Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: part three in our series on predators in the deep
Speaker 3: and dark parts of the Ocean. Now for a brief
Speaker 3: recap on the previous episodes in the series. The ocean
Speaker 3: can be thought of as having several different zones if
Speaker 3: you imagine them stacked vertically, each with different environmental conditions
Speaker 3: regarding the availability of light, the availability of food, temperature, pressure,
Speaker 3: and so forth. And to be sure, the majority of
Speaker 3: marine fauna do live relatively close to the surface of
Speaker 3: the water, where sunlight can reach the phytoplankton and the
Speaker 3: other photo autotrophs that form the base of the food chain.
Speaker 3: Up there, they photosynthesize things, eat them, things eat those things,
Speaker 3: and so on. Now, in centuries past, there were thinkers
Speaker 3: such as the naturalist Edward Forbes, who observed that you know,
Speaker 3: the deeper you trawl or plunge into the water looking
Speaker 3: for life, the less you find. And from that he
Speaker 3: extrapolated that you know, below a certain depth there will
Speaker 3: be no fauna at all. Within the sea. This was
Speaker 3: the so called azoic hypothesis. We of course now know
Speaker 3: that that is not true. And while conditions are harsher
Speaker 3: and life forms may be less dense and less diverse
Speaker 3: in the depths than they are near the surface, there
Speaker 3: is nevertheless a fascinating world of animal interactions taking place
Speaker 3: in the deeper, darker zones of the ocean, even going
Speaker 3: all the way down to the very bottom, down to
Speaker 3: the abyssle ocean floor, and even into the sort of
Speaker 3: inverted island communities of the deep ocean trenches. Now, when
Speaker 3: you look at the animals within the environments, some of
Speaker 3: them are grazers, you know, grazing on microbial mats. Some
Speaker 3: of them are scavengers. But some are also predators and
Speaker 3: even top predators. And that's what we've been looking at
Speaker 3: in this series, Hunters in the Dark Parts of the Ocean. Now,
Speaker 3: in part one, we started by talking about a couple
Speaker 3: of specific organisms. One was a type of predatory amphipod
Speaker 3: crustacean called Dulcabella common chaka the sweet, Sweet, Sweet, Beautiful Darkness,
Speaker 3: newly discovered and documented in a paper by Weston at
Speaker 3: All from November twenty twenty four This was a crustacean
Speaker 3: predator found in the Hadel zone at a depth of
Speaker 3: almost eight thousand meters in the Atacama Trench, and this
Speaker 3: led us down a tangent of looking at bizarre amphipod
Speaker 3: body forms that was very fun. But we also in
Speaker 3: that episode talked about predatory sciphonophores, which can have unbelievably
Speaker 3: weird body forms as well. There's the one we talked
Speaker 3: about that's long as a waial thin rail, and we
Speaker 3: discussed a specific sighting documented in twenty twenty one of
Speaker 3: a large unidentified predatory cephonophore in Hadl waters. Now in
Speaker 3: Part two, I started off by talking about an abyssle
Speaker 3: predatory fish found more than four thousand meters deep in
Speaker 3: the Pacific, known as the gridi fish, which was notable,
Speaker 3: at least to me, for having these absolutely bizarre bean
Speaker 3: shaped neon yellow plate like depressions in the top of
Speaker 3: its head that apparently function as light sensitive spots for
Speaker 3: hunting bioluminescent prey. And then after that, Rob talked about
Speaker 3: a couple of deep swimming cephalopods, the strawberry squid, which
Speaker 3: inhabits a sort of boundary zone in the midwater with
Speaker 3: a little bit of twilight above and dark water below,
Speaker 3: which requires an interesting adaptation of two different kinds of
Speaker 3: eyes on opposite sides of its body, one for seeing
Speaker 3: shadows moving against the faint sunlight above and one for
Speaker 3: seeing glowing self illuminated organisms from below. After that, we
Speaker 3: also talked about the dumbo octopus, a very very cute,
Speaker 3: interesting little critter that seems to have forsaken many of
Speaker 3: the defense mechanisms of its cephalopod kin because it lives
Speaker 3: deep where predators are less of a concern. And we're
Speaker 3: back today to talk about more. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have at least a couple of different classifications
Speaker 2: of critics that I think everyone is going to be
Speaker 2: fascinated by, and at least well, I think both of
Speaker 2: them are probably anticipated as well now right, Actually, just
Speaker 2: a couple hours ago, I was in my regular Wednesday
Speaker 2: midday yoga class and my teacher, Allison, asked what I
Speaker 2: was working on, and I mentioned deep sea fish, and
Speaker 2: she mentioned that the late great David Lynch's two thousand
Speaker 2: and six book Catching the Big Fish evokes deep sea
Speaker 2: fish as a those kind of treasures of introspection and meditation.
Speaker 2: I don't know if anyone out there familiar with this
Speaker 2: book and to understand it's kind of an autobiography but
Speaker 2: also a self help guide and gets into some of
Speaker 2: the meditative concepts that David Lynch gravitated towards. I'm going
Speaker 2: to read a quick quote here from it. Quote ideas
Speaker 2: are like fish. If you want to catch little fish,
Speaker 2: you can stay in the shallow water. But if you
Speaker 2: want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper,
Speaker 2: down deep. The fish are more powerful and more pure.
Speaker 2: They're huge and abstract, and they're beautiful. Everything, anything that
Speaker 2: is a thing, comes up from the deepest level. Modern
Speaker 2: physics calls that level the unified field. The more your consciousness,
Speaker 2: your awareness is expanded, the deeper you go toward this source,
Speaker 2: and the bigger fish you can catch. So I think
Speaker 2: that's pretty cool. We can quibble about deep sea gigantism
Speaker 2: and the relative small size of some of the deep
Speaker 2: sea organisms been discussing here, but in general I will say, yes,
Speaker 2: these are the waters where you find organisms as deeply
Speaker 2: weird as a David Lynch film.
Speaker 3: If my hum sounded quibbli, it was more about the
Speaker 3: consciousness physics kind of connection there but no, I followed
Speaker 3: the metaphor absolutely with the deep sea biology. Yeah, the
Speaker 3: fish are certainly they've got to be more pure in
Speaker 3: whatever that means. It just feels right, and as we'll
Speaker 3: discuss today, probably more reeking. So are you ready for
Speaker 3: the snailfish.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the snailfish.
