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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. This is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and Hey, today's Saturday, so we have another

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Speaker 1: repeat for you. This is an older episode, this one

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Speaker 1: originally published eight fifteen, twenty twenty four. It is Blood

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Speaker 1: Squirting from the Lizard's Eye, Part two. We hope you enjoy.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with

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Speaker 3: Part two in our series on the horned lizards of

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Speaker 3: North America, also known sometimes as horned toads or horny

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Speaker 3: toads if you prefer, though they are in fact lizards

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Speaker 3: and not toads. The horned blizzard, of course, is a

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Speaker 3: genus scientific name Freno soma, meaning toad body, which contains

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Speaker 3: about twenty one species which have different geographical ranges, but

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Speaker 3: they're all found in western North America, from the southern

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Speaker 3: tip of Mexico up through parts of western Canada. Now again,

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Speaker 3: this is part two of the series. In Part one,

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Speaker 3: we focused mainly on the horned lizard's relationship with various

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Speaker 3: predators and their fascinating anti predator defense strategies which include camouflage, spikes,

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Speaker 3: and armored scales, which can make them difficult and in

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Speaker 3: some cases quite dangerous to eat. We talked about some

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Speaker 3: eating related mishaps from various predators, and then finally, they're

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Speaker 3: weaponized blood jets, the adaptation that allows them to shoot

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Speaker 3: streams of apparently foul tasting blood out of their eyes

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Speaker 3: when threatened by a dog. Robin, in your words last time,

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Speaker 3: a way of deterring predation with the most aggressive and

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Speaker 3: unpleasant free sample in the world. That's right to refer

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Speaker 3: back to something that came up last time, that we're

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Speaker 3: still interested in this question of why the blood apparently

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Speaker 3: tastes so foul to dogs, and I read in some

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Speaker 3: cases maybe also cats, but not noticeably so to humans,

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Speaker 3: and certainly not to predators such as birds.

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Speaker 1: Now I want to throw in right here at the top.

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Speaker 1: We described the horned lizards in detail in the last episode,

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Speaker 1: and I hope that everyone has had a chance to

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Speaker 1: check out some footage or images on their own. At

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Speaker 1: this point in our research, I've looked at a lot

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Speaker 1: of images, a lot of footage, and I do have

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Speaker 1: to give them props for just being tremendous splooters, you know.

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Speaker 1: They certainly the squirrels can splute like like none other.

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Speaker 1: You know, cats are great splooters. But man, I have

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Speaker 1: to say the horned lizard isn't natural as well.

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Speaker 3: Wait, I'm not understanding the word splute, then I thought

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Speaker 3: you were. You were meaning like squirting, like squirting the

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Speaker 3: blood out of the eye. That's all what it means.

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Speaker 1: They're tremendous squirters as well. But spluting. Spluting is when

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Speaker 1: if you ever it's a hot day and you look

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Speaker 1: out and you see a squirrel like laying on its

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Speaker 1: belly like splluted out, you may see you can't do

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Speaker 1: much the same. Various other organisms will splute. This is

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Speaker 1: an unofficial terminology for what they're doing. But I feel

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Speaker 1: like that the horned lizard has this down as well.

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Speaker 3: Splute seems like a variation on display when the whole

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Speaker 3: body like flat against the ground, all limbs outstretched exactly.

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Speaker 1: Yes, but the kind of PLoP to it as well,

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Speaker 1: You know, like there's a certain you got the organism

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Speaker 1: really needs to have a certain amount of like semi

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Speaker 1: liquid solidness to it to really deliver it. You got

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Speaker 1: to have that toad body or you got to have

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Speaker 1: that slightly soft mammalian body to pull it off.

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Speaker 3: Oh, that's right. And of course the toad body, as

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Speaker 3: we talked about last time, is part of the horned

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Speaker 3: lizard's defensive camouflage strategy. Like the splluting is indeed part

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Speaker 3: of what keeps them safe from detection by predators. They

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Speaker 3: try to lay flat against the ground so as not

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Speaker 3: to cast a shadow and to make it harder for

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Speaker 3: a predator, say a bird flying overhead, to see their outline. Also,

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Speaker 3: since we're just talking about reviewing the tape on the

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Speaker 3: horned Lizard since the last time we talked, I was

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Speaker 3: watching just more blood squirting footage since we recorded the

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Speaker 3: previous episode, And I don't know if I emphasized enough

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Speaker 3: how much it really looks so alarming. If you haven't

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Speaker 3: seen this, look it up. The blood that the jets

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Speaker 3: out of the eyes somehow looks darker and thicker than

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Speaker 3: I expected. And it's also just weird how much blood

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Speaker 3: is coming out compared to the size of the animal,

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Speaker 3: which is quite small. It doesn't look like something that

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Speaker 3: should be happening.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it is quite alarming. It's redder and bloodier than

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Speaker 1: I think I was anticipating it feels like a cut

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Speaker 1: scene from Event Horizon.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, to get into the meat of today's episode,

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Speaker 3: I wanted to address just a few more lingering biological

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Speaker 3: facts about horned lizards, biological and ecological facts that we

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Speaker 3: didn't quite have time to get into last time. And

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Speaker 3: the first thing I wanted to talk about is the

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Speaker 3: horned lizard's relationship to water. Of course, horned lizards generally

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Speaker 3: live in dry places, deserts and semi arid ecoregions, where

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Speaker 3: the sun cooks you, the rain is scarce, water is

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Speaker 3: hard to come by, and horned toads, like all animals,

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Speaker 3: of course, need water to live, so much of their

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Speaker 3: biology has gone still suit mode. They are very efficient

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Speaker 3: at sourcing and preserving water. There is a great passage

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Speaker 3: about the horned lizard's relationship to water in a book

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Speaker 3: that I referred to in the last episode. That book

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Speaker 3: is Introduction to Horned Lizards of North America by Wade C. Sherbrook.

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Speaker 3: This was published by the University of California Press in

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Speaker 3: two thousand and three. The author, Wade Sherbrook, was director

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Speaker 3: of the Southwestern Research Station of the American Museum of

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Speaker 3: Natural history, So of course, losing water is just part

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Speaker 3: of having a body. It is impossible to avoid losing

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Speaker 3: some water content through ambient interface with the air. We

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Speaker 3: lose some water vapor from our lungs when we breathe,

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Speaker 3: we lose some water through evaporation from our skin, and

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Speaker 3: the same is true for horned lizards. To reduce water

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Speaker 3: loss to evaporation, horned lizards have some behavioral adaptations. For example,

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Speaker 3: sometimes they burrow underground or partially bury parts of their

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Speaker 3: bodies in the soil. This can reduce water loss from evaporation,

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Speaker 3: but they also have some clever ways to source water

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Speaker 3: from their environment. They will, of course just drink free

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Speaker 3: standing water when they can get access to it, if

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Speaker 3: there are puddles after a rainstorm or something like that.

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Speaker 3: They will drink dew that collects on plants in the morning.

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Speaker 3: But much of the water that they get from external

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Speaker 3: sources comes from food like juicy juicy harvest or ants.

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Speaker 3: But here's where Surbrook gets into. Something I found really

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Speaker 3: fascinating of these strategies they have for sourcing water is

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Speaker 3: that some species of horned lizards use their own backs

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Speaker 3: as what Sherbrook calls a rain harvesting surface. So he

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Speaker 3: singles out three species as examples, the Texas horned lizard,

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Speaker 3: the round tail horned lizard, and the desert horned lizard.

