VAMPIRE BATS 
The first-mentioned is an extensive family of rather large 
bats with well-developed eyes, large ears, nose leaves, and three 
phalanges in the middle finger. They are scattered over tropi- 
cal America, and the most of them feed wholly upon insects, 
others on a mixture of insects and fruit, while two species have 
become world-famous as “vampires,” —a name recalling the 
superstition rife in Europe in the Middle Ages as to foul, blood- 
exhausting fiends, which were fabled to lull their victims into 
unconsciousness by the slow flapping of their wings, 
and then deprive them of life. The foremost of 
these vampires is a small reddish species (Desmodus rufus), 
whose front teeth are like keen daggers, while the cheek teeth 
have disappeared, having nothing to do, since the animal sub- 
sists wholly on a liquid diet (blood), and the digestive organs 
are extremely modified; indeed, no other mammal known 
shows so great a departure from the type in its mouth and 
stomach as does this. To quote Professor Flower : '* — 
Vampire. 
“Travelers describe the wounds inflicted by the large, sharp-edged 
incisors as similar to those caused by a razor when shaving: a portion of 
the skin being shaved off and a large number of severed capillary vessels 
thus exposed, from which a constant flow of blood is maintained. From 
this source the blood is drawn through the exceedingly narrow gullet — 
too narrow for anything solid to pass — into the intestinelike stomach, 
where it is probably gradually drawn off during the slow process of diges- 
tion, while the animal, sated with food, is hanging in a state of torpidity 
from the roof of a cave or the inner side of a hollow tree. 
‘They appear to be confined to the forest-clad parts, and their attacks 
on men and other warm-blooded animals were noticed by some of the 
earliest writers. Thus Peter Martyr (Anghiera), who wrote soon after 
the conquest of South America, says that in the Isthmus of Darien there 
were bats which sucked the blood of men and cattle when asleep to such 
a degree as to kill them. Condamine, a writer of the eighteenth century, 
remarks that at Borja (Ecuador) and in other places they had entirely de- 
stroyed the cattle introduced by the missionaries.” 
Although many of the old stories of harm done to men and 
women were exaggerated, it is true that vampires attack sleep- 
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