Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so we have a
Speaker 1: vault episode for you. This is going to be part
Speaker 1: four of our series, Part four of four titled Life
Speaker 1: in the Hypogenean World. We're gonna wrap this one up today,
Speaker 1: so let's dive right in. This originally published three fourteen,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: the fourth and final part of our series on cave
Speaker 3: biology and cave environments. If you haven't listened to the
Speaker 3: other parts already, this will probably be a richer experience
Speaker 3: if you go back and check those out first. In
Speaker 3: the previous parts, we talked about some of the common
Speaker 3: characteristics of cave environments, especially as they pertain to the
Speaker 3: life forms that might inhabit caves. We talked about the
Speaker 3: different types of organisms you find in caves, the ones
Speaker 3: that are fully cave adapted versus the ones that are
Speaker 3: only visitors. We talked about cave adapted organisms such as
Speaker 3: the blind Mexican cavefish, also known as the Mexican tetra
Speaker 3: the ome, which is a type of cave salamander found
Speaker 3: in the Dynaric Alps. We talked about bat guano, We
Speaker 3: talked about snakes that hide in caves and attack bats
Speaker 3: as they come and go. We got into a lot
Speaker 3: of great stuff, and today we're here to round out
Speaker 3: the series.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with a lot of like a lot of our
Speaker 1: multi part episodes, it's kind of like the first episode
Speaker 1: is kind of like a lot of the initial information
Speaker 1: you need, and then the second episode this is where
Speaker 1: you find some of the core stuff that attracted us
Speaker 1: to the topic to begin with. Part three we kind
Speaker 1: of like fill in with a little more data some
Speaker 1: other interest entries in said series in the fourth episode
Speaker 1: or whatever the final episode happens to be. Generally, that's
Speaker 1: where it's like, what's left. What's the thing that came
Speaker 1: up in our research that we didn't know we were
Speaker 1: going to be excited about, or or in some cases,
Speaker 1: maybe what's the weird tangential connection that also came up
Speaker 1: or we found ourselves drifting into in the in our journey. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good way to characterize it. So
Speaker 1: what have you got, rob Well? I mentioned this earlier.
Speaker 1: I forget which of the earlier episodes, but I mentioned
Speaker 1: the extinct cave bear in Passing, and I would just
Speaker 1: kind of kept touching back in on the subject as
Speaker 1: we were working on the other episodes, and finally I
Speaker 1: was like, Yeah, we need to go in a little
Speaker 1: deeper and talk about what is ultimately like a really
Speaker 1: fascinating organism. There have been disagreements and mysteries regarding it,
Speaker 1: and it is an organism that, while no longer with us,
Speaker 1: does overlap with our ancestors. You know, it was an
Speaker 1: ice age creature. Include did here for you, Joe a
Speaker 1: reconstruction and image of what one of these bears would
Speaker 1: have looked like potentially, And in a bit I'll get
Speaker 1: into like what are some of the main anatomical features?
Speaker 1: But just looking at you can tell this is a
Speaker 1: very huge bear. If it doesn't look that different from say,
Speaker 1: like a large you know, grizzly bear, brown bear of
Speaker 1: some sort. Coloration is brownish, but one might notice that
Speaker 1: the head is enormous. It has a much bigger head
Speaker 1: than one might expect, certainly on an extant bear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks a lot like a grizzly. Though I'm
Speaker 3: no bear expert, it does appear to me in this
Speaker 3: reconstruction to have a somewhat shorter snout and the and
Speaker 3: the sort of boxier.
Speaker 1: Head boxier and I'm to understand would have been what
Speaker 1: would have appeared wider as well. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: Ursus spilaeus. It's a member of the Ursus genus, alongside
Speaker 1: the brown bear, which includes grizzly subspecies, among others, the
Speaker 1: polar bear, the American black bear, and the Asian black bear.
Speaker 1: That means it's naturally a member of the larger Ursudae family,
Speaker 1: which also includes the likes of giant pandas, short face
Speaker 1: bears and others.
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't realize pandas were technically in that family.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Like one of the interesting things about pandas
Speaker 1: is that pandas are herbivores for the most part, but
Speaker 1: they still have a carnivores digestive system, and they still
Speaker 1: have like carnivore jeans, So they're pretty fascinating in their
Speaker 1: own right. You know, it's easy to overlook how interesting
Speaker 1: pandas are, especially if you go to a zoo and
Speaker 1: you see one in captivity that is probably not doing
Speaker 1: much other than sleeping or eating pamboo.
Speaker 3: The last time I went to a zoo, the thing
Speaker 3: I saw that filled me with the most joy was
Speaker 3: actually vicarious joy through a panda when I saw the
Speaker 3: feeders through some new bamboo into the enclosure, and the
Speaker 3: panda went up to the pile of bamboo and literally
Speaker 3: just flopped in. It, just flopped down in its food, like, ah,
Speaker 3: give it to me.
Speaker 1: It is literally their favorite thing, Yeah, rolling around in it.
Speaker 1: More on this connection to the panda in a minute here,
Speaker 1: but yeah, the cave bear when extinct. I do want
Speaker 1: to highlight that the exact timing for this depends on
Speaker 1: exactly what sources and what evidence you're looking at. I've
Speaker 1: seen between twenty eight and twenty seven thousand years ago
Speaker 1: during the last glacial maximum. I've seen twenty four thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, and in some sources, some of the older sources,
Speaker 1: you also see fifteen thousand years ago cited as an
Speaker 1: extinction point. But I believe an earlier point in twenty eight,
Speaker 1: twenty seven, maybe twenty four is generally favored by scientists today.
Speaker 1: That's generally the range. The broader range in which I'm
Speaker 1: tending to see the numbers and the sources I was
Speaker 1: looking at. And the interesting thing about the cave bear, too,
Speaker 1: is that this animal is a recent enough denizen of
Speaker 1: the planet that we have been able to study its
Speaker 1: soft tissue in addition to its bones, and it's actual
Speaker 1: you know, we're able to study like the chemical composition
Speaker 1: of its bones. There was even a frozen specimen discovered
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, I believe, and we've been able to
Speaker 1: sequence its genome, so we're able to learn a fair
Speaker 1: amount about what they were and what they did, though
Speaker 1: certain mysteries remain about, you know, their exact lifestyles, their
Speaker 1: interactions with other organisms and so forth. Well, let's come
Speaker 1: back to the cave theme, right, because that's the umbrella
Speaker 1: in which we're just under which we're discussing the cave bear. Here,
Speaker 1: we're of course, not talking about an obligate cave dweller.
