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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today's episode

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Speaker 1: is a fault episode. This originally published on July second,

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Speaker 1: and it's about eggs. Yeah. I don't remember this one

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Speaker 1: at all. Um, maybe listeners do. Sometimes I have very

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Speaker 1: fond memories of recording one an episode. Other times, Um,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. It just kind of I have I

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Speaker 1: have missing time there. Oh this one was fun. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was your idea. Yeah, well I'm not I'm not

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Speaker 1: doubting that, nor am I doubting that it's a fun episode.

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Speaker 1: I just don't remember it at all. All Right, here

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Speaker 1: we go. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production

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Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: And today we're going to reach into a jar of

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Speaker 1: pickled eggs and and see what we pull out. Yes,

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Speaker 1: that's right, we are venturing into the egg chamber. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This is going to be kind of a potpourri episode. Uh,

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Speaker 1: kind of a you know, a salad bar episode with

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Speaker 1: with multiple curiosities plucked from the vinegar soaked vat here,

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Speaker 1: and if everyone digs it, perhaps will come back and

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Speaker 1: explore more topics along this line. But basically, yeah, we're

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Speaker 1: talking about eggs, and eggs just in general are pretty amazing,

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Speaker 1: even in their most mundane form. Factoring you know, into

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Speaker 1: the equation the more familiar examples of reproduction and cuisine,

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Speaker 1: you know, I feel like we need to take a

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Speaker 1: step back and just consider how weird and wonderful they

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Speaker 1: are there in the organic vessel. A means for biology

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Speaker 1: to leave one being and then develop into another and

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Speaker 1: then burst free of this protective shell or casing that

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Speaker 1: has served as its vehicle the egg and way makes

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Speaker 1: me think of that quote that we've talked about a

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Speaker 1: couple of times that was in Brian Green's book about

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Speaker 1: how when we learned to take the water with us

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Speaker 1: out of the ocean, that's like how organisms move to land,

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Speaker 1: like you know that where water bags slashing around on feet,

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Speaker 1: and in a way, the egg is sort of the

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Speaker 1: same principle. It takes some of the same sustaining conditions

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Speaker 1: from being within the mother's body, outside of the body

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Speaker 1: where you can eventually hatch out after you mature enough.

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Speaker 1: I like that you brought up the ocean here, because

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Speaker 1: we all of course come from the ocean, that is

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Speaker 1: the the ultimate origin of of life here on Earth.

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Speaker 1: But but in addition to that, we see of course

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Speaker 1: primordial oceans factoring into various world mythologies, and we also

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Speaker 1: see the idea of an egg featuring prominently in world

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Speaker 1: mythologies as well. We see variations of the world egg

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Speaker 1: in many different myth cycles, including but not limited to Vedic, Greek, Egyptian,

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Speaker 1: and Chinese mythologies, and we can we can easily devote

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Speaker 1: an entire episode just to these varied myths, because they're

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Speaker 1: all pretty pretty fabulous. The idea of of of the

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Speaker 1: universe or some primordial creator being emerging from this egg uh.

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Speaker 1: In the Greek tradition, it's known as the and it's

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Speaker 1: often depicted as being kind of serpent bound, this orphic

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Speaker 1: egg from which the primordial fanniase emerges. Isn't it interesting though,

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Speaker 1: the way that the egg is kind of a biological

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Speaker 1: Pandora's box to go to another Greek myth, because you

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Speaker 1: can't always tell from the external morphology of the egg

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Speaker 1: what kind of animal is inside, right right, and certainly

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Speaker 1: in the case so we've We've of course talked about

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Speaker 1: like various brood parasites in the show before, including avian

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Speaker 1: examples like the cuckoo. Uh and, in which case, you know,

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Speaker 1: the a mother bird may not be able to tell

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Speaker 1: if one of the eggs has been placed into her

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Speaker 1: nest by another species, the speaking of mysterious and and

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Speaker 1: difficult to identify orbs. Uh So, the idea that made

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Speaker 1: us want to do this episode was something that you

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Speaker 1: shared with me last week. It was a news article

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Speaker 1: about a really interesting fossil find. This was so. The

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Speaker 1: article you shared was a June NPR article by Nell

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Speaker 1: Greenfield Boice, and it tells the story of how a

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Speaker 1: paleontologist from U T. Austin named Julia Clark was visiting

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Speaker 1: a colleague named David Rubyl R. Rogers, who works at

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Speaker 1: Chile's National Museum of Natural History. And this was back

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Speaker 1: in and Ruble R. Rogers apparently wanted Clark's opinion on

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Speaker 1: a very strange fossil in his collection, which had been

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Speaker 1: found in an Arctico way back in two thousand eleven. Specifically,

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Speaker 1: it was on an island off the tip of the

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Speaker 1: Antarctic Peninsula called Seymour Island. And Seymour Island has been

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Speaker 1: a rich site for fossil excavations for more than a

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Speaker 1: hundred years now. I think I've read about fossils being

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Speaker 1: found there in the eighteen nineties. But Greenfield Voice describes

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Speaker 1: the fossil that these two paleontologists were looking at as

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Speaker 1: more than eleven by seven inches, so it's about twenty

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Speaker 1: nine by twenty centimeters and of pretty much the exact

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Speaker 1: size and appearance of a deflated football, except its stone.

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Speaker 1: Now it's it's petrified, it's fossilized, and Ruble R. Rogers

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Speaker 1: and his colleagues referred to this object as the thing,

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Speaker 1: so you can see why we were intrigued. Absolutely, And

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Speaker 1: the images that that that accompanied this article of the

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Speaker 1: thing do look very thing ish, uh it is it

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Speaker 1: almost almost looks like it's like a withered face, you know,

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Speaker 1: kind of like the face of the sorting hat or something,

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Speaker 1: or what's that the oogie Boogie creature from the nine

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Speaker 1: Are before Christmas. I was thinking exactly that, and I

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Speaker 1: think that's a really good point. The comparison to a

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Speaker 1: deflated football or this kind of wrinkly oogie boogeyman face

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Speaker 1: is really good because when you look at this object,

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Speaker 1: even though it is now fully fossilized, is basically it

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Speaker 1: is a mineral product. You can immediately see in its

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Speaker 1: creases and textures the remnants of what must have been

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Speaker 1: some kind of soft, leathery membrane collapsed in on itself. So, yes,

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Speaker 1: it's mysterious, Yes it's creepy. It is definitely a thing.

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Speaker 1: But what is it? It's just this strange collapsed, deflated orb. Well.

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Speaker 1: Upon further analysis, the researchers here figured out that this

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Speaker 1: was an egg. It's a fossil of a giant soft

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Speaker 1: shelled egg from around sixty eight million years ago, so

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Speaker 1: that this would be just towards the ends of the

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Speaker 1: Cretaceous period, near the KPg boundary that marks the end

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Speaker 1: of the non avian dinosaurs. And the researchers published their

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Speaker 1: findings in the journal Nature earlier this month. The article

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Speaker 1: was called a giant soft shelled egg from the Late

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Speaker 1: Cretaceous of Antarctica, and this is now the largest soft

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Speaker 1: shelled egg ever known to exist, and it's uh in

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Speaker 1: addition to being the largest soft shelled egg, it's the

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Speaker 1: second largest egg of any kind and known to ever exist,

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Speaker 1: falling only slightly behind the huge eggs of Madagascar's flightless

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Speaker 1: elephant birds, which would extinct sometime in the past few

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Speaker 1: hundred years. Yeah, we we discussed them a little bit

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Speaker 1: in our MOA episodes, right, But but even that was

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Speaker 1: only a little bit bigger than this egg. And the

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Speaker 1: author's conclude that this was probably the egg of a

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Speaker 1: gigantic marine reptile such as a mosasaur, of which adult

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Speaker 1: remains had been found nearby the same fossil beds. So

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Speaker 1: you find adult mosasaurs nearby there and around the same layer,

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Speaker 1: it seems like this very likely came from a creature

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Speaker 1: like that. And on the importance of this find, Greenfield

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Speaker 1: voice in her n p R piece, quotes an evolutionary

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Speaker 1: biologist from Princeton University named Mary Caswell Stoddard, who says, quote,

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Speaker 1: a soft shelled fossil egg like this is a rare gym.

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Speaker 1: The lack of soft shelled fossil eggs, which are extremely rare,

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Speaker 1: makes it challenging to flesh out a detailed picture of

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Speaker 1: egg evolution invertebrates. This discovery helps provide one critical piece

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Speaker 1: of the puzzle. So this is important because it gives

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Speaker 1: us a look at something that we don't often see

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Speaker 1: captured in fossil form, the soft shelled egg, and it

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Speaker 1: helps us get a better picture of how exactly eggs

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Speaker 1: changed and evolved as dinosaurs evolved over time. Oh and

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Speaker 1: real quick, if you if you're out there listening and

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Speaker 1: you're like, okay, mossaur, which one is that put it

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Speaker 1: in Jurassic Park terms for me? Well, in the movie

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Speaker 1: Jurassic World, that's supposed to be a mosasaur in the

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Speaker 1: big aquatic part of the park, or the one that

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Speaker 1: like eats an executive assistant or something. Yeah. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: really horrible scene in the film where where it sleeps

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Speaker 1: up and eats this, uh, this I think otherwise innocent

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Speaker 1: character in the film. Yeah, I remember that. That was.

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Speaker 1: Well I'm not going to get off on all my

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Speaker 1: Jurassic World beefs, but that scene felt totally strange. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I agreed, But still great dinosaur sequence. I just wish

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Speaker 1: she had been more of a villain or something. But yeah, So,

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Speaker 1: so back to the thing, so that the characteristics of

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Speaker 1: this egg are strange. Instead of the hard calcified shells

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Speaker 1: that paleontologists used to believe, we're just the norm for dinosaurs. This,

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Speaker 1: along with other recent egg finds, for example, from the

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Speaker 1: genus Protoceratops and the genus um Moossaris, reveals that many

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Speaker 1: dinosaurs and Cretaceous marine reptiles laid eggs that were like

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Speaker 1: this that we're pliable and soft like some turtle species

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Speaker 1: due today. And it looks like it, just it varied

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Speaker 1: according to different groups of dinosaurs. So you would have

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Speaker 1: therapod dinosaurs like the t rex and they would lay calcified,

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Speaker 1: hard shelled eggs, and you'd have many saua pods or

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Speaker 1: hadrosaurs also laying hard shelled, calcified eggs like the ones

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Speaker 1: you would imagine from birds or many reptiles that live

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Speaker 1: on land today. While you have these their animals like

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Speaker 1: probably mosasaurs, probably Protoceratops, laying softer, leathery or eggs. And

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Speaker 1: so the question is why would the egg shell be

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Speaker 1: so thin and soft. What's the advantage to that. Well,

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Speaker 1: one possibility is maybe that's just the way things had

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Speaker 1: always been, and they would stay that way unless they

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Speaker 1: were driven by specific environmental pressures to become otherwise, to

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Speaker 1: harden and calcify. The researchers in this other nature paper

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Speaker 1: from this year, the one I mentioned a minute ago.

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Speaker 1: It's called it's just called the first dinosaur egg was soft.

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Speaker 1: They argued that ancestral dinosaurs probably all laid soft shelled eggs,

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Speaker 1: and then over time, over the millions of years, via

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Speaker 1: convergent evolution, several different groups of later dinosaurs independently evolved

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Speaker 1: the adaptation of hard shelled eggs at least three different

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Speaker 1: times that we know of. So there would have been

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Speaker 1: just been evolutionary pressure for thicker shells on some of

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Speaker 1: these other dinosaurs, but apparently not on this one. Probably

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Speaker 1: not on this mosasaur creature. Uh so, So, looking specifically

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Speaker 1: at the thing, the authors of that study in Nature

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Speaker 1: posits something really interesting about it. They say at the

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Speaker 1: end of their abstract quote, such a large egg with

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Speaker 1: a relatively thin eggshell may reflect a derived constraints associated

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Speaker 1: with body shape, reproductive investment linked with gigantism and lepido

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Speaker 1: sarian viviparity, in which a vestigial egg is laid and

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Speaker 1: hatches immediately. So we don't know this for sure, but

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Speaker 1: what they're saying it looks like here is this was

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Speaker 1: very likely a creature that laid an egg, but it

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Speaker 1: was almost a sort of egg assisted live birth. So

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Speaker 1: you would lay lay a soft, thin, pliable egg and

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Speaker 1: then nearly immediately the hatchling would tear out of this

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Speaker 1: egg sac and escape, and then the egg would fall

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Speaker 1: to the ocean floor and collapse. Yeah. All right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think this this is making sense here because uh

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Speaker 1: and you can imagine the world of the mosasaur like

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Speaker 1: like all aquatic uh worlds. You know, it's it's it's

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Speaker 1: probably not a really peaceful place. So that uh, that creature,

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Speaker 1: that that young ling needs to be highly developed and

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Speaker 1: just ready to burst out and go, not to sink

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Speaker 1: to the bottom of the muck. Yeah. And this level

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Speaker 1: of maturity at the time of hatching is a theme

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Speaker 1: that will come back to a few other times here. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: In fact, our our next example of curious eggs from

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Speaker 1: the natural world gets into this a little bit. I

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Speaker 1: want to talk about the eggs of the volcano birds. Good. So,

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Speaker 1: uh specifically we're going to be talking about the Malayo

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Speaker 1: birds of the You'll find them on the Indonesian island

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Speaker 1: of Sulawesi, uh and then there's a smaller island named

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Speaker 1: Bhutan where you'll also find them. Uh And uh Sulawesi

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Speaker 1: is one of the four Greater Sunda Islands, actually the

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Speaker 1: world's eleventh largest island. I believe listeners might remember us

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Speaker 1: from discussing this in the recent episode about archaeological finds there.

