Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: And in this episode, we're gonna be diving deeper on
Speaker 2: a topic that we first explored just a little bit
Speaker 2: on an episode of Automilia Stupendium, which of course is
Speaker 2: one of our shorties that airs on Wednesdays, and that
Speaker 2: is the subject of the Giant Clam. I found this
Speaker 2: to be a fascinating topic to explore because, on one hand,
Speaker 2: the giant clam is just an amazing organism, notable not
Speaker 2: only for its size but also for its unique symbiosis.
Speaker 2: But in addition to this, it's an organism that has
Speaker 2: continually invited creative but highly inaccurate ideas about how they
Speaker 2: actually behave.
Speaker 3: It's not hard to see why people might look at
Speaker 3: this thing and think that it will bite you, because
Speaker 3: it just looks like the whole thing is just a
Speaker 3: pair of jaws like cartoon teeth.
Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah, And as we'll be exploring, I think the
Speaker 2: really interesting thing here is that you see this, this idea,
Speaker 2: this interpretation resonating not only with people who don't know
Speaker 2: any better. Who are you know, one or multiple degrees
Speaker 2: away from this organism and its natural habitat, but also
Speaker 2: people in close proximity to it, or just can be
Speaker 2: overwhelmed by the fact that it looks like a big mouth.
Speaker 2: What if it was like a big mouth? And what
Speaker 2: would the consequences of that be. The most pervasive idea,
Speaker 2: of course, is we're talking about the idea that a
Speaker 2: giant clam might latch onto your leg while you were
Speaker 2: diving or snorkeling, or even in a very cartoon sense,
Speaker 2: swallow you whole. And to be clear, just to go
Speaker 2: ahead and get this out at the top, this has
Speaker 2: never happened. There's no recorded evidence of it ever happening,
Speaker 2: and for reasons we'll discuss, very good reasons. It pretty
Speaker 2: much never could happen. That's right.
Speaker 3: There's like one real famous anecdote of a guy claiming
Speaker 3: that it happened, and he was there and I saw
Speaker 3: one of the babies and the baby looked at me.
Speaker 3: There are strong reasons for thinking that this story is
Speaker 3: not true, and other than that, it's mostly just vague
Speaker 3: generalizations from people not citing any evidence or fictional storytelling.
Speaker 2: Right, right, Ben. You know that there are all sorts
Speaker 2: of things that can go wrong in the water, and
Speaker 2: there are lots of ways you can become injured and
Speaker 2: so forth, but this is not really one of them.
Speaker 2: And I think if you were gonna, if you were
Speaker 2: going to pin your death on a giant clam, it
Speaker 2: would be like you would have to essentially like strap
Speaker 2: yourself to the giant clam and die drown underwater. You
Speaker 2: would have to frame it in a major, insignificant way.
Speaker 2: So yeah, in some ways, this I think is reminiscent
Speaker 2: of our recent look at manta rays in the ways
Speaker 2: that European sailors in particular misinterpreted the great fish as
Speaker 2: a threat. But again, the curious thing about the myth
Speaker 2: of the man eating clam is that while you only
Speaker 2: find it circulating in the nineteenth and twentieth century among
Speaker 2: Europeans and Americans, the idea also exists among native peoples,
Speaker 2: who would have had more hands on understanding of what
Speaker 2: these creatures were all about. But again, we're susceptible to
Speaker 2: on one level, the kind of creative thinking, like you know,
Speaker 2: this can occur separate from a logical interpretation. You know,
Speaker 2: the idea that you know it's not a mouth, but
Speaker 2: what if it is a mouth? And I think we'll
Speaker 2: maybe get into a little bit about how maybe we're
Speaker 2: just hardwired to see the jaws that could consume us,
Speaker 2: even if we know those are not jaws. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it just I think it might just boil down to
Speaker 2: the fact that a giant clam, especially just looks too
Speaker 2: much like a big old mouth for us to move
Speaker 2: past it.
Speaker 3: And if you've never seen one of these, by the way,
Speaker 3: you can look up a giant clam or tridacna clam
Speaker 3: tridac na. These things have a waviness to their shells,
Speaker 3: you know, the way the shell closes it. It is
Speaker 3: not just a straight curved line across. It waves up
Speaker 3: and down like a you know, oscillation of a sound
Speaker 3: wave or something, which sort of suggests teeth and further
Speaker 3: lends itself into the mouth interpretation.
Speaker 2: Now, speaking of mouths, it's interesting that tridacna apparently stems
Speaker 2: from the Latin for three bites, and this goes back
Speaker 2: to the writings of Like Plenty of the Elder and
Speaker 2: even the Conquest of Alexander the Great, where it was
Speaker 2: said that these could supply such meat as to require
Speaker 2: not one, not two, but three bites for you to
Speaker 2: consume it all. So the name actually originates in us
Speaker 2: eating them, rather than any fabulous reversal on that.
Speaker 3: And people do eat them. By the way, A lot
Speaker 3: of people believe the meat of this clam is a
Speaker 3: is a delicacy. A lot of people think it's really delicious.
Speaker 3: This has greatly harmed the clams. They are now in
Speaker 3: a I believe, listed by the IUCN as a critically
Speaker 3: endangered species, and there were efforts at combating this by
Speaker 3: changing over some of the trade in their meat to
Speaker 3: like farmed populations instead of wild populations, receding wild populations
Speaker 3: and things like that. But yeah, people are definitely getting
Speaker 3: some three bites in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they're an important part of coral reef environments,
Speaker 2: the coral reef environments that they call home. Now, I
Speaker 2: was excited to look into giant clams. I hadn't really
Speaker 2: I didn't really have giant clams on my mind at all, because,
Speaker 2: aside from maybe in the background, I had kind of
Speaker 2: like a Looney Tunes idea of them, you know, swallowing
Speaker 2: a diving bugs bunny or something to that effect. But
Speaker 2: as I've previously mentioned on the show. Over the summer,
Speaker 2: I had the privilege of visiting the islands of raja
Speaker 2: Ampat in Indonesia, where rich diversity of marine life, and
Speaker 2: this included the giant Tradacna clams, and of course the
Speaker 2: biggest of all Tradacna geigis, and a particularly large one
Speaker 2: in the area was known informally as Wu Tang clam.
Speaker 2: And so I didn't get to dive right down to
Speaker 2: Wu Tang clam because Wu Tang clam was like a
Speaker 2: little deeper than some of the other than many of
Speaker 2: the other giant clams I was seeing, but it was
Speaker 2: still substantially large. And I included a photograph of Wu
Speaker 2: Tang clam for you here, Joe. I'm I'm like ninety
Speaker 2: nine percent sure this is Wu Tang clam. But this
Speaker 2: is a shot from down there at its level with
Speaker 2: proper lighting.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, yeah, just looking at this one image here,
Speaker 3: it is so crusty with life all over it.
