WEBVTT - Mud, Part 2 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.480 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.920 --> 0:00:14.640 Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind? 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:15.640 My name is Robert. 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.439 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:22.800 two of our series on mud. Now. In the last episode, 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:27.320 we talked about some sort of definitional constraints on the 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:30.200 idea of mud, and yes, it is the mud you're 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:34.560 thinking of, as in wet soil, typically composed of small 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:38.720 particles of the silt or clay particle size variety, But 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:42.680 we also talked about mud in the sort of geohistory 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:46.080 of Earth, in the history of how the continents were 0:00:46.479 --> 0:00:51.880 colonized by early plants and animals terrestrial life, and how 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:55.240 the presence of mud was sort of was sort of 0:00:55.360 --> 0:01:00.200 driven by the presence of plants on Earth's continents, and 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:02.600 then how the build up of mud on the continents 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:06.080 from there sort of shaped the way the continents developed. 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:09.920 But before that, we also talked about a passage in 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:14.000 The Fairy Queen, which is a late sixteenth century English 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:18.200 epic poem by the poet Edmund Spencer in which the 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:21.480 author talks about his belief that the mud of the 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:26.160 Nile and maybe just mud in general spawns monsters, and 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:28.360 I knew we were not done with the idea of 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:31.399 monsters that grow out of mud. Surely there's going to 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:33.240 be a lot of that going around. And Rob, I 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:34.760 think you had one as well, didn't you. 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:38.040 Yeah. I actually looked into this a little bit last 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:42.319 year because I worked a mud monster into the script 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:45.320 I wrote for Thirteen Days of Halloween last year, and 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:49.840 I was looking for inspiration regarding mud monsters, and at 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:52.200 least at the time, I didn't find as many as 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:55.120 I thought I would, But I did find one really 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:58.960 interesting one. This one is a yokai from Japanese traditions, 0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:04.320 and it's non is the doughra Tabo. This name means 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:09.160 either mud man or rice paddy man, and this yokai 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:14.040 is generally described and depicted as a humanoid made out 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:17.040 of mud, or at least a torso of a humanoid 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:19.240 made out of mud, emerging from the mud of a 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:23.919 rice patty, grasping with its arms and staring out through 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:27.600 a single eye in its head as it wails at 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:28.000 the night. 0:02:28.600 --> 0:02:31.239 It's brutal looking. It's got a kind of mud skeleton 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:34.040 like you can see the ribs at least. 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:39.640 Yeah, it's a frightening looking yokai, that's for sure. Of course, 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:44.160 frightening in yokai doesn't necessarily mean it's going to try 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:47.680 to kill you. And well that's how it basically breaks 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:50.520 down in this one. I have a really fun yochai 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:54.240 book that my son and I read last year. This 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:59.880 is from Heroko Yoda and Matt Alt titled Yokai Attack. 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:02.320 It's a fun little book. They has some great illustrations, 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:06.080 and they point out that the doughro Tabo is not 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:10.160 generally believed to be dangerous. It cries and frightens those 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:13.280 who encounter it, but that's about it. Some traditions say 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:16.280 that it originated as a man who lost his hard 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:20.920 won farmland and now haunting the rice fields, cries for 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:22.079 its return in the. 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:25.400 Night, wait the return of the fields, like as the 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:27.920 mud monster. He wants to now again be the rightful 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:28.959 owner of the fields. 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:31.120 Yeah, yeah, you know, it's like this was my place 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:33.239 and now you've taken it from me, you know, basic 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:37.840 haunting one oh one. Right. But the authors here also 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:41.360 share that the Doro Tabo's origins go back at least 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:46.000 as far as Sekan Toriyama's famous eighteenth century Yokai book 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:49.040 Tales of Monsters Then and Now, And while it might 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:51.920 be based on pre existing folk tales, they think it's 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:56.960 more likely the creation of Toriyama himself. And yeah, it's 0:03:56.960 --> 0:04:00.440 one of these things where it's the frightenings barid. Here 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:03.600 loses some of its appeal when it seems that it 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:05.640 might have been a little more than the embodiment of 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:08.640 a crude sexual metaphor to stick a pole in the 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:13.720 rice patty. So maybe its origins are less spooky and 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:19.680 more just kind of skeazy. But still, and the thing is, 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:20.800 you can see that too if you look at some 0:04:20.839 --> 0:04:24.080 of these illustrations. I mean, it's the monster's appearance is 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:29.400 vaguely phallic, and the authors point out that Saykan may 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:32.760 have been referencing brothels that were located north of Edo 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:37.040 Castle at the time. But whatever the road to get there, 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:40.160 the result is a pretty cool looking mud monster. 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:43.159 Now, while we're on the topic of the intersection between 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:47.760 mud and monsters, there is a movie example that I 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:50.320 know we have to talk about. It's one not of 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:54.599 a monster made of mud, but of a hero who 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:58.719 must defeat a monster by using mud and your horror 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:00.560 movie geeks out there, I know you you already know 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:04.320 the one we're thinking of. It occurs in the transition 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:07.720 to the third act in the original Predator, the movie 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:11.680 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and basically every other guy with muscles 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:14.479 that you could think of in nineteen eighty seven. So, 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:16.440 I know a lot of you have probably seen this movie, 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:18.200 but just in case you have, ut I'll explain the 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:21.560 setup to the mud scene. So the premise of the 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:24.320 movie is that Arnold Schwarzenegger is leading a group of 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:28.440 private military contractors on a hit for the CIA in 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:32.600 the jungle somewhere in Central America. Unbeknownst to them, they 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:35.840 just happen to be jumping right into the hunting grounds 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:39.720 of an alien from another planet who likes to come 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:43.640 to war zones on Earth to hunt humans for sport. 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:46.440 Yeah, he likes it hot, he likes it violent, and 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:47.320 that's why he's heer. 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:49.520 That's right. And I always took it to mean that 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:53.719 the Predator seeks out war zones because it's like, you know, 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:55.960 the humans aren't going to notice as much that people 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:56.680 are going missing. 