Common Vampire Bat
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| Common Vampire Bat | ||||||||||||||||
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| Desmodus rotundus Geoffroy, 1810 |
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The Common Vampire Bat (Desmodus rotundus) is a species of vampire bat. They have burnt amber colored fur on their backside while soft and velvety light brown fur covers their belly. They have large pointy ears and a flat leaf-shaped nose. Their babies use tiny thumbs in the middle of the wing to cling on the mother’s furry belly. The vampire bats have a wingspan of about eight inches and a body about the size of an adult's thumb.
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[edit] Feeding
If not for their diet, people would not pay much attention to these small bats. Vampire bats feed on the blood of large birds, cattle, horses, pigs, dogs and many other animals including humans. However, they don’t suck the blood directly from their "victims", they let it flow from the wound first before lapping it up.
The Common Vampire is a highly evolved bat. The front teeth, lips and tongue are highly specialized, with the former used to trim the surrounding fur of the host, meaning acting like scissors. Then a piece of skin is removed by the razor-sharp V-shaped front teeth, much like using a spoon to scoop ice cream out of a cup. During this process the animal's saliva, which contains an anticoagulant, is released and the resulting wound bleeds freely, enabling the vampire to feed using grooves in its lower lip and under its tongue. The grooves form a straw-like structure enabling the bat to suck up the blood rather than lap it.
[edit] Behavior
The Vampire is one of the few known bats capable of walking, jumping and hopping. This is accomplished by folding its wings in such a fashion that the animal literally walks on its thumbs.[1] This behavior is important because it permits the bat to stealthily maneuver on the ground and host. Vampires choose hard to get to places on the host, such as shoulders, underside of the tail and teats and soft tissue near the hoof to get to the unique spot. Often they will return night after night to the same animal (particularly tethered farm animals), so they just have to lift the scab from previous visits to get more blood. It is speculated that before the introduction of domesticated animals, vampires fed upon a wide variety of animals including opossums, armadillos, raccoons, snakes, birds, monkeys, and so forth.[2]
[edit] References
- ^ A.M. Greenhall and U. Schmidt, editors. 1988. Natural History of Vampire Bats, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida. ISBN 0849367506; ISBN 978-0849367502, pp. 72-79.
- ^ A.M. Greenhall and U. Schmidt, editors. 1988. Natural History of Vampire Bats, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida. ISBN 0849367506; ISBN 978-0849367502, pp. 114ff.
- Chiroptera Specialist Group (1996). Desmodus rotundus. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 12 May 2006.
- Greenhall, Arthur M. 1961. Bats in Agriculture. A Ministry of Agriculture Publication. Trinidad and Tobago.
- Greenhall, Arthur M. 1965. The Feeding Habits of Trinidad Vampire Bats.
- Greenhall, A., G. Joermann, U. Schmidt, M. Seidel. 1983. Mammalian Species: Desmodus rotundus. American Society of Mammalogists, 202: 1-6.
- A.M. Greenhall and U. Schmidt, editors. 1988. Natural History of Vampire Bats, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida. ISBN 0849367506; ISBN 978-0849367502
- Riskin, Daniel K. and John W. Hermanson. 2005. Biomechanics: Independent evolution of running in vampire bats. Nature 434: 292-292. Abstract, video.
- Kishida R, Goris RC, Terashima S, Dubbeldam JL. (1984) A suspected infrared-recipient nucleus in the brainstem of the vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus. Brain Res. 322:351-5.
- Campbell A, Naik RR, Sowards L, Stone MO. (2002) Biological infrared imaging and sensing. Micron 33:211-225. pdf.
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