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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. Today is, of course Saturday, so

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Speaker 1: we have a vault episode for you. This is part

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Speaker 1: one of four in our Hunters of the Dark Ocean series.

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Speaker 1: This episode originally aired three eighteen, twenty twenty five. It's

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Speaker 1: time to get deep and time to get weird. Let's

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Speaker 1: have it.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff

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Speaker 3: to Blow Your Mind, we're going to be starting a

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Speaker 3: discussion about animal life in the deepest parts of the ocean,

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Speaker 3: specifically the deep oceans predators, looking at what it takes

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Speaker 3: to be an active hunter in the deep and I

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Speaker 3: thought a good place to start off with this series

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Speaker 3: would be the story that inspired me to look at

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Speaker 3: this topic, and that was the discovery last year of

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Speaker 3: a new species known as del Sabella common chaka. You

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Speaker 3: may have seen stories about this. It was covered in

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Speaker 3: some popular press, but the finding was described in a

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Speaker 3: November twenty twenty four paper published in the journal Systematics

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Speaker 3: and Biodiversity by Johanna Weston, Carolina Gonzales, Reuben Escrubano, and

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Speaker 3: Osvaldo Uloa, and the paper was called a new large

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Speaker 3: predator Amphibida eucyrite hidden at Haitel depths of the Atacama Trench. Now,

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Speaker 3: one of the things that really got my attention when

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Speaker 3: I was first reading about this was simply what this

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Speaker 3: animal looks like. We'll get to a physical description of

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Speaker 3: it in just a minute. But the other thing that

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Speaker 3: I thought was really interesting is the ecological question how

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Speaker 3: an animal like this makes its living in such an environment,

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Speaker 3: what it takes to be a predator so far down

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Speaker 3: in the ocean. And we'll be continuing to explore that

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Speaker 3: question as we as we move on in the series.

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Speaker 3: But so, the authors of this paper included scientists affiliated

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Speaker 3: with the Woodshole Oceanographic Institute in the United States and

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Speaker 3: the Instituto Millennio dey Oceanographia, which is based at the

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Speaker 3: Universidad des Concepcion in Chile. Now, again, this paper was

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Speaker 3: marking the discovery of a new species of oceanic predator,

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Speaker 3: and the name they gave to the new predator was

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Speaker 3: Delcibella keman Chaka. And this is interesting for a number

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Speaker 3: of reasons. I'll do a full etymology in just a

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Speaker 3: minute here, but especially I wanted to draw attention to

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Speaker 3: the species name keman Chaka, which I saw in several

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Speaker 3: sources was derived from an Andean language word, a word

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Speaker 3: apparently in several of the Indian languages meaning darkness, but

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Speaker 3: apparently it has multiple meanings. So Kamanchaka also refers, according

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Speaker 3: to the authors of this paper, to quote a dense,

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Speaker 3: low coastal fog that forms by the Atacama Desert and

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Speaker 3: moves inland. Kamanchaka's was also the name given to some

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Speaker 3: of the littoral inhabitants of this desertic region. So mysterious

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Speaker 3: swirling ideas. There a name that means fog, a kind

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Speaker 3: of fog that rolls in, rolls in around the desert,

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Speaker 3: and then also darkness itself. Now why would the species

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Speaker 3: be named darkness? Well, it's because Dulcibella Kimanchaka was discovered

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Speaker 3: at a depth of almost eight thousand meters in a

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Speaker 3: place called the Atacama Trench. This is a deep ocean

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Speaker 3: trench basically following the contour off the coast of South

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Speaker 3: America from perud Icile, and it's roughly one hundred and

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Speaker 3: sixty kilometers or about one hundred miles off shore for

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Speaker 3: most of its length, and as we will probably continue

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Speaker 3: to come back to in this series, there are a

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Speaker 3: lot of interesting things about this sort of environment. Deep

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Speaker 3: ocean trenches, sometimes called the Hadle zone, can function kind

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Speaker 3: of like islands do in biogeography. They create a pocket

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Speaker 3: of environmental conditions surrounded on all sides by much different conditions,

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Speaker 3: where the ocean is less deep all around them, unless

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Speaker 3: the pressure is different, the temperature is different, and thus

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Speaker 3: in these in these deep deep zones surrounded by the

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Speaker 3: less deep deep zones, they can evolve unique isolated organisms

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Speaker 3: and biological relationships. So ocean trenches are in many ways

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Speaker 3: like islands inverted, but with unique features. For example, the

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Speaker 3: kind of ecosystem that's possible in a deep ocean trench

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Speaker 3: is based in part on what happens in the ocean

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Speaker 3: above it, like what kind of biological productivity takes place

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Speaker 3: up there, and by consequence, what kind and quantities of

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Speaker 3: goodies rain down into the trench from above. I was

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Speaker 3: thinking about it, and you could almost kind of compare

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Speaker 3: that environmental factor to something like soil quality or water

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Speaker 3: conditions on a terrestrial island environment.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I often referred to it as the marine snow.

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Speaker 1: I think of it as kind of like the gray

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Speaker 1: rainfall of little pieces of flesh.

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Speaker 3: The blessed rot that sustains us all. And in addition

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Speaker 3: to these interesting general qualities, the Autocoma Trench itself is

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Speaker 3: especially interesting and unique because of its relative isolation from

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Speaker 3: other deep ocean trenches. So to read from the paper here,

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Speaker 3: the authors say, quote the Hadl zone, or the deepest

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Speaker 3: forty five percent of the ocean from six thousand to

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Speaker 3: eleven thousand meters, has hotigh levels of undiscovered biodiversity. Most

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Speaker 3: HATEL features are trenches formed at the subduction zone between

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Speaker 3: tectonic plates and shaped by a unique suite of extrinsic

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Speaker 3: and intrinsic factors. The Atacoma Trench, the southern sector of

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Speaker 3: the Peru Chile Trench, is one of the most geographically

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Speaker 3: isolated HATEL features and is situated below eutrophic surface waters

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Speaker 3: and characterized by high sediment loads. The Atacomma Trench is

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Speaker 3: known to host a highly distinctive funnel community driven by

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Speaker 3: a combination of these isolating factors. So it's not just

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Speaker 3: the things that are true of these deep trench environments

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Speaker 3: the Hatel zones around the world, but also that there's

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Speaker 3: something kind of special about this one, that it's especially isolated,

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Speaker 3: that it's got these productive waters above it, and so

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Speaker 3: it gives rise to a lot of unique and fascinating biology.

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Speaker 1: Kind of a Galapagos of the deep. Perhaps, to play

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Speaker 1: with that island comparison.

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Speaker 3: Now, just a side note here, because it connected to

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Speaker 3: something we've talked about before. The authors give a nod

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Speaker 3: to important early work done in characterizing hadel fauna in

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Speaker 3: the nineteen sixties by expeditions of the First of all,

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Speaker 3: they mentioned the RV Academic corchetav but then they also

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Speaker 3: mentioned the RV Eltannan. Yeah, and we talked about some

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Speaker 3: deep ocean surveys by the Eltannan in a series we

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Speaker 3: did about sort of anomalous imagery taken underwater that people

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Speaker 3: ended up saying had to be UFOs or some kind

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Speaker 3: of technology from the future, or Atlantis or anything like that.

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Speaker 3: In this case, the thing was the Eltannan quote antenna.

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Speaker 3: Many people have said, oh, yeah, this has to be

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Speaker 3: a piece of alien technology, because it looks like a

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Speaker 3: radar array with these aerials coming up. In fact, it

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Speaker 3: is almost definitely a carnivorous sponge.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, deep sea carnivorous sponge. Yeah. So that's a fun

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Speaker 1: episode to go back and listen to if you want

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Speaker 1: to lean more into this weird world of misinterpretation of

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Speaker 1: confusing visual data.

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Speaker 3: So coming back to this newly discovered species, the new

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Speaker 3: species is an amphipod.

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Speaker 4: Now.

