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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 2: name is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 2: And as we continue our Halloween seasonal offerings, we have

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Speaker 2: to ask ourselves a question, is there anything more suitably

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Speaker 2: creepy than a vast collection of bones? I have a

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Speaker 2: feeling that a number of you, like us, have found yourself,

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Speaker 2: especially this month, this month, more than like any past Halloween,

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Speaker 2: have found yourself wandering through your neighborhood and neighborhood yards

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Speaker 2: are just littered with plastic bones. Like every year, the

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Speaker 2: skeleton decorations just get more and more intense, more gigantic.

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Speaker 2: Some of these yards are just littered with plastic bones.

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Speaker 3: I can't remember if I've already mentioned it this year,

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Speaker 3: but my daughter, who is very Halloween brained at this moment,

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Speaker 3: is also especially skeleton brained, which she calls selkins selkin brain.

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Speaker 3: So we have to go around the neighborhood to buy

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Speaker 3: a request to see particular skeletons in particular yards. There

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Speaker 3: are some that are better than others. There are scary selkins,

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Speaker 3: there are cute selkans. There are beautiful selkins. There's a

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Speaker 3: whole taxonomy, and I don't know exactly what the criteria are,

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Speaker 3: but she does. And it's clear that while a subset

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Speaker 3: are considered scary, some are not scary at all. Some

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Speaker 3: some are just beautiful things to admire. There. You know,

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Speaker 3: it's like people are putting Christmas lights up.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it is fascinating how the symbol of

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Speaker 2: the skull, of the skeleton of bones, or the skull

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Speaker 2: and bones. You know, at a very basic level, it

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Speaker 2: always means death, but there are so many different tweaks

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Speaker 2: on that, and so culturally pop culturally, skulls and bones

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Speaker 2: can be very empowering. They can be very life affirming,

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Speaker 2: They can be fun, they can be hilarious, even if

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Speaker 2: there is like a very like basic message about mortality

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Speaker 2: at the bottom of everything.

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Speaker 3: Have we ever talked before about the what I take

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Speaker 3: to be implied humor in all of these anatomically incorrect

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Speaker 3: skeletons that proliferate different kinds of animal, skeletons of animals

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Speaker 3: that don't actually have internal skeletons, like you know, an

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Speaker 3: octopus skeleton or a.

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Speaker 2: Skeleton the most ridiculous. But I've also seen some like

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Speaker 2: there's one of an owl where the owl has its ears,

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Speaker 2: so you need to tell by its profile that it's

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Speaker 2: an owl skeleton.

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Speaker 3: There are dogs around our neighborhood that have cute, like

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Speaker 3: fluffy dog ears in bone dog skeletons with the ears

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Speaker 3: are phone ears, and I think that's because, Yeah, you

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Speaker 3: wouldn't know it was a dog necessarily if it didn't

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Speaker 3: have the ears.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, cat looks solid, though. We have a fake cat

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Speaker 2: skeleton on our porch and I'm not sure it's one

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Speaker 2: hundred percent anatomically correct, but I don't think it has

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Speaker 2: any fake ears, but maybe it does. I'm going to

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Speaker 2: check after a record and see if I've been duped.

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Speaker 3: The fact that we have to put these non bone

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Speaker 3: things onto skeletons to make them recognizable as the animals

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Speaker 3: we know in life gives you real perspective on paleo

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Speaker 3: art and reconstructions of dinosaurs and stuff like. You know,

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Speaker 3: you have to realize how much soft tissue there is,

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Speaker 3: and that there is some guesswork involved in reconstructing the

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Speaker 3: body of an extinct animal when all you've got is

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Speaker 3: an imprint or fossil of the hard parts. I mean,

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Speaker 3: in some cases we actually do know, because you know,

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Speaker 3: there are clues that you can get through fossil evidence

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Speaker 3: of what the soft tissue parts may have been, but

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Speaker 3: not in every case.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, later on in this episode, we'll be talking a creature,

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Speaker 2: a prehistoric creature. And I was looking around to see

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Speaker 2: if there was a nice bit of paleo art to

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Speaker 2: throw into our outline, just for you and me to

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Speaker 2: look at. And you know, I just wasn't. I wasn't

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Speaker 2: taken by any out so I just included a picture

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Speaker 2: of the skull. And it's like, the skull is the

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Speaker 2: hard data in this case. Anyway, the skull, I think

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Speaker 2: really illustrates a lot of what we'll be discussing regarding

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Speaker 2: the creature.

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Speaker 3: But clearly skulls and bones are a big part of

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Speaker 3: the imagery of modern horror. In fact, we're going to

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Speaker 3: be talking about a weird house cinema movie this week

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Speaker 3: that has a great bone body reveal. It's got a

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Speaker 3: lady with a fleshy head and at one point they

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Speaker 3: pull the cloak back and you see her her body

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Speaker 3: is just bones, yes, or it's not just bones. I

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Speaker 3: don't know. It's bones and some gungk.

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Speaker 2: But mostly bones.

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Speaker 3: Yes, bones, bones are revealed at least Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there are so many great examples from especially from

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Speaker 2: horror cinema and horror media that I think we can

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Speaker 2: turn to where bones is especially big. Heaps of bones.

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Speaker 2: Collections of bones are very very important, and they can

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Speaker 2: read in different ways. So I thought we might run

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Speaker 2: through just a few examples before we get into the

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Speaker 2: meat of our episode here. But you know, speaking of meat,

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Speaker 2: I think one of the great ones is, of course,

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Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four is the Texas chainsaw Massacre, where we

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Speaker 2: have our characters, you know, slowly approaching the saw your

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Speaker 2: home and as they begin to you know, creep every

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Speaker 2: closer to the house in that ominous generator that's that's running,

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Speaker 2: we begin to see like little bone trinkets hanging from limbs,

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Speaker 2: and then when we get into the house itself, there's

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Speaker 2: also like more things made out of bones.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, the saw your household is not wasteful. They don't

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Speaker 3: like to throw things out, you know, they make use

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Speaker 3: of what they got.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. In other cases, we you know, we have

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Speaker 2: plenty of examples of essentially a monster's layer where there

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Speaker 2: are a lot of bones. One great example that I've

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Speaker 2: always I've always liked back from my days when I

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Speaker 2: think read the story for the first time in junior.

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Speaker 2: High would be the nineteen seventy Stephen King short story

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Speaker 2: Graveyard Shift, as well as the nineteen ninety film adaptation

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Speaker 2: that I quite like. There's eventually you end up in

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Speaker 2: a vast subterranean chamber. It's just filled with human and

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Speaker 2: animal bones.

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Speaker 3: Is that the one is about like a giant rat

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Speaker 3: or bat.

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Speaker 2: Ultimately there is a giant rat or bat, and then

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Speaker 2: just a lot of rats.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, it's funny. These first two examples

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Speaker 3: you mentioned highlight what I would say are the main

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Speaker 3: two genres of bone collections in horror. One, exemplified by

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Speaker 3: the Texas Chainsaw massacre, is the intentionally curated bone collection,

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Speaker 3: often where artifacts have been fashioned out of bone, or

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Speaker 3: where bones are placed in a particular arrangement. And then

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Speaker 3: the other is the midden or the pile of bones,

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Speaker 3: where bones are just accumulating haphazardly, And they both suggest horror,

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Speaker 3: but in very different ways. One is a kind of

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Speaker 3: chaotic biological horror that just suggests a kind of like

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Speaker 3: some animal is just like eating the flesh and stripping

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Speaker 3: the bones and here's where the bones end up, whereas

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Speaker 3: the former suggests a creepy fascination that suggests aberrant behavior

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Speaker 3: and obsession.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is a good distinction to make. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: there's certainly if there's a collection of bones somewhere and

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Speaker 2: there's some sort of intelligence behind it, it's not necessarily

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Speaker 2: an intelligence we want to interact with. You know, it

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Speaker 2: falls under the heading of like trophy taking, and you know,

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Speaker 2: we're not really going to go in that direction probably

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Speaker 2: with these episodes. But I think there are plenty of

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Speaker 2: examples of that to point too in human history. But

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Speaker 2: then the other example being like whoa, here's a place

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Speaker 2: where there are a bunch of bones. A bunch of

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Speaker 2: bones means a lot of death. Maybe a lot of

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Speaker 2: death happened at once, maybe a lot of death has

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Speaker 2: taken place over time. But you know, obviously humans and

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Speaker 2: are myth making and our supernatural thinking, those places can

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Speaker 2: often be interpreted as places of bad vibes, places that

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Speaker 2: might be haunted, cursed, or you know, in some manner

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Speaker 2: given supernatural weight, they can also be rather holy places

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Speaker 2: in their own right as well. But also the idea

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Speaker 2: of a place where there are a lot of bones

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Speaker 2: that could also spell the possibility of a very real

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Speaker 2: life danger. What if the thing that is producing all

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Speaker 2: of these bones is still here some manner of predator

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Speaker 2: or predators that could threaten us directly. I mean, that's

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Speaker 2: getting into some of our basic hardwiring as an organism.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right. There are sort of ecological implications

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Speaker 3: whenever you see a collection of bones that kind of

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Speaker 3: suggests what else may be about in the area. But

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Speaker 3: then there's another thing, which is just the self reflective

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Speaker 3: version of the reaction to seeing human bones in particular,

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Speaker 3: which is I think of uh, the you know the

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Speaker 3: quote from uh, you know, the story of Wilhelm Runken

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Speaker 3: when he first you know, creates the X ray machine

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Speaker 3: and he gets an X ray of his wife's hand

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Speaker 3: and she she looks through on the plate and sees

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Speaker 3: her bones printed on the on the image. Uh, and

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Speaker 3: she says, I have seen my own death. You know,

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Speaker 3: you're not supposed to see your own bones unless and

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Speaker 3: you don't unless there is some kind of catastrophic imagery. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I was gonna say injury, but yes, catastrophic imagery as well.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought you were going to say

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Speaker 2: if we do see our own bones. They better be dancing.

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Speaker 2: It better be in carniform, you know. I should also

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Speaker 2: mention the killer rabbit from a money python in The

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Speaker 2: Holy Grail.

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Speaker 4: That's another great example.

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Speaker 2: Just look at the bones.

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Speaker 4: Look at the bone.

