Reddit reviews Bats: From Evolution to Conservation

>The common vampire, Desmodus rotundus, is sensitive to breathing noises at 20-35kHz and may also make use of prey-generated sounds to find its prey (Schmidt et al. 1991, Obrist et al. 1993).

Source: Altringham, John D. Bats From Evolution to Conservation. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.



They can distinguish individual humans by their breathing. Given differences in how heavy some people sleep, and presumably other animals, it makes sense to target the same individuals you've successfully fed from rather than risk being kicked by an animal a thousand times your size. I believe we captured this individual twice (he had a little notch in his ear) but I wasn't in the party that would have caught him the first time so I'm not 100% certain. Generally, bat captures in the mist-nets tended to peak sometime before midnight where we were, but if you wanted to see a vampire, you had to stay up late. This one was caught at 3:26am according to the data sheets.

This is the glove after holding him. I wore these gloves just for this individual and gloves should be worn when handling any bat, which should really only be done by trained and vaccinated individuals. Only a few Artibeus were able to damage the thinner leather gloves I wore most of the trip, ignoring the green poop from Carollia which stained them. This guy was captured at CREA. Much of the rainforest there was secondary and had recovered fantastically, and the adjacent cattle pastures were still around as buffets for the common Vampire bats. We captured 53 species.

Here’s a slow motion gif of him taking off. It’s better with sound (first time using this new imgur feature).

Other vampire bat facts.