welcome to our Google+ hangout
celebrating 125 years of excavation all
right thank you everybody for joining us
today i’m your host Andrew halle here
from National Geographic joined by three
great explorers and one very lucky
participant who sent in a question in
advance as we explore the world of
exploration and the constructive role
that failure can have in it as you know
we’ve been celebrating all your the
125th anniversary of the National
Geographic Society and it gave us lots
of opportunities to talk about the
spectacular successes and amazing
discoveries and thrilling adventures
that everybody’s had but anybody who’s
ever attempted any of these things knows
that that’s always the last part of the
story that there’s many great challenges
and some huge and colossal and wonderful
failures along the way so our explorers
with us today have made amazing
discoveries and accomplished incredible
things in their long and short careers
and we’re going to explore some of the
things that happen to them along the way
that they might not have expected but
still learned a lot from so joining us
first we have agostina lentes Augustine
there is a primatologist who has studied
most recently some macaques and these
straps critter cams on them and we have
wonderful videos that you can see of the
macaques in the world that they live in
and he had a wonderful expedition where
he was out in the jungles of Borneo and
you know as an explorer does started
exploring maybe a little bit too much
and got terribly lost so we’ll hear
about that story from him we have Jill
Heiner who is a cave diver and has had
some incredible experiences down deep
under the water under the earth in some
of the most dangerous and beautiful
places on earth a few years ago she set
out to explore some of the least
explored of these places where you at
least expect to find underwater diving
and that’s in the middle of the desert
so
following the footsteps of Alexander the
Great she headed out into the deserts of
Egypt and came up dry is that good whiff
of it again we’ll hear about how those
adventures and Paul racy here coming to
us from the UK has had a long and
distinguished career has species named
after him and species discovered and
incredible adventures that he has had
and one thorn in his side for nearly a
decade while studying soccer footed bats
and the many many males that they have
found they’ve never quite been able to
find a female and fall I don’t know if
you would know any better than the rest
of us as to why that is but maybe that’s
one of the first stories we can dive
into and then our public participant
here is Sophie steer she’s coming to us
from Pennsylvania you can see some of
her wonderful art behind her there so if
he’s a medical illustrator and science
illustrator so you can wait Sophie and
say hello to everybody and she’ll be
joining us and not jumping in on the
conversation I think Paul I think I’d
like to start with you and see what can
you tell us about what your thoughts
were going into the experience searching
for these bats and how you can I don’t
they did it just started off as it is
any sort of study on an unknown species
of bat very little is known about
malagasy bats we found a particularly
interesting one the endemic sucker
funded bat it has these strange sucker
like things on its wrists and ankles we
want to know more about it so we started
off any any sort of study on the species
and after seven years we caught three
hundred individuals we’d had nearly 900
captures of those 300 individuals
because we recaptured several few times
and we haven’t caught a female and it’s
extremely embarrassing and it’s also
inexplicable and I don’t know what to do
about it there that the fact that little
boys join
the adult males in our study area twice
a year means that their mothers can’t be
far away and I guess that’s the most
tantalizing thing that that the little
boys that join the adults we know
they’re juveniles because we can hold up
their wings to the light and we can see
a bit of light through the cartilage in
their wing boats which means they
haven’t fully formed now juvenile bats
don’t migrate long distances that their
wings aren’t up to it so they haven’t
come far but they’ve come out of range
of their mothers so far as we’re
concerned and we’ve had a few side trips
to try and find the mothers and we have
failed Sophia Sophia your question I
believe one of your first questions was
for for Paul if you want to lay into
that yeah um you know they’re
procreating you know they have to be
there somewhere released you think
because the last time you saw a mother
about was 30 years ago so I was
wondering could they do anything like
the flatworm or the clownfish and change
gender a very interesting question and
and i have to say Soviets cross my mind
but that would be a first for mammals
yes what that would be a first for
mammals and and and from everything we
know about mammalian reproductive
biology which is my sort of basic
discipline I think that is most unlikely
most unlikely I mean it’s got to the ice
EDD I was a mammalian reproductive
biologist it’s got to this state now
where people are saying to me racy are
you sure you’re sexing them properly you
know that that’s really kind of hard to
take yeah you know cuz it’s pretty
obvious when you got a male that’s all
for all the obvious reasons and you can
even you can even push the testes around
under the skin so you know watch it you
know watch it if you know what you’re
dealing with and they’re all males so
Paul I can see this being you know a big
challenge for you and very surprising
the first season for the second season
you know maybe
third season that you guys have been out
there how did your interpretation of the
experience and the sense of the
challenge of the failure change over the
years as of this mystery developed well
I thought it has to be easy explanation
maybe the males are in this valley and
the females are in adjacent valleys
because because the young males aren’t
going so far so we went back to National
Geographic and said look we need more
support to have these expeditions to
adjacent valleys and we did that and we
found it very difficult to catch bats in
the adjacent valleys and we found no
females so it’s still an open question I
don’t think they’re far away but but
Madagascar’s are very it’s very
difficult terrain to move over
particularly when you you need quite a
lot of equipment with you need your
camping gear and all that sort of stuff
I mean if there’s not a track you’re not
you’ve got to find it very difficult to
get there so we could drive we could
drive a certain way then we had to hire
porters and and baggage carriers and to
get us to our our destination and you
can see them now and it it didn’t work
out I mean it’s it’s tantalizing because
if you go back over the museum
collections and in the Smithsonian
collection in Washington and the field
museum and that’s with history in
Chicago you can find females in those
collections so 808 out of 20 23 bear my
cipota sucker for the bats in those
collections since nineteen forty eight
collected since nineteen forty eight are
females there are eight females in those
museum collections and three of those
from the river valley where we were
working and one from the village where
we working so that’s really wow more
tantalizing but it’s a wonder why
couldn’t we find them i mean you know
other people around them I mean the
whole time
oh yeah so those would be 1948 was the
first capture was the first female
wonderful so the people who collected
those specimens they’re not out there
looking anymore you know anything
anymore you can find some cottage
somewhere whether another time eater you
know society injured by the mysteries of
the woman that kind of answers one of
the questions that we’ve had sent in
from akshay from rekha from kuala lumpur
and he was wondering about you know when
they’re when you do run into you know a
lack of success in the field does not G
a reissue the failed assignments or they
completely abandoned and I guess Paul
your your story for one shows like yeah
if you could say that you’ve got a new
clue you can you can get the funding
people want to answer these mysteries
it’s not like you know we thought we
