I vant to suck your blood
It makes sense that vampire legends were inspired by vampire bats. But that’s not what happened. Vampire bats were named after the legend, not the other way around. The vampires we know best — Dracula, Bella and Edward, Count von Count (my personal favorite), and all the rest — descend from Eastern European legends of rotting corpses that come back from the dead to suck the blood of humans. (Later versions prettied them up and put them in evening attire. By the time they got to North America, they were in jeans and sweaters.) Vampire bats, which suck the blood of cattle mostly, and rarely bite humans, are native to Central and South America. There are no vampire bats in Europe or Asia.
In and of itself, the bite of a vampire bat is mostly harmless. They don’t take much blood at any given visit. However, they can transmit parasites and viral infections, such as rabies. One thing they don’t do is turn a cow into a bat.
Another big difference between vampire bats and their Eastern European namesakes: Vampire bats are kind. A single vampire bat cannot survive for more than two days without a blood meal. When one bat has missed too many meals, others will often regurgitate blood and share it with their hungry colony-mate. Female vampire bats often share food with a new mother for a week or so after she gives birth, something like a bat version of the covered dishes humans bring when another human has a baby. And by the way, with the exception of possible disease transmission, vampire bats don’t even harm the animals they feed on. Often the cow or pig won’t even know they’ve been bitten.
Makes you wonder why they named these gentle creatures after Dracula, doesn’t it?
’til next time,
Avery
Image courtesy of Josep Monter, via Pixabay