Speaker 1: And Arthur went as far as esquier Orvo in Ireland,
Speaker 1: to the place where the boar Troweth was with his
Speaker 1: seven young pigs, and the dogs were let loose upon
Speaker 1: him from all sides. That day until evening the Irish
Speaker 1: fought with him. Nevertheless, he laid waste the fifth part
Speaker 1: of Ireland. And on the day following the household of
Speaker 1: Arthur fought with him, and they were worsted by him
Speaker 1: and got no advantage. And the third day Arthur himself
Speaker 1: encountered him, and he fought with him nine nights and
Speaker 1: nine days, without so much as killing even one little pig.
Speaker 1: The warriors inquired of Arthur what was the origin of
Speaker 1: that swine, and he told them that he was once
Speaker 1: a king, and that God had transformed him into a
Speaker 1: swine for his sins.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: part two in our Halloween season series called Hogs of Hell.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: In the previous episode, we focused mostly on mythology and fiction,
Speaker 3: looking at a glorious assortment of monster pigs, bielsa, bores,
Speaker 3: and also a few rather benevolent divine suiform beings of
Speaker 3: various types. So in terms of specific examples, we talked
Speaker 3: about everything from the vicious, shaggy, froth jawed Aromanthian boar
Speaker 3: which was captured by Hercules in Greek myth, to the
Speaker 3: noble and heroic pig featured incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu,
Speaker 3: who retrieves the earth when it is rolled up and
Speaker 3: stolen away to the ocean depths by a great demon.
Speaker 3: And here we are again today to keep the monster
Speaker 3: pig parade on the March.
Speaker 1: And indeed, in the last episode we did talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about King Arthur battling various bores across the
Speaker 1: British Isle. So I wanted to at the top of
Speaker 1: this episode throwing just a little quote that gives you
Speaker 1: a taste of that, though it doesn't really reference all
Speaker 1: the gorings that also take place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like how it says the warriors were like, hey, Arthur,
Speaker 3: we've been fighting this pig and it's worsting us. I
Speaker 3: don't know if it was like different than being bested
Speaker 3: by a pig, to be worsted by a pig but
Speaker 3: it's besting all the nights and they're like, Arthur, where
Speaker 3: did this pig come from? And Arthur is like, well,
Speaker 3: this pig was once a king, but he was a
Speaker 3: bad king, not like me.
Speaker 1: I have to question his management style a little bit
Speaker 1: for not like fully briefing everyone on the nature of
Speaker 1: these boors. Was he just like, Hey, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: wage war against pigs for a few months here, And
Speaker 1: they were like, okay, sure, that sounds like a reasonable
Speaker 1: thing to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, why not?
Speaker 3: Anyway, I wanted to kick things off today by turning
Speaker 3: to the world of palaeontology, because it so happens. You
Speaker 3: do not have to go into mythology and fiction to
Speaker 3: meet some blood curdling monster pigs, or, perhaps, to be
Speaker 3: more accurate, maybe not pigs, but blood curdling monster hoofed
Speaker 3: mammals with some pig like features. Well hash out what's
Speaker 3: really a pig and what's not as we go along.
Speaker 3: But the point is, if you go back maybe twenty
Speaker 3: thirty million years into the fossil record, you will encounter
Speaker 3: a branch of the mammal family tree that has been
Speaker 3: affectionately nicknamed the hell pigs, and perhaps less tastefully the
Speaker 3: terminator pigs. That's got to be a subsequent nickname there.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, I don't know how clinical that is.
Speaker 3: Now, hell pigs is just a cute name that has
Speaker 3: been used in popular media. I found earlier sources from
Speaker 3: the nineteen twenties which refer to the same class of
Speaker 3: animals by calling them giant pigs. In scientific nomenclature, these
Speaker 3: creatures we're going to be talking about are called antilodonts
Speaker 3: e ntel od intilodonts. They belong to the family Intilodontidy,
Speaker 3: which is now completely extinct. The family name comes from
Speaker 3: the Greek intellus, meaning complete or perfect, and odon, meaning tooth,
Speaker 3: so the antilidont is the beast of the perfect tooth,
Speaker 3: or the beast of the complete tooth. The antilodont family
Speaker 3: is a member of the order Artiodactyla, which for much
Speaker 3: of scientific history were known as the even toed ungulates ungulates,
Speaker 3: meaning a hoofed animal even toad ungulates, referring to the
Speaker 3: fact that most branches of this order bear their weight
Speaker 3: primarily on two toes per foot. Now, despite the historical
Speaker 3: classification based on this feature, more recent research has shown
Speaker 3: that not all of the animals in this branch of
Speaker 3: mammalia are actually ungulates or hoofed animals as traditionally understood,
Speaker 3: so artiodactyls today consist of more well known ungulates like
Speaker 3: de bison, cattle, sheep, and goats, but also camels, pigs, giraffes, hippopotamuses,
Speaker 3: and maybe most surprisingly, whales and dolphins, because remember, whales
Speaker 3: evolved from animals that used to live entirely on land
Speaker 3: and millions of years ago made the gradual adaptive transition
Speaker 3: to more and more water based lifestyle and physiology over time,
Speaker 3: until eventually they were fully water dwelling creatures, having come
Speaker 3: began as fish, moved onto the land, become mammals, and
Speaker 3: then moved back into the water. Yeah, quite a journey
