Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, wasn't it stuff to blow your mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Ducla. Julie.
Speaker 1: What is the largest organism? Honor? I'm going to cut
Speaker 1: you off. It's a blue whale, all right, we can
Speaker 1: just go home now, yep, that's it, all right, Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. Well, okay, most people think it is
Speaker 1: the blue whale because it's to be fair, and it
Speaker 1: is the largest sea animal, right, yeah, for sure largest
Speaker 1: my mammal by by far larger than any dinosaur that
Speaker 1: we do. We know of two hundred tons blue whale
Speaker 1: an extensive length of a hundred and ten feet, which
Speaker 1: is pretty massive. Um. And you know, just just to
Speaker 1: put that into perspective, two hundred tons is about as
Speaker 1: heavy as eight DC nine aircraft or fifteen school buses.
Speaker 1: A hundred and ten feet is longer than a basketball court.
Speaker 1: And about one hundred people can fit in a blue
Speaker 1: whale's mouth. On people, you can have a party in
Speaker 1: a blue wheels. You could crawl inside its heart, right, yes,
Speaker 1: you can actually, and that that's not an exaggeration. A
Speaker 1: human could crawl through its major arteries and hang out
Speaker 1: in the heart. I mean, that is that is huge.
Speaker 1: What in the world could be bigger than a blue whale.
Speaker 1: Like imagine a blue whale going for a medical check
Speaker 1: up and like, I'm sorry, your your arteries are clogged,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, is it cholestaurant. It's like no,
Speaker 1: it's um, it's thirteen year olds. They're just clogged the
Speaker 1: kids in your arteries, right. I mean, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: eat thirteen year olds, just make sure they're not on
Speaker 1: a diet of potato chips and yeah, and of course
Speaker 1: they don't eat thirteen year old they eat very small creatures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something like you know, millions and gazellions. That's not the
Speaker 1: actual stature, but of krill. Yeah, we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: like when you have a super large organism. They are
Speaker 1: essentially crowned atop a throne that sits on a pyramid
Speaker 1: of bones and the various and these bones represent all
Speaker 1: the animals that and and b lower down on the
Speaker 1: pyramid the vegetation that has to has to die for
Speaker 1: that animal to live. And the pyramid or blue whale
Speaker 1: is pretty vast because it's all these these these tiny
Speaker 1: organisms that it eat at the bottom, at the base
Speaker 1: of the pyramid. Yeah, but it turns up. But there
Speaker 1: there is an organism much much larger than a blue whale,
Speaker 1: and it's pyramid of destruction is really spread out for
Speaker 1: you know, thousands and thousands of acres. Wow, now I'm excited.
Speaker 1: What could this possibly be? Is it is it's some
Speaker 1: sort of even larger whale. Is it a super whale,
Speaker 1: like a godzilla, well, a kin cong whale. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's it's something enormous, right, yeah, yeah, okay, so yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll just cut to the chase. It is a fungus
Speaker 1: amongst us, like a giant mushroom that stands as tall
Speaker 1: as the city. Yes, it is a cousin to the
Speaker 1: white button mushroom. You know, there's cut little mushrooms that
Speaker 1: you see in the package of the grocery store. Is
Speaker 1: called Amarillaria a stoier okay, And it's known as honey
Speaker 1: mushroom for its yellowish cap and I think it's got
Speaker 1: a fruity little essence to it. Do not eat any mushrooms, period,
Speaker 1: but let us just go I mean, except for the
Speaker 1: ones that your mom cooks for you. And gets at
Speaker 1: the grocery store. But I'm saying don't eat any wild
Speaker 1: mushrooms by any means, though apparently the ones we're talking about,
Speaker 1: they are edible for most people. But again, don't just
Speaker 1: don't know, don't eat any wild mushrooms because we talked
Speaker 1: about mushrooms. Yeah, yeah, thank you that we had to
Speaker 1: mention that we care about your health. But this fungus
Speaker 1: actually causes amalaria root disease, which kills you know, wide
Speaker 1: swaths of conifers in many parts of the US and Canada.
