Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature a production of I Heart Radio. Today.
Speaker 1: On the show, we're talking about aliens under the sea.
Speaker 1: If you want to explore the world of extraterrestrials, we
Speaker 1: have to leave the terrain and go underwater. Giant bugs,
Speaker 1: animals that clone themselves, things that come back to life
Speaker 1: after being eviscerated. And later on the show, we'll be
Speaker 1: speaking to a professor of marine biology who kept an
Speaker 1: octopus in his living room. Discover this and more as
Speaker 1: we answer the angel question. Who's got no thumbs and
Speaker 1: three hearts? These guys? So I want to start out
Speaker 1: the show with a listener question. Mike asks, why is
Speaker 1: the deep sea filled with nightmares? Anglerfish, goblin sharks, gulper eels.
Speaker 1: When evolution turns the light out? Why doesn't have to
Speaker 1: go full horror show? I mean, tigers are scary too,
Speaker 1: but there are equal parts cuddly at least. Well, Mike,
Speaker 1: here's my theory. It's not so much that the sea
Speaker 1: is filled with nightmares, rather that we diverged from them
Speaker 1: on our evolutionary road trip, so we share more features
Speaker 1: in common with other mammals, and our schema for what
Speaker 1: looks cuddly is based on mammalian features. Researchers found that
Speaker 1: children as young as three to six years of age
Speaker 1: form a sort of mental cuteness map faces of humans
Speaker 1: and animals were manipulated in photoshop to be more proportionally
Speaker 1: similar to babies. Children spent more time looking at images
Speaker 1: that more closely fit these baby proportions and rated them
Speaker 1: as more pleasing. Big eyes, big foreheads, chubby cheeks. Now
Speaker 1: compare that to many deep sea creatures, tiny beady eyes,
Speaker 1: no foreheads, sunken cheeks, almost the opposite of the baby schema.
Speaker 1: In a sense, deep sea animals and other aquatic life
Speaker 1: is alien to us. So far back on the evolutionary
Speaker 1: tree were barely relatives. But today on the show, we're
Speaker 1: going to challenge that concept. We're going to take a
Speaker 1: good hard look at some of the slimiest, tenticaliest, most
Speaker 1: alien looking animals when we see and learn to love them.
Speaker 1: And later in the show, I'm going to be joined
Speaker 1: by prof Essor David Shield, a marine biologist who invited
Speaker 1: an octopus to come live with him in his home
Speaker 1: and found we have shockingly much in common with these
Speaker 1: evolutionary aliens. Joining me today is comedian musician Monkey Lover
Speaker 1: Chris crofton, Hey, how are you, Katie? So are you
Speaker 1: familiar with the sea. I mean I've been in it, um,
Speaker 1: you know, just a few feet. Usually I don't usually
Speaker 1: go out very far. You don't mess with the ocean, now,
Speaker 1: I'm with you there, I don't. I don't mess with
Speaker 1: it either. I take one good look at the ocean like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm okay. Actually yeah, I got feet. They're good
Speaker 1: for land, right yeah. And I'm like, I used to
Speaker 1: be a redhead and now I'm I'm bald. But when
Speaker 1: I was when I had I mean, I'm pale. So
Speaker 1: the ocean, I mean, the beach is something I have
Speaker 1: to coat myself in zinc to go there. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: I've I've got the ginger jeans too. And it's natures
Speaker 1: telling me something. It's telling me to stay indoors, don't
Speaker 1: go to the beach, cover yourself in sund screen. Just
Speaker 1: but I don't know where Irish people are supposed to be.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to be in some kind of missy. I
Speaker 1: think we're supposed to be like subterranean creatures that just
Speaker 1: kind of like I really don't understand it. Is there
Speaker 1: no son in Ireland. I don't I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're not prepared or built for some it's all bog right,
Speaker 1: I guess that's what I always picture. You're supposed to
Speaker 1: be the ball inside of a box, right exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: so first I want to talk about an animal called
Speaker 1: the goblin shark and to kind of address the listener
Speaker 1: question of these freaky animals you find deep undersea. Um. So,
Speaker 1: here's a picture of a goblin shark's head. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it kind of looks to me. It looks a little
Speaker 1: bit like Mr Smithers on The Simpsons. Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like that if he was wearing a hat.
Speaker 1: It's called a long hat beak on top of him exactly.
Speaker 1: It's got this big, pointy nose and like these protruding lips.
Speaker 1: It's more of a snow than a nose. But it's
Speaker 1: where's his eyeballs underneath his nose? Eyes are? Yeah, his
Speaker 1: eyes are right there? Like what a drag? Well, your
Speaker 1: eyeballs underneath your nose? You're not going to get that
Speaker 1: many dates. Nope. Um. But they grow up to sixteen
Speaker 1: feet long, so they're tall. And where do they how?
Speaker 1: Where is that because I don't want to go anywhere
Speaker 1: near that. You probably won't have to worry about the shallows. No, No,
Speaker 1: they're very rare shark that can be found throughout the world,
Speaker 1: deep in the ocean at depths of over three feet,
Speaker 1: so you're probably never going to see one of these.
Speaker 1: It looks kind of old. It looks like it's kind
Speaker 1: of like an old Egyptian carving. That's like, I guess
Speaker 1: alive because it's kind of like it looks like it's
Speaker 1: made of rock. Yeah. I think this one is probably
Speaker 1: a little bit desiccated because I think that's a dead sample.
Speaker 1: That's a dead one. Yeah, I was wondering why it
Speaker 1: looks so ragged. It's hard like you can't get live
Speaker 1: samples of these, pretty much like when they try to
Speaker 1: collect a live sample, it dies pretty quickly. But if
Speaker 1: you want to, there's this video of a live one
Speaker 1: and you can see it actually can shoot its jaws out,
Speaker 1: shoot its jaws out. Yeah, it will shoot its jaws
Speaker 1: from its face like a sling shot. Uh, let me
Speaker 1: show you, okay, yeah, oh boy, wow. So he's like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, he has a mouth inside his mouth
Speaker 1: or she does. It's kind of like Alien, you know
Speaker 1: the alien from Alien, where it like shoots out that
Speaker 1: tongue alien. Is that what happens in that movie? It's
Speaker 1: like a little tongue alien that shoots out of its
Speaker 1: mouth and then screams at people. Yeah, kind of I
Speaker 1: think that that's. Yeah. So this shark that I just
Speaker 1: looked at has like a mouth like a and then
Speaker 1: inside it has another mouth that shoots out. Well, it's
Speaker 1: actually one mouth, but it kind of it looks like
Speaker 1: it's shooting out an extra mouth because it's actually kind
Speaker 1: of recessed inside of of its um mandibles. So it's
Speaker 1: got once one jaw, one set of teeth, and then
Speaker 1: that it's as if you could like pop your jaws
Speaker 1: like out of your skull and kind of like push
Speaker 1: it forward, like my mother in law just kids, and
Speaker 1: I'm not even married, married, roasted to the imaginary mother
Speaker 1: in law. I came on your show to do. Well,
Speaker 1: it's what is it? Um? So it's probably an ambush predator.
Speaker 1: So it sneaks up behind prey and then snaps it
Speaker 1: with its freaky jaws. The reason it's able to catapult
Speaker 1: its jaws forward is it actually has these elastic ligaments
Speaker 1: that are like rubber bands. Um, so when it's jaws closed,
Speaker 1: these these rubber band ligaments are actually pulled tight and
Speaker 1: then it releases them literally like a sling shot. But
Speaker 1: it's full of teeth. So I see what it's doing.
Speaker 1: It's like it can so it can dead pan like
Speaker 1: it's not gonna like it's not hungry or it's not
Speaker 1: about to bite you. It's just like has a straight face.
Speaker 1: And then but inside it's got this like it has
Speaker 1: its real intentions. Teeth nightmares. Yeah, yeah, boom teeth nightmares.
Speaker 1: You see another person meets or a person another animal
Speaker 1: meets that fish and the fish is like, oh, he's
Speaker 1: not mad because his vase is straight, his mouth is straight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they look kind of doofy. They got that long
Speaker 1: nose and then just teeth everywhere. It's incredible, what a
Speaker 1: strange evolution. Yeah. More nightmare fuel for you is the
Speaker 1: giant I pods. So do you know like pillbugs, they're
Speaker 1: also called like wood lice and roly polly under the
Speaker 1: rocks exactly. The some of them like roll up, some
Speaker 1: of them don't roll up, but they all have that
Speaker 1: general look. The little second called potato bugs. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: another name for them. Um, I think I called him
Speaker 1: Roly Polly's. I loved collecting big fistfuls of them and
Speaker 1: just like letting him run over my hands. Interesting, I
Speaker 1: was a monster. Yeah, um, so imagine one of those
Speaker 1: roll pollies that's the size of a chihuahua. Really yep,
Speaker 1: where are they? They're deep under the sea there, so
Speaker 1: five hundred feet under the sea in the West Atlantic
Speaker 1: Ocean lives the giant i pod. They grow up to
Speaker 1: up to two and a half feet in length and
Speaker 1: up to four pounds. So they're in fact related to pillbugs.
Speaker 1: They're both isopods, so they're quite closely related. Obviously, the
Speaker 1: pillbugs are terrestrial and the isopods are aquatic, but they're
Speaker 1: part of this larger family of Isopoda, which also includes
Speaker 1: tongue eating parasites that live in the sea. We've actually
Speaker 1: talked about it on the show before, but these are
Speaker 1: parasites that latch onto fish tongues, suck out their blood,
Speaker 1: and replace the actual tongue. In terms of functioning, what
Speaker 1: it replaced everything that's outed normal, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: relatively normal the tongue, right, because they eat so much
Speaker 1: of the fish tongue that the tongue atrophies, and the
Speaker 1: fish uses that isopod that parasite as a tongue because
Speaker 1: it's like attached to the muscles at the back of
Speaker 1: the tongue. So once that actually, once that isopod completes
Speaker 1: its life cycle and drops off of the fish, the
Speaker 1: fish dies because it doesn't have a tongue anymore. Wow, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad. Do they have those? They don't have those
Speaker 1: for people, do they. There's no, not that I know of. No,
Speaker 1: is that your tongue. No, it's it's a predator that
Speaker 1: replaced my tongue. So here's the picture of one of
Speaker 1: these guys. He's being held by I guess a researcher,
Speaker 1: kind of like a little baby. It's like, what do
Speaker 1: the scientists do with these weird animals? They just pull
Speaker 1: them out so they can show them, I guess, so
Speaker 1: just holding like look at this check out and I
Speaker 1: think that's pretty much it just like look at this
Speaker 1: weird thing. The thing that they pulled out like dies
Speaker 1: right after they chase around their crush like holding this
Speaker 1: thing up like look at this yeah, yeah, running away,
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Um, giant potato bug fish. It's not a
Speaker 1: fish though, is it. No, it's it's a it's nice
Speaker 1: a pod, which is kind of more closely related to crustaceans. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're kind of the poster child for deep sea gigantism.
