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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with the

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Speaker 3: fourth and final part of our series on cave biology

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Speaker 3: and cave environments. If you haven't listened to the other

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Speaker 3: parts already, this will probably be a richer experience if

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Speaker 3: you go back and check those out first. In the

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Speaker 3: previous parts, we talked about some of the common characteristics

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Speaker 3: of cave environments, especially as they pertain to the life

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Speaker 3: forms that might inhabit caves. We talked about the different

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Speaker 3: types of organisms you find in caves, the ones that

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Speaker 3: are fully cave adapted versus the ones that are only visitors.

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Speaker 3: We talked about cave adapted organisms such as the blind

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Speaker 3: Mexican cavefish also known as the Mexican tetra, the om

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Speaker 3: which is a type of cave salamander found the dynark alps.

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Speaker 3: We talked about bat guano. We talked about snakes that

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Speaker 3: hiding in caves and attack bats as they come and go.

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Speaker 3: We got into a lot of great stuff, and today

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Speaker 3: we're here to round out the series.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, with a lot of Like a lot of our

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Speaker 2: multi part episodes, it's kind of like the first episode

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Speaker 2: is kind of like a lot of the initial information

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Speaker 2: you need, and then the second episode this is where

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Speaker 2: you find some of the core stuff that attracted us

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Speaker 2: to the topic to begin with Part three we kind

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Speaker 2: of like fill in with a little more data some

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Speaker 2: other interesting entries in said series in the fourth episode

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Speaker 2: or whatever the final episode happens to be. Generally, that's

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Speaker 2: where it's like, what's left, what's the thing that came

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Speaker 2: up in our research that we didn't know we were

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Speaker 2: going to be excited about or or or in some cases,

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Speaker 2: maybe what's the weird tangential connection that also came up

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Speaker 2: or we found ourselves drifting into the in our journey. Oh,

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Speaker 2: I think that's a good way to characterize it. So

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Speaker 2: what have you got, Rob Well? I I mentioned this earlier.

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Speaker 2: I forget which of the earlier episodes, but I mentioned

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Speaker 2: the extinct cave bear in Passing, and I would just

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Speaker 2: kind of I kept touching back in on the subject

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Speaker 2: as we were working on the other episodes, and finally

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Speaker 2: I was like, Yeah, we need to go in a

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Speaker 2: little deeper and talk about what is ultimately like a

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Speaker 2: really fascinating organism. There have been disagreements and mysteries regarding it,

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Speaker 2: and it is an organism that, while no longer with us,

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Speaker 2: does overlap with our ancestors. You know, it was an

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Speaker 2: ice age creature. I included here for you, Joe, a

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Speaker 2: reconstruction and image of what one of these bears would

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Speaker 2: have looked like potentially, And in a bit I'll get

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Speaker 2: into like what are some of the main anatomical features.

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Speaker 2: But just looking at you can tell this is a

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Speaker 2: very huge bear. It doesn't look that different from say,

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Speaker 2: like a large, you know, grizzly bear, brown bear of

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Speaker 2: some sort. Coloration is brownish, but one might notice that

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Speaker 2: the head is enormous, has a much bigger head than

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Speaker 2: one might expect, certainly on an extant bear.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks a lot like a grizzly. Though I'm

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Speaker 3: no bear expert, it does appear to me in this

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Speaker 3: reconstruction to have a somewhat shorter snout and the sort

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Speaker 3: of boxier.

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Speaker 2: Head boxier and I'm to understand would have been would

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Speaker 2: have would have appeared wider as well. So we're talking

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Speaker 2: about Ursus Spilaeus. It's a member of the Ursus genus

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Speaker 2: alongside the brown bear, which includes the grizzly subspecies, among others,

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Speaker 2: the polar bear, the American black bear, and the Asian

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Speaker 2: black bear. That means it's naturally a member of the

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Speaker 2: larger Ursudae family, which also includes the likes of giant pandas,

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Speaker 2: short face bears, and others.

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Speaker 3: Oh I didn't realize pandas were technically in that family.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like one of the interesting things about pandas

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Speaker 2: is that pandas are herbivores for the moment part, but

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Speaker 2: they still have a carnivores digestive system, and they still

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Speaker 2: have like carnivore jeanes, So they're pretty fascinating in their

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Speaker 2: own right. You know, it's easy to overlook how interesting

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Speaker 2: pandas are, especially if you go to a zoo and

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Speaker 2: you see one in captivity that is probably not doing

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Speaker 2: much other than sleeping or eating bamboo.

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Speaker 3: The last time I went to a zoo, the thing

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Speaker 3: I saw that filled me with the most joy was

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Speaker 3: actually vicarious joy through a panda. When I saw the

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Speaker 3: feeders through some new bamboo into the enclosure, and the

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Speaker 3: panda went up to the pile of bamboo and literally

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Speaker 3: just flopped in it. Just flopped down in its food like, ah,

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Speaker 3: give it to me.

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Speaker 2: It is literally their favorite thing, Yeah, rolling around in it.

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Speaker 2: More on this connection to the panda in in a

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Speaker 2: minute here, but yeah, the cave bear when extinct. I

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Speaker 2: do want to highlight that the exact timing for this

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Speaker 2: depends on exactly what sources and what evidence you're looking at.

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Speaker 2: I've seen between twenty eight twenty seven thousand years ago

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Speaker 2: during the last glacial maximum. I've seen twenty four thousand

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Speaker 2: years ago, and in some sources. Some of the older sources,

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Speaker 2: you also see fifteen thousand years ago cited as an

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Speaker 2: extinction point, but I believe an earlier point in twenty eight,

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Speaker 2: twenty seven, maybe twenty four is generally favored by scientists today.

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Speaker 2: That's generally the range, the broader range in which I'm

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Speaker 2: tending to see the numbers and the sources I was

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Speaker 2: looking at. And the interesting thing about the cave bear, too,

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Speaker 2: is that this animal is a recent enough denizen of

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Speaker 2: the planet that we have been able to study its

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Speaker 2: soft tissue, in addition to its bones and its actual

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Speaker 2: you know, we were able to study like the chemical

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Speaker 2: composition of its bones. There was even a frozen specimen

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Speaker 2: discovered in twenty twenty, I believe, and we've been able

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Speaker 2: to sequence its genome, so we were able to learn

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Speaker 2: a fair amount about what they were and what they did,

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Speaker 2: though certain mysteries remain about, you know, their exact lifestyles,

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Speaker 2: their interactions with other organisms and so forth. Well, let's

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Speaker 2: come back to the cave theme, right, because that's the

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Speaker 2: umbrella on which we're just under which we're discussing the

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Speaker 2: cave bear. Here. We're of course, not talking about an

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Speaker 2: obligate cave dweller. This is not a blind, hairless bear

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Speaker 2: living in the depths, as I'm suddenly realizing. As interesting

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Speaker 2: as that might be, I'm assuming some fantasy weaver has

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Speaker 2: done something like that before. But now this would have

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Speaker 2: had at best been a troglophilic creature.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so the troglophilic creature enjoys visiting caves. It may

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Speaker 3: visit caves for a number of reasons, but it doesn't

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Speaker 3: live there permanently, and it's not biologically adapted to full

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Speaker 3: time life in the caves.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Like it's not just hanging out in there all

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Speaker 2: the time, eating bats or anything. But you know, the

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Speaker 2: cave moniker can be confusing with a lot of these species,

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Speaker 2: because of course we speak of cave men either in

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Speaker 2: terms of prehistoric Homo sapiens or Neanderthals, though even with

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Speaker 2: the latter, who certainly did utilize cave environments as did humans,

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Speaker 2: they used open air sites for various activities as well,

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Speaker 2: it seems, so it's not like they just lived in

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Speaker 2: caves or or and they're certainly not creatures that were

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Speaker 2: obligate cave dwellers. Plus, the cave moniker sometimes has as

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Speaker 2: much to do, if not more, to do with the

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Speaker 2: places where we've discovered the remains, because, as we've touched

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Speaker 2: on before, I think in this series and probably in general,

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Speaker 2: like caves are a great place for remains to be preserved.

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Speaker 2: To some degree. I saw a paper that was quoting

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Speaker 2: an expert on cave bears. It was like the bears

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Speaker 2: slept in caves and they had the good fortune to

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Speaker 2: die in them, something to that effect. You know, they're like,

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Speaker 2: fortunately for us, they died in caves a lot, and

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Speaker 2: so we have a lot of remains to look at.

