The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth

by Zoë Schlanger

It is nighttime in the rain forest of southeastern Cuba, and a long-tongued bat is sailing between the trees, plucking a clear path through the dense canopy at high speed and in total darkness. All gossamer wing membrane and stealth fluff, its whole body weighs hardly a third of an ounce. A paper airplane. The bat lets out a pulse of tones and listens for the echo they return to its oversize jackal ears. A cavalcade of clicks conjure a landscape of objects and air as the tiny mammal tilts its wings to slice between a tangle of vines. All of a sudden a tone comes back clear and crisp—again and again in the same way, despite the angle of incidence that changes over and over as the bat flies around and comes closer. The sound is irresistible in its clarity, a lure, a beacon in the night. The bat arrives to find a vine hung with a ring of sumptuous wine-colored flowers, their pollen-tufted faces tilted down toward red pitchers full of nectar. The bat unfurls its long tongue and squeezes its face between the flower and its pitcher. It begins to lap nectar, hovering in midair as it drinks. Its back takes a dusting of pollen in the process. Just above the ring of flowers grow a series of glossy leaves, conspicuously oblong and concave, like upright canoes. The deep, rounded shape reflects the same clear echo from many angles. To a moving bat in the acoustic mess of the forest, a loud, consistent echo coming from the same location stands out. And for a rare bat-pollinated vine sca...