(no subject)

[coraa]

Starting assumptions: werewolves are humans who assume wolf shape either at will or when provoked by a stimulus (such as the full moon). That nature is contagious, usually spread by bite.

(That is: if your werewolves don't really turn into wolves, or spread via some mechanism that's not contagious, this question is irrelevant.)

Has anyone read any werewolf stories where the contagion-via-bite is true even if they bite something other than a human? That is, where a werewolf who bites a horse might create a horsewolf that shifts into a wolf at the full moon, or where a werewolf that bites a deer creates a deerwolf, or etc.?

Alternately, any stories where there's an explicit explanation for why that doesn't happen (as opposed to just assuming from the start that the only species susceptible to the contagion is humans)?

EDIT: Of course, as deer and horses presumably can't carry silver weapons or whatever else one does to avoid werewolves if one is a human, this might result in there being a ton of horsewolves and deerwolves and whatever, any animal large enough to survive a werewolf bite, roaming around. Which would make an interesting story, I think: a world in which any animal might theoretically turn into a contagious wolf monster by night, in which humans survive in isolated enclaves with rigorously-protected livestock...

...sort of like in JRPGs, in fact, where dangerous beasts lurk to destroy you as soon as you leave town.

Comments

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I imagine that werewolf bite is kind of like avian flu. Some animals are more susceptible to it than others. In the case of avian flu it is very unusual for people to catch it, unless there are pigs around to help mutate the virus into a form virulent to humans.

Brother and I just had a conversation about this re: vampire contagion. He said vampires used to be monsters that ate people, but didn't necessarily turn them. Now it's handled more 'outbreak' style like infectious disease. Rabies or something.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I've heard that about vampires, that a lot of the older folklore doesn't have any "turning humans to vampires" element. (And of course there's the Vampire the Masquerade variant, also used elsewhere, where it's not biting someone but feeding them some of your own vampire blood that turns them. Presumably because otherwise one vampire bites two, and two bite two more, and so on, until you begin to hit exponential vampire levels. And unlike zombie stories, vampire stories tend to rely on vampires being a minority...)

One of my favorite werewolf stories is "Bisclavret," in which, if an explanation for werewolfism is ever given, I can't remember it, but the trigger for transformation is whether he has human clothes or not. (It's also a fairly early werewolf-as-sympathetic-character story....)