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Speaker 2: But anyway, just because we have come to refer to

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Speaker 2: a creature as a cave animal, it doesn't necessarily mean

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Speaker 2: that it lived in caves. The main example of this

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Speaker 2: era would be the cave lion or Panthera spileea, also

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Speaker 2: known as the step lion, which is now understood to

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Speaker 2: have largely lived in open areas, possibly woodlands. But we

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Speaker 2: know them a lot of We know a lot about

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Speaker 2: them from skeletal remains found in caves, thus cave lions.

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Speaker 3: But it's not thought that that's where they spent a

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Speaker 3: huge amount of their time. It's more just like we

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Speaker 3: happened to have gotten some remains from caves.

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Speaker 2: That's right, yeah, I mean their remains found in caves

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Speaker 2: are apparently best understood as on one hand, perhaps the

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Speaker 2: accumulations or middens of extinct cave hyenas. These this was

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Speaker 2: all This is also known as the ice age spotted

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Speaker 2: hyena that would have scavenged carcasses and brought them back

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Speaker 2: to the caves where they lived, or at least the

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Speaker 2: cave openings where they live. These would have been. This

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Speaker 2: is an example of something that did live in caves

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Speaker 2: based on our current understanding, and so they would have hoarded, scavenged,

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Speaker 2: and killed prey in such places while also competing apparently

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Speaker 2: with Neanderthals for some of the same cave environments.

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Speaker 3: Oh interesting.

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Speaker 2: But back to the cave lion. It is also thought

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Speaker 2: that they might have ventured into caves during the winter,

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Speaker 2: especially in search of hibernating bears that might in some

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Speaker 2: cases be easier to pick off, especially if they were

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Speaker 2: desperate for the food. And they also may have periodically

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Speaker 2: entered caves in order to steal food away from cave hyenas,

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Speaker 2: though to be sure, it seems like they largely preyed

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Speaker 2: on larger wild herbivores like the wild horse and the bison.

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Speaker 2: Either way, cave lions wound up in caves, and cave

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Speaker 2: environments helped preserve their bones for future excavation by humans, who,

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Speaker 2: at least at first were like, oh, this is a

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Speaker 2: cave line. We found it in a cave.

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Speaker 3: But I assume you're saying that researchers do not believe

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Speaker 3: the same kind of naming error was made with cave bears.

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Speaker 3: The cave bears really do seem largely involved with caves.

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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's the consensus. So you know, what were

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Speaker 2: cave bears. We talked a little bit about what they

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Speaker 2: look like already. They were very large bears comparable to

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Speaker 2: or even larger than any of the bears we know today,

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Speaker 2: even the polar bears and Kodiak bears, which depending on

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Speaker 2: who you're talking to, these are kind of like the

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Speaker 2: two extant species of bears that are often held up

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Speaker 2: as the biggest. So male cave bears could range and weight.

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Speaker 2: One estimate I saw was three fifty to six hundred

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Speaker 2: kilograms or seven hundred and seventy to three hundred and

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Speaker 2: twenty pounds. I've also seen like the four hundred to

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Speaker 2: one thousand kilogram estimate, about eight hundred and eighty to

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Speaker 2: twenty two hundred pounds. Again, it's going to vary. The

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Speaker 2: males were bigger than the females and so forth. But

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Speaker 2: anyway you cut it, big bears, big heavy bears. Their

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Speaker 2: weight were have fluctuated depending on you know, where they

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Speaker 2: were seasonally, where their diet was, what the overall climate

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Speaker 2: happened to be. But yes, these were very large bears.

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Speaker 2: And therefore, as you can imagine, not just any cave

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Speaker 2: is going to do. Cave has to be large enough

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Speaker 2: to hold a bear. Now, speaking of these caves, I

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Speaker 2: was reading about them a little bit. I was looking

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Speaker 2: a few different sources. But I've had this book on

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Speaker 2: my shelf for years and I hadn't really cracked it open.

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Speaker 2: But it's by one wolf Dee Storal titled Bear Myth,

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Speaker 2: Animal and Icon. This author, by the way, I think

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Speaker 2: he's generally more considered an anthropologist and an ethnobotanist, and

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Speaker 2: I'm to understand his views have ventured into some areas

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Speaker 2: that may be considered more esoteric and even controversial, but

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Speaker 2: I don't think any of that applies to this work. Okay, Anyway,

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Speaker 2: the author here points to another connection who is kind

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Speaker 2: of similar to something we discussed I believe in the

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Speaker 2: last episode with the Ohm, a connection between an actual

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Speaker 2: cave organism and traditions concerning the dragon. There's a cave

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Speaker 2: in Austria known as Drachenhole or Dragon's Hole, so named

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Speaker 2: because the copious amounts of cave bear bones in there

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Speaker 2: were apparently it interpreted during the Middle Ages as the

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Speaker 2: bones of dragons. The cave is located near a place

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Speaker 2: called mix Nits and is associated with the legend of

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Speaker 2: the dragon Slayer of mixed Nits. I was looking around,

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Speaker 2: I couldn't find what felt like a definitive analysis or

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Speaker 2: retelling of this legend. But I saw some ride ups

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Speaker 2: where it seems like it's, you know, you, on one level,

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Speaker 2: your typical tale of a dragon slayer. But it did

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Speaker 2: seem based on the one telling I found that the

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Speaker 2: dragon slayer here uses an ingenious trap rather than overt

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Speaker 2: combat to kill the dragon. Like it has to do

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Speaker 2: with like a sharpened spikes and left out to gouge

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Speaker 2: into the dragon's flesh and then it goes off and dies.

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Speaker 2: That sort of thing, you know, kind of your predator

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Speaker 2: model of overcoming your foe.

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Speaker 3: Oh that's my kind of tale. I always love a

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Speaker 3: monster trap.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're probably wondering, Okay, this cave is full

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Speaker 2: of cave bare bones. How many bones were talking about?

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Speaker 2: You know, we're talking about like two or three individuals,

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Speaker 2: maybe a dozen individuals, you know, maybe a dusty old

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Speaker 2: set of cave bones near one corner, a skull in

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Speaker 2: the other. No, no, no, we're talking about the bones

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Speaker 2: of an estimated thirty thousand cave bears. Thirty thousand.

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Speaker 3: Wow.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Other bones were apparently also found in this particular cave,

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Speaker 2: including those those of the cave line apparently, but we're

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Speaker 2: mostly talking about cave bears here and in quite an abundance.

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Speaker 3: You have to think how long they would have been

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Speaker 3: accumulating there for. That's unbelievable.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like we would be dealing with a situation

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Speaker 2: here where the bears lived in these caves, hibernated in

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Speaker 2: these caves, and died in these caves for thousands and

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Speaker 2: thousands of years. So like, recent genetic data apparently indicates

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Speaker 2: that cave beer populations in Europe, specifically along the Danube

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Speaker 2: River were stable for a good one hundred thousand years

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Speaker 2: or more. So, yeah, you're dealing with lots of bears

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Speaker 2: living and dying in these locations.

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Speaker 3: That is incredible.

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Speaker 2: Now, the caves, specifically this Austrian cave, the system was

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Speaker 2: apparently excavated during the nineteenth century because the soil found

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Speaker 2: inside of these caves is rich, was rich in bones

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Speaker 2: and bear manure that it accumulated over these vast periods

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Speaker 2: of time, and they proved usable as phosphate fertilizer, and

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Speaker 2: there was a shortage during this time period. Storal rites

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Speaker 2: that sixty trains with fifty cars each were filled with

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Speaker 2: the stuff and also points out that a cave near Velberg, Germany,

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Speaker 2: was also excavated for its cave bear riches during this

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Speaker 2: time period. Now, these aren't the only two European caves

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Speaker 2: that there's evidence of a lot of cave bear activity.

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Speaker 2: I read in passing examples of caves and for instance

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Speaker 2: Spain and Romania that also provided a great deal of

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Speaker 2: cave bear remains. Now speaking to their death in these caves,

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Speaker 2: because you know, it's one thing to sleep in the cave,

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Speaker 2: and there is evidence we'll get to that in a second.

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Speaker 2: There is evidence already of like the bears having lived

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Speaker 2: in and slept in the caves, but they also died there.

