Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert.
Speaker 1: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 1: Part two in our series on the horned lizards of
Speaker 1: North America, also known sometimes as horned toads or horny
Speaker 1: toads if you prefer, though they are in fact lizards
Speaker 1: and not toads. The horned blizzard, of course, is a
Speaker 1: genus scientific name Phrenosoma, meaning toad body, which contains about
Speaker 1: twenty one species which have different geographical ranges, but they're
Speaker 1: all found in western North America, from the southern tip
Speaker 1: of Mexico up through parts of western Canada. Now again,
Speaker 1: this is part two of the series. In Part one,
Speaker 1: we focused mainly on the horned lizard's relationship with various
Speaker 1: predators and their fascinating anti predator defense strategies which include camouflage, spikes,
Speaker 1: and armored scales which can make them difficult and in
Speaker 1: some cases quite dangerous to eat. We talked about some
Speaker 1: eating related mishaps from various predators, and then finally, their
Speaker 1: weaponized blood jets, the adaptation that allows them to shoot
Speaker 1: streams of apparently foul tasting blood out of their eyes
Speaker 1: when threatened by a dog. Rob in your words last time,
Speaker 1: a way of deterring predation with the most aggressive and
Speaker 1: unpleasant free sample in the world. That's right to refer
Speaker 1: back to something that came up last time, that we're
Speaker 1: still interested in this question of why the blood apparently
Speaker 1: tastes so foul to dogs, and I read in some
Speaker 1: cases maybe also cats, but not noticeably so to humans,
Speaker 1: and certainly not to predators such as birds.
Speaker 2: Now I want to throw in right here at the top.
Speaker 2: We described the horned lizards in detail in the last episode,
Speaker 2: and I hope that everyone has had a chance to
Speaker 2: check out some footage or images on their own. At
Speaker 2: this point in our research, I've looked at a lot
Speaker 2: of images, a lot of footage, and I do have
Speaker 2: to give them props for just being tremendous splooters. You
Speaker 2: know they certainly the squirrels can splute like like none other.
Speaker 2: You know, cats are great spluters, But man, I have
Speaker 2: to say the horned lizard isn't natural as well.
Speaker 1: Wait, I'm not understanding the word splute, then I thought
Speaker 1: you were. You were meaning like squirting, like squirting the
Speaker 1: blood out of the eye.
Speaker 2: That's all what means they're tremendous squirters as well. But spluting.
Speaker 2: Spluting is when if you ever it's a hot day
Speaker 2: and you look out and you see a squirrel like
Speaker 2: laying on its belly like spluted out, you may see
Speaker 2: it can't do much the same. Various other organisms will splute.
Speaker 2: This is an unofficial terminology for what they're doing, but
Speaker 2: I feel like that the horned lizard has this down
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Splute seems like a variation on display when the whole
Speaker 1: body like flat against the ground, all limbs outstretched.
Speaker 2: Exactly, Yes, but the kind of PLoP to it as well.
Speaker 2: You know, like there's a certain you got the organism
Speaker 2: really needs to have a certain amount of like semi
Speaker 2: liquid solidness to it to really deliver it. You got
Speaker 2: to have that toad body, or you got to have
Speaker 2: that slightly soft mammalian body to pull it off.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's right. And of course the toad body, as
Speaker 1: we talked about last time, is part of the horned
Speaker 1: lizard's defensive camouflage strategy, like the spluting is indeed part
Speaker 1: of what keeps them safe from detection by predators. They
Speaker 1: try to lay flat against the ground so as not
Speaker 1: to cast a shadow and to make it harder for
Speaker 1: a predator, say a bird flying overhead, to see their outline. Also,
Speaker 1: since we're just talking about reviewing the tape on horned
Speaker 1: lizards since the last time we talked, I was watching
Speaker 1: just more blood squirting footage since we recorded the previous episode.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if I emphasized enough how much
Speaker 1: it looks so alarming. If you haven't seen this, look
Speaker 1: it up. The blood that the jets out of the
Speaker 1: eyes somehow looks darker and thicker than I expected. And
Speaker 1: it's also just weird how much blood is coming out
Speaker 1: compared to the size of the animal, which is quite small.
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like something that should be happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is quite alarming. It's redder and bloodier than
Speaker 2: I think I was anticipating. It feels like a cuts
Speaker 2: scene from Event Horizon.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, to get into the meat of today's episode,
Speaker 1: I wanted to address just a few more lingering biological
Speaker 1: facts about horned lizards, biological and ecological facts that we
Speaker 1: didn't quite have time to get into last time. And
Speaker 1: the first thing I wanted to talk about is the
Speaker 1: horned lizard's relationship to water. Of course, horned lizards generally
Speaker 1: live in dry places, deserts and semi arid ecoregions, where
Speaker 1: the sun cooks you, the rain is scarce, water is
Speaker 1: hard to come by, and horned toads, like all animals,
Speaker 1: of course, need water to live, so much of their
Speaker 1: biology has gone still suit mode. They are very efficient
Speaker 1: at sourcing and preserving water. There is a great passage
Speaker 1: about the horned lizard's relationship to water in a book
Speaker 1: that I referred to in the last episode. That book
Speaker 1: is Introduction to Horned Lizards of North America by Wade C. Sherbrook.
Speaker 1: This was published by the University of California Press in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. The author, Wade Sherbrooke, was director
Speaker 1: of the Southwestern Research Station of the American Museum of
Speaker 1: Natural History. So, of course, losing water is just part
Speaker 1: of having a body. It is impossible to avoid losing
Speaker 1: some water content through ambient interface with the air. We
Speaker 1: lose some water vapor from our lungs when we breathe.
Speaker 1: We lose some water through evaporation from our skin, and
Speaker 1: the same is true for horned lizards. To reduce water
Speaker 1: law to evaporation. Horned lizards have some behavioral adaptations. For example,
Speaker 1: sometimes they burrow underground or partially bury parts of their
Speaker 1: bodies in the soil. This can reduce water loss from evaporation.