Speaker 3: Okay. In part one of this series, one of the
Speaker 3: things we got into briefly was an experiment that was
Speaker 3: designed to monitor what would happen when a dolphin carcass
Speaker 3: was dropped into the Hadele zone. And as a reminder,
Speaker 3: the Hadl zone is the deepest forty five percent of
Speaker 3: the ocean in terms of vertical depth, often defined as
Speaker 3: the space deeper than six thousand meters from the surface. Now,
Speaker 3: while the Hadele zone is almost half of the ocean's
Speaker 3: maximum depth, it takes up less than one percent of
Speaker 3: the ocean's horizontal seafloor area because it's limited to these
Speaker 3: deep sea trenches and trench systems. So just in terms
Speaker 3: of depth, these regions are going way beyond even the
Speaker 3: abysstal depth of most of the world's ocean floor, but
Speaker 3: in terms of space taken up on the surface of
Speaker 3: the Earth, very limited they're little, tiny islands. So what
Speaker 3: this study wanted to examine was what happens when a
Speaker 3: large dead animal, in effect a huge cache of food,
Speaker 3: hits the floor of an ocean trench. This obviously happens
Speaker 3: naturally all the time, but we're not around to observe
Speaker 3: it from the beginning when it does happen, And so
Speaker 3: they staged these They staged these events where a dolphin
Speaker 3: carcass would fall down into hadel waters and then they
Speaker 3: would monitor what happens. One of the findings was of
Speaker 3: a kind of dynamic interaction pattern where first scavenger like
Speaker 3: impipod crustaceans would show up to eat the soft tissue
Speaker 3: of the dolphin's body. But how fast the crustaceans were
Speaker 3: able to consume that soft tissue was in part controlled
Speaker 3: by the presence of secondary predators who showed up to
Speaker 3: eat the amphipod scavengers who were eating the carcass. And
Speaker 3: one group of secondary predators mentioned in that research was
Speaker 3: the snailfish. So I wanted to explore more about these creatures,
Speaker 3: figure out what they are and what's special about them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who's showing up this deep to interfere with the
Speaker 2: work of the initial scavengers.
Speaker 3: So snail fishes are any of more than one hundred
Speaker 3: known species of ray finned fishes grouped into the family Liparidy.
Speaker 3: They take different forms, but they tend to be small,
Speaker 3: with the largest growing only about a foot in length,
Speaker 3: and not all snailfish are deep trench dwellers. Various species
Speaker 3: can be found in habitats throughout the ocean. You'll find
Speaker 3: some of them in shallow, even shallow coastal waters, and
Speaker 3: some are in much deeper waters. In general, snailfish tend
Speaker 3: to be good at adapting to extreme environments, so a
Speaker 3: lot of snailfish species gravitate toward cold waters, such as
Speaker 3: in the Arctic and the Antarctic. A snailfish is often
Speaker 3: shaped sort of like a tadpole, so you can think
Speaker 3: of a big, bulbous head and a narrowing tail, and
Speaker 3: the deep dwelling varieties are often pale or translucent pink
Speaker 3: in color. So to picture a deep sea snailfish, imagine
Speaker 3: a fish in the form of a fat, pale, pink
Speaker 3: tadpole without scales on its body and instead a kind
Speaker 3: of loose, milky sea through skin, which is usually covered
Speaker 3: in a gelatinous slime, and occasionally that skin will be
Speaker 3: prickly or spiny.
Speaker 2: They're kind of like how you included a picture here
Speaker 2: of one, and I get a vibe of like a
Speaker 2: sort of a like a pink person faced monster super
Speaker 2: baby that lives in the deep. You know, like they're
Speaker 2: they're weirdly kind of cute. You want to attribute various
Speaker 2: emotional states to them, And I was looking, right, I
Speaker 2: found other Like I found various headlines that refer to
Speaker 2: them as cuties. So it's not just like me and
Speaker 2: my own like weird sensibilities. Like a lot of people
Speaker 2: seem to think that snailfish are kind of cute.
Speaker 3: Let's put a pin in that. We'll come back to
Speaker 3: how cute they are. But I think you're right. I
Speaker 3: think they are at once cute and gross, which is
Speaker 3: the best kind of cute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, babies have been nailing that for ages.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot that is interesting about snail fishes.
Speaker 3: But snailfishes have one very impressive credential that is relevant
Speaker 3: to our topic today, and that is, at least as
Speaker 3: of April twenty twenty three, a snailfish whole. It's the
Speaker 3: record for the deepest diving fish that has ever been
Speaker 3: directly observed by humans. And I do have to put
Speaker 3: an asterisk on there, because I was reading in one
Speaker 3: article there are claimed observations of fish that have been
Speaker 3: cited lower but like, not directly imaged or documented, And
Speaker 3: for various theoretical reasons we'll get into those other claims
Speaker 3: seem unlikely to be true. But so yeah, I guess
Speaker 3: we'll put a question mark on this the best confirmed
Speaker 3: sighting of the deepest diving fish ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because there are a lot of things that are
Speaker 2: possible down there, just based on how little relatively we
Speaker 2: know about it. And you can go all the way
Speaker 2: back to you know, we talked in past episodes about
Speaker 2: the observations on the bath sphere, you know, and the
Speaker 2: varying degrees to which those reported observations have matched up
Speaker 2: or haven't matched up with subsequent human discoveries.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. But as far as well documented cases go,
Speaker 3: this is the deepest anybody's ever seen a fish. And
Speaker 3: note that this is not the deepest organism or the
Speaker 3: deepest animal ever observed in a reliable way, just the
Speaker 3: deepest fish now here. I'm relying on a University of
Speaker 3: Western Australia press release about this discovery, which was made
Speaker 3: by a team of scientists from Australia and from Japan.
Speaker 3: And I'm also relying on an April twenty twenty three
Speaker 3: right up in Scientific American by Tom metcalf. So the
Speaker 3: location of this record breaking discovery was within the izu
Speaker 3: Ogasawara Trench, which is south of Japan, at a depth
Speaker 3: of eighty three hundred and thirty six meters. The previous
Speaker 3: record before this for the deepest confirmed sighting of a
Speaker 3: fish was held by a Mariana snail fish more on
Speaker 3: that species and a bit at eighty one hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy eight meters depth, and that was within the Mariana
Speaker 3: Trench back in twenty seventeen. This new find, which was deeper,
Speaker 3: was in this other trench south of Japan, izu Ugasawara.
