**6. Pacific region**

A legend tells that in Fiji, a giant white vampire bat acts as a messenger, and one finds bats as gods in both Tikopian and Tongan myths. The Tongan king's Samoan wife was rescued by flying foxes, and she honored her rescuers later by naming her son Tonumaipe'a (= "rescued by flying foxes") [45]. People in Vanuatu consider Pacific Flying Fox *Pteropus tonganus* as their ancestor and claim to be able to communicate with them [46]. In Makira, Solomon Islands, local people value traditional currency for transactions, such as bride price, and use the canine teeth of flying foxes as a traditional currency [47]. Samoan people prize flying fox meat as a delicacy and as a gift to elders, but commercial hunting and export of the meat are culturally frowned. The general attitude is that the flying fox is part of the forest, and the vast majority support the protection of *Pteropus samoensis* and *P. tonganus* [45]. Samoans said that flying foxes were cheeky and courageous, making it a popular tattoo motif [48].

In New Zealand, Māori people associate bats, *pekapeka*, with the mythical nocturnal bird *hokioi* that foretells death [49]. In 2021, a bat won New Zealand's Bird of the Year competition name of which in Māori language is *Te Manu Rongonui o te Tau*, and the word "*Manu*" means "flying creatures," including bats. The decision to include the New Zealand long-tailed bat *Chalinolobus tuberculatus* also known as *pekapeka-tou-roa* (Māori) in the 2021 Bird of the Year competition did cause a bit of controversy, some people saying the country had gone "batty." However, the long-tailed bat got more than 7000 votes, bringing a clear victory to this critically endangered animal, despite not being a bird [50].

## **7. Central and South America**

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]. In pre-Columbian Central and South America, the bat played an important role in the religions and social structures of the various cultures, most notably with the Moche people of Peru and the Maya of Guatemala. In northern Argentina, a Toba story tells of the leader of the very first people—a hero bat or batman who was teaching people all they needed to know as human beings. Similarly, the Ge tribe in Brazil moved through the night following a bat that looked for light toward which to guide the people (**Figure 4**) [51, 52].

*Bats in Folklore and Culture: A Review of Historical Perceptions around the World DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102368*

#### **Figure 4.**

*A bat-headed figure from Costa Rica made by pre-Colombian Diquis people sometimes between 700 and 1530 AD. Photo credit: Public domain "creative commons"—Wikimedia.*

The bat was central to Maya religion and social structure. One clan of the Cakchiquel Maya, of the highlands of Guatemala, was named the Zotzil (=belonging to the bat), whose deity was a bat. The Tzotzil Maya lived, and continue to live to this day, on the plateau of Chiapas in southern Mexico. They called themselves Zotzil uinic (batmen), claiming that their ancestors discovered a stone bat, which they took as their god, and their chief town was named Zinacantlan (=place of the bats) by Nahuatl merchants from Mexico [53]. Generally, the Maya revered a Vampire Bat god, Camazotz, the death bat, which killed dying men on their way to the center of the earth [51, 52].

The north coast of Peru is one of the South American regions where bat iconography is particularly prominent [51]. The Moche people in Peru were aware of the connection between bats and plants. On Mochica pottery, a bat is depicted with the Sweetsop *Annona squamosa*, a common fruit also known as Sugar Apple or Pinha, the seeds of which are dispersed by bats [51, 52]. Some of their ceramic vessels have an anthropomorphic bat that is an agent of human sacrifice, with a knife in one hand and a human head in the other. Sometimes a Mochica bat carries a warclub and a small human captive. The enormous size of the bat and the small human head or body indicate supernatural status for the bat [51].

The widespread sacrificial association derives largely from the habits of the Common Vampire Bat that feeds exclusively on the blood of vertebrates (**Figure 5**).

In many places, blood sacrifice was believed to benefit agriculture, and therefore, bats had agricultural, as well as death, connections for Pre-Columbian peoples and in Oaxaca, Mexico, a bat deity was associated with maize [51]. 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.

