vampire bat
noun1
Any of the three small bats of the subfamily Desmodontinae, native to Central and South America, which use their teeth to cut the skin of larger animals while they are asleep and surreptitiously drink blood, their sole source of food.
- I noticed a peculiarity which distinguished these bats from any others with which I had come in contact (and on the Rio Negro my experiences in this respect had been ghastly and terrible: men wither and die there from nightly visitations of vampire bats).1930, Sax Rohmer, The Day the World Ended, published 1969, page xix. 172:
- Synonyms
- vampire
- Derived terms
- false vampire bat, Linnaeus's false vampire bat, spectral vampire bat, white-winged vampire bat
- Hyponyms
- common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus, white-winged vampire bat, Diaemus youngi, hairy-legged vampire bat, Diphylla ecaudata