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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And once again October content

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Speaker 3: has spilled over the edge of the month.

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Speaker 2: That's right. In today's episode, we're continuing our Halloween twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty four express with an episode that was originally scheduled

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Speaker 2: for late October, but our episode on the Hogs of

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Speaker 2: Hell went a little long, ended up going to two episodes,

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Speaker 2: so we bumped this one back a bit. It's a

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Speaker 2: topic we've touched on briefly before, but it's a great one,

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Speaker 2: taking us back to the world of oceanic monsters of

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Speaker 2: myth and legend. We're going to be talking about the siren.

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Speaker 3: The siren, so I realized, Rob correct me if I'm wrong,

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Speaker 3: But I realized, I think we both had we had

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Speaker 3: different theeomorphic hybrids in my and when we were separately

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Speaker 3: thinking about the siren. Because when I thought of the siren,

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Speaker 3: I first thought of sort of half woman, half bird

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Speaker 3: creatures that sing to the sailors. But I get the

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Speaker 3: impression that your mind first went to half human, half fish.

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Speaker 3: So I guess those are both within the siren tradition,

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Speaker 3: aren't they?

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Speaker 2: They are. This is one of the things about the siren,

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Speaker 2: as we'll discuss, is that there are takes on them

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Speaker 2: in which they are essentially mermaids. It's essentially some version

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Speaker 2: of the European North European mermaid tradition. There are versions

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Speaker 2: of it in which they are just sort of beautiful

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Speaker 2: ladies who sing sailors to their death, that sort of thing.

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Speaker 2: And then other times they are essentially what we might

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Speaker 2: think of as a harpie, you know, they are a

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Speaker 2: winged creature, perhaps like an all out vulture type being,

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Speaker 2: with even just the head of a maiden or the

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Speaker 2: face of a maiden.

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Speaker 3: But in either case, I think we're to assume that

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Speaker 3: their voices may be lovely, but they sing sailors to

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Speaker 3: their doom.

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Speaker 2: Yes, And that's one thing we can be sure on

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Speaker 2: when we look to really the most famous literary account

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Speaker 2: of the sirens, but also the one that continues to

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Speaker 2: raise a lot of questions because it does skim over

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Speaker 2: some of the details. As we'll discuss, we are, of

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Speaker 2: course talking about Homer's the Odyssey. I'm just going to

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Speaker 2: read a quote here. This is from the Samuel Butler translation.

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Speaker 2: I believe this is Circe warning Odysseus and his men

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Speaker 2: about the challenges ahead. First, you will come to the sirens,

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Speaker 2: who enchant all who come near them. If anyone unwarily

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Speaker 2: draws in too close and hears the singing of the sirens,

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Speaker 2: his wife and children will never welcome him home again,

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Speaker 2: for they sit in a green field and warble him

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Speaker 2: to death with the sweetness of their song. There is

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Speaker 2: a great heap of dead men's bones lying all around,

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Speaker 2: and the flesh still rotting off them.

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Speaker 3: Number one, that's intense. Number two does not describe them physically,

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Speaker 3: and number three warbled to death.

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Speaker 2: Warbled to death. You know which, if you got to go,

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Speaker 2: why not choose warbling? Why not? So this is you know, considered,

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Speaker 2: You know this is This is probably the most famous

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Speaker 2: literary description and non description of the sirens. But we

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Speaker 2: have a lot of other materials that have depicted the sirens,

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Speaker 2: described them or depicted them visually that also sort of

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Speaker 2: compete with our imaginations here and end up in This

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Speaker 2: is often the case with these things ends up coloring

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Speaker 2: our absorption of Homer's original writings. We've had some great

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Speaker 2: cinematic sirens over time, we've have, for example, to get

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Speaker 2: into the adaptations of the Odyssey itself. There, of course

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Speaker 2: the Three Sirens and No Brother, Where art thou? The

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Speaker 2: three strange women that appear as beautiful washer women singing

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Speaker 2: go to sleep, Little Baby. They of course lure in

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Speaker 2: del Mar and turn him into a horny toad sort of.

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Speaker 3: Wait does he get turned back? I haven't seen this

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Speaker 3: movie in a while.

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Speaker 2: Well, he doesn't. Actually, we end up finding out later

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Speaker 2: that he was never turned into a horny toad. He

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Speaker 2: was captured by authorities because he was wanted.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and they find him again in the movie

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Speaker 3: theater Do Not Seek the Treasure.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, it's a great sequence in the film,

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Speaker 2: a lot of laughs, and it works nicely in comparison

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Speaker 2: to the theme of baptism that's also employed in the work.

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Speaker 2: Elsewhere in cinema, we tend to see the idea of

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Speaker 2: sirens employed more in terms of the evil mermaid. You

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Speaker 2: want to have a mermaid, but you want an evil one. Well,

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Speaker 2: you lean into this idea of the siren. Just a

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Speaker 2: few quick mentions, and I'm missing a lot of them.

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Speaker 2: I'm sure there's two thousand and one's Daygone. This is

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Speaker 2: the Stuart Gordon film you have neat Split Tail that

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Speaker 2: kidnaped Mermaids. In that, There's a two and another two

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Speaker 2: thousand and one film titled She Creature that I have

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Speaker 2: not seen since two thousand and one, but I remember

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Speaker 2: having a nice little cast to it, and also having

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Speaker 2: a monstrous mermaid. More recently, I don't know much about

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Speaker 2: the plot details here, so I don't know where this

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Speaker 2: falls in terms of sirens, but there's a Polish musical

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Speaker 2: horror film titled The Lure that seems to have resonated

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Speaker 2: with a number of viewers. I've seen some nice reviews

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Speaker 2: of that. And then I think we've had at least

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Speaker 2: a couple of different Mermaids slash Siren TV shows in

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Speaker 2: recent decades, but I have not seen them, So we'll

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Speaker 2: have to lean on our listeners to write in and

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Speaker 2: tell us what those are like. Now again, to get

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Speaker 2: back to what we were just talking about earlier, Though

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Speaker 2: sirens are not definitively sea creatures or definitively mermaids, however,

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Speaker 2: it's impossible to separate the two completely, so you know,

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Speaker 2: we do have to acknowledge that to whatever extent. Sirens

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Speaker 2: are based in this idea of undersea creature as well,

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Speaker 2: you know, the idea of people and creatures from beneath

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Speaker 2: the waves. Naturally, it goes back very long ways. As

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Speaker 2: long as humans have gazed out across the waves or

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Speaker 2: peered down through clear waters from the side of their boats,

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Speaker 2: they've dreamed of a mirror world to our own, a

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Speaker 2: place where every animal has its watery reflection, where intelligent

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Speaker 2: human like beings, no doubt dwell as well, along with

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Speaker 2: various monsters and gods and so forth. There is a

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Speaker 2: paper by Nancy Easterlin. This is a two thousand and

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Speaker 2: one paper again back to two thousand and one that

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Speaker 2: we've we cited in a munch Older episode of the

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Speaker 2: podcast titled Hans Christian Andersen's Fish out of Water, and

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Speaker 2: she points out that the Babylonians recognize gods with fish

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Speaker 2: features or hybridity. You have like what Adappa, the fishermen

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Speaker 2: of Oneius, the teacher of wisdom, even Mighty Inky, the

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Speaker 2: ancient Sumerian water god, is sometimes depicted as having a

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Speaker 2: cloak of fish or scaled skin, and the chief place

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Speaker 2: of worship was a ziggurat known as the House of

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Speaker 2: the subterranean waters, and additionally fishtailed gods, water dragons and

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Speaker 2: so forth found throughout the cultures of India, China and

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Speaker 2: Japan and so forth. There's a quote from that Easter

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Speaker 2: paper she writes some other mythological sea beings and deities,

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Speaker 2: such as Poseidon and the Sirens were not originally associated

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Speaker 2: with water and piicine anatomy. The sirens were originally birds.

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Speaker 2: We'll get back to that in a minute, indicating that

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Speaker 2: divine power and womanly allure became combined with the power

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Speaker 2: and promise of the sea when ancient cultures overtook maritime

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Speaker 2: war and trade. So in that paper she gets into

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Speaker 2: a familiar theme on this show when we're talking about

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Speaker 2: deities and supernatural beings, is that, of course they are

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Speaker 2: passed down and they do not stay in one form

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Speaker 2: or another. They are reused, recreated, you know, different different,

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Speaker 2: various relaunches and reboots of the brand over time, and.

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Speaker 3: In past episodes we've even talked about reasons for questioning

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Speaker 3: the very idea of such a thing as a canonical

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Speaker 3: form of a deity or a monster or something that

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Speaker 3: you know, that makes sense when you have something like

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Speaker 3: intellectual property like if a monster is the creation of

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Speaker 3: a specific author and they describe it a certain way,

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Speaker 3: and then other people could take the idea and vary it,

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Speaker 3: but you would want to refer back to what is

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Speaker 3: the original one, you know, with like gods and monsters

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Speaker 3: and things that come out of folklore. You know, maybe

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Speaker 3: sometimes it makes sense to say there's basically an authoritative

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Speaker 3: version of a story, but most of the time there's not.

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Speaker 3: Sometimes the characteristics aren't even given in the earliest works

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Speaker 3: that are still extant today. So like searching after the

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Speaker 3: canonical form of the monster or deity or whatever is fruitless.

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Speaker 3: There just is no original that we can access.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we've talked about this before. You get

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Speaker 2: kind of close to this idea when you look at

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Speaker 2: a multi author of franchise, like say Marvel Comics, where

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Speaker 2: you can set you know, you try to explain, like, well,

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Speaker 2: who's Venom. Oh he's a villain of Spider Man. Oh well, no,

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Speaker 2: he's also kind of a hero, he's kind of an

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Speaker 2: anti hero. Oh yeah, And sometimes he's just straight up

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Speaker 2: what we would think I was the protagonist of a story,

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Speaker 2: So it just it changes. And there are probably better

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Speaker 2: examples than Venom to turn to there.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think that's a good one, except it's

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Speaker 3: it's like that. But imagine if most Marvel comics were

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Speaker 3: lost and we don't know what they said or what

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Speaker 3: was in them, and we don't know where the first

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Speaker 3: appearance of Venom was.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, But coming back to the siren and

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Speaker 2: getting into the Greek traditions here, we as the quote

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Speaker 2: we read earlier attests to we certainly experienced the sirens

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Speaker 2: and Homer's eighths century BCE work The Odyssey, and they

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Speaker 2: are described as malicious, doomy women when we put in

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Speaker 2: asterisk by that woman description, malicious do me entities anyway,

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Speaker 2: who hang out on rocks and sing to passing sailors.

