No Tequila?!
VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Did you know that without bats, we wouldn't have tequila? Bats pollinate not just tequila, but many of our favorite foods. | Did you know that without bats, we wouldn't have tequila? Bats pollinate not just tequila, but many of our favorite foods. | Read the Full Article
From the “I bet you didn’t know this” department: Without bats, there would be no tequila.
According to the makers of the film, “Growing a Greener World: Bats—Unsung Heroes,” bats pollinate agave, the primary ingredient in tequila, which blooms at night in the Desert Southwest.
So, no bats, no tequila.
Bats have never been embraced as cuddly creatures. But they’ve been especially vilified lately, thanks to those who suggest that COVID-19 originated in a bat in a wet market in Wuhan, China, and subsequently jumped to humans—despite mounting evidence that the virus was created in, and escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab.
You might say, bats are terribly misunderstood.
And that’s a shame. Because, as this video explains, bats are actually ecological superheroes. They pollinate not just tequila, but many of our favorite foods.
Bats—and there are 1,400 species of them!—also dine on pests that can damage food crops, saving farmers hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars each year.