Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature, feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show, we're talking about deep sea legs,
Speaker 1: some of the weirdest appendages in the deep sea, from
Speaker 1: the legs that do everything from walking to breathing to
Speaker 1: three D printed worms. Discover this and more as we
Speaker 1: answer the angel question, do those legs go all the
Speaker 1: way up? Yes, yes they do. Joining me is friend
Speaker 1: of the show, producer host of the podcast Rough Stuff
Speaker 1: as well as shooting threes, Bridget Greenberg.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Hey, thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: So good to have you back where I'm back from
Speaker 1: summer summer break and we're going right directly into the
Speaker 1: yourdest parts of the ocean, back into the sea from
Speaker 1: whence we came back from whence we came into that
Speaker 1: soup of life. Yeah, find out what we've been swimming
Speaker 1: in all summer. Yeah, so it's it's definitely a weird one.
Speaker 1: We start out with deep sea spiders, are you, oh boy,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen these little critters? They're not I
Speaker 1: would not say they're cute exactly.
Speaker 3: I don't oh, God, Yeah, they look like aliens.
Speaker 2: From Aliens, they do look.
Speaker 1: Like face huggers. They got that nice sort of jointed
Speaker 1: legs that seemed like they would attach well onto your face.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I can't say I've seen these guys. I
Speaker 3: I knew we were going to get some creepy guys
Speaker 3: in this one. Well, it's that's That's kind of the point.
Speaker 1: Deep sea it gets pretty weird. Most of the ocean
Speaker 1: is weird, but like the deeper get usually weirder. You
Speaker 1: get so. Sea spiders are not arachnids, so they're not
Speaker 1: splant the same land spider. They're not spiders, but they
Speaker 1: are related to spiders. They're related to spiders, scorpions, mites,
Speaker 1: and actually horseshoe crabs as well. They're all members of
Speaker 1: the subphylum Chilliserata, which you know.
Speaker 2: I love that band.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cellis Serata, what a wonderful phrase. The strangest thing
Speaker 1: about them is that they are all legs. They do
Speaker 1: not really have a true abdomen. Oh, they just kind
Speaker 1: of have a simple juncture point at which all the
Speaker 1: legs connect. They they do typically have like a proboscis
Speaker 1: maybe some chillisserra, those like little mouth parts. But yeah,
Speaker 1: in terms of an actual like abdomen with room in
Speaker 1: it for there to be organs, there's not a lot
Speaker 1: going on there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they are just legs. I yeah, I just saw
Speaker 3: a picture of its center and it's just like all
Speaker 3: the joints mashed together at some point.
Speaker 1: Pretty much. It's it's it's it's very strange. And there's
Speaker 1: a wide variety of the many, many mini species of
Speaker 1: sea spiders. The smallest species are just a few millimeters
Speaker 1: in diameter, whereas the largest, uh Colasendais colossalia, has a
Speaker 1: leg span over two feet long. So you know, it
Speaker 1: could could wrap around your head. It probably won't, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it probably won't, but it could. So that's fun to
Speaker 1: think about.
Speaker 2: How Yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Feel like, well, how how how deep down are these guys?
Speaker 1: I mean they're found it's still they're all yeah, probably not.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think they are generally interested in
Speaker 1: human beings. They don't attack humans or any large animals there.
Speaker 1: They are carnivored, but all their prey is soft bodied
Speaker 1: sea animals like sea and enemies. They're actually not considered
Speaker 1: predators because they rarely kill their victims. They generally stick
Speaker 1: their proboscis in suck out some of the juices from
Speaker 1: say like a cea an enemy and then move on.
Speaker 1: And the cea an enemy rarely ever dies from the attacks,
Speaker 1: so they're actually considered parasites more than they're considered predators.
Speaker 2: But like friendly little guys, they're not trying to hurt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they just need they need to get that bag
Speaker 1: of an enemy soup.
Speaker 2: Yum mmmm, that's yeah.
Speaker 3: The so there's just like a whole somewhere where all
Speaker 3: the business is done and the rest.
Speaker 1: Is leg Yeah. So yeah, they have like a proboscis
Speaker 1: that can suck stuff in, but where like the problem is,
Speaker 1: they don't really have much of an abdomen. So where
Speaker 1: do all the organs go?
Speaker 2: Because you got where's the spider?
Speaker 1: They gotta have organs? Well, uh, let's uh, let's talk
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: It turns out that basically their legs do everything. They
Speaker 1: house their organs. They do a bunch of stuff in
Speaker 1: addition to you know, walking. Uh, they are responsible for
Speaker 1: all the other things that the spider, the sea spider
Speaker 1: can do.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the Nati sea spider, which it's naughty
Speaker 1: as in knotted like a like a Sailorman's.
Speaker 2: Not naughty sea spider.
Speaker 1: Naughty not naughty as in like not on Santa's list,
Speaker 1: sea spider, the spiders, and bad These are Nazi sea
Speaker 1: spiders as Yeah. They're also known as uh pic no
Speaker 1: ganem literally so uh as the name suggests. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: limbs look kind of like you took some sort of
Speaker 1: off white rope and just tied a bunch of outs
Speaker 1: in it. Uh. But yeah, they they have they have
Speaker 1: those legs they got they got eight of them. They
Speaker 1: kind of look like an alien spider made out of
Speaker 1: white bindie straws. So uh. They are the tail tail
Speaker 1: of a rat king, but it's just tail. That's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably like they're they're kind of preboscous area. Actually
Speaker 1: it might not be. That might be there, and I'm
Speaker 1: get a little turned around with these guys.
Speaker 2: It's hard to tell.