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Speaker 2: And I've read that it's thought that cave bears may

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Speaker 2: have frequently died during hibernation, especially during particularly trying time periods,

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Speaker 2: which we'll get to here, because if an individual couldn't

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Speaker 2: put on enough weight heading into winter and or environmental

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Speaker 2: conditions were particularly dire, they just might not emerge again

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Speaker 2: in the spring. Plus we already mentioned that in some

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Speaker 2: cases you might have predators venturing into those caves to

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Speaker 2: try and find an easy bear to pick off. And

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Speaker 2: it's any easy mathematics to imagine, like, okay, if you

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Speaker 2: have a weakened bear in a hibernation state, one that

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Speaker 2: might not be surviving the winter anyway, Like that's ideal

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Speaker 2: biomass to pick off. Now. I think everyone's familiar enough

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Speaker 2: with the fat bear week craze these days to know, yeah,

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Speaker 2: that bears have to pack it on, and we find

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Speaker 2: some sport and amusement in figuring out, like which bears

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Speaker 2: are packing on the most and what do extant bears

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Speaker 2: eat in order to go into hibernation, While the answer

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Speaker 2: is what do you got? They're omnivores, anything is on

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Speaker 2: the table, right, Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I think a lot of the ones that we're familiar

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Speaker 3: with are these ones photographed in Alaska. From what I understand,

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Speaker 3: they're probably going to be eating a lot of like

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Speaker 3: river fish, like salmon.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. The cave bears, though, this would have been

295
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Speaker 2: a different matter. So research has differed at different times

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Speaker 2: on whether the bears were strictly herbivores or if they

297
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Speaker 2: were mostly herbivores. At the very least, they seem to

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Speaker 2: have depended far more on the consumption of plant matter

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Speaker 2: than pretty much any extent bear, with the obvious exception

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Speaker 2: of the giant panda. These cave bears would have gone

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Speaker 2: out and eaten a lot of vegetation, and we see

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Speaker 2: that reflected in like they're just their anatomy. So I

303
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Speaker 2: was looking at the work of Alejandro Perez Ramos at

304
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Speaker 2: the University of Malaga in Spain. This would have been

305
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Speaker 2: a twenty twenty study. The researcher here points out that

306
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Speaker 2: the cave bears were built in such a way. Their

307
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Speaker 2: skulls were built in such a way that they could

308
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Speaker 2: only chew with their back teeth. So extent bears, the

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Speaker 2: bears we have today can chew with the front as

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Speaker 2: well as the back, and therefore have the correct dental

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Speaker 2: build to eat vegetation or meat, switching back and forth

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Speaker 2: between the two depending on what's available. You know. So

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Speaker 2: if there are a lot of fish on hand, bam,

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Speaker 2: the bear bears like grizzlies and so forth, they're good

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Speaker 2: to go, get in there and eat that meat. Dead whale. Likewise,

316
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Speaker 2: get in there scaving some of that meat. Oh what's this?

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Speaker 2: You only have berries? Or oh somebody left the door

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Speaker 2: open to their house. You know, they can make do

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Speaker 2: with what's available, but again not the case with bears.

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Speaker 2: A chemical analysis of cave bear bones has also revealed

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Speaker 2: a mostly plant based diet. So the cave bear had

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Speaker 2: evolved to a point at which there was no going

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Speaker 2: back in a swift manner anyway, such as the demands

324
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Speaker 2: brought on by sudden changes in climate, and this would

325
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Speaker 2: seem to be a major factor in their extinction, if

326
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Speaker 2: not the major factor in their extinction. And this seems

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Speaker 2: to be the answer that most of the current research

328
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Speaker 2: is pointing to. But it also reveals some other interesting

329
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Speaker 2: things about them, you know, the build of their skull here,

330
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Speaker 2: because they also had much larger sinuses in exchange for

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Speaker 2: that lack of robust front teeth. And this is interesting

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Speaker 2: especially because extant bears are already famous super smellers. I

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Speaker 2: think if you've ever ventured into bear territory, you have

334
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Speaker 2: been warned. You know, don't leave, say, chapstick in your car,

335
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Speaker 2: because a bear can smell that, and a bear will

336
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Speaker 2: want to come see what kind of sweet, delicious fruity

337
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Speaker 2: food you have hidden away inside of your automobile. Oh.

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Speaker 3: I just imagining the bears going wild over like the

339
00:19:04,800 --> 00:19:08,360
Speaker 3: synthetic kinds of fruity flavors that you get in all

340
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Speaker 3: these products, Like what is funberry? I must discover exactly?

341
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's This is again with something we've

342
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Speaker 2: touched on already in this series. You know, like how

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Speaker 2: how difficult or impossible it is for human beings to

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Speaker 2: really put themselves in the sense world of another organism

345
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Speaker 2: that has, you know, a sense array different from our own.

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Speaker 2: And smell is another one of those areas. So take,

347
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Speaker 2: for instance, a bloodhound, a canine. Canines in general, but

348
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Speaker 2: specifically something like a bloodhound is already pretty famous for

349
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Speaker 2: being a super smeller. That is, they're just dogs in general.

350
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Speaker 2: They're like their sense of smell is just a different

351
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Speaker 2: part of their being, you know. You see that when

352
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Speaker 2: you see a dog like riding around with its human

353
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Speaker 2: in a vehicle and it has its head out the window, right,

354
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Speaker 2: it's like it's like unlike all the psychedelics at that moment.

355
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Speaker 2: And yet I've seen it estimated that a bear, and

356
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Speaker 2: again not a cave bear, just bears in general, bears

357
00:20:10,320 --> 00:20:12,919
Speaker 2: we have today, I've read that their sense of smell

358
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Speaker 2: is seven times better than a bloodhound, and that would

359
00:20:16,520 --> 00:20:19,640
Speaker 2: mean that their sense of smell is thousands of times

360
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Speaker 2: more powerful than a human beings. And yet the cave

361
00:20:23,280 --> 00:20:26,200
Speaker 2: bear likely had an even keener sense of smell. If

362
00:20:26,200 --> 00:20:29,399
Speaker 2: we can even imagine such a thing, likely great hearing

363
00:20:29,440 --> 00:20:31,960
Speaker 2: as well, but on the other hand, reduced eye sight

364
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Speaker 2: and a smaller brain that you might than you might

365
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Speaker 2: expect with such a large head. And I'm suspecting here

366
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Speaker 2: that you know that would also have to do with

367
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Speaker 2: its mode of life at this point in its evolution,

368
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Speaker 2: Like it it's just going around eating as much vegetation

369
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Speaker 2: as it can, sifting through these various sources of vegetation,

370
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Speaker 2: but maybe not having to be as clever and opportunistic

371
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Speaker 2: as a true omnivore would be. But anyway, all this

372
00:21:00,440 --> 00:21:03,560
Speaker 2: would seem to be wound up in their extinction as well,

373
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Speaker 2: because somewhere around twenty four thousand years ago, around the

374
00:21:09,760 --> 00:21:12,120
Speaker 2: time when their age ended, the age of the cave

375
00:21:12,119 --> 00:21:15,600
Speaker 2: bear comes to an end, temperatures plummeted. This would have

376
00:21:15,600 --> 00:21:19,960
Speaker 2: been the last glacial maximum period. Cooler tempts meant less

377
00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:23,520
Speaker 2: time and less plant matter to bulk up on before

378
00:21:23,520 --> 00:21:26,640
Speaker 2: going into hibernation, so the cave bears likely couldn't keep up.

