Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: some weird, wet, and sometimes mucusy sea creatures. No matter
Speaker 1: how strange they seem, their behavior isn't always so different
Speaker 1: from us terrestrial animals, and maybe we can learn how
Speaker 1: to live a little from them. From the sunlight to
Speaker 1: the abyssle zone. We're going to go over some of
Speaker 1: the weirdest citizens of the sea. Because joining me today
Speaker 1: is science writer for The New York Times and author
Speaker 1: of the new book Leaving the Ocean Was a Mistake.
Speaker 1: Life Lessons from Sixty Sea Creatures. Kara Jaimo.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Hi, Katie. It's great to be back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got a.
Speaker 3: Copy of the book.
Speaker 1: It's very enchanting. I love all of it. The illustrations
Speaker 1: by Vlad Sinkovic areautiful. And then you have coupled with
Speaker 1: it these amazing nuggets of knowledge wisdom about each of
Speaker 1: these sea creatures, and I feel like it gives you
Speaker 1: a really beautiful, charming sense of how wildly diverse the
Speaker 1: ocean is. And all these really weird things that are
Speaker 1: so like, they're so unusual, and it goes beyond sort
Speaker 1: of just like kind of the sea creatures we know,
Speaker 1: like sharks, jellyfish, et cetera. I mean that there are
Speaker 1: there are definitely ones that you will know in this
Speaker 1: book and really interesting facts about them as well. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it because it really gives a nice sense
Speaker 1: of how weird these animals can be and nonsensical they
Speaker 1: can be. Yeah, I mean, I want to talk about
Speaker 1: the subjects of your book a little bit, but first,
Speaker 1: of these sixty sea creatures you wrote about, are there
Speaker 1: any that really were kind of your favorites or close
Speaker 1: to your favorite or the weirdest one that you were
Speaker 1: most surprised to write about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4: I mean I found the research and writing process for
Speaker 4: this book actually maybe surprisingly surprising, considering that I do
Speaker 4: write a lot about.
Speaker 2: Weird little critters.
Speaker 4: But the ocean was a little bit of a zone
Speaker 4: for me that I had not thoroughly explored, So I
Speaker 4: kept being excited at surprise to like run into a
Speaker 4: weird guy. I think one of my favorites. Let me
Speaker 4: just flip and find it in my own book. There's
Speaker 4: like a special interspecies friendship which I always love between
Speaker 4: this really huge, kind of scary looking jellyfish and this
Speaker 4: really tiny fish. So it's the giant Phantom jelly which
Speaker 4: is like a really very big jellyfish. It's bell so like,
Speaker 4: you know, the top part is the size of like
Speaker 4: your rige bean bag chair, and then it has these
Speaker 4: really long arms that I wrote are like haunted drapes,
Speaker 4: so it's sort of like a haunted looking jellyfish. And
Speaker 4: then it has this tiny friend, this little white fish
Speaker 4: called the pelagic brachela, and they just like are always
Speaker 4: found together.
Speaker 2: Like the funny thing about doing research.
Speaker 4: For this book is also that a lot of these
Speaker 4: creatures have only been seen three or four times total
Speaker 4: in the history of like recorded anything. But every time
Speaker 4: scientists and researchers have seen this big jellyfish, it's had
Speaker 4: a little fish friend.
Speaker 2: So I think that's kind of nice.
Speaker 1: And do they have any ideas as to why these
Speaker 1: guys are buddies?
Speaker 2: No, they don't.
Speaker 4: I don't think anyone has really looked into it. Like
Speaker 4: deep sea research is hilarious because they're just kind of like,
Speaker 4: I mean, not to you know, sell anyone short. But
Speaker 4: all they can really do is be like, hey, look
Speaker 4: at that guy. Oh he's gone. I hope I see
Speaker 4: him again.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we check out this weirdo we found. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: never seen him again. Yeah, that's this is something that happens.
Speaker 1: Like where I'm researching for the show things about deep
Speaker 1: sea creatures, I find one that's like, oh, this looks
Speaker 1: incredibly gnarly. It must have so much interesting research done
Speaker 1: on it. And no, not for a lack of wanting,
Speaker 1: but it is very difficult to observe them and the
Speaker 1: wild and often, like when you actually get specimens to
Speaker 1: the surface, they just are not at all like what
Speaker 1: they are in the ocean. You can't observe their behaviors
Speaker 1: physically they might explode because when they're deep enough they don't.
Speaker 1: They aren't actually designed to be able to survive totally.
Speaker 1: And are you know PSI's up here, which is relatively
Speaker 1: light compared to the crushing depths, so there's sort of
Speaker 1: an explosion rather than an implosion. Yes, So they're really
Speaker 1: hard to study. So so when we do find these
Speaker 1: weird things, sometimes all we can do is speculate, right,
Speaker 1: like look at behaviors of other animals, we say, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of like symbiotic behaviors where you know, I
Speaker 1: mean like one could imagine like maybe this little fish
Speaker 1: is able to get some protection from the jellyfish. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's eating some of the crumbs that the jellyfish is collected,
Speaker 1: and maybe that helps with the jellyfish's hygiene, maybe it
Speaker 1: helps attract other prey, the.
Speaker 3: Movement of the fish.
Speaker 1: All of this is I pulled all of this out
Speaker 1: of my butt, Like this is not these are not
Speaker 1: real facts. This is just there's so many potential possibilities
Speaker 1: for this friendship that we have between them, because they're
Speaker 1: like some this happens also with like terrestrial animals where
Speaker 1: you'll just have like this very odd like almost it's
Speaker 1: a buddy comedy because they don't seem like they would
Speaker 1: work together. These tarantulas and micro highlight frogs where they're
Speaker 1: just like heaty tiny little guys, little frogs, and then
Speaker 1: these giant spiders and you think like, oh, the spider's
Speaker 1: gonna eat that little guy. They don't, and they have
Speaker 1: this like great relationship like Timone and Pumba. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. I have picked out some of my
Speaker 1: favorites from the book and I've gone sort of in
Speaker 1: order of descent, so like from the top of the
Speaker 1: ocean to the bottom, which I also like in the
Speaker 1: book that because I always get confused about ocean depths.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, pleagic zone, benthic zone, and then I
Speaker 1: kind of like, I don't know, and then it gets
Speaker 1: really dark yep, and I get confused. So I really
Speaker 1: appreciate the structure of the zone of the book where
Speaker 1: we go from the sunlight zone all the way down
Speaker 1: to be a bus zone to the very bottom.
Speaker 4: And you'll see like, oh, I'm sorry, no, go ahead,
Speaker 4: you'll see like we my editor and I kind of
Speaker 4: made this plot where as the creatures get deeper. Not
Speaker 4: only did the illustrations get darker, because that's just what
Speaker 4: makes sense, but the advice goes from being like maybe
Speaker 4: a little bit cheesy to being like super surreal and weird,
Speaker 4: because the idea is that these deep sea creatures like
Speaker 4: are going to be even more out of touch with
Speaker 4: our lives than the ones that are closer to us.
