Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry, Jerome Roland, just
Speaker 1: the whole the whole House Stuff Works gang here to
Speaker 1: present to you stuff you should know, all three of us.
Speaker 1: Are you doing good? Yeah? Yeah, Oh I'm a little caffeinated.
Speaker 1: I should warn you a little bit, like when teeth
Speaker 1: are about to just come right out of my face.
Speaker 1: That's not good. Uh. You know, we did a video
Speaker 1: about Cela Cants one time. Yeah, like was it this
Speaker 1: day in history about when they were discovered. I ran
Speaker 1: across it because it smacked is familiar to me, and
Speaker 1: you know, the constant fear we have of recording an
Speaker 1: entire podcast over uh is sort of always there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the fear that sometimes comes true. Yeah. So I definitely
Speaker 1: went back and looked, and I was like, I new
Speaker 1: we did something. Yeah, we were trapped in a shipping container, right.
Speaker 1: I didn't watch it. I didn't either enough to say,
Speaker 1: oh yeah I remember that. Yeah, that really weird, weird
Speaker 1: thing we did. But this is really cool. I think
Speaker 1: I need to Seela Cants were um, well they're interesting,
Speaker 1: despite what the House Stuff Works article would lead you
Speaker 1: to believe. It was. Yeah, it was a little thin,
Speaker 1: was a little bit. It was all right. But luckily
Speaker 1: the rest of the Internet is there for us. Right,
Speaker 1: thanks especially to Smithsonian and mental Floss for this one. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that mental plus article is kind of neat, actually it was.
Speaker 1: So you want to go back to the beginning, actually
Speaker 1: the second beginning. Maybe, Well, I don't know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about now, so just okay, Well we'll go back
Speaker 1: to the very beginning. We'll go back to something about
Speaker 1: four million years ago, doing the Devonian period, which is
Speaker 1: a k a. The Rise of the Fish the Age
Speaker 1: of the Fish, right, And in this Devonian period, there's
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of stuff going on. Things have
Speaker 1: been swimming around for a while on Earth. There's a
Speaker 1: nice atmosphere that's developed. The things in the ocean are
Speaker 1: starting to say, oh, what's out there? I want to
Speaker 1: see what's on land. I want to just crawl out
Speaker 1: and see. Yeah, I want to taste clover. So they
Speaker 1: start trying. And during this period there was the progression
Speaker 1: from the sea to the land, and one of those
Speaker 1: things that was starting to develop legs to get onto
Speaker 1: land was called the Ceila cant yeah, which um A
Speaker 1: it means hollow spine, which is we'll get to there's
Speaker 1: a reason for that. And B it's spelled c O
Speaker 1: E l A c A n t h, which is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not how you would think it might be
Speaker 1: spelled or pronounced rather either one. But it's sela camp.
Speaker 1: It is sela can uh. And what it is is
Speaker 1: a fish that is um, like you said, been around
Speaker 1: for a long long time. It's um kind of funny looking.
Speaker 1: And we'll get into all the physical characteristics that make
Speaker 1: it unusual uh in a sec. But it is notable, uh,
Speaker 1: mainly for the fact that everyone thought it was gone
Speaker 1: forever until it was suddenly discovered. This thing that that
Speaker 1: swam with the dinosaurs was discovered a new in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties and then again a little bit later on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it was it pops up for the first time
Speaker 1: around um, four hundred and seven million years ago, I think,
Speaker 1: I said, and and then it just drops off eighty
Speaker 1: million years ago. So they said, well, a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff when the way of the dinosaur around the time
Speaker 1: the dinosaurs went away. Um, so that's probably what happened
Speaker 1: to the Cela can't, so it was quite a big surprise.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen thirties when a trawler um that was
Speaker 1: out fishing, a trawler called the Narine which is keptain
Speaker 1: by Hendrik Goossen off the coast of South Africa, came
Speaker 1: in and as was Captain Goosen's want, he contacted the
Speaker 1: director of the local museum in East London, woman named
Speaker 1: Miss Marjorie Courtney Latimer, and she used to come over
Speaker 1: and look at the fish loads this guy would bring
Speaker 1: in because they were buddies and he's He gave her
Speaker 1: a call like normal and said, I got to load
Speaker 1: you want to come look at it? And she was like,
Speaker 1: it's two days before Christmas and his blazing hot out.
Speaker 1: Don't forget where in South Africa at the time, and
Speaker 1: she's like, I don't feel like it. But the world
Speaker 1: was saved, the world of ich theology was saved this
Speaker 1: day because this lady Marjorie Courtney Latimer was so nice
Speaker 1: that she decided to go look at the fish anyway,
Speaker 1: just to wish the captain and his crew a merry Christmas.