379
00:21:26,920 --> 00:21:30,320
Speaker 2: They couldn't bulk up, and again could not adjust their

380
00:21:30,359 --> 00:21:34,040
Speaker 2: diet like other bear species. So the bear species that

381
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Speaker 2: survived these cold times were the ones that could diversify

382
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Speaker 2: that could go in more on the meat perhaps than

383
00:21:40,960 --> 00:21:43,920
Speaker 2: they had been and in many cases, yeah, this would

384
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Speaker 2: mean that you would have cave bears crawling into their

385
00:21:46,600 --> 00:21:49,520
Speaker 2: caves to hibernate with or without young and simply never

386
00:21:49,680 --> 00:21:53,080
Speaker 2: getting back up again. I alluded to this earlier, but yeah,

387
00:21:53,560 --> 00:21:56,000
Speaker 2: in the caves that they called home, we do have

388
00:21:56,080 --> 00:21:58,160
Speaker 2: more than just their bones to speak of them. So they,

389
00:21:58,520 --> 00:22:00,399
Speaker 2: like a lot of animals, they ended up leaving claw

390
00:22:00,440 --> 00:22:04,000
Speaker 2: marks on the walls in some cases, and they also

391
00:22:04,240 --> 00:22:08,439
Speaker 2: dug shallow depressions in the floor, likely as places to sleep,

392
00:22:08,480 --> 00:22:11,960
Speaker 2: and you can find images of these from various European

393
00:22:12,040 --> 00:22:16,280
Speaker 2: cave systems. You know, they're not especially flashy, but it's

394
00:22:16,320 --> 00:22:19,640
Speaker 2: this sort of large bear shaped indention in the ground

395
00:22:20,560 --> 00:22:23,159
Speaker 2: and many of these remained to this day, and some

396
00:22:23,200 --> 00:22:25,960
Speaker 2: of those claw marks, by the way, would later be

397
00:22:26,080 --> 00:22:28,919
Speaker 2: incorporated into the cave art of Homo sapiens.

398
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Speaker 3: Oh interesting, Like you mean like that humans made their

399
00:22:33,600 --> 00:22:36,919
Speaker 3: art around pre existing claw marks in the walls and

400
00:22:37,080 --> 00:22:38,520
Speaker 3: like made that part of the art.

401
00:22:38,920 --> 00:22:40,639
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Like I believe that's the case with some

402
00:22:40,680 --> 00:22:45,159
Speaker 2: of the art in France's Chauvet caves, where you have

403
00:22:45,560 --> 00:22:48,240
Speaker 2: depictions of cave bears, but also evidence of cave bears,

404
00:22:48,240 --> 00:22:52,440
Speaker 2: including claw marks. Now, speaking of humans, there, of course,

405
00:22:52,480 --> 00:22:55,199
Speaker 2: there's long been some mystery over exactly what sort of

406
00:22:55,240 --> 00:22:59,560
Speaker 2: relationships the Anderthals and Homo sapiens had with the cave bears.

407
00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:01,760
Speaker 2: I mean, we're humans. We can't help it. We find

408
00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:04,120
Speaker 2: out that we were alive at all during the same

409
00:23:04,160 --> 00:23:06,919
Speaker 2: time period, We're like, what about us? How do we

410
00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:10,680
Speaker 2: factor into this this fascinating and majestic scenario. What were

411
00:23:10,680 --> 00:23:14,720
Speaker 2: we doing? And did we ride them? Did we ride them?

412
00:23:14,760 --> 00:23:18,080
Speaker 2: Did we worship them? Yeah, there was this much popularized

413
00:23:18,119 --> 00:23:22,280
Speaker 2: idea that early humans worshiped cave bears, and it does

414
00:23:22,359 --> 00:23:26,120
Speaker 2: seem like there's some potential evidence for this, but apparently

415
00:23:26,160 --> 00:23:29,200
Speaker 2: this has long been disputed and sort of largely pushed

416
00:23:29,200 --> 00:23:31,440
Speaker 2: out of the way. This would have been the basis

417
00:23:31,480 --> 00:23:35,080
Speaker 2: for fictional works like the novel Clan of the Cave Bear,

418
00:23:36,080 --> 00:23:38,480
Speaker 2: but there's still various mysteries along these lines. You know,

419
00:23:38,520 --> 00:23:42,080
Speaker 2: they will never know one hundred percent what our ancient

420
00:23:42,119 --> 00:23:46,240
Speaker 2: ancient ancestors really thought about these creatures. And it's also

421
00:23:46,280 --> 00:23:49,120
Speaker 2: easy to simplify what we thought about them that like, oh,

422
00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:52,560
Speaker 2: did we worship them? Or did we eat them or

423
00:23:52,600 --> 00:23:55,679
Speaker 2: did we run from them? And of course, you know,

424
00:23:55,800 --> 00:23:58,320
Speaker 2: even our prehistoric ancestors I think would have had the

425
00:23:58,440 --> 00:24:02,119
Speaker 2: mental complexity to do all three, depending on where you

426
00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 2: are in a given day and so forth.

427
00:24:04,320 --> 00:24:06,560
Speaker 3: I seem to I think it's been years now, but

428
00:24:06,680 --> 00:24:11,000
Speaker 3: I have a memory of coming across some interesting claims

429
00:24:11,040 --> 00:24:16,280
Speaker 3: on the Internet about about, like, you know, prehistoric humans

430
00:24:16,280 --> 00:24:19,760
Speaker 3: and their specific beliefs regarding bears, and I was like,

431
00:24:19,880 --> 00:24:22,159
Speaker 3: what's the source of this, Like what's the evidence for it?

432
00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:24,040
Speaker 3: And I could never actually track it down, Like it

433
00:24:24,040 --> 00:24:27,080
Speaker 3: seems like there's just a lot of claims floating around

434
00:24:27,119 --> 00:24:30,160
Speaker 3: on the internet about prehistoric humans and bears.

435
00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:32,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess on one level, it's like

436
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:36,159
Speaker 2: we do acknowledge the fact that human, ancient humans and

437
00:24:36,240 --> 00:24:43,440
Speaker 2: prehistoric humans, they acknowledged these large creatures in their natural world. Yea,

438
00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:46,600
Speaker 2: they had relationships with various creatures in their natural world,

439
00:24:47,040 --> 00:24:52,000
Speaker 2: and they seem to have superstitious and or mythological ideas

440
00:24:52,040 --> 00:24:54,960
Speaker 2: about them. We talked about some of the earliest images

441
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:59,080
Speaker 2: and past episodes of the show where these people would

442
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:03,480
Speaker 2: combine human and animal imagery into a single entity. Though

443
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 2: exactly what is meant by that, We're not sure.

444
00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:08,679
Speaker 3: Yeah, this actually came up in a listener mail I

445
00:25:08,680 --> 00:25:11,119
Speaker 3: did while you were out recently, a listener wrote in

446
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:14,480
Speaker 3: about our episode on the Loewenmine this, you know, this

447
00:25:14,640 --> 00:25:17,680
Speaker 3: carving that has been interpreted as depicting a sort of

448
00:25:17,680 --> 00:25:21,520
Speaker 3: a human body with the lion's head. Though there's some

449
00:25:21,600 --> 00:25:24,640
Speaker 3: dispute about whether that's the correct interpretation of what it's

450
00:25:24,640 --> 00:25:27,679
Speaker 3: supposed to be, but that seems like a common interpretation

451
00:25:27,840 --> 00:25:30,560
Speaker 3: and so yeah, this raised these interesting questions about like,

452
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:35,440
Speaker 3: when did we start forming ideas about creatures that did

453
00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:36,600
Speaker 3: not exist in nature.

454
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:38,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is hard for us to figure out the

455
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:43,640
Speaker 2: exact artistic intent. For example, going back to the Chouve

456
00:25:43,840 --> 00:25:47,480
Speaker 2: Cave in France, this is a cave that contains human

457
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:51,399
Speaker 2: illustrations of cave bears among other animals, copious amounts of

458
00:25:51,480 --> 00:25:54,240
Speaker 2: cave bear bones, cave bear claw marks on the walls.

459
00:25:54,240 --> 00:25:57,600
Speaker 2: It has floor depressions made by the bears. But one

460
00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:01,479
Speaker 2: chamber here also apparently has a single cave bear skull

461
00:26:01,920 --> 00:26:04,680
Speaker 2: that seemed to have been placed on a stone slab

462
00:26:05,119 --> 00:26:08,720
Speaker 2: in the center of the chamber. But it's impossible to

463
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:12,199
Speaker 2: say why this is the case. Were they worshiping the

464
00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:15,800
Speaker 2: bear or a particular bear. Was it just a curiosity,

465
00:26:16,600 --> 00:26:19,639
Speaker 2: was it some form of superstition or what? Did it

466
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:24,040
Speaker 2: represent some tangible connection between these people and their way

467
00:26:24,080 --> 00:26:28,440
Speaker 2: of life to the bear, or was it something more abstract. Now,

468
00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:32,640
Speaker 2: apparently we do know from some skeletal evidence this would

469
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 2: be in rare cases, some evidence of butchery. And also

470
00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:39,920
Speaker 2: there may have been another example that was more directly

471
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 2: tied to some sort of like hunting weapon, but at

472
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:46,159
Speaker 2: least butchery evidence that shows that humans at least sometimes

473
00:26:46,920 --> 00:26:50,720
Speaker 2: hunted or killed, or at least butchered cave bears, but

474
00:26:50,960 --> 00:26:54,240
Speaker 2: is pointed out in Andrew Curry's twenty ten Fate of

475
00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:58,440
Speaker 2: the Cave Bear article ver smithsonian dot com, citing anthropologist

476
00:26:58,600 --> 00:27:03,080
Speaker 2: Eric Trinkhaus, it's unlikely that human hunting impacted the cave

477
00:27:03,119 --> 00:27:09,360
Speaker 2: bear's existence or led to its extinction. Trenkyles points out

478
00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:13,160
Speaker 2: faced many lethal threats during this time, and the cave bear,

479
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:16,399
Speaker 2: if provoked, was certainly one of them. I mean, just

480
00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:19,479
Speaker 2: because it doesn't really eat meat doesn't mean that an

481
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:22,320
Speaker 2: animal this big and this ferocious could not kill you.

