Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Uh. You know, we've been sheepish about tour
Speaker 1: announcements lately, but we can finally announce our well, let's
Speaker 1: just call it h our tour. Some cities we've been to,
Speaker 1: some are new, someone's been a while. Yeah, we're coming
Speaker 1: to cities all over the Conental Us and parts of Canada.
Speaker 1: If you live in either of those two places, there's
Speaker 1: a really good chance we're gonna be somewhere near you
Speaker 1: at some point this year. Chuck, I'm psyched. We're kicking
Speaker 1: off in Toronto on August eight at the Dan fourth
Speaker 1: Music Hall. It's going to be great. And then the
Speaker 1: next day we're gonna be in beautiful Chicago on August
Speaker 1: nine at the Harris Theater. Uh. And then the next day,
Speaker 1: August nine at Dan fourth Music Hall in lovely Toronto, Canada,
Speaker 1: North America, Planet Earth. And then we're too next so
Speaker 1: I don't know, how about Vancouver on September and then
Speaker 1: the next day we're gonna be a min Neapolis on September.
Speaker 1: Those are gonna be awesome, that is correct. Then we
Speaker 1: are going to take a nap, and then we're going
Speaker 1: to wake up on October ten in Austin Texas, wonder
Speaker 1: how the heck we got there, and remember that we
Speaker 1: have to be at the Paramount Theater for our show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's called the Austin Wake Up. And then Chuck, the
Speaker 1: next day, we're going to be for the first time
Speaker 1: ever in beautiful Lawrence, Kansas at the Liberty Hall on
Speaker 1: October eleven. That's gonna be huge. And then equally huge
Speaker 1: is what's next. We have a special three night second
Speaker 1: home stand. We call it our second Home that's because
Speaker 1: it's the Bellhouse in beautiful Brooklyn, New York. October. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be there three nights in a row. And finally
Speaker 1: we're gonna wrap it up in true stuff you should
Speaker 1: know fashion here in Atlanta at the Bucket Theater on
Speaker 1: November four, and there's gonna be a very special show.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for more details. But it is going to
Speaker 1: be a charity benefit show. And not only are we
Speaker 1: donating of our dough, uh, we got our booking agent,
Speaker 1: in venues and promoters and everyone is chipping in to
Speaker 1: donate large portions of their dough as well. So I'm
Speaker 1: pretty excited about that. Yep. So it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: great tour, Chuck, We need to go get our rest. Yes,
Speaker 1: and you can go to s y s K live
Speaker 1: dot com to get all your details because that is
Speaker 1: our touring home on the web and tickets are going
Speaker 1: on sale this Friday, June ninth, So visit s y
Speaker 1: sk live dot com for ticket links. And if the
Speaker 1: ticket link doesn't happen to be there, do not fret,
Speaker 1: Just go to the theater home page and you can
Speaker 1: find out all about it there. We'll see you on
Speaker 1: the road. Welcome to Stuff you should know from house
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark with Mr Charles W. Chuck Bryant and
Speaker 1: roundly liked fella and uh another roundly like person Jerry
Speaker 1: Jerome rolling me. People can take a lad me. What
Speaker 1: a weird start. Yeah, it's weird, but this is a
Speaker 1: weird episode. Man, you think sure it's mysterious at least
Speaker 1: that's mystery is weird? Uh, yeah, mystery is weird. There,
Speaker 1: that's a T shirt. Prove my point, man, it's I've
Speaker 1: been a long time since we came up with a
Speaker 1: T shirt. Well, yes, since we pointed one out. Yeah
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, mystery is weird. Josh Clark, that's y
Speaker 1: sk s right, or some people say s U s K,
Speaker 1: I've never gotten that. Well you knew the text version.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess I think it's just a mistake.
Speaker 1: I think so too. It looks weird. To each his own,
Speaker 1: that's another good T shirt. Yeah, well that's our motto
Speaker 1: here stuff you should know to each their own. That's right,
Speaker 1: So chuck um. Back in February of this year, and
Speaker 1: not too terribly long ago, down in New Zealand at
Speaker 1: a beach called Farewell Spit in Golden Bay. It's on
Speaker 1: the top of the South Island of New Zealand. Okay um,
Speaker 1: they had a huge, huge mass stranding of whales, pilot
Speaker 1: whales to be specific, about six hundred. Imagine that. It's
Speaker 1: a satisfy thing. You can see. Well, yeah, there's one
Speaker 1: of them. There's a I was reading an article I
Speaker 1: think it was from The Guardian that it was basically
Speaker 1: on location interviewing people down there. They were like, this
Speaker 1: is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1: It's alver experienced anything worse than this. Is dead pilot
Speaker 1: whales everywhere, dying pilot whales everywhere, and apparently the local
Speaker 1: authorities put out a call to people living in the
Speaker 1: area saying like cancel school, calling sick to work, like
Speaker 1: we need your help down here. And there's this group
Speaker 1: called Project Jonah that's a New Zealand basically a whale
Speaker 1: rescue group. And it's pretty appropriate that they're from New
Speaker 1: Zealand because from what I understand, New Zealand has the
Speaker 1: highest incidents of whale strandings or I think even cetacean strandings,
Speaker 1: which you know is an ending up on a beach
Speaker 1: um in the world. But the as an International Whaling
Speaker 1: Commission puts it, any country with the coastline has is
Speaker 1: going to have a problem with mass strandings of whales.
