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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

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Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 2: we're continuing Cat Week here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 2: If you are not aware, it is Cat Week, a

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Speaker 2: celebration of cats in our own weird stuff to Blow

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Speaker 2: your Mind and eventually weird house cinema manner. In this episode,

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Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about, to a large extent,

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Speaker 2: the domestication of cats. And when we think about the

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Speaker 2: oldest human civilizations to value the domestic cat, I think

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Speaker 2: a lot of us tend to, in many ways rightfully

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Speaker 2: think about the ancient Egyptians. After all, the ancient Egyptians

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Speaker 2: held the cat in high esteem, living with them, depicting

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Speaker 2: them in their art, casting gods and their likeness, and

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Speaker 2: of course sometimes mummifying their remains. So you'd be quite excused,

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Speaker 2: I think of you came into this episode assuming that

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Speaker 2: that ancient egypt provided us with the earliest evidence of

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Speaker 2: domesticated cats, and in fact up until I mean reasonably recently,

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Speaker 2: like the early two thousands, but certainly recent enough that

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Speaker 2: it occurred on the other end of a lot of

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Speaker 2: our schooling used to this was exactly what was assumed

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Speaker 2: based on evidence from something like thirty six hundred years

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Speaker 2: ago concerning the domestication of the Near Eastern and Egyptian

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Speaker 2: populations of the African wildcat. But then in the early

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Speaker 2: two thousands, as we'll be discussing, new archaeological findings pointed

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Speaker 2: researchers to a new possible location for the oldest known

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Speaker 2: evidence of domesticated cats, and that is on the Isle

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Speaker 2: of Cyprus. For those of you trying to pull up

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Speaker 2: the map in your own head, or perhaps you know,

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Speaker 2: opening another window on whatever device you maybe I'll save

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Speaker 2: you a trip and a little brain power. The Mediterranean

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Speaker 2: island of Cyprus is the third largest Mediterranean island after

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Speaker 2: Sicily and Sardinia, and it was first settled by hunter

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Speaker 2: gatherers approximately thirteen thousand years ago, and it's been uniquely

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Speaker 2: situated over the millennia to experience cultural exchange with Europe, Africa,

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Speaker 2: and Asia, shaping the Cypriot culture. And so, as we'll discuss,

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Speaker 2: it's possible that evidence of domesticated cats does indeed go

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Speaker 2: back some nine five hundred years and of course then

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Speaker 2: some maybe two ancient humans in.

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Speaker 3: Cyprus, that's right. But before we get to the archaeological

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Speaker 3: evidence for cats as human companions on the island of Cyprus,

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Speaker 3: I thought we should briefly look at the question how

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Speaker 3: did cats become domesticated? Where does the cat come from?

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Speaker 3: So my main source here is a paper by Atoni

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Speaker 3: at all Claudio Atoni and co authors published in the

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Speaker 3: journal Nature, Ecology and Evolution in twenty seventeen, and it's

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Speaker 3: called the Palaeogenetics of Cat dis bersail in the Ancient World.

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Speaker 3: The top line here is the discovery. And this wasn't

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Speaker 3: always known because there are a number of different wildcats

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Speaker 3: sub varieties you find around the world. There you know,

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Speaker 3: there's a European wild cat, there is a Central Asian wildcat,

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Speaker 3: different wildcats you find all over the place, and so

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Speaker 3: it was not always known where the domesticated cat came from.

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Speaker 3: But now researchers can say with a pretty high degree

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Speaker 3: of confidence that all domesticated cats are thought to descend

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Speaker 3: from an original population of wildcats native to North Africa

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Speaker 3: and Southwest Asia, known as Felis silvestros libica, or the

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Speaker 3: African wildcat. So the cats that are domestic cats around

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Speaker 3: the world originally come from the subgroup of the African wildcats,

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Speaker 3: and there appear to have been two waves of domestication.

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Speaker 3: So the authors of this paper a tony at all

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Speaker 3: that they studied cat DNA collected from all around the

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Speaker 3: globe and they determined through genetic analysis that cat domestication

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Speaker 3: started first in the Fertile Crescent, that's the earliest time

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Speaker 3: in the Neolithic period, that's the last part of the

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Speaker 3: Stone Age, and then it accelerated in Egypt in the

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Speaker 3: first millennium BCE.

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Speaker 2: So we can still basically look at our household cats

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Speaker 2: and think think of them as being descendants of the

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Speaker 2: goddess Bastett, right or bast So there's a lot of

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Speaker 2: Egyptian heritage to the domestic cat species.

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Speaker 3: It does seem like ancient Egyptian civilization does contribute hugely

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Speaker 3: to the domestic cats of today. But ancient Egypt was

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Speaker 3: not the first time cats were domesticated. That seems to

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Speaker 3: be in the Fertile Crescent a little bit earlier in

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Speaker 3: the in the Neolithic period.

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Speaker 2: But maybe the last time they would be domesticated. Because

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Speaker 2: it seems like we're done, it seems like we're at

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Speaker 2: a good, good level with the current domestication of the

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Speaker 2: of the of the common healthcat.

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Speaker 3: I think they're here to stay. But speaking of the

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Speaker 3: idea that a domestication attempt of an animal could not

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Speaker 3: stick around, I was reading about an interesting variation in

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Speaker 3: a paper by an author that we'll come back to

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Speaker 3: several times in this episode. A paper by Jean Denis

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Speaker 3: Vignert and a bunch of co authors from PLUS one

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Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen called earliest domestic cats in China identified

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Speaker 3: as leopard cat. So in this paper the authors agree

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Speaker 3: that all domestic cats today are descended from the African wildcat,

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Speaker 3: so it's not a dispute about like the leopard cat

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Speaker 3: being a part of the genetic heritage of any cat

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Speaker 3: that you would find in a house today. Instead, this

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Speaker 3: paper documents archaeological remains from China dating from between fifty

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Speaker 3: five hundred to forty nine hundred years before present, showing

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Speaker 3: what appeared to me to be domesticated cats buried in

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Speaker 3: human contexts, so found in human storage areas or dwellings,

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Speaker 3: and analysis of the bones of these animals shows that

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Speaker 3: these are not African wildcats, but rather from a historically

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Speaker 3: short lived attempt to domesticate the Asian leopard cat and

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Speaker 3: now an extant wild animal.

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Speaker 2: Wow, that is fascinating. Yeah, I mean you think about

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Speaker 2: we tend to think about the domestication success stories, and

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Speaker 2: you know, with the cat, I think we're still figuring

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Speaker 2: out how successful that was. I know, I had my

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Speaker 2: own household cat just pee all over the place this morning,

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Speaker 2: So yeah, it definitely gave me some time for a

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Speaker 2: little A few sidebars. As I was finishing the research

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Speaker 2: for this episode, it's like, have we reached a good

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Speaker 2: point with this domestication. I'm not sure, but clearly there

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Speaker 2: are cases where there's even less of a match and

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Speaker 2: where not enough lines up in short enough time for

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Speaker 2: the domestication to really take hold.

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Speaker 3: Well yeah, I mean I guess you're sort of asking

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Speaker 3: this question now, but yeah, it raises the question like

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Speaker 3: what counts as domesticated? Like how sticky does the relationship

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Speaker 3: have to be between the humans and these animals for

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Speaker 3: it to really be domesticated, Because yeah, in the case

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Speaker 3: of these semi domesticated or proto domesticated leopard cats, the

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Speaker 3: practice appears to have died out. There's not like a widespread,

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Speaker 3: you know, population of domesticated leopard cat descendants.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, imagine there are a number of different elements,

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Speaker 2: like the cultural attachment, religious significance, and then just is

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Speaker 2: it useful? Like are they serving a purpose in the

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Speaker 2: household or on you know, or on the land surrounding

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Speaker 2: the household? Are they killing the enemies of man? And

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Speaker 2: so forth?

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Speaker 3: I have to wonder. I don't have direct evidence of this,

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Speaker 3: but I have to wonder if the spread of the

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Speaker 3: domesticated African wildcat descendant could have possibly replaced, you know,

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Speaker 3: previous attempts to domesticate cats or cat like animals.

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Speaker 2: That's a good point, yeah, because if you're kind of

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Speaker 2: like putting in a lot of work to try and

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Speaker 2: domesticate these leopards and then someone shows up with something

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Speaker 2: maybe a little more, a little more closely aligned to

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Speaker 2: what we think of as a modern house cat, yeah,

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Speaker 2: you might be inclined to think, well, heck, let's just

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Speaker 2: go at this.

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Speaker 4: This model seems to work.

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Speaker 3: So how did domestic cats come to cover the entire globe?

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Speaker 3: Since the African wild cat is native to North Africa

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Speaker 3: and the Middle East, how did it spread all over

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Speaker 3: the world? A TONI had all determined by looking at

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Speaker 3: DNA from cat remains, especially in major ancient port cities.

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Speaker 3: That domestic cats spread around the world on ships, it

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Speaker 3: had to have been by sea travel that they made

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Speaker 3: it from place to place and eventually basically to the

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Speaker 3: whole world. And they argue, I think this makes a

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Speaker 3: lot of sense. They were probably kept aboard ships to

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Speaker 3: kill rats and mice that would otherwise get into food

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Speaker 3: stashes during transport. And this will be a theme. Actually.

