Wait what. Do they not?
God you’re so fucking stupid I’m flying to the midwest as we speak to kiss you
Wait, but no, seriously. Is that not the implication? Do they just use the pointy teeth to open a wound, and then lick at the blood that comes out like some kind of dumbass psychotic cat?
I always assumed it was something along the lines of snake fangs, where there were channels in the teeth like little straws to enable the suckage.
ultimately it depends on the vampire fiction, but yeah normally they poke holes and then use their mouths to suck the blood out.
That just sounds... Unsanitary. What if the person's got a sweaty-ass neck? Vampires don't want to be sucking on nasty neck-sweat.
but the blood is fine?
Wait - you expect a vampire to drain someone dry just from sort of...what...pressing their lips to an open wound? Are they sucking at it like a baby sucking its thumb? Do people genuinely interpret vampires as just kind of standing there, suckling at some maiden's neck while relying on her own rapidly falling blood pressure to get it enough food??? Obviously a vampire's teeth have holes in them, like snake fangs, and obviously they're used to actively pump blood into the vampire. Duh.
Ok, but now... Do they habe double channels? Cause most vampires give their victim an ecstasy fugue state thingy. So they have to have some kind of venom.
That, I assume, would be salivary. The vampire would make the incision, and saliva would flow into the wound, delivering an assortment of intoxicants and relaxants and - depending on the interpretation of the vampire - an anaesthetic, so that the process is darkly fascinating instead of just agonizingly painful. Then the vampire begins to inflate its stomach, physically drawing blood down into it. There's a lot more blood in a human body than there is room in a humanoid stomach, so the vampire will have to either bloat itself like a tick or leave the person dizzy and half-drained to drink from again another day - depending on which works better for the current story.
I have no idea how feasible it is biologically, but given that most depictions of vampire feeding has them stay latched on, teeth still in the wound, until done feeding, and then only leave the two pinprick wounds behind, I was also assuming there was some suction going on through the teeth, because otherwise wouldn't the teeth plug the tiny wounds and prevent much blood from coming out? So yeah. I was picturing hollow fangs with some manner of suction behind them as well. If not, I'd expect the wounds to be significantly bigger and messier. Like full rip-the-throat-out sort of wounds. Otherwise how are they going to get the volume-at-speed?
The ecstasy thing I always assumed was a hypnotic effect, not a narcotic one. I'm fairly sure that's explicit in at least several version of the mythology. But everyone does their vampires differently these days, so it probably depends on the version.
The straw fangs were the assumption when I was a kid, then the "cooler and edgier" vampires started doing that thing around the late 90s where they're just guzzling blood from a wound, and I think it was mainly just to make vampire movies messier and gorier; so you could show them snarl at the camera with faces all covered in red, instead of a stealthy dual mosquito bite.
Most parasites don't want to be noticed and cause as little damage as possible.
