And because of this, many myths, superstitions, and folklore have been created about them. Open Access is an initiative that aims to make scientific research freely available to all. A world without bats would look very different than the one you know and not for the better. Bat Conservation International 500 N Capital of TXHwy. This Order name means hand-wing as the bats can hold food between their forearms. ), the ambiguous nature of bats is transformed into duplicity in their character. These names can be misleading as often, megabats can be smaller while microbats can be bigger. Category:African legendary creatures https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode. The number of Bats seen also has meaning. Saharan African mythology have legendary Two Bats are greater luck, and five represents the five blessings In northern Thailand, harming bats incurs a curse because bats are sacred for Buddhists [36]. Their prayers were partially granted and they were given grotesquely humanoid faces, hair and teeth but still had their wings and could fly. African Mythology But now, increased access to habitats supplied by roads created by logging companies and modern equipment such as shotguns and fishing nets, has resulted in far larger numbers being killed. The Rompo is a common South African mythical creatures believed to exist. Licensee IntechOpen. In Macbeth (1605), there is the incantation of the three witches: Eye of newt, and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog, while there is Calibans curse on Prospero in The Tempest (16101611): All the charms of Sycorax, toads, beetles and bats, light on you.. We explore the role that bats play in traditional narratives and the likely reasons for their salience, including their connections with the extraordinary and supernatural. They also don't share behavior with rodents. Flying foxesalong with all other native batsare now protected in Australia. Subcategories. Obviously, these bats were not the only animalsor even the only batsto use these now destroyed habitats. Bats are also seen as useful in Iran, India, and Pakistan because people are collecting bat guano as a natural fertilizer. The remaining cultures had combinations of positive, neutral, and negative values. Pomo Indians of California have a myth that a bat could chew and swallow a large piece of obsidian and then vomit large numbers of excellent arrowheads. WebMYTH: Bats are blind. Vampires. To date, ethnobiological information regarding bats in Africa has mainly focused on utilitarian aspects of bats as food and medicine, whereas knowledge concerning symbolism and beliefs surrounding bats in that continent has not been assembled, apart from ancient Africa [18], Ghana [19, 20], Kenya [21], and Madagascar [22]. By making research easy to access, and puts the academic needs of the researchers before the business interests of publishers. Bats play an important role in the ecosystem by eating large quantities of insects. In some folklore, bats often have sexual connotations, which may relate to fertility and agriculture as bats are important seed dispersers and pollinators of many fruit trees. There are more than 1000 different species of bats in the world, making them the second-largest order of mammals. Its unlucky to see a bat in the daytime. As PhD students, we found it difficult to access the research we needed, so we decided to create a new Open Access publisher that levels the playing field for scientists across the world. It is a canine creature supposedly living close to the Sahara Desert in North Africa. author. The bat is a devil who flies only in the night because it would die if flying in the daytime [25]. Oyot boiled the water and jumped in, but the soup, being boiling, killed him. For example, a bat entering a household was a forewarning of a death in the house. Like all bats, the large fruit-eating bats of the family (Pteropidae) must have been known to humanity since the dawn of time. No content from this site may be used elsewhere without the permission of either #FolkloreThursday or the article Interestingly, blood sucking has been attributed to bats both in Cameroon and Sierra Leone despite the countries being widely separated and when no such type of bat is found in Africa [19]. Using two willing female teenagers, one with relatively short curly hair and one with longer wavy hair was done up behind in a bun, Cranbrook took turns in placing four different species of bat on their heads. Contemporarily the bats were divided based upon morphology and behavior into two suborders, Microchiroptera (Microbats) and Megachiroptera (Flying Foxes and Old World Fruit Bats) [4]. Half of the students knew that bats are mammals, but 26% believed them to be birds, some thought of them being amphibians (12%) or reptiles (11%); 37% disliked the bats, and 27% liked them remaining seeing them as indifferent. 