Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. It is Saturday, so we have a
Speaker 1: vault episode for you. This is going to be The
Speaker 1: Hogs of Hell Part two. It originally published ten twenty nine,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. Let's jump right in. And Arthur went
Speaker 1: as far as esquier Orvo in Ireland, to the place
Speaker 1: where the boar Troweth was with his seven young pigs,
Speaker 1: and the dogs were let loose upon him from all sides.
Speaker 1: That day until evening, the Irish fought with him. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: he laid waste the fifth part of Ireland. And on
Speaker 1: the day following the household of Arthur fought with him,
Speaker 1: and they were worsted by him and got no advantage.
Speaker 1: And the third day Arthur himself encountered him, and he
Speaker 1: fought with him nine nights and nine days, without so
Speaker 1: much as killing even one little pig. The warriors inquired
Speaker 1: of Arthur what was the origin of that swine, and
Speaker 1: he told them that he was once a king, and
Speaker 1: that God had transformed him into a swine for his sins.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: part two in our Halloween season series called Hogs of Hell.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: In the previous episode, we focused mostly on mythology and fiction,
Speaker 3: looking at a glorious assortment of monster pigs, beelze bores,
Speaker 3: and also a few rather benevolent divine suiform beings of
Speaker 3: various types. So in terms of specific examples, we talked
Speaker 3: about everything from the vicious, shaggy, froth jawed Aromanthian boar
Speaker 3: which was captured by Hercules in Greek myth to the
Speaker 3: noble and heroic pig featured incarnation of the Hindu god
Speaker 3: vision Sew, who retrieves the earth when it is rolled
Speaker 3: up and stolen away to the ocean depths by a
Speaker 3: great demon. And here we are again today to keep
Speaker 3: the monster pig parade on the March.
Speaker 1: And indeed, in the last episode we did talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about King Arthur battling various bores across the
Speaker 1: British Isle, so I wanted to at the top of
Speaker 1: this episode throwing just a little quote that gives you
Speaker 1: a taste of that, though it doesn't really reference all
Speaker 1: the gorings that also take place.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I like how it says the warriors were like, hey, Arthur,
Speaker 3: we've been fighting this pig and it's worsting us. I
Speaker 3: don't know if it was like different than being bested
Speaker 3: by a pig, to be worsted by a pig, but
Speaker 3: it's besting all the nights. And they're like, Arthur, where
Speaker 3: did this pig come from? And Arthur is like, well,
Speaker 3: this pig was once a king, but he was a
Speaker 3: bad king, not like me.
Speaker 1: I have to question his management style a little bit
Speaker 1: for not like fully briefing everyone on the nature of
Speaker 1: these boors. Was he just like, Hey, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: wage war against pigs for a few months here, and
Speaker 1: they're like, okay, sure, that sounds like a reasonable thing
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, why not? Anyway, I wanted to kick things off
Speaker 3: today by turning to the world of palaeontology, because it
Speaker 3: so happens. You do not have to go into mythology
Speaker 3: and fiction to meet some blood curdling monster pigs or perhaps,
Speaker 3: to be more accurate, maybe not pigs but blood curdling
Speaker 3: monster hoofed mammals with some pig like features. Well, hash
Speaker 3: out what's really a pig? And what's not as we
Speaker 3: go along. But the point is, if you go back
Speaker 3: maybe twenty thirty million years into the fossil record, you
Speaker 3: will encounter a branch of the mammal family tree that
Speaker 3: has been affectionately nicknamed the hell pigs and perhaps less tastefully,
Speaker 3: the terminator pigs. That's got to be a subsequent nickname there.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, I don't know how clinical that is.
Speaker 3: Now. Hell pigs is just a cute name that has
Speaker 3: been used in popular media. I found earlier sources from
Speaker 3: the nineteen twenties which refer to the same class of
Speaker 3: animals by calling them giant pigs. In scientific nomenclature, these
Speaker 3: creatures we're going to be talking about are called antilodonts
Speaker 3: e nte l odnt intilodonts. They belong to the family Intilodontidy,
Speaker 3: which is now completely extinct. The family name comes from
Speaker 3: the Greek intellus, meaning complete or perfect, and odon, meaning tooth,
Speaker 3: so the antilodont is the beast of the perfect tooth,
Speaker 3: or the beast of the complete tooth. The antilodont family
Speaker 3: is a member of the order Arteodactyla, which for much
Speaker 3: of scientific history were known as the even toed ungulates
Speaker 3: ungulates meaning a hoofed animal even toad ungilates, referring to
Speaker 3: the fact that most branches of this order bear their
Speaker 3: weight primarily on two toes per foot. Now, despite the
Speaker 3: historical classification based on this feature, more recent research has
Speaker 3: shown that not all of the animals in this branch
Speaker 3: of mammalia are actually ungulates or hoofed animals as traditionally understood.
Speaker 3: So Ardiodactyls today consist of more well known ungulates like deer, bison, cattle, sheep,
Speaker 3: and goats, but also camels, pigs, giraffes, hippopotamuses, and maybe
Speaker 3: most surprisingly, whales and dolphins, because remember, whales evolved from
Speaker 3: animals that used to live entirely on land and millions
Speaker 3: of years ago, made the gradual adaptive transition to more
Speaker 3: and more water based lifestyle and physiology over time, until
Speaker 3: eventually they were fully water dwelling creatures. Having come, you
Speaker 3: began as fish, moved onto the land, become mammals, and
Speaker 3: then moved back into the water.
