Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to you Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with the second
Speaker 3: part in our series on the biological prodigy that is blubber,
Speaker 3: that subcutaneous blanket of the marine mammal world. A lot
Speaker 3: of ways you could describe as kind of a dynamic
Speaker 3: beer cooler worn underneath the skin of the whale and
Speaker 3: seal alike. The interesting way that it's equipped with a
Speaker 3: hot cold toggle switch that works by opening and closing
Speaker 3: the inner floodgates of blood. So in part one of
Speaker 3: this series, we started off by talking about a couple
Speaker 3: of passages from the novel Moby Dick, One from a
Speaker 3: chapter about whale blubber, where the narrator sort of does
Speaker 3: a mental dissection of the body of the whale and
Speaker 3: then marvels at what he calls this cozy blanketing of
Speaker 3: his body, the blanket underneath the skin by which the
Speaker 3: whale can quote be cool at the equator and keep
Speaker 3: thy blood fluid at the pole. And the book deploys
Speaker 3: this as a metaphor for a way that humans should
Speaker 3: be ideally for how humans should try to cultivate a
Speaker 3: sort of stoicism or a form of mental independence from
Speaker 3: the influence of outside events. But in the literal sense,
Speaker 3: this ability to carry your own weather with you is
Speaker 3: indeed probably the most amazing thing about blubber. Blubber is
Speaker 3: not just fat based insulation, but highly vascularized dynamic insulation,
Speaker 3: which can keep the body core warm in freezing waters,
Speaker 3: but open up those channels of blood flow within the
Speaker 3: fat to dump excess heat when the whale is hot
Speaker 3: from warmer water or from exertion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's no mere coat. If it were a coat,
Speaker 2: it would be some sort of high tech living smart coat.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, it's like it's cyber. It's very cyber. But
Speaker 3: in the last episode we also talked about a bunch
Speaker 3: of the weird fascinating biological characteristics of blubber, its role
Speaker 3: not just in thermal insulation, but energy storage, supporting fasting seasons,
Speaker 3: long migrations, and extreme reproductive challenges for some marine mammals.
Speaker 3: We also talked in particular about probably the blubberiest beast
Speaker 3: in the seas, would you say, Rob the bowhead whale,
Speaker 3: which uses thick, powerful walls of blubber insulation to survive
Speaker 3: despite being a warm blooded mammal in the iciest of
Speaker 3: polar waters. And we're back here today to talk about more.
Speaker 2: As promised, we're going to be getting into the culinary
Speaker 2: uses of blubber a bit here, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, So if you are not from a blubber consuming
Speaker 3: culture yourself, it might come as a surprise to you
Speaker 3: that blubber plays a big role in multiple food traditions
Speaker 3: around the world. One of the most interesting and important
Speaker 3: of ways, which is the cultural use of blubber as
Speaker 3: food known as muktuck, a traditional preparation of whale skin
Speaker 3: and blubber made by the Inuit and other related peoples
Speaker 3: of the Arctic Circle. So I've been reading about this
Speaker 3: a lot today, and it seems like there is a
Speaker 3: wide variety in how people enjoy muktuck. Traditionally it was
Speaker 3: most often eaten raw or frozen, and still today it's
Speaker 3: sometimes eaten raw. I've seen people compare it to, you know,
Speaker 3: a preparation that's kind of like sushi. You know, you
Speaker 3: would have these raw pieces of the whale blubber with
Speaker 3: the skin together, served with a variety of different seasonings
Speaker 3: and condiments according to people's tastes. I've read some people
Speaker 3: talking about eating it with soy sauce, some people with
Speaker 3: HP sauce, you know, the British brown sauce, different types
Speaker 3: of seasonings people like. There are also recipes for pickled muktuck,
Speaker 3: fried muktuck, boiled muktuck, aged, or fermented muktuck. The thing
Speaker 3: that seems to be common between these is the source
Speaker 3: of the product, of course, which is whale blubber, most
Speaker 3: often from beluga or bowhead whales. So it's gonna be
Speaker 3: whale blubber with the skin attached. So that's one thing
Speaker 3: in common. And the other thing that seems to be
Speaker 3: common is the way it is initially processed and cleaned
Speaker 3: after the whale is harvested, and then after that you
Speaker 3: can take it in a lot of different directions. I
Speaker 3: was reading a short article in Mashed by an author
Speaker 3: named Maria Sinto from twenty twenty three that was just
Speaker 3: mentioning the various different flavors that people said muktuk reminded
Speaker 3: them of, and the list is pretty diverse. Quote anything
Speaker 3: from fried eggs to coconut meat to beef jerky and sardines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a pretty wide ray.
Speaker 3: So muktuk is traditionally an important dietary source of vitamin
Speaker 3: C and vitamin D for people living in the Arctic Circle.
Speaker 3: I've seen some sources claim, or at least imply, I
Speaker 3: believe inaccurately, that whale blubber and whale skin are the
Speaker 3: only ways you can get vitamin C in the far North,
Speaker 3: due to the lack of fresh fruit. From what I
Speaker 3: can tell, this is not quite true, as some locally
Speaker 3: available vegetable and animal sources will also supply you with
Speaker 3: vitamin C. Examples could be algae, berries, meat, and various
Speaker 3: organs from other animals, including from whales. But it is
Speaker 3: true that muktuk is a good source of vitamin C,
Speaker 3: I think, especially in the whale's skin, and traditionally for
Speaker 3: the Inuit an important one. I was reading a bit
Speaker 3: about the harvesting of the beluga and the processing of
Speaker 3: the muktuk from an article from September twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: hosted on the website of a marine conservation group called
Speaker 3: Ocean's North, and this article was by an author named
Speaker 3: John Noxana Junior, who is Nuvi alu It beluga hunter
Speaker 3: who lives in a coastal hammet called Tukta Yaktuk, which
Speaker 3: is right up on the coast of the Arctic Sea
Speaker 3: in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Actually got to this
Speaker 3: article backwards because I was first watching a video of
Speaker 3: Noxana showing how to prepare the aged muktuk. So he
Speaker 3: starts with these pieces of a harvested beluga and showing
Speaker 3: like how you clean it, how you cut it, and
Speaker 3: how you soak it to get some of the blood out.