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Speaker 1: It may push back the earliest date for known examples

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Speaker 1: of hunting scenes and prehistoric art. Oh. Yeah, and there

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Speaker 1: was also a question I think about whether the same

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Speaker 1: cave artwork in Indonesia depicted theory and thropes right, the

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Speaker 1: idea of of UH theeomorphic or animal form humans, and

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Speaker 1: if so, whether that would push back the earliest physical

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Speaker 1: evidence we have of fantasy thinking or supernatural magical thinking

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Speaker 1: in humans. Yeah, so, as far as I know, that's

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Speaker 1: still kind of an open question. More research remains to

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Speaker 1: be UH conducted. But it's certainly exciting. But also the

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Speaker 1: Malayo bird is rather exciting. I was not familiar with

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Speaker 1: this creature until very recently, but basically it's a it's

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Speaker 1: a chicken sized bird and we had and of course

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Speaker 1: it lays eggs. And one of the important jobs of

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Speaker 1: an egg layer is of course UH to provide for

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Speaker 1: the eggs incubation. Now, in some cases an egg UH

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Speaker 1: may basically be ready to go, like we said, the

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Speaker 1: and it comes out. But then other times the egg

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Speaker 1: needs to uh be cared for, it needs to be

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Speaker 1: incubated a bit longer. And in many cases, you know,

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Speaker 1: a bird is just going to use their own body

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Speaker 1: to incubate the egg. This is the classic scenario of

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Speaker 1: a chicken, um uh you know land laying on its eggs.

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Speaker 1: The example of penguins keeping their eggs warm, uh you know,

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Speaker 1: by their feet, that sort of thing. It's a good

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Speaker 1: energy move because I mean, you've got extra body heat

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Speaker 1: coming off of you, whether you want that or not.

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Speaker 1: Why not put it to use exactly? And then it

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Speaker 1: also opens up the door for various uh additional strategies

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Speaker 1: such as again the cuckoo's brood parasites that don't actually

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Speaker 1: incubate the egg further themselves, but have another bird another

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Speaker 1: species do it through a mix of mimicry and or

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Speaker 1: threats of violence. But then there are also there are

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Speaker 1: sort of environmental engineers animals that use the environment meant

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Speaker 1: that build structures of some kind to help them incubate

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Speaker 1: eggs without having to make a personal time commitment of

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Speaker 1: just sitting on it the whole time. That's right, I

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Speaker 1: mean it's almost it's almost as if the bird would

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Speaker 1: think back, It's like, all right, what am I doing

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Speaker 1: Here'm providing heat? Where else can I get heat? Um? So,

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Speaker 1: like in Australia, you see the example of the bush turkey,

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Speaker 1: which actually builds a compost pile that incubates the eggs

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Speaker 1: via the heat of microbial decay. Oh yeah, these things

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Speaker 1: are great. I think some listeners in Australia have actually

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Speaker 1: talked to us about them before, regarding them somewhat as

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Speaker 1: pests for making giant mounds in their yard and things

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Speaker 1: like this. But uh, but yeah, the the bush turkey

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Speaker 1: or brush turkey, these are examples of these megapode birds,

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Speaker 1: uh that that are they're sort of like the beavers

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Speaker 1: of the bird world. Yeah. And uh, you know, if

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Speaker 1: you if anyone out there, if you, if you like

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Speaker 1: like me, if you have a compost, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: spinner that sort of thing, you'll notice it does heat

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Speaker 1: up in there. You know, there's a lot of acting

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Speaker 1: of it going on inside the compost. When my son

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Speaker 1: was younger, he would call it the hot hot machine.

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Speaker 1: And indeed that's what the bush turkey has done here,

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Speaker 1: is that it creates its own hot, hot machine to

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Speaker 1: incubate the eggs. Yeah. So it makes a big compost

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Speaker 1: pile out of litter and leaf litter and things like

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Speaker 1: that that I've read. I think sometimes that they can

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Speaker 1: be as big as a car. Like these piles can

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Speaker 1: be huge. Yeah, their size, well, I can see why

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Speaker 1: it could be in some cases considered a pest because

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Speaker 1: it just creates a big old heap. But you know what,

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Speaker 1: if you've got a heap in your yard, don't be ashamed.

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Speaker 1: Don't be embarrassed. Be proud of your heat pointed out

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Speaker 1: to your neighbors, say, check out that heap. That's really cool.

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Speaker 1: It's hot. It's the hot hot heat. Yeah. Alright, So

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Speaker 1: let's get back to the Malayo bird here um, which

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Speaker 1: which also has a cool pair of solutions to this problem.

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Speaker 1: It depends on one of two options for the incubation

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Speaker 1: of its eggs. Either by burying its eggs in solar

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Speaker 1: heated sands. So there's some hot sand over here, I'll

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Speaker 1: put my eggs in there. Solar power will do the

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Speaker 1: rest or. And this is the exciting part, burying them

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Speaker 1: in geothermally heated volcanic soils hot sands adjacent to volcanic events. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's a strategy on the edge that that that bird

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Speaker 1: is living on the edge. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's

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Speaker 1: pretty amazing. There's a wonderful some wonderful footage of this

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Speaker 1: as well, and it's just it's almost phoenix like this

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Speaker 1: idea right of of of the the egg being deposited

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Speaker 1: in the of volcanically heated ground and then it emerges.

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Speaker 1: Um by the way that the maleos egg is roughly

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Speaker 1: watermelon shaped. And I was reading in a two thousand

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Speaker 1: seventeen study from Princeton University that was doing like kind

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Speaker 1: of an overall uh you know, catalog ng of egg

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Speaker 1: sizes and game characteristics. They point out that it is

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Speaker 1: the most elliptical of all Avian eggs. And the idea

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Speaker 1: here is that the bird may have evolved to become

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Speaker 1: a skillful flyer, and it's egg may also have evolved

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Speaker 1: this way to accommodate a streamlined body that is built

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Speaker 1: for instantaneous flight. Now, wait a minute, would that mean

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Speaker 1: the egg was shaped to accommodate the body of the

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Speaker 1: of the embryo inside it or of the mother that's

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Speaker 1: carrying it before it is laid. Um, my, interpretation. My

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Speaker 1: understanding is that we're dealing more with the chick because

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Speaker 1: the chick when it when it hatches, needs to be

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Speaker 1: ready to go, because the whole idea of letting a

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Speaker 1: volcano incubate your eggs letting a volcano raise your children

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Speaker 1: is that you don't have to do anything. When the

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Speaker 1: egg hatches, the mother malao is long gone. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: so the the young male the malayo chick, hatches and

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Speaker 1: is on its own and ready to fly almost immediately.

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Speaker 1: And this is actually a very special feature of megapode

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Speaker 1: birds generally, the megapode. I was just wondering, Actually, everybody

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Speaker 1: I've heard pronounced this word says megapodes, But then I

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Speaker 1: was thinking about the antipodies, and I was like, it

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Speaker 1: isn't megapades but words. But no, I think it's megapoets anyway. Um,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, these other birds, like the bush turkey, are

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Speaker 1: famous for having young that are extremely quick to adapt

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Speaker 1: to life, like immediately after hatching. They can run around,

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Speaker 1: they can hunt, they can fly on a dime. All right,

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Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a quick break,

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Speaker 1: but we'll be right back with more eggs. Thank Alright,

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Speaker 1: we're back, So what's next in the egg chamber here, Joe, Well, Robert,

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Speaker 1: as soon as you suggested the idea of doing an

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Speaker 1: episode on eggs, my mind instantly filled with thoughts of

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Speaker 1: Ridley Scott's Alien because I think, you know, we come

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Speaker 1: back to this text quite a bit, and I think

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Speaker 1: of John Hurt descending into an enclosed pit of these

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Speaker 1: leathery orbs, and then he comes in closer to get

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Speaker 1: a better look at one, and one of the eggs

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Speaker 1: nearby starts to throb, and it's flaps peel back, and

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Speaker 1: of course we all know what happens next, right, the

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Speaker 1: parasite and just leaps out, attaches itself to its to

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Speaker 1: his face, mobilizes him, and begins putting some kind of

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Speaker 1: alien pupa in his body. So in Alien, we're presented

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Speaker 1: with the vision of a sort of predatory egg or

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Speaker 1: ambush egg, and an egg which opens to unleash a

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Speaker 1: parasite that requires no additional maturation outside the egg before

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Speaker 1: it is lethal. And that made me wonder, is there

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Speaker 1: anything like a predatory egg in the natural world? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because this is, of course the most famous example is

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Speaker 1: Alien BC. Versions of this throughout science fiction, influenced by alien,

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Speaker 1: where there's some sort of horrible egg and yeah, you

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Speaker 1: look at it wrong and it will open and get you,

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Speaker 1: or you know, open and dix. It exudes some sort

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Speaker 1: of a parasite that will creep up on you and

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Speaker 1: get you. Yeah. Now I couldn't find anything exactly like alien,

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Speaker 1: but there are some pretty close parallels. In fact, things

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Speaker 1: we've already talked about a good bit on the podcast,

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Speaker 1: so we're not going to linger on too much, but

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Speaker 1: I want to go in a few directions with this.

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Speaker 1: One is just to talk about an interesting distinction in

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Speaker 1: zoology that we've already been coming up against the border

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Speaker 1: of and that's the relevant distinction between altriciality and precociality

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Speaker 1: and animals. So, think of the hatchlings of a songbird,

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Speaker 1: like like a sparrow, you know, the passive forms. Here

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Speaker 1: the sparrow, once it emerges from an egg, it is helpless.

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Speaker 1: It could not survive on its own. It lacks the

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Speaker 1: ability to fly, and I'm not sure if it even

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Speaker 1: lacks the ability to walk really, I mean, it can't

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Speaker 1: move around much by itself. It certainly can't forage for itself.

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Speaker 1: Once it hatches. The sparrow hatchling sits in the nest

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Speaker 1: waiting to be brought food while it matures, and there

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Speaker 1: there are many animals that are like this, you know,

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Speaker 1: upon whether it's hatching from an egg or live birth.

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Speaker 1: Upon being born, they can't really do much for themselves.

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Speaker 1: They certainly can't move around much, and a species like

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Speaker 1: this would be called altricial, meaning it's young or relatively helpless,

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Speaker 1: unable to move around by themselves for a long time

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Speaker 1: after they're born or hatched. The opposite of altriciality is

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Speaker 1: known as precociality, and this is from the same root

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Speaker 1: word is precocious, a word that often gets applied to

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Speaker 1: like creepily mature human children. Yes, when there's the little

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Speaker 1: boy who speaks like an adult man and you know,

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Speaker 1: quite surely temple is is often an example of this. Uh.

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Speaker 1: A precocial species is one that matures and is able

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Speaker 1: to move around on its own and finn for itself

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Speaker 1: relatively soon after being born or hatched. I think the

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Speaker 1: most common metric used to measure this distinction is a

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Speaker 1: movement like how much can this animal you know do

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Speaker 1: its own locomotion? And there are some animals that take

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Speaker 1: precociality to the extreme, and these are known as super

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Speaker 1: precocial animals. A very commonly cited example is exactly what

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Speaker 1: we've been talking about already, megapode birds. Of course, the

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Speaker 1: megapodes include the malayo bird that you were just talking about.

