Speaker 1: My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today we're going to be kicking off a series
Speaker 1: of episodes about examples of throwing in non human animals.
Speaker 1: We may also talk about the evolution of throwing in
Speaker 1: humans as well, But this is a subject I recently
Speaker 1: became interested in, specifically because of a paper that was
Speaker 1: published in November. Some of you might have seen science
Speaker 1: headlines going around about this. There was a publication in
Speaker 1: the journal Plus one about octopuses throwing objects, or at
Speaker 1: least potentially throwing objects. The whether or not it should
Speaker 1: count as debatable, and we'll talk about some of the
Speaker 1: arguments for for and against um. But octopuses at least
Speaker 1: allegedly throwing objects potentially deliberately and potentially deliberately aiming those
Speaker 1: objects at other octopuses. Uh. Though, of course, the exact
Speaker 1: nature of their motivations is is somewhat mysterious. It's hard
Speaker 1: to to suss out exactly. And I thought it would
Speaker 1: be good to to start off our series by looking
Speaker 1: at this example that first got me interested in this
Speaker 1: um and then maybe we can branch out to other
Speaker 1: examples of throwing in the animal world in subsequent episodes. Interesting,
Speaker 1: I just assumed that your interest in this topic was
Speaker 1: because you had become a father and you were already
Speaker 1: feeling the poll You already were longing to throw ball
Speaker 1: with your child, which which is something that that I
Speaker 1: felt when when I became a father, I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I've I've got to get a ball, right, I've got
Speaker 1: to get a mit. I have no other connection to
Speaker 1: baseball at all, or softball or any of these sports,
Speaker 1: no attachment to them. I don't play of them or
Speaker 1: watched them. But there's something about throwing that that must
Speaker 1: be done with the child. I do like throwing a ball.
Speaker 1: I think I'm more into like a tennis ball in
Speaker 1: the hand than a baseball. But um but that's a
Speaker 1: dog thing, that's for dogs. I guess that's true. Also,
Speaker 1: Um No, I'm not talking about with like the scoop.
Speaker 1: I mean the roller ball scoop. I mean tennis ball
Speaker 1: straight in the hand. Okay, all right, but no, that's
Speaker 1: not the reason. And if I were to go with
Speaker 1: the the the motor activities, I've been thinking of more
Speaker 1: since becoming a father would be the act of knocking
Speaker 1: things over after they've been set up. I think that's
Speaker 1: an interesting impulse that we could study. Oh yes, definitely.
Speaker 1: But onto the octopus study. So this paper was by
Speaker 1: Peter Godfrey Smith, David Sheiel, Stephanie Chancellor, Stefan Linquist, and
Speaker 1: Matthew Lawrence, and it was called in the line of
Speaker 1: Fire Debris Throwing by wild Octopus is published published in
Speaker 1: Plus one. And so first I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: what the author's report and argue in this paper here,
Speaker 1: and then we'll talk about some context as well as
Speaker 1: some criticism or or differences in interpretation. Now, for for
Speaker 1: background on this subject, I think we can safely say
Speaker 1: that not a lot of animals throw things at all.
Speaker 1: Throwing is a relatively unique behavior, and the authors of
Speaker 1: this study say, quote, a throw can be distinguished from
Speaker 1: other phenomenon by the ballistic motion of a manipulable object
Speaker 1: or material, where ballistic describes free motion and momentum. So
Speaker 1: when I think of throwing, I think of taking a
Speaker 1: free external object or material, so not part of your
Speaker 1: own body, and projecting it through the environment toward a target.
Speaker 1: Throwing is so unique that it has sometimes been characterized
Speaker 1: as exclusively the domain of humans. But there are a
Speaker 1: number of animal behaviors that I think should count as throwing.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about them throughout the series. Uh, some very
Speaker 1: clear examples that I don't think anybody would really dispute,
Speaker 1: like the throwing behaviors of primates like chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, there are plenty of examples of this
Speaker 1: occurring both in the wild and in captivity. Not to
Speaker 1: not to say they're not interesting. We may come back
Speaker 1: to some of them, but but yeah, they're very well documented. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, and also some very interesting ones in like
Speaker 1: elephants and mongooses and birds and so forth. Now, if
Speaker 1: you were to expand the definition of throwing to include
Speaker 1: the projection of parts of the animals own body or
Speaker 1: substances produced by the animal's own body, then the number
Speaker 1: of examples really expands. Then you get all kinds of things,
Speaker 1: Like you get spitting, which would include snakes. They're snakes
Speaker 1: that project venom out of their mouths, out of their glands.
Speaker 1: You have, of course, camels famously spit. All kinds of
Speaker 1: animals spit, uh, and then you also have examples like spiders,
Speaker 1: such as New World tarantulas. These spiders famously uh kind
Speaker 1: of kick or shoot a little fibers known as urticating
Speaker 1: hairs off of their bodies, and these are a defense
Speaker 1: mechanism because the hairs can cause severe irritation to the
Speaker 1: skin and mucous membranes of vertebrate animals that might threaten
Speaker 1: the spiders. And you know, I've always thought of this
Speaker 1: in the context of like tarantula itching powder, like it's
Speaker 1: just an irritant. It's unpleasant, it gets on your skin,
Speaker 1: it causes itching, makes you want to retreat. But apparently
Speaker 1: in some cases of like the tarantulas with with more
Speaker 1: severe hairs, this can even cause death in the cases
Speaker 1: of some small animals when the when the hairs get
Speaker 1: in their mucous membranes. Tarantulas are fascinating. I'd yet for
Speaker 1: a return to the world of tarantulas again. But there
Speaker 1: are other spider examples too. You know, some other spiders
Speaker 1: are known to project or throw threads of silk produced
Speaker 1: again by their own bodies at prey to capture them.
