VAMPIRE BAT— DITMARS AND GREENHALL 287 



room. His notes on feeding actions would be nothing more than 

 repetition of what has ah-eady been brought out. What he noted 

 particularly was the general tolerance of the goat to bats which 

 crawled over its back or even wandered up the neck to the head. 

 For a time after alighting on a goat, the vampire was not inclined to 

 bite, but rested on the dorsal area, a bit forward of the shoulder, or 

 clung to the side, where it looked like a big spider. This latter posi- 

 tion is shown among the plates accompanying this article. The 

 wandering of the bat upon the strangely tolerant host, the occasional 

 lifting of the bat's head, the leer that disclosed its keen teeth, and 

 the observer's realization that all of this pointed to a sanguineous 

 meal, produced a sinister and impressive effect. 



When the wound had been made, the tongue of the bat seemed to 

 move slower than when lapping blood from a dish, and was extended 

 far enough to come well in contact with the tissue. Goats of the 

 laboratory herd, which had been previously bitten while heavily 

 haired, showed bare spots surrounding the area of former wounds. 

 The wounds themselves had healed as a slightly indicated ridge, from 

 three-sixteenths to a quarter of an inch in length, but the area devoid 

 of hair was as large as, or larger than, one's thumbnail. Apparently 

 the hair had been shed in the area of the wound. Here may be a 

 condition of "clesensitization" in a vampire bite, with attending de- 

 struction of hair follicles. It has been suggested, though not with 

 satisfactory evidence, that the saliva of the bat contains an antico- 

 agulent, which might account for many bites bleeding for several 

 hours. The term "desensitization", as here used, may be rather a 

 loose one, but it signifies that something abnormal has happened to 

 the tissue besides the opening of a mere wound by specialized and 

 lancing incisor teeth. There can certainly be no injection of an anti- 

 coagulant, but there is a possibility of the application of some sali- 

 vary secretion during the action of the bat's lapping tongue — a secre- 

 tion retarding the formation of a clot about the wound. This matter 

 will be considered in a treatment of physiological characteristics in 

 following paragraphs relating to investigations now^ under way with 

 four vam])ires, in the possession of the senior author. 



Field observations in Trinidad indicated vampire bats to be fairly 

 common, but not generally distributed. Near the base of the Aripo 

 heights, particularly, frequent bites were reported. The bats at- 

 tacked cattle, swine, and poultry. Sows were bitten upon the teats 

 and the wounds in healing so shriveled these members that the ani- 

 mals were unable to nurse their young. Most fowls were unable 

 to survive the loss of blood and were found dead in the morning. 



Around a dish of defibrinated blood, the feeding motions of the 

 four vampires brought back from Trinidad duplicated the notes made 



