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

by Bill Schutt

illustrations by Patricia J. Wynne

(New York: Harmony Books, 2008)

Hardcover, 325 Pages, Nonfiction

ISBN: 9780307381125, US$25.95

ABCD Rating: BACKLIST

“… The blood is the life …” (Deuteronomy 12:23)

From the Cover: 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 Brasil 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.

My Review: Two or three weeks ago, a book about blood and blood-feeders seemed to leap off the New Books Shelf at my local library and into my library bag … seemingly of its own accord. It was only a matter of time before it made its way to the top of my pile of Books to Read, and now Dark Banquet has become one of those books that I am glad I have read … but wish I could unread. Or, to paraphrase Futurama: “YOU [READ] IT, YOU CAN’T UN[READ] IT!”

Schutt’s book is an absolutely fascinating window into the world of sanguivores and why they do it, and what makes them tick … no pun intended. His opening chapters trace the evolution of vampire bats, and the utter curiosity that they are: of the thousands of bat species, only three are hemophagic and those three live only in Central and South America. Schutt, a researcher and professor at C.W. Post College on Long Island, asks why these three species and why only in the New World? It is a fascinating question, one I had not paused to consider before reading Dark Banquet, and one that had not occurred to me. Ignorant me, I had thought that there were vampire bats in Africa and Asia as well as in the Americas. Shows what I know. This begs the question of is there a proto-vampire bat (Schutt say there were prehistoric vampire bats in the Pleistocene Era (one in particular, Desmodus draculae was a biggun’) but they, and Desmodus were already sanguivores and not transitional forms), so while there is no concrete conclusion on how bats become vampires, there are some leading theories that Schutt outlines in the book (as well as HERE, if you are interested).

From bats, Schutt moves on to leeches, and leaves the most fascinating parts of his novel (the bats) for the less NEAT-O/GEE-WHIZ portion and the more ICK portion. Not that the history of leeches isn’t interesting … it is. Surprisingly so. And even the leeches aren’t the worst part of the book. They are actually quite matter-of-fact and historical, making for some very compelling reading (especially for their suspected role in the death of George Washington (yes … that George Washington)). It is what comes after the leeches that left me scratching at phantom itches and squirming uncomfortably in my seat and eyeing every piece of furniture suspiciously.

Leaving leeches, Schutt moves into the world of bed bugs, ticks, chiggers and mites. Just thinking about these portions of Dark Banquet makes my skin crawl and make me feel like I need to itch my scalp and back and arms. It is absolutely awful, the information about these vampires that Schutt imparts … especially bed bugs. I can think of very little that I have read in my 30-some-odd years that rival the sheer ICK Factor of reading about the habits and lives of bed bugs, and I’ve read quite a bit Jack Ketchum and Bentley Little.

Bed bugs have to be living Hell Spawn sent to skitter across the Earth and torment the likes of us poor mortals. The pages wherein Schutt discusses bed bugs are horrific, to say the least. It is enough to make a somewhat normal individual like myself want to hermetically seal himself into a sterile chamber à la Howard Hughes. Learning what I have about bed bugs, I honestly wonder how I can go about functioning like I did before the knowledge, they are that bad! There is, seemingly, nothing that can be done to avoid them, short of going Howard Hughes, and—horrors of horrors—apparently books are a prime aggregation spot for them (he types while thinking about the 1600+ books sitting in boxes in the garage right now, awaiting the next move). It truly was horrific.

As I paraphrased above: “YOU [READ] IT, YOU CAN’T UN[READ] IT!” However, one just has to soldier on, and live as best as one can, não é? and they say forewarned is forearmed, so I just have to suck it up, and go on.

And on that note, the less said about the candiru the better, because even if the stories are just hearsay and anecdotal, they are still pretty damn bad.

Anyway, enough about my neuroses, and back to Dark Banquet. All-in-all, this is truly an amazing book, chock-full of fascinating scientific facts, though, I did have one complaint about Schutt’s writing style and that is the fact that Schutt is trying to write about a very complex scientific concept for the average layperson and so he tries to make the book “accessible” by trying to be “hip” and “funny,” much like Mary Roach. Unfortunately, unlike Roach, most of that “wit” falls flat and the book suffers for it, often miserably.

However, as with the bed bugs, this caveat is not to make you avoid the book, but rather to just forewarn you so you don’t give up on the book, because in spite of Schutt’s attempts at humor, the book is, in fact, very interesting and informative and one that should be picked up and read, because what could be more spellbinding than learning about how animals from bats to bugs to birds live on solely blood? Oh, yeah. Did I mention that there is a species of finch in the Galápagos Islands that lives on the blood of the blue-footed booby? Well. There is.