Speaker 1: But they also have some clever ways to source water
Speaker 1: from their environment. They will, of course, just drink free
Speaker 1: standing water when they can get access to it. If
Speaker 1: there are puddles after a rainstorm or something like that,
Speaker 1: they will drink dew that collects on plants in the morning.
Speaker 1: But much of the water that they get from external
Speaker 1: sources comes from food like juicy juicy harvest or ants.
Speaker 1: But here's where Sherbrook gets into something I found really fascinating.
Speaker 1: One of these strate strategies they have for sourcing water
Speaker 1: is that some species of horned lizards use their own
Speaker 1: backs as what Sherbrook calls a rain harvesting surface. So
Speaker 1: he singles out three species as examples, the Texas horned lizard,
Speaker 1: the round tail horned lizard, and the desert horned lizard.
Speaker 1: And when these animals sense that rain is about to fall,
Speaker 1: they do the opposite of what humans usually do. You know,
Speaker 1: we go inside. They go outside, They run out of
Speaker 1: cover into the open and stand with their backs sort
Speaker 1: of cupped like they raise up there, they raise up
Speaker 1: on their legs, they flatten out their backs, and they
Speaker 1: lower their heads. Now what does this do. It turns
Speaker 1: the lizards back into a kind of combination rain barrel
Speaker 1: and whatever you call that. You know, the beer drinking
Speaker 1: helmet where you got the beers on the sides and
Speaker 1: it's got a straw running to the mouth. So you
Speaker 1: combine that with the rain barrel concept. Their back collects
Speaker 1: water over the widest possible surface area, which is the
Speaker 1: lizard's flattened out dorsal scales, and then it funnels the
Speaker 1: water to the edge of its mouth for drinking. So
Speaker 1: like my body is a catch basin and my mouth
Speaker 1: is the receptacle.
Speaker 2: I'm glad we're getting into this because as I was
Speaker 2: looking into like the culture of the horned lizard, I
Speaker 2: was hoping to find an example of cowboy poetry about them.
Speaker 2: But my search came up largely empty. But I did
Speaker 2: find an interesting blog post by Charlie Buck of the
Speaker 2: University of Arizona Poetry Center about an elementary school exercise
Speaker 2: where they brought in a herpetologist to talk about horned lizards,
Speaker 2: and then a poet led the class in filling out
Speaker 2: horned lizard worksheets with descriptive text to create concrete poems
Speaker 2: or visual poetry. So it's like an outline of a
Speaker 2: horned lizard and then you fill in with text. And
Speaker 2: I included one example of this in our outline here.
Speaker 2: Joe and folks can look up the blog posts and
Speaker 2: see an example of this as well. And for instance,
Speaker 2: written by one of the students in the head is
Speaker 2: a horned lizard eats ants. I babysat horned lizards. I
Speaker 2: can't read the rest of it. I spit my blood
Speaker 2: out of my eye at snack, I drink water from
Speaker 2: the sky. And then like later on one of the legs,
Speaker 2: it says I eat ant every day. And then there's
Speaker 2: also a part of the anatomy that says I drink
Speaker 2: water from my back. So I read that before I
Speaker 2: actually got to that point in reading about their biology.
Speaker 2: So I was like, I wonder if that's true. Gonna
Speaker 2: have to FA fact check this child.
Speaker 1: Yes, this child's poetry passes fact check. The horned lizards,
Speaker 1: at least some species do drink water from their backs
Speaker 1: and It's interesting the way Sherbrook describes it. It's not
Speaker 1: just like you know, water randomly running off the back
Speaker 1: and some of it sort of getting into the mouth.
Speaker 1: It seems like it has a fairly sophisticated system of
Speaker 1: like this sort of this matrix of layers underneath and
Speaker 1: between the scales absorbing water and then routing it by
Speaker 1: capillary action down to the edges of the mouth where
Speaker 1: the where the lizard then sort of sits there opening
Speaker 1: and closing its jaws slowly to drink the water as
Speaker 1: it trickles in from the corners of the mouth. And
Speaker 1: so it's got a fairly sophisticated topography on the back
Speaker 1: there to get the water to the mouth.
Speaker 2: It's a great system. You can't follow them.
Speaker 1: Another interesting way that horned lizards can serve water they
Speaker 1: do not urinate. Now, how is that possible. They're animals,
Speaker 1: Surely their bodies produce and collect waste products like excess
Speaker 1: salts and the nitrogen bearing compounds that are the byproduct
Speaker 1: of animal metabolism, like uric acid common in reptiles. Well,
Speaker 1: they do still have to purge these waste products, but
Speaker 1: they purge them not as liquid urine but as a
Speaker 1: semi solid substance rather than dissolved in water. So a
Speaker 1: Schrberch writes, quote, water carrying uric acid from the kidney
Speaker 1: is reabsorbed in the kloaca. From here, the uric acid,
Speaker 1: mixed with some insoluble crystals of urate salts is voided
Speaker 1: as a white mass attached to the end of the
Speaker 1: fecal pellet. And I thought this was interesting because in
Speaker 1: just a minute, I want to mention, and there was
Speaker 1: a video I was watching, like a short documentary about
Speaker 1: some conservation efforts with horned lizards, and it was showing
Speaker 1: some of their feces that the researchers were finding in
Speaker 1: the wild. And yeah, there fecal pellets did have these
Speaker 1: interesting little white caps on them. So apparently that is
Speaker 1: what the lizard releases instead of liquid urine solid P
Speaker 1: and some solidness crystals of solid P. Also, as we
Speaker 1: have discussed with some other reptiles in the past, horned
Speaker 1: lizards can sometimes remove excess salts from the body, not
Speaker 1: by urinating, but by sneezing. So salts accumulate in glands
Speaker 1: around the nostrils where they are secreted. As this hyper
Speaker 1: concentrated salty brine in the nose, which you can then
Speaker 1: you just hank it right out, and Sherbrook says that
Speaker 1: you can find horned lizard individuals with noses covered in
Speaker 1: this salty white trust from the process. So the moral
Speaker 1: of the story is when you don't pee, you poop,
Speaker 1: and you sneeze. Different other anti predator considerations that we
Speaker 1: didn't have time to talk about in the last episode.
