Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: have you ever played dead? Have you ever played possum?
Speaker 1: As they say, Julie, Julie, snap at it? Not now,
Speaker 1: you're not dead? Oh okay, all right, no, yes, all
Speaker 1: the time? Yeah, yeah, just for fun. Okay, we'll take
Speaker 1: me through the average day of playing dad around the uh,
Speaker 1: the Julie household. Well, you know, you're just you're sitting there,
Speaker 1: you're talking to your spouse, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you just get the blank look. You slump over in
Speaker 1: your chair and you try to scare them. And you
Speaker 1: need to know that. One of the films that made
Speaker 1: the biggest impressions on me in my youth was Harold
Speaker 1: and Maud, in which the main character Harold played by
Speaker 1: Bud Court. Yes, he likes to stage the suicide tableaus.
Speaker 1: So my brother and I growing up, would would sort
Speaker 1: of do this around the household. Well that's I think
Speaker 1: that's a that's a good activity for kids. Nice, nice, morbid,
Speaker 1: A way to stend a rainy day. Afternoon. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if you're trying, if you're doing the whole like
Speaker 1: corpse being dragged away in a doorway so that all
Speaker 1: you can see is that legs, and you can kind
Speaker 1: of do this on your own. By the way, there's
Speaker 1: some tricks here. It's it's great fun for mom and dad. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't see Harold in Montill I was older,
Speaker 1: but I do remember watching a lot of Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 1: mysteries when I was really young, and they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're wonderful. Jeremy Brett was the Sherlock Holmes. I mean,
Speaker 1: Benedict cumber Box is great, but but Jeremy Brett was wonderful.
Speaker 1: So every episode, of course, would have some sort of
Speaker 1: murder of varying grizzliness. For the most part, one or
Speaker 1: two wouldn't have a murder. But but I never really
Speaker 1: got into acting amount, but perhaps I should have. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there is a great value in playing
Speaker 1: parts them. And I wanted to point out that this
Speaker 1: episode actually comes out the forty second anniversary of Harold
Speaker 1: and Maud, So talking about fanatosis today, this death mimicry
Speaker 1: that ties in pretty nicely with that yeah, So it
Speaker 1: begs the question, as humans, are there times when we
Speaker 1: should play dead, when we should just you know, lay
Speaker 1: there on the floor in a crumpled heap or in
Speaker 1: a nice, you know, stiff uh riga mortis type of
Speaker 1: position and just hope that whatever is after us will say, oh,
Speaker 1: well they're dead, better move on. Yeah. Sometimes actually, but
Speaker 1: sometimes not so much. Now, there are a couple of
Speaker 1: prime examples, uh situations that most of us don't encounter,
Speaker 1: where there's a there the myth is out there that
Speaker 1: you should play dead and that's the way you'll survive.
Speaker 1: The first of which we're going to discuss is the shark. Now,
Speaker 1: the shark is of course terrifying, whether you're dealing with
Speaker 1: a you know, a fairly unrealistic idea that a great
Speaker 1: white it's gonna get to at the beach, or you're
Speaker 1: dealing with a more realistic idea that some sort of
Speaker 1: smaller shark is gonna come after your your toes in
Speaker 1: the surf. Regardless, it's something to be fearful of. We
Speaker 1: don't want to be eaten. And so there's this idea
Speaker 1: out there, Hey, if you see a shark coming after you,
Speaker 1: just go limp in the water, play dead, and then
Speaker 1: they'll pass on. True or not true? Not true? Yes?
Speaker 1: And the reason here is, of course, ask yourself, why
Speaker 1: would the shark pass you by? Why would the sharks say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they're dead. I don't want to eat something that's dead.
Speaker 1: Have you met these guys? Have you met these sharks?
Speaker 1: If you watch Shark Week, you know that they're not
Speaker 1: going to turn their backs on on a potential meal
Speaker 1: just because it stopped moving. Yeah. Well, and Louis c.
Speaker 1: K has this great bit about how humans don't realize
Speaker 1: like what an upgrade in our existence it is to
Speaker 1: be out of the food chain, and he goes into
Speaker 1: the shark's perspective and says, hey, we don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of energy to spend here. We already have to
Speaker 1: swim around all the time. We need to go for
Speaker 1: the easy stuff. And that's why a lot of times
Speaker 1: they'll uh separate an infant from its mother in the
Speaker 1: water because that's an easy target. Not much energy expended
Speaker 1: to go after that. So if you're in the water
Speaker 1: and let's say shark is circling you, this is bad news, right.
Speaker 1: This is not the time to just sort of pretend
Speaker 1: like you're dead. This is the time to be like, wow,
Speaker 1: big energy, I'm a big problem. You are not gonna
Speaker 1: want to spend like of your energy reserve on me today, buddy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And think of the shark as a Hollywood producer. People
Speaker 1: are always saying, oh, why don't they go after some
Speaker 1: sort of an original idea that really takes us somewhere
Speaker 1: we haven't been before. Why don't they go for these
Speaker 1: remakes and this and the remake of a remake and
Speaker 1: another adaptation of this proven concept. That's because it's a
Speaker 1: proven concept, it's a it's an easy catch, and the
Speaker 1: economics of it are driving the decision. Same with the shark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can eat that that that person that's playing dead
Speaker 1: there with with little or no added effort, or I
Speaker 1: can get into some sort of struggle with this thing. Well.
