It is difficult to find creatures in mythology about which as many terrible legends have been written as about vampires. In general, the ability to feed on blood and kill people with one bite was attributed to many animals, as well as people. As a rule, various sorcerers were guilty of this, among whom the well-known Count Dracula occupies a special place.
In fact, the vampires who cause such horror throughout Europe have never been found there. Only in South America they hover like an ominous reality in the darkness of the night. Their victim can be grazing livestock or a sleeping person. These are small animals belonging to the order Chiroptera, which are capable of truly long-term maneuverable flight. Their forelimbs are modified into wings. The shoulders, forearms, phalanges of all fingers are elongated, and between them, the sides of the body and the hind limbs, a thin elastic flying membrane is stretched. Their ears are usually very large and their hearing is very sensitive, while their eyes are small. Animal with eyes closed flies just as well as with open ones.
Vampires settle in large colonies or in natural shelters (in caves, mines), or built by other animals or humans, tree hollows, etc.
These animals are common in South America from Mexico to Paraguay. The body length of a vampire does not exceed 7-8 centimeters, and its weight is 50 grams. The mouth is armed with twenty teeth. The fur is brown, reddish, golden or orange on top and yellowish-brown underneath. An ordinary vampire flies well and runs fast. When running, the wings are usually folded tightly along the forearm, and the animal rests on the pads at the base of the thumbs.
Animals settle in colonies of tens and hundreds of individuals. When darkness falls, they fly out in search of victims: horses, mules, goats, pigs. One victim is sometimes attacked by 6-8 vampires. There was a case when one cow’s skin was cut in thirty places overnight.
The famous German naturalist Alexander Humboldt observed their attacks and described: “Horses and cattle cannot enjoy peace even at night. During their sleep, bats suck their blood or hang on their backs, causing them purulent wounds that are attacked by mosquitoes, horseflies and clouds of biting insects.”
Such cases are rare. The pain from a bite is usually so insignificant that the person bitten in a dream wakes up only after the bat has flown away. Many travelers to South America have more than once noticed bats that hovered over the hanging bunks of travelers for a good part of the night. When trying to catch a vampire, he defends himself and often injures people and dogs. The bloodsucker bites with lightning speed. Sometimes the vampire's triangle of sharp front teeth removes a thin piece of the victim's skin. Having made a wound, the animals fall to it and lap up the oozing blood. The vampire does all this in such a way that the person does not wake up, and in the morning the only evidence of the night’s visit will be a blanket stained with blood. A vampire is usually sated in one and a half to two hours, and the wounds of their victims bleed for a very long time. The larvae that hatch in them cause inflammation of the skin. It also happens that three weeks after visiting a vampire, you may find that you have caught terrible disease- paralytic rabies: animals, when feeding, often transmit the rabies virus to their victims, which in ordinary vampires remains alive for up to ten months.
Well-fed vampires drink a lot. In general, they cannot live long without water, and therefore they can often be found near water.
Protection against vampire bites can be provided by bright light (usually hanging a burning lamp) or even a mosquito net.
Most bats feed on insects and are not only harmless creatures, they should be considered human benefactors. Some of the mice catch frogs and even fish, and flying dogs and foxes living in tropical zone, feed on fruits, and not only forest and wild ones, but also raid gardens and berry plantations, devastating them in one night.
And among this host of mysterious wanderers of the night there are creatures that are not only unsympathetic, but also very unpleasant for all warm-blooded creatures, including people. These mice feed on blood, and their name is vampires.
Since ancient times, in beliefs and myths, monsters that suck blood from people were called vampires. The name stuck to real beings, as soon as they were discovered by European travelers in the warm zone of South America.
