Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop work
Speaker 1: dot com. Modern science has not only shown us how
Speaker 1: fragile human life is, but even the entire planet, or
Speaker 1: the entire universe as we know it, is on the
Speaker 1: edge of extinction. Perhaps only the already dead, the zombies,
Speaker 1: and the vampires, will have the strength to survive the
Speaker 1: apocalyptic disasters so often predicted these days, involving exploding sun spots,
Speaker 1: gigantic volcanoes, meteor attacks, and rampaging epidemics that can wipe
Speaker 1: out whole populations in an instant. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Christian Sager, and we just began the show with
Speaker 1: a quote from Mary Halab from her article Vampires and
Speaker 1: Medical Science that is printed in the February two fifteen
Speaker 1: issue of the Journal of Popular Culture. Why, because we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the physics and mathematics of vampire
Speaker 1: blood sucking today. Yeah. Now, if you're a long time
Speaker 1: listening to Stuff to Blow your Mind, uh, and you
Speaker 1: visit our website, perhaps you're familiar with the Monster Science
Speaker 1: the video series. You know from all these avenues that
Speaker 1: we've we've touched on vampires before in the past. Uh,
Speaker 1: this time, we're we're largely going to deal with you know,
Speaker 1: a little a little physics, a little um fluid mechanics,
Speaker 1: a little mathematics, as well as just taking you through
Speaker 1: the the evolution of natural world vampires as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, certainly we love vampires. Here's stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. I think as as uh you know, as
Speaker 1: a people humans uh cannot get over the Yeah, as
Speaker 1: you know, we are fans of and did an episode
Speaker 1: on the Strange, that's right. Uh, and it was interesting.
Speaker 1: There was stuff in the research for today's episode that
Speaker 1: brought up the strain for me that I didn't find
Speaker 1: when we were doing research on the strain um, like
Speaker 1: in particular different kinds of tongues and bats and how
Speaker 1: they consumed blood. Yeah. I mean, we could really just
Speaker 1: do vampire episode after vampire episode and find just probably
Speaker 1: a whole podcast out there vampires. I mean, and even
Speaker 1: when you're getta do this, our fascination with it, just
Speaker 1: the mythological appeal of vampires, you know, despite our best
Speaker 1: efforts to just totally kill it with with with a
Speaker 1: steak in the party, with a steak in the heart,
Speaker 1: especially a cinematic steak in the heart. Through some of
Speaker 1: just the sort of trite rehashes that we see over
Speaker 1: and over again, we still can't get enough. There's still
Speaker 1: something just hideously romantic about the vampire. Oh yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: always on the lookout for a good new vampire movie. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think the last one that I saw, did
Speaker 1: you see Byzantium? I did not think. I have it
Speaker 1: in my cute. It's an interesting movie. It's not it's
Speaker 1: not like mind blowing or anything like that, but it was.
Speaker 1: It was a nice take on the vampire mythos um. Well, like,
Speaker 1: I love how the Strain has done and we talked
Speaker 1: about this in the Strain episode, how they've like really
Speaker 1: taken into account like anatomical differences in nature incorporate and
Speaker 1: incorporated that into their vampire mythos um. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: just as a horror fan, or maybe just as a
Speaker 1: cinema fan, I'm always waiting for somebody to find like
Speaker 1: the next cool hook on it. You know. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of Near Dark a lot of fun. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: Bill Paxton roll on that, yeah, Lance Hendrickson too, pretty
Speaker 1: much everybody from Aliens, Yeah, yeah, it was a Katherine
Speaker 1: Bigelow film. It was. Yeah. Now, for the purposes of
Speaker 1: this episode again, we're gonna we're going to limit our
Speaker 1: discussion of vampires to physics, mathematics, and evolution, um, you know,
Speaker 1: basic real world biology without getting very you know, without
Speaker 1: doing too much the way of dragging in anymore folklore, mythology,
Speaker 1: film history, etcetera. And really the best place to start,
Speaker 1: in my opinion is um is by looking at bats.
Speaker 1: I mean, bats are pretty much the vampire bat is
Speaker 1: one of our most prevalent modern examples. Uh. The the
Speaker 1: main parallel between the idea of a blood drinking human
Speaker 1: uh in fiction is a real life blood drinking um vertebrate.
Speaker 1: You know. It's interesting about that that I learned doing
Speaker 1: research for this episode was I had always assumed that
Speaker 1: we called them. Sorry, I had always assumed that the
Speaker 1: vampire myth came out of people having witnessed vampire bats.
Speaker 1: I did not realize that it was sort of like
Speaker 1: the hydra that we've talked about recently, that it was
Speaker 1: actually the myth that came first, and then when we
Speaker 1: discovered vampire bats, we gave them the name. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: because these areas where you many of the areas in
Speaker 1: the world where you had the vampire mythology that you
Speaker 1: didn't actually have any blood drinking bats. There are million
Speaker 1: South America and and part of that has to do
Speaker 1: I mean, most of it has to do with some
Speaker 1: of the limitations of blood drinking. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: the bats and the birds. They have a great deal
Speaker 1: in common. They're very different organisms. And the birds we
Speaker 1: have the avians that emerged about a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million years ago in the Jurassic Period. They went out
Speaker 1: to fly, swim, trot, burrow all over the world. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: mammalian bats date back between seventy five and a hundred
Speaker 1: million years and uh, it's harder to say because um quote,
Speaker 1: bats are one of the most diverse groups of mammals today,
Speaker 1: they are one of the least common groups in the
Speaker 1: fossil record. Bats have small light skeletons that do not
Speaker 1: preserve well, and we have very little information on the
Speaker 1: early evolution of the group. And that's from a University
Speaker 1: of Edinburgh page that I'll link to in the landing
Speaker 1: page for this episode that deals with just sort of
Speaker 1: the basic evolution of bats. Have you ever been to
Speaker 1: or heard of the bridge that's in Austin, Texas that
Speaker 1: just has like millions of bats underneath it and if
Speaker 1: you like hang out there at the right time of night,
Speaker 1: you can just see them all swarming out. I've seen
Speaker 1: video of it. I went to Austin on vacation two
Speaker 1: years ago and it was awesome, Like we got to
Speaker 1: see it and it was really, uh, really something to behold.
Speaker 1: But also apparently are co workers who were in Austin
Speaker 1: recently for south By Southwest. We're gonna try to do
Speaker 1: a video on it, but the bats wouldn't come out.
Speaker 1: They were not cooperative. Um, so both bats and birds
Speaker 1: learned to fly in their own ways. Uh. And there
Speaker 1: are there are other fascinating examples of their conversion evolution. Uh.
