Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and Hey, today's Saturday, so we have another
Speaker 1: repeat for you. This is an older episode, this one
Speaker 1: originally published eight fifteen, twenty twenty four. It is Blood
Speaker 1: Squirting from the Lizard's Eye, Part two. We hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: Part two in our series on the horned lizards of
Speaker 3: North America, also known sometimes as horned toads or horny
Speaker 3: toads if you prefer, though they are in fact lizards
Speaker 3: and not toads. The horned blizzard, of course, is a
Speaker 3: genus scientific name Freno soma, meaning toad body, which contains
Speaker 3: about twenty one species which have different geographical ranges, but
Speaker 3: they're all found in western North America, from the southern
Speaker 3: tip of Mexico up through parts of western Canada. Now again,
Speaker 3: this is part two of the series. In Part one,
Speaker 3: we focused mainly on the horned lizard's relationship with various
Speaker 3: predators and their fascinating anti predator defense strategies which include camouflage, spikes,
Speaker 3: and armored scales, which can make them difficult and in
Speaker 3: some cases quite dangerous to eat. We talked about some
Speaker 3: eating related mishaps from various predators, and then finally, they're
Speaker 3: weaponized blood jets, the adaptation that allows them to shoot
Speaker 3: streams of apparently foul tasting blood out of their eyes
Speaker 3: when threatened by a dog. Robin, in your words last time,
Speaker 3: a way of deterring predation with the most aggressive and
Speaker 3: unpleasant free sample in the world. That's right to refer
Speaker 3: back to something that came up last time, that we're
Speaker 3: still interested in this question of why the blood apparently
Speaker 3: tastes so foul to dogs, and I read in some
Speaker 3: cases maybe also cats, but not noticeably so to humans,
Speaker 3: and certainly not to predators such as birds.
Speaker 1: Now I want to throw in right here at the top.
Speaker 1: We described the horned lizards in detail in the last episode,
Speaker 1: and I hope that everyone has had a chance to
Speaker 1: check out some footage or images on their own. At
Speaker 1: this point in our research, I've looked at a lot
Speaker 1: of images, a lot of footage, and I do have
Speaker 1: to give them props for just being tremendous splooters, you know.
Speaker 1: They certainly the squirrels can splute like like none other.
Speaker 1: You know, cats are great splooters. But man, I have
Speaker 1: to say the horned lizard isn't natural as well.
Speaker 3: Wait, I'm not understanding the word splute, then I thought
Speaker 3: you were. You were meaning like squirting, like squirting the
Speaker 3: blood out of the eye. That's all what it means.
Speaker 1: They're tremendous squirters as well. But spluting. Spluting is when
Speaker 1: if you ever it's a hot day and you look
Speaker 1: out and you see a squirrel like laying on its
Speaker 1: belly like splluted out, you may see you can't do
Speaker 1: much the same. Various other organisms will splute. This is
Speaker 1: an unofficial terminology for what they're doing. But I feel
Speaker 1: like that the horned lizard has this down as well.
Speaker 3: Splute seems like a variation on display when the whole
Speaker 3: body like flat against the ground, all limbs outstretched exactly.
Speaker 1: Yes, but the kind of PLoP to it as well,
Speaker 1: You know, like there's a certain you got the organism
Speaker 1: really needs to have a certain amount of like semi
Speaker 1: liquid solidness to it to really deliver it. You got
Speaker 1: to have that toad body or you got to have
Speaker 1: that slightly soft mammalian body to pull it off.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's right. And of course the toad body, as
Speaker 3: we talked about last time, is part of the horned
Speaker 3: lizard's defensive camouflage strategy. Like the splluting is indeed part
Speaker 3: of what keeps them safe from detection by predators. They
Speaker 3: try to lay flat against the ground so as not
Speaker 3: to cast a shadow and to make it harder for
Speaker 3: a predator, say a bird flying overhead, to see their outline. Also,
Speaker 3: since we're just talking about reviewing the tape on the
Speaker 3: horned Lizard since the last time we talked, I was
Speaker 3: watching just more blood squirting footage since we recorded the
Speaker 3: previous episode, And I don't know if I emphasized enough
Speaker 3: how much it really looks so alarming. If you haven't
Speaker 3: seen this, look it up. The blood that the jets
Speaker 3: out of the eyes somehow looks darker and thicker than
Speaker 3: I expected. And it's also just weird how much blood
Speaker 3: is coming out compared to the size of the animal,
Speaker 3: which is quite small. It doesn't look like something that
Speaker 3: should be happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is quite alarming. It's redder and bloodier than
Speaker 1: I think I was anticipating it feels like a cut
Speaker 1: scene from Event Horizon.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, to get into the meat of today's episode,
Speaker 3: I wanted to address just a few more lingering biological
Speaker 3: facts about horned lizards, biological and ecological facts that we
Speaker 3: didn't quite have time to get into last time. And
Speaker 3: the first thing I wanted to talk about is the
Speaker 3: horned lizard's relationship to water. Of course, horned lizards generally
Speaker 3: live in dry places, deserts and semi arid ecoregions, where
Speaker 3: the sun cooks you, the rain is scarce, water is
Speaker 3: hard to come by, and horned toads, like all animals,
Speaker 3: of course, need water to live, so much of their
Speaker 3: biology has gone still suit mode. They are very efficient
Speaker 3: at sourcing and preserving water. There is a great passage
Speaker 3: about the horned lizard's relationship to water in a book
Speaker 3: that I referred to in the last episode. That book
Speaker 3: is Introduction to Horned Lizards of North America by Wade C. Sherbrook.
