Speaker 1: Welcome to stuct to Blow Your Mind, production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: today we're gonna reach into a jar of pickled eggs
Speaker 1: and and see what we pull out. Yes, that's right,
Speaker 1: we are venturing into the egg chamber. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: gonna be kind of a potpourri episode. Uh, kind of
Speaker 1: a you know, a salad bar episode with with multiple
Speaker 1: um curiosities plucked from the vinegar soaked vat here and
Speaker 1: if everyone digs it, perhaps will come back and explore
Speaker 1: more topics along this line. But basically, yeah, we're talking
Speaker 1: about eggs, and eggs just in general are pretty amazing,
Speaker 1: even in their most mundane form. Factoring you know, into
Speaker 1: the equation the more familiar examples of reproduction and cuisine,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like we need to take a
Speaker 1: step back and just consider weird and wonderful they are
Speaker 1: there in the organic vessel a means for biology to
Speaker 1: leave one being and then develop into another and then
Speaker 1: burst free of this protective shell or casing that has
Speaker 1: served as its vehicle. The egg in a way makes
Speaker 1: me think of that quote that we've talked about a
Speaker 1: couple of times. That was in Brian Green's book about
Speaker 1: how when we learned to take the water with us
Speaker 1: out of the ocean. That's like how organisms move to land,
Speaker 1: like you know that where water bags slashing around on feet,
Speaker 1: And in a way, the egg is sort of the
Speaker 1: same principle. It takes some of the same sustaining conditions
Speaker 1: from being within the mother's body, outside of the body
Speaker 1: where you can eventually hatch out after you mature enough.
Speaker 1: I like that you brought up the ocean here, because
Speaker 1: we all of course come from the ocean. That is
Speaker 1: the the ultimate origin of of life here on Earth.
Speaker 1: But but in addition to that, we see of course
Speaker 1: primordial oceans factoring into various world mythologies, and we also
Speaker 1: see uh the idea of an egg featuring prominently in
Speaker 1: world mythologies as well. We see variations of the world
Speaker 1: egg in many different myth cycles, including but not limited
Speaker 1: to Vedic, Greek, Egyptian, and Chinese mythologies. And we could
Speaker 1: we could easily devote an entire episode just to these
Speaker 1: varied myths, because they're all pretty pretty fabulous. The idea
Speaker 1: of of of the universe or some primordial creator being
Speaker 1: emerging from this egg. Uh. In the Greek tradition, it's
Speaker 1: known as the and it's often depicted as being kind
Speaker 1: of serpent bound, this orphic egg from which the primordial
Speaker 1: fan ease emerges. Isn't it interesting though, the way that
Speaker 1: the egg is kind of a biological Pandora's box to
Speaker 1: go to another Greek myth, because you can't always tell
Speaker 1: from the external morphology of the egg what kind of
Speaker 1: animal is inside right right, and certainly in the case
Speaker 1: so we've we've of course talked about like various brood
Speaker 1: parasites in the show before, including an examples like the
Speaker 1: cuckoo uh and, in which case you know, the and
Speaker 1: a mother bird may not be able to tell if
Speaker 1: one of the eggs has been placed into her nest
Speaker 1: by another species. But speaking of mysterious and and difficult
Speaker 1: to identify orbs uh So, the idea that made us
Speaker 1: want to do this episode was something that you shared
Speaker 1: with me last week. It was a news article about
Speaker 1: a really interesting fossil find. This was so the article
Speaker 1: you shared was a June NPR article by Nell Greenfield Boice,
Speaker 1: and it tells the story of how a paleontologist from
Speaker 1: u T. Austin named Julia Clark was visiting a colleague
Speaker 1: named David Rubil R Rogers, who works at Chile's National
Speaker 1: Museum of Natural History. And this was back in and
Speaker 1: Ruble R Rogers apparently wanted Clark's opinion on a very
Speaker 1: strange fossil in his collection, which had been found in
Speaker 1: an article way back in two thousand eleven. Specifically, it
Speaker 1: was on an island off the tip of the Antarctic
Speaker 1: Peninsula called Seymour Island, and Seymour Island has been a
Speaker 1: rich site for fossil excavations for more than a hundred
Speaker 1: years now, I think I've read about fossils being found
Speaker 1: there in the eighteen nineties. But Greenfield Voice describes this
Speaker 1: fossil that the these two paleontologists were looking at as
Speaker 1: more than eleven by seven inches, so it's about twenty
Speaker 1: nine by twenty centimeters and of pretty much the exact
Speaker 1: size and appearance of a deflated football, except its stone.
Speaker 1: Now it's it's petrified, it's fossilized. And Ruble R Rogers
Speaker 1: and his colleagues referred to this object as the thing.
Speaker 1: So you can see why we were intrigued absolutely, And
Speaker 1: the images that that that accompanied this article of the
Speaker 1: thing do look very thing ish. Uh. It is it
Speaker 1: almost almost looks like it's like a withered face, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like the face of the sorting hat or something,
Speaker 1: or what's that the the oogie boogie cree cheer from
Speaker 1: the night before Christmas. I was thinking exactly that, and
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point. The comparison to
Speaker 1: a deflated football or this kind of wrinkly oogie boogeyman
Speaker 1: face is really good because when you look at this object,
Speaker 1: even though it is now fully fossilized, it is basically
Speaker 1: it is a mineral product. You can immediately see in
Speaker 1: its creases and textures the remnants of what must have
Speaker 1: been some kind of soft leathery membrane collapsed in on itself. So, yes,
Speaker 1: it's mysterious. Yes it's creepy. It is definitely a thing.
Speaker 1: But what is it? It's just this strange, collapsed, deflated orb. Well,
Speaker 1: upon further analysis, the researchers here figured out that this
Speaker 1: was an egg. It's a fossil of a giant soft
Speaker 1: shelled egg from around sixty eight million years ago, so
Speaker 1: that this would be just towards the ends of the
Speaker 1: Cretaceous period, near the KPg boundary that marks the end
Speaker 1: of the non avian dynah sours and the researchers published
Speaker 1: their findings in the journal Nature earlier this month. The
Speaker 1: article was called a giant soft shelled egg from the
Speaker 1: Late Cretaceous of Antarctica, and this is now the largest
Speaker 1: soft shelled egg ever known to exist. And it's uh.
Speaker 1: In addition to being the largest soft shelled egg, it's
Speaker 1: the second largest egg of any kind known to ever exist,
Speaker 1: falling only slightly behind the huge eggs of Madagascar's flightless
Speaker 1: elephant birds, which would extinct sometime in the past few
Speaker 1: hundred years. Yeah, we we discussed them a little bit
Speaker 1: in our MOA episodes, right, But but even that was
Speaker 1: only a little bit bigger than this egg. And the
Speaker 1: author's conclude that this was probably the egg of a
Speaker 1: gigantic marine reptile such as a mosasaur, of which adult
Speaker 1: remains had been found nearby the same fossil beds. So
Speaker 1: you find adult mosasaurs nearby there and around the same layer,
Speaker 1: it seems like this very likely from a creature like that.
Speaker 1: And on the importance of this find Greenfield voice in
Speaker 1: her n PR piece quotes an evolutionary biologist from Princeton
Speaker 1: University named Mary Caswell Stoddard, who says, quote, a soft
Speaker 1: shelled fossil egg like this is a rare jim. The
Speaker 1: lack of soft shelled fossil eggs, which are extremely rare,
Speaker 1: makes it challenging to flesh out a detailed picture of
Speaker 1: egg evolution invertebrates. This discovery helps provide one critical piece
Speaker 1: of the puzzle. So this is important because it gives
Speaker 1: us a look at something that we don't often see
Speaker 1: captured in fossil form, the soft shelled egg, and it
Speaker 1: helps us get a better picture of how exactly eggs
Speaker 1: changed and evolved as dinosaurs evolved over time. Oh and
Speaker 1: real quick, if you if you're out there listening and
Speaker 1: you're like, okay, Mosesaur, which one is that put it
Speaker 1: in Jurassic Park terms for me? Well, in the movie
Speaker 1: Jurassic World, that's supposed to be a Mosesaur in the
Speaker 1: big aquatic part of the park or the one that
Speaker 1: like eats an executive assistant or something. Yeah, the that
Speaker 1: that really horrible scene in the film where it where
Speaker 1: it leaps up and eats this U this I think
Speaker 1: otherwise innocent character in the film. Yeah, I remember that
Speaker 1: that was. Well I'm not going to get off on
Speaker 1: all my Jurassic World beefs, but that scene felt totally strange. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, But still great dinosaur sequence. I just wish
Speaker 1: she had been more of a villain or something. But yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so back to the thing, so that the characteristics of
Speaker 1: this egg are strange. Instead of the hard, calcified shells
Speaker 1: that paleontologists used to believe, we're just the norm for dinosaurs. This,
Speaker 1: along with other recent egg finds, for example from the
Speaker 1: genus Protoceratops and the genus um Moossaris, reveals that many
Speaker 1: dinosaurs and Cretaceous marine reptiles laid eggs that were like this.
