Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're back with the
Speaker 2: third part in a series on lick licking with the tongue,
Speaker 2: which we began before the week we were recently out
Speaker 2: for the holiday. We thought we might end the series
Speaker 2: after the second part. We got some great listener mail
Speaker 2: on this subject and decided we'd like to come back
Speaker 2: and talk about it for at least one more episode,
Speaker 2: so to refresh on the previous two episodes. In part one,
Speaker 2: we talked about licking in the context of ancient Egyptian
Speaker 2: ritual magic, where licking could bestow healing and divine blessings.
Speaker 2: For example, in the Licks of the Cow goddess Hathor
Speaker 2: who is described licking the limbs of Pharaoh Hatchupsot to
Speaker 2: give her life and kingly power, and licking could also
Speaker 2: be a vehicle for curses and magical violence, like the
Speaker 2: danger described in the Book of the Dead of the
Speaker 2: danger of being licked by the demon Crocodile in the afterlife,
Speaker 2: where the lick is some kind of attack understood is
Speaker 2: removing protective magic from the dead person's soul. We briefly
Speaker 2: talked about some research on at what age children start
Speaker 2: to get the idea that food or eating utensils can
Speaker 2: be contaminated by being licked by other people. And we
Speaker 2: also talked about the surprisingly interesting question how many licks
Speaker 2: does it take to get to the center of a
Speaker 2: TUTSI pop? That question kind of well, it starts from
Speaker 2: a classic candy commercial. If you haven't seen it, where
Speaker 2: have you been? Look it up? But also that sort
Speaker 2: of moved from the commercial to a bunch of laboratory experiments,
Speaker 2: empirical testing, and then I think you could say, finally
Speaker 2: winds up in the mind of the philosopher or the
Speaker 2: philosopher of science, prompting us to think about think about
Speaker 2: the ways that assumptions are often hit in seemingly mundane
Speaker 2: empirical questions and how that should affect the way we
Speaker 2: try to answer them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got some good listener mail about the tussy
Speaker 1: Rall topic as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely addressed in the listener mail episode from earlier
Speaker 2: this week on Tuesday, So if you haven't heard that,
Speaker 2: check it out after this In part two of the
Speaker 2: Licking series, we talked about wound licking behavior in animals,
Speaker 2: especially in mammals, and the difficult trade offs involved. In effect,
Speaker 2: the licking of wounds comes with both benefits and dangers biologically,
Speaker 2: so there's a balancing of risk and reward underlying the
Speaker 2: evolution and preservation of that behavior. Though fortunately humans have
Speaker 2: come up with a technological replacement for wound locking, which
Speaker 2: is washing wounds with clean water or clean water and soap,
Speaker 2: which gives us most of the same benefits while eliminating
Speaker 2: most of the risks. We also talked about the specific
Speaker 2: qualities of the cat's tongue and its roughness and function,
Speaker 2: and self cleaning, and some prevailing theories about what it
Speaker 2: means when a cat licks of human. After this, we
Speaker 2: got into eye locking, especially self eye looking in geckos
Speaker 2: and in a few alleged cases, I guess, some verified
Speaker 2: cases in humans with extraordinarily long tongues. And we're back
Speaker 2: today to do another episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's start with bears. So this is the one.
Speaker 1: This is the reason that we're doing a part three,
Speaker 1: though not everything that we're going to be discussing here
Speaker 1: is going to relate directly to bears.
Speaker 2: Right, So I wanted to begin with an email we
Speaker 2: received after the first two parts from listener Elena. Elena says, hello,
Speaker 2: Robert and Joe. I really enjoyed the episodes on licking.
Speaker 2: They made me think of a medieval belief about bears.
Speaker 2: People thought that bears gave birth to shapeless blobs of
Speaker 2: flesh and only through licking the mother would give them
Speaker 2: the physical characteristics of a bear cub. Elena, that's the
Speaker 2: whole message, So thank you, Elena. I actually did not
Speaker 2: know that. That was really interesting to me, and it
Speaker 2: made me want to do a whole segment here. But
Speaker 2: I have to also mention that with this email, Elena
Speaker 2: attached a medieval illustration of an adult bear licking. I
Speaker 2: guess what's supposed to be an unformed lump of flesh.
Speaker 2: It is like a three lobed little pink ham, just
Speaker 2: a little kind of three three hump thing. And I
Speaker 2: didn't know where this was from. Elena did not include
Speaker 2: that information in the email, but I did a reverse
Speaker 2: image search and figured out that this is originally from
Speaker 2: a twelfth century text called the Aberdeen Bestiery, which has
Speaker 2: been held by the Aberdeen Library in Scotland. Since the
Speaker 2: mid sixteenth century. The bear entry in this bestiary actually
Speaker 2: shares a page with the entry for the monoceros, a
Speaker 2: legendary one horned creature sometimes equated with the unicorn, or
Speaker 2: maybe a different creature than a unicorn, but sharing a
Speaker 2: lot of the same characteristics. Rab I went back and
Speaker 2: I got a picture of the whole page for you
Speaker 2: to look at here, so you can get bear licking
Speaker 2: the three and the one horned unicorn or non unicorn
Speaker 2: type creature right above it.
Speaker 1: Well, I certainly can't read any of the text, but
Speaker 1: the mere fact that the bear image is on the
Speaker 1: same page with the unicorn image lets me know that
Speaker 1: I can trust its accuracy. Right.
Speaker 2: The University of Aberdeen Collections website hosts a full scan
Speaker 2: of the text, so you can actually go look at
Speaker 2: it yourself if you'd like to. It's worth the look.
Speaker 2: It's pretty interesting. They've also got sort of interpretation materials
Speaker 2: beneath each page of the text, as well as their
Speaker 2: own translations of the Latin. I believe it's in Latin,
Speaker 2: but there are modern English translations. First of all, I
Speaker 2: have to say that the best Eieri entry on the
Speaker 2: bear is full of awesome twelfth century bear facts varying accuracy.
Speaker 2: I'm going to come back to the claims about the
Speaker 2: unformed newborn bear in a bit, but first I just
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about a few other things said in
Speaker 2: this text, especially since a few of them end up
Speaker 2: connecting in interesting ways. Back to the bear's tongue. The
Speaker 2: first thing that this book says, apart from some claims
Speaker 2: about bears being unformed at birth, is quote, the bear's
Speaker 2: head is not strong. Its greatest strength lies in its
Speaker 2: arms and loins. For this reason, bears sometimes stand upright.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, I think it's kind of hilarious
Speaker 2: to imagine somebody in the twelfth century looking at a
Speaker 2: bear and saying, not a very strong head.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I feel like I've seen plenty
Speaker 1: of bear footage where I'm thinking long and hard about
Speaker 1: how strong and terrifying the head is.
Speaker 2: To be fair, I think this might not be an
Speaker 2: inaccurate original observation. Probably a lot of the facts in
Speaker 2: this bestiary are not direct observations by the author, but
Speaker 2: there are things being repeated from other texts going back
Speaker 2: into classical times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that kind of game of telephone, And I don't know,
Speaker 1: I guess you could. You know, you can probably imagine
Speaker 1: certain interpretation of the basic form of the bear, and
Speaker 1: maybe in some cases, with some bears particularly, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: like you know, black bears, you could maybe interpret the
Speaker 1: head as being smaller than the body. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a way of looking at, say a black bear,
Speaker 1: where you might interpret this. I can sort of see
Speaker 1: where they're maybe coming from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so there's a way in which you could say.