Speaker 3: You go through these multiple stages of processing and then
Speaker 3: eventually you pack it with these strips of fat from
Speaker 3: the whale to age it over time, and it takes
Speaker 3: a lot of care. And in this post on the
Speaker 3: Ocean's North website, Noxana talks about inuvialuate beluga harvesting practices
Speaker 3: for one thing, and how the catch is used to
Speaker 3: feed the community. So you can use the different parts
Speaker 3: of the whale for different things, like you can turn
Speaker 3: the flippers into a grilled meat that he compares to bacon.
Speaker 3: You can soak the large muscle in this solution to
Speaker 3: extract blood and oil so that they can be used
Speaker 3: as meat. And cooking. And this process also includes cleaning
Speaker 3: and preparing these strips of skin and blubber to be
Speaker 3: used as muktuck, and also the process of extracting an
Speaker 3: oil called uzuk, which he says can be used with
Speaker 3: other traditional foods that they harvest, like caribou and fish.
Speaker 3: And so there's this video you can look up. I
Speaker 3: think you'll probably find it if you google, like belugabytes.
Speaker 3: But this video of him preparing aged to muktuck that's
Speaker 3: very centered around I noticed making sure that the pieces
Speaker 3: are clean and that all of the blood has been
Speaker 3: removed from the layers of blubber and skin before it
Speaker 3: gets packed in to age and the necessity of getting
Speaker 3: the blood out. I thought was very interesting because it
Speaker 3: put me back in mind of some of the biological
Speaker 3: facts we were talking about in the last episode, the
Speaker 3: biological characteristics that make blubber unique and so different from
Speaker 3: other fat, the main one being that it is highly vascularized,
Speaker 3: so that it has all of this ability to allow
Speaker 3: throughput of blood for when the whale needs to dump
Speaker 3: excess heat.
Speaker 2: That's right again, the idea that is not just not
Speaker 2: just a coat, but a smart coat loaded with all
Speaker 2: of these veins.
Speaker 3: So anyway, if you kind of like me, are addicted
Speaker 3: to cooking videos and you would like to learn about
Speaker 3: this subject from that point of view, this video is
Speaker 3: a good thing to look up. I think you can
Speaker 3: find it if you google belugabytes aged mooktok m u
Speaker 3: k t uk and I think this will come right up.
Speaker 3: That's the title of the video on YouTube. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: it shows the processing of the whale blubber and skin
Speaker 3: and how the how it's packed for fermentation. Has a
Speaker 3: lot of interesting details about the whole process.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was glancing at this video, and you know, I
Speaker 2: don't currently eat meat, and I I've never had whale
Speaker 2: meat or blubber either. But there's something very appetizing about
Speaker 2: the look of the meat. It has like this really
Speaker 2: like white coloration. You know, it reminds me. I guess
Speaker 2: if I'm going to compare it to anything, I would
Speaker 2: compare it to like calamari, like uncooked kalamari, or maybe
Speaker 2: I've also seen tripe. I guess it's also this this
Speaker 2: the same coloration, but it's almost like a You get
Speaker 2: the sense of almost like a completely clean palate upon
Speaker 2: which to build some sort of culinary creation.
Speaker 3: Though I do want to say that although mukduck is
Speaker 3: clearly one of the most interesting and famous of these
Speaker 3: blubber preparations as food, it's not the only one. People
Speaker 3: eat blubber in a variety of cultures.
Speaker 4: It does.
Speaker 3: It does seem especially far northern culture is you know,
Speaker 3: you will see whale meat and blubber in icelandic culture.
Speaker 3: In I think there are some preparations in Norway or
Speaker 3: Scandinavia generally, so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Whale drife proteins have served as an important
Speaker 2: food source in Norway, i Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands,
Speaker 2: as well as Japan, going back at least as far
Speaker 2: as the Joman period, so we're talking twelve thousand BCE.
Speaker 2: And I think it's interesting because you think about whaling,
Speaker 2: and of course you can set aside more recent industrial era,
Speaker 2: essentially modern whaling, and you get into these various indigenous
Speaker 2: practices and you can still think about them as pretty
Speaker 2: labor intensive hone skills that were involved to go out
Speaker 2: and actually hunt and catch these animals and then bring
Speaker 2: them back for processing. But for a very long time
Speaker 2: for humans, and it's still this way for various opportunistic
Speaker 2: non human carnivores. You have the bounty of the beached
Speaker 2: live whale or a washed up dead whale, which is
Speaker 2: an enormous caloric windfall. So well, before we humans had
Speaker 2: the technology and the skills to actually go after many
Speaker 2: of the whales of the sea, we were taking advantage
Speaker 2: of opportunities like this. You're out there, you can just
Speaker 2: imagine scraping together a living perhaps depending on the season,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to find the nutrients and the calories
Speaker 2: that you need, and then lo and behold, here is
Speaker 2: a dead whale, or here's a whale that is yet
Speaker 2: still alive but is beached, and you don't even have
Speaker 2: to venture out into the water to take advantage of it.
Speaker 2: You might have to fend off other humans or other
Speaker 2: opportunistic carnivores, but you got a shot at least some
Speaker 2: of that whale, meet some of that blubber.
Speaker 3: It is not just the sharks and the seagulls that
Speaker 3: take advantage of a free whale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you might have to deal with a bear or
Speaker 2: some other organisms.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I was referring to us humans, where we
Speaker 3: benefit as well, but I'm sure other Yeah, whatever is
Speaker 3: around that likes the smell is probably going to get
Speaker 3: in there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: I also wanted to revisit a source that we talked
Speaker 3: about in the last episode. That was the Biological Overview
Speaker 3: of blubber in the Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals from Academic Press,
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine. This entry was written by the
Speaker 3: marine biologist Sarah J. Iverson. Last time, we talked about
Speaker 3: the summary of the role of blubber in thermoregulation and
Speaker 3: energy storage, but I wanted to come back to Iverson's
Speaker 3: article briefly to talk about the role of blubber in
Speaker 3: low commotion and moving from one place to the other. Obviously,
Speaker 3: getting around in water presents challenges that we don't have
Speaker 3: to think about much on land. A major example here
Speaker 3: is drag. Drag is the force that opposes the motion
Speaker 3: of an object moving through a fluid like air or water.