Speaker 1: That We're pliable and soft like some turtle species due today,
Speaker 1: and it looks like it, just it varied according to
Speaker 1: different groups of dinosaurs. So would have therapod dinosaurs like
Speaker 1: the t rex and they would lay calcified, hard shelled eggs,
Speaker 1: and you'd have many saua pods or hadrosaurs also laying
Speaker 1: hard shelled, calcified eggs like the ones you would imagine
Speaker 1: from birds or many reptiles that live on land today,
Speaker 1: while you have these other animals like probably mosasaurs, probably
Speaker 1: protoceratops laying softer leathery or eggs, and so the question is,
Speaker 1: why would the egg shell be so thin and soft?
Speaker 1: What's the advantage to that. Well, one possibility is maybe
Speaker 1: that's just the way things had always been, and they
Speaker 1: would stay that way unless they were driven by specific
Speaker 1: environmental pressures to become otherwise, to harden and calcify. The
Speaker 1: researchers in this other Nature paper from this year, the
Speaker 1: one I mentioned a minute ago, it's it's just called
Speaker 1: the first dinosaur egg was soft. They argued that ancestral
Speaker 1: dinosaurs probably all laid soft shelled eggs, and then over time,
Speaker 1: over the millions of years, via convergent evolution, several different
Speaker 1: groups of later dinosaurs independently evolved the adaptation of hard
Speaker 1: shelled eggs at least three different times that we know of.
Speaker 1: So there would have been just been evolutionary pressure for
Speaker 1: thicker shells on some of these other dinosaurs, but apparently
Speaker 1: not on this one. Probably not on this mosasaur creature.
Speaker 1: Uh so, so, looking specifically at the thing, the authors
Speaker 1: of that study in Nature posits something really interesting about it.
Speaker 1: They say at the end of their abstract quote, such
Speaker 1: a large egg with a relatively thin egg shell may
Speaker 1: reflect a derived constraints associated with body shape, reproductive investment
Speaker 1: linked with gigantism and lepido sarian viviparity, in which a
Speaker 1: vestigial egg is laid and hatches immediately. So we don't
Speaker 1: know this for sure, but what they're saying it looks
Speaker 1: like here is this was very likely a creature that
Speaker 1: laid an egg, but it was almost a sort of
Speaker 1: egg assisted live birth. So you would lay lay a soft, thin,
Speaker 1: pliable egg and then nearly immediately the hatchling would tear
Speaker 1: out of this egg sack and escape, and then the
Speaker 1: egg would fall to the ocean floor and collapse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, yeah, I think this this is making sense
Speaker 1: here because, uh, I mean, you can imagine the world
Speaker 1: of the mosasaur like like all aquatic worlds, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's probably not a really peaceful place. So
Speaker 1: that uh, that creature, that that young ling needs to
Speaker 1: be highly developed and just ready to burst out and go,
Speaker 1: not to sink to the bottom of the muck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this level of maturity at the time of hatching
Speaker 1: is a theme that will come back to a few
Speaker 1: other times here. Yeah. In fact, our our next example
Speaker 1: of curious eggs from the natural world gets into this
Speaker 1: a little bit. I want to talk about the eggs
Speaker 1: of the volcano birds. Good. So uh, specifically we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about the Malayo birds of the You'll
Speaker 1: find them on the Indonesian island of Sulawesti uh and
Speaker 1: then there's a smaller island named Bhutan where you'll also
Speaker 1: find them, uh and Uh. Sulawesi is one of the
Speaker 1: four Greater Sunda Islands, actually the world's eleventh largest island.
Speaker 1: I believe listeners might remember us from discussing this in
Speaker 1: the recent episode about archaeological finds there that may push
Speaker 1: back the earliest date for known examples of hunting scenes
Speaker 1: and prehistoric art. Oh. Yeah, and there was also a
Speaker 1: question I think about whether the same cave artwork in
Speaker 1: Indonesia depicted theory and thropes right, the idea of of
Speaker 1: uh theeomorphic or animal form humans, and if so, whether
Speaker 1: that would push back the earliest physical evidence we have
Speaker 1: of fantasy thinking or supernatural magical thinking in humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so as far as I know, that's still kind of
Speaker 1: an open question. More research remains to be uh conducted.
Speaker 1: But it's certainly exciting. But also the Malayo bird is
Speaker 1: rather exciting. I was not familiar with this creature until
Speaker 1: very recently. But basically it's a it's a chicken sized
Speaker 1: bird and we had and of course it lays eggs.
Speaker 1: And one of the important jobs of an egg layer is,
Speaker 1: of course, uh to provide for the eggs incubation. Now,
Speaker 1: in some cases, an egg uh may basically be ready
Speaker 1: to go, like we said, the second it comes out, uh,
Speaker 1: But then other times the egg needs to uh be
Speaker 1: cared for, It needs to be incubated a bit longer.
Speaker 1: And in many cases, you know, a bird is just
Speaker 1: going to use their own body to incubate the egg.
Speaker 1: This is the classic scenario of a chicken um uh
Speaker 1: you know, laying laying on its eggs. The example of
Speaker 1: penguins keeping their the eggs warm, uh, you know, by
Speaker 1: their feet that sort of thing. It's a good energy
Speaker 1: move because I mean, you've got extra body heat coming
Speaker 1: off of you, whether you want that or not, why
Speaker 1: not put it to use exactly, And then it also
Speaker 1: opens up the door for various, uh, additional strategies, such
Speaker 1: as again the cuckoo's brood parasites that don't actually incubate
Speaker 1: the egg further themselves, but have another bird another species
Speaker 1: do it through a mix of mimicry and or threats
Speaker 1: of violence. But then there are also there are sort
Speaker 1: of environmental engineers, animals that use the environment that build
Speaker 1: structures of some kind to help them incubate eggs without
Speaker 1: having to make a personal time commitment of just sitting
Speaker 1: on it the whole time. That's right, I mean it's
Speaker 1: almost it's almost as if the bird would think back,
Speaker 1: It's like, all right, what am I doing here? I'm
Speaker 1: providing heat? Where else can I get heat? Um? So,
Speaker 1: like in Australia you see the example of the bush turkey,
Speaker 1: which actually builds a compost pile that incubates the eggs
Speaker 1: via the heat of microbial decay. Oh yeah, these things
Speaker 1: are great. I think some listeners in Australia have actually
Speaker 1: talked to us about them before, regarding them somewhat as
Speaker 1: pests for making giant mounds in their yard and things
Speaker 1: like this. But uh, but yeah, the the bush turkey
Speaker 1: or brush turkey, these are examples of these mega owed birds,
Speaker 1: uh that that are. They're sort of like the beavers
Speaker 1: of the bird world. Yeah. And uh, you know, if you,
Speaker 1: if anyone out there, if you, if you like like me,
Speaker 1: if you have a compost, uh, you know, spinner that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, you'll notice it does heat up in there.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of activity going on inside
Speaker 1: the compost. When my son was younger, he would call
Speaker 1: it the hot hot machine. And indeed that's what the
Speaker 1: bush turkey has done here, is that it creates its
Speaker 1: own hot hot machine to incubate the eggs. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: it makes a big compost pile out of litter and
Speaker 1: leaf litter and things like that that I've read. I
Speaker 1: think sometimes that they can be as big as a car.
Speaker 1: Like these piles can be huge. Yeah, their size, well,
Speaker 1: I can see why it could be in some cases
Speaker 1: considered a pest because it just creates a big old heap.
Speaker 1: But you know what, if if you got a heap
Speaker 1: in your yard, don't be ashamed, don't be embarrassed, be
Speaker 1: proud of your heat pointed out to your neighbors, say,
Speaker 1: check out that heap. That's really cool. It's hot. It's
Speaker 1: the hot, hot heat. Yeah, alright, so let's get back
Speaker 1: to the Malayo bird here, uh, which which also has
Speaker 1: a cool pair of solutions to this problem. It depends
Speaker 1: on one of two options for the incubation of its eggs,
Speaker 1: either by burying its eggs in solar heated sands. So
Speaker 1: there's some hot sand over here, I'll put my eggs
Speaker 1: in there. Uh. Solar power will do the rest or.
