Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
Speaker 3: in our series on that most charismatic anatomical feature of whales,
Speaker 3: the blowhole, also known as the spiracle or the spout.
Speaker 3: If you are just joining us and you haven't heard
Speaker 3: part one, you might want to hop back in the
Speaker 3: timeline and listen to that one first. That's where we
Speaker 3: go over a lot of the basic science of the blowhole.
Speaker 3: But as I mentioned last time, this is a subject
Speaker 3: that I was tempted to look into because there is
Speaker 3: a whole chapter about the spout in the classic nineteenth
Speaker 3: century American novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Now, if
Speaker 3: you've ever read Moby Dick, you'll probably recall that it
Speaker 3: is not all high speed whale chases and heroics by
Speaker 3: Queek Wegg and mad sermons of vengeance by Captain Ahab An.
Speaker 3: Awful lot of the book is made up of chapters
Speaker 3: that could be considered strange, thoughtful little essays on objects
Speaker 3: both technological and biological. Technological subjects like various pieces of
Speaker 3: whaling equipment and things on ships, and biological subjects like
Speaker 3: the various parts of a sperm whale's body. And one
Speaker 3: of the latter chapters is called the Fountain. It concerns
Speaker 3: the blowhole, and I thought this this would make an
Speaker 3: interesting subject for us, in particular because the chapter raises
Speaker 3: a number of practical controversies about the biology of whale spouts,
Speaker 3: as well as some tantalizing but questionable claims about sprays
Speaker 3: of blubbery venom from the whole. Now, among the primary
Speaker 3: controversies that concern the narrator Ishmael in this chapter is
Speaker 3: the question what is it exactly that shoots out of
Speaker 3: the whale's spout? What are the plumes that whaling ships
Speaker 3: used to locate these animals out on the high seat?
Speaker 3: And of course these are still you know, people looking
Speaker 3: for the whale blow is still what like whale watchers
Speaker 3: today would use to look for these animals? Is it
Speaker 3: a towering jet of water blasting as if from a
Speaker 3: fire hose, as it is often depicted, I'd say most
Speaker 3: often depicted, or is it nothing more than gas, vapor
Speaker 3: or misst And to get as started here, I want
Speaker 3: to read from this chapter in Moby Dick articulating this
Speaker 3: first question, Are you all right if I read this? Rob,
Speaker 3: go for it? Okay, okay, this is what Ishmael says.
Speaker 3: You have seen him spout, then declare what the spout is?
Speaker 3: Can you not tell water from air? My dear sir,
Speaker 3: In this world it is not so easy to settle
Speaker 3: these plain things. I have ever found your plane things
Speaker 3: the nattiest of all. And as for this whale spout,
Speaker 3: you might almost stand in it and yet be on
Speaker 3: decided as to what it is. Precisely the central body
Speaker 3: of it is hidden in the snowy, sparkling mist enveloping it.
Speaker 3: And how can you certainly tell whether any water falls
Speaker 3: from it? When always, when you are close enough to
Speaker 3: a whale to get a close view of his spout,
Speaker 3: he is in a prodigious commotion, the water cascading all
Speaker 3: around him. And if at such times you should think
Speaker 3: that you really perceived drops of moisture in the spout,
Speaker 3: how do you know that they are not merely condensed
Speaker 3: from its vapor? Or how do you know that they
Speaker 3: are not those identical drops superficially lodged in the spout
Speaker 3: whole fissure which is countersunk into the summit of the
Speaker 3: whale's head. For even when tranquility swimming through the midday
Speaker 3: sea in a calm with his elevated hump sun dried
Speaker 3: as a dromedaries in the desert, even then, the whale
Speaker 3: always carries a small basin of water on his head.
Speaker 3: As under a blazing sun, you will sometimes see a
Speaker 3: cavity in a rock filled up with rain.
Speaker 2: Whoa who this kind of went off the rails. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and here what.
Speaker 3: You do not agree that whales always have a pool
Speaker 3: of water on top of them, like a rock filled
Speaker 3: up with rain.
Speaker 2: Right, or that they keep their elevated humps sun dried
Speaker 2: as a camel's in the desert.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is a good quase. I don't know if
Speaker 3: there's anything to that claim or not, Like, would a
Speaker 3: whale ever keep a part of its body consistently exposed
Speaker 3: over the surface or do they? I mean, what I
Speaker 3: feel like I've seen most of the time is repeatedly
Speaker 3: going under and then coming back up to breathe, and
Speaker 3: then returning correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think there'll be a hint of
Speaker 2: this in one of the sources I refer to in
Speaker 2: a bit concerning depictions and iconography of whales, which very
Speaker 2: often still do picture the whale as having a large
Speaker 2: portion of its head above the water, as if that's
Speaker 2: just how it rides around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now, we already discussed discussed this question to some
Speaker 3: extent in the last episode, and the consensus of spurts,
Speaker 3: marine biologists, and just whale watchers that we were reading
Speaker 3: last time seem to be that what comes out of
Speaker 3: the whale's blowhole is not primarily water. It is not
Speaker 3: a jet like from a fire hose, but it is
Speaker 3: the explosive exhalation of gas from the whale's lungs, and
Speaker 3: to be clear, that can be quite explosive, because when
Speaker 3: a whale breathes out, especially after it has been under
Speaker 3: for a long time, it nearly totally collapses its lungs.
Speaker 3: It is like a blast of breath, and that exhalation
Speaker 3: can create a very watery looking blow for several reasons.
Speaker 3: First of all, the exhaled breath contains vapor, which condenses
Speaker 3: into mist and droplets when it leaves the warmer environment
Speaker 3: of the whale's lungs and airways and enters the colder
Speaker 3: environment of the atmosphere above, similar to how you can
Speaker 3: see your own breath on a cold day. Then, of
Speaker 3: course there's also some droplet content in the whale breath
Speaker 3: that is just mucus being exhaled, kind of like when
Speaker 3: we sneeze. And then there's probably also some splashing of
Speaker 3: sea water, which may happen if the exhalation begins before
Speaker 3: the blowhole breaks the surface of the water, so some
Speaker 3: water is just getting sort of splashed up by the blast,
Speaker 3: or if there was some amount of seawater trapped in
Speaker 3: the airways robbed, Is that about the gist of it,
Speaker 3: you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, And, like I say, from my family's tripped
Speaker 2: down to Mexico to observe the gray whales and their lagoons,
Speaker 2: very much the case with those exhalations that occur below
Speaker 2: the surface of the water. Those can be quite explosive
Speaker 2: and create what feels like a fountain next to you
Speaker 2: in the water.
