It ’s hard to tell who vampire squash racket wish to feast on just by looking at their ordure since they dine entirely on blood . But now , researcher dissect desoxyribonucleic acid isolate from bat muck reveal that they crave pigs ’ blood most , though they ’ll settle for chicken rip , according to a newJournal of Mammalogystudy .
When seek to key out a forager ’s prey preference , you usually visit their fecal matter for fur , undigested bit , or os fragments from their meals . To see whose blood is being sucked by common lamia bats ( Desmodus rotundus ) , a trey conduct by Paulo Bobrowiec from theInstituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazôniaexamined the DNA from faecal samples . They eat eight captive bats blood from chicken , cow , pigs , dog , and human — the most frequently attacked quarry items during the Nox in rural areas of the Brazilian Amazonia . The blood was garner from slaughterhouse ( cows , pigs ) and anesthetized dogs at a vet clinic , and people blood came from a local hematology center ; the chickens were provided live within the squash racket enclosures . The team extracted and amplified DNA from ancestry sampling of each prey species and from 190 fecal sampling from these cricket bat ( that ’s 38 samples of each prey species ) .
Additionally , the squad also captured 157Desmodus rotundusbats and collected 88 faecal samples from 18 little village along a lake and two rivers in central - westerly Brazilian Amazonia . They also measured the accessibility of domestic animals . No trace of wild , rainforest vertebrates ( like cervid or tapir ) were identified in the faecal samples — which hint that they selectively course on domesticated animal . After all , stock is more predictable , detectable , and approachable .
Gallus gallus , they found , were the most attacked prey coinage , making up 61.4 percent of the identifiable sample — but bird is only exploited as a secondary , complementary food generator . When usable , pigs were the extremely prefer prey . druthers is a measure of the dimension of attacked prey and the symmetry of useable prey species : The one attacked more than expected by chance is the one that ’s preferred . According to Science , the cricket bat were seven meter more likely to tip on pigs than chance would predict .
It ’s likely that the bats ’ thirst for pig bed ’ blood is related to its high nutritional value liken with other farm animals , as well as the dark corralling of grunter ( as opposed to horse and cows who might be allowed to roam gratuitous ) . moreover , Desmodussaliva liquefies mammal blood more readily than it does avian parentage — making it easy and quicker to ingest .