Speaker 1: So that's where Oh it's funny the post your child gigantism.
Speaker 1: Do you or your relatives suffer from deep sea gigantism.
Speaker 1: If so, we're here to help call one eight hundred
Speaker 1: deep sea gigantism lawyers. Uh So, invertebrates at greater depths
Speaker 1: can actually evolve to grow much larger than their smaller counterparts.
Speaker 1: So like think about the giant squid. Normally squid aren't
Speaker 1: really that big, but deep under the sea, like at
Speaker 1: these great depths, they can actually get to be quite large.
Speaker 1: Uh this, there's a few theories about why this happens.
Speaker 1: One of them is that because at these depths the
Speaker 1: food density drops so like there's not that much food around,
Speaker 1: there's not that many organisms. Obviously sunlight doesn't reach so
Speaker 1: there's not as much phytoplankton down there, so obviously right,
Speaker 1: Uh so you need you literally need a larger body
Speaker 1: to be able to cover more ground and fight scattered
Speaker 1: resource which seems kind of counterintuitive because like, the bigger
Speaker 1: you are, the more food you need. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, there's this law in nature where it's like
Speaker 1: the bigger your body is, you're actually more efficient metabolically.
Speaker 1: Uh So, something tiny needs to keep eating pretty constantly
Speaker 1: to keep its body running, but a large animal has
Speaker 1: more body reserves, so it can put a lot of
Speaker 1: it a lot of its energy can be stored, whereas
Speaker 1: like a small animal. It's kind of like how hummingbirds
Speaker 1: have to feed basically constantly to stay alive because they're
Speaker 1: so small they have no result. Yeah, so that's why
Speaker 1: giant tortoises and things can live. Yeah, And actually that's
Speaker 1: a very good point because these large animals, like the
Speaker 1: greenland shark, which we've talked about on previous episodes. Is
Speaker 1: this giant shark that can live hundreds of years because
Speaker 1: it's metabolism is so slow and it's so big, and
Speaker 1: it it's like its whole body system is just kind
Speaker 1: of slowed down in the it's this giant ancient creature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in in the animals live a long
Speaker 1: time just because it's i don't know, just interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there I find them interesting because they are
Speaker 1: old I think things too. Yeah, but I get what
Speaker 1: you're saying because you don't think of we think of
Speaker 1: it in terms of human lifespan. So something that lives
Speaker 1: hundreds of years, it's just bizarre to think of one
Speaker 1: lifespan spanning over like five hundred years, right, And you
Speaker 1: attach your perception of time to their perception of time,
Speaker 1: which is totally different, So you think that. I'm always
Speaker 1: imagining that they poke their head up all the time
Speaker 1: and say like, see what's going on, Like you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like they're like, oh, they're wearing those outfits,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like they're like they see
Speaker 1: like try corner hats, and then they poke their head
Speaker 1: up again and it's like the seventies of like bell bottoms,
Speaker 1: and you know it's not happening. They're just like they're
Speaker 1: just like thinking this they're thinking, right, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I kind of like the idea that they're thinking, like, Hi, wait,
Speaker 1: when did fregging caps go out about human culture? I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're like keeping it out. They're just like living
Speaker 1: a long time so they could see more human outfits.
Speaker 1: That's my idea exactly. How nature works. So one last
Speaker 1: deep sea creature I want to talk about. It's really funny.
Speaker 1: It's called so it's the toll a jellyfish. It's a
Speaker 1: species of deep sea crown jellyfish. It's I don't know,
Speaker 1: do you play D and D at all or did
Speaker 1: when I was younger. Yeah, it's kind of looks like
Speaker 1: one of these when it looks like one of the
Speaker 1: monsters from d nd D because it's red, it's got
Speaker 1: twenty tentacles, like what's that I monster in dn D
Speaker 1: I don't know enough about, or with blanks or whatever.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I had a corrupt dungeon master who
Speaker 1: gave me some strength that was way too high so
Speaker 1: I could beat like everybody, and then the game was
Speaker 1: no fun, like paid off the dungeon give me strength
Speaker 1: because everyone was like, how did you get that strength
Speaker 1: when you're a knave or whatever? And you found that
Speaker 1: bribery doesn't pay something like that. These deep sea crowned
Speaker 1: jellyfish are bioleminescent, and when it's attacked, it actually flashes
Speaker 1: a blue police siren of bioluminescence. Let me show you
Speaker 1: a video of this. So here's it's a this guy
Speaker 1: it's really freaky looking as you can see. And then
Speaker 1: when it's attacked it has like this blue beautiful Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like blue fireworks. Man, I'd like to hold
Speaker 1: one of those when I was stoned. Well, it would
Speaker 1: probably nark on you. Because this is also known as
Speaker 1: the alarm jellyfish, or as I like to call it,
Speaker 1: the snatch fish, because it will use this alarm when
Speaker 1: it's attacked to drop predators in which sounds counterintuitive, but
Speaker 1: what happens is, so it's being attacked by a smaller predator,
Speaker 1: it does this alarm. Larger predators come over to see
Speaker 1: what's happening, and instead of attack the jellyfish, they attack
Speaker 1: their attackers, so the smaller predator that was attacking the jellyfish.
Speaker 1: So there essentially they're calling in the c police, which
Speaker 1: comes over, checks it out, and then eats the predator
Speaker 1: that was bothering them. Oh that's interesting. It's a very
Speaker 1: complicated trick. Yeah, I mean, I almost don't understand it,
Speaker 1: but that's just because I'm well, it's well, it's a
Speaker 1: little confusing because you have like these two So, so
Speaker 1: jellyfish gets attacked by say a little fish, right, and
Speaker 1: then the jellyfish signals it's alarmed, it flashes blue, it
Speaker 1: makes all this commotion. A bigger fish comes overish over there, right,
Speaker 1: and it's like, there's this these bright lights happening. I
Speaker 1: wonder what's going on, And instead of attacking the jellyfish,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, hey, look a little fish. I'll eat
Speaker 1: that because that's more that's more ticing than the jets.
Speaker 1: The big thing. The jellyfish just gets to escape. Now
Speaker 1: it doesn't it's yeah, it's just it's just itching so
Speaker 1: that it can escape. Oh, I got it. Well, wait,
Speaker 1: what was the little fish gonna do? The jellyfish try
Speaker 1: to eat it? Okay, there you go get it. Um.
Speaker 1: It is very complicated, so I think that's if that.
Speaker 1: So that kind of jellyfish that has all those great
Speaker 1: lights would be if it was a Pixar movie, would
Speaker 1: be like they'd make a disco out of those, right,
Speaker 1: or put it on top of a police car. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: like just slap it on top of a fish police
Speaker 1: car and then the sirens off. And it's funny because
Speaker 1: it is it's red and blue, so it's it's very pretty.
Speaker 1: They say bioluminescence or or you say bioluminescence or that's
Speaker 1: the term, and it's just such a it's such a like,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can call it that, but it's also
Speaker 1: just incredible. I mean, it's just the craziest thing. Ever,
Speaker 1: how the you know what I mean. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like you can call it bioluminescence, but it's really just
Speaker 1: like more like yeah, it is. It is beautiful and nuts.
Speaker 1: And why how in the old with that develop as
Speaker 1: a defense mechanism rather than just like some horrible looking
Speaker 1: thing like a jaw that's loaded, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like they get lights? Why do they get lights? It's
Speaker 1: other things gets a horrible looking exploding jaw. Well you know,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe to them, an exploding jaw is attractive.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Jellyfish has a better agent negotiated for
Speaker 1: the lights. I mean, that's a great thing. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: marine biologists actually mimic that pattern of light using just
Speaker 1: like a mechanical device to attract predators. I know, I
Speaker 1: know they steal it trapped, and so you take them
Speaker 1: out of the ocean and show them to their girlfriend
Speaker 1: or I think between that mother in law joke. So anyway, yes,
Speaker 1: they're pulling these things out. Yeah, they're pulling these things
Speaker 1: out and making mother in law jokes exactly, and then
Speaker 1: they yeah, exactly exactly, it's not right. They've even used
Speaker 1: that alarm to lure in a giant squid, which they
Speaker 1: caught on film for like one of the it's really
Speaker 1: hard to catch giant squid all I know, but I
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, Yeah, I like any kind of like
Speaker 1: treasure hunt kind of thing, you know, I just really
Speaker 1: like any kind of Yeah, So if there's something it's
Speaker 1: hard to see or like it's hard to get a
Speaker 1: picture of, I like that. Like Locknest Monster to me
Speaker 1: is like, so if I can't see the Locknest Monster,
Speaker 1: I'll take a giant squid. And I've seen that. It's
Speaker 1: very neat that they can't see them. Also, anything that
Speaker 1: exists where it's like we know they exist because whales
Speaker 1: have scars on from that's incredible. We can't. Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: It does make it more real somehow, because I have
Speaker 1: seen like dead giant squid, and it's somehow just like
Speaker 1: because it's dead, it almost doesn't register as a real thing.
Speaker 1: You're like, yeah, okay, I get that's real. But then
Speaker 1: when you actually see it, moving and alive. It really
Speaker 1: sinks and it's like, no, this is a real living creature,
Speaker 1: not just a big dead thing or like a big model.