Speaker 1: This is not a blind, hairless bear living in the depths,
Speaker 1: as I'm suddenly realizing. As interesting as that might be,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming some fantasy weaver has done something like that before.
Speaker 1: But now this would have had at best been a
Speaker 1: troglophilic creature.
Speaker 3: Okay, so the troglophilic creature enjoys visiting caves. It may
Speaker 3: visit caves for a number of reasons, but it doesn't
Speaker 3: live there permanently, and it's not biologically adapted to full
Speaker 3: time life in the caves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it's not just hanging out in there all
Speaker 1: the time, eating bats or anything. But you know, the
Speaker 1: cave moniker can be confusing with a lot of these
Speaker 1: species because of course we speak of cave men either
Speaker 1: in terms of prehistoric Homo sapiens or Neanderthals. Though even
Speaker 1: with the latter, who certainly did utilize cave environments as
Speaker 1: did humans, they used open air sites for various activities
Speaker 1: as well, it seems, so it's not like they just
Speaker 1: lived in caves or or and they're certainly not creatures
Speaker 1: that were obligate cave dwellers. Plus, the cave moniker sometimes
Speaker 1: has as much to do, if not more, to do
Speaker 1: with the places where we've discovered the remains, because, as
Speaker 1: we've touched on before, I think in this series and
Speaker 1: probably in general, like caves are a great place for
Speaker 1: remains to be preserved. To some degree, I saw a
Speaker 1: paper that was quoting an expert on cave bears. It
Speaker 1: was like the bears slept in caves and they had
Speaker 1: the good fortune to die in them, something to that effect.
Speaker 1: You know, they're like, fortunately for us, they died in
Speaker 1: caves a lot, and so we have a lot of
Speaker 1: remains to look at. But anyway, just because we have
Speaker 1: come to refer to a creature as a cave animal,
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily mean that it lived in caves. The
Speaker 1: main example of this era would be the cave lion
Speaker 1: or Panthera spileea, also known as the step lion, which
Speaker 1: is now understood to have largely lived in open areas
Speaker 1: and possibly woodlands. But we know them a lot of
Speaker 1: We know a lot about them from skeletal remains found
Speaker 1: in caves, thus cave lions.
Speaker 3: But it's not thought that that's where they spent a
Speaker 3: huge amount of their time. It's more just like we
Speaker 3: happen to have gotten some remains from caves.
Speaker 1: That's right, yeah, I mean there are remains found in
Speaker 1: caves are apparently best understood as on one hand, perhaps
Speaker 1: the accumulations or middens of extinct cave hyenas. These this
Speaker 1: was all This is also known as the Ice Age
Speaker 1: spotted hyena that would have scavenged carcasses and brought them
Speaker 1: back to the caves where they lived, or at least
Speaker 1: the cave openings where they lived. These would have been
Speaker 1: This is an example of something that did live in
Speaker 1: caves based on our current understanding, and so they would
Speaker 1: have hoarded, scavenged, and killed prey in such places, while
Speaker 1: also competing apparently with Neanderthals for some of the same
Speaker 1: cave environments. Oh interesting, But back to the cave lion.
Speaker 1: It is also thought that they might have ventured into
Speaker 1: caves during the winter, especially in search of hibernating bears
Speaker 1: that might in some cases be easier to pick off,
Speaker 1: especially if they were desperate for the food. And they
Speaker 1: also may have periodically entered caves in order to steal
Speaker 1: food away from cave hyenas, though to be sure, it
Speaker 1: seems like they largely preyed on larger wild herbivores like
Speaker 1: the wild horse and the bison. Either way, cave lions
Speaker 1: wound up in caves and cave environments helped preserve their
Speaker 1: bones for future excavation by humans, who, at least at
Speaker 1: first like, oh, this is a cave line, we found
Speaker 1: it in a cave.
Speaker 3: But I assume you're saying that researchers do not believe
Speaker 3: the same kind of naming error was made with cave bears.
Speaker 3: The cave bears really do seem largely involved with caves.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, that's the consensus. So you know, what were
Speaker 1: cave bears. We talked a little bit about what they
Speaker 1: look like already. They were very large bears, comparable to
Speaker 1: or even larger than any of the bears we know today,
Speaker 1: even the mighty polar bears and Kodiak bears, which depending
Speaker 1: on who you're talking to, these are kind of like
Speaker 1: the two extant species of bears that are often held
Speaker 1: up as the biggest. So male cave bears could range
Speaker 1: and wait. One estimate I saw was three fifty to
Speaker 1: six hundred kilograms or seven hundred and seventy to three
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty pounds. I've also seen like the four
Speaker 1: hundred to one thousand kilogram estimate, about eight hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty to two two hundred pounds. Again, it's going to vary.
Speaker 1: The male were bigger than the females and so forth,
Speaker 1: But anyway you cut it, big bears, big heavy bears.
Speaker 1: Their weight would have fluctuated depending on where they were seasonally,
Speaker 1: where their diet was, what the overall climate happened to be.
Speaker 1: But yes, these were very large bears. And therefore, as
Speaker 1: you can imagine, not just any cave is going to do.