There are many bloodsuckers on Earth. Let us recall, for example, leeches, bedbugs, ticks, and mosquitoes. En masse of small mosquitoes in the north can bleed a deer, which is why deer from the forest-tundra migrate in the spring to the shores of the ocean, where the wind saves them from their tormentors. Mosquitoes cause suffering to all things; just look, for example, into a nest where chicks are sitting, strewn with mosquitoes. In the once swampy Belarus, in the summer, smoke fires were burned in villages, and horses ran towards the smoke to escape the bloodsuckers. Bedbugs, leeches, and ticks are also not a gift from God, but they still do not inspire mystical horror. We see them during the day and know what to expect from them. Another thing is a vampire, relatively large mysterious creature, blood drinker from a cock's comb, from a horse's leg, from the nose or toes of a sleeping person. The word vampire very accurately characterizes this bat.
Its appearance is similar to the bat mice that are common in our area. But the muzzle of the night robber in the bizarre folds of skin with protruding front “lancet” teeth evokes an involuntary disgust that makes you shudder. Brem wrote: “Their physiognomy looks monstrous.”
Now imagine dark night in the tropics. The traveler fell asleep in a hammock, and someone mysterious on webbed wings descended to drink blood from his finger or to sit for the same purpose on the withers of a horse dozing nearby... Vampires immediately became overgrown with legends, a lot of speculation and instilled panic in people.
The flying bloodsuckers are still alive today. But today a lot is known about them, ways have been found to protect themselves from them, and yet they do what nature prescribed for them - they drink other people’s blood at night.
Vampires live in warm places- from Mexico to northern Argentina. During the day, like all bats, they sleep in caves and tree hollows, hanging upside down. But as soon as the sun goes below the horizon, vampires fly out en masse to hunt. Once upon a time, their victims were only wild animals. Now they are more often looking for domestic animals - horses, donkeys, mules, calves, pigs, sheep, chickens. Some kind of sensitive mechanism, just like in bedbugs, helps them detect a warm-blooded victim. Moreover, among a herd of calves, for example, they focus their attention on something they like (perhaps the youngest, with supple thin skin), while for some reason the vampires are not interested in others. They do not touch cattle (the skin is thick!), but in horses they are attracted to places on the neck, near the mane, which they hold on to with tenacious paws; on pigs they sit on the ears and near the nipples; on a sleeping person they will sit on the ear, nose, bare fingers legs...
I remember for the program “In the Animal World” we were preparing a film in which, by some miracle, the cameraman captured the “work” of a vampire. His victim was a horse. The vampire circled over her for a minute, then sat down on the ground a little to the side and, folding his wings, jumped like a frog and approached the back leg of the chosen victim. In the part of the leg above the hoof, which is called the pastern, the hunter quickly performed the usual operation and sucked out so much blood that he could hardly fly. It is curious that the dozing horse did not feel anything - did not move, did not kick its leg. When they examined her leg at dawn, they discovered an inconspicuous wound from which blood was oozing.
Streams of blood in the morning usually reveal subtle wounds that do not cause (according to the evidence of injured people) pain. Just like leeches, vampires have painkillers and anti-clotting agents in their saliva.
A malicious mouse carries out its operation in this way: with its hind legs it clings to the feathers or hair of the victim and with its lips, as medical cups do, it swells an area of skin the size of a lentil, causing a rush of blood to it. Then, with razor-sharp teeth, the mouse makes an incision on the swollen skin and begins to suck out the blood. At this moment, she seems to get drunk, loses caution and becomes so full that her weight increases by half, and she weighs about sixty grams. A little. But it happens that, attracted by the smell of blood, other vampires come to the wound. And one morning they found forty-nine bites on the body of one of the calves. It is estimated that a blood-sucking mouse sucks about eight liters of blood per year. And over a lifetime (twelve years) - about one hundred liters. A colony of hundreds of vampires drinks ten thousand liters of blood in twelve years. This is already impressive. But the main problem is not the involuntary “donation” of suffering warm-blooded animals. Flies lay eggs in a bleeding but inconspicuous wound (the vampire bites only the skin without touching the muscles), and if the owner of a calf, horse or sheep is not careful, the wound begins to fester and can cause the death of the animals.
And stress affects people. Imagine, at night you slept through the moment when the bloodsucker “dined” on your nose or ear. And, although the bite on the skin is tiny - one per two millimeters - the knowledge that someone made an attempt on you at night has a depressing effect.
