Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Future production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, Roses are Red,
Speaker 1: Blood is blue, Blood is Green and transparent too. We're
Speaker 1: talking about all the bloody, weird animals in nature, from
Speaker 1: truly primeval horseshoe crabs to a group of mysterious zombie
Speaker 1: lizards to a fish whose blood runs ice cold. Discover
Speaker 1: this and more as we answer the age old question
Speaker 1: is ghost Blood a good band name or is it
Speaker 1: already taken? Joining me today to cover blood are the
Speaker 1: weirdos behind Dog, Sean Baby and Rubert Brockway. Welcome. I
Speaker 1: studied bud light and volleyball. I studied blood blood. If
Speaker 1: you're going to be great, sweet blood blood blood blood blood, blood,
Speaker 1: blood blood is that you know? They did they sing
Speaker 1: that song at Vampire College? Oh yeah, I mean all
Speaker 1: the time. I went there, clearly and uh did not
Speaker 1: graduate washed out of that like I do just everything.
Speaker 1: If being a gifted kid really screwed me, I thought
Speaker 1: I could coast through Blood College. But it's tough, and
Speaker 1: they do, Greg, they do. Greg stands it's where they
Speaker 1: drink blood from some guy named Greg. I like that one.
Speaker 1: That's cute. I love it when jokes cute and say say,
Speaker 1: I like that one. That's cute. Speaking you're cute. I
Speaker 1: made something for you. I did this once. Uh in
Speaker 1: rehearsal it did not go well, so we might want
Speaker 1: to just cut all this. But here we go. Can
Speaker 1: you hear that? Okay, yes, I'm playing. I'm playing the piano.
Speaker 1: It worries me Brockway, Katie and the and it's me
Speaker 1: five out of five at red my feet discussing blood
Speaker 1: field chimpanzees. I look at chimps that way. This is
Speaker 1: that old Joni Mitchell's song from the movie Coda My
Speaker 1: I've had on We've been on Katie's show three times now,
Speaker 1: learned about giant bears and maybe cow it's the Klowaka
Speaker 1: jokes that I recall. We really don't know creature. Uh,
Speaker 1: the features. I was waiting. I was waiting. I knew
Speaker 1: that was alright, alright, that was it? Can I play
Speaker 1: that without getting a sued into oblivion? I got it
Speaker 1: from like a deep cut YouTube karaoke track, So maybe
Speaker 1: I tried to find the one with the fewest number
Speaker 1: of views, but that might be it might be the
Speaker 1: most litigious of them. Actually, best best case scenario, you
Speaker 1: could cut the music and just have Sean going acapella
Speaker 1: on that and this heartbreaking solo melody for five minutes. Well,
Speaker 1: this has been a great use of the first the
Speaker 1: first ten minutes of the podcast. Thanks. I gave that
Speaker 1: a four percent chance of you keeping but and here
Speaker 1: we are. That's accurate. Something like that, something like that
Speaker 1: pops into your head at four am. It's like, you
Speaker 1: know what, tomorrow, I'm gonna sing this on the podcast. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: that's I keep keep rolling with those instincts. It's gonna
Speaker 1: it's it's really gonna far in this business. Kid. We're anyway.
Speaker 1: Back to blood, Yeah, back to blood. So today we're
Speaker 1: all about blood. Blood is great. We need it for
Speaker 1: being alive generally. And the cool thing about blood is
Speaker 1: that most living organisms have some version of it. Most
Speaker 1: animals have blood, and the blood they have. We've all
Speaker 1: met Greg, we've all tasted Greg, we've all done a
Speaker 1: Greg stand and we're not proud of it. And blood
Speaker 1: is well you drained Greg in seventy three seconds. Rep. Greg,
Speaker 1: Sweet baby, sweet Angel. But the so yes, the blood
Speaker 1: of other animals can be very different from our own.
Speaker 1: Take the horseshoe crab please. The Atlantic horseshoe crab is
Speaker 1: four fifty million years old, I mean as a species. Uh.
Speaker 1: And their blood is this bright blue color. It is
Speaker 1: not red. It is blue. Is that the picture I'm
Speaker 1: looking at? It looks refreshing, It does, doesn't It looks
Speaker 1: kind of like a blueberry smoothie. Yeah. I can taste that.
Speaker 1: It would be like kind of a blue raspberry fizz
Speaker 1: kind Yeah. Yeah. So is this like a horseshoe crab
Speaker 1: milking assembly line? Yes, it is. That's disgusting. It is.
Speaker 1: Feel like there should be some kind of a law
Speaker 1: against that. This is illegal what they're doing. Right, No,
Speaker 1: but there should. We'll actually get more into the morality
Speaker 1: of that in a little bit. But your instincts that
Speaker 1: this seems bad is actually correct. Good good instincts to
Speaker 1: spot that something is wrong with the blood drinking assembly. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's a bunch of monsters and there's bright blue blood
Speaker 1: coming out of their buttholes. Now, I my instinct say,
Speaker 1: wholes off about this? Soft? No, a very soft no.
Speaker 1: I can get talked into it. I'm no city slicker.
Speaker 1: But when I hear the word blood factory, something seems
Speaker 1: liky about that. So yes, Horse Atlantic horseshoe crabs are invertebrates,
Speaker 1: and they are a species that are over four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty million years old, older than the dinosaurs, truly
Speaker 1: ancient creatures. Individually, they only live to be up to
Speaker 1: around forty years old, which I still think is impressive
Speaker 1: for Yeah, exactly, and visually they really do look like
Speaker 1: some kind of ancient creature. They don't really look like crabs.
Speaker 1: They are not. They aren't. In fact, crabs are not
Speaker 1: all that closely related to them. They're much more closely
Speaker 1: related to spiders and scorpions, and they are if you've
Speaker 1: never seen a horseshoe crab, they're basically like a dome
Speaker 1: with a tail and legs and gross rat tail. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: they deserve the butt. Whole blood factory maybe evolved from
Speaker 1: like an empty shoe and a rat tail, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like, maybe do something, some wings, some horns,
Speaker 1: I don't care, try out something, maybe just a face
Speaker 1: of any kind. This is what self confidence looks like, Sean.
Speaker 1: This is they discovered themselves. If it ain't broke don't
Speaker 1: evolve it. You're gonna shame these horseshoe crabs as if
Speaker 1: they're supposed to go on Instagram and do what everyone
Speaker 1: else is doing. They've got their own style, and that
Speaker 1: style is dome, legs and tail. So there's something respectable
Speaker 1: about that. They're just doing their things for them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're there's kind of like muddy gray color um.
Speaker 1: On one side, of course, they look sort of like
Speaker 1: a weird sort of a rigid dome with the tail.
Speaker 1: On the other side, you see all their legs. So
Speaker 1: that tail that they have is not really a tale.
Speaker 1: It's called a tellson, which is actually, yeah, tellson. It's
Speaker 1: like if you've seen a shrimp before, Have you guys
Speaker 1: seen a shrimp before? Ever seen a shrimp? Never heard
Speaker 1: about these little guys? How can you have a jumbo shrimp?
Speaker 1: Tell me to explain that to me. Why don't you
Speaker 1: drive on the parkway of a park on the driveway
Speaker 1: watermelon smash? Yeah, exactly. So the tail of a shrimp,
Speaker 1: that little fan thing that's actually the shrimps tellson. Whereas
Speaker 1: for the horseshoe crab, it is this long and pointy thing.
Speaker 1: So they use this tellson both for swimming and foreseeing.
Speaker 1: They have a cluster of photo receptors on their tail,
Speaker 1: which you know. Uh, so they sort of have a face.