Speaker 1: We were talking about the advantages of the horned lizard's
Speaker 1: armor for self defense, you know, the tough scales, but
Speaker 1: especially the sharp bony spines around the crown of the
Speaker 1: horned lizard's head. That these pieces of armor increase the
Speaker 1: risk a predator has to take in trying to eat
Speaker 1: one of these lizards. The predator has to make a
Speaker 1: judgment call is it too big for me to survive
Speaker 1: swallowing this? Will the head spikes split open my throat
Speaker 1: or puncture my organs? That can actually happen. But in
Speaker 1: the context of looking at another predator prey relationship that
Speaker 1: we didn't talk about last time, Sherbroke had some interesting
Speaker 1: thoughts on the evolution of these head spikes. So Sherbrooke
Speaker 1: is talking about the Southern grasshopper mouse or ani Comis torridus,
Speaker 1: and this animal will prey on some smaller horned lizard
Speaker 1: species by biting the skull right over the eye socket.
Speaker 1: So this is before you get to the crown of spikes.
Speaker 1: This is the skull above the eyes. And when the
Speaker 1: grasshopper mouse attacks other prey animals, most other vertebrate prey,
Speaker 1: it bites in a different place. It bites at the
Speaker 1: back of the neck near the base of the head,
Speaker 1: attempting to damage and sever the spinal cord, and this
Speaker 1: is apparently a common attack area for predators to target.
Speaker 1: I was actually kind of thinking, I know, I've read
Speaker 1: about big cats often targeting the back of the neck
Speaker 1: and the base of the skull in those rare cases
Speaker 1: where they happen to attack humans, and I was trying
Speaker 1: to remember where I came across that fact, and finally
Speaker 1: I realized it was from Mary Roach's book fuzz When
Speaker 1: Nature Breaks the Law, which we interviewed her about on
Speaker 1: the show. That was one of my favorite interviews we've done,
Speaker 1: and it's from the part of the book where she's
Speaker 1: talking about taking the class learning to identify different common
Speaker 1: wound patterns from different types of animal attacks, and so
Speaker 1: for example, she talks about how when a grizzly bear
Speaker 1: attacks a human sometimes a lot of the injuries are
Speaker 1: sort of face on. They're like to the face in
Speaker 1: the front of the head, almost as if the bear
Speaker 1: is fighting a human the way it fights a rival bear,
Speaker 1: where they're both kind of like biting at each other's faces.
Speaker 1: Whereas cougars are used to killing their prey with a
Speaker 1: powerful bite to the back of the neck, which they
Speaker 1: in these rare cases where a cougar attacks a human,
Speaker 1: they will sometimes target the same sort of place on
Speaker 1: the body, like the back of the neck, base of
Speaker 1: the back of the head.
Speaker 2: I believe in Jurassic Park this is also how the
Speaker 2: velociraptors are depicted as preying on humans, biting the back
Speaker 2: of the neck.
Speaker 1: But anyway, coming back to the relationship between the southern
Speaker 1: grasshopper mouse and the horned lizard, so these mice will
Speaker 1: try to prey on the lizards, especially the smaller ones,
Speaker 1: but they don't bite where they bite most prey because
Speaker 1: in the lizard's case, this is right where the head
Speaker 1: horns grow, so the mouse doesn't even bother trying to
Speaker 1: attack this well, defended area. Instead, it has got to
Speaker 1: kind of like awkwardly chew with the head over the eyes,
Speaker 1: and Sherbrook speculates that these horns could have evolved from
Speaker 1: what was originally a more modest kind of bony defensive
Speaker 1: ridge at the base of the skull designed to protect
Speaker 1: against this kind of attack to the back of the neck.
Speaker 1: And studies have shown that the spines do protect against
Speaker 1: predator attacks. And you can measure this because the size
Speaker 1: of the spines around the head actually matters. Like research
Speaker 1: has shown that lizards killed by birds tend to have
Speaker 1: order spines around the head than lizards of the same
Speaker 1: species in that area, so the ones that are picked
Speaker 1: off the most and to have the shortest headspikes. Now,
Speaker 1: there's one more thing we brought up in the last
Speaker 1: episode that I did want to make sure we came
Speaker 1: back to today because I wanted to clarify something about it.
Speaker 1: This was when we were talking about the relationship between
Speaker 1: horned lizards and the red imported fire ant or Solenopsis
Speaker 1: in Victa. It came up that non native fire ants
Speaker 1: in North America are thought to be a reason for
Speaker 1: some horned lizard population declines, and this does appear to
Speaker 1: be true. There are a number of horned lizards whose
Speaker 1: ranges have been shrinking in recent decades. There are places
Speaker 1: where you used to find them, you don't find them anymore.
Speaker 1: Many of their populations are in decline, and in the
Speaker 1: case the case with a lot of these species does
Speaker 1: seem to be that the fire ant is playing a
Speaker 1: role there, especially because the lizards have such an important
Speaker 1: relationship with the native harvester ants, which are sometimes sort
Speaker 1: of driven out by the fire ants. So while it's
Speaker 1: true that the fire ants appear to be playing a
Speaker 1: role in population and range declines for these horned lizards,
Speaker 1: they're not thought to be the only factor, or necessarily
Speaker 1: even the main factor everywhere.
