This is an IHeart podcast.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart 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.

We have a special omnibus episode of The Monster Fact here for you this week, collecting four past episodes about miscellaneous creatures from the

Dungeons and Dragons universe and the possible science behind them. This was actually a listener-submitted

idea, so we hope you enjoy the experiment. Up first, the Nosferatu. 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, others sinister and dangerous, others altogether monstrous. The Nosphoratu vampire has come

into its own, a pale, emaciated body with ghoulish features, bat-like 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 vampiric 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 thin.

Naturally, this monster dates back to the 1922 silent German expressionist film, Nosphorus,

a symphony of horror, which in turn has been reimagined many times, including in the Werner Herzog, 1979 film Nosphoratu,

the Vampire.

I find the Nosferatu particularly engaging in light of what we know of obligate Sanguvoirs

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 50% of their body weight in order to

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