Speaker 1: Several dozen bats species and more than three hundred species
Speaker 1: of hummingbirds evolved to resemble each other anatomically and behaviorally
Speaker 1: solely because they existed in similar environments and exploited a
Speaker 1: similar resource, that being nectar. Yeah, so nectar feeding bats
Speaker 1: they have pretty strange anatomies as well. Like I think
Speaker 1: we hyper focus on the vampire bats, but really I
Speaker 1: think it's something like three out of like a thousand
Speaker 1: and one hundred bats species drink blood, so it's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting that we focus so much on that. But
Speaker 1: so these nectar feeding bats, there's one called the orange
Speaker 1: nectar feeding back, or it's a Latin name is Lancophilia Robustah.
Speaker 1: It can extend its tongue out to drink the nectar,
Speaker 1: and it has grooves on its tongue that undulate like waves,
Speaker 1: forming a conveyor belt to just basically conveyor belts drag
Speaker 1: the nectar up to it. It's a it's gullet. And
Speaker 1: the way, the reason why is that these bats way
Speaker 1: fifteen grams each. They have to drink one point five
Speaker 1: times their own weight every single night. So that means
Speaker 1: that each one of these bats has to visit somewhere
Speaker 1: between eight hundred and a thousand flowers every night in
Speaker 1: order to survive. Um. So it has to be really quick.
Speaker 1: That's why it's evolved this crazy tongue. It only has
Speaker 1: two second visit, so it's just like boom, flies into
Speaker 1: the flower, sucks out the nectar with its crazy tongue,
Speaker 1: and flies away. Now imagine something like this with somebody
Speaker 1: who drinks blood, right, um, And in fact there's also
Speaker 1: a bat in South America that has a tongue like
Speaker 1: the vampires in the strain that we had talked about.
Speaker 1: Its tongue is one point five times the length of
Speaker 1: the rest of its body, and it reaches all the
Speaker 1: way down its throat between its sternam and its heart.
Speaker 1: So it's just this huge organ that's shooting up out
Speaker 1: of its body through its mouth, grabbing this is a nectar,
Speaker 1: drinking one again, grabbing the nectar and the yankee back down. Um.
Speaker 1: But those are nectivores, right, and we're here to talk
Speaker 1: about san guivores. Yes, sanguavar is the blood drinkers. And
Speaker 1: there's little or no convergence between birds and bats when
Speaker 1: it comes to drinking blood. And now there are birds
Speaker 1: that occasionally or even frequently feed on on blood. Um.
Speaker 1: Vampire finches of the Glastical Sylands occasionally feed by drinking
Speaker 1: of the blood of other birds. Meanwhile, you have, you know,
Speaker 1: plenty of examples of birds that feed on ticks and
Speaker 1: other ectoparasites on large animals, and they sometimes cross that
Speaker 1: line between dining on stolen blood and stealing it for themselves.
Speaker 1: But none of these birds is an obligate cyclevore an
Speaker 1: obligate blood drinker. The vampire bat stands alone among all vertebrates,
Speaker 1: is the only aerial or terrestrial obligate blood drinker. It's
Speaker 1: all they consume aside from their mother's milk. And so,
Speaker 1: to give you a comparison to those nectar drinking bats
Speaker 1: that I was talking about earlier, blood is actually pretty
Speaker 1: skimpy when it comes to protein and fat. The kind
Speaker 1: of energy they need water, so vampire bats get almost
Speaker 1: no fat at all out of it. Subsequently, they have
Speaker 1: to consume this is different from the nectar ones. They
Speaker 1: only have to consume half their weight in blood each
Speaker 1: night to stay alive. Imagine if you and I had
Speaker 1: to do that, if we had to consume half our
Speaker 1: way in blood, Like that's even uh fantastic by the
Speaker 1: imagination of vampires, right, Like, that's a lot of blood.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna get to that later on when we
Speaker 1: talk about the physics of actually drinking blood from a
Speaker 1: thrall if you're a vampire. Yeah, I think that's certainly,
Speaker 1: certainly something that's very important to keep in mind here though,
Speaker 1: is that that blood is not this just font of
Speaker 1: energy and resources. Uh, there's there's very little power in
Speaker 1: the blood and for a vampire bat and certainly if
Speaker 1: you're gonna extrapolate that and say a vampiric human, if
Speaker 1: they're going to make this their soul um feeding method,
Speaker 1: if this is gonna be the only place they get
Speaker 1: their energy, it is it's pretty skimpy. You're talking about
Speaker 1: living on the very edge here. Yeah, and there was
Speaker 1: a you know, I think it's easy for us to say, like, well,
Speaker 1: for for us, you and me, because we love our
Speaker 1: monster science, it's easy for us to go, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: science to be had there, but it's easy for us
Speaker 1: as a culture to go, well, vampires, that's just some
Speaker 1: made up stuff. Uh, there's there's nothing real going on there.
Speaker 1: But in fact, there is a collision in the seventeen
Speaker 1: hundreds between medicine science in the myth of the vampire um.
Speaker 1: And this comes from that Mary Hallab article that I
Speaker 1: quoted at the beginning of the episode Rural People's in
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, they relied on traditional medicine to ward
Speaker 1: off vampires, and to them, taking an interest in something
Speaker 1: like the supernatural was their means of conducting scientific inquiry.
Speaker 1: So what they would do is they would pay a
Speaker 1: fee to somebody who said, yes, I'm a vampire expert,
Speaker 1: I have been trained, uh, and I can prevent the
Speaker 1: spread of this right. So an example, UM, and I
Speaker 1: wonder I thought of you when I was reading this,
Speaker 1: because I'm sure you've heard of this before. In a
Speaker 1: Serbian village, people thought there was a deceased soldier named
Speaker 1: Arnold Paul and he kept coming back quote unquote as
Speaker 1: a vampire and attacking villagers. Uh. And what happened was,
Speaker 1: you know, it resulted in two waves of sort of
Speaker 1: a vampire panic that lasted one was three weeks and
Speaker 1: one was forty days. After he died. They eventually had
Speaker 1: surgeons show up uh and disenter his audi so they
Speaker 1: could attest yes, this is indeed a vampire. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so one of these doctors, his name was Dr Fluckinger
Speaker 1: and Dr Flukinger, brought this story to Western Europe where
Speaker 1: it was actually debated amongst a lot of medical professionals,
Speaker 1: in particular in Germany. And there was also a doctor
Speaker 1: John Polar Doori, who wrote an influential story about vampires
Speaker 1: that has actually uh. Mary Shelley talks about at the
Speaker 1: beginning of Frankenstein. These two events together by two medical
Speaker 1: professionals may have been responsible for establishing vampires as fantasy
Speaker 1: and not as rural, you know, a supernatural fact. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so basically the German academics and doctors debating this
Speaker 1: led to uh, the original Pope Benedict in seventeen forty
Speaker 1: nine declaring these vampires are superstition, they don't actually exist.