Speaker 1: It's just spread out across the telson. It's spread out
Speaker 1: across the whole body. Because they have nine eyes. Not
Speaker 1: only do they have that, they have a not only
Speaker 1: do they have to disagree with that decision. You guys
Speaker 1: are coming around way too fast on the side of
Speaker 1: blood factory. I'm still with blood factory. I just would
Speaker 1: like that to know that I disagree with having nine
Speaker 1: eyes and sprawled a face, sprawled across a tail. I
Speaker 1: think that's disagreement, is noted um put it. We'll put
Speaker 1: a pin in that, see if we can, you know,
Speaker 1: get a scrum, get a meet and going about that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so they have nine eyes. They have a
Speaker 1: pair of compound eyes. They have a pair of small
Speaker 1: lateral eyes right behind the compound eyes. They have two
Speaker 1: pairs of eyes near the front of the crab, and
Speaker 1: they have one single eye in the middle. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that there's a middle pair of eyes that can detect
Speaker 1: UV light. But otherwise they have pretty poor vision. Uh.
Speaker 1: Even with all of these eyes, they have good Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have these large rudimentary rods and cones. I mean,
Speaker 1: remember these are four hundred and fifty million years old.
Speaker 1: Their eyes are not gonna be like the new the
Speaker 1: iPhone six there, you know, they don't have the updated technology.
Speaker 1: Nine none of them worked. Let me just maybe the
Speaker 1: tent will do it. These are like the Nokia of invertebrates.
Speaker 1: You know, they're they're built to last four fifty million years.
Speaker 1: But if you try to take an image with it,
Speaker 1: it's gonna, you know, come out like with one pixel,
Speaker 1: you look like a guar cod piece. You've got nine
Speaker 1: eyes and none of them work. I'm coming around on
Speaker 1: the blood you know what. I'm coming around on the
Speaker 1: blood factory, damn it. So they're the eyes are really
Speaker 1: more optimized towards being able to see things in low
Speaker 1: light than being able to have a crystal clear clarity vision.
Speaker 1: I have a question is worth looking at when you're
Speaker 1: a horseshoe crab, Like, is there a lot of decisions
Speaker 1: you make based on things you see? Are they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: look there's some some seafloor gunk over there that's more
Speaker 1: tasty than the seafloor gunk this direction, right, No, not really,
Speaker 1: it's just a vague danger acquire food and mate. That's it. Really,
Speaker 1: it's been working for a long time, to work for
Speaker 1: a long time. Yeah. So if you flip over a
Speaker 1: horseshoe crab, you you weird o you They have eight
Speaker 1: legs underneath there they have two petal helps just like
Speaker 1: spiders do those like little arms, and they have a
Speaker 1: pair of chilis arrae. Again very spider like, because these
Speaker 1: are more closely related to spiders than they are to say,
Speaker 1: like a crab. And speaking of being spider like, they
Speaker 1: have book lungs on their underside, which if you if
Speaker 1: you know about spiders, you know that spiders also have
Speaker 1: book lungs. But whereas the spider's book lungs can breathe air,
Speaker 1: the horseshoe crabs book lungs breathe underwater. And the reason
Speaker 1: these are called book lungs is they are kind of
Speaker 1: like flap like structures that they they kind of these
Speaker 1: thin membranes which are sort of the quote unc quote
Speaker 1: pages on which gas exchange occurs. So you know, so
Speaker 1: this is very much like a guar cod piece. I've
Speaker 1: got the pedopalps yells the gas exchange. Eight legs hold
Speaker 1: the classics. Yes, Guar as everyone everyone knows Gar, the
Speaker 1: band that has the you know, and cod pieces and
Speaker 1: cod pieces exactly everybody. More of their albums were called
Speaker 1: Blood Factory and Loves. All of my references referenced Gallagher
Speaker 1: and Gar. I think those are the kids love both
Speaker 1: those things. Yeah, yeah, I mean, if we want to,
Speaker 1: if we want to keep it up to date for
Speaker 1: the kids these days. I guess it looks like an
Speaker 1: elden Ring cod piece. That's true, it does look like
Speaker 1: an elder Ring cod piece. I think I had that
Speaker 1: hat for I feel so bad for the kids these
Speaker 1: days that your version of Guar is elden Ring. So yeah.
Speaker 1: The idea is that spiders and scorpions, who also have
Speaker 1: book lungs, may have may have evolved from the book
Speaker 1: gills of the horseshoe crab. Um so I think I
Speaker 1: said earlier that horseshoe crabs have book lungs, that they
Speaker 1: have book gills. I'm sorry, but the Yeah, the book
Speaker 1: lungs are very similar, but they're actually found internally in
Speaker 1: spiders and scorpions, whereas with the horseshoe crabs, their book
Speaker 1: gills are just kind of like outside of them just
Speaker 1: just like on on their underside, as if they're holding
Speaker 1: a little accordion, but that accordion breathes for them. It
Speaker 1: seems like another bad decision. I'm just gonna say, like
Speaker 1: for something that's what four million years old, I feel
Speaker 1: like there are a few times you could have reconsidered
Speaker 1: holding your lungs outside in the air, being like, hey,
Speaker 1: hear me out, hear me out. They can also use
Speaker 1: them as legs, and they can use them to help
Speaker 1: them swim, So it'd be kind of like if we
Speaker 1: could like run with our lungs, like sticking our lungs
Speaker 1: out of our bodies, you know, kind of running on them. No. Yes,
Speaker 1: if you knew someone who had eight legs and they
Speaker 1: pulled their lungs out so they would have ten legs,
Speaker 1: you'd probably say, buddy, I take it easy. I think
Speaker 1: you don't need to do whatever problem you're trying to
Speaker 1: fix with more legs. You could have done it with eight.
Speaker 1: I just don't think more legs solution. Let's explore other avenues.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing. Honestly, it's the same thing with
Speaker 1: the eyes. Man. You've got this problem over and over again.
Speaker 1: It is very much like whoa, this is neat. We
Speaker 1: got some legs. Let's make some more legs. Oh an eyeball,
Speaker 1: this is great. Maybe some more eyeballs though, and and
Speaker 1: the lungs are okay, but maybe back to legs again. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: actually that's that's a good point because those skills, the
Speaker 1: book gills were thought to originally have been legs and
Speaker 1: then turned into into the gills, like from legs to
Speaker 1: using them to breathe legs, and then was like, wait,
Speaker 1: I need to breathe. I screwed that up. I was
Speaker 1: going to suggest that maybe the horse, you crab ladies
Speaker 1: like a guy with lung legs, and so they just
Speaker 1: sort of selectively bred for that. Yeah, that's my theory.
Speaker 1: I'm not again, I did not major and evolutionary biology.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just a theory. I think you should
Speaker 1: consider both sides. Yeah, I mean, you know, like you're
Speaker 1: at the gym and you see someone breathing with their legs,
Speaker 1: is that it's got to do something. I guess for
Speaker 1: some people it's not for me, but I I you know,
Speaker 1: I could see being into that, right, So you guys
Speaker 1: keep like it's in my Google search a little bit. No, No,
Speaker 1: shame in that. So I know it's blood. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about it's blood. It is blue blood, which is striking beautiful.
Speaker 1: But why is it blue? I mean, we have to
Speaker 1: in part understand why our blood is red. Horseshoe crab
Speaker 1: blood is blue because it contains a lot of copper.