Speaker 1: It's a little hard to tell, but yeah.
Speaker 2: Mostly legs.
Speaker 1: It's mostly legs. They're very confusing looking. But researchers at
Speaker 1: the University of Wisconsin Madison, in conjunction with the University
Speaker 1: of Vienna, looked into the naughty sea spider to explore
Speaker 1: a question, why do see spiders keep all their organs
Speaker 1: in their legs rather than in an abdomen. So the
Speaker 1: researchers found that the sea spiders are missing a key
Speaker 1: hawks gene. So hawks genes are a group of genes
Speaker 1: that control body development, and so this missing gene is
Speaker 1: one that would normally control abdominal growth. And they just
Speaker 1: don't have it, don't need it. They simply don't do it,
Speaker 1: don't it, don't need it, don't want to donat it.
Speaker 1: For some reason, it seems that the gene controlling abdominal
Speaker 1: development was deleted in an ancestor of the sea spiders,
Speaker 1: and they ended up compensating by storing all their organs
Speaker 1: in their legs. And they truly use their legs for everything.
Speaker 1: They walk with them. They breathe through their legs.
Speaker 2: I don't know why that got me.
Speaker 1: Well, it gets worse. Females eject eggs out of their
Speaker 1: legs ah, and males will fertilize the eggs and then
Speaker 1: attach them to special baskets on his legs until they hatch.
Speaker 2: Oh, which is nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah you got the men spiders have pockets.
Speaker 1: Too, Yeah, exactly, I mean the man sea spiders do
Speaker 1: a lot of the child care there by carrying around
Speaker 1: the fertilized eggs, so you know, stay at home dads.
Speaker 2: And they're convenient pants pockets exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like cargo shorts, but eight legs of those and yeah,
Speaker 1: and you breathe an excrete out of them. So it's nice,
Speaker 1: an elegant solution to not having Yeah. The funny thing
Speaker 1: is that even though they have found sort of the
Speaker 1: genetic uh blueplant print for why they don't have an abdomen,
Speaker 1: they don't really know why this happened. It just seemed
Speaker 1: to potentially have been a little bit of an oopsy
Speaker 1: goofa mups and then the sea spiders just rolled with it.
Speaker 1: It's like, actually, we don't really need this. Everything fits
Speaker 1: all good in our legs and we're still we're still along,
Speaker 1: it's still hugging along. Don't don't need all this abdominal stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they made it, yeah yeah, uh yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: it's thought that they were they had a common ancestor
Speaker 1: who did have an abdomen and we're more like land
Speaker 1: spiders at some point and then they're just like, ah,
Speaker 1: I want to do something different, more unique.
Speaker 2: Keep it all in the legs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't need anything else just these legs and
Speaker 3: this weird tongue stra.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, the proboscis. The uh. It's really interesting
Speaker 1: because the hardest part of the study was apparently being
Speaker 1: able to get sea spider samples, because it's really hard
Speaker 1: to raise them in captivity. They apparently do not like
Speaker 1: it much. They're very strange and very finicky about their food.
Speaker 1: But the University of Vienna painstakingly found the specific types
Speaker 1: of sea and enemies that they like. They kind of
Speaker 1: like offer them this buffet of sea and enemies and
Speaker 1: then they like make sure that they're allowing the individual
Speaker 1: sea spiders to like pick out sea and enemies that
Speaker 1: they like, and they're like, great, we're gonna house you
Speaker 1: with these now so you can like eat them. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it was apparently not easy, but the University of Vienna
Speaker 1: has figured it out, so they have a lab where
Speaker 1: they breed these things.
Speaker 3: Wow yeah yeakie.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you know, when you don't have a stomach,
Speaker 2: you're going to be picky about what you eat.
Speaker 1: They do have, but yeah, it's it's in their legs.
Speaker 2: Yeah that is.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know why, Like I'm not uh, I'm
Speaker 3: not a big spider person. I'm not freaked out by
Speaker 3: spiders at all, but the idea of breathing through your
Speaker 3: legs really is creepy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you didn't like that. I could.
Speaker 2: I don't know why. I don't know why that reaction,
Speaker 2: but breathing through your legs. Don't like it?
Speaker 1: It's different. It's different for people. I mean we sometimes
Speaker 1: till it's like you gotta let your feet breathe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let your dogs, your dogs are barking, take up your shoes,
Speaker 1: let your feet breathe. But yeah, it's very literal with
Speaker 1: these guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, that is. And they're weird.
Speaker 3: They're very particular about their I kind of like that.
Speaker 3: They're they're culinary expert.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're piggy little guys.
Speaker 1: I highly encourage you all listening to just look at
Speaker 1: the various species of sea spiders because they're very strange looking.
Speaker 1: They're very uncanny. You really do see, Like I think
Speaker 1: for things like alien.
Speaker 2: It's a bit of a roar shock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: there's a lot of cool designs. If you're like a
Speaker 1: sci fi artist or writer or whatever, oh for sure,
Speaker 1: look up these guys. They're great inspiration. They look very Yeah,
Speaker 1: they look very upsetting in a cool kind of deep
Speaker 1: sea way.
Speaker 3: So yeah, and it looks like these like the Naughty spiders.
Speaker 3: I'm sure there are joints, but look a little more
Speaker 3: fluid than some of the big prickly face hugger looking guys.