would figure it out but know if we run
up against a brick wall so we’re cutting
and running you think that that’s one of
the driving things in science still I
guess you know Jill and Augustine all of
you could jump in on this is there a
good sense of kind of excitement when
people meet failure because of the new
opportunities that it presents if you’re
not willing to fail then then you’re not
exploring you know you can spend your
entire life in front of a television set
like a lump of meat with a remote
control in your hand and you’ll never
fail at anything so you have to be
willing to embrace that to learn clues
and have discovery opportunities I mean
the whole point of doing science is
really failure that’s how we learn there
are so many actual successes that it’s
going out and trying and demonstrating
that it’s not this but it might be
something else that’s basically how we
gain knowledge yeah so so absolutely
it’s always it there’s always new
information even if something goes wrong
you don’t find what you were looking for
you’ve kind of answered a question there
yeah and it may lead you in a completely
different direction to so what about you
Jill you’re out there in the desert
looking for water as people have done
many times generally in comics are
cartoons thanks most people try to avoid
the adventure but what what did you
you know when you went out there and
didn’t find the water how how did that
shape your new search well we were
following a very old lead from Alexander
the Great who was drawn to travel across
the desert to this incredible oasis
called SIA to consult with an Oracle and
an Oracle was inside the temple and when
i read that this Oracle was a spring and
that Alexander thought that these OAC
springs were connected beneath the
desert to me that was crying cave
exploration and so my colleagues and I
went out to consult the Oracle and when
we got to the temple and the actual well
where Alexander had his moment i
shimmied through some little bars and
and then climbed down the shaft of this
well to this incredible beautiful clear
spring water fresh water welling up out
of the ground but the entire well had
collapsed in and there was rocks
blocking everything so there wasn’t a
chance for me to fit my little body down
into these networks so we traveled
elsewhere in the desert to these other
way ceased to try and find out how the
water system worked in the Western
Desert and unfortunately it was during
the Arab Spring which made any efforts
at exploration extremely challenging and
and fraught with dangers along the way
Wow so you know that brings up some new
unexpected dangerous act that came into
that situation for you but we actually
have someone from Cairo rode in on
facebook and asked the question is it
even safe to explore underwater caves to
start with it seems like I’m asking for
trouble well cave diving is sort of
known as one of the most dangerous
sports that people can take on and if
you have the appropriate training and
the right equipment then you can
certainly mitigate a lot of the risks
but I think one of the key things is is
to understand when to call it a day when
to accept failure and come back another
day and so you have to be with willing
to get within you know just an inch of
she got in grabbing what you think is
success or the treasure or whatever and
saying oh not today I need to call the
dive go home and take another stab at it
at another time maybe in a different way
okay so so what well where you at now on
your search for these underwater caves
in the desert oh well you know I do
travel all around the world exploring
and documenting underwater caves I would
really like to go back and do some
further exploration in the area maybe
when political things calm down a little
bit um but that whole area of the
western desert sits on top of the
greatest fossil aquifer on the planet
there is water welling out of the ground
and I think my exploration led me
perhaps in a different direction and and
I think what is there is this
unbelievable water story that really
complements a lot of the other work that
I do on conservation and outreach
efforts that’s fantastic so yeah so
sometimes you’ll not find what you’re
looking for but find other things
entirely sure sure Augustine that kind
of makes me think of your story well you
think about it the story were talking
about as I got lost in the jungle
looking for us monkey I supposed to
study what has actually helped out of
the jungle by an orangutan who came down
got me and walked me back into camp
which is pretty impressive but the punch
line here is that early in my career I
wanted to study those things on the edge
for really explores of the hidden things
that the last remaining members of a
species or something like that and and
when I came up with it was really a
lesson I failed in the sense of my
experience in Borneo because I went to
study the sort of a really amazing
monkey called presbyters Rubicon de and
the only time I ever saw him they were
like this and not running around in the
trees so it turns out my experience
there plus the orangutans who had been
an old pet who’s rehabilitated to live
in the jungle gave me the hint that you
know what maybe what you should be
looking at is not these last few things
living out there
but those primates that do okay with
people that actually do really well
crown people and that drove me to the
last ten years or so looking at macaque
monkeys who do really well around humans
and so I went from a failure trying to
find the last few things out there to a
lot of successes asking the question of
what given how much humans mess with the
world which other things out there are
able to exploit are messed up work
that’s an excellent i love that because
I mean I’ve known your stories here in
master Geographic for the last few years
I didn’t know that this is the actual
origin of it yeah getting lost and the
thing that you find was then like your
mission for the next ten years well it’s
that whole thing that we think of
expiration so frequently is something
that’s totally out there and way from
people when it turns out some of the
most interesting things in the world
today or how does the word we’ll get
along with people cuz we’re not going
away we just keep expanding and I’m
really interesting those other animals
that do well around us so that that’s
not like a deep choudhary’s question
from New Delhi he said this in on
google+ and he was wondering if any of
you had ever explored or discovered
something while taking a casual stroll
or that you didn’t mean to find so i
don’t know if you could call getting
lost in the Borneo jungle a casual rule
okay learned a lot of work it was
walking through the jungle so I thought
I knew where I was going and this was
another important lesson this was early
on in my career and so I had compass now
we have gps units and all of that it
wouldn’t be the same I followed a map
and I followed some of the rule of the
road and it turns out in jungles that
doesn’t work so well in jungles you have
to feel your way and that orangutans
taught me something jungles aren’t about
the ground jungles are about the trees
and so understanding how things move
around in the trees and sort of live on
a three-dimensional reality was a lot
better than the two-dimensional so one
last thing I also noticed that even
though you’re looking at the trees you
do have to look at the ground a little
bit in that story I came across this
clearing when I was lost that was
shimmering blue and was all these
butterflies gorgeous thousands of
butterflies in this clearing and I
walked into them to see how it was and
as they all
flew up I realized why they were there I
was standing in the gigantic pool of pig
feces hey be on the baby so so your
discovery came from following a monkey
my first cave I found following cows
into the jungle and ended up diving into
the place where they were all drinking
and also crapping too I don’t think I’m
ever going to look at that you know
classic image of like Bambi and a little
butterfly comes and lands on his tail
and it’s just the sweetest little scene
you’ve ever seen I’m gonna have a much
more robust killed sense of them the
whole story there but I would think get
getting down into the caves and being
