Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. Merry Christmas. Today is Christmas, so
Speaker 1: we are running a vault episode. This is going to
Speaker 1: be our holiday episode from last year, originally published twelve twelve,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, and it is Christmas Trees beneath the Sea,
Speaker 1: So don't worry. We're not talking about the dumping of
Speaker 1: old Christmas trees, certainly not artificial ones. We're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about natural organisms in the watery depths of Earth,
Speaker 1: so otions that in varying ways bring to mind a
Speaker 1: holiday decorated tree. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and.
Speaker 1: We have a special holiday episode here for you today.
Speaker 1: It does concern Christmas trees of a sort. We have,
Speaker 1: of course talked about Christmas trees plenty of times on
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind in the past. I think
Speaker 1: the most recent installment being an episode we did a
Speaker 1: couple of years back. Holiday inventions, Christmas tree lights, tinsel
Speaker 1: and angels. We've talked about Christmas trees and connection to
Speaker 1: sacred trees in the past. But today we're going to
Speaker 1: find our Christmas trees in an all new location. We
Speaker 1: are going to venture beneath the sea.
Speaker 3: That's right, it's Yule tied in the deep today.
Speaker 1: Yes, deep down in the ocean. In some cases, deep
Speaker 1: in the ocean where it's said that Cuthulhu waits dreaming.
Speaker 1: But just maybe maybe he's dreaming of a white Christmas.
Speaker 3: He's dreaming of that red writer be begun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that'd we come around to Christmas trees under
Speaker 1: the sea? Well, credit where credits due. We had a
Speaker 1: couple of lead ends to this. One of the organisms
Speaker 1: we're going to cover here is one that was already
Speaker 1: on your radar and is also something that I've observed
Speaker 1: in the wild before. And then another source of inspiration
Speaker 1: was a twenty twenty one Jay Store Daily article by
Speaker 1: Sierra Garcia titled Meet the Christmas Tree Doppelgangers of the Sea. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously with a title like that, you know I'm going
Speaker 1: to give the post a second look. You know. Doppelganger
Speaker 1: of course, being the German double walker, the uncanny, sinister
Speaker 1: and perhaps doom harboragering duplication of self. Christmas, with its
Speaker 1: hidden depths of darkness, seems a great place for such
Speaker 1: creatures to wander around. But of course it's not about
Speaker 1: actual doppelgangers. It's about things in the ocean that may
Speaker 1: or may not resemble Christmas trees, depending on how much
Speaker 1: you want to see Christmas in them.
Speaker 3: You know, my daughter is two years old now, and
Speaker 3: so this is going to be her first, her first
Speaker 3: really conscious Christmas, the one that I think she's really
Speaker 3: going to be very aware of. And of course at
Speaker 3: her age, I'm constantly thinking about, like the recognition of objects,
Speaker 3: because she likes to point to things and either ask
Speaker 3: what's that or to say what the thing she's pointing
Speaker 3: at is, And a lot of times it's not the
Speaker 3: thing she says it is, but you can see the resemblance.
Speaker 3: And so I'm constantly thinking about the minimum visual criteria
Speaker 3: to associate a shape or some kind of sight with
Speaker 3: an object or a concept that she already has. And
Speaker 3: one of them now is Christmas trees, and so like
Speaker 3: I'm wondering what kind of triangular thing this week? You know,
Speaker 3: she'll point out is that Christmas tree? And we're sort
Speaker 3: of playing the same game now, aren't we.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean you've got to call these organisms something, right,
Speaker 1: We've encountered examples of this before. You know, everything is
Speaker 1: an apple, according to Western explorers, some version of an apple,
Speaker 1: be it pine or otherwise. But you know, on another level,
Speaker 1: all of this kind of connects with the ancient notion
Speaker 1: that we've discussed in the show before, the idea that
Speaker 1: if if you look into the water, if you gaze
Speaker 1: deep into it, you're going to inevitably fine twins of
Speaker 1: things that exist above the water. You're going to find
Speaker 1: lions of the sea, cows of the sea, and so
Speaker 1: much more so. Maybe it's not all that off the
Speaker 1: mark anyway, that there are doppelgangers Christmas tree doppelgangers in
Speaker 1: the deep, because we have Christmas trees up here, so
Speaker 1: they must exist in the mirror realm beneath the waves.
Speaker 3: That's right. Well, are you ready to kick things off
Speaker 3: with my example here?
Speaker 1: Yes? Yes, this is a fun one. This is probably
Speaker 1: the one that's instantly coming to some folks mind out there,
Speaker 1: especially folks who have done a little snorkeling and scuba diving.
Speaker 3: Well, we're going to start in the place you might
Speaker 3: expect for undersea Christmas Trees, and that is James Cameron's
Speaker 3: Avatar from two thousand and nine. I know, I was
Speaker 3: actually so reading an article about this that was LinkedIn
Speaker 3: that Jastore Daily you mentioned earlier. But this was a
Speaker 3: short article that was mainly just promoting a conference presentation,
Speaker 3: but it had some interesting behind the scenes details about the
Speaker 3: making of Avatar. It was called of Plants in Film
Speaker 3: by Tanya Marion and the Botanical Artist twenty fifteen, and
Speaker 3: so it was talking about when Cameron was setting out
Speaker 3: to design the world of Avatar, he wanted to achieve
Speaker 3: some degree of biological plausibility, and the movie is set
Speaker 3: on a planet. Actually, I think it's supposed to be
Speaker 3: a moon called Pandora, which he was originally imagining as
Speaker 3: a place with low light conditions and a toxic atmosphere,
Speaker 3: so it would have kind of different different material pressures
Speaker 3: applying to the biosphere, maybe leading to different forms of
Speaker 3: life than we have here on Earth. And so in
Speaker 3: trying to dream up these life forms, he consulted with
Speaker 3: a plant physiologist from UC Riverside named Jody Holt to
Speaker 3: help imagine the botany of the alien biosphere. It's kind
Speaker 3: of interesting how the plants they dreamed up in some
Speaker 3: way resemble life forms that are found not on the
Speaker 3: surface of Earth but underneath Earth's oceans. So the movie
Speaker 3: features in some scenes a type of large ground flora,
Speaker 3: I think within the sort of in universe lore. It's
Speaker 3: they call it like a zoo botanical or something like that.
