Fear of Bats
Chiroptophobia
Chiroptophobia is a fear of bats, and the paper that carries the word in its title was written by virologists arguing that the fear is too narrow. It then lists several dozen viruses that bats do carry.
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Why virologists say the bat fear is too narrow
The paper, published in April 2011, opens with a sentence that could serve as this catalogue's epigraph: chiroptophobia is as widespread as bats are in nature. Its argument is that the modern fear of bats is almost exclusively a fear of rabies, that this narrow view hinders conservation and discourages research, and that a realistic assessment of the risk bats pose to the public and to the people who work with them would help preserve bat populations and their habitats.
Then it enumerates the risk:
- neurological disease, from lyssaviruses including rabies, Nipah and Hendra virus, Japanese encephalitis, Kyasanur Forest disease, St Louis encephalitis and West Nile viruses, and several alphaviruses
- pulmonary disease, from hantavirus infection, the SARS coronaviruses, influenza A and a run of paramyxoviruses
- haemorrhagic fever, from Marburg and Ebola, from dengue, from Rift Valley fever
The argument is not that bats are harmless. It is that a person who fears bats because of rabies is right about the mechanism and wrong about the inventory, and that the fear in that form is the wrong size to be useful.
Where the name chiroptophobia comes from
Almost every phobia word takes a Greek common noun for its object. This one takes a Linnaean order: Chiroptera, the second largest mammalian order after the rodents. Wiktionary derives the word straight from the taxon.
Chiroptera does resolve into Greek, and pleasantly. Cheir is a hand and pteron a wing, so the order name means hand-wing, after animals whose wings sit where the hands would be. The same pteron gives pteronophobia, the fear of feathers, which is a strange thing for a word about mammals to have in common with a word about birds.
Why Batman is the clearest counterphobic case
The word's best-known appearance is not clinical. A writing textbook published in 2011 offers the sentence that Bruce Wayne suffers from chiroptophobia and rarely admits it, and a book on Wisconsin folklore the same year calls the fear a fairly common psychological trait, noting that most bats are small and timid and that something about the leathery wings and small fangs still trips the alarm.
The Batman case is worth a moment because it is the clearest popular illustration of Counterphobia, the psychoanalytic term for seeking out what one fears. A man frightened of bats designs a costume of one and goes looking for danger in the dark. Whether that is a treatment or a symptom is precisely the question the counterphobia literature does not settle.
What is known about how common it is
Nothing specific. One professional-development reference describes chiroptophobia as not very common and observes that most people have not heard the word, while noting that with more than 1,400 species of bats worldwide the fear is disabling for some. It places the phobia against a general figure of around one person in 23 having some phobia, or roughly 2.5 million people in the United Kingdom, with the National Health Service considering that an underestimate and the real figure nearer ten million.
The same source makes an observation that fits the entry. Because bats are generally nocturnal, most people with the fear can avoid meeting one. An object that keeps its own hours is easy to avoid, and a fear nobody has to confront is a fear nobody brings to a clinic, which is a sufficient explanation for why the literature under this name is about viruses rather than about patients.
Told apart
Often confused with Fear of Bats
- Fear of BirdsA bat in flight is read as a bird by most people who see one, and the reaction reported is usually to the flight and the wing rather than to the animal's biology.
- CounterphobiaThe best-known figure attached to this fear responded to it by dressing as the object and seeking it out at night, which is what counterphobia names.
- Fear of GermsThe 2011 review argues the modern fear of bats is almost entirely a fear of rabies, which makes it a contamination fear with an animal attached rather than an animal phobia.
Common questions
Questions about Chiroptophobia
- Is a fear of bats justified?
- Partly, and the paper that uses the word says so at length. It argues the modern fear is almost exclusively of rabies, which is too narrow, and lists lyssaviruses, Nipah and Hendra, several encephalitis viruses, hantaviruses, the SARS coronaviruses, Marburg and Ebola among bat-associated pathogens. Its point is that the fear in its current form is the wrong shape to be useful, not that it is groundless.
- Where does the word come from?
- From taxonomy. Chiroptera is the mammalian order of bats, second largest after the rodents, and the phobia name is built directly on it rather than on a Greek common noun. Chiroptera itself means hand-wing, from cheir and pteron, after animals whose wings sit where their hands would be.
- Does Batman have it?
- A writing textbook of 2011 says so in as many words: Bruce Wayne suffers from chiroptophobia and rarely admits it. The case is a clean illustration of counterphobia, since the response was to dress as the feared animal and go looking for danger in the dark.
- Why is there so little clinical literature?
- Probably because bats are nocturnal. A professional-development reference makes the point directly: most people with the fear can arrange never to meet one. A fear that nobody is forced to confront is a fear nobody takes to a clinic, and what has been published under the name is virology rather than psychiatry.
Added 2026-08-24 · Revised 2026-08-26
Nearby in the catalogue
Related entries
- Fear of BirdsBirds cannot be avoided, so this fear ends in closed windows and car-only travel. The reference that classifies it also states that nobody has counted it.
- CounterphobiaThe minority response to anxiety seeks the feared thing out. Fenichel's warning is the useful part: dismantling the defence is only the first step of treatment.
- Fear of GermsWilliam A. Hammond made the word in 1879 describing an OCD case of repeated hand-washing. It now names a specific phobia, which are treated differently.
- Fear of AnimalsWhat predicts fear of an animal is perceiving it as dangerous, disgusting and uncontrollable. Whether anything ever happened to the person does not.
- Fear of AntsBoth forms of this fear take the colony as their object, not the insect. The only study attached to the word tested clips from the Ant-Man films.
- Fear of BeesApiphobia is a fear of the sting rather than the insect, and the one phobia whose diagnosis can be settled by an allergy test. What the record holds on it.