Speaker 3: But that does not mean the whale spout is shooting
Speaker 3: a jet. It is breathing out and that breath is gas,
Speaker 3: though it contains probably some mucus droplets and bits of water.
Speaker 2: Now, of note, I've run across various descriptions both in
Speaker 2: literature and in just you know, the discussions of whale behavior.
Speaker 2: Of the of the spout with a rainbow within it.
Speaker 2: You know, the spout mist goes up into the air
Speaker 2: and you can see the reflection, the refraction and the
Speaker 2: and the dispersion of light in the water droplets. I
Speaker 2: don't have much to say about that other than it
Speaker 2: is neat to see, and you've certainly seen it. See
Speaker 2: that it has captured people's imaginations over the years, and
Speaker 2: you can find various photos of this today from whale watchers.
Speaker 3: Rob When you mentioned this, did you know that this
Speaker 3: actually connects to the final paragraph of this chapter in
Speaker 3: Moby Dick.
Speaker 2: Moby Dick was coming up in my searches, and I've
Speaker 2: never actually read Moby Dick. I've I've only seen the
Speaker 2: film adaptations, but I did suspect that Melville also touched
Speaker 2: on this.
Speaker 3: I actually he writes about it quite beautifully, so if
Speaker 3: you don't mind it. In the last paragraph, he says,
Speaker 3: and how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty
Speaker 3: misty monster to behold solemnly sailing through a calm, tropical sea,
Speaker 3: his vast mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor
Speaker 3: engendered by his incommunicable contemplations, and that vapor, as you
Speaker 3: will sometimes see it, glorified by a rainbow, as if
Speaker 3: Heaven itself put its seal upon his thoughts. For do
Speaker 3: you see rainbows do not visit the clear air, They
Speaker 3: only irradiate vapor. Thrue science fact. And so through all
Speaker 3: the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind,
Speaker 3: divine intuitions now and then shoot in kindling my fog
Speaker 3: with a heavenly ray.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful. Yeah, and really, I mean, this is what
Speaker 2: it's like to be in the company of whales, Like
Speaker 2: the idea that Heaven is glorifying them with a rainbow.
Speaker 2: It does not feel hyperbolic to me having been in
Speaker 2: their presence, like being in the presence of a whale
Speaker 2: invites hyperbole because it's just such an overwhelming experience.
Speaker 3: Haven't had the experience myself, but I can't disagree it
Speaker 3: is quite true to most observers who write of it.
Speaker 3: But I want to come back to this misconception, the
Speaker 3: idea that the whale spout shoots a jet of water
Speaker 3: like from a fire hose. Do we have any idea
Speaker 3: like where does this misconception come from? How far back
Speaker 3: does it go? And like why were people saying this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting to try and tease this apart getting
Speaker 2: into these older descriptions of whales and older understandings of
Speaker 2: whale behavior and biology. You know, there's a lot we're
Speaker 2: still unraveling about wales today. But historically there was a
Speaker 2: great deal that wasn't known about these creatures, and they
Speaker 2: were frequently the subject of myth, legend and folklore, and
Speaker 2: even people who are trying to, you know, skeptically understand
Speaker 2: them were often having to depend on the word of
Speaker 2: sailors and second and third hand accounts of what they do.
Speaker 2: And then you throw whalers into the mix, and of
Speaker 2: course you know that also skews things in different directions.
Speaker 2: But they were, you know, generally they were often interpreted
Speaker 2: as fish, as monsters, as gods, as shape shifters, and more. Now,
Speaker 2: concerning whale blow or whale spout in particular, there are
Speaker 2: a few main myths and misconceptions. Yeah, to discuss, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, first hitting on this one about the about
Speaker 2: the spout being a jet of water. Again, this is
Speaker 2: something that not only do you find in old besty
Speaker 2: areas and woodcuts some of those old maps. You see
Speaker 2: these fabulous like beat twails with two you know, almost
Speaker 2: like Martian old school Martian style blowholes on the top
Speaker 2: of their head that are depicted just spouting big jets
Speaker 2: of water like their fire engines.
Speaker 3: They have almost horns made of water or like antinnae.
Speaker 2: Yes and then just poking around. If you if you
Speaker 2: have your your smartphone with you and you pull up,
Speaker 2: pull up somebody in there, do a you know, a text,
Speaker 2: and if you go into throwing some whale emojis, chances are,
Speaker 2: I don't know, if your phone's like mine, you'll have
Speaker 2: two to choose from. One is a more thankfully scientifically
Speaker 2: accurate whale, but the other is what we've seen a
Speaker 2: million times and emojis and clip art. It is a
Speaker 2: cartoon whale spouting a fountain out of its single blowhole
Speaker 2: on the top of its head.
Speaker 3: The same way it is most often drawn, with the
Speaker 3: fountains splitting in a kind of fork two ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which, as we discussed in the previous episode, you know,
Speaker 2: the spout has different shapes and different intensities depending on
Speaker 2: the species of the whale. Some do kind of squirt
Speaker 2: off in two directions. But it's the way you see
Speaker 2: it in clip art and these simple plaistic cartoon illustrations. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it tends to look just like a fountain. Now. In
Speaker 2: trying to in getting into this ended up, I kept
Speaker 2: pulling up older sources. But one of the more interesting
Speaker 2: older sources on this is an eighteen eighty four book
Speaker 2: by naturalist Henry Lee titled See Fables Explained, and it
Speaker 2: took on this misconception about whale spout more than a
Speaker 2: century eco.
Speaker 3: Now a brief note on Henry Lee. He was a
Speaker 3: nineteenth century English naturalist who specialized in marine organisms, and
Speaker 3: for a time he was the director of the Brighton
Speaker 3: Aquarium in England.
Speaker 2: But he is.
Speaker 3: Notable for writing measured skeptical investigations of cryptozoological legends, and
Speaker 3: in this latter capacity he has actually come up on
Speaker 3: the show before, I think, on some episodes that we
Speaker 3: just recently did for Vaults on Saturdays. So Lee was
Speaker 3: the author of the eighteen eighty seven monograph called the
Speaker 3: Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, a curious fable of the cotton plant.
Speaker 3: We discussed this at length in those episodes on the
Speaker 3: vegetable lamb, which of course was a legendary organism with
Speaker 3: accounts going back to ancient times, usually described as a
Speaker 3: basically a mammal that grew from a plant, a furry,
Speaker 3: flesh and blood mammal that had meat and bones and
Speaker 3: blood that came out of a stalk that was attached
Speaker 3: to the ground roots and grew somewhere in Central Asia.
