Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind? My name is Robert lamp and I'm
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas. Julie, have you seen any recent movies that
Speaker 1: have centaurs? And no, I haven't, but you recently sent
Speaker 1: out a rate photo of fifty center. Oh yes, well
Speaker 1: that was online. Various individualsome to have a lot of
Speaker 1: fun creating centaurs out of humans famous humans generally and horses.
Speaker 1: But they have shown up in some movies, and the
Speaker 1: Narnia movies had centers in that Harry Potter movies. Pierce
Speaker 1: Bronson even hoofs it up in Percy Jackson and the
Speaker 1: Lightning Thief, which is amusing to look at because it's
Speaker 1: one of these cases where the centaur is wearing clothes
Speaker 1: on its human part. It's just weird. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: the horses naked, of course, and you're like, why aren't
Speaker 1: you even wearing a shirt? You know? In our films,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because they use various elements of costume and
Speaker 1: makeup and CG. I generally need to create these. A
Speaker 1: centaur is an idea that is kind of monstrosity. In
Speaker 1: the best of cases. But if you throw in kind
Speaker 1: of shaky c g I or makeup, it looks even
Speaker 1: weirder and a little more troubling to behold. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have to say that in the Narnia series that for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, that Center drives me nuts, Like, not in
Speaker 1: a good way anyway, it is. It's a fine line. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're ridiculous yet oddly perplexing, and in large
Speaker 1: part because they do embody the dual nature of man,
Speaker 1: this idea of the man and beast hybrid, you know,
Speaker 1: much like the Saturday that we had mentioned before. It
Speaker 1: represented the duplicity of man's be steel and pious nature.
Speaker 1: So it's why you also find centaur's running around in
Speaker 1: Dante's Inferno, thrusting centers back to their assigned depths in
Speaker 1: boiling rivers of blood with spears um. Elsewhere in the
Speaker 1: world of sculptures, you find them choking heroes and punching heroes.
Speaker 1: They're always engaging in physical violence. With a few exceptions.
Speaker 1: You do have some notable centaur teachers who are very
Speaker 1: wise and want to help people, but a lot of
Speaker 1: Center seemed to be perfectly happy, was just punching dudes
Speaker 1: in the face. Yeah, it's funny because when you first
Speaker 1: think of them, it's sort of like in the realm
Speaker 1: of unicorns and they seem cute and you know, like
Speaker 1: randier unicorns, half man, but they really are sort of
Speaker 1: bloodthirsty folk. When you look at the tales of them.
Speaker 1: You see them in various mythologies. Their most famous for
Speaker 1: their role in Greek mythology, but you also find them
Speaker 1: in India. The Gandharva's are are basically centaurs, and then
Speaker 1: you find other cultural traditions that take new takes on
Speaker 1: what a centauri is. For instance, according to Carol Rose,
Speaker 1: historian has written a lot about monsters and symbolic meaning
Speaker 1: of monsters, points out that centers often pop up in
Speaker 1: European traditions to represent quote, the suffering of Christ as
Speaker 1: the man and the revenge taken upon his betrayal, which
Speaker 1: I find rather interesting and kind of hard to imagine.
