Rodrigo Medellín and his team are instantly recognizable while traipsing through the agave fields of Mexico. A cap lamp on his shiny bald head, his tousled gray beard glinting in the light, he was leading the hunt for his favorite mammal, the bat.
He has such expertise in the animal that the National Autonomous University of Mexico professor is nicknamed “the Bat Man of Mexico.” But he was not here to capture a few specimens. Medellín and his team were trying to confirm the presence of bat catnip—batnip?—that lures them to these fields, the tall, Dr. Seuss–like flowers of the agave plant.
