(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

[sollers]

H'm... unlike some transformations werewolves seem to adhere at least to some extent to conservation of mass... so a horsewolf would presumably transform into a BLOODY ENORMOUS wolf!

[green_knight]

I *love* the idea of anything-wolf. You can tweak things so that a) the animal needs to be bitten and survive (that mostly rules out mouse-wolves, I suppose) and b) there will be recovery time. A herd animal that is unable to walk far for a couple of weeks is easy prey for everything else and thus unlikely to survive long enough to turn wolf. Also, if there is a residue of wolf-smell, others of its species might shun it, making it harder for the animal to survive during its non-wolf phases.

This could definitely work. I would *love* to read a story about this.

[coraa]

Yay!

Yeah, sufficiently small creatures would be unlikely to survive; I was thinking of things like horses and deer and goats and similar things at that scale because they can, at least theoretically, fight off and survive a wolf attack. (Especially depending on whether wolf-beasts are physically tougher than normal animals and, if so, how long after infection that toughness kicks in.) Mousewolves and squirrelwolves, not so much.

Although there is the question of whether they're contagious in all forms, or just when in wolf shape. It doesn't come up much with werewolves on account of humans not biting one another very often, but if one rare lone squirrel got infected somehow and then nipped or bit other animals in squirrel-form... would they get the wolfness? If so, it could readily spread to smaller animals from just one vector.

:D I think this would be a lot of fun to play with.

[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....)

[morganlf.livejournal.com]

I just read the YA book Blood and Chocolate where werewolves are a different species and biting a human doesn't turn them (although the book mentions that there are legends of the sort). It's not a great book, but an interesting book in the genre.

There's also Lonely Werewolf Girl, which is great...but I can't remember if werewolves can turn others into their kind of the top of my head...

[morganlf.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, okay, so I remember a little bit more about Lonely Werewolf Girl. Wolves and humans can interbreed, but it dilutes the wolfs bloodline (and they live in a very clannish society, so it's a big no-no). Not sure of a human can become 'infected' or not though.

[coneycat.livejournal.com]

Terry Pratchett once had a footnote that referred to vampire watermelons, although even he didn't see how they could be very dangerous. ("Do they suck back?")

I think this is a really cool idea for a story, although the implications are a little alarming--I guess I should be careful about Mitzi at the full moon!

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's awesome. You have to use this idea for something!

[nixve.livejournal.com]

I am greatly amused/intrigued by the idea of horsewolves and deerwolves! I would totally read something following that interpretation of the transmission mechanism.

[istgut.livejournal.com]

It sometimes bugs me that it seems that the transmission rate of the virus or whatever is 100% regardless of the severity of the contact. An interesting tact might be that the transmission rate is generally low, and maybe it has to do with whether the werewolf has open sores in its mouth or something like that... maybe transition from human (or deer) to wolf causes bleeding which makes the time after transition the most dangerous time to be bitten. Or, say, if you fight it and stab it in the mouth.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

That's true, although if biting is the means of procreation for the species, they might do something to enhance the chance of transmission. For instance, if the werewolf virus requires blood contact to transmit, perhaps werewolves have a compulsion to bite their own cheeks or tongues before they bite people...?

I do like the idea that transmission is less than 100%, though, because as far as I know most (all?) actual contagious diseases have a less than 100% infection rate. That would add some interesting narrative drama, too: if the infection rate is, say, around 50%, you'd have some incentive to keep your bitten buddy (or horse, or whatever) around for a while, in case they were going to be fine, as opposed to just throwing them out to the wilds as soon as they got bit.

[caericarclight.livejournal.com]

Peter David's "Howling Mad" revolves around a wolf bitten by a werewolf and then turns into a human during the full moon. Great book.

In regards to the infection rate - I think that if you're dealing with the "spread via bite" theory it would be 100% *but*....I don't think there'd be very many people around who ever survived a werewolf attack to worry about turning in the first place. Most of the stories I remember off hand either the person was lucky to get away or was bitten specifically to turn them.

[istgut.livejournal.com]

Of interest there is whether they know about the blood or not... Concious decisions about whether or not to infect others makes for an entirely different sort of drama :)

Also, while we're going with the blood-borne pathogen thing, why not also have multiple mutant strains such that folks can get multiple infections that perhaps have slightly different effects or have different effects on different people. From there, you can also have non-expressing carriers, etc. Now, how close to HIV you want your lycanthropy is another question entirely...

[paperclippy.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever seen a story where a werewolf has bitten a non-human creature and the creature has survived (usually, they get eaten).

The most unique werewolf passing story I have read is probably Kit Whitfield's "Benighted," where most people are werewolves, and you're born that way, but if you're born head first (or was it feet first?) then you're not a werewolf. I wasn't a huge fan of the book, but it was certainly unique.