Speaker 3: in tilodonts. The so called hell pigs first show up
Speaker 3: in the fossil record sometime in the middle of the
Speaker 3: Eocene epoch, which began roughly fifty five million years ago,
Speaker 3: placing it about ten million years after the extinction of
Speaker 3: the non avian dinosaurs, and continued until about thirty four
Speaker 3: million years ago. I don't know if this has been
Speaker 3: superseded by any more recent fossil finds, but at least
Speaker 3: for a while, it was thought that antilodants first appeared
Speaker 3: in the area that is now Mongolia and then spread
Speaker 3: across the globe. First spread across much of Asia and
Speaker 3: then to North America and Europe as well. And numerous
Speaker 3: species of antilidants thrived during the Oligocene epic, and then
Speaker 3: they appeared to have died out in the Early Miocene
Speaker 3: between nineteen and sixteen million years ago. So one thing
Speaker 3: that's worth emphasizing is that we're not talking about one
Speaker 3: specific species of animal. We're talking about this family. So
Speaker 3: there were many different species of antilodonts. The largest were
Speaker 3: probably according to now I've come across different estimates here,
Speaker 3: but according to the estimate given by Encyclopedia Britannica, they
Speaker 3: could maybe get nine hundred kilograms. Britannica compares this to
Speaker 3: a Clydesdale horse, so you can picture giant fanged pigs
Speaker 3: pulling the Budweiser wagon. The largest known genus of antilidont
Speaker 3: is confusingly known by seven different names, primarily Dinohias d
Speaker 3: n O. H y Us, which means terrible pig or
Speaker 3: monstrous pig from the same formation that you get dinosaur,
Speaker 3: you know, terrible reptile, but then also is known as
Speaker 3: Deodon daeodn, which means hostile tooth. It took me a
Speaker 3: while to figure out what was going on here, but
Speaker 3: it seems that the type species in question here is
Speaker 3: known as either Dinohias Hollandi or Diodon shoshoneensis, And these
Speaker 3: are designations based on different fossil finds, but I think
Speaker 3: most experts agree that they refer to the same animal.
Speaker 3: So Dinohias Hollandy is a full skeleton found at Agate
Speaker 3: Springs Fossil Quarry in Nebraska, whereas Diodon was a genus
Speaker 3: that was established earlier on the basis of less complete
Speaker 3: fossil remains. So it gets kind of confusing because you
Speaker 3: will find references to both names used SEP Britly in
Speaker 3: different sources. But as best I can tell, these are
Speaker 3: probably the same genus or the same species, whatever you
Speaker 3: call them, Diodon or Dinohias. These animals were magnificent, with huge, devastating,
Speaker 3: awe inspiring skulls and rob I have attached some images
Speaker 3: for you to look at in the outline here. Folks
Speaker 3: at home, if you want to try to google a
Speaker 3: Dinohias or Diodon skull. You can do that yourself, but
Speaker 3: I'll for the people who can't look it up, I
Speaker 3: will describe it as best I can. For the full skeleton,
Speaker 3: imagine a body that looks kind of like a buffalo
Speaker 3: or a rhinoceros, with raised neural spines over the backbone
Speaker 3: at the shoulder, kind of like a suspension bridge, implying
Speaker 3: this massive shoulder hump at the base of the neck
Speaker 3: to hold up an enormous head. And it did have
Speaker 3: an enormous head, the huge, deep, powerful jaws under a
Speaker 3: long snout with canines that somehow look like both sharpened
Speaker 3: fangs and crushingly thick blunt bats at the same time.
Speaker 3: The skull could be huge, could be up to ninety
Speaker 3: centimeters long, or about thirty five or maybe even forty
Speaker 3: five percent of the total body length. So this is
Speaker 3: a big, powerful animal with a big, powerful skull a
Speaker 3: crushing bite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you almost get the sense of it
Speaker 1: being like the combination of a bear and a horse.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of like the fierceness of a
Speaker 1: bear skull, but far like thicker and longer.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have to keep all of the different cross
Speaker 3: between analogies going. There will be a number of them
Speaker 3: as we go through. But one thing I wanted to
Speaker 3: point out for you, Rob is if you look around
Speaker 3: on the skull of this animal, you will see not
Speaker 3: just teeth, but these strange little solid knobs of bone
Speaker 3: poking out at several places from the bone of the skull.
Speaker 3: They're not teeth, they're like say along the bottom of
Speaker 3: the jaw, under the lower jawbone, or behind the eye.
Speaker 3: On the upper part of the skull. They will have
Speaker 3: these protrusions. They just like parts of the bone that
Speaker 3: stick out, almost as if they're like, you know, something's
Speaker 3: going to be hanging from them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was thinking.
Speaker 3: It's almost like the animal's head is like a rock
Speaker 3: climbing wall. It's got little, you know, handholds and stuff
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of nooks and crannies.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so these protruding bone formations may have had a
Speaker 3: couple of different purposes, perhaps defensive in nature, but also
Speaker 3: possibly related to increasing the power of muscles that worked
Speaker 3: the jaw in the head. Again, this creature had a
Speaker 3: powerful bite. It could chew you up and maybe bite
Speaker 3: you in half. So the dadon would have stood probably
Speaker 3: a little under two meters tall at the shoulder. I
Speaker 3: already gave one weight estimate earlier, the nine hundred kilograms.
