Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with the
Speaker 3: fourth and final part of our series on cave biology
Speaker 3: and cave environments. If you haven't listened to the other
Speaker 3: parts already, this will probably be a richer experience if
Speaker 3: you go back and check those out first. In the
Speaker 3: previous parts, we talked about some of the common characteristics
Speaker 3: of cave environments, especially as they pertain to the life
Speaker 3: forms that might inhabit caves. We talked about the different
Speaker 3: types of organisms you find in caves, the ones that
Speaker 3: are fully cave adapted versus the ones that are only visitors.
Speaker 3: We talked about cave adapted organisms such as the blind
Speaker 3: Mexican cavefish also known as the Mexican tetra, the om
Speaker 3: which is a type of cave salamander found the dynark alps.
Speaker 3: We talked about bat guano. We talked about snakes that
Speaker 3: hiding in caves and attack bats as they come and go.
Speaker 3: We got into a lot of great stuff, and today
Speaker 3: we're here to round out the series.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with a lot of Like a lot of our
Speaker 2: multi part episodes, it's kind of like the first episode
Speaker 2: is kind of like a lot of the initial information
Speaker 2: you need, and then the second episode this is where
Speaker 2: you find some of the core stuff that attracted us
Speaker 2: to the topic to begin with Part three we kind
Speaker 2: of like fill in with a little more data some
Speaker 2: other interesting entries in said series in the fourth episode
Speaker 2: or whatever the final episode happens to be. Generally, that's
Speaker 2: where it's like, what's left, what's the thing that came
Speaker 2: up in our research that we didn't know we were
Speaker 2: going to be excited about or or or in some cases,
Speaker 2: maybe what's the weird tangential connection that also came up
Speaker 2: or we found ourselves drifting into the in our journey. Oh,
Speaker 2: I think that's a good way to characterize it. So
Speaker 2: what have you got, Rob Well? I I mentioned this earlier.
Speaker 2: I forget which of the earlier episodes, but I mentioned
Speaker 2: the extinct cave bear in Passing, and I would just
Speaker 2: kind of I kept touching back in on the subject
Speaker 2: as we were working on the other episodes, and finally
Speaker 2: I was like, Yeah, we need to go in a
Speaker 2: little deeper and talk about what is ultimately like a
Speaker 2: really fascinating organism. There have been disagreements and mysteries regarding it,
Speaker 2: and it is an organism that, while no longer with us,
Speaker 2: does overlap with our ancestors. You know, it was an
Speaker 2: ice age creature. I included here for you, Joe, a
Speaker 2: reconstruction and image of what one of these bears would
Speaker 2: have looked like potentially, And in a bit I'll get
Speaker 2: into like what are some of the main anatomical features.
Speaker 2: But just looking at you can tell this is a
Speaker 2: very huge bear. It doesn't look that different from say,
Speaker 2: like a large, you know, grizzly bear, brown bear of
Speaker 2: some sort. Coloration is brownish, but one might notice that
Speaker 2: the head is enormous, has a much bigger head than
Speaker 2: one might expect, certainly on an extant bear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks a lot like a grizzly. Though I'm
Speaker 3: no bear expert, it does appear to me in this
Speaker 3: reconstruction to have a somewhat shorter snout and the sort
Speaker 3: of boxier.
Speaker 2: Head boxier and I'm to understand would have been would
Speaker 2: have would have appeared wider as well. So we're talking
Speaker 2: about Ursus Spilaeus. It's a member of the Ursus genus
Speaker 2: alongside the brown bear, which includes the grizzly subspecies, among others,
Speaker 2: the polar bear, the American black bear, and the Asian
Speaker 2: black bear. That means it's naturally a member of the
Speaker 2: larger Ursudae family, which also includes the likes of giant pandas,
Speaker 2: short face bears, and others.
Speaker 3: Oh I didn't realize pandas were technically in that family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like one of the interesting things about pandas
Speaker 2: is that pandas are herbivores for the moment part, but
Speaker 2: they still have a carnivores digestive system, and they still
Speaker 2: have like carnivore jeanes, So they're pretty fascinating in their
Speaker 2: own right. You know, it's easy to overlook how interesting
Speaker 2: pandas are, especially if you go to a zoo and
Speaker 2: you see one in captivity that is probably not doing
Speaker 2: much other than sleeping or eating bamboo.
Speaker 3: The last time I went to a zoo, the thing
Speaker 3: I saw that filled me with the most joy was
Speaker 3: actually vicarious joy through a panda. When I saw the
Speaker 3: feeders through some new bamboo into the enclosure, and the
Speaker 3: panda went up to the pile of bamboo and literally
Speaker 3: just flopped in it. Just flopped down in its food like, ah,
Speaker 3: give it to me.
Speaker 2: It is literally their favorite thing, Yeah, rolling around in it.
Speaker 2: More on this connection to the panda in in a
Speaker 2: minute here, but yeah, the cave bear when extinct. I
Speaker 2: do want to highlight that the exact timing for this
Speaker 2: depends on exactly what sources and what evidence you're looking at.
Speaker 2: I've seen between twenty eight twenty seven thousand years ago
Speaker 2: during the last glacial maximum. I've seen twenty four thousand
Speaker 2: years ago, and in some sources. Some of the older sources,
Speaker 2: you also see fifteen thousand years ago cited as an
Speaker 2: extinction point, but I believe an earlier point in twenty eight,
Speaker 2: twenty seven, maybe twenty four is generally favored by scientists today.
