SciShow Tangents - Monster Month: Vampires

Episode Date: October 20, 2020

Monster Month turns up the spooky sex appeal as we talk about the hunkiest monster in Monster Town: vampires!  What monster do you think is the hunkiest? Or how about least-hunkiest (sort of tricky! They can all be hunks in their own way)? Send us a tweet and let us know!  Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions!  While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Stefan: @itsmestefanchin Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgreen If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links: [Truth or Fail] Wirewormshttps://extension.entm.purdue.edu/fieldcropsipm/insects/corn-wireworms.phphttps://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1119566-overview Vampire Ground Finchhttp://blog.discoveringgalapagos.org.uk/vampire-finch/ Japanese Wild Boarshttps://www.nal.usda.gov/fsrio/research-projects/silver-nanoparticles-pesticide-agricultural-applications#:~:text=Silver%20nanoparticles%20have%20received%20significant,resistance%20to%20existing%20chemical%20pesticides.https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2136652/wild-boars-are-taking-over-japans-small-towns-and-residents-are [Fact Off] Blood batteryhttps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160429095849.htmhttps://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Scientists-create-bio-batteries-which-can-be-charged-with-human-sweat/articleshow/40198217.cmshttps://futurism.com/blood-is-helping-us-make-the-next-generation-of-batteries Tick traumatic insemination https://www.pnas.org/content/116/29/14682https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/08/immune-system-protects-female-bedbugs-traumatic-sexhttps://phys.org/news/2019-07-female-bed-bugs-immune-stis.html [Ask the Science Couch] Teeth/beak/etc puncturehttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/c/common-vampire-bat/https://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/7242.htmlhttps://academic.oup.com/beheco/article/11/2/154/204658https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1469-7998.2000.tb00583.x Specialized mouthpiece strawhttps://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/07/480653821/watch-mosquitoes-use-6-needles-to-suck-your-bloodhttps://web.natur.cuni.cz/parasitology/vyuka/LekEnt_CV/The%20Biology%20of%20Blood-Sucking%20in%20Insects.pdf [Butt One More Thing] Vampire bat poophttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/science/vampire-bats-blood.htmlhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0476-8

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly horrifying knowledge screamcase, sawing some of the ghoulish geniuses that bring the YouTube series SciShow to life. This week, as always, I'm joined by Stefan Chin, Prince of Darkness. Do you have a scent? I, at one point, was a regular purchaser of Giorgio Armani's Gio scent.

Oh, gosh. Goodness gracious. But that was my college days. What's your tagline? Spicy. Cheesy. Sam Schultz is also here. Sam, what's your tagline?

The Deathly Power. Right. We should be having creepy taglines. Yeah, you shouldn't be talking like a shock jock at the top of the show. Whoa! Sari Riley is also here. Hello. Sari, what's your tagline? A sort of deflated

balloon. Very creepy. My tagline, I'm going to try and think of a creepy one. It's a Jellington of Skellingtons. Every week here on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to freak out, frighten, and terrify each other with science facts.

We're playing for glory, but also keeping score and awarding sandbox from week to week. We try to stay on topic, but we're not always good at that. So if the rest of the team deems a tangent unworthy, we'll force you to give up

one of your sandbox. So tangent with care. For this most horrifying month of all of the months, we're doing things a little differently. Each week in October, we're talking about science related to, inspired by, or just sort of vaguely reminiscent of classic horror monsters. And now, as always, we will summon this week's monster with a traditional science incantation from Sari. What's black and white and red all over. A slightly sexual haunting book cover with stories of undead charismatic creatures.

No rotting flesh or drooping features, just fangs and cloaks and a murderous intent. A dirt filled stone coffin that they often frequent. But sparkly stalkers are overrated and Dracula's outdated. As a horror trope, I'm sated with everything related to blood sucking, antiquated, desecrated, emaciated dudes with pointy teeth. But if you like them, go ahead. My permission, I do bequeath. Enjoy your vampire stories. They can be fun and life is short.