0:05:57.000 --> 0:06:01.279 Yeah, there's always a lot of there's already distress there's 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:04.520 already people vanishing. It can get in and do its 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:07.480 thing without having to worry about stirring up the locals 0:06:07.520 --> 0:06:08.120 too much. 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:11.600 Oh but it's also because the predator wants to hunt 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:16.240 like the toughest, like armed humans. Like he's specifically looking 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:21.160 for humans of the Arnold Schwarzenegger with a machine gun variety. Yeah, 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:23.040 so in this movie, the alien has all kinds of 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:27.760 technology that gives the alien an advantage over humans. So, 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:30.720 for example, it can put on a cloaking device that 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:33.720 makes it nearly invisible to the naked eye. But it 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:36.760 also has a huge advantage in that instead of just 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:39.640 seeing the world in the visible spectrum of light like 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:44.119 we do, it sees in infrared, so the body heat 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:47.839 of a living organism really pops out of the background, 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:51.960 making any warm blooded animal easy to track in the forest. 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:54.200 So by the end of the second act of the movie, 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:59.200 this alien has trophy hunted Arnold Schwarzenegger's entire team. Only 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:01.760 Arnold is left, and just when you think he's done for, 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:04.600 he ends up he's running away from the alien. He 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:08.239 ends up crawling on his belly across a muddy river bank, 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:12.320 so that his entire body ends up covered in mud. 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:14.720 And I will note that the mud. I was just 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:16.760 thinking back on the scene, it does appear to have 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:18.840 a lot of clay sized particles. I think that's a 0:07:18.880 --> 0:07:19.840 clay rich mud. 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:22.040 Yeah, it does look look very clay rich. 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:24.920 But anyway, so yeah, Arnold Schwarzenegger ends up total. He's 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:27.800 totally covered in mud. He's lying there on the river 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:31.760 bank waiting for the predator to finish him off, and 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:35.440 to his surprise, suddenly it seems like this alien hunter 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:39.080 can't see him. The mud has made him invisible to 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:42.800 the alien So finally he has an advantage to even 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:46.800 the playing field against this enemy with overwhelming technology, and 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:49.040 sort of that sets up the big conflict in the 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:51.560 third act. It's a great twist. I remember when I 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:53.280 first saw the movie as a kid, I thought it 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:54.360 was genius. 0:07:55.840 --> 0:07:58.920 It's pretty great, and it's been very influential because you 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:02.480 see this either directly referenced in so many films to 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:05.720 come afterwards, or films will find sort of a new 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:10.160 way to do the same thing, Like our hero accidentally 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:14.720 finds some sort of protection from from some sort of 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:19.280 an enemy, or you know, accidentally finds this key strategy 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:21.240 that they can employ against said enemy. 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:24.920 Now, while if I remember correctly, I think nobody in 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.800 the movie actually explains how this works. You're just left 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:30.400 to sort of figure it out for yourself. But the 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:33.319 way it is presumed to work is that by covering 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:37.480 his body in mud, Arnold Schwarzenegger here has masked his 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:40.800 the heat signature of his body because it's now the 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:43.480 mud is the same temperature as the rest of the environment, 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:44.840 so he just blends in. 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:47.720 Yeah, now, this is a scene that's a lot of 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:51.840 fun to dissect, and maybe maybe almost too fun to dissect, 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:53.640 Like you can get a little too wrapped up and 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:55.760 trying to break down whether this will work or not, 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:56.959 and you have to at the end of the day 0:08:57.000 --> 0:08:59.840 remind yourself, well, we need to experience it through the 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:05.400 you know, the cinematic excitement of the scene. But still, 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:09.960 there are a couple of key conversations about this. I 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:11.880 found one that was really interesting that I had not 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:16.080 run across before from a book titled The Sensory Modes 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:20.600 of Animal Rhetorics by Alexy Parrish, and at one point 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:23.280 in the book, Parish examines this scene, and it seems 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:26.160 to have a mostly high opinion of the sequence He 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:29.200 points out that quote, infrared radiation is nearly impossible to 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:31.760 detect through any amount of water, so the wet mud 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:35.720 masks Dutch's heat signature. Dutch is the character that Arnold 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:39.400 plays from the Predator once his high tech mass becomes 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:42.679 damaged in one of the earlier struggles. I think one 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:44.720 of the it's been a while since I've seen Predator 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:47.800 in its entirety, but I think part of it too, 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:51.760 is that the Predator sees an infrared but it has 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:55.080 kind of like a it sees everything in infrared, and 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:57.680 it has some of these technological filters that can throw 0:09:57.760 --> 0:09:59.880 on to sort of refine that a bit. 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:02.880 Yes, and it may it may have lost some of 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:07.120 its capabilities in previous combat. Yeah, I'm not sure. Though. 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:09.480 Now we'll come back to sort of the you know, 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:11.920 the science of this. I should point out though, that 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:15.199 I believe Parish's main interest in this is not really 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:19.280 about like the direct infrared radiation and thermal science of 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:24.199 the scenario, but he's he's more interested on this sort 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:28.400 of this idea of this being an interaction between two 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:34.720 beings with entirely different sensory understandings of the world, and 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:37.400 he likes this example because quote Dutch is able to 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:41.720 think outside his own lived experience and quickly adapt to 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:46.040 an alien way of sensing the world. So humans can't 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:49.880 detect infrared radiation without the aid of technology, and therefore 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:52.280 most of us are just essentially blind to this realm 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:55.440 of senses, the direct experience of it, certainly, but also 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:58.200 perhaps just sort of the idea of it. And you know, 0:10:58.240 --> 0:11:03.800 you throw throw in a very stressful, life threatening situation 0:11:04.040 --> 0:11:06.160 like that depicted in the movie, and you know it 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:07.920 adds his extra layer to it, So it's kind of 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:10.960 neat like that. Ultimately, the quality that Dutch has that 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:14.160 makes him an effective hero in the movie is not 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:16.760 that he has big muscles or he can blow things up. 