Speaker 2: That's generally the range, the broader range in which I'm
Speaker 2: tending to see the numbers and the sources I was
Speaker 2: looking at. And the interesting thing about the cave bear, too,
Speaker 2: is that this animal is a recent enough denizen of
Speaker 2: the planet that we have been able to study its
Speaker 2: soft tissue, in addition to its bones and its actual
Speaker 2: you know, we were able to study like the chemical
Speaker 2: composition of its bones. There was even a frozen specimen
Speaker 2: discovered in twenty twenty, I believe, and we've been able
Speaker 2: to sequence its genome, so we were able to learn
Speaker 2: a fair amount about what they were and what they did,
Speaker 2: though certain mysteries remain about, you know, their exact lifestyles,
Speaker 2: their interactions with other organisms and so forth. Well, let's
Speaker 2: come back to the cave theme, right, because that's the
Speaker 2: umbrella on which we're just under which we're discussing the
Speaker 2: cave bear. Here. We're of course, not talking about an
Speaker 2: obligate cave dweller. This is not a blind, hairless bear
Speaker 2: living in the depths, as I'm suddenly realizing. As interesting
Speaker 2: as that might be, I'm assuming some fantasy weaver has
Speaker 2: done something like that before. But now this would have
Speaker 2: had at best been a troglophilic creature.
Speaker 3: Okay, so the troglophilic creature enjoys visiting caves. It may
Speaker 3: visit caves for a number of reasons, but it doesn't
Speaker 3: live there permanently, and it's not biologically adapted to full
Speaker 3: time life in the caves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like it's not just hanging out in there all
Speaker 2: the time, eating bats or anything. But you know, the
Speaker 2: cave moniker can be confusing with a lot of these species,
Speaker 2: because of course we speak of cave men either in
Speaker 2: terms of prehistoric Homo sapiens or Neanderthals, though even with
Speaker 2: the latter, who certainly did utilize cave environments as did humans,
Speaker 2: they used open air sites for various activities as well,
Speaker 2: it seems, so it's not like they just lived in
Speaker 2: caves or or and they're certainly not creatures that were
Speaker 2: obligate cave dwellers. Plus, the cave moniker sometimes has as
Speaker 2: much to do, if not more, to do with the
Speaker 2: places where we've discovered the remains, because, as we've touched
Speaker 2: on before, I think in this series and probably in general,
Speaker 2: like caves are a great place for remains to be preserved.
Speaker 2: To some degree. I saw a paper that was quoting
Speaker 2: an expert on cave bears. It was like the bears
Speaker 2: slept in caves and they had the good fortune to
Speaker 2: die in them, something to that effect. You know, they're like,
Speaker 2: fortunately for us, they died in caves a lot, and
Speaker 2: so we have a lot of remains to look at.
Speaker 2: But anyway, just because we have come to refer to
Speaker 2: a creature as a cave animal, it doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 2: that it lived in caves. The main example of this
Speaker 2: era would be the cave lion or Panthera spileea, also
Speaker 2: known as the step lion, which is now understood to
Speaker 2: have largely lived in open areas, possibly woodlands. But we
Speaker 2: know them a lot of We know a lot about
Speaker 2: them from skeletal remains found in caves, thus cave lions.
Speaker 3: But it's not thought that that's where they spent a
Speaker 3: huge amount of their time. It's more just like we
Speaker 3: happened to have gotten some remains from caves.
Speaker 2: That's right, yeah, I mean their remains found in caves
Speaker 2: are apparently best understood as on one hand, perhaps the
Speaker 2: accumulations or middens of extinct cave hyenas. These this was
Speaker 2: all This is also known as the ice age spotted
Speaker 2: hyena that would have scavenged carcasses and brought them back
Speaker 2: to the caves where they lived, or at least the
Speaker 2: cave openings where they live. These would have been. This
Speaker 2: is an example of something that did live in caves
Speaker 2: based on our current understanding, and so they would have hoarded, scavenged,
Speaker 2: and killed prey in such places while also competing apparently
Speaker 2: with Neanderthals for some of the same cave environments.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting.
Speaker 2: But back to the cave lion. It is also thought
Speaker 2: that they might have ventured into caves during the winter,
Speaker 2: especially in search of hibernating bears that might in some
Speaker 2: cases be easier to pick off, especially if they were
Speaker 2: desperate for the food. And they also may have periodically
Speaker 2: entered caves in order to steal food away from cave hyenas,
Speaker 2: though to be sure, it seems like they largely preyed
Speaker 2: on larger wild herbivores like the wild horse and the bison.
Speaker 2: Either way, cave lions wound up in caves, and cave
Speaker 2: environments helped preserve their bones for future excavation by humans, who,
Speaker 2: at least at first were like, oh, this is a
Speaker 2: cave line. We found it in a cave.
Speaker 3: But I assume you're saying that researchers do not believe
Speaker 3: the same kind of naming error was made with cave bears.
Speaker 3: The cave bears really do seem largely involved with caves.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's the consensus. So you know, what were
Speaker 2: cave bears. We talked a little bit about what they
Speaker 2: look like already. They were very large bears comparable to
Speaker 2: or even larger than any of the bears we know today,
Speaker 2: even the polar bears and Kodiak bears, which depending on
Speaker 2: who you're talking to, these are kind of like the
Speaker 2: two extant species of bears that are often held up
Speaker 2: as the biggest. So male cave bears could range and weight.
Speaker 2: One estimate I saw was three fifty to six hundred
Speaker 2: kilograms or seven hundred and seventy to three hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty pounds. I've also seen like the four hundred to
Speaker 2: one thousand kilogram estimate, about eight hundred and eighty to
Speaker 2: twenty two hundred pounds. Again, it's going to vary. The
Speaker 2: males were bigger than the females and so forth. But
Speaker 2: anyway you cut it, big bears, big heavy bears. Their
Speaker 2: weight were have fluctuated depending on you know, where they
Speaker 2: were seasonally, where their diet was, what the overall climate
Speaker 2: happened to be. But yes, these were very large bears.
Speaker 2: And therefore, as you can imagine, not just any cave
Speaker 2: is going to do. Cave has to be large enough
Speaker 2: to hold a bear. Now, speaking of these caves, I
Speaker 2: was reading about them a little bit. I was looking
Speaker 2: a few different sources. But I've had this book on
Speaker 2: my shelf for years and I hadn't really cracked it open.
