A couple of questions concerning canon

[indri]

I've checked All Things Philosophical and peasant_'s The Gate but can find nothing to definitively answer a couple of questions. Depending on the answers, I may have to rewrite a key passage or two of the long fic I'm working on. Is anyone able to help?

Did Spike's chip prevent him from injuring or attacking nonhuman animals?

As far as I can tell, all the evidence is equivocal.

(i) Shortly after the chipping, he turns up starving on Giles' doorstep. There's no evidence that he's tried and failed to eat the local domestic animals but there's no sign that he's not tried to.

(ii) Harmony at one point claims that Spike can't even pick flowers, but I am inclined to dismiss this on the grounds that (a) it's Harmony, (b) Spike begs to differ and most importantly, (c) Spike turns up with some wildflowers for Joyce on her death and he presumably picked these himself.

(iii) Spike plays for kittens in poker, but it's unclear whether he eats them or simply uses them as currency.

(iv) Riley says at one point that Spike can't injure any living thing, but see (ii). Also, it's hard to see why this would benefit the Initiative and we don't know if the chip worked exactly as expected.

Can vampires choose not to breathe?

We know that vampires don't need to breathe in the sense that they have no need of oxygen; this was demonstrated early on when Angel was able to turn off the gas in the high school basement. Also, Angel clearly wouldn't have survived his later undersea adventure otherwise. Vamps talk, smoke and pant so they do use their lungs on a daily basis. But can they choose to suppress the urge to breathe? This is what I am not sure about. When The First tortured Spike by dunking him underwater, did this in fact provide us with a demonstration that vampires retain the urge to breath even though they don't need air?

Comments

[onetwomany.livejournal.com]

I take a similar view to Barb on vamps breathing. They clearly in inhale and exhale for some reason. Even Angel pants after a good fight. I'd say it's partially a psychological thing, partially muscle memory - both of which would make it a pretty yucky experience to not be able to breath. Angel, being a more in-control kind of person, and a much older and less human vamp, just deals with that stress a bit better than Spike. Interestingly though, Spike managed to knock Dru unconscious by denying her air, so she seemed the most strongly affected of all...