Speaker 2: It's hard to.
Speaker 3: See this as just one organism, as one clam with
Speaker 3: its two valves, you know, slightly parted. It looks more
Speaker 3: like a I don't know, a big piece of coral
Speaker 3: reef for something.
Speaker 2: Well, that that underscores the reality here that yeah, they
Speaker 2: are reef builders in the long term, like you know,
Speaker 2: they settle, they grow there in one spot, and when
Speaker 2: they eventually pass on for one reason or another, you
Speaker 2: know they will be the bone of future coral reefs.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's one of the reasons they're so vitally
Speaker 2: important to these environments.
Speaker 3: Another reason, I think, Rob maybe you can confirm this
Speaker 3: because I guess you have seen them up close. I
Speaker 3: think sometimes people might not recognize they are looking at
Speaker 3: a giant clam, especially if they're like looking down from above,
Speaker 3: because it's not you don't obviously see the shell. You
Speaker 3: might just see a kind of ripply looking sheet of
Speaker 3: the inner flesh of the clam, like the mantle protruding
Speaker 3: from out of the shell. Because in a lot of
Speaker 3: cases they will be perched somewhere in a kind of
Speaker 3: sunlit sea bottom and they're trying to spread out and
Speaker 3: gather sunlight on the fleshy parts. And we can talk
Speaker 3: about the reasons for that in just a minute here.
Speaker 2: But you might not.
Speaker 3: Actually see something that looks like a clam. You might say,
Speaker 3: what is this a big kind of flat ripple a
Speaker 3: sea cucumber or something. Because you're just seeing the mantle.
Speaker 2: Right right, and the mantle tissue, it can be really
Speaker 2: eye catching. Certainly saw this a lot with the various
Speaker 2: giant clams that I was snorkling over. They almost feel
Speaker 2: magical at times, seeming to pulsate with a strange energy,
Speaker 2: and then they would as you would get near them,
Speaker 2: they would sense you for reasons that I'll get into,
Speaker 2: and the smaller varieties in particular would often kind of
Speaker 2: like maybe not close all the way, but kind of tense. Yeah.
Speaker 2: They were very vibrant to look at, and to your point, yeah,
Speaker 2: they are. They are facing mouth up if you will,
Speaker 2: because the mansle tissue needs to be, you know, have
Speaker 2: maximum exposure to sunlight. Whereas the Looney Tunes version of
Speaker 2: the giant clam that might eat bugs, bunny that you
Speaker 2: tend to imagine it positioned less vertically and more horizontally.
Speaker 3: You're right, because it's like a crocodile's mouth.
Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah, So, as I was passing over these these clans,
Speaker 2: the interesting thing is I still knew enough about clams
Speaker 2: and giant clams to know that these things were not
Speaker 2: a danger to me. They were not actually going to
Speaker 2: try and bite me or anything to that effect. And
Speaker 2: yet there is this undeniable resemblance to some sort of
Speaker 2: a big fleshy mouth or secondary secondarily perhaps some sort
Speaker 2: of yonic imagery. And so these associations I thought about
Speaker 2: this fair amount as I was passing over them snorkeling, Like,
Speaker 2: these associations connect with us, I think on a primal level,
Speaker 2: and it's hard not to at least casually think of
Speaker 2: what you're seeing in anthropomorphic terms, comparing them to basic
Speaker 2: human physiological analogues and analogs that are like very closely
Speaker 2: tied in to our survival and reproduction and so forth. Yeah,
Speaker 2: mostly we're going to talk about giant clams as mouths.
Speaker 2: But on the subject of yonic imagery, we do certainly
Speaker 2: see interpretations of clamshells in general in the giant clamshell,
Speaker 2: as well as vulva in its use as fertility emblems
Speaker 2: as well as currency in some cultures in the past.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you'll even see like Bodicelli's rendition of the Birth
Speaker 2: of Venus sided in there as well, though the shell
Speaker 2: that he depicts in that painting is a scallop shell,
Speaker 2: I believe, and not actually a clamshell, but it is
Speaker 2: presented on a scale that is more in keeping with
Speaker 2: a giant clamshell.
Speaker 3: Though I think actually in that that's also bigger than
Speaker 3: any known giant clam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we'll discuss giant clamshells, I think about the
Speaker 2: maximum you're going to get is like four feet.
Speaker 3: Across, Yeah, which is very big, still very big.
Speaker 2: It's still enormous. But you know, they can't fit a venus. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you couldn't fit a whole venus in there. You'd have
Speaker 2: to really scrunch your up. Still seashells in general, you know,
Speaker 2: pop up and Renaissance paintings, paintings sometimes with erotic suggestions
Speaker 2: and their usage. Though quite incidentally, there is a venus
Speaker 2: genus of clam. I was reading about this recently. Eighteenth
Speaker 2: century Swedish naturalist and father of modern taxonomy, Carl Linaeus
Speaker 2: famously described the venus claim in quite sexual terms, which
Speaker 2: was pretty controversial at the time. Critics charged that he
Speaker 2: quote indulged in obscene illusions. Suffice to say, it seems
Speaker 2: quite a common interpretation, second only to the view of
Speaker 2: the clam as a mouth.
Speaker 3: Was Linnaeus not otherwise really known for very expressive or
Speaker 3: controversial descriptions.
