Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and we have.
Speaker 2: A special holiday episode here for you today. It does
Speaker 2: concern Christmas trees of a sort. We have, of course
Speaker 2: talked about Christmas trees plenty of times on Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind in the past. I think the most
Speaker 2: recent installment being an episode we did a couple of
Speaker 2: years back, holiday inventions, Christmas tree lights, tinsel and angels.
Speaker 2: We've talked about Christmas trees and connection to sacred trees
Speaker 2: in the past, but today we're going to find our
Speaker 2: Christmas trees in an all new location. We are going
Speaker 2: to venture beneath the sea.
Speaker 3: That's right, it's mule tied in the deep today.
Speaker 2: Yes, deep down in the ocean in some cases, deep
Speaker 2: in the ocean where it's that Cuthulhu waits dreaming. But
Speaker 2: just maybe maybe he's dreaming of a white Christmas.
Speaker 3: He's dreaming of that red writer be begun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that'd we come around to Christmas trees under
Speaker 2: the sea. Well, credit where credits due. We had a
Speaker 2: couple of lead INDs to this one of the organisms
Speaker 2: we're going to cover here is one that was already
Speaker 2: on your radar and is also something that I've observed
Speaker 2: in the wild before. And then another source of inspiration
Speaker 2: was a twenty twenty one j Store Daily article by
Speaker 2: Sierra Garcia titled Meet the Christmas Tree Doppelgangers of the Sea. Now,
Speaker 2: obviously with a title like that, you know I'm going
Speaker 2: to give the post a second look.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Doppelganger, of course, being the German double walker, the uncanny,
Speaker 2: sinister and perhaps doom harboragering duplication of self. Christmas, with
Speaker 2: its hidden depths of darkness, seems a great place for
Speaker 2: such creatures to wander around. But of course it's not
Speaker 2: about actual doppelgangers. It's about things in the ocean that
Speaker 2: may or may not resemble Christmas trees, depending on how
Speaker 2: much you want to see Christmas in them.
Speaker 3: You know, my daughter is two years old now, and
Speaker 3: so this is going to be her first, her first
Speaker 3: really conscious Christmas, the one that I think she's really
Speaker 3: going to be very aware of. And of course at
Speaker 3: her age, I'm constantly thinking about like the recognition of objects,
Speaker 3: because she likes to point to things and either ask
Speaker 3: what's that or to say what the thing she's pointing
Speaker 3: at is, And a lot of times it's not the
Speaker 3: thing she says it is, but you can see the resemblance.
Speaker 3: And so I'm constantly thinking about the minimum visual criteria
Speaker 3: to associate a shape or some kind of sight with
Speaker 3: an object or a concept that she already has. And
Speaker 3: one of them now is Christmas trees. And so like,
Speaker 3: I'm wondering what kind of triangular thing this week, you know,
Speaker 3: she'll point out is that Christmas tree? And we're sort
Speaker 3: of playing the same game now, aren't we.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean you've got to call these organisms something, right,
Speaker 2: We've encountered examples of this before. You know, everything is
Speaker 2: an apple, according to Western explorers, some version of an apple,
Speaker 2: be it pine or otherwise. But you know, on another level,
Speaker 2: all of this kind of connects with the ancient notion
Speaker 2: that we've discussed in the show before, the idea that
Speaker 2: if you look into the water, if you gaze deep
Speaker 2: into it, you're going to inevitably fine twins of things
Speaker 2: that exist above the water. You're going to find lions
Speaker 2: of the sea, cows of the sea, and so much
Speaker 2: more so. Maybe it's not all that off the mark anyway,
Speaker 2: that there are doppelgangers Christmas tree doppelgangers in the deep,
Speaker 2: because we have Christmas trees up here, so they must
Speaker 2: exist in the mirror realm beneath the waves.
Speaker 3: That's right. Well, are you ready to kick things off
Speaker 3: with my example here?
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, this is a fun one. This is probably
Speaker 2: the one that's instantly coming to some folks mind out there,
Speaker 2: especially folks who have done a little snorkeling and scuba diving.
Speaker 3: Well, we're going to start in the place you might
Speaker 3: expect for undersea Christmas trees, and that is James Cameron's
Speaker 3: Avatar from two thousand and nine. I know, I was
Speaker 3: actually so reading an article about this that was linked
Speaker 3: in that Jay Store Daily you mentioned earlier. But this
Speaker 3: was a short article that was mainly just promoing a
Speaker 3: conference presentation, but it had some interesting behind the scenes
Speaker 3: details about the making of Avatar. Who was called of
Speaker 3: plants in film by Tanya Marion in The Botanical Artist
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen. And so I was talking about when Cameron
Speaker 3: was setting out to design the world of Avatar, he
Speaker 3: wanted to achieve some degree of biological plausibility, and the
Speaker 3: movie is set on a planet. Actually, I think it's
Speaker 3: supposed to be a moon called Pandora, which he was
Speaker 3: originally imagining as a place with low light conditions and
Speaker 3: a toxic atmosphere, so it would have kind of different
Speaker 3: different material pressures applying to the biosphere, maybe leading to
Speaker 3: different forms of life than we have here on Earth.
Speaker 3: And so in trying to dream up these life forms,
Speaker 3: he consulted with a plant physiologist from u SE Riverside
Speaker 3: named Jody Holt to help imagine the botany of the
Speaker 3: alien biosphere. It's kind of interesting how the plants they
Speaker 3: dreamed up in some way resemble life forms that are
Speaker 3: found not on the surface of Earth, but underneath Earth's oceans.