amongst bats I’m sure you you’ve coming
across some really unsavory environments
said me oh yeah yeah no so Augustine was
talking about the butterflies that when
they flew away reveal the pool of pig
feces that they were that they were had
alighted upon and it just made me think
of what kinds of unsavory things you may
have stumbled upon inadvertently it deep
in the cave looking for batch me yes
yeah yeah okay sorry I I haven’t found
anything I’ve always been frightened of
finding snakes in caves but that’s never
happened and I’ve never found anything
thats causing me any any alarm I did
enter caves from the sea ones on the
Kenya coast with a the excursion of an
international back conference that went
down from Nairobi to Mombasa and then
along the coast we all were told that
there was a interesting bats in the
caves we all stripped off in our
costumes went into the cave and the bats
erupted and landed on our all over our
bodies and you know there was very
little panic because we knew that
we didn’t grab them it would all be all
right they would get fed up with hanging
on our bodies and then go off somewhere
else and so that’s what happened and
these these bats were some of the
African bats were the largest teeth some
people certain some people were very
nervous of this up let’s say but it
nobody got bitten so it would Mariana
Niccolo lava from Sweden had a question
for us on google+ that ties right into
this she was wondering how new
adventures fight your fears during these
failures how do you have that like inner
fortitude when fats land all up and down
you to just stand and say oh I’m sure
they’ll just get tired and fly away you
know what what does that take howdy how
do you conquer your fear in such a tough
look there’s no real fear because you
know you know enough about bats to know
what what’s okay and what’s not okay as
long as you don’t grab them you grab
them they’ll bite you I mean you’ve
learned that as a Prentice researcher
that you know you need gloves of a
certain thickness to protect your
fingers and if you don’t have them the
bats canines will go straight through
them so as long as you don’t grab them
there okay look like most most animals I
mean wasps won’t bees won’t sting you if
you don’t grab them you know snakes
won’t bite you if you don’t grab them or
don’t don’t impact them in some way yeah
in general in general that’s part of the
whole lesson I think of failure is that
you learn from it and build from it and
especially working in in in forested
areas or far places it’s the repeated
experience of small failures that you
get larger successes you know how do you
deal with mosquitoes well you don’t pay
enough attention them early on and get
covered with hundreds of touch device
and you slowly learn how do you do with
snakes you have some close calls and
luckily it’s if things work out okay you
realize what not to do how do you not
get lost in the jungle take your time
learn your maps and done nowadays by GPS
unit I think I mean folks for me because
I
project in Madagascar was actually my
last research project so I really in
that respect do feel a sense of failure
and it gripes a bit to go you know to
finish my career on a low ie not
achieving what I wanted to achieve but I
don’t feel too badly about it because I
know someone’s going to come along and
find these females you know it has to
happen because you know the species
continues so you know some of the
females have to be there and someone
else is going to find them someone found
them in the past not too many of them
and not the ratio of one female to one
male as you might expect but females
were found in the past and females are
going to be found in the future I just
hope I’m still around to read about it
and what is the grand the whole story of
exploration that I think you know
there’s two sides that go on if it was
just a matter of collecting facts about
the world there’s lots of facts that we
have that we don’t know um you know you
can open up the encyclopedia and see
lots of things that you never knew about
and you’ve learned these new facts but
there was no real adventure in
discovering it for you because you just
read it out of a book or someone else’s
adventure um when you guys go out there
how much of the excitement for you is
also the sense of really not knowing if
you’re going to find the facts you’re
not going to just open up to a page and
have the answer but I us with asthma dr
z that’s the best part of the questions
or the most exciting part absolutely i
mean that’s where all the discovery
happens and the opportunity to to find
something that nobody’s ever seen before
or discover a new place is is is
incredible but it requires that you and
this comes back to our last question it
requires that you push the envelope and
pushing the envelope often means
embracing fear whether it’s fear of
personal harm or whether it’s fear of
failure there has to be a certain
acceptance that fear is your self
preservation but it’s also what pushes
you forward in discovery this is great
so thanks everybody for joining us
everybody who’s watching their these are
our explorers talking about failure and
the role it can play in the successes of
exploration
you have any questions just hash tag
them let’s explore on Twitter Google+
wherever you are and will be watching
those questions we have one that’s come
in from jason s in minnesota saying how
many of your first time explorers injure
themselves during their first field
engagement absolutely yeah good yeah I
did I mean the closest I came to losing
my life was in a cave where I was
helping a student to foot to to mark the
eggs in a cave swiftlets Nets high up in
a boulder cave and we were trying to get
a cave ladder up and I there was a we
needed a rope I said I can get the rope
he said no I’ll jump I said don’t jump
he jumped and the roof fell in and rocks
came very close to my head and the
feliway one landed on my foot if that
rocket had landed on my head I wouldn’t
be talking to you now so that was that
that was the closest I’ve come and it
wouldn’t when I look back on it now I’m
much more scared about it and I was at
that time I think that’s a very common
story many of us have had that in my
dissertation research I was cutting
trails and I took a trail up one end
miraya did the jungle near this stream
because it was I thought a better view
two or three days later I’m walking that
trail during a heavy rainstorm and I
realized this whole hillsides was made
of clay so me and the hillside went down
all the way to the raw was carrying a
machete with me flew back lost
everything I hit the ground down at the
bottom and saw the machete falling down
towards me it hit my shoulder with the
handling Oh what my closest call was
actually on my first National Geographic
project it was the ice Island project
back in two thousand when we went to
cave dive inside of the largest moving
object on the planet which was a huge
iceberg in Antarctica and under the the
pressure of intense current we were
trapped inside
this cave trying to get out and mere
hours after we finally escaped this
iceberg cold and practically hypothermic
the whole thing exploded just like an
ice cube when you drop it in a glass Wow
so what do you do in that situation yeah
well I mean if for the time that we were
actually pinned inside the iceberg it
was just you know you make the next best
decision you can you take the emotion of
what’s happening and you tuck it back in
your back of your head and say you know
there’ll be plenty of time for crying
later but right now I just make the best
practical next step you can and you just
work towards survival when the iceberg
itself exploded to me that was a message
that it was time to go home and at the
time on that expedition we sort of felt
it was failure because we hadn’t fully
explored this new ecosystem that we’d
found but in retrospect what happened
was the story and a lot of incredible
science came from that project yeah
that’s amazing so mastermind on Google+
from New Jersey has a question for you
Jill he says what happens if you get
lost in those underwater caves so you’re
out in the iceberg thing exploded you’re
able to get in his chip and get out of
there if you get lost in a cave what
happens uh he would die you would not be