Speaker 1: The copper atom containing protein hemocyanin is present. Instead of
Speaker 1: the hemoglobin found in human and other vertebrate blood. Our
Speaker 1: blood has iron atoms in them instead of copper, which
Speaker 1: is why our blood is red when oxygenated. You know
Speaker 1: how iron when it rusts, it turns red rusty blood
Speaker 1: that I do know. One other thing about horseshoe crab
Speaker 1: blood is it it's like supercoagulating. Is that the proper term? Well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what's interesting is that the blue blood has a
Speaker 1: meebo sites, which is a blood cell which clots when
Speaker 1: it comes into contact with an indo TX. And so
Speaker 1: an indotoxin is found in certain bacteria's outer membranes, uh,
Speaker 1: and it can cause a lot of problems for you
Speaker 1: if it gets into your blood. And so the horseshoe
Speaker 1: crab has this protective technique of forming these very quick
Speaker 1: blood clots in response to indo toxins, which protects it
Speaker 1: from bacterial infections inside its bloodstream. So what this means
Speaker 1: is you gotta you gotta keep your blood factory super
Speaker 1: sterile or your end up making like a like a
Speaker 1: jello factory. I mean, that's just a good tip for
Speaker 1: any blood factory, any and all blood factories. I mean
Speaker 1: general life tents are encouraged, eye wear protective eyewear, don't
Speaker 1: wear sandals, and you know, do not drink the blood jello.
Speaker 1: So correct vampire screening processes. Right, you must betray God, yes,
Speaker 1: exactly in your mission statement, Like you can't even get
Speaker 1: the business loan unless you tell the bank I will
Speaker 1: betray God. So this is like, this is like a
Speaker 1: medical facility like you said cover and I'm like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: this is an iPhone factory. This is like how we
Speaker 1: make wires. No, no, it's a million year old monsters
Speaker 1: and we bleed them until they give us iPhones. Relatively
Speaker 1: inefficient use of the horseshoe crab. What they're actually used for,
Speaker 1: like like you said, is in a medical context. So
Speaker 1: the fact that it clots in the presence of indotoxin
Speaker 1: makes it extremely useful because catching Indotoxins in vaccines or
Speaker 1: medical devices can mean the difference between life and death.
Speaker 1: Like if you have, say you're like replacing a knee cap,
Speaker 1: but it's covered in bacteria, you could get sepsis and
Speaker 1: that can be fatal. But if you dunk the replacement
Speaker 1: knee cap in some horseshoe crab blood and and then
Speaker 1: it clots, then you know that it is covered in
Speaker 1: I mean, that's not how they do it. I don't
Speaker 1: think they just like dunk it, right, They just have
Speaker 1: like a hoop that squeeze it like a sponge over.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's always juice is always better fresh, right,
Speaker 1: they got one of those. That's why you always bring
Speaker 1: a horseshoe crab with you to the doctor. Yea, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's why they why that's why your doctor has rubbed
Speaker 1: a horseshoe crab on you. Yeah. No. So so you
Speaker 1: can use the amba site from the horseshoe crab blood
Speaker 1: to test batches of vaccines to make sure that they
Speaker 1: don't have any indotoxins, which means that they are bacteria
Speaker 1: free and that they would be safe. And so this
Speaker 1: is extremely important for medicine to make sure that we
Speaker 1: can vaccinate people without you know, having an impurity in
Speaker 1: the vaccine that could hurt people. But there is a
Speaker 1: cost to this, and that is, of course having blood
Speaker 1: factories that use bunch of right exactly, spitting in the
Speaker 1: eye of the ancient god. Surely the odd that they worship,
Speaker 1: being four million years old will return one day and
Speaker 1: we'll see this and there will be a reckoning, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: just like they're gonna be so disappointed. They're probably so
Speaker 1: proud of that thing. They're like, dude, I added nine eyes,
Speaker 1: ten legs. Two of them are kind of lungs. Oh,
Speaker 1: they're gonna love this thing. And then they see this
Speaker 1: blood factory. You didn't like the tail with eye gou
Speaker 1: on its butt. It made it bright blue, so you
Speaker 1: would leave the blood alone. Specifically, that was a warning color.
Speaker 1: Blue is God's no no color. Yeah. So, pharmaceutical companies
Speaker 1: round up around five hundred thousand horseshoe crabs a year,
Speaker 1: milk them of their blood, and then return them to
Speaker 1: the ocean, which sounds sustainable, but it's not. You can't
Speaker 1: just bleed an animal for bottles of their blood, chuck
Speaker 1: them back in the ocean and expect them to be Okay,
Speaker 1: hell you can't, says spy. There it brings some mind
Speaker 1: them just whipping them like skipping stones out into the ocean.
Speaker 1: You're free body, just this pale, wheezing horseshoe crab, all motion,
Speaker 1: just sending blue blood like a sprinkler out of it
Speaker 1: the whole time. Please kill me, You're free, go free, Willie,
Speaker 1: whipping it like some ultimate just going for a distance.
Speaker 1: Look upon what we've done to you with nine eyes.
Speaker 1: Tell the others that the humans are the ones in charge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is a problem. The many of these quote
Speaker 1: unquote milked horseshoe crabs, which are in fact blood horseshoe crabs,
Speaker 1: will die or not successfully mate, because again, you can't
Speaker 1: just like drain an animal of its blood and expect
Speaker 1: it to be cool. We learned that from Greg. We
Speaker 1: did learn that it was pretty cool ripping peace. Gregg,
Speaker 1: You're too good for this world, and your blood was delicious.
Speaker 1: So there is a solution to this, because we do
Speaker 1: need that those amibo sites. We need that detection to
Speaker 1: be able to make sure our vaccines and medical devices
Speaker 1: are safe and in fact, a horseshoe blood artificial arts
Speaker 1: Jesus A horseshoe blood. Artificial alternative has been invented and
Speaker 1: is in use in Europe, so UH. The problem, however,
Speaker 1: in the US, is that the USP, which is the
Speaker 1: US Pharmacopeia, which is a US based publications guide company
Speaker 1: that sets industry standards for pharmaceuticals UH, decided that the
Speaker 1: artificial version is too untested and does not categorize it
Speaker 1: as an alternative to horseshoe crab blood, and so pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: companies do not want to use the artificial alternative instead.
Speaker 1: So I bet if you follow the money, turns out
Speaker 1: it's probably just cheaper. Yeah, that's yeah, So in the
Speaker 1: long run, it probably wouldn't be right, Like this is
Speaker 1: sort of the This is like the curve of technology.
Speaker 1: Like when you have a new technology, the initial startup
Speaker 1: costs of it is, uh, it's usually more costly. And
Speaker 1: I don't I don't want to make any claims here
Speaker 1: because I don't know enough about medicine. I'm I'm just
Speaker 1: a simple country gallon, not a horseshoe crab doctor. I'm
Speaker 1: just a humble country podcast. I'm not some kind of
Speaker 1: big blood factory tycoon. But to me, as though, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't milk blood out of horseshoe crabs. That's just common sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the the I don't know whether like there that
Speaker 1: when they're saying that that the artificial version is not
Speaker 1: tested enough, like they could have a point. I don't know,
Speaker 1: But then we should just test it some more because
Speaker 1: this is clearly not sustainable, like you know, this big
Speaker 1: crab money, This is big crab lobbing, keeping things corrupt.
Speaker 1: They like the old ways here, So I would test it.
Speaker 1: I would jam it up into a milked horseshoe crab,
Speaker 1: asked him how he's feeling is that, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it's ethical, but I think that would be my first idea.