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Speaker 3: And when these animals sense that rain is about to fall,

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Speaker 3: they do the opposite of what humans usually do. You know,

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Speaker 3: we go inside. They go outside. They run out of

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Speaker 3: cover into the open and stand with their backs sort

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Speaker 3: of cupped like they raise up there. They raise up

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Speaker 3: on their legs, they flatten out their backs, and they

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Speaker 3: lower their heads. Now what does this do. It turns

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Speaker 3: the lizards back into a kind of combination rain barrel

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Speaker 3: and whatever you call that. You know, the beer drinking

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Speaker 3: helmet where you got the beers on the sides and

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Speaker 3: it's got a straw running to the mouth. So you

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Speaker 3: combine that with the rain barrel concept. Their back collects

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Speaker 3: water over the widest possible surface area, which is the

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Speaker 3: lizard's flattened out dorsal scales, and then it funnels the

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Speaker 3: water to the edge of its mouth for drinking. So

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Speaker 3: like my body is a catch base and my mouth

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Speaker 3: is the receptacle.

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Speaker 1: I'm glad we're getting into this because as I was

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Speaker 1: looking into the culture of the horned lizard. I was

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Speaker 1: hoping to find an example of cowboy poetry about them,

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Speaker 1: but my search came up largely empty. But I did

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Speaker 1: find an interesting blog post by Charlie Buck of the

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Speaker 1: University of Arizona Poetry Center about an elementary school exercise

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Speaker 1: where they brought in a herpetologist to talk about horned lizards,

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Speaker 1: and then a poet led the class in filling out

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Speaker 1: horned lizard worksheets with descriptive text to create concrete poems

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Speaker 1: or visual poetry. So it's like an outline of a

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Speaker 1: horned lizard, and then you fill in with text. And

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Speaker 1: I included one example of this in our outline here.

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Speaker 1: Joe and folks can look up the blog post and

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Speaker 1: see an example. This is well and for instance, written

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Speaker 1: by one of the students in the head is a

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Speaker 1: horned lizard eats ants. I babysat horned lizards. I can't

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Speaker 1: read the rest of it. I spit my blood out

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Speaker 1: of my eye at snack. I drink water from the sky.

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Speaker 1: And then like later on one of the legs, it

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Speaker 1: says I eat ant every day. And then there's also

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Speaker 1: a part of the anatomy that says I drink water

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Speaker 1: from my back. So I read that before I actually

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Speaker 1: got to that point in reading about their biology. So

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Speaker 1: I was like, I wonder if that's true. Gonna have

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Speaker 1: to fat fact check this child.

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Speaker 3: Yes, this child's poetry passes fact check. The horned lizards,

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Speaker 3: at least some species do drink water from their backs.

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Speaker 3: And it's interesting the way Sherbrook describes it. It's not

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Speaker 3: just like you know, water randomly running off the back

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Speaker 3: and some of it sort of getting into the mouth.

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Speaker 3: It seems like it has a fairly sophisticated system of

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Speaker 3: like this sort of this matrix of layers underneath in

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Speaker 3: between the scales absorbing water and then routing it by

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Speaker 3: capillary action down to the edges of the mouth where

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Speaker 3: the where the lizard then sort of sits there, opening

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Speaker 3: and closing its jaws slowly to drink the water as

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Speaker 3: it trickles in from the corners of the mouth. And

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Speaker 3: so it's got a fairly sophisticated top topography on the

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Speaker 3: back there to get the water to the mouth.

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Speaker 1: It's a great system. You can't follow them.

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Speaker 3: Another interesting way that horned lizards can serve water They

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Speaker 3: do not urinate. Now, how is that possible? They're animals.

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Speaker 3: Surely their bodies produce and collect waste products like excess

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Speaker 3: salts and the nitrogen bearing compounds that are the byproduct

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Speaker 3: of animal metabolism, like uric acid common in reptiles. Well,

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Speaker 3: they do still have to purge these waste products, but

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Speaker 3: they purge them not as liquid urine, but as a

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Speaker 3: semi solid substance rather than dissolved in water. So Sherberch writes, quote,

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Speaker 3: water carrying uric acid from the kidney is reabsorbed in

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Speaker 3: the kloaca. From here, the uric acid, mixed with some

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Speaker 3: insoluble crystals of urate salts, is voided as a white

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Speaker 3: mass attached to the end of the fecal pellet. And

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Speaker 3: I thought this was interesting because in just a minute,

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Speaker 3: I want to mention, there was a video I was watching,

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Speaker 3: like a short documentary about some conservation efforts with horned lizards,

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Speaker 3: and it was showing some of their feces that the

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Speaker 3: researchers were finding in the wild. And yeah, their fecal

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Speaker 3: pellets did have these interesting little white caps on them.

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Speaker 3: So apparently that is what the lizard releases instead of

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Speaker 3: liquid urine solid P and some in solidness crystals of

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Speaker 3: solid P. Also, as we have discussed with some other

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Speaker 3: reptiles in the past, horned lizards can sometimes remove excess

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Speaker 3: salts from the body, not by urinating, but by sneezing.

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Speaker 3: So salts accumulate in glands around the nostrils where they

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Speaker 3: are secreted as this hyper concentrated salty brine in the nose,

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Speaker 3: which you can then you just hank it right out.

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Speaker 3: And Sherbrook says that you can find horned lizard individuals

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Speaker 3: with noses covered in this salty white crust from the process.

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Speaker 3: So the moral of the story is when you don't pee,

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Speaker 3: you poop, and you sneeze. Different other anti predator considerations

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Speaker 3: that we didn't have time to talk about in the

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Speaker 3: last episode, we were talking about the advantages of the

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Speaker 3: horned lizard's armor for self defense, you know, the tough scales,

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Speaker 3: but especially the sharp bony spines around the crown of

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Speaker 3: the horned lizard's head. That these pieces of armor increase

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Speaker 3: the risk a predator has to take in trying to

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Speaker 3: eat one of these lizards. The predator has to make

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Speaker 3: judgment call, is it too big for me to survive

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Speaker 3: swallowing this? Will the head spikes split open my throat

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Speaker 3: or puncture my organs that can actually happen. But in

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Speaker 3: the context of looking at another predator prey relationship that

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Speaker 3: we didn't talk about last time, Sherbroke had some interesting

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Speaker 3: thoughts on the evolution of these head spikes. So Sherbrooke

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Speaker 3: is talking about the southern grasshopper mouse or ani Comis torridus,

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Speaker 3: and this animal will prey on some smaller horned lizard

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Speaker 3: species by biting the skull right over the eye socket.

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Speaker 3: So this is before you get to the crown of spikes.

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Speaker 3: This is the skull above the eyes. And when the

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Speaker 3: grasshopper mouse attacks other prey animals, most other vertebrate prey,

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Speaker 3: it bites in a different place. It bites at the

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Speaker 3: back of the neck, near the base of the head,

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Speaker 3: attempting to damage and sever the spinal cord. And this

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Speaker 3: is apparently a common attack area for predators to target.

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Speaker 3: I was actually kind of thinking, I know, I've read

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Speaker 3: about big cats often targeting the back of the neck

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Speaker 3: and the base of the skull in those rare cases

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Speaker 3: where they happen to attack humans, and I was trying

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Speaker 3: to remember where I came across that fact, and finally

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Speaker 3: I realized It was from Mary Roach's book fuzz When

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Speaker 3: Nature Breaks the Law, which we interviewed her about on

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Speaker 3: the show. That was one of my favorite interviews we've done,

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Speaker 3: and it's from the part of the book where she's

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Speaker 3: talking about taking the class learning to identify different common

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Speaker 3: wound patterns from different types of animal attacks. And so

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Speaker 3: for example, she talks about how when a grizzly bear

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Speaker 3: attacks a human sometimes a lot of the injuries are

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Speaker 3: sort of face on. They're like to the face in

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Speaker 3: the front of the head, almost as if the bear

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Speaker 3: is fighting a human the way it fights a rival bear,

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Speaker 3: where they're both kind of like biting at each other's faces.

