Vampire Bats Are Now Starting To Bite Humans

Good luck sleeping tonight 😳

It has finally happened, after years of contently drinking the blood of local birds the vampire bat is now moving on to humans.

These tiny coffee cup-sized mammals have traditionally only preyed on other animals, but as humans have encroached on their habitats the small blood-suckers are starting to fight back.

Open Image Modal
Dervical via Getty Images

In research carried out by Enrico Bernard and his team at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil, it was discovered that wild vampire bats are starting to eat outside of their set menu.

There are three types of vampire bat in the world, and while the first two are considered to be the more generalised variety the last known as Diphylla ecaudata feeds exclusively on the blood of birds.

Found in the Caatinga dry forests, the research team examined the faeces of the bat and found DNA samples from both chicken and human blood.

While we traditionally assume that vampire bats already eat human blood it’s actually the last thing they’d usually consume.

Open Image Modal
The bats have started targetting both chickens and humans.
PHILIPPE HUGUEN via Getty Images

Eating blood as your sole diet is incredibly difficult, as such each species of vampire bat has evolved to very specifically process the blood of its local prey.

In this instance, Diphylla ecaudata has evolved to digest the high levels of fat found in bird blood, rather than the protein rich blood of other larger mammals like humans.

As humans have started to encroach on their natural habitat however it seems as though the bats are starting to consume the blood of humans as a last resort.

“The record of humans as prey and the absence of blood from native species may reflect a low availability of wild birds in the study site, reinforcing the impact of human activities on local ecological processes”, explains the paper.

If the thought of bats eating human blood doesn’t scare you enough this development has further consequences.

Bats have historically proven to be a nightmare when it comes to containing diseases.

Open Image Modal
ullstein bild via Getty Images

They’re notoriously effective at spreading rabies and have historically caused huge outbreaks across South America.

By introducing humans into their diet, this significantly increases the risk of diseases being passed on to humans from the bats that are dining on them.

Some comfort should be gained from the fact that this is still an isolated incident that has been discovered deep in the forests of northern Brazil.

Of course what it does highlight is once again the impact that human expansion can have, not only on the habitat around it, but on humans themselves.

The Coolest Science Photos Of The Decade:

2015
Martin Le-May
A baby weasel took the ride of a lifetime on the back of a green woodpecker in Hornchurch Country Park in East London. Photographer Martin Le-May just happened to be lucky enough to capture the moment on March 2, 2015.
2014
NASA, ESA, H. Teplitz and M. Rafelski (IPAC/Caltech), A. Koekemoer (STScI), R. Windhorst (Arizona State University), and Z. Levay (STScI)
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope assembled a comprehensive picture of the evolving universe -- among the most colorful deep space images ever captured by the 25-year-old telescope. The image was released on June 3, 2014.
2013
NASA
NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins snapped a selfie while completing a spacewalk outside of the Earth-orbiting International Space Station on Dec. 24, 2013.
2012
Hadoram Shirihai/Tubenoses project
A rare Mascarene petrel with an egg-shaped bulge in its middle. Photographed in 2012 by researchers near Reunion, an island off the coast of Madagascar, it was said to be the first to show a bird flying with a visible "baby bump."
2011
Wikimedia Commons: Wtop.com
In 2011, a female Celebes crested macaque (Macaca nigra) in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, decided to pick up British wildlife photographer David Slater's camera and take a selfie.
2010
NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
A stunning scanning electron micrograph of a human T lymphocyte (also called a T cell) from the immune system of a healthy donor, taken on May 24, 2010.
2009
Sung Hoon Kang, Joanna Aizenberg and Boaz Pokroy; Harvard University
An electron microscope photograph shows self-assembling hair-like polymers around a polystyrene sphere, about two micrometers in diameter. It won first place in the National Science Foundation's 2009 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.
2008
NASA
Hurricane Ike covers more than half of Cuba. It was taken by the Expedition 17 crew aboard the International Space Station from a vantage point of 220 miles above Earth, on September 9, 2008.
2007
Gloria Kwon/NIKON Small World
A close-up look at a double transgenic mouse embryo, just 18.5 days old. The photo won first place in Nikon's 2007 Small World Photomicrography Competition.
2006
Thierry Legault
A photo of the International Space Station (ISS) and Space Shuttle Atlantis flying between Earth and the sun. The photo was taken from Normandie, France on Sept. 17, 2006.
2005
Charles Krebs/NIKON Small World
A portrait of a Muscoid fly (house fly) that won first place in Nikon's 2005 Small World Photomicrography Competition.