When asked to describe a vampire, most people think of a tall, pale creature, with fangs and a cloak. But were the creatures of folklore inspired by real traits seen in the animal kingdom? From avoiding sunlight to using ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 29, 2018
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4
The vampire bat's diet consists of blood. It prefers to feed on domestic animals such as cows and pigs, but when it does so, there is a risk of transmitting pathogens such as rabies. Now, a new study lead by Assistant Professor ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 23, 2018
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225
It may seem batty, but blood is the diet of choice for several species of bats. Now, scientists discover that jumping genes provide the evolutionary key to this vampiric life.
Plants & Animals
Apr 18, 2018
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4
The availability of livestock as a food source for vampire bats influences their immune response and infection by bacterial pathogens, according to a new paper in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Because ...
Ecology
Mar 26, 2018
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20
At first glance, the cost-benefit ratio of a blood-only diet suggests that vampire bats—the only mammals to feed exclusively on the viscous, ruby-red elixir—flew down an evolutionary blind alley.
Evolution
Feb 20, 2018
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274
The fossilized remains of a giant burrowing bat that lived in New Zealand millions of years ago have been found by a UNSW Sydney-led international team of scientists.
Archaeology
Jan 10, 2018
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Female vampire bats form strong social bonds with their mothers and daughters as they groom and share regurgitated meals of blood. They also form friendships with less closely related bats. Gerry Carter, post-doctoral fellow ...
Plants & Animals
May 23, 2017
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1863
The number of vampire bats, which transmit rabies and are a concern for livestock breeders, may be increasing in Brazil and the Americas along with growth in the populations of invasive feral pigs and wild boars (Sus scrofa).
Plants & Animals
Feb 1, 2017
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8
A new study challenges the tenet of herpes viruses being strictly host-specific. Scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Germany have discovered that gammaherpesviruses switch their hosts ...
Cell & Microbiology
Nov 8, 2016
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7
Rabies will likely reach the Pacific Coast of Peru—where the virus currently does not occur—within four years, according to a paper published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Evolution
Sep 13, 2016
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30