Speaker 3: So the movie features in some scenes a type of
Speaker 3: large ground flora I think within the sort of in
Speaker 3: universe lore. It's they call it like a zoo botanical
Speaker 3: or something like that. It's sort of like an animal
Speaker 3: plant combination. But whatever it is, it basically seems plant formed.
Speaker 3: It's a piece of large ground flora with spiral shaped
Speaker 3: foliage and in the universe of the movie it's called
Speaker 3: helicoradium spirally And in the movie we see that this
Speaker 3: plant has an unusual reaction to activity in its environment.
Speaker 3: When it is physically disturbed. These fan out, corkscrew shaped
Speaker 3: leaves rapidly recoil and fold up into almost nothingness. So
Speaker 3: you can be standing in the middle of a little
Speaker 3: grove of these things and suddenly they all fold up
Speaker 3: and you can see everything around you. It's a touch
Speaker 3: me not reflex.
Speaker 2: Very impressive effects in play here, particularly nice on the
Speaker 2: big screen and in three D. You know, say what
Speaker 2: you will about the Avatar films, but there's a lot
Speaker 2: of fantastic biological world building going on in them. And yeah,
Speaker 2: this is a great example of one of the organisms
Speaker 2: that Cameron unleashes on us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so it turns out this was one of
Speaker 3: the biological elements of the movie that was inspired by
Speaker 3: organisms that actually exist in nature, not so much a plant,
Speaker 3: but by an animal, the real animal called Spirobranchus giganteus,
Speaker 3: or the Christmas tree worm. And that's the animal that
Speaker 3: I want to talk about for a minute here. So
Speaker 3: first of all, your mind, if it works like mine,
Speaker 3: might be looking in the wrong direction here, because when
Speaker 3: I hear Christmas tree worm, for some reason, to me,
Speaker 3: it sounds like the name of a pest animal that
Speaker 3: is named after the crop that it is most notorious
Speaker 3: for infesting and consuming, So like the tobacco hornworm or
Speaker 3: the potato tuber worm. These are in reality both moth
Speaker 3: species that in their larval stages feed on night shade
Speaker 3: plants like the ones in their names, and other night
Speaker 3: shade plants as well. But you know, humans kind of
Speaker 3: have a sometimes a kind of economic agricultural mindset in
Speaker 3: interfacing with wildlife, so they can sort of name animals
Speaker 3: after the crop that that animal is causing them problems with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like Christmas tree worms have ravaged the harvest again,
Speaker 2: is going to be a tough winner exactly.
Speaker 3: But the Christmas tree worm is not a caterpillar that
Speaker 3: infests Christmas tree farms. Instead, it is a marine tubeworm
Speaker 3: that lives on the surface of coral reefs. And so
Speaker 3: what's the association. Well, these animals are named after Christmas
Speaker 3: trees because they look like Christmas trees. And yet sometimes
Speaker 3: these naming conventions are a bit of a stretch, But
Speaker 3: for my part, I think it's close enough. I think
Speaker 3: these worms really do kind of remind me of Christmas trees.
Speaker 3: Though I will qualify that, and my qualification is that
Speaker 3: it's not so much that they resemble the actual species
Speaker 3: of evergreens, which are usually fir trees that we use
Speaker 3: as Christmas decorations. The only way in which I'd say
Speaker 3: they actually evoke the trees themselves is in general shape.
Speaker 3: So like Christmas trees, the part of these worms you
Speaker 3: can see is a cone which is widest at the
Speaker 3: base and the narrows towards the top, and it does
Speaker 3: sort of have branches branches radiating for my central trunk
Speaker 3: or spine. They're also sort of needly needly branches, which
Speaker 3: you could compare to evergreen pine needle texture, but it's
Speaker 3: not exactly a perfect match when you look at it. Instead,
Speaker 3: I think the main way that they remind me and
Speaker 3: remind other people of Christmas trees is that they mimic
Speaker 3: a popular style of Christmas tree decoration, especially from years past,
Speaker 3: which is that you would have a string of lights
Speaker 3: or a brightly colored garland wrapped around the tree in
Speaker 3: a spiral pattern. I've got a couple of examples for
Speaker 3: you to look at here, Rob. I don't really know
Speaker 3: that much about historical patterns of Christmas tree decoration, but
Speaker 3: this reads to me as a more old style way
Speaker 3: of decorating a Christmas tree. I associate it with like
Speaker 3: the nineteen thirties or forties.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And I guess maybe some of this survived.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm looking at this. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: when this style of tree decoration dies out or then
Speaker 2: again resurges again. For that matter, I'm not sure where
Speaker 2: we are now. We don't put a tremendous amount of
Speaker 2: thought into it. We just throw up the tree and
Speaker 2: we put our favorite decorations up and call it a day.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. My family never had a spiral garland on
Speaker 3: our trees, so it's not something I remember from personal experience.
Speaker 3: I feel like I've seen it in older media, which
Speaker 3: is maybe why I think of it as something that's older.
Speaker 2: We might have had a spiral garland, or maybe my
Speaker 2: grandmother did. I don't remember, but it feels like something
Speaker 2: I've seen in my life done somewhere. Hard to get
Speaker 2: excited about the garland, though, especially as a kid, because
Speaker 2: it's the individual ornaments and the lights that have all
Speaker 2: of the personality.
Speaker 3: I think, especially for people with brains like yours and mind.
