VAMPIRE BAT— DITMARS AND GREENHALL 289 



We did sleep, but so soundly that it was not until morning that we discovered 

 that we had been raided during the night by vampire bats, and the whole party 

 was covered with blood stains from the many bites of these bats. It may seem 

 unreasonable to the uninitiated that we could have been thus bitten and not 

 be disturbed in our sleep, but the fact is that there is no pain produced at the 

 time of the bite, nor indeed for some hours afterward. 



In a previous paragraph it has been noted that a fowl, introduced 

 into a cage witli vampires, flinched upon being bitten, this observa- 

 tion being made by the senior author. Examining some of the 

 recent studies of Dunn, it appears that the younger bats are not so 

 expert in effecting their bites and that experimenters testing the 

 bites of various specimens upon the human forearm occasionally 

 found bats that dealt decidedly painful bites. 



There is controversy as to whether the bat carries an anticoagulant 

 in its saliva, introducing it into the freshly-made wound to keep it 

 bleeding, or whether a specialized type of bite induces prolonged 

 bleeding. Bier (1932), of the Biological Society of Sao Paulo, 

 Brazil, experimented with extracts of the salivary glands of Des- 

 iiiodus and also with a species of PhyJlostomu^ {P. hastatus). His 

 published results indicate that Desmodus possessed anticoagulating 

 proj)erties in its saliva, while the nonhematophagus bat's saliva was 

 completely inactive. In October 1934 Dr. Barry King, of Columbia 

 University, began experiments with the four vampire bats now in 

 the care of the senior author. This work points to an anticoagulant 

 in the salivary secretion of Desmodus^ but time and checking will 

 be required to define its activity. 



Although mosquitoes, blood-sucking flies, ticks, and lice have long 

 been known to harbor disease organisms in their saliva, the vampire 

 bat only recently came under suspicion. The work of Clark and 

 Dumi at the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory has confirmed the guilt 

 of the bat. These investigators demonstrated that Desinodus ro- 

 tundus murinus is a vector of the equine disease murrina, prevalent 

 in Panama and produced by Trypanosoma hippicum Darling. It is 

 interesting to note that the disease also proved to be fatal to all of 

 the bats carrying the trypanosome, although they live long enough 

 after becoming infected to produce grave damage. 



While there have been statements that vampires appeared to be 

 unable to endure a fast of not much more than 36 hours, Urich 

 states that vampires can fast as long as 3 days. The senior author 

 fasted four specimens for 48 hours, seemingly without harm. 



As early as 1865 Huxley made a detailed study of the stomach of 

 Desmodus and found that its extremely intestiform shape was ap- 

 parently specialized for rapid assimilation. This, together with the 

 specialized dentition and peculiar type of quadrupedal gait, make 

 the vampire especially adapted to its sanguinary mode of living. 



