..to wonder where the expression 'batshit crazy' comes from?

[grumpysquash]

I had never heard it before recently joining MN. But it is so good and describes things perfectly :)
Where did it come from?

Seems to link up with bullshit and 'bats in the belfry' and 'batty' (crazy), from American slang. The link below says there was a character in Dr Strangelove known as Col Bat Guano (batshit) so the term goes back at least to the 1960s. I first read it as describing Sarah Palin in a Rolling Stone article. She is the poster girl of batshit crazy for me.

boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=433628

Could go back even further. ??

I don't know, but bats can carry rabies, can't they?
Can you contract rabies from their fecal matter?

I was familiar with apeshit before batshit, and that makes more sense (chimps flinging shit around in temper). But the Doctor Strangelove link is interesting.

"bats in the belfry" means crazy. If they've been there for ages then the belfry is also full of batshit too.

My MIL uses the phrase 'Mad as a brush.' Now that I have never been able to understand. I much prefer batshit though.

Do bats eat a lot of nuts?

Tri, we use daft as a brush

Also mad as a box of frogs... I have often wondered why so many animals are maligned in this way

I always assumed it was a reference to catching rabies from bat shit.

"I don't know, but bats can carry rabies, can't they?
Can you contract rabies from their fecal matter?"

No you can't. It is only transferred through a bite or a scratch.
Bat shit would actually do anything to humans and I believe some in some countries people class it as good eating. Makes excellent fertiliser for your garden.

If a bat licks you, you can catch rabies. A monkey bite never heals.......don't want to find out if either is true.

www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=batshit+crazy

I quite like the phrase "as nutty as squirrel poo" first came across that one in a Harry Potter book

I like to pretend I made it up... I didn't btw

Thanks for the replies and for the links - they made interesting reading.

However, I had understood 'batshit crazy' to mean so cross that you lose it (in the sense of "when I saw the mess the DC had made, I went batshit crazy").

But with all the bats in the belfry connections, I'm now wondering if it is offensive.

Is it?

Eating batshit? Can't you catch ebola from doing that though? [ignorant]

Eating batshit? Can't you catch ebola from doing that though? [ignorant]

Possibly. Possibly also from touching it, if you have a break in your skin. Of course, any of this presumes that the batshit in question is from bats infected with Ebola- not all bats are. It's uncertain which species of bats do carry Ebola. Bats in the US and UK almost certainly don't carry Ebola.

So have a baby, lady
If you really must,
Babies are better than rabies
But only just...

Or something like that. It just popped into my head. Wilde? Parker? Anyone know?

almost certainly? Somehow I feel slightly less safe than I did, reading that

is it to do with the ammonia/general stench from decomposing bat crap??

....in all the wildlife progs they all seem to wear masks when they are going to investigate bats in caves

...i prefer batcrapcrazy as it's more alliterative.