Speaker 3: This was published by the University of California Press in
Speaker 3: two thousand and three. The author, Wade Sherbrook, was director
Speaker 3: of the Southwestern Research Station of the American Museum of
Speaker 3: Natural history, So of course, losing water is just part
Speaker 3: of having a body. It is impossible to avoid losing
Speaker 3: some water content through ambient interface with the air. We
Speaker 3: lose some water vapor from our lungs when we breathe,
Speaker 3: we lose some water through evaporation from our skin, and
Speaker 3: the same is true for horned lizards. To reduce water
Speaker 3: loss to evaporation, horned lizards have some behavioral adaptations. For example,
Speaker 3: sometimes they burrow underground or partially bury parts of their
Speaker 3: bodies in the soil. This can reduce water loss from evaporation,
Speaker 3: but they also have some clever ways to source water
Speaker 3: from their environment. They will, of course just drink free
Speaker 3: standing water when they can get access to it, if
Speaker 3: there are puddles after a rainstorm or something like that.
Speaker 3: They will drink dew that collects on plants in the morning.
Speaker 3: But much of the water that they get from external
Speaker 3: sources comes from food like juicy juicy harvest or ants.
Speaker 3: But here's where Surbrook gets into. Something I found really
Speaker 3: fascinating of these strategies they have for sourcing water is
Speaker 3: that some species of horned lizards use their own backs
Speaker 3: as what Sherbrook calls a rain harvesting surface. So he
Speaker 3: singles out three species as examples, the Texas horned lizard,
Speaker 3: the round tail horned lizard, and the desert horned lizard.
Speaker 3: And when these animals sense that rain is about to fall,
Speaker 3: they do the opposite of what humans usually do. You know,
Speaker 3: we go inside. They go outside. They run out of
Speaker 3: cover into the open and stand with their backs sort
Speaker 3: of cupped like they raise up there. They raise up
Speaker 3: on their legs, they flatten out their backs, and they
Speaker 3: lower their heads. Now what does this do. It turns
Speaker 3: the lizards back into a kind of combination rain barrel
Speaker 3: and whatever you call that. You know, the beer drinking
Speaker 3: helmet where you got the beers on the sides and
Speaker 3: it's got a straw running to the mouth. So you
Speaker 3: combine that with the rain barrel concept. Their back collects
Speaker 3: water over the widest possible surface area, which is the
Speaker 3: lizard's flattened out dorsal scales, and then it funnels the
Speaker 3: water to the edge of its mouth for drinking. So
Speaker 3: like my body is a catch base and my mouth
Speaker 3: is the receptacle.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we're getting into this because as I was
Speaker 1: looking into the culture of the horned lizard. I was
Speaker 1: hoping to find an example of cowboy poetry about them,
Speaker 1: but my search came up largely empty. But I did
Speaker 1: find an interesting blog post by Charlie Buck of the
Speaker 1: University of Arizona Poetry Center about an elementary school exercise
Speaker 1: where they brought in a herpetologist to talk about horned lizards,
Speaker 1: and then a poet led the class in filling out
Speaker 1: horned lizard worksheets with descriptive text to create concrete poems
Speaker 1: or visual poetry. So it's like an outline of a
Speaker 1: horned lizard, and then you fill in with text. And
Speaker 1: I included one example of this in our outline here.
Speaker 1: Joe and folks can look up the blog post and
Speaker 1: see an example. This is well and for instance, written
Speaker 1: by one of the students in the head is a
Speaker 1: horned lizard eats ants. I babysat horned lizards. I can't
Speaker 1: read the rest of it. I spit my blood out
Speaker 1: of my eye at snack. I drink water from the sky.
Speaker 1: And then like later on one of the legs, it
Speaker 1: says I eat ant every day. And then there's also
Speaker 1: a part of the anatomy that says I drink water
Speaker 1: from my back. So I read that before I actually
Speaker 1: got to that point in reading about their biology. So
Speaker 1: I was like, I wonder if that's true. Gonna have
Speaker 1: to fat fact check this child.
Speaker 3: Yes, this child's poetry passes fact check. The horned lizards,
Speaker 3: at least some species do drink water from their backs.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting the way Sherbrook describes it. It's not
Speaker 3: just like you know, water randomly running off the back
Speaker 3: and some of it sort of getting into the mouth.
Speaker 3: It seems like it has a fairly sophisticated system of
Speaker 3: like this sort of this matrix of layers underneath in
Speaker 3: between the scales absorbing water and then routing it by
Speaker 3: capillary action down to the edges of the mouth where
Speaker 3: the where the lizard then sort of sits there, opening
Speaker 3: and closing its jaws slowly to drink the water as
Speaker 3: it trickles in from the corners of the mouth. And
Speaker 3: so it's got a fairly sophisticated top topography on the
Speaker 3: back there to get the water to the mouth.
Speaker 1: It's a great system. You can't follow them.
Speaker 3: Another interesting way that horned lizards can serve water They
Speaker 3: do not urinate. Now, how is that possible? They're animals.
Speaker 3: Surely their bodies produce and collect waste products like excess
Speaker 3: salts and the nitrogen bearing compounds that are the byproduct
Speaker 3: of animal metabolism, like uric acid common in reptiles. Well,
Speaker 3: they do still have to purge these waste products, but
Speaker 3: they purge them not as liquid urine, but as a
Speaker 3: semi solid substance rather than dissolved in water. So Sherberch writes, quote,
Speaker 3: water carrying uric acid from the kidney is reabsorbed in
Speaker 3: the kloaca. From here, the uric acid, mixed with some
Speaker 3: insoluble crystals of urate salts, is voided as a white
Speaker 3: mass attached to the end of the fecal pellet. And
Speaker 3: I thought this was interesting because in just a minute,
Speaker 3: I want to mention, there was a video I was watching,
Speaker 3: like a short documentary about some conservation efforts with horned lizards,
Speaker 3: and it was showing some of their feces that the
Speaker 3: researchers were finding in the wild. And yeah, their fecal
Speaker 3: pellets did have these interesting little white caps on them.
Speaker 3: So apparently that is what the lizard releases instead of
Speaker 3: liquid urine solid P and some in solidness crystals of
Speaker 3: solid P. Also, as we have discussed with some other
Speaker 3: reptiles in the past, horned lizards can sometimes remove excess
Speaker 3: salts from the body, not by urinating, but by sneezing.
