Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: Given that video versions of our episodes are now being
Speaker 2: published to Netflix, I thought it fitting to cover a
Speaker 2: Netflix monster and they have quite a few to choose from.
Speaker 2: In fact, we've previously discussed on Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: everything from Black Mirror's Bandersnatch to the creature from Panos Cosmotos.
Speaker 2: Is the viewing today, though, I want to take you
Speaker 2: back to a twenty twenty two episode of the third
Speaker 2: season of the animated series Love, Death and Robots titled
Speaker 2: Bad Traveling Now. This episode was directed by David Fincher,
Speaker 2: with Frank Balson, Jerome Den Jean, and Jennifer U. Nelson.
Speaker 2: An adapted the Neil Asher short story by none other
Speaker 2: than Andrew Kevin Walker. The setting is a fantasy twist
Speaker 2: on the age of sails, with a crew of sailors
Speaker 2: who brave alien oceans on the hunt for javel sharks,
Speaker 2: which are harvested for their oil. The ship in our
Speaker 2: story encounters a terrible storm and is bordered by a
Speaker 2: monstrous crab called a panopod, which takes up residents below deck.
Speaker 2: Lots are then drawn among the crew to see who
Speaker 2: has to go down to deal with the monster, and
Speaker 2: our protagonist Torren winds up with the duty. Now this
Speaker 2: is where the plot gets clever. The phanopod, we learn,
Speaker 2: can use the bodies of the dead to talk, it
Speaker 2: can puppet them. It's a nice twist that also seems
Speaker 2: to channel some of that attack of the crab monster's energy.
Speaker 2: The phanopod lays out what it wants to reach the
Speaker 2: populated island of Fate Torn strikes a deal with the monster.
Speaker 2: He will give it what he wants in exchange for
Speaker 2: his own life and a key from the captain's body.
Speaker 2: The captain's body was previously eaten by the phanopod, so
Speaker 2: we then follow Tora and as he employs this key
Speaker 2: to unlock the captain's pistol and uses this pistol to
Speaker 2: claim control of the ship, and he puts the matter
Speaker 2: of Fadan Island to a vote. Should we bring the
Speaker 2: creature to the densely populated island or drop it off
Speaker 2: on a nearby deserted island and just tell the giant
Speaker 2: crab that this is where you wanted to go. There's
Speaker 2: a great deal of turmoil over this. Some crew members
Speaker 2: may be more than a few simply want to give
Speaker 2: the monster what it wants, like whatever it takes. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: it becomes clear that the monster is a parent, and
Speaker 2: now the depths of the ship are crawling with its young.
Speaker 2: It's a fun action horror ride, and the central monster,
Speaker 2: the phantopod, is just a real grotesque treat. Lots of
Speaker 2: excellent crab vibes to it as well wonderful monster design.
Speaker 2: So Bad Traveling concerns a monstrous invasive ship born organism,
Speaker 2: but it serves as a fantastic exaggeration of the very
Speaker 2: real history and present reaction of ship born invasive species. Now,
Speaker 2: there are multiple avenues by which invasive species plant or
Speaker 2: animal have been and are still being spread through human activities. These,
Speaker 2: as outlined in twenty eighteen's Animals and Human Society by
Speaker 2: Skeins and Tikshadi, include species introduced just for aesthetics or
Speaker 2: for as a game, species for biological control which often
Speaker 2: doesn't go well, or for fur, as well as populations
Speaker 2: of feral domestic animals, pets thoughtlessly released into the wild,
Speaker 2: and of course animal stowaways much like our phantom pod,
Speaker 2: and these occur not only via boat, they can also
Speaker 2: occur via airplane. One example of this is the brown
Speaker 2: tree snake. This particular snake is native to eastern and
Speaker 2: northern coastal Australia, eastern Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and many
Speaker 2: islands in northwestern Melanesia. The brown tree snake is only
Speaker 2: mildly venomous to humans, but its venom packs quite a
Speaker 2: punch when comes to birds, and according to biologists Brian
Speaker 2: Frye of the University of Queensland, you know that can
Speaker 2: pose quite a problem. The brown snake has been particularly
Speaker 2: rough on the bird population of Guam, which it apparently
Speaker 2: reached aboard Australian troop transports during the Second World War,
