Goi

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Bats

As in 2023

Kapil Dixit, Sep 16, 2023: The Times of India

Goi village (Pratapgarh): If Batman were a UP-ite, Goi would have been his home. This small sleepy village in Uttar Pradesh’s Pratapgarh is home to thousands of bats — and has been so for around 70 years. Villagers have long made peace with the flying mammals. Goi is now the undeclared sanctuary of bats in central UP. 
 You reach Shailendra Pandey’s sprawling house in Goi through narrow, meandering lanes typical of so many UP villages. You spot the bats and hear their distinctive screech immediately. Those perched on Pandey’s mango and badhal (monkey jack) tree are but a few of the many. 


“We (Goi has around 1,500 residents) are now accustomed to their screech. The bats neither harm humans nor the crops,” says Pandey, who’s the unofficial patron of this bat colony. “Initially, I spent thousands of rupees on firecrackers, hoping the noise would chase them away but they flew back to the same trees every time the noise stopped. Eventually I just accepted their presence,” he says.

That the bats came precisely back to the same trees is thanks to their much-studied direction sense — these mammals, who hunt for food at night, use sound echoes and can track Earth’s magnetic field basis light from sunsets.

Villagers say that decades ago the bats made a mahua and a pakar tree their home in Goi. But those trees didn’t survive, and the clan flocked to the mango and badhal trees in Pandey’s courtyard — and made that their home. “Some villagers suggested cutting down these trees to get rid of the bats…but they would have chosen new trees,” says Pandey.

Kaleem Ahmed, a college student in the village, says the people have learnt to coexist with their permanent guests. “I have grown up with the bats… they no longer scare me. The village panchayat held several meetings to find a solution, but failed. ” Some insist the bats protect them from “bad omens”. There was a scare during Covid that bats may spread the disease. But villagers quickly realised their fear was unfounded.

Other villages have roosters as their morning wake up call. In Goi, villagers wake up to the sound of bats’ calls. And despite their initial apprehensions, residents have never complained to the forest department against the bat colony, says district forest officer, Pratapgarh, JP Srivastava.

Goi may have seen the plus side of hosting bats as well. As environmentalist Ajay Krantikari points out, bats are “excellent pest controllers and plant pollinators. ”