Speaker 1: Cave has to be large enough to hold a bear. Now,
Speaker 1: speaking of these caves, I was reading about them a
Speaker 1: little bit. I was looking a few different sources. But
Speaker 1: I've had this book on my shelf for years and
Speaker 1: I hadn't really cracked it open. But it's by one
Speaker 1: wolf Dee Storal titled Bear Myth, Animal and Icon. This author,
Speaker 1: by the way, I think he's generally more considered an
Speaker 1: anthropologist and an ethnobotanist, and I'm to understand his views
Speaker 1: have ventured into some areas that may be considered more
Speaker 1: esoteric and even controversial, but I don't think any of
Speaker 1: that applies to this work. Okay, Anyway, the author here
Speaker 1: points to another connection who is kind of similar to
Speaker 1: something we discussed I believe in the last episode with
Speaker 1: the with the Ohm, a connection between an actual cave
Speaker 1: organism and traditions concerning the dragon. There's a cave in
Speaker 1: Austria known as Drakenhole or Dragons hole so named because
Speaker 1: the copious amounts of cave bear bones in there were
Speaker 1: apparently interpreted during the Middle Ages as the bones of dragons.
Speaker 1: The cave is located near a place called mix Nitz
Speaker 1: and is associated with the legend of the dragon slayer
Speaker 1: of mix Nitz. I was looking around. I couldn't find
Speaker 1: what felt like a definitive analysis or retelling of this legend.
Speaker 1: But I saw some ride ups where it seems like it's,
Speaker 1: you know, you, on one level, your typical tale of
Speaker 1: a dragon slayer. But it did seem based on the
Speaker 1: one telling I found that the dragon slayer here uses
Speaker 1: an ingenius trap rather than overt combat to kill the dragon.
Speaker 1: Like it has to do with like a sharpened spikes
Speaker 1: and left out to gouge into the dragon's flesh and
Speaker 1: then it goes off and dies. That sort of thing,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of your predator model of overcoming your foe.
Speaker 3: Oh that's my kind of tale. I always love a
Speaker 3: monster trap.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're probably wondering, Okay, this cave is full
Speaker 1: of cave bear bones. How many bones we're talking about?
Speaker 1: You know, we're talking about like two or three individuals,
Speaker 1: maybe a dozen individuals, you know, maybe a dusty old
Speaker 1: set of cave bones near one corner a skull and
Speaker 1: the other. No, no, no, we're talking about the bones
Speaker 1: of an estimated thirty thousand cave bears. Thirty thousand.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Other bones were apparently also found in this particular cave,
Speaker 1: including those those of the cave line apparently, but we're
Speaker 1: mostly talking about cave bears here, and in quite an abundance.
Speaker 3: You have to think how long they would have been
Speaker 3: accumulating there for it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we would be dealing with a situation here
Speaker 1: where the bears lived in these caves, hibernated in these caves,
Speaker 1: and died in these caves for thousands and thousands of years.
Speaker 1: So like recent genetic data apparently indicates that cave beer
Speaker 1: populations in Europe, specifically along the Danube River were stable
Speaker 1: for a good one hundred thousand years or more. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're dealing with lots of bears living and dying in
Speaker 1: these locations.
Speaker 3: That is incredible.
Speaker 1: Now, the caves, specifically this Austrian cave system, was apparently
Speaker 1: excavated during the nineteenth century because the soil found inside
Speaker 1: of these caves is rich, was rich in bones and
Speaker 1: bear manure, that it accumulated over these vast periods of time,
Speaker 1: and they proved usable as phosphate fertilizer, and there was
Speaker 1: a shortage during this time period. Storal rites that sixty
Speaker 1: trains with fifty cars each were filled with the stuff,
Speaker 1: and also points out that a cave near vell Berg, Germany,
Speaker 1: was also excavated for its cave bear riches during this
Speaker 1: time period. Now, these aren't the only two European caves
Speaker 1: that there's evidence of a lot of cave bear activity.
Speaker 1: I read in passing examples of caves and for instance
Speaker 1: Spain and Romania that also provided a great deal of
Speaker 1: cave bear remains. Now speaking to their death in these caves,
Speaker 1: because you know, it's one thing to sleep in the cave,
Speaker 1: and there is evidence we'll get to that in a second.
Speaker 1: There is evidence already of like the bears having lived
Speaker 1: in and slept in the caves, but they also died there.
Speaker 1: And I've read that it's thought that bears may have
Speaker 1: frequently died during hibernation, especially during particularly trying time periods,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to here, because if an individual couldn't
Speaker 1: put on enough weight heading into winter and or environmental
Speaker 1: conditions were particularly dire, they just might not emerge again
Speaker 1: in the spring. Plus we already mentioned that in some
Speaker 1: cases you might have predators venturing into those caves to
Speaker 1: try and find an easy bear to pick off. And
Speaker 1: it's any easy mathematics to imagine, like, Okay, if you
Speaker 1: have a weakened bear in a hibernation state, one that
Speaker 1: might not be surviving the winter anyway, like that's ideal
Speaker 1: biomass to pick off. Now. I think everyone's familiar enough
Speaker 1: with the fat bear week craze these days to know, yeah,
Speaker 1: that bears have to pack it on, and we find
Speaker 1: some sport and amusement in figuring out like which bears
Speaker 1: are packing on the most and what do extant bears
Speaker 1: eat in order to go into hibernation? Well, the answer
Speaker 1: is what do you got? They're omnivores. Anything is on
Speaker 1: the table, right. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the ones that we're familiar
Speaker 3: with are these ones photographed in Alaska. From what I understand,
Speaker 3: they're probably going to be eating a lot of like
Speaker 3: river fish, like salmon.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. The cave bears, though, this would have been
Speaker 1: a different matter. So research has differed at different times
Speaker 1: on whether the bears were strictly herbivores, or if they
Speaker 1: were mostly herbivores, at the very least, they seem to
Speaker 1: have depended far more on the consumption of plant matter
Speaker 1: than pretty much any extant bear, with the obvious exception
Speaker 1: of the giant panda. These cave bears would have gone
Speaker 1: out and eaten a lot of vegetation, and we see
Speaker 1: that reflected in like they're just their anatomy. So I
Speaker 1: was looking at the work of Alejandro Perez Ramos at
Speaker 1: the University of Malaga in Spain. This would have been
Speaker 1: a twenty twenty study. The researcher here points out that
Speaker 1: the cave bears were built in such a way. Their
Speaker 1: skulls were built in such a way that they could
Speaker 1: only chew with their back teeth. So extant bears, the
Speaker 1: bears we have today, can chew with the front as
Speaker 1: well as the back, and therefore have the correct dental
Speaker 1: build to eat vegetation or meat, switching back and forth
Speaker 1: between the two depending on what's available. You know, so
Speaker 1: if there are a lot of fish on hand, bam
Speaker 1: the bear. You know, bears like grizzlies and so forth,
Speaker 1: they're good to go. Get in there and eat that meat.