Speaker 2: Correct. That's my understanding is that this was kind of
Speaker 2: an outlier where suddenly everyone was like, whoa, whoa, what
Speaker 2: are you doing? But you know, I guess the controversy
Speaker 2: died down after a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does seem like a biology is a funny
Speaker 3: domain to get upset about that in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right, Well, speaking of biology, let's let's
Speaker 2: let's go through some of the basics of the giant
Speaker 2: clam here, particularly so again we're talking about for the
Speaker 2: most part, we're talking about Tridacna gaigis, and it can
Speaker 2: be found in coral reefs of the South Pacific and
Speaker 2: Indian Oceans. They can reach sizes of up to two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty kerls are five hundred and fifty pounds,
Speaker 2: and they can grow to somewhere over four feet or
Speaker 2: one point two meters long or across. So again, maybe
Speaker 2: not quite man swallowing size like we would see in
Speaker 2: our fiction, but still incredibly big. Like they still look
Speaker 2: like a they can still look like a massive like
Speaker 2: bio chest there on the seafloor. Yeah. Now, the giant clam,
Speaker 2: to be sure here, doesn't really have a mouth, especially
Speaker 2: in the way, you might read it as again the
Speaker 2: bugs bunny swallowing mouth. Instead, we have the valves, and
Speaker 2: they are bivalves. Remember, so we have the like the
Speaker 2: two shells that essentially howls the organism, and inside they
Speaker 2: have a pair of siphons, one for drawing in food
Speaker 2: and water and another for expelling waste. Furthermore, they are
Speaker 2: filter feeders and they have no need for any jaw
Speaker 2: like mechanics. There's no chewing that takes place with the
Speaker 2: two valve. They simply close, or in the case of
Speaker 2: the giant clams, nearly close their shells for protection. The
Speaker 2: giant clams can't actually close them all the way for
Speaker 2: a couple of reasons. And here's another big kicker. They
Speaker 2: close their shells exceedingly slowly. One of the main predators
Speaker 2: that they're closing their shells for protection against are sea stars,
Speaker 2: which you are quite a threat to a number of
Speaker 2: coral reef dwelling organisms. But they themselves are also slow
Speaker 2: moving creatures. So for this very specific encounter, the closing
Speaker 2: of the shell is actually pretty fast, but it's as
Speaker 2: fast as it needs to be, and it's not man
Speaker 2: catching fast.
Speaker 3: Yes, And the other thing you mentioned is they often
Speaker 3: don't close their shells completely because you will still see
Speaker 3: some of the flesh of the clam kind of protruding,
Speaker 3: like they've got to both expel water and retract their
Speaker 3: tissues inside in order.
Speaker 2: To close exactly. Now, the varied colorization of the mantle
Speaker 2: tissues on the giant clam is due to ariticide cells
Speaker 2: that feed light to symbiotic single celled dinoflagelet algae or zooxanthellae.
Speaker 2: And this is where we get into the really cool
Speaker 2: example of symbiosis going on here. The clam acquires these
Speaker 2: zooxanthellae via constant filter feeding in the water, it also
Speaker 2: acquires basic basic plectonic organisms that it actually eats, and thus,
Speaker 2: during the day the clam is going to open wide
Speaker 2: and extend its mantle tissue to absorb the sunlight necessary
Speaker 2: for the algae to conduct photosynthesis, and in return, the
Speaker 2: algae produced sugars and proteins that the clam needs to
Speaker 2: survive along with its more traditional filter diet, which it
Speaker 2: requires less off. So the giant clam has a dual
Speaker 2: feeding strategy and this is thought to have evolved some
Speaker 2: sixty four million years ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, two different ways of eating. It is photosynthesizing with
Speaker 3: the help of these organized that it has absorbed and
Speaker 3: taken into itself. And then it's also filter feeding. It's
Speaker 3: sucking through water and filtering out little bits that it
Speaker 3: can eat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so that's that's one of the interesting like
Speaker 2: observations you can make as you like snorkel over them.
Speaker 2: Is like that mantle tissue is like it really seems engorged,
Speaker 2: uh and and very out there because because it is,
Speaker 2: it is, you know, collecting sunlight, and yeah, so fascinating
Speaker 2: that it has this dual feeding strategy. The giant clam
Speaker 2: also boasts thousands of pinhole eye spots along the mantle's
Speaker 2: edge that allowed to detect changes in light, not only
Speaker 2: the cycles of night and day, but also tailtale shadows
Speaker 2: of approaching predators. And so this gets into you know,
Speaker 2: the observation that I had as I was snorkeling over again,
Speaker 2: the smaller of the giants, they would sometimes like tense
Speaker 2: up a little bit. They wouldn't close all the way,
Speaker 2: but there would be like a visual like rippling or
Speaker 2: movement of the mantle tissue and even the valves. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I've seen video of the same thing happening.
Speaker 3: If you say, you move your hand over the top
Speaker 3: of one and cast a shadow over it, sometimes it
Speaker 3: will kind of tense and partially close.
Speaker 2: Which, again the logical mind knows that, you know, it
Speaker 2: is just responding to the presence of another organism, which
Speaker 2: may or may not be something that is a threat
Speaker 2: to it. But you also can't help but illogically read
Speaker 2: it as like little mouths that are kind of going
Speaker 2: at you, you know. So again, I think it's almost
Speaker 2: impossible not to read them on additional levels as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean I think the way to think
Speaker 3: of it is that what you're seeing there is a
Speaker 3: retracting impulse, not a biting.
Speaker 2: Impulse, exactly. Yeah, it is a retracting not a biting
Speaker 2: Because yeah, I think the other way we tend to,
Speaker 2: you know, artificially think about them, and certainly in like
Speaker 2: modern looney tune sense, is to think of them as
Speaker 2: a bear trap. Yes, and we'll turn to some actual
Speaker 2: examples from twentieth century cinema that depicts them essentially as
Speaker 2: a bear trap just waiting down there for divers to
Speaker 2: pass through it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, before we get to twentieth century cinema, there are
Speaker 3: older stories of giant clams. As you know various forms
Speaker 3: of monsters or man killers. The giant clam has appeared
Speaker 3: in some myths and legends of various people's of the
Speaker 3: Pacific Islands, sometimes as a benign creature, but sometimes as
Speaker 3: a dangerous or monstrous creature. One interesting example I found
Speaker 3: is in a to Amotuan version of the story of
Speaker 3: the Polynesian hero Rata. I can't remember if Rata's come
Speaker 3: up on the show before, but Rata is basically a
Speaker 3: culture hero that you will find throughout Polynesian storytelling and
Speaker 3: lots of different Pacific Island cultures. There are Rata stories
Speaker 3: among the Maori, among Tahitians, to Emotuans, and others, sometimes
Speaker 3: with a different name a slightly different name in different regions.
Speaker 3: The Rata stories differ in many details, but the most
Speaker 3: common elements are that he is a young, brave, resourceful
Speaker 3: hero who has to go on a dangerous quest to
Speaker 3: avenge the death of his father or to avenge some
Speaker 3: other kind of crime against his family, and in doing
Speaker 3: so he has to build a mighty canoe, which involves
Speaker 3: felling a tree protected by spirits or magical beings of
Speaker 3: the forest. Sometimes in older English sources these beings are
Speaker 3: translated as elves or goblins. More recent sources, I think,
Speaker 3: will call them things like forest spirits or something. But
Speaker 3: once in this great canoe that he has made, Rada
Speaker 3: has to go on a journey, sometimes with companions, to
Speaker 3: avenge his family or avenge his father, and battle terrifying
Speaker 3: monsters along the way. And so in one version of
Speaker 3: the Rada journey, I found one of those monsters he
Speaker 3: fights is a giant clam.
