Yami_no_tengoku
Think about it: do you
really think humans exist alone?
No, it's quite obvious we share the planet with billions of other organisms; everything from ebola to sperm whales. The universe is full of so many natural wonders and mysteries that it's quite frankly pure ignorance that makes people ask stupid questions like this.
From a purely scientific perspective, the likleyhood that vampirism lies undescovered as either a medical condition or as a seperate species is pretty much rubbish. I'm not even going to bother going into the specifics of a disease, since I've already wasted a lot of breath explaining here there
are many diseases out there which have symptoms reminiscent of 'classic vampirism'. It must also be said that all of these have been, at different times, used as 'explanations' for vampirism, yet the sufferers are not vampires. To counter this by saying "oh, the disease is just is rare it hasn't been discovered yet" is pure childish petulance. It's not exactly as if people are falling over each other rushing to get diagnosed with porphyria. Remember this is a disease so uncommon that
medical texts refer to it as 'rare and mysterious'. Taking a sample of the number of people here who claim to be or have 'seen' vampires versus the number of people here with porphyria, I'd hazard a guess that this apparently 'undiscovered' vampire-disease is apparently more common. In fact, there are whole
websites and
clubs devoted to people who think they have this disease; I would hardly call that 'rare'. But go on, prove me wrong; you think you have it? Then go to your nearest medical specialist and get it discovered. Your doctor would
love to be the one to discover a new diesase, trust me.
If vampirism isn't some mystical undiscovered disease, could it be a previously-unknown species of vertibrate; most likely a mutant strain of
homo sapiens sapiens? Well, it's possibly. It's easy to look into nature and find examples of 'vampire-like' traits existing naturally. We've seen how certain rare genetic diseases may result in photosensitivity, and nature is full of animals with metabolisms so slow they often appear dead, such as the New Zealand tuatara and pretty much anything that hybernates. And lots of animals subsist wholly on blood, though it needs to be pointed out that the majority of these are insect or worm parasites (and a few primitive fish, I believe), and the only mammal to do so is the
tiny South American vampire bat (they're about as big as your thumb). Most blood-drinking animals are tiny in comparison to your average (or even non-average) human; since the amount of food consumed is relatvive to the size of the animal, imagine how much blood a human-sized vampire would have to consume if it were their only or main source of sustenence. Now imagine how many dead bodies or fainting anemiacs that would leave behind. A thousand years ago that probably wouldn't've been a concern; now, on the other hand, it would be. Doctors and scientists aren't (perhaps be definition) stupid, and considering this phenomenon has supposedly been with us since ancient times... let's just say I do't buy the idea that no-one would've gotten suspicious by now. And of course the other simple fact is that pretty much every animal species of a reasonable size and rarity has already been catalogued and discovered. The last three major discoveres in zoology were the okapi (in circa 1901), the colossal squid (1925; even bigger and rarer than the giant squid) and the coelacanth (193
cool that was thought to have died off in the Cretaceous. I'm certainly not suggesting we've discovered
everything that exists on the planet, but it does need to be noted that these three discoveries were of animals that live in fairly inhospitable environments (deep forest and deep ocean). The middle of the city is, in my opinion, not a particularly inhospitable environment. The point being, that it seems
highly unlikely that some kind of uncatalogued vampire species would exist in populated areas, and no-one has ever given me any good argument as to why they remain so elusive; especially when so many people are running around volunteering themselves as specimens or having met specimens. Let's point out that only one adult (ie. large) colossal squid has ever been captured, plus two tentacles and some beaks found in a whale's belly, as well as numerous scars on whale skin that are thought to have been caused by the hooks on the squid's tentacles. But again; one adult specimen. Yet we know this species exists. And people expect me to buy that there is some hidden species of vampires that have never been discovered? Bah.
Anyway, the whole argument is moot since you're asking the wrong question. The question isn't "do vampires exist?" so much as "why do people want to believe vampires exist?" One is a child's question; I'll let you make up your own mind on which one it is.
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