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Speaker 1: They include the mound builder birds like the brush turkeys

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Speaker 1: or the bush turkeys, and obviously not all of them

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Speaker 1: are exactly the same, but megapodes generally, you're going to

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Speaker 1: see that once they hatch, they're able to see. They're

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Speaker 1: not born blind. They can see, they can walk, they

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Speaker 1: can run, they can hunt, they can fly pretty much

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Speaker 1: on the same day that they emerge from their eggs,

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Speaker 1: and that that's pretty amazing. Yeah, it really throws a

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Speaker 1: lot of our, especially um human centric ideas about about

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Speaker 1: birth and um and and and maturity right out the

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Speaker 1: window totally, because obviously humans are relatively altricial, right um.

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Speaker 1: But by this metric, the xenomorp face hugger from Alien

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Speaker 1: would be an example of super precociality, right. It's taken

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Speaker 1: to the logical extreme. It's a parasite that that only

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Speaker 1: needs one host and it is ready to attack that

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Speaker 1: hosts literally the moment it emerges from its eggs, so

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Speaker 1: it's already hunting within seconds of of cracking out. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and of course we could easily do the whole podcasts

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Speaker 1: about like each each faces in the life cycle of

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Speaker 1: the zeno morph But you know, I was just thinking,

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Speaker 1: it's like, in a way, is the face hugger that

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Speaker 1: emerges from the egg, Like that seems to be like

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Speaker 1: the the actual organism itself, right, Uh, depending on how

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Speaker 1: you interpret it, Well, yeah, it's interesting. It's it's a

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Speaker 1: it's a creature with a life cycle that's got two

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Speaker 1: completely morphologically different stages that are that are you know,

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Speaker 1: like trophically staggered. So one life cycle gives rise to

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Speaker 1: the next life cycle. But they're not the like, you know,

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Speaker 1: adults do not emerge from the egg. The face hugger

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Speaker 1: emerges from the egg, and then it finds a human.

424
00:24:37,480 --> 00:24:39,800
Speaker 1: It implants in the human the I guess there's a

425
00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:42,800
Speaker 1: pupa that just states there and then that becomes the adult.

426
00:24:43,040 --> 00:24:44,960
Speaker 1: So yeah, depending on how you look at it, the

427
00:24:45,600 --> 00:24:48,920
Speaker 1: face hugger could be considered like the the the purest

428
00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:51,840
Speaker 1: form of the organism before it ends up taking on

429
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:56,320
Speaker 1: properties of the the host organism. Oh, I see Yeah, yeah, yeah,

430
00:24:56,320 --> 00:24:59,399
Speaker 1: but by that count as well. I've also seen interpretations

431
00:24:59,520 --> 00:25:02,199
Speaker 1: that the say, well, the face hugger is essentially like

432
00:25:02,240 --> 00:25:05,400
Speaker 1: a mobile sex organ like, it's not it's it's not

433
00:25:05,480 --> 00:25:08,960
Speaker 1: the organism itself, it is a precursor to it um.

434
00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:12,600
Speaker 1: And then ultimately the whole life cycle is so suitably

435
00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:15,880
Speaker 1: alien that it doesn't completely line up with with even

436
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:18,199
Speaker 1: some of the elaborate life cycles that we see here

437
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:21,359
Speaker 1: on Earth, and we do have some really elaborate ones. Yeah,

438
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:24,400
Speaker 1: And I would say of all the life cycles that

439
00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:27,120
Speaker 1: we see on Earth, I think probably the one that

440
00:25:27,160 --> 00:25:31,560
Speaker 1: the alien creature is the closest to is something we've

441
00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:33,359
Speaker 1: actually talked about a good bit on the show before.

442
00:25:33,400 --> 00:25:35,800
Speaker 1: So we're not going to rehash everything here, but just

443
00:25:35,920 --> 00:25:40,719
Speaker 1: real quickly. Parasitoid wasps um so parasitoid wasps you know,

444
00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:44,040
Speaker 1: there are different well actually you could just say parasitoids

445
00:25:44,040 --> 00:25:48,320
Speaker 1: in general, but the parasitoid wasp the hymenoptera in parasitoids

446
00:25:48,320 --> 00:25:51,399
Speaker 1: are a really good example where what they will often

447
00:25:51,480 --> 00:25:54,320
Speaker 1: do is they will find a host organism such as

448
00:25:54,440 --> 00:25:58,280
Speaker 1: a tarantula or something like that they will immobilize it,

449
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:01,399
Speaker 1: so they injected with a parallel rising venom, seal it

450
00:26:01,480 --> 00:26:03,760
Speaker 1: up some way with their eggs, either the eggs planted

451
00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 1: on it or near it, and then when the eggs hatch,

452
00:26:06,840 --> 00:26:11,080
Speaker 1: they consume this animal, this like spider or whatever it is,

453
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:14,879
Speaker 1: alive from the inside out as they mature towards their

454
00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:18,119
Speaker 1: adult stage. I mean, that's that's pretty dang close to

455
00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:20,880
Speaker 1: exactly what goes on with the enomorph right. Oh yeah,

456
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:23,159
Speaker 1: And in many cases it's even more amazing than that,

457
00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:26,399
Speaker 1: because you get into these examples of the of the

458
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:31,600
Speaker 1: of the parasitoid wasp altering the behavior of the host organism.

459
00:26:31,640 --> 00:26:35,199
Speaker 1: It gets uh yeah, it's certainly a case where nature

460
00:26:35,600 --> 00:26:39,840
Speaker 1: um at least equals but I think probably exceeds, uh

461
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:42,920
Speaker 1: just the complexity of the xenomoreph scenario, or at least

462
00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:44,959
Speaker 1: in this case. Yeah, I guess it's a it's a

463
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:47,720
Speaker 1: cliche for us at this point, but nature is stranger

464
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:51,400
Speaker 1: than fiction. You can't make this stuff up. Yeah, But

465
00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:55,280
Speaker 1: to explore some more new territory, I was wondering about

466
00:26:55,480 --> 00:26:58,479
Speaker 1: the idea of being attacked by an egg itself. Is

467
00:26:58,520 --> 00:27:01,800
Speaker 1: there such a thing as a real like predatory egg,

468
00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:04,600
Speaker 1: not just what comes out of the egg and I

469
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:07,679
Speaker 1: couldn't find anything directly like this, Like you know, I

470
00:27:07,760 --> 00:27:10,400
Speaker 1: was looking for something like a you know, an animal

471
00:27:10,560 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 1: that like mimics an egg, like an egg mimic decoy

472
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:16,199
Speaker 1: that attacks I don't know when you come up on

473
00:27:16,240 --> 00:27:19,040
Speaker 1: it or something. I couldn't find anything exactly like that.

474
00:27:19,119 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 1: If if you know of examples out there that I

475
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,639
Speaker 1: couldn't find, please email make us aware. But you mean

476
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:26,960
Speaker 1: like a creature that pretends to be an egg and

477
00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:30,560
Speaker 1: then would prey upon something that eats eggs. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

478
00:27:30,600 --> 00:27:33,200
Speaker 1: that's what I mean. Do what do you know of

479
00:27:33,320 --> 00:27:36,280
Speaker 1: something like that? Um? No, I don't know. I think

480
00:27:36,280 --> 00:27:38,840
Speaker 1: there's some sort of robot in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, right,

481
00:27:38,880 --> 00:27:41,639
Speaker 1: don't they have some robots that look like eggs? I

482
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:44,240
Speaker 1: don't know, but if they were turtle eggs, they may

483
00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:47,800
Speaker 1: very well be soft and leathery shelled instead of hard shelled. Oh.

484
00:27:47,840 --> 00:27:50,280
Speaker 1: We have just received an update from our producer Seth,

485
00:27:50,600 --> 00:27:54,160
Speaker 1: who has been uh digging into old episodes of Teenage

486
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:56,720
Speaker 1: Muting Ninja Turtles, and he informs us that I am

487
00:27:56,760 --> 00:28:01,159
Speaker 1: thinking of the mouse or robots which are not I

488
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:04,359
Speaker 1: think supposed to be eggs, but do look sort of

489
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:07,080
Speaker 1: egg like, So it's just kind of a coincidence of

490
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:09,879
Speaker 1: their design. Yeah. I think Seth told us recently that

491
00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:12,560
Speaker 1: he's made it to season forty six of the Team

492
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 1: Ninja Turtles cartoon. So so best of luck to a

493
00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:19,679
Speaker 1: Seth on your on your turtle journey. Um, but but

494
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:21,640
Speaker 1: I want to bring it back. Okay, So, in terms

495
00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:24,600
Speaker 1: of being injured or attacked by an egg itself, I

496
00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:28,520
Speaker 1: did find something. It wasn't active deliberate violence by an egg,

497
00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 1: but I did find something here. So I was reading

498
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:35,000
Speaker 1: an article in the New York Times from December seen

499
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:39,480
Speaker 1: by very Nique Greenwood, which was based in part on

500
00:28:39,560 --> 00:28:43,560
Speaker 1: a series of findings by a couple of acoustics experts

501
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:47,960
Speaker 1: named Anthony Nash and Lauren von Blonde, who at the

502
00:28:48,040 --> 00:28:51,640
Speaker 1: time worked at an acoustics firm that was called Charles M.

503
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:55,960
Speaker 1: Salter and Associates. Now, what would acoustics experts have to

504
00:28:55,960 --> 00:28:59,800
Speaker 1: do with eggs? Well, their research, which was presented in

505
00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:03,120
Speaker 1: our December at the Acoustical Society of America meeting in

506
00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:08,640
Speaker 1: New Orleans, concerned the physical properties, especially the loudness, of

507
00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:13,680
Speaker 1: exploding eggs. Now we're again, we're just talking about regular

508
00:29:13,760 --> 00:29:17,240
Speaker 1: chicken eggs here, no gegaresque, insect trapped mine eggs or

509
00:29:17,240 --> 00:29:20,960
Speaker 1: anything like that. Uh Nash and von Blonde had been

510
00:29:21,040 --> 00:29:27,600
Speaker 1: hired as expert witnesses for the defense in a recent lawsuit. Unfortunately,

511
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:29,640
Speaker 1: I don't think the real names of the plaintiff, for

512
00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:32,720
Speaker 1: the defendant, or the location wherever published. I think that

513
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 1: stuff remains confidential, so we only know about it from

514
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:38,360
Speaker 1: their research and the reporting on that research where the

515
00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:41,520
Speaker 1: details were anonymized. Uh And I think the case was

516
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:43,760
Speaker 1: eventually settled out of court, so it may remain a

517
00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:48,600
Speaker 1: mystery forever, but in broad anonymous outline the alleged facts

518
00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:53,280
Speaker 1: of the case. Whereas follows, plaintiff walks into a restaurant,

519
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 1: he orders a hard boiled egg. I'm assuming he ordered

520
00:29:57,200 --> 00:29:59,240
Speaker 1: some other stuff too. That would be a pretty strange

521
00:29:59,280 --> 00:30:01,480
Speaker 1: thing to order to restaurant by itself, but the egg

522
00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 1: is the important part here. They bring him his hard

523
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:08,600
Speaker 1: boiled egg. He bites into the egg. Upon being pierced

524
00:30:08,680 --> 00:30:12,480
Speaker 1: by the plaintiff's teeth, the egg explodes, as in, it

525
00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:15,800
Speaker 1: literally explodes, resulting in what the plane have claimed were

526
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:19,520
Speaker 1: severe burns and actual hearing damage from the volume of

527
00:30:19,560 --> 00:30:23,040
Speaker 1: the explosion. Now, when I first read that, I was like,

528
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 1: what could could that be real? I'm having a hard

529
00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:32,000
Speaker 1: time imagining it that that really happened. But you can

530
00:30:32,120 --> 00:30:34,760
Speaker 1: use the old YouTube and see for yourself. Unless there

531
00:30:34,760 --> 00:30:38,200
Speaker 1: are a bunch of like coordinated egg explosion hoaxers all

532
00:30:38,280 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 1: doing homebrew video manipulation or special effects, exploding eggs are

533
00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:46,760
Speaker 1: absolutely a thing, uh, and they they can actually be

534
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:50,200
Speaker 1: done very easily if you involve one crucial piece of technology,

535
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:53,680
Speaker 1: and that is the microwave oven. But of course, yeah,

536
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:56,640
Speaker 1: so perhaps you yourself have at some point tried to

537
00:30:56,680 --> 00:31:00,680
Speaker 1: cook a whole intact egg shell on inside a microwave,

538
00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:04,320
Speaker 1: and if so, I would not be surprised if you

539
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:07,880
Speaker 1: have detonated an egg bomb yourself in this way. Microwaving

540
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:10,720
Speaker 1: a whole egg often results in a big pop and

541
00:31:10,720 --> 00:31:15,360
Speaker 1: a gooey mess, but sometimes a microwaved egg, especially a

542
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:20,680
Speaker 1: microwave reheating of a previously hard boiled egg, can result

543
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:23,600
Speaker 1: in an egg that holds together through the cooking. So

544
00:31:23,680 --> 00:31:26,240
Speaker 1: you can microwave it for however long you take it

545
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:29,480
Speaker 1: out of the microwave, But if you disturb it in

546
00:31:29,600 --> 00:31:32,160
Speaker 1: just the wrong way, say by piercing it, with a

547
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:36,040
Speaker 1: fork or with your teeth. It suddenly explodes with a

548
00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:39,040
Speaker 1: with a pop, a real like loud sound like a firecracker.

