[Amanda] This episode is brought
to you by Skillshare. Hey, everyone.
I'm Jess Keating, and you're watching "Animalogic: Second Nature."
[man] Vampires!
[Cackling] [Jess]
Hematophagy, the practice of drinking blood from another animal.
[reporter] Speculation continues as to
who will be the next victim.[Jess] These predators are vampires.
[male announcer] 300 million years before man
appeared on earth, with time to develop
varieties so diverse their numbers are
beyond concession. [♪♪♪]
For much of the odds, vampires dominated
our cultural landscape. Yet, for all their
sparkling, headboard shattering, sleep stalking charm, they
couldn't be further removed from their inspiration in
the natural world. There are over 15,000
species that drink blood. Some species drink blood in
order to survive or reproduce. These animals are
exclusively hematophagous. Others do it as a
secondary source of nutrition. They practice
hematophagy opportunistically. [woman]
Ah, no! No!
The earliest known vampires are proto-mosquitoes, and they lived
about 220 million years ago.
Yet, not all bloodsuckers trace their roots
back to these mosquitoes. Vampirism has
evolved separately at least six times
in invertebrates. Bloodsucking isn't as
straightforward as it seems, and it requires
specialized adaptations for the evolutionary
strategy to succeed. The first step is finding a host
big enough to feed on and then figuring out how to
attach yourself to said host. [woman]
Oh good, it's going in deeper. I can feel it piercing more.
While the method of many of our fictional vampires
requires that slow, spooky stalking to find a host,
for many vampiric insects, it's not so easy.
Many of these bloodsucking insects don't even have wings
and have to rely on their hosts and environment for dispersal.
Ticks, for example, wait on blades of grass for a host
to walk by close enough so that they can attach themselves.
[male announcer] Man's ancient enemy
continues to multiply. This tick alone in
a few generations can give birth to young
outnumbering the population of China.
Bat flies also lack wings, and many species have evolved
to be hyperspecialized to bats. They're hard and flat,
and their legs are covered in little hairs. All of which make
it very difficult for the bats
to dislodge or kill them. They're born, raised,
and die all on bats. Imagine having a tick on
your face for your entire life. [male announcer]
Along with ticks and mites, 10,000 species are
man's mortal foe. Insect carriers bring dirt
and disease to man himself. [Jess]
Insects that are able to hunt prey, like mosquitoes,
rely on vision, temperature cues, and chemoreception.
Tracking CO2 emissions is the most common way
these vampires find their meals. Like my dear old
gran used to say, If it breathes, it bleeds.
Once they've found prey, they need to not get killed.
This can be tricky as the prey of a vampire is often
thousands of times larger than themselves.
Many insects, like mosquitoes and leeches,
inject analgesics to prevent the host from feeling the bite
until after they finish drinking.
Blood makes a particularly appealing meal
because it contains a lot of nutrients.
Specifically, iron, salt, protein, and fat,
but it also contains a lot of water.
This can make the vampires heavy after feeding,
increasing their chances of being preyed upon.
Mosquitoes are able to filter out the nutrients from the blood
and expel the water, but not all vampires are so adept.
[male announcer] A male mosquito
cannot bite or suck blood. A newly emerged male may try
blood suction without success. [Jess]
Drinking blood as a primary source of nutrients
is difficult as it contains almost no vitamin C.
And so vampiric species either need to adapt
to produce their own vitamin C or be able to get by
with much less of it. Mosquitoes are quite possibly
the most hated insect on the face of the earth,
and that title is very well deserved.
They spread horrific diseases around the world,
and they ruin the outside. So perhaps it will give you a
sense of poetic justice that mosquitoes, too, fall
victim to bloodsuckers. Mosquitoes are targeted
by little midges that drink their blood by
puncturing their abdomen with their proboscis.
Their mouth parts attach very securely to the mosquito
and will stay attached for up to 56 hours,
through flight and all. If that's not justice,
I don't know what is. A spider spinning
his web for the unwary fly. The blood is the
life, Mr. Renfield. [Jess]
Evarcha culicivora, a jumping spider from Kenya,
also targets mosquitoes for their blood.