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Speaker 3: You know, it's funny how a lot of people listening

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Speaker 3: probably today do not think of the cat as like

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Speaker 3: a functional or working animal. It's a companion animal. You

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Speaker 3: have a cat, you know, to be friends with it,

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Speaker 3: you know, to feel nice when you're petting it and

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Speaker 3: taking care of it, to feel good, just you know,

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Speaker 3: getting that reciprocal relationship of companionship and mutual enjoyment with

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Speaker 3: another creature. But for much of history the cat had

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Speaker 3: a job to do.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, And you know, I don't know, I still think

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Speaker 2: about this. I think of my cat primarily as a

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Speaker 2: companion animal. But you know, there are times where you know,

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Speaker 2: live I live near some railroad tracks, there's always there's

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Speaker 2: some there are rodents out there, and so it does

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Speaker 2: cross my mind from time to time. That she is

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Speaker 2: also kind of like the last line of defense that

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Speaker 2: I Odin's center the house. It's her job to take

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Speaker 2: to take care of it, and if not, I will

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Speaker 2: satirize her with poetry so hard.

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Speaker 3: Well, you better be careful you don't summon the King

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Speaker 3: of Cats.

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Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I'm not going to drag him into this.

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Speaker 2: I'm gonna just target Mochi, my cat with that.

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Speaker 3: Oh right, I forgot what Shaun chan Jin was not.

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Speaker 3: Did he not satirize cats hard enough to invite the

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Speaker 3: King of cats just like to protect them on the

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Speaker 3: Did he actually have to satirize the King of cats himself?

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Speaker 2: He went straight to the King of cats because he's like,

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Speaker 2: it's like cats are under his jurisdiction and cats have

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Speaker 2: failed me and not eating the mice that ate this

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Speaker 2: egg that I was going to eat. Yeah, yeah, okay,

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Speaker 2: he went straight to the top.

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Speaker 3: You run in his mouth about the boss. That's a

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Speaker 3: bad idea. Oh but this all brings us back to

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Speaker 3: the connection between cats and the island of Cyprus and

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Speaker 3: the Mediterranean, because, as you were alluding to earlier, Rob,

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Speaker 3: it seems that our earliest archaeological evidence of cat human

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Speaker 3: companionship may be in an ancient Stone age grave on

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Speaker 3: the island of Cyprus.

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Speaker 2: That's right, And so we're gon we're gonna skip over

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Speaker 2: Egyptian cats here and mostly focus on Cyprus. But I

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Speaker 2: do want to note that we could easily come back

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Speaker 2: in another episode, maybe next Cat Week, maybe sooner, and

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Speaker 2: discuss the ancient Egyptians and their cats. But again, this

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Speaker 2: was an important find. This really changed the way we

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Speaker 2: understood humanity's relationship with domesticated or nearly domesticated felines. And

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Speaker 2: again this is the work of French scientists Jean Denis

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Speaker 2: Vignier of the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris,

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Speaker 2: along with his co authors. The big initial paper was

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Speaker 2: Early Taming of the Cat in Cyprus, published in two

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Speaker 2: thousand and four in the journal Science, and it essentially

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Speaker 2: set the clock back, I believe, like a good five

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Speaker 2: thousand years on what we understood about humanity's relationship with

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Speaker 2: a domesticated cat. Yeah, so this is essentially how it

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Speaker 2: went down, And Joe, we were both looking at the

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Speaker 2: same sources here, so jump in if you want to

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Speaker 2: expand on anything that I'm mentioning here. But essentially the

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Speaker 2: researchers discovered a mostly complete skeleton. And I want to

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Speaker 2: add the caveat that it seems to have been buried

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Speaker 2: in complete form. It's just parts of the skeleton were

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Speaker 2: damaged at some point or another.

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Speaker 3: And the fact that it's in complete form is important

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Speaker 3: for reasons. We'll get into it in a minute.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. Yes, so mostly complete skeleton of an eight month

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Speaker 2: old cat next to the nine five hundred year old

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Speaker 2: grave of a human being. And this grave was located

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Speaker 2: in the Shiluru Combas archaeological site. This is a pre

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Speaker 2: Pottery Neolithic b site. I'm to understand this was a

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Speaker 2: settlement occupied from the end of the ninth till the

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Speaker 2: end of the eighth millennium BCE. And this is in

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Speaker 2: southern Cyprus, a site that had been first excavated just

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Speaker 2: a decade earlier. And this would have been one of

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Speaker 2: the Neolithic people that had traveled from the mainland bringing

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Speaker 2: crops and livestock to Cyprus, not individually one of the people,

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Speaker 2: I mean more broadly, like the people the strain of

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Speaker 2: humanity that came to the island.

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Speaker 3: Right, so, sometime previous in the previous few thousand years,

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Speaker 3: there had been settlers from the mainland. Originally occupants of

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Speaker 3: somewhere in the Fertile Crescent were Stone Age humans that

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Speaker 3: got in boats and made their way to the island.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So this particular human that was buried again

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Speaker 2: alongside this cat was apparently about thirty when they died,

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Speaker 2: and they were buried with various items, which was always

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Speaker 2: interesting to see what kind of items they were buried with,

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Speaker 2: or at least the ones we know about because they've

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Speaker 2: survived in one form or another. And it consisted of

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Speaker 2: a marine shell, a stone pendant, a flint scraper, two

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Speaker 2: small polished axes and those was damaged, a pumice stone,

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Speaker 2: a fragment of ochre, a large flint piercing tool, and

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Speaker 2: then several flint blades, so a lot of utilitarian tools

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Speaker 2: on their body. They'd probably been buried in a bag

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Speaker 2: placed in a circular pit that also contained various additional

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Speaker 2: shells and stones. The cat's grave was oval shaped and

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Speaker 2: about fifteen centimeters deep. The body was seemingly again complete

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Speaker 2: at burial, though parts of it were destroyed I believe

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Speaker 2: by plowing, because it was like the uppermost bones that

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Speaker 2: had been damaged here and the cat was laid out

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Speaker 2: on its side, head to the west and back to

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Speaker 2: the south. That happens to be the exact same positioning

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Speaker 2: as the human buried beside it. The cause of death

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Speaker 2: for the feline could not be determined, but evidence suggested

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Speaker 2: that it had not been cut, had not been burned,

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Speaker 2: its body had not been opened up. Gender of the

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Speaker 2: cat was unknown due to missing or destroyed pelvic bone pieces, So.

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Speaker 3: We don't know if the cat died of nashe causes

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Speaker 3: or was killed, but the evidence of its death was

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Speaker 3: not clear.

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Speaker 2: Right, It's entirely possible that it could have been killed

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Speaker 2: as a sacrifice and buried alongside the human, but there's

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Speaker 2: no evidence that that happened. There's no evidence that that

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Speaker 2: didn't happen. And you know, it's not like either possibility

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Speaker 2: really alters the argument for this animal being important to

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Speaker 2: the person who's buried with I mean, either way, it

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Speaker 2: has a privileged position alongside the human, or vice versa,

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Speaker 2: the human has a privileged position alongside the cat.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and the really important thing here being that

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Speaker 3: it's clear to the archaeologists that this cat was intentionally

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Speaker 3: buried on purpose. This isn't it's not a situation where like, oh,

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Speaker 3: a cat was running around and it just happened to

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Speaker 3: die near the grave, and they're mistaking it for and

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Speaker 3: for there were several reasons for thinking that this is

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Speaker 3: an intentional burial alongside the human, not just the proximity

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Speaker 3: it is right beside the other grave, but also you

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Speaker 3: mentioned the fact that the cat's skeleton was articulated, maybe

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Speaker 3: like the joints and were still connected and intact.

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Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, and Vigne also points out that the mere

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Speaker 2: fact that it was buried like this articulated almost entirely intact,

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Speaker 2: if not entirely intact, it means it was likely a

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Speaker 2: tame species because when wild animals were rarely buried during

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Speaker 2: this time, the skeletons were generally rather incomplete. So just

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Speaker 2: everything about the way this creature has been buried, in

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Speaker 2: the way that, the way it's positioned, and so forth,

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Speaker 2: it seems to indicate that this animal was likely domesticated

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Speaker 2: to some degree. And we should also note that these

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Speaker 2: findings Vigner backs up by pointing to various other cat

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Speaker 2: remains found at least in pieces elsewhere on the island,

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Speaker 2: and also the idea. He mentions the idea that cats

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Speaker 2: had special status among these individuals is also backed up

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Speaker 2: by discovery of figurines in neighboring regions from this time,

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Speaker 2: as well as the one that was found at the

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Speaker 2: same archaeological site in Cyprus, though from a slightly earlier time.

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Speaker 2: So everything seems in place here to suggest. Yeah, a

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Speaker 2: tame cat, a cat that is that is considered close

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Speaker 2: to humans for one reason or another. We'll get into

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Speaker 2: more about, you know, some of those reasons. And and

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Speaker 2: also by a culture that that values the cat enough

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Speaker 2: to create its likeness. Again, maybe for religious purposes, maybe

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Speaker 2: you know, for some other purpose, but they certainly held

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Speaker 2: the cat in the high esteem.