Speaker 1: And then you also find some interesting takes on centaurs
Speaker 1: in sculpture. Versus, if you traveled to the Louver and
Speaker 1: you see the old centaur there, which is this statue
Speaker 1: of the centaur and his arms are bound behind his
Speaker 1: back and upids riding on his back. There originally two
Speaker 1: of these, you have the old centaur and the young centaur,
Speaker 1: and the young center is free and in love, and
Speaker 1: the old one has his arms bound by Cupid behind
Speaker 1: his back. So there's this idea of his dual nature
Speaker 1: of man and sort of the bestial urges that are
Speaker 1: commanding the human portion of ourselves, and what the ramifications
Speaker 1: of that might be in later years. Well, and we
Speaker 1: wanted to focus on Center today because we thought, you know, what,
Speaker 1: what if a centaur were to actually exist, what might
Speaker 1: it look like physically? What sort of vital organs would
Speaker 1: it have, much like when we talked about King Kong
Speaker 1: or god Zilla. So we're gonna kind of take you
Speaker 1: guys through this a little bit today, talk about not
Speaker 1: just centaurs, but mythology, mistaking mythology for science, and you know,
Speaker 1: in a historical context. And then we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: look at our own bodies and try to figure out
Speaker 1: why we are designed the way we are designed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: first of all, we should stay just for the record, again,
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as a center. They do not
Speaker 1: exist as real creatures. As powerful as the idea maybe
Speaker 1: and as interesting as the topic. Maybe there has never
Speaker 1: existed a human horse hybrid creature. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: people didn't try to convince us otherwise. Right, We've always
Speaker 1: tried to make sense out of fossils that we find
Speaker 1: a way bones are aligned in the earth, the ruminants
Speaker 1: of bones, So it's not impossible that one might come
Speaker 1: across the mixed bones of a human and a horse
Speaker 1: or horse like creature and wonder, hey, I wonder one
Speaker 1: of these are the same creature? How how might these
Speaker 1: pieces fit together if I symble them wrong? And then
Speaker 1: of course you have stories about the Spanish conquistadors arriving
Speaker 1: on horseback in Central America and the native people thinking
Speaker 1: at first that they were one creature composed of horse
Speaker 1: and man. How to explain the first time someone rode
Speaker 1: a horse? Right, and you see that cruising by, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might think, what so a lot of these fantastic
Speaker 1: idea I mean, monsters, on one hand, are always symbols.
Speaker 1: Monsters symbolize something. And so we've discussed a little, and
Speaker 1: we'll continue to discuss a little about what a into
Speaker 1: our means and what it represents about us. But then
Speaker 1: also we create monsters in attempt to understand something or
Speaker 1: to illustrate something that exists in the world, such as
Speaker 1: people riding horses or strange ways that bones are turning
Speaker 1: up in the earth. Yeah. The Fermbank Museum here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: I guess I was, but it was a year and
Speaker 1: a half two years ago had an exhibit that actually
Speaker 1: talked about these mythical creatures. And I did not see it, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: but you did see it, right, nephew. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: they wanted to talk about with the public specimens and
Speaker 1: fossils of prehistoric animals and try to investigate how they
Speaker 1: could have, through misidentification, speculation, fear, or imagination, inspired the
Speaker 1: development of some legendary creatures. They were talking about narwhal
Speaker 1: tusks from the North Sea, which they think could have
Speaker 1: given credence to this idea of the unicorn. Right, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen the narwhal tusk two, you can
Speaker 1: actually see the way that it's spiraling upward, just like
Speaker 1: you think of a unicorn. And how dinosaurs might have
Speaker 1: been mistaken for griffin for instance, or undersea monsters like
Speaker 1: giant squid could have become these Yeah, the cracking, these
Speaker 1: crazy creatures that rose up with you in these hundred
Speaker 1: foot waves. Hundred foot waves, true rug waves, but not
Speaker 1: so much giant three headed octopus. That exhibit which I
Speaker 1: believe there's a Smithsonian traveling exhibit. They also had a
Speaker 1: Fiji mermaid, which which is a lot of fun, which
Speaker 1: of course one of these side show carnival hybrid deals
Speaker 1: where they would take the remnants of a monkey and
Speaker 1: the remnants of a fish, sew them together and display
Speaker 1: the mummified remains and it's it's frightening and horrifying and
Speaker 1: wonderful and wonderful at the same time. You tend not
Speaker 1: to see that kind of specimen with centaurs, because you're
Speaker 1: talking of a horse is a big animal to deal with,
Speaker 1: and even if you had a large enough monkey so
Speaker 1: on to that body that you're still talking about a
Speaker 1: lot of work to click, a lot of bones for
Speaker 1: that one. But you do see some examples of people
Speaker 1: combining the bones of a man in the bones of
Speaker 1: a horse, specifically with an artistic result in mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I attended the University of Tennessee and Knoxville some years
Speaker 1: ago and they actually have an exhibit there in their library.
