Speaker 1: Guess what, Mango? What's that? Will? All right? So I've
Speaker 1: been looking at octopus facts all week, and I hope
Speaker 1: you have too, because that's the episode we're recording right now.
Speaker 1: But did you know that they love puzzles like they
Speaker 1: actually kind of need them. I mean, it's not surprising
Speaker 1: that they're smart. They're basically a giant heads with too
Speaker 1: many legs. So I was reading about Louis the octopus.
Speaker 1: He's a giant Pacific octopus who lives at an aquarium
Speaker 1: in Cornwall, England. So he's this beautiful six ft wide
Speaker 1: creature and he insists on cuddling with his Mr. Potato
Speaker 1: Head toy, which sounds cute. It is, but Louis gets
Speaker 1: really aggressive if you try to take it away from him,
Speaker 1: so don't try to do that. I mean, Luis needs
Speaker 1: to learn to share. So is he just rearranging the toy? Well,
Speaker 1: he does fiddle with the parts and and supposedly the
Speaker 1: bright colors are also stimulating. But the most appealing thing
Speaker 1: for him is that the scientists fill the tiny toy
Speaker 1: with crab meat or smelt. They just stuff it through
Speaker 1: the arm and the headholes and it's a bit of
Speaker 1: a puzzle. I mean, it's fun for Louis and other
Speaker 1: octopus to figure out how to get those treats. But
Speaker 1: reading about Louis made me wonder how smart are squid
Speaker 1: and octopus? What are the major differences between them? And
Speaker 1: how exactly do you stuff a smelt into a potato head?
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what today's show is all about. It's
Speaker 1: alp in to part time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and
Speaker 1: as always I'm joined by my good friend Manuesh I
Speaker 1: ticket off and sitting behind the soundproof glass wearing his
Speaker 1: Octopus Give the Best Hugs t shirt is our friend
Speaker 1: and producer Tristan McNeil. He'd been staring at that thing
Speaker 1: on eBay for weeks. Tobago, Today's show is a little
Speaker 1: all over the place. I know, we wanted to chat
Speaker 1: about squid and octopus. Yeah, that's right, but since we're
Speaker 1: covering the sea, I thought would be fun to slip
Speaker 1: in a quick chat with one of our favorite authors,
Speaker 1: Julie Burwald. She wrote this lovely new book called Spineless.
Speaker 1: It's all about jellyfish and and though octopus and squid
Speaker 1: and jellyfish aren't exactly the same thing, it did feel
Speaker 1: like a delicious seafood salad of an episode. But you
Speaker 1: don't even eat octopus, maga. I know, you know, I
Speaker 1: actually used to eat it, But then we did this
Speaker 1: article on octopus and metal flass and they just seemed
Speaker 1: too smart. And also it compared the creatures two kittens. Actually,
Speaker 1: I pulled up this quote because I thought it was
Speaker 1: so funny. Here to the chagrin of some scientists, these
Speaker 1: cephalopods can run. As a pre vet student, Alexa Warburton
Speaker 1: had the tricky task of scooping octopuses out of their tanks.
Speaker 1: The stubborn animals would hide or squeeze into the tanks
Speaker 1: cracks to avoid being removed. As a last ditch effort,
Speaker 1: some octopuses would trampoline off the net, leap to the floor,
Speaker 1: and take off zig zagging around the lab. It's like quote,
Speaker 1: chasing a cat, Warburton told a Ryan Magazine. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like hurting octopus is the new herding cats.
Speaker 1: But that there was a been in the story where
Speaker 1: this octopus actually escaped into a scientists library, and when
Speaker 1: the scientist walked in, he saw the octopus going through
Speaker 1: each of his books, just turning the page away. Is
Speaker 1: that actually true? Yeah, we fact checked it. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's certainly escape artists, and they're kind of destructive. To
Speaker 1: Scientific American reporter that two workers at the Santa Monica
Speaker 1: Pier Aquarium walked in to find two gallons of seawater
Speaker 1: soaking the floor of their new space. They try to
Speaker 1: figure out what had happened, and they realized these two
Speaker 1: octopus had quote disassembled a water recycling valve and redirected
Speaker 1: the two to spew water out of the tank for
Speaker 1: about ten hours. There must have been so much water
Speaker 1: it ridiculous. But I mean that seems more playful than
Speaker 1: means spirited, right, And obviously we know that octopus is
Speaker 1: play not just from your Lewis and Mr Potato Head example,
Speaker 1: but also because octopuses have been observed in boring situations
Speaker 1: amusing themselves. So there was this one story I read
Speaker 1: where this octopus and a tank was given like an
Speaker 1: empty floating pill bottle, I think, and after enough time
Speaker 1: it started flicking it into a jet of water in
Speaker 1: the aquarium and waiting for it to come back, then
Speaker 1: doing it again and again in the scientists claimed it
Speaker 1: was like watching a kid throw a ball against the wall,
Speaker 1: but it did make me wonder how smarter octopus? And
Speaker 1: so what did you find out? That octopus aren't really
Speaker 1: very cooperative subjects? I mean, obviously they've got all these
Speaker 1: skills right there, super strong, they can hide. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: mimic other forms, and and you're talking specifically about the
Speaker 1: mimic octopus. That's one of the types of octopus. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're masters of disguise and changing their shapes, but they're
Speaker 1: also good at going through mazes and solving little puzzles.