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Speaker 3: Now, another thing that would be interesting to know is

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Speaker 3: do we know what kind of cat this was?

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Speaker 2: Yes? Yeah, So Vigner contends that that the quote the

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Speaker 2: post cranial and cranial measurements fall in the upper half

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Speaker 2: of the range variation of size of the western Asian

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Speaker 2: Felis Silvestris livica. So this does seem to be the

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Speaker 2: African wildcat. And I'm only just now realizing that the

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Speaker 2: cartoon cat Sylvester gets its name probably from this. Well.

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Speaker 3: I think the name Sylvester means like from the forest

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Speaker 3: or of the woods, though I assume that's what it

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Speaker 3: means in the context of this cat's name as well

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Speaker 3: the cartoon cat, well, the real species and the cartoon cat. Okay,

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Speaker 3: I don't know about the cartoon cat. That probably just yeah,

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Speaker 3: maybe that comes.

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Speaker 2: From this, but anyway, this does seem to be the

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Speaker 2: African wildcat, so the ancestor of the domestic cat, though

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Speaker 2: this would of course have been the earlier domestication wave,

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Speaker 2: not the one that really took hold. And this specimen

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Speaker 2: was apparently bigger than a modern domestic cat, had longer limbs,

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Speaker 2: but it is definitely an African wildcat. Points out that

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Speaker 2: there's no evidence of a native field species of cat

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Speaker 2: on Cyprus, so they would have had to have been

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Speaker 2: introduced by these neolithic settlers.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'll have more on that in just a minute.

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Speaker 2: So this updated timeline would put the domestication just three

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Speaker 2: thousand years after the likely domestication point of the dog,

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Speaker 2: and alongside the human domestication of the sheep mastery of

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Speaker 2: wheat as well. So I think settlers of Katan fans

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Speaker 2: out there will recognize that this is just one stone

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Speaker 2: short of getting to buy a development cost. So this

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Speaker 2: is a big deal and when it comes to the

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Speaker 2: advancement of your civilization.

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Speaker 3: But does it help you with the longest road.

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Speaker 2: Nope, You're going to need what bricks and wood for that.

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Speaker 3: Now, just a note about the timeline of dog domestication,

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Speaker 3: because I think reading about the timeline of dog domestication

336
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Speaker 3: can be confusing sometimes because while the earliest undisputed archaeological

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Speaker 3: evidence of a dog buried with humans comes from the

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Speaker 3: fifteenth millennium before present, so that that's from a site

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Speaker 3: in modern Germany, genetic evidence shows that modern domestic dogs

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Speaker 3: began to diverge from their wolf ancestors something like twenty

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Speaker 3: to forty thousand years ago. I think there are some

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Speaker 3: different figures on that commonly cited range. So genetic evidence

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Speaker 3: shows the process beginning much earlier, But the genetic evidence

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Speaker 3: doesn't tell us exactly how domesticated those proto dogs or

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Speaker 3: divergent wolves were in terms of behavior and living arrangements. So,

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Speaker 3: for example, it could be that for thousands of years

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Speaker 3: these proto dogs were only partially domesticated, not necessarily treated

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Speaker 3: as companions, but genetically and behaviorally adapted to increased interaction

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Speaker 3: with human populations. One example of this would be following

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Speaker 3: humans around and scavenging their camps. So yeah, the truth

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Speaker 3: is we don't know exactly when people started treating dogs

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Speaker 3: like pets or like working animals, but the first clear

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Speaker 3: archaeological evidence for that kind of relationship comes from the

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Speaker 3: fifteenth millennium before now. And again, like with the cat example,

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Speaker 3: that's from an example of humans being buried along with

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Speaker 3: their dog. I think it's from a couple being buried

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Speaker 3: with their dog.

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Speaker 2: It's also going to fusing because sometimes we use BP

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Speaker 2: in measuring this, because we're just saying before Pluto, before Pluto,

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Speaker 2: the Disney cartoon dog. Yeah, so it's essentially the same,

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Speaker 2: but it's off by a few decades.

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Speaker 3: So apart from the proximity to a human grave, one

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Speaker 3: clue that the cat skeleton found at schileuro Cambos might

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Speaker 3: have been a domesticated cat begins with the observation that,

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Speaker 3: as you said a minute ago, Rob, the African wildcat,

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Speaker 3: was not native to Cypress before the arrival of humans.

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Speaker 3: That's worth stressing there were no wildcats on Cypress at all,

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Speaker 3: and we know that pretty conclusively from the fossil record.

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Speaker 3: No cats. In fact, the fossil record indicates that before

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Speaker 3: humans there were very few terrestrial mammals at all on Cypress.

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Speaker 3: This is probably because even during glacial maximum periods the

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Speaker 3: sea levels were at their lowest, Cypress was never connected

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Speaker 3: to the mainland, so the only pre human terrestrial mammals

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Speaker 3: on Cypress appear to have been The following one was

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Speaker 3: the dwarf hippopotamus. This seems to have gone extinct when

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Speaker 3: humans arrived, which was about twelve five hundred years before present,

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Speaker 3: so they were very likely hunted or otherwise driven extinct

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Speaker 3: by humans. The dwarf elephant also disappeared when we showed up.

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Speaker 3: The Cypriot genet, which is a small carnivore sort of

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Speaker 3: a catlike weasel like creature, a little bit raccoony maybe

381
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Speaker 3: it's got a long tail, may have survived a few

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Speaker 3: thousand years after humans arrived, but it is now extinct.

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Speaker 3: And then finally, the Cypriot mouse, which is the only

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Speaker 3: native land mammal from Cypress that still exists today.

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Speaker 2: And you know, that's quite a compliment for the Cypriot

386
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Speaker 2: mouse to have survived given what is about to follow.

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Speaker 3: Well, mice are hardy, but yeah, when humans show up

388
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Speaker 3: on an island, we do a lot of damage, especially

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Speaker 3: us and the things we bring with us.

390
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Speaker 2: Do you think humans are the reason that the hippopotamus

391
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Speaker 2: and the elephant disappeared? Just a coincidence size.

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Speaker 3: So, since cats were not native to the island and

393
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Speaker 3: thus not acquired locally, we know that ancient humans and

394
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Speaker 3: these would have been in Stone Age farmers originally from

395
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Speaker 3: the Fertile Crescent, must have crossed the sea with cats

396
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Speaker 3: in their boats. And given the size of the boats

397
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Speaker 3: that would have been used, and given the fact that

398
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Speaker 3: you need multiple breeding pairs to establish a stable island population,

399
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Speaker 3: it's just not very plausible that we could be dealing

400
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Speaker 3: with the case of cat stowaways that established themselves on

401
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Speaker 3: an island. That's not I don't know, it's not impossible,

402
00:23:49,320 --> 00:23:51,240
Speaker 3: but it seems very unlikely.

403
00:23:51,560 --> 00:23:55,879
Speaker 2: Right, especially because you know, to be clear, over the

404
00:23:56,000 --> 00:24:02,560
Speaker 2: course of time, unlikely introduction do occur. We see that,

405
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Speaker 2: especially when you go beyond the span of human civilizations

406
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Speaker 2: and you look at just like you know, more like

407
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Speaker 2: geologic time.

408
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Speaker 3: But this is about millions of years is years.

409
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Speaker 2: This is within the range of human domain, and it

410
00:24:16,600 --> 00:24:21,160
Speaker 2: suspiciously involves an animal that humans took a liking to yes.

411
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Speaker 3: Yeah, so it seems much more likely that humans brought

412
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Speaker 3: cats to Cyprus across the sea on purpose. But why Well,

413
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Speaker 3: one clue is that cats were not the only non

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00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:38,680
Speaker 3: native animal species introduced by humans. So here I want

415
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Speaker 3: to reference another paper again where Jean Deni Vignier is

416
00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:46,399
Speaker 3: the first author. This one is called Historical Dynamics of

417
00:24:46,440 --> 00:24:49,720
Speaker 3: the Human Environment Interactions in Cyprus during the twelfth to

418
00:24:49,840 --> 00:24:54,399
Speaker 3: tenth millennium before present the last thirty years of contributions

419
00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:59,320
Speaker 3: of the Amathus area. This was published in the Journal

420
00:24:59,320 --> 00:25:02,760
Speaker 3: of Archaeological Science Reports in the year twenty twenty three,

421
00:25:02,920 --> 00:25:06,280
Speaker 3: once again by vigne at All. So in this paper

422
00:25:06,320 --> 00:25:08,480
Speaker 3: the authors are actually looking at a lot of different stuff.