Speaker 1: And so it's easy to spot where it has been
Speaker 1: because death follows and its footsteps. Yeah, but not so
Speaker 1: easy to spot where it's going or where it actually
Speaker 1: maybe in other parts. And the reason is because it's
Speaker 1: just a really pervasive disease and it's difficult to deal
Speaker 1: with because it uses these dead trees as a food base.
Speaker 1: But it also will live in the stumps of trees
Speaker 1: that have been cut down because they're dead, right, And
Speaker 1: not only that, but it and grow through direct root
Speaker 1: contacts and graft with uninfected trees. Okay, so it can
Speaker 1: travel on via underground networks to uninfected trees and strangle
Speaker 1: those to death by stopping out all of its nutrients
Speaker 1: and then um it also and this isn't isn't quite
Speaker 1: as common, but it can propagate through spores. So you know,
Speaker 1: you've got spores through the wind that are carrying and
Speaker 1: you know, maybe like a mile later, you know, boom,
Speaker 1: there you have a spot infecting that area. So I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting, especially that it can live in that
Speaker 1: stump for fifty years waiting for new growth. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: so long lived. And like exaggerated earlier about a mushroom
Speaker 1: as big as a building, its size is not of
Speaker 1: that nature. It's it's spread out over long distances. In fact,
Speaker 1: like we're talking acres and acres, Like there's one particular
Speaker 1: individual that covered over acres I believe near Mount Adams
Speaker 1: in Washington. Yeah, definitely acres and acres. There's one patch
Speaker 1: that actually covers two thousand, three hundred eighty four acres
Speaker 1: in the soil of Oregon's Blue Mountains. And this is
Speaker 1: according to Scientific American their article strange but true, the
Speaker 1: largest organism on earth is a fungus. Wow. I think
Speaker 1: they really have to embrace that in Oregon, Oregans not
Speaker 1: which which state is Big Sky country Montana believe. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: Oregon should be a big mushroom, big fungus country. I
Speaker 1: think there are actually fungus fest and I believe this
Speaker 1: ties back to the first occurrence of discovering these massive
Speaker 1: fungus underground systems come out for Fungus Fest. Fungus Best
Speaker 1: Queen Man. I wish I had that sash, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this stuff is is pretty crazy. It just
Speaker 1: moves from roots system to roots system old roots systems.
Speaker 1: It's some serious fungus. I guess if you could say
Speaker 1: that it has a cousin in the form of our
Speaker 1: malaria gallica, which is less easy to find because it
Speaker 1: doesn't like wipe out things and it's a path quite
Speaker 1: as much. But it's so widely distributed in the rocky mountains.
Speaker 1: And again it also you know, it's it's it's in
Speaker 1: the ground. It's feeding on things and uh on hardwoods
Speaker 1: and uh it's pretty widespread too, but it's it's harder
Speaker 1: to really pinpoint exactly how big uh those organisms are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the fungus was actually discovered when a team of
Speaker 1: fortunate forestry scientists set out to map out the population
Speaker 1: of this pathogenic fungus in eastern Oregon, and they paired
Speaker 1: fungal samples and Petrie dishes to see if they fused,
Speaker 1: which is a sign that they were from the same
Speaker 1: genetic individual. Yeah, that's the really key thing here. This
Speaker 1: is not a population. This is one genetic individual. Right.