coming home one of the things that we
train people in when we teach them to
cave dive is how to use a guideline so
we use a spool of line that we take with
us through the environment and we leave
this tactile reference because sometimes
well most of the time when you’re
exploring a new cave your movement
through the cave or your bubbles on the
ceiling will completely blitz the
visibility so that you cannot see a
thing on the way out and so you just put
your hand you know on this guideline and
you use it as the tactile reference to
bring you home so getting lost is just
simply not an option wow wow so we’ve
got a lot of great questions coming in
now we’re in our kind of final moments
we’ll have a few more minutes to talk to
our explorers hear about failure and the
role that constructive role
can play in explorations but I want to
get back to Sofia are probably
participant who kind of kicked us off
with questions from Paul and see what
you’ve been thinking about this and one
of the questions have come to your mind
actually one of the questions that I
just got my phone from uh from an
elementary girl she wanted to know Jill
how do you go about handling all the
different cultures especially she said
and see what it’s very the culture is
very correct so as a woman how do you
die and honor their cultures at the same
time oh that’s so important I did a lot
of research ahead of time and talk to
people about how I should be
appropriately addressed and how I should
behave as an expedition leader and
interacting with with men in that part
of the world and so it’s really
important to understand and embrace the
cultures and be very apologetic not be
afraid to ask you know how it is
appropriate to behave as a woman it’s
challenging one of the most common fails
that explorers have is the cultural fail
showing up somewhere and making some
huge gap your mistake by not having done
enough research as to where they’re
going and how the people live there
that’s crazy um have you ever been
denied place like because just of their
culture or have you ever been denied
I’ve had some challenges as a woman I’ve
been told there is no place for you here
and been denied a visa to travel because
I was a woman so yeah there’s a lot of
there’s a lot of additional challenges
but it’s always worth trying she says
her name is Cynthia she says she’s not
going to have that problem because she’s
going to the new king planet but she
won’t have that very good time all right
yes excellent go board Cynthia total
starting for me
that’s great uh Paul we’ve got another
you know kind of an inspiration question
for you which their wonder about these
bats and how unusual this might be let
me get the guy’s name here it’s Tom
Simmons he came to us on google+ from
Santa Barbara California he’s wandering
for Paul has this been seen at any other
bat species or maybe even any other
mammal species where they’ve had trouble
finding one section the other well it’s
a good question and I think the answer
is no not in any other bat species or
any other mammal species you do you do
get some degree of segregation like in
all the bats in in the UK and probably
in North America too i think that during
the summer females like to go in one
place to have their young and suckle a
young and male to go somewhere else so
you have maternity colonies and bachelor
colonies and stuff like that but that’s
just for part of the year and they get
together at mating time and they
hibernate together in caves so that’s
well-documented that’s just temporary
segregation but but this is absolute
segregation over a seven-year period and
not one member of the opposite sex being
found I mean that is extreme for bats I
mean it’s unheard off the bats and I
think it’s unheard of for mammals such
extreme segregation yeah really weird
will there be any possibility that
there’s kind of a generational thing
like they have a crop of female children
in the 40s and they kind of go off and
kind of cyber few generations and like
20 years later the next time that there
is more females no no I think that’s
most unlikely and every bit that this I
mean these bats obviously haven’t been
reading the right textbooks because
they’re behaving like they should do all
right so I Sophie I want to give you one
last chance to get some questions out
here for our explorers and again
encourage you guys Augustine Jill Paul
anything else that you’re wondering from
each other it’s been so great to have
you all out here it’s been a really fun
conversation
I was kind of thinking the same way you
were Andrew I was like is there like a
harem effect going on with the bat so
where there’s like you know several
females may be higher up in the tree or
something you know they only need one
bat so all the males the other males are
like you know living lower in the tree
no no no because they roost it or all
the bats roost in a single semi unfurled
leaf of the travelers tree so I look
like an unfair banana leaf and you get
up to 50 bats in one leaf and then as
the leaf unfurls the bats must go away
and find another leaf to get some
shelter and we can capture all the bats
in the leaf we just put a big bag over
the leaf and and then check all the bats
inside the leaf and they’re all males ah
so that there’s no what there’s no other
roosting possibility in this particular
tree and they don’t roost anywhere else
they don’t roost in banana that we have
we haven’t found them in caves and
because they have the sucker feet
they’re adapted to this particular
smooth shiny leaf they can leave the the
suckers on that don’t actually suck they
work by wet adhesion I am so so like it
you stick a bit of wet paper to a window
it sticks they just walk up the leaf
like that and you get up to 50 living
together and they’re all males and twice
a year there they’ve got some little
boys with them too and so there’s nope
no roosting opportunity for females in
that study area which is which is about
four square kilometers and they found
only in this particular tree the
travelers tree ravin Allah is
characteristic of degraded forest it’s
only found there in degraded forests so
they’re not short of habitat there’s
plenty of degraded forest in Madagascar
and the plenty of these trees for them
to roosted yeah it’s fascinating I know
like you said you know it would be nice
to end your career with it with the
final discovery I think it’s even better
to have such a great mystery going on
the session trogir sofa thank you Andrew
that was a really right thing to say
alright so we’ve got one last question I
think I’ll throw it to you Augustine
Nicholas Alvarado on Google+ had a
question from Sarasota means wondering
how do you see technology affecting your
specific area of expertise how could
technology mitigate or even eliminate
the risk of failure would that be
possible oh yeah there are two really
quick ways I could say one was having a
GPS I wouldn’t have gotten lost modern
why stuff that would have helped but
that was before they were available most
fascinating lee what I’m doing now is
with a very broad team and and great
support from National Geographic in the
way foundation is we’re putting cameras
and critic cans and GPS collars on
macaque monkeys so that all these times
we thought we were losing them we’re now
getting sort of satellite fixes as to
where they are so we can sit back not
bother them besides and putting the
collars on them let them roam around and
figure out where they are and we’ve
learned an enormous amount all of these
things we thought we knew about how to
macaque monkeys move around cities and
jungles and temples well it turns out
they’re doing at least fifty percent
more than we thought and it’s all
because of modern technology ten years
ago this would have been impossible in
10 years from now I think the best field
workers the real explorers are gonna be
the monkeys and they’ll just be
providing the information that you guys
like you won’t have to ride down a
mudslide with machete chasing them go
for that that’ll be cool yeah our
technology is just expanding the bounds
of exploration exponentially it’s it’s
unbelievable there’s a device that that
I I used and piloted in a project back
in 98 that was in nat geo adventure and
on that mapping device developed by dr.