Speaker 2: But it's by one wolf Dee Storal titled Bear Myth,
Speaker 2: Animal and Icon. This author, by the way, I think
Speaker 2: he's generally more considered an anthropologist and an ethnobotanist, and
Speaker 2: I'm to understand his views have ventured into some areas
Speaker 2: that may be considered more esoteric and even controversial, but
Speaker 2: I don't think any of that applies to this work. Okay, Anyway,
Speaker 2: the author here points to another connection who is kind
Speaker 2: of similar to something we discussed I believe in the
Speaker 2: last episode with the Ohm, a connection between an actual
Speaker 2: cave organism and traditions concerning the dragon. There's a cave
Speaker 2: in Austria known as Drachenhole or Dragon's Hole, so named
Speaker 2: because the copious amounts of cave bear bones in there
Speaker 2: were apparently it interpreted during the Middle Ages as the
Speaker 2: bones of dragons. The cave is located near a place
Speaker 2: called mix Nits and is associated with the legend of
Speaker 2: the dragon Slayer of mixed Nits. I was looking around,
Speaker 2: I couldn't find what felt like a definitive analysis or
Speaker 2: retelling of this legend. But I saw some ride ups
Speaker 2: where it seems like it's, you know, you, on one level,
Speaker 2: your typical tale of a dragon slayer. But it did
Speaker 2: seem based on the one telling I found that the
Speaker 2: dragon slayer here uses an ingenious trap rather than overt
Speaker 2: combat to kill the dragon. Like it has to do
Speaker 2: with like a sharpened spikes and left out to gouge
Speaker 2: into the dragon's flesh and then it goes off and dies.
Speaker 2: That sort of thing, you know, kind of your predator
Speaker 2: model of overcoming your foe.
Speaker 3: Oh that's my kind of tale. I always love a
Speaker 3: monster trap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're probably wondering, Okay, this cave is full
Speaker 2: of cave bare bones. How many bones were talking about?
Speaker 2: You know, we're talking about like two or three individuals,
Speaker 2: maybe a dozen individuals, you know, maybe a dusty old
Speaker 2: set of cave bones near one corner, a skull in
Speaker 2: the other. No, no, no, we're talking about the bones
Speaker 2: of an estimated thirty thousand cave bears. Thirty thousand.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Other bones were apparently also found in this particular cave,
Speaker 2: including those those of the cave line apparently, but we're
Speaker 2: mostly talking about cave bears here and in quite an abundance.
Speaker 3: You have to think how long they would have been
Speaker 3: accumulating there for. That's unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like we would be dealing with a situation
Speaker 2: here where the bears lived in these caves, hibernated in
Speaker 2: these caves, and died in these caves for thousands and
Speaker 2: thousands of years. So like, recent genetic data apparently indicates
Speaker 2: that cave beer populations in Europe, specifically along the Danube
Speaker 2: River were stable for a good one hundred thousand years
Speaker 2: or more. So, yeah, you're dealing with lots of bears
Speaker 2: living and dying in these locations.
Speaker 3: That is incredible.
Speaker 2: Now, the caves, specifically this Austrian cave, the system was
Speaker 2: apparently excavated during the nineteenth century because the soil found
Speaker 2: inside of these caves is rich, was rich in bones
Speaker 2: and bear manure that it accumulated over these vast periods
Speaker 2: of time, and they proved usable as phosphate fertilizer, and
Speaker 2: there was a shortage during this time period. Storal rites
Speaker 2: that sixty trains with fifty cars each were filled with
Speaker 2: the stuff and also points out that a cave near Velberg, Germany,
Speaker 2: was also excavated for its cave bear riches during this
Speaker 2: time period. Now, these aren't the only two European caves
Speaker 2: that there's evidence of a lot of cave bear activity.
Speaker 2: I read in passing examples of caves and for instance
Speaker 2: Spain and Romania that also provided a great deal of
Speaker 2: cave bear remains. Now speaking to their death in these caves,
Speaker 2: because you know, it's one thing to sleep in the cave,
Speaker 2: and there is evidence we'll get to that in a second.
Speaker 2: There is evidence already of like the bears having lived
Speaker 2: in and slept in the caves, but they also died there.
Speaker 2: And I've read that it's thought that cave bears may
Speaker 2: have frequently died during hibernation, especially during particularly trying time periods,
Speaker 2: which we'll get to here, because if an individual couldn't
Speaker 2: put on enough weight heading into winter and or environmental
Speaker 2: conditions were particularly dire, they just might not emerge again
Speaker 2: in the spring. Plus we already mentioned that in some
Speaker 2: cases you might have predators venturing into those caves to
Speaker 2: try and find an easy bear to pick off. And
Speaker 2: it's any easy mathematics to imagine, like, okay, if you
Speaker 2: have a weakened bear in a hibernation state, one that
Speaker 2: might not be surviving the winter anyway, Like that's ideal
Speaker 2: biomass to pick off. Now. I think everyone's familiar enough
Speaker 2: with the fat bear week craze these days to know, yeah,
Speaker 2: that bears have to pack it on, and we find
Speaker 2: some sport and amusement in figuring out, like which bears
Speaker 2: are packing on the most and what do extant bears
Speaker 2: eat in order to go into hibernation, While the answer
Speaker 2: is what do you got? They're omnivores, anything is on
Speaker 2: the table, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the ones that we're familiar
Speaker 3: with are these ones photographed in Alaska. From what I understand,
Speaker 3: they're probably going to be eating a lot of like
Speaker 3: river fish, like salmon.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. The cave bears, though, this would have been
Speaker 2: a different matter. So research has differed at different times
Speaker 2: on whether the bears were strictly herbivores or if they
Speaker 2: were mostly herbivores. At the very least, they seem to
Speaker 2: have depended far more on the consumption of plant matter
Speaker 2: than pretty much any extent bear, with the obvious exception
Speaker 2: of the giant panda. These cave bears would have gone
Speaker 2: out and eaten a lot of vegetation, and we see
Speaker 2: that reflected in like they're just their anatomy. So I
Speaker 2: was looking at the work of Alejandro Perez Ramos at
Speaker 2: the University of Malaga in Spain. This would have been
Speaker 2: a twenty twenty study. The researcher here points out that
Speaker 2: the cave bears were built in such a way. Their
Speaker 2: skulls were built in such a way that they could
Speaker 2: only chew with their back teeth. So extent bears, the
Speaker 2: bears we have today can chew with the front as
Speaker 2: well as the back, and therefore have the correct dental
Speaker 2: build to eat vegetation or meat, switching back and forth
Speaker 2: between the two depending on what's available. You know. So
Speaker 2: if there are a lot of fish on hand, bam,
Speaker 2: the bear bears like grizzlies and so forth, they're good
Speaker 2: to go, get in there and eat that meat. Dead whale. Likewise,
Speaker 2: get in there scaving some of that meat. Oh what's this?
