An article in Science News examines some of the challenges inherent in feeding on blood:
Jennifer Zaspel can't explain why she stuck her thumb in the vial with the moth. Just an after-dark, out-in-the-woods zing of curiosity.
She was catching moths on a July night in the Russian Far East and had just eased a Calyptra, with brownish forewings like a dried leaf, into a plastic collecting vial. Of the 17 or so largely tropical Calyptra species, eight were known vampires. Males will vary their fruit diet on occasion by driving their hardened, fruit-piercing mouthparts into mammals, such as cattle, tapirs and even elephants and humans, for a drink of fresh blood.
Zaspel, however, thought she was outside the territory where she might encounter a vampire species. She had caught C. thalictri, widely known from Switzerland and France eastward into Japan as a strict fruitarian.
Before capping the vial with the moth, "I just for no good reason stuck my thumb in there to see what it would do," Zaspel says. "It pierced my thumb and started feeding on me."
Make that eight-plus vampires. Zaspel, an entomologist now at the Milwaukee Public Museum, is still puzzling over the genetics of the moths at the two Russian field sites she visited in 2006. Males there will bite a researcher's thumb if offered, yet genetic testing so far shows the moths are part of a vast, otherwise mild-mannered species.
Not just moths, but mosquitoes, ticks, bed bugs, and bats, too.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @10:58AM (1 child)
They run for office.
/ba-dum-tsh
(Score: 1) by doc_doofus on Thursday October 19 2017, @11:34AM
Beat me to it.
My first thought was move to D.C.
Bravo Zulu
"Just because you're real, doesn't necessarily mean that you're intelligent." - Inspirobot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @11:43AM
Perhaps little buggers were exerting a defensive aggressive behavior?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday October 19 2017, @12:45PM
" ... are part of a vast, otherwise mild-mannered species."
I know when Buffy went on the hunt it was part of some giant hate-crime-fueled-killing-spree.
(Score: 3, Funny) by AssCork on Thursday October 19 2017, @03:05PM (1 child)
"And that's how I was assaulted" #MeToo
Seriously, WTF? This is how we get "Moth Flu", people!
Just popped-out of a tight spot. Came out mostly clean, too.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday October 19 2017, @05:24PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64Xb_msonNE [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @03:31PM (2 children)
In unrelated news, Zaspel acquired a habit of working only at night and avoiding sunlight. Also she developed an aversion to garlic.
And in other unrelated news, near her place there were several reports of people being bitten at night.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Thursday October 19 2017, @06:15PM (1 child)
Still a better love story than Twilight.
[ducks]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @08:26PM
those aren't ducks, those are bats!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20 2017, @02:29AM
Moth was using her as a salt lick. Current theory is that blood-feeders of genus Calyptra drink blood for sodium, not protein.