Speaker 1: But I think we probably don't want to count substances
Speaker 1: produced by an animal's own body for throwing, because that
Speaker 1: seems like a kind of that's a different class of
Speaker 1: behavior than what we usually think about with throwing, because
Speaker 1: when it comes out of the animal's own body, I
Speaker 1: would think that usually tends to be an instinctual defensive
Speaker 1: or predation mechanism. That's something that's probably just a wrote
Speaker 1: behavioral program that exists. You know, it's evolutionarily coded into
Speaker 1: the animals a nervous system, so they just kind of
Speaker 1: do it automatically. Whereas the throwing of free external objects
Speaker 1: found in the nearby environment, I would argue that indicates
Speaker 1: a very different kind of underlying mentality, a much more
Speaker 1: interesting and versatile type of tool use. Well, of course,
Speaker 1: it's easy for us to say since our bodies don't
Speaker 1: really produce weapons. Um it might be a different scenario
Speaker 1: if human beings, say, produced and shed some form of
Speaker 1: horn or antler or um or I don't know, had
Speaker 1: had some other you know, let your imagination go wild.
Speaker 1: But one might well imagine some sort of a humanoid
Speaker 1: being that had some sort of evolved feature like this
Speaker 1: That might blur the line. But but I, but I,
Speaker 1: I do agree, yeah, with certainly with the human factor involved. Uh,
Speaker 1: humans are are not really going to do much with
Speaker 1: anything that their own body produces. They're gonna have to
Speaker 1: turn to the things in the environment around them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be interesting if a human could like cough
Speaker 1: up darts from their stomach on command. Now what now,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying anything how to make that plausible? Okay? Now,
Speaker 1: imagine you've got an animal that has a sort of
Speaker 1: gizzard and they keep gizzard stones down there, and when
Speaker 1: they need a weapon, they just vomit up a gizzard
Speaker 1: stone and then they can throw that there. You go,
Speaker 1: surely somebody's had done something like that. That would that
Speaker 1: would that would be terrific. You have some sort of
Speaker 1: like a kaiju bird and one of its attacks is
Speaker 1: vomiting stones at you, and these stones could perhaps you know,
Speaker 1: be used it as some sort of a siege weapon. Okay.
Speaker 1: So that's the distinction between like an instinctual throwing or
Speaker 1: projecting of part of your body or something that comes
Speaker 1: out of your body versus throwing of things found in
Speaker 1: the environment. Another distinction I would like to make about
Speaker 1: throwing is the important, the important difference between throwing away
Speaker 1: and throwing at. For one example of this contained within
Speaker 1: one animal. I think you could possibly make the argument
Speaker 1: that the ant lion might exhibit both types of throwing
Speaker 1: because it certainly at least does one. So the ant lion,
Speaker 1: at one stage in its life cycle, it it lives
Speaker 1: down at the bottom of a pit that has steep
Speaker 1: sloped sides with uh. You know, the sides are lined
Speaker 1: with sediment of a certain grain size, and a prey
Speaker 1: and see falls in it can't climb back out, and
Speaker 1: then the ant lion kicks sediment or sand up at
Speaker 1: the insect, and the insect falls down into its jaws
Speaker 1: and it eats them. And then after it's done, it
Speaker 1: is typically known to fling the body out of the
Speaker 1: pit by a similar motion to what it used to
Speaker 1: fling the sand up at the insect falling in. Now,
Speaker 1: I think you could definitely make the case that it
Speaker 1: shows throwing away behavior because it's just rejecting the desiccated
Speaker 1: exoskeleton of the of the ant that it has drained
Speaker 1: of delicious juice. Is once it's done, right, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But it may also display throwing at behavior, arguably because
Speaker 1: as the ant is falling down, it will kick sand
Speaker 1: up at the ant and uh, and you could argue
Speaker 1: about whether that's actually at the ant or whether it's
Speaker 1: just kind of generic sand throwing behavior that because the
Speaker 1: real purpose, I think is not for it to land
Speaker 1: on the ant, but to de ableize the walls of
Speaker 1: the pit and cause them to avalanche downward, bringing the
Speaker 1: ant further towards the bottom with the sand. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: believe we talked about the ant line a bit in
Speaker 1: our episode on the star lac Um, comparing the star
Speaker 1: lacks imagined biology to the Antlin's very real biology, and yeah,
Speaker 1: they're fascinating little creatures. But the authors of this paper
Speaker 1: also mentioned in the background how in some cases throwing
Speaker 1: is a kind of tool use that also sort of
Speaker 1: contains information. Like a projectile can be not only aggressive
Speaker 1: and violent, but it can be a communicative social tool
Speaker 1: between animals within a social species. And that brings us
Speaker 1: to the example of the octopus. Is because one thing
Speaker 1: it's really important to realize about octopuses is that they
Speaker 1: are for the most part, not social. They are incredibly
Speaker 1: anti social as far as animals go. With perhaps a
Speaker 1: few notable exceptions, octopuses and really do not socialize with
Speaker 1: other octopuses. They don't flock together they don't form groups
Speaker 1: usually or have very complex social relationships. For the most part,
Speaker 1: octopuses are solitary hunters, and when they do encounter one another,
Speaker 1: they practice avoidance or sometimes outright violence. They will fight
Speaker 1: one another and sometimes even cannibalize one another. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that seems to be the extent of octopus politics. However,
Speaker 1: despite their usual antisocial nature, there is some previous evidence
Speaker 1: that octopuses might be able to communicate with or signal
Speaker 1: information to one another. And an example that the author's
Speaker 1: pick here is one that has some of the same
Speaker 1: authors as this this studying question. It's by David Shield,
Speaker 1: Peter Godfrey Smith, and Matthew Lawrence called Signal Use by
Speaker 1: Octopuses in Agonistic Interactions, published in Current Biology in twenty
Speaker 1: six and this study looked at the same species as
Speaker 1: our main studies going to be looking at here, one
Speaker 1: called Octopus tetricus, and this species can change color pigment,
Speaker 1: can change the color patterns on its skin in a
Speaker 1: number of ways, and this report found a correlation between
Speaker 1: color displays on this octopus skin and intra specific behaviors
Speaker 1: behaviors showing interactions between members of the species. The author's
Speaker 1: right quote. Here we show by field observation that in
Speaker 1: a shallow water octopus Octopus tetricus, a range of visible
Speaker 1: displays are produced during agonistic interactions, and these displays correlate
Speaker 1: with the outcome of those interactions. Interactions in which dark
Speaker 1: body color by an approaching octopus was matched by similar
Speaker 1: color in the reacting octopus were more likely to escalate
Speaker 1: to grappling darkness, and an approaching octopus met by paler
Speaker 1: color in the reacting octopus accompanied retreat of the paler octopus.