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Speaker 3: Whereas cougars are used to killing their prey with a

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Speaker 3: power bite to the back of the neck, which they

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Speaker 3: in these rare cases where a cougar attacks a human,

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Speaker 3: they will sometimes target the same sort of place on

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Speaker 3: the body, like the back of the neck, base of

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Speaker 3: the back of the head.

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Speaker 1: I believe in Jurassic Park this is also how the

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Speaker 1: velociraptors are depicted as preying on humans biting the back

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Speaker 1: of the neck.

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Speaker 3: But anyway, coming back to the relationship between the Southern

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Speaker 3: grasshopper mouse and the horned lizard. So these mice will

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Speaker 3: try to prey on the lizards, especially the smaller ones,

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Speaker 3: but they don't bite where they bite most prey because

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Speaker 3: in the lizard's case, this is right where the head

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Speaker 3: horns grow. So the mouse doesn't even bother trying to

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Speaker 3: attack this well defended area. Instead, it's got to kind

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Speaker 3: of like awkwardly chew with the head over the eyes

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Speaker 3: and Sherbrook speculates that these horns could have evolved from

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Speaker 3: what was originally a more modest kind of bony defensive

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Speaker 3: ridge at the base of the skull designed to protect

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Speaker 3: against this kind of attack to the back of the neck,

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Speaker 3: and studies have shown that the spines do protect against

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Speaker 3: predator attacks. And you can measure this because the size

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Speaker 3: of the spines around the head actually matters, like research

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Speaker 3: has shown that lizards killed by birds tend to have

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Speaker 3: shorter spines around the head than lizards of the same

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Speaker 3: species in that area, So the ones that are picked

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Speaker 3: off the most tend to have the shortest head spikes. Now,

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Speaker 3: there's one more thing we brought up in the last

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Speaker 3: episode that I did want to make sure we came

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Speaker 3: back to today because I wanted to clarify something about it.

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Speaker 3: This was when we were talking about the relationship between

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Speaker 3: horned lizards and the red imported fire ant or solenopsis

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Speaker 3: in Victa. It came up that non native fire ants

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Speaker 3: in North America are thought to be a reason for

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Speaker 3: some horned lizard population declines, and this does appear to

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Speaker 3: be true. There are a number of horned lizards whose

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Speaker 3: ranges have been shrinking in recent decades. There are places

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Speaker 3: where you used to find them, you don't find them anymore.

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Speaker 3: Many of their populations are in decline, and in the

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Speaker 3: case with the case with a lot of these species,

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Speaker 3: does seem to be that the fire ant is playing

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Speaker 3: a role there, especially because the lizards have such an

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Speaker 3: important relationship with the native harvester ants, which are sometimes

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Speaker 3: sort of driven out by the fire ants. So while

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Speaker 3: it's true that the fire ants appear to be playing

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Speaker 3: a role in population and range declines for these horned lizards,

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Speaker 3: they're not thought to be the only factor, or necessarily

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Speaker 3: even the main factor everywhere.

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Speaker 1: That's very much the case. Yeah, and reading about the

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Speaker 1: Texas horned lizard like urbanization vast urbanization and Texas is

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Speaker 1: often singled out as one of the prime imary factors

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Speaker 1: there exactly.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so the fire ant, the imported fire ant, seem

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Speaker 3: to be one factor among many. And this came up

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Speaker 3: when I was watching a short documentary video that was

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Speaker 3: just delightful. I recommend people look this up. A documentary

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Speaker 3: video produced by Texas Parks and Wildlife in twenty twenty

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Speaker 3: one called Horned Lizard Homecoming. You can find this on YouTube.

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Speaker 3: It is a video specifically that's focused on an attempt

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Speaker 3: by the San Antonio Zoo to breed Texas horned lizards

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Speaker 3: in captivity and then release them back into areas from

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Speaker 3: which they have largely disappeared since the nineteen seventies. Just

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Speaker 3: one of the many charming things in this short documentary

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Speaker 3: is that the conservation biologists are working with a lizard

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Speaker 3: sniffing dog. So you know, imagine the canine unit at

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Speaker 3: the airport, but instead of a drug sniffing dog or

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Speaker 3: a bomb sniffing dog, it's a dog that is trained

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Speaker 3: to find Texas horned lizard in the wild and not

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Speaker 3: to bother them by the way, not go like pick

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Speaker 3: them up in the mouth and harass them until they

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Speaker 3: get a blood squad. Just to signal from a safe

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Speaker 3: distance that they've found one.

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Speaker 1: Ah, that's awesome.

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Speaker 3: It's also very cute that the lizard sniffing dog in

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Speaker 3: the video is sort of wearing shoes as it goes

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Speaker 3: about its business. I think this is probably because there,

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Speaker 3: you know, it's a very scrubby area, and there's probably

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Speaker 3: a lot of like thorns and stuff that can get

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Speaker 3: stuck in a dog's paw around there. But anyway, the

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Speaker 3: conservation biologists and the parks and wildlife workers they interview

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Speaker 3: in this video, they talk about a few other things

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Speaker 3: that are affecting the range and population of Texas horned lizards.

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Speaker 3: For example, human attempts to eliminate harvester ants from large

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Speaker 3: areas of land. Of course, again, Texas horned lizards need

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Speaker 3: to eat harvest or ants. Without the ants, the land

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Speaker 3: cannot sustain the lizards. And then also things like replacing

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Speaker 3: native grasses with different grass types, so you replace what

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Speaker 3: are called bunch grasses with turf grasses. This is not

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Speaker 3: what the lizards are adapted to and they can't really

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Speaker 3: survive in it. Of course, as you mentioned, Rob, just

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Speaker 3: general urbanization and reformatting of a lot of land area

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Speaker 3: roads cutting through natural land ranges, which interferes with movement

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Speaker 3: back and forth. But there's another thing I just wanted

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Speaker 3: to mention from this video because I found it hilarious.

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Speaker 3: There's a part where they're showing a lab at the

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Speaker 3: San Antonio Zoo where they're trying to breed lots of lizards,

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Speaker 3: so it's sort of it's a lizard's sex lab, and

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Speaker 3: they are trying to facilitate mating, and they will put

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Speaker 3: a male lizard into a female lizard's tank. And there's

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Speaker 3: one part where the technician is explaining that the head

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Speaker 3: movements that we are seeing back and forth between these

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Speaker 3: two lizards indicate that they are both interested in mating.

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Speaker 3: But it totally looks like two lizards on a log

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Speaker 3: just nodding back and forth at each other, like yep, yep,

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Speaker 3: it's great. It's a very Texas kind of nod as well.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you can image like the little cowboy hats being

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Speaker 1: on their heads, right yeah, all right, Well, at this point,

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Speaker 1: I'd like to get back into some cultural connections to

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Speaker 1: the hornet lizard, and in the last episode, we teased

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Speaker 1: out some connections in Navajo culture among the Dnet people,

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Speaker 1: and I wanted to get into some of that so

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Speaker 1: there are several mentions of the hornet toad in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty four book Navajo Witchcraft by Clyde Kluckhohn, who

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Speaker 1: lived nineteen oh five through nineteen sixty. I've talked about

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Speaker 1: this text a little bit on the show before. The

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Speaker 1: version I have is from nineteen eighty nine with some

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Speaker 1: additions made to it, and there are several mentions of

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Speaker 1: the horned toad's use as a key ingredient in various

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Speaker 1: alleged spells in Navajo Witchcraft, which I want to stress

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Speaker 1: the term witchcraft is used here as shorthand, not for

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Speaker 1: mainstream religious rituals and practice, but rather for what is described,

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Speaker 1: as described by Kluckhohn as quote Navajo ideas and action

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Speaker 1: patterns concerned with the influencing of events by supernatural techniques

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Speaker 1: that are socially disapproved.

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Speaker 3: Right, So what would be viewed by the people as

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Speaker 3: a sort of illicit, outsider form of magic.