Speaker 2: That's very much the case. Yeah, and reading about the
Speaker 2: Texas horned lizard, like urbanization vast urbanization and Texas is
Speaker 2: often singled out as one of the primary factors there exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the fire ant, the imported fire ant, seemed
Speaker 1: to be one factor among many. And this came up
Speaker 1: when I was watching a short documentary video that was
Speaker 1: just delightful. I recommend people look this up. A documentary
Speaker 1: video produced by Texas Parks and Wildlife in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one called Horned Lizard Homecoming, you can find on YouTube.
Speaker 1: It is a video specifically that's focused on an attempt
Speaker 1: by the San Antonio Zoo to breed Texas horned lizards
Speaker 1: in captivity and then release them back into areas from
Speaker 1: which they have largely disappeared since the nineteen seventies. Just
Speaker 1: one of the many charming things in this short documentary
Speaker 1: is that the conservation biologists are working with a lizard
Speaker 1: sniffing dog. So you know, imagine the canine unit at
Speaker 1: the airport, but instead of a drug sniffing dog or
Speaker 1: a bomb sniffing dog, it's a dog that is trained
Speaker 1: to find Texas horned lizards in the wild and not
Speaker 1: to bother them by the way, not go like pick
Speaker 1: them up in the mouth and harass them until they
Speaker 1: get a blood squirt, just to signal from a safe
Speaker 1: distance that they found one.
Speaker 2: Ah. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: It's also very cute that the lizard sniffing dog in
Speaker 1: the video is sort of wearing shoes as it goes
Speaker 1: about its business. I think this is probably because they're
Speaker 1: you know, it's a very scrub area and there's probably
Speaker 1: a lot of like thorns and stuff. That can get
Speaker 1: stuck in a dog's paw around there. But anyway, the
Speaker 1: conservation biologists and the parks and wildlife workers they interview
Speaker 1: in this video, they talk about a few other things
Speaker 1: that are affecting the range and population of Texas horned lizards.
Speaker 1: For example, human attempts to eliminate harvester ants from large
Speaker 1: areas of land. Of course, again, Texas horned lizards need
Speaker 1: to eat harvest or ants. Without the ants, the land
Speaker 1: cannot sustain the lizards. And then also things like replacing
Speaker 1: native grasses with different grass types, so you replace what
Speaker 1: are called bunch grasses with turf grasses. This is not
Speaker 1: what the lizards are adapted to and they can't really
Speaker 1: survive in it. Of course, as you mentioned, Rob, just
Speaker 1: general urbanization and reformatting of a lot of land area
Speaker 1: roads cutting through natural land ranges, which interferes with movement
Speaker 1: back and forth. But there's another thing I just wanted
Speaker 1: to mention from this video because I found it hilarious.
Speaker 1: There's a part where they're showing a lab at the
Speaker 1: San Antonio Zoo where they're trying to breed lots of lizards.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of it's a lizard sex lab, and
Speaker 1: they are trying to facilitate mating, and they will put
Speaker 1: a male lizard into a female lizard's tank. And there's
Speaker 1: one part where the technician is explaining that the head
Speaker 1: movements that we are seeing back and forth between these
Speaker 1: two lizards indicate that they are both interested in mating.
Speaker 1: But it totally looks like two lizards on a log
Speaker 1: just nodding back and forth at each other, like yep, yep,
Speaker 1: it's great. It's a very Texas kind of nod as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can imagine like the little cowboy hats being
Speaker 2: on their heads, right, yeah, all right, Well, at this point,
Speaker 2: I'd like to get back into some cultural connections to
Speaker 2: the hornet lizard, and in the last episode we teased
Speaker 2: out some connections in Navajo culture among the Dnet people,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to get into some of that. So
Speaker 2: there are there several mentions of the horned toad in
Speaker 2: the nineteen forty four book Navajo Witchcraft by Clyde Kluckhohon,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen oh five through nineteen sixty. I've talked
Speaker 2: about this text a little bit on the show before.
Speaker 2: The version I have is from nineteen eighty nine with
Speaker 2: some additions made to it, and there are several mentions
Speaker 2: of the horned toad's use as a key ingredient in
Speaker 2: various alleged spells in Navajo witchcraft, which I want to
Speaker 2: stress the term witchcraft is used here as shorthand, not
Speaker 2: for mainstream religious rituals and practice, but rather for what
Speaker 2: is described, as described by Kluckhohn as quote Navajo ideas
Speaker 2: and action patterns concerned with the influencing of events by
Speaker 2: supernatural techniques that are socially disapproved.
Speaker 1: Right, So what would be viewed by the people as
Speaker 1: a sort of illicit, outsider form of magic.
Speaker 2: Right, right, And it's my understanding as I understand it,
Speaker 2: these are not necessarily things that were practiced, but were
Speaker 2: believed to be practic by these few individuals. So the
Speaker 2: book outlines various alleged curses, including the placing of a
Speaker 2: personal item or a bit of clothing from a man
Speaker 2: you want to death, curse inside a grave or inside
Speaker 2: the mouth of a dead man, in the cursing of
Speaker 2: a pregnant woman. A personal item is placed inside the
Speaker 2: body of a horned toad or a horned lizard, or
Speaker 2: a purse made from its hide.
Speaker 1: Oh, interesting, and.
Speaker 2: So that these would again, these would be specialized alleged
Speaker 2: uses practiced by these you know, these outsiders that are
Speaker 2: practicing this kind of like co or said to be
Speaker 2: practicing this kind of like negative magical system. But there
Speaker 2: is a fragment of a story shared late in the
Speaker 2: book that is indeed a reference to a major Navajo
Speaker 2: story about the horned lizard, and it does get into
Speaker 2: some aspects of its biology, as we've discussed. So this
Speaker 2: is the quote that is included in a Navajo Witchcraft
Speaker 2: as a commentary on something else that's reference to the
Speaker 2: book quote. The story is about the holy toad who
Speaker 2: eats ants that give him power. One day, he was
Speaker 2: swallowed by a coyote who he had kindly given of
Speaker 2: his best corn. So while inside, he asked the code
Speaker 2: what all the things he sees are for, and finally
Speaker 2: comes to the back brain and asked what it was for,
Speaker 2: and the coyote said, that is what I live by.
