Vampire bats have become such specialized bloodsuckers that they metabolize their food more like some blood-feeding flies than like other known mammals, a new experiment shows.
The common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) doesn’t stick to flying for moving around. It also scurries along the ground in targeting cattle, horses and other mammals to steal blood. Thus researchers, who were curious about what fuels the animals use, could coax the vampires — at least for a little while — to run on a bespoke-for-bats treadmill.
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