While you sleep: debunking the myths about Malta’s bats

While you sleep: debunking the myths about Malta’s bats
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By the time the last ferry from Gozo slips into Ċirkewwa and the Comino day-trippers have rinsed the salt from their hair, another shift clocks in. Above the honey-coloured bastions of Mdina, below the festa lights of Birkirkara, and even along the glass-and-steel skyline of Tigné Point, Malta’s only true native mammals unfurl their leathery wings and get to work. Yet most Maltese will never knowingly meet a bat; what they think they know is usually cobwebbed folklore passed on by nanniet who still cross themselves at dusk.

That needs to change—fast. Of the 1,300-plus bat species on Earth, at least six call the Maltese archipelago home year-round, and two others drop by in winter like low-key snowbirds. Far from being winged witches or Dracula extras, these creatures are unpaid pest controllers, gulping thousands of mosquitoes each night and saving the islands’ farmers a small fortune in pesticides. One pregnant Common Pipistrelle, no heavier than a €2 coin, can polish off 3,000 midges in a single evening. Multiply that by the colonies roosting in the limestone crevices of Wied Babu and you’ve got a living, echolocating insecticide service—gratis.

Still, the myths persist. “My grandma swore they’d tangle in your hair if you walked under a tree,” laughs Ritianne Stanyer, a 29-year-old biology teacher from Żebbuġ. She spent last summer nights with a thermal camera for her Master’s project at the University of Malta, proving that Maltese bats actively avoid humans. “The moment they detect our body heat, they bank away like tiny fighter jets.” Her footage, now doing the rounds on TikTok, has racked up 200,000 views, mostly from teenagers stunned to learn that Malta even has bats.

Cultural roots run deep. In Maltese folklore, il-farfett ta’ il-lejl (literally, the butterfly of the night) was once believed to be a soul trapped between heaven and earth. Fishermen in Marsaxlokk still knock on wood when they glimpse bats before setting out, a superstition carried from Sicilian ancestors. Yet the same fishermen now credit bat droppings—guano—for the lush caper bushes that stabilise the coastal cliffs where they moor their luzzus. Ecologist Dr. Adriana Vella jokes that the bats are “sub-contractors in the Blue Economy,” preventing erosion that could silt up their fishing coves.

The real drama unfolds in the planning offices of our rapidly densifying towns. Every time an old townhouse is scraped clean to make way for a boutique hotel, centuries-old roosts vanish. “We lost a maternity colony of Lesser Horseshoe bats in Sliema last year,” says Michaela Montanaro from Nature Trust-FEE Malta. “The developers promised bat boxes, but these species need limestone caves, not plywood cubes.” A new €1.2 million EU-funded project—BatBnB Malta—aims to retrofit heritage buildings with discrete roosting chambers. The first pilot site? The deconsecrated chapel of St. Roque in Valletta, where Baroque frescoes meet ultrasonic recorders.

Community buy-in is growing. At the recent Notte Bianca, children queued at Spazju Kreattiv to build origami bats while DJs spun darkwave remixes of Għana. Over in Rabat, the youth NGO Futur Ambjent has turned the catacombs into an after-dark classroom, projecting sonograms onto Roman walls as guides explain how bats navigate without eyes. “It’s like Stranger Things meets Heritage Malta,” grins 16-year-old volunteer Luke Zahra, who convinced his scout troop to swap one camping night for a bat census. Their data fed straight into the Environment & Resources Authority’s new atlas, the first in 25 years.

So next time you hear a faint click-click overhead while staggering home from Paceville, pause. That sound is a bat shouting at the world, listening for the echo that says dinner is served. It’s also the sound of an ancient partnership—between limestone and mammal, between folklore and science, between a tiny Maltese soul and the vast Mediterranean night. Protecting it won’t cost us our roofs or our roads, just a little imagination.

Because while you sleep, Malta’s bats are wide awake—keeping the islands saner, safer, and slightly less itchy. Let’s return the favour.