Speaker 1: Dead whale. Likewise, get in there, scavenge some of that meat.
Speaker 1: Oh what's this? You only have berries? Or oh, somebody
Speaker 1: left the door open to their house. You know, they
Speaker 1: can make do with what's available. But again not the
Speaker 1: case with cave bears. A chemical analysis of cave bear
Speaker 1: bones has also revealed a mostly plant based diet. So
Speaker 1: the cave bear had evolved to a point at which
Speaker 1: there was no going back in a swift manner anyway,
Speaker 1: such as the demands brought on by sudden changes in climate,
Speaker 1: and this would seem to be a major factor in
Speaker 1: their extinction, if not the major factor in their extinction,
Speaker 1: And this seems to be the answer that most of
Speaker 1: the current research is pointing to. But it also reveals
Speaker 1: some other interesting things about them. You know, the build
Speaker 1: of their skull here, because they also had much larger
Speaker 1: sinuses in exchange for that lack of robust front teeth.
Speaker 1: And this is interesting, especially because extant bears are already
Speaker 1: famous super smellers. I think if you've ever ventured into
Speaker 1: bear territory, you have been warned. You know, don't leave say,
Speaker 1: chapstick in your car, because a bear can smell that
Speaker 1: and a bear will want to come see what kind
Speaker 1: of sweet, delicious fruity food you have hidden away inside
Speaker 1: of your automobile.
Speaker 3: Oh, I just imagining the bears going wild over like
Speaker 3: the synthetic kinds of fruity flavors that you get in
Speaker 3: all these products, Like what is fun bearry? I must
Speaker 3: discover exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this is again with something we've touched
Speaker 1: on already in this series. You know, like how difficult
Speaker 1: or impossible it is for human beings to really put
Speaker 1: themselves in the sense world of another organism that has,
Speaker 1: you know, a sense array different from our own. And
Speaker 1: smell is another one of those areas. So take, for instance,
Speaker 1: a bloodhound, a canine. Canines in general, but specifically something
Speaker 1: like a bloodhound is already pretty famous for being a
Speaker 1: super smeller. That is just dogs in general, like their
Speaker 1: sense of smell is just a different part of their being.
Speaker 1: You know. You see that when you see a dog
Speaker 1: like riding around with its human in a vehicle and
Speaker 1: it has its head out the window, right, It's like
Speaker 1: it's like all the psychedelics at that moment. And yet
Speaker 1: I've seen it estimated that a bear and again not
Speaker 1: a cave bear just bears in general, bears we have today.
Speaker 1: I've read that their sense of smell is seven times
Speaker 1: better than a bloodhound, and that would mean that their
Speaker 1: sense of smell is thousands of times more powerful than
Speaker 1: a human beings. And yet the cave bear likely had
Speaker 1: an even keener sense of smell, if we can even
Speaker 1: imagine such a thing. Likely great hearing as well, but
Speaker 1: on the other hand, reduced eye sight and a smaller
Speaker 1: brain that than you might expect with such a large head.
Speaker 1: And I'm suspecting here that you know that would also
Speaker 1: have to do with its mode of life at this
Speaker 1: point in its evolution, like it's just going around eating
Speaker 1: as much vegetation as it can, sifting through these various
Speaker 1: sources of vegetation, but maybe not having to be as
Speaker 1: clever and opportunistic as a true omnivore would be. But anyway,
Speaker 1: all this would seem to be wound up in their
Speaker 1: extinction as well, because somewhere around twenty four thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: around the time when their age ended, the age of
Speaker 1: the cave beer comes to an end, temperatures plummeted. This
Speaker 1: would have been the last glacial maximum period cooler tempts
Speaker 1: meant less time and less plant matter to bulk up
Speaker 1: on before going into hibernation, so the cave bears likely
Speaker 1: couldn't keep up. They couldn't bulk up, and again could
Speaker 1: not adjust their diet like other bear species. The bear
Speaker 1: species that survived these cold times were the ones that
Speaker 1: could diversify, that could go in more on the meat
Speaker 1: perhaps than they had been And in many cases, yeah,
Speaker 1: this would mean that you would have cave bears crawling
Speaker 1: into their caves to hibernate with or without young and
Speaker 1: simply never getting back up again. I alluded to this earlier,
Speaker 1: but yeah, in the caves that they called home, we
Speaker 1: do have more than just their bones to speak of them.
Speaker 1: So they, like a lot of animals, they ended up
Speaker 1: leaving claw marks on the walls in some cases, and
Speaker 1: they also dug shallow depressions in the floor, likely as
Speaker 1: places to sleep, and you can find images of these
Speaker 1: from various European cave systems. You know, they're not especially flashy,
Speaker 1: but it's this sort of large bear shaped indention in
Speaker 1: the ground. And yeah, many of these remained to this day,
Speaker 1: and some of those claw marks, by the way, would
Speaker 1: later be incorporated into the cave art of Homo sapiens.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, Like you mean, like that human made their
Speaker 3: art around pre existing claw marks in the walls and
Speaker 3: made that part of the art.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Like I believe that's the case with some
Speaker 1: of the art in France's Chauvet caves, where you have
Speaker 1: depictions of cave bears, but also evidence of cave bears,
Speaker 1: including claw marks. Now speaking of humans there, of course,
Speaker 1: there's long been some mystery over exactly what sort of
Speaker 1: relationships Theanderthals and Homo sapiens had with the cave bears.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're humans. We can't help it. We find
Speaker 1: out that we were alive at all during the same
Speaker 1: time period, We're like, what about us? How do we
Speaker 1: factor into this fascinating and majestic scenario? What were we doing?