Speaker 1: And the thing about the shark text is that most
Speaker 1: of them are hit and runs. And when I say
Speaker 1: hit and running, men more like hit and take a
Speaker 1: chunk out of you. And then they realize, oh, this
Speaker 1: is not a seal, or this is not something that
Speaker 1: I would normally eat, and normally they would retreat. But
Speaker 1: there there are those times when a shark would attack you,
Speaker 1: and that behavior is very obvious, as I said, the
Speaker 1: circling behavior. So put up a big fight, do not
Speaker 1: play possum. Yeah. Now, another area where we encounter this
Speaker 1: this notion that you should play dead is with bear encounters,
Speaker 1: and the bear is kind of the shark of the land,
Speaker 1: and that it is a creature that definitely outweighs us,
Speaker 1: outpowers us, and it can and does eat us from
Speaker 1: time to time. And you were you were talking to
Speaker 1: the other day, you were in the woods, and what
Speaker 1: were you thinking about. I was thinking, I don't want
Speaker 1: First of all, I'm glad that my daughter isn't with
Speaker 1: me right now while I'm taking this walk through the
Speaker 1: North Georgia Mountains and this trail, because you know, she
Speaker 1: would be the easy pray right and instinctually a bear
Speaker 1: or some other animal would know that. But then I
Speaker 1: started to think, oh, I can't remember. Do you know
Speaker 1: if a bear comes after me, do I act crazy
Speaker 1: and ridiculous and do I blow in a whistle that
Speaker 1: I don't have, or do I completely retreat and get quiet,
Speaker 1: punch in the nose, hunch in the nose, because you
Speaker 1: know I could do that. Um. But it turns out
Speaker 1: it depends on the type of bear. Yeah, and uh yeah.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of factors here. One of the
Speaker 1: big ones, of course, is does the bear have a
Speaker 1: natural fear of humans or has the bear been eating
Speaker 1: out of garbage cans that are that that park rangers
Speaker 1: have brought out. When I visited the Yosemite National Park
Speaker 1: um a couple of years back, then they went into
Speaker 1: the history of the park and there was a time
Speaker 1: when they would they would everyone would gather around and
Speaker 1: they would have dumps like garbage cans full of scraps
Speaker 1: from the from the from the from the kitchens, and
Speaker 1: they would beat on the cans and the bears would
Speaker 1: come out and they'd feed them. And they had a
Speaker 1: sign that said, do not fear, do not feed the
Speaker 1: bears by hand, by hand, by hand. But you know,
Speaker 1: I love that they put the by hand. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but if that happens, so you know, you hear this
Speaker 1: time and time again. You feed the bears, and the
Speaker 1: bears don't have a fear of humans, and then you
Speaker 1: just have closer proximity to this creature that may eat you.
Speaker 1: Pick anyway, and generally bears really don't want anything to
Speaker 1: do with you. But the Yellowstone National Park saw human
Speaker 1: bear conflict spike in two thousand and eight and two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten, and followed in two thousand eleven by
Speaker 1: its first fatal bear attack in twenty five years. So
Speaker 1: you see this violence linked to a bunch of factors
Speaker 1: habitat loss, human intrusion, food shortages, and climate change. That's
Speaker 1: a couple of examples. But generally, as we say, they
Speaker 1: don't want anything to do with you. But I always
Speaker 1: go back to Cheryl Strait, who wrote the book Wild.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you are familiar with this account
Speaker 1: of her. I think three month track through this Pacific
Speaker 1: Crest trail, which was crazy terrain, and she actually carried
Speaker 1: a very loud whistle for the purpose of bears because
Speaker 1: you know, she knew that that was a real possibility
Speaker 1: depending on the time of year she was in certain areas,
Speaker 1: about whether or not they would go after the food
Speaker 1: that she had or even herself. Yeah, the food is
Speaker 1: that is one of the big things, of course. So
Speaker 1: do you have food on you that's attracting the attention
Speaker 1: of the bear, And if you then encounter a bear
Speaker 1: while say carrying around a whole basket of sandwiches, you
Speaker 1: probably want to drop that basket of sandwich. Is better
Speaker 1: to let the bear have the sandwiches than than fight
Speaker 1: it away from you. Yeah. Now, if you encounter a
Speaker 1: brown bear, and this is according to Mother Nature Network,
Speaker 1: stand tall, stay calm, and slowly reach for your bear spray.
Speaker 1: You're going to have bear spray, right, I needed by
Speaker 1: some they say don't worry if the bear stands up,
Speaker 1: that usually just means that it's curious. And you would
Speaker 1: want to back away slowly if you could, with your
Speaker 1: spray at the ready, and if the bear follows you
Speaker 1: stop and stand your grunt. And now all of this
Speaker 1: sounds sort of terrifying to me. Just get in that
Speaker 1: one little and it's easy to say these things, but
Speaker 1: I'm trying to imagine myself in the woods and a
Speaker 1: bear either standing up or following me, and I think
Speaker 1: there would be a very good chance that I would
Speaker 1: just completely lose it, destroying, just make a break for
Speaker 1: it and run or be unable to run well. And
Speaker 1: I did read. I think it was the Yellowstone attack. Um,
Speaker 1: I might have the park wrong, but there were three
Speaker 1: people that were under bear attack and one of them
Speaker 1: was killed and the one that was killed was the
Speaker 1: one that went crazy and started screaming. One actually was
Speaker 1: gored a bit, but she played possum and she was fine.