Speaker 2: Leave it alone. So the toad cut it into, killed
Speaker 2: the coyote, and came out of his throat.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So I looked up some other versions of this amazing story,
Speaker 2: and there appear to be different versions of it, or
Speaker 2: you know, there were different retellings of it. I was
Speaker 2: reading a version from Navajo Religion, Volume one by Gladys A.
Speaker 2: Reichard from nineteen fifty, and the way this one goes is, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's a theft of corn. The corn belongs to the
Speaker 2: horned toad, and coyote steals it, and then the horned
Speaker 2: toad us is the cooty of the theft. But coyote
Speaker 2: kind of laughs about it and says, well, yeah, I
Speaker 2: am hungry, and then he eats the horned toad. But
Speaker 2: then horned toad begins to move around inside the code
Speaker 2: he's belly, and at first coyote thinks it's just the
Speaker 2: corn that he ate, but then the toad begins to
Speaker 2: talk to him. He's like, where am I? It's dark
Speaker 2: in here, and he like kicks the inside of the
Speaker 2: stomach just to you know, to sort of punish the
Speaker 2: coote a little bit. But then he moves to the windpipe,
Speaker 2: keeps speaking. Then he moves to the heart and this
Speaker 2: is where he carves across in the heart and it
Speaker 2: kills the code. He dead, and then he emerges from
Speaker 2: the code. He's body in this telling or retelling of
Speaker 2: it from the code he's anus.
Speaker 1: This is interesting in how it matches with the cases
Speaker 1: we talked about from biology in the in the previous
Speaker 1: episode about animals that died from trying to eat a
Speaker 1: horned lizard that was too big and too thorny, like
Speaker 1: the various birds and snakes all. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: a dangerous proposition to get too greedy with attacking a
Speaker 1: horned toad that they have really serious spikes and they
Speaker 1: can mess you up from the inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you can imagine the story being inspired
Speaker 2: by observations of that having occurred in predators, perhaps including
Speaker 2: the coyote. And then, of course, as we referenced the
Speaker 2: last episode, this nugget about them getting their power from
Speaker 2: the ants that they eat, Like, that's right on as
Speaker 2: far as they're irritating blood is concerned.
Speaker 1: Right, because the idea, as we talked about last time,
Speaker 1: is that there is something in the harvest or ant
Speaker 1: diet that causes their blood to have the properties that
Speaker 1: make it foul smelling or foul tasting to canids like
Speaker 1: foxes and coyotes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, according to Navajo historian Wally Brown on Navajo
Speaker 2: traditional teachings, This is a twenty twenty three video. The
Speaker 2: grandfather horned toad is a symbol of protection, with the
Speaker 2: spikes serving as arrow points that protect one. And he
Speaker 2: also drives home that the horned toad is close to
Speaker 2: the Earth, and which matches up with the way that
Speaker 2: it lives its life, you know, not only being a
Speaker 2: very terrestrial organism, but being solo to the earth, flattening
Speaker 2: itself so that it doesn't cast that shadow as we discussed.
Speaker 2: But he stresses that it can be used to bless
Speaker 2: one's mind, to bless one's spirit, and to bless one's
Speaker 2: physical well being.
Speaker 1: I am interested in the way that it seems that
Speaker 1: at least two humans, the spiritual connotations of the horned
Speaker 1: toad or the horned lizard are really taken as almost
Speaker 1: entirely positive. Despite the fact that it is a very
Speaker 1: spiky looking creature. There seems to be a kind of
Speaker 1: tension there. You would think, you see a creature that's
Speaker 1: all like spiky and thorny like that, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: people might just be more inclined to attach a kind
Speaker 1: of negative spiritual energy to it. But so we have
Speaker 1: these traditions that can consider the horned lizard as like
Speaker 1: a route for a blessing, a blessing of the mind
Speaker 1: and spirit and the health of the body. But also
Speaker 1: just if you read about people's personal relationships who grew
Speaker 1: up around these lizards, people have overwhelmingly positive feelings about them,
Speaker 1: like very positive feelings about catching them and handling them
Speaker 1: as children and things like that. Do you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I was thinking about this as well.
Speaker 2: I guess on one hand, it's worth stressing that like
Speaker 2: they're they're not a direct threat to humans. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not not even like a situation where you know,
Speaker 2: they're Obviously there are a lot of like say, like
Speaker 2: venomous snakes out there that are also not out there
Speaker 2: in the game trying to have encounters with humans, but
Speaker 2: it just happens, and you know, and you know, injuries
Speaker 2: and so forth can can result. That's not really the
Speaker 2: case here, Like, they're pretty much not a threat to us,
Speaker 2: and so there's almost a certain like natural kinship with
Speaker 2: them because they're out there in the world. They're dealing
Speaker 2: with stress, stresses, they're dealing with predators, enemies, and they
Speaker 2: have these natural defenses against them. But they also seem
Speaker 2: very much like an underdog because they are small, and
Speaker 2: you know it doesn't always work. Yeah. So there are
Speaker 2: some other details on some of these traditions mentioned in
Speaker 2: another book. I looked at Jane Manister's Horned Lizards. This
Speaker 2: is a two thousand and two book from Texas Tech
Speaker 2: University Press. The author here sites that at least in
Speaker 2: some tellings of this the code is being punished for
Speaker 2: stealing corn from the sacred stalk, that the horned lizard
Speaker 2: is associated with inner protection, especially for warriors traditionally, and
Speaker 2: then the author also cites that there may be a
Speaker 2: Navajo taboo, or there may have been a Navajoa taboo
Speaker 2: against including certain animals, including this one, in various rug
Speaker 2: weaving designs, perhaps in deference to its special strength. Now,
Speaker 2: I want to stress that Navajo traditions vary across time
Speaker 2: and geography, as with pretty much any belief system, and
Speaker 2: there are also aspects of Navajo traditions that are not
Speaker 2: meant for me to know of. And I hope that
Speaker 2: I've been respectful with what I've brought to the discussion here.
