Thursday, January 12, 2017

Vampire Bats Drink Human Blood in Brazil

You only thought you were concerned about Zika as researchers now have significant evidence vampire bats in Brazil are sometimes taking human blood.  (New Scientist:  Wild vampire bats are now sucking blood from humans at night)

How about a look at one of those li'l beauties:


Common vampire bat - Nick Gordon  

RT:  Vampire bats developing taste for human blood – study


The common vampire bat is not the perpetrator in the study since they say it was a hairy-legged vampire bat doing it in Brazil.  There are three kinds of vampire bats and all live in the area of Central America to South America.

There's some confusion on which blood bats prefer since the common vampire bat will take blood from mammals and sometimes take human blood but the hairy-legged vampire bat usually only takes blood from birds.  The hairy-legged vampire bat is the one which has started taking human blood and this is the surprise to researchers since such bats will often starve rather than take blood from an alternate host because human blood is a great deal different from bird blood.

Note:  human blood is higher in protein while bird blood is higher in fat.


I had thought they injected some type of anesthetic chemical but they don't.  Apparently they're so smooth and sneaky you just don't feel it.  (WIKI:  Vampire bat)

Sleep well, chill'uns.

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