Speaker 1: Hi everyone, Happy weekend.
Speaker 2: I hope you're having a lovely, lovely Saturday wherever you
Speaker 2: are in the world. We're gonna jump back in time
Speaker 2: to June six, twenty seventeen to talk about Sela cants,
Speaker 2: how Cela cants work. What in the world is a
Speaker 2: Cela cant? I think I kind of remember. Check it
Speaker 2: out right now.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 4: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
Speaker 4: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry, Jerome Roland, just the whole
Speaker 4: house Stuff Works Gang here to present to you Stuff
Speaker 4: you should.
Speaker 1: Know, all three of us. How you doing. I'm good? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh I'm a little caffeinated.
Speaker 4: I should warn you, oh a little bit, like when
Speaker 4: teeth are to just come right out of my face.
Speaker 1: That's not good.
Speaker 2: You know, we did a video about Cela cants one time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like was it this day in history about when
Speaker 4: they were discovered?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I ran across because it smacked as familiar to me.
Speaker 2: And you know, the constant fear we have of recording
Speaker 2: an entire podcast over is sort of always there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the fear that sometimes comes true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I definitely went back and looked, and I
Speaker 2: was like, I knew he did something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we were trapped in a shipping container.
Speaker 1: Right, I didn't watch it. I didn't either.
Speaker 4: Enough to say, oh, yeah I remember that one. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that really weird, weird thing we did.
Speaker 1: But this is really cool. I think I do too.
Speaker 4: Cela cants were well, they're interesting, despite what the house
Speaker 4: Stuff Works article.
Speaker 1: Would lead you to believe.
Speaker 2: Oh it was, Yeah, it was a little thin, wasn't
Speaker 2: it a little bit? It was all right, okay, but
Speaker 2: luckily the rest of the Internet is.
Speaker 1: There for us.
Speaker 4: Right, thanks especially to Smithsonian and Mental floss for this one.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that mental Flass article is kind of neat,
Speaker 2: actually it was.
Speaker 4: So you want to go back to the beginning, actually
Speaker 4: the second beginning maybe.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, I don't know what you're talking about now, so.
Speaker 4: Just okay, well follow me. We'll go back to the
Speaker 4: very beginning. We'll go back to something about four hundred
Speaker 4: million years ago, okay, during the Devonian period, which is
Speaker 4: aka the Rise of the fish, Yes, the Age of
Speaker 4: the Fish. Right, And in this Devonian period there's a
Speaker 4: lot a lot of stuff going on. Things have been
Speaker 4: swimming around for a while on Earth. There's a nice
Speaker 4: atmosphere that's developed. The things in the ocean are starting
Speaker 4: to say, oh, what's out there? I want to see
Speaker 4: what's on land?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want can just crawl out and see.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I want to taste clover. So they start trying.
Speaker 4: And during this period there was the progression from the
Speaker 4: sea to the lane.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And one of those things that was starting to develop
Speaker 4: legs to get onto land was called the Cela canth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which A it means hollow spine, which is we'll
Speaker 2: get to there's a reason for that. And B it's
Speaker 2: spelled ceo E l A c A n t h,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, not how you would think it
Speaker 2: might be spelled.
Speaker 1: No or pronounced rather right, either one. But it's Cela camp.
Speaker 1: It is Cela camp.
Speaker 2: And what it is is a fish that is, like
Speaker 2: you said, been around for a long long time. It's
Speaker 2: kind of funny looking, and we'll get into all the
Speaker 2: physical characteristics that make it unusual in a sect, but
Speaker 2: it is notable mainly for the fact that everyone thought
Speaker 2: it was gone forever until it was suddenly discovered. This
Speaker 2: thing that that swam with the dinosaurs was discovered anew
Speaker 2: in the nineteen thirties, right, and then again a little
Speaker 2: bit later on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it was it pops up for the first
Speaker 4: time around four hundred and seven million years ago, I think,
Speaker 4: I said, and then it just drops off eighty million
Speaker 4: years ago. So they said, well, a lot of stuff
Speaker 4: went the way of the dinosaur around the time the
Speaker 4: dinosaurs went away, so that's probably what happened to the
Speaker 4: Cela canth So it was quite a big surprise. In
Speaker 4: the nineteen thirties when a trawler that was out fishing,
Speaker 4: a trawler called the Narreen which is captained by Hendrik
Speaker 4: Goosen off the coast of South Africa, came in and
Speaker 4: as was Captain Goosen's wont he contacted the director of
Speaker 4: the local museum in East London, a woman named Miss
Speaker 4: Marjorie Courtney Latimer, and she used to come over and
Speaker 4: look at the fish loads this guy would bring in
Speaker 4: because they were buddies. Yeah, And he gave her a
Speaker 4: call like normal and said, I got a load, you
Speaker 4: want to come look at it? And she was like,
Speaker 4: it's two days before Christmas and is blazing hot out.
Speaker 4: Don't forget we're in South Africa at the time, huh.
Speaker 1: And she's like, I.
