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The Method: Going Batty

Peter Miller/via Flickr

Today, The Method is going batty. First up, we look at the mammalian kind of bat. There are more than 1,300 bat species, and some biologists think climate change may be the reason certain varieties are turning up in new places—including in and around Knoxville. Matt Shafer Powell reaches out to University of Tennessee Ecology and Evolutionary Biology professor Gary McCracken to see if a new habitat area might be one by-product of climate change.

Then, Brandon Hollingsworth is off to the ballpark to learn more about the crack of the bat. That's more than a colorful, oft-used phrase. It describes a real acoustic quality that can tell the players on the field a lot about what’s happening in the batter’s box. Tennessee Smokies outfielders Bijan Rademacher and Billy McKinney, and broadcaster Justin Rocke, will tell us how what a player hears can be key to how they react on the field.

gary_for_web.mp3

WEB EXTRA: Biologist Gary McCracken tells Matt Shafer Powell about the effects of wind power generation on bat populations.

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