Speaker 1: Yeah, quite a journey.
Speaker 3: In telodonts, the so called hell pigs first show up
Speaker 3: in the fossil reccred sometime in the middle of the
Speaker 3: Eocene epoch, which began roughly fifty five million years ago,
Speaker 3: placing it about ten million years after the extinction of
Speaker 3: the non avian dinosaurs, and continued until about thirty four
Speaker 3: million years ago. I don't know if this has been
Speaker 3: superseded by any more recent fossil finds, but at least
Speaker 3: for a while, it was thought that antilodonts first appeared
Speaker 3: in the area that is now Mongolia and then spread
Speaker 3: across the globe. First spread across much of Asia and
Speaker 3: then to North America and Europe as well, and numerous
Speaker 3: species of antilodonts thrived during the Oligocene epic, and then
Speaker 3: they appeared to have died out in the early Miocene
Speaker 3: between nineteen and sixteen million years ago. So one thing
Speaker 3: that's worth emphasizing is that we're not talking about one
Speaker 3: specific species of animal. We're talking about this family. So
Speaker 3: there were many different species of antilodonts. The largest were
Speaker 3: probably according to now I've come across different estimates here.
Speaker 3: According to the estimate given by Encyclopedia Britannica, they could
Speaker 3: maybe get nine hundred kilograms. Britannica compares this to a
Speaker 3: Clydesdale horse, so you can picture giant fanged pigs pulling
Speaker 3: the Budweiser wagon. The largest known genus of Antilodont is
Speaker 3: confusingly known by several different names, primarily Dinohias di n
Speaker 3: o h y us, which means terrible pig or monstrous
Speaker 3: pig from the same formation that you get dinosaur, you know,
Speaker 3: terrible reptile, but then also is known as Deodon daeod
Speaker 3: n which means hostile tooth. It took me a while
Speaker 3: to figure out what was going on here, but it
Speaker 3: seems that the type species in question here is known
Speaker 3: as either Dinohias hollandi or Diodon shoshonensis, and these are
Speaker 3: designations based on different fossil finds, but I think most
Speaker 3: experts agree that they refer to the animals. So Dinohias
Speaker 3: hollandy is a full skeleton found at Agate Spring's Fossil
Speaker 3: Quarry in Nebraska, whereas Diodon was a genus that was
Speaker 3: established earlier on the basis of less complete fossil remains.
Speaker 3: So it gets kind of confusing because you will find
Speaker 3: references to both names used separately in different sources. But
Speaker 3: as best I can tell, these are probably the same
Speaker 3: genus or the same species, whatever you call them, Diodon
Speaker 3: or Dinohias. These animals were magnificent, with huge, devastating, awe
Speaker 3: inspiring skulls and rob I have attached some images for
Speaker 3: you to look at in the outline here, folks at home,
Speaker 3: if you want to try to google a Dinohias or
Speaker 3: Diodon skull, you can do that yourself, but I'll for
Speaker 3: the people who can't look it up, I will describe
Speaker 3: it as best I can. For the full skeleton, imagine
Speaker 3: a body that looks kind of like a buffalo or
Speaker 3: a rhinoceros, with raised neural fines over the backbone at
Speaker 3: the shoulder, kind of like a suspension bridge, implying this
Speaker 3: massive shoulder hump at the base of the neck to
Speaker 3: hold up an enormous head. And it did have an
Speaker 3: enormous head, the huge, deep, powerful jaws under a long
Speaker 3: snout with canines that somehow look like both sharpened fangs
Speaker 3: and crushingly thick blunt bats at the same time. The
Speaker 3: skull could be huge, could be up to ninety centimeters long,
Speaker 3: or about thirty five or maybe even forty five percent
Speaker 3: of the total body length. So this is a big,
Speaker 3: powerful animal with a big, powerful skull a crushing bite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you almost get the sense of it
Speaker 1: being like the combination of a of a bear and
Speaker 1: a horse. You know, it's kind of like the fierceness
Speaker 1: of a bear skull, but far like thicker and longer.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have to keep all of the different cross
Speaker 3: between analogies going. There will be a number of them
Speaker 3: as we go through. But one thing I wanted to
Speaker 3: point out for you, Rob is if you look around
Speaker 3: on the skull of this animal, you will see not
Speaker 3: just teeth, but these strange little solid knobs of bone
Speaker 3: poking out at several places from the bone of the skull.
Speaker 3: So they're not teeth, they're like say along the bottom
Speaker 3: of the jaw, under the lower jawbone, or behind the eye.
Speaker 3: On the upper part of the skull, they will have
Speaker 3: these protrusions. They just like parts of the bone that
Speaker 3: stick out, almost as if they're like, you know, something's
Speaker 3: going to be hanging from them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was thinking it's almost like the animal's head is
Speaker 3: like a rock climbing wall. It's got little, you know,
Speaker 3: handholds and stuff on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of nooks and crannies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so these protruding bone formations may have had
Speaker 3: a couple of different purposes, perhaps defensive in nature, but
Speaker 3: also possibly related to increasing the power of muscles that
Speaker 3: worked the jaw and the head. Again, this creature had
Speaker 3: a powerful bite. It could chew you up and maybe
Speaker 3: bite you in half. So the daton would have stood
Speaker 3: probably a little under two meters tall at the shoulder.