Speaker 3: This new record holding fish in twenty twenty three beat
Speaker 3: the previous record by one hundred and fifty eight meters
Speaker 3: and as far as I can tell, the observation still
Speaker 3: has not been surpassed. This sighting took place during an
Speaker 3: exploration of several trench environments in the Pacific around Japan
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty two. The expedition was conducted by a
Speaker 3: research ship called the DSSV Pressure Drop, so the research
Speaker 3: team used baited cameras plunked down into the deepest parts
Speaker 3: of several trenches, and at one of these baited cameras,
Speaker 3: at this kind of unlikely depth of again eighty three
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty six meters, a fish appeared. Interestingly, this
Speaker 3: solitary deep diver was a relatively small juvenile snail fish,
Speaker 3: which seems to be able to venture a bit deeper
Speaker 3: than the normal adult range for its species. More on
Speaker 3: that in a moment. The fish in question was idd
Speaker 3: as the genus Pseudoliparus, but the exact species couldn't be verified. Also,
Speaker 3: just two days after the deep fish was caught on camera,
Speaker 3: two more snail fish were actually caught like trapped in
Speaker 3: baited traps at a depth of eighty twenty two meters
Speaker 3: and brought up and rapidly preserved. In this case, the
Speaker 3: fish were identified down to the species level, and these
Speaker 3: were pseudo lyperis at Belle Yavy and rob I attached
Speaker 3: a picture from the s expedition for you to look at,
Speaker 3: with several of these snail fishes crowding around a baited trap.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure quite what that is on the trap.
Speaker 3: It might be might be a mackerel or something, but yeah,
Speaker 3: some kind of bait they've got there. And I think
Speaker 3: the idea is that the dead fish attracts the crustaceans
Speaker 3: probably amphipods that come to eat the dead fish, and
Speaker 3: then the snail fish show up to eat the scavengers. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I have to say a little kind of
Speaker 2: cute here looks looks absolutely boopable. And for an example
Speaker 2: of a headline that invokes the cuteness, Atlas Obscura has
Speaker 2: an article about this with the title the world's deepest
Speaker 2: living fish is surprisingly cute.
Speaker 3: It is. It is kind of cute. Again, it's kind
Speaker 3: of on the boundary of cute and ugly or cute
Speaker 3: engross kind of in the way that we talked about
Speaker 3: this with some of the creatures that come to the
Speaker 3: bathhouse in Spirited Away. You know, they're right on that
Speaker 3: line there, where like are they ugly and gross or
Speaker 3: are they adorable? It's a tough call.
Speaker 2: And I think this is compounded by the fact that
Speaker 2: some of the more famous deep sea fish, though to
Speaker 2: be clear fish that don't dive down as deep as
Speaker 2: the snail fish, but the more famous deep sea fish,
Speaker 2: one of which we'll get to in a bit here,
Speaker 2: are generally regarded as like severely grotesque and like aggressively
Speaker 2: weird looking and not cute. So it can come as
Speaker 2: a bit of a shock where people are like, you
Speaker 2: want to see the deepest fish ever. You're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm in for a horror show, and then you look
Speaker 2: at it and you're like, well, you know, oh, quite
Speaker 2: quite cute when I take into account expectations.
Speaker 3: Give them a snuggle now. On the other hand, I
Speaker 3: did also come across an AP article by a writer
Speaker 3: named Nick Perry which was covering some hatel snailfish discoveries,
Speaker 3: and in that article it said that deep sea trench
Speaker 3: snailfish look like quote guts stuffed in cellophane.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, aren't we all really, but okay, fair
Speaker 2: enough they do. Also, yeah, there is that they do
Speaker 2: look like little pink bags of guts. I guess I
Speaker 2: can see it.
Speaker 3: So I was thinking about the depth of this one
Speaker 3: record holder again, that's eight three hundred and thirty six meters.
Speaker 3: That is so deep. That's like five point seventeen miles down.
Speaker 3: So this is a five mile fish, and according to
Speaker 3: the researchers who led this team, there are strong reasons
Speaker 3: for thinking that if we ever find a fish living
Speaker 3: deeper than this, it won't be by much. And again,
Speaker 3: this limit applies not necessarily to animals. You'll probably find
Speaker 3: crustaceans and other types of an animals even deeper. But fish,
Speaker 3: they're saying, you're probably not going to find one much
Speaker 3: deeper than this, and that's because there appear to be
Speaker 3: biochemical circumstances that place a pretty rigid theoretical maximum depth
Speaker 3: on how far you can go if you are a fish. Now,
Speaker 3: why would that be? How would that work? Well? Fish
Speaker 3: that live under extremely high pressure are only able to
Speaker 3: do so because of compounds in their cells called osmolites,
Speaker 3: such as the molecule you might have read about this before,
Speaker 3: trimethylamine in oxide or TMAO. Osmolites like TMAO act as
Speaker 3: protein stabilizers. So within an animal's cells, you can think
Speaker 3: of proteins as sort of the machine parts that make
Speaker 3: most cellular functions possible. Proteins need to maintain their particular
Speaker 3: folded structure in order to do what they do, much
Speaker 3: the same way that the parts in a machine need
Speaker 3: to maintain their shape and the way they move, or
Speaker 3: the machine will stop working. But physical stresses like heat
Speaker 3: and pressure can denature and deform proteins or prevent them
Speaker 3: from folding correctly. And this is one of the difficulties
Speaker 3: of life in the high pressure conditions of the deep sea.
Speaker 3: Hydrostatic pressure does violence to the proteins in your cells,
Speaker 3: and so high osmolite concentrations are an adaptation deep sea
Speaker 3: animals use to get around this problem to stabilize their
Speaker 3: proteins against the high pressure environment and basically keep the
Speaker 3: machine parts stable and working the way they're supposed to.
Speaker 3: And one interesting side note that I was reading about
Speaker 3: dig you know that osmolites, these compounds that stabilize proteins,
Speaker 3: are the main cause of the fishy smell of decomposing seafood.
Speaker 3: So as a dead marine organism, you know, like a
Speaker 3: fish that's not frozen, it starts to rot in the sun,
Speaker 3: begins to decay. Bacteria break down the trimethylamine inoxide or
Speaker 3: TMAO into volatile trimethylamine, which smells fishy. That is the
Speaker 3: main part of what the fishy smell is interesting. Come
Speaker 3: back to that in the second. So marine biologists have
Speaker 3: found that as you go deeper and deeper in the
Speaker 3: ocean and the pressure gets greater, the fish species that
Speaker 3: live at each depth zone have higher concentrations of osmolites.
