What came first, the vampire or the bat?

In this case, the answer is clear. The vampire bat, or Desmondus rotundus, is about the size of an adult thumb and weighs approximately one ounce. They live in tropical and sub-tropical areas of South and Central America where they live in colonies of anywhere between one hundred to two thousand bats. They eat insects and larvae and drink blood from wounds of larger mammals. This gives them a natural association with the Gothic horror figures of legend.

Where was this connection solidified, then?

An illustrated version of “Varney the Vampire; The Feast of Blood,” by James Malcolm Rymer shows a rather bat-like drawing of Sir Francis Varney on the cover. This was a serialized story published between 1845 and 1847, and it was finally published in one massive copy in 1847. “The Feast of Blood” was to be an influence on the later, much better-known Bram Stoker’s work.

It is in Bram Stoker’s famous 1897 novel “Dracula” that the connection between bats and vampires truly coalesces in folklore. In the novel, the character Quincey Morris states, “I have not seen anything pulled down so quick since I was on the Pampas and had a mare… One of those big bats that they call ‘vampires’ had got at her during the night and … there wasn’t enough blood in her to let her stand up.” It seems that Stoker did not know about how small vampire bats really were, or he decided to ignore it for a good story.

It is also in Stoker’s work where the ability for vampiric shape-shifting was introduced. In order to seduce Lucy, Dracula would often turn into a bat to perch on her windowsill. He also possessed the ability to turn into a wolf, or mist if he chose to. The motif of shape-shifting was carried through into the films “Nosferatu” in 1922, and Bela Legosi’s 1931 rendition of “Dracula.” In “Nosferatu,” the bat is replaced with a rat. However, when “Dracula” was produced, they did stay true to that original vision.

Stoker’s work is inarguably the most influential work on the modern view of vampires. There is no work, from “Interview With A Vampire” to “Twilight” that does not draw off of his book. Along with his influence flutters a little brown bat, and the legend is firmly tied.