Speaker 1: It seems like it seems sort of unfair to say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: how could this be one organism, But and in fact
Speaker 1: it is the same genetic individual. And they also use
Speaker 1: DNA fingerprinting to determine where one individual fungus ended. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a biology professor by the name of Tom Volk,
Speaker 1: And in terms of talking about what constitutes an individual organism,
Speaker 1: he says, it's one set of genetically identical cells that
Speaker 1: are in communication with one another, that have a sort
Speaker 1: of common purpose or at least can coordinate themselves to
Speaker 1: do something. And isn't that very much like you know humans, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you have all these functions in your your
Speaker 1: body that are coordinating with one another. For me to
Speaker 1: even like be gesticulating with my hands right now, like
Speaker 1: I like to do. Yeah, well, we're not as good
Speaker 1: about coordinating things, I guess within our own body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean if I mean I think you're talking
Speaker 1: about human culture as a whole. No, no, no, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about like within my own body, within my own
Speaker 1: little meat sack. I have old sorts of signals and
Speaker 1: we're all hopefully on the same page and trying to
Speaker 1: you know, I'm an individual, right, right, individual organism right,
Speaker 1: and see what you're getting. A's like, how many individuals
Speaker 1: make an uber individual? Right? Right? And individual? I met
Speaker 1: a individual? I like that. Yeah, And that's important to
Speaker 1: note because you would think that, like the mushrooms or
Speaker 1: the fungus um, that you think of it as more
Speaker 1: like this collection of when in fact, it's one organism
Speaker 1: working in concert, and that is why it is so huge. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We've talked about in the past of microbes in our
Speaker 1: gut and bacterial colonies in our body, and how you
Speaker 1: break it all down, and it's like, that's what we are,
Speaker 1: you know, we are all these tiny communities that make
Speaker 1: a larger community than the being itself is engaged with
Speaker 1: other beings and it's just an endless maze circle and
Speaker 1: the spiral that kind of thing. Now, there are other
Speaker 1: particularly large organisms. I found it interesting that a case
Speaker 1: can be made for an aspen clone in Utah. This
Speaker 1: comprises approximately forty seven thousand stems of roots, sprouts, origin,
Speaker 1: and covering up out a hundred and six acres. So
Speaker 1: it looks like you look at a picture of it,
Speaker 1: and it's called the Pando clone and fish like National
Speaker 1: Forest Southern Utah. It looks like a forest. You don't say, wow,
Speaker 1: look at that organism. You go, oh, look at all
Speaker 1: those trees. They're kind of boring looking, But actually they're
Speaker 1: genetically identical their clones. So you can make the argument
Speaker 1: that is one organism covering that that's territory, and yet
Speaker 1: that still isn't as large exactly. Another big contender, of course,
Speaker 1: is the or if it's not really a contender, it's
Speaker 1: pretty much by this fungus. But the genant sequoias, of course,
Speaker 1: can get the pretty huge. They can exceed a thousand
Speaker 1: tons and they're they're really impressive to see, but not
Speaker 1: as impressive size wise as the fungus. Let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break and when we get back, let's talk about
Speaker 1: how this fungus communicates this message of hey, let's be
Speaker 1: one big organism and take over the world when we return.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, okay, So We've talked about this
Speaker 1: fungus how it grows primarily along tree route via hype,
Speaker 1: which are fine filaments that matted together in excrete digestive enzymes. Oh,
Speaker 1: there you go. How cool is that the fungus also
Speaker 1: has the unique ability to extend these flat shoestring like
Speaker 1: structures and that bridges the gap between food sources and
Speaker 1: expanding the reach of the fungus. Yeah. I saw a
Speaker 1: picture of these root like hair like structures and it
Speaker 1: looks just like it's kind of like nasty black hair
Speaker 1: like maybe you just like unclogged a drain or some things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's pretty much what it looks like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like kind of you know, seaweedy. Yeah, also too, maybe
Speaker 1: not quite as thick, but yeah, the very stringy and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, it's not pretty stuff. But it does the job.
