Nov. 20, 2025: Science on Tap: The Prospects of Poop: What can bat guano tell us about past environments in Virginia?

November 20, 5:30 p.m., Rising Silo Brewery in Blacksburg: It’s easy to dismiss poop as waste, but poop actually contains a lot of information about animal diets, behavior, and the environments they live in.

Join Rachel Reid, a research assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech, to learn how information contained in bat poop can be used to uncover past landscapes, from the types of plants present to the frequency of fires. Then, find out how your diet influences your chemical composition, and how it can be measured (no poop required!).

Free and open to the public. Hosted by the Center for Communicating Science at Virginia Tech and Virginia Tech's chapter of Sigma Xi.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact Erin Smith at erinsmith@vt.edu during regular business hours least ten days before the event.