Bats are among the most misunderstood and unfairly mistreated animals in our imagination. He talked about it The Conversation ecologist Veronica Zamora-Gutierrez of the University of Southampton, who, inspired by legends, representations and clichés about bats in popular culture, tried to dispel some of the most persistent myths about these flying mammals.
A fear of our own. Perhaps the most interesting aspect highlighted by Zamora-Gutierrez is the fact that the fear of bats is a relatively modern invention, and characteristic of our so-called Western culture.
In the rest of the world, bats are on the contrary seen as animals with a positive aura. Of course, in some cases (like that of the Maya) they are associated with the night, death and the afterlife, but ultimately it is predictable, given that we are talking about nocturnal animals; the Maya, however, considered them divine creatures, not fearsome monsters – an essential link between the worlds of the living and the dead.
Bloodsucker. On the contrary, we Westerners tend to associate them with negative thoughts: just think of the most famous bat in the history of literature, that is, Dracula, depicted as a bloodthirsty beast. Well: there are around 1,500 species of bats in the world, and only three of these (vampires, in fact) feed on blood.
And they almost never “attack” humans: they prefer livestock, or other animals that are more convenient to “suck”. The idea of the bloodsucking vampire, then, is more of an exotic fantasy than anything else.
The good that bats do for us. There are also more serious issues related to bats and their image: think for example about how often they are pointed out as carriers of diseases. A topic that we have already talked to you about in the past, and which should be seen as a positive thing: studying the immune system of bats can help us fight certain diseases, not fear them. Without considering the fact that, in the rare cases of spillover from bat to human, the main cause is always the destruction of their habitat which leads them to be in close contact with humans.
fundamental for the health of ecosystems. Finally, we often tend to forget how much good bats do for the environment and also for us humans. A 2021 study, for example, is one of many that has demonstrated their importance as pollinators. And one of the most famous plants in the world, the agave, from which tequila and mezcal are obtained, among other things, has bats as its main pollinators.