Speaker 3: It's sort of like an animal plant combination. But whatever
Speaker 3: it is, it basically seems plant formed. It's a piece
Speaker 3: of large ground flora with spiral shaped foliage, and in
Speaker 3: the universe of the movie it's called helicoradium spirally. And
Speaker 3: in the movie we see that this plant has an
Speaker 3: unusual reaction to activity in its environment. When it is
Speaker 3: physically disturbed, these fanned out, corkscrew shaped leaves rapidly recoil
Speaker 3: and fold up into almost nothingness. So you can be
Speaker 3: standing in the middle of a little grove of these
Speaker 3: things and suddenly they all fold up and you can
Speaker 3: see everything around you. It's a touch me not reflex.
Speaker 1: Very impressive effects in play here, particularly nice on the
Speaker 1: big screen and in three D. You know, say what
Speaker 1: you will about the Avatar films, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of fantastic biological world building going on in them, And yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a great example of one of the organisms
Speaker 1: that Cameron unleashes us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so it turns out this was one of
Speaker 3: the biological elements of the movie that was inspired by
Speaker 3: organisms that actually exist in nature, not so much a plant,
Speaker 3: but by an animal, the real animal called Spirobranchus gigantius,
Speaker 3: or the Christmas tree worm. And that's the animal that
Speaker 3: I want to talk about for a minute here. So
Speaker 3: first of all, your mind, if it works like mine,
Speaker 3: might be looking in the wrong direction here, because when
Speaker 3: I hear Christmas tree worm, for some reason, to me,
Speaker 3: it sounds like the name of a pest animal that
Speaker 3: is named after the crop that it is most notorious
Speaker 3: for infesting and consuming. So like the tobacco hornworm or
Speaker 3: the tato tuber worm. These are in reality both moth
Speaker 3: species that in their larval stages feed on night shade
Speaker 3: plants like the ones in their names, and other night
Speaker 3: shade plants as well. But you know, humans kind of
Speaker 3: have a sometimes a kind of economic agricultural mindset in
Speaker 3: interfacing with wildlife, so they can sort of name animals
Speaker 3: after the crop that that animal is causing them problems with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like Christmas tree worms have ravaged the harvest
Speaker 1: again is going to be a tough winner exactly.
Speaker 3: But the Christmas tree worm is not a caterpillar that
Speaker 3: infests Christmas tree farms. Instead, it is a marine tubeworm
Speaker 3: that lives on the surface of coral reefs. And so
Speaker 3: what's the association. Well, these animals are named after Christmas
Speaker 3: trees because they look like Christmas trees. And yet sometimes
Speaker 3: these naming conventions are a bit of a stretch, But
Speaker 3: for my part, I think it's close enough. I think
Speaker 3: these worms really do kind of remind me of Christmas trees,
Speaker 3: though I will qualify that, and my qualification is that
Speaker 3: it's not so much that they resemble the actual species
Speaker 3: of evergreens, which are usually fir trees that we use
Speaker 3: as Christmas decorations. The only way in which I'd say
Speaker 3: they actually evoke the trees themselves is in general shape.
Speaker 3: So like Christmas trees, the part of these worms you
Speaker 3: can see is a cone which is widest at the
Speaker 3: base and the narrows towards the top, and it does
Speaker 3: sort of have branches, branches radiating from a central trunk
Speaker 3: or spine. They're also sort of needly needly branches, which
Speaker 3: you could compare to evergreen pine needle texture, but it's
Speaker 3: not exactly a perfect match when you look at it. Instead,
Speaker 3: I think the main way that they remind me and
Speaker 3: remind other people of Christmas trees is that they mimic
Speaker 3: a popular style of Christmas tree decoration, especially from years past,
Speaker 3: which is that you would have a string of lights
Speaker 3: or a brightly colored garland wrapped around the tree in
Speaker 3: a spiral pattern. I've got a couple of examples for
Speaker 3: you to look at here, Rob. I don't really know
Speaker 3: that much about historical patterns of Christmas tree decoration, but
Speaker 3: this reads to me as a more old style way
Speaker 3: of decorating a Christmas tree. I associate it with like
Speaker 3: the nineteen thirties or forties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I guess maybe some of this survived.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm looking at this. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: when this style of tree decoration dies out or then
Speaker 1: again resurges again. For that matter, I'm not sure where
Speaker 1: we are now. We don't put a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: thought into it. We just throw up the tree and
Speaker 1: we put our favorite decorations up and call it a day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, my family never had a spiral garland on
Speaker 3: our tree, so it's not something I remember from personal experience.
Speaker 3: I feel like I've seen it in older media, which
Speaker 3: is maybe why I think of it as something that's older.