Speaker 2: This is kind of true, but not as stated. It
Speaker 2: is not fair to say that bears have weak heads.
Speaker 2: A brown bear, for example, has an extremely powerful skull
Speaker 2: with powerful bones and jaw muscles, powerful neck muscles, with
Speaker 2: a bite capable of crushing bones. What is true, however,
Speaker 2: is that when you compare the bite force to the
Speaker 2: body mass in a factor that's called bite force quotient,
Speaker 2: that's how strong the bite is compared to how big
Speaker 2: your body is. Even brown bears tend to have a
Speaker 2: smaller bite force quotient than many other carnivores, like less
Speaker 2: than half of that of standouts like the Tasmanian devil,
Speaker 2: which has an incredibly high bite force quotient and still
Speaker 2: significantly lower than that of a jaguar very high bite
Speaker 2: force quotient. So it's a huge body and a very
Speaker 2: powerful jaw. But you can say that its jaw is
Speaker 2: not especially powerful for its body size, but its body
Speaker 2: size is enormous.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I also thought it was interesting how the text claims that,
Speaker 2: so it doesn't have a strong head, its greatest strength
Speaker 2: lies in its arms and loins. For this reason, bears
Speaker 2: sometimes stand upright. That actually got me wondering why do
Speaker 2: bears usually stand upright when they do? We've seen bears
Speaker 2: doing this, you know, what are the most common reasons?
Speaker 2: I was reading around. It seems that people with a
Speaker 2: lot of experience with bears emphasize that the most common
Speaker 2: reasons bears seem to do this is for information gathering purposes.
Speaker 2: So the head contains the sensory array the eyes, the ears,
Speaker 2: and the nose, and by standing up and placing the
Speaker 2: head higher, bears allow themselves a longer viewing horizon, seeing
Speaker 2: over obstacles, better ability to use directional hearing, and the
Speaker 2: ability to isolate smells wafting from a distance as opposed
Speaker 2: to what's coming up from right around the ground where
Speaker 2: you are. Bears might also stand up to reach objects
Speaker 2: high up or to manipulate objects with their forelimbs. So
Speaker 2: there is some truth here. Bears do tend to have
Speaker 2: more forelimb dexterity than many other carnivores, though not as
Speaker 2: much as most primates. That dexterity comes from a number
Speaker 2: of things, in part, like the way that bears are
Speaker 2: able to rotate their arms with a greater degree of
Speaker 2: freedom than animals like dogs, whose fore limb movement is
Speaker 2: more restricted to the backward forward motion parallel to the
Speaker 2: length of the body. There are also differences in the
Speaker 2: bear's posture, like walking flat footed versus walking on the digits,
Speaker 2: which some carnivores do, having more separated digits independently movable digits.
Speaker 2: Things like that, and these things make bear arms and
Speaker 2: bare four paws more versatile than like a dog's fore
Speaker 2: legs and four paws, which are built with more focus
Speaker 2: on running speed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess something to keep in mind in
Speaker 1: all of this, too, is that in general, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about bears, especially modern bears, you're mostly dealing with
Speaker 1: a varied omnivorous diet. Of course, there are outliers on
Speaker 1: either end, you know, considering polar bears and panda bears.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, you're dealing with a bear
Speaker 1: that like one. Depending on what's available in the season,
Speaker 1: it might be eating a bunch of vegetation. It might
Speaker 1: be eating a part of a dead whale. It might
Speaker 1: be eating honey, it might be eating the contents of
Speaker 1: a refrigerator. You know, it's going to depend and it
Speaker 1: needs to have the abilities to shift between these different
Speaker 1: sources of food.
Speaker 2: The diet is more varied. Therefore, the bear's behavior needs
Speaker 2: to be more general as opposed to more specific, and
Speaker 2: so as a generalist, it has to have more freedom
Speaker 2: to do different kinds of things with its bot.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Another interesting claim from this book is about bear sex.
Speaker 2: It says bears and we have to assume here that
Speaker 2: this is talking mainly about brown bears, you know, for
Speaker 2: geographical historical reasons. It says they do not mate like
Speaker 2: other quadrupeds, but embrace each other when they copulate, just
Speaker 2: like the couplings of humans.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't have time to see what else
Speaker 1: Plenty had to say about sexual positions for humans, but
Speaker 1: it almost sounds like he's saying for humans, only two
Speaker 1: sexual positions are known, and this is how bears stack,
Speaker 1: or maybe just one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it says, yeah, it says that they
Speaker 2: embrace one another. I can't say for sure that bears
Speaker 2: never face each other during copulation. I can't like rule
Speaker 2: out that that happens. But after some extensive kind of
Speaker 2: awkward googling, it seems to me that the standard what's
Speaker 2: called the dorso ventral position, which you see in other
Speaker 2: quadrupedal mammals, the male mounting from behind, that is also
Speaker 2: the norm for bears, at least most of the time.
Speaker 2: What is definitely true, however, and what may have inspired
Speaker 2: this claim, is that male and female bears engage in
Speaker 2: extensive courtship rituals, lasting for days or even weeks at
Speaker 2: a time. And these courtship rituals, while the bears are
Speaker 2: sort of getting to know one another, they can include
Speaker 2: all kinds of things that could be mistaken for face
Speaker 2: to face copulation. So this can include face to face
Speaker 2: wrestling and play fighting, which does sometimes look like embracing,
Speaker 2: as well as just lots of sniffing each other and
Speaker 2: nuzzling and body rubbing of various sorts. So bears go
Speaker 2: through extensive courtship rituals, and you could think how somebody
Speaker 2: seeing this from a distance could think that this was
Speaker 2: actually the act of mating.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Another interesting claim here is the entry says when sick,
Speaker 2: the bear eats ants. Now bears do eat ants, though
Speaker 2: I couldn't find any evidence that they do so, especially
Speaker 2: when they're sick. It just seems ants are part of
Speaker 2: a bear's omnivorous repertoire, especially it seems with black bears.
Speaker 2: I was reading up on this and I discovered that
Speaker 2: bears are not usually interested in eating adult ants. Instead,
Speaker 2: when they go ant hunting, they are looking for what's
Speaker 2: called the ant brood, the plump little insect sausages that
Speaker 2: are the ant colonies young. This would be the larvae
Speaker 2: and the pewpe These are little grub like juveniles that
Speaker 2: are packed with protein and fat, and they are especially
Speaker 2: prized as a nutritious food source by black bears. And
Speaker 2: in fact, to come back to the subject of licking,
Speaker 2: have you ever seen a black bear's tongue, rob, I.
Speaker 1: Don't think I had until you shared this image here,
Speaker 1: and it is. Oh, it is extensive. This is a
Speaker 1: creature that I'm not saying it could. It could of
Speaker 1: its own power, own eye but the tongue is long
Speaker 1: enough to at least with help reach the eye of desire.