Speaker 4: But there's still something to take from even the.
Speaker 2: Most strange advice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I hope it made uh to be clear,
Speaker 1: like these like as you learn about each of these animals.
Speaker 1: They are also giving you some life advice, which I
Speaker 1: appreciate and I do need. So I do you appreciate
Speaker 1: their their advice, but particularly actually this first one is
Speaker 1: great advice for me. I like to be a nice person,
Speaker 1: but when when you are like a friendly person, it's
Speaker 1: also really important establish firm boundaries, which is the gloomy
Speaker 1: octopus's specialty. I love octopuses. I can't talk about it
Speaker 1: the enough. They're so they're so intro like, they're so
Speaker 1: intelligent and kind of mystical, but then they're also surprisingly
Speaker 1: spunky sometimes, which I love. So talk about a little
Speaker 1: bit this this gloomy octopus who does not have a
Speaker 1: backbone but has a backbone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: So I really like this advice too, And I think
Speaker 4: one of my sisters said that this is her favorite
Speaker 4: piece of advice in the book. So the advice that
Speaker 4: the gloomy octopus is giving to us is never be
Speaker 4: afraid to set and enforce your boundaries. And the behavioral
Speaker 4: observation that this advice comes from is that gloomy octopuses
Speaker 4: are mostly solitary, like they spend a lot of their
Speaker 4: time alone, like many octopuses, do, and if their neighbors
Speaker 4: get too close to them, they will throw stuff at
Speaker 4: them like shells, dirt and algae based whatever's around, in
Speaker 4: order to kind of keep that boundary literally sort of like,
Speaker 4: don't come any closer to me. I'm chilling by myself.
Speaker 4: I don't need your intrusion here. I don't care how
Speaker 4: curious you are. I don't care what you need. Like
Speaker 4: this is my alone time almost all the time, so
Speaker 4: that is that is kind of funny. I think this
Speaker 4: gloomy octopus research came from one of my favorite research sites,
Speaker 4: which is the two group octopus living sites Octopolus and Octlantis,
Speaker 4: which are both off the coast of Australia, and we're
Speaker 4: discovered by Australian scuba divers and snorkelers, and these are
Speaker 4: places where octopuses actually do live together, which again is
Speaker 4: as far as we know, kind of rare because they
Speaker 4: like to be on their own. But these places are
Speaker 4: so filled with it's like the undersea topography attracted so
Speaker 4: many shellfish that the octopus has just started hanging out
Speaker 4: and eating all the shellfish and then throwing the shells away.
Speaker 4: And then when they see the shells away, they would
Speaker 4: make beautiful sort of like structures that could be used
Speaker 4: at octopus houses. So they're all like, okay, let's just
Speaker 4: stay here. And then they ended up living in almost
Speaker 4: like a little octopus city. And then they're like, oh no,
Speaker 4: I hate living in a city.
Speaker 2: I want to be on my own. And so at
Speaker 2: that point they started throwing stuff at each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love that. I think this happens probably with a
Speaker 1: lot of introverts, where you find like a hobby that
Speaker 1: introverts enjoy, from magic, the gathering to crocheting, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and then you're like, well, it's really convenient to share
Speaker 1: the hobby with other people. And then you join a
Speaker 1: bunch of groups. Ah, here's like a croche group, and
Speaker 1: then and it's great because we can share yarn. And
Speaker 1: then you're like, oh right, but I'm also very shy. Yes,
Speaker 1: I forgot I forgot that detail. I love octopuses are
Speaker 1: so relatable. This behavior reminds me a little bit of
Speaker 1: the day octopus, which is another unique one in that
Speaker 1: it does seem to have a relationship with other animals,
Speaker 1: not necessarily other octopuses, but it seems to hunt with
Speaker 1: other fish. They'll have sort of like the large groups
Speaker 1: of these smaller predatory fish that kind of hang out
Speaker 1: with the octopus. It's a little bit of a question
Speaker 1: of like they are the fish just hanging out because
Speaker 1: the octopus will act like a lawnmower and churn up
Speaker 1: all this stuff and then the fish can benefit or
Speaker 1: is it more of a mutualistic relationship. I think researchers
Speaker 1: are kind of on the side of it being mutualistic
Speaker 1: because the octopus seems to be able to benefit from
Speaker 1: following the fish, like finding where the fish the fish
Speaker 1: may be better at finding like prey, but then the
Speaker 1: fish can't get to it because you have these coral
Speaker 1: reefs that have a lot of nooks and crannies maybe
Speaker 1: even like sand or rocks in the way that the
Speaker 1: fish can't get at because the prey has learned how
Speaker 1: to hide really well. So then the octopus can get
Speaker 1: in there and flush it out. But sometimes the octopus
Speaker 1: will give one of these little fish that it tolerates
Speaker 1: really well a smack get smack with a tenticle, and
Speaker 1: so researchers think maybe it's something where one of the
Speaker 1: fish crosses a line isn't really cooperating in the hunt well, enough,
Speaker 1: but it's it's just like it. It makes me think
Speaker 1: of sort of those old tapestries you see with like
Speaker 1: hunters with all their hunting dogs with these like but
Speaker 1: it's these octopuses with a bunch of me going around.
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. I do not suggest that anyone
Speaker 1: smacks their hunting dogs. I think that this is only
Speaker 1: acceptable when it's done by an octopus because they're their
Speaker 1: legs are so squishy.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, okay, it's just more of like a it's
Speaker 4: more of a communication than a violence.
Speaker 1: Maybe, yes, yeah, exactly. That's what's so interesting to me,
Speaker 1: because like the octopus could turn around, Like if a
Speaker 1: fish is annoying it, why isn't the octopus just turning around,
Speaker 1: grabbing it and eating it?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Like there's something I mean, it's probably a pretty careful
Speaker 1: calculation where it's like, if it's a larger fish that
Speaker 1: is going to be more of a struggle, that's probably
Speaker 1: not worth it to the octopus. But also there's probably
Speaker 1: some recognition of like, hey, we're working together pretty well
Speaker 1: in general. Killing something that is helping me doesn't do
Speaker 1: any good for me, But teaching it a lesson with
Speaker 1: a little sort of limp noodled whack is you know,
Speaker 1: constructive only in this circumstance. I'm usually very much a pacifist,
Speaker 1: but you know, when you're literally don't have a spine,
Speaker 1: I don't know what else you can do to enforce
Speaker 1: your boundaries with You might have to throw some stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The way they throw this stuff is cool too, Just
Speaker 4: before we move on, they'll like scoop it up with
Speaker 4: their arms, and then they'll sometimes use their little siphons
Speaker 4: that they have to like blow it.
