What Do You Know About Vampire Bats?
What is special about a vampire bat's teeth?
- Because vampire bats don't actually need to chew their food, they have fewer teeth than other bat species.
Vampire bats are great at flying, but which of the following movements can they also perform skillfully?
- These agile creatures can do much more than fly, thanks to the powerful muscles in their chests, wings, and legs.
You have probably heard that vampire bats can eat blood. But how exactly do they do it?
- Instead of using a traditionally vampiric method of sucking the blood with their teeth, these bats just make a small cut and lick up the blood.
What year did Darwin officially document the existence of vampire bats during his travels?
- Darwin wrote about these creatures in his book "The Voyage of the Beagle" in 1839.
Though vampire bats can drink human blood, it's not their preferred food source. Which of the following animals do vampire bats primarily seek out?
- These creatures don't expressly target humans for food, so you can put those garlic bulbs away!
What is the amazing sense called that vampire bats use to find prey and navigate?
- Vampire bats, like other bat species, use echolocation to discover the world around them by a series of high-pitched noises that bounce back and reveal their surroundings.
Approximately how much blood does a vampire bat consume when it finds a suitable host?
- Once a vampire bat finds a good source of food, it will feed on up to half its weight in blood. But since they are small animals, it's not catastrophic for the animal being fed upon!
What are the social dynamics of vampire bats like?
- These are social creatures, with large colonies of between 20 to 100 bats, with some colonies even numbering in the thousands of individuals.
The release of what classic vampire tale cemented the vampire bat's association with blood-sucking and the undead?
- Vampires as a mythological and cultural staple have been around far before these bats were given their moniker, so associations with famous vampiric characters are quite harmless.
Apart from blood, what else does a vampire bat feed upon?
- Vampire bats are the only mammal on earth that feeds only on blood from other living creatures!