549
00:31:39,080 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 1: An egg hot egg pieces go everywhere. And we know

550
00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:45,960
Speaker 1: this is possible just from publicly available video evidence. People

551
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:48,240
Speaker 1: are you know, messing around with this in their houses

552
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:51,520
Speaker 1: all the time, apparently, But how often does this happen,

553
00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 1: what are the physics underlying it, and how dangerous is it? Yeah,

554
00:31:55,640 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 1: because I mean, obviously it makes sense that an egg

555
00:31:58,320 --> 00:32:00,520
Speaker 1: could pop. You know, you could have us you're built

556
00:32:00,600 --> 00:32:02,760
Speaker 1: up in there. In fact, really we use an egg

557
00:32:02,760 --> 00:32:04,440
Speaker 1: cooker in the house a lot. And they had that

558
00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:07,880
Speaker 1: spike in the middle that you're supposed to use to

559
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:10,120
Speaker 1: to to make a hole in the shell of the

560
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 1: egg before you cook it, which you know, I always

561
00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:17,480
Speaker 1: assumed was to keep it from bursting or or even exploding. Now,

562
00:32:17,520 --> 00:32:20,360
Speaker 1: I was surprised about the idea that it could allegedly

563
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:24,720
Speaker 1: cause hearing damage. The idea of a bursting egg, I

564
00:32:24,760 --> 00:32:26,280
Speaker 1: would imagine it would be just kind of a you know,

565
00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:31,040
Speaker 1: a popping situation. Right. The hearing damage was alleged by

566
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:33,320
Speaker 1: the plaintiff, and we'll we'll try to get to the

567
00:32:33,320 --> 00:32:36,080
Speaker 1: bottom of that. But um, so what was what did

568
00:32:36,080 --> 00:32:39,120
Speaker 1: their research consists of when they're looking into this national

569
00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:43,960
Speaker 1: Von Bland's research first tested actual eggs using the same

570
00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:47,800
Speaker 1: reheating method that was supposedly employed by the restaurant that

571
00:32:47,920 --> 00:32:51,080
Speaker 1: was the defendant in the lawsuit. So you would take

572
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:54,680
Speaker 1: a previously hard boiled egg and you'd reheat it by

573
00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 1: microwaving it for three minutes in a water bath. Now,

574
00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:02,080
Speaker 1: the researchers here did mint that after several explosions coated

575
00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:05,360
Speaker 1: the inside of the microwave with egg gunk, they realized

576
00:33:05,400 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 1: they needed some kind of permeable containment device, so they

577
00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:11,400
Speaker 1: came up with the addition of like a nylon stocking

578
00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:14,720
Speaker 1: type casement for the egg. But with this in place,

579
00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:18,280
Speaker 1: they repeated the experiment with about a hundred eggs, taking

580
00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 1: the temperature of the water bath and taking the temperature

581
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 1: of the egg itself each time by piercing it with

582
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:27,480
Speaker 1: a meat thermometer. And when the eggs were done microwaving

583
00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 1: they did the piercing, they would take it out, put

584
00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:31,920
Speaker 1: it on the floor and stabbed the probe of the

585
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:35,640
Speaker 1: meat thermometer in to take the internal temperature and to

586
00:33:35,760 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 1: see if piercing the egg would cause it to explode.

587
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:41,320
Speaker 1: And what they found was that some eggs did nothing,

588
00:33:41,880 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 1: some exploded inside the microwave while cooking. But of the

589
00:33:46,040 --> 00:33:50,480
Speaker 1: one hundred eggs roughly, they found about one third survived

590
00:33:50,560 --> 00:33:54,600
Speaker 1: the reheating itself, only to explode on the outside of

591
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:58,280
Speaker 1: the microwave once poked with the thermometer. So I think

592
00:33:58,280 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: it's pretty conclusive the explosion thing, whether you like, rupturing

593
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 1: a microwave heated hard boiled egg, absolutely can cause it

594
00:34:05,840 --> 00:34:09,000
Speaker 1: to blow up. That just happens, and it looks like

595
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:11,600
Speaker 1: it happens roughly about one third of the time. But

596
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:14,600
Speaker 1: of the ones that did explode, the loudness of the

597
00:34:14,640 --> 00:34:17,520
Speaker 1: explosion at its peak was between eighty six and a

598
00:34:17,600 --> 00:34:20,600
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty three decibles at a distance of twelve

599
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:24,480
Speaker 1: inches from the egg, and Nash compared this too at

600
00:34:24,480 --> 00:34:27,440
Speaker 1: the upper end the hundred and thirty three disciples. He

601
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:30,400
Speaker 1: compared it to the loudness of something like a chainsaw,

602
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:33,400
Speaker 1: which is, you know, loud, but not usually a source

603
00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:36,360
Speaker 1: of hearing damage on a on a short time of

604
00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:39,839
Speaker 1: exposure on its own, and based on this reasoning, Nash

605
00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:42,880
Speaker 1: claimed that actual hearing damage from an exploding egg was

606
00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:45,880
Speaker 1: not impossible, but that it was unlikely. Though at the

607
00:34:45,920 --> 00:34:48,239
Speaker 1: same time, I think it is worth noting that these

608
00:34:48,280 --> 00:34:51,040
Speaker 1: scientists were hired by the defense in the trial to

609
00:34:51,239 --> 00:34:54,600
Speaker 1: be expert witnesses for that side, so not not impugning

610
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:58,160
Speaker 1: their reputation, but it is worth noting the interests involved. Yeah,

611
00:34:58,160 --> 00:34:59,880
Speaker 1: so we might need to take this particular eggs to

612
00:35:00,160 --> 00:35:02,719
Speaker 1: with a grain of salt, maybe a little pepper, a

613
00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:08,520
Speaker 1: little mustard if wely some gherkins. Definitely so. But realistically,

614
00:35:08,520 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 1: I guess it sounds like it would be loud enough

615
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 1: that if you just heard exploding eggs all day, it

616
00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:17,640
Speaker 1: could hurt your hearing. But maybe not just one going off.

617
00:35:18,440 --> 00:35:20,640
Speaker 1: That could be the case. Then again, I mean we

618
00:35:20,680 --> 00:35:22,759
Speaker 1: don't know for sure. I mean, like it's possitively that

619
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:26,040
Speaker 1: they didn't rule out the possibility that there could there

620
00:35:26,080 --> 00:35:29,160
Speaker 1: could be hearing damage in some kind of outside case here,

621
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:34,359
Speaker 1: but the standard, the average loudness of the explosion they

622
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:37,000
Speaker 1: thought probably would not hurt your ears if it just

623
00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:39,960
Speaker 1: happened one time. But then but that's not to say

624
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 1: this is fine. I mean, you would not want to

625
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:43,920
Speaker 1: bite into one of these eggs. I think burns are

626
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:48,799
Speaker 1: obviously why that could happen, and just generally, anything exploding

627
00:35:48,840 --> 00:35:53,000
Speaker 1: inside your mouth, I'd imagine even could just probably startle

628
00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:55,880
Speaker 1: you enough that you might get whiplash or something like that.

629
00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:59,400
Speaker 1: I mean, that's biting into something that explodes as a

630
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:02,279
Speaker 1: horrifying idea. Yeah, and I do want to drive home here.

631
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:04,560
Speaker 1: If you're out there and you're listening to this, and

632
00:36:04,600 --> 00:36:06,680
Speaker 1: maybe you're stuck in your house and you're a little

633
00:36:06,719 --> 00:36:11,239
Speaker 1: bit bored, do not experiment with exploding eggs just you know,

634
00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:14,640
Speaker 1: have an egg for breakfast maybe and think about this,

635
00:36:14,680 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 1: But you don't try and make eggs explode just because

636
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:18,799
Speaker 1: you heard about it on this show, right, uh and

637
00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:20,920
Speaker 1: and and so there's a more interesting question, though we

638
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:23,680
Speaker 1: still haven't solved, which is why would the eggs explode

639
00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:26,520
Speaker 1: at all? You can kind of imagine, like, okay, the heating,

640
00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:29,279
Speaker 1: the build up of pressure and steam as could cause

641
00:36:29,320 --> 00:36:32,919
Speaker 1: it to explode while it's cooking inside the microwave. Why

642
00:36:33,040 --> 00:36:35,920
Speaker 1: is it that there's this pattern where about a third

643
00:36:36,080 --> 00:36:39,440
Speaker 1: of the eggs that they tested out here didn't explode

644
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:42,880
Speaker 1: while cooking, but did explode once you poked them with something.

645
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:45,200
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, it would seem like they would reach

646
00:36:45,239 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 1: the because again coming back to my experience using an

647
00:36:47,520 --> 00:36:50,000
Speaker 1: egg cooker, is Okay, we poked the hole on the

648
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 1: top of the egg with the spike so that it

649
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:55,319
Speaker 1: doesn't rupture, I guess, and then some of the time, uh,

650
00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:58,840
Speaker 1: you see, egg content has been pushed up through the

651
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:01,759
Speaker 1: hole that we created, and other times it is not.

652
00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:05,160
Speaker 1: So maybe and I've never analyzed it enough to say

653
00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:07,000
Speaker 1: that it's happening a third at the time or whatnot.

654
00:37:07,040 --> 00:37:08,840
Speaker 1: But maybe that's that's what we're talking about here. The

655
00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:12,359
Speaker 1: same situation could be now So. One thing found by

656
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:15,560
Speaker 1: Nash and von Blonde was that when they measured the

657
00:37:15,560 --> 00:37:18,600
Speaker 1: temperature of the water bath that the egg was sitting

658
00:37:18,640 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: in while it was microwaved, and then compared that to

659
00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:25,520
Speaker 1: the temperature inside the egg, specifically of the yolk, there

660
00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:28,080
Speaker 1: was a big difference. Of course, the water bath was

661
00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:30,719
Speaker 1: limited to two d and twelve degrees fahrenheit or one

662
00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:33,600
Speaker 1: hundred degrees celsius. This is the boiling point of water.

663
00:37:34,239 --> 00:37:37,600
Speaker 1: We know that, you know, at that temperature, water doesn't

664
00:37:37,600 --> 00:37:40,759
Speaker 1: really heat up beyond that because it equalizes with the

665
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:43,719
Speaker 1: you know, with the vapor pressure around it. So so

666
00:37:43,800 --> 00:37:47,279
Speaker 1: additional energy put into it goes into boiling off more

667
00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:50,840
Speaker 1: and more of the water into steam. But the yolk

668
00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:53,920
Speaker 1: was significantly hotter than the boiling point of water. It

669
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 1: was there was an average of twenty two degrees fahrenheit

670
00:37:57,080 --> 00:38:00,479
Speaker 1: of difference between the water and the yolk. And yet

671
00:38:00,560 --> 00:38:03,520
Speaker 1: the yolk has a significant amount of water in it.

672
00:38:04,040 --> 00:38:07,000
Speaker 1: By some estimates, that chicken egg yolk is it's something

673
00:38:07,040 --> 00:38:11,879
Speaker 1: like fifty water, Okay, now, yeah, yeah, well, of course

674
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:14,480
Speaker 1: in addition to lots of proteins and fats and stuff.

