Logic upside down: Divine bats that can sense floods

Bengaluru: A colony of bats living in a temple complex in Kundapura town in Udupi District are not just worshipped as  'divine',  because they can divine when the waters are rising, their absence signals to local residents that they must move to higher ground.

Though hanging upside down in the dark cave, located near Bramhi Durga Parameswari temple, residents watch the bats closely as they have the uncanny ability to foretell the rise of floodwaters in the Kubja river that flows around and along the temple. When the bats do not return to their colony in the morning, it is understood that the water level will rise.  

Every year, once during the monsoon, the flood water rises all the way up to the deity of temple and washes over the Goddess. Large numbers of devotees throng to this temple during this phenomenon.

This year, a fortnight ago, the bat colony exhibited similar behavior and returned to the caves only after three days and nights.  “The floods do not occur on the same day every year. Yet the bats manage to calculate the time right down to the last second. Numbers of devotees who visit the temple also visit the bat colony as they are referred as the divine bats of Goddess," says a temple priest.

Ecologists say that birds and animals sense all natural phenomena. “During the tsunami in 2004 animals in the islands of Andaman and Nicobar had moved to the higher ground before the water actually hit the land,” says an ecologist.

Experts point out that animals and bird behaviour often coincides with religious sentiments, leading to conservation of the species, while contributing to mystical folklore.