bill stone is is now going to head out
to eventually Jupiter’s moon Europa to
explore oceans underneath frozen seas so
technology has such a huge factor in
expanding what’s possible and allowing
us an opportunity to fail bigger that’s
I mean one of the things that is
important though is it’s always people
operating tech
ology so you’re never going to get rid
of the person because technology can
only do what we tell it to do it’s not
going to do anything yeah yeah except
we’re still the ones that have the major
impact yeah yeah but darn the mapper
that was going to go to Europa without a
cave diver attached to it unfortunately
miniaturization of the things that I
guess team was talking about it had been
a huge step forward for bats I mean we
put radio tags on the tangram my sapota
and now there are there are GPS tags you
could we can put on fruit bats that are
becoming smaller all the time so we can
put them on smaller and smaller bats so
that’s been a huge step forward and and
you learn as a ghost and said you learn
new things all the time great well thank
you so much everybody for joining us
this has been a very enjoyable and
enlightening conversation about failure
exploration and I definitely have opened
up my eyes to the thrill that can be on
the least most least expected adventures
that you have thanks everybody for
joining us on Google+ and YouTube and
Twitter great questions you can continue
the conversation on Google+ with us stay
tuned and follow Nat Geo on google+ for
more hangouts on air Thank You Sofia for
joining us and everybody sending her
questions as well and for more
exploration of the stories of failure
see this month’s National Geographic
magazine or NGM com or the natgeo
magazine app on your iPad and you can
explore some of the classic stories from
long before any of us were even born
ernest shackleton and other amazing
stories of seeming failure that became
great stories in the history of
exploration thank you everybody for
joining us and we look forward to seeing
you again soon on natgeo on google+
thanks bye bye
celebrating 125 years of excavation all
right thank you everybody for joining us
today i’m your host Andrew halle here
from National Geographic joined by three
great explorers and one very lucky
participant who sent in a question in
advance as we explore the world of
exploration and the constructive role
that failure can have in it as you know
we’ve been celebrating all your the
125th anniversary of the National
Geographic Society and it gave us lots
of opportunities to talk about the
spectacular successes and amazing
discoveries and thrilling adventures
that everybody’s had but anybody who’s
ever attempted any of these things knows
that that’s always the last part of the
story that there’s many great challenges
and some huge and colossal and wonderful
failures along the way so our explorers
with us today have made amazing
discoveries and accomplished incredible
things in their long and short careers
and we’re going to explore some of the
things that happen to them along the way
that they might not have expected but
still learned a lot from so joining us
first we have agostina lentes Augustine
there is a primatologist who has studied
most recently some macaques and these
straps critter cams on them and we have
wonderful videos that you can see of the
macaques in the world that they live in
and he had a wonderful expedition where
he was out in the jungles of Borneo and
you know as an explorer does started
exploring maybe a little bit too much
and got terribly lost so we’ll hear
about that story from him we have Jill
Heiner who is a cave diver and has had
some incredible experiences down deep
under the water under the earth in some
of the most dangerous and beautiful
places on earth a few years ago she set
out to explore some of the least
explored of these places where you at
least expect to find underwater diving
and that’s in the middle of the desert
so
following the footsteps of Alexander the
Great she headed out into the deserts of
Egypt and came up dry is that good whiff
of it again we’ll hear about how those
adventures and Paul racy here coming to
us from the UK has had a long and
distinguished career has species named
after him and species discovered and
incredible adventures that he has had
and one thorn in his side for nearly a
decade while studying soccer footed bats
and the many many males that they have
found they’ve never quite been able to
find a female and fall I don’t know if
you would know any better than the rest
of us as to why that is but maybe that’s
one of the first stories we can dive
into and then our public participant
here is Sophie steer she’s coming to us
from Pennsylvania you can see some of
her wonderful art behind her there so if
he’s a medical illustrator and science
illustrator so you can wait Sophie and
say hello to everybody and she’ll be
joining us and not jumping in on the
conversation I think Paul I think I’d
like to start with you and see what can
you tell us about what your thoughts
were going into the experience searching
for these bats and how you can I don’t
they did it just started off as it is
any sort of study on an unknown species
of bat very little is known about
malagasy bats we found a particularly
interesting one the endemic sucker
funded bat it has these strange sucker
like things on its wrists and ankles we
want to know more about it so we started
off any any sort of study on the species
and after seven years we caught three
hundred individuals we’d had nearly 900
captures of those 300 individuals
because we recaptured several few times
and we haven’t caught a female and it’s
extremely embarrassing and it’s also
inexplicable and I don’t know what to do
about it there that the fact that little
boys join
the adult males in our study area twice
a year means that their mothers can’t be
far away and I guess that’s the most
tantalizing thing that that the little
boys that join the adults we know
they’re juveniles because we can hold up
their wings to the light and we can see
a bit of light through the cartilage in
their wing boats which means they
haven’t fully formed now juvenile bats
don’t migrate long distances that their
wings aren’t up to it so they haven’t
come far but they’ve come out of range
of their mothers so far as we’re
concerned and we’ve had a few side trips
to try and find the mothers and we have
failed Sophia Sophia your question I
believe one of your first questions was
for for Paul if you want to lay into
that yeah um you know they’re
procreating you know they have to be
there somewhere released you think
because the last time you saw a mother
about was 30 years ago so I was
wondering could they do anything like
the flatworm or the clownfish and change
gender a very interesting question and
and i have to say Soviets cross my mind
but that would be a first for mammals
yes what that would be a first for
mammals and and and from everything we
know about mammalian reproductive
biology which is my sort of basic
discipline I think that is most unlikely
most unlikely I mean it’s got to the ice
EDD I was a mammalian reproductive
biologist it’s got to this state now
where people are saying to me racy are
you sure you’re sexing them properly you
know that that’s really kind of hard to
take yeah you know cuz it’s pretty
obvious when you got a male that’s all
for all the obvious reasons and you can
even you can even push the testes around
under the skin so you know watch it you
know watch it if you know what you’re
dealing with and they’re all males so
Paul I can see this being you know a big
challenge for you and very surprising
the first season for the second season
you know maybe
third season that you guys have been out
there how did your interpretation of the
experience and the sense of the
challenge of the failure change over the
years as of this mystery developed well
I thought it has to be easy explanation
maybe the males are in this valley and
the females are in adjacent valleys
because because the young males aren’t
going so far so we went back to National
Geographic and said look we need more
support to have these expeditions to
adjacent valleys and we did that and we
found it very difficult to catch bats in
the adjacent valleys and we found no
females so it’s still an open question I
don’t think they’re far away but but
Madagascar’s are very it’s very
difficult terrain to move over
particularly when you you need quite a
lot of equipment with you need your
camping gear and all that sort of stuff
I mean if there’s not a track you’re not
you’ve got to find it very difficult to
get there so we could drive we could
drive a certain way then we had to hire
porters and and baggage carriers and to
get us to our our destination and you
can see them now and it it didn’t work
out I mean it’s it’s tantalizing because
if you go back over the museum
collections and in the Smithsonian
collection in Washington and the field
museum and that’s with history in
Chicago you can find females in those
collections so 808 out of 20 23 bear my
cipota sucker for the bats in those
collections since nineteen forty eight
collected since nineteen forty eight are
females there are eight females in those
museum collections and three of those
from the river valley where we were
