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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And my name is Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Star Trek Week right here on Stuff to

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Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind. Yesterday was Star Trek Day, so called

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Speaker 2: because Star Trek the original series debuted on September eighth,

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Speaker 2: way back in nineteen sixty six, and the episode in

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Speaker 2: question was The Man Trap, which sounds maybe like it's

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Speaker 2: going to be some sort of a dating based episode,

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Speaker 2: but it's not. It is really more of a like

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Speaker 2: a horror flavored creature feature episode.

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Speaker 3: I thought it would be about a trap, like a

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Speaker 3: literal trap, it really doesn't. Is there a trap in it?

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Speaker 3: I don't recall one.

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Speaker 2: I think the title the title goes back to earlier

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Speaker 2: stages of the script. I'm to understand, where like the

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Speaker 2: basic ideas that there would be some sort of an

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Speaker 2: alien creature that was using various illusion based deceptions that

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Speaker 2: were essentially a series of traps.

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Speaker 3: But this is actually the episode that we're going to

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Speaker 3: be talking about on the podcast today. Now, I got

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Speaker 3: to go full disclosure for all of Star Trek Week.

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Speaker 3: I think Rob, you're more of a Trekkie than I am.

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Speaker 3: I'm not like anti Star Trek. I've always liked Star Trek.

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Speaker 3: I just for whatever reason, never got deep into it

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Speaker 3: like a lot of people do. I think you have

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Speaker 3: maybe watched like a lot of the Next Generation at

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Speaker 3: least or something.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I was definitely a Next Generation kid. I would

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Speaker 2: watch it every night on cable at like nine pm

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Speaker 2: before I went to sleep. So I watched tons of

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Speaker 2: Next Generation, quite a lot of Deep Space nine and

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Speaker 2: That's and then various films. But in terms of watching

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Speaker 2: the original series, is just really only one or two episode,

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Speaker 2: three or four episodes tops that I had ever seen.

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Speaker 2: That just wasn't part of my Star Trek diet.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I've seen a lot less than you. I've seen

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Speaker 3: like four or five episodes of the original series. I

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Speaker 3: watched all of the first season of the Next Generation,

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Speaker 3: which I'm to understand is not necessarily the cream of

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Speaker 3: the crop. And then I've seen most of the at

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Speaker 3: least the original series cast movies. So I guess throughout

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Speaker 3: this week in our Star Trek episodes, you're gonna have

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Speaker 3: to fill me in more where my Star Trek knowledge

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Speaker 3: has gaps. But anyway, I had the idea to do

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Speaker 3: this episode because I was reading about various Star Trek

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Speaker 3: creatures and I came across the idea of a salt vampire,

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Speaker 3: the creature that appears in the very first episode of

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Speaker 3: the show that ever aired. Right, because this one, The

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Speaker 3: Man Trap, went on air before the pilot.

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Speaker 2: Right right right the pilot episode The Cage wouldn't air

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Speaker 2: until I believe, nineteen eighty eight, after receiving a VHS

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Speaker 2: release in eighty six, So this was indeed the public's

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Speaker 2: first taste of Star Trek. Now, narratively speaking, there's no

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Speaker 2: particular reason this episode comes first. This is not one

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Speaker 2: of those episodes where it's like, how did Spock meet

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Speaker 2: Kirk or anything like that. Rather, I'm to understanding it

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Speaker 2: was largely the network's called. They're like, okay, here's one

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Speaker 2: that feel it's a little scary, it's a little dark. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: this is going to be the one we're going to

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Speaker 2: launch with. And it seems like it was the right

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Speaker 2: choice because it struck a chord with viewers, and also

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Speaker 2: the press seemed to like it, so it must have

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Speaker 2: been the right choice.

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Speaker 3: There are some things about this episode that feel very

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Speaker 3: first episode. Though, one example, if you know what I'm

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Speaker 3: talking about, is that we would later get this dynamic

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Speaker 3: throughout the original series where Spock there are constantly references

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Speaker 3: to Spock being unemotional, and there are sort of jokes

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Speaker 3: about this where you know, he's kind of puzzled by

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Speaker 3: other characters having an illogical emotional reaction to something. In

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Speaker 3: The Man Trap, it actually goes a bit beyond that,

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Speaker 3: and there are moments where he seems confused by what

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Speaker 3: emotion are. It's like he's not even sure what you're

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Speaker 3: talking about when you explain having an emotion.

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Speaker 2: That's yeah, that's true in a way that almost compared

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Speaker 2: to other episodes or movies that I've seen, it seemed

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Speaker 2: maybe that is Spock's relationship to emotions was less developed

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Speaker 2: at this point.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why it feels distinctly early to me. It's

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Speaker 3: like there are some elements that feel like they're still

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Speaker 3: being worked out.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. It's also interesting how, at least in my viewing,

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Speaker 2: it really didn't feel like Kirk was a centerpiece to

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Speaker 2: the episode at all. And I mean, in so far

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Speaker 2: as he's the captain, he's the centerpiece, but it really

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Speaker 2: wasn't a Kirk centric episode.

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Speaker 3: It's very ensemble. I'd say, yeah, you get time with

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Speaker 3: a lot of the characters. You get time with with Kirk,

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Speaker 3: especially McCoy's kind of almost the centerpiece of it, but

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Speaker 3: also with Huah, with Sulu, with Spock, and with some

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Speaker 3: other characters we never meet again, or at least I

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Speaker 3: don't remember from other episodes.

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Speaker 2: This episode was directed by Mark Daniels, who directed fifteen

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Speaker 2: episodes of the original Star Trek I believe, And it

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Speaker 2: was written by George Clayton Johnson, who had previously pinned

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Speaker 2: seven episodes of the original Twilight Zone and also he

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Speaker 2: wrote the story that served as the basis for nineteen

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Speaker 2: sixties Oceans eleven and then of course various remakes of that,

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Speaker 2: and he'd go on to co author the novel that

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Speaker 2: served as the basis for nineteen seventy six's Logan's Run.

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Speaker 2: So the Twilight Zone connection especially is often stressed in

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Speaker 2: discussions of this episode's darker take on things.

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Speaker 3: Am I to understand that there are some similarities in

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Speaker 3: the story of this episode to a Twilight Zone episode

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Speaker 3: that he wrote.

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Speaker 2: Yes, I believe you're right. There's an episode that he

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Speaker 2: pinned for the Twilight Zone Season one, episode thirteen, The

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Speaker 2: Four of Us are Dying that has to do with

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Speaker 2: a This is one that I may have seen, but

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Speaker 2: I don't remember it really strongly. But it has a

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Speaker 2: con man that I believe has a shape shifting ability,

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Speaker 2: and so you can see threat of that in the

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Speaker 2: form this episode ends up taking right, because.

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Speaker 3: That's a major theme. It's like the main other thing

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Speaker 3: about the alien in this episode. It is a salt vampire,

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Speaker 3: but also it is a shape shifter. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Now I mentioned that this one has a darker tone,

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Speaker 2: maybe compared to some of the other original Series of

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Speaker 2: Star Trek episodes, and it is notable because, I mean,

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Speaker 2: there's plenty of darkness in the Star Trek universe, and

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Speaker 2: certainly if you start making a list of things that

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Speaker 2: are dark about it, you can make a pretty exhaustive list.

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Speaker 2: But as we've come to know it over the decades,

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Speaker 2: the franchise is light that often captivates us the most. Right,

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Speaker 2: it's that sense of optimism even in divided or troubled times,

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Speaker 2: be it nineteen sixty six or twenty twenty five. Because

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Speaker 2: Star Trek depicts a post scarcity world in which the

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Speaker 2: entire planet Earth benefits from a united government and serves

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Speaker 2: as a key member of a largely benevolent United Federation

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Speaker 2: of planets. And while we encounter plenty of philosophical nundrums

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Speaker 2: and ethical dilemmas, there's always this intense striving to do

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Speaker 2: right by everyone.

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Speaker 3: You know. This weekend, I also, in addition to watching

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Speaker 3: this episode for the first time, I also watched the

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Speaker 3: first episode with the appearance of Ricardo montalban As con

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Speaker 3: he plays a spoiler alert for this old episode. He

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Speaker 3: plays a ruthless dictator, reawakened from the twentieth century, reawakened

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Speaker 3: far in the future, and he's sort of describing his

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Speaker 3: ideals to the crew of the Enterprise, and one thing

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Speaker 3: they tell him is basically, you're not going to like

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Speaker 3: the world you've just been awakened into. And there's a

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Speaker 3: little a nice bit of humor in there. It's kind

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Speaker 3: of like we've improved many things that make the world

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Speaker 3: less amenable to the ruthless dictators among us.

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Speaker 2: That's a good point, and we'll come back to that

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Speaker 2: episode later on in the week.

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Speaker 3: Now.

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Speaker 2: How much of that optimism is present in this episode,

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Speaker 2: I would argue quite a bit because on one hand. Yes,

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Speaker 2: it's an alien threat episode, and the way they ultimately

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Speaker 2: deal with that alien threat is going to be on

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Speaker 2: par with the way alien threats are treated in most fiction.

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Speaker 2: Despite all of that, you know, they apply logic and

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Speaker 2: they apply compassion in a in what I would argue

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Speaker 2: would be, you know, the uniquely Star Trek way.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree with that, and especially to zero

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Speaker 3: in on what you say about the the deployment of

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Speaker 3: logic in the execution of the plot. That's a thing

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Speaker 3: I like in a lot of the Star Trek that

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Speaker 3: I have seen, not just logic in the sense of

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Speaker 3: being the opposite of the being being the thing that

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Speaker 3: Spock possesses, you know, not thinking emotionally, but also logic

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Speaker 3: has a process like seeing the characters methodically work through

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Speaker 3: steps in how to solve a problem, something that's often

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Speaker 3: not depicted in you know, a lot of genre fiction

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Speaker 3: where it's all action. A lot of my favorite stuff

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Speaker 3: I've seen in our track are scenes of characters like

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Speaker 3: sitting around a table discussing what they're going to do

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Speaker 3: to solve a problem.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and then as we see in this episode two,

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Speaker 2: discussing the ramifications of all that. So, yeah, it's the

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Speaker 2: kind of stuff that makes an episode like this more

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Speaker 2: memorable even after the dust is settled from the action itself.

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Speaker 2: All right, well, I'm going to provide a quick summary

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Speaker 2: of this episode, so you know, fair warning if you

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Speaker 2: haven't seen The Man Trap and you would like to

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Speaker 2: watch The Man Trap before we proceed with this episode,

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Speaker 2: and then get into some of the science, because ultimately

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Speaker 2: that's where we're headed with this. We're going to talk

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Speaker 2: about how we might interpret some of the plot elements

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Speaker 2: and the creature through the lens of natural world science.

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Speaker 2: But spoiler warning, if you want to dip out, now

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Speaker 2: watch the episode and come back, go ahead and do that.

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Speaker 2: All right, So, this is not an episode I'd ever

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Speaker 2: watched before, and in my opinion, it's a pretty fun one.

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Speaker 2: The episode having been digitally remastered, like the rest of

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Speaker 2: the original series, I believe it looks great and we

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Speaker 2: have some very vibrant colors as we orbit the mysterious

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Speaker 2: planet M one one three, as we venture into the

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Speaker 2: gel lit caverns on its surface, and even aboard the Enterprise,

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Speaker 2: we get to venture into the botany department, where we

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Speaker 2: have a bunch of really vibrantly colored plants on display.

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Speaker 3: That was one of my favorite moments. Sulu has a

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Speaker 3: Sulu has a screaming pet plant in this episode. That's

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Speaker 3: really good. That kind of works like the dogs in Terminator,

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Speaker 3: like the plant begins to scream when something is not

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Speaker 3: right with one of the people in the room.

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Speaker 2: But you're right, we do get some nice George to

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Speaker 2: Kay scenes here with his Sulu. We also get, as

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Speaker 2: we mentioned already, some nice scenes with Michelle Nichols Uhura,

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Speaker 2: and then some nice Bock scenes from with Leonard Nimoy

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Speaker 2: and then DeForest Kelly's doctor McCoy is arguably the centerpiece

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Speaker 2: of the episode, and as far as Shatner's Captain Kirk

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Speaker 2: is concerned, it's easy to look for all the cliches

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Speaker 2: in any given Kirk role, any Kirk performance, you know.