Speaker 1: Oh amazing, like leaf flowers. Yeah, exactly, that's incredible. We
Speaker 1: see that in like captive octopuses too, where they'll either
Speaker 1: use their own siphons so like push things around, or
Speaker 1: they learn to use the the pumps in their tanks,
Speaker 1: and they'll like take maybe like something that's floating. Like
Speaker 1: sometimes researchals will kind of leave little toys for them,
Speaker 1: not they're not real toys, but it's like I've heard,
Speaker 1: like empty plastic bottles or something, and then the octopus
Speaker 1: likes to play fetch with themselves by like throwing it
Speaker 1: in the current. Yeah. So they're very clever and also
Speaker 1: sometimes a little bit cranky, which I love. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: another this is kind of like going in the wildly
Speaker 1: opposite direction. But hump back whales like one of the
Speaker 1: largest vertebrates in the world that lives in the ocean.
Speaker 1: It's it's always interesting to me because they're so whales
Speaker 1: are so huge. The assumption I think is that we
Speaker 1: should know pretty much everything about them because they're the
Speaker 1: biggest animal in the world. They're mammals like us, they're vertebrates.
Speaker 1: They're so present in our popular culture. But then when
Speaker 1: you get to these like relatively large whales, the research
Speaker 1: is a lot thinner than you would think because it's
Speaker 1: just so hard to like observe them and kind of
Speaker 1: station yourself, Like, yes, we see them when they're migrating,
Speaker 1: but then when they're like deep in the ocean in
Speaker 1: their element, there's a lot of behaviors that we kind
Speaker 1: of miss. So I really love it when we do
Speaker 1: find something really interesting about them, because they're really really complicated.
Speaker 1: So I love you talk about like people I think
Speaker 1: are generally aware of whale song that they sing. They
Speaker 1: have unique songs, and they're socially intelligent. But what you
Speaker 1: talk about, I think is a pretty interesting fact that
Speaker 1: I don't think people would be as familiar with in
Speaker 1: terms of their their song repertoires.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this is super fun and something I've had
Speaker 4: in my mind since I first wrote about it, maybe
Speaker 4: like six years ago, just because of the new study
Speaker 4: came out and I happened to see it. But like
Speaker 4: you said, yeah, humpback whales are known for singing. Their
Speaker 4: songs are quite famous. There are like recordings of them
Speaker 4: that you can buy in cool New age stores to
Speaker 4: this day. And then everybody knows what their songs sound like.
Speaker 4: They're very like haunting and beautiful and exactly and basically
Speaker 4: like songs are a cultural thing for them, and different
Speaker 4: populations of these whales who meet at particular breeding grounds
Speaker 4: all around the world will have like certain songs, and
Speaker 4: those songs will change from year to year, but they'll
Speaker 4: all kind of like have their their favorite songs that
Speaker 4: they all sing together. But researchers notice that different populations
Speaker 4: were sort of like borrowing from each other's songs and
Speaker 4: like remixing little bits into their own songs.
Speaker 2: And they were like, how is this happening? When are
Speaker 2: they hanging out? And they figured out that there is
Speaker 2: like this place in the South Pacific specifically where whales.
Speaker 4: In the area all come and hang out and sing
Speaker 4: together and like kind of teach each other maybe or
Speaker 4: like listen to each other's songs. And then when they
Speaker 4: depart again, that's when this like remixing happens. When they're
Speaker 4: sort of like, I heard this really cool thing that
Speaker 4: this guy from way far away was doing, and now
Speaker 4: I'm going to try to do it. And so yeah,
Speaker 4: it's this very cool cultural spot off the coast of
Speaker 4: New Zealand that I like to call a humpback whale
Speaker 4: karaoke zone where.
Speaker 2: Everybody comes and tries out each other's music. And so
Speaker 2: that's amazing.
Speaker 4: The advice that we kind of took from that for
Speaker 4: the book is share your art with friends and don't
Speaker 4: be weird about copyright.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I completely agree with that.
Speaker 3: Fair use.
Speaker 1: Whales understand fair use exactly. Why why doesn't YouTube? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. I mean it is really interesting, like
Speaker 1: it is. I think we when it comes to animals
Speaker 1: that have songs, even animals that are arguably less complicated
Speaker 1: and intelligent versus wales, like songbirds, you do see a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence of local dialects and then cultural shifts,
Speaker 1: generational shifts in song choice. Birds are also influenced by
Speaker 1: when they like migrate and they encounter maybe birds that
Speaker 1: have like a different dialect from them, they then start
Speaker 1: to kind of shift their songs a little bit. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of this like kind of I think,
Speaker 1: you know, when you have an animal who learns their
Speaker 1: songs and their calls, like, because there are plenty of
Speaker 1: like say songbirds or animals that make a certain kind
Speaker 1: of call, who are just born basically with a pre
Speaker 1: programmed thing that they do. Usually it's very simple because
Speaker 1: you don't have a lot of sort of space to
Speaker 1: write really complicated programming in an in a newborn animal's brain.
Speaker 1: But for the ones that have really complicated repertoires, that's
Speaker 1: almost always through learning, which is the case for whales,
Speaker 1: which is the case for songbirds. And when you have that,
Speaker 1: then you almost it seems almost inevitable that you're gonna
Speaker 1: have like cultural changes in cultural influence because it's since
Speaker 1: it's a learning process, since they have to learn from
Speaker 1: those around them, there's there's like really interesting evolution of
Speaker 1: songs of groups of like and then you see the
Speaker 1: influence of other groups. So it's much more I think
Speaker 1: similar to like you'll find in animals who are learners
Speaker 1: that kind of they when you whenever you have different
Speaker 1: populations of them, you inevitably have kind of different cultural
Speaker 1: habits and then those influencing each other, which I find
Speaker 1: really really interesting.
Speaker 2: And like.
Speaker 4: When and I first wrote about this, one of the
Speaker 4: commenters on the article was like, why do we call
Speaker 4: these songs, which, like, I don't know, that's a whole
Speaker 4: question in itself. But then this person said, like, maybe
Speaker 4: these whales are exchanging information, Like maybe this is a
Speaker 4: form of oral storytelling or like passing along stuff from
Speaker 4: like this is what it's like in my part of
Speaker 4: the ocean right now, Like if you come through, look
Speaker 4: out for that octopus who's throwing shit or whatever. And yeah,
Speaker 4: I thought that was really interesting too, because I know
Speaker 4: there are more and more attempts to kind of decode
Speaker 4: whale language, and I have a lot of thoughts about that,
Speaker 4: but this could be, yeah, a way of them not
Speaker 4: only like having fun, but like telling each other important stuff,
Speaker 4: the same way that humans do in songs and other
Speaker 4: species as well.