Speaker 3: They kind of looked like those. Yeah, they look like
Speaker 3: those jelly like hands that you used to get that
Speaker 3: used to slap on car windows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're a little meteor like. They're a little softer looking,
Speaker 1: but yeah, some of the spindly ones do kind of
Speaker 1: look like they're made out of weird toothpicks. Apparently. There
Speaker 1: was a movie that came out in twenty twenty called
Speaker 1: h Abissel Spider, which is about a giant sea spider. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's designed seems to be more based on
Speaker 1: land spiders because it does have like a body. I
Speaker 1: think it would have been creepier if they had gone
Speaker 1: with the sort of classic sea spider layout.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that would have been because, Yeah, the center
Speaker 3: of it is so unsettling. It's just like when you
Speaker 3: put knuckles together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, which is really it's really more of the
Speaker 1: face hugger design from Alien but Yeah, it looks like
Speaker 1: uh abyssal spider is just just looks like a giant
Speaker 1: tarantula that's like floating in the water, which to me
Speaker 1: is just kind of funny because if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: an actual spiders reaction, like a land a terrestrial, true
Speaker 1: spiders reaction to water, it's never dignified.
Speaker 2: No, No, it's very floppy.
Speaker 1: There's always a a there's always a sort of like
Speaker 1: Scooby Doo trying to escape a ghost skidaddle or whatever.
Speaker 1: A spider yeah running water, Yeah, like like you know
Speaker 1: they're going nowhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. This is just a big old tarantula.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, missed opportunity. Yeah, so that's my advice.
Speaker 1: Next next uh cool movie. Uh. I was gonna say villain,
Speaker 1: but can we really say? I guess monster is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it's whose side you're taking.
Speaker 1: Is it alien from Aliens, A villain or a monster?
Speaker 3: Yeah, who's to say. It depends on the movie too,
Speaker 3: it depends on the franchise.
Speaker 1: It's just doing what it was born to do. Yeah. Anyways,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about more. Abystle horrors. Uh that have
Speaker 1: cool technology. All right, so, uh bread jet, We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about bristle worms, also known as Paula keats, which
Speaker 1: is a much cuter name than what they look like.
Speaker 2: I feel like I know these guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, gross, they're pretty strange.
Speaker 2: There were oh god, and they got.
Speaker 1: Weird heads, right, And it's so a lot of things
Speaker 1: are called worms, but they're not like at all related
Speaker 1: to actual worms like earthworms. These are actually related to earthworms.
Speaker 1: They are extremely diverse. There's many, many, many species of them.
Speaker 1: There's other over ten thousand of these little little nightmare
Speaker 1: fuel guys, and they're all very different. They have Some
Speaker 1: of them look more like say, the sandworms from Dune.
Speaker 1: Some of them look sort of like weird mop heads.
Speaker 1: It's just there's so many, and they're so varied, and
Speaker 1: they're so strange. I do love them. Some are actually
Speaker 1: a bit pretty, I would say, in a weird way.
Speaker 1: Still a little bit disquieting, but you know, like they're
Speaker 1: coming like bright red. Some of them are sort of
Speaker 1: iridescent or gold, yeah, yeah, like feathery ones. It's they
Speaker 1: come in all sizes and shapes and they're they're truly
Speaker 1: very interesting U're We're going back to the University of Vienna,
Speaker 1: which is apparently just.
Speaker 3: Doing some weird They're finding all the weird guys and
Speaker 3: bringing them there.
Speaker 1: They have a lab where they are just bringing all
Speaker 1: the Eldrich horrors of the world.
Speaker 2: Ye, so to watch out for them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they have been studying bristle worms, and bristleworms have
Speaker 1: this amazing ability, which is that they are really good
Speaker 1: at regenerating lost body parts. Uh, they're actually better than
Speaker 1: terrestrial earthworms at like if you cut them and half
Speaker 1: at regenerating because like sometimes with an earthworm you can
Speaker 1: do that, you can cut it and it'll but most
Speaker 1: of the time when you bisect an earthworm, it just dies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that makes sense. They have sensitive parts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but these guys are actually quite good at it.
Speaker 1: They are also really good at regenerating their limbs. At
Speaker 1: this University of Vienna, they are studying Platinarus dumorellly no
Speaker 1: dumer really doo marelli doroom rill eye Platinarus dou marilli,
Speaker 1: which is a species of bristleworm that lives in coastal waters.
Speaker 1: It's pretty small, it only grows about three centimeters. It's
Speaker 1: amber and color, and it has a bunch of bristle
Speaker 1: like protrusions on the side of its body. Most bristle
Speaker 1: worms do that. It's in the name. They are very bristly,
Speaker 1: like you could put them on as a fake mustache
Speaker 1: if you know, like you know how like in Davy
Speaker 1: the Pirates of the Caribbean. Oh yeah, octopus man with
Speaker 1: the tentacles for like a beard. I could also imagine
Speaker 1: some other guy like, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: But just a mustache. That is a bristleworm.
Speaker 1: Brother Reginald Jones, and he's got a mustache and it's
Speaker 1: a bristle worm. So yeah, they have a bunch of
Speaker 1: bristle like protrusions from the sides of their bodies. And bristleworms. Uh,
Speaker 1: these guys are really really good at regenerating it. When
Speaker 1: they lose their bristles, they just build them right back.
Speaker 1: So at the University of Vienna, researchers looked at this
Speaker 1: p Dummerlli uh in an amazing study called dynamic Microvilli
Speaker 1: sculpt the bristles at nanometric scale. Uh yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a catchy title. So they found evidence that these
Speaker 1: bristleworms have specialized cells called ketoblast in each of its bristles.
