Hoggatt Cave: Vampire Bats

There is an interesting (and sometimes disturbing) article at the mental_floss website.  When the article about vampire bats came up, I figured I needed to share it.  Vampire bats are not indigenous to the United States, but through folklore and fantasy, the vampire bat, along with the fictitious vampire, has become a hot commodity for American consumers.  I'm really not interested in the fictional side of this creature, so the article linked here satisfies my curiosity pretty well.

The article, titled 11 Bloody Facts About Vampires, begins thusly:

Bats are firmly rooted in Western vampire lore, but only three species, out of some 1100 in the order Chiroptera, actually have a taste for blood. The vampire bats are the only mammals in the world that live on blood alone, and the unique challenges of that diet make them some of the most specialized, fascinating and downright weird animals that nature has to offer.

In our class, we know that Chiroptera refers to the bat's "hand wing".  Last week, we studied the structure of the bat's wing to see the elongated finger bones that make up the actual skeletal structure of the bat's wing.  It truly fascinated us to find that the bat flaps not its "arm", but its hand.  The membrane stretched over the finger bones is what gives the bat the lift it needs to fly through the air.

Of course, that's not what the article in mental_floss is about.  Instead of repeating the article's information here, I encourage you to click on the link and read the 11 Bloody Facts for yourself.  Then ask yourself, "What if Batman actually shared a bat's properties the way Spider-Man does a spider's?"  The Batman story might be far darker and creepier with a vampire element.