Speaker 3: It's not known for sure how much mass would have
Speaker 3: attached to the skeleton. But even if you go down
Speaker 3: from the nine hundred kilograms estimate that they cite in Britannica,
Speaker 3: other sources guests around seven hundred and fifty kilograms, and
Speaker 3: for comparison, that is bigger than most estimates you get
Speaker 3: for adult male brown bears. So whether you're in the
Speaker 3: Clydesdale territory or just like surpassing the large brown bear class,
Speaker 3: it should put respect for nature's power into your brain
Speaker 3: and in dear blood. Here and at the same time
Speaker 3: that you're looking at this skull, if you go back
Speaker 3: and look at the legs, they don't look like something
Speaker 3: that really fits with the skull. This is a hoofed mammal,
Speaker 3: and the legs actually appear fairly slender. And so the
Speaker 3: pairing of this amazing, frightening skull and mouth with the
Speaker 3: fact that its feet are hoofd and that its legs
Speaker 3: almost look kind of like deer legs or something something
Speaker 3: we associate with prey animals, animals that humans hunt and
Speaker 3: eat or domesticate and use for milk and work. The
Speaker 3: feet and the legs do not look like those of
Speaker 3: wild beasts that could probably chomp us in half. So
Speaker 3: should we think of in telodonts as predators. We can
Speaker 3: come back to that question now to pivot a bit
Speaker 3: and go on a short tangent away from the overtly
Speaker 3: crushingly horrifying. I want to shift to the uncanny, the creepy,
Speaker 3: the unwholesome and unnatural. So Rob, I've got a link
Speaker 3: for you to look at here. I've also got an
Speaker 3: image in the outline for you. Again, I will try
Speaker 3: to describe for you folks at home so you can
Speaker 3: picture it as well. But the thing we're about to
Speaker 3: look at here is actually a sculpture. It is a
Speaker 3: sculpture of the animal we have just been talking about,
Speaker 3: and it is held in the collection of the Carnegie
Speaker 3: Museum of Natural History. You can find a picture of
Speaker 3: it easily if you search for Carnegie din Ohias. I
Speaker 3: want to give a shout out that I found out
Speaker 3: about this sculpture by reading a Carnegie Museum blog post
Speaker 3: from January twenty nineteen by a collection an assistant for
Speaker 3: the section of Vertebrate Paleontology named Joe Sauchak. So this
Speaker 3: sculpture was created in nineteen oh nine by an American
Speaker 3: artist named Theodore Augustus Mills, who lived from eighteen thirty
Speaker 3: nine to nineteen sixteen. Mills worked for a number of institutions,
Speaker 3: including the Smithsonian and the Carnegie Museum, and was the
Speaker 3: son of sculptor Clark Mills, who famously made a cast
Speaker 3: of the face of President Abraham Lincoln in eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 3: which a younger Theodore assisted with. But this Dinohias sculpture
Speaker 3: is perhaps an art movement unto itself. Sawchak writes that
Speaker 3: as powerful and amazing as the Deodon or Dinohias bones are,
Speaker 3: quote to several members of the Vertebrate Paleontology staff, including myself,
Speaker 3: the model lovingly known as the Highest is perhaps even
Speaker 3: more horrifying than the actual creature itself. So, Rob, I've
Speaker 3: got the photo in here for you to look at,
Speaker 3: alongside a hedge out of Peter Lorrie, just for reference.
Speaker 3: And so the author of this blog post tries to
Speaker 3: identify exactly what the museum staff finds so creepy and
Speaker 3: fascinating about the sculpture. He mentioned something about the eyes
Speaker 3: that seems especially human and emotive. But I do have
Speaker 3: to agree there is something really special about this piece
Speaker 3: of three dimensional paleo art that it is at once
Speaker 3: alien and disturbingly human. I think parts of it are
Speaker 3: hitting Uncanny Valley territory because we're getting sort of like
Speaker 3: a pig, giant pig horse with human eyes energy. But
Speaker 3: also it looks like it's about to tell me something,
Speaker 3: like it's about to tell me a secret, and it's
Speaker 3: a secret I don't want to know, and it's grinning
Speaker 3: because it knows that I don't want to know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean it's definitely looking at me. It's
Speaker 1: definitely looking at many I feel like to some degree
Speaker 1: judging me, but judging me fairly. Judge like it is
Speaker 1: making a fair assessment of me. And yes, to your point,
Speaker 1: perhaps I don't really want to hear it, but maybe
Speaker 1: I do want to hear it. Maybe what this creature
Speaker 1: has to share with me will bring a lot of
Speaker 1: positive change into my life.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, well, I like the open mindedness with which
Speaker 3: you're approaching this creature. Yeah, maybe, maybe the thing, the
Speaker 3: secret that is going to share is actually great wisdom.
Speaker 3: It's wisdom you need and you just aren't ready to accept.
Speaker 1: But I do not get the sense that it wants
Speaker 1: to eat me. I get the sense that it is
Speaker 1: a bit more benign when it comes to matters of
Speaker 1: the flesh.