Speaker 1: And so what these cells do is they actually extend
Speaker 1: like an arm from the cell that deposits a little
Speaker 1: bit of kitan, which is a sort of tough building
Speaker 1: block used for a lot of invertebrates. And the study
Speaker 1: authors said that the process is a lot like three
Speaker 1: D printing in the way that three D printers work,
Speaker 1: where they move an arm around and then deposit a
Speaker 1: little little beat of that that. Oh that's super postic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's convenient. Yeah, And it's interesting because these bristles, like
Speaker 1: when you get down to the very small microscopic level,
Speaker 1: they have things structures on the bristles. They're not just
Speaker 1: all smooth sort of like yeah, they have like little
Speaker 1: tooth like projections, and so they create it's like this
Speaker 1: kind of conveyor belt of it starts to create the
Speaker 1: bristle and then it's like, ah, here's the part where
Speaker 1: we build a little tooth and then they just like
Speaker 1: kind of pop that out and it's yeah, they're they
Speaker 1: are working from sort of It works very very much
Speaker 1: like a three D printer, where they have the model
Speaker 1: which comes from the bristleworms genes, no doubt, and then
Speaker 1: they just sort of are able to reconstruct this limb
Speaker 1: in a way that is not it's like how it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be. It's not sort of like scar tissue
Speaker 1: or kind of weird or wonky. It's just like exactly
Speaker 1: what the original design is.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's so no, Like because like when we break
Speaker 3: an elbow and it grows back, it's a little cracky, there's.
Speaker 2: Scars, weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's a lot. It's a lot smoother of
Speaker 1: a process, which is really interesting. Apparently some of these tissues,
Speaker 1: like some of this the functioning of these keto blasts
Speaker 1: is sort of similar to our inner ear cells and
Speaker 1: our inner ears, at least the skin of our inner ears.
Speaker 1: It's really good at you know, sort of rebuilding itself.
Speaker 1: We have it's basically a conveyor belt of skin in
Speaker 1: our inner ears. It's a little gross, but one way
Speaker 1: that like earwax as it's produced like exits your ears,
Speaker 1: that the skin in your ear is kind of constantly
Speaker 1: growing and pushing stuff out like a conveyor belt as
Speaker 1: the new skin is growing, and so there's kind of
Speaker 1: a similarity there. So they're hoping that given that there's
Speaker 1: some similarities with that, that maybe understanding these cells could
Speaker 1: also help us understand say, like because there's some structures
Speaker 1: of the inner ears that don't don't repair themselves quite
Speaker 1: as well, right, And so the hope is that, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we could find out how these bristleworms do it,
Speaker 1: Like we could find out how to potentially create cells
Speaker 1: in human in our ears that will like repair the
Speaker 1: very delicate little organs inside our ears.
Speaker 3: You know, it seems with a lot of these animals,
Speaker 3: it's like don't have delicate organs, so you can't replace it.
Speaker 3: Just feels like they're all legs. They're all one thing. Right,
Speaker 3: Keep it simple, human.
Speaker 1: Keep it simple. I don't think the future therapies will
Speaker 1: be us sticking bristleworms inside of our ears for them
Speaker 1: to rebuild ourselves.
Speaker 2: But that sounds horrible.
Speaker 1: You know what if we like create a human bristleworm
Speaker 1: hybrid and you just kind of stick it in your
Speaker 1: ear and it works like a little three D printer.
Speaker 3: I'm opting out at that point. I am not sticking
Speaker 3: worms in my ear, not doing it.
Speaker 1: You just don't have the constitution for the future.
Speaker 2: I don't have for things.
Speaker 3: Any story about things crawling into people's ears, don't.
Speaker 2: Like it I have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I actually share your opinion on that. I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: I have red a lot of I can't stop myself.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the worst thing I've read stories of,
Speaker 1: like like a little bugs or something crawling in your Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, spiders like laying eggs in people's ears. I don't
Speaker 3: know how true that is.
Speaker 1: That so spiders generally don't want to do that. Spiders
Speaker 1: don't like that whole thing of like you eat. I
Speaker 1: don't know one hundred spiders a year because they're always
Speaker 1: crawling in your mouth. If spiders were that stupid, they
Speaker 1: would not be very successful. Yeah, animals, so they don't much. No,
Speaker 1: so they they generally don't want to crawl in your mouth.
Speaker 1: It's a probably too moist and damp for them, probably
Speaker 1: smells weird. It's not something they want to do. It's
Speaker 1: pretty difficult for a spider to mistake your mouth for
Speaker 1: a good place to hide. It doesn't happen. Ears stuff, though.
Speaker 1: I think that while it really is extremely rare, it
Speaker 1: might actually be more likely to happen than the spider
Speaker 1: crawling in your mouth. I don't. I think the cases
Speaker 1: in which like a spider or any kind of insect
Speaker 1: crawls in your ear and lays eggs is just astronomically small,
Speaker 1: don't You don't have to worry about it happening. It
Speaker 1: will not happen to you. It's like good to take
Speaker 1: that off the list of things, right, like you can,
Speaker 1: like it's the same thing as like winning the lottery,
Speaker 1: except for in one case. In either case you won't
Speaker 1: be happy because of tax. But yeah, I mean they're
Speaker 1: like I have red leg. Like, if you do have
Speaker 1: something like a bug in your ear, do not chase
Speaker 1: after it with a que tip because apparently this simply
Speaker 1: scares the bug and we'll drive it deeper deeper into
Speaker 1: your ear. You want to go to a medical professional because,
Speaker 1: first of all, it might not be a bug. It
Speaker 1: could be something wrong with your hearing. You want to
Speaker 1: get assessed. And the case that it is a bug,
Speaker 1: they can flush that out with some watery and that'll
Speaker 1: get that that'll get that little guy right out of there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you if you're experiencing ear spiders, do
Speaker 1: go to the doctor. To the doctor, right, you know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I I won't recount the stories, first of all,
Speaker 1: because I'm not sure how true they are but also
Speaker 1: they're really disgusting of people being like like, I had
Speaker 1: like a bug in my ear and then I like
Speaker 1: tried to get it out with some tweezers and it
Speaker 1: all went terribly awry. Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I went to summer camp. We've heard those stories.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't know. They sound a little apocryphal
Speaker 1: to me. It's something that just happens so rarely that
Speaker 1: if someone's like, yeah, this happened to me, I would
Speaker 1: be pretty skeptical. Yeah, are like, yeah, my uncle had
Speaker 1: like spiders in his ears. It's like spiders, old spiders.