working and one from the village where
we working so that’s really wow more
tantalizing but it’s a wonder why
couldn’t we find them i mean you know
other people around them I mean the
whole time
oh yeah so those would be 1948 was the
first capture was the first female
wonderful so the people who collected
those specimens they’re not out there
looking anymore you know anything
anymore you can find some cottage
somewhere whether another time eater you
know society injured by the mysteries of
the woman that kind of answers one of
the questions that we’ve had sent in
from akshay from rekha from kuala lumpur
and he was wondering about you know when
they’re when you do run into you know a
lack of success in the field does not G
a reissue the failed assignments or they
completely abandoned and I guess Paul
your your story for one shows like yeah
if you could say that you’ve got a new
clue you can you can get the funding
people want to answer these mysteries
it’s not like you know we thought we
would figure it out but know if we run
up against a brick wall so we’re cutting
and running you think that that’s one of
the driving things in science still I
guess you know Jill and Augustine all of
you could jump in on this is there a
good sense of kind of excitement when
people meet failure because of the new
opportunities that it presents if you’re
not willing to fail then then you’re not
exploring you know you can spend your
entire life in front of a television set
like a lump of meat with a remote
control in your hand and you’ll never
fail at anything so you have to be
willing to embrace that to learn clues
and have discovery opportunities I mean
the whole point of doing science is
really failure that’s how we learn there
are so many actual successes that it’s
going out and trying and demonstrating
that it’s not this but it might be
something else that’s basically how we
gain knowledge yeah so so absolutely
it’s always it there’s always new
information even if something goes wrong
you don’t find what you were looking for
you’ve kind of answered a question there
yeah and it may lead you in a completely
different direction to so what about you
Jill you’re out there in the desert
looking for water as people have done
many times generally in comics are
cartoons thanks most people try to avoid
the adventure but what what did you
you know when you went out there and
didn’t find the water how how did that
shape your new search well we were
following a very old lead from Alexander
the Great who was drawn to travel across
the desert to this incredible oasis
called SIA to consult with an Oracle and
an Oracle was inside the temple and when
i read that this Oracle was a spring and
that Alexander thought that these OAC
springs were connected beneath the
desert to me that was crying cave
exploration and so my colleagues and I
went out to consult the Oracle and when
we got to the temple and the actual well
where Alexander had his moment i
shimmied through some little bars and
and then climbed down the shaft of this
well to this incredible beautiful clear
spring water fresh water welling up out
of the ground but the entire well had
collapsed in and there was rocks
blocking everything so there wasn’t a
chance for me to fit my little body down
into these networks so we traveled
elsewhere in the desert to these other
way ceased to try and find out how the
water system worked in the Western
Desert and unfortunately it was during
the Arab Spring which made any efforts
at exploration extremely challenging and
and fraught with dangers along the way
Wow so you know that brings up some new
unexpected dangerous act that came into
that situation for you but we actually
have someone from Cairo rode in on
facebook and asked the question is it
even safe to explore underwater caves to
start with it seems like I’m asking for
trouble well cave diving is sort of
known as one of the most dangerous
sports that people can take on and if
you have the appropriate training and
the right equipment then you can
certainly mitigate a lot of the risks
but I think one of the key things is is
to understand when to call it a day when
to accept failure and come back another
day and so you have to be with willing
to get within you know just an inch of
she got in grabbing what you think is
success or the treasure or whatever and
saying oh not today I need to call the
dive go home and take another stab at it
at another time maybe in a different way
okay so so what well where you at now on
your search for these underwater caves
in the desert oh well you know I do
travel all around the world exploring
and documenting underwater caves I would
really like to go back and do some
further exploration in the area maybe
when political things calm down a little
bit um but that whole area of the
western desert sits on top of the
greatest fossil aquifer on the planet
there is water welling out of the ground
and I think my exploration led me
perhaps in a different direction and and
I think what is there is this
unbelievable water story that really
complements a lot of the other work that
I do on conservation and outreach
efforts that’s fantastic so yeah so
sometimes you’ll not find what you’re
looking for but find other things
entirely sure sure Augustine that kind
of makes me think of your story well you
think about it the story were talking
about as I got lost in the jungle
looking for us monkey I supposed to
study what has actually helped out of
the jungle by an orangutan who came down
got me and walked me back into camp
which is pretty impressive but the punch
line here is that early in my career I
wanted to study those things on the edge
for really explores of the hidden things
that the last remaining members of a
species or something like that and and
when I came up with it was really a
lesson I failed in the sense of my
experience in Borneo because I went to
study the sort of a really amazing
monkey called presbyters Rubicon de and
the only time I ever saw him they were
like this and not running around in the
trees so it turns out my experience
there plus the orangutans who had been
an old pet who’s rehabilitated to live
in the jungle gave me the hint that you
know what maybe what you should be
looking at is not these last few things
living out there
but those primates that do okay with
people that actually do really well
crown people and that drove me to the
last ten years or so looking at macaque
monkeys who do really well around humans
and so I went from a failure trying to
find the last few things out there to a
lot of successes asking the question of
what given how much humans mess with the
world which other things out there are
able to exploit are messed up work
that’s an excellent i love that because
I mean I’ve known your stories here in
master Geographic for the last few years
I didn’t know that this is the actual
origin of it yeah getting lost and the
thing that you find was then like your
mission for the next ten years well it’s
that whole thing that we think of
expiration so frequently is something
that’s totally out there and way from
people when it turns out some of the
most interesting things in the world
today or how does the word we’ll get
along with people cuz we’re not going
away we just keep expanding and I’m
really interesting those other animals
that do well around us so that that’s
not like a deep choudhary’s question
from New Delhi he said this in on
google+ and he was wondering if any of
you had ever explored or discovered
something while taking a casual stroll
or that you didn’t mean to find so i
don’t know if you could call getting
lost in the Borneo jungle a casual rule
okay learned a lot of work it was
walking through the jungle so I thought
I knew where I was going and this was
another important lesson this was early
on in my career and so I had compass now
we have gps units and all of that it
wouldn’t be the same I followed a map
and I followed some of the rule of the
road and it turns out in jungles that
doesn’t work so well in jungles you have
to feel your way and that orangutans
taught me something jungles aren’t about
the ground jungles are about the trees
and so understanding how things move
around in the trees and sort of live on
a three-dimensional reality was a lot
better than the two-dimensional so one
last thing I also noticed that even
though you’re looking at the trees you
do have to look at the ground a little
bit in that story I came across this
clearing when I was lost that was
shimmering blue and was all these
butterflies gorgeous thousands of
butterflies in this clearing and I
walked into them to see how it was and
as they all
flew up I realized why they were there I
was standing in the gigantic pool of pig
feces hey be on the baby so so your
discovery came from following a monkey
my first cave I found following cows
into the jungle and ended up diving into
the place where they were all drinking
and also crapping too I don’t think I’m
ever going to look at that you know
classic image of like Bambi and a little
butterfly comes and lands on his tail
and it’s just the sweetest little scene
you’ve ever seen I’m gonna have a much
more robust killed sense of them the
whole story there but I would think get
getting down into the caves and being
amongst bats I’m sure you you’ve coming