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Speaker 2: But Homer neglects to physically describe them at all. So again,

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Speaker 2: even by just briefly mentioning them as women, I'm airing

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Speaker 2: because he does not ascribe gender to these creatures. But

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Speaker 2: the thing is, it's really hard not to be infected

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Speaker 2: by the various visual treatments of this encounter of these

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Speaker 2: creatures from throughout Western art, you know, which has often

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Speaker 2: served as a great opportunity to create dramatic and evocative

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Speaker 2: scenes that make use of, you know, the the unclothed

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Speaker 2: or partially unclothed male and female bodies. I was talking

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Speaker 2: about this with my son yesterday when I was researching this,

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Speaker 2: and I mentioned to him, and he already knows his

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Speaker 2: way aroun myths and monsters pretty well. I mentioned, you

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Speaker 2: know that that Homer never actually describes them. So they

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Speaker 2: could look like a woman, they could look like a

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Speaker 2: fish monster, they could look like a bird person. We

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Speaker 2: don't know. And he asked, well, could they just be

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Speaker 2: like a banana peal? And I I dare say they could.

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Speaker 2: And he does not say that they do not look

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Speaker 2: like banana peels, and provides no other physical description at all.

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Speaker 3: They could literally be Ronald MacDonald.

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Speaker 2: They could be. There's nothing in the Odyssey that says

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Speaker 2: they're not. So I was reading a bit more about

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Speaker 2: this in this is an older book. This is older publication.

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Speaker 2: This is from nineteen seventy The Homeric Sirens by Gerald K. Gressith.

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Speaker 2: This was publishing the Transactions and Proceedings of the American

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Speaker 2: Philological Association, and in it the author spends a lot

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Speaker 2: of time talking about what at the time were like

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Speaker 2: two dueling interpretations of the sirens in Homer's the Odyssey,

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Speaker 2: and I think it's interesting to look at them here.

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Speaker 2: So the first one that he references is the idea

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Speaker 2: that the sirens are soul birds, again playing on the

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Speaker 2: idea that in other texts we have the sirens described

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Speaker 2: an Avian term. And the connection here is that they

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Speaker 2: would be representations of the souls of the dead in

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Speaker 2: bird form, an idea that extends back through ancient Egyptian religion.

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Speaker 2: This was an idea champion by the German classical archaeologist

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Speaker 2: Georg Viker. In short, this view sees the sirens as

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Speaker 2: things that emerge from hades and or the grave and

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Speaker 2: as Grethis explains, Homer likely wouldn't have thought that the

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Speaker 2: soul became a bird upon death in this scenario, but

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Speaker 2: he might have been influenced by older ideas still present

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Speaker 2: in art and culture of his time. Okay, then there's

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Speaker 2: this other idea, and that is that the sirens are

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Speaker 2: other world enchantresses. So an idea in this case champion

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Speaker 2: by German archaeologist and translator Ernst Bouscher in response to

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Speaker 2: Vicker arguing that homer sirens are anthropomorphic. This view sees

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Speaker 2: the sirens not as creatures of the afterlife, but as

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Speaker 2: something else that doesn't reside in Hades, though perhaps does

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Speaker 2: resis guide in a different other world and might not

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Speaker 2: even be directly malicious. That's the interesting thing about this

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Speaker 2: kind of view. They might be more in line with

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Speaker 2: muses offering song and information that were just not equipped

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Speaker 2: to resist. We just can't handle a song this beautiful

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Speaker 2: and or information that's tantalizing, and therefore we are just

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Speaker 2: drawn into it. And this actually gets into the vagueness

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Speaker 2: of how they actually bring about these men's dooms, because,

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Speaker 2: as Aggressive points out, we don't have an answer for

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Speaker 2: this in Homer either, and elsewhere, interpretations range from an

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Speaker 2: overt and then the sirens ad him sort of situation

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Speaker 2: to this idea that enraptured individuals just slowly die of

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Speaker 2: exposure on the shores of the sirens, like they're drawn

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Speaker 2: by the song, and then they just, you know, forget

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Speaker 2: to eat, forget to stay out of the sun, and

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Speaker 2: just waste away. And so in that scenario, it's like, well,

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Speaker 2: the muses, like they may not even be entities that

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Speaker 2: are aware of what they are doing. They're just sharing

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Speaker 2: song and information, but we just can't handle it as mortals.

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Speaker 3: That's fascinating, and it's funny because the interpretation I always

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Speaker 3: just had in the back of my mind isn't even

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Speaker 3: listed there, which is the idea that they sit on

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Speaker 3: the rocks and they sing to the sailors and they

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Speaker 3: draw the sailors in close, and the ship's wreck on

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Speaker 3: the rocks and the sailors drone. I don't know where

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Speaker 3: that idea came from, but that is what I thought

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Speaker 3: was being described in the Odyssey.

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Speaker 2: You know, Like I said, there are a lot of

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Speaker 2: paintings of the sirens and or Odysseus, and I think

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Speaker 2: they also almost at times subliminally charge one's understanding of

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Speaker 2: this scenario. And there are several of these that I

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Speaker 2: think I've just seen most of my life. There are

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Speaker 2: a couple in particular that pop up in the time

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Speaker 2: Life Enchanted World book series, of course makes use of

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Speaker 2: a lot of excellent original art, but also a lot

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Speaker 2: of classic art as well too. In particular, John William

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Speaker 2: Waterhouse is the Siren from nineteen hundred. This is a

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Speaker 2: like a vertical piece in which there is a nude

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Speaker 2: woman with a harp some kind of or is this

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Speaker 2: a lute?

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Speaker 3: I believe it's a liar's Yeah, yeah, there you go,

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Speaker 3: U shaped stringed instrument.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So she's playing it on the rocks, and there

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Speaker 2: down in the water below her is an enraptured male,

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Speaker 2: like a youthful male, who looks like he is probably

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Speaker 2: going to drown. And so like, I think this really

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Speaker 2: matches up with your read on it, and you know,

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Speaker 2: I often I think thought about it in similar terms

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Speaker 2: looking at these images, like the sirens just draw you

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Speaker 2: in and then you know, stuff happens, but it's not

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Speaker 2: like they're biting into you or anything that's right.

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Speaker 3: But she in this in the waterhouse painting, the siren

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Speaker 3: does not look malicious. She does not look like she's

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Speaker 3: even really attempting to lure him. She's just kind of

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Speaker 3: there existing, And he is up to his neck in

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Speaker 3: the water, clearly about to die, looking like he has

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Speaker 3: this combination of just joy and tear or yeah.

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Speaker 2: And then the other piece that was definitely in the

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Speaker 2: Enchanted World series is Herbert James Draper's nineteen oh nine

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Speaker 2: painting Ulysses and the Sirens. This is a very captivating

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Speaker 2: piece in which you see the familiar scenario that I

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Speaker 2: may again describe her in a second where, of course,

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Speaker 2: how does Odysseus how does he get past the sirens? Well,

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Speaker 2: of course he clogs the ear holes of all of

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Speaker 2: his men with wax, and then he himself is strapped

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Speaker 2: to the mast of the ship, and then they just

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Speaker 2: keep moving that way. The siren song doesn't infect the oarsman.

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Speaker 2: It infects him, but he can't do anything about it

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Speaker 2: because he's strapped to the mast.

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Speaker 3: And this is usually presented as a result of curiosity,

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Speaker 3: like Odysseus wants to hear what the siren song is like,

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Speaker 3: but doesn't want to allow himself under its spell to

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Speaker 3: command his men to do otherwise, so he has himself

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Speaker 3: tied up on purpose.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and so in this particular piece by Draper, which

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Speaker 2: you know is widely available you can find it on

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Speaker 2: wiki commons, and so forth, we see, you know, this

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Speaker 2: crazed look on Odysseus's eye. He's completely enraptured, straining against

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Speaker 2: the ropes that bind him. Meanwhile, the naked sirens in

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Speaker 2: this case seemingly seeming to transform out of mermaid form

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Speaker 2: into humanoid form, just like the movie Splash as they

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Speaker 2: crawl on the ship. And of course this is a.

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Speaker 2: This image, of course, like a lot of the later

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Speaker 2: treatments of Sirens, is of course very there's a certain

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Speaker 2: sexual politics to all this and gender politics to it,

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Speaker 2: because it's clearly showing like the feminine form is the

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Speaker 2: aggressively alluring temptation that is coming at the men on

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Speaker 2: the ship.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and it looked There are very different implied situations

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Speaker 3: in these two paintings, Like in the Waterhouse painting, I

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Speaker 3: don't know, you could interpret it multiple ways, but it

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Speaker 3: doesn't look obvious to me. Like I said that the

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Speaker 3: siren is even trying to attract the man, She's just

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Speaker 3: sitting there. She might just be minding her own business. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: and he's raptured. In the second painting, the Draper painting

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Speaker 3: from nine These these are beings that are obviously trying

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Speaker 3: to seduce the men, and they are posed with seductive

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Speaker 3: ill intent.

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Speaker 2: Yes, So these are the two that I was most

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Speaker 2: familiar with. But there's a third I want to mention,

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Speaker 2: and this is the Sirens and Ulysses from eighteen thirty

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Speaker 2: seven by William Edie or Eddie I'm not sure which,

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Speaker 2: but this one is also tremendous. I was not familiar

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Speaker 2: with this but in this one, we see the sirens

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Speaker 2: on their rocky island in the foreground, and in the

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Speaker 2: background we see Ulysses send a ship and there's a

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Speaker 2: lot of struggling going on there. But in the foreground

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Speaker 2: the sirens are just kind of like, hey, sirens, party,

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Speaker 2: come on over, guys. And then next to them we

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Speaker 2: see rotting bodies and bones. It's quite quite a quite

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Speaker 2: a scene.

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Speaker 3: It is wonderful. But to your point, yeah, I interpret

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Speaker 3: this one more along the lines of the waterhouse painting.

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Speaker 3: There's no indication that that their attention even has anything

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Speaker 3: to do with the men on the ship.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So I already rolled through the basic

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Speaker 2: scenario with Odysseus and the Odyssey and how they get

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Speaker 2: past the sirens. But we have another encounter, and this

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Speaker 2: one is detailed in the Argonautica from the third century BCE,

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Speaker 2: and this one involves Jason in the Argonauts, how did

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Speaker 2: they defeat the sirens? Well, they brought Orpheus along with them,

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Speaker 2: the most famous bard of Greek mythology, at least as

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Speaker 2: far as mortals go, and his song is even sweeter

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Speaker 2: than the sirens. So you know, they explode or something.