Speaker 3: Makes sense, right, That trend continues until you reach the
Speaker 3: maximum possible concentration of osmolites in the body tissues, which
Speaker 3: according to theoretical models, would be the concentration that would
Speaker 3: allow fish to survive at about eighty four hundred meters. So,
Speaker 3: according to this model, the fish that was observed in
Speaker 3: this expedition like eighty three hundred and something meters. It
Speaker 3: was within about seventy meters of the theoretical limit of
Speaker 3: fish biology. You basically can't get enough osmolytes into the
Speaker 3: cells to stabilize proteins any deeper than this, which is
Speaker 3: why researchers don't expect to find a fish much deeper
Speaker 3: than this one.
Speaker 2: You know, this makes me think back to that paper
Speaker 2: were discussed in the first episode by Daskuupta. At all
Speaker 2: depth in predation regulate consumption of dolphin carcasses in the
Speaker 2: hatal zone. Again, they dropped two dolphin carcasses at one
Speaker 2: of the sites snailfish were interfering with the initial scavengers,
Speaker 2: and on the other site they were not. I'm going
Speaker 2: to have to go back and look at the depths
Speaker 2: that they were discussing there and see, because it makes
Speaker 2: me wonder, well, did maybe the snailfish didn't arrive at
Speaker 2: one of the drop sites because it was too deep
Speaker 2: for them? And to be clear, this would this would
Speaker 2: not be out of keeping with the general inclusions that
Speaker 2: were made in that paper, which were that the exact
Speaker 2: like shape of the whale fall site is going to
Speaker 2: depend on the depth and on the you know, the
Speaker 2: the organisms that are in its vicinity. So again I'm
Speaker 2: gonna have to go back and look.
Speaker 3: At that, right, So it could be that if a
Speaker 3: if a whale carcass falls in a deeper zone that's
Speaker 3: outside of the range you know, it's too deep for fishes,
Speaker 3: basically for predatory fishes, then the scavenging amphipods have you know,
Speaker 3: easier time of it. Yeah, exactly. Now there's something I
Speaker 3: wanted to come back to about the fact that the
Speaker 3: breakdown of osmolites, specifically TMAO, causes the fishy smell that
Speaker 3: we associate with decaying seafood. Pairing that fact with the
Speaker 3: increasing osmolite concentrations that go up with depth, the depth
Speaker 3: of a fish's natural habitat. If you put those two
Speaker 3: facts together, that made me wonder, do abystle or hatel
Speaker 3: fish smell the worst? Like, would the deeper fish be
Speaker 3: the most foul smelling of all the fishiest of all
Speaker 3: fishy smells. I was looking to see if there was
Speaker 3: any any research into this. I don't know if there's
Speaker 3: direct research into this exact question, but I did find
Speaker 3: a marine biologist commenting on it. So I found a
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four ap article by Nick Perry about research
Speaker 3: on hal snailfish, and this article cites a marine biologist
Speaker 3: named Paul Yancey of Whitman College in Washington State, who
Speaker 3: directly says, yes, indeed, the deeper the fish lives, the
Speaker 3: worse it will stink. So hatel snailfish quite likely have
Speaker 3: like the ultimate fish smell. They've got to be a contender.
Speaker 3: I don't know if anybody's tested this directly, but it
Speaker 3: seems a priori that would be the assumption that they
Speaker 3: are the kings of stink. I also have to mention
Speaker 3: this article was the source of that comparison of trench
Speaker 3: snailfish to guts wrapped in cellophane. And there was another
Speaker 3: good one in here, not directly from the author, but
Speaker 3: it quotes a New Zealand marine ecologist and named Ashley Rodin,
Speaker 3: who caught a number of hadel snailfish from more than
Speaker 3: seven thousand meters depth in twenty twenty three. And Rodin
Speaker 3: describes holding on to one of these fish after bringing
Speaker 3: it up from I think a mackerel bated trap, and
Speaker 3: Rodin says, quote, it was like a water filled condom,
Speaker 3: a sloppy, gelatinous mass that moves between your hands. It
Speaker 3: was very cool and very strange to see its organs
Speaker 3: and everything. But anyway, back to the discovery of the
Speaker 3: deepest fish ever from the trench south of Japan. According
Speaker 3: to Professor Alan Jamison, the chief scientist of the expedition, quote,
Speaker 3: the real take home message for me is not necessarily
Speaker 3: that they are living at eighty three hundred and thirty
Speaker 3: six meters, but rather we have enough information on this
Speaker 3: environment to have predicted that these trenches would be where
Speaker 3: the deepest fish would be. In fact, until this expedition,
Speaker 3: no one had ever seen nor collected a single fish
Speaker 3: from this entire trench. Now, next, I want to look
Speaker 3: at a particular species of hadel snailfish. This is the
Speaker 3: Marianna snailfish or pseudo Lyparis sweary i SwRI. It's one
Speaker 3: of these deep adapted species. It's believed to grow about
Speaker 3: a foot long. And I'm going to say this one
Speaker 3: looks even more tadpoley than most of them do. I've
Speaker 3: got a picture for you to look at here, rob
Speaker 3: of one specimen, just like a like a pale wad
Speaker 3: of chewing gum with eye spots and a tail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one really does look like something that would
Speaker 2: be in David Lynch's eraser head.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Can't you just imagine it talking? What does his
Speaker 3: voice sound like? It's it's got a cowboy accent for
Speaker 3: some reason. It's got so Yeah. These things live in
Speaker 3: the Mariana Trench more than seven thousand meters and up
Speaker 3: to eight thousand meters below the surface. They're now believed
Speaker 3: to be the top predator within the trench ecosystem there,
Speaker 3: so they feed primarily on crustaceans, but they are probably
Speaker 3: the apex of the food chain. The species was actually
Speaker 3: discovered fairly recently announced in a publication in the journal
Speaker 3: Zoa Taxa in twenty seventeen by Garringer at All and
Speaker 3: the article was called Pseudo la Peris suirie, a newly
Speaker 3: discovered hatl snail fish from the Mariana Trench. The authors
Speaker 3: of the study described the new species on the basis
Speaker 3: of thirty seven individuals collected from the Mariana Trench between
Speaker 3: depths of six eight hundred ninety eight meters and seven
Speaker 3: nine hundred and sixty six meters, so going almost up
Speaker 3: to the eight kilometer mark. And one thing that was
Speaker 3: interesting is despite the resource challenges we've talked about, reports
Speaker 3: are that these fish tend to be well fed and
Speaker 3: their natural range. The ones that have been caught tended
Speaker 3: to have full stomachs. And they conclude that this fish
Speaker 3: is likely endemic to the Mariana Trench. And this is
Speaker 3: in keeping with the observation that since trench ecosystems tend
