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Vampire Bat Research Paper

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Firstly, Vampire bats and their survival are important to the food chain and are a secondary pollinator leading to increases in plant based food production of which helps to prevent famine in a particular area where they are common. Many tropical to subtropical and desert plants depend on bats for pollination. These plants include but are not limited to mangoes, bananas, and desert plants like the fruit of the cactus etc. A bat pollinates by landing on a plant and/or flower and the pollen of that plant sticks to bat's fur as the bat continues to do this the traits and attributes of the parent plants are spread to cover a larger area. In recent years the poverty rate has soared in recent years leading to as many as many as ten thousand people …show more content…

While vampire bats do not consume insects such as mosquitos most other species of bats do so and as such the attempted culling of the vampire bat population often affects to populations of other bat species that are harmed and or killed because of them being confused for vampire bats and being killed because of it. A typical female brown bat weighs roughly forty grams and consume their entire body weight in one night. If a brown bat were to consume strictly mosquitos, they would be able to consume sixteen thousand mosquitoes in a night. Meaning that under perfect circumstances a singular brown bat could consume approximately sixteen thousand mosquitos that may be carrying diseases in a single night. One hundred would represent a more conservatively oriented estimate. While I understand the viewpoint of the culling of the vampire bat population to reduce rabies recent studies have shown that this may be counterproductive. This is because younger vampire bats have a higher immunity and more rabies antibodies in there system. This is because younger healthy vampire bats are one of the most active groomers meaning that they are the most affected by culling via poisons. Because of this the bats with higher resistance to rabies will not have children and spread this trait onto their

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