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Speaker 3: Amphipods are animals belonging to the order Amphipida, which are

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Speaker 3: crustaceans found in both marine and freshwater environments. Usually described

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Speaker 3: as having laterally compressed bodies, so you can think of

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Speaker 3: them as taller than they are wide, maybe like somebody

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Speaker 3: put them in a vice and squeeze their sides in.

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Speaker 3: I've seen a number of sources describe amphipods as looking

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Speaker 3: shrimp like, and that does describe some of them. Confusingly,

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Speaker 3: Shrimp are not amphipods, but a lot of apipods do

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Speaker 3: look shrimp like, though not all of them. Some of

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Speaker 3: them look more like weird fantasy insects. For example, just

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Speaker 3: one I found that I thought was very visually striking.

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Speaker 3: If you want a good little freak out, look up

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Speaker 3: the amphipod genus Epimeria epi me r I A with

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Speaker 3: a few of the guys in this genus, I get

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Speaker 3: strong notes of the toxic jungle from NAUSICAA.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, And this one image that you shared in our

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Speaker 1: outline here, in particular, I found extra grotesque because if

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Speaker 1: I didn't know better, I would dismiss this image as

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Speaker 1: that sort of horrifying AI generated monster imagery that you

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Speaker 1: see everywhere these days, you know, the sort of thing

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Speaker 1: that is in and of itself unnerving and disturbing. But

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Speaker 1: I've also swiftly conditioned myself to abhor them all the

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Speaker 1: more because I know they're not the product of a

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Speaker 1: human mind or a human imagination. So just looking at

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Speaker 1: this image makes my stomach churn in weird ways, and

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Speaker 1: I end up not really knowing how I feel about it.

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Speaker 1: But of course, this is not an AI generated monstrosity.

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Speaker 1: This isn't an actual denizen of the natural world.

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Speaker 3: I wonder if everybody has the same experience I do,

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Speaker 3: so I don't. Of course, I don't personally use Facebook

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Speaker 3: these days, but I still have an account specifically to

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Speaker 3: check our work, you know, our work page every now

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Speaker 3: and then, and every time I log in there, Literally

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Speaker 3: my entire news feed on there is just like AI

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Speaker 3: generated fake images of things and saying like new beasts

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Speaker 3: discovered in whatever, And you know, it's almost like they're

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Speaker 3: like they're trying to trick us into doing an episode

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Speaker 3: on this new beast discovered as some AI garbage that's

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Speaker 3: like a fake image of some monster in a jungle.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's I don't like it.

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Speaker 3: I mean, in a way, I appreciate it because it's

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Speaker 3: so distasteful. I'm not even tempted to scroll the news

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Speaker 3: feed for a few seconds and I just immediately navigate away.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, there's currently a sameness to so much of it,

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Speaker 1: and I guess I should appreciate that sameness while it's

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Speaker 1: still there. If it gets harder to tell them, even

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Speaker 1: harder to classify them and categorize them as AI generated things,

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Speaker 1: then we're even we're in even more troubling waters.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, but back to real troubling waters, right.

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Speaker 3: So Amphipods can be found in all over the place,

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Speaker 3: many habitats that take many different forms. It seems the

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Speaker 3: majority of amphipods are scavengers. They eat decomposing organisms or

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Speaker 3: whatever little bits of organic detritis they come across. The

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Speaker 3: new species described in this paper however, is an active predator.

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Speaker 3: According to the authors, it is the first large active

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Speaker 3: predator ever found this deep in the Atacoma Trench. Again,

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Speaker 3: it was the individuals collected here.

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Speaker 4: We're at like.

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Speaker 3: Seventy nine hundred meters down. All the other amphipods previously

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Speaker 3: identified in this area have been scavengers, though predatory amphipods

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Speaker 3: have been found in other ocean trenches on Earth. So

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Speaker 3: the specimens here were collected by a deep sea vehicle

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Speaker 3: operated by Chile's Integrated Deep Ocean Observing System in twenty

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Speaker 3: twenty three. There was like a they call it like

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Speaker 3: a land or vehicle, So it's like a thing that

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Speaker 3: can go down and collect collect specimens, collect baited traps

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Speaker 3: and things like that. And according to morphological and genetic analysis,

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Speaker 3: this new predator is not only a newly discovered species,

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Speaker 3: but a newly discovered genus. And here's where I wanted

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Speaker 3: to get back to both the etymology of the genus

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Speaker 3: and species name, but to a kind of interesting side

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Speaker 3: note on taxonomic frustrations. So the authors originally tried to

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Speaker 3: give this animal the genus name Dulcinea, which is spelled

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Speaker 3: d u l c I n E A Dulcinea after

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Speaker 3: the name of a character from Don Quixote.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, Robert Goulay would have loved this choice in

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Speaker 1: genus name because the lyrics to don Quixote the mana

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Speaker 1: lamacha musical. Rather, it goes like, you know, Dulcinea, Dulcinea,

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Speaker 1: I see heaven when I see the Dulcinea.

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Speaker 4: Okay, I don't know that one. It's a great musical, Okay,

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Speaker 4: I'll look it up.

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Speaker 3: I've heard of it before, obviously, but yeah, I've never

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Speaker 3: seen it or listened. But this apparently, and so like,

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Speaker 3: trying to name this genus after don Quixote was apparently

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Speaker 3: following a pre existing convention by which several other genera

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Speaker 3: of deep sea amphipods were named after characters from Servantes.

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Speaker 3: So I've never read Don Quixote myself, so I didn't

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Speaker 3: know who this character was, and I was curious to

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Speaker 3: look it up. The character is called Dulcinea del Toboso

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Speaker 3: and is a character that is fictional or maybe better

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Speaker 3: to say, imaginary, within the narrative of the novel. So

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Speaker 3: the character don Quixote is you know, like a knight errant,

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Speaker 3: and he thinks he must have a lady to serve.

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Speaker 3: So the way I read it summarized is that he

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Speaker 3: looks at a peasant girl and then he kind of

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Speaker 3: imagines a version of her as this high born princess

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Speaker 3: who is impossibly perfect and worthy of his lance in

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Speaker 3: every way, and so he thinks of her as the

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Speaker 3: ultimate all time milady, and this character in his head

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Speaker 3: he names Dulcinea del toboso. Dulcinea derived from like dulce,

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Speaker 3: like the Latin word for sweet, so this name would

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Speaker 3: mean a superlative sweetness. And so, together with what I

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Speaker 3: already mentioned about the species name cumun chaka meaning darkness,

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Speaker 3: darkness in several indigenous and Deean languages, this predatory amphipod's

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Speaker 3: name basically means sweet darkness. It's like the name of

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Speaker 3: a necromancer's pet. And so this is.

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Speaker 1: Just even the name Dulcinea darkness. That sounds pretty great.

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Speaker 1: That's got some great noir vibes to it.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's like that saccharin goth thing. There's a

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Speaker 3: lot of that, a lot of that going on. And

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Speaker 3: so this is still basically what the animal is named.

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Speaker 3: But remember that I was gonna mention taxonomic frustrations, So

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Speaker 3: they were trying to name the genus Dulcinea, but it

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Speaker 3: turned out that name had already been assigned to a

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Speaker 3: genus of Coleoptera, I mean Beatles, a genus of beatles

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Speaker 3: a long time ago, I think over one hundred years ago.

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Speaker 3: I don't even know if that genus name is even

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Speaker 3: used anymore. But it had been a signed sometime in

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Speaker 3: the past, and according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature,

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Speaker 3: you cannot reuse names, so they had.

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Speaker 4: To change the name.

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Speaker 3: They changed it to Dulcibella, also a nickname derived from

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Speaker 3: the word for sweet or sweetness, also basically meaning milady.

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Speaker 3: And so now we end up with Dulcibella common chaka. Still,

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Speaker 3: I think you can still say sweet darkness.