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:18.839 He can do all of those things, unless those skills 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:22.079 seem to serve him well against other humans. But at 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:24.640 this point in the movie, it is essentially he's essentially 0:11:24.679 --> 0:11:28.199 about to be killed. His only his trick to surviving 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:31.400 is being able to think outside of the human experience 0:11:31.440 --> 0:11:35.480 and realize why, I'm part of its luck too. Obviously 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:37.680 that he just happened to get so muddy, happened to 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:42.800 fall into that water. But then, you know, being swift 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:46.199 enough to realize, Oh, this is what is happening, This 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:47.480 is what has given me the edge. 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:50.000 Yes, but I guess that brings us back to the 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:52.760 question of would something like this work in real life, Like, 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:56.440 I don't know, how would it change your infrared heat 0:11:56.480 --> 0:11:58.400 signature to cover your body in mud? 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:01.320 Well, as I know a number of you out there 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:03.240 are familiar with this already because we have I think 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:06.960 there's a lot of crossover between our listeners and viewers 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:10.240 of the TV show MythBusters. But yeah, there is an 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:15.280 episode of MythBusters that busted this myth. They experimented with 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:19.600 a thermographic camera and they found that it would work, 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:22.520 but would only work for a very brief amount of 0:12:22.520 --> 0:12:25.720 time until the mud heated up from the human body 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:26.800 temperature underneath it. 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:27.680 Hmm. 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:33.120 Okay, And I've seen some other analyzes that line up 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:35.760 with this as well, arguing that okay, it could work, 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.040 but probably not for as long as it seems to 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:43.280 work in the movie. Also based on how relative little 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.320 mud is involved. So I take that to mean if 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:52.000 Arnold aka dots here had just been completely mud monstered himself, 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:55.240 like he didn't even look like Arnold anymore, you could 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:57.559 make a better case for it working, but then it 0:12:57.559 --> 0:12:59.360 would have looked a little silly like. Part of the 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:02.920 peel of the scene too, is that you know, Arnold's 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:06.600 face and muscles are covered with this clay like mud slime. 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:11.160 You can still see the muscles clearly defined, but he 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:13.560 looks like he's sort of covered in gray paint. 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:18.360 Yeah, now, Joe, I think you've seen this as well. 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:22.080 But the twenty twenty two film Prey cleverly adapts this, 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:26.040 having our hero in this movie, instead of covering themselves 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:30.680 with mud, they ingest a traditional medicine that it's described 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:35.839 as it lowers one's body temperature through medicinal means and 0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:39.360 is able to then give the hero the same advantage 0:13:39.400 --> 0:13:40.200 over the predator. 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:41.480 That was a good twist. 0:13:41.920 --> 0:13:44.520 Yeah, now, I guess you could argue that Dutch was 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:47.040 also cooling his body temperature because you know, he first 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:50.199 jumps off a waterfall, I think, into this water. Then 0:13:50.280 --> 0:13:53.520 he gets covered in the mud. But I can't imagine 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:55.680 that this on its own would have been enough to 0:13:55.679 --> 0:13:57.559 make a difference, Like it wouldn't have really low. It's 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:02.280 not like he was jumping into like freezing water down there. However, 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:04.679 this is just occurring to me, Now, if we think 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:07.160 of what we see in Predator as sort of the 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.160 myth that spawned by some sort of an event that 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:14.280 actually happened, I could imagine a situation where Okay, Dutch 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:17.040 is running for his life, jumps into the cold water, 0:14:17.280 --> 0:14:19.520 crawls through the mud, is covered with the mud, but 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:22.400 instead of then having a direct confrontation with the predator, 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:26.880 already has some distance and the predator is not able 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:29.080 to scan him from a distance in this short time 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:31.040 it takes for him to then get the rest of 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:34.320 the way out of range and find a place to hide. 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:38.080 Yeah, or in the real world scenario just has a 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:40.280 much thicker coating of mud, like they didn't have to 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:42.840 be concerned in the real world about making sure you 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:44.680 could still tell it was arnold. 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:47.720 Right, Yeah, But then I guess you're do Like there 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:49.840 are all sorts of complications that arise there too, like 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:53.200 how much mud can you cake on your body without 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:56.440 it slouching off? How can you move with all that 0:14:56.600 --> 0:14:59.880 mud on your body? So there are limitations there as well, 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:02.520 I think if memory serves, and it could be wrong 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:06.160 on this, I think in the MythBusters episode they found 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:09.160 that there were ways to to sort of mask your 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:12.040 your your heat signature, but you had to you know, 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:14.760 use some sort of like a thermal suit to do that. 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:17.600 Well, I was just thinking, if you if you make 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:20.680 it so that you're not giving off a visible heat signature, 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:23.360 wouldn't that just mean you're retaining the heat and therefore 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:24.640 you would get really hot? 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:28.680 Hmm. Well, you know, in this we're getting really into 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:33.040 the more and more into the thermal regulation side of 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:36.800 the whole scenario, which is fortunate because as we venture 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:41.360 into the world of real life animals that often cake 0:15:41.400 --> 0:15:44.560 themselves in mud, wallow and mud and ultimately use mud 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:47.840 for other things, you don't really find animals covering themselves 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:51.160 in mud to mask their the their ir signature. But 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:54.000 we're going to look at several examples here of animals 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:58.720 using mud for various purposes in their lives, and I 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:02.240 think we're going to begin with probably the most notable example, 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:05.800 the most famous example of a mud loving animal. 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:10.200 That's right, So, one family of animals whose relationship with 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:14.040 mud is quite well known is the family Suidy, the 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:19.120 family containing all the animals commonly known as hogs, pigs, porkers, 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:24.040 and swine, most notably to humans, SEUs domesticus, the common 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:29.360 domestic pig now pigs, along with plenty of other animals 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:34.960 like elephants, rhinoceroses, some bovids, et cetera, wallow in mud, 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:40.080 and wallowing is defined as coating the body surface with mud, 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:44.480 often simply by lying in a pit of muddy water, 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:47.680 or even sort of rolling around or wiggling in a 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:50.440 pit of muddy water. But when I thought about it, 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:54.760 I realized I didn't really know why pigs wallow. My 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:57.920 best guess was that it had something to do with temperature, 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.160 but I didn't know. So to answer this question, I 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:04.080 dug up a paper, a paper in an animal behavior 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:09.160 journal exploring exactly the question of why pigs wallow in mud. 