Speaker 2: So this is a.
Speaker 3: Telling of a version found among the Tuamotuan people of
Speaker 3: the Tuamotu Islands and of Tahiti, told by a local
Speaker 3: scholar named Taroi to a Missus Walker, and compiled into
Speaker 3: a book called Ancient Tahiti by the British Tahitian folkloristan
Speaker 3: scholar Tearia Henry, who lived eighteen forty seven to nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to read the excerpt of the text,
Speaker 3: and of course I have to apologize in advance for
Speaker 3: any mispronunciations.
Speaker 2: I'll do my best.
Speaker 3: Here they were sailing on their course when the great
Speaker 3: au or swordfish came into sight, and Rata mistook it
Speaker 3: for land. But Tava said it was not land, but
Speaker 3: another foe. So Rada stood prepared again for battle, and
Speaker 3: when the monster approached the the canoe, intending to pierce it,
Speaker 3: he killed it with his spear and presented the body
Speaker 3: to the elves as before. Thus that demon was exterminated
Speaker 3: and his flesh eaten by all. They sailed on, and
Speaker 3: they met the great Urua, the Kavala fish, which looked
Speaker 3: like land, but Tava told Rada it was the Kavala fish,
Speaker 3: sent by King Puna to kill him. The fish darted
Speaker 3: forward to carry away Rada, but he stood ready, and
Speaker 3: as soon as it approached him, he thrust his spear
Speaker 3: into its throat and killed it, and it was also
Speaker 3: eaten by all. Next they met the great Pahua Tutahi,
Speaker 3: a giant clam which appeared like a mountain looming up
Speaker 3: from the sea. But Tava said, it is not land.
Speaker 3: It is the giant clam, and Rada prepared for the
Speaker 3: inevitable encounter. As his vessel was being drawn up into it.
Speaker 3: The clam had opened its great valves and was sucking
Speaker 3: in the waves upon which the canoe. Tua Rata was sailing.
Speaker 3: Stood at the bow with his spear, and as soon
Speaker 3: as they reached the center of the clam, he pierced
Speaker 3: it through its vital part, severing its flesh from the
Speaker 3: shell so that it could not close upon him. He
Speaker 3: presented the clam to his spirit company to annihilate, and
Speaker 3: as soon as the canoe was safely away, the dead
Speaker 3: clam sank into the deep sea. So several interesting things
Speaker 3: here in the story. It sounds like he's talking about
Speaker 3: cutting the adductor muscle, which is something we see later
Speaker 3: when people are talking about how to fight this clam.
Speaker 3: In this case, it says that Rada, you know, he
Speaker 3: stabbed it at its vital part with the spear. Severing
Speaker 3: its flesh from the shell makes it sound, and that
Speaker 3: prevented the shell from closing. Right, So it sounds like
Speaker 3: he is saying he attacked. He attacked the adductor muscle,
Speaker 3: which the clam uses to close the shell. Another thing
Speaker 3: I want to note here is that I think there
Speaker 3: could be a temptation to take a story like this
Speaker 3: as evidence that the storyteller or the storyteller's audience would
Speaker 3: be expected to believe that giant clams are actually dangerous,
Speaker 3: that you know, they will come in eat your boat
Speaker 3: or something. But I'm not sure that's actually right. In
Speaker 3: this telling, the giant clam is not only a giant clam,
Speaker 3: as in a tridacta geigis. It is a giant giant
Speaker 3: clam described as looming over the sea like a mountain
Speaker 3: and capable of swallowing an entire canoe. So to me,
Speaker 3: that doesn't necessarily mean that the teller of the story
Speaker 3: wanted to you to get the idea that a regular
Speaker 3: sized giant clam poses a threat to human beings, though
Speaker 3: that belief does appear to be common enough around the
Speaker 3: world at different times. Maybe you can't rule it out either.
Speaker 3: But it might well be that the clam in this
Speaker 3: story is only understood as threatening because it is supernatural
Speaker 3: and monstrous and leviathan sized, not because regular giant clams
Speaker 3: are a threat. After all, the very next monster that
Speaker 3: ratafights in the story is a terrible demon bird that
Speaker 3: carried away Rada's parents and swallowed his father's head, and
Speaker 3: this is presumably not an indication of what the storyteller
Speaker 3: thought about the offensive capabilities of regular sea birds. So
Speaker 3: I don't know that we can actually draw from this
Speaker 3: story a belief that giant clams would hurt you. It's
Speaker 3: just like, this is a monster giant clam. It might
Speaker 3: be no different than when we have Knight of aleipis
Speaker 3: a movie about monster bunnies.
Speaker 2: Right, if if a bunny was that big, it would
Speaker 2: it would be a threat to us just based on
Speaker 2: its mass, similar to you know, we know that our
Speaker 2: housecat is not actually a threat to our life in
Speaker 2: a direct sense, but we can certainly engage in fantasies
Speaker 2: where it is enlarged or we are shrunken, and then
Speaker 2: that changes everything. Right, if a giant clam were supernaturally
Speaker 2: giant enough, it could it could filter feed us exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't want to be filter fed or filter eaten.
Speaker 2: Now, why was this monster's flesh not eaten by all? Though?
Speaker 2: That seems like a missed opportunity.
Speaker 3: That's a really good question. I don't know the answer.
Speaker 3: And anybody out there listening who's a scholar of toomotu
Speaker 3: and folklore who knows more about the Rata hero cycle, Like,
Speaker 3: what do you have an idea? Why was the clam
Speaker 3: not eaten like the other fish were?
Speaker 2: I like a story where the people eat the monster
Speaker 2: we've encountered these sorts of stories before, and they seem
Speaker 2: very practical. I mean, sometimes the monster's body is poisonous
Speaker 2: by nature, and therefore, you know, it is left alone.
Speaker 2: But I like a story where they're like, okay, let's
Speaker 2: make use of this flesh.
Speaker 3: And it's not just the hero. It's actually kind of heartwarming.
Speaker 3: The hero kills the monster and then takes it back
Speaker 3: and it's eaten by all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. And speaking of giant clams, I'll also
Speaker 2: refer listeners back to our episodes on the Fata Morgana,
Speaker 2: this being a mirage, an optical illusion that is seen
Speaker 2: at sea, which I did get to see an example
Speaker 2: of when I was in Indonesia. In Indonesia, but we
Speaker 2: discussed the Chinese myths concerning the shin or chin, which
Speaker 2: is a kind of giant clam, a giant giant clam,
Speaker 2: to be sure, a supernaturally giant clam. And this one too,
Speaker 2: kind of emerges from the water like a mountain, but
Speaker 2: it also expels a fantastic phantasmagorical island, you know, that
Speaker 2: throws sailors off and people sail towards it and then
Speaker 2: they realize too late that this was not a real place.