Speaker 1: Your you should send your resume into the blood factory,
Speaker 1: because that's the kind of crabb kind of initiative they like.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think that, you know, I agree, I
Speaker 1: think that, like the monitor, like, we just need to
Speaker 1: make the monetary incentives. They're like, look, you have to
Speaker 1: you have to research this artificial alternative because we cannot
Speaker 1: just keep bleeding literally bleeding the horseshoe crabs dry until
Speaker 1: they all die. Like first of all, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think they're rat even though they've got those extra butt eyes,
Speaker 1: and like also, if we run out of them, then
Speaker 1: we can't do this thing anyway, Like we can't test
Speaker 1: medicine anyway, So we have to switch to something before
Speaker 1: we just kill all the horseshoe crabs. You know what
Speaker 1: it is for me, it's it's the straps in this picture.
Speaker 1: There's this picture, this blood factory assembly line, and they're
Speaker 1: all strapped in with those big black rubber torture straps. Something.
Speaker 1: I just if you ever need like an indicator that
Speaker 1: this isn't kosher, it's when you need to like strapple
Speaker 1: another living thing with those big black rubber jack Ryan
Speaker 1: torture straps. Yeah, I got a bunch of those. Inline
Speaker 1: You've got to stop and think, huh Now, I've never
Speaker 1: seen this beach chill. I've never strapped something. And the
Speaker 1: lab tech like wearing leather with the whip, and you
Speaker 1: know that's a little excessive. There's something about like it's
Speaker 1: not like they're being bled into like fancy vets. It
Speaker 1: like looks like a bunch of like two Leader bottles
Speaker 1: they've taken that it looks delicious. That's why it looks
Speaker 1: like Fanta. Just this is how Fantas made everybody. Fanta'
Speaker 1: is the Brazilian word for crab tragedy. I should kind
Speaker 1: of look like like delicious crab claws, like when you
Speaker 1: get the shell taken off just right, Like can you
Speaker 1: eat a horseshoe crab? I don't think, really, are they good?
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I don't eat shell fish in
Speaker 1: general because I don't trust. It's just they're shifting. I
Speaker 1: don't like them. It sounds like, uh, they're kind of rubbery.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know. They don't look like they're good
Speaker 1: super taste, don't look like a good crab. You don't
Speaker 1: make it four or fifty million years. They do come
Speaker 1: with their own bull sort of. That's fun. Yeah, that's nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah you get to keep it afterwards, right, you make
Speaker 1: some new pads out of it. These poor freaking crabs,
Speaker 1: Like first we will bleed you at the blood factory,
Speaker 1: and then we will plan to eat you as a
Speaker 1: soup in your own body bowl. And let's clear, it's
Speaker 1: not even because you're good. If you're not even tasty,
Speaker 1: you're just here. Ah, we got we gotta protect the
Speaker 1: horseshoe crabs. But yeah, their populations are declining. That is
Speaker 1: not good we gotta, we gotta find a solution so
Speaker 1: we can live with the horseshoe crabs in harmony. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for saying all those terrible things about horseshoe crabs. Apology,
Speaker 1: except they're filthy and disgusting, and now I find out
Speaker 1: we have them to thank for spiders, which is not
Speaker 1: a positive. Well common ancestor, but yeah, but blame blame
Speaker 1: us home, blame I blame them for spiders. I find
Speaker 1: them pretty disgusting. But I don't think blood factory disgusting.
Speaker 1: I don't want to hang out like this Saturday. I
Speaker 1: don't want to hang out with a bunch of horseshoe crabs.
Speaker 1: But maybe maybe I guess I'm opposed to like factory
Speaker 1: line extinction. Yeah, like maybe that's a bit for Like
Speaker 1: if I met a guy and he says, and I said,
Speaker 1: what do you do for work? And he says, oh,
Speaker 1: I make the rubber straps to strap down horse and
Speaker 1: crabs so we can bleed him drying the blood factor,
Speaker 1: I consider punching him in the face for you, Katie,
Speaker 1: for you, Okay, That's what That's what Greg did, and
Speaker 1: we were all cool with that. This is a This
Speaker 1: is a strong I like at this strong campaign like
Speaker 1: that you could make a button out of Like. I
Speaker 1: guess maybe I'm against the blood factories shrug. I'm two
Speaker 1: out of ten in favor of horshe crabs. So, guys,
Speaker 1: I know this little green lizard fellow. You do? Who
Speaker 1: is he? He's Yeah, he's a ski skink. That's a skink. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's a new Guinea Skies skink, skink skin. I was
Speaker 1: right about the new Guinea part. Yeah. No, it's a
Speaker 1: new Guinea skink. That's right. That's a that's astonishing to me.
Speaker 1: So you know a thing. My daughter loves reptiles. We
Speaker 1: read a lot of reptile that's adorable. Love you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your daughter taught you about the new Guinea skink. That's great.
Speaker 1: Do you know why I'm bringing up I'm being so
Speaker 1: like freaking condescending right now. Do you know why I
Speaker 1: brought up the new Guinea skink? Well, Katie, I bet
Speaker 1: he has very silly blood, very silly. Yes, it makes
Speaker 1: a noise when you take it. It's a little slide
Speaker 1: whistle noise when you cut him. Yeah. No, So I
Speaker 1: don't know if I know why I think he has
Speaker 1: a weird like like bacteria in his blood. Okay, so
Speaker 1: they have a weird thing in their blood that should
Speaker 1: kill them, that is what you're thinking of. So New
Speaker 1: Guinea lizard blood is a lovely bright green color. It
Speaker 1: looks like, you know, zombie blood from some kind of
Speaker 1: b movie. It is ridiculous looking. First, I wanna say
Speaker 1: that I found out most of this stuff from an
Speaker 1: article from one of my favorite science writers and young uh.
Speaker 1: He also writes my favorite science article titles like this one,
Speaker 1: which is these lizards are full of green blood that
Speaker 1: should kill them. Good good title. It is so uh.
Speaker 1: Skinks in the genus Frosinohema have green blood. So they
Speaker 1: live only in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. One
Speaker 1: of these species is actually called the green blooded skink.
Speaker 1: Just kind of advertising that. I don't like that. That
Speaker 1: feels that feels derogatory. Green blooded skink. That's a car
Speaker 1: sword in a fantasy novel. Yeah. This it's very funny,
Speaker 1: very very funny name. Uh. The this is a slender, green,
Speaker 1: shiny lizard with green blood and organs as well, So
Speaker 1: it's basically green through and through and it is you know,
Speaker 1: so for the horseshoe crab blood. We talked about how
Speaker 1: it's blood is blue because that is oxidized copper, which
Speaker 1: you know, like you got a penny and it oxidizes,
Speaker 1: it kind of turns blue. And our blood is red
Speaker 1: because when it's oxidizes, it is that's like iron rusting,
Speaker 1: that is red. Is it turquoise? Is this one turquoise?
Speaker 1: Does he have turquoise in his blood? No? No, so
Speaker 1: he Uh, it's strange. It has nothing to do with this.
Speaker 1: The skink actually has hemoglobin and red blood cells just
Speaker 1: like humans do, so their blood Bible rights should be red, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're oxiden transport system is iron based, just like ours.
Speaker 1: So why do they have this green blood? Well, the
Speaker 1: ants there is they actually have just get tore up
Speaker 1: and it lasts for the entire year. They are very festive.
Speaker 1: Ah yeah yeah they it's just like they drink some
Speaker 1: of that Starbucks, the green stuff, and you know it
Speaker 1: gets right in your blood. It does, so yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: they actually have green zombie blood. So when red blood
Speaker 1: cells die, macrophages get to work. So macrophages are sort
Speaker 1: of like the pac Man of our cells. They eat
Speaker 1: dead cells. Pac Man, Pacman's They are the pac Man's
Speaker 1: of our bodies, and they eat dead cells and recycle
Speaker 1: them for parts, so they're all involved in our immune system.