5 Princes Gate Court, In Malaysia, older generations prevented thievery by mixing flying fox blood with milky mangrove Excoecaria agallocha tree sap to cause violent intestinal inflammation [40]. When a truce is declared, the bat is rejected by both sides because of this deceitful behavior. Only older and somewhat educated people reported more positive attitudes toward bats than others [21]. Bats can be found practically everywhere on the planet, including most parts of the United States. A detailed list of all the African gods and goddesses wuld be endless, but these twelve from the Orisha Pantheon are a good placde to start. This is bound to threaten the continued existence of local bat populations. They fly at night and so do witches, hence in Western Europe, witches and bats must be associated together. Conversely, negative symbolism could promote conservation if it prevents unsustainable hunting and consumption [27]. In the terminology of folklorists, bats are liminal; they dont fit into the normal order of things and are somehow apart or in-between. In 2005, the privately owned Montfort Bat Cave Sanctuary on Mindanao Island, south of the Philippines, opened for tourism. Bats are not associated with any diseases, and it was felt to be safe to eat bat meat, but both studies were conducted before the 2013 Ebola outbreak (Figure 2) [19, 20]. From this duality and strangeness evolved a reputation of duplicity and threat, appearing as neither one thing nor the other. Decapitating bat demons appears in various myths in Amazonia and to the south in northern Argentina. A folktale from Kanara, India tells how bats were once unhappy birds that prayed to become human. Fruit growers may view fruit bats as crop pests [71]. However, modern science, and hence western Europe, really only learned about them as we traveled out to the tropical world. Whereas in China, it was a sign of good fortune. To date our community has made over 100 million downloads. In that day people will throw away to the moles and bats their idols of silver and idols of gold, It is at this time when the veil between this world and the otherworld was believed to thin and a state of liminality existed. Most students wanted to participate in bat conservation activities, including some students who disliked bats. The animals then give teeth to the bat to make it more animal-like. While Aesops fables involving bats may have envisioned them as duplicitous and dishonest, other folklore has ascribed a lot worse to bats, as we have seen in this series of articles. Later bats received even more bad publicity when they became linked to Count Dracula and vampires. Here are some of the other names that people have given bats. Despite positive associations toward bats, they are widely consumed as food and medicine throughout Asia, except in Brunei and Singapore. and Folkrealm Studies. Many people still believe this to be true in Mexico. Between the years 1950 and 2007, only 56 cases of bat-borne rabies transmission to humans occurred in the United States and Canada, which translates to 3.9 cases per billion person-years [65]. Spirits are less grand, less powerful, and less like humans than the gods, who often have weaknesses and emotions. The Adze is a vampire in the legends of the Ewe people of Ghana and Togo. Flying foxs emergence time is believed in Myanmar to indicate the weather: an early or no emergence foretells a coming storm. In his book Bats (1939), G. M. Allen speculates that this association of bats with arrowheads refers to the California leaf-nosed bat (Macrotus californicus). People can further move the fungus on their clothing and caving gear and spread the disease into an area that does not currently. The fictional DC Comic Super-hero, Batman relied on the sinister aspect of bats to strike fear into criminals, yet despite the scary myths, bats are an important part of the ecosystems and economies of many parts of the world. In Malaysian Borneo, people consider it taboo to disturb a fruit bat. Do they really deserve this sinister reputation, or do they play a more important role in the world than feeding the dark human fascination for the spooky and the supernatural? Becoming neither one thing nor the other made them ashamed. Why is it then that while in some parts of the world this beneficial creature is seen as a symbol of good luck and good fortune, in many societies it is viewed with fear and loathing? We still are. Besides the above, hunting of fruit bats in the Indo-Pacific area is also supported by a market in Guamartificially maintained by the higher per capita income on Guam than on the source islands. Below, we will be taking a look at some of the most popular bat myths from around the globe. Because of the resemblance in dentition and such external phenomena as the thoracic position of the mammae, etc., the great