Summary
February 27, 2009: In Nicaragua, many towns are plagued by vampire bats. Normally, vampire bats attack primarily livestock, but when cattle herds are sold off or moved elsewhere, the bats will look for other prey - including humans. Their bite is razor sharp, which means that sleeping humans often don't notice the bite until much later, and the saliva contains a strong anticoagulating agent which causes the victim to bleed for hours. Furthermore, vampire bats often transmit rabies.
Professional exterminators frequently catch single vampire bats and coat them with poison. Once the bat returns to the colony, the other bats will try to lick it clean, poisoning themselves in the process. The article actually refers to the exterminators as Vampire Hunters.
It also says that simple mosquito netting around the beds would be enough to keep the vampires out - but in that impoverished area people can't afford mosquito nets.
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Source
Game and Story Use
- Global Warming could cause vampire bats to migrate northwards - perhaps as far as the United States.
- Similar extermination approaches could work on other vermin in science fiction or fantasy campaigns.
- The bats eat mosquitoes. So if the bats are killed off, you could have an outbreak of dengue fever or other skeeter-carried diseases.
- Vampire bats don't eat mosquitoes … the mosquito eating bats were the ones at risk of death if the vampires were controlled by old fashioned strategies like dynamiting bat caves. Which would be useful for an RPG plot, because if there's one thing PCs usually like it's a brute force strategy.
- A Philanthropist donates mosquito nets, and the exterminators send poison into the nest, but nothing works. Bats keep coming from somewhere, and get through the nets, windows, etc. Because they're actually real vampires, with human intelligence and supernatural powers, and immune to poison.