across some really unsavory environments
said me oh yeah yeah no so Augustine was
talking about the butterflies that when
they flew away reveal the pool of pig
feces that they were that they were had
alighted upon and it just made me think
of what kinds of unsavory things you may
have stumbled upon inadvertently it deep
in the cave looking for batch me yes
yeah yeah okay sorry I I haven’t found
anything I’ve always been frightened of
finding snakes in caves but that’s never
happened and I’ve never found anything
thats causing me any any alarm I did
enter caves from the sea ones on the
Kenya coast with a the excursion of an
international back conference that went
down from Nairobi to Mombasa and then
along the coast we all were told that
there was a interesting bats in the
caves we all stripped off in our
costumes went into the cave and the bats
erupted and landed on our all over our
bodies and you know there was very
little panic because we knew that
we didn’t grab them it would all be all
right they would get fed up with hanging
on our bodies and then go off somewhere
else and so that’s what happened and
these these bats were some of the
African bats were the largest teeth some
people certain some people were very
nervous of this up let’s say but it
nobody got bitten so it would Mariana
Niccolo lava from Sweden had a question
for us on google+ that ties right into
this she was wondering how new
adventures fight your fears during these
failures how do you have that like inner
fortitude when fats land all up and down
you to just stand and say oh I’m sure
they’ll just get tired and fly away you
know what what does that take howdy how
do you conquer your fear in such a tough
look there’s no real fear because you
know you know enough about bats to know
what what’s okay and what’s not okay as
long as you don’t grab them you grab
them they’ll bite you I mean you’ve
learned that as a Prentice researcher
that you know you need gloves of a
certain thickness to protect your
fingers and if you don’t have them the
bats canines will go straight through
them so as long as you don’t grab them
there okay look like most most animals I
mean wasps won’t bees won’t sting you if
you don’t grab them you know snakes
won’t bite you if you don’t grab them or
don’t don’t impact them in some way yeah
in general in general that’s part of the
whole lesson I think of failure is that
you learn from it and build from it and
especially working in in in forested
areas or far places it’s the repeated
experience of small failures that you
get larger successes you know how do you
deal with mosquitoes well you don’t pay
enough attention them early on and get
covered with hundreds of touch device
and you slowly learn how do you do with
snakes you have some close calls and
luckily it’s if things work out okay you
realize what not to do how do you not
get lost in the jungle take your time
learn your maps and done nowadays by GPS
unit I think I mean folks for me because
I
project in Madagascar was actually my
last research project so I really in
that respect do feel a sense of failure
and it gripes a bit to go you know to
finish my career on a low ie not
achieving what I wanted to achieve but I
don’t feel too badly about it because I
know someone’s going to come along and
find these females you know it has to
happen because you know the species
continues so you know some of the
females have to be there and someone
else is going to find them someone found
them in the past not too many of them
and not the ratio of one female to one
male as you might expect but females
were found in the past and females are
going to be found in the future I just
hope I’m still around to read about it
and what is the grand the whole story of
exploration that I think you know
there’s two sides that go on if it was
just a matter of collecting facts about
the world there’s lots of facts that we
have that we don’t know um you know you
can open up the encyclopedia and see
lots of things that you never knew about
and you’ve learned these new facts but
there was no real adventure in
discovering it for you because you just
read it out of a book or someone else’s
adventure um when you guys go out there
how much of the excitement for you is
also the sense of really not knowing if
you’re going to find the facts you’re
not going to just open up to a page and
have the answer but I us with asthma dr
z that’s the best part of the questions
or the most exciting part absolutely i
mean that’s where all the discovery
happens and the opportunity to to find
something that nobody’s ever seen before
or discover a new place is is is
incredible but it requires that you and
this comes back to our last question it
requires that you push the envelope and
pushing the envelope often means
embracing fear whether it’s fear of
personal harm or whether it’s fear of
failure there has to be a certain
acceptance that fear is your self
preservation but it’s also what pushes
you forward in discovery this is great
so thanks everybody for joining us
everybody who’s watching their these are
our explorers talking about failure and
the role it can play in the successes of
exploration
you have any questions just hash tag
them let’s explore on Twitter Google+
wherever you are and will be watching
those questions we have one that’s come
in from jason s in minnesota saying how
many of your first time explorers injure
themselves during their first field
engagement absolutely yeah good yeah I
did I mean the closest I came to losing
my life was in a cave where I was
helping a student to foot to to mark the
eggs in a cave swiftlets Nets high up in
a boulder cave and we were trying to get
a cave ladder up and I there was a we
needed a rope I said I can get the rope
he said no I’ll jump I said don’t jump
he jumped and the roof fell in and rocks
came very close to my head and the
feliway one landed on my foot if that
rocket had landed on my head I wouldn’t
be talking to you now so that was that
that was the closest I’ve come and it
wouldn’t when I look back on it now I’m
much more scared about it and I was at
that time I think that’s a very common
story many of us have had that in my
dissertation research I was cutting
trails and I took a trail up one end
miraya did the jungle near this stream
because it was I thought a better view
two or three days later I’m walking that
trail during a heavy rainstorm and I
realized this whole hillsides was made
of clay so me and the hillside went down
all the way to the raw was carrying a
machete with me flew back lost
everything I hit the ground down at the
bottom and saw the machete falling down
towards me it hit my shoulder with the
handling Oh what my closest call was
actually on my first National Geographic
project it was the ice Island project
back in two thousand when we went to
cave dive inside of the largest moving
object on the planet which was a huge
iceberg in Antarctica and under the the
pressure of intense current we were
trapped inside
this cave trying to get out and mere
hours after we finally escaped this
iceberg cold and practically hypothermic
the whole thing exploded just like an
ice cube when you drop it in a glass Wow
so what do you do in that situation yeah
well I mean if for the time that we were
actually pinned inside the iceberg it
was just you know you make the next best
decision you can you take the emotion of
what’s happening and you tuck it back in
your back of your head and say you know
there’ll be plenty of time for crying
later but right now I just make the best
practical next step you can and you just
work towards survival when the iceberg
itself exploded to me that was a message
that it was time to go home and at the
time on that expedition we sort of felt
it was failure because we hadn’t fully
explored this new ecosystem that we’d
found but in retrospect what happened
was the story and a lot of incredible
science came from that project yeah
that’s amazing so mastermind on Google+
from New Jersey has a question for you
Jill he says what happens if you get
lost in those underwater caves so you’re
out in the iceberg thing exploded you’re
able to get in his chip and get out of
there if you get lost in a cave what
happens uh he would die you would not be
coming home one of the things that we
train people in when we teach them to
cave dive is how to use a guideline so
we use a spool of line that we take with
us through the environment and we leave
this tactile reference because sometimes
well most of the time when you’re
exploring a new cave your movement
through the cave or your bubbles on the
ceiling will completely blitz the
visibility so that you cannot see a
thing on the way out and so you just put
your hand you know on this guideline and
you use it as the tactile reference to
bring you home so getting lost is just
simply not an option wow wow so we’ve
got a lot of great questions coming in
now we’re in our kind of final moments
we’ll have a few more minutes to talk to
our explorers hear about failure and the
role that constructive role
can play in explorations but I want to
get back to Sofia are probably
participant who kind of kicked us off
with questions from Paul and see what
you’ve been thinking about this and one
of the questions have come to your mind
actually one of the questions that I