Speaker 4: Don't feel like it, but the world was saved. The
Speaker 4: world of ichthyology was saved this day. Yeah, because this lady,
Speaker 4: Marjorie Courtney Latimer was so nice that she decided to
Speaker 4: go look at the fish anyway, just to wish the
Speaker 4: captain and his crew a merry Christmas.
Speaker 1: So she takes a look at this fish.
Speaker 2: And here is her quote as she recounted. It wasn't
Speaker 2: her quote at the time or quote at the time.
Speaker 2: It's probably a South African explative, right, but she said later,
Speaker 2: I picked away the layers of slime to reveal the
Speaker 2: most beautiful fish I had ever seen. And of course
Speaker 2: only a fish lover can find this thing truly beautiful, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because it's kind of ugly it is. It was five
Speaker 2: feet long, a pale mauve blue with faint flecks of
Speaker 2: whiter spots. It had an iridescent silver blue green sheen
Speaker 2: all over. It was covered in hard scales, and it
Speaker 2: had four limb like fins and a strange little puppy
Speaker 2: dog tail. Not literally, of course, it was such which
Speaker 2: would be great, though actually it did.
Speaker 1: That's the dogfish that has that.
Speaker 2: It was such a beautiful fish, more like a big
Speaker 2: China ornament. But I didn't know what it was. And
Speaker 2: it was pretty faithful that she was called in to
Speaker 2: look at this thing, because it ended up being one
Speaker 2: of the most important zoological finds of you know, history,
Speaker 2: probably of the.
Speaker 4: Twentieth century at least. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, this woman's curiosity,
Speaker 4: something in her said, this is weird, this is unusual,
Speaker 4: this is this is something worth looking into. So she
Speaker 4: took it with her. This thing was like five feet long,
Speaker 4: just under two meters, about one hundred and how many pounds.
Speaker 1: One hundred and twenty seven pounds. This is a.
Speaker 4: Significant fish, Yeah, and Mss Courtney Latimer talked her way
Speaker 4: into a cab with it.
Speaker 1: She took a cab back.
Speaker 4: To the East London Museum with this fish stuffed in
Speaker 4: the back seat, and she took it to the taxidermist
Speaker 4: and had it stuffed. Unfortunately, the taxidermist wasn't completely aware
Speaker 4: of how to preserve a fish for identification and threw
Speaker 4: out the skeleton and the gills, which are what you
Speaker 4: need for.
Speaker 1: The idea fish.
Speaker 2: Apparently, well, she probably should have said something, well, she like,
Speaker 2: this is no ordinary mount.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, she probably should have, or maybe she did,
Speaker 1: and he just ignored her.
Speaker 4: He's like, I'm not going to get boss drawn by
Speaker 4: a woman's nineteen thirty eight. So she contacts a guy
Speaker 4: named J. L. B. Smith, who is an ichthyologist. He's
Speaker 4: the head of the ichthyology department at a university in
Speaker 4: Grahamstown and PhD in chemistry. He's a smart guy and
Speaker 4: he's the the local fish expert as far as she knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and their pals and so she said, hey, I've
Speaker 2: got this weird looking fish. And then Smith his quote
Speaker 2: was I told myself sternly not to be a fool,
Speaker 2: but there was something about that sketch, and apparently it
Speaker 2: was sketch.
Speaker 1: She sent him a sketch of the fish to begin with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that seized upon my imagination and told me that
Speaker 2: this was something very far beyond the usual run of
Speaker 2: fishes in our seas.
Speaker 1: And luckily, even though.
Speaker 2: The fish was, I guess mounted in a traditional form, which,
Speaker 2: like you said, takes away, it's how you can identify it,
Speaker 2: she was able to preserve some of the scales, and
Speaker 2: somehow from these scales he was able to say, this
Speaker 2: is a cola cant seala cant Well, that's what he said.
Speaker 2: At first, and she went his pronounced seala cant.
Speaker 4: He's like, oh, apparently, he said when he saw that
Speaker 4: scale and I and identified it positively as a seala cant.
Speaker 4: His quote was, if I'd met a dinosaur in the street,
Speaker 4: I't have been more astonished.
Speaker 1: I like that guy, a little hyperbole there, but I
Speaker 1: like it.
Speaker 4: So he I mean, this is seriously, this is like
Speaker 4: the zoological find of the century and would be for
Speaker 4: the next sixty something years. Right, So he very magnanimously says,
Speaker 4: you know what, I'm going to name this thing after you,
Speaker 4: and he named it as a new species, Latimeria chilumnae,
Speaker 4: because well, obviously her name is Courtney Latimer. Yeah, Courtney
Speaker 4: hyphen Latimer.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 4: And it was found in the Chilumna River at the
Speaker 4: mouth of it where it hits the coast off of
Speaker 4: the eastern coast of South Africa.
Speaker 1: So that's a great name.
Speaker 4: It's perfect. Yeah, it really puts it in a place
Speaker 4: in time.
