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need? And if a callous, greedy bat should die of hunger, those genes are no loss to the species, which as a whole benefits from generosity. Even more impressively, when a bat lies—when it goes begging despite a full belly—by various means, the other bats know the difference. For Truth Bats, the key is in the voice.
    It’s a pity that Truth Bats are invisible, because they’re so cute—like furry plum pits with mouse ears, three-inch wingspans, and expressions of pipsqueak ferocity. They live in small clusters, lap the blood of nocturnal moths, and roost, by day, on the bodies of large mammals. They are clean, easy guests, dining and digesting elsewhere, bringing only their need to sleep safely, and a tendency to chatter among themselves. Like our eyelash follicle mites, they go unnoticed. But when it comes to humans, Truth Bats are picky: they will only adorn the hair or clothes of a truthful person. How do they know?
    When we tell a lie, our larynx muscles contract, producing an inaudible signal sometimes used in lie detection. Truth Bats hear this signal and fear it; their small, tight-knit society really cannot afford bloodsucking liars in its midst, so the lie signal is a strong negative stimulus. When it emanates from their own roost—everywhere intheir house!—they leave in a hurry. Their departure has consequences. Truth Bats chatter as they hang together, and their continuous piping makes a background to our speech that we don’t hear, but feel—something like the tingling echo of a waterfall just before your ears catch it. This is the “ring of truth.” When your bats depart, scattering into the air as you trot out some whopper of a lie, your voice loses its reassuring background, and people feel that. You have more trouble persuading them; you have trouble persuading yourself. Until your Truth Bats return, you feel forlorn, lonesome, awkward, and unreal. Of course, there are liars who revel in their mendacity and don’t miss the bats one bit; it’s a kind of deficiency. But forlorn, lonesome, awkward, and unreal was how I felt on the day I went to visit my cousin Helen, because of a lie I had told.
    â€œD O I SOUND FUNNY TO YOU ?” I demanded, looking up at Helen. She sat on her porch, spinning silk on her hi-tech spinning wheel, a compact disk the height of her knee. Helen and I are cousins many times removed, but we’ve always been close, as the two oddballs in a large clan of scientists: Helen went into the arts, while I, of course, am the invisible-beast spotter. For years, we’ve shared our peculiar ways of seeing things. Helen belongs to a worldwide fiber arts collective called the Fibettes; all around the globe, Fibettes pick sticky cocoons off trees and ship them to other Fibettes, who spin them. Through Helen’shands pass the silks of many latitudes, to become a single, fine, homespun thread. Except for the modern wheel, my cousin resembles her great-grandmother, a Chippewa-Irish farmer, with black braids down her back, a work-hardened body in a cotton shift, and patient eyes.
    â€œYou sound . . . not yourself, Sophie. What’s wrong?”
    I climbed the porch steps feeling wretched, though it was a lazy July afternoon, and the porch was shaded by a canopy of honeysuckle, pagoda-shaped, fragrant, and loud with floating bees.
    â€œI’d like your advice,” I said, “and I brought you something.” I held out a basketful of Grand Tour cocoons. Helen stopped her treadle action, lifted her worn fingers from the thread, and took the basket, peering in. I put one of the invisible cocoons in her palm, and soon she was plucking them out by touch alone.
    â€œGet me a bushel of these and an emperor,” she smiled. “What’s up?” I slumped on the steps, swiping away tears, and confessed how I had lied to my sister Evie when she unearthed an Asian honeybee from the Pleistocene epoch, mysteriously preserved in