In the seventeenth century, as the conquistadores colonized South and Central America, tales of attacks by bats soon came back to Europe so that people's impression of the bat became even worse. With the blood-sucking vampire bat being a carrier of rabies, the distance between humans and bats increased even further.
十七世紀，西班牙軍人在中南美洲遭蝙蝠攻擊的消息傳回，歐洲人對蝙蝠印象愈加嫌惡；而吸血蝙蝠吸食家畜血液，成為狂犬病的散播者，更令人對所有蝙蝠退避三尺。