Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back for Globsters Part two, The Revenge That's Right.
Speaker 1: The last episode was a fun introduction to the world
Speaker 1: of globsters, grotesque, love crafty and amorphous monstrosities that wash
Speaker 1: upon our shores and perplex onlookers. Now, last time we
Speaker 1: tended to focus on globsters that are of a sort
Speaker 1: of maybe you could call like the standard class globster,
Speaker 1: which is something that is sort of off white, gray
Speaker 1: or pale pink and color. Huge blob like in shape,
Speaker 1: maybe multi ton no apparent skeleton or bones, no apparent eyes,
Speaker 1: no apparent head covered in will find hairs or stringy
Speaker 1: fibrous substances, kind of a rubbery texture, your classic beach blob. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And as we discussed and explored in that episode, it's
Speaker 1: almost always a safe bet to go with the explanation
Speaker 1: that it's a big old piece of rotting whale blubber.
Speaker 1: In fact, if someone if you're out in the world,
Speaker 1: you know, in the next over the next few months,
Speaker 1: and someone says, hey, did you see this headline about
Speaker 1: this strange creature that washed up you. You can just
Speaker 1: go ahead and say, oh, yeah, that's probably whale blubber,
Speaker 1: and you have a very good chance of being correct.
Speaker 1: You can you can really feel like a Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 1: in this scenario. Yeah, you'll be right most of the time.
Speaker 1: But we should acknowledge that there is also another, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it'd be one class, you could say,
Speaker 1: a whole range of other classes of globsters, which are
Speaker 1: you know, some form of mysterious dead organic matter that
Speaker 1: washes up on a beach and defies initial classification and
Speaker 1: people don't automatically know exactly what kind of animal it is.
Speaker 1: That it might be a new species or some kind
Speaker 1: of sea monster or sea serpent. And that's what we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about today, the globsters that are not
Speaker 1: just whale blubber or some type of whale tissue. Right.
Speaker 1: One of the key examples that you come up with
Speaker 1: our our globsters that are interpreted as being a plesiosaur. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is one of the biggest classes of other globsters
Speaker 1: out there. The plesiosaur form the kind of like long
Speaker 1: neck reptile with weird little paddle fins, the lockness monster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the thing is, you can you can just go
Speaker 1: ahead and forget about the lockness monster for a second,
Speaker 1: because the lockness monster does not exist, never existed, but
Speaker 1: the plesiosaur did. And it's uh, you know, it's it is.
Speaker 1: It is an amazing thing, like we should wake up
Speaker 1: every day in amazement that giant marine reptiles once ruled
Speaker 1: our seas. Yeah. Well, a point of clarification. Sometimes plesiosaurs,
Speaker 1: they get lumped in with dinosaurs. Weren't dinosaurs more than
Speaker 1: pterosaurs were dinosaurs. Plesiosaurs were seed dwelling reptiles, right, Yes, though,
Speaker 1: I have to I have to admit I myself will
Speaker 1: sometimes mistakenly refer to a tarrasaur as a dinosaur, and
Speaker 1: my six year old son will correct me. They're not
Speaker 1: actually dinosaurs, Dad, they're tarrasaurs. Good on him, he's flexing
Speaker 1: those pedantic muscles early. Yes, I mean, that's just good
Speaker 1: training for adulthood, nobody. The kind of person everybody loves
Speaker 1: most is the person who corrects them about what kind
Speaker 1: of animal something is. Yes, well, you know you have
Speaker 1: to work on that too, that's that's the story of
Speaker 1: of of raising a child, right. Um, the difficult part
Speaker 1: is yet convincing them that there is a time and
Speaker 1: a place to correct people on this and this sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And in granted some adults never learned that lesson.
Speaker 1: But anyway, to come back to Tanessy, it is important
Speaker 1: to acknowledge Nessy because NeSSI is a great example of
Speaker 1: how we have this well worn cryptid trope uh to
Speaker 1: turn to when we find a strange creature that in
Speaker 1: some way resembles a prehistoric marine lizard. And so it
Speaker 1: is a great form to turn to because for starters,
Speaker 1: nothing alive today really looks like a plesiosur in the
Speaker 1: same way that nothing to the live today really looks
Speaker 1: like say a sauropod or any number of prehistoric animal forms.
Speaker 1: I mean nothing, I mean nothing outside of you know,
Speaker 1: a chicken looks like a t rex, but you know,
Speaker 1: certainly not at that scale. But but at the same time,
Speaker 1: these forms are famous and and if certain animals decay
Speaker 1: in just the right way, underlying you know, bones or
Speaker 1: ligaments may create the illusion of a long neck and
Speaker 1: a small head emerging from a bulky Torso So what
Speaker 1: happens is. On several different occasions, basking sharks have been
Speaker 1: misidentified as plesiosaurs. This due to their prominent snouts or noses,
Speaker 1: which is the namesteak, the namesake of their genus uh
Speaker 1: set O rhinus ketos, which is marine monster in Greek
Speaker 1: plus rhinos meaning nose, and with it so with the
Speaker 1: underlying basking mouth rotted away because these are big, you know,
Speaker 1: filter feeders. Uh, it looks like the remnants look like
Speaker 1: a small head on a long neck. One of the
Speaker 1: most prominent examples of this that you still see everywhere.
Speaker 1: You go to any cryptozoological website and they will have
Speaker 1: this picture is this This this thing that was pulled
Speaker 1: up by a Japanese fishing trawler, the zoo Maru in
Speaker 1: ninety seven. Again, this picture still makes a round sometimes
Speaker 1: as part of a creepy pasta. I've even I've seen
Speaker 1: it used in that way, and it is an unsettling image.