Speaker 1: I definitely think there could be something too whales communicating
Speaker 1: information through their song. I would my guess would be
Speaker 1: it's probably not like the same kind of like grammatical
Speaker 1: structure as human language has. But maybe there's something some
Speaker 1: other way that they're communicating that just does not not
Speaker 1: how we use language, But that doesn't mean it's not
Speaker 1: a form of language or communication.
Speaker 4: It's so funny to think about, because like, I don't
Speaker 4: know humans. We have this spoken language that we use
Speaker 4: for so so many things, and then we have a
Speaker 4: written equivalent, and like to an outside observer, I don't
Speaker 4: I think it would be pretty hard to figure out
Speaker 4: that those things were connected, or that this thing we're
Speaker 4: doing with our mouths is necessarily communicating, because we do
Speaker 4: so many other things. So sometimes I think about, like
Speaker 4: when we were watching whales and listening to them, we're
Speaker 4: like sort of like aliens trying to figure out like
Speaker 4: what they're doing. And if aliens were watching us, they
Speaker 4: might be like, oh, humans communicate through the length of
Speaker 4: their hair, or like humans communicate through like the weird
Speaker 4: things they do with their hands, like as they're moving
Speaker 4: their mouths, like they wouldn't necessarily.
Speaker 1: Italians do, for sure, and I should know I live
Speaker 1: in Italy. That part's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like we have to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's so easy to like map map our own
Speaker 4: stuff onto other creatures, and to some extent that's helpful
Speaker 4: because we all do share needs and drives and a
Speaker 4: certain evolutionary history.
Speaker 2: But it only can go so far.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, we can overdo it with putting sort of
Speaker 1: human feelings onto animals, but we can also underdo it
Speaker 1: where we just like, of course, we're going to share
Speaker 1: a lot of characteristics with animals. We're all we've all
Speaker 1: evolved on the same sort of stuff as they have
Speaker 1: in general, so there's going to be some similarities. I
Speaker 1: do want to talk about the sarcastic French head before
Speaker 1: that break. I love these guys so much. They're this
Speaker 1: sort of like when they're just kind of in their
Speaker 1: normal state, they're kind of this awkwardly shaped brown fish
Speaker 1: with this huge head and kind of a slim body.
Speaker 1: They just look a little bit funky. There's nothing to
Speaker 1: me they like. They're not intimidating at all. They're just
Speaker 1: kind of like a weirdly shaped little fish. But then
Speaker 1: when they're competing with each other, they have this really
Speaker 1: like it's both kind of It can be viewed as
Speaker 1: scary or funny, I think, depending on your perspective. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to talk a little bit about their the
Speaker 1: special party trick that they have.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's totally worth looking up a video of this
Speaker 4: when anyone has the time. If this was like a
Speaker 4: sort of magical book, I would have put a moving
Speaker 4: image on this page because these French heads, which, like
Speaker 4: Katie said, are sort of like cute, droopy mouthed little
Speaker 4: fish that kind of like bop along underwater when they
Speaker 4: are feeling you know, it's hard to say if they're
Speaker 4: feeling aggressive, if they're feeling flirty, like why they do this,
Speaker 4: but they open their mouths and their mouth opens like
Speaker 4: like a horror movie monster.
Speaker 1: Mouth or like yeah, like Predator from Predator, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: that has a little like weird sort of I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a like yeah, like a pop up tent.
Speaker 4: It's sort of like pop yeah, and it's suddenly like
Speaker 4: so much bigger and like so much sort of more
Speaker 4: like scarily angled. And uh So they do this and
Speaker 4: one will go like wow at the other one, and
Speaker 4: then the other one will go like waw back, and
Speaker 4: then they sort of just like make out, like they
Speaker 4: squish their mouths together and they like around yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and nobody is totally sure, like what this is about
Speaker 4: or why they do it?
Speaker 2: And the top.
Speaker 4: Theory is like, okay, it's like an aggressive contest almost
Speaker 4: like you know, deer with antlers, and the winner is
Speaker 4: going to get like the best house, which is right,
Speaker 4: It's like if you think about it as like a
Speaker 4: human reality competition show that's on, like you know, the
Speaker 4: HGTV or what ever, it's like yeah, fringe head house
Speaker 4: makeout competition.
Speaker 1: Honestly, the housing market is so messed up, like if
Speaker 1: we just had a new system where it's like whoever
Speaker 1: has the most unfoldable mouth gets the biggest house, I'm
Speaker 1: fine with that.
Speaker 3: I don't know, like.
Speaker 1: It's I think it's it's already it's already a pretty
Speaker 1: messed up market. Yeah, yeah, I do think that the
Speaker 1: theory that this is like a form of like I
Speaker 1: because it's this kind of competition happens a lot between
Speaker 1: males with a lot of other species where yes, you
Speaker 1: could fight each other, but both the victor and the
Speaker 1: loser uh suffers some cost from that, right, could be energy,
Speaker 1: it could be injury, it could even be killing one another. Right,
Speaker 1: so there's a big cost involved to physically fighting with arrival.
Speaker 1: If you're fighting over resources, over territory, over access to emails.
Speaker 1: There's a motivation to fight, but actually fighting is really costly.
Speaker 1: So a lot of animals have developed kind of a
Speaker 1: system where they either sort of like measure each others up,
Speaker 1: like their bodies, Like they look at their bodies and
Speaker 1: they're like, you know, you might have two elephant seals
Speaker 1: kind of waddle up to each other and like kind
Speaker 1: of size each other up, like, Okay, who's actually gonna
Speaker 1: win this, like before they start slamming their necks into
Speaker 1: each other, right, because neither of them necessarily wants to fight,
Speaker 1: because they would much rather it just be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know you're way bigger, like I'll be gone bye,
Speaker 1: I'll see you. Because that's better for the one that
Speaker 1: would lose, certainly, but also for the one that would win,
Speaker 1: because the one that would win might still get injured
Speaker 1: or at least have to waste a bunch of effort
Speaker 1: fending off all these little guys.
Speaker 3: So you they.
Speaker 1: Want to generally be able to find out like, Okay,
Speaker 1: who's tougher, who's bigger? The only the problem is when
Speaker 1: you have a situation where it's less clear right where
Speaker 1: it's like, ah, we don't know who's actually gonna win.