Speaker 1: And that was sort of the beginning of it of
Speaker 1: us acknowledging it as fictional. Interesting, Now, I know a
Speaker 1: lot of you are probably wondering. Okay, So so we
Speaker 1: we've already talked about the rarity of of a of
Speaker 1: a mammal drinking blood is its soul of form of sustenance? Uh?
Speaker 1: And and we we talked about what a poor form
Speaker 1: of sustenance blood is. So how do we get to
Speaker 1: that part via evolution? Why are there so few species
Speaker 1: that do it well? The vampires in question likely emerged
Speaker 1: twenty six million years ago, but we already mentioned bat
Speaker 1: fossils are not too easily come by. Uh. And sure
Speaker 1: we have a few fossil vampire bats, including a thirty
Speaker 1: percent larger does Moodius dracula. Uh Yeah, that's that's a wonderful.
Speaker 1: And but but these are these are total vampires that
Speaker 1: you know, we don't really have those transitional forms. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and then part of this comes from the fact
Speaker 1: that you see so many of these bats that have
Speaker 1: delicate bones and they're tropical region. Fossils of them are rare.
Speaker 1: So we just have a few hypotheses as to how
Speaker 1: vampires emerged. Uh. One hypothesis is that the proto vampire
Speaker 1: bats that they these ancient species, they weren't quite vampires
Speaker 1: yet they fed on blood and gorged ectoparasites found on
Speaker 1: large animals, much like these various you know, tick eating birds,
Speaker 1: you know, oxen and rhinos and whatnot. UM. So we're
Speaker 1: you know, we're talking fat fall off the rump, prehistoric
Speaker 1: kicks um. And you know earlier we mentioned the blurring
Speaker 1: the term fall off the rump. They fell up. They're
Speaker 1: just they're just there. There's there. It's say, once they're full,
Speaker 1: they can't hold on anyone. Yeah, they're and they're mostly
Speaker 1: the blood of another species. Um. And they're just there
Speaker 1: for the picking. And we already mentioned that the blinds
Speaker 1: are often blurred between parasite eater and just just an
Speaker 1: eater of blood. And it's the same deal here, supported
Speaker 1: by the fact that se bats um are insectivores, so
Speaker 1: you know, anttis are iractants. But still you get the
Speaker 1: idea they're used to eat. These are the type of
Speaker 1: creatures that they eat already. And then if certain bats
Speaker 1: began to depend more and more on on parasites, you
Speaker 1: can see where the transition could take place. Plus, there
Speaker 1: are anecdotal reports of vampire bats preying on vampire moths,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. And and yes there is a vampire
Speaker 1: moth and you'll find it in Malaysia, uh, the Ural
Speaker 1: mountains and also southern Europe. Uh. And just like imagining
Speaker 1: as we're explaining all these various different types of species
Speaker 1: with vampire in front of their name, that there's like so,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's gotta be a fictional account there somewhere
Speaker 1: of like u mythical vampires, but they like turn like
Speaker 1: a bear or something like that. And then you've got
Speaker 1: like vampire bears duking it out with vampire humans. You
Speaker 1: know who's gonna eventually survive on the food chain, Right,
Speaker 1: vampire bats are eating vampire moths, what's eating vampire humans? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: vampire whales vampire whales. See that that has not been
Speaker 1: explored at all yet. I think we've gotta we should
Speaker 1: copy right that. So Bill Shoot wrote a wonderful book
Speaker 1: a titled Dark Banquet Blood and the Curious Lives of
Speaker 1: Blood Feeding Creatures. Highly recommend anyone interesting this topic check
Speaker 1: it out. I noticed that this book was cited in
Speaker 1: multiple of the resources that we're looking at for this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a great one. It's it's one that's you know,
Speaker 1: very readable for a general audience. And he goes into
Speaker 1: not only vampire bats, that he goes into various insects
Speaker 1: as well, so it's a you know, a thorough engaging
Speaker 1: exploration of the topic. But he points out that mutual
Speaker 1: grooming behavior may have played a role in the evolution
Speaker 1: of vampire bats as well. Because the vampire bats are
Speaker 1: highly social, they spend five percent of their time grooming
Speaker 1: one another, and Shoot suggests that they may have had
Speaker 1: their first taste of blood consuming each other's kicks and
Speaker 1: bedbug species, so you know it kind of you know,
Speaker 1: they're in this situation with like, oh, these are great,
Speaker 1: we should go try and get more of these, and
Speaker 1: we just get it direct from the tap yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: take out the middleman. Now. It's also worth noting that
Speaker 1: bat expert Brock Finton disagrees with another great name Brockton.
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a fauna expert. Brock points out that
Speaker 1: ectoparasites are small, ecto parasites are difficult to find on
Speaker 1: other animals, and vampire bats are restricted to the Americas.
Speaker 1: So those impossible problems with this hypothesis. But Finton presents
Speaker 1: hypothesis too, and that's the proto vampire bats fed on
Speaker 1: insects and larva crawling around the wounds of large prehistoric mammals.
Speaker 1: You know where I first heard this theory was on
Speaker 1: Dr Anton Jessup's episode of Monster Science. So we talked
Speaker 1: about vampires because that was where I learned the term
Speaker 1: mega fauna. Yes, yeah, mega fauna the large you know,
Speaker 1: today we pretty much are down to, you know, just
Speaker 1: elephants is like the really great example of megafauna in
Speaker 1: the old days when they could be sustained and you
Speaker 1: had plenty of other creatures as well. With a whale, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly similar. Yeah, because you have this large creature, this
Speaker 1: just bounty of resources, it gets a cut on it,
Speaker 1: right that becomes a just an area of increased economic activity,
Speaker 1: a lot of organisms trying to feed off of it,
Speaker 1: and then who's gonna feed on the feeders? Well, then
Speaker 1: perhaps that's where this this begins. The vampire bats or
Speaker 1: the proto vampire bats, they volunteer and jump in there
Speaker 1: to get some of the the goods. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of back and forth in this hypothesis as well.
Speaker 1: And then finally there's an arboreal feeding hypothesis, and this
Speaker 1: is the idea that proto vampires foraged in trees, feeding
Speaker 1: on small vertebrates, and over time they evolved uh to
Speaker 1: capitalize on larger prey uh that they couldn't kill. At first,
Speaker 1: they bit the animals that slept in the trees, and
Speaker 1: eventually they adapted to prey on ground dwelling animals as well.