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Speaker 3: It's the Devil went down to Georgia.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, actually, as Apollodorus described it, I believe the sweet

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Speaker 2: song of Orpheus causes them to throw them selves into

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Speaker 2: the sea and become rocks. And it would turn out

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Speaker 2: that these were like the terms of their power, that

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Speaker 2: if their song ever failed to enthrall someone, then they

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Speaker 2: have to die. They were done for. And there are

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Speaker 2: similar accounts with the Sphinx as well, you know, like

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Speaker 2: if it's riddle as guest, it has to throw itself

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Speaker 2: off a mountain, that sort of thing.

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Speaker 3: Wait, now that I said it, I'm trying to remember

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Speaker 3: what happens to the devil at the end of Devil

361
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Speaker 3: went Down to Georgia. BET's a fiddle of gold against

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Speaker 3: your soul. But what happens if Johnny wins.

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Speaker 2: He gets to keep the golden golden.

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Speaker 3: Devil's just out of gold fiddle. That's it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there was some I forget who, some stand up

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Speaker 2: comedian I think, was talking about how you know, it's

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Speaker 2: clear that the Devil's music is more impressive in that

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Speaker 2: particular song, we still give the wind to the mortals.

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Speaker 2: But yes, I agree, it is like very much like

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Speaker 2: the Devil goes down.

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Speaker 3: To Geordia which text came first. I'm not sure.

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Speaker 2: Now the exact number of sirens fairies. They're like between

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Speaker 2: two and five, depending on what telling you're looking at.

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Speaker 2: They have various names, different there are different takes on

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Speaker 2: their parentage as well. Again, it's just how many there

376
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Speaker 2: are to begin with, but their exact nature in large

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Speaker 2: part due to Homer being vague about it. This has

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Speaker 2: always been an area of discussion, and apparently it's not

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Speaker 2: the only area that Homer's vague, and for instance, according

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Speaker 2: to Gressith, he never explains that the cyclops as one eye.

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Speaker 2: So I think there are moments like that where we

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Speaker 2: just kind of like assume, like we like we know

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Speaker 2: as the as the reader what it's supposed to be

384
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Speaker 2: or what it becomes canonized as later. But you can

385
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Speaker 2: apparently get into discussions with any of this of like, well,

386
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Speaker 2: what did the original author intend? What was the shape

387
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Speaker 2: of it? Then?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, then again, they because most of these

389
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Speaker 3: stories would be drawing on pre existing concepts and stuff,

390
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Speaker 3: you never know, like what did people just naturally assume

391
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Speaker 3: when you name a character or type of being, Like

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Speaker 3: what did the reader bring to the reader or listener

393
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Speaker 3: bring to the table.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's one thing that Gressi gets into as well,

395
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Speaker 2: is that you have to end up looking for these

396
00:22:08,359 --> 00:22:12,320
Speaker 2: answers in the contemporary religion, but also in contemporary folklore,

397
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Speaker 2: to whatever extent you can pick at it through other sources. Now,

398
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Speaker 2: I picked up a couple of my favorite monster books

399
00:22:21,840 --> 00:22:26,399
Speaker 2: for a little more on these sirens, and I was

400
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Speaker 2: looking at Jorge Luis Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings, and

401
00:22:31,840 --> 00:22:34,720
Speaker 2: he points out three different traditions. He points out that

402
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Speaker 2: Avid describes them as golden birds with the faces of virgins.

403
00:22:38,760 --> 00:22:42,159
Speaker 2: He points out that Paulinius of Rhodes described them as

404
00:22:42,200 --> 00:22:44,679
Speaker 2: women with the lower half of sea birds. And then

405
00:22:44,760 --> 00:22:48,680
Speaker 2: much later medieval heraldry and bestiaries tend to present them

406
00:22:48,760 --> 00:22:52,800
Speaker 2: just as straight up mermaids, again fusing these older classical

407
00:22:53,680 --> 00:22:59,600
Speaker 2: tellings with Northern European traditions of mermaids. And I think

408
00:22:59,600 --> 00:23:02,239
Speaker 2: it's this is a reality you just can't get away from. Then,

409
00:23:02,280 --> 00:23:05,760
Speaker 2: when you keep tugging at siren myths, because the terms

410
00:23:05,760 --> 00:23:09,920
Speaker 2: are often used interchangeably, like some some tales of the siren,

411
00:23:10,359 --> 00:23:12,600
Speaker 2: you could sort of maybe make a better case that

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Speaker 2: these are actually mermaid stories. But some of them are

413
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Speaker 2: very are very juicy, and I just couldn't resist getting

414
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Speaker 2: into a particular one. This is one that Borges also

415
00:23:25,080 --> 00:23:28,520
Speaker 2: talks about. This This would have been the sixth century

416
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Speaker 2: in northern Wales. It is said that a siren was

417
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Speaker 2: caught and baptized, eventually becoming a saint in some traditions,

418
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Speaker 2: by the name of Murgan or Murrgan, which I believe

419
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:45,080
Speaker 2: means Seaborn. She was reportedly carried to her baptism in

420
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Speaker 2: a vat, and I believe and this is also tied

421
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Speaker 2: to an Irish legend of lie Bon, and in fact

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Speaker 2: I often I have elsewhere seen this character referenced as

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Speaker 2: li Bon Murrgan, for example. I've also seen Morgan described

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Speaker 2: as an early discredited saint, so I don't know if

425
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Speaker 2: I don't believe that she is officially a saint in

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Speaker 2: the Catholic Church. This would have been around what five

427
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Speaker 2: eighty eight CE, I think, But she had a feast

428
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Speaker 2: day at one point, and it was January twenty seventh,

429
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Speaker 2: which I think is also devoted to various other saints

430
00:24:21,240 --> 00:24:21,840
Speaker 2: and so forth.

431
00:24:22,600 --> 00:24:24,879
Speaker 3: This is an interesting story, but I'm thinking about the

432
00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:28,359
Speaker 3: symbolic implications of the baptism of an animal that lives

433
00:24:28,440 --> 00:24:29,080
Speaker 3: under the water.

434
00:24:29,800 --> 00:24:32,199
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And it comes back to what we were

435
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:36,280
Speaker 2: talking earlier about baptism and sirens and no brother where

436
00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:41,760
Speaker 2: art thou. There's apparently a more complete telling of this story,

437
00:24:41,800 --> 00:24:45,080
Speaker 2: and I found it in Carol Rose's Spirits Farries, Leprachauns

438
00:24:45,119 --> 00:24:50,200
Speaker 2: and Goblins, where this luban murrgan. She starts out as

439
00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:52,720
Speaker 2: a human, a human daughter of the High King of

440
00:24:52,760 --> 00:24:56,880
Speaker 2: Ireland and a goddess Iatawan I believe is her name,

441
00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:00,679
Speaker 2: and she's just a normal human child. But then she

442
00:25:00,800 --> 00:25:04,240
Speaker 2: is caught in the flood of a sacred spring with

443
00:25:04,359 --> 00:25:07,760
Speaker 2: her dog and carried to an underwater cavern and she's

444
00:25:07,840 --> 00:25:10,000
Speaker 2: trapped there for a year. But then she prays that

445
00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:12,640
Speaker 2: she might be free like the fishes, and so her

446
00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:16,240
Speaker 2: lower half becomes like a fish, and her dog transforms

447
00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:16,840
Speaker 2: into an otter.

448
00:25:19,080 --> 00:25:21,639
Speaker 3: Well that is appropriate because otters are good boys.

449
00:25:23,359 --> 00:25:26,119
Speaker 2: Three hundred years later, enter a cleric by the name

450
00:25:26,160 --> 00:25:30,200
Speaker 2: of BioC and he hears her singing and then you

451
00:25:30,280 --> 00:25:33,440
Speaker 2: know he's drawn to her singing. So they meet and

452
00:25:33,880 --> 00:25:37,600
Speaker 2: she asked him to bring her to Saint Comgall, an

453
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:40,320
Speaker 2: actual historic saint, and this is where the vat comes

454
00:25:40,320 --> 00:25:43,080
Speaker 2: into the picture. They throw her in a vat and

455
00:25:43,119 --> 00:25:46,520
Speaker 2: she is willingly, you brought to the saint so that

456
00:25:46,560 --> 00:25:50,800
Speaker 2: she may be baptized. But at her baptism she is

457
00:25:51,320 --> 00:25:53,919
Speaker 2: or upon her baptism she is faced with a choice

458
00:25:54,320 --> 00:25:58,359
Speaker 2: another three hundred years of life or immediate entry into heaven.

459
00:25:58,560 --> 00:26:02,520
Speaker 2: So you know, do not pass go directly to heaven.

460
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:07,800
Speaker 2: She chooses heaven. So anyway, it's a lovely little little

461
00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:10,600
Speaker 2: bit of folklore there. I like it quite a bit.

462
00:26:11,080 --> 00:26:15,320
Speaker 2: And they're apparently depictions of the saint here, Saint leban

463
00:26:15,920 --> 00:26:21,280
Speaker 2: or Saint Morgan, and yeah, sometimes she's depicted with a crown,

464
00:26:22,119 --> 00:26:25,440
Speaker 2: yeah quite oh and then and some depictions you also

465
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:27,440
Speaker 2: see her order there beside her.

466
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 3: Oh that's adorable.

467
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:34,000
Speaker 2: So essentially, you know, we have these Northern European mermaid traditions,

468
00:26:34,560 --> 00:26:37,240
Speaker 2: not to be confused with similar tales from around the world,

469
00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:40,919
Speaker 2: merging to some extent with classical tales of sirens, but

470
00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:45,600
Speaker 2: plenty of winged descriptions remain that ultimately line up more

471
00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:47,760
Speaker 2: with what you might think of today as a heartbeat.

472
00:26:47,800 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 2: You know, ancient wind spirits eventually transformed into fiends through

473
00:26:52,280 --> 00:26:55,080
Speaker 2: tellings of Greek myth depending on how you slice it.

474
00:26:55,160 --> 00:27:00,360
Speaker 2: Harpies and sirens may have been both female bird human hybrids,

475
00:27:00,880 --> 00:27:03,359
Speaker 2: but of different demeanors. So harpies you can think of

476
00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:07,600
Speaker 2: more as vengeful cannibal to spoilers, while sirens are alluring,

477
00:27:07,760 --> 00:27:11,960
Speaker 2: musical beings of temptation and is. If faced with both,

478
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:14,679
Speaker 2: you'd need to fight the harpies off with physical weapons,

479
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:18,480
Speaker 2: while the siren demands a more cerebral approach. So you know,

480
00:27:18,560 --> 00:27:21,199
Speaker 2: in some ways, they're kind of if you're looking at

481
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:24,919
Speaker 2: them both as avian beings, they're kind of reflections of

482
00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:27,360
Speaker 2: each other, one targeting the body and the other targeting

483
00:27:27,400 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 2: the mind.

484
00:27:28,400 --> 00:27:28,960
Speaker 3: Interesting.

