askavampirologist:

i-want-my-iwtv:

That is a point of vampire physiological debate actually, whether they DO breathe or not. Lestat Says Yes, Therefore it is Truth! … except maybe not. Maybe he thinks he’s breathing because he has to, but he may be doing it out of habit.

I feel like they would need to breathe for the air to go through properly for speech. Otherwise, wouldn’t they sound more like the breathless screeching vampires in 30 Days of Night?

there was a fic in which the vampires considered what would happen if they were in a coffin on a ship and the ship sunk. Would they still be conscious, trapped in their coffin? Presumably they wouldn’t die by drowning… hmmm…?

However that’s just RICEAN vampires. If you wanna know in a more general way, go to askavampirologist ;]

Since I never receaved this ask I will just answer it anyway in short, just in case the anon got shy or something. 

I see no reason a vampire would need to breathe in the sense that we do, which is to intake and convert air into oxygen. That seems negligibly important to an undead physiology. (not to mention oxygen deteriorates our insides veeeeery slowly, aka oxidization, which is one of the possible reasons our bodies age, it would make sense for a non-aging body to not intake and distribute such a harmful gas.)

Anyway, I do think they would however, need to breathe for other reasons. You can’t talk without breathing, as our vocal chords require air to pass through them to cause vibrations.

This leads to other issues, like heartbeats and blood movement to keep the lungs lubricated to allow expansion. But that’s getting really complicated so I’ll leave it there.

I imagine yes, it’s mostly out of habit, and to allow them to speak.