Bat Bite Treatment, Symptoms, Toxicity, and How to Drive Them Out of Your Home
Summer is here, and all kinds of snakes, insects, rats, and ants are out in “force”. While taking precautions against mosquito and insect bites, we also need to be wary of bat attacks. So what should you do if you are bitten by a bat? What are the symptoms? Is it venomous? How do you drive a bat out if one gets into your home?
Bats are chiropterans, and Chiroptera is the second-largest order of animals after Rodentia. They are the only mammals that have evolved true powered flight. There are currently 19 families, 185 genera, and 961 living species, distributed throughout the world except for the polar regions and some oceanic islands, with the greatest numbers in the tropics and subtropics. Most bats rest during the day and forage at night.
Are bats venomous?
As is widely known, bats can transmit diseases to humans through their droppings and through bites, so we should avoid contact with bats to prevent infection with the viruses they carry.
To date, researchers in China and abroad have detected or isolated more than 130 viruses from bats using various methods, nearly half of which are zoonotic viruses, including rabies virus and rabies-related viruses in the family Rhabdoviridae, and some virus members of the families Togaviridae, Flaviviridae, Bunyaviridae, Arenaviridae, Reoviridae, Paramyxoviridae, and Herpesviridae.
In addition, research statistics have found that a single bat species can carry an average of 2.71 viruses, while a single virus is present in 4.51 bat species. For comparison, another important host that carries and transmits pathogens——rodents——has figures of 2.48 and 2.76, respectively. In this respect, the role of bats in transmitting pathogens should not be underestimated.
What are the symptoms of a bat bite? What should you do?
(1) Generally, the toxicity of a bat is similar to that of a venomous bee. A bite causes itchy skin, swelling, and pain, followed by blistering.
(2) In the most severe cases, the patient develops fever, low blood pressure, and cardiac arrhythmia after being bitten, and may even go into shock.
But if you are unlucky enough to be bitten by a bat, what measures should you take immediately? Below are some methods summarized by professionals based on years of experience:
1. If a member of the public is bitten by a bat, it is recommended to wash the area locally with soapy water and disinfect it with iodophor, then do not bandage the wound, and go to a nearby hospital or health and epidemic prevention station as soon as possible to receive a rabies vaccine injection. In terms of diet, avoid spicy and irritating foods and avoid alcohol.
2. Try to determine whether the bat has rabies. The only way to know whether an animal is infected with rabies is to find the virus in the brain after the animal dies. A live bat infected with rabies can be observed through certain ordinary behaviors. They may appear very docile, and even if they encounter humans at night while rabid, they will not flee. Conversely, if a bat behaves very aggressively and launches vicious attacks without provocation, it is very likely carrying the disease. In some cases, the animal will have excessive saliva and foam in its mouth. So regardless of whether the bat that bit you has rabies, the best approach is still to go to the hospital for wound treatment and to receive immunoglobulin and vaccine;
In summary, please remember that “rabies” is not just a dog disease! All warm-blooded animals (cats, dogs, mice) can potentially carry rabies. So once you are bitten, please do not take any chances. Get a rabies vaccine immediately.
What do bats eat?
Bats have quite a wide range of feeding habits. Some species like nectar and fruit, some like to eat fish, frogs, and insects, some feed on animal blood, and some even eat other bats. Generally speaking, the large bat species feed mainly on fruit or nectar, while most small bat species feed mainly on insects.
There are bat species that eat all kinds of things: including fruit, fish, pollen, and even blood. Most bats hunt insects while flying at night. Each bat can distinguish the sound waves it emits itself, which shows that even when hunting together with other bats, it will not be interfered with by other sound waves.
What animals are bats' natural enemies?
The main natural enemies of cave-dwelling bats are mainly snakes, lizards, and the like; the natural enemies of tree-dwelling types (some fruit bats) also include some birds of prey and felids. Another natural enemy of bats is humans; for example, the Guam flying fox went extinct because of being hunted for food by the local people.
How do you drive a bat out if one gets into your home?
The experts' advice is:
1. Change the environment in your home a little.
2. The method is to use a smoke bomb to drive it away.
3. Buy an insect repellent device, plug it in, and the device can drive the bat away.
Clean your home, because it may be that something in the house is attracting it. Some female bats have the ability to attract other male bats, especially bat blood!
Bats navigate by sound waves. If there is a bat in your home, first, you can use smoke to drive it away, such as lighting a used mosquito coil, but be careful not to light an open flame; it is enough for smoke to come out.
Another option is to plug in an electronic insect repellent device; the sound waves it emits can also drive bats away.
Although bats rarely bite people, it is still recommended that you do not try to attack a bat, because nearly 5% of individual bats carry rabies virus. If the bat is startled while you are driving it away, it may very likely attack humans.
The uses of bats
Bats and their droppings can be used as medicine
It can be used as a traditional Chinese medicine for chronic cough, malaria, gonorrhea, eye cataracts, and so on. Its droppings are also a traditional Chinese medicine called yemingsha, used for eye diseases. The Baopuzi says: “A thousand-year-old bat, colored like white snow, hangs upside down when it rests, because its brain is heavy. If one obtains this creature, dries it in the shade, grinds it into powder, and takes it, it will make a person live ten thousand years.” The Wu Shi Bencao also says that bats, “dried in the shade after the beginning of summer, cure dimness of vision and enable a person to see light at night.” The Shui Jing goes even further, saying that bats, “if obtained and taken, make a person become an immortal.”
The positive role of bats for humans
1. Bats play a very important role in maintaining the ecological balance of the natural world. Various insect-eating bats can eliminate large numbers of mosquitoes, noctuid moths, scarab beetles, and other pests, and can prey on more than 3,000 in a single night, which is beneficial to humans.
2. The droppings accumulated by bats are also a very good fertilizer and are useful for agricultural production. Processed bat droppings are called “yemingsha” and are a kind of traditional Chinese medicine.
3. Bats are also an important subject for human research on animal orientation, positioning, and dormancy. Drawing on bionic principles, humans developed radar based on the bat's echolocation system.
4. Bats are the species among mammals that is easiest to sample in large quantities and quickly from the wild. In the extremely competitive academic world, studying bats is far simpler and more economical than studying most other species.
Bats are mostly a symbol of “fortune”; calling a person a bat means they are cunning
The bat is abbreviated as “fu”, and because “fu” (bat) is homophonous with “fu” (fortune), people use the bat to represent good fortune, blessings, prosperity, longevity, and joy, and other auspicious things. In folk paintings, five bats are drawn to mean “five blessings arrive at the door.” In the old days, silk and brocade often used bat patterns as decorative designs.
The Jingpo people of Yunnan Province generally believe that the bat is a symbol of insidiousness and cunning. Legend has it that in ancient times the sun was very hot, and the animals on the earth were scorched beyond endurance and cursed it one after another. The sun was very angry when it heard this, and turned its head away and went up into the sky. From then on, the whole world was plunged into darkness. So the animals gathered together and agreed to raise some gold and silver to ask the sun to come out. When the birds went to the bat to raise funds, the bat folded up its wings and said that it did not belong to the birds but to the rodents, and was unwilling to donate. When the mice found it, it flapped its wings and said that it belonged to the birds and not the rodents, and also did not donate. In this way, the bat, by both deception and shameless refusal, did not donate a single cent. Therefore, the Jingpo people call those who say one thing and mean another, who adapt to circumstances, and who present one face to your face and another behind your back, “bat people.”
In Chinese culture, the bat is absolutely a symbol of “fortune,” but if a person is referred to as a bat, then there is no auspicious meaning in it at all, as the legend above has already made very clear.