Speaker 1: So she takes a look at this fish and here
Speaker 1: is her quote. Uh as she recounted. It wasn't her
Speaker 1: quote at the time or quote at the time, it's
Speaker 1: probably a South African expletive, but she said later I
Speaker 1: picked away the layers of slime to reveal the most
Speaker 1: beautiful fish I had ever seen. Uh. And of course
Speaker 1: only a fish lover can find this thing truly beautiful,
Speaker 1: because it's kind of ugly. It was five ft long,
Speaker 1: a pale mauve blue with faint flecks of whitish spots
Speaker 1: that had an iridescent silver blue green sheen all over.
Speaker 1: It was covered in hard scales, and it had four
Speaker 1: limb like fins and a strange little puppy dog tail.
Speaker 1: Uh not literally, of course. Uh, it was such which
Speaker 1: would be great though actually that's the dog fish that
Speaker 1: has that. It was such a beautiful fish, more like
Speaker 1: a big China ornament. But I didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1: And um, it was pretty faithful that she was called
Speaker 1: in uh to look at this thing, because it ended
Speaker 1: up being one of the most important zoological finds of
Speaker 1: you know, history, probably of the twentieth century at least
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, this woman's curiosity, Um, something in her said,
Speaker 1: this is weird, this is unusual, this is this is
Speaker 1: something worth looking into. So she took it with her.
Speaker 1: This thing was like five ft long, just under two ms,
Speaker 1: about a hundred and how many pounds seven pounds. This
Speaker 1: is a significant fish and uh ms, Courtney Latimer talked
Speaker 1: her way into a cab with it. She took a
Speaker 1: cab back to the East London Museum with this fish
Speaker 1: stuffed in the back seat. And um, she took it
Speaker 1: to the taxidermist and had it stuffed. Unfortunately, the taxidermist
Speaker 1: wasn't completely aware of how to preserve a fish for
Speaker 1: identification and throughout the skeleton and the gills, which to
Speaker 1: what you need for for um the idea fish. Apparently, well,
Speaker 1: she probably should have said something. Well she she like,
Speaker 1: this is no ordinary mount. Yeah, right, she probably should have,
Speaker 1: or maybe she did, and he just ignored her. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not getta get boss dround by one. So she
Speaker 1: contacts a guy named j. LB. Smith who is an
Speaker 1: ich theologist. He's the head of the ichthyology department at
Speaker 1: the university in Graham's Town and PhD in chemistry. Um,
Speaker 1: he's a smart guy and he's the local fish expert
Speaker 1: as far as she knows. Yeah, and their their pals,
Speaker 1: and so she said, hey, I've got this. Uh, we're
Speaker 1: looking fish. And then Smith his quote was, I told
Speaker 1: myself sternly not to be a fool, but there was
Speaker 1: something about that sketch uh, and apparently it was it
Speaker 1: was sketched. She sent him a sketch of the fish
Speaker 1: to begin with. Uh that seized upon my imagination and
Speaker 1: told me that this was something very far beyond the
Speaker 1: usual run of fishes in our seas. Uh. And luckily,
Speaker 1: even though the fish was um um, I guess mounted
Speaker 1: in a traditional form, which, like you said, takes away.
Speaker 1: It's how you can identify it. She was able to
Speaker 1: preserve some of the scales, and somehow from these scales
Speaker 1: he was able to say, this is a Cola Cant
Speaker 1: Seela canth. Well that's what he said at first, and
Speaker 1: she was pronounce Cela can't. He's like, oh, apparently he
Speaker 1: said when he saw that scale and I and identified
Speaker 1: it positively as a Steela Cant. His quote was, if
Speaker 1: I'd bet a dinosaur in the street, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been more astonished. I like that guy. A little hyperbole there,
Speaker 1: but I like it so he um, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is seriously, this is like the zoological find of the
Speaker 1: century and would be for the next sixties something years.
Speaker 1: So he very magnanimously said, you know what, I'm going
Speaker 1: to name this thing after you, and he named it
Speaker 1: as a new species. Let him marry Chilumny because, um, well,
Speaker 1: obviously her name is Courtney Latimer, Courtney hyphen Latimer. And
Speaker 1: it was found in the Chilumna River at the mouth
Speaker 1: of it where it hits the coast off the eastern
Speaker 1: coast of South Africa. So that's a great name. It's
Speaker 1: it's perfect. It really puts it in a place in time. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they have now discovered this thing. They realized that
Speaker 1: they have a big find on their hands. Um. They
Speaker 1: thought this thing had long been extinct by tens of
Speaker 1: millions of years. Uh. And so they started to research
Speaker 1: and you know, try and learn more about this fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is no ordinary fish. No, but I mean this
Speaker 1: was so this is right, and it was the only
Speaker 1: one that had been found for another sixty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's only so much you can find from
Speaker 1: a stuffed fish. But it did prove because it have
Speaker 1: been caught alive. It wasn't like they pulled up a
Speaker 1: fossil or a dead fish. It had been alive when
Speaker 1: it was caught. Yeah, I think it was attached to
Speaker 1: another fish, like potentially trying to eat it, which is
Speaker 1: one of the uh well, not unusual but interesting things
Speaker 1: about the Cela canth is that it's a it eats meat. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of unusual things about the Cela camp um.
