Skip to content

Lookin' Kinda Dumb!

2020-05-15 · explainer · Hank · 3:50 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature · mode: Explainer · tags: recurring series, self promotion

In a Bizarre Beasts video, Hank goes from Snopes's creature pages to the hammer-headed bat, a common West and Central African megabat that is smaller than it looks and whose male face, shaped by lek mating and sexual selection, exists to make a terrible noise.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Snopes and its creatures section: fakes, the hammerhead salamander sculpture, the bee hummingbird figurine, real animals no one believes

  • ★★ Hank calls Snopes a good thing about the world: it started because the internet is bad at getting its story straight. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank says Snopes has a whole creatures section, where fakes are usually obvious, like the 'sea roach', an animatronic from Pacific Rim. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank says hammerhead salamanders don't exist but did 250 million years ago; the viral picture is a sculpture of what they probably looked like. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Hank says the bee hummingbird is the smallest bird, but the picture said to show it is a miniature chickadee figurine. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Hank finds Snopes more interesting when it has a page for an animal because no one believes it is real. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — The hammer-headed bat: a common megabat; why bats cannot be heavy; bat weights

  • ★★ Hank says the shoebill stork and the Malabar giant squirrel are such real animals on Snopes. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ Hank says the hammer-headed bat, the most bizarre real Snopes creature, is a megabat that is downright common in West and Central Africa. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Hank says bats cannot be very big because they fly without feathers, which fly much better than skin membranes; very big-looking bats are usually camera angles. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ Hank says bats can span over a meter but none weighs over 3.5 pounds; the hammer-headed bat tops out near one pound; North America's most common bat weighs about a third of an ounce. — 00:01:27

00:01:56 — The face: sonar faces versus fruit-eating megabats, the lek, the noise, sexual selection; sign-off and pin club

  • ★★ Hank says bat faces often look silly to sharpen their sonar, but fruit-eating megabats don't need it, so they are usually cute. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ Hank says the male's weird face exists, as far as we can tell, only for the lek: its rostrum, lips and split nose make a big, awful noise to attract females. (hedged) — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Hank explains lekking: males gather in a central location, the lek, to display to females, who pick the male they like most. — 00:02:26
  • ★ Hank says 'the lek' would be a very good name for a dating app. (playful) — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ Hank says that, as with many bizarre things in nature, the hammer-headed bat's face comes down to sexual selection. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Hank would add one sentence to the Snopes page: they look terrible, but the face exists so they can sound terrible too. (playful) — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Hank says Bizarre Beasts is a series he is doing on Vlogbrothers, with only a couple more episodes left. (hedged) — 00:02:55 · Bizarre Beasts, Vlogbrothers
  • ★★ Hank says pin club subscribers can expect the hammer-headed bat pin soon; his own handfish pin just arrived and he likes it. — 00:02:55

00:03:39 — Handfish pin arrived; the Bizarre Beasts Pin Club is closed

  • ★★ Hank says the Bizarre Beasts Pin Club is closed to new members, apologises, and says they will try to figure out something in the future. (hedged) — 00:03:39 · Bizarre Beasts

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says hammer-headed bats are not as big as they look but exactly as weird, at least the males, and that Hank loves them. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: hammer-headed bat · lek mating · sexual selection · Snopes

Also: Projects: Bizarre Beasts · Bizarre Beasts Pin Club

Works: Pacific Rim

Concepts: bee hummingbird · Indian giant squirrel · Internet · megabat · red handfish · shoebill

Places: North America · West Africa

← Previous: We Could All Use a Little Change · Next → Didn't Make Sense Not to Live for Fun