Speaker 1: I assume it's still there. Perhaps any U t K.
Speaker 1: Listeners out there can correct me on this if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: But they have this exhibit called the Center Excavations at Volos,
Speaker 1: and it's made to look like the fossil remnants of
Speaker 1: a cent our skeletal system. We've always kind of thought,
Speaker 1: well in the description and the photo I saw, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really pretty mapped out so that it looks like
Speaker 1: it is indeed the real thing. And it's tuned in
Speaker 1: a case with a faux marble base and stimulated wood
Speaker 1: panels at these skeletal remains of what they call a
Speaker 1: centaur burial, along with inscribed clay tablets. And you see
Speaker 1: there's a panel and it says it's one of three
Speaker 1: Center burials discovered in nineteen eighty by the Archaeological Society
Speaker 1: of Argos near Volos, Greece, and they include a map.
Speaker 1: Would cut. I mean they make it look like, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a real thing, and the idea is that
Speaker 1: it supposed to be an object lesson on the importance
Speaker 1: of skepticism. Yeah, right, like it just because something is
Speaker 1: presented in a way that looks like it's got authority
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, these bones are the
Speaker 1: real thing. I think it's it's fascinating and of course,
Speaker 1: as you said, it's meant as is artwork as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of wish it would have become more of
Speaker 1: a heart for the university because the football team was
Speaker 1: the Tennessee Volunteers, and I never really paid any attention
Speaker 1: to the football, but but I might have had they
Speaker 1: been the Tennessee Centaurs if that had been like the mascot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very possible, right, and then they should have taken
Speaker 1: that whole heart, because I think that's an I wish
Speaker 1: my university had had such an exhibit. But what if,
Speaker 1: what if a center could be real? Well, we should
Speaker 1: explore that after a fifth break. All right, we're back
Speaker 1: the anatomy of the center. It's a fascinating thing to
Speaker 1: think about, and we've discussed before. I love it when
Speaker 1: someone with the scientific mind applies that scientific mind to
Speaker 1: something ridiculous, not in an attempt to prove that ridiculous
Speaker 1: thing true, but sort of has a thought experiment. So
Speaker 1: we actually have an example of that. Year. There's a
Speaker 1: wonderful paper that actually it published in the Annals of
Speaker 1: Improbable Research. And these are the guys to do the
Speaker 1: Ignoble Prizes every year, and just a little background on that.
Speaker 1: They highlight real and legitimate scientific research that seems absurd. Generally,
Speaker 1: these experiments or papers or studies that they highlight there's
Speaker 1: generally something to them. It's not just complete nonsense, and
Speaker 1: there's there's always science to it. A lot of these
Speaker 1: scientific experiments are things that elected giggles from certain members.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the scientists who a forty year study
Speaker 1: of his own cracking of his knuckles proved to his
Speaker 1: mother that it wasn't going to cause I don't know,
Speaker 1: our fridays or something, as his mother had claimed years
Speaker 1: and years. And that's a great example because on one hand,
Speaker 1: question answered, mystery solved. This dude set out and using science,
Speaker 1: using rigid system of evaluation take that mom, investigated his
Speaker 1: mom's statement and proved it wrong, you know. So that's awesome.
Speaker 1: But then in the other hand, it's a guy cracking
Speaker 1: his knuckles and keeping track of it for this large
Speaker 1: portion of his life and then publishing the results. So
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff since the lineup like that. For instance,
Speaker 1: there was the I think was the Las Vegas study
Speaker 1: into the ovulation of strippers and how that affected their
Speaker 1: tips like that was also a study that ignoble prizes
Speaker 1: anson probably research fla that research, by the way, has
Speaker 1: been questioned, yes, by the way recently, but a lot
Speaker 1: of researches. But still it was a scientific inquiry. And
Speaker 1: so we encounter a paper titled Anatomy of the Centaur.