Speaker 2: You only have berries? Or oh somebody left the door
Speaker 2: open to their house. You know, they can make do
Speaker 2: with what's available, but again not the case with bears.
Speaker 2: A chemical analysis of cave bear bones has also revealed
Speaker 2: a mostly plant based diet. So the cave bear had
Speaker 2: evolved to a point at which there was no going
Speaker 2: back in a swift manner anyway, such as the demands
Speaker 2: brought on by sudden changes in climate, and this would
Speaker 2: seem to be a major factor in their extinction, if
Speaker 2: not the major factor in their extinction. And this seems
Speaker 2: to be the answer that most of the current research
Speaker 2: is pointing to. But it also reveals some other interesting
Speaker 2: things about them, you know, the build of their skull here,
Speaker 2: because they also had much larger sinuses in exchange for
Speaker 2: that lack of robust front teeth. And this is interesting
Speaker 2: especially because extant bears are already famous super smellers. I
Speaker 2: think if you've ever ventured into bear territory, you have
Speaker 2: been warned. You know, don't leave, say, chapstick in your car,
Speaker 2: because a bear can smell that, and a bear will
Speaker 2: want to come see what kind of sweet, delicious fruity
Speaker 2: food you have hidden away inside of your automobile. Oh.
Speaker 3: I just imagining the bears going wild over like the
Speaker 3: synthetic kinds of fruity flavors that you get in all
Speaker 3: these products, Like what is funberry? I must discover exactly?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's This is again with something we've
Speaker 2: touched on already in this series. You know, like how
Speaker 2: how difficult or impossible it is for human beings to
Speaker 2: really put themselves in the sense world of another organism
Speaker 2: that has, you know, a sense array different from our own.
Speaker 2: And smell is another one of those areas. So take,
Speaker 2: for instance, a bloodhound, a canine. Canines in general, but
Speaker 2: specifically something like a bloodhound is already pretty famous for
Speaker 2: being a super smeller. That is, they're just dogs in general.
Speaker 2: They're like their sense of smell is just a different
Speaker 2: part of their being, you know. You see that when
Speaker 2: you see a dog like riding around with its human
Speaker 2: in a vehicle and it has its head out the window, right,
Speaker 2: it's like it's like unlike all the psychedelics at that moment.
Speaker 2: And yet I've seen it estimated that a bear, and
Speaker 2: again not a cave bear, just bears in general, bears
Speaker 2: we have today, I've read that their sense of smell
Speaker 2: is seven times better than a bloodhound, and that would
Speaker 2: mean that their sense of smell is thousands of times
Speaker 2: more powerful than a human beings. And yet the cave
Speaker 2: bear likely had an even keener sense of smell. If
Speaker 2: we can even imagine such a thing, likely great hearing
Speaker 2: as well, but on the other hand, reduced eye sight
Speaker 2: and a smaller brain that you might than you might
Speaker 2: expect with such a large head. And I'm suspecting here
Speaker 2: that you know that would also have to do with
Speaker 2: its mode of life at this point in its evolution,
Speaker 2: Like it it's just going around eating as much vegetation
Speaker 2: as it can, sifting through these various sources of vegetation,
Speaker 2: but maybe not having to be as clever and opportunistic
Speaker 2: as a true omnivore would be. But anyway, all this
Speaker 2: would seem to be wound up in their extinction as well,
Speaker 2: because somewhere around twenty four thousand years ago, around the
Speaker 2: time when their age ended, the age of the cave
Speaker 2: bear comes to an end, temperatures plummeted. This would have
Speaker 2: been the last glacial maximum period. Cooler tempts meant less
Speaker 2: time and less plant matter to bulk up on before
Speaker 2: going into hibernation, so the cave bears likely couldn't keep up.
Speaker 2: They couldn't bulk up, and again could not adjust their
Speaker 2: diet like other bear species. So the bear species that
Speaker 2: survived these cold times were the ones that could diversify
Speaker 2: that could go in more on the meat perhaps than
Speaker 2: they had been and in many cases, yeah, this would
Speaker 2: mean that you would have cave bears crawling into their
Speaker 2: caves to hibernate with or without young and simply never
Speaker 2: getting back up again. I alluded to this earlier, but yeah,
Speaker 2: in the caves that they called home, we do have
Speaker 2: more than just their bones to speak of them. So they,
Speaker 2: like a lot of animals, they ended up leaving claw
Speaker 2: marks on the walls in some cases, and they also
Speaker 2: dug shallow depressions in the floor, likely as places to sleep,
Speaker 2: and you can find images of these from various European
Speaker 2: cave systems. You know, they're not especially flashy, but it's
Speaker 2: this sort of large bear shaped indention in the ground
Speaker 2: and many of these remained to this day, and some
Speaker 2: of those claw marks, by the way, would later be
Speaker 2: incorporated into the cave art of Homo sapiens.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, Like you mean like that humans made their
Speaker 3: art around pre existing claw marks in the walls and
Speaker 3: like made that part of the art.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Like I believe that's the case with some
Speaker 2: of the art in France's Chauvet caves, where you have
Speaker 2: depictions of cave bears, but also evidence of cave bears,
Speaker 2: including claw marks. Now, speaking of humans, there, of course,
Speaker 2: there's long been some mystery over exactly what sort of
Speaker 2: relationships the Anderthals and Homo sapiens had with the cave bears.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're humans. We can't help it. We find
Speaker 2: out that we were alive at all during the same
Speaker 2: time period, We're like, what about us? How do we
Speaker 2: factor into this this fascinating and majestic scenario. What were
Speaker 2: we doing? And did we ride them? Did we ride them?
