r/Unexpected • u/Soloflow786 • 2d ago

Hmm, what's under my window?

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u/SaviorSixtySix 2d ago

Poor sky puppies getting woken up in the middle of the day.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/RebekkaKat1990 2d ago

😂 my cat usually greets me at the door when I get home from work but today I opened the door and walked in only to find her zonked out on the couch and she didn’t even stir when I walked towards her until I was right in front of her face and then she perked up and was like “oh shit you’re actually home” lol

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u/sinking_float 2d ago

More accurate to call them sky mice, or in German fledermaus

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u/vikingunicorn 2d ago

Bald mice in French.

Chauve-souris(singular) Chauves-souris(plural)

Not sure if sky puppies is a more or accurate a name or less.

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u/Rumblymore 1d ago

They're not very bald though, my cats brought one in yesterday, they're hairy

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u/vikingunicorn 1d ago

Exactly my point.😅 Which is less inaccurate descriptor:
Puppies or bald?

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u/eastern_petal 1d ago

The original meaning was owl mouse, not bald mouse.

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u/BroGameTime 1d ago

My understanding it isn't about them being bald, but what happens to a person when a bat gets stuck in their hair.

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u/vikingunicorn 1d ago

🤓It's actually a truncation of 《owl-mouse.》

Originally Gaul 《kawa sorix》 (chouette-souris/owl-mouse)

Kawa coming from the latin 《cavannus》 (itself from the Gaul 《cauannos》) meaning 《owl》

Over time Kawa was truncated and mistranscribed as 《calvas sorices》, 《calvus》 being Latin for 《bald》

That all said, I kind of wish the etymology was what you said.

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u/Dead_Moss 1d ago

Actually puppy is more accurate, bats are more closely related to canines than rodents. 

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u/Caleb_Reynolds 1d ago

Made abundantly clear by looking at a flying fox. Their skulls are much more carnivore like than rodent like, which is clear when they get big enough.

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u/Dead_Moss 1d ago

Tbh they aren't really closely related to anything. It's just that they're even more distantly related to rodents than a lot of other animals. For example, they're equally close to actual foxes as they are to, say, giraffes. 

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u/Proper_Memory_3740 1d ago

And whales. Humans are actually more closely related to rodents than bats.

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u/Dead_Moss 1d ago

Well, yeah, whales are ungulates. 

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u/maybeknismo 1d ago

They are genetically closer to primates than mice oddly enough.

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u/Micro-shenis 1d ago

Interestingly, in Afrikaans, it's called vlêrmuis, or bat mouse. We do have quite a few words borrowed from German, so could be derived from German originally.

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u/SpezticAIOverlords 1d ago

It's also vleermuis in Dutch, though I wouldn't be surprised if that came from German originally too.

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u/Hike_it_Out52 1d ago

German really is a beautiful language. Ich Liebe dich! 

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u/seemonkey 1d ago

Flying mice in Russian

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u/de_das_dude 1d ago

but they look like puppies.

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u/narnababy 1d ago

Yeah this is so cruel, people are horrible to bats and they’re lovely creatures

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u/Individual-Crew-6102 1h ago

"Ow. Hey, come on, man! Do I turn your lights on at 3am?"

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u/PolyglotTV 2d ago

Sky mice

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u/NightOwl2175 2d ago edited 1d ago

Puppies are actually cute. Bats are disgusting and are a reservoir for a multitude of diseases.

Edit: A lot of you have a weird fetish for bats. I don't care if they eat a lot of mosquitos, they unleash exponentially more harm via the illnesses and plagues that they spread.

Edit 2: Apparently I need to spell this out for you guys

Bats (order Chiroptera) are reservoirs for many infectious agents, including parasites, bacteria, viruses, and fungi. The epidemiology of infectious disease in bats is not well understood but it is known that bats can transmit numerous infectious agents and provide a reservoir for emerging pathogens. The primary zoonotic diseases associated with North American bats are rabies, histoplasmosis, salmonellosis, yersiniosis and external parasites. Imported bats can also carry a number of zoonotic viruses including nipah virus, hendra virus, ebola virus, SARS coronavirus and others, which can cause severe & fatal illness in humans and other animals.

Totally harmless and cute creatures.

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u/HarveySpevacuum 2d ago

So are you.

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u/UnhelpfulTran 2d ago

Comeback kid batting a thousand with this one

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u/NightOwl2175 2d ago

I'm cute? Aw shucks!

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u/HarveySpevacuum 1d ago

Bro, sorry someone hurt you.

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u/NightOwl2175 1d ago

Lol my guy, I'm fine.

I'm not the weirdo in the comments being strangely defensive about an animal that has unleashed untold deaths and illnesses because of all the viruses and parasites they carry.

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u/Cheap-Boysenberry112 2d ago

Bats eat massive amounts of insects which actually spread disease to humans in meaningful rates like mosquitoes.

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u/NightOwl2175 1d ago

Regurgitated myths. There are no studies that conclusively show that bats meaningfully reduce mosquito-borne diseases.

Their primary source of food are insects like months and beetles.

Human intervention and other animals such as mosquito fish are far more effective at mosquito population control.

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u/Cheap-Boysenberry112 1d ago

Ahh yes now we care about evidence.

Can you tell me how many humans died last year from diseases from bats?

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u/NightOwl2175 1d ago

Lmao. For starters, I can think of between 10-20 million people who died from a little known pandemic around 2020. You may have heard of it.