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Speaker 2: But but I don't know, I felt like he was

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Speaker 2: perfectly fine here, if not a little bit in the background.

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Speaker 2: Though I did find it amusing that the whole episode

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Speaker 2: and therefore all of Star Trek kicks off with him

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Speaker 2: being kind of a real jerk to McCoy. They're going

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Speaker 2: on this mission, as we're going to discuss, he's essentially

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Speaker 2: going to visit an X and he's a little nervous

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Speaker 2: about it, and so he says, shall we pick some flowers? Doctor?

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Speaker 2: When a man visits an old girlfriend, she usually expects

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Speaker 2: something like that, And I don't know, it just felt off, like,

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Speaker 2: oh my god, it seems like a little cruel Kirk.

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Speaker 2: By the end of the episode, I feel like maybe

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Speaker 2: they've grounded a little more in they're rapport but right

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Speaker 2: off the bat here it felt a little a little mean.

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Speaker 3: If I have a critique, one thing I'll say about

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Speaker 3: the writing in this episode is that I think it's

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Speaker 3: pretty It's pretty good, decent to good when it's on

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Speaker 3: plot and when the characters are just chit chatting, and

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Speaker 3: that's not not some of the best stuff. Yeah, and

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Speaker 3: this is an example here, But yeah. One thing I

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Speaker 3: sometimes noticed when I go back and watch these original

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Speaker 3: series episodes is that, especially because I came to the

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Speaker 3: original series cast backwards, I saw the original series cast

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Speaker 3: movies before I really ever watched any of the show.

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Speaker 3: And as I said, I still haven't seen that much

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Speaker 3: of the show. But I'm often struck by how much

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Speaker 3: more hot blooded and emotional Kirk is in the movies

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Speaker 3: than he is in the show. Usually in the show,

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Speaker 3: it seems to me like he's closer to the Spock

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Speaker 3: end of the spectrum. He's kind of cool and logical

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Speaker 3: and methodical and occasionally a bit you know, acerbic or something.

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Speaker 3: But he's not like he is in the movies, where

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Speaker 3: he's more like a hot blooded, you know, just bursting

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Speaker 3: with feeling.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he is rather casual in this episode, even

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Speaker 2: when things get stressful. You know, he's kind of cool

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Speaker 2: as a cucumber.

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Speaker 3: And by the.

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Speaker 2: Books, all right, So the basic plot summary goes as fall.

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Speaker 2: So the Enterprise is conducting a routine medical check in

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Speaker 2: with Professor Robert Crater played by Alfred Ryder and his

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Speaker 2: wife Nancy Crater played by Janine Ball on the desolate

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Speaker 2: planet of m one one three. So it's a task

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Speaker 2: that's low stakes, socially complicated again by the fact that

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Speaker 2: Nancy is McCoy's old flame from like a decade ago.

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Speaker 2: Our first hint of intrigue is that when Nancy's introduced,

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Speaker 2: she looks like a beautiful middle aged woman to Kirk,

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Speaker 2: but to McCoy, she looks at least ten years younger,

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Speaker 2: as young as he remembers her from their past relationship.

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Speaker 2: And you know that's all well and good, right. I

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Speaker 2: mean the music that there's a little music sting here

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Speaker 2: that makes us think something's not right. But still it's

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Speaker 2: subjective how you interpret someone's appearance. But then we have

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Speaker 2: this crewman Darnell with them, who is a total red

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Speaker 2: shirt even though he's wearing a blue shirt, and he

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Speaker 2: sees her as an entirely different woman, a blonde lady

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Speaker 2: that he met on Wrigley's pleasure planet.

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Speaker 3: And yeah, he actually says this out loud, and he

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Speaker 3: is like scolded by Kirk. He's like, you can't say that.

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Speaker 3: He's sent outside to think about it, think about his sins. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So we eventually come to learn that this creature killed

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Speaker 2: the real Nancy a year prior, but it took on

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Speaker 2: her form and continued on with the Professor. And I

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Speaker 2: think this is one of the more interesting wrinkles in

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Speaker 2: the plot here. So the professor knows this is not

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Speaker 2: the real Nancy. The relationship between the Professor and the

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Speaker 2: shape shifting alien is one of kind of consensual delusion

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Speaker 2: and ultimately real affection.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, because the professor is So the creature begins killing

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Speaker 3: people in the enterprise, of course, and they are the

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Speaker 3: people that the crew members are found with these weird

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Speaker 3: modeled faces. They've got these circles on their faces. And

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Speaker 3: there's a mystery plot throughout the whole middle of the

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Speaker 3: episode where Kirk and everyone are trying to figure out

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Speaker 3: what's going on with these dead people. At first they

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Speaker 3: think that they have eaten a poisonous plant on the

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Speaker 3: surface of the planet, and then they rule that out.

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Speaker 3: They say that doesn't make sense, and they realize they're

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Speaker 3: being attacked by some creature, and they think the creature

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Speaker 3: is down on the planet threatening the Professor, but then

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Speaker 3: eventually they figure out, oh, it was there with him

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Speaker 3: all along, and when he is brought on board the Enterprise,

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Speaker 3: they're trying to get his help in capturing the creature,

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Speaker 3: which is shape shifting and blending in among the crew,

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Speaker 3: you know, trying to prey on members of the crew.

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Speaker 3: But the Professor doesn't want to help because he loves

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Speaker 3: the creature, the creature that killed his real wife but

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Speaker 3: in his lonely years there on the planet. Because this

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Speaker 3: creature can assume the shape of his wife. It has

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Speaker 3: just replaced her, it has just become.

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Speaker 2: Her to yeah, and so he's like, yes, I know,

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Speaker 2: it's just it's an alien shape shifter, but it's the

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Speaker 2: closest thing I have to the person I lost. And

301
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Speaker 2: there's a sense too that the alien loves him as well,

302
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Speaker 2: like needs them as well. Yea, So it's again, the

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Speaker 2: various other treatments of this basic idea would not have

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Speaker 2: included this much compassion. But of course, yeah, like you said,

305
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Speaker 2: there's a lot of running about in disguise on the

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Speaker 2: enterprise itself, chasing salt shakers around, even because that's what

307
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Speaker 2: it wants solved. And eventually we're going to get to

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Speaker 2: the point where McCoy has to put the alien down

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Speaker 2: with a phaser and in doing so reveal its true form.

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Speaker 3: That's right, So through most of the episode, the creature

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Speaker 3: is a shape shifter, and we are only seeing it

312
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Speaker 3: in the forms it takes. It Basically, it tries to

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Speaker 3: take whatever form what it thinks would be most appealing

314
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Speaker 3: to the person it's dealing with, often someone from the

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Speaker 3: person's past, or someone who reminds them of someone from

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Speaker 3: their past or would seem familiar to them. And then

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Speaker 3: in the end you finally see what it looks like,

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Speaker 3: and it is somewhat more lockish. As we mentioned in

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Speaker 3: our episode on the Time Machine from nineteen sixty. It

320
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Speaker 3: kind of has a gray green skin, a kind of

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Speaker 3: puckered mouth with these fangs in it, and you would think, oh,

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Speaker 3: the fangs there, that's the vampire part, right, that's what

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Speaker 3: it's feeding. But now, remember the crew members who were

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Speaker 3: found dead have these circles on their skin, on their faces.

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Speaker 3: What's all that about. Well, we discover when we see

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Speaker 3: the creature's final form that the creature is using its

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Speaker 3: fingers for sucking the salt out of its victims. It

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Speaker 3: has suction cups like on the arms of an octopus,

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Speaker 3: and these are the cause of the circles and the

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Speaker 3: modeling on the face. It is attaching to the victim's face,

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Speaker 3: sucking all the salt out of the victim's body and

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Speaker 3: leaving them dead, which, by the way, I don't know

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Speaker 3: if salt can be extracted by itself in that way,

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Speaker 3: but that would absolutely kill you. You need salt to live.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of questions about the extraction

336
00:17:54,520 --> 00:17:58,120
Speaker 2: of mechanism here, but yeah, the idea that it would

337
00:17:58,160 --> 00:18:01,720
Speaker 2: be fatal absolutely checks out. Yeah, it's a pretty great

338
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Speaker 2: monster design, clearly steering firmly into the monster category. Sad

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Speaker 2: face gray here and fur suckers on those three fingers.

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Speaker 2: One wonders again what the teeth are for if it

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Speaker 2: feeds exclusively through its fingers, But I don't know, Maybe

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Speaker 2: the teeth stuck around for one reason or another.

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Speaker 3: Well, as we will discover with some of the creatures

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Speaker 3: we'll get to in the scientific portion of this episode,

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Speaker 3: it may be that this creature actually has two different

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Speaker 3: feeding mechanisms that has one for salt and another for

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Speaker 3: the energy containing macronutrients that it consumes to live. So

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Speaker 3: maybe it's getting its energy from sugars or proteins or whatever.

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Speaker 3: But then it also has salt suckers on its fingers

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Speaker 3: for the salt that it needs to survive.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, at least on its fingers. I was wondering about this.

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Speaker 2: I was thinking, well, we never I don't think we

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Speaker 2: ever see its feet or that certainly the bottoms of

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Speaker 2: its feed Might it have salt absorbing suckers down there

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Speaker 2: as well? And I would argue I think it would

356
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Speaker 2: be reasonable to expect it might, especially if on some

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Speaker 2: level salt absorption through the hands and or the feet

358
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Speaker 2: here originally evolved as a kind of passive feeding or

359
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Speaker 2: sensing from at least a partially quadrupedal organism as it

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Speaker 2: traversed its environment before it became steadily became its presumably

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Speaker 2: primary mode of ingestion its primary diet. Because we can

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Speaker 2: look to various natural world organisms that can quote unquote

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Speaker 2: taste with their feet, and that includes as we'll be

364
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Speaker 2: getting into, butterflies, flies, bees, and crayfish. Additionally, we have

365
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Speaker 2: organisms that can absorb water through drinking patches on their skin,

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Speaker 2: as we see in amphibians. And we also have the

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Speaker 2: thorny devil lizard of Australia that can draw water up

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Speaker 2: from its feet via capillary action. So all it has

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Speaker 2: to do is touch water with any part of its

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Speaker 2: body and it can channel that water. The channels in

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Speaker 2: its skin will move that water up to its mouth.

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Speaker 2: So I don't know. I like to think that it

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Speaker 2: probably has suckers on the bottoms of its feet as well.

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Speaker 3: I bet it's got suckers everywhere. I mean, why not.

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Speaker 2: I included a few images of the monster in our

376
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Speaker 2: outline here, Joe. The fourth one you'll note is apparently

377
00:20:16,720 --> 00:20:18,479
Speaker 2: you can and listeners. You can find this as well

378
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Speaker 2: as if you go to like memory alpha and look

379
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Speaker 2: up the Salt Vampire. But apparently they did a redesign

380
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Speaker 2: of this creature for the two thousand and nine Star

381
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Speaker 2: Trek film but ended up not using it.

382
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Speaker 3: Was it going to be major plot element or just

383
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Speaker 3: like a fan service cameo.

384
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Speaker 2: I guess it was more of a cameo because it

385
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Speaker 2: seemed to have never made it into even any deleted

386
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Speaker 2: scenes as far as I know. But you can see

387
00:20:42,760 --> 00:20:46,520
Speaker 2: the design here and it looks obviously updated. Still I

388
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Speaker 2: guess true enough to the original concept, but I don't know,

389
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Speaker 2: lacking that signature sad face because we should get that

390
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Speaker 2: sense of sadness. It's a survivor and the last survivor

391
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Speaker 2: of a now vanished species.

392
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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and there are many sad things in this episode.

393
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Speaker 3: For example, I think we were talking about this off mic.

394
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Speaker 3: I think we haven't said this in the episode yet.