Speaker 1: In Germany it did happen, which is not landlocked. It
Speaker 1: turns out. Yeah, it's just heartbreaking to see these beautiful,
Speaker 1: humongous creatures, uh, just laying there dying an awful, awful death.
Speaker 1: And um, there's a a lot of, like I said,
Speaker 1: mystery to the whole thing. We're not entirely certain why
Speaker 1: whales end up stranded, especially on mass um. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of pretty good hypotheses, some of which are probably true.
Speaker 1: It's there's probably multiple explanations, but there is definitely some
Speaker 1: some weirdness to it still. And then there's a lot
Speaker 1: of debate about what exactly you should do during a
Speaker 1: whale stranding. Should you help them, should you kill them? Um?
Speaker 1: And then should you kill him? Yeah, exactly. And then
Speaker 1: then there's a lot of debate also about what exactly
Speaker 1: you should do with a dead whale stranded on the beach,
Speaker 1: because those things, you don't just flush them down the toilet.
Speaker 1: They're pretty big. Yeah, And when I said dying in
Speaker 1: awful death, um, they well, there's a lot of things
Speaker 1: that happen. Uh. Their skin burns, yeah, they have very
Speaker 1: soft sensitive skin. Yes, So just to be out there
Speaker 1: in the sun like that, they equated it to like
Speaker 1: a third degree burn on a human just laying there
Speaker 1: in the sun. Um. Seagulls come in and don't even
Speaker 1: wait for them to die, and apparently have a thing
Speaker 1: for going for the eyeballs. So a dying live whale
Speaker 1: being having its skin burned and eyeballs picked out, Yep,
Speaker 1: that's a big problem. And then you also, I didn't
Speaker 1: think about this, but so a whale is a marine mammal, right,
Speaker 1: they come up to breathe but they're there equipped to
Speaker 1: be in the water where gravity is is less. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're huge, and so they need that water to
Speaker 1: uh well, when they go and land, big problems happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they encounter the pressure of gravity um pressing down and
Speaker 1: then they actually start to to suffocate under their own weight.
Speaker 1: The big problem is while they're laying there on the beach,
Speaker 1: they it takes them a very long time to suffocate.
Speaker 1: They have a tremendous obviously tremendous reserve of blubber, so
Speaker 1: they don't starved to death first, and they very infrequently
Speaker 1: do so. Over the course of days, possibly even weeks,
Speaker 1: they're laying there suffocating under the weight of gravity, being
Speaker 1: crushed by the their own blubber, yeah, and their their
Speaker 1: own organs being crushed under their own weight. So it's
Speaker 1: a bad jam. It's a pretty bad scene. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just really really sad. And to fully understand how to
Speaker 1: help whales and other cetaceans from becoming stranded in the
Speaker 1: first place, we have to understand why they become stranded.
Speaker 1: And there's a a lot of investigation into this, but
Speaker 1: apparently it's nothing new from from what I've seen as
Speaker 1: far as long as humans have been keeping records, there
Speaker 1: have been reports of mass whale strandings all over the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you cobble together quite a few articles for this. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the really good ones was what causes mass? Uh?
Speaker 1: What causes whale mass strandings? From the conversation by Robin
Speaker 1: Grace and um she points out that you know, like
Speaker 1: you said, this has been going on forever since people
Speaker 1: have been writing it writing it down. And um, lots
Speaker 1: all different kind of species of whales this can happen to,
Speaker 1: and dolphins and other cetaceans. But um, it says she said,
Speaker 1: short finn pilot whales are the most frequent or he.
Speaker 1: I guess it could be like that guy from Cheers.
Speaker 1: It is r O B y N. That's that's always
Speaker 1: a she? Right, No, Robin Hitchcock spells his name with
Speaker 1: a Why doesn't he? Oh? What a confusing world. I
Speaker 1: talked to him in an elevator. Uh, the sketch best
Speaker 1: that last year? Really? Yeah? What are the Egyptians with him? No? Wait,
Speaker 1: wasn't he in the band? What band? The band? Oh?
Speaker 1: What was the in? Originally? I don't know he was
Speaker 1: in like a what major band like that first, I
Speaker 1: wonder he's definitely not the band. He's English. Um, sorry,
Speaker 1: where were we? Oh? Yeah, yeah, So pilot whales short
Speaker 1: finn pilot whales are the most frequent U strand strand
Speaker 1: ease I guess um false killer whales, melon headed whales, uh,
Speaker 1: melon headed whale and that name uh, the Cuvier beaked
Speaker 1: whale and sperm whales. Um. These these are all very
Speaker 1: much deep sea dwellers, very social fish. And this is
Speaker 1: one of the problems as they hang out together in
Speaker 1: the hundreds and so um, one of the thoughts, uh,
Speaker 1: Like you said, there are a lot of different hypotheses,
Speaker 1: but one of the thoughts when they see these mass
Speaker 1: strandings is whatever. And we'll talk about what might get
Speaker 1: that first whale there, whether it was just sick or
Speaker 1: confused or out of its depth trying to go for
Speaker 1: some prey, uh like, out of its comfort zone its deep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but maybe the other hundreds are just tagging along. Right.