I'll just spend my time with other monstrous sort. Oh, a judgmental poem. What the heck? I think growing up in Washington and particularly being a teenager during the Twilight phenomenon, it was overrated and everyone wanted to go to Forks. No one cares about Forks. So that's probably some of my cynicism bubbling up, too. That makes sense. Gosh, I forgot that the Twilight boys were vampires.

I just sort of like, to me, they're a different, they're a whole other thing. Sari, what is a vampire? I just sort of like, to me, they're a different, they're a whole other thing. Sari, what is a vampire? Its definition has changed over time. But as far as like the specific features of it, like I think that whole handsome thing is a more recent addition. But it is a corpse. So someone who has died and become undead that leaves its resting place, its coffin, at night to drink the blood of the living. It's like a blood zombie instead of a brain zombie.

Yeah. I feel like they're also more, like, infernal and devilish than, like, magical or disease-like zombies are. Yeah, because that's, like, how they get transformed usually involves some sort of, like, magic or demonic presence rather than a virus, I think. I'm really very happy that Sam gets to show off some of his expertise here. I don't know about any real stuff. Okay.

Do you know if all vampires can turn into vampire bats? Or is that like a more recent? Well, the ones in Twilight can't do that. No. Or like Buffy. I don't think they can turn into bats and Buffy. Dracula can turn into bats and Buffy, but not normal vampires. Yeah.

I feel like there's a lot of vampire media where they're like, oh, you think we can turn into bats? That's so stupid. But turning into bat would be fucking cool. Or turning into a bunch of bats. Like if you want to go ahead and conserve matter, because that's like a rule, pretty big one, you'd have to turn into a bunch of bats but I think that's even cooler. And I think Dracula can turn into

a wolf and like mist and stuff too. If I was going to be an infernal plague blood zombie I would want to turn into a bunch of flies. I've always loved that trope. That's gross. Turn into like a cloud of insects.

Yeah. I'd want to turn into something cool and people would be like That's gross. Turn into like a cloud of insects. Yeah. I'd like to turn into something cool and people would be like, that's cool. No, no, no. You need to be horrifying. Gross. I just want to be missed. You'd just stay missed the whole time? Yeah. It's 2020. I really could use some

relaxation. Try being missed. Do you know where the word vampire comes from? I think the first time it came about was in the 1700s, but also there are some scattered references in literature as far back as the 1100s. But it feels like it's always been used in this mythological sense. The source words are like Serbian vampire, Bulgarian vapir, Ukrainian uper. And some people think it comes from a word for witch, which was U-B-Y-R.

But some linguists disagree with that. Feels like people are always trying to find like the meaning or the source of these things. Because like vampires, you see a lot of articles that are like, oh, this might be people who had like hemophilia or something, or maybe that's why they were pale, or maybe that's why they didn't like garlic. But then it's kind of like, well, people had imaginations back then too. They could have thought of weird stuff. And that's basically what the etymology seems to say. It's like Slavic languages and probably due to some

sort of common mythology, even though maybe they had some sort of disease to attribute the name to. And now it's time for True or Fail. One of our panelists has prepared three science facts with which to torment us, but only one of those facts is real and the rest of us have to figure out either by deduction or wild guess which is the true fact. If we do, we get a sandbuck. If we are tricked, then Sam will get the sandbuck. Sam, what are your three facts? Upon gaining immortal life, vampires take on a whole host of rules and weaknesses that

they have to live by, including such disadvantages as having no reflection, the inability to cross running water, and an extremely negative reaction to garlic, just to name a few. And in reality, there are some animals with very similar weaknesses. So which of these is a real animal with a very vampire-esque weakness? Number one, one of the most pervasive of vampire weaknesses is death upon contact with sunlight. And the same can also be said of wire worms, which are a larval form of click beetle and notorious carrot-eating pests. Because of their carrot-heavy diet

and constant close proximity to carrot plants, wireworms are full of light-sensitizing chemicals that in plants help with photosynthesis, but in the wireworms, the concentrated chemicals react when exposed to sunlight, splitting and blistering the worm's exoskeleton. So basically during the day, they have to stand aground away from the deadly rays of the sun until they become beetles. And then they're okay because they got shells.