Speaker 2: At all, but just an illusion cast up by this giant,
Speaker 2: this giant bivalve in the water. Yeah, but I don't
Speaker 2: believe it ever, you know, latched on or ate anybody.
Speaker 2: So I kind of skipped over it otherwise for this episode. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 2: coming back to modern myths of giant clams eating people,
Speaker 2: I want to read an excerpt from Charles Frederick Holder.
Speaker 2: He was an American naturalist and conservations and he had
Speaker 2: a book in eighteen eighty five title Elements of Zoology,
Speaker 2: and this is time to understand otherwise for the time period,
Speaker 2: a very well regarded work. So this is again not
Speaker 2: an example of like outrageous fiction. It is not an
Speaker 2: example of mythology or folklore, just you know, an attempt
Speaker 2: to present biological facts about the natural world. And in
Speaker 2: it he writes, quote, so powerful are they that large
Speaker 2: sharks and rays that have accidentally crossed them have been
Speaker 2: seized and held. That already gives us a lot to play.
Speaker 2: First of all, I've crossed them, I think just means
Speaker 2: has come close to them. I don't think this is
Speaker 2: like a Vendetta situation he's describing here, right. He goes
Speaker 2: on to state that the tradacna always harbors within its
Speaker 2: shell several crabs. I actually couldn't find out out much
Speaker 2: about this other than to say that, yeah, you will
Speaker 2: find lots of animals living around and even among the
Speaker 2: valves of a clam like this. And then he also
Speaker 2: points out that the bisis this is the substance that
Speaker 2: like sticks. The clam to the rock is quote so
Speaker 2: large that it can only be cut with a hatchet.
Speaker 2: And then he goes on to point out that eight
Speaker 2: species are known. So still the idea that the clam
Speaker 2: will latch on to creatures in its vicinity, including sharks
Speaker 2: and rays, which, as we've discussed, are very agile creatures
Speaker 2: that are not certain. I mean, it's one thing to
Speaker 2: even make the claim, well that a flimsy human snorkeler
Speaker 2: or diver might get trapped by one of these things,
Speaker 2: but it's quite another to imagine a shark or a
Speaker 2: ray being grabbed by something like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's not going to stop you from telling
Speaker 3: a good story. I mean, so, there are lots of
Speaker 3: perpetuators of the myth of the killer clam. In the
Speaker 3: twentieth century, it came across many many things here that
Speaker 3: we can discuss. One great example of the idea that
Speaker 3: giant clams weregerous appears in a very short article that
Speaker 3: was reprinted throughout, you know, the publishing world, originally in
Speaker 3: the magazine Popular Mechanics in May nineteen twenty four. This
Speaker 3: was volume forty one, number five. I saw a vague
Speaker 3: reference to this in another article and I had to
Speaker 3: go dig up the original text, and I'm glad I did,
Speaker 3: by the way, because this entire issue of Popular Mechanics
Speaker 3: is hilarious. This is sort of a digression from the clams.
Speaker 3: But I have to discuss a few highlights from this
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty four pop mac one headline tear gas in
Speaker 3: police clubs to foil bandits. What The article claims that
Speaker 3: it is impossible to remain within ten feet after the
Speaker 3: gas is released. So it says, you know, you hit
Speaker 3: the bandit with your mace or billy and it releases
Speaker 3: the tear gas. And I was like, what about the
Speaker 3: person hitting with it? I guess they have to be
Speaker 3: wearing a gas.
Speaker 2: They just have to be gas masked up from the
Speaker 2: get going.
Speaker 3: What it's in the club? That was inside the club?
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: The other thing is the headline baking as cure for
Speaker 3: dog ills is tried in Germany and Rob here's an
Speaker 3: illustration for you to look at. Well, not a photo
Speaker 3: of a guy who's got a dog, and it's just
Speaker 3: labeled dog being baked in gas. Of Now, I have
Speaker 3: to c it's not saying that you bake it at
Speaker 3: like cooking temperatures. I think it's just like kind of
Speaker 3: like a steam bath. It's like very warm in there.
Speaker 2: Like a cartoon steam bath where you would have a
Speaker 2: cartoon character get in and only their head sticking out.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what they're doing to this dog. That headline
Speaker 2: really is a roller coaster because when I first read it,
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, well, that's kind of nice. You're
Speaker 2: baking for the dog, you're making little cookies or you know,
Speaker 2: little treats. But no, this dude has a metal contraption
Speaker 2: that this dog's body is stuck in.
Speaker 3: So this poor dog's just looking like I'm very hot.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Another one. Here's the headline. Forty pound cigar is valued
Speaker 3: at seventy five dollars what is said to be one
Speaker 3: of the largest cigars ever made. One of the largest
Speaker 3: was shown at an Eastern Tobacco exposition and it goes
Speaker 3: on to, yeah, not really say anything else except that
Speaker 3: it's valued at seventy five dollars. It does not answer
Speaker 3: the question did anybody smoke it?
Speaker 2: And it's so weird looking at these because my grandfather
Speaker 2: in the I guess this is in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 2: he always had he had always had copies of Popular
Speaker 2: Mechanics and Popular Science sitting around and I would look
Speaker 2: through them as a kid, and you know, these felt
Speaker 2: like they were accurately depicting the future. There are always
Speaker 2: articles about, you know, new gadgets, new upcoming technologies. So
Speaker 2: it's quite a trip to explore these these previous stories
Speaker 2: in Popular Mechanics.
Speaker 3: Skeptical editorial standards might have been improving as the decades
Speaker 3: went on. Maybe anyway, onto clams. So in this wacky
Speaker 3: Popular Mechanics, there's one article titled Giant clams trap sea
Speaker 3: divers in Grip of Shells. It's a very short article,
Speaker 3: so I can read it in full. It says shells
Speaker 3: of huge clams found off the coast of Papua often
Speaker 3: weigh more than four hundred pounds. Divers who accidentally step
Speaker 3: into the open lips of the monsters are not infrequently
Speaker 3: held with such force that they cannot release themselves and
Speaker 3: are drowned. The shells closed with such force that they
Speaker 3: serve as gigantic traps. That's the whole article, except for
Speaker 3: there's a photo of a giant clam, and we see
Speaker 3: the characteristic shell with the with the wavy line of
Speaker 3: the mouth, and the caption is giant clam and coral
Speaker 3: reef off New Guinea, powerful crushing lips, partly open.