Speaker 1: Or you have those pictures of on postcards of like
Speaker 1: some guy looks like Charlie Chaplin stand next to a
Speaker 1: giant squid that looks kind of just like a pile
Speaker 1: of um oh, I don't know something, but not like
Speaker 1: a live thing, right. I love those postcards though. It
Speaker 1: is really funny to look at old pictures of what
Speaker 1: people thought squid and octopus looked like. Like I saw
Speaker 1: a cartoon of an octopus where it has like a
Speaker 1: a mouth like a human mouth, and of course they
Speaker 1: don't have human mountains, they have beaks. But it's just
Speaker 1: it's really funny to see that like just has this
Speaker 1: like weird smile with teeth and that that doesn't really happen.
Speaker 1: But they had no idea what they were doing when
Speaker 1: they were drawing these animals. But now we can, we
Speaker 1: can see videos of them because we we stole the
Speaker 1: idea from the jellyfish, right, So the jellyfish. So these
Speaker 1: so these biologist dangles, yeah, dangle like lights that look
Speaker 1: like jellyfish down there and trick giant squid. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: another day at the office the maniacs. What would happen
Speaker 1: if humans were forced deep, deep under water and had
Speaker 1: to evolve to survive their environment. First, we'd have to
Speaker 1: get rid of some of our pesky organs. Lungs obviously
Speaker 1: don't work under water, but even worse, at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the ocean, the pressure is so great over fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand p s I. Your lungs would be crushed as
Speaker 1: the air becomes compressed, and water would force its way
Speaker 1: into any part of your body still filled with air.
Speaker 1: And even if we could somehow breathe a tank of
Speaker 1: air without our lungs collapsing, we would suffer from nitrogen narcosis.
Speaker 1: In this high pressure environment, nitrogen dissolves out of the
Speaker 1: air we breathe and would leach into our blood, choking
Speaker 1: us on the cellular level. So we'd have to ditch
Speaker 1: the lungs in favor of some nice gill slits, perhaps
Speaker 1: the ones that are present in fetal development that we've
Speaker 1: been using forming parts of the ear with no sunlight
Speaker 1: are year with no sunlight. Our eyes would be used
Speaker 1: forming parts of the ear with no sunlight, are with
Speaker 1: no sunlight our eyes would be used us. Unless we
Speaker 1: could make use of some bioluminescence, we'd either want to
Speaker 1: ditch the eyes or develop huge, gome like eyes with
Speaker 1: a nice bioluminescent glow. Due to our relatively large size
Speaker 1: and the poor nutrition in this environment, we need a
Speaker 1: much slower metabolism. Our many muscles and bones would become
Speaker 1: superfluous and perhaps vestigial as we became smooth, gelatinous creatures
Speaker 1: that slowly float through the depths, hoping to ambush that
Speaker 1: rare bit of unsuspecting prey. Perhaps we'd be like the
Speaker 1: greenland sharks, who live hundreds of years due to their
Speaker 1: very slow metabolism, with sharp serrated teeth that can snatch
Speaker 1: up prey and prevent them from escaping or jaws. We
Speaker 1: would in effect become creepy monsters, but we learned to
Speaker 1: find our new horrible shape to be attractive. In other words,
Speaker 1: Snapchat filters are helping us adapt to our new deep
Speaker 1: sea homes. Don't go to a sea which to trade
Speaker 1: your legs and for fins just yet. When we return,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about some alien creatures that can be found
Speaker 1: a bit closer to home. You don't actually need to
Speaker 1: go to the depths of the ocean to find alien creatures.
Speaker 1: You can find them in almost every body of water
Speaker 1: and in almost every inch of the ocean. For example,
Speaker 1: take sea snails please. You probably have an image of
Speaker 1: a little shell in the snail head poking out, but
Speaker 1: there's a group of teeny tiny sneeze snip sneeze snails.
Speaker 1: There's a group of teeny tiny sea snails and sea
Speaker 1: slugs called teropoda, free swimming gastropods found all over the
Speaker 1: ocean at depths of only around thirty feet, who look
Speaker 1: like a cross between aliens and ghosts. These include sea
Speaker 1: angels who have what appeared to be wings and alien antenna,
Speaker 1: and whose bodies are a pale, ghostly veil of transparent,
Speaker 1: gelatinous flesh. They're carnivores and feed on sea butterflies. Another
Speaker 1: group of pteropods sea butterflies look like a snail, a
Speaker 1: butterfly and orchand and an alien ghost all had a
Speaker 1: baby together. It's golls like wings beat as if it's flying,
Speaker 1: allowing it to swim through the ocean as it carries
Speaker 1: along it's tiny transparent snail shell encased body. I am
Speaker 1: afraid of no ghost, but an alien ghost. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of afraid of that. Yeah. I think that it's
Speaker 1: interesting to see our concepts of science fiction and thinking
Speaker 1: about sci fi and then you look at some of
Speaker 1: our sci fi inventions and you look under the sea
Speaker 1: and they're just there. So like the concept art for
Speaker 1: the movie Aliens, like you look under who is that
Speaker 1: guy who made that? Uh? Yeah, that's right. Like hr
Speaker 1: Geiger's illustrations just look like deep sea creatures or animals
Speaker 1: that you can find in the ocean, and even common
Speaker 1: animals that we don't really we don't know that much
Speaker 1: about because either they're small or they're hard to find.
Speaker 1: But like these these snails that are actually really spooky looking.
Speaker 1: They don't look like terrestrial snails at all. It's kind
Speaker 1: of amazing. And I like the idea that I don't
Speaker 1: know that there's all this stuff going on that that
Speaker 1: that doesn't care about Donald Trump, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like there's a whole other civilization that's going on that's
Speaker 1: you know, kind of probably going to be fine no
Speaker 1: matter what we do to the planet. They're just going
Speaker 1: to be doing their thing. So later we're going to
Speaker 1: talk to I'm talking to a marine biologist who kept
Speaker 1: an octopus in his home, and the fact that octopuses
Speaker 1: are so intelligent kind of gives me hope that, say
Speaker 1: we screw up the planet, maybe octopuses will be the
Speaker 1: dominant life form and maybe they'll be nicer, right they exactly,
Speaker 1: although we can probably mess up the oceans too. U
Speaker 1: So then they will adapt, probably and they'll just be
Speaker 1: muck monsters, you know, or the plastic eating potato giants
Speaker 1: or whatever they are. You know, Yes, I hope, So,
Speaker 1: I really do. I think so, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: if plastic eating potato monsters can learn from our mistakes
Speaker 1: and develop a more peaceful society, that'd be great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: eventually one of them will crawl out of the muck
Speaker 1: and become a Koke brother, but I mean that will
Speaker 1: take a long time. Yeah, yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: they've crawl into the muck. Come up there. Boom roasted,
Speaker 1: the boom roasted posthumously roasted. That that was real good.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about speaking of disgusting worms roasted,
Speaker 1: really really raking. I'm on fire. Uh So I want
Speaker 1: to talk about um oh boy, here's a here's a
Speaker 1: Latin word that I'm going to try to pronounce and
Speaker 1: get it perfectly the first time gorgon or hightentions ripped
Speaker 1: pens right, otherwise known as the proboscis warm Why don't
Speaker 1: we go with that? Um So, the proboscis worm has
Speaker 1: a branching proboscus that looks like a lightning strike. Um. So,
Speaker 1: when they're attacked, they actually turn their proboscis, which is
Speaker 1: this like it's an extrusion of their mouth that helps
Speaker 1: them hunt and eat a popular it's so fetch down
Speaker 1: in don't exactly it's a versible which just is a
Speaker 1: fancy way of saying it's like reversible, like you can
Speaker 1: turn a glove inside out, So they can turn it
Speaker 1: inside out like a glove. And here's a fun video
Speaker 1: of that happening so you can see it. Just use
Speaker 1: my god, it looks it looks like a lightning strike, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: or else like a spider man out of his mouth,
Speaker 1: you know, like a it's like a web exactly, yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it's a goop web. Uh. And they do that when
Speaker 1: they're being attacked as a kind of like distraction technique.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'll even completely toss it like dump it out
Speaker 1: at their attacker so they can escape, which is kind
Speaker 1: of weird because as far as we know, they can't
Speaker 1: grow them back, so it's really a last ditch effort. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they can't eat, but hopefully they'll be able
Speaker 1: to reproduce between the time they spit out their means
Speaker 1: of eating. And so that's the that thing they spit
Speaker 1: out is there, like digestive system or something. It's there.
Speaker 1: It's their proboscus, which is like they're basically like a
Speaker 1: tongue um, but they use it for for hunting and
Speaker 1: they'll they'll spit it. They'll capture prey by like poking
Speaker 1: their proboscis out and like snatching it up and pulling
Speaker 1: it in. So if they ditch that, then they no
Speaker 1: longer have the opportut their whole proboscis because exactly they panicked.
Speaker 1: That would suck if like they it was like a
Speaker 1: surprise party for one of these guys, and they're like
Speaker 1: like surprise, like yeah, and just like spit out of
Speaker 1: pros Like Fredd, it was just it's your birthday. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: damn it, now I'm gonna starve to death. And what's
Speaker 1: the name of that animal? It's a proboscis warm or
Speaker 1: gorgon horror's and that's um. I think it's interesting because
Speaker 1: so so I guess like the predator would just be
Speaker 1: like that thing. I mean, you saw that video, if
Speaker 1: you saw that coming at you, well, right, but the
Speaker 1: thing that's trying to eat that thing is probably so
Speaker 1: freaked up looking that why would it be freaked out
Speaker 1: by some goop would be like? Oh, it's all relative though, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you have if you're like one of those
Speaker 1: um goblin sharks, to you, someone with a big pointy
Speaker 1: nose and a big set of jaws you can shoot
Speaker 1: out is attractive, but not like a goop monster. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's all you know, beauty is relative. It's
Speaker 1: it's all in the eyes or the eye spots or
Speaker 1: proboscis of the beholders. One thing that just kind of
Speaker 1: a quick thing about sand dollars because that's a common
Speaker 1: animal I think people are pretty used to and we
Speaker 1: know we've beach comb them. You pick them up there
Speaker 1: the the white that little white disk that has that
Speaker 1: little floral exactly. Yeah, so that's that's when they're dead.