395
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Speaker 3: There is one scene where the leaders of the Enterprise

396
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Speaker 3: are sitting around a table discussing what to do. They're

397
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Speaker 3: aware now that the shape shifting creature is among them

398
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Speaker 3: on the ship and what they're going to do to

399
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Speaker 3: stop it and the creature in disguise I believe, As

400
00:21:25,400 --> 00:21:28,560
Speaker 3: McCoy suggests, why don't we just give this creature the

401
00:21:28,600 --> 00:21:32,960
Speaker 3: salt it needs and let it go away. Yeah, and

402
00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:35,200
Speaker 3: it's already killed many of their friends at this point,

403
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Speaker 3: so maybe he's not grasping why exactly that they wouldn't

404
00:21:40,240 --> 00:21:42,680
Speaker 3: want to just let it go. But at the same time,

405
00:21:43,280 --> 00:21:47,080
Speaker 3: you get a plea for mercy essentially from the monster's

406
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Speaker 3: own lips. It's just like, it just needs the salt

407
00:21:49,200 --> 00:21:51,240
Speaker 3: to survive. Why not just give it the salt and

408
00:21:51,359 --> 00:21:51,800
Speaker 3: let it go.

409
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Speaker 2: Like it does what it needs to survive. And it's

410
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Speaker 2: also brought up we'll look at humans. Humans also historically

411
00:22:00,080 --> 00:22:01,879
Speaker 2: killed to survive and killed to eat, and so and

412
00:22:01,920 --> 00:22:04,760
Speaker 2: so forth. So yeah, we do get some nice logical

413
00:22:04,800 --> 00:22:07,760
Speaker 2: consideration here of everything. But but yeah, I kept coming

414
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Speaker 2: back to the idea. It's like this could have all

415
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Speaker 2: been avoided if we just had been honest about all

416
00:22:12,240 --> 00:22:15,080
Speaker 2: of this, and the Federation could have just supplied this

417
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Speaker 2: one creature with just unlimited salt. How much salt would

418
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Speaker 2: be required to keep it from killing people. Surely that

419
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Speaker 2: is a price that the Federation would be willing to pay.

420
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Speaker 3: Yeah, And also I would say general plausibility question. I

421
00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:30,960
Speaker 3: feel like on a barren planet like you see with

422
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Speaker 3: M one one three. Here, it would probably be harder

423
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Speaker 3: to find food than it would be to find salt.

424
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Speaker 3: The food is in like, you know, energy containing molecules.

425
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Speaker 2: And it's just also hard to imagine a world where

426
00:22:42,800 --> 00:22:46,040
Speaker 2: the salt has been used up. I was looking into this,

427
00:22:46,080 --> 00:22:48,560
Speaker 2: a little bit of salt. Yeah, where'd all the salt go?

428
00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:53,600
Speaker 2: Like again, salt is cheap and readily available in most places,

429
00:22:54,080 --> 00:22:58,200
Speaker 2: and I was reading about this in an article or

430
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Speaker 2: I guess this was a chapter in Chemistry in Science

431
00:23:00,600 --> 00:23:05,040
Speaker 2: Fiction from twenty twenty five by Carston Mueller, and the

432
00:23:05,080 --> 00:23:07,119
Speaker 2: author here points out that, yeah, we have to tweak

433
00:23:07,119 --> 00:23:10,520
Speaker 2: our interpretation of this to file it away logically. The

434
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Speaker 2: author here writes, quote, the salt requirement seems to be

435
00:23:13,600 --> 00:23:16,840
Speaker 2: so high that the species eventually became extinct because all

436
00:23:16,880 --> 00:23:19,359
Speaker 2: the salt on M one one three was used up

437
00:23:19,359 --> 00:23:22,119
Speaker 2: at some point. It can't really be used up no

438
00:23:22,160 --> 00:23:24,920
Speaker 2: matter what chemical reaction you do with salt. The sodium

439
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:28,400
Speaker 2: and chlorine atoms from which it is built remain as such,

440
00:23:28,680 --> 00:23:32,160
Speaker 2: and the total amount on the planet does not change. Nevertheless,

441
00:23:32,240 --> 00:23:34,800
Speaker 2: it is conceivable that at some point all the table

442
00:23:34,840 --> 00:23:38,200
Speaker 2: salt is used up, in the sense that we use

443
00:23:38,280 --> 00:23:41,520
Speaker 2: up water. Water is not destroyed when washing and drinking.

444
00:23:41,720 --> 00:23:45,199
Speaker 2: It is still water. However, it becomes contaminated, meaning it

445
00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:48,919
Speaker 2: is dirtier after use than before it is used up,

446
00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:51,360
Speaker 2: in the sense that it is still there but can

447
00:23:51,440 --> 00:23:54,720
Speaker 2: no longer be used immediately. Something similar could have happened

448
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:57,600
Speaker 2: with the salt on M one one three.

449
00:23:57,359 --> 00:24:01,280
Speaker 3: So some kind of planet wide contaminate process by which

450
00:24:01,359 --> 00:24:05,200
Speaker 3: all of the salt is fouled throughout the whole environment.

451
00:24:05,960 --> 00:24:08,320
Speaker 2: And I also get the sense maybe salt is more

452
00:24:08,320 --> 00:24:10,880
Speaker 2: delicious if you pull it out of a humanoid's face,

453
00:24:11,320 --> 00:24:15,280
Speaker 2: because because she only chases salt shakers around so much.

454
00:24:15,320 --> 00:24:18,159
Speaker 2: And I don't remember any comment of anybody saying that

455
00:24:18,280 --> 00:24:22,280
Speaker 2: the storehouses of salt on the enterprise have been completely depleted.

456
00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:28,960
Speaker 2: The replicators are all fried because somebody's been replicating NonStop salt. No,

457
00:24:29,000 --> 00:24:30,600
Speaker 2: it just goes straight for the face anyway.

458
00:24:30,800 --> 00:24:33,080
Speaker 3: Well, in the same way that like a teaspoon of

459
00:24:33,119 --> 00:24:36,000
Speaker 3: salt by itself is disgusting, but a teaspoon of salt

460
00:24:36,040 --> 00:24:38,960
Speaker 3: on food with other natural flavors, with some sweetness and

461
00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:41,400
Speaker 3: some acidity balancing it all out, is delicious.

462
00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:43,399
Speaker 2: You get some of the face oil in there, it

463
00:24:43,440 --> 00:24:56,120
Speaker 2: really flavors it up nicely. Right. All right, Well, let's

464
00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:58,680
Speaker 2: go ahead and make our transition out of the world

465
00:24:58,680 --> 00:25:02,320
Speaker 2: of science fiction and in to the natural world of biology. Right.

466
00:25:02,800 --> 00:25:07,000
Speaker 3: So, I found the idea of a salt vampire so intriguing.

467
00:25:07,080 --> 00:25:09,640
Speaker 3: I had to wonder, as we often do, is there

468
00:25:09,720 --> 00:25:13,240
Speaker 3: such an organism in the real world on our planet.

469
00:25:13,640 --> 00:25:17,040
Speaker 3: I think there's nothing exactly like the salt monster in

470
00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:20,119
Speaker 3: the episode, but there are things that are close, and

471
00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:23,040
Speaker 3: there are a number of fascinating animal adaptations that have

472
00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:27,520
Speaker 3: evolved in nature's desperate quest for salt. Because, as we

473
00:25:27,840 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, in the real world, salt is very important.

474
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:38,160
Speaker 3: Animals need salt. We need many dietary minerals in some quantities, magnesium, potassium,

475
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:42,119
Speaker 3: and things like that, but sodium chloride is especially important

476
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:46,080
Speaker 3: because salt is necessary for the proper functioning of nerves

477
00:25:46,080 --> 00:25:49,879
Speaker 3: and muscles. Sodium ions present in the water content of

478
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:54,600
Speaker 3: our bodies. They help us regulate fluid pressure. So if

479
00:25:54,640 --> 00:25:58,480
Speaker 3: an animal has a serious enough deficiency of salt that

480
00:25:58,560 --> 00:26:02,280
Speaker 3: will kill it. It will suffer stematic collapse and eventually die.

481
00:26:02,400 --> 00:26:04,720
Speaker 3: So again, like it's shown in the episode, if you

482
00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:06,480
Speaker 3: suck all the salt out of a person that will

483
00:26:06,560 --> 00:26:11,240
Speaker 3: kill them. Salt deficiency is not usually a problem for

484
00:26:11,320 --> 00:26:14,959
Speaker 3: humans in industrialized societies because we tend to get a

485
00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 3: lot of extra salt in our diet.

486
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:19,600
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like we're hardwired to want it because we

487
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:22,200
Speaker 2: need it, and therefore we like a lot of it.

488
00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:23,200
Speaker 3: Yeah.

489
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:25,920
Speaker 2: Think about what you had to eat during the last

490
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:29,639
Speaker 2: forty eight hours, and there was probably a fair amount

491
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:31,160
Speaker 2: of salt involved in the process.

492
00:26:31,440 --> 00:26:33,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a lot of foods we eat have some

493
00:26:33,760 --> 00:26:36,480
Speaker 3: salt content naturally, but then we add even a lot

494
00:26:36,520 --> 00:26:38,840
Speaker 3: more extra salt to that because, I mean, because it

495
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 3: tastes good, It boosts flavors, it makes things taste more

496
00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:46,479
Speaker 3: like themselves. You know, it's a great dietary additive. So

497
00:26:46,600 --> 00:26:49,480
Speaker 3: it's no mystery why chefs use a lot of salt.

498
00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:52,040
Speaker 3: You know, it is a great part of the pleasure

499
00:26:52,080 --> 00:26:55,720
Speaker 3: sensation of eating. But yeah, it's much more likely that

500
00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 3: you're getting way more salt than you need than that

501
00:26:58,600 --> 00:27:02,159
Speaker 3: you're not getting enough. Yeah, But of course there are

502
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:05,439
Speaker 3: exceptions to this. I mean, you can, for example, you know,

503
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:09,960
Speaker 3: we've talked on the show before about hyponatremia, where maybe

504
00:27:10,040 --> 00:27:13,080
Speaker 3: you go out hiking, you're sweating a lot, you're drinking

505
00:27:13,080 --> 00:27:16,440
Speaker 3: a lot of water, and you find yourself getting oh,

506
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:20,000
Speaker 3: experiencing unpleasant symptoms. Maybe you feel dizzy, you've got a headache,

507
00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:22,199
Speaker 3: you feel like, what am I dehydrated? So you just

508
00:27:22,280 --> 00:27:26,000
Speaker 3: keep drinking more water and that's not helping. In fact,

509
00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:29,760
Speaker 3: maybe you're feeling worse. And it turns out what sometimes

510
00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:31,960
Speaker 3: is happening in these cases is actually your body. You've

511
00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:34,320
Speaker 3: had too much water and not enough salt, and you've

512
00:27:34,359 --> 00:27:36,239
Speaker 3: been sweating a lot, so you're losing a lot of

513
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:38,760
Speaker 3: salt and now your body is salt deficient. You're not

514
00:27:38,880 --> 00:27:41,919
Speaker 3: like in a state of death yet, but you or

515
00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 3: you are critically low on salt and you need to

516
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:47,720
Speaker 3: eat some pretzels or something. This has actually happened to

517
00:27:47,760 --> 00:27:50,840
Speaker 3: people I know while like hiking in the desert. You

518
00:27:50,880 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 3: know they were making very they're being very careful to

519
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:56,320
Speaker 3: stay hydrated. Didn't think about the other end of the scale.

520
00:27:56,520 --> 00:28:00,960
Speaker 3: You need water in salt, but in Nate's sure also

521
00:28:01,160 --> 00:28:05,040
Speaker 3: you can run into real salt deficiency issues. And so

522
00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:07,679
Speaker 3: turning to nature, I would like to look at some

523
00:28:08,320 --> 00:28:13,080
Speaker 3: moths that crave salt and will go to shocking, disgusting

524
00:28:13,200 --> 00:28:17,439
Speaker 3: lengths to get it. So as a bit of background here,

525
00:28:17,920 --> 00:28:21,920
Speaker 3: moths are a large group of insects in the order Lepidoptera,

526
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:27,119
Speaker 3: along with their cousins, the butterflies. Exactly how to taxonomize

527
00:28:27,119 --> 00:28:29,680
Speaker 3: moths is a problem that has existed for a while,

528
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:34,240
Speaker 3: but the insects that we call moths are sometimes described

529
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:38,640
Speaker 3: as like those species of order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies.