Speaker 3: While there have been multiple skeptical attempts to make sense
Speaker 3: of these legends going back hundreds of years, Lee offered an,
Speaker 3: I think, in both of our views, an extremely persuasive
Speaker 3: argument that these accounts actually go back to observations and
Speaker 3: misunderstandings of the cotton plant. So by the standards I
Speaker 3: would normally apply to a I don't know, a multidisciplinary
Speaker 3: skeptical treatise involving literary, historical, and biological knowledge from the
Speaker 3: eighteen eighties, I recall being extremely impressed with the last
Speaker 3: work of Lee's that we looked at.
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely yeah, And I feel like this book. What
Speaker 2: I read from it, which is basically the chapter on
Speaker 2: whale spout, I thought thought it was a very level
Speaker 2: and in any ways ahead of its time. So in
Speaker 2: this chapter he cites an example of this whale spout
Speaker 2: misunderstanding in the work of the second century Greco Roman
Speaker 2: poet Opian And this is the quote uncouth the site
Speaker 2: when they, in dreadful play discharge their nostrils and refund
Speaker 2: to see while noisy finfish let their fountains fly and
Speaker 2: spout the curling torrent to the sky. So beautiful, you know,
Speaker 2: in translation obviously, but yeah, this idea of refunding the sea,
Speaker 2: letting the fountain fly a curling torrent up to the sky,
Speaker 2: it's at least a landsman's idea of what whale spout
Speaker 2: consisted of.
Speaker 3: Based on what I've read, it seems like the most
Speaker 3: common understanding was that whales were shooting jets of water
Speaker 3: out of their blowholes because they like swallowed a lot
Speaker 3: of water through their mouths while eating, and then they
Speaker 3: would have to squirt it back out, but couldn't do
Speaker 3: that through their mouths for some reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which I think it's one of those things
Speaker 2: that certainly by this point naturalists knew that this is
Speaker 2: not how an organism worked, and certainly not how to
Speaker 2: how whale works. And so Lee, Yeah, he basically lays
Speaker 2: out that this had been already been refuted time and
Speaker 2: time again by naturalist but that the image was just
Speaker 2: too entrenched in the popular imagination and popular imagery of
Speaker 2: whales to be fully dismissed. And also more people are
Speaker 2: casually taking these images in than they are actually listening
Speaker 2: to the naturalists. And we have to, I guess we
Speaker 2: also have to bear in mind like today so many
Speaker 2: of us have access, whether we're actively watching them or not,
Speaker 2: to fabulous documentaries about the biology and behavior of whales,
Speaker 2: so many opportunities to see for yourself what the whale
Speaker 2: spout looks like. And this of course was not always the.
Speaker 3: Case, right, So back then there might have been more
Speaker 3: correct knowledge about whales and their mammalian biology in books.
Speaker 3: But that it really hits home more when you just
Speaker 3: like see some video of them moving and swimming and spouting.
Speaker 2: Right, right, So he rails against quote sensational pictures in
Speaker 2: which whales are presented with their heads above the surface
Speaker 2: and throwing up from their nostrils column of water like
Speaker 2: the fountains in Trafalgar Square. Now he cites another erroneous
Speaker 2: description from a sixteenth century map by map master Olaus Magnus.
Speaker 2: This is somebody we've talked about on the show before
Speaker 2: and concerning old maps and sea monsters. Right.
Speaker 3: I think he came up extensively in my interview with
Speaker 3: chet van Duzer on the history of monsters on maps,
Speaker 3: but I think he's come up in other capacities as well.
Speaker 3: This is a recurring guest here.
Speaker 2: Yes, Lee writes the following, quoting Magnus quote four to
Speaker 2: the danger of seamen, he will sometimes raise himself above
Speaker 2: the saal yards and cause such floods of water above
Speaker 2: his head which he had sucked in that with a
Speaker 2: cloud of them, he will often sink the strongest ships
Speaker 2: or expose the mariners to extreme danger. This beast hath
Speaker 2: also a large round mouth like a lamprey, whereby he
Speaker 2: sucks in his meat or water and buy his weight
Speaker 2: casts upon the flour or or hinder deck. He sinks
Speaker 2: and drowns a ship hinder deck, hinder deck, hinder deck.
Speaker 2: I think I don't know anyway, you get the idea like,
Speaker 2: here's this big monster and there and he fears. Some
Speaker 2: woodcut illustrations to this article, and you can you can
Speaker 2: easily find these as well, depicting the same sort of
Speaker 2: like you know, beaked monstrosity we just described with these
Speaker 2: creatures like coming up to a ship and spitting out that,
Speaker 2: you know, using their their strange blowholes to just flood
Speaker 2: a ship and make it sink.
Speaker 3: Brutal, not real though.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, and Lee continues to rail against this. He
Speaker 2: shares that after previously trying to set the record straight
Speaker 2: on this in a publication, he received letters stating that, Okay, sure,
Speaker 2: while lesser whales might not spout water like this, the
Speaker 2: great whales are doing it. They're totally doing it. You're wrong.
Speaker 2: So he goes on to discuss the basics of blowhole
Speaker 2: anatomy and function, driving home that there's no way this
Speaker 2: system could be the system that you find in a
Speaker 2: whale's head, great or small. There's no way that this
Speaker 2: system could be used to squirt jets of pure water.
Speaker 2: It's just not how their bodies work. Right.
Speaker 3: So, as we said before, in certain cases, there might
Speaker 3: be a lot of splashing from a whale's explosive exhalation,
Speaker 3: but it's exhaling gas and that maybe some splash is
Speaker 3: getting caught up in that exhalation, but it is not
Speaker 3: squirting water. What's coming out is from its lungs.
Speaker 2: Right, and he lays all this out and discusses everything
Speaker 2: we've just mentioned before that yeah, it's not water coming out,
Speaker 2: but if the exhalation comes below the surface of the water,
Speaker 2: it's liable to carry up a lot of water and
Speaker 2: have this explosive watery appearance.
Speaker 3: Now, given all this, I did want to be fair.
Speaker 3: I want to come back and add that to the
Speaker 3: partial credit of Ishmael, the narrator of Moby Dick. He
Speaker 3: does come down on what we now know to be
Speaker 3: the correct side of the water jet versus mist or
Speaker 3: vapor debate. So he says it is missed, but he
Speaker 3: gives a fairly hilarious reason for thinking it is missed.
Speaker 3: His explanation is as follows.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: I account him meaning the sperm whale, no common shallow being,
Speaker 3: inasmuch as it is an undisputed fact that he has
Speaker 3: never found on soundings or near shores all other whales
Speaker 3: sometimes are. He is both ponderous and profound. And I
Speaker 3: am convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound
Speaker 3: beings such as Plato, Piro, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and
Speaker 3: so on, there always goes up a certain semi visible steam.