Speaker 1: We might have had a spiral garland, or maybe my
Speaker 1: grandmother did. I don't remember, but it feels like something
Speaker 1: I've seen in my lifetimee somewhere. Hard to get excited
Speaker 1: about the garland, though, especially as a kid, because it's
Speaker 1: the individual ornaments and the lights that have all of
Speaker 1: the personality.
Speaker 3: I think, especially for people with brains like yours in mind.
Speaker 3: I think you and I were both like the Illustrated
Speaker 3: Dictionary kind of kids. We like things with lots of
Speaker 3: little individual in trees, with the little illustration and explanation,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of what the individual ornaments feel like
Speaker 3: to me. I like individual ornaments with personality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good way of puting it.
Speaker 3: But coming back to the Christmas tree worm, So if
Speaker 3: you do a search for pictures of this worm, you
Speaker 3: will find plenty of stunning underwater photos of coral reef
Speaker 3: surfaces speckled with multicolored pairs of spiral Christmas trees. Each
Speaker 3: pair branching in a fork. So what you'll see are
Speaker 3: two little Christmas trees right beside one another, with the
Speaker 3: same coloration. Now, each pair has a different coloration from
Speaker 3: the other ones around, but within the pair, the two
Speaker 3: little trees next to each other that are growing in
Speaker 3: a V shape split at the base, those will be
Speaker 3: the same color usually. And one important thing to emphasize
Speaker 3: is that the Christmas trees that you're seeing are not
Speaker 3: the whole of the organism. Each pair of Christmas trees
Speaker 3: represents the two crowns, or feeding and breathing appendages of
Speaker 3: a worm, the main cylindrical body of which is hidden
Speaker 3: in a tube in the coral right beneath where the
Speaker 3: trees emerge. And whether or not you think they look
Speaker 3: like Christmas trees, these things are beautiful. I know they're
Speaker 3: especially popular as a site for like scuba divers and snorkelers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've gotten to observe these in the wild before,
Speaker 1: snorkeling in Breeze and in Rowatan. They're one of the
Speaker 1: smaller pleasures of snorkeling in the shallows, and honestly, that's
Speaker 1: what I'm all about when it comes to snorkeling. I
Speaker 1: don't really I don't really want to see anything big,
Speaker 1: you know, unless it's like a big coral format. I mean,
Speaker 1: I see a bigger fish, it's neat. But I often
Speaker 1: spend my time with looking around for those little details
Speaker 1: things that are you know, curling about inside the reefs
Speaker 1: and the rocks and and and you know, I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that makes something like a
Speaker 1: Christmas tree worm special. Now, in terms of whether they
Speaker 1: look like Christmas trees, I don't know. Obviously, It's one
Speaker 1: of those things where I knew what they were called,
Speaker 1: but as they were pointed out to me, so I
Speaker 1: couldn't help but bring Christmas tree into the scenario. But
Speaker 1: the ones I remember looking at I tended to think
Speaker 1: more of like bristle cleaner for straws and tubes, you know.
Speaker 3: But gorgeously decorated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, I don't remember them being the ones I saw,
Speaker 1: mind you, as colorful as the ones I see in
Speaker 1: some of these photos. But on the other hand, underwater
Speaker 1: photography is very much a lighting game. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess all photography is a lighting game, and you know,
Speaker 1: what you actually see with your own eyes, and maybe
Speaker 1: less than optimal lighting conditions the water. You know, they're
Speaker 1: not going to necessarily match up with what you see,
Speaker 1: you know, in somebody's showcase of underwater photography. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they still they do have a lot of character. You know,
Speaker 1: there's something sneaky and whimsical about them. A lot of
Speaker 1: the things in the water don't want to be seen
Speaker 1: and will do what they can passively or actively to
Speaker 1: avoid a clumsy human and a mask and a snorkel
Speaker 1: from seeing them. But Christmas tree worms tend to feel
Speaker 1: just a little extra cheeky in the way they hide from.
Speaker 3: Us, Like they're not just hiding from you, they're almost
Speaker 3: kind of playing peekaboo, maybe playing yeah hard to get.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is like a peekaboo feel to them, you.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, yeah, you know. I was reading some guides
Speaker 3: to marine life and coral reef life that we're talking
Speaker 3: about people who try to get photos of these things,
Speaker 3: and apparently they's somewhat They're sensitive to multiple things, including
Speaker 3: changes in light conditions. So maybe if a shadow falls
Speaker 3: under them, they could retract, or if the flash of
Speaker 3: a camera goes off, they could retract, and then slowly
Speaker 3: over time after they retract, they'll so re emerge, and
Speaker 3: so I think there might be some patience involved in
Speaker 3: trying to get up close and see them or to
Speaker 3: take a good photo of them, to kind of wait
Speaker 3: for them to come back out after you have spooked
Speaker 3: them the first time. But then another thing I saw
Speaker 3: in one of the sources I was reading was that
Speaker 3: how skittish they are might well depend on their surroundings.