530
00:28:39,360 --> 00:28:41,760
Speaker 3: The reality is a little more complicated because it seems

531
00:28:41,800 --> 00:28:45,600
Speaker 3: basically that butterflies are a type of moth, like butterflies

532
00:28:45,640 --> 00:28:49,640
Speaker 3: are a branch from the moth family tree. There are

533
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 3: thought to be more than one hundred and sixty thousand

534
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:56,520
Speaker 3: species of moths, most but not all, of which are nocturnal,

535
00:28:57,080 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 3: so generally moths are among the children of the night,

536
00:29:00,360 --> 00:29:03,840
Speaker 3: and along with butterflies, moths go through a multi stage

537
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:07,680
Speaker 3: life cycle where they hatch from eggs, they become caterpillars,

538
00:29:07,760 --> 00:29:11,400
Speaker 3: which are these fat larval eating machines, and then, when

539
00:29:11,440 --> 00:29:14,280
Speaker 3: sufficiently fed, they find a place to chill out and

540
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:17,920
Speaker 3: enter the pupa stage where their outside usually hardens into

541
00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:21,200
Speaker 3: a shell of some sort their insides basically turn into

542
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 3: full goo. This is called histolysis and then they reform

543
00:29:25,920 --> 00:29:29,800
Speaker 3: and emerge as a sexually mature moth with wings which

544
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:33,440
Speaker 3: will fly around mate and if female, lay eggs and

545
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 3: eventually die, and then the cycle begins again.

546
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:39,360
Speaker 2: Moths are amazing, and it is kind of interesting to

547
00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:43,760
Speaker 2: think about butterflies and moths from the human perspective. We often,

548
00:29:43,960 --> 00:29:47,160
Speaker 2: I think maybe it's because we see butterflies as denizens

549
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 2: at the day and moths as nuisances of the night.

550
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:53,160
Speaker 2: You know, we tend to go gaga over butterflies, and

551
00:29:53,240 --> 00:29:55,720
Speaker 2: maybe we find the moths a little annoying. Quit trying

552
00:29:55,760 --> 00:29:58,240
Speaker 2: to come into my house when the doors open at night.

553
00:29:58,400 --> 00:29:59,960
Speaker 3: Get awakened on the light bulb beyond.

554
00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:01,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, get away from my light bulbs and all that.

555
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:03,800
Speaker 2: But of course, I mean we've talked about some amazing

556
00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:07,959
Speaker 2: moths on here before, you know, ant colony infiltrators and

557
00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 2: so forth. And you know, it wasn't It was just

558
00:30:11,640 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 2: maybe several weeks back my wife spotted a hummingbird moth

559
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:19,400
Speaker 2: in our yard. And those are amazing. You know, at

560
00:30:19,400 --> 00:30:20,960
Speaker 2: first you think it is a hummingbird, that it is

561
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 2: in fact a moth. So there's so many amazing body

562
00:30:25,800 --> 00:30:29,120
Speaker 2: morphs and lifestyles out there among the moth kind.

563
00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:31,680
Speaker 3: Absolutely true. And I like this you went to the

564
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:34,880
Speaker 3: hummingbird moth because you know, one thing that the hummingbird

565
00:30:34,960 --> 00:30:37,520
Speaker 3: has that makes it notable, of course, is that long

566
00:30:37,680 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 3: needle like beak. And the studies that we're going to

567
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:44,240
Speaker 3: be looking at here about moths are very concerned with

568
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:48,600
Speaker 3: a moth body part that's equivalent called the prebosis. This

569
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:52,160
Speaker 3: is the elongated appendage coming off of the animal's head.

570
00:30:52,480 --> 00:30:55,720
Speaker 3: It's sort of a tubular mouth part used for feeding,

571
00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:59,800
Speaker 3: like a big hollow needle or a biological straw. Many

572
00:31:00,960 --> 00:31:04,120
Speaker 3: will use a proboss to eat, for example, to suck

573
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:08,440
Speaker 3: nectar up from inside a flower, and moths have a

574
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:12,720
Speaker 3: pis as well, which is used for various things. To

575
00:31:12,920 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 3: kick off this spooky moth journey, I want to begin

576
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:18,920
Speaker 3: by looking at some papers I found from the late

577
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:25,080
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties by a Swiss entomologist named Hans Bonsicker, at

578
00:31:25,080 --> 00:31:28,640
Speaker 3: the time affiliated with the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich,

579
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:33,440
Speaker 3: who seems to have specialized in moths. And this part

580
00:31:33,480 --> 00:31:35,160
Speaker 3: was what made me think we've really got to talk

581
00:31:35,160 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 3: about these papers specialized in letting moths access his own

582
00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:44,200
Speaker 3: personal body fluids with biological equipment that seems to come

583
00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:47,600
Speaker 3: from the hell raiser universe. So the first paper I

584
00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:51,160
Speaker 3: want to look at is from nineteen sixty nine. This

585
00:31:51,320 --> 00:31:54,360
Speaker 3: was published in the Journal of Medical Entomology by Hans

586
00:31:54,440 --> 00:31:58,240
Speaker 3: Bonsiker and a co author named Wilhelm Buteker, and it's

587
00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:04,320
Speaker 3: called Records of I Frequenting Lepidoptera from Man. The authors

588
00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 3: start this paper off by discussing a curious observation among

589
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:12,440
Speaker 3: a big family of moths. The first ones they identify

590
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:16,160
Speaker 3: are the ones called the noctuids. A number of species

591
00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:22,200
Speaker 3: of noctuid moths have been observed swarming around the eyes

592
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:27,280
Speaker 3: of large vertebrate animals. This is not just in one

593
00:32:27,360 --> 00:32:31,360
Speaker 3: place or in one species. It's a semi global phenomenon.

594
00:32:31,400 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 3: It's been documented among various noctuids in South Africa, in

595
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:41,400
Speaker 3: modern day Tanzania, in Cambodia, Thailand, India, and elsewhere sins

596
00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:45,480
Speaker 3: throughout Africa and Asia. What kind of animalized do these

597
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:49,040
Speaker 3: moths seek out? Well, they don't seem to be super picky,

598
00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 3: as the ice warming has been observed in domestic cattle, sheep, deer,

599
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:59,280
Speaker 3: water buffalo, pigs, antelope, mules, horses, and elephants. It seems

600
00:32:59,320 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 3: the most common observations are in bovines like cows, and

601
00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 3: the authors note that there are some cases where you'd

602
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:08,640
Speaker 3: come up on a single cow and it would have

603
00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:12,120
Speaker 3: literally a dozen moths crowded around the edge of a

604
00:33:12,160 --> 00:33:15,160
Speaker 3: single eye at one time. So it's like, imagine, you know,

605
00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:18,600
Speaker 3: animals crowded around a shrinking watering hole in the desert,

606
00:33:18,920 --> 00:33:22,240
Speaker 3: but just moths around a cow's eye. Now, why would

607
00:33:22,280 --> 00:33:25,240
Speaker 3: a moth want to land on a cow's eye or

608
00:33:25,320 --> 00:33:27,840
Speaker 3: a pig's eye or an elephant's eye and try to

609
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:32,360
Speaker 3: hang out there, wouldn't delicate. Moths usually want to avoid

610
00:33:32,600 --> 00:33:36,720
Speaker 3: large animals entirely for fear of being eaten or swatted

611
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:39,480
Speaker 3: or crushed. You would think this is the danger zone

612
00:33:39,520 --> 00:33:39,840
Speaker 3: for them.

613
00:33:39,920 --> 00:33:42,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you would think stay away from the large

614
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:46,240
Speaker 2: creatures that you know, they might not have opposable thumbs

615
00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:48,880
Speaker 2: and fingers to swat at their own faces, but they

616
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:51,640
Speaker 2: still have ways of fighting you off. But you know,

617
00:33:52,040 --> 00:33:54,120
Speaker 2: an elephant that certainly can use that trunk.

618
00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:56,760
Speaker 3: I mean they could certainly just shake around, yeah, I

619
00:33:56,840 --> 00:33:58,960
Speaker 3: mean yeah, they could roll over on you. Like, yeah,

620
00:34:00,360 --> 00:34:02,960
Speaker 3: these are big, These animals are big compared to you like.

621
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:05,680
Speaker 3: It seems evident there must be something of value to

622
00:34:05,800 --> 00:34:09,160
Speaker 3: the moth around the animal's eye that would justify the

623
00:34:09,280 --> 00:34:12,520
Speaker 3: risk of doing like the human equivalent of parachute landing

624
00:34:12,560 --> 00:34:17,480
Speaker 3: on Godzilla's face. Yeah. So the authors note what the

625
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:20,680
Speaker 3: draw for the moth seems to be, and it is

626
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 3: lachrymal secretions aka tears. These moths are crawling up to

627
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:31,520
Speaker 3: the elephant's eye or the pig's eye to drink its tears.

628
00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:35,440
Speaker 2: That it's suffering. They want the suffering.

629
00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:39,320
Speaker 3: The suffering may or may not be incidental. Actually, the

630
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:41,799
Speaker 3: suffering it does seem to me to be part of

631
00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:44,759
Speaker 3: the process, because because you've got to you've got to

632
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:46,959
Speaker 3: kind of make sure that the eyes are watering enough.

633
00:34:48,840 --> 00:34:52,640
Speaker 3: So they also note that some species of lepidoptera have

634
00:34:52,680 --> 00:34:56,160
Speaker 3: been found with traces of blood detected in their stomachs.

635
00:34:56,160 --> 00:34:58,640
Speaker 3: We'll come back to that in just a bit, but

636
00:34:58,719 --> 00:35:01,360
Speaker 3: the real focus of this paper begins with a curious,

637
00:35:01,480 --> 00:35:07,000
Speaker 3: almost offhand comment. So Bonziger and Bueker write, quote, during

638
00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:11,200
Speaker 3: nocturnal field studies of the biology, behavior, etc. Of eye

639
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:15,880
Speaker 3: frequenting lepidoptera infesting mammals, it often happens that such moths

640
00:35:16,239 --> 00:35:18,920
Speaker 3: fly about near the face of the human observer and

641
00:35:18,960 --> 00:35:22,680
Speaker 3: try to alight at its eyes. My god, I love

642
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 3: when I'm reading of like an older biology paper and

643
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:29,120
Speaker 3: you get to a comment like this and it's like

644
00:35:29,160 --> 00:35:31,960
Speaker 3: at the beginning of the experimental section, and you can

645
00:35:32,040 --> 00:35:33,919
Speaker 3: start to feel it shifting. It's like, is this going

646
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:37,120
Speaker 3: where I think it's going? Yes, it is. The rest

647
00:35:37,160 --> 00:35:41,520
Speaker 3: of this paper is about observations of these moths trying

648
00:35:41,560 --> 00:35:44,880
Speaker 3: to get access to human eyes and the author just

649
00:35:45,000 --> 00:35:48,280
Speaker 3: letting them going the extra step and seeing what happens

650
00:35:48,280 --> 00:35:50,920
Speaker 3: if he lets the moths go. So I'm going to

651
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 3: read from a few of these examples experienced by the authors,

652
00:35:54,120 --> 00:35:59,319
Speaker 3: mainly Bounziger himself, but also there's some experiences described by

653
00:35:59,360 --> 00:36:03,760
Speaker 3: his like his co authors and employees and collaborators. Warning,

654
00:36:03,760 --> 00:36:05,839
Speaker 3: there is some eye quick coming, and.

655
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:07,520
Speaker 2: I want to go ahead and front load a little

656
00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:09,719
Speaker 2: additional squick here. We'll get into this, but I just

657
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:13,680
Speaker 2: want to remind everyone butterflies don't just land on flowers.

658
00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:18,480
Speaker 2: Moths don't just land on around light bulbs. These creatures

659
00:36:18,560 --> 00:36:21,760
Speaker 2: land on very gross things. So keep that in mind

660
00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:24,360
Speaker 2: when all the eyeball drinking takes place.

