WEBVTT - Rise of the Vampire Bat 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.960 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:13.200 Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:15.680 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:18.560 and this week we're talking about vampires. Specifically, we're talking 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:21.239 about vampire bats. But I feel like I have to 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:24.840 to urge everyone, like, don't don't run away, because because 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:27.880 on one hand, vampires, of course, as just is a 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:29.720 is a whole. It's like bringing in all of the 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:33.120 various fantasy elements. They're like, that's completely overblown, to the 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:36.400 point that most people I think are getting, if not 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:39.839 completely already forward with vampires, you know, we kind of 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:42.200 know what to expand with it. And then with vampire bats, 0:00:42.840 --> 0:00:45.199 I don't want to, you know, discredit them either, but 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:48.360 on a at a surface level, it's easy to say, oh, well, 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:51.000 their bats and they drink blood from cows, no big deal. 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:53.959 I've seen them on I've seen Attenborough talk about them 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:56.640 on documentaries, and yes, they're they're neat, but I don't 0:00:56.720 --> 0:00:59.120 necessarily need to hear about them for an hour. But 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:03.320 the thing is, we really start asking questions about the 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:07.640 blood diet and about the vampiric lifestyle style and how 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:13.520 that evolved really get into some crazy imaginative areas that 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:16.200 that that that really blew my mind. Yeah, these guys 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:19.520 are so interesting for for many many reasons. And we've 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:21.319 talked about bats. I think we had a couple of 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:25.560 bad episodes last year. Maybe we've talked about how um, 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:28.080 we'll just we'll discuss a little bit about this, but 0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:31.600 we've talked about how they have rich social bonds and 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:35.720 they are amazing creatures, and they have these these four limbs. 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:38.240 If you look at their bodies, it's very easy to 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:43.840 see the human hand and the human armbones replicated in 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:47.760 that wingspan. That alone gives us this idea that there's 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:51.400 so much to this mammal that's only flying mammal um 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:54.360 that relates to us. And then there's the weirdness of 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:57.720 the blood diet too. So let's let's launch into these 0:01:57.840 --> 0:02:01.720 guys because they're so amazing. Yeah, vampire bats. Now, bats 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:04.960 exist in various places throughout the world. We have both 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:06.840 both the Old World and the New World bats, the 0:02:07.120 --> 0:02:10.440 New World of course being the America's. But out of 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:14.520 all these species and uh, and we're talking over a thousand, 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:17.680 like five more or less different species of bats in 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:20.920 the world, they make up a quarter of all mammal species, 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:26.320 and yet vampire bats limited to three species currently, all 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:29.800 three live in the New World in the America's ranging 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:34.000 from Mexico to Brazil, Chile and argat Argentina. And there's 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:36.160 a reason for that. Yes, we'll get into that in 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:39.000 a little bit. But when we're talking about these three species, 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:43.280 we were talking about does modest rotundus, diphilia eco data 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:48.400 and Diningma's jungi and respectively, were talking about the common vampire, 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:52.519 the hairy legged vampire, and the white winged vampire. Yes, 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:55.519 and these are all three again their vampires their single bars. 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:59.040 They live which in their obligates obligates samla single bars, 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:03.760 meaning they live exclusively on blood. There are obligated to 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:06.760 drink it. It's not just a situation of like, yeah, 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:08.560 I eat blood, eat bugs and then I get a 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:11.600 little blood here and there. No, they exist solely on blood. 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:14.560 And as will discuss, like that's that's a hard road, 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:17.960 like blood is not a great nutrient. Like if you 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:20.520 had to choose one thing in the world to live upon, 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:23.520 that's not a good choice. Like that's why you have 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:26.080 that's really one of the reasons you have only three 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:29.000 species out of these thousands of species of bats that 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:32.799 do this. The rest are living on fruits or insects. 