Spend an Hour in the Dark With Bats, Cats and Naked Mole Rats

On a recent morning in the Bronx, three vampire bats circled around a bowl to drink their breakfast: warm beef blood.

Nearby, a red-rumped agouti — a South American rodent that looks like a large, long-legged guinea pig — scuttled behind a tree trunk. A few feet away, an Arabian sand cat put its paw inside a log to grab a mouse. The fluttering noise in the distance was coming from several Egyptian fruit bats that were zooming around.

It was a bright and humid day, but inside the World of Darkness at the Bronx Zoo it was a cool dusk. The exhibit, which was originally installed in 1969, closed in 2009 because of budget trouble. It reopened on Saturday, with a fully updated and reimagined nocturnal experience.