Speaker 1: They will ingest dangerous intruders as well as our own
Speaker 1: dead cells to kind of break them down so we
Speaker 1: can reuse them for scrap. So we macrophages break down
Speaker 1: a red uh, break down a dead red blood cell.
Speaker 1: They will recycle the iron. And recycling the iron actually
Speaker 1: has like a chemical byproduct called bill of Verdon, which
Speaker 1: is a green toxin. So you can actually see this
Speaker 1: when you get a bruise, Like have you ever had
Speaker 1: a kind of nasty bruise that turns sort of green? Sure? Sure, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I do a lot of a lot of ill advised stunts.
Speaker 1: Lizard I turned green, amateur stunt work. I do a
Speaker 1: lot of like stair work, yeah too, falling up stairs, Yeah,
Speaker 1: my favorite for it yet. But sometimes he just stands
Speaker 1: at the top of stairs and says terribly mean things.
Speaker 1: Do people push him? A lot of it's unrelated to
Speaker 1: stunt work. It's my my favorite stunt is a woman
Speaker 1: goes what as she falls down stairs? As that's my
Speaker 1: sort of yeah. So yes, so that that green hue
Speaker 1: you see is actually your red blood cells that were
Speaker 1: destroyed in your stair escapade that are now being recycled
Speaker 1: for their iron. And that byproduct is the Bill of Verden.
Speaker 1: That is that green color, and that will that will
Speaker 1: kill me. That will kill me. Should get that out
Speaker 1: as soon as possible. Yes, So a high amount of
Speaker 1: that will kill you. So it is toxic, and Bill
Speaker 1: of Verden, you don't really have to worry about it
Speaker 1: when you just get a normal bruise because it is
Speaker 1: filtered by the liver. Oh you're oh did you? Oh no, well,
Speaker 1: actually you know there is something called um green You
Speaker 1: know how there is oh shoot, come on, it's a
Speaker 1: green never well, you know how there's yellow jaundice due
Speaker 1: to the liver not functioning properly. There's actually there's green jaundice. Uh.
Speaker 1: That is also due to the liver not functioning properly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yellow jaundice is actually you know how I said,
Speaker 1: like Bill of Verdon, that green stuff is the byproduct
Speaker 1: of the the iron being recycled in your blood. Um
Speaker 1: bill arubin is just a further broken down version of
Speaker 1: Bill of Verdon's So, and that bill ubin is actually yellow.
Speaker 1: So the byproduct goes from green to then yellow. That's
Speaker 1: also why sometimes when you see like your your brewis
Speaker 1: it can go from sort of a green to like
Speaker 1: a yellow color later on. Uh. And so that's also
Speaker 1: the cause of yellow jaundice. So yes, you can't actually
Speaker 1: get green and yellow jaundice, which means your liver isn't
Speaker 1: functioning properly. U. Sometimes like babies will get it because
Speaker 1: their liver is just not like if there's an issue
Speaker 1: and it's not working fast enough. So uh, yeah, that
Speaker 1: it is. It can be bad in humans. And so
Speaker 1: the fact that the lizards are chock full of this
Speaker 1: toxic green blood byproduct is really weird. They fall down
Speaker 1: a lot of stairs. That would be kind of cute though,
Speaker 1: like a little slinky, like a little like it's a slinky.
Speaker 1: It's a little skinky cute. So are the lizards, like
Speaker 1: how are they doing this? Uh, it's not conclusively known.
Speaker 1: We might have solved it today. Yeah, So how they're
Speaker 1: able to survive such high levels of billiard and that
Speaker 1: um green byproduct is not conclusively known. There are some
Speaker 1: theories about why they have this in their blood. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the green blood of these lizards didn't evolve from
Speaker 1: a single common ancestor. Instead, there seems to be multiple
Speaker 1: times of this evolving in these skinks, in a case
Speaker 1: of parallel evolution, meaning there must have been some very
Speaker 1: strong ecological pressure on these lizards to pump themselves full
Speaker 1: of toxic blood. And the answer pure pressure birds, and
Speaker 1: pure pressure birds mocking them like, yeah, look at us,
Speaker 1: we can fly. It's like, oh yeah, well my blood
Speaker 1: is great. An idiot, make your blood green, stupid. Mine
Speaker 1: was a real guest. I thought it was birds. No,
Speaker 1: well no, well no, so I figured, like a bird
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to eat you if you're poisonous, right, like
Speaker 1: you know, like when a when a bug pretends to
Speaker 1: be poisonous and the birds like, oh I don't want
Speaker 1: to eat that snake or whatever. Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: not it's not a bad idea, right, But the answer
Speaker 1: I mean, like, I think the issue with that is
Speaker 1: just that is a There are other ways you can
Speaker 1: evade birds, whereas like pumping yourself full of toxic blood. Umbrella,
Speaker 1: it's much better. Just wait, umbrella. Oh right, I see
Speaker 1: what you mean. Certain certain apps certain a right, you
Speaker 1: can docs the birds could yeah, cyberbully, right, So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of techniques you can do against birds,
Speaker 1: but what this blood may have actually evolved in response
Speaker 1: to would be malaria. So a certain species of malaria
Speaker 1: causing single celled Plasmodium is exclusively a parasite for the
Speaker 1: green blooded lizards. And so I'm gonna I'm kind of
Speaker 1: working backwards here. Uh So, the theory is that a
Speaker 1: long time ago, the lizards were coping with pretty bad malaria,
Speaker 1: and these malaria causing parasites were so bad that it
Speaker 1: drove these lizards to toxifying their own blood to get
Speaker 1: the malaria under control over generations of natural selection. Because
Speaker 1: this green blood actually seems to neutralize the the malaria parasite.
Speaker 1: That's that plasmodium that causes malaria, that causes malaria. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so the fact that the reason that researchers believe
Speaker 1: this is there is actually a species of Plasmodium, this
Speaker 1: little tiny unicellular organism that is such a troublemaker and
Speaker 1: causes malaria. There's this one species that specializes on the
Speaker 1: green blooded lizards and only on them. Now, the reason
Speaker 1: that points towards the green blooded lizards actually evolving this
Speaker 1: blood to try to evade malaria counterintuitively, is that it
Speaker 1: is evidence of an evolutionary arms race. The fact that
Speaker 1: this um parasite had to specialize for the green blood
Speaker 1: meant probably that the parasite and the lizard were trying
Speaker 1: to out maneuver each other when it came to UH
Speaker 1: to infecting the lizard, and so it is one of
Speaker 1: the only like malaria parasites that managed to out evolve
Speaker 1: the lizards toxic blood and continue to be a parasite,
Speaker 1: whereas other malaria causing parasites just couldn't deal with this
Speaker 1: toxic blood. So UH it is it is. It didn't
Speaker 1: even work, all this work for the green blood and
Speaker 1: it still didn't get rid of the malaria. It's still
Speaker 1: worked in the UH in the sense that these lizards
Speaker 1: are still alive, and so they must have survived that
Speaker 1: evolutionary pressure, and like having one species of malaria Plasmodium
Speaker 1: is better than like a bunch of them. I suppose
Speaker 1: poison me, or poison you, poison you all poison you.
Speaker 1: One of the biologists studying these lizards actually calls their
Speaker 1: blood green gold because it is so valuable to understands
Speaker 1: in terms of medicine and evolutionary biology. Let's just hope
Speaker 1: that pharmaceutical companies don't get any weird ideas and start
Speaker 1: doing another blood factory. Yeah, I was gonna say, I
Speaker 1: feel blood factory coming on. Seems like a blood factory.