661
00:36:24,680 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 3: That's part of this paper's conclusion. Actually, so yeah, So

662
00:36:29,800 --> 00:36:32,839
Speaker 3: first case he describes. This takes place in Waglek, which

663
00:36:32,880 --> 00:36:37,279
Speaker 3: is in central Thailand, in August nineteen sixty five. And

664
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:40,240
Speaker 3: this is Hans Bonseiger talking about his own experience. He says, quote,

665
00:36:40,719 --> 00:36:43,840
Speaker 3: while I was collecting specimens of three different eye frequenting

666
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 3: species Lobocraspus greasifusa filodes ful of A dorsalus and Pionea

667
00:36:51,920 --> 00:36:55,680
Speaker 3: or Reo lalie in a herd of cattle. The latter

668
00:36:55,880 --> 00:37:00,480
Speaker 3: pyrolid made continuous attempts for several minutes to alight on face.

669
00:37:01,040 --> 00:37:04,160
Speaker 3: Finally it alighted on my left cheek near the nose

670
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:07,239
Speaker 3: and started immediately to climb to the lower eyelid, where

671
00:37:07,280 --> 00:37:11,600
Speaker 3: it imbibed the lachrymal secretion for about fifteen seconds. The

672
00:37:11,600 --> 00:37:14,800
Speaker 3: probosis of the of the moth could be felt probing

673
00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:19,320
Speaker 3: over the eye's surface. The eye produced a considerable flow

674
00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:23,919
Speaker 3: of lachrymation, and the irritation caused by the moth was uncomfortable,

675
00:37:24,120 --> 00:37:27,719
Speaker 3: although not at all painful. The moth remained feeding for

676
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:31,840
Speaker 3: fifteen seconds, after which it was collected for identification and fixation.

677
00:37:32,160 --> 00:37:37,080
Speaker 3: Prior to dissection, so joke's on you, moth. Then he

678
00:37:37,120 --> 00:37:41,080
Speaker 3: describes another case, this next one at the Chengmai Zoological

679
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:44,560
Speaker 3: Gardens in northern Thailand. This is October nineteen sixty five,

680
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:48,120
Speaker 3: where he says he's collecting some eye frequenting moths from

681
00:37:48,160 --> 00:37:51,360
Speaker 3: the enclosure of a sambar deer. He says one of

682
00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:55,400
Speaker 3: the moths suddenly landed on his lips Bonzicker's lips, not

683
00:37:55,440 --> 00:37:59,360
Speaker 3: the deer's, started trying to insert its probossis into his nose,

684
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:02,360
Speaker 3: and then after trying this for a few seconds, it

685
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:05,760
Speaker 3: crawled up to his left eye started stabbing his eyelid

686
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:08,839
Speaker 3: and his eyeball with its psis at intervals of one

687
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 3: to two seconds, which caused Bensaker to tear up, and

688
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 3: then the moth drank the tears quote. The painful effects

689
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:18,920
Speaker 3: could be described as resembling the pricks of minute pins

690
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 3: on the surface of the eye, not the lid, although

691
00:38:22,080 --> 00:38:25,840
Speaker 3: thes was felt on the eyelids too, and it drank

692
00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:28,440
Speaker 3: his tears for about three minutes and then flew away.

693
00:38:29,360 --> 00:38:33,160
Speaker 3: There are a lot more accounts, both again both firsthand

694
00:38:33,320 --> 00:38:36,759
Speaker 3: of the author and collaborators and employees, where the moth

695
00:38:36,800 --> 00:38:41,120
Speaker 3: attacks the eye. It inserts the feedings into or round

696
00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:44,560
Speaker 3: the like into the eye around the eyelid, it stabs

697
00:38:44,640 --> 00:38:48,840
Speaker 3: or scrapes for several minutes, causing varying degrees of pain, irritation,

698
00:38:49,040 --> 00:38:51,719
Speaker 3: and tearing up. And then eventually it gets enough and

699
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:52,600
Speaker 3: it flies away.

700
00:38:53,320 --> 00:38:55,759
Speaker 2: Even in the name of science, it just feels like

701
00:38:55,760 --> 00:38:56,880
Speaker 2: you're being way too lenient.

702
00:38:56,960 --> 00:39:00,000
Speaker 3: Here. There's one final case. I have to mention this.

703
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:02,600
Speaker 3: This is the best one. This is the sixth case

704
00:39:02,600 --> 00:39:06,600
Speaker 3: he describes. This was in northern Thailand in October nineteen

705
00:39:06,640 --> 00:39:08,680
Speaker 3: sixty six. And I'm just going to read from his

706
00:39:09,239 --> 00:39:13,880
Speaker 3: description here quote in this experiment in my bungalow, I

707
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:18,120
Speaker 3: kept he mentioned two species of eye frequenting moths in

708
00:39:18,239 --> 00:39:21,520
Speaker 3: my mosquito net for about fifty hours without offering them

709
00:39:21,520 --> 00:39:22,080
Speaker 3: any food.

710
00:39:22,239 --> 00:39:22,520
Speaker 2: Oh No.

711
00:39:22,880 --> 00:39:26,000
Speaker 3: After having slept the entire night undisturbed by the moths,

712
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:29,240
Speaker 3: I was attacked in the early morning by L. Grisifusa.

713
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:32,279
Speaker 3: I suddenly tried to drive the moth away, but it

714
00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:35,760
Speaker 3: returned instantly and endeavored to attach itself near my nose,

715
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:39,600
Speaker 3: lips or ears. After a few minutes of unsuccessful probing,

716
00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:42,680
Speaker 3: it located my left eye and immediately started to feed,

717
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:47,400
Speaker 3: remaining quietly below the eyelid. I felt the usual irritating

718
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:50,319
Speaker 3: stings of short duration and closed my eyes in order

719
00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:52,440
Speaker 3: to find out whether this would cause the moth to

720
00:39:52,480 --> 00:39:55,640
Speaker 3: withdraw its per bosses. Interesting experiment, close your eyes, see

721
00:39:55,680 --> 00:39:57,759
Speaker 3: what it does. I would have thought that he would

722
00:39:57,760 --> 00:40:00,400
Speaker 3: have closed his eyes in one of the earlier experiments,

723
00:40:00,400 --> 00:40:03,319
Speaker 3: like he was able to resist earlier. But he goes on.

724
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 3: He's like, I'm gonna try closing my eyes. See what happens.

725
00:40:06,520 --> 00:40:06,920
Speaker 2: Quote.

726
00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:10,359
Speaker 3: However, the insect continued to suck from the eyelid from

727
00:40:10,440 --> 00:40:14,000
Speaker 3: whence I felt extremely sharp pain, which could be compared

728
00:40:14,040 --> 00:40:17,960
Speaker 3: with gradually penetrating stings. Whenever I opened my eyes, the

729
00:40:17,960 --> 00:40:20,560
Speaker 3: pains were felt on the surface of the eye. When

730
00:40:20,560 --> 00:40:23,759
Speaker 3: I closed them again, the moth resumed feeding on the lid.

731
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:26,359
Speaker 3: The pains were relatively slight at the beginning of each

732
00:40:26,400 --> 00:40:29,520
Speaker 3: resumption of feeding on the lid, but they commenced immediately

733
00:40:29,600 --> 00:40:33,640
Speaker 3: and increased in strength considerably as feeding continued. The lacrymal

734
00:40:33,680 --> 00:40:37,440
Speaker 3: secretion was very much stimulated by the activity of the money,

735
00:40:37,560 --> 00:40:42,280
Speaker 3: so I cried a lot. I cried so much. After

736
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:45,360
Speaker 3: thirty minutes, my eye was so irritated that I was

737
00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:49,160
Speaker 3: forced to interrupt the experiment. A red discoloration of the

738
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:51,920
Speaker 3: eye and the inner side of the eyelid was then apparent.

739
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:55,560
Speaker 3: The inflammation lasted for the entire day, during which difficulty

740
00:40:55,640 --> 00:40:57,840
Speaker 3: was experienced in keeping the eye open.

741
00:40:58,040 --> 00:40:58,800
Speaker 2: Oh my lord.

742
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:02,759
Speaker 3: And then he's got selfies in nineteen sixty whatever, this

743
00:41:02,920 --> 00:41:05,880
Speaker 3: is the sixties. It's got selfies of the author with

744
00:41:05,960 --> 00:41:09,319
Speaker 3: a moth in his eye with the preposis stabbing in.

745
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:12,879
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and the second photo especially looking pretty rough.

746
00:41:13,200 --> 00:41:17,040
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyway, So the authors document a bunch of these

747
00:41:17,080 --> 00:41:20,560
Speaker 3: attacks on eyeballs of animals and humans, and they make

748
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:22,640
Speaker 3: a few general comments at the end of the paper.

749
00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:26,120
Speaker 3: They say the attacks would be infrequent. You know, it's

750
00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 3: not all the time, and it doesn't seem to be

751
00:41:28,760 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 3: all of the individuals of this species. Sometimes you might

752
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:36,239
Speaker 3: get no attacks for weeks, sometimes multiple attacks in the

753
00:41:36,280 --> 00:41:41,439
Speaker 3: same night. Some species seem to explore the face more,

754
00:41:41,640 --> 00:41:45,360
Speaker 3: crawling around to various wet spots or spots of dried

755
00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:47,759
Speaker 3: secretions on the face. I think that would mean like

756
00:41:47,840 --> 00:41:52,759
Speaker 3: snot or sweat or saliva before tending to gravitate toward

757
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:55,880
Speaker 3: the eye. Others are more like a heat seeking missile

758
00:41:55,960 --> 00:42:00,280
Speaker 3: straight to the eye, no funny business. Different species produce

759
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:03,879
Speaker 3: different levels of pain, only some seem to be able

760
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:06,719
Speaker 3: to attack through closed lids, like he was talking about

761
00:42:06,719 --> 00:42:10,600
Speaker 3: in the in the mosquito net example. And the authors

762
00:42:11,160 --> 00:42:15,120
Speaker 3: note the relevance of this behavior to animal and human epidemiology.

763
00:42:15,200 --> 00:42:18,000
Speaker 3: They say insects like this may actually be an important

764
00:42:18,120 --> 00:42:21,600
Speaker 3: vector for infection. They say, some of the moths that

765
00:42:21,680 --> 00:42:24,759
Speaker 3: feed on mammal eyes may also be sticking their PERBOSSI

766
00:42:25,360 --> 00:42:28,040
Speaker 3: if that's the plural, I guess their you know, nose parts,

767
00:42:28,080 --> 00:42:32,479
Speaker 3: their mouthparts, into animal dung, into decaying organic matter such

768
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:35,719
Speaker 3: as rotting bodies. Those those tubes are going in all

769
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:36,560
Speaker 3: kinds of stuff.

770
00:42:36,760 --> 00:42:39,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they're gross. This is this is This is

771
00:42:39,360 --> 00:42:41,960
Speaker 2: butterflies and moths. By the way, so don't don't think

772
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:45,600
Speaker 2: for a second that your daytime butterflies are are are

773
00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 2: somehow immune to this behavior.

774
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:50,600
Speaker 3: My daughter actually has a children's book that we received

775
00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:53,800
Speaker 3: as a gift from our coworker, Tracy Wilson, of stuff

776
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:56,600
Speaker 3: you missed in history class called butterflies are pretty gross.

777
00:42:56,800 --> 00:42:58,760
Speaker 3: That's about how they're pretty and they're gross.

778
00:42:58,800 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 2: Oh that's awesome.

779
00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:03,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it is a great book, and it has

780
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:05,120
Speaker 3: all kinds of stuff about this in it. They are

781
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:11,120
Speaker 3: pretty gross anyway. This tear drinking activity is known as lacrifaggy,

782
00:43:12,080 --> 00:43:15,200
Speaker 3: which comes from the words meaning tear eating tear consumption.

783
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:19,680
Speaker 3: It is seen most often in moths and butterflies, but

784
00:43:19,760 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 3: it has also been observed in flies and some bees.

785
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:27,319
Speaker 3: And while tears contain some amount of protein and other

786
00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:32,239
Speaker 3: dietary nutrients, entomologists generally think that one of the main

787
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:35,239
Speaker 3: reasons for drinking tears. This brings us back to the

788
00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:40,080
Speaker 3: salt monster is to acquire sodium. Fluids that come from

789
00:43:40,120 --> 00:43:43,239
Speaker 3: animal bodies are salty. They have to be for the

790
00:43:43,280 --> 00:43:47,080
Speaker 3: reasons we talked about earlier. Salt is so important for

791
00:43:47,160 --> 00:43:50,640
Speaker 3: the functioning of muscles and nerve cells and fluid maintenance.