Speaker 3: It's really funny to me how much this paleo art image,
Speaker 3: with the you know, the the fully constructed image, with
Speaker 3: its kind of serene, placid eyes gazing into your mind
Speaker 3: and maybe hypnotizing you maybe you're about to do some
Speaker 3: scanners stuff on you, how much that does not comport
Speaker 3: with the the just the fierceness suggested by the bones.
Speaker 1: This is often the case, though, isn't it. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the prime exit, I mean, the main prime
Speaker 1: example here would of course, be the human skull. You
Speaker 1: get a totally different vibe looking at a human skull
Speaker 1: looking at a human face. But you know, that's almost
Speaker 1: to be expected because you also have to confront a
Speaker 1: lot about your own mortality when you look at a
Speaker 1: skull of a human. I think it's more pronounced when
Speaker 1: you see I think that the other readily available example
Speaker 1: is the skull of the horse, Like the horse is
Speaker 1: a domesticated animal that many judge to be you know,
Speaker 1: basically in the same realm as that of the dog
Speaker 1: in terms of human animal relationships. You know, it is
Speaker 1: an animal that is very close to us, and ultimately
Speaker 1: there's a strong case to be made that it's more
Speaker 1: essential to the development of human civilization than anything any
Speaker 1: other animal that we've domesticated. But while we look at
Speaker 1: a horse, you know, we tend to see something again,
Speaker 1: more benign, a friend of humanity, something noble and proud,
Speaker 1: beautiful even. But you look at the skull of the
Speaker 1: horse and you get this sense of kind of a
Speaker 1: grinning demon. And people have, you know, had I think,
Speaker 1: similar connections with the with the skull of the horse
Speaker 1: for ages, you know, often incorporating it into designs of
Speaker 1: supernatural beings or utilizing the horse skull in some way
Speaker 1: that is you know, magical, perhaps protective magic and so forth.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I guess maybe it is easy
Speaker 1: to lose sight of that when you're dealing with the
Speaker 1: skeletal remains of a prehistoric organism in which we don't
Speaker 1: know what the fleshed version of the face looked like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And this is a great reminder of something
Speaker 3: we've talked about on the show before about how you
Speaker 3: know paleo art is necessarily, to some extent an interpretive enterprise.
Speaker 3: In some cases you have more than just the bones,
Speaker 3: but in a lot of cases you just have fossils,
Speaker 3: maybe not even a complete skeleton. But you know, even
Speaker 3: if you do have a complete a near complete fossil skeleton,
Speaker 3: that doesn't necessarily tell you what the soft tissue looked
Speaker 3: like on the outside. So you know, you can have
Speaker 3: ways of informing the guesses made, like paleo art can
Speaker 3: be informed by scientific knowledge, but you're still having to
Speaker 3: make some guesses.
Speaker 4: You're having to make some leaps.
Speaker 1: Didn't we discuss my memories a little foggy on this,
Speaker 1: But didn't we discuss some examples of like intentionally bad
Speaker 1: paleo art reconstructing existing organisms like living organisms.
Speaker 3: I think I recall what you're talking about, and I
Speaker 3: think we were talking about the quote shrink wrapping phenomenon,
Speaker 3: where it's like a lot of extinct animals or just
Speaker 3: you take the bones and then you imagine skin tightly
Speaker 3: wrapped around those bones and cutting out a lot of
Speaker 3: the kind of bulk or soft tissue that you actually
Speaker 3: see on some animals, and so yeah, I think the
Speaker 3: idea was taking the skeletons of animals we know today
Speaker 3: and cutting out all of the excess soft tissue and
Speaker 3: just shrink wrapping them.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think that that is what I was thinking of.
Speaker 1: But it's easy to take that idea of the shrink wrapping.
Speaker 1: Look at say a horse skeleton, and then imagine like
Speaker 1: the shrink wrapped paleo art version of an extant horse.
Speaker 1: You know, it would be this nightmare steed, you know.
Speaker 1: And I mean you could apply something similar to humans.
Speaker 1: We would all look like some sort of a ghoul.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, Well, anyway, I do want to admit that,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't have enough expertise in the anatomy
Speaker 3: or physiology of these extinct mammals to judge whether the
Speaker 3: Carnegie the Carnegie Museum statue is I don't know, is
Speaker 3: anywhere close to right or not. But there is one
Speaker 3: thing that I thought was interesting about it, which is
Speaker 3: that the overly human eyes do kind of connect to
Speaker 3: an interesting scientific fact about the antelodonts, which is that
Speaker 3: they had more forward facing eye placement than a lot
Speaker 3: of ardiodactyls, which raises questions about their survival strategies.
Speaker 4: On a lot of hoofed.
Speaker 3: Mammals, you will see the eyes the eyes spread more
Speaker 3: to the sides, which does that can be helpful, especially
Speaker 3: to prey animals, because it gives them a wider field
Speaker 3: of vision, so it's easier for them to see predators approaching.
Speaker 3: But the more forward shifted gaze of the antelodonts suggests
Speaker 3: some other pressures in play. Oh and just quickly for
Speaker 3: contrast on paleo art for these hell pigs, I wanted
Speaker 3: to attach a couple more images for you to look at.
Speaker 3: They both look pretty interesting. One is one I've just
Speaker 3: seen floating around the internet, sited a few different times.
