Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
6
Evasion Beats Entanglement: Bats
MYTHS
Bats are blind.
Bats fly into people's hair.
Bats pose a major threat of rabies to humans.
Bats are a sort of a flying mouse.
MONSTROUS BEYOND IMAGINING, ALL-CONSUMING, BLACKER THAN BLACKEST
NIGHT, THE HIDEOUS SATAN IN THE
NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN
SECTION OF WALT
DISNEY'S
FANTASIA
SPREADS GIGANTIC BAT WINGS AS IT TURNS FIERY EYES TOWARD
THE LOST SOULS ABOUT TO BE ENGULFED IN WRATH AND FLAMES. This batlike depiction
should come as no surprise; it's merely another manifestation of the fear, horror, and superstition with
which bats have been regarded down through the ages.
In any drawing of a haunted house, bats are likely to be seen emanating from its towers and windows.
Bats were also regarded as “familiars”—that is, spirit helpers in animal form—of witches. Evil witches
in conical hats— toothless hags on airborne broomsticks—usually are shown with a flight of compan-
ion bats, like a swarm of night fighter planes shepherding a heavy bomber on its deadly journey. Indeed,
one unfortunate woman in fourteenth-century France was burned as a witch for no better reason than
the abundance of bats around her home!
Bats have also figured prominently in potions and curses. “Wool of bat” is a key ingredient in the
witches' brew in Shakespeare's
Macbeth—
a concoction that surely rates as the most unappetizing cook-
ery of all time! And in
The Tempest,
Caliban includes bats with such things as beetles and toads when
invoking his curse on Prospero.
Even in this modern age of supposed enlightenment, millions of people still shudder at the vision of
bats flying at their heads to entangle themselves in human hair, or of bats as fiendish vampires sucking
the blood out of their victims. To all of these has been added the overblown fear of rabid bats.