Speaker 2: Did we worship them? Yeah, there was this much popularized
Speaker 2: idea that early humans worshiped cave bears, and it does
Speaker 2: seem like there's some potential evidence for this, but apparently
Speaker 2: this has long been disputed and sort of largely pushed
Speaker 2: out of the way. This would have been the basis
Speaker 2: for fictional works like the novel Clan of the Cave Bear,
Speaker 2: but there's still various mysteries along these lines. You know,
Speaker 2: they will never know one hundred percent what our ancient
Speaker 2: ancient ancestors really thought about these creatures. And it's also
Speaker 2: easy to simplify what we thought about them that like, oh,
Speaker 2: did we worship them? Or did we eat them or
Speaker 2: did we run from them? And of course, you know,
Speaker 2: even our prehistoric ancestors I think would have had the
Speaker 2: mental complexity to do all three, depending on where you
Speaker 2: are in a given day and so forth.
Speaker 3: I seem to I think it's been years now, but
Speaker 3: I have a memory of coming across some interesting claims
Speaker 3: on the Internet about about, like, you know, prehistoric humans
Speaker 3: and their specific beliefs regarding bears, and I was like,
Speaker 3: what's the source of this, Like what's the evidence for it?
Speaker 3: And I could never actually track it down, Like it
Speaker 3: seems like there's just a lot of claims floating around
Speaker 3: on the internet about prehistoric humans and bears.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess on one level, it's like
Speaker 2: we do acknowledge the fact that human, ancient humans and
Speaker 2: prehistoric humans, they acknowledged these large creatures in their natural world. Yea,
Speaker 2: they had relationships with various creatures in their natural world,
Speaker 2: and they seem to have superstitious and or mythological ideas
Speaker 2: about them. We talked about some of the earliest images
Speaker 2: and past episodes of the show where these people would
Speaker 2: combine human and animal imagery into a single entity. Though
Speaker 2: exactly what is meant by that, We're not sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this actually came up in a listener mail I
Speaker 3: did while you were out recently, a listener wrote in
Speaker 3: about our episode on the Loewenmine this, you know, this
Speaker 3: carving that has been interpreted as depicting a sort of
Speaker 3: a human body with the lion's head. Though there's some
Speaker 3: dispute about whether that's the correct interpretation of what it's
Speaker 3: supposed to be, but that seems like a common interpretation
Speaker 3: and so yeah, this raised these interesting questions about like,
Speaker 3: when did we start forming ideas about creatures that did
Speaker 3: not exist in nature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is hard for us to figure out the
Speaker 2: exact artistic intent. For example, going back to the Chouve
Speaker 2: Cave in France, this is a cave that contains human
Speaker 2: illustrations of cave bears among other animals, copious amounts of
Speaker 2: cave bear bones, cave bear claw marks on the walls.
Speaker 2: It has floor depressions made by the bears. But one
Speaker 2: chamber here also apparently has a single cave bear skull
Speaker 2: that seemed to have been placed on a stone slab
Speaker 2: in the center of the chamber. But it's impossible to
Speaker 2: say why this is the case. Were they worshiping the
Speaker 2: bear or a particular bear. Was it just a curiosity,
Speaker 2: was it some form of superstition or what? Did it
Speaker 2: represent some tangible connection between these people and their way
Speaker 2: of life to the bear, or was it something more abstract. Now,
Speaker 2: apparently we do know from some skeletal evidence this would
Speaker 2: be in rare cases, some evidence of butchery. And also
Speaker 2: there may have been another example that was more directly
Speaker 2: tied to some sort of like hunting weapon, but at
Speaker 2: least butchery evidence that shows that humans at least sometimes
Speaker 2: hunted or killed, or at least butchered cave bears, but
Speaker 2: is pointed out in Andrew Curry's twenty ten Fate of
Speaker 2: the Cave Bear article ver smithsonian dot com, citing anthropologist
Speaker 2: Eric Trinkhaus, it's unlikely that human hunting impacted the cave
Speaker 2: bear's existence or led to its extinction. Trenkyles points out
Speaker 2: faced many lethal threats during this time, and the cave bear,
Speaker 2: if provoked, was certainly one of them. I mean, just
Speaker 2: because it doesn't really eat meat doesn't mean that an
Speaker 2: animal this big and this ferocious could not kill you.
Speaker 2: So it's unlikely, according to this expert, that humans tangled
Speaker 2: with it all that much. But they might have sometimes
Speaker 2: gone after hibernating bears or hunted them in other isolated
Speaker 2: events for one reason or another. So it happened, but
Speaker 2: probably not all that often. Still there's a Again, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of room for some level of supernatural consideration
Speaker 2: of the cave bear. Going back to the work of
Speaker 2: a Wolf Storel in his book, he writes that surely quote,
Speaker 2: any animal that can go in and out of the
Speaker 2: womb of the Great Goddess without incident is surely all
Speaker 2: a guardian of fertility and birth. Again, he's predominantly an
Speaker 2: anthropologist and athnobotanist, So this is the book in its entirety,
Speaker 2: is more about how we have thought about bears throughout history,
Speaker 2: even getting into at least short entries on ewoks and
Speaker 2: Fazzy Bear later on. But particularly he points to other
Speaker 2: traditions along these lines of a female bear shaman character
Speaker 2: a lady of the caves, and also reflects on, you know,
Speaker 2: up to traditions of the of the ancient Greek goddess Artemis,
Speaker 2: whose domain includes both the hunt and childbirth and is
Speaker 2: also associated with bears. Interesting, but of course we just
Speaker 2: get increasingly into the domain of speculation in this Yeah, again,
Speaker 2: I think most experts kind of dismiss the notion that
Speaker 2: that early Homo sapiens worshiped the cave bear to any
Speaker 2: significant degree.