One Yupa man in northern Colombia started night after night to drink and flirt with a female bat when he was returning from an evening hunt. Finally, his wife realized what he was doing and set fire to the tree and killed her husband and the bats [54]. Sometimes bats are husbands as in a Mataco lore from Argentina. A woman noted that her husband had a round tail and dropped the vessel of water she was bringing to him. The bat husband then cut off her head and those of other

#### **Figure 5.**

*Common vampire bat* Desmodus rotundus *is the one reason for global Chiroptophobia although it is very small weighing about 55 grams and only occurring in central and South America. Photo credit: Uwe Schmidt. "Creative commons"—Wikimedia. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode.*

Indians and put all heads in the tree hole where he was living [55]. Also, a Tacana woman in Bolivia was killing a bat while not realizing that it was her husband [34].

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. Bat guano provides one reason for the fertility associations [56].

In Caribbean South America and the Antilles, bat images are associated with death rites and burials in archeological context [57], and in Cuba, a Taino ball court was batshaped, the ballgame being a sacrificial ritual [58]. In Jamaica, the bat and the owl were very important symbols in Taino mythology and death. The bat represented the *opias* (= spirits of the dead people) to the Taino. Fruit-eating bats such as Jamaican fruit bat *Artibeus jamaicensis* loves feeding on guavas, which is also the favorite food of the Taino spirits of the dead. In Jamaican folklore, bats are also perceived as death images [59].

In northern Guiana, Bat Mountain is the home of" killer bats," and there is also a killer bat in folklore from Venezuela. Decapitating bat demons appears in various myths in Amazonia and to the south in northern Argentina. These myths associate killer bats with fire as the bat burns its victims and is, in turn, thrown into the fire [60–62]. One bat, whose habits may have fostered these tales of decapitating bats, is the false vampire *Vampyrum spectrum.* It is the largest New World bat with a yard wingspan. It is a carnivore, eating birds and other vertebrates, occasionally taking even other species of bats. When capturing its prey, it grabs the neck, sometimes killing the prey with a single powerful bite [51, 52].

### **8. North America**

The artificial bat became a shorthand for horror in 1931, jiggled on a fishing line behind a Hungarian-American actor Béla Ferenc Dezsö Blaskó, known professionally as Bela Lugosi in the genre-defining movie *Dracula.* Shockingly, US news media recently reported shortages of Halloween decorations—plastic bats among them, doubtless—due to the world supply crunch [63].

Monstrous beyond imagining, all-consuming, blacker than blackest night, the hideous Satan in the Night on Bald Mountain section of Walt Disney's 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]. This North American bat-like

#### *Bats in Folklore and Culture: A Review of Historical Perceptions around the World DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102368*

depiction should come as no surprise; it is merely another manifestation of the fear, horror, and superstition with which bats have been regarded down through ages [64]. Large, often man-eating, bats are found in Hawaiian traditions, and there is even a legend of an eight-eyed bat in Hawaii. Interestingly, giant bat stories have persisted in these" flying-fox-less" societies, which evolved from western Polynesians cultures where flying foxes have been prevalent [45].

Warner Shedd (2000) felt strongly that the level of fear about rabid bats sometimes rises almost paranoid concern in the United States, citing the State of New York as an example [63]. 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. In its entire history, the state of New York has recorded only one case of bat-transmitted rabies [64]. 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].

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. Although the exact source of the fungal pathogen, *Pseudogymnoascus destructans*, and its mode of introduction into North America remain unknown, the introduction was most likely mediated by humans, either through direct or indirect transfer of infectious propagules [66]. People can further move the fungus on their clothing and caving gear and spread the disease into an area that does not currently.

have the fungus [67].

Even worse have been the vandalism and wanton destruction of bats and their habitat in North America. A variety of methods have been used to harass and kill these harmless and beneficial creatures, and some people have even gone so far as to dynamite caves and abandoned mines where bats roost or hibernate [64]. Lately, education seems to have some effect, and more and more people have started to appreciate how useful and amazing bats truly are. It remains to be seen, however, if this could halt or even reverse the decline of the North American bats [64].