675
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:19,480
Speaker 1: And so Nash's hypothesis about the explosion is that the

676
00:38:19,560 --> 00:38:25,240
Speaker 1: microwave process, microwaving process somehow superheats little pockets of water

677
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:30,040
Speaker 1: inside the egg yolk beyond the boiling point of water. Now,

678
00:38:30,120 --> 00:38:32,120
Speaker 1: there can be a couple of ways that water becomes

679
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:36,239
Speaker 1: superheated and then flashes suddenly into steam. One way is

680
00:38:36,320 --> 00:38:39,799
Speaker 1: when water is heated in a microwave with an absence

681
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:43,880
Speaker 1: of what are called nucleation points. Nucleation sites are just

682
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:48,360
Speaker 1: little places where bubbles can form naturally that allow the

683
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:51,759
Speaker 1: water to begin to convert into steam. Uh. And this

684
00:38:51,840 --> 00:38:53,560
Speaker 1: is why you might have been advised to put a

685
00:38:53,560 --> 00:38:55,920
Speaker 1: little wooden coffee stir or something like that in a

686
00:38:56,000 --> 00:38:58,239
Speaker 1: mug of water if you're heating it in the microwave.

687
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:01,879
Speaker 1: There have been occasions where people have gotten burns by

688
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:08,080
Speaker 1: microwaving water, especially in very smooth, clean containers. And I've

689
00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:12,920
Speaker 1: read also especially when you repeatedly microwave the same container

690
00:39:12,960 --> 00:39:16,759
Speaker 1: of water without like stirring it or touching it. There

691
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:19,280
Speaker 1: can be cases where the water just gets hotter and hotter,

692
00:39:19,320 --> 00:39:22,520
Speaker 1: but it can't boil because there are no sites where

693
00:39:22,560 --> 00:39:26,400
Speaker 1: this hot mass of water is able to start forming bubbles.

694
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:29,000
Speaker 1: And in these cases, the water can become hotter than

695
00:39:29,040 --> 00:39:33,480
Speaker 1: its boiling point, but it looks perfectly calm until it's

696
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:37,759
Speaker 1: disturbed in some way that suddenly does provide nucleation points. Uh.

697
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:41,120
Speaker 1: This could include jostling the container, inserting a spoon or

698
00:39:41,160 --> 00:39:43,919
Speaker 1: sugar or something like that. The superheated water can then

699
00:39:44,480 --> 00:39:48,919
Speaker 1: quite suddenly flash into steam and explode. But another way

700
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:52,200
Speaker 1: that water can become superheated and flash suddenly into steam

701
00:39:52,480 --> 00:39:56,040
Speaker 1: is changes in pressure. Uh. You know, remember the principles

702
00:39:56,080 --> 00:39:59,279
Speaker 1: illustrated by a pressure cooker. The normal boiling point of

703
00:39:59,280 --> 00:40:03,160
Speaker 1: water is determined by atmospheric pressure, so you can actually

704
00:40:03,280 --> 00:40:05,680
Speaker 1: change the boiling point of water just by going up

705
00:40:05,800 --> 00:40:08,600
Speaker 1: or down in altitude. If you go higher in altitude

706
00:40:08,680 --> 00:40:12,440
Speaker 1: up a mountain, water converts into vapor easier at a

707
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:15,840
Speaker 1: lower temperature, and this lowers the boiling point of water,

708
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 1: so a boiling pot of water on top of a

709
00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:21,319
Speaker 1: mountain will be cooler than a boiling point of water

710
00:40:21,440 --> 00:40:24,040
Speaker 1: at sea level. In fact, there are even stories, I

711
00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:26,719
Speaker 1: think we've talked about these in a previous episode, uh,

712
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:30,440
Speaker 1: stories of people trying to cook at super high altitudes

713
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:33,040
Speaker 1: and being unable to do it, Like mountain climbers on

714
00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:36,760
Speaker 1: Everest have sometimes found that you cannot, for example, boil

715
00:40:36,880 --> 00:40:41,040
Speaker 1: potatoes effectively at the top of Everest because at some

716
00:40:41,080 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 1: point you get so high up and the pressure is

717
00:40:43,560 --> 00:40:46,759
Speaker 1: so low that the boiling point of water gets so

718
00:40:46,880 --> 00:40:49,120
Speaker 1: low that a pot of water on a burner literally

719
00:40:49,160 --> 00:40:51,600
Speaker 1: just can't get hot enough to cook potatoes, and a

720
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:54,279
Speaker 1: reasonable amount of time your your water is boiling, but

721
00:40:54,320 --> 00:40:58,279
Speaker 1: it's just not very hot. Conversely, if you increase the

722
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:00,840
Speaker 1: pressure on a cooking vessel by healing it tight with

723
00:41:00,920 --> 00:41:04,000
Speaker 1: the lid and safety gasket and all that, you can

724
00:41:04,040 --> 00:41:07,000
Speaker 1: actually raise the boiling point of water, allowing water to

725
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 1: get a lot hotter than it ever would in a

726
00:41:09,040 --> 00:41:11,800
Speaker 1: pot on the stove where it can just evaporate normally,

727
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:14,720
Speaker 1: and this cooks your food faster. This is the principle

728
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:18,239
Speaker 1: behind a pressure cooker. Modern pressure cookers tend to be

729
00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:22,280
Speaker 1: very safe by design, but they years ago, pressure cookers

730
00:41:22,360 --> 00:41:24,840
Speaker 1: used to have a reputation for exploding. This was the

731
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:27,239
Speaker 1: thing people were afraid about, and there are cases of

732
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:30,360
Speaker 1: this happening. You can see why they could be dangerous

733
00:41:30,360 --> 00:41:33,880
Speaker 1: in principle, because it's contents under pressure, and it's a

734
00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:38,040
Speaker 1: bunch of superheated water. If suddenly exposed to reduced pressure,

735
00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:41,280
Speaker 1: that water would try to convert from liquid water into

736
00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:45,120
Speaker 1: steam really suddenly in a kind of explosive instant. Yeah.

737
00:41:45,160 --> 00:41:48,640
Speaker 1: I remember growing up and hearing about like the canning

738
00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:52,200
Speaker 1: process in which one would put uh you know, their

739
00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:57,200
Speaker 1: jars into a pressure cooker to to sterilize them. I

740
00:41:57,239 --> 00:42:00,360
Speaker 1: remember there being accounts of this which sounded dang triss.

741
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:03,239
Speaker 1: It sounded explosive to me. Um, I don't know to

742
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 1: what extent there was actually, Yeah, some sort of cautionary

743
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:09,880
Speaker 1: tail involved in the telling of it, But but I

744
00:42:09,920 --> 00:42:12,319
Speaker 1: got the sense that the cooking with a with a

745
00:42:12,320 --> 00:42:15,560
Speaker 1: pressure cooker had had some sort of inherent danger to it.

746
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:19,239
Speaker 1: I mean, there are natural dangers of like burns and

747
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:22,799
Speaker 1: stuff if you don't have a modern pressure cooker with

748
00:42:22,960 --> 00:42:25,960
Speaker 1: good safety features. But I think modern pressure cookers, like

749
00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:28,359
Speaker 1: if it's made by a reputable company and all that,

750
00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:30,680
Speaker 1: it's going to have safety features in place that make

751
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:34,319
Speaker 1: it pretty darn safety use. Oh yeah, like like, yeah,

752
00:42:34,320 --> 00:42:36,719
Speaker 1: we use one all the time for various uh you know,

753
00:42:36,880 --> 00:42:40,760
Speaker 1: rice dishes and whatnot. Great for lentils. Yeah. But anyway,

754
00:42:40,920 --> 00:42:43,680
Speaker 1: So so back to the pressure issue. I think this

755
00:42:43,760 --> 00:42:46,760
Speaker 1: is what Anthony Nash is sort of hypothesizing is happening

756
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:50,080
Speaker 1: inside the yolk of an exploding egg. While an egg

757
00:42:50,200 --> 00:42:53,880
Speaker 1: is being microwaved, It's got this protein matrix inside the

758
00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:57,000
Speaker 1: yolk that becomes hotter than the boiling point of water,

759
00:42:57,600 --> 00:43:00,840
Speaker 1: and this protein matrix is holding all these little pockets

760
00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:05,880
Speaker 1: of water trapped inside. These pockets of water become superheated

761
00:43:05,880 --> 00:43:08,799
Speaker 1: beyond the boiling point of water, and when the egg

762
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:12,719
Speaker 1: is pierced, these little pockets of superheated liquid water can

763
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:17,560
Speaker 1: suddenly boil. They flash into steam very rapidly, causing the

764
00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:20,520
Speaker 1: egg to explode in the process. Now, I don't know

765
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:23,560
Speaker 1: if Nash's hypothesis about the cause of the exploding eggs

766
00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:25,560
Speaker 1: is correct. I can't judge for sure, but it seems

767
00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:28,120
Speaker 1: pretty plausible to me. Uh And I think it's a

768
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:32,400
Speaker 1: pretty clear indication that microwaving hard boiled eggs is not

769
00:43:32,520 --> 00:43:34,760
Speaker 1: a very good idea. You know, if you've got cold,

770
00:43:34,800 --> 00:43:36,920
Speaker 1: hard boiled eggs, why not just eat them cold or

771
00:43:36,960 --> 00:43:41,240
Speaker 1: make egg salad? Yeah, yeah, don't risk the explosion. You know. However,

772
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:44,520
Speaker 1: all this talk, okay, we're talking about the pressure inside

773
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:46,960
Speaker 1: the egg and changes to to to the pressure and

774
00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:50,239
Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure. It does make me wonder, Okay, could you

775
00:43:50,280 --> 00:43:54,240
Speaker 1: have a scenario where you say, venturing aboard a drylic

776
00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:59,000
Speaker 1: spaceship and dur encountering the eggs of another species? Who knows,

777
00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:04,399
Speaker 1: like under what atmospheric conditions they were originally um lane

778
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:07,200
Speaker 1: point yeah yeah. And and then and then what happened,

779
00:44:07,640 --> 00:44:08,960
Speaker 1: you know, where they put on a ship with an

780
00:44:09,080 --> 00:44:12,399
Speaker 1: entirely different pressure and then maybe that pressure went away,

781
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:14,759
Speaker 1: maybe the people now discovering it bring it back to

782
00:44:14,840 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 1: their ship and there's a different uh air pressure scenario

783
00:44:18,320 --> 00:44:20,640
Speaker 1: going on. Could you end up with an explosive alien

784
00:44:20,719 --> 00:44:24,759
Speaker 1: egg along those lines. I'm gonna rule it physically plausible

785
00:44:24,760 --> 00:44:28,880
Speaker 1: but unproven. Okay, alright, Well, on that note, we're going

786
00:44:28,920 --> 00:44:30,799
Speaker 1: to take one more break, but when we come back,

787
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:37,240
Speaker 1: we have a couple of more eggs for you. Alright,

788
00:44:37,239 --> 00:44:40,680
Speaker 1: we're back, Robert. Is it time to pet the furry egg? Yes,

789
00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:44,920
Speaker 1: let us consider the furry egg. So, uh, my, my family,

790
00:44:45,160 --> 00:44:49,240
Speaker 1: like a lot of households out there, recently enjoyed viewing

791
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:53,319
Speaker 1: the excellent series The Mandalorian, which features everything I love

792
00:44:53,360 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 1: about Star Wars, including some really cool creatures and one

793
00:44:57,160 --> 00:44:59,440
Speaker 1: of the most important in the series. This is creature

794
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:02,359
Speaker 1: that that p up called a mud horn. And it's

795
00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:06,040
Speaker 1: this a large mammalian creature, or assume we assume it

796
00:45:06,080 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 1: to be mammalian. Uh. That looks a lot like a

797
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:11,880
Speaker 1: wooly rhino. It's like an alien take on a wooly rhino.

798
00:45:12,160 --> 00:45:14,279
Speaker 1: And as its name implies, it makes its home in

799
00:45:14,280 --> 00:45:19,719
Speaker 1: the mud. Here it lays a very unique furry egg. Uh.