Speaker 3: to be somewhat isolated again kind of like inverted islands,
Speaker 3: when a snailfish species becomes locally trench adapted, it's kind
Speaker 3: of stuck there. It's kind of stuck in the specific
Speaker 3: trench environment or system it's evolved for and the author's
Speaker 3: rite quote. The discovery of another hatele liperid species, apparently
Speaker 3: abundant at depths where other fish species are few and
Speaker 3: only found in low numbers, provides further evidence for the
Speaker 3: dominance of this family among the hatelfish fauna. So again,
Speaker 3: snailfishes are the kings and queens of Hades. So in
Speaker 3: the years following this initial discovery, researchers continued to look
Speaker 3: into what made the Mariana snailfish special. And I wanted
Speaker 3: to refer to a paper from twenty nine teen in
Speaker 3: the journal Nature, Ecology and Evolution by Kunwang at All
Speaker 3: called Morphology and Genome of a snailfish from the Mariana
Speaker 3: Trench provide insights into deep sea adaptation. So the authors
Speaker 3: of this study begin by explaining, you know, it is
Speaker 3: largely unknown how animals, especially vertebrates, survive in the Hatel
Speaker 3: zone given the extremity of the physical environment. So to
Speaker 3: better understand the vertebrates of the Hatel zone, the authors
Speaker 3: look at the specific morphology and genome of pseudo leiperisuirii.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to cover everything they explore in the paper,
Speaker 3: just wanted to mention a few interesting things that stood
Speaker 3: out to me. Of course, as we already discussed, fish
Speaker 3: use osmolites such as TMAO to stabilize proteins, and these
Speaker 3: fish are no exception. In fact, they are they are
Speaker 3: prodigious osmolite factories on the Mariana Trench snailfish. The eyes
Speaker 3: are if you see pictures of them, it looks kind
Speaker 3: of like they have eyes, like they have little dark spots.
Speaker 3: The eyes are non functioning. The fish did not react
Speaker 3: to lights from the lander vehicle, and genomic analysis also
Speaker 3: found that these fish were missing gene variants that are
Speaker 3: associated with photoreceptor tissues. They have an inflated stomach, so
Speaker 3: the stomach of the snailfish is larger and takes up
Speaker 3: more space in the body cavity than in other snail fishes.
Speaker 3: Why would that be I believe the thinking is in
Speaker 3: extreme environments where prey density is lower, you need to
Speaker 3: have space to eat more when you get the opportunity.
Speaker 3: So I think maybe you just don't ever want to
Speaker 3: be like, oh, sorry, there's food right here, but I
Speaker 3: am too full to eat it right right.
Speaker 2: Oversized stomachs. It is something we see in some of
Speaker 2: the other deep sea fish that we'll be talking about later.
Speaker 3: They also had a larger liver and larger eggs than
Speaker 3: expected for their body size. One thing is we already
Speaker 3: mentioned that deep see snail fishes tend to be non
Speaker 3: scaled on their skin, So these snail fishes also they
Speaker 3: don't have scales, and they have this large layer of
Speaker 3: gelatinous mucus covering the body. Is thought to serve several functions.
Speaker 3: Probably it helps them grow, it helps them move easily.
Speaker 3: They also have a non closed skull, like there's a
Speaker 3: gap in their skull structure, and this may be an
Speaker 3: adaptation to the pressure environment to help balance pressure inside
Speaker 3: and outside the skull.
Speaker 2: All right, keep your head from exploding, gotcha or imploding?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And flexible bones this is another thing. Instead of
Speaker 3: rigid ossified bones, the Mariana snailfish have thin bones made
Speaker 3: primarily of cartilage, and these flexible sort of non bones
Speaker 3: may also help the fish withstand pressure. And this cartilage
Speaker 3: bone system is caused by a mutation in one of
Speaker 3: their bone protein genes, which seems to result in early
Speaker 3: termination of the calcification of cartilage. So overall fascinating organism,
Speaker 3: but it brought me back to a question. I know
Speaker 3: we've talked about on the show before. So you know,
Speaker 3: apologies old time listeners for coming back to familiar territory.
Speaker 3: But I couldn't help but think how so many of
Speaker 3: the body forms that we see as scary are a
Speaker 3: result of the kind of environment in which we live
Speaker 3: and the predators you find there, you know. So like
Speaker 3: when we try to think of what a scary monster
Speaker 3: would look like, often we think of the kinds of
Speaker 3: animals you could easily imagine eating a human being, So
Speaker 3: you know, it's going to be something with sharp teeth
Speaker 3: and big claws, that sort of thing. And so I'm
Speaker 3: wondering which types of adaptations and body forms you would
Speaker 3: come to see as those defining you know, a frightening
Speaker 3: anatomy or monsterhood. If you were a prey organism in
Speaker 3: one of these deep sea trenches, would it be you know,
Speaker 3: it's like the hole in the skull, or the thin
Speaker 3: bones of the thin skin that you can see through,
Speaker 3: the gelatinous coating of slime on the body, the broad
Speaker 3: pectoral fins, like what would be the scary things to
Speaker 3: the organisms down there? Because it's got to be something
Speaker 3: that looks like these these critters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, something with no exoskeleton, disgusting, horrifying. Look at that
Speaker 2: pink flesh. You can see it's guts. I mean that'd
Speaker 2: be pretty horrifying for us as well, of course.
Speaker 3: But well, gut stuffed in cellphone doesn't seem threatening. It
Speaker 3: just looks like it's like ikey, It's like you don't
Speaker 3: want to touch it, but it doesn't seem like it's
Speaker 3: gonna hurt you. Hmmm, maybe if it were big enough.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I guess size is always going to
Speaker 3: be a major part of the monster hood equation. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but oh man, uh what what? What a beauty? All right?
Speaker 2: Well, at last, I would like to turn our attention
Speaker 2: to one of the most iconic fish of the deep sea,
Speaker 2: the deep sea anglerfish. A true superstar, this become the
Speaker 2: poster fish for the deep end, even pops up in
Speaker 2: such animated films as Finding Nemo, pops up of course
Speaker 2: on SpongeBob square Pants and as this was the fish
Speaker 2: I was referencing earlier. When you think of deep sea fish,
Speaker 2: you probably think of a handful of illustrations of deep
Speaker 2: sea fish. I used to have a pote when I
Speaker 2: was a kid. I had a poster out of it
Speaker 2: like a national geographic that had a bunch of these illustrations,
Speaker 2: and I was always captivated by several of like the
Speaker 2: needle toothed a variety of deep sea fish, and the
Speaker 2: angler fish is definitely one of the more alarming looking.
