Nectar bats may have nature’s biggest sweet tooth. Each night, the creatures scour the jungle for blossoming flowers in order to consume as much as 150% of their body weight in liquid sugar.
Such a feat would leave other mammals in shock or in a coma. But nectar bats push biology to the limit — making them “wonderful, majestic flying superheroes,” in the words of Jasmin Camacho, a postdoctoral researcher at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research who was recently named a STAT Wunderkind. By learning how bats protect themselves from the toxic effects of high sugar consumption, Camacho is striving to find new treatments for metabolic disorders like diabetes and obesity.
Camacho is part of a small but growing group of scientists eschewing standard lab animals, like flies and mice, for creatures with more extreme physiology in the hopes of applying what they learn to humans. Studying such animals — like bats, pythons, and bears — is a challenging endeavor requiring mastery of field work as well as cutting-edge laboratory techniques but can offer new insights into what biology is capable of.
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