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Speaker 1: Right right, And it's my understanding as I understand it,

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Speaker 1: these are not necessarily things that were practiced, but were

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Speaker 1: believed to be practiced by these few individuals. So the

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Speaker 1: book outlines various alleged curses, including the placing of a

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Speaker 1: personal item or a bit of clothing from a man

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Speaker 1: you want to death curse inside a grave, or inside

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Speaker 1: the mouth of a dead man, in the cursing of

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Speaker 1: a pregnant woman, a personal item is placed inside the

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Speaker 1: body of a horned toad or a horned lizard, or

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Speaker 1: a purse made from its hide.

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Speaker 3: Oh interesting, and so.

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Speaker 1: That these would again, these would be specialized alleged uses

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Speaker 1: practiced by these you know, these outsiders that are practicing

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Speaker 1: this kind of like co or said to be practicing

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Speaker 1: this kind of like negative magical system. But there is

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Speaker 1: a fragment of a story shared late in the book

393
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Speaker 1: that is indeed a reference to a major Navajo story

394
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Speaker 1: about the horned lizard, and it does get into some

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Speaker 1: aspects of its biology, as we've discussed. So this is

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Speaker 1: the quote that is included in Navajo Witchcraft as a

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Speaker 1: commentary on something else that's referenced in the book quote.

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Speaker 1: The story is about the holy toad who eats ants

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Speaker 1: that give him power. One day he was swallowed by

400
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Speaker 1: a coyote who he had kindly given of his best corn.

401
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Speaker 1: So while inside he asked the code what all the

402
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Speaker 1: things he sees are for, and finally comes to the

403
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Speaker 1: back brain and asked what it was for, and the

404
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Speaker 1: code said, that is what I live by. Leave it alone.

405
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Speaker 1: So the toad cut it into killed the coyote and

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Speaker 1: came out of his throat. Wow. So I looked up

407
00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:58,080
Speaker 1: some other versions of this amazing story, and there appear

408
00:23:58,119 --> 00:24:00,119
Speaker 1: to be different versions of it, or you know, there

409
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:03,280
Speaker 1: are different retellings of it. I was reading a version

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Speaker 1: from Navajo Religion, Volume one by Gladys A. Reichard from

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty, and the way this one goes is, Okay,

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Speaker 1: there's a theft of corn. The corn belongs to the

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Speaker 1: horned toad, and coyote steals it, and then the horned

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Speaker 1: toad accuses the koty of the theft, but coyote kind

415
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Speaker 1: of laughs about it and says, well, yeah, I am hungry,

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Speaker 1: and then he eats the horned toad. But then horned

417
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Speaker 1: toad begins to move around inside the code he's belly,

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Speaker 1: and at first coyote thinks it's just the corn that

419
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Speaker 1: he ate, but then the toad begins to talk to him.

420
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Speaker 1: He's like, where am I It's dark in here, and

421
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Speaker 1: he like kicks the inside of the stomach just to

422
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Speaker 1: sort of punish the coyote a little bit, but then

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Speaker 1: he moves to the windpipe, keeps speaking. Then he moves

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Speaker 1: to the heart and this is where he carves across

425
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Speaker 1: in the heart and it kills the code. He dead,

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Speaker 1: and then he emerges from the code he's body in

427
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Speaker 1: this telling or retail of it from the codes anus.

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Speaker 3: This is interesting in how it matches with the cases

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Speaker 3: we talked about from biology in the in the previous

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Speaker 3: episode about animals that died from trying to eat a

431
00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:17,080
Speaker 3: horned lizard that was too big and too thorny, like

432
00:25:17,119 --> 00:25:20,199
Speaker 3: the various birds and snakes all. You know, it's like

433
00:25:20,240 --> 00:25:24,199
Speaker 3: a dangerous proposition to get too greedy with attacking a

434
00:25:24,240 --> 00:25:27,199
Speaker 3: horned toad that they have really serious spikes and they

435
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:28,919
Speaker 3: can mess you up from the inside.

436
00:25:29,200 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so you can imagine the story being inspired

437
00:25:31,640 --> 00:25:36,200
Speaker 1: by observations of that having occurred in predators, perhaps including

438
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:38,919
Speaker 1: the coyote. And then, of course, as we referenced in the

439
00:25:38,960 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 1: last episode, this nugget about them getting their power from

440
00:25:41,320 --> 00:25:43,840
Speaker 1: the ants that they eat, like, that's that's right on

441
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:48,200
Speaker 1: as far as they're they're they're irritating blood is concerned.

442
00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:50,480
Speaker 3: Right, because the idea as we talked about last time,

443
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:53,400
Speaker 3: is that there is something in the harvest or ant

444
00:25:53,560 --> 00:25:57,439
Speaker 3: diet that causes their blood to have the properties that

445
00:25:57,480 --> 00:26:00,040
Speaker 3: make it foul smelling or foul tasting. To can it,

446
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:02,240
Speaker 3: it's like foxes and coyotes. Yeah.

447
00:26:02,400 --> 00:26:06,400
Speaker 1: Now, according to Navajo historian Wally Brown on Navajo traditional

448
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:10,040
Speaker 1: teachings this is a twenty twenty three video, the grandfather

449
00:26:10,160 --> 00:26:13,440
Speaker 1: horned toad is a symbol of protection, with the spikes

450
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:17,640
Speaker 1: serving as arrow points that protect one. And he also

451
00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:20,080
Speaker 1: drives home that the horned toad is close to the

452
00:26:20,080 --> 00:26:23,320
Speaker 1: Earth and which matches up with the way that it

453
00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:25,080
Speaker 1: lives its life, you know, not only being a very

454
00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:28,840
Speaker 1: terrestrial organism, but being solo to the earth, flattening itself

455
00:26:28,880 --> 00:26:31,160
Speaker 1: so that it doesn't cast that shadow as we discussed.

456
00:26:32,560 --> 00:26:34,919
Speaker 1: But he stresses that it can be used to bless

457
00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:38,200
Speaker 1: one's mind, to bless one's spirit, and to bless one's

458
00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:39,320
Speaker 1: physical well being.

459
00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:43,480
Speaker 3: I am interested in the way that it seems that

460
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:48,960
Speaker 3: at least two humans the spiritual connotations of the horned

461
00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:53,000
Speaker 3: toad or the horned lizard are really taken as almost

462
00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:56,200
Speaker 3: entirely positive, despite the fact that it is a very

463
00:26:56,240 --> 00:26:58,800
Speaker 3: spiky looking creature, there seems to be a kind of

464
00:26:58,840 --> 00:27:01,159
Speaker 3: tension there. You would think, I think you see a

465
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:04,120
Speaker 3: creature that's all like spiky and thorny like that, and

466
00:27:04,520 --> 00:27:06,879
Speaker 3: I don't know, people might just be more inclined to

467
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:10,919
Speaker 3: attach a kind of negative spiritual energy to it. But

468
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:15,639
Speaker 3: so we have these traditions that can consider the horned

469
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:18,240
Speaker 3: lizard as like a route for a blessing, a blessing

470
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:21,479
Speaker 3: of the mind and spirit and the health of the body.

471
00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:26,240
Speaker 3: But also just if you read about people's personal relationships

472
00:27:26,280 --> 00:27:30,560
Speaker 3: who grew up around these lizards, people have overwhelmingly positive

473
00:27:30,600 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 3: feelings about them, like very positive feelings about catching them

474
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:37,200
Speaker 3: and handling them as children and things like that. Do

475
00:27:37,480 --> 00:27:38,560
Speaker 3: you know what I'm talking about?

476
00:27:38,800 --> 00:27:41,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I was thinking about this as well.