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Speaker 1: By the way, some of you might have noticed that

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Speaker 1: I said dulcinea earlier and not dulcinea. In the musical

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Speaker 1: they say dulcinea. I believe dulcinea is correct. So I

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Speaker 1: don't know. This is not a show that is exclusively

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Speaker 1: about musicals, though, so those are you more familiar with

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Speaker 1: Mana la mancha, perhaps you can write it about it.

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Speaker 3: I think we also are bound to be forgiving of

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Speaker 3: pronuncia differences.

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Speaker 1: I think Peter O'Toole sings at Dulcinea in the nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy two adaptation of the musical, But we're not talking

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Speaker 1: about Peter o'tool We're talking about the deep ocean, right.

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Speaker 3: So I think it's finally time to talk about the

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Speaker 3: physical form of this creature. So Rob, I've attached a

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Speaker 3: photo for you to look at in the outline here Again,

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Speaker 3: folks at home, if you want to look it up yourselves,

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Speaker 3: you can google Dulcabella, Come and Chaka. The first thing

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Speaker 3: I have to acknowledge is what many other articles have

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Speaker 3: already pointed out. There is some significant overlap with the

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Speaker 3: appearance of the face hugger from Alien. Not so much

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Speaker 3: in body form, it's not shaped like a face hugger,

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Speaker 3: but in color and texture. I think we're almost perfectly there.

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Speaker 3: The pale white and off white, slimy, bumpy surface in

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Speaker 3: some places looks kind of like a shrimp covered in

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Speaker 3: white goo. In other places looks like a translucent white

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Speaker 3: skin stretched over a bumpy landscape of I got some

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Speaker 3: things in there that look like vertebrae, little leg joints

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Speaker 3: and knobs that were just made to wriggle and ride.

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Speaker 3: It is monstrously face huggery in multiple ways, not in

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Speaker 3: body shape, but otherwise.

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Speaker 1: Yes, the texture, the apparent texture here reminds me of

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Speaker 1: various images I've seen of like three D printed scaffolding

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Speaker 1: for like vatgrown organs, and like, you know, he has

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Speaker 1: that kind of appearance, kind of like if you three

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Speaker 1: D printed a shrimp and you really didn't want to

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Speaker 1: eat it. It also kind of has a zoidberg ye

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Speaker 1: look to it with its various mouth parts. It looks

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Speaker 1: almost like it has like cuthulhuoid tentacles or something. It

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Speaker 1: has a real kind of sinister vibe.

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Speaker 4: I have to say.

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Speaker 3: Now, there's another thing that is both creepy and funny

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Speaker 3: about it, which is not so much about the organism itself,

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Speaker 3: but about how I misunderstood when I was first looking

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Speaker 3: at this picture. Because one way I would have initially

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Speaker 3: described this is it's like a cavefish.

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Speaker 4: Xenomor of shrimp dog with a broom for a face.

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Speaker 3: Because there is what I first interpreted to be like

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Speaker 3: a huge, long, bristly white beard shooting straight out of

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Speaker 3: the animal's head. But here's the thing on the right

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Speaker 3: side of the image they rob that is not the

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Speaker 3: animal's head. I was looking at it backwards. The head

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Speaker 3: is on the left. So an expert, you know, somebody

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Speaker 3: who knows amphipod biology probably would not have made this mistake.

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Speaker 3: But just to add to the list of weird things

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Speaker 3: about it for the lay observer, the backside doubles as

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Speaker 3: a kind of ghostly veiled face. And again a little

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Speaker 3: you said, cathu Lewy, I can see that because the

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Speaker 3: way you know, I don't know, mind flarers are rendered

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Speaker 3: with like all the tentacles coming out of the face.

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Speaker 3: When you look at its backside as its head, which

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Speaker 3: really I think many observers would be strongly inclined to do.

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Speaker 3: It's got all this stuff coming out of the front,

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Speaker 3: and that that's actually the back Oh wow.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So it's even weirder when you look at it the

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Speaker 1: right way around, because its head is up here, not

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Speaker 1: down there. Wow.

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Speaker 3: So this specimen we're looking at here is a little

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Speaker 3: less than four centimeters long. And remember this does qualify

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Speaker 3: as a large predator for its environment. There was a

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Speaker 3: part of the paper I want to read where the

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Speaker 3: authors describe its characteristic body features, because it ends up

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Speaker 3: that it's like this list of weird anatomical terms that

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Speaker 3: flow together like a kind of horrible poetry. So they

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Speaker 3: describe it as follows. A smooth dorsal body, twelve spines

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Speaker 3: on the outer maxilla one plate, subsimilar and strongly subcelate

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Speaker 3: nathopods with broad carpus lobes. The periopods three and four

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Speaker 3: dactyli are zero point forty five x of the respective

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Speaker 3: propodus and periopods five to seven deck till i are.

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Speaker 4: Zero point six x.

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Speaker 3: A distal spiniform process on the peduncle of europod one,

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Speaker 3: and an elongated but weakly cleft telson. And that as

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Speaker 3: it's like, I don't know, sexy or something.

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Speaker 1: It is sexy or something. Yes, the peduncle of europod one.

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Speaker 3: I love it, but again you might not guess by

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Speaker 3: looking at it. One of the things that distinguishes this

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Speaker 3: is that for its environment, this is a fast moving animal,

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Speaker 3: a fast moving predator of the deep ocean, not an

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Speaker 3: ambling sea floor scrubber, but an active predator that chases

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Speaker 3: down prey. Typically it's prey being other amphipods. You might

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Speaker 3: remember from the poetry passage the nathopods that spelled g

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Speaker 3: n A t h opods. These are raptorial front appendages

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Speaker 3: that the animals used to hunt, so they'll dart through

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Speaker 3: the water and snatch the smaller cousins with these four

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Speaker 3: claws that looks you can kind of imagine like the

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Speaker 3: clause of a praying mantis, you know, these folding four

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Speaker 3: claws that can grab and then feed prey toward the mouth.

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Speaker 1: Strong elements of JABBERWOCKI I want to say to all

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Speaker 1: of the language involved in this description, Yeah, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: feel like the nathapods surely outgrabe at.

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Speaker 4: One point or another.

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Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I just had to look up the poem

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Speaker 3: because I couldn't remember the exact phrasing. But I see this,

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Speaker 3: and I see sly the toes. But anyway, I just

356
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Speaker 3: thought this was so interesting looking at animals like this

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Speaker 3: and that we're still discovering these types of these animals,

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Speaker 3: these predators, because it reminds us how relatively little we

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Speaker 3: know about these extremely deep environments, especially the super deep

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Speaker 3: like the Hadel Zone, the deep ocean trenches. And one

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Speaker 3: thing that some authors writing about this discovery mentioned is

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Speaker 3: that there's actually a lot that studying the fauna of

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Speaker 3: the Hadel Zone could teach us about how to look

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Speaker 3: for life elsewhere in the Solar system, like on subsurface oceans,

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Speaker 3: on moons like Europa.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. The idea of looking into dark, lightless oceans, well,

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Speaker 1: we have dark, lightless regions of our own ocean. And indeed,

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Speaker 1: one thing that becomes clear when you start reading more

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Speaker 1: about specific organisms is that we know, we know more

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Speaker 1: than we ever have regarding these depths, but there is

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Speaker 1: still so much mystery, and you know, it's just there.

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Speaker 1: These are places that are hard to get to, hard

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Speaker 1: to get eyes down there, you know, be they organic

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Speaker 1: or mechanical. And we've discussed in the past the complications

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Speaker 1: that are involved in bringing any kind of physical specimens

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Speaker 1: up from the deep. They may explode and be damaged

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Speaker 1: in ways that don't apply as much to other organisms

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Speaker 1: you might collect. Many of these are very delicate as well.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely true. So there are a lot of challenges

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Speaker 3: to studying the biology and ecology of the deep ocean,

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Speaker 3: but there is a lot of interesting stuff we know,

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Speaker 3: and that's what we want to look at in the series,

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Speaker 3: specifically again focused on predators. What are predators doing down there?