Number two, in order to sustain their unholy life force, vampires have to drink the blood of the living. So too must the vampire ground finch drink the blood of its fellow birds to live. So too must the vampire ground finch drink the blood of its fellow birds to live. This Galapagos Island native usually eats bugs, seeds, and fruit, but when food is scarce, they've been observed pecking holes in seabirds with their super sharp beaks and feeding on their blood. And the larger birds don't seem to mind, possibly because they think the little birds are just eating parasites off of them. Number three, vampires, and in fact many holy creatures,

burn when touched by silver. And so apparently do japanese wild boars so these boars also known as white mustache pigs have been found to have a species-wide allergic reaction to silver and since boars are a fairly common pest in japan often destroying rice fields in search of bugs and because it's illegal to kill them researchers have looked into using silver nanoparticle pesticides as a borer deterrent, but the environmental impacts and effectiveness of this method are not well understood. Wow, Sam, this is a killer. I love it. You got through the first two and I was like, well, it's not either of those ones, but then you did the third one. I'm like, it's not that either.

So our three facts are sunlight can be deadly to wireworms, which are a carrot pest, until they become click beetles. So these are the larva of click beetles. Number two, vampire ground finches can feed on the blood of larger birds when food is scarce and they live on the Galapagos Islands. Or three, wild boars are allergic to silver, inspiring research to look into silver-based pesticides. Sunlight being deadly to wireworms.

Like in humans, that's kind of a rare condition and that seems more likely than like a whole species being really sensitive to sunlight because sunlight's freaking everywhere. It is, but not where they are. They're under the ground. Animals live their whole lives in caves without sunlight. And I'm sure if you took those pasty critters out,

then they'd experience some damage too. So this does not feel like, this feels weird because there's some link between carrots and eyesight that I feel like. No, that's an old wives tale. Yeah, old vitamin A, beta carotene, whatever, that feels like it could feed into a lie, but also these worms feel like they could be very real.

The carrot eyesight thing isn't true. I don't know if it's like eat carrots and then your eyesight gets better. Pretty sure it's not that. I think it's more that if you're deficient in vitamin A, I think, that you can go blind. It would just be very unusual to be deficient in vitamin A if you have a diet in America. Not impossible.

It can happen, but unusual. And then the ground finches, I feel like Charles Darwin would have written about them. And I would have read about it as Charles Darwin said, this is a weird bird that eats the blood of other birds. It's kind of cool. I'm going to eat it now. You think he found every single one of them, though? Come on.

Probably not. But it seems weird enough to write about. Well, but maybe he didn't. Because it said that it only happens when they're in need. The thing about for me is that like if I'm a seagull and a little finch with a needle beak walks up to me and pokes me, I move. I go to a different place, right? And also I feel like don't I know about all the vampire birds? Are there a lot of vampire birds?

There's ox peckers, which people use. They're the ones that sit on top of hippos and zebras and stuff. And people were like, they were eating ticks off of them. But then more scientists did more research and they were like, actually the number of ticks doesn't significantly decrease. So they're just pecking at wounds and eating whatever. Oh no. Well, that's why they call them ox peckers.

Yeah. Yeah. It seems like they had the name right the first time. As far as the metal allergy one, this would be very cool. I would spray. I'm always looking for like pesticides now that I'm a gardener that don't really affect things. And so like if there's a wasp nest using some sort of mint oil so it's not dangerous to other animals. Silver seems like an

expensive, but if they're nanoparticles maybe fairly safe option. I mean, I know that like metal pollution in bodies of water is very bad. So I don't, like I think that you want to avoid that. I don't know, like I know that

this is the case with copper, maybe, that copper dissolved in water is very bad for fish. But I don't know about silver because I think it's just less common. So I would be very wary of spreading metal nanoparticles around. But Sam did say that there was need for more research before they just made all these poor boars allergic to the land. Okay.

You got to pick one now. I'm going with vampire ground finches. I was going to go with vampire ground finches too. I'll go all in. I'll go all in on vampire ground finches. Everybody go vote it at twitter.com slash SciShow tangents. You can make your voice heard. Which is the true fact.

