Discover, November 30, 1998
Nancy Simmons went down to the jungles of French Guiana in 1991 with the seemingly simple mission of determining how many species of bats live in one place. Each afternoon she and her colleagues headed out from their camp and set up their nets, sometimes arranging them artfully over the openings of hollowed trees where bats like to roost. Then they waited for the sun to fall.
“The forest is noisy and active at night,” says Simmons. “Armadillos come walking by, and kinkajous are knocking around in the trees above your head. You sit there in the dark and you wait, and you never know what is going to come next.”