By Team Mangalorean

Mangalore April 5, 2008: How many times people speak about the vampire movies they have seen and repeat the scenes how the bad bat bites a handsome prince on the neck and after a brief hibernation the prince emerges from his slumber with two canines protruding out of his mouth and perhaps with a red eyes also. He is now the Count Dracula, some uncles, fathers and brothers also enact the incident in their own silly ways. Similarly even the wolves are not spared from this malicious campaign, there are ware wolves that turn into man and vice versa.
 
But the elders fail to give the other side of the story of a bat, of that of wolf and their importance to the nature. The children after listening to all that vampire and ware-wolf stories harbour a great deal of hatred or repulsiveness on these animals unless sometime in their lives they come across the good things about them.
 
One of the species that has been subjected to bad light is the bat. But in reality bats help spread seeds far and wide due to their efforts seeds of the fruits like Chikoo, Guava and some berries do get sprinkled all over the place- as a result the trees of these fruits come up without the human effort in forests. The regenerated forests due to the efforts of the bats, there is more shade in the world and creation of humus and organic matter that helps the earth to retain its moisture and fertility.
 
Bats eat harmful insects and rats which means there are less vectors to spread disease that not just affect human beings but also other animals and plants.
 
But human beings have been very unkind to bats basically due to the misconceptions they have like the bat carries rabies and bats suck human blood which are unfounded and untrue as per the zoologists. People catch bats to eat with the hope that its flesh had medicinal values, in many places where there are fruit orchard bats are shot and killed in many other ways for as small a sin like eating a fruit from the orchard. Old scriptures say that when man grows fruits and vegetables in his garden he should voluntarily leave some of the fruits in the tree for the birds so that they also survive.
 
People suffocate bats with smoke in temples and houses thinking that they are evil which is not true, they are more afraid of human beings than the human beings are afraid of bats.