{"id":248412,"date":"2025-10-29T18:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T18:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/248412\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T18:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T18:19:10","slug":"vampire-bats-are-little-ninjas-who-are-actually-quite-sweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/248412\/","title":{"rendered":"Vampire bats are \u2018little ninjas\u2019 who are actually quite sweet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThey bring bad luck.\u201d \u201cThey get stuck in your hair!\u201d Let\u2019s face it: bats have a bad rap.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And vampire bats have the worst reputation of all \u2014 as creepy, bloodthirsty creatures who are always on the hunt for humans to feed on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In reality, they\u2019re intriguing creatures that look out for one another, and they\u2019re full of surprises. For example, did you know vampire bats can walk on all fours? They can even run!<\/p>\n

In the heart of Belize, bat scientists descend upon the more than 3,000-year-old Mayan ruins of the Lamanai Archaeological Reserve every year for \u201cBat-a-thon,\u201d a two-week field study where 70 to 80 scientists study most of the 45 species that live there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the documentary Empire of Bats, Anthony Morgan joins in on Bat-a-thon to discover what we can learn from these furry flyers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The littlest \u2018blood-suckers\u2019<\/p>\n

According to the U.K.\u2019s Bat Conservation Trust, there are an estimated 1,500 species of bat<\/a>, making up about 20 per cent of all mammal species on Earth. But among those, only three types qualify as vampire bats. Found in the tropics of Central and South America, these critters are \u201csanguivorous,\u201d meaning they feed off the blood of other animals.<\/p>\n

The white-winged vampire bat (Diaemus youngi) and hairy-legged vampire bat (Diphylla ecaudata) normally keep to the forests, feeding on birds, reptiles and other animals they can find.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) is often found in agricultural areas, drinking the blood of farm animals \u2014 pigs, chickens and cows. Because of this, they are sometimes considered a nuisance for local farmers as they can spread rabies and give animals wounds that can become infected.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At seven to nine centimetres in length, they\u2019re on the smaller side, but that doesn\u2019t stop them from pulling off some impressive feats.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The common vampire has an incredible trick up its sleeve \u2026 er, wings. It can jump. In fact, these tiny creatures are capable of leaping from the ground a metre or more in order to take flight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What’s more, they have an intriguing way of walking.<\/p>\n

\"TwoWith their elongated thumb, vampire bats are able to walk and quickly scuttle on the ground! (Brock Fenton)Little bat ninjas<\/p>\n

In Empire of Bats, Morgan chats with Kenneth Welch at the University of Toronto, who studies how animals move. He shows Morgan an incredible video of a vampire bat walking on a treadmill. \u201cThey do this really cool sideways walk,\u201d Welch says in the documentary. \u201cWe think what they\u2019re doing with that sideways motion is maybe circling around their prey.\u201d<\/p>\n

WATCH | Vampire bats can walk sideways:\"\"<\/p>\n

Vampire bats are \u2018little ninjas\u2019<\/p>\n

Vampire bats get a bad rap but in reality, they\u2019re intriguing creatures that look out for one another, and they\u2019re full of surprises. For example, did you know vampire bats can walk on all fours? They can even run! Watch Empire of Bats on CBC Gem. <\/p>\n

As Morgan accurately quips in the clip above, vampire bats are like little ninjas, circling their prey until they can get close enough while undetected.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Though they use echolocation to find their way while flying, they have heat sensors around their face to help them zero in on their victim, pinpointing an exposed patch of skin with an easily accessible blood vessel near the surface.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Once in position, they make a small incision using their incredibly sharp incisors and lick up the blood that comes out. Their saliva stops the wound from clotting thanks to a strong anticoagulant, which has even been studied for use in human stroke patients.<\/p>\n

Vampires with a heart?<\/p>\n

Behind its creepy-yet-cool feeding tactics, the vampire bat can actually be quite sweet. Unlike other bat babies, which wean in a matter of weeks, little vampires will stay with their mother for months until they\u2019ve learned to feed independently. Mothers and their young roost in groups, and if one individual in the group has an unlucky night of hunting, other members will share their\u00a0 meals with them so they don\u2019t go hungry.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Watch Empire of Bats on CBC Gem and The Nature of Things YouTube channel.\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThey bring bad luck.\u201d \u201cThey get stuck in your hair!\u201d Let\u2019s face it: bats have a bad rap.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-248412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}