Speaker 1: And this is the exciting part. Burying them in geothermally
Speaker 1: heated volcanic soils, hot sands adjacent to volcanic events. That's
Speaker 1: a strategy on the edge that that that bird is
Speaker 1: living on the edge. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: There's a wonderful uh some wonderful footage of this as well,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's almost phoenix like this idea right
Speaker 1: of of of the the egg being deposited in the
Speaker 1: of volcanically heated ground and then it emerges. Um. By
Speaker 1: the way, the maleos egg is roughly watermelon shaped. And
Speaker 1: I was reading in a two thousand seventeen study from
Speaker 1: Princeton University that was doing like kind of an overall
Speaker 1: uh you know, catalog ng of egg sizes and characteristics.
Speaker 1: They point out that it is the most elliptical of
Speaker 1: all Avian eggs, and the idea here is that the
Speaker 1: bird may have evolved to become a skillful flyer, and
Speaker 1: its egg may also have evolved this way to accommodate
Speaker 1: a streamlined body that is built for instantaneous flight. Now,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, would that mean the egg was shaped
Speaker 1: to accommodate the body of the of the embryo inside it,
Speaker 1: or of the mother that's carrying it before it is
Speaker 1: laid Um my interpretation, My understanding is that we're dealing
Speaker 1: more with the chick because the chick when it when
Speaker 1: it hatches, needs to be ready to go. Because the
Speaker 1: whole idea of letting a volcano incubate your eggs letting
Speaker 1: a volcano raise your children, is that you don't have
Speaker 1: to do anything. When the egg hatches. Uh, the mother
Speaker 1: Malao is long gone, so so the young milo, the
Speaker 1: maleo chick hatches and is on its own and ready
Speaker 1: to fly almost immediately. And this is actually a very
Speaker 1: special feature of megapode birds generally the megapodes. I was
Speaker 1: just wondering, Actually, everybody I've heard pronounced this word, says megapodes.
Speaker 1: But then I was thinking about the antipodes, and I
Speaker 1: was like, it isn't megapodes birds, but no, I think
Speaker 1: it's megapodes anyway. Um, but yeah, these other birds, like
Speaker 1: the bush turkey, are famous for having young that are
Speaker 1: extremely quick to adapt to life, like immediately after hatching.
Speaker 1: They can run around, they can hunt, they can fly
Speaker 1: on a dime. All right, on that note, we're going
Speaker 1: to take a quick break, but we'll be right back
Speaker 1: with more eggs. Thank alright, we're back. So what's next
Speaker 1: in the egg chamber here? Joe? Well, Robert, as soon
Speaker 1: as you suggested the idea of doing an episode on eggs,
Speaker 1: my mind instantly filled with thoughts of Ridley Scott's Alien
Speaker 1: because I think, you know, we come back to this
Speaker 1: text quite a bit, and I think of John Hurt
Speaker 1: descending into an enclosed pit of these leathery orbs, and
Speaker 1: then he comes in closer to get a better look
Speaker 1: at one, and one of the eggs nearby starts to throb,
Speaker 1: and it's flaps peel back, and of course we all
Speaker 1: know what happens next, right, the parasite and just leaps out,
Speaker 1: attaches itself to its to his face immobilizes him and
Speaker 1: begins putting some kind of alien pupa in his body.
Speaker 1: So in Alien, we're presented with a vision of a
Speaker 1: sort of predatory egg or ambush egg, and an egg
Speaker 1: which opens to unleash a parasite that requires no additional
Speaker 1: maturation outside the egg before it is lethal. And that
Speaker 1: made me wonder, is there anything like a predatory egg
Speaker 1: in the natural world? Yeah, because this is of course
Speaker 1: the most famous example is Alien BC versions of this
Speaker 1: throughout science fiction influenced by Alien, where there's some sort
Speaker 1: of horrible egg and yeah, you look at it wrong
Speaker 1: and it will open and get you, or you will
Speaker 1: open and dix. It exudes some sort of a parasite
Speaker 1: that will creep up on you and get you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I couldn't find anything exactly like Alien, but there
Speaker 1: are some pretty close parallels. In fact, things we've already
Speaker 1: talked about a good bit on the podcast, so we're
Speaker 1: not going to linger on too much, but I want
Speaker 1: to go in a few directions with this. One is
Speaker 1: just too talk about an interesting distinction in zoology that
Speaker 1: we've already been coming up against the border of and
Speaker 1: that's the relevant distinction between altriciality and precociality and animals.
Speaker 1: So think of the hatchlings of a songbird, like like
Speaker 1: a sparrow, you know, the passive forms here the sparrow.
Speaker 1: Once it emerges from an egg, it is helpless. It
Speaker 1: could not survive on its own. It lacks the ability
Speaker 1: to fly, and I'm not sure if it even lacks
Speaker 1: the ability to walk really, I mean, it can't move
Speaker 1: around much by itself. It certainly can't forage for itself.
Speaker 1: Once it hatches. The sparrow hatchling sits in the nest
Speaker 1: waiting to be brought food while it matures. And there
Speaker 1: there are many animals that are like this, you know,
Speaker 1: upon whether it's hatching for an egg or live birth.
Speaker 1: Upon being born, they can't really do much for themselves.
Speaker 1: They certainly can't move around much. And a species like
Speaker 1: this would be called altricial, meaning it's young or relatively helpless,
Speaker 1: unable to move around by themselves for a long time
Speaker 1: after they're born or hatched. The opposite of altriciality is
Speaker 1: known as precociality, and this is from the same root
Speaker 1: word is precocious, a word that often gets applied to
Speaker 1: like creepily mature human children. Yes, when there's the little
Speaker 1: boy who speaks like an adult man, and you know,
Speaker 1: quite surely, temple Is is often an example of this. Uh.
Speaker 1: A precocial species is one that matures and is able
Speaker 1: to move around on its own and finn for itself
Speaker 1: relatively soon after being born or hatched. I think the
Speaker 1: most common metric used to measure this distinction is a
Speaker 1: movement like how much can this animal, you know, do
Speaker 1: its own locomotion? And there are some animals that take
Speaker 1: precociality to the extreme, and these are known as super
Speaker 1: precocial animals. A very commonly cited example is exactly what
Speaker 1: we've been talking about already, megapode birds. Of course, the
Speaker 1: megapodes include the malayo bird that you were just talking about.
Speaker 1: They include the mound builder birds like the brush turkeys
Speaker 1: or the bush turkeys, and obviously not all of them
Speaker 1: are exactly the same, but megapodes generally you're going to
Speaker 1: see that once they hatch, they're able to see. They're
Speaker 1: not born blind. They can see, they can walk, they
Speaker 1: can run, they can hunt, they can fly pretty much
Speaker 1: on the same day that they emerge from their eggs,
Speaker 1: and that that's pretty amazing. Yeah, it really throws a
Speaker 1: lot of our especially um human centric ideas about about
Speaker 1: birth and um and and and maturity right out the
Speaker 1: window totally, because obviously humans are relatively altrichial, right, um.
Speaker 1: But by this metric, the xenomorph face hugger from Alien
Speaker 1: would be an example of super precociality. Right. It's taken
Speaker 1: to the logical extreme. It's a parasite that that only
Speaker 1: needs one host, and it is ready to attack that
Speaker 1: hosts literally the moment it emerges from its eggs, So
Speaker 1: it's already hunting within seconds of of cracking out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course we could easily do the whole podcasts
Speaker 1: about like each each phase in the life cycle of
Speaker 1: the zeno morph. But you know, I was just thinking,
Speaker 1: it's like, in a way, is the face hugger that
Speaker 1: emerges from the egg like that seems to be like
Speaker 1: the the actual organism itself, right, Uh? It depending on
Speaker 1: how you interpret it. Well, yeah, it's interesting. It's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a creature with a life cycle that's got
Speaker 1: two completely morphologically different stages that are that are you know,
Speaker 1: like trophically staggered. So one life cycle gives rise to
Speaker 1: the next life cycle, but they're not the like, you know,
Speaker 1: adults do not emerge from the egg. The face Hugger
Speaker 1: emerges from the egg, and then it finds a human.
Speaker 1: It implants in the human the I guess there's a
Speaker 1: pupa that just states there and then that becomes the adult.