Speaker 3: So salts accumulate in glands around the nostrils where they
Speaker 3: are secreted as this hyper concentrated salty brine in the nose,
Speaker 3: which you can then you just hank it right out.
Speaker 3: And Sherbrook says that you can find horned lizard individuals
Speaker 3: with noses covered in this salty white crust from the process.
Speaker 3: So the moral of the story is when you don't pee,
Speaker 3: you poop, and you sneeze. Different other anti predator considerations
Speaker 3: that we didn't have time to talk about in the
Speaker 3: last episode, we were talking about the advantages of the
Speaker 3: horned lizard's armor for self defense, you know, the tough scales,
Speaker 3: but especially the sharp bony spines around the crown of
Speaker 3: the horned lizard's head. That these pieces of armor increase
Speaker 3: the risk a predator has to take in trying to
Speaker 3: eat one of these lizards. The predator has to make
Speaker 3: judgment call, is it too big for me to survive
Speaker 3: swallowing this? Will the head spikes split open my throat
Speaker 3: or puncture my organs that can actually happen. But in
Speaker 3: the context of looking at another predator prey relationship that
Speaker 3: we didn't talk about last time, Sherbroke had some interesting
Speaker 3: thoughts on the evolution of these head spikes. So Sherbrooke
Speaker 3: is talking about the southern grasshopper mouse or ani Comis torridus,
Speaker 3: and this animal will prey on some smaller horned lizard
Speaker 3: species by biting the skull right over the eye socket.
Speaker 3: So this is before you get to the crown of spikes.
Speaker 3: This is the skull above the eyes. And when the
Speaker 3: grasshopper mouse attacks other prey animals, most other vertebrate prey,
Speaker 3: it bites in a different place. It bites at the
Speaker 3: back of the neck, near the base of the head,
Speaker 3: attempting to damage and sever the spinal cord. And this
Speaker 3: is apparently a common attack area for predators to target.
Speaker 3: I was actually kind of thinking, I know, I've read
Speaker 3: about big cats often targeting the back of the neck
Speaker 3: and the base of the skull in those rare cases
Speaker 3: where they happen to attack humans, and I was trying
Speaker 3: to remember where I came across that fact, and finally
Speaker 3: I realized It was from Mary Roach's book fuzz When
Speaker 3: Nature Breaks the Law, which we interviewed her about on
Speaker 3: the show. That was one of my favorite interviews we've done,
Speaker 3: and it's from the part of the book where she's
Speaker 3: talking about taking the class learning to identify different common
Speaker 3: wound patterns from different types of animal attacks. And so
Speaker 3: for example, she talks about how when a grizzly bear
Speaker 3: attacks a human sometimes a lot of the injuries are
Speaker 3: sort of face on. They're like to the face in
Speaker 3: the front of the head, almost as if the bear
Speaker 3: is fighting a human the way it fights a rival bear,
Speaker 3: where they're both kind of like biting at each other's faces.
Speaker 3: Whereas cougars are used to killing their prey with a
Speaker 3: power bite to the back of the neck, which they
Speaker 3: in these rare cases where a cougar attacks a human,
Speaker 3: they will sometimes target the same sort of place on
Speaker 3: the body, like the back of the neck, base of
Speaker 3: the back of the head.
Speaker 1: I believe in Jurassic Park this is also how the
Speaker 1: velociraptors are depicted as preying on humans biting the back
Speaker 1: of the neck.
Speaker 3: But anyway, coming back to the relationship between the Southern
Speaker 3: grasshopper mouse and the horned lizard. So these mice will
Speaker 3: try to prey on the lizards, especially the smaller ones,
Speaker 3: but they don't bite where they bite most prey because
Speaker 3: in the lizard's case, this is right where the head
Speaker 3: horns grow. So the mouse doesn't even bother trying to
Speaker 3: attack this well defended area. Instead, it's got to kind
Speaker 3: of like awkwardly chew with the head over the eyes
Speaker 3: and Sherbrook speculates that these horns could have evolved from
Speaker 3: what was originally a more modest kind of bony defensive
Speaker 3: ridge at the base of the skull designed to protect
Speaker 3: against this kind of attack to the back of the neck,
Speaker 3: and studies have shown that the spines do protect against
Speaker 3: predator attacks. And you can measure this because the size
Speaker 3: of the spines around the head actually matters, like research
Speaker 3: has shown that lizards killed by birds tend to have
Speaker 3: shorter spines around the head than lizards of the same
Speaker 3: species in that area, So the ones that are picked
Speaker 3: off the most tend to have the shortest head spikes. Now,
Speaker 3: there's one more thing we brought up in the last
Speaker 3: episode that I did want to make sure we came
Speaker 3: back to today because I wanted to clarify something about it.
Speaker 3: This was when we were talking about the relationship between
Speaker 3: horned lizards and the red imported fire ant or solenopsis
Speaker 3: in Victa. It came up that non native fire ants
Speaker 3: in North America are thought to be a reason for
Speaker 3: some horned lizard population declines, and this does appear to
Speaker 3: be true. There are a number of horned lizards whose
Speaker 3: ranges have been shrinking in recent decades. There are places
Speaker 3: where you used to find them, you don't find them anymore.
Speaker 3: Many of their populations are in decline, and in the
Speaker 3: case with the case with a lot of these species,
Speaker 3: does seem to be that the fire ant is playing
Speaker 3: a role there, especially because the lizards have such an
Speaker 3: important relationship with the native harvester ants, which are sometimes
Speaker 3: sort of driven out by the fire ants. So while
Speaker 3: it's true that the fire ants appear to be playing
Speaker 3: a role in population and range declines for these horned lizards,
Speaker 3: they're not thought to be the only factor, or necessarily
Speaker 3: even the main factor everywhere.