792
00:43:51,520 --> 00:43:55,120
Speaker 3: It is not very hard for carnivorous animals to get

793
00:43:55,160 --> 00:43:58,600
Speaker 3: the salt they need because animal bodies are salty, so

794
00:43:58,680 --> 00:44:03,640
Speaker 3: if you eat animals, get salt naturally from your diet. Herbivores,

795
00:44:03,680 --> 00:44:06,760
Speaker 3: on the other hand, are often at the more desperate

796
00:44:06,840 --> 00:44:09,200
Speaker 3: end of the quest for salt. Plants tend to be

797
00:44:09,280 --> 00:44:13,080
Speaker 3: low in sodium content, so herbivores have to find other

798
00:44:13,239 --> 00:44:15,840
Speaker 3: ways to acquire salt from the environment.

799
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:19,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then that leads to the reality of salt

800
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:26,919
Speaker 2: licks various herbivores seeking out salt even in caves over

801
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:30,160
Speaker 2: vast distances. I imagine a number of you have seen

802
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:33,800
Speaker 2: documentary footage at this point of elephants seeking out salt

803
00:44:33,880 --> 00:44:37,800
Speaker 2: and caves. It's quite remarkable. But yeah, when you understand

804
00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:41,400
Speaker 2: that it's just not as potent a part of their

805
00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:44,279
Speaker 2: natural diet, you understand why they have to supplement it

806
00:44:44,320 --> 00:44:46,880
Speaker 2: this way. And sometimes carnivores of course have to supplement

807
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:50,839
Speaker 2: as well. But when they eat the meat they get the.

808
00:44:50,840 --> 00:44:54,800
Speaker 3: Salt, right, But tears, drinking moss, if they eat anything

809
00:44:54,840 --> 00:44:58,080
Speaker 3: other than tears in their winged adult stage, they're herbivores,

810
00:44:58,120 --> 00:45:01,799
Speaker 3: so they need the salt. Now, of course, tears are

811
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:05,680
Speaker 3: not the only way to get extra salt. There are

812
00:45:05,840 --> 00:45:08,800
Speaker 3: other places in insect could probe if looking for salt.

813
00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:12,720
Speaker 3: And that brings me to something called the vampire moth.

814
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:16,320
Speaker 3: I think this might be the closest example in nature

815
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:20,400
Speaker 3: to something like the salt vampire from Star Trek. The

816
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 3: term vampire moth has been used to refer to several

817
00:45:23,560 --> 00:45:27,760
Speaker 3: species of the moth genus Calyptra, most often the species

818
00:45:27,840 --> 00:45:32,160
Speaker 3: Calyptra the leak tree. These are moths mostly found in

819
00:45:32,200 --> 00:45:37,000
Speaker 3: tropical and subtropical Asia that yes, actually do drink blood.

820
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:40,560
Speaker 3: And by golly, you know what, I found a paper

821
00:45:40,760 --> 00:45:44,480
Speaker 3: from the sixties where good old Hans Bonsinger is like,

822
00:45:44,560 --> 00:45:46,719
Speaker 3: what happens if I let one of these guys go

823
00:45:46,800 --> 00:45:47,880
Speaker 3: to town on my flesh?

824
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:50,600
Speaker 2: Oh? My god, he is just far too lenient. Of

825
00:45:50,640 --> 00:45:51,600
Speaker 2: course it's this guy.

826
00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:56,720
Speaker 3: The paper is called Preliminary Observations on a skin piercing

827
00:45:56,760 --> 00:46:01,680
Speaker 3: blood sucking Moth. He gives the taxonomy in Malaya. This

828
00:46:01,719 --> 00:46:05,359
Speaker 3: is in the Bulletin of Entomological Research nineteen sixty eight.

829
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:08,400
Speaker 3: So this paper starts off with the author talking about how,

830
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:13,279
Speaker 3: among some of the eye frequenting moths discussed previously, dead

831
00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:16,880
Speaker 3: specimens have been found with blood in their stomachs. Remember

832
00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 3: that it came up last time. How'd that get there?

833
00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:24,839
Speaker 3: What's that doing there? Well? Entomologists observed the answer in

834
00:46:24,920 --> 00:46:28,319
Speaker 3: field work in Southeast Asia between nineteen sixty five and

835
00:46:28,400 --> 00:46:32,560
Speaker 3: sixty seven, where they saw firsthand two different kinds of

836
00:46:32,680 --> 00:46:36,800
Speaker 3: blood consuming behavior in moths, what the authors call blood

837
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:43,440
Speaker 3: suckers and skin lickers. Bloodsuckers have a strong probosis, which

838
00:46:43,520 --> 00:46:46,600
Speaker 3: pierces animal skin like a needle, allowing them to suck

839
00:46:46,680 --> 00:46:50,480
Speaker 3: blood out like a mosquito, except these moths are, of

840
00:46:50,480 --> 00:46:53,880
Speaker 3: course larger than mosquitos, so you know you're dealing with

841
00:46:54,360 --> 00:46:59,360
Speaker 3: a meteor kind of piercing organ. Usually, skin lickers, on

842
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:03,480
Speaker 3: the other hand, tend to have a weaker incapable of

843
00:47:03,520 --> 00:47:06,960
Speaker 3: punching through an animal skin, and these moths instead get

844
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:10,240
Speaker 3: their blood either by sucking it from an open wound

845
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:15,480
Speaker 3: or by sucking up little droplets left behind on a

846
00:47:15,520 --> 00:47:19,640
Speaker 3: mammal's skin by mosquitos, kind of a mosquito cleanup crew.

847
00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:23,640
Speaker 3: And some of these skin liquors, by the way, also

848
00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:25,759
Speaker 3: drink tears from the eyes, like the ones we talked

849
00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:30,640
Speaker 3: about earlier, so they're multiple strategies. This paper is particularly

850
00:47:30,680 --> 00:47:37,319
Speaker 3: focused on a blood sucking moth called Calyptra eustragatta. This

851
00:47:37,440 --> 00:47:40,799
Speaker 3: kind has a powerfuls that can puncture skin and suck

852
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 3: blood directly, and these moths have been observed to drink

853
00:47:44,160 --> 00:47:48,560
Speaker 3: blood from large mammals like deer, antelope, water buffalo, and

854
00:47:48,640 --> 00:47:53,560
Speaker 3: the tapier. After cataloging field observations, the author is like

855
00:47:53,640 --> 00:47:57,439
Speaker 3: reaider Yes yes, I will let this moth suck my blood.

856
00:47:57,880 --> 00:47:59,759
Speaker 3: And so here once again, I just have to read

857
00:47:59,760 --> 00:48:02,480
Speaker 3: from Manziger's first hand account of how he gets it

858
00:48:02,520 --> 00:48:07,880
Speaker 3: to drink his blood. He says, quote by breathing upon

859
00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:11,600
Speaker 3: the moths, their attention was drawn to moistened fingers held

860
00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:16,719
Speaker 3: inside the cages. There's some kind of almost romantic about that,

861
00:48:17,239 --> 00:48:21,120
Speaker 3: I guess. Yeah. Anyway, as soon as the moth encountered

862
00:48:21,160 --> 00:48:23,800
Speaker 3: the fingers, it settled on one of them and began

863
00:48:23,840 --> 00:48:27,520
Speaker 3: to palpate the skin with its psis, and shortly thereafter

864
00:48:27,719 --> 00:48:31,200
Speaker 3: thrust the prosis vertically against the skin and tried to

865
00:48:31,280 --> 00:48:34,759
Speaker 3: pierce it. The spots most commonly pierced appeared to be

866
00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:39,120
Speaker 3: the pores of the hairs. The dagger shaped, sclerotized tip

867
00:48:39,200 --> 00:48:41,960
Speaker 3: of the psis was pressed against the skin, so the

868
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:46,160
Speaker 3: whole posis became curved. At the same time, the moth's

869
00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:49,719
Speaker 3: head began to oscillate, rather like the balance wheel of

870
00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:53,040
Speaker 3: a watch. This movement induced the middle part of the

871
00:48:53,040 --> 00:48:57,120
Speaker 3: probosis to vibrate so rapidly that the whole resembled a spindle.

872
00:48:57,960 --> 00:49:01,480
Speaker 3: Whenever the skin proved impended trouble, the moth tried again

873
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:05,359
Speaker 3: at another point nearby. As soon as the probossis successfully

874
00:49:05,400 --> 00:49:09,080
Speaker 3: perforated the skin, the subject felt strong, burning pines, which

875
00:49:09,080 --> 00:49:12,160
Speaker 3: were described as being like those caused by a hot needle.

876
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:16,280
Speaker 3: Thereafter the rate of penetration was more rapid, probably because

877
00:49:16,320 --> 00:49:19,920
Speaker 3: the tissue encountered was softer and the sawing mechanism worked

878
00:49:19,960 --> 00:49:23,560
Speaker 3: more efficiently as the barbs of the possis gripped the tissues.

879
00:49:24,160 --> 00:49:28,480
Speaker 3: Once inserted, the probossis remained straight whilst the oscillating movements

880
00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:31,400
Speaker 3: of the head continued. It was possible to study the

881
00:49:31,440 --> 00:49:34,759
Speaker 3: working of the mouth parts with a magnifying glass. When

882
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:37,440
Speaker 3: they were in operation. The two halves of the probosis

883
00:49:37,520 --> 00:49:41,600
Speaker 3: moved rapidly along their longer axis in opposite directions. This

884
00:49:41,719 --> 00:49:46,000
Speaker 3: mechanism was effective provided that the outset sufficient force could

885
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:49,080
Speaker 3: be brought to bear to thrust the probossis into the tissues,

886
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:53,040
Speaker 3: because one half of the probossis could then anchor itself

887
00:49:53,080 --> 00:49:57,040
Speaker 3: within the tissues whilst the other penetrated more deeply. It

888
00:49:57,120 --> 00:50:00,359
Speaker 3: goes on describing the action the oscillating motion of the head,

889
00:50:01,040 --> 00:50:03,840
Speaker 3: the boring action of the probossis going up and down

890
00:50:04,080 --> 00:50:08,120
Speaker 3: at regular intervals with a hole in the skin. There's

891
00:50:08,160 --> 00:50:10,720
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff about the fluids here, like sometimes

892
00:50:10,800 --> 00:50:13,520
Speaker 3: the moth is leaking some saliva out around the wound.

893
00:50:14,080 --> 00:50:17,480
Speaker 3: Sometimes some blood gets out, like it maybe regurgitates some

894
00:50:17,560 --> 00:50:21,399
Speaker 3: blood and then sucks it back up. He says, Yeah,

895
00:50:21,440 --> 00:50:24,680
Speaker 3: after the blood was regurgitated, it was quickly re ingested.

896
00:50:25,360 --> 00:50:28,960
Speaker 3: The sawing motion continues, So there's a lot going on here.

897
00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:32,120
Speaker 3: It is a laborious process from the moth's point of view,

898
00:50:32,680 --> 00:50:35,920
Speaker 3: and apparently feels like a hot needle going into the skin.

899
00:50:36,719 --> 00:50:41,000
Speaker 3: Bonseker did this twenty six times. In sixteen of those times,

900
00:50:41,040 --> 00:50:44,320
Speaker 3: the moth sucked his blood. In four the moth sucked

901
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:47,319
Speaker 3: blood from an existing open wound that he made with

902
00:50:47,360 --> 00:50:51,600
Speaker 3: a knife. In six cases, the moth did not seem

903
00:50:51,640 --> 00:50:54,040
Speaker 3: to care. It either did not pierce his skin because

904
00:50:54,040 --> 00:50:58,880
Speaker 3: it wasn't trying or because it it wasn't able to. Eventually,

905
00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:01,680
Speaker 3: in each case the w would start to swell. He says.