485
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:32,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, And we mentioned earlier the idea of the siren

486
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:37,639
Speaker 2: as a feminine monster, and Carol Rose in Giants, Monsters

487
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:41,520
Speaker 2: and Dragons discusses this. Briefly points out that in medieval

488
00:27:41,560 --> 00:27:46,159
Speaker 2: European traditions, the siren takes on various symbolic powers. Quote

489
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:50,160
Speaker 2: for her attributed where the comb and the mirror of vanity,

490
00:27:50,600 --> 00:27:53,920
Speaker 2: the fish or eel symbols of the entrapped Christian soul

491
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:58,159
Speaker 2: ensnared by luxury and vice, the small dragon the symbol

492
00:27:58,240 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 2: of her liaison with the devil, and her nakedness taken

493
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:05,840
Speaker 2: as a sign of wanton sexuality. So then and to

494
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:08,520
Speaker 2: this day, in some depictions we see the siren presented

495
00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:12,720
Speaker 2: as this monstrous female temptress, a corruptor of menfolk, but

496
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:15,639
Speaker 2: also like this, indeed, like something that has been summoned

497
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:20,000
Speaker 2: up to test ones resolve. Still, as Rose points out,

498
00:28:20,040 --> 00:28:22,399
Speaker 2: there were still descriptions of the siren as a bird

499
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:26,119
Speaker 2: woman you know, well, you know, out of of the

500
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 2: ancient world, pops up in the seventh and eighth century,

501
00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:35,160
Speaker 2: leaving Monstroum also a twelfth century Latin Bestiaria, which describes

502
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:39,480
Speaker 2: them in much more harpy terms as winged, rock dwelling

503
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 2: beasts well that will not only lure sailors to their death,

504
00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:47,360
Speaker 2: but pounce on them with flesh rending talons. And then

505
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:50,640
Speaker 2: during the nineteenth century we even see again kind of

506
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:53,440
Speaker 2: like bumping up against all of these depictions of sirens

507
00:28:53,840 --> 00:28:57,320
Speaker 2: as mermaids and naked women in the water, we see

508
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:01,600
Speaker 2: John William Waterhouse's eighteen ninety one pain Ulysses and the Sirens.

509
00:29:01,840 --> 00:29:06,120
Speaker 2: And what do we see here? We see big birds

510
00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:09,120
Speaker 2: with the heads of women, and they are the ones

511
00:29:09,120 --> 00:29:13,040
Speaker 2: as sailing ulysses strapped to the mast and his various oarsmen.

512
00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:16,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no ambiguity about their intentions. Here they are

513
00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:17,360
Speaker 3: swarming the boat.

514
00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:22,000
Speaker 2: Yes these are Yeah, these are definitely aggressive human headed

515
00:29:22,040 --> 00:29:25,120
Speaker 2: birds here. Waterhouse it would seem drew more on those

516
00:29:25,160 --> 00:29:29,520
Speaker 2: classical Greek descriptions and depictions on vases and urns rather

517
00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:31,520
Speaker 2: than what his contemporaries were doing.

518
00:29:32,080 --> 00:29:34,480
Speaker 3: It's interesting because I think it's the same painter, John

519
00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:37,120
Speaker 3: William Waterhouse that did the siren from nineteen hundred we

520
00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:40,720
Speaker 3: talked about earlier, the much more haunting an ambiguous image.

521
00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:43,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't help, but one I don't know much

522
00:29:43,480 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 2: about about the man in his work, and you know

523
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:49,240
Speaker 2: who's painting for. But I wonder if with the nineteen

524
00:29:49,280 --> 00:29:51,040
Speaker 2: hundred someone was like, I'd like you to draw me

525
00:29:51,080 --> 00:29:55,120
Speaker 2: a siren and no birds this time, John, I wanted

526
00:29:55,120 --> 00:29:56,600
Speaker 2: to be a lady.

527
00:29:57,200 --> 00:30:00,000
Speaker 3: The one from nine years later does seem a little

528
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,680
Speaker 3: little more mysterious and maybe mature.

529
00:30:04,200 --> 00:30:05,960
Speaker 2: And to be clear, these are just a few, like

530
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:10,240
Speaker 2: very famous examples of sirens and paintings from this period.

531
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:13,040
Speaker 2: There are others, So if you have favorites, feel free

532
00:30:13,080 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 2: to send them into us, and you know, I'd love

533
00:30:15,160 --> 00:30:16,640
Speaker 2: to take a look at them.

534
00:30:16,880 --> 00:30:19,960
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely, Contact at Stuff to Blow your mind

535
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:33,520
Speaker 3: dot com. Get in touch as always. Now, the idea

536
00:30:33,760 --> 00:30:37,880
Speaker 3: of the siren song luring sailors to their destruction by

537
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:42,040
Speaker 3: one means or another got me thinking about nature. I

538
00:30:42,160 --> 00:30:46,560
Speaker 3: was wondering, are there any predators in nature that have

539
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:51,920
Speaker 3: the genuine biological equivalent of a siren song? A sound

540
00:30:52,120 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 3: or a song or a vocalization that lures pray to

541
00:30:55,760 --> 00:30:58,680
Speaker 3: their doom. And after I did a little digging, I

542
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:02,520
Speaker 3: discovered the answer is yes. Apparently it is not very

543
00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:04,960
Speaker 3: common in nature, at least as far as we know.

544
00:31:05,440 --> 00:31:08,480
Speaker 3: But there is one excellent example I want to talk about,

545
00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:12,120
Speaker 3: and this predatory song involves an animal that we just

546
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:15,840
Speaker 3: did a series on earlier this year, the cicada. In

547
00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:18,640
Speaker 3: this case, the cicada not as the predator, but as

548
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:21,680
Speaker 3: the prey. So I'm going to be referring to one

549
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:24,880
Speaker 3: major source here, a zoology paper from two thousand and

550
00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 3: nine published in Plus one by David C. Marshall and

551
00:31:28,440 --> 00:31:33,320
Speaker 3: Kathy B. R. Hill called versatile aggressive mimicry of cicadas

552
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:39,000
Speaker 3: by an Australian predatory Katie did So. This paper begins

553
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 3: by talking about the concept of mimicry in nature. Mimicry

554
00:31:43,880 --> 00:31:46,840
Speaker 3: in the animal kingdom is when an animal has an

555
00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:50,160
Speaker 3: adaptation that makes it seem like something other than what

556
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:52,440
Speaker 3: it is, and this can take a lot of different

557
00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:55,800
Speaker 3: forms and serve a lot of different purposes. A lot

558
00:31:55,840 --> 00:32:01,200
Speaker 3: of animal mimicry is defensive in purpose and visual in format.

559
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:05,640
Speaker 3: So a vulnerable prey animal might try to fool predators

560
00:32:05,680 --> 00:32:09,680
Speaker 3: into leaving it alone, perhaps by looking like something totally

561
00:32:09,760 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 3: uninteresting to the predator, like a leaf, or like another

562
00:32:13,760 --> 00:32:18,480
Speaker 3: animal that tastes bad and is non nutritious. In some cases,

563
00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:23,000
Speaker 3: visual defensive mimicry makes the prey animal look threatening. It

564
00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:26,160
Speaker 3: makes it look like a different animal that is dangerous

565
00:32:26,200 --> 00:32:29,280
Speaker 3: and could put up a fight, or one that is poisonous.

566
00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 3: But there are non visual forms of defensive mimicry as well.

567
00:32:34,000 --> 00:32:38,080
Speaker 3: For example, a prey animal can smell like something uninteresting

568
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:42,800
Speaker 3: or something dangerous, so that's defensive mimicry. But there's also

569
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:47,320
Speaker 3: what's called aggressive mimicry. This is when an animal disguises

570
00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:52,040
Speaker 3: itself for aggressive purposes, usually to attract or gain advantage

571
00:32:52,080 --> 00:32:55,200
Speaker 3: over prey if the mimic is a predator, or over

572
00:32:55,280 --> 00:32:59,080
Speaker 3: a host if the mimic is a parasite, and apparently

573
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:02,360
Speaker 3: one of the most common strategies for aggressive mimics in

574
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:07,360
Speaker 3: nature is to exploit mating drive. So it's like, hello,

575
00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:10,320
Speaker 3: fellow conspecifics, I am a member of your species and

576
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:15,160
Speaker 3: I'm very sexy. So the authors give some examples of this.

577
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:20,400
Speaker 3: One is the bolus spiders collectively known as a Mastophora,

578
00:33:20,960 --> 00:33:24,800
Speaker 3: which have been documented to attract male moths of at

579
00:33:24,880 --> 00:33:28,760
Speaker 3: least two different species by copying the sex pheromones of

580
00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:31,760
Speaker 3: female moths of those same species, so this would be

581
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:37,240
Speaker 3: aggressive mimicry by smell. There's another interesting example, which is

582
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 3: predatory fireflies known as Fouturis versicolor, which these animals use

583
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:47,840
Speaker 3: flashes of light to initiate mating within their own kind,

584
00:33:48,240 --> 00:33:52,560
Speaker 3: but they can also copy the courtship flashes of females

585
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:56,720
Speaker 3: of other firefly species to trick the males of those

586
00:33:56,760 --> 00:34:00,640
Speaker 3: species into getting close for a mating opportunity, and then

587
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:04,000
Speaker 3: the predatory fireflies just eat them, so this is aggressive

588
00:34:04,040 --> 00:34:07,960
Speaker 3: mimicry by visual signal, and the authors note that this

589
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:13,239
Speaker 3: case is particularly interesting because the predatory fouturist fireflies can

590
00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:18,000
Speaker 3: copy the flashing patterns of eleven different prey species of fireflies.

591
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:23,400
Speaker 3: So that's incredible versatility in the predatory mimic behavior, and

592
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:27,359
Speaker 3: it's an interesting evolutionary question in cases like this how

593
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:31,319
Speaker 3: that much versatility in the predatory behavior comes about. The

594
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:34,800
Speaker 3: authors speculate that it might be possible in part because

595
00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:38,400
Speaker 3: in this case the predator and the prey are closely related.

596
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:41,960
Speaker 3: But whatever the explanation there, both of these previous examples

597
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:45,680
Speaker 3: work by the predator falsely appearing to be a female

598
00:34:45,800 --> 00:34:48,920
Speaker 3: conspecific that is ready to mate, either by smelling like

599
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:52,800
Speaker 3: one or looking like one. This paper presents an example

600
00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:57,319
Speaker 3: of aggressive mimicry that is interesting for several reasons. Like

601
00:34:57,400 --> 00:35:01,600
Speaker 3: the fireflies, the predator in this case shows versatility in

602
00:35:01,680 --> 00:35:05,480
Speaker 3: altering the mimic behavior to match multiple different prey species.