Speaker 1: That's very much the case. Yeah, and reading about the
Speaker 1: Texas horned lizard like urbanization vast urbanization and Texas is
Speaker 1: often singled out as one of the prime imary factors
Speaker 1: there exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the fire ant, the imported fire ant, seem
Speaker 3: to be one factor among many. And this came up
Speaker 3: when I was watching a short documentary video that was
Speaker 3: just delightful. I recommend people look this up. A documentary
Speaker 3: video produced by Texas Parks and Wildlife in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: one called Horned Lizard Homecoming. You can find this on YouTube.
Speaker 3: It is a video specifically that's focused on an attempt
Speaker 3: by the San Antonio Zoo to breed Texas horned lizards
Speaker 3: in captivity and then release them back into areas from
Speaker 3: which they have largely disappeared since the nineteen seventies. Just
Speaker 3: one of the many charming things in this short documentary
Speaker 3: is that the conservation biologists are working with a lizard
Speaker 3: sniffing dog. So you know, imagine the canine unit at
Speaker 3: the airport, but instead of a drug sniffing dog or
Speaker 3: a bomb sniffing dog, it's a dog that is trained
Speaker 3: to find Texas horned lizard in the wild and not
Speaker 3: to bother them by the way, not go like pick
Speaker 3: them up in the mouth and harass them until they
Speaker 3: get a blood squad. Just to signal from a safe
Speaker 3: distance that they've found one.
Speaker 1: Ah, that's awesome.
Speaker 3: It's also very cute that the lizard sniffing dog in
Speaker 3: the video is sort of wearing shoes as it goes
Speaker 3: about its business. I think this is probably because there,
Speaker 3: you know, it's a very scrubby area, and there's probably
Speaker 3: a lot of like thorns and stuff that can get
Speaker 3: stuck in a dog's paw around there. But anyway, the
Speaker 3: conservation biologists and the parks and wildlife workers they interview
Speaker 3: in this video, they talk about a few other things
Speaker 3: that are affecting the range and population of Texas horned lizards.
Speaker 3: For example, human attempts to eliminate harvester ants from large
Speaker 3: areas of land. Of course, again, Texas horned lizards need
Speaker 3: to eat harvest or ants. Without the ants, the land
Speaker 3: cannot sustain the lizards. And then also things like replacing
Speaker 3: native grasses with different grass types, so you replace what
Speaker 3: are called bunch grasses with turf grasses. This is not
Speaker 3: what the lizards are adapted to and they can't really
Speaker 3: survive in it. Of course, as you mentioned, Rob, just
Speaker 3: general urbanization and reformatting of a lot of land area
Speaker 3: roads cutting through natural land ranges, which interferes with movement
Speaker 3: back and forth. But there's another thing I just wanted
Speaker 3: to mention from this video because I found it hilarious.
Speaker 3: There's a part where they're showing a lab at the
Speaker 3: San Antonio Zoo where they're trying to breed lots of lizards,
Speaker 3: so it's sort of it's a lizard's sex lab, and
Speaker 3: they are trying to facilitate mating, and they will put
Speaker 3: a male lizard into a female lizard's tank. And there's
Speaker 3: one part where the technician is explaining that the head
Speaker 3: movements that we are seeing back and forth between these
Speaker 3: two lizards indicate that they are both interested in mating.
Speaker 3: But it totally looks like two lizards on a log
Speaker 3: just nodding back and forth at each other, like yep, yep,
Speaker 3: it's great. It's a very Texas kind of nod as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can image like the little cowboy hats being
Speaker 1: on their heads, right yeah, all right, Well, at this point,
Speaker 1: I'd like to get back into some cultural connections to
Speaker 1: the hornet lizard, and in the last episode, we teased
Speaker 1: out some connections in Navajo culture among the Dnet people,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to get into some of that so
Speaker 1: there are several mentions of the hornet toad in the
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four book Navajo Witchcraft by Clyde Kluckhohn, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen oh five through nineteen sixty. I've talked about
Speaker 1: this text a little bit on the show before. The
Speaker 1: version I have is from nineteen eighty nine with some
Speaker 1: additions made to it, and there are several mentions of
Speaker 1: the horned toad's use as a key ingredient in various
Speaker 1: alleged spells in Navajo Witchcraft, which I want to stress
Speaker 1: the term witchcraft is used here as shorthand, not for
Speaker 1: mainstream religious rituals and practice, but rather for what is described,
Speaker 1: as described by Kluckhohn as quote Navajo ideas and action
Speaker 1: patterns concerned with the influencing of events by supernatural techniques
Speaker 1: that are socially disapproved.
Speaker 3: Right, So what would be viewed by the people as
Speaker 3: a sort of illicit, outsider form of magic.
Speaker 1: Right right, And it's my understanding as I understand it,
Speaker 1: these are not necessarily things that were practiced, but were
Speaker 1: believed to be practiced by these few individuals. So the
Speaker 1: book outlines various alleged curses, including the placing of a
Speaker 1: personal item or a bit of clothing from a man
Speaker 1: you want to death curse inside a grave, or inside
Speaker 1: the mouth of a dead man, in the cursing of
Speaker 1: a pregnant woman, a personal item is placed inside the
Speaker 1: body of a horned toad or a horned lizard, or
Speaker 1: a purse made from its hide.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, and so.
Speaker 1: That these would again, these would be specialized alleged uses
Speaker 1: practiced by these you know, these outsiders that are practicing
Speaker 1: this kind of like co or said to be practicing
Speaker 1: this kind of like negative magical system. But there is
Speaker 1: a fragment of a story shared late in the book
Speaker 1: that is indeed a reference to a major Navajo story
Speaker 1: about the horned lizard, and it does get into some
Speaker 1: aspects of its biology, as we've discussed. So this is
Speaker 1: the quote that is included in Navajo Witchcraft as a
Speaker 1: commentary on something else that's referenced in the book quote.
Speaker 1: The story is about the holy toad who eats ants
Speaker 1: that give him power. One day he was swallowed by
Speaker 1: a coyote who he had kindly given of his best corn.