Speaker 3: Like the ones that are in shallower, more turbulent waters,
Speaker 3: I think, tend to be a little less skittish than
Speaker 3: the ones that are in deeper, more calm and stable waters,
Speaker 3: which sort of makes sense. Yeah, but anyway, Okay, so
Speaker 3: what's the biological rundown on the Christmas tree worm. It
Speaker 3: is a relatively small polychet worm that lives the entirety
Speaker 3: of its adult life with the majority of its body
Speaker 3: hidden inside a calcareous tube that it makes initially on
Speaker 3: the surface of a rock or more often a coral reef,
Speaker 3: and then the tube can kind of become subsumed within
Speaker 3: the coral as the coral grows, and then the worm
Speaker 3: and its tube grows up along with the coral. So
Speaker 3: it begins life in a short planktonic larval phase, floating
Speaker 3: around after which it lands somewhere on the reef, secretes
Speaker 3: a tube made of mucus, which it lives in for
Speaker 3: a bit, and over time that mucous tube becomes cemented
Speaker 3: with solid minerals, and then within that tube, the Christmas
Speaker 3: tree worm metamorphoses and grows into its adult form, where
Speaker 3: it will live the rest of its life, growing with
Speaker 3: the structure of the reef, safe and secure, and covered
Speaker 3: inside its tube by a nice lubricating blanket of mucus.
Speaker 3: I've seen different estimates on size range. According to a
Speaker 3: post by the NOAA, on average, these worms are less
Speaker 3: than four centimeters long, but according to marine biologist Eugene
Speaker 3: Kaplan in his book A Field Guide Coral Reefs from
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety nine, their body length can reach up to
Speaker 3: twelve centimeters or about five inches either way. They are small,
Speaker 3: but they're easy to spot because they're very colorful, and
Speaker 3: in some cases because of rapid changes that you can
Speaker 3: observe with them, most often them disappearing suddenly, so the
Speaker 3: exposed parts the two Christmas trees are two tentacles or crowns,
Speaker 3: and I've also seen them called gill plumes arranged in
Speaker 3: a spiral or whirl pattern, which themselves contain what's called
Speaker 3: a bipinnate arrangement of hair like or needle like protrusions
Speaker 3: called radioles. And then those little needle protrusions are themselves
Speaker 3: perpendicularly covered in other smaller protrusions called pinules or ccilia.
Speaker 3: So you can imagine a kind of fern shape. You know,
Speaker 3: you have the main stalk going out, and then you
Speaker 3: have branches going out from that stalk, and then out
Speaker 3: from the branches you got the little leaves projecting at
Speaker 3: a ninety gre angle. So these radioles covered in the cilia,
Speaker 3: the worm fans them out in this spiral pattern and
Speaker 3: then beats them in the water to catch floating phytoplankton
Speaker 3: and other bits of biological particle matter that will become
Speaker 3: the worm's food. The little pins sort of they catch
Speaker 3: hold of bits of organic stuff suspended in the water,
Speaker 3: and then they sort of transport those particles in a
Speaker 3: stream in little ridges along the surface of the worlds
Speaker 3: down to the worm's mouth. Delicious. So imagine kind of
Speaker 3: a spiral Christmas tree that gradually sucks in all of
Speaker 3: its ornaments, sucks the ornaments down the branches and then
Speaker 3: down the trunk and eats them.
Speaker 1: I mean it sometimes works like that if you have
Speaker 1: a cat and Christmas tree.
Speaker 3: Now, these structures are not only for filter feeding, they're
Speaker 3: also for breathing. They are the worm's gills, and so
Speaker 3: the worm uses these radioles to extract dissolved oxygen from
Speaker 3: the water. Now, the activity that makes the Christmas tree
Speaker 3: worm notable as an inspiration for the plants in Avatar
Speaker 3: is the touch me not reflex. When it senses danger
Speaker 3: through multiple types of stimuli, it can rapidly retract its
Speaker 3: two Christmas trees into the hole where it lives, and
Speaker 3: on top of that, it can also shut the door
Speaker 3: behind it. It has a flat body structure, sometimes capped
Speaker 3: with some sort of horny surface called an operculum, which
Speaker 3: it can slam shut over the opening of its tube.
Speaker 3: And we've talked about this adaptation the operculum in other species,
Speaker 3: such as snails. Snails sometimes have an operculum that they
Speaker 3: can use to cover the opening of their shell. Serves
Speaker 3: the same purpose, but of course, in the case of
Speaker 3: a snail, the shell is mobile. Here we'd be talking
Speaker 3: about a stationary tube on a substrate for a sedentary organism.
Speaker 3: We also talked about it in our episodes on hermit crabs,
Speaker 3: because in some cases the hermit crab will have one
Speaker 3: one claw that is so made that it functions as
Speaker 3: an operculum at the opening of the shell.
Speaker 1: That's right. It's perfect little lid for their shell.
Speaker 3: That's right. So the operculum is a biological adaptation for
Speaker 3: slamming the door shut. Now, I wanted to shout out
Speaker 3: an interesting sort of ecological fact that I became aware
Speaker 3: of because I saw it in a PBS Nova segment,
Speaker 3: So thank you Nova. But the interesting thing is that
Speaker 3: there is some evidence that the relationship between the Christmas
Speaker 3: tree worm and the coral reef on which it lives
Speaker 3: goes both ways. Now, of course you can see how
Speaker 3: the worm benefits. The worm benefits from the coral skeletal structure,
Speaker 3: which of course provides it, you know, rigid protection against
Speaker 3: predators and you know, the tube it can live in.
Speaker 3: But also as it grows, it lifts it up into
Speaker 3: the water where it can have access to better waters
Speaker 3: for filter feeding. But the coral itself may also benefit
Speaker 3: from having Christmas tree worms all over it, because apparently
Speaker 3: the Christmas tree worms can provide a kind of protection
Speaker 3: for the coral against one of the coral's major predators,
Speaker 3: and that predator is the crown of thorns starfish aka acinthaster,
Speaker 3: plantcy or plunky p l A n c I. But
Speaker 3: I'll just say crown of thorns starfish because boy, is
Speaker 3: the epicness of that name appropriate. So imagine kind of
Speaker 3: a cross between a giant sunflower and an iron maiden
Speaker 3: turned inside out. These things are absolutely from the hell
Speaker 3: razor universe, extremely wicked. They might do. They're large, they
Speaker 3: might be roughly a foot and a half in diameter
Speaker 3: on average, coated in spikes, and what they do is
Speaker 3: they crawl over the surface of the coral reef just mowing.