Speaker 1: So there's this there's this big drive, especially among environmental
Speaker 1: protection groups, to say this is human caused in large part,
Speaker 1: and there is a whole branch of strandings that probably
Speaker 1: are that actually almost certainly can be accounted or chalked
Speaker 1: up to human activity. But there's also a big wide
Speaker 1: portion of animal strandings, cetacean strandings that appear to be
Speaker 1: natural in nature. Right. And so some of those hypotheses
Speaker 1: are that initially, like one whale or something was sick
Speaker 1: or maybe injured, um, and came in toward shallower water
Speaker 1: so it could come up to surface for air more easily,
Speaker 1: and when in a little too shallow and got trapped there. Um.
Speaker 1: It's possible that a pod of whales were chasing some
Speaker 1: very valuable prey into areas that they weren't familiar with
Speaker 1: that were too shallow, um, and they got stranded there
Speaker 1: as well. And there's there's a couple of uh parts
Speaker 1: to this that that makes the whole thing makes sense
Speaker 1: a little more. One is that echolocation that is part
Speaker 1: of it's basically the number one sense that um marine
Speaker 1: mammals use. Uh. It's it doesn't work very well in
Speaker 1: shallow waters, right. Yeah, So they do their navigational aid,
Speaker 1: they get into these shallower waters, like you said, maybe
Speaker 1: they were chasing something to eat. All of a sudden
Speaker 1: they find themselves out of place. They don't know which
Speaker 1: way to go, So they inadvertently swim towards the shore
Speaker 1: and accidentally beach and maybe they've got hanging out with
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty pals because their social because which makes
Speaker 1: it all so sad. That's a big cue though, or
Speaker 1: a big clue that, UM, these are deep sea marine
Speaker 1: mammals that strand on gently sloping sandy areas. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they found some uh, I guess anecdotal evidence. UM, some
Speaker 1: whales in the North Sea that were beached or stranded
Speaker 1: had recently digested oceanic squid. So they thought, well, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they had gone in chasing the squid, had just
Speaker 1: eaten it and didn't know which way to go to
Speaker 1: get out of there. Yeah, they got confused. And that's
Speaker 1: another thing that UM, people who have been on the
Speaker 1: scene of mass whales strandings report is that the whales
Speaker 1: often seemed to be disoriented or disorientated, depending on where
Speaker 1: you're from. Oh, that's right, wasn't that a thing on
Speaker 1: the show? I think it's u kaish is disorientated. Uh
Speaker 1: should we take a break now? All right, we'll take
Speaker 1: a break, and UM talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: the natural causes and also about potential man made causes,
Speaker 1: So Chuck. One thing that you you hit upon, um,
Speaker 1: is that the whales are very, very social. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so there's this idea that if one becomes stranded, especially
Speaker 1: if this is a leader that's leading a pod, if
Speaker 1: they become lost or disoriented, as long as they're stranded,
Speaker 1: the other members of the pod, of this extremely social,
Speaker 1: tight knit group are going to hang around and stick
Speaker 1: with that one. There's also an idea that ones that
Speaker 1: they are sick are injured if they go off and
Speaker 1: become stranded. That even if the ones that follow them
Speaker 1: aren't lost, they're there because of the social bonds, like
Speaker 1: they're there to provide support or because they care. It's
Speaker 1: called the social caring hypothesis. This idea that whales allow
Speaker 1: themselves to become stranded because a member of their pod
Speaker 1: has been come stranded and they're worried about them. Basically Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh So obviously there are a lot of people around
Speaker 1: the world that care a lot about this and are
Speaker 1: trying to work to just learn more about how to
Speaker 1: handle this and uh and last year there was a
Speaker 1: workshop held to discuss, you know, how to practically handle
Speaker 1: these strandings. Uh and so it concluded UM that they
Speaker 1: had a uh an International Strandings Network they were going
Speaker 1: to establish this, and I guess they're in the process
Speaker 1: of doing that now, basically stranding experts from all all
Speaker 1: these different countries where it happens. Partnering up was something
Speaker 1: called the Entanglement Network UM to basically share information on
Speaker 1: best practices and just get a little more organized with
Speaker 1: how they can best help this situation. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's good that they're doing something about it. One of
Speaker 1: the other things that UM very recently, I think within
Speaker 1: the last year two has been finally handled was this
Speaker 1: longstanding issue of whether or not sonar that's used by
Speaker 1: like navies around the world UM it leads to strandings
Speaker 1: of whales. Yeah, this was the first time this connection
Speaker 1: was made. There was a NATO military exercise off the
Speaker 1: coast of Greece which coincided with the stranding of twelve
Speaker 1: UH Cuvier's beaked whales. UM. Another one in May two
Speaker 1: thousand in the Bahamas UM loud loud mid frequency sonar
Speaker 1: stranded a number of whales and for those they did
Speaker 1: some UH examinations and found hemorrhaging in them in the
Speaker 1: inner ear that indicated acoustic trauma, which is just devastating, right,
Speaker 1: And there were NATO or either NATO or U S
Speaker 1: Navy sonar exercises that had been conducted right there, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then in two thousand two, a group of beaked
Speaker 1: whales landed in the Canary Islands and UM, they were
Speaker 1: examined and this has raised a really big mystery as well.