Speaker 1: We're kind of the same size. And then they actually
Speaker 1: have to fight, and it can be pretty pretty grizzly
Speaker 1: with all sorts of animals, like from from deer to
Speaker 1: elf and seals to lions. But then with these French heads,
Speaker 1: which I find really interesting. Of course we don't know,
Speaker 1: and so this is a little bit it's out of
Speaker 1: my butte university, but kind of like an educated butt,
Speaker 1: so you know, take from it what you will. It
Speaker 1: seems like they have kind of come up with maybe
Speaker 1: a like a symbolic display of fitness, right with like
Speaker 1: jaw size, right, because jaw size is a that would
Speaker 1: be like a fairly honest signal of fitness in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. But their jaws are very like ornamental
Speaker 1: and weird in a way that it makes it seem
Speaker 1: like they're kind of trying to send a strong signal
Speaker 1: to each other of like, hey, I'm really tough, to
Speaker 1: the point where it's become very much like a ritualistic
Speaker 1: dance where they almost have it seems like they've almost
Speaker 1: completely done away with the any kind of realistic fighting
Speaker 1: and it's more like a sports game, right, and then
Speaker 1: the loser of this like weird kissing sport goes off,
Speaker 1: and then the winner gets the nice house. So it's
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting. There's definitely some kind of
Speaker 1: communication going on here where they have sort of traded
Speaker 1: in actual weaponry for kind of a more symbolic like hey,
Speaker 1: like the flag I'm waving is bigger than yours, so
Speaker 1: like that's how we're gonna settle this.
Speaker 4: I've just been watching this video of them on loop.
Speaker 4: It's in the New York Times rite up of this paper,
Speaker 4: which I didn't write. It's by Jason din But the
Speaker 4: video is just like they're in a little tank, the
Speaker 4: two fringe heads. They are like approximately the same size,
Speaker 4: and one of them is in this like really sweet
Speaker 4: looking house, which is a shell, and the other one
Speaker 4: doesn't seem to have a house, and so the one
Speaker 4: without a house is like, ugh, fine, I guess I
Speaker 4: better try to go get a house. He goes up
Speaker 4: to the shell, and the one in the shell just
Speaker 4: kind of like rises out of the shell and it's
Speaker 4: like it is time for me, like you said, to
Speaker 4: perform the ritual and just like opens his mouth like waw,
Speaker 4: and the other one's like fine, and it's like wah,
Speaker 4: and they just press their mouths together. And then the one,
Speaker 4: the loser who doesn't live in the shell, it doesn't
Speaker 4: take that long for him to be like okay, like
Speaker 4: I had to try, you know, like you said, it's
Speaker 4: not really like a It doesn't seem that high stakes.
Speaker 4: It seems a little bit more like there's two guys
Speaker 4: in the weight room and one of them isn't done
Speaker 4: with his reps yet, and the other one's trying to
Speaker 4: get on the bench, and they have a little like
Speaker 4: right yeh, and then order is restored.
Speaker 1: It's like a little dance you do when you're on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk and you're both kind of like figuring out
Speaker 1: who shouldn't do exactly left versus the right. I'm really
Speaker 1: bad at that. I do that all the time. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's really it is really funny to me how
Speaker 1: they've you know, like again, we like Kara was saying,
Speaker 1: we don't exactly know why they do this, but it
Speaker 1: definitely seems like some kind of ritualistic, symbolic placeholder for
Speaker 1: actual aggression, actual fighting, some form of communication that is
Speaker 1: helping them to resolve conflict, which is I think really nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a nice, nice lesson. We can learn from them totally.
Speaker 4: And the advice that we have for them is, if
Speaker 4: you can solve it with fighting, you can probably solve
Speaker 4: it with smooching exactly.
Speaker 3: I agree with that.
Speaker 1: I think the world needs more giant tint flap smooching
Speaker 1: versus fighting. We're going to take a quick break and
Speaker 1: then when we come back, we're gonna head deeper down
Speaker 1: into the Twilight Zone, which is not just the rod
Speaker 1: Sterling Show, but an actual part of the ocean, and
Speaker 1: then even deeper as we discuss some of the amazing animals.
Speaker 3: From Kara's book.
Speaker 1: All Right, so now we're in the twilight Zone, just
Speaker 1: a little darker. There's still light there, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: getting a little dimmer. But the one I want to
Speaker 1: talk about is the sea elephant, which not to be
Speaker 1: confused with like elephant seals or elephant nose fish. These
Speaker 1: are snails and they're really I found one photo of
Speaker 1: it being held by I guess like a fisherman who
Speaker 1: found it, and it's got the doofiest little face like
Speaker 1: in the water. Like when they're in the water, they
Speaker 1: are kind of hard to see because they're very transparent,
Speaker 1: and they're kind of they looked sort of like this
Speaker 1: ghostly outline. They they don't even look three dimensional really.
Speaker 1: They look like a weird light pencil sketch of some
Speaker 1: kind of weird globby snail shaped critter. And they don't
Speaker 1: have shells, so they're just like all blobular. But then
Speaker 1: when this guy has them in his hand, it's like
Speaker 1: looking directly into the camera and you can see a
Speaker 1: little face and they've got these long proboscises that look
Speaker 1: like elephant noses. But it just looks like this weird
Speaker 1: little elephant cartoon. Yeah, just the stupidest looking animal I've
Speaker 1: seen in a while. So, uh, do you want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the elephant snail?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean sorry, the sea elephant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the sea elephant.
Speaker 4: Something truly amazing about doing research for this book was
Speaker 4: like I had no idea like how many different sort
Speaker 4: of tiny, little translucent guys are just like floating around
Speaker 4: like hoping.
Speaker 2: For the best in there.
Speaker 4: Kind of just like okay, like I can move in
Speaker 4: three dimensions, I being tossed about.
Speaker 2: I have few defenses, and I'm just gonna try to
Speaker 2: make this work. Yeah, and the sea elephant is one
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 4: And so yes, long time back and evolutionary history, these
Speaker 4: guys had shells and presumably they lived, you know, on
Speaker 4: the bottom or somewhere else where gravity would pull them
Speaker 4: down and they had the protection of their shell, but
Speaker 4: they evolved to live in the open water instead, totally shellless.
Speaker 2: They have this really funky long nose.
Speaker 4: Like you said, which is super cute, and they kind
Speaker 4: of just like tumble around in the water column and
Speaker 4: even though they don't have a shell to curl up inside,
Speaker 4: they still curl, which I think is really cute. They're
Speaker 4: in sort of like a summersault shape most of the time.
Speaker 4: And so the advice that they are giving is remember
Speaker 4: your roots, remember the snail times, even if you're in
Speaker 4: a evolutionary stage that is maybe a bit more scary
Speaker 4: and free falling.
Speaker 1: I'm always trying to be humble and remember the snail time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, they're interesting because they're movements. They even if they
Speaker 1: don't like ambulate really fast in one direction, their movements
Speaker 1: can be surprisingly like they're they're moving around quite a bit,
Speaker 1: like if you compare it to say terrestrial snails movement
Speaker 1: or even like a c snail's movement, Like they can
Speaker 1: move around quite a bit, it just doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: like propel them much in one direction. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of like floundering, which I think is really cute. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that the the the sort of like, well, why would
Speaker 1: they like shells seem really helpful?
Speaker 3: Why did they lose their shells?