Speaker 1: So yeah, depending on how you look at it, the
Speaker 1: face hugger could be considered like the the the purest
Speaker 1: form of the organism before it ends up taking on
Speaker 1: properties of the the host organism. Oh I see, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but by that countant as well. I've also seen interpretations
Speaker 1: that that say, well, the face hugger is essentially like
Speaker 1: a mobile sex organ like, it's not it's it's not
Speaker 1: the organism itself. It is a precursor to it um
Speaker 1: and then ultimately the whole life cycle is so suitably
Speaker 1: alien that it doesn't completely line up with with even
Speaker 1: some of the elaborate life cycles that we see here
Speaker 1: on Earth. And we do have some really elaborate ones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I would say of all the life cycles that
Speaker 1: we see on Earth, I think probably the one that
Speaker 1: the alien creature is the closest to is something we've
Speaker 1: actually talked about a good bit on the show before.
Speaker 1: So we're not going to rehash everything here, but just
Speaker 1: real quickly, parasitoid wasps um so parasitoid wasps you know
Speaker 1: there are different Well actually you could just say parasitoids
Speaker 1: in general, but the parasitoid wasp the hymenopter in parasitoids
Speaker 1: are a really good example where what they will often
Speaker 1: do is they will find a host organism such as
Speaker 1: a tarantula or something like that, they will immobilize it,
Speaker 1: so they injected with a paralyzing venom, seal it up
Speaker 1: some way with their eggs, either the eggs planted on
Speaker 1: it or near it, and then when the eggs hatch,
Speaker 1: they consume this animal, this like spider or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: alive from the inside out as they mature toward their
Speaker 1: adult stage. I mean, that's that's pretty dang close to
Speaker 1: exactly what goes on with the xenomorph right. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: And in many cases it's even more amazing than that,
Speaker 1: because you get into these examples of the of the
Speaker 1: of the parasitoid wasp altering the behavior of the host organism.
Speaker 1: It gets uh yeah, it's certainly a case where nature
Speaker 1: um at least equals, but I think probably exceeds uh,
Speaker 1: just the the complexity of the xenomorphs and area, at
Speaker 1: least in this case. Yeah, I guess it's a it's
Speaker 1: a cliche for us at this point, but nature is
Speaker 1: stranger than fiction. You can't make this stuff up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But to explore some more new territory, I was wondering
Speaker 1: about the idea of being attacked by an egg itself.
Speaker 1: Is there such a thing as like a real like
Speaker 1: predatory egg, not just what comes out of the egg.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't find anything directly like this, Like you know,
Speaker 1: I was looking for something like a you know, an
Speaker 1: animal that like mimics an egg, like an egg mimic
Speaker 1: decoy that attacks I don't know, when you come up
Speaker 1: on it or something. I couldn't find anything exactly like that.
Speaker 1: If if you know of examples out there that I
Speaker 1: couldn't find, please email make us aware. But you mean
Speaker 1: like a creature that pretends to be an egg and
Speaker 1: then would prey upon something that eats eggs. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I mean. Do what mean do you know
Speaker 1: of something like that? Um? No, I don't know, Okay.
Speaker 1: I think there's some sort of robot in Teenage Muntant
Speaker 1: Ninja Turtles. Right, don't they have some robots that look
Speaker 1: like eggs? I don't know, but if they were turtle eggs,
Speaker 1: they may very well be soft and leathery shelled instead
Speaker 1: of hard shelled. Oh, we have just received an update
Speaker 1: from our producer Seth, who has been uh digging into
Speaker 1: old episodes of Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles, and he informs
Speaker 1: us that I am thinking of the MOUs er robots,
Speaker 1: which are not I think supposed to be eggs, but
Speaker 1: do look sort of egg like. So it's just kind
Speaker 1: of coincidence of their design. Yeah. I think Seth told
Speaker 1: us recently that he's made it to season forty six
Speaker 1: of the Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. So so best of
Speaker 1: luck to a Seth on your on your turtle journey. Um,
Speaker 1: but but I want to bring it back. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: in terms of being injured or attacked by an egg itself,
Speaker 1: I did find something. It wasn't active deliberate violence by
Speaker 1: an egg, but I did find something here. So I
Speaker 1: was reading an article in The New York Times from
Speaker 1: December by very Nique Greenwood, which was based in part
Speaker 1: on a series of findings by a couple of a
Speaker 1: coup sticks experts named Anthony Nash and Lauren von Blonde,
Speaker 1: who at the time worked at an acoustics firm that
Speaker 1: was called Charles M. Salter and Associates. Now, what would
Speaker 1: acoustics experts have to do with eggs? Well, their research,
Speaker 1: which was presented in early December at the Acoustical Society
Speaker 1: of America meeting in New Orleans, concerned the physical properties,
Speaker 1: especially the loudness, of exploding eggs. Now we're again, We're
Speaker 1: just talking about regular chicken eggs here, no gegaresque insect,
Speaker 1: trapped mine eggs or anything like that. Uh. Nash and
Speaker 1: von Blonde had been hired as expert witnesses for the
Speaker 1: defense in a recent lawsuit. Unfortunately, I don't think the
Speaker 1: real names of the plaintiff, for the defendant, or the
Speaker 1: location wherever published. I think that stuff remains confidential, so
Speaker 1: we only know about it from their research and the
Speaker 1: reporting on that research, where the details were anonymized. Uh
Speaker 1: And I think the case was eventually settled out of court,
Speaker 1: so it may remain a mystery forever. But in broad
Speaker 1: anonymous outline the alleged facts of the case, whereas follows
Speaker 1: plaintiff walks into a restaurant. He orders a hard boiled egg.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming he ordered some other stuff too. That would
Speaker 1: be a pretty strange thing to order at a restaurant
Speaker 1: by itself, but the egg is the important part here.
Speaker 1: They bring him his hard boiled egg. He bites into
Speaker 1: the egg. Upon being pierced by the plaintiff's teeth, the
Speaker 1: egg explodes, as in, it literally explodes, resulting in what
Speaker 1: the planeiff claimed were severe burns and actual hearing damage
Speaker 1: from the volume of the explosion. Now, when I first
Speaker 1: read that, I was like, what could could that be real?
Speaker 1: I'm having a hard time imagining it that that really happened.
Speaker 1: But you can use the old YouTube and see for yourself.
Speaker 1: Unless there are a bunch of like coordinated egg explosion
Speaker 1: hoaxers all doing homebrew video manipulation or special effects, exploding
Speaker 1: egg are absolutely a thing, uh And they they can
Speaker 1: actually be done very easily if you involve one crucial
Speaker 1: piece of technology, and that is the microwave oven. So
Speaker 1: perhaps you yourself have at some point tried to cook
Speaker 1: a whole intact egg shell on inside a microwave, and
Speaker 1: if so, I would not be surprised if you have
Speaker 1: detonated an egg bomb yourself in this way. Microwaving a
Speaker 1: whole egg often results in a big pop and a
Speaker 1: gooey mess, But sometimes a microwaved egg, especially a microwave
Speaker 1: reheating of a previously hard boiled egg, can result in
Speaker 1: an egg that holds together through the cooking, So you
Speaker 1: can microwave it for however long you take it out
Speaker 1: of the microwave. But if you disturb it in just
Speaker 1: the wrong way, say by piercing it with a fork
Speaker 1: or with your teeth, it suddenly explodes with a with
Speaker 1: a pop, a real like loud sound like a firecracker.
Speaker 1: An egg hot egg pieces go everywhere. And we know
Speaker 1: this is possible just from publicly available video evidence. People
Speaker 1: are you know, messing around with this in their houses
Speaker 1: all the time, apparently, But how often does this happen,
Speaker 1: what are the physics underlying it, and how dangerous is it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean, obviously it makes sense that an egg
Speaker 1: could pop, you know, you could have pressure built up
Speaker 1: in there. In fact, really we use an egg cooker
Speaker 1: in the house a lot, and they have that spike
Speaker 1: in the middle that you're supposed to use to to
Speaker 1: to make a hole in the shell of the egg
Speaker 1: before you cook it, which I you know, I always
Speaker 1: assumed was to keep it from bursting or or even exploding. Now,
Speaker 1: I was surprised about the idea that it could allegedly
Speaker 1: cause hearing damage. The idea of a bursting egg, I
Speaker 1: would imagine it would be just kind of a you know,
Speaker 1: a popping situation. Right, the hearing damage was alleged by
Speaker 1: the plaintiff, and we'll we'll try to get to the
Speaker 1: bottom of that. But um so what was what did
Speaker 1: their research consists of when they're looking into this national
Speaker 1: Von Bland's research first tested actual eggs using the same
Speaker 1: reheating method that was supposedly employed by the restaurant that
Speaker 1: was the defendant in the lawsuit. So you would take
Speaker 1: a previously hard boiled egg and you'd reheat it by
Speaker 1: microwaving it for three minutes in a water bath. Now,
Speaker 1: the researchers here did admit that after several explosions coated
Speaker 1: the inside of the microwave with egg gunk, they realized
Speaker 1: they needed some kind of permeable containment device, So they
Speaker 1: came up with the addition of like a nylon stocking
Speaker 1: type casement for the egg. But with this in place,
Speaker 1: they repeated the experiment with about a hundred eggs, taking
Speaker 1: the temperature of the water bath and taking the temperature
Speaker 1: of the egg itself each time by piercing it with
Speaker 1: a meat thermometer. And when the eggs were done microwaving
Speaker 1: they did the piercing, they would take it out, put
Speaker 1: it on the floor and stabbed the probe of the
Speaker 1: meat thermometer in to take the internal temperature and to
Speaker 1: see if piercing the egg would cause it to explode.