These spiders go after mosquitoes that are full
of blood, in part for the nutrition, but also for mating.
Jumping spiders that eat full mosquitoes have been found
to be more attractive to the opposite sex.
In a feeding frenzy, one jumping spider can kill up to
20 mosquitoes in rapid succession.
They kill more than they can eat.
These jumping spiders are true heroes.
Challenging mosquitoes for the title of the worst
are kissing bugs and bedbugs. [videographer]
There's a little bug hiding right in there.
[Jess] Bedbugs are particularly awful
as they seem to have adapted to feed specifically on humans.
These bloodsuckers are particularly difficult to fight,
because the symptoms of their bites don't show up
until several days after they've bitten you,
giving them plenty of time to hide.
This is compounded by the fact that bedbugs
only need to feed about once a week.
Like mosquitoes, they inject their prey with anticoagulants
and painkillers before biting to prevent their prey
from noticing. [videographer]
This client tells me she noticed this two weeks ago.
She may have noticed them two weeks ago,
but she's had them a lot longer than two weeks.
See, like they're just friggin' everywhere.
[Jess] Kissing bugs, or vampire bugs,
are obligate bloodsuckers that are equipped with a huge
proboscis to drink blood. They get their name
from their nasty habit of biting human faces as
they're highly attracted to the carbon dioxide
that we exhale. Vampire moths have adapted
their proboscis to drink blood. [woman 1]
Lata is feeding on me. [woman 2]
It's in? [man]
Really? Ah!
[woman 2] Is it hurting?
Yeah. [woman 2]
Sorry. [Jess]
The same mouth parts that are used for sucking up
fruit juice are used to suck blood from large,
tough-skinned mammals like buffalo.
Only the males drink blood, and their bites are much more
painful and leave a much bigger mark than mosquito bites.
Oh damn! Okay.
Oh, that proboscis is full of blood.
[woman 2] Good.
[woman 1] It's pink.
[woman 2] Yay!
[woman 1] Yeah.
[woman 2] I'm so glad.
Anything coming out of the abdomen?
[woman 1] No.
[woman 2] Nothing.
[woman 1] But the proboscis
is pink with blood. [woman 2] That's really good.
[woman 1] Yep.
Much more frightening than vampiric moths, however,
is the mouth of horrors, the lamprey.
18 species of lamprey drink fish blood.
And while they may look like eels,
they are actually jawless fish. They attach themselves to their
prey using their rows of sharp, horrific teeth, gorging
themselves for several days. In order to feed, once attached
they use their hard and sharp tongue to puncture a
hole in the fish's body. The fish don't
usually die from the wound, but they can develop infections.
[male announcer] For a century, lampreys bred
undisturbed in the lakes. No one suspected
their potential danger. Then, in the '40s,
their population exploded. 400 million years of evolution
had done their job well. [Jess]
Sea lampreys have become a huge problem in the Great Lakes
in North America. They've invaded the lakes
through manmade canals and have since caused a
steep decline in lake trout and other fish populations.
All of the vampires that we've discussed today
are bloodsuckers, but the ultimate vampire
doesn't suck blood, it drinks it.
Meet the vampire bat. There are three
species of vampire bat, and they all use a very
different strategy from other vampires.
Instead of sucking blood, vampire bats cut the skin
of their victims with their sharp teeth
and wait for the blood to pour out and pool.
Once there's enough, the bats lap it up.
As I mentioned earlier, vampire bats themselves
fall victim to the vampiric bat flies.
And one study found that a single bat can be covered
in up to 60 bat flies. And finally, the vampire finch.
These harmless-looking birds are native to Wolf Island
in the Galapagos, and they supplement their diet of seeds
and nectar with blood from the blue-footed booby.
Like vampire bats, they make a small incision in the skin
of their host and then they go to town on the blood.
Nothing can stop it now! My dear Anton, this is power!
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Nature every other week." Thanks so much for watching.
[♪♪♪] If that's not justice,
I don't know what is. [man] So these are mosquitoes
that get bitten by midges? [man] Okay, cool.
Yeah, man! Boom! Right in their mosquito
faces! Eat it!