Speaker 1: So while inside he asked the code what all the
Speaker 1: things he sees are for, and finally comes to the
Speaker 1: back brain and asked what it was for, and the
Speaker 1: code said, that is what I live by. Leave it alone.
Speaker 1: So the toad cut it into killed the coyote and
Speaker 1: came out of his throat. Wow. So I looked up
Speaker 1: some other versions of this amazing story, and there appear
Speaker 1: to be different versions of it, or you know, there
Speaker 1: are different retellings of it. I was reading a version
Speaker 1: from Navajo Religion, Volume one by Gladys A. Reichard from
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty, and the way this one goes is, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a theft of corn. The corn belongs to the
Speaker 1: horned toad, and coyote steals it, and then the horned
Speaker 1: toad accuses the koty of the theft, but coyote kind
Speaker 1: of laughs about it and says, well, yeah, I am hungry,
Speaker 1: and then he eats the horned toad. But then horned
Speaker 1: toad begins to move around inside the code he's belly,
Speaker 1: and at first coyote thinks it's just the corn that
Speaker 1: he ate, but then the toad begins to talk to him.
Speaker 1: He's like, where am I It's dark in here, and
Speaker 1: he like kicks the inside of the stomach just to
Speaker 1: sort of punish the coyote a little bit, but then
Speaker 1: he moves to the windpipe, keeps speaking. Then he moves
Speaker 1: to the heart and this is where he carves across
Speaker 1: in the heart and it kills the code. He dead,
Speaker 1: and then he emerges from the code he's body in
Speaker 1: this telling or retail of it from the codes anus.
Speaker 3: This is interesting in how it matches with the cases
Speaker 3: we talked about from biology in the in the previous
Speaker 3: episode about animals that died from trying to eat a
Speaker 3: horned lizard that was too big and too thorny, like
Speaker 3: the various birds and snakes all. You know, it's like
Speaker 3: a dangerous proposition to get too greedy with attacking a
Speaker 3: horned toad that they have really serious spikes and they
Speaker 3: can mess you up from the inside.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so you can imagine the story being inspired
Speaker 1: by observations of that having occurred in predators, perhaps including
Speaker 1: the coyote. And then, of course, as we referenced in the
Speaker 1: last episode, this nugget about them getting their power from
Speaker 1: the ants that they eat, like, that's that's right on
Speaker 1: as far as they're they're they're irritating blood is concerned.
Speaker 3: Right, because the idea as we talked about last time,
Speaker 3: is that there is something in the harvest or ant
Speaker 3: diet that causes their blood to have the properties that
Speaker 3: make it foul smelling or foul tasting. To can it,
Speaker 3: it's like foxes and coyotes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, according to Navajo historian Wally Brown on Navajo traditional
Speaker 1: teachings this is a twenty twenty three video, the grandfather
Speaker 1: horned toad is a symbol of protection, with the spikes
Speaker 1: serving as arrow points that protect one. And he also
Speaker 1: drives home that the horned toad is close to the
Speaker 1: Earth and which matches up with the way that it
Speaker 1: lives its life, you know, not only being a very
Speaker 1: terrestrial organism, but being solo to the earth, flattening itself
Speaker 1: so that it doesn't cast that shadow as we discussed.
Speaker 1: But he stresses that it can be used to bless
Speaker 1: one's mind, to bless one's spirit, and to bless one's
Speaker 1: physical well being.
Speaker 3: I am interested in the way that it seems that
Speaker 3: at least two humans the spiritual connotations of the horned
Speaker 3: toad or the horned lizard are really taken as almost
Speaker 3: entirely positive, despite the fact that it is a very
Speaker 3: spiky looking creature, there seems to be a kind of
Speaker 3: tension there. You would think, I think you see a
Speaker 3: creature that's all like spiky and thorny like that, and
Speaker 3: I don't know, people might just be more inclined to
Speaker 3: attach a kind of negative spiritual energy to it. But
Speaker 3: so we have these traditions that can consider the horned
Speaker 3: lizard as like a route for a blessing, a blessing
Speaker 3: of the mind and spirit and the health of the body.
Speaker 3: But also just if you read about people's personal relationships
Speaker 3: who grew up around these lizards, people have overwhelmingly positive
Speaker 3: feelings about them, like very positive feelings about catching them
Speaker 3: and handling them as children and things like that. Do
Speaker 3: you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I was thinking about this as well.
Speaker 1: I guess on one hand, it's worth stressing that like,
Speaker 1: they're not a direct threat to humans. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not even like a situation where you know, obviously there
Speaker 1: are a lot of like say, like venomous snakes out
Speaker 1: there that are also not out there in the game
Speaker 1: trying to have encounters with humans, but it just happens,
Speaker 1: and you know, and you know, injuries and so forth
Speaker 1: can result. It's not really the case here, Like, they're
Speaker 1: pretty much not a threat to us, and so there's
Speaker 1: almost a certain like natural kinship with them because they're
Speaker 1: out there in the world. They're dealing with stresses, they're
Speaker 1: dealing with predators, enemies, and they have these natural defenses
Speaker 1: against them. But they also seem very much like an
Speaker 1: underdog because they are small, and you know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: always work. Yeah, So there are some other details on
Speaker 1: some of these traditions mentioned in another book I looked at,
Speaker 1: Jane Manister's Horned Lizards. This is a two thousand and
Speaker 1: two book from Texas Tech University Press. The author here
Speaker 1: cites that at least in some tellings of this the
Speaker 1: code is being punished for stealing corn from the sacred stalk,
Speaker 1: that the horned lizard is associated with inner protection, especially
Speaker 1: for warriors traditionally, and then the author also cites that
Speaker 1: there may be a Navajo taboo, or there may have
Speaker 1: been a Navajo taboo against including certain animals, including this one,
Speaker 1: in various rug weaving designs, perhaps in deference to its
Speaker 1: special strength. Now, I want to stress that Navajo traditions
Speaker 1: vary across time and geography, as with pretty much any
Speaker 1: belief system, and there are also aspects of Navaja traditions
Speaker 1: that are not meant for me to know of. And
Speaker 1: I hope that I've been respectful with what I've brought
Speaker 1: to the discussion here. But I think this is always
Speaker 1: there's always a fascinating relationship to be observed between a
Speaker 1: people's beliefs and a people's natural environment, and I think
Speaker 1: that we see that here with the horned toad or
Speaker 1: horned lizard, both as a metaphor as well as an
Speaker 1: interpretation of what I assume were observations of the horned
Speaker 1: lizard's biology in the wild. Now, another source I looked
Speaker 1: at I was looking at an article by Joyce Gibson
Speaker 1: Roach writing for TCU magazine talking about different cultural interpretations
Speaker 1: of the of the horned lizard. And this author points
Speaker 1: to Spanish folk beliefs. So this would have been, you know,
Speaker 1: in Mexico for the most part, where they would sometimes
Speaker 1: refer to the horned lizard as torrito dilo virgin or
Speaker 1: the little bull who protects the virgin. And so this
Speaker 1: is there's kind of like two different things going on
Speaker 1: with this this nickname. So we we talked about this
Speaker 1: in the last episode how they may be observed to
Speaker 1: charge like a bull and are sometimes referred to as
Speaker 1: the little bull.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, like against an absurdly larger predator, like
Speaker 3: against a human shoe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that I think this again, this
Speaker 1: is one of the things that makes this animal charming.
