A Short History of the World in 50 Animals by Jacob F. Field

Author:Jacob F. Field [Field, Jacob F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, World, Historical Geography, nature, animals, Wildlife
ISBN: 9781789292954
Google: jkagzQEACAAJ
Publisher: Michael O'Mara Books, Limited
Published: 2021-07-15T23:27:41.311110+00:00

BATS

There are over 1,200 species of bat, the only mammal capable of flight. For the most part, they are nocturnal animals, roosting, sometimes in colonies numbering in the millions, by day and seeking food at night. They navigate by echolocation, emitting short, high-frequency pulses of sound and then determining the location of objects and features of the landscape by listening to their echoes. Their hearing is excellent, aided by their extremely large, and sometimes funnel-shaped, ears. Bats are by no means blind; many species have sight even stronger than humans.

Much of the mythology surrounding bats is associated with the fact that they have attributes characteristic of both birds and mammals. In one of the fables of the ancient Greek storyteller Aesop (c. 620–564 BC), the bat escapes the clutches of a bird- and mouse-eating weasel by claiming to be neither (in fact the bat is more closely related to primates than rodents). In another fable there was a conflict between birds and land animals, and the bat joined whichever side was in the ascendant. This meant that when peace came, the bat was rejected by both sides, and so was condemned to only come out at night. Similarly, in the mythologies of Native American peoples the origin of the bat is associated with a competitive ball game between birds and land animals. The bat, then a wingless small creature, wanted to join the land animals but was rejected – the eagle then gave him wings so he could join the birds (in another telling the inverse is the case, and the bat is given teeth by land animals when turned away from the birds).

As bats are nocturnal they often symbolize death and darkness. Their dual nature as both winged and mammalian has led many to link them to the uncanny and mysterious, often with a link to the underworld (for example, in Tongan mythology they are associated with the souls of the dead). As such, bats are often tied to Halloween, as well as the Celtic festival Samhain that occurs at the same time of the year and marks the end of the harvest. Most famously, bats have become a central part of the lore of vampires – supernatural undead creatures that feed on blood. This is a relatively recent connection. Although in some European traditions they were believed to be messengers for the Devil and used by witches as their familiars, it was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the connection between bats and vampires became commonplace. This was largely thanks to the work of the Irish author Bram Stoker (1847–1912), in whose famed Gothic horror Dracula (1897) the eponymous main character has the ability to shape-shift into a bat.

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