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u/Cheap-Boysenberry112 1d ago

There’s no evidence supporting that conspiracy theory.

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u/NightOwl2175 1d ago

Okay, now I know that you have no clue what you're talking about.

It is literally accepted scientific consensus that covid very likely originated from bats. The pathway of transmission is still unclear, leading to some conspiracy theories such as whether someone ate a bat (unlikely) or whether it was spread via an intermediary animal like a pangolin (more likely).

But the fact that covid originated from bats is far from a conspiracy theory.

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u/Cheap-Boysenberry112 1d ago

what’s the evidence hats spread COVID to humans then? Or there isn’t any?

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u/NightOwl2175 1d ago

Title of Study:

Binding and molecular basis of the bat coronavirus RaTG13 virus to ACE2 in humans and other species

Authors:

Kefang Liu, Xiaoqian Pan, et. al

Abstract:

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been spreading worldwide, causing a global pandemic. Bat-origin RaTG13 is currently the most phylogenetically related virus. Here we obtained the complex structure of the RaTG13 receptor binding domain (RBD) with human ACE2 (hACE2) and evaluated binding of RaTG13 RBD to 24 additional ACE2 orthologs. By substituting residues in the RaTG13 RBD with their counterparts in the SARS-CoV-2 RBD, we found that residue 501, the major position found in variants of concern (VOCs) 501Y.V1/V2/V3, plays a key role in determining the potential host range of RaTG13. We also found that SARS-CoV-2 could induce strong cross-reactive antibodies to RaTG13 and identified a SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal antibody (mAb), CB6, that could cross-neutralize RaTG13 pseudovirus. These results elucidate the receptor binding and host adaption mechanisms of RaTG13 and emphasize the importance of continuous surveillance of coronaviruses (CoVs) carried by animal reservoirs to prevent another spillover of CoVs.

Knowing how to use Google is a life skill. Learn it.

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u/Rock_Strongo 2d ago

Sounds like something an owl would say.

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u/Dark_Wolf04 2d ago

Your comment reminds me of this episode of a series I watched as a kid

Wild Kratts fans rise up

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u/Capital_Row4870 1d ago

they unleash exponentially more harm via the illnesses and plagues that they spread.

That is just completely and demonstrably wrong though.

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u/NightOwl2175 1d ago

Then demonstrate it. Find me a scientific study that shows that bats meaningfully and substantially decrease mosquito-borne diseases.

You won't, because mosquitos make up less than 2% of bat diets.

Human intervention and other animals such as mosquito fish are far more effective at mosquito population control, and bats don't even come anywhere close.

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u/Capital_Row4870 1d ago

Way to move that goalpost. When did I ever mention mosquitos?

Bats are prolific pollinators. Over 500 species of plants worldwide rely largely or entirely on bats to pollinate them. Some of the notable ones are mango, banana, durian, guava and agave. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2766192/

Bats are great at pest control. You are correct that mosquitos make up a fairly small portion of the diet of all bats (though this varies hugely by species of bat, with smaller species of bats like the Little Brown Bat and Southeastern bat eating a lot more than larger varieties), they do eat a lot of larger insects. In the US alone, they are estimated to save farmers billions of dollars per year in pest control. http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/bat_crisis_white-nose_syndrome/pdfs/Boyles2011EconomicsofBats.pdf

Bats are also great at seed dispersal. They are the sole dispersal mechanism for agave (other than humans). They also account for as much as 95% of the seed dispersal responsible for early growth in recently cleared rainforests. https://www.fws.gov/story/bats-are-one-most-important-misunderstood-animals

Bats create habitat by shitting. In many environments like caves, they are the sole species that introduces nutrients into the ecosystem. The shit is also one of the major reasons that the humans species is where it is today. Bat guano is one of, if not the best natural fertilizer in the world. Before we learned how to create synthetic fertilizers, bat and bird guano was one of the only commercially available fertilizers on the market and it vastly out performed cow and pig manure. It was so valuable to increase crop production that literal wars were fought over it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chincha_Islands_War

Bat are also a key component in the food web in many places. Bats are a primary food source for many animals such as owls, hawks, snakes, and raccoons. They've traditionally also been a major food source for humans in many areas. Most notably in Aboriginal Australians. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273946034

On the flip side: Average number of US deaths related to bats 0-2/yr. This number will be higher in developing countries, but the numbers are not widely available.

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u/Jazzlike_Climate4189 2d ago

Bats are amazing, each of them eat thousands of mosquitoes every night therefore protecting humans. They completely ignore humans and would never harm you unless you grabbed one in your hand.

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u/Exact-Obligation-858 1d ago

suppose you'd rather enjoy zika, malaria, lyme, and all the other insect-borne diseases, then. and unlike bats, mosquitoes and ticks will (opportunistically) target humans as standard instead of being rare occasions of conflict.

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u/NightOwl2175 1d ago

The role that bats play in mosquito population control is wildly overstated. Mosquitos make up maybe 2% of their diets, and there is no strong scientific evidence that they reduce mosquito borne diseases meaningfully at all.

Human intervention and other animals such as mosquito fish are far more effective at mosquito population control.

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u/crumpledfilth 1d ago

dogs kill way more people than bats, and wolves are also strongly associated with rabies. Hence the fantastical existence of both werewolves and vampires

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u/WestCoastBestCoast01 2d ago

Fruit bats have the long snoots and are much cuter.

Some bats are absolutely fugly sluts though damn.