Speaker 3: I already gave one weight estimate earlier, the nine hundred kilograms.
Speaker 3: It's not known for sure how much mass would have
Speaker 3: attached to the skeleton, but even if you go down
Speaker 3: from the nine hundred kilograms estimate that they cite in Britannica,
Speaker 3: other sources guests around seven hundred and fifty kilograms, And
Speaker 3: for comparison, that is bigger than most estimates you get
Speaker 3: for adult male brown bears. So, whether you're in the
Speaker 3: Clydesdale territory or just like surpassing the large brown bear class,
Speaker 3: it should put respect for nature's power into your brain
Speaker 3: and in dear blood. Here and at the same time
Speaker 3: that you're looking at this skull, if you go back
Speaker 3: and look at the legs, they don't look like something
Speaker 3: that really fits with the skull. This is a hoofed mammal,
Speaker 3: and the legs actually appear fairly slender. And so the
Speaker 3: pairing of this amazing, frightening skull and mouth with the
Speaker 3: fact that its feet are hooved and that its legs
Speaker 3: almost look kind of like deer legs or something something
Speaker 3: we associate with prey animals, animals that humans hunt and
Speaker 3: eat or domesticate and use for milk and work. The
Speaker 3: feet and the legs do not look like those of
Speaker 3: wild beasts that could probably chomp us in half. So
Speaker 3: should we think of in telodonts as predators? We can
Speaker 3: come back to that question now to pivot a bit
Speaker 3: and go on a short tangent away from the overtly
Speaker 3: crushingly horrifying, I want to shift to the uncanny, the creepy,
Speaker 3: the unwholesome and unnatural. So Rob, I've got a link
Speaker 3: for you to look at here. I've also got an
Speaker 3: image in the outline for you. Again, I will try
Speaker 3: to describe for you folks at home so you can
Speaker 3: picture it as well. But the thing we're about to
Speaker 3: look at here is actually a sculpture. It is a
Speaker 3: sculpture of the animal we have just been talking about,
Speaker 3: and it is held in the collection of the Carnegie
Speaker 3: Museum of Natural History. You can find a picture of
Speaker 3: it easily if you search for Carnegie din Ohias. I
Speaker 3: want to give a shout out that I found out
Speaker 3: about this sculpture by reading a Carnegie Museum blog post
Speaker 3: from January twenty nineteen by a collection assistant for the
Speaker 3: section of Vertebrate Paleontology named Joe Sauchak. So this sculpture
Speaker 3: was created in nineteen oh nine by an American artist
Speaker 3: named Theodore Augustus Mills, who lived from eighteen thirty nine
Speaker 3: to nineteen sixteen. Mills worked for a number of institutions,
Speaker 3: including the Smithsonian and the Carnegie Museum, and was the
Speaker 3: son of sculptor Clark Mills, who famously made a cast
Speaker 3: of the face of President Abraham Lincoln in eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 3: which a younger Theodore assisted with. But this din Ohias
Speaker 3: sculpture is perhaps an art movement unto itself. A Sawchak
Speaker 3: writes that as a powerful and amazing as the Deodon
Speaker 3: or Dinahias bones are quote to several members of the
Speaker 3: Vertebrate Paleontology staff, including myself, the model lovingly known as
Speaker 3: the highest is perhaps even more horrifying than the actual
Speaker 3: creature itself. So Rob, I've got the photo in here
Speaker 3: for you to look at, alongside a headshot of Peter Lorrie,
Speaker 3: just for reference. And so the author of this blog
Speaker 3: post tries to identify exactly what the museum staff finds
Speaker 3: so creepy and fascinating about the sculpture. He mentioned something
Speaker 3: about the eyes that seems especially human and emotive. But
Speaker 3: I do have to agree there is something really special
Speaker 3: about this piece of three dimensional paleo art. It is
Speaker 3: at once alien and disturbingly human. I think parts of
Speaker 3: it are hitting Uncanny Valley territory because we're getting sort
Speaker 3: of like a pig, giant pig horse with human eyes energy.
Speaker 3: But also it looks like it's about to tell me something,
Speaker 3: like it's about to tell me a secret, and it's
Speaker 3: a secret I don't want to know, and it's grinning
Speaker 3: because it knows that I don't want to know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, it's definitely looking at me. It's
Speaker 1: definitely looking at me. I feel like, to some degree
Speaker 1: judging me, but judging me fairly, judging like it is
Speaker 1: making a fair assessment of me. And yes, to your point,
Speaker 1: perhaps I don't really want to hear it, but maybe
Speaker 1: I do want to hear it. Maybe what this creature
Speaker 1: has to share with me will bring a lot of
Speaker 1: positive change into my life.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, well I like the open mindedness with which
Speaker 3: you're approaching this creature.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe the thing, the secret that is going to
Speaker 3: share is actually great wisdom. It's wisdom you need and
Speaker 3: you just aren't ready to accept.