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Speaker 2: Now, we put together a whole list of additional horror

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Speaker 2: movies that had some sort of bone collecting going on

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Speaker 2: in them. We may come back to some of these

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Speaker 2: as we get into specific examples, because we are, of

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Speaker 2: course going to dip into the natural world here into

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Speaker 2: the real world. And I thought a great place to

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Speaker 2: start would be with a creature of prehistoric caves, a

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Speaker 2: creature that accumulated bones in such caves and would have

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Speaker 2: been encountered by our ancestors. And I think this is

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Speaker 2: particularly potent to think about because these would have This

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Speaker 2: would be an example of a bone littered environment that

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Speaker 2: our ancestors would have seen, would have thought about, would

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Speaker 2: have processed, and also a creature that we would have

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Speaker 2: had direct interaction with. I'm going to be talking about

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Speaker 2: the cave hyena. The cave hyena consisted of two extinct species.

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Speaker 2: There's crocuta crocuta spellia and crocuta crocuta old Tema, and

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Speaker 2: they would have ranged across Eurasia during the middle to

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Speaker 2: late plus to seen, an age that saw the expansion

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Speaker 2: of modern humans and the extinction of archaic humans, including

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Speaker 2: the Neanderthals. There of course relatives of the modern African

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Speaker 2: spotted hyena that is Crocuta crocuta, and there are also

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Speaker 2: three other extant hyaena species, as well as other extinct

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Speaker 2: species that they're related to, such as the giant short

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Speaker 2: faced hyena. Now, the modern spotted hyena alone is an

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Speaker 2: impressive organism. I think everyone has some knowledge of this creature,

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Speaker 2: hopefully more from documentaries than maybe going to zoos and

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Speaker 2: so forth, as opposed to just the lion king.

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Speaker 3: But I thought you were going to say just having

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Speaker 3: them as pets.

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Speaker 2: Or no, you know, please don't have them as pets.

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Speaker 2: But you know, this is definitely an impressive and fascinating

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Speaker 2: organism that we could we could easily do an an

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Speaker 2: entire episode on, and they're more than capable of inspiring

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Speaker 2: myth and legend on their own. I mean, they're large,

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Speaker 2: scavenging carnivores with a wide vocal range. They can make

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Speaker 2: very perplexing sounds, and they're also noted and have long

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Speaker 2: been noted for their propensity for a grave robbing, and

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Speaker 2: sometimes they've been known to opportunistically prey on live humans.

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Speaker 2: They are voracious bone eaters, and I'm to understand they

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Speaker 2: can digest all organic components of bone, not just the marrow.

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Speaker 2: So they are, you know, basically like the idea of

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Speaker 2: like a graveyard ghoule is very much a humanoid take

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Speaker 2: on a hyena.

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Speaker 3: But do I understand correctly with the spotted hyena, it

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Speaker 3: not only gnaws bones to get the meat off, It

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Speaker 3: actually eats the bones themselves. It crunches up the bone

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Speaker 3: and digests the whole thing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's how it goes down. And you can

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Speaker 2: mentioned skulls earlier. You can look up the you know,

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Speaker 2: certainly the skull of a modern spotted hyena, but also

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Speaker 2: look up the skulls of any of these prehistoric hyenas

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Speaker 2: and you'll just see how robust they are. And you

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Speaker 2: can you can really take one look at this skull

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Speaker 2: and realize, oh yeah, this is a bone muncher. This

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Speaker 2: is a bone munching machine. Just look at those jobs.

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Speaker 3: This head is like the machine press that they crushed

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Speaker 3: the terminator in at the end of the first movie.

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Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, exactly. So again, they're very fascinating creatures and

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Speaker 2: they have They've inspired all sorts of different folk beliefs, legends,

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Speaker 2: and mythologies. Ancient writers discuss them quite a bit also

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Speaker 2: got a fair bit wrong about them, especially considering their

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Speaker 2: gender and sexuality. There are these various misnomers and in

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Speaker 2: ancient writings about how they would they were they were

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Speaker 2: like bisexual or hemaphroditic, or you know, various takes on

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Speaker 2: this just obviously a classic case of of the observers

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Speaker 2: not really knowing what they're observing and looking at with

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Speaker 2: a particular organ. But then there are all these other

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Speaker 2: crazy ideas as well, such as I'm just gonna read

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Speaker 2: a little bit from our old friend plenty of the

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Speaker 2: elder here. Okay, a number of other remarkable facts about

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Speaker 2: it the hyena are reported, but the most remarkable are

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Speaker 2: that among the shepherd's homesteads, it simulates human speech and

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Speaker 2: picks up the name of one of them so as

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Speaker 2: to call him to come out of doors and tear

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Speaker 2: him in pieces. What And also that it imitates a

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Speaker 2: person being sick to attract the dogs so that it

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Speaker 2: may attack them. That this animal alone, digs up graves

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Speaker 2: in search of corpses, that a female is seldom caught,

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Speaker 2: that its eyes have a thousand variations and alterations of color. Moreover,

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Speaker 2: that when its shadow falls on dogs, they are struck dumb,

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Speaker 2: and that it has certain magic arts by which it

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Speaker 2: causes every animal at which it gazes three times to

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Speaker 2: stand rooted to the spot.

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Speaker 3: The last part is that a metaphor does he say,

263
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Speaker 3: does he mean the animals literally grow roots?

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Speaker 2: I'm going to assume it's not going to that link.

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Speaker 2: But but the idea I guess is that they they

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Speaker 2: had they have the power to essentially hypnotize with their gaze.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, look three times in its freeze tag.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they're alarming animals.

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Speaker 4: Uh.

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Speaker 3: Sure.

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Speaker 2: And some of the footage and and images I've seen,

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Speaker 2: and certainly again they have that extended vocal range. They

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Speaker 2: create very strange sounds that we often compare to laughter.

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Speaker 2: And you know, they're not alone in this. There are

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Speaker 2: various other organisms that make sounds that remind us of

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Speaker 2: human human laughter, human conversation, and it can be very uncanny.

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Speaker 3: You can almost sense the telephone game in this reporting.

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Speaker 3: They do actually make strange sounds that could sound kind

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Speaker 3: of human in ways, but here this this gets escalated

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Speaker 3: to they say your name and call you outside.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Likewise, the whole bit about them being the only creatures

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Speaker 2: to rob human graves, I mean, they're various creatures that

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Speaker 2: if they can, if they can dig up a body,

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Speaker 2: they will do so and get to it, you know.

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Speaker 2: So it's not just in the hyaenas. And then also

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Speaker 2: they are known to sometimes make opportunistic attacks against humans.

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Speaker 2: They may in some cases become man eaters. But again

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Speaker 2: they're not alone in them.

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Speaker 3: But to be clear, do we think that plenty here

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Speaker 3: is talking about like the African spotted hyaena or is

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Speaker 3: he talking about an extinct variety of Hyaena.

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Speaker 2: I believe he's talking about you know, sub Saharan African

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Speaker 2: spotted hyaenas here. Okay, thus sort of the game of

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Speaker 2: telephone in places here. Yeah, but yeah, suffice to say,

296
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Speaker 2: it's a species that certainly invites mystery, and they occupy

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Speaker 2: a number of roles in the traditional beliefs of people

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Speaker 2: who have long lived beside them. You know, some fearsome,

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Speaker 2: but also there are plenty of examples that are either

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Speaker 2: ambivalent or even protective in their attitude regarding human beings,

301
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Speaker 2: so they're not just batties. So there's more than just

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Speaker 2: the lion king in play when we consider myth making

303
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Speaker 2: in legends with hyaenas. Sure, now I want to come

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Speaker 2: back though, to, of course, cave hyenas, because modern hyaenas

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Speaker 2: are broadly considered habitat generalists. You know, they may reside

306
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Speaker 2: in they may reside in dens that they've dug out

307
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Speaker 2: of the earth. They may reside in caves, they may

308
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Speaker 2: lay around on rocky outcrops and various other locations. They're

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Speaker 2: generally quite flexible. Wherever they make their den, they may

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Speaker 2: bring carcasses and bones back for further consumption and therefore

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Speaker 2: litter them in that environment. And then we have the

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Speaker 2: cave hyenas. And the name might easily summon the idea that, okay, well,

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Speaker 2: these are hyenas that exclusively lived in caves, and therefore

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Speaker 2: there's some sort of a cave specialist. But this too

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Speaker 2: would be incorrect. So cave hyenas, despite their name, they

316
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Speaker 2: could also make dens in various other places, and did,

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Speaker 2: but their use of cave dens is particularly pronounced. And

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Speaker 2: these environments have served as time capsules, preserving the littered remains,

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Speaker 2: the bones left over from their habitation there.

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Speaker 3: That makes sense. So because the caves protect what the

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Speaker 3: hyaenas did inside there to some extent, that evidence is preserved,

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Speaker 3: and so we have an idea of what cave hyenas

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Speaker 3: were doing when they were in caves.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of what we've learned about cave

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Speaker 2: hyenas has come from these environments, and we've learned a

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Speaker 2: lot about the animals that they preyed on from these environments.

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Speaker 2: But the cave hyenas themselves, they would have been They

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Speaker 2: were larger, heavier creatures compared to modern spotted hyaenas, and

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Speaker 2: they were considered apex predators in their own right alongside

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Speaker 2: the likes of the cave lion. They were probably less

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Speaker 2: skilled at running after prey or running away with meat

332
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Speaker 2: and bone compared to modern day spotted hyaenas, but they

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Speaker 2: would have been really good at dragging away much larger carcasses.

334
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Speaker 2: So you know, they were essentially you can think of

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Speaker 2: them as beefier and therefore better able to drag away

336
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Speaker 2: big bodies, big pieces of meat. And this was a

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Speaker 2: time when multiple large mammal species thrived and provided carcasses

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Speaker 2: on a regular basis to sustain them.

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Speaker 3: So can you think of them as the tractor model

340
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Speaker 3: rather than the sports car.

341
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that would be fair. Like there

342
00:19:27,960 --> 00:19:30,560
Speaker 2: were a lot of big bodies that would occasionally drop

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Speaker 2: to the ground, maybe with a little help, certainly with

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Speaker 2: a little help either from cave hyenas or various other

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Speaker 2: carnivore creatures. And then these guys would have been just

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Speaker 2: really good at dragging the meat, dragging the bodies back

347
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Speaker 2: to the caves where they could take their time breaking

348
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Speaker 2: down the bodies. And then also I'm to understand there

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Speaker 2: would be a certain amount of a preservation in there

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Speaker 2: as well, so sort of a cold storage environment, you know,

351
00:19:59,640 --> 00:20:01,800
Speaker 2: I don't think that was the main point, but there

352
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Speaker 2: would be some of that in play as well.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, low gear, torque, not speed.