Speaker 3: Drag is the main reason it's harder to walk through
Speaker 3: water than it is to walk through air. Though both
Speaker 3: water and air do exert drag on us, water usually
Speaker 3: exerts hundreds of times as much drag as air at
Speaker 3: sea level. Though drag is not static for each type
Speaker 3: of fluid, it's not just like drag in water is
Speaker 3: one number and drag in air is another. Drag varies
Speaker 3: depending on the density of the fluid, the speed you're moving,
Speaker 3: and notably on your shape, which is an interesting thing.
Speaker 3: Two objects of the exact same mass and the exact
Speaker 3: same volume, moving at the exact same speed through the
Speaker 3: exact same fluid can experience dramatically different levels of drag
Speaker 3: depending on how their external surface is shaped and which
Speaker 3: way their bodies are facing when they move. And that
Speaker 3: might sound complicated, but you can actually illustrate it with
Speaker 3: very simple examples. The human body experiences less drag diving
Speaker 3: head first into the water, then it does belly flopping.
Speaker 4: Into the water.
Speaker 3: So same mass, same volume, same water, same everything. It's
Speaker 3: just like how your body is trying, what part of
Speaker 3: your body is facing, the direction you're moving into the
Speaker 3: water hugely changes the amount of drag you experience. I
Speaker 3: assume you have a lot of experience with this in
Speaker 3: your swimming rob.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean it's I mean it's almost kind
Speaker 2: of in the background ones thinking when you're swimming laps
Speaker 2: and so forth. But yeah, I mean you're dealing with
Speaker 2: with drag all the time with your the shape or
Speaker 2: the imperfection of your strokes, the you know, whatever kind
Speaker 2: of swimwear you're wearing, you know, is it something that's
Speaker 2: form fitting and tight or is it baggy like a
Speaker 2: pair of beach swim trunks. You know, And then you know,
Speaker 2: other folks take advantage of it, people who are jogging
Speaker 2: in the water like they're doing so to use that
Speaker 2: drag of as part of their exercise resistance.
Speaker 3: I've never been good enough at swimming that I had
Speaker 3: that I got to the point where thinking about hydrodynamics
Speaker 3: made any sense. I never I've always just got the
Speaker 3: baggy board shorts because like you know, I can't swim
Speaker 3: good enough anyway that it matters. But I guess, yeah,
Speaker 3: once you're moving pretty fast and you're trying to maximize
Speaker 3: how fast you're moving, you really do think about like
Speaker 3: what you're wearing, whether do you wear do you wear
Speaker 3: a cap when you swim?
Speaker 2: I wear a cap, but mainly it's to just keep
Speaker 2: from having to wash my hair each time. Oh I see,
Speaker 2: so yeah, I'm I've never been a fast swimmer, so
Speaker 2: I've never been too concerned with how streamlined I am.
Speaker 2: But you know, sometimes I tend to wear shorts. I mean,
Speaker 2: I wear swim trunks when I when I swim, and
Speaker 2: it can at times you're like, this just seems like
Speaker 2: an undignified way to do things. You know, You've got
Speaker 2: like a draw string and you're having to I have
Speaker 2: to keep retying it, and like so sometimes I feel like,
Speaker 2: especially as the swim trunks get older and are wearing
Speaker 2: out and they need to be replaced, I feel like
Speaker 2: I'm wearing a bag in the swim pool and I
Speaker 2: think to myself, I should really buy something a little
Speaker 2: more streamlined and in a way dignified, but I never
Speaker 2: do well.
Speaker 3: So the same kinds of considerations that people have in
Speaker 3: mind when choosing what to wear when they get in
Speaker 3: the pool trying to swim fast, those same considerations figure
Speaker 3: into evolution. The bodies of fish and other water dwelling
Speaker 3: animals are shaped by evolution to maximize hydrodynamics, so that
Speaker 3: they usually I mean, there might be different considerations in
Speaker 3: play depending on what your ecological niche is. You know,
Speaker 3: maybe you're trying to hide more than move fast or
Speaker 3: something like that. But with a lot of fish and
Speaker 3: marine animals, the deal is that you want to be
Speaker 3: able to glide easily through the water with as little
Speaker 3: drag as possible, allowing you to swim faster or to
Speaker 3: use less energy and movement. Marine mammals need to maximize
Speaker 3: hydrodynamics on their external surface as well, and it turns
Speaker 3: out blubber is a great tool for doing this. This
Speaker 3: might be counterintuitive to people because you might just think
Speaker 3: like having extra blubber sounds like something that would slow
Speaker 3: you down, but no, actually having extra blubber, especially in
Speaker 3: the right place, can make it easier to move through
Speaker 3: water by changing your shape to make it closer to
Speaker 3: the optimally hydrodynamic shape to go diving and swimming. Ierson
Speaker 3: gives some examples of this, and my favorite one that
Speaker 3: she mentions is seal butts. So the blubber at the
Speaker 3: back end of a seal is often thicker than it
Speaker 3: would need to be for insulation alone. So you know
Speaker 3: a seal all around its body, it's going to have
Speaker 3: a layer of blubber. This blubber helps keep its body
Speaker 3: heat in. It has the right amount for insulation, but
Speaker 3: then toward the back end of the body, it's got
Speaker 3: extra Why is this well? Iverson writes that this extra
Speaker 3: blubber quote serves to taper the animal more gradually than
Speaker 3: would be dictated by the musculoskeleton. So, okay, you've got
Speaker 3: the working parts of the seal's body, the bones and
Speaker 3: the muscles needed for movement. If the blubber just wrapped
Speaker 3: those parts at an even thickness all the way around
Speaker 3: the body, what you would end up with is a
Speaker 3: seal butt that narrows and terminates too fast. And rob,
Speaker 3: I've got some illustrations for you to look at here
Speaker 3: in the outline. I don't know if you care to
Speaker 3: comment on these, but for example, I've got the skeleton
Speaker 3: of a harbor seal next to a nice fleshy, plump
Speaker 3: harbor seal with all of the soft tissue wrapped around it.
Speaker 3: You can kind of see that the full fleshy harbor seal,
Speaker 3: it tapers nicely, you know, it kind of like narrows
Speaker 3: to a point, very gradually, going back towards the back flippers.
Speaker 3: But if you look at the skeleton, you've got like
Speaker 3: the big rib cage, and then you've got just a
Speaker 3: very narrow section around the lower area of the spine
Speaker 3: and this pretty narrow looking pelvis, and then the back flippers.