Speaker 1: And what they found was that some eggs did nothing,
Speaker 1: some exploded inside the microwave while cooking. But of the
Speaker 1: one hundred eggs, roughly they found about one third survived
Speaker 1: the reheating itself, only to explode on the outside of
Speaker 1: the microwave once poked with the thermometer. So I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty conclusive the explosion thing, where like rupturing a
Speaker 1: microwave heated hard boiled egg absolutely can cause it to
Speaker 1: blow up. That just happens, and it looks like it
Speaker 1: happens roughly about one third of the time. But of
Speaker 1: the ones that did explode, the loudness of the explosion
Speaker 1: at its peak was between eighty six and a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty three decibels at a distance of twelve inches
Speaker 1: from the egg, and Nash compared this too at the
Speaker 1: upper end the hundred and thirty three disciples. He compared
Speaker 1: it to the loudness of something like a chainsaw, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, loud but not usually a source of hearing
Speaker 1: damage on a on a short time of exposure on
Speaker 1: its own, and based on this reasoning, Nash claimed that
Speaker 1: actual hearing damage from an explode egg was not impossible,
Speaker 1: but that it was unlikely. Though at the same time,
Speaker 1: I think it is worth noting that these scientists were
Speaker 1: hired by the defense in the trial to be expert
Speaker 1: witnesses for that side, so not not impugning their reputation,
Speaker 1: but it is worth noting the interests involved. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we might need to take this particular egg study with
Speaker 1: a grain of salt, maybe a little pepper, a little
Speaker 1: mustard if we some gherkins. Definitely so. But realistically I
Speaker 1: guess it sounds like it would be loud enough that
Speaker 1: if you just heard exploding eggs all day, it could
Speaker 1: hurt your hearing, but maybe not just one going off
Speaker 1: that could be the case. Then again, I mean we
Speaker 1: don't know for sure. I mean, like it's positively that
Speaker 1: they didn't rule out the possibility that there could there
Speaker 1: could be hearing damage in some kind of outside case here,
Speaker 1: but the standard, the average loudness of the explosion they
Speaker 1: thought probably would not hurt your ears if it just
Speaker 1: happened one time. But then, but that's not to say
Speaker 1: this is fine. I mean, you would not want to
Speaker 1: bite into one these eggs. I think burns are obviously
Speaker 1: why that could happen. And just generally, anything exploding inside
Speaker 1: your mouth, i'd imagine even could just probably startle you
Speaker 1: enough that you might get whiplash or something like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's biting into something that explodes as a
Speaker 1: horrifying idea. Yeah, and I do want to drive home here.
Speaker 1: If you're out there and you're listening to this, and
Speaker 1: maybe you're stuck in your house and you're a little
Speaker 1: bit bored, do not experiment with exploding eggs just you know,
Speaker 1: have an egg for breakfast maybe and think about this,
Speaker 1: But you don't try and make eggs explode just because
Speaker 1: you heard about it on this show, right, Uh. And
Speaker 1: and so there's a more interesting question that we still
Speaker 1: haven't solved, which is why would the eggs explode at all?
Speaker 1: You can kind of imagine, like, okay, the heating, the
Speaker 1: build up of pressure and steam as could cause it
Speaker 1: to explode while it's cooking inside the microwave. Why is
Speaker 1: it that there's this pattern where about a third of
Speaker 1: the eggs that they tested out here didn't explode while cooking,
Speaker 1: but did explode once you poked them with something. That's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would seem like they would reach the because again
Speaker 1: coming back to my experience using an egg cooker, is okay,
Speaker 1: we poked the hole on the top of the egg
Speaker 1: with the spike so that it doesn't rupture, I guess,
Speaker 1: and then some of the time, uh, you see, egg
Speaker 1: content has been pushed up through the hole that we created,
Speaker 1: and other times it is not. So maybe and I've
Speaker 1: never analyzed it enough to say that it's happening a
Speaker 1: third at the time or whatnot. But maybe that's that's
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here. The same situation could be
Speaker 1: now So. One thing found by Nash and von Blonde
Speaker 1: was that when they measured the temperature of the water
Speaker 1: bath that the egg was sitting in while it was microwaved,
Speaker 1: and then compare that to the temperature inside the egg,
Speaker 1: specifically of the yolk. There was a big difference. Of course,
Speaker 1: the water bath was limited to two d and twelve
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit or one degrees celsius. This is the boiling
Speaker 1: point of water. We know that, you know, at that temperature,
Speaker 1: water doesn't really heat up beyond that because it equalizes
Speaker 1: with the you know, with the vapor press sure around it.
Speaker 1: So so additional energy put into it goes into boiling
Speaker 1: off more and more of the water into steam. But
Speaker 1: the the yolk was significantly hotter than the boiling point
Speaker 1: of water. It was there was an average of twenty
Speaker 1: two degrees fahrenheit of difference between the water and the yolk.
Speaker 1: And yet the yolk has a significant amount of water
Speaker 1: in it. By some estimates, that chicken egg yolk is
Speaker 1: it's something like fifty water, okay, now, yeah, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: in addition to lots of proteins and fats and stuff,
Speaker 1: and so Nash's hypothesis about the explosion is that the
Speaker 1: microwave process, microwaving process somehow superheats little pockets of water
Speaker 1: inside the egg yolk beyond the boiling point of water. Now,
Speaker 1: there can be a couple of ways that water becomes
Speaker 1: superheated and then flashes suddenly into steam. One way is
Speaker 1: when water is heated in a microwave with an absence
Speaker 1: of what are called nucleation points. New cleation sites are
Speaker 1: just little places where bubbles can form naturally that allow
Speaker 1: the water to begin to convert into steam. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this is why you might have been advised to put
Speaker 1: a little wooden coffee stir or something like that in
Speaker 1: a mug of water if you're heating it in the microwave.
Speaker 1: There have been occasions where people have gotten burns by
Speaker 1: microwaving water, especially in very smooth, clean containers. And I've
Speaker 1: read also especially when you repeatedly microwave the same container
Speaker 1: of water without like stirring it or touching it. There
Speaker 1: can be cases where the water just gets hotter and hotter,
Speaker 1: but it can't boil because there are no sites where
Speaker 1: this hot massive water is able to start forming bubbles.
Speaker 1: And in these cases, the water can become hotter than
Speaker 1: its boiling point, but it looks perfectly calm until it's
Speaker 1: disturbed in some way that suddenly does provide nucleation points. Uh.
Speaker 1: This could include jostling the container, inserting a spoon or
Speaker 1: sugar or something like. The superheated water can then quite
Speaker 1: suddenly flash into steam and explode. But another way that
Speaker 1: water can become superheated and flash suddenly into steam is
Speaker 1: changes in pressure. Uh. You know, remember the principles illustrated
Speaker 1: by a pressure cooker. The normal boiling point of water
Speaker 1: is determined by atmospheric pressure, so you can actually change
Speaker 1: the boiling point of water just by going up or
Speaker 1: down in altitude. If you go higher in altitude up
Speaker 1: a mountain, water converts into vapor easier at a lower temperature,
Speaker 1: and this lowers the boiling point of water, So a
Speaker 1: boiling pot of water on top of a mountain will
Speaker 1: be cooler than a boiling point of water at sea level.
Speaker 1: In fact, there are even stories, I think we've talked
Speaker 1: about these in a previous episode. Uh, stories of people
Speaker 1: trying to cook at super high altitudes and being unable
Speaker 1: to do it. Like mountain climbers on everest have sometimes
Speaker 1: found that you cannot, for example, boil potatoes effectively at
Speaker 1: the top of everest because at some point you get
Speaker 1: so high up and the pressure is so low that
Speaker 1: the boiling point of water gets so low that a
Speaker 1: pot of water on a burner literally just can't get
Speaker 1: hot enough to cook potatoes, and a reasonable amount of
Speaker 1: time your your water is boiling, but it's just not
Speaker 1: very hot. Conversely, if you increase the pressure on a
Speaker 1: cooking vessel by sealing it tight with the lid and
Speaker 1: safety gasket and all that, you can actually raise the
Speaker 1: boiling point of water, allowing water to get a lot
Speaker 1: hotter than it ever would in a pot on the
Speaker 1: stove where it can just evaporate normally, and this cooks
Speaker 1: your food faster. This is the principle behind a pressure cooker. Um.