Speaker 1: Because that gets into how vampire bats actually work. If
Speaker 1: they swoop down um uh and they they open up
Speaker 1: just a small opening on a like a sweeping cow
Speaker 1: or what have you, and then lap the blood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not draining and cow dry. And it's the interesting
Speaker 1: connection here to the studies we're gonna be talking about later,
Speaker 1: as the premise really is the same for like, uh,
Speaker 1: the vampire human myths, right, which is is that you know,
Speaker 1: essentially it's not economical for a vampire bat or a
Speaker 1: vampire human to drain you dry. They need to come
Speaker 1: in do it quick in such a way that you
Speaker 1: probably won't even notice, right. And that's where that like
Speaker 1: comparing it to the nectivores is important because they've only
Speaker 1: got that two second windows. So if a vampire bat
Speaker 1: just flies up to a cow, makes a small incision,
Speaker 1: laps up a little bit of blood for a couple
Speaker 1: of seconds, and then flies away, cow is probably not
Speaker 1: even gonna notice until the next day when it starts itchin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's also it's very much a stealth activity again there,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a business model, right. They can
Speaker 1: only extend so much energy to pull off this heist
Speaker 1: and still make a profit. Like the vampire bat cannot
Speaker 1: get into a situation where it's going to try and
Speaker 1: wrestle a cow. It's not gonna work. It has I'd
Speaker 1: love to see it, Yeah, And I suppose vampire bats
Speaker 1: are also probably not cooperative enough that they've come to
Speaker 1: the point where like they're just gonna swarm onto a
Speaker 1: cow and just drink it dry, you know. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: I think it's one of those things where one vampire
Speaker 1: bats gonna get away with it, Like one one criminal
Speaker 1: can rob one store, all six criminals cannot rob the
Speaker 1: same store at one competition for resources. Al Right, So
Speaker 1: this brings us to the the process of drinking blood itself.
Speaker 1: How do you drink blood as a mammal, as a
Speaker 1: vampire bat? And then what could that possibly tell us
Speaker 1: about how it might work for a human um? And uh,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of this is chemical. Um, the vampire
Speaker 1: bat makes a small cut and laps, does not suck
Speaker 1: the blood. And uh, while the average wound inflicted by
Speaker 1: a vampire bat would likely stop bleeding in one to
Speaker 1: two minutes, they are key ingredients in the vampire bats
Speaker 1: saliva that interfere with clotting for several hours. So you
Speaker 1: you're talking about really a complex chemical cocktail in the saliva.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we would definitely have to assume that any
Speaker 1: kind of vampire, uh, humanoid sized vampire would also be
Speaker 1: producing an anticoagulant. That's right. I wonder if they get
Speaker 1: I haven't watched enough of like True Blood or anything
Speaker 1: like that, but I wonder if they get into that
Speaker 1: with those shows. I do not remember from all my
Speaker 1: time watching True Blood. Um. Now, now, some people, some
Speaker 1: experts also speculate that there's often a pain killing and
Speaker 1: or skin softening enzyme in the saliva as well as
Speaker 1: the bat will lick before they bite. So again, the
Speaker 1: saliva is it's just a cocktail of essential blood drinking
Speaker 1: chemicals and that they lick, they cut, then they lap
Speaker 1: it up and those times work very similar to that
Speaker 1: nectivore I was describing that. It's just kind of like this,
Speaker 1: uh conveyor belt. It's just like working like a piston.
Speaker 1: The way that it licks. When you watch the slow
Speaker 1: motion videos of these things, it's kind of stunning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it causes that this movement causes the blood to flow
Speaker 1: along a pair of grooves on the bottom of the
Speaker 1: tongue and into the mouth. There's even a cleft in
Speaker 1: the lip that allows the flow of blood. And wasn't
Speaker 1: there like a period of time where some scientists thought
Speaker 1: that that U the flaps on their nose, we're what
Speaker 1: we're making the cuts themselves and things. Yeah, there, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was, But of course it turns out that all
Speaker 1: most of that has to do with that called location
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with feeding. But but yeah, if
Speaker 1: you're just looking at these these crazy looking or gamy
Speaker 1: back faces, you could I can imagine one producing that
Speaker 1: theory like, oh those look kind of sharp. Maybe they
Speaker 1: kind of slashed their face back and forth in a
Speaker 1: open a vein. So again, think of this though, is
Speaker 1: as a heist. It's really a high stakes heist for
Speaker 1: the vampire back um so that they're they're absorbing, Uh,
Speaker 1: they're taken in this blood and absorption of the of
Speaker 1: the of the water that makes up the ingested blood.
Speaker 1: This carrious to the kidneys, noon to the bladder for excretion.
Speaker 1: So they may have to fly off at any moment
Speaker 1: when that cow begins to wake up, wake up and
Speaker 1: they're peeing. Yeah, because they're having to process this in
Speaker 1: real time that a sudden weight gain could be lethal.
Speaker 1: Can't carry a one out around that much useless water,
Speaker 1: so it needs to just pass it as quickly as possible. Um,
Speaker 1: So these cows are getting back golden showers at the
Speaker 1: same time. You can put it that way. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: that they end up having to to urinate a little
Speaker 1: as they're feeding. Um approximate and approximately the blood volume
Speaker 1: consume is excreted as urine in the first hour after feeding,
Speaker 1: so again you gotta you gotta get rid of the
Speaker 1: useless water as quickly as possible, and still at the
Speaker 1: same time, there's a constant dehydration risk because we're talking
Speaker 1: about a lot of urine here, and mammals break down
Speaker 1: amino acids into uria in order to prevent the toxic
Speaker 1: build up of ammonia. The vampire batch digestive system cranks
Speaker 1: up more and more with feeding to eliminate the waste,
Speaker 1: but in doing so, this is just constant risk of dehydration.