Speaker 1: When they're alive, they're covered in like thousands of tiny
Speaker 1: hair like spines. They look fuzzy, they look like they're
Speaker 1: covered in fluff. And these spines there there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of spines. They're a little they're also tiny tube
Speaker 1: feet called podia and silia, so which is pretty silly.
Speaker 1: Get and these can move around and they actually allow
Speaker 1: the sand dollar to walk on like these hundreds of
Speaker 1: little uh tube feet um. And they also use these
Speaker 1: hairs to transfer sand into its mouth. So it's like
Speaker 1: a conveyor belt of thousands of these hairs and they're
Speaker 1: all like pulling these cranes of sand into its mouth
Speaker 1: and then they scrape the algae off and that's what
Speaker 1: they eat. Wow, that's really weird. What a weird thing,
Speaker 1: like a conveyor belt like a human or not a human,
Speaker 1: but like a like a body that is a conveyor
Speaker 1: belt to to bring sand into your mouth so you
Speaker 1: can lick it off. Right. It'd be like as if
Speaker 1: you could put a sandwich on your hand and then
Speaker 1: just a bunch of tiny hairs like drags the sandwich
Speaker 1: up into your mouth. It sounds pretty good. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: if if we up the ocean enough, then someday they
Speaker 1: might they might pull the stand in their mouth. And
Speaker 1: there's no muck on it for them to lick, right exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it is all pretty interlinked. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, the more we screw up, it seems like
Speaker 1: we create a big blooms of algae. So maybe they'll
Speaker 1: be fine, it's just everything else will be dead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they'll get huge algae. Then they'll be like
Speaker 1: monster sea or child. Then they'll be like, I've had
Speaker 1: enough of the ocean. I'm coming on land taking it over.
Speaker 1: They'll also eat little tiny pieces of metal because because
Speaker 1: they're um, they kind of lack even though they can
Speaker 1: like walk with all their little little hairs, they can't.
Speaker 1: They're not great at locomotions, so they're kind of at
Speaker 1: the mercy of the currents. And they're relatively light, so
Speaker 1: then they would just get tossed around like an ocean frisbee.
Speaker 1: So by eating the metal, they actually can weigh themselves
Speaker 1: down so they can stick in the sand are easily.
Speaker 1: I didn't how and oh that's so strange. And then
Speaker 1: they also uh in response to threats, baby sand dollars,
Speaker 1: which are called larva, will clone themselves, which both makes
Speaker 1: themselves smaller so harder, more difficult targets and increases their numbers,
Speaker 1: so it's a survival strategy. It's like, if you were
Speaker 1: being attacked, you could just split yourself into two smaller guys. Insane.
Speaker 1: I mean, what a what a place? What a place? It? Really?
Speaker 1: I feel like the Little Mermaid kind of was selling
Speaker 1: it short, was bearing the lead with like the you know,
Speaker 1: the song and dance number, with all the animals and
Speaker 1: monsters and stuff. It's like, oh, that's pretty neat, but
Speaker 1: they don't show like an animal, like getting split in
Speaker 1: half and forming two smaller animals, which you know, the
Speaker 1: worst thing about that movie exactly. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: one of the coolest. It's one of the weirdest animals,
Speaker 1: I think. And it's called planary in, which is a
Speaker 1: flat worm that's found all over the world. Uh in
Speaker 1: salt water and fresh water. There even some terrestrial ones,
Speaker 1: so they're they're everywhere. Um, and they're very simple. They're
Speaker 1: just basically they look like little brown linguini and they
Speaker 1: have they have eye spots, not really eyeballs, because it's
Speaker 1: just like a cluster of cells that can detect light
Speaker 1: and dark. So very simple. Their brain is a ganglion,
Speaker 1: which is just a cluster of nerve cells um and
Speaker 1: just just like your mother in law ganglion head, and
Speaker 1: it also has just like a kind of very simple
Speaker 1: nerve cord um, no spine, no bones. Uh. They don't
Speaker 1: have lungs or circulatory system. They just absorb oxygen through
Speaker 1: their body. They have pharynx which is kind of like
Speaker 1: both a throat and a bottle at the same time, um,
Speaker 1: and a gastrovascular cavity instead of a stomach, and so
Speaker 1: they're very simple. They use the eye spots to kind
Speaker 1: of vaguely see their environment. They eat through their quote
Speaker 1: unquote mouth opening of their pharynx on in the middle
Speaker 1: of them, and then digest it through their just basically
Speaker 1: a hole in their bodies. So very attractive. They pee
Speaker 1: through their skin. Yeah that's good. Um. Yeah, they they
Speaker 1: poop through their pharynx, but then they pee through their body,
Speaker 1: so any liquid waste is excreted through their their skin. Well,
Speaker 1: they're in the water, so it doesn't matter, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, who doesn't peanut, It doesn't pee in the pool.
Speaker 1: You know. There's some animal that down there is designed
Speaker 1: to drink whatever they're into. It just design specifically to
Speaker 1: drink what's the name of this animal, probably just urinated
Speaker 1: through its skin at least I don't know if they
Speaker 1: drink it, but they're at least into it. You know,
Speaker 1: they're freaky. Planarians are even more freaky. They can regrow
Speaker 1: their entire body from tiny like if you cut it,
Speaker 1: you can it just regrows the whole body. So they
Speaker 1: can regrow their head, eye spots, pharynx, and everything they
Speaker 1: need from sliced pieces. So you can cut You can
Speaker 1: cut a planarian like a loaf of bread, and each
Speaker 1: chunk is going to grow into a new polinarian. You
Speaker 1: can even you can bisect it. You can cut it
Speaker 1: in any which way one like they've roughly like one
Speaker 1: two hundred of the planarian can be cut and regrow
Speaker 1: so tiny sections of it. Um you can even you
Speaker 1: can even like partially bisect it, so kind of like
Speaker 1: split it down the middle slightly, but like not all
Speaker 1: the way, so it'll grow two heads on one organism.
Speaker 1: That that's ah, that's nice. I mean it's nice for
Speaker 1: them that they get cut. Yeah, they're like, who cares. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now I'm gonna have a friend. Yeah, yes, I'm glad
Speaker 1: you have someone to hang out with. You get it,
Speaker 1: you slay yourselves see queens and then grow anew. I
Speaker 1: wonder if they both have the same personality both their
Speaker 1: segments after they grow question. I mean, their personality has
Speaker 1: got to be very simple because their brands are so tiny.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know, it would suck though, if like
Speaker 1: one of them was like super into other things than
Speaker 1: the other one and it was like, you know, just
Speaker 1: like really different or politically very different and they had
Speaker 1: to share a body. Can you imagine they've had to
Speaker 1: fight with themselves right Thanksgiving? Would be so awkward, even
Speaker 1: worse than humans. Exactly. They can regrow because they use
Speaker 1: stem cells, which are the kinds of selves found in
Speaker 1: embryonic humans. Unlike humans, we don't we don't have stem
Speaker 1: cells as adults that are throughout the body that can
Speaker 1: just like regrow a finger. Although you know, re searchers
Speaker 1: are trying to use human stem cells to see if
Speaker 1: we can regrow body parts. So if you cut off
Speaker 1: a fingertip and then you treat it with stem cells,
Speaker 1: you can grow your fingertip back. Um. Unfortunately, we're kind
Speaker 1: of not at the stage where we can just rub
Speaker 1: planarians all over our body and regrow right body. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we can study them and figure out
Speaker 1: how they manage this and then can it would be
Speaker 1: really useful, Like during the French Revolution, you know robes Pier,
Speaker 1: he cut off his head. It just grows a little
Speaker 1: tiny body out of it, like like I'm the new Robespierre. Righted,
Speaker 1: history would have exactly planarian robes Pierre. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I'm talking about robes Pier because he's a famous
Speaker 1: he's a famous planarian. He got his he got his
Speaker 1: head cut off, right, he's the most He cut off
Speaker 1: a bunch of people's heads, right. I wouldn't have gone
Speaker 1: on a French Revolution podcast. Yeah, well, this isn't that.
Speaker 1: I'd love to see French people try to cut off
Speaker 1: Planarian's head and just get really frustrated, like some kind
Speaker 1: of bourgeoisie. Planarian keeps getting its head cut off. It's like, man,
Speaker 1: we just keep making new ones. That's why they don't
Speaker 1: have capital punishment undersea. That's true. That actually think that
Speaker 1: is correct. That's right, because you you just can't do it.
Speaker 1: You can't. You just make more more of them, will
Speaker 1: make a mess. You got a courtroom, will turn into
Speaker 1: who knows, everybody will start squirting stuff and growing stuff,
Speaker 1: shooting out there and someone else Easter proboscars or is
Speaker 1: I like to call it a nice time? Why are
Speaker 1: we so fascinated with intelligent aliens? One theory is that
Speaker 1: as science advances, we are seeking a replacement to religion.
Speaker 1: Instead of a god, we want to believe in the
Speaker 1: existence of intelligent life beyond our pale blue dot. A
Speaker 1: psychology study by North Dakota State University found that religiousness
Speaker 1: and believe in aliens were inversely related. Those who were
Speaker 1: non religious but will expressed a desire for meaning, we're
Speaker 1: more likely to believe in extraterrestrial intelligence. But is this
Speaker 1: belief in aliens just a replacement for religion, or is
Speaker 1: the instinct that there may be more intelligent life beyond
Speaker 1: our world rational? Personally, I think that if there's a
Speaker 1: planet out there with conditions suitable for life, there's a
Speaker 1: non zero chance that intelligent life may form. In fact,
Speaker 1: as will soon discuss, we have evidence that intelligent life
Speaker 1: can evolve separately from humans. When we return, I'll be
Speaker 1: joined by one such human who formed an emotional bond
Speaker 1: with one such of these homegrown intelligent alien life forms
Speaker 1: octopuses They're one of my favorite aquatic animals, and I'm
Speaker 1: hoping once you've listened to this interview, they'll become yours
Speaker 1: as well. Octopuses are beautiful, strange, and intelligent creatures. Their
Speaker 1: skin can change color at the blink of an eye
Speaker 1: due to color changing cells called chromatophores. They have no
Speaker 1: bones and can squeeze through tiny holes that are action
Speaker 1: of their normal body size. The largest octopus, the giant
Speaker 1: Pacific octopus, weighs in it about a hundred and fifty pounds,
Speaker 1: whereas the star sucker pigmy octopus weighs in it less
Speaker 1: than a gram. Octopus is evolved somewhat independently from humans.
