No one can say for sure if vampires really turn into bats and fly away when they’re discovered, but vampire bats do exist! There are several other kinds of fruit-eating bats; these are the kind that you see in North America. They might look creepy, but they’re not bloodsuckers. Admit it, if a bat swooped over yuor head, you’d scream like a little girl! EEK!
But vampire bats are real! They actually do live off a diet of nothing but blood. They only come out at night to feed, live in dark places, and they hang upside down to sleep –that sounds eerily like a vampire. doesn’t it?
Bats use echo-location to find their way around. Vampire bats live in small colonies, and at dusk, they emerge from their hiding places to hunt for blood. Not human blood! Certain types of bats will bite and drink the blood of cows or other sleeping animals. They have fangs that can bite through skin so they can lap up blood from the wound. Since bats need blood to survive every couple of days, if a bat hasn’t eaten, one of its bat family members will give the bat a ‘transfusion’. One bat will give blood from their mouth to the other’s so it looks like they’re kissing.
Did you know that bats are the only flying mammals? Well, not the only ones–if you count vampires and witches, they’re one of three flying mammals.
Bats can live to be 20 years old or more in captivity. At the Bat Conservation Center, there’s a 30-year old bat named ‘Barnabus’, so he’s older than many of our guests at Thrillvania.
One of the largest bat colonies is in Texas. Austin is the home to about 2 million bats that live under the Congress bridge .It’s a spooky sight when they all come out at night. No worries about those bats though, these are fruit eating bats, and not vampires. But you never know…what if there really are vampire bats that suck humans’ blood and transform their victims into vampires?…
Join us this weekend at Thrillvania Haunted House Park 2330 County Rd 138, Terrell, Tx 75161. And keep your eye out for those little blood-sucking creatures..