Speaker 1: So they're just constantly one step ahead of the hydration,
Speaker 1: which is another reason that you you only find vampire
Speaker 1: bats and very very moist envied Okay, And that's uh
Speaker 1: somewhat similar to what we talked about when we looked
Speaker 1: at the science of the strain, Right you remember, the
Speaker 1: vampires in the strain are just like I think, as
Speaker 1: they're feeding, they're constantly emitting ammonia or something like that, right,
Speaker 1: as like a waste product. And that's I haven't watched
Speaker 1: a lot of the TV, so I don't think they
Speaker 1: tracked them that way, and I think they do that
Speaker 1: in the TV show. Don't they like they tracked the
Speaker 1: ammonia stains with like UV lights or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe they do, and that that would fit in
Speaker 1: nicely with this with the research here del Toro once
Speaker 1: again looking at his anatomical manuals. Yeah so um so. Again,
Speaker 1: it just comes back to this idea that that it's
Speaker 1: a very very high risk fringe lifestyle that the vampire
Speaker 1: bat is left with. They can't really store up a
Speaker 1: lot of fat. They can't. This another reason you don't
Speaker 1: find vampire bats and cold environments. They can't. They can't
Speaker 1: se question themselves away for the winter and a cave
Speaker 1: because they constantly have to get that blood. They're more
Speaker 1: like a hunting bird than a true carnivore. If only
Speaker 1: vampire bats could keep thralls, if they could keep like,
Speaker 1: like uh, like maybe a mouse sized thrall in their
Speaker 1: nest and they just drink a little bit here and there.
Speaker 1: But the problem is they have to drink so much, right, Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: if they could do something like they need a lot
Speaker 1: of thralls. Yeah, they would need a lot of thralls
Speaker 1: or set up some sort of honeybee environment where they're
Speaker 1: they're essentially making like blood honey and storing it away.
Speaker 1: I like that. Maybe they'll get there one day, but
Speaker 1: for now, we we've got this earth vampire bats. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: that actually leads pretty nicely into uh, what really brought
Speaker 1: us into talking about this. We're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but when we come back, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: a brand new study that looks at the physics of
Speaker 1: how we would drain blood from a human being if
Speaker 1: they were our vampick Thrall. Alright, we're back, and we
Speaker 1: had so far we're looking at we're trying to imagine
Speaker 1: a humanoid vampire. We're looking at an emaciated, stealthy nonsperrato
Speaker 1: that slips into your bedroom, licks your neck with us,
Speaker 1: and then with a strange groove tongue, then slices it
Speaker 1: with a specialized tooth and then lapse up the blood
Speaker 1: before and peas a little bit before slinking away into
Speaker 1: the night. But how long does this non sperato in
Speaker 1: question have to fee? Well, the answer has been discovered,
Speaker 1: and it was actually just discovered last fall, and uh,
Speaker 1: actually Robert has written about it already. We were inspired
Speaker 1: by this. We both saw the study on the same day.
Speaker 1: Oh no, actually, you found it, did I? Oh, I
Speaker 1: was the one who found that. You were the one
Speaker 1: who felt okay, and we we we have pitch meetings
Speaker 1: here and at the beginning of the week we both
Speaker 1: pitched the story and then the uh you know, our
Speaker 1: editor said, you guys gotta do this, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: it's monster science. That's Robert. Robert's gonna do the vampire
Speaker 1: long as we get to do it for the podcast.
Speaker 1: And I ended up writing about Batman Superman did about
Speaker 1: the various Superman Vatman uh interactions, So you got the
Speaker 1: bat kind of a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So but
Speaker 1: that was the inspiration for us to dive into this
Speaker 1: because we said, this study is so cool, let's extrapolated
Speaker 1: outwards and really look at the physics of it. And
Speaker 1: turns out a lot of people have done research into this,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about this study. Yeah. This comes to
Speaker 1: us from the University of Leicester in the UK. It
Speaker 1: was published in the Journal of Physics Special Topics. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's a whole team of researchers here worked on it.
Speaker 1: They decided to just weigh in on just how much
Speaker 1: blood a human vamppire would drink and how long it
Speaker 1: would take them to drink, because I don't think this
Speaker 1: is anything anyone really uh put a lot of thought
Speaker 1: to in the past. But there are you know, there
Speaker 1: there are going to be limits here. I hope people
Speaker 1: making vampire movies and television going forward to take this
Speaker 1: science into account and use it in their calculations, including
Speaker 1: the mathematics that we'll talk about after this too, because
Speaker 1: there's a large your game at play here. But let's
Speaker 1: we're gonna zoom right in and look at a vampire
Speaker 1: lord and their thrall. Premise here being that you don't
Speaker 1: want to just drain your thrall dry, right, You want
Speaker 1: to keep them on hand so that you've got a
Speaker 1: constant tap of blood available. Yeah, you want to be
Speaker 1: able to come back. However often I'm guessing, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're going by like blood donation standards, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be over a month between visits if they're playing by
Speaker 1: the rules. Yeah. Well, and that's assuming that this humanoid
Speaker 1: sized vampire doesn't have to drink as much blood uh
Speaker 1: comparative to its body weight as a vampire bat does.
Speaker 1: Otherwise they just have like a basement full of people
Speaker 1: that they're drinking from constantly, right, So the first thing
Speaker 1: they had to decide is, yeah, how much, um, how
Speaker 1: much blood are they going to drink? And so, based
Speaker 1: on information from the American College of Surgeons Advanced Trauma
Speaker 1: Life Support or a t l S program, the researchers
Speaker 1: figure that that amount would be about of your blood volume. Technically,
Speaker 1: that is that that's the upper limit of a class
Speaker 1: one hemorrhage. So hey, if your thraw out there, do
Speaker 1: not let your vampiric overlord talk you into a class
Speaker 1: to hemorrhage. That's over unless he's willing to make good
Speaker 1: on his promise. And actually the gist here is that
Speaker 1: it's similar to the vampire bat scenario in that the
Speaker 1: percent is from the model that a vampire would be
Speaker 1: able to drink enough secretly, uh that you wouldn't notice
Speaker 1: and it would be able to get away. So like,
Speaker 1: maybe it sneaks into your bedroom at night and it
Speaker 1: just like opens a vein and it starts going is
Speaker 1: the cap before your heart rate starts to change and
Speaker 1: you would notice effects on your circulatory system. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in particular, the model for this study, they have their
Speaker 1: vampires specifically drinking from the external kartid artery. And they've
Speaker 1: also modeled the A order and coatid arteries as being
Speaker 1: smooth tubes when the assumed air pressure of one standard
Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure unit. So obviously this is not uh true
Speaker 1: to life, right, Like, we don't all have perfectly smooth
Speaker 1: tubes with the exact perfect atmospheric pressure in it. But hey,
Speaker 1: we got to solve these problems somehow. So, as we
Speaker 1: previously mentioned, they decided to go with the bat model
Speaker 1: of blood drinking makes more sense than looking mosquitoes, right,
Speaker 1: they were looking at free flowing lapping as we've discussed,
Speaker 1: rather than sucking from a pair of point five millimeter
Speaker 1: neck punctures. And then they calculated the average diameter of
Speaker 1: the orda and the five connected arteries, as well as
Speaker 1: blood pressure and the heart driving velocity of the flowing blood.