Speaker 1: Some of them showed signs of what we would call
Speaker 1: the bends submersion sickness, which you would not think that
Speaker 1: marine mammal would ever have a problem with. No, because
Speaker 1: they've developed UM, well they've adapted to be able to
Speaker 1: die very quickly and rise very quickly. But they think
Speaker 1: that probably something about acute sonar, which is basically just
Speaker 1: getting hit by a blast of high frequency, short duration
Speaker 1: sound waves UM causes them to either swim away. This
Speaker 1: is the current hypothesis. There was a New York Times
Speaker 1: article called the Search for Clues to What causes Whale
Speaker 1: strandings and UM. It talks about this study that was
Speaker 1: published in the Journal of Experimental Biology in two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: and the study UM, who's carried out by Terry Terry
Speaker 1: Williams basically says that sonar goes off nearby some whales
Speaker 1: or cetaceans, they try to get away as fast as
Speaker 1: they can. As they do, they expand about double the
Speaker 1: amount of energy they normally would swimming, and they they
Speaker 1: lose oxygen to their brain. In the meantime, carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: starts to build, which allows bubbles to form in their tissues,
Speaker 1: including their brain, which is bends decompression sickness, which so
Speaker 1: it's not like sonar causes the bends, but indirectly, they
Speaker 1: think leads to the bends by disrupting that the whale
Speaker 1: or cetaceans ability to dive or rise very quickly without
Speaker 1: decompression sickness. Yeah, and this um, that study was pretty
Speaker 1: important because they I think for for a long time
Speaker 1: people just thought, well, they're fish. They can swim endlessly
Speaker 1: and it's not a problem because their marine mammals or
Speaker 1: fish and they just that's what they do. But it's
Speaker 1: sort of a no brainer that they can get tired
Speaker 1: just like anything else, and they confirmed that in studies.
Speaker 1: You know, if they if they sprint, basically, um, they
Speaker 1: are essentially getting tired. And if they're sprinting to avoid sonar,
Speaker 1: then that's a problem, and so as a result, the
Speaker 1: Navy entered into an agreement to not conduct these trials
Speaker 1: or sonar exercises or underwater explosions UM between around Hawaii
Speaker 1: or southern California, which are extremely important UM reproducing and
Speaker 1: feeding grounds for whales of all types, and there's some
Speaker 1: resident populations there. But they finally said, okay, alright, fine,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do that anymore around there, which
Speaker 1: was a big deal. Yeah, seaquakes or another uh UM
Speaker 1: underwater sound UM like really intense thing that can can
Speaker 1: affect them beyond sonar. So it's not always just man
Speaker 1: made sounds, no, but there another type of man made
Speaker 1: sound that's a big problem called chronic underwater noise. That
Speaker 1: UM is created by things like UM shipping or industry,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing where it's not necessarily this high intensity,
Speaker 1: but it's it's pretty much constant, and it can drive
Speaker 1: cetaceans nuts because again, like we use our eyes, they
Speaker 1: use their ears, and if you have a huge loud
Speaker 1: sound or a constant loud sound, it makes it difficult
Speaker 1: for you to do things like you know, hit on
Speaker 1: a lady whale when you're when it's time to reproduce. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we've we've mostly been talking about whales, but there
Speaker 1: was this one um anecdotal story of these dolphins short
Speaker 1: beaked common dolphin that this one researcher found and this
Speaker 1: kind of lends itself to the to the fact that
Speaker 1: they will travel together if one of them is hurt.
Speaker 1: And this is at the Tife Estuary, West Wales, and
Speaker 1: he found these two dolphins on the beach and one
Speaker 1: of them was sick. Uh postmortermobile had a heavy long
Speaker 1: parasite infection that affected its breathing. But the other one
Speaker 1: apparently was not sick but remained close to uh it's
Speaker 1: little buddy in distress, like whistling frequently. So um man,
Speaker 1: that's just like heartbreaking. It was like ted Ted, stay
Speaker 1: with me, his ted Ted's the dying dolphins. Okay, I
Speaker 1: thought that was a references something just Ted the dolphin. Yeah, gotcha.
Speaker 1: Did you ever hear about the researchers. Surely we've talked
Speaker 1: about that, the dolphin researcher who like took acid with dolphins,
Speaker 1: like gave acid to dolphins and dropped it himself. I
Speaker 1: don't think so build a house, and I think the
Speaker 1: Bahamas that could be flooded to the dolphins could come
Speaker 1: live in the house with them. M I believe tried
Speaker 1: to or successfully. His research assistant did it with the dolphin,
Speaker 1: had sex with a dolphins. That's another way to put it.
Speaker 1: This is real. I've definitely never heard this story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we I think that one might deserve its own episode.