800
00:45:19,760 --> 00:45:22,080
Speaker 1: And this, by the way, is on the world our

801
00:45:22,200 --> 00:45:26,360
Speaker 1: Volla seven end. And it's here that Jawa's consider it

802
00:45:26,719 --> 00:45:29,920
Speaker 1: a delicacy. So of course our main character ends up

803
00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:34,520
Speaker 1: being sent on a quest to obtain the furry egg. Okay,

804
00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:37,839
Speaker 1: I still haven't seen this, but this sounds good. Yeah,

805
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:39,480
Speaker 1: well you're in for a treat with this one. I know,

806
00:45:39,560 --> 00:45:42,320
Speaker 1: Baby Yoda. So we've got we've got furry eggs and

807
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:45,200
Speaker 1: baby Yoda. What are they just trying to like cute

808
00:45:45,200 --> 00:45:47,960
Speaker 1: you to death? Well, I mean, I think cute is

809
00:45:47,960 --> 00:45:49,920
Speaker 1: an important part of Star Wars. You gotta have a

810
00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:52,759
Speaker 1: cute element in there. And I think I think anyone who, um,

811
00:45:53,200 --> 00:45:56,200
Speaker 1: who disagrees with me on that is wrong. There's there's

812
00:45:56,239 --> 00:45:58,160
Speaker 1: got to be something cute in there. And uh, and

813
00:45:58,200 --> 00:46:00,400
Speaker 1: so you got you gotta go, you got your furry

814
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:03,080
Speaker 1: egg here. Um. But the furry egg is I think

815
00:46:03,120 --> 00:46:06,200
Speaker 1: really something to ponder though, because in many ways it

816
00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:11,279
Speaker 1: seems paradoxical and suitably alien. Right, because eggs we tend

817
00:46:11,280 --> 00:46:13,319
Speaker 1: to just assume, you know, eggs are the domain of

818
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:16,360
Speaker 1: scale and feather, right, not the domain of fur. Sure,

819
00:46:16,840 --> 00:46:19,720
Speaker 1: fur is typically the domain of mammals. But of course

820
00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:23,200
Speaker 1: the mammalian world is not entirely devoid of egg layers,

821
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 1: because of course we have the monotreams. Yeah, now monitreams

822
00:46:29,120 --> 00:46:32,680
Speaker 1: are when we're talking about monotreams, we're talking about I

823
00:46:32,680 --> 00:46:36,760
Speaker 1: think what five species around still today, One of course,

824
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:40,000
Speaker 1: is the platypus which were largely going to leave alone

825
00:46:40,120 --> 00:46:43,080
Speaker 1: to its monstrous pools in this episode, because I'd like

826
00:46:43,160 --> 00:46:46,359
Speaker 1: to come back and really dive into the platypus uh

827
00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:49,239
Speaker 1: and focus on it because it is a true monster. Uh.

828
00:46:49,280 --> 00:46:51,600
Speaker 1: And then it's wonderful. But then we have I think

829
00:46:51,640 --> 00:46:55,680
Speaker 1: four different species of a kidnea to consider as well.

830
00:46:56,239 --> 00:46:58,840
Speaker 1: So Monotreams are thought to have diverged from other mammals

831
00:46:58,920 --> 00:47:01,920
Speaker 1: roughly a hundred and nine million years ago. There's still

832
00:47:01,960 --> 00:47:04,200
Speaker 1: a lot we don't know about them and their connections

833
00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:07,040
Speaker 1: to other mammals. But but among their most notable features

834
00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:10,080
Speaker 1: is their egg laying. Oh and incidentally, uh, the name

835
00:47:10,160 --> 00:47:14,400
Speaker 1: at kidna we get that from the Greek mythological figure

836
00:47:14,520 --> 00:47:18,040
Speaker 1: a Kidna, who is sometimes described as the mother of monsters,

837
00:47:18,640 --> 00:47:21,600
Speaker 1: and who is often depicted as having like a half

838
00:47:21,640 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 1: snake half human body. Therefore, she embodies both mammalian and

839
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:29,400
Speaker 1: serpentine aspects. I'm just trying to remember. Why did the

840
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:32,560
Speaker 1: word a kidna make me think of vampires? Is the

841
00:47:33,520 --> 00:47:36,720
Speaker 1: they're like a a kidna vampire in the Witcher Games

842
00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:39,319
Speaker 1: or something? I don't know. I don't know, I've never

843
00:47:39,320 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 1: played the Witcher Games, but I mean a kidnas a

844
00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:45,359
Speaker 1: wonderful name for a monstrous enemy. So I think I'm

845
00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:47,320
Speaker 1: brushing up against a sound alike here. But but a

846
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:50,239
Speaker 1: kidna in the mythological context is is cool enough on

847
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:52,840
Speaker 1: her own right? And uh And when we look to

848
00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:56,240
Speaker 1: the organisms that we have dubbed a kidnas, they're really

849
00:47:56,280 --> 00:48:00,400
Speaker 1: fascinating as well. Less frightening and monsters perhaps, but just

850
00:48:00,840 --> 00:48:04,680
Speaker 1: weird and at times adorable. So I was reading a

851
00:48:04,680 --> 00:48:06,839
Speaker 1: few different sources on this, one of which is as

852
00:48:06,840 --> 00:48:09,400
Speaker 1: an excellent little article from the New York Times in

853
00:48:09,400 --> 00:48:13,120
Speaker 1: two thousand nine titled Brainy, A kidnap proves looks aren't everything,

854
00:48:13,560 --> 00:48:17,680
Speaker 1: And the author Natalie Angier, has this wonderful little paragraph

855
00:48:17,719 --> 00:48:23,200
Speaker 1: describing their reproduction quote reproductively, Monotreams are like a VCR

856
00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:27,920
Speaker 1: DVD unit, an embodiment of a technology. In transition, they

857
00:48:28,000 --> 00:48:31,080
Speaker 1: lay leathery eggs, as reptiles do, but then feed the

858
00:48:31,160 --> 00:48:34,680
Speaker 1: so called puggles that hatch with milk drizzled out of

859
00:48:34,719 --> 00:48:38,839
Speaker 1: glands in the chest rather than expressed through nippled teats,

860
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:43,799
Speaker 1: and sometimes so enriched with iron that it looks pink. WHOA, man,

861
00:48:43,880 --> 00:48:48,560
Speaker 1: I'm still reeling from that VCR DVD unit comparison. It

862
00:48:48,640 --> 00:48:50,360
Speaker 1: makes me think this should have been the subject of

863
00:48:50,400 --> 00:48:52,719
Speaker 1: a Fast and the Furious movie, Like they're trying to

864
00:48:52,800 --> 00:48:57,160
Speaker 1: hijack a truck full of a kidna. They're they're they're

865
00:48:57,160 --> 00:48:59,440
Speaker 1: they're weird looking creative. For first of all, that that

866
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 1: that iron and rich milk. That's I'm assuming coming largely

867
00:49:03,280 --> 00:49:06,560
Speaker 1: from their diet of ants and termites, So they're voracious

868
00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:09,920
Speaker 1: ant and termite eaters. And yeah, they're just really look

869
00:49:10,000 --> 00:49:11,919
Speaker 1: up a picture of one, because they're they're really neat.

870
00:49:11,960 --> 00:49:16,520
Speaker 1: They have this this specialized snout clearly uh evolved to

871
00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:20,480
Speaker 1: enable them to pursue their their main prey. And then

872
00:49:20,520 --> 00:49:26,120
Speaker 1: they have these just pudgy, spiny bodies. They're they're absolutely

873
00:49:26,280 --> 00:49:29,200
Speaker 1: weird and adorable looking. And if you look up images

874
00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:32,840
Speaker 1: of of of a of an a kidna, puggle of

875
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:35,880
Speaker 1: a of a baby a kidnah, it is just even

876
00:49:35,960 --> 00:49:39,240
Speaker 1: weirder and more cuddly. They're like little um little bean

877
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:43,240
Speaker 1: bags with with snouts. I believe the adults are spiny,

878
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:46,000
Speaker 1: aren't they are? The are the young also spiny? Know

879
00:49:46,200 --> 00:49:50,080
Speaker 1: that well is well discuss the young are born or

880
00:49:50,280 --> 00:49:53,879
Speaker 1: rather hatch without spines and then developed them later. But Yeah,

881
00:49:53,880 --> 00:49:58,160
Speaker 1: the adults definitely have spines for their protection. Now to

882
00:49:58,200 --> 00:50:00,480
Speaker 1: come back to the pink milk it, I was looking

883
00:50:00,520 --> 00:50:03,799
Speaker 1: at a two thousand and eight Harvard University study that

884
00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:07,360
Speaker 1: the claims that the achidna might have simply evolved away

885
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:10,279
Speaker 1: from suckling due the due to the demands of its

886
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:14,560
Speaker 1: specialized mouth parts and its specialized diet. So not necessarily

887
00:50:14,600 --> 00:50:17,600
Speaker 1: a case here where the achidna is like, um, you know,

888
00:50:17,680 --> 00:50:21,680
Speaker 1: you know, predates suckling, but rather might have evolved away

889
00:50:21,719 --> 00:50:25,319
Speaker 1: from suckling as a means of carrying out its diet. Yeah,

890
00:50:25,360 --> 00:50:28,840
Speaker 1: maybe a mouth made for devouring ants is not ideal

891
00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:32,960
Speaker 1: for this way of getting milk. Yeah, exactly, more for lapping.

892
00:50:33,680 --> 00:50:35,960
Speaker 1: So so let's talk about the eggs a little bit. So,

893
00:50:36,000 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 1: the eggs of an a kidna, I want to be clear,

894
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:42,000
Speaker 1: are not furry. Um. The achidna is of course covered

895
00:50:42,040 --> 00:50:45,080
Speaker 1: with with spines, but also coarse hair, so this is

896
00:50:45,120 --> 00:50:47,439
Speaker 1: still not a case of a furry egg. The egg

897
00:50:47,520 --> 00:50:51,239
Speaker 1: is leathery and twenty two days after conception it is

898
00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:55,479
Speaker 1: deposited directly into the female's pouch, and after ten days

899
00:50:55,520 --> 00:50:59,799
Speaker 1: of gestation in the pouch, the puggle bust through uh,

900
00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:03,640
Speaker 1: that leathery shell with a reptile like egg tooth, and

901
00:51:03,640 --> 00:51:06,279
Speaker 1: then remains in the pouch for another forty five to

902
00:51:06,320 --> 00:51:10,040
Speaker 1: fifty five days, continuing to develop in major ways, such

903
00:51:10,080 --> 00:51:14,520
Speaker 1: as growing out those defensive spines and if you, I

904
00:51:14,760 --> 00:51:17,960
Speaker 1: highly encourage everyone to look up video footage of this.

905
00:51:18,120 --> 00:51:20,920
Speaker 1: I found a great a kidnapped hatching video that's easily

906
00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:23,239
Speaker 1: found on YouTube from I want to say it's from

907
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:26,000
Speaker 1: the seventies or maybe the fifties. I can't can't recall.

908
00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:28,279
Speaker 1: It's it's over footage, but you get to see one

909
00:51:28,320 --> 00:51:30,719
Speaker 1: of these little puggles, and it's pointed out that the

910
00:51:30,760 --> 00:51:35,000
Speaker 1: puggle is so uh, you know, immature, so translucent, so

911
00:51:35,120 --> 00:51:39,239
Speaker 1: helpless that after it has stuffed itself with milk, you

912
00:51:39,280 --> 00:51:42,880
Speaker 1: can see the milk inside of it through its translucent

913
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:45,359
Speaker 1: pink body. WHOA. That makes me think of the honey

914
00:51:45,400 --> 00:51:48,920
Speaker 1: pot ants where you can Yeah, yeah, it does look

915
00:51:48,960 --> 00:51:50,879
Speaker 1: a lot like that, you know. It's it's just so

916
00:51:51,320 --> 00:51:54,799
Speaker 1: immature and helpless at that point. It's uh uh it's

917
00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:57,600
Speaker 1: I was thinking it's kind of like a translucent gush

918
00:51:57,680 --> 00:52:00,640
Speaker 1: or candy, you know, with a kid in the milk

919
00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:03,040
Speaker 1: in the health wait didn't we also compare the honeypot

920
00:52:03,080 --> 00:52:05,440
Speaker 1: ants to gushers. I guess we did. We just we

921
00:52:05,600 --> 00:52:08,160
Speaker 1: just got gushers on the brain here. I don't even

922
00:52:08,160 --> 00:52:10,400
Speaker 1: know if they still make gushers, but god, that is

923
00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:13,520
Speaker 1: the most malevolent candy of all time. I don't know,

924
00:52:13,600 --> 00:52:16,760
Speaker 1: now that I'm thinking about it. What do you think gushers? Um?

925
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:19,760
Speaker 1: You know they they have that kind of popping liquid filled.

926
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:24,160
Speaker 1: Maybe they're supposed to be like eggs. You know, children

927
00:52:24,160 --> 00:52:27,440
Speaker 1: want to gobble up the eggs of some strange, purplely

928
00:52:27,960 --> 00:52:30,920
Speaker 1: fruit scented creature, and that's what gushers are for. I

929
00:52:30,960 --> 00:52:33,840
Speaker 1: don't want to know what happens if you microwave a gusher. No,

930
00:52:34,080 --> 00:52:37,080
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's been done to certainly do not try

931
00:52:37,120 --> 00:52:40,080
Speaker 1: it on our account though if even hasn't been done.