Speaker 2: So they have now discovered this thing, they realize that
Speaker 2: they have a big find on their hands. They thought
Speaker 2: this thing had long been extinct by tens of millions
Speaker 2: of years, and so they started to research and you know,
Speaker 2: trying to learn more about this fish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is no ordinary fish.
Speaker 4: No, but I mean this was so this was nineteen
Speaker 4: thirty eight, right, Yeah, and it was the only one
Speaker 4: that had been found for another sixty years.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean there's only so much you can find from
Speaker 4: a stuffed fish. But it did prove because it had
Speaker 4: been caught alive. It wasn't like they pulled up a
Speaker 4: fossil or a dead fish. It had been alive when
Speaker 4: it was caught.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it was attached to another fish. Oh, really,
Speaker 2: like potentially trying to eat it. Oh, okay, which is
Speaker 2: one of the well, not unusual but interesting things about
Speaker 2: the Sela camp is that it's it eats meat.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot of unusual things about the Cela camp. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So fast forward another sixty years exactly in Indonesia, which
Speaker 4: is on the other side of the Indian Ocean, the
Speaker 4: eastern side of the Indian Ocean. It was actually first
Speaker 4: seen in nineth ninety seven by a biologist named Mark
Speaker 4: Erdman who was in Indonesia doing his PhD dissertation, and
Speaker 4: he saw a Cela cant in the market.
Speaker 1: That's crazy, that's a cela.
Speaker 4: Can't what's that doing here? So apparently he put a
Speaker 4: bit of a bounty out on it with the locals,
Speaker 4: and within a year, by nineteen ninety eight, they had
Speaker 4: brought him a freshly caught one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is quite a task.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's finding a once thought extinct fish. Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: a big one. Well, and we'll get to a little
Speaker 4: bit why. It's even tougher than you would think too.
Speaker 1: Sure. So the one that Erdman found was brown, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a little bit different color.
Speaker 4: Right, the one like Courtney Latimer described, those are known
Speaker 4: to be like steel blue. This is brown, a little
Speaker 4: smaller than the one that Courtney Latimer found. And so
Speaker 4: eventually when Erdman got his hands on that one, he
Speaker 4: described it as a new species.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, it turns out that at one point, you know,
Speaker 2: hundreds of millions of years ago, there were you know,
Speaker 2: potentially over one hundred different varieties of this fish, and
Speaker 2: they came in all shapes and sizes. These obviously were
Speaker 2: pretty big, but there were some that were smaller and faster.
Speaker 2: Basically just kind of a wide variety. And as far
Speaker 2: as we know, I think, are these the only two
Speaker 2: known survivors?
Speaker 1: Yes, so far?
Speaker 4: Yeah, the one that Corney Latimer founder known as the
Speaker 4: West Indian Ocean Seala camp those are the blue ones.
Speaker 4: They're typically found off of the west, you know, the
Speaker 4: east coast of Africa, south of Kenya, I believe, yeah,
Speaker 4: down to about the Cormeros Islands. I think that's they're
Speaker 4: actually also known as the Cormeroos Islands sela cant because
Speaker 4: there's that's that seems to be where they inhabit the
Speaker 4: most or the highest density of them is Yeah.
Speaker 2: And some of the weird some of the weirdos that
Speaker 2: have well, we assume that they've been extinct, but you
Speaker 2: never know. One of them was toothless and over ten
Speaker 2: feet long. That was the megalo se Lacanthus very appropriately
Speaker 2: some of them said, forget you, ocean, I'm going to
Speaker 2: go to the fresh water.
Speaker 1: So there were actually freshwater selacants at one time.
Speaker 2: And like I said, some of them were slow and
Speaker 2: ambushed prey somewhere smaller and faster. But they've pretty much
Speaker 2: universally all been predators from what I've seen.
Speaker 4: Right, And the two species that are alive today that
Speaker 4: we know of are aside from that megalis Selacanth tend
Speaker 4: to be a little bigger than the extinct species. Yeah,
Speaker 4: which I read is a good it's a good example
Speaker 4: of why they shouldn't be called living fossils, which is
Speaker 4: what they're frequently called.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's Darwin's term for something that basically never changed.
Speaker 2: And they've actually studied the genome of the selacant and
Speaker 2: found that they very much haven't changed. And the kind
Speaker 2: of the main reason is they haven't had to. They've
Speaker 2: kind of stayed in the same places. And when you
Speaker 2: say in the same places and you eat the same stuff,
Speaker 2: then maybe you don't change so much.
Speaker 1: Read.
Speaker 4: I read the opposite of that that they have changed
Speaker 4: enough that they that they have been evolving, and a
Speaker 4: good example of that is that they're bigger than they
Speaker 4: used to be.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but the two species that are alive today, they
Speaker 4: have traced their genomes back and decided that they've been
Speaker 4: separated for several million years at least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one, they finally got the full genome and
Speaker 2: they said that it does indeed match the fish's appearance
Speaker 2: of slower evolution, and a journal published in Nature because
Speaker 2: they have a slower rate of substitution.
