A vampire-hunting kit, from Thomas Sandberg’s Wonder Cabinet:
An incredible Victorian novelty. Complete in mahogany box with revolver, silver bullets, garlic powder, silver dagger, ivory cross, mirror, Professor Blomberg`s New Vampire Serum, wooden stake, etc.
Fortunately, Clive Thompson assures us there can’t be more than 512 vampyric bloodsuckers running around at the moment. It’s ecologically implausible. (Although the population model makes debatable assumptions about vampyric reproduction – a topic on which Whedon, Rice, Stoker, le Fanu, etc. don’t agree).
The Sandberg collection is extensive. There are papier-mache anatomical models, medicine boxes, even a clockwork lion that jumps and roars. I want!
hat-tip: Athanasius Kircher Society
No way! If Thompson had bothered to watch the show he’d know that vampires tend to sire enough vampires to create a hive (usually between five to ten compatriots in evil) before they simply kill the humans that they feed on. Hence they arrest their own population growth. A population such as sunnydale (according to wikipedia around 35,000 humans) could easily sustain one to five hives at any point and time. It could be a great many more, if you allow for high immigration rates.
If vampires do exist, and they are “ancient,” then it stands to reason that they would be subject to the same evolutionary pressures as any other creature (living or undead) that occupies an ecological niche.
Because of their unique feeding needs it makes sense that their reproductive strategy would be heavily biased towards K selection than R selection. Of course, one would think that this evolution would need quite a lot of widespread deaths before it became behaviorally or genetically imprinted. Perhaps the black death, the crusades, the flood of Genesis were all world events where vamprism lost control?
What a delightfully nerdy comment!
But i’m not sure I accept your assertion that vampires evolve. In order to evolve, an organism must have traits upon which selection can act, AND a way to pass those traits on to offspring. Since vampires are genetically unrelated as humans, unless some sort of selectable vampyric genetic code is passed on when they become vampires (a vampire virus?), I don’t see how conventional evolutionary pressures could select for the hive lifestyle. But without such an instinct, well, most vampires in the Buffyverse seem quite stupid, so they would probably fail to plan ahead and inadvertantly kill off their food supply.
Yeah, they really weren’t to smart, were they. Good call, regarding genetic material. Obviously *something* biological is passed when vampires sire spawn, but without a mechanism it’s difficult to say exactly what or how they would be subject to evolutionary pressures. However, assuming that the “demon” is some sort of parasite (symbiont?), evolution is not inconceivable.
As an aside, I’d just like to point out that, while I know I’m in the minority here, I’d really thrill with a gruesome horror film that had a firm basis in science. Every time I see a zombie or monster movie I think “Wait, if they’re constantly puking and never eating, why aren’t they starving to death? Or…”how did these creatures evolve for nighttime flight on a planet that’s in perpetual sunlight?”
these movies aren’t made for me, I realize, but it still bugs me.