(01/27/2009) In films, vampires as portrayed by Bela Lugosi,
 Jerry Ruotolo |
Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and more recently Robert Pattinson might make a girl respond viscerally with a desire to expose her neck in invitation of a love bite. Real-life bloodsuckers tend to trip our disgust button.
In “Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures,” Bill Schutt, a zoologist, casts light on critters whose life histories have been clouded by centuries of myth. We travel to dark caves in Trinidad, leech warehouses along the Long Island Expressway, and swank New York City hotels where unwelcome cimicids, reviled not only for their parasitic eating habits but also for the disturbing sexual activity of the male, have checked into the mattresses.
“Dark Banquet” is a buffet of blood-feeding creatures, served with a side dish of the oxygen-rich sauce that supports them. In setting the table in the prologue, Mr. Schutt warns that this witty exploration of sanguivory “might get a little rough, so grab a glass of red wine and let’s get started. . . .”
Heed the advice, you are settling into an experience where blood runs freely and crawly things are evoked with such clarity that they seem ready to jump off the pages. If you are game for a field biologist’s tour of this subject, Mr. Schutt is an engrossing guide.
The author combines biological expertise, historical anecdotes, and a playful sense of humor to carry the reader through what could potentially be an orgy of “gross-me-out” sensationalism. He occasionally slips over the line, as when describing the origin of Bram Stoker’s inspiration for the name Dracula, which forever linked bats to people’s fear of vampirism. Literally meaning “son of the dragon,” it was the alternate name of the murderous Romanian prince Vlad the Impaler. The prince earned his latter name by the gruesome activities he actually committed. Enough said.
As we delve into the real-life world of vampires, Mr. Schutt asks why, out of approximately 20,000 species of terrestrial vertebrates, only three mammals specialize in a diet of blood. These are the vampire bats. And, when nearly 1,100 bat species exist globally, why are vampire bats found only in the Americas?
In search of answers we are led on a paleontological investigation in which we find that the evolutionary links connecting insect-eating bats to the sanguivores are missing. Though our puzzle remains unsolved, we exit better enlightened on the process of evolution and diversification.
Early explorers of the New World abetted prejudice against bats after observing the gastronomical preference of a minority. Like birds, bats — the only flying mammals — provide seed dispersal, pollination, and insect control. Naturalists, including Charles Darwin, added to both the fascination and the confusion.
Recent attempts to curtail the spread of rabies probably cost the lives of beneficial bat species. Mr. Schutt points out that bat populations may have suffered from the indiscriminate use of explosives deployed to destroy thousands of caves in Trinidad, Brazil, and other parts of South America.
In 2006, when a teenager died of rabies after being scratched on the cheek by a bat that had entered his bedroom, Houston citizens took it upon themselves to kill hundreds of bats, mostly Mexican free-tail. Houston health officials had tried to calm fears by emphasizing that probably less than half of 1 percent of the bat population carried rabies. One large Texas colony of Mexican free-tail consumes approximately 250 tons of insects per night.
I was left hungry for an extra helping on bats, wondering what Mr. Schutt thinks might be causing the deaths of thousands of bats in upstate New York and Vermont. The book mentions it only in a footnote, but researchers are calling “white-nose syndrome,” so named because of a white fungus ring found on the dead bats, “the gravest threat in memory to bats in the U.S.”
But this is a book about blood-feeders, therefore we move on to other sanguivores, including many familiar to us as the spoilers of a walk in the woods or a day of gardening. Mr. Schutt adds a new dimension to these maligned creatures by recruiting fictional, historical, and real-life characters. A cameo performance by Humphrey Bogart pulling the African Queen through waist-deep water is employed to display the physiological and mechanical responses a hungry leech experiences as its prey (Bogart) moves closer to the ambush site.
Rudy Rosenberg, a real-life character and proprietor of Leeches U.S.A., is a gem. Pride in his leeches radiates in his conversations with Mr. Schutt, especially when he tells how these slimy cousins of the worm helped save his mother’s leg after doctors had decided on amputation.
The clever illustrations by Patricia Wynne are an added treat. Though not captioned, I found it amusing to stumble upon their meaning while reading. I was particularly intrigued by an oddly proportioned bathing suit on a hanger that caught my eye when I first opened the book and began to sip on that prescribed red wine. It compares an important aspect of red blood cells and water, but the image brings to mind how one feels after the holiday meals have settled around your hips.
Mr. Schutt is most lucid when his appetite for scientific wonder is tuned to his research subjects, the vampire bats. On observing his captive colony of white-winged bats, he writes:
“Crawling across the floor of their feeding enclosure like a pair of spiders, the vampires made what I thought was a bold approach to a rather large hen. The bird cocked her head to one side, eyeing the bats. Her beak could have severely injured or even killed them — and I got ready to intervene. One of the vampires stopped a couple of inches beyond pecking distance but the other crept closer. Then, amazingly, the bat nuzzled against the hen’s feathery breast. Instead of becoming alarmed, the bird seemed to relax a bit. The vampire responded by pushing itself deeper into what I would later learn was a sensitive section of feather-free skin called the brood patch. This was a region densely packed with surface blood vessels, where body heat could be efficiently transferred from the hen to her eggs. Later, the brood patch was where chicks snuggled up to warm themselves. As I watched, the hen reacted to the bat by fluffing her feathers, hunkering down, and finally — closing her eyes.”
The brooding hen may have found the Brad Pitt of her dreams.
“Dark Banquet”
Bill Schutt
Harmony Books, $25.95
Bill Schutt is an associate professor of biology at Long Island University’s C.W. Post campus. He lives in Hampton Bays.
Patricia Paladines is a conservation science educator affiliated with the Blue Ocean Institute and the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments at the State University at Stony Brook. She lives in Amagansett and Setauket.