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Speaker 3: What challenges to predators in the deep deep ocean face

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Speaker 3: and how do they make a living?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So first and foremost, we have to talk

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Speaker 1: just briefly, I think about temperature and pressure. We've discussed

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Speaker 1: the challenges of temperature and pressure and the deep ocean

389
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Speaker 1: before and stuff to blow your mind. But we're talking

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Speaker 1: about depths where sunlight does not reach and so too

391
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Speaker 1: the sun's heat does not quite reach it, geothermal sources

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Speaker 1: of heat aside. It's a realm of pretty chilling waters.

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Speaker 1: And to be on the ocean floor is to feel

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Speaker 1: the pressure of the water colo on your back and

395
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Speaker 1: upon all sides of you at once. Actually, the pressure

396
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Speaker 1: at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is more than

397
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Speaker 1: a thousand times that of the pressure at sea level.

398
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Speaker 1: And meanwhile, the temperature down there is I've read on

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Speaker 1: the order of like one to four degrees celsius or

400
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Speaker 1: thirty four to thirty nine degrees fahrenheit.

401
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Speaker 3: So an extreme environment and organisms that want to adapt

402
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Speaker 3: or evolve to survive there need to need to make

403
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Speaker 3: some pretty radical investments.

404
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Speaker 1: That's right now. One thing that's interesting about the deep

405
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Speaker 1: ocean is that it may at times seem like a contradiction.

406
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Speaker 1: You know, it may seem like a contradictory realm because

407
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Speaker 1: on one hand, is pointed out by for example, the

408
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Speaker 1: Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, it is a biologically diverse realm

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Speaker 1: and one that ultimately constitutes ninety five percent of the

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Speaker 1: Earth's living environment. If you consider the hard surface of

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Speaker 1: a planet to be its core environment, so you know,

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Speaker 1: not just talking about the surface that we know, but

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Speaker 1: also the seafloor is being like the rocky surface, then

414
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Speaker 1: the ephotic zone, the dark ocean is the majority of

415
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Speaker 1: the Earth. It's the realm. Alien observers might, by some metric,

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Speaker 1: consider the default tearan environment, you know, like on the

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Speaker 1: rocky surface, covered by crushing amounts of water and out

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Speaker 1: of reach of sunlight.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so like terrestrial animals by comparison, are just the

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Speaker 3: thing that is living on certain mountaintops.

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Speaker 4: That's right.

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Speaker 1: The dark ocean entails the mesopalgic the back of the logic,

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Speaker 1: and the abyssopalalgic and the deepest hatopalagic zone, which is

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Speaker 1: also known as the hatal zone. And again in the

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Speaker 1: darkness here there is diversity, there is life.

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Speaker 3: But that doesn't mean life there is easy and in

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Speaker 3: many ways in the deep ocean, animals may face some

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Speaker 3: challenges that that you might not think of, not just

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Speaker 3: the cold and the darkness and the pressure, but maybe

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Speaker 3: resource challenges.

431
00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:09,679
Speaker 1: That's right, has pointed out by the likes of the NOAA.

432
00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 1: The deep ocean is a kind of food desert. Sunlight

433
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:17,359
Speaker 1: does not reach down to power photosynthesis, and so with

434
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:21,640
Speaker 1: the exception of chemosynthetic communities masked in close proximity around

435
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:26,159
Speaker 1: hydrothermal vents, these zones suffer from food scarcity and this

436
00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:29,800
Speaker 1: results in an overall lack of density in organisms. The

437
00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:32,760
Speaker 1: main food sources that creatures in this region are going

438
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: to depend on, They're going to depend on predation among

439
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:38,760
Speaker 1: fellow inhabitants. And then on the other hand, you also

440
00:26:38,840 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 1: have the periodic megafeasts that occur when you have whale fall,

441
00:26:43,280 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 1: when you have a particularly large organism that has died

442
00:26:48,160 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: or is killed in the waters above and sinks down

443
00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:56,200
Speaker 1: steadily towards the bottom. Now coming back to the hadal

444
00:26:56,280 --> 00:27:00,880
Speaker 1: zone specifically, here again the absolute deep of the dark

445
00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:03,480
Speaker 1: ocean realms. We're talking three point seven to six point

446
00:27:03,520 --> 00:27:06,320
Speaker 1: eight miles or six to eleven kilometers beneath the waves.

447
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:10,280
Speaker 1: We're also talking about something that's a little different from

448
00:27:10,359 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 1: the idea of just like expansive deserts of depth, we're

449
00:27:15,359 --> 00:27:21,600
Speaker 1: talking again about long, narrow, topographic v shaped depressions, and

450
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:25,280
Speaker 1: so you might well wonder, okay, well, given their comparatively

451
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:30,040
Speaker 1: limited horizontal footprint, how often are there going to be

452
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:34,040
Speaker 1: sufficient falls such as a whalefall of some sort to

453
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:36,520
Speaker 1: feed the Hatle zone. Again, if we were to think

454
00:27:36,560 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 1: of it in terms of like the surface world, imagine

455
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:42,440
Speaker 1: you know a topography and there's like a narrow canyon

456
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:44,760
Speaker 1: and they are creatures that live at the bottom of

457
00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:48,760
Speaker 1: that canyon. How often is a big old condor or

458
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 1: vulture going to fall out of the sky and feed them? Right?

459
00:27:52,520 --> 00:27:54,160
Speaker 4: So that's what I was, like a long shot.

460
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it turns out maybe it's not that actually

461
00:27:57,280 --> 00:28:01,240
Speaker 1: that big of a big of a deal, But that

462
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:03,199
Speaker 1: was my question that it was in my head, and

463
00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:06,399
Speaker 1: that's what led me to look around, and indeed I

464
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:11,480
Speaker 1: found a paper by desk Gupta at All from twenty

465
00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:15,840
Speaker 1: twenty four titled Depth and Predation Regulate Consumption of Dolphin

466
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:19,240
Speaker 1: carcasses in the Hadal Zone. This is from Deep Sea Research,

467
00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:24,240
Speaker 1: Part one Oceanographic Research Papers. So they point out that

468
00:28:24,280 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 1: we've known about whalefalls and smaller sized food falls for

469
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:31,479
Speaker 1: more than three decades, and with that the realization that

470
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:36,040
Speaker 1: these are important food sources, particularly for the deep kicking

471
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:39,480
Speaker 1: up temporary and some I mean also kind of not

472
00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:44,480
Speaker 1: so temporary, as we'll discuss sea floor environments around the bounty.

473
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:49,200
Speaker 1: But such events in the Hadal zone were largely unknown

474
00:28:49,240 --> 00:28:53,160
Speaker 1: and unstudied. So what did the researchers here decide to do?

475
00:28:53,560 --> 00:28:56,320
Speaker 1: They said, well, let's orchestrate a couple of them. Let's

476
00:28:56,400 --> 00:29:00,160
Speaker 1: drop some dead dolphins down a couple of trenches and

477
00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:01,440
Speaker 1: watch and see what happens.

478
00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:05,840
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so this wouldn't be something that is totally artificial,

479
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:08,680
Speaker 3: like it never happens in nature. It's just rare enough

480
00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:10,920
Speaker 3: that we you know, it's hard to like come across

481
00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:12,680
Speaker 3: this naturally, right.

482
00:29:12,760 --> 00:29:14,720
Speaker 1: And I want to stress that the authors here that

483
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:18,120
Speaker 1: they point out that whale falls are actually thought to

484
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:21,840
Speaker 1: occur with relative frequency in the deep ocean. So my

485
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:25,960
Speaker 1: question seems to largely just be dismissed, like it just

486
00:29:26,280 --> 00:29:29,440
Speaker 1: it occurs, and there's no reason to think that it's

487
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 1: especially rare. I think we have to remember that take

488
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 1: the Mariana Trench for example. Yes, it's narrow compared to

489
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: the expanse of ocean around it. But we're still talking

490
00:29:39,280 --> 00:29:41,560
Speaker 1: about a feature that's five hundred miles long with an

491
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 1: average width of about forty three miles. But still no

492
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 1: hatl whale falls had ever been recorded. So that's why

493
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:51,560
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one the researchers dunked a pair of

494
00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:55,520
Speaker 1: Fraser's dolphins, one down the Marianna Trench and the other

495
00:29:55,640 --> 00:29:57,560
Speaker 1: down the Philippine Basin.

