CHAPTER VI 



THROUGH THE HIGHLAND WILDER- 

 NESS OF WESTERN BRAZIL 



WE were now in the land of the bloodsucking 

 bats, the vampire bats that suck the blood of 

 living creatures, clinging to or hovering against 

 the shoulder of a horse or cow, or the hand or foot of a 

 sleeping man, and making a wound from which the blood 

 continues to flow long after the bat's thirst has been 

 satiated. At Tapirapoan there were milch cattle; and 

 one of the calves turned up one morning weak from loss 

 of blood, which was still trickling from a wound, for- 

 ward of the shoulder, made by a bat. But the bats do 

 little damage in this neighborhood compared to what 

 they do in some other places, where not only the mules 

 and cattle but the chickens have to be housed behind bat- 

 proof protection at night or their lives may pay the 

 penalty. The chief and habitual offenders are various 

 species of rather small bats ; but it is said that other kinds 

 of Brazilian bats seem to have become, at least sporadi- 

 cally and locally, affected by the evil example and occa- 

 sionally vary their customary diet by draughts of living 

 blood. One of the Brazilian members of our party, 

 Hoehne, the botanist, was a zoologist also. He informed 

 me that he had known even the big fruit-eating bats to 



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