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:35.800 And then here these these guys and gals, and they're 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:38.800 depending upon blood. Yeah, in a pretty limited region if 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:41.120 you look at it from a world perspective. Um, but 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:44.080 let's look at the way these guys appear to us, 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:48.320 because they're they're quite striking. Um. They have these pig 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:51.760 like noses that if you ever look at angry birds 0:03:51.920 --> 0:03:56.119 and you see the pigs, they've got big gizmo ears, right, 0:03:56.800 --> 0:03:59.240 and um, they have a kind of a it's been 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:01.840 described as a cleft on its chin which helps to 0:04:01.920 --> 0:04:05.280 channel the blood. And then of course these just razor 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:09.200 sharp teeth. Yeah. And the and the nose you mentioned 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:11.240 is all. They also have this this kind of nose 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:14.160 leafing it's called, which almost kind of makes their nose 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:16.680 looks like some sort of a fungus. Uh. And and 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:19.000 you find these all in other bats as well, not 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:22.520 just the vampire bats. But they give the the vampire 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:25.919 about a very distinct appearance. And in fact, early naturalist thought, 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:29.000 you know, I guess, based mostly on illustrations at this 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:32.200 point that those leaves might be sharp, so their noses 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:35.080 are kind of these these razor blades that they might 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:37.599 be using to slice open their prey in order to 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:40.679 drink the blood, which isn't so then the nose leaves 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:43.440 have have to do with echolocation and also thermal location, 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:46.760 not only seeing things with sight, but also detecting changes 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:49.479 in temperature so they can see where that blood is 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:51.360 to see where see where where to strike, and where 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:53.359 to drink exactly. They actually it's sort of like an 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:57.320 infrared system that can actually sense that heat. But um. 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:00.040 But what I love about the way they look and 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:02.680 these depictions of them is they almost look like these 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:07.440 fictional like medieval etchings or something or something that would 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:10.000 come out of the mind of man, because they look 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:13.000 so bizarre they do. They have this goblin the UH 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:17.360 look to them, and it's right because you you look 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:21.480 at the illustrations of fantastic goblins and whatnot and monsters 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:23.280 and demons, and then you look at the bat, and 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:25.240 then you have to know what comes first. You know, 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:29.200 to what extent has the bat influenced our iconography of 0:05:29.240 --> 0:05:32.560 the monstrous? To what extent has the monstrous UH interpreted 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:36.120 our interpretation of the bat, because for instance, the vampire thing, 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:40.400 it really our understanding of the vampire bat is fairly recent. Uh. 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:42.680 And again they're in there in the New World, they're 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:45.960 in the Americas. But the idea of the vampire, of 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:49.080 some sort of creature that sustains itself on blood, on 0:05:49.200 --> 0:05:51.760 human blood, especially, like, that's a very old idea that 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:54.039 you find, uh, you know, back in even in the 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:57.640 Hellenistic ages, and perhaps you know even earlier indeed. But 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:01.000 let's let's get into some of their feeding habits, because 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:03.760 this is really interesting stuff. In a study published in 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:07.560 the journal BMC Biology, it was found that vampire bats 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:10.159 of this species does modus rotundus by the way, if 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:13.200 they were named rotundus at the time, because their stomachs 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:15.920 looked appear to the people it is very very large 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:18.760 to the researchers, um. But little did they know that 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:21.680 the stomach was actually filled with blood at that moment, 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:25.080 so that's why the stomach looked so rotund. But they 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:29.479 found that these bats could recognize recorded human breathing sounds 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:34.080 much better than human participants could. And vampire bats feed 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:36.719 on the same prey, by the way, over several nights 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:38.960 and the authors of the study proposed that the bats 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:41.960 us breathing sounds to identify prey in the same way 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:46.760 um humans use voice to recognize each other. So it's 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:48.920 kind of it's interesting not only that they have the 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:55.160 certain live stock in mind, but they can differentiate between 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:58.680 that live stock based on their breathing patterns. And we've 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:01.919 talked about this ability with bats before, this sort of 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:05.240 zen like ability just to to take everything else in 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:08.560 the background and have it sort of receeed and really 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:12.760 hone in on the prey. Yeah, they're amazing creatures and 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:15.920 and it's easy to focus on on all of this, uh, 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:19.520 the alien aspects of the bat, because as we discussed 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:21.600 in the previous podcast, it's it's it's almost impossible to 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:24.440 put ourselves in that perspective and to imagine seeing the 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:27.400 world as the bat sees the world. But they're also 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:30.200 really social creatures. They typically gather in collegues about a 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:32.920 hundred animals, but sometimes they meant living may live in 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:36.240 a group of a thousand or more. And uh, incidentally, 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:39.520 over that time, a hundred bat colony can drink the 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:43.560 blood of twenty five cows. But but again, they're they're 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:48.960 very social. You see actual um reciprocal altruism in vampire bats. 