Why do bats creep me out?
People who are uneasy about bats often cannot say why, which is unusual. With most animals there is a clear complaint. With bats there is a feeling, and it tends to arrive at dusk.
What is hard to put a finger on
When people do find words for it, these are the ones they find.
- They come out when the light goes.
- They fly in a way that is hard to follow, close to your head.
- They are neither bird nor mouse. Fur, and wings made of skin.
- Vampires, caves, haunted houses: the whole stock of stories.
What bats are actually like
Most of what we think we know about bats comes from those stories.
- There are more than 1,400 kinds of bat, and only three of them feed on blood. All three live in Latin America, and only one of those takes blood from mammals.Source: Bat Conservation International, Bats 101
- Bats are not blind. Many find their way by echo, and others depend on sharp eyesight and smell to find food and get back to their roosts.Source: Bat Conservation International, Bats 101
- Every bat in the UK eats insects and nothing else. Elsewhere, bats also live on fruit, nectar and pollen.Source: Bat Conservation Trust
What the unease can point to
A feeling with no clear reason is a good place to look for something of your own. What follows is one way to look, and you are the judge of whether it applies.
Bats belong to the hours when we are not on show. Most people have a daytime self that is sensible and presentable, and another that comes out late: the thoughts at three in the morning, the wants that do not suit the office. If the bat disturbs you, it may be because it lives entirely in that second world and is perfectly at home there.
Bats also refuse to be one thing. A mammal that flies sits between categories. People who have never quite belonged to one group or the other, between two families, two countries or two versions of themselves, sometimes dislike the bat for showing it so openly.
And there is the way it steers. A bat sends out a sound and trusts what comes back. It cannot show anyone how it knows where the wall is. If you were taught to distrust a hunch and to act only on what you can prove, an animal that lives by its own signal can feel wrong.
Three questions to ask yourself
- Which part of your life happens out of sight of the people who know you by day?
- How do you feel about deciding something on a hunch, with nothing to show for why?
- Where do you feel you are neither one thing nor the other?
Questions people ask
Are bats blind?
No. Many bats use echoes to find their way in the dark, and others rely on good eyesight and smell. “Blind as a bat” is a saying, not a fact.
Do bats drink blood?
Three kinds do, out of more than 1,400, and all three live in Latin America. Only one of them feeds on mammals. Every bat in the UK eats insects.
Is fear of bats a phobia?
Feeling uneasy when one flits past is ordinary. If the fear keeps you indoors on summer evenings, or the thought of a bat in the house brings on panic, it has become a phobia. A GP or therapist can help, and you would not be the first to ask.
What can being unsettled by bats say about me?
Maybe only that you grew up on the same stories as the rest of us. It can also point to how you feel about the side of yourself that comes out at night, about not fitting a category, or about trusting your own instinct.