Speaker 2: The interesting thing here is, though it's described as partly open,
Speaker 2: this is actually probably a situation where they're as closed
Speaker 2: as they are going to get. Yes, And they're describing
Speaker 2: giant clams, by the way, in exactly the area that
Speaker 2: I was snorkling in.
Speaker 3: Oh that's funny.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: The text of this popular mechanics article seems to have
Speaker 3: been reproduced in newspapers and other publications in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 3: so it seems kind of like this story really got
Speaker 3: around in the following decades, including in various bits of
Speaker 3: pop culture. This exact clam trap scenario is depicted in
Speaker 3: a scene from a nineteen forty eight adventure film called
Speaker 3: Wake of the Red Witch starring John Wayne himself and
Speaker 3: Gail Russell rob I put in a link for you
Speaker 3: to look at the scene if you want. It's actually,
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's not that remarkable as a scene,
Speaker 3: and it's really hard to see what's going on in
Speaker 3: the underwater photography. It's very murky. Basically, the movie is
Speaker 3: a revenge story about this deadly feud over a woman
Speaker 3: between a bitter ship captain played by John Wayne and
Speaker 3: a wealthy shipping company owner played by Luther Adler. I
Speaker 3: haven't seen the movie in full, but yeah, I found
Speaker 3: a clip of this clam scene. Basically, a kid goes diving.
Speaker 3: He accidentally sticks his leg into a tritachna clamshell. The
Speaker 3: shell slams shut and traps him by the ankle, and
Speaker 3: then John Wayne has to dive down and do battle
Speaker 3: with the clam to get it to release the kid.
Speaker 3: He succeeds by with the kid's foot still inside the shell.
Speaker 3: By the way, by John Wayne, he stabs into the
Speaker 3: gap in the clam's shell with some kind of spear
Speaker 3: almost looks like a glave, and I was like, he's
Speaker 3: gonna stab the foot, but the kid's okay.
Speaker 2: This shell in this movie, by the way, just it
Speaker 2: looks like a giant quarium clam. You know the kind
Speaker 2: of little clamshell that opens and closes in your standard
Speaker 2: a quar Yeah, it's like bubbles. Yeah, it looks like
Speaker 2: it's made out of plastic or something like plastic. And
Speaker 2: also like no visible or at least I didn't see
Speaker 2: any visible mantle tissue either.
Speaker 3: Another great example I found from popular our culture is
Speaker 3: Superman versus giant clam. There are actually several instances of this.
Speaker 3: The theme that is usually emphasized is like, wow, Superman
Speaker 3: is so strong he can even pry apart the jaws
Speaker 3: of the killer clam. That would take a mightiness born
Speaker 3: only of his Kryptonian blood interacting with our yellow sun.
Speaker 3: So the main example I came across is that Superman
Speaker 3: fights giant clams in one arc of the Adventures of
Speaker 3: Superman radio serial. This was a I think it was
Speaker 3: a six episode series called The Curse of dead Man's
Speaker 3: Island which ran from September to October nineteen forty and
Speaker 3: in this encounter, they're on a mysterious island and Jimmy
Speaker 3: Olsen and another character are swimming to shore after their
Speaker 3: motor boat has been wrecked, and they get attacked by
Speaker 3: a swarm of fast moving giant clams. Yeah, these clams
Speaker 3: they not only clamp down and trap you, they actively
Speaker 3: chase you, is what it sounds like. Don't remember the
Speaker 3: exact wording, but it's like they're coming right for us.
Speaker 2: They're like wind up chattery teeth.
Speaker 3: Can we get a can we get a sample of
Speaker 3: this jjuting.
Speaker 1: The waters clear?
Speaker 3: I've got to work fast before I would drown.
Speaker 1: Wally shells apart and fleet these things are powerful.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, only the Man of Steel has hands strong
Speaker 3: enough to wrench apart the deadly molluscian grip. And I
Speaker 3: love how you can hear Superman like grunting and groaning
Speaker 3: and saying.
Speaker 2: Great Scott.
Speaker 3: These things are powerful. And then there are also some
Speaker 3: some visual like Superman comics where he has to fight
Speaker 3: a giant clam. There's one. I actually was not able
Speaker 3: to figure out what issue this is from, so I
Speaker 3: can't say, but I found it just like a clip
Speaker 3: on Google image searches, where it looks like it's a
Speaker 3: silver age Superman who's having to he gets his own
Speaker 3: foot stuck in a giant clam's mouth and he has
Speaker 3: to like shoot it with his eye lasers.
Speaker 2: And this is another example of the comic book giant
Speaker 2: clam is more horizontal, yeah, positioning as opposed to vertical. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you mentioned that film from nineteen forty eight. I ran
Speaker 2: across another film from nineteen forty eight that also features
Speaker 2: pretty much the same giant clam gag, and that's the
Speaker 2: film sixteen Fathoms Deep. This one starred Lloyd Bridges as
Speaker 2: well as Lawn Cheney Jr.
Speaker 3: This one has a lot of narration. I don't know
Speaker 3: who's narrating, but I watched the scene you sent me,
Speaker 3: and like, it's the exact same thing. A kid goes swimming,
Speaker 3: clam bites his leg, somebody has to swim down and
Speaker 3: rescue him, though it looks a lot easier this time.
Speaker 3: The person who swims down and rescues the kid and
Speaker 3: the clam just kind of pulls him out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he just goes down and negotiates the situation. That's
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 3: All this twentieth century killer clam stuff, when you look
Speaker 3: into it, it's not like really claims based on anything specific.
Speaker 3: There are claims that are supposed to be authentic, but
Speaker 3: they're just vague generalizations. And then there's also pop culture.
Speaker 3: But are there any actual, specific, first hand accounts of
Speaker 3: giant clam attacks in the twentieth century. There's one main one,
Speaker 3: though it will come with some major caveats. So a
Speaker 3: lot of these stories seem to trace back to a
Speaker 3: figure named Wilburn Dowell Cobb, an American who wrote an
Speaker 3: article called the Pearl of a Llah in the November
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty nine edition of Natural History magazine. Cobb was
Speaker 3: at the time he wrote this article the owner of
Speaker 3: a massive clam pearl. And I'm not fully up on
Speaker 3: this distinction, but I know gemologists make some kind of
Speaker 3: distinction between clam pearls and some other kind of pearls.
Speaker 3: I'm to understand that this thing is huge enough to
Speaker 3: be considered really, you know, notable and valuable, but that
Speaker 3: generally clam pearls are not as prized as like the
Speaker 3: iridescent kinds of pearls you might get from pearl oysters.
Speaker 2: Right, that's my understanding as well. The basic the composition
Speaker 2: is different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but Cob was the owner of this gigantic clam pearl.
