WEBVTT - Into the Egg Chamber 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.360 Welcome to stuct to Blow Your Mind, production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:14.680 Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:17.239 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:19.440 today we're gonna reach into a jar of pickled eggs 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:22.079 and and see what we pull out. Yes, that's right, 0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:25.759 we are venturing into the egg chamber. Uh. This is 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:29.200 gonna be kind of a potpourri episode. Uh, kind of 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:31.920 a you know, a salad bar episode with with multiple 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:37.559 um curiosities plucked from the vinegar soaked vat here and 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:40.400 if everyone digs it, perhaps will come back and explore 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:44.400 more topics along this line. But basically, yeah, we're talking 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:48.760 about eggs, and eggs just in general are pretty amazing, 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:52.440 even in their most mundane form. Factoring you know, into 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:56.600 the equation the more familiar examples of reproduction and cuisine, 0:00:57.080 --> 0:00:58.760 you know, I feel like we need to take a 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:01.720 step back and just consider weird and wonderful they are 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:05.280 there in the organic vessel a means for biology to 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:08.480 leave one being and then develop into another and then 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:12.479 burst free of this protective shell or casing that has 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:15.160 served as its vehicle. The egg in a way makes 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:17.440 me think of that quote that we've talked about a 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:20.200 couple of times. That was in Brian Green's book about 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:23.120 how when we learned to take the water with us 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:27.560 out of the ocean. That's like how organisms move to land, 0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:30.959 like you know that where water bags slashing around on feet, 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:33.120 And in a way, the egg is sort of the 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:36.960 same principle. It takes some of the same sustaining conditions 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:41.840 from being within the mother's body, outside of the body 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:44.520 where you can eventually hatch out after you mature enough. 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:47.000 I like that you brought up the ocean here, because 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:50.440 we all of course come from the ocean. That is 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:55.160 the the ultimate origin of of life here on Earth. 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:57.720 But but in addition to that, we see of course 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:01.760 primordial oceans factoring into various world mythologies, and we also 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:06.080 see uh the idea of an egg featuring prominently in 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:09.360 world mythologies as well. We see variations of the world 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:12.880 egg in many different myth cycles, including but not limited 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:17.880 to Vedic, Greek, Egyptian, and Chinese mythologies. And we could 0:02:17.960 --> 0:02:20.440 we could easily devote an entire episode just to these 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:23.760 varied myths, because they're all pretty pretty fabulous. The idea 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:27.320 of of of the universe or some primordial creator being 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:31.720 emerging from this egg. Uh. In the Greek tradition, it's 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:34.040 known as the and it's often depicted as being kind 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:38.120 of serpent bound, this orphic egg from which the primordial 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:41.360 fan ease emerges. Isn't it interesting though, the way that 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:44.560 the egg is kind of a biological Pandora's box to 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.240 go to another Greek myth, because you can't always tell 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:51.280 from the external morphology of the egg what kind of 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:54.320 animal is inside right right, and certainly in the case 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:57.560 so we've we've of course talked about like various brood 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:01.000 parasites in the show before, including an examples like the 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:04.080 cuckoo uh and, in which case you know, the and 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:06.320 a mother bird may not be able to tell if 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:10.000 one of the eggs has been placed into her nest 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:16.320 by another species. But speaking of mysterious and and difficult 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:20.639 to identify orbs uh So, the idea that made us 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:23.720 want to do this episode was something that you shared 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:26.560 with me last week. It was a news article about 0:03:26.600 --> 0:03:30.600 a really interesting fossil find. This was so the article 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:35.560 you shared was a June NPR article by Nell Greenfield Boice, 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:39.960 and it tells the story of how a paleontologist from 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:44.080 u T. Austin named Julia Clark was visiting a colleague 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:48.160 named David Rubil R Rogers, who works at Chile's National 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:51.760 Museum of Natural History. And this was back in and 0:03:51.840 --> 0:03:55.560 Ruble R Rogers apparently wanted Clark's opinion on a very 0:03:55.600 --> 0:03:59.600 strange fossil in his collection, which had been found in 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:03.040 an article way back in two thousand eleven. Specifically, it 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:05.520 was on an island off the tip of the Antarctic 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:09.360 Peninsula called Seymour Island, and Seymour Island has been a 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:12.080 rich site for fossil excavations for more than a hundred 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:14.160 years now, I think I've read about fossils being found 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:17.720 there in the eighteen nineties. But Greenfield Voice describes this 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:22.240 fossil that the these two paleontologists were looking at as 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:25.080 more than eleven by seven inches, so it's about twenty 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:28.920 nine by twenty centimeters and of pretty much the exact 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:33.680 size and appearance of a deflated football, except its stone. 