Species
Due to differences among the three species, each has been placed within a different genus, each consisting of one species. In the older literature, these three genera were placed within a family of their own, Desmodontidae, but taxonomists have now grouped them as a subfamily, the Desmodontinae, in the American leaf-nosed bat family, Phyllostomidae.
Because the three known species of vampire bats all seem more similar to one another than to any other species suggests that sanguivorous habits (feeding on blood) evolved only once, and the three species may share a common ancestor.
Read more about this topic: Vampire Bat
Famous quotes containing the word species:
“If we consider the superiority of the human species, the size of its brain, its powers of thinking, language and organization, we can say this: were there the slightest possibility that another rival or superior species might appear, on earth or elsewhere, man would use every means at his disposal to destroy it.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“The French manner of hunting is gentlemanlike; ours is only for bumpkins and bodies. The poor beasts here are pursued and run down by much greater beasts than themselves; and the true British fox-hunter is most undoubtedly a species appropriated and peculiar to this country, which no other part of the globe produces.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)