Batty Biases Look Past The Scales, Matted Fur And Slime - ‘Scary’ Creatures Don’t Deserve Our Scorn

Creatures will haunt the streets and homes of Spokane and the Inland Northwest this evening. From the alleys and from minivans they will appear, wolves and skeletons, bats and monsters.

Halloween is a delicious holiday, and not only because of the candy collected. It is the fears we indulge, even relish in, that make the night.

A harmless cultural release? Perhaps. But there is a darker side to this ghoulish eve.

When it comes to animals like bats and wolves and spiders, we Americans seem to have a hard time putting fantasy in its place. Just as we let Walt Disney reinforce our love for fuzzy critters, so we let Hollywood strengthen our hate for the scaled and hairless.

We take to heart images of wolves howling at the moon and bats sucking blood, instead of recognizing them for the myths that they are.

The result? Some of our earthly neighbors get a bad reputation. The consequence in many cases is near extinction.

“It is interesting to speculate on just what it is that makes a creature a social pariah from the human standpoint,” writes Ronald Rood, a wildlife biologist with the New York State Extension Service, in his book “Animals Nobody Loves.” “Sometimes an animal is too much of a challenge, I guess. Take the wolf … he is a threat to man’s ego, for the wolf is one animal that refuses to acknowledge that man is the biggest stroke of fortune that ever hit the plains - or mountains, or the forests or wherever the wolf chooses to make his stand.

“Sometimes an animal embarrasses us. Such is the rat, or the cockroach, which reminds us of the filth and slovenliness that must be present for them to survive.

“Other unfortunates are those ugly ducklings whose looks are against them. To our way of thinking, the unlovely - and unloved - creatures are too scaly or too slimy. They have too many legs or too few. They wriggle like snakes or creep like slugs. They are all arms like an octopus or all wings like a bat.

“It doesn’t matter, of course, that they are marvelously fitted for their particular lives. They just don’t look human, and that’s that.”

Many of the animals we hate are active at night. They provoke our centuries-old fear of the dark, notes Maureen Fredrickson, programs director for the Delta Society, a Renton-based international organization that champions the human-animal bond.

This fear, Fredrickson said, is more than an evolutionary survival instinct on our part. She traces it quite concisely to the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of the Catholic Church and Europe’s entrance into the Dark Ages.

“In those times, one of the best ways to keep the locals under control was fear, so the Church would tell people the wolf is the soul of someone damned, or snakes are the ultimate evil, that animals that come out at night are the devil. It was a control issue, and we’re not too forgiving of animals that scare us,” Fredrickson said. “When the Roman Empire fell it was scary, transitional time. The Church took advantage of that.”

Darkness or light. Good or bad. There is a human tendency to assign labels, especially in the fairy tales and nursery rhymes we read to our children. Our attitudes about particular animals form early.

“What we’re told as children affects us,” said Albert Carlin, a psychologist with the University of Washington’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. “There are good survival qualities of fear, but a lot of it has lost its current evolutionary value. Why do we fear particular animals? The answer resides in the mythic structure of our culture.”

Since the Industrial Revolution, America has moved away from its farming roots. Along the way, we became even more separated from nature than the European ancestors some of us share. The phenomenon is called urbanization, and it affects how we view animals.

Studies about our attitudes toward wildlife, conducted by researchers like Rodney Sayler, a wildlife ecologist at Washington State University, show the less we know about an animal, the more negatively we feel about it.

“It seems the more different an animal is from us, the less understanding we have and the more negatively we view it,” Sayler said. “This is just personal speculation, but I think that’s the case with things like snakes and spiders.”

What we don’t know we often fear, said Michael Brown, an associate professor of psychology at Gonzaga University.

“Fear of the unknown, of the unpredictable, things that we can’t control - this is a general trend in human nature,” Brown said. “Literature continues the myths that fuel these fears, as does the press today. Both continue stereotypes.”

How American cultures deal with death also influences our attitudes toward animals. So does our definition of what is means to be civilized. Our interpretation of that word, said Fredrickson, is still colored by Europe of the 1400s, 1500s and 1600s.

“European culture really wanted to separate from nature; it viewed itself as different and better,” Fredrickson said. “The question is, what is so fearful to us if animals have souls?”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Staff illustration by Bridget Sawicki

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: DEBUNKING THE MYTH Here is a short synopsis of facts about bats, wolves, snakes, vultures and spiders. The information was gathered from field guides, state and federal wildlife agencies and the book “Animals Nobody Loves,” by Ronald Rood.