Speaker 3: It looks like it would it would sort of bulge
Speaker 3: in the front and then narrow really fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, the image of the harbor seal too. Once
Speaker 2: we're really focusing in on how streamlined the creature is,
Speaker 2: I really do get a sense of like a commercial
Speaker 2: airline looking at it, you know, it looks like like
Speaker 2: an airline fuselage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, and even much plumper seals. I mean, you
Speaker 3: can see some seals that look very plump with blubber,
Speaker 3: but still they taper at a nice gentle ratio. You know,
Speaker 3: the way that their body narrows as it goes towards
Speaker 3: the very end is a gentle sloping down of the
Speaker 3: thickness of the body. So instead of the way that
Speaker 3: the seal would taper off very quickly if it was
Speaker 3: just wrapped tightly around the bones and the muscles, Iverson
Speaker 3: says that to maximize hydrodynamic efficiency, marine organisms tend to
Speaker 3: be adapted one way or another to have a gradually
Speaker 3: tapering tail end, aka the spindle shape. This reduces the
Speaker 3: wake behind the animal and thus reduces drag. And it's
Speaker 3: not just seals. Whales, porpoises, and dolphins all apparently use
Speaker 3: blubber to thicken and gradually taper the tail stock for
Speaker 3: maximally smooth glide through the water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if I recommend, if you haven't had a
Speaker 2: chance to see a seal or sea lion, especially moving
Speaker 2: through the water, definitely check it out because it can
Speaker 2: be quite impressive. I was in Vancouver with my family
Speaker 2: a few months back when we went to the excellent
Speaker 2: Vancouver Aquarium where they have different varieties of seals and
Speaker 2: sea lions that you can observe from above the water
Speaker 2: and also below the water via some viewing areas. And
Speaker 2: oh man, especially the stellar sea lions, especially the male
Speaker 2: stellar sea lions, such an enormous creature and just moving.
Speaker 2: It's such an incredible click through the water.
Speaker 3: It's quite impressive, especially at hilarious contrast to how they
Speaker 3: sometimes move on land. I mean, different seals are different
Speaker 3: in this sort, but a lot of times you see
Speaker 3: a seal moving on land and it's it's adorably awkward.
Speaker 3: It's kind of scooting along, you know, like like you
Speaker 3: would imagine job of the Hut moves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like big furry hot dogs kind of rolling around,
Speaker 2: flopping around. But then when they get and then they
Speaker 2: can move around. Not to say they can't move in
Speaker 2: a very intimidating fashion. Yes, on the ground when they
Speaker 2: need to, but in the water, of course, they're completely.
Speaker 3: At ease, undulating plump worm sausage, just kind of like
Speaker 3: scooting around on the beach. But then yes, once they
Speaker 3: get into the water, suddenly it's totally different story, graceful, rapid,
Speaker 3: agile movements. They're like, this is a strange comparison, but
Speaker 3: I think of them flitting around like fairies in a movie.
Speaker 2: Mm. Yeah, yeah, I've had a similar experience with with
Speaker 2: other creatures that you think of as being you know,
Speaker 2: from our terrestrial land based view we think of often
Speaker 2: we think of sea turls this way sometimes, and I've
Speaker 2: been in the water where there'll be a sea turl,
Speaker 2: like a smaller variety that suddenly zooms away from me,
Speaker 2: and I'm just a little astounded because it moves with
Speaker 2: such not only speed but ease through the water.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So that's a big part of blubber in the marine
Speaker 3: mammal's body. It's used to help shape the body to
Speaker 3: be its ideal tapering ratio, generally to shape the body
Speaker 3: for maximum hydrodynamic efficiency. In addition to all the other
Speaker 3: things we've talked about energy storage and most importantly thermoregulation,
Speaker 3: but there are a couple of other locomotion possibilities that
Speaker 3: Iverson talks about in this overview. One thing she mentions
Speaker 3: is that there's also some research indicating that cetaceans may
Speaker 3: I think this is less firmly established, it's more speculative,
Speaker 3: but cetaceans may use blubber as a form of biomechanical spring.
Speaker 3: So I went looking elsewhere to try to find more
Speaker 3: detail about this. I found an article in in Science
Speaker 3: from January two thousand by Elizabeth Panissi talking about this research. Essentially,
Speaker 3: the idea is studies conducted in trained dolphins showed how
Speaker 3: blubber may help contribute to a spring like phenomenon that
Speaker 3: increases efficiency in swimming. So, if you look at a
Speaker 3: dolphin or a porpoise, the blubber lining in the mid
Speaker 3: section of the body near the dorsal fin is quite stretchy,
Speaker 3: but the blubber at the end of the tail is
Speaker 3: relatively stiff. And remember we talked about in the last episode,
Speaker 3: blubber has a lot of collagen and elastic fibers that
Speaker 3: make it much bouncier and tougher than regular fat tissue,
Speaker 3: and so this article talks about how researchers and Pabst
Speaker 3: and John Hamilton associated with the University of North Carolina
Speaker 3: at Wilmington found in this research. I think this was
Speaker 3: first published in the nineties that when a dolphin swims, quote,
Speaker 3: the stiffer blubber hardly bends at all, while the blubber
Speaker 3: closest to the dorsal fin bends quite a lot, reaching
Speaker 3: its maximum distortion at the bottom of the tail's downstroke
Speaker 3: and then bouncing back. Because remember, the dolphin's tail does
Speaker 3: not stroke side to side like the tail of a fish,
Speaker 3: but up and down, bending like the spine of a
Speaker 3: land mammal, because of course dolphins ancestors were land mammals.
Speaker 3: All marine mammals evolved from land mammals, so they still
Speaker 3: have that up and down flexing spine, unlike fish and reptiles.
Speaker 3: So as the dolphin swims, its spine flexes up and down,
Speaker 3: and its tail pushes with these powerful downstrokes and then
Speaker 3: flexes back up with the return stroke. And at the
Speaker 3: extreme of these strokes, it seems some extra energy, instead
Speaker 3: of being wasted, is stored in the deformation of the
Speaker 3: elastic mid section of the animal's body, which when it
Speaker 3: springs back from the extreme of the stroke, puts that
Speaker 3: energy back into locomotion. So it's of course it's muscle
Speaker 3: powered undulation of the body where it's flexing and producing
Speaker 3: these strokes, but some amount of that energy may get
Speaker 3: stored in the elastic tension of the body when it
Speaker 3: reaches the extreme and then bounces back, which helps propel
Speaker 3: each stroke. And because of its elastic properties, the idea
Speaker 3: here is blubber itself may be contributing to this. It
Speaker 3: wouldn't be just the blubber that is storing this potential energy,
Speaker 3: but the blubber itself may be contributing, storing and then
Speaker 3: releasing some of this energy along with other parts of
Speaker 3: the body.