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:38.240 Now it's it's petrified, it's fossilized. And Ruble R Rogers 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:41.880 and his colleagues referred to this object as the thing. 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:45.040 So you can see why we were intrigued absolutely, And 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:48.880 the images that that that accompanied this article of the 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:51.960 thing do look very thing ish. Uh. It is it 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:55.240 almost almost looks like it's like a withered face, you know, 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:58.240 kind of like the face of the sorting hat or something, 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:00.560 or what's that the the oogie boogie cree cheer from 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:03.960 the night before Christmas. I was thinking exactly that, and 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:07.080 I think that's a really good point. The comparison to 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:10.880 a deflated football or this kind of wrinkly oogie boogeyman 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:14.640 face is really good because when you look at this object, 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:18.200 even though it is now fully fossilized, it is basically 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:21.800 it is a mineral product. You can immediately see in 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:26.400 its creases and textures the remnants of what must have 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:32.599 been some kind of soft leathery membrane collapsed in on itself. So, yes, 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:35.680 it's mysterious. Yes it's creepy. It is definitely a thing. 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:41.120 But what is it? It's just this strange, collapsed, deflated orb. Well, 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:45.200 upon further analysis, the researchers here figured out that this 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:49.719 was an egg. It's a fossil of a giant soft 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:53.720 shelled egg from around sixty eight million years ago, so 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:55.599 that this would be just towards the ends of the 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:58.800 Cretaceous period, near the KPg boundary that marks the end 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:02.520 of the non avian dynah sours and the researchers published 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:05.600 their findings in the journal Nature earlier this month. The 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:08.800 article was called a giant soft shelled egg from the 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:14.039 Late Cretaceous of Antarctica, and this is now the largest 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:18.320 soft shelled egg ever known to exist. And it's uh. 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:21.120 In addition to being the largest soft shelled egg, it's 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:25.159 the second largest egg of any kind known to ever exist, 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:30.080 falling only slightly behind the huge eggs of Madagascar's flightless 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:32.880 elephant birds, which would extinct sometime in the past few 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:35.400 hundred years. Yeah, we we discussed them a little bit 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:38.640 in our MOA episodes, right, But but even that was 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:40.960 only a little bit bigger than this egg. And the 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:45.320 author's conclude that this was probably the egg of a 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:51.279 gigantic marine reptile such as a mosasaur, of which adult 0:06:51.320 --> 0:06:54.039 remains had been found nearby the same fossil beds. So 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:57.560 you find adult mosasaurs nearby there and around the same layer, 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:01.599 it seems like this very likely from a creature like that. 0:07:02.240 --> 0:07:05.000 And on the importance of this find Greenfield voice in 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:08.760 her n PR piece quotes an evolutionary biologist from Princeton 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:13.400 University named Mary Caswell Stoddard, who says, quote, a soft 0:07:13.400 --> 0:07:16.520 shelled fossil egg like this is a rare jim. The 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:19.760 lack of soft shelled fossil eggs, which are extremely rare, 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:22.800 makes it challenging to flesh out a detailed picture of 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:27.520 egg evolution invertebrates. This discovery helps provide one critical piece 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:30.160 of the puzzle. So this is important because it gives 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:32.440 us a look at something that we don't often see 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.960 captured in fossil form, the soft shelled egg, and it 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:38.679 helps us get a better picture of how exactly eggs 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:42.360 changed and evolved as dinosaurs evolved over time. Oh and 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:44.600 real quick, if you if you're out there listening and 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:46.640 you're like, okay, Mosesaur, which one is that put it 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:50.360 in Jurassic Park terms for me? Well, in the movie 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:53.680 