Today I learned that the university of Coimbra in Portugal has
a great 18th-century library, the Biblioteca Joanina, that maintains a colony of bats to effectively control the population of paper-eating insects called
papirófagos.
These bats are less than an inch long. They roost during the day behind the bookcases and come out at night. There doesn’t seem to be any English word for
papirófago, a cursory search turns up no details about what sort of insect they are, and ngl I am slightly concerned about them as a phenomenon. But I think my overarching point here is clear:
This library keeps tiny bats that look after the books.
I’m here for tiny bats saving books.
Aaaahhh!!
What good and noble tiny flitters!!!! <3
My nayme is Batt And wen its nite On sylente wings I flye to fite
The lybrarie’s
My battlefielde
Papir’fagoes
Haffe to be killed
bats shit a TON.workers at the library have to clean the library every morning because the bats leave a layer of shit on everything, but there’s no way they get it all.
histoplasmosis can be contracted from exposure to bat feces. no thanks.
