Mary Batten
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marybattenauthor.bsky.social
Mary Batten
@marybattenauthor.bsky.social
Author, nature/science books, articles, TV documentaries. Emmy nominee for work on Children’s Television Workshop’s series, 3-2-1 CONTACT. Recent book, Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean. #AuthorsGuild Website: MaryBatten.com
To keep from being eaten alive, plants produced thousands of chemical defenses, including caffeine, nicotine, cyanide, opium. Many of our medicines are derived from plant chemicals. Others we use to wake up.
#plantchemicals
#sciencewriter
#scienceteacher
#authorsky

www.amazon.com/Together-Nat...
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships [Batten, Mary] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
www.amazon.com
November 11, 2025 at 8:56 PM
The gigantic sunfish goes to the birds to get rid of the annoying parasites on its skin. It lies on the ocean’s
surface to attract seabirds. The birds use their sharp beaks to dig out the parasites.
#Symbiosis
#scienceteacher
#authorsky
#fishes

www.amazon.com/Together-Nat...
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships [Batten, Mary] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
www.amazon.com
November 10, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Years ago on a film assignment in Panama, I met American scientist Neal Griffith Smith. He had published a controversial paper on the advantage of being parasitized. Imagine!The story is in my book.
#parasites
#booksky
#scienceteacher
#writingcommunity
#sciencewriter

www.amazon.com/Together-Nat...
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships [Batten, Mary] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
www.amazon.com
November 1, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Millions of years before humans began farming, leafcutter ants were doing it. In vast underground nests, they cultivate fungus which they eat. Edward O. Wilson called them “Earth’s ultimate superorganisms.”
#booksky
#scienceteacher
#authorcommunity
#entomology

www.amazon.com/Together-Nat...
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships [Batten, Mary] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
www.amazon.com
October 31, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Some slave-making ants use chemical warfare to subdue their victims. Edward O. Wilson called these chemicals “propaganda substances” that put the victims in panic and confusion. Sounds like politics today!
#ants
#booksky
#sciencewriter
#chemicalwarfare
www.amazon.com/Together-Nat...
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships [Batten, Mary] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
www.amazon.com
October 31, 2025 at 1:22 AM
If you think plants can’t do
anything because they’re rooted in one place, you’d be wrong. Plants defend themselves from being eaten alive by producing natural insecticides like caffeine and nicotine.
#booksky
#botany
#plantchemicals
#writingcommunity
#sciencewriter

www.amazon.com/Together-Nat...
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships [Batten, Mary] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
www.amazon.com
October 28, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Orchids are the most outrageous tricksters in the plant world. Some look, smell, and feel like female wasps and bees, tricking males into trying to mate with them!
#booksky
#writingcommunity
#scienceteacher
#symbiosis
#librarian

www.amazon.com/Together-Nat...
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships [Batten, Mary] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
www.amazon.com
October 28, 2025 at 1:06 AM
Among ants, you’ll find some of the most spectacular symbiotic partnerships in all of nature. Slave-makers, farmers, herders, soldiers.
#booksky
#writingcommunity
#scienceteacher
#sciencewriter

www.amazon.com/Together-Nat...
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships [Batten, Mary] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
www.amazon.com
October 25, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Mating among plants is a problem. They’re rooted in one place and can’t move around. The solution? Seduce a third party to do your sexual bidding. Three isn’t a crowd; it’s a necessity!
#booksky
#writingcommunity
#authorsky
#pollination
#scienceteacher

www.amazon.com/Together-Nat...
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
Amazon.com: Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships eBook : Batten, Mary: Kindle Store
www.amazon.com
October 19, 2025 at 5:21 PM
We are Stone Age people trying to adapt to the high-tech world of instant communication and lethal weapons that we have created. And we’re making a mess of it!
#booksky
#symbiosis
#writingcommunity
#scienceteacher

www.amazon.com/Together-Nat...
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
Amazon.com: Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships eBook : Batten, Mary: Kindle Store
www.amazon.com
October 17, 2025 at 3:21 PM
We would not be who we are without our bacterial partners. They are part of us, living in our mouth, on our skin, in body openings
and our intestines. You have 10 times more bacteria in your body than you have cells in your body.
#booksky
#symbiosis
#scienceteachers