Speaker 1: You know. It's an underdog, stand in its ground, you know,
Speaker 1: And like, how can you not want to be like
Speaker 1: the like the humble, horny toat in this respect? But
Speaker 1: then where does the virgin come in? Well, this seems
Speaker 1: to be connected to various interpretations that what's going on
Speaker 1: here is that the horned toad is crying tears of blood.
Speaker 1: So there is a long, sometimes controversial, and also generally
Speaker 1: skeptically debunked history of statues of the Virgin Mary weeping
Speaker 1: tears of blood in Catholicism, and accounts of weeping statues
Speaker 1: in general, dating back at least to the writings of
Speaker 1: Plutarch in the first and second century. See Now. I
Speaker 1: should also point out that humans can experience blood in
Speaker 1: the tears or blood from the tear ducks or hematuria
Speaker 1: for various reasons. So for instance, when my son was younger,
Speaker 1: he had tubes put in his tear ducks to correct
Speaker 1: a minor problem, and immediately after surgery he shed a
Speaker 1: single tear of blood, which was pretty awesome. At the time,
Speaker 1: we knew everything was fine, you know, and it was
Speaker 1: just kind of like, oh wow, that was a blood tear,
Speaker 1: but only got the one.
Speaker 3: Agreed, if you know, not to worry. That is pretty cool,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 1: Now. There a connection to the horned toad the horned
Speaker 1: lizard in culture. This is one that was shared in
Speaker 1: that book by Jane Manister Horned Lizards from two thousand
Speaker 1: and two. She gets into to a number of different traditions,
Speaker 1: at least mentioning like that there are a number of
Speaker 1: ideas about them being tied up in weather prediction and
Speaker 1: rain generation, which I guess is understandable of a creatures
Speaker 1: that clearly is able to thrive in a very arid environment,
Speaker 1: and we have these unique observations, you know, concerning the
Speaker 1: way that they catch rain and so forth. But then
Speaker 1: she also gets into this account that some of you
Speaker 1: may have heard of before. I believe stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history class did a whole episode about this last
Speaker 1: couple of years. There's the story of Old Rip. This
Speaker 1: is a horned lizard originally named Blinky, that was placed
Speaker 1: in an Eastland County, Texas time caps along with a bible,
Speaker 1: some coins, and some newspapers. And then when the capsule
Speaker 1: was dug out thirty one years later, the lizard was
Speaker 1: allegedly still alive.
Speaker 3: I don't know about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of solid reasons to doubt this detail
Speaker 1: of the story, but this is the main detail of
Speaker 1: the story. So it's like everyone who's celebrating this, it's
Speaker 1: like they're basically the idea being that they were saying
Speaker 1: the cowboy lore is correct. This is a victory of
Speaker 1: cowboy biology. They were right the cowboys when they said
Speaker 1: that the horned toad could live for one hundred years
Speaker 1: without food or water. Because clearly, this particular horned lizard
Speaker 1: was locked away for thirty one years and we just
Speaker 1: got him out and he's still alive. Everyone and take
Speaker 1: a look at him. So this was very popular at
Speaker 1: the time. Old Rip toured the country, even met President
Speaker 1: Coolidge at the White House, and ultimately died in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine. Now, various folks later took credit for switching
Speaker 1: out lizards at the capsule's opening. So this is that
Speaker 1: I want to stress that this is almost certainly a hoax,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of reason to believe it was
Speaker 1: a hoax. This was not carried out with any kind
Speaker 1: of like scientific rigger, but it was a big deal
Speaker 1: and it was covered in the New York Times, among
Speaker 1: other major publications. In fact, I want to read to
Speaker 1: you from the New York Times. This is from February twentieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty eight. Oh boy toad alive after thirty one
Speaker 1: years sealed in Texas cornerstone, Eastland, Texas, February nineteenth ap
Speaker 1: Hey hornage toad sealed alive in the cornerstone of the
Speaker 1: courthouse here thirty one years ago, was alive when the
Speaker 1: stone was removed yesterday. According to County Judge Edward S. Pritchard,
Speaker 1: the old courthouse is being raised, and it goes into
Speaker 1: some additional details, including this bit that I also have
Speaker 1: to include. After the cornerstone was removed, the toad appeared
Speaker 1: lifeless for some time, but in a little while it
Speaker 1: opened its eyes in about twenty minutes a begin and
Speaker 1: to breathe. The mouth however, appeared to have grown together.
Speaker 3: What grown together?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so I was looking around. There's some other
Speaker 1: takes on this as well.
