My next study is complete, and right on time for the festival. This time I decided to take the seasonal opportunity of being able to study the Blood Bats before and during their mating season. Since Blood Bats have already been previously noticed to only leave their caves during the fall, this was a one time opportunity. Unless I wanted to wait till next year that is.

In the past people have considered Blood Bats to be related to an old Terran mythological creature called a “vampire”. The creature was thought to be a pale human that was nearly immortal, afraid of sunlight, could turn into a bat, and would drink the blood of humans. After the past 3 months of studying Blood Bats, I can see why people would think that they would be related. But I would like to remind everyone that we are very far away from the Sol system and while Venyx has some environmental similarities to Terra, this planet has taken a much different path in evolution and has no native intelligent life. Plus Tarren and Venyxian bats look completely different.

Anyway, Blood Bats are carnivorous but instead of hunting ,they lure their pray to them by hanging high up and secreting a substance from their wings that both looks and smells like blood, but isn’t. After running some tests on the substance it seams to be very high in iron but is missing most of the key parts that would make it blood. From now on I shall refer to this substance as “pseudoblood”. The Blood Bats don’t seam to have control over when they start secreting since they are constantly dripping, though they do seam to increase secretions when they get hungry. Since they produce so much they need to eat a lot, meaning that their main pray happens to be stalkers, and they tend to ignore animals that are any smaller. To catch their pray they dive for it as soon as it stops to sniff the pseudoblood and snaps its neck instantly using it’s claws. It can take about an hour for one finish eating a stalker, leaving nothing behind.

Blood Bats may be nocturnal since they live in caves for most of their lives, but they can still see during the day and live alone, unlike their Tarren counterparts. Blood Bats live very deep in their caves but will slowly get closer to the entrance as October approaches. Once October arrives they leave their caves and will go look for a mate in the forests. During this time due to the bats grouping together, the pseudoblood will pool enough to create a small river if it is on a hill. This causes more and more stalkers to make their way to locations with higher concentrations of bats, letting them have plenty of food for mating, but also means that they need to be carful while they mate.

That’ll do it for all I was able to gather. Like last time if you happen to learn anything that I didn’t cover please let me know so I can update my data, though I would not recommend getting anywhere close to one since it could mean certain death.