482
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:27,360
Speaker 2: So it's unlikely, according to this expert, that humans tangled

483
00:27:27,400 --> 00:27:31,680
Speaker 2: with it all that much. But they might have sometimes

484
00:27:31,760 --> 00:27:36,919
Speaker 2: gone after hibernating bears or hunted them in other isolated

485
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:40,960
Speaker 2: events for one reason or another. So it happened, but

486
00:27:41,080 --> 00:27:44,640
Speaker 2: probably not all that often. Still there's a Again, there's

487
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:48,320
Speaker 2: a lot of room for some level of supernatural consideration

488
00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:50,399
Speaker 2: of the cave bear. Going back to the work of

489
00:27:50,440 --> 00:27:54,280
Speaker 2: a Wolf Storel in his book, he writes that surely quote,

490
00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:56,359
Speaker 2: any animal that can go in and out of the

491
00:27:56,400 --> 00:27:59,840
Speaker 2: womb of the Great Goddess without incident is surely all

492
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:04,520
Speaker 2: a guardian of fertility and birth. Again, he's predominantly an

493
00:28:04,520 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 2: anthropologist and athnobotanist, So this is the book in its entirety,

494
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:12,720
Speaker 2: is more about how we have thought about bears throughout history,

495
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:16,159
Speaker 2: even getting into at least short entries on ewoks and

496
00:28:16,200 --> 00:28:21,480
Speaker 2: Fazzy Bear later on. But particularly he points to other

497
00:28:21,520 --> 00:28:25,760
Speaker 2: traditions along these lines of a female bear shaman character

498
00:28:25,920 --> 00:28:30,000
Speaker 2: a lady of the caves, and also reflects on, you know,

499
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:33,359
Speaker 2: up to traditions of the of the ancient Greek goddess Artemis,

500
00:28:33,560 --> 00:28:37,040
Speaker 2: whose domain includes both the hunt and childbirth and is

501
00:28:37,040 --> 00:28:41,520
Speaker 2: also associated with bears. Interesting, but of course we just

502
00:28:41,560 --> 00:28:45,760
Speaker 2: get increasingly into the domain of speculation in this Yeah, again,

503
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:49,160
Speaker 2: I think most experts kind of dismiss the notion that

504
00:28:50,200 --> 00:28:55,200
Speaker 2: that early Homo sapiens worshiped the cave bear to any

505
00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:56,320
Speaker 2: significant degree.

506
00:28:56,960 --> 00:28:59,920
Speaker 3: By dismissed, I assume you mean not that they rule

507
00:28:59,880 --> 00:29:01,800
Speaker 3: it out, but they just say we don't have super

508
00:29:01,800 --> 00:29:02,640
Speaker 3: strong evidence.

509
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:05,440
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's what I get from it, because I

510
00:29:05,440 --> 00:29:08,600
Speaker 2: think it would be silly to say, you know, our

511
00:29:08,640 --> 00:29:12,040
Speaker 2: ancestors didn't notice these things at all, or they didn't

512
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:14,560
Speaker 2: care about like it seems like there's room for there

513
00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:17,200
Speaker 2: to be that connection. But do we have the evidence

514
00:29:17,280 --> 00:29:17,480
Speaker 2: of it.

515
00:29:17,640 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just one of those mysteries. There's a lot

516
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:22,959
Speaker 3: about the culture of prehistoric humans that's difficult to know

517
00:29:23,120 --> 00:29:24,280
Speaker 3: based on the evidence we have.

518
00:29:24,800 --> 00:29:27,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, real quick in passing before we move on to

519
00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 2: more important matters, I will say that Storel has one entry,

520
00:29:32,240 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 2: actually a whole page in the book on gummy bears

521
00:29:35,160 --> 00:29:39,120
Speaker 2: also apparently known as dancing bears, which apparently have Germanic

522
00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:43,320
Speaker 2: origins going back to nineteen twenty two and are quote

523
00:29:43,480 --> 00:29:47,120
Speaker 2: now part of the German way of life. Okay, he

524
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:51,080
Speaker 2: doesn't get into this issue in this twenty eighteen book,

525
00:29:51,560 --> 00:29:53,600
Speaker 2: but I wonder what he would make of the increasing

526
00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:56,440
Speaker 2: use of bear shaped gummies as a delivery system for

527
00:29:56,800 --> 00:30:00,440
Speaker 2: CBD and cannabis and cannabis related products. And and even

528
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:02,360
Speaker 2: before this, I think, going back in the nineties, they

529
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 2: were being used in some cases to deliver vitamins. And

530
00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:07,520
Speaker 2: today you can get all manner of supplements in them,

531
00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:13,120
Speaker 2: So like the dancing bear kind of becomes this shumnistic item.

532
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 2: Perhaps once more, you know that's funny, but no real

533
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:17,360
Speaker 2: connection to the cave bear there?

534
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 3: Sorry, what would you make Also about the equivalency of

535
00:30:20,480 --> 00:30:22,880
Speaker 3: worms there and the fact that the gummy worms are

536
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:26,720
Speaker 3: typically larger than the bears. That suggests something about Shai lude.

537
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 2: To me, Ah, yes, solid point. For some reason, I've

538
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:33,040
Speaker 2: gotten to the point where I accept that a bear

539
00:30:33,080 --> 00:30:36,120
Speaker 2: shaped gummy is an appropriate shape for some sort of

540
00:30:36,200 --> 00:30:40,480
Speaker 2: chemical delivery system as opposed to some of the other shapes.

541
00:30:40,560 --> 00:30:42,400
Speaker 2: Like for some reason, a worm is too silly for me,

542
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:45,000
Speaker 2: Like it just seems like, why what are you doing?

543
00:30:45,320 --> 00:30:51,440
Speaker 2: It's ridiculous, irresponsible. Kids eat candy worms, but bears bears?

544
00:30:51,960 --> 00:30:53,440
Speaker 2: I don't know, Like, are we at the point where

545
00:30:55,040 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 2: I just you know, we don't I guess we don't

546
00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:58,600
Speaker 2: go through a lot of gummy bears. But it just

547
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:00,840
Speaker 2: it's just like I would be suspicions of a gummy bear.

548
00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:03,040
Speaker 2: I'd be like, be careful, you don't know what's in

549
00:31:03,080 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 2: that bear.

550
00:31:04,880 --> 00:31:07,280
Speaker 3: But a pure gummy worm, you're saying you're more likely

551
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:07,960
Speaker 3: to trust that.

552
00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 2: I guess, But now I'm second guessing myself. I don't know.

553
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:14,280
Speaker 2: I'm just suspicious of the whole gummy genre.

554
00:31:23,360 --> 00:31:25,360
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I've got one more thing I want to

555
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:29,520
Speaker 3: talk about. So we've discussed the ways that animals adapt

556
00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:33,080
Speaker 3: to cave environments, but I wanted to talk about a

557
00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:37,800
Speaker 3: fascinating idea I came across in a spielology paper, which is,

558
00:31:38,120 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 3: what if some of the natural holes and recessions in

559
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:48,000
Speaker 3: rock that we call caves were actually formed in part

560
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:53,040
Speaker 3: not by standard inorganic processes like you know, lava tube

561
00:31:53,080 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 3: solidification in volcanic rock or the dissolution of limestone by water.