Speaker 2: Certainly. I've got one image here in the outline, and
Speaker 2: it looks like a whole can of bubble tape hanging
Speaker 2: out of the bear's mouth. It's just this long, long,
Speaker 2: pink thing. So a black bear's tongue is quite long, flexible,
Speaker 2: and sticky, and a major reason for it to be
Speaker 2: that way is to help the bear attack difficult to
Speaker 2: reach food sources. And this this can be I don't know,
Speaker 2: reaching up to get berries and other stuff. It's not
Speaker 2: limited to ants, but ants are a big part of this,
Speaker 2: attacking ant broods inside nests. So the bear wants to
Speaker 2: get the ant larvae and the pupet inside the cavities
Speaker 2: of a rock crevice or a hollow log or a
Speaker 2: piece of wood. Might chew, you know, chew at a
Speaker 2: rotten log or piece of wood to get some holes
Speaker 2: in it, and then kind of stick the tongue in
Speaker 2: trying to get the ant brewed out. And so I
Speaker 2: was reading about black bears attacking ant colonies to get
Speaker 2: at the brood, and I came across a fascinating hypothesis
Speaker 2: about that on a fact page for the North American
Speaker 2: Bear Center. This is relating to the chemical warfare that
Speaker 2: goes on during these black bear versus ant raids. And
Speaker 2: so the North American Bear Center page says, quote, when
Speaker 2: researchers experimentally put their faces next to the bears faces
Speaker 2: at logs, First of all, that's funny. The researchers jerked
Speaker 2: away from the acrid cloud of formic acid. Okay, so
Speaker 2: the ants are producing this formic acid to repel the
Speaker 2: attacking bear that's trying to steal all their children. But
Speaker 2: then this goes on to say, quote, they stood amazed
Speaker 2: that the bears could keep working. Formic acid is probably
Speaker 2: and again I want to emphasize this is just a hypothesis.
Speaker 2: This is not proven. But they say formic acid is
Speaker 2: probably a reason bears sometimes bite into insulated snowmobile seats,
Speaker 2: hot tub covers, and refrigerator walls. Huh, what's going on there? Well,
Speaker 2: they explain these items all produce formic acid when the
Speaker 2: formaldehyde in the insulation breaks down, making them smell like
Speaker 2: ant colonies.
Speaker 1: Huh. That is fascinating.
Speaker 2: So yeah, some industrially produced foams and insulating materials apparently
Speaker 2: do release these these scents that are reminiscent of the
Speaker 2: scent of ant chemical warfare. So what the ants would
Speaker 2: be producing in order to repel and attacking animal like
Speaker 2: a bear, it and you know, to a hungry enough
Speaker 2: bear that probably just smells like, well, you know, there's
Speaker 2: something in there that's good to eat. Another thing that
Speaker 2: is mentioned in this Besteria entry is quote they attack
Speaker 2: beehives and try hard to get honeycombs. There is nothing
Speaker 2: they sees more eagerly than honey. This one I rule
Speaker 2: partially true. Hard to say, hard to actually rank the
Speaker 2: food sources or say, there's nothing that bears like more
Speaker 2: than honey, but honey is and especially energy dense food,
Speaker 2: and black bears and brown bears will aggressively pursue honey
Speaker 2: resources in their environment. They are partially protected from beastings
Speaker 2: by their thick fur coat, though they will just also
Speaker 2: put up with a lot of stings on the face
Speaker 2: to get at the honeycomb, which it's worth emphasizing is
Speaker 2: rich with both the sugar dense honey and the fat
Speaker 2: and protein dense bee broods. So once again we're back
Speaker 2: to the hymenopter and brood. Those insect young are like
Speaker 2: little arthropod sausages, but unlike the ant sausages, which are
Speaker 2: retrieved through a cloud of chemical warfare, these sausages come
Speaker 2: preloaded with their own thick sugar syrup. So it's like
Speaker 2: even better.
Speaker 1: All right, So the bear appreciation for honey is it's
Speaker 1: a little different compared to the human appreciation for honey.
Speaker 1: We maybe shouldn't lean too much on Winnie the Poof
Speaker 1: for understanding it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, when humans look for honey, they're actually looking
Speaker 2: usually just for the honey. They're not as much interested
Speaker 2: in trying to eat the bee broods. Yeah yeah, but okay,
Speaker 2: we want to come back to the idea of licking
Speaker 2: the newborns, the stuff that Elayna mentioned in that original email.
Speaker 2: So here I'm going to read a couple of passages
Speaker 2: directly from the Aberdeen Library's online translation of the entry
Speaker 2: on the bear. First passage says the bear is said
Speaker 2: to get its name because the female shapes her newborn
Speaker 2: cub with her mouth or a giving it so to speak.
Speaker 2: It's beginning or sus ford is said that they produce
Speaker 2: a shapeless fetus, and that a piece of flesh is born.
Speaker 2: The mother forms the parts of the body by licking it.
Speaker 2: The shapelessness of the cub is the result of its
Speaker 2: premature birth. It is born only thirty days after conception,
Speaker 2: and as a result of this rapid fertility, it is
Speaker 2: born unformed. And then later the entry says, repeating some
Speaker 2: of the same ideas it says among bears, the time
Speaker 2: of gestation is accelerated. Indeed, the thirtieth day sees the
Speaker 2: womb free of the cub. As a result of this
Speaker 2: rapid fertility, the cubs are created without form. The females
Speaker 2: produce tiny lumps of flesh, white in color, with no eyes.
Speaker 2: These they shape gradually, holding them meanwhile to their breasts,
Speaker 2: so that the cubs are warmed by the constant embrace
Speaker 2: and draw out the spirit of life. So, to review
Speaker 2: the claims here, the bear's pregnancy lasts only thirty days.
Speaker 2: Newborn bear cubs are shapeless pieces of flesh, white in color,
Speaker 2: with no eyes. And then the mother licks the flesh
Speaker 2: lump into shape, giving it limbs, giving it a head,
Speaker 2: and all the other parts of the body, forming it
Speaker 2: with her tongue like a sculptor mold clay. I think
Speaker 2: most of you can guess correctly that this is not true,
Speaker 2: but it is interesting to compare to reality because, while
Speaker 2: literally incorrect, it taps into the spirit of some true
Speaker 2: facts about bear birth, about dinning, and maternal care in
Speaker 2: several different bear species. So one of the ideas mentioned
Speaker 2: here is that the bear cubs are born as these
Speaker 2: limbless flesh lumps after a mere thirty day pregnancy. That
Speaker 2: is not correct, but it does tap into something. So
Speaker 2: the total pregnancy time for a bear varies bear to
Speaker 2: bear in species to species, but generally it's going to
Speaker 2: be a lot longer than thirty days. Nevertheless, bears actually
Speaker 2: do have an interesting adaptation called delayed implantation, which means
Speaker 2: that a fertilized embryo will pause its development for months
Speaker 2: at a time, only implanting in the uterine, lining, and
Speaker 2: continuing growth if certain timing and metabolic conditions are met.
Speaker 2: For example, in the North American black bear, mating typically
Speaker 2: happens in the spring or early summer, and then you
Speaker 2: will get a fertilized egg inside the body that will
Speaker 2: just kind of float in the uterus and it will
Speaker 2: temporarily halt or at least dramatically slow down its development.