Speaker 1: But all of that makes them really difficult to study.
Speaker 1: So this is from a report I saw in the Guardian.
Speaker 1: Apparently this paper tried to teach three octopus to pull
Speaker 1: a lever for food. And we've seen this with you know,
Speaker 1: monkeys and rats and other creatures. And first of all,
Speaker 1: the octopus in the study have the best, most dignified names.
Speaker 1: What's that They were called Albert, Bertram, and Charles. That's
Speaker 1: what I would have named my octopus. That that is dignified.
Speaker 1: So Albert and Bertram are really good subjects. They pulled
Speaker 1: the levers in a quote reasonably consistent manner. According to
Speaker 1: the study. It Charles, it turns out, is a total terror.
Speaker 1: He tries to pull a light that's suspended above the
Speaker 1: water into the tank. He squirts water at anyone who
Speaker 1: gets close. He's basically taunting the scientists, and then he
Speaker 1: ends the experiment by breaking off the levers so they
Speaker 1: couldn't run the experiment anymore. I mean, Charles is totally gangster.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have to admit I kind of like
Speaker 1: Charles amusing to watch him. I feel like maybe there's
Speaker 1: a whole episode to be done on octopus is behaving badly.
Speaker 1: I mean they can undo latches and untied knots. I
Speaker 1: even saw a story where scientists were complaining that octopus
Speaker 1: would leave their lab tanks at night and then go
Speaker 1: raid the neighboring tanks for food. There was one octopus
Speaker 1: who was squirting water at the light switch to turn
Speaker 1: it off, and then he short circuited the power. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are these horror stories that come out, and clearly
Speaker 1: they're kind of smart. But I wonder if we think
Speaker 1: octopuses are especially smart because they look like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like aliens really, I mean they are alien like. I
Speaker 1: don't think we'd be doing this episode if they weren't,
Speaker 1: and their entire class of mollus is called sephalopods, which
Speaker 1: means head foot. They're all a bunch of head feet.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, that category isn't just octopus and
Speaker 1: includes squid and cuttle fish and nautilus is But there's
Speaker 1: a big debate about whether they're really that smart. The
Speaker 1: octopus have about a half billion neurons, and that's particularly
Speaker 1: amazing for a creature without a backbone. But you know,
Speaker 1: in reality, it puts them in the range of dogs.
Speaker 1: So even though they might play with a Rubik's cube,
Speaker 1: but it's not like they're consistently solving them or anything,
Speaker 1: at least I haven't seen one. There's this old Burden
Speaker 1: Ernie sketch from Sesame Street where Ernie walks in on
Speaker 1: Burt and he says, that's amazing, Butt, you're playing checkers
Speaker 1: with your pigeon, and Bert kind of whispers something like, Ernie,
Speaker 1: it's not that impressive. Of the seven times we've played,
Speaker 1: he's only one twice. I think one thing I read
Speaker 1: that really convinced me of their intelligence was that when
Speaker 1: they're faced with the problem, they actually changed strategies. How
Speaker 1: do you mean so scientific? American pointed this out, but
Speaker 1: Apparently octopuses are a little lazy, Like, they're obviously quite strong,
Speaker 1: and if they're given muscles or clams, they'll go for
Speaker 1: the muscles just because the meat is easier to get
Speaker 1: to and the shells take less effort. But if the
Speaker 1: clams are served on a half shell, you know, if
Speaker 1: they're at a cocktail party or something, they'll go for
Speaker 1: the tastier meteor options. But here's what's interesting. Right when
Speaker 1: scientists passed the long muscles, but whyed a few of
Speaker 1: the shells shut? The octopus tried to open it using
Speaker 1: one method They can use their arms, but then they
Speaker 1: also have this beak that they can use to chip
Speaker 1: away at the shell. And then when that took too long,
Speaker 1: they drilled a little hole in and injected a poison
Speaker 1: to weaken the creature's defenses. Like all octopus and cuttlefish
Speaker 1: have a poison reserve. But the octopus would use one
Speaker 1: method and if that proved futile, they switched to a
Speaker 1: different one. And the author's point was most creatures, when
Speaker 1: they fail, they just keep trying to do the same
Speaker 1: thing over and over rather than adjust their approach. That
Speaker 1: is pretty cool, and I know we're going to get
Speaker 1: into the giant squid and cracking and how octopus and
Speaker 1: squid are different. But before we do, let's chat a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the octopus. So what's one of
Speaker 1: the more surprising things you learned about them and doing
Speaker 1: your research this week. Uh, that they're not good swimmers,
Speaker 1: I think was interesting to me, and the reasons even weirder.
