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Description
In the 15th or 16th Century of the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico, a collared peccary (Dicotyles tajacu) sleeps on the ground after the sun has set, but unbeknownst to the animal, it is being preyed upon by multiple smaller creatures at once. In the wild, the peccary would be prey to jaguars and cougars, but this individual is resting in the relative safety behind a simple fence built by humans. It is not a wild animal, but a domesticated peccary that has been raised with others of its kind by people of the Maya civilization (I mean yes they're keeping it for its meat but jaguars still can't reach it easy). The fence, however, does not keep out all animals. The warm-blooded bodies of livestock gathered together in an outdoor location attracts vampire bats to come and drink their blood. Here, one common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) has bitten a wound into the back of the peccary's neck and is licking the blood up, while three giant vampire bats (Desmodus draculae), each quite a bit bigger than the common vampire bat, also arrive to drink blood. Despite being bitten multiple times and bleeding in places, the peccary remains asleep for the whole process and is entirely unaware that bats are drinking its blood, and the bats won't drink enough to be life-threatening.

One last drawing for Prehistoric Flyers Week (mobile.twitter.com/EDGEinthewi… ) and also decided to have it sorta match with how it's Halloween today by involving vampire bats. Bats are the last animals to have evolved powered flight so far, having evolved flight during the early Cenozoic, and so here's bats for the last day of this theme week.

Commonly called the vampire bats because they are the only mammals to feed exclusively on blood, species in the bat subfamily Desmodontinae are capable of flight like other bats, but are also well-adapted to walking and hopping on the ground on all fours, which they do to get close to sleeping animals to drink their blood. The most common extant species of vampire bat is Desmodus rotundus, aptly named the common vampire bat, which is found from Mexico down south into South America as far as Uruguay and northern Argentina. While the other two extant species of vampire bats drink mainly bird blood, the common vampire bat has a preference for the blood of large mammals. They are known to drink blood from wild animals like tapirs and peccaries, but seem to have a preference for livestock such as horses, pigs and cattle, and are also known to bite humans for our blood. Vampire bats emerge from caves at night to drink blood while their targets are asleep, and can detect body heat to hone in on targets. Able to bite a target without waking it, the saliva of the bat contains anticoagulants which prevent blood from clotting so the bat can keep licking up the blood flowing out for as long as half an hour. The good news is that common vampire bats are tiny, only 9 centimeters long with an 18-centimeter wingspan, and don't drain enough blood from a person to kill. The bad news is that they are known to spread diseases like rabies through their bite, and in fact are now a main vector of rabies in Latin America (though with the bats, the rabies they spread poses more a risk to livestock than humans since that's their preferred prey).

The common vampire bat is the only extant species of the genus Desmodus (the other 2 living species are in other genera), but fossil remains of other extinct species in the genus have been found. The remains of an extinct species called Desmodus draculae have been found across South America and Mexico, and this species was around 30% larger than the common vampire bat, making it comparable in size to Australia's ghost bat (one of the largest extant microchiropteran bats). The majority of the fossil remains of the giant vampire bat (as it is commonly called) are fossilized and date to the Pleistocene epoch (2.5 million to 11,000 years ago), but a canine tooth found in Argentina believed to be from a D. draculae came from sediments dated to as recent as 1650 A.D., suggesting the animal may have lived into historical times and encountered humans from Mesoamerican civilizations like the Aztecs and Mayas. In fact, the giant vampire bat may be the inspiration behind the Mayan god Camazotz, a bat God associated with death and sacrifice. Pleistocene populations of the bat likely drank the blood of extinct megafauna like ground sloths and Macrauchenia, while more recent Holocene individuals probably drank the blood of tapirs, large rodents, the livestock of Mesoamerican people and those people themselves. It has been suggested that the giant vampire bat was so specialized on drinking the blood of megafauna that when most Pleistocene megafauna died out the bats were unable to adapt and died out as well, though that 17th century tooth kinda contradicts this.

The peccaries are hoofed mammals from Latin America that bear extreme resemblance to pigs, but actually belong in their own seperate family Tayassuidae. Like pigs, peccaries are omnivores that forage from food in leaf litter and soil, are around the same size as most wild pigs and live very similar lifestyles. And further like pigs, it has been documented that while they are exclusively wild animals now, some populations of peccaries were once domesticated by people of Mesoamerican civilizations like the Mayans for food and ritual use, and archeological remains of the animals dating up until just before the Spaniards made contact with these civilizations have been found, suggesting that domestic peccaries may have stopped being a thing when Europeans showed up, conquered and looted places. Whole the peccary isn't extinct and technically we can try domesticating them again, the fact that they take longer to mature than pigs and are more likely to kill their own young means pigs are still generally more desirable for modern industry. I don't know if peccary meat tastes that much better than pork to make it worth the try, I've never eaten a peccary.

