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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: TUM-VAN |
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VAMPIRE , a term, apparently of Servian origin (wampir), originally applied in eastern Europe to blood-sucking ghosts. but in modern usage transferred to one or more species of blood-sucking bats inhabiting South America. In the first-mentioned meaning a vampire is usually supposed to be the soul of a dead man which quits the buried body
body
Two species of blood-sucking hats (the only species known) Desmodus rufus and Diphylla ecaudatarepresenting two genera (see CHIROPTERA
Martyr
Ecuador )and in other places they had entirely destroyed the cattle introduced by the missionaries. Sir Robert Schomburgk relates that at Wicki, on the river Berbice, no fowls could be kept on account of the ravages of these creatures, which attacked their combs, causing them to appear white from loss of blood- The present writer, when in South and Central America, had many accounts given him as to the attacks of the vampires, and it was agreed upon by most of his informants that these bats when attacking horses showed a decided preference for those of a grey colour. It is interesting to speculate how far the vampire bats may have been instrumentalwhen they were, perhaps, more abundantin causing the destruction of the horse, which had disappeared from America previous to the discovery of that continent. Although these bats were known thus early to Europeans, the species to which they belonged were not determined for a long time, several of the large frugivorous species having been wrongly set down as blood-suckers, and named accordingly. Thus the name Vampyrus was suggested to Geoffroy and adopted by Spix, who also considered that the long-tongued bats of the group Glossophaga were addicted to blood, and accordingly described Glossopleaga soricina as a very cruel blood-sucker (sanguisuga crudelissima), believing that the long brush-tipped tongue was used to increase the flow of blood. Vampyrus spectrum, a large bat inhabiting Brazil, of sufficiently forbidding aspect, which was long considered by naturalists to be thoroughly sanguivorous in its habits, and named accordingly by Geoffroy, has been shown by the observations of travellers to be mainly frugivorous, and is considered by the inhabitants of the countries in which it is found to be perfectly harmless. Charles Waterton believed Artibeus planirostris, a common bat in British Guiana, usually found in the roofs of houses, and now known to be frugivorous, to be the veritable vampire; but neither he nor any of the naturalists that preceded him had succeeded in detecting any bat in the act of drawing blood. It fell to the lot of Charles Darwin to determine one of the blood-sucking species at least, and the following is his account of the circumstances under which the discovery of the sanguivorous habits of Desmodus rufus was made: " The vampire bat is often the cause of much trouble by biting the horses on their withers. The injury is generally not so much owing to the loss of blood as to the inflammation which the pressure of the saddle afterwards produces. The whole circumstance has lately been doubted in England; I was therefore fortunate in being present when one was actually caught on a horse's back. We were bivouacking late
Desmodus rufus, the common blood-sucking bat, is widely spread over the tropical and subtropical parts of Central and South America from Oaxaca to southern Brazil and Chile. It is a comparatively small bat, a little larger than the noctule, the head and body about 3 in. in length, the forearm 22, with a remark- ably long and strong thumb; it is destitute of a tail, and has a very peculiar physiognomy (fig. I). The body is covered with rather short fur of a reddish-brown colour but vary- ing in shade, the extremities of the FIG. 1.l-iead of Blood- hairs sometimes ashy. The teeth are sucking vampire (Desmo- peculiar and characteristic, admirably dus rufus). adapted for the purposes for which they are employed. The upper front teeth (incisors), of which there are only two, are enormously enlarged (see fig. 2), and in shape obliquely triangular like small guillotines. The canines, though smaller than the incisors, are large and sharp
by a small space from the canines. Behind the lower incisors the jaw is deeply hollowed out to receive the extremities of the large upper incisors. With this peculiar dentition there is associated as remarkable a departure from the general type in the form of the digestive 1pparatus. The exceedingly narrow oesophagus opens at right angles into a narrow, intestine-like stomach, which almost immediately terminates on the right, without a distinct pylorus, in the duodenum, but on the left forms a greatly elongated caecum, bent and folded upon itself, which appears at first sight like part of the intestines. This, the cardiac extremity of the stomach, is, for a short distance to the left of the entrance of the oesophagus, still very narrow, but soon increases in size, till near its termination it attains a diameter quite three times that of the short pyloric portion. The length of this cardiac diverticulum of the stomach appears to vary from 2 to 6 in., the size in each specimen probably depending on the amount of food obtained by the animal before it was captured.The only other known species of blood-sucking bat, Diphylla ecaudata, inhabits Brazil, and appears to be much less abundant than Desmodus rufus, from which it is distinguished by its slightly smaller size, by the absence of a groove in the front of the lower lip, the non-development of the interfemoral membrane in the centre, and the presence of a short calcaneum (absent in D. rufus), but more particularly by the presence of an additional rudimentary cheek-tooth (?molar) above and below, and the peculiar form of the lower incisors, which are much expanded in the direction of the jaws and pectinated, forming a semicircular row touching each other, the outer incisors being wider than the inner ones, with six notches, the inner incisors with three each. Travellers describe the wounds inflicted by the large sharp
drawn
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