Speaker 3: I think you and I were both like the illustrated
Speaker 3: dictionary kind of kids. We like things with lots of
Speaker 3: little individual in trees with the little illustration and explanation,
Speaker 3: And that's kind of what the individual ornaments feel like
Speaker 3: to me. I like individual ornaments with personality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good way opening it.
Speaker 3: But coming back to the Christmas tree worm, So if
Speaker 3: you do a search for pictures of this worm, you
Speaker 3: will find plenty of stunning underwater photos of coral reef
Speaker 3: surfaces speckled with multi colored pairs of spiral Christmas trees,
Speaker 3: each pair branching in a fork. So what you'll see
Speaker 3: are two little Christmas trees right beside one another with
Speaker 3: the same coloration. Now, each pair has a different coloration
Speaker 3: from the other ones around it, but within the pair,
Speaker 3: the two little trees next to each other that are
Speaker 3: growing in a V shape split at the base, those
Speaker 3: will be the same color usually. And one important thing
Speaker 3: to emphasize is that the Christmas trees that you're seeing
Speaker 3: are not the whole of the organism. Each pair of
Speaker 3: Christmas trees represents the two crowns, or feeding and breathing
Speaker 3: appendages of a worm, the main cylindrical body of which
Speaker 3: is hidden in a tube in the coral right beneath
Speaker 3: where the trees emerge. And whether or not you think
Speaker 3: they look like Christmas trees, these things are beautiful. I
Speaker 3: know they're especially popular as a site for like scuba
Speaker 3: divers and snorkelers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got to observe these in the wild before
Speaker 2: snorkeling and Belize and in Roatan. They're one of the
Speaker 2: smaller pleasures of snorkeling in the shallows, and honestly, that's
Speaker 2: that's what I'm all about. When it comes to snorkeling.
Speaker 2: I don't really I don't really want to see anything big,
Speaker 2: you know, unless it's like a big coral formation. I mean,
Speaker 2: I see a bigger fish, it's it's neat. But I
Speaker 2: often spend my time with looking around for those little details,
Speaker 2: things that are you know, curling about inside the reefs
Speaker 2: and the rocks and and and you know, I think
Speaker 2: that's one of the things that makes something like a
Speaker 2: Christmas tree worm special. Now, in terms of whether they
Speaker 2: look like Christmas trees, I don't know. Obviously, It's one
Speaker 2: of those things where I knew what they were called,
Speaker 2: but as they were pointed out to me, so I
Speaker 2: couldn't help but bring Christmas tree into the scenario. But
Speaker 2: the ones I remember looking at I tended to think
Speaker 2: more of like bristle cleaner for straws and tubes.
Speaker 3: You know, but gorgeously decorated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I don't remember them being the one I saw,
Speaker 2: mind you as colorful as the ones I see in
Speaker 2: some of these photos. But on the other hand, underwater
Speaker 2: photography is very much a lighting game. I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess all photography is a lighting game, and you know
Speaker 2: what you actually see with your own eyes and maybe
Speaker 2: less than optimal lighting conditions in the water. You know,
Speaker 2: they're not going to necessarily match up with what you see,
Speaker 2: you know, in somebody's showcase of underwater photography. But yeah,
Speaker 2: they still they do have a lot of character, you know,
Speaker 2: there's something sneaky and whimsical about them. A lot of
Speaker 2: the things in the water don't want to be seen
Speaker 2: and will do what they can passively or actively to
Speaker 2: avoid a clumsy human and a mask and a snorkel
Speaker 2: from seeing them. But Christmas tree worms tend to feel
Speaker 2: just a little extra cheeky in the way they hide
Speaker 2: from us.
Speaker 3: Like they're not just hiding from you, they're almost kind
Speaker 3: of playing peekaboo, maybe playing yeah hard to get Yeah.
Speaker 2: There is like a peekaboo feel to them, you.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, yeah, you know. I was reading some guides
Speaker 3: to marine life and coral reef life that we're talking
Speaker 3: about people who try to get photos of these things,
Speaker 3: and apparently there's somewhat They're sensitive to multiple things, including
Speaker 3: changes in light conditions. So maybe if a shadow falls
Speaker 3: under them, they could retract, or if the flash of
Speaker 3: a camera goes off, they could retract, and then slowly
Speaker 3: over time, after they retract, they'll sort of re emerge.
Speaker 3: And so I think there might be some patience involved
Speaker 3: in trying to get up close and see them or
Speaker 3: to take a good photo of them, to kind of
Speaker 3: wait for them to come back out after you have
Speaker 3: spooked them the first time. But then another thing I
Speaker 3: saw in one of the sources I was reading was
Speaker 3: that how skittish they are might well depend on their surroundings.