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:14.359 So the article was by Mark Braka called Review of 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:18.160 Wallowing in Pigs, Description of the behavior and its motivational 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:21.840 basis in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science from the 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:25.560 year twenty eleven. And there's some interesting motivating context for 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:28.040 this paper, which is that it was really aimed at 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:33.720 informing decisions about animal welfare in a domestic context or 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:37.399 in agriculture, because, of course people keep pigs domestically as 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:41.000 a farm species, and sometimes even as pets, so to 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:45.880 treat them humanely means understanding what their needs are, and 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:49.280 it has been widely observed that pigs wallow in mud 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:52.760 when they can. So is this something that pigs need 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:55.760 to do for their well being? And if so, why 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:58.600 do they need to do it so? The paper consists 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:02.400 of a literature review the existing evidence on why domestic 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:05.399 pigs and related species such as wild boares coat their 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:08.919 bodies in mud. I guess the first question is what 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:11.119 does this actually look like? Well, like, when pigs and 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:15.159 wild pigs and bores wallow, what do they do? Bracket 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:18.359 writes that if a pre existing pool of mud is 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:21.480 not available, pigs will often make their own. They will 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:24.600 like dig to make their own wallow. And the pit 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:28.360 of mud or muddy water where pigs wallow the verb 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:31.159 is called a wallow the noun so it's kind of 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:33.840 like how you shower in the shower. They wallow in 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:37.840 the wallow. When a wallow is available, the pig will 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:42.480 usually begin by rooting, which means repeatedly pushing the snout 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:45.959 in and sort of rooting and digging in the mud, 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:48.200 and then they will enter the mud with the four 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:52.800 body first, headside first and then wiggle and roll around 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:55.439 in the mud, sometimes until much of the body, or 0:18:55.480 --> 0:18:59.000 occasionally even the whole body is covered in mud. Now, 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:01.320 how much of their body they submerge in the mud 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:05.280 has been observed to correlate somewhat with temperature. According to 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:09.200 mcgloon in nineteen ninety nine, when the temperature is above freezing, 0:19:09.720 --> 0:19:13.200 pigs will stand in the cool water. When the temperature 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:16.639 goes up from there, more often they will lie down 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:19.920 with their utters submerged in the water, And when it's 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:23.040 even hotter, they will sometimes like roll around and coat 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:25.840 most or or all even of the of the body 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:28.840 in mud. But more often the parts of the body 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:32.760 they get coated in mud are the sides and the underside. 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:35.399 The author says, if the wallow is deep enough and 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:39.159 the temperature is high enough, sometimes a sow will submerge 0:19:39.240 --> 0:19:42.160 its entire body, so only the head and the snout 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:45.439 is poking out. But on hot days it's normal for 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:49.080 a pig to keep fifty to seventy five percent of 0:19:49.119 --> 0:19:53.320 its body surface covered in mud. Now some observers do 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:57.119 note that pigs will exhibit wallowing behavior even in cold weather. 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:00.080 That'll come back in a bit, but they just they 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:03.479 clearly do it more often in hot weather. Apparently becomes 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:07.560 really prevalent around seventeen to twenty one degrees celsius, which 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:11.240 is about sixty three to seventy degrees fahrenheit. So sometimes 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:14.480 a pig will stand or lie down in the mud 0:20:14.480 --> 0:20:17.280 and just hang out there. Other times the pig will 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:19.359 get in the mud, get a coat of the mud, 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:22.080 and then leave and let it evaporate as the pig 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:25.840 goes about its business, maybe returning later to get another coat. 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:29.680 Pigs are often seen scratching off their coats of dried 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:33.240 mud against a tree or other scratching post type object. 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:36.080 So you might get in the mud, get mud all 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:38.680 over your skin, let the mud dry, and then scratch 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:41.600 against a tree to get the dried mud off. But 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:46.600 what purpose biologically does mud wallowing serve? Well, one of 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:52.280 the most obvious and widely recognized benefits is thermoregulation. As 0:20:52.280 --> 0:20:56.280 we were talking about, wallowing in mud clearly helps pigs 0:20:56.440 --> 0:21:01.000 keep cool. Pigs actually have comparatively little in terms of 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:05.159 internal biological mechanisms for fighting off the heat, especially compared 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:08.880 to some other species. They have fewer sweat glands than humans. 0:21:08.920 --> 0:21:12.040 For instance, and there was a paragraph in this paper 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:15.679 that actually made me feel so much emotion about what 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:18.360 it's like to be a pig, about how hot it 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:21.560 must be to be a pig, especially a domestic pig. 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:24.000 Do you mind if I read this, Rob, Yes, let's 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:28.359 do so. Bracho writes, for several reasons, pigs are prone 0:21:28.400 --> 0:21:32.840 to overheating. Their sweat glands are hardly responsive to elevated temperatures, 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:37.160 subcutaneous fat may result in a relatively high insulation value, 0:21:37.280 --> 0:21:40.960 and their barrel shaped body reduces body surface to body 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:45.720 mass ratio and this reduces heat exchange. In addition, compared 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:49.280 to wild boar, domesticated pigs have shorter snouts and this 0:21:49.359 --> 0:21:53.679 reduces their ability to pant. Furthermore, while domesticated pigs have 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:57.439 sparse hair cover and larger ears, their ears are not 0:21:57.720 --> 0:22:01.000 very mobile and vascularized as in the case of elephants, 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:05.520 and their circulatory system has a limited capacity. Finally, pigs 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:08.440 may be producing considerable amounts of heat e g. Due 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:12.400 to muscular activity and feeding, fighting and play, and very 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:15.840 high production levels, growing up to about one kilogram per 0:22:15.920 --> 0:22:19.560 pig per day, producing up to thirty piglets per sow 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:23.360 per year. So this just sounds like pigs are busy 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:26.359 getting and stayin hot. It is hot to be a pig, 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.600 you need to find ways to cool off. So because 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:33.200 of the convergence of all these limitations and their vulnerability 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:36.879 to heat, pigs have to supplement their basical sort of 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:41.639 internal or anatomical cooling capabilities with behavioral ones. And this 0:22:41.720 --> 0:22:44.520 could in some cases be as simple as reducing your 0:22:44.560 --> 0:22:48.080 movement and seeking out shade when the sun is high, 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:52.200 But it also includes wallowing. So strong is a pig's 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:55.119 desire to wallow that in some cases, if water and 0:22:55.240 --> 0:22:58.400 mud are not available in the pig's environment, they will 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:01.520 lie down against any wets they can find, or even 0:23:01.600 --> 0:23:04.920 lie against their own feces and urine. Pigs really want 0:23:04.960 --> 0:23:08.399 to get their skin wet. But it's interesting to consider 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:12.360 the complexity of how the wallowing works, like it's more 0:23:12.400 --> 0:23:15.600 complex than simply the way we would jump in water, say, 0:23:15.640 --> 0:23:17.720 get in the pool to cool off. We all know 0:23:17.840 --> 0:23:20.080 that it is cooler to