Speaker 2: Shortly after fertilization at the blasticist stage, and it doesn't
Speaker 2: implant and begin differentiated cell growth until late fall or
Speaker 2: the onset of wintertime, and only then if the mother
Speaker 2: has reached a sufficient body weight so that she will
Speaker 2: have the energy resources to survive and sustain a pregnancy
Speaker 2: and provide milk for offspring born over the winter in
Speaker 2: the mother's den. The actual period of embryonic development after
Speaker 2: the pause, again, it varies. It might be like, you know,
Speaker 2: two months or something. Maybe maybe up to three months,
Speaker 2: so like two to three months or something, but the
Speaker 2: total time between mating and birth is a lot longer,
Speaker 2: might be more like six to nine months, though it
Speaker 2: is true, and I don't know if this is the
Speaker 2: reason for the initial claim that's repeated in the bestiary here.
Speaker 2: It is interesting that the actual time between the resumption
Speaker 2: of development here from the blastocyst stage until birth is
Speaker 2: quite short. It's still longer than thirty days, but it
Speaker 2: happens pretty fast. Interesting, and I was just talking about
Speaker 2: black bears. A similar overall pattern occurs in brown bears,
Speaker 2: with a few different slight timing differences. Now coming to
Speaker 2: the idea of the flesh lump, of course, that's not
Speaker 2: literally correct. Newborn bears of all species do actually have
Speaker 2: limbs and heads and fully formed individual body parts. But
Speaker 2: the grain of truth in the flesh lump legend is
Speaker 2: that newborn bear cubs are highly altricial and extremely small
Speaker 2: compared to adults of the same species. Rob, I've got
Speaker 2: a picture of some grizzly bear cubs for you to
Speaker 2: look at at here that are adorable, But they're also
Speaker 2: just so tiny compared to the adult. And they also
Speaker 2: look I don't know, you know, they're very cute. There's
Speaker 2: that signal of helplessness in what cuteness is. In a way,
Speaker 2: so animals that are highly altricial are at one end
Speaker 2: of a spectrum known as altriciality and precociality. This refers
Speaker 2: to how independent an animal is after birth. If a
Speaker 2: newborn animal is independent, able to use its senses and
Speaker 2: move around and feed itself shortly after birth, that species
Speaker 2: is precocial. If the newborn is relatively helpless and needs
Speaker 2: a lot of parental care to survive, that species is altricial.
Speaker 2: And it's not a binary, it's a spectrum. You know,
Speaker 2: you can be somewhere along the spectrum toward one one
Speaker 2: end or the other. Megapode birds like brush turkeys are
Speaker 2: known for being highly precocial. Almost immediately after hatching. The
Speaker 2: newborn chicks can run around and even fly a bit,
Speaker 2: They can feed themselves, and they can basically make it
Speaker 2: on their own. Bears are on the altricial end of
Speaker 2: the spectrum. They are highly altricial, with tiny, helpless newborns
Speaker 2: with extremely limited mobility and limited senses. Their eyes are
Speaker 2: closed for some time after birth, and so bear cubs
Speaker 2: need a lot of maternal care to survive. This reality
Speaker 2: of altricial helplessness lends itself in a way to the
Speaker 2: idea of a newborn bear as a tiny, formless lump,
Speaker 2: and the way they look really helps with that as well,
Speaker 2: because while they are born with limbs and differentiated body parts,
Speaker 2: their skin and fur tends to be much paler than
Speaker 2: that of an adult of the same species. The bestiary
Speaker 2: text says that they're born as white lumps. They're typically
Speaker 2: not white, but they might be more kind of a
Speaker 2: pale gray or a paler gray brown, so they're paler
Speaker 2: than the adults. Their eyes are closed, and they must
Speaker 2: nuzzle against their mother for warmth and for nursing. So
Speaker 2: even if you could somehow see them right after birth,
Speaker 2: which that takes place inside the mother's winter den, it's
Speaker 2: kind of hard to see that in nature without some
Speaker 2: really special circumstances arising. If you could see them, they
Speaker 2: would not be up and roaming around on their own.
Speaker 2: They would be huddling close for warmth and trying to nurse.
Speaker 2: Some other realities probably contributing to the licking the formless
Speaker 2: lump myth. Mother bears do lick and then usually eat
Speaker 2: the birth membrane almost immediately after the cub is born.
Speaker 2: Mother bears of multiple species also do lick the cubs
Speaker 2: right after birth. They've been observed licking the cubs themselves
Speaker 2: after parturition, and this is a common maternal behavior, not
Speaker 2: just in bears, but across lots of mammalian species. And
Speaker 2: I think we can infer some probable survival motivations that
Speaker 2: would drive the selection of this behavior. First of all,
Speaker 2: licking after birth helps clean the cubs fur of the
Speaker 2: wet residual amniotic fluid after birth. So why would this
Speaker 2: be important cleaning the amniotic fluid off of the fur
Speaker 2: and skin. A big reason, probably the biggest reason is thermoregulation.
Speaker 2: Newborn bear cubs are incredibly tiny compared to adults. Like
Speaker 2: newborn brown bears are typically at most around a one
Speaker 2: to five hundredth of the body mass of their mother,
Speaker 2: and thus they have a very high surface area to
Speaker 2: body mass ratio. The smaller you are, the harder it
Speaker 2: is for your body to retain heat to keep the
Speaker 2: heat inside. So these babies, these baby bears lose heat
Speaker 2: much faster than an adult bear. Also, they're usually born
Speaker 2: in winter during cold weather. Also, they have much less
Speaker 2: heat insulation in the form of subcutaneous fat and body fur.
Speaker 2: They've got a lot less fur when they're born than
Speaker 2: adults have. So newborn bears are at great risk of
Speaker 2: hypothermia from the moment that they're born. Being coated in
Speaker 2: amniotic fluid obviously makes that risk a lot worse. By
Speaker 2: keeping the fur wet and matted down, it makes the bear,
Speaker 2: the bear cub subject to evaporative cooling. You know, when
Speaker 2: you're wet that the the evaporation steals energy from the
Speaker 2: surface of your body. And to the extent that the
Speaker 2: newborn bear has any fur, this very some of the
Speaker 2: different bear species, but they're not going to have a
Speaker 2: lot of fur, but what fur they have is going
Speaker 2: to be matted down and matted down and wet, and
Speaker 2: when it's matted and wet, it's not really going to
Speaker 2: work very well as insulation against the cold. So by
Speaker 2: licking the newborn clean, the mother is actually increasing the
Speaker 2: cub's ability the cub's ability to retain body heat. A
Speaker 2: second big thing that I see mentioned in the literature
Speaker 2: about mother bears licking their newborns is in addition to
Speaker 2: cleaning cleaning the body, licking of the perenneal or anogenital
Speaker 2: region is important because that is thought to help stimulate
Speaker 2: the cubs to urinate and defecate. In some cases, newborn
Speaker 2: bears apparently can't poop or pee without external stimulation of
Speaker 2: the ans and genitals, and at the very least, the
Speaker 2: licking seems to make that easier. So the mother will
Speaker 2: lick the nether regions to make the cubs poop and pee,
Speaker 2: and then we'll often eat the feces after the cubs
Speaker 2: poop and the den. I thought that was interesting, so
Speaker 2: I was investigating, like, why eat the poop? This seems
Speaker 2: to be often explained as a den hygiene behavior. I
Speaker 2: can't prove this, but I wonder if a reason for
Speaker 2: this is that it would help prevent the den from
Speaker 2: having an excess of smells that would attract predators.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was thinking about the smell issue earlier, just
Speaker 1: in terms of say the ambiotic fluid, thinking of non
Speaker 1: bear mamalion creatures that in which part of the the
Speaker 1: young's protection is that they are sometimes described as being
Speaker 1: perhaps smell neutral or having a much less pronounced odor.
