It is imperative to obtain more current ethnobiological data to further our understanding of contemporary attitudes and relationships with batsand to document other cultural traditions not covered in this review. Bat Myths and Folktales from Around the World. That nailing a dead bat to your door will protect you from demons, That putting a drop of bats blood under a womans pillow will help her be fruitful. When Oyot went home his wife had to go out on an errand. Samoan folklore tells of a similar origin for bats. Bats lead us to the best opportunities to protect nature anywhere in the world. Zteve believes that people have far more in common with each other than is often shown on the surface and this can often be seen in the folktales from other parts of the world. Photo credit: [7] Roy Kabanlit creative commonsWikimedia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode. In 2021, a bat won New Zealands Bird of the Year competition name of which in Mori language is Te Manu Rongonui o te Tau, and the word Manu means flying creatures, including bats. The genus Pteropus was first described by Brisson in 1762 from specimens collected on the Reunion Islands. The oldest age group (5170years old) of 150 respondents were mostly aware of the bat conservation efforts. It remains to be seen, however, how effectively the further education efforts could halt or even reverse the decline of the bats around the world. This ability, coupled with the ability to navigate at night by using a system of acoustic orientation (echolocation), has made the bats a highly diverse and populous order. These are Under the influence! Men hunt and consume bats more often than women who have fears that consuming bat meat would give them strange or deformed children. Pre-Islamic magical belief in Hunza said that if the lady would once offer the cooked meat of bat to her guests, hiding it behind her back while serving her family would never be without meat for their whole life [25]. BUSTED! 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. 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 other parts of the world, fruit bats are occasionally hunted in small numbers. But where theyre used as an ingredient in a witchs brew, theyre no different to frogs or snails (also common ingredients). Our collection of global perceptions aims to promote a better biocultural richness for humans and bats as our long-term nocturnal companions. Courtesy of creative commonsWikimedia. Having multifaceted anatomy of a lion, hippopotamus, and crocodile, she waited for the opportunity to devour the hearts of Frustrated, Jonayaiyin eventually told the bat You cannot take care of your feathers, so you shall never have any. Very well, said the bat, I deserve to lose them, for I could never take care of those feathers.. In northern Guiana, Bat Mountain is the home of killer bats, and there is also a killer bat in folklore from Venezuela. This apparent ambiguity in the nature of bats is seen in many folktales about how they came to be in the first place and how they acquired their various features. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode. In Malaysia, a face-to-face survey was conducted in Penang Island to assess knowledge and awareness level toward bat conservation efforts. Traditional Navajo folklore places the origin of bats in the earliest world, when all was dark: twelve insects and the bat revolved in darkness. The flying fox obtained his wings when he borrowed them from the rat and refused to return them. Photo credit to creative commons https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode. These creatures, or more like monsters, were said to be able to transform themselves into bats at will and would fly around looking for victims to drink their blood. In a Cherokee fable, an eagle, a hawk, and other birds fashioned the first bat and the first flying squirrel from two mouse-like creatures. Bat Myths bat, (order Chiroptera), any member of the only group of mammals capable of flight. Their prayers were answered, but only in part; they were given teeth, hair, and human faces, but otherwise remained bird-like. Bats in a church during a wedding ceremony is a bad omen. In the third book of Moses in the Old Testament, bats were identified as birds, while the world-famous Swedish taxonomist, Carl von Linn (or Linnaeus), only reclassified bats as mammals and not birds as late as 1758 in the 10th Edition of his Systema Naturae [2]. Bats Unquestionably, they are strange creatures, appearing as half animal and half bird, like something from a nightmare world. Ancient Celtic Cauldrons: The Magical, the Mythical, the Real, Top 5 Trees in Celtic Mythology, Legend and Folklore, Celtic Warrior Women: Queen Boudica of the Iceni, Animism and the Living World of the Ancient Celts, Mixing Animals, Birds, Humans and Gods in Celtic Mythology, Unicorn Lore: Interpreting the Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries, The Legendary Puss in Boots and the Marquis of Carabas, Top Five Mythical Birds in Legend and Folklore, Aesops Fables; a new translation by Aesop, BATS Magazine Article: Folklore and the Origin of Bats, Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria, West Africa by Elphinstone Dayrell. During this time eating food between sunrise and sunset is forbidden. Even worse have been the vandalism and wanton destruction of bats and their habitat in North America. Should a bat or an owl come near the house, or a bush-cat defecate in the compound, the owner must go at once to diviner to discover what remedies must be taken to ward off the evil. Another belief about bats comes from the Navajo, a Native American tribe from the southwestern United States. 