Speaker 1: So this is interesting. It raises the stability that even
Speaker 1: though these octopuses are not very friendly with one another
Speaker 1: and they don't they don't really want to hang out
Speaker 1: and interact, they might still be communicating. They might be
Speaker 1: using color displays to at least communicate information about their
Speaker 1: intentions with one another, and that could be beneficial to
Speaker 1: both parties because it could help them avoid unnecessary violent conflict.
Speaker 1: Like if you can change your color patterns to signal
Speaker 1: like I mean business, I'm not going to back down,
Speaker 1: or okay, okay, I'm not going to fight like that
Speaker 1: can help you avoid a fight that would have happened otherwise.
Speaker 1: M M yes, yes, this of course, a topic that's
Speaker 1: come up recently on the show and a couple other episodes.
Speaker 1: We talked about the Galapagos tortoise, about the showdowns between
Speaker 1: these big males and how uh it is almost, if
Speaker 1: not exclusively, non violent in that they just have these
Speaker 1: showdowns with their neck, who's the who's the tallest, and
Speaker 1: whoever is the judge to be the tallest winds and
Speaker 1: there's no need for actual violence to take place. Uh.
Speaker 1: It also reminds me of the the episode idea with
Speaker 1: Joe Burger while you were out talking about goats and
Speaker 1: rams getting into conflict over mineral resources, and part of
Speaker 1: the issue there it does come down to how goats
Speaker 1: deal with this sort of conflict between each other, how
Speaker 1: rams deal with the sort of conflict with each other.
Speaker 1: But then when you have goats and rams, there's can
Speaker 1: be kind of a communication breakdown. It's really interesting. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it makes you think about how much apparent
Speaker 1: uh conflict and violence within the natural world actually doesn't
Speaker 1: come to violence because animals are often looking for a
Speaker 1: way to avoid a fight. They just want to know
Speaker 1: who would win and like find a way to sort
Speaker 1: it out without having to do the violence. Yeah, even
Speaker 1: in a lot of human combat, whether you're dealing with
Speaker 1: individual level or more complex scenarios involving um uh, civilizations
Speaker 1: and so forth, there's uh, you know, there so many
Speaker 1: different way there's a lot of posturing. But then they
Speaker 1: are also the the fights or battles one might get
Speaker 1: into with the intention of being stopped by others before
Speaker 1: the battle can take place. Like, there's so many different
Speaker 1: things to consider though. I also want to come back
Speaker 1: to this example I mentioned about the changing color patterns
Speaker 1: on on these octopuses. I think you could also have
Speaker 1: non communicative interpretations of this as well, that that's possible,
Speaker 1: but it's one good interpretation of that might be that
Speaker 1: these animals are communicating with each other, they're sharing information,
Speaker 1: even though they're not really a social species. Now, we
Speaker 1: also know that octopuses are able to manipulate objects in
Speaker 1: their environments using the surprisingly deft touch of the eight
Speaker 1: octopus arms raising the specter always of you know, possible
Speaker 1: tool using intelligence and even maybe one day technological evolution
Speaker 1: in the octopus. And we've seen many great examples of this.
Speaker 1: One that I always think of is in octopus nest
Speaker 1: building behavior. You r sometimes you'll find examples where um,
Speaker 1: an octopus will be able to pull an an object
Speaker 1: over the opening of its din in order to essentially
Speaker 1: close the door, which I love. But also this study
Speaker 1: mentions veined octopuses or anti octopus marginatus, which they say
Speaker 1: quote carry can carry shelter in the form of nested
Speaker 1: coconut shell haves that are then reassembled. You may have
Speaker 1: seen video of this. Yeah, this is this is remarkable footage.
Speaker 1: And I know just the just look watching an octopus
Speaker 1: in the wild or in captivity. It seems to have
Speaker 1: inspired many to imagine what it would be like if
Speaker 1: they actually use tools and weapons. Um. I was I
Speaker 1: was trying to remember where I had specifically seen an
Speaker 1: image of an octopus with like a hatchet in one
Speaker 1: of its tentacles. I imagine this was maybe an old
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons illustration or something. But I did an
Speaker 1: image search and I found that numerous people have have
Speaker 1: painted some sort of scenario in which an octopus is
Speaker 1: carrying a spear. I saw one where there's like a
Speaker 1: spear wheel wielding octopus battling a samurai octopus. So there
Speaker 1: is something about the the the octopus arms that we
Speaker 1: we can't help but imagine them doing truly or weapony
Speaker 1: things with them. I'm not sure exactly why, but that
Speaker 1: reminds me of the doom ba meme where people would
Speaker 1: just like tape a knife to the top of their room. Ba.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I saw that one, but that
Speaker 1: sounds sounds dangerous. Thank thank thank, Okay, Well, anyway, these
Speaker 1: two different threads we've been talking about the use of
Speaker 1: materials or arguably tools from the environment by octopuses and
Speaker 1: behavior that might constitute social signaling between con specifics. These
Speaker 1: two things come together in this studies. So the animal
Speaker 1: in question in this paper is the species to Pus tetricus,
Speaker 1: also known as the gloomy octopus. Now why are they
Speaker 1: called the gloomy octopus? Well, just look at their eyes.
Speaker 1: Some people think that these animals have eyes that look
Speaker 1: perennially unhappy. I don't know what I think about that.