be in the pool than 0:23:20.119 --> 0:23:23.080 out of the pool, and studies show this is of 0:23:23.080 --> 0:23:26.040 course true with the puddles of mud and pig habitats, 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:29.320 even if they're in direct sun. But this is not 0:23:29.480 --> 0:23:31.920 just about the time that the pig is physically in 0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:34.760 the mud in the wallow, because if you think of 0:23:34.800 --> 0:23:38.280 the pool analogy, when your skin is wet as you 0:23:38.320 --> 0:23:41.560 slowly dry off, it takes a lot of energy to 0:23:41.720 --> 0:23:45.760 turn the water clinging to your skin into water vapor, 0:23:46.240 --> 0:23:49.280 and that results in a heat transfer from your body 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:52.440 to the water as it makes that costly phase transition 0:23:52.920 --> 0:23:55.760 into vapor. So you can think of why you feel 0:23:55.800 --> 0:23:58.720 cold after you get out of the shower, even if 0:23:58.760 --> 0:24:00.560 the shower water was hot. 0:24:01.200 --> 0:24:04.920 Yeah, this is a great point and with I found 0:24:04.960 --> 0:24:08.760 this with a child. This this period of transition between 0:24:08.760 --> 0:24:11.199 getting out of the swimming pool and going you know, 0:24:11.240 --> 0:24:13.399 back into the house or the room or whatever like 0:24:13.480 --> 0:24:17.600 this is pivotal. Smaller bodies thrown into the mix as well, 0:24:17.840 --> 0:24:20.000 because yeah, they're instantly colder when they get out of 0:24:20.040 --> 0:24:21.760 the pool, but they cannot go back in the pool, 0:24:21.960 --> 0:24:24.080 and you're gonna, i think, maybe have diminishing returns of 0:24:24.119 --> 0:24:27.119 trying to heap back up in the pool. And for 0:24:27.400 --> 0:24:30.960 you know, again a small bodied child, this is gonna 0:24:30.960 --> 0:24:34.040 be an even more dire situation. They need those towels, 0:24:34.040 --> 0:24:37.000 they need to get to a warm shower somewhere as 0:24:37.040 --> 0:24:38.800 they can warm back up right. 0:24:38.880 --> 0:24:41.000 And this is also actually the same principle by which 0:24:41.000 --> 0:24:44.200 sweat cools your body. Water evaporating from the skin makes 0:24:44.240 --> 0:24:48.320 your body cooler. It's a cooling technique. But another thing 0:24:48.359 --> 0:24:50.760 you might know from getting out of the pool is 0:24:50.800 --> 0:24:54.840 that water drips and evaporates off of the skin pretty quickly, 0:24:54.960 --> 0:24:57.879 So once you leave the pool or the shower, whatever 0:24:57.920 --> 0:25:03.080 it is, the cooling potent of evaporation is relatively short lived, 0:25:03.160 --> 0:25:06.520 probably on the order of just minutes under a hot sun. 0:25:07.720 --> 0:25:11.119 I'm reminded of a time I was hiking in a 0:25:11.720 --> 0:25:15.160 Big Bin National Park in Texas under you know, this 0:25:15.200 --> 0:25:18.520 is a desert environment where like the sun is beating 0:25:18.600 --> 0:25:21.959 down and I remember I was very hot. So I 0:25:22.000 --> 0:25:24.720 took like an icy water bottle that I had, and 0:25:24.760 --> 0:25:27.399 I poured the water just all over myself, like on 0:25:27.480 --> 0:25:30.240 my head and down my back. So my shirt was 0:25:30.320 --> 0:25:33.320 soaked in water, and I remember it. So I was like, okay, 0:25:33.359 --> 0:25:35.879 so I'll be good. You know, I'm like wet with 0:25:35.960 --> 0:25:38.679 this icy water, my clothes are wet. I should be 0:25:38.720 --> 0:25:40.640 good for a while. But I don't know how long 0:25:40.680 --> 0:25:43.199 it was, but it felt like within fifteen minutes, I 0:25:43.280 --> 0:25:48.000 was bone dry, So being wet and evaporating helps you 0:25:48.040 --> 0:25:50.840 cool off, but it doesn't last that long. Here's the 0:25:50.840 --> 0:25:55.280 genius of mud wallowing. These these studies unwallowing showed that 0:25:55.359 --> 0:25:58.639 an animal such as a wild pig, coated in mud 0:25:59.080 --> 0:26:02.480 stays wet much longer after getting out of the wallow 0:26:02.640 --> 0:26:06.720 than the same animal coated in water alone. Mud keeps 0:26:06.720 --> 0:26:10.480 you wet longer than water and the mud. Essentially, it 0:26:10.480 --> 0:26:13.879 seems like it helps create a matrix for trapping water 0:26:14.040 --> 0:26:17.760 against the skin, which will still provide the benefits of 0:26:17.800 --> 0:26:21.080 evaporative cooling as it dries. But the mud may take 0:26:21.240 --> 0:26:25.080 hours to fully dry into a crust, while water alone 0:26:25.119 --> 0:26:27.960 is gone in minutes. To read from the study here, 0:26:28.080 --> 0:26:31.200 quote wallowing in mud leaves a coat of mud on 0:26:31.280 --> 0:26:35.600 the pig's lateral and ventral surfaces and limbs. This superficial 0:26:35.680 --> 0:26:40.000 layer of caked mud assists in relieving hyperthermia through evaporation, 0:26:40.440 --> 0:26:44.280 acting as a kind of quote wet suit, helping to 0:26:44.359 --> 0:26:47.240 keep cool in a warm environment. Water in mud on 0:26:47.280 --> 0:26:50.199 the skin of a pig took two hours to evaporate 0:26:50.520 --> 0:26:54.080 compared to fifteen minutes when water alone was used, and 0:26:54.119 --> 0:26:57.600 the evaporation rate was seven hundred to eight hundred grams 0:26:57.640 --> 0:27:01.800 per hour per meter squared. Some mud is more effective 0:27:01.880 --> 0:27:05.919 than clean water in temperature control because mud allows the 0:27:05.960 --> 0:27:10.679 evaporation process to continue for a longer time, so for 0:27:10.920 --> 0:27:14.880 cooling the body in hot conditions, mud is an upgrade 0:27:14.960 --> 0:27:15.919 from clean water. 0:27:16.320 --> 0:27:19.280 All right, that makes sense. Yeah, it's the water just 0:27:19.320 --> 0:27:21.760 flows right off here. The water evaporates, but the mud, 0:27:21.800 --> 0:27:40.880 the mud sticks. 0:27:32.280 --> 0:27:36.399 So Thermoregulation seems to be the most widely accepted explanation 0:27:36.480 --> 0:27:38.600 for why pigs wallow, and the one with the most 0:27:38.600 --> 0:27:41.680 evidence behind it, But there are a ton of other 0:27:41.920 --> 0:27:46.240 possible or partial explanations that have been offered. And one 0:27:46.280 --> 0:27:50.639 reason for this is that there have been observations that 0:27:50.720 --> 0:27:54.720 while pigs wallow less in cold weather, they still wallow some. 0:27:55.600 --> 0:27:57.840 So if they're doing it even when it's like really 0:27:57.960 --> 0:28:02.200 cold outside, it probably we must serve some purpose in addition, 0:28:02.400 --> 0:28:05.280 you know, like some other purpose in addition to just 0:28:05.359 --> 0:28:08.960 avoiding overheating. So what are some of the other explanations 0:28:08.960 --> 0:28:11.320 that have been offered. Well, a number of them have 0:28:11.400 --> 0:28:14.919 to do with various types of grooming in skincare. So 0:28:15.160 --> 0:28:19.320 imagine this pig has ectoparasites, on its skin. It might 0:28:19.359 --> 0:28:22.960 have fleas or lice or ticks or something. The pig 0:28:23.119 --> 0:28:27.760 cannot reach back and pick all these parasites off. Pig is, unfortunately, 0:28:27.880 --> 0:28:32.159 by way of evolution, stuck in barrel mode. But the 0:28:32.160 --> 0:28:35.639 pig can wallow, and by getting in the mud and 0:28:35.760 --> 0:28:39.440 lying in it wiggling around, wiggling around, that may kill 0:28:39.640 --> 0:28:44.120 or dislodge some of those parasites. But then the benefits 0:28:44.160 --> 0:28:46.800 continue even after the pig gets up out of the 0:28:46.880 --> 0:28:50.000 mud and the mud dries into a crust. The pig 0:28:50.040 --> 0:28:54.360 can go scratch its body against posts like trees or 0:28:54.400 --> 0:28:57.600 the pin wall or whatever to remove the mud crust 0:28:57.640 --> 0:29:01.120 and probably remove trapped parasites along with it. 0:29:01.680 --> 0:29:03.040 Oh, I'd never thought about that. 0:29:03.520 --> 0:29:08.280 Yeah, So this has been documented as an anti parasite 0:29:08.280 --> 0:29:12.480 behavior in water buffaloes. It is assumed by many to 0:29:12.640 --> 0:29:17.840 serve the same function in pigs, but there's some countervailing 0:29:17.880 --> 0:29:21.880 evidence that like the author here sites a study from 0:29:21.920 --> 0:29:25.040 two thousand and five that looked for evidence that wallowing 0:29:25.120 --> 0:29:28.000 reduced parasite loads in wild boar and actually did not 0:29:28.120 --> 0:29:31.640 find any correlation. So the picture on that one seems mixed. 0:29:32.200 --> 0:29:35.040 But there's also it's also been proposed that maybe having 0:29:35.040 --> 0:29:39.120 a layer of mud helps protect pigs from biting insects 0:29:39.160 --> 0:29:42.520 like flies and mosquitoes. That would make sense, and furthermore, 0:29:42.640 --> 0:29:47.240 a layer of mud could also help provide protection against sunburn, 0:29:47.400 --> 0:29:51.560 to which domestic pigs are susceptible. Domestic pigs can get sunburned. 0:29:51.640 --> 0:29:55.400 Being relatively hairless and not having a lot of natural 0:29:55.400 --> 0:30:00.560 skin protection against against the sun, they are vulnerable to sunburn. 0:30:00.840 --> 0:30:03.400 Though I was thinking, it's interesting that usually the mud 0:30:03.520 --> 0:30:06.160 ends up on the sides and the underside of the pig, 0:30:06.280 --> 0:30:09.440 more so than on the back of the pig, which 0:30:09.440 --> 0:30:11.920 would be the part that's in the most direct sunlight. 0:30:12.040 --> 0:30:16.320 But I don't know few other possible ideas. Maybe there's 0:30:16.360 --> 0:30:20.120 some kind of health benefit not related to heat. Pigs 0:30:20.160 --> 0:30:23.200 have been observed to wallow more when they are suffering 0:30:23.240 --> 0:30:27.920 from disease, and it's also been hypothesized that pigs wallow 0:30:28.000 --> 0:30:31.800 in order to perhaps disinfect wounds, because mud in some 0:30:31.880 --> 0:30:38.840 cases can have bacteriocytal properties. But this is another hypothesis 0:30:38.880 --> 0:30:42.240 that was not There was found to be no correlation 0:30:42.360 --> 0:30:44.320 in that same two thousand and five study that found 0:30:44.320 --> 0:30:49.000 no correlation with parasites on wild boar. At least there 0:30:49.000 --> 0:30:51.760 are other ideas that maybe it has some relationship to 0:30:51.800 --> 0:30:56.200 sexual behavior, such as scent marking or advertising mate fitness, 0:30:56.640 --> 0:31:00.520 but this also seems uncertain. So I'd say there is 0:31:00.760 --> 0:31:05.640 definitely plays a role in thermoregulation, and the fact that 0:31:05.720 --> 0:31:09.040 pigs also do it when it's very cold makes it 0:31:09.040 --> 0:31:11.960 seem like maybe it may have some other functions as well, 0:31:12.080 --> 0:31:14.240 but we're less certain about what those are. 0:31:14.720 --> 0:31:17.560 This is all fascinating. Yeah, with pigs and mud, I 0:31:17.640 --> 0:31:20.280 just always I kind of just had the loose understanding 0:31:20.280 --> 0:31:22.600 while they're doing it to cool down. But yeah, it 0:31:22.640 --> 0:31:26.240 sounds like it's sounds like there are more dimensions to that, 0:31:26.480 --> 0:31:29.800 And ultimately these additional dimensions cast light on many of 0:31:29.800 --> 0:31:33.320 the various other examples of wallowing and mud behavior that 0:31:33.360 --> 0:31:35.760 you see in animals. You know, and we're certainly not 0:31:35.800 --> 0:31:39.040 going to get into all of these examples today, but 0:31:39.400 --> 0:31:42.320 you can see how a number of these explanations can 0:31:42.400 --> 0:31:45.800 and do line up with these other species. 