Welcome to Chiroptrivia.
"Life is a beautiful and strange creature that appears at a window, flies swiftly through the banquet and is gone."
The Venerable Bede
So this section is dedicated to the strange and wonderful things which make bat group members laugh, agree with or wonder at. If you have something you'd like to post here, quotations, facts, trivia or whatever email us
Since we relaunched this website in 2005, Chiroptrivia has proven to be one of our most visited sections.
In the 2009 update we culled a lot of the older pages, on the site but Chiroptrivia has emerged unscathed , other than to have its layout altered. On each of the following pages you will find the original content in the main column and links to sources and further reading in the right hand column
We try to include new material on each of our quarterly updates, so the section grows quite quickly, so we have subdivided the entries by date. New material appears at the top of the web page .Just click the links
| Posted October 2006 | |
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It was once believed that owls would tear the hearts out of bats and leave them in their nests to protect their young |
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Folklore says that a bat landing on your head would not fly away until it heard thunder.. and if you find one flying indoors, it predicts rain. |
| Posted April 2006 | |
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We are reliably informed that the one food that SAS members won't eat when lurking in the jungle is bat |
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The Dragon Robes of the Emperor of China often had bats embroidered on them as bats are a symbol of good fortune |
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In chinese the word for "bat " and the word for "happiness' are the same and pronounced "fu" An old chinese character for bat looks very batlike. |
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Seattle's Bat Northwest’s website contains the following gem. “Every night the bats of Bracken Cave consume 440 000 lbs of insects. This is equivalent in weight to 352.000 grapefruits, 880 tigers, 110 giraffes, 6 fully laden eighteen wheelers lorries or 5,500 bales of hay” |
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A female bat gives birth to a baby which weighs between 12 and 48% of her body weight. By way of comparison, if Kate Moss were a bat, her baby would weigh between 12 and 30lbs |
| Posted January 2006 | |
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The shape of the upper window frames on the ground floor at Gaudi's Casa Battlo in Barcelona are said to be based on the shape of a bat's wing. (Look closely) |
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An excellent way of locating a Noctule's roost is to look for urine stains on a tree. Noctules produce copious amounts of urine and don't seem to mind staying in urine soaked places. The fur of a captive Noctule is a darker red colour than its free living relatives. It is thought this is because it's fur does not get bleached by repeated contact with urine
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Bats knees bend backwards Click here for more details |
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The shortest latin name for a bat is Io ia - The Great Evening bat |
| Posted October 2005 | |
 Mexican long tongued bat (c) Mary Louise Crosby. Used with permission  |
Tequila is produced from the agave plant which is pollinated by bats.In traditional Mexican communities agaves were known as the shamans' tree because they were the only people allowed to drink it, as it gave access to the spirit world. The nearest ordinary people got to drinking it was by drinking the shaman's urine. Click here for more on the agave/bat connection |
| Posted October 2005 | ` |
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The word "bat" came from the norse word "bakka" meaning bacon. This is because sides of bacon used to be hung from the ceilings of smoke houses and looked rather bat like. Germans use the word "Speckmaus." Schinkenspeck is the German for bacon
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| Posted July 2005 | |
 A haiku for the summer Hiroshige "Men chasing bats" (detail) |
"Darting here and there the bat is exploring the moonlit plum" Taniguchi Buson (1717-1784) click here For more of Buson's work
Click here for more examples of bats in literature |
Posted April 2005
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his room, tapped his blood and Discovered while researching the Flying Doctors item for the April 2005 Bloodletting has a long and honourable role in the history of medicine. In the UK we used medicinal leeches, but elsewhere.... Allen in 1939 reported the following event in Mexico. A local monk was suffering from a violent fever and was at death’s door. He was not expected to last the night – and yet he survived.“It seems” wrote Allen “ that his feet had been left uncovered and during the night a vampire bat had entered reduced his fever”. There is no information provided as to how the bat fared. For more on vampire biology click here.
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Posted January 2005 |
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| "A bat is beautifully soft and silky; I do not know any creature that is
pleasanter to the touch or is more grateful or caressings, if offered
in the right spirit."
Mark Twain For more on Mark Twain and bats click here |
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