Ancient people found ghostly pale stunted plants growing in caves where fruit-eating bats roost and drop seeds. Today, local people still gather the seeds, seeing them as gifts of the gods, a kind of recognition of the contributions of bats. In some South American myths, honey, bees, and bats are related or interchangeable. In other folklore, bats are classed with hummingbirds and butterflies, animals that sometimes visit the same flowers by day that bats feed from by night. The Mochica culture of the Central Andes likely was aware of the connection between bats and plants.
Tobacco continues to be an important ritual plant in many places.
The Bororo, a tribe in Brazil, tell a story about men casually smoking one night. According to the story, the men who disobeyed the bat were turned into otters. In folk tales, supernatural bats often burn their victims or they are themselves destroyed by fire. In addition, natural fires in caves sometimes occur from spontaneous combustion of bat guano. Although bat depictions on Pre-Columbian artifacts do not hint at fire or smoke, the cultural association of bats with fire suggests that bats might have had similar connotations in ancient times.