Vampires become the real deal

Vampires become the real deal

So, how is it these two fiends became so strongly associated?  The answer is that there are major traits of bats and wolves, vampires and werewolves that are strikingly similar.  Both are creatures of the night, bats almost exclusively.  Wolves can hunt both night and day, but their extremely sensitive night vision makes them especially successful at stalking prey in low light.  Human vision is suited for higher levels of light, where we can use our color vision to great advantage.  At night, we are the ones that are ‘blind as a bat’, while bats and wolves, vampires and werewolves, can sense us very well and appear to come out of nowhere to accost us. Both play heavily on our fear of the dark where wild things can sneak up on us. 

However, the greatest similarities between vampires and werewolves, beyond rage itself, are a thirst for blood, coupled with the ability to turn victims into new vampires or werewolves (respectively; only a very few, more recent – 17^th century - stories portray dead werewolves transforming into vampires).  A number of these characteristics are basic traits of wolves and other canidae.  Wolf-type and werewolf attacks are very bloody as they bite, chew, and rend flesh to fell their prey – bleeding out of the victim is common.  As Pavlov’s dogs remind us, canidae produce copious amounts of saliva in preparation for eating, literally foaming at the mouth, certainly also a vivid characteristic of werewolves.  Wolves gorge as much as they can at the site of the attack itself and then leave the bled-out carcass.  They may return later to feed further, but take few specific precautions to protect the carcass from other carnivores.  Evidence of their attacks is clear.   

On very much the other hand, Eurasian bats hunt only insects.  Normally they are just pesky nuisances to humans that are out at night.  However, when, and only when, infected with rabies, they will bite humans and the bite can draw blood.  This extraordinary change in their habits would have been enough to alarm people and to raise suspicions of witchcraft.  Only a few early versions of revenants portray them as lusting for blood to continue their unearthly life.  Since bats and revenants were associated in some ways (not quite dead yet…) and (rabid) bats bite humans, bats have always been associated, albeit weakly, with blood. However, when actual blood-sucking (well, blood-lapping) bats, the vampire bats of South and Central America, became known to Europeans in the mid-to-late 1500’s, the association of bats with a thirst for blood became an extraordinarily vivid reality.  The vision of vampire bats draining blood from apparently unaware (dazed, hypnotized…) victims confirmed the vampire’s blood-lust as real.  It also expanded the traits of humanesque vampires, affording them hypnotic powers that had not been a feature of earlier revenants or vampires, but are seen in many modern tales.

Long before bats became blood-thirsty, it was known that the bite of a (rabid) bat could turn a human or other mammal into a vampiric creature.  For bats, biting humans was a dramatic change from their normal behavior. The bite of a wolf was also well-known to result in the victim being turned.  As with bats, the association is specific for wolves infected with rabies.  Here the change in behavior is a bit more subtle, but more bloody.  Wolves do hunt humans and other mammals, but normally only when hungry.  When hunting for food they devour their victim – not much opportunity for the victim to be turned.  On the other hand, when rabid, wolves attack multiple victims without killing and eating them.  Under these conditions, victims could be left alive… to subsequently turn into rabid creatures themselves. And when rabid, wolves attack indiscriminately ignoring barriers such as fences that should warn them of dangers like humans.  Overall then, the primary association between bats and vampires, wolves and werewolves is their ability to turn victims into the likes of vampires and werewolves.  And, in both cases this is a direct result of rabies infection.  Blood-lust, at least bloody, is a primary feature of wolves and werewolves, but for vampires it seems more of an afterthought, not one noted in early descriptions.  But since Eurasian bats did bite mammals when rabid, it was a trait almost perfectly set in place just waiting for the conquistadores to confirm and embellish.