Speaker 3: While in the act of thinking deep thoughts while composing
Speaker 3: a little treatise on eternity. I had the curiosity to
Speaker 3: place a mirror before me, and ere long saw reflected
Speaker 3: there a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere
Speaker 3: over my head, the invariable moisture of my hair while
Speaker 3: plunged in deep thought after six cups of hot tea
Speaker 3: in my thin shingled attic of an August noon. This
Speaker 3: seems an additional argument for the above supposition is so good,
Speaker 3: I get sweaty one time too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are some some wonderful mental gymnastics which again
Speaker 2: land him in the right spot, but some unnecessary twists
Speaker 2: and turns. Now. It's worth noting, for the most part,
Speaker 2: this misunderstanding of whale anatomy is victimless, right. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, if worst case scenario you think that
Speaker 2: a whale shoots water out of its blowhole, I mean,
Speaker 2: what's it? Or if you encounter a whale you'll be
Speaker 2: set right on this. But it's worth noting that the
Speaker 2: myth of whale spouts and water can even prove actually
Speaker 2: dangerous to whales. This, according to Dan Jarvis of the
Speaker 2: British Diver's Marine Life Rescue organization is quoted in a
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one Melissa Hobson article on Nationalgeographic dot Cota UK.
Speaker 2: Apparently there have been cases where people who are not
Speaker 2: familiar with the anatomy of whales, who still have this
Speaker 2: idea of the whale fountain in their mind. They have
Speaker 2: happened upon a stranded whale on the beach and thinking
Speaker 2: that this great fish needs water to start pouring water
Speaker 2: into its blowhole, which can drown the whale. Oh no, yeah,
Speaker 2: So you know there are cases where not knowing what's
Speaker 2: going on, even is a non biologist, it can lead
Speaker 2: to something like this. So don't go pouring water into blowholes.
Speaker 3: Certainly not but okay, I think we can mostly close
Speaker 3: the book on the idea of the water jet. It's
Speaker 3: not a water jet. But returning to c fables explained
Speaker 3: by Henry Lee, Lee also briefly addresses a strange claim
Speaker 3: in the same chapter of Moby Dick that caught our
Speaker 3: attention and we wanted to investigate further and to refresh you.
Speaker 3: We mentioned that in the last episode. But this is
Speaker 3: the allegation made by Ishmael that the whale spout is poisonous,
Speaker 3: a claim that seemed prima fasse unlikely to both of us.
Speaker 3: But to read again from Mobi Dick so you'll know
Speaker 3: what he's saying. He says that for even when coming
Speaker 3: into slight contact with the outer vapory shreds of the jet,
Speaker 3: which will often happen, your skin will feverishly smart from
Speaker 3: the acridness of the thing, so touching it. And I
Speaker 3: know one who coming into still closer contact with the spout,
Speaker 3: whether with some scientific object in view or otherwise, I
Speaker 3: cannot say, the skin peeled off from his cheek and arm. Wherefore,
Speaker 3: among whalemen the spout is deemed poisonous. They try to
Speaker 3: evade it. Another thing I have heard it said, and
Speaker 3: I do not much doubt it, that if the jet
Speaker 3: is fairly spouted into your eyes it will blind you.
Speaker 3: The wisest thing the investigator can do, then, it seems
Speaker 3: to me, is to let this deadly spout alone. So
Speaker 3: that's a number of strange claims, he says. Okay, I've
Speaker 3: got a friend who got some whale blow on him
Speaker 3: and that made his skin peel off. Whaleman generally say
Speaker 3: that the blow that comes out of the spout is
Speaker 3: poisonous and if you get it in your eyes it
Speaker 3: will make you blind.
Speaker 2: So Lee doesn't spend a lot of time with this.
Speaker 2: He mentions it he doesn't really have much to add,
Speaker 2: but he kind of dismisses it out of hand, and
Speaker 2: also throws in there that Herman Melville is quote not
Speaker 2: a naturalist, and he doesn't seem to have much to
Speaker 2: add beyond that, aside from mentioning an account from a
Speaker 2: steamship whaler. He writes, quote, he believes that the blast
Speaker 2: was strong enough to blow a man off the spiracle
Speaker 2: if he were seated on it. Now, I don't know. Okay,
Speaker 2: that also feels kind of like a tall tail, but
Speaker 2: maybe a more believable. It's not saying that it will
Speaker 2: blow your skin off and blind you, but he's just saying, well,
Speaker 2: it's pretty explosive. If you were re seated right on it,
Speaker 2: I bet it would blast you into the air. I
Speaker 2: think it definitely would make you move, So just on,
Speaker 2: just strong enough to blow a man off the spiracle.
Speaker 2: I believe you would not remain on the spiracle if
Speaker 2: you were somehow balanced there for the spout.
Speaker 3: Right, So it might knock you off, but it would
Speaker 3: not as often depicted in cartoons and illustrations. Create a
Speaker 3: jet that then leaves you floating in the air above it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And the idea of it being used as
Speaker 2: an offensive blast against ships, yeah, that's pure fantasy. Now.
Speaker 2: One thing I did find interestingly doesn't go into this,
Speaker 2: but he mentions that this being an account from a
Speaker 2: steamship whaler, and I can't help but wonder about, during
Speaker 2: the age of steam power, if there's like not some
Speaker 2: level of technological comparison going on in one's mind where
Speaker 2: steam comes out of the top of a ship. Steam,
Speaker 2: of course, is very hot and can damage you and
Speaker 2: burn the skin off your body, things like that, And
Speaker 2: so if there's some sort of like comparison that gets
Speaker 2: made between the ship and the whale, which of course
Speaker 2: is large, travels in the water and also emits these
Speaker 2: blasts that don't look unlike steam like, maybe it's the
Speaker 2: kind of thing where there's just kind of like a
Speaker 2: sub conscious comparison being made.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. I never thought about that, but that does
Speaker 3: seem plausible. So I did my own digging around for
Speaker 3: answers on the question of the supposedly poisonous whale spout
Speaker 3: and like you, Rob, I found no support whatsoever for
Speaker 3: the claim that the blow from the blowhole is poisonous,
Speaker 3: meaning that it contains a chemical toxin or venom with
Speaker 3: directly injurious effects on nearby mammals through either topical contact
Speaker 3: or ingestion. I found nothing on that. In fact, I
Speaker 3: didn't even find that many references to this passage in
Speaker 3: moby Dick, which I was surprised by. I thought I
Speaker 3: would come across more. I don't know scientific sources referencing it,
Speaker 3: even if only to contradict it or maybe try to
Speaker 3: get at the source of this belief. But it just
Speaker 3: doesn't seem like this this idea gets a lot of stick.