Speaker 3: By dismissed, I assume you mean not that they rule
Speaker 3: it out, but they just say we don't have super
Speaker 3: strong evidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's what I get from it, because I
Speaker 2: think it would be silly to say, you know, our
Speaker 2: ancestors didn't notice these things at all, or they didn't
Speaker 2: care about like it seems like there's room for there
Speaker 2: to be that connection. But do we have the evidence
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just one of those mysteries. There's a lot
Speaker 3: about the culture of prehistoric humans that's difficult to know
Speaker 3: based on the evidence we have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, real quick in passing before we move on to
Speaker 2: more important matters, I will say that Storel has one entry,
Speaker 2: actually a whole page in the book on gummy bears
Speaker 2: also apparently known as dancing bears, which apparently have Germanic
Speaker 2: origins going back to nineteen twenty two and are quote
Speaker 2: now part of the German way of life. Okay, he
Speaker 2: doesn't get into this issue in this twenty eighteen book,
Speaker 2: but I wonder what he would make of the increasing
Speaker 2: use of bear shaped gummies as a delivery system for
Speaker 2: CBD and cannabis and cannabis related products. And and even
Speaker 2: before this, I think, going back in the nineties, they
Speaker 2: were being used in some cases to deliver vitamins. And
Speaker 2: today you can get all manner of supplements in them,
Speaker 2: So like the dancing bear kind of becomes this shumnistic item.
Speaker 2: Perhaps once more, you know that's funny, but no real
Speaker 2: connection to the cave bear there?
Speaker 3: Sorry, what would you make Also about the equivalency of
Speaker 3: worms there and the fact that the gummy worms are
Speaker 3: typically larger than the bears. That suggests something about Shai lude.
Speaker 2: To me, Ah, yes, solid point. For some reason, I've
Speaker 2: gotten to the point where I accept that a bear
Speaker 2: shaped gummy is an appropriate shape for some sort of
Speaker 2: chemical delivery system as opposed to some of the other shapes.
Speaker 2: Like for some reason, a worm is too silly for me,
Speaker 2: Like it just seems like, why what are you doing?
Speaker 2: It's ridiculous, irresponsible. Kids eat candy worms, but bears bears?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Like, are we at the point where
Speaker 2: I just you know, we don't I guess we don't
Speaker 2: go through a lot of gummy bears. But it just
Speaker 2: it's just like I would be suspicions of a gummy bear.
Speaker 2: I'd be like, be careful, you don't know what's in
Speaker 2: that bear.
Speaker 3: But a pure gummy worm, you're saying you're more likely
Speaker 3: to trust that.
Speaker 2: I guess, But now I'm second guessing myself. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm just suspicious of the whole gummy genre.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I've got one more thing I want to
Speaker 3: talk about. So we've discussed the ways that animals adapt
Speaker 3: to cave environments, but I wanted to talk about a
Speaker 3: fascinating idea I came across in a spielology paper, which is,
Speaker 3: what if some of the natural holes and recessions in
Speaker 3: rock that we call caves were actually formed in part
Speaker 3: not by standard inorganic processes like you know, lava tube
Speaker 3: solidification in volcanic rock or the dissolution of limestone by water.
Speaker 3: Instead were formed in part by animals essentially eating their
Speaker 3: way through the rock. Let's look at a paper. So
Speaker 3: my source here is by Charles A. Lundquist and William W.
Speaker 3: Varnado Junior, called salt Ingestion Caves, published in the International
Speaker 3: Journal of Spielology in the year two thousand and six,
Speaker 3: So the authors kick things off by pointing out that,
Speaker 3: of course animals need salt to survive. It is a
Speaker 3: basic requirement in the body. Regular table salt is known
Speaker 3: chemically as sodium chloride, and when we ingest it, our
Speaker 3: bodies use both the sodium ions and the chloride ions
Speaker 3: from that molecule for a number of functions. Salt is
Speaker 3: necessary for our muscles to function properly, like we need
Speaker 3: sodium so muscles can contract and relax. It's used in
Speaker 3: our nervous systems to conduct impulses. It's used for all
Speaker 3: kinds of things throughout the body, and most humans get
Speaker 3: way more of it than we need because we add
Speaker 3: some plemental salt to our food for taste.
Speaker 2: But of course.
Speaker 3: Wild animals don't have the kind of ready access to
Speaker 3: supplemental salt that we do. In the wild, carnivores can
Speaker 3: usually get the salt they need by eating the flesh
Speaker 3: of other animals, which naturally contains a good bit of it,
Speaker 3: but for herbivores, getting enough salt can be difficult. The
Speaker 3: sodium content of most terrestrial plants is quite low, and
Speaker 3: since ancient times, humans have noticed that animals, especially herbivores,
Speaker 3: sometimes gather at what are called salt licks, or more broadly,
Speaker 3: mineral licks, places where there are rocks or soils that
Speaker 3: animals can consume in some way to supplement the mineral
Speaker 3: content of their diet, including minerals such as sodium salt.
Speaker 3: This can include a range of behaviors in the wild,
Speaker 3: like licking salty rocks on a mountainside, eating exposed clays
Speaker 3: or other sediments that have a desirable mineral content. And
Speaker 3: because herbivores are drawn to these salty rocks and soils,
Speaker 3: hunters have long known about them as good places to
Speaker 3: find game. So what does this have to do with caves? Well,
Speaker 3: the author's right quote large vertebrate herbivores when they find
Speaker 3: a salt bearing layer of rock in a cliff face
Speaker 3: can over generations produce sizeable voids where they have removed
Speaker 3: and consumed salty rock. These cavities that humans can enter
Speaker 3: can have the characteristics of a cave as defined locally.
Speaker 3: So that last sentence meaning that you know whatever people
Speaker 3: call a cave, you know that varies from place to place,
Speaker 3: but usually it means like a void in the rock,
Speaker 3: that's large enough for a person to go into to enter,
Speaker 3: and those types of voids can indeed be created by
Speaker 3: animals removing the rock by eating it.
Speaker 2: Wow, So you're saying that in some cases a cave
Speaker 2: is naturally formed over geologic time by rainwater and so forth.
Speaker 2: Times a deer just licks it until it's right a
Speaker 2: deer licked it into the side of a mountain.
Speaker 3: That appears to be the case according to these authors.
Speaker 3: So they look at several case studies in the paper.