Speaker 3: One is I think seemingly associated with the Encyclopedia Britannica resources.
Speaker 3: And that one is funny to me because it looks
Speaker 3: like a crocodile horse pig with face spikes doing the
Speaker 3: meme troll face.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very toothy. It looks like, how is
Speaker 1: this mouth supposed to shut? It kind of implies an
Speaker 1: organism that cannot close its mouth all the way. It
Speaker 1: just has monster jaws.
Speaker 3: Well, that's another funny thing where so it looks hilarious
Speaker 3: in the picture this way, because it looks like this
Speaker 3: animal is laughing at me, laughing at my misfortune and grief.
Speaker 3: But there is an interesting thing about these the antilidants,
Speaker 3: which is that they could apparently open their jaws extremely wide.
Speaker 1: Well that makes me feel worse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I wanted to come back to the question
Speaker 3: are these animals really pigs? They have been called hell
Speaker 3: pigs in popular media and books and articles, but apparently
Speaker 3: this is probably.
Speaker 4: Not exactly accurate.
Speaker 3: Pigs, swine, and hogs are animals that belong to the
Speaker 3: mammal family Suidy. And while the antilodonts do share some
Speaker 3: morphological features in common with pigs, like it's not hard
Speaker 3: to see with some of these remains why someone would
Speaker 3: look at them and say, oh, this is some type
Speaker 3: of giant pig, like there are pig like things about it.
Speaker 3: But more recent research has shown that pigs are probably
Speaker 3: not the their closest relatives in the ardiodactyl order, and
Speaker 3: in fact what their closest relatives are is maybe even
Speaker 3: more interesting. So there have been findings about this going
Speaker 3: back for years now. This is not like a new discovery.
Speaker 3: But for an example of a more recent paper supporting
Speaker 3: the division between antilodonts and pigs, I came across This
Speaker 3: paper by Yang Yu Hong, Yang Gao, Chang Li, and
Speaker 3: Xijun Ni, published in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, called a new antilidont ardiodactyl mammalia from
Speaker 3: the Late Eocene of China and its phylogenetic implications. This
Speaker 3: paper is a report on a new genus and species
Speaker 3: of antelodontity. This one is known as Antilodontellis Julianji and
Speaker 3: it's and basically, they say based on finding remnants of
Speaker 3: the animal's lower jaw and then comparing this animal to
Speaker 3: comparing this newly discovered antilodont to other ardiodactyls, the authors
Speaker 3: conclude that the antilodonts are situated within the clade setancodonto Morpha,
Speaker 3: which means that they are quote more closely related to
Speaker 3: hippopotamus and cetaceans than to suena. So the hell pigs
Speaker 3: are not pigs as we understand them today, and are
Speaker 3: probably more distant cousins of pigs and closer cousins of
Speaker 3: hippos and whales. So you have this all inspiring body
Speaker 3: form in many ways resembling a giant pig, but if
Speaker 3: you kind of crossed it with a horse and a
Speaker 3: bison and one of the monsters from Doom, and in
Speaker 3: fact it is more closely related to hippos and whales.
Speaker 1: All right, the Doom creature in that like that pink guy,
Speaker 1: the big pink one with oh it's.
Speaker 3: Gotta be yeah, yeah, yeah, they had the visible forms
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, I believe that's the one, all right, all right,
Speaker 1: So what we're we have here is maybe less of
Speaker 1: a hell pig and more of a hell land whale
Speaker 1: or hell hippo, or at least a cousin of those. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Another scientific paper I was reading, one by Florent rivals
Speaker 3: at all, described these animals morphologically as a cross between
Speaker 3: a hippopotamus, a giant pig, and a carnivore. But the
Speaker 3: hippopotamus connection is interesting because of that anatomical fact that
Speaker 3: these animals tend to have jaws so made that they
Speaker 3: can they can open them unusually wide, like more than
Speaker 3: a I think the figure was more than one hundred degrees.
Speaker 3: They can open them so like hugely wide opening of
Speaker 3: the jaws, and hippopotamuses can do that as well. Hippopotamuses
Speaker 3: famously have an extremely lethal and powerful closing bite.
Speaker 1: Yeah have a very dangerous animal in the wild.
Speaker 3: So this brings us to the question of what what
Speaker 3: did these antilodonts eat? What and how did they eat?
Speaker 3: Antilodonts are apparently different from a lot of other ungulates
Speaker 3: in that their skull and jaw structure is in some
Speaker 3: ways more like that of modern carnivores. Now, not in
Speaker 3: all ways, but in some And it is worth noting
Speaker 3: that there are no carnivorous hoofed mammals today, but there
Speaker 3: were hoofed predators in the past. Could come back to this,
Speaker 3: but anyway, if you compare the jaws of herbivorous hoofed
Speaker 3: mammals with the jaws of carnivores, you will see some patterns.
Speaker 3: I mean, different animals will have some idiosyncratic characteristics, but
Speaker 3: broad patterns emerge in the teeth and the jaw shape.