Speaker 1: It could alert predators to their presence.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I was thinking about that as well. This
Speaker 2: is something that again that I have not found proof of,
Speaker 2: but I was just wondering if smells associated with birth
Speaker 2: I think would usually signal to predators if they're present,
Speaker 2: that you are in a vulnerable state and that they're
Speaker 2: a vulnerable newborns present. And so this did come up.
Speaker 2: This wasn't in bears, but I was looking at another
Speaker 2: study about maternal licking behaviors in mammals in general. Actually
Speaker 2: this was more about not just licking but general postparturition
Speaker 2: maternal bonding behaviors, and one of the things that was
Speaker 2: looking at was licking. And this study reported in the
Speaker 2: context of rodents that the presence of predator smells. If
Speaker 2: you pipe in some smells of a predator, that actually
Speaker 2: increased licking behavior in mother with newborns.
Speaker 1: Oh fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that did make me wonder if that it
Speaker 2: does have something to do with trying to remove smells
Speaker 2: that might signal prey vulnerability.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems possible, at least to me, that
Speaker 1: the consumption of the feces here by the mother would
Speaker 1: perhaps factor into that, because I've read about the reverse
Speaker 1: the offspring's consumption of the mother's feces in some animals,
Speaker 1: perhaps having to do with the transfer of the microbiome
Speaker 1: and so forth. But obviously that wouldn't to my understanding,
Speaker 1: be the case here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, going the other way, it's harder to see why
Speaker 2: that would be necessary.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The only other option that immediately comes to mind
Speaker 1: is remaining nutrients that are still within the fecal matter
Speaker 1: of the newborns. But ye, which is something you also
Speaker 1: see in this kind of behavior.
Speaker 2: Yeah, overwintering in the den is also a resource conservation time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and there could be other motivations as well, Like in
Speaker 2: lots of mammals, licking and mutual grooming behaviors promote social bonding.
Speaker 2: We're already talking about that in part two of the series,
Speaker 2: and so that might be another thing. There is just
Speaker 2: part of a social bonding behavior that strengthens the emotional
Speaker 2: connection between mother bear and offspring in some animal. In
Speaker 2: some animals, maternal licking might stimulate autonomic survival functions like
Speaker 2: breathing and blood flow. So maybe something like that is
Speaker 2: going on here. But what's absolutely clear is that the
Speaker 2: mother bear does lick the baby bear. At least part
Speaker 2: of this seems to be related to stimulating urination and defecation,
Speaker 2: and a big part of it, I think it's fair
Speaker 2: to say, is motivated by cleaning the baby bear to
Speaker 2: help it thermoregulate, help it retain heat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there are a number of things that are
Speaker 1: just not online yet with the newborn bear, they eventually
Speaker 1: come online, and part of the process, at least as
Speaker 1: a observed, is the licking by the mother. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was actually reading about licking behaviors in bears in
Speaker 2: a study that was like a this was really interesting.
Speaker 1: It was a.
Speaker 2: Wild den camera study. This was published in the journal
Speaker 2: Animals in the year twenty twenty by Lynn Rogers and
Speaker 2: a bunch of co authors. The title was behavior in
Speaker 2: free living American black bear dens, parturition, maternal care, and
Speaker 2: cub behavior, and the authors explain their method here. They say, quote,
Speaker 2: we report here some of the major findings on the
Speaker 2: behavior of black bear mothers and cubs in their dens
Speaker 2: in the wild, based on observations in the state of Minnesota, USA.
Speaker 2: Wild female bears were outfitted with radio callers and their
Speaker 2: dens located as they prepared for hibernation in the fall.
Speaker 2: Cameras were installed in the dens and events in the
Speaker 2: den recorded until they and their cubs finally abandoned their
Speaker 2: dens in the spring. So this is amazing. They actually
Speaker 2: were able to get cameras into wild dens so they
Speaker 2: could see what the bears were doing in the dens
Speaker 2: in the wild. This is something that normally is really
Speaker 2: hard to see. Obviously, you can study captive bears, but
Speaker 2: captivity might alter the bear's behavior. It often does, so
Speaker 2: this study looked at a bunch of different things, but
Speaker 2: I was interested in the licking behaviors observed. So one
Speaker 2: thing they documented was the licking of cubs right after birth,
Speaker 2: started almost immediately, and it does seem to be related
Speaker 2: to a period where the mothers are trying to warm
Speaker 2: and stimulate their newborns. So, to read from the author's results,
Speaker 2: quote activities were sufficiently visible for three litters born in
Speaker 2: twenty ten Lily, twenty eleven Lily, and twenty twelve Jewel.
Speaker 2: These are bear names to determine that the mothers began
Speaker 2: licking embryonic membranes from the first born cubs within nine
Speaker 2: sixteen and eighty five seconds of parturition. On the twenty
Speaker 2: second of January twenty two twelve, when it was negative
Speaker 2: eight degrees celsius outside, Jewel licked her first born seventy
Speaker 2: seven times per minute for six point five minutes before
Speaker 2: assuming the ventrally recumbent warming position and placing the cub
Speaker 2: under her sparsely furred chest and belly. In that position,
Speaker 2: with her head tucked under her chest and her crown
Speaker 2: against the den floor, she continued licking the cubs dry
Speaker 2: while warming them with her breath. So this seems to
Speaker 2: me to be associated with a licking, clean, drying, and
Speaker 2: warming behavior after birth, where the mother bear is trying
Speaker 2: to make sure that the cub is sufficiently kept warm
Speaker 2: and it's also adorable. The idea of warming her warming
Speaker 2: the cub with her breath.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The study also does document another thing I talked about,
Speaker 2: the licking of the perineal region in what the study
Speaker 2: calls toilet licking. Okay, that's the name for it. It
Speaker 2: says in this process they lick, but also the mother's
Speaker 2: quote ingest the urine and feces to avoid fouling their
Speaker 2: living quarters. And it says that Lily and Jewel routinely
Speaker 2: did this, often in response to their cubs cries. And
Speaker 2: then finally they document one more thing that it seems
Speaker 2: like actually totally different. This is not like licking of
Speaker 2: newborn cubs. But they say, in our quote previous studies
Speaker 2: in northeastern Minnesota, we have seen cubs, juveniles, and adults
Speaker 2: touch tongues and engage in reciprocal tongue licking in apparent
Speaker 2: signs of friendship, but we have not seen these behaviors
Speaker 2: reported for bears in dens. Reciprocal tongue looking involves bears
Speaker 2: simultaneously touching and or entwining tongues as they lick each
Speaker 2: other in and around the mouth. And then they say
Speaker 2: the webcams revealed Lily's licking Hope's mouth without Hope reciprocating
Speaker 2: when Hope was thirty nine, forty one and fifty one
Speaker 2: days old. However, on March seventeenth, twenty ten, fifty four
Speaker 2: day old Hope vocalized the pulsing home of suckling for
Speaker 2: twenty four seconds during a thirty seven second session of
Speaker 2: reciprocal tongue licking. So, first, mom is trying to do
Speaker 2: reciprocal tongue licking with the cub. First few times the
Speaker 2: cub does not lick back, but then finally the cub
Speaker 2: does start. They they're now reciprocal tongue licking, and it
Speaker 2: mentions a couple other examples too. But I don't know,
Speaker 2: I thought that was interesting. That seems to be maybe
Speaker 2: another just social bonding thing. I don't know if there's
Speaker 2: an established reason why they're licking each other's tongues other
Speaker 2: than just some form of play or bonding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it does sound like it could just be bonding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's what I've got on bear locking of
Speaker 2: newborns for now. But Elena, thank you for writing in
Speaker 2: on this subject.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. After I read this email and we
Speaker 1: decided we were going to discuss this on the show,
Speaker 1: I picked a bear book off of my bookshelf here.
