CHAPTER VI 



THROUGH THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS 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 in front of the shoulder, made 

 by a bat. But the bats do little damage in this neigh- 

 bourhood 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 

 smaU bats ; but it is said that other kinds of Brazilian 

 bats seem to have become, at least sporadically and 

 locally, affected by the evil example, and occasionally 

 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 take 

 to bloodsucking. They did not, according to his 



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