Speaker 1: And did we ride them? Did we ride them? Did
Speaker 1: we worship them? Yeah? There was this much popularized idea
Speaker 1: that early humans worshiped cave bears, and it does seem
Speaker 1: like there's some potential evidence for this, but apparently this
Speaker 1: has long been disputed and sort of largely pushed out
Speaker 1: of the way. This would have been the basis for
Speaker 1: fictional works like the novel clan of the Cave Bear.
Speaker 1: But there's still various mysteries along these lines. You know,
Speaker 1: they will never know one d percent what our ancient
Speaker 1: ancient ancestors really thought about these creatures. And it's also
Speaker 1: easy to simplify what we thought about them that like, oh,
Speaker 1: did we worship them? Or did we eat them? Or
Speaker 1: did we run from them? And of course, you know,
Speaker 1: even our prehistoric ancestors I think would have had the
Speaker 1: mental complexity to do all three, depending on where you
Speaker 1: are in a given day and so forth, I.
Speaker 3: Seem to I think it's been years now, but I
Speaker 3: have a memory of coming across some interesting claims on
Speaker 3: the internet about about, like, you know, prehistoric humans and
Speaker 3: their specific beliefs regarding bears, And I was like, what's
Speaker 3: the source of this, Like what's the evidence for it?
Speaker 3: And I could never actually track it down, Like it
Speaker 3: seems like there's just a lot of claims floating around
Speaker 3: on the internet about about prehistoric humans and bears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess I one level, Well, it's
Speaker 1: like we do acknowledge the fact that human ancient humans
Speaker 1: and prestark humans, they acknowledged these large creatures in their
Speaker 1: natural world. Yeah, they had relationships with various creatures in
Speaker 1: their natural world, and they seem to have superstitious and
Speaker 1: or mythological ideas about them. We talked about some of
Speaker 1: the earliest images and past episodes of the show where
Speaker 1: these people would combine human and animal imagery into a
Speaker 1: single entity. Though exactly what is meant by that, we're
Speaker 1: not sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this actually came up in a listener mail I
Speaker 3: did while you were out recently. A listener wrote in
Speaker 3: about our episode on the loewenmine, you know this carving
Speaker 3: that has been interpreted as depicting a sort of a
Speaker 3: human body with the lion's head, though there's some dispute
Speaker 3: about whether that's the correct interpretation of what it's supposed
Speaker 3: to be, but that seems like a common interpretation, and
Speaker 3: so yeah, this raised these interesting questions about like when
Speaker 3: did we start forming ideas about creatures that did not
Speaker 3: exist in nature.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is hard for us to figure out the
Speaker 1: exact artistic content. For example, going back to the Chouve
Speaker 1: Cave in France, this is a cave that contains human
Speaker 1: illustrations of cave bears among other animals, copious amounts of
Speaker 1: cave bear bones, cave bear claw marks on the walls,
Speaker 1: it has floor depressions made by the bears. But one
Speaker 1: chamber here also apparently has a single cave bear skull
Speaker 1: that seemed to have been placed on a stone slab
Speaker 1: in the center of the chamber. But it's impossible to
Speaker 1: say why this is the case, like were they worshiping
Speaker 1: the bear or a particular bear, was it just a curiosity,
Speaker 1: was it some form of superstition or what did it
Speaker 1: represent some like tangible connection between these people and their
Speaker 1: way of life to the bear or was it something
Speaker 1: more abstract. Now apparently we do know from some skeletal
Speaker 1: evidence this would be in rare cases some evidence of butchery.
Speaker 1: And also there may have been another example that was
Speaker 1: more directly tied to some sort of like hunting weapon,
Speaker 1: but at least butchery evidence that shows that humans at
Speaker 1: least sometimes hunted or killed or at least butchered cave bears,
Speaker 1: but is pointed out in Andrew Curry's twenty ten Fate
Speaker 1: of the Cave Bear article ver Smithsonian dot Com, citing
Speaker 1: anthropologist Eric Trinkhaus, it's unlikely that human hunting impacted the
Speaker 1: cave bear's existence or led to its extinction. Trenkiles points
Speaker 1: out faced many Illethal threats during this time, and the
Speaker 1: cave bear, if provoked, was certainly one of them. I mean,
Speaker 1: just because it doesn't really eat meat doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: an animal this big and this ferocious could not kill you.
Speaker 1: So it's unlikely, according to this expert, that humans tangled
Speaker 1: with it all that much. But they might have sometimes
Speaker 1: gone after hibernating bears or hunted them in other isolated
Speaker 1: events for one reason or another. So it happened, but
Speaker 1: probably not all that often. Still there's again there's a
Speaker 1: lot of room for some level of supernatural consideration of
Speaker 1: the cave bear. Going back to the work of a
Speaker 1: wolf Storrel in his book, he writes that Shirley quote,
Speaker 1: any animal that can go in and out of the
Speaker 1: womb of the Great Goddess without incident is surely also
Speaker 1: a guardian of fertility and birth. Again, he's predominantly an
Speaker 1: anthropologist and athnobotanist. So this is the book in its entirety,
Speaker 1: is more about how we have thought about bears throughout history,
Speaker 1: even getting into at least short entries on ewoks and
Speaker 1: Fozzy Bear later on. But particularly he points to other
Speaker 1: traditions along these lines of a female bear shaman character
Speaker 1: a lady of the caves, and also reflects on up
Speaker 1: to traditions of the ancient Greek god is Artemis, whose
Speaker 1: domain includes both the hunt and childbirth and is also
Speaker 1: associated with bears. M interesting, but of course we just
Speaker 1: get increasing way into the domain of speculation in this. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: I think most experts kind of dismissed the notion that
Speaker 1: that that early Homo sapiens worshiped the cave bear to
Speaker 1: any significant degree.
