"No bat so fires our imagination or is more renowned than the common vampire bat of tropical America. Its singular diet of warm blood, its stealthy nighttime attacks, and its capability of transmitting deadly diseases all create an aura of fear and fascination."--BOOK JACKET. "To present a picture of these parasitic mammals in true-life form, zoologist David Brown has gathered and distilled an enormous amount of factual information, while sifting through the mythology of the "vampyre" in both the Old and New Worlds."--Jacket.