Speaker 1: Gotcha.
Speaker 2: Basically, she's the the doctor.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I guess she is a doctor. Just sounded
Speaker 1: weird to say that.
Speaker 2: The doctor the researcher who was also a doctor, Yeah,
Speaker 2: who was She said it may reflect the fact that
Speaker 2: they do not need to evolve quickly because they've lived
Speaker 2: in relatively unchanging environment where there are a few predators,
Speaker 2: and they basically haven't needed to change over time like
Speaker 2: other organisms.
Speaker 4: Well, that brings up another thing too. There's a big
Speaker 4: question why would they just drop off of the fossil
Speaker 4: record if they've been around this whole time, if they
Speaker 4: didn't just go extinct eighty or sixty five million years ago.
Speaker 4: The only explanation I've seen is that the places where
Speaker 4: the fossils turned up were areas conducive to fossilization, Like
Speaker 4: there's a lot of sentiment that could turn bone into rock,
Speaker 4: and then the areas that the living species live at
Speaker 4: now are not conducive to that kind of thing, possibly
Speaker 4: because they're mostly living around volcanic rock that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 4: produce fossils.
Speaker 2: You want to take a break, Yeah, let's take a break,
Speaker 2: go back and talk a little bit about this funny fish.
Speaker 3: Sevy shit.
Speaker 2: All right, So we've talked a little bit about what
Speaker 2: makes the Sela camp such a interesting critter.
Speaker 1: Can a critter be a fish? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Have you heard of the cuddlefish? That's a critter if
Speaker 4: there ever.
Speaker 2: Was, Yeah, a cuddly critter. So here are some remarkable
Speaker 2: things about the Cela camp. They can live as deep
Speaker 2: I mean they're deep water dwellers. They can live as
Speaker 2: deep as two thousand or more feet, but generally they
Speaker 2: think the I think they generally live about five hundred
Speaker 2: to eight hundred feet and what they call the twilight zone, right, which.
Speaker 1: Is still pretty deep.
Speaker 4: Remember our cave episode, Yeah, that had the same thing.
Speaker 4: Remember there was like organisms that live in the dark,
Speaker 4: organisms that live in the twilight zone, and organisms that
Speaker 4: live in the lighted zone. Yeah, these guys live in
Speaker 4: that threshold between light and dark and the ocean. And
Speaker 4: they apparently are nocturnal hunters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they come out at night, kind of stay hidden.
Speaker 2: Most of these habitats are caves, right, that they tend
Speaker 2: to stay in. But there's one off of Tasmania that
Speaker 2: do not live in caves, and so they have officially
Speaker 2: been placed on an endangered list because they don't have
Speaker 2: the protection from bycatch that these other cave dwellers have.
Speaker 1: Right, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So the average day or in the life of
Speaker 4: Azila canth or at least the cave dwelling species, they'll
Speaker 4: you know, during the day time, they're hanging out in
Speaker 4: a cave. They'll hang out in a cave with I've
Speaker 4: seen between up to twelve to sixteen other sela camps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, have a little coffee, Yeah, maybe just talk.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, talk about their night and then as
Speaker 4: night falls, they'll leave their caves and they they'll go hunting.
Speaker 4: And like you said, they're carnivorous predators. They do that
Speaker 4: passive bycatch thing for the most part right where they
Speaker 4: let the current bring the food to them.
Speaker 1: But they.
Speaker 4: Just basically hang out and wait for a cuttlefish. It's
Speaker 4: one thing. They eat, squids, other cephalopods, some fishes, but
Speaker 4: they seem to not show aggression toward one another from
Speaker 4: what I understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and while they are passive hunters, they do have
Speaker 2: an unusual feature which is, like we said, one of many.
Speaker 2: But they have what's called a rostral organ which just
Speaker 2: means it's in the nasal region and their snout and
Speaker 2: it's filled with a jelly like substance that they think,
Speaker 2: and they think most of this stuff. I mean, they've
Speaker 2: done a lot of good studying, but for something so rare,
Speaker 2: you can't be super sure. But they think that it
Speaker 2: detects low level electrical signals and frequencies from prey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a shark or a ray. Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's an electro sensory organ where when living tissue contacts water,
Speaker 4: it can make an electrical impulse that can be picked up.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And this cool Mental Floss article is I think eleven
Speaker 2: eleven things about the sei loocanth. I can't remember how
Speaker 2: it was put, but just eleven interesting features.
Speaker 4: Eleven fishy facts was that it.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately that's why I forgot it title aside, it's an
Speaker 2: interesting article. And one of the things that they don't
Speaker 2: know why they do, and I have a feeling it
Speaker 2: has to do with that electrical frequency, is they'll swim
Speaker 2: nose down for up to two full minutes, which is
Speaker 2: weird for a fish.
Speaker 4: They're just kind of hovering in place, head standing, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I guess I mean, if they have
Speaker 2: that nasal bag of jelly that helps them locate fish,
Speaker 2: I would imagine that's what they're doing there.