Speaker 1: It's it's hard to it's hard to read too much
Speaker 1: human emotion into octopus eyes. But then again, I get
Speaker 1: to staring at this and I don't know, maybe I
Speaker 1: do feel kind of the mood coming down a little bit.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Maybe I mean, I get kind of
Speaker 1: a calm vibe off of this particular octopus. It looks cozy. Well,
Speaker 1: they do like to be cozy. They like to to
Speaker 1: hide in their dens. So the gloomy octopus is a
Speaker 1: medium sized ben thick octopus ben thick meaning they live
Speaker 1: on the sea floor and they occupy the waters around
Speaker 1: Australia and New Zealand. But the particular population of animals
Speaker 1: observed in this study live in a special zone along
Speaker 1: the bottom of Jervis Bay, Australia, which is the coast
Speaker 1: of New South Wales as it's south of Sydney. And
Speaker 1: in this area along the bottom of Jervis Bay, many
Speaker 1: individuals of the gloomy octopus live in very close proximity
Speaker 1: to one another, high density, especially for octopuses, making dens
Speaker 1: sometimes just right smack next to one another. Now, is
Speaker 1: this a change and they're normally solitary antisocial nature, It
Speaker 1: does not seem like that. There's no indication that these
Speaker 1: animals like being near one another. Instead, it's a case
Speaker 1: of a lot of octopuses trying to cram into a
Speaker 1: spot that has both food abundance and excellent benthic strata
Speaker 1: for making dens. So it's good real estate to make
Speaker 1: homes in, and it's lots of great food, and it's
Speaker 1: surrounded on all sides by terrible real estate, just sort
Speaker 1: of featureless mud flats, which sort of prevents these octopuses
Speaker 1: from spreading out. So for a human analogy, imagine a
Speaker 1: kind of tiny island in the middle of the ocean
Speaker 1: with of food on it, lots of great stuff there,
Speaker 1: but it's just swarming with antisocial introverts who don't want
Speaker 1: to talk to each other. I think I've had this
Speaker 1: experience on most road trips I've taken. You know, you
Speaker 1: find that one exit that has that one chain coffee
Speaker 1: store that you need and can depend on. Um and Yeah,
Speaker 1: an alien observing you might say, look at all these people.
Speaker 1: They all love each other there, they love being around
Speaker 1: each other. Oh that's good. So these spots in in
Speaker 1: Jervis Bay have been nicknamed things like octo Lantis or Octopolis.
Speaker 1: A lot of just a lot of these antisocial non
Speaker 1: buddies squeezing into a relatively small area. Naturally, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be some conflict here. The octopus is regularly get in
Speaker 1: one another's space, and this leads to the creatures poking
Speaker 1: and grappling, grabbing, generally harassing each other. Now, it was
Speaker 1: in studying this Jervis Bay population of Tetracus that the
Speaker 1: author is first observed what they called a throwing behavior.
Speaker 1: And the team collected many hours of video footage from
Speaker 1: emplaced cameras from a couple of different sessions. I think
Speaker 1: there was some footage from and from and uh and
Speaker 1: they write quote here we provide the first report for
Speaker 1: any octopus species of a behavior frequently seen at these aggregations,
Speaker 1: the throwing or projection of debris, both in social interactions
Speaker 1: and in other contexts. Ballistic motion of manipulable objects is
Speaker 1: possible through water, albeit against greater resistance than through air.
Speaker 1: These throws by Octopus tetricus sometimes hit other octopuses, So
Speaker 1: they are throwing debris sometimes hitting other octopuses. And the
Speaker 1: big question is are they doing it on purpose? Are
Speaker 1: they targeting one another on purpose? And if they are,
Speaker 1: is that a social signal of some kind? Now, I
Speaker 1: think it's important to first just describe exactly what's going
Speaker 1: on here. When when an octopus is said to quote
Speaker 1: throw something, octopuses do not throw the way humans do.
Speaker 1: By building momentum with an arm motion and then releasing
Speaker 1: or at least not most of the time. The team
Speaker 1: apparently documented one case of an octopus throwing what looked
Speaker 1: to be a bivalve shell by holding it in its arm,
Speaker 1: quickly straightening the arm, and then releasing the shell. Uh. Instead,
Speaker 1: what happens is most of the time the octopus would
Speaker 1: throw by way of its siphon, and the siphon, also
Speaker 1: called a funnel, is kind of a tube shaped organ
Speaker 1: that octopus is used to swim. You can think of
Speaker 1: it as an organic water jet. It's sort of a
Speaker 1: pump that pumps water out the back and allows the
Speaker 1: octopus to to by reaction, push its body forward. Interesting,
Speaker 1: so in in these in these cases of an octopus
Speaker 1: throwing it, depending on what is being thrown, you could
Speaker 1: think of it as being like they they've load did
Speaker 1: their their biocannon, their their fluid based biocannon with like
Speaker 1: a piece of shell, and are firing it. Or it's
Speaker 1: just kind of like loaded with debris yet well sort of,
Speaker 1: I mean that is good, I think, except actually what
Speaker 1: the cannon is loaded with is just water as usual.
Speaker 1: It's more like they've loaded a cannon and they have
Speaker 1: put the thing they want to throw right in front
Speaker 1: of the cannon so that when the cannonball comes out,
Speaker 1: it hits the thing they want to throw. The cannonball
Speaker 1: just being water and propels it towards the target. Again,
Speaker 1: assuming that these are targeted throws. We don't know that
Speaker 1: for sure, but going with that for a minute. So
Speaker 1: it's a several step procedure. It goes like this. So
Speaker 1: this octopus, Octopus tetricus, it will gather external material. And
Speaker 1: there were three main types of material that the author's
Speaker 1: observed being thrown in the study. One is shells, generally
Speaker 1: mollusk shells, so like scallop shells, which also would be
Speaker 1: shells of things that the octopuses are eating. And then
Speaker 1: the other one is algae, and then finally silt or
Speaker 1: sediment from the seafloor, so just you know, sand, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. This sounds like dirty Fighters. It sounds
Speaker 1: like like the scene in so many movies, especially like
Speaker 1: Sword and Sandal movies, where there's some sort of a
Speaker 1: gladiatorial combat going on, and what does the villain do. Oh,
Speaker 1: He's gonna get a little sand off the battleground floor
Speaker 1: throw it in the eyes of our hero, except the
Speaker 1: gloomy octopuses are all dirty fighters. They love to shoot
Speaker 1: this silt, so you scoop that up in your arms,
Speaker 1: So they're actually using their arms for this part, scooping
Speaker 1: up the thing, whatever it is, shells, algae, or silt,
Speaker 1: and then they hold it underneath the body. They hold
Speaker 1: it underneath the body with their arms, and then they
Speaker 1: position their siphon underneath the body, which is not normally
Speaker 1: where it is. They kind of hook it under so
Speaker 1: that it lines up behind this stuff, and then they
Speaker 1: release the stuff with their arms at the same time
Speaker 1: that they blast it with a jet of water from
Speaker 1: the siphon, and then that jet of water carries the
Speaker 1: sediment toward its target. So again, this is very different
Speaker 1: than human throwing. I think for a rough analogy, you'd
Speaker 1: have to imagine that you could throw a baseball, not
Speaker 1: by extending your arm rapidly and releasing it, but by
Speaker 1: like holding the baseball in front of your face and
Speaker 1: then suddenly releasing it from your hand and at the
Speaker 1: same time blowing on it. Really hard to shoot it
Speaker 1: off where you want it to go. And of course
Speaker 1: in order to do this we need to have far
Speaker 1: more lung capacity and diaphragm power than humans actually do have.