Speaker 3: Like the ones that are in shallower, more turbulent waters,
Speaker 3: I think tend to be a little less skittish than
Speaker 3: the ones that are in deeper, more calm and stable waters,
Speaker 3: which sort of makes sense. Yeah, but anyway, Okay, so
Speaker 3: what's the biological rundown on the Christmas tree worm. It
Speaker 3: is a relative small polychete worm that lives the entirety
Speaker 3: of its adult life with the majority of its body
Speaker 3: hidden inside a calcareous tube that it makes initially on
Speaker 3: the surface of a rock or more often a coral reef,
Speaker 3: and then the tube can kind of become subsumed within
Speaker 3: the coral as the coral grows, and then the worm
Speaker 3: and its tube grows up along with the coral, so
Speaker 3: it begins life in a short planktonic larval phase, floating around,
Speaker 3: after which it lands somewhere on the reef secretes a
Speaker 3: tube made of mucus, which it lives in for a bit,
Speaker 3: and over time that mucous tube becomes cemented with solid minerals,
Speaker 3: and then within that tube, the Christmas tree worm metamorphoses
Speaker 3: and grows into its adult form, where it will live
Speaker 3: the rest of its life, growing with the structure of
Speaker 3: the reef, safe and secure and covered inside its tube
Speaker 3: by a nice lubricating blanket of mucus. I've seen different
Speaker 3: estimates on size range. According to a post by the NOAA,
Speaker 3: on average, these worms are less than four centimeters long,
Speaker 3: but according to marine biologists Eugene Kaplan in his book
Speaker 3: A Field Guide to Coral Reefs from nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3: Their body length can reach up to twelve centimeters or
Speaker 3: about five inches either way. They are small, but they're
Speaker 3: easy to spot because they're very colorful, and in some
Speaker 3: cases because of rapid changes that you can observe with them,
Speaker 3: most often them disappearing suddenly. So the exposed parts the
Speaker 3: two Christmas trees are two tentacles or crowns, and I've
Speaker 3: also seen them called gill plumes, arranged in a spiral
Speaker 3: or whirl pattern, which themselves contain what's called a bipinnate
Speaker 3: arrangement of hair like or needle like protrusions called radioles.
Speaker 3: And then those little needle protrusions are themselves perpendicularly covered
Speaker 3: in other smaller protrusions called pinules or cilia. So you
Speaker 3: can imagine a kind of fern shape. You know, you
Speaker 3: have the main stalk going out, and then you have
Speaker 3: branches going out from that stalk, and then out from
Speaker 3: the branches you got the little leaves projecting at a
Speaker 3: ninety degree angle. So these radioles covered in the cilia,
Speaker 3: the worm fans them out in this spiral pattern and
Speaker 3: then beats them in the water to catch floating phytoplankton
Speaker 3: and other bits of biological particle matter that will become
Speaker 3: the worm's food. The little pins sort of they catch
Speaker 3: hold of bits of organic stuff suspended in the water,
Speaker 3: and then they sort of transport those particles in a
Speaker 3: stream in little ridges along the surface of the worlds
Speaker 3: down to the worm's mouth. Delicious. So imagine kind of
Speaker 3: a spiral Christmas tree that gradually sucks in all of
Speaker 3: its ornaments, sucks the ornaments down the branches and then
Speaker 3: down the trunk and eats them.
Speaker 2: I mean, it sometimes works like that if you have
Speaker 2: a cat and Christmas tree.
Speaker 3: Now, these structures are not only for filter feeding, they're
Speaker 3: also for breathing. They are the worm's gills, and so
Speaker 3: the worm uses these radioals to extract dissolved oxygen from
Speaker 3: the water. Now, the activity that makes the Christmas tree
Speaker 3: worm notable as an inspiration for the plants in Avatar
Speaker 3: is the touch me not reflex. You know, when it
Speaker 3: senses danger through multiple types of stimuli, it can rapidly
Speaker 3: retract its two Christmas trees into the hole where it
Speaker 3: lives and on top of that it can also shut
Speaker 3: the door behind it. It has a flat body structure,
Speaker 3: sometimes capped with some sort of horny surface called an operculum,
Speaker 3: which it can slam shut over the opening of its tube.
Speaker 3: And we've talked about this adaptation the operculum in other species,
Speaker 3: such as snails. Snails sometimes have an operculum that they
Speaker 3: can use to cover the opening of their shell. Serves
Speaker 3: the same purpose, but of course, in the case of
Speaker 3: a snail, the shell is mobile. Here we'd be talking
Speaker 3: about a stationary tube on a substrate for a sedentary organism.
Speaker 3: We also talked about it in our episodes on hermit crabs,
Speaker 3: because in some cases the hermit crab will have one
Speaker 3: claw that is so made that it functions as an
Speaker 3: operculum at the opening of the shell.
Speaker 2: That's right, It's perfect little lid for their shell.
Speaker 3: That's right. So the operculum is a biological adaptation for
Speaker 3: slamming the door shut. Now, I wanted to shout out
Speaker 3: an interesting sort of ecological fact that I became aware
Speaker 3: of because I saw it in a PBS Nova segment,
Speaker 3: So thank you Nova. But the interesting thing is that
Speaker 3: there is some evidence that the relationship between the Christmas
Speaker 3: tree worm and the coral reef on which it lives
Speaker 3: goes both ways. Now, of course you can see how
Speaker 3: the worm benefits. The worm benefits from the coral skeleton structure,
Speaker 3: which of course provides it, you know, rigid protection against
Speaker 3: against predators, and you know, the tube it can live in,
Speaker 3: but also as it grows, it lifts it up into
Speaker 3: the water where it can have access to better waters
Speaker 3: for filter feeding. But the coral itself may also benefit
Speaker 3: from having Christmas tree worms all over it, because apparently
Speaker 3: the Christmas tree worms can provide a kind of protection
Speaker 3: for the coral against one of the coral's major predators.
Speaker 3: And that predator is the crown of thorns starfish aka
Speaker 3: Acanthaster plantsy or plunky p l A n c I.