Speaker 1: It looks like there is this long necked, small headed
Speaker 1: creature with like two or at least two probably like
Speaker 1: four limbs trailing off of it. Some sort of underlying structure, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it could be a skeleton, so it's easy
Speaker 1: to look at that and think, oh, my goodness, that
Speaker 1: is that's that's nesty, that's that's e Plesius are right,
Speaker 1: but it's not right. Uh. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: books we're looking at for this was Abominable Science Origins
Speaker 1: of the YETI, uh Nessy and More by Daniel Lockston
Speaker 1: and Donald R. Prothero, and it provides an excellent illustration
Speaker 1: of how this sort of thing would occur, exactly like
Speaker 1: how the flesh would rot away to create this false
Speaker 1: impression of e Plesiosaur. It's on page to fourteen in
Speaker 1: a Kindle edition. Yeah, there's actually ah, there's a great guy.
Speaker 1: It's a reversal of the shrink rapping thing you know
Speaker 1: that we know we talked about when we did the
Speaker 1: episode with Katie Golden of Creature Feature. You know this
Speaker 1: idea that sometimes when paleo artists are trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to draw what a dinosaur looks like, they
Speaker 1: essentially just like wrap the skin as tightly around the
Speaker 1: bones as possible, and so we end up with a
Speaker 1: dinosaur or any kind of extinct animal that looks like
Speaker 1: a very like slim, very slim, slender interpretation of what
Speaker 1: the bones were kind of like the bones have been
Speaker 1: shrink wrapped by the skin, but in fact many animals
Speaker 1: are They've got all kinds of tissues that are not
Speaker 1: fossilized don't show up in the bones. So maybe we
Speaker 1: should be imagining dinosaurs as as plumper, fat or more
Speaker 1: more fluffy creatures. And uh, this is like the opposite
Speaker 1: of that procedure where we pull up the bones and
Speaker 1: then you're we're actually maybe it's the same thing. You're
Speaker 1: imagining a shrink wrapped version of what these cartilaginous remains
Speaker 1: are from the basking shark. And if you were to
Speaker 1: do the shrink wrapped version of the cartilaginous remains, they
Speaker 1: look what would look kind of like a plesiosaur exactly,
Speaker 1: you know, when when alive. The head of a basking
Speaker 1: shark is something like five feet across, but it's skeleton
Speaker 1: is made of cartilage, and those huge jaws that it
Speaker 1: have they quickly wrought away and it leaves behind what
Speaker 1: looks like a small skull at the end of a
Speaker 1: long spine. Another example of this this exact same situation
Speaker 1: occurred in eighteen o eight with the strong say beast,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a classic globster. Yeah, washed
Speaker 1: ashore on the island of Stronsay in the Orkney Islands,
Speaker 1: Scottish anatomist John Barclay thought that it was surely the
Speaker 1: remains of a sea serpent, and it caused quite a
Speaker 1: stir at the time, especially in the media. Though anonymoust
Speaker 1: to Sir Everard Home, who was a belief based in
Speaker 1: London at the at the time, he dismissed it. I'm
Speaker 1: almost immediately saying that's a decaying basking shark. Uh. And
Speaker 1: others backed him up on this, But so there were
Speaker 1: other people who jumped to Barclay's defense, saying that this
Speaker 1: was clearly the remains of a long necked beast with
Speaker 1: three pairs of paws or wings, along with hair like
Speaker 1: bristles down its back. Now, one place I have frequently
Speaker 1: seen claims of people trying to validate the existence of
Speaker 1: plesiosaur remains found coming out of the ocean is among
Speaker 1: Young Earth creationists. Well, I guess they sometimes seem keen
Speaker 1: on the idea that there are still dinosaurs out there,
Speaker 1: or there are still animals that we now know to
Speaker 1: be ancient extinct animals. Uh, you know they're because they've
Speaker 1: compressed the timeline of Earth history to a tiny fraction
Speaker 1: of what it really is. I think they're motivated to
Speaker 1: think that things that we think have been extinct for
Speaker 1: millions of years are actually still somewhere in a jungle
Speaker 1: or somewhere in the deep ocean. If your agenda is
Speaker 1: to take geological time and fit it within the time
Speaker 1: frame of human language, then that's probably solid step to make.
Speaker 1: But but the thing is, even people without that agenda
Speaker 1: in mind, I mean, they still can fall into this
Speaker 1: uh under this way of the plesiosaur interpretation. I mean
Speaker 1: that there were a couple, at least a couple of
Speaker 1: scientists in Japan who supported the plis are the pleas
Speaker 1: sr interpretation of that that Zeromorrow case from seven uh,
Speaker 1: which is kind of baffling, But but I guess who
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to believe It comes back to the whole,
Speaker 1: you know, situation of finding either a dead sasquatch or
Speaker 1: a dead chimpanzee in your backyard. One of them is
Speaker 1: far more likely, but one is amazing. Well, I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a plesiosaur molder like I would love to believe
Speaker 1: that that would be wonderful if we discovered that some
Speaker 1: kind of branch of plesiosaurs had survived into the modern
Speaker 1: age at this point. You know, it seems kind of unlikely,
Speaker 1: but you know, the ocean is big. Who knows. It's
Speaker 1: just that these cases are not actually good evidence of that.
