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Biological History of the Vampire Legend

The vampire's thirst for blood is shrouded in mystery and simply explained by basic high school biology.

By George GottPublished 7 years ago 4 min read
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Bram Stoker, through his novel Dracula, and the motion-picture industry with its many portrayals, have led us to consider Count Dracula, a fifteenth-century Romanian nobleman, as the vampire. The Count, who was known as Vlad the Impaler, was a seemingly unpleasant person who was known to feast in the presence of impaled enemies. Once, during such a feast, an ambassadorial guest complained that the sights and sounds interfered with his appetite. Count Dracula ordered one more stake (pun intended), on which he had his guest impaled. He then continued dining, alone.

Count Dracula makes a splendid vampire, but where did the vampire legend beyond fifteenth-century Transylvania come from? Legend tells us that the story of vampirism dates back thousands of years to the prehistoric cave dwellers of Europe. To appreciate the mysterious history of the vampire legend, a number of very real biological and anthropological facts about why the concept of vampires came from. These real facts about the vampire legend can explain why observers of the time thought what they were seeing was unexplainable, but thanks to science we can put some of the mysteries about vampires to rest, or can we?

Actual Biological and Anthropological Vampire Facts

  • Throughout the glacial periods, primitive human beings sought shelter in caves. Archaeological finds from these caves include paintings, stone and metal implements, shallow graves, ashes and other debris of cave life.

  • Bats normally inhabit caves. The Carlsbad Caverns of New Mexico, for example, were discovered because of a plume of bats issuing from a small hole in the ground at eventide.

  • Bat populations are natural reservoirs of the rabies virus, and bats are important Vectors of that disease. The drive to eliminate the vampire bat from tropical America is aimed as much at eradicating rabies as it is at the prevention of involuntary bovine anemia.

  • General symptoms of rabies among mammals of all sorts are a (terminal) feverish alertness, aggression, and an urge to bite; this urge extends to rabies-infected horses and cows, which, despite being herbivorous, attack and bite nearby animals. Because the rabies virus is concentrated in saliva, the biting reaction can be viewed as an adaptive neurological disorder induced in the now-dying host by the virus.

  • Another general symptom of rabies exhibited by recently infected animals is a preference for solitude, perhaps accompanied by discomfort when one is exposed to light. Thus, while the disease is developing, dogs seek out cool, shaded shelters and foxes retire to their dens.

  • A final, simple, and well-known point. Rabies is typically transmitted from one animal to another by the bite of an infected individual. The mad dog is but one example, terminally ill foxes attack both human beings and dogs. Since 1972, 600 Europeans have died of rabies. The ultimate source of the virus in Europe today is the population of wild foxes.

In prehistoric times, when human beings were primarily cave dwellers, they clustered near the opening of the cave, where they were warmed and protected by a fire. The bats lived in the rear of the cave, where the ceiling approached the floor, and in the more remote and inaccessible caverns. Many of these bats were infected with rabies, and, Occasionally, a rabid bat, driven to aberrant behavior by the virus, would deliberately attack and bite a human being. Such odd behavior on the part of a bat would have been noted by those present, just as farmers in Austria note the attack on a person by a crazed fox.

In due time the bat's victim would develop rabies. During the early stages of the disease, the victim would seek solitude in the rear of the cave, away from daylight and the heat and light of the fire. Friends and family members bringing food and Water to the ill one would note that his newly exhibited preference placed him in the company of the bats, not with his own kind.

A Virus Turned into a Myth

Finally in the course of the disease, the victim would become feverishly alert and aggressive—perhaps shrewdly rather than blindly so. He would be driven to bite those who came near him, driven by the same terminal neurological control the rabies virus exerts over all its victims.

An unlucky samaritan, bitten by the now-rabid victim, would inexorably pass through the same stages as the original victim who was bitten by the bat. Retirement into the dark recesses of the cave in a seeming preference for the company of bats over humans and the eventual alertness and craze to bite. Thus, the victim of a bat's bite would have taken on, in the eyes of his contemporaries, the habits of a bat—even the urge to bite like a bat. Furthermore, the strange ability to cause another person to take on the behavior of a bat would confirm that the first victim had indeed become bat-like.

Because of a nineteenth-century novel, most people associate vampirism with a fifteenth century Count. I suspect, however that the truth lies more as with actual biology and disease. The vampire legend has been handed down for thousands of years, starting with observations of cave dwellers on the effects of rabies and ending with the transmission of this disease from bats to humans and from one human being to another. Can we conclude the idea of a vampire is simply biology or is it supernatural, or maybe both?

evolutionpop culturehumanity
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About the Creator

George Gott

Writer & Social Media Editor for Jerrickmedia who is an avid reader of sci-fi and a fierce defender of women, minority, and LGBTQ rights.

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