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These Bats are swarming! Wanna know why Bats swarm? Because insects swarm too! So if a group of Bats heads out at night, and finds a nice big swarm of insects, they can all chow down together. But not all Bats eat insects; some, like Vampire Bats, prefer blood! But luckily for Sarah, Vampire Bats almost never attack people; they get their blood from cows and horses. Somehow, I don’t think Sarah believes me right now...
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Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera; with their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. In many cultures, Bats are popularly associated with darkness, malevolence, witchcraft, and death. In the dimension of Jumanji, Bats that resemble African Bats inhabit dark caves as terrifying nocturnal animals that attack anything that agitates them with loud noises.

Behaviour

Most Bats are nocturnal, and many roost in caves or other refuges; it is uncertain whether bats have these behaviours to escape predators. Some Bats are solitary while others congregate in large clusters of up to millions. They are important in their ecosystems for pollinating flowers and dispersing seeds; many tropical plants depend entirely on bats for these services.

Bats provide humans with some benefits, at the cost of some threats. Bat dung has been mined as guano from caves and used as fertilizer. Bats consume insect pests, reducing the need for pesticides. They are natural reservoirs of many pathogens, such as rabies; and since they are highly mobile, social, and long-lived, they can readily spread disease.

Appearances

In the 1995 film, in the Parrish Mansion, Alan Parrish invited Sarah Whittle to play Jumanji, but she was uninterested and threw the dice onto the game board, activating her Rhino piece. As she was the first to make dice roll, her turn released a flock of Jumanji Bats inside the fireplace, which spooked the kids. Since Alan was about to put the game away, he was spooked again by the chiming clock and dropped the dice and his turn ended up taking him into Jumanji's dimension. Because Sarah was screaming in horror at what she was seeing, the Bats became agitated and flocked out of the fireplace to surround her, scaring her outside the house where they continued to chase her down the street. This experience haunted Sarah for the rest of her life, especially when no-one in Brantford believed her story about Alan's disappearance.

26 years after Alan's disappearance, at least one Bat stayed inside the attic of the Parrish Mansion, which spooked Peter Shepherd when it stretched its wings, also scaring Nora Shepherd into phoning an exterminator. However, all the Bats seemed to have left the mansion after this and didn't return to bother the players again.

Once Alan Parrish finally reaches Jumanji's crystal ball and calls out the name, all the Bats and other animals were pulled back into the game's dimension and everything from the altered timeline was undone.

Jumanji PC game

In the Jumanji (1996 Video Game), Bats appear both in the game and on the game's box art.

  • Tiny Bites (Rhino Totem): The player controls Judy Shepard, alone in the dark attic, swatting away bats and mosquitoes with a tennis racquet, while avoiding spiders, which eat the other enemies but can also harm the player.

  • Secret symbol: Racquet
  • Number: 1
  • In the Milton Bradley board game, the Bat has it's own danger card. Rolling a Racquet on the rescue die within 1 second will defeat the Bat threat.

    Jigsaw Puzzles
    In 1995, Milton Bradley produced three variant Jigsaw Puzzles as promotional tie-ins for the 1995 Jumanji film.

    • Jumanji Animals
    Jumanji's animals.
    A collection of different Jumanji animals that appeared in the 1995 film. Against a red background, the scene depicts the Jumanji board game and the dice in amongst a Rhinoceros, Elephant, Lion, Crocodile, Pelican and Bats emerging from a gap in the Parrish Mansion's Library wall, as a reference to the iconic Stampede scene.

    Jumanji TV Bats

    Bats attack Alan.

    In the animated series, Bats inhabit caves and tend to hang upside down, preferring not to be disturbed.

    Jumanji TV Bats Bite

    Bats annoy Alan.

    • In No Dice, Alan tried to flee from the intimidating Stalker, but when climbing a ladder, a swarm of Bats attacked and forced him to lose his grip and fall.
    • In The Palace of Clues, a swarm of vampire Bats sleep inside a cave the explorers rest in until they are woken up by Ashton Philips roaring with self-pride. Despite fending the Bats off with fire, Peter ran into the darkness to lure them away against Alan's better knowledge that they like the dark. The Bats were eventually scared away by the torches melting the ice and letting daylight into the cave which turned out to be the legendary Man of the mountain.
    • In Young Alan, in order to escape from a persistent Lion, the trio entered a cave that was too small for the cat to follow into, but they attracted the attention of swarming Bats, which required Judy to grab a stick to fend them off.

    In the 2017 film, one of the many stalls at the Bazaar sold roasted Bats that were hung on a rail above the streets.

    Bat 3

    "CR-Bat"

    In Jumanji: the Curse Returns, In Jumanji: the Curse Returns, based on the 1995 film, the Bats are one of the main dangers, the game has unleashed, and just like the movie, come in a group when four players can face, if either of four players roll the dice for a bat battle. When a dice roll summons the Battle, a flock of bats will appear out of thing air and any of the four players would choose an item to strike the bats. When the health bars are out, the bats will disappear back into the game.

    References

    1. The Extreme Book of Nature
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