906
00:51:01,719 --> 00:51:05,520
Speaker 3: The penetration was generally about six millimeters deep, and across

907
00:51:05,560 --> 00:51:08,640
Speaker 3: these different feeding events, bloodsucking went on anywhere from ten

908
00:51:08,719 --> 00:51:21,799
Speaker 3: to sixty minutes. Now, the really interesting thing about these

909
00:51:21,840 --> 00:51:26,680
Speaker 3: bloodsucking vampire moths is that they come from taxa from

910
00:51:26,719 --> 00:51:31,400
Speaker 3: insect groups that typically use their sharp mouth parts to

911
00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:37,000
Speaker 3: pierce and suck fruit, not animal flesh, and even Calyptra

912
00:51:37,320 --> 00:51:41,640
Speaker 3: eustrogata itself has been observed piercing fruit, so these are

913
00:51:41,680 --> 00:51:46,200
Speaker 3: also fruit suckers in addition to being bloodsuckers. The author

914
00:51:46,360 --> 00:51:50,120
Speaker 3: argues it is likely that these vampire moths evolved the

915
00:51:50,160 --> 00:51:54,960
Speaker 3: blood sucking behavior as a repurposing of adaptations that were

916
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:58,880
Speaker 3: originally for fruit sucking, and there are a couple of

917
00:51:58,920 --> 00:52:02,920
Speaker 3: possible benefits to switching from fruit to blood, or at

918
00:52:03,000 --> 00:52:07,120
Speaker 3: least adding blood to the repertoire of your fruit piercing behaviors.

919
00:52:07,719 --> 00:52:10,200
Speaker 3: First of all, ripe fruit can in some cases be

920
00:52:10,320 --> 00:52:13,320
Speaker 3: seasonally limited. Animal blood is going to be available throughout

921
00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:18,080
Speaker 3: the year generally, and also blood has some things that

922
00:52:18,160 --> 00:52:20,640
Speaker 3: you don't usually get in fruit. It's likely to have

923
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:25,160
Speaker 3: some protein that is not present in fruit, and precious salts.

924
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:30,400
Speaker 3: So again, most moths are herbivores. As with other herbivores,

925
00:52:30,440 --> 00:52:34,759
Speaker 3: acquiring salt is a major concern, and whether through tears

926
00:52:34,960 --> 00:52:38,400
Speaker 3: or blood, animal body fluids are an excellent place for

927
00:52:38,560 --> 00:52:43,600
Speaker 3: otherwise herbivorous animals to stock up on salt. Now the

928
00:52:43,680 --> 00:52:47,319
Speaker 3: question is how did these different behaviors evolve. We looked

929
00:52:47,360 --> 00:52:51,080
Speaker 3: at the idea that blood drinking is probably an exaptation

930
00:52:51,200 --> 00:52:54,399
Speaker 3: of mouthparts originally used to pierce and suck juices from

931
00:52:54,520 --> 00:52:57,919
Speaker 3: ripe fruits. But when we go back to the tear

932
00:52:58,040 --> 00:53:03,440
Speaker 3: drinking example, a commonly accepted theory is that lacriphagia evolved

933
00:53:03,480 --> 00:53:08,759
Speaker 3: from mud puddling behavior, where these lepidopterrines, these moths and

934
00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:12,240
Speaker 3: butterflies would get salts and other nutrients by consuming mud

935
00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:15,799
Speaker 3: or damp soil because generally there is some salt in

936
00:53:15,840 --> 00:53:16,360
Speaker 3: the soil.

937
00:53:17,040 --> 00:53:19,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is something you can observe on nature walks.

938
00:53:19,840 --> 00:53:22,440
Speaker 2: There'll be some like gross mud and the butterflies are

939
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:24,600
Speaker 2: all over it or the moths are on it, you know.

940
00:53:25,239 --> 00:53:28,160
Speaker 2: And it's my understanding too that the term puddling is

941
00:53:28,239 --> 00:53:30,880
Speaker 2: kind of a catch all for not only like lighting

942
00:53:30,960 --> 00:53:33,920
Speaker 2: on mud and mud buttles, but also dung and carrion.

943
00:53:34,080 --> 00:53:35,960
Speaker 2: Like we've been discussing, that's right.

944
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:37,920
Speaker 3: I mean, even when it's just mud, it seems to

945
00:53:37,960 --> 00:53:41,719
Speaker 3: be it's it looks like they're intentionally choosing the grossest

946
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:44,120
Speaker 3: patches of mud. When I've seen this in nature, it

947
00:53:44,160 --> 00:53:46,680
Speaker 3: always looks like it's somewhere really nasty. Yeah.

948
00:53:46,760 --> 00:53:49,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, like there's probably something dead in there too. Yeah.

949
00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:52,520
Speaker 2: So you can imagine you have these things are landing

950
00:53:52,560 --> 00:53:56,680
Speaker 2: on gross mud, and certainly if they're landing on rotting bodies,

951
00:53:57,480 --> 00:53:59,200
Speaker 2: it's not that big of a step to then move

952
00:53:59,239 --> 00:54:02,560
Speaker 2: on to just bodies or the bodies of scientists that

953
00:54:02,640 --> 00:54:06,560
Speaker 2: seem surprisingly inviting an open.

954
00:54:06,280 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 3: Eyed So there are some more interesting things about this

955
00:54:11,120 --> 00:54:13,880
Speaker 3: I want to get into. So there's one last paper

956
00:54:13,920 --> 00:54:17,160
Speaker 3: I'm going to bring up. This one is by Sharon R. Hill,

957
00:54:17,360 --> 00:54:22,920
Speaker 3: Jennifer Zaspol, Susan Weller, Bill Hanson, and Richard Ignell called

958
00:54:23,040 --> 00:54:26,480
Speaker 3: to Be or Not to Be a Vampire? A matter

959
00:54:26,600 --> 00:54:30,680
Speaker 3: of Sincillum numbers in Calyptra Theilik tree. This was published

960
00:54:30,680 --> 00:54:33,719
Speaker 3: in Arthropods, Structure and Development in the year twenty ten.

961
00:54:34,360 --> 00:54:36,480
Speaker 3: A couple of things I want to discuss from this paper.

962
00:54:36,560 --> 00:54:40,360
Speaker 3: One is the purpose of the blood meal and the

963
00:54:40,400 --> 00:54:45,440
Speaker 3: second thing is what separates the vampire moths from non

964
00:54:45,640 --> 00:54:50,280
Speaker 3: vampires of the same species. So for the first question,

965
00:54:51,080 --> 00:54:55,000
Speaker 3: the authors get into this in their background section. Generally,

966
00:54:55,440 --> 00:54:59,680
Speaker 3: in the Calyptra species that suck blood, only the males

967
00:54:59,719 --> 00:55:02,880
Speaker 3: do it. That's interesting, and that's kind of an inversion

968
00:55:02,920 --> 00:55:06,399
Speaker 3: of things we've seen in other species like rob isn't

969
00:55:06,400 --> 00:55:09,400
Speaker 3: it the case with mosquitoes that generally only the females

970
00:55:09,440 --> 00:55:12,759
Speaker 3: consume a blood meal. This is true, yes, opposite thing

971
00:55:12,800 --> 00:55:16,240
Speaker 3: going on here in the calyptra only the males drink blood.

972
00:55:16,320 --> 00:55:20,000
Speaker 3: In the cases where they do drink blood, most insects

973
00:55:20,040 --> 00:55:23,320
Speaker 3: that suck blood are of course able to digest that blood.

974
00:55:24,040 --> 00:55:26,200
Speaker 3: That makes sense. You want to get nutrition from the blood,

975
00:55:26,200 --> 00:55:28,480
Speaker 3: so there's going to be protein content in the blood,

976
00:55:29,120 --> 00:55:31,920
Speaker 3: and you want your digestive system to break down that

977
00:55:31,960 --> 00:55:34,279
Speaker 3: protein and get energy from it, so you have these

978
00:55:34,880 --> 00:55:38,400
Speaker 3: enzymes called proteases. These enzymes break down and get energy

979
00:55:38,440 --> 00:55:43,560
Speaker 3: from proteins. But Calyptra moths do not express these proteases,

980
00:55:44,200 --> 00:55:48,560
Speaker 3: so they are not actually getting a caloric nutritional benefit

981
00:55:48,920 --> 00:55:54,200
Speaker 3: from the protein content of the blood they drink. The

982
00:55:54,239 --> 00:55:57,719
Speaker 3: author's right quote. And in fact, the majority of red

983
00:55:57,760 --> 00:56:01,440
Speaker 3: blood cells are found densely packed and intact in the

984
00:56:01,480 --> 00:56:05,839
Speaker 3: anal excreta from the male post blood meal, So they're

985
00:56:05,920 --> 00:56:09,720
Speaker 3: drinking blood, but they're not getting protein nutrition from the blood.

986
00:56:10,120 --> 00:56:14,000
Speaker 3: They're just pooping out the red blood cells on the

987
00:56:14,040 --> 00:56:17,799
Speaker 3: other hand, male moths have been found to be incredibly

988
00:56:17,840 --> 00:56:23,360
Speaker 3: efficient at storing salt contents from various sources, from a

989
00:56:23,400 --> 00:56:26,760
Speaker 3: blood meal or from other sources, preserving up to ninety

990
00:56:26,880 --> 00:56:31,319
Speaker 3: five percent of the salt consumed. Like males of other

991
00:56:31,400 --> 00:56:35,560
Speaker 3: moth species have been observed keeping internal salt caches from

992
00:56:35,640 --> 00:56:38,799
Speaker 3: things like tear drinking. Now we know that salt is

993
00:56:38,960 --> 00:56:42,080
Speaker 3: important for organisms that you need it for various things

994
00:56:42,160 --> 00:56:44,360
Speaker 3: in the body, but what are the males doing with

995
00:56:44,440 --> 00:56:49,040
Speaker 3: all that stored up salt. Well, some researchers named Adler

996
00:56:49,080 --> 00:56:52,799
Speaker 3: and Pearson in nineteen eighty two proposed an answer here,

997
00:56:53,160 --> 00:56:56,680
Speaker 3: and it's called the male dowry hypothesis, or what you

998
00:56:56,760 --> 00:57:02,000
Speaker 3: might call like romantic salt gift the sexy salt. Under

999
00:57:02,080 --> 00:57:06,360
Speaker 3: this model, in habitats where access to sodium through the

1000
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:11,520
Speaker 3: moth's normal plant diet is limited, sequestered salts held in

1001
00:57:11,600 --> 00:57:15,880
Speaker 3: reserve by a male moth are transferred to a female

1002
00:57:16,120 --> 00:57:20,560
Speaker 3: during reproduction as a gift to help the female replenish

1003
00:57:20,600 --> 00:57:23,760
Speaker 3: salts that she's going to lose during the production of eggs.

1004
00:57:24,560 --> 00:57:27,000
Speaker 3: And the authors of the paper here cite Bansaker for

1005
00:57:27,080 --> 00:57:30,840
Speaker 3: the idea that this general principle is also what's seen

1006
00:57:30,960 --> 00:57:34,560
Speaker 3: in the sequestration of salts by male Calyptra moths after

1007
00:57:34,600 --> 00:57:37,640
Speaker 3: a blood meal, So it seems very possible that's what's

1008
00:57:37,680 --> 00:57:41,080
Speaker 3: going on here when these male Calypto moths come up

1009
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:43,520
Speaker 3: to a guy and they pierce his finger and drink

1010
00:57:43,520 --> 00:57:45,920
Speaker 3: blood from it. Yet again, they are hoping to be

1011
00:57:45,960 --> 00:57:48,320
Speaker 3: able to store this up as a as a gift

1012
00:57:48,400 --> 00:57:52,000
Speaker 3: for a future mating partner to help her replenished salts

1013
00:57:52,080 --> 00:57:56,440
Speaker 3: lost during of a position. Oh wow. Now that second

1014
00:57:56,520 --> 00:58:00,160
Speaker 3: question I posed was what separates the vampire moths from

1015
00:58:00,160 --> 00:58:04,960
Speaker 3: the non vampires of the same species. To set that up,

1016
00:58:05,000 --> 00:58:07,360
Speaker 3: I'm going to read from the author's abstract here because

1017
00:58:07,640 --> 00:58:10,600
Speaker 3: they sort of explain how they get to this question quote.