Speaker 2: But I think this is always there's always a fascinating
Speaker 2: relationship to be observed between a people's beliefs and a
Speaker 2: people's natural environment. And I think that we see that
Speaker 2: here with the horned toad or horned lizard, both as
Speaker 2: a metaphor as well as an interpretation of what I
Speaker 2: assume were observations of the horned lizard's biology in the wild. Now,
Speaker 2: another source I looked at. I was looking at an
Speaker 2: article by Joyce Gibson Roach writing for TCU magazine talking
Speaker 2: about different cultural interpretations of the horned lizard, and this
Speaker 2: author points to Spanish folk beliefs. So this would have
Speaker 2: been you know, in Mexico for the most part, where
Speaker 2: they would sometimes refer to the horned lizard as a
Speaker 2: torrito dilo virgin or the little bull who protects the virgin.
Speaker 2: And so this is there's kind of like two different
Speaker 2: things going on with this this nickname. So we talked
Speaker 2: about this in the last episode. How they may be
Speaker 2: observed to charge like a bull and are sometimes referred
Speaker 2: to as the little bull.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, like against an absurdly larger predator, like
Speaker 1: against a human shoe. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think that I think this again, this is
Speaker 2: one of the things that makes this animal charming. You know,
Speaker 2: it's an underdog stand in its ground, you know, and like,
Speaker 2: how can you not want to be like the like
Speaker 2: the humble, horny toad in this respect? But then where
Speaker 2: does the virgin come in? Well, this seems to be
Speaker 2: connected to various interpretations that what's going on here is
Speaker 2: that the horned toad is crying tears of blood. So
Speaker 2: there is a long, sometimes controversial, and also generally skeptically
Speaker 2: debunked history of statues of the Virgin Mary weeping tears
Speaker 2: of blood in Catholicism, and accounts of of weeping statues
Speaker 2: in general, aiding back at least to the writings of
Speaker 2: Plutarch in the first and second century see now. I
Speaker 2: should also point out that humans can experience blood in
Speaker 2: the tears or blood from the tear ducks or hematuria
Speaker 2: for various reasons. So for instance, when my son was younger,
Speaker 2: he had tubes put in his tear ducks to correct
Speaker 2: a minor problem, and immediately after surgery he shed a
Speaker 2: single tear of blood, which was pretty awesome. At the time,
Speaker 2: we knew everything was fine, you know, and it was
Speaker 2: just kind of like, oh, wow, that was a blood tear,
Speaker 2: but only got the one agreed, if you know, not
Speaker 2: to worry. That is pretty cool, all right. Now another
Speaker 2: connection to the horned toad the horned lizard in culture.
Speaker 2: This is one that was shared in that book by
Speaker 2: Jane Manister Horned Lizards from two thousand and two. She
Speaker 2: gets into a number of different traditions, at least mentioning
Speaker 2: that there are a number of ideas about them being
Speaker 2: tied up in weather predict and rain generation, which I
Speaker 2: guess is understandable of a creatures that clearly is able
Speaker 2: to thrive in a very arid environment, and we have
Speaker 2: these unique observations, you know, concerning the way that they
Speaker 2: catch rain and so forth. But then she also gets
Speaker 2: into this account that some of you may have heard
Speaker 2: of before. I believe stuff you missed in history class
Speaker 2: did a whole episode about this last couple of years.
Speaker 2: There's the story of Old Rip. This is a horned
Speaker 2: lizard originally named Blinky, that was placed in an Eastland County,
Speaker 2: Texas time capsule along with a bible, some coins, and
Speaker 2: some newspapers. And then when the capsule was dug out
Speaker 2: thirty one years later, the lizard was allegedly still alive.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, A lot of solid reasons to doubt this detail
Speaker 2: of the story, but this is the main detail of
Speaker 2: the story. So it's like everyone who's celebrating this, it's
Speaker 2: like they're basically the idea being that they were saying
Speaker 2: the cowboy lore is correct. This is a victory of
Speaker 2: cowboy biology. They were right the cowboys when they said
Speaker 2: that the horned toad could live for one hundred years
Speaker 2: without food or water. Because clearly this particular horned lizard
Speaker 2: was locked away for thirty one years and we just
Speaker 2: got him out and he's still alive. Everyone and take
Speaker 2: a look at him. So this was very popular at
Speaker 2: the time. Old Rip toured the country, even met President
Speaker 2: Coolidge at the White House, and ultimately died in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty nine. Now, various folks later took credit for switching
Speaker 2: out lizards at the capsule's opening. So this is that
Speaker 2: I want to stress that this is almost certainly a hoax,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of reason to believe it was
Speaker 2: a hoax. This was not carried out with any kind
Speaker 2: of like scientific rigger, but it was a big deal
Speaker 2: and it was covered in the New York Times among
Speaker 2: other major publications. In fact, I want to read to
Speaker 2: you from the New York Times. This is from February twentieth,
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty eight. Oh boy, toad alive after thirty one
Speaker 2: years sealed in Texas cornerstone, Eastland, Texas, February nineteenth ap
Speaker 2: hey hornage toad sealed alive in the cornerstone of the
Speaker 2: courthouse here thirty one years ago, was alive when the
Speaker 2: stone was removed yesterday. According to County Judge Edward S. Pritchard,
Speaker 2: the old courthouse is being raised, and it goes into
Speaker 2: some additional details, including this bit that I also have
Speaker 2: to include. After the cornerstone was removed, the toad appeared
Speaker 2: lifeless for some time, but in a little while it
Speaker 2: opened its eyes. In about twenty minutes, it began to breathe.
Speaker 2: The mouth, however, appeared to have grown together.
Speaker 1: What grown together?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so I was looking around. There's some other
Speaker 2: takes on this as well that.
