The Bat in Folklore and Mythology

They sleep hanging upside down by their feet. They live in shelters such as caves or hollow trees, but they also take advantage of human structures. Like most small animals that are drawn to human habitations, bats have often been identified in folk belief with the souls of the dead. As a result, in cultures that venerate ancestral spirits, bats are often considered sacred or beloved. When spirits are expected to pass on rather than return, bats appear as demons or, at best, souls unable to find peace.

According to one well-known fable, popularly attributed to Aesop, the birds and beasts were once preparing for war. The birds said to the bat, “Come with us,” but he replied, “I am a beast.” The beasts said to the bat, “Come with us,” but he replied, “I am a bird.” At the last moment a peace was made, but ever since, all creatures have shunned the bat. The earliest version of this story, by the Roman Phaedrus, contained no explicit moral, and perhaps he intended to suggest that bats prefer human civilization to nature. The learned folklorist Joseph Jacobs, however, appended the lesson: “He that is neither one thing nor the other has no friends” (Aesop, p. 63). Today taxonomists place bats in a separate order of mammals, but both laypeople and scientists have puzzled for centuries whether bats are avians, flying mice, monkeys, or something else.

Revulsion against them, however, is far from universal, and their quizzical faces have often inspired affection. There were no glass windows in the ancient world, and so people had little choice but to share their homes with bats. According to Ovid, the daughters of Minyas had refused to join the revels in honor of Bacchus and stayed at home weaving and telling stories. As punishment, they were turned into bats, but they continued to avoid the woods and flock to houses. In a similar spirit, the medieval bestiaries praised bats for the way they would hang together “like a cluster of grapes,” showing affection that was not often found in human beings (White, p. 141).

In medieval times it was common for the entire household, from the lord and lady to the serfs, to sleep in the great hall of the manor, and little privacy was available. In such close quarters, they must, indeed, have felt rather like bats in a cave. In Africa, Swahili-speaking people have believed that after death the spirit of the departed hovers near his or her body as a bat. People in Uganda and Zimbabwe have believed that bats taking wing in the evening are departed spirits coming to visit the living. The flying fox, a large bat found in Ghana, however, is believed to be a demon in league with witches and sorcerers.