932
00:52:40,280 --> 00:52:43,439
Speaker 1: Don't ever microwave anything because you heard us talking about

933
00:52:43,520 --> 00:52:48,160
Speaker 1: something the blanket statement, All all liability erased. Yes, follow

934
00:52:48,280 --> 00:52:51,719
Speaker 1: the instructions for heating anything in the microwave. Okay, So

935
00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:54,319
Speaker 1: back to mono trains. So there were once hundreds of

936
00:52:54,320 --> 00:52:57,480
Speaker 1: mono train species, and the largest that we know of

937
00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:01,759
Speaker 1: was one that is known is zack Losis Haketti and

938
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:04,319
Speaker 1: it would have been about a meter long and a wait,

939
00:53:04,360 --> 00:53:07,200
Speaker 1: about thirty k so about three point two ft long

940
00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:12,319
Speaker 1: and weighing sixty six pounds. Um. I've seen some images here.

941
00:53:12,320 --> 00:53:14,960
Speaker 1: I included one in our document Joe. You can see

942
00:53:14,960 --> 00:53:16,560
Speaker 1: about how big this would have been. It would have

943
00:53:16,600 --> 00:53:18,600
Speaker 1: been like, I don't know, what would you say, like

944
00:53:18,640 --> 00:53:22,080
Speaker 1: a like a very large plump dog. Yeah, that sounds

945
00:53:22,120 --> 00:53:25,720
Speaker 1: about right, A spiny bulldog. Again, not a furry egg,

946
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:28,520
Speaker 1: but in a way close to a furry egg. But

947
00:53:28,520 --> 00:53:33,160
Speaker 1: but I will add that there is perhaps another possibility

948
00:53:33,200 --> 00:53:36,960
Speaker 1: for furry egg hunting in nature. A certain moths are

949
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:40,840
Speaker 1: often described as being furry. Granted, we're dealing with something

950
00:53:40,880 --> 00:53:43,399
Speaker 1: different than what you would encounter on your pet dog

951
00:53:43,520 --> 00:53:47,160
Speaker 1: or your pet cat. But these moths, such as the

952
00:53:47,200 --> 00:53:50,160
Speaker 1: gypsy moth, will actually cover their eggs with a coating

953
00:53:50,200 --> 00:53:54,640
Speaker 1: that contains that quote unquote fur. So you know that

954
00:53:54,760 --> 00:53:56,960
Speaker 1: might be one way to tackle the problem. I suppose

955
00:53:56,960 --> 00:53:59,360
Speaker 1: the idea of an egg naturally being insulated with a

956
00:53:59,440 --> 00:54:02,719
Speaker 1: layer of hair isn't completely crazy, but I don't think

957
00:54:02,800 --> 00:54:05,600
Speaker 1: we see it, and and most examples we see entail

958
00:54:05,680 --> 00:54:09,279
Speaker 1: a stronger alliance on the parent's body or efforts by

959
00:54:09,320 --> 00:54:11,840
Speaker 1: the parent to secret the egg away in a warm place.

960
00:54:12,560 --> 00:54:18,239
Speaker 1: All right, and for our final egg exploration or exploration. Uh.

961
00:54:18,320 --> 00:54:21,799
Speaker 1: Here today, I thought we might consider the idea of

962
00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:24,680
Speaker 1: the god in his egg. Okay, let's do it. So

963
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:27,640
Speaker 1: we we've mentioned this entity on the show before, uh

964
00:54:27,680 --> 00:54:30,920
Speaker 1: and Joe, you might even remember it. Uh. I think

965
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:32,800
Speaker 1: I think we came up in one of our episodes.

966
00:54:33,400 --> 00:54:35,960
Speaker 1: The Egyptian Book of the Dead speaks of this is,

967
00:54:35,960 --> 00:54:39,000
Speaker 1: of course a translation quote that August God who is

968
00:54:39,040 --> 00:54:42,480
Speaker 1: in his egg a terrifying entity said to rule over

969
00:54:42,520 --> 00:54:47,040
Speaker 1: the realm of of exc within the Egyptian underworld. It's

970
00:54:47,040 --> 00:54:49,600
Speaker 1: a It's described as a yellow realm that is hidden

971
00:54:49,640 --> 00:54:52,680
Speaker 1: from the gods and subject to the powers of the

972
00:54:52,760 --> 00:54:57,279
Speaker 1: eye that captures. And so there's an invocation for the

973
00:54:57,719 --> 00:55:02,000
Speaker 1: traveler into the afterlife. Uh. I would say, hail to you, you,

974
00:55:02,120 --> 00:55:04,919
Speaker 1: August God, who are in your egg. I have come

975
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:06,960
Speaker 1: to you to be in your sweets, so that I

976
00:55:07,040 --> 00:55:09,920
Speaker 1: may go in and out of Xy, that its doors

977
00:55:09,960 --> 00:55:11,880
Speaker 1: may be open to me, that I may breathe the

978
00:55:11,920 --> 00:55:14,239
Speaker 1: air in it, and that I may have power through

979
00:55:14,320 --> 00:55:19,439
Speaker 1: its offerings. Okay, so you've gotta prostrate yourself before the egg. Yeah, yeah,

980
00:55:19,520 --> 00:55:22,960
Speaker 1: this weird. And something about this idea again, it comes

981
00:55:22,960 --> 00:55:26,360
Speaker 1: back to this paradox of that is often inherent in

982
00:55:26,360 --> 00:55:28,560
Speaker 1: the egg. You know, what is the egg, things that

983
00:55:28,600 --> 00:55:31,680
Speaker 1: emerge out of the egg. But here especially the paradox

984
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:36,040
Speaker 1: of a thing that is post egg and pre egg

985
00:55:36,120 --> 00:55:39,040
Speaker 1: at once, the thing that never emerged from its egg

986
00:55:39,080 --> 00:55:42,680
Speaker 1: and yet is a complete being in some form, like

987
00:55:42,760 --> 00:55:45,319
Speaker 1: it is a god, but it has not hatched, and

988
00:55:45,360 --> 00:55:48,880
Speaker 1: it somehow has the powers of an entity that is

989
00:55:49,040 --> 00:55:51,400
Speaker 1: um you know that that is that is you know,

990
00:55:51,440 --> 00:55:56,120
Speaker 1: fully powerful. Yeah, I mean the egg is in many

991
00:55:56,120 --> 00:56:00,239
Speaker 1: ways the archetype of potential. Yeah. So again the agus

992
00:56:00,239 --> 00:56:05,000
Speaker 1: Gott in his egg terrifying, weird, almost impossible to behold.

993
00:56:05,440 --> 00:56:08,319
Speaker 1: But it also does bring to mind. I don't know

994
00:56:08,360 --> 00:56:11,680
Speaker 1: if you remember this character, but there's a character named

995
00:56:11,680 --> 00:56:16,279
Speaker 1: Sheldon who was featured on in Jim Davis's U. S

996
00:56:16,360 --> 00:56:20,120
Speaker 1: Acres cartoon, and this showed up on Garfield and Friends.

997
00:56:20,320 --> 00:56:22,759
Speaker 1: Rachel and I were just talking about US Acres the

998
00:56:22,800 --> 00:56:24,879
Speaker 1: other day. I don't remember why it came up, but

999
00:56:24,960 --> 00:56:27,600
Speaker 1: we we both remember having this feeling where you'd be

1000
00:56:27,600 --> 00:56:30,160
Speaker 1: watching Garfield and then it would go to this other

1001
00:56:30,360 --> 00:56:34,600
Speaker 1: thing this farm thing, and I remember having this feeling

1002
00:56:34,760 --> 00:56:38,600
Speaker 1: like when is this going to start making sense? And

1003
00:56:39,040 --> 00:56:41,160
Speaker 1: I don't think it ever did. Yeah, you would, you

1004
00:56:41,160 --> 00:56:43,279
Speaker 1: would get Garfield, and you would then you would get

1005
00:56:43,640 --> 00:56:45,800
Speaker 1: us Acres, and then you would get a little more Garfield.

1006
00:56:45,800 --> 00:56:47,759
Speaker 1: It was what I like that I think they called

1007
00:56:47,800 --> 00:56:52,040
Speaker 1: like an ad a format um. But but us Acres

1008
00:56:52,040 --> 00:56:54,040
Speaker 1: had a whole host of characters, you know, your typical

1009
00:56:54,040 --> 00:56:56,600
Speaker 1: farm characters. But one of them, the one that really

1010
00:56:56,640 --> 00:56:59,840
Speaker 1: made it memorable, was that you had Sheldon, who was

1011
00:56:59,880 --> 00:57:02,920
Speaker 1: a chicken that was still in its egg. It was

1012
00:57:03,000 --> 00:57:05,200
Speaker 1: just an egg, like a walking egg, an egg with

1013
00:57:05,239 --> 00:57:09,080
Speaker 1: two chicken legs emerging from it. And there are other

1014
00:57:09,440 --> 00:57:12,000
Speaker 1: takes on this out there. There's a wonderful children's book

1015
00:57:12,040 --> 00:57:15,319
Speaker 1: by Many Gray titled egg Drop, and it features an

1016
00:57:15,320 --> 00:57:18,320
Speaker 1: egg that wants to fly, and I don't recall it

1017
00:57:18,360 --> 00:57:21,200
Speaker 1: actually has legs, but it certainly has like a will

1018
00:57:21,240 --> 00:57:23,200
Speaker 1: of its own, and it wants to do things, and

1019
00:57:23,240 --> 00:57:27,160
Speaker 1: it thinks it can do things that a a hatched chicken,

1020
00:57:27,200 --> 00:57:29,720
Speaker 1: a fully developed chicken, should be capable off. That's a

1021
00:57:29,720 --> 00:57:32,720
Speaker 1: funny symbol. I mean it. Uh. We all have the

1022
00:57:32,760 --> 00:57:35,640
Speaker 1: experience in childhood of wanting to do the things that

1023
00:57:35,720 --> 00:57:38,720
Speaker 1: adults do, not understanding why I can't do that yet,

1024
00:57:38,760 --> 00:57:42,120
Speaker 1: And in a lot of cases the reason is intellectual

1025
00:57:42,120 --> 00:57:44,880
Speaker 1: and emotional maturity. You don't have that like level of

1026
00:57:45,400 --> 00:57:48,280
Speaker 1: like brain responsibility yet to be an adult. But the

1027
00:57:48,320 --> 00:57:50,520
Speaker 1: egg is a different thing, right, because it doesn't have

1028
00:57:50,680 --> 00:57:55,480
Speaker 1: limbs and it can't move around on its own. Yeah, exactly,

1029
00:57:55,520 --> 00:57:57,200
Speaker 1: And that's that's roughly kind of the idea that that

1030
00:57:57,280 --> 00:58:00,600
Speaker 1: many Gray explores in this this excellent book, which also,

1031
00:58:00,640 --> 00:58:04,000
Speaker 1: by the way, has some principles of aerodynamics involved in it.

1032
00:58:04,080 --> 00:58:06,160
Speaker 1: So I wouldn't say that it's the science book, but

1033
00:58:06,200 --> 00:58:07,920
Speaker 1: it has a little science sprinkled in it, and it

1034
00:58:07,960 --> 00:58:11,920
Speaker 1: has wonderful illustrations. Now the for for our purposes. Though,

1035
00:58:11,960 --> 00:58:14,880
Speaker 1: in the natural world, the prospect of an animal simply

1036
00:58:15,120 --> 00:58:20,520
Speaker 1: never leaving its egg is certainly fascinating. It's it's paradoxical

1037
00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:23,360
Speaker 1: to a magical degree. It's kind of like the aura

1038
00:58:23,440 --> 00:58:26,880
Speaker 1: bora serpent consuming its own tail. Right. But while we

1039
00:58:26,920 --> 00:58:29,720
Speaker 1: don't see examples in the in the natural world where

1040
00:58:29,760 --> 00:58:32,919
Speaker 1: an egg lasts forever like the egg is the final form,

1041
00:58:33,000 --> 00:58:36,000
Speaker 1: we do see examples where the egg phase lasts for

1042
00:58:36,080 --> 00:58:39,120
Speaker 1: a pretty long time. Oh yeah, I guess I've never

1043
00:58:39,320 --> 00:58:42,480
Speaker 1: asked this specific question before. What what is the longest

1044
00:58:42,600 --> 00:58:46,200
Speaker 1: egg incubation period in in nature? Yeah, Like, just to

1045
00:58:46,240 --> 00:58:49,080
Speaker 1: come back to Alien, right, there's that The open question

1046
00:58:49,160 --> 00:58:51,120
Speaker 1: in that movie is like how long have these eggs

1047
00:58:51,120 --> 00:58:54,000
Speaker 1: been here? You know, sort of applies like thousands of

1048
00:58:54,080 --> 00:58:57,360
Speaker 1: years or something. Yeah, long enough for for the for

1049
00:58:57,400 --> 00:59:00,880
Speaker 1: the engineer up there on the the seat thing to

1050
00:59:00,880 --> 00:59:04,920
Speaker 1: to rotten and become a mummy. But but yeah, when

1051
00:59:04,960 --> 00:59:07,000
Speaker 1: we look to the natural world, where there's some pretty

1052
00:59:07,080 --> 00:59:12,960
Speaker 1: startling um examples. Probably the most startling that I ran

1053
00:59:13,000 --> 00:59:19,400
Speaker 1: across is the deep sea octopus Granella dn boro pacifica.

