WEBVTT - Vampire Physics, Mathematics & Evolution 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:06.080 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop work 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:17.960 dot com. Modern science has not only shown us how 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:21.479 fragile human life is, but even the entire planet, or 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:24.200 the entire universe as we know it, is on the 0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:29.120 edge of extinction. Perhaps only the already dead, the zombies, 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:32.199 and the vampires, will have the strength to survive the 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:38.400 apocalyptic disasters so often predicted these days, involving exploding sun spots, 0:00:38.720 --> 0:00:44.320 gigantic volcanoes, meteor attacks, and rampaging epidemics that can wipe 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:49.880 out whole populations in an instant. Hey, welcome to Stuff 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:51.680 to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:54.240 I'm Christian Sager, and we just began the show with 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:58.760 a quote from Mary Halab from her article Vampires and 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:03.040 Medical Science that is printed in the February two fifteen 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:06.880 issue of the Journal of Popular Culture. Why, because we're 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:10.160 going to talk about the physics and mathematics of vampire 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:13.560 blood sucking today. Yeah. Now, if you're a long time 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:15.720 listening to Stuff to Blow your Mind, uh, and you 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:19.400 visit our website, perhaps you're familiar with the Monster Science 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:22.319 the video series. You know from all these avenues that 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:26.760 we've we've touched on vampires before in the past. Uh, 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:29.760 this time, we're we're largely going to deal with you know, 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:33.120 a little a little physics, a little um fluid mechanics, 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:37.880 a little mathematics, as well as just taking you through 0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:43.199 the the evolution of natural world vampires as well. Uh. 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:46.200 But yeah, certainly we love vampires. Here's stuff to blow 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:48.880 your mind. I think as as uh you know, as 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:55.120 a people humans uh cannot get over the Yeah, as 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:58.920 you know, we are fans of and did an episode 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:01.200 on the Strange, that's right. Uh, and it was interesting. 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:03.960 There was stuff in the research for today's episode that 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:06.000 brought up the strain for me that I didn't find 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:09.000 when we were doing research on the strain um, like 0:02:09.080 --> 0:02:12.160 in particular different kinds of tongues and bats and how 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:15.800 they consumed blood. Yeah. I mean, we could really just 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:20.079 do vampire episode after vampire episode and find just probably 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:23.200 a whole podcast out there vampires. I mean, and even 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:25.200 when you're getta do this, our fascination with it, just 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:30.960 the mythological appeal of vampires, you know, despite our best 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:34.480 efforts to just totally kill it with with with a 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:36.160 steak in the party, with a steak in the heart, 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:39.239 especially a cinematic steak in the heart. Through some of 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:42.560 just the sort of trite rehashes that we see over 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:45.880 and over again, we still can't get enough. There's still 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:49.880 something just hideously romantic about the vampire. Oh yeah, I'm 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:54.400 always on the lookout for a good new vampire movie. Um. 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:57.960 And I think the last one that I saw, did 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:00.280 you see Byzantium? I did not think. I have it 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:03.000 in my cute. It's an interesting movie. It's not it's 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:05.920 not like mind blowing or anything like that, but it was. 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:09.680 It was a nice take on the vampire mythos um. Well, like, 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:12.560 I love how the Strain has done and we talked 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:14.600 about this in the Strain episode, how they've like really 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:19.400 taken into account like anatomical differences in nature incorporate and 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:23.640 incorporated that into their vampire mythos um. But yeah, I 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:26.680 just as a horror fan, or maybe just as a 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:29.760 cinema fan, I'm always waiting for somebody to find like 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:33.320 the next cool hook on it. You know. I'm like, 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:37.960 I'm thinking of Near Dark a lot of fun. Yeah. Um, 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:41.840 Bill Paxton roll on that, yeah, Lance Hendrickson too, pretty 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:44.480 much everybody from Aliens, Yeah, yeah, it was a Katherine 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:47.160 Bigelow film. It was. Yeah. Now, for the purposes of 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:50.440 this episode again, we're gonna we're going to limit our 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:55.240 discussion of vampires to physics, mathematics, and evolution, um, you know, 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:59.000 basic real world biology without getting very you know, without 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:02.960 doing too much the way of dragging in anymore folklore, mythology, 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:06.920 film history, etcetera. And really the best place to start, 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:11.240 in my opinion is um is by looking at bats. 