Speaker 1: Modern pressure cookers tend to be very safe by design,
Speaker 1: but they years ago, pressure cookers used to have a
Speaker 1: reputation for exploding. This was the thing people were afraid about,
Speaker 1: and there are cases of this happening. You can see
Speaker 1: why they could be dangerous in principle because it's contents
Speaker 1: under pressure and it's a bunch of superheated water. If
Speaker 1: suddenly exposed to reduced pressure, that water would try to
Speaker 1: convert from liquid water into steam really suddenly in a
Speaker 1: kind of explosive instant. Yeah. I remember growing up and
Speaker 1: hearing about like the canning process in which one would
Speaker 1: put uh you know, their jars into a pressure cooker
Speaker 1: to to sterilize them. I remember there being accounts of
Speaker 1: this which sounded dangerous. It sounded explosive to me. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know to what extent there was actually some
Speaker 1: sort of cautionary tail involved in the telling of it,
Speaker 1: but but I got the sense that that the cooking
Speaker 1: with a with a pressure cooker had had some sort
Speaker 1: of inherent danger to it. I mean, there are natural
Speaker 1: dangers of like burns and stuff if you don't have
Speaker 1: a modern pressure cooker with good safety features. But I
Speaker 1: think modern pressure cookers, like if it's made by a
Speaker 1: reputable company and all that, it's going to have safety
Speaker 1: features in place that make it pretty darn safe to use.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like like, yeah, we use one all the
Speaker 1: time for various uh you know, rice dishes and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Great for lentils. Yeah. But anyway, So so back to
Speaker 1: the pressure issue. I think this is what Anthony Nash
Speaker 1: is sort of hypothesizing is happening inside the yolk of
Speaker 1: an exploding egg. While an egg is being microwaved, It's
Speaker 1: got this protein matrix inside the yolk that becomes hotter
Speaker 1: than the boiling point of water, and this protein matrix
Speaker 1: is holding all these little pockets of water trapped inside.
Speaker 1: These pockets of water become superheated beyond the boiling point
Speaker 1: of water, and when the egg is pierced, these little
Speaker 1: pockets of superheated liquid water can suddenly boil. They flash
Speaker 1: into steam very rapidly, causing the egg to explode in
Speaker 1: the process. Now, I don't know if Nash's hypothesis about
Speaker 1: the cause of the exploding eggs is correct. I can't
Speaker 1: judge for sure, but it seems pretty plausible to me.
Speaker 1: Uh And I think it's a pretty clear indication that
Speaker 1: microwaving hard boiled eggs is not a very good idea.
Speaker 1: You know, if you've got cold, hard boiled eggs, why
Speaker 1: not just eat them cold or make egg salad? Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't risk the explosion, how you know. However, all this talk, okay,
Speaker 1: we're talking and about the pressure inside the egg and
Speaker 1: changes to to to the pressure and atmospheric pressure, it
Speaker 1: does make me wonder, Okay, could you have a scenario
Speaker 1: where your say, venturing aboard a derelict spaceship and you're
Speaker 1: encountering the eggs of another species. Who knows, like under
Speaker 1: what atmospheric conditions they were originally? Um lane point yeah.
Speaker 1: And and then and then what happened, you know where
Speaker 1: they put on a ship with an entirely different pressure
Speaker 1: and then maybe that pressure went away. Maybe the people
Speaker 1: now discovering it bring it back to their ship and
Speaker 1: there's a different uh air pressure scenario going on. Could
Speaker 1: you end up with an explosive alien egg along those lines.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna rule it physically plausible but unproven. Okay, alright, well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take one more break. But
Speaker 1: when we come back, we have a couple of more
Speaker 1: eggs for you. Alright, we're back, Robert, Is it time
Speaker 1: to pet the furry egg? Yes, let us consider the
Speaker 1: furry egg? So, uh my, my family, like a lot
Speaker 1: of households out there, recently enjoyed viewing the excellent series
Speaker 1: The Mandalorian, which features everything I love about Star Wars,
Speaker 1: including some really cool creatures and one of the most
Speaker 1: important in the series. This is creature that that pops
Speaker 1: up called a mud horn, and it's this large mammalian
Speaker 1: creature or assume, oh, we assume it to be mammalian.
Speaker 1: Uh that looks a lot like a wooly rhino. It's
Speaker 1: like an alien take on a wooly rhino. And as
Speaker 1: its name implies, it makes its home in the mud.
Speaker 1: Here it lays a very unique furry egg. Uh. And this,
Speaker 1: by the way, is on the world our Volla seven
Speaker 1: in and it's here that Jawa's consider it a delicacy.
Speaker 1: So of course our main character ends up being sent
Speaker 1: on a quest to obtain the furry egg. Okay, I
Speaker 1: still haven't seen this, but this sounds good. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: you're in for a treat with this one, I know,
Speaker 1: Baby Yoda. So we've got we've got furry eggs in
Speaker 1: Baby Yoda. What are they just trying to like cute
Speaker 1: you to death? Well, I mean, I think cute is
Speaker 1: an important part of Star Wars. You gotta have a
Speaker 1: cute element in there. And I think I think anyone who, um,
Speaker 1: who disagrees with me on that is wrong. There's there's
Speaker 1: got to be something cute in there. And uh, and
Speaker 1: so you got, you got, you got, you got your
Speaker 1: your furry egg here. Um. But the furry egg is
Speaker 1: I think really something to ponder though, because in many
Speaker 1: ways it seems paradoxical and suitably alien. Right, because eggs
Speaker 1: we tend to just assume, you know, eggs are the
Speaker 1: domain of scale and feather, right, not the domain of fur. Sure,
Speaker 1: fur is typically the domain of mammals. But of course
Speaker 1: the mammalian world is not entirely devoid of egg layers,
Speaker 1: because of course we have the monotreams. Yeah, now, monotreams
Speaker 1: are when we're talking about monotreams, we're talking about I
Speaker 1: think what five species around still today. One of course
Speaker 1: is the platypus, which were largely going to leave alone
Speaker 1: to its monstrous pools in this as because I'd like
Speaker 1: to come back and really dive into the platypus uh
Speaker 1: and focus on it, because it is a true monster.
Speaker 1: Uh and and it's wonderful. But then we have I
Speaker 1: think four different species of a kidna to consider as well.
Speaker 1: So monetreams are thought to have diverged from other mammals
Speaker 1: roughly a hundred and ninety million years ago. There's still
Speaker 1: a lot we don't know about them in their connections
Speaker 1: to other mammals, but but among their most notable features
Speaker 1: is their egg laying. Oh and incidentally, uh, the name
Speaker 1: a kidna We get that from the Greek mythological figure
Speaker 1: a kidna, who is sometimes described as the mother of monsters,
Speaker 1: and who is often depicted as having like a half
Speaker 1: snake half human body. Therefore, Shi embodies both mammalian and
Speaker 1: serpentine aspects. I'm just trying to remember. Why did the
Speaker 1: word a kidna make me think of vampires? Is the
Speaker 1: they're like an a kidna vampire and the Witcher Games
Speaker 1: or something. I don't know. I don't know. I've never
Speaker 1: played the Witcher Games, but I mean a kidnas a
Speaker 1: one full name for a monstrous enemy. So I think
Speaker 1: I'm brushing up against a sound alike here. But but
Speaker 1: a kidna in the mythological context is is cool enough
Speaker 1: on her own, right? And uh? And when we look
Speaker 1: to the organisms that we have dubbed a kidnas, they're
Speaker 1: really fascinating as well. Less frightening and monstrous perhaps, but
Speaker 1: just weird and at times adorable. So I was reading
Speaker 1: a few different sources on this, one of which is
Speaker 1: as an excellent little article from the New York Times
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine titled Brainy A kidnap proves looks
Speaker 1: aren't everything, and the author, Natalie Angier, has this wonderful
Speaker 1: little paragraph describing their reproduction quote. Reproductively, monotreams are like
Speaker 1: a VCR DVD unit, an embodiment of a technology. In transition,
Speaker 1: they lay leathery eggs, as reptiles do, but then feed
Speaker 1: the so called puggles that hatch with milk drizzled out
Speaker 1: of glands in the chest rather than expressed through nippled teats,
Speaker 1: and sometimes so enriched with iron that it looks paint.
