fruit bat

Scientific name: Pteropus sp.

Good bat, bad bat! On one hand, we have Batman, a vigilante who adopts the fearsome guise of a bat to strike terror into criminals, and on the other, Dracula, the infamous blood-sucking vampire. These contrasting figures show how deeply bats are embedded in our cultural consciousness, whether through popular media or historical mythology.

But what does it really mean to be a bat? Philosopher Thomas Nagel’s famous essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” explores the idea that, while we can imagine a bat’s actions—flying, echolocating—we cannot truly grasp its subjective experience. Our human understanding is inherently limited, as we can only imagine what it would be like for us to be a bat, not what it’s like for the bat itself.

This image of the fruit bats (Pteropus sp.) plays with this perceptual gap. By turning them upside down, they appear strangely human, forcing us to grapple with their otherness and familiarity at the same time. They seem more human, yet this visual manipulation also reminds us how little we can truly comprehend their experience—making them both more and less normal in our eyes.

Learn more about the More than Human exhibition.