Speaker 1: So fast forward another sixty years exactly um in Indonesia,
Speaker 1: which is on the other side of the Indian Ocean,
Speaker 1: the eastern side of the Indian Ocean. It was actually
Speaker 1: first seen in by a biologist named Mark Erdmann who
Speaker 1: was in Indonesia doing his PhD dissertation, and he saw
Speaker 1: a Cela cant in the market. That's crazy, that's a
Speaker 1: sela can't what's that doing here? So apparently he put
Speaker 1: a bit of a bounty out on it with the locals,
Speaker 1: and within a year by they had brought him freshly
Speaker 1: caught one, which is quite a task. Yeah, it's finding
Speaker 1: a uh once thought extinct fish. Yeah, it's a big one. Well,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to a little bit why. It's even
Speaker 1: tougher than you would think to So the one that
Speaker 1: Erdman found was brown, right, Yeah, it was a little
Speaker 1: bit different color, right, the one like uh Courtney Lattimer described,
Speaker 1: those are known to be like steel blue. This is
Speaker 1: a brown a little smaller than the one that Courtney
Speaker 1: Lattimer found. Um. And so eventually when Erdman got his
Speaker 1: hands on that one, um, he described it as a
Speaker 1: new species. Yeah. I mean, uh, it turns out that
Speaker 1: at one point, um, you know, hundreds of millions of
Speaker 1: years ago, there were you know, potentially over a hundred
Speaker 1: different varieties of this fish. Uh, and they came in
Speaker 1: all shapes and sizes. Um. These obviously were pretty big,
Speaker 1: but there were some that were smaller and faster. Uh.
Speaker 1: Basically just kind of a wide variety. And as far
Speaker 1: as we know, I think are the the only two
Speaker 1: known survivors, yes, so far. Yeah, the one that Corney
Speaker 1: Latimer founder known as the West Indian Ocean Seila Cant.
Speaker 1: Those are the blue ones, and they're typically found off
Speaker 1: of the west, you know, the east coast of Africa,
Speaker 1: south of Kenya. I believe, um, down to about the
Speaker 1: Cormoros Islands. I think that's they're actually also known as
Speaker 1: the Cormoros Islands Celia Cant because there's that's that seems
Speaker 1: to be where they inhabit the most or the highest
Speaker 1: density of them is Yeah, and UM, some of the
Speaker 1: weird some of the weirdos that have well, we assumed
Speaker 1: that they've been extinct, but you never know. One of
Speaker 1: them was toothless, uh and over ten feet long. That
Speaker 1: was the megalo se La canthus very appropriately, Uh, some
Speaker 1: of them said forget you, ocean, I'm gonna go to
Speaker 1: the freshwater. So they were actually freshwater Cela cants at
Speaker 1: one time. And like I said, some of them were
Speaker 1: slow and ambushed prey somewhere uh, smaller and faster. But
Speaker 1: they've pretty much universally all been predators from what I've seen,
Speaker 1: and the two species that are alive today that we
Speaker 1: know of UM are aside from that Megalis Cela cant
Speaker 1: um tend to be a little bigger than the the
Speaker 1: extinct species, which UM I read is a good it's
Speaker 1: a good example of why they shouldn't be called living fossils,
Speaker 1: which is what they're frequently called. Yeah, that's Darwin's term
Speaker 1: for something that UM basically never changed. Uh. And they've
Speaker 1: actually studied the genome of the Cela cant and found
Speaker 1: that they very much haven't changed and the kind of
Speaker 1: the main reason is they haven't had to. Um, they've
Speaker 1: kind of stayed in the same places. And when you
Speaker 1: stay in the same places and you eat the same stuff,
Speaker 1: then maybe you don't change so much. I read the
Speaker 1: I read the opposite of that, they have changed enough
Speaker 1: that they that they have been evolving in a good
Speaker 1: example of that is that they're bigger than they used
Speaker 1: to be. Interesting. Yeah, but the two species that are
Speaker 1: alive today, Um, they have traced their genomes back and
Speaker 1: decided that they've been separated for several million years at least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one. Uh, they finally got the full genome and
Speaker 1: they said that, uh, it does indeed match the fish's
Speaker 1: appearance of slower evolution and a journal published in Nature
Speaker 1: because they have a slower rate of substitution. Um. Basically,
Speaker 1: she the doctor, well, yeah, I guess she has a doctor.