Speaker 1: It's one that I've referenced in the show before by
Speaker 1: Wolf Dieter Storrel. He's a German American cultural anthropologist and ethnobotanist.
Speaker 1: But he has some interesting little bits about this. He
Speaker 1: does briefly refer to this idea that we've been discussing about,
Speaker 1: the bear licking this this this mass into form, and
Speaker 1: he notes the Franco, German and otherwise Northern European proverbial
Speaker 1: expression an unlicked bear, which was apparently used historically to
Speaker 1: describe an unrefined person, like, oh, look at there, whatever
Speaker 1: they're doing, you know, in breach of etiquette, that person's
Speaker 1: an unlicked bear. Also, the idea licked into shape apparently
Speaker 1: also stems from this idea as well, which is which
Speaker 1: is one that certainly I'm more familiar with. Loked into shape.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, that's exactly what we're talking about the
Speaker 1: bear doing electually. All right, I want to return to
Speaker 1: a couple of animals that we've already talked about and
Speaker 1: get into some various beliefs and traditions surrounding them, Starting
Speaker 1: first with cows, as we discussed in our previous licking episodes.
Speaker 1: Cows are big liquors, and when they lick humans, it's
Speaker 1: sometimes perceived as auspicious or even some manner of good luck.
Speaker 1: This seems to especially be true in cultures where cattle
Speaker 1: enjoy sacred status. There's a particular account of how the
Speaker 1: cattle gathered around fifteenth and sixteenth century Hindu saint Chaitanya Mahapruvu,
Speaker 1: founder of the Godhea Vishnuism Hindu religious movement, and licked
Speaker 1: his body as an act of love. Accounts of cows
Speaker 1: licking Krishna are also important, I understand in the Hadi
Speaker 1: Krishna movement or the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, which
Speaker 1: is itself a modern expression of Godia Vishnuism. Now, in
Speaker 1: mentioning cowlix, I'm sure a number of you also were
Speaker 1: instantly reminded that, hey, that's what we call this weird
Speaker 1: part in our hair that may be difficult to comb
Speaker 1: into shape. I have one of these. This is one
Speaker 1: of the prime reasons I eventually gave up on combing
Speaker 1: my hair and keep up a more sort of I
Speaker 1: don't know, ruffled style, if you will, because the cowlick
Speaker 1: itself is so difficult to manage. The cowlick, of course,
Speaker 1: is just a pattern of follicle disruption on the human scalp.
Speaker 2: Sort of like going in the opposite direction of the
Speaker 2: follicles around it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it kind of looks like I grew up
Speaker 1: hearing this word cowlick, which I have to made it
Speaker 1: feel all the more silly and undesirable to have one,
Speaker 1: because the idea of being lickd by a cow, for me,
Speaker 1: it felt rather foolish. I think it's a good name, though,
Speaker 1: because you look at a cow lick a very pronounced
Speaker 1: cowl like and it does kind of look like some
Speaker 1: sort of big wet tongue reached out and kind of disrupted.
Speaker 1: It kind of made like a crop circle.
Speaker 2: In your hair.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I do wonder how I might have felt
Speaker 1: about it if I'd been raised in a culture that
Speaker 1: saw the actual look of a cow as a potentially
Speaker 1: auspicious thing unknown. But I was looking around and reading.
Speaker 1: In some cases these were just like you know, like
Speaker 1: online conversations people were having about different cultural traditions. But
Speaker 1: in parts of India, having two cowlcks is considered lucky
Speaker 1: and or that that child may be a handful and
Speaker 1: I've read that this tradition like is also found in
Speaker 1: other cultures. I was seeing threads where people of Korean
Speaker 1: descent were talking about this as well, where another case
Speaker 1: in which two hair licks meant that the child would
Speaker 1: go on to have two marriages in their life, and
Speaker 1: if you had more than two, it might mean more
Speaker 1: than two marriages. So I would be very interested to
Speaker 1: hear from listeners out there if you have some insight
Speaker 1: on these, you know, you know, I think generally light
Speaker 1: hearted interpretations of what a cow lick might mean for someone,
Speaker 1: you know, especially as scene in a child. Now, I
Speaker 1: want to turn from here to Norse traditions, because there
Speaker 1: is some very important cosmic cow licking that goes on there,
Speaker 1: as detailed in the twelve to twenty work The pros
Speaker 1: at A, two entities emerged from the melting of the
Speaker 1: primordial ice in Neffelheim. The first was, of course, the
Speaker 1: giant Yemir, but the second was the giant cow Uhumla,
Speaker 1: and her milk is said to have sustained Yemir. The
Speaker 1: quote translated, of course, is four milk streams ran from
Speaker 1: her teats, and she fed Yeamer. But then, while how's
Speaker 1: she going to produce this milk, she has to consume
Speaker 1: something herself. And what she does is she the frost
Speaker 1: covered salt stones or the salty rhymestones for her own nourishment.
Speaker 1: And as she licks them, something interesting happens. Depending on
Speaker 1: the actual translation, and I think how you interpret it,
Speaker 1: the rough action of her tongue against the salt stones
Speaker 1: either uncovers a man, first his hair and then the
Speaker 1: rest of him, a man perhaps already within the salt stone,
Speaker 1: kind of like reaching the center of a TUTSI roll pop. Yes,
Speaker 1: Or she licks the salt stone into the shape of
Speaker 1: a man, forming the man out of the stone, kind
Speaker 1: of carving him out of the stone with her tongue,
Speaker 1: or something akin to what we were talking about with
Speaker 1: the bear. The licking by the mammalian mother brings form
Speaker 1: to the formless, And I think the latter is the
Speaker 1: more popular interpretation. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Yeah, I could imagine how it might be ambiguous
Speaker 2: if it said something like the cow licked a man
Speaker 2: out of the stone, setting one loose from the stone,
Speaker 2: or turning the stone into a man.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I did a quick looking around and surveying. It
Speaker 1: seems like most scholarly works are discussing it, not in
Speaker 1: terms of revealing, like you know, the man was in
Speaker 1: there to begin with, but she's literally forming him out
Speaker 1: of the stone. So either way though, the individual inside
Speaker 1: the stone or made from the stone, et cetera, is
Speaker 1: important because it's this figure Bury or Burr grandfather of
Speaker 1: Odin and also grandfather of course of Odin's brothers VILLI
Speaker 1: and V and they become the first gods. They are
Speaker 1: the slayers of Yamir. And the earth, of course is
Speaker 1: going to be born out of this dead giant's bones.