Speaker 1: But that's basically what they're saying here. With a brown bear,
Speaker 1: if it charges you, you you know, fall down and you
Speaker 1: lace your fingers over the back of your neck, right
Speaker 1: because you want to protect that. Usually what they go
Speaker 1: for guard your stomach by lying flat on the ground
Speaker 1: or assuming a fetal position with nice tech on ger
Speaker 1: chin and don't move play possum. Because the thing is is, uh,
Speaker 1: they want to They're not really interested if you're looking
Speaker 1: like you're dead, and they don't want to play with
Speaker 1: you necessarily. But the thing is you have to play
Speaker 1: dead for at least twenty minutes because they will hang
Speaker 1: around and make sure that you're just as boring as
Speaker 1: you look. I know, twenty minutes, yeah, I mean just
Speaker 1: twenty minutes with a bear. It's hanging out, just gonna
Speaker 1: see if you stir and uh and then eat you
Speaker 1: perhaps if if you do, yes, yeah, and I mean
Speaker 1: anything I want to say. This really is the best tactic.
Speaker 1: But of course, if if that does not work, then
Speaker 1: you know, a big slam to the nose, to the
Speaker 1: eyes if they were, if you could even manage, that
Speaker 1: would be the last resort. Yeah, I mean, at that point,
Speaker 1: if it's you might as well go down with the fight. Right,
Speaker 1: You're gonna eat me, but I'm gonna make your nose
Speaker 1: a little sore for a few minutes. All right, So
Speaker 1: what else you got? What are the bears? All right?
Speaker 1: Black bears? Same principle. You know, you see a black bear,
Speaker 1: do not run away, but do stand tall. And in
Speaker 1: this case though, you're gonna want to create a big commotion.
Speaker 1: So if you have sticks, if you have a whistle.
Speaker 1: And again, this is why Cheryl straight Um when she
Speaker 1: was on the Pacific Cross Trail had her whistle, is
Speaker 1: because she wanted to just scare anything away and really
Speaker 1: let other animals know that she was around so she
Speaker 1: didn't accidentally come upon them and frighten them. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: that's always the thing I'm concerned about when I'm I'm
Speaker 1: walking around in the mountain here in Georgia. It's it's
Speaker 1: not that a bear will hunt me down, but I'll
Speaker 1: just suddenly round a corner and there'll be a bear
Speaker 1: and then we just kind of look at each other
Speaker 1: and the bear will be like you know, just shrug
Speaker 1: and say, well, I guess we got to do this,
Speaker 1: and then I get eaten. So yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 1: if it is a black bear, then you know you're
Speaker 1: gonna want to try to make as much commission as possible.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing is if it does attack you,
Speaker 1: the best thing to do is to actually try to
Speaker 1: fend off the black bear. Again according to Mother Nature Network,
Speaker 1: not according to Julie Douglas. If this happens and it fails,
Speaker 1: you miserably. Um. So, you know, the idea again is
Speaker 1: that with the black bear, that it's going to respond
Speaker 1: more to you actually fighting back. And perhaps it's more
Speaker 1: of the idea of, hey, this thing, this person is
Speaker 1: kind of a pain in the butt. Maybe I won't
Speaker 1: tangle with it all right. Of course, another big area
Speaker 1: of humans playing possum humans pretending to be dead, of course,
Speaker 1: is when humans are dealing with other humans. You see
Speaker 1: this more for the most part, you see it as
Speaker 1: a trope that shows up in TV shows, movies, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Somebody's in a generally in a war situation, and they're
Speaker 1: on the battlefield and they play dead and then they're
Speaker 1: passed over by the enemy troops. I mean, I ad
Speaker 1: meant say it's a troupe, but it also obviously it happens.
Speaker 1: It has happened, Uh, you know many many times in
Speaker 1: real battles as well, due to varying number of causes.
Speaker 1: You know, you could be intentionally saying, all right, there's
Speaker 1: no way i'm gonna find them out of this, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna hunker down. You might be partially incapacitated due to
Speaker 1: an injury, but you end up to varying degrees pretending
Speaker 1: to be out of the battle when you really are not. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about the mall shooting in Nairobi
Speaker 1: and one of the people who survived actually employed the
Speaker 1: possum method, which was, you know, she covered herself and
Speaker 1: and I believe blood and and uh actually kind of
Speaker 1: snuck in underneath someone else and pretended to be dead. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's horrific to think about. But this is I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly this is not the first instance, as you have
Speaker 1: pointed out that this has happened in human history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, one of my favorite examples of this as
Speaker 1: it shows up in fiction in a way that doesn't
Speaker 1: actually horrify us in a in a non entertaining manners
Speaker 1: of course, silence of the Lambs. Do you remember the
Speaker 1: the possum I'm thinking when it would a certain Dr
Speaker 1: Hannibal lecter um mald An individual. Yes, and then he
Speaker 1: took their skin off. Ye. And in the film especially
Speaker 1: fantastically um utilized and you just really had you on
Speaker 1: edge the whole time. There's an elevator involved. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean there's the element of deception, right, And that's the thing,
Speaker 1: it's the deception. And that is why it's interesting to
Speaker 1: note that in UH, in actual warfare and under various
Speaker 1: UH national, international UM laws of war, playing dead, especially
Speaker 1: if you're playing dead with the intention and to then
Speaker 1: kill somebody, is against international laws, against Geneva convention. I
Speaker 1: have a bit here just to put it in the
Speaker 1: perspective from the JAG book on the Law of Land War,
Speaker 1: and it is from section that deals with treachery and assassination.
Speaker 1: UH again to put it in context. That's the area
Speaker 1: where they discussed playing Possum says it is the essence
Speaker 1: of treachery that the offender assumes a false character by
Speaker 1: which he deceives his enemy and thereby is able to
Speaker 1: affect a hostile act which had he come under his
Speaker 1: true colors, he could not have done. It is treachery
Speaker 1: for a soldier to throw up his hands in surrender
Speaker 1: and then take up his rifle and shoot his captor.