Speaker 1: Just sounded weird to say that. The doctor the researcher
Speaker 1: who was also a doctor, who was she said it
Speaker 1: may reflect the fact that they do not need to
Speaker 1: evolve quickly because they've lived in relatively unchanging environment whe
Speaker 1: there are a few predators. Uh, and they basically haven't
Speaker 1: needed to change over time like other organisms. Well, that
Speaker 1: brings up another thing too, there's a there's a big
Speaker 1: why would they just drop off of the fossil record
Speaker 1: if they've been around this whole time, if they didn't
Speaker 1: just go extinct eighty or sixty five million years ago.
Speaker 1: The um only explanation I've seen is that the places
Speaker 1: where the fossils turned up where areas conducive to fossilization,
Speaker 1: Like there was a lot of sentiment that could turn
Speaker 1: bone into rock. And then the areas that the living
Speaker 1: uh species live at now are not conducive to that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, possibly because they're mostly living around volcanic
Speaker 1: rock that doesn't necessarily produce fossils. You want to take
Speaker 1: a break, Yeah, let's take a break and we'll get
Speaker 1: back and talk a little bit about this funny fish.
Speaker 1: All right, So we talked a little bit about what
Speaker 1: makes the Celo camp such a interesting critter. Um. Can
Speaker 1: a critter be a fish? Yeah? Have you heard of
Speaker 1: the cuttle fish? That's a critter? If there ever was
Speaker 1: a cuddly critter. Uh So, here are some remarkable things
Speaker 1: about the Cela camp um. They can live as deep
Speaker 1: I mean, they're deep water dwellers. They can live as
Speaker 1: deep as two thousand or more feet, but generally, uh,
Speaker 1: they think the UM I think they generally live about
Speaker 1: five eight hundred feet and what they call the twilight zone,
Speaker 1: which is still pretty deep. That Remember our cave episode, Yeah,
Speaker 1: UM that had the same thing. Remember there was like
Speaker 1: organisms that live in the dark, organisms that live in
Speaker 1: the twilight zone, and organisms that live in the lighted zone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these guys live in that threshold between light and dark
Speaker 1: in the ocean. And they um apparently are nocturnal hunters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they come out at night, Uh, kind of stay hidden.
Speaker 1: Most of these habitats are are caves, right that they
Speaker 1: tend to stay in. But there's one off of Tasmania
Speaker 1: that do not live in caves, and so they have
Speaker 1: officially been placed on an endangered list because they don't
Speaker 1: have the protection from bycatch that these other cave dwellers have.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, Yeah, so they the average day in
Speaker 1: the life of a cila can't at least the cave
Speaker 1: dwelling UM species. They they'll you know, the during the daytime,
Speaker 1: they're hanging out in a cave. They'll hang out in
Speaker 1: a cave with I've seen between up the twelve to sixteen.
Speaker 1: Other Ceila cants have coffee. Yeah, maybe just talk, you know,
Speaker 1: talk about their night and then as nightfalls, they'll leave
Speaker 1: their caves and they'll they'll go hunting. And like you said,
Speaker 1: their um carnivorous predators. Um, they do that passive by
Speaker 1: catch thing for the most part right where they let
Speaker 1: the the current bring the food to them. But they
Speaker 1: just basically hang out and wait for a cuttle fish.
Speaker 1: It's one thing. They eat squids, other cephalopods, some fishes,
Speaker 1: but they seem to not um show aggression towards one
Speaker 1: another from what I understand. Yeah, and um, while they
Speaker 1: are passive hunters, they do have an unusual feature which is,
Speaker 1: like we said, one of many. But they have what's
Speaker 1: called a rostral organ, which just means it's in the
Speaker 1: nasal region and their snout uh, and it's filled with
Speaker 1: a jellylike substance that they think uh. And they think
Speaker 1: most of this stuff. I mean, they've done a lot
Speaker 1: of good studying, but for something so rare, you can't
Speaker 1: you know, be super sure. But they think that it
Speaker 1: detects low level electrical signals and frequencies from prey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a shark or array. Yeah, it's an electrosensory organ
Speaker 1: where when living tissue contacts water, it can make an
Speaker 1: electrical impulse that can be picked up. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: cool mental floss articles at eleven um eleven things about
Speaker 1: the sea. Look ant, I can't remember how it was put,
Speaker 1: but just eleven interesting features, eleven fishy facts. Unfortunately that's
Speaker 1: why I forgot it, uh title aside, it's an interesting article.
