Vila Wolf's Dyslexic Folklorist Ranting

Vespertilio spectrum (now Vampyrum spectrum) - The Spectral Bat

Also known as the false vampire bat and Linnaeus’ vampire bat, the spectral bat may not bite humans like the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus), but small animals and large insects have much more to fear from this stealthy hunter.

True vampire bats (Desmodus sp.) hunt by opening a small wound in an animal while it sleeps, with razor sharp teeth that don’t even wake the victim. It laps up the blood, and flies away undetected. The fact that the animals are almost always unharmed by this encounter makes true vampire bats the only parasitic mammals.

Spectral bats, on the other hand, are absolute hunters. They do not drink blood like true vampire bats, and often hunt much like owls, stealthily patrolling the edges of forests at night, and swooping down to attack and consume large insects, small mammals, reptiles, and even other bats (whose distress calls can attract many spectral bats from miles around).

The spectral bat is much larger than the true vampire bats, and has large ears and decent sight. It hunts by using its large canine teeth to puncture either the cervical arteries or the brain-case of small vertebrates, or sever the head of insects. Like the true vampires, spectral bats are nocturnal, and live in the Americas. However, they’re not as ubiquitous, being confined mostly to the northwest quadrant of South America, and living almost exclusively in forested regions. 

Images:

Flickr via Wikimedia Commons

Die Säugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur.  Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber, 1775.

Fruit bat of the subfamily Pteropodinae

The megabats of the Pteropodinae include the largest bats in the world: the Giant Golden-Crowned Flying Fox (Acerodon jubatus) and the Large Flying Fox (Pteropus vampyrus), also known as the Malaysian Flying Fox.

The teeth of the family Pteropus, and especially of the subfamily Pteropodinae, are specially designed to rip open and grind up fruits, both juicy and fleshy. The large canines allow them to slash into thick skins, and the dextrous tongue and molars that are good for chewing (but not continued grinding) make an ideal dentition for most South Pacific fruits. Some fruit bats consume vegetation, pollen, or nectar, but Pteropodinae consumes almost exclusively fruit.

Fruit bats lack a tail and the ability to echolocate, like all Old-World bats. They have very good eyesight, and are thought to have split off from microbats (the New-World bats, including all of the carnivorous bats) during the Eocene epoch, around 45 million years ago.

Die Säugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur. J.C.D. Schreber, 1774.