Speaker 3: There's just mowing the lawn, eating everything they can. According
Speaker 3: to that NOVA segment, these giant starfish are in part
Speaker 3: responsible for the major decline of living coral within the
Speaker 3: Great Barrier Reef. There are other factors at work as well,
Speaker 3: but when these things get going, a sort of explosion
Speaker 3: in the population of these coral predators can clean out
Speaker 3: a reef of living corals, and so the whole ventral surface,
Speaker 3: the underside of the starfish, you can kind of think
Speaker 3: of as a vast digestive organ complex containing tube feet
Speaker 3: and this inverted stomach inside out stomach system, so it's
Speaker 3: just the underside of it is foreeat. It is just
Speaker 3: going to devour the coral underneath. And it turns out
Speaker 3: there's some evidence that if it comes to a part
Speaker 3: of a coral reef where there are Christmas tree worms,
Speaker 3: the Christmas tree worms can protect the corals directly underneath
Speaker 3: them because they get in the way of the starfish
Speaker 3: feeding and in fact they irritate the starfish's feeding organs.
Speaker 3: I've looked up a pa so I was trying to
Speaker 3: find the paper that was the source of this observation,
Speaker 3: and I found one published in the Marine Ecology Progress
Speaker 3: Series from nineteen eighty six by Devantier at All called
Speaker 3: does spiro Bronchus gigantius protect host porities from predation by
Speaker 3: acanthaster planky predator pressure as a mechanism of coevolution? And
Speaker 3: I was looking for the part of the paper that
Speaker 3: describes exactly how this works. I found it in their
Speaker 3: results section where they say, quote, preliminary field experiments indicate
Speaker 3: that for certain worms, contact by Acinhaster planky induces retraction,
Speaker 3: followed by almost immediate reappearance with the operculum and bronchial
Speaker 3: crowns pushing against the tube feet and arms of the starfish.
Speaker 3: This caused the predator to move quickly away. So something
Speaker 3: about what these worms like poking it at their tube
Speaker 3: feed and the averted stomach. The starfish do not like
Speaker 3: the worms messing with them, and so this can have
Speaker 3: the effect of protecting the corals that are situated right
Speaker 3: around where the worms are, And so it's not going
Speaker 3: to protect the reef totally from being mowed by the starfish,
Speaker 3: but what it can do is make sure that some
Speaker 3: corals are left alive on the reef, and that those
Speaker 3: corals left alive around the worms protected by the worms,
Speaker 3: can reseed the rest of the reef structure with living
Speaker 3: coral once again.
Speaker 1: Fascinating. So they're holding down their turf, which could allow
Speaker 1: the overall reef to then grow and heal later. Yes, fascinating.
Speaker 3: So I don't know. We've been thinking about trees a
Speaker 3: lot lately as apotropaic magic. Is there something here protective
Speaker 3: kind of the coral reef's got its own protective amulet,
Speaker 3: Except I guess it's not magic. It's just like literally
Speaker 3: keeping the starfish from absolutely devouring every inch of its life.
Speaker 1: It would be like if your Christmas tree protected your
Speaker 1: else by coming alive in the night, yeah, and fighting
Speaker 1: you know, weird alpine demons that might venture into your home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like if aliens wanted to come over your
Speaker 3: house and suck all of the people out of it.
Speaker 3: If the Christmas tree that you had like poked the
Speaker 3: alien ship and irritated it and made it go away.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 3: So that does it for Christmas tree worms. But I
Speaker 3: know we had some other organisms we were going to
Speaker 3: talk about.
Speaker 1: That's right. This next one is one that I learned
Speaker 1: about in that Jaystore Daily post that I referenced earlier,
Speaker 1: and it's very much still in the world of coral.