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:52.280 You see, because this will discuss, it's essential with with 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:55.680 a blood diet to to get that blood every night 0:07:55.720 --> 0:07:57.760 if possible. And if you go forty eight hours without 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:01.160 blood as a vampire bat, you're starving yet your toast. Yeah, 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:04.360 and so we we we see examples of the vampi 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:08.760 of vampire bats bringing blood back and feeding the famished bats, 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:11.480 the bats that haven't had enough to eat, and and 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:14.600 looking after each other in this in this fashion. And 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:16.800 that one of the theories here with this is that 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:19.760 bats picked up this behavior, this kind of altruism, is 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:23.240 looking after one another because in their habitats, as you 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:26.000 see the horse die aways, you see the camel and 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:29.680 the giant slop disappear from the continent, leaving them only uh, 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:32.240 you know, much more limited food supplies. They had to 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:34.679 do this in order to survive. Yeah, there's a kind 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:37.280 of cooperation, just like among humans. Right. If you kind 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:39.000 of help me out this time, I'll help you out 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:41.760 next time. You know, you can't find a source of blood, 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:45.280 right there, there's what I said yesterday, right exactly. Yeah, 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:48.600 And there's they're they're even you know, there's some degree 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:52.160 of of argument uh in this on this particular topic 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:56.320 among bat researchers. But they may be able to weed 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:58.920 out cheats. So if you're taking blood but not giving, 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:02.520 then they're going to cut you off. Ah, that's interesting. 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:06.400 And they have seen that in captivity all of the 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:09.800 bats will share a meal if if someone needs it, 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:13.679 but in their natural habitat the adult males will not 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:16.480 engage in this behavior the female as well. Of course, 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:21.160 they also like to sniff each other as a greeting 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:26.040 and they perform social grooming of one another, which is key. 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:28.600 We'll be getting back to that in a minute. Yeah, 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:31.839 And for their body size, vampire bats have one of 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:35.319 the largest brains among bats. The neo cortex is about 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:39.720 twice the average size of other bats. And as we 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:43.959 know about the neo cortex and humans, it's really important 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:48.319 in terms of social intelligence and social complexity. So it 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:51.200 would make sense that um it is so very large. 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:53.840 And if they have these very rich bonds with one another. 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:57.880 And we have talked about this before and the other 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:01.400 podcast about bad but a lot of the test to 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:05.600 do with their communication, which is super nuanced. We know 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:08.920 of course they can recognize each other's voices. We also 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:13.200 know that bats share a common gene for communication called 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:18.160 fox P two with us. And we also known, according 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:21.400 to researcher Mere Jean Quinn Child and her colleagues at 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:25.920 the University of Erlingen Nuremberg in Germany, that the younger 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:30.880 great greater sack bats that the baby ones were observed 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:34.720 stringing together screeches, barks, and hisses with no soccial context, 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:40.360 essentially practicing language much like a toddler does when it babbles. Yeah, 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:42.880 so again, you see a lot of parallels with humans. 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:45.880 All right, So let's talk about evolution. Now, mostly we're 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:50.800 interested in the evolution of of vampiresm of depending upon 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:53.480 that blood diet. But but let's let's step it out 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:56.200 a little, uh, a little more and think about the 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:59.600 evolution of the bat itself. Bats and birds. Obviously they 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:03.640 have a great deal in common. Both both are flying organisms, 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:07.520 yet they're very different. In birds, we have the aviens 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:10.400 emerging about a hundred and fifty million years ago during 0:11:10.400 --> 0:11:13.280 the Jurassic period, uh, and they go on from there 0:11:13.320 --> 0:11:18.440 to fly, swim, trott and borrow all over the world. Meanwhile, uh, 0:11:18.600 --> 0:11:22.760 the mammalion bat dates back between seventy hundred million years ago. 