Welcome to Zoologic! This blog will be a celebration of animal intelligence in the many forms it takes. I'll cover new discoveries in animal behavior and cognition to illustrate that "intelligence" isn't limited to humans, primates, or even vertebrates. Animal intelligence includes feats of perception, learning, and memory; methods of communication using sounds, chemicals, and touch; problem-solving, decision-making, and tool-using; and the social savvy necessary for mating, friendship, and deception.
I earned my Ph.D. in psychology from Brown University, where I studied bat echolocation. I have since left the world of academic research for science writing, and while I miss seeing bats every day, I love learning about the variety of remarkable research conducted worldwide.
With Zoologic, I'm committed to bringing you stories about the most amazing and oddest animal behaviors. And each month, I'll highlight a critter that strikes my fancy in the Creature Feature.
I thought a good way to inaugurate this blog would be to share my answer to a question posed in the Wired Science application: What hybrid species do you wish existed, and why? (Check out Wired's gallery of other fictional hybrid creatures). Once I started thinking about my imaginary creature, I got a little carried away. And so I introduce to you, dear readers, the vampire naked mole bat.
The vampire naked mole bat combines two of my favorite creatures: the common vampire bat and the naked mole rat. They're both pretty awesome on their own, but hybridized, they create an ugly-adorable superbeast.
The vampire bat and the naked mole rat actually have a lot in common. They're both remarkably long-lived for their size. In captivity, a vampire bat can live to be 20 years old and a naked mole rat might make it to 30 (that's about nine times longer than other rodents). Both animals prefer hot environments and live most of their lives in complete darkness: naked mole rats in underground tunnels and vampire bats in caves and other dark places. They both live in large colonies of mostly-related individuals. Naked mole rats thrive in environments low in oxygen and high in ammonia and carbon dioxide; vampire bat roosts are often low in oxygen and high in ammonia due to the digested blood that collects on the walls and ground. Both animals tend to use senses other than vision. The tiny eyes of naked mole rats see very little underground, so they rely on their senses of hearing, smell, and touch. Vampire bats use their sensitive hearing when echolocating and listening for the regular breathing sounds of their sleeping prey. And they both have very active social lives, whether it's huddling in piles for warmth in the case of the mole rats or grooming each other and caring for one another's young in the bat colony.
I'm using my mad scientist skills to combine these two animals and keep the best parts of both. The vampire naked mole bat has a hairless, wrinkled, sausage-shaped body and a pair of functional wings. Like the naked mole rat, it is nearly immune to cancer and impervious to the pain of acid burns. The vampire naked mole bat possesses several of the vampire bat's adaptations for feeding on blood. Like the vampire bat, it has the ability to detect infrared radiation with thermoreceptors in its nose, allowing it to pinpoint areas on its prey where the blood flows close to the skin. And its saliva contains an anticoagulant (named draculin, proving scientists can have senses of humor) that prevents the wounds they slice open on their prey from clotting. If the vampire naked mole bat has jaws as strong as a naked mole rat (about 25% of its muscle mass is in its jaws), it may be able to feed on especially large and thick-skinned prey. Sleeping elephants, perhaps?
The vampire naked mole bat is charming, with a face so far beyond ugly that it's cute. It shares the vampire bat's ability to walk, run, hop, and bound on all fours along the ground. Despite its tubular body, it is agile and stealthy. Its long, healthy lifespan means social bonds are especially strong. I like to imagine a colony of vampire naked mole bats, huddling their wrinkled, pink bodies close together, neighbors gently squeaking "hello" to one another. Maybe one sorry individual could not find a blood meal that night — not to worry, her friend will regurgitate some blood for her after a little grooming. Warm, happy, full of blood, enjoying the companionship of relatives and friends, the vampire naked mole bats get sleepy and close their tiny eyes. Somewhere distant, the sun is rising, but not for them. They have everything they need in the darkness. For now, they sleep the content and dreamless sleep that comes to such magical creatures.
*What hybrid species do you wish existed? Leave your thoughts in the comments or tweet your ideas with #hybridspecies. *