496
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:00,480
Speaker 3: Okay, so the reason that was not recorded before is

497
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:02,840
Speaker 3: not because it doesn't happen, but because it's limited our

498
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 3: limited ability to look for it.

499
00:30:04,520 --> 00:30:06,520
Speaker 4: Naturally happen exactly. Yeah.

500
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:08,920
Speaker 1: Now I want to feature a little reminder here about

501
00:30:08,960 --> 00:30:11,560
Speaker 1: sort of the phases. There are generally four phases of

502
00:30:11,600 --> 00:30:16,800
Speaker 1: whalefall that are recognized by scientists. So, first of all,

503
00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:20,680
Speaker 1: what happens again dead whale of one size or another

504
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:23,960
Speaker 1: sinks to the bottom and is now on the bottom

505
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:26,960
Speaker 1: of the ocean at some depth through another The first

506
00:30:27,000 --> 00:30:32,560
Speaker 1: stage is the mobile scavenger stage. Scavengers or necrophages arrive

507
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:37,200
Speaker 1: for the soft tissues, and the resulting feast can last

508
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:39,920
Speaker 1: four months or even over a year. It's going to

509
00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:43,760
Speaker 1: ultimately depend on the exact environment and the size of

510
00:30:43,880 --> 00:30:46,760
Speaker 1: the bounty. And one thing that is kind of fun

511
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:48,959
Speaker 1: to do is to think about these two in terms of,

512
00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:54,200
Speaker 1: you know, of a human scenario. Imagine prospectors discovering gold, oil,

513
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:57,800
Speaker 1: or some other desired resource and a previously unoccupied or

514
00:30:57,800 --> 00:31:02,280
Speaker 1: scarcely occupied area. What sort of stages of development and

515
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:04,040
Speaker 1: then abandonment end up occurring?

516
00:31:04,320 --> 00:31:05,040
Speaker 4: Okay? Cool?

517
00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:09,400
Speaker 1: Okay, So first the mobile scavengers come. Then phase two

518
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:13,320
Speaker 1: is the enriched mint opportunist stage. This is when we

519
00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:20,040
Speaker 1: get heterotrophic fauna arriving to colonize the surrounding sediments, which

520
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:25,400
Speaker 1: are now infused with organics from the whalefall as well

521
00:31:25,440 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 1: as the exposed bones of the whale, and this period

522
00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:33,760
Speaker 1: can last months or even years. The third phase is

523
00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:37,480
Speaker 1: the breakdown phase. This is when we have sulfophilic bacteria

524
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:41,760
Speaker 1: anaerobically breaking down the lipids embedded in the bones. This

525
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:46,320
Speaker 1: results in bacterial mats that provide sustenance for the various

526
00:31:46,320 --> 00:31:49,760
Speaker 1: critters and this can take fifty to even one hundred years.

527
00:31:50,080 --> 00:31:50,480
Speaker 4: Wow.

528
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:54,800
Speaker 1: And then the final stage is the reef stage. This

529
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:58,600
Speaker 1: is when only minerals remain, creating a hard substrate for

530
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:02,200
Speaker 1: filter feeders such as deep sea sponges.

531
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 3: And we've discussed before how just a just a hard

532
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:08,719
Speaker 3: surface raised up off of the seafloor is actually something

533
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 3: that can be at a premium in the ocean.

534
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 1: That's right, and this is one way that new solid

535
00:32:14,280 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 1: outcroppings can be created in the long run. So again

536
00:32:18,480 --> 00:32:22,160
Speaker 1: coming back to this twenty twenty one research project, they

537
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:28,160
Speaker 1: dropped two dolphin carcasses, one down each trench, and then

538
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:31,720
Speaker 1: they used a man submersible to observe the initial phases

539
00:32:31,760 --> 00:32:34,480
Speaker 1: of the whale fall. So nine dives were conducted over

540
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:37,280
Speaker 1: a period of eighty six days for the Philippine basin

541
00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 1: and fifty days for the Mariana Trench. Now, the dolphins

542
00:32:41,560 --> 00:32:44,960
Speaker 1: involved here are quite small by whale standards, so we're

543
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:48,560
Speaker 1: not talking this ultimately the same time frame as cited

544
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:52,920
Speaker 1: previously here, but the stages are still in play, and

545
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 1: the researchers observe both of the initial stages, which we

546
00:32:56,520 --> 00:32:58,720
Speaker 1: have to also point out do tend to overlap in

547
00:32:58,760 --> 00:33:01,000
Speaker 1: general and overlapped here as well. So there's not a

548
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:03,840
Speaker 1: hard cutof there's nobody's blowing a whistle and saying all right,

549
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 1: that's it. Opportunistic scavengers, get out of here. We got

550
00:33:06,240 --> 00:33:10,520
Speaker 1: the next crew coming in. Huh. So what they observed

551
00:33:10,520 --> 00:33:15,600
Speaker 1: with phase one They had hatl amphipods, which we were

552
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:18,560
Speaker 1: just talking about an example of that, as well as

553
00:33:18,560 --> 00:33:23,360
Speaker 1: snail fish. These were found occurring at the whale drop

554
00:33:23,680 --> 00:33:28,560
Speaker 1: in the Philippine Basin and then just hatle amphipods, no

555
00:33:28,680 --> 00:33:32,360
Speaker 1: snail fish at the Mariana Trench drop. So without the

556
00:33:32,400 --> 00:33:37,840
Speaker 1: predatory snail fish in action, the scavengers, the scavenging amphipods

557
00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:41,240
Speaker 1: at the Mariana Trench location, they were able to work faster,

558
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 1: uninterrupted in their feeding, and consume most of the soft

559
00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:47,080
Speaker 1: tissue in just a matter of days.

560
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:51,760
Speaker 3: Ah okay, that's interesting. Yeah, So the presence of secondary

561
00:33:52,080 --> 00:33:58,240
Speaker 3: predators complicates how the initial resources are consumed. So the

562
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:03,760
Speaker 3: dolphin down and you've got these amphipods, you know, stripping,

563
00:34:03,880 --> 00:34:06,160
Speaker 3: stripping the bones, eating all the soft tissue. But then

564
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:09,799
Speaker 3: you also could have predators there that limit the amphipod's

565
00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:12,400
Speaker 3: ability to quickly consume the carcass.

566
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:14,880
Speaker 1: Right, And that's exactly how it seemed to go down

567
00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:17,839
Speaker 1: at the Philippine Basin site where the scavengers ended up

568
00:34:17,840 --> 00:34:20,320
Speaker 1: having to take a ten day feeding break to avoid

569
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:24,239
Speaker 1: the snailfish. Now they observe that the second stage only

570
00:34:24,320 --> 00:34:28,280
Speaker 1: attracted a few grazing organisms and quote the dispersed organic

571
00:34:28,320 --> 00:34:31,960
Speaker 1: matter and limited lipid content in the dolphin bones were

572
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:36,279
Speaker 1: likely insufficient to sustain an active grazing community or the

573
00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:41,520
Speaker 1: chemosynthetic community that typically typically follows. So larger whales would

574
00:34:41,640 --> 00:34:46,279
Speaker 1: presumably sustain larger environments for longer. But one of the

575
00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:49,120
Speaker 1: key ideas presented by the researchers here is that the

576
00:34:49,160 --> 00:34:51,759
Speaker 1: exact shape and time frame of a given whale fall

577
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:56,000
Speaker 1: is going to depend not only on the animals that

578
00:34:56,480 --> 00:34:59,200
Speaker 1: sinks to, the depths, the size of the carcass, but

579
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 1: also on on the depth that it sinks to. You know,

580
00:35:02,200 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 1: the exact location, and you know what sort of like

581
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:09,720
Speaker 1: local deep ocean environment is in play.

