Yep, that's a corny Christmas reference in the title... A recent paper compared the hearing sensitivity of common vampires with other bats. We humans can hear from about 20 Hz to just under 20,000 Hz (20 kHz). Here, listen: Vampires like other bats have excellent high frequency hearing. Anything above about 17 kHz starts to … Continue reading Do you hear what I hear? Hearing sensitivity of the common vampire bat

I recently noticed that one of the vampire bats that died in 2010 at the Organization for Bat Conservation was the oldest vampire on record, at about 30 years old. Bats live 3.5 times longer than they should for their size. The average max lifespan of a bat is 17 years. For comparison, the oldest … Continue reading the oldest vampire bat

Read our new paper here. You can learn a lot about the social life of an animal by learning what forms of communication they use. The communication system of vampire bats is similar to some other highly cognitive and cooperative species, like bottle-nosed dolphins. Both vampires and dolphins produce biosonar clicks and use longer tonal sounds … Continue reading New paper on social calls in vampire bats

A team of researches based in the USA and Peru conducted a rigorous study on rabies in vampire bats, and found some intriguing results. First, a bit about rabies. This is a terrible disease which infects and kills mammals (including bats, cattle, and humans). Rabies virus is spread from mammal to mammal via saliva, usually from … Continue reading Is killing vampire bats good for public health? No. It might increase rabies risks.

I love BBC Nature footage! For those of you who don't know, the BBC created a digital "arkive" of photos and videos of animals from around the world. Behold the footage of vampire bats at arkive.org.