423
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:11,680
Speaker 3: They're tracking what we know about how the physical environment

424
00:25:11,800 --> 00:25:17,160
Speaker 3: of Cyprus changed before, during, and after its early colonization

425
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Speaker 3: by humans. And they look at quote, hydrological changes and

426
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:25,320
Speaker 3: their impact on the establishment and preservation of Neolithic sites,

427
00:25:25,720 --> 00:25:29,159
Speaker 3: Plant and vertebrate faunal evolution, especially as a consequence of

428
00:25:29,200 --> 00:25:32,840
Speaker 3: the introduction of new wild and domestic species. Birth and

429
00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:37,200
Speaker 3: evolution of the commensal fauna e g. Mice, cats and crows,

430
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Speaker 3: and commensal fauna means things living alongside. Commensalism in biology

431
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Speaker 3: is typically it's a type of symbiotic relationship in which

432
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Speaker 3: one organism gets a benefit and the other is not

433
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Speaker 3: really affected one way or another. And then the list

434
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:58,159
Speaker 3: goes on local domestication of wild boar and goats, adaptation

435
00:25:58,400 --> 00:26:02,280
Speaker 3: and intensification of cultiv and breeding to the local environments,

436
00:26:03,160 --> 00:26:05,920
Speaker 3: so to zoom in specifically on the introduction of new

437
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:10,159
Speaker 3: animal species. The author is right that the first introduction

438
00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:14,560
Speaker 3: we have evidence of is actually the wild bore, which

439
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:19,120
Speaker 3: was established on the island during the Epipalaeolithic, probably as

440
00:26:19,560 --> 00:26:24,680
Speaker 3: hunting stock. So the bore remains found on Cyprus show

441
00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:29,440
Speaker 3: insular dwarfism, meaning that they're about fifteen percent smaller than

442
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:33,240
Speaker 3: the mainland variety and they were often wounded with arrowheads.

443
00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:37,440
Speaker 3: So this would be an interesting early case of intentional

444
00:26:38,160 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 3: animal management, or like game management, bringing a live stock

445
00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 3: of a wild species to an island to release so

446
00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 3: that it can establish itself there and so you can

447
00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:51,560
Speaker 3: hunt it on the island.

448
00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:54,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this is fascinating to think about because I

449
00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:58,080
Speaker 2: know it for my own part. I often think about

450
00:26:58,119 --> 00:27:04,199
Speaker 2: this more when I'm thinking about Europeans, you know, setting

451
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:07,920
Speaker 2: off during the age of Discovery and as well as

452
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:13,000
Speaker 2: the the as well as the expansion you know of Polynesian,

453
00:27:13,080 --> 00:27:18,320
Speaker 2: Micronesian and so forth, seafaring folks coming to an island

454
00:27:18,320 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 2: and realizing, Hey, nice island here, but there's nothing to

455
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:23,480
Speaker 2: eat here. I better leave some pigs, I better leave

456
00:27:23,520 --> 00:27:25,600
Speaker 2: some goats, and then I can come back in. This

457
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:28,919
Speaker 2: island will be my larder. But you know, clearly this

458
00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:31,600
Speaker 2: has been in the human playbook for a very long time.

459
00:27:31,720 --> 00:27:34,200
Speaker 3: Right, I mean this is like thousands of years before

460
00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:37,600
Speaker 3: I imagine there was such a practice. Yeah, so seeding, Yes,

461
00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:40,679
Speaker 3: seeding an island with a new game species that can

462
00:27:40,720 --> 00:27:44,440
Speaker 3: be hunted for generations to come. But then well after

463
00:27:44,480 --> 00:27:47,960
Speaker 3: the introduction of the board during the eleventh millennium before present,

464
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:51,760
Speaker 3: we get other mammals appearing, and this includes domestic dogs

465
00:27:51,800 --> 00:27:57,160
Speaker 3: brought from the levant, the Western European house mouse, and cats.

466
00:27:57,400 --> 00:27:59,720
Speaker 3: This would be the African wildcat, as we've been talking

467
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:03,840
Speaker 3: about now. To clarify, there is no evidence that the

468
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:09,120
Speaker 3: wildcats brought along were initially treated as companions or had

469
00:28:09,160 --> 00:28:13,119
Speaker 3: any special significance to humans. That evidence would start to

470
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:16,560
Speaker 3: appear more than a thousand years later. With that human

471
00:28:16,640 --> 00:28:21,120
Speaker 3: cat co burial. So why were cats brought The authors

472
00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:24,359
Speaker 3: here argue that it was likely that African wildcats were

473
00:28:24,359 --> 00:28:30,000
Speaker 3: brought to Cyprus as an already semi domesticated commensal species

474
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:33,919
Speaker 3: that were valued for pest control, because if you are

475
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:38,080
Speaker 3: a farming society and you take foods, you take grain

476
00:28:38,360 --> 00:28:41,240
Speaker 3: or other food somewhere with you, it is pretty much

477
00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 3: a guarantee that rodents are sneaking along for the ride,

478
00:28:44,640 --> 00:28:47,640
Speaker 3: or that there are already rodents where you're going, and

479
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:51,240
Speaker 3: either way they're going to get into your food. Rodent

480
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:55,360
Speaker 3: attacks on human food caches are just a perennial problem

481
00:28:55,440 --> 00:28:58,200
Speaker 3: for human cultures going back as far as we have evidence.

482
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:03,760
Speaker 3: So if these moody, little carnivorous critters, these cats already

483
00:29:03,840 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 3: like to hang out around your villages and kill the mice,

484
00:29:07,320 --> 00:29:10,720
Speaker 3: it is definitely worth bringing some of them along with

485
00:29:10,760 --> 00:29:13,680
Speaker 3: you when you move to a new place across the sea.

486
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:17,920
Speaker 3: So these early cats were probably intentionally brought to Cyprus

487
00:29:18,320 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 3: for the purpose of pest control. And then after this,

488
00:29:22,360 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 3: well around the same time, maybe a few hundred years later,

489
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:27,640
Speaker 3: we start to see some other things goats and cattle.

490
00:29:28,080 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 3: Goats seem to have been treated not as domestic animals initially,

491
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 3: but as wild game stocks. So kind of like the

492
00:29:34,080 --> 00:29:37,720
Speaker 3: bors like hunted for some time wild on the island

493
00:29:38,080 --> 00:29:42,080
Speaker 3: before they were either domesticated or redomesticated on the island.

494
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 3: They may have been domesticated earlier on the mainland and

495
00:29:45,040 --> 00:29:48,400
Speaker 3: then released wild on the island, but eventually they get

496
00:29:48,440 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 3: redomesticated or domesticated for the first time. Then after this

497
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:56,840
Speaker 3: we start to see more introductions. You get fallow deer

498
00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:00,080
Speaker 3: again brought and established as a wild population, and then

499
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:04,120
Speaker 3: to domestic sheep, and then curiously, I thought this was

500
00:30:04,160 --> 00:30:06,080
Speaker 3: so interesting. Foxes.

501
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:07,120
Speaker 2: Foxes.

502
00:30:07,360 --> 00:30:10,560
Speaker 3: Foxes not native to the island of Cyprus. They were

503
00:30:10,600 --> 00:30:12,760
Speaker 3: not there on their own. They had to have been

504
00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:17,560
Speaker 3: brought by humans. It is hard to imagine foxes could

505
00:30:17,680 --> 00:30:21,760
Speaker 3: establish themselves by accident, like just stowing away in boats.

506
00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:25,800
Speaker 3: Right again, you need multiple breeding pairs to have a

507
00:30:25,840 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 3: stable population there. How would you get enough foxes to

508
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 3: the island. Uh, It's it's harder for foxes to stow

509
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:34,520
Speaker 3: away than it is for mice.

510
00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:37,200
Speaker 2: I think, why bring them?

511
00:30:37,280 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 1: Like?

512
00:30:37,680 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 2: I don't know. This seems along the lines of, say,

513
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:43,080
Speaker 2: intentionally introducing raccoons to this.

514
00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:44,960
Speaker 3: Is like you to get into your trash cans.

515
00:30:45,080 --> 00:30:47,200
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like, well, I mean, and I imagine, you know,

516
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:49,880
Speaker 2: folks living in urban foxes probably see that as a

517
00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 2: more direct comparison. Yeah, but like, ye, why bring the foxes?

518
00:30:53,960 --> 00:30:56,480
Speaker 3: Uh? The authors say, we don't know, we don't know

519
00:30:56,520 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 3: why they brought the foxes. Maybe this is just a guess.

520
00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 3: There's not a reason to think this. You're just having

521
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 3: to guess. Maybe foxes had some kind of cultural or

522
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:10,320
Speaker 3: religious significance to the settlers. Possibly the physical evidence indicates

523
00:31:10,560 --> 00:31:14,240
Speaker 3: that foxes were not hunted and they were tolerated as

524
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:18,720
Speaker 3: commensals in the early Cypriot villages. The authors say, quote

525
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:22,360
Speaker 3: this also strengthens the idea that early Neolithic people were

526
00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:27,240
Speaker 3: experimenting with a lot of different systems of relationships with animals.

527
00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:30,560
Speaker 3: So just like just try it out, why not?

528
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:33,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if you if you think about like

529
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:36,480
Speaker 2: the idea of bringing cats with you, and these cats

530
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:39,600
Speaker 2: are not necessarily your friends. They just live in the

531
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 2: same area and they eat something, they kill something that

532
00:31:43,200 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 2: is useful to you that they're.

