Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The mention of sanguivores generally evokes a repulsive response from most of us. The subject matter of Dark Banquet is precisely these creatures that stroke our natural fears. The book is not purely a scientific text, but a mélange of science, scientific history and personal anecdotes. The first part takes readers from Trinidad to Brazil, and along the journey, one learns about vampire bats. With over eleven hundred bat species, only three consume blood. One specie, Trinidadian white-winged vampire bat, only feeds on the blood of chickens, and does so by imitating the behavior of chicks to get to its prey).

The second part opens by taking the reader back to George Washington's last days, and suggests that the elder statesman may have bleed to death by doctors employing bloodletting (a common treatment during the day). One learns that bloodletting was common until the early twentieth century! In this section one learns about the role blood plays in our bodies. One is also treated to ancient and modern medical techniques that use blood. Examples of these include using leeches to draw blood in ancient times and using the natural chemicals from these creatures as anti-coagulants (or blood thinners) in contemporary times.

The third part introduces the reader to a host of other sanguivores such as the bed bug, tick, mosquito, chigger, mite, hookworm, assassin bug, vampire finch, and candiru (blood-sucking fish found in the Amazon River). One learns of the diseases they carry (bubonic plague, rabies, scrub typhus, tick vectors) and of the psychological condition "in which the victim believes that tiny biting or bloodsucking creatures are crawling over his or her body."

This book makes a passionate appeal that these creatures are worthy of study, and even worthy of conservation! It brings into focus the benefits that our ecology derives from their presence, and the uses these creatures have in contemporary medicine and research.

Scientific discussion is kept to a minimum and the writing style is witty and fluid. The illustrations do not have captions, but this could be because I have is an uncorrected proof and the captions are included in the actual publication.

Armchair Interviews says: Zoologist Bill Schutt has studied bats in Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Brazil, Trinidad, and the United States.

Some of the creatures featured in the book are what you'd expect to see--vampire bats, leeches, ticks, etc. Those are the traditional bloodsucking fiends (to borrow a Christopher Moore book title) that we worry about. Other creatures don't pop into mind as readily--bedbugs, mites, and the like--but when described we can nod our heads and say "Yes, Indeed!" or the like. But there are also a couple of chapters on the old practice of bleeding and the newer practice of transfusion. These seem a bit out of place, unless perhaps you consider doctors to be "blood-feeding creatures".

In addition, there's a chapter on the candiru, a small variety of Amazonian catfish. It's interesting, to be sure, and quite funny, but it doesn't seem all that relevant to the book. The candiru attaches itself to the gills of other fishes and scrapes a living. So there's a blood connection, but it's rather peripheral. If you include candiru, why not also include lampreys? Lampreys certainly are blood-feeders, but they aren't in a group that worries us humans--at least not as regards providing a blood meal. Many of the creatures in the book do not feed on humans: there are bird-feeding vampires, for example. But the bird-feeding vampire bats are a member of a family that could feed on humans. I don't recall anything about human victims, but we can certainly provide dinner.

There are some absences: fleas get short shrift here, and I'm not sure why. So you get a mixture in the book--I would have preferred less on medical bleeding and cupping, perhaps more on fleas and some other creatures. There are lots of drawings--but unfortunately, a great many have no captions. There are (usually) explanations in the text, but more captions would be helpful. Another book of a similar nature (if you can find a copy) is Michael Andrews' fine The Life That Lives on Man. This is more about ticks, mites, fleas, bacteria, etc, and not about vampire bats or candiru. Still--Schutt's book is a very nice addition to your library--well-written, amusing, enjoyable.

Massively entertaining and educational at the same time! Bill really knows how to paint a picture in your mind of the experiences he has had and blood suckers he has seen. A fun read and highly recommended!

This is a grat read. Scientific but reads like a great story. The details and explanation in this book will lead you to a greater understadning of not only these creatures but of biology and some anatomy too. Whis i could get my book signed by him.

I found this book in a local bookstore and was intrigued enough to buy a copy. The subject is not unknown to me as I deal every year with at least one of the creatures discussed, the bedbug (and occasionally mites, often non-existent invisible mites, but that is another story!) and I have had considerable experience with a couple of groups that he discusses in much less depth- mosquitoes and blood-feeding assassin bugs.

Bill Schutt is a biologist in New York who has had extensive experience with vampire bats. I might add, for the sake of honesty, that we have a mutual friend in Louis Sorkin (I once took a course in parasitic Hymenoptera at the University of Maryland in which Louis was also a student, and he has been of help on numerous occasions when I requested loans of spiders from the American Museum of Natural History). That said, I think that in "Dark Banquet" Schutt has well captured the dark, but very fascinating, world of blood sucking organisms.

