You probably already know that when it comes to everything but intellectual pursuits and wearing cardigans in a knot over one's shoulders, animals have humans beat. All of your senses together can't match what a dog can pick up with its nose, for instance. But every now and then, an animal's sensory superiority goes above and beyond the usual and takes a turn for the bizarre and/or terrifying.

6 Vampire Bats Have a Map of Your Veins

Wikipedia

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Vampire bats are the only mammals that subsist entirely on blood -- otherwise, we'd just call them "bats." Getting their nightly blood dinner, however, requires a supersense that you probably didn't even know existed, and it comes from a nose that looks like it fought leprosy and lost. By, like, a million.

Livescience.com

Bats only appear on film as 1980s school photos.

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That nose that God forgot actually does more than just invite business cards of bat plastic surgeons -- it can sense the heat of your blood flowing through your veins.

Its nose-lip combo contains infrared heat cells that can sense the warmth of the blood at a distance. That in itself is pretty amazing, because all other mammals (including you) have to, you know, actually touch things with their skin to know they're hot. What if you could just sense that the barrel end of your sister's curling iron was 150 degrees before you accidentally sat on it? But the fact that vampire bats sense heat with their face holes isn't the crazy part.

Wikipedia

It's the fact that they refuse to eat or drink unless it's served to them in a sterling silver bowl.

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The crazy part is that they know where the best veins are.

Their system for heat detection is so efficient that they don't waste time tooth-stabbing the hairy parts over and over again to tap a vein, which is impressive, considering that they snack on animals as big as cows. The vampire bat hones right in on the vein, first time, every time.