Speaker 1: WHOA man, I'm still reeling from that VCR DVD unit comparison.
Speaker 1: It makes me think this should have been the subject
Speaker 1: of a fast and furious movie, Like they're trying to
Speaker 1: hijack a truck full of a kidna. They're they're they're
Speaker 1: they're weird looking creative. For first of all, that that
Speaker 1: that iron and rich milk that's I'm assuming coming largely
Speaker 1: from their diet of ants and termites, So they're voracious
Speaker 1: ant and termite eaters. And yeah, they're just really look
Speaker 1: up a picture of one, because they're they're really neat.
Speaker 1: They have this this specialized snout clearly uh evolved to
Speaker 1: enable them to pursue their their main prey, and then
Speaker 1: they have these just pudgy, spiny bodies. They're they're absolutely
Speaker 1: weird and adorable looking. And if you look up images
Speaker 1: of of of a of an a kidna puggle of
Speaker 1: a of a baby a kidna, uh, it is just
Speaker 1: even weirder and more cuddly. They're like little um little
Speaker 1: bean bags with with snouts. I believe the alts are spiny,
Speaker 1: aren't they? Or the or the young also spiny? Know
Speaker 1: that well is we'll discuss the the young are born
Speaker 1: or rather hatch without spines and then developed them later.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the adults definitely have spines for their protection. Now,
Speaker 1: to come back to the pink milk it looks I
Speaker 1: was looking at a two thousand and eight Harvard University
Speaker 1: study that the claims that the achidna might have simply
Speaker 1: evolved away from suckling due the due to the demands
Speaker 1: of its specialized mouth parts and its specialized diet. So
Speaker 1: not necessarily a case here where the achidna is like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, predates suckling, but rather might have
Speaker 1: evolved away from suckling as a means of carrying out
Speaker 1: its diet. Yeah, maybe a mouth made for devouring ants
Speaker 1: is not ideal for this way of getting milk. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: more for lapping. So so let's talk about the eggs
Speaker 1: a little bit. So the eggs of an a kidna,
Speaker 1: I want to be clear, are not furry. Um. The
Speaker 1: achidna is of course covered with with spines, but also
Speaker 1: coarse hair, so this is still not a case of
Speaker 1: a furry egg. The egg is leathery and twenty two
Speaker 1: days after conception, it is deposited directly into the female's pouch,
Speaker 1: and after ten days of gestation in the pouch, the
Speaker 1: puggle bust through uh that leathery shell with a reptile
Speaker 1: like egg tooth, and then remains in the pouch for
Speaker 1: another forty five to fifty five days, continuing to develop
Speaker 1: in major ways, such as growing out those defensive spines.
Speaker 1: And if you, I am highly encourage everyone to look
Speaker 1: up video footage of this. I found a great a
Speaker 1: kidnaped hatching video that's easily found on YouTube from I
Speaker 1: want to say it's from the seventies or maybe the fifties.
Speaker 1: I can't can't recall. It's it's older footage, but you
Speaker 1: get to see one of these little puggles and it's
Speaker 1: pointed out that the puggle is so uh, you know, immature,
Speaker 1: so translucent, so helpless that after it has stuffed itself
Speaker 1: with milk, you can see the milk inside of it
Speaker 1: through its in slucent pink body. Whoa, that makes me
Speaker 1: think of the honey pot ants or you can. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does look a lot like that, you know. It's
Speaker 1: it's just so immature and helpless at that point. It's
Speaker 1: uh uh, it's I was thinking it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a translucent gush or candy, you know, with a kid
Speaker 1: in the milk in the middle. Wait, didn't we also
Speaker 1: compare the honey pot ants to gushers? I guess we did.
Speaker 1: We just we just got gushers on the brain here.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if they still make gushers, but god,
Speaker 1: that is the most malevolent candy of all time. I
Speaker 1: don't know, now that I'm thinking about it. What do
Speaker 1: you think gushers? Um? You know, they they have that
Speaker 1: kind of popping liquid filled Maybe they're supposed to be
Speaker 1: like eggs, you know. Children want to gobble up the
Speaker 1: eggs of some strange, purplely fruit scented creature, and that's
Speaker 1: what gushers are for. I don't want to know what
Speaker 1: happens if you microwave a gusher. No, I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: been done to certainly, do not try it on our
Speaker 1: account though, if even hasn't been done, don't ever microwave
Speaker 1: anything as you heard us talking about something that blanket statement.
Speaker 1: All all liability erased. Yes, follow the instructions for heating
Speaker 1: anything in the microwave. Okay, So back to mono trains.
Speaker 1: So there were once hundreds of mono train species, and
Speaker 1: the largest that we know of was one that is
Speaker 1: known as Zaglosis Haketti. And it would have been about
Speaker 1: a meter long and a wait, about thirty kilogram, so
Speaker 1: about three point two ft long and weighing sixty six pounds. Um.
Speaker 1: I've seen some images here. I included one in our document, Joe,
Speaker 1: we can see about how big this would have been.
Speaker 1: It would have been like, I don't know, what would
Speaker 1: you say, like a like a very large plump dog. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds about right, a spiny bulldog. Again, not a
Speaker 1: furry egg, but in a way close to a furry egg.
Speaker 1: But but I will add that there is perhaps another
Speaker 1: possibility for fury egg hunting in nature. A certain moths
Speaker 1: are often described as being furry Granted, we're dealing with
Speaker 1: something different than what you wouldn't honor on your pet
Speaker 1: dog or your pet cat. But these moths, such as
Speaker 1: the gypsy moth, will actually cover their eggs with a
Speaker 1: coating that contains that quote unquote fur, So you know
Speaker 1: that might be one way to tackle the problem. I
Speaker 1: suppose the idea of an egg naturally being insulated with
Speaker 1: a layer of hair isn't completely crazy, but I don't
Speaker 1: think we see it, and and most examples we see
Speaker 1: entail a stronger alliance on the parent's body or efforts
Speaker 1: by the parent to secret the egg away in a
Speaker 1: warm place. All right, And for our final egg exploration
Speaker 1: or exploration, uh, here today, I thought we might consider
Speaker 1: the idea of the God in his egg. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: do it. So we've we've mentioned this entity on the
Speaker 1: show before, uh, and Joe, you might even remember it, uh.
Speaker 1: I think I think we came up in one of
Speaker 1: our episodes. The Egyptian Book of the Dead speaks of
Speaker 1: and this is of course a translation quote that August
Speaker 1: God who is in his egg, a terrifying entity said
Speaker 1: to rule over the realm of of exc within the
Speaker 1: Egyptian underworld. It's a It's described as a yellow realm
Speaker 1: that is hidden from the gods and subject to the
Speaker 1: powers of the eye that captures, and so there's an
Speaker 1: invocation for the traveler into the afterlife. They would say,
Speaker 1: hail to you, you August, God, who are in your egg.
Speaker 1: I have come to you to be in your sweets,
Speaker 1: so that I may go in and out of xy,
Speaker 1: that its doors may be open to me, that I
Speaker 1: may breathe the air in it, and that I may
Speaker 1: have power through its offerings. Okay, so you gotta prostrate
Speaker 1: yourself before the egg. Yeah, yeah, this weird. And something
Speaker 1: about this idea. It's again it comes back to this
Speaker 1: paradox of that is often inherent in the egg. You know,
Speaker 1: what is the egg, things that emerge out of the egg.
Speaker 1: But here especially the paradox of a thing that is
Speaker 1: post egg and pre egg at once, the thing that
Speaker 1: never emerged from its egg, and yet is a complete
Speaker 1: being in some form, like it is a god, but
Speaker 1: it has not hatched, and it somehow has the powers
Speaker 1: of an entity that is um you know that that
Speaker 1: is that is you know, fully powerful. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the egg is in many ways the archetype of potential. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so again the August got in his egg. Terrifying, weird,
Speaker 1: almost impossible to behold. But it also does bring to mind.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember this character, but there's
Speaker 1: a character named Sheldon who was featured on in Jim
Speaker 1: Davis's US Acres cartoon and this showed up on Garfield
Speaker 1: and Friends. Rachel and I were just talking about us
Speaker 1: Acres the other day. I don't remember why it came up,
Speaker 1: but we we both remember having this feeling where you'd
Speaker 1: be watching Garfield and then it would go to this
Speaker 1: other thing, this farm thing, and I remember having this
Speaker 1: feeling like when is this going to start making sense?
Speaker 1: And I don't think it ever did. Yeah, you would.
