Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures

by Bill Schutt

The presence in the fossil record of a giant vampire bat, Desmodus draculae, suggests that this creature was feeding on megamammals like the giant ground sloths and heavily armored glyptodonts. Desmodus draculae was significantly larger than modern vampires and there is some evidence that they lived as far north as northern West Virginia. Presumably, all of the ancient vampire bat species died out in North America following the great megafaunal extinctions of the late Pleistocene. One vampire bat expert, however, was convinced that at least some of them had not gone extinct. “I think Desmodus draculae might still be alive,” Arthur Greenhall told

between the 1820s and 1920s to defibrinate a human donor’s blood prior to transfusion. In the days before the medicinal use of anticoagulants, donated blood was collected in a bowl, whisked, and filtered before being transfused into a recipient.

Several hours before his death, after repeated efforts to be understood, [he] succeeded in expressing a desire that he might be permitted to die without further interruption. —Drs. James Craik and Elisha Dick (December 31, 1799)