Speaker 1: Christmas tree coral, a cold water black coral discovered apparently
Speaker 1: in the mid two thousands. Some of you may be wondering,
Speaker 1: what is a black coral? Like, what does this even mean? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: you know a reminder that generally, you know, corals, of course,
Speaker 1: are animals, like we've been discussing, and if you've gotten
Speaker 1: out into the water, you're probably mostly familiar with the
Speaker 1: vibrant corals and you know sometimes the bleached corals and
Speaker 1: shallow coastal environments, but what are black corals well? As
Speaker 1: the NAA article Black Corals of Hawaii by Anthony Montgomery
Speaker 1: points out, black corals or thorn corals, which are officially
Speaker 1: known as antipatharia, are found all over the world and
Speaker 1: at varying depths, so you don't have to go into
Speaker 1: the deep waters to find them, but they're often noted
Speaker 1: for their presence in deep sea environments. Despite their name,
Speaker 1: they are rarely actually black. I'll get to why we
Speaker 1: still call them black corals in spite of this, but
Speaker 1: they can be various even bright colors, and their shapes
Speaker 1: also vary wildly. A key difference, however, between black corals
Speaker 1: and the stony corals that I think more people are
Speaker 1: familiar with, is that black corals have a skeleton made
Speaker 1: of protein and kitan. This skeleton is black, no matter
Speaker 1: what color the outer layers are, and that's the reason
Speaker 1: they end up with this name. So they have black skeletons,
Speaker 1: but they may have any number of colors on top
Speaker 1: of that skeleton. I see now Montgomery and that na
Speaker 1: article stresses that black corals do not have symbiotic algae
Speaker 1: associated with them, and they don't require light, thus their
Speaker 1: ability to survive at greater depths. And there are apparently
Speaker 1: something like two hundred known species of black coral. Now
Speaker 1: the Christmas tree black coral in question. Here is a
Speaker 1: particular species Antipathos Dindo christos in nomine patre. That's not
Speaker 1: part of it, but it sounds very Catholic, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Dendro cristos. That's gotta literally mean Christmas tree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is one. I'm gonna get to another
Speaker 1: organism later where not everybody seems to be associated with
Speaker 1: Christmas as far as I can understand, but this one,
Speaker 1: it's right there in the official name.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: According to environmental factors that influence the distribution, size, and
Speaker 1: biotic relationships of the Christmas tree coral, Antipathis dindol krystos
Speaker 1: in the southern California bite by huff at All. This
Speaker 1: is in Marine Ecology Progress Series twenty thirteen. The Christmas
Speaker 1: tree coral is an uncommon, long lived colonial coral that
Speaker 1: typically supports a diverse population of marine life forms. This,
Speaker 1: of course, is one of the reasons that there are
Speaker 1: a number of studies looking at it because there's a
Speaker 1: lot more to learn about them and a lot of
Speaker 1: organisms depend on them. But why do we call it
Speaker 1: a Christmas tree coral? What is even remotely christmas y
Speaker 1: about it? Well, while your mind may easily turn to
Speaker 1: an image of a green tree, you know, draped in
Speaker 1: silver tassels and multicolored lights, the Christmas tree, its name for,
Speaker 1: is actually one of those artificially frosted, you know, white
Speaker 1: flocked Christmas trees. You know what I'm talking about. These
Speaker 1: are the ones where the idea is the tree is
Speaker 1: supposed to look like a frost covered tree in the forest,
Speaker 1: very much in keeping with the movie Jack Frost that
Speaker 1: we watched for Weird House Cinema, in which Jack Frost
Speaker 1: essentially like flocks the trees in the forest, covering them
Speaker 1: with ice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that is what they're
Speaker 1: going for here, Joe, I included a photograph for you here.
Speaker 1: This This is an image I believe from the huff
Speaker 1: at All Paper.
Speaker 3: Oh, I absolutely see the comparison. It looks very much
Speaker 3: like fur tree branches covered in snow.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's not now, it's not tree shaped, it's not
Speaker 1: really conical, but yeah, it looks like like fur tree
Speaker 1: branches that are completely covered in some through a white frost. Now,
Speaker 1: as the huff at All Paper points out, Christmas tree
Speaker 1: corals also occur in red. But my first thought was like, well,
Speaker 1: it doesn't always look like a Christmas tree. But that
Speaker 1: shows how little I know about the history of flocking
Speaker 1: Christmas trees or creating you know, plastic a official trees,
Speaker 1: because I easily found an image of like a flocked
Speaker 1: red Christmas tree where it just is like a bright
Speaker 1: red imitation fur tree I'm assuming here, And yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it does not look unlike an actual photograph of
Speaker 1: a red Christmas tree, black coral.
Speaker 3: I'd see that. For some reason, this one made me
Speaker 3: think alveoli just like you know, a little uh red
Speaker 3: broccoli in the lungs.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's another solid comparison. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: also have to point out this one picture from the
Speaker 1: huff at All paper that has the red There's a
Speaker 1: red one and then there's a white one right behind it.
Speaker 1: And on the red one you see two different crustaceans
Speaker 1: climbing about, And to me it looks like one of
Speaker 1: those sometimes you see like a really wacky themed holiday tree,
Speaker 1: you know where there's very much a particular theme in mind.
Speaker 1: It's not about just getting all of your favorite ornaments
Speaker 1: on there, but like making something that is very fashionable.
Speaker 1: And so I can imagine a tree where it's like
Speaker 1: your only two ornaments are two enormous crustaceans crawling about
Speaker 1: on the tree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Ho ho LV four twenty six.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sort of thing. So full grown colonies of
Speaker 1: this particular form of black coral apparently reach heights of
Speaker 1: eight feet in eight feet tall, and they can live
Speaker 1: more than a century of conditions are favorable. A two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven bulletin of marine science paper from Love
Speaker 1: at All found that basically in this paper they've discussed
Speaker 1: how they found a dead two point one meter or
Speaker 1: six point eight feet tall Christmas tree black coral collected
Speaker 1: from one hundred and six meter depth or three hundred
Speaker 1: and forty eight feet depth off off the coast of
Speaker 1: southern California, and this one they found it would be
Speaker 1: to have been about one hundred and forty years old
Speaker 1: when it died, and its skeleton was heavily colonized by invertebrates.
Speaker 1: According to this paper and this particular specimen two five
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty four species living there.
Speaker 3: Wow, somebody counted all those species.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so it's a lot now that you know
Speaker 1: this is a dead one. But you know, basically the
Speaker 1: idea here is that you know, alive, we're dead. They
Speaker 1: have an important place in the ecosystem, you know, providing
Speaker 1: you know, substrate and so forth for various other organisms
Speaker 1: to thrive. And of course black corals, like like other corals,
Speaker 1: are you know, generally threatened by a climate change and
Speaker 1: related human industrial level activities, so you know, it's any
Speaker 1: threat to them is of course not only a threat
Speaker 1: to this particular species, but then there's also all these
Speaker 1: cascading effects that can occur with all the species that
Speaker 1: are then dependent upon it. I was also reading about
Speaker 1: how the black in general, not with this particular species,
Speaker 1: the Christmas tree black coral, but black corals in general.