Speaker 1: You would get Garfield and knew it, then you would
Speaker 1: get us Acres, and then you would get a little
Speaker 1: more Garfield. It was what I like that. I think
Speaker 1: they call it like an ad a format um. But
Speaker 1: but US Acres had a whole host of characters, you know,
Speaker 1: your typical farm characters, but one of them, the one
Speaker 1: that really made it memorable, was that you had Sheldon,
Speaker 1: who was a chicken that was still in its egg.
Speaker 1: It's just an egg, like a walking egg, an egg
Speaker 1: with two chicken legs emerging from it. And there are
Speaker 1: other takes on this out there. There's a wonderful children's
Speaker 1: book by many Gray titled Egg Drop, and it features
Speaker 1: an egg that wants to fly, and I don't recall
Speaker 1: it actually has legs, but it certainly has like a
Speaker 1: will of its own, and it wants to do things,
Speaker 1: and it thinks it can do things that a a
Speaker 1: hatched chicken, a fully developed chicken should be capable of.
Speaker 1: That's a funny symbol. I mean it. Uh, we all
Speaker 1: have the experience in childhood of wanting to do the
Speaker 1: things that adults do, not understanding why I can't do
Speaker 1: that yet, And then a lot of cases the reason
Speaker 1: is intellectual and emotional maturity. You don't have that level
Speaker 1: of like brain responsibility yet to be an adult. But
Speaker 1: the egg is a different thing, right because it doesn't
Speaker 1: have limbs and it can't move around on its own. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And that's that's roughly kind of the idea that that
Speaker 1: many Gray explores in this this excellent book, which also,
Speaker 1: by the way, has some principles of aerodynamics involved in it,
Speaker 1: so I wouldn't say that it's the science book, but
Speaker 1: it has a little science sprinkled in it, and it
Speaker 1: has wonderful illustrations. Now the for for our purposes. Though,
Speaker 1: in the natural world, the prospect of an animal simply
Speaker 1: never leaving its egg is certainly fascinating. It's it's paradoxical
Speaker 1: to a magical degree. It's kind of like the aura
Speaker 1: bora serpent consuming its own tail. Right. But while we
Speaker 1: don't see examples in the in the natural world where
Speaker 1: an egg lasts forever like the egg is the final form,
Speaker 1: we do see examples where the egg phase lasts for
Speaker 1: a pretty long time. Oh yeah, I guess I've never
Speaker 1: asked this specific question before. What what is the longest
Speaker 1: egg incubation period in in nature? Yeah, Like, just to
Speaker 1: come back to Alien, right, there's that The open question
Speaker 1: in that movie is like how long have these eggs
Speaker 1: been here? You know, sort of applies like thousands of
Speaker 1: years or something. Yeah, long enough for for the for
Speaker 1: the engineer up there on the the seat thing to
Speaker 1: to rot and become a mummy. But but yeah, when
Speaker 1: we look to the natural world, where there's some pretty
Speaker 1: startling um examples. Probably the most startling that I ran
Speaker 1: across is the deep sea octopus Greanella dawn Boro pacifica.
Speaker 1: And it has been observed to brood its eggs for
Speaker 1: four point five years or fifty three months wow. And
Speaker 1: to put that in a in a proper frame of reference,
Speaker 1: that's compared to the typical one to three month brooding
Speaker 1: time for shallower water octopus species. That's unbelievable. I mean,
Speaker 1: so an egg can't defend itself. So that would mean
Speaker 1: an egg has to either just survive on its own
Speaker 1: or be protected for for four and a half years
Speaker 1: before it can hatch and at least have like escape
Speaker 1: behaviors exactly. And and that's exactly, and what we see
Speaker 1: with the octopus is a mother caring for the eggs,
Speaker 1: looking after the eggs. And and of course one of
Speaker 1: the curious wrinkles here is that typically the mother does
Speaker 1: not eat during this period, like she has she has
Speaker 1: deposited the eggs and now her only purpose in life
Speaker 1: is to protect them and to ultimately die protecting them.
Speaker 1: Like she's not gonna she's not going to eat, They're
Speaker 1: going to hatch, and then when they're gone, she's going
Speaker 1: to die. So with the deep sea octopus, this four
Speaker 1: point five year brooding period in which she looks after them.
Speaker 1: This is apparently the longest brooding period of any known animal.
Speaker 1: I was reading about this in a study by Robinson
Speaker 1: at All published in p. Los One in two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: and uh and they go into greater detail on this.
Speaker 1: You can find the whole study online. But the two
Speaker 1: key factors they say here are low to amperature because
Speaker 1: of course it's the deep sea, and and this would
Speaker 1: means slower metabolism. We see other examples of this in
Speaker 1: other organisms in terms of just you know, slow metabolism
Speaker 1: and and low temperature. But then also key here is
Speaker 1: the selective advantage of producing highly developed hatch links. So
Speaker 1: it comes back to the idea that once they're they're
Speaker 1: they hatch, they're ready to go. They're well cooked, ready
Speaker 1: to move. The clutch size of the deep sea octopus
Speaker 1: is is quite small compared to other octopus species. So
Speaker 1: there's ultimately this focus on quality over quantity, instead of
Speaker 1: it being a situation where like let's get some baby
Speaker 1: octopi out there, a lot of them are gonna get eaten,
Speaker 1: but some of them will slip by. Now this is
Speaker 1: instead let's focus on a smaller bunch of of of
Speaker 1: octopus young. Uh, that all have a very strong fighting chance.
Speaker 1: And while this might be a familiar tactic too, you
Speaker 1: know people thinking about mammals and birds and stuff, this
Speaker 1: is the less common choice for organ is ms that
Speaker 1: live in the ocean, right, I mean marine organisms are
Speaker 1: very often just sort of spamming with eggs. I mean
Speaker 1: like there there's tons of production of offspring with very
Speaker 1: little investment in each individual one. Yeah, it's usually um,
Speaker 1: you know, generally when we're talking about the about the
Speaker 1: cases that buck the trend, were of course dealing with
Speaker 1: something like like a whale, uh, you know, annalion species
Speaker 1: that return to the water, or we're dealing with you know,
Speaker 1: really interesting examples from the shark world. But this is
Speaker 1: the octopus. So the reach of searchers stress though that
Speaker 1: this is a pretty abundant deep sea species. So it's
Speaker 1: not like we've necessarily found a true rarity in the
Speaker 1: natural order of things. It just seems like a rarity
Speaker 1: because we don't understand deep sea ecology well enough. Interesting
Speaker 1: and and the other side of it that they point
Speaker 1: out is again octopus mothers generally don't eat during their brooding,
Speaker 1: so it's it would seem to be the case that
Speaker 1: this mother does not eat for four point five years.
Speaker 1: Um and uh. And this is not completely understood, but
Speaker 1: basically it seems like it's going to come back to
Speaker 1: the slower metabolism of deep sea creatures. Yeah, so what
Speaker 1: you load up on a bunch of body fat or
Speaker 1: stored energy before this brooding period and then in the
Speaker 1: extreme cold and dark, I would imagine it's probably not
Speaker 1: moving a whole lot during this period. You just sort
Speaker 1: of like take your metabolism way way down so you
Speaker 1: can stay in it for the long haul without continuous
Speaker 1: reinvestments of chemical energy. Yeah. Absolutely, So it's not quite
Speaker 1: the God in his egg, but it is interesting to
Speaker 1: see like an example of like what remains an egg
Speaker 1: the longest under natural conditions on our planet. I did
Speaker 1: not know about this octopus and this is absolutely majestic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean the octopus world, as we see time and
Speaker 1: time again on the show, is just full of wonders,
Speaker 1: and there's still so much we have to learn about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd imagine, especially with these really deep ones. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: well we're gonna go ahead it and uh seal the
Speaker 1: egg chamber shut for this episode. But like I said,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of eggs out there in the
Speaker 1: natural world, a lot of unique um egg forms, a
Speaker 1: lot of unique egg laying strategies. We would love to
Speaker 1: come back and explore more of these. You have everyone
Speaker 1: out there is interested. If you're interested, let us know.
Speaker 1: If you have your own experiences with eggs of varying species, uh,
Speaker 1: feel free to write in and tell us about it.
Speaker 1: Or likewise, if there's just a really cool example of
Speaker 1: eggs in the natural world or something from science fiction
Speaker 1: that you think we should know about that we could
Speaker 1: really pick up and run with, then let us know
Speaker 1: about that as well. In the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: you can find us wherever you get your podcast and
Speaker 1: wherever that happens to be. Just make sure you rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe. Huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, to
Speaker 1: tell us your stories about eggs, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or
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