Liliecii și bolile în contextul pandemiei de SARS-CoV-2 și a medicinei magice: percepții, prejudecăți și realități (interferențe istorice, zoologice, epidemiologice și etnoculturale)
Bats and diseases in the context of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and magic medicine practices: perceptions, prejudices and realities (historical, zoological, epidemiological and ethnocultural interferences)

Summary/Abstract: The pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus has multiple unknown sides, various hypotheses regarding the causes of this plague being launched. One of the hypotheses, circulating both in science and in the media, concerns a series of animals, carriers of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, subsequently transmitted through other animals to humans. Bats are among the possible mammals that are targeted in such contamination, but there is no clear evidence in this regard. Chiroptera play an important role in ecology, economy and human life, contributing to the protection and pollination of plants, the eradication of harmful insects in agriculture, the development of new remedies and pharmacological preparations, including anticoagulants. In Romanian folklore, bats have an evil image, a fact explained by their nocturnal way of life. Some practices of magical medicine were based on the use of certain parts of the bat’s body (blood, wings, paws, down) to treat certain diseases and mental ailments. The bat appears in children’s folklore, in stories and riddles, being a creature through which the little ones got to know the fauna and learned to hate the petty qualities of the human being. In the cultures of the world, the bat is ubiquitous in folklore, magic medicine and art.

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