You horrible goons. It's the vampire ground. Oh. I knew it wasn't the the wormy things because you said exoskeletons. And I don't think that they would have exoskeletons.

That is a I looked for a long time because I was like what the hell is a worm skin made out of? Is it called an exoskeleton? And everything said exoskeleton. Okay. All right. I'm wrong. My reasoning was flawed. I think there are those like chitinous kind of larva that have an exoskeleton, but like what's a caterpillar made out of? They're squishy, right? Or do they just look squishy? I guess they got an exoskeleton. Like it's not like they have an exoskeleton but like what's a caterpillar made out of they're squishy right or do they just look squishy i guess they got an exoskeleton like it's not like they have an endoskeleton yeah so i guess like anything that's holding them together from the outside

is your is your exoskeleton i agonized over that word choice that was also what led me to finch so i should just skin i had skin for a long time but yeah if you had said skin i wouldn't have questioned it interesting well there's not much more to say about vampire ground finches because i said it all but the birds don't move when they walk up to them they just let them peck a hole in them and they think it's because there's other birds that groom them and that they think these birds are also grooming them but they're not another thing that these ground finches do is they steal eggs out of the seabirds' nests

and roll them down hills into rocks so they break and then they eat them. That seems real. So they're just like nasty little boys. And then the wireworms thing, wireworms are real. They have exoskeletons, I think. But they don't die in the sun. But that was based on people can suffer from phytophotodermatitis if they're exposed to certain plants, including a lot of plants in the carrot and citrus family that produce a lot of a

photosynthetic chemical that like sits on the surface, I guess, maybe of the plant. And so then if you're, if you have a lot of this chemical on your hand and are exposed to UV radiation, then you can, your hand can like swell up and blister and it looks pretty bad. And it can even lead to permanent blindness if it gets in your eyes. And it's something that impacts farm workers a lot and people who are overexposed to certain essential oils. Like there was a perfume in France a long time ago that had too much citrus oil in it and it was making people have this bad reaction until they figured out what was going on.

I've also heard this with summer drinks. Like if you're squeezing limes in a margarita, then people on the beach would get really blistered sunburned hands because of the citrus oil or acids that were left over on the hands that would then get so much more sunburned than the rest of their skin. They call it lime disease, but it's a different Lyme disease. And then boars aren't allergic to silver. I don't know if there is like a species-wide allergy to things.

Is that a thing? I mean, yeah, we have a species-wide allergy to like bee stings. But I was kind of interested in why vampires and werewolves and stuff don't like silver. And it seems like it could be like an extrapolation of silver being antibacterial or it has something to do with alchemy or it might just be like a weird thing that old timey people made up i couldn't really figure it like i don't think anybody really knows next up we shall crawl into our coffins for a short nap and then the fact of Welcome back, everybody. Sam Buck totals.

Sari has two. Hank and Stefan have one. And Sam has nothing. Sorry, Sam. And now it is time for the fact-off, where Stefan and I have each brought science facts in an attempt to scare the other's pants off. The presentees each have a Sam Buck to award

to the fact that they like the most. And to decide who goes first, we have a trivia question. What is it? Before the bacillus mycobacterium tuberculosis was discovered, the infectious disease tuberculosis was known as consumption, and some believed it was caused and spread by deceased vampires feeding off of the life of their living relatives. While it didn't put an immediate stop to the ritual exhumations and organ burnings, the discovery of M. tuberculosis did help scientists focus efforts on more effective treatment and prevention.

So what date did Robert Koch identify M. tuberculosis? I was going to go with a pretty early date, but Robert Koch makes me think it's a little later. What? Because people didn't have names back in the day. Well, not like that. I feel like Robert's been around.

If it was like Leonardo Coke, that would have been what I was imagining. I guess I'll go first since I feel like I have, I should know. I will say 1840. Well, I'll say 1841.