Speaker 3: One is a site referenced in some literature about the
Speaker 3: Altai Mountains in Asia. The authors are talking about reports
Speaker 3: from surveys of the Altai Mountains, specifically of a mountain
Speaker 3: bearing shale formations near the confluence of the Kan River
Speaker 3: and the Charch River. Apparently, the shale here is very salty,
Speaker 3: and they quote a commentary by an author named Carl
Speaker 3: Friedrich von Ledebour from eighteen twenty six, who writes of
Speaker 3: the shale, quote, all livestock of the Kalmuks find this rock,
Speaker 3: which gives the mountain an ash gray appearance, very desirable
Speaker 3: and consume it in not small amounts, so that one
Speaker 3: not infrequently finds grottos built in this way. Of course,
Speaker 3: a grotto refers to a small cave, and this author
Speaker 3: mentions that both domestic and wild animals come to this
Speaker 3: mountain to eat the shale. Another example they mention is
Speaker 3: a place in the United States. It's called rock House Cave.
Speaker 3: It's a cave situated within the rock of a small
Speaker 3: bluff in the US state of Mississippi. They say that
Speaker 3: the entrance is roughly ten feet wide, but then the
Speaker 3: cave actually widens once you go inside. It roughly doubles
Speaker 3: in width. It's just about tall enough for an adult
Speaker 3: to stand up, and it reaches about fifteen feet deep
Speaker 3: into the bluff. And they say the surrounding rock is
Speaker 3: mostly what the authors characterize as a soft, fine grained sandstone.
Speaker 3: They say it is of the Kataboolah formation and it's
Speaker 3: got a significant amount of sodium chloride in it. The
Speaker 3: authors also say there's no evidence that water solution caused
Speaker 3: the formation of this cave, and instead it appears that
Speaker 3: it was caused by many generations of animals remove the
Speaker 3: walls by licking. They say there is a rough surface
Speaker 3: on the walls that seems to quite possibly have been
Speaker 3: created just by animals licking it away over time. They
Speaker 3: say it was probably first wild deer and possibly bison
Speaker 3: that opened this cave up, and then maybe cattle later.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: But the most amazing example they cite is one from
Speaker 3: eastern Africa. This so there's an extinct volcano on the
Speaker 3: border between Kenya and Uganda. This volcano is called Mount
Speaker 3: Elgon or Elganye. And on the side of this mountain
Speaker 3: there are what I've read described elsewhere as ballroom sized caves,
Speaker 3: large sizable caves that appear to have been at least
Speaker 3: in part excavated by elephants. Elephants inside caves, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: so there is some question about the role of the
Speaker 3: elephants in creating the caves, but there is no question
Speaker 3: that the cave that the elephants do into the caves
Speaker 3: and consume rocks, that has been directly observed. That's the
Speaker 3: thing that happens. So the most famous of the Mount
Speaker 3: Elgon caves is known as Katoomb Cave k I t
Speaker 3: u m and the authors propose that these caves were
Speaker 3: formed in part by water solution, but also in part
Speaker 3: because wild herbivores literally eat the rocks away and remove
Speaker 3: them from the caverns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is amazing. I have I've actually
Speaker 2: seen footage of this. I don't remember which elephant documentary
Speaker 2: I saw this in problem maybe more than one. Watched
Speaker 2: a lot of elephant documentaries at one point and my
Speaker 2: son's upbringing when he was super into elephants. But it's
Speaker 2: it is amazing to behold. And these are large caves,
Speaker 2: you know, starters elephants have to fit in them. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I think ballroom seems appropriate based on the footage as
Speaker 2: I remember it, because these look like the kind of
Speaker 2: caverns that you might have filmed like a B movie
Speaker 2: in or perhaps an episode of Star Trek took place in. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I can see that.
Speaker 3: Now. Elephants are not the only animals that go into
Speaker 3: these caves to eat, to consume parts of the walls
Speaker 3: and eat the rocks. Apparently, also buffaloes, antelopes, and sometimes
Speaker 3: monkeys have been observed to go into the caves and
Speaker 3: eat some of the some of the soft rocks that
Speaker 3: line the walls. The authors say specifically Katoomb Cave to
Speaker 3: give you a better idea about the size of one
Speaker 3: of the big caves here. They say that the rock
Speaker 3: face that the elephants generally go to get their minerals
Speaker 3: from is about one hundred and sixty meters into the
Speaker 3: mountain from the entrance, so that's a deep cave. And
Speaker 3: they say that what happens is the elephants go in
Speaker 3: and they usually loosen pieces of rock from the walls
Speaker 3: of the cave with their tusks, so they're like digging
Speaker 3: against the walls with their tusks. These pieces fall to
Speaker 3: the floor and then they pick up the pieces with
Speaker 3: their trunks and then they put the piece in their
Speaker 3: mouth and chew it up, crush it with their teeth. Now,
Speaker 3: what was not fully resolved at the time of this paper,
Speaker 3: and from what I can tell, has still not been
Speaker 3: fully resolved, is what are the relative contributions of the
Speaker 3: different processes to how large the caves are?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: Are the caves predominantly formed by inorganic solution and erosion
Speaker 3: of the rock by water flow and then supplemented is
Speaker 3: that excavation supplemented by elephants and other animals removing some
Speaker 3: amount of rock, Or are the elephants and other animals
Speaker 3: primarily responsible for hollowing out the caves? And there's just
Speaker 3: some solution by water going on, Also what role may
Speaker 3: have been played by human mining and other factors. So
Speaker 3: the authors look at several analyzes of this and they
Speaker 3: quote one researcher named Ian Redmond who did a study
Speaker 3: of the cave in nineteen eighty four. Redmond and did
Speaker 3: several months of field observations, watching the elephants and analyzing
Speaker 3: even the mineral content of their droppings. Redmond wrote, quote,
Speaker 3: the volume of Katoumb cave is on the order of
Speaker 3: one point three million gallons or about five million liters. If,
Speaker 3: for the sake of conservative argument, we suppose that elephant
Speaker 3: excavations averaged just one quart per week, it would have
Speaker 3: taken only one hundred thousand years for them to dig Katum.