Speaker 1: Uncles are always telling you about the spiders and rarely
Speaker 1: is it true? Rarely, so you don't you don't got
Speaker 1: to worry about that so much.
Speaker 3: I had a question about these guys, what are the bristles.
Speaker 3: I'm guessing the bristles help them like filter feed.
Speaker 1: It's actually a lot of it has to do with
Speaker 1: a local motion, so like moving around and also protection
Speaker 1: making them not like for for some of the sort
Speaker 1: of harrier bristles, that's gonna make them less appealing to eat.
Speaker 1: It kind of depends on the species. For some of them,
Speaker 1: like the bristles, uh just work as a bunch of
Speaker 1: little legs that help them walk around on the seafloor.
Speaker 1: Some of them use them to swim. They're like pleagic swimmers,
Speaker 1: so they'll swim in the ocean, open, open ocean for
Speaker 1: some of them. Yeah, some of them are burrowing, so
Speaker 1: it helps them burrow. It really just like depends on
Speaker 1: the species. They have a lot of different types of
Speaker 1: of uh uses for these bristles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: They have to be built back so specifically, and you
Speaker 3: lose one. It's that because they're covered, you would think
Speaker 3: they could lose a few without it needing to be
Speaker 3: built back.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if it's too many, then you got a problem.
Speaker 1: Some of them actually have venomous bristles, so like irritating
Speaker 1: venomous bristles. So you don't they look really soft and fluffy,
Speaker 1: but you.
Speaker 2: Do not don't touch them.
Speaker 1: You don't want to touch them.
Speaker 3: No, Yeah, that's often true with the with the bugs
Speaker 3: and the words that look fluffy, don't.
Speaker 1: The ones that look the fluffiest bugs are often gonna
Speaker 1: give you the worst rash. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: real bummer. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and then when we get back, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: one of my favorite cryptids because it's real and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a he's a real cutie. All right, So we're
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about, uh not the giant squid, because
Speaker 1: I think everyone's pretty familiar with giant squids. They're real,
Speaker 1: they're cool, they're huge, they're very elusive. This one is
Speaker 1: even more elusive. It is the big Finn squid, so
Speaker 1: it has incredibly long they're not technically legs, they're arms.
Speaker 1: But you know who's a leg an arm? Come on,
Speaker 1: who's counting? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Not with these guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so bridget I, I implore you to look up
Speaker 1: image of the big Finn squid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one, and it's a clearly shot.
Speaker 3: There's a couple of these that are shot in like
Speaker 3: night vision, and they're very ominous.
Speaker 1: Very very creepy. There's a famous one which was shot
Speaker 1: by one of these deep sea cameras and it looks
Speaker 1: like a it looks like a movie alien. We're kind
Speaker 1: of back to the real alien looking guys. Got kind
Speaker 1: of a green tint to it due to the camera
Speaker 1: filter and the squid's head. It's not really a head,
Speaker 1: so it's called a mantle, but it kind of looks
Speaker 1: like a weird alien head with weird little floppy ears,
Speaker 1: and then it's got these like long appendages that they
Speaker 1: start out where they kind of are they go out
Speaker 1: at a right degree angle and then just drop down.
Speaker 2: So it's yeah, it's very marionette.
Speaker 1: Right, Like, it kind of looks like a giant virus.
Speaker 1: It's very weird looking. It does not look real.
Speaker 2: No, it looks like a giant ants head. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's really freaky looking. Yeah, it is a
Speaker 1: real animal. So this is a big fin squid and
Speaker 1: it has sort of a pretty normal squid mantle, although
Speaker 1: the fins, so like squids have these fins on the
Speaker 1: sides of their mantles, are are quite large, like they're
Speaker 1: sort of, yeah, sort of the dumbos of the squid world.
Speaker 2: Everything about this guy seems quite large.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, like it's interesting because you would think that
Speaker 1: they would call it the long arm squid because that
Speaker 1: is perhaps the more notable features. So the reason they're
Speaker 1: called big fin squid is that there for the longest time,
Speaker 1: we had no obviously no video of them or images
Speaker 1: of them because they are just so deep, such deep
Speaker 1: sea creatures. They live around twenty thousand feet over twenty
Speaker 1: thousand feet, that's great. So specimens are really really hard
Speaker 1: to come by. So the ones that they did tend
Speaker 1: to get that would wash ashore were actually juveniles, and
Speaker 1: juveniles have sort of the big the big fins, but
Speaker 1: they don't have the big legs yet. So old school
Speaker 1: researchers and biologists would see these and say, like they
Speaker 1: got a big fin. They had no idea that as
Speaker 1: adults they have these enormous arms. So, yeah, the big
Speaker 1: fin squid probably has the longest arm to body ratio
Speaker 1: of any squid out there. They grow, these arms grow
Speaker 1: to be over twenty five feet long, which is around
Speaker 1: eight meters. Yeah, and that's.
Speaker 2: They probably get caught in stuff all the time.