477
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:43,840
Speaker 1: I guess on one hand, it's worth stressing that like,

478
00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:47,960
Speaker 1: they're not a direct threat to humans. You know, it's

479
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:51,439
Speaker 1: not even like a situation where you know, obviously there

480
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:53,560
Speaker 1: are a lot of like say, like venomous snakes out

481
00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:55,960
Speaker 1: there that are also not out there in the game

482
00:27:56,080 --> 00:28:00,159
Speaker 1: trying to have encounters with humans, but it just happens,

483
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:02,800
Speaker 1: and you know, and you know, injuries and so forth

484
00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:05,719
Speaker 1: can result. It's not really the case here, Like, they're

485
00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:08,360
Speaker 1: pretty much not a threat to us, and so there's

486
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:11,280
Speaker 1: almost a certain like natural kinship with them because they're

487
00:28:11,320 --> 00:28:14,720
Speaker 1: out there in the world. They're dealing with stresses, they're

488
00:28:14,760 --> 00:28:18,760
Speaker 1: dealing with predators, enemies, and they have these natural defenses

489
00:28:18,800 --> 00:28:21,280
Speaker 1: against them. But they also seem very much like an

490
00:28:21,359 --> 00:28:24,600
Speaker 1: underdog because they are small, and you know, it doesn't

491
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:28,359
Speaker 1: always work. Yeah, So there are some other details on

492
00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:31,080
Speaker 1: some of these traditions mentioned in another book I looked at,

493
00:28:31,320 --> 00:28:34,639
Speaker 1: Jane Manister's Horned Lizards. This is a two thousand and

494
00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:38,680
Speaker 1: two book from Texas Tech University Press. The author here

495
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:42,120
Speaker 1: cites that at least in some tellings of this the

496
00:28:42,760 --> 00:28:46,360
Speaker 1: code is being punished for stealing corn from the sacred stalk,

497
00:28:47,720 --> 00:28:50,840
Speaker 1: that the horned lizard is associated with inner protection, especially

498
00:28:50,840 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 1: for warriors traditionally, and then the author also cites that

499
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 1: there may be a Navajo taboo, or there may have

500
00:28:58,040 --> 00:29:02,760
Speaker 1: been a Navajo taboo against including certain animals, including this one,

501
00:29:02,960 --> 00:29:07,360
Speaker 1: in various rug weaving designs, perhaps in deference to its

502
00:29:07,400 --> 00:29:11,480
Speaker 1: special strength. Now, I want to stress that Navajo traditions

503
00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:15,280
Speaker 1: vary across time and geography, as with pretty much any

504
00:29:15,320 --> 00:29:18,560
Speaker 1: belief system, and there are also aspects of Navaja traditions

505
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: that are not meant for me to know of. And

506
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:22,880
Speaker 1: I hope that I've been respectful with what I've brought

507
00:29:22,920 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 1: to the discussion here. But I think this is always

508
00:29:25,720 --> 00:29:28,640
Speaker 1: there's always a fascinating relationship to be observed between a

509
00:29:28,680 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 1: people's beliefs and a people's natural environment, and I think

510
00:29:32,360 --> 00:29:34,360
Speaker 1: that we see that here with the horned toad or

511
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:37,080
Speaker 1: horned lizard, both as a metaphor as well as an

512
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:41,400
Speaker 1: interpretation of what I assume were observations of the horned

513
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:54,400
Speaker 1: lizard's biology in the wild. Now, another source I looked

514
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:56,960
Speaker 1: at I was looking at an article by Joyce Gibson

515
00:29:57,040 --> 00:30:01,880
Speaker 1: Roach writing for TCU magazine talking about different cultural interpretations

516
00:30:01,920 --> 00:30:06,000
Speaker 1: of the of the horned lizard. And this author points

517
00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:09,720
Speaker 1: to Spanish folk beliefs. So this would have been, you know,

518
00:30:09,720 --> 00:30:14,360
Speaker 1: in Mexico for the most part, where they would sometimes

519
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:19,440
Speaker 1: refer to the horned lizard as torrito dilo virgin or

520
00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 1: the little bull who protects the virgin. And so this

521
00:30:22,760 --> 00:30:24,640
Speaker 1: is there's kind of like two different things going on

522
00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:28,400
Speaker 1: with this this nickname. So we we talked about this

523
00:30:28,480 --> 00:30:31,160
Speaker 1: in the last episode how they may be observed to

524
00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:33,960
Speaker 1: charge like a bull and are sometimes referred to as

525
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 1: the little bull.

526
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, like against an absurdly larger predator, like

527
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:41,480
Speaker 3: against a human shoe.

528
00:30:41,800 --> 00:30:44,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that I think this again, this

529
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:46,360
Speaker 1: is one of the things that makes this animal charming.

530
00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:49,320
Speaker 1: You know. It's an underdog, stand in its ground, you know,

531
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:51,240
Speaker 1: And like, how can you not want to be like

532
00:30:51,840 --> 00:30:55,200
Speaker 1: the like the humble, horny toat in this respect? But

533
00:30:55,240 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 1: then where does the virgin come in? Well, this seems

534
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:02,320
Speaker 1: to be connected to various interpretations that what's going on

535
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:07,760
Speaker 1: here is that the horned toad is crying tears of blood.

536
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:11,680
Speaker 1: So there is a long, sometimes controversial, and also generally

537
00:31:11,760 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 1: skeptically debunked history of statues of the Virgin Mary weeping

538
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 1: tears of blood in Catholicism, and accounts of weeping statues

539
00:31:21,160 --> 00:31:23,320
Speaker 1: in general, dating back at least to the writings of

540
00:31:23,360 --> 00:31:27,080
Speaker 1: Plutarch in the first and second century. See Now. I

541
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:30,560
Speaker 1: should also point out that humans can experience blood in

542
00:31:30,600 --> 00:31:33,600
Speaker 1: the tears or blood from the tear ducks or hematuria

543
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 1: for various reasons. So for instance, when my son was younger,

544
00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:39,800
Speaker 1: he had tubes put in his tear ducks to correct

545
00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 1: a minor problem, and immediately after surgery he shed a

546
00:31:43,600 --> 00:31:47,480
Speaker 1: single tear of blood, which was pretty awesome. At the time,

547
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:49,880
Speaker 1: we knew everything was fine, you know, and it was

548
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:52,800
Speaker 1: just kind of like, oh wow, that was a blood tear,

549
00:31:53,440 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 1: but only got the one.

550
00:31:55,120 --> 00:31:57,560
Speaker 3: Agreed, if you know, not to worry. That is pretty cool,

551
00:31:59,080 --> 00:31:59,480
Speaker 3: all right.

552
00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:04,280
Speaker 1: Now. There a connection to the horned toad the horned

553
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:07,000
Speaker 1: lizard in culture. This is one that was shared in

554
00:32:07,040 --> 00:32:11,240
Speaker 1: that book by Jane Manister Horned Lizards from two thousand

555
00:32:11,280 --> 00:32:15,120
Speaker 1: and two. She gets into to a number of different traditions,

556
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:18,640
Speaker 1: at least mentioning like that there are a number of

557
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:22,200
Speaker 1: ideas about them being tied up in weather prediction and

558
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 1: rain generation, which I guess is understandable of a creatures

559
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:31,160
Speaker 1: that clearly is able to thrive in a very arid environment,

560
00:32:31,320 --> 00:32:34,560
Speaker 1: and we have these unique observations, you know, concerning the

561
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:38,320
Speaker 1: way that they catch rain and so forth. But then

562
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:40,760
Speaker 1: she also gets into this account that some of you

563
00:32:40,800 --> 00:32:43,800
Speaker 1: may have heard of before. I believe stuff you missed

564
00:32:43,840 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: in history class did a whole episode about this last

565
00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:51,640
Speaker 1: couple of years. There's the story of Old Rip. This

566
00:32:52,480 --> 00:32:57,719
Speaker 1: is a horned lizard originally named Blinky, that was placed

567
00:32:57,760 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 1: in an Eastland County, Texas time caps along with a bible,

568
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:05,680
Speaker 1: some coins, and some newspapers. And then when the capsule

569
00:33:05,720 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 1: was dug out thirty one years later, the lizard was

570
00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:10,000
Speaker 1: allegedly still alive.

