No animal's physiognomy can be more hideous, when seen from the front,
than the countenance of the largest South American vampire-bat. Fancy a
creature measuring twenty-eight inches in expanse of wing, its large
leathery ears standing out from the sides and top of the head, and an
erect spur-shaped appendage on the tip of the nose,--the grin, and the
glistening black eye, all combining to make up a figure which reminds
one of some mocking imp of fable. No wonder that imaginative people
have conferred diabolical instincts on so ugly an animal.
Ugly as is the broad leaf-nosed family of bats, it is in reality the
least harmless. The little grey Phyllostoma is the guilty blood-sucker
which visits sleepers and bleeds them in the night. It is of a dark
grey colour, striped with white down the back, and having a leaf-like
fleshy expansion on the tip of the nose. Although they undoubtedly
attack sleeping people, yet they appear to be somewhat partial as to the
individuals they select. Bates, when sleeping in a room up the Amazon,
long unused, was awoke at midnight by a rushing noise made by vast hosts
of bats sweeping round him. The air was alive with them. They had put
out the lamp, and when he relighted it the place appeared black with the
impish multitudes that were whirling round and round. After he had laid
about him well with a stick for a few minutes they disappeared among the
tiles; but when all was quiet again, they returned once more and
extinguished the light. The next night several got into his hammock,
and on waking in the morning he found a wound, evidently caused by one
of them, on his hip. There were altogether four species. One of them
(the Dysopes perotis) has enormously large ears, and measures two feet
from tip to tip of the wings. The natives, however, assured him that it
was the phyllostoma which had inflicted the wound, and they asserted
that it is the only kind which attacks man. But Mr Bates considers
that several kinds of bats have this propensity.
Darwin, when travelling in Chili, noticing that one of the horses was
very restive, went to see what was the matter; and fancying that he
could distinguish something, put his hands on the beast's withers, and
discovered a vampire-bat. In the morning, the place where the wound had
been inflicted was easily distinguished by being slightly swollen and
bloody.
Waterton describes the mode in which the vampire-bat makes the orifice
through which to suck its victim's blood. It does so by pressing gently
the point of its sharp projecting teeth, noiselessly circling round, and
making them act the part of a centre-bit,--performing the operation so
quietly that no pain is felt. He says, however, that at times they
commit a good deal of mischief. A young Indian boy suffered greatly by
being frequently attacked; and the son of an English gentleman was
bitten so severely on the forehead, that the wound bled freely on the
following morning. The fowls also suffered so terribly that they died
fast; and an unfortunate jackass on whom they had set their fancy was
almost killed by inches.
The vampire rises in the air by means of a wide flattened membrane
connecting the whole of the limbs and tail, the thumb of the fore-paws
and the hind-feet alone being left free. This membrane, though
wonderfully delicate, is furnished with minute blood-vessels. It also
possesses a system of nerves of the most exquisite power of sensation,
which enables it to fly rapidly among the boughs and foliage, avoiding
all impediments even in the darkest hours of night. The vampire can run
along the ground and climb trees by means of the sharp hooks on the
fore-paws. They sleep, however, like ordinary bats, hanging by their
hind-feet--being thus able at a moment's notice to take to flight.
Of the other species, some have the fur of a blackish colour, some of a
ruddy hue.
When flying, the larger ones wheel heavily round and round, somewhat in
the manner of a pigeon, so that they may easily be mistaken for birds.
Although they live largely on insects, they also greedily devour fruits;
indeed, some species live chiefly on them. Bates opened the stomach of
several, and found them to contain a mass of pulp and seeds of fruit,
mingled with a few remains of night insects. On comparing the seeds
taken from their stomachs with those of cultivated trees, he found that
they were unlike any of them: he concludes, therefore, that they resort
to the forest to feed, coming only to human habitations in the morning
to sleep, where they find themselves more secure from animals of prey
than in their natural abodes in the woods.