Vampires have always been an interesting concept. The Stephenie Meyer bestselling novel and the Robert Pattinson-Kristen Stewart Twilight saga did provide us an insight into the world of vampires. In short, vampires are creatures that feed on the blood of living organisms and nothing else.
Besides the fictional bestseller and the movie, this very concept of we, ‘human’ being the prey of some other creature was far beyond imagination. Contradicting this fact, a recent study has pointed to 3 species of bat that thrive on blood. Two of these species shift their prey of interest frequently while the third hunts for birds specifically.
The 3rd species, Diphylla ecaudata is commonly called the ‘vampire bat’ for its vampire nature. These bats were found to crowd the dense forests of Caatinga in Northern Brazil until people started to move in. They cut down the trees and fed on the guan birds which are the vampire bats’ prey.
A group of inquisitive researches from the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco in Recife, began to test what these birds would eat after this human invasion. They tested the faeces of these bats and determined the presence of chicken blood. Shockingly, they also found traces of human blood in their faeces.
Researches are surprised because bats can process the fat in bird’s blood and are not much capable of processing thicker, protein-rich human blood. The result of this research is a wake-up call since bats possess high capability to carry viruses fatal to human. The hairy-legged vampire bats are said to carry the dangerous ‘hantavirus’. Previously Brazil witnessed hundreds of people bit by bats leading to 23 fatalities.