Speaker 2: Wow, it makes you wonder where they would be without springs.
Speaker 3: Wait is that an mst short?
Speaker 2: I think it's.
Speaker 4: Gotta be no springs.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, now that don't never wish such a thing,
Speaker 2: don't wish.
Speaker 3: And then one last thing for blubber and locomotion is
Speaker 3: this one's fairly obvious, but buoyancy. This is a huge thing. Obviously,
Speaker 3: marine mammals use blubber to manage buoyancy. Fat tissue is
Speaker 3: generally less dense than water, while lean body mass is
Speaker 3: generally denser than water. And then the ratio between these
Speaker 3: two things within your body helps determine how easily your
Speaker 3: body sinks or floats Iversen writes quote. Studies have demonstrated
Speaker 3: that seals descend faster during diving when they are more
Speaker 3: negatively buoyant than when they are less negatively buoyant, providing
Speaker 3: evidence that seals adjust to their diving behavior in relation
Speaker 3: to seasonal changes in buoyancy. So during the fattening season
Speaker 3: and then the lean season, how buoyant you are in
Speaker 3: the water will actually change because of your relative level
Speaker 3: of blubber compared to the lean muscle and you know
Speaker 3: the rest of the mass of your body. So as
Speaker 3: that buoyancy changes, you will also have to go through
Speaker 3: some behavioral changes. But this could contribute to this could
Speaker 3: be adaptive for the marine mammals in some cases as well.
Speaker 2: All right, Joe, well, are you ready to talk about
Speaker 2: reptile blubber?
Speaker 3: Oh? I cannot wait. You told me you were going
Speaker 3: to go down this avenue and I got so excited.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I didn't know to be excited about
Speaker 2: it because I'll be honest, I was not expecting to
Speaker 2: discuss prehistoric reptiles in an episode on Blubber because, as
Speaker 2: we've been discussing, it's generally considered a hallmark of aquatic mammals.
Speaker 2: But we've discussed convergent evolution before on the show, particularly
Speaker 2: in the way that certain body plans can be found
Speaker 2: in both prehistoric reptiles and mammals, birds and fish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So sometimes there is a common problem presented by environments,
Speaker 3: and different evolutionary lineages get too roughly the same solution
Speaker 3: to that problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like if multiple different creatures had to open cans
Speaker 2: of beans, they would evolve different appendages that carry out
Speaker 2: the same task, and they might appear rather similar to
Speaker 2: each other, and then they might have key differences as well.
Speaker 2: So you can consider the similarities and differences between the
Speaker 2: wing plans of birds, mammalian bats, and reptilian pterosaars. You
Speaker 2: can consider the similarities between the mammalian dolphin and the
Speaker 2: reptilian ichthiosaar. In both cases we see morphology that evolved
Speaker 2: to tack all the engineering and life challenges of locomotion
Speaker 2: through a particular medium. So you know, why not blubber
Speaker 2: as well, makes sense, and this does seem to be
Speaker 2: the case with ichthiosaurs. So these were the ancient Mesozoic,
Speaker 2: largely Mesozoic marine rep tiles whose story so closse closely
Speaker 2: resembles that of the dolphin, the descendants of land based
Speaker 2: organisms that took to the ocean and evolved into effective
Speaker 2: marine predators. Plus again, in many respects, the two organisms
Speaker 2: have a lot in common when it comes to general morphology.
Speaker 2: Like if you look at even just the skeletons of
Speaker 2: a nichthyosar or certainly paleo art depicting them, you get
Speaker 2: the idea that, oh, these were reptilian dolphins, these were
Speaker 2: lizard dolphins, you know, And I think the more evocative
Speaker 2: imagery kind of captures that. You're like, you recognize the
Speaker 2: outline of the thing as dolphin shaped or you know,
Speaker 2: large fish shape. But then when you get closer you
Speaker 2: see the differences. You know, you can you can tell
Speaker 2: there's something about it that stands distinct from any kind
Speaker 2: of mammalian legacy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really is striking how much they look like
Speaker 3: whales and dolphins. I mean, we can be aware of
Speaker 3: their their heritage if your pitch during something in your
Speaker 3: mind and that doesn't match what you're picturing.
Speaker 2: You might be.
Speaker 3: Thinking of applesiosaur, which I think looks more distinctly reptilian
Speaker 3: or more like a dinosaur the ichthiosaur. It has just
Speaker 3: such strong dolphin energy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And we know that the ichthiosaurs, this is an
Speaker 2: order containing various genuses by the way, we're also warm blooded,
Speaker 2: air breathing, and that they bore live young, and based
Speaker 2: on excellent fossil evidence, they may have also benefited from
Speaker 2: the thermal protection of blubber or a blubber like tissue. Johann
Speaker 2: Lindgren from Lund University in Sweden is one of the
Speaker 2: prime researchers on this topic, with a big major publication
Speaker 2: from this research came out in twenty eighteen Soft tissue
Speaker 2: Evidence for homeothermy and crypsis in Jurassic Ichthiosaur, as well
Speaker 2: as some more recent publications that have followed up. This
Speaker 2: is very much an area of continual study as our
Speaker 2: tools and our technology continues to improve in this area.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty two's A review of Ichthyosaur soft tissue with
Speaker 2: implifications for life reconstructions published in Earth Science Reviews. This
Speaker 2: is one that I looked at more extensively, and Lindgren
Speaker 2: and his co authors walk through a number of the
Speaker 2: key points here. So for starters, yes, most of what
Speaker 2: we know about prehistoric reptiles in general comes via the
Speaker 2: inherently incomplete fossil record that consists largely of mineralized hard tissues.
Speaker 2: This is like the basic scenario where you go to
Speaker 2: the museum and you realize that the skeleton of a
Speaker 2: particular dinosaur, for example, is based on a number of
Speaker 2: actual fossil bone finds, and then we've kind of filled
Speaker 2: in the missing pieces based on other finds and also
Speaker 2: just extrapolations about what the rest of its skeletal system
Speaker 2: would look like. However, with the ichtheos are due to
Speaker 2: a combination of biological factors, rapid burial processes, and specific
Speaker 2: and oxic marine environments, we have some great representation of
Speaker 2: these creatures in the fossil record, and it includes not
Speaker 2: only hard tissues but soft tissues as well, and this
Speaker 2: means we're afforded just far more insight into the anatomy
Speaker 2: of these creatures and how they lived, of more so
Speaker 2: than many of the prehistoric reptiles of their age.