Speaker 1: It's it happened the man who did acid and did
Speaker 1: sex with dolphins. I think his research assistant, a female, uh,
Speaker 1: did it with dolphins, or at least came close. There
Speaker 1: was like a this wasn't a fever dream. It sounds
Speaker 1: like it must have seemed like it down in the
Speaker 1: Bahamas at the time. Yeah, well, we'll do an episode
Speaker 1: on it. Okay, so we It feels like a science
Speaker 1: is hot on the trail of cetacean stranding, so figuring
Speaker 1: out what causes it. There's a lot of different causes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably all that stuff. I think, probably, um, but
Speaker 1: there's a big issue still to be discussed, and that
Speaker 1: is that if you have a dolphin stranding or a
Speaker 1: whale strain ending, and you've got some that have died naturally,
Speaker 1: but you still have some that are alive, what do
Speaker 1: you do well. There's this that group in New Zealand
Speaker 1: called Project Jonah. They have guidelines for like the average
Speaker 1: person of how to how to keep a citation that's
Speaker 1: been stranded or beached, how to keep it comfortable, how
Speaker 1: to keep it alive. Ye, a dolphin obviously is more savable,
Speaker 1: uh and um, more savable, not only because they're smaller,
Speaker 1: but there it's frankly, it's an unsafe to go too
Speaker 1: close to a beached whale, right. That's why I was
Speaker 1: really surprised that this group was putting out guidelines telling
Speaker 1: you how to care for a beach to whale. It's
Speaker 1: an extremely dangerous thing to get near a beached whale,
Speaker 1: especially by the tail. Yeah, I mean an accident can
Speaker 1: easily happen. And they're so strong, sure, and they're agitated,
Speaker 1: they're scared out of their minds. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: dangerous thing. So there's a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: discussion about you know, what do you do well? Some
Speaker 1: people say, well, you refloat them, you get them out
Speaker 1: there as fast as possible, but it is hard to
Speaker 1: do and also to an untrained person, you can't really
Speaker 1: spot a gravely injured internally injured citacean just by looking
Speaker 1: at it. So you may be pushing it back out
Speaker 1: to sea and being like, go go live, when really
Speaker 1: they're going going to have a long, prolonged death at
Speaker 1: sea because they're dying of internal injuries. The The prevailing idea,
Speaker 1: it seems like, at least among scientists, is that you
Speaker 1: should probably euthanize, especially a whale. Dolphins, Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: probably refloat them. A whale once it becomes beached, it's
Speaker 1: probably a goner, so say most scientists that I've come across,
Speaker 1: And so you you would euthanize them. But then this
Speaker 1: raises the whole issue how do you humanely kill a whale?
Speaker 1: Where do you get a guillotine that big? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know what, we'll talk about what they've come
Speaker 1: up with right after this. All right, So where we
Speaker 1: left off was the um Sadly, oftentimes the most humane
Speaker 1: thing to do would be to put one of these
Speaker 1: whales out of their misery, uh immediately or you know,
Speaker 1: as quickly as possible. Uh. And so how do you
Speaker 1: do this safely? Um? They've tried a variety of drugs
Speaker 1: over the years, UM, some degreater success than others. UM.
Speaker 1: One drug they tried was good old phena barbital um.
Speaker 1: The problem with feena barbital is that it's uh, it
Speaker 1: doesn't just leave the whale immediately. It can It can
Speaker 1: stay in the whale system and then go into other
Speaker 1: places like a dog. Yeah, it doesn't break down in
Speaker 1: the environment. And there was a case of a dog
Speaker 1: being fed whale meat and falling into a coma because
Speaker 1: of the bar the barbituous that had. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: it takes a truckload of barbituous to euthanize a whale, right,
Speaker 1: so this dog eating this meat and falling into a coma,
Speaker 1: it was to be expected. Luckily the dog recovered after
Speaker 1: having its stomach pumped twice. But I mean, what a
Speaker 1: cluster of a day that was all around kind of
Speaker 1: euthanize a whale and then your dog falls into a
Speaker 1: comma when you feed at the whale and you're just
Speaker 1: trying to complete the circle of life, you know. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and don't you need special permission to use fena barbers
Speaker 1: all anyway? Yes, it's not like the kind of thing
Speaker 1: you can just you know, No, these are like significant drugs.
Speaker 1: And actually there was a there's a protocol that was
Speaker 1: recently developed and published in the Journal of a sequence
Speaker 1: of drug administrations that keep that will kill a whale,
Speaker 1: but it will do it very humanely and actually quite safely.
Speaker 1: To these very clever scientists figured out how to use
Speaker 1: drugs to kill a whale. And it's very much like
Speaker 1: the drug cocktail that they give to prisoners in the
Speaker 1: United States when UM for the death penalty. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean it's taken them a while to find the correct
Speaker 1: mix of drugs that won't um that are safety use,
Speaker 1: that won't agitate the whale further, that will kill them quickly.
Speaker 1: Uh So a lot of like kind of experimentation has
Speaker 1: gone on, and what they finally came up with was
Speaker 1: for drugs uh medas a lamb. I think that's like
Speaker 1: at a van okay, thumbs up on that um as
Speaker 1: a promosine. I think that's like bear okay, uh excellent
Speaker 1: excelazine that's ecstasy and potassium chloride that is UM special
Speaker 1: K the cereal and that needs to be administered sequentially.
Speaker 1: I believe in that order, correct, Yeah, because one of them,
Speaker 1: what was the one with the X uh except excelazine Okay,
Speaker 1: so that one excelazine, Yeah, maybe orig is zelazine. Anytime
Speaker 1: something starts with three consonants, I just get throne one. Um.
Speaker 1: But that if you just give that to a whale,
Speaker 1: it's a sedative, I believe. Right. No, it's a pain killer.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. But it can cause thrashing. That is extremely dangerous.