1054
00:59:19,680 --> 00:59:22,120
Speaker 1: And it has been observed to brood its eggs for

1055
00:59:22,360 --> 00:59:27,360
Speaker 1: four point five years or fifty three months. Wow. And

1056
00:59:27,400 --> 00:59:29,760
Speaker 1: to put that in in a proper frame of reference,

1057
00:59:29,800 --> 00:59:32,640
Speaker 1: that's compared to the typical one to three month brooding

1058
00:59:32,680 --> 00:59:37,480
Speaker 1: time for shallower water octopus species. That's unbelievable. I mean,

1059
00:59:37,520 --> 00:59:41,280
Speaker 1: so an egg can't defend itself, So that would mean

1060
00:59:41,440 --> 00:59:44,160
Speaker 1: an egg has to either just survive on its own

1061
00:59:44,240 --> 00:59:48,560
Speaker 1: or be protected for for four and a half years

1062
00:59:48,600 --> 00:59:51,360
Speaker 1: before it can hatch and at least have like escape

1063
00:59:51,400 --> 00:59:55,040
Speaker 1: behaviors exactly. And and that's exactly. And what we see

1064
00:59:55,080 --> 00:59:58,680
Speaker 1: with the octopus is a mother caring for the eggs,

1065
00:59:58,680 --> 01:00:00,880
Speaker 1: looking after the eggs. And and of course one of

1066
01:00:00,920 --> 01:00:03,200
Speaker 1: the curious wrinkles here is that typically the mother does

1067
01:00:03,240 --> 01:00:06,560
Speaker 1: not eat during this period like she has she has

1068
01:00:06,680 --> 01:00:09,640
Speaker 1: deposited the eggs and now her only purpose in life

1069
01:00:10,040 --> 01:00:13,400
Speaker 1: is to protect them and to ultimately die protecting them.

1070
01:00:13,440 --> 01:00:16,040
Speaker 1: Like she's not gonna she's not going to eat, they're

1071
01:00:16,040 --> 01:00:18,160
Speaker 1: going to hatch, and then when they're gone, she's going

1072
01:00:18,200 --> 01:00:21,760
Speaker 1: to die. So with the deep sea octovists, this four

1073
01:00:21,800 --> 01:00:24,560
Speaker 1: point five year brooding period in which she looks after them,

1074
01:00:24,600 --> 01:00:28,000
Speaker 1: this is apparently the longest brooding period of any known animal.

1075
01:00:28,280 --> 01:00:30,800
Speaker 1: I was reading about this in a study by Robinson

1076
01:00:30,840 --> 01:00:34,040
Speaker 1: at All published in p. Los One in two thousand fourteen.

1077
01:00:34,760 --> 01:00:37,120
Speaker 1: And uh and they go into greater detail on this.

1078
01:00:37,200 --> 01:00:39,800
Speaker 1: You can find the whole study online. But the two

1079
01:00:39,880 --> 01:00:43,800
Speaker 1: key factors they say here are low temperature because of

1080
01:00:43,840 --> 01:00:46,479
Speaker 1: course it's the deep sea. And then this would means

1081
01:00:46,480 --> 01:00:49,120
Speaker 1: slower metabolism that we see other examples of this in

1082
01:00:49,200 --> 01:00:52,600
Speaker 1: other organisms in terms of just you know, slow metabolism

1083
01:00:52,880 --> 01:00:56,200
Speaker 1: and and low temperature but then also key here is

1084
01:00:56,560 --> 01:01:01,560
Speaker 1: the selective advantage of producing highly developed catch links. So

1085
01:01:02,320 --> 01:01:04,400
Speaker 1: it comes back to the idea that once they're they're

1086
01:01:04,480 --> 01:01:07,800
Speaker 1: they hatch, they're ready to go, they're well cooked, ready

1087
01:01:07,840 --> 01:01:11,280
Speaker 1: to move. The clutch size of the deep sea octopus

1088
01:01:11,480 --> 01:01:16,040
Speaker 1: is is quite small compared to other octopus species, So

1089
01:01:16,080 --> 01:01:19,520
Speaker 1: there's ultimately this focus on quality over quantity, instead of

1090
01:01:19,520 --> 01:01:21,440
Speaker 1: it being a situation where like, let's get some baby

1091
01:01:21,720 --> 01:01:24,560
Speaker 1: octopi out there, a lot of them are gonna get eaten,

1092
01:01:24,560 --> 01:01:26,360
Speaker 1: but some of them will slip by. Now, this is

1093
01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:30,400
Speaker 1: instead let's focus on a smaller bunch of of octopus

1094
01:01:30,440 --> 01:01:33,560
Speaker 1: young uh, that all have a very strong fighting chance.

1095
01:01:33,880 --> 01:01:36,480
Speaker 1: And while this might be a familiar tactic too, you

1096
01:01:36,480 --> 01:01:40,040
Speaker 1: know people thinking about mammals and birds and stuff, this

1097
01:01:40,160 --> 01:01:43,080
Speaker 1: is the less common choice for organisms that live in

1098
01:01:43,120 --> 01:01:46,080
Speaker 1: the ocean, right, I mean marine organisms are very often

1099
01:01:46,160 --> 01:01:49,160
Speaker 1: just sort of spamming with eggs. I mean like there

1100
01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:54,080
Speaker 1: there's tons of production of offspring with very little investment

1101
01:01:54,160 --> 01:01:57,960
Speaker 1: in each individual one. Yeah, it's usually um, you know, generally,

1102
01:01:58,000 --> 01:02:01,040
Speaker 1: when we're talking about about the cases that buck the trend,

1103
01:02:01,080 --> 01:02:03,760
Speaker 1: we're of course dealing with something like like a whale uh,

1104
01:02:03,760 --> 01:02:06,440
Speaker 1: you know, amalion species that return to the water, or

1105
01:02:06,440 --> 01:02:09,400
Speaker 1: we're dealing with, you know, really interesting examples from the

1106
01:02:09,440 --> 01:02:12,880
Speaker 1: shark world. But this is the octopus. So the reach

1107
01:02:12,920 --> 01:02:16,840
Speaker 1: of searchers stress though that this is a pretty abundant

1108
01:02:16,840 --> 01:02:20,439
Speaker 1: deep sea species. So it's not like we've necessarily found

1109
01:02:20,480 --> 01:02:23,480
Speaker 1: a true rarity in the natural order of things. It

1110
01:02:23,560 --> 01:02:26,880
Speaker 1: just seems like a rarity because we don't understand deep

1111
01:02:26,920 --> 01:02:31,000
Speaker 1: sea ecology well enough. Interesting, And and the other side

1112
01:02:31,000 --> 01:02:33,720
Speaker 1: of it that they point out is again, octopus mothers

1113
01:02:33,800 --> 01:02:38,040
Speaker 1: generally don't eat during their brooding, so it's it would

1114
01:02:38,080 --> 01:02:40,960
Speaker 1: seem to be the case that this mother does not

1115
01:02:41,120 --> 01:02:45,360
Speaker 1: eat for four point five years um and and this

1116
01:02:45,440 --> 01:02:48,040
Speaker 1: is not completely understood, but basically it seems like it's

1117
01:02:48,040 --> 01:02:50,240
Speaker 1: going to come back to the slower metabolism of deep

1118
01:02:50,320 --> 01:02:53,040
Speaker 1: sea creatures. Ye, so what you load up on a

1119
01:02:53,080 --> 01:02:57,000
Speaker 1: bunch of body fat or stored energy before this brooding

1120
01:02:57,040 --> 01:03:00,720
Speaker 1: period and then in the extreme coal old and dark

1121
01:03:01,480 --> 01:03:03,880
Speaker 1: I would imagine it's probably not moving a whole lot

1122
01:03:03,960 --> 01:03:06,080
Speaker 1: during this period. You just sort of like take your

1123
01:03:06,080 --> 01:03:09,800
Speaker 1: metabolism way way down so you can stay in it

1124
01:03:09,880 --> 01:03:14,360
Speaker 1: for the long haul without continuous reinvestments of chemical energy. Yeah,

1125
01:03:14,480 --> 01:03:17,680
Speaker 1: absolutely so. It's not quite the God in his egg,

1126
01:03:17,720 --> 01:03:20,320
Speaker 1: but it is interesting to see like an example of

1127
01:03:20,320 --> 01:03:24,280
Speaker 1: like what remains an egg the longest under natural conditions

1128
01:03:24,360 --> 01:03:27,080
Speaker 1: on our planet. I did not know about this octopus

1129
01:03:27,120 --> 01:03:31,000
Speaker 1: and this is absolutely majestic. Yeah. I mean, the occopus world,

1130
01:03:31,040 --> 01:03:32,680
Speaker 1: as we see time and time again on the show,

1131
01:03:32,760 --> 01:03:35,800
Speaker 1: is just full of wonders, and there's still so much

1132
01:03:35,840 --> 01:03:38,480
Speaker 1: we have to learn about them. Yeah, i'd imagine, especially

1133
01:03:38,480 --> 01:03:41,600
Speaker 1: with these really deep ones. Yeah. All right, well, we're

1134
01:03:41,600 --> 01:03:45,160
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and uh seal the egg chamber shut

1135
01:03:45,320 --> 01:03:47,920
Speaker 1: for this episode. But like I said, there are a

1136
01:03:47,960 --> 01:03:50,480
Speaker 1: lot of eggs out there in the natural world, a

1137
01:03:50,480 --> 01:03:54,680
Speaker 1: lot of unique um egg forms, a lot of unique

1138
01:03:54,720 --> 01:03:58,320
Speaker 1: egg laying strategies. We would love to come back and

1139
01:03:58,360 --> 01:04:01,400
Speaker 1: explore more of these. You have, everyone out there's interested.

1140
01:04:01,440 --> 01:04:03,400
Speaker 1: If you're interested, let us know. If you have your

1141
01:04:03,440 --> 01:04:09,040
Speaker 1: own experiences with eggs of varying species, uh, feel free

1142
01:04:09,080 --> 01:04:11,720
Speaker 1: to write in and tell us about it. Or likewise,

1143
01:04:11,720 --> 01:04:14,040
Speaker 1: if it's just a really cool example of eggs in

1144
01:04:14,040 --> 01:04:16,600
Speaker 1: the natural world or something from science fiction that you

1145
01:04:16,640 --> 01:04:19,000
Speaker 1: think we should know about that we could really pick

1146
01:04:19,080 --> 01:04:21,440
Speaker 1: up and run with, then let us know about that

1147
01:04:21,520 --> 01:04:23,720
Speaker 1: as well. In the meantime, if you want to check

1148
01:04:23,720 --> 01:04:25,400
Speaker 1: out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you

1149
01:04:25,400 --> 01:04:27,840
Speaker 1: can find us wherever you get your podcast and wherever

1150
01:04:27,880 --> 01:04:30,400
Speaker 1: that happens to be. Just make sure you rate, review

1151
01:04:30,440 --> 01:04:34,000
Speaker 1: and subscribe. Huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio

1152
01:04:34,080 --> 01:04:36,960
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get

1153
01:04:36,960 --> 01:04:39,160
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or

1154
01:04:39,160 --> 01:04:41,960
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest topic for the future, to tell

1155
01:04:42,040 --> 01:04:44,440
Speaker 1: us your stories about eggs, or just to say hello,

1156
01:04:44,560 --> 01:04:47,320
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1157
01:04:47,360 --> 01:04:57,480
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind It's

1158
01:04:57,520 --> 01:05:00,400
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart

1159
01:05:00,480 --> 01:05:03,280
Speaker 1: Radio is the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

1160
01:05:03,320 --> 01:05:17,200
Speaker 1: wherever you listening to your favorite shows.