Vampire Metabolism and Social Structure: A Structural Realist Approach to Myth through Biology and Ecology

This paper reimagines the vampire myth through the lens of structural realism, integrating insights from biology, medicine, ecology, and social theory. Challenging the trope of the vampire as a supernatural predator, the study reconstructs the figure as a metabolically fragile, socially interdependent being whose survival depends on complex physiological adaptations and cooperative institutions. Drawing on comparative zoology (e.g., hematophagous bats), medical pathology (e.g., porphyria, hemochromatosis), and reciprocal altruism, the paper explores how blood consumption necessitates ethical norms, infrastructural design, and ritualized exchange. The concept of “structural mythography” is introduced as a methodological framework for grounding speculative beings in real-world constraints. By treating mythic figures as responses to ecological and physiological limits, the paper offers a new model for interdisciplinary narrative construction that bridges speculative fiction, cultural theory, and the life sciences.