1018
00:58:11,000 --> 00:58:14,000
Speaker 3: The mechanisms by which blood feeding and insects has evolved

1019
00:58:14,040 --> 00:58:17,160
Speaker 3: are unclear, primarily because there has been no access to

1020
00:58:17,240 --> 00:58:20,440
Speaker 3: species in which there is a mixture of same sex

1021
00:58:20,520 --> 00:58:24,800
Speaker 3: blood feeding and non blood feeding individuals. The discovery of

1022
00:58:24,840 --> 00:58:28,880
Speaker 3: a subset of male Calyptera Thilik tree that blood feed

1023
00:58:29,080 --> 00:58:32,960
Speaker 3: under constrained experimental conditions, while the majority of these males

1024
00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:37,440
Speaker 3: do not, provides a unique opportunity to investigate members of

1025
00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:40,880
Speaker 3: the same species for potential root mechanisms leading to the

1026
00:58:40,920 --> 00:58:44,360
Speaker 3: ability to blood feed. I like that two word verb there,

1027
00:58:44,400 --> 00:58:48,080
Speaker 3: blood feed. So what made the difference here? Why do

1028
00:58:48,240 --> 00:58:52,360
Speaker 3: some of these moths eat blood and some don't. Previously,

1029
00:58:52,440 --> 00:58:56,240
Speaker 3: researchers could not find any morphological differences between males that

1030
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:59,040
Speaker 3: drank blood and those that did not. But in this experiment,

1031
00:58:59,080 --> 00:59:03,720
Speaker 3: the authors did difference. They found that males that drank

1032
00:59:03,760 --> 00:59:08,560
Speaker 3: blood had differences on their antennae which made them less

1033
00:59:08,960 --> 00:59:14,240
Speaker 3: sensitive to particular olfactory compounds. They were less sensitive to

1034
00:59:14,320 --> 00:59:19,840
Speaker 3: certain smells. What smells are those? Well, the volatiles associated

1035
00:59:19,920 --> 00:59:24,320
Speaker 3: with vertebrate animal bodies. Things the authors mentioned like ammonia

1036
00:59:24,560 --> 00:59:29,400
Speaker 3: and short chain carboxylic acids. These are compounds that I

1037
00:59:29,440 --> 00:59:31,520
Speaker 3: guess they're gonna be hovering in the air I think

1038
00:59:31,520 --> 00:59:35,600
Speaker 3: around most vertebrates, and the normal reaction of a moth

1039
00:59:35,760 --> 00:59:39,680
Speaker 3: to these chemical cues in the air is repulsion. I

1040
00:59:39,800 --> 00:59:42,640
Speaker 3: smell a godzilla, I smell a big thing around me

1041
00:59:42,720 --> 00:59:45,920
Speaker 3: out yeah, get away from it. Avoid this thing. It

1042
00:59:45,920 --> 00:59:49,160
Speaker 3: could hurt me because the big animal is usually only

1043
00:59:49,200 --> 00:59:53,640
Speaker 3: a threat, not an opportunity. The morphological difference in blood

1044
00:59:53,720 --> 00:59:57,680
Speaker 3: drinking moths of the same species is that they are

1045
00:59:57,720 --> 01:00:02,360
Speaker 3: the ones that are less sensitive, apparently to big vertebrate

1046
01:00:02,440 --> 01:00:07,120
Speaker 3: animals smell. Thus the repulsion reaction is less likely to

1047
01:00:07,120 --> 01:00:10,600
Speaker 3: be triggered. Thus they're more likely to just land on

1048
01:00:10,640 --> 01:00:15,320
Speaker 3: you and start probing around for salt juice. So I

1049
01:00:15,400 --> 01:00:18,520
Speaker 3: like that too. You might have imagined a different mechanism

1050
01:00:18,520 --> 01:00:20,720
Speaker 3: making the difference. I don't know, like a special need

1051
01:00:20,800 --> 01:00:23,880
Speaker 3: for salt or something else, but it seems like maybe

1052
01:00:23,920 --> 01:00:26,840
Speaker 3: the big difference here is that all these moths could

1053
01:00:26,880 --> 01:00:29,840
Speaker 3: benefit from getting some extra salt, and they have the

1054
01:00:30,120 --> 01:00:32,440
Speaker 3: you know, the needle like mouth parts to jab in

1055
01:00:32,480 --> 01:00:34,600
Speaker 3: through the skin and get to it. But some of

1056
01:00:34,640 --> 01:00:38,880
Speaker 3: the moths are more fearless than others. They are less

1057
01:00:38,960 --> 01:00:42,760
Speaker 3: afraid of the to them god Zilla sized vertebrate animal

1058
01:00:42,800 --> 01:00:47,040
Speaker 3: wandering around. Oh wow, So tear drinking moths and blood

1059
01:00:47,080 --> 01:00:50,960
Speaker 3: drinking moths. I propose these as the best real world

1060
01:00:51,040 --> 01:00:54,520
Speaker 3: counterpart to the salt vampire of Star Trek.

1061
01:00:55,080 --> 01:00:57,760
Speaker 2: Wow. I think so. I think that's a pretty solid luck,

1062
01:00:58,240 --> 01:01:00,440
Speaker 2: and hopefully everyone will look at moths a little differently

1063
01:01:00,480 --> 01:01:04,840
Speaker 2: now too. Again, not all moths do this, but yeah,

1064
01:01:04,480 --> 01:01:07,400
Speaker 2: but you know, now you might imagine them on their

1065
01:01:07,600 --> 01:01:11,920
Speaker 2: behavior a little differently. Man. In this, this whole bit

1066
01:01:11,960 --> 01:01:16,480
Speaker 2: about doctor Hans Bonzigger fascinating. I had to look him up.

1067
01:01:16,520 --> 01:01:20,480
Speaker 2: I couldn't find I think he might still be with us. Really, Yeah,

1068
01:01:20,480 --> 01:01:23,920
Speaker 2: it looks like he was, at least as recently as

1069
01:01:23,960 --> 01:01:27,800
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, he was still active, living in Thailand, be

1070
01:01:27,840 --> 01:01:30,720
Speaker 2: getting up in age. I could not I did not

1071
01:01:30,840 --> 01:01:35,800
Speaker 2: find anything concerning his obituary. So maybe he's out there

1072
01:01:35,880 --> 01:01:41,040
Speaker 2: right now, still discovering and chronicling new species of moth.

1073
01:01:40,880 --> 01:01:43,680
Speaker 3: In the wild. Maybe I didn't follow up on his biography.

1074
01:01:43,960 --> 01:01:47,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a there's an interesting article titled titled Vampire Moths,

1075
01:01:47,880 --> 01:01:53,480
Speaker 2: Dastardly Orchids and tearsipping Bees Doctor Hans Banziger's fascinating fines

1076
01:01:53,720 --> 01:01:56,160
Speaker 2: And this was in this was a published in City Life.

1077
01:01:56,240 --> 01:01:58,600
Speaker 3: Chang, Man, Oh, you'll have to share that in the chat.

1078
01:01:58,600 --> 01:01:59,920
Speaker 3: I want. I want to read that after we've done

1079
01:02:00,000 --> 01:02:00,640
Speaker 3: recording here.

1080
01:02:00,840 --> 01:02:03,400
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's brief. It goes over some

1081
01:02:03,440 --> 01:02:06,080
Speaker 2: of the stuff we already talked about here, but gives

1082
01:02:06,320 --> 01:02:10,080
Speaker 2: a little more biographical information about him. So I do

1083
01:02:10,160 --> 01:02:12,600
Speaker 2: recommend it. Well, you know, i'd say I don't have

1084
01:02:12,600 --> 01:02:15,680
Speaker 2: too much else to say about salt vampires other than

1085
01:02:16,520 --> 01:02:20,640
Speaker 2: in the Star Trek episode, coming back again to its

1086
01:02:21,000 --> 01:02:25,200
Speaker 2: desire and maybe need to be loved. I couldn't help

1087
01:02:25,240 --> 01:02:29,400
Speaker 2: but think about the way various non human animals, but

1088
01:02:29,480 --> 01:02:32,960
Speaker 2: especially dogs and cats, worm their way into our affection

1089
01:02:33,400 --> 01:02:37,600
Speaker 2: by essentially mimicking lovable or cute features that we find

1090
01:02:37,720 --> 01:02:41,800
Speaker 2: admirable and human infants, you know, the cat and certainly

1091
01:02:41,840 --> 01:02:44,160
Speaker 2: the kitten kind of looks like a baby. The puppy

1092
01:02:44,680 --> 01:02:47,520
Speaker 2: feels like a baby, and so they managed to hijack

1093
01:02:47,560 --> 01:02:51,360
Speaker 2: our emotions. The salt vampire engages, though obviously in a

1094
01:02:51,360 --> 01:02:52,560
Speaker 2: more direct form.

1095
01:02:52,360 --> 01:02:56,160
Speaker 3: Of this, right, because the salt vampire doesn't just have

1096
01:02:56,240 --> 01:03:00,240
Speaker 3: to resemble a human baby in some kind of you know,

1097
01:03:00,320 --> 01:03:03,720
Speaker 3: in physical appearance or affect. It can literally look exactly

1098
01:03:03,840 --> 01:03:07,720
Speaker 3: like your actual family members or loved ones. Yeah. Yeah,

1099
01:03:07,760 --> 01:03:10,280
Speaker 3: and I well, you know what I was gonna say.

1100
01:03:10,320 --> 01:03:12,680
Speaker 3: I wonder if there is anything like this in nature.

1101
01:03:12,680 --> 01:03:14,960
Speaker 3: But there are things like this in nature, especially in

1102
01:03:15,320 --> 01:03:19,200
Speaker 3: the insect world. Yeah, you know, I didn't research this

1103
01:03:19,440 --> 01:03:21,280
Speaker 3: going into the episode, but I know I've read before

1104
01:03:21,280 --> 01:03:24,680
Speaker 3: about in fact, some lepidopteranes. I believe there aren't there

1105
01:03:25,040 --> 01:03:29,120
Speaker 3: butterflies and caterpillars that can mimic the scent of an

1106
01:03:29,160 --> 01:03:32,000
Speaker 3: ant queen and be taken into the ants hi for

1107
01:03:32,160 --> 01:03:34,560
Speaker 3: colony and be accepted as the queen like I am

1108
01:03:34,600 --> 01:03:35,720
Speaker 3: the one you really care about.

1109
01:03:36,160 --> 01:03:39,800
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah. And another example is of course the famous

1110
01:03:39,880 --> 01:03:43,240
Speaker 2: Death's Head mock, the deaths Head hawk moth. This is

1111
01:03:43,280 --> 01:03:46,040
Speaker 2: the silence of the lambs moth. For those of you

1112
01:03:46,080 --> 01:03:50,560
Speaker 2: who are unfamiliar, these are famous infiltrators of beehives.

1113
01:03:51,320 --> 01:03:52,040
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1114
01:03:52,160 --> 01:03:55,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's all manner of deception that goes on

1115
01:03:55,280 --> 01:03:58,080
Speaker 2: in the moth world. All right, we're gonna go ahead

1116
01:03:58,120 --> 01:04:01,840
Speaker 2: and close things up here, but stay tuned. Star Trek

1117
01:04:01,880 --> 01:04:06,360
Speaker 2: Week continues. Tomorrow's Monster Fackted episode is of course going

1118
01:04:06,400 --> 01:04:07,920
Speaker 2: to be Star Trek themed. We're going to be back

1119
01:04:07,960 --> 01:04:11,000
Speaker 2: on Thursday with another Star Trek themed core episode, and

1120
01:04:11,040 --> 01:04:14,160
Speaker 2: then on Friday on Weird House Cinema, we will discuss

1121
01:04:14,600 --> 01:04:17,480
Speaker 2: a Star Trek motion picture, and based on some of

1122
01:04:17,520 --> 01:04:19,600
Speaker 2: the things we discussed in this episode, you may already

1123
01:04:19,640 --> 01:04:22,800
Speaker 2: be able to guess what that movie is going to be.

1124
01:04:23,160 --> 01:04:27,120
Speaker 3: Huge. Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1125
01:04:27,360 --> 01:04:28,880
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1126
01:04:28,880 --> 01:04:31,320
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1127
01:04:31,320 --> 01:04:33,360
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.

1128
01:04:33,480 --> 01:04:36,080
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1129
01:04:36,080 --> 01:04:44,400
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

1130
01:04:44,520 --> 01:04:47,440
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1131
01:04:47,560 --> 01:04:50,320
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1132
01:04:50,480 --> 01:05:03,600
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, nations,

1133
01:05:05,080 --> 01:05:05,120
Speaker 1: or