Speaker 1: And this is from a German anatomous by the name
Speaker 1: of Reinhard. Do you have his full name? Yeah? HC.
Speaker 1: Reinhard v Puts of Germany's Ludwig Maximilian University, Unique Institute
Speaker 1: of Anatomy. Yeah. And he writes a paper where he
Speaker 1: just sets out with this question in mind. All right,
Speaker 1: so the centaur is not real, but what if it was.
Speaker 1: If the center was real, how would it's an atomy work,
Speaker 1: How would its circulatory so isom work? How would it
Speaker 1: digest food? There are a number of anatomical problems that
Speaker 1: emerge and trying to imagine how a centaur works. And
Speaker 1: this guy decided to create an answer using actual science,
Speaker 1: using everything you knew about human and equine anatomy to
Speaker 1: combine those and create a probable centaur. Yep, you've got
Speaker 1: a hybrid system. So you have to keep this in mind.
Speaker 1: So centaur's heart, or we should say hearts right right,
Speaker 1: the centaur's going to need two of them, primary and
Speaker 1: secondary to pump blood. Through this mash up of bodies,
Speaker 1: you're also getting into questions of well, how does it
Speaker 1: digest food? All right, so the stomach would be in
Speaker 1: the horse section, but it would need to have a
Speaker 1: human stomach because the centaurs, according to most records, they're
Speaker 1: not going around eating hay or anything. They're going around
Speaker 1: eating human food, so they would have to have a
Speaker 1: human gastro intestinal system. Well, and lots of libations too.
Speaker 1: According to right big drinkers, they live large. And then
Speaker 1: he also gives a certain amount of consideration to the
Speaker 1: reproductive organs of the center pis. Yes, most depictions is
Speaker 1: he discusses show no penis in the front of the center,
Speaker 1: and most centers in art are are males. You'd see
Speaker 1: no penis at the front of the center because that's
Speaker 1: like the front of the horse. That's like the horses
Speaker 1: sternum more or less. Right, So i'd be like a
Speaker 1: penis on a sternum, right, So you tend not to
Speaker 1: see it there, you tend to see it back in
Speaker 1: the back. So where the horses actual reproductive organs would
Speaker 1: be right. There was no definitive that like where the
Speaker 1: placement is right. It just sort of makes sense that
Speaker 1: it would be in the hind quarters, though you do
Speaker 1: see a certain variety points out the cretion variety of center,
Speaker 1: which you'll see in some like mid eighth century BC
Speaker 1: Greek artwork, where you see a center that has more
Speaker 1: human legs in the front and human genitalia in the front,
Speaker 1: but then but then it's unknown if it also has
Speaker 1: genitalia in the back. This is the problem when you
Speaker 1: start start trying to imagine mythical, unreal things as real
Speaker 1: anatomical creation. And now I'm just laughing that we're sitting
Speaker 1: here discussing the penis placement on the center. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't know how we got here, but we did. One
Speaker 1: of the things we found most interesting was the idea
Speaker 1: that Reinhart argues that it would need to hearts, that
Speaker 1: you need the human heart and the horse heart both
Speaker 1: achieving a certain synchronicity in order for this being to exist,
Speaker 1: which led us to think, Okay, we've got two lungs,
Speaker 1: two kidneys, two eyes, why don't we have two hearts?
Speaker 1: Exactly yeah, why is there? Why is there just one
Speaker 1: of these? Is? Okay, there's there's there's there's a really
Speaker 1: good reason for this Record's University anthropologists Susan Cashell says
Speaker 1: that the one heart to lung system began to emerge
Speaker 1: about three hundred million years ago when animals first moved
Speaker 1: from seed to land, and the idea is that this
Speaker 1: one heart too lung system was an easy blueprint to
Speaker 1: iterate as animals evolved into such divergent species as birds
Speaker 1: and insects and humans. Um, So we all evolved to
Speaker 1: have stomachs digest food, lungs to breathe air, kidneys to
Speaker 1: filter waste, and this became the most efficient mold for
Speaker 1: nearly all species to evolve here and live on earth.