Speaker 1: But just imagine you could briefly create like a little
Speaker 1: jet engine exhaust port with your mouth. And this is
Speaker 1: interesting because it reminds me of stories I've read elsewhere
Speaker 1: of octopuses using directed siphon jets, but without any like
Speaker 1: material being propelled other than the water itself. Like the
Speaker 1: main thing is something of their stories of octopuses in
Speaker 1: captivity squirting their handlers with water from their siphon, often
Speaker 1: in the context of the handler believing at least that
Speaker 1: the octopus is annoyed with them or being defensive. And
Speaker 1: of course this is also reminiscent of of squid uh
Speaker 1: using their ink in various ways, though of course that
Speaker 1: would would obviously be an example again of an animal
Speaker 1: using something created by its own body, rather than in
Speaker 1: this case, using something from their environment. Right exactly so,
Speaker 1: when the researchers watched the gloomy octopus do this throwing
Speaker 1: of of shells, weeds, and silt, some of the instances
Speaker 1: were obviously cases of simple rejection behavior, the throwing away
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier, and a great example of this
Speaker 1: would be what they classified as eating based throwing behavior.
Speaker 1: So sometimes the octopus is going to eat, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: a bivalve or something. Maybe it eats a scallop, and
Speaker 1: then it throws the shells away. When it's done, it
Speaker 1: actually projects them away from the body. Other examples of
Speaker 1: throwing away behavior would be the classification they called den cleaning. Uh.
Speaker 1: The octopuses actually do tidy up their dens. So they're
Speaker 1: going to try to make a little hidy hole to
Speaker 1: settle into on the sea floor. And sometimes I guess
Speaker 1: it gets dirty in there, so they want to basically
Speaker 1: blast a bunch of stuff out of there. And so
Speaker 1: they will they will do this with their dens to
Speaker 1: get things out of the hole. Yeah, you don't want
Speaker 1: your midden to get out of control there with the
Speaker 1: bones of your many kills or the shells of your
Speaker 1: many kills. Other times, uh, they showed apparent throwing behavior
Speaker 1: that the researcher said was anomalous. There was no apparent reason.
Speaker 1: Maybe an octopus is just kind of like rippling arong along.
Speaker 1: Nothing's really going on. It's not eating, it's not in
Speaker 1: its din, nothing else is around, but it just kind
Speaker 1: of throws something that didn't happen a lot. But occasionally
Speaker 1: it did. And then finally, the last category they said
Speaker 1: was was what they called interactive throwing. This is when
Speaker 1: the octopus was interacting with another octopus or in a
Speaker 1: few cases, another animal or objects such as a fish
Speaker 1: or a camera. And these are the ones that are
Speaker 1: really interesting because in this case, the researchers said, it
Speaker 1: really looks like not just throwing away behavior, but throwing
Speaker 1: at behavior. It looks like the octopuses are intentionally throwing
Speaker 1: things to try to hit or discourage other octopuses in
Speaker 1: their vicinity. So what proportion of throws are represented by
Speaker 1: these different categories. Well, to read from their results, quote,
Speaker 1: over half of all throws, or fifties three percent occurred
Speaker 1: in interactive contexts, thirty six percent in interactive, only sevent
Speaker 1: in interactive mixed. And that's where they're interacting with another octopus,
Speaker 1: but also something else is going on, like maybe they
Speaker 1: also just finished sheeting, or they're also cleaning out their den. Uh.
Speaker 1: Thirty two percent occurred during den cleaning, only eight percent
Speaker 1: after eating, and eight percent without a parent context. Oh,
Speaker 1: and this total is more than due to rounding. But
Speaker 1: they say that the material thrown and so, and then
Speaker 1: there's another distinction they make throw interactive throwing, where they're
Speaker 1: basically interacting with another octopus and they throw in that
Speaker 1: octopus's direction, and then they make the distinction of, well,
Speaker 1: did the stuff they threw actually hit the other octopus
Speaker 1: on the footage they captured, and they said that the
Speaker 1: material throne hit another octopus in seventeen cases that they documented.
Speaker 1: In two other throws the material hit a fish, and
Speaker 1: so co author David Shield said, speaking to the media,
Speaker 1: it seems like there's a target and they're not throwing away,
Speaker 1: they're throwing at But it is a difficult question, like
Speaker 1: how can you prove that they're actually intending to hit
Speaker 1: another octopus with this stuff when they do it. Of course,
Speaker 1: it's possible they're just accidentally or maybe inconsiderately hitting one
Speaker 1: another with these water jet payloads while they're doing somethinging else.
Speaker 1: Maybe we don't know why they're doing it, and the
Speaker 1: researchers aren't sure that these throws are intentionally targeted, but
Speaker 1: they argue that on balance that is the more likely interpretation,
Speaker 1: and that it possibly is some kind of social signal,
Speaker 1: And they give a few arguments why they think it
Speaker 1: is the more likely interpretation. So for one thing, Uh,
Speaker 1: you might imagine that interactive throws are targeted and social
Speaker 1: if you notice some patterns, like patterns of differences between
Speaker 1: interactive throws versus other types of throws. And the researchers did,
Speaker 1: in fact, documents some differences specifically between throws that hid
Speaker 1: another octopus and throws that did not. One difference was
Speaker 1: which arms are the octopus using. I thought this was
Speaker 1: really interesting because it wasn't exactly what I would have expected.
