WARNING: Video is very graphic.
U.S. health authorities have announced the first death by a vampire bat in the United States.
According to the AFP, on July 15, 2010, a 19-year-old man was bitten by a vampire bat in Michoacan, Mexico. Ten days later, the migrant farm worker left for the U.S. to pick sugar cane at a Louisiana plantation. He fell sick, presenting symptoms of fatigue, shoulder pain, numbness in his left hand and a drooping left eye.
Tests later confirmed that the teenager had rabies. There is no cure for rabies and the youth died within days after his family took him off life support. The only time rabies can be stopped is before the onset of symptos. This is the first human death from vampire bat rabies in the United States. To date, no vampire bats exist in the United States. According to the CDC:
“Although vampire bats currently are found only in Latin America, research suggests that the range of these bats might be expanding as a result of changes in climate. Expansion of vampire bats into the United States likely would lead to increased bat exposures to both humans and animals (including domestic livestock and wildlife species) and substantially alter rabies virus dynamics and ecology in the southern United States.”
This doesn’t sound like very good news. There is discussion about killing vampire bats before they become a threat to the United States population.
WARNING! VIDEO IS VERY GRAPHIC! MAJOR EEEEEEWWWWW FACTOR.
Should we plan to kill off the vampire bat or will they stay out of the United States? Is this a new immigration fear? A fence won’t keep bats out.
Re: Killing of Vampire Bats. What would Starry keep in his belfry?
Just to put the shoe on the other foot, so to speak, Brookfield Zoo outside Chicago has a large display of vampire bats. So many bats, in fact, that they had to give some of them away to a group called the Organization for Bat Conservation (OBC). The OBC has a program in which anyone who wishes to contribute can “adopt” a vampire bat (just adopt, not bring it home). The bats are fed with donated cow’s blood.
The OBC is all about how beneficial all bats are to the environment — which is basically true. The bats (non-vampire) around our house are like RAF fighter squadrons going after the mosquito Luftwaffe. Bats of all kinds can get rabies, but I think the incidence is probably no higher than that of other mammals also susceptible to that disease. But, just so you don’t get too comfortable with that, Loudoun County is often rated at or near the top in the Commonwealth for confirmed rabies cases and, of course, borders good old PWC.
@Wolverine
I like bats and encourage them to live in my yard. They turned up their nose at the bat house my son built.
I don’t want vampire bats though. They are predetors.
These things are rather ingenious little creatures. Their saliva consists partly of an anticoagulant which keeps the blood flowing after the bite.
@Cato the Elder
Pretty sure mosquitos and several other types of animals have the same thing.