Speaker 1: And um. One of the things that they don't know
Speaker 1: why they do, and I have a feeling it has
Speaker 1: to do with that electrical frequency, is they will swim
Speaker 1: nose down, um for up to two full minutes, which
Speaker 1: is weird for a fish. It just kind of hovering
Speaker 1: in place, headstanding, right, Yeah, and I guess I mean
Speaker 1: if they have that nasal uh bag of a jelly
Speaker 1: that helps them locate fish, I would imagine that's what
Speaker 1: they're doing there, right. I imagine it like tonto, like
Speaker 1: holding a railroad track, you know. Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: the same thing basically. So um, when they catch their prey,
Speaker 1: they eat them, and they can eat stuff that's way
Speaker 1: bigger than them because I again, which is this is
Speaker 1: um unique to see the cants among living things They
Speaker 1: have a hinge in their cranium that allows basically their
Speaker 1: head is convertible. The top of their skull can retract,
Speaker 1: allowing their mouth to open really wide, so they can
Speaker 1: eat a large, large cuttle fish. Yeah. And I think
Speaker 1: the that feature also allows it to uh, their mouth
Speaker 1: to close with like much greater force with extreme prejudice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like when it's unhinged um emotionally and physically, it can
Speaker 1: really close that mouth, uh, super hard. They hate themselves
Speaker 1: for eating cuttle so I just can't stop. So those
Speaker 1: are just a couple of the features. Another is um
Speaker 1: and we mentioned earlier that the name literally translates into
Speaker 1: hollow spine. Uh. This is because they have what's called
Speaker 1: a noo chord, which is a hollow pressurized tube filled
Speaker 1: with oil where a lot of fish start this way
Speaker 1: and then they'll eventually get a spine. But this doesn't
Speaker 1: go away, right, And not just fish vertebrates apparently, um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of mammals that go through this, I
Speaker 1: think possibly even humans. In the embryo and the sela
Speaker 1: cancer says, I'm good with the noto coorse, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stick here, I'm gonna stop here, which is strange. It
Speaker 1: is strange. You want to hear some more stranges. I
Speaker 1: could do this all day. Well, it's a strange fish.
Speaker 1: Cela canth um. We don't quite understand how they reproduce,
Speaker 1: and the reason why is because males don't seem to
Speaker 1: have any sex parts. They don't have junk. They think
Speaker 1: possibly males grow it when they need it, but it's otherwise,
Speaker 1: it's it's not around to growers. They're not showers right exctly,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. So we have no idea how they reproduce,
Speaker 1: but we know that the um the mode of reproduction
Speaker 1: is called uh ovo viviparity, which is how for the
Speaker 1: eggs that the female has get fertilized. Once they're fertilized,
Speaker 1: they just state or the eggs developed in the female,
Speaker 1: and then they hatch in the female, and then the
Speaker 1: live fishes continue to just date. Oh and like the
Speaker 1: whole period last like three years before they're born. So
Speaker 1: they go from egg to being hatched to being born
Speaker 1: within a three year period. And so apparently this does
Speaker 1: not make the mom Cela can't very happy, and sometimes
Speaker 1: she will try to eat her newborn pups. So supposedly
Speaker 1: Cela can't pups, that's what they're called. Can dive really deep,
Speaker 1: very quickly the moment they're born to get away from mom,
Speaker 1: to get away from their mom, who's like three years
Speaker 1: three years paging Dr Freud. Yeah, uh yeah, I think
Speaker 1: sharks maybe the only other uh fish that give the
Speaker 1: live little ones? Is that right? I mean most fish
Speaker 1: lay eggs, right, so that it's definitely unusual. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it may not be new unique. Um. But the other
Speaker 1: thing about their their sexy time is there's also a
Speaker 1: theory that, um, they are monogamousts. In a German team. Um,
Speaker 1: they had a couple of corpses of too pregnant. Um.
Speaker 1: I believe that the African version, yeah, the Ladimir chlumni
Speaker 1: and uh because what was I remember the other one?
Speaker 1: It was Ladimir something else. For the Indonesian version, we'll
Speaker 1: just go with that for now. I was practicing pronouncing
Speaker 1: it Latimer menadoensis. Okay, wow, thanks. Uh. So they analyze
Speaker 1: these two pregnant ladies, unfortunately that we're no longer with us,
Speaker 1: and they found out that they had like most definitely
Speaker 1: had a single father, which they said was unusual because
Speaker 1: one of them had twenty six little baby pups inside
Speaker 1: of her, right, and they um, they thought at first, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's because the Cela cant is so rare that
Speaker 1: the female wouldn't have opportunity to mate with more than
Speaker 1: one male. And they said, well wait a minute, well no,
Speaker 1: not necessarily, once they found out that they stayed to
Speaker 1: hang out together. Yeah, in caves all day long. What
Speaker 1: else are you gonna do? Once general hospitals over just
Speaker 1: looking around and everybody like, whoa, what do you want
Speaker 1: to do? Yeah, that's a good point. All right, Well
Speaker 1: let's uh ponder that and take another break, and uh
Speaker 1: we'll finish up with even more interesting things about the
Speaker 1: ceila cant. Yeah, alright, so these guys have live babies.
Speaker 1: They might mate with a single mate. Good day. They
Speaker 1: have they can unhinge their jaw to eat more. They
Speaker 1: have a jelly filled thing in there, nostra that the
Speaker 1: that the texts electricity, The texts electricity. I know I'm
Speaker 1: having trouble thing to text. Uh what else? This is
Speaker 1: sort of a recap. They have oil filled spine, oil
Speaker 1: filled spine, and they're they're just good with They're like,
Speaker 1: I don't need a real spine. This one is my favorite.
