The fear of vampires does not reflect empirical reality, but the psychology of our ancestors. Many of our fears bear little relation to the objective dangers of the modern world but are remnants of our species evolutionary history. Many people are afraid of flying, although traveling by car is eleven times more dangerous (Lewis, 1990). Some people are afraid of sharks, although they are four hundred times more likely to drown in their bathtub (Ropeik, 2010). Activists rightly fight for a ban on pesticide residues and food additives, even though they pose minimal cancer risks compared to the many natural carcinogens that plants have evolved to stop herbivory (Ames et al., 1990). Such risks are misestimated because they stem from our innate fears of heights, confinement, predation, and poisoning (Pinker, 2002). Other common fears are storms, large carnivores, darkness, blood, strangers, deep water, and leaving home

Journal of Geek Studies 9(2): 79-90 (2022). alone situations that endangered our ancestors. Fear is the emotion that enabled our ancestors to deal with the dangers they might encounter (Pinker, 1997). Figure 3. The Kiss of the Enchantress, by Isobel Lilian Gloag (1890), depicts Lamia as half-serpent. Public domain. In his book The Descent of Man, Darwin (1871: 43) reported how captive-bred monkeys exhibit a strong instinctive fear of snakes: I then placed the stuffed [snake] specimen on the ground in one of the larger compartments. After a time all the monkeys collected round it in a large circle, and staring intently, presented a most ludicrous appearance. They became extremely nervous; so that when a wooden ball, with which they were familiar as a plaything, was accidently moved in the straw, under

These monkeys behaved very differently when a dead fish, a mouse, and some other new objects were placed in their cages; for though at first frightened, they soon approached, handled and examined them. Figure 4. Lilith, by John Collier (1889). Public domain. Similar to Darwin, Hebb (1946) found that chimpanzees scream when they see a snake for the first time. These behavioral responses are ingrained in these primates. The best evidence that fears are adaptations and not just errors of the nervous system is that animals that evolve on islands without predators (like dodos and kiwi) lose their fear and are easy prey for any invader (Pinker, 1997). In his account, Darwin (1871: 43) ob-

The biology of vampires served that, despite the fear, One of the monkeys immediately approached, cautiously opened the bag a little, peeped in, and instantly dashed away. The ape was taken by curiosity, in the same way that humans are drawn to horror, provided they are safe for example, within fiction. Fear and fascination intertwine when there is no real danger. Our attention is preferentially captured by evolutionarily relevant dangers, and horror fiction monsters such as vampires capitalize on this tendency. It is obvious that such creatures did not exist in ancestral environments, but vampires represent an imaginative combination of threats that existed in prehistoric times such as the threat posed by mammalian predators with sharp teeth and thirst for blood (Clasen, 2014).