Hmmm, with the question of the soul, that opens up a whole can of humanocentric thinking. There's the whole question of symbolic reasoning, the capability of metaphor. But, in Jossverse at least, we've seen that a vampire can exist with or without a soul, that without a soul s/he doesn't have a moral compass, has no need for morality, only desire. Any creature capable of the desire to eat and reproduce would be capable of hosting the demon.
But then again, we've seen that the social system, the relationships learned in life, inform the vampire, shape it. Any social animal turned vampire would have the same issues. And any great ape has plenty of those. I don't know about gibbons and siamangs since they're the least social, but then again, with their territoriality, they'd probably make good vampires. *g*
Yes, there's the whole question of what creatures in the Jossverse have souls. Most humans and some demons and we have no info at all on non-magical animals other than humans. Barb raised the point about the Turok-Han being possibly vamped hominids -- but now that I think about it some more, there's a fairly big disconnect between standard evolutionary theories and Jossverse prehistory.
To survive, the vamped creature would need to be smart enough not to walk out into the sun, so a successful vamped group would need some communication skills and memory. You'd need a social species. But it doesn't tell us which creatures could, theoretically, be vamped.
Hmm, I hadn't really considered that the Turok-Han were another species of hominid. But then the whole creation mythos of Jossverse doesn't fit in with any standard evolutionary model.
Also a vamped creature's survival would depend on who or what did the siring and if they stuck around to teach basic survival skills. I'd always wondered why vampires seemed to procreate with such a wide spectrum of parental investment, from 'bite them and leave them' to centuries long relationships.
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Date: 2005-10-19 08:34 pm (UTC)But then again, we've seen that the social system, the relationships learned in life, inform the vampire, shape it. Any social animal turned vampire would have the same issues. And any great ape has plenty of those. I don't know about gibbons and siamangs since they're the least social, but then again, with their territoriality, they'd probably make good vampires. *g*
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Date: 2005-11-25 10:27 am (UTC)To survive, the vamped creature would need to be smart enough not to walk out into the sun, so a successful vamped group would need some communication skills and memory. You'd need a social species. But it doesn't tell us which creatures could, theoretically, be vamped.
Hm.
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Date: 2005-11-26 07:03 pm (UTC)Also a vamped creature's survival would depend on who or what did the siring and if they stuck around to teach basic survival skills. I'd always wondered why vampires seemed to procreate with such a wide spectrum of parental investment, from 'bite them and leave them' to centuries long relationships.