Speaker 1: A soldier who pretends to be disabled or dead is
Speaker 1: guilty of treachery if he then uses his rifle. And
Speaker 1: the idea here too, is that if you get into
Speaker 1: a situation where enemy combatants are faking their death and
Speaker 1: then and then rising up and and and and attacking again,
Speaker 1: then it degrades the morals of the of the of
Speaker 1: the warfare scenario to the point where you just in
Speaker 1: of having possum squads going around just like shooting everybody
Speaker 1: in the head, uh and instead of you know, dealing
Speaker 1: with the with the potentially injured uh combatants. It's interesting
Speaker 1: too that there are these laws of morality and killing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you look at it this way, and it
Speaker 1: does seem like there is some sort of um attempt
Speaker 1: to structure it to make it less awful, but at
Speaker 1: the same time, it's still killing. And so it's just
Speaker 1: the interesting dichotomy. Yeah, we could probably go a whole
Speaker 1: episode just on this weird idea of the laws of
Speaker 1: war and how and what if into what extended has
Speaker 1: h been utilized sometimes? You know, because for instance, uh,
Speaker 1: the absence not the complete absence, but the largely the
Speaker 1: absence of chemical weapons during the Second World War very
Speaker 1: interesting anomaly following the horrific use in the First World War.
Speaker 1: And then of course we see these standardized rules of
Speaker 1: of uniform combatants. We see we see these ideals breaking
Speaker 1: down as we we enter into a stranger high tech
Speaker 1: but also gerrilla existence of warfare in the modern age. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about when we talked to Dr
Speaker 1: Alan Arkin over at Georgia Tech, and he was talking
Speaker 1: about how do you teach machines morality If they're going
Speaker 1: to be making these autonomous decisions about who would kill
Speaker 1: and who not to kill. It's very dicey territory even
Speaker 1: as a human. Can you imagine trying to instill this
Speaker 1: in a machine. Yeah, I mean, because it would make
Speaker 1: more sense to instill it in a machine if it
Speaker 1: was fighting, say, you know, the Revolutionary War or some
Speaker 1: sort of you know, very structured, old fashioned land war.
Speaker 1: But it makes increasingly complex as we advanced, and we've
Speaker 1: seen this with drones to drone strikes and anyway we
Speaker 1: were way off path, he aren't we Yeah, because we're
Speaker 1: in this episode, we're talking about playing dead. We're talking
Speaker 1: about a little something that is often referred to under
Speaker 1: two terms, and we're gonna discuss these terms a bit.
Speaker 1: Tonic immobility and fanatosis. Yes, and they are confused quite
Speaker 1: a bit in terms of how you define them and
Speaker 1: when to use them. Uh tonic immobility. In my head,
Speaker 1: I tried to fix this as more a reflex in animals.
Speaker 1: So um one definition would be in natural state of
Speaker 1: paralysis that animals enter in most cases when presented with
Speaker 1: a threat. Yes, something's trying to eat me. Ha ha ha,
Speaker 1: I can't move, whereas fanatosis would be more like, there's
Speaker 1: a creature in my midst's gonna try and eat me.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be real still, I'm gonna lock things down,
Speaker 1: and then after he's not making any more noise, I'm
Speaker 1: going to move off. Very deliberate, right and adaptive to
Speaker 1: So I guess that's how you could tell the distinction
Speaker 1: between the two. I did want to mention that fanatosis
Speaker 1: in Greek mythology is the personification of death, and the
Speaker 1: Greek poet Hesiod established that thanatosis is a son of
Speaker 1: Nick's night in Arabos darkness and the twin of hypnos sleep,
Speaker 1: hence the beautiful term. What is interesting you mentioned hypnos
Speaker 1: because this scenario, this fanatosis tonic immobility, has been known
Speaker 1: by a number of different terms, including including death, seeing immobility,
Speaker 1: reflex contact, defense, immobility, writing time, catatonia, playing possum, playing dead,
Speaker 1: and animal hypnosis, which just now, I'm just thinking about
Speaker 1: a possum with like a watch in front of it.
Speaker 1: You're going back and forth. Do not let them. I
Speaker 1: do not trust a possum to hypnotize me. That's no good.
Speaker 1: So we see this in a huge variety of animals.
Speaker 1: You see an insects, decapod, spiders, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds,
Speaker 1: various mammals, um And that's why why the terminology can
Speaker 1: get a bit confusing. We've discussed enough about just the
Speaker 1: human scenario. What do we choose to do in our lives?
Speaker 1: What do we deliberately do from our lives? And what
Speaker 1: extent is it instinct kicking in when you start making
Speaker 1: a judgment call on whether this animal is deciding to
Speaker 1: do something or it's a reflex there can be a
Speaker 1: certain amount of gray area, especially if you're talking about
Speaker 1: simpler organisms. Yeah, and this is interesting. Artificial select and
Speaker 1: experience have shown that there is a heritable variation for
Speaker 1: a length of death feigning and beetles. So again that
Speaker 1: tells us that that might be adaptive and those selected
Speaker 1: for longer death feigning durations are at a selective advantage
Speaker 1: to those at a short for shorter durations when a
Speaker 1: predator is introduced, So again the idea that it's adaptive
Speaker 1: among that species. Now you mentioned the beetles that it's
Speaker 1: interesting that the theory is that a number of insects
Speaker 1: to do this, they lock up, they go stiff, because
Speaker 1: a lot of the animals that they're the predators that
Speaker 1: are dealing with, would be there to eat them whole
Speaker 1: without any chewing. And if and if you're if you
Speaker 1: straighten yourself out and you just go completely into a
Speaker 1: star shape legs akimbo, then than that that swallower may
Speaker 1: not be able to get you down. Huh. I was
Speaker 1: just thinking about my cousin who's in the military, and
Speaker 1: one of the things that he had to do is
Speaker 1: he was dropped in the middle of nowhere and he
Speaker 1: had to eat or a live rabbit, because that was
Speaker 1: the only thing that he could not a live rabbit.