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:13.560 I mean, bats are pretty much the vampire bat is 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:18.520 one of our most prevalent modern examples. Uh. The the 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:22.040 main parallel between the idea of a blood drinking human 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:27.920 uh in fiction is a real life blood drinking um vertebrate. 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:31.160 You know. It's interesting about that that I learned doing 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:34.040 research for this episode was I had always assumed that 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:37.640 we called them. Sorry, I had always assumed that the 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:42.320 vampire myth came out of people having witnessed vampire bats. 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:45.400 I did not realize that it was sort of like 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:49.080 the hydra that we've talked about recently, that it was 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:52.160 actually the myth that came first, and then when we 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.560 discovered vampire bats, we gave them the name. Yeah, that's right, 0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:58.120 because these areas where you many of the areas in 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:01.680 the world where you had the vampire mythology that you 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:05.960 didn't actually have any blood drinking bats. There are million 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:08.400 South America and and part of that has to do 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:10.839 I mean, most of it has to do with some 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:13.920 of the limitations of blood drinking. So let's talk about 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:15.760 the bats and the birds. They have a great deal 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:18.479 in common. They're very different organisms. And the birds we 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:21.760 have the avians that emerged about a hundred and fifty 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:24.360 million years ago in the Jurassic Period. They went out 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:28.159 to fly, swim, trot, burrow all over the world. Meanwhile, 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:31.800 mammalian bats date back between seventy five and a hundred 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:37.000 million years and uh, it's harder to say because um quote, 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:40.239 bats are one of the most diverse groups of mammals today, 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:42.159 they are one of the least common groups in the 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:45.960 fossil record. Bats have small light skeletons that do not 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:49.880 preserve well, and we have very little information on the 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:52.520 early evolution of the group. And that's from a University 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:54.719 of Edinburgh page that I'll link to in the landing 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:56.600 page for this episode that deals with just sort of 0:05:56.640 --> 0:06:00.280 the basic evolution of bats. Have you ever been to 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:03.200 or heard of the bridge that's in Austin, Texas that 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.360 just has like millions of bats underneath it and if 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:08.479 you like hang out there at the right time of night, 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:10.360 you can just see them all swarming out. I've seen 0:06:10.480 --> 0:06:13.640 video of it. I went to Austin on vacation two 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:16.120 years ago and it was awesome, Like we got to 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:20.120 see it and it was really, uh, really something to behold. 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:22.799 But also apparently are co workers who were in Austin 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:25.240 recently for south By Southwest. We're gonna try to do 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:26.880 a video on it, but the bats wouldn't come out. 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.760 They were not cooperative. Um, so both bats and birds 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:34.760 learned to fly in their own ways. Uh. And there 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:38.520 are there are other fascinating examples of their conversion evolution. Uh. 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:42.200 Several dozen bats species and more than three hundred species 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:47.159 of hummingbirds evolved to resemble each other anatomically and behaviorally 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:51.000 solely because they existed in similar environments and exploited a 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:56.279 similar resource, that being nectar. Yeah, so nectar feeding bats 0:06:56.680 --> 0:07:00.560 they have pretty strange anatomies as well. Like I think 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:04.000 we hyper focus on the vampire bats, but really I 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:06.960 think it's something like three out of like a thousand 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:11.520 and one hundred bats species drink blood, so it's kind 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:14.240 of interesting that we focus so much on that. But 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:17.600 so these nectar feeding bats, there's one called the orange 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:23.640 nectar feeding back, or it's a Latin name is Lancophilia Robustah. 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:26.520 It can extend its tongue out to drink the nectar, 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:31.200 and it has grooves on its tongue that undulate like waves, 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:35.120 forming a conveyor belt to just basically conveyor belts drag 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:38.400 the nectar up to it. It's a it's gullet. And 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:40.720 the way, the reason why is that these bats way 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:44.040 fifteen grams each. They have to drink one point five 0:07:44.160 --> 0:07:47.680 times their own weight every single night. So that means 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:49.840 that each one of these bats has to visit somewhere 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:52.640 between eight hundred and a thousand flowers every night in 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:56.200 order to survive. Um. So it has to be really quick. 