354
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Speaker 2: Yeah, And so they'd occupy specific cave mouths on and off,

355
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Speaker 2: and that's key for thousands of years, seemingly displaced by

356
00:20:16,200 --> 00:20:21,080
Speaker 2: and displacing other occupiers, including Neanderthals at times, and also

357
00:20:21,160 --> 00:20:25,639
Speaker 2: perhaps cohabitating certain caves with other creatures, either kind of

358
00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:29,159
Speaker 2: at the same time or in phases, and in the

359
00:20:29,200 --> 00:20:33,720
Speaker 2: process accumulating just great quantities of animal bones that would

360
00:20:33,760 --> 00:20:37,119
Speaker 2: just build up over time. Nobody's dragging those carcasses or

361
00:20:37,160 --> 00:20:40,640
Speaker 2: those bones back out. They're just building up and providing

362
00:20:40,680 --> 00:20:44,720
Speaker 2: this ultimately wealth of data for paleontologists to come in

363
00:20:44,800 --> 00:20:47,200
Speaker 2: the distant future from their time.

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Speaker 3: So I assume you have examples of caves like this

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Speaker 3: where their middens have been found.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there was. In twenty twenty three, it was

367
00:20:55,600 --> 00:20:59,080
Speaker 2: reported that the Siberian there's a cave near the Siberian

368
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Speaker 2: city of Cacassia, and it was said to contain some

369
00:21:03,200 --> 00:21:06,600
Speaker 2: four hundred kilograms or eight hundred and eighty two pounds

370
00:21:06,600 --> 00:21:10,160
Speaker 2: of bones estimated, And this would have included the likes

371
00:21:10,200 --> 00:21:17,560
Speaker 2: of mammoths, rhinos, bison, yaks, deer, gazelle, ancient brown bears,

372
00:21:18,240 --> 00:21:21,800
Speaker 2: and then various smaller creatures like foxes, wolves, every you know,

373
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Speaker 2: all the way down. These guys apparently weren't too proud

374
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Speaker 2: to drag you know, just about anything back to the layer. Now,

375
00:21:28,680 --> 00:21:32,240
Speaker 2: there are various other cave hyena dens that are you know,

376
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Speaker 2: important sites for paleontology, such as Zulithan Cave in Bavaria

377
00:21:38,760 --> 00:21:41,320
Speaker 2: in Germany. This site is thought to have been a

378
00:21:41,359 --> 00:21:45,760
Speaker 2: major cave bear den with cave hyenas, wolves and cave

379
00:21:45,880 --> 00:21:49,240
Speaker 2: lions co occupying or scavenging over time.

380
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Speaker 3: Now, if we know that different types of carnivores or

381
00:21:54,880 --> 00:21:59,239
Speaker 3: predators occupied these caves over different times, how are we

382
00:21:59,280 --> 00:22:03,000
Speaker 3: able to identi when they were occupied by different types

383
00:22:03,040 --> 00:22:06,439
Speaker 3: of predators or which predator it was that was responsible

384
00:22:06,480 --> 00:22:08,800
Speaker 3: for a specific kill or for eating a carcass that's

385
00:22:08,880 --> 00:22:09,600
Speaker 3: left in the cave.

386
00:22:10,280 --> 00:22:12,320
Speaker 2: Well, a part of it comes down to, you know,

387
00:22:12,359 --> 00:22:14,480
Speaker 2: looking at the bones and seeing the wear and tear

388
00:22:14,520 --> 00:22:16,679
Speaker 2: on them, because you know they would have been gnawing

389
00:22:16,680 --> 00:22:19,520
Speaker 2: on them. We can essentially, you know, use byte data

390
00:22:20,000 --> 00:22:23,520
Speaker 2: to understand this, like, Okay, what's been chewing on this bone? Well,

391
00:22:23,600 --> 00:22:26,879
Speaker 2: it looks like it was cave hyenus, So that's part

392
00:22:26,880 --> 00:22:29,479
Speaker 2: of it. And then there's just various other evidence in

393
00:22:29,520 --> 00:22:32,960
Speaker 2: the way that the the different layers of sediment have

394
00:22:33,040 --> 00:22:36,280
Speaker 2: built up and where the bones are in caves. I

395
00:22:36,320 --> 00:22:39,240
Speaker 2: was looking at a paper by Dietrix and Zach from

396
00:22:39,280 --> 00:22:42,600
Speaker 2: two thousand and six and the Bulletin of Geosciences. This

397
00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:46,520
Speaker 2: particular paper was looking at a at a cave in

398
00:22:46,560 --> 00:22:50,600
Speaker 2: the Bohemian Karst. This is in the Czech Republic and

399
00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:53,960
Speaker 2: like they had a nice little illustration in this paper

400
00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:55,760
Speaker 2: that I included here for you, Joe that kind of

401
00:22:55,800 --> 00:22:59,919
Speaker 2: like lays out like these different sort of the different

402
00:23:00,040 --> 00:23:03,880
Speaker 2: phases in occupation of a cave, with like cave bears

403
00:23:04,520 --> 00:23:07,359
Speaker 2: occupying a place and then well a cave bears being

404
00:23:07,480 --> 00:23:11,439
Speaker 2: larger organism kind of like you know, physically impacting the

405
00:23:11,440 --> 00:23:14,040
Speaker 2: shape of things. We've talked about this on the show before.

406
00:23:14,160 --> 00:23:17,320
Speaker 2: How you have something like a like a large sloth,

407
00:23:17,359 --> 00:23:20,880
Speaker 2: a giant sloth or or a bear, and when they're

408
00:23:21,000 --> 00:23:23,119
Speaker 2: habitating in a cave, they kind of create these little

409
00:23:23,800 --> 00:23:28,680
Speaker 2: indentions kind of like wallowing points, right, Yeah, and those

410
00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:31,560
Speaker 2: you know, in the preserved environment of a cave, those

411
00:23:32,600 --> 00:23:36,359
Speaker 2: those little indentions can remain over time. And what happens

412
00:23:36,359 --> 00:23:39,840
Speaker 2: when hyenas come in with their bones, well they're liable

413
00:23:39,840 --> 00:23:42,480
Speaker 2: to put those bones right in those indentions, fill those in.

414
00:23:43,160 --> 00:23:45,080
Speaker 2: So we we have evidence like that that we can

415
00:23:45,119 --> 00:23:48,080
Speaker 2: look at. And in this paper they also discussed that, yeah,

416
00:23:48,160 --> 00:23:50,639
Speaker 2: like you'd have cave bears and kive cave hyenas and

417
00:23:50,680 --> 00:23:54,520
Speaker 2: they seemingly like trade back and forth over usage of

418
00:23:54,560 --> 00:23:57,000
Speaker 2: the cave. So it's not just it's not necessarily a

419
00:23:57,000 --> 00:23:59,640
Speaker 2: situation where you know, either organism is in the cave

420
00:23:59,680 --> 00:24:02,400
Speaker 2: all the time, despite what you might come to think

421
00:24:02,480 --> 00:24:06,720
Speaker 2: watching an old caveman movie. But cave bears would use

422
00:24:06,760 --> 00:24:10,000
Speaker 2: the caves for birthing and hibernation, and then hyenas would

423
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:14,399
Speaker 2: come in and use them periodically or seasonally for the

424
00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:17,200
Speaker 2: drag in their their their kills, or their scavenge the

425
00:24:17,359 --> 00:24:20,560
Speaker 2: meat and bones. So there's it seems like a fair

426
00:24:20,560 --> 00:24:23,760
Speaker 2: amount of traffic in these caves when they're you know,

427
00:24:23,840 --> 00:24:27,480
Speaker 2: cohabitated or uh. And then certainly you throw in neanderthals

428
00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:32,800
Speaker 2: and potential interactions with with our human ancestors where uh

429
00:24:32,960 --> 00:24:35,880
Speaker 2: they would be competing for the same cave environments at times.

430
00:24:36,359 --> 00:24:37,800
Speaker 2: Uh So, yeah, there's a lot of a lot of

431
00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:38,640
Speaker 2: back and forth here.

432
00:24:39,119 --> 00:24:42,000
Speaker 3: So what happened to the cave hyena? They no longer exist?

433
00:24:42,600 --> 00:24:43,000
Speaker 4: Correct?

434
00:24:43,119 --> 00:24:46,440
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah they are. They are quite extinct, and it's

435
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:50,280
Speaker 2: it's notable that, in addition to changing climate, humans likely

436
00:24:50,320 --> 00:24:53,159
Speaker 2: played a key role in the extinction of cave hyenas,

437
00:24:53,240 --> 00:24:57,720
Speaker 2: likely out competing with it for prey and carcasses. Neanderthals,

438
00:24:57,720 --> 00:25:02,680
Speaker 2: of course, had already competed with cave hyenas with with

439
00:25:02,720 --> 00:25:05,440
Speaker 2: the with the cave Heyen is at least Cave Heyen

440
00:25:05,480 --> 00:25:08,439
Speaker 2: is at least scavenging Neanderthal dead, if not outright preying

441
00:25:08,440 --> 00:25:11,159
Speaker 2: on them from time to time as well. So that's

442
00:25:11,200 --> 00:25:12,840
Speaker 2: kind of interesting in and of itself. It's kind of

443
00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:15,679
Speaker 2: like who we became the new masters of carcasses and

444
00:25:15,720 --> 00:25:18,960
Speaker 2: bones to a certain extent, we didn't, you know, we

445
00:25:18,960 --> 00:25:21,400
Speaker 2: didn't put it all in the caves. We started doing

446
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:24,800
Speaker 2: other things with the bodies, fully processing the bodies in

447
00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:28,760
Speaker 2: our own human ways, uh, and in doing so, ultimately

448
00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:32,960
Speaker 2: changing the shape of the natural world around us. But

449
00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:38,080
Speaker 2: it's it's interesting to contemplate potential human, early human interactions

450
00:25:38,119 --> 00:25:41,080
Speaker 2: with these caves and the creatures that made their homes there,

451
00:25:41,640 --> 00:25:44,479
Speaker 2: such as the Cave Hyena. Because again, caves in and

452
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:46,840
Speaker 2: of themselves, as we've discussed in the show many times,

453
00:25:46,840 --> 00:25:50,240
Speaker 2: have long been places of wonder and mystery, places of

454
00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:55,240
Speaker 2: spiritual and cultural significance, places where one might find resources

455
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:59,959
Speaker 2: some resources anyway, certainly find shelter, but also encounter danger.