Speaker 1: But I do not get the sense that it wants
Speaker 1: to eat me. I get the sense that it is
Speaker 1: a bit more benign when it comes to matters of
Speaker 1: the flesh.
Speaker 3: It's really funny to me how much this paleo art image,
Speaker 3: with the you know, the fully concer diructed image, with
Speaker 3: its kind of serene, placid eyes gazing into your mind
Speaker 3: and maybe hypnotizing you maybe you're about to do some
Speaker 3: scanners stuff on you, how much that does not comport
Speaker 3: with the just the fierceness suggested by the bones.
Speaker 1: This is often the case, though, isn't it. I mean
Speaker 1: one of the prime exit I mean, the main prime
Speaker 1: example here would of course be the human skull. You
Speaker 1: get a totally different vibe looking at a human skull,
Speaker 1: looking at a human face. But you know, that's almost
Speaker 1: to be expected because you also have to confront a
Speaker 1: lot about your own mortality. When you look at a
Speaker 1: skull of a human. I think it's more pronounced when
Speaker 1: you see I think that the other readily available example
Speaker 1: is the skull of the horse. Like the horse is
Speaker 1: a domesticated animal that many judge to be you know,
Speaker 1: basically in the same realm as that of the dog
Speaker 1: in terms of human animal relationships. You know, it is
Speaker 1: an animal that is very close to us, and ultimately
Speaker 1: there's a strong case to be made that it's it's
Speaker 1: more essential to the development of human civilization than anything
Speaker 1: any other animal that we've domesticated. But while we look
Speaker 1: at a horse, you know, we tend to see something again,
Speaker 1: more benign, a friend of humanity, something noble and proud,
Speaker 1: beautiful even, But you look at the skull of the
Speaker 1: horse and you get this sense of kind of a
Speaker 1: grinning demon. And people have, you know, had I think,
Speaker 1: similar connections with the skull of the horse for ages,
Speaker 1: you know, often incorporating it into designs of supernatural beings,
Speaker 1: or utilizing the horse skull in some way that is
Speaker 1: you know, magical, perhaps protective magic and so forth. And
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess maybe it is easy to
Speaker 1: lose sight of that when you're dealing with the skeletal
Speaker 1: remains of a prehistoric organism in which we don't know
Speaker 1: what the fleshed version of the face looked like. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this is a great reminder of something we've
Speaker 3: talked about on the show before about how you know
Speaker 3: paleo art is necessarily to some extent and interpretive enterprise.
Speaker 3: In some cases you have more than just the bones,
Speaker 3: But in a lot of cases you just have fossils,
Speaker 3: maybe not even a complete skeleton. But you know, even
Speaker 3: if you do have a complete near complete fossil skeleton,
Speaker 3: that doesn't necessarily tell you what the soft tissue looked
Speaker 3: like on the outside. So you know, you can have
Speaker 3: ways of informing the guesses made like paleo art can
Speaker 3: be informed by scientific knowledge, but you're still having to
Speaker 3: make some guesses. You're having to make some leaps.
Speaker 1: Didn't we discuss my memories a little foggy on this,
Speaker 1: But didn't we discuss some examples of like intentionally bad
Speaker 1: paleo art reconstructing existing organisms like living organisms.
Speaker 3: I think I recall what you're talking about, and I
Speaker 3: think we were talking about the quote shrink wrapping phenomenon
Speaker 3: where it's like a lot of extinct animals or just
Speaker 3: you take the bones and then you imagine skin tightly
Speaker 3: wrapped around those bones and cutting out a lot of
Speaker 3: the kind of bulk or soft tissue that you actually
Speaker 3: see on some animals. And so yeah, I think the
Speaker 3: idea was taking the skeletons of animals we know today
Speaker 3: and cutting out all of the excess soft tissue and
Speaker 3: just shrink wrapping them.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think that that is what I was thinking of.
Speaker 1: But it's easy to take that idea of the shrink wrapping.
Speaker 1: Look at say a horse skeleton, and then imagine like
Speaker 1: the shrink wrapped paleo art version of an extant horse.
Speaker 1: You know, it would be this nightmare steed, you know.
Speaker 1: And I mean you could apply something similar to humans.
Speaker 1: We would all look like some sort of a ghoule. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, anyway, I do want to admit that, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't have enough expertise in the anatomy or physiology
Speaker 3: of these extinct mammals to judge whether the Carnegie the
Speaker 3: Carnegie Museum statue is I don't know is anywhere close
Speaker 3: to right or not, But there is one one thing
Speaker 3: that I thought was interesting about it, which is that
Speaker 3: the overly human eyes do kind of connect to an
Speaker 3: interesting scientific fact about the antilodonts, which is that they
Speaker 3: had more forward facing eye placement than a lot of ardiodactyls,
Speaker 3: which raises questions about their survival strategies. On a lot
Speaker 3: of hoofed mammals, you will see the eyes the eyes
Speaker 3: spread more to the sides, which does that can be helpful,
Speaker 3: especially to prey animals, because it gives them a wider
Speaker 3: field of vision, so it's easier for them to see
Speaker 3: predators approaching. But the more forward shifted gaze of the
Speaker 3: antilodonts suggests some other pressures in play. Oh and just
Speaker 3: quickly for contrast on paleo art for these hellpigs, I
Speaker 3: wanted to attach a couple more images for you to
Speaker 3: look at. They both look pretty interesting. One is one
Speaker 3: I've just seen floating around the Internet sit at a
Speaker 3: few different times. One is I think seemingly associated with
Speaker 3: the Encyclopedia Britannica resources And that one is funny to
Speaker 3: me because it looks like a crocodile horse pig with
Speaker 3: face spikes doing the meme troll face.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very toothy. It looks like, how is
Speaker 1: this mouth supposed to shut? It kind of implies an
Speaker 1: organism that cannot close its mouth all the way. It
Speaker 1: just has monster jaws.