Linnaeus himself ended to place the bat along with man in the order Primates [3]. In fact, around a fifth of all mammals on Earth are bats! WebSpirits African mythology is filled with spirits, invisible beings with powers for good or evil. One reason not to kill bats is that female bats have breasts and are mothers like human females [25]. Much of the folklore about bats relates to their way of life. WebLegendary creatures from African mythology. I am a bat ecologist with an interest in how people, culture and beliefs bonds or ties with bats. It is no real surprise that in a Christian Europe throughout history, the bat has been associated with the Devil, evil spirits, and witches [9]. When you stand with us, your donation will support critical bat conservation initiatives. In South America, the vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) is persecuted because it transmits the rabies virus to the livestock it feeds off. A witch shape is believed to be capable to suck out the life of a sleeping man or woman [18]. As such, the Earl of Cranbrook was able to dispel this silly superstition. Large flying fox Pteropus vampyrus suffers from its misleading scientific name as it is not blood-eating species but feeds only fruits and flowers. In northern Argentina, a Toba story tells of the leader of the very first peoplea hero bat or batman who was teaching people all they needed to know as human beings. As with that other iconic nocturnal creature, the owl, the bat has a myriad of very strange old wives tales and superstitions surrounding it [15]. Bats are also used as allegories to denote romantic or parental love in the poetry of Tamil Sangam literature in India [27, 28, 29]. In some places bats were seen more positively. One of these fables also exists, with slight variation, among tribes in southern Nigeria, among Australian aboriginals, and ancient Romans. The recent introduction of a fungal disease (WNS=White-nose Syndrome) from Eurasia to North America has killed millions of bats in North America in the past decade. In its entire history, the state of New York has recorded only one case of bat-transmitted rabies [64]. Another piece of bat folklore from the Americas includes the Maya believing that the House of the Bat was one of the areas that the soul had to pass through on its way to the land of Death. Emiong knew he was in trouble and flew off into the bush. It is not just their physical form that makes bats a curiosity. Out of over 13,000 species, there are only three that feed on blood. As you can see, bats have been both persecuted and protected through the ages. More than 1,200 species are currently recognized, and many are enormously abundant. By using a million dollars annually to educate the public about the dangers of bat-caused rabies in humans simply exacerbates the already unreasonable fears, which many people have of bats. So, using positive symbolism alone to promote bat conservation might be insufficient without accounting for day-to-day relationships of local communities with bats. WebFar Eastern Bat Symbolic Meanings. Bat In Indonesia, Iban people in Kalimantan also hunt fruit bats for consumption, and mainly Christian people in North Sulawesi regularly eat flying foxes (Black Flying Fox Pteropus alecto and Sulawesi Fruit Bat Acerodon celebensis) especially during the Christmas season [38, 39]. Bats were also persecuted because they were believed to be carriers of disease. Bat Myths and Folktales from Around the World Therefore, instead of coming out and feeding in daylight he began to feed at night. In India, bats are revered in many areas, but still large bat-harvesting festivals take place. Bats in a church during a wedding ceremony is a bad omen. It is also noted that bat tourism has a potential to conserve bat populations while providing social and economic benefits to local people in host communities. In Pakistan, one belief is that if a bat enters ones ear, it can never be removed and contact with bat urine is thought to cause eczema. People would sometimes even burn down whole colonies of bats because they thought that this would stop the spread of disease. Large-bodied old-world fruit bats, like this Egyptian fruit bat Rousettus aegyptiacus, are disproportionally targeted to be hunted for bushmeat. Books > African In India, a total of 3059 high school students from 36 schools were questioned on their bat perceptions. Using four species of bats and three brave female volunteers he deliberately attempted to entangle the bats by thrusting them into the womans hair. People often perceive bats as anomalous or ambiguous creatures, different from more normal animals. Bats have fascinated humans for millennia, and this cultural and spiritual relevance is reflected in the presence of bat symbols in Egyptian tombs from 2000BC [7].
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