Speaker 3: One example of the kind of reference I found was
Speaker 3: in not even really a scientific book, just a sort
Speaker 3: of book on grey whales called Grey Whales Wandering Giants
Speaker 3: by Robert Bush from nineteen ninety eight, which mentions the
Speaker 3: claim in Moby Dick that the spout is poisonous, only
Speaker 3: to say that it's not poisonous at all, but that
Speaker 3: sometimes it does have a very powerful smell, and the
Speaker 3: author quotes John Steinbeck from a work called The Log
Speaker 3: from the Sea of Cortes. In Steinbeck wrote, a whale's
Speaker 3: breath is frightfully sickening. It smells of complete decay. The
Speaker 3: author here Bush says, I don't know, it's never really
Speaker 3: smelled that way to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was in a position to smell a lot
Speaker 2: of grey whale breath and I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: there is a breathiness to it, I guess at times,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I wouldn't say it stinks. Now. One thing
Speaker 2: to keep in mind, though, is like these are organisms.
Speaker 2: The blowhole is, you know, a breathing orifice. So I
Speaker 2: have read that you do have situations where you can
Speaker 2: have a sick whale, so that could impact what you're smelling.
Speaker 2: I suppose that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Bush says the same thing. Maybe it's breath
Speaker 3: smells worse when it is diseased or wounded or something.
Speaker 3: So beyond this, I was just I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm going to expand my circle of interest here. I
Speaker 3: was looking to find any evidence of any mammal or
Speaker 3: any animal for that matter, that is believed to have
Speaker 3: poisonous or venomous breath, and I really could not find
Speaker 3: anything that fits the description. Despite the popularity of creatures
Speaker 3: with toxic breath in Dungeons and Dragons in video games.
Speaker 3: It's a good area of effect type attack. But I
Speaker 3: couldn't find really any evidence of this in reality. Maybe
Speaker 3: there is such a thing and I just wasn't searching
Speaker 3: the right way. But the closest stuff I could find
Speaker 3: is what we're all more familiar with animals that might
Speaker 3: spit venom or something, but not having toxic breath.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the only thing that really comes to my
Speaker 2: mind is vultures, say vomiting, which there are a few
Speaker 2: different interpretations of that behavior, but it's not quite a
Speaker 2: Dungeons of Dragon's area of a fact attack.
Speaker 3: And still that would be vomit from the digestive system,
Speaker 3: not toxic breath.
Speaker 2: Right right, not toxic gas emitted from the mouth.
Speaker 3: So is this claim in mobe to just completely made up?
Speaker 3: Maybe Melville just made it up to make, you know,
Speaker 3: just for interesting fictional effect. Or maybe it was something
Speaker 3: he heard he heard from people that was an actual
Speaker 3: belief among whalers, but they just made it up. Well maybe,
Speaker 3: but then again maybe not. While I think it's clear
Speaker 3: that the exhalation of whales is not poisonous or venomous,
Speaker 3: I think this could be a misunderstanding of something that
Speaker 3: does seem true, which is that I found evidence that sometimes,
Speaker 3: after certain times types of contact with marine mammals, including whales,
Speaker 3: people do report reactions. In fact, this is a great
Speaker 3: bit of listener mail we heard from a listener after
Speaker 3: part one of this series who has a bit of
Speaker 3: relevant personal experience. So Rob, I'm gonna read Tabitha's email here,
Speaker 3: all right. Tabitha says, Dear Robert and Joe, regarding the
Speaker 3: consequences of getting a face full of blowhole ejecta. I
Speaker 3: have a family experience. As a child, I went on
Speaker 3: a dolphin watching boat trip. When dolphins started swimming alongside
Speaker 3: the boat and playing in the bow waves, my sister
Speaker 3: and I were allowed to lie on the deck and
Speaker 3: stick our heads out under the railing to watch them.
Speaker 3: It was the nineties. One dolphin surfaced and exhaled directly
Speaker 3: into my sister's face from close range. Initially she was fine,
Speaker 3: if a bit slimy and embarrassed. Later that day, however,
Speaker 3: her eyes turned red, weepy and swelled almost shut. I
Speaker 3: don't really remember the aftermath except for thinking it was hilarious,
Speaker 3: But as far as I recall, it got better in
Speaker 3: a day or so, suggesting an allergic reaction rather than
Speaker 3: bacterial infection. So maybe a certain number of people are
Speaker 3: just really allergic to cetaceans. Maybe a lot of people,
Speaker 3: but we don't have the opportunity to find out very often.
Speaker 3: I can imagine a whaling crew having one case of
Speaker 3: whalesnot face rash, and the story spreading until it reaches
Speaker 3: the flesh dissolving, eye melting, tall tail stage. Love the
Speaker 3: show as always, Tabitha, well fascinating and thank you so
Speaker 3: much for sharing this, Tabitha. So I totally agree that
Speaker 3: it is not hard to imagine some nineteenth century whalers
Speaker 3: could observe experiences like this and conclude incorrectly from it
Speaker 3: that the whale spout is toxic, is venomous or poisonous,
Speaker 3: like the venom of a spitting cobra or something. But
Speaker 3: I was wondering more about the mechanism, what is actually
Speaker 3: going on here now? I honestly could not find much
Speaker 3: of anything documenting what we're directly classified as allergic reactions
Speaker 3: to cetace blow. But I did find a very interesting
Speaker 3: source documenting similar reactions in the context of human zoonotic
Speaker 3: diseases from marine mammal vectors. Now, this is something I
Speaker 3: really had never thought about before we did this series.
Speaker 3: Of course, when you think about zoonotic diseases, you think
Speaker 3: about bats, You think about livestock animals, you know, maybe pigs, birds,
Speaker 3: and so forth. I had never thought of the idea
Speaker 3: that humans could catch diseases from whales, seals, dolphins, and
Speaker 3: so forth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean neither.
Speaker 3: But now allow me to introduce you to the paper
Speaker 3: Health Risks for Marine Mammal Workers published in the journal
Speaker 3: Diseases of Aquatic Organisms the year two thousand and eight
Speaker 3: by Tanya Hunt at All. This is a paper where
Speaker 3: the authors say there have been isolated, documented cases of
Speaker 3: humans acquiring zoonotic diseases from marine mammals. There are certain
Speaker 3: diseases that are well known and even have interesting little names,
Speaker 3: such as seal finger. If you want to be grossed out,
Speaker 3: you can look up images of seal finger. But they
Speaker 3: wanted to design a survey to get a broader range
Speaker 3: of responses. So they wanted to survey professionals and volunteers
Speaker 3: who regularly work directly with marine mammals to see how
Speaker 3: common various types of injuries and work related illnesses were
Speaker 3: in people who have contact with these animals. So what
Speaker 3: did they find to read from their abstract? First of all,
Speaker 3: they characterized the people who responded to the survey. Most
Speaker 3: respondents eighty eight percent were researchers and rehabilitators. And then
Speaker 3: they say, quote of all respondents, fifty percent reported suffering
Speaker 3: an injury caused by a marine mammal and twenty three
Speaker 3: percent reported having a skin rash or reaction. Marine mammal.