456
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:03,240
Speaker 2: And then caves were often seen as you know, gateways

457
00:26:03,320 --> 00:26:06,520
Speaker 2: to some sort of underworld. So it's kind of fitting,

458
00:26:06,600 --> 00:26:09,720
Speaker 2: or at least curious that our ancestors would have found

459
00:26:09,880 --> 00:26:12,919
Speaker 2: caves such as this just choked with bones. You know,

460
00:26:12,960 --> 00:26:15,800
Speaker 2: one can't help, but wonder, like, did we think about

461
00:26:15,800 --> 00:26:17,880
Speaker 2: them in such a way that like, here's a here

462
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:21,600
Speaker 2: is a cavern full of bones, some of which are

463
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:25,480
Speaker 2: bones like I have in my body. Is this, on

464
00:26:25,520 --> 00:26:28,399
Speaker 2: some level some gateway to a realm of death?

465
00:26:28,880 --> 00:26:31,399
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an interesting question. I do wonder for a

466
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:36,160
Speaker 3: prehistoric human, you know, Homo sapiens or Neanderthal, coming into

467
00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:39,359
Speaker 3: a cave and finding bones in there, what is the

468
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 3: most salient thing about that? What is your primary association?

469
00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:46,520
Speaker 3: Does that make you think competition for this piece of

470
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:50,000
Speaker 3: shelter or does that make you think predator? Or does

471
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:52,320
Speaker 3: that make you just think death? Or does that make

472
00:26:52,359 --> 00:26:56,720
Speaker 3: you think resources? You know, like, I wonder what is

473
00:26:56,760 --> 00:27:01,000
Speaker 3: the salience? Because obviously, you know, there are some just

474
00:27:01,040 --> 00:27:04,040
Speaker 3: sort of objective facts about the reason we associate bones

475
00:27:04,080 --> 00:27:07,200
Speaker 3: with death. But also I think we have to recognize

476
00:27:07,200 --> 00:27:11,600
Speaker 3: that a lot of our associations between bones and you know,

477
00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:16,240
Speaker 3: frightening horror ideas are culturally conditioned and contingent, and we

478
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 3: might have different associations. I don't know if you're if

479
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:21,520
Speaker 3: you're like a butcher or something. You might have very

480
00:27:21,520 --> 00:27:24,639
Speaker 3: different thoughts about bones. You maybe mainly associate them with

481
00:27:24,840 --> 00:27:26,919
Speaker 3: making a living or with you know, with food.

482
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:29,640
Speaker 2: That's a great point because especially when we're talking about

483
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:33,720
Speaker 2: the humans here, the humans that are gonna outcompete the

484
00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:39,000
Speaker 2: cave hyenas for scavenge carcasses and and of course it

485
00:27:39,080 --> 00:27:43,960
Speaker 2: also kills of various mammals. You know, they're obviously people

486
00:27:43,960 --> 00:27:47,040
Speaker 2: that are far more connected to the killing and butchery

487
00:27:47,560 --> 00:27:52,160
Speaker 2: of animals than most of us are today. So yeah,

488
00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:55,359
Speaker 2: they might have just been like, hey, these this place

489
00:27:55,440 --> 00:27:56,359
Speaker 2: is great, This.

490
00:27:56,280 --> 00:27:57,640
Speaker 3: Is good hunting around here. Yeah.

491
00:27:57,720 --> 00:27:59,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the kind of place I would love

492
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:02,360
Speaker 2: to have, and these cave hyenas have figured it out

493
00:28:02,359 --> 00:28:05,400
Speaker 2: for themselves. Might have to steal some business from them.

494
00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:10,080
Speaker 2: One more bit of cave hyena information I wanted to

495
00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:14,400
Speaker 2: share for a little bit. There there was this argument

496
00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 2: that the accumulation of bones and caves like these were

497
00:28:18,080 --> 00:28:22,560
Speaker 2: due not to prehistoric predators but to the Great Flood,

498
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:26,360
Speaker 2: the Great Biblical flood. Okay, this was an idea that

499
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:30,280
Speaker 2: English geologist William Buckland in particular, who lived seventeen eighty

500
00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 2: four through eighteen fifty six, theorized early in his career

501
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:39,040
Speaker 2: concerning Kirkdale Cave in North Yorkshire, but to his credit,

502
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:42,440
Speaker 2: he later shifted his view based on his own findings.

503
00:28:43,160 --> 00:28:46,520
Speaker 2: So he came around and said, actually, you know, these

504
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:50,720
Speaker 2: bones are this accumulation of bones, this is due to

505
00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:54,840
Speaker 2: cave hyenas, though for a while he maintained, Okay, cave

506
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:58,040
Speaker 2: hyenas are the reason. But see this soil deposited on

507
00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 2: top of the bones that's over from the Great flood.

508
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:03,600
Speaker 2: But then he later abandons this idea as well. But

509
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 2: I like the idea that, like, here's somebody that is

510
00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:12,520
Speaker 2: identifying evidence for a biblical event in the natural world

511
00:29:12,880 --> 00:29:15,720
Speaker 2: and is not just illogically sticking to his guns, Like

512
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:20,760
Speaker 2: his opinion is changing based on the accumulation of actual,

513
00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:22,880
Speaker 2: you know, objective evidence.

514
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:26,000
Speaker 3: Yeah. Sure, respect to Buckland for updating. But though I haven't,

515
00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 3: I would like to go read about this because I'm like,

516
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:31,760
Speaker 3: why would the bones in the cave have anything to

517
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:33,840
Speaker 3: do with the flood? Why would that be different than

518
00:29:33,840 --> 00:29:34,800
Speaker 3: bones anywhere else.

519
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:37,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't go hard on this, but I mean

520
00:29:37,880 --> 00:29:40,120
Speaker 2: maybe the idea is, well, the water had to drain

521
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:42,480
Speaker 2: somewhere and it took all those bodies with it, and

522
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:45,560
Speaker 2: this is just like the clogged bone drain of the earth.

523
00:29:45,600 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 3: Oh that's cool. Okay, cave, that's my guess.

524
00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:49,440
Speaker 2: That's my guess.

525
00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:51,560
Speaker 3: The drain at the bottom of the bathtub.

526
00:29:51,760 --> 00:29:54,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, where all the bones go. There

527
00:29:54,560 --> 00:29:54,840
Speaker 2: you go.

528
00:30:05,120 --> 00:30:08,120
Speaker 3: Okay. Well, given the distinction we talked about at the

529
00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:10,080
Speaker 3: beginning of the episode, I think we could sort the

530
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:14,239
Speaker 3: cave hyena more into the middens category. This is a

531
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:19,520
Speaker 3: somewhat chaotically assembled pile of bones or animal remains that

532
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:21,840
Speaker 3: just happens to all end up in the same place

533
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:24,800
Speaker 3: because of the lifestyle or living habits of the animal

534
00:30:24,880 --> 00:30:27,840
Speaker 3: that brought them there. Then we had the other category,

535
00:30:27,840 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 3: which was more like Texas Chainsaw massacre, where you have

536
00:30:31,600 --> 00:30:36,360
Speaker 3: a curated collection of bones, animal remains, things that are

537
00:30:36,640 --> 00:30:39,440
Speaker 3: put in a certain way for a certain reason due

538
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:43,280
Speaker 3: to someone's obsessive interest, and how that's frightening in a

539
00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:46,600
Speaker 3: different way than the midden is than just the predator's midden.

540
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:50,280
Speaker 3: I wonder when we're done talking about the next example,

541
00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:52,520
Speaker 3: which category you'd put it in, because I think it's

542
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:54,760
Speaker 3: almost kind of a straddler. It could go either way.

543
00:30:56,120 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 3: So I want to talk about an article published in

544
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:02,520
Speaker 3: the journal Science in April of this year, twenty twenty

545
00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:07,280
Speaker 3: five by the researchers Daniel Rubinoff, Michael San Jose and

546
00:31:07,480 --> 00:31:14,760
Speaker 3: Camielle Duran Weird called Hawaiian caterpillar patrols spiderwebs camouflaged in

547
00:31:14,760 --> 00:31:20,000
Speaker 3: insect praise body parts. All three authors here are entomologists

548
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:24,800
Speaker 3: affiliated with the University of Hawaii at Manoa. So the

549
00:31:24,840 --> 00:31:29,040
Speaker 3: authors begin this paper by talking about the interesting evolutionary

550
00:31:29,120 --> 00:31:34,040
Speaker 3: laboratory of the Hawaiian Islands. Because of Hawaii's geographic isolation

551
00:31:34,240 --> 00:31:38,720
Speaker 3: from mainland populations for so long, it evolved lots of

552
00:31:38,960 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 3: weird and interesting invertebrates, especially when it comes to Lepidoptera.

553
00:31:44,920 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 3: Now a reminder, Lepidoptera is the insect order containing moths

554
00:31:49,480 --> 00:31:52,360
Speaker 3: and butterflies. A lot of people already know this, but

555
00:31:52,840 --> 00:31:57,960
Speaker 3: just to be clear, caterpillars are the same animals as

556
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:02,080
Speaker 3: the winged forms of moths butterflies, simply at different stages

557
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 3: of life. So caterpillars are the larval stage of the

558
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:09,240
Speaker 3: lepidopter in life cycle, in which the insect is this

559
00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:11,600
Speaker 3: you know, fat little grub shape and it crawls around

560
00:32:11,680 --> 00:32:14,440
Speaker 3: and it chomps the world. It's bulking up on food

561
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 3: before finding a place to settle down and pupate. When

562
00:32:18,840 --> 00:32:22,960
Speaker 3: it goes into the pupi phase, it undergoes metamorphosis, and

563
00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:26,120
Speaker 3: then the winged forms that we think of as moths

564
00:32:26,120 --> 00:32:28,480
Speaker 3: and butterflies kind of the main idea of what this

565
00:32:28,600 --> 00:32:33,520
Speaker 3: insect is. The winged forms are the reproductively mature stage

566
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:37,360
Speaker 3: after the metamorphosis of the pupa. This is the stage

567
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 3: in which these insects mate and lay eggs. And the

568
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:46,640
Speaker 3: authors of this paper mention several fascinating caterpillar adaptations found

569
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:50,000
Speaker 3: in the Hawaiian islands, specifically in the larval phase of

570
00:32:50,360 --> 00:32:54,680
Speaker 3: local lepidopterans. There are caterpillars in Hawaii that hunt snails.