just got my phone from uh from an
elementary girl she wanted to know Jill
how do you go about handling all the
different cultures especially she said
and see what it’s very the culture is
very correct so as a woman how do you
die and honor their cultures at the same
time oh that’s so important I did a lot
of research ahead of time and talk to
people about how I should be
appropriately addressed and how I should
behave as an expedition leader and
interacting with with men in that part
of the world and so it’s really
important to understand and embrace the
cultures and be very apologetic not be
afraid to ask you know how it is
appropriate to behave as a woman it’s
challenging one of the most common fails
that explorers have is the cultural fail
showing up somewhere and making some
huge gap your mistake by not having done
enough research as to where they’re
going and how the people live there
that’s crazy um have you ever been
denied place like because just of their
culture or have you ever been denied
I’ve had some challenges as a woman I’ve
been told there is no place for you here
and been denied a visa to travel because
I was a woman so yeah there’s a lot of
there’s a lot of additional challenges
but it’s always worth trying she says
her name is Cynthia she says she’s not
going to have that problem because she’s
going to the new king planet but she
won’t have that very good time all right
yes excellent go board Cynthia total
starting for me
that’s great uh Paul we’ve got another
you know kind of an inspiration question
for you which their wonder about these
bats and how unusual this might be let
me get the guy’s name here it’s Tom
Simmons he came to us on google+ from
Santa Barbara California he’s wandering
for Paul has this been seen at any other
bat species or maybe even any other
mammal species where they’ve had trouble
finding one section the other well it’s
a good question and I think the answer
is no not in any other bat species or
any other mammal species you do you do
get some degree of segregation like in
all the bats in in the UK and probably
in North America too i think that during
the summer females like to go in one
place to have their young and suckle a
young and male to go somewhere else so
you have maternity colonies and bachelor
colonies and stuff like that but that’s
just for part of the year and they get
together at mating time and they
hibernate together in caves so that’s
well-documented that’s just temporary
segregation but but this is absolute
segregation over a seven-year period and
not one member of the opposite sex being
found I mean that is extreme for bats I
mean it’s unheard off the bats and I
think it’s unheard of for mammals such
extreme segregation yeah really weird
will there be any possibility that
there’s kind of a generational thing
like they have a crop of female children
in the 40s and they kind of go off and
kind of cyber few generations and like
20 years later the next time that there
is more females no no I think that’s
most unlikely and every bit that this I
mean these bats obviously haven’t been
reading the right textbooks because
they’re behaving like they should do all
right so I Sophie I want to give you one
last chance to get some questions out
here for our explorers and again
encourage you guys Augustine Jill Paul
anything else that you’re wondering from
each other it’s been so great to have
you all out here it’s been a really fun
conversation
I was kind of thinking the same way you
were Andrew I was like is there like a
harem effect going on with the bat so
where there’s like you know several
females may be higher up in the tree or
something you know they only need one
bat so all the males the other males are
like you know living lower in the tree
no no no because they roost it or all
the bats roost in a single semi unfurled
leaf of the travelers tree so I look
like an unfair banana leaf and you get
up to 50 bats in one leaf and then as
the leaf unfurls the bats must go away
and find another leaf to get some
shelter and we can capture all the bats
in the leaf we just put a big bag over
the leaf and and then check all the bats
inside the leaf and they’re all males ah
so that there’s no what there’s no other
roosting possibility in this particular
tree and they don’t roost anywhere else
they don’t roost in banana that we have
we haven’t found them in caves and
because they have the sucker feet
they’re adapted to this particular
smooth shiny leaf they can leave the the
suckers on that don’t actually suck they
work by wet adhesion I am so so like it
you stick a bit of wet paper to a window
it sticks they just walk up the leaf
like that and you get up to 50 living
together and they’re all males and twice
a year there they’ve got some little
boys with them too and so there’s nope
no roosting opportunity for females in
that study area which is which is about
four square kilometers and they found
only in this particular tree the
travelers tree ravin Allah is
characteristic of degraded forest it’s
only found there in degraded forests so
they’re not short of habitat there’s
plenty of degraded forest in Madagascar
and the plenty of these trees for them
to roosted yeah it’s fascinating I know
like you said you know it would be nice
to end your career with it with the
final discovery I think it’s even better
to have such a great mystery going on
the session trogir sofa thank you Andrew
that was a really right thing to say
alright so we’ve got one last question I
think I’ll throw it to you Augustine
Nicholas Alvarado on Google+ had a
question from Sarasota means wondering
how do you see technology affecting your
specific area of expertise how could
technology mitigate or even eliminate
the risk of failure would that be
possible oh yeah there are two really
quick ways I could say one was having a
GPS I wouldn’t have gotten lost modern
why stuff that would have helped but
that was before they were available most
fascinating lee what I’m doing now is
with a very broad team and and great
support from National Geographic in the
way foundation is we’re putting cameras
and critic cans and GPS collars on
macaque monkeys so that all these times
we thought we were losing them we’re now
getting sort of satellite fixes as to
where they are so we can sit back not
bother them besides and putting the
collars on them let them roam around and
figure out where they are and we’ve
learned an enormous amount all of these
things we thought we knew about how to
macaque monkeys move around cities and
jungles and temples well it turns out
they’re doing at least fifty percent
more than we thought and it’s all
because of modern technology ten years
ago this would have been impossible in
10 years from now I think the best field
workers the real explorers are gonna be
the monkeys and they’ll just be
providing the information that you guys
like you won’t have to ride down a
mudslide with machete chasing them go
for that that’ll be cool yeah our
technology is just expanding the bounds
of exploration exponentially it’s it’s
unbelievable there’s a device that that
I I used and piloted in a project back
in 98 that was in nat geo adventure and
on that mapping device developed by dr.
bill stone is is now going to head out
to eventually Jupiter’s moon Europa to
explore oceans underneath frozen seas so
technology has such a huge factor in
expanding what’s possible and allowing
us an opportunity to fail bigger that’s
I mean one of the things that is
important though is it’s always people
operating tech
ology so you’re never going to get rid
of the person because technology can
only do what we tell it to do it’s not
going to do anything yeah yeah except
we’re still the ones that have the major
impact yeah yeah but darn the mapper
that was going to go to Europa without a
cave diver attached to it unfortunately
miniaturization of the things that I
guess team was talking about it had been
a huge step forward for bats I mean we
put radio tags on the tangram my sapota
and now there are there are GPS tags you
could we can put on fruit bats that are
becoming smaller all the time so we can
put them on smaller and smaller bats so
that’s been a huge step forward and and
you learn as a ghost and said you learn
new things all the time great well thank
you so much everybody for joining us
this has been a very enjoyable and
enlightening conversation about failure
exploration and I definitely have opened
up my eyes to the thrill that can be on
the least most least expected adventures
that you have thanks everybody for
joining us on Google+ and YouTube and
Twitter great questions you can continue
the conversation on Google+ with us stay
tuned and follow Nat Geo on google+ for
more hangouts on air Thank You Sofia for
joining us and everybody sending her
questions as well and for more
exploration of the stories of failure
see this month’s National Geographic
magazine or NGM com or the natgeo
magazine app on your iPad and you can
explore some of the classic stories from
long before any of us were even born
ernest shackleton and other amazing
stories of seeming failure that became
great stories in the history of
exploration thank you everybody for
joining us and we look forward to seeing
you again soon on natgeo on google+
thanks bye bye
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