The eternal battle between vampires and werewolves has been the subject of many movies, books and tv shows. In fact, if there’s a show about one of the two, one can basically start counting down until the other makes an appearance as well.
Here’s my question though: why on bloody earth has neither party managed to get rid of the other once and for all?
Heightened Senses
Both vampires and werewolves brag about their ability to see, hear and smell things. I wonder then how they constantly manage to walk past one another without noticing. The perfect hunters, prey to no other creature. And their perfection ends with their sworn enemies? How exactly does that happen?
One explanation is that the vampires hide themselves well, both from the wolves and from humanity. Usually, it is claimed that otherwise humankind by numbers alone would soon get rid of vamps. However, most often they also tend to set all kinds of creatures in alarm mode, merely by standing close by. Why would the exact same thing not happen with werewolves then, who are supposedly much closer to their inner beast?
Fangs vs. Claws
Fangs. Claws. Both are dreaded weapons. All I can say about this is that they should be pretty capable of hurting one another badly. Then, though wolves are likely more savage than vampires, so I do understand the caution fangs have with the wolves, seeing as they could rip them to shreds in no time. On the other hand, what good is your strength when you literally no longer have blood in your body because someone sucked it all out of you?
Sun and Moon
Ah, yes. Sun and moon. This is my favourite part as far as why at least one party should be all but extinct by now. Sure, wolves only change with the moon cycle. While they’re not changed, they are mostly depicted as ordinary humans – thus should be very hard to detect.
Now let’s turn this around.
The sun is a pretty deadly thing for a vampire. So if push came to shove, all a wolf would have to do is buy some time. Eventually, good old sunlight will do all the work for him. Worse yet, vampires are said to be incapable of movement (or at least severely hindered in doing so during the day). Remember those heightened senses we were talking about before? Those wolves in theory should be able to literally sniff the fangs out and either rip them apart or drag them out into the sun.
Pack Animals vs. Solitary Hunters
Vampires are usually the solitary hunters of the night. Dark and brooding. Ok, so sometimes they choose to live in weird forms of family. However, they always hunt on their own. This is about seduction after all!
Wolves should be the exact opposite. Yet more often than not werewolves are loners as well. Why would they be? If they’re as animalistic as the stories would have it, then they should be flocking together, using pack hunting techniques to single out the weakest vampire and take him down.
While vampires are usually reasonably afraid of werewolves, they most often fear each one singularly. The Twilight Saga made a nice exception to that general rule (though that is probably the only part about it that I actually liked – shoot me later, folks). The other exception is the World of Darkness roleplaying games.
Considering where the werewolf legends came from, I can see why they started out just as single creatures as well. However, in our modern time and age, keeping that going seems like not thinking the idea of a man turned wolf all the way through, which is a shame in my book.
