Death via bloodloss

It's really hard to drain a body of all its blood through one tiny incision. When an animal is butchered, one usually cuts off the head and hangs the carcass neck down, which does a pretty good job, but hard to do it through one artery or vein. The individual will die when s/he has lost about half his/her blood, after that, the blood will tend to clot and start to escape from blood vessels into the surrounding tissues (the underneath side of a body is usually purple).

The body would be somewhat paler than expected, especially in whatever parts were lowest. Wouldn't the two little holes in the neck give away the cause of death? (Not a vampire expert, just asking)

Yeah, purging a body of 5 liters or so of blood is a tough deal, but hey...they're vampires!

Paleness, lack of lividity (blood pooling in the low points of the body), that kind of stuff...

*sigh*

Vamps "draining" victims is inherently not plausible. The heart will stop at 40% blood loss - a matter of seconds in a panicked body from an artery.

The best thing to do would be for the vamp to disfigure the marks so they didnt look like bites, then let the blood run as the heart would no longer be beating to force blood into his mouth. Let the "expert" remark on how little blood was present around the body for the type of wound (as most of it went into the vampire) and later an autopsy could show bruising around the wound consistent with the shape of a mouth.

The low volume of blood would still do that. There wouldn't be enough to pool properly, but there would still be peri-mortem bruising from however the victim was restrained (I'm assuming he held the guy down, of course)

A vien would most likley clot off before bleeding a person dry ( from a small incision like a puncture anyway) But if your vamp injects a anti-coagulant to keep the blood from clotting- that could be your clue to anyone looking at the body-

efreysson said:

I'm writing a vampire that doesn't actually leave noticeable marks: Just bodies with very little blood in them. And so I'm looking for some other way for the character to notice that there is something odd about the corpse.

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A corpse has "post-mortem lividity" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livor_mortis

These corpses would have way less lividity, if any.

But if the person is not accustomed to corpses, they might not notice it.

If your vampire person is like a vampire bat--the saliva will have an anticoagulant that prevents the platelets from clotting. Conceivably, this makes the blood flow faster into the vampire's mouth. Going with the two fangs of a large male, with 3/16th diameter each, and the vamp is hungry, he could easily chug 4-6 pints in a minute. Death can occur with lack of blood to the brain combined with shock that raises blood pressure though the heart rate rises fast then plummets as the blood is taken.

You could have the wounds close as a result of the self-healing ability of the vampire transfered via the lips to the place of feeding. The blood, leftover 2 pints, would breakdown -- lysis from the vampire's saliva.

The body would be very pale, facial expression of terror from the struggle, the basal temp taken with the ME's thermometer would be much lower than expected since there's less blood to keep the body warm so time of death would be thought to be extended an extra 6-18 hours, say.

Could be petichial hemorrhaging in the eyes from pressure on the throat.

I'm not an avid fan of vampire fiction (and if you have your predator of the night falling in love with the cattle that are humans I'm even less a fan!).

However, one thing that I think a lot of the technical answers listed above are missing (especially where others declare blood loss by vampire to be inherently implausible) is one factor:

Most of the technical aspects discussed above relate to the normal functions of blood loss, i.e. a puncture or wound to the body. The answers listed above discuss the bodily process from that point.

What they miss - however - is that the case of a vampire feeding isn't a normal function of blood loss. There is a puncture or wound to the body, granted, but there is also an outside force acting upon the body which causes an abnormal function of blood loss.

I'm going to try to explain it akin to this: Take a bottle, fill it with water and then put a spout cap on it. Now squeeze the bottle. This simulates normal function of blood loss. A bunch of water can be taken out this way, granted, but eventually the various factors that cause the water to flow out of the spout will equalize and the water will cease to flow from the bottle.

Now, add another factor. Such as highly pressurizing the bottle. Now there is a distinctly (and AWESOME) reaction that goes far and above that of the normal pressure.

The vampire feeding? That's the highly pressurized system which is going to cause significant more blood loss (including, but not up to and/or not limited to total loss).

Rabe...

HeronW said:

You could have the wounds close as a result of the self-healing ability of the vampire transfered via the lips to the place of feeding.

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interesting

HeronW said:

facial expression of terror from the struggle, the basal temp taken with the ME's thermometer would be much lower than expected since there's less blood to keep the body warm so time of death would be thought to be extended an extra 6-18 hours, say.

.

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No, death does not freeze expressions into the face. Of course maybe vampire related deaths are different. I've never seen one of those...as far as I know. Also blood is not what keeps the body warm. Blood is warmed by the body. Loss of blood, by reducing the amount of mass that has to cool might make it cool slightly faster but not realistically measurably different than any other cause of death. Of course maybe vampire related deaths are different.