Speaker 1: It's all because they have three hearts, So they're not
Speaker 1: good swimmers because they have Yeah. Actually that was surprising
Speaker 1: to me too. I mean I read in smith sony
Speaker 1: and that two of the hearts worked to move blood
Speaker 1: beyond their gills. And obviously there's so many parts of
Speaker 1: the octopus I didn't realize beaks and gills and ragul
Speaker 1: which is kind of like a tiny drill for a tongue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and their penis is on one of their arms, which
Speaker 1: I also never realized. I mean, I guess that's a
Speaker 1: little weird too. You know that while some octopus mount
Speaker 1: their partners, others will just stick their penis arm into
Speaker 1: a cave where a female octopus is hiding, and so
Speaker 1: they made in what's called the distance position. That's so ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But we were talking about the three hearts. All right,
Speaker 1: So the two hearts move blood beyond the gills, and
Speaker 1: then the third heart is exclusively for pumping blood to organs.
Speaker 1: But when they're swimming, they actually turned that heart off.
Speaker 1: It stops beating entirely. So they get completely exhausted when
Speaker 1: they move that way, and they mostly choose a walk
Speaker 1: or crawl instead. But I like the idea that octopuses
Speaker 1: actually enjoy long walks on the beach. But there's clearly
Speaker 1: a ton more to say about these bizarre and wonderful creatures.
Speaker 1: But I also want to get Julie on the phone
Speaker 1: to talk about jellyfish. So how about we take a
Speaker 1: little break for that and then we dive back in.
Speaker 1: All right, let's do it, Mango. We've got a special
Speaker 1: guest on the line with us today. She's the author
Speaker 1: of a fascinating new book called Spineless, The Science of
Speaker 1: Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone. Julie Berwald.
Speaker 1: Welcome to part time Genius. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me so, Julie. Jellyfish are obviously these simple and
Speaker 1: beautiful but also reviled creatures, and they cause problems for
Speaker 1: swimmers and factories. I'm kind of curious why did you
Speaker 1: choose to study the jellyfish. Yeah, I mean it's true,
Speaker 1: and and there's something about what you just said that
Speaker 1: made them really fascinating to me, because, um, you know,
Speaker 1: you couldn't put polar bears in this like box of like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're so you know, impress sieve and and beautiful and
Speaker 1: big and they they are this charismatic creature and but
Speaker 1: jellys have more subtlety to them. You know, they're undeniably beautiful,
Speaker 1: and yet you're right, like they can be lethal and
Speaker 1: they can be as you know, a symbol of ecosystem demise.
Speaker 1: And there was something about that, the fact that they
Speaker 1: kind of walked it back and forth across these lines
Speaker 1: in our minds that I found super fascinating. And they're
Speaker 1: just such strange creatures too. I know you've written that
Speaker 1: they can see light without eyes. Do you do you
Speaker 1: mind just taking a minute for our listeners and describe
Speaker 1: a little bit of their biology and and and what
Speaker 1: some of the more curious things about their bodies that
Speaker 1: you've found. Um, yeah, so you know, they are super simple.
Speaker 1: They have just like we have three cell layers that
Speaker 1: we have an end their deerm and exoderm, which is
Speaker 1: like our skin, our outside skin, and then in between
Speaker 1: we have this musoderm that holds all our organs and everything,
Speaker 1: and jelly fish just don't have that. They have jelly inside.
Speaker 1: It's truly it's called mesoglia, and it's a cellular and
Speaker 1: so um they have this really cool ability that they
Speaker 1: they're like big. They're like a balloon, right, So they
Speaker 1: have skin on the outside, skin on the inside, and
Speaker 1: then something that they don't have to support metabolically on
Speaker 1: the inside. So they get away with being big at
Speaker 1: very low metabolic cost. And that's part of what makes
Speaker 1: them so successful. And that's why I called the book Spineless,
Speaker 1: because they're very spinelessness is actually contributing to their um
Speaker 1: increase in abundances in many places in our oceans. I
Speaker 1: went to go visit these um scientists in Woodhole who
Speaker 1: work at the Marine Biological Laboratory there, and they were
Speaker 1: the Navy had given them money to build robotic jellyfish,
Speaker 1: and they weren't entirely certain what the Navy wanted to
Speaker 1: do with these robotic jelly miss that they were pretty
Speaker 1: excited about the opportunity, and so they created this jellyfish
Speaker 1: out of silicone and sort of like fake muscles called actuators.
Speaker 1: And when they turned it on um it squeezed and
Speaker 1: it squeezed shut, and that causes a jet of water
Speaker 1: to come out behind it, which pushes on the water
Speaker 1: and it moves the jellyfish forward. But then when it
Speaker 1: opened back up, it went right back to its starting
Speaker 1: place like a yo yo. And they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: what's going on, And so they this graduate student was like, well,
Speaker 1: you know that peplum around the edge of the jellyfish,
Speaker 1: that part that's kind of beautiful that just flops around.
Speaker 1: The graduate student was like, I didn't have time to
Speaker 1: glue that little flap on the robot. So they pulled
Speaker 1: it out of the water and they glued it on.
Speaker 1: They put it back in the water, and they turned
Speaker 1: it on and it's it's They turned it on and
Speaker 1: it squeezed and it jetted forward, and then when it
Speaker 1: opened up, it actually continued going forward. And then it
Speaker 1: squeezed again and it went forward farther, and then it
Speaker 1: opened and it continued going forward. And it turns out
Speaker 1: that that little flexible flap is is what drives part
Speaker 1: of what drives the jellyfish forward. In the water. It
Speaker 1: gives it the push backwards. But then they figured out, um,
Speaker 1: it doesn't only give it a push backwards, it actually
Speaker 1: creates a low pressure zone in front of the jellyfish.
