What interesting facts are there about vampire bats?
Vampire bats feed only on blood, a fact that sets the human imagination racing[phpbay] The three species are medium-seized, with adult wingspans of 320 to 350 mm and weights of about 40 grams[phpbay] While they are larger than most of the bats of the temperate zones of the world, vampire bats are much smaller than Gigantic Flying Foxes, which weigh in at 1,500 g[phpbay] Horror movie depictions of vampire bats often use flying foxes as models because larger bats are easier to photograph[phpbay] This contributes to the public perception of vampire bats as large, terrifying animals[phpbay] But animals that feed on blood, whether they are insects, leeches or bats, tend to be small because blood is a precioous commodity and hard to obtain in large amounts[phpbay]
Vampire bats are members of the New World Leaf-nosed bats, the Phyllostomidae[phpbay] All three species of living vampire bats occur in South and Central America[phpbay] Fossils of three other species reveal that several thousand years ago vampire bats were more widespread[phpbay] They are known from Cuba and from as far north as West Virginia and the northern Califfornia, places where they no longer occur[phpbay] With the exception of captive amimals, vampire bats have never been found outside of the New World[phpbay]
People are often surprised to learn that vampire bats are not found in central Europe[phpbay] It seems common to suppose that human myths about vampires and stories about Dracula somehow involve vampire bats[phpbay] The truth is that vampire bats got their names from human myths about vampires[phpbay] In many human cultures, vampires are people who return from the dead to feed on the blood of living people[phpbay] After the bats were discovered by European explorers, they were given the name vampire, denoting blood-feeding[phpbay] The blood-feeding were well known to many human inhabitants of South and Central America well before their discovery by Europeans[phpbay] Bram Stoker, intrigued by the publicity surrounding bats that fed on blood, included bats in his book Dracula[phpbay]
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