Owls Aren't Wise and Bats Aren't Blind by Warner Shedd Page A
Authors: Warner Shedd
Tags: nonfiction
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and indeed, they found the porcupine to be a most useful creature. It was easy to kill, and its meat was deemed a delicacy, an opinion confirmed by a number of people in recent times. Further, its quills, often dyed, were widely used to make handsome decorative designs on such things as baskets and canoes, as well as a form of jewelry for personal adornment.
Our own perception of the porcupine is changing, too, especially now that porkies are no longer present in excessive numbers. True, a dog may occasionally run afoul of the quill-bearing rodent, or a porky may cause damage by gnawing on anything from a tree to a tool handle. Nonetheless, more and more we’re recognizing the plodding, seemingly imperturbable porcupine as an important component of the forest ecosystem; more significant, we’re perhaps beginning to fully appreciate the unique qualities of this mammalian curiosity.
Big brown bat
6
Evasion Beats Entanglement: Bats
MYTHS
Bats are blind.
Bats fly into people’s hair.
Bats pose a major threat of rabies to humans.
Bats are a sort of a flying mouse.
MONSTROUS BEYOND IMAGINING, ALL-CONSUMING, BLACKER THAN BLACKEST NIGHT, THE HIDEOUS SATAN IN THE
NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN
SECTION OF WALT DISNEY’S
FANTASIA
SPREADS GIGANTIC BAT WINGS AS IT TURNS FIERY EYES TOWARD THE LOST SOULS ABOUT TO BE ENGULFED IN WRATH AND FLAMES. This batlike depiction should come as no surprise; it’s merely another manifestation of the fear, horror, and superstition with which bats have been regarded down through the ages.
In any drawing of a haunted house, bats are likely to be seen emanating from its towers and windows. Bats were also regarded as “familiars”—that is, spirit helpers in animal form—of witches. Evil witches in conical hats— toothless hags on airborne broomsticks—usually are shown with a flight of companion bats, like a swarm of night fighter planes shepherding a heavy bomber on its deadly journey. Indeed, one unfortunate woman in fourteenth-century France was burned as a witch for no better reason than the abundance of bats around her home!
Bats have also figured prominently in potions and curses. “Wool of bat” is a key ingredient in the witches’ brew in Shakespeare’s
Macbeth—
a concoction that surely rates as the most unappetizing cookery of all time! And in
The Tempest,
Caliban includes bats with such things as beetles and toads when invoking his curse on Prospero.
Even in this modern age of supposed enlightenment, millions of people still shudder at the vision of bats flying at their heads to entangle themselves in human hair, or of bats as fiendish vampires sucking the blood out of their victims. To all of these has been added the overblown fear of rabid bats.
All of this is truly sad, both for bats and humans. Because of superstition and irrational fears, bats are among the most persecuted of all our mammals. We humans, too, are impoverished by these archaic attitudes, for bats are unquestionably among the most astonishing and fascinating of all living things.
So complex and intriguing are bats that it’s difficult to know where to begin in telling their story. However, the origins of bats and the structure that gives them the ability to fly represent as good a starting point as any.
Approximately 55 million years ago, and nearly that long before we humans even existed, bats had evolved into winged creatures—the only mammal that truly flies. The earliest known fossils are from the early Eocene period. In geological terms, this is a mere ten million years or so after the dinosaurs died out.
These early bats, such as
Archeonycteris, Icaronycteris, Hassianycteris,
and
Paleochiropteryx,
were very similar to their modern counterparts—smallish bats about the size of our present-day North American bats. This doesn’t mean, of course, that bats didn’t evolve from flightless ancestors; rather, it simply means that we haven’t yet—and may never—find their intermediate ancestors.
Our own perception of the porcupine is changing, too, especially now that porkies are no longer present in excessive numbers. True, a dog may occasionally run afoul of the quill-bearing rodent, or a porky may cause damage by gnawing on anything from a tree to a tool handle. Nonetheless, more and more we’re recognizing the plodding, seemingly imperturbable porcupine as an important component of the forest ecosystem; more significant, we’re perhaps beginning to fully appreciate the unique qualities of this mammalian curiosity.
Big brown bat
6
Evasion Beats Entanglement: Bats
MYTHS
Bats are blind.
Bats fly into people’s hair.
Bats pose a major threat of rabies to humans.
Bats are a sort of a flying mouse.
MONSTROUS BEYOND IMAGINING, ALL-CONSUMING, BLACKER THAN BLACKEST NIGHT, THE HIDEOUS SATAN IN THE
NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN
SECTION OF WALT DISNEY’S
FANTASIA
SPREADS GIGANTIC BAT WINGS AS IT TURNS FIERY EYES TOWARD THE LOST SOULS ABOUT TO BE ENGULFED IN WRATH AND FLAMES. This batlike depiction should come as no surprise; it’s merely another manifestation of the fear, horror, and superstition with which bats have been regarded down through the ages.
In any drawing of a haunted house, bats are likely to be seen emanating from its towers and windows. Bats were also regarded as “familiars”—that is, spirit helpers in animal form—of witches. Evil witches in conical hats— toothless hags on airborne broomsticks—usually are shown with a flight of companion bats, like a swarm of night fighter planes shepherding a heavy bomber on its deadly journey. Indeed, one unfortunate woman in fourteenth-century France was burned as a witch for no better reason than the abundance of bats around her home!
Bats have also figured prominently in potions and curses. “Wool of bat” is a key ingredient in the witches’ brew in Shakespeare’s
Macbeth—
a concoction that surely rates as the most unappetizing cookery of all time! And in
The Tempest,
Caliban includes bats with such things as beetles and toads when invoking his curse on Prospero.
Even in this modern age of supposed enlightenment, millions of people still shudder at the vision of bats flying at their heads to entangle themselves in human hair, or of bats as fiendish vampires sucking the blood out of their victims. To all of these has been added the overblown fear of rabid bats.
All of this is truly sad, both for bats and humans. Because of superstition and irrational fears, bats are among the most persecuted of all our mammals. We humans, too, are impoverished by these archaic attitudes, for bats are unquestionably among the most astonishing and fascinating of all living things.
So complex and intriguing are bats that it’s difficult to know where to begin in telling their story. However, the origins of bats and the structure that gives them the ability to fly represent as good a starting point as any.
Approximately 55 million years ago, and nearly that long before we humans even existed, bats had evolved into winged creatures—the only mammal that truly flies. The earliest known fossils are from the early Eocene period. In geological terms, this is a mere ten million years or so after the dinosaurs died out.
These early bats, such as
Archeonycteris, Icaronycteris, Hassianycteris,
and
Paleochiropteryx,
were very similar to their modern counterparts—smallish bats about the size of our present-day North American bats. This doesn’t mean, of course, that bats didn’t evolve from flightless ancestors; rather, it simply means that we haven’t yet—and may never—find their intermediate ancestors.
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