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.360 That's why it's evolved this crazy tongue. It only has 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:01.600 two second visit, so it's just like boom, flies into 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:04.840 the flower, sucks out the nectar with its crazy tongue, 0:08:05.000 --> 0:08:08.160 and flies away. Now imagine something like this with somebody 0:08:08.160 --> 0:08:11.240 who drinks blood, right, um, And in fact there's also 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:13.600 a bat in South America that has a tongue like 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:16.480 the vampires in the strain that we had talked about. 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:20.640 Its tongue is one point five times the length of 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:23.440 the rest of its body, and it reaches all the 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:26.840 way down its throat between its sternam and its heart. 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:30.360 So it's just this huge organ that's shooting up out 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:33.720 of its body through its mouth, grabbing this is a nectar, 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:38.280 drinking one again, grabbing the nectar and the yankee back down. Um. 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:41.560 But those are nectivores, right, and we're here to talk 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:46.160 about san guivores. Yes, sanguavar is the blood drinkers. And 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:49.600 there's little or no convergence between birds and bats when 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.480 it comes to drinking blood. And now there are birds 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:56.080 that occasionally or even frequently feed on on blood. Um. 0:08:56.240 --> 0:09:00.199 Vampire finches of the Glastical Sylands occasionally feed by drinking 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:02.840 of the blood of other birds. Meanwhile, you have, you know, 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:04.880 plenty of examples of birds that feed on ticks and 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:09.280 other ectoparasites on large animals, and they sometimes cross that 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:12.839 line between dining on stolen blood and stealing it for themselves. 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:16.760 But none of these birds is an obligate cyclevore an 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:21.199 obligate blood drinker. The vampire bat stands alone among all vertebrates, 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:25.800 is the only aerial or terrestrial obligate blood drinker. It's 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:29.000 all they consume aside from their mother's milk. And so, 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:31.800 to give you a comparison to those nectar drinking bats 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:34.880 that I was talking about earlier, blood is actually pretty 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:37.880 skimpy when it comes to protein and fat. The kind 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:41.960 of energy they need water, so vampire bats get almost 0:09:42.040 --> 0:09:45.000 no fat at all out of it. Subsequently, they have 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:47.360 to consume this is different from the nectar ones. They 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:49.760 only have to consume half their weight in blood each 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:51.959 night to stay alive. Imagine if you and I had 0:09:52.000 --> 0:09:53.840 to do that, if we had to consume half our 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:58.680 way in blood, Like that's even uh fantastic by the 0:09:58.679 --> 0:10:01.520 imagination of vampires, right, Like, that's a lot of blood. 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:03.640 And we're gonna get to that later on when we 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:06.680 talk about the physics of actually drinking blood from a 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:10.200 thrall if you're a vampire. Yeah, I think that's certainly, 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:12.400 certainly something that's very important to keep in mind here though, 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:15.480 is that that blood is not this just font of 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:19.320 energy and resources. Uh, there's there's very little power in 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.440 the blood and for a vampire bat and certainly if 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:26.080 you're gonna extrapolate that and say a vampiric human, if 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:30.679 they're going to make this their soul um feeding method, 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:32.400 if this is gonna be the only place they get 0:10:32.440 --> 0:10:35.040 their energy, it is it's pretty skimpy. You're talking about 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:38.520 living on the very edge here. Yeah, and there was 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:42.560 a you know, I think it's easy for us to say, like, well, 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:45.240 for for us, you and me, because we love our 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:47.480 monster science, it's easy for us to go, yeah, there's 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:49.880 science to be had there, but it's easy for us 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:51.960 as a culture to go, well, vampires, that's just some 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:55.400 made up stuff. Uh, there's there's nothing real going on there. 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:57.960 But in fact, there is a collision in the seventeen 0:10:58.040 --> 0:11:02.559 hundreds between medicine science in the myth of the vampire um. 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:04.840 And this comes from that Mary Hallab article that I 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:07.840 quoted at the beginning of the episode Rural People's in 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:11.600 the seventeen hundreds, they relied on traditional medicine to ward 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:15.440 off vampires, and to them, taking an interest in something 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:19.600 like the supernatural was their means of conducting scientific inquiry. 