Speaker 3: But I'll just say crown of thorns starfish because boy
Speaker 3: is the the epicness of that name appropriate. So imagine
Speaker 3: kind of a cross between a giant sunflower and an
Speaker 3: iron maiden turned inside out. These things are are absolutely
Speaker 3: from the hell razor universe, extremely wicked. They might. They're large,
Speaker 3: they might be roughly a foot and a half in
Speaker 3: diameter on average, coated in spikes, and what they do
Speaker 3: is they crawl over the surface of the coral reef
Speaker 3: just mowing. There's mowing the lawn, eating everything they can.
Speaker 3: According to that Nova segment, these giant starfish are in
Speaker 3: part responsible for the major decline of living coral within
Speaker 3: the Great Barrier reef. There are other factors at work
Speaker 3: as well, but when these things get going, a sort
Speaker 3: of explosion in the population of these coral predators can
Speaker 3: clean out a reef of living corals. And so the
Speaker 3: whole ventral surface, the underside of the starfish you can
Speaker 3: kind of think of as a vast digestive organ complex
Speaker 3: containing tube feet and this inverted stomach inside out stomach system.
Speaker 3: So it's just the underside of it is foreat it
Speaker 3: is just going to devour the coral underneath. And it
Speaker 3: turns out there's some evidence that if it comes to
Speaker 3: a part of a coral reef where there are Christmas
Speaker 3: tree worms, the Christmas tree worms can protect the corals
Speaker 3: directly underneath them because they get in the way of
Speaker 3: the starfish feeding and in fact they irritate the starfish's
Speaker 3: feeding organs. I looked up a paper, so I was
Speaker 3: trying to find the paper that was the source of
Speaker 3: this observation, and I found one published in the Marine
Speaker 3: Ecology Progress Series from nineteen eighty six by Devantier at
Speaker 3: All called does spiro Bronchus gigantius protect host porities from
Speaker 3: predation by acinhaster planky predator pressure as a mechanism of coevolution?
Speaker 3: And I was looking for the part of the paper
Speaker 3: that describes exactly how this works. I found it in
Speaker 3: their results section where they say, quote preliminary field experiments
Speaker 3: indicate that for certain worms, contact by acinhaster planky induces
Speaker 3: retraction followed by almost immediate reappearance with the operculum and
Speaker 3: bronchial crown pushing against the tube, feet and arms of
Speaker 3: the starfish. This caused the predator to move quickly away.
Speaker 3: So something about what these worms like poking it at
Speaker 3: their tube feed and the averted stomach. The starfish do
Speaker 3: not like the worms messing with them, and so this
Speaker 3: can have the effect of protecting the corals that are
Speaker 3: situated right around where the worms are. And so it's
Speaker 3: not going to protect the reef totally from being mowed
Speaker 3: by the starfish, but what it can do is make
Speaker 3: sure that some corals are left alive on the reef,
Speaker 3: and that those corals left alive around the worms, protected
Speaker 3: by the worms, can reseed the rest of the reef
Speaker 3: structure with living coral once again.
Speaker 2: M fascinating. So they're holding down their turf, which could
Speaker 2: allow the overall reef to then grow and heal later. Yes, fascinating.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, we've been thinking about trees a
Speaker 3: lot lately. Z apotropaic magic? Is there something here protective
Speaker 3: kind of? You know, the coral reef's got its own
Speaker 3: protective amulet, Except I guess it's not magic. It's just
Speaker 3: like literally keeping the starfish from absolutely devouring every inch
Speaker 3: of its life.
Speaker 2: It would be like if your Christmas tree protected your
Speaker 2: house by coming alive in the night, yeah, and fighting
Speaker 2: you know, weird alpine demons that might venture into your home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's like if aliens wanted to come over your
Speaker 3: house and suck all of the people out of it.
Speaker 3: If the Christmas tree that you had like poked the
Speaker 3: alien ship and irritated it and made it go away.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 3: So that does it for Christmas tree worms. But I
Speaker 3: know we had some other organisms we were going to
Speaker 3: talk about.
Speaker 2: That's right, This next one is one that I learned
Speaker 2: about in that Jaystore Daily post that I referenced earlier,
Speaker 2: and it's very much still in the world of coral.