Speaker 1: That is why, my friend, And here's another thing. If
Speaker 1: we were to have two hearts, it really wouldn't make
Speaker 1: a difference because your body is a system that functions
Speaker 1: at full capacity, so the addition of extra heart wouldn't
Speaker 1: really do much. So it seems like a cool thing, like, hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: why not have two hearts? It seems like that could
Speaker 1: really get us to move faster, pump more blood to
Speaker 1: our system, more oxygen to our brain. But that is
Speaker 1: not actually what would happen. I ran across an excerpt
Speaker 1: from a paper by a man by the name of
Speaker 1: Nikolai Siniston. He was working at Gorky Medical Institute in Moscow,
Speaker 1: and this is from and he says, for a number
Speaker 1: of years my laboratory has been studying the problem of
Speaker 1: transplating the heart of vertebrate animals in the animal kingdom.
Speaker 1: Many necessary prerequisites exist for carrying out this important and
Speaker 1: at first sight impossible operation. The first stage was my
Speaker 1: work on cold blooded animals, frogs and fishes. After a
Speaker 1: number of experimental variants and the perfection of the operation technique,
Speaker 1: I succeeded in transplanting to a frog a second heart
Speaker 1: taken from another animal. I planted the second heart in
Speaker 1: the same area is the heart of the host. Animals
Speaker 1: with two hearts show no difference from control frogs, and
Speaker 1: experienced biologists invited to examine them were unable to distinguish
Speaker 1: one from the other. Two hearted frogs went through the
Speaker 1: usual nuptial period in spring and cast their spawn in
Speaker 1: the ordinary way, which is a delightful way of saying.
Speaker 1: Two hearted frogs also did it in the baby frogs
Speaker 1: did it just fine. Yeah, And so they weren't able
Speaker 1: to tell. Scientists looking at the frogs weren't able to tell.
Speaker 1: So to your point, an animal with an extra heart
Speaker 1: thrown into the mix is not going to be a
Speaker 1: super frog or a super animal. It's gonna work out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You could actually do the same to a human if
Speaker 1: you were to intervene in the embryonic stage. Because here's
Speaker 1: the deal. During the embryonic stage of development, we actually
Speaker 1: do have two hearts, and this is called the heart primordia,
Speaker 1: which eventually fuses together into one heart with four chambers.
Speaker 1: And we're also outfitted with two eyes during the embryonic stage,
Speaker 1: although we begin with one primordia of the eye, which
Speaker 1: eventually separates to formed do so if the primorny were
Speaker 1: to be kept from splitting, we would have a cyclop side.
Speaker 1: How crazy, awful and great is that. I think we
Speaker 1: could also consiuerably engineer two hearts at that early stage exactly.
Speaker 1: But I believe they have achieved that with frogs, Yes
Speaker 1: they did. You could do it frogs, You could do
Speaker 1: it with humans, but obviously this is not something you'd
Speaker 1: want to do. But there is something called heterotopic heart
Speaker 1: transplant that we should mention, Yes, we should, because it
Speaker 1: has to do with a guy human who actually does
Speaker 1: have two hearts. Earlier this year, an older man was
Speaker 1: admitted to a hospital in Verona, Italy, and doctors were
Speaker 1: amazed because they could detect two heartbeats, both of which
Speaker 1: were displaying signs of dys rhythmia. And what they found
Speaker 1: out is that this guy had undergone a procedure known
Speaker 1: as heterotopic heart transplant, which we don't really do anymore
Speaker 1: because technology has gotten to the point where it's not necessary.