603
00:35:05,960 --> 00:35:10,239
Speaker 3: But unlike the fireflies, the predator is not closely related

604
00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:14,280
Speaker 3: to the prey in a phylogenetic sense. And then, also,

605
00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:17,840
Speaker 3: though I didn't notice this priority claim in the paper itself,

606
00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:20,279
Speaker 3: a couple of news and blog sources I was reading

607
00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:24,360
Speaker 3: about the paper say that this was the first scientifically

608
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:28,520
Speaker 3: documented case of an aggressive or predatory mimic relying on

609
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:33,319
Speaker 3: sound rather than on visual or smell based cues, though

610
00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:36,880
Speaker 3: this mimic the mimic in question also does use visual

611
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:40,440
Speaker 3: mimicry as a secondary appeal. I can't confirm there were

612
00:35:40,480 --> 00:35:43,400
Speaker 3: no earlier documented examples in nature, and I'm a little

613
00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:45,680
Speaker 3: curious why I found that claim in the popular sources

614
00:35:45,680 --> 00:35:48,040
Speaker 3: and not in the research itself. But I did not

615
00:35:48,239 --> 00:35:51,439
Speaker 3: find any earlier examples. So if that is true, this

616
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:56,440
Speaker 3: is the first documented case. Or sound is the medium

617
00:35:56,680 --> 00:36:00,320
Speaker 3: being used for the aggressive mimic to mimic something that

618
00:36:00,719 --> 00:36:04,680
Speaker 3: gets it access to its prey. Wow, So what is

619
00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:09,120
Speaker 3: this dangerous mimic? Well, it is the spotted predatory katie

620
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:15,200
Speaker 3: did or Chlorobalius leucoviritus. So this is a large green,

621
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:19,520
Speaker 3: green and white patterned katie did or bush cricket. It's

622
00:36:19,520 --> 00:36:22,960
Speaker 3: a species native to Australia, mostly found in the dry

623
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:26,800
Speaker 3: interior regions of the continent, and it preys on multiple

624
00:36:26,840 --> 00:36:31,320
Speaker 3: different species of cicadas belonging to the tribe Cicadatini, among

625
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:34,239
Speaker 3: other things. It's got multiple prey, but it likes to

626
00:36:34,280 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 3: eat these cicadas of Cicadatini. Now it's important to note

627
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:43,279
Speaker 3: that these prey cicadas rely on a two part acoustic

628
00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:48,000
Speaker 3: signaling behavior to initiate sexual pair formation. And when we

629
00:36:48,040 --> 00:36:50,479
Speaker 3: did our series on cicadas, we talked a lot about

630
00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 3: the songs of cicadas, how they use sound in their

631
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:58,560
Speaker 3: their mating behaviors. But in this case, these specific cicadas

632
00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:02,680
Speaker 3: rely on what the authors call signal responds duets. So

633
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:06,040
Speaker 3: when it's time to mate, the male cicada initiates with

634
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:09,520
Speaker 3: a song particular to its species, and then if a

635
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:13,200
Speaker 3: female is nearby and she's receptive to mating, she will

636
00:37:13,239 --> 00:37:16,759
Speaker 3: reply with a series of wing flicks, which can be

637
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:20,600
Speaker 3: recognized visually if you're very close. But more importantly, the

638
00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:25,240
Speaker 3: wingflicks produce an audible sound that matches with that specie

639
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 3: specific mating call put out by the male. So the

640
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:30,920
Speaker 3: wingflicks can usually be heard for a range of several

641
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:35,160
Speaker 3: meters and they will help the male locate the female

642
00:37:35,200 --> 00:37:40,400
Speaker 3: the author's right quote. Because a wingflick reply is structurally nondescript,

643
00:37:40,600 --> 00:37:44,120
Speaker 3: it must closely follow the queue in the male cicada's

644
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:48,400
Speaker 3: song in order to be recognized. But this leads to

645
00:37:48,600 --> 00:37:51,560
Speaker 3: a kind of interesting situation where a clicking sound that

646
00:37:51,719 --> 00:37:55,560
Speaker 3: has roughly the right sound quality and the right latency

647
00:37:55,719 --> 00:37:58,640
Speaker 3: meaning I interpret this. I hope I'm right about this.

648
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:01,680
Speaker 3: I think they're talking about the the time delay between

649
00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:05,600
Speaker 3: the end of the male cicada song and when the

650
00:38:05,640 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 3: clicks start and stop in response to that. If it

651
00:38:10,040 --> 00:38:14,600
Speaker 3: has these sonic qualities correct, it can be interpreted as

652
00:38:14,640 --> 00:38:17,799
Speaker 3: a female sexual signal by the male cicada. And as

653
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:20,080
Speaker 3: an example, the authors mentioned that with some of these

654
00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:24,439
Speaker 3: cicadas in the tribe Cicadatini, you can attract males by

655
00:38:24,520 --> 00:38:26,839
Speaker 3: like snapping your fingers if you time it right with

656
00:38:26,920 --> 00:38:31,520
Speaker 3: respect to their songs. But different species listen for different things,

657
00:38:31,560 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 3: and some are more wary than others. I guess some

658
00:38:33,640 --> 00:38:36,279
Speaker 3: just kind of rush right in there. Now, coming back

659
00:38:36,280 --> 00:38:40,239
Speaker 3: to the katie DIDs, Chloribelius adults are most active in

660
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:42,840
Speaker 3: the summertime, and you will tend to find them perched

661
00:38:42,920 --> 00:38:46,239
Speaker 3: in the upper branches of small trees and large shrubs,

662
00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:49,200
Speaker 3: where they can take advantage of their green and white

663
00:38:49,239 --> 00:38:53,359
Speaker 3: camouflage coloration pattern to hide in the foliage and rob

664
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:55,520
Speaker 3: I've attached a couple of pictures for you to look at,

665
00:38:56,040 --> 00:38:59,280
Speaker 3: where one is against a white background where this animal

666
00:38:59,320 --> 00:39:01,920
Speaker 3: is very easy to say see. Another one is of

667
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:05,560
Speaker 3: its standing in the tree branches, where it's much easier

668
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 3: to see how it would just kind of blend in,

669
00:39:07,160 --> 00:39:08,840
Speaker 3: especially if you weren't looking very close.

670
00:39:09,400 --> 00:39:11,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is often the case. Right when you

671
00:39:11,520 --> 00:39:15,920
Speaker 2: look at the specimen more in its natural habitat, it

672
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:16,759
Speaker 2: does blend in.

673
00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:21,000
Speaker 3: So what do these kadieids do to mimic and hunt

674
00:39:21,040 --> 00:39:24,319
Speaker 3: the cicadas they eat? Well? The authors write that they

675
00:39:24,360 --> 00:39:30,480
Speaker 3: can quote attract male cicadas Hymiptera cicatada by imitating the

676
00:39:30,680 --> 00:39:36,320
Speaker 3: species specific wing flick replies of sexually receptive female cicadas.

677
00:39:36,960 --> 00:39:42,080
Speaker 3: This aggressive mimicry is accomplished both acoustically with tegmental clicks

678
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:46,839
Speaker 3: and visually with synchronized body jerks, so it's a two

679
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:51,600
Speaker 3: part mimic They imitate both the sounds and the visually

680
00:39:51,640 --> 00:39:55,640
Speaker 3: recognizable body movements produced by female cicadas that are ready

681
00:39:55,680 --> 00:40:00,040
Speaker 3: to mate, attracting male cicadas from the surrounding area, and

682
00:40:00,080 --> 00:40:03,719
Speaker 3: when the male cicada gets close enough, the katie did

683
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:07,000
Speaker 3: will promptly snatch it, bite into it, and eat it.

684
00:40:07,520 --> 00:40:10,799
Speaker 3: And observations of these predatory encounters find that the kdi

685
00:40:10,880 --> 00:40:13,759
Speaker 3: did typically just eats the whole thing. The entire cicada

686
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:16,440
Speaker 3: except for the wings, and they leave the wings behind.

687
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:18,759
Speaker 3: And I thought that was interesting because I recall from

688
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 3: our series on cicadas this was also true of some

689
00:40:21,280 --> 00:40:24,239
Speaker 3: bird predators, which would eat the whole cicada except the

690
00:40:24,239 --> 00:40:26,840
Speaker 3: wings and then just leave pairs of wings everywhere.

691
00:40:27,280 --> 00:40:28,200
Speaker 2: Oh interesting.

692
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:31,520
Speaker 3: Now, one really interesting thing that the authors point out

693
00:40:31,640 --> 00:40:35,560
Speaker 3: is that these predators are able to not only reproduce

694
00:40:35,600 --> 00:40:39,440
Speaker 3: the different specific sounds of a bunch of different cicada species,

695
00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:43,719
Speaker 3: experiments showed they can reproduce the songs of cicadas they

696
00:40:43,719 --> 00:40:48,080
Speaker 3: have never come across before. So this acoustic mimicry is

697
00:40:48,120 --> 00:40:53,280
Speaker 3: not just a singular, evolved, pre programmed behavior, but it's versatile.

698
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:57,640
Speaker 3: It is a versatile adaptable capacity to mimic and respond

699
00:40:57,680 --> 00:41:03,440
Speaker 3: to cicada calls. Interestingly, and perhaps relatedly, Chlorobelius also uses

700
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:07,560
Speaker 3: acoustic signals for its own reproductive purposes. So when it's

701
00:41:07,600 --> 00:41:10,279
Speaker 3: time for this KTI did to mate, the male KTI

702
00:41:10,360 --> 00:41:13,160
Speaker 3: DIDs will produce a trilling sound with a file and

703
00:41:13,200 --> 00:41:16,520
Speaker 3: scraper system on the edges of their fore wings, which

704
00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:20,879
Speaker 3: is thought to attract females which are interested in mating. Now,

705
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:23,399
Speaker 3: coming to the discussion section of this paper. It's worth

706
00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:26,600
Speaker 3: noting that this is not the only way that the

707
00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:29,600
Speaker 3: mating call of a cicada could be used to help

708
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:33,200
Speaker 3: a predator eat a cicada. The predator could, for example,

709
00:41:33,400 --> 00:41:36,080
Speaker 3: just follow the song to its source and eat the male,

710
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 3: and many predators do exactly this. They do follow the

711
00:41:39,600 --> 00:41:42,680
Speaker 3: mating calls of prey animals to hunt. But this is

712
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:45,640
Speaker 3: a different strategy like the siren, or at least one

713
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:50,719
Speaker 3: version of the siren. The kti did lures victims to itself,

714
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:53,319
Speaker 3: and I think that's kind of interesting to consider. It's

715
00:41:53,360 --> 00:41:57,440
Speaker 3: like a different evolutionary investment. I don't believe the authors

716
00:41:57,480 --> 00:41:59,560
Speaker 3: say this, so this could be on the wrong track,

717
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:02,600
Speaker 3: but I was personally wondering if it could have something

718
00:42:02,600 --> 00:42:05,840
Speaker 3: to do with the fact that the katie did already

719
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:09,880
Speaker 3: has a cryptic coloration pattern. It has camouflage, and so

720
00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 3: the fact that it may be using camouflage for one thing,

721
00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:15,239
Speaker 3: it may be using camouflage defensively to hide from its

722
00:42:15,239 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 3: own predators, from birds and so forth. You know, whatever

723
00:42:17,600 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 3: preis on it, it may be able to get double

724
00:42:20,239 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 3: use out of that by specializing in a type of

725
00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:26,080
Speaker 3: predation that allows it to hold still and hide among

726
00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:30,120
Speaker 3: the leaves and have its prey come to it right right.

