PDF - Wallace Online

TROPICAL NATUREacross the expanded wings, with the body of a proportionatesize ;and when resting in the daytime on dead trees, hanginghead downwards, the branches look as if covered with somemonster fruits. The descendants of the Portuguese in the Eastuse them for food, but all the native inhabitants reject them.In South America there is a group of bats which are sureto attract attention. These are the so-called vampires orblood-suckers, which abound in most parts of tropical America,and are especially plentifulin the Amazon valley. Theircarnivorous propensities were once discredited, but are toowell authenticated. Horses and cattle are often bitten, andare found in the morning covered with blood, and repeatedattacks weaken and ultimately destroy them. Some personsare especially subject to the attacks of these bats; and asnative huts are never sufficientlyclose to keep them out,these unfortunate individuals are obliged to sleep completelymuffled up in order to avoid being made ill seriously or evenlosing their lives. The exact manner in which the attack ismade is not positively known, as the sufferer never feels thewound. The present writer was once bitten on the toe,which was found bleeding in the morning from a small roundhole from which the flow of blood was not easily stopped.On another occasion, when his feet were carefully coveredup, he was bitten on the tip of the nose, only awaking to findhis face streaming with blood. The motion of the wings fansthe sleeper into a deeper slumber, and renders him insensibleto the gentle abrasion of the skin either by teeth or tongue.This ultimately forms a minute hole, the blood flowing fromwhich is sucked or lapped up by the hovering vampire. Thelargest South American bats, having wings from two to two anda half feet in expanse, are fruit-eaters like the Pteropi of theEast, the true blood-suckers being small or of medium size,and varying in colour in different localities.They belong tothe genus Desmodus, and have a tongue with horny papillaeat the end ;and it is probably by means of this that theyabrade the skin and produce a small round wound. This isthe account given by Buffon and Azara, and there seems nowlittle doubt that it is correct.Beyond these two great types the monkeys and the batswe look in vain among the varied forms of mammalian life