Extinct vampire bats

Introduction

The vampire bats have a wingspan of about eight inches and a body about the size of an adult's thumb. 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, and pigs. However, they donÕt suck the blood of their victims. Using their sharp teeth, the bats make tiny cuts in the skin of a sleeping animal. The bats' saliva contains a chemical that keeps the blood from clotting. The bats then lap up the blood that oozes from the wound. Another chemical in their saliva numbs the animal's skin and keeps them from waking up.( Brown, 25)

Discussion

The fossil species are members of the genus Desmodus, it is reasonable to assume that they, also, mostly fed on mammals. A few vampire bat fossils are preserved associated with large mammals. A fossil Common vampire from a Brazilian cave, radiometrically dated to about 12,000 years ago, was discovered adhering to the underside of a coprolite produced by the sloth Nothrotherium stocki fossils from Florida are preserved in the same caves as ground sloths. A skull belonging to the giant vampire D. draculae was preserved in association with a skull of the extinct horse Equus neogeus. None of these associations demonstrate the predatory preference of the vampire species concerned, but they are at the very least highly suggestive. The idea that some of these bats may have fed on giant sloths is likely and entirely acceptable, and one published life restoration a drawing by Brown depicts a D. stocki feeding on a nothrotheriid sloth.(Czaplewski,786)

Many fossil vampire records occur outside of the 10 degree C minimum isotherm that, today, marks the distributional limit for vampire bats. Rather than these records indicating cold-tolerance among the extinct ...