Speaker 3: Work related illnesses commonly included seal finger, which is now
Speaker 3: known to be traceable to a bacterium called mycoplasma, conjunctivitis.
Speaker 3: That's very interesting because that conjunctivitis is irritation and swelling
Speaker 3: of the eyes. That of course connects to Tabitha's story,
Speaker 3: but also connects to the idea that getting whale blow
Speaker 3: in your face could make you blind. But to go on,
Speaker 3: viral dermatitis, bacterial dermatitis, and non specific contact dermatitis. This
Speaker 3: is rash or irritation of the skin, although specific diagnoses
Speaker 3: could not be confirmed by a physician. Through the study,
Speaker 3: severe illnesses were reported and included tuberculosis, leptospirosis, brucillosis, and
Speaker 3: serious sequli to seal finger. Risk factors associated within increased
Speaker 3: odds of injury and illness included prolonged and frequent exposure
Speaker 3: to marine mammals, direct contact with live marine mammals, and
Speaker 3: contact with tissue, blood and excretions. And I was looking
Speaker 3: at another paper tracking marine mammals Zunocees in humans. This
Speaker 3: was by waltzik at All in Zunoceason Public Health from
Speaker 3: twenty twelve, and it also tried to collect all of
Speaker 3: the literature on zoonotic infections from marine mammals and humans,
Speaker 3: and it concluded that the most common type of zoonotic
Speaker 3: reaction to marine mammals was localized skin infections in humans,
Speaker 3: which again makes you think about the discussion about like
Speaker 3: peeling skin and skin reactions that Melville mentions. So those
Speaker 3: are human diseases that have been tentatively linked at least
Speaker 3: circumstantially to contact with marine mammals. But we need to
Speaker 3: introduce some caveats Number one. This includes a wide range
Speaker 3: of different marine mammals, so not just whales, but all
Speaker 3: kinds of marine mammals, and a wide range of different
Speaker 3: types of contact including touching of skin, bites, contact with
Speaker 3: blood and inner organs, et cetera, not just exposure to say,
Speaker 3: mucus and droplets from the blowhole of whales. So what
Speaker 3: if we were to come at this question from the
Speaker 3: other direction and ask what is in whalesnot specifically when
Speaker 3: a whale breathes out, there's got to be plenty of
Speaker 3: bacteria and stuff in there. Has anybody ever documented what
Speaker 3: microbes are present in the blow of a whale and
Speaker 3: whether that list contains anything that could cause skin or
Speaker 3: eye infections or otherwise create the impression, even the false
Speaker 3: impression that the spout is poisonous or venomous. Yes, there
Speaker 3: have in fact been investigations microbiological investigations of whale blow.
Speaker 3: The first one I wanted to mention was a paper
Speaker 3: from twenty seventeen. This was published in m sistems Too,
Speaker 3: which is an American Society for Microbiology journal. It's by
Speaker 3: Amy April at All and it's called Extensive Core Microbiome
Speaker 3: in Drone Captured Whale Blow supports a framework for health monitoring.
Speaker 3: This study was interesting because it used a drone to
Speaker 3: fly above the water surface and collect blow from two
Speaker 3: populations of healthy humpback whales, one Pacific group off of
Speaker 3: Vancouver Island and an Atlantic group off of Cape Cod
Speaker 3: and I was thinking, wow, that's a good use for drones. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So they took these samples, but then they compared the
Speaker 3: microbes present in them to what was present in just
Speaker 3: samples of straight seawater from around because obviously some seawater
Speaker 3: gets in with the blow, so you're looking to see
Speaker 3: what's in the blow that's not just in the seawater.
Speaker 3: And the author's right quote. The blow microbiomes were distinct
Speaker 3: from the seawater microbiomes and included twenty five phylogenetically diverse
Speaker 3: bacteria common to all sampled whales. This core assemblage comprised
Speaker 3: on average thirty six percent of the microbiome, making it
Speaker 3: one of the more consistent animal microbiomes studied to date.
Speaker 3: The closest phylogenetic relatives of twenty of these core microbes
Speaker 3: were previously detected in marine mammals, suggesting that this core
Speaker 3: microbiome assemblage is specialized for marine mammals and may indicate
Speaker 3: a healthy, non infected pulmonary system. So that's interesting. These
Speaker 3: two geographically distinct populations of healthy humpback whales from different
Speaker 3: oceans share a common baseline of non pathogenic bacterial species.
Speaker 3: Of course, the fact that a bacterium is not pathogenic
Speaker 3: in its normal whale host doesn't necessarily tell you how
Speaker 3: it will behave when sprayed onto the skin or into
Speaker 3: the eyes of a human being. But then, the other
Speaker 3: study I wanted to mention is one that was published
Speaker 3: in Nature Scientific Reports by Raverty at All in twenty
Speaker 3: seventeen called Respiratory Microbiome of Endangered Southern resident killer Whales
Speaker 3: and Microbiome of surrounding Sea surface micro layer in the
Speaker 3: Eastern North Pacific. So, to summarize from a news report
Speaker 3: on this article, I was reading from the University of
Speaker 3: British Columbia. Stephen Raverty, he was the lead author on
Speaker 3: the study, is a professor or an adjunct professor at
Speaker 3: University of British Columbia's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries.
Speaker 3: And this study was looking at the microbiome of endangered
Speaker 3: Southern resident killer whales in what's known as the Salish Sea.
Speaker 3: It's the sea around I think, the sort of the
Speaker 3: inside of Vancouver Island. It's the sea around that stretch
Speaker 3: throughout British Columbia and Washington State. And this study was
Speaker 3: focused on the health of orcas, not on humans, so
Speaker 3: this was not studying human diseases. But it did find
Speaker 3: that the breath of these killer whales, when sampled droplets
Speaker 3: from that blow, contained all kinds of bacteria and fungi
Speaker 3: that are known to cause disease in humans, so bacteria
Speaker 3: like salmonella, like Staphylococcus aureus, and then fungi like penicillium
Speaker 3: and foma. And it's not clear that these common bacteria
Speaker 3: that could also cause disease in humans would be present
Speaker 3: in the breath of all whales. It's also not clear
Speaker 3: that they have always been present, even in these killer whales,
Speaker 3: because there's a possibility that these are sort of recently
Speaker 3: introduced microbia loads that are a result of human activity.