Speaker 2: Christmas Tree coral, a cold water black coral discovered apparently
Speaker 2: in the mid two thousands. Some of you may be wondering,
Speaker 2: what is a black coral? Like, what does this even mean? Okay, well,
Speaker 2: you know a reminder that generally, you know, corals, of course,
Speaker 2: are animals, like we've been discussing, and if you've gotten
Speaker 2: out into the water, you're probably mostly familiar with the
Speaker 2: vibrant corals, and you know sometimes the bleached corals and
Speaker 2: shallow coastal environments. But what are black corals? Well? As
Speaker 2: the NAA article Black Corals of Hawaii by Anthony Montgomery
Speaker 2: points out black corals or thorn corals, which are officially
Speaker 2: known as antipatharia, are found all over the world and
Speaker 2: at varying depths, so you don't have to go into
Speaker 2: the deep waters to find them, but they're often noted
Speaker 2: for their presence in deep sea environments. Despite their name,
Speaker 2: they are rarely actually black. I'll get to why we
Speaker 2: still call them black corals in spite of this, But
Speaker 2: they can be various even bright colors, and their shapes
Speaker 2: also vary wildly. A key difference, however, between black corals
Speaker 2: and the stony corals that I think more people are
Speaker 2: familiar with, is that black corals have a skeleton made
Speaker 2: of protein and kitan. This skeleton is black, no matter
Speaker 2: what color the outer layers are, and that's the reason
Speaker 2: they end up with this name. So they have black skeletons,
Speaker 2: but they may have any number of colors on top
Speaker 2: of that skeleton. I see now, Montgomery and that NA
Speaker 2: article stresses that black corals do not have symbiotic algae
Speaker 2: associated with them, and they don't require light, thus their
Speaker 2: ability to survive at greater depths. And they are apparently
Speaker 2: something like two hundred known species of black coral. Now
Speaker 2: the Christmas tree black coral in question here is a
Speaker 2: particular species Antipathus Dindo christos in nomine patre. That's not
Speaker 2: part of it, but it sounds very Catholic, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Dendro Christo's that's got to literally mean Christmas tree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is one. I'm gonna get to another
Speaker 2: organism later where not everybody seems to be associated with
Speaker 2: Christmas as far as I can understand. But this one,
Speaker 2: it's right there in the official name, Okay. According to
Speaker 2: environmental factors that influence the distribution, size, and biotic relationships
Speaker 2: of the Christmas tree coral antipathis dindel Christos in the
Speaker 2: southern California bye by huff at All. This is in
Speaker 2: Marine Ecology Progress Series twenty thirteen. The Christmas tree coral
Speaker 2: is an uncommon, long lived colonial coral that typically supports
Speaker 2: a diverse population of marine life forms. This, of course,
Speaker 2: is one of the reasons that there are a number
Speaker 2: of studies looking at it, because there's a lot more
Speaker 2: to learn about them and a lot of organisms depend
Speaker 2: on them. But why do we call it a Christmas
Speaker 2: tree coral? What is even remotely Christmasy about it? Well,
Speaker 2: while your mind may easily turn to an image of
Speaker 2: a green tree, you know, draped in silver tassels and
Speaker 2: multicolored lights, the Christmas tree it's named for is actually
Speaker 2: one of those artificially frosted, you know, white flocked Christmas trees,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm talking about. These are the ones
Speaker 2: where the idea is that the tree is supposed to
Speaker 2: look like a frost covered tree in the forest, very
Speaker 2: much in keeping with the movie Jack Frost that we
Speaker 2: watched for Weird House Cinema, in which Jack Frost essentially
Speaker 2: like flocks the trees in the forest, covering them with ice.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so that is what they're going for here, Joe,
Speaker 2: I included a photograph for you. Here. This is an
Speaker 2: image of a leave from the huff at All Paper.
Speaker 3: Oh, I absolutely see the comparison. It looks very much
Speaker 3: like fur tree branches covered in snow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now it's not tree shaped, it's not really conical,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it looks like like fir tree branches that
Speaker 2: are completely covered in some sort of white frost. Now,
Speaker 2: as the huff at All Paper points out, Christmas tree
Speaker 2: corals also occur in red. But my first thought was like, well,
Speaker 2: it doesn't always look like a Christmas tree. But that
Speaker 2: shows how little I know about the history of flocking
Speaker 2: Christmas trees or creating, you know, plastic artificial trees, because
Speaker 2: I easily found an image of like a flocked red
Speaker 2: Christmas tree where it just is like a bright red
Speaker 2: imitation fur tree I'm assuming here, And yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: it does not look unlike an actual photograph of a
Speaker 2: red Christmas tree black.
Speaker 3: Coral, I'd see that. For some reason, this one made
Speaker 3: me think alveoli, just like you know, a little red
Speaker 3: broccoli in the lungs.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's another solid comparison. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: also have to point out this one picture from the
Speaker 2: huff at All paper that has the red There's a
Speaker 2: red one and then there's a white one right behind it,
Speaker 2: and on the red one you see two different crustaceans
Speaker 2: climbing up out And to me, it looks like one
Speaker 2: of those sometimes you see like a really wacky themed
Speaker 2: holiday tree, you know, where there's very much a particular
Speaker 2: theme in mind. It's not about just getting all of
Speaker 2: your favorite ornaments on there, but like making something that
Speaker 2: is very fashionable. And so I can imagine a tree
Speaker 2: where it's like your only two ornaments are two enormous
Speaker 2: crustaceans crawling about on the tree.
Speaker 3: Yeah ho ho LV four twenty six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sort of thing. So full grown colonies of
Speaker 2: this particular form of black coral apparently reach heights of
Speaker 2: eight feet and eight feet tall, and they can live
Speaker 2: more than a century of conditions are favorable. A two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven Bulletin of Marine Science paper from love
Speaker 2: at all found that basically, in this paper they discuss
Speaker 2: how they found a dead two point one meter or
Speaker 2: six point eight feet tall Christmas tree black coral collected
Speaker 2: from one hundred and six meter depth or three hundred
Speaker 2: and forty eight feet depth off off the coast southern California.
Speaker 2: And this one they found to be to have been
Speaker 2: about one hundred and forty years old when it died,
Speaker 2: and its skeleton was heavily colonized by invertebrates. According to
Speaker 2: this paper and this particular specimen, two five and fifty
Speaker 2: four species living there.
