{"product_id":"dark-banquet-isbn-9780307381132","title":"Dark Banquet","description":"\u003cb\u003e“A witty, scientifically accurate, and often intensely creepy exploration of sanguivorous creatures.”—\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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 \u003ci\u003eParasite Rex\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMicrocosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor centuries, blood feeders have inhabited our nightmares and horror stories, as well as the shadowy realms of scientific knowledge. In \u003ci\u003eDark Banquet\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eExamining 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eDark Banquet\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEnlightening and alarming, \u003ci\u003eDark Banquet\u003c\/i\u003e peers into a part of the natural world to which we are, through our blood, inextricably linked.“A jaunty, instructive and charmingly graphic look at nature’s born phlebotomists.”\u003cb\u003e—Natalie Angier, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Schutt illuminates the bizarre world of sanguivores with the wizened voice of a biologist who’s gotten his hands dirty.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eOrion Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Wide ranging . . . packed with fascinating facts and anecdotes.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Star-Ledger\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“It’s creepy, funny and really, really interesting.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBaltimore Sun\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“My vote for the most fun and best-written ‘nature book’ of the past several years.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eIdaho Nature Notes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Schutt reveals elements of nature that few authors have written about with such vigor and wit.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eAlbuquerque Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“I love Bill Schutt’s book. . . . Schutt writes with obvious enthusiasm about fascinating creatures that, quite frankly, repel most of us.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The Nature Conservancy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Schutt may have a doctorate in zoology but he has also mastered the pen along the way. And, he gets an A+ for his droll sense of humor.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eRoanoke Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A natural history of bloodsuckers that shines in gory glory.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Absorbing and insightful . . . an interesting, well-written volume . . . educational and fun to read. Written in clear language in a witty conversational style . . . intriguing . . . highly recommended.”\u003cb\u003e—American Library Association\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Witty and illuminating . . . Schutt’s fascination for ‘sanguivores’ goes a long way towards disarming, while defining, our primal fear of creatures that feed on blood.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“With great scientific accuracy (backed up by extensive notes . . . ), text couched in layman’s terms, and a sense of breathless discovery, Schutt will make blood feeding just another choice on the culinary spectrum.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Booklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Hooks the reader on the first page . . . riveting . . . well-rounded . . . engrossing science.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Library Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Dr. Schutt’s voyage through the world of blood-feeders is alive with  humor and the sheer fun of scientific exploration. He may become the literary heir  to Stephen Jay Gould—if you can imagine Gould writing after downing twelve cups of  coffee sweetened with nitrous oxide.”\u003cb\u003e—Charles Pellegrino\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e “Having donated some of myself to  most kinds of bloodsuckers during my field research around the world, mercifully  with the exception of vampire bats and candiru catfish, I was totally absorbed by  this thoroughly charming and scientifically accurate account.”\u003cb\u003e—Edward O. Wilson\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eBill Schutt\u003c\/b\u003e is a vertebrate zoologist and author of six nonfiction and fiction books, including the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Editors’ Choice \u003ci\u003eCannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History\u003c\/i\u003e. Recently retired from his post as professor of biology at LIU Post, he is a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, where he has studied bats all over the world. His research has been featured in \u003ci\u003eNatural History\u003c\/i\u003e magazine as well as in the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eNewsday\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eEconomist\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eDiscover\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cb\u003eWALLERFIELD\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ( Nine years earlier ) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The ceiling tiles in the abandoned icehouse  had fallen long ago, transforming the floor of the cavernous building into a debris-strewn  obstacle course. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Hey, it’s squishy,” I said, stepping gingerly onto a slime-coated  chunk just inside the doorway. “Some sort of foam.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “It’s probably just asbestos.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My wife, Janet, was a terrific field assistant, but I could tell that this place  was already giving her a serious case of the creeps. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Yes, but with a protective  coating of bat shit,” I added, trying to cheer her up. “Let’s check it out.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Wallerfield,  in north-central Trinidad, had been a center for American military operations in  the southern Atlantic during World War II. The land on which it had been built became  part of the same Lend-Lease program that had brought Churchill’s shell-shocked government  fifty outdated American destroyers. Once it had been the largest and busiest air  base in the world, but the English were long gone, as were the Yanks (most of them  anyway), and now Wallerfield was an overgrown ruin. Row upon row of prefab buildings  had either been carted off in pieces by the locals or reclaimed by the scrubby forests  of Trinidad’s Central Plain, but because of its cement construction the icehouse  was one of the few buildings still standing. Stark white below a mantle of tangled  green, the icehouse belonged to the bats—tens of thousands of them. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e With help from  the Trinidad’s Ministry of Agriculture we’d been collecting vampire bats around the  island for nearly two weeks—and things had gone incredibly well. So well, in fact,  that when our friend Farouk suggested that we visit the cavernous and somewhat notorious  ruins of Wallerfield, Janet and I jumped at the chance to accompany him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The icehouse  wasn’t completely dark yet. Daylight streamed through a window frame that in all  likelihood hadn’t held glass in fifty years. The light fell obliquely onto the floor,  illuminating the base of a cement pillar that rose a dozen feet to the ceiling. The  only movement was from the dust that swirled into and out of  the sunlight. We passed  single file through a shaft of motes before continuing on into deepening shadow.  The room we were crossing was huge, perhaps two hundred feet long and half as wide,  and it took us a good five minutes to pick our way across the slippery rubble. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We stopped at what looked to be a high doorway leading into a smaller room, around  fifteen feet square. But instead of entering, our companion put his arm out, stopping  us before we could go farther. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You \u003ci\u003edon’t\u003c\/i\u003e want to walk in there, boy.” The Indo-Trini  accent belonged to Farouk Muradali, head of his government’s Anti-Rabies Unit. Farouk  would also become my mentor for all things related to Trinidadian bats and a collaborator  on a project to study quadrupedal locomotion in vampire bats. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Why’s that, Farouk?”  I asked, as Janet and I flicked on our headlamps.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “That is not a room,” he said.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As I trained my beam inside the chamber I couldn’t help noticing that the floor  had a weird shine to it. “What the—?” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “It’s an elevator shaft.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A what?” Janet  said, pulling up beside me. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I kicked in a small piece of debris past the threshold  and it hit the dark surface with a plop. “Jesus, it’s completely filled with water!”  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Janet edged closer, the light from her headlamp focused at a point just beyond  the doorway. “That is not water,” she said. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The “floor” of the shaft was a debris-strewn  swamp. There was indeed some type of filthy, tar black liquid filling the shaft,  but Janet was right—it certainly wasn’t water.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Scattered across the surface of this  scuzzy brew were tattered blocks of dark-stained ceiling material as well as unidentifiable  rubbish that had been chucked in over the past fifty years. The scariest thing to  me was that all of it looked \u003ci\u003eremarkably\u003c\/i\u003e like the rubble-littered cement floor we  were currently standing on. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A group came in here to see the bats some time ago  and one of them, a woman, turned up missing.” Farouk pointed to a spot near where  the real floor ended. “They found her there, clutching onto the ledge. Only her head  and arms were above the surface.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I could see my wife give a shudder and she took  several steps back from the edge. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Carefully, I moved a bit closer, kneeling at  the entrance of the shaft. \u003ci\u003eIt still looked like a solid surface.\u003c\/i\u003e “Farouk. How deep  is this friggin’ thing?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “It goes down several floors,” he said, a bit too matter-of-factly.  “And off the main shaft—a maze of side tunnels.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As the light from my headlamp moved  across the glistening surface, something the size of a football catapulted itself  through the beam. My reflexes send me backward onto my butt as the object landed  with a loud splash. Three headlamp beams hit the impact point, but by then whatever  it was had disappeared below the ink black sludge.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “What the hell was that?” Janet  asked, her voice an alarmed whisper. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I think it was a toad,” I responded. “A big  mother.” And as I turned back to Farouk, he nodded in agreement. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “They feed on  the bats that fall in from above,” he said. “The babies and the weak ones.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e With  that, the Trinidadian directed his light upward, until we could just make out the  ceiling of the elevator shaft, twenty feet from where we stood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As I squinted into  the darkness, Farouk moved away, motioning us to follow. “You can see the bats much  better from upstairs.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Our companion stopped before a narrow stairway leading to  the second floor. The railings had either collapsed long ago or been carted off by  the locals, leaving only small circular holes in the cement. Three separate beams  moved across the steps, each of us searching for any indication that the stairs might  not be safe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I was on the verge of saying something about the strong smell of ammonia  when I heard Farouk’s voice. His tone had grown more serious. “Janet, maybe you should  remain down here.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Yeah, that’s gonna happen,” I said with a laugh. My wife had  recently spent three hours exploring Caura Cave, the floor of which was slick with  guano and crawling with enormous roaches, all without a complaint. Only later did  I learn that she had had a migraine the entire time. So it came as no shock when  she politely waved off Farouk’s chivalrous suggestion and began climbing the darkened  stairs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e One year earlier, at a symposium on bat research, I had gotten up the courage  to approach Arthur M. Greenhall, one of the world’s leading authorities on vampire  bats. I was in the second year of a Ph.D. program at Cornell and like many grad students  I was sniffing around for a dissertation project. (Luckily, the head of my graduate  committee, John Hermanson wasn’t one of those guys who handed you a ready-made project,  although I had to admit there were some days when I wished he had.) By this time,  Greenhall was in his midseventies but he was still vibrant and inquisitive—as excited  about science as anyone I had ever met.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Born and raised in New York City, he’d had  a storied career. In 1933 Greenhall and Raymond Ditmars, his mentor at the New York  Zoological Park, had collected the first vampire bat ever to be exhibited alive in  the United States. It was a female that turned out to be pregnant, delivering a vampire  bat pup several months later. The following year, the young scientist arrived in  Trinidad during the height of a major rabies outbreak. He studied the deadly virus  and its blood-feeding vector with local scientists and collected additional vampire  bats. On his return to the United States, he found he had more specimens than his  zoo could display or handle. Greenhall solved the problem by keeping twenty of the  creatures in his New York City apartment for two years. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e During a break between  research presentations that day, I had spoken to several noted bat biologists about  possible differences in behavior or anatomy between the three vampire bat genera,  Desmodus, Diaemus, and Diphylla. From previous studies I had learned that Desmodus,  the common vampire bat, exhibited an incredible array of unbatlike behaviors, including  a spiderlike agility on the ground. Just as interesting to me was the way Desmodus  initiated flight. In virtually all nonvampire bats, takeoff began with a wing beat  that accelerated the animal away from the wall, ceiling, or branch from which it  hung. Heavily loaded down after a blood meal, Desmodus was renowned for its ability  to catapult itself into flight from the ground by doing a sort of super push-up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Maybe,” I proposed, “the other vampire bats, Diaemus or Diphylla, did things a  little differently.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Not likely,” I was told more than once. “A vampire bat is  a vampire bat is a vampire bat,” chanted several bat scientists. I wondered if there  might be a secret handshake that went along with this information, one that I had  yet to learn. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e After introducing myself to Greenhall, I told him what the  bat researchers  had said, adding that I found their responses puzzling.","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303322013925,"sku":"NP9780307381132","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307381132.jpg?v=1767724497","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/dark-banquet-isbn-9780307381132","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}