Speaker 3: By dismissed, I assume you mean not that they rule
Speaker 3: it out, but they just say, we don't have super
Speaker 3: strong evidence.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's the That's that's what I get from it,
Speaker 1: because I think it would be silly to say, you know,
Speaker 1: our ancestors didn't notice these things at all, or they
Speaker 1: didn't care about like it seems like there's there's room
Speaker 1: for there to be that connection. But do we have
Speaker 1: the evidence of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just one of those mysteries. There's a lot
Speaker 3: about the culture of prehistoric humans that's difficult to know
Speaker 3: based on the evidence we have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, real quick in passing before we move on to
Speaker 1: more important matters, I will say that Storrel has one entry,
Speaker 1: actually a whole page in the book on gummy bears,
Speaker 1: also apparently known as dancing bears, which apparently have Germanic
Speaker 1: origins going back to nineteen twenty two and are quote
Speaker 1: now part of the German way of life. Okay, he
Speaker 1: doesn't get into this issue in this twenty eighteen book,
Speaker 1: but I wonder what he would make of the increasing
Speaker 1: use of bear shaped gummies as a delivery system for
Speaker 1: CBD and cannabis and cannabis related products. And even before this,
Speaker 1: I think, going back in the nineties, they were being
Speaker 1: used in some cases to deliver vitamins, and today you
Speaker 1: can get all manner of supplements in them. So like
Speaker 1: the dancing bear kind of becomes this shumnistic item. Perhaps
Speaker 1: once more you know that's funny, but no real connection
Speaker 1: to the cave bear there.
Speaker 3: Sorry, What would you make also about the equivalency of
Speaker 3: worms there, and the fact that the gummy worms are
Speaker 3: typically larger than the bears. That suggests something about Shai
Speaker 3: lude to me.
Speaker 1: Ah, yes, solid point. For some reason, I've gotten to
Speaker 1: the point where I accept a bear shaped gummy is
Speaker 1: an appropriate shape for some sort of chemical delivery system
Speaker 1: as opposed to some of the other shape Like for
Speaker 1: some reason, a worm is too silly for me, Like
Speaker 1: it just seems like, why, what what are you doing?
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. Responsible kids eat candy worms, but bears, bears?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like are we at the point where
Speaker 1: I just you know, we don't. I guess we don't
Speaker 1: go through a lot of gummy bears. But it just
Speaker 1: it's just like I would be suspicious of a gummy bear.
Speaker 1: I would be like, be careful, you don't know what's
Speaker 1: in that bear. But a pure gummy worm, you're saying
Speaker 1: you're more likely to trust that, I guess, But now
Speaker 1: I'm second guessing myself. I don't know. I'm just suspicious
Speaker 1: of the whole gummy genre.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I've got one more thing I want to
Speaker 3: talk about. So we've discussed the ways that animals adapt
Speaker 3: to cave environments, but I wanted to talk about a
Speaker 3: fascinating idea I came across in a spielology paper, which is,
Speaker 3: what if some of the natural holes and recessions in
Speaker 3: rock that we call caves were actually formed in part
Speaker 3: not by standard inorganic processes like you know, lava tube
Speaker 3: solidification in volcanic rock or the dissolution of limestone by
Speaker 3: water instead were formed in part by animals essentially eating
Speaker 3: their way through the rock. Let's look at a paper,
Speaker 3: So my source here is by Charles A. Lundquist and
Speaker 3: William W. Varnado Junior, called Salt Ingestion Caves, published in
Speaker 3: the International Journal of Spielology in the year two thousand
Speaker 3: and six. So the authors kick things off by pointing
Speaker 3: out that, of course animals need salt to survive. It
Speaker 3: is a basic requirement in the body. Regular table salt
Speaker 3: is known chemically as sodium chloride, and when we ingest it,
Speaker 3: our bodies use both the sodium ions and the chloride
Speaker 3: ions from that molecule for a number of functions. Salt
Speaker 3: is necessary for our muscles to function properly, like we
Speaker 3: need sodium so muscles can contract and relax. It's used
Speaker 3: in our nervous systems to conduct impulses. It's used for
Speaker 3: all kinds of things throughout the body, and most humans
Speaker 3: get way more of it than we need because we
Speaker 3: add supplemental salt to our food for taste. But of
Speaker 3: course wild animals don't have the kind of ready access
Speaker 3: to supplemental salt that we do in the wild. Carnivores
Speaker 3: can usually get the salt they need by eating the
Speaker 3: flesh of other animals, which naturally contains a good bit
Speaker 3: of it, but for herbivores getting enough salt can be difficult.
Speaker 3: The sodium content of most terrestrial plants is quite low,
Speaker 3: and since ancient times, humans have noticed that animals, especially herbivores,
Speaker 3: sometimes gather at what are called salt licks, or more broadly,
Speaker 3: mineral licks, places where there are rocks or soils that
Speaker 3: animals can consume in some way to supplement the mineral
Speaker 3: content of their diet, including minerals such as sodium salt.
Speaker 3: This can include a range of behaviors in the wild,
Speaker 3: like licking salty rocks on a mountainside, eating exposed clays
Speaker 3: or other sediments that have a desirable mineral content. And
Speaker 3: because herbivores are drawn to these salty rocks and soils,
Speaker 3: hunters have long known about them as good places to
Speaker 3: find game. So what does this have to do with caves? Well,
Speaker 3: the author's rite quote large vertebrate herbivores, when they find
Speaker 3: a salt bearing layer of rock in a cliff face,
Speaker 3: can over generations produce sizeable voids where they have removed
Speaker 3: and consumed salty rock. These cavities that humans can enter
Speaker 3: can have the characteristics of a cave as defined locally.
Speaker 3: So that last sentence meaning that, you know, whatever people
Speaker 3: call a cave, You know that varies from place to place,
Speaker 3: but usually it means like a void in the rock
Speaker 3: that's large enough for a person to go into to enter.
Speaker 3: And those types of voids can indeed be created by
Speaker 3: animals removing the rock by eating it.
Speaker 1: Wow, So you're saying that in some cases a cave
Speaker 1: is naturally formed over geologic time by rain, water and
Speaker 1: so forth. Other times a deer just licks it until
Speaker 1: it's right a deer licked it into the side of
Speaker 1: a mountain.
Speaker 3: That appears to be the case, according to these authors.
Speaker 3: So they look at several case studies in the paper.