Speaker 1: Oh, they're also saying they're going to open the mouth
Speaker 1: by surgery and force it to eat food.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's also the New York Time story. So yeah,
Speaker 2: this story, I should be clear, there were a number
Speaker 2: of skeptics at the time that were like, that doesn't
Speaker 2: sound right. Let me see this toad. I think there
Speaker 2: was maybe there may be one or two support supporters
Speaker 2: in the scientific community who are maybe like, well, it's possible.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but generally people were very doubtful about this.
Speaker 2: And then on the other hand you had others pointing out, well,
Speaker 2: clearly the animal survived in the time capsule because there
Speaker 2: was a Bible in there. The Bible sustained the lizard.
Speaker 2: I guess the Bible also made the lizard's mouth grow together.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I've read other accounts that it had
Speaker 2: a broken leg and worn down horns but was otherwise healthy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then others claim that their eyes were sealed shut
Speaker 2: as well. There seems to be a certain amount of
Speaker 2: drift in the telling and retelling of this this feat.
Speaker 2: But here's what we actually know to be true. So
Speaker 2: hornet lizards can live around five but normal lifespan in
Speaker 2: the wild is not fully known, according to the Oklahoma
Speaker 2: Department of Wildlife Conservation. But I think we can probably
Speaker 2: take that as like a ballpark. According to Texas Monthly
Speaker 2: in a twenty fifteen article by Alex Dropkin, the Texas
Speaker 2: horned lizard species hibernates, or rather bermates between October and April,
Speaker 2: and this is likely where that cowboy lore originated, that
Speaker 2: these creatures can live without food or water for one
Speaker 2: hundred years. And this is the lore that the folks
Speaker 2: in Eastland, Texas decided to put to the test. This
Speaker 2: is why they put a horned lizard inside of a
Speaker 2: time capsule to test or I think, if we're being
Speaker 2: rightfully skeptic here to prove that the cowboy lore was correct.
Speaker 2: There is no evidence that horned lizards in the wild
Speaker 2: choose hibernation spots based on the presence of biblical texts
Speaker 2: or coins or newspapers. But I guess we should note
Speaker 2: that long lifespans for lizards are not completely unheard of.
Speaker 2: The New Zealand tuatara can live twenty five to thirty
Speaker 2: five years, typical age ages to sixty or apparently common,
Speaker 2: and one captive specimen apparently lived to be over one hundred. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: some wizards can go without food or water for weeks
Speaker 2: or months. I think it's safe to say that the
Speaker 2: accounts of Old Rip places the story so far outside
Speaker 2: of anything reported or at least, you know, authenticated to
Speaker 2: any reasonable degree that common sense leans us very strongly
Speaker 2: in the direction of hoax here.
Speaker 1: You know, we talked not too long ago on the show,
Speaker 1: we were doing some stuff about cave biology, and we
Speaker 1: ended up talking about the cave dwelling amphibian, the olm,
Speaker 1: which is notable for being one of the most sort
Speaker 1: of sedentary creatures on Earth that it can live for
Speaker 1: a long time. It's an aquatic salamander. It's found in
Speaker 1: the dynaic alps in cave systems. It lives in the
Speaker 1: dark for much of the time, and it is thought
Speaker 1: that sometimes these creatures can go for like ten years
Speaker 1: without food, and that in itself is incredible, but that
Speaker 1: seems to be sort of the upper bound of where
Speaker 1: you can where you can push push the slow motion
Speaker 1: metabolism too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And so again this if this story of
Speaker 2: old Rip were true, it would just it would, you know,
Speaker 2: triple that that ten year record. So yeah, I think
Speaker 2: we are very right to be highly skeptical of this.
Speaker 2: And again, various folks came forward and claimed that they
Speaker 2: were involved with the hoax and so forth. So there's
Speaker 2: a lot of smoke there that suggests the fire. I
Speaker 2: should also point this out. You know, we're talking about
Speaker 2: in endangered status of hornet lizards. This particular incident was
Speaker 2: so popular that it resulted in a horned toad boom,
Speaker 2: so the yet specimens being harvested and then exported for
Speaker 2: novelty's sake, hurting local populations in the process. But hey,
Speaker 2: old rip is allegedly currently entombed in Eastland, Texas. I
Speaker 2: think he's on display. So if we have any Eastland
Speaker 2: listeners or visitors to Eastland, or folks who have been
Speaker 2: to Eastland and can report on the body of old
Speaker 2: rip rite in, we would love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: I believe he has at least historically been stolen at
Speaker 2: least once and returned.
Speaker 1: Are you, County Judge Edward S. Pritchard, what criteria did
Speaker 1: you use to judge that this was the real original lizard?
Speaker 2: All right? I have another interesting bit that I ran
Speaker 2: across in these texts that I want to talk about.
Speaker 2: This is from Manister's book as well, and it is
Speaker 2: the horny toad Man, something that I know, on the
Speaker 2: surface absolutely sounds like a cryptid or some American Western
Speaker 2: horror story, and the fact that it's associated with the
Speaker 2: railway I think only compounds this possibility.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like he belongs alongside sasquatch and paramouth.
Speaker 2: A yeah. So. According to Manaster, the figure emerges in
Speaker 2: response to a unique problem on a segment of the
Speaker 2: Santa Fe railroad connecting Albuquerque and El Paso, a segment
Speaker 2: of track that was dubbed the Horny toad a segment
Speaker 2: where anything bad that ever happened on the railroad could
Speaker 2: happen and had happened, including a unique problem first reported
Speaker 2: apparently in the Jiorada del Niorto desert basin, and that
Speaker 2: is trains losing traction on the rails due to the
Speaker 2: grease and moisture of hundreds of squashed hornet lizards. What so,
Speaker 2: Apparently it was so bad that brakemen and firemen aboard
Speaker 2: the train would have to scramble down onto the tracks
Speaker 2: and sweep it all off to get all this gunk
Speaker 2: off the tracks, and it led to the idea, nay,
Speaker 2: the ideal of the horny toad man. So, a horny
Speaker 2: toad man is not merely like somebody that goes down
Speaker 2: and sweeps off the rails in the scenario, this is
Speaker 2: a railway man with eyes on corporate promotion, willing to
Speaker 2: do anything and everything the company requires in order to advance,
Speaker 2: and that certainly includes going out onto the tracks in
Speaker 2: the desert heat and removing lizard guts from the rails.