571
00:33:10,640 --> 00:33:11,400
Speaker 3: I don't know about that.

572
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:15,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of solid reasons to doubt this detail

573
00:33:15,760 --> 00:33:17,360
Speaker 1: of the story, but this is the main detail of

574
00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:21,000
Speaker 1: the story. So it's like everyone who's celebrating this, it's

575
00:33:21,080 --> 00:33:24,640
Speaker 1: like they're basically the idea being that they were saying

576
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 1: the cowboy lore is correct. This is a victory of

577
00:33:28,400 --> 00:33:32,840
Speaker 1: cowboy biology. They were right the cowboys when they said

578
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:36,240
Speaker 1: that the horned toad could live for one hundred years

579
00:33:36,520 --> 00:33:40,160
Speaker 1: without food or water. Because clearly, this particular horned lizard

580
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:43,120
Speaker 1: was locked away for thirty one years and we just

581
00:33:43,120 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 1: got him out and he's still alive. Everyone and take

582
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 1: a look at him. So this was very popular at

583
00:33:47,720 --> 00:33:50,640
Speaker 1: the time. Old Rip toured the country, even met President

584
00:33:50,760 --> 00:33:54,920
Speaker 1: Coolidge at the White House, and ultimately died in nineteen

585
00:33:54,960 --> 00:34:00,720
Speaker 1: twenty nine. Now, various folks later took credit for switching

586
00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:05,400
Speaker 1: out lizards at the capsule's opening. So this is that

587
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:08,320
Speaker 1: I want to stress that this is almost certainly a hoax,

588
00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:10,719
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of reason to believe it was

589
00:34:10,719 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 1: a hoax. This was not carried out with any kind

590
00:34:12,680 --> 00:34:15,839
Speaker 1: of like scientific rigger, but it was a big deal

591
00:34:15,920 --> 00:34:18,360
Speaker 1: and it was covered in the New York Times, among

592
00:34:18,440 --> 00:34:21,360
Speaker 1: other major publications. In fact, I want to read to

593
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:24,880
Speaker 1: you from the New York Times. This is from February twentieth,

594
00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:28,880
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty eight. Oh boy toad alive after thirty one

595
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:33,399
Speaker 1: years sealed in Texas cornerstone, Eastland, Texas, February nineteenth ap

596
00:34:33,840 --> 00:34:36,759
Speaker 1: Hey hornage toad sealed alive in the cornerstone of the

597
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:40,360
Speaker 1: courthouse here thirty one years ago, was alive when the

598
00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:44,560
Speaker 1: stone was removed yesterday. According to County Judge Edward S. Pritchard,

599
00:34:44,760 --> 00:34:48,080
Speaker 1: the old courthouse is being raised, and it goes into

600
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:51,480
Speaker 1: some additional details, including this bit that I also have

601
00:34:51,560 --> 00:34:55,320
Speaker 1: to include. After the cornerstone was removed, the toad appeared

602
00:34:55,360 --> 00:34:57,640
Speaker 1: lifeless for some time, but in a little while it

603
00:34:57,680 --> 00:35:00,120
Speaker 1: opened its eyes in about twenty minutes a begin and

604
00:35:00,160 --> 00:35:02,800
Speaker 1: to breathe. The mouth however, appeared to have grown together.

605
00:35:03,560 --> 00:35:06,600
Speaker 3: What grown together?

606
00:35:07,520 --> 00:35:11,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so I was looking around. There's some other

607
00:35:11,239 --> 00:35:12,560
Speaker 1: takes on this as well.

608
00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:16,040
Speaker 3: That oh, they're also saying they're going to open the

609
00:35:16,120 --> 00:35:19,959
Speaker 3: mouth by surgery and force it to eat food. Yeah.

610
00:35:20,040 --> 00:35:24,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was also the New York Times story. So yeah,

611
00:35:24,680 --> 00:35:28,360
Speaker 1: this story, I should be clear, there were a number

612
00:35:28,520 --> 00:35:32,200
Speaker 1: of skeptics at the time that were like, that doesn't

613
00:35:32,239 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 1: sound right. Let me see this toad. I think there

614
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:38,120
Speaker 1: was maybe there may be one or two support supporters

615
00:35:38,160 --> 00:35:42,239
Speaker 1: in the scientific community who are maybe like, well, it's possible.

616
00:35:42,360 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 1: I don't know, but generally people were very doubtful about this.

617
00:35:46,520 --> 00:35:48,839
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, you had others pointing out, well,

618
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:52,799
Speaker 1: clearly the animal survived in the time capsule because there

619
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:56,600
Speaker 1: was a Bible in there. The Bible sustained the lizard.

620
00:35:57,239 --> 00:36:00,000
Speaker 1: I guess the Bible also made the lizard's mouth grow together.

621
00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:03,920
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I've read other accounts that it had

622
00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:08,560
Speaker 1: a broken leg and worn down horns but was otherwise healthy. Yeah,

623
00:36:08,560 --> 00:36:10,560
Speaker 1: And then others claim that the eyes were sealed shut

624
00:36:10,560 --> 00:36:12,840
Speaker 1: as well. There seems to be a certain amount of

625
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 1: drift in the telling and retelling of this feat But

626
00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:19,920
Speaker 1: here's what we actually know to be true. So hornet

627
00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:23,840
Speaker 1: lizards can live around five years, but normal lifespan in

628
00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:26,480
Speaker 1: the wild is not fully known, according to the Oklahoma

629
00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:29,920
Speaker 1: Department of Wildlife Conservation, but I think we can probably

630
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:33,640
Speaker 1: take that as like a ballpark. According to Texas Monthly

631
00:36:33,680 --> 00:36:37,280
Speaker 1: in a twenty fifteen article by Alex Dropkin, the Texas

632
00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:43,360
Speaker 1: horned lizard species hibernates, or rather birmates between October and April,

633
00:36:43,640 --> 00:36:47,479
Speaker 1: and this is likely where that cowboy lore originated, that

634
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:50,520
Speaker 1: these creatures can live without food or water for one

635
00:36:50,600 --> 00:36:53,400
Speaker 1: hundred years. And this is the lore that the folks

636
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:56,040
Speaker 1: in Eastland, Texas decided to put to the test. This

637
00:36:56,160 --> 00:36:59,160
Speaker 1: is why they put a hornet lizard inside of a

638
00:36:59,200 --> 00:37:02,920
Speaker 1: time capsule to test or I think, if we're being

639
00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:07,960
Speaker 1: rightfully skeptic here to prove that the cowboy lore was correct.

640
00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:11,520
Speaker 1: There is no evidence that hornet lizards in the wild

641
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:15,480
Speaker 1: choose hibernation spots based on the presence of biblical texts

642
00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:19,040
Speaker 1: or coins or newspapers. But I guess we should note

643
00:37:19,040 --> 00:37:22,799
Speaker 1: that long lifespans for lizards are not completely unheard of.

644
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:28,320
Speaker 1: The New Zealand tuatara can live twenty five to thirty

645
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:32,880
Speaker 1: five years, typical age ages to sixty or apparently common,

646
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:38,240
Speaker 1: and one captive specimen apparently lived to be over one hundred. Meanwhile,

647
00:37:38,280 --> 00:37:40,719
Speaker 1: some wizards can go without food or water for weeks

648
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:43,840
Speaker 1: or months. I think it's safe to say that the

649
00:37:43,880 --> 00:37:46,880
Speaker 1: accounts of Old Rip places the story so far outside

650
00:37:46,920 --> 00:37:50,680
Speaker 1: of anything reported or at least, you know, authenticated to

651
00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:54,360
Speaker 1: any reasonable degree, that common sense leans us very strongly

652
00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 1: in the direction of hoax here.