Speaker 1: So again interesting once more that we have this idea
Speaker 1: of a mother's licking of a newborn, giving life and
Speaker 1: perhaps echoing the ideas concerning the bear forming the birth
Speaker 1: mass into a cup or calf. And I included an
Speaker 1: illustration of from the pros here, and you can, folks
Speaker 1: can look this up if you look up the cow
Speaker 1: in question Odumla on say Wikipedia, you can see this
Speaker 1: illustration of the big cow. You see the big tongue there,
Speaker 1: you see the four streams of milk. And I believe
Speaker 1: we see the figure being licked from the stone here
Speaker 1: from the salt stone.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, that's what that is. At first, I thought
Speaker 2: that was you.
Speaker 1: Mer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, doesn't look happy to be being licked out of
Speaker 2: the stone. He's got a big grimace on his face, like, oh, brother,
Speaker 2: I got to live in this world.
Speaker 1: Didn't ask for this, But here we are, all right,
Speaker 1: And then I want to come back to the world
Speaker 1: of dogs. I believe we talked a little bit about
Speaker 1: dogs licking and also about the idea that a dog's
Speaker 1: lick would have a healing power to it, and yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a widespread idea in the ancient world, and
Speaker 1: we discussed it's it's use in some ma interpretations, and
Speaker 1: so we have another another chapter of that here to
Speaker 1: discuss specifically, I want to talk about dog related rituals
Speaker 1: attributed to the Hittites, an ancient Anatolian Bronze Age empire
Speaker 1: in what is now Turkey, and there's some bleed over
Speaker 1: into some related groups as well. Of note here there's
Speaker 1: a fair amount of scholarly discussion about the relationship between
Speaker 1: actual historic Hittites and the people described as Hittites in
Speaker 1: the Bible.
Speaker 2: Like questioning whether that's actually referring to the same people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I like, are the Hittites that we know
Speaker 1: from other literature and archaeological evidence. Are they the same
Speaker 1: as the people called Hittites in the Bible? And there
Speaker 1: seems to be a fair amount of disagreeance that basically
Speaker 1: they certainly don't line up one for one, and they
Speaker 1: may be rather disaligned. But I didn't have time to
Speaker 1: get into it too deeply in my own research, I see,
Speaker 1: so I looked at a couple of papers on this.
Speaker 1: An older nineteen ninety two were titled The Puppy in
Speaker 1: Hittie Ritual by Billy Jean Collins, published by the University
Speaker 1: of Chicago's Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, as
Speaker 1: well as the more recent Puppy Sacrifice in Sinophagi from
Speaker 1: early Philistine tel Nickney Ekron, contextualized by livtov at All,
Speaker 1: published in the journal Jamas in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: Wait, hold on puppy sacrifice and Sinophagi. That dog eating.
Speaker 1: Yes, so I'm not going to talk as much about
Speaker 1: dog eating, but I am going to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about puppy sacrifice. So I'm not going to get
Speaker 1: into gross details at all, and not everything I'm going
Speaker 1: to discuss is going to involve puppies being sacrificed outright,
Speaker 1: But I totally understand if anyone wants to go ahead
Speaker 1: and call it here and close this episode out. But
Speaker 1: trust me that I'm not going to get We're not
Speaker 1: going to get too gross here.
Speaker 2: Well, I understand. Also my reaction is an unfair dog bias,
Speaker 2: you know. Well, now, I mean to talk about animal
Speaker 2: sacrifices of other kinds a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's humans have a special relationship with dogs,
Speaker 1: and you know, even if you're not a dog person,
Speaker 1: I'm not much of a dog person, but I of
Speaker 1: course I don't want puppies to be sacrificed. I don't
Speaker 1: like that idea. Puppies are cute, undeniably, and yeah, and
Speaker 1: humans and dogs have a special relationship and it's, you know,
Speaker 1: part of our culture and part of who we are,
Speaker 1: whether there's one in your house or in your lap
Speaker 1: or not.
Speaker 2: Let me steal my emotions, and we will. I want
Speaker 2: to learn about this.
Speaker 1: Yes, So the recent the more. The more recent paper
Speaker 1: that I reference here concerns a fine in Ekron, historically
Speaker 1: a Canaanite and then Philistine city, where evidence of a
Speaker 1: beheaded sacrifice dog dated to twelfth to tenth centuries BC
Speaker 1: during the Iron Age are discussed, and then the remains
Speaker 1: here are thought to be tied to the sorts of
Speaker 1: rights that we'll be discussing here, and in this case,
Speaker 1: not a funerary rite a quote, non elite domestic right,
Speaker 1: So in other words, not something that was just done
Speaker 1: by you know, for the king and queen, by the
Speaker 1: king and Queen's you know, you know, wizards or priests,
Speaker 1: but rather something that would be the part of non
Speaker 1: elite domestic.
Speaker 2: Life, household magic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So essentially this is how the issue breaks down.
Speaker 1: So we know from literature and archaeological evidence that the
Speaker 1: Hittites valued dogs as trained herders, as hunters, and as
Speaker 1: guardians guard dogs, but they also made use of young,
Speaker 1: as yet untrained dogs, puppies, which they would have ready
Speaker 1: access to, and they would sometimes be used in cases
Speaker 1: of magical sacrifice. You know, this kind of part of
Speaker 1: this comes back again. This is a culture that prized dogs,
Speaker 1: but a puppy is untrained, they're around, they're easy to acquire.
Speaker 1: And this also ties into some of these prevailing eyes
Speaker 1: ideas that were present in the ancient world. Who've always
Speaker 1: that we've already referred to that dogs have some sort
Speaker 1: of a healing property to them. So the basic idea
Speaker 1: here is that in specific cases of ritual is that
Speaker 1: the puppy would serve as a sacrifice in a transfer
Speaker 1: ritual by which the dog would lick the afflicted human
Speaker 1: and in doing so absorb that affliction, and then the
Speaker 1: dog would be ritually sacrificed. So again the tradition here's
Speaker 1: a link to others who had discussed before the idea
Speaker 1: that dogs heal via their licking. The ancient Greeks believed
Speaker 1: in this, and also, according to Collins, would engage in
Speaker 1: a kind of transfer ritual of their own. The dog
Speaker 1: would lick an afflicted individual, absorb the illness, and then
Speaker 1: the dog would be killed and examined to determine the
Speaker 1: nature of the human malady. So in the Greek case,
Speaker 1: not a situation all right, we've driven the illness into
Speaker 1: the dog, and now we must kill the dog. But
Speaker 1: rather we've driven the illness into to the dog, and
Speaker 1: now let us examine the dog to see what the
Speaker 1: sickness is, so we can then treat the human. Collins
Speaker 1: also points out that among the Spartans, dogs were sacrificed
Speaker 1: by the cult of their god of War, and that
Speaker 1: it was thought that the lick of a dog could
Speaker 1: cure blindness, and perhaps related, Hippocrates suggested dog meat as
Speaker 1: being good for the eyes. Like you having ailments, will
Speaker 1: cook up some dog meat that will help. Plenty the
Speaker 1: Elder also wrote of such uses for the puppy, specifically
Speaker 1: that a blind puppy, and this is playing off the
Speaker 1: observation that dogs are born blind much like bears are
Speaker 1: born blind. As we've discussed, you know, their eyes are not,
Speaker 1: you know, fully operational and open and so forth, and
Speaker 1: then by this view, are kind of healed by their
Speaker 1: or given sight via their mother's licking. Plenty rights that
Speaker 1: you could take a blind puppy press it to a
Speaker 1: sick person's abdomen for three during which the puppy would
Speaker 1: absorb the illness of the individual and die of said illness. Again,
Speaker 1: nobody wants the idea of struggling up to a puppy
Speaker 1: until it dies, but this was one idea that was
Speaker 1: explored in the ancient world. By the way, Plenty is
Speaker 1: full of eye wisdom elsewhere in the natural history as well.
