Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures by Bill Schutt (PDF)

Description

“A witty, scientifically accurate, and often intensely creepy exploration of sanguivorous creatures.”—San Francisco Chronicle“Bill Schutt turns whatever fear and disgust you may feel towards nature’s vampires into a healthy respect for evolution’s power to fill every conceivable niche.”—Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex and Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of LifeFor 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 us on a fascinating 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 blood feeders, from bats to bedbugs, are as deserving of our curiosity as warmer and fuzzier species are—and that many of them are even worthy of conservation.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. 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 and alarming, Dark Banquet peers into a part of the natural world to which we are, through our blood, inextricably linked.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Everything arrived on time and as advertised

⭐This book is zoology with humour, passion and sincerity. Schutt manages to write about a scientific topic with an engaging flare and a lot of humanity. No matter how technical he gets, he never lets you forget that he or his colleagues are human beings pursuing their passion. He is generous with intelligent jokes, brings to light the wonderful absurdities of the natural word, and writes throughout with a genuine love for his work. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves science, animals, strange facts and who wants a great story about a funny guy who went on a quest to uncover the truth about nature’s blood-suckers.

⭐I rarely get a chance to chuckle or almost laugh when reading a non-fiction science/wildlife book but this one made me do so several times, it is a fun read. Filled with interesting facts and a great writing style, with popular references to culture that lighten the book with quick asides that by no means degrades the seriousness and content. I would have loved to have been a student in Schutt’s classes — lucky the kids that are! Joe McDonald

⭐What mars this book is a woeful lack of an organizing principle (an entire book about creatures that feed on blood and essentially nothing about mosquitoes?) and the vicissitudes of the author’s own attention span. He’s excited about bats, it appears, but the chapter on bed bugs is a series of silly puns and phoned-it-in reportage that has all the intellectual rigor of a sidebar in _People_ magazine. It’s hard to know what was going on with Schutt and this book, but he ought either to have abandoned the project or pulled himself together and written a book that was worthy of its title. Among Schutt’s bad habits are an inability to make pronouns and antecedents agree and a weakness for belaboring silly, juvenile jokes of the variety that will surely land him a job, in the event there’s another writers’ strike, on the team that produces _Family Guy_ or _American Dad_. Notwithstanding the sycophantic blurbs from E. O Wilson and Michael Novacek on the cover, this is a mediocre book. Schutt’s no Stephen J. Gould, and more’s the pity.

⭐This is a great book. if you like any kind of animal or insect that is blood sucking this is the book for you. The author goes into great detail about his experiences with these ‘vampires’ and enjoys catching and studying them.

⭐It tells you in full where the blood suckers come from. I liked it.

⭐Great book! Interesting topic and easy to read. Local author and scientist.Fascinating facts about bloodsucking creatures written in simple language and humorous.

⭐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

⭐If you want to know about blood and those that eat it…really there is no better starter text. Entertaining to read, wide in scope, a real treat.

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