Speaker 1: But here's what they say. Okay, they say a total
Speaker 1: of fourteen throws out of ninety eight that could be
Speaker 1: assessed as anomalous arm throws, and these would be throws
Speaker 1: using one of the side arms instead of just the
Speaker 1: two front arms. Uh. They say, quote, anomalous arm throws
Speaker 1: were more likely to hit other octopuses than L one
Speaker 1: R one throws, and L one and R one are
Speaker 1: the two frontal arms. So it seems like if you're
Speaker 1: just cleaning out your den, you're just kind of throwing
Speaker 1: stuff wherever you use the front two arms, but way
Speaker 1: more often if an octopus throws something and it hits
Speaker 1: a different octopus, they're using their side arms. Isn't that
Speaker 1: kind of strange, and they found that the side arm
Speaker 1: throws were less common overall, but more common if the
Speaker 1: material hit another octopus. So something about this pattern of
Speaker 1: arm choice could indicate maybe a type of aiming behavior
Speaker 1: with hostile intentions. It's hard to know for sure, but
Speaker 1: that is an interesting difference. They also write quote in
Speaker 1: three cases of hits, a thrower also altered their body
Speaker 1: orientation towards another octopus, but these movements were very slight,
Speaker 1: and the effects of arm choice other than L one
Speaker 1: R one were more marked. Okay, so that's one difference
Speaker 1: between between throws that hit hit other octopuses and throws
Speaker 1: it down. Second second difference body patterns and throw vigor.
Speaker 1: These octopuses, as we mentioned earlier, can change their external appearance,
Speaker 1: and in fact, they might even change their external appearance
Speaker 1: in order to signal to other octopuses, maybe to help
Speaker 1: avoid aggressive encounters. Uh And remember before when an octopus
Speaker 1: displayed a uniform dark coloration, that was usually a sign
Speaker 1: that they were displaying kind of like dominant aggressive behavior,
Speaker 1: whereas maybe like turning paler might indicate that they were
Speaker 1: willing to back away from a fight. The authors here
Speaker 1: found that UH that throws that hit another octopus more
Speaker 1: often took place when the thrower was displaying a uniform
Speaker 1: and especially uniform dark body color. Quote. We note that
Speaker 1: that throws by octopus is displaying uniform body patterns, especially
Speaker 1: uniform dark patterns, were more often thrown with high vigor. Further,
Speaker 1: throws by octopuses displaying uniform body patterns also hit hit
Speaker 1: other octopuses significantly more more often than those in other
Speaker 1: body patterns. And then also they say, in addition, high
Speaker 1: vigor throws more frequently hit another octopus. However, with that
Speaker 1: last point, they want to clarify, and I think this
Speaker 1: is good to point out. High vigor throws, of course,
Speaker 1: are because they're higher vigor, meaning thrown harder, they go longer,
Speaker 1: and they have a wider range, which could explain more
Speaker 1: frequent hits even if they're not deliberately targeting somebody like
Speaker 1: a a random throw that goes farther and spreads farther
Speaker 1: is more likely to hit something randomly than one that doesn't.
Speaker 1: Another thing, they noticed material chosen when when octopuses through
Speaker 1: something that hit another octopus, it was way more likely
Speaker 1: to be silk as opposed to the other materials, which
Speaker 1: appeared more often in other context. So maybe an octopus
Speaker 1: is eating or cleaning its din, it's going to be
Speaker 1: more likely to throw shells around. When an octopus gets
Speaker 1: into a gets into an aggressive interaction with another octopus,
Speaker 1: it seems more likely they will throw silt at them.
Speaker 1: M hm. Back to the dirty fighter point. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's something about, you know, the throwing of the
Speaker 1: silt to that that I don't know that a lot
Speaker 1: of this is just the human perspective and all, but
Speaker 1: I know it makes me think of of things like
Speaker 1: another trope from films, throwing a single pedal pebble at
Speaker 1: a at a window pane to get somebody's attention. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like you know where it's You know clearly
Speaker 1: you're not you're actually trying to to harm anyone, but
Speaker 1: you want to. You're creating a message. You're you're you're
Speaker 1: sending a signal and in a different way. Uh that
Speaker 1: there is a difference between pelting somebody with sand and
Speaker 1: throwing a rock at them, like even in the human scenario, Um,
Speaker 1: these are two These are two acts with rather different
Speaker 1: messages if they were to happen, say at a beach
Speaker 1: between two people, Yes, that that that's correct. Uh, So,
Speaker 1: I think the material may make a difference there, though
Speaker 1: they did say that the difference that they found in
Speaker 1: material choice was not statistically significant because they're dealing with
Speaker 1: a small number of samples here. There was a difference
Speaker 1: in the numbers, but it didn't make statistical cut. Now.
Speaker 1: One thing, they did also observe repeat offenders and aggressive patterns.
Speaker 1: They say some particular octopuses would repeatedly throw and strike
Speaker 1: another one again and again and again, and this kind
Speaker 1: of repeated hit behavior would seem to indicate a deliberate,
Speaker 1: targeted pattern more than an accidental one. The authors also
Speaker 1: say quote hits in many cases occurred within sequences of
Speaker 1: interactions that featured ongoing mild aggression, including arm probes and
Speaker 1: momentary grappling. So they're saying we saw throws that hit
Speaker 1: another octopus, often when octopuses had already been tussling a lot.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm okay, And in another way of stating it,
Speaker 1: some octopuses might just be jerks. One last thing, they
Speaker 1: say there were defensive behaviors. Uh. The apparent victim of
Speaker 1: the throw often reacted by either holding arms up to
Speaker 1: block the jet of material flying their way, or by
Speaker 1: ducking and dodging out of the way. Uh. And they
Speaker 1: said sometimes octopuses who had been hit altered their behavior
Speaker 1: in some other way, by say, like pausing or halting
Speaker 1: or redirecting their movements. And this last point I think
Speaker 1: is really important because the authors say, you know, even
Speaker 1: if these throws are not actually socially intended, they do
Speaker 1: appear to have social effects, Like if they cause redirected
Speaker 1: movement in the victim, that would seem to be a
Speaker 1: socially relevant behavior. Even if you would I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly what it would mean in this case though, to
Speaker 1: say that they were not intend to be social signals
Speaker 1: by the by the individual throwing. Yeah, it's so. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's an impossible task to try and do, to
Speaker 1: try and put yourself in the mind of an octopus,
Speaker 1: but you can't help. But wonder, coming back to some
Speaker 1: of what you said earlier, like is it is it
Speaker 1: potentially indeed like a directed action where the octopus, in
Speaker 1: its own octopus way, is quote unquote thinking I don't
Speaker 1: like you, I want you to go away, or something
Speaker 1: I will throw sand at you. Or is it like
Speaker 1: the octopus is throwing sand while having a certain hostility
Speaker 1: towards other octopuses or a particular octopus, and in doing so,
Speaker 1: these things kind of a line and maybe there's there's
Speaker 1: less intention there. I don't know. Oh no, that I
Speaker 1: think that's a really good point, and that comes up
Speaker 1: in one of I think the better criticisms of the
Speaker 1: study that I want to get to in just a minute.
