Top Ten Most Vampiric Animals in the World

1.Vampire Bats

Vampire bats are bats whose food source is blood, a dietary trait called hematophagy. There are three bat species that feed solely on blood: the Common Vampire Bat , the Hairy-legged Vampire Bat , and the White-winged Vampire Bat . Vampire bats tend to live in colonies in almost completely dark places, such as caves, old wells, hollow trees, and buildings. They range in Central to South America and live in arid to humid, tropical and sub tropical areas. Vampire bats live in colonies that can number in the thousands in roosting sites.

2.Candirú

Candiru or vampire fish, are a number of genera of parasitic freshwater catfish in the family Trichomycteridae; all are native to the Amazon River. Candirus inhabit the Amazon and Orinoco rivers of lowland Amazonia, where they constitute part of the Neotropical fish fauna. Candirus are hematophagous and parasitize the gills of larger Amazonian fishes, especially catfishes of the family Pimelodidae.

3.Female mosquito

Mosquitoes are a family of small midge-like flies, the Culicidae. Most species are harmless, even useful, but many are blood-sucking nuisances. Mosquito habits of oviposition, the ways in which they lay their eggs, vary considerably between species, and the morphologies of the eggs vary accordingly. The simplest procedure is that followed by many species of Anopheles: like many other gracile species of aquatic insects, females just fly over the water, bobbing up and down to the water surface and dropping eggs more or less singly.

4.Tick

Ticks are parasites that attach to an animal and bury their mouthparts below the skin and drink blood. They can affect both dogs and cats but rarely are animals infected with the dog-specific tick. Ticks satisfy all of their nutritional requirements on a diet of blood, a practice known as hematophagy. They extract the blood by cutting a hole in the host’s epidermis, into which they insert their hypostome, likely keeping the blood from clotting by excreting an anticoagulant.

5.Lamprey

Lampreys  are a family of jawless fish, whose adults are characterized by a toothed, funnel-like sucking mouth. They are found in most temperate regions except those in Africa. Their larvae have a low tolerance for high water temperatures, which may explain why they are not distributed in the tropics.

6.Bedbug

Bed bugs are parasitic insects that prefer to feed on human blood. Bed bugs are mainly active at night but are not exclusively nocturnal and are capable of feeding on their host without being noticed. Bed bugshave been known as human parasites for thousands of years. At a point in the early 1940s they were mostly eradicated in the developed world but since 1995 have recently increased in prevalence. Because infestation of human habitats has been on the increase, bed bug bites and related conditions have been on the rise as well.

7.Kissing bug

They are mainly found and widespread in the Americas, with a few species present in Asia, Africa andAustralia. These bugs usually share shelter with nesting vertebrates, from which they suck blood. Theskin on the lips and around the eyes is relatively thin, and thus easier for the kissing bugs to pierce. The bites of these bloodsuckers are painless, and victims will often not know that they have been bitten until they awaken in the morning with a swollen, bug-kissed lip or a puffy eye.

8.Leech

Leeches are segmented worms that belong to the phylum Annelida and comprise the subclass Hirudinea. Their bodies are much more solid as the spaces in their coelom are dense with connective tissues. They also have two suckers, one at each end. The majority of leeches live in freshwater environments, while some species can be found in terrestrial and marine environments, as well.

9.Flea

Fleas are external parasites, living by hematophagy off the blood of mammals  and birds. Adult fleas must feed on blood before they can become capable of reproduction. Flea systematics are not entirely fixed. While, compared to many other insect groups, fleas have been studied and classified fairly thoroughly, details still remain to be learned about the evolutionary relationships among the different flea lineages.

10.Louse

The louse is a wingless parasite living on the bodies of warm-blooded animals. True lice suck blood and spend their entire lives as parasites. The eggs, or nits, are usually attached to the hair of the host. Three kinds can infest humans: the body louse, the head louse, and the crab louse.