vampire bat

English

Noun

vampire bat (plural vampire bats)

1. Any of the three small bats of the subfamily Desmodontinae, native to Central and South America, which use their teeth to cut the skin of larger animals while they are asleep and surreptitiously drink blood, their sole source of food.
   • 1930, Sax Rohmer, The Day the World Ended, published 1969, page xix. 172:

     I noticed a peculiarity which distinguished these bats from any others with which I had come in contact (and on the Rio Negro my experiences in this respect had been ghastly and terrible: men wither and die there from nightly visitations of vampire bats).

A vampire bat.

Synonyms

• vampire

Hyponyms

• common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus
• white-winged vampire bat, Diaemus youngi
• hairy-legged vampire bat, Diphylla ecaudata

Derived terms

• false vampire bat
• Linnaeus's false vampire bat (Vampyrum spectrum)
• spectral vampire bat (Vampyrum spectrum)
• white-winged vampire bat (Diaemus youngi)

Translations

bat of the subfamily Desmodontinae

• Asturian: vampiru (ast)
• Catalan: vampir (ca) m
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 吸血蝠 (zh) (xīxuèfú)

• Czech: upír (cs) m
• Estonian: vereimeja
• Finnish: vampyyri (fi), vampyyrilepakko
• French: chauve-souris vampire (fr) f
• German: Vampirfledermaus m
• Greek: νυχτερίδα (el) (nychterída)
• Irish: vaimpír f
• Italian: pipistrello vampiro m
• Malay: kelawar langsuir m
• Ottoman Turkish: وامپیر (vampir)
• Polish: wampir (pl) m
• Portuguese: morcego-vampiro m
• Romanian: liliac vampir m, vampir (ro) m
• Russian: вампи́р (ru) m (vampír)