Vampire bats usually, or perhaps quite frequently, freak us out. Goosebumps immediately pop up when seeing or even thinking about their thin webbing between their long digits; their sharp, tiny fangs and their black, beady, little eyes. But an interesting and evolutionarily advantageous behavior of theirs may freak us out even more, and not because it’s spooky. It’s good. It’s quite amazing. They help each other out. They scratch each other’s backs (not literally). They reciprocate – something we as doctors and even as humans often have a difficult time doing. Reciprocation is hard but it’s extremely beneficial for all involved in both the short and long term. If little vampire bats can do it, I’m sure we can too!

Here’s the lesson. After a successful night of bloodsucking vampire bats will regurgitate blood into the mouth of another genetically unrelated vampire bat that was not successful in their hunt. The unsuccessful bat will then remember the good deed of the kind bat and reciprocate in the future. Furthermore, the unfortunate vampire bat will share blood primarily with those bats who had helped them before. And again, they aren’t even related. What a nice relationship!

I feel as humans we don’t think twice about helping relatives, but we often must consider things before helping an unrelated person. As doctors, too, perhaps we are more likely help our friends or give preference to a client we know versus an unknown doctor or unfamiliar client. Either way, reciprocation is an important part of veterinary medicine and we should think about it more. Just like we fear little vampire bats sucking our blood, we should let reciprocation haunt our dreams and completely take over our minds.