Merlin Tuttle

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Merlin Devere Tuttle, an American ecologist, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1941. He co-directed the Venezuelan Research Project of the Smithsonian Institution from 1965 to 1967, performed research on population ecology at the University of Minnesota in 1972, then became curator of mammals at the Milwaukee Public Museum from 1975 to 1986.

He made many contributions to studies of predator and prey interaction and foraging behaviour in mammals, and the energetics of thermo-regulation, hibernation, and migration in bats. He founded Bat Conservation International (1982) in Austin, Texas to "promote a positive image of bats and encourage their preservation."

Tuttle has been a prominent photographer of bats, and most of the photographs of bats people see in newspaper articles, books, and other sources were taken by him.^{[citation needed]}