You may think vampires are limited to the tales of undead humans drinking blood, but you might be surprised to learn about one peculiar so-called vampire tree found in the forests of New Zealand.

Scientists found vampire-like behaviour in the stump of a living tree. The tree had extended its roots into an interweaving community of surrounding trees, forming what the study authors called a super organism. The vampire tree grafts its roots onto dozens or even hundreds of other trees, sucking in the water and nutrients at night that the other trees spent all day collecting.

Without the water and nutrients drained from its neighbours, the tree stump would most certainly be dead. It lacks green tissue of its own, according to study co-author Sebastian. As for why the host trees don’t cut off the leaching stump, he and his colleagues theorized the vampire tree’s super organism acts as a network of water and nutrients, taking turns pumping resources to one another.

Sebastian and Baden went on to uncover the stump’s nature by measuring the flow of water in the stump and the surrounding trees of the same species. In effect, they found a strong negative correlation in the water flow between the trees. In other words, though genetically different, they were sharing resources thanks to grafted roots recognizing nearby root tissue.

Researchers are looking for more types of tree stumps to further study the formation of root systems between stumps and living trees. Should they discover more vampire trees and the scope of the research expands, a better understanding of such resource-sharing super organisms may be significant to the longevity of forests.