Speaker 1: Just get all tangled. They're twenty times longer than the
Speaker 1: mantle of this guid, which is an incredible sort of
Speaker 1: body ratio.
Speaker 2: So much legs, yeah, really really really.
Speaker 1: Going going all legs. The only reason we know this
Speaker 1: is because of deep sea cameras. I don't think we
Speaker 1: have really any complete specimens of an adult with all
Speaker 1: the legs intact. And yeah, so like it's in addition
Speaker 1: to just having really long legs. I think one of
Speaker 1: the weirdest aspects to them is that they look like
Speaker 1: they kind of have elbows, right, because they stick out
Speaker 1: at a ninety degree angle and then drop down as
Speaker 1: if they have like a joint there, which they almost
Speaker 1: certainly do not have a joint there. It has something
Speaker 1: more to do with the musculature of the arms, not
Speaker 1: that they have like a bindy joint there most likely.
Speaker 3: Okay, so it's all still arms. So the babies were
Speaker 3: probably just like up until the little the.
Speaker 1: Drop right exactly exactly, so so yeah, it's it's all
Speaker 1: part of their arms. But yeah, it's a very it's
Speaker 1: a very weird thing because we don't necessarily know why
Speaker 1: they hold them out like this. I mean when possibility
Speaker 1: is just so they don't get so tangled, right, like
Speaker 1: keep them keep them separate so they.
Speaker 2: Don't get entangled. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like if you've ever played around with a marionette
Speaker 1: and the strings get all tangled when you let the
Speaker 1: strings get together and other it's arrangement with that little
Speaker 1: crossbar type handle thinging. Yeah, yeah, poor guys always be
Speaker 1: like we also we also don't know why they have
Speaker 1: such long arms. Also, the like our sort of videos
Speaker 1: and images of it are pretty limited. So all we've
Speaker 1: seen of these guys is them just sort of flow
Speaker 1: around pretty passively.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine those at that length that's that helpful
Speaker 3: for swimming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I don't think that they are really probably
Speaker 1: meant for swimming. The fin itself is probably the most
Speaker 1: useful part for swimming. I do have what I'm going
Speaker 1: to share with you a pretty incredible video of one
Speaker 1: of these guys swimming around in the chat here.
Speaker 2: I got to see how these guys move, and.
Speaker 1: You'll be able to see that. This is from a distance,
Speaker 1: so that's why it looks so small, but you can
Speaker 1: kind of see that it is using that giant fin
Speaker 1: rather than its tentacles to swim.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is not how I expected this thing to move.
Speaker 3: That is right, very strange. Yeah, his head looks is
Speaker 3: a lot flatter, I guess, or it looks I guess.
Speaker 2: Those are just the fins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those are those are mostly the fins. It's got
Speaker 1: sort of like the solid the solid part of the
Speaker 1: mantle and then the the fins doing a lot of
Speaker 1: the work. Usually squids. Also, we'll be able to move
Speaker 1: using jet propulsion. To buy squeezing water out, so it's
Speaker 1: probably doing something like that as well. It's hard to
Speaker 1: see though. We just don't. We don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of data to go on with these guys.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm sure they figured it out. But this
Speaker 3: looks like a horrible way to swim. It looks like
Speaker 3: it's getting pushed around quite a bit.
Speaker 1: I think it probably relies on currents a lot to
Speaker 1: move around. Yeah, it would be my guess, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't really know how they feed. Like
Speaker 1: one of the speculations about their long arms is that
Speaker 1: they use it to like catch prey up and then
Speaker 1: that's how they like the prey gets all tangled up. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: but truly, like it's just not really known exactly why
Speaker 1: they're so weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these are all such good like sci fi alien
Speaker 3: villain looking guys. Especially this this picture with the night
Speaker 3: vision of it, like coming from the deep, looks very
Speaker 3: like Star Trek alien villain.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, bring me to your leader.
Speaker 1: It's very strange. It's also a little funny because it
Speaker 1: does look a little bit like you just kind of
Speaker 1: like tied a bunch of spaghettis together and toss them
Speaker 1: in the ocean.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's at the same time very very eerie looking
Speaker 1: but also a little bit silly.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's it's arms too big.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's arms is too big. It should should work
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're so skinny too. It really feels like
Speaker 3: it's all ahead and then it just gets like tangled.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I it has to happen. It's all arms.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I guess, I mean there's not a bunch
Speaker 2: of I mean, I guess it depends down there. There's
Speaker 2: not a bunch of stuff for it to get stuck on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like they also think the arms might be sticky,
Speaker 1: so then, oh.
Speaker 2: That would be a real inconvenience.
Speaker 1: It'd be really tough. But maybe that's exactly what they
Speaker 1: need to like get stuff in there. They figured it out, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really figured it out. It's really it's really wild.
Speaker 1: And also what's weird is that they're not it's not
Speaker 1: just like some remote like little corner of the Mariana
Speaker 1: Trench where these guys live. They're all over the globe
Speaker 1: at these depths. Wow, so they must have it's they
Speaker 1: must have a pretty good strategy for survival. So we
Speaker 1: just We just can't fathom what that is because they're
Speaker 1: so strange looking.
Speaker 3: That is so weird. Yeah, that's why stuff that deep
Speaker 3: is so fascinating. It is truly like a completely different world. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that you have to learn that these creatures have to
Speaker 3: survive in and that they're good at that.
Speaker 1: Like, Yeah, they're found all over the world and they're thriving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: looking like this, looking isn't it's inspirational for all of us.
Speaker 1: Like you can, yeah, you can look like arms, you
Speaker 1: can look like a bunch of spaghetti tied together with
Speaker 1: a kite, and you can still make it in the
Speaker 1: big deep ocean, and.