Speaker 3: The soft tissue prints are a real gym.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Yeah. There's sort of two major areas for
Speaker 2: key ichthiosr fossil finds. That's Pasidonia Shale and holds out
Speaker 2: in Germany and the Zapota Formation in Patagonia. So the
Speaker 2: first ichthiosaur fossils were described as far back as sixteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine, and the first known discovery of fossilized soft tissue,
Speaker 2: this would be patches of scaleless skins, were made in
Speaker 2: eighteen thirty six. So over time, just in general trying
Speaker 2: to understand what the ichthyosaurs were, paleontologists gradually went from
Speaker 2: this idea that well, maybe they were sort of like
Speaker 2: big crocodiles and they crawled back on land periodically. We
Speaker 2: kind of moved away from this to realize that no,
Speaker 2: they were essentially like modern dolphins. They lived out in
Speaker 2: the water and they were not coming back. They weren't
Speaker 2: crawling up on the land of lay eggs or anything
Speaker 2: like that. But yeah, like I was saying, the fossilized
Speaker 2: soft tissue here has apparently been just amazingly revealing, like
Speaker 2: to the point where we've had we've had an indication
Speaker 2: of what was inside of their guts, inside the abdominal cavity,
Speaker 2: we were able to tell that, in particular, they may
Speaker 2: have lived on a diet of cephalopods. And this in
Speaker 2: addition to just a general body outline as well. So
Speaker 2: when you look at especially modern images of ichthiosaurs, we're
Speaker 2: not just doing the exercise that we do with other
Speaker 2: prehistoric animals. We're like, Okay, we know what the skeleton
Speaker 2: looks like. We're gonna lay some skin over that and
Speaker 2: just sort of imagine it. No, we know with a
Speaker 2: great deal of accuracy that they were their shape like
Speaker 2: the way we think they were shaped. They have this
Speaker 2: dolphin shape to them, or the ichthyosaurs might say, well,
Speaker 2: that's the ichthyosaur shape, not the dolphin shape we had
Speaker 2: it first.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, good point.
Speaker 2: The blubber find came about in twenty eighteen. This was
Speaker 2: a specimen discovered in the Hole Mountain area, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to read the description of it here from the
Speaker 2: paper that the fossilized remains provided evidence of a quote
Speaker 2: layer of condensed, densely laminated organic material enriched in hydrocarbons,
Speaker 2: including potential fatty acid moieties. Situated in between of phosphatized
Speaker 2: fibers and overlain by distinct epidermis and dermal layers, and
Speaker 2: this the is can tend provide strong evidence that they
Speaker 2: were home themic or intothermic like birds and mammals in
Speaker 2: order to sustain the high energy lifestyle they would have
Speaker 2: required in the ancient ocean. So again, it's living essentially
Speaker 2: the life of what a dolphin lives today. So it
Speaker 2: has to be out there as an active hunter in
Speaker 2: the water, chasing after things that are moving around with
Speaker 2: a great deal of speed.
Speaker 3: But that also means it cannot tolerate its body temperature dropping.
Speaker 2: Right right, It needs to maintain yeah, right, it has
Speaker 2: to maintain quote insulating blubber would have kept ichthiosaurs warmed
Speaker 2: during deeper dives into colder mesoplagic zones in pursuit of prey,
Speaker 2: but also help them tolerating excursions into frigid waters at
Speaker 2: higher latitudes, explaining their occurrence in polar regions. Back in
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, there was a BBC article about some of
Speaker 2: this work by Paul Runken, and it has a wonderful
Speaker 2: side by side illustration. Everyone out there can look this
Speaker 2: up at Your Leisure included the image here for you, Joe.
Speaker 2: It shows a comparison between matured modern porpoise blubber and
Speaker 2: skin and the equivalent from the fossil ichtheos are. And
Speaker 2: I'm not going to lie and say that I'm well
Speaker 2: versed in interpreting this kind of kind of imagery, but
Speaker 2: it's you know, everything's labeled here, and you know, side
Speaker 2: by side, I can see it, you know. And I
Speaker 2: should say that the contemporary blubber images remind me of
Speaker 2: some of these other blobber images we've been looking at,
Speaker 2: particularly culinary preparations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder what the what people would say the
Speaker 3: ichtheos or blubber tastes like I'm looking at this and
Speaker 3: I'm trying to see is there any indication whether it's
Speaker 3: vascularized in the same way that marine mammal blubber is,
Speaker 3: you know, infused with all of these blood vessels that
Speaker 3: can sort of toggle on the blood gates, so to speak,
Speaker 3: when the animal is overheating, or whether it's it's less
Speaker 3: dynamic than the installation of modern marine mammals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think a lot of these answers. They stress
Speaker 2: in these articles that as the tools of molecular paleontology
Speaker 2: continue to improve, we're going to be able to tell
Speaker 2: even more about a fossil soft tissue fossil remains like this,
Speaker 2: and tell yeah, just how robust was the quote unquote
Speaker 2: blubber of the achthiosar compared to the blubber of modern
Speaker 2: day aquatic mammals.
Speaker 3: That we're getting a picture of the blubber of an
Speaker 3: animal that went extinct to this long ago is amazing
Speaker 3: on its own. Just that you're getting this level of
Speaker 3: granular detail on the soft tissue is pretty remarkable.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When I first was doing some searches and this
Speaker 2: came out, I was like, that doesn't sound right, this
Speaker 2: sound this this Yeah, prehistoric reptile blubber is surely not
Speaker 2: a thing. But lo and behold here it is. Now.
Speaker 2: I want to move on to one last topic here,
Speaker 2: but it connects because none of this concerning ichthiosaur blubber
Speaker 2: is really all that shocking when you consider that penguins,
Speaker 2: avian descendants of the reptilian dinosaurs also have blubber of
Speaker 2: a sort generally referred to as blubber. But as we'll discuss,
Speaker 2: there are some distinct differences between the quote unquote blubber
Speaker 2: of the penguin and the blubber of a whale. Joe,
Speaker 2: you've seen a penguin before, right, a few times? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so you can agree that they have a little bit
Speaker 2: of that chalk going on. We've been discussing. They have
Speaker 2: a little bit of a blubbery body build that certainly
Speaker 2: aids them well when they're swimming underwater.