Speaker 3: We don't know, but it's a possibility. Giving a quote
Speaker 3: to this news article, the lead author, Raverty says, quote,
Speaker 3: We're not sure if these microbes naturally occur in the
Speaker 3: marine environment or if they may be terrestrially sourced. These
Speaker 3: animals are long ranging as they migrate along the coast,
Speaker 3: and they are exposed to agricultural runoff and urban discharge,
Speaker 3: which may introduce a variety of microbes into the water.
Speaker 3: So ultimately, in this case, we don't know for sure,
Speaker 3: Like we can't take a sample of what whalers might
Speaker 3: have been getting blown in their faces from sperm whale
Speaker 3: or whales in general in the nineteenth century. But here
Speaker 3: at least there are cases today of whales that are
Speaker 3: ejecting breath from their lungs that contains droplets of mucus
Speaker 3: with bacteria that we know do cause disease in humans.
Speaker 3: Whether that is sort of a recent loading onto these
Speaker 3: whales or whether that would have been present a long
Speaker 3: time ago, we can't say for sure. But if you
Speaker 3: combine this with the other observations that people, you know,
Speaker 3: people who work directly with marine mammals, report a lot
Speaker 3: of sort of skin infections conjunctividis and things like that,
Speaker 3: it does not seem implausible to me that this story
Speaker 3: about the whale blow being poisonous could emerge from different
Speaker 3: types of infections people get after getting whale mucus or
Speaker 3: other types of whale body fluids on their skin or
Speaker 3: in their eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a number of additional considerations to make
Speaker 2: based on this information, because, on one hand, just by
Speaker 2: the nature of tall and sailor lore. How many times
Speaker 2: would it need to happen really for the stories to generate,
Speaker 2: You know, just one incident of somebody really swelling up
Speaker 2: after being exposed to whale blow might be enough. At
Speaker 2: On top of that, if there are myths and legends
Speaker 2: pre existing that to tie into some of this, those
Speaker 2: could add to the energy of these tales and could
Speaker 2: even in their origin be partially inspired by such experiences.
Speaker 2: And then I think the other thing to keep in
Speaker 2: mind is that the whalers we were just talking about
Speaker 2: all the different things that one might have reactions to
Speaker 2: have exposed to, including like blood and organs, Like the
Speaker 2: whaler was not just out there to see the whale,
Speaker 2: not just out there to experience the whale. They were
Speaker 2: out there to kill and butcher the whales. So it
Speaker 2: seems entirely likely that, yeah, if you're going to have
Speaker 2: an allergic reaction to one aspect of the whales anatomy,
Speaker 2: there are going to be multiple additional opportunities to be
Speaker 2: infected by blood, viscera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: I absolutely agree with all that. So yeah, I can't
Speaker 3: say for sure, but my best guess is if this
Speaker 3: is not just a made up story. If there are
Speaker 3: if there were actually folk tales among whalers that the
Speaker 3: spout was poisonous, it probably came from people getting some
Speaker 3: kind of infection after being around whales.
Speaker 2: Now I have a few other little things first to
Speaker 2: take into this first one kind of ties into several
Speaker 2: different things we've discussed, because it definitely concerns whaling. It
Speaker 2: concerns the idea of a liquid spout, and it also
Speaker 2: concerns exposure of the whaler to various parts of the
Speaker 2: whales anatomy. So this concerns the red spout. In the
Speaker 2: book Red Leviat and the Secret History of Soviet Whaling,
Speaker 2: author and previous guest on the show, Ryan Tucker Jones
Speaker 2: discusses the destruction wrought by the Soviet industrial whaling industry,
Speaker 2: and in this one particular case, the Soviet industrial whaling harpoons.
Speaker 2: So these were not like the harpoons of the classical
Speaker 2: age of whaling as depicted in Moby Dick. We're talking
Speaker 2: about things that are fired, and in this case a
Speaker 2: grenade tipped so that they explode upon hitting the whale
Speaker 2: and impacting the whale. He points out that the ideal
Speaker 2: first hit ideal for the whalers, of course, not the whale.
Speaker 2: Would be for one of these to go off near
Speaker 2: the whale's vital organs. Wherever it hit, blood would pour
Speaker 2: into the cavity and the brain would eventually succumb. But
Speaker 2: if the lungs were punctured quote, blood would soon fountain
Speaker 2: out the blowhole. This was termed by the Soviet whalers
Speaker 2: a red spout, and the whale would drown in its
Speaker 2: own fluids. And he goes into a great deal more
Speaker 2: detail about all of this, but suffice to say like
Speaker 2: two to six harpoons were often required to kill the whale.
Speaker 2: So worth keeping this in mind, I think and thinking
Speaker 2: about all of this, and also it brings to mind
Speaker 2: an account that I was reading regarding a mythic monstrous whale.
Speaker 2: So we have the word cetacean, you know, referring to
Speaker 2: our whales. This I've read is connected to the name
Speaker 2: of the of the sea monster in Greek mythology Ketos
Speaker 2: or CTOs, and it is believed by some, at least
Speaker 2: in some tellings, to be based on or interpreted as
Speaker 2: a whale. In Manilius is Monster by K. M. Coleman
Speaker 2: from nineteen eighty three, the author points to whale like
Speaker 2: qualities of spouting in the writings of first century Roman
Speaker 2: poet Manilius. Ovid, however, doesn't write of spouting with these
Speaker 2: with this creature, but of vomiting bloody water. So the
Speaker 2: there of this paper, Coleman contends that Manilius was possibly
Speaker 2: incorporating observational or even for the time natural insight into
Speaker 2: his treatment of the myth. But I also think this
Speaker 2: depiction of that Ovid gives the spouting of bloody water.
Speaker 2: This also brings to mind, I mean this, I can't
Speaker 2: help but compare to this idea of the red spout
Speaker 2: and wonder if it might be connected to some you know,
Speaker 2: ancient world older accounts of harpooning a whale piercing the
Speaker 2: lung and observing this reaction.