Speaker 3: Carnivores often need to have big skulls with powerful jaw
Speaker 3: muscles to deliver a strong bite force because they use
Speaker 3: their jaws not just for chewing, but specifically for biting,
Speaker 3: to injure and kill prey with the bite, and sometimes
Speaker 3: to fight with each other. Herbivores not so much. Herbivores
Speaker 3: more often have rows of flat teeth and jaws that
Speaker 3: are specialized to move side to side for grinding down
Speaker 3: plant matter between the molars. Carnivores tend to have sharp
Speaker 3: incisors in the front of the mouth and jaws that
Speaker 3: primarily move up and down, sort of less grinding oriented.
Speaker 3: Carnivores more often have a jaw that hinges roughly in
Speaker 3: line with the teeth, so it opens kind of like
Speaker 3: a claw. Herbivores more often have an L shaped lower
Speaker 3: jaw that hinges up above the teeth.
Speaker 4: So which of.
Speaker 3: These patterns do the antelodonts conform to? You know, if
Speaker 3: I had looked at one of these daodon skulls with
Speaker 3: my untrained eye, I would have guessed this was a
Speaker 3: fully carnivorous predator if you look at the power of
Speaker 3: the jaw, the shape.
Speaker 4: Of the front teeth.
Speaker 3: Certainly, the canines and incisors, they look very sharp and threatening.
Speaker 3: They certainly seem like me eating predators on those counts.
Speaker 3: But the current consensus of paleontologists. Seems to be that
Speaker 3: antilodonts had an omnivorous diet, meaning they ate the whole
Speaker 3: buffet plants, animals, meat, vegetables, whatever energy dense matter they
Speaker 3: could get into their mouths. So one piece of evidence
Speaker 3: for this is the shape of their molars and premolars.
Speaker 3: Antilodonts had what are called bunodont teeth. This was a
Speaker 3: new term to me, I think, but this means teeth
Speaker 3: with little hill shaped bumps on the surface specialized for
Speaker 3: crushing a wide variety of foods. So animals with bunadont
Speaker 3: teeth today include bears, pigs, and some primates such as humans,
Speaker 3: all of which are omnivores. There's also evidence from a
Speaker 3: number of other lines, things like the ware patterns on
Speaker 3: fossil antilidont teeth. All these tend to line up with
Speaker 3: an omnivorous diet, so it seems they were likely eating
Speaker 3: from both the flora and fauna all around them. And
Speaker 3: this is interesting because that is also the case with
Speaker 3: modern pigs. Modern pigs you don't usually think of as predators,
Speaker 3: but they will absolutely eat some meat if they can
Speaker 3: get their hands on it. Wild pigs and feral bores
Speaker 3: and stuff will eat small animals, but they also eat
Speaker 3: a lot of vegetables, you know, And so they have
Speaker 3: this kind of combination of traits in the jaws and
Speaker 3: the teeth that show that they're specialized for both. Really,
Speaker 3: and one thing is very clear from looking at their mouths.
Speaker 3: The teeth and jaws of most of these animals were
Speaker 3: capable of eating very hard foods, cracking and crushing their
Speaker 3: way through anything including roots, nuts, and of course plant matter,
Speaker 3: as well as meat and possibly even bone. I found
Speaker 3: references to these animals possibly being bone crushers in several sources.
Speaker 3: One out site is the Uicy Bowl Museum of Natural
Speaker 3: History in describing research on a species of antilodont called Archaeotherium.
Speaker 3: This is an extinct genus that once lived in the
Speaker 3: floodplains of North America during the Late Acene and the Oligocene,
Speaker 3: and the museum it compares the front teeth, the canines,
Speaker 3: the fangs sort of of these animals to tusks and
Speaker 3: says that you know, it may have been using these
Speaker 3: front teeth to dig, essentially like to dig for tubers,
Speaker 3: to dig for roots that.
Speaker 4: It could eat.
Speaker 3: But they also have evidence that this animal was into
Speaker 3: crushing bones with its teeth, and they cite evidence of
Speaker 3: an ancient species of camel called the Pobrotherium, which a
Speaker 3: bunch of the remains of this camel were found in
Speaker 3: a fossil formation known as the White River formation in Wyoming,
Speaker 3: where it looks at least like they were killed or
Speaker 3: eaten at least by these archaeotherium, and there are punctures
Speaker 3: on the bones that apparently match the premolars of the
Speaker 3: Antilidont species. Scars found on the bones of hell pigs
Speaker 3: suggest that these animals fought each other as well, apparently
Speaker 3: biting at each other's heads and faces, resulting in deep
Speaker 3: bone scars. And that remember we mentioned earlier on the
Speaker 3: skulls of these animals, the protrusions of bone jutting out
Speaker 3: of the jaw and then back behind the eyes. They
Speaker 3: of course maybe an anchor point for some of the
Speaker 3: facial musculature to help the jaw operate the way it
Speaker 3: needs to, but as possible, they also protected soft spots
Speaker 3: of antilidont faces during these biting competitions to maybe protect
Speaker 3: the nose or the eyes. And it does appear that
Speaker 3: these animals probably had a strong sense of smell. Now
Speaker 3: there's another interesting question, which is the debate about the
Speaker 3: meat that.
Speaker 4: They likely ate.
Speaker 3: So because there's this evidence in the way their bodies
Speaker 3: are made, and of course in the remains of others
Speaker 3: their animals, that antilodonts were running around eating meat, there
Speaker 3: is of course a debate about how they got.
Speaker 4: The meat they ate.