Speaker 1: So I still maintain that there's far less excuse for
Speaker 1: going with the plesiosaur explanation today or even in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven. But as Lockston and Prothero pointed out in
Speaker 1: their book Abominable, Abominable Science, we should realize a few
Speaker 1: things about about the early nineteenth century when considering these
Speaker 1: earlier examples, like the strong state beast, they write, quote,
Speaker 1: by nineteenth century standards, the ink was hardly dry on
Speaker 1: newspaper reports of the sea serpent siding around Gloucester in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventeen, when ichthyosaurs were shown to be reptiles in
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty one. The first nearly complete plesiosaur skeleton was
Speaker 1: described in eighteen twenty four in a presentation before the
Speaker 1: Geological Society of London at the same meeting that announced
Speaker 1: the first dinosaur genus name, Megalosaurus. Almost immediately naturalists made
Speaker 1: the connection to sea serpents. So you've still got contemporary
Speaker 1: reports of sea serpent sightings. People are just discovering remains
Speaker 1: of these ancient you know, gigantic reptiles. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: why not put two and two together. Maybe these these
Speaker 1: remains were discovering are the sea serpents that people claim
Speaker 1: to see out on the waters. Yeah, And you had
Speaker 1: people like the likes of geologist Robert Bakewell stating that
Speaker 1: he was inclined to believe that something like ichosaurs were
Speaker 1: likely alive today. He stated this in the eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: three textbook Introduction to Geology. Well, I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: without precedent that an ancient marine species thought to have
Speaker 1: been extinct for for millions of years or so is
Speaker 1: actually discovered to still be alive today. That one of
Speaker 1: the most commonly sided examples is the lobe finned fish
Speaker 1: the seila can't. Yes, But because one has been found
Speaker 1: to exist does not suggest that necessarily another world be found, right,
Speaker 1: But all prehistoric marine life forms are on the table, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And to to put this time period in context, you know,
Speaker 1: the the early nineteenth century. To put it in context
Speaker 1: of a past episode of stuff to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: the bathosphere would not descend for another century like so
Speaker 1: that's where we were too in our understanding of the
Speaker 1: ocean and what kind of animals live there. I think
Speaker 1: these were the This might even been before. I forget
Speaker 1: when this happened, but they we were talking about in
Speaker 1: the Bathisphere episode, how people tried to figure out what
Speaker 1: was deep in the ocean before we had, you know,
Speaker 1: anything that could go down there. And there were the
Speaker 1: days of the drag lines where you just drag a
Speaker 1: bucket along under you know, behind a ship and see
Speaker 1: if you could pull anything up in it. It seems
Speaker 1: remarkably crude technology. Now, yeah, just a death bucket to
Speaker 1: pull things up and see what kind of flesh you
Speaker 1: managed to snare and if it exploded by the time
Speaker 1: it got to the surface. Right, all right, well, I
Speaker 1: guess we should take a quick break and when we
Speaker 1: come back we will discuss some more non whale globsters
Speaker 1: from the Globster Hall of Fame. Thank you, thank you. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back now. One thing I wondered about is how
Speaker 1: long have people been reporting globsters, Like how far back
Speaker 1: does the does the Sun article about the beach blob go?
Speaker 1: That's true, because if it, certainly this would seem like
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that would have occurred throughout human history.
Speaker 1: Of course it would I mean nothing like nothing that
Speaker 1: we know have changed suddenly in the seventeenth century to
Speaker 1: make this stuff start happening. So, uh, let's take a
Speaker 1: look at old Plenty of the Elder. This is kind
Speaker 1: of a late appearance, for Plenty usually shows up earlier
Speaker 1: in an episode. That's true. Yeah, well he's making of
Speaker 1: fashionable appearances. Okay. So Plenty of the Elder in his
Speaker 1: Natural History is in a section talking about nereads, which
Speaker 1: are the sea nymphs or the ocean fairies or mermaids,
Speaker 1: and he writes about how the governor of Gaul once
Speaker 1: wrote a letter to Caesar Augustus reporting that a number
Speaker 1: of dead nereads had washed up on shore in his
Speaker 1: territory and that their quote mournful song moreover, when dying
Speaker 1: has been heard a long way off by the coast dwellers. Uh.
Speaker 1: Later he writes, during the rule of Tiberius, in an
Speaker 1: island off the coast of the province of Leone, the
Speaker 1: receding ocean tide left more than three hundred monsters at
Speaker 1: the same time of marvelous variety and size, and an
Speaker 1: equal number on the coast of the Saints and among
Speaker 1: the rest elephants and rams, with only a white streak
Speaker 1: to resemble horns, and also many neriads. And then later
Speaker 1: he writes about a couple of other monsters cast cast shore.
Speaker 1: One story quote, the skeleton of the monster twitch Andromeda,
Speaker 1: and the story was exposed, was brought by Marcus Scaurus
Speaker 1: from the town of Jaffa in Judea and shown at
Speaker 1: Rome among the rest of the marvels during his his
Speaker 1: uh edile ship. It was forty ft long, the height
Speaker 1: of the ribs exceeding the elephants of India, and the
Speaker 1: spine being one foot and six inches thick. Well, this
Speaker 1: all sounds exactly like what we've been talking about, like
Speaker 1: people finding strange bodies, strange flesh upon the shores and
Speaker 1: turning to mythological explanations or it just I mean, really
Speaker 1: it almost almost of the you know, uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: almost unfair to say mythology in these cases because in
Speaker 1: some of these cases we're talking about just sort of
Speaker 1: unexpected understanding of the more mysterious corners of the world. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this was a time for which mythology I
Speaker 1: think was in some ways kind of blended with history.