Speaker 1: So they really got into the biology and the fluid
Speaker 1: mechanics of the whole. But they didn't They didn't factor
Speaker 1: in anti coagulants, So this is assuming that there's no
Speaker 1: anti coagulant chemical applied by the vampire. Interesting, I didn't
Speaker 1: notice that during my first read of this. Now, a
Speaker 1: few equations later, the researchers determined this that any self
Speaker 1: respecting vampire needs six point four minutes to drain a
Speaker 1: polite point seven five liters of blood from his earth draw.
Speaker 1: So to put that in perspective, it takes less than
Speaker 1: an hour to give point four seven leaders during a
Speaker 1: blood drive where they take eight of your blood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they don't drink any of it. I know they drink. Well,
Speaker 1: we don't know. I mean they might be that's what
Speaker 1: those curtains are there. Yeah, I mean, in a sense
Speaker 1: it is. If it is used, it is it becomes
Speaker 1: a part of another person. So it's as well in
Speaker 1: a sense it's it's concerned. Now, these results are based
Speaker 1: on a couple of mathematical assumptions that the people doing
Speaker 1: the research made specifically about human biology. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: run through these real quick. The first one is that
Speaker 1: the five arteries that split out of our a orda
Speaker 1: have total even thickness, which you know, I doubt that's true,
Speaker 1: and everybody the diameter of the aorta is four centimeters,
Speaker 1: which is that's known as the known carotid artery diameter. Right.
Speaker 1: That seems big to me. You think about that four centimeters.
Speaker 1: I guess that makes sense, but it's a major highway to. Uh.
Speaker 1: The velocity of blood coming out of your a or
Speaker 1: to has a mean speed not not like means speed,
Speaker 1: but at average speed of point one milliseconds. Uh. The
Speaker 1: internal arteries have a point five centimeter diameter. The average
Speaker 1: human blood pressure would be one millimeters of mercury, and
Speaker 1: the average density of whole blood is one thousand sixty
Speaker 1: kms per cubic meter at room temperature. So they thought
Speaker 1: of it all, uh, and they calculated it out based
Speaker 1: on the average human body having a total of five
Speaker 1: liters of blood inside of it. Okay, alright, so that
Speaker 1: gives us, uh, that gives us some you know physics
Speaker 1: grounding on exactly how much blood is gonna be taken,
Speaker 1: how long uh it takes to consume it. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: to crunch that at six point four minutes, that scene,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess, like maybe I'm a light sleeper,
Speaker 1: but that seems to me like I would notice, um,
Speaker 1: but you you know, like I'm thinking, no s Feratu style,
Speaker 1: like sneaks into the room and there's a a woman
Speaker 1: whose neck is is just a positioned just the right way. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe they just don't notice. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: as long as she didn't have a neck pillow or anything,
Speaker 1: or if she's you know, she's sleeping under the covers
Speaker 1: completely and neck pillows like modern enemy of Vampires never
Speaker 1: even thought about that, Yeah, because he can't very well
Speaker 1: just pull that off, right. So all right, that's the
Speaker 1: micro version of it, right of how the drinking of
Speaker 1: the blood would work on one vampire on one human
Speaker 1: if they were trying to drink it real quick, get
Speaker 1: away with it without getting caught, or just have a
Speaker 1: thrall on hand and keep them alive. Let's broaden this
Speaker 1: a little bit. So we turned to Anissa Mary Ramia,
Speaker 1: who is at the University of Ottawa in eleven and
Speaker 1: for a mathematic model ling of infectious diseases class, wrote
Speaker 1: the paper vampires do they want to suck our blood?
Speaker 1: And I want to I want to take an aside
Speaker 1: here to say I was disappointed in you, and I
Speaker 1: am disappointed in Ramia for spelling want with a W.
Speaker 1: It should have been do they vant to suck our blood?
Speaker 1: Because that would have that would have been because I
Speaker 1: believe you had the do they want to suck our blood?
Speaker 1: Or want to suck your blood in the title of
Speaker 1: the original piece of the story we just talked about, Okay,
Speaker 1: so Ramya's goal here was to use mathematical models to
Speaker 1: deduce whether vampires could exist. In particular, could we as
Speaker 1: human beings live alongside a creature who wants to suck
Speaker 1: our blood? So is it a sustainable creature? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: she looks at she proposes several models and I'll present
Speaker 1: them here, and she uses theoretical data based off of
Speaker 1: the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So she's working
Speaker 1: off of some of the premises within that mythos, because
Speaker 1: you know, vampire mythos varies from yeah you gotta you
Speaker 1: gotta choose one and if you gotta go with one,
Speaker 1: I guess it seems like a pretty good one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So um, she starts with the first model that was
Speaker 1: actually written by somebody else. It was written by Dr
Speaker 1: Sohan Gandhi and Dr Costas J. I'm gonna butcher this
Speaker 1: name ft the EMU sure sorry, uh cost Us. Anyways,
Speaker 1: that they had this really cool paper called Ghosts, Vampires
Speaker 1: and Zombies Cinema Fiction Versus Physics Reality. It was published
Speaker 1: in Skeptical inquirer in seven and we're gonna call this,
Speaker 1: or at least Ramia does the s V model. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is the bare bones model. So going with statistics
Speaker 1: that say that the present human population is six point
Speaker 1: nine billion people in rising, these guys argued that vampires
Speaker 1: never existed and could have never existed, because if they did,
Speaker 1: the human race would have been wiped out in three years.
Speaker 1: The way that they figured this out was by using
Speaker 1: a mathematical concept called geometric progression, and this is used
Speaker 1: to calculate the interest in economics and finance, or to
Speaker 1: find the quantity of decaying radioactive elements in geology and physics.
Speaker 1: So cool application of pre existing model. The constraint there
Speaker 1: is that the world population is constant, so there's no
Speaker 1: in their study, there's no birth rate or death rate fluctuations. Okay. Uh.
