Take a look at this passage from the final book of the Odyssey and tell me, please, what you think might be going on with the chains mentioned:

"...and the ghosts [of the slain suitors] trailed after with high thin cries
as bats cry in the depths of a dark haunted cavern,
shrilling, flittering, wild when one drops from the chain--
slipped from the rock face, while the rest cling tight..."

Now, my reading of this interprets the bat falling from the chain as a chain of bats, somehow hanging together. If true, do bats ever hang together in a chain? I've seen individual bats in caves, but never a chain of bats. Or could Homer simply mean that the strings of bats along the cave ceiling are hanging so close together that the form is chain-like? This is very interesting to consider. But, then again, I could have misinterpreted the passage.

In any case, I at least wonder if this is a true phenomenon. When a bat slips from a group in a cave ceiling, do the others shrilly call out? Also, why doesn't the limestone calcify [wrong verb, but I can't think of a better one] the little bat feet while the bats are hibernating? It is a wonder that they ever get loose. I saw a bat once that was dead and covered with a first veil of limestone. Quite spooky to contemplate, actually.