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:21.880 So what they would do is they would pay a 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:25.960 fee to somebody who said, yes, I'm a vampire expert, 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:29.360 I have been trained, uh, and I can prevent the 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:32.200 spread of this right. So an example, UM, and I 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:34.240 wonder I thought of you when I was reading this, 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:36.200 because I'm sure you've heard of this before. In a 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:39.360 Serbian village, people thought there was a deceased soldier named 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:42.640 Arnold Paul and he kept coming back quote unquote as 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:46.880 a vampire and attacking villagers. Uh. And what happened was, 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:49.040 you know, it resulted in two waves of sort of 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:52.720 a vampire panic that lasted one was three weeks and 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:56.560 one was forty days. After he died. They eventually had 0:11:56.679 --> 0:12:00.600 surgeons show up uh and disenter his audi so they 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:05.000 could attest yes, this is indeed a vampire. Uh. And 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:09.000 so one of these doctors, his name was Dr Fluckinger 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:14.280 and Dr Flukinger, brought this story to Western Europe where 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:18.960 it was actually debated amongst a lot of medical professionals, 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:22.200 in particular in Germany. And there was also a doctor 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:25.640 John Polar Doori, who wrote an influential story about vampires 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:28.040 that has actually uh. Mary Shelley talks about at the 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:33.120 beginning of Frankenstein. These two events together by two medical 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:37.800 professionals may have been responsible for establishing vampires as fantasy 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:44.040 and not as rural, you know, a supernatural fact. Uh. 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:48.560 And so basically the German academics and doctors debating this 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:52.720 led to uh, the original Pope Benedict in seventeen forty 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:57.040 nine declaring these vampires are superstition, they don't actually exist. 0:12:57.160 --> 0:12:59.720 And that was sort of the beginning of it of 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:04.040 us acknowledging it as fictional. Interesting, Now, I know a 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:06.440 lot of you are probably wondering. Okay, So so we 0:13:06.440 --> 0:13:10.120 we've already talked about the rarity of of a of 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:15.280 a mammal drinking blood is its soul of form of sustenance? Uh? 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:18.319 And and we we talked about what a poor form 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:20.720 of sustenance blood is. So how do we get to 0:13:20.760 --> 0:13:23.480 that part via evolution? Why are there so few species 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:28.120 that do it well? The vampires in question likely emerged 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:31.560 twenty six million years ago, but we already mentioned bat 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:35.320 fossils are not too easily come by. Uh. And sure 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:38.360 we have a few fossil vampire bats, including a thirty 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:43.960 percent larger does Moodius dracula. Uh Yeah, that's that's a wonderful. 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:48.679 And but but these are these are total vampires that 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:51.520 you know, we don't really have those transitional forms. Uh. 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:53.680 And and then part of this comes from the fact 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:55.560 that you see so many of these bats that have 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:59.800 delicate bones and they're tropical region. Fossils of them are rare. 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:03.240 So we just have a few hypotheses as to how 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:08.600 vampires emerged. Uh. One hypothesis is that the proto vampire 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:12.240 bats that they these ancient species, they weren't quite vampires 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:15.360 yet they fed on blood and gorged ectoparasites found on 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:18.880 large animals, much like these various you know, tick eating birds, 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:23.600 you know, oxen and rhinos and whatnot. UM. So we're 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:26.520 you know, we're talking fat fall off the rump, prehistoric 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:30.120 kicks um. And you know earlier we mentioned the blurring 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:34.680 the term fall off the rump. They fell up. They're 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:38.960 just they're just there. There's there. It's say, once they're full, 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:41.720 they can't hold on anyone. Yeah, they're and they're mostly 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:45.360 the blood of another species. Um. And they're just there 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:47.840 for the picking. And we already mentioned that the blinds 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:51.480 are often blurred between parasite eater and just just an 0:14:51.480 --> 0:14:54.640 eater of blood. And it's the same deal here, supported 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:59.520 by the fact that se bats um are insectivores, so 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:02.000 you know, anttis are iractants. But still you get the 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:03.600 idea they're used to eat. These are the type of 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:06.720 creatures that they eat already. And then if certain bats 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:10.960 began to depend more and more on on parasites, you 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:14.040 can see where the transition could take place. Plus, there 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:18.360 are anecdotal reports of vampire bats preying on vampire moths, 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:21.480 which is interesting. And and yes there is a vampire 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:24.960 moth and you'll