Speaker 1: You Like, the whale's tail is already dangerous enough when
Speaker 1: it's stranded. If you give it a drug that makes
Speaker 1: it involuntarily thrash, you're you're in big trouble. But they
Speaker 1: found that if they administer that stuff after the other two,
Speaker 1: it won't cause thrashing, but we'll have the pain killing effect. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the medazzolam and the aspromazine. Uh, they use already
Speaker 1: in veterinary services for horses and dogs to calm them down.
Speaker 1: And you know when when you have a dog put down,
Speaker 1: they don't give just one shot. That's a couple of shots.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, ideally, Yeah, they don't even give humans a
Speaker 1: couple of shots these days. Yeah, So they do this,
Speaker 1: you know with dogs, they give one to kind of
Speaker 1: calm the dog down, and then wanted to stop the heartbeat, right,
Speaker 1: and the potassium chloride, the final thing is the one
Speaker 1: that stops the whale's heart. I believe. Yes, the exazzoline
Speaker 1: is the pain relief and anesthesia, and then that final
Speaker 1: potassium chloride is what does it. So the the guys
Speaker 1: who came up with this UM protocol also developed needles,
Speaker 1: like industrial sized needles that can be used. They're attached
Speaker 1: to gardens sprayers. Yeah, that's nuts, right, So you put
Speaker 1: all the drugs in these gardens prayers and then you
Speaker 1: attach a needle to it. And the great thing about
Speaker 1: the needles is that you can insert the needles into
Speaker 1: the veins that are around the fins. You don't need
Speaker 1: to go near the arteries, which which the main artery
Speaker 1: connects the tail of the body. So it's much safer
Speaker 1: to administer these drugs because you're working by the fin,
Speaker 1: which is much less dangerous than say, working by the tail.
Speaker 1: And apparently UM, I don't think that they've actually used
Speaker 1: this protocol on any cetacean yet, but UM brand new.
Speaker 1: It is brand new, but they they are feeling pretty
Speaker 1: pretty good about it, as good as you can feel
Speaker 1: about coming up with a cocktail of drugs to kill
Speaker 1: a whale. But that's just one way of euthanizing whales.
Speaker 1: There's there's other ones. People shoot them with shotguns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're certainly more primitive attempts. Uh, that are primitive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. And and there's actually a protocol for shooting
Speaker 1: a whale, and you want to use very high caliber
Speaker 1: bullets projectiles, and if you don't, you're just going to
Speaker 1: hurt that whale because they have a really really strong skull. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really tough to penetrate. Um. So there's this thing
Speaker 1: that's been developed called the sweed, the sperm whale euthanasia device.
Speaker 1: Sperm whales have a very thick goal. They're huge whales,
Speaker 1: and this thing is a modified World War two fourteen
Speaker 1: point five millimeter Russian anti tank gun that's been developed
Speaker 1: just to euthanize sperm whales by shooting them in the
Speaker 1: head with this thing. Yeah, I'm gonna go with the
Speaker 1: drug cocktail. There's also exanguination, which is if you don't
Speaker 1: have a drug cocktail and you've got a whale, you
Speaker 1: don't have an anti tank gun, you don't have a
Speaker 1: drug cocktail. The the the preferred method is to exanguinate
Speaker 1: the whale by cutting that major artery that connects the
Speaker 1: tail to its body and basically just letting it bleed out,
Speaker 1: which is sad, but it's better than dying while your
Speaker 1: skin is is burning off, you know. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: we'll finish with um kind of the problem of what
Speaker 1: to do with that dead whale. Uh. And something that
Speaker 1: happened in November nineteen seventy November twelve, specifically in Oregon.
Speaker 1: A lot of people think that it was a made
Speaker 1: up story that they blew up a whale, but it
Speaker 1: really happened, right, And there's actually grainy footage of it
Speaker 1: on YouTube seventy news footage from w no k A
Speaker 1: t U t V right because it's west right, so
Speaker 1: it's k oh is that what that is? W's the east,
Speaker 1: Kay is the west? I never knew that. Uh. So
Speaker 1: you've got um an eight ton forty ft long sperm whale.
Speaker 1: This from Snopes correct. Yes, um. And apparently snobs did
Speaker 1: the real research because there was this long published article
Speaker 1: that everyone kind of referenced over and over as people
Speaker 1: do on the internet. UM, and they realized, you're, like,
Speaker 1: no one ever really called the people that actually did this,
Speaker 1: so let's do that. And they did talked to a
Speaker 1: guy named Ed because it kept coming up on the
Speaker 1: internet and people thought it was number one and it
Speaker 1: just happened, and then number two that it was a
Speaker 1: hoax and an urban legend and an actual urban legend
Speaker 1: developed out of the real thing. Correct. But the real
Speaker 1: story is that on November twel eight to forty ft
Speaker 1: long sperm whale which was dead, washed up on in Florence, Oregon,
Speaker 1: and um it was. You know, a dead whale eventually
Speaker 1: will smell a lot. That's a big problem. And not
Speaker 1: only that, it's it poses a big problem. And that
Speaker 1: if if you have a whale that's like still partially
Speaker 1: in the surf, those sharks come of calling to feed
Speaker 1: on it, and they'll attack anything around there. So it's
Speaker 1: a huge public health problem if you have a big
Speaker 1: dead whale on your beach. Ye. So, um, they think, like,
Speaker 1: all right, we need to get rid of the thing.