Speaker 3: I mean, we were just talking about the beautiful chonkiness
Speaker 3: of the seal earlier and the way that that translates
Speaker 3: to actually almost Elvin Grace in swimming. There's a similar
Speaker 3: thing going on with the penguin. It's like the bird
Speaker 3: version of that chonky grace. And for the record, my
Speaker 3: daughter thinks penguins are adorable, and so I think the
Speaker 3: chonkiness helps there.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Penguins, of course are pretty much synonymous with cold environments
Speaker 2: and cold waters. They of course can and do live
Speaker 2: in less chilly areas as well, and also just they
Speaker 2: can live much further north than the Antarctic. One example,
Speaker 2: of course is the Galapagos penguin, the only penguin found
Speaker 2: north of the equator, though the waters of the Glapgos
Speaker 2: tend to be quite cold as well due to the
Speaker 2: Humboldt and Cromwell currents. But on the whole, yes, we
Speaker 2: have a variety of bird here that has evolved to
Speaker 2: thrive in cold and semi aquatic conditions, and you know
Speaker 2: it needs to dive into the water and go down
Speaker 2: to certain depths in order to obtain its food.
Speaker 3: And we talked in the last episode about mammals that
Speaker 3: do not have blubber as such, they don't have like
Speaker 3: vas uscularized marine mammal blubber, but they still do rely
Speaker 3: on a lot of fat as insulation. One example would
Speaker 3: be the polar bear, which, despite some differences, you could
Speaker 3: think of as having some ecological similarities to the penguin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's very fair. That's a very fair comparison,
Speaker 2: and we'll get into exactly how this plays out here.
Speaker 2: I was reading a twenty twenty two New York Times
Speaker 2: article titled How Penguins Beat the Heat and Went South
Speaker 2: by Jack Demsia, and the author here points out that
Speaker 2: some prehistoric penguins lived in tropical waters off the coast
Speaker 2: of Peru. Others had long legs and might have stood
Speaker 2: seven feet tall, but as they pushed south into Chilier waters,
Speaker 2: various adaptations kicked into eid them, and we've been able
Speaker 2: to study these changes by looking at their genes. And
Speaker 2: these include the transition of wing into flipper, the increase
Speaker 2: of low oxygen tolerance for deeper dies, boosted immunity, and
Speaker 2: that ability to pack on blubber or blubber like tissue. Now,
Speaker 2: blubber is not their only adaptation to cope with cold
Speaker 2: weather and cold water. And this is where we get
Speaker 2: back to that polar bear comparison, because penguins also have
Speaker 2: a dense layer of feathers, and they're so dense. If
Speaker 2: you didn't know what you were looking at, if you
Speaker 2: did not know that a penguin was a bird, you
Speaker 2: might look at it and think of it as fur.
Speaker 2: It almost reads more as fur.
Speaker 3: It doesn't look like feathers to me, at least in
Speaker 3: most cases. Maybe in some varieties. But the penguin I'm
Speaker 3: picturing in my mind looks fairly smooth to the touch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's because of the density, more feathers per
Speaker 2: square inch than almost any other bird, layered and oiled
Speaker 2: and trapping that crucial layer of air insulation that we
Speaker 2: referenced in the last episode. You know that serves this
Speaker 2: is just a little barrier to help keep them insulated.
Speaker 2: So and more on that in just a second. But
Speaker 2: their circula story systems also evolve to conserve heat by
Speaker 2: better warming the cold blood that's returning from their extremities,
Speaker 2: and they also adapted to form these rotating huddles which
Speaker 2: we've all seen in documentaries where some varieties of penguins
Speaker 2: will share their body heat but also keep cycling around
Speaker 2: so that the penguins on the outside also get some
Speaker 2: time closer into the inside. So penguin blubber here. Again,
Speaker 2: it's not quite the same, but one of the reasons
Speaker 2: it's not quite the same is that it's essentially a
Speaker 2: second line of defense against the cold right behind their
Speaker 2: specialized feathers. So it's primarily the feathers, but then especially
Speaker 2: during deeper dives, this is going to cause this is
Speaker 2: going to you know, the deeper you dive, you're going
Speaker 2: to get greater pressure, and that pressure is going to
Speaker 2: collapse the layers of the feathers, and this is where
Speaker 2: the blubber really comes in and does its role. And
Speaker 2: so it's you get into the texture of the blubber.
Speaker 2: And actually, you know, comparing penguin blubber to mammalian blubber,
Speaker 2: and rather than the sophisticated, fibrous and highly regulated organ
Speaker 2: that is mammal blubber, penguin blubber is more it's a
Speaker 2: little simpler in its structure. It's still it's crucial again,
Speaker 2: but it is more of a subcutaneous fat.
Speaker 3: Layer, less of the vascularization exactly the tough collagen kind
Speaker 3: of meshing.
Speaker 2: Right, because they have not abandoned the feathers. The feathers
Speaker 2: are still doing most of the work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you can see that also still with some mammals.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is why it's good comparison to polar
Speaker 3: bears because some people have said, you know, creatures, you have,
Speaker 3: like you know, whales that have fully made the transition
Speaker 3: from terrestrial mammal to aquatic mammal, and then you've got
Speaker 3: polar bears and that are you know, that are somewhere
Speaker 3: on the beginning of that journey kind of you know,
Speaker 3: they're they're more fully terrestrial adapted, but they they you know,
Speaker 3: in millions of years, their descendants could be fully aquatic mammals.
Speaker 3: And then somewhere in between you have seals, which are
Speaker 3: basically they're you know, they're halfway there to being fully aquatic,
Speaker 3: but they still many seals do still have fur, and
Speaker 3: that you know, so they're using both blubber and fur
Speaker 3: at that point. But there is an evolutionary transition that
Speaker 3: has been documented from fur to blubber in these mammals,
Speaker 3: and so you can see a similar thing going on
Speaker 3: here with the feathers to to fat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it can get reasonably thick. With the penguins.
Speaker 2: I was reading the for the Emperor Penguin. The blubber
Speaker 2: layer can be three to four centimeters or one point
Speaker 2: two to one point six inches thick. Now, I know
Speaker 2: a number of you are asking, well, what does it
Speaker 2: taste like? Well, I looked into this a little bit.
