Bats

Bats are creatures with fleshy wings. In real life most creatures dubbed as "bats" belong in the order Chiroptera and is where the word originates. Bats are most famous for their webbed wings, and many fictional creatures and people may have "bat wings". Vampires and demons often have bat wings on their arms and back, respectively. Dragons have wings that are based off of bats but are not considered bats. Some people consider dragons wings and bats wings to have minor differences in structure. The same may occur for other bat-based monsters like gargoyles. Bat wings are considered to be scary looking.
Bats also have echolocation, and in many bat characters this is featured, though not always. Bats are often portrayed to have bad eyesight, which is true to most species. They may even wearing glasses. However, the sonar is intended to make up for it, but creators misunderstanding (intentionally or unintentionally) how it is used, bats may be portrayed as clumsy. Sonar itself isn't portrayed badly except when it's heard to be a screech. Echolocation itself is considered to be cool, though its rarely used to its full potential. In Animorphs, at least one of the books does well to bring its potential to good use. Echolocation as advanced as a bats makes up for eyesight entirely outside of color features, and also allows for recognizing the quality and density of objects.
In English media they are usually portrayed as small, scary creatures. They are also found in groups, including mass flocks coming out of caves, which is true to their real life counterpart as well. In cartoons and other stories, accidentally scaring a cave full of bats can result in mass panic for the other characters, but generally does not result in real harm, as the bats are only flying away, not attacking. 
However, bats characters do not play a large part in cartoons, with their being few characters that are bats. However, Batman, a dark and edgy superhero, is a main character with several series and a huge influence on American culture. He is not a bat, but his costume is based on them. Some examples of bat characters found in American media would be Fu Fu from Sawga, Rouge The Bat from Sonic The Hedgehog, and Bartok from Anastasia. Bats are considered to be dark, if weak when portrayed as small. Monsters based off of bats, such as dragons or more series-based ones like Demidevimon and Devimon from Digimon, express this. Small dragons and small bat-like monsters are not a real threat. In general, when bats are portrayed as large they may be fearsome, but when small they are weaklings. 
They are commonly weak enemies in video games. They have developed a reputation of being the "annoying enemies" in video games as they can pop out of nowhere and are seen as unnecessarily common in the gaming levels, as with Keese in the Legend Of Zelda franchise and Zubats in Pokemon. 
Bats are one of the famous animals in American culture that are learned early on by most children. They are associated with Halloween. Thus, they are seen traditionally as scary, nocturnal creatures. They are typically portrayed in dark places such as caves or even abandoned houses, but generally not in other places they may be seen in real life like woods or the night sky...unless those take place in a noticeably spooky location. Bats trying to come back to the cave at sunrise is a known trait, and it is said that a bat left over in the day will die. Alongside with the night and scary places, one reason for their fearsome reputation is the vampire bat, a Central American group of bats (but often seen as one species) with a knack for biting its prey, than lapping up its blood (often thought of as sucking up the blood). For this reason vampires have become associated with bats; and vampires can be seen transforming into, living with, and commanding hordes of bats. Bats were also (and I'm not sure if they still are) strongly associated with this "species", and when seeing a bat a question of whether it's a vampire bat or not was worth consideration. However, most people didn't know what non-vampire bats ate or drank. The information is likely more readily available today.
Conservationists produce media to combat these stereotypes. They discuss how most bats don't drink blood and talk about how important they are for the environment, mainly pushing out an exaggeration of their consumption of mosquitoes (an insectivorous bat mainly eats moths, but include other flying insects into their diets). They also discuss how some are pollinators, however they don't push this agenda nearly as much as they should, considering that some species of plants, including domesticated ones (agave, bananas, chocolate, avocado, etc) require or are heavily reliant on bats for pollination.
Fu Fu, mentioned earlier, is an example of an attempt to help bat's reputation, as bats are said to be traditionally considered lucky in China. However, I have seen traditionally bad representations of bats in Chinese media, such as flying out of demons caves. His name means "lucky bat" and this issue is discussed in-series, and it is a children's show. This highlights how Americans consider bats to be unlucky, or at least not good. Woobat and Swoobat from Pokemon may also be attempts to change bat stereotypes as they put focus onto a bats unique looking nose and turn it heart-shaped, making them somewhat cute (but not totally and still blue) girly creatures.
 
Category:Bats
Category:Chiroptera
Category:Dragons
Category:Sacred animals in American culture
Category:Animals important to American children