If I was you you I would have said 1839 but we'll see what happens Stefan wins because the answer is March 24th 1882 yeah

well at least we got the right century yeah yeah alright I guess I'll go first so I'm gonna tell you about something

in the spirit of the theme of vampires something that loves to consume your blood and you already know what I'm going to tell you about something in the spirit of the theme of vampires, something that loves to consume your blood. And you already know what I'm talking about. It's batteries. So we all know about lithium ion batteries, but there are some researchers who are also working on batteries that are powered by glucose. And it just so happens that our blood is great at transporting glucose around our body. that our blood is great at transporting glucose around our body.

And so no one else has called these vampire batteries, but I'm calling them vampire batteries. I'm stamping it. Patented. But at this point, it doesn't seem like there's anything that's commercially viable here, but they call them bio batteries. And I'll talk about some different ones, but there are some that run off the glucose in your blood

and they use enzymes to extract the energy directly from the glucose in basically the same way that our bodies metabolize the glucose in our blood. So as long as you keep eating, assuming this thing is in your body, as long as you keep eating and replenishing your blood sugar, the batteries would have an endless supply of glucose, which means they could- The batteries in your body? Well, hold on. I'll get there. I'll get there. Okay.

First, you have to be the kind of person who eats batteries. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the first step in this procedure. Big caveat here. They're thinking it could be really great for things like pacemakers, since currently you have to replace pacemakers every five or 10 years,

which means more surgeries, not the ideal situation. So if you had a battery that runs the pacemaker that runs off of your, or is powered by your blood, then it would be theoretically powered indefinitely as long as you keep eating. So that's the blood-based one, but there are other versions of biobatteries that instead of running on glucose would run off of the electrolytes in various bodily fluids, so like sweat or urine or even blood. Again, they talked about having a device that monitors your workout and is powered by your sweat. And then maybe like a urine test that sort of of self powers when you pee on it.

So there's another kind of battery that also can use blood. So it's not bio batteries, but there's lithium oxygen batteries or lithium air batteries. And I think a lot of people are hoping for these to replace lithium ion batteries eventually because they can store a bunch more energy. And so you could have electric cars that go really far or phones that you don't have to charge that often. One of the problems that's holding these things back is that the chemical reaction that produces power in them has a byproduct that builds up on one of the electrodes and covers it up. And so eventually the battery stops working. But another thing that blood is great at transporting is oxygen. And these are lithium oxygen batteries.

And so in your blood is hemoglobin. And in the hemoglobin has these little heme groups. And those are the parts that bind to oxygen. And if you include those heme biomolecules in the reaction within these batteries, it binds to oxygen. And that prevents those bad byproducts from forming and building up. And so the battery works a lot better. But in that case, they're not talking about using it in the body.

It's more of like they could use the waste blood from like slaughtered livestock. Since nobody's really doing anything with that, they could use it to fuel these batteries theoretically. I'm glad it doesn't have to be human blood. It would be weird if it had to be human blood. It would be hard. That would be technically difficult. That does feel like the next stage of dystopia, though. I guess it would be Mad Max Fury Road level

where you have your blood source so you can charge your phone whenever you want. That definitely seems less efficient than the current ways that we have. I guess I'll go. Do we have more questions? All right.

Well, there are so many types of things that are powered by blood, but one of them isn't a battery. It's bedbugs.

And, you know, bedbugs, they suck. And male bedbugs. And, you know, bedbugs, they suck. And male bedbugs tend to be attracted to female bedbugs who have recently

consumed blood. So male bedbugs don't just like, aren't just vampires. They also, like, nevermind. I don't want to go

too far down that road. But like, it makes sense because like, a female that has had a blood meal will be more able to make more eggs and have happy babies.

But because bedbugs are deeply unsettling in so many different ways, they managed to make this whole entire process uncomfortable for everyone involved, including the female bedbugs, who do have a reproductive tract through which they lay eggs. But the males do not use that reproductive tract. Instead, they stab the female bedbugs in the belly with their needle penises, puncturing a specialized organ called the spermalage. I don't know if I'm saying that right.