Speaker 4: Right, I imagine it like tonto, like holding a railroad track,
Speaker 4: you know, Yeah, I think it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: Basically, So.
Speaker 4: When they catch their prey, they eat them, and they
Speaker 4: can eat stuff that's way bigger than them because again,
Speaker 4: which is this is unique to see the cants among
Speaker 4: living things. They have a hinge in their cranium that
Speaker 4: allows basically their head is convertible, the top of their
Speaker 4: skull can retract, allowing their mouth to open really wide,
Speaker 4: so they can eat a large, large cuttlefish.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think that feature also allows it to their
Speaker 2: mouth to close with like much greater.
Speaker 1: Force with extreme prejudice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like when it's unhinged emotionally, and basically it can
Speaker 2: really close that mouth super hard.
Speaker 4: They hate themselves for eating cuttle fish, so they just
Speaker 4: can't stop.
Speaker 1: So those are just a couple of the features.
Speaker 2: Another is, and we mentioned earlier that the name literally
Speaker 2: translates into hollow spine. This is because they have what's
Speaker 2: called a notochord, which is a hollow pressurized tube filled
Speaker 2: with oil where a lot of fish start this way
Speaker 2: and then they'll eventually get a spine. But this doesn't
Speaker 2: go away.
Speaker 4: Right, and not just fish vertebrates apparently there's a lot
Speaker 4: of mammals that go through this, I think possibly even
Speaker 4: humans in the embryo.
Speaker 1: And the selacanther just says, I'm good with the notochord.
Speaker 4: I'm going to stick here. Yeah, I'm going to stop here.
Speaker 4: Which is strange. It is strange. You want to hear
Speaker 4: some more stranges. I could do this all day.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a strange fish.
Speaker 4: Celacanth. We don't quite understand how they reproduce, and the
Speaker 4: reason why is because males don't seem to have any
Speaker 4: sex parts.
Speaker 1: They don't have junk.
Speaker 4: They think possibly males grow it when they need it,
Speaker 4: but it's otherwise. It's it's not around the showers, right exactly.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
Speaker 4: So we have no idea how they reproduce, but we
Speaker 4: know that the mode of reproduction is called ovo viviparity,
Speaker 4: which is, however the eggs that the female has get fertilized.
Speaker 4: Once they're fertilized, they gestate or the eggs develop in
Speaker 4: the female, and then they hatch in the female. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and then the live fishes continue to gestate and like
Speaker 4: the whole period lasts like three years before they're born.
Speaker 4: So they go from egg to being hatched to being
Speaker 4: born within a three year period, and so apparently this
Speaker 4: does not make the mom. Sila can't very happy, and
Speaker 4: sometimes she will try to eat her newborn pups.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So supposedly selacanth pups that's what they're called, can dive
Speaker 4: really deep, very quickly the moment they're born, to get
Speaker 4: away from mom, to get away from their mom, who's
Speaker 4: like three years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, three years, paging doctor Freud.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think sharks may be the only other fish
Speaker 2: that give birth the live little ones.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 2: I mean most fish lay eggs, right, so it's definitely unusual.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it may not be unique.
Speaker 2: But the other thing about their sexy time is there's
Speaker 2: also a theory that they are monogamous.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In twenty thirteen, a German team they had a couple
Speaker 2: of corpses are too pregnant. I believe the African version, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the Vladimir Chlumne and because what was I don't remember
Speaker 2: what the other one was, it was Latimir something else.
Speaker 2: For the Indonesian version.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll just go with that for now.
Speaker 4: I was practicing pronouncing it Latimera menadoensis.
Speaker 1: Okay, wow, thanks, nice work.
Speaker 2: So they analyze these two pregnant ladies unfortunately that we're
Speaker 2: no longer with us. And they found out that they had,
Speaker 2: like most definitely had a single father.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which they said was unusual.
Speaker 2: Sure, because one of them had twenty six, twenty six
Speaker 2: little baby pups inside.
Speaker 4: Of her, right, And they they thought at first, well,
Speaker 4: maybe it's because the celacanth is so rare that the
Speaker 4: female wouldn't have opportunity to mate with more than one male.
Speaker 4: And they said, well, wait a minute, well that's true. Well, no,
Speaker 4: not necessarily. Once they found out that they stayed.
Speaker 1: They hang out together.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in caves all day long. What else are you
Speaker 4: going to do once general Hospital's over? Just looking around
Speaker 4: at everybody, like, well, what do you want to do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2: All right, Well let's ponder that and take another break
Speaker 2: and we'll finish up with even more interesting things about
Speaker 2: the Seila.
Speaker 3: Camp Sevy shit.
Speaker 2: All right, so these guys have live babies. They might
Speaker 2: mate with a single mate. Good a they have They
Speaker 2: can unhinge their jaw to eat more. They have a
Speaker 2: jelly filled thing in their.
Speaker 1: Nastra that detects electricity, detects electricity.
Speaker 4: I know I'm having trouble saying to text.