Speaker 1: I should say that it was just one of the
Speaker 1: few sources of protein that he could find out there
Speaker 1: in the wild. And what he had to do is
Speaker 1: he actually had to pet it and before he killed
Speaker 1: it and split its throat, because otherwise, if it had
Speaker 1: had any sort of fear, it would have frozen up,
Speaker 1: and then he couldn't have It would have made the
Speaker 1: meat youing very hard to do. So it just made
Speaker 1: me think about that and the beetle and freezing up
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, I'm not all that great to eat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how are you gonna get me down? I'm just all
Speaker 1: stiff and awful. Yeah, too bad that rabbit couldn't have
Speaker 1: exercise a little fanatosis. But of course, with most vertebrates,
Speaker 1: um fanatosis is generally best explained under the hypothesis that
Speaker 1: it has to do with losing the predator's interest saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm just this dead, awful thing. You don't want to
Speaker 1: eat me. I smell horrible. You want fresh meat, You
Speaker 1: want to fresh kill. You don't want something that's been
Speaker 1: just been here in a puddle of its own rotting
Speaker 1: awfulness for you know, however, how long has passed well?
Speaker 1: And I think the i iconic example here is the opossum,
Speaker 1: in particular the Virginia opossum Didelphis Virginia. And this is
Speaker 1: according to Natalie Angier, writing from New York Times. She
Speaker 1: says that when faced with a predator, it falls to
Speaker 1: its side with its mouth a gape, and excretes droppings
Speaker 1: in a foul or odor and remains in a deathlike
Speaker 1: state of curled catatonia for minutes to hours until it
Speaker 1: finally revives, beginning with a twitch of the years. And
Speaker 1: that's that's great, right for an opossum. Yeah, just completely.
Speaker 1: This puts on the ruse of death pooping itself, emitting
Speaker 1: foul odors. And it already looks pretty foul. I mean,
Speaker 1: all fairness to the to the bossom, but it's a
Speaker 1: it's a pretty foul looking creature to begin with. The
Speaker 1: problem is when it mistakes a car, let's say, an
Speaker 1: oncoming car for a predator and employs the fanatosis and
Speaker 1: then becomes roadkill. Yeah, now that that's unfortunate, but of
Speaker 1: course that's really on us, not really on them. Road
Speaker 1: screw up the whole scenario for wildlife. Now, it is
Speaker 1: worth noting with the with the possum, uh that even
Speaker 1: though it appears to be in a canatonic state, it's
Speaker 1: metabolic processes are as high as when the animal is
Speaker 1: fully alert. So in this we see the possum as
Speaker 1: another example this kind of gray area between the idea
Speaker 1: of tonic about immobility is a completely non voluntary reflex
Speaker 1: and then the idea of fanatosis as a conscious ruse. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's still an open question, okay. And that's the interesting
Speaker 1: thing about tonic immobility and sharks, because there is this
Speaker 1: idea that it is involuntary and that they're taking basically
Speaker 1: there um their vitals down to the studs. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: shark thing is really interesting, especially when you're looking at
Speaker 1: great white sharks, which we already talked about earlier. This
Speaker 1: is a this is an apex predator. This is a
Speaker 1: big deal. So why in the world what a creature
Speaker 1: like this um roll over and play dead when attacked
Speaker 1: by an orca? Well here's the Okay, we'll get to
Speaker 1: the But there is this idea that t I is
Speaker 1: a defense mechanism that just is reflexive because they see
Speaker 1: it more sense sensitive levels of it in female Great whites,
Speaker 1: and female Great whites might do this to avoid mating. UM.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing about it is that you can induce
Speaker 1: it by touching certain areas of the great whites body,
Speaker 1: specifically the nose area. And it's thought that UM, it's
Speaker 1: this animal's sense of motor interchange with the environment that
Speaker 1: causes a limp response in the animal displays relaxation in
Speaker 1: muscle tone and deep rhythmic respiration. Again, taking those vittals
Speaker 1: down to the studs, and sharks can enter into t
Speaker 1: I into less than a minute, and if left alone
Speaker 1: in tonic immobility, they can remain in that state for
Speaker 1: up to fifteen minutes before eventually righting themselves. So animal
Speaker 1: trainers will sometimes use this and they'll place their hands
Speaker 1: lightly on the side of animal snout or it's eyes.
Speaker 1: That's because there's something called ampuli of loren Zini and
Speaker 1: these are special jelly filled sensory organs and they're extremely
Speaker 1: sensitive and this enables a short to detect even the
Speaker 1: faintest of changes in the electrical fields. And so there's
Speaker 1: this idea that the animal is saying something very weird.