Speaker 3: Well that's another funny thing. Where so it looks hilarious
Speaker 3: in the picture this way, because it looks like this
Speaker 3: animal is laughing at me, laughing at my misfortune and grief.
Speaker 3: But there is an interesting thing about these the antilidonts,
Speaker 3: which is that they could apparently open their jaws extremely wide.
Speaker 1: Well that makes me feel worse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I wanted to come back to the question
Speaker 3: are these animals really pigs? They have been called hell
Speaker 3: pigs in popular media and books and articles, but apparently
Speaker 3: this is probably not exactly accurate. Pigs, swine, and hogs
Speaker 3: are animals that belong to the mammal family Suidy. And
Speaker 3: while the antilodonts do share some morphological features in common
Speaker 3: with pigs, like it's not hard to see with some
Speaker 3: of these remains why someone would look at them and say, oh,
Speaker 3: this is some type of giant pig, Like there are
Speaker 3: pig like things about it, but more recent research has
Speaker 3: shown that pigs are probably not the their closest relatives
Speaker 3: in the ardiodactyl order, and in fact what their closest
Speaker 3: relatives are is maybe even more interesting. So there have
Speaker 3: been findings about this going back for years now. This
Speaker 3: is not like a new discovery, but for an example
Speaker 3: of a more recent paper supporting the division between antilodonts
Speaker 3: and pigs, I came across This paper by Yang Yu, Hongyang,
Speaker 3: Gao Chang Li, and Xijun Ni published in the Journal
Speaker 3: of Systematic Paleontology in twenty twenty three, called a new
Speaker 3: antilodont ardiodactyl Mammalia from the late scene of China and
Speaker 3: its phylogenetic implications. This paper is a report on a
Speaker 3: new genus and species of antilodontidy. This one is known
Speaker 3: as Antilodontellus juliangi and it's and basically they say based
Speaker 3: on finding remnants of the animal's lower jaw and then
Speaker 3: comparing this animal to comparing this newly discovered antilodont to
Speaker 3: other ardiodactyls, the authors conclude that the antilodonts are situated
Speaker 3: within the clade Setancodonto morpha, which means that they are
Speaker 3: quote more closely related to hippopotamus and cetaceans than to suena.
Speaker 3: So the hell pigs are not pigs as we understand
Speaker 3: them today, and are probably more distant cousins of pigs
Speaker 3: and closer cousins of hippos and whales. So you have
Speaker 3: this all inspiring body form in many ways rezen bling
Speaker 3: a giant pig, but if you kind of crossed it
Speaker 3: with a horse and a bison and one of the
Speaker 3: monsters from Doom, and in fact it is more closely
Speaker 3: related to hippos and whales.
Speaker 1: All right, the Doom creature in that like that pink guy,
Speaker 1: that big pink one with oh it's.
Speaker 3: Gotta be yeah, yeah, yeah, they had the invisible forms
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, I believe that's the one, all right, all right,
Speaker 1: So what we're we have here is maybe less of
Speaker 1: a hell pig and more of a hell land whale
Speaker 1: or hell hippo, or at least a cousin of those. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Another scientific paper I was reading, one by Florent
Speaker 3: rivals at All, described these animals morphologically as a cross
Speaker 3: between a hippopotamus a giant pig and a carnivore. But
Speaker 3: the hippopotamus connection is interesting because of that anatomical fact
Speaker 3: that these animals tend to have jaws so made that
Speaker 3: they can they can open them unusually wide, like more
Speaker 3: than a I think the figure was more than one
Speaker 3: hundred degrees. They can open them so like hugely wide
Speaker 3: opening of the jaws, and hippopotamuses can do that as well.
Speaker 3: Hippopotamuses famously have an extremely lethal and powerful closing bite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have a very dangerous animal in the wild.
Speaker 3: So this brings us to the question of what did
Speaker 3: these antilodonts eat, what and how did they eat? Antilodonts
Speaker 3: are apparently different from a lot of other ungulates in
Speaker 3: that their skull and jaw structure is in some ways
Speaker 3: more like that of modern carnivores. Now, not in all ways,
Speaker 3: but in some And it is worth noting that there
Speaker 3: are no carnivorous hoofed mammals today, but there were hoofed
Speaker 3: predators in the past. Could come back to this, but anyway,
Speaker 3: if you compare the jaws of herbivorous hoofed mammals with
Speaker 3: the jaws of carnivores, you will see some patterns. I mean,
Speaker 3: different animals will have some idiosyncratic characteristics, but broad patterns
Speaker 3: emerge in the teeth and the jaw shape. Carnivores often
Speaker 3: need to have big skulls with powerful jaw muscles to
Speaker 3: deliver a strong bite force, because they use their jaws
Speaker 3: not just for chewing, but specifically for biting, to injure
Speaker 3: and kill prey with the bite, and sometimes to fight
Speaker 3: with each other. Herbivores not so much. Herbivores more often
Speaker 3: have rows of flat teeth and jaws that are specialized
Speaker 3: to move side to side for grinding down plant matter
Speaker 3: between the molars. Carnivores tend to have sharp incisors in
Speaker 3: the front of the mouth and jaws that primarily move
Speaker 3: up and down, sort of less grinding oriented. Carnivores more
Speaker 3: often have a jaw that hinges roughly in line with
Speaker 3: the teeth, so it opens kind of like a claw.