533
00:31:45,240 --> 00:31:47,080
Speaker 3: They're killing them enemy of my enemy.

534
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:49,440
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so maybe something similar with foxes here, Like

535
00:31:49,440 --> 00:31:52,960
Speaker 2: we have seen the foxes eat the mice or something

536
00:31:53,000 --> 00:31:55,760
Speaker 2: that we don't want around. They seem to have a

537
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 2: meaningful purpose, so let's just bring them along.

538
00:31:58,240 --> 00:32:01,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder, Yeah, could boxes have possibly been thought

539
00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:04,320
Speaker 3: of as pest control? I don't know how plausible that is.

540
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:07,520
Speaker 3: Somebody who has more experienced with foxes please write in

541
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:10,800
Speaker 3: about that. Is that plausible that there were a complementary

542
00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:14,800
Speaker 3: pest control system? Possibly? Once again, I want to make

543
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:17,040
Speaker 3: clear the authors don't say that we don't know.

544
00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:19,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it seems to me anyway that it like

545
00:32:19,840 --> 00:32:22,960
Speaker 2: the discovery that any of these introductions could backfire on

546
00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:27,320
Speaker 2: us is a pretty recent revelation for human beings. So

547
00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:33,320
Speaker 2: maybe I'm wrong. Maybe earlier civilizations did realize that they

548
00:32:33,320 --> 00:32:37,080
Speaker 2: could blow it introducing animals intentionally for one purpose and

549
00:32:37,080 --> 00:32:41,360
Speaker 2: then it just doesn't work out. But yeah, but either way,

550
00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:43,440
Speaker 2: they had to have some reason to bring them there,

551
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:45,520
Speaker 2: and it's yeah, it's fascinating to try and guess what

552
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 2: that could have been. They just like the look of them, maybe.

553
00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:52,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I would not dismiss the idea of people

554
00:32:52,040 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 3: simply liking the look of cats. In the gradual evolution

555
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:57,600
Speaker 3: of the cat from a working animal, you know, a

556
00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:02,040
Speaker 3: commensal tolerated because of their pest can troll capabilities into

557
00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:04,520
Speaker 3: becoming a companion animal that you would want to have

558
00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:07,200
Speaker 3: sit in your lap and pet and feed and have

559
00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:08,440
Speaker 3: buried alongside you.

560
00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I imagine another thing you could factor

561
00:33:11,600 --> 00:33:15,240
Speaker 2: in is always how cute do the pops look? How

562
00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:18,000
Speaker 2: cute do do the kittens look? And so forth. I

563
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:20,360
Speaker 2: mean that has been a major factor with dogs and

564
00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 2: cats and various other animals. You know, if they kind

565
00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:27,320
Speaker 2: of look like human babies, if they get that cute

566
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:31,920
Speaker 2: response out of us, then that has a benefit to us,

567
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 2: but it also really benefits the animal that we are

568
00:33:34,960 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 2: inevitably trying to domesticate. It's true, baby foxes are quite cute.

569
00:33:39,320 --> 00:33:42,240
Speaker 2: I imagine I'm not summoning an image to my mind

570
00:33:42,320 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 2: right off the bat, but I'm just going to assume

571
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 2: they're very cute to look at. So, yeah, maybe that's

572
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 2: part of it.

573
00:33:48,240 --> 00:33:52,400
Speaker 3: But how this relationship evolved on Stone age cypress, we

574
00:33:52,760 --> 00:34:06,160
Speaker 3: don't know. We can only speculate. But Rob, you had

575
00:34:06,160 --> 00:34:09,760
Speaker 3: some other stuff on cats and cypress for more recent history, right.

576
00:34:10,160 --> 00:34:14,279
Speaker 2: That's right. There are still domesticated cats on the isle

577
00:34:14,280 --> 00:34:16,800
Speaker 2: of Cypress, which should not come as a surprise to anyway,

578
00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:20,680
Speaker 2: because domesticated cats are everywhere now and there's a part

579
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:24,239
Speaker 2: yeah there again they're here to stay. I think this

580
00:34:24,280 --> 00:34:28,560
Speaker 2: is the last domestication of the African wild cat. And

581
00:34:28,680 --> 00:34:31,839
Speaker 2: there's there's apparently no known connection between all of the

582
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:35,560
Speaker 2: cats you'll find there on Cypress today and and this,

583
00:34:35,680 --> 00:34:39,000
Speaker 2: you know, the so called ancient Cypriot wild cat, this

584
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:42,640
Speaker 2: this initial wave of domestication that we see in the

585
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:48,359
Speaker 2: archaeological record there. But the Cypress cat is a designated

586
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:51,759
Speaker 2: domestic cat breed found on the island. Again, just a

587
00:34:51,800 --> 00:34:55,720
Speaker 2: breed of domestic cat, sometimes called the Saint Helen cat

588
00:34:55,920 --> 00:34:59,120
Speaker 2: and sometimes called the Saint Nicholas cat.

589
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:02,280
Speaker 3: So if you are those two things are the same animal.

590
00:35:02,360 --> 00:35:06,600
Speaker 2: Yes, But I want to walk through the saintly connections here,

591
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 2: and in this we're going to be dealing more with

592
00:35:11,239 --> 00:35:15,960
Speaker 2: a lot of legends as in some fact, but certainly

593
00:35:16,040 --> 00:35:21,000
Speaker 2: less science. So let's let's discuss this Saint Helen connection first.

594
00:35:21,120 --> 00:35:25,360
Speaker 2: This refers to Helena of Constantinople, who would have lived

595
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:27,960
Speaker 2: two forty six or two forty eight through three point

596
00:35:27,960 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 2: thirty CE, mother of Constantine the first and she does

597
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:38,480
Speaker 2: again an actual historic person here who does. It does

598
00:35:38,520 --> 00:35:40,920
Speaker 2: seem like she may have spent some time in Cyprus,

599
00:35:41,200 --> 00:35:44,840
Speaker 2: as it was under her patronage. And the legend here

600
00:35:45,000 --> 00:35:49,160
Speaker 2: is that she imported hundreds of cats from Egypt, or

601
00:35:49,200 --> 00:35:52,239
Speaker 2: Persia or Palestine. The exacts on this seemed to vary.

602
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:56,239
Speaker 2: I've seen various sources that point to different places, but

603
00:35:56,600 --> 00:36:00,360
Speaker 2: somewhere that had cats, she, according to this legend, ship

604
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:03,680
Speaker 2: them in like a thousand or so, and this would

605
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:06,800
Speaker 2: have been in the fourth century CE, and the purpose

606
00:36:07,440 --> 00:36:12,360
Speaker 2: was to rid the monastery there which she founded of snakes.

607
00:36:13,560 --> 00:36:16,560
Speaker 3: There are a lot of legends about the travels and

608
00:36:16,640 --> 00:36:20,200
Speaker 3: pilgrimages of Saint Helen. I know it said also that

609
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:22,840
Speaker 3: didn't she make a journey to find the True Cross?

610
00:36:23,239 --> 00:36:24,880
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of that going on.

611
00:36:25,160 --> 00:36:28,080
Speaker 3: Yes, she was at least one of the people who

612
00:36:28,120 --> 00:36:29,080
Speaker 3: found the True Cross.

613
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:32,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, so take all of these legends with at least

614
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:34,200
Speaker 2: a grain of salt, you know, especially what we were

615
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:37,560
Speaker 2: dealing from saints with saints from this era like this

616
00:36:37,640 --> 00:36:39,759
Speaker 2: is where you can potentially run into the problem of

617
00:36:39,800 --> 00:36:43,200
Speaker 2: like this person has there are too many relics out there.

618
00:36:43,440 --> 00:36:46,960
Speaker 2: They're more relics than she had. Bones, not specifically in

619
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:49,240
Speaker 2: this case. But that sort of thing can sometimes occur.

620
00:36:49,320 --> 00:36:53,640
Speaker 2: There's a lot of legends that build up around these individuals,

621
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:56,080
Speaker 2: even though at the core we're dealing with an actual

622
00:36:56,160 --> 00:37:01,600
Speaker 2: human being who existed. So snakes, yeah, Cypress is home

623
00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:06,000
Speaker 2: to numerous snake species, venomous and non venomous. There's one

624
00:37:06,040 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 2: that's actually called the cat snake, and there's a there's

625
00:37:09,040 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 2: one called the Cypress whipsnake, and this one is endemic

626
00:37:12,600 --> 00:37:16,640
Speaker 2: to Cypress. But this is the legend that the monastery

627
00:37:16,800 --> 00:37:20,480
Speaker 2: had a snake problem, and so Saint Helena brings in

628
00:37:20,520 --> 00:37:24,360
Speaker 2: a bunch of cats, or has cats brought in. According

629
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:25,680
Speaker 2: to the Slate.

630
00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:28,719
Speaker 3: I was just picturing her trying to bring them all herself.