653
00:37:56,920 --> 00:37:59,399
Speaker 3: You know, we talked not too long ago on the show,

654
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:01,960
Speaker 3: we were doing so stuff about cave biology, and we

655
00:38:02,080 --> 00:38:07,120
Speaker 3: ended up talking about the cave dwelling amphibian, the olm,

656
00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:11,799
Speaker 3: which is notable for being one of the most sort

657
00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:16,160
Speaker 3: of sedentary creatures on Earth that it can live for

658
00:38:16,200 --> 00:38:18,480
Speaker 3: a long time. It's an aquatic salamander. It's found in

659
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:22,200
Speaker 3: the dynamic alps in cave systems, where it lives in

660
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:25,000
Speaker 3: the dark for much of the time. And it is

661
00:38:25,080 --> 00:38:28,600
Speaker 3: thought that sometimes these creatures can go for like ten

662
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:32,759
Speaker 3: years without food, and that in itself is incredible, But

663
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:35,520
Speaker 3: that seems to be sort of the upper bound of

664
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:38,720
Speaker 3: where you can where you can push push the slow

665
00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:40,160
Speaker 3: motion metabolism too.

666
00:38:40,560 --> 00:38:44,000
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And so again, if this story of Old

667
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:48,320
Speaker 1: Rip were true, it would just it would triple that

668
00:38:49,239 --> 00:38:54,040
Speaker 1: ten year record. So yeah, I think we are very

669
00:38:54,160 --> 00:38:56,960
Speaker 1: right to be highly skeptical of this. And again various

670
00:38:57,000 --> 00:38:59,360
Speaker 1: folks came forward and claimed that they were involved with

671
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:02,520
Speaker 1: the hoax and so forth, So there's a lot of

672
00:39:02,520 --> 00:39:06,440
Speaker 1: smoke there that suggests the fire. I should also point

673
00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:10,160
Speaker 1: this out. You know we were talking about in endangered

674
00:39:10,239 --> 00:39:17,120
Speaker 1: status of horned lizards. This particular incident was so popular

675
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:20,759
Speaker 1: that it resulted in a horned toad boom, so the

676
00:39:21,080 --> 00:39:26,720
Speaker 1: specimens being harvested and then exported for novelty's sake, hurting

677
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:30,200
Speaker 1: local populations in the process. But hey, Old Rip is

678
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:34,160
Speaker 1: allegedly currently entombed in Eastland, Texas. I think he's on display.

679
00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:38,160
Speaker 1: So if we have any Eastland listeners or visitors to Eastland,

680
00:39:38,200 --> 00:39:40,120
Speaker 1: or folks who have been to Eastland and can report

681
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:43,839
Speaker 1: on the body of Old Rip right in, we would

682
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:45,799
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. I believe he has at

683
00:39:45,880 --> 00:39:48,880
Speaker 1: least historically been stolen at least once and returned.

684
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:53,279
Speaker 3: Are you, County Judge Edward S. Pritchard, what criteria did

685
00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:56,640
Speaker 3: you use to judge that this was the real original lizard?

686
00:39:58,640 --> 00:40:01,560
Speaker 1: All right? I have another interesting bit that I ran

687
00:40:01,600 --> 00:40:03,560
Speaker 1: across in these texts that I want to talk about

688
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:06,360
Speaker 1: This is from Manister's book as well, and it is

689
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:10,319
Speaker 1: the Horny toad Man, something that I know, on the

690
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:13,920
Speaker 1: surface absolutely sounds like a cryptid or some American Western

691
00:40:13,960 --> 00:40:17,040
Speaker 1: horror story. And the fact that it's associated with the railway,

692
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:19,120
Speaker 1: I think only compounds this possibility.

693
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds like he belongs alongside Sasquatch and paramouth a. Yeah.

694
00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:28,880
Speaker 1: So, according to Manister, the figure emerges in response to

695
00:40:28,960 --> 00:40:31,400
Speaker 1: a unique problem on a segment of the Santa Fe

696
00:40:31,640 --> 00:40:36,320
Speaker 1: railroad connecting Albuquerque and El Paso, a segment of track

697
00:40:36,400 --> 00:40:39,680
Speaker 1: that was dubbed the Horny toad a segment where anything

698
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:42,319
Speaker 1: bad that ever happened on the railroad could happen and

699
00:40:42,440 --> 00:40:47,440
Speaker 1: had happened, including a unique problem first reported apparently in

700
00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:53,760
Speaker 1: the Jiorada del Niorto desert basin, and that is trains

701
00:40:53,880 --> 00:40:56,960
Speaker 1: losing traction on the rails due to the grease and

702
00:40:57,080 --> 00:41:02,279
Speaker 1: moisture of hundreds of squashed hornet what so. Apparently it

703
00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:05,439
Speaker 1: was so bad that brakemen and firemen aboard the train

704
00:41:05,520 --> 00:41:08,720
Speaker 1: would have to scramble down onto the tracks and sweep

705
00:41:08,760 --> 00:41:11,560
Speaker 1: it all off to get all this gunk off the tracks,

706
00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:15,799
Speaker 1: And it led to the idea nay, the ideal of

707
00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:19,120
Speaker 1: the horny toad man. So a horny toad man is

708
00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:21,560
Speaker 1: not merely like somebody that goes down and sweeps off

709
00:41:21,880 --> 00:41:25,040
Speaker 1: the rails. In the scenario, this is a railway man

710
00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:28,719
Speaker 1: with eyes on corporate promotion, willing to do anything and

711
00:41:28,880 --> 00:41:32,400
Speaker 1: everything the company requires in order to advance, and that

712
00:41:32,560 --> 00:41:36,280
Speaker 1: certainly includes going out onto the tracks in the desert

713
00:41:36,320 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 1: heat and removing lizard guts from the rails.

714
00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:43,440
Speaker 3: So this is a railroad company version of I'll get

715
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:47,000
Speaker 3: the boss's coffee, you know, I will sweep the sweep

716
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:49,480
Speaker 3: all of the horny toad grease off of the rails.

717
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:51,759
Speaker 1: Right, And to put it in an alien context, since

718
00:41:51,760 --> 00:41:55,359
Speaker 1: we're talking about alien in the last episode, you might

719
00:41:55,400 --> 00:41:58,680
Speaker 1: consider Burke from Aliens a horny toad man of sorts,

720
00:41:58,719 --> 00:42:02,759
Speaker 1: you know, a complete scoundrel, but he proves that, if

721
00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:05,160
Speaker 1: nothing else, he is more than ready to get down

722
00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:07,239
Speaker 1: there on the tracks and get his hands dirty for

723
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:08,880
Speaker 1: the company. He's a company man.

724
00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:10,680
Speaker 3: All the way. That's right, all right.

725
00:42:10,719 --> 00:42:12,799
Speaker 1: Now, in trying to understand this, I guess we do

726
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:15,880
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge that horned lizard populations would have been

727
00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:20,440
Speaker 1: greater back in this time period. As opposed to what

728
00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 1: they are now, so we can't compare what we see

729
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:25,160
Speaker 1: in the world today to what would have been happening then.

730
00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:27,440
Speaker 1: But I needed more clarity on why are there so

731
00:42:27,520 --> 00:42:32,080
Speaker 1: many horned lizards getting run over by trains? And I

732
00:42:32,239 --> 00:42:35,480
Speaker 1: found a possible answer here in a nineteen twenty two

733
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:39,680
Speaker 1: paper by J. P. Givler. Givler writes, it is an

734
00:42:39,719 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 1: interesting fact that at such times horned lizards are very

735
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:47,240
Speaker 1: abundant under the crossties of railroad tracks. Often they burrow

736
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:50,960
Speaker 1: through into the area between the two rails. Here they

737
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:54,520
Speaker 1: emerge and are literally trapped. The rails are usually too

738
00:42:54,640 --> 00:42:57,160
Speaker 1: high to be climbed over, and the lizards run up

739
00:42:57,160 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 1: and down frantically. Occasionally one climbs up on a rail

740
00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:03,200
Speaker 1: just in time to be crushed by a passing train.