Speaker 3: He originally called it the Pearl of Allah. He later
Speaker 3: renamed it the Pearl of laod Zoo. Which at the
Speaker 3: time this article was written, this pearl was advertised as
Speaker 3: the largest pearl ever found in nature. Cobb claimed that
Speaker 3: he acquired it as a gift from a pearl diving
Speaker 3: family in the Philippine province of Palawan in nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 3: and so his story goes like this again. After this,
Speaker 3: I'm going to come back with some reasons for doubting this,
Speaker 3: but this is what he says. He says that he
Speaker 3: was visiting a small diac fishing village on an archaeological
Speaker 3: expedition with some companions. Now, I was a little confused
Speaker 3: about the terminal he was using to refer to the
Speaker 3: people here, because from what I understand, the term Diek
Speaker 3: is usually used to refer to the largest ethnic group
Speaker 3: in Borneo, not to the people of Palawan. I'm not
Speaker 3: sure what accounts for this, but anyway, he says, one
Speaker 3: night he was awakened by a great commotion and it
Speaker 3: seemed to be a funeral. Dirge Cobb's guide explained that
Speaker 3: his own son, who was the village chief, bog Tong,
Speaker 3: had organized a dive to collect conk shells, which the
Speaker 3: villagers planned to trade at market for some much needed
Speaker 3: new fishing equipment. But after several dives, bog Tong realized
Speaker 3: one of his best divers, a man named Etim, was missing.
Speaker 3: And then here I'm going to read from Cobb's article,
Speaker 3: he writes quote, Suspecting a giant octopus, they unsheathed their
Speaker 3: knives and as one dove down in search of their
Speaker 3: missing comrade. On the fourth dive, they found Etem already dead.
Speaker 3: In his search for conk shells, he had failed to
Speaker 3: see the giant tridacna clam, which was partly hidden by
Speaker 3: coral rocks, its huge jaws held open ready to clamp
Speaker 3: shut with the strength of a bear trap. Attim accidentally
Speaker 3: got his hand between the shells, which snapped shut, and
Speaker 3: thus he met his death. With the aid of ropes,
Speaker 3: the men hoisted their dead comrade and his deep sea
Speaker 3: murderer into one of their canoes.
Speaker 2: Deep sea murder. Again, these are generally found in coral
Speaker 2: reef environments.
Speaker 3: Right, So Cobb claims that this clam, which was brought ashore,
Speaker 3: was later revealed to contain a gigantic pearl, and it
Speaker 3: was The pearl was first claimed by a local Muslim chieftain,
Speaker 3: but then given to Cob as a gift after Cob
Speaker 3: managed to save the chief's son from a deadly illness. Again,
Speaker 3: this is all his own account, so there is at
Speaker 3: least a first hand account of a giant clam snapping
Speaker 3: down on somebody and drowning them, and the pearl itself
Speaker 3: is actually real, but the story of where it came
Speaker 3: from that has met with intense scrutiny from later reviewers.
Speaker 3: I didn't have time to chase down all of the
Speaker 3: different investigations of this. There have been several, but it
Speaker 3: seems that multiple later articles point out serious reasons for
Speaker 3: doubting the story, including the fact that Cobb changed major
Speaker 3: details of the story over time. There was no corroborating
Speaker 3: evidence or documentation of this from the Philippines, and Frankly,
Speaker 3: while well this is just subjective and doesn't really bear
Speaker 3: any evidential weight, I have to say just because I
Speaker 3: noticed it myself. If you read Cobb's article, it has
Speaker 3: a fabulous texture in the pros it reads like a
Speaker 3: guy making up a story to make himself sound cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds a little carney. It sounds very much
Speaker 2: like someone selling the lore of the thing he is
Speaker 2: literally selling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you want to read more, about this. There's
Speaker 3: an article in the Atlantic called The Pearl of Laosu
Speaker 3: by Michael LaPoint from twenty eighteen, and that gets into
Speaker 3: the whole history of this pearl and also what happened
Speaker 3: to it, because there was also some ownership controversy after Cobb.
Speaker 3: Another commonly repeated claim when people are writing about this
Speaker 3: idea that giant clams will attack people or clamp onto
Speaker 3: them and trap them underwater is the claim that US
Speaker 3: Navy diving manuals of the twentieth century portrayed the grip
Speaker 3: of the giant clam as one of the perils of
Speaker 3: working on the bottom. For example, there's an article that
Speaker 3: I think you referred me to rob that was in
Speaker 3: Atlas Obscura. It's about giant clams, but it's actually it's
Speaker 3: an excerpt from a book by an author named Cynthia Barnett.
Speaker 3: The book came out in twenty twenty two and it's
Speaker 3: called The Sound of the Sea, Seashells and the Fate
Speaker 3: of the Ocean. In this excerpt of the author rights quote,
Speaker 3: the stories captured the imagination of the US Navy during
Speaker 3: World War Two, when soldiers fighting in the Pacific were
Speaker 3: briefed on the man eating clams and large sharks known
Speaker 3: to inhabit the reefs. The man eater myth was so
Speaker 3: persistent that decades later, navy diving manuals still advised frogmen
Speaker 3: how to free themselves if caught in the vice like
Speaker 3: grip of a giant clam, by inserting a knife between
Speaker 3: the valves and severing the animal's a ductor muscle.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I ran across this tidbit and a couple other
Speaker 2: sources I was looking at as well. But again, but
Speaker 2: in terms of finding the original material, I couldn't couldn't
Speaker 2: really find anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have no reason to doubt Barnett. I'm sure
Speaker 3: it is out there somewhere, But unfortunately I wasted a
Speaker 3: lot of time searching in vain for the primary text here.
Speaker 3: I was looking through navy diving manuals of the forties, fifties,
Speaker 3: and seventies, and I never found any references to clams.
Speaker 3: In fact, I couldn't find anything at all really about
Speaker 3: dealing with wildlife. The sections on dealing with hazards and
Speaker 3: working on the bottom are highly concerned with various forms
Speaker 3: of entrapment underwater, But it looks to me like the
Speaker 3: most pressing concern is what's called fouling, which is when
Speaker 3: the diver's lifeline or air hose gets caught or tangled
Speaker 3: on something on the bottom, like rocks or wreckage, and
Speaker 3: this is very dangerous because it prevents the diver from
Speaker 3: safely ascending. I found very little about the diver themself
Speaker 3: being caught bodily, though in terms of threats to your
Speaker 3: own body orientation, there are concerns about getting knocked over
Speaker 3: or tripping and falling on a dive because in this era,
Speaker 3: divers would wear a heavy metal helmet applied at the surface,
Speaker 3: kind of like what you see in BioShock, and you
Speaker 3: had to remain upright during a dive or you could
Speaker 3: risk the possibility of flooding the helmet, which was very,
Speaker 3: very bad. So for divers of this period, the real
Speaker 3: monster you have to fear is not a creature that
Speaker 3: lives in the sea. It's hydrostatic pressure, yeah, pressure and
Speaker 3: equipment failures. That's like the main thing to worry about.
