Millions of years ago, some bats gave up their old habits of hunting for insects and tried something new: drinking blood. These creatures evolved into today’s vampire bats, and it’s mind-boggling to explore all the ways that they evolved to make the most of their sanguine meal.

A lot of the adaptations are easy enough to see with the naked eye. Vampire bats have Dracula-style teeth, for example, which they use to puncture the tough hide of cows. When they open up a crater-shaped wound, they dip in their long tongue, which contains two straw-shaped ducts that take up the blood.

Finding these prey has led to another remarkable adaptation that you can see–at least if you’re a scientist who studies how