Speaker 1: Our last common ancestor was probably something like the polenarian,
Speaker 1: a worm like creature with simple eye spots, around seven
Speaker 1: hundred fifty million years ago. That means they're complex, incredible
Speaker 1: brains evolved on a completely separate limb of the evolutionary tree.
Speaker 1: So if you're wondering what alien intelligence looks like, who's
Speaker 1: got eight limbs and no thumbs? These guys joining me
Speaker 1: today is professor of Marine biology at the Alaska Pacific
Speaker 1: University and Anchorage. David shield In octopus making contact. The
Speaker 1: season premiere of PBSS Nature, Professor Shield invites an octopus
Speaker 1: named Heidi into his living room and sees what kind
Speaker 1: of relationship can be formed with an octopus. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us, Professor Shield, as you're thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. So when you first decided to
Speaker 1: welcome an octopus into your home, what were you hoping
Speaker 1: to find out? Well? Um, I think I say this
Speaker 1: in the film, but it's really just a way to
Speaker 1: spend more time playing with an octopus without the limitations
Speaker 1: of being underwater myself. You know, so scuba diving can
Speaker 1: be fairly limited, and so this was a way to
Speaker 1: expand on that. What new things did you pick up
Speaker 1: on by having the Heidi the octopus in your living room? Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know so much. If it was about learning
Speaker 1: something new, is just kind of being present with the
Speaker 1: animal for a longer period of time, um, and kind
Speaker 1: of having that continual input to mall things over and
Speaker 1: think about things. I guess I got a little more
Speaker 1: interested in understanding octopus cognition and the way they encounter
Speaker 1: their world than I had been prior to the project. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense to me, because so I never had
Speaker 1: a dog growing up, and when I got a dog,
Speaker 1: I was so fascinated with the way that I saw
Speaker 1: her mind working. Uh and in a way I didn't
Speaker 1: really expect, like I would see her looking for things
Speaker 1: and just be so so interested in how she would
Speaker 1: get up on her hind legs to kind of look
Speaker 1: around her environments. Like, huh. So so weird living with
Speaker 1: an animal that is showing signs of this human level cognition.
Speaker 1: And I imagine that's even weirder with an octopus, which
Speaker 1: is not a mammal, evolved completely separately from us, So
Speaker 1: it's it's such an alien looking creature. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think I think in in today's world, we don't often
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time with animals, and particularly not
Speaker 1: with a bunch of different kinds of animals. You know,
Speaker 1: people spend time with dogs and cats and and maybe
Speaker 1: just some extent birds, um. And so it's kind of
Speaker 1: fascinating to spend time with any animal that's much more
Speaker 1: distantly related to us. Uh. And so that was I
Speaker 1: find that interesting as well, and that was what made
Speaker 1: this project kind of fun. Well started your fascination with
Speaker 1: octopuses because I think you mentioned in the documentary that
Speaker 1: you've been studying them for around twenty years. Over twenty years,
Speaker 1: yeah about let's see, I started so yeah, almost twenty
Speaker 1: five years now. The I mean, I've always been fascinated
Speaker 1: with octopuses. Who wouldn't be right? Um? Uh? You know,
Speaker 1: when I was about twelve years old, I received a
Speaker 1: copy of Chacousta's book Soft Intelligence as a gift, But
Speaker 1: I think I was fascinated by ocean life even before then.
Speaker 1: At the time, I read a lot of science fiction,
Speaker 1: and I suppose there's a twelve year old I thought
Speaker 1: being a marine biologist might be as close as I
Speaker 1: could never get to studying life from another planet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned in the documentary how octopuses are about
Speaker 1: as alien as you can get in terms of intelligent
Speaker 1: animals because of how far back they are separated from
Speaker 1: us on the evolutionary tree. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how they really evolved all these structures completely
Speaker 1: independently of humans, like their eyes and their heart and
Speaker 1: their brains. You know, it's it's probably a stretch to
Speaker 1: say completely independently, but I think it's true that evolutionary
Speaker 1: science has been surprised several times over the last twenty
Speaker 1: five or thirty years in understanding how deep the roots
Speaker 1: of evolutionary traits go. I mean, I remember when hawks genes,
Speaker 1: for example, were first discovered. People were talking about the
Speaker 1: fact that it seemed like limbs and much of the
Speaker 1: regulatory structure of animals was the same, whether you were
Speaker 1: talking about a marine polocyte worm or a mammal, and
Speaker 1: that was really surprising to evolutionary biologists at the time,
Speaker 1: or at least two some of them. UM, and so
Speaker 1: I think the roots what what this really shows is
Speaker 1: not so much that that the evolution of oxopus and
Speaker 1: humans has been completely independent, but that the roots of
Speaker 1: UM what we think about is fairly advanced traits might
Speaker 1: in fact be extremely deep. Octopuses having common with humans,
Speaker 1: probably some aspects of the visual system, some aspects of
Speaker 1: sensory ecology, some aspects of nervous evolution that are common
Speaker 1: to all animals, and we're present very early on in
Speaker 1: the animal stem. On the other hand, the general organization
Speaker 1: of their nervous system, the way it's laid out in
Speaker 1: the body, the way the brain grows, the way um
Speaker 1: nerves are distributed in the brain versus the body. These
Speaker 1: things seem to be really different between octopuses and for example, mammals,
Speaker 1: and so it's it is really fascinating to look at
Speaker 1: the ways that the octopus functions. Is sometimes considered an
Speaker 1: honorary vertebrate. You know, it functions in many ways that
Speaker 1: are very similar to the ways that dog or a
Speaker 1: catworld function Uh. And yeah, it's organization at the at
Speaker 1: the at the gross anatomy level is very different. And
Speaker 1: so it's it's a lot of it's very intriguing to
Speaker 1: compare and think about why that those big differences in anatomy.
Speaker 1: Um nevertheless seemed very approachable to us. We feel like
Speaker 1: we have a connection with this animal that looks back
Speaker 1: at us with these very different eyes, but very recognizable eyes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting to me. And one one of the
Speaker 1: things that I find interesting and sad is the short
Speaker 1: lifespan of the octopus because it's so intelligent. You know,
Speaker 1: already I feel sad about like dogs having a shorter
Speaker 1: lifespan than humans, but some of these octopuses have such short,
Speaker 1: fleeting lifespans, but they're also so intelligent. It seems kind
Speaker 1: of cruel of nature to do this. Um, And what
Speaker 1: do you think it's like, from the perspective of the octopus,
Speaker 1: what do you think it's like to have that intelligence
Speaker 1: but also have such a short lifespan that almost it
Speaker 1: seems to end as soon as the new generation of
Speaker 1: octopus has come into play. Yeah. I don't have the
Speaker 1: sense that they worry too much about how time is left.
Speaker 1: You know, at the end, male pretty busy looking for
Speaker 1: mating opportunities. Females are pretty busy tending their eggs, So
Speaker 1: they kind of have a lot going on, and I
Speaker 1: don't imagine they dwell much on the inevitable. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: maybe that's a blessing in a way. They just live
Speaker 1: in the moment. We should all be so lucky, right exactly.
Speaker 1: You mentioned in the documentary, uh that your observations of
Speaker 1: Heidi aren't exactly scientific. But did you find that it
Speaker 1: helped influence your research and your understanding of octopuses or
Speaker 1: did it just give you sort of a new dimension
Speaker 1: to the meaning of your research. It's probably too soon
Speaker 1: to tell. Um. I'm thinking now more about octopus cognition
Speaker 1: and how they encounter and perceive their world, and so
Speaker 1: that might influence future research directions. But you know, research
Speaker 1: is this, uh, this intriguing mixture of directions and questions
Speaker 1: that interests the researcher and opportunities that exist, and so
Speaker 1: you have to get them somehow to line up before
Speaker 1: you've got a new direction. Yeah, that makes sense. It's
Speaker 1: a much slower process than maybe building the emotional connection
Speaker 1: with the octopus, which because it seemed maybe there was
Speaker 1: like a little bit of a moment of acclamation. But
Speaker 1: both you guys, you and your daughter and the octopus
Speaker 1: seemed to become pretty fast friends pretty quickly. It was
Speaker 1: I thought it was really cute when your daughter would
Speaker 1: come home and the octopus would rush over to the
Speaker 1: other side of the tank to greeter, just like a
Speaker 1: dog or a cat would. Why do you think hidio
Speaker 1: is so excited to see you guys? And what does
Speaker 1: affection mean for an octopus? Well, this is a question.
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you liked attention? Um and you know, stimulus,
Speaker 1: string play. She liked having things going on. Plus probably
Speaker 1: our hands tasted a little bit like the anticipation of
Speaker 1: a meal. Uh, you know, because we handle the shrimp
Speaker 1: or whatever. And so whatever chemical signals or sense we
Speaker 1: have um that she can detect, that's got to become
Speaker 1: over time become associated with with food and reward you
Speaker 1: Pavlov's octopus. Yeah, Pavlov's octopus exactly what and so like that.
