I pondered this a while ago...
I always like to capitalise, and usually do when talking about different species, like Stickleback etc.
I believe that the 'birds' and 'bats' references are not capitalised as they are not referring to a specific species, but the word is used as a generalisation ('bears' 'cats' etc.), whereas Ratz is known to refer to a specific species ('Black Rat' 'Brown Bear' etc.), and so should be capitialised. Probably in Oddworld there's a number of bat species (as well as the flying ones we saw, I'd believe Boombats are a stalk from the original bat ancestry), as well as bird ones (as well as numerous wild birds other than the doves we see, a the very least there are Clakkerz, though those suck).
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