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Updated: June 8, 2025
The next night several got into his hammock, and on waking in the morning he found a wound, evidently caused by one of them, on his hip. There were altogether four species. The natives, however, assured him that it was the phyllostoma which had inflicted the wound, and they asserted that it is the only kind which attacks man. But Mr Bates considers that several kinds of bats have this propensity.
No wonder that imaginative people have conferred diabolical instincts on so ugly an animal. Ugly as is the broad leaf-nosed family of bats, it is in reality the least harmless. The little grey Phyllostoma is the guilty blood-sucker which visits sleepers and bleeds them in the night.
He had all along been under the painful impression that some venomous serpent had caused the blood to flow, and now he had no farther fear on that score. He knew that there was no poison in the wound inflicted by the phyllostoma only the loss of a little blood; and this quieted his anxieties at once.
Every year animals are killed by the phyllostoma hastatum, not in hundreds, but in thousands. It is recorded that on one extensive cattle-farm several hundred head were killed in the short period of six months by the bats; and the vaqueros, who received a bounty upon every bat they should capture, in one year succeeded in destroying the enormous number of seven thousand!
By far the greater number belonged to the Dysopes perotis, a species having very large ears, and measuring two feet from tip to tip of the wings. The Phyllostoma was a small kind, of a dark-grey colour, streaked with white down the back, and having a leaf-shaped fleshy expansion on the tip of the nose. I was never attacked by bats except on this occasion.
These creatures suffer, perhaps, without knowing from what cause, for the phyllostoma performs its cupping operation without causing the least pain at all events the sleeper is very rarely awakened by it.
Every year animals are killed by the phyllostoma hastatum, not in hundreds, but in thousands. It is recorded that on one extensive cattle-farm several hundred head were killed in the short period of six months by the bats; and the vaqueros, who received a bounty upon every bat they should capture, in one year succeeded in destroying the enormous number of seven thousand!
Even Guapo could not explain the process. The large teeth of which it has got quite a mouthful seem altogether unfitted to make a hole such as is found where the "phyllostoma" has been at work. Their bite, moreover, would awake the soundest sleeper. Besides these, it has neither fangs, nor stings, nor proboscis, that would serve the purpose. How then does its reach the blood?
The fact of their sucking the blood of persons sleeping, from wounds which they make in the toes, is now well established; but it is only a few persons who are subject to this blood-letting. According to the negroes, the Phyllostoma is the only kind which attacks man. Those which I caught crawling over me were Dysopes, and I am inclined to think many different kinds of bats have this propensity.
The red hair covering its body and large membranous wings added to the hideousness of its aspect, and a more hideous creature could not have been conceived. It was the vampire, the blood-sucking phyllostoma! A short cry escaped from the lips of Leon. It was not a cry of pain, but the contrary. The sight of the great bat, hideous as the creature was, relieved him.
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