0:31:45.680 --> 0:31:49.840 Right, So you might you know, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippos, water buffalo, 0:31:50.080 --> 0:31:55.480 other bovids all engage in wallowing behaviors, and to some 0:31:55.640 --> 0:31:59.320 extent they probably share some of the same biological purposes. 0:32:00.360 --> 0:32:02.840 In fact, there was an interesting passage I did want 0:32:02.840 --> 0:32:06.120 to read from this paper about the evolution of wallowing. 0:32:06.280 --> 0:32:10.120 So the author writes, quote wallowing, defined widely as covering 0:32:10.160 --> 0:32:13.120 the body surface with a mud like substance, is common 0:32:13.160 --> 0:32:17.880 in mammals such as cervids, carnivores and primates. Pigs, however, 0:32:17.960 --> 0:32:23.520 prefer to wallow more specifically in mud, mainly for thermoregulatory 0:32:23.600 --> 0:32:27.400 reasons for cooling, and in this respect it resembles mud 0:32:27.440 --> 0:32:33.080 wallowing seen and other large animals giant tortoises, crocodiles, elephant, seals, 0:32:33.440 --> 0:32:37.880 and in particular in the large hairless mega herbivores such 0:32:37.880 --> 0:32:42.600 as elephants, rhinos, bison, and water buffalo. Pigs probably also 0:32:42.720 --> 0:32:48.040 descended from a large ancestor, by contrast to, for example, 0:32:48.240 --> 0:32:52.520 the horse, an odd toed ungulate, whose ancestor, the Eohippus, 0:32:52.760 --> 0:32:57.400 was far smaller than his descendant. So if I get 0:32:57.440 --> 0:33:00.400 what the author is going for here, it's sounds like 0:33:00.400 --> 0:33:05.280 he's suggesting that it's interesting that these species that engage 0:33:05.320 --> 0:33:08.880 in wallowing today tended to be things that had large 0:33:08.960 --> 0:33:12.440 bodied ancestors. Obviously, having a large body means that your 0:33:13.280 --> 0:33:17.000 cooling needs are more acute. And you know, a horse, 0:33:17.040 --> 0:33:19.520 on the other hand, evolves from something with a small 0:33:19.560 --> 0:33:22.680 body that has less acute cooling needs. 0:33:23.080 --> 0:33:27.479 That's fascinating. And yeah, the Galapagos tortoise in particular, they 0:33:27.480 --> 0:33:30.880 mentioned the giant tortoises. Yeah, this is a great example. 0:33:31.320 --> 0:33:34.040 I got to I mean, my family and I got 0:33:34.040 --> 0:33:36.760 to go out and see some of these animals in 0:33:36.760 --> 0:33:39.600 the wild. And there was one particular morning where, yeah, 0:33:39.640 --> 0:33:41.880 a lot of the tortoises had not yet emerged from 0:33:41.920 --> 0:33:44.880 their nightly mud. Some were just coming out, but some 0:33:44.960 --> 0:33:49.000 were still just you know, firmly parked in alone in 0:33:49.040 --> 0:33:52.040 this kind of wallow of mud. And it was going 0:33:52.120 --> 0:33:54.080 to be maybe a little bit the morning was gonna 0:33:54.080 --> 0:33:55.880 have to warm up a bit before they started coming 0:33:55.920 --> 0:33:56.600 back out again. 0:33:56.960 --> 0:33:59.840 But of course, the animal uses of mud are by 0:33:59.880 --> 0:34:03.800 no means limited to wallowing and thermoregulation. I mean, in 0:34:03.840 --> 0:34:06.240 a way you can almost think mud is not quite 0:34:06.320 --> 0:34:08.880 like water, but it is close to like water in 0:34:08.920 --> 0:34:11.279 that it is a material and a habitat. 0:34:11.600 --> 0:34:14.480 That's right. And there are various other things that animals 0:34:14.520 --> 0:34:19.520 do with mud that are worth mentioning. Here. One neat 0:34:19.560 --> 0:34:24.319 place to start is geofogy. This is something that's been 0:34:24.400 --> 0:34:27.640 known of an animals since at least the time of Galen, 0:34:28.120 --> 0:34:30.560 and it's been known that, you know, many animals on 0:34:30.560 --> 0:34:35.000 occasion will eat soil or clay or something that might 0:34:35.040 --> 0:34:37.600 be considered mud. This is one of the issues in 0:34:37.760 --> 0:34:41.000 talking about how animals use mud, as we fall back 0:34:41.000 --> 0:34:45.799 into the issue of definitions that we discussed in the 0:34:45.800 --> 0:34:48.800 first episode. What's mud, what's not mud? What is more? 0:34:49.760 --> 0:34:53.600 What would you more consider silt and sand and so forth? 0:34:53.880 --> 0:34:58.640 When does mud become dirt? So all of those questions 0:34:58.680 --> 0:35:01.880 and uncertainties remain in effect, but at least in some 0:35:01.920 --> 0:35:04.759 of these cases, animals would be eating something that you 0:35:04.840 --> 0:35:10.400 might define as mud. There are three main reasons for 0:35:10.600 --> 0:35:12.560 them to do this that are recognized. One is to 0:35:12.640 --> 0:35:19.200 control parasites I believe indo parasites in this regard. Another 0:35:19.320 --> 0:35:22.960 is for mineral contents such as iron, sodium, and magnesium 0:35:23.280 --> 0:35:25.800 something in the mud that they need for their diet. 0:35:26.800 --> 0:35:31.440 Another factor is to help metabolize toxic compounds. You know, 0:35:31.440 --> 0:35:33.400 they are various examples of this in the animal Kingdom, 0:35:33.400 --> 0:35:37.360 where at least during part of a season an animal 0:35:37.360 --> 0:35:40.520 bite might be forced to eat some plants that are 0:35:40.560 --> 0:35:46.239 a little rougher on the gut, and the added mud 0:35:46.360 --> 0:35:48.680 or dirt into the system will help sort of balance 0:35:48.680 --> 0:35:52.080 all of that out. Geophagy also factors into some human 0:35:52.120 --> 0:35:56.879 traditions as well, sometimes as a medicinal practice or other 0:35:56.920 --> 0:36:01.439 times as part of a survival dietary substitution practice. Though 0:36:02.000 --> 0:36:04.719 again we're focusing on mud here, and this ultimately goes 0:36:04.760 --> 0:36:07.160 beyond just mud, So it's a stretch, I think, to 0:36:07.200 --> 0:36:10.120 spend too much time on it, but mud is certainly 0:36:10.160 --> 0:36:14.200 on the table in the animal Kingdom. Now. Another big one, 0:36:14.239 --> 0:36:18.640 of course, is building with mud. Humans, we should note, 0:36:18.640 --> 0:36:21.600 are famous for building with earth and mud is a 0:36:21.600 --> 0:36:23.400 big part of that. And we're going to discuss more 0:36:23.440 --> 0:36:26.520 about humans specifically in the next episode. But of course 0:36:26.520 --> 0:36:29.799 we're not the only animals to make our homes out 0:36:29.800 --> 0:36:34.120 of mud. There are a few key examples to discuss here. 0:36:34.600 --> 0:36:36.640 I think one of the most impressive, though, and one 0:36:36.640 --> 0:36:38.960 that I think a lot of people, if not everyone, 0:36:38.960 --> 0:36:41.880 out there, will have some experience with, is that of 0:36:41.920 --> 0:36:45.320 the mud dauber or the dirt dauber or the mud wasp. 0:36:45.680 --> 0:36:48.000 As a child, I remember really wondering what. 0:36:47.920 --> 0:36:51.360 The word Dauber meant, yeah, yeah, I grew up hearing 0:36:51.400 --> 0:36:53.920 of them as dirt daubers, which is kind of a 0:36:53.960 --> 0:36:57.439 silly name. And also since it's like it's mud, that's 0:36:57.480 --> 0:36:59.279 I mean, ultimately it's mud. But then the mud dries. 0:36:59.320 --> 0:37:02.279 That's another one of the definitional problems here is the 0:37:02.440 --> 0:37:05.880 mud mud only remains mud for a little bit and 0:37:05.920 --> 0:37:09.440 then it becomes like dried mud or dirt and so forth. 0:37:09.920 --> 0:37:12.920 But anyway, yeah, the mud wasp. I'll call the mud 0:37:13.080 --> 0:37:15.080 the mud wasp moving forward because it sounds a little 0:37:15.080 --> 0:37:18.399 more serious. These are various species of I believe, two 0:37:18.440 --> 0:37:23.040 different families of parasitoid wasps. I definitely encounter these a 0:37:23.040 --> 0:37:26.880 lot during my own childhood. The resulting nests kind of 0:37:26.920 --> 0:37:30.560 look like, imagine a like a pan flute composed of 0:37:30.960 --> 0:37:33.319 cylinders that instead of being made out of you know, 0:37:33.360 --> 0:37:36.320 some sort of you know, like metal tubing or bone 0:37:36.360 --> 0:37:38.839 tubing or wooden tubing or what have you. Instead, those 0:37:38.880 --> 0:37:43.479 are made out of cylinders of dried mud. And if, 0:37:43.600 --> 0:37:46.080 when say, cleaning out an old shed or something, you 0:37:46.160 --> 0:37:49.719 happen to break some of these cylinders open, well, there's 0:37:49.760 --> 0:37:52.520 an additional level of surprise you might find that they 0:37:52.560 --> 0:37:57.200 are full of the remains of tiny spiders, because while 0:37:57.239 --> 0:38:02.239 the adults are typically nectar drinkers, the young require the 0:38:02.280 --> 0:38:06.000 meat and the bodies of host organisms in the form 0:38:06.040 --> 0:38:09.640 of spiders, which they cram in these cylinders by the dozen. 0:38:10.200 --> 0:38:13.000 If you've never seen this before, I highly recommend looking 0:38:13.080 --> 0:38:17.840 up some images on your favorite image search system, because 0:38:17.840 --> 0:38:22.320 it's grizzly. These chambers are just filled with the remains 0:38:22.320 --> 0:38:25.160 of spiders because they need to be in there so 0:38:25.239 --> 0:38:29.080 that the young can hatch in or on these spiders 0:38:29.120 --> 0:38:33.080 and then consume their precious meat. Now an interesting wrinkle 0:38:33.239 --> 0:38:37.400 considering mud wasp nests, however, is that, as you may 0:38:37.440 --> 0:38:42.000 have noticed, while they'll naturally build their nests on naturally 0:38:42.000 --> 0:38:46.319 occurring wood or naturally occurring rock conditions, human structures of 0:38:46.400 --> 0:38:51.160 varying styles and materials often offer great environments for them, 0:38:51.440 --> 0:38:54.600 particularly you know, if it's something that's exposed to the 0:38:54.640 --> 0:38:57.960 elements at all, if it's open at all, so barns 0:38:58.400 --> 0:39:03.719 sheds this sort of thing. These are often significantly encrusted 0:39:04.160 --> 0:39:07.520 in mud wasp nests, to the point that someone may 0:39:07.560 --> 0:39:11.520 have to come around eventually and scrape them off. I 0:39:11.560 --> 0:39:13.920 think I've even seen them form on window panes, that 0:39:14.040 --> 0:39:17.680 sort of thing. In some cases, they're even building their 0:39:17.719 --> 0:39:21.719 own mud dwellings on human dwellings or creations that are 0:39:21.719 --> 0:39:23.840 made out of mud or stone or earth of some sort. 0:39:24.200 --> 0:39:26.640 And they've been doing this for a very long time. 0:39:27.239 --> 0:39:30.759 In fact, as pointed out by Finch at All in 0:39:30.800 --> 0:39:35.400 a twenty nineteen paper I was looking at in coordinary geochronology, 0:39:35.960 --> 0:39:39.680 the radiocarbon dating of these nests, when attached to things 0:39:39.760 --> 0:39:43.960 like ancient human rock art and relatively open rock dwellings, 0:39:44.840 --> 0:39:49.439 can be incredibly insightful. So we're talking like late Plustocene 0:39:49.480 --> 0:39:54.680 nests here, which have fossilized. The primary innovator of this 0:39:54.719 --> 0:40:00.840 approach with an Australian geochronologist named Richard Burt Roberts Bird 0:40:00.920 --> 0:40:03.600 being like the nickname you can call him bird apparently, 0:40:04.320 --> 0:40:07.640 and the hope was that given the wide world distribution 0:40:07.760 --> 0:40:10.520 of mud wasps, this would become something of like a 0:40:10.640 --> 0:40:16.320 standard tool for dating, you know, certain sites of archaeological interests. 