www.amazon.com/Together-Nat...
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships
Amazon.com: Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships eBook : Batten, Mary: Kindle Store
www.amazon.com
October 10, 2025 at 1:06 AM
Reposted by Mary Batten
Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.
October 5, 2025 at 9:08 AM
I posted my 3 favorite reads in 2025 on the Shepherd website. Authors, this is a great place to publicize your books using a
different approach. Feature your book by recommending others.
#booksky
#writingcommunity
#authorsky

shepherd.com/bboy/2025/f/...
Want to know Mary Batten's Top 3 Books of 2025?
Mary's top 3 reads of 2025 include Getting Back Our Stolen Bootstraps and two other amazing books. Discover what makes these books unmissable!
shepherd.com
October 4, 2025 at 10:12 PM
I feel I am witnessing the murder of my country. The assassins are the president and his cabinet of incompetents who daily insult the intelligence of and display contempt for the American people with actions that threaten our health, our pocketbooks, our laws, and our lives.
September 17, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by Mary Batten
Before he was a Senator, a candidate for President, and our greatest champion in the fight against oligarchy, Bernie Sanders was the four-term Mayor of Burlington, VT.

I sat down with Bernie in Astoria to talk about the lessons he learned—and the work ahead.
September 17, 2025 at 6:09 PM
Reposted by Mary Batten
Shapiro: Censorship, using the long arm of government to silence people, to silence businesses and nonprofits, and restrict their right to free speech, that will not solve this problem. 
September 16, 2025 at 3:58 PM
The Pompeii worm, named after the Italian city that was wiped out by a volcano in 79 AD can withstand higher temperatures than almost any other animal—175
degrees F (79 degrees C).
#extremophile
#scienceteacher
#sciencewriter
#hydrothermalvent

bookshop.org/p/books/life...
Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean
Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean
bookshop.org
September 16, 2025 at 1:30 AM
The flag should fly at half-mast until Congress passes gun control legislation. Charlie Kirk isn’t the only person killed by a gun yesterday. There have been 47 school shootings this year, one yesterday in Colorado.

#writingcommunity
#democracy
September 11, 2025 at 4:59 PM
“The entire ocean volume circulates through hydrothermal vents every 40 million years.”
Dr. Jeffrey Hawkes
Uppsala University, Sweden
Communicating with the scientists was the best part of writing this book.
#booksky
#sciencewriter

www.amazon.com/Life-Hot-Wat...
Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean
Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean [Batten, Mary, Gonzalez, Thomas] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean
www.amazon.com
September 10, 2025 at 8:58 PM
One of the scientists I interviewed for this book, Dr. Jeffrey Hawkes, Uppsala University, Sweden, said, “Vents are like the recycling centers of the sea.”
#booksky
#oceanscience
#sciencewriter
#scienceteacher

bookshop.org/p/books/life...
Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean
Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean
bookshop.org
September 8, 2025 at 1:56 AM
Tube worms are among the strangest of vent animals. Like science fiction creatures, they have no eyes, no mouth, and no gut. The red plume at the tip of their bodies is filled with blood.
#booksky
#writingcommunity
#scienceteachers
#extremophiles
#hydrothermalvents

bookshop.org/p/books/life...
Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean
Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean
bookshop.org
September 5, 2025 at 8:35 PM
Vent creatures have special enzymes that enable them to survive in the scalding water, toxic fluids, and extreme pressure at the ocean’s depths.
#authorsky
#sciencewriter
#booksky
#oceanscience
#scienceteacher
#childrensbook
#hydrothermalvents

www.amazon.com/Life-Hot-Wat...
Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean
Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean [Batten, Mary, Gonzalez, Thomas] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean
www.amazon.com
August 24, 2025 at 5:10 PM
The most amazing discovery at hydrothermal vents is the food chain that sustains vent life—chemosynthesis, powered by chemicals inside Earth, not sunlight.
#booksky
#writingcommunity
#sciencewriter
#hydrothermalvent
#chemosynthesis

www.amazon.com/Life-Hot-Wat...
Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean
Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean [Batten, Mary, Gonzalez, Thomas] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean
www.amazon.com
August 22, 2025 at 6:05 PM
The scalding hot environment at hydrothermal vents would kill most other organisms on Earth but vent creatures thrive there.
#booksky
#writingcommunity
#extremophile
#sciencewriter
#childrensbook
#scienceteacher

www.amazon.com/Life-Hot-Wat...
Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean
Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean [Batten, Mary, Gonzalez, Thomas] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean
www.amazon.com
August 17, 2025 at 4:10 PM