Speaker 1: What do we do? Who do we call? Um? The
Speaker 1: Oregon Beaches Public right of Way. So oddly enough, they
Speaker 1: went to the State Highway Division to clean this up.
Speaker 1: Uh So they consulted the Department of the Navy, and
Speaker 1: the Navy said blow it up. Yeah. This guy named
Speaker 1: George Thornton was the guy whose shoulders that fell on.
Speaker 1: He was with the Highway Division, and he was like,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll blow it up. I mean they it
Speaker 1: made sense of the time they blew up huge boulders
Speaker 1: that weighed about the same and that's how they that's
Speaker 1: the what they used to calculate how much dynamite to
Speaker 1: blow this whale up. Yeah, I mean, in the weirdest way,
Speaker 1: it did make sense. It totally did. Like they calculated
Speaker 1: that they would need a half a ton of dynamite
Speaker 1: twenty crates worth, and they thought, well, if we stuff
Speaker 1: this stuff on the landward side of the whale, it'll
Speaker 1: blow it out to see how to see. Basically, no
Speaker 1: must know, fuss gonna blow it the smithereens and we'll
Speaker 1: just leave it for the seagulls and you know, the crabs.
Speaker 1: And I think the quote was the crabs and the
Speaker 1: seagulls and what not to eat the tiny particles of blubber,
Speaker 1: Like you said, no fuss, no must. So on November twelve, uh,
Speaker 1: there were a group of a couple dozen onlookers who
Speaker 1: came to see this. Word got out around Florence, Oregon
Speaker 1: that they were going to blow a whale up. That
Speaker 1: was a pretty fun thing to do in Florence, Oregon
Speaker 1: that day, right, so people people came out to see
Speaker 1: Channel two ka t used. Paul Lindman reported on the scene,
Speaker 1: and he did the whole thing, very tongue in cheap.
Speaker 1: This is right out of the gate. They're gonna blow
Speaker 1: a whale up with half a ton of dynamite. This
Speaker 1: guy got the hilarious nous inherent in the idea right
Speaker 1: out of Anchorman pretty much. Uh, And so he called
Speaker 1: it and everybody went and hid behind the dunes about
Speaker 1: a quarter of a mile away, not far enough. No,
Speaker 1: they blew the thing and you got to see this
Speaker 1: footage just just look up exploding whale on YouTube. It
Speaker 1: was a huge explosion and everybody's watching and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: somebody goes we and then all of a sudden they're
Speaker 1: like oh some I think a woman says, oh God,
Speaker 1: as whale parts just start raining down on everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like that scene in Tremors when they finally blew
Speaker 1: up one of the tremors and they just start, you know,
Speaker 1: getting Of course in Tremors, it was that kind of
Speaker 1: orange blood orange pulp, one of the grab boids. So
Speaker 1: they were called that's what. Oh well, that's what the
Speaker 1: the store owner, the little store owner guy called them.
Speaker 1: They were trying to think of what he called me.
Speaker 1: He's like, what about grab boids? Great movie? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it basically rained down whale blubber. Uh, some in
Speaker 1: larger pieces than others. And it's remarkable nobody got hurt
Speaker 1: because a three foot by five ft piece landed on
Speaker 1: a buick owned by Walter uman Hoffer and they showed
Speaker 1: the car. It crushed his car. Had he been sitting
Speaker 1: in there, he would have been dead as a doornail. Like,
Speaker 1: it's really lucky no one got killed. Yeah, that could
Speaker 1: have squashed somebody easy, sure. And so everybody is sitting
Speaker 1: there wiping whale blubber and guts and and gristle off
Speaker 1: of their faces and they look over and most of
Speaker 1: the whale is still there. It definitely vaporized part of
Speaker 1: the whale, but most of it was still there. So
Speaker 1: they just buried it on the beach, which is one
Speaker 1: thing you can do with the whale. You can bury
Speaker 1: it on the beach. You can take it to a
Speaker 1: lion fill. You can drag it out to see that's
Speaker 1: the preferred thing, but out and then let it, let
Speaker 1: it sink, which is the natural thing. There's something called
Speaker 1: a whale fall which creates like a temporary ecosystem on
Speaker 1: the seafloor that attracts a bunch of different organisms that
Speaker 1: eat the whale. Right. Um, But it's illegal in the
Speaker 1: US to to tow a whale that's been put down
Speaker 1: with barbiturous out to sea because remember those don't break down,
Speaker 1: so you've got secondary toxicity. So if you put a
Speaker 1: whale down with the cocktail in the US, you have
Speaker 1: to render it, burn it, or bury it in the landfill.
Speaker 1: You can't take it out to sea. But if you
Speaker 1: just shoot in the head, you can drag it out
Speaker 1: to sea and and let it. Say, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of math to be done with dragging it out to
Speaker 1: sea because ostensibly you would tie a rope around its tail,
Speaker 1: pull it out where it would drag along the sea floor. Well,
Speaker 1: hopefully it would float, would it, Sure it wouldn't. The
Speaker 1: reason why is another reason why a dead whale is
Speaker 1: super dangerous because as they decompose, gas builds up, just
Speaker 1: like they do in a decomposing human, and then they
Speaker 1: explode on their own sometimes too that you don't want
Speaker 1: to be standing near either all right, So I guess
Speaker 1: it has to float because otherwise eventually it would start
Speaker 1: pulling that boat down with it, at which point you
Speaker 1: would definitely want to cut bait. Yes, literally, you got
Speaker 1: anything else? No, it's um it's a very sad thing,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that there are people who dedicate their
Speaker 1: lives to this kind of thing. Yeah, if you're into that,
Speaker 1: If you hear that as a call and go check
Speaker 1: out Project Jonah's website. They will be right up your alley.