562
00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 3: Instead were formed in part by animals essentially eating their

563
00:32:03,320 --> 00:32:06,400
Speaker 3: way through the rock. Let's look at a paper. So

564
00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:10,880
Speaker 3: my source here is by Charles A. Lundquist and William W.

565
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 3: Varnado Junior, called salt Ingestion Caves, published in the International

566
00:32:16,400 --> 00:32:19,720
Speaker 3: Journal of Spielology in the year two thousand and six,

567
00:32:20,360 --> 00:32:22,920
Speaker 3: So the authors kick things off by pointing out that,

568
00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:26,600
Speaker 3: of course animals need salt to survive. It is a

569
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 3: basic requirement in the body. Regular table salt is known

570
00:32:30,920 --> 00:32:34,680
Speaker 3: chemically as sodium chloride, and when we ingest it, our

571
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:38,760
Speaker 3: bodies use both the sodium ions and the chloride ions

572
00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:43,040
Speaker 3: from that molecule for a number of functions. Salt is

573
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:47,520
Speaker 3: necessary for our muscles to function properly, like we need

574
00:32:47,560 --> 00:32:50,960
Speaker 3: sodium so muscles can contract and relax. It's used in

575
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 3: our nervous systems to conduct impulses. It's used for all

576
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:57,560
Speaker 3: kinds of things throughout the body, and most humans get

577
00:32:57,600 --> 00:32:59,760
Speaker 3: way more of it than we need because we add

578
00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:02,000
Speaker 3: some plemental salt to our food for taste.

579
00:33:02,280 --> 00:33:03,280
Speaker 2: But of course.

580
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:06,440
Speaker 3: Wild animals don't have the kind of ready access to

581
00:33:06,560 --> 00:33:10,760
Speaker 3: supplemental salt that we do. In the wild, carnivores can

582
00:33:10,840 --> 00:33:14,280
Speaker 3: usually get the salt they need by eating the flesh

583
00:33:14,400 --> 00:33:17,720
Speaker 3: of other animals, which naturally contains a good bit of it,

584
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:21,600
Speaker 3: but for herbivores, getting enough salt can be difficult. The

585
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:25,760
Speaker 3: sodium content of most terrestrial plants is quite low, and

586
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:30,240
Speaker 3: since ancient times, humans have noticed that animals, especially herbivores,

587
00:33:30,600 --> 00:33:35,400
Speaker 3: sometimes gather at what are called salt licks, or more broadly,

588
00:33:35,560 --> 00:33:39,920
Speaker 3: mineral licks, places where there are rocks or soils that

589
00:33:40,040 --> 00:33:44,600
Speaker 3: animals can consume in some way to supplement the mineral

590
00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:49,000
Speaker 3: content of their diet, including minerals such as sodium salt.

591
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:52,200
Speaker 3: This can include a range of behaviors in the wild,

592
00:33:52,280 --> 00:33:57,240
Speaker 3: like licking salty rocks on a mountainside, eating exposed clays

593
00:33:57,400 --> 00:34:01,640
Speaker 3: or other sediments that have a desirable mineral content. And

594
00:34:01,720 --> 00:34:05,240
Speaker 3: because herbivores are drawn to these salty rocks and soils,

595
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:08,520
Speaker 3: hunters have long known about them as good places to

596
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:11,879
Speaker 3: find game. So what does this have to do with caves? Well,

597
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:16,440
Speaker 3: the author's right quote large vertebrate herbivores when they find

598
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:19,080
Speaker 3: a salt bearing layer of rock in a cliff face

599
00:34:19,600 --> 00:34:24,400
Speaker 3: can over generations produce sizeable voids where they have removed

600
00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:28,879
Speaker 3: and consumed salty rock. These cavities that humans can enter

601
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:32,800
Speaker 3: can have the characteristics of a cave as defined locally.

602
00:34:33,320 --> 00:34:35,760
Speaker 3: So that last sentence meaning that you know whatever people

603
00:34:35,840 --> 00:34:38,840
Speaker 3: call a cave, you know that varies from place to place,

604
00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:42,000
Speaker 3: but usually it means like a void in the rock,

605
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:45,080
Speaker 3: that's large enough for a person to go into to enter,

606
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:49,799
Speaker 3: and those types of voids can indeed be created by

607
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:52,839
Speaker 3: animals removing the rock by eating it.

608
00:34:53,480 --> 00:34:55,800
Speaker 2: Wow, So you're saying that in some cases a cave

609
00:34:55,840 --> 00:34:59,440
Speaker 2: is naturally formed over geologic time by rainwater and so forth.

610
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:04,040
Speaker 2: Times a deer just licks it until it's right a

611
00:35:04,120 --> 00:35:06,280
Speaker 2: deer licked it into the side of a mountain.

612
00:35:06,680 --> 00:35:09,480
Speaker 3: That appears to be the case according to these authors.

613
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:12,760
Speaker 3: So they look at several case studies in the paper.

614
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:16,200
Speaker 3: One is a site referenced in some literature about the

615
00:35:16,239 --> 00:35:21,759
Speaker 3: Altai Mountains in Asia. The authors are talking about reports

616
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:25,360
Speaker 3: from surveys of the Altai Mountains, specifically of a mountain

617
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:29,839
Speaker 3: bearing shale formations near the confluence of the Kan River

618
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 3: and the Charch River. Apparently, the shale here is very salty,

619
00:35:35,600 --> 00:35:38,720
Speaker 3: and they quote a commentary by an author named Carl

620
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:43,520
Speaker 3: Friedrich von Ledebour from eighteen twenty six, who writes of

621
00:35:43,560 --> 00:35:47,919
Speaker 3: the shale, quote, all livestock of the Kalmuks find this rock,

622
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:52,120
Speaker 3: which gives the mountain an ash gray appearance, very desirable

623
00:35:52,239 --> 00:35:55,680
Speaker 3: and consume it in not small amounts, so that one

624
00:35:55,840 --> 00:36:00,359
Speaker 3: not infrequently finds grottos built in this way. Of course,

625
00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:04,880
Speaker 3: a grotto refers to a small cave, and this author

626
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:08,400
Speaker 3: mentions that both domestic and wild animals come to this

627
00:36:08,560 --> 00:36:12,000
Speaker 3: mountain to eat the shale. Another example they mention is

628
00:36:12,040 --> 00:36:15,080
Speaker 3: a place in the United States. It's called rock House Cave.

629
00:36:15,800 --> 00:36:18,480
Speaker 3: It's a cave situated within the rock of a small

630
00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 3: bluff in the US state of Mississippi. They say that

631
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:24,080
Speaker 3: the entrance is roughly ten feet wide, but then the

632
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:27,480
Speaker 3: cave actually widens once you go inside. It roughly doubles

633
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:30,600
Speaker 3: in width. It's just about tall enough for an adult

634
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:34,080
Speaker 3: to stand up, and it reaches about fifteen feet deep

635
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:37,640
Speaker 3: into the bluff. And they say the surrounding rock is

636
00:36:37,680 --> 00:36:42,520
Speaker 3: mostly what the authors characterize as a soft, fine grained sandstone.

637
00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:46,520
Speaker 3: They say it is of the Kataboolah formation and it's

638
00:36:46,520 --> 00:36:49,680
Speaker 3: got a significant amount of sodium chloride in it. The

639
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:53,680
Speaker 3: authors also say there's no evidence that water solution caused

640
00:36:53,719 --> 00:36:56,560
Speaker 3: the formation of this cave, and instead it appears that

641
00:36:56,600 --> 00:37:00,319
Speaker 3: it was caused by many generations of animals remove the

642
00:37:00,320 --> 00:37:03,480
Speaker 3: walls by licking. They say there is a rough surface

643
00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:06,080
Speaker 3: on the walls that seems to quite possibly have been

644
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 3: created just by animals licking it away over time. They

645
00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:13,080
Speaker 3: say it was probably first wild deer and possibly bison

646
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:16,160
Speaker 3: that opened this cave up, and then maybe cattle later.

647
00:37:16,600 --> 00:37:17,080
Speaker 2: Oh wow.