Speaker 1: Is going on in my electromagnetic field. Let's turn off
Speaker 1: the lights. So the idea here is that tonic and
Speaker 1: mobility may present itself in sharks as a way to
Speaker 1: help with the mating well or avoid the mating, or
Speaker 1: avoid a predator. Although as you say, it's odd because
Speaker 1: they are apex. Yeah, well, why would they have that
Speaker 1: in their in their DNA unless it's you know, hold
Speaker 1: over from from the past. Right. And the really interesting
Speaker 1: thing about this is that the orca, the killer whill,
Speaker 1: is hip to this. Yeah, it's a highly intelligent animal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it says, oh really, so you guys do that every
Speaker 1: once in a while, you know. The ideas that they
Speaker 1: have observed this behavior in great white Yeah, they say, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a there's more or less a button on your
Speaker 1: face and if I push it, you go limp. Don't
Speaker 1: mind if I do. And uh, And there have been
Speaker 1: uh we've seen this several times and the waters of
Speaker 1: the fair Lone Islands, the female oracle was observed to
Speaker 1: hold a white shark upside down for fifteen minutes, uh,
Speaker 1: effectively causing it to suffocate. And there's actually a whole
Speaker 1: documentary titled The Whale that eight Jaws that that dives
Speaker 1: into this uh this, this topic of shark knic and
Speaker 1: mobility in a deeper way. Yeah. The idea is that
Speaker 1: it basically goes in really hard and slams into that shark,
Speaker 1: into the great white and then stums it. And then
Speaker 1: once they do that, then they can go and they
Speaker 1: can hit that mark on their face and flip it
Speaker 1: over and essentially suffocate it. And they've actually seen the
Speaker 1: Oorcas do this in pods with sting rays as well,
Speaker 1: and you can see video of this is very intentional
Speaker 1: with the sting rays where they take them, they actually
Speaker 1: go in upside down so that they can slip the
Speaker 1: stingray and render it immobile. All Right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break and when we come back, more santatosis,
Speaker 1: more tonic and mobility and ducks, and we're back. Is
Speaker 1: that really the plot line for that book? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: right off of audible. Okay, so look for that plot
Speaker 1: line in the next season to True Blood. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know exactly what I'm gonna look up right after the
Speaker 1: podcast here, alright, let's talk about n got eight tracks.
Speaker 1: We've got all sorts of great uh BG songs playing
Speaker 1: in the background, and we have a bunch of researchers
Speaker 1: with about fifty ducks and some foxes. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: study published under the title death Feeding by Ducks in
Speaker 1: response to Predation by red foxes um as in not
Speaker 1: as in the comedian, but is in actual red foxes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this appeared in American Midland Naturalists. So yeah, they
Speaker 1: took about fifth year so ducks and they let the
Speaker 1: fox have at them. Now, if you're familiar with foxes
Speaker 1: at all, you know that they keep to themselves. They're
Speaker 1: they're they're they're rarely seeing. Really, they're they're sly creatures.
Speaker 1: And if one gets into a chicken coop, what happens, Well,
Speaker 1: they go after them. Well, and they kill all the chickens.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that like the idea of the foxes.
Speaker 1: The fox is not going to go in and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I will have a chicken today and maybe i'll be
Speaker 1: back for chicken tomorrow. No, the fox is gonna say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna take all these chickens and I can
Speaker 1: hide some away for later. So that's pretty much what
Speaker 1: happens when the when the foxes get at the ducks, Uh,
Speaker 1: they just start they start going after him. And what
Speaker 1: did the ducks do in retaliation? Well, they play possum.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting about this, besides the fact that the
Speaker 1: researchers just tossed these fifty ducks into the cages of
Speaker 1: these red foxes, again, it's nineteen five at this point. Um,
Speaker 1: what's interesting about this in that in sixty of those trials,
Speaker 1: the foxes quit their attacks when the ducks look to
Speaker 1: be immobile or dead. Yeah, and apparently it was the
Speaker 1: especially with the inexperienced foxes. They were like, whoa, what happened?
Speaker 1: This duck was alive and thriving, and then that came
Speaker 1: after and then went dead. Am I still supposed to
Speaker 1: eat it? I don't know. The experienced foxes, those are
Speaker 1: the ones who who were not fooled by this at all.
Speaker 1: They're like, all right, go ahead, play dad, makes it
Speaker 1: easier for me. Well, and that's the interesting thing about
Speaker 1: that attack with the great white is that when you
Speaker 1: look at the documentary for it, what they say is
Speaker 1: that that great white was inexperience. It should not have
Speaker 1: been hanging around a pod of white orcas um. And
Speaker 1: so that's why it's rare. You don't see that happening
Speaker 1: very often, you know, Orca going after great white. But
Speaker 1: experience of as always plays into whether or not, you know,
Speaker 1: organism is going to survive. Now, the death faints and
Speaker 1: these ducks lasted anyone from twenty seconds to fourteen minutes,
Speaker 1: with the recovery delayed by tactile visual or sound cues
Speaker 1: from the foxes. So as the fox still touching me?
Speaker 1: Do I hear it? Do it? Can I maybe see
Speaker 1: the fox? Um? And twenty nine of the fifty ducks
Speaker 1: survived the initial capture and handling. Uh. You know, then
Speaker 1: you know, maybe mouth you're killed or store and stored
Speaker 1: away later. But the idea here is that tonic and
Speaker 1: mobility fantatosis in this in this case with the ducks,
Speaker 1: allowed them at least the potential of escaping later. And uh,
Speaker 1: and you know, ultimately that's that's what matters. So you're
Speaker 1: about to be eaten by a fox? What are you
Speaker 1: gonna What are you gonna do? What makes more sense?
Speaker 1: What from an evolutionary standpoint like a which is the
Speaker 1: higher percentage of rate of possible survival? De Yeah, obviously
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna get some things in your neck unless
Speaker 1: you use deception right. Yeah, So in this we see
Speaker 1: highly adapted behavior makes a possible the duck to potentially
Speaker 1: escape that foxy death. But the foxes have rolled with
Speaker 1: the punches. They're smart to this, their hip to it.