582
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:11,640
Speaker 4: Oh well, that totally makes sense.

583
00:35:11,800 --> 00:35:14,000
Speaker 3: The same way if you like, well, I mean just

584
00:35:14,040 --> 00:35:16,360
Speaker 3: on the surface, if you drop a dead animal somewhere,

585
00:35:16,760 --> 00:35:20,040
Speaker 3: what happens to it afterwards would depend not only on

586
00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:22,880
Speaker 3: what kind of the food quality of that dead animal is,

587
00:35:22,880 --> 00:35:24,640
Speaker 3: but where you put it. So you know, you take

588
00:35:24,680 --> 00:35:26,320
Speaker 3: a dead cow and you put it in the middle

589
00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:28,880
Speaker 3: of the desert, something different is going to happen to it.

590
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 3: Then if you take that same dead cow and you

591
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:32,480
Speaker 3: put it, you know, in the middle of the forest.

592
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:35,359
Speaker 1: It comes back to our example of the islands. If

593
00:35:36,040 --> 00:35:39,040
Speaker 1: a large condor, let's say, falls dead out of the

594
00:35:39,080 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 1: air and it lands on this island, and it lands

595
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:44,080
Speaker 1: on this island, like different things are likely going to

596
00:35:44,120 --> 00:35:47,120
Speaker 1: eat it. Coconut crabs on one island, komodo dragons on another,

597
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:50,240
Speaker 1: rats on yet another island.

598
00:35:51,040 --> 00:35:53,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, though, I guess actually a better comparison

599
00:35:53,600 --> 00:35:57,560
Speaker 3: than what I said would be would be different versions

600
00:35:57,600 --> 00:36:00,279
Speaker 3: of a similar ecosystem. Because here they're both talking. They're

601
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:02,799
Speaker 3: dropping it into the Hadel zone, So it would be

602
00:36:02,840 --> 00:36:05,880
Speaker 3: like dropping it into two different forests in different places

603
00:36:05,920 --> 00:36:08,520
Speaker 3: on the Earth, so similar kind of environments, but still

604
00:36:08,640 --> 00:36:11,960
Speaker 3: different local conditions and ecology.

605
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:16,480
Speaker 1: So again, outside of the vents like these and hydrothermal

606
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:19,839
Speaker 1: vent communities, there's just a lot of distance down there

607
00:36:19,880 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 1: in the dark ocean, especially when you get into the

608
00:36:22,680 --> 00:36:26,280
Speaker 1: Hadel zone. And we see that reflected in the various

609
00:36:26,320 --> 00:36:29,320
Speaker 1: ways that the denizens of the deep live their lives

610
00:36:29,560 --> 00:36:33,359
Speaker 1: in terms of reproduction, but also in terms of how

611
00:36:33,520 --> 00:36:37,760
Speaker 1: predators conducted their business, how they seek out their prey

612
00:36:38,360 --> 00:36:41,760
Speaker 1: or allow their prey sometimes to find them, or position

613
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:45,080
Speaker 1: themselves in just the right place to where they will

614
00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:47,080
Speaker 1: run into the things they want to eat.

615
00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:50,800
Speaker 3: And so, as we saw in the last example, sometimes

616
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:54,319
Speaker 3: that might mean not just chasing after the thing you

617
00:36:54,360 --> 00:36:56,319
Speaker 3: want to eat, but going to where the thing you

618
00:36:56,360 --> 00:36:59,479
Speaker 3: want to eat wants to eat is right right.

619
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:02,720
Speaker 1: And so for the remainder of this episode, I wanted

620
00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:06,440
Speaker 1: to talk about one example of a predator of the

621
00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:09,760
Speaker 1: deep of the of the deep ocean in general, but

622
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:12,960
Speaker 1: also as we'll get into, seemingly of the hadel zone

623
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:18,080
Speaker 1: as well, and that is the general category of deep

624
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:23,760
Speaker 1: sea sciphonophores. Now, we've talked about sciphonophores on the show before,

625
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:27,040
Speaker 1: and I know I've talked about easily the most famous

626
00:37:27,120 --> 00:37:30,400
Speaker 1: sciphono four on Adam alias Stupendium before that is the

627
00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:33,520
Speaker 1: Portuguese man O War. This is not only the most

628
00:37:33,520 --> 00:37:37,200
Speaker 1: famous siphono four, it was the first described by science

629
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:40,760
Speaker 1: in seventeen fifty eight and also essentially the only sciphono

630
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:42,319
Speaker 1: four with a common name.

631
00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:44,400
Speaker 3: I mean, how often do you get to bring up

632
00:37:44,400 --> 00:37:45,960
Speaker 3: a sciphonophoor in conversation?

633
00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:48,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean, the thing about the Portuguese men

634
00:37:48,560 --> 00:37:50,680
Speaker 1: of war is that it is a sciphonopoor that lives

635
00:37:50,719 --> 00:37:53,239
Speaker 1: at the surface of the water. It doesn't get any

636
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:55,839
Speaker 1: closer to us unless it, you know, gets washed up

637
00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:58,160
Speaker 1: on the beach, as they may do, or if it

638
00:37:58,200 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 1: were to actually crawl up and like enter our house

639
00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:04,520
Speaker 1: or something, which they're not doing. But yeah, siphonophores are

640
00:38:04,600 --> 00:38:11,160
Speaker 1: just so endlessly weird and wonderful. They're hydrozoans, and they

641
00:38:11,160 --> 00:38:15,680
Speaker 1: are so they are aquatic invertebrates, but they are not jellyfish,

642
00:38:15,880 --> 00:38:19,120
Speaker 1: they are not sea jellies. And the wild thing is

643
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:23,480
Speaker 1: they are not even individual organisms, but are rather colonial

644
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:28,880
Speaker 1: organisms made up of genetically identical but highly specialized polyps.

645
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:32,799
Speaker 1: So what you might mistake for a single organism's reproductive

646
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:36,920
Speaker 1: system with one of these critters you know, say, you know,

647
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:40,080
Speaker 1: is a like a digestive system or an arm or

648
00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:42,839
Speaker 1: a flotation bladder. Each of these is in fact an

649
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:49,360
Speaker 1: individual zooid. So each zooid is a multicellular animal unto

650
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:53,359
Speaker 1: itself that exists as part of a colonial whole, each

651
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:57,400
Speaker 1: comprising an essential system of that whole. So to employ

652
00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:01,840
Speaker 1: an imperfect comparison here, if you know Ultron. Vultron is

653
00:39:02,400 --> 00:39:06,120
Speaker 1: a large mech mecha robot that is made out of

654
00:39:06,120 --> 00:39:09,960
Speaker 1: smaller mecha lion robots, you know that are piloted by humans.

655
00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:15,799
Speaker 1: Except in this situation, imagine that the lions that form

656
00:39:15,840 --> 00:39:19,600
Speaker 1: our Vultron cannot exist separate from the whole. They cannot

657
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:23,719
Speaker 1: live on their own, and in fact are not just

658
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:27,000
Speaker 1: forming the legs and the arms and the torso in

659
00:39:27,040 --> 00:39:29,680
Speaker 1: the head, but are forming things like the reproductive system,

660
00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:33,960
Speaker 1: the vultron digestive system and so forth. And generally, the

661
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:37,319
Speaker 1: layout you'll see with one of these siphonophores is you'll

662
00:39:37,360 --> 00:39:41,520
Speaker 1: have a section called the neumataphor, which provides buoyancy, and

663
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:43,640
Speaker 1: this is very obvious with the Portuguese man o War.