571
00:32:55,120 --> 00:32:58,720
Speaker 3: There are caterpillars that are amphibious or like live underwater.

572
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:03,360
Speaker 3: There are caterpillars that work as ambush predators. You know,

573
00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:05,280
Speaker 3: they kind of lie in wait and they hide in

574
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:09,200
Speaker 3: leaves and then they attack their prey. And this article

575
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 3: is about another caterpillar from Hawaii that can be added

576
00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:16,800
Speaker 3: to that list of beautiful monstrosities, the so called bone

577
00:33:16,920 --> 00:33:22,920
Speaker 3: collector caterpillar of the moth genus Hyposmocoma. Which the author's

578
00:33:23,040 --> 00:33:28,080
Speaker 3: rite is notable for quote, a bizarre housekeeping regimen not

579
00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:32,640
Speaker 3: reported for any other insect, and an ecology not recorded

580
00:33:32,680 --> 00:33:38,760
Speaker 3: elsewhere in the order Lepidoptera. So what are these unique traits? Well,

581
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:42,400
Speaker 3: the top line is that this is the first documented

582
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:48,680
Speaker 3: caterpillar evolved to depend on spider webs as a habitat

583
00:33:48,880 --> 00:33:52,600
Speaker 3: spider webs. And to be clear, we're not talking about

584
00:33:52,640 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 3: like exclusively abandoned old spider webs or something. We're talking

585
00:33:57,440 --> 00:34:01,760
Speaker 3: about active spider webs with a spider in them.

586
00:34:02,120 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 2: Oh wow.

587
00:34:02,760 --> 00:34:07,880
Speaker 3: Yeah. These caterpillars typically dwell in webs within like recesses,

588
00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:11,080
Speaker 3: So you would find these webs in tree hollows or

589
00:34:11,160 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 3: rock hollows or in the voids inside of fallen log

590
00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:17,680
Speaker 3: We're talking about those kind of three dimensional, tangled looking

591
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 3: webs you see in a little depression or indentation somewhere

592
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:25,200
Speaker 3: in the natural world. So that's where you're gonna find

593
00:34:25,239 --> 00:34:28,160
Speaker 3: these caterpillars in webs like that. Now, that alone is

594
00:34:28,320 --> 00:34:31,759
Speaker 3: pretty weird. It's kind of like imagining a rabbit species

595
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:34,840
Speaker 3: that is evolved specifically to live in wolf dens.

596
00:34:35,320 --> 00:34:38,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this seems like this seems like this would

597
00:34:38,239 --> 00:34:42,239
Speaker 2: be the place most small creatures would not want to

598
00:34:42,280 --> 00:34:45,080
Speaker 2: find themselves, leave it to the spiders and their prey.

599
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:48,400
Speaker 3: Right, so the author is right quote. Although caterpillars and

600
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:51,840
Speaker 3: spiders are common in the same environments all over the world,

601
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:56,520
Speaker 3: only this single caterpillar lineage in Hawaii is known to

602
00:34:56,560 --> 00:35:00,080
Speaker 3: have made the leap to spider cohabitation. In fact, I

603
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:02,160
Speaker 3: was looking this up in some other sources to see

604
00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 3: if there was any contradiction on this. The only real

605
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:08,520
Speaker 3: counterexample I found was in a write up of this

606
00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:12,920
Speaker 3: paper in The New York Times by Jack Tomisia, which

607
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:17,640
Speaker 3: quoted an entomologist at the University of Connecticut named David Wagner,

608
00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:20,880
Speaker 3: who didn't really contradict this, but said he was aware

609
00:35:20,960 --> 00:35:24,120
Speaker 3: of only one other moth species that had anything to

610
00:35:24,120 --> 00:35:26,800
Speaker 3: do with spider webs. It didn't like live there entirely,

611
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:31,279
Speaker 3: but there was one moth species that was vegetarian and

612
00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:35,160
Speaker 3: would sometimes eat plant material caught in spider webs. But

613
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:37,759
Speaker 3: this is the only example that we know of anywhere

614
00:35:37,800 --> 00:35:41,399
Speaker 3: of a caterpillar that lives in fully evolved to live

615
00:35:41,600 --> 00:35:45,040
Speaker 3: in the habitat of a spider's web. Another thing that's

616
00:35:45,239 --> 00:35:48,600
Speaker 3: crazy about this is that it's not just like caterpillar

617
00:35:48,640 --> 00:35:51,920
Speaker 3: goes crawling around the world until it finds a spider web.

618
00:35:52,239 --> 00:35:54,680
Speaker 3: From what I was reading, it seems like the moths

619
00:35:54,680 --> 00:35:59,000
Speaker 3: here will actually try to lay their eggs in spider webs.

620
00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:02,239
Speaker 3: Oh wow, So you know the caterpillar hatches from the

621
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:05,719
Speaker 3: egg in the web, makes its home there, and just

622
00:36:05,880 --> 00:36:10,879
Speaker 3: lives there. That's that is its environment, and there are

623
00:36:10,920 --> 00:36:15,439
Speaker 3: some freaky specializations that make this arrangement work. Explaining both

624
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:20,160
Speaker 3: the why and the how of caterpillar cohabitation with a spider.

625
00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:24,720
Speaker 3: The major part of the why is answered by another

626
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:28,680
Speaker 3: strange fact about the species. The bone collector caterpillar is

627
00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:34,120
Speaker 3: a carnivore. Now, carnivorous caterpillars are, from an evolutionary perspective,

628
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:39,520
Speaker 3: pretty rare. The authors note that of all existing insect orders,

629
00:36:39,960 --> 00:36:44,960
Speaker 3: Lepidoptera is actually the most herbivorous overall, So moths and butterflies,

630
00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 3: in all of their life cycles are the most vegetarian

631
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:52,120
Speaker 3: of all branches of the class Insecta, but there are

632
00:36:52,239 --> 00:36:57,319
Speaker 3: a few exceptions. About zero point one three percent of

633
00:36:57,360 --> 00:37:01,040
Speaker 3: the roughly two hundred thousand known moth and butterfly species

634
00:37:01,360 --> 00:37:05,200
Speaker 3: practice some form of predation in their caterpillar stage.

635
00:37:05,680 --> 00:37:07,759
Speaker 2: You know, I think most of us have to think

636
00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:12,960
Speaker 2: back to probably our initial introduction to caterpillar anatomy and

637
00:37:13,560 --> 00:37:17,720
Speaker 2: physiology and behavior, that being the hungry, hungry caterpillar. Yes,

638
00:37:18,880 --> 00:37:22,120
Speaker 2: that basically tells you what everything you need to know. Right,

639
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:26,120
Speaker 2: Caterpillars have to eat. That's what they're here to do,

640
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:28,600
Speaker 2: to eat a lot so that they can become that

641
00:37:28,719 --> 00:37:33,000
Speaker 2: reproductive flying adult. Therefore, you know, it makes sense that

642
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 2: most of them would be vegetarian, most of them would

643
00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:39,680
Speaker 2: depend on plant matter in order to bulk up their

644
00:37:39,719 --> 00:37:46,120
Speaker 2: own mass for metamorphosis. I guess you can imagine why

645
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:49,440
Speaker 2: there would be more of that as compared to some

646
00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:52,080
Speaker 2: sort of a carnivorous body plan that is going to

647
00:37:52,120 --> 00:37:54,200
Speaker 2: depend on just eating lots and lots of meat in

648
00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:55,640
Speaker 2: order to make that metamorphosis.

649
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, you can think about this evolutionary energy dilemma.

650
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:03,640
Speaker 3: Of course, animal based foods do tend to be richer

651
00:38:03,719 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 3: in nutrients, they're going to be more high calorie, but

652
00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:08,799
Speaker 3: they're also a lot harder to come by. And you know,

653
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:12,480
Speaker 3: the plant food is abundant and it's a lot easier

654
00:38:12,480 --> 00:38:14,919
Speaker 3: to get to as long as you can get enough

655
00:38:14,960 --> 00:38:16,560
Speaker 3: of it and you can process.

656
00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 2: It right and deal with any kind of self defensive

657
00:38:19,680 --> 00:38:22,879
Speaker 2: involved adaptations on the part of the plant. But there's

658
00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:25,560
Speaker 2: you know, an arms race there between each side of

659
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:26,080
Speaker 2: the equation.

660
00:38:26,440 --> 00:38:29,920
Speaker 3: That's right. So, yeah, so only about zero point one

661
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:32,920
Speaker 3: three percent of the two hundred thousand known moth and

662
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:37,799
Speaker 3: butterfly species practice some form of carnivorous predation. This is

663
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:41,280
Speaker 3: one of those those rare caterpillars. Now a minute ago

664
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 3: we already mentioned carnivorous caterpillars in Hawaii, the ones that

665
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:49,520
Speaker 3: hunt snails or maybe disguise themselves among leaves and launch

666
00:38:49,520 --> 00:38:52,759
Speaker 3: an ambush attack. But those things, they sound like a

667
00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:56,040
Speaker 3: lot of work. What if you could get somebody else

668
00:38:56,160 --> 00:38:59,279
Speaker 3: to do most of the trapping and killing for you,

669
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:04,080
Speaker 3: If you could just kinda crawl around and suck up

670
00:39:04,120 --> 00:39:08,480
Speaker 3: the leftovers of a perfectly evolved predator.

671
00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:11,799
Speaker 2: It's not a bad plan. It's one that prehostoric cave

672
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:15,480
Speaker 2: hyenas and prehostaric humans in some situations would have could

673
00:39:15,520 --> 00:39:16,360
Speaker 2: definitely get behind.