Speaker 2: You know, it has that frog like face, sharp teeth,
Speaker 2: and then of course this bizarre bioluminescent lure that hangs
Speaker 2: in front of its face and encourage it's prey to
Speaker 2: move in and check out the light, only to be
Speaker 2: sucked into this fierce maw.
Speaker 3: I assume that's where the name of it comes from,
Speaker 3: because it's like a sort of like a fishing pole.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they're fisherfish. Yeah, that's that's why. So when
Speaker 2: we talk about anglerfish in general, we're talking about multiple
Speaker 2: species of the teleost order lava forms. Anglerfish in general
Speaker 2: live in deeper waters, though there are some lavaform species
Speaker 2: that live in shallower waters as well. We previously discussed
Speaker 2: some shallow water frog fishes in our episode episodes about
Speaker 2: the Sargasso Sea, concerning an ecosystem right near the surface
Speaker 2: of the water. All told, when we're talking about anglerfish,
Speaker 2: we have sea toads, we have brightly colored frog fishes,
Speaker 2: and we have batfishes, we have goose fishes and more.
Speaker 2: They're all ambush predators of one sort or another. They'll
Speaker 2: also all do a little bit of scavenging. They're not
Speaker 2: too proud. Some hunt on the seafloor, others in midwater
Speaker 2: or again even near the surface. Now, why all the
Speaker 2: like frog and toad. Why aren't we invoking these terrestrial
Speaker 2: organisms in particular. Well, they tend to have frog like
Speaker 2: heads due to their broad mouths, which they use in
Speaker 2: suction feeding, which is something you see in a lot
Speaker 2: of sea organisms. In order to swallow something. What do
Speaker 2: you do? You just suck it in. You just you know,
Speaker 2: create that vacuum and just take in a portion of
Speaker 2: water that has an organism in it and you consume it.
Speaker 3: Hole.
Speaker 2: But again here we're talking about deep sea varieties of
Speaker 2: the angler fish found in tropical to temperate latitudes at
Speaker 2: depths of twenty five hundred meters or eighty two hundred feet,
Speaker 2: So at their deepest they get down to the bathy
Speaker 2: pelagic zone, the midnight zone, which is plenty deep, a
Speaker 2: lightless realm of pressure and chilling waters. Now you asked
Speaker 2: about their name and their lures, Yeah. Angler are of
Speaker 2: course known for their lures. They are again the fishermen
Speaker 2: fish of the sea. Some seafloor anglers have a frilly
Speaker 2: but non bioluminescent lure, sometimes said to resemble a worm,
Speaker 2: and then batfishes actually release a bait chemical from their
Speaker 2: lures in order to bring in prey, but the deep
Speaker 2: sea anglerfish are best known for their glow. Morphologically, the
Speaker 2: lure or even lures can vary greatly, so what we're
Speaker 2: talking about here is generally the first dorsal fin spine
Speaker 2: has modified. It's evolved into a long, wiggling rod an elysium,
Speaker 2: and again they can wiggle it so they can actively
Speaker 2: move it to help bring in the prey. And then
Speaker 2: there's a lure at the end of the elysium called
Speaker 2: the esca, and in bioluminescent anglerfish, the esca is a
Speaker 2: sack of glowing bacteria chef's kiss. Yes, so these are
Speaker 2: symbiotic photobacteria. Embiotic relationship here is that, of course, the
Speaker 2: angler fish uses the light to draw and prey, and
Speaker 2: in return, the photobacteria get to live in a little
Speaker 2: fleshy knob at the end of this protrusion on the
Speaker 2: fish's head, which I know doesn't sound very attractive to
Speaker 2: most of us. But if you're a if you are
Speaker 2: a photobacterium, this is advantageous because you get to live
Speaker 2: with a whole bunch of your fellow photobacteriums by the millions,
Speaker 2: inside of this lure. And you get to see the world. Baby,
Speaker 2: maybe not all the world, but you get to travel around.
Speaker 2: It takes you places.
Speaker 3: So it's a mutualistic form of symbiosis bothas benefit. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, one of the big questions that scientists have puzzled
Speaker 2: over for years is well, how do the fish first
Speaker 2: acquire the bacteria, and scientists have largely been unsure whether
Speaker 2: this is a situation where it developing anglerfish would encounter
Speaker 2: the bacteria in the open ocean, or if they were
Speaker 2: inoculated with them by a parent during spawning, you know,
Speaker 2: or in some way like it's passed on parent to offspring. Now,
Speaker 2: most of the recent research I was looking at does
Speaker 2: seem to point more towards the idea that they acquire
Speaker 2: the photobacteria in the open ocean. And it's also worth
Speaker 2: noting that the anglerfish do have specific species of bacteria
Speaker 2: that they pair with and when when you get into
Speaker 2: some of the other details, you can see how you
Speaker 2: could potentially lean one way or another and trying to
Speaker 2: figure out where they get this stuff, because on one hand,
Speaker 2: young female anglerfish apparently don't seem to yet have room
Speaker 2: for the bacteria in that little knob in the escap Also,
Speaker 2: as Baker at All reported in twenty nineteen's Diverse Deep
Speaker 2: Sea anglerfishes share a genetically reduced luminous symbiate that is
Speaker 2: acquired from the environ. This was published in Ecology Evolutionary Biology.
Speaker 2: They point out that if the bacteria were transferred parent
Speaker 2: to young then we would then we would be able
Speaker 2: to observe it in the bacteria DNA. There would be
Speaker 2: this sort of lineage of coevolution, and we don't see
Speaker 2: the telltale markers of that with the angler fish and
Speaker 2: their specific bacteria.
Speaker 3: So it seems to be a more kind of capture
Speaker 3: and cultivate kind of situation right now.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, the reduced genome of these particular
Speaker 2: bacteria species seem to indicate that they've lost the ability
Speaker 2: to exist separately from their host fish. This is something,
Speaker 2: of course, we see in such symbiotic relationships in nature,
Speaker 2: as say the leafcutter ants who have their own fungus
Speaker 2: that has essentially become extinct in the wild because it's
Speaker 2: a domesticated species, and so on one hand, given that
Speaker 2: it's it seems like these bacteria species have lost the
Speaker 2: ability to exist without the angler fish. Well, then maybe
Speaker 2: it's something that's passed on initially from parent to offspring,
Speaker 2: because otherwise how could it live free out there in
Speaker 2: the water. However, the other studies have added different wrinkles
Speaker 2: to this by pointing out, well, okay, maybe there are examples,
Speaker 2: and it seems like there are examples of free floating
Speaker 2: symbiants of the angler's photobacteria, at least in some cases.