Speaker 1: It also assumes that there is a constant rate that
Speaker 1: vampires turn humans into other vampires, only doing so on
Speaker 1: the first of each month. So I don't know why
Speaker 1: that would be particularly the date. But so the vampires
Speaker 1: have all gotten together and said, okay, we can only
Speaker 1: do this on the first aga. Uh. And so this
Speaker 1: susceptible population would decline over time, while the vampire population
Speaker 1: would increase at the same time. At that rate, there
Speaker 1: would be no humans left on Earth after three years. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the obvious problems I've i've I've had when
Speaker 1: I've encountered this kind of argument before is that you're
Speaker 1: assuming the vampires are not making some efforts to keep
Speaker 1: themselves from destroying each other. Because even if there is
Speaker 1: you know, an unsustainable species, I mean, you can make
Speaker 1: arguments that humans in our present form are also an
Speaker 1: unsustainable species, and you know, and maybe we're doomed, but
Speaker 1: also maybe we're able to stave off extinction by curbing
Speaker 1: our self destructive tendencies at least a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Ramya keeps adding complexities like that into the various models,
Speaker 1: but she never gets to that one, which is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like that idea. Like that, vampires, which are you know,
Speaker 1: based off of our anatomy and our psychology and Russia,
Speaker 1: would probably have as much in fighting as we humans do, right,
Speaker 1: They wouldn't just all cooperate perfectly in order to drain
Speaker 1: blood together? Yeah? Not surely. Not everybody gets the good
Speaker 1: blood now, but not everybody gets to have as much
Speaker 1: blood as they want. So she extrapolates their data out
Speaker 1: to the second model, and this is the SVR model,
Speaker 1: and it includes data for the rate that humans are turned,
Speaker 1: the rate that humans are killed by vampire, as well
Speaker 1: as the birth rate and the death rate uh, and
Speaker 1: as well as all non human related death rates for vampires.
Speaker 1: And that wasn't um extrapolated on other than I think
Speaker 1: that that is just maybe it's vampire on vampire violence,
Speaker 1: like you accidentally like walk into the sun or something
Speaker 1: like that, UM, but there is She later does get
Speaker 1: into human on vampire violence and how that would factor
Speaker 1: into it. So her next one, and this is a
Speaker 1: the SVR plus model. This is her third model. UH.
Speaker 1: It's basically that humans are aware of the existence of
Speaker 1: vampires and they actively hunt and kill them, and it's quantifiable.
Speaker 1: There's a rate that we can quantify how fast humans
Speaker 1: can kill vampires. So that would mean as an employed
Speaker 1: vampire hunter in this scenario, you have a quota that
Speaker 1: you're expected to hit it each month, and there's no
Speaker 1: reason you shouldn't be able to hit it. And not
Speaker 1: only that, not only are all the vampire hunters expected
Speaker 1: to meet their quotas, but then there's also a slayer
Speaker 1: that is more efficient at killing vampires than any of
Speaker 1: the other hunters. So this is factoring in the Buffy
Speaker 1: methods obviously. So that's on top of all of the
Speaker 1: other data predictions in the mathematical models presented so far.
Speaker 1: We had two more models to go. Oh, I really
Speaker 1: hope one includes blade. Would be awesome if they're like
Speaker 1: and then blades there, I think she would just she
Speaker 1: would just be ice skating uphill with that one. All right,
Speaker 1: we'll cut that little bit of awkwardness alright. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: Model four does not include blade, but it adds in
Speaker 1: the rationale that it's not in vampire's best interest to
Speaker 1: turn every single human that they drink from, right, And
Speaker 1: this kind of goes along with the other study that
Speaker 1: we were just talking about with that drinking. So I
Speaker 1: think we can assume that that's kind of how they're
Speaker 1: working here. Uh. And the reasons why, well, there'd be
Speaker 1: too many dead bodies that would arouse suspicion first of all,
Speaker 1: but then there would also be an increase in the
Speaker 1: competition for human blood resources, and then that's probably where
Speaker 1: you get the in fighting between vampires. So it uses
Speaker 1: parameters that in order to be turned. You have to
Speaker 1: both be bitten by a vampire and then you subsequently
Speaker 1: have to drink a vampire's blood and then you turn
Speaker 1: into a vampire. Yes, and that's certainly the model we
Speaker 1: see in a lot of vampire fictions. Yea. And the
Speaker 1: last one, uh, she calls the predator prey model, and
Speaker 1: this uses this as an actual population dynamic mathematical theory
Speaker 1: called predator prey uh in. In biology, the idea that
Speaker 1: the carrying capacity of a given environment is the maximum
Speaker 1: number of a particular species that can be supported and
Speaker 1: sustained indefinitely, given that food, water, and other necessities are
Speaker 1: all available in that environment. And it was previously approached
Speaker 1: by a guy named Dr Brian Thomas in two thousand
Speaker 1: two in a paper called Vampire Population Ecology. So she
Speaker 1: cleaned that up and applied it here. I love that
Speaker 1: we are not the only ones who are hungry. No
Speaker 1: pun intended for vampire science. Yeah, there's there's a legacy
Speaker 1: here of of sort of epidemic consideration of vampires. So
Speaker 1: the first case here represents that human and vampire populations
Speaker 1: eventually go extinct. The second case that she shows are
Speaker 1: when vampires are extinct but the human population hovers somewhere
Speaker 1: near its carrying capacity. And the third case is where
Speaker 1: human and vampire populations are capable of coexisting. And the
Speaker 1: important thing to notice here is that the human equilibrium
Speaker 1: population does not depend on its own carrying capacity. However,
Speaker 1: the vampire population does depend on the human populations carrying capacity.
Speaker 1: So basically, there needs to be a constant influx of
Speaker 1: human population in order for vampires to have a sustainable
Speaker 1: coexistence with us. Otherwise we go back to scenario number
Speaker 1: one where they drink us dry in three years and
Speaker 1: then what are they left with. It's like that movie
Speaker 1: what is it called Daybreakers, the one with Ethan Hawk
Speaker 1: where everybody is a vampire. Um. So, yeah, the human
Speaker 1: population doesn't depend on its own caring capacity, the vampire
Speaker 1: population does. We are not large enough to support a
Speaker 1: vampire population. So I think by looking at this mathematical model,
Speaker 1: we can deduce that there aren't vampires. Okay, maybe mathematically
Speaker 1: you don't have to. You can take that neck pillow
Speaker 1: off tonight. Nothing is going to drink your blood. Although
Speaker 1: I will point out, and this is a note in
Speaker 1: her actual paper, she says this does not take into
Speaker 1: account quote large scale supernatural events like the apocalypse. So
Speaker 1: she admits, look, there's not a lot of data here
Speaker 1: for her to work with, but she's basing off the
Speaker 1: TV show. Sure, if somebody out there wants to go
Speaker 1: and watch every Buffy episode and note the frequency of
Speaker 1: vampire encounters, feeds, kills, and turns, you can apply that
Speaker 1: in these models and extrapolate the data outward. And well,
Speaker 1: what I like about these studies is they kind of
Speaker 1: give you a starting point and from there you can
Speaker 1: sort of tweak the vampire mythos to make it more
Speaker 1: sustainable or more believable, or throw in certain behaviors or safeguards.