Speaker 1: And I think it's fascinating that it does that, that
Speaker 1: it it all pulls together to extend that reach so
Speaker 1: that if there is no food source that can travel
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of feet down or fifty yards
Speaker 1: down to you know, basically strangle off a tree system,
Speaker 1: uh and its roots and get those nutrients for itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: The plant world is a pretty it's a much slower
Speaker 1: world than the animal world. It moves at a at
Speaker 1: at a much slower pace, but it itself is a
Speaker 1: pretty violent and competitive world. There was a great episode
Speaker 1: of Believe It Was Life um the BBC Discovery compunction,
Speaker 1: and they did a great job of taking footage of plants,
Speaker 1: of vines growing and speeding it up, and you really
Speaker 1: get to see the plant world more like the pace
Speaker 1: that it is this by putting it more in a
Speaker 1: human framework and h and it's just as as cruel
Speaker 1: and vicious and competitive as the animal world. You know. Recently,
Speaker 1: I was in Belize and we were inland in the
Speaker 1: jungle area of the Lemoni ruins, and there was this
Speaker 1: incredible tree, actually there were several of them, but one
Speaker 1: with just completely stood out and it was I don't
Speaker 1: it was an incredibly tall tree, like hundred feet tall,
Speaker 1: but it had been encased by this um vine like
Speaker 1: a strangler fig type of thing. Yeah, and it had
Speaker 1: grown so thick it had basically created a sarcophagus around
Speaker 1: this tree with all of these very thick some in
Speaker 1: some cases like a foot in diameter thick vines coming
Speaker 1: down and that tree was dying underneath. It is completely lethal.
Speaker 1: But as you said, you know, these things happened really slowly,
Speaker 1: and who knows, it could be another fifty years before
Speaker 1: that tree dies. But to see that, to see this
Speaker 1: this um, this vine choking off this tree, it's just
Speaker 1: it's sort of brought to mind this idea of um,
Speaker 1: the the invisible world, you know, happening before our very eyes.
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, and size really mattering in
Speaker 1: nature because we've talked about morphological limits before, and we
Speaker 1: when we think about size mattering in nature, we think
Speaker 1: about predation, right, And like you said, you know there's
Speaker 1: a creature standing atop the pyramid of bones, and in
Speaker 1: terms of this fungus, it's a bit different, right because
Speaker 1: again those bones will be sort of spread out and
Speaker 1: there's no one real predator for this fungus other than
Speaker 1: it's not but it's very broad. Yeah, it's very easy
Speaker 1: to scale. But I mean, you know, of course, again,
Speaker 1: if you if you want to survive, being larger helps, right,
Speaker 1: because you don't want to be eaten by your prey.
Speaker 1: But if you're a fungus, you've got your environmental conditions
Speaker 1: to contend with, as prey, but you're also the predator
Speaker 1: and your ability to say, pounce on the roots ums
Speaker 1: these conifers, while other plants are doing, are very much
Speaker 1: in the hight game of like I need. We knew
Speaker 1: the sunlight is the key, so I'm going to get
Speaker 1: that sunlight. Well, other plants, the plants as opposed to fungus.
Speaker 1: But right right, so you still, yes, the size still
Speaker 1: doesn't matter because you have to spread out in order
Speaker 1: to conquer. All right, Well, we got a little extra
Speaker 1: time on this one, so let's haul out some listener
Speaker 1: mail and see what folks have been saying. Crack the seal. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, Ernie. Oh yes, sorry, not that seale. Why
Speaker 1: I was thinking he's cracking a seal? Like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: he's a robot. He has no no, no, he doesn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't care. All right, So here's a little listener
Speaker 1: mail from Jackie. Jackie rites in and says, Dear Robert
Speaker 1: and Julie, fascinating thought that tidally locked perpetual darkness. I've
Speaker 1: spent the last couple of days contemplating this in my
Speaker 1: spare time. I'm particularly enchanted with the idea of everyone
Speaker 1: living in the twilight zone, this of course being if
Speaker 1: you had a planet that one side is always facing
Speaker 1: the sun and the other side is always facing the
Speaker 1: outer dark. Um, you would have one side of super hot,
Speaker 1: one side it's a this frigid, and then you had
Speaker 1: this ring, uh, this twilight zone that would in some
Speaker 1: cases be habitable or something good theoretically support robb life.
Speaker 1: Jackie continues, Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for
Speaker 1: the thought provoking and story inspiring episode, Julie. Your wish
Speaker 1: for stories about this has just been granted to keep
Speaker 1: up the great and occasionally inspiring podcast. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: love it when we can inspire fictional imaginings of what's possible,
Speaker 1: you know, in an other world. And and don't be
Speaker 1: shy I send it to us. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: wanting someone to look at your stuff, I speak for myself.