Speaker 1: Might not always be clear to these people which of
Speaker 1: these myths were true and to what extent or were
Speaker 1: they based on actual historical events. So if you've got
Speaker 1: a story of your your classic heroes like Perseus or whatever,
Speaker 1: and there's a sea monster in them, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe that story happened, and maybe the c monster is
Speaker 1: real and this. Oh and you know what, I found
Speaker 1: some really big bones or a big, old, confusing pile
Speaker 1: of flesh on the beach. I bet it was that
Speaker 1: sea monster, right, And then of course we have to
Speaker 1: we have to recognize that if these things are occurring
Speaker 1: throughout history, we have possibly the reverse situation occurring where
Speaker 1: you have just a story about a sea monster and
Speaker 1: then you find these weird remains and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: this must be the form, and then that informs the myth. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: we just we've discussed creatures like this on the show
Speaker 1: in the past, especially Triton's and neriads, mermaids and whatnot. Uh,
Speaker 1: And you know, I believe we discussed the link between
Speaker 1: mermaid myths and the sightings of real life marine mammals
Speaker 1: and even occasionally sightings of cephalopods. But I wonder too
Speaker 1: if actual human remains ever factored into these observations as well.
Speaker 1: Oh so, like like kind of bloated dead human corpses
Speaker 1: washing up on the beach and people and say, ah,
Speaker 1: these are the dead sea nymphs. Yeah, I mean we've
Speaker 1: we have looked. At example, I looked around for specific
Speaker 1: discussion of this, and I couldn't find anything. And maybe
Speaker 1: it's out there though, and I just didn't happen upon it.
Speaker 1: But you know, in discussing the Kappa in Japanese folklore,
Speaker 1: we talked about how they are aspects of that myth.
Speaker 1: They're based upon misinterpretations of of of bloated bodies, the
Speaker 1: bodies of drowning victims. So it doesn't seem that remote
Speaker 1: a possibility that one could misinterpret the human remains found
Speaker 1: on a shore, you know, the remains of some fishing vessel,
Speaker 1: or even a vessel in a time of war, provided
Speaker 1: that the the decay was substantial enough or unique enough. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like we're developing an interesting parallel to like
Speaker 1: Adrian Mayer's geomethology, where the idea that maybe ancient people's
Speaker 1: discovered dinosaur fossils or other kinds of fossilized bone remains
Speaker 1: and developed the ideas of mythical beasts from them. Here,
Speaker 1: I guess we're talking more like bio mythology, like recently
Speaker 1: dead creatures and corpses found or blobs found could give
Speaker 1: you ideas of the types of mythical monsters and creatures
Speaker 1: that inhabit the hidden part of the world, you know,
Speaker 1: and looking around it more like recent examples of supposed
Speaker 1: cryptozoological creatures. I did find at least one example where
Speaker 1: it's this weird bipedal looking creature. It appears hairless and
Speaker 1: has this kind of quasi human appearance to it, and
Speaker 1: the likely explanation is that it was a sloth. Whoa yeah,
Speaker 1: So so you know, you could have a situation where
Speaker 1: somehow this animal is wound up in the water, it's dead,
Speaker 1: it's lost its hair, and it is no longer quite
Speaker 1: recognizable as what it was and now occupies this kind
Speaker 1: of strange in between space. Well, it makes me think
Speaker 1: about the New Jersey Beach monster. I think you've probably
Speaker 1: seen pictures of this, which is what do they ultimately
Speaker 1: decided it likely was like a raccoon. Yes, they did
Speaker 1: run across this one Yeah, it's just this hairless, gross
Speaker 1: looking little demon mammal without you know, it's smooth all
Speaker 1: over dead on a beach in New Jersey, and people
Speaker 1: now think, oh, it's probably just a raccoon. But regardless
Speaker 1: of what you know, they may have made of human
Speaker 1: remains on the beach, they were inevitably encountering chunks of blubber.
Speaker 1: They were encountering things like basking sharks, perhaps the remnants
Speaker 1: of marine mammals such as manatees or doo gongs. So
Speaker 1: there's plenty of stuff there to to lend itself to
Speaker 1: monstrous interpretations. Yes, I'm so sorry. I've got to clarify.
Speaker 1: I said New Jersey it was the Montauk Monster. I
Speaker 1: was wrong. It was the New York beach mont talk.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, sorry about that. New Jersey sea monster
Speaker 1: is an entirely different scenario. By the way, myriads and
Speaker 1: Triton's uh play an important part in Transgenesis, the sci
Speaker 1: fi podcast that is publishing January thirty one, two thousand nineteen.
Speaker 1: I hope everyone that listens to the show will check
Speaker 1: it out. You can find out more about it at
Speaker 1: Transgenesis dot show. That's right, check it out. Now, Robert,
Speaker 1: are you ready to talk about a sea monster or
Speaker 1: wonderful beast? Do I get to choose between the two?
Speaker 1: Are they one and the same? They are one and
Speaker 1: the same, But you will get to choose which one
Speaker 1: you think it is? All right, let's do it, okay, now,
Speaker 1: I so I came across evidence of a seventeenth century
Speaker 1: lobster washed ashore in Ireland, and this is a glorious
Speaker 1: thing it was. I'm going to make the case that
Speaker 1: this was pretty clearly a giant squid of the genus
Speaker 1: arctotis uh. It was written up in a pamphlet published
Speaker 1: in London in sixty four, and the pamphlet is usually
Speaker 1: known by its opening line, which is a true and
Speaker 1: perfect account of the miraculous sea monster or wonderful fish.