Speaker 3: The big deep ocean twenty five thousand feet down right.
Speaker 3: That's crazy. That's so far down.
Speaker 1: It's very far down. Speaking of far down, I got
Speaker 1: this listener question or not really a question, more of
Speaker 1: a listener comment and recommendation, which I think is very
Speaker 1: apropos for this episode. Here it is, Hi, Katie, I
Speaker 1: have been obsessed with the near daily live streams from
Speaker 1: Schmidt Ocean. They were previously exploring the deep over three
Speaker 1: thousand meters at most off the Argentinian coast, took a break,
Speaker 1: and now they're back exploring off the Uruguay coast. I
Speaker 1: find myself oohing and I alongside the scientists with some
Speaker 1: of the unexpected discoveries cute sponges and pulpos which is octopus,
Speaker 1: and cheering when they success successfully collect a tricky sample.
Speaker 1: They also make the most beautiful short videos. Please check
Speaker 1: it out. This is from Jesse and Jesse. I did
Speaker 1: indeed check this out. It is so relaxing. I can't understand.
Speaker 1: I don't speak Spanish, so I can't understand what they're saying,
Speaker 1: but they have very soothing voices and they, uh, it
Speaker 1: is this really interesting rig because it's a camera, but
Speaker 1: they also have this robotic arm that moves very slowly
Speaker 1: and well yeah, they'll they'll try to collect like samples
Speaker 1: very gently, very slowly. But it's like it's this it's
Speaker 1: like this big mechanical claw and it has a bunch
Speaker 1: of tools at its disposal, like it has a little yeah,
Speaker 1: well no, it's it's it's got like it's got like
Speaker 1: little how do It's like got little bins that has
Speaker 1: the things in it that it needs. So it'll like
Speaker 1: reach over like pick up a little like shovel type
Speaker 1: thing that has a bunch of holes in it like
Speaker 1: a sieve and then pick that up to try to
Speaker 1: grab a sample. Uh. And of course there's a lot
Speaker 1: of like weird, weird stuff down there that this camera captures.
Speaker 1: They have like if you don't have the patience for
Speaker 1: a live stream where not a lot of could be happening,
Speaker 1: or not much could be happening, like like Jesse said,
Speaker 1: there's also yeah, short videos that are really really beautiful.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you want, if you want something relaxing
Speaker 1: on you're trying to trying to fall asleep and you
Speaker 1: don't have philosophobia, it's a I think it's really really
Speaker 1: nice and it's I think it's great that they make
Speaker 1: this uh live stream available to everyone to watch because
Speaker 1: you can you can see sort of the process. Takes
Speaker 1: a lot of patience for these scientists because they're not
Speaker 1: just doing it, you know when they feel like it.
Speaker 1: They're just observing this for long periods of time.
Speaker 2: This is your job.
Speaker 3: I'm on one now. This is yeah, this is so
Speaker 3: cool that they're streaming this. Yeah, it and it is
Speaker 3: probably so exciting because it is mostly like long wormy
Speaker 3: fish without arms, like stuff you'd expect to see. But
Speaker 3: every now and again, just like one of these giant squids. Yeah,
Speaker 3: squid crosses its path.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking at the I'm looking at the live
Speaker 1: stream now. It is uh, it's it's pretty neat. Like
Speaker 1: I'm looking. It looks like there's a lot of maybe
Speaker 1: these are eels or hagfish. They might be hagfish. I
Speaker 1: can't quite.
Speaker 2: Quite tell. But yeah, these are armless fish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they they're fish. They're very very cool. But there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of them, because it really gives you a
Speaker 1: better sense of like, yeah, there are parts of the
Speaker 1: deep ocean that are not very well inhabited, but some
Speaker 1: of it it's like you get down there, there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff just thriving. Yeah, and you'll have these
Speaker 1: big events. I don't know if they've ever caught anything
Speaker 1: like this, but they'll have these Uh, there's one looking
Speaker 1: at the camera right now. It's very cute. They'll have
Speaker 1: these events where, like you know, you'll have a whale
Speaker 1: dye and fall down to the bottom of the ocean
Speaker 1: called whale fall, and you'll just have this like big
Speaker 1: feast of a ton of these deep sea animals showing
Speaker 1: up for this giant buffet, and it really shows you
Speaker 1: It shows you how much a surprising amount of life
Speaker 1: thrives where there's no light. You cannot there's no photosynthesis happening.
Speaker 1: It's all chemo synthesis, so like chemicals being processed by
Speaker 1: bacteria that then gets eaten by larger organisms that gets
Speaker 1: eaten by animals. So like, you have this really interesting
Speaker 1: food chain at the bottom of the ocean, and it's
Speaker 1: all thanks usually to some kind of bacteria that can
Speaker 1: eat something that's normally really toxic, like cyanobacteria that can
Speaker 1: eat poison. And then you'll have you know, larger organisms
Speaker 1: that can eat the bacteria, or even things that kind
Speaker 1: of co evolved with the bacteria, like tube worms that
Speaker 1: have back tia in them that they used to uh
Speaker 1: get food from tube worms? Are these crazy? They look
Speaker 1: like pipe organs, Yeah, and they're full of the those
Speaker 1: are in.
Speaker 2: The Marianna's Trench.
Speaker 3: I feel like I've seen, yes, yes, a video in
Speaker 3: a science class about those guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm going to try to find out what we're
Speaker 1: looking at here because these are soad this is crazy.
Speaker 3: Uh. Yeah, the the machine picked up what looks like
Speaker 3: a piece of trash, but it has a bunch of
Speaker 3: barnacles on it.
