Vampire Bats and Four Other Extremely Metal Blood-Suckers in Nature

Each Halloween, you’ll see them come out in plastic and rubber varieties, genuinely creeping people out for their cultural connotations. Vampire bats have become icons of fear, mostly for their nocturnal behavior, and are associated with terror, mostly for their diet. But blood is actually the perfect food for these South American creatures: It’s inside the body of every vertebrate animal, and it contains red and white blood cells, so it’s rich in proteins. And yet, despite blood’s status as an excellent food source, feeding on it is rare in the animal kingdom.

Of course, there are drawbacks to an all-blood diet: While the dry-matter phase of blood is about 93 percent proteins, only 1 percent is carbohydrates. Plus, blood is relatively low in vitamins, and it can potentially contain pathogens.

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