Speaker 1: The pamphlet continues, lately taken in Ireland, bigger than an ox,
Speaker 1: yet without legs, bones, fins or scales, with two heads,
Speaker 1: and ten horns of ten or eleven foot long, on
Speaker 1: eight of which horns there grew knobs about the bigness
Speaker 1: of a cloak, button in shape like crowns or coronets,
Speaker 1: to the number of a hundred on each horn, which
Speaker 1: we're all too open and had rows of teeth within them.
Speaker 1: That does sound a lot like a giant squid. I
Speaker 1: think we're getting there. So. The pamphlet tells the story
Speaker 1: about a man named James Steward who was riding by
Speaker 1: the seaside in the west of Ireland, and quote, as
Speaker 1: the tide was coming in, perceived at a distance something
Speaker 1: of a strange bigness to make towards the shore. At
Speaker 1: first he apprehended it might be some horse that might
Speaker 1: have been caught away with the violence of the tide,
Speaker 1: and having recovered himself, was now swimming to land. But
Speaker 1: approaching nearer on a closer view, he was infinitely surprised
Speaker 1: and amazed, not so much at the bigness, which yet
Speaker 1: he found to exceed that of a horse, which he
Speaker 1: first took it for in the body, as at the
Speaker 1: uncouth shape, and a number of strange horns of great length,
Speaker 1: which rendered it not a little terrible to behold, insomuch
Speaker 1: that he durst not go near it, lest it should
Speaker 1: destroy both him and his horse. So we got the
Speaker 1: dramatic set up. Steward goes off and gets help from
Speaker 1: a couple who live nearby, and they use ropes to
Speaker 1: drag it up on the beach. This they could do,
Speaker 1: though the account says that when they tried to touch
Speaker 1: the horns quote, they found there on shells like coronets
Speaker 1: with teeth within them, which got hold of their hands
Speaker 1: and fingers, so that they were glad to let them go.
Speaker 1: So they come back the next day with a bigger company,
Speaker 1: and by then the beast was dead. And after that
Speaker 1: they gave a further description, saying that the body was
Speaker 1: smooth and without scales or bones, and that it had
Speaker 1: two heads and two eyes, quote, of an oval form
Speaker 1: and of extraordinary bigness. Now, I think this has pretty
Speaker 1: much got to be a giant squid, especially when talking
Speaker 1: when they talk about the size of the eyes, because
Speaker 1: the eyes of a giant squid are extremely remarkable or organs.
Speaker 1: They've got a maximum diameter of around twenty five centimeters
Speaker 1: or ten inches. I've also seen slightly larger estimates of
Speaker 1: around thirty centimeters or about twelve inches, And the eyes
Speaker 1: of the giant squid and their southern Southern Ocean cousins,
Speaker 1: the colossal squid, are by far the biggest eyes in nature.
Speaker 1: Like they're often compared to the size of dinner plates. Uh.
Speaker 1: The one I like is that they're bigger in diameter
Speaker 1: than a standard basketball. They don't have irises or eyelids.
Speaker 1: Their eyes are not filled with jelly like fluid like ours,
Speaker 1: but rather they're just filled with water. And so I've
Speaker 1: read that after the squid dies, their eyes just kind
Speaker 1: of like collapse like a deflat bag. Um. They're made
Speaker 1: for extreme light sensitivity in the pitch dark of the
Speaker 1: ocean more than five hundred meters down. And I was
Speaker 1: reading an interesting piece in Scientific American from twelve by
Speaker 1: Katherine Harmon about research on the purpose of those huge eyes,
Speaker 1: because why why do they need eyes that big? Like
Speaker 1: the next biggest eyes in nature are the eyes of
Speaker 1: the sword fish, and they're literally like a third of
Speaker 1: the size of the squid's eye. These eyes are like
Speaker 1: three pent of the next biggest eyes in nature. Uh,
Speaker 1: the entire eye of a swordfish would fit inside the
Speaker 1: giant squid's pupil. On top of this, there's the fact
Speaker 1: that beyond a certain size, scientists have generally found really
Speaker 1: diminishing returns in eye bigness, where in most cases it
Speaker 1: just does not pay off at all for an animal
Speaker 1: to have an eye any larger than an orange, It
Speaker 1: consumes a lot of energy, it's very vulnerable, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't see much better than anything bigger than an orange.
Speaker 1: I mean, you think of some of the of the
Speaker 1: animals that have that are known for having the most
Speaker 1: impressive eyesight, and that the eyes aren't that big. Eyes
Speaker 1: aren't that big. You're you're generally dealing with different varieties
Speaker 1: of bird. Yeah, that's exactly correct. So what are the
Speaker 1: squid using these triple huge eyes for? Well? Study found
Speaker 1: that while a squid's huge eye is not generally better
Speaker 1: at seeing, it's not just it's not like better at
Speaker 1: seeing everything. It is better at seeing one extremely specific
Speaker 1: kind of visual information, which is subtle changes in contrast
Speaker 1: caused by large objects at a distance. Oh, I bet,
Speaker 1: I know what that large object is. That's right. So
Speaker 1: imagine what, in fact a squid might be most likely
Speaker 1: to be on the lookout for, Robert, you know the answer,
Speaker 1: the sperm whale. That's right. So imagine the body of
Speaker 1: a sperm whale diving through the Black Ocean five meters
Speaker 1: down and as it travels. What the scientists were pointing
Speaker 1: out is that you know, as as a sperm whale
Speaker 1: dives through the water, it will probably disturb and trigger
Speaker 1: the bioluminous the luminescence of tiny organisms here and there
Speaker 1: as it rushes through the water column. And most of
Speaker 1: the time it does not pay to have foot wide eyes.