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:25.560 But it's hard to say because even though they're one 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:28.240 of the most diverse groups of mammals today, they're one 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.440 of the least common groups in the fossil records. Uh. 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:34.120 Part of this is that they have small light skeletons, 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:36.240 they don't preserve all that well. And also, if you're 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:39.080 residing in a tropical environment, as a lot of these 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:43.280 these bats due today and and did historically, these are 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:48.720 not environments where where dead things last long decomposition is yeah, 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:51.600 things that it's breaking down, it's hot, it's moist, things 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:54.880 are eating. Uh, so it's chance the chances of fossilization 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:58.520 are reduced. Again. They're over a thousand different species of 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:00.160 bats in the world. They make up a quarter of 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:03.240 all mammal species. Uh. And among these we have the 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:06.400 mega bats as opposed to the microbats. These are large 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:09.959 bats found in the Old World tropical rainforests Australia, Asia, 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:12.600 and Africa. The biggest bat in the world is the 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:15.840 is the Malayan flying fox found in Asia. Waighs about 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:17.959 two pounds and has a wingspan a fan of about 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:20.760 six feet, and that's one of the fruit eaters. The 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:24.000 smallest bat in the world is Kitty's hog nose bat, 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:26.839 also called the bumblebee bat, and that's stuff found in 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:29.680 Thai land in ways about two grams uh. It's about 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:31.840 as much as a dime, by the way, and it 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:35.160 has a six inch wingspan. So both the bat and 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:38.000 the bird learned to fly in their own way. And 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:41.959 there are other fascinating examples of their covergent evolution. Several 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:44.599 dozen bat species and more than three hundred species of 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:49.640 hummingbird evolved to resemble each other, both anatomically and behaviorally, uh, 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:52.440 solely because they existed in similar environments and exploited a 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:56.360 similar resource name lamely nectar. All right, this is the 0:12:56.640 --> 0:13:00.640 sugary liquid bribe of pollen producing plants. But those are 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:03.200 the nectivores. And we're here to talk about bats with 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:08.040 another highly specialized lifestyle for a liquid diet. And we're 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:11.640 talking here, of course about the songlevores, the blood drinkers. 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:15.439 How did the blood drinkers evolve? Well, the first vampire 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:18.480 bats emerged less than twenty six million years ago, according 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:22.040 to genetic evidence, and they are closely related to insect 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:25.880 eating bats that may have gorged on the parasites of 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:30.640 prehistoric beasts. So if you've just feasted on a fat, 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:35.760 juicy tick, let's say, then it's not too far of 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:39.280 a walk in logic to see how some bats may 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:42.640 have begun to have the taste for blood or to 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:46.040 seek it out as as a mean source. Right, And 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:49.200 we we see this to a certain degree in birds. Uh, 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:52.040 there are birds that occasionally or even frequently feed on blood. 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:55.760 Vampire finches of the Glagos Islands occasionally feed by drinking 0:13:55.760 --> 0:13:58.280 the blood of other birds. Meanwhile, there are plenty of 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:01.640 birds that feed on picks and other parasites and large animals, 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:04.080 you know, ox peckers and the like. They're eating the ticks, 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:07.360 they're eating the fleas, whatever. And then if there's a 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:09.839 little blood there from the host organism, they'll they'll go 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:11.480 ahead and cross that line and have some of it 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:15.079 as well. But there's little or no convergence between birds 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:17.200 and bats when it comes to blood. When we're talking 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:21.400 about obligate blood drinking, you don't see uh, any obligate 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:26.440 blood drinking birds. Well, I think imagine the pigeons out there, 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:31.320 so so central are these blood meals to the vampire 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:35.160 bats that they actually have been missing around or modifying 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:39.760 a plasma gen activator gene, which we haven't. Humans have it, 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:43.000 and it protects against heart attack by producing proteins that 0:14:43.040 --> 0:14:46.560 bust up blood clots and they clear vessels. Um. But 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:49.240 they actually have this, uh, this gene that they can 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:54.160 activate in their saliva. And David Liberles, a geneticist at 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:57.360 the University of Wyoming and Laramie, studied three species of 0:14:57.440 --> 0:15:00.760 vampire bouts and found this modification. And he found that 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.320 two species that prey on lifestock acquired additional mutations that 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:09.400 prevent these p A proteins from being silenced by natural inhibitor. 