Speaker 1: Like the bending kind of creates the suction in front
Speaker 1: of the jellyfish, and that suction pulls the animal forward
Speaker 1: through the water. And then they started looking at all
Speaker 1: these other animals and if you think about it, everything
Speaker 1: in the ocean or in water, then when it moves
Speaker 1: like nothing solid, like the way we build both they
Speaker 1: all bend. And the reason for that bending is because
Speaker 1: it creates this low pressure in front of the animal
Speaker 1: that pulls it through the water. So we've thought about,
Speaker 1: um swimming completely backwards. It turns out that um, the
Speaker 1: forces you know in front of the jelly fish pulling
Speaker 1: it are stronger than the forces behind the jellyfish pushing it.
Speaker 1: And because we're terrestrial and all we can do is
Speaker 1: push backwards in order to go forwards, we just completely
Speaker 1: misunderstood swimming for our whole all of subtle antion really
Speaker 1: and then, um, yeah, it's a really cool story. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of travel, I know you traveled all the way
Speaker 1: to Japan to see the giant jellyfish there, So so
Speaker 1: what makes it so extraordinary and why did you make
Speaker 1: the trip there to see it? Yeah, this jelly fish
Speaker 1: is really really interesting. Um it grows to being five pound,
Speaker 1: which is like the size of a refrigerator. Yeah, it's massive,
Speaker 1: massive jelly fish, you know. And throughout the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: this jellyfish was seen in just off the coast of Japan,
Speaker 1: but only about every thirty years. So because the kind
Speaker 1: of thing where like a fisherman would tell his son like,
Speaker 1: well that you're the giant jellyfish showed up, you know,
Speaker 1: look out for them, and then thirty years later the
Speaker 1: sun would be like, oh, yeah, this is what my
Speaker 1: dad told me about. And then in the twenty one
Speaker 1: century they started appearing every year, and not just every year,
Speaker 1: but like in enormous numbers, where the entire cy would
Speaker 1: be just these huge and they're sort of maroon, these
Speaker 1: maroon giant blobs of jellyfish for as far as the
Speaker 1: eye could see. And there's pictures of fishing boats with
Speaker 1: their nets just the sea of maroon jelly. One fishing
Speaker 1: vessel collected so many of these giant jellyfish that it
Speaker 1: actually the weight of them in their nets, flips the
Speaker 1: boat over and threw the crew into the sea. And
Speaker 1: I just want to ask very quickly. You know, for
Speaker 1: years people have been saying that jellyfish are gonna be
Speaker 1: winners in this world of climate change. But why is
Speaker 1: it important that we have a balanced population of jellyfish?
Speaker 1: The questions look really complex, and I think that we
Speaker 1: have a tendency to look at the ocean is like
Speaker 1: this one big place, and in fact, you know, the
Speaker 1: ocean is a really uh diverse, dynamic place that has
Speaker 1: lots of different ecosystems, lots of latitudes and longitudes, different temperatures,
Speaker 1: different salinities and so and different kinds of pressures that
Speaker 1: we're putting on the ocean. So in some places is
Speaker 1: already jellyfish are dominating the ecosystem. And those are the
Speaker 1: places that we should look to to say, like do
Speaker 1: we want our oceans in other places to become like that?
Speaker 1: And Um, a good example is off the coast in
Speaker 1: Namibia where they really really over fished the ocean. Um,
Speaker 1: there was not good controls on what was happening. In fact,
Speaker 1: Numidia was under the offices of South Africa for a
Speaker 1: long time and South Africa didn't monitor what was happening
Speaker 1: in Nimidia, and these big commercial ships came in from
Speaker 1: other countries and just fished it like crazy and opened
Speaker 1: up ecological niches for jellyfish. And it used to be
Speaker 1: one of the richest fisheries in the world, where like
Speaker 1: a million tons of fish every year could be fished easily,
Speaker 1: and then the jellyfish we're able to get a foothold,
Speaker 1: and now the biomass is like two to three times
Speaker 1: more jellyfish than fish there, and the seals and birds
Speaker 1: there's reports of them starving because there's just not enough
Speaker 1: fish for them to eat anymore. So the reason why
Speaker 1: we want to pay attention to this is because we
Speaker 1: could end up with ecosystems where birds and fields are starving,
Speaker 1: and I don't think anyone wants that kind of situation.
Speaker 1: Big bloom fish jellyfish can also sweep into fish farm
Speaker 1: and about a month ago a huge bloom swept into
Speaker 1: a fish farm in Scotland and killed like a quarter
Speaker 1: or a a million famine overnight. So the yeah, the numbers,
Speaker 1: you know, start to add up of the devastation that
Speaker 1: jellyfish can cause. Not to mention the sting, the stings
Speaker 1: that you know heard us very personally and individually in
Speaker 1: the water and emotionally and and all of that. And
Speaker 1: our our friend John would have very much appreciated you
Speaker 1: having been there to educate him before he jumped in
Speaker 1: the water. Do you remember this mango when we were
Speaker 1: on a trip and the and the keys and he
Speaker 1: we were out in a boat and he looks out
Speaker 1: and he says, I don't think those are the kind
Speaker 1: of jellyfish that staying. And there was a large school
Speaker 1: of them, I guess, and he jumped in the water.
