Just got back late last night from a week-long bat research workshop in Belize. We found a breeding colony of vampires in an old overgrown Mayan ruin near Lamanai and I managed to gather some social data on another group of vampire bats that I brought into captivity for a few days. I have now repeated Jerry’s original food sharing experiment (1984 Nature) with 6 different groups of vampire bats (about 45 bats) from Trinidad, Belize, and a captive zoo population at the Organization for Bat Conservation in Michigan. I am hoping to write up the first paper this summer. I’m very psyched!
Once again, I’m overwhelmed by the enthusiastic support for this project on petridish.org. We have raised $2,325 so far. Thank you all so much. This will be the first year I don’t attend the scientific meetings on Mammalogy, Behavior, etc– so I can save money for when we bring vampire bats to campus. But I hope this will enable me to have some very exciting results to present next year.
Carter Lab 