Description
In the 15th or 16th Century of the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico, a collared peccary (Dicotyles tajacu) sleeps on the ground after the sun has set, but unbeknownst to the animal, it is being preyed upon by multiple smaller creatures at once. In the wild, the peccary would be prey to jaguars and cougars, but this individual is resting in the relative safety behind a simple fence built by humans. It is not a wild animal, but a domesticated peccary that has been raised with others of its kind by people of the Maya civilization (I mean yes they're keeping it for its meat but jaguars still can't reach it easy). The fence, however, does not keep out all animals. The warm-blooded bodies of livestock gathered together in an outdoor location attracts vampire bats to come and drink their blood. Here, one common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) has bitten a wound into the back of the peccary's neck and is licking the blood up, while three giant vampire bats (Desmodus draculae), each quite a bit bigger than the common vampire bat, also arrive to drink blood. Despite being bitten multiple times and bleeding in places, the peccary remains asleep for the whole process and is entirely unaware that bats are drinking its blood, and the bats won't drink enough to be life-threatening.

One last drawing for Prehistoric Flyers Week (mobile.twitter.com/EDGEinthewi… ) and also decided to have it sorta match with how it's Halloween today by involving vampire bats. Bats are the last animals to have evolved powered flight so far, having evolved flight during the early Cenozoic, and so here's bats for the last day of this theme week.

Commonly called the vampire bats because they are the only mammals to feed exclusively on blood, species in the bat subfamily Desmodontinae are capable of flight like other bats, but are also well-adapted to walking and hopping on the ground on all fours, which they do to get close to sleeping animals to drink their blood. The most common extant species of vampire bat is Desmodus rotundus, aptly named the common vampire bat, which is found from Mexico down south into South America as far as Uruguay and northern Argentina. While the other two extant species of vampire bats drink mainly bird blood, the common vampire bat has a preference for the blood of large mammals. They are known to drink blood from wild animals like tapirs and peccaries, but seem to have a preference for livestock such as horses, pigs and cattle, and are also known to bite humans for our blood. Vampire bats emerge from caves at night to drink blood while their targets are asleep, and can detect body heat to hone in on targets. Able to bite a target without waking it, the saliva of the bat contains anticoagulants which prevent blood from clotting so the bat can keep licking up the blood flowing out for as long as half an hour. The good news is that common vampire bats are tiny, only 9 centimeters long with an 18-centimeter wingspan, and don't drain enough blood from a person to kill. The bad news is that they are known to spread diseases like rabies through their bite, and in fact are now a main vector of rabies in Latin America (though with the bats, the rabies they spread poses more a risk to livestock than humans since that's their preferred prey).

The common vampire bat is the only extant species of the genus Desmodus (the other 2 living species are in other genera), but fossil remains of other extinct species in the genus have been found. The remains of an extinct species called Desmodus draculae have been found across South America and Mexico, and this species was around 30% larger than the common vampire bat, making it comparable in size to Australia's ghost bat (one of the largest extant microchiropteran bats). The majority of the fossil remains of the giant vampire bat (as it is commonly called) are fossilized and date to the Pleistocene epoch (2.5 million to 11,000 years ago), but a canine tooth found in Argentina believed to be from a D. draculae came from sediments dated to as recent as 1650 A.D., suggesting the animal may have lived into historical times and encountered humans from Mesoamerican civilizations like the Aztecs and Mayas. In fact, the giant vampire bat may be the inspiration behind the Mayan god Camazotz, a bat God associated with death and sacrifice. Pleistocene populations of the bat likely drank the blood of extinct megafauna like ground sloths and Macrauchenia, while more recent Holocene individuals probably drank the blood of tapirs, large rodents, the livestock of Mesoamerican people and those people themselves. It has been suggested that the giant vampire bat was so specialized on drinking the blood of megafauna that when most Pleistocene megafauna died out the bats were unable to adapt and died out as well, though that 17th century tooth kinda contradicts this.

The peccaries are hoofed mammals from Latin America that bear extreme resemblance to pigs, but actually belong in their own seperate family Tayassuidae. Like pigs, peccaries are omnivores that forage from food in leaf litter and soil, are around the same size as most wild pigs and live very similar lifestyles. And further like pigs, it has been documented that while they are exclusively wild animals now, some populations of peccaries were once domesticated by people of Mesoamerican civilizations like the Mayans for food and ritual use, and archeological remains of the animals dating up until just before the Spaniards made contact with these civilizations have been found, suggesting that domestic peccaries may have stopped being a thing when Europeans showed up, conquered and looted places. Whole the peccary isn't extinct and technically we can try domesticating them again, the fact that they take longer to mature than pigs and are more likely to kill their own young means pigs are still generally more desirable for modern industry. I don't know if peccary meat tastes that much better than pork to make it worth the try, I've never eaten a peccary.