Speaker 1: Uh what else? This is sort of a recap.
Speaker 4: They have an oil filled spine.
Speaker 2: Oil filled spine they're just good with. They're like, I
Speaker 2: don't need a real spine.
Speaker 4: This one's my favorite. They were long thought to be
Speaker 4: the missing link between the fishes yea and the tetrapods,
Speaker 4: which are land dwelling for lambed animals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because a notable thing I don't think we mentioned
Speaker 2: yet is this thing has well. I think I did
Speaker 2: a quote from Miss Latimir Courtney Latimir. But they have
Speaker 2: four fins that smooth, sort of like you would think
Speaker 2: legs would move if a fish could swim out onto
Speaker 2: the beach.
Speaker 1: Legs and arms. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Can you remember how Shaggy walked and Scooby Doo do
Speaker 4: just like that. That's basically how a cila can't swim. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And the fact that their fins are suspiciously arm like
Speaker 4: in appearance just made people think that even more. What's more,
Speaker 4: their arms, what are called lobes, are attached by a
Speaker 4: bone that is compared to the humorous in humans. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so a lot of people said, well, that's it. It's
Speaker 4: the missing link. The celacanth is a missing link. Between
Speaker 4: the fish and the land dwelling for limbed animals, and
Speaker 4: apparently once the genome came around, he said, no.
Speaker 1: It's a little disappointing. They said, yes, we're all related.
Speaker 4: Technically, we are all what are known as sarcopterygians, okay, man,
Speaker 4: which means we are fleshy limb vertebrates.
Speaker 1: So we're all that gross.
Speaker 4: So we are related, but it's not like our direct ancestor.
Speaker 4: In fact, we're more closely related to the lungfish than
Speaker 4: the selacanth. But the celacanth holds its place of honor,
Speaker 4: is probably living on something of its own branch, and
Speaker 4: is a very close cousin, if not bro of the lungfish.
Speaker 4: So we're related by marriage.
Speaker 1: To the cela.
Speaker 2: Can't say, but we legally we probably could marry a celacanth, sure,
Speaker 2: and have it not be super creepy, right, except for
Speaker 2: the fact that it's a fish.
Speaker 4: Right, you feel it's a fleshy lobe thin stroking the
Speaker 4: back of your head as you kiss it.
Speaker 2: I got something for you that was I'm just walking
Speaker 2: right past that one. They taste gross, so don't think
Speaker 2: it's some weird delicacy, right, not? You know that there
Speaker 2: are that many of them to eat, but apparently if
Speaker 2: you do eat them, they can make you sick because
Speaker 2: these things are filled with urea, with oil, with wax.
Speaker 1: Ester and fat. Yeap, like ninety eight point five percent fat.
Speaker 1: That's just an skull. Oh I thought that was the
Speaker 1: whole body.
Speaker 4: No, it's it's brain occupies one point five percent of
Speaker 4: the area inside its skull. The other ninety eight point
Speaker 4: five percent is fat.
Speaker 1: And that's at the point that they're an adult, right. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Supposedly their brains are bigger proportionately when they're younger.
Speaker 2: And they just stay there. Yeah, they're frozen in perpetual
Speaker 2: like I guess.
Speaker 1: Toddlerhood pretty much. They love life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no responsibilities, no bills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly what else I got one for you, okay.
Speaker 2: Prestigial lungs.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, man, I love these things.
Speaker 1: So they grow.
Speaker 2: They had CT scans done and this is from the
Speaker 2: mental article of these embryos, and they start growing little
Speaker 2: lungs early in the gestation period and it slows down
Speaker 2: a bit, and then by the time they're an adult,
Speaker 2: the organ serves no purpose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just there. Yep, that's a good one. It is.
Speaker 4: It was It's almost like the ceilacanth was an attempt,
Speaker 4: an evolutionary attempt, and it's just like, I'm gonna scrap
Speaker 4: this design.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to the lungfish. Yeah maybe so. You know.
Speaker 4: One of the things that struck me though, Chuck, was
Speaker 4: when they were talking about how a couple of females
Speaker 4: that had fully formed young in them ready to be born.
Speaker 1: Were caught.
Speaker 4: It's like that was a lot of the Seila camp
Speaker 4: population that got wiped out with those two caught fish.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, if there are only hundreds, then everyone matters. Yeah.
Speaker 4: They think that there's possibly about a thousand of the
Speaker 4: ones that live around Indonesia.
Speaker 1: And far fewer of the ones.
Speaker 4: That live off of the west coast of Africa on
Speaker 4: the western side of the Indian Ocean, and as a result,
Speaker 4: both of them are on the endangered species list. They're
Speaker 4: both protected. The problem is is that if something happens
Speaker 4: to these species and these species die out this time,
Speaker 4: the whole order is gone for good this time around. Yeah,
Speaker 4: unless we revide them with some of.