Jurassic World, that's supposed to be a Mosesaur in the 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:56.840 big aquatic part of the park or the one that 0:07:56.920 --> 0:08:01.200 like eats an executive assistant or something. Yeah, the that 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:03.960 that really horrible scene in the film where it where 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:07.160 it leaps up and eats this U this I think 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:10.800 otherwise innocent character in the film. Yeah, I remember that 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:12.360 that was. Well I'm not going to get off on 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:18.480 all my Jurassic World beefs, but that scene felt totally strange. Yeah, yeah, 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:22.800 I agree, But still great dinosaur sequence. I just wish 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:26.760 she had been more of a villain or something. But yeah. So, 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:29.200 so back to the thing, so that the characteristics of 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:33.560 this egg are strange. Instead of the hard, calcified shells 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:37.959 that paleontologists used to believe, we're just the norm for dinosaurs. This, 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:41.840 along with other recent egg finds, for example from the 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:47.160 genus Protoceratops and the genus um Moossaris, reveals that many 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:51.360 dinosaurs and Cretaceous marine reptiles laid eggs that were like this. 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:55.640 That We're pliable and soft like some turtle species due today, 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:58.200 and it looks like it, just it varied according to 0:08:58.240 --> 0:09:01.600 different groups of dinosaurs. So would have therapod dinosaurs like 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:05.840 the t rex and they would lay calcified, hard shelled eggs, 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:09.679 and you'd have many saua pods or hadrosaurs also laying 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:12.520 hard shelled, calcified eggs like the ones you would imagine 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:16.400 from birds or many reptiles that live on land today, 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:20.680 while you have these other animals like probably mosasaurs, probably 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:25.559 protoceratops laying softer leathery or eggs, and so the question is, 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:28.800 why would the egg shell be so thin and soft? 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:32.600 What's the advantage to that. Well, one possibility is maybe 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:35.400 that's just the way things had always been, and they 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:38.520 would stay that way unless they were driven by specific 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:43.120 environmental pressures to become otherwise, to harden and calcify. The 0:09:43.160 --> 0:09:45.599 researchers in this other Nature paper from this year, the 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:48.760 one I mentioned a minute ago, it's it's just called 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:52.480 the first dinosaur egg was soft. They argued that ancestral 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:57.320 dinosaurs probably all laid soft shelled eggs, and then over time, 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:01.880 over the millions of years, via convergent evolution, several different 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:07.000 groups of later dinosaurs independently evolved the adaptation of hard 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:10.720 shelled eggs at least three different times that we know of. 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:13.680 So there would have been just been evolutionary pressure for 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:17.400 thicker shells on some of these other dinosaurs, but apparently 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:20.200 not on this one. Probably not on this mosasaur creature. 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:24.560 Uh so, so, looking specifically at the thing, the authors 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:27.480 of that study in Nature posits something really interesting about it. 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:30.400 They say at the end of their abstract quote, such 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:33.199 a large egg with a relatively thin egg shell may 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:38.760 reflect a derived constraints associated with body shape, reproductive investment 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:43.400 linked with gigantism and lepido sarian viviparity, in which a 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:48.360 vestigial egg is laid and hatches immediately. So we don't 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:50.880 know this for sure, but what they're saying it looks 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:54.559 like here is this was very likely a creature that 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:57.360 laid an egg, but it was almost a sort of 0:10:57.520 --> 0:11:02.720 egg assisted live birth. So you would lay lay a soft, thin, 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:07.720 pliable egg and then nearly immediately the hatchling would tear 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:10.160 out of this egg sack and escape, and then the 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.360 egg would fall to the ocean floor and collapse. Yeah, 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:15.680 all right, yeah, I think this this is making sense 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:18.600 here because, uh, I mean, you can imagine the world 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:22.200 of the mosasaur like like all aquatic worlds, you know, 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:25.080 it's it's it's probably not a really peaceful place. So 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:28.040 that uh, that creature, that that young ling needs to 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:30.720 be highly developed and just ready to burst out and go, 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:33.760 not to sink to the bottom of the muck. Yeah, 0:11:33.800 --> 0:11:36.160 and this level of maturity at the time of hatching 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:38.439 is a theme that will come back to a few 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:42.120 other times here. Yeah. In fact, our our next example 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:45.560 of curious eggs from the natural world gets into this 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:48.080 a little bit. I want to talk about the eggs 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:52.720 of the volcano birds. Good. So uh, specifically we're going 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:56.640 to be talking about the Malayo birds of the You'll 0:11:56.679 --> 0:12:00.720 find them on the Indonesian island of Sulawesti uh and 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:03.720 then there's a smaller island named Bhutan where you'll also 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:06.600 find them, uh and Uh. Sulawesi is one of the 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:11.079 four Greater Sunda Islands, actually the world's eleventh largest island. 