648
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:20,200
Speaker 3: But the most amazing example they cite is one from

649
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:25,880
Speaker 3: eastern Africa. This so there's an extinct volcano on the

650
00:37:25,920 --> 00:37:31,600
Speaker 3: border between Kenya and Uganda. This volcano is called Mount

651
00:37:31,719 --> 00:37:35,600
Speaker 3: Elgon or Elganye. And on the side of this mountain

652
00:37:36,080 --> 00:37:40,680
Speaker 3: there are what I've read described elsewhere as ballroom sized caves,

653
00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:44,120
Speaker 3: large sizable caves that appear to have been at least

654
00:37:44,120 --> 00:37:50,760
Speaker 3: in part excavated by elephants. Elephants inside caves, yes, yes,

655
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:55,239
Speaker 3: so there is some question about the role of the

656
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:58,040
Speaker 3: elephants in creating the caves, but there is no question

657
00:37:58,120 --> 00:38:01,080
Speaker 3: that the cave that the elephants do into the caves

658
00:38:01,080 --> 00:38:04,400
Speaker 3: and consume rocks, that has been directly observed. That's the

659
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:08,200
Speaker 3: thing that happens. So the most famous of the Mount

660
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:11,799
Speaker 3: Elgon caves is known as Katoomb Cave k I t

661
00:38:12,040 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 3: u m and the authors propose that these caves were

662
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:19,040
Speaker 3: formed in part by water solution, but also in part

663
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:23,000
Speaker 3: because wild herbivores literally eat the rocks away and remove

664
00:38:23,080 --> 00:38:24,239
Speaker 3: them from the caverns.

665
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:27,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is amazing. I have I've actually

666
00:38:27,160 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 2: seen footage of this. I don't remember which elephant documentary

667
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:33,720
Speaker 2: I saw this in problem maybe more than one. Watched

668
00:38:33,719 --> 00:38:36,719
Speaker 2: a lot of elephant documentaries at one point and my

669
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:40,279
Speaker 2: son's upbringing when he was super into elephants. But it's

670
00:38:40,360 --> 00:38:42,760
Speaker 2: it is amazing to behold. And these are large caves,

671
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:47,680
Speaker 2: you know, starters elephants have to fit in them. But yeah,

672
00:38:47,680 --> 00:38:50,480
Speaker 2: I think ballroom seems appropriate based on the footage as

673
00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:52,440
Speaker 2: I remember it, because these look like the kind of

674
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:56,640
Speaker 2: caverns that you might have filmed like a B movie

675
00:38:56,680 --> 00:39:00,600
Speaker 2: in or perhaps an episode of Star Trek took place in. Yeah, yeah,

676
00:39:00,640 --> 00:39:01,279
Speaker 2: I can see that.

677
00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:05,000
Speaker 3: Now. Elephants are not the only animals that go into

678
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:08,080
Speaker 3: these caves to eat, to consume parts of the walls

679
00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:12,440
Speaker 3: and eat the rocks. Apparently, also buffaloes, antelopes, and sometimes

680
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:15,279
Speaker 3: monkeys have been observed to go into the caves and

681
00:39:15,520 --> 00:39:18,040
Speaker 3: eat some of the some of the soft rocks that

682
00:39:18,080 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 3: line the walls. The authors say specifically Katoomb Cave to

683
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:23,839
Speaker 3: give you a better idea about the size of one

684
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:26,560
Speaker 3: of the big caves here. They say that the rock

685
00:39:26,680 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 3: face that the elephants generally go to get their minerals

686
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:35,640
Speaker 3: from is about one hundred and sixty meters into the

687
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:40,040
Speaker 3: mountain from the entrance, so that's a deep cave. And

688
00:39:40,080 --> 00:39:42,120
Speaker 3: they say that what happens is the elephants go in

689
00:39:42,760 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 3: and they usually loosen pieces of rock from the walls

690
00:39:46,160 --> 00:39:48,680
Speaker 3: of the cave with their tusks, so they're like digging

691
00:39:48,719 --> 00:39:52,040
Speaker 3: against the walls with their tusks. These pieces fall to

692
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 3: the floor and then they pick up the pieces with

693
00:39:54,320 --> 00:39:57,080
Speaker 3: their trunks and then they put the piece in their

694
00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:00,680
Speaker 3: mouth and chew it up, crush it with their teeth. Now,

695
00:40:00,719 --> 00:40:03,040
Speaker 3: what was not fully resolved at the time of this paper,

696
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:05,160
Speaker 3: and from what I can tell, has still not been

697
00:40:05,239 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 3: fully resolved, is what are the relative contributions of the

698
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:14,200
Speaker 3: different processes to how large the caves are?

699
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:14,400
Speaker 1: Like?

700
00:40:14,920 --> 00:40:19,759
Speaker 3: Are the caves predominantly formed by inorganic solution and erosion

701
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:23,960
Speaker 3: of the rock by water flow and then supplemented is

702
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:27,800
Speaker 3: that excavation supplemented by elephants and other animals removing some

703
00:40:27,920 --> 00:40:31,239
Speaker 3: amount of rock, Or are the elephants and other animals

704
00:40:31,320 --> 00:40:34,560
Speaker 3: primarily responsible for hollowing out the caves? And there's just

705
00:40:34,640 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 3: some solution by water going on, Also what role may

706
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:42,719
Speaker 3: have been played by human mining and other factors. So

707
00:40:43,160 --> 00:40:46,600
Speaker 3: the authors look at several analyzes of this and they

708
00:40:46,719 --> 00:40:50,960
Speaker 3: quote one researcher named Ian Redmond who did a study

709
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:53,960
Speaker 3: of the cave in nineteen eighty four. Redmond and did

710
00:40:54,160 --> 00:40:58,719
Speaker 3: several months of field observations, watching the elephants and analyzing

711
00:40:58,719 --> 00:41:02,600
Speaker 3: even the mineral content of their droppings. Redmond wrote, quote,

712
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:05,560
Speaker 3: the volume of Katoumb cave is on the order of

713
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:10,399
Speaker 3: one point three million gallons or about five million liters. If,

714
00:41:10,560 --> 00:41:13,920
Speaker 3: for the sake of conservative argument, we suppose that elephant

715
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:18,200
Speaker 3: excavations averaged just one quart per week, it would have

716
00:41:18,239 --> 00:41:21,640
Speaker 3: taken only one hundred thousand years for them to dig Katum.

717
00:41:22,239 --> 00:41:26,840
Speaker 3: The theory of elephant spieleogenesis cave creation is entirely plausible.

718
00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:27,520
Speaker 2: Wow.

719
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:31,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, amazing to consider, the author is. Also they cite

720
00:41:31,680 --> 00:41:35,880
Speaker 3: another study, this one by researchers named Donald McFarlane and

721
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:39,680
Speaker 3: Joyce Lundberg. This was from two thousand and four, where

722
00:41:39,840 --> 00:41:44,880
Speaker 3: after field observations, these researchers suggested a multi step process

723
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:48,800
Speaker 3: for cave formation that would go like this. They summarize

724
00:41:48,800 --> 00:41:51,480
Speaker 3: it as follows. So, first of all, there is a

725
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:56,320
Speaker 3: cliff that forms. There's like water flowing off of the mountain,

726
00:41:56,400 --> 00:41:59,799
Speaker 3: they say, off of a cap rock layer, and it

727
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:04,359
Speaker 3: roads some material from underneath. Then after that they say

728
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:09,239
Speaker 3: that some more material clay sized material sediment is removed

729
00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:13,960
Speaker 3: from the floor of the cave by groundwater sapping. And

730
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:17,000
Speaker 3: then they also say more mass is removed from the

731
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 3: cave by animal excavation. And then at some point there

732
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:25,000
Speaker 3: are collapses within the cave. They write, quote collapse of

733
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:29,719
Speaker 3: overlying beds makes piles of broken material which are removed

734
00:42:29,719 --> 00:42:34,920
Speaker 3: by action of water and animal geophagi rock eating. And

735
00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:38,319
Speaker 3: then finally they say step four is repeat This whole

736
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:41,279
Speaker 3: process repeats over and over again. So they're saying that

737
00:42:41,320 --> 00:42:45,720
Speaker 3: it's a combination of material being removed by water flow

738
00:42:46,040 --> 00:42:49,880
Speaker 3: and then the cavern collapsing as material is removed and

739
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:55,000
Speaker 3: supporting walls are removed, and then animals also remove parts

740
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:57,680
Speaker 3: of the walls and remove some of the collapsed material

741
00:42:57,760 --> 00:43:00,080
Speaker 3: from above, and it just keeps going on.