Speaker 1: They have at times been prize for medicinal uses and
Speaker 1: then also for jewelry making, and I believe in Hawaii
Speaker 1: there's still a certain amount of black coral harvesting that
Speaker 1: is allowed, and I think largely for jewelry making, though
Speaker 1: perhaps there's some medicinal usage in there as well. In
Speaker 1: other areas, though black corals, along with other forms of coral,
Speaker 1: are completely protected. And to be clear, there is some
Speaker 1: level of protection in Hawaii based on what I was reading.
Speaker 1: It's just I think there is some allowance for harvesting.
Speaker 1: So again, Christmas tree black corals named named for the
Speaker 1: Christmas tree, and you know, I think it's not unreasonable
Speaker 1: to say, yes, they do kind of look like Christmas trees.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, if you tried to make
Speaker 3: a Christmas tree like harvests, assuming you could and ecological
Speaker 3: concerns aside, harvest some and make it the Christmas tree
Speaker 3: in your house, would it still look like a Christmas
Speaker 3: tree out of the water.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I think well, I mean one of
Speaker 1: the things, once you with the black corals, it's like
Speaker 1: people were harvest was doing it and doing stuff with
Speaker 1: the black skeleton. So I don't know, you might end
Speaker 1: up with some sort of like you know, goth black
Speaker 1: Christmas tree, which you know, I'm also totally on board
Speaker 1: for do what you want with your Christmas trees. Make
Speaker 1: them a statement of your identity.
Speaker 3: Okay, what's our third underwater Christmas tree? Okay?
Speaker 1: I I did to do a little bit more digging
Speaker 1: for this one, because I was like, all right, we
Speaker 1: really need something else for the episode. You've got to
Speaker 1: round it out with a third, right, And for a
Speaker 1: little bit there I was like, I think the third
Speaker 1: is going to be the Christmas Tree of the desert.
Speaker 1: And then I had to remind myself in the way,
Speaker 1: I can't do that. That's that's not deep sea. That's
Speaker 1: the opposite of deep sea. That's the desert. So I
Speaker 1: was beginning to think there wasn't going to be something,
Speaker 1: but then I started finding some references from the Monterey
Speaker 1: Bay Aquarium and that led me to a particular genus
Speaker 1: of Sciphonophore that we're going to talk about here, and
Speaker 1: that genus is a forced Kalia. And this genus I
Speaker 1: believe is unofficially referred to as containing at least one
Speaker 1: variety of Christmas tree Siphonophor. Okay, so what is a
Speaker 1: siphonophor or Sciphonophora is an order of colonial free swimming
Speaker 1: or floating marine hydra zooins, such as the Portuguese Man
Speaker 1: of War that's probably the most well known member of
Speaker 1: this group. And they're mostly delicate, transparent, various colors in play,
Speaker 1: and they are composed of zooids, zooids that possess special
Speaker 1: functions such as feeding or locomotion. They're very strange. The
Speaker 1: Good Wizard recently discussed Man of Wars on Automa alias Stupendium,
Speaker 1: an occasional Wednesday episode that we do, and in that
Speaker 1: we went into some of the details of what a
Speaker 1: sephonophor actually is. It is a colonial organism made up
Speaker 1: of getically identical but highly specialized polyps. So what you
Speaker 1: might mistake for a single organism's reproductive system or a
Speaker 1: digestive system, grasping arms, or the flotation bladder are in
Speaker 1: fact individual zooids. And I have a way that I
Speaker 1: make sense of all this, and I'm going to adapt
Speaker 1: what is in that Animalius to Pendium episode for the
Speaker 1: holiday theme here. Okay, so imagine your Santa Claus and
Speaker 1: you need a reindeer to pull your sleigh this year.
Speaker 1: It's a common problem. Unfortunately, all but one of your
Speaker 1: reindeer were killed last year by the bear spirit Tombach.
Speaker 1: So what are you going to do? You just got
Speaker 1: one one can't pull the sleigh right. Fortunately, your Santa Claus,
Speaker 1: you have access to advanced cloning technology, So what can
Speaker 1: you do? Well? You could simply clone blitz In a
Speaker 1: dozen times to produce a host of genetically identical reindeer
Speaker 1: to pull your sleigh. That would work, But your Santa Claus,
Speaker 1: what if you aimed higher? What have you instead? Formed
Speaker 1: each Blitzen clone into a giant organ or organ system
Speaker 1: or you know, or tissue or part of some sort
Speaker 1: of a greater organism. You know, one Blitzen becomes the
Speaker 1: digestive system, another they're reproductive system, another the skeletal and
Speaker 1: so forth, until you have a single uber Blitzen, a
Speaker 1: colonial super deer organism composed of genetically identical individuals. Those
Speaker 1: individuals do not look like a deer. They look like
Speaker 1: parts of the greater thing that you associate as a
Speaker 1: single entity.
Speaker 3: Kind of Blitzen.
Speaker 1: Biovultron, Yeah, vultron is another way of thinking. Like when
Speaker 1: you look at a Portuguese man of war, and when
Speaker 1: you look at any of these siphonophores, you are looking
Speaker 1: at vultrons. But unlike vultron, vultron of course can come
Speaker 1: back apart into lions and fly about. That doesn't happen here,
Speaker 1: like they're all part of the whole. They there is
Speaker 1: no decoupling from the whole here interesting. There may be
Speaker 1: a better way of thinking about it, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: tend to think of it in this way. I think
Speaker 1: the vultrone way of understanding them is also pretty solid.