Speaker 1: My knee caps swelling up. That must mean a blood
Speaker 1: factory is coming into the neighborhood. Since I fell down
Speaker 1: those stairs, I can just send crocodile ized fish, crocodile
Speaker 1: I fish. Everybody get your crocodiles icy cold favorite album.
Speaker 1: We'll just stop bringing up the DARP. That is a
Speaker 1: fair comment to make you. No, I will talk about
Speaker 1: War four more time. Yeah, you probably can't stop talking
Speaker 1: bringing up war because we are going to talk about
Speaker 1: ghosts blood, ghost blood. See, that's my favorite war. That's
Speaker 1: my ghost blood. That's my favorite war. Man, the ghost
Speaker 1: blood man. You know how you got You got Skippy
Speaker 1: and Tangerine and then you got ghost Blood and those
Speaker 1: are the members of the War Carl and Funkadelic you're
Speaker 1: thinking of. Oh yeah, there's there is a lot of
Speaker 1: crossover between those fan bases. Anyways, crocodile ice fish have
Speaker 1: invisible ghost blood. So fantastic. It is so good, right,
Speaker 1: very cool, it's so that I know, it's just so
Speaker 1: good I feel. It makes me feel happy just to
Speaker 1: say that. In fact, I'll say it again. Crocodile ice fish. Wow,
Speaker 1: I messed that up already. Crocodile ice fish have invisible
Speaker 1: ghost blood. Come on, get it together. You an upstair face.
Speaker 1: You won't nine eyes and eight legs, a couple of
Speaker 1: weird leg lungs. Like, well, I'm crocodile. I's fish. I
Speaker 1: can't say it either, and I have ice fish. Crocodile
Speaker 1: ice fish. Yes, So what's a crocodile ice fish? It
Speaker 1: is a family a fish of ray fin fish that
Speaker 1: live in the icy waters of the southern Ocean around
Speaker 1: Antarctica in temperatures of around twenty eight degrees fahrenheit or
Speaker 1: negative two point two degrees celsius. And typically they hang
Speaker 1: out on the ocean floor around there. So yeah, So
Speaker 1: these crocodile ice fish are around long, which is fifty
Speaker 1: cimeters or like a subway, right, sort of nice long sandwich.
Speaker 1: They have long, crocodile like mouths, with sharp teeth, large eyes,
Speaker 1: and hilariously small bodies compared to their heads. That's true.
Speaker 1: It is really funny. They do look like bad fish drawings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they look kind of like if you were drawing a
Speaker 1: fish on a piece of paper, but then you drew
Speaker 1: its head way too big, so you're run out of space,
Speaker 1: so you kind of just fit a little noodle body
Speaker 1: in the corner. It's like you plugged in, uh fish
Speaker 1: that doesn't want to be into one of those AI
Speaker 1: programs that makes really messed up images, like a little
Speaker 1: wombo filters, and it tried to make just a fish
Speaker 1: that doesn't want to be. Yeah, computer's best stab at
Speaker 1: it depressed fish. Yeah, no exactly. Uh it is. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like it's a fish that is the embodiment
Speaker 1: of like, yeah, you're fine, I guess I'll I guess
Speaker 1: i'll fish. I guess I got invisible ghost blood. I
Speaker 1: got big problems here, Yeah, I got I got ghost blood.
Speaker 1: What more do you want for me? Talk to me
Speaker 1: your own blood. They are the haunted Victorian child of
Speaker 1: Fish of the Sea. Yes, so they their jaws are
Speaker 1: disproportionately large for their bodies. Their mouth is kind of
Speaker 1: they kind of this like weird duck like mouth. They
Speaker 1: have large fan like fins on their dorsal and ventral sides.
Speaker 1: They're kind of pale and coloration. They have kind of
Speaker 1: a modeled grayish blue or brown and white, and they
Speaker 1: will feed on krill and fish. Sometimes they'll eat fish
Speaker 1: around half their body length, which bold wild move for
Speaker 1: something with the little feeble noodle body in a giant head.
Speaker 1: So they don't eat ghosts. I didn't say that. Science.
Speaker 1: Science put on our show Deep Sea Monsters will prove
Speaker 1: this might explain why Antarctica is not haunted. That's right.
Speaker 1: Another thing here on creature chairs. So their blood is
Speaker 1: in fact transparent. Their blood contains no hemoglobin, no red
Speaker 1: blood cells, and is pure plasma. They are the only
Speaker 1: vertebrate in the world who have no hemoglobin as fully
Speaker 1: mature adults. So it's weird. That's it. I lost something.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I just said it's weird. That's it and
Speaker 1: a sentence. Sorry. I made it sound like I was
Speaker 1: going to say something else, but no, I was just
Speaker 1: saying it is weird. Period. The podcast gotcha, it is weird.
Speaker 1: You're a weird dude. Yeah, Edgar Edgar the Victorian ghost
Speaker 1: child of the scene. Yeah, Edgar, My blood is Edgar.
Speaker 1: My like a genius muppet designer tried to design him
Speaker 1: uppet that just had everything wrong with him. Most I
Speaker 1: accept your bet to make him uppet that no child
Speaker 1: will love. I can see your dead grandmother and I
Speaker 1: shall eat her and make her part of my ghost blood.
Speaker 1: That's so spooky. It is a public service that they
Speaker 1: eat ghosts. That's great. Who are you going to call
Speaker 1: crocodile ice fish? Because then it eats the ghosts and
Speaker 1: doesn't know this is funny about it just eats them.
Speaker 1: This is a bold evolutionary ploy though, because as we've seen,
Speaker 1: this makes it immune to the blood factory syndrome. Right exactly.
Speaker 1: This is their way of in evading the blood factor,
Speaker 1: because the blood factors like can'ts in your blood here,
Speaker 1: don't don't tell your blood here? You want to wind
Speaker 1: up in a blood factory trying and not have blood?
Speaker 1: That's a thinker, so right? How can they even be
Speaker 1: alive if their blood is just plasma and it doesn't
Speaker 1: have any of those red blood cells because the reason
Speaker 1: we have red blood cells? Can I be honest, I
Speaker 1: don't want to interrupt, but um, I know so little
Speaker 1: about blood that I didn't even think to question that.
Speaker 1: It just seemed just fine to me. I thought hemoglobin
Speaker 1: less blood. Okay, we'll sit down, gall around and let
Speaker 1: me tell you the story of blood. So the reason
Speaker 1: we have red blood just you know, let me tell
Speaker 1: you a tale of blood. Um. So, yeah, we have
Speaker 1: red blood cells which we use to transport oxygen. And
Speaker 1: our red blood cells use an iron molecule. Sorry, let
Speaker 1: me retake that I know about blood. Don't worry. I
Speaker 1: know about blood. Okay. Our blood has harassed by the blood.
Speaker 1: The blood, the blood blood twitter Actually it's iron atoms,
Speaker 1: not iron molecules. But yes, so our blood has iron
Speaker 1: atoms in them, which is wire. Blood is red. And
Speaker 1: remember we talked about those cute, adorable, perfectly designed horseshoe crabs.
Speaker 1: Their blood is blue when exposed to oxygen because the
Speaker 1: copper atoms in their blood. And what happens is our
Speaker 1: iron atoms, or the horseshoe crabs. Copper atoms bind to
Speaker 1: oxygen and they will carry the oxygen with them in
Speaker 1: those blood cells, you know, through our bodies, you know,
Speaker 1: pump it through our heart and wind up in different
Speaker 1: parts of our bodies where it uh you know, leaves
Speaker 1: that oxygen and distributes it throughout our bodies for important
Speaker 1: body things that happen that use oxygen as a component
Speaker 1: in these chemical reactions that our cells need to be alive.