Speaker 3: To the extent that they ate meat in their omnivorous diet.
Speaker 3: Were the antelodonts primarily active predators chasing down in killing prey,
Speaker 3: or scavengers eating dead animals when they came across them.
Speaker 3: And by the way, I think it's worth noting that
Speaker 3: predation and scavenging are not mutually exclusive. Most animals that
Speaker 3: engage in one will engage in the other given the
Speaker 3: right opportunity. It's more a question of specialization which they
Speaker 3: primarily do. And I've seen some paleo experts comment that
Speaker 3: they think it quite possible that some antilodonts would have
Speaker 3: been what you might call intimidation scavengers. So to the
Speaker 3: extent that they were scavengers, it's possible that some species
Speaker 3: would do this kind of activity where you arrive at
Speaker 3: the site of a kill by another predator, and then
Speaker 3: you threaten and intimidate the original predator into running away,
Speaker 3: and then the antelodont can steal the kill. This is
Speaker 3: a strategy that some predators and scavengers employ today. For example,
Speaker 3: a lion might wait for a cheetah to chase down
Speaker 3: and kill an impala, and then the larger lion comes
Speaker 3: and scares the cheetah away and takes the prey. Now
Speaker 3: you might think, well, well, if you're like a bigger,
Speaker 3: more powerful predator, why wouldn't you just kill the prey
Speaker 3: in the first place. But actually there are different specializations
Speaker 3: in play. Like, some predators might be faster moving and
Speaker 3: easier to you know, it's easier for them to chase
Speaker 3: prey that's actively trying to run away, whereas you might
Speaker 3: not be as fast as the original predator, but the
Speaker 3: original predator like can't drag its kill away fast enough
Speaker 3: to get away from you if you're bigger and more powerful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the former is a game of stealth. The latter
Speaker 1: is holding down turf, stealing territory and defending it. Adding
Speaker 1: into the fact that the actual that made the initial
Speaker 1: kill might be rather extinguished by the hunt so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a huge opportunity for something like that to move
Speaker 1: in and take advantage of the situation. And of course
Speaker 1: there are various other versions of this we've talked about
Speaker 1: on the show before, some involving human beings getting in
Speaker 1: there and getting at least a piece of the kill
Speaker 1: and then making off with it. From the original predators.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, what, I know that's come up in the
Speaker 3: show before about humans as intimidation scavengers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, some traditional human practices along those lines.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so antilo dants maybe not literally pigs, more pigs
Speaker 3: in name only, but good enough as monster pigs for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it sounds like weighing everything we've discussed here,
Speaker 1: It's like, it sounds like still a very intimidating organism,
Speaker 1: one that you would want to probably keep a healthy
Speaker 1: distance from, even if it was looking at you with
Speaker 1: those kind of sweet Peter Laurie eyes, I guess even
Speaker 1: more so if it's looking directly at you with with
Speaker 1: front facing Peter Lourie eyes.
Speaker 4: I don't know why I'm not.
Speaker 3: I'm really not just like playing it up for the show,
Speaker 3: Like I truly am a little disturbed and unnerved by
Speaker 3: the idea of being chased or preyed upon or threatened
Speaker 3: by a by a toothy mammal that has hooves instead
Speaker 3: of paws and claws.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why do you Why do you think that is
Speaker 1: what makes it worse than, say, being hunted by a
Speaker 1: great bear. I don't, which I find to be extremely terrifying.
Speaker 4: Well, that is extremely terrifying.
Speaker 3: It's I think it's just that the hooves idea is
Speaker 3: it's unusual, like the idea that you would you could
Speaker 3: like hear something that sounds like kind of hoof beats.
Speaker 3: I mean, it wouldn't be exactly like horse hoof beats,
Speaker 3: because you know, they have different types of hooves, you know,
Speaker 3: it's the it's the two toed ungulate. But it would
Speaker 3: still be basically a hoofed animal would sound like a
Speaker 3: pig walking around, except it could bite you in half.
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's freaky.
Speaker 1: Reminds me a bit. I'm reminded here too of our
Speaker 1: discussions of the horse in the past. Was it was
Speaker 1: it stories of Julius Caesar's horse having human feet or
Speaker 1: tell feet?
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe we'll have to rerun soon our episodes on
Speaker 3: the evolution of horse hooves.
Speaker 4: I think this kind of ties in somehow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that one had the less frightening but still quite
Speaker 3: jarring idea that in an evolutionary sense, horses are galloping
Speaker 3: around on their middle fingers.
Speaker 1: Yes, they just have finger feet. Yeah, but still, you know,
Speaker 1: the basic idea of the hell hog. Here, the fossil evidence,
Speaker 1: I think does provide us with like a basic idea
Speaker 1: of what some of these monster pigs might consist of.
Speaker 1: You know, if they were a reality, Like if King
Speaker 1: Arthur was actually battling a bunch of hell pigs that
Speaker 1: used to be human kings they were too wicked to
Speaker 1: remain in human form, Yeah, I could see it looking
Speaker 1: so something like this. You know, if the various other
Speaker 1: accounts of monster pigs that we discussed, you know, if
Speaker 1: there was some sort of primordial monster hog roaming the countryside. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see it looking something like this, having eyes
Speaker 1: like this even and maybe the eyes of the highest
Speaker 1: that are disturbing, because you can sort of imagine the
Speaker 1: idea of, oh, this is like a human intellect staring
Speaker 1: out at me through the body and the appetites of
Speaker 1: a hellish pig.