Another problem: vampire colonies are receptacles for various diseases, including rabies. How do you fight bloodsuckers? Finding their caves in the jungle is a difficult and expensive task. Protected on site. People who spend the night under the sky always go to bed wearing socks and covering their faces with something. Travelers sleep under mosquito nets; the doors in stuffy stables are left open, but covered with nets or scraps of fabric that repel mice. The aboriginal population makes fires at night near the farmyards and places garlic-smelling vines, as if to repel bloodsuckers. Today's chemists search selectively active poisons and they advise to smear the fur of animals with it; They invent, as against mosquitoes, substances with a repellent odor and, of course, carefully study vampires - the structure of their body, habits and way of life.
It has been established: vampires are excellent acrobats, and not only in the air, but also where they land for dinner, they run, jump, and climb well. Males and females live separately and even in different places, but come together during noisy autumn weddings. After mating, the vampire's seed is preserved in the female's body and fertilizes the egg only in the spring. The mouse constantly carries one baby on its body and, like all mothers, takes care of it touchingly. Biologists studying vampires in captivity claim that these creatures with a disgusting appearance are quite calm, peaceful - they can sit on a hand, showing the intelligence characteristic of mammals. And they are the only mammals that are immune to rabies, being its carriers.
Latest news. A substance found in the saliva of vampires that quickly dissolves blood clots seems to have been synthesized. This medicine can be effective for strokes. Perhaps vampires produce the same substance that leeches use. A person knows how to benefit from everything.
Vasily PESKOV http://www.kp.ru/
Vampire bat is a member of the Chiroptera family. The body length of this animal reaches 10 centimeters, the wingspan is 50-55 centimeters. The weight of this animal is 40-50 grams. Vampires have a brown color, a lighter belly and a black nose. There is a leathery process on the nose. This bat has big ears and a small tail.
Vampires are found in Brazil and Guiana. In the southwestern United States, there are millions of colonies of such animals. These bats feed on fruits and insects (for example, mosquitoes). But sometimes vampires suck blood from animals and people. Fruit vampires Artibeus are champions in digesting food. Fruit passes through their digestive tract very quickly, so they act as sowers.
There are many legends about vampire bats and scary stories because they drink blood. But such stories are greatly exaggerated. There really is a breed bats– vampires who feed on one blood. But they suck out little of it, the bite wounds are small and heal quickly. The vampire's saliva numbs the pain, so the animal does not notice the bite. Vampires attack people only if they do not find a victim among animals or birds.
Vampires live in very large colonies of thousands. They usually live in caves, attics or trees. Vampires are nocturnal animals; they feed at night. During the day, these bats sleep with their paws clinging to the roof of a cave or tree, upside down.
Photo: colony of vampire bats.
Vampires try to avoid bright, sunny places. The vampire colony has its own thermoregulation, maintaining a constant temperature. At low temperatures ah, vampires hibernate. Some bats fly south for the winter, like birds. These animals live 15-20 years. Bat excrement is considered a valuable fertilizer, guano, which is sold to farmers around the world. Vampires destroy malarial mosquitoes, which is very valuable in tropical countries.
Video about how vampires drink the blood of animals:
Amazon Vampires (Killer Bats) / Killer Amazon Bats
Video: Bat attacks in Kharkov. Attack of bats in Kharkov
Illustration copyright AP Image caption Vampire bats able to suck donor blood for 20 minutes to an hour
Vampire bats are not evil monsters at all. They - small miracle nature and help their friends with all their might. The correspondent was convinced of this.
They say that: these bats are blind and bloodthirsty webbed creatures. Friends of real vampires. Evil incarnate.
In fact: Such fears are quite traditional. You will fall in love with vampire bats, their blood-sucking lifestyle will cease to frighten you, and you will appreciate their ability to care for each other by sharing blood with a hungry relative through the method of regurgitation*.
Vampire bats taught me a lot. For example, the word “hematophages”, which refers to creatures that feed exclusively on the blood of vertebrates.