Speaker 1: He says, these are the kind of thing, the kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So it did not it did not go well.
Speaker 1: So mainly this episode is to try to get him
Speaker 1: to learn a little bit more and not make the
Speaker 1: same mistake. So if you get stung by a jellyfish,
Speaker 1: the thing you ushould do is hot water and vinegar. Julie,
Speaker 1: this is such a wonderful read. The book is called Spineless,
Speaker 1: The Science of Jellyfish in the Art of Growing Up Backbone. Julie,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us on Part Time Genius.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Part Time Genius. We're talking squid, octopus
Speaker 1: and jellyfish. So we've been chatting octopuses for a while
Speaker 1: and we need to move on to squid. But before
Speaker 1: we do, why don't we reel off some of our
Speaker 1: favorite octopus Definitely? What are some of the weirder ones
Speaker 1: you want to talk about? Well, I love Louis. You
Speaker 1: know the cantankerous giant pacific octopus we were talking about
Speaker 1: also from that article. He was only ex feet but
Speaker 1: they can actually grow to be about sixteen ft and
Speaker 1: way up to six hundred pounds. Wow. Each arm has
Speaker 1: about two hundred and eighty suckers and they lay up
Speaker 1: to ninety thousand eggs at a time. Nine eggs, I know,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of omelets. Well, one octopus I like,
Speaker 1: on the other end of the spectrum is this thing
Speaker 1: called the octopus wolfe, which is the world's smallest octopus.
Speaker 1: It's like an inch long and ways less than a graham. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess kind of like kind of like a pocket
Speaker 1: octopus exactly, and it's perfect for travel. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they're not wildy. So, according to a Newsweek article,
Speaker 1: a two thousand four study gave them a six out
Speaker 1: of ten on likelihood of escaping a tank. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of tiny octopus, this one's totally weird. It's called
Speaker 1: the blanket octopus. And while the females are a tall
Speaker 1: and leggy six ft long, the males are only about
Speaker 1: an inch tall. How crazy is that? How's that possible?
Speaker 1: I have no idea. But their mating technique is equally weird.
Speaker 1: So here's how Newsweek described it. To breathe, the male
Speaker 1: sticks his specialized mating arm inside the female and breaks
Speaker 1: it off. He then swims away with only seven legs
Speaker 1: and dies shortly after octopus romance. But the creatures are
Speaker 1: even more interesting than that. Actually, well, the female blanket
Speaker 1: octopus is is more of a swimmer, so instead of
Speaker 1: hiding in caves, will actually swim in the open water, which,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about, it is pretty unusual for an octopus.
Speaker 1: And it fans out like a giant blanket whenever it
Speaker 1: senses a threat. But it's the tiny male that's the
Speaker 1: real character. So blanket octopuses are immune to man of
Speaker 1: wars things, so when something is attacking a blanket male,
Speaker 1: it'll just break off a poisonous tentacle of a Portuguese
Speaker 1: man of war and then whip it around like crazy,
Speaker 1: you know, the swashbuckle against its enemies. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: they're pretty feisty. Actually, well, I do want to come
Speaker 1: back to octopuses food and this whole etiquette of throwing
Speaker 1: them at red wings games, because there's some strict rules there.
Speaker 1: But let's get in the squid. So what are some
Speaker 1: of the characteristics of squid. So here, the basic squids
Speaker 1: are really good hunters. First of all, I mean, much
Speaker 1: like octopus, they've got beaks and radula, so they have
Speaker 1: ten arms in total. They actually have eight short arms
Speaker 1: around the mouth and then these two long tentacles with suckers,
Speaker 1: which are really helpful when they're hunting. Now, unlike octopus,
Speaker 1: squids swim in the open ocean, and they're amazing swimmers.
Speaker 1: In fact, they've been called the fighter jets of the
Speaker 1: cephalopod because they use this water propulsion system to shoot
Speaker 1: backwards at these tremendous speeds. Yeah, I've seen that some
Speaker 1: consuming speeds of like twenty five miles per hour, which
Speaker 1: is stunning because that's almost shark speeds. And I was
Speaker 1: actually reading about Japanese flying squid. Have you heard of them?
Speaker 1: I didn't realize the flying squid word thing. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I missed that. Yeah, so they get confused for flying
Speaker 1: fish sometimes, although flying fish can move that way for
Speaker 1: great lens. Well, you know, these squid can only jump
Speaker 1: out of the water for twenty stretches then they kind
Speaker 1: of tire out. It seems more like a cool party
Speaker 1: trick than anything that's wise in terms of evolution. So
Speaker 1: why do you say that, Well, they accidentally jump onto
Speaker 1: fishing boats all the time, and birds like the red
Speaker 1: footed booby will just pluck them out of the air
Speaker 1: for meals. You know, it's kind of a weird question.