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:14.520 I believe listeners might remember us from discussing this in 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:18.320 the recent episode about archaeological finds there that may push 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:21.440 back the earliest date for known examples of hunting scenes 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:24.000 and prehistoric art. Oh. Yeah, and there was also a 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:27.200 question I think about whether the same cave artwork in 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:31.480 Indonesia depicted theory and thropes right, the idea of of 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:37.079 uh theeomorphic or animal form humans, and if so, whether 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:39.959 that would push back the earliest physical evidence we have 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:45.920 of fantasy thinking or supernatural magical thinking in humans. Yeah, 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:48.000 so as far as I know, that's still kind of 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:51.640 an open question. More research remains to be uh conducted. 0:12:51.720 --> 0:12:56.360 But it's certainly exciting. But also the Malayo bird is 0:12:56.480 --> 0:12:59.760 rather exciting. I was not familiar with this creature until 0:12:59.840 --> 0:13:02.199 very recently. But basically it's a it's a chicken sized 0:13:02.280 --> 0:13:05.839 bird and we had and of course it lays eggs. 0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:08.000 And one of the important jobs of an egg layer is, 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:12.000 of course, uh to provide for the eggs incubation. Now, 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:15.720 in some cases, an egg uh may basically be ready 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:19.520 to go, like we said, the second it comes out, uh, 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:22.920 But then other times the egg needs to uh be 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:25.720 cared for, It needs to be incubated a bit longer. 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:28.400 And in many cases, you know, a bird is just 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:31.520 going to use their own body to incubate the egg. 0:13:31.640 --> 0:13:35.520 This is the classic scenario of a chicken um uh 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:38.040 you know, laying laying on its eggs. The example of 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:41.760 penguins keeping their the eggs warm, uh, you know, by 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:44.520 their feet that sort of thing. It's a good energy 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:47.440 move because I mean, you've got extra body heat coming 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:49.360 off of you, whether you want that or not, why 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:52.360 not put it to use exactly, And then it also 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:56.880 opens up the door for various, uh, additional strategies, such 0:13:56.920 --> 0:14:01.239 as again the cuckoo's brood parasites that don't actually incubate 0:14:01.280 --> 0:14:05.360 the egg further themselves, but have another bird another species 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:09.400 do it through a mix of mimicry and or threats 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:13.720 of violence. But then there are also there are sort 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:18.439 of environmental engineers, animals that use the environment that build 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:22.400 structures of some kind to help them incubate eggs without 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:24.920 having to make a personal time commitment of just sitting 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:27.040 on it the whole time. That's right, I mean it's 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:29.560 almost it's almost as if the bird would think back, 0:14:29.600 --> 0:14:30.840 It's like, all right, what am I doing here? I'm 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:34.320 providing heat? Where else can I get heat? Um? So, 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:36.840 like in Australia you see the example of the bush turkey, 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:40.960 which actually builds a compost pile that incubates the eggs 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:44.320 via the heat of microbial decay. Oh yeah, these things 0:14:44.360 --> 0:14:47.520 are great. I think some listeners in Australia have actually 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:50.600 talked to us about them before, regarding them somewhat as 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:53.880 pests for making giant mounds in their yard and things 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:57.280 like this. But uh, but yeah, the the bush turkey 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:00.840 or brush turkey, these are examples of these mega owed birds, 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:04.360 uh that that are. They're sort of like the beavers 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:07.920 of the bird world. Yeah. And uh, you know, if you, 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:10.000 if anyone out there, if you, if you like like me, 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:13.480 if you have a compost, uh, you know, spinner that 0:15:13.560 --> 0:15:16.240 sort of thing, you'll notice it does heat up in there. 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:18.960 You know, there's a lot of activity going on inside 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:21.040 the compost. When my son was younger, he would call 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:24.120 it the hot hot machine. And indeed that's what the 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:26.400 bush turkey has done here, is that it creates its 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:29.720 own hot hot machine to incubate the eggs. Yeah. So 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:32.240 it makes a big compost pile out of litter and 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:34.520 leaf litter and things like that that I've read. I 0:15:34.520 --> 0:15:36.520 think sometimes that they can be as big as a car. 0:15:36.760 --> 0:15:39.440 Like these piles can be huge. Yeah, their size, well, 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:41.560 I can see why it could be in some cases 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:44.560 considered a pest because it just creates a big old heap. 