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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of

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Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and

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Speaker 1: this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on mythical creatures, ideas,

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Speaker 1: and monsters in time. If you listen to enough nineties

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Speaker 1: industrial dance music, you'll come across an interesting track by

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Speaker 1: the German group by God twenty with vocals by Front

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Speaker 1: to forty two's Jean Luc Demayer. It's titled The Bog,

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Speaker 1: and within this infectious swamp of synth and drum machine beats,

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Speaker 1: the vocalist narrates a tale of a hunter pursuing ducks

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Speaker 1: at the edge of the fin quote no presence of foul.

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Speaker 1: The Finn is a desert, said a man of poise

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Speaker 1: with drawing voice. The grounds are alive and the wind

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Speaker 1: has dropped. The thin in is awakened and follows the steps.

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Speaker 1: Here we're told something is watching the hunter, and the

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Speaker 1: final stretch of the song details the tentacled horrors ravenous

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Speaker 1: thoughts as it drags the man down into the Bog.

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Speaker 1: The music video is also worth looking up. There aren't

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Speaker 1: really any tentacled monsters in it. Per se, but you

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Speaker 1: do get to see two brain guy looking men in robes,

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Speaker 1: ringing bells and sort of dancing about. I've long wondered

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Speaker 1: about this horror about though, where did it come from?

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Speaker 1: What inspired it? I haven't found anything in artist interviews

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Speaker 1: to suggest a definite direction here. While it might well

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Speaker 1: just be pure creative invention on by God twenties part,

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Speaker 1: perhaps inspired by weird tales and haunting rural environments, I've

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Speaker 1: also considered one I think strong possibility. So The Song

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Speaker 1: of the Bog came out in a few years earlier,

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Speaker 1: in six the first edition of games Workshops Warhammer Fantasy

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Speaker 1: role Play came out, featuring a creature profile for something

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Speaker 1: called a bog octopus, described as you guessed it, a

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Speaker 1: large octopus that lives in a bog quote. These creatures

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Speaker 1: live in the cold and forbidding marshes and bogs of

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Speaker 1: the Old World. Their entire lives are spent squelching, menacingly

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Speaker 1: around and stinking mud and quagmires, surfacing occasionally to drag

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Speaker 1: down and eat some passing creature. Living in such a

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Speaker 1: dense medium, they are incredibly strong, and once caught by

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Speaker 1: a tentacle, it is very hard for all but the

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Speaker 1: strongest creatures to escape, so could at least one of

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Speaker 1: the three members in by God twenty have been a

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Speaker 1: role playing fan. The creatures profile even includes special rules

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Speaker 1: for dragging key creatures into the bog with its tentacles,

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Speaker 1: and while the monster doesn't seem to have remained a

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Speaker 1: standard in the Warhammer universe, I can imagine how inspiring

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Speaker 1: this passage in mind have been. Now in the natural world,

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Speaker 1: bogs are full of biodiversity, but they are ultimately freshwater wetlands,

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Speaker 1: and the fact is that no freshwater octopuses or freshwater

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Speaker 1: cephalopods in general, are known to exist. What's more, they

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Speaker 1: likely never did exist either. A cephalopod expert and author

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Speaker 1: Mark Norman points out in a interview with Australia's ABC Science,

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Speaker 1: cephalopods likely never developed a sodium pump to allow for

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Speaker 1: osmotic change in freshwater environments, and even if they had,

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Speaker 1: they would have likely lost the ability due to the

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Speaker 1: tight economics of evolution. The cephalopod body is finely tuned

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Speaker 1: for survival in the marine environment. Of course, this hasn't

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Speaker 1: stopped crypto enthusiasts from reporting freshwater octopuses from time to time,

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Speaker 1: and it shouldn't stop us from enjoying some purely fictional

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Speaker 1: fantasy horror action as well. After are all. Even The

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Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings features an encounter with a fresh

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Speaker 1: water tentacled horror. The Watcher in the water quote out

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Speaker 1: from the water, a long, sinuous tentacle had crawled. It

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Speaker 1: was pale, green and luminous and wet. Its fingered end

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Speaker 1: had hold of Froto's foot and was dragging him into

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Speaker 1: the water. Maybe not quite a bog octopus, but close enough.

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Speaker 1: Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact each week.

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Speaker 1: As always, you can email us at contact and Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your

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Speaker 1: Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.