Speaker 1: But how do they see when they're flying backwards? Is
Speaker 1: that why they end up on the boats because they
Speaker 1: can't see where they're going or what? I think it's
Speaker 1: more that they can't exactly like switch directions while they're
Speaker 1: in the air. But from what I read, their eyes, tentacles,
Speaker 1: and beak are all at the back, and as they're flying,
Speaker 1: they have a pretty good view and they'll actually pull
Speaker 1: their fins and adjust their tentacles to make a smoother
Speaker 1: dive back into the water. There's still a lot of
Speaker 1: study that has to be done on them, and that's
Speaker 1: actually something that seems to come up a lot, Like
Speaker 1: I read that one of the ways people catch octopus
Speaker 1: is that they just place a little basket next to
Speaker 1: an octopus cave or dwelling, and then octopus might just
Speaker 1: snuggle into the basket and then fishermen can pull that up.
Speaker 1: But catching enormous squid isn't that easy. And clearly there's
Speaker 1: a fascination with the giant squid, which has been pretty elusive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny to think about how that misunderstanding about giant
Speaker 1: squid and just not being able to observe their behavior.
Speaker 1: It's kind of made them these monsters of the sea.
Speaker 1: I mean, you see their written about in literature and
Speaker 1: Jules Verne's twenty thou Leagues under the Sea. You know,
Speaker 1: it's this monstrous squid with a taste for human flesh
Speaker 1: and attacks the submarine and everything. And he Actually I
Speaker 1: was reading this article about the cracking and wired it
Speaker 1: was called fantastically wrong and I didn't realize this, but
Speaker 1: early Europeans assumed that all creatures on Earth had a
Speaker 1: counterpart in the sea. So there were these strange beasts
Speaker 1: like sea rhinos and even things like see bishops. You know,
Speaker 1: the seafaring counterparts to the human land bishops. But the
Speaker 1: descriptions of the crack and it's just crazy. So this
Speaker 1: is from seventeen seventy five when an historian named Eric Pontpain.
Speaker 1: He wrote in the Natural History of Norway, the beast
Speaker 1: is round, flat and full of arms, the largest and
Speaker 1: most surprising of all animal creations. He then claimed to
Speaker 1: have talked to a number of different fishermen and all
Speaker 1: of them gave the exact same description, including that the
Speaker 1: squid's back is a mile and a half in circumference,
Speaker 1: the various tentacles could be mistaken for islands. And the
Speaker 1: funny thing is that there's this second mythical sea creatures
Speaker 1: that gets described, and it says, um, the island whale
Speaker 1: that's so big, sailors mistake it for land, And when
Speaker 1: the sailors set shore and build fire on it, that's
Speaker 1: when the beast awakens and drags them to their doom.
Speaker 1: So most people assume that the crack and descriptions are
Speaker 1: exaggerations of the giant squid that some fishermen must have seen,
Speaker 1: which can be at least forty three ft long, which
Speaker 1: is huge. Those the article reveals both the colossal squid
Speaker 1: and the giant squid are you know, very lackadaisical and
Speaker 1: by one estimate, use up to six hundred times less
Speaker 1: energy than similarly sized predators. So supposedly they just hang
Speaker 1: out waiting for prey instead of actively chasing anything. And
Speaker 1: what's the difference between the colossal and giant squid. Well,
Speaker 1: it's likely that the giant squid is longer than the colossal,
Speaker 1: but the colossal is probably heavier and has bigger eyes.
Speaker 1: And so giant squids also have teeth on their tentacles,
Speaker 1: which of course is terrifying to think about, while colossal
Speaker 1: squids have show art pokes that swivel on their tentacles.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I guess it's just like a different
Speaker 1: sort of terrifying. Well, I'm glad they're kind of lazy,
Speaker 1: but it's also a little disappointing, like you want them
Speaker 1: to have more personality than that. So I did read
Speaker 1: about squid and whale battles, which are amazing, all right,
Speaker 1: So why why is that? So? I always wondered why
Speaker 1: colossal squid have such big eyes. It basically comes down
Speaker 1: to whales, So like squid have the biggest eyes on
Speaker 1: the planet, measuring over eleven inches in diameter, which is
Speaker 1: essentially the size of a dinner plate. But the reason
Speaker 1: is that in murky and weak light in the ocean,
Speaker 1: you need a big eye to pick up light. But
Speaker 1: a biologist at Duke modeled the eye and realized that
Speaker 1: a bigger eye isn't actually good at seeing all objects.