Speaker 3: Wow, somebody counted all those species?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it's a lot now that you know
Speaker 2: this is a dead one. But you know, basically the
Speaker 2: idea here is that you know, alive, we're dead. They
Speaker 2: have an important place in the ecosystem, you know, providing
Speaker 2: you know, substrate and so forth for various other organisms
Speaker 2: to thrive. And of course, black corals, like other corals,
Speaker 2: are you know, generally threatened by a climate change and
Speaker 2: related human industrial level activities, so you know, it's any
Speaker 2: threat to them is of course not only a threat
Speaker 2: to this particular species, but then there's also all these
Speaker 2: cascading effects that can occur with all of the species
Speaker 2: that are then dependent upon it.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: I was also reading about how the black in general,
Speaker 2: not with this particular species, the Christmas tree black coral,
Speaker 2: but black corals in general. They have at times been
Speaker 2: prize for medicinal uses and then also for jewelry making,
Speaker 2: and I believe in Hawaii there's still a certain amount
Speaker 2: of black coral harvesting that is allowed, and I think
Speaker 2: largely for jewelry making, though perhaps there's some medicinal usage
Speaker 2: in there as well. In other areas, though black corals,
Speaker 2: along with other forms of coral, are completely protected, and
Speaker 2: to be clear, there is some level of protection in
Speaker 2: Hawaii based on what I was reading, it's just I
Speaker 2: think there is some allowance for harvesting. So again, Christmas
Speaker 2: tree black corals named named for the Christmas tree, and
Speaker 2: you know, I think it's not unreasonable to say, yes,
Speaker 2: they do kind of look like Christmas trees.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, if you tried to make
Speaker 3: a Christmas tree like harvests, assuming you could and ecological
Speaker 3: concerns aside, harvest some and make it the Christmas tree
Speaker 3: in your house, would it still look like a Christmas
Speaker 3: tree out of the water.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I think well, I mean one of
Speaker 2: the things once you with the black corals, it's like
Speaker 2: people were harvesting it and doing stuff with the black skeleton.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, you might end up with some
Speaker 2: sort of like you know, goth black Christmas tree, which
Speaker 2: you know, I'm also totally on board for do what
Speaker 2: you want with your Christmas trees. Make them a statement
Speaker 2: of your identity.
Speaker 3: Okay, what's our third underwater Christmas tree?
Speaker 2: Okay? I did do a little bit more digging for
Speaker 2: this one because I was like, all right, we really
Speaker 2: need something else for the for the episode. You've got
Speaker 2: to round it up with a third, right, And for
Speaker 2: a little bit there I was like, I think the
Speaker 2: third is going to be the Christmas Tree of the desert.
Speaker 2: And then I had to remind myself in the way,
Speaker 2: I can't do that. That's that's not deep sea. That's
Speaker 2: the opposite of deep sea. That's the desert. So I
Speaker 2: was beginning to think there wasn't going to be something,
Speaker 2: But then I started finding some differences from the Monterey
Speaker 2: Bay Aquarium and that led me to a particular genus
Speaker 2: of Sciphonophor that we're going to talk about here, and
Speaker 2: that genus is forced Kalia, and this genus I believe
Speaker 2: is unofficially referred to as as containing at least one
Speaker 2: variety of Christmas tree siphonophoor. Okay, So what is a
Speaker 2: siphonophor or Sciphonophora is an order of colonial free swimming
Speaker 2: or floating marine hydrazooins, such as the Portuguese Man of
Speaker 2: War that's probably the most well known member of this group.
Speaker 2: And they're mostly delicate, transparent, various colors in play, and
Speaker 2: they are composed of zooids, zooids that possess special functions
Speaker 2: such as feeding or locomotion. They're very strange. A Good
Speaker 2: Wizard recently discussed a Man of Wars on Automalias Stupendium,
Speaker 2: an occasional Wednesday episode that we do, and in that
Speaker 2: we went into some of the details of what Asopopona
Speaker 2: four actually is. It is a colonial organism made up
Speaker 2: of genetically identical but highly specialized polyps. So what you
Speaker 2: might mistake for a single organism's reproductive system, you know,
Speaker 2: or a digestive system, grasping arms or the flotation bladder,
Speaker 2: are in fact individual zooids. And I have a way
Speaker 2: that I make sense of all this, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to adapt what is in that Animalias stupendium episode for
Speaker 2: the holiday theme here. Okay, So imagine your Santa Claus
Speaker 2: and you need a reindeer to pull your sleigh this year.
Speaker 2: It's a common problem. Unfortunately, all but one of your
Speaker 2: reindeer were killed last year by the bear spirit Tombach.
Speaker 2: So what are you gonna do? You just got one
Speaker 2: one can't pull the sleigh right. Fortunately, you're Santa Claus.
Speaker 2: You have access to advanced cloning technology. So what can
Speaker 2: you do? Well, you could simply clone Blitzen a dozen
Speaker 2: times to produce a host of genetically identical reindeer to
Speaker 2: pull your sleigh. That would work, But your Santa Claus,
Speaker 2: what if you aimed higher? What have you? Instead? Formed
Speaker 2: each Blitzen clone into a giant organ or organ system
Speaker 2: you know, or tissue or part of some sort of
Speaker 2: a greater organism, you know. One Blitzen becomes the digestive system,
Speaker 2: another they're reproductive system, another the skeletal and so forth,
Speaker 2: until you have a single uber Blitzen, a colonial super
Speaker 2: deer organism composed of genetically identical individuals. Those individuals do
Speaker 2: not look like a deer. They look like parts of
Speaker 2: the greater thing that you associate as a single entity.
Speaker 3: Kind of blitzen biovultron.
Speaker 2: Yeah, vultron is another way of thinking. Like when you
Speaker 2: look at a Portuguese man of war, and when you
Speaker 2: look at any of these siphonophores, you are looking at voltrons.
Speaker 2: But unlike vultron. Vultron of course can come back apart
Speaker 2: into lions and fly about. That doesn't happen here, Like
Speaker 2: they are all part of the whole. There is no
Speaker 2: decoupling from the whole here.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 2: There may be a better way of thinking about it,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I tend to think of it in this way.