It can only be pronounced that way. Yeah, I think that you're saying that the only person who's ever said it right is you. But their needle penises are not sanitary because they're on the outside. They're just like, you know,

on the outside of a bug. So they got lots of bacteria on them. So there's actually a bundle of immune cells that the sperm has to get through in order to get to

the reproductive tract of the female bed bug. It spends about two hours in that bundle before swimming through the blood to get to the reproductive tract of the female bed bug. It spends about two hours in that bundle before swimming through the blood and getting to her reproductive tract and to the eggs. And if the sperm doesn't go through the waiting period, the female bed bugs are more likely to die from bacterial infections. Scientists wanted to understand, because of course they did, whether female bed bugs always had these immune cells ready to go or whether they had to like prime their immune system for the process so they started to

jab female bedbugs with bacteria covered needles to measure how the immune cells were being produced around the jabbing so they had two hypotheses either you could stab them at a regular interval and they would start to produce those cells beforehand, like sort of like a Pavlovian reaction. And so they'd be like, oh, well, it's been about the same amount of time, so I'll start to produce my immune cells because I'm about to get stabbed.

Or that it was related to their meal. So if they were to eat, then they would produce the immune cells knowing that the males would be coming along soon because they are attracted to females who have had blood recently. And it turned out to be that second thing. It wasn't a timed response.

It was the females, like the entire bed bug mating procedure is based on when the females eat. So once she eats, she produces the immune cells, knowing that a male is more likely to come by and stab her. So, yes, female bed bugs prime their immune systems around their feeding schedules to prevent sexually transmitted infections, basically. Just like vampires do. Just like vampires do. Is it weird that the sperm has to travel through the blood?

That feels weird to me. Yes. The entire thing is weird because there's a reproductive tract. And it's like, just go through the tract to where the eggs are. But no, it has to be bothered. I don't know. I guess it's just like a test of the ability of a male bedbug sperm. It is sort of like a reverse vampire.

Like instead of stealing the blood from the female, it's like, here's some sperm. There you go. That's how I always think of sex, Sari. Reverse sperm. Anytime you give a fluid to another person, that's just being a reverse vampire. Well, before we head too far down this road, do you guys just want to vote? Yeah.

Oh, I don't have to vote. This is great. Okay. Three, two, one. Stefan. Oh, fuck me. Reproductive immune cells. Yeah.

But blood batteries. Blood batteries. I guess that's pretty good. Vampire batteries is a really good portmanteau batteries. Blood batteries. I guess that's pretty good. Vampire batteries is a really good portmanteau too. It is. You got to give it up. All right, now it's time to ask the science couch. We've got some listener questions for our crypt of finely honed scientific brains.

This is from Emma Warner who asks, do you think the fangs work like straws or do they simply function as to puncture? I don't know why, but it seems like a lot, like some of the literature has them that they're like pokey, sippy straws. Like when you put it in the juice box, it's just like that. Is that even possible? Are there straw teeth in nature? There aren't straw teeth, but there are straw appendages.

So like mosquitoes have a proboscis thing that jab needles in. That's like a straw appendage. Just like a long nose. Totally normal. No, it's a mouth part. It's not a nose. It's kind of their nose. It's kind of a nose.

It's called a mouth part it's not a nose it's kind of their nose it's kind of a nose it's called a mouth part I think the science couch is all on board with this is not a nose yeah okay it's like they're mandibles that have formed it it's not even like

evolutionarily close to a nose I have seen a lot of cartoons where it's their nose so yeah the fictional vampires we can decide

whatever we want so that is up to vote from the science couch and non-science couch consensus insects are divided into two categories so they're the ones like I was talking about with mosquitoes but also lice and fleas that have mouth parts

that both pierce and suck so that's like the straw but all other animals that I could find that drink blood or eat blood through hematophagy. So vampire bats bite the animal and then licks up the blood. Sea lampreys have like a suction disc mouth, which are filled with sharp teeth and then like poke it and then suck up the blood, not through sharp teeth, and then, like, poke it and then suck up the blood, not through the teeth, just through their mouth. That's the same as leeches, too.