Speaker 3: This king he has remorse for his sins for the
Speaker 3: sense he committed as king, and now he is doomed
Speaker 3: spend eternity in the Big Bone Room of the Carnegie Museum.
Speaker 1: You know, two more cinematic connections to pigs and bores
Speaker 1: that I want to mention here because these might be
Speaker 1: coming to my for some of our listeners. First of all,
Speaker 1: Wizard of oz Uh, there is the scene where Dorothy
Speaker 1: almost falls in or does fall into the pig pen,
Speaker 1: and there is concern that Dorothy is about to be
Speaker 1: eaten by pigs.
Speaker 4: Or at least injured by them. But yeah, I thought it.
Speaker 1: Would be like straight up eating down to the bone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of horrifying sequence.
Speaker 4: I agree. You know that was scary as heck. I
Speaker 4: remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then I'm also reminded that there's a whole
Speaker 1: plot line one of the main I guess part of
Speaker 1: the main plot in Hannibal is that Mason Berger wants
Speaker 1: to feed Hannibal Lecter to some wild bores. I forget
Speaker 1: the exact details, but he's like specially bred some big
Speaker 1: monster bores to eat Hannibal Lecter.
Speaker 3: I think they're not wild boars, aren't they They're like
Speaker 3: they're like domestic pigs that were selected to enjoy the
Speaker 3: taste of human flesh.
Speaker 1: Was that it I knew there was some sort of
Speaker 1: selective breeding, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't sure how Jurassic
Speaker 1: Park it got. It's been a long time since I
Speaker 1: read it, So it's like if you had told me
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, he used he used DNA from prehistoric
Speaker 1: pigs and bores, I would be like, okay, sure, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean he's like super rich, and that is certainly
Speaker 1: a novel of excess, So why not.
Speaker 3: Like he oh, yes, he cloned din Ohias Hellandi or
Speaker 3: deoda on whichever is. Yeah, he cloned it to make
Speaker 3: a giant pig so that it could come eat Hannibal
Speaker 3: Lector's feet.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, that like that's not any wilder than anything
Speaker 1: it's actually in the book, So I'd say, why not
Speaker 1: does not work out? Spoilers for Hannibal book and film adaptation,
Speaker 1: But yeah, they don't actually eat Hannibal. I think in
Speaker 1: the movie they end up eating Mason, but I don't
Speaker 1: think it goes down like that in the novel.
Speaker 3: Oh, in the book there's something even weirder. I think
Speaker 3: he gets thrown into some eels or.
Speaker 1: Something something like that. I don't think we can really
Speaker 1: even go into all the detail what happens in the book,
Speaker 1: but but it's yeah, I think it's worse in some ways.
Speaker 1: But now I'm wondering if there are other like monstrous pigs,
Speaker 1: sort of horror pig scenarios that we should bring up
Speaker 1: but we haven't. Perhaps those four listeners will have to
Speaker 1: jump in other Halloween related cinematic pigs, hogs, bores, and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, send them our way contacted stuff to blow your
Speaker 3: mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe Haveleena is even getting on the action that
Speaker 1: I can Haveveleenas don't really seem to have the same
Speaker 1: like horror vibe. I don't know. I was get a
Speaker 1: sweeter vibe off of the Havelena though. I've seen some
Speaker 1: pretty ferocious looking Hovelina heads mounted on the wall before.
Speaker 1: My uncle and aunt had the head of one that
Speaker 1: they had killed on the wall of their guest room,
Speaker 1: and they had they also had this like this reading
Speaker 1: light that had like a red plastic cover, so it
Speaker 1: ended up casting like a hellish red glow on the
Speaker 1: like snarling head mounted head of a Hovelina, and it
Speaker 1: created quite a scene. I think when when my son
Speaker 1: traveled out there with us. We ended up having to
Speaker 1: do something to sort of alter the tableau so it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be quite as terrifying to sleep at the same
Speaker 1: room with it.
Speaker 4: Put a towel over it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, put a towel over it, our hat on it.
Speaker 1: I don't know what we did, Maybe change the light out.
Speaker 3: I don't know how you didn't start our series talking
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 1: That's great, I know I'd kind of kind of forgotten
Speaker 1: about that real quick before anybody goes to correct me
Speaker 1: on this. Halloween is our peck reas. So they are
Speaker 1: pig like, like ungulates, but they are not pigs per se.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people will call them pigs or
Speaker 1: call them bores, and yeah, it's they're pig like. We'll
Speaker 1: leave it at that, all right. Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to go ahead and close out this look
Speaker 1: at the Hogs of Hell. But again, certainly right in
Speaker 1: if you have more examples of Halloween hogs, be they fictional, prehistoric, science, fictional,
Speaker 1: mythological folklore, whatever you've got writing in, we would love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. We'll probably, you know, inevitably do
Speaker 1: some sort of a like a Halloween Hangover listener mail
Speaker 1: episode at some point in November to go through additional
Speaker 1: stuff that has come in related to our Halloween episodes,
Speaker 1: So do write in.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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