Chiroptophobia -The Fear Of Bats
By Trapper Robb Russell, Anytime Wildlife Control Gainesville Florida.
Sadly the idea of bats being beneficial is met with disbelief by many even today who find it hard to accept. The abnormal fear of bats can put some folks into a panic with the mere flap of a leathery wing.
Bats probably got their bad name because they are mostly active at night and the night has always been associated by earlier societies as a source of fear alone as anything related to darkness. We have pretty good evidence of man and bats living in the same caves. Cave man and bats lived in close proximity to each other and it’s when bats abandoned the cave that the bugs made the jump to humans and are closely related to bed bugs today.
Bat phobia is present even in today’s society !!
Bats won’t fly into your hair by the way; we have no vampire bats , werewolves, Dracula or vampires native to the United States and Canada either. We really have no issues with bats as people here in North America just their association with bad superstitions.
As early as the 16th century, there were reports of bats that drank blood, but the exact identities of these animals were not confirmed for another 200 years. As a race we tend to fear what we do not understand and since bats are rarely seen sadly they will become victimized needlessly.
Bats are also though to as Flying mice when truthfully they are more closely related to primates then they are to any rodent especially a mouse. The Germans probably had a lot ot do with this misconception by calling a bat a ” fledermaus ” which literally translates in English as a flying mouse.
Bats are not always portrayed as evil in world mythologies. Eastern folklore from the Orient have an entirely different opinion of bats ! Chinese folklore always showed the bat as a symbol of good luck and good fortune and the Chinese word for bat is ” bianfu ” ! Five bats are often pictured together to represent a long life, wealth, good health, love of virtue and a natural death.
Cao Zhi, a noted poet of the Three Kingdoms Period (220-280), wrote a poem entitled “About the Bat”, which reads: “The bat is born of an evil spirit, shunned by beasts and rejected by birds.” In one of Aesop’s Fables, during a war between birds and beasts the bat is portrayed as “two-faced,” ready to ally itself with whichever of the two species became the victor. When the two entities eventually reached a peace agreement, the bat was despised and rejected by both, causing it to hide by day, coming out only at night.
It was not until modern times it became common knowledge that the bat is neither a magic vampire nor knightly, but merely a mammal that can fly. Its echolocation, rather than its eyes, help it to navigate safely at night, and gave credence to the phrase “blind as a bat”.
After thousands of years of being detested and feared by humankind, a few centuries ago bats experienced a positive change in overall attitude towards them. The Chinese word for bat is bianfu — fu being a homophone for happiness. By the middle and late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911,) favorable bat motifs had had become widely used on architecture, textiles, embroidery, paintings, chinaware, furniture, and brick and stone carvings as symbols of happiness. Thanks to artistic license, they were generally given a far more attractive appearance than is true in real life.
- http://www.speleophilately.com
My own experiences with bats is I found them remarkably gentle creatures that eat a large volume of insects with each night flight and estimated to be about 8000 insects including mosquitoes, moths. Some bat species are also recognized as native pollinators and our a vital part of our ecosystems.
Insectivorous bats feed primarily on night-flying insects such as moths, beetles, fruit flies, mosquitoes, mayflies, caddis flies, and midges. Frugivorous and nectivorous bats eat fruit, pollen, or nectar from plants or flowers.
Foraging habitat for bats often include wooden lot canopies and understory, over streams and other bodies of water, in open fields and agricultural cropland, over desert landscapes, and in lighted, residential areas in which large populations of insects
Want to learn more about bats please visit Trapper Robb’s Bat Removal Web site batremovalpro.com
Read the rest of this article on Why We Need To Preserve and Keep Our Bats