They've got, like, tiny teeth, and so they just kind of, like, poke and then suck. So their whole body's the straw, but their teeth are not. And then some of the birds that we were talking about, it also seems, I couldn't find, like, the exact method, exact method but that's like peck and sip so however birds sip other things not through a tooth so there's no straw tooth biologically that i have found but it's a vampire so it could be part bug too that would be creepy i mean i think that you just bite and then the blood flows into your mouth yeah i think magic plays a certain part in it too it does seem a little like that.

What part does magic play into sucking blood? Well, I think it probably makes it look cooler somehow because Dracula can just leave the two little marks in your neck and there's not blood everywhere. And that feels like so stylish that it would have to be magic to me. Yeah, and when Brad Pitt does it in an interview with a vampire, it seems like it feels really good. Yeah.

Like it feels really bad. Like it seems like it feels really good. Yeah. Like it feels really bad. Like it seems like it would feel really bad if I think about what it would be like to have my blood drained out of me, but it seems like people are enjoying it. So that seems like magic, sexy magic. Yeah. That could also be just sexy science too because leeches have a numbing compound in their teeth and saliva so that when they bite you, that's why leeches don't hurt when they suck.

You have no idea it's happened. You come out of the lake and you're like, why do I have 15 leeches on me? Yeah. It's amazing. You don't feel them. them and then a lot of hematophagic animals like vampire bats or lampreys have anti-coagulating compounds in their saliva so that when they bite the blood just like keeps flowing rather than the wound stopping up and getting scabby so so vampire spit is probably pretty magical i wouldn't think it'd be suction though because because they don't leave a big mark on your neck you don't get a big hickey after vampire

I don't think you need to suck when you puncture the jugular vein you just let it go anyway if you want to ask Science Crypt your questions follow us on Twitter at SciShowTangents where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every

week thank you to at Cody the Smiley at the Tiny Vegan, and everybody else who tweeted us your questions this week. Sandbuck final scores. Stefan pulls into the lead for the episode and the season with three points. Sam's got nothing. I've got one. Sari's got two.

That leaves Stefan with one more point than Sari as far as I can tell unless this is wrong. So, you know, Sam and I are just gonna like hang out here in the back.

I like it down here. There's no pressure. No pressure. You don't have to worry about anything. I can tell you about this picture of an alligator with a bunch of leeches

in its mouth that I found. No one, I don't have to worry at all about whether I'm gonna lose my lead. Just eat those things, my friend. So there are some leeches that are strong. I read

a lot about leeches. They're strong enough teeth to bite in from the outside and pierce skin, but there are some leeches that are only strong enough to pierce internal tissues. So swallowing the leeches would not mean you're safe. It would make it easier for them to suck your blood. What?

There's inside leeches? The worst thing I've ever heard. Somebody kick Sari out of the chat, please. Oh my God. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's very easy to do that. You can just leave us a review wherever you listen. It helps us know what you like about the show. Second, you can tweet out

your favorite moment from this episode. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green.

I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Stephen Chin. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly and a wonderful team at WNYC Studios.

It's created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who edits a lot of these episodes along with Hiroko Matsushima. Our social media organizer is Paola Garcia Prieto.

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the mind is not a coffin to be filled, but a jack-o'-lantern to be lighted. But, one more thing. If you're a scientist and want to learn more about how vampires eat and digest blood, you gotta look at vampire poop. Specifically, scientists look at vampire bat poop to learn that the bat's cells and gut microbes break down tough proteins in blood and protect them against blood-borne viruses. One of the researchers wished she could have studied mama bat blood vomit too, but said, quote, getting their fecal samples was already hard enough. I'll just leave that idea for someone else to explore, end quote.

I don't think vampires poop. I don't think vampires poop either. It seems like they're not drinking the blood to actually like calorically sustain themselves it's a life force thing where does all that extra stuff go then why do they need to keep drinking more blood do they just use it it's magic they need it to turn into a bat and turn into mist and turn it right and if they like instead of pooping they just have a little bit of themselves that turns into a bat and flies away. I'm okay with it then. If instead of poop, they emit one bat every once in a while.