Speaker 2: I think the vultron way of understanding them is also
Speaker 2: pretty solid. So the Forskalia genus was first described in
Speaker 2: the eighteen hundreds, and the species in question here is
Speaker 2: Forskalia formosa, first recorded by Keverstein and Elers in eighteen sixty. Now,
Speaker 2: I am personally not certain if anyone other than the
Speaker 2: Monterey Bay Aquarium and perhaps their web team are calling
Speaker 2: this species the Christmas tree siphonofour But even if they're
Speaker 2: the only ones, that's good enough for me, because a
Speaker 2: they're a world class institution, and b we needed one
Speaker 2: more Christmas tree to round out podcasts.
Speaker 3: I mean, I see it. Looking at a picture of
Speaker 3: this thing, it looks the most festively decorated I mean
Speaker 3: talk about garlands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there there are some pictures of this on
Speaker 2: the Monterey Bay Aquarium's website. There's also some really nice
Speaker 2: video footage on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's YouTube page.
Speaker 2: Especially that video I find you look at it and
Speaker 2: you're like, yes, it looks like a Christmas tree. It's
Speaker 2: upside down, but it looks like a you know, roughly
Speaker 2: Christmas tree shaped array of branches with illumination.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. So it's kind of actually, I think like
Speaker 3: the Christmas tree worm, where it's not so much that
Speaker 3: the crowns of the worm look really a lot like
Speaker 3: you know, evergreen trees. They're sort of cone shaped, they're
Speaker 3: generally shaped like a tree. But then the real thing
Speaker 3: is that that that decorating convention, the garland that you
Speaker 3: wrap around a tree like a spiral that resembles the
Speaker 3: the you know, the color tips of the spiral, the
Speaker 3: radials going up around the tentacles of the worm. In
Speaker 3: a similar fashion. Here, I would say that it's not
Speaker 3: so much that this looks like a Christmas tree, is
Speaker 3: that it's roughly tree shaped, and then it has these
Speaker 3: little white shining or glowing bits in the video you've seen,
Speaker 3: which makes me think of like the lights that we
Speaker 3: put on a Christmas tree. So again, it's kind of
Speaker 3: a decorating convention that I think really seals the esthetic comparison.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, these organisms
Speaker 2: live in the deep ocean, ranging from the surface down
Speaker 2: to six six hundred feet or two hundred meters deep
Speaker 2: in the North Pacific and Atlantic oceans. They reach sizes
Speaker 2: of up to ten feet or three meters in length
Speaker 2: or height, depending on how you want to view it
Speaker 2: as a Christmas tree, I guess, subsisting on various small
Speaker 2: sea animals in those environments, and it moves through the
Speaker 2: water via a system of floats and swimming bells.
Speaker 3: Whether or not it looks like a Christmas tree to you,
Speaker 3: it is beautiful, that's right.
Speaker 2: You know, you could maybe again use this as inspiration
Speaker 2: for your own Christmas tree instead of ornaments this year,
Speaker 2: you know, decorate your tree with zooids. I don't know. Yeah, No, no.
Speaker 2: In truth, I think you could technically do a theme
Speaker 2: tree based on all three of these organisms. It would
Speaker 2: be an impressive feat and I guess it would be
Speaker 2: for a limited audience. But I don't know. Maybe there's
Speaker 2: some marine biologists out there who really get into it.
Speaker 2: If you have ever decorated your Christmas tree to align
Speaker 2: with actual marine organisms named for Christmas trees or associated
Speaker 2: with Christmas trees, obviously we want to know about it.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I mean it's not impossible. It's not impossible,
Speaker 2: but I guess it's more likely there may be people
Speaker 2: with Christmas trees out there that have some sort of
Speaker 2: a science theme or even a marine biology or underwater
Speaker 2: oceanic theme. I would settle for that. I'm always gamed
Speaker 2: to look at the pictures of somebody's Christmas tree, so
Speaker 2: by all means, send them in, please do All right,
Speaker 2: I think we're going to go ahead it and wrap
Speaker 2: this episode up, But hopefully this was a fun and
Speaker 2: surprisingly different holiday episode from us here. You know, in
Speaker 2: the past, we've done again, you know, Christmas inventions, things
Speaker 2: that tie into like psychological or even philosophical ideas that
Speaker 2: are associated with the holidays. This time we went a
Speaker 2: little deeper in the oceanic sense.
Speaker 3: All I want for Christmas is to have my body
Speaker 3: exfoliated by a crown of thorn starfish.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, those look pretty rough, kind of like a
Speaker 2: like a whoopy cushion from Hell. I guess, you know.
Speaker 2: C stars in general have like a do not touch vibe,
Speaker 2: but these really have it do not touch vibe.
Speaker 3: Maybe we have to come back in the future and
Speaker 3: give them, give them their own episode.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, we could easily do an episode on
Speaker 2: I mean on starfish in general, you know, calling out
Speaker 2: various particular species of note. But yeah, maybe these guys too.
Speaker 2: All right, we're gonna wrap it up here then, but
Speaker 2: just a reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
Speaker 2: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema. If you want to follow us on Instagram,
Speaker 2: that's probably the best place to follow us these days.
Speaker 2: You can find us at st b ym Podcast. And
Speaker 2: let's see what else do we want to mention to here.
Speaker 2: We should have a call out that we do have
Speaker 2: a merch store. If you want to check that out,
Speaker 2: there should be a link on the Instagram. You can
Speaker 2: also find a link at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
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