Speaker 3: Herbivores more often have an L shaped lower jaw that
Speaker 3: hinges up above the teeth. So which of these patterns
Speaker 3: do the antelodonts conform to? You know, if I had
Speaker 3: looked at one of these daodon skulls with my untrained eye,
Speaker 3: I would have guessed this was a fully carnivorous predator
Speaker 3: if you look at the power of the jaw, the
Speaker 3: shape of the front teeth, certainly the canines and incisors,
Speaker 3: they look very sharp and threatening. They certainly seem like
Speaker 3: meat eating predators on those counts. But the current consensus
Speaker 3: of paleontologists seems to be that antilodonts had an omnivorous diet,
Speaker 3: meaning they ate the whole buffet plants, animals, meat, vegetables,
Speaker 3: whatever energy dense matter they could get into their mouths.
Speaker 3: So one piece of evidence for this is the shape
Speaker 3: of their molars and premolars. Antilodonts had what are called
Speaker 3: bunadont teeth. This was a new term to me, I think,
Speaker 3: but this means teeth with little hill shaped bumps on
Speaker 3: the surface specialized for crushing a wide variety of foods.
Speaker 3: So animals with bunadont teeth today include bears, pigs, and
Speaker 3: some primates such as humans, all of which are omnivores.
Speaker 3: There's also evidence from a number of other lines, things
Speaker 3: like the wear patterns on fossil antilidont teeth. All these
Speaker 3: tend to line up with an omnivorous diet, so it
Speaker 3: seems they were likely eating from both the flora and
Speaker 3: fauna all around them. And this is interesting because that
Speaker 3: is also the case with modern pigs. Modern pigs you
Speaker 3: don't usually think of as predators, but they will absolutely
Speaker 3: eat some meat if they can get their hands on it.
Speaker 3: Wild pigs and feral bores and stuff will eat small animals,
Speaker 3: But they also eat a lot of vegetables, you know.
Speaker 3: And so they have this kind of combination of traits
Speaker 3: in the jaws and the teeth that show that they're
Speaker 3: specialized for both. Really, and one thing is very clear
Speaker 3: from looking at their mouths. The teeth and jaws of
Speaker 3: most of these animals were capable of eating very hard foods,
Speaker 3: cracking and crushing their way through anything including roots, nuts,
Speaker 3: and of course plant matter, as well as meat and
Speaker 3: possibly even bone. I found references to these animals possibly
Speaker 3: being bone crushers in several sources. One al site is
Speaker 3: the UCY Boulder Museum of Natural History in describing research
Speaker 3: on a species of antilodont called Archaeotherium. This is an
Speaker 3: extinct genus that once lived in the floodplains of North
Speaker 3: America during the late Acene and the Oligocene and the
Speaker 3: museum it compares the front teeth, the canines, the fangs
Speaker 3: sort of of these animals to tusks and says that
Speaker 3: you know, it may have been using these front teeth
Speaker 3: to dig, essentially like to dig for tubers, to dig
Speaker 3: for roots that it could eat. But they also have
Speaker 3: evidence that this animal was into crushing bones with its teeth,
Speaker 3: and they cite evidence of an ancient species of camel
Speaker 3: called the Pobrotherium, which a bunch of the remains of
Speaker 3: this camel were found in a fossil formation known as
Speaker 3: the White River formation in Wyoming, where it looks at
Speaker 3: least like they were killed or eaten at least by
Speaker 3: these archaeotherium. And there are punctures on the bones that
Speaker 3: apparently match the premolars of the antilidont species. Scars found
Speaker 3: on the bones of hell pigs suggest that these animals
Speaker 3: fought each other as well, apparently biting at each other's
Speaker 3: heads and faces, resulting in deep bone scars. And that,
Speaker 3: remember we mentioned earlier on the skulls of these animals
Speaker 3: the protrusions of bone jutting out of the jaw and
Speaker 3: then back behind the eyes they of course maybe an
Speaker 3: anchor point for some of the facial musculature to help
Speaker 3: the jaw operate the way it needs to, but as possible,
Speaker 3: they also protected soft spots of antilidont faces during these
Speaker 3: biting competitions to maybe protect the nose or the eyes,
Speaker 3: And it does appear that these animals probably had a
Speaker 3: strong sense of smell. Now there's another interesting question, which
Speaker 3: is the debate about the meat that they likely ate.