Speaker 2: So based on what I've read here and elsewhere, it
Speaker 2: sounds like the current wisdom on the topic drifts somewhat
Speaker 2: towards the acquired in the wild argument, but with some
Speaker 2: possible shades of the parent transfer theory as well, like
Speaker 2: perhaps they pick up the bacteria from an environmental population
Speaker 2: that is supplied by symbiants ejected from adult anglerfish. Now
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if they're ejected at some point during
Speaker 2: the fish's life or a death, but the idea here
Speaker 2: would be that perhaps the bacteria live the majority of
Speaker 2: their life within the anglerfish, within that fleshy knob at
Speaker 2: the in the esca. But then at some point they're
Speaker 2: going to escape or they're going to be released, and
Speaker 2: it's when they're free living that's when they're picked up
Speaker 2: by other anglerfish. Okay, the esca, by the way, does
Speaker 2: have a pore on it that seems to be the
Speaker 2: likely exit entry point in question, so it's not, you know,
Speaker 2: completely sealed. There does seem to be like a hatch
Speaker 2: to go in and out of. I should also add
Speaker 2: that the exact findings on all this it may depend
Speaker 2: on which specific anglerfish species and corresponding bacteria species you're
Speaker 2: looking at, but again, things in general do seem to
Speaker 2: tip toward the acquired and the wild model. However they
Speaker 2: get their glow, they definitely use it, drawing in hungry
Speaker 2: or perhaps mate seeking prey that the anglers then suck
Speaker 2: and gobble into their large mouths. We already mentioned that
Speaker 2: you know, it's good to have a large belly in
Speaker 2: addition to a large mouth in the deep, because again,
Speaker 2: you don't know when you're gonna get your next meal,
Speaker 2: and in the case of the anglerfish, specifically, this means
Speaker 2: they can also kind of take in oversized prey. They've
Speaker 2: got the big mouth and they've got the big belly,
Speaker 2: so they're really here for it. They're gonna clean house
Speaker 2: anytime there's an all you can eat buffet. Also, those teeth,
Speaker 2: those noticeable teeth of the anglerfish. They can depress the
Speaker 2: teeth at will to allow unobstructed travel down their throat,
Speaker 2: and they can likewise raise them again like the bars
Speaker 2: of a cage, to prevent engulfed prey from escaping.
Speaker 3: Again, that is horrifying. Yeah, so like the teeth. Wow,
Speaker 3: So when it's trying to get its mouth around something
Speaker 3: that's just too big to get past the teeth, the
Speaker 3: teeth come down, but then they close again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, what big teeth you have, Grandma to
Speaker 2: bite me with, note to trap you with to keep
Speaker 2: you from escaping.
Speaker 3: Let me let me get these out of the way
Speaker 3: so I can get in there.
Speaker 2: I should also note that the light on the end
Speaker 2: of the lure, it has a kind of lid, a
Speaker 2: kind of like flap of skin that can muscularly hide
Speaker 2: or reveal the glow. I guess we might think of
Speaker 2: it almost like an eye lid or something.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The other really noticeable thing and headline catching thing about anglerfish,
Speaker 2: of course, is the extreme sexual dimorphism we see in
Speaker 2: some anglerfish species. The female is larger and fiercer by
Speaker 2: a considerable margin in these species, and the male's main
Speaker 2: purpose is to provide sperm for sexual reproduction. So for
Speaker 2: black sea devils, for example, there are like five species
Speaker 2: of black sea devil. The male is free swimming but
Speaker 2: doesn't even feed as an adult. In other species, the
Speaker 2: male is small and parasitic nature, so what it does
Speaker 2: is and in general the males again, they're small, they
Speaker 2: often have like oversized sense organs, and they are basically
Speaker 2: like heat seeking little missiles. Their one goal in life
Speaker 2: is to find the female, which you know, this matches
Speaker 2: up with with other modes of reproduction sexual reproduction we
Speaker 2: see in the animal kingdom. But when they get there,
Speaker 2: some of them, particularly like these black sea devils, they
Speaker 2: will attach to the female's body. They will latch on
Speaker 2: and they will fuse with her.
Speaker 3: Body, almost blurring the line between like the male adult
Speaker 3: itself and like the germ cells. Like it's almost like
Speaker 3: an infection, like.
Speaker 2: Let me become part of your body. Let us share
Speaker 2: a circulatory system, because that is exactly what happens. Uh.
Speaker 2: There is a there is a merging, There is a
Speaker 2: fusing of the male and female, and in some cases
Speaker 2: multiple males. The female will have multiple males attached to her. Joe,
Speaker 2: if you if you slide down in our notes here,
Speaker 2: I included an image here and you can really see.
Speaker 2: I mean when I say there's a difference in size here,
Speaker 2: it is extreme. The female here looks like she just
Speaker 2: has You could mistake this for just like a little
Speaker 2: flourish on the creature's back, but that is a male
Speaker 2: that is fused with her. It would be like, I
Speaker 2: don't think a mole. Yeah, yeah, it would be like
Speaker 2: you have a male if the male human being was
Speaker 2: the size of a squirrel, you know, compared to the female.
Speaker 2: Like that's how small he is.
Speaker 3: But waite, does she have two males stuck to her?
Speaker 3: Is there another one on her face? Or is that
Speaker 3: the lure?
Speaker 2: That may be a lure. I'm not completely certain I'm
Speaker 2: that but indeed, yeah, the females will end up with
Speaker 2: multiple males, and the males continue to live, but they
Speaker 2: become entirely dependent on the female for nutrients. They don't feed,
Speaker 2: they're just latched on. They are essentially part of her body.
Speaker 2: The upside for her is they don't take up much space.
Speaker 2: They're small, and they also require comparably little nourishment, so
Speaker 2: they're not too much of a drain, and they're just
Speaker 2: they're ready to provide sperm whenever she is ready to
Speaker 2: reproduce again. This comes down to the idea that in
Speaker 2: these deep waters you may have trouble running in to prey,
Speaker 2: and when you do, you need to be able to
Speaker 2: be ready to eat them entirely, eat as much as
Speaker 2: you can. And likewise it's going to be hard to
Speaker 2: find a mate. So when you find one, you better
Speaker 2: be ready to fuse with her body, and or if
Speaker 2: you're the female, you need to go ahead and attach
Speaker 2: them to you and carry them with you so you
Speaker 2: can use them later.