Speaker 1: So in many cases they're learning to kill some of
Speaker 1: the ducks after capture. And they're also adapting appendage severing
Speaker 1: behavior so that they can at least hobble their their
Speaker 1: meals once they take them way. All right, So next
Speaker 1: we should talk about the nursery web spider. And we
Speaker 1: have talked about sexual cannibalism in spiders, particularly when they
Speaker 1: are mating, because we find that sometimes when the female
Speaker 1: is mating with a male, particularly with the orb spiders. Right, Uh,
Speaker 1: not only will they say okay, hey we're mating, but
Speaker 1: the female might just chomp off your head and say
Speaker 1: I was hungry. By the way, so thanks for bringing
Speaker 1: yourself over here. So, if you are a male spider
Speaker 1: approaching potential mate, and this is from Map of Life
Speaker 1: Convergent Evolution online, it says, uh, the mood of that
Speaker 1: potential mate may swear from uh amatory to predatory, and
Speaker 1: sexual cannibalism is a constant risk. If you are a
Speaker 1: male spider, so what do you do, Well, it helps
Speaker 1: bring a gift. It's true. Yes, the male nursery web
Speaker 1: spiders will bring a silk wrapped gift to their potential mates.
Speaker 1: And they're basically two kinds of gifts, well, aren't there always?
Speaker 1: They're good gifts and they're bad gifts. And in the
Speaker 1: spider economy of things, that means there are edible gifts
Speaker 1: and they are inedible gifts. A good edible gift we
Speaker 1: might be, you know, insect parts, the head of a
Speaker 1: tasty insect, a little gut action wrapped up in that,
Speaker 1: in that the little cocoon. But then a bad gift
Speaker 1: and inedible gift might be seeds which the spiders have
Speaker 1: no interest in or at worst of all, this is
Speaker 1: particularly hilarious, an empty exoskeleton of an insect that the
Speaker 1: male spider himself consumed. That's that's It's like bringing an
Speaker 1: empty box of Valentine's chocolates to your beloved and saying,
Speaker 1: here you go, oh, by the way, I ate all
Speaker 1: the chocolates in the box. So what happens when she
Speaker 1: unwraps that and finds that her nice little protein source
Speaker 1: is not there, that it was a ruse? Well, you
Speaker 1: have to have something in your back pocket here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, guys, we've all been there. This is
Speaker 1: you know, you know how it goes you. You present,
Speaker 1: you know, a potential girlfriend with a gift you didn't
Speaker 1: have time to stop off at the store. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's not a great gift. They don't like it. So
Speaker 1: what do you do? You fake your own death and
Speaker 1: you try again tomorrow after you're out again with a
Speaker 1: different gift, maybe even a better one. Because that's essentially
Speaker 1: what the spider does if the Spider present. Because because
Speaker 1: if you don't have a gift in the in the
Speaker 1: nursery Web Spider world, you can still made, but your
Speaker 1: chances of making a significantly less if you if you
Speaker 1: don't have the gift, and then if you have the gift,
Speaker 1: your chances are significantly higher. A prolonged mating is that
Speaker 1: is a tasty, edible gift. So if things are going
Speaker 1: south with your gift exchange of it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: it's gonna work. You do you faint? You say oh
Speaker 1: I'm dad, You pull a hornburger, fake your own death
Speaker 1: and maybe you'll get to do it tomorrow. Nice thirty
Speaker 1: rock reference. So the thing is too, is that if
Speaker 1: you fake it, if you're fainting there, you're still copulating. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're just looking like you're copulating, slumping over, I suppose, um.
Speaker 1: And so what this does is it increases the length
Speaker 1: of compulation. It might also save your life. So at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, though, it is an adaptive
Speaker 1: male mating strategy as well. Yeah, I mean you could
Speaker 1: imagine a similar thing working with humans where the female
Speaker 1: says we're done, and the male says, oh, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I just died, or you know, just snoring. Dr Sarah
Speaker 1: the Octave she wrote a great little article called Playing Possum,
Speaker 1: and she talks about the hog no snake in this instance,
Speaker 1: and she says that it rolls onto its back and
Speaker 1: appears to be dead when threatened by predator. And this
Speaker 1: is great. A foul smelling volatile fluid oozes from its body.
Speaker 1: I wish I could do this um. Predators like cats
Speaker 1: would then lose interest because it smells dead and it
Speaker 1: looks dead, right, And one of the reasons why it
Speaker 1: would lose interest, why when you start poking around, is
Speaker 1: that that rotten smell might be you know, as we've
Speaker 1: talked about this in nature, big, hey, watch out, there
Speaker 1: could be an infectious disease going on here. Usually that's
Speaker 1: what we know sort of discussed that we feel is
Speaker 1: an innate response against infection or disease. So that's why
Speaker 1: it works so well in the Hog No Snake because
Speaker 1: when we talk about vultures in that episode, we did
Speaker 1: a whole episode on on buzzards and vultures a while back.
Speaker 1: We really got into how souped up that organism has
Speaker 1: to be to handle a lifestyle of eating dead animals
Speaker 1: because they basically have to be disease proof to a
Speaker 1: certain extent. So obviously animals that have adapted their entire
Speaker 1: existence to eating fresh kills are not going to go
Speaker 1: that rope exactly. So if the cat can't throw up
Speaker 1: on it and have a high pH you know, of
Speaker 1: acidity in its stomach, then it's probably not going to
Speaker 1: consume that snake, right, all right? So who else does it? Well?
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, young fire ant workers under attack from neighboring
Speaker 1: ant colonies. Uh. This this is really interesting because it's
Speaker 1: not the whole colony playing dead, but just the the young,
Speaker 1: the young ones, the young members of the of the colony.
