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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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
(Phys.org)—A pair of researchers, one with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the other the University of Maryland, has found evidence that suggests vampire bats regurgitate blood into the mouths of others ...
As the closest real-world cousin of a Halloween nightmare, the vampire bat is unique among vertebrates because it feeds only on the blood of other mammals. But according to new research from two Texas Tech University faculty ...
Ecology
Nov 2, 2015
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