Vampire Bat

So, just there ahead of us, that dark hole, is a cave and that's where we're heading. Watch your step, it's slippery.

Heading into the dark where the vampires roost is seriously spooky stuff. The cave stinks with hundreds of years of poo.

It's the perfect hidey-hole for bats. In the darkest corners of the cave, fluttering shapes catch my eye.

Oh, look at that! Can you see that Johnny? One in? Yep, got one . So what I have in this bag is an animal that's probably inspired more meatmyth and legend than any other animal in the world.

It's a vampire bat. They have also possibly the sharpest teeth of any animal, which explains why I'm wearing these big, thick gardening gloves before I even think about trying to get it out.

Last time I tried to do this, it bit clean through the glove and into my finger. So I'm going to go to quite careful. Right!

Let's get you into a good position. Look at him whirling around to try and get his... huge canine teeth into my fingers. Okay.

So that is the face that all the fuss is about: the vampire bat. If you look at its mouth, you can see the most special set of teeth found just about anywhere.

Above me now is a roost of about 30 or 40 vampire bats and at night,they'll take wing using that remarkable wing membrane, and fly out in search of a warm-blood meal.

They use the ridiculously sharp teeth at the front of the mouth here... I don't want to get my finger too close.

I just know I'll get bitten on camera! But they shave away a portion of hair from the animal they're going to be feeding on, and then bite a tiny hole and then lap away at the blood that leaks out, and their saliva keeps the blood flowing, it's what's called an anticoagulant.

They take in about a soup spoon of blood, which doesn't sound like much but when you look at the size of this tiny bat, actually for its body weight, that's an enormous meal.

While it might seem that everything about vampire bats is just a bit grim and grotesque amongst themselves, they're really quite thoughtful creatures.

In fact, if they come back from having got a very good meal, and there's another bat here that hasn't managed to feed, one of these guys will actually regurgitate their blood meal and give some to the other bat.

They look after each other. So vampire bats - they may be the creature of nightmares but with possibly the sharpest teeth in the whole animal kingdom, I reckon they're worth a place on the Deadly 60.