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Article: Embodying evil and bad luck: stray notes on the folklore of bats in southwest Asia.
- Article from:
- Asian Folklore Studies
- Article date:
- October 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Asian Folklore Studies. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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BEFORE introducing ethnographic notes on bat folklore in the region between Iran and Rajasthan, it seems appropriate to take a brief look at the zoology of these misunderstood and feared animals (FENTON 1983; FENTON 1992). * A characteristic often reflected in local oral traditions is that bats, like humans, are mammals: They give birth to live young ones, feed their newborns milk, and most of them have hair or fur. But strangely enough, they are the only mammals that can actively fly. Moreover, in a typical posture differing remarkably from that of other mammals, many bats hang upside down when they are not flying.
Bats comprise the mammalian order called ...