741
00:43:03,760 --> 00:43:06,120
Speaker 1: Many live for the rest of the summer in this

742
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:07,520
Speaker 1: uncomfortable pasture.

743
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:08,400
Speaker 3: Bummer.

744
00:43:08,800 --> 00:43:11,640
Speaker 1: Now, it doesn't I mean, it doesn't completely answer my question,

745
00:43:11,680 --> 00:43:14,560
Speaker 1: but it at least puts a lot of horned lizards

746
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 1: in the vicinity of those train tracks. And you know,

747
00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:21,920
Speaker 1: he only mentions it as being like an occasional squashing,

748
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:25,160
Speaker 1: But may I guess that's close enough to like a

749
00:43:25,200 --> 00:43:28,920
Speaker 1: mass squashing that we can consider this reality now. I

750
00:43:28,960 --> 00:43:31,920
Speaker 1: look for any discussions out there in the literature about

751
00:43:32,080 --> 00:43:36,719
Speaker 1: loss of traction due to animal railway mortalities, and I

752
00:43:36,760 --> 00:43:39,360
Speaker 1: looked at it at least one full source on animal

753
00:43:39,440 --> 00:43:42,720
Speaker 1: railway mortalities or one that deals with this in depth

754
00:43:43,000 --> 00:43:47,399
Speaker 1: titled railway ecology. And there's no mention in this of

755
00:43:47,760 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 1: tracks getting greased up by dead animals or dead lizards.

756
00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:54,160
Speaker 1: So if true, maybe this was indeed more of a

757
00:43:54,200 --> 00:43:58,800
Speaker 1: concern with an historic engine and an historic local population

758
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:02,200
Speaker 1: of lizard. I'm not sure, but I will add the

759
00:44:02,280 --> 00:44:06,920
Speaker 1: following from another paper. I looked up Experimental evaluation of

760
00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 1: effect of leaves on railroad tracks and loss of braking

761
00:44:10,680 --> 00:44:13,600
Speaker 1: by Kumar at All. This is in the Journal Machines

762
00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:17,799
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four. Quote loss of traction results in

763
00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:21,040
Speaker 1: either breaking of the train or slip, which arises at

764
00:44:21,120 --> 00:44:25,960
Speaker 1: lower tractive coefficients. This case occurs when there are third

765
00:44:26,160 --> 00:44:29,880
Speaker 1: body layers that cause reduce traction, such as in the

766
00:44:29,880 --> 00:44:33,600
Speaker 1: case of leaves. Various traction enhancers are adopted by the

767
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 1: railway to improve adhesion when the rail is contaminated.

768
00:44:38,040 --> 00:44:41,200
Speaker 3: Okay, so you can certainly imagine that leaves falling on

769
00:44:42,280 --> 00:44:46,400
Speaker 3: railroad tracks could reduce the traction between the wheels and

770
00:44:46,440 --> 00:44:50,480
Speaker 3: the rails. So yeah, you can guess that if like

771
00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 3: lizard especially not just like lizard body fluids, but whole

772
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:58,440
Speaker 3: lizard bodies were on the rails, that might interfere in

773
00:44:58,520 --> 00:44:59,000
Speaker 3: some way.

774
00:44:59,400 --> 00:45:02,319
Speaker 1: That's my ga. You know, if we're not dealing with

775
00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:04,840
Speaker 1: leaves here, we're dealing with lizard bodies and lizard guts

776
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:09,080
Speaker 1: and lizard liquids. But I guess if there were enough

777
00:45:09,080 --> 00:45:11,799
Speaker 1: of them, and also dealing with the idea that these

778
00:45:11,800 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 1: are not modern trains, these are historic drain engines, I

779
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:17,920
Speaker 1: can I guess it's conceivable that there would have been

780
00:45:17,960 --> 00:45:22,040
Speaker 1: some sort of issue here, thus necessitating the horny toad man.

781
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:24,200
Speaker 3: Horny toad man, we salute you.

782
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:28,360
Speaker 1: So yeah. I don't know if we have any anybody

783
00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:31,680
Speaker 1: out there who is, you know, verse more versed than

784
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:37,160
Speaker 1: the history of locomotives and in the railway in America,

785
00:45:37,680 --> 00:45:39,920
Speaker 1: you know, right in we'd love to hear from you.

786
00:45:40,560 --> 00:45:43,120
Speaker 3: What's your company's version of the horny toad man.

787
00:45:44,719 --> 00:45:46,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess there's there's probably a horny toad man

788
00:45:46,760 --> 00:45:50,279
Speaker 1: in any business, in any corporation. So those were some

789
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:54,000
Speaker 1: of the cultural connections to the horned lizard or a

790
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:56,880
Speaker 1: horned toad or horny toad that I was able to

791
00:45:56,880 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 1: come across. But I'd love to hear from anyone out

792
00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:02,319
Speaker 1: there if you have some additional insights to share, be

793
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:04,799
Speaker 1: they related to something we discussed in this episode, or

794
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:10,640
Speaker 1: something we missed altogether. Be it something from Native beliefs

795
00:46:10,640 --> 00:46:13,479
Speaker 1: and traditions that you want to share, or cowboy lore

796
00:46:13,800 --> 00:46:16,440
Speaker 1: or indeed cowboy poetry. I'm still at a loss that

797
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:18,759
Speaker 1: there's not at least one cowboy poem out there on

798
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:20,720
Speaker 1: the Internet that deals with these guys.

799
00:46:21,200 --> 00:46:23,839
Speaker 3: Surely there is. I'm gonna blame Google being bad now

800
00:46:24,160 --> 00:46:28,200
Speaker 3: for the inability to connect with that literature.

801
00:46:28,560 --> 00:46:31,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well we're going to gohead and close

802
00:46:31,440 --> 00:46:34,080
Speaker 1: out this episode. But yeah, right in, we'd love to

803
00:46:34,080 --> 00:46:37,279
Speaker 1: hear from you. Let's see a little housekeeping here. Hey,

804
00:46:37,280 --> 00:46:40,360
Speaker 1: if you're on Instagram, look us up. We're STBYM podcast.

805
00:46:40,680 --> 00:46:42,759
Speaker 1: That's our handle. You can follow us there and keep

806
00:46:42,840 --> 00:46:45,080
Speaker 1: up with some of what's coming out in the old

807
00:46:45,120 --> 00:46:47,600
Speaker 1: podcast feed. And in that old podcast feed, we've got

808
00:46:47,600 --> 00:46:50,799
Speaker 1: core science and culture episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short

809
00:46:50,800 --> 00:46:53,760
Speaker 1: form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we set aside

810
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:56,000
Speaker 1: most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film

811
00:46:56,040 --> 00:46:57,200
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema.

812
00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:00,279
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, her

813
00:47:00,400 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 3: JJ Posway, and special thanks to our excellent guest audio

814
00:47:05,160 --> 00:47:07,560
Speaker 3: producer Chandler may Is for sitting in with us today.

815
00:47:08,080 --> 00:47:09,960
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

816
00:47:10,000 --> 00:47:13,120
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

817
00:47:13,200 --> 00:47:15,680
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hi, you

818
00:47:15,719 --> 00:47:18,319
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

819
00:47:18,320 --> 00:47:27,000
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

820
00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:30,000
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821
00:47:30,080 --> 00:47:32,880
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822
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:50,320
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