find it in Malaysia, uh, the Ural 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:29.040 mountains and also southern Europe. Uh. And just like imagining 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:32.400 as we're explaining all these various different types of species 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:34.880 with vampire in front of their name, that there's like so, 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:37.440 I'm sure there's gotta be a fictional account there somewhere 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:41.480 of like u mythical vampires, but they like turn like 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:43.880 a bear or something like that. And then you've got 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:47.480 like vampire bears duking it out with vampire humans. You 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:51.280 know who's gonna eventually survive on the food chain, Right, 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:56.840 vampire bats are eating vampire moths, what's eating vampire humans? Yeah? Yeah, 0:15:56.920 --> 0:16:00.640 vampire whales vampire whales. See that that has not been 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:03.080 explored at all yet. I think we've gotta we should 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:07.680 copy right that. So Bill Shoot wrote a wonderful book 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:10.320 a titled Dark Banquet Blood and the Curious Lives of 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:14.280 Blood Feeding Creatures. Highly recommend anyone interesting this topic check 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:16.200 it out. I noticed that this book was cited in 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:19.640 multiple of the resources that we're looking at for this. Yeah, 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:22.160 it's it's a great one. It's it's one that's you know, 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:24.880 very readable for a general audience. And he goes into 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:28.200 not only vampire bats, that he goes into various insects 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:31.720 as well, so it's a you know, a thorough engaging 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:35.600 exploration of the topic. But he points out that mutual 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:38.080 grooming behavior may have played a role in the evolution 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:40.720 of vampire bats as well. Because the vampire bats are 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:43.520 highly social, they spend five percent of their time grooming 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:46.600 one another, and Shoot suggests that they may have had 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:50.280 their first taste of blood consuming each other's kicks and 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:54.200 bedbug species, so you know it kind of you know, 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:56.120 they're in this situation with like, oh, these are great, 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:58.080 we should go try and get more of these, and 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:00.640 we just get it direct from the tap yeah, yeah, 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:04.760 take out the middleman. Now. It's also worth noting that 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:09.240 bat expert Brock Finton disagrees with another great name Brockton. 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:15.359 I'm a I'm a fauna expert. Brock points out that 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:20.359 ectoparasites are small, ecto parasites are difficult to find on 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:23.480 other animals, and vampire bats are restricted to the Americas. 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:26.920 So those impossible problems with this hypothesis. But Finton presents 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:30.639 hypothesis too, and that's the proto vampire bats fed on 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:35.320 insects and larva crawling around the wounds of large prehistoric mammals. 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:37.760 You know where I first heard this theory was on 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:41.720 Dr Anton Jessup's episode of Monster Science. So we talked 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:44.320 about vampires because that was where I learned the term 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:48.520 mega fauna. Yes, yeah, mega fauna the large you know, 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:51.160 today we pretty much are down to, you know, just 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:54.919 elephants is like the really great example of megafauna in 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.080 the old days when they could be sustained and you 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:02.760 had plenty of other creatures as well. With a whale, Yeah, yeah, 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:05.800 exactly similar. Yeah, because you have this large creature, this 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.159 just bounty of resources, it gets a cut on it, 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:14.840 right that becomes a just an area of increased economic activity, 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:17.360 a lot of organisms trying to feed off of it, 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:20.119 and then who's gonna feed on the feeders? Well, then 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:23.040 perhaps that's where this this begins. The vampire bats or 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:26.400 the proto vampire bats, they volunteer and jump in there 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:29.040 to get some of the the goods. So there's a 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:31.159 lot of back and forth in this hypothesis as well. 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:34.920 And then finally there's an arboreal feeding hypothesis, and this 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:37.680 is the idea that proto vampires foraged in trees, feeding 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.919 on small vertebrates, and over time they evolved uh to 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:45.160 capitalize on larger prey uh that they couldn't kill. At first, 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:47.240 they bit the animals that slept in the trees, and 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:50.360 eventually they adapted to prey on ground dwelling animals as well. 