Speaker 1: But the one exception is if you're going to be
Speaker 1: looking around for huge objects in the pelagic darkness, then
Speaker 1: gigantic eyes are where it's at and five down. The
Speaker 1: researchers figure that a squid can spot an approaching sperm
Speaker 1: whale at a hundred and twenty meters, giving it a
Speaker 1: chance to escape. Of course, the whales don't really need
Speaker 1: sight to hunt in the dark because they use sound
Speaker 1: based decolocation. This is amazing and but it does make
Speaker 1: perfect sense, you know, because the sperm whale is the uh,
Speaker 1: the giant squid eater par excellence. Yeah. Yeah, we love
Speaker 1: to think of the giant squid as like the ultimate crazy,
Speaker 1: scary ocean monster. But it's a prey animal. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: of course it preys on other things, but like but
Speaker 1: a sperm whale. When sperm whales are found, sometimes they
Speaker 1: will have guts full of beaks, you know, because the
Speaker 1: squid it's mostly got soft body parts that are easy
Speaker 1: to digest, except for this one hard body part, the beak,
Speaker 1: which which you know, you open up a sperm whale
Speaker 1: stomach and you you may may just be beak city
Speaker 1: in there. All right, we're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back. Thank thank and we're back.
Speaker 1: So back to the sea monster or wonderful fish. Uh So,
Speaker 1: Another thing the pamphlet says is on the cloak button
Speaker 1: shaped crowns upon its horns. The pamphlet points out, quote
Speaker 1: the resemblance of a pearl, which was to open and
Speaker 1: shut as a little mouth, and had within it a
Speaker 1: row of teeth, so that it should seem beside the
Speaker 1: mouth of a little head, which we shall describe by
Speaker 1: and by this monster received nourishment for its body at
Speaker 1: eight hundred several places for that to number, or thereabouts,
Speaker 1: did the crowns on all eight horns amount. So they're
Speaker 1: saying they think that this this creature eats with its suckers.
Speaker 1: If this is a squid, that seems to be incorrect.
Speaker 1: But but they thought, oh, these look like tiny mouths.
Speaker 1: These are the mouth through which it eats, and they
Speaker 1: are kind of like tiny mouths they're kind of like
Speaker 1: a little leech mouths all over the arms. A giant
Speaker 1: squid has eight arms and two feeding tentacles longer than
Speaker 1: the other arms, making the tin limbs tin limbs in total,
Speaker 1: consistent with the report of the tin horns. And of
Speaker 1: course these cloak button shaped crowns sound pretty much exactly
Speaker 1: like the toothed suckers lining the arms and the tentacle
Speaker 1: the feeding tentacle clubs of a giant squid. I've got
Speaker 1: an image here of what they look like, Robert. They're nice,
Speaker 1: real quick. I should also throw in that the tentacle
Speaker 1: armed distinction, that's another one that's easy to to refer
Speaker 1: to the tentacles of a squid when you really are
Speaker 1: referring to to the arms. Right, But you get into,
Speaker 1: especially when you get into like weird fiction and all,
Speaker 1: the word arm is not nearly as evocative as the tentacle.
Speaker 1: You don't want to have a mini armed alien crawling
Speaker 1: out of a dimensional gateway, No, you want a many
Speaker 1: tentacled monster. Well it makes me wonder, you know, when
Speaker 1: like you hear about these ancient monsters that are described
Speaker 1: to say an apocalyptic religious visions as like an angel
Speaker 1: with tin arms or something. If we go with the
Speaker 1: cephalopod analogy here, maybe those are things more like what
Speaker 1: people would call tentacles, not necessarily human arms with elbows
Speaker 1: and hands. I like this this reading of pretty much
Speaker 1: any certainly any biblical account. Just put in tentacles for
Speaker 1: arms or heads, and you have. You have quite a
Speaker 1: cool monster in your hands. But to be biologically rigorous,
Speaker 1: you are correct about that distinction. There the squid has
Speaker 1: eight arms which are covered in suckers all over, and
Speaker 1: then it's got the two tentacles which are longer, and
Speaker 1: I have clubs for grabbing prey and bringing it to
Speaker 1: the mouth. Those are the feeding tentacles. But let's come
Speaker 1: back to this, uh, this globster here, because there was
Speaker 1: mentioned to get biblical again, there was mention of horns, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's got these tin horns, and then it says
Speaker 1: in the middle of the head, between all these horns, uh,
Speaker 1: we're we're assuming the horns are the arms and the tentacles.
