<\/div>\n
Researchers looked at the carbon dioxide they exhaled on the treadmill and found traces of amino acids, the building blocks of protein.<\/p>\n
The ratio of CO2 to oxygen (respiratory exchange ratio) stayed the same at all speeds.<\/p>\n
It suggests the bats’ main source of energy was their protein-rich blood meal, rather than the stored carbohydrate and fat primarily used by most other mammals.<\/p>\n
Researchers say it shows “how strongly metabolism can be shaped by a specialized diet” because the diet of vampire bats is relatively low in carbohydrate and fat.<\/p>\n
Common vampire bats are only about 7-9cm long but can double their weight after one blood-sucking feeding session.<\/p>\n
They emerge at night, using sonar to navigate and detecting prey using heat sensors in their face. A strong anticoagulant in their saliva stops the blood of their prey from clotting during a meal.<\/p>\n
The study, by Giulia Rossi at McMaster University and Kenneth Welch from University of Toronto, is published in the journal Biology Letters.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on sky.com<\/div>\n
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Vampire bats have been put on a treadmill as a study showed the special way they use blood for energy – as well as how quickly they can run. Footage shows one bat using its wings to sprint along inside a plastic box at up to 30 metres per minute. The vampire bat is one <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9614,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}