Speaker 2: Their Yeah, all right, I got one last one and
Speaker 2: this was on Mental Floss's list as well, under the
Speaker 2: title A prominent hematologist once wrote a selacanth operetta, So
Speaker 2: that's an attention grabber. Apparently in nineteen seventy five there
Speaker 2: was a man named Charles Rand of Long Island University,
Speaker 2: and he was a hematologist and was doing some work
Speaker 2: with the celacanth, and this was when the big revelation
Speaker 2: was they learned that it gave birth to live young
Speaker 2: and he, I guess, was a music guy and decided
Speaker 2: to write a little operetta about this discovery, titled a
Speaker 2: Cela Camp's lament or Quintuplets at fifty fathoms can be
Speaker 2: fun all song to the tune of various Gilbert and
Speaker 2: Sullivan songs.
Speaker 1: Right, that's a hematologist for you. Wow. Sure, I have
Speaker 1: no comment on that. Well, I mean it speaks for itself,
Speaker 1: other than I wish this was on tape somewhere.
Speaker 4: Surely it's on YouTube. Everything's on YouTube, you think, Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: You want to go over some of these other quote
Speaker 2: living fossils end quote.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so again there was there's some fishes out there
Speaker 4: that may have made the jump kind of to land
Speaker 4: or almost did, or what have you.
Speaker 1: But there's there's.
Speaker 4: Some interesting fishes that are worth mentioning.
Speaker 2: Speaking of making the jump. Did you see that shark
Speaker 2: that jumped into the boat the other day? No, there
Speaker 2: was a fisherman and I guess the shark just did
Speaker 2: you know one of their famous Uh there was a
Speaker 2: great white Oh god, did one of its breeches where
Speaker 2: they just jump out of the water. And this thing
Speaker 2: did that and landed in a dude's fishing boat.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And he he got banged around a little bit, but
Speaker 2: was not like, you know, a bitten or anything, and
Speaker 2: basically went into his little control room, I think, and
Speaker 2: called for help. And this shark like, I mean, it
Speaker 2: was kind of sad. I think the chark just died.
Speaker 2: But there were pictures of it. It's huge. It's like
Speaker 2: eight feet long. Oh it's not a little guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you imagine? No, my god, that guy did
Speaker 1: the right thing. He ran. He pooped his pants too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I may have jumped into the water had that happened.
Speaker 1: All right, So living fossils, the bowfin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the dogfish, mudfish or grindle, I like dogfish.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This guy, I looked all these up.
Speaker 2: He lives in the Mississippi River basin, in the Great
Speaker 2: Lakes and other places and are pretty mean supposedly like
Speaker 2: eats small mammals, snakes, frogs, other fish. Yeah, like they'll
Speaker 2: go after you. Right, It's sort of normal looking, just
Speaker 2: sort of a long fish. Nothing remarkable as appearance wise, though.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you one that's remarkable appearance wise is the gar.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, I just saw a long nosed gar.
Speaker 2: They are so ugly last weekend and I was like,
Speaker 2: it was floating dead in a lake. I was like,
Speaker 2: what in the world. Because I went by it at first,
Speaker 2: I was like, was that a swordfish?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Well, no, it's not a swordfish, right, but in the
Speaker 2: long nose ones, I mean this thing had you had
Speaker 2: a twelve inch beak?
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean it look prehistoric.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they very much do look prehistoric, which is one
Speaker 4: of the reasons why they're called a living fossil. And
Speaker 4: they are just mean. Apparently they're known to kill other fish,
Speaker 4: even not even to eat them, yeah, just because they
Speaker 4: were in their way. Basically like you see this nose. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and you can't eat gar. They're inedible and as a
Speaker 4: matter of fact, if you eat their eggs, it will
Speaker 4: kill you. They're very toxic to humans yea. And they
Speaker 4: just go around killing other fish, So they're not the
Speaker 4: best thing to have in your lake if you like
Speaker 4: the fish and a lake.
Speaker 2: No, and they did you ever see Vernon, Florida the documentary? No,
Speaker 2: I've never seen that one by the great Errol Morris.
Speaker 2: It has one of the interviews, it's one of my favorites,
Speaker 2: with guy talking about talking about the garfish.
Speaker 1: Really. Yeah, I gotta see that one. Come across one
Speaker 1: of those.
Speaker 4: Oh boy, I finally saw a thin blue line for
Speaker 4: the first time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a good one. It is really good.
Speaker 2: You probably saw it after the parody of documentary, Now, yeah.
Speaker 4: I definitely did. I saw the documentary now.
Speaker 1: Which they nail like. It's like perfect. They really do.
Speaker 2: One of the great shows. What's the next hagfish? Yeah,
Speaker 2: mud dwellers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they basically look like eels, but they're fish. But
Speaker 4: the interesting thing about hagfish, aside from the fact that
Speaker 4: they don't have any eyes, is that they eat fish
Speaker 4: from the inside out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think you underplayed it when you said they basically
Speaker 2: look like eels. It looks like something out of Dune. Okay,
Speaker 2: like the body looks like an eel, But have you
Speaker 2: seen the front end of this thing?