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting that she seemed to really
Speaker 1: like to hold hands, and that kind of explains why
Speaker 1: that she associates hands with food. She would also squirt
Speaker 1: water at you guys. Do you think she was being
Speaker 1: mischievous or is that an octopus is way of exploring
Speaker 1: their world. Yeah, the squirting is it's used in the
Speaker 1: wild as a way to deter nuisances. So if a fish,
Speaker 1: little little fish even doesn't have to be a threatening fish,
Speaker 1: but even a little fish gets interested in octopus, then
Speaker 1: the octopus will squirt water added a jetta water added
Speaker 1: to try and drive it away or kind of reach
Speaker 1: out with one arm and try and bat it out
Speaker 1: of the way. Um. I think there's a moment of
Speaker 1: that in the film too. But you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of sporting us, I think maybe it starts out that
Speaker 1: way of like just seeing what happens, but then you know,
Speaker 1: once you've taken a bucket of octopus water in the face. Um,
Speaker 1: I think the octopus learns that she can get a
Speaker 1: reaction out of you. And so that that might be
Speaker 1: part of it too. And can she do you think
Speaker 1: she can kind of read your body language and your expression?
Speaker 1: I know in the documentary you mentioned she can recognize
Speaker 1: human faces and you would wear a mask when you
Speaker 1: had to weigh her, so she wouldn't associate you with
Speaker 1: an unpleasant activity. Do you think she can read expressions
Speaker 1: or body language? Yeah, I'm not sure that's a that's
Speaker 1: a good question. Um. You know, I once kept an
Speaker 1: oxopus in my facility at the university that got to
Speaker 1: be fairly famous for aiming for people's faces with the
Speaker 1: squirt of water. And and in in the at the university,
Speaker 1: the water's Alaskan water, so it's quite cold to take
Speaker 1: a squirt in the face. And so one day I
Speaker 1: was given a tour in the lab and I decided
Speaker 1: I didn't want to take a squirt of water in
Speaker 1: the face, and so I there was this vertical sort
Speaker 1: of panel that when you opened the tank, that's clear,
Speaker 1: and so I sort of stood behind that where the
Speaker 1: octopus could could see me, and I could see the
Speaker 1: oxopus and I could talk to the visitors. But you know,
Speaker 1: I was protected from that squirt of water and and
Speaker 1: the octopus managed to shoot directly up over that barrier
Speaker 1: and hit me in the top of the head. Anyway. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a clever girl. I don't know if that's reading
Speaker 1: facial expressions, but she certainly was tracked thing where I was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's an interesting understanding of physics. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: pretty fascinating. I kind of felt like I was safe,
Speaker 1: but it turned out not to be the case. Speaking
Speaker 1: of their sense of physics, one of the methods of
Speaker 1: play that octopus is engaged in is they take that
Speaker 1: empty pill bottle that's buoyant and they push it into
Speaker 1: inside the tank. They have that jet of water circulating
Speaker 1: through the tank, and they kind of put it, push
Speaker 1: it into that jet of water and watch it spin
Speaker 1: around the tank and come back to them, kind of
Speaker 1: like they're playing fetch with themselves. Do you think that's
Speaker 1: what it is or what do you think is the
Speaker 1: purpose of that form of play. Yeah, that was actually
Speaker 1: a recreation of an experiment that was done in the
Speaker 1: Seattle Aquarium. So, yeah, the water is circulating and kind
Speaker 1: of a you know, a big gyre around the tank,
Speaker 1: and and that's because there's a jet you know, the
Speaker 1: surface that's blowing water out and then given the sort
Speaker 1: of confined to the tank. That creates a cycle in
Speaker 1: the tank where the water comes back to its starting point.
Speaker 1: And in the Seattle experiment, the octopus was you know,
Speaker 1: they did it with several octopuses, and not all of
Speaker 1: them did it, but the ones who did would use
Speaker 1: their own jet to blow this neutrally buoyant toebottle out
Speaker 1: into the into the current, have it circled around, and
Speaker 1: then they grab it when it comes the other way
Speaker 1: and comes back to them, and then push it back out.
Speaker 1: And the experimenters likened that to bouncing a ball um,
Speaker 1: which is a form of play, just sort of engaging
Speaker 1: in repetitive motion. You know, in some ways, it's a
Speaker 1: little reminiscent of there was a paper not too many
Speaker 1: years ago, five or ten years ago maybe that documented
Speaker 1: that that birds, parrots specifically not songbirds, but parrots had
Speaker 1: a rhythmic sense and could dance to human music. So this,
Speaker 1: you know, this sense of rhythm maybe one of these
Speaker 1: very deep evolutionary things that many animals possess. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: so that's so interesting because I know we've talked on
Speaker 1: the show before about parents who will actually use sticks
Speaker 1: or other things in their environment to kind of drum.
Speaker 1: So it's this weird bird form of making music themselves
Speaker 1: and kind of dancing to the beat of it. And
Speaker 1: I think this idea that in birds are quite alien
Speaker 1: to us as well. I mean, we're we're a little
Speaker 1: more related to birds than we are two octopus is right,
Speaker 1: but um, but still like theyre, they diverged quite a
Speaker 1: while ago. But it's it is really interesting to see
Speaker 1: these kind of parallels of play and an understanding of
Speaker 1: repetitive motion or maybe rhythm. Do you think so? So
Speaker 1: you mentioned that our last common ancestor with an octopus
Speaker 1: was probably a flat worm like animal, and they evolved intelligence,
Speaker 1: like you said, maybe not completely independently, as obviously we
Speaker 1: shared a common ancestor, but uh, they in a parallel
Speaker 1: way they developed this intelligence. Do you think that given
Speaker 1: the right conditions, like a planet that supports life, that
Speaker 1: intelligent life is very likely, like sort of inevitable, or
Speaker 1: do you think that we're just extremely lucky to have
Speaker 1: this happen. Well, you know, it's a big universe, and
Speaker 1: I you know, astronomers are discovering exoplanets with some regularity.
Speaker 1: It seems like, and so I suspect Earth is not
Speaker 1: particularly unique across the scale of the of the universe.
Speaker 1: UM and so, Yeah, if you have a planet that
Speaker 1: supports life, once the life becomes active, that is, once
Speaker 1: uh an organism has to control its own body parts
Speaker 1: in relation to information that comes in from a complex
Speaker 1: environment and has to move through that environment like animals
Speaker 1: do in this planet, then I don't think it's it's
Speaker 1: that unexpected to find different degrees of intelligence and problem solving. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you think if mammals and humans never really rose
Speaker 1: to prominence, that some kind of intelligence sea life, maybe
Speaker 1: like the octopus, could have formed primate like or human
Speaker 1: like intelligence, or or some kind of society, or do
Speaker 1: you think that the environment of the ocean would be
Speaker 1: somewhat prohibitive towards that kind of evolutionary path. Well, that
Speaker 1: depends what you mean by sort of you know, human
Speaker 1: like or primate like intelligence. I mean, we consider elephants
Speaker 1: to be pretty smart, and an elephant trunk works on
Speaker 1: a similar biomechanical principle to octopus arms. You know, they
Speaker 1: have that same kind of dexterity. UM. And so you
Speaker 1: know that's a level to which UM you know, octopuses
Speaker 1: might might be similar. At the same time, if you
Speaker 1: are looking at sort of human levels of technology, then
Speaker 1: you know, the biggest obstacle to to that is really
Speaker 1: probably water. Um any sort of manufacturing process based on
Speaker 1: combustion doesn't work so well underwater, and octopus biology is
Speaker 1: pretty intimately tied up with seawater, so they're not they're
Speaker 1: not well poised right now evolutionarily to just come walking
Speaker 1: out onto dry land. So maybe no cars made out
Speaker 1: of seaweed, and uh, well it's yeah, it's a little
Speaker 1: difficult to imagine a completely underwater combustion based technology getting started.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if you think about early technologies
Speaker 1: for humans, fire was probably pretty important in going from
Speaker 1: um of the very simple tool making society to a
Speaker 1: more technological society, and so that that seems like that's
Speaker 1: easier on land than it is underwater. They do use
Speaker 1: sort of these simple tools to some extent, like the
Speaker 1: octopuses that will hide in coconuts. Do you think does
Speaker 1: that count as tool used? Do you think they learn
Speaker 1: this behavior? Is it an instinctive behavior to to use
Speaker 1: these coconuts as camouflage? Well? That yeah, that example of
Speaker 1: the coconuts has been considered a very minimal type of
Speaker 1: tool use. Tool uses usually thought about modifying an object
Speaker 1: to suit a purpose for the user, but the modification
Speaker 1: in this case is pretty simple, just assembling two halves,
Speaker 1: like picking up two sides of a clamshell. So it
Speaker 1: probably counts the tool use, but it's a pretty minimal kind.
Speaker 1: And the importance of tool use in sort of you know,
Speaker 1: there's this there's this history in talking about human intelligence
Speaker 1: of trying to claim a unique spot in the world
Speaker 1: for humans as rational agents, and tools were one way
Speaker 1: to sort of draw the line right between us and
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. It is probably misguided to
Speaker 1: try and draw a lie, and so any way that
Speaker 1: you would attempt to demarcate that line is probably also misguided.
Speaker 1: And so you know, um, there they are. They have
Speaker 1: the kinds of intelligence they do. They're kind of amazing
Speaker 1: at it. They can open a clam better than I can,
Speaker 1: for sure. Um, but if you want to have a
Speaker 1: conversation with with words, then you probably want to look
Speaker 1: for a person, not an octopus. Do you think One
Speaker 1: of the more shocking things that I saw in the
Speaker 1: documentary was this video of Heidi possibly dreaming, could you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about because it didn't even occur
Speaker 1: to me that maybe octopuses could dream, especially in the
Speaker 1: way that Heidi does. Um, well, you know, octopuses sleep.
Speaker 1: So this turns out to very likely be one of
Speaker 1: those extremely deep connections amongst all animals, in the sense
Speaker 1: that in any animal fila where people have looked carefully,
Speaker 1: there seems to be evidence that the animals need to sleep.
Speaker 1: And in the case of mollusks octopuses, they also seem
Speaker 1: to have something similar to what we call rapid eye
Speaker 1: movement and sleep, which is one of two types of
Speaker 1: sleep that that humans have. And so there they are
Speaker 1: engaged in sleep and engaged in rapid eye movement sleep.