Vultures Rood summed it up succinctly: “Man, in his attempts to give human characteristics to animals, is often mistaken. Such is the case with our attitude toward vultures. That naked head and neck are regarded as ugly. The bird’s appetite for carrion is considered to be depraved. And the caution with which it approaches its potential meal is of course regarded as cowardice. Actually, everything fits perfectly.” Consider these facts: It is practical for a vulture to have only bristles around the head and neck. Eating carrion is not a dainty act. Neck feathers would get matted and soiled. By eating the carcasses of dead animals, the vulture eliminates for people and other animals a potential source of disease and pollution. Even more important, it speeds the return of minerals and organic compounds from the world of the dead to the world of the living. Instead of taking months to seep from a decaying carcass, these substances are quickly deposited on the earth in vulture droppings. Vultures are not afraid of their food. The reason they sit near a carcass for some time before eating it is they are waiting for the sun to soften the body, which makes it easier to tear apart.

Spiders Although several animals have silk-making glands, spiders spin the most art. Like tiny architects, spiders create beautifully-patterned snares that catch their dinner - usually insects. Spiders make silk from a special gland in their abdomens. Inside this gland are tiny tubes, or spinnerets, with the flexibility of human fingers. Within the spinnerets are even smaller tubes from which individual threads of silk are made. Diving spiders use their webs in an ingenious way. They build silky, dome-shaped diving bells that hold air bubbles, allowing them to spend most of their lives under water hunting insects, tadpoles and even small fish. However, not all spiders spin webs. Some hunt for their dinner, sometimes taking animals as large as mice.

Snakes Snakes are reptiles and cousins of the dinosaur. But while tryrannosaurus was on its way out, evolutionarily speaking, snakes were emerging and adapted well enough to have remained on the planet for the past 100 million years. The niche, or role, they fill is as a predator, and they are well-qualified for the job. No matter where they live, they keep the local rodent population in check. And that’s without benefit of legs or arms.

Wolves No other species has been more maligned than the wolf. More myths surround this creature than any other on the planet. Yet we call the dog, believed to have been domesticated from the wolf, our best friend. Some biologists who have studied the wolf surmise that that is the point. Wolves look like dogs, but they are not domesticated. They aren’t devoted to us, and they are better hunters than we are. That irritates our ego. Wolves are loyal to their pack. The pack hunts together, and raises pups together. Like us, wolves have social rules that govern interaction among individuals. Of the many things that wolves eat, deer bother us the most. Our reasons are contradictory. Like wolves, we hunt deer, which makes us competitors. At the same time, we say wolves are bad because they eat our beloved Bambi, even though we do the same thing. Wolves usually eat sick and old deer. It makes sense. These animals are easier to catch. And by taking these animals out of a population, young, healthy deer are left with more habitat and food. But if an opportunity presents itself, wolves will sometimes take healthy deer. And sometimes wolves eat our livestock. Wolves do not slaughter herds of deer. Unlike us, they usually kill only what they intend to eat. Again, it makes sense. To survive, wolves, like all wildlife, must budget their energy, especially during the winter. Wolves howl for many reasons, but they do not howl at the moon. They howl when there is no moon as often as they howl when there is a moon. They howl at night, and they howl during the day. There is no such thing as a werewolf. And wolf attacks are so extremely rare, none has ever been documented in North America.

Bats Like people, bats are mammals. Several species of bats reside in the Northwest. None, however, are vampires. There are several types of vampire bats in South and Central America, but they have little in common with Dracula. They are about the size of a sparrow, and they do not suck their prey to death nor cause it to transform into a monster. Bats do not carry rabies any more often than any other wild mammal; at any given time, less than one percent of the bat population has rabies. Bats eat insects, lots and lots of insects. In fact, they are the biggest predators of night-flying bugs. For example, the little brown myotis bat can devour 500 insects in just one hour. Annoyed by mosquitoes on summer nights? Attract bats to your yard by putting up a small, wooden house in which bats can roost. The houses are available at stores like Wild Birds Unlimited. It’s cheaper, more effective and more comfortable than smothering yourself in insect repellant every evening. And remember, bats have absolutely no interest, or need, to fly into your hair.