Speaker 3: So not only did I not find any references to clams,
Speaker 3: it just seems like wildlife is like so far down
Speaker 3: the list of concerns, like the thing that they're really
Speaker 3: getting into the the diver's heads here has to do
Speaker 3: with with dealing with pressure and using your equipment properly.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, yeah, pressure equipment issues, the threats posed
Speaker 2: potentially by other boats if they're not aware of your presence,
Speaker 2: things like that. Yeah, you know, to be clear, I mean,
Speaker 2: there are various threats in the water posed by organisms,
Speaker 2: but a certainly the giant clam doesn't really rank highly
Speaker 2: among them. And I mean there's even a case to
Speaker 2: be made this references here. I'll point outs in reef
Speaker 2: environments and you know, when I was in reef environments
Speaker 2: in raja Ampat, there are sharks around, but they were
Speaker 2: not interested in us at all. So it does make
Speaker 2: me wonder. Okay, if playing Devil's advocate, let's assume that
Speaker 2: there actually was reference to this in US Navy dive
Speaker 2: manuals of the time period. You could look at it
Speaker 2: in one of two ways. Either, Okay, there this idea
Speaker 2: was taken up that these organisms were potentially a threat
Speaker 2: and therefore you needed some sort of a plan of
Speaker 2: action should the threat arise. But maybe also a part
Speaker 2: of it could have been Okay, we're training up a
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of landsmen here to go into
Speaker 2: the water and do things for the Navy. They're going
Speaker 2: to have concerns about organisms in the water because they've
Speaker 2: been watching movies or reading comic books or listening to
Speaker 2: radio programs, and or we just have a natural aversion
Speaker 2: to large, strange creatures in the water. Understandable. And maybe
Speaker 2: part of that was like, Okay, there's no reason that
Speaker 2: the giant clam is actually a threat. There's no reason
Speaker 2: that even some of these sharks are necessarily a threat.
Speaker 2: But we need to have give them a plan of
Speaker 2: action so they'll feel more at ease in the water
Speaker 2: knowing that there is something they can do if this,
Speaker 2: if this event were to transpire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, I wouldn't say, based on what
Speaker 3: I was reading, that a giant clam would never be
Speaker 3: a threat. But I would say that it doesn't appear
Speaker 3: to me that the main threat would be that it
Speaker 3: would close upon you. It would be that you would
Speaker 3: It would be the same threat as like a rock
Speaker 3: or a reef on the ground, which is fouling you
Speaker 3: would get your lines tangled on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I would. I would agree with that, treating
Speaker 2: it essentially like like any other large structure or rock
Speaker 2: or piece of coral in the water.
Speaker 3: So beyond all this, I checked around, and from what
Speaker 3: I can tell, the killer clam story is universally agreed
Speaker 3: among experts a marine biologists to be without merit. There
Speaker 3: is no solid evidence anywhere of a single example of
Speaker 3: a person ever being killed, seriously injured, or trapped by
Speaker 3: a tridachna lam. Marine biology resources stress again and again that,
Speaker 3: like you were saying earlier, Rob, the clamshell can close defensively,
Speaker 3: but it tends to close slowly. It has to expel
Speaker 3: water to do so, and it has to retract its
Speaker 3: own flesh, which tends to protrude out of the gap
Speaker 3: in the shell. So apart from Cobb's story, which there
Speaker 3: are serious reasons for doubting, there's no documented account anywhere
Speaker 3: of a giant clam actually harming anyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'd really have to, like Homer sense in your
Speaker 2: arm in there, Like Sarah, you just just holding on
Speaker 2: to the inside of the clam. You're just holding on
Speaker 2: to the mantle tissue, and you say, yes, actually that's
Speaker 2: what I'm doing.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean, I guess the other thing to
Speaker 3: say is that it has never actually happened that we
Speaker 3: know about in any verifiable way. Is different from saying
Speaker 3: it couldn't happen if you did something really stupid right
Speaker 3: like I don't know, if you like, maybe if you
Speaker 3: really like shoved a boot down in there and you
Speaker 3: forced it to stay inside while the clam was closing,
Speaker 3: and until the clam had closed around you, it might
Speaker 3: be hard to get it back out.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but that.
Speaker 3: We have no examples that are verifiable that this has happened.
Speaker 2: Don't try to be the first. I feel like you'd
Speaker 2: really have to try. You'd really have to get in
Speaker 2: there and really tempt fate and try to make this
Speaker 2: happen for yourself. And you know, I guess there's one
Speaker 2: way to go down in the history books, but surely
Speaker 2: there's a better option. You'd have to again, essentially frame
Speaker 2: a giant clam for murder, which I don't think is fair.
Speaker 3: They don't need any more trouble there. I mean, they're
Speaker 3: having a hard time, they take a long time to grow,
Speaker 3: they've been over harvested. Giant giant clams need a break.
Speaker 2: Yeah, leave them be, keep a respect respectful distance, but
Speaker 2: by all means observe them if you get the chance.
Speaker 2: Like I say, it was it beautiful and weird to
Speaker 2: be in their presence. I can't stress both enough. Again,
Speaker 2: their mantle tissue is beautiful, their size alone can be
Speaker 2: quite a spectacle. But there is also something kind of weird,
Speaker 2: because again we can't help but read them as analogs
Speaker 2: of human physiology, and it's, you know, weird that they're
Speaker 2: kind of like smiling up at us from the from
Speaker 2: the seafloor.
Speaker 3: Smile back, yes, get out of their light.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I think that's going to do it
Speaker 2: for this episode. But of course we'd love to hear
Speaker 2: from everyone out there. We've heard in the past from
Speaker 2: snorkelers and divers, you know, with lots of experience. So
Speaker 2: I know we have some snorkelers and divers out there
Speaker 2: who have more experience with giant clams or clams in general,
Speaker 2: and might want to chime in with their own expertise, observations,
Speaker 2: or you know lore that you've heard from maybe fellow
Speaker 2: older divers and snorkelers about giant clams, whether it's pure
Speaker 2: mythology or fact base. We'd love to hear about you,
Speaker 2: So write in just a reminder that stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have short form
Speaker 2: episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set us like
Speaker 2: most serious concerns, to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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