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:54.000 Because that gets into how vampire bats actually work. If 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:58.719 they swoop down um uh and they they open up 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:01.440 just a small opening on a like a sweeping cow 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:03.800 or what have you, and then lap the blood. Yeah, 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:07.240 they're not draining and cow dry. And it's the interesting 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:10.360 connection here to the studies we're gonna be talking about later, 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:13.040 as the premise really is the same for like, uh, 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:17.600 the vampire human myths, right, which is is that you know, 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:20.800 essentially it's not economical for a vampire bat or a 0:19:20.880 --> 0:19:24.040 vampire human to drain you dry. They need to come 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:26.320 in do it quick in such a way that you 0:19:26.320 --> 0:19:29.480 probably won't even notice, right. And that's where that like 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:32.600 comparing it to the nectivores is important because they've only 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:34.760 got that two second windows. So if a vampire bat 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:37.520 just flies up to a cow, makes a small incision, 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:39.280 laps up a little bit of blood for a couple 0:19:39.280 --> 0:19:41.159 of seconds, and then flies away, cow is probably not 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:44.560 even gonna notice until the next day when it starts itchin. Yeah, 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:47.600 because it's also it's very much a stealth activity again there, 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:51.280 it's kind of like a business model, right. They can 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:54.560 only extend so much energy to pull off this heist 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:58.040 and still make a profit. Like the vampire bat cannot 0:19:58.040 --> 0:19:59.920 get into a situation where it's going to try and 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:04.280 wrestle a cow. It's not gonna work. It has I'd 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:06.840 love to see it, Yeah, And I suppose vampire bats 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:09.879 are also probably not cooperative enough that they've come to 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:11.879 the point where like they're just gonna swarm onto a 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:14.520 cow and just drink it dry, you know. Yeah, well 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:16.600 I think it's one of those things where one vampire 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:19.400 bats gonna get away with it, Like one one criminal 0:20:19.480 --> 0:20:22.639 can rob one store, all six criminals cannot rob the 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:26.840 same store at one competition for resources. Al Right, So 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:30.320 this brings us to the the process of drinking blood itself. 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:33.240 How do you drink blood as a mammal, as a 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:35.520 vampire bat? And then what could that possibly tell us 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:39.720 about how it might work for a human um? And uh, 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:44.120 it's a lot of this is chemical. Um, the vampire 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:47.800 bat makes a small cut and laps, does not suck 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:51.359 the blood. And uh, while the average wound inflicted by 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:53.480 a vampire bat would likely stop bleeding in one to 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:56.639 two minutes, they are key ingredients in the vampire bats 0:20:56.640 --> 0:21:01.080 saliva that interfere with clotting for several hours. So you 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:05.879 you're talking about really a complex chemical cocktail in the saliva. 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:08.520 So yeah, we would definitely have to assume that any 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:13.639 kind of vampire, uh, humanoid sized vampire would also be 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:17.520 producing an anticoagulant. That's right. I wonder if they get 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:19.840 I haven't watched enough of like True Blood or anything 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:21.199 like that, but I wonder if they get into that 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:24.840 with those shows. I do not remember from all my 0:21:24.880 --> 0:21:28.080 time watching True Blood. Um. Now, now, some people, some 0:21:28.080 --> 0:21:31.399 experts also speculate that there's often a pain killing and 0:21:31.680 --> 0:21:35.560 or skin softening enzyme in the saliva as well as 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:39.080 the bat will lick before they bite. So again, the 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:44.160 saliva is it's just a cocktail of essential blood drinking 0:21:44.280 --> 0:21:48.560 chemicals and that they lick, they cut, then they lap 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:51.040 it up and those times work very similar to that 0:21:51.080 --> 0:21:53.320 nectivore I was describing that. It's just kind of like this, 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:56.880 uh conveyor belt. It's just like working like a piston. 0:21:57.000 --> 0:21:59.000 The way that it licks. When you watch the slow 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:01.520 motion videos of these things, it's kind of stunning. Yeah, 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:03.840 it causes that this movement causes the blood to flow 0:22:03.880 --> 0:22:05.919 along a pair of grooves on the bottom of the 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:08.240 tongue and into the mouth. There's even a cleft in 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:12.400 the lip that allows the flow of blood. And wasn't 0:22:12.440 --> 0:22:15.200 there like a period of time where some scientists thought 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:18.480 that that U the flaps on their nose, we're what 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:22.000 we're making the cuts themselves and things. Yeah, there, yeah, 0:22:22.119 --> 0:22:23.960 there was, But of course it turns out that all 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:25.760 most of that has to do with that called location 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:28.639 has nothing to do with feeding. But but yeah, if 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:31.840 you're just looking at these these crazy looking or gamy 0:22:32.160 --> 0:22:36.879 back faces, you could I can imagine one producing that 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:38.879 theory like, oh those look kind of sharp. Maybe they 0:22:38.960 --> 0:22:41.040 kind of slashed their face back and forth in a 0:22:41.440 --> 0:22:44.119