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Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures
Harmony
October 2008
On Sale: October 14, 2008
336 pages
ISBN: 0307381129
EAN: 9780307381125
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
For centuries, blood feeders have inhabited our nightmares
and horror stories, as well as the shadowy realms of
scientific knowledge. In Dark Banquet, zoologist Bill
Schutt takes readers on an entertaining voyage into the
world of some of nature’s strangest creatures—the
sanguivores. Using a sharp eye and mordant wit, Schutt
makes a remarkably persuasive case that vampire bats,
leeches, ticks, bed bugs, and other vampires are as
deserving of our curiosity as warmer and fuzzier species
are—and that many of them are even worthy of conservation.
Schutt takes us from rural Trinidad to the jungles of
Brazil to learn about some of the most reviled,
misunderstood, and marvelously evolved animals on our
planet: vampire bats. Only recently has fact begun to
disentangle itself from fiction concerning these remarkable
animals, and Schutt delves into the myths and
misconceptions surrounding them. Examining the substance that sustains nature’s vampires,
Schutt reveals just how little we actually knew about blood
until well into the twentieth century. We revisit George
Washington on his deathbed to learn how ideas about blood
and the supposedly therapeutic value of bloodletting, first
devised by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, survived into
relatively modern times. Schutt also tracks the history of
medicinal leech use. Once employed by the tens of millions
to drain perceived excesses of blood, today the market for
these ancient creatures is booming once again—but for very
different reasons. Among the other blood feeders we meet in these pages are
bed bugs, or “ninja insects,” which are making a creepy
resurgence in posh hotels and well-kept homes near you. In
addition, Dark Banquet details our dangerous and sometimes
deadly encounters with ticks, chiggers, and mites (the
latter implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder—currently
devastating honey bees worldwide). Then there are the truly
weird—vampire finches. And if you thought piranha were
scary, some people believe that the candiru (or willy fish)
is the best reason to avoid swimming in the Amazon. Enlightening, alarming, and appealing to our delight in the
bizarre, Dark Banquet peers into a part of the natural
world to which we are, through our blood, inextricably
linked.
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