Speaker 1: It's just a lot better at seeing really big objects
Speaker 1: coming at you. And according to Scientific American, that means
Speaker 1: the squid can spot whales at a dark depths or
Speaker 1: more hopefully enough space that they can shoot out a
Speaker 1: cloud of ink and flee. So what about the whales though,
Speaker 1: So what's interesting is that they don't actually need great
Speaker 1: eyesight because they're all using sonar. But the way the
Speaker 1: whales catch the squid is amazing. So for smaller prey,
Speaker 1: they'll actually use these ultrasound bursts. Like the whales emit
Speaker 1: these noises and it knocks out prey and send schools
Speaker 1: of fish swimming. But when the scientists, said woods Holds,
Speaker 1: studied the creatures, they realized that squids don't react to
Speaker 1: these sonic bursts at all, So instead the whales use
Speaker 1: this incredible twisting motion to go after them. Basically they
Speaker 1: like wriggle and twist their bodies as they attack, and
Speaker 1: that creates this giant, crazy vacuum which pulls in the
Speaker 1: squid so that they can just lurk them up from
Speaker 1: a distance. And so does that always work? No? I mean,
Speaker 1: sometimes the giant and colossal squid are big enough to
Speaker 1: fight back, and as Life Science points out, you can
Speaker 1: find sperm whales with suction scars on their skin, and
Speaker 1: that's this obvious mark of a squid that got away.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, before we get off the squid, I
Speaker 1: feel like we should again mention a few of our favorites.
Speaker 1: I think I like the it was called the cock
Speaker 1: eyed squid, you know, just because he's so funny looking.
Speaker 1: So their left eye is usually twice as big as
Speaker 1: the right eye is just kind of comical looking, honestly,
Speaker 1: so it actually bulges out of the squid's head. All right,
Speaker 1: So what's yours? Oh that's great. So my favorite is
Speaker 1: definitely the vampire tooth is in for analis, which is
Speaker 1: essentially the vampire squid from Hell. That's how it translates.
Speaker 1: But everything about it is wrong. So starting with the
Speaker 1: fact that it's actually a big woos. When it senses danger,
Speaker 1: it bites off one of its bioluminescent arms, which then
Speaker 1: floats away, and that sends the predator in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1: But it just has to keep gnawing off arms to
Speaker 1: the data backers. And also, the vampire squid from Hell
Speaker 1: is a misnomer because it's actually an octopus. The vampire
Speaker 1: squid from Hell I think he went on that one.
Speaker 1: That one's pretty good. All right. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: we won't be able to get to today, but but
Speaker 1: I know some of that will get say, for an
Speaker 1: episode on technologies we're stealing from the Animal Kingdom. We've
Speaker 1: talked about doing an episode like that. You know, specifically
Speaker 1: how cuttle fish and squid both camouflage and communicate through
Speaker 1: changing their skin colors. There's actually a super elaborate code
Speaker 1: that some squid use. But I also know we want
Speaker 1: to return to the octopus us for for a bit
Speaker 1: before we move on, yeah, and talk about octopus cities
Speaker 1: and red wings etiquette. But let's talk about after a
Speaker 1: little break. Welcome back to part time Genius. So will
Speaker 1: I know you got pretty excited about this octopus community
Speaker 1: we're reading about. I want to give us a rundown
Speaker 1: on why an octopus city is so exciting. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Mainly because it's called Octlantis, which is such a great
Speaker 1: pame and it's a big deal. Partially because the gloomy octopus,
Speaker 1: you know, a k a. The Sydney octopus, is mostly
Speaker 1: known for being a loner. But the reason this was exciting,
Speaker 1: and we saw this in an article in Courts, was
Speaker 1: that the creatures were filmed exhibiting complex social behaviors that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't imagine from a solitary animal. It's funny because
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine there was another of these colonies
Speaker 1: found called Octopolus, very different than actlantis, and and scientists
Speaker 1: assumed it is this total anomaly. So it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I feel like they're going to run out of octopon names.
Speaker 1: But what actually happens there, Well, the octopus interact and
Speaker 1: they chase each other around, and at any time there
Speaker 1: are two to fifteen octopus and it has to be
Speaker 1: a pretty special situation, like you know, there has to
Speaker 1: be a good stock of food coming through pretty regularly,
Speaker 1: and not that many habitable places in the surrounding seabed.
Speaker 1: That makes them want to be there, and you know,
Speaker 1: but while the gloomy octopus are solitary, it seems like
Speaker 1: communities like this could only exist if octopus had lived
Speaker 1: and interacted with one another for generations. Well, I do
Speaker 1: feel like Octopus Village should be like a Nickelodeon show
Speaker 1: where totally one flucky octopus and a bunch of sarcastic
Speaker 1: gloomy ones. But even though for most of the show
Speaker 1: we've been talking about living octopus, I found a couple
Speaker 1: of things that we're fascinating about dead ones and what's that. Well,
Speaker 1: no one pulled the research for me on how Greeks
Speaker 1: cook octopus, and it was kind of fascinating. So the
Speaker 1: diver slice the nerve between the eyes that instantly kills
Speaker 1: the beasts, and it's generally not a long protracted battle.
Speaker 1: But unlike fish, which you'd grilled right away, the octopus
Speaker 1: is mostly water, so you really have to dry it out.
Speaker 1: Like they'll beat the carcass up to a hundred times
Speaker 1: on a rock to ring out the water, and then
Speaker 1: they put the octopus on a clothesline all day and
Speaker 1: once it's dried then you can grill it or else
Speaker 1: you just get something that's super mushy. But this Greek
Speaker 1: grill master told NPR quote, in the old days, when
Speaker 1: there weren't freezers, people here used to sun the octopus
Speaker 1: for days until it was tiny and fit into a
Speaker 1: little caraft, but expanded to its original size when cooked.
Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy? It's so weird. Yeah, but it also
Speaker 1: feels maybe a little bit morbid. So why don't we
Speaker 1: skip to this Red Wings fact that you were you
Speaker 1: were talking about before. Well, I'm not sure it's any
Speaker 1: less morbid, but we both know about the Red Wings
Speaker 1: and this legend of the octopus and how people started
Speaker 1: lobbying dead creatures on the rink after games because the
Speaker 1: Red Wings at one time needed eight games to sweep
Speaker 1: the series, and it kind of became a thing. But
Speaker 1: apparently there's an art to it, really, alright, So so
Speaker 1: what's the art to throwing the to pus? Well, the
Speaker 1: New York Times did this great piece on it, and
Speaker 1: the trick to tossing a large octopus onto the rink
Speaker 1: is to boil it with wine and lemon juice or
Speaker 1: else it's gonna stink. Also, it has to be boiled
Speaker 1: like a well boiled octopus can travel a hundred feet
Speaker 1: and as they put it, bounce and rolls satisfactorily or
Speaker 1: across the ice when it lands. It's amazing what they
Speaker 1: go through just to make this happens. All right, So
Speaker 1: what happens if it's a rare, like a medium rare
Speaker 1: octopus instead of well boiled. Yeah, those just splatz, which
Speaker 1: seems equally amusing. But the article goes into these mistakes
Speaker 1: that rookies tend to make. So you have to grab
Speaker 1: the octopus arms in the middle, and you've got to
Speaker 1: keep the head back and toss it from the knees
Speaker 1: and what they describe as this over exaggerated grenade toss.
Speaker 1: According to the piece, if you try to throw it
Speaker 1: like a baseball or by the tips of the tentacles,
Speaker 1: octopus parts are going to end up on your neighbor.
Speaker 1: But the absolutely best part of the article was how
Speaker 1: people sneak the octopus in Because while it's this beloved tradition,
Speaker 1: management doesn't love dealing with the octopus. So people have
Speaker 1: all these smuggling tricks, like one guy he'll wrap it
Speaker 1: in a zip lock and wear them like a pot belly,
Speaker 1: and others try to sneak them under really tall hats,
Speaker 1: which just feels kind of crazy because, according to the Times,
Speaker 1: the biggest octopus to land on the rink was thirty pounds. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's an impressive pop. And you know, while it isn't
Speaker 1: good for the octopus, I guess it is good for
Speaker 1: octopus sales. I read somewhere that they actually double in
Speaker 1: Detroit during the hockey playoffs. Yeah, that's right. I didn't
Speaker 1: sneak a full grown octopus in here, but I did
Speaker 1: sneak in a few extra facts. You ready for the
Speaker 1: fact off? You know? I am all right? Well, squid
Speaker 1: are easy to digest from many ocean creatures. The one
Speaker 1: part that isn't is their beak. Apparently, beaks often collect
Speaker 1: inside other sea creatures. Have you heard of Kimberrella? I
Speaker 1: can't say that. I've heard of tiny mollis that lived
Speaker 1: over five million years ago and is the earliest known
Speaker 1: ancestor of the squid. Also, doesn't it sound like she
Speaker 1: left seven slippers behind at Prince Charming's palace? She sounds beautiful, Kimbarella?
Speaker 1: All right? So did you know that human trash can
Speaker 1: occasionally be good for octopus that have no shelter? On
Speaker 1: a dive off of the Puget Sound, one scientist observed
Speaker 1: eight beer bottles, all with tiny red octopus in them.
Speaker 1: I mean these beer bottles had occupancy, right, that's a
Speaker 1: good right. Have you heard of the octopo tooth, this deletron?
Speaker 1: I have not. It's a squid that doesn't have sex organs.
Speaker 1: So the males have to put these sperm packets on
Speaker 1: the side of their potential mates for later fertilization. But
Speaker 1: because their eyesight isn't great in the cloudy waters, they
Speaker 1: just tag these onto any squid they can hope with
Speaker 1: a few of them might be females. So alright, well,
Speaker 1: my favorite squid discovery might be the Grimaldi scaled squid.
Speaker 1: I guess Prince Albert, the first of Monaco was an
Speaker 1: amateur squid enthusiast, and I didn't remember this story from
Speaker 1: mental flaws, but apparently he'd sit through what he called
Speaker 1: the precious regurgit patians of sperm wells for specif and
Speaker 1: because the scales of the squid were so flashy and luxurious,
Speaker 1: he named the squid after the house he belonged to,
Speaker 1: the House of Grimaldi luxury squid. I like that, Why
Speaker 1: don't you take the Crown today, I can do that.
Speaker 1: Thank you all right. Well, remember, if we miss some
Speaker 1: of your favorite octopus or squid facts, be sure to
Speaker 1: share them with us on our fact hot line that's
Speaker 1: one eight four four pet Genius, or by reaching out
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter. And if you enjoy the show,
Speaker 1: help us get a word out by reviewing us on iTunes.
Speaker 1: You can also email us at part Time Genius at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Thanks so much for listening.
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