Speaker 1: They're they're gonna help it make sense. This is what
Speaker 1: I feel like del Toro did. Yeah, he maybe didn't
Speaker 1: sit down with these mathematical models, but like they think
Speaker 1: of stuff like this in that show, you know the
Speaker 1: practicalities of a vampire invasion, especially upon New York. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also looking at it in the strain, Uh, looking
Speaker 1: at it too is what you can have the organism,
Speaker 1: and then you're gonna have sort of offshoots and mutations
Speaker 1: that can be less sustainable and therefore our risk to
Speaker 1: both the humans and the established vampires well. By applying
Speaker 1: these models, she concluded that if an outbreak of vampires
Speaker 1: were to break out in an area like say Sunnydale, California,
Speaker 1: where people were generally really aware and there was a
Speaker 1: slayer involved, and this is not counting hell Mouth, she said,
Speaker 1: no supernatural events exactly, it would be less likely uh
Speaker 1: than an endemic that would occur in a population like
Speaker 1: somewhere like where she lives, Ottawa. Uh. And she says, look,
Speaker 1: there's no slayer in the population, and Ottawa is generally
Speaker 1: unaware of vampires, so it might be a problem there.
Speaker 1: But she takes into account and this is where it
Speaker 1: gets crazy. She applies what she calls the g factor
Speaker 1: to a locale and this is how much garlic is
Speaker 1: in particular areas. And the way that she does this
Speaker 1: is she takes Google Maps and she plots out all
Speaker 1: the swarm of shops that are in Ottawa, and she
Speaker 1: scientifically says that the reasons the scent of garlic would
Speaker 1: make it difficult for vampires to navigate through a populated
Speaker 1: area are because of these swarmer shops. She plots it
Speaker 1: on the map and then she even gives each store
Speaker 1: an effective radius and The way that she mathematically computes
Speaker 1: this radius is based on the rating of the restaurant,
Speaker 1: it's popularity and therefore how much garlic you could assume
Speaker 1: is in each diners system after they leave. So as
Speaker 1: they're leaving the restaurant, they're creating this radius because they've
Speaker 1: got like a certain amount of garlic in their blood
Speaker 1: and on their lips, and that the vampires would smell
Speaker 1: that and basically like veer away from it. Okay, So
Speaker 1: there are certain there there would be certain cuisines that
Speaker 1: and and therefore certain geographical regions the vampires would just
Speaker 1: have to avoid, Like they just could not go to Italy.
Speaker 1: They are parts of China, they would not be able
Speaker 1: to get a firm foothold, and they have to really
Speaker 1: go to those Icelandic countries. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And she
Speaker 1: finally recommends she doesn't break down the math on this,
Speaker 1: but she says, you know what might also be a
Speaker 1: good idea is bless all the bodies of water in town.
Speaker 1: That way, it would make it difficult for the vampires
Speaker 1: to cross them. Uh, And I think they don't they
Speaker 1: do something to that effect in uh in the strain
Speaker 1: or is it just that they can't cross moving bodies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they plan it at Which is another which is an
Speaker 1: often overlooked a little detail from the Vampire Folklores is
Speaker 1: that they can't cross moving bodies of water, and they
Speaker 1: I think they play into the strain that it might
Speaker 1: have something to do with like essentially their little worms
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, and I think, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: I hope this isn't a spoiler for the TV show
Speaker 1: that the way they get away with it isn't what
Speaker 1: they just like hop on the back of like subway
Speaker 1: trains that are going underneath the rivers. And yeah, well
Speaker 1: you know another bit from from Vampire Folklores that's rarely explored,
Speaker 1: certainly in the scientific literature, but also in fiction is
Speaker 1: the idea that they're obsessed with with knots and uh
Speaker 1: and like intricate fabrics. I think the only bit of
Speaker 1: fiction that I've seen it used in UH is habit.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know when Larry Fresden, I believe, No,
Speaker 1: I don't know this one, Okay, yeah, it's it was
Speaker 1: an old indie picture, kind of a slight like nineties
Speaker 1: indie remake of Dracula, but very much a in be
Speaker 1: filmed with an indie vibe, and there's a scene where
Speaker 1: the vampire is transfixed by you know, some sort of
Speaker 1: knotted fact. Interesting, so they're just like constantly tying their shoes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the situation is that if you want to VAMPI
Speaker 1: you want to protect yourself from a vampire, just hang
Speaker 1: like an intricate knot or some sort of woven thing
Speaker 1: outside of your house. The vampire will come to it
Speaker 1: and then they're just transfixed by it and they start
Speaker 1: messing around with it. Then the sun comes up in
Speaker 1: their toes. I wonder if that's connected to knots of garlic. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe maybe just double up on the
Speaker 1: hunt exactly. Yeah. Well that's it. We got vampire math,
Speaker 1: vampire physics, vampire evolution. I think we've figured it out.
Speaker 1: So what do you think vampires possible? H me? Uh, well,
Speaker 1: so certainly if we based some of those hypotheses for
Speaker 1: vampire bats off of human humanoid vampires, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: they were drinking blood off of mega fauna and they
Speaker 1: but then they went into the shadows. They've been sneaking
Speaker 1: that fifteen percent off of us for a long time now.
Speaker 1: But the only way that they would be able to
Speaker 1: get away with it is if they kept themselves in
Speaker 1: check with that fifteen percent. Otherwise, Uh, they would either
Speaker 1: kill the entire human race or we would figure out
Speaker 1: that they're there and we would hunt them down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they for them to exist, it would just be this
Speaker 1: very stealthy, very strategic and and just and also just
Speaker 1: very dangerous position. Um, you know, like the vampire bats.
Speaker 1: It would just be it's a heist with high stakes
Speaker 1: and they have to they have to carry it out
Speaker 1: just so in order to avoid capture and extermination. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sleep better tonight. I'm probably gonna sleep better
Speaker 1: than I have since I was a little kid and
Speaker 1: I saw that episode of The Amazing Spider Man that
Speaker 1: we're Dracula showed up. So um, thank you to the
Speaker 1: scientists involved in all this research. Yes, we can all
Speaker 1: put aside our garlic knight pill lives tonight. All right.
Speaker 1: So so there you have it. Hey, if you want
Speaker 1: more on this topic other topics, go to stuff about
Speaker 1: your mind dot com. That's where we'll find a landing
Speaker 1: page for this episode. Um, various bits of vampire content.
Speaker 1: You can just throw vampire into the search of oar.
Speaker 1: There you'll also find links out to our various social
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Speaker 1: Instagram now and we're blow the Mind on most of those.
Speaker 1: And if you're a vampire and you have a secret
Speaker 1: method for getting away with drinking more than fift percent
Speaker 1: of a person's blood in one sitting, please write us
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Well more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
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