Blindsight, page 299 by Peter Watts
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nervous system development). While this provoked radical neurological and behavioral changes, significant physical changes were limited to soft tissue and microstructures that do not fossilise. This, coupled with extremely low numbers of vampire even at peak population levels (existing as they did at the tip of the trophic pyramid) explains their virtual absence from the fossil record.
Significant deleterious effects also resulted from this cascade. For example, vampires lost the ability to code for ï¥-Protocadherin Y, whose genes are found exclusively on the hominid Y chromosome6. Unable to synthesise this vital protein themselves, vampires had to obtain it from their food. Human prey thus comprised an essential component of their diet, but a relatively slow-breeding one (a unique situation, since prey usually outproduce their predators by at least an order of magnitude). Normally this dynamic would be utterly unsustainable: vampires would predate humans to extinction, and then die off themselves for lack of essential nutrients.
Extended periods of lungfish-like dormancy7 (the so-called "undead" state)--and the consequent drastic reduction in vampire energetic needs-- developed as a means of redressing this imbalance. To this end vampires produced elevated levels of endogenous Ala-(D) Leuenkephalin (a mammalian hibernation-inducing peptide8) and dobutamine, which strengthens the heart muscle during periods on inactivity9.
Another deleterious cascade effect was the so-called "Crucifix Glitch"-- a cross-wiring of normally-distinct receptor arrays in the visual cortex10, resulting in grand mal-like feedback siezures whenever the arrays processing vertical and horizontal stimuli fired simultaneously across a sufficiently large arc of the visual field. Since intersecting right angles are virtually nonexistent in nature, natural selection did not weed out the Glitch until H. sapiens sapiens developed Euclidean architecture; by then, the trait had become fixed ac