Speaker 3: One is a site referenced in some literature about the
Speaker 3: Altai Mountains in Asia. The authors are talking about reports
Speaker 3: from surveys of the Altai Mountains, specifically of a mountain
Speaker 3: bearing shale formations near the confluence of the Kan River
Speaker 3: and the Charch River. Apparently, the shale here is very salty,
Speaker 3: and they quote a commentary by an author named Carl
Speaker 3: Friedrich von Eltibor from eighteen twenty six, who writes of
Speaker 3: the shale quote, all livestock of the Kalmuks find this rock,
Speaker 3: which gives the mountain an ash gray appearance, very desirable,
Speaker 3: and consume it in not small amounts, so that one
Speaker 3: not infrequently finds grottos built in this way. Of course,
Speaker 3: a grotto refers to a small cave, and this author
Speaker 3: mentions that both domestic and wild animals come to this
Speaker 3: mountain to eat the shale. Another example they mention is
Speaker 3: a place in the United States. It's called rock House Cave.
Speaker 3: It's a cave situated within the rock of a small
Speaker 3: bluff in the US state of Mississippi. They say that
Speaker 3: the entrance is roughly ten feet wide, but then the
Speaker 3: cave actually widens once you go inside. It roughly doubles
Speaker 3: in width. It's just about tall enough for an adult
Speaker 3: to stand up, and it reaches about fifteen feet deep
Speaker 3: into the bluff. And they say the surrounding rock is
Speaker 3: mostly what the authors characterize as a soft, fine grained sandstone.
Speaker 3: They say it is of the Kataboulah formation, and it's
Speaker 3: got a significant amount of sodium chloride in it. The
Speaker 3: authors also say there's no evidence that water solution caused
Speaker 3: the formation of this cave, and instead it appears that
Speaker 3: it was caused by many generations of animals removing the
Speaker 3: walls by licking. They say there is a rough surface
Speaker 3: on the walls that seems to quite possibly have been
Speaker 3: created just by animals licking it away over time. They
Speaker 3: say it was probably first wild deer and possibly bison
Speaker 3: that opened this cave up, and then maybe cattle later.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: But the most amazing example they cite is one from
Speaker 3: eastern Africa. This so, there's an extinct volcano on the
Speaker 3: border between Kenya and Uganda. This volcano is called Mount
Speaker 3: elgon or Elgonyi, and on the side of this mountain
Speaker 3: there are what I've read described elsewhere as ballroom sized caves,
Speaker 3: large sizable caves that appear to have been at least
Speaker 3: in part excavated by elephants. Elephants inside caves, Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: so there there is some question about the role of
Speaker 3: the elephants in creating the caves, but there is no
Speaker 3: question that the cave that the elephants do go into
Speaker 3: the caves and consume rocks that has been directly observed.
Speaker 3: That's the thing that happens. So the most famous of
Speaker 3: the Mount Elgon caves is known as Katoomb Cave k
Speaker 3: t u M and the authors propose that these caves
Speaker 3: were formed in part by water solution, but also in
Speaker 3: part because wild herbivores literally eat the rocks away and
Speaker 3: remove them from the caverns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is this is amazing. I have I've actually
Speaker 1: seen footage of this. I don't remember which elephant documentary
Speaker 1: I saw this in Problem maybe More and One watched
Speaker 1: a lot of elephant documentaries at one point, and my
Speaker 1: son's upbringing when he was super into elephants. But it's
Speaker 1: it is amazing to behold. And these are large caves,
Speaker 1: you know, starters elephants have to fit in them. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think ballroom seems appropriate based on the footage as
Speaker 1: I remember it, because these look like the kind of
Speaker 1: caverns that you might have filmed like a B movie
Speaker 1: in or perhaps an episode of Star Trek took place in. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see that.
Speaker 3: Now elephants are not the only animals that go into
Speaker 3: these caves to eat the to like consume parts of
Speaker 3: the walls and eat the rocks. Apparently, also buffaloes, antelopes,
Speaker 3: and sometimes monkeys have been observed to go into the
Speaker 3: caves and eat some of the some of the soft
Speaker 3: rocks that line the walls. The authors say specifically Katoomb
Speaker 3: Cave to give you a better idea about the size
Speaker 3: of one of the big caves. Here, they say that
Speaker 3: the rock face that the elephants generally go to to
Speaker 3: get to get their minerals from is about one hundred
Speaker 3: and sixty meters into the mountain from the entrance, so
Speaker 3: that's a deep cave. And they say that what happens
Speaker 3: is the elephants go in and they usually loosen pieces
Speaker 3: of rock from the walls of the cave with their tusks,
Speaker 3: so they're like digging against the walls with their tusks.
Speaker 3: These pieces fall to the floor, and then they pick
Speaker 3: up the pieces with their trunks, and then they put
Speaker 3: the piece in their mouth and chew it up crush
Speaker 3: it with their teeth. Now, what was not fully resolved
Speaker 3: at the time of this paper, and from what I
Speaker 3: can tell, has still not been fully resolved, is what
Speaker 3: are the relative contributions of the different processes to how
Speaker 3: large the caves are like, are the caves predominantly formed
Speaker 3: by inorganic solution and erosion of the rock by water
Speaker 3: flow and then supplemented is that excavation supplemented by elephants
Speaker 3: and other animals removing some amount of rock? Or are
Speaker 3: the elephants and other animals primarily respectible for hollowing out
Speaker 3: the caves and there's just some solution by water going on?
Speaker 3: Also what role may have been played by like human
Speaker 3: mining and other factors. So the authors look at several
Speaker 3: analyzes of this, and they quote one researcher named Ian
Speaker 3: Redmond who did a study of the cave in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty four. Redmond did several months of field observations, watching
Speaker 3: the elephants and analyzing even the mineral content of their droppings.
