Mammals · plate 23 of 60
Bat
Chiroptera
Sleeps all day, parties all night, hangs with thousands.
Only 1.5% of people are Bats. (estimated)
If you're a Bat
You are at your best after dark and in a crowd. A pipistrelle weighs about as much as a coin and can eat thousands of insects in one night; you run on the same economy of tiny body, enormous appetite and constant motion. You navigate by asking questions and listening hard, and your friends are counted in the hundreds.
A bat's wing is a hand with the same bones as yours: the long struts are finger bones, and the thumb pokes out at the front with a claw on it.
The Bat as a spirit animal
Matching a Bat says you are a night person and a group person at once: shy with strangers, tireless with your own, happiest in a packed room where everyone talks over everyone. You read a situation by listening rather than looking. The flaw is a metabolism that cannot idle, so you crash hard and often. Bats hang upside down because it is the easiest way to leave in a hurry. Make of that what you like.
Grounded in how the species actually lives; nothing borrowed from anyone's tradition. Why we put it that way.
How to get along with a Bat
Do
- Plan for evenings; mornings are not available.
- Invite the whole group; they are rarely found alone.
- Say things out loud; they take in more by ear than by eye.
Don't
- Don't shine a light on them, socially or otherwise.
- Don't expect them to sit still for long; the metabolism won't allow it.
When it goes wrong: A Bat under pressure drops into torpor, going quiet and cold for a day or two; let them hang there, keep the room dark and they will be back by nightfall.
The Bat in a relationship
You love in company and find your person in a crowd, often by voice before anything else. Most bats raise one pup a year and pour everything into it, so when you commit you commit entirely, just not often. You keep odd hours. The right partner keeps them with you.
Field notes
Every animal is placed on six personality traits derived from how the species lives. Your answers are placed on the same six, and the closest animal wins. How the scoring works
- Sociability
- 10
- Boldness
- 3
- Energy
- 9
- Curiosity
- 5
- Devotion
- 6
- Roaming
- 7
- Bats are the only mammals capable of powered flight; with over 1,400 species they make up about a fifth of all mammal species.
- Vampire bats that fail to find a meal are fed by roost-mates, who regurgitate blood for them and remember who returned the favor.
- A mother bat returning to a nursery roost of thousands finds her own pup by its voice and smell.
Bats in literature
- Mang — The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling (1894)
- The Bat — Aesop's Fables (The Bat and the Weasels), Aesop (550 BCE)
- The Bat — Fables (The Bat and the Two Weasels), Jean de La Fontaine (1668)
Characters from public-domain works. Company, not a verdict.
Closest personalities
The animals whose profiles sit nearest to the Bat's. If you got Bat, one of these was probably your runner-up.
Other mammals
WolfRed FoxBrown BearPolar BearLionTigerLeopardCheetahElephantGiraffeHippopotamusGorillaOrangutanSlothKoalaKangarooPlatypusOtterBeaverBadgerRaccoonHedgehogCamelDolphinSperm Whale
Among the 60
Gustav Mützel (1839–1893), Brehms Tierleben, Alfred Brehm (1890). Public domain, viacommons.wikimedia.org.All credits