There are many blood-sucking invertebrates (think mosquitoes and leeches), but only three species of mammals choose blood as the basis of their diet. These are vampire bats: the common vampire, the white-winged vampire and the rumpled vampire.
Draculas of the animal world
If you take into account their unusual diet, it becomes clear that vampire bats acquired their name from a character in European folklore - the living dead bloodsucker.
But the more I learned about vampire bats, the more I realized they had been maligned.
Illustration copyright Thinkstock Image caption Night look life and peculiar appearance made bats characters of terrible legendsThe unhurried, majestic gait of the mythological vampire gives reason to believe that these creatures lead a measured lifestyle. If bats could talk, they would beg not to be considered the same.
Although blood is rich in protein, it is very low in carbohydrates, so bats must feed heavily and frequently.
Therefore, vampires have developed the ability to perform various tricks in order to get the coveted drink.
Compared to other bats, common vampire bats (and probably other types of vampires too) are much more sensitive to low-frequency sounds.
This talent allows them to find prey. For example, an ordinary vampire can distinguish individual sleeping people by the sounds of their breathing.
Once a bat has spotted a target, it often approaches it from the ground using hind limbs and wings, with amazing agility and speed. One bat placed on treadmill, reached a speed of more than one meter per second (3.6 km/h).
Once on the chosen animal, the vampire bat displays its bloodletting abilities: using the heat-sensitive cells of its nose, it accurately finds a suitable blood vessel.
Illustration copyright Getty Image caption A palisade of sharp teeth and long fangs are characteristic not only of vampires from the order ChiropteraThe animal then prepares an area of the victim's skin for surgery by plucking hairs or feathers and licking the exposed area with its tongue. Then it pierces the bloodstream with its razor-sharp incisors.
A complex cocktail of proteins found in bat saliva, one of which is self-explanatory name"draculin", does not allow you to close blood vessels, and the blood clots, so bleeding can continue for several hours. These substances also have anesthetic properties.
As a rule, a vampire attaches itself to a carefully prepared bite site for a period of 20-30 minutes to one hour.
During this time, the animal can increase in size up to two times due to the ability of its stomach to stretch. "They puff up like mosquitoes," says Gerald Wilkinson of the University of Maryland, College Park.
The “overweight of luggage” makes taking off after a meal a rather tricky affair. But the vampire's springy forelimbs allow the animal to rise vertically into the air - like the Harrier VTOL carrier-based fighter jets do - at speeds of over two meters per second.
Illustration copyright Getty Image caption Fruit-eating bats carry dangerous pathogens, including Ebola and rabies virusesThis property also turns out to be useful if the potential victim unravels the bat’s tricks and the bat has to hastily retreat.
Despite their remarkable hematophagous abilities, not all bats are guaranteed food.
Wilkinson, who caught the bats at dawn on their way to their dens, estimated that one in 10 adults and a third of the young returned home hungry.
"Eat obvious signs, allowing them to determine whether they managed to get food," he says.
If a bat fails to get enough food for three nights in a row, it will lose a quarter of its body weight. And he will die.
This is why vampires have developed the ability to share blood with their relatives, which reduces the risk of death from starvation. Every night, well-fed individuals regurgitate blood clots to their nesting neighbors.
"It's very similar to how cats regurgitate milk back into the bowl they're lapping at, only in this case the food is regurgitated into the mouths of other bats," Wilkinson explains.
Illustration copyright Getty Image caption All bats live in colonies, but only vampires show mutual altruismIn the late 1970s and early 1980s, Wilkinson and an assistant spent hundreds of hours peering into the dark interiors of hollow trees in Costa Rica and watching one vampire regurgitate blood into the mouth of another.
In many cases these were mothers feeding blood to their offspring. But often obvious family ties between donor and recipient were not traced.
It looked like the two individuals spent a lot of time together and developed a caring relationship between them.
I asked Wilkinson if it would be correct to call such animals friends. “Friends is another term,” he replied.