0:40:16.760 --> 0:40:18.840 I've read some other papers that seem to indicate that 0:40:18.920 --> 0:40:21.920 this didn't quite come to pass. There might actually be 0:40:22.040 --> 0:40:25.200 limited practical value, but it's still pretty interesting and apparently 0:40:25.239 --> 0:40:29.280 maybe in some cases can be incredibly insightful when dating 0:40:29.480 --> 0:40:41.719 something of conditions are just right, all right. So that's 0:40:42.320 --> 0:40:46.319 some added detail on a case of an organism using 0:40:46.440 --> 0:40:48.400 mud that, again I think a lot of us are 0:40:48.400 --> 0:40:52.879 familiar with due to the distribution of mud wasps, and also, 0:40:53.040 --> 0:40:55.720 you know, is a fairly safe thing to encounter as 0:40:55.760 --> 0:40:59.640 a kid. But an example I wasn't familiar with concerns 0:41:00.040 --> 0:41:00.960 fiddler crabs. 0:41:01.600 --> 0:41:04.719 Oh interesting, now, if I recall, fiddler crabs played a 0:41:04.880 --> 0:41:07.680 big role in our series called The Lesser of Two 0:41:07.719 --> 0:41:09.880 Crab Claws about asymmetry and nature. 0:41:10.239 --> 0:41:13.279 Yeah, yeah, and here they are once more or at 0:41:13.360 --> 0:41:18.719 least two species of fiddler crab. Anyway, So I was 0:41:18.760 --> 0:41:21.160 reading about this in a two thousand and three article 0:41:21.200 --> 0:41:25.640 by Christy at All published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 0:41:26.200 --> 0:41:28.680 and they pointed out that you have there are couple 0:41:28.760 --> 0:41:32.520 of key examples of fiddler crabs that do something interesting 0:41:32.840 --> 0:41:35.160 with the materials that they bring out of their burrows. 0:41:35.400 --> 0:41:37.400 So obviously one of the things about digging a burrow 0:41:37.680 --> 0:41:39.120 is you got to bring all that dirt up right. 0:41:39.120 --> 0:41:41.200 It's kind of like in the movie The Great Escape, 0:41:41.200 --> 0:41:42.560 What do you do with all that extra dirt from 0:41:42.600 --> 0:41:45.080 digging the tunnels. You can't just step in one place 0:41:45.400 --> 0:41:48.680 because then the guards will notice. So you've got to 0:41:48.680 --> 0:41:50.440 sneak it around. You've got to put it in the 0:41:50.440 --> 0:41:54.319 cuffs of your pants and secretly deposit it just all 0:41:54.360 --> 0:41:55.080 over the yard. 0:41:55.280 --> 0:41:57.160 Man, how much dirt can you fit in the cuff 0:41:57.160 --> 0:41:58.400 of your pants. 0:41:58.280 --> 0:42:00.279 Well, a little bit at a time, or as much 0:42:00.320 --> 0:42:03.880 as possible at a time to try to avoid detection. 0:42:04.719 --> 0:42:07.160 But you know, the crabs don't have to worry about that. 0:42:07.239 --> 0:42:11.480 So the crabs bring these materials out of the burrow, 0:42:12.080 --> 0:42:16.240 and in a couple of species, you see male fiddler 0:42:16.280 --> 0:42:21.239 crabs essentially to some degree, building something out of it 0:42:21.360 --> 0:42:25.600 next to their burrow. For instance, there's the musical fiddler crab. 0:42:26.000 --> 0:42:30.239 This is Leptusa Musica, and this one will build what 0:42:30.280 --> 0:42:33.000 it's called a sand hood next to the burrow. So 0:42:33.080 --> 0:42:34.840 this is just like I mean, picture kind of like 0:42:34.880 --> 0:42:38.520 a pile of sand. The image that I found of it, 0:42:38.520 --> 0:42:43.960 it looks kind of like a wave though it's kind 0:42:43.960 --> 0:42:46.359 of like a sale made out of piled sand. It's 0:42:46.440 --> 0:42:48.640 roughly the same height as the crab. 0:42:49.040 --> 0:42:51.320 I think of it as sort of a popped collar 0:42:51.440 --> 0:42:53.720 around the neck hole of the burrow entrance. 0:42:54.360 --> 0:42:57.360 Yeah, yeah, I think that's reasonable. Now you would be 0:42:57.360 --> 0:42:59.800 fair and saying, well, that sounds a lot like sand 0:43:00.160 --> 0:43:03.719 significantly less like mud guys. But don't worry. There's another one, 0:43:03.800 --> 0:43:08.880 and this is Bbe's Fiddler Crab. Bbe's Fiddler Crab sometimes 0:43:08.880 --> 0:43:13.920 builds mud pillars next to their burrows, and this seems 0:43:13.960 --> 0:43:18.279 to help them attract females for mating. Now, as the 0:43:18.320 --> 0:43:20.840 authors point out here, this is where it's more interesting 0:43:21.680 --> 0:43:25.520 is apparently females do seem to prefer going over and 0:43:25.560 --> 0:43:30.080 hanging out near males and burrows that have a mud tower, 0:43:30.200 --> 0:43:32.719 or in the case of the musical fiddler Crab, that 0:43:33.600 --> 0:43:37.759 sand hood. They do seem to prefer it, but the 0:43:37.880 --> 0:43:41.440 practice might not have evolved for mate choice. So, in 0:43:41.480 --> 0:43:43.760 other words, a lot of times things like this occur, 0:43:43.800 --> 0:43:46.239 and we talk about it being like a signal of fitness, 0:43:46.360 --> 0:43:48.120 like saying, look, I mean clearly I'm the one to 0:43:48.160 --> 0:43:50.840 mate with because look what I have throught, you know, 0:43:50.920 --> 0:43:52.600 look at this thing that I can Look how much 0:43:52.640 --> 0:43:55.319 sand I can pile up? Right, And that seems to 0:43:55.320 --> 0:43:57.600 be kind of like our basic way of understanding it. 0:43:57.719 --> 0:44:01.040 They argue in this paper that it may serve. These 0:44:01.080 --> 0:44:06.280 may serve as sensory traps providing shelter for crabs, which crabs, 0:44:06.520 --> 0:44:09.680 you know, crave to avoid predators. If you've ever walked 0:44:09.719 --> 0:44:11.799 around on the beach, you know how this works. The 0:44:11.840 --> 0:44:14.560 crab doesn't really want to be moving out in the 0:44:14.600 --> 0:44:19.200 open for long. It prefers to stick to to crevices 0:44:19.280 --> 0:44:22.320 and shadows because they're and of course holes and burrows 0:44:22.360 --> 0:44:25.040 could because there's safety there. And so the idea here 0:44:25.200 --> 0:44:29.360 is that selection pressure emerges out of the increased survivability 0:44:30.000 --> 0:44:34.040 of shade building male fiddler crabs. So the fiddler crabs 0:44:34.120 --> 0:44:37.680 that have have their sand or their mud piled in 0:44:37.760 --> 0:44:40.399 such a way as to allow for a little extra shade, 0:44:40.440 --> 0:44:44.880 a little extra shelter for themselves and for females they 0:44:44.920 --> 0:44:47.520 might be mating with, these are the ones that tend 0:44:47.520 --> 0:44:48.000 to survive. 0:44:49.200 --> 0:44:52.040 Okay, so not just a mate signal, but an actual, 0:44:53.080 --> 0:44:55.439 actually useful for survival. 0:44:55.239 --> 0:44:57.680 Right right, Yeah, And I think they're Their argument, if 0:44:57.719 --> 0:45:00.560 I'm understanding them correctly, is that, yeah, it's it's more 0:45:01.080 --> 0:45:04.680 about that survivability than any kind of signal that they're 0:45:05.600 --> 0:45:08.600 sending out there, any kind of fitness signal, though, I mean, 0:45:08.719 --> 0:45:10.799 just as far as you know. I'm looking at these 0:45:10.800 --> 0:45:13.640 pictures and I think I can't stack sand or mud 0:45:13.680 --> 0:45:15.840 that high where it towers over me. I mean this 0:45:16.000 --> 0:45:18.120 one of the of Bebe's fiddler craft. 0:45:18.200 --> 0:45:20.040 You're thinking I should go mate with that crab. 0:45:21.600 --> 0:45:23.799 Well, no, I mean, I just admire. It's like, could 0:45:23.840 --> 0:45:26.840 I stack mud up in a pillar or a column 0:45:27.000 --> 0:45:29.879 that's twice as tall as I am? No, I would 0:45:29.920 --> 0:45:34.320 be crushed by the mud. Now, other factors are involved, obviously. 0:45:34.040 --> 0:45:38.200 Hats off to the fiddler crab, to the Bebe crab specifically. 0:45:37.800 --> 0:45:41.040 Yeah, all right. Mud, of course, is also a nest 0:45:41.080 --> 0:45:44.920 building ingredient. Various birds collect mud in addition to other 0:45:44.960 --> 0:45:47.640 elements to build their nest. Using the mud is kind 0:45:47.680 --> 0:45:50.560 of a you know, glue or mortar. Swallows are the 0:45:50.600 --> 0:45:54.000 best example of mud use in birds, but various birds 0:45:54.120 --> 0:45:56.960 use mud to some degree. But still, if you haven't 0:45:56.960 --> 0:45:59.680 seen a swallow nest, you should look at one. It 0:45:59.719 --> 0:46:02.799 looks a muddy mess. This is not the bird ness 0:46:02.880 --> 0:46:05.800 that your kindergarten teacher kept in a shoe box to 0:46:05.840 --> 0:46:08.279 show you. 0:46:08.280 --> 0:46:10.560 Now, this one looks like a real disaster if it 0:46:10.560 --> 0:46:11.200 gets wet. 0:46:11.480 --> 0:46:14.080 I should also, of course mention beavers once more. We 0:46:14.120 --> 0:46:17.239 did a series of episodes on beavers not too long ago. 0:46:17.520 --> 0:46:22.279 Beavers obviously also use mud in their constructions, which are 0:46:22.280 --> 0:46:24.360 made out of out of wood and mud for the 0:46:24.400 --> 0:46:29.160 most part. Yeah, but I want to get to the 0:46:29.200 --> 0:46:33.680 best example of a of a mud organism, organism that 0:46:33.760 --> 0:46:37.200 thrives on it and in it, and that is the 0:46:37.320 --> 0:46:41.240 mud skipper. So in the last episode we discussed mud 0:46:41.280 --> 0:46:44.799 as this intermediate environment that likely played a greater role 0:46:44.840 --> 0:46:48.160 in the evolution of land animals than we often consider, right. 0:46:49.080 --> 0:46:51.560 Was one of the things that I mentioned in the 0:46:51.600 --> 0:46:54.279 last episode is like you think of that that illustration, 0:46:54.560 --> 0:46:57.799 that simplistic illustration, and a lot of old science textbooks 0:46:57.800 --> 0:47:01.480 of the the of mortal organisms coming out of the 0:47:01.520 --> 0:47:04.640 water and taking the land, and it's generally, you know, 0:47:04.640 --> 0:47:07.200 it looks like it's at at your local park, or 0:47:07.239 --> 0:47:09.120 it looks like maybe it's at the beach or something. 0:47:10.000 --> 0:47:12.000 You know. I often think of also if that Treehouse 0:47:12.040 --> 0:47:14.360 with Horror episode where the creature crawls out of the 0:47:14.360 --> 0:47:16.960 water and Homer Simpson sets on it or steps on it, 0:47:16.960 --> 0:47:17.799 africat which one it. 0:47:17.840 --> 0:47:21.200 Is, I'm thinking of a fish with human feet like that, 0:47:21.600 --> 0:47:23.640 like Julius Caesar's horse in that drawing. 