Speaker 3: It's a brilliant adaptation, perfect it is.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. And it's by the way, their reproduction is
Speaker 2: still carried out externally via spawning, So the females release eggs,
Speaker 2: the males release sperm, and then the fertilized eggs drift
Speaker 2: off in the water column.
Speaker 3: The male is right there, is stuck to her yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's just right there, right there, on the whole
Speaker 2: of the ship. I mean, there's a lot crazy about this. Again,
Speaker 2: this is about as far from the human model of
Speaker 2: sexual reproduction as you can you can get, and it
Speaker 2: certainly gets into like, certainly body horror realms when you
Speaker 2: start imagining like human versions of this. But one of
Speaker 2: the crazy things about the merging here is that we're
Speaker 2: dealing with genetically disparate male and female counterparts, and yet
Speaker 2: they're able to fuse together without invoking a strong anti
Speaker 2: graft immune rejection response, let's say on the part of
Speaker 2: the female. This is you know, this is the what
Speaker 2: you generally see in cases of parabiosis, particularly of the
Speaker 2: surgical variety, in pretty much all other vertebrates, any kind
Speaker 2: of grafting like this, you know, limb transplant, organ transplant,
Speaker 2: tissue transplant, depending on exactly on what you're transplanting. You know,
Speaker 2: when you get down into bones, it's a little different,
Speaker 2: but generally you're going to generate an immune system response
Speaker 2: resulting in the rejection of the grafted tissue, unless immunosuppressant
Speaker 2: medications are employed, or i know, in the case of
Speaker 2: some organ transplants, you'll have bone marrow transplants that are
Speaker 2: sometimes employed to reduce rejection.
Speaker 3: You're saying, the angler fish immune systems do not do this.
Speaker 3: They can have the male graft right on there and
Speaker 3: the immune system does not reject.
Speaker 2: It exactly exactly. So yeah, like this, we have to
Speaker 2: jump through so many hoops to actually successfully transplant tissues, limbs,
Speaker 2: and so forth with our human bodies, and with anglerfish
Speaker 2: that they just do it as part of their sexual reproduction.
Speaker 2: And so this has been a major point of fascination
Speaker 2: for scientists. I was reading an article from twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two that gets into some of this, titled Histocompatibility and
Speaker 2: Reproduction Lessons from the Anglerfish by Noah Issakoff in the
Speaker 2: journal Life, and they point out that it's thought that
Speaker 2: anglerfish evolved to quote tolerate the history incompatible tissue antigens
Speaker 2: of their mate and prevent the occurrence of reciprocal graph
Speaker 2: rejection responses, and so they likely this is where it
Speaker 2: gets interesting. This doesn't mean that they just like flipped
Speaker 2: off all defenses and they're like, well, we don't care
Speaker 2: about infections now because we need to breed. It's likely
Speaker 2: The author points out that they evolved other immune strategies
Speaker 2: to protect against, to protect against the sorts of infections
Speaker 2: and threats that those very defense systems would otherwise be
Speaker 2: in place for. So they're arguing, there's obviously there's so
Speaker 2: much we could learn, you know, from these fish to
Speaker 2: better you know, to better understand how, for instance, on
Speaker 2: one hand, how we might just protect against infections, like
Speaker 2: what sort of strategies are they using that are different
Speaker 2: from what we see in other organisms. And then of course,
Speaker 2: the the obvious ramification here is what if we could
Speaker 2: learn from them to improve human too, is shoe limb
Speaker 2: and organ transplants. Those are the potential quote lessons from
Speaker 2: the anglerfish. Now, Joe, I only shared like one, maybe
Speaker 2: two pictures of anglerfish in our document, but I do
Speaker 2: I recommend that everyone out there just do a few
Speaker 2: image searches. Look around there. Anglerfish vary so much in
Speaker 2: their appearance and their morphology. You know, it's really wild
Speaker 2: and wonderful. And once you see, especially when you get
Speaker 2: out of deep sea angler fish and you start looking
Speaker 2: at like all of these like colorful examples you find
Speaker 2: in shallower waters. Yeah, there's some amazing diversity here.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, It's funny. We were just talking about
Speaker 3: how ecology affects esthetic values, you know, in terms of
Speaker 3: like what looks scary to us is affected by the
Speaker 3: animals that we're afraid could harm us. And if you,
Speaker 3: you know, you're a prey animal and the Mariana trench,
Speaker 3: would what looks scary to you be these cute little
Speaker 3: snail fishes? I have think we have to ask the
Speaker 3: same question about the biology underlying aesthetics. If you were
Speaker 3: a highly evolved anglerfish species, what looks sexy do you? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Interesting question looking either way at the at the anglerfish sexes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if you're a female anglerfish, you're really
Speaker 2: looking for a guy who no longer eats and is
Speaker 2: really ready to change for you.
Speaker 3: Trying to imagine the cosmetic trends of like technology of
Speaker 3: anglerfish that evolve technological intelligence, what would they be doing
Speaker 3: to try to enhance the look of the jail bar
Speaker 3: teeth and they'd be messing with the lure somehow. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of them have kind of a like a
Speaker 2: beard going on that is also biolinminescence, so they they
Speaker 2: might be you know, wanting a more robust, glowing beard,
Speaker 2: you know, that's that's certainly advisable.
Speaker 3: These are wonderful creatures.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And I mean they're horrifying, but they're also there.
Speaker 2: They are attractive in their own way. I just doing
Speaker 2: a quick image and I'm running across tattoos that people
Speaker 2: have of angler fish, so they have their own vibe
Speaker 2: going on that definitely people love. All Right, we're going
Speaker 2: to go ahead and close up this episode of Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind. We were just chatting off Mike
Speaker 2: and we think we're probably going to come back and
Speaker 2: do one more episode, but we're going to leave it
Speaker 2: a little open. High likelihood that you're going to get
Speaker 2: another episode on deep sea predators and it will also
Speaker 2: be gross and amazing and weird. But if not, you know,
Speaker 2: we'll come back with something else. In the meantime, we'd
Speaker 2: like to remind everyone that Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and
Speaker 2: on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to just
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Speaker 3: Podcasts Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer
Speaker 3: JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch
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