Speaker 1: That actually happens quite a bit in the ocean, where
Speaker 1: you'll have something that starts out with a shell and
Speaker 1: then loses it, like with a lot of molluscs. So
Speaker 1: like cephalopods, like squid and octopuses, they used to have
Speaker 1: like their common ancestor had like a shell that was
Speaker 1: pretty weird like for some of them, like some of these,
Speaker 1: like squid ancestors had like a giant conical shell that
Speaker 1: looks like this like sort of giant unicorn horn type
Speaker 1: thing that when you look at it, it's like all right,
Speaker 1: I mean I get it, but it's a little much.
Speaker 1: And so thought is that. I mean, you still have
Speaker 1: nautiluses that have their shells, but for them, you know,
Speaker 1: like for squid and octopuses, they don't have them and
Speaker 1: they just probably like they got out competed by predators
Speaker 1: that came along that had better defenses, and so they
Speaker 1: went into the niche of being squishy, being to fit
Speaker 1: into things and being able to hide under stuff, and
Speaker 1: then as predators being to squished themselves into narrow passages that.
Speaker 3: They can get stuff out of.
Speaker 1: So I could not I found scant information on the clephant.
Speaker 1: It seems like these are one of the ones where
Speaker 1: we basically know they exist, that they're weird, and they
Speaker 1: have eyes, we know that, but otherwise what exactly they're
Speaker 1: up to is a little bit of a mystery. They're
Speaker 1: one of these one of these weird guys that we
Speaker 1: kind of know that what they look like, we know
Speaker 1: they have eyeballs, uh, and that they used to have shells.
Speaker 1: But then otherwise we're like, what do you doing, little guy?
Speaker 1: And it's like, I don't know, just being being a
Speaker 1: little guy, being a transparent little guy, trying not to
Speaker 1: get eaten.
Speaker 4: A lot of these, I mean, you mentioned this, a
Speaker 4: lot of these snails and these shellless snails are also
Speaker 4: like very ferocious predators. Like supposedly this c elephant is
Speaker 4: a ferocious predator. It's just kind of hard to imagine. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's always going to be a smaller, more translucent guy
Speaker 4: than you around to eat in.
Speaker 1: These Yeah, there, schnalls is a little bit vacuum like,
Speaker 1: so I can because they've got mouth parts at.
Speaker 3: The very tip. So if you're if you're.
Speaker 1: Like a little planktonic creature, I could see this being intimidating.
Speaker 1: But to me, it is a premium goofass, So it's
Speaker 1: really hard to imagine them as predators. Before we move
Speaker 1: on to the deeper zones of the ocean, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about the fire breathing shrimp. Yes, honestly, it
Speaker 1: looks more like they're barfing up sort of like supernatural ecdoplasm.
Speaker 1: But let's talk a little bit about their very very
Speaker 1: unique defense mechanism totally.
Speaker 4: So one cool thing about the ocean is that some
Speaker 4: creatures can like either create or use bioluminescence, which is
Speaker 4: like biologically produced light because they're especially when you get
Speaker 4: deeper in the ocean, there's not a lot of natural
Speaker 4: light that makes its way down there. So if you
Speaker 4: can make your own light, or you can get like
Speaker 4: a bacteria to make light that you can use.
Speaker 1: That's my preferred method. Get the bacteria to do the
Speaker 1: work for me.
Speaker 4: You can kind of have this cool signaling like goo
Speaker 4: that you can use however you want. And you know,
Speaker 4: the anglerfish famously sometimes use it to like lure other
Speaker 4: fish by just having like a little beacon and the
Speaker 4: fish come over. But the fire everything shrimp, who I agree,
Speaker 4: they gave him a very dignified name, but he's really
Speaker 4: just barfing. He stores up this bioluminescent blue colored goo
Speaker 4: in an organ called the hippato pancreas, which I don't
Speaker 4: believe that humans have, but I guess I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: And then when for.
Speaker 1: Sure we do, I don't know if we have a
Speaker 1: hippado pancreas.
Speaker 4: If we do, maybe it's filled with glowing goo, so
Speaker 4: that could be a cool thing to discover at some point.
Speaker 4: But this guy, he stores this, uh, this goo in
Speaker 4: hishippato pancreas, and he if he gets scared or threatened,
Speaker 4: he's just like blah.
Speaker 2: And then the blue gooo comes out. When it hits
Speaker 2: the water, it lights up.
Speaker 4: It's almost like if you crack a glow stick right
Speaker 4: that triggers the light. And then the predator is like, WHOA,
Speaker 4: where the bluegoo come from? Gets freaked out, and this
Speaker 4: scrimp shrimp can escape.
Speaker 1: So it's a really good Yeah, yeah, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a similar like you do see that with Like so
Speaker 1: squid have the the ink that they can release, which
Speaker 1: is a similarly defensive like, ah, you're threatening me, Like
Speaker 1: here's a distruction, you know, like if anyone watches King
Speaker 1: of the Hill, it's the dale Gripple's pocket sand that
Speaker 1: he throws at you, like pocket sand you know, gets away.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: Terrestrial animals there are forgot what they're named. They're there
Speaker 1: the there's a few baby birds actually who use either
Speaker 1: projectile vomiting or pooping to ward off predators where it's like, ah,
Speaker 1: you know, like you're coming at me, here's like some
Speaker 1: startling vomit.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: So it is.
Speaker 1: It is a technique, but I don't think I know
Speaker 1: of any other defensive vomitters who bio use bioluminescence. Like
Speaker 1: certainly you can use bioluminescence as sort of defensive distracting posturing.
Speaker 1: That usually have seen that in animals that have actual
Speaker 1: structures on their body that contain the bioluminescent gel. Whereas
Speaker 1: these guys just like they have it you know, in
Speaker 1: their in their patto pang grease and then vomit it up,
Speaker 1: which is a very unique method of distracting predators. It's
Speaker 1: it's very it's pretty. It's the prettiest vomit I think
Speaker 1: I've seen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very pretty.
Speaker 1: So now let's move down to the midnight zone. Just
Speaker 1: to briefly mention the Ping Pong tree sponge seems like
Speaker 1: it might have almost accidentally caused an international incident because
Speaker 1: it is this is one of those things where it's like,
Speaker 1: it looks like it comes from one of those sort
Speaker 1: of pulp sci fi books where they imagine an alien landscape,
Speaker 1: and this is like the alien tree you'd find on
Speaker 1: an alien planet, which also, for some reason, also has
Speaker 1: beautiful women on it, and that's never explained. But this
Speaker 1: is like, this is a really weird looking thing that
Speaker 1: does not look it neither looks like a living creature.
Speaker 1: It looks artificial, nor does it look like an animal,
Speaker 1: which it is.