742
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:02,759
Speaker 2: Like that because those animals, they don't care about the

743
00:43:02,800 --> 00:43:04,719
Speaker 2: structural integrity of the cave. They just want to get

744
00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:09,080
Speaker 2: that salt, right. It's all they want is their fix. Now.

745
00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:13,080
Speaker 3: Ultimately, the authors of this analysis, McFarlane and Lundberg, were

746
00:43:13,280 --> 00:43:17,480
Speaker 3: unable to say what the relative masses of rock removed

747
00:43:17,520 --> 00:43:20,760
Speaker 3: by water versus geophagi were, but they seem to believe

748
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 3: that the amount removed by the animals was significant. And

749
00:43:25,040 --> 00:43:26,880
Speaker 3: then coming back to the parent paper, the one by

750
00:43:26,960 --> 00:43:31,160
Speaker 3: Lundquist and Varnido Junior, they bring up something that was

751
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:34,200
Speaker 3: interesting when thought about. When I was thinking about it,

752
00:43:34,239 --> 00:43:36,640
Speaker 3: in parallel to our discussion of batguana, was a kind

753
00:43:36,680 --> 00:43:39,400
Speaker 3: of alternative sunlight or base of the food chain in

754
00:43:39,440 --> 00:43:44,400
Speaker 3: deeper limestone caves. Speaking of the Mount Elgun caves, the

755
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:48,400
Speaker 3: authors here note that quote a common feature in most

756
00:43:48,400 --> 00:43:51,839
Speaker 3: of the larger caves is the quantity of dung deposited

757
00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:54,719
Speaker 3: by beasts which have come to the caves from time

758
00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:59,360
Speaker 3: immemorial to lick or otherwise consume the agglomerate walls. Traces

759
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:02,239
Speaker 3: of elephants using the caves are most common, and their

760
00:44:02,320 --> 00:44:06,319
Speaker 3: tusk marks are clearly recognizable where they have gouged the rock.

761
00:44:06,880 --> 00:44:10,920
Speaker 3: So actually a couple interesting parallels there. The connection to

762
00:44:11,200 --> 00:44:14,560
Speaker 3: the seeing where the elephants with their tusks have like

763
00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 3: cut gashes in the rock in the walls of the

764
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:19,879
Speaker 3: cave is kind of like the marks on the cave

765
00:44:19,920 --> 00:44:23,120
Speaker 3: walls left by the cave bears, but also all the poop,

766
00:44:23,239 --> 00:44:25,880
Speaker 3: all the poop of all the visitors accumulating over the

767
00:44:26,239 --> 00:44:27,160
Speaker 3: thousands of years.

768
00:44:27,719 --> 00:44:30,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy, and you know all this also reminds

769
00:44:30,480 --> 00:44:36,000
Speaker 2: me of episode we did a while back on giant sloths,

770
00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:40,359
Speaker 2: a particular variety of giant sloth that would have dug

771
00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:44,560
Speaker 2: itself kind of a burrow into a kind of like

772
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:47,680
Speaker 2: deep into burrow, creating eventually over time as they reuse

773
00:44:47,760 --> 00:44:50,160
Speaker 2: these spaces a kind of tunnel in the earth.

774
00:44:50,800 --> 00:44:53,400
Speaker 3: Funny, you should mention that because the fourth case study

775
00:44:53,480 --> 00:44:56,800
Speaker 3: that the authors bring up in this paper is evidence

776
00:44:56,840 --> 00:45:01,160
Speaker 3: related to what's called Mylodon Cave in Patagonia, and they

777
00:45:01,520 --> 00:45:04,640
Speaker 3: say that it is possible that this is a case

778
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:09,120
Speaker 3: of cave formation by salt ingestion long ago, this time

779
00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:14,000
Speaker 3: implicating extinct giant ground slots. This is fully speculative, but

780
00:45:14,040 --> 00:45:16,880
Speaker 3: they do highlight this as a possibility, explaining where this

781
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:17,719
Speaker 3: cave came from.

782
00:45:18,280 --> 00:45:18,680
Speaker 2: Wow.

783
00:45:19,160 --> 00:45:21,920
Speaker 3: But to come back and conclude the look at the

784
00:45:22,200 --> 00:45:25,000
Speaker 3: Mount Elgon caves. So they say, what we do know

785
00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:28,480
Speaker 3: is that animals come to these caves to consume mineral

786
00:45:28,560 --> 00:45:31,000
Speaker 3: laden soil and rock, so these caves could be thought

787
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:35,080
Speaker 3: of as massive salt licks or mineral licks. There are

788
00:45:35,160 --> 00:45:38,839
Speaker 3: generally no permanent streams running out of the caves, so

789
00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 3: that that's not an option for removal of cave material

790
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:48,200
Speaker 3: by like permanent water passage. Some water does appear to

791
00:45:49,400 --> 00:45:52,759
Speaker 3: run out of the caves during flooding events, but how

792
00:45:52,960 --> 00:45:56,080
Speaker 3: much rock material is removed during these events in this

793
00:45:56,120 --> 00:45:59,160
Speaker 3: way is uncertain, so we still in the end don't

794
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:02,080
Speaker 3: know the relation amounts. We don't know how much of

795
00:46:02,120 --> 00:46:06,560
Speaker 3: the cave formation is due to water solution versus how

796
00:46:06,640 --> 00:46:09,719
Speaker 3: much is due to animals eating the rock. But they

797
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:13,839
Speaker 3: think that both processes contribute, and their judgment in the

798
00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 3: end is that the contribution of the elephants is the

799
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 3: primary process.

800
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:19,760
Speaker 2: Wow.

801
00:46:20,200 --> 00:46:23,400
Speaker 3: Either way, it's amazing to imagine elephants going into caves

802
00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:24,320
Speaker 3: to eat the rocks.

803
00:46:24,840 --> 00:46:27,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing. And you know, we shouldn't cast too

804
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:31,319
Speaker 2: much judgment. Like you mentioned earlier, humans very often don't

805
00:46:31,360 --> 00:46:34,440
Speaker 2: have to worry about getting enough salt we eat at

806
00:46:34,480 --> 00:46:40,000
Speaker 2: a restaurant. Once we get like a colossal salt bomb, right,

807
00:46:40,040 --> 00:46:42,480
Speaker 2: we get more than enough salt. We get an unhealthy

808
00:46:42,520 --> 00:46:47,040
Speaker 2: amount of salt ingested into our bodies. But if we

809
00:46:47,080 --> 00:46:50,919
Speaker 2: didn't have those food sources, we might be out there

810
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:54,480
Speaker 2: looking the sides of mountains just like these various herbivores are.

811
00:46:55,160 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 2: Assuming we also didn't eat copious amounts of meat on

812
00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:02,200
Speaker 2: top of that, which is another factor to consider here.

813
00:47:02,560 --> 00:47:05,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, well does that do it for this

814
00:47:05,840 --> 00:47:08,760
Speaker 3: exploration of caves. I'm sure we'll be back in the future.

815
00:47:09,160 --> 00:47:11,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's all I mean, we've covered caves in the past. Yeah,

816
00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:14,160
Speaker 2: we'll be back in the future. And there are a

817
00:47:14,239 --> 00:47:18,279
Speaker 2: number of fascinating cave organisms that we didn't cover in

818
00:47:18,320 --> 00:47:20,759
Speaker 2: these episodes. And if you have favorites right in, we'd

819
00:47:20,760 --> 00:47:23,120
Speaker 2: love to hear from you, because we could always venture

820
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:25,359
Speaker 2: back into the caves. You know, we don't reside there

821
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:27,799
Speaker 2: all the time, but we go in from time to

822
00:47:27,840 --> 00:47:32,760
Speaker 2: time in order to discuss something interesting. All right, as usual,

823
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:34,439
Speaker 2: we'll just remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind

824
00:47:34,480 --> 00:47:37,360
Speaker 2: is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes

825
00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:40,840
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826
00:47:41,200 --> 00:47:43,839
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827
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828
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00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:54,480
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830
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831
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834
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846
00:48:37,719 --> 00:48:41,600
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847
00:48:42,040 --> 00:48:43,600
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848
00:48:43,640 --> 00:48:46,120
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849
00:48:46,120 --> 00:48:48,120
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850
00:48:48,239 --> 00:48:50,919
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851
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