With industrial tequila farms switching to cloned agave plants, the bats that pollinate them are disappearing. “You can’t have tequila without agave, the spiky desert plant used as its base,” says NPR. “And it’s hard to have agave without bats — because a few species of these winged creatures are the plant’s primary pollinators. Agave co-evolved with bats over thousands of years. As a result, it’s one of the very few plants that pollinates at night.”
But as demand for tequila has risen 60 percent over the past 10 years, the biggest companies don’t want to wait for bats to pollinate. Instead, they use cloned agave plants that are prone to fungus or disease capable of killing an entire crop. The bats could help with the problem, by spreading genetics between plants.
But as things stand, the agrochemicals used on industrial agave farms are hurting three common agave-pollinating bats. “Two of these bats are listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: the Mexican long-nosed bat and the lesser long-nosed bat,” says NPR. “The third, the Mexican long-tongued bat, is listed as a species of concern.”