Bane or Blessing? Reviewing Cultural Values of Bats across the Asia-Pacific Region - Mary-Ruth Low, Wong Zhi Hoong, Zhiyuan Shen, Baheerathan Murugavel, Nikki Mariner, Lisa Marie Paguntalan, Krizler Tanalgo, Moe Moe Aung, . Sheherazade, Lawrence Alan Bansa, Tuanjit Sritongchuay, Jason Hideki Preble, Sheema Abdul Aziz, 2021

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• which encompasses negative perceptions of bats as disease vectors, pests, or harmful creatures associated with evil spirits

• We found that 62% of the cultures had only positive values, 8% had only neutral values, while 10% had only negative values.

• This suggests that the Asia-Pacific region and its cultures contain far more positive associations with bats than most Western societies

• bats are associated with vampires in Western culture (e.g., Prokop et al. 2009; Rydell et al. 2018)—folklore with roots in a Russian myth of a reanimated corpse that feeds on human blood, dating back to the eleventh century

• In contrast, since the fourteenth century, Chinese culture has associated bats with good luck and blessings

• To date, ethnobiological information regarding bats throughout the Asia-Pacific region has mainly focused on utilitarian aspects of bats as food and medicine

• Bats—in recognizable or abstract forms —serve as inspiration and motifs in art forms. Ethnic Chinese communities regard bats as lucky animals,

• Bats are revered throughout India

• as sacred and protect colonies for fear of divine punishment.

• indicating that positive cultural perceptions of bats are not isolated or unique, but are rather under-represented in global, English-language narratives about bats.

• The negative impact of such cultural erosion is compounded by contemporary negative messaging and scaremongering in the media that portray bats as disease carriers (López-Baucells et al. 2018; Tuttle 2018), thus conferring a negative value to bats.

• the proliferating negative representations of bats due to growing Western influence and the simultaneous erosion of local biocultural memory and relationships containing positive representations.