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:12.280 So he says that's a process that humans and other 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:14.840 mammals used to put a harness on blood clotting, but 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:20.600 feeding on mammals, he says, is a key adaptation for that. 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:23.400 So it's just further evidence that this is so important 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:27.040 to them that they've been tinkering over time their genes 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:31.040 say hey, we need to make this process more solid. Yeah, 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:35.160 like thet a genetic level, they are completely committed to 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:37.160 this blood diet and we're going to get into into 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:39.920 some more aspects of this little more. But it's such 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:43.520 a specialized diet that it demands a very specialized physiology. 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:46.880 It's not. And that's something to keep in mind again 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:49.600 when you think of of humanoid vampires, like, what would 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:51.200 it take for a human? Could a human live on 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:54.080 blood exclusively? No, a human couldn't. It would require a 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:57.320 different species of humanoid exactly entirely. Yeah, you'd have to 0:15:57.360 --> 0:15:59.840 be a very tiny humanoid first of all. Um. But 0:15:59.880 --> 0:16:02.120 I did want a little side note here mentioned that 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:07.000 the anticoagulating enzyme that they produce has been synthathesized by 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:10.560 researchers and it is called draculin. Nice. It isn't that nice, 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:12.800 And it's used in medication for strict victims to keep 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:15.680 tissue damage and a minimum by keeping that blood flow 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:18.160 to the tissues. Yeah, like we discussed when we were 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:22.440 talking about leeches, I believe any animal that that depends 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:24.800 on blood has to be kind of a hacker. And 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:28.080 the and the the bat though it's hard to call 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:30.320 about a parasite. You see people shying away from them 0:16:30.360 --> 0:16:33.200 as bat and calling them a carnivore, but still they 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:35.480 have to be able to hack the blood. And so 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:38.080 from a medical standpoint, as we try to figure out 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:40.240 ways to hack the blood, we end up turning to 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:43.000 the to the leeches, to the bats, the parasites of 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:44.880 the world, to the blood drinkers of the world, and 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:48.840 see how they do it. Um. You mentioned the evolution 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:51.920 of the bat and the idea that they evolved from 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:55.680 insect eating bats in prehistory, and I just wanted to 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:59.520 run through UM that that that idea because it gave 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:01.720 me some visual old, didn't it It did? And uh 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:04.159 And specifically I was reading a fantastic book and you 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:07.720 were reading this as well, by Bill Shoot called Dark Banquet, 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:11.720 Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood Feeding Creatures. It's 0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:15.920 available on paperback, hardcover, and kindle, and it's it's really excellent, 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:19.720 excellently written, great for just about any any reading level, 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:23.320 in any science level. UM. But he really goes into 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:25.560 this topic and I was. I really enjoyed it so 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:28.760 much I wanted to hit the three uh or so 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:32.760 hypotheses that he mentions. Now, the first hypothesis is, again, 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:35.879 we have these proto vampire bats and they're feeding on 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:40.240 blood in gorge ectoparasites found on large prehistoric animals. So 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:42.720 think of all those crazy prehistoric animals that we covered 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:45.840 in the past. Or you send pictures of um and there, 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:48.639 and there of course loaded with parasites, big old ticks, 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:51.800 big old fleas, other things that are gorging on the blood. Yeah, 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:54.240 it's a feast. And you're a bat, you're you're you 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:57.480 eat insects, and it's a world in which the insects 0:17:57.520 --> 0:18:00.560 are are the available prey. And here is a large 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:03.919 animal and it's crawling with these things. So you're you're 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:06.560 gonna you're gonna eat those, right, You're gonna eat those 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:10.000 big blood gorge ticks and whatnot. And so that the 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:13.160 idea here is that they're dining on those and over 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:16.560 time they crossed the line, you know, they start drinking 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:18.800 some blood from the host, and then they reached the 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:21.560 point where they're living exclusively on the blood of the 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:25.680 host animal and ignoring all of those ticks and fleets. Now, 