Speaker 1: Here's a quote in translation. It is said that goats
Speaker 1: can see by night as well as they can in
Speaker 1: the daytime, and that consequently a diet of goat's liver
Speaker 1: restores twilight's sight to persons suffering from what is called
Speaker 1: night blindness.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Okay, I wonder why the liver, Well.
Speaker 1: You know, that's where most of the goat teness is.
Speaker 2: I mean, does the flavor Yeah, I mean I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, you can certainly get into the health potential
Speaker 1: health benefits of eating a mammal's liver, as well as
Speaker 1: some of the health risks in some animals. So I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's one of these things that without going
Speaker 1: actually looking into it in depth, you know, there might
Speaker 1: be some wisdom to it. There might be something in
Speaker 1: an animal's liver that would help people with certain maladies.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's gonna actually help with night blindness,
Speaker 1: but there you.
Speaker 2: Are, public service announcement, never read a polar bear's liver exactly.
Speaker 1: Collins also adds that there was a medieval German ritual,
Speaker 1: and I'm guessing this is sort of like a folk ritual,
Speaker 1: folk magic, very much domestic in nature, where you could
Speaker 1: rid yourself a fever or some other ailment by placing
Speaker 1: a bowl of sweet milk before a dog and reciting
Speaker 1: the following good luck you hound, may you be sick
Speaker 1: and I be sound this. I think the rhyme in
Speaker 1: German would be gossooned and hooned. So the idea is
Speaker 1: the dog drinks, then the human drinks sickness transferred to
Speaker 1: the dog. And I love how this pre germ theory
Speaker 1: folk ritual actually seems to invert the way that an
Speaker 1: illness might conceivably be transferred between two participants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: So again the Hittites, where we're not standouts in any
Speaker 1: of their beliefs. Here she references the Hittite ritual of
Speaker 1: Zui zu Wi in this text, by which a puppy
Speaker 1: is called on to absorb one's sicknesses. Quote, just as
Speaker 1: the puppy licks its own nine body parts in the
Speaker 1: same way, let it lick up the illness in the
Speaker 1: subject's body parts. And then each part is named, including
Speaker 1: the butt. Just go through just the whole anatomy and saying,
Speaker 1: just there's like a chant to it, like a very
Speaker 1: much a ritualistic invocation to it. As the puppy then
Speaker 1: licks the different parts of the human body and brings
Speaker 1: about healing via transference. Wow. Yeah, And I'm not. I'm
Speaker 1: not certain that in this particular ritual the dog's death
Speaker 1: is inherently implied. Elsewhere in Hittite rituals and ideas presented
Speaker 1: that the dead puppy of some sort of transfer like
Speaker 1: this could be buried, and in doing so, you are
Speaker 1: burying the illness as well. I don't know about you, Joe,
Speaker 1: but in thinking about this, I was reminded of a
Speaker 1: topic we've discussed on the show before, the story of
Speaker 1: Jesus casting the demon Legion into the pigs and then
Speaker 1: the pigs dying very much an act of transference.
Speaker 2: Yes, always seemed interesting to me. The logic of that
Speaker 2: in the story, that the demon can't just be removed
Speaker 2: to go nowhere, it has to be sent into something else.
Speaker 2: The pigs must be there to receive the demon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I detect a certain amount of kinship between
Speaker 1: these two ideas. Collins also outlines a Hittite apotropaic practice
Speaker 1: that does not involve a dead dog. We're going to
Speaker 1: end on a nice light note here, but this practice
Speaker 1: is a practice by which a tallow puppy, so kind
Speaker 1: of like a soap or a candle puppy, was placed
Speaker 1: in the King and Queen's bedchamber at night to keep
Speaker 1: evil at bay in the same way that the adult
Speaker 1: guard dogs, or I think the term that she uses
Speaker 1: the dogs of the table, and I think this is
Speaker 1: also referred to in the writings of Homer as well,
Speaker 1: the dogs of the table being the dogs that hang
Speaker 1: around you and eat food scraps that you throw out
Speaker 1: from under the table. They're also your protectors, but I
Speaker 1: guess they are not allowed to sleep with you, or
Speaker 1: they're not in the bedchamber, or maybe they's just a
Speaker 1: sleep and kind of lousy, or they can't protect against
Speaker 1: supernatural threats, and therefore you need this magical tallow puppy,
Speaker 1: the soap puppy that's gonna keep the enemy at bay
Speaker 1: at night.
Speaker 2: Well, this also reminds me of ancient Mesopotamian traditions we've
Speaker 2: talked about on the show before, of apotropeic figurines, that
Speaker 2: you would have a guard figurine some kind of might
Speaker 2: represent a dema or might represent a kind of like
Speaker 2: strong human soldier or something like that, a figurine that
Speaker 2: would protect you in some way, maybe around your bed
Speaker 2: while you sleep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, very much the same thread.
Speaker 2: But here it's c puppy. Yes, all right. Are we
Speaker 2: done with licking for the time being?
Speaker 1: I think so, unless we get just a really intriguing
Speaker 1: bit of listener mail, which is always a possibility, So
Speaker 1: at least conceivably for the time being, we're going to
Speaker 1: go ahead and close the book on licking. Okay, just
Speaker 1: a reminder for everyone out there that Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast of
Speaker 1: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on
Speaker 1: Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns
Speaker 1: to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: I didn't even get to my film notes. I had
Speaker 1: some notes about angels licking people's eyeballs and the prophecy
Speaker 1: three to learn their history, something that I think has
Speaker 1: no real counterpart in actual folklore and mythology.
Speaker 2: Well maybe not for history learning purposes, but we have
Speaker 2: talked about gods licking people's eyeballs in Egyptian magic. Yes,
Speaker 2: probably the whole deal there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so it could be it could be related
Speaker 1: to that. I just don't know that I've ever read
Speaker 1: anything concerning angels per se. Licking eyeballs, but yeah, there's
Speaker 1: likely a connection there. I also had some notes about
Speaker 1: the other prophecy movie, the nineteen seventy five Bear movie,
Speaker 1: in which the mutant bear is essentially a partially formless mass,
Speaker 1: and I had some notes there where I was probably
Speaker 1: reading too much into all of this, where it's like,
Speaker 1: is it the idea that instead of the environment is
Speaker 1: not nurtured by humans, it is polluted by humans, resulting
Speaker 1: in mutant bears. There are also some mutant bear cubs
Speaker 1: in that film as well, But like I say, I'm
Speaker 1: probably reaching with all of that.
Speaker 2: One of these days, I mean have to see it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I tried to watch it once. It
Speaker 1: immediately begins with the death of like nine dogs, so
Speaker 1: it's a it's a more serious film than Killer Mutant
Speaker 1: Bear might make you think it's gonna be anyway. That's sorry,
Speaker 1: That once again stuff to blow your mind. Find us
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Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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