Speaker 3: Wow, but now I'm picturing this. So the key toss
Speaker 3: or the sea monster that is here being interpreted as
Speaker 3: a whale I think was the monster in the Perseus
Speaker 3: and Andromeda story. So like when Cassiopeia offers up Andromeda
Speaker 3: as a sacrifice to the sea monster, we should maybe
Speaker 3: picture at not like a big scaly man thing coming
Speaker 3: out of the water track see and clash of the Titans,
Speaker 3: but instead a whale vomiting bloody water.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and you know this idea of the vomiting whale,
Speaker 2: he goes. There's some other accounts of this as well,
Speaker 2: because I was poking around looking for just any other
Speaker 2: interesting like whale spout myths that connected into what we're
Speaker 2: talking about here. And there are various myths about whales
Speaker 2: being you know, monsters or gods and so forth, but
Speaker 2: not all of them are necessarily insightful concerning the spout
Speaker 2: or the blowhole. But I happened to cross something in
Speaker 2: Irish traditions that I can't help but wonder if this
Speaker 2: is something that ended up helping inform sailor's lore, especially
Speaker 2: as discussed in Moby Dick. I found this initially in
Speaker 2: an eighteen ninety nine publication Notes and Folklore from the
Speaker 2: Renez Copy of the Dencentchez by TJ. Westrop, published in
Speaker 2: the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland.
Speaker 2: The Dencentchez. This is the tales of the Tales of
Speaker 2: the Duns, the Lore of Places. It's a class of
Speaker 2: texts from early Irish literature, and these were apparently added
Speaker 2: to by various writers up until the eleventh or twelfth centuries.
Speaker 2: So here's a quote from this particular author quote. A
Speaker 2: very dangerous monster, the ros Sualt is also described, which
Speaker 2: spouts at Muhrisk in Mayo, and a pestilence en sieus.
Speaker 2: This is stated of the whale in other ancient works.
Speaker 2: When the whale spouts upwards, flying creatures die, when downwards
Speaker 2: it kills the fish, and when at the land, a
Speaker 2: plague ensieus. Whoa. So this is the idea of a
Speaker 2: whale shooting birds out of the air with its poisonous spout,
Speaker 2: and occasionally, you know, coming close to the shore and
Speaker 2: being a bringer of plagues, vomiting up plague upon the
Speaker 2: shore and letting that plague or roll across the countryside
Speaker 2: as a vapor, a bringer of miasma.
Speaker 3: Okay, I was confused about the timeline for a second.
Speaker 3: But okay, so this is an eighteen ninety nine publication,
Speaker 3: but it is discussing these earlier like medieval Irish texts.
Speaker 2: Correct. Yes, and for there's a little background. Mrisk is
Speaker 2: in fact a village in County Mayo in Ireland, and
Speaker 2: also according to a different text in eighteen ninety two
Speaker 2: text I was looking at this ross salt, and I
Speaker 2: apologize that I'm butchering. This was sometimes understood as a
Speaker 2: sea animal, and I think sometimes translated as a walrus.
Speaker 2: Not that we should necessarily think of it as a walrus,
Speaker 2: but you know, sometimes there's a shift in what these
Speaker 2: terms are referring to over time. So since we had
Speaker 2: a sea monster here, especially one of European origin, I turned,
Speaker 2: as I always do, to the books of Carol Rose.
Speaker 2: He has these wonderful pair of encyclopedias, one dealing with
Speaker 2: monsters and giants and other other one dealing with fairies
Speaker 2: and leprechauns. And there's some crossover between the books, but
Speaker 2: they're both great. So I looked it up. And Rose
Speaker 2: has a little more insight on the resalt, which she
Speaker 2: says is an alternate name for the moorisk, a monster
Speaker 2: fish of Irish tradition. She writes that it was said
Speaker 2: to inhabit the region of crow og Patrick, and it
Speaker 2: was super poisonous. If it vomited in the water, all
Speaker 2: the sea life around it would die. The fumes from
Speaker 2: its mouth would cause dead birds to fall out of
Speaker 2: the sky, and it could breathe on a coastal region
Speaker 2: and bring disease.
Speaker 3: Okay, that sort of matches what we were reading a
Speaker 3: minute ago, right, right, yeah, yeah, And at the coast
Speaker 3: it brings the pestilens. It kills the birds if it
Speaker 3: shoots up, and it kills the fish if it shoots down.
Speaker 2: Right. And I also found another source referring to this.
Speaker 2: This is from P. W. Joyce in nineteen oh six
Speaker 2: is a smaller social History of Ancient Ireland, and this
Speaker 2: author added basically says the same thing, but added that
Speaker 2: it was quote able to vomit in three different ways
Speaker 2: three years in succession. He adds that the vomiting into
Speaker 2: the water also wrecked ships, and when it vomited towards
Speaker 2: the land in the third year, the whale caused quote
Speaker 2: a pestilential vapor to creep over the country that killed
Speaker 2: men and four footed animals.
Speaker 3: No, not the four footed animals.
Speaker 2: The four footed animals are just at the forefront of
Speaker 2: strange death. I mean, this is how many times are
Speaker 2: we gonna in this year and last have we talked
Speaker 2: about strange reasons that four legged animals are dying? And
Speaker 2: in the British Isles.
Speaker 3: We never considered this as an explanation for the cattle
Speaker 3: mutilation panic. What if it was actually a risk?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what if a whale vomited? So this is
Speaker 2: this is all interesting Again, I don't think that. I
Speaker 2: think potentially one has to, you know, take into account
Speaker 2: these these myths and legends about poisonous vomit coming out
Speaker 2: of these whales or whale like creatures, these also first
Speaker 2: hand accounts of potentially getting some sort of an infection
Speaker 2: after contact with a whale spout or whale blood, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But I also can't help but wonder if there's some connection,
Speaker 2: particularly between this story and perhaps encounters with beached and
Speaker 2: dead whales, where there's of course decomposition going on, and
Speaker 2: therefore there's going to be a very strong, awful odor,
Speaker 2: the kind of odor that we would, you know, we
Speaker 2: would associate with with illness. Perhaps, so I wonder, I
Speaker 2: wonder if there's any connective tissue there as well.
Speaker 3: Well. Rob, I think this has been a mighty fun
Speaker 3: and interesting exploration. Even though we didn't get a definitive
Speaker 3: answer on the poisonous whales thing, I think what we
Speaker 3: did find out has been enlightening, and as Melville would say,
Speaker 3: through all the thick mists and the dim doubts, you know,
Speaker 3: the divine intuitions now and then shoot, so our fog
Speaker 3: has been enkindled with a heavenly ray.
Speaker 2: Very nice. All right, We're gonna gohead and close it
Speaker 2: out then, but yeah, we'd love to hear from everyone
Speaker 2: out there. If you have additional insight, experience, et cetera,
Speaker 2: just general thoughts and what we've talked about in this
Speaker 2: pair of episodes or our previous episodes on Gray Whales
Speaker 2: in particular, write in we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 2: but on Mondays we do listener mail. On Wednesdays we
Speaker 2: do a short form artifact or monster fact episode, and
Speaker 2: then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
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Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 3: email us at contact Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
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