Speaker 3: Redmond wrote, quote, the volume of Katumb cave is on
Speaker 3: the order of one point three million gallons or about
Speaker 3: five million liders. If for the sake of conservative argument,
Speaker 3: we suppose that elephant excavations averaged just one quart per week,
Speaker 3: it would have taken only one hundred thousand years for
Speaker 3: them to dig Katum. The theory of elephants, spieleogenesis cave
Speaker 3: creation is entirely plausible. Wow, yeah, amazing to consider. The
Speaker 3: authors also they cite another study, this one by researchers
Speaker 3: named Donald McFarlane and Joyce Lundberg. This was from two
Speaker 3: thousand and four where after field observations, these researchers suggested
Speaker 3: a multi step process for cave formation that would go
Speaker 3: like this. They summarize it as follows. So, first of all,
Speaker 3: there is a cliff that forms. There's like water flowing
Speaker 3: off of the mountain they say, off of a cap
Speaker 3: rock layer, and it erodes some material from underneath. Then
Speaker 3: after that they say that some more material clay sized
Speaker 3: material sediment is removed from the floor of the cave
Speaker 3: by groundwater sapping. And then they also say more mass
Speaker 3: is removed from the cave by animal excavation. And then
Speaker 3: at some point there are collapses within the cave. They write,
Speaker 3: quote collapse of overlying beds makes piles of broken material
Speaker 3: which are removed by action of water and animal geoff
Speaker 3: rock eating. And then finally they say step four is repeat.
Speaker 3: This whole process repeats over and over again. So they're
Speaker 3: saying that it's a combination of material being removed by
Speaker 3: water flow and then the cavern collapsing as material is
Speaker 3: removed and supporting walls are removed, and then animals also
Speaker 3: remove parts of the walls and remove some of the
Speaker 3: collapsed material from above, and it just keeps going on.
Speaker 1: Like that because those animals, they don't care about the
Speaker 1: structural integrity of the cave. They just want to get
Speaker 1: that salt right. It's all they want is they're fix now.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, the authors of this analysis, McFarlane and Lundberg, were
Speaker 3: unable to say what the relative masses of rock removed
Speaker 3: by water versus geophagi were, but they seem to believe
Speaker 3: that the amount removed by the animals was significant. And
Speaker 3: then coming back to the parent paper, the one by
Speaker 3: Lundquist and Varnido Junior, they bring up something that was
Speaker 3: interesting when thought about. When I was thinking about it,
Speaker 3: in parallel to our discussion of batguana, is a kind
Speaker 3: of alternative sunlight or base of the food chain in
Speaker 3: deeper limestone caves. Speaking of the Mount Elgun caves, the
Speaker 3: authors here note that quote a common feature in most
Speaker 3: of the larger caves is the quantity of dung deposited
Speaker 3: by beasts which have come to the caves from time
Speaker 3: immemorial to lick or otherwise consume the agglomerate walls. Traces
Speaker 3: of elephants using the caves are most common, and their
Speaker 3: tusk marks are clearly recognizable where they have gouged the rock.
Speaker 3: So actually a couple interesting parallels there, the connection to
Speaker 3: the seeing where the elephants with their tusks have like
Speaker 3: cut gashes in the rock in the walls of the caves,
Speaker 3: kind of like the marks on the cave walls left
Speaker 3: by the cave bears. But also all the poop, all
Speaker 3: the poop of all the visitors accumulating over the thousands
Speaker 3: of years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy, and you know all this also reminds
Speaker 1: me of episode we did a while back on giant sloths,
Speaker 1: a particular variety of giant sloth that would have dug
Speaker 1: itself kind of a burrow into a like deep into burrow,
Speaker 1: creating eventually over time as they reuse these spaces a
Speaker 1: kind of tunnel in the earth.
Speaker 3: Funny you should mention that because the fourth case study
Speaker 3: that the authors bring up in this paper is evidence
Speaker 3: related to what's called Mylodon Cave in Patagonia in Chile.
Speaker 3: They say that it is possible that this is a
Speaker 3: case of cave formation by salt ingestion long ago, this
Speaker 3: time implicating extinct giant ground sloths. This is fully speculative,
Speaker 3: but they do highlight this as a possibility, explaining where
Speaker 3: this cave came from.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: But to come back and conclude the look at the
Speaker 3: Mount Elgon caves. So they say, what we do know
Speaker 3: is that animals come to these caves to consume mineral
Speaker 3: laden soil and rocks, so these caves could be thought
Speaker 3: of as massive salt licks or mineral licks. There are
Speaker 3: generally no permanent streams running out of the caves, so
Speaker 3: that that's not an option for removal of cave material
Speaker 3: by like permanent water passage. Some water does appear to
Speaker 3: run out of the caves during flooding events, but how
Speaker 3: much rock material is removed during these events in this
Speaker 3: way is uncertain, so we still in the end don't
Speaker 3: know the relative amounts. We don't know how much of
Speaker 3: the cave formation is due to water solution versus how
Speaker 3: much is due to animals eating the rock. But they
Speaker 3: think that both processes contribute, and their judgment in the
Speaker 3: end is that the contribution of the elephants is the
Speaker 3: primary process.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Either way, it's amazing to imagine elephants going into caves
Speaker 3: to eat the rocks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing. And you know, we shouldn't cast too
Speaker 1: much judgment. Like you mentioned earlier, humans very often don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about getting enough salt we eat at
Speaker 1: a restaurant. Once we get like a colossal salt bomb, right,
Speaker 1: we get we get more than enough salt. We get
Speaker 1: an unhealthy amount of salt ingested into our bodies. But
Speaker 1: if we didn't have those food sources, we might be
Speaker 1: out there looking the sides of mountains just like these
Speaker 1: various herbivores are. Assuming we also didn't eat copious amounts
Speaker 1: of meat on top of that, which is another factor
Speaker 1: to consider here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, well does that do it for this
Speaker 3: exploration of caves. I'm sure we'll be back in the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's all I mean, we've we've covered caves in
Speaker 1: the past. Yeah, we'll be back in the future. And
Speaker 1: there are a number of fascinating cave organisms that we
Speaker 1: didn't cover in these episodes. And if you have favorites
Speaker 1: right in, we'd love to hear from you, because we
Speaker 1: could always venture back into the caves. You know, we
Speaker 1: don't reside there all the time, but we we go
Speaker 1: in from time to time in order to discuss something interesting.
Speaker 1: All right, as as usual, we'll just remind you that
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