Speaker 2: and fry also points out that the US was still
Speaker 2: flying military planes from Guam to Hawaii at the time
Speaker 2: of the riding, and brown snakes have been intercepted at
Speaker 2: Hawaiian airports in the past, so the potential is there
Speaker 2: for plane based introduction of the species to the Hawaiian
Speaker 2: islands as well. And as for why this particular snake
Speaker 2: is so adept at hitching rides on planes well. One
Speaker 2: reason seems to be their lasso locomotion, which allows them
Speaker 2: to climb large, smooth cylinders. But when talking about animal stowaways,
Speaker 2: especially ships play a huge role, with rats and mice
Speaker 2: standing as one of the best examples of creatures that
Speaker 2: have spread to every continent except Antarctica, where I believe
Speaker 2: the only invasive species is a variety of muscle and
Speaker 2: these likely traveled by ship as well. But stowaways include
Speaker 2: far more than rodents and monster crabs. According to Grasping
Speaker 2: at the Routes of Biological Invasions by Hume at All,
Speaker 2: Journal of apply Tocology, two thousand and eight, stowways include
Speaker 2: organisms that foul the wholes of ships, are transported as
Speaker 2: seeds or resting stages, in soil attached to vehicles, and
Speaker 2: in ballast water, as well as in shipping containers, cargo
Speaker 2: and air freight. So for instance, as the authors point out,
Speaker 2: brown seaweed sargasm A muticum is a great example of
Speaker 2: a stowaway species thought to have spread from its native
Speaker 2: Japan to northern France, the English South Coast, and to
Speaker 2: the Netherlands via contamination of commercial oysters and then via
Speaker 2: drifting plants. The authors share that vessels provide numerous interior
Speaker 2: and exterior possibilities for species to spread, but one of
Speaker 2: the most pervasive is just the hull of the ship itself,
Speaker 2: so species don't need to climb inside the hull to
Speaker 2: use it the means of traveling from one far flowing
Speaker 2: island to another. They need only a fix to the
Speaker 2: outside of this vessel, this artificial island that will then
Speaker 2: drift from one place to another. There are other examples
Speaker 2: that we can point to. Oar boreal monkeys have also
Speaker 2: spread to various places as invasive species, and there are
Speaker 2: accounts of monkeys taking up residents in a ship's rigging.
Speaker 2: It seems like most of these introductions, though, were via
Speaker 2: monkeys that were kept as pets, but still there have
Speaker 2: been accounts from this century of monkeys stowing away on vessels,
Speaker 2: such as I believe a twenty fourteen report of monkeys
Speaker 2: who boarded in Malaysia and arrived in the Netherlands. I
Speaker 2: think in this case the monkeys were caught and caged
Speaker 2: in transit and then handed over in the Netherlands upon arrival.
Speaker 2: One of the challenges of stowing away is, of course
Speaker 2: being able to survive a lengthy sea voyage without detection
Speaker 2: and being able to just survive with some sort of
Speaker 2: dependable food source. Mice and rats remain the best example
Speaker 2: of note, because of course they're highly skilled at living
Speaker 2: in humanity's shadow, eating what we eat or cast aside,
Speaker 2: and so forth. There are other interesting examples of animal stowaways.
Speaker 2: Invasive earthworms are a great example, spreading via transported soils
Speaker 2: and plants. Birds can also stow away. The house sparrow
Speaker 2: is thought to have spread aboard Roman ships, and this
Speaker 2: is how they reached Great Britain. So while we don't
Speaker 2: see anything as singular and gigantic as the panopod in
Speaker 2: our own invasive ship born species, it still works nicely
Speaker 2: as a fantastic symbol of it all. None of our
Speaker 2: real world stowaways are actually aiming to reach specific destinations
Speaker 2: that they have heard about or inquired of with their
Speaker 2: puppeted corpses, but they are still ultimately following their genetic
Speaker 2: mission and taking full advantage of new environments they might
Speaker 2: never have reached otherwise. Tune in for additional episodes of
Speaker 2: the monster fact, the artifact or animaliust Opindium each week.
Speaker 2: As always, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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