Speaker 1: And this fish says na, and this fish says, don't
Speaker 1: eat it. Nah, it's all right, so right, so yeah,
Speaker 1: like that sounds great for you, buddy, but no, thinks
Speaker 1: I don't need it too cool to have blood. So
Speaker 1: they have plasma. So when you can actually separate human
Speaker 1: plasma from our blood, and it's a lot sometimes it's
Speaker 1: sort of more of a like pale like pinkish orange
Speaker 1: e color, but that's just because I think it's hard
Speaker 1: to separate it out from all of the blood cells.
Speaker 1: But pure plasma is actually more of a clear color.
Speaker 1: So this plasma will still absorb oxygen that's just kind
Speaker 1: of free floating in this plasma, which is not as
Speaker 1: an efficient transportation method as like the red blood cells
Speaker 1: going off and like handing off this package of the oxygen.
Speaker 1: And so they need to have huge hearts, huge veins,
Speaker 1: and a lot of blood proportional to their body so
Speaker 1: that they can absorb oxygen directly from the blood rather
Speaker 1: than from the red blood cells. It's like if instead
Speaker 1: of having a truck on a highway delivering oranges to
Speaker 1: where they're needed. You just put a bunch of oranges
Speaker 1: sort of on a highway and hope it gets to
Speaker 1: where it needs to go. Their hearts are actually kind
Speaker 1: of spongy so that they can absorb oxygen directly from
Speaker 1: the blood. They also have no scales. They're smooth, and
Speaker 1: so they're able to absorb some oxygen direct lee through
Speaker 1: their skin. And the only reason they can do this without,
Speaker 1: you know, just not just dying because it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like it should work, is that because they live in
Speaker 1: such icy cold water, oxygen is more soluble in cold water,
Speaker 1: and so there's a greater concentration of oxygen for them
Speaker 1: to draw from. So they're basically just kind of like
Speaker 1: sponges that soak up oxygen from the water and goose
Speaker 1: it around. It's like free for all, giant heart, giant
Speaker 1: veins with a bunch of plasma throughout them. It's a
Speaker 1: little fish with a with a big heart. He's too
Speaker 1: cool to bleed. It's too cool to bleed. Are they tasty?
Speaker 1: Are the ice fish they tasty? I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I feel like I would risk the mouth haunting. That's true,
Speaker 1: this fishing, it's actually delicious. It's like eating the ancestors
Speaker 1: of a million different ghosts act with layers of ghost flavor.
Speaker 1: I feel like it is incumbent upon me since this
Speaker 1: is a science podcast to say, like we don't know
Speaker 1: if they do eat ghosts or not, like that has
Speaker 1: not improven yet. Yeah, we haven't observed it in the wild.
Speaker 1: But really just the secondary only in captivity to indicate Yeah,
Speaker 1: all comes razors suggests they're eating all the ghosts and
Speaker 1: no ghosts around right, you see any ghosts? Thank you
Speaker 1: ice fish. Yeah, ghosts don't exist because the ice fish
Speaker 1: did eat them. Yeah, that's the first science I've understood
Speaker 1: in this podcast so far. Yeah, there you go. So
Speaker 1: why would they do this? Why would they turn their ghosts? Sorry,
Speaker 1: why would they turn their blood into ghosts or their
Speaker 1: ghosts in the blood? Oh that's like if you're reverse it,
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of scary, Like if ghosts was blood,
Speaker 1: he turned ghosts into blood, gasp, gasp and aways. The
Speaker 1: reason I turned ghost into blood, the reason they turned
Speaker 1: or they ditched the hemoglobin and they just have plasma
Speaker 1: is that because they're in an oxygen rich environment but
Speaker 1: actually very iron poor environment. Getting rid of the red
Speaker 1: blood cells allowed the fish to conserve iron for other
Speaker 1: nutritional purposes since there was so little iron to be
Speaker 1: spared in their environment. Yeah, blacksmithing mostly little little shows
Speaker 1: and basic tools. If we drop some nails in the
Speaker 1: Arctic ocean, maybe we can give these poor ghost fish
Speaker 1: some blood. It's like, oh, did somebody just drop a
Speaker 1: nail on my head? You're welcome. Yea, Now I got
Speaker 1: ghost blood and a nail through my hand. My body's
Speaker 1: way too small and a barbarious, most depressing cartoon. It's
Speaker 1: a Leven oh Edgard. So not only is their blood transparent,
Speaker 1: but like one of you was just super excited for this,
Speaker 1: it also contains anti freeze proteins. So yeah, proteins that
Speaker 1: prevent the formation of ice crystals inside the fish by
Speaker 1: binding two ice crystals as they begin to form and
Speaker 1: stopping more ice from binding to that crystal. Because you
Speaker 1: know how like ice crystal sort of you have like
Speaker 1: one like sort of ice crystal seed and more crystals
Speaker 1: form off of that and then you start to get
Speaker 1: a bigger ice crystal. Uh. This supports my theory that
Speaker 1: they're delicious because anti freeze tastes good. It's good. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna just I'm just gonna have so many lawsuits, gonna
Speaker 1: use that song you did at the beginning, going to
Speaker 1: get a lawsuits. Shouldn't anti freeze lawsuits? Yeah, it's wonderful,
Speaker 1: so yeah, yeah, don't. Anti freeze is bad for your body,
Speaker 1: but not for these guys. It's gonna drink it. No,
Speaker 1: but really, don't leave any freeze outside because it does
Speaker 1: taste sweet and like dogs eleat it. Don't don't put
Speaker 1: it outside. No, do not keep it covered and stored
Speaker 1: away so that both children and animals do not get
Speaker 1: to it because it's very bad or staying alone. Have
Speaker 1: any fish living in the Arctic fill them with it? Well,
Speaker 1: they already got there, So I don't think you need
Speaker 1: to add more anti freeze to the fish. I mean
Speaker 1: you do have to top it off. Maybe, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: I just love fish more than you. Uh yeah. They
Speaker 1: also got ghost bones though, So what do you say?
Speaker 1: This is the fish that is closest to a car?
Speaker 1: M m, this is a fish? Car? Is this fish
Speaker 1: more of a hat or a frisbee? Yeah? I can
Speaker 1: how this fishes is a room room car? I can
Speaker 1: see that. Um, if it's the one closest to a car,
Speaker 1: I guess so, I guess so, But I do want
Speaker 1: to say I mentioned that this fish has ghost bones,
Speaker 1: and you guys were like, cool, anyways, is this fish
Speaker 1: a car. Yeah, we're on board with the ghostbones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is I don't joke on this podcast. I'm not
Speaker 1: messing doing a bit. No, their bones are transparent because
Speaker 1: they're so calcium deficient. Hell yeah, transparent, correct with him
Speaker 1: being like a poor Victorian child of the sea. But
Speaker 1: my blood is made of ghosts and my bones are
Speaker 1: have no calcium. I have glass bones. Like if you
Speaker 1: encountered a ghost skeleton, that's like that's a very advanced creature,
Speaker 1: Like you you need to be a high level party
Speaker 1: too to beat a ghost skeleton. And yeah you're a fish.
Speaker 1: It's like yeah, it's because they have no calcium. They suck. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: once again betrayed by dungeons and dragons. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: I mean like these are really kind of like, when
Speaker 1: you think about it, pretty like feeble little again, the
Speaker 1: sickly Victorian child of fish. Just like, my bones are
Speaker 1: see through there, so weak. Please don't breathe on meat
Speaker 1: hurts my bones. Drifting along the bottom, waiting, waiting for
Speaker 1: help is what they do with their whole lives. I've
Speaker 1: been pining on the ocean floor, but by my blood
Speaker 1: is still ghosts. If you x ray these fish, you
Speaker 1: see nothing except the faces of the dead. If you
Speaker 1: x ray these fish, I feel like it would disintegrate them.