631
00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:31,120
Speaker 2: Oh God, yes, I mean yeah, if you try to,

632
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:33,160
Speaker 2: trying to bring one would be a task. I can't

633
00:37:33,160 --> 00:37:34,960
Speaker 2: I don't even want to imagine, Like the effort is

634
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:38,280
Speaker 2: like load up the ship with a thousand cats. That's

635
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:40,200
Speaker 2: going to be a pretty cross ship by the time

636
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:43,279
Speaker 2: you get over. But according to the Slate article, the

637
00:37:43,280 --> 00:37:46,319
Speaker 2: Holy Monastery of Saint Nicholas of the Cats solved a

638
00:37:46,360 --> 00:37:50,839
Speaker 2: snake problem with felines. This is by Eric Grundhauser. I

639
00:37:50,880 --> 00:37:53,960
Speaker 2: also looked at the website of the author, Charlotte Wriggle

640
00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 2: Charlotte Wriggle dot com. She has some materials on this,

641
00:37:57,360 --> 00:38:00,239
Speaker 2: and basically legend has it that Cypress was in the

642
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:02,399
Speaker 2: midst of an epic drought at the time. I've seen

643
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:05,720
Speaker 2: it given an account of like thirty seven years of drought,

644
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:10,160
Speaker 2: and it's just driving the snakes indoors in search of water.

645
00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:15,160
Speaker 2: And namely it's mainly it's running them into the monastery,

646
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:17,280
Speaker 2: so they're trying to do the Lord's work in there,

647
00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:19,960
Speaker 2: but they're just too many snakes. Somebody's got to do

648
00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 2: something about these snakes.

649
00:38:21,600 --> 00:38:23,520
Speaker 3: Sounds like this up to a a I don't know,

650
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:25,800
Speaker 3: ancient Snakes on a plane prequel.

651
00:38:27,680 --> 00:38:31,759
Speaker 2: Essentially, the legend makes it sound like that level of infestation,

652
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:34,760
Speaker 2: like it's just completely out of control, and it's driving

653
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 2: people off the island, Like people are leaving Cyprus because

654
00:38:37,560 --> 00:38:39,160
Speaker 2: they're just too many snakes.

655
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:43,319
Speaker 3: Popping out of the Holy Water basin, yeah, dangling from

656
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:43,840
Speaker 3: the ceiling.

657
00:38:44,640 --> 00:38:47,600
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this this led me to wonder a little

658
00:38:47,640 --> 00:38:50,000
Speaker 2: bit like is this at all reasonable? Like is this

659
00:38:50,160 --> 00:38:54,319
Speaker 2: just purely legendary? Is it possible that snakes would get

660
00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:58,600
Speaker 2: this out of control? I mean, one potentially one way

661
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:00,480
Speaker 2: to think about this is that we should mentioned that

662
00:39:00,520 --> 00:39:02,920
Speaker 2: this is not the only tidbit from the ancient world

663
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:08,000
Speaker 2: about snake infestations getting out of control, or or particular

664
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:14,239
Speaker 2: problem snakes interfering with the machinations of various rulers. There

665
00:39:14,239 --> 00:39:17,520
Speaker 2: are various accounts of plagues of serpents, of course, depictions

666
00:39:17,719 --> 00:39:21,640
Speaker 2: descriptions rather of foreign lands and enemy battlefields that are

667
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:25,319
Speaker 2: infested with snakes and other undesired creatures, and of course

668
00:39:25,320 --> 00:39:27,080
Speaker 2: a lot of that you can you can think about

669
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:30,719
Speaker 2: from various angles, like how are you gonna how do

670
00:39:30,800 --> 00:39:33,600
Speaker 2: you want to insult the land of foreigners? You can

671
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:35,400
Speaker 2: just say, oh, it's just nothing but snake, snakes and

672
00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:36,480
Speaker 2: scorpions everywhere.

673
00:39:36,719 --> 00:39:39,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of these they just sound

674
00:39:40,040 --> 00:39:45,160
Speaker 3: like obvious exaggeration. Though then again, I don't want to

675
00:39:45,200 --> 00:39:49,000
Speaker 3: say it provides any evidence that this particular story is true.

676
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:51,720
Speaker 3: But we have talked on the show before about great

677
00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:55,400
Speaker 3: gatherings of snakes, like at the narciss how do we

678
00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:57,760
Speaker 3: pronounce it the narcissa or narciss snake.

679
00:39:59,239 --> 00:39:59,560
Speaker 2: Yeah.

680
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:02,200
Speaker 3: Again, to be clear, I'm not saying like, oh, that's

681
00:40:02,200 --> 00:40:04,920
Speaker 3: what's happening here, and therefore the story is true. But

682
00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:07,440
Speaker 3: snakes can gather in massive numbers.

683
00:40:07,880 --> 00:40:10,520
Speaker 2: I mean, anyone who's ever been around snakes you know that, yes,

684
00:40:10,560 --> 00:40:15,319
Speaker 2: snakes do enter into human areas, and when they do,

685
00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:21,200
Speaker 2: given the place that snakes hold in our minds, you

686
00:40:21,239 --> 00:40:24,200
Speaker 2: know that the threat that snakes can pose to us,

687
00:40:25,880 --> 00:40:28,359
Speaker 2: the fact that we are often frightened by snakes, and

688
00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 2: also all of the layers of meaning that we attribute

689
00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:34,400
Speaker 2: to snakes, all of this makes it meaningful when a

690
00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:36,520
Speaker 2: snake is where we don't think a snake should be.

691
00:40:36,760 --> 00:40:39,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this is magic, this is a curse.

692
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:45,880
Speaker 2: Yeah there was. Looking around for other examples of it

693
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:49,800
Speaker 2: honestly gets a little confusing at times, looking for even

694
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:56,160
Speaker 2: legendary histories that are referring to snake infestations. One reason

695
00:40:56,320 --> 00:40:59,600
Speaker 2: I've found is that there are certain works of Mormon

696
00:40:59,600 --> 00:41:03,560
Speaker 2: apology jedics out there that talk about some of this

697
00:41:03,960 --> 00:41:06,719
Speaker 2: apparent There is apparently an incident in the Book of

698
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:10,960
Speaker 2: Mormon that involves a serpent infestation, and so some at

699
00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:14,520
Speaker 2: at least some of these works of apologetics like attempt

700
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:17,600
Speaker 2: to back this up with other examples from ancient history.

701
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:19,880
Speaker 2: As with any work of apologetics, we often have to

702
00:41:19,920 --> 00:41:21,719
Speaker 2: take that with a grain of salt, because obviously, you

703
00:41:21,760 --> 00:41:24,920
Speaker 2: know it's it's an attempt to back up certain ideas

704
00:41:24,920 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 2: with an interpretation of reality.

705
00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:30,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, religious apologetics being one of the most straightforward forms

706
00:41:30,520 --> 00:41:34,080
Speaker 3: of motivated reasoning. Yeah, but not without value as literature.

707
00:41:34,120 --> 00:41:36,200
Speaker 3: I mean, it can still point you to these these

708
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:39,200
Speaker 3: real examples, but it doesn't necessarily prove that you know

709
00:41:39,280 --> 00:41:41,280
Speaker 3: the story they're using it as evidence.

710
00:41:40,960 --> 00:41:44,240
Speaker 2: For now, this one doesn't involve a bunch of snakes.

711
00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:49,000
Speaker 2: It just involves one giant snake, and that it involves

712
00:41:49,800 --> 00:41:54,880
Speaker 2: the adventures of Roman general Marcus Attilius Regulus during the

713
00:41:54,880 --> 00:41:59,080
Speaker 2: First Punic War. His troops are said to have encountered

714
00:41:59,080 --> 00:42:01,920
Speaker 2: a giant snake and it just became like a whole battle,

715
00:42:01,920 --> 00:42:03,360
Speaker 2: like essentially a kaiju battle.

716
00:42:04,480 --> 00:42:07,600
Speaker 3: Wait, where are you saying in on Cyprus.

717
00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:09,959
Speaker 2: Or no, no, this is elsewhere in the Oh okay, sorry, sorry,

718
00:42:09,960 --> 00:42:13,840
Speaker 2: this was not on Cyprus, but just an example of

719
00:42:14,080 --> 00:42:16,400
Speaker 2: a snake showing up in another legend about it and

720
00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:20,480
Speaker 2: again another historic individual, though in this case it is

721
00:42:20,520 --> 00:42:24,520
Speaker 2: not mentioned in the primary histories. For instance, it's not

722
00:42:24,600 --> 00:42:28,000
Speaker 2: in the writings of Polybius about the Punic Wars. It's in,

723
00:42:28,200 --> 00:42:30,239
Speaker 2: you know, sort of secondary sources, and it's thought to

724
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:32,600
Speaker 2: just generally be a legend, a tall tale about how

725
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:37,520
Speaker 2: great this guy was. I see now elsewhere in legends

726
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:41,600
Speaker 2: and tall tales about holy places infested by snakes. There

727
00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:43,960
Speaker 2: are a couple of stories that popped up, and I realized, yes,

728
00:42:43,960 --> 00:42:47,080
Speaker 2: we're getting a little far away from cats here, but

729
00:42:47,680 --> 00:42:50,520
Speaker 2: these were too fascinating to not cover on the show.