Speaker 4: It has a wonderful name, the Ping Pong tree sponge,
Speaker 4: because that's what it looks like. Yes, so what you
Speaker 4: hinted at is that I read that when US Navy
Speaker 4: officers first saw the Ping Pong tree sponge in underwater
Speaker 4: surveillance photos, they thought that it was like a Russian
Speaker 4: device that was spying on the ocean. Granted I saw
Speaker 4: this only in one source, but I felt like I
Speaker 4: had to include it because I really want to know more.
Speaker 4: I looked so hard for more information. I might have
Speaker 4: to do like a Foyer request or something. So if
Speaker 4: anybody knows about the near international incident caused by the
Speaker 4: Ping Pong tree sponge, please get in touch with me,
Speaker 4: because there's nothing I want to know about more. But
Speaker 4: the website I found it on is like a government website,
Speaker 4: so I do believe it.
Speaker 2: But I just couldn't find anything.
Speaker 3: Else, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just assume there's a lot of like
Speaker 1: things during the Cold War where we almost almost blew
Speaker 1: each other up and pass because of some kind of
Speaker 1: weird sea creature where we're like, it's a Russian, a
Speaker 1: Russian weapon, but it just turns out to be a
Speaker 1: weird little sea sponge. It also, to me, it looks
Speaker 1: kind of like a lamp you might buy in the seventies.
Speaker 1: It's very it's very cool looking. But yeah, the the
Speaker 1: you're mentioned in the book, like the structure of it
Speaker 1: is actually not just like decorative obviously, but it's to
Speaker 1: capture tiny crustaceans, tiny animals on these actual balls which
Speaker 1: have like a bunch of little you can't really see
Speaker 1: them from far away, but they have a bunch of
Speaker 1: tiny little like hooks to catch little guys onto these balls.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's functional, even though it looks like
Speaker 1: something some kind of ikea lamp that would be called
Speaker 1: like a bog or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's got they're like little birds, I think, right.
Speaker 4: Imagine, sponges are so cool because they are also predators.
Speaker 4: They have to eat other stuff, but they can't move
Speaker 4: when they're adults, so they need to come up with
Speaker 4: all these weird strategies like being covered in hooky ping
Speaker 4: pong balls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's amazing. They're sessile usually meaning that they
Speaker 1: stick in one spot. But yeah, they still got to eat,
Speaker 1: and so they've got all sorts of like weird weird
Speaker 1: uh food gathering techniques that so now we're going to
Speaker 1: go down to the abyssele zone. Talk about another weird
Speaker 1: food gathering technique, the tripod fish. I love these guys
Speaker 1: so much. They're very weird to see on a deep
Speaker 1: sea camera. They look like lawn ornaments because it looks
Speaker 1: like someone took something that's a pretty normal fish shape,
Speaker 1: maybe a little longer. They do also have a pair
Speaker 1: of fins that kind of look like rabbit ears, ghostly
Speaker 1: rabbit ears, but otherwise it just kind of looks like
Speaker 1: a fish. It's not that weird. But it also looks
Speaker 1: like someone stuck them on like three rods, like two
Speaker 1: coming from the front, one coming from near its table,
Speaker 1: from from its tail, and then stuck them on the
Speaker 1: ocean floor like ornamentation. Like they look like something weird
Speaker 1: you could pick up at a discount like a home
Speaker 1: supply store, where it's like these aren't selling well because
Speaker 1: nobody wants a decorative fish, but it's these are alive.
Speaker 2: They aren't.
Speaker 1: They are real fish, and they are doing this on purpose.
Speaker 2: So these fish are very crafty.
Speaker 4: They also have to eat, but they don't want to
Speaker 4: have to swim around and hunt for stuff. So presumably
Speaker 4: evolutionarily they started out without these weird long feet, but
Speaker 4: eventually they evolved because like if you sort of are
Speaker 4: in the ocean sort of hanging out and you just
Speaker 4: open your mouth, like the current will bring some food
Speaker 4: to you, and what these guys eventually figured out on
Speaker 4: an evolutionary timescale is like if they're about three feet
Speaker 4: off the sand and they're opening their mouth, there's more
Speaker 4: food because the current is like stronger up there. It's
Speaker 4: like a sweet spot, so it's gonna bring more food
Speaker 4: into your mouth. So they just yeah, they have developed
Speaker 4: these tripods that allow them to kind of just like
Speaker 4: stand three feet above the sand.
Speaker 2: And yeah, when you see these.
Speaker 4: Deep sea videos or photos of them, they're so funny
Speaker 4: because they're just like weird. It's like you said, it's
Speaker 4: like someone just stuck them in the sand and they're
Speaker 4: like hanging out with their mouths open, just eating.
Speaker 1: It looks like a prank. It doesn't look like something
Speaker 1: that does naturally occur, right, It looks like someone, as
Speaker 1: a prank, stuck a bunch of fish on like weird
Speaker 1: tripods on the seafloor just to like give researchers with
Speaker 1: their deep sea cameras kind of a scare. But no,
Speaker 1: they're real. Uh it's uh yeah, it's in like those
Speaker 1: legs are like kind of fin extensions that are that
Speaker 1: somehow managed to be like these kind of like tough
Speaker 1: protrusions that keep them stuck up there. Just like I love, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the I love the like they say that
Speaker 1: necessity is the mother of invention. I think laziness is
Speaker 1: a huge contributor to invention and I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: The advice that is in your book is that you
Speaker 1: should stretch yourself as much as possible, especially when reaching
Speaker 1: for snacks. Yes, as as the as the wife of
Speaker 1: a very tall person, I have developed my own evolutionary
Speaker 1: technique to reach snacks that have been placed high up,
Speaker 1: which is tongs like arm extensions. So when my husband,
Speaker 1: like he's not trying to keep the food away from me,
Speaker 1: he just like puts things up high because that's like
Speaker 1: where he like, that's where he's at, you know, that's
Speaker 1: his that's his zone. And then I'm like down here
Speaker 1: in the abyss zone going up. But so use I
Speaker 1: use tongs. So I feel like me and this fish,
Speaker 1: I mean, this tripod fish can relate to each other
Speaker 1: really well.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to mention I learned about the tripodfish
Speaker 4: because I was writing about Costa Rican Deep Sea Expedition.
Speaker 4: And on this expedition and a lot of expeditions that
Speaker 4: go through the Schmidt Ocean.
Speaker 2: Institute do this.
Speaker 4: They brought artists on board to kind of like be
Speaker 4: part of it and create work that would help people
Speaker 4: see what everybody was seeing on board. And there was
Speaker 4: this painter, Carlos Hiller, who was painting all the stuff
Speaker 4: they found, and he has really beautiful, sort of like
Speaker 4: funny but also very moving tripod fish paintings.
Speaker 2: That I really love. So that's what got me into
Speaker 2: this fish and I recommend looking him up.
Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, I got I gotta do that because
Speaker 1: I love I mean, I love the art in the book.
