Home › Volumes › American Animals › Leaf-nosed Bats
Leaf-nosed Bats
Images coming soon.
Description. Head broad and thick, nose-leaf, consisting of a high-pointed central lobe and two smaller lateral ones separated from the middle one by the nostrils. No tail. Interfemoral membrane reaching to the ankles, but much hollowed out in the middle. Colour, deep brown or gray, with more or less ashy tips to the fur.
This is only a rare straggler to our southernmost coast, and is the only representative of the leaf-nosed or vampire bats that we have in the eastern United States, though one occurs in California and another in Texas.
In tropical America they are numerous, and feed mainly upon fruit, as does the present species; two species, however, suck blood from living animals, and concerning them many fanciful stories have been written.