Speaker 2: So first of all, penguin fat can be used to
Speaker 2: create oil, so in the same way that whale blubber
Speaker 2: has been used to create oil, certainly penguins have been
Speaker 2: exploited for the same purpose. But then when it comes
Speaker 2: to the eating of penguins, just penguin meat in general,
Speaker 2: they are like basically two ways to look at it.
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, you have the accounts of
Speaker 2: Antarctic explorers, and then you also have indigenous practices, you know,
Speaker 2: people who for much longer lived within the range of
Speaker 2: different penguin species. The Antarctic explorers, the generally Europeans, would
Speaker 2: sometimes eat penguin meat out of desperation, but pretty much
Speaker 2: across the board disliked it strongly thought it was oily
Speaker 2: and fishy. Meanwhile, the indigenous groups on the whole would
Speaker 2: eat penguin meat as a supplementary but not primary soon
Speaker 2: a food source, and this was due to a few
Speaker 2: different factors, slow yield, limited range involved, but also potentially
Speaker 2: taste of versions as well. So I didn't go too
Speaker 2: deep on this, but it seems like the best recipes
Speaker 2: on either the indigenous end or the European end of
Speaker 2: the spectrum, they all seem to lean heavily on masking
Speaker 2: the natural flavor of the meat. So it's pretty much
Speaker 2: always been considered a famine food or supplementary food source,
Speaker 2: depending on the availability of other protein sources, with the
Speaker 2: eggs being much more desired than the meat of the
Speaker 2: actual bird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to humans at least, I'd imagine if you're like
Speaker 3: a leopard seal, they're great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I'm about to lean far more heavily on
Speaker 2: the European accounts.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find a good indigenous account of describing the
Speaker 2: treatment or impression of penguin meat. But in this one
Speaker 2: we have an individual who is both a harsh critic
Speaker 2: of penguin meat but also perhaps its greatest defender among
Speaker 2: European voices.
Speaker 4: And I read yeah, And.
Speaker 2: I was reading about this in Peter Smith's twenty twelve
Speaker 2: Smithsonian Magazine article A Different Kind of Dinner Bell in
Speaker 2: the Antarctic. This concerns doctor Frederick Cook, who served as
Speaker 2: a physician on the Belgica Expedition eighteen ninety seven through
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety nine. This was when the ship was trapped
Speaker 2: in the Antarctic ice, which, of course that means that
Speaker 2: it put a great strain on the cruise ability to survive.
Speaker 2: And during this time he observed that penguin meat tasted
Speaker 2: like quote, a piece of beef odoriferous codfish and a
Speaker 2: canvas back duck roasted together in a pot with blood
Speaker 2: and cod liver oil for sauce.
Speaker 3: Is that good or bad?
Speaker 2: I think he means it to be bad. And yet,
Speaker 2: as the ship's crew faced the as yet not fully
Speaker 2: understood threat of scurvy during the harsh winter, he landed
Speaker 2: on penguin meat as their deliverer. And I think part
Speaker 2: of this too was based on, you know, observations of
Speaker 2: how indigenous peoples lived in extreme regions. And so again
Speaker 2: he did not have nice things to say about the flavor,
Speaker 2: but ultimately ended up prescribing it to crew members and saying,
Speaker 2: what you need is some meat of the penguin. And
Speaker 2: this is where the dinner bell part comes in. They
Speaker 2: learned that they could summon penguins and seals to their vessel,
Speaker 2: apparently by playing the cornett. Yeah, and Cook himself wrote
Speaker 2: about this, saying, quote, at meal time, a cornet is
Speaker 2: used to call them in together. And the penguins, it
Speaker 2: seems also like the music, for when they hear it,
Speaker 2: they make directly for the ship and remain as long
Speaker 2: as the music lasts, but leave once it ceases. In
Speaker 2: this manner, we have only to wait and seize our
Speaker 2: visitor to obtain penguin steaks, which are just at present
Speaker 2: the prize of the menu.
Speaker 3: That's I'm feeling so many things. That's sad and funny
Speaker 3: and degree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it becomes the prize of the menu
Speaker 2: when it is one of the only things on the
Speaker 2: menu obviously, but also yeah, a key to their survival. Again,
Speaker 2: they were consuming it as a survival meat. The author
Speaker 2: here of that Smithsonian piece also notes that Ernest Shackleton
Speaker 2: backed him up on this, saying, yeah, yeah, the penguins
Speaker 2: come when you play the cornette, but also observed that
Speaker 2: if you play the bagpipes drives them away. So do
Speaker 2: not try and lureen penguins to eat with a set
Speaker 2: of bagpipes. That's the lesson.
Speaker 3: Should we have some kind of stinger or tag for
Speaker 3: when our biology discussions inevitably turned to what does it
Speaker 3: taste like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, it's kind of inevitable, you know,
Speaker 2: omnivores that we are. That is one way that we
Speaker 2: have always connected with the natural world. What happens when
Speaker 2: we eat it? Is it good? Is it bad? Does
Speaker 2: it kill us? Does it make us stronger? The answer
Speaker 2: varies tremendously, and you mean to a large extent, like
Speaker 2: the human stomach, the human taste buds. These were all
Speaker 2: one of the first laboratories by which we began to
Speaker 2: understand the natural world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and as we've talked about in other contexts. It
Speaker 3: remains a kind of crude chemistry laboratory for the geologists,
Speaker 3: for the chemists sometimes when they don't have other equipment.
Speaker 3: Not recommending people taste things to discern their chemical properties,
Speaker 3: but people can do this and do sometimes. Yeah, see
Speaker 3: our old Ignobel episode about licking rocks if you want
Speaker 3: to learn. All right, does that do it for Blubber
Speaker 3: Part two?
Speaker 2: I think it does. Yeah, that's Blubber Part two. But
Speaker 2: we'd love to hear from everyone out there. You have
Speaker 2: additional insight on any of this, be it the meat
Speaker 2: of the penguin or the blubber of the whale, or
Speaker 2: how chonky prehistoric bosrs were, whatever the case, right in,
Speaker 2: we would love to hear from you. Just a reminder
Speaker 2: to everyone out there. The Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes
Speaker 2: and Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Wednesday's we run a
Speaker 2: short form episode, and on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird film.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
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