674
00:39:17,200 --> 00:39:19,360
Speaker 3: And yeah, so here we come to the why of

675
00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:23,920
Speaker 3: the bone collector caterpillar. These carnivorous insects live in spider

676
00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 3: webs because spider webs are great places to, in the

677
00:39:27,680 --> 00:39:31,719
Speaker 3: words of Mick Jagger, get the meat. That's where they

678
00:39:31,760 --> 00:39:35,120
Speaker 3: get the meat. The author's right quote. Bone collector caterpillars

679
00:39:35,280 --> 00:39:40,560
Speaker 3: crawl through the jumble of web and detritus and opportunistically

680
00:39:40,680 --> 00:39:45,239
Speaker 3: eat any weakened or recently deceased insects they come across, eg.

681
00:39:46,040 --> 00:39:49,800
Speaker 3: Cased spider prey, so stuff the spider might have left

682
00:39:49,840 --> 00:39:53,040
Speaker 3: over after eating or might be saving for later. That's

683
00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:57,520
Speaker 3: caterpillars now, yum yum. And they will even chew through

684
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 3: the silk of the web to get to the meal

685
00:40:00,719 --> 00:40:03,960
Speaker 3: so they can they can remodel the web environment to

686
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:06,160
Speaker 3: suit their needs if they need to get to food

687
00:40:06,239 --> 00:40:07,040
Speaker 3: by going through it.

688
00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:08,480
Speaker 2: Ah devious.

689
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:12,279
Speaker 3: I sort of mentioned this already, but the bone collector caterpillars.

690
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:14,640
Speaker 3: One thing about them is you're typically not going to

691
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:20,760
Speaker 3: find them in the plane shaped webs or flat sheet

692
00:40:20,840 --> 00:40:23,120
Speaker 3: webs that you would see suspended out in the air

693
00:40:23,160 --> 00:40:25,279
Speaker 3: between branches, the kinds of things that you're going to

694
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:28,120
Speaker 3: expect a butterfly in its adult stage to fly into.

695
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:32,279
Speaker 3: You're instead going to find them in these these tangled,

696
00:40:32,440 --> 00:40:36,400
Speaker 3: three dimensional webs that you see spun in enclosed spaces

697
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:41,880
Speaker 3: like recesses in wood. Because these caterpillars specialize in the

698
00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:45,560
Speaker 3: three dimensional webs, they can generally reach prey in any

699
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 3: part of the web, and it seems that they are

700
00:40:48,120 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 3: quite adaptable scavengers and predators. In other words, they can

701
00:40:52,080 --> 00:40:56,320
Speaker 3: they can and will eat any insect that is immobilized, weak,

702
00:40:56,480 --> 00:41:00,600
Speaker 3: or slow moving. In fact, they will even cannibalize each other,

703
00:41:01,200 --> 00:41:05,120
Speaker 3: which is why you typically only find one bone collector

704
00:41:05,160 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 3: caterpillar per spider web. If there were two, there would

705
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:11,440
Speaker 3: soon be only one. The larger would eat the smaller.

706
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:13,480
Speaker 2: Ah, there can be only one.

707
00:41:13,560 --> 00:41:14,200
Speaker 4: Gotcha.

708
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:16,480
Speaker 3: Now, where does the name come from? Why are they

709
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:20,080
Speaker 3: bone collectors? It's sort of a cute name, because, of

710
00:41:20,080 --> 00:41:23,360
Speaker 3: course we're not talking about bones here in the mammalian sense,

711
00:41:24,080 --> 00:41:26,080
Speaker 3: In the vertebrate sense, we're going to be talking about

712
00:41:26,680 --> 00:41:32,239
Speaker 3: almost exclusively prey with exoskeletons arthropods. But this is the

713
00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:37,560
Speaker 3: other fascinating thing about them. These caterpillars cover their bodies

714
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:43,560
Speaker 3: in portable cases made of silk, and to the outside

715
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:48,520
Speaker 3: of that silk case that they make, they attach chopped

716
00:41:48,640 --> 00:41:53,279
Speaker 3: up insect body parts. They don't seem to be very

717
00:41:53,320 --> 00:41:57,839
Speaker 3: picky about what kinds of dead bodies are allowed to contribute.

718
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:01,480
Speaker 3: The authors report a single catterp having remains from as

719
00:42:01,480 --> 00:42:04,800
Speaker 3: many as six different insect families stuck to the outside

720
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 3: of it at once. In fact, Rob, I've got a

721
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:09,399
Speaker 3: photo from the article for you to look at here

722
00:42:10,640 --> 00:42:12,960
Speaker 3: if you can see it in the outline. On the left,

723
00:42:13,040 --> 00:42:16,400
Speaker 3: we have an adult female specimen of the bone collector

724
00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:19,480
Speaker 3: caterpillar moth. This is what it looks like after metamorphosis.

725
00:42:19,840 --> 00:42:22,640
Speaker 3: The adult moth is kind of a furry brown and

726
00:42:22,719 --> 00:42:26,920
Speaker 3: white spotted appearance. It looks almost looks almost a Malian

727
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:28,279
Speaker 3: in a way. I see it kind of you know,

728
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:31,520
Speaker 3: looks like you would want to stroke the hide and dignified.

729
00:42:31,680 --> 00:42:34,440
Speaker 2: And this is a dignified looking moth. Yes, the no

730
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:38,320
Speaker 2: hint of any kind of grotesque, shady past.

731
00:42:38,760 --> 00:42:42,160
Speaker 3: On the right, we have the decorated silk case of

732
00:42:42,200 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 3: a single caterpillar in the larval stage, which is absolutely

733
00:42:46,080 --> 00:42:51,440
Speaker 3: spangled with invertebrate death. It has an ant head, fly wings,

734
00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:56,600
Speaker 3: fly legs, a weavil head, a bark beetle abdomen, and

735
00:42:56,640 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 3: then all over in between all that what look like

736
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:05,800
Speaker 3: jointed orange tubes, like little orange straws. These, in fact,

737
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:10,560
Speaker 3: are not prey animal pieces. These are parts of the

738
00:43:10,600 --> 00:43:16,359
Speaker 3: host spider's exoskeleton leftover after molting. So it is the

739
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:21,960
Speaker 3: caterpillar has a bone armor of spider integument and dead

740
00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 3: hollow pieces of insect exoskeletons.

741
00:43:26,600 --> 00:43:31,480
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, it looks just absolutely apocalyptic.

742
00:43:31,080 --> 00:43:35,879
Speaker 3: Like it shambling junkyard of insect death.

743
00:43:36,360 --> 00:43:40,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, I mean, one instant you know, pop culture

744
00:43:40,200 --> 00:43:45,640
Speaker 2: fantasy comparison is, of course, the character Rattleshirt from Game

745
00:43:45,680 --> 00:43:48,839
Speaker 2: of Thrones. Yeah, the characters wearing armor that's made from

746
00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:51,680
Speaker 2: like human bones and all Lord of Bones. Yeah, but

747
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:54,040
Speaker 2: that looks far more dignified than what we have here.

748
00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 2: What we see with the bone collectorc caterpillar is much

749
00:43:57,640 --> 00:44:01,960
Speaker 2: more Texas chainsaw massacre. It is just pure chaos.

750
00:44:02,680 --> 00:44:06,760
Speaker 3: Now. The fact that the caterpillar's silk case is covered

751
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:12,319
Speaker 3: in an insect slaughterhouse might make it seem like the

752
00:44:12,320 --> 00:44:14,480
Speaker 3: stuff just kind of clings on their at random, right,

753
00:44:14,560 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 3: Like maybe it just gets stuck there as it crawls

754
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:21,000
Speaker 3: around in the web. But no, there is diversity and variety,

755
00:44:21,120 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 3: but it is not just randomly assembled or chaotic. The

756
00:44:25,200 --> 00:44:29,480
Speaker 3: authors describe how you can observe the caterpillars carefully shopping

757
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:32,319
Speaker 3: for just the right parts and shaping them, you know,

758
00:44:32,400 --> 00:44:35,440
Speaker 3: to fit just right. They will pick up an ant

759
00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:38,000
Speaker 3: head or a beetle leg, whatever the part might be,

760
00:44:38,719 --> 00:44:42,360
Speaker 3: and then they will measure it for size before adhering

761
00:44:42,480 --> 00:44:46,240
Speaker 3: it to their silk case. So they will rotate it around,

762
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:50,120
Speaker 3: rotate the body part, feel it with their mandibles, and

763
00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:54,399
Speaker 3: if it's too big, the caterpillar will often modify it

764
00:44:54,480 --> 00:44:57,880
Speaker 3: by chewing it down until it's just the right size.

765
00:44:58,520 --> 00:45:02,160
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this gets even more horror show by the moment.

766
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:16,120
Speaker 3: Here's an interesting thing. The authors of this paper found

767
00:45:16,120 --> 00:45:19,120
Speaker 3: that if you put one of these caterpillars in captivity

768
00:45:19,600 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 3: and you deny it access to insect body parts, but

769
00:45:23,640 --> 00:45:28,080
Speaker 3: supply it with little, similarly shaped things that are other

770
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:31,840
Speaker 3: than insect body parts, it will not use them. So

771
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:35,000
Speaker 3: it is not like a hermit crab that will take

772
00:45:35,040 --> 00:45:38,920
Speaker 3: up residence in a vienna sausage. Can the bone collector says,

773
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:42,759
Speaker 3: chopped up, chewed down dead bodies or nothing, that's all

774
00:45:42,800 --> 00:45:46,640
Speaker 3: that's all I want. And this is this is interesting

775
00:45:46,719 --> 00:45:50,839
Speaker 3: because I think this implies possibly the fact that they're

776
00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:54,799
Speaker 3: corpses and the remnants of spider molting that may be

777
00:45:55,120 --> 00:45:59,560
Speaker 3: crucial to the caterpillar's survival somehow. The author is right

778
00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:03,080
Speaker 3: quote given the context, it is possible that the array

779
00:46:03,200 --> 00:46:07,280
Speaker 3: of partially consumed body parts and shed spider skins covering

780
00:46:07,320 --> 00:46:12,680
Speaker 3: the case forms effective camouflage from a spider landlord. The

781
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:17,320
Speaker 3: caterpillars have never been found predated by spiders or wrapped

782
00:46:17,360 --> 00:46:21,239
Speaker 3: in spider silk, so these authors here have studied these

783
00:46:21,239 --> 00:46:23,600
Speaker 3: things for years. By the way, this is a research

784
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:26,480
Speaker 3: years in the making, and there is not a single

785
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:32,440
Speaker 3: documented instance of these caterpillars slipping up and becoming spider food.