Speaker 1: You'll probably end up moving to New Zealand, which I
Speaker 1: can attest is a great, great place to visit. I
Speaker 1: want to go. It's great, And I hear it's friendly
Speaker 1: and safe. Yes, and like i've heard it compared to
Speaker 1: like the United States in the nineteen fifties as far
Speaker 1: as like friendliness and safety. Yeah, and just sort of
Speaker 1: a bit of a throwback in like the best ways.
Speaker 1: That's what friends of mine have said. Or maybe they
Speaker 1: just mean everyone's drunk all day long, maybe and uh,
Speaker 1: doing drugs and having a good time. This is all
Speaker 1: that happened in the fifties. There's a town in there
Speaker 1: that was built in art like completely art deco in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties. But they're talking about that they use
Speaker 1: art deco to to describe it. No, this is just
Speaker 1: New Zealand as a whole. Okay, well check it out.
Speaker 1: We'll have to go there on tour someday. Absolutely. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: since I said we'll go there on tour someday, it's
Speaker 1: time for listening email. I'm gonna call this general email
Speaker 1: of interest. That's a good one. Hello, Josh, Chuck, and Jerry.
Speaker 1: I cannot remember the name of the podcast where there's
Speaker 1: a crazy doctor. I remember what this was, Um, not
Speaker 1: Uncle Shlomo Um who got run out of multiple towns,
Speaker 1: starts up multiple practices and possibly loses his license multiple times.
Speaker 1: I know if I could remember exactly what he was
Speaker 1: doing to get run out of these towns, I would
Speaker 1: remember the podcast. But the right page of twenty it
Speaker 1: is lost. Do you remember it? No? I was hoping
Speaker 1: that you would know and that we could delight this listener.
Speaker 1: I think this guy's confusing us with stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. What's the lady? I think? Do you think
Speaker 1: I don't know? It happens from time it's hot. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna finish the email anyway. Um, I know that It's
Speaker 1: on my list of favorites amongst Satanic Panic of the eighties,
Speaker 1: great one, Operation Mincemeat another good one, how Bars work,
Speaker 1: to listen to public Relations and Kitty genevese Boy, those
Speaker 1: are all some of my favorites too. Uh. And of
Speaker 1: course the time you guys partied with Billy Boy Gates.
Speaker 1: That was a great party. Uh. You guys always brighten
Speaker 1: my day and lead me to become a person whose
Speaker 1: slogan is so I heard on this podcast dot dot
Speaker 1: dot there's a t shirt. I'm an architecture student from
Speaker 1: Auburn University War Eagle even if you don't want to Tigers. Uh. Yeah, see,
Speaker 1: that's just weird dumb to make up your mind Auburn. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I've listened to you all to keep me going
Speaker 1: through countless late hours, early mornings and days. But I
Speaker 1: don't ever leave my studio desk. Also, I have forced
Speaker 1: many of my classmates to listen to you. Shout out
Speaker 1: to fellow listener and classmate Corey Subsessic pronounced Sue Basic
Speaker 1: Subsassic and not through all kinds of letters in there,
Speaker 1: Corey Sue Basic if you read the son the listener mail. Uh,
Speaker 1: shout out Corey and I always suggest I always suggest
Speaker 1: the Satanic Panic as the first episode. That's a good starter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. Anyway, guys, please help me remember my favorite
Speaker 1: episode and have just a remarkable day. Best of luck
Speaker 1: to you all in your perspective children and spouses. I
Speaker 1: don't think she means perspective children. Does she thinks she's
Speaker 1: been in architecture too long. That's a perspective. Children mean
Speaker 1: children that have yet to be born. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's happening anytime soon. Uh. That is from Olivia Barrett,
Speaker 1: she says, signed note Birmingham, Alabama would love to have you.
Speaker 1: We performed in Birmingham. It was a great show. It
Speaker 1: was a great show. Maybe we'll come back in day
Speaker 1: to the great work play eater there. It's a very
Speaker 1: warm reception. Um, I can't remember. So what I'm hoping
Speaker 1: is someone writes in to about the crazy doctor who
Speaker 1: got run out of multiple town start to multiple practices
Speaker 1: and possibly was this his license multiple times? So idea,
Speaker 1: So I mean, not a clue. If anyone can remember
Speaker 1: that and write and tell us will answer Lidia back
Speaker 1: again on the air and then read jrtan Now, oh well,
Speaker 1: there you go. That's a heck of a deal. Chair.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, if you have Livia's answer, you can
Speaker 1: tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
Speaker 1: can also hang out with me. I'm at josh um
Speaker 1: Clark on Twitter. You can I Alway Chuck on Facebook
Speaker 1: at Charles W. Chuck Bryant or Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast, the
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works dot com and as always, too us
Speaker 1: to home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how Stuff Works dot com