Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters. In time, countless variations of the vampire have emerged from our popular culture, fed by the blood of global myths, folk tales, and legends. Some are sparkly and sexy,
other sinister and dangerous, others altogether monstrous. The Nosforatu vampire has come into its own, a pale, emaciated body with ghoulish features, batlike ears, and a pair of elongated incisors for piercing the skin of their victims rather than the elongated canine teeth found in so many other vampire depictions. While not always completely devoid of humanity, they tend toward
the purely monstrous end of the vampire e spectrum. They have been consumed by their unnatural thirst, and this may leave them in a primal state, or one in which their human memories have faded gossamer then naturally. This monster dates back to the nineteen twenty two silent German expressionist film Nosferatu A Symphony of horror, which in turn has been reimagined many times, including in the Werner Herzog nineteen
seventy nine film Nosferatu the Vampire. I find the Nosferatu particularly engaging in light of what we know of obligate sant guovar's in the natural world, particularly vampire bats. It is a highly specialized diet blood and not at all an easy survival path. Unlike their insect and fruit eating relatives, vampire bats cannot hibernate or migrate. They lack the fat store, so instead they must feed every night, lapping up fifty of their body weight in order to survive. So too,
the Nosferatu seems shackled to its thirst. In the fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons, the Nosferatu merits its own monster manual entry, separate from all the other blood drinkers, with a level eight challenge rating. It's no pushover, but it's both powerful and in some ways fragile. Hyper sensitive to sunlight. It has a few different attack actions at its disposal, including blood disgorge, in which quote the Nosferatu
vomits blood in a fifteen foot cone. In doing this, it inflicts necrotic damage on any hapless hero in its way. In the natural world, scavenging vultures are known to disgorge their meals when threatened, perhaps to bribe the attacker or to lighten their load for an escape flight. This would be a fit in comparison for the nosferatu, but the
Texas hornet lizard boast an impressive defense as well. While it's camouflage is generally quite effective, it can also shoot a stream of blood out of its eyelids with a range of up to five ft. According to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. The blood also contains a bitter chemical, possibly derived from ants and the lizard's diet, which predators such as coyotes find particularly distasteful. The lizard can use up to a third of its total blood supply in
this counter attack, but it gets the message across. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind It's production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.