786
00:46:32,600 --> 00:46:36,800
Speaker 3: So is it possible that the bone cloak hides them somehow,

787
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:41,160
Speaker 3: makes them invisible or makes them uninteresting to this power

788
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:43,560
Speaker 3: predator a few centimeters away.

789
00:46:44,400 --> 00:46:48,880
Speaker 2: Like any given zombie film or comic book where someone

790
00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:53,160
Speaker 2: covers themselves in zombie gore in order to pass through

791
00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:54,239
Speaker 2: the horde unnoticed.

792
00:46:54,520 --> 00:46:58,719
Speaker 3: It could be. Yeah, we don't exactly know now. The

793
00:46:58,760 --> 00:47:03,200
Speaker 3: authors also note the adaptability of the bone collectors survival strategy.

794
00:47:03,440 --> 00:47:06,440
Speaker 3: I thought this was really interesting. While the bone collector

795
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:12,000
Speaker 3: caterpillar is native to Hawaii, of the four different species

796
00:47:12,040 --> 00:47:15,120
Speaker 3: of spider in whose webs they have been found none

797
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:19,160
Speaker 3: of those spiders is native to Hawaii, and so the

798
00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:22,680
Speaker 3: authors note that like of course, non native species dominate

799
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:25,719
Speaker 3: many of Hawaii's ecosystems. This is something we've talked about

800
00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:29,000
Speaker 3: on the show before. So if this this moth had

801
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:32,680
Speaker 3: been too dependent on just a single species of native

802
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:36,600
Speaker 3: spider as its web host, it might not have survived

803
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:40,760
Speaker 3: recent exchanges with the mainland. But it's adaptable to different

804
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:44,840
Speaker 3: types of spider webs, so it has. And yet human

805
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:49,440
Speaker 3: encounters with these caterpillars are pretty rare. The author's right quote.

806
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:54,799
Speaker 3: These caterpillars are only rarely encountered on. Over twenty two

807
00:47:54,880 --> 00:47:57,520
Speaker 3: years of fieldwork and over one hundred and fifty field

808
00:47:57,560 --> 00:48:01,320
Speaker 3: surveys in the area where they occur have yielded only

809
00:48:01,440 --> 00:48:06,080
Speaker 3: sixty two individuals, and most apparently suitable spiderwebs do not

810
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:07,400
Speaker 3: host them.

811
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:10,280
Speaker 2: Oh wow, So they would seem to be a rarity

812
00:48:10,400 --> 00:48:12,719
Speaker 2: even among the sort of webs that they could call.

813
00:48:13,320 --> 00:48:15,799
Speaker 3: Yeah, assuming we know where to look. But they do

814
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:17,720
Speaker 3: seem to be, as far as we can tell, limited

815
00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:22,640
Speaker 3: to this small range, and as best we can tell,

816
00:48:22,760 --> 00:48:27,440
Speaker 3: they're contained entirely within this like fifteen square kilometer forested

817
00:48:27,480 --> 00:48:30,680
Speaker 3: area of a mountain range on the island of Oahu,

818
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:34,600
Speaker 3: though they used to have a larger range, we think.

819
00:48:34,760 --> 00:48:38,280
Speaker 3: Through filo genomic analysis, the authors found that the species

820
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:42,320
Speaker 3: is at least six million years old, several million years

821
00:48:42,360 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 3: older than the island of Oahu itself, and probably at

822
00:48:46,640 --> 00:48:49,800
Speaker 3: least a million years older than any of the major

823
00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:54,440
Speaker 3: Hawaiian islands that remain today, which implies that this lineage

824
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:59,000
Speaker 3: probably first appeared on Hawaiian islands that no longer exist

825
00:48:59,360 --> 00:49:02,239
Speaker 3: or you know, have eroded into the sea, and then

826
00:49:02,280 --> 00:49:06,080
Speaker 3: it migrated to inhabit new islands that came up, including

827
00:49:06,480 --> 00:49:10,320
Speaker 3: islands that do still today exist in the Hawaiian island chain,

828
00:49:10,400 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 3: but no longer have these caterpillars on them.

829
00:49:13,000 --> 00:49:15,120
Speaker 2: Oh wow, now that new they have almost kind of

830
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:17,720
Speaker 2: like elder god status, right, and some sort of elder

831
00:49:17,760 --> 00:49:21,720
Speaker 2: creature like we hail from islands that no longer exist.

832
00:49:21,480 --> 00:49:26,759
Speaker 3: From the lens that sank we came And so the

833
00:49:26,800 --> 00:49:30,800
Speaker 3: paper also does get into conservation concerns. Of course, Hawaii

834
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:33,239
Speaker 3: is one of the extinction capitals of the world, with

835
00:49:33,400 --> 00:49:37,760
Speaker 3: introduced species and other factors threatening native life. They write, quote,

836
00:49:37,760 --> 00:49:40,879
Speaker 3: the current range of the bone collector lineage is now

837
00:49:40,960 --> 00:49:44,160
Speaker 3: limited to a single species holding on in a fragment

838
00:49:44,160 --> 00:49:48,200
Speaker 3: of isolated forest that is increasingly beset with invasive species,

839
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:52,360
Speaker 3: exemplifying the vulnerability of many endemic Hawaiian insects and the

840
00:49:52,440 --> 00:49:56,680
Speaker 3: ecosystems on which they depend. So, of course, you know

841
00:49:56,719 --> 00:50:00,680
Speaker 3: that highlights conservation concerns that are true of all different

842
00:50:00,760 --> 00:50:05,040
Speaker 3: kinds of Hawaiian wildlife, and especially wildlife island wildlife all

843
00:50:05,080 --> 00:50:05,680
Speaker 3: over the world.

844
00:50:06,840 --> 00:50:09,799
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, thinking about how how fragile something like this

845
00:50:10,040 --> 00:50:13,520
Speaker 2: is and how it could have easily passed away without

846
00:50:13,600 --> 00:50:17,480
Speaker 2: us having a chance to even understand it and chronicle it.

847
00:50:18,120 --> 00:50:23,080
Speaker 2: You know what other strange oddities of the natural world

848
00:50:23,360 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 2: have just completely passed away without evidence. You know, we're

849
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:28,080
Speaker 2: lucky to have this.

850
00:50:28,680 --> 00:50:32,799
Speaker 3: But it is really amazing to think about the spider's

851
00:50:32,920 --> 00:50:35,799
Speaker 3: web as a life niche for something other than the

852
00:50:35,840 --> 00:50:40,919
Speaker 3: spider itself. There are clear advantages. It provides food for

853
00:50:40,960 --> 00:50:44,280
Speaker 3: a carnivore. You can swoop in there and eat, eat

854
00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:46,480
Speaker 3: after the spider is done eating, or eat what the

855
00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:51,880
Speaker 3: spider has saved for later. It provides presumably protection against

856
00:50:51,920 --> 00:50:53,840
Speaker 3: other predators. You know, there are a lot of things

857
00:50:53,840 --> 00:50:55,920
Speaker 3: that might threaten you otherwise, but they're not going to

858
00:50:55,960 --> 00:50:59,760
Speaker 3: go messing around in a spider web. But there's a spider,

859
00:51:00,920 --> 00:51:06,560
Speaker 3: so it seems pretty clear that there is some part

860
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:10,080
Speaker 3: of the silk case adaptation, you sticking all of the

861
00:51:10,160 --> 00:51:13,960
Speaker 3: dead insect body parts to the silk case that protects

862
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:18,120
Speaker 3: the caterpillar against the host spider. But why does that work?

863
00:51:18,200 --> 00:51:21,920
Speaker 3: How does the dead body parts suit protect the caterpillar.

864
00:51:22,800 --> 00:51:25,799
Speaker 3: In one article I read, it cited the idea that

865
00:51:26,280 --> 00:51:30,719
Speaker 3: maybe it makes the caterpillar look like trash to the spider, like,

866
00:51:30,800 --> 00:51:32,799
Speaker 3: you know, it looks like this is the stuff I've

867
00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:35,200
Speaker 3: already gotten rid of and no longer have any use

868
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:38,600
Speaker 3: for us. It's just not interesting to me. But I

869
00:51:38,760 --> 00:51:41,520
Speaker 3: do wonder kind of how that actually works in the

870
00:51:41,560 --> 00:51:44,400
Speaker 3: spider's brain. What does that look like to the spider?

871
00:51:44,440 --> 00:51:47,360
Speaker 3: What's going on there? And I wonder how it would

872
00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:52,399
Speaker 3: not be excited by, you know, the things that draw

873
00:51:52,440 --> 00:51:55,319
Speaker 3: it to prey that comes into its web in any

874
00:51:55,360 --> 00:51:58,960
Speaker 3: other case, like movement cues, vibrations in the web, or

875
00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:02,360
Speaker 3: smell cues or something like that. I don't know, but

876
00:52:03,360 --> 00:52:06,920
Speaker 3: it's super interesting that this animal can live in what

877
00:52:06,960 --> 00:52:11,000
Speaker 3: would seemingly be like the most hostile of possible spaces.

878
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:15,560
Speaker 2: I'm imagining a terminator heads up display situation where it's

879
00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:17,640
Speaker 2: like looking at it and it just says trash, you know,

880
00:52:18,000 --> 00:52:22,480
Speaker 2: classification trash. But yeah, I mean it's so and it's

881
00:52:22,560 --> 00:52:26,560
Speaker 2: also just so interesting to try to imagine like the

882
00:52:27,120 --> 00:52:33,840
Speaker 2: presumably you know, gruesome and and doom ridden evolutionary journey

883
00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:37,640
Speaker 2: to this point. Yeah, where you know this is this

884
00:52:37,680 --> 00:52:41,040
Speaker 2: is a niche that had to be occupied over time,

885
00:52:41,680 --> 00:52:44,799
Speaker 2: and you can imagine a lot of mistakes were made

886
00:52:44,800 --> 00:52:45,399
Speaker 2: along the way.

887
00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:49,520
Speaker 3: Oh well, that brings up another interesting sort of phylogenetic connection,

888
00:52:49,640 --> 00:52:54,799
Speaker 3: which is that within this moth genus Hyposmocoma that you

889
00:52:54,920 --> 00:52:59,239
Speaker 3: find throughout Hawaii, there are many other different kinds of

890
00:52:59,560 --> 00:53:04,240
Speaker 3: unique cases. So the it's not just the bone collector.