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:47.120 But you know what, if if you got a heap 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:49.880 in your yard, don't be ashamed, don't be embarrassed, be 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:52.120 proud of your heat pointed out to your neighbors, say, 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:55.040 check out that heap. That's really cool. It's hot. It's 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:58.880 the hot, hot heat. Yeah, alright, so let's get back 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:02.520 to the Malayo bird here, uh, which which also has 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:07.640 a cool pair of solutions to this problem. It depends 0:16:07.680 --> 0:16:11.080 on one of two options for the incubation of its eggs, 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:15.120 either by burying its eggs in solar heated sands. So 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:17.040 there's some hot sand over here, I'll put my eggs 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:20.160 in there. Uh. Solar power will do the rest or. 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:24.000 And this is the exciting part. Burying them in geothermally 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:29.560 heated volcanic soils, hot sands adjacent to volcanic events. That's 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.520 a strategy on the edge that that that bird is 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:36.720 living on the edge. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's pretty amazing. 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:39.480 There's a wonderful uh some wonderful footage of this as well, 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:42.440 and it's just it's almost phoenix like this idea right 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:46.120 of of of the the egg being deposited in the 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:51.800 of volcanically heated ground and then it emerges. Um. By 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:55.520 the way, the maleos egg is roughly watermelon shaped. And 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:58.440 I was reading in a two thousand seventeen study from 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:01.320 Princeton University that was doing like kind of an overall 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:05.640 uh you know, catalog ng of egg sizes and characteristics. 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:10.000 They point out that it is the most elliptical of 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:13.600 all Avian eggs, and the idea here is that the 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:17.080 bird may have evolved to become a skillful flyer, and 0:17:17.119 --> 0:17:20.000 its egg may also have evolved this way to accommodate 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:24.960 a streamlined body that is built for instantaneous flight. Now, 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:27.439 wait a minute, would that mean the egg was shaped 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:31.639 to accommodate the body of the of the embryo inside it, 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:34.680 or of the mother that's carrying it before it is 0:17:34.800 --> 0:17:38.879 laid Um my interpretation, My understanding is that we're dealing 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:41.800 more with the chick because the chick when it when 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:44.919 it hatches, needs to be ready to go. Because the 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:48.800 whole idea of letting a volcano incubate your eggs letting 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:51.199 a volcano raise your children, is that you don't have 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:55.600 to do anything. When the egg hatches. Uh, the mother 0:17:56.119 --> 0:18:00.399 Malao is long gone, so so the young milo, the 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.000 maleo chick hatches and is on its own and ready 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:05.520 to fly almost immediately. And this is actually a very 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:09.439 special feature of megapode birds generally the megapodes. I was 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:13.560 just wondering, Actually, everybody I've heard pronounced this word, says megapodes. 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:15.679 But then I was thinking about the antipodes, and I 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:18.760 was like, it isn't megapodes birds, but no, I think 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:22.119 it's megapodes anyway. Um, but yeah, these other birds, like 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:25.480 the bush turkey, are famous for having young that are 0:18:25.720 --> 0:18:30.320 extremely quick to adapt to life, like immediately after hatching. 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:32.520 They can run around, they can hunt, they can fly 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:35.320 on a dime. All right, on that note, we're going 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:37.639 to take a quick break, but we'll be right back 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:44.840 with more eggs. Thank alright, we're back. So what's next 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:47.360 in the egg chamber here? Joe? Well, Robert, as soon 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:50.240 as you suggested the idea of doing an episode on eggs, 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:53.840 my mind instantly filled with thoughts of Ridley Scott's Alien 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:56.000 because I think, you know, we come back to this 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:58.800 text quite a bit, and I think of John Hurt 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:03.240 descending into an enclosed pit of these leathery orbs, and 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:05.480 then he comes in closer to get a better look 0:19:05.520 --> 0:19:08.960 at one, and one of the eggs nearby starts to throb, 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:11.640 and it's flaps peel back, and of course we all 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:15.120 know what happens next, right, the parasite and just leaps out, 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:18.760 attaches itself to its to his face immobilizes him and 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:23.240 begins putting some kind of alien pupa in his body. 