Speaker 1: They were long thought to be the missing link between
Speaker 1: fishes and the tetrapods, which are land dwelling four limbed animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because a notable thing I don't think we mentioned yet
Speaker 1: is this thing has well, I think I didn't a
Speaker 1: quote from miss Ladimir Courtney Ladimir, but they have four
Speaker 1: are fins that smooth, sort of like you would think
Speaker 1: legs would move if a fish could swim out onto
Speaker 1: the beach. Legs and arms. Remember how Shaggy walked in
Speaker 1: Scooby Doo, Just like that. That's basically how a ceila
Speaker 1: can't swims. And the fact that they're their fins are
Speaker 1: suspiciously arm like in appearance just made people think that
Speaker 1: even more. What's more, their arms, what are called lobes,
Speaker 1: are attached by a bone that is compared to the
Speaker 1: humorous in humans. So a lot of people said, well,
Speaker 1: that's it. It's a missing link. The cela can't is
Speaker 1: a missing link between the fish and the land dwelling
Speaker 1: four limbed animals. And apparently once the genome came around
Speaker 1: and said now a little disappointing, they said, yes, we're
Speaker 1: all related. Technically, we are all um what are known
Speaker 1: as sarcopterygians okay um, which means we are fleshy limb vertebrates.
Speaker 1: So we're all that. So we are related, but it's
Speaker 1: not like our direct ancestor. In fact, we're more closely
Speaker 1: related to the lungfish than the seila can'ts. But the
Speaker 1: seila can'ts holds this place of honors, probably living on
Speaker 1: something of its own branch uh and is a very
Speaker 1: close cousin, if not bro, of the lung fish. So
Speaker 1: we're related by marriage right to the seal It can't say,
Speaker 1: but we legally we probably could marry a sela can't
Speaker 1: and have it not be super creepy except for the
Speaker 1: thet it's a fish. I feel it's a fleshy, lobed
Speaker 1: thin stroking the back of your head as you kiss it.
Speaker 1: I got something for you that was I'm just walking
Speaker 1: right past that one. Um. They taste gross, so don't
Speaker 1: think it's some weird delicacy, right, uh not? You know
Speaker 1: that there are that many of them to eat, But
Speaker 1: apparently if you do eat them, they can make you
Speaker 1: sick because these things are filled with urea, with oil,
Speaker 1: with wax, esther and fat like ninety eight point five
Speaker 1: percent fat. That's just in its skull. Oh I thought
Speaker 1: that was the whole body. No, it's it's brain occupies
Speaker 1: one point five of the area inside its skull. The
Speaker 1: other is fat. And that's at the point that they're
Speaker 1: an adult, right. Yeah. Supposedly their brains are bigger proportionately
Speaker 1: when they're younger, and they just stay there. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: frozen in uh, perpetual like I guess toddler hood pretty much.
Speaker 1: They love life. Yeah, no responsibilities, no bills, exactly. What
Speaker 1: else I got one for you? Okay. Vestigial lungs Oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I love these things. So they grow, They had CT
Speaker 1: scans done and this is from the mental flass article
Speaker 1: of these embryos, and they start growing little lungs uh
Speaker 1: early in the gestation period and it slows down a bit,
Speaker 1: and then by the time they're an adult, the organ
Speaker 1: serves no purpose. Yeah, it's just there. Yep, that's a
Speaker 1: good one. It is. It was. It's almost like the
Speaker 1: Cela canth was an attempt and evolutionary attempt, and it's
Speaker 1: just like, I'm gonna scrap this design. Let's move on
Speaker 1: to the long fish. Yeah maybe so you know, um,
Speaker 1: one of the things that struck me though, Chuck, was
Speaker 1: when they were talking about how a couple of females
Speaker 1: that had fully formed young yeah in them, ready to
Speaker 1: be born, were caught. It's like that was a lot
Speaker 1: of the Cela canth population that got wiped out with
Speaker 1: those two caught fish. Yeah. I mean, if there are
Speaker 1: only hundreds, then everyone matters. Yeah. They think that there's
Speaker 1: possibly about a th thousand of the ones that live
Speaker 1: around Indonesia and far fewer of the ones that live
Speaker 1: off of the west coast of Africa on the western
Speaker 1: side of the Indian Ocean. Um. And as a result,
Speaker 1: both of them are on the Endangered Species list. They're
Speaker 1: both protected. The problem is that if something happens to
Speaker 1: these species and these species die out this time, the
Speaker 1: whole order is gone, um for good this time around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: unless we revive them, uh with some of their DNA. Alright,
Speaker 1: I got one last one um And this was on
Speaker 1: Mental Flosses list as well, under the title A prominent
Speaker 1: hematologist once wrote a celacanth operetta A right, So that's
Speaker 1: an attention grabber. Apparently there was a man named Charles
Speaker 1: Rand of Long Guideland University, and he was a hematologist,
Speaker 1: and um was doing some work with the Cela Camp
Speaker 1: and uh, this is when the big revelation was. They
Speaker 1: learned that it gave birth to live young. And he,
Speaker 1: I guess, was a music guy and decided to write
Speaker 1: a little operetta about this discovery titled a Cila Camp's
Speaker 1: Lament or Quinn Tuplets at fifty fathoms can be fun
Speaker 1: all song to the tune of various Gilbert and Sullivan songs. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a hematologist for you. I have no comment on that. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it speaks for itself other than I wish
Speaker 1: this was on tape somewhere. Surely it's on YouTube. Everything's
Speaker 1: on YouTube, you think, yeah, sure, you want to go
Speaker 1: over some of these other quote living fossils end quote Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: so again there was there's some fishes out there that
Speaker 1: may have made the jump kinda to land or on
Speaker 1: most did or what have you. But there's there's some
Speaker 1: interesting fishes that are worth mentioning. Speaking of making the jump,
Speaker 1: did you see that shark that jumped into the boat
Speaker 1: the other day? There was a fisherman, Uh, and I
Speaker 1: guess the shark just did you know one of their
Speaker 1: famous uh it was a great white did one of
Speaker 1: its breeches where they just jump out of the water.