Speaker 1: But we don't really fully understand what sleep does for humans,
Speaker 1: let alone for other animals. And do we really know
Speaker 1: what dreaming is either, I'm not sure. And so if
Speaker 1: we can't even answer those questions for people, it's it's
Speaker 1: that much harder to answer them for for octopuses. But
Speaker 1: we do use, we do use our behavior even amongst
Speaker 1: people as an indication of our internal state, Like what's
Speaker 1: going on with me while people look at me, whether
Speaker 1: I'm pacing, whether I'm nervous, whether I'm yelling, you know,
Speaker 1: and they use my behavior to get a sense and
Speaker 1: read my mental state, and we accept that. We consider
Speaker 1: that to be fine, and sometimes we extend it to
Speaker 1: our dogs, you know, we say, oh, look his legs
Speaker 1: are running, you know, and he's twitching, and he's probably
Speaker 1: dreaming of chasing a rabbit. So if we do that
Speaker 1: same sort of thing for the octopus, they have these
Speaker 1: amazing abilities to change the color and texture of their skin,
Speaker 1: and this is a behavior that we can see, and
Speaker 1: they do it when they're asleep sometimes. And so there's
Speaker 1: this bit in the film where you can see this
Speaker 1: octopus going through a sequence of of of of color
Speaker 1: changes and texture changes. And so in the film, I
Speaker 1: I sort of narrate that is that typical of a
Speaker 1: behavior that the octopus might might exhibit, And it seems
Speaker 1: to vaguely match up with what you would expect to
Speaker 1: see if the occupus were pouncing on a crab. But
Speaker 1: in this case, the octupus is clearly asleep, so maybe
Speaker 1: she's dreaming. That comparison to watching your dog kind of
Speaker 1: twitching in their sleep and the little legs kind of
Speaker 1: moving a little bit in their mouth twitching. I think
Speaker 1: it's very apt because obviously we don't we can't be
Speaker 1: inside the heads of other animals. We can't even, like
Speaker 1: you said, dreaming is pretty mysterious even for humans. We
Speaker 1: we don't actually know exactly how and why dreams happen, uh,
Speaker 1: And so we can just kind of guess that maybe
Speaker 1: since animals have the this basic similarity that's basic parallel
Speaker 1: to our brains, and they also sleep, and they seem
Speaker 1: to exhibit little motor functions that that are suppressed because
Speaker 1: of the way sleep functions. But it does seem to
Speaker 1: mirror some of their awake behavior. I think to me,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty strong indicator that they're at least kind
Speaker 1: of going through the motions maybe of their day, maybe
Speaker 1: read thinking about what happened that day, or generalizing and
Speaker 1: thinking about these behaviors in general. And then it shows
Speaker 1: up on their body when we're in sleep and the
Speaker 1: brain stops signals to the rest of to our spinal cord,
Speaker 1: which case the octopus doesn't have a spinal cord, so
Speaker 1: I'm supposing it stops signals to the nerve structure somehow.
Speaker 1: It must yeah, right, I'm not a sleep biologist. But
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things that's interesting about this
Speaker 1: is if if sleep is evolutionarily very deep, and it
Speaker 1: has a function that pretty much all animals with nervous
Speaker 1: systems need, and and if dreaming is important, you know,
Speaker 1: then that raises the question not just about humans and
Speaker 1: dogs and occupuses, but like do jellyfish dream? Right? Um? So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think this is just it's one area
Speaker 1: where we don't necessarily have a complete story yet about
Speaker 1: what the biological functions of these things are or whether
Speaker 1: they're just phenomenon that occur in systems that, you know,
Speaker 1: nervous systems that have these properties that need to sleep.
Speaker 1: Dreaming might simply occur as a byproduct of things that
Speaker 1: are important. It might not be an important product itself.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't really know. I don't know that
Speaker 1: anyone really knows. Yeah, like kind of a spandrel of
Speaker 1: just having a brain and thinking and then also having
Speaker 1: to sleep. Yeah. One other thing I was kind of
Speaker 1: interested in is the extent to which octopuses will socialize
Speaker 1: with each other. They seem rather solitary, but I know
Speaker 1: that they do occasionally bump bump tentacles with each other,
Speaker 1: and they're not necessarily unfriendly. But can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about what the social life of an octopus
Speaker 1: is like in the wild? Yeah, well, I think you know,
Speaker 1: as a general rule, the characterization of of octopuses is
Speaker 1: probably as solitary seems to bear up reasonably well. They
Speaker 1: you know, for many octopuses when you find them there alone.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, we're still sorting out what the
Speaker 1: exceptions are to that and when they occur in how commonly,
Speaker 1: And the more we the more we look, the more
Speaker 1: exceptions we find, and so that that seems to be
Speaker 1: fairly interesting. Octopuses do appear to interact with one another
Speaker 1: more than had previously been noticed. I work also sometimes
Speaker 1: at that site that is visited towards the very end
Speaker 1: of the film in Australia, and at those sites you
Speaker 1: might have sixteen or seventeen octopuses in a relatively small area,
Speaker 1: and they do seem to interact with one another routinely
Speaker 1: throughout the day. Um, but we still haven't sorted out
Speaker 1: what those interactions are about, or how typical they are,
Speaker 1: how important they are to the animal's life. They may
Speaker 1: occur simply because it's a dangerous world out there, and
Speaker 1: this relatively small patch of habitat has a lot of
Speaker 1: good shelter, and so it forces the animals into contact
Speaker 1: with one another. But at the same time, when they're
Speaker 1: in contact whether another, they are using signaling we think,
Speaker 1: and a fairly complex set of behaviors and your actions.
Speaker 1: And so they seem to have access to ways to
Speaker 1: moderate the need to interact with one another, and they
Speaker 1: have tools to do that. I don't mean manufactured tools,
Speaker 1: I mean behavioral patterns to do that. And so that
Speaker 1: suggests that even if even if interacting with other octopuses
Speaker 1: doesn't happen daily in the life of most octopuses, when
Speaker 1: it does happen, they know how to deal with it.
Speaker 1: So they're they're introverts, but they know how to function,
Speaker 1: especially something like that. Yeah, yeah, I may or may
Speaker 1: not know people like that. I may or may not
Speaker 1: be a person. So are they any other octopus facts
Speaker 1: that you think people should know? You know, I tell
Speaker 1: my students there's an octopus in every lesson. And what
Speaker 1: I mean by that is, you know, when I'm teaching
Speaker 1: ethics or philosophy or aquarium biology, I kind of mean
Speaker 1: it's easy to talk about how we should treat other humans,
Speaker 1: or or what does a fish need to survive in
Speaker 1: an aquarium? Because those are very familiar cases that we
Speaker 1: we talk about all the time. And what makes this
Speaker 1: octopus film interesting and what makes occopus is interesting is
Speaker 1: there a very different other case. They are what's been
Speaker 1: called a distant and challenging case, and because of that,
Speaker 1: they make the questions much clearer. You know, if we
Speaker 1: want to ask how does what what do humans owe
Speaker 1: in ethical treatment of animals? Right, if we ask that
Speaker 1: question about a chimpanzee, it seems pretty straightforward. If we
Speaker 1: ask that question about a dog, it seems pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: But by the time we get to an octopus, it's
Speaker 1: a much harder question and we have to think about
Speaker 1: it a lot more clearly. And so that's why I
Speaker 1: think it's important to have a film about octopuses, and
Speaker 1: why I think we if we're going to talk about octopuses,
Speaker 1: we should do it in a way that um is
Speaker 1: respectful of what they might offer us, including in the headlines.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. I mean, I think it's hard for people
Speaker 1: to put themselves on the shoes of like an animal
Speaker 1: that literally can't wear shoes. It's just so alien to us.
Speaker 1: But I think they just need four pairs of a yeah,
Speaker 1: pull a squid word there. Um. Yeah. I think if
Speaker 1: we can learn to empathize with an octopus, maybe that
Speaker 1: would be good for our society as a whole. Like,
Speaker 1: if you can empathize with an octopus, you can empathize
Speaker 1: with other people and maybe be a better people. You know, more,
Speaker 1: empathy can't hurt, right, exactly. Well, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us today, and again, you guys can check
Speaker 1: out the documentary. It's called Octopus Making Contact. You can
Speaker 1: catch that tonight on PBS. It's October two and it's
Speaker 1: airing today to the season premiere of Nature. It's an
Speaker 1: excellent documentary, so check that out. Thank you for speaking
Speaker 1: with me. So I'm back with Chris crofton uh So.
Speaker 1: We just finished talking about keeping an octopus as like
Speaker 1: a family member in your home. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: always knew octopuses were intelligent, but the idea of them
Speaker 1: dreaming and playing basically playing like ball with themselves, like
Speaker 1: tossing a little buoyant ball around, and I didn't know
Speaker 1: any of that stuff. Yeah, I had no idea that
Speaker 1: an octopus was intelligent. I'm still not sure that they are.
Speaker 1: I think maybe this this biologist guy might be insane.
Speaker 1: I've got to take his side. I think that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of evidence of how intelligent they are, especially
Speaker 1: because they can basically escape any any tank that they're
Speaker 1: in because they're so squishy, they can slip out of
Speaker 1: little holes. And then question where are they going to
Speaker 1: go steal? They'll steal people's goldfish. So like if you
Speaker 1: have like an aquarium that has an octopus in it,
Speaker 1: they've been known to escape out of the aquarium, go
Speaker 1: over to the bowl of goldfish and eat the goldfish. Okay,
Speaker 1: well that was that? That Okay, that explains I guess
Speaker 1: if there's a goldfish nearby. But what else they if
Speaker 1: they get out of a out of a out of
Speaker 1: their tank, where are they going to go? They don't
Speaker 1: they need to be wet, they do they I think
Speaker 1: even though they're intelligence, they that doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: they have um street smarts. So like they get out
Speaker 1: of their tank, they get the they get their illicit goods.
