Design — Vampire Bat Feeder

As part of Duke's Introductory Engineering Curriculum, freshman are matched with clients in the community. I chose to work with North Carolina Zoo because of the novelty of creating a feeder for Vampire Bats. The goal was to feed the 100s of bats blood in a way that better mirrored their natural conditions. We wanted to completely replace the zoo's currently solution of filling dog-bowls with blood.

After chatting with zookeepers at the NC Zoo, we learned that our primary goal was extending the feeding time for bats from a few minutes to half an hour.

Our inital idea was imitating ball-bearing rabbit feeders, but after many tests of different sized bearings, tubes, and O-rings, our manufacturing capabilities proved to be in-exact for a water-tight seal.

Eventually, we purchased a feeder online to dissassemble, test, and use in our prototype.

Our original prototype was created with the goals of testing vampire bat's climbing / feeding capabilities and the durability of our system.

By creating a tall thin strucutre we hoped to imitate the cow legs that vampire bats fed on in the wild. Unfortunately, we learned bats would simply land on the thin platform rather than climbing and engaging with the "play structure".

We also measured minimal leaking through the rubber seals, even after multiple "drop tests". In the final prototype, however, we hoped to move to a fully plastic and USDA compliant design.