Dennis cares for Seba’s short-tailed bats

Bats wrongly have a bad reputation. They are often said to be bloodthirsty vampires! If we look at the facts, however, out of 1300 species of bats, only a few South American species are vampires. These are also not the scary vampires from horror movies but smaller bat species that usually drink blood from livestock, such as cows and goats. After a small bite, they drink a few drops of blood, often from sleeping animals. A cow or goat usually barely notices; you could compare it to mosquitoes drinking blood from sleeping humans. The Seba’s short-tailed bats at Burgers’ Zoo mostly eat fruit, which they supplement with insects, nectar and pollen. They drink water in full flight, scooping it from the surface with their mouths in a dive. The animals also exhibit this behaviour at the water feature in Burgers’ Zoo’s cave enclosure—observant visitors can see it for themselves.