730
00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:54,280
Speaker 2: So from the seventh century CE there is the story

731
00:42:54,320 --> 00:42:59,040
Speaker 2: of Saint Hilda's Abbey. This is in Yorkshire, in Britain.

732
00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:02,120
Speaker 2: This is all also the area where Count Dracula moves

733
00:43:02,160 --> 00:43:03,600
Speaker 2: to in Bromstoker's Dracula.

734
00:43:03,640 --> 00:43:06,279
Speaker 3: By the way, Oh interesting, did I forget about it?

735
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:08,880
Speaker 3: In the novel? Does he not actually come directly to London.

736
00:43:09,239 --> 00:43:10,600
Speaker 3: He goes somewhere up in the north.

737
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:13,880
Speaker 2: I believe. I believe so now I haven't actually I

738
00:43:13,880 --> 00:43:17,080
Speaker 2: haven't actually read Dracula in a number of years. I've

739
00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:22,239
Speaker 2: mostly been watching various cinematic adaptations that drift pretty far

740
00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:24,840
Speaker 2: from the sourus at times. But there does seem to

741
00:43:24,840 --> 00:43:27,359
Speaker 2: be a Dracula connection here, very loose loosely, but I'm

742
00:43:27,400 --> 00:43:30,239
Speaker 2: gonna mention it. So the idea here is that Saint

743
00:43:30,280 --> 00:43:34,400
Speaker 2: Hilda's Abbey was infested by snakes until Hilda of Whitby

744
00:43:34,800 --> 00:43:38,839
Speaker 2: turned them to stone with I guess holy magic. And

745
00:43:39,120 --> 00:43:41,520
Speaker 2: there is actually a science tie into this legend, though

746
00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:44,000
Speaker 2: as it seems to be a there seems to be

747
00:43:44,080 --> 00:43:47,279
Speaker 2: a strong case for geo mythology here in order to

748
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:51,960
Speaker 2: explain the presence of fossilized ammonites in the area. Oh, now,

749
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:54,600
Speaker 2: you can look up images of ammonites here if you're

750
00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:57,000
Speaker 2: If you're not instantly recognizing them, but once you see them,

751
00:43:57,000 --> 00:43:59,040
Speaker 2: you go like, oh, yes, that I've seen that fossil

752
00:43:59,080 --> 00:44:02,400
Speaker 2: many times. You know, it essentially has the look It

753
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:04,880
Speaker 2: does look like something curled up. You can easily be

754
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:07,120
Speaker 2: mistaken for a curled up serpent or a curled up

755
00:44:07,600 --> 00:44:09,920
Speaker 2: centipede or something that has been fossilized.

756
00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:12,799
Speaker 3: Yeah, ammonites were cephalopods that lived in the sea that

757
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 3: went extinct the KPg extinction along with the dinosaurs, the

758
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:20,640
Speaker 3: non avian dinosaurs. But yeah, the fossils will be basically

759
00:44:20,640 --> 00:44:23,680
Speaker 3: a spiral shell because they had a spiral shell shape,

760
00:44:24,160 --> 00:44:26,880
Speaker 3: kind of like nautiluses today. But from what I understand,

761
00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:30,319
Speaker 3: they're more closely related to some other species than the nautiluses,

762
00:44:30,360 --> 00:44:34,040
Speaker 3: but they look superficially similar. And yeah, and you can

763
00:44:34,080 --> 00:44:36,800
Speaker 3: still find lots of fossils of these shells. I remember

764
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:40,920
Speaker 3: coming across amonite fossils and reading about the discovery of

765
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:43,759
Speaker 3: a lot of ammonite fossils on the Jurassic Coast in

766
00:44:43,800 --> 00:44:44,960
Speaker 3: England when I was there.

767
00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:48,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you can imagine folks running across these and

768
00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:51,680
Speaker 2: thinking these look like snakes that have been turned to stone.

769
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:55,520
Speaker 2: And then to add an extra layer here and kind

770
00:44:55,520 --> 00:44:58,240
Speaker 2: of getting back to apologetics, and to a certain extent,

771
00:44:58,600 --> 00:45:03,200
Speaker 2: you have examples where where these ammonites have then been

772
00:45:03,320 --> 00:45:06,360
Speaker 2: carved a little serpent's head or something's supposed to be

773
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:09,400
Speaker 2: a serpent's head has been carved at the very end

774
00:45:10,239 --> 00:45:13,000
Speaker 2: of the of the creature to make it look like

775
00:45:13,040 --> 00:45:14,799
Speaker 2: it is a snake. And you can you can look

776
00:45:14,840 --> 00:45:17,360
Speaker 2: images up of this online as well. The one I

777
00:45:17,400 --> 00:45:19,520
Speaker 2: found here I shared with you. Joe looks so much

778
00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:24,000
Speaker 2: like the sandworms from Beetlejuice, but except friendlier. It doesn't

779
00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:28,760
Speaker 2: have sharp teeth, and it's going high. Yeah, he doesn't

780
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:31,160
Speaker 2: look as fearsome and looks a little duck like I'm

781
00:45:31,200 --> 00:45:44,480
Speaker 2: just a little snake. Now there's another legend I ran across.

782
00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:49,680
Speaker 2: This is a legend of the monastery of Langovarda in Greece,

783
00:45:49,760 --> 00:45:54,000
Speaker 2: located on the island of Catalonia, in which the snakes

784
00:45:54,040 --> 00:45:57,520
Speaker 2: are said to have actually defended the monastery against pirates.

785
00:45:57,520 --> 00:45:59,440
Speaker 2: And I believe seventeen oh five.

786
00:45:59,520 --> 00:46:03,440
Speaker 3: That's my kind of story. I like that. I like

787
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:06,640
Speaker 3: a trap for intruders that involves animals, like a pit,

788
00:46:06,719 --> 00:46:09,440
Speaker 3: a mote with piranhas in it, a pit full of snakes,

789
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:13,680
Speaker 3: something like that crab pit, crab pit, that'd be really good.

790
00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:17,680
Speaker 2: Well, in this case, it was snakes protecting nuns that

791
00:46:17,760 --> 00:46:21,600
Speaker 2: were living there at the time. And then afterwards these

792
00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:26,480
Speaker 2: snakes find Christ, they become holy snakes, sometimes said to

793
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:29,359
Speaker 2: have crosses on their heads, and then they show up

794
00:46:29,600 --> 00:46:31,920
Speaker 2: at the monastery it's said in the days leading up

795
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:34,680
Speaker 2: to August fifteenth, the feast of the Dormition of the

796
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:39,560
Speaker 2: Virgin Mary. So essentially right now, this place is sometimes

797
00:46:39,640 --> 00:46:42,320
Speaker 2: called the Monastery of the Virgin Mary, of the Snakes,

798
00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:45,960
Speaker 2: of the snakes. You can look up pictures of these

799
00:46:45,960 --> 00:46:48,400
Speaker 2: snakes too. I don't know, I'm not seeing the cross

800
00:46:48,440 --> 00:46:51,440
Speaker 2: on their foreheads so much, but you know this is

801
00:46:51,480 --> 00:46:54,600
Speaker 2: more of a this is more an article of faith

802
00:46:54,680 --> 00:46:57,360
Speaker 2: rather than a matter of herpetology.

803
00:46:57,800 --> 00:47:00,479
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I've really enjoyed this snake hunt. But does

804
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:04,239
Speaker 3: this inform our attempt to answer the question is there

805
00:47:04,239 --> 00:47:07,680
Speaker 3: any historical truth to the idea of Saint Helena bringing

806
00:47:07,680 --> 00:47:10,239
Speaker 3: a bunch of snakes to the monastery in Cyprus to

807
00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:14,400
Speaker 3: or not sorry, not snakes, bringing cats to the monastery

808
00:47:14,440 --> 00:47:15,400
Speaker 3: to get rid of the snakes.

809
00:47:15,640 --> 00:47:19,640
Speaker 2: I don't know that it actually provides additional answers, but yeah,

810
00:47:19,640 --> 00:47:21,480
Speaker 2: I guess I'll just come back to like, when you're

811
00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:25,720
Speaker 2: dealing with snakes, a snake is just such a loaded creature.

812
00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:27,799
Speaker 2: We have so many thoughts about the snakes, so many

813
00:47:28,080 --> 00:47:31,680
Speaker 2: layers of meaning with the snake, and so the legends

814
00:47:31,719 --> 00:47:35,320
Speaker 2: just pile up. But yeah, there are other accounts of

815
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:38,879
Speaker 2: snake infestations being a thing, and you know, we do

816
00:47:38,920 --> 00:47:43,640
Speaker 2: see examples. There are places in the world where snakes

817
00:47:43,640 --> 00:47:45,279
Speaker 2: do become a problem, soecially when you're dealing I mean

818
00:47:45,320 --> 00:47:48,080
Speaker 2: mainly when you're dealing with venomous snakes, because a non

819
00:47:48,160 --> 00:47:52,080
Speaker 2: venomous snake is essentially going to do as good, if

820
00:47:52,080 --> 00:47:54,520
Speaker 2: not more good, than having a cat around. I mean,

821
00:47:54,520 --> 00:47:57,279
Speaker 2: it's not as maybe not as too many people's eye,

822
00:47:57,440 --> 00:48:03,640
Speaker 2: not as friendly, maybe not as cutly. Though, listeners who

823
00:48:03,719 --> 00:48:07,400
Speaker 2: keep snakes, you will say, no, this cat, this particular snake,

824
00:48:07,480 --> 00:48:09,600
Speaker 2: is cutly. But and you know you have a strong

825
00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 2: case to make there as well.

