Welcome to You Ask Andy

Paul Jones, age 10, of Atlanta, Ga 

Do vampire bats really exist?

Yea, indeed there are vampire bats in the world  They dine on warm blood taken from a living victim, Fortunately there are not many of them and they live only in the warm, tropical regions from Mexico south to Brazil  These are also false vampire bats who dine on fresh mast, They catch and eat small animals in Asia, Africa, Australia and the East Indies; A certain bat of China has bean reported to drink blood like his vampire cousins, but the experts hive no sure proof of this, Until we have proof, this little fellow will be classed among the false vampire bats,

The true vampire bats make us think of horrible goings‑on in the dark and eerie night, We may have read hair‑raising tales or seen fantastic movies of huge vampire bats swooping down to drain the blood from their helpless victims  These ghastly, blood‑curdling stories are far from the truth, In the first place, the vampire bat is a little fellow no more than three inches long 

What's more, he i s far more handsome than some of his batty cousins  He has a mousy face with large pointed ears and a coat of soft, reddish‑brown fur  The remarkable thing about him is his teeth, There are no back teeth at all but the long and slender front teeth are sharp as the sharpest razor, Actually, these front teeth are his cutting instruments and the vampire bat is a very skillful surgeon 

He works so quietly and gently that the victim feels no pain, or very, very little at most  He settles so softly on the neck of a sleeping horse that the animal rarely wakes, The toothy surgical instruments gently make a small slit in a blood vessel and the blood comes oozing forth  Then the vampire bat quietly and gently laps up the warm, red liquid.

For this is his only food. When dinner is finished, off he flies to roost in a cave or rocky crevice  The horse may never know about the wound on his nook and it may soon heal  However, there is one danger, and a great big one  The bite of the bat may carry germs and the wound may become infected  The vampire bats even have been known to hand on the terrible disease of rabies  Horses, cattle, other warm‑blooded animals and even human beings have been wounded and poisoned by vampire bats 

Though vampire bats are rarer no sensible person sleeps outdoors where the bloodthirsty little fellows are likely to live  As a rule, several of the little monsters arrive together, for they live in colonies of a dozen or so and usually go out to dine in a group  Sad to say, the small numbers of vampire bats have given a bad name to the entire bat clan, and this is not fair  Our little brown bat and most other bats are our friends  They do no harm and devour vast hordes of our insect enemies.

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