IN Lately Wilkinson again began studying the habits of vampires who share food with their relatives, and established under what circumstances this happens. He and his colleague counted almost 1,000 instances of food exchanges in captive bat colonies.
Zoologists have never observed one bat forcing another to share blood with it. "What's actually happening is just the opposite," says Wilkinson. "They're willing to give up the food."
Illustration copyright Thinkstock Image caption Vampire bats suck the blood of South American capybaras.Some cases of food exchange occurred between members of the same family. But more often regurgitation occurred between friends.
Sucking blood is not a habit to be enjoyed, but it does build community spirit. Either way, it softens the vampire bat image somewhat.
Ordinary vampires usually suck the blood of domestic mammals, most often large cattle and horses, but do not ignore wild animals - capybaras (or capybaras), peccaries (South American wild pigs) and tapirs.
Sometimes they dig into people, which usually happens during sleep. While Wilkinson was on a field trip to Costa Rica in the 1970s, a bat bit one of his fellow students.
“His leg was sticking out from under the mosquito net, and the bat settled down to feed,” says the zoologist.
I asked Wilkinson if he had ever been bitten by these wondrous creatures in the years he spent studying them.
“Sometimes they bit,” he replied. “When you catch them, they become very agile. They desperately try to escape, and if you don’t take precautions, they can easily bite.”
However, he adds, they are quickly tamed. "I like them very much!" says Wilkinson.
Oddly enough, me too.
*The Medical Encyclopedia defines regurgitation as “the rapid movement of liquids or gases in a direction opposite to the natural one, observed in hollow muscular organs during their contraction.”
Looking at the elegant and powerful vampires shown in feature films, viewers, as a rule, do not think about the physiological processes in their bodies. However, based on the anatomy and physiology of bloodsucking bats actually living on Earth, feeding on blood alone brings some inconvenience.
Vampires feed only on fresh blood large mammals, sometimes they even choose sleeping people as victims. When night falls, bloodsucking bats fly out of their caves. Like other representatives of the order Chiroptera, they use echolocation for orientation, although this ability is much less developed in them than in bats that feed on insects, and it is not surprising that it is much more difficult to detect a flying bug than a sleeping antelope or even a chicken.
When a flying vampire finds a victim, it quietly lands on it or on the ground nearby. Then, using infrared receptors, it finds areas of skin unprotected by hair or feathers: neck, comb, ears. With their needle-sharp teeth, vampires bite victims and inject saliva with a high content of anesthetics and anticoagulants, one of which helped scientists create effective medicine from a stroke. After a bite, blood can flow for 8 hours, although the vampire needs only 20-30 minutes to become saturated. During feeding, the animal drinks twice as much blood as it weighs about 60 ml.
To assimilate blood in bats, bloodsuckers do not need complex digestive system, a short esophagus and stomach with an intestinal outgrowth are enough for them. The sucked blood is easily absorbed in the stomach and after 2 minutes the excretion of urine begins, otherwise, having dined heavily, the animal would not be able to take off again. The urine of bloodsucking bats is, in fact, blood plasma, and each new portion is more and more concentrated, since the blood is very saturated with proteins, which are converted into urea during the feeding process.
The vampire body cannot starve for more than two days, then the animals often take turns sucking blood from a sleeping victim, while a small animal or bird can become the main dish at a dinner with fatal. Patching bloodsuckers often share the blood they drink with their fellows, while they pour their dinner from mouth to mouth. At the same time, the mice remember their benefactors and greedy people, and never later share food with the latter.
Even though vampires are only capable of killing small animals, they are serious danger for all their victims, as they transmit many dangerous infectious diseases, among which the most terrible is rabies. But even these creepy animals have served people well.
In 2003, scientists managed to create the drug desmoteplase, which entered the system effective treatment stroke. This medicine is a genetically modified enzyme in the saliva of bloodsucking bats. It is used for the prevention and treatment of acute circulatory disorders (strokes), since when it enters the blood, desmoteplase dissolves blood clots formed in the lumens of blood vessels, and at the same time does not affect other components of the circulatory system.
Loading...