Speaker 1: Missing did that and landed in a dude's fishing boat. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he got banged around a little bit but was
Speaker 1: not like, you know, a bitten or anything, and basically
Speaker 1: went into his little control room I think, and called
Speaker 1: for help. And this shark like, I mean, it was
Speaker 1: kind of sad. I think the shark just died. But
Speaker 1: there were pictures of it. It's it's huge, it's like
Speaker 1: eight ft long. It was not a little guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you imagine? No, Oh my god, that guy did
Speaker 1: the right thing. He ran. He pooped his pants too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I may have jumped into the water had that happened. Alright.
Speaker 1: So living fossils um, the bow fin, yeah, the dog fish,
Speaker 1: mudfish or grindel I like dog fish. Yeah, this guy,
Speaker 1: I looked all these up, lily. He lives in the
Speaker 1: Mississippi River basin, in the Great Lakes and other places. Um,
Speaker 1: and are pretty mean supposedly like eats small mammals, snakes, frogs,
Speaker 1: other fish like they'll they'll go after you. Um. It's
Speaker 1: sort of normal looking, just sort of a long fish. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nothing remarkable as appearance wise, though, I'll tell you one
Speaker 1: that's remarkable appearance wises. The gar. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: just saw a long nosegar so ugly last weekend and
Speaker 1: I was like, it was floating dead in a lake.
Speaker 1: I was like, what in the world. Because I went
Speaker 1: by it at first, I was like, was that a swordfish? Like, well, no,
Speaker 1: it's not a swordfish. But in the long nose ones,
Speaker 1: I mean this this thing had a he had a
Speaker 1: twelve inch beak. I mean it looks prehistoric. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: very much do look prehistoric, which is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why they're called a living fossil um. And they
Speaker 1: are just mean. Apparently they're known to kill other fish,
Speaker 1: even not even to eat them, just because they were
Speaker 1: in their way. Basically, like you see this nose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can't eat gar. They're inedible and as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, if you eat their eggs, it will
Speaker 1: kill you. They're very toxic to humans and they just
Speaker 1: go around killing other fish, So they're not the best
Speaker 1: thing to have in your like if you like to
Speaker 1: fish in a lake. No, and they did you ever
Speaker 1: see Vernon, Florida the documentary? No, I've never seen that one.
Speaker 1: By the great Errol Morris. It has uh one of
Speaker 1: the interviews, it's one of my favorites, as with a
Speaker 1: guy talking about talking about the garfish. Really, yeah, I
Speaker 1: gotta see that one. Come across one of those. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: I finally saw a thin blue line for the first time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a good one. It's really You probably
Speaker 1: saw it after the parody of documentary Now, I definitely did.
Speaker 1: I saw the documentary now on which they nailed like,
Speaker 1: it's like perfect. They really one of the great shows. Uh,
Speaker 1: what's the next? Hagfish? Yeah, mud dwellers. Yeah, they basically
Speaker 1: look like eels, but their fish. But the interesting thing
Speaker 1: about hag fish, aside from the fact that they don't
Speaker 1: have any eyes, is that they eat fish from the
Speaker 1: inside out. Yeah. I think you underplayed it when he
Speaker 1: said they basically look like eels. It looks like something
Speaker 1: out of Dune. Okay, like the body looks like an eel.