Speaker 3: That oh, they're also saying they're going to open the
Speaker 3: mouth by surgery and force it to eat food. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was also the New York Times story. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this story, I should be clear, there were a number
Speaker 1: of skeptics at the time that were like, that doesn't
Speaker 1: sound right. Let me see this toad. I think there
Speaker 1: was maybe there may be one or two support supporters
Speaker 1: in the scientific community who are maybe like, well, it's possible.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but generally people were very doubtful about this.
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, you had others pointing out, well,
Speaker 1: clearly the animal survived in the time capsule because there
Speaker 1: was a Bible in there. The Bible sustained the lizard.
Speaker 1: I guess the Bible also made the lizard's mouth grow together.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I've read other accounts that it had
Speaker 1: a broken leg and worn down horns but was otherwise healthy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then others claim that the eyes were sealed shut
Speaker 1: as well. There seems to be a certain amount of
Speaker 1: drift in the telling and retelling of this feat But
Speaker 1: here's what we actually know to be true. So hornet
Speaker 1: lizards can live around five years, but normal lifespan in
Speaker 1: the wild is not fully known, according to the Oklahoma
Speaker 1: Department of Wildlife Conservation, but I think we can probably
Speaker 1: take that as like a ballpark. According to Texas Monthly
Speaker 1: in a twenty fifteen article by Alex Dropkin, the Texas
Speaker 1: horned lizard species hibernates, or rather birmates between October and April,
Speaker 1: and this is likely where that cowboy lore originated, that
Speaker 1: these creatures can live without food or water for one
Speaker 1: hundred years. And this is the lore that the folks
Speaker 1: in Eastland, Texas decided to put to the test. This
Speaker 1: is why they put a hornet lizard inside of a
Speaker 1: time capsule to test or I think, if we're being
Speaker 1: rightfully skeptic here to prove that the cowboy lore was correct.
Speaker 1: There is no evidence that hornet lizards in the wild
Speaker 1: choose hibernation spots based on the presence of biblical texts
Speaker 1: or coins or newspapers. But I guess we should note
Speaker 1: that long lifespans for lizards are not completely unheard of.
Speaker 1: The New Zealand tuatara can live twenty five to thirty
Speaker 1: five years, typical age ages to sixty or apparently common,
Speaker 1: and one captive specimen apparently lived to be over one hundred. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: some wizards can go without food or water for weeks
Speaker 1: or months. I think it's safe to say that the
Speaker 1: accounts of Old Rip places the story so far outside
Speaker 1: of anything reported or at least, you know, authenticated to
Speaker 1: any reasonable degree, that common sense leans us very strongly
Speaker 1: in the direction of hoax here.
Speaker 3: You know, we talked not too long ago on the show,
Speaker 3: we were doing so stuff about cave biology, and we
Speaker 3: ended up talking about the cave dwelling amphibian, the olm,
Speaker 3: which is notable for being one of the most sort
Speaker 3: of sedentary creatures on Earth that it can live for
Speaker 3: a long time. It's an aquatic salamander. It's found in
Speaker 3: the dynamic alps in cave systems, where it lives in
Speaker 3: the dark for much of the time. And it is
Speaker 3: thought that sometimes these creatures can go for like ten
Speaker 3: years without food, and that in itself is incredible, But
Speaker 3: that seems to be sort of the upper bound of
Speaker 3: where you can where you can push push the slow
Speaker 3: motion metabolism too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And so again, if this story of Old
Speaker 1: Rip were true, it would just it would triple that
Speaker 1: ten year record. So yeah, I think we are very
Speaker 1: right to be highly skeptical of this. And again various
Speaker 1: folks came forward and claimed that they were involved with
Speaker 1: the hoax and so forth, So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: smoke there that suggests the fire. I should also point
Speaker 1: this out. You know we were talking about in endangered
Speaker 1: status of horned lizards. This particular incident was so popular
Speaker 1: that it resulted in a horned toad boom, so the
Speaker 1: specimens being harvested and then exported for novelty's sake, hurting
Speaker 1: local populations in the process. But hey, Old Rip is
Speaker 1: allegedly currently entombed in Eastland, Texas. I think he's on display.
Speaker 1: So if we have any Eastland listeners or visitors to Eastland,
Speaker 1: or folks who have been to Eastland and can report
Speaker 1: on the body of Old Rip right in, we would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. I believe he has at
Speaker 1: least historically been stolen at least once and returned.
Speaker 3: Are you, County Judge Edward S. Pritchard, what criteria did
Speaker 3: you use to judge that this was the real original lizard?
Speaker 1: All right? I have another interesting bit that I ran
Speaker 1: across in these texts that I want to talk about
Speaker 1: This is from Manister's book as well, and it is
Speaker 1: the Horny toad Man, something that I know, on the
Speaker 1: surface absolutely sounds like a cryptid or some American Western
Speaker 1: horror story. And the fact that it's associated with the railway,
Speaker 1: I think only compounds this possibility.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds like he belongs alongside Sasquatch and paramouth a. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, according to Manister, the figure emerges in response to
Speaker 1: a unique problem on a segment of the Santa Fe
Speaker 1: railroad connecting Albuquerque and El Paso, a segment of track
Speaker 1: that was dubbed the Horny toad a segment where anything
Speaker 1: bad that ever happened on the railroad could happen and
Speaker 1: had happened, including a unique problem first reported apparently in
Speaker 1: the Jiorada del Niorto desert basin, and that is trains
Speaker 1: losing traction on the rails due to the grease and
Speaker 1: moisture of hundreds of squashed hornet what so. Apparently it
Speaker 1: was so bad that brakemen and firemen aboard the train
Speaker 1: would have to scramble down onto the tracks and sweep
Speaker 1: it all off to get all this gunk off the tracks,
Speaker 1: And it led to the idea nay, the ideal of
Speaker 1: the horny toad man. So a horny toad man is
Speaker 1: not merely like somebody that goes down and sweeps off
Speaker 1: the rails. In the scenario, this is a railway man
Speaker 1: with eyes on corporate promotion, willing to do anything and
Speaker 1: everything the company requires in order to advance, and that
Speaker 1: certainly includes going out onto the tracks in the desert
Speaker 1: heat and removing lizard guts from the rails.