Speaker 1: So the Forscalia genus was first described in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and the species in question here is Forskalia formosa, first
Speaker 1: recorded by Keverstein and Elers in eighteen sixty. Now, I
Speaker 1: am personally not certain if anyone other than the Monterey
Speaker 1: Bay Aquarium and perhaps their web team are calling this
Speaker 1: species the Christmas tree siphonopour. But even if they're the
Speaker 1: only ones, that's good enough for me, because A they're
Speaker 1: a world class institution and B we needed one more
Speaker 1: Christmas tree to round out podcasts.
Speaker 3: I mean, I see it. Looking at a picture of
Speaker 3: this thing, it looks the most festively decorated I mean
Speaker 3: talk about garlands.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there are some pictures of this on the
Speaker 1: Monterey Bay Aquariums website. There's also some really nice video
Speaker 1: footage on the Bay Aquarium Research Institutes YouTube page. Especially
Speaker 1: that video. I find you look at it and you're like, yes,
Speaker 1: it looks like a Christmas tree. It's upside down, but
Speaker 1: it looks like a you know, roughly Christmas tree shaped
Speaker 1: array of branches with illumination.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. So it's kind of actually, I think like
Speaker 3: the Christmas tree worm, where it's not so much that
Speaker 3: the crowns of the worm look really a lot like
Speaker 3: you know, evergreen trees. They're sort of cone shaped, they're
Speaker 3: generally shaped like a tree. But then the real thing
Speaker 3: is that that decorating convention, the garland that you wrap
Speaker 3: around a tree like a spiral that resembles the the
Speaker 3: you know, the color tips of the spiral, the radioals
Speaker 3: going up around the tentacles of the worm in a
Speaker 3: similar fashion. Here, I would say that it's not so
Speaker 3: much that this looks like a Christmas tree, is that
Speaker 3: it's roughly tree shaped, and then it has these little white,
Speaker 3: shining or glowing bits in the video you've seen, which
Speaker 3: makes me think of like the lights that we put
Speaker 3: on a Christmas tree. So again, it's kind of a
Speaker 3: decorating convention that I think really seals the esthetic comparison.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, these organisms
Speaker 1: live in the deep ocean, ranging from the surface down
Speaker 1: to six six hundred feet or two hundred meters deep
Speaker 1: in the North Pacific and Atlantic oceans. They reach sizes
Speaker 1: of up to ten feet or three meters in length
Speaker 1: or height, depending on how you want to view it
Speaker 1: as a Christmas tree. I guess, subsisting on various small
Speaker 1: sea animals in those environments, and it moves through the
Speaker 1: water via a system of floats and swimming bells.
Speaker 3: Whether or not it looks like a Christmas tree to you,
Speaker 3: it is beautiful.
Speaker 1: That's right. Well, then you know you could maybe again
Speaker 1: use this as inspiration for your own Christmas tree instead
Speaker 1: of ornaments this year, you know, decorate your tree with zooids.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, no, no, In truth, I think
Speaker 1: you could technically do a theme tree based on all
Speaker 1: three of these organisms. It would be an impressive feat,
Speaker 1: and I guess it would be for a limited audience.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. Maybe there's some marine biologists out
Speaker 1: there who really get into it. If you have ever
Speaker 1: decorated your Christmas tree to align with actual marine organisms
Speaker 1: name for Christmas trees or associated with Christmas trees, obviously
Speaker 1: we want to know about it. Oh, yes, I mean
Speaker 1: it's not impossible. It's not impossible, but I guess it's
Speaker 1: more likely there may be people with Christmas trees out
Speaker 1: there that have some sort of a science theme or
Speaker 1: even a marine biology or underwater oceanic theme. I would
Speaker 1: settle for that. I'm always game to look at the
Speaker 1: pictures of somebody's Christmas tree, So by all means, send
Speaker 1: them in, please do all right, I think we're going
Speaker 1: to go ahead and wrap this episode up, but hopefully
Speaker 1: this was a fun and surprisingly different holiday episode from
Speaker 1: us here. You know, in the past we've done again,
Speaker 1: you know, Christmas inventions, things that tie into like psychological
Speaker 1: or even philosophical ideas that are associated with the holidays.
Speaker 1: This time we went a little deeper in the oceanic sense.
Speaker 3: All I want for Christmas is to have my body
Speaker 3: exfoliated by a crown of thorn starfish.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, those look pretty rough, kind of like a
Speaker 1: like a whoope cushion from hell. I guess, you know.
Speaker 1: C stars in general have like a do not touch vibe,
Speaker 1: but these really have it do not touch vibe.
Speaker 3: Maybe we have to come back in the future and
Speaker 3: give them, give them their own episode.
Speaker 1: I think yeah, we could easily do an episode on
Speaker 1: I mean on starfish in general, you know, calling out
Speaker 1: various particular species of note. But yeah, maybe these guys too.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna wrap it up here then, But
Speaker 1: just a reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious
Speaker 1: concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema. If you want to follow us on Instagram,
Speaker 1: that's probably the best place to follow us these days.
Speaker 1: You can find us at st b y M Podcast
Speaker 1: And let's see what else do we want to mention here?
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Speaker 1: a merch store. If you want to check that out.
Speaker 1: There should be a link on the Instagram. You can
Speaker 1: also find a link at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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