Bat

Guest Reviewer: Holly Kirkwood

Notable Variations: vampire, dog torturer
Habitat: caves, sheds, horror film sets, scary books about ebola

People are fond of saying that bats are like mice or rats with wings, but this is not the case. Mice and rats crawl about in a peculiarly un-exiting way, whereas bats are suprasonic, and that’s only the first element which makes them so excellent.

One would almost think that when the bats got together to decide what was going to be their thing they chose to be wilfully different to all other animals. They don’t come out in the day like everything else: they like night-time for hunting mice and rats while it’s dark so they don’t know what hit them. And when they speak they do it so nobody else can hear them, so they obviously know some pretty important stuff which needs to be kept under wraps. And they see with their ears instead of their eyes. How cool is that?

A slightly annoyed bat.

Bats may not make many friends of other species as a result of not meeting anybody apart from the animals that they're going to have for dinner, but they probably don’t need them because whenever you see a bat it’s almost always hanging out with about a thousand million other bats, and if you think about it, keeping up your commitments to that many of your own kind isn’t going to leave much room for fraternisation with others.

A bat is always going to be more of a status symbol than anything else - it's not going to be very good at cheering you up when you’ve been dumped or didn’t get any Valentines cards. But if you’re happy with this then it’s the animal for you: cute, cuddly, able to fly, but with a hunting instinct second to none. Plus, when they talk in that funny high-pitched squeaky voice, dogs get upset (probably), like with those high pitched dog whistles you get when they start whining and running away, and that’s funny.

In addition to this, if you get a vampire bat then you’ll always have the exiting possibility that it may catch rabies, and suddenly take against you, making for hours of comedy chase scenes, which in turn is good for your health.

The vampire bat.
Not actually that scary.

And of course if you get a vampire bat, there is always the slim possibility that it’s Dracula, which could be the start of a very interesting, and long, life.

Good Pet/Bad Pet:

Good pet. Your bat will keep to themselves, source their own food, look cute, and command the respect of your friends. Getting rid of unwanted girls in the house becomes easy: simply train your bat to fly dangerously close to unwanted guest's hair.

Celebrity Owner:

• Dracula, natch
• Osama Bin Laden doubtless has millions, considering his cave-dwelling habits of late

Verdict:

Overall, bats are surely excellent:

+ Cute on the outside but ruthless on the inside therefore a good antidote to rubbish girly pets
+ They can chase unwanted guests out of the house
+ They may turn out to be a world-famous celebrity vampire

- Potential for messing up your new hairdo
- could contract rabies
- not chatty, unless you’re a dog

Overall Bat Score: 7.8/10

Cheers Holly,

Bats are pretty cool, but 7.8 is pushing it somewhat. We'd have to go for somewhere in the mid sixes for an animal that has the potential to be very scary indeed, but more often than not squanders it by getting tangled up in net curtains.

Here are some other mildly interesting bat facts for you:

• The world's smallest mammal is the Bumblebee bat of Thailand. It also has the best name of all the bats.
• Woolly bats in West Africa live in the large webs of spiders.
• A single little brown bat can catch 1,200 mosquitoes per hour. Greedy little rascal.
• An anticoagulant from vampire bat saliva may soon be used to treat heart conditions.
• Baby bats, like seals and dogs, are called pups.

A bumblebat