Speaker 3: So this is a railroad company version of I'll get
Speaker 3: the boss's coffee, you know, I will sweep the sweep
Speaker 3: all of the horny toad grease off of the rails.
Speaker 1: Right, And to put it in an alien context, since
Speaker 1: we're talking about alien in the last episode, you might
Speaker 1: consider Burke from Aliens a horny toad man of sorts,
Speaker 1: you know, a complete scoundrel, but he proves that, if
Speaker 1: nothing else, he is more than ready to get down
Speaker 1: there on the tracks and get his hands dirty for
Speaker 1: the company. He's a company man.
Speaker 3: All the way. That's right, all right.
Speaker 1: Now, in trying to understand this, I guess we do
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge that horned lizard populations would have been
Speaker 1: greater back in this time period. As opposed to what
Speaker 1: they are now, so we can't compare what we see
Speaker 1: in the world today to what would have been happening then.
Speaker 1: But I needed more clarity on why are there so
Speaker 1: many horned lizards getting run over by trains? And I
Speaker 1: found a possible answer here in a nineteen twenty two
Speaker 1: paper by J. P. Givler. Givler writes, it is an
Speaker 1: interesting fact that at such times horned lizards are very
Speaker 1: abundant under the crossties of railroad tracks. Often they burrow
Speaker 1: through into the area between the two rails. Here they
Speaker 1: emerge and are literally trapped. The rails are usually too
Speaker 1: high to be climbed over, and the lizards run up
Speaker 1: and down frantically. Occasionally one climbs up on a rail
Speaker 1: just in time to be crushed by a passing train.
Speaker 1: Many live for the rest of the summer in this
Speaker 1: uncomfortable pasture.
Speaker 3: Bummer.
Speaker 1: Now, it doesn't I mean, it doesn't completely answer my question,
Speaker 1: but it at least puts a lot of horned lizards
Speaker 1: in the vicinity of those train tracks. And you know,
Speaker 1: he only mentions it as being like an occasional squashing,
Speaker 1: But may I guess that's close enough to like a
Speaker 1: mass squashing that we can consider this reality now. I
Speaker 1: look for any discussions out there in the literature about
Speaker 1: loss of traction due to animal railway mortalities, and I
Speaker 1: looked at it at least one full source on animal
Speaker 1: railway mortalities or one that deals with this in depth
Speaker 1: titled railway ecology. And there's no mention in this of
Speaker 1: tracks getting greased up by dead animals or dead lizards.
Speaker 1: So if true, maybe this was indeed more of a
Speaker 1: concern with an historic engine and an historic local population
Speaker 1: of lizard. I'm not sure, but I will add the
Speaker 1: following from another paper. I looked up Experimental evaluation of
Speaker 1: effect of leaves on railroad tracks and loss of braking
Speaker 1: by Kumar at All. This is in the Journal Machines
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four. Quote loss of traction results in
Speaker 1: either breaking of the train or slip, which arises at
Speaker 1: lower tractive coefficients. This case occurs when there are third
Speaker 1: body layers that cause reduce traction, such as in the
Speaker 1: case of leaves. Various traction enhancers are adopted by the
Speaker 1: railway to improve adhesion when the rail is contaminated.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you can certainly imagine that leaves falling on
Speaker 3: railroad tracks could reduce the traction between the wheels and
Speaker 3: the rails. So yeah, you can guess that if like
Speaker 3: lizard especially not just like lizard body fluids, but whole
Speaker 3: lizard bodies were on the rails, that might interfere in
Speaker 3: some way.
Speaker 1: That's my ga. You know, if we're not dealing with
Speaker 1: leaves here, we're dealing with lizard bodies and lizard guts
Speaker 1: and lizard liquids. But I guess if there were enough
Speaker 1: of them, and also dealing with the idea that these
Speaker 1: are not modern trains, these are historic drain engines, I
Speaker 1: can I guess it's conceivable that there would have been
Speaker 1: some sort of issue here, thus necessitating the horny toad man.
Speaker 3: Horny toad man, we salute you.
Speaker 1: So yeah. I don't know if we have any anybody
Speaker 1: out there who is, you know, verse more versed than
Speaker 1: the history of locomotives and in the railway in America,
Speaker 1: you know, right in we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 3: What's your company's version of the horny toad man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess there's there's probably a horny toad man
Speaker 1: in any business, in any corporation. So those were some
Speaker 1: of the cultural connections to the horned lizard or a
Speaker 1: horned toad or horny toad that I was able to
Speaker 1: come across. But I'd love to hear from anyone out
Speaker 1: there if you have some additional insights to share, be
Speaker 1: they related to something we discussed in this episode, or
Speaker 1: something we missed altogether. Be it something from Native beliefs
Speaker 1: and traditions that you want to share, or cowboy lore
Speaker 1: or indeed cowboy poetry. I'm still at a loss that
Speaker 1: there's not at least one cowboy poem out there on
Speaker 1: the Internet that deals with these guys.
Speaker 3: Surely there is. I'm gonna blame Google being bad now
Speaker 3: for the inability to connect with that literature.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well we're going to gohead and close
Speaker 1: out this episode. But yeah, right in, we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. Let's see a little housekeeping here. Hey,
Speaker 1: if you're on Instagram, look us up. We're STBYM podcast.
Speaker 1: That's our handle. You can follow us there and keep
Speaker 1: up with some of what's coming out in the old
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Speaker 1: core science and culture episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short
Speaker 1: form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, her
Speaker 3: JJ Posway, and special thanks to our excellent guest audio
Speaker 3: producer Chandler may Is for sitting in with us today.
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: topic for the future, or just to say hi, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
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