As I am less familiar with vampire bats, I found the first section quite interesting in that new (to me) observations kept popping up. I was much intrigued by the description of the old military base where the bird blood-feeding vampires were found. The elevator shaft with the rain water, bat feces and bat urine, plus the debris from the base that probably contained some pretty toxic stuff, was quite evocative. It made me think of a possibly dark future in which a number of life forms, not necessarily friendly to humans, evolved in ways that we would not like and lived in the ruins of our great cities. Certainly the presence of the vampires, along with giant toads adds to that image.

Schutt goes on to discuss other blood-feeders, like leeches, bed bugs, mites and ticks, and the legend-haunted candiru, who apparently enters the human urethra occasionally, although it mostly feeds on the blood of fish. In a final chapter he discusses the life-style of blood-feeders and the evolution of vampires of one sort and another.

All-in-all this is a fascinating read, but not for the faint of heart. I recommend it highly. Pleasant dreams!

I have only a casual interest in such creatures but I was very happy with the writing and information contained within. It was sharp, witty, concise and very readable!

The author has presented his subject in an informative, often humorous light. It was apparent that bats provided the most sustenance to the book, but the rest of the creatures covered were treated pretty thoroughly albeit without the same personal experience the bats received. All in all the book was a very tasty read.

I purchased this book because I read an excellent excerpt in the news magazine, The Week. That excerpt was from the first and best portion of the book, the part on vampire bats. In that section, which covers the first 95 pages, the author is clearly in his element (he is a mammologist who studies, or has studied vampire bats); Schutt gives a lot of detail on vampire natural history in an accessible and witty manner intertwined with personal tales from his vampire field and laboratory studies. Also included are some interesting tidbits on the interface between vampire bats and myth/sociology. This is all great.

The next chapter is on leeches, and here Schutt wanders off into the wilderness. He tells us precious little about the natural history of leeches and prattles on for 50+ pages about the fixation medicine had with leeches through the centuries. These stories form a hodgepodge with no apparent goal other than trying to be sensational.

After that there is a rapid series on bedbugs, ticks, mites and the such. Some of this is interesting, but again, the book focuses predominately on these animals' effects on human health rather than the animals themselves. Near the end, he entirely gives into the sensational and discusses the Candiru, a group of small catfish that feed off the blood of other fish by attaching to their gills. However, the actual lifestyle of the Candiru is merely an aside in the chapter, which is almost entirely about the myth that these creatures like to ascend varies orifices of the human body. Although I found this bit amusing, I found myself wondering, how did we get from a detailed natural history of vampires to Candiru mythology.

Additionally, the author's incomplete understanding of medicine is frequently revealed, and when discussing medicine, he strays away from his scientific voice into a sensationalistic one. For instance, his statement that "our 99% germ-free culture has resulted in hypersensitive immune systems" is incorrect (there is some thought that lack of exposure to allergens, such as pollen and dust, when very young is the culprit... not lack of exposure to viruses and bacteria). Furthermore, this statement is a surprising bit of pseudoscience from a scientist--- What the heck does a "99% germ-free culture" mean?

So, this is really the tale of two books. The first is a very enjoyable science-for-the-layman discussion of vampire bats. I would have rated this part 5-Stars. The second portion of the book would get 3 Stars at best in my estimation. I wish the author had stuck to his area of expertise, and written more about vampires and skipped the rest.

Steven Mlodinow

OK, the title of my review has not much to do with the book...I just couldn't resist.

Full of interesting facts and amusing anecdotes, "Dark Banquet" explores the lives of a handful of creatures occupying the specialized ecological niche of blood feeding. This exploration touches on their life cycles, feeding behaviours and human interaction. Along with the obvious vampire bats, Schutt also explores the lives of other sanguinovores, including leeches, bedbugs, chiggers and even touches briefly on blood-feeding finches.

Each section of this book is fairly short and self-contained, which makes it a perfect "light reading" book for when you don't have the time to devote to more engrossing fare.

Warning: When you read the section on bedbugs, be prepared to have a sudden urge to vaccuum your entire home and then take a long, soapy shower!

This book is a combination of entertaining and informative. It seems like there was not enough material to make a book out of the author's area of expertise, vampire bats and so other blood consuming creatures were included. It is almost as if the theme were suggested to the author by a literary agent. Each blood sucker is interesting in itself but their food is an odd principle around which to wrap a book. The sections on the bats were the best. Being a birder I like to hear about how convergent evolution of put both creatures in the skies, vampire bats seemingly got stuck on a not very nutritious food source while the few birds which copied them used it for only part of their diet.
I have two problems with the book. One is its humor which often seems undergraduate. Although the author may be an entertaining college teacher, I tired of his puns. Number two had to do with footnotes. I am a footnote reader and I couldn't understand why, if the footnotes were so illuminating, they had not been incorporated into the text. Most of them (not the additional puns) should have been but that would have demanded a more mature (maybe less entertaining) literary style. I am glad I read the book. It makes bats, leaches, bedbugs, fleas and ticks all the more familiar.

Charlie Fisher author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World