Vampires as Misunderstood Geniuses of Evolution #science #bats #Desmodusrotundus #vampires #animals

The Biomedical Secrets of Vampire Bats Today we have a truly unusual hero on the show. His name is the Common Vampire... aka the Great Bloodsucker, aka Desmodus, aka (in scientific Latin) Desmodus rotundus. This is a creature that has learned to break seemingly all the rules of biology for the sake of survival. Real bloodsuckers live only in the American tropics. And, fortunately for medicine, they have proven far more useful than the fictional count. Incidentally, studying these myths today helps sociologists and psychologists understand how collective phobias are formed and how popular culture can hinder the scientific study of beneficial species for years by creating false prejudices. Doctor Akhaslim, here our little hero flies out to hunt. Night, darkness. How does he even find his prey? Does he have some kind of radar? He has something even better. First, hearing. It works like a sophisticated acoustic analyzer. The mouse doesn't just hear breathing; it recognizes sleep phases. Seriously? Does it know when I'm in my tenth sleep? Exactly. Its brain is tuned to the low breathing rates of a sleeping mammal. If breathing becomes irregular, it means the prey might wake up, and attacking is dangerous. But when the "patient" is in deep sleep, a second superpower kicks in—thermometer perception. Is it like a thermal imager? Yes. But I think I should explain. All mammals have a receptor protein with a "tasty" name—the vanilloid receptor type 1, or more precisely, its long isoform. This receptor acts as a thermal pain detector and only activates if the temperature exceeds forty-three degrees—so we can pull our hand away from something hot. But vampires are more cunning: in special folds on their noses, in addition to the usual long isoform, they have a unique one—a short one. It reacts to the victim's body heat at just thirty degrees, acting like a built-in thermal imager. Imagine standing in front of a wall with a hot water pipe embedded in it. You can't see it, but you can feel the heat with your hand. So, for a vampire, a blood vessel under the skin glows in the infrared spectrum. It knows exactly where to bite to immediately hit the vein. This discovery has enormous implications for bionics: scientists are developing ultra-sensitive, contactless temperature sensors that mimic the structure of a vampire's nose. Such devices could help search for people buried under rubble or create early detection systems for inflammatory processes in medicine. And that's without even mentioning examples of not-so-fantastic biohacking... They recognize sleep phases based on the frequency of breathing. Studying this mechanism helps develop contactless sleep monitoring systems for patients with sleep apnea or cardiovascular disorders. Essentially, scientists can develop systems capable of recognizing sleep phases based on breathing sounds, mimicking the natural precision of vampire bats. Their incisors are so sharp that they remove the top layer of skin, barely touching the nerve endings. Then the chemistry of their saliva comes into play. It contains substances, such as lipocalins, that block histamine. Vampire lipocalins are the key to creating next-generation anti-allergy drugs. Instead of fighting the symptoms of the entire immune system, we are learning to selectively "turn off" the allergic reaction and itching at the site of contact. This could radically change the lives of people with severe skin dermatitis. Vampire saliva contains a cocktail of anticoagulant proteins. The most famous is Desmoteplase. Journalists like to call it the "Dracula Factor." Think of a blood clot in the brain as a clogged drain. Conventional medications act like the aggressive plumbing solution "Mole"—they dissolve the clog, but they can also corrode the pipe itself, causing bleeding. Desmoteplase, on the other hand, works like a biochemical nanorobot. It is activated only when it encounters fibrin, the backbone of a blood clot. Without a clot, it is harmless. In medicine, this property is called high fibrin specificity. Unlike the first-generation drug streptokinase, which "melts" everything, desmoteplase, derived from vampire saliva, increases the "therapeutic window"—the time during which brain damage can be saved after a stroke without the risk of fatal bleeding. While Desmoteplase "destroys" existing blood clots, Drakulin is a powerful anticoagulant that prevents blood from clotting altogether. Drakulin blocks specific clotting factors. Specifically, factors nine-a and ten-a. Its uniqueness lies in its very gentle and long-lasting action. Scientists are currently trying to develop a drug based on it for the prevention of deep vein thrombosis that wouldn't have as many side effects as modern medications. Research in 2022 showed that, during the course of evolution, they simply "kicked out" thirteen genes from their DNA. Including the REP-15 gene. Without this gene, their intestinal cells stop accumulating iron and begin releasing it at a...