Speaker 1: Sure? It's frightening. Oh yeah. And to think about that
Speaker 1: crawling up in you and eating it from the inside out.
Speaker 4: Right, Because if you're dead or dying fish and you're like,
Speaker 4: oh man, I hope I hurry up and die before
Speaker 4: hagfish finds me. Yeah, and a hagfish swims down your
Speaker 4: throat and then each you from the inside out. That's
Speaker 4: a bad day. That's not a good death.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 4: And then lastly, what about the sturgeon.
Speaker 1: I love the sturgeon.
Speaker 4: Did you know that they they are both fresh water
Speaker 4: and saltwater here in North America.
Speaker 2: I did not know that. But I know one thing
Speaker 2: is they're huge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they get up to like twenty feet long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I didn't I didn't see any pictures of
Speaker 2: in that big. But I've seen pictures of fishermen with
Speaker 2: like sturgeon that look like they're at least eight or
Speaker 2: nine feet long, right, and they're crazy looking.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, the reason I was surprised that they are largely
Speaker 4: North America is I always associate them with the Baltic area,
Speaker 4: where they they're The Beluga sturgeon is prized for its cavear.
Speaker 1: I always think of I think sturgeon.
Speaker 2: Well I didn't realize that that's where beluga came from either. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they have armor like skin and they're they're these
Speaker 2: retractable mouths that I guess there are different varieties, but
Speaker 2: some of them look almost like alligators from like the
Speaker 2: head forward.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're weird looking fish. Yeah, but they don't want
Speaker 4: to hurt anybody. They just want you to eat their eggs.
Speaker 4: Is that true?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like the giving tree of the lake. All right,
Speaker 1: up with sturgeon, you got anything else? I got nothing else.
Speaker 4: But if you want to know more about living fossils,
Speaker 4: like you know, sela, cants or us right, you can
Speaker 4: type those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 4: And since I said search bar, it's time for a
Speaker 4: listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this my mom married Bob doro. Oh.
Speaker 1: I like this one. You see that one, right?
Speaker 2: And I thought it was because that was the subject line, right,
Speaker 2: And then the very first line of the email was
Speaker 2: sorry about that attention grabbing subject line, right, And I
Speaker 2: thought it was a lie because a lot of times
Speaker 2: people say something remarkable in the subject line that is
Speaker 2: completely false, which always ticks me off.
Speaker 1: Sure, but this is true.
Speaker 2: My mom married the wonderful, talented and sweet Bob Doro
Speaker 2: twenty three years ago. And if you didn't listen to
Speaker 2: the show, Bob Dora was part of the genius behind
Speaker 2: Schoolhouse Rock.
Speaker 1: You know, the original genius.
Speaker 2: It was wonderful to hear you, too, speak so highly
Speaker 2: of him in your recent podcast. My own family listens
Speaker 2: to you guys a lot, so to hear you speak
Speaker 2: of our Bob with such reverence it warmed our hearts.
Speaker 2: When you mentioned early in your podcast that you wished
Speaker 2: you could have gotten Bob on the show, I wanted
Speaker 2: to jump through my phone to say I can make
Speaker 2: that happen. Bob learned about you guys about two weeks
Speaker 2: ago when we took a short road trip for Mother's
Speaker 2: Day and listened to the Grave Robbing episode. How awesome
Speaker 2: is that?
Speaker 4: I know the guy listened to us right before we
Speaker 4: released the Schoolhouse Rock episode. Yeah, so he was primed
Speaker 4: and ready to hear us mention it fortuitous.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He chuckled often during the ride, and when we got
Speaker 2: to our destination, he asked something to the effect of
Speaker 2: who are those comedy guys?
Speaker 1: They're good? Man. That made me feel good.
Speaker 2: And then to have the Schoolhouse Rock episode pop up
Speaker 2: a few weeks later.
Speaker 1: It was like, whoa.
Speaker 2: You guys were spot on in your characterization of Bob
Speaker 2: as a creative genius. A lot of his genius comes
Speaker 2: from his hard work. The age of ninety three, he
Speaker 2: is still traveling the world taking gigs.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: My mom often complains that he doesn't know how to
Speaker 2: say no. Thank you for giving Bob in Schoolhouse rockets
Speaker 2: proper due.
Speaker 1: Next time you.
Speaker 2: Come up the coast the northeast, that is, we'll be there,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure Bob won't say no. And that is
Speaker 2: from Pete, I guess his step son. Yeah, and Pete
Speaker 2: sending a picture of he and Bob and that's.
Speaker 1: Him in the flesh. It's pretty awesome, pretty neat, And you.
Speaker 2: Should go to www dot Bob doro ru gh dot
Speaker 2: com and just check it out.
Speaker 1: Ninety three and going strong, nice going, Bob.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening to us, and thank you Pete for
Speaker 4: writing in to let us know that we were spot
Speaker 4: on about what a great guy he is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were genuinely thrilled to hear this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you want a annuinely thrill us, you can
Speaker 4: send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.