727
00:42:30,160 --> 00:42:33,480
Speaker 2: And also I guess maybe it's helpful if it's this way,

728
00:42:33,480 --> 00:42:35,680
Speaker 2: it doesn't have to worry about the predators that could

729
00:42:35,719 --> 00:42:38,240
Speaker 2: potentially be seeking out the mating call of their very prey.

730
00:42:38,680 --> 00:42:41,080
Speaker 3: Oh that's a very good point because as we talked

731
00:42:41,080 --> 00:42:43,160
Speaker 3: about it in our cicada series. I don't know with

732
00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:48,319
Speaker 3: this specific Australian family with the Cicadatinian Australia, but in

733
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:51,600
Speaker 3: most places everything eats cicadas when the cicadas come out

734
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 3: their dinner for everything out there, and most of the

735
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:56,000
Speaker 3: things that are eating them, or at least a lot

736
00:42:56,040 --> 00:42:58,400
Speaker 3: of the things would be big enough to eaticated it

737
00:42:58,480 --> 00:43:02,600
Speaker 3: as well. Right now. The authors in this paper argue

738
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:06,000
Speaker 3: that the katie DIDs versatility and mimicry probably follows from

739
00:43:06,040 --> 00:43:09,919
Speaker 3: the application of a few simple rules. For one thing,

740
00:43:10,080 --> 00:43:12,880
Speaker 3: Since they're game to eat pretty much any cicada and

741
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:17,960
Speaker 3: not just one particular species, they can probably ignore everything

742
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:21,600
Speaker 3: about the male cicada's song except whatever part of it

743
00:43:21,840 --> 00:43:26,040
Speaker 3: cues the female cicada to respond, so there's less information

744
00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:28,920
Speaker 3: to process. Just tune most of that out focus on

745
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:31,479
Speaker 3: whatever part you need to pay attention to to time

746
00:43:31,560 --> 00:43:35,800
Speaker 3: your response, your clicks and response, which is typically probably

747
00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:38,279
Speaker 3: something about the onset of a pause at the end

748
00:43:38,280 --> 00:43:41,640
Speaker 3: of a song segment. And this was funny because it

749
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:44,799
Speaker 3: made me think about like text message scammers who are

750
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:48,239
Speaker 3: going to possibly ignore basically everything you type to them

751
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:50,400
Speaker 3: and just be looking for a couple of keywords to

752
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:52,759
Speaker 3: advance the scamscript to the next waypoint.

753
00:43:53,200 --> 00:43:58,360
Speaker 2: Hmmm, yeah, I mean often predatory. There you go, efficiency, yeah,

754
00:43:58,640 --> 00:43:59,839
Speaker 2: predatory efficiency.

755
00:44:00,520 --> 00:44:03,200
Speaker 3: But in general, the authors point out that a complex

756
00:44:03,200 --> 00:44:07,600
Speaker 3: adaptation like the kd did has here, it requires multiple parts. Right,

757
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 3: You've got to have sound producing organs, which they do

758
00:44:11,080 --> 00:44:14,760
Speaker 3: in the four wings. You've got to have sound perceiving organs.

759
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:16,719
Speaker 3: You've got to be able to listen so you know

760
00:44:16,960 --> 00:44:19,360
Speaker 3: what to respond to. And you've got to have the

761
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:23,480
Speaker 3: neural processing required to make that match right, to produce

762
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:26,080
Speaker 3: the appropriate sound to match the call you just heard.

763
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:30,000
Speaker 3: And fortunately for the kd DIDs, they already have all

764
00:44:30,040 --> 00:44:34,279
Speaker 3: three capabilities for use in their own mating. Remember that

765
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:37,400
Speaker 3: from earlier they also use sound in their own mating. However,

766
00:44:37,560 --> 00:44:42,319
Speaker 3: there's an interesting complication here, which is that if this

767
00:44:42,520 --> 00:44:47,239
Speaker 3: predatory mimicry of cicada mating duets were based on the

768
00:44:47,239 --> 00:44:50,880
Speaker 3: mating behavior of the predator species, you would expect the

769
00:44:50,960 --> 00:44:54,319
Speaker 3: kd DIDs to also engage in duets, and as far

770
00:44:54,320 --> 00:44:56,760
Speaker 3: as the authors could tell, this was not the case.

771
00:44:56,800 --> 00:45:00,880
Speaker 3: The kd DIDs do not seem to do male female duets. Instead,

772
00:45:00,920 --> 00:45:03,520
Speaker 3: it seems as of the time of this paper that

773
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:07,840
Speaker 3: males generally produce a song which attracts a silent female

774
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 3: to its source. So the male makes a song, the

775
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:13,920
Speaker 3: female comes and finds the male. But the authors acknowledge

776
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:16,560
Speaker 3: that not a lot is known about this katie did species,

777
00:45:16,600 --> 00:45:20,040
Speaker 3: so maybe some information is missing here. And also just

778
00:45:20,080 --> 00:45:22,520
Speaker 3: a reminder that I said there was both an acoustic

779
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:25,520
Speaker 3: and a visual signal that the katie did also does

780
00:45:25,600 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 3: this body jerking behavior which accompanies the mimicry clicks, and

781
00:45:30,239 --> 00:45:33,040
Speaker 3: it does not seem to be physically necessary to make

782
00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:36,840
Speaker 3: the click sound, so it's probably also a mimic behavior

783
00:45:37,120 --> 00:45:39,840
Speaker 3: in this case to kind of look like a female

784
00:45:39,880 --> 00:45:42,920
Speaker 3: cicada flicking its wings between the leaves, so the male's like,

785
00:45:42,960 --> 00:45:44,360
Speaker 3: oh yeah, I see it right up there, and the

786
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:46,680
Speaker 3: male's crawling up and then it gets.

787
00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:49,600
Speaker 2: Eaten fascinating it, I mean as lines up with the

788
00:45:49,600 --> 00:45:52,440
Speaker 2: basic siren script right absolutely.

789
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:54,960
Speaker 3: But in fact, to come back to the Odyssey, one

790
00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:57,680
Speaker 3: thing we see in the Odyssey is that the prey

791
00:45:57,800 --> 00:46:01,520
Speaker 3: of the sirens, at least one one member of the

792
00:46:01,560 --> 00:46:07,040
Speaker 3: sirens prey has a clever workaround a way of avoiding

793
00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:12,200
Speaker 3: the sirens song by plugging the ears of the men

794
00:46:12,320 --> 00:46:15,000
Speaker 3: rowing the ship and by lashing himself to the mast

795
00:46:15,160 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 3: so that the sirens wouldn't get him. This is what

796
00:46:17,440 --> 00:46:20,440
Speaker 3: Odysseus does, and you could see that as the beginning

797
00:46:20,480 --> 00:46:24,600
Speaker 3: of a possible arms race in adaptations between sailors and sirens.

798
00:46:24,960 --> 00:46:27,760
Speaker 3: And in fact there may be a fairly complex predator

799
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:31,640
Speaker 3: prey arms race in evolution between these cicadas and the

800
00:46:31,719 --> 00:46:34,839
Speaker 3: katie DIDs. So here to read from the paper the

801
00:46:34,880 --> 00:46:39,560
Speaker 3: author's write quote. Even though Cobonga ox lay, the species

802
00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:44,600
Speaker 3: we observed being attracted by Chlorobelius luco viridus, has a

803
00:46:44,680 --> 00:46:49,080
Speaker 3: structurally obvious song cue and an easily timed repetitive rhythm,

804
00:46:49,400 --> 00:46:52,759
Speaker 3: we have found this species to be extremely resistant to

805
00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:57,040
Speaker 3: our artificial signals. Poorly timed finger snaps cause males of

806
00:46:57,080 --> 00:47:00,560
Speaker 3: many species to become wary with k i ox lay

807
00:47:00,600 --> 00:47:06,040
Speaker 3: an especially strong example. Perhaps persistent aggressive mimicry by Chlorobelius

808
00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:11,480
Speaker 3: lucoviritis has selected kox lay males for greater sensitivity to

809
00:47:11,600 --> 00:47:17,160
Speaker 3: the occasional, poorly timed click. This possibility also suggests an

810
00:47:17,200 --> 00:47:21,719
Speaker 3: additional evolutionary route for the cicada prey, the addition of

811
00:47:22,080 --> 00:47:27,440
Speaker 3: false cues that elicit premature katie did replies without queuing

812
00:47:27,560 --> 00:47:32,200
Speaker 3: female cicadas, whose response depends on a particular combination of

813
00:47:32,360 --> 00:47:36,440
Speaker 3: song elements. Long continued selection of this sort might account

814
00:47:36,480 --> 00:47:42,359
Speaker 3: for the extraordinarily complex songs of many Australian cicatatine species

815
00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:46,760
Speaker 3: found in the arid Acacia dominated habitats where see Lucoviritus

816
00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:50,560
Speaker 3: is most common. So that's very interesting. We may have

817
00:47:50,640 --> 00:47:55,640
Speaker 3: some cicada odysseuses on hand who have evolved a defensive

818
00:47:55,680 --> 00:47:59,879
Speaker 3: reaction to this type of predatory mimicry by, for one thing,

819
00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:05,879
Speaker 3: throwing out some decoy sound signals that are not going

820
00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:08,799
Speaker 3: to get females of its own species responding. But if

821
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:11,680
Speaker 3: you do hear clicks in response to them, that's something

822
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:14,160
Speaker 3: to be afraid of. Lets you know there's a monster

823
00:48:14,239 --> 00:48:20,320
Speaker 3: nearby and then also perhaps by being more sensitive to

824
00:48:20,840 --> 00:48:23,960
Speaker 3: incorrect timing on the response clicks in the duet.