Speaker 1: But just before I do that, I want to mention
Speaker 1: a few other things that the author's highlights several things
Speaker 1: they did not see. Uh, and I think it's worth
Speaker 1: paying attention to what these are. They say, you know what,
Speaker 1: we never saw an octopus quote return fire, So they
Speaker 1: never saw a throw hit initiate any kind of violent
Speaker 1: retaliation by the target. That they did see the targets
Speaker 1: like it might make them sort of go away or
Speaker 1: redirect their movements. Thank thank They also say, and I
Speaker 1: thought this was quite interesting quote. Some throws in what
Speaker 1: appeared to be fairly intense interactions were not directed at
Speaker 1: another octopus but into empty space. So octopuses might be
Speaker 1: tussling pretty strongly, like they're fighting each other, but then
Speaker 1: in the middle of that, you know, prolonged aggressive interaction,
Speaker 1: the octopus just kind of like throws some material but
Speaker 1: not at another octopus just throws something. Almost invites comparisons
Speaker 1: of just like throwing things in a huff. But I
Speaker 1: don't know if you could say that's what's going on
Speaker 1: with an octopus. Yeah, yeah, no, you can't help. But
Speaker 1: but but think that again putting the human lens over everything.
Speaker 1: But anyway to come back with some uh, some criticisms
Speaker 1: of this type of interpretation, I was reading an article
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic by Marina Corn called everyone has an
Speaker 1: Octopus opinion and uh. This article collects some arguments that
Speaker 1: there might be less than meets the eye when it
Speaker 1: comes to the octopus throwing footage uh and saying that
Speaker 1: the interpretation of socially targeted throwing might just simple simply
Speaker 1: be anthropomorphization. So a few things that that are collected
Speaker 1: in this article. One is that Coren documents a dissenting
Speaker 1: opinion from an evolutionary biologist at San Francisco State University
Speaker 1: named Robin Crook, who questioned whether this behavior really counts
Speaker 1: as quote throwing because of the physical processes in oolved noting, again,
Speaker 1: like we talked about earlier, that while octopuses will grasp
Speaker 1: things and pass them around with their arms. They don't
Speaker 1: use their arms to throw the way we do. Instead,
Speaker 1: they use this this siphon blasting maneuver, which to Crook
Speaker 1: does not constitute throwing. I don't know if I would
Speaker 1: really like make this distinction. It seems to me like
Speaker 1: the important part of throwing is like the intentional ballistic
Speaker 1: projection behavior of objects from the environment, not so much
Speaker 1: like the muscle movements you use to do that. But
Speaker 1: I don't know what you think. Yeah, I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of it's just gonna come down to the body type, right, Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, what kind of tools you have to to
Speaker 1: to send stuff fly in at another creature? Really? I
Speaker 1: keep coming back to children and all of this. Um,
Speaker 1: I can't can't wait for you to take everything in
Speaker 1: this episode with you when you start taking your your
Speaker 1: child to the beach, because um, yeah, a human child
Speaker 1: is is certainly an education and all the ways that
Speaker 1: you can you can send sand flying in the wrong
Speaker 1: directions as well as as various other objects. They can
Speaker 1: kick it, they can throw it, they can shake it
Speaker 1: from from towels. That's wonderful. I have so much magic
Speaker 1: of that kind of look forward to. Um, But no,
Speaker 1: but so so so, Krook says. Another thing is that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like we were talking about there, there are
Speaker 1: other contexts in which octopus is clearly show this kind
Speaker 1: of like siphon blasting behavior, such as cleaning up their
Speaker 1: dens after a big meal, you know, blasting a bunch
Speaker 1: of mollusk shells out, and Kirk argues that maybe that's
Speaker 1: all that's happening in the footage that's examined in this paper.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're just blasting their dens out or doing a
Speaker 1: behavior that they do when they blast their den's out
Speaker 1: and hitting other octopuses by accident. In the total footage,
Speaker 1: this article claims that only seventeen percent of the throws
Speaker 1: actually hit another octopus, So a majority of what we
Speaker 1: see either way is just throwing away behavior, not throwing
Speaker 1: at the question is whether this minority of cases where
Speaker 1: it was interactive throwing, and especially the ones where it
Speaker 1: looks like interactive throwing and it actually hit the other animal,
Speaker 1: those are the minority we're looking at. That's just seventeen
Speaker 1: percent of all the throws. Yeah, I mean, I again
Speaker 1: come back to something you mentioned earlier about again the
Speaker 1: the octopus is generally a solitary creature, and this is
Speaker 1: a scenario in which they are living in close proximity
Speaker 1: to one another due to the restraints of the of
Speaker 1: the environment itself. So you could just simply look at
Speaker 1: it like, look, these octopuses are are violent slabs, and
Speaker 1: normally they're on their own being violent slabs, but now
Speaker 1: they're forced to live together, and this is this is
Speaker 1: what happens when occopuses, I don't know, stop being polite
Speaker 1: and start getting real. Now, there are several things raised
Speaker 1: in this article, but one I thought was actually a
Speaker 1: pretty good point to make was that even if the
Speaker 1: octopuses are trying to hit one another with the throwing,
Speaker 1: so maybe you can say, like half of the equation
Speaker 1: is true. Maybe it is targeted throwing. They are throwing
Speaker 1: at the other octopus. But at the same time you
Speaker 1: could say it might still not be social octopus signaling
Speaker 1: exactly because in the words of Piero Amodio, a biologist
Speaker 1: who has specialized in octopuses at anton Dorn Zoological Station
Speaker 1: in Italy, it maybe quote used more broadly towards annoying
Speaker 1: or threatening stimuli. So maybe it's not a thing about
Speaker 1: octopuses communicating with octopuses, but it's just like something is
Speaker 1: bothering them, so they throw They just squirt object, they
Speaker 1: squirt material at it. Uh And evidence for this would
Speaker 1: include octopuses were also observed in a couple of instances
Speaker 1: in the study throwing debris at fish uh and at
Speaker 1: a camera emplacement in a couple of cases. So it
Speaker 1: could be less interspecific social signaling and more like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what that is, I don't like that object