2. Especially Western cultural associations of bats with evil spirits, which have been recorded in Christian tradition as early as the fourteenth century [68] along with current media sensationalizing bats and the COVID-19 pandemic, are major hindrances toward bat conservation [69], although there is no reason why public health messages cannot be consistent with bat conservation. Since the fourteenth century, Chinese culture has associated bats with good luck and blessings [33]. By making research easy to access, and puts the academic needs of the researchers before the business interests of publishers. Saharan African mythology have legendary A modern variation of the myth that bats arose from rodents comes from an Ohio woman of Polish ancestry who attested that the bat was from a mouse that had eaten blessed Easter food. (In Polish tradition, a representative food from the Easter dinner is taken to church to be blessed.) Licensee IntechOpen. Below, we will be taking a look at some of the most popular bat myths from around the globe. A folktale from Kanara, India tells how bats were once unhappy birds that prayed to become human. This category has the following 7 subcategories, out of 7 total. 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). Indigenous Ainu people in Japan worshipped the crafty and wise bat god Kappa kamui, who kept away demons and diseases [44]. Also known as Hunbatz, One Monkey A Monkey, not a Bat One of the Monkey Twins, hes the son of Hun Hunahpu and Xbaquiyalo. Halloween. In China, the bat is a symbol of happiness and good luck and its image is found in art and crafts expressing this. It tells how a bushrat named Oyot was friends with Emiong the bat and they would often eat together, taking it in turns to cook. According to the Serer myth, the creation of the earth began from a swamp. Bending over the soup to stir, but unlike the old joke where a diner saw a hair in their soup, she saw the dead body of her husband. Monstrous beyond imagining, all-consuming, blacker than blackest night, the hideous Satan in the Night on Bald Mountain section of Walt Disneys animated film Fantasia (1940) spreads gigantic bat wings as it turns fiery eyes toward the lost souls about to be engulfed in wrath and flames [64]. How? Many people still believe this to be true in Mexico. I am a bat ecologist with an interest in how people, culture and beliefs bonds or ties with bats. In a Creek Indian variation of this tale, the bat first asks to play with the birds but is rejected by them and accepted by the animals team. Over half of the students (57%) did not know anybody in their neighborhood who would hunt bats. Even cultures that value bats positively may have values conflicting with bat conservation. Other than the polar regions, extreme deserts, and a few isolated islands, bats live in every habitat on Earth. 7 Myths About Bats The diversity of South American bats is impressive as there are more bats, and more bat species, than in any other part of the world [51, 52]. Bats prefer a variety of daytime hideaways, including rock crevices, caves, old buildings, mines, bridges, and trees. In North America, education has had some effect as more people have started to understand how useful bats truly are and how few cases of bat-born rabies transmission to humans there have been in the United States and Canada. However, in post-Christian Europe, the bats propensity of flying at night led to its association with the devil. Some bats also pollinate flowers and help disperse seeds. The bat begged to be spared but the weasel insisted that he could not do that because he was an enemy of all birds. Bldg. For American Indians they provided information on the natural world and the behavior and habits of animals. Strangely perhaps, given its poor press in Europe, carrying the dried and powdered heart of a bat in your front pocket was supposed to protect you from bleeding to death and later to stop bullets. It is merely a passing reference, along with moles, to represent animals that live with things that have been discarded. As such, the Earl of Cranbrook was able to dispel this silly superstition. 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]. Oh - and he wrote this website. They belong to the Order Chiroptera. Besides hunting, the primary threats to bat species include habitat loss and degradation through logging. 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]. In many cultures, they are seen as symbols of good luck, while in others they are seen as omens of bad news. There is also, of course, the European connection with bats to vampirism. Bat dung placed over a door opening prevented disease carrying demons from entering. Ammit (from Egyptian Mythology) Ominously translating to devourer or soul eater, the Ammit (also known as Ammut) was an underworld-dwelling ancient Egyptian goddess/demon who personified divine retribution. When a truce is declared, the bat is rejected by both sides because of this deceitful behavior. In Vietnam, many mounted bat species are sold in souvenir shops, and in Laos, bats are traded in several markets (Figure 3) [41, 42]. Despite positive associations toward bats, they are widely consumed as food and medicine throughout Asia, except in Brunei and Singapore. However, more recently, the habit has become much more common. WebLegendary creatures from African mythology. Books > Most often, they are seen only at night. It is greedy for fragile human living creatures and sings a resonating tune to itself as it feasts. For example, a bat entering a household was a forewarning of a death in the house. Although the bats roost in the sacred forest in Ghana, they are not regarded as sacred animals. There are also numerous stories and legends associated with the bat. Surprisingly little folklore exists specifically about Vampire bats, and Pre-Columbian erotic scenes do not involve bats although some folklore portrays female bats as alluring to men. People often perceive bats as anomalous or ambiguous creatures, different from more normal animals.
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