LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It’s October, so we thought our next Creature Feature should be a creepy one. Why not visit a real-life vampire?
Bill McMahan, a curator at the Louisville Zoo, joined us at the Vampire Bat exhibit to tell us about them.
Rob: First of all, we see bats flying in the sky, and we may think of them as kind of like birds; but, they’re mammals just like you and me.
Bill: They are mammals. They represent 20-25% of all mammal species on earth, actually. 16 species here in Kentucky.
Rob: 16 species here in Kentucky, which do not drink blood—correct?
Bill: Correct.
Rob: Alright, but the ones here at this exhibit are vampire bats, so tell us a little bit about them and what they’d be eating in the wild.
Bill: Our vampire bats eat cow blood, and in nature nowadays they typically eat cow blood, horses, hogs, and sometimes humans.
Rob: Sometimes humans. There it is. Not here at the Louisville Zoo, though. They’re not drinking human blood here. How do you guys care for bats as curators here?
Bill: We provide them with a good diet of bovine (or cow) blood, and we have them in set up that would be similar to what you might experience or find in nature. And so ours is sort of set up like a mine shaft. Vampires: they’ll use old houses, caves, tree hollows, thinks like that, just about anywhere they can get out of the light.
Rob: What’s your favorite fact about bats? Or what do you think would surprise people the most to learn about them?
Bill: I think they’d be surprised how intelligent vampire bats are, and how agile they are on the ground. They have to be, because they may have to feed on an animal that’s 10,000 times their size. So they have to be pretty nimble in order to do that.
If you'd like to see these creatures in person, you can get more information on the Louisville Zoo website.
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