Speaker 1: Let's see. I'm gonna I'm gonna find out what this is. Uh?
Speaker 2: Is it just like the dead skin sack of something?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm trying to look.
Speaker 1: I'm quickly trying to look at these could be cusk eels.
Speaker 1: Oh but that's yeah. This I'm I'm gonna get so distracted. Advice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, video this is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's gonna become a twitch stream of us reacting
Speaker 3: to this streame.
Speaker 1: Uh, this is fantastic. Yeah, this thing is cool.
Speaker 2: Gosh.
Speaker 1: So it's so mesmerizing, it really is. It's it's peaceful,
Speaker 1: but then once in a while something whoa, oh there's
Speaker 1: a little scuffle going on. Something happens. Ah. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: incredible if you kind of want to get a view
Speaker 1: of life as it is down there live, which is
Speaker 1: I don't know that it's kind of cool because it's
Speaker 1: like it's not it's just happening right now, man, right
Speaker 1: deep in the ocean. You can see it. That's very cool.
Speaker 2: It is very cool.
Speaker 3: It is cool how busy it is, because yeah, I
Speaker 3: truly think of like yet the deep ocean as all
Speaker 3: of these kind of small creatures that you wouldn't even
Speaker 3: register as.
Speaker 1: Right, like like pale, pale, white little things with too
Speaker 1: many legs, which certainly is true. We've talked about we see,
Speaker 1: we've seen already. Yeah, and that is true. But there's
Speaker 1: all so actual fish down here. So yeah, it's busy, yeah,
Speaker 1: busy day down on the ocean. Yeah, yeah, there's it's
Speaker 1: a bumper to bumper traffic down here.
Speaker 2: Folks.
Speaker 1: You thought you could avoid rush hour from the scottom
Speaker 1: the bottom off the coast of Uruguay, No, no surre.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, fantastic. Well, thank you so much for that recommendation, Jesse,
Speaker 1: much appreciated. I've got a new, a new thing to
Speaker 1: help me procrastinate with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's going to be on in the background. This
Speaker 2: is now is set to exactly.
Speaker 1: Uh So before we go, we do got to play
Speaker 1: a little game. It's called gets Who's Squawking? The Mystery
Speaker 1: Animal sound Game. Uh So we're we're back, uh and
Speaker 1: I got fresh fresh sounds fresh from the sound bakery.
Speaker 3: For you guys.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna start this game right back up. This
Speaker 1: week's mystery animal sound hint is this This poisonous animal
Speaker 1: is a fantastic survivor which is bad news for anything
Speaker 1: caught in its path. So that should strike that should
Speaker 1: strike terror into your heart. Bridge. Yeah, especially if you're
Speaker 1: a small mammal. Uh So, yes, you gotta get that again.
Speaker 1: This poisonous animal is a fantastic survivor, which is bad
Speaker 1: news for anything in its path.
Speaker 2: Oh man, And with that sound, that's difficult. I gotta
Speaker 2: I'm guessing it's some sort of snake.
Speaker 1: Some sort of snakes, some some some some kind of
Speaker 1: snaky thingy, some sort of snaky thing, some kind of
Speaker 1: snaky thingy. That is Bridget's guess. It's a good guess.
Speaker 1: I can neither confirm nor deny.
Speaker 2: This guess.
Speaker 1: Uh uh. So you out there, you out there listener,
Speaker 1: If you think you know who made that sound, you
Speaker 1: can write to me at Creature Feature product gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also write to me your live stream video recommendations.
Speaker 1: Do keep them animal related, but yeah, I I love
Speaker 1: to see them. Also, I will often do listener questions episodes.
Speaker 1: So the questions that you send me are some of
Speaker 1: the most intelligent questions I have ever considered. So those
Speaker 1: help me a lot because they send me on really
Speaker 1: interesting rese journeys answering questions that I didn't even think of,
Speaker 1: so I always appreciate those. I'll still do us some
Speaker 1: more listener questions episodes now that we are back to
Speaker 1: doing fresh, new full length episodes after this summer. So
Speaker 1: thank you guys so much for listening. Bridget Where can
Speaker 1: people find you?
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
Speaker 3: You can find me on Instagram atport two tweets, and
Speaker 3: you can follow all the stuff Sarah and I are
Speaker 3: doing in the podcast world over at small Beads and
Speaker 3: on our instagram bs Underscore podcasting.
Speaker 1: And where We're in the ocean benthic pleagic. Where are
Speaker 1: you at?
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, probably probably somewhere in the tweet just like
Speaker 3: right floating around, right in the middle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's no shame in that. Please please do
Speaker 1: check out bridges stuff very cool and thanks to the
Speaker 1: space cast looks for their super awesome song ex Alumina.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying the show, please do leaving a rating
Speaker 1: or of you that's still continue to be relevant and helpful. Uh.
Speaker 1: Creature features a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or Hey guess what where of you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows. I'm not your mother. I can't
Speaker 1: tell you what to do. Don't try to clean your
Speaker 1: ears out with a bristle worm. It's not gonna Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not good for you. Just just ear drops, Just
Speaker 1: ear drops. Don't stick anything in those precious little here
Speaker 1: and holes of yours. You need them for listening to podcasts.
Speaker 2: Treat them a spider in there, Go to the doctor.
Speaker 1: Go to the doctor. Uh. Don't do not spray rate
Speaker 1: in your ears. Do not recommend YEP official stance of
Speaker 1: this podcast. Also, it will not happen to you. You
Speaker 1: will not get a spider in your ear. I can
Speaker 1: all clost one hundred percent guarantee it. So sue me
Speaker 1: see you next Wednesday. M hm