Speaker 1: But have you seen the front end of this thing? Sure,
Speaker 1: it's frightening. And to think about that crawling up in
Speaker 1: you and eating you from the inside out, right, because
Speaker 1: if you're dead or dying fish and you're like, oh man,
Speaker 1: I hope, I hurry up and die before a hagfish
Speaker 1: five and a hagfish swims down your throat and then
Speaker 1: eat you from the inside out. That's a bad day.
Speaker 1: That's not a good death. And then lastly, what about
Speaker 1: the sturgeon. I love the sturgeon. Did you know that
Speaker 1: they they are both freshwater and saltwater here in North America?
Speaker 1: I did not know that, But um, I know one
Speaker 1: thing is they're huge. Yeah, they get up to like
Speaker 1: twenty ft long. Yeah, and I didn't I didn't see
Speaker 1: any pictures of him that big, but I've seen pictures
Speaker 1: of fishermen with like sturgeon that looked like they're at
Speaker 1: least eight or nine feet long. Uh. And they're crazy looking. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: the reason I was surprised that they are largely North
Speaker 1: America's I always associate them with, um, the Baltic area
Speaker 1: where they they're the beluga sturgeon is prized for its
Speaker 1: caviar I always think of, I think sturgeon. No, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that that's where bluga came from either. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they have armor like skin, and they're they're these
Speaker 1: retractable mouths that I guess there are different varieties, but
Speaker 1: some of them look almost like alligators from like the
Speaker 1: head forward. Yeah, they're weird looking fish. Yeah, but they
Speaker 1: don't want to hurt anybody. They just want you to
Speaker 1: eat their eggs. Is that true? They're like the giving
Speaker 1: tree of the lake. All right, up with sturgeon? Uh
Speaker 1: you anything else? I got nothing else? But if you
Speaker 1: want to know more about living fossils, like uh, you
Speaker 1: know Cela, cants or us Right, you can type those
Speaker 1: words in the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And since I said search farts, time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this My mom married Bob Doro. You
Speaker 1: see that one, right? And I thought it was because
Speaker 1: that was the subject line. And then the very first
Speaker 1: line of the email was sorry about that attention grabbing
Speaker 1: subject line. And I thought it was a lie because
Speaker 1: a lot of times people say something remarkable in the
Speaker 1: subject line that is completely false, which always ticks me off.
Speaker 1: But this is true. Uh, my mom married the wonderful,
Speaker 1: talented and sweet Bob Doro twenty three years ago. And uh,
Speaker 1: if you didn't listen to the show, Bob Dora was
Speaker 1: um part of the genius behind Schoolhouse Rock. Um, maybe
Speaker 1: you know the original genius. It was wonderful to hear
Speaker 1: you two speak so highly of them in your recent podcast.
Speaker 1: My own family listens to you guys a lot, so
Speaker 1: to hear you speak of our Bob with such reverence
Speaker 1: it warmed our hearts. Whence you meant? You mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: in your podcast that you wished you could have gotten
Speaker 1: Bob on the show. I wanted to jump through my
Speaker 1: phone to say I can make that happen. Bob learned
Speaker 1: about you guys about two weeks ago when we took
Speaker 1: a short road trip for Mother's Day and listen to
Speaker 1: the grave Robbing episode. Um, how awesome is that? I
Speaker 1: know the guy listen to us right before we released
Speaker 1: the Schoolhouse Rock episode. Yeah, it's primed and ready to
Speaker 1: hear us mention it fortuitous, huh. He chuckled off, and
Speaker 1: during the ride, and when we got to our destination,
Speaker 1: he asked something to the effect of who are those
Speaker 1: comedy guys? They're good man. That made me feel good. Uh,
Speaker 1: And then to have the Schoolhouse Rock episode pop up
Speaker 1: a few weeks later, it was like whoa. You guys
Speaker 1: were spot on in your characterization of Bob as a
Speaker 1: creative genius. A lot of his genius comes from his
Speaker 1: hard work. The age of ninety three, he is still
Speaker 1: traveling the world taking gigs. Uh. My mom often complains
Speaker 1: that he doesn't know how to say no. Thank you
Speaker 1: for giving Bob and schoolhouse rockets proper due. Next time
Speaker 1: you come up the coast the northeast, that is will
Speaker 1: be there and I'm sure Bob won't say no. And
Speaker 1: that's from Pete. Uh, I guess his stepson and um
Speaker 1: Pete sending a picture of Pee and Bob and that's
Speaker 1: him in the flesh. It's pretty awesome, pretty neat uh.
Speaker 1: And you should go to www dot Bob do O
Speaker 1: d O r O U g h dot com and
Speaker 1: just check it out. Fanny three and going strong, Nice going, Bob.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to us, and thank you Pete for
Speaker 1: writing in to let us know that we were spot
Speaker 1: on about what a great guy he is. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: were genuinely thrilled to hear this. If you want to
Speaker 1: genuinely thrill us, you can tweet to us at s
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast or I'm at josh um Clark.
Speaker 1: You can hang out with us on Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash stuff you Should Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
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