Origins

• The original werewolf tale may lie in the myth recounted in Ovid's "Metamorphoses," in which King Lycaeon wanted to test the Greek gods by giving them food with human flesh. Zeus, enraged, changed him into a werewolf as punishment so he would always be doomed to crave human flesh. From this myth, we get the word "lycanthrope," which means "wolf man." Vampires legends rose from Eastern Europe, when unexplained deaths were blamed on a dead family member coming back from the grave to assault the living. They were not the suave, charming night stalkers in the style of Bram Stoker's "Dracula"; they were more zombielike in the original legends.
  
  Plagues, rashes of murders, missing people or dead livestock were often blamed on a vampire or werewolf presence. Both werewolves and vampires are believed to be able to pass on their curse by infecting a victim with a bite. Victims were originally thought doomed to transform as well, so the bodies of alleged victims were often desecrated or destroyed to prevent it.
  
  

Shape Shifting

• Werewolves and vampires are known for shape-shifting abilities. Werewolves are humans who change into man-wolf hybrids, and vampires can transform into bats or wolves. The difference is that werewolves are usually considered cursed to change under certain conditions, such as the influence of the full moon, rather than voluntarily. Their minds also change to a vicious animalistic state in which they lose the ability to think like a man. Vampires can shape-shift from human to animal form at will and do so to hide, spy, stalk others or flee from danger. They retain their ability to reason and make choices in any form they take.
  
  

Life and Undeath

• The biggest distinction between werewolves and vampires is that the former are living humans, while the latter are undead. It was believed that since a werewolf was a cursed human, removing the curse would fully restore his humanity. In human form, he could be killed like any other human; in werewolf form, only silver could stop or kill him.
  
  Vampires were humans who had to suffer human deaths before becoming vampires. A vampire could be destroyed in only a few ways: removing his head and/or heart, driving a wooden stake driven through his heart or exposing him to sunlight are all believed effective. He could never, however, revert to human.
  
  

Different Lifestyles

• Werewolves, when not in their werewolf state, are otherwise human. They can go out in the daytime, feel emotions, eat, age and do not necessarily desire to harm others. Vampires, being no longer human at all, are vampires full time. In most legends, they can come out only at night and survive on blood alone.
  
  The frightening thing they have in common is that they are both formidable predators, and humans are their preferred prey.