Here's a blurb from enature.com in time for the Halloween season:

"Hairy-legged Vampires


Hairy-legged Vampire Bat
© Merlin D. Tuttle/Bat Conservation International
Discovered in Mexico in the 16th century by the Spanish conquistadores, who named them after the blood-sucking creatures of eastern European legend, vampire bats feed entirely upon blood and occur only in the New World. One is a tiny brown furry creature called the Hairy-legged Vampire Bat.

Sleeping by day in caves or other dark, protected places, Hairy-legged Vampire Bats feed at night, chiefly on the blood of birds, such as chickens, turkeys, guinea fowl, ducks, and geese. The bat uses its sharp upper incisors to quickly inflict a wound so shallow that the victim rarely notices. Curling the tongue into a tube that fits a V-shaped notch in its lower lip, the feeding bat sips the blood, which flows freely due to an anticoagulant in its saliva. Unless the victim is very small, the amount of blood taken by the bat is not harmful. These large-eyed bats, which live from central Mexico south into South America, rarely feed on mammals."


...the curling the tongue into a tube part was interesting. Remember that genetic test? Some people can curl their tongues; others cannot? Now we know the tongue curlers evolved from these vampire bats...or maybe vice versa!

Bat regards,
WW

Dear WW: Bloodsucking is just a small part of nastiness of vampire bats. Far worse is the fact
that they are probably biggest reservoir of rabies. And insectivorous bats who share caves
with them pick up the virus in winter and in spring bring virus North. Although now there is
so much rabies in racoons that bat vectors are no longer important. I have read it is possible
to contract rabies just from exploring caves in Mexico.

who named them after the blood-sucking creatures of eastern European legend

Dear Ms. Wordwind,

This is to put you on immediate notice the the Hungarian/Magyar Anti-Defamation Society is both alarmed and offended at the above cited remark from your post, and we demand it's immediate removal or we will pursue litigation against you! We feel it is a gross injustice to reinforce these insensitive vampiric stereotypes of Hungarians for either humorous or voyeuristic purposes, and we call on you to desist from this practice immediately. Oh, and...We'd like like to suck your blood! Blahhh! Blahhh!

Dear WO'N: Dracula didn't come from Hungary.
"Bram Stoker penned his immortal classic, Dracula, he based his vampire villian on an actual
historical figure. Stoker's model was Vlad III Dracula (called Tepes, pronounced tse-pesh); a
fifteenth century viovode, or prince, of Wallachia of the princely House of Basarab. Wallachia is a
provence of Romania bordered to the north by Transylvania and Moldavia, to the east by the Black
Sea and to the south by Bulgaria. "

So true, Dr. Bill. Vlad the Impaler was Roumanian, another reason people should stop hanging all this vampiric madness on the Hungarians just because Bela Lugosi was a Hunky. Sheesh! Oh, and...look deeply into my eyes...

I once had a copy of The Annotated Dracula that included a lot of notes about the historical Vlad the Impaler. He just had victims stuck on top of huge stakes all over the countryside, right up through the sternums, like a collection of human shishkebobs, but only one per stake. There were etchings of Vlad's many murders. And, if memory serves me, these impalings were conducted somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania.

I never knew Bela Lugosi was Hungarian, Juan! He's my favorite dracula although I'll probably never see that movie again. The opening music is from "Swan Lake," and is pretty creepy. Can't ever hear "Swan Lake" without thinking of Dracula.