0:47:24.360 --> 0:47:27.839 Yeah, but like we discussed like these kind of these 0:47:28.000 --> 0:47:32.240 these muddy environments, muddy waters and muddy shores and mud flats, 0:47:32.239 --> 0:47:34.560 they were. They were probably a lot more important than 0:47:34.600 --> 0:47:38.359 we often give them credit. And even today, when you 0:47:38.440 --> 0:47:42.600 consider the mud flats found in coastal wetlands around the world, 0:47:43.120 --> 0:47:47.839 you'll find vital ecosystems that are home to various specialized organisms. 0:47:48.480 --> 0:47:52.319 And yeah, the mud skipper is a mud specialist. You 0:47:52.400 --> 0:47:55.440 may like to go mudding, but the mud skipper lives 0:47:55.440 --> 0:47:58.040 in the mud. This is the mud skipper's world. 0:47:58.160 --> 0:47:59.279 You're in my world now. 0:47:59.400 --> 0:48:03.120 Yeah. So there are twenty three extended species of mud skipper. 0:48:03.800 --> 0:48:07.520 They're members of the vast Gabba dat family. More than 0:48:07.600 --> 0:48:10.520 two thousand species and more than two hundred genera, though 0:48:10.600 --> 0:48:12.720 I've seen that count lower as well, but it's still 0:48:13.000 --> 0:48:16.040 a lot. There are a lot of Gobi's in the world, 0:48:17.000 --> 0:48:20.000 but Gobi's, you know what I'm talking about. Most of 0:48:20.040 --> 0:48:23.120 you probably do. Gobi's. They have kind of a telltale 0:48:23.160 --> 0:48:28.200 look right their heads, their overall morphology they look like Gobi's. 0:48:28.200 --> 0:48:30.520 There's kind of I don't know how else to explain it. 0:48:30.719 --> 0:48:32.720 They all kind of look like they're saying, hey, guys, 0:48:32.719 --> 0:48:36.000 what's going on exactly? Yeah, there's a I think there's 0:48:36.040 --> 0:48:40.480 some gobies on SpongeBob like. They're very Spongebobby in their appearance. Now, 0:48:40.480 --> 0:48:43.919 they're fifteen genera of air breathing gobi's. But the mud 0:48:43.920 --> 0:48:47.640 skippers here in particular, belong to the genus Periophthalmus, and 0:48:47.840 --> 0:48:51.000 they have several defining features of note here that aid 0:48:51.120 --> 0:48:54.879 them in their their their muddy habitat. So, first of all, 0:48:54.920 --> 0:48:58.480 they have fused pelvic fins which form a disc shaped 0:48:58.520 --> 0:49:01.920 sucker which them by allowing them to sort of attach 0:49:02.000 --> 0:49:06.360 to surfaces. They can use these to aid themselves in 0:49:06.600 --> 0:49:11.600 climbing rocks and even trees. Namely, now we're talking about 0:49:11.640 --> 0:49:14.320 mangroves here, but we're talking about their roots, their trunks, 0:49:14.360 --> 0:49:18.880 their lower branches. So definitely a case of a fish 0:49:18.920 --> 0:49:19.880 that can climb a tree. 0:49:20.080 --> 0:49:21.000 Wouldn't have thought that. 0:49:21.440 --> 0:49:23.239 But of course, this is not the only gobi that 0:49:23.320 --> 0:49:26.640 excels at climbing. There's also a gobi that you will 0:49:26.640 --> 0:49:30.120 find in Hawaii if you visit certain waterfalls that I 0:49:30.120 --> 0:49:31.680 don't know if you'll get to see one. I didn't 0:49:31.680 --> 0:49:33.200 get to see one, but I mean you can you 0:49:33.280 --> 0:49:36.439 know they're there, or they're there sometimes there. These are 0:49:36.560 --> 0:49:42.960 the Oapu Nopili or Stimpson's Gobi, and these little guys 0:49:43.040 --> 0:49:45.600 scale the vertical cliffs of waterfalls. 0:49:46.080 --> 0:49:46.480 Wow. 0:49:46.880 --> 0:49:50.000 Yeah, you may have seen some videos, some documentary footage 0:49:50.120 --> 0:49:52.920 about these these creatures because they're they're amazing and it's 0:49:52.920 --> 0:49:55.160 an amazing journey, especially for something so small. 0:49:55.520 --> 0:49:57.600 You know, I knew about flying fish. I don't know why. 0:49:57.600 --> 0:50:00.800 I'm more impressed by climbing fish. I'm up trees and 0:50:01.160 --> 0:50:03.800 cliffs than i am with flying fish. 0:50:03.960 --> 0:50:06.160 So the coming back to the mud skipper though, Yeah, 0:50:06.160 --> 0:50:09.879 they have specialized morphology for semi aquatic living on these 0:50:09.960 --> 0:50:13.239 mud flats. They can breathe air through their skin and 0:50:13.320 --> 0:50:16.840 the lining of their mouth the only while wet. You 0:50:16.960 --> 0:50:18.920 often see images of them and footage of them with 0:50:18.960 --> 0:50:22.480 them with their mouths opening and so forth. They also 0:50:22.520 --> 0:50:27.200 do this as part of like a defensive display between males. 0:50:27.480 --> 0:50:30.480 It's a lot of great footage of that of these 0:50:30.520 --> 0:50:34.120 males combating each other and having standoffs on the mud. 0:50:35.440 --> 0:50:39.560 They are excellent soft sediment burrowers as well. They're great 0:50:39.560 --> 0:50:41.960 at burrowing in the mud. This is key to their 0:50:41.960 --> 0:50:44.160 egg laying. They build these burrows, they lay their eggs 0:50:44.200 --> 0:50:47.799 in the mud. Also, this is how they avoid predators. 0:50:48.040 --> 0:50:51.160 They jump down those burrows get out of sight of 0:50:51.200 --> 0:50:53.719 anything that's trying to eat them. And they also use 0:50:53.800 --> 0:50:57.760 these for thermoregulation as well. They also work to maintain 0:50:57.920 --> 0:51:01.560 an air pocket inside the burrow for prolonged stays in 0:51:01.640 --> 0:51:05.680 low oxygen environments. And you might wonder, too, well, how 0:51:05.680 --> 0:51:07.279 do they bring the mud back up? While they bring 0:51:07.280 --> 0:51:10.040 it up in their mouths, They bring big mouthfuls and 0:51:10.080 --> 0:51:14.520 they spit out these mud balls beside the burrow. Joe 0:51:14.520 --> 0:51:17.960 I included an image of a mud skipper spitting mud 0:51:18.880 --> 0:51:22.000 sort of a ball. It's not as cartoon cartoonally ball 0:51:22.160 --> 0:51:24.600 like as you might imagine, but here's a mud skipper 0:51:24.960 --> 0:51:25.720 spit and mud. 0:51:26.000 --> 0:51:28.120 So this is the equivalent of you're digging a hole 0:51:28.160 --> 0:51:30.720 in the ground with the shovel, you're throwing the mud, 0:51:30.840 --> 0:51:33.480 or not the mud, the dirt over your shoulder. Here 0:51:33.600 --> 0:51:36.719 it is digging in this wet mud, a sort of 0:51:36.760 --> 0:51:40.480 tunnel in the mud, and it is spitting out the 0:51:40.680 --> 0:51:42.760 excess that's being voided from the cavity. 0:51:42.800 --> 0:51:47.000 It's making exactly. Yeah. The other interesting thing about them, 0:51:47.000 --> 0:51:50.400 like their morphology positions, their eyes atop their head. They 0:51:50.400 --> 0:51:53.719 have these big eyes that you might not catch what 0:51:53.760 --> 0:51:56.680 it is. It's amazing about them when you're watching them. 0:51:56.719 --> 0:51:59.000 That makes them somehow more relatable and more human like. 0:51:59.080 --> 0:52:01.560 And part of that is is that they blink. Uh, 0:52:01.760 --> 0:52:05.399 they've and they evolved this independently of terrestrial tetrapods. 0:52:05.840 --> 0:52:08.440 Well, I said this about Gobi's earlier in general, but 0:52:08.560 --> 0:52:13.040 the yeah, the mud skippers do seem relatable in a 0:52:13.080 --> 0:52:14.520 way that a lot of fish don't. 0:52:15.360 --> 0:52:19.000 Yeah, and they're just yeah, they're they're crawling around on 0:52:19.120 --> 0:52:23.239 the mud flats. They're engaging in these standoffs with each other. 0:52:23.560 --> 0:52:25.520 And I think the other part is like, unlike a 0:52:25.520 --> 0:52:28.680 fish in the water, of course, in this case, they 0:52:28.680 --> 0:52:33.200 are also interacting, you know, on on a surface. They're 0:52:33.320 --> 0:52:36.880 they're they're out of that three d uh marine environment 0:52:37.080 --> 0:52:39.959 and here they are on the mud behaving as these 0:52:40.239 --> 0:52:43.520 strange creatures that that you know, that almost feel very 0:52:43.560 --> 0:52:46.840 alien compared to anything else because they're they're they're not 0:52:47.280 --> 0:52:49.719 exactly like anything in the water, and they're not like 0:52:49.760 --> 0:52:52.440 anything on the land. Uh, They're they're totally doing their 0:52:52.480 --> 0:52:56.640 own thing, and they're doing it in this strange, like muddy, 0:52:57.080 --> 0:52:58.480 kind of slimy environment. 0:52:58.840 --> 0:53:01.200 I mean, I guess they look like a cross between 0:53:01.600 --> 0:53:06.240 fish and frogs, which makes sense because they are amphibious fish. 0:53:06.440 --> 0:53:09.560 Yeah. I want to say, it's BBC's Life, one of 0:53:09.600 --> 0:53:13.560 the David Attenboroughs that has some tremendous footage of these 0:53:13.600 --> 0:53:16.279 guys going about their business. And I think they even 0:53:16.360 --> 0:53:19.360 used to they put a camera down in one of 0:53:19.360 --> 0:53:22.520 their burrows so you can see how that's going. Some 0:53:22.800 --> 0:53:26.359 really remarkable footage that's from probably at least ten years 0:53:26.360 --> 0:53:28.200 old now, but it's out there. 0:53:28.800 --> 0:53:29.840 See how it's going. 0:53:30.640 --> 0:53:33.279 Yeah, it's going. It's going great down there. 0:53:33.480 --> 0:53:35.480 Now we're the ones saying, hey, guys, what's up? 0:53:35.719 --> 0:53:37.360 Yeah? All right? 0:53:37.360 --> 0:53:38.759 Should we call it there for part two? 0:53:39.120 --> 0:53:40.560 Yeah? I think so. I mean, I think that's a 0:53:40.600 --> 0:53:43.319 good overview of some of the ways that animals use mud, 0:53:43.440 --> 0:53:47.000 like most of the major categories of mud use and 0:53:47.120 --> 0:53:51.680 some of the more exciting and notable cases. I'm sure 0:53:51.719 --> 0:53:54.040 we left off some interesting ones. So if there's one 0:53:54.040 --> 0:53:56.200 that you really love, just right in let us know. 0:53:56.360 --> 0:53:59.680 We'll highlight it, perhaps in a future episode of Listener. Mail, 0:54:00.680 --> 0:54:05.200 because yeah, it's the realm of mud. Is this world 0:54:05.200 --> 0:54:07.000 that is easy. It's easy for us to take it 0:54:06.800 --> 0:54:10.239 for granted and not realize just how versatile it is 0:54:10.280 --> 0:54:13.799 and how essential it is for various organisms. So we're 0:54:13.840 --> 0:54:16.800 going to have at least one more episode regarding mud 0:54:16.880 --> 0:54:18.800 this Thursday. Tune in for that. This is going to 0:54:18.840 --> 0:54:20.160 be the one where we're going to come back and 0:54:20.280 --> 0:54:22.520 discuss mud and warfare a little bit, but we're also 0:54:22.560 --> 0:54:24.680 going to discuss the importance of mud as a human 0:54:24.719 --> 0:54:28.480 construction material or the creation of mud bricks and so forth. 0:54:28.960 --> 0:54:30.640 In the meantime, if you would like to listen to 0:54:30.640 --> 0:54:32.359 other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you will 0:54:32.360 --> 0:54:34.200 find them in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast 0:54:34.280 --> 0:54:38.160 feed We have our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 0:54:38.239 --> 0:54:40.839 listener Mail on Monday, short Form Artifact or Monster Fact 0:54:40.840 --> 0:54:42.880 on Wednesday, and on Fridays, we set aside most series 0:54:42.880 --> 0:54:45.680 concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird 0:54:45.680 --> 0:54:46.360 House Cinema. 0:54:46.760 --> 0:54:50.640 Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. 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