The United States of America in the future will face a problem that seems straight out of a horror movie, but is just one of the countless consequences of climate change. We are talking about the invasion of vampires, who with their diseases like rabies, endangering livestock farms and even people’s health. This is according to a study by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University published in Ecography, which obviously does not focus on Count Dracula and his relatives, but on bats known as vampires, and in particular on the species Desmodus rotundus, the most widespread of the three existing types in the world.

Native to Central and South America, vampires were once much more widespread in the Americas as the Stock vampire, for example, reached as far as Arizona, but their range has dwindled over time, along with their diversity. Today only three species exist, distributed between Central and South America and some remote Caribbean islands. However, they are animals capable of thriving in very different conditions. They are found at sea level, but also on mountain tops. And the University of Virginia study was born precisely from the desire to find out what climatic and geographical factors affect them. What the team found is that vampires prefer areas with a more stable climate, and tend to abandon places where the temperature differences between summer and winter are extreme. Therefore, they are used to “changing houses” and looking for new areas more suitable for their survival. This is exactly what will happen in the South of the United States in the coming years.

Therefore, vampires will also arrive in states such as Louisiana and Florida, where they will find, in the coming decades, more favorable conditions than those of Central America, and it cannot be excluded that, if temperatures continue to rise, they will take bottom moving even more north.

But where is the problem? For health reasons, vampires can bring diseases such as rabies with them and help spread them rapidly among livestock as they suck the blood of large mammals to feed on, and in rare cases, humans.

Already today, vampire victims number in the hundreds in South America. A 2017 study says that in Peru these bats led to the death of 500 animals in 2014 alone, and in the not too distant future the problem may spread to the rest of the continent.

👁️[WPPV-TOTAL-VIEWS]