Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week! I had a wonderful first week of winter break. No big snows yet, but the car has frozen shut a few times! I hope everyone has been enjoying their holidays!

I found an article about how bats are still being overlooked despite how helpful they are. But the durian fruit is teaching farmers just how important bats are. The durian fruit, also known as the world’s smelliest fruit, is vital to the farming economy in Indonesia. The fruit has an export value of more than $3.34 million and is very important to the farmers. In order to help small-scale farmers grow more, and therefore gain a livable profit, researchers figured out how the durian plants were being pollinated. By figuring out that the plants usually had their prime pollination time in the evening, the researchers were able to learn what was pollinating the plants. BATS!!! Two species of flying foxes and one cave nectar bat were specifically found to pollinate the durian plants. The flying foxes were not expected to be pollinators of the plant because these bats usually eat smaller fruit than the durians. Since farmers often kill bats in an attempt to protect their mango crops, researchers are hoping that this new knowledge will help protect the bats.

If you’d like to read more about the study, you can find the article here.

*2016 dollar amount from Durian Global Market Report.