Speaker 1: The pamphlet says between all these horns there was a
Speaker 1: smaller head quote in shape much like the head of
Speaker 1: a hawk, looking upward, and had a strange mouth and
Speaker 1: two tongues in it, and here too, no doubt it
Speaker 1: did take much of its nourishment. And in this they
Speaker 1: are correct because this sounds like the beak and mouth
Speaker 1: of a giant squid exactly right. They mentioned the resemblance
Speaker 1: to a hawk. Giant squid actually do have hooked bird
Speaker 1: like beaks. As we're talking about a minute ago, the
Speaker 1: sperm whale stomach might be full of beaks, and inside
Speaker 1: this beak in a giant squid is a chewing mechanism,
Speaker 1: a grinding tooth covered tongue called the radula. And here
Speaker 1: here's a crazy thing I did not remember learning about
Speaker 1: in the past. I may have, But so the mouth
Speaker 1: parts here have to process food down into tiny piece
Speaker 1: is before it swallowed. And there's a very good reason
Speaker 1: for this because the squid, and I've read about this
Speaker 1: this in the context of the colossal squid, I believe
Speaker 1: it's also true with the giant squid. Uh. The squid
Speaker 1: has a taurus or doughnut shaped brain, and the esophagus
Speaker 1: through which it swallows food passes directly through the middle
Speaker 1: of that doughnut shaped brain, so it goes through the
Speaker 1: donut hole. So if it tries to swallow a piece
Speaker 1: of food that is too large it could literally press
Speaker 1: against its brain. Now, imagine if when you ate there
Speaker 1: was a choking risk, but the choking risk was not
Speaker 1: of suffocation, but a risk of mashing on your cerebral cortex.
Speaker 1: I'm imagining an alien race of cephalopod beings who, in
Speaker 1: order to have hallucinogenic experiences, they swallow polyhedral dice. So
Speaker 1: that you know, different different sizes will press on their
Speaker 1: brains their donut brains in different ways produce different visions.
Speaker 1: It's called the god choking. Anyway, I know what you're thinking.
Speaker 1: Whenever a sea monster washes up dead on a beach,
Speaker 1: the next thing they should do is figure out what
Speaker 1: did it taste like? Right? So, for experiment that people
Speaker 1: boiled some of the flesh. But the longer it boiled quote,
Speaker 1: the harder it became. It gave a very good scent
Speaker 1: as it boiled and seemed fat, But in boiling the
Speaker 1: fat hardened, and no creature, though several at diverse times
Speaker 1: were tried, would eat a bit of it, or so
Speaker 1: much as taste of it. They don't say what creatures
Speaker 1: they tried, though, I mean, did they offer it to
Speaker 1: a cow? To a dog. What I mean a dog,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it would be up for anything. Did they
Speaker 1: offer it to a shark? I mean, there's no clues
Speaker 1: to go on here, but anyway that I mean, this
Speaker 1: just reminds me of Robert. Have you ever tried to
Speaker 1: cook calamari? I don't think I've ever tried to cook
Speaker 1: it myself. I've only ever had it in restaurants. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if what is true of smaller squid
Speaker 1: is also true of larger squid, but food sized squid,
Speaker 1: which is what calamari is because I'm is overcooked and rubbery.
Speaker 1: Extremely easily boiling it can make it tough as rubber.
Speaker 1: You actually be very careful to cook it very quickly. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you know, get it out of the heat before
Speaker 1: it gets overcooked and gets super chewy. So this would
Speaker 1: be this would be why you tend to encounter it
Speaker 1: in kind of like a flash fried uh fashion. And
Speaker 1: I bet you've had you may have like ordered calamari
Speaker 1: at a not so great restaurant and it was really
Speaker 1: tough and chewy. Yeah, I probably said, but it also
Speaker 1: probably explains why it is hard to find calamari that
Speaker 1: is not fried and of course not sushi. On the
Speaker 1: other side, like there used to be a Vietnamese place
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. This was ages ago that that I like
Speaker 1: to go into because they had like a calamari salad
Speaker 1: and the calamari was it was baked or something, you know,
Speaker 1: so some of that I forget how it was actually prepared.
Speaker 1: It's been so long, but it was like one of
Speaker 1: the few places where it's like, oh, it's cooke calamari,
Speaker 1: it's not fried. Well, I mean, I think another way
Speaker 1: you can get tender calamari. I'm not positive about this,
Speaker 1: but I think the other way is to like of
Speaker 1: the low and slow method, you know, low temperature, long
Speaker 1: long period of time. But I haven't tried it myself,
Speaker 1: but anyway, I've got to mention. There is also an
Speaker 1: addendum to the pamphlet at the end, which does it's
Speaker 1: been I would say I'm impressed with this seventeenth century pamphlet.
Speaker 1: It sounds, based on my reading, like it's a very
Speaker 1: like kind of thorough empirical description that they do a
Speaker 1: pretty good job of giving you an idea of what
Speaker 1: this thing was. Uh, it's not too sensational. But then
Speaker 1: it gets to the addendum at the end quote. We
Speaker 1: might now divert the reader a little and tell him
Speaker 1: that some Zealots, hearing of a strange creature with several heads,
Speaker 1: tin horns, and more than triple crowns, took it for
Speaker 1: the apocalyptical beast and fancied the Pope was landed in person.