Speaker 1: But for a while, if you were going to transplant
Speaker 1: an additional organ kidney, you wouldn't necessarily take the old
Speaker 1: organ out right because it might be too difficult to extract,
Speaker 1: or there was the hope that the organ might recover
Speaker 1: while the new organ took over day to day functions. Right,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, oh, well, we don't want to
Speaker 1: fire this person. Let's have them train their replacement for
Speaker 1: a few for a week or so, and it works out,
Speaker 1: we'll just keep them both. And that's what happened in
Speaker 1: the chest of this Italian man. Yeah, yeah, that the
Speaker 1: transplant team made it his new heart with his malfunctioning
Speaker 1: old one, and the chambers and blood vessels of the
Speaker 1: two hearts were married so that the new heart could
Speaker 1: support the old one. The problem though, is that you
Speaker 1: can develop two independent heart rhythms, especially in a scenario
Speaker 1: where one heart gets a little bit better, and in
Speaker 1: this guy's case, to just rhythmic problems led to him
Speaker 1: actually flatlining. Fortunately, though, he was jolted back to life
Speaker 1: with a defibrillator and his pacemaker was replaced. But it
Speaker 1: did kind of put you know, doctors on alert to like, oh, yeah, hey,
Speaker 1: there are some people walking around with two hearts from
Speaker 1: this procedure. He would have a great excuse, I guess
Speaker 1: if he was caught by his adi looking around, you know,
Speaker 1: and he would say, hey, what can I do? I
Speaker 1: got two hearts? You know, Hey, I got a lot
Speaker 1: of hearts, got a lot of heart Yeah, something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he would love that joke. Seriously. It's it's amazing, though,
Speaker 1: I think there are individuals out there with two hearts
Speaker 1: in their chest. It's possible conceivable at an early stage
Speaker 1: to interfere in human development and create two hearts. So
Speaker 1: even these things that would factor into the existence of
Speaker 1: a mythical creature we can pinpoint in the anatomical world
Speaker 1: at large, and also like the discovery, at least for me,
Speaker 1: that we did have this primordia I that separated that.
Speaker 1: If it didn't, you would have a cyclopsize. So centaurs.
Speaker 1: There you go. That's just kind of a a quick
Speaker 1: run through what they are and some of the science
Speaker 1: tied up around them. One of the more thought provoking
Speaker 1: ideas I ran across. I discovered it through some of
Speaker 1: the writings of author and theorist Ken Wilbur who was
Speaker 1: drawing from the works of Hubert Benoir, Jane Alexander, and
Speaker 1: Eric Erickson, and they used the centaur to describe the
Speaker 1: integrated state of mind and body. So the idea here is,
Speaker 1: especially modern humans, we tend to think of ourselves in
Speaker 1: our body, our brain in our body as a rider
Speaker 1: on a horse. We are the rider, our body is
Speaker 1: the horse, and inevitably our horse ends up failing us.
Speaker 1: It's not going as fast as we wanted to go.
Speaker 1: It's got a bum legs trying to buck us. You know,
Speaker 1: it's up, so we're whipping it. We have this relationship
Speaker 1: where we're the mind, the body is a horse, and
Speaker 1: we kind of treat the horse like this thing that
Speaker 1: is subservient to us, where in reality, the state is
Speaker 1: more like a centaur. It is an integrated state. So
Speaker 1: we've discussed before we're not just a brain, and we
Speaker 1: talked about the way our diet and the way whatever
Speaker 1: is going on in our digestic system, how that influences
Speaker 1: our state of being. Where this integrated being, where this
Speaker 1: centaur when it comes to the mind body relationship, and
Speaker 1: that's definitely the more healthy and the more accurate way
Speaker 1: of looking at the relationships. So if your horsey parts
Speaker 1: aren't happy, you're not happy, Yes, exactly, speak because you
Speaker 1: are your horsey parts. That's that's that's the one takeaway
Speaker 1: from this this episode. So there you have it. Centaurs.
Speaker 1: If you would like to share your lots on centaur's,
Speaker 1: your favorite centaurs from fact or fantasy, let us know
Speaker 1: about them. You can find us on Facebook where we
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