Speaker 1: There is one story of an octopus that like escaped
Speaker 1: from uh its container and it was like on a ship,
Speaker 1: it'd either escape from a net or a container and
Speaker 1: then it like crawled along the ship and it can
Speaker 1: survive surprisingly long time, and then it went into like
Speaker 1: a teapot full of water. Oh I saw a video
Speaker 1: of a something an octopus doing something interesting, but I
Speaker 1: can't really Oh yeah, yeah, there's a viral video of
Speaker 1: an octopus who's on the deck of a fishing boat
Speaker 1: and then it squeezes through a tiny hole in the
Speaker 1: ship into the water. Yeah. Yeah, So they're pretty weirdly
Speaker 1: capable on land. Obviously they won't survive too long on land,
Speaker 1: but they can move pretty good. It is kind of
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, all right, I guess this is the
Speaker 1: thing I have a question about, Katie, and that is why. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're an intelligent octopus, I mean, this is so
Speaker 1: interesting because you're applying, like I'm applying human sort of
Speaker 1: emotions to intelligence, which doesn't necessarily that's who don't necessarily
Speaker 1: go together, so it's different. It's probably a different kind
Speaker 1: of intelligence. But I'm imagining that if you are super
Speaker 1: intelligent and you're an octopus, you're probably a reincarnated human
Speaker 1: being punished, because who the hell wants to be an octopus?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, in a way it might
Speaker 1: be kind of fun. They can, like they can take
Speaker 1: east with their arms. But I'm thinking this is the
Speaker 1: way I think that. I'm like, I'm thinking an octopus
Speaker 1: is thinking to itself, who the hell wants to be
Speaker 1: an octopus, which is obviously not a thought that that
Speaker 1: would have. I don't know, I mean, we I did
Speaker 1: talk about earlier. How I think it's kind of cruel
Speaker 1: that octopuses are fairly intelligent, but they have such short lifespans.
Speaker 1: But maybe that just makes them live in the moment more.
Speaker 1: It's like dolphins being super intelligent. Like I'm like, I
Speaker 1: always think of it in terms of human intelligence, So
Speaker 1: I'm like, I bet dolphins are pretty mad they can't
Speaker 1: go to a concert. Well, there's this famous Douglas Adams
Speaker 1: quote that I really love, which is like humans always
Speaker 1: think and I'm just paraphrasing here, but it's like humans
Speaker 1: always think that we're the most intelligent ones because we've
Speaker 1: built societies and roads and cars and bureaucracy, while dolphins
Speaker 1: are just mucking around playing in the water, and dolphins
Speaker 1: think they're the most intelligent for the exact same reason, right,
Speaker 1: So that's interesting. So I imagine, Yeah, an octopus is
Speaker 1: being some miserable Einstein. You're like, oh, intelligent, that means Einstein.
Speaker 1: So it's like Einstein, except it's like he he has
Speaker 1: to be in a tank. I don't know, but well
Speaker 1: not always. That's like Einstein in a tank. But like
Speaker 1: if an octopus, so like if you could like shift
Speaker 1: your body into every shape and squeeze through holes and
Speaker 1: like you can taste with your tentacles and um, change
Speaker 1: change color and texture and just kind of I don't know,
Speaker 1: it'd be kind but you like, but then to like somebody,
Speaker 1: like the octopus is excited when the guy's daughter comes home.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's weird to me. I mean it is.
Speaker 1: It is weird because it really kind of puts our
Speaker 1: own minds in perspective where we kind of feel like
Speaker 1: humans were special at least mammals are special, right, like
Speaker 1: humans and primates, and because like you can you look
Speaker 1: at a dog and you can look into a dog's
Speaker 1: eyes and you're like, okay, so the dog likes to
Speaker 1: have its belly rubbed and and that kind of makes
Speaker 1: sense because they're they're mammals too. They have expressions that
Speaker 1: we can read. Um, we've we've actually co evolved with dogs,
Speaker 1: so we can both kind of read each other's by
Speaker 1: d language fairly well. But with an octopus, they're so
Speaker 1: they've evolved in such a different environment. That connection of
Speaker 1: like I can read their body language, they can read
Speaker 1: my body language is very is much more difficult. So
Speaker 1: imagining them their emotional state is so much harder, where
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, are they happy or they excited? And
Speaker 1: what does that mean? It it? I mean, obviously there's
Speaker 1: no definitive answers because we can't be inside an octopus
Speaker 1: brain unless Elon Musk gets on that. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, it's I think personally, I think
Speaker 1: it that they are conscious and they're cognizant, but they
Speaker 1: probably just have a very different experience of the world
Speaker 1: that's basically impossible to put into words because an octopus
Speaker 1: doesn't have words. They probably think in weird pictures and like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they they expressed themselves through their skin can
Speaker 1: change color and texture. So when they're like we talked
Speaker 1: about in the interview, like when they're dreaming, their skin
Speaker 1: sort of fluctuates in color and texture as they're thinking
Speaker 1: about hunting or playing or whatever they're doing, and it's
Speaker 1: just it's such a different It's like, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: essentially like aliens. Like when we try to think about
Speaker 1: what alien life would be like, this is to me
Speaker 1: what it would be like. Did you see that movie
Speaker 1: about those huge balloons that hung in the sky and
Speaker 1: US Arrival? Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, and that was that
Speaker 1: was whoever that guy is Jeremy Renner and uh I
Speaker 1: think amy um, they like stare at octopus for the movie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Someone someone was like, if we make yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: just I just thought of that. Yeah. No, exactly, no, exactly,
Speaker 1: no aliens, No, No, it does because I think that
Speaker 1: and like I think in the movie they were sort
Speaker 1: of trying to figure out how to communicate with them,
Speaker 1: and their method of language was so different from ours
Speaker 1: it was hard to recognize. But uh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's to me, like I mean, obviously an alien might
Speaker 1: not look like an octopus, but the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: maybe because octopuses were so we're so far back in
Speaker 1: terms of when we were related to them, like seven
Speaker 1: million years ago and very simple like warm like creature
Speaker 1: was our common ancestor that you know, I imagine like
Speaker 1: maybe if there's a planet that can support life and
Speaker 1: can create at least a warm like creature. Maybe intelligent
Speaker 1: life is bound to develop given enough time, given the
Speaker 1: proper circumstances, the environment that's friendly towards evolving life. And
Speaker 1: and then that way, like maybe this kind of star
Speaker 1: trek world where you have these different races that develop
Speaker 1: and but they all kind of all think and dream
Speaker 1: and and can communicate. Maybe it'll all start in this
Speaker 1: marine biologists apartment. Maybe that's what he's doing. Well, maybe
Speaker 1: Heidi is learning more from us than we're learning from her,
Speaker 1: and she's she's learning how to take over the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's gonna, Yeah, he might be in big trouble. Well,
Speaker 1: it's like that movie Planet of the Apes. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: a what was that ape's name? That the chimpanzee that
Speaker 1: like went insane and yeah, that sounds right. Of them,
Speaker 1: I don't know which one is the one, right, oh, Caesar,
Speaker 1: I think is that the main one? And it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe these octopuses will Unfortunately they only live
Speaker 1: about a year long, so yeah, well some of them.
Speaker 1: The giant Pacific apartment, yeah, it can only live about
Speaker 1: a year. And then the giant Pacific octopus lives up
Speaker 1: to five years. So it's it's really sad because like,
Speaker 1: I would love to be friends with an octopus, but
Speaker 1: that would be so bittersweet. It would be super boring too.
Speaker 1: I don't know if have you ever held hands with
Speaker 1: an octopus? Yes, it seems like really no, you're lying now.
Speaker 1: I think it would be fun. And then they scored
Speaker 1: it you with water. It's a good time, I guess,
Speaker 1: so until you come home and they got eight of
Speaker 1: your beers in their hands and then you're like, they
Speaker 1: can open jars. That's not too much of a stretch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, all right, I want I want to hang
Speaker 1: out with an octopus. Good. We've converted you just all
Speaker 1: part of our plan, I mean their plan. I mean
Speaker 1: nobody's playing. Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1: Have you got anything to plug any where? People can
Speaker 1: find you on Twitter? Yeah you can. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter. Uh my handle is at the crofton
Speaker 1: show and I write poems on there just for fun,
Speaker 1: like pretty much really dumb poems about animals, and actually
Speaker 1: wrote I wrote one about an octopus. Yeah, just I
Speaker 1: think it was. Octopus is the name of the poem,
Speaker 1: and it's a Uh, you've got eight arms and inc
Speaker 1: write a book. I think that was what the poem was.
Speaker 1: So you can follow me, Yeah, you can follow me
Speaker 1: on at the Crofton Show and and you can hear
Speaker 1: about all my stuff and then also Instagram Chris Underscore
Speaker 1: Crofton and um, I talked endlessly about cold brew on
Speaker 1: there because whatever, I used to be an alcoholic and
Speaker 1: now but now my now I'm my coffee holic. So
Speaker 1: um and I have a record, a music record that
Speaker 1: you can listen to on Spotify or anything title I
Speaker 1: don't know, however, you listen to music. It's called Hello,
Speaker 1: It's me and it's a dead serious record that got
Speaker 1: reviewed by NPR and Pitchfork and uh and it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's like soft rock. That's all about it's all about
Speaker 1: for the purposes of this podcast, it's all about octopuses. Yes,
Speaker 1: please please make an album a soft rock about octopuses. Well,
Speaker 1: and they are soft bodied animals, so I mean it's
Speaker 1: technically about my ex girlfriend, but you could what's your
Speaker 1: ex girlfriend an octopus? For the yes? All right? And
Speaker 1: you can find us on the internet Creature Feature dot com,
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Creature Feature Pod, on Twitter at Creature
Speaker 1: Feet Pod. F a T, not f et. It's a
Speaker 1: very different Potter account. Um. You can find me at
Speaker 1: Katie Golden and of course at pro bird Rites where
Speaker 1: I advanced the rights of birds. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: You can join us next Wednesday and keep sending in
Speaker 1: those Chevrotaine pictures. Would you like some Chevartaine pictures, Chris?
Speaker 1: Send Chris some Dick Dick pick picks. Don't worry, those
Speaker 1: are also tiny deer called Dick Dix and some Chevertaine.
Speaker 1: Get him on the Chevertine trains. You'll find out what
Speaker 1: we mean. Okay, Well, thank you for having me on
Speaker 1: the show. It's been super fun. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us, and thanks to the Space Classics for
Speaker 1: their excellent song Exo Lumina. Creature features a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.