826
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:13,799
Speaker 3: I want to hear from listeners who have cats and

827
00:48:13,880 --> 00:48:18,120
Speaker 3: snakes which one is cuddlier. Well, wait a minute, hold on,

828
00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:23,280
Speaker 3: there's a mystery here. So that explains why the cats

829
00:48:23,280 --> 00:48:26,960
Speaker 3: of Cyprus would be called Saint Helen's cats or Saint

830
00:48:27,000 --> 00:48:29,279
Speaker 3: Helena cats. But wasn't there another name for them, Saint

831
00:48:29,360 --> 00:48:30,839
Speaker 3: Nicholas cats or something.

832
00:48:30,800 --> 00:48:33,920
Speaker 2: Right, And and you might be thinking, well, this couldn't

833
00:48:34,000 --> 00:48:37,760
Speaker 2: possibly be Santa Claus, right, But you'd apparently be wrong,

834
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:41,000
Speaker 2: because as far as I can tell, this is supposed

835
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:43,360
Speaker 2: to be the Saint Nicholas, who then went on to

836
00:48:43,520 --> 00:48:47,160
Speaker 2: Mira and, through the accumulation of legend and holiday tradition,

837
00:48:47,320 --> 00:48:52,240
Speaker 2: becomes the figure of Santa Claus. According to the aforementioned sources,

838
00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:55,800
Speaker 2: as well as the Virginia Theological Seminary Saint Nicholas Center,

839
00:48:57,080 --> 00:49:01,640
Speaker 2: this was supposedly where the future Saint Nicholas was at

840
00:49:01,640 --> 00:49:05,160
Speaker 2: the time, like he was there at this monastery, potentially

841
00:49:05,360 --> 00:49:07,480
Speaker 2: like ringing the bell for the for the cats to

842
00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:08,400
Speaker 2: come and eat the snakes.

843
00:49:08,600 --> 00:49:13,040
Speaker 3: Whoa yet another crazy Saint Nicholas story. Do you know

844
00:49:13,040 --> 00:49:17,960
Speaker 3: the one about how he resurrected the three boys who

845
00:49:17,960 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 3: had been chopped up and pickled and cooked in a

846
00:49:20,640 --> 00:49:21,520
Speaker 3: pot or something.

847
00:49:21,600 --> 00:49:23,799
Speaker 2: Oh, I'd forgotten about them, but yeah, I think that

848
00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:27,640
Speaker 2: that does ring a bell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the the

849
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:32,759
Speaker 2: the legends of Saint Nicholas, we get pretty fascinator.

850
00:49:32,520 --> 00:49:33,840
Speaker 3: Gets here in the Christmas spirit.

851
00:49:36,040 --> 00:49:40,360
Speaker 2: So the monastery or the Monastery of the Holy Monastery

852
00:49:40,400 --> 00:49:44,000
Speaker 2: of Saint Nicholas of the Cats, is still around. It

853
00:49:44,040 --> 00:49:47,520
Speaker 2: became known for taking in stray cats. The local fishermen

854
00:49:47,760 --> 00:49:50,759
Speaker 2: would for a while reportedly donate their entire catch to

855
00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:54,120
Speaker 2: the cats on the feast day of Saint Nicholas. And

856
00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:59,000
Speaker 2: you know, it's a lot has happened over the course

857
00:49:59,000 --> 00:50:02,319
Speaker 2: of its existence, but apparently it's still around today as

858
00:50:02,360 --> 00:50:06,319
Speaker 2: an active monastery and an active cat sanctuary. Like you see,

859
00:50:06,400 --> 00:50:08,759
Speaker 2: you see people visiting it and taking photos in there.

860
00:50:08,760 --> 00:50:12,160
Speaker 2: Indeed are a lot of cats, arguably maybe too many cats,

861
00:50:12,200 --> 00:50:14,520
Speaker 2: but this is a place where they're allowed to do

862
00:50:14,600 --> 00:50:15,000
Speaker 2: their thing.

863
00:50:15,440 --> 00:50:18,520
Speaker 3: Nonsense it's beautiful cat Heaven Monastery.

864
00:50:19,120 --> 00:50:21,759
Speaker 2: So Cypress. So if you are a cat fancier and

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00:50:21,760 --> 00:50:25,400
Speaker 2: you're trying to plan your next cat based vacation, maybe

866
00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:26,680
Speaker 2: Cypress is your destination.

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Speaker 3: By the way, I looked up the Cypress cat breed

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00:50:30,200 --> 00:50:31,880
Speaker 3: in my opinion certified cute.

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00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:35,120
Speaker 2: Well, which cats are not cute? Really?

870
00:50:35,680 --> 00:50:36,600
Speaker 3: I guess that's true.

871
00:50:36,880 --> 00:50:39,440
Speaker 2: I mean, I know we'll get some answers for some

872
00:50:39,520 --> 00:50:42,200
Speaker 2: of my listeners out there, but it's all subjective.

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00:50:42,600 --> 00:50:45,919
Speaker 3: It's got fur, it's got big ears. What more could

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00:50:45,920 --> 00:50:48,839
Speaker 3: you want? Well, Rob, shall we wrap this up before

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00:50:48,880 --> 00:50:50,280
Speaker 3: the King of Cats comes a knocking?

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00:50:50,840 --> 00:50:52,400
Speaker 2: Yes, I think we should. This will be the end

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00:50:52,440 --> 00:50:54,680
Speaker 2: of our second core episode of Stuff to Blow Your

878
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:57,520
Speaker 2: Mind here for Cat Week, but we have one more episode,

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00:50:57,880 --> 00:51:01,359
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema tomorrow will also be cat based. And

880
00:51:01,400 --> 00:51:04,799
Speaker 2: you know, I didn't expect it to be this way,

881
00:51:04,840 --> 00:51:06,880
Speaker 2: but I feel like the movie we're going to be

882
00:51:06,880 --> 00:51:09,759
Speaker 2: talking about really lines up with a lot of the

883
00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:14,399
Speaker 2: actual serious cat information we've been discussing in the core

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00:51:14,400 --> 00:51:17,320
Speaker 2: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. I think the

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00:51:17,400 --> 00:51:20,600
Speaker 2: King of Cats would approve. Okay, so tune in for

886
00:51:20,640 --> 00:51:22,759
Speaker 2: that if you're interested. It is a title that has

887
00:51:22,800 --> 00:51:26,480
Speaker 2: also been suggested over the years by Weird House Cinema listeners.

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00:51:27,040 --> 00:51:30,560
Speaker 3: You are invited tune in if you don't want yourisan

889
00:51:30,640 --> 00:51:32,160
Speaker 3: to repute to shreds.

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00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:34,960
Speaker 2: Exactly all right, Just a reminder that Stuff to bliw

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00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:37,320
Speaker 2: your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with

892
00:51:37,400 --> 00:51:40,040
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we

893
00:51:40,040 --> 00:51:42,080
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a

894
00:51:42,080 --> 00:51:45,440
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you want to

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00:51:45,440 --> 00:51:48,640
Speaker 2: follow us online, we're on several of the main social

896
00:51:48,719 --> 00:51:51,600
Speaker 2: media platforms. Whichever one you use, look us up, you'll

897
00:51:51,600 --> 00:51:54,400
Speaker 2: probably find us there. You can follow Weird House Cinema

898
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:59,640
Speaker 2: on letterbox We're Weird House there, and on Instagram. Our

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00:51:59,640 --> 00:52:04,000
Speaker 2: newer Instagram account is STBYM Podcast. We had an older

900
00:52:04,000 --> 00:52:07,799
Speaker 2: one had more followers, it had met a tragic end,

901
00:52:08,400 --> 00:52:11,319
Speaker 2: but we have the newer one, which we actually can

902
00:52:11,360 --> 00:52:14,680
Speaker 2: log into, and so if you do still use the

903
00:52:14,719 --> 00:52:17,440
Speaker 2: instagrams and you wish to follow us, do so. It's

904
00:52:17,440 --> 00:52:19,040
Speaker 2: another way you can keep up with what sort of

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00:52:19,080 --> 00:52:22,120
Speaker 2: content we're covering and what kind of content we're planning

906
00:52:22,120 --> 00:52:22,960
Speaker 2: to cover in the future.

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00:52:23,239 --> 00:52:27,080
Speaker 3: Huge things as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

908
00:52:27,320 --> 00:52:28,960
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

909
00:52:28,960 --> 00:52:31,480
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

910
00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:33,560
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

911
00:52:33,680 --> 00:52:36,239
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

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00:52:36,280 --> 00:52:43,880
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

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00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:48,440
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:51,319
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:54,200
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.