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:28.280 this is supported by the fact as a theory, as 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:32.639 a hypothesis, rather that bats are insectivore. So we know 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:36.080 that that prehistoric bats would have been eating insects, and 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:41.640 there are anecdotal reports of vampire bats praying on vampire moths. Now, 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:44.440 just that's gonna come as a surprise for a lot 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:47.560 of you, because yes, there is a vampire moth um 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:50.120 blood on blood here, yeah, and you'll find him in Malaysia, 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:54.680 you'll find him in Thailand. You're all southern Europe and 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:58.000 and so there. Again, there's anecdotal evidence that vampire bats 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:02.640 have preyed on blood engorged insects, So take that point. 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:06.520 It's another scenario that lends support to this idea. Is 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:08.919 the whole grimming thing, right, you had pointed that out. 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:11.880 That's that's important socially that you sit there and groom 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:14.080 each other. So that would be an opportunity to pick 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:18.080 out some nice, juicy morsels, right, That's so that could 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:20.720 lend some support to it. And I said that it 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:23.400 was a sort of short walk in logic to say 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:26.600 you would cross over. But that's also a little simplistic, right, 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:28.720 because that's like saying that if you had to be 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:33.600 a cannibal in this very dire situation as a human being, 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:35.960 that once you had that, you might go cannibal for 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:38.560 the rest of your life, right right. Yeah. We find 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:41.520 it increasingly when you try and apply some sort of 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:45.320 mathematical model for evolution, if you fall into this trap here, 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:48.199 because it's not a situation able X plus y equals 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:50.640 z here so it must be the same here, and 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:55.119 it gets gets complex anyway, Um that expert brock Fenton 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:57.960 disagrees with this, uh, this theory that we've been discussing, 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:02.200 and he argues on some three points. Number one, ectoparasites 0:20:02.240 --> 0:20:04.760 are small, Like even if we're talking about a prehistoric animal, 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:08.480 it's it's still gonna have small parasites. It's not like 0:20:08.640 --> 0:20:12.760 the giant elephant head giant ticks. So let's take like 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:15.840 thousands of these things. Yeah, you still a lot of them, 0:20:15.840 --> 0:20:19.000 and it's gonna be difficult to act. The ectoparasites are 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:22.639 difficult to find on other animals, and vampire bats are 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:25.639 restricted to a very slim portion of the Americans. And 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:27.880 so part of his argument is, if this was really 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:29.560 how things were gonna go down, why didn't it go 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:33.680 down like this in other places? So he presents hypothesis 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:36.479 number two, the idea that proto vampire bats fed on 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:40.720 insects and larva crawling around the gaping wounds of large 0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:46.159 prehistoric mammals. So, which is another wondrously grotesque image to 0:20:46.200 --> 0:20:49.360 imagine a giant prehistoric creature. It's, you know, it's shambling 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:51.679 through the forest. Maybe it's something that attacked it, had 0:20:51.680 --> 0:20:53.560 got into a fight, or it just ripped itself on 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:56.119 some thorns, just got this bleeding hole. So what happens 0:20:56.119 --> 0:20:59.400 to a bleeding hole on an animal? Insects come for it, right, 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:03.080 things start laying their squirming larvae in there, and uh. 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:05.000 And so a bat might come and say, well, hey, 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:07.439 I want to hang out where all these delicious insects 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:10.600 are hanging out. And then they end up inevitably drinking 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:13.560 from that font as well, which again is kind of 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:18.240 too easy to walk here. Yeah. Shoot. In his book Counters, 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:21.720 he says that the scenario requires large wound sits on 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:25.880 a regular basis um and uh. And also, as we're 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:29.080 gonna get into a little later, vampire invertebrate blood is 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:32.320 water and protein. There's no fat, so vampire bats can't 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:35.760 store it as fat like non blood drinking bats store 0:21:35.800 --> 0:21:38.920 away their their their food. Uh. They need to feed 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:41.600 and consume fifty of their body weight and blood each night. 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:43.280 So you need to be able to find if you're 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:46.840 depending upon wounds, uh, surrounded by insects, you've gotta be 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:49.320 able to find those wounds surrounded by insects on a 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:52.919 regular basis basis, and also echolocation is gonna be useless 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:56.520 in finding these animals. Um It's it's just that there 0:21:56.520 --> 0:21:59.840 are a number of holes in this argument as well. Now, 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:05.200 a third hypothesis here is something called the arboreal feeding hypothesis, 0:22:05.359 --> 0:22:09.520