664
00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:47,920
Speaker 1: Then you have the nectosome, which is related to swimming,

665
00:39:48,280 --> 00:39:53,799
Speaker 1: and the siphosome, which is related to feeding, reproductive capabilities,

666
00:39:53,800 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 1: and defense. And they may seem like floaty and docile

667
00:39:58,280 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 1: that like and especially this is the case this may

668
00:40:01,160 --> 00:40:03,200
Speaker 1: have seen the case with the Portuguese Man of War

669
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:06,840
Speaker 1: because they are kind of tossed about by the wind

670
00:40:06,880 --> 00:40:09,880
Speaker 1: and the sea and are taken to certain extents you know,

671
00:40:09,920 --> 00:40:13,560
Speaker 1: where the sea is sending them but siphonophs in general,

672
00:40:13,719 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 1: they are predatory carnivores, and and there they are. They're

673
00:40:18,680 --> 00:40:22,480
Speaker 1: active predatory carnivores in their own peculiar way.

674
00:40:23,239 --> 00:40:26,719
Speaker 3: It's actually a more horrifying kind of predation even than

675
00:40:26,760 --> 00:40:27,319
Speaker 3: we're used to.

676
00:40:27,560 --> 00:40:29,240
Speaker 4: You think, a bit more like the blob.

677
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:32,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And it's like that level of just like

678
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:35,080
Speaker 1: you look at the body layout of one of these

679
00:40:35,080 --> 00:40:36,120
Speaker 1: and I guess you know, they have more of a

680
00:40:36,120 --> 00:40:39,640
Speaker 1: body layout than the blob, but it's still you know,

681
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:45,200
Speaker 1: vastly inhuman and non mammalion, non vertebrate, and and even

682
00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:48,960
Speaker 1: so different from the you know, invertebrate worlds of other animals.

683
00:40:49,080 --> 00:40:51,239
Speaker 1: You can't just turn it around and say, oh, well

684
00:40:51,239 --> 00:40:54,040
Speaker 1: that's the head and now it makes sense. No, Sciphonophores

685
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:55,839
Speaker 1: are like weird no matter how you look at them.

686
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:56,920
Speaker 4: Yeah.

687
00:40:57,080 --> 00:41:00,319
Speaker 1: So one example of note here, the one will the

688
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:04,480
Speaker 1: best defines the discussion here today, is the giant Sephona

689
00:41:04,560 --> 00:41:08,440
Speaker 1: four or the prey a duvia. This is a tube

690
00:41:08,480 --> 00:41:11,359
Speaker 1: shaped sephona four that can reach lengths of up to

691
00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:14,440
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty feet or forty meters. This is

692
00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:17,520
Speaker 1: frequently pointed out to be as long as a blue whale,

693
00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:19,839
Speaker 1: but also about as wide as.

694
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:21,239
Speaker 4: A broom handle. What.

695
00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:25,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, that just seems like an animal body of that

696
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:26,040
Speaker 3: sort should not.

697
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:28,880
Speaker 1: Exist exactly, And this is like the only plays that

698
00:41:28,880 --> 00:41:31,799
Speaker 1: could exist, you know, where they can have they kind

699
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:34,880
Speaker 1: of have the space to exist, but also they're ultimately delicate,

700
00:41:35,640 --> 00:41:39,239
Speaker 1: dangerous to the creatures that they consume, but delicate, and

701
00:41:39,280 --> 00:41:41,200
Speaker 1: they need a place where they're not going to be

702
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:47,040
Speaker 1: tossed around by the sea. Down here, it's relatively quiet.

703
00:41:47,600 --> 00:41:51,560
Speaker 1: Its long tube like body maneuvers via pulsating meduci and

704
00:41:51,640 --> 00:41:55,680
Speaker 1: one end features a gas filled noumataphor to provide buoyancy.

705
00:41:56,400 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 3: Okay, so it's got kind of a bubble that helps

706
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:01,759
Speaker 3: the negotiate where it floats to, and then it's got

707
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:05,120
Speaker 3: the pulsating you said, maneuvers with MEDUSI what are these

708
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:09,200
Speaker 3: little threadlike or hair like things that project off of it?

709
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:13,399
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little little yeah, kind of wiggly bits. And

710
00:42:13,560 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 1: the overall appearance of the creature, especially in sketches, is

711
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:21,000
Speaker 1: kind of like a weird alien like jelly pelvis bone

712
00:42:21,200 --> 00:42:25,160
Speaker 1: that would be that would be the buoyancy providing noumataphor.

713
00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:29,360
Speaker 1: And then it looks like there's kind of a noodle

714
00:42:29,440 --> 00:42:34,319
Speaker 1: rib spiny length growing out of it. It reminds me

715
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:37,920
Speaker 1: a bit of illustrations of yokai that I've seen, particularly

716
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:41,799
Speaker 1: the Rokoro Kubi yokai, where it's like a woman with

717
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:45,040
Speaker 1: a long snakelike neck, except in this case there's no body.

718
00:42:45,120 --> 00:42:48,320
Speaker 1: It's just it's just a strange creature to behold.

719
00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:49,440
Speaker 4: Super creepy.

720
00:42:49,520 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 3: Yes, repulsion attraction reaction I'm having like I don't want

721
00:42:54,080 --> 00:42:55,640
Speaker 3: to get near it, but also want to wrap it

722
00:42:55,680 --> 00:42:56,440
Speaker 3: around myself.

723
00:42:56,840 --> 00:43:01,280
Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah, Now, in a vast and sparse populated environment,

724
00:43:01,440 --> 00:43:03,800
Speaker 1: you've got to be swift, you got to be a patient,

725
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:06,799
Speaker 1: or you've got to be attractive. And I guess the

726
00:43:06,880 --> 00:43:10,600
Speaker 1: giant sevano four seems to engage in a little bit

727
00:43:10,640 --> 00:43:15,200
Speaker 1: of both patient and attractive because, on one hand, it

728
00:43:15,320 --> 00:43:19,839
Speaker 1: uses bright blue bioluminescence to attract prey, and I'm to

729
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:23,600
Speaker 1: understand that they, like most siphonophores, are also fairly selective,

730
00:43:24,040 --> 00:43:27,480
Speaker 1: in this case, gravitating to areas where favored prey are

731
00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:29,600
Speaker 1: present or will be present. You know, there's some sort

732
00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:32,160
Speaker 1: of they're going to go where the food is going

733
00:43:32,200 --> 00:43:36,120
Speaker 1: to be, and then it can grab with its tentacles

734
00:43:36,120 --> 00:43:40,279
Speaker 1: and sting with its nomaticists before passing the bits of

735
00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:46,200
Speaker 1: now food its prey onto the digestive zooids that will

736
00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:47,719
Speaker 1: carry on digestion.

737
00:43:48,520 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 3: I'm curious, do you know why the bioluminescence works to

738
00:43:52,239 --> 00:43:55,399
Speaker 3: attract prey, Like, what are the prey trying to get out?

739
00:43:55,800 --> 00:43:58,920
Speaker 3: Or do the prey eat something that normally glows blue

740
00:43:58,920 --> 00:43:59,400
Speaker 3: as well?

741
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:03,000
Speaker 1: We should first of all stress that blue green light

742
00:44:03,120 --> 00:44:06,560
Speaker 1: this tends to be the standard among bioluminescent animals in

743
00:44:06,600 --> 00:44:08,800
Speaker 1: the deep. Sometimes red light is used for a different

744
00:44:08,800 --> 00:44:11,879
Speaker 1: reason than we may get into later on. As for

745
00:44:12,040 --> 00:44:15,719
Speaker 1: what the sciphono war in question here is doing, what

746
00:44:16,239 --> 00:44:21,480
Speaker 1: is it mimicking? According to the Nterey Bay Aquarium's Wonderful

747
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:27,160
Speaker 1: Overview page on bioluminescence, there are siphonophores that use this

748
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:31,839
Speaker 1: kind of bioluminescent lure to mimic the appearance of copods.