825
00:48:24,719 --> 00:48:28,160
Speaker 2: Interesting. Interesting, So yeah, so their use of the song

826
00:48:28,520 --> 00:48:31,920
Speaker 2: become becomes more nuanced in a way, in a way

827
00:48:31,920 --> 00:48:37,400
Speaker 2: to outwit these pretenders. Yeah, I mean one is tempted

828
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:44,560
Speaker 2: to make various comparisons, to say, conversations between humans, perhaps

829
00:48:44,800 --> 00:48:47,200
Speaker 2: in a dating scenario, you know, like a first date

830
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:51,360
Speaker 2: where one might throw out, hey, you know, did you

831
00:48:51,360 --> 00:48:54,080
Speaker 2: see such and such movie? And I thought it was

832
00:48:54,080 --> 00:48:55,919
Speaker 2: pretty good and they're like, yeah, it's great. Well, then

833
00:48:56,080 --> 00:49:00,479
Speaker 2: you know that's a red flag fill in your own example. Well, sorry,

834
00:49:00,520 --> 00:49:01,920
Speaker 2: I'm a little slow today. I can't come up with

835
00:49:01,960 --> 00:49:04,839
Speaker 2: a good example that we can all stand behind as

836
00:49:04,880 --> 00:49:06,600
Speaker 2: being the red flag for a first day.

837
00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:10,600
Speaker 3: But I absolutely understand what you're talking about, sort of

838
00:49:10,840 --> 00:49:15,759
Speaker 3: tossing out a sonic conversational bait to draw out the

839
00:49:15,800 --> 00:49:18,200
Speaker 3: attention of anything that you should be avoiding.

840
00:49:18,520 --> 00:49:23,759
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well this is fascinating and again more evidence to

841
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 2: a point that we're always making on the show, and

842
00:49:25,680 --> 00:49:29,840
Speaker 2: that is that anything you find in myth and in

843
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:36,400
Speaker 2: legend and fictional monsters, there is almost always something equally

844
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:37,880
Speaker 2: weird in the natural world.

845
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:41,319
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's you know, through doing a lot of these

846
00:49:41,440 --> 00:49:45,200
Speaker 3: October Monster episodes, I find it varies how close of

847
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:48,080
Speaker 3: a match we can find in the natural world. Sometimes

848
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:50,919
Speaker 3: there's just not something in nature that is a real

849
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:55,239
Speaker 3: tight fit on whatever fictional example we're talking about, But

850
00:49:55,280 --> 00:49:59,759
Speaker 3: there's always something more amazing. Yeah, but this was a

851
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:02,200
Speaker 3: case where I was shocked how close the fit is,

852
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:06,040
Speaker 3: especially with the Odysseus cicadas. To be clear, that's not

853
00:50:06,120 --> 00:50:08,520
Speaker 3: their biological name, that's just what I'm calling him.

854
00:50:08,560 --> 00:50:24,120
Speaker 2: Now, all right, I have one more little curiosity to

855
00:50:24,200 --> 00:50:27,239
Speaker 2: consider here. Take it from the cabinet of curiosity, if

856
00:50:27,239 --> 00:50:32,720
Speaker 2: you will, because it concerns a very learned individual who

857
00:50:33,200 --> 00:50:36,360
Speaker 2: seems to have thought very long and hard on the

858
00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:40,160
Speaker 2: reality of sirens, as well as the reality of some

859
00:50:40,200 --> 00:50:44,839
Speaker 2: other things that I don't think one typically thinks of

860
00:50:44,880 --> 00:50:48,839
Speaker 2: as having an objective reality. So I ran across this

861
00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:52,520
Speaker 2: in Literature and Lore of the Sea, edited by Patricia

862
00:50:52,560 --> 00:50:56,839
Speaker 2: Ann Karlson, specifically, in an article titled the Extraordinary being

863
00:50:57,360 --> 00:51:02,120
Speaker 2: Death in the Mermaid and Baroque literature Eileen S. Goodman,

864
00:51:02,640 --> 00:51:05,320
Speaker 2: She points out the seventeenth century German polymath and Jessuit

865
00:51:05,400 --> 00:51:10,080
Speaker 2: scholar Athanasius Kircher, who is sixteen o two through sixteen eighty,

866
00:51:10,120 --> 00:51:13,440
Speaker 2: in one of his natural history volumes, seems to give

867
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:18,200
Speaker 2: serious consideration to not only the objective reality of Noah's Ark,

868
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:21,719
Speaker 2: which isn't completely out of the ordinary. He still see

869
00:51:21,719 --> 00:51:24,760
Speaker 2: that kind of thing going on today, but also spends

870
00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:27,080
Speaker 2: a lot of time trying to figure out where Noah

871
00:51:27,120 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 2: put all of the sirens.

872
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:31,319
Speaker 3: Right next to the unicorns.

873
00:51:31,360 --> 00:51:35,720
Speaker 2: Obviously, well, we'll get to unicorns. He also believed in them.

874
00:51:36,880 --> 00:51:39,319
Speaker 2: I guess brief refresher for those of you who don't

875
00:51:39,320 --> 00:51:43,239
Speaker 2: remember the story of Noah's Ark is this Old Testament

876
00:51:43,360 --> 00:51:46,919
Speaker 2: Book of Genesis tale concerning the Great flood and one

877
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:50,040
Speaker 2: anti Theiluvian patriarch's mission to save all of the world's

878
00:51:50,080 --> 00:51:54,040
Speaker 2: animals from the flood in a great big boat. It's

879
00:51:54,040 --> 00:51:58,240
Speaker 2: one of various great flood myths found throughout the ancient world. Obviously,

880
00:51:58,320 --> 00:52:00,920
Speaker 2: this is not a story that easily endures. Is very close,

881
00:52:01,200 --> 00:52:04,920
Speaker 2: you know, literal scrutiny. When you dig down into the

882
00:52:04,920 --> 00:52:07,799
Speaker 2: two by two details of the endeavor. I think you

883
00:52:07,840 --> 00:52:09,960
Speaker 2: know a lot of us who grew up, you know,

884
00:52:10,000 --> 00:52:11,960
Speaker 2: going to Sunday school class. You reach that point where

885
00:52:12,000 --> 00:52:14,239
Speaker 2: you're like, wait, how does this work? Now? Wait to

886
00:52:14,360 --> 00:52:18,280
Speaker 2: two of each animal, you know, and then various questions arise.

887
00:52:18,680 --> 00:52:21,279
Speaker 2: But Kircher was very into figuring out exactly how all

888
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:26,319
Speaker 2: of this would work, and he, to be clear, seems

889
00:52:26,440 --> 00:52:31,560
Speaker 2: to have believed in the reality of mermaids or sirens

890
00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:36,240
Speaker 2: as well as unicorns, based on some like the tail

891
00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:40,200
Speaker 2: and the bones of a mermaid that were in his museum.

892
00:52:41,080 --> 00:52:43,920
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so he had empirical evidence.

893
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:46,879
Speaker 2: He's like, we have evidence, this is what these were.

894
00:52:46,960 --> 00:52:50,879
Speaker 2: And he describes them as amphibians and stresses that there

895
00:52:50,960 --> 00:52:54,839
Speaker 2: is some controversy as to whether these particular amphibians were

896
00:52:55,040 --> 00:52:58,440
Speaker 2: or were not received into the arc. And I imagine

897
00:52:58,560 --> 00:53:00,839
Speaker 2: some of you might have wondered about this, how did

898
00:53:01,200 --> 00:53:03,960
Speaker 2: what happened to the mermaids? So he explains in his writing,

899
00:53:03,960 --> 00:53:06,960
Speaker 2: well that others have said, well, perhaps they lived on

900
00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:10,880
Speaker 2: the outside of the arc, outside of this great boat,

901
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:15,040
Speaker 2: perhaps in some sort of a nest, something like a

902
00:53:15,160 --> 00:53:16,320
Speaker 2: fixed to the hole.

903
00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:20,239
Speaker 3: I'm finding it a little confusing here because I would

904
00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:23,200
Speaker 3: not normally think that aquatic animals needed to be taken

905
00:53:23,239 --> 00:53:25,839
Speaker 3: onto the arc at all, which I guess is part

906
00:53:25,840 --> 00:53:28,560
Speaker 3: of why he's classifying them as amphibians that like, they

907
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:31,200
Speaker 3: can't live their entire lives in the water. They must

908
00:53:31,200 --> 00:53:33,440
Speaker 3: come to dry surface at some point.

909
00:53:33,880 --> 00:53:38,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there was some disagreement with people asking the

910
00:53:38,520 --> 00:53:40,960
Speaker 2: same questions here. Where did the mermaids or sirens go?

911
00:53:41,520 --> 00:53:43,440
Speaker 2: Some said they stayed in nests on the outside of

912
00:53:43,480 --> 00:53:47,839
Speaker 2: the arc, but Kircher dismisses the idea, stating that this

913
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:50,640
Speaker 2: is a This is a quote translated quote from his work,

914
00:53:50,680 --> 00:53:55,960
Speaker 2: as referenced in that article by Goodman Holy writ is

915
00:53:56,000 --> 00:53:58,759
Speaker 2: in agreement on the matter of the little stalls into

916
00:53:58,760 --> 00:54:01,880
Speaker 2: which the animals were district and it does not teach

917
00:54:02,000 --> 00:54:05,680
Speaker 2: that any existed outside. And I believe he argues against

918
00:54:05,680 --> 00:54:08,359
Speaker 2: the idea that any creature lived outside the ship during

919
00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:14,920
Speaker 2: the cataclysm, like even fish. I mean it, it's I

920
00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:19,359
Speaker 2: have no answer there. It's like, even if you're even

921
00:54:19,400 --> 00:54:22,160
Speaker 2: if I'm going to assume that fish surely get away

922
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:25,280
Speaker 2: with living outside of the arc. I think he's making

923
00:54:25,320 --> 00:54:28,840
Speaker 2: the case that amphibian creatures could not. They would have

924
00:54:28,920 --> 00:54:34,000
Speaker 2: to be aboard the arc. H Okay, So I'm assuming here,

925
00:54:34,040 --> 00:54:36,640
Speaker 2: based on what I'm reading, that Kircher is arguing that

926
00:54:36,680 --> 00:54:41,040
Speaker 2: the sirens would have ridden inside the arc, and I

927
00:54:41,120 --> 00:54:45,040
Speaker 2: have to acknowledge that, yes, that sounds ludicrous to even

928
00:54:45,120 --> 00:54:48,239
Speaker 2: be wondering about that. But I also I don't want

929
00:54:48,239 --> 00:54:52,080
Speaker 2: to give everyone the wrong idea about this man, because

930
00:54:52,120 --> 00:54:54,960
Speaker 2: by all accounts he was. He was a brilliant mind,

931
00:54:55,280 --> 00:54:58,200
Speaker 2: you know, a brilliant man of his time, sometimes described

932
00:54:58,239 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 2: as being the last man to know everything. So this

933
00:55:02,200 --> 00:55:08,400
Speaker 2: is a guy who studied religion, linguistics, geology, medicine. He

934
00:55:09,000 --> 00:55:12,200
Speaker 2: tried to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and claimed that he

935
00:55:12,280 --> 00:55:17,240
Speaker 2: had translated them, but apparently not. He wrote an encyclopedia

936
00:55:17,400 --> 00:55:23,320
Speaker 2: on China. He kept a vundokama, or a cabinet of curiosities,

937
00:55:23,360 --> 00:55:26,440
Speaker 2: and he spent the majority of his career at Roman College.