Speaker 1: It's also because like I would when I was looking
Speaker 1: at these animals, uh, I would also like look at
Speaker 1: photos of them. It's like no, like they they because
Speaker 1: I was like, maybe, like this artist is interpreting that
Speaker 1: dumb little look on this fish's face, like his kind
Speaker 1: of creative interpretation. Like I was like, no, he got it.
Speaker 1: He got the the stupid little look of this tripod
Speaker 1: fish just waiting for food. It's very funny.
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 1: I do very much recommend this book. It's a it's
Speaker 1: really a beautiful book that you can flip through and
Speaker 1: then learn all these amazing facts.
Speaker 3: So I love it.
Speaker 1: But before we go, we got to play a little
Speaker 1: game called Guess Who's squawking the Mystery Animal sound game.
Speaker 1: Last week's Mister Animal sound hint was this, This poisonous
Speaker 1: animal is a fantastic survivor, which is bad news for
Speaker 1: anything in its path. So that should strike fear into
Speaker 1: the hearts of many a invertebrate or small mammal carea.
Speaker 1: Do you have any any guesses?
Speaker 4: Oh man, is this some kind of Is it like
Speaker 4: a poison frog.
Speaker 1: That is very close? You're so warm, You're so warm?
Speaker 4: Is it like a venomous toad?
Speaker 1: Yes, it is, so this is the cane toad. This
Speaker 1: is the beautiful call of the cane toad. It is
Speaker 1: well known for being invasive in Australia. I think it's
Speaker 1: often viewed as kind of a villain because it does
Speaker 1: destroy so many innocent marsupial lives. But it doesn't. It's
Speaker 1: not its fault. It's from South and Central America. There
Speaker 1: was no way this guy was going to get to
Speaker 1: Australia without our help.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It's it had no intention of being a menace until
Speaker 1: we intervened. They are both poisonous and toxic. They're quite
Speaker 1: large for a toad. They can grow to be around
Speaker 1: half a foot to up to two feet in length.
Speaker 1: I mean like usually they are somewhere between there. They're
Speaker 1: not usually two feet long and that huge, but they
Speaker 1: can get to be that big, and they have just
Speaker 1: the most voracious appetites. You can look up There must
Speaker 1: be videos of this with cane toads as well, but
Speaker 1: you can look up videos of frogs and toads where
Speaker 1: you put like an iPhone or an iPad game in
Speaker 1: front of them, where like little things come up on
Speaker 1: screen and they will try to eat stuff off of
Speaker 1: the screen, like they never seem to learn that that's
Speaker 1: not food. So they are really just like mouths with
Speaker 1: a brain that can like operate the mouth, and not
Speaker 1: a whole lot else going on, So that makes them
Speaker 1: a big problem. They were introduced to Australia because they
Speaker 1: had been previously introduced to islands like Pco to control
Speaker 1: cane beetle populations. And although I still think it's not
Speaker 1: good that they introduced them to these other islands, it
Speaker 1: was more of a quote unquote success story because they
Speaker 1: were able to control the beetle population that was ravaging
Speaker 1: the sugar cane field. So in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: human industry, it worked. In terms of the local wildlife.
Speaker 1: Not a great idea, but in Australia it was a
Speaker 1: double whammy because not only did you just introduce this venomous,
Speaker 1: toxic toad that's giant and hungry to an island where
Speaker 1: the animals have never seen this thing before in their
Speaker 1: entire revolutionary history. It also didn't work to control the
Speaker 1: dang beetles because the cane beetles in Australia lived on
Speaker 1: the very tops of the sugar cane where the cane
Speaker 1: toad just like, I don't know, doesn't think to look
Speaker 1: up there. Like these cane toads are very simple. If
Speaker 1: they see something, they eat it. They're a little like
Speaker 1: pac men. But if they're not seeing the beetles and
Speaker 1: it's not like, you know, directly in front of them,
Speaker 1: they're not going to do anything about it. So the
Speaker 1: beatles were fine, and then the cane toads had to eat,
Speaker 1: so they went off and start eating everything in their path,
Speaker 1: and so huge nightmare. But you know, also because like
Speaker 1: predators would try to eat them, and they're toxic and poisonous,
Speaker 1: and they hadn't co evolved with them, so they had
Speaker 1: no defenses. They did not know, you know, they hadn't
Speaker 1: learned that these toads are toxic. So just awful, an
Speaker 1: awful nightmare. Not the toad's fault, though, The toad's just
Speaker 1: the toad is just doing what it was born to do,
Speaker 1: which is to eat and not be eaten. It's they're innocent,
Speaker 1: sweet little creatures.
Speaker 3: That are destroying Australia.
Speaker 1: So onto this week's mystery sound. The hint is this.
Speaker 1: You could find this animal in Karajaimo's book. It's not
Speaker 1: a bird and it is not a superhero sidekick.
Speaker 3: All right, I hope you guys could hear that. It's
Speaker 3: that little like.
Speaker 1: Sound. So, Kara, this maybe this is maybe this is
Speaker 1: unfair or too much pressure on you, but uh, do
Speaker 1: you have any.
Speaker 3: Guesses as to what this is?
Speaker 2: I know this one all right.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: I'll bleep you out if you get it right, so
Speaker 1: everyone will know that you've won, but they won't know
Speaker 1: how you've won.
Speaker 2: This is this?
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely correct?
Speaker 1: I found there's there are like what you can hear.
Speaker 3: This is a video of one.
Speaker 1: It's not. Here's another hint. It's really not happy to
Speaker 1: be where it is right now in this video. So
Speaker 1: it's making this sound more out of a protest. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you can find this animal in Kara Jaimo's book, Carol,
Speaker 1: Why don't you tell them where they can get the book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can get this book pretty much anywhere. I
Speaker 4: think you can buy it online. Hopefully they'll have it
Speaker 4: at your local bookstore. I'm imagining or hoping also that
Speaker 4: it will be in like some aquariums and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: But yeah, just wherever you tend to find books, take
Speaker 4: a look, and I hope you enjoy it if you grab.
Speaker 1: One, absolutely, I know I did, and I found mine
Speaker 1: in the ocean. That's not true unless you unless you
Speaker 1: define the Internet as the ocean of information. Thank you
Speaker 1: guys so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show
Speaker 1: and you leave a rating or review, those really do
Speaker 1: help me and I read all the reviews. And thanks
Speaker 1: to the Space Classics for their super awesome song. Exolumina
Speaker 1: Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like
Speaker 1: the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple
Speaker 1: podcasts are Hey, guess what wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows. I'm not your mother. I can't tell you
Speaker 1: what to do. I can tell you that if you
Speaker 1: see something weird in the ocean. Probably don't pick it up.
Speaker 1: It could vomit, glowing stuff at you, or cover your
Speaker 1: hand in mucus, or poison you. Any of those things
Speaker 1: could happen. You don't know, but do admire it because
Speaker 1: the ocean is beautiful. I'll see you next Wednesday.