VAMPIRE BAT— DITMARS AND GREENHALL 291 



althougli bats were associated with supernatural happenings, they 

 were not associated with vampirism. Slowly the tradition of vam- 

 pirism added the bat form to its list and later fiction, founded on 

 vampirism, included allusion to bat wings, batlike movements and 

 the actual bat form as portrayed in the really classic Dracula 

 (Stoker, 1929). 



Early naturalists visiting Central and South America arrived 

 there with definite knowledge of a bat of some sort that fed upon 

 blood. The exact bat was unknown. This led to various inferences. 

 The ugliest and largest bats were thought to be the vampire. Actual 

 observations of these early travelers, thrilled by the strange New 

 World Tropics, appear to be in the minority as compared to the 

 acceptance of tales they heard, or their deductions from dead speci- 

 mens. Hence, we find in the old records weird descriptions of vam- 

 pires hovering over their sleeping victims, fanning them with their 

 wings to induce profound sleep, inserting long tongues in the vein 

 and sucking the man or beast dry. 



TAXONOMY 



The actual vampire was accorded a place in the formal, binomial 

 lists before it was individually known to be a sanguineous bat. 

 Prince Maximilian Wied (1826) separated the vampire from the 

 genus Phyllostoma of E. Geoffroy and placed it in a separate 

 genus, Desmodus^ with the specific name of rufus in 1826. This 

 application of a new specific name in the removal of the vam- 

 pire from Phyllostoma failed to hold, as Geoffroy had already estab- 

 lished the species as P. rotundum in 1810.^ The generic separation, 

 however, was clearly indicated by the specialized dentition, although 

 Desmodus still retained a place in the family of spear-nosed bats, 

 Phyllostomidae. Waterhouse (1839) referred to the vampire as 

 Desmodus d'^orbignyi. Wagner (Schreber, 1840) proposed the spe- 

 cific name of murinus. To bring the taxonomy to date we quote 

 from Osgood (1912) : 



In selecting specimens of Desmodus for comparison, I find a noticeable 

 difference in size between examples of typical D. rotiindus from Paraguay 

 and specimens from Mexico and Central America. In typical rotundus, the 

 forearm measures 60-64 mm, while in Mexican and Guatemalan specimens 

 the maximum is 55. A corresponding difference is shown by the skulls. It 

 would seem advisable, therefore, to recognize a northern subspecies, using 

 Wagner's name murinus (suppl. Schreb. Sniigth., vol. 1, p. 377, 1840), which 

 would stand as Desmodus rotundus murinus Wagner. 



It now appears that the only known sanguineous bats of the 

 world occur in the American Tropics, forming the family Desmo- 



^ Geoffroy, E., Ann. Mus. Hist. Nat, p. 181, 1810. 

 112059—37 20 



