"Of course people are scared. They're abandoning their homes, temporarily, to go deeper into the jungle," said Shapiom Noningo, vice president of the Inter-Ethnic Association of the Peruvian Jungle.

Luis Suarez, director general of the health ministry's epidemics department, told Reuters there had been two separate outbreaks, one September to October when three children died and another in November when eight died.

"They were all under six," Suarez told Reuters in a phone interview. A total of 1,101 people have been bitten -- the last in December -- and are receiving rabies vaccines, some of which were brought in from Argentina and Ecuador, he added.

Vampire bats -- which only live in Latin America -- only eat blood, and only turn to humans when animals are unavailable since they will die if they fail to feed for two days.

Despite their bad reputation, US bat expert Merlin Tuttle said vampire bats were in fact gentle and easily tamed, and should not be demonized.

The bats shun light and typically sneak up on sleeping humans and nip their heads or toes. Curiously, they often develop a taste for a particular person's blood.

Noningo said 10,000 people lived in the whole valley but 2,500 were in the most affected areas, home to the Huambisa and Aguaruna tribes.

BATTLING THE BATS

Suarez said the locals attributed the first deaths to sorcery and did not allow government officials to take samples or perform autopsies. They are, however, accepting vaccines.

It can take several months for someone who is bitten to develop rabies -- a virus that causes a painful death within days after symptoms appear if untreated. The vampire bats themselves also die, usually within two weeks, Suarez said.

The UN's children fund, is giving $8,800 to help battle the bats and has put up nets to trap them at night, said Mario Tavera, UNICEF Peru's health coordinator.

Bat catchers go out with torches before dawn to pick up the bats and smear them with poison before releasing them. They go back to their bat caves and pass on the poison through licks.

Tuttle, founder of Bat Conservation International, a Texas-based organization devoted to preserving and researching bats and the ecosystems they serve, said that was pointless. "It makes no sense at all to try to go out to destroy bats. In my experience, 95 percent of those killed are ones that have some beneficial effect, like eating mosquitoes," he said.

He said the best answer was the cheapest: mosquito nets, which bats never bite through.