749
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:35,880
Speaker 1: This is a common prey organism for deep sea fishes,

750
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:39,720
Speaker 1: and so that seems to be what's probably going on here,

751
00:44:39,880 --> 00:44:44,359
Speaker 1: mimicking one prey animal to attract the predators which then

752
00:44:44,440 --> 00:44:56,680
Speaker 1: become the prey. Now, when it comes to the exact

753
00:44:56,840 --> 00:45:01,279
Speaker 1: zones that we find the giant's siphonophoor in a lot

754
00:45:01,280 --> 00:45:05,280
Speaker 1: of resources out there are pointing to the zones above

755
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:08,400
Speaker 1: the Hatel zone, so still the deep deep ocean, but

756
00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:11,719
Speaker 1: not the deepest trenches. And yet on the other hand,

757
00:45:11,880 --> 00:45:15,400
Speaker 1: there is also evidence that they do go into the

758
00:45:15,440 --> 00:45:19,040
Speaker 1: Hadel waters or do reside there. Again, we have to

759
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:22,279
Speaker 1: remind ourselves that we don't know everything about these deep

760
00:45:22,320 --> 00:45:26,600
Speaker 1: ocean trenches. They are mysterious places, and a lot of

761
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:31,000
Speaker 1: those mysteries remain. A lot more research and exploration is required,

762
00:45:31,560 --> 00:45:35,760
Speaker 1: but there is some evidence that we do find giant

763
00:45:35,760 --> 00:45:41,319
Speaker 1: siphonophors or some type of sciphonophoor some related species in

764
00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:44,680
Speaker 1: these waters, as we'll explain here. And I was reading

765
00:45:44,680 --> 00:45:47,880
Speaker 1: about this in a twenty twenty one edition of the

766
00:45:47,960 --> 00:45:52,040
Speaker 1: Journal of Plankton Research paper by Alan J. Jamison and

767
00:45:52,080 --> 00:45:57,120
Speaker 1: Thomas D. Linley, and they said that we have observed

768
00:45:57,160 --> 00:46:00,600
Speaker 1: a probable sciphonophoor within the Mariana Trench at a depth

769
00:46:00,680 --> 00:46:04,880
Speaker 1: of eight meters, which is well within the Hadle zone.

770
00:46:06,040 --> 00:46:08,719
Speaker 1: And I've included here for you as well, Joe. It's

771
00:46:09,040 --> 00:46:12,160
Speaker 1: image C of the ABC image block that we're looking

772
00:46:12,200 --> 00:46:12,600
Speaker 1: at here.

773
00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 3: Ooh, okay, so we're looking at a cameras have captured

774
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:21,000
Speaker 3: some stuff from the ocean floor, and the image c

775
00:46:21,280 --> 00:46:23,480
Speaker 3: it just looks like we're looking out into this blue

776
00:46:23,480 --> 00:46:26,440
Speaker 3: water that's illuminated with our official light, of course. And

777
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:29,040
Speaker 3: then there's something that looks almost like a constellation of

778
00:46:29,120 --> 00:46:33,239
Speaker 3: little little star like freckles kind of zipping around in

779
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:34,520
Speaker 3: a strange arrangement.

780
00:46:35,239 --> 00:46:38,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, what we're seeing here, apparently is that trailing link

781
00:46:39,239 --> 00:46:42,000
Speaker 1: the cciphosome. This is the part that is going to

782
00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:45,799
Speaker 1: ultimately be fishing for prey. The net is out, as

783
00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:50,759
Speaker 1: the authors here describe it. Again, we don't have enough

784
00:46:50,880 --> 00:46:54,200
Speaker 1: evidence here to really tell exactly what species we're looking at,

785
00:46:54,400 --> 00:46:55,680
Speaker 1: or you know, to make a case it is a

786
00:46:55,680 --> 00:46:59,120
Speaker 1: new species, but they say that it's very likely a

787
00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:02,799
Speaker 1: relative of the giants Sephonophore uh, and it's probably a

788
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:06,920
Speaker 1: member of the same suborder. Full identification could not be made,

789
00:47:07,600 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 1: but this evidence does seem to indicate that known and

790
00:47:10,520 --> 00:47:14,760
Speaker 1: maybe unknown species of siphonophores do hunt in hatel waters.

791
00:47:15,760 --> 00:47:18,120
Speaker 4: That's a whole other kind of deep sea horror.

792
00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:21,120
Speaker 1: And Yeah, one of the things I love about the

793
00:47:21,120 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 1: sulphonophores is that we I think by you know, by

794
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:27,960
Speaker 1: this point, I mean everyone's seen a lot of like

795
00:47:28,000 --> 00:47:30,880
Speaker 1: really cool images of deep sea fish with their you know,

796
00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:37,600
Speaker 1: translucent bodies or needle like teeth and bioluminescent bulges and

797
00:47:37,719 --> 00:47:41,040
Speaker 1: other strange properties and gonna make them very frightening. But

798
00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:44,640
Speaker 1: it's almost like that's an extrapolation of a fish and uh,

799
00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:48,560
Speaker 1: and we're prepared for that, but we're sometimes less prepared

800
00:47:48,640 --> 00:47:51,440
Speaker 1: for just how again how weird seiphonophores are, even though

801
00:47:51,440 --> 00:47:55,319
Speaker 1: we've also find siphonophores again at the surface of the ocean. Uh,

802
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:58,439
Speaker 1: up there with the Portuguese Man of Wars. But yeah,

803
00:47:58,440 --> 00:48:00,920
Speaker 1: they're these like the giants I find for is just

804
00:48:00,920 --> 00:48:06,359
Speaker 1: such a strange creature. And the idea that there are

805
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:10,000
Speaker 1: things like this just floating around in the deep ocean,

806
00:48:10,640 --> 00:48:13,120
Speaker 1: you know, making their way towards the places where their

807
00:48:13,200 --> 00:48:17,640
Speaker 1: favored prey are found and then casting their bioluminescent net

808
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:20,960
Speaker 1: in order to draw them in and sting them as

809
00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:23,319
Speaker 1: they brush up against them, and then pass them on

810
00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:29,840
Speaker 1: to their specific colonial zooids that are going to complete

811
00:48:29,840 --> 00:48:30,920
Speaker 1: the digestion task.

812
00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:33,200
Speaker 3: You'd have to think if one of those things get you,

813
00:48:33,200 --> 00:48:38,759
Speaker 3: you'd just be like fair enough digest me. Well, that

814
00:48:39,000 --> 00:48:42,640
Speaker 3: is a truly fascinating organism, and I think we're going

815
00:48:42,719 --> 00:48:45,040
Speaker 3: to have to call it there for today on part

816
00:48:45,080 --> 00:48:46,080
Speaker 3: one of this series.

817
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:47,359
Speaker 4: But we will be back with more.

818
00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:50,800
Speaker 3: We're not done talking about predation in the deepest parts

819
00:48:50,840 --> 00:48:51,440
Speaker 3: of the ocean.

820
00:48:51,800 --> 00:48:54,160
Speaker 4: We'll have at least one more part for you, maybe more.

821
00:48:54,600 --> 00:48:57,160
Speaker 1: That's right, We'll be back with maybe with some expected

822
00:48:57,280 --> 00:49:01,280
Speaker 1: cases of deep sea predators, but also perhaps unexpected examples

823
00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:03,680
Speaker 1: as well. All right. In the meantime, we just want

824
00:49:03,680 --> 00:49:05,640
Speaker 1: to remind everyone that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

825
00:49:05,680 --> 00:49:08,360
Speaker 1: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on

826
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:12,120
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays. We air a short form episode on Wednesdays,

827
00:49:12,200 --> 00:49:14,600
Speaker 1: and on Fridays. We set aside most series concerns to

828
00:49:14,680 --> 00:49:16,520
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird film here on a weird

829
00:49:16,520 --> 00:49:17,280
Speaker 1: house cinema.

830
00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:21,120
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

831
00:49:21,400 --> 00:49:22,880
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

832
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:25,400
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

833
00:49:25,560 --> 00:49:28,040
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

834
00:49:28,080 --> 00:49:30,799
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

835
00:49:30,840 --> 00:49:39,280
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

836
00:49:39,400 --> 00:49:42,319
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

837
00:49:42,400 --> 00:49:45,200
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838
00:49:45,360 --> 00:50:00,000
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839
00:50:00,640 --> 00:50:04,920
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