Speaker 1: So the thing is they can't really contribute much to
Speaker 1: the defense of the colony because their mandibles and stingers
Speaker 1: are not sufficiently hardened to penetrate the external skeletons of
Speaker 1: the aggressors, so they're far more valuable. The argument is
Speaker 1: in the clean up and rebuilding phase after the attack.
Speaker 1: So when the when the enemy troops roll in, they
Speaker 1: just lay dead and they're not getting up and using
Speaker 1: it as a ruse to then attack. But they're The
Speaker 1: idea is that they can't really contribute to the defense anyway.
Speaker 1: Their best use is rebuilding afterwards, which is brilliant. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But we have another example. Oh yes, and this one's
Speaker 1: really cool because it's a particular fish, the sleeper chichwood,
Speaker 1: also known as the Livington stoney um. It's named after
Speaker 1: Dr David Livingston, the famous explorer. Dr Livingston I presenting,
Speaker 1: uh you'll find uh find these guys freshwater Africa. Widespread
Speaker 1: in Lake Malai, Upper Shire River and Lake Malombie. They
Speaker 1: live in soft muddy bottoms and their solitary. They have
Speaker 1: this really modeled kind of corpse light color and they
Speaker 1: have they've they've been observed to do to pull this uh,
Speaker 1: this ruse where they mimic a dead fish, you know,
Speaker 1: on their side toward the bottom, and then when small
Speaker 1: fish move in to get a bite to scavenge, then
Speaker 1: they wake up and eat themselves, some all scavenger fish.
Speaker 1: So they're they're completely ignoring the Geneva Convention law. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: these guys are definitely just throwing any kind of moral
Speaker 1: military law to the wind. But but it's interesting because
Speaker 1: it stands out as a as a really interesting example
Speaker 1: of an animal playing dead, uh for predatory purposes and
Speaker 1: not defensive purposes. And you know, again, I will go
Speaker 1: back to Louis c. K's bit about this whole thing
Speaker 1: about humans being you know, the apex species and not
Speaker 1: and getting out of the food chain and not having
Speaker 1: to worry about this stuff. And and he's saying, and
Speaker 1: I believe the show is called Oh my God. He says,
Speaker 1: you know, we really take it for granted that sometimes
Speaker 1: we get to die in bed with our loved ones
Speaker 1: around us, while all the other species, for the most part,
Speaker 1: you know, they've got a pair of fangs in their
Speaker 1: neck and they're there. You know, that's how they meet
Speaker 1: their end. So you know, you you think about something
Speaker 1: like playing possum or tonic and mobilit or fanatists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course they would do that. But no, yes, of
Speaker 1: course you would do that if you were in the
Speaker 1: food chain. Yeah. I mean, I can imagine having this
Speaker 1: conversation with my cat, who is now an indoor cat
Speaker 1: ever since she ran away a few years back and
Speaker 1: she's too old to live out there on her own.
Speaker 1: But we'll have this conversation where she says, I would
Speaker 1: like to go outside now, and I say, you can't
Speaker 1: go outside. If you go outside, you're going to die.
Speaker 1: You're gonna get run over, one of the young feral
Speaker 1: cats is gonna kill you. A dog is gonna get you.
Speaker 1: And her answer would be, well, that's how it goes.
Speaker 1: That's how you die. That's what dying is about. Eventually
Speaker 1: something eats you or crushes you, uh in some way,
Speaker 1: shape or form. This idea of dying quietly and peacefully
Speaker 1: on your own terms, uh, in the house, that's more
Speaker 1: of a human thing. Yeah, And she's like, if the
Speaker 1: coyote gets me gets me, Yeah, that's part of the thrill.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. Playing Bed for Survival an introduction,
Speaker 1: we ran through some interesting examples, and I do want
Speaker 1: to point out that I was inspired to pursue this
Speaker 1: topic after meeting a possum with my son at Aware
Speaker 1: Wildlife Center in the Atlanta area. If you want to
Speaker 1: look them up, go to Aware one dot org. They're
Speaker 1: a federally recognized tax exempt nonprofit organization of volunteers working
Speaker 1: to preserve and restore wildlife and its habitat through education
Speaker 1: and wildhigh life rehabilitation. So people find like an owl
Speaker 1: that's been injured, they bring it in. They find other
Speaker 1: wild animals that have that that have been injured or abandoned,
Speaker 1: they bring them in and UH and then if possible,
Speaker 1: they re release them and you and they depend on
Speaker 1: donations from supporters. UH. Just to give you an example
Speaker 1: of how where the money goes, Like ninety three dollars
Speaker 1: that'll rehabilitate a fox, hundred thirteen dollars will get a hawk,
Speaker 1: forty dollars a possum. They're a little cheaper eighty six
Speaker 1: dollars for an owl, twenty dollars for a rabbit, six
Speaker 1: dollars for a songbird, fifty one dollars for a squirrel.
Speaker 1: UH And the the average costs thou to real rehabilitate
Speaker 1: an animal is seventy five dollars. So anyway, a where
Speaker 1: one dot org and they're a really good organization in
Speaker 1: the Atlanta area, So especially for our Atlanta area listeners.
Speaker 1: If you care about wildlife and those possums wandering out
Speaker 1: on the road, check them out. Indeed, and possum comes
Speaker 1: a calling at your backdooring that you left some garbage out.
Speaker 1: Don't answer that call. Do not answer to call it
Speaker 1: the possum. Hey. And if you want to check out
Speaker 1: more of our stuff, go to stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's our mothership. That's where all the
Speaker 1: podcast episodes are, all the blog posts, all the videos.
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Speaker 1: the good old email? Oh yeah, you can send it
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