Speaker 1: I'm more than happy to look at it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by all means, here's another one. Daniel writes in and says, hey, dudes,
Speaker 1: I'm listening. I kind of want to do it in
Speaker 1: a dude voice, Hey dudes, and listening to your Tidley
Speaker 1: locked episode. And you asked for an example of another
Speaker 1: author who wrote on the subject. I was immediately reminded
Speaker 1: of vun to get Sirens of Titans, where on the
Speaker 1: tidally lock mercury the intense burning of one half in
Speaker 1: the outther cold of the other meat to produce a
Speaker 1: planet wide vibration. Spoilers aside deepen the planet are creatures
Speaker 1: who feed solely from this planet wide humming an excrete light.
Speaker 1: They have no eyes or ears, but instead or drawn
Speaker 1: to any pulses of the movie. And then he does
Speaker 1: a movie trailer, guy, boys, and even a beating heart.
Speaker 1: Read it. Time to push the thirty second button back
Speaker 1: six or seven times. Keep up the good work. So
Speaker 1: that's that's that's cool. Sirens of Titan is the one
Speaker 1: that's been on my bookshelf forever, uh Like, I think
Speaker 1: it was one of my dad had, and I don't
Speaker 1: think he ever read it. I'm trying to continue the
Speaker 1: legacy of not getting around to read Sirens of Titans,
Speaker 1: I guess, but maybe I should, Maybe I should change that. Well,
Speaker 1: he had me excrete light about my interest is all right.
Speaker 1: Here's a little listener mail from Christie. Christie righton says
Speaker 1: high Julian Robert. I recently heard the Sword podcast and
Speaker 1: it hit a note with me. When I was a kid,
Speaker 1: my mom used to tell me all about the stuff
Speaker 1: she grew up with, lots of antiquated stuff. One story
Speaker 1: was a pair of double bladed ceremonial Spanish great swords.
Speaker 1: Wow did you grow up? She told me they were
Speaker 1: thing like six to eight feet long with scalloped edges.
Speaker 1: I had a hard time believing her until I went
Speaker 1: to my grandmother's house and saw them on the wall.
Speaker 1: They were just as advertised. Unfortunately, I don't know what
Speaker 1: happened to them. Uh and I was ten when I
Speaker 1: saw them, so I'm working from long term memory. They're
Speaker 1: probably in a museum somewhere. I've read many books about
Speaker 1: nights and swords this size being used, but until your podcast,
Speaker 1: I had my doubts. Having listened to the podcast, I
Speaker 1: understand they didn't weigh as much as they looked like,
Speaker 1: but on the wall they look like they waited a ton.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard too much listener mail on the subject.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how common the scaloped edges were and if
Speaker 1: they were only for ornamentation or served a purpose. I
Speaker 1: don't think you mentioned this aspect. Interesting. Thanks and keep
Speaker 1: up the great work Christie. Scaloped edges. I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say. It'd have to see. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of edges that actually had some
Speaker 1: ornate etchings in it, and some I don't know the
Speaker 1: the shallowness of the scaloping, you know, because that would
Speaker 1: certainly affect the way that the sword cut. But who knows.
Speaker 1: I mean, it could be could be that it was
Speaker 1: actually in working order. I can't help but imagine a
Speaker 1: sword that is actually edged with scalops, like like fake scalops.
Speaker 1: It would be delicious end scalops. Now I'm just thinking, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: potato scalops swords. All right. So that's that's all the
Speaker 1: listener mail. We have violins and more. We should also
Speaker 1: make a quick note if you're listening to this podcast
Speaker 1: and you're and you're asking you something, where are the
Speaker 1: seven Deadly Sin podcasts? Because we've at this point when
Speaker 1: you're listening to this, I think we're like four into it,
Speaker 1: and so there are three remaining we are gonna finish
Speaker 1: the series, must Uh, Sloth and Anchor. Yeah, and those
Speaker 1: are pretty garn exciting sins, right, Yeah, three really exciting
Speaker 1: sins coming your way. So expect those in the weeks ahead,
Speaker 1: and while you're waiting for those, feel free to drop
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