Search for the Rodrigues fruit bat Exclusive: From the 1989 radio series

The answer is blowing in the wind

This episode tracks Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine's search for the Rodrigues fruit bat. First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 25 October 1989, this is how the programme was billed at the time:

The Rodrigues fruit bat is a noisy, randy, sociable creature, whose numbers are declining due mainly to the fact that it spends most of its time hanging around in the trees in the middle of a cyclone belt. At regular intervals it is blown into oblivion somewhere over the Indian Ocean. Not to be outdone, one of our heroes (the 6'5" extremely ignorant non-zoologist) nearly joins the deceased bats when, leaping from a boat onto a rock, he promptly sinks into a shark-infested sea.