Speaker 1: And it just like us humans, we can't even have
Speaker 1: a nice pamphlet about a dead blob of sea monster
Speaker 1: flesh without bringing religion and politics into it, getting all
Speaker 1: your Protestant grievances out against the pope. Well, that reminds
Speaker 1: me of the example from from like this month's headlines
Speaker 1: that we referred in the first one, where some strange
Speaker 1: blob was found and they compared it to the current
Speaker 1: yost president. Oh yeah, I just want pure enjoyment of
Speaker 1: sea monsters that having to think about politics. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems that would you. There should be plenty to
Speaker 1: talk about without bringing politics and religion into it, because
Speaker 1: here behold is a mystery of the deep cast upon
Speaker 1: the shore for our perusal. Now, I guess one thing
Speaker 1: we should say is that this is a globster by
Speaker 1: by virtue of its time in history, because this wouldn't
Speaker 1: be classed as a globster today. I think if this
Speaker 1: thing washed ashore, people would immediately now be able to
Speaker 1: recognize that it was almost undoubtedly a large species of squid, right,
Speaker 1: Not much like the recent Australian case we mentioned in
Speaker 1: the last episode where people saw it and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: it's a giant squid. Let's get the camera, let's put
Speaker 1: this stuck around Instagram. Well, yeah, I mean those things
Speaker 1: are rare enough on there. Even though we know what
Speaker 1: they are and they're just animals, they are in a
Speaker 1: way like the modern equivalent of a sea monster. You've
Speaker 1: seen something rare and amazing, it's exotic. Yeah. Not for
Speaker 1: sperm whales though maybe not right they're like, yeah, I had,
Speaker 1: I had six of them yesterday. Yeah. Actually, you know,
Speaker 1: this one thing I'm not clear on or I don't
Speaker 1: remember from past research is just how often a sperm
Speaker 1: whale is eating a giant squid. I don't know either.
Speaker 1: One thing I did come across in this research is
Speaker 1: um that a colossal squid has an extreme colossal squid
Speaker 1: is the Southern Ocean like Antarctic equivalent of a giant squid.
Speaker 1: They're around the same length, though a colossal squid has
Speaker 1: a fat or more robust body, and the colossal squid
Speaker 1: apparently has a very very slow metabolism. I guess it
Speaker 1: lives in deep cold water, and despite its gigantic size,
Speaker 1: it really doesn't have to eat very much at all
Speaker 1: because it just doesn't move or do very much. But
Speaker 1: either way, I mean, I guess these things delicious sperm whales.
Speaker 1: I I wonder, like, do sperm whales get upset stomachs
Speaker 1: when they have too many squid and they get do
Speaker 1: they get like beak belly? One well, one would think so.
Speaker 1: But then again, if these are these are indeed a
Speaker 1: primary part of their diet, they've they've had time to
Speaker 1: get used to it. One wonders, maybe someday, if we
Speaker 1: create the machine that allows us to talk to whales,
Speaker 1: we will that will be the first thing we ask them, right,
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's just simply the fact that it's sure,
Speaker 1: you're gonna pay for it, you're gonna get beak belly,
Speaker 1: but it just tastes so good. It's indeed, like when
Speaker 1: a when a human goes to a restaurant and eats
Speaker 1: an entire appetizer of fried calamary all By themselves. It's
Speaker 1: a terrible choice. They're gonna pay for it later, but
Speaker 1: it sure was delicious while they were eating it. Squid
Speaker 1: the awesome blossom of the sea. All right. So there
Speaker 1: you have it. Globsters A two parter here on stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. Again. We didn't cover all the
Speaker 1: globsters that have occurred and been reported by humans wandering
Speaker 1: the beaches of the world. We haven't discussed anywhere near
Speaker 1: all the amazing creatures that live in the in the
Speaker 1: ocean and sometimes wind up washed on the shore. But
Speaker 1: we get to cover a lot of ground. I think
Speaker 1: there are some examples we didn't get to that are
Speaker 1: neither confirmed to be parts of whales, nor are they
Speaker 1: like basking sharks or squid like we talked about today,
Speaker 1: but some other kind of blobby mass that we don't
Speaker 1: quite know what it is, and uh, who knows. Maybe
Speaker 1: will come back to that in the future if people
Speaker 1: really want to hear more blobs. They love blobs, you know,
Speaker 1: we we can always we can always return to blob
Speaker 1: Blob Island. Will do Globster three D. That will be
Speaker 1: the third one, because it'll be in three D. You
Speaker 1: can't have a monster movie that's number three without having
Speaker 1: some three D glasses. That's good. I like it. Whether
Speaker 1: whether it's whether it's whale body parts, whether it's a squid,
Speaker 1: whether it's a basking sharp or shark, or whether it's
Speaker 1: the Pope. It's all gonna look good in three D.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be glad you came and you paid the
Speaker 1: extra dollar for the glasses. All right. Well, if you
Speaker 1: want to check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind, you know where to find them. You can
Speaker 1: find them wherever it is you get the podcast, wherever
Speaker 1: you get any of your podcast. You can also check
Speaker 1: us out at our home page our mothership stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com that has links out to
Speaker 1: our various social media accounts. For instance, you can go
Speaker 1: check out our our group on Facebook. It's called Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind Discussion Module. It's a fun place
Speaker 1: to interact with other listeners as well as with us. Uh. Likewise,
Speaker 1: if you want to support the show, click on that
Speaker 1: link at the top of the page for the merchandise store.
Speaker 1: You can get some cool shirts, some cool stickers. It's
Speaker 1: a cool way to support the show. And if you
Speaker 1: want to support the show without spending a dime. You
Speaker 1: can just rate and review us wherever you have the
Speaker 1: power to do so, and don't forget about Invention, which
Speaker 1: is already out. We have multiple episodes. Look up Invention
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe that comes out
Speaker 1: every Monday, and then looking just a week ahead, be
Speaker 1: sure to subscribe to and check out Transgenesis, a science
Speaker 1: fiction a fix in scripted fiction podcast that I have
Speaker 1: coming out that involves all sorts of deep water horrors
Speaker 1: and also a cameo from Joe McCormick. Big thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: directly with feedback about this episode or any other, to
Speaker 1: suggest topic for the future, or just to say hi,
Speaker 1: let us know how you found out about the show
Speaker 1: where you listen from all that kind of stuff, you
Speaker 1: can always email us at blow the Mind at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Tropical char