Speaker 3: The theory of elephant spieleogenesis cave creation is entirely plausible.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, amazing to consider, the author is. Also they cite
Speaker 3: another study, this one by researchers named Donald McFarlane and
Speaker 3: Joyce Lundberg. This was from two thousand and four, where
Speaker 3: after field observations, these researchers suggested a multi step process
Speaker 3: for cave formation that would go like this. They summarize
Speaker 3: it as follows. So, first of all, there is a
Speaker 3: cliff that forms. There's like water flowing off of the mountain,
Speaker 3: they say, off of a cap rock layer, and it
Speaker 3: roads some material from underneath. Then after that they say
Speaker 3: that some more material clay sized material sediment is removed
Speaker 3: from the floor of the cave by groundwater sapping. And
Speaker 3: then they also say more mass is removed from the
Speaker 3: cave by animal excavation. And then at some point there
Speaker 3: are collapses within the cave. They write, quote collapse of
Speaker 3: overlying beds makes piles of broken material which are removed
Speaker 3: by action of water and animal geophagi rock eating. And
Speaker 3: then finally they say step four is repeat This whole
Speaker 3: process repeats over and over again. So they're saying that
Speaker 3: it's a combination of material being removed by water flow
Speaker 3: and then the cavern collapsing as material is removed and
Speaker 3: supporting walls are removed, and then animals also remove parts
Speaker 3: of the walls and remove some of the collapsed material
Speaker 3: from above, and it just keeps going on.
Speaker 2: Like that because those animals, they don't care about the
Speaker 2: structural integrity of the cave. They just want to get
Speaker 2: that salt, right. It's all they want is their fix. Now.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, the authors of this analysis, McFarlane and Lundberg, were
Speaker 3: unable to say what the relative masses of rock removed
Speaker 3: by water versus geophagi were, but they seem to believe
Speaker 3: that the amount removed by the animals was significant. And
Speaker 3: then coming back to the parent paper, the one by
Speaker 3: Lundquist and Varnido Junior, they bring up something that was
Speaker 3: interesting when thought about. When I was thinking about it,
Speaker 3: in parallel to our discussion of batguana, was a kind
Speaker 3: of alternative sunlight or base of the food chain in
Speaker 3: deeper limestone caves. Speaking of the Mount Elgun caves, the
Speaker 3: authors here note that quote a common feature in most
Speaker 3: of the larger caves is the quantity of dung deposited
Speaker 3: by beasts which have come to the caves from time
Speaker 3: immemorial to lick or otherwise consume the agglomerate walls. Traces
Speaker 3: of elephants using the caves are most common, and their
Speaker 3: tusk marks are clearly recognizable where they have gouged the rock.
Speaker 3: So actually a couple interesting parallels there. The connection to
Speaker 3: the seeing where the elephants with their tusks have like
Speaker 3: cut gashes in the rock in the walls of the
Speaker 3: cave is kind of like the marks on the cave
Speaker 3: walls left by the cave bears, but also all the poop,
Speaker 3: all the poop of all the visitors accumulating over the
Speaker 3: thousands of years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy, and you know all this also reminds
Speaker 2: me of episode we did a while back on giant sloths,
Speaker 2: a particular variety of giant sloth that would have dug
Speaker 2: itself kind of a burrow into a kind of like
Speaker 2: deep into burrow, creating eventually over time as they reuse
Speaker 2: these spaces a kind of tunnel in the earth.
Speaker 3: Funny, you should mention that because the fourth case study
Speaker 3: that the authors bring up in this paper is evidence
Speaker 3: related to what's called Mylodon Cave in Patagonia, and they
Speaker 3: say that it is possible that this is a case
Speaker 3: of cave formation by salt ingestion long ago, this time
Speaker 3: implicating extinct giant ground slots. This is fully speculative, but
Speaker 3: they do highlight this as a possibility, explaining where this
Speaker 3: cave came from.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: But to come back and conclude the look at the
Speaker 3: Mount Elgon caves. So they say, what we do know
Speaker 3: is that animals come to these caves to consume mineral
Speaker 3: laden soil and rock, so these caves could be thought
Speaker 3: of as massive salt licks or mineral licks. There are
Speaker 3: generally no permanent streams running out of the caves, so
Speaker 3: that that's not an option for removal of cave material
Speaker 3: by like permanent water passage. Some water does appear to
Speaker 3: run out of the caves during flooding events, but how
Speaker 3: much rock material is removed during these events in this
Speaker 3: way is uncertain, so we still in the end don't
Speaker 3: know the relation amounts. We don't know how much of
Speaker 3: the cave formation is due to water solution versus how
Speaker 3: much is due to animals eating the rock. But they
Speaker 3: think that both processes contribute, and their judgment in the
Speaker 3: end is that the contribution of the elephants is the
Speaker 3: primary process.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Either way, it's amazing to imagine elephants going into caves
Speaker 3: to eat the rocks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing. And you know, we shouldn't cast too
Speaker 2: much judgment. Like you mentioned earlier, humans very often don't
Speaker 2: have to worry about getting enough salt we eat at
Speaker 2: a restaurant. Once we get like a colossal salt bomb, right,
Speaker 2: we get more than enough salt. We get an unhealthy
Speaker 2: amount of salt ingested into our bodies. But if we
Speaker 2: didn't have those food sources, we might be out there
Speaker 2: looking the sides of mountains just like these various herbivores are.
Speaker 2: Assuming we also didn't eat copious amounts of meat on
Speaker 2: top of that, which is another factor to consider here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, well does that do it for this
Speaker 3: exploration of caves. I'm sure we'll be back in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's all I mean, we've covered caves in the past. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll be back in the future. And there are a
Speaker 2: number of fascinating cave organisms that we didn't cover in
Speaker 2: these episodes. And if you have favorites right in, we'd
Speaker 2: love to hear from you, because we could always venture
Speaker 2: back into the caves. You know, we don't reside there
Speaker 2: all the time, but we go in from time to
Speaker 2: time in order to discuss something interesting. All right, as usual,
Speaker 2: we'll just remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind
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