891
00:53:04,400 --> 00:53:08,120
Speaker 3: There are relatives of this moth where the caterpillar phase

892
00:53:08,200 --> 00:53:11,240
Speaker 3: of the life cycle has the has these weird cases

893
00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 3: it makes that are i think, in most cases thought

894
00:53:13,719 --> 00:53:16,080
Speaker 3: to help it blend in with the environment around it.

895
00:53:16,120 --> 00:53:18,800
Speaker 3: This is the only one that puts dead insect body

896
00:53:18,800 --> 00:53:21,279
Speaker 3: parts on itself and hides some spider's web. But there

897
00:53:21,320 --> 00:53:23,759
Speaker 3: are these others that make these cases that are said

898
00:53:23,760 --> 00:53:26,000
Speaker 3: to look like a crab. There's one that's called like

899
00:53:26,040 --> 00:53:29,279
Speaker 3: the candy wrapper caterpillar. It looks kind of like a

900
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:32,040
Speaker 3: candy wrapper. There's one that looks like a cigar. There's

901
00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:34,160
Speaker 3: one that looks like I think they say it looks

902
00:53:34,200 --> 00:53:37,400
Speaker 3: like a burrito. So you get all these different shapes.

903
00:53:37,840 --> 00:53:40,600
Speaker 3: I think generally they're thought to just be types of

904
00:53:40,640 --> 00:53:44,640
Speaker 3: camouflage that help hide this from potential predators. But the

905
00:53:44,680 --> 00:53:48,680
Speaker 3: bone collector really stands out like it looks quite different

906
00:53:48,680 --> 00:53:50,920
Speaker 3: and much more striking than the other ones, which I

907
00:53:50,960 --> 00:53:54,920
Speaker 3: think are mostly trying to appear drab and blend in

908
00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:58,160
Speaker 3: with I don't know, an environment of leaves or sticks

909
00:53:58,280 --> 00:54:02,160
Speaker 3: or something. But anyway, coming back to the question, where

910
00:54:02,160 --> 00:54:05,719
Speaker 3: does the bone collector caterpillar fall on the you know,

911
00:54:05,840 --> 00:54:09,680
Speaker 3: Cave Hyena versus Texas chainsaw massacre at scale? Like, you know,

912
00:54:09,920 --> 00:54:13,680
Speaker 3: this seems to be much more intentional than the the

913
00:54:13,719 --> 00:54:17,239
Speaker 3: midden of bones that has formed chaotically just through you know,

914
00:54:17,280 --> 00:54:20,120
Speaker 3: you're eating nearby and that's where the bones get deposited.

915
00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:24,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really kind of taking advantage of a mitten.

916
00:54:25,239 --> 00:54:30,040
Speaker 2: It's taking advantage of a a of an accumulation of

917
00:54:30,120 --> 00:54:33,760
Speaker 2: body parts or bones if you rather, and then using

918
00:54:33,800 --> 00:54:37,080
Speaker 2: it intentionally. It's like if you lived in the Texas

919
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:39,239
Speaker 2: Chainsaw massacre house, but you were not a member of

920
00:54:39,280 --> 00:54:42,440
Speaker 2: the saw your clan, and you just covered yourself up

921
00:54:42,480 --> 00:54:44,760
Speaker 2: with bones just to blend in with all the bone

922
00:54:45,840 --> 00:54:47,760
Speaker 2: bone decorated furniture and so forth.

923
00:54:48,000 --> 00:54:50,279
Speaker 3: And you get to eat leather faces lunch when he's

924
00:54:50,280 --> 00:54:52,200
Speaker 3: not looking because you covered left.

925
00:54:52,080 --> 00:54:56,839
Speaker 2: Over barbecue left under slaw. You know, I was sure

926
00:54:56,840 --> 00:54:57,719
Speaker 2: I had some food.

927
00:54:57,520 --> 00:55:01,719
Speaker 3: On my plate. Well, off to the bone collectors. I

928
00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:04,759
Speaker 3: like your your style. Obviously the bone suit is cool,

929
00:55:04,800 --> 00:55:08,400
Speaker 3: but also it's just like bold behavior. You know, this

930
00:55:08,520 --> 00:55:13,400
Speaker 3: is a this is a boldness admired. I admire you

931
00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:13,920
Speaker 3: from afar.

932
00:55:14,160 --> 00:55:18,000
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's a frequent story and evolution where

933
00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:20,920
Speaker 2: you know, not not to personify evolution too much, but

934
00:55:21,000 --> 00:55:24,280
Speaker 2: it is fun from time to time, and it's almost

935
00:55:24,360 --> 00:55:27,000
Speaker 2: like gain evolutions to Hey, you know, there's a good

936
00:55:27,040 --> 00:55:29,560
Speaker 2: living to be made living in a spider web if

937
00:55:29,560 --> 00:55:31,920
Speaker 2: you're not a spider in the same way that evolution

938
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:35,880
Speaker 2: might whisper you know, Uh, there's a lot of riches

939
00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:38,200
Speaker 2: in a bee hive. You could get in there and

940
00:55:38,680 --> 00:55:41,040
Speaker 2: not alert the bees to your presence or make them

941
00:55:41,080 --> 00:55:43,719
Speaker 2: think that you belong there. Well, there's a lot of

942
00:55:43,719 --> 00:55:47,480
Speaker 2: honey in there, there's a lot of resources, and these

943
00:55:47,520 --> 00:55:50,600
Speaker 2: are all you know, these are all dangerous missions, dangerous hests.

944
00:55:51,239 --> 00:55:53,520
Speaker 2: But evolution is generally up for the job.

945
00:55:53,800 --> 00:55:57,280
Speaker 3: That's true. This is not the only infiltrator in nature. Yeah,

946
00:55:57,320 --> 00:56:01,319
Speaker 3: but maybe the most morbid looking one. Yeah, okay, Well

947
00:56:01,360 --> 00:56:02,640
Speaker 3: should we call part one there?

948
00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:05,440
Speaker 2: We should call part one, yes, but we will be back.

949
00:56:05,719 --> 00:56:08,200
Speaker 2: Let's see today's Thursday. We will be back on Tuesday

950
00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:10,719
Speaker 2: with a second part in which we'll look at some

951
00:56:10,800 --> 00:56:15,200
Speaker 2: other creatures that make use of the bones, be they

952
00:56:15,239 --> 00:56:19,400
Speaker 2: literal bones or some other parts of dead organisms. I

953
00:56:19,400 --> 00:56:22,279
Speaker 2: will have a few more examples to discuss in part two.

954
00:56:22,800 --> 00:56:25,040
Speaker 2: In the meantime, we'd love to hear from everyone out there,

955
00:56:25,280 --> 00:56:27,560
Speaker 2: you know about any of the organisms we talked about here,

956
00:56:27,680 --> 00:56:32,320
Speaker 2: or other examples from horror cinema, horror comics and so forth.

957
00:56:33,040 --> 00:56:35,480
Speaker 2: There's some other great examples, you know. Actually, I will

958
00:56:35,480 --> 00:56:37,279
Speaker 2: go ahead and mention one real quick that came up

959
00:56:37,320 --> 00:56:39,640
Speaker 2: in my research. This is not a movie that I

960
00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:42,799
Speaker 2: have seen, but there is a two thousand and three

961
00:56:42,800 --> 00:56:47,000
Speaker 2: British Canadian horror film titled The Bone Snatcher which apparently

962
00:56:47,040 --> 00:56:51,120
Speaker 2: does feature some sort of an insectoid creature that wears

963
00:56:51,160 --> 00:56:55,759
Speaker 2: the bones of its victims. So it's like covered in

964
00:56:55,800 --> 00:56:59,720
Speaker 2: bones or somehow partially armored in bones. I'm not sure,

965
00:56:59,760 --> 00:57:01,640
Speaker 2: but it is. It's kind of interesting. This would have

966
00:57:01,719 --> 00:57:04,480
Speaker 2: the two thousand and three and it does kind of

967
00:57:04,480 --> 00:57:06,480
Speaker 2: match up with what we were discussing here with the

968
00:57:06,480 --> 00:57:09,840
Speaker 2: bone collectorc caterpillar. I couldn't really find a good screen

969
00:57:09,920 --> 00:57:11,880
Speaker 2: cap of the monster though, so I don't really have

970
00:57:11,920 --> 00:57:12,799
Speaker 2: a great sense of it.

971
00:57:14,120 --> 00:57:16,560
Speaker 3: Well, I don't want to insult a movie without having

972
00:57:16,600 --> 00:57:19,080
Speaker 3: seen it, but it does have a real two thousand

973
00:57:19,120 --> 00:57:25,040
Speaker 3: and three kind of look. Yeah tagline it will scare

974
00:57:25,120 --> 00:57:26,760
Speaker 3: you out of your skull.

975
00:57:29,160 --> 00:57:30,200
Speaker 2: Maybe so, maybe so?

976
00:57:31,040 --> 00:57:32,400
Speaker 3: All right, next time.

977
00:57:33,000 --> 00:57:35,840
Speaker 2: All right. Just a reminder for everyone out there, This

978
00:57:35,880 --> 00:57:37,640
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and

979
00:57:37,680 --> 00:57:40,360
Speaker 2: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short

980
00:57:40,400 --> 00:57:42,760
Speaker 2: form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside

981
00:57:42,800 --> 00:57:44,760
Speaker 2: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film

982
00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:46,080
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema.

983
00:57:46,320 --> 00:57:50,320
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway,

984
00:57:50,360 --> 00:57:54,160
Speaker 3: and special thanks to our guest producer Today Andrew Howard.

985
00:57:54,240 --> 00:57:57,160
Speaker 3: Thank you so much Andrew for stepping in. If you

986
00:57:57,200 --> 00:57:59,800
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

987
00:57:59,840 --> 00:58:02,640
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for

988
00:58:02,680 --> 00:58:05,200
Speaker 3: the future, or just to say hello, you can email

989
00:58:05,280 --> 00:58:15,360
Speaker 3: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

990
00:58:15,400 --> 00:58:18,360
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

991
00:58:18,440 --> 00:58:21,200
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992
00:58:21,360 --> 00:58:39,000
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