Speaker 3: So because there's this evidence in the way their bodies
Speaker 3: are made, and of course in the remains of other
Speaker 3: animals that antilodonts were running around eating meat, there is
Speaker 3: of course a debate about how they got the meat
Speaker 3: they ate to the extent that they ate meat in
Speaker 3: their omnivorous diet. Were the antelodonts primarily active predators chasing
Speaker 3: down in killing prey, or scavengers eating dead animals when
Speaker 3: they came across them. And by the way, I think
Speaker 3: it's worth noting that predation and scavenging are not mutually exclusive.
Speaker 3: Most animals that engage in one will engage in the
Speaker 3: other given the right opportunity. It's more a question of
Speaker 3: specialization which they primarily do, and I've seen some paleo
Speaker 3: experts comment that they think it quite possible that some
Speaker 3: antilodonts would have been what you might call intimidation scavengers,
Speaker 3: So to the extent that they were scavengers, it's possible
Speaker 3: that some species would do this kind of activity where
Speaker 3: you arrive at the site of a kill by another
Speaker 3: predator and then you threaten and intimidate the original predator
Speaker 3: into running away, and then the antilodont can steal the kill.
Speaker 3: This is a strategy that some predators and scavengers employ today.
Speaker 3: For example, a lion might wait for a cheetah to
Speaker 3: chase down and kill an impala, and then the larger
Speaker 3: lion comes and scares the cheetah away and takes the prey.
Speaker 3: Now you might think, well, what if you're like a bigger,
Speaker 3: more powerful predator, why wouldn't you just kill the prey
Speaker 3: in the first place. But actually there are different specializations
Speaker 3: in play. Like some predators might be faster moving and
Speaker 3: easier to you know, it's easier for them to chase
Speaker 3: prey that's actively trying to run away, whereas you might
Speaker 3: not be as fast as the original predator. But the
Speaker 3: original predator like can't drag its kill away fast enough
Speaker 3: to get away from you if you're bigger and more powerful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the former is a game of stealth. The latter
Speaker 1: is holding down turf, stealing territory and defending it. Adding
Speaker 1: into the fact that the actual predators that made the
Speaker 1: initial kill might be rather extinguished by the hunt. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a huge opportunity for something like that to move
Speaker 1: in and take advantage of the situation. And of course
Speaker 1: there are various other versions of this we've talked about
Speaker 1: in the show before, some involving human beings getting in
Speaker 1: there and getting at least a piece of the kill
Speaker 1: and then making off with it from the original predators.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I know that's come up in the show before,
Speaker 3: about humans as intimidation scavengers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, some traditional human practices along those lines.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so antilidants maybe not literally pigs, more pigs in
Speaker 3: name only, but good enough as monster pigs for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it sounds like weighing everything we've discussed here,
Speaker 1: it's like, it sounds like still a very intimidating organism,
Speaker 1: one that you would want to probably keep a healthy
Speaker 1: distance from, even if it was looking at you with
Speaker 1: those kind of sweet Peter Laurie eyes. I guess even
Speaker 1: more so if it's looking directly at you with with
Speaker 1: front facing Peter Laurie eyes.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I'm not. I'm really not just
Speaker 3: like playing it up for the show. Like I truly
Speaker 3: am a little disturbed and unnerved by the idea of
Speaker 3: being chased or preyed upon or threatened by a by
Speaker 3: a toothy mammal that has hooves instead of paws and claws.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why do you Why do you think that is
Speaker 1: what makes it worse than say, being hunted by a
Speaker 1: great bear. I don't, which I find to be extremely terrifying.
Speaker 3: Well, that is extremely terrifying, it is. I think it's
Speaker 3: just that the hooves idea is it's unusual, like the
Speaker 3: idea that you would you could like hear something that
Speaker 3: sounds like kind of hoof beats. I mean, it wouldn't
Speaker 3: be exactly like horse hoof beats, because you know, they
Speaker 3: have different types of hoofs, you know, it's the it's
Speaker 3: the two toad ungulate. But it would still be basically
Speaker 3: a hoofed animal would sound like a pig walking around,
Speaker 3: except it could bite you in half. I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's freaky.
Speaker 1: Reminds me a bit. I'm reminded here two of our
Speaker 1: discussions of the horse in the past was it was
Speaker 1: it stories of Julius Caesar's horse having human feet or
Speaker 1: tell feet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, maybe we'll have to rerun soon
Speaker 3: our episodes on the evolution of horse hooves. I think
Speaker 3: this kind of ties in somehow. Yeah, that one had
Speaker 3: the less frightening but still quite jarring idea that in
Speaker 3: an evolutionary sense, horses are galloping around on their middle fingers.
Speaker 1: Yes, they just have finger feet, yeah, but still, you know,
Speaker 1: the basic idea of the hell hog here, the fossil evidence,
Speaker 1: I think does provide us with like a basic idea
Speaker 1: of what some of these monster pigs might consist of.
Speaker 1: You know, if they were a reality, Like if King
Speaker 1: Arthur was actually battling a bunch of hell pigs that
Speaker 1: used to be human kings they were too wicked to
Speaker 1: remain in human form, Yeah, I could see it looking
Speaker 1: something like this. You know, if the various other accounts
Speaker 1: of monster pigs that we discussed, you know, if there
Speaker 1: was some sort of primordial monster hog roaming the countryside, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see it looking something like this, having eyes
Speaker 1: like this even and maybe the eyes of the highest
Speaker 1: that are disturbing because you can sort of imagine the
Speaker 1: idea of, oh, this is like a human intellect staring
Speaker 1: out at me through the body and the appetites of
Speaker 1: a hellish pig.