Speaker 1: That's how you cook one. That is the best preparation.
Speaker 1: That quick flash from an X ray my bones. You're
Speaker 1: melting my bones. Poof, and a little smoke goes up.
Speaker 1: Poor old fish, And that's how ghosts is born. Wonderful.
Speaker 1: A lot of learning we did on this science podcast,
Speaker 1: arguably too much. I'm never gonna be able to keep
Speaker 1: all that in my head. I'm just gonna go with
Speaker 1: Car of the Sea ghost blood and Greg is delicious.
Speaker 1: Everybody take a little taste of Greg. Yeah, do a
Speaker 1: Greg stand? Thanks Greg? Yeah? No, the blood was great.
Speaker 1: Good job, good job learning about blood with me. But
Speaker 1: before we go, we gotta play a game. And the
Speaker 1: game is called Guess Who's squawking? And what the game
Speaker 1: is is you guess what the animal sound is, what
Speaker 1: kind of animals making it? I'll play the sound, don't worry,
Speaker 1: I'll play it for you and you'll hear it. Oh,
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to do it. I thought
Speaker 1: you were gonna No. I mean I've been doing like
Speaker 1: everything you've been hearing, that's been that's been all me, baby, incredible.
Speaker 1: I thought you had a vast sound board. I truly
Speaker 1: am the woman of many voices. No, yeah, so yes.
Speaker 1: The hint from a last wink was does this ring
Speaker 1: a bell? And here is the sound? Okay, well, who
Speaker 1: do you think is hawking DJ skink? Yeah that's a
Speaker 1: bird that definitely ate a skink and it disagrees with
Speaker 1: its tummy. I think it's a DJ that is also
Speaker 1: a skink, and he's here dropping his hot beats. I
Speaker 1: feel like that was just like leading up, really getting
Speaker 1: the crowd pumped, and then like if you would let
Speaker 1: that play two seconds longer, the beat would have dropped. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's your guest. I think he's a bellmouthed red booby.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Sean, you're so you're so freaking clothes.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm I am dead serious. You think I'm joking
Speaker 1: and just ribbing you for you know, you are so
Speaker 1: freaking clothes. This is the white bell bird. I was close.
Speaker 1: I knew there's gonna be a color and some kind
Speaker 1: of you wouldn't hear that and say like, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna name that bird like the the cristed No. That.
Speaker 1: I just love that. The naming convention of birds is
Speaker 1: so ridiculous that you can just be like thighs like
Speaker 1: the crested bell, mouthed red booby, and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're almost there. That's almost You're pretty close. Yes, So
Speaker 1: this is the white bell bird. Congratulations to Joey P,
Speaker 1: Jared M, and Cat H who all correctly guess the
Speaker 1: white bell bird. Many other listeners also correctly guessed it,
Speaker 1: but they were the first three to write in. And
Speaker 1: so white bell birds are one of the loudest birds
Speaker 1: on earth. So male white bellbirds scream at females at
Speaker 1: rock concert levels of loudness. So they look interesting. They're
Speaker 1: kind of they look I mean, they are a white bird,
Speaker 1: but they have this very long gray wattle that hangs
Speaker 1: off of the side of its beak. You know, how
Speaker 1: like turkeys have that wattle. Uh, it is like that,
Speaker 1: but it's the length of his whole body and it
Speaker 1: just like dangles down there. Uh. It's just not sound
Speaker 1: like an appealing bird in appearance. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: how like this long flopping beak, scrotum. What do you think, ladies,
Speaker 1: big way, That is exactly what they do. They like,
Speaker 1: wiggle their their beakscrown them in the female's faces and
Speaker 1: scream at them. And how I met my first eleven wives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it works, it works, it works. Their calls reach a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five decibels, which is as loud as
Speaker 1: a Jetta and take off a siren or a pneumatic
Speaker 1: drill and right in your face before you have sex,
Speaker 1: right exactly, no, literally, So once the male has actually
Speaker 1: somehow convinced a female to come near him, he'll blast
Speaker 1: a loud note in her face before they mate. And
Speaker 1: while she's reeling from that, right, while she's stunned and
Speaker 1: like station Christ, what are you doing sticking a wing
Speaker 1: in her ear and wiggling it around trying to regain
Speaker 1: her hearing, He's like, anyways, will you marry me? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So that's when I think about being a bird lady.
Speaker 1: I think that seems like a pretty nice life. Like
Speaker 1: all the birds are dancing for you and building you things,
Speaker 1: and they're just trying to impress you all day long.
Speaker 1: You just pick the best one. But this seems awful
Speaker 1: imagine if they have to be in like the same
Speaker 1: jungle as those nice dancing birds and the birds that
Speaker 1: build houses, and they have to just look at them,
Speaker 1: and we're can you try that, Henry? Can you please
Speaker 1: like try building me a house or doing like a dance?
Speaker 1: Have a better ideas? Screaming in my face until I
Speaker 1: die from it? Okay, knocks back a belt of Scotch.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, well, Henry's made out of He yells. He
Speaker 1: yells real loud, and that's why I love Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: you can do so much better. Female white billbirds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go for another bird, start a new bird. Uh. So
Speaker 1: this week's mystery animal sound, the hint is this isn't
Speaker 1: a cat, it's not a dog, and despite that smell,
Speaker 1: it's not a skunk. Mm hmm. Alright, So who do
Speaker 1: you think is clocking? Frog probe? What? Frog probe? A
Speaker 1: frog probe a frog like this? The probe the probe
Speaker 1: that the frog send out when they're like not certain
Speaker 1: about something. Frog probe. Yeah, like a frog detective, like
Speaker 1: a frog submarine. Oh, like I see a frog Okay,
Speaker 1: like a frog sonar, like a like a like a
Speaker 1: Nissan probe, but a frog probe I was gonna say
Speaker 1: Toad submarine, so I could submarine. Yeah, it's the same.
Speaker 1: We got frog Probe and we got Toad submarine. Those
Speaker 1: are the answers to beat listeners. Those are the answers
Speaker 1: Thomasin's white belted frog Probe. Oh my god, you got it?
Speaker 1: How did you know? Actually, I'm sorry, that's wrong. It's
Speaker 1: Thomas's crested frog Probe. I always get him mixed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll too bad for you. Anyways, if you think you
Speaker 1: know what is making that sound, you can write to
Speaker 1: me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com and
Speaker 1: I will reveal the answer to you next Wednesday. Sean Brockway,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on to this Bloodcast
Speaker 1: Pleasure Bood, blood Cast, blood Gast. Yeah. Thanks for having us,
Speaker 1: And if you, for some reason what more from us.
Speaker 1: We can be found at our own podcast, The Dog's
Speaker 1: Own nine thousand. They will be at the Blood Factory
Speaker 1: shutting out Blood where we are starting a blood factory
Speaker 1: and we could use some crowdsourced help a fresh blood
Speaker 1: from the blood cows. We do a lot of Joni
Speaker 1: Mitchell song parodies, a lot of crowd pleasers like that.
Speaker 1: We can be found on dog dot com and and
Speaker 1: we contain a lot of greg Yeah, full of greggy
Speaker 1: goodness talk full of that wholesome greggy goodness. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you guys so much for listening. Uh. You can find
Speaker 1: me online a Creature Feature pod on Instagram, a Creature
Speaker 1: feet pot on Twitter. Uh. You if you are enjoying
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Speaker 1: Uh and yeah, and thank you so much to the
Speaker 1: Space Classics for their super awesome song excell Alumina. Creature
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