938
00:55:26,800 --> 00:55:31,400
Speaker 2: He was fascinated by fossils. He made proposals about the

939
00:55:31,400 --> 00:55:35,440
Speaker 2: cause of plague that apparently line up with some of

940
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:39,240
Speaker 2: the actual the actual reality of it. He was intrigued

941
00:55:39,280 --> 00:55:42,680
Speaker 2: by various devices, made little inventions. He was a science

942
00:55:42,719 --> 00:55:46,120
Speaker 2: superstar of his day, even if he's often eclipsed in

943
00:55:46,160 --> 00:55:50,560
Speaker 2: our recollection by such contemporaries as Galileo. And there is

944
00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:52,520
Speaker 2: the fact that he seemed to believe in the existence

945
00:55:52,520 --> 00:55:56,360
Speaker 2: of both mermaids and unicorns based on the evidence in

946
00:55:56,400 --> 00:55:57,080
Speaker 2: his museum.

947
00:55:57,520 --> 00:56:00,279
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, I mean this would be, by no

948
00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:03,440
Speaker 3: means the only example of a truly brilliant mind in

949
00:56:03,560 --> 00:56:07,400
Speaker 3: history who spent a lot of time obsessing over minutia

950
00:56:07,480 --> 00:56:11,160
Speaker 3: based on false premises. Yeah, you know, the all the

951
00:56:11,160 --> 00:56:15,040
Speaker 3: devotion to to alchemy and trying to trying to work

952
00:56:15,080 --> 00:56:17,800
Speaker 3: things out based on the literal interpretation of the Bible

953
00:56:17,880 --> 00:56:18,600
Speaker 3: and things like that.

954
00:56:19,640 --> 00:56:21,520
Speaker 2: So a lot of books have been written about him,

955
00:56:21,560 --> 00:56:25,400
Speaker 2: and I ran across there's actually a review of a

956
00:56:25,480 --> 00:56:29,839
Speaker 2: particular book about him. This was in this case, the

957
00:56:29,880 --> 00:56:33,880
Speaker 2: review was written by the Vatican Observatory's brother, Guy Konsumajno,

958
00:56:34,600 --> 00:56:36,680
Speaker 2: who I had the pleasure to hear speak here in

959
00:56:36,680 --> 00:56:40,000
Speaker 2: Atlanta many years ago. Was not speaking about this. Who

960
00:56:40,000 --> 00:56:45,319
Speaker 2: was speaking, I believe about religion and extraterrestrials, the sort

961
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:49,640
Speaker 2: of like speculative material. But yeah, he wrote this article

962
00:56:49,640 --> 00:56:53,319
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one titled a mishmash of brilliance and absurdity,

963
00:56:53,719 --> 00:56:56,440
Speaker 2: and he stressed that, yeah, there's here's this guy Kirchner,

964
00:56:56,480 --> 00:57:00,000
Speaker 2: who was brilliant, you know, was obsessed with optics, acoustics,

965
00:57:00,239 --> 00:57:03,560
Speaker 2: you name it just like everything that could be learned

966
00:57:03,680 --> 00:57:07,440
Speaker 2: or known about the world. He was all in on it.

967
00:57:07,719 --> 00:57:11,520
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, he wrote three volumes on

968
00:57:11,680 --> 00:57:14,080
Speaker 2: how Noah managed to fit all of the animals and

969
00:57:14,120 --> 00:57:17,440
Speaker 2: their food into the arc, and then also speculates about

970
00:57:17,840 --> 00:57:18,959
Speaker 2: the sirens as well.

971
00:57:19,560 --> 00:57:22,400
Speaker 3: Isaac Newton, one of the most brilliant minds of all time,

972
00:57:22,560 --> 00:57:25,920
Speaker 3: was spent a huge amount of intellectual energy obsessed with

973
00:57:26,080 --> 00:57:30,640
Speaker 3: interpreting his with like his interpretations of Biblical prophecies.

974
00:57:31,840 --> 00:57:37,480
Speaker 2: Kanzemaijno writes quote, Kirchner makes a fascinating contrast in style

975
00:57:37,520 --> 00:57:41,520
Speaker 2: with Galileo. While both were shameless self promoters, Galileo was

976
00:57:41,600 --> 00:57:45,720
Speaker 2: far more rigorous, focused, and polemical in his science. Kirchner's

977
00:57:45,720 --> 00:57:50,520
Speaker 2: theme was simply wonder and delight, reporting marvelous machines and novelties,

978
00:57:50,560 --> 00:57:53,520
Speaker 2: like a seventeenth century version of Ripley's Believe It or Not.

979
00:57:53,880 --> 00:57:56,080
Speaker 3: Well, Far be it from me to find fault there

980
00:57:56,720 --> 00:57:58,880
Speaker 3: in wonder and delight.

981
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:02,240
Speaker 2: I mean, you know it kind of you know, drives

982
00:58:02,240 --> 00:58:04,560
Speaker 2: home that you know. Wonder and delight are great, but

983
00:58:04,800 --> 00:58:07,800
Speaker 2: they too can be kind of a siren song, steering

984
00:58:07,840 --> 00:58:12,040
Speaker 2: you off into I mean in the worst cases, you know,

985
00:58:12,440 --> 00:58:16,040
Speaker 2: misinformation and delusion, but even into maybe just ideas that

986
00:58:16,120 --> 00:58:20,600
Speaker 2: are not ultimately that productive but maybe entertaining. I don't know.

987
00:58:20,680 --> 00:58:24,680
Speaker 2: Did Kirchner's three volumes on Noah's art like hurt anything,

988
00:58:25,160 --> 00:58:28,680
Speaker 2: Did his belief in the physical reality of unicorns and

989
00:58:28,720 --> 00:58:31,080
Speaker 2: mermaids hurt anything? Well? Maybe not, Maybe it's fine.

990
00:58:31,480 --> 00:58:33,640
Speaker 3: I guess it's hard to say about that kind of thing, though,

991
00:58:33,640 --> 00:58:37,280
Speaker 3: I would say in general, it's absolutely the case. I

992
00:58:37,320 --> 00:58:41,160
Speaker 3: think that the estheticization of ideas can in some cases

993
00:58:41,200 --> 00:58:45,280
Speaker 3: have very negative consequences. Appreciating ideas primarily for whether they

994
00:58:45,320 --> 00:58:47,800
Speaker 3: are fun or exciting or how they make you feel,

995
00:58:47,920 --> 00:58:51,400
Speaker 3: with not enough appreciation for testing whether they are true,

996
00:58:51,520 --> 00:58:53,680
Speaker 3: can be in fact quite dangerous.

997
00:58:54,280 --> 00:58:56,640
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, We've We've discussed multiple times in the show

998
00:58:56,760 --> 00:59:02,640
Speaker 2: various hypotheses that you know, sometimes are quite enthralling and

999
00:59:03,200 --> 00:59:07,640
Speaker 2: and even inspiring, but are they the best hypotheses with

1000
00:59:07,720 --> 00:59:11,240
Speaker 2: which to understand the universe? And that's not always the case.

1001
00:59:12,160 --> 00:59:16,040
Speaker 2: And if you just follow what's exciting, then you're, you know,

1002
00:59:16,080 --> 00:59:18,600
Speaker 2: you're in search of with Leonard Nimoy or something, you know,

1003
00:59:18,640 --> 00:59:20,800
Speaker 2: you're you're in the realm of let's just talk about

1004
00:59:20,840 --> 00:59:24,560
Speaker 2: these ideas because they are entertaining and not because they

1005
00:59:24,600 --> 00:59:26,880
Speaker 2: actually explain the world around us.

1006
00:59:27,440 --> 00:59:29,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, though, if we can make a persuasive case, I

1007
00:59:29,880 --> 00:59:33,680
Speaker 3: hope we could convince you that you can put truth

1008
00:59:33,760 --> 00:59:37,160
Speaker 3: testing as the first priority and ideas can still be fun.

1009
00:59:38,040 --> 00:59:41,000
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So you know, don't put wax in your ears.

1010
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:43,000
Speaker 2: Put put put a little Stuff to Blow your Mind

1011
00:59:43,000 --> 00:59:47,080
Speaker 2: in your ears and hopefully that'll help you out. All right,

1012
00:59:47,080 --> 00:59:48,880
Speaker 2: We're gonna go ahead and close up this episode, but

1013
00:59:48,920 --> 00:59:50,960
Speaker 2: we'll remind everyone out there. The Stuff to Blow Your

1014
00:59:50,960 --> 00:59:53,440
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core

1015
00:59:53,440 --> 00:59:56,080
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We do a short form

1016
00:59:56,120 --> 00:59:58,480
Speaker 2: episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays. We set aside most

1017
00:59:58,520 --> 01:00:00,920
Speaker 2: serious concerns to just talk about a we film on

1018
01:00:01,040 --> 01:00:04,000
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. If you listen to us on Apple

1019
01:00:04,040 --> 01:00:07,480
Speaker 2: Podcasts or what have you, make sure you're subscribed to

1020
01:00:07,560 --> 01:00:09,880
Speaker 2: the show. If you haven't reviewed us, give us a

1021
01:00:09,920 --> 01:00:12,240
Speaker 2: nice review. Maybe touch up that old review. I don't know,

1022
01:00:12,520 --> 01:00:14,760
Speaker 2: but you know, the stars help, the nice words help,

1023
01:00:15,320 --> 01:00:18,320
Speaker 2: and likewise, it's the If you're on Instagram, you can

1024
01:00:18,360 --> 01:00:20,920
Speaker 2: follow us. We are stb ym podcast.

1025
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:25,800
Speaker 3: Huge Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1026
01:00:26,080 --> 01:00:27,600
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1027
01:00:27,600 --> 01:00:30,160
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1028
01:00:30,160 --> 01:00:32,280
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1029
01:00:32,440 --> 01:00:35,000
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1030
01:00:35,040 --> 01:00:43,760
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

1031
01:00:43,880 --> 01:00:46,800
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1032
01:00:46,880 --> 01:00:49,680
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app

1033
01:00:49,840 --> 01:01:02,240
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1034
01:01:02,480 --> 01:01:03,840
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