Speaker 3: This king he has remorse for his sins, for the
Speaker 3: sense he committed as king, and now he is doomed
Speaker 3: spend eternity in the Big Bone Room of the Carnegie Museum.
Speaker 1: You know, two more cinematic connections to pigs and bores
Speaker 1: that I want to mention here is because these might
Speaker 1: be coming to mind for some of our listeners. First
Speaker 1: of all, Wizard of oz Uh, there is the scene
Speaker 1: where Dorothy almost falls in or does fall into the
Speaker 1: pig pen, and there is concern that Dorothy is about
Speaker 1: to be eaten by pigs.
Speaker 3: Or at least injured by them. But yeah, I always thought.
Speaker 1: It would be like straight up eating down to the bone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of horrifying sequence.
Speaker 3: I agree. You know that was scary as heck. I
Speaker 3: remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then I'm also reminded that there's a whole
Speaker 1: plot line one of the main I guess part of
Speaker 1: The main plot in Hannibal is that Mason Berger wants
Speaker 1: to feed Hannibal Lecter to some wild bores. I forget
Speaker 1: the exact details, but he's like, actually bred some big
Speaker 1: monster bores to eat Hannibal Lecter.
Speaker 3: I think they're not wild boars, aren't they. They're like,
Speaker 3: they're like domestic pigs that were selected to enjoy the
Speaker 3: taste of human flesh.
Speaker 1: Was that it? I knew there was some sort of
Speaker 1: selective breeding, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't sure how Jurassic
Speaker 1: Park it got. It's been a long time since I
Speaker 1: read it, So it's like, if you had told me
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, he used he used DNA from prehistoric
Speaker 1: pigs and bores, I would be like, okay, sure, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean he's like super rich, and that is certainly
Speaker 1: a novel of excess, So why not.
Speaker 3: Like he, oh, yes, he cloned din Ohias hollandi or Deodon,
Speaker 3: whichever is. Yeah, he cloned it to make a giant
Speaker 3: pig so that it could come eat Hannibal Lecter's feet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Like that's not any wilder than anything it's
Speaker 1: actually in the book, So I'd say, why not? Does
Speaker 1: not work out? Spoilers for Hannibal book and film adaptation.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they don't actually eat Hannibal. I think in
Speaker 1: the movie they end up eating Mason, but I don't
Speaker 1: think it goes down like that in the novel.
Speaker 3: Oh, in the book there's something even weirder. I think
Speaker 3: he gets thrown into some eels or.
Speaker 1: Something something like that. I don't think we can really
Speaker 1: even go into all the detail what happens in the book,
Speaker 1: but it's Yeah, I think it's worse in some ways.
Speaker 1: But now I'm wondering if there are other like monstrous pigs,
Speaker 1: sort of horror pig scenarios that we should bring up
Speaker 1: but we haven't. Perhaps those four listeners will have to
Speaker 1: jump in other Halloween related cinematic pigs, hogs, bores, and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, send them our way, contact it stuff to blow
Speaker 3: your mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe Haveleen is even getting on the action that
Speaker 1: I can't Haveveleena's don't really seem to have the same
Speaker 1: like horror vibe. I don't know Ila was get a
Speaker 1: sweeter vibe off of the Havelena, though I've seen some
Speaker 1: pretty ferocious looking Hovelna heads mounted on the wall before
Speaker 1: my uncle and aunt had the head of one that
Speaker 1: they had killed on the wall of their s room,
Speaker 1: and they had they also had this like, uh, this
Speaker 1: reading light that had like a red plastic cover, so
Speaker 1: it ended up casting like a hellish red glow on
Speaker 1: the like snarling head mounted head of a hovelina, and
Speaker 1: it created quite a scene, I think when when when
Speaker 1: my son traveled out there with us, we ended up
Speaker 1: having to do something to sort of alter the tableau
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't be quite as terrifying to sleep at
Speaker 1: the same room with it. Put a towel over it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: put a towel over it, our hat on it. I
Speaker 1: don't know what we did, maybe change the light out.
Speaker 3: I don't know how you didn't start our series talking
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 1: That's great, I know, I'd kind of kind of forgotten
Speaker 1: about that real quick before anybody goes to correct me
Speaker 1: on this. Haveleen is our pack reas. So they are
Speaker 1: pig like like ungulates, but they are not pigs per se,
Speaker 1: So a lot of people will call them pigs or
Speaker 1: call them bores, and yeah, it's there, they're pig like.
Speaker 1: I'll leave it at that, all right, Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to go ahead and close out this look
Speaker 1: at the Hogs of Hell, but again certainly write in
Speaker 1: if you have more examples of Halloween hogs, be the fictional, prehistoric, science, fictional, mythological, folkloric,
Speaker 1: whatever you've got, write in. We would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. We'll probably, you know well, inevitably do some
Speaker 1: sort of a like a Halloween Hangover listener mail episode
Speaker 1: at some point in November to go through additional stuff
Speaker 1: that has come in related to our Halloween episodes. So
Speaker 1: do write in.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of Heart Radio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: M