Speaker 1: in my space. Squirt some dirt at it for this objection,
Speaker 1: I think fair enough. Like in that case, I think
Speaker 1: it would definitely count as directed throwing. It would be
Speaker 1: throwing at rather than throwing away. But this might limit
Speaker 1: what kinds of interpretations we could make about the relationships
Speaker 1: between gloomy octopuses specifically. The article makes uh sites. One
Speaker 1: last argument that I thought was pretty interesting, and this
Speaker 1: comes from Christian now Roth, who is a researcher on
Speaker 1: the behavior of goats at the Research Institute for Farm
Speaker 1: Animal Biology in Germany. And the point that Narrowth makes
Speaker 1: here talking about goats is that, yeah, even goats have
Speaker 1: lots of mysteries about them. Quote, they sneeze when they're
Speaker 1: spooked or frustrated, and there is actually nothing on how
Speaker 1: often goats show this behavior, how often they use it,
Speaker 1: in which contexts they use it. Uh And I thought
Speaker 1: that was really interesting because it, of course is especially
Speaker 1: hard to figure out the motivation for animal behavior when
Speaker 1: you're studying them in the wild as opposed to in
Speaker 1: the lab. Like in the lab, you can strictly limit
Speaker 1: variables to some degree, but in the natural environment there
Speaker 1: might be thousands of variables to disentangle, and you might
Speaker 1: not even recognize what some of them are. And the
Speaker 1: specific example about okay, so goats sometimes sneeze when they're spooked,
Speaker 1: but like, why do they do that? What exactly are
Speaker 1: they trying to do with the sneezing. Is it a
Speaker 1: directed behavior or just to kind of tick or what?
Speaker 1: It reminds me of our recent discussion on the Galapagos
Speaker 1: marine iguana. Do they sort snort salt out of their
Speaker 1: salt glands at an attacker defensively, like when something is
Speaker 1: approaching them, when when a Charles Darwin is approaching them,
Speaker 1: as Charles Darwin thought he observed, or is the salt
Speaker 1: snorting not actually correlated with with defensive behavior? Is it
Speaker 1: not actually motivated by defensive considerations at all. It's hard
Speaker 1: to tell. Yeah, again, it is so hard to step
Speaker 1: outside of the um of of the human lens here
Speaker 1: when when trying to imagine what any of these creatures
Speaker 1: are doing. Um, because some of these things, like we
Speaker 1: we want to interpret them and think about them as
Speaker 1: being deliberate actions as opposed to say, in the human scenario,
Speaker 1: sort of uh, incidental signalings of hostility that we might have.
Speaker 1: Like someone can look hostile and say a bus without
Speaker 1: actively thinking like, oh, I'm going to show everybody on
Speaker 1: this bus how I feel about them. Check out my hostility.
Speaker 1: Don't come near me or or violence happens next, like
Speaker 1: you could. That person could just genuinely be and say
Speaker 1: a bad mood or be thinking about something that's bothering
Speaker 1: them and their their posture, that the way their their
Speaker 1: their look, their expression on their face could take on
Speaker 1: a hostile energy that would then be picked up on
Speaker 1: by other people. And that and that kind of ambiguity
Speaker 1: exists even with in our very finely tuned ability to
Speaker 1: suss out the motivations of other humans. These are on specifics.
Speaker 1: We're right in that human meal you you know, we're
Speaker 1: used to that when looking at another species. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like several orders of magnitude more difficult to figure
Speaker 1: things out right, right, Because again, that same dude on
Speaker 1: the bus that you're thinking looks hostile, he could just
Speaker 1: be thinking about a really cool episode of some TV
Speaker 1: show that he watched, you know, and that's just all
Speaker 1: you because you think, oh, somebody who looks weird on
Speaker 1: a bus must have hostile intentions. Uh, they must have
Speaker 1: something negative going on, and they don't just have an
Speaker 1: intense look because they're trying to figure out the plot
Speaker 1: of of I don't know, some Netflix show. Now, I
Speaker 1: think when it comes to the ambiguity behind animal behaviors,
Speaker 1: there might be other kinds of considerations that would come in, Like, okay,
Speaker 1: is the marine iguana even if you could show, wow,
Speaker 1: it does, uh, you know, snort salt out of its
Speaker 1: salt glands more often when a human is approaching it,
Speaker 1: That would show a correlation with the proximity of a
Speaker 1: larger land animal. But it wouldn't, Uh, it wouldn't still
Speaker 1: wouldn't show it was defensive in some way. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe it's snorting like that because it's trying to I
Speaker 1: don't know, like clear, some kind of gland blockage in
Speaker 1: case it needs to move quickly or something like that.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's part of the kind of fight or flight uh,
Speaker 1: physiological internal regulation of the iguana's body. Who knows. I'm
Speaker 1: just speculating there, But you could imagine other things for
Speaker 1: this octopus throwing behavior. Maybe the throwing is part of
Speaker 1: something that's going on internally with the octopus that is
Speaker 1: related to aggressive interactions with other octopuses, but is not
Speaker 1: about hitting them with the objects, though it's hard to
Speaker 1: figure out what that other purpose would be. Then again,
Speaker 1: maybe it is just about hitting them with the silt.
Speaker 1: I mean, that seems like a perfectly plausible explanation to me.
Speaker 1: Either way. A fascinating look here, another fascinating consideration of
Speaker 1: the world of the octopus. And this episode is also
Speaker 1: kind of a stealth goat episode two, since we get
Speaker 1: to get in a little bit of goat pondering here
Speaker 1: at the end. I like that. But we're gonna be
Speaker 1: back with more interesting examples of throwing behavior and animals,
Speaker 1: so these questions will continue, that's right, so be sure
Speaker 1: to join us for the next one. Um, let's just
Speaker 1: remind everybody that's stuff to Blow your Mind publishes in
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed with our
Speaker 1: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesday's we do
Speaker 1: a short form artifact or monster fact episode, on Monday's
Speaker 1: we do listener mail, and on Fridays we set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to our audio producer Max Williams. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
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