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:25.879 So in Alien, we're presented with a vision of a 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:29.879 sort of predatory egg or ambush egg, and an egg 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:34.840 which opens to unleash a parasite that requires no additional 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:37.960 maturation outside the egg before it is lethal. And that 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:41.000 made me wonder, is there anything like a predatory egg 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:44.200 in the natural world? Yeah, because this is of course 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:47.159 the most famous example is Alien BC versions of this 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:51.240 throughout science fiction influenced by Alien, where there's some sort 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:55.160 of horrible egg and yeah, you look at it wrong 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:57.880 and it will open and get you, or you will 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:01.440 open and dix. It exudes some sort of a parasite 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:03.520 that will creep up on you and get you. Yeah. 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:06.840 Now I couldn't find anything exactly like Alien, but there 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:09.240 are some pretty close parallels. In fact, things we've already 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:11.119 talked about a good bit on the podcast, so we're 0:20:11.119 --> 0:20:12.600 not going to linger on too much, but I want 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:14.679 to go in a few directions with this. One is 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:18.560 just too talk about an interesting distinction in zoology that 0:20:18.600 --> 0:20:21.520 we've already been coming up against the border of and 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:27.520 that's the relevant distinction between altriciality and precociality and animals. 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:30.320 So think of the hatchlings of a songbird, like like 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:33.640 a sparrow, you know, the passive forms here the sparrow. 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:37.199 Once it emerges from an egg, it is helpless. It 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:40.200 could not survive on its own. It lacks the ability 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:42.600 to fly, and I'm not sure if it even lacks 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:44.680 the ability to walk really, I mean, it can't move 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.760 around much by itself. It certainly can't forage for itself. 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:52.359 Once it hatches. The sparrow hatchling sits in the nest 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:56.000 waiting to be brought food while it matures. And there 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:58.000 there are many animals that are like this, you know, 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:01.240 upon whether it's hatching for an egg or live birth. 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:04.920 Upon being born, they can't really do much for themselves. 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:08.000 They certainly can't move around much. And a species like 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:11.680 this would be called altricial, meaning it's young or relatively helpless, 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:15.240 unable to move around by themselves for a long time 0:21:15.280 --> 0:21:19.240 after they're born or hatched. The opposite of altriciality is 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:22.640 known as precociality, and this is from the same root 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:25.720 word is precocious, a word that often gets applied to 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:30.240 like creepily mature human children. Yes, when there's the little 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:32.560 boy who speaks like an adult man, and you know, 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:39.440 quite surely, temple Is is often an example of this. Uh. 0:21:39.480 --> 0:21:43.160 A precocial species is one that matures and is able 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:45.360 to move around on its own and finn for itself 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:48.800 relatively soon after being born or hatched. I think the 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:52.159 most common metric used to measure this distinction is a 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:54.879 movement like how much can this animal, you know, do 0:21:54.960 --> 0:21:58.760 its own locomotion? And there are some animals that take 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:01.960 precociality to the extreme, and these are known as super 0:22:02.040 --> 0:22:06.080 precocial animals. A very commonly cited example is exactly what 0:22:06.080 --> 0:22:09.920 we've been talking about already, megapode birds. Of course, the 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:12.960 megapodes include the malayo bird that you were just talking about. 0:22:13.080 --> 0:22:16.440 They include the mound builder birds like the brush turkeys 0:22:16.520 --> 0:22:19.280 or the bush turkeys, and obviously not all of them 0:22:19.280 --> 0:22:23.119 are exactly the same, but megapodes generally you're going to 0:22:23.200 --> 0:22:26.640 see that once they hatch, they're able to see. They're 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:29.199 not born blind. They can see, they can walk, they 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:32.280 can run, they can hunt, they can fly pretty much 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:34.879 on the same day that they emerge from their eggs, 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:37.480 and that that's pretty amazing. Yeah, it really throws a 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:42.159 lot of our especially um human centric ideas about about 0:22:42.280 --> 0:22:45.480 birth and um and and and maturity right out the 0:22:45.480 --> 0:22:51.119 window totally, because obviously humans are relatively altrichial, right, um. 0:22:51.160 --> 0:22:54.960 But by this metric, the xenomorph face hugger from Alien 0:22:55.000 --> 0:22:58.119 would be an example of super precociality. Right. It's taken 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:01.920 to the logical extreme. It's a parasite that that only 0:23:01.960 --> 0:23:04.879 needs one host, and it is ready to attack that 0:23:04.920 --> 0:23:07.879 hosts literally the moment it emerges from its eggs, So 0:23:08.000 --> 0:23:12.800 it's already hunting within seconds of of cracking out. Yeah, 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:15.840