The difference between vampire and fruit bats

1. What is the similarities between the diet of vampire and fruit-er bats?

The key similarities between the vampire bats and the fruit-er bats is that the vampire is hematophagous while the fruit-er bats are non-hematophagous. The vampire bats are blood sucking vampires, they feed on blood (Brown and William 43). They do this by carefully making small holes in animals and then suck fresh blood off them. (Wilkinson and Gerald 112). The fruit-eating bats just loves feeding on fruits and insects on nectar. Scientists are of the opinion that the vampire bats transformed from the non-hematophagous forefathers.

2. Do bats like food with novel flavors? How can you tell?

Bats like food with novel flavors. After being given a choice between flavored and non-flavored food on day 12, it is evident from the graph that there is a high consumption of the flavored food that the non-flavored on the y-axis(Williams and George 231). The vampire bats showed some high consistent by feeding on the novel flavored food(Gracheva and Elena 421). The fruit-er bats did not consist of their level of feeding because the trend was significant at fast then it dropped consistently.

3. Antabuse is one of medicine that was popular in earlier decades to reduce alcoholism. When given to a subject, sometimes covertly by family members, this drug suppresses breakdown of an alcohol metabolite called acetaldehyde. This metabolite then accumulates in the body and creates nausea. Subject reduces alcohol intake over days because of unpleasant sensations. How does that relate to the behavior shown by fruit-eating bats in figure 2?

From figure two, it is clear that the induction of flavored food to the fruit-eating bats causes the curve do drop from the standard rate. In this case, there is an unpleasant sensation just as the one experienced when there is an accumulation of metabolite in the body(Greenhall, Arthur and Uwe 78). The accumulation of flavored food suppresses the fruit-eating bats, and this lowers their level of activities as compared to the first days when the metabolism was high(Ito and Mikako 89). We can say that flavored food causes the fruit-eating bats to have some nausea due to unpleasant sensations.

4. Both bats behave similarly when novel flavors are presented day after day (first figure). What explains the trend seen in picture one? Give a coherent and parsimonious hypothesis.

From figure one, the taste condition of the bats was changing depending on what they were consuming on different days. For instance, during the even days, the trend kept on rising for the vampire days when they fed on citric acid laced with blood for about ten days(Kalko and Elisabeth 98). After the ten days of feeding, on blood laced with water, the level the treatment for the bats was parallel. This shows that the bats were more active when feeding on citric acid laced with blood than when consuming on water laced with blood(Kunz, Thomas and Carlos 112). Bats love the different flavor. Non-flavored food like water laced with blood makes the trend of treatment to remain parallel just as shown on the odd days on figure one.

5. Both bats behave differently in the experiments described in number 2. What explains trends seen in figure 2? Give a coherent and parsimonious hypothesis.

From figure two, it is evident that the bat's behavior is different while feeding on flavored food consumption both for the vampire bats and the fruit-eating bats. The trend can clearly be observed on day 12 when the bats were given a choice between the flavored versus the non-flavored food(Lande and Russell 32). On the Y-axis, it is clear that the vampire bats were more interested in consuming flavored food. Flavored food made the bats more active as compared to the fruit eating bats (Schneider and Maria 85). It is clear that the fruit bats did not correspond well with the flavored food since they only feed on the non-hematophagous food. From the y-axis, the magnitude of the fruit bats changes on I and D where it drops significantly as compared to the vampire bats where it rises on I and falls slightly on D. it is, therefore, clear that the vampire bats auger well with flavored food as compared to the fruit bats.

Works Cited

Brown, William M. "Natural selection of mammalian brain components." Trends in Ecology & Evolution 16.9 (2001): 471-473.

Greenhall, Arthur Merwin, and Uwe Schmidt. Natural history of vampire bats. CRC Press, 1988.

Gracheva, Elena O., et al. "Ganglion-specific splicing of TRPV1 underlies infrared sensation in vampire bats." Nature 476.7358 (2011): 88-91.

Ito, Mikako, et al. "Genetic characterization and geographic distribution of rabies virus isolates in Brazil: identification of two reservoirs, dogs and vampire bats." Virology 284.2 (2001): 214-222.

Kalko, Elisabeth KV, Edward Allen Herre, and Charles O. Handley. "Relation of fig fruit characteristics to fruit‐eating bats in the New and Old World tropics." Journal of Biogeography 23.4 (1996): 565-576.

Kunz, Thomas H., and Carlos A. Diaz. "Folivory in fruit-eating bats, with new evidence from Artibeus jamaicensis (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae)." Biotropica (1995): 106-120.

Lande, Russell. "Sexual dimorphism, sexual selection, and adaptation in polygenic characters." Evolution (1980): 292-305.

Schneider, Maria Cristina, et al. "Rabies transmitted by vampire bats to humans: an emerging zoonotic disease in Latin America?." Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública 25.3 (2009): 260-269.

Wilkinson, Gerald S. "Food sharing in vampire bats." Scientific American 262.2 (1990): 76-82.

Williams, George Christopher. Adaptation and natural selection: A critique of some current evolutionary thought. Princeton university press, 2008.