Speaker 1: So this is a this is a railroad company version
Speaker 1: of I'll get the boss's coffee, you know, I will
Speaker 1: sweep the sweep all of the horny toad grease off
Speaker 1: of the rails.
Speaker 2: Right, And to put it in an alien context, since
Speaker 2: we're talking about Alien in the last episode, you might
Speaker 2: consider Burke from Aliens a horny toad man of sorts,
Speaker 2: you know, a complete scoundrel, but he proves that if
Speaker 2: nothing else, he is more than ready to get down
Speaker 2: there on the tracks and get his hands dirty for
Speaker 2: the company. He's a company man all the way.
Speaker 1: That's right, all right.
Speaker 2: Now, In trying to understand this, I guess we do
Speaker 2: have to acknowledge that hornet lizard populations would have been
Speaker 2: greater back in this time period as opposed to you
Speaker 2: know what they are now. Can't compare what we see
Speaker 2: in the world today to what would have been happening then.
Speaker 2: But I needed more clarity on why are there so
Speaker 2: many horned lizards getting run over by trains? And I
Speaker 2: found a possible answer here In a nineteen twenty two
Speaker 2: paper by J. P. Givler, Givler writes, it is an
Speaker 2: interesting fact that at such times horned lizards are very
Speaker 2: abundant under the crossties of railroad tracks. Often they burrow
Speaker 2: through into the area between the two rails. Here they
Speaker 2: emerge and are literally trapped. The rails are usually too
Speaker 2: high to be climbed over, and the lizards run up
Speaker 2: and down frantically. Occasionally one climbs up on a rail
Speaker 2: just in time to be crushed by a passing train.
Speaker 2: Many live for the rest of the summer in this
Speaker 2: uncomfortable pasture bummer. Now it doesn't come I mean, it
Speaker 2: doesn't completely answer my question, but it at least puts
Speaker 2: a lot of horned lizards in the vicinity of those
Speaker 2: train tracks. And you know, he only mentions it as
Speaker 2: being like an occasional squad. But may I guess that's
Speaker 2: close enough to like a mass squashing that we can
Speaker 2: consider this reality. Now, I look for any discussions out
Speaker 2: there in the literature about loss of traction due to
Speaker 2: animal railway mortalities, and I looked at it. At least
Speaker 2: one full source on animal railway mortalities or one that
Speaker 2: deals with this in depth titled railway ecology. And there's
Speaker 2: no mention in this of tracks getting greased up by
Speaker 2: dead animals or dead lizards. So if true, maybe this
Speaker 2: was indeed more of a concern with an historic engine
Speaker 2: and an historic local population of lizard. I'm not sure,
Speaker 2: but I will add the following from another paper. I
Speaker 2: looked up Experimental evaluation of effect of leaves on railroad
Speaker 2: tracks and loss of breaking by Kumar at All. This
Speaker 2: is in the Journal Machines in twenty twenty four. Quote
Speaker 2: loss of traction results in either breaking of the train
Speaker 2: or slip, which arises at lower track active coefficients. This
Speaker 2: case occurs when there are third body layers that cause
Speaker 2: reduce traction, such as in the case of leaves. Various
Speaker 2: traction enhancers are adopted by the railway to improve adhesion
Speaker 2: when the rail is contaminated.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you can certainly imagine that leaves falling on
Speaker 1: railroad tracks could reduce the traction between the wheels and
Speaker 1: the rails. So yeah, you can guess that if like lizards,
Speaker 1: especially not just like lizard body fluids, but whole lizard
Speaker 1: bodies were on the rails that might interfere in some way.
Speaker 2: That's my guess. You know, if we're not dealing with
Speaker 2: leaves here, we're dealing with lizard bodies and lizard guts
Speaker 2: and lizard liquids. But I guess if there were enough
Speaker 2: of them, and also dealing with the idea that these
Speaker 2: are not modern trains, these are historic drain engines, can
Speaker 2: I guess it's conceivable that there would have been some
Speaker 2: sort of issue here, thus necessitating the horny toe man.
Speaker 1: Horny toad man, we salute you.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I don't know if we have any anybody
Speaker 2: out there who is, you know, verse more versed than
Speaker 2: the history of locomotives and in the railway in America,
Speaker 2: you know, right in we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: What's your company's version of the horny toad man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess there's there's probably a horny toad man
Speaker 2: in any business, in any corporation. So those were some
Speaker 2: of the cultural connections to the horned lizard or a
Speaker 2: horned toad or horny toad that I was able to
Speaker 2: come across. But I'd love to hear from anyone out
Speaker 2: there if you have some additional insights to share. Be
Speaker 2: they related to something we discussed in this episode, or
Speaker 2: something we missed altogether, be it you know something from
Speaker 2: Native beliefs and traditions that you want to share, or
Speaker 2: cowboy lore or indeed cowboy poetry. I'm still at a
Speaker 2: loss that there's not at least one cowboy poem out
Speaker 2: there on the Internet that deals with these guys.
Speaker 1: Surely I'm gonna blame Google being bad now for the
Speaker 1: inability to connect with that literature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, well we're gonna ahead and close out
Speaker 2: this episode, but yeah, right in, we'd love to hear
Speaker 2: from you. Let's see a little housekeeping here. Hey, if
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Speaker 2: House Cinema.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway,
Speaker 1: and special thanks to our excellent guest audio producer Chandler
Speaker 1: may Is for sitting in with us today. If you
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