Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: And today on the podcast, we are going to be
Speaker 3: starting a two part series of episodes exploring a kind
Speaker 3: of salad bar of topics related to the Star Wars universe. Now, Rob,
Speaker 3: I know you love a calendar tie in. We've got
Speaker 3: something going on on the calendar the week that these
Speaker 3: episodes are airing, Right.
Speaker 2: That's right, May the fourth, the unofficial turn basically official
Speaker 2: holiday for all things Star Wars.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's a pun, Right the fourth be with you? Yeah,
Speaker 3: very cute.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I think for all of the first episode today,
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about a setting from the
Speaker 3: Empire Strikes Back, my favorite of the Star Wars movies.
Speaker 3: It's going to be the planet Hath, the Ice World,
Speaker 3: location of the Hidden Rebel Bass where the first act
Speaker 3: of the movie takes place. So we're gonna be talking
Speaker 3: about wampas, We're gonna be talking about ton toons as organisms,
Speaker 3: ton toons as sleeping bags, and maybe some other stuff. Rob,
Speaker 3: I wonder if you have a similar kind of particular
Speaker 3: childhood memories of the Hawth scenes to the ones that
Speaker 3: I hold. So I really loved the Hawth segment of
Speaker 3: Empire when I was a kid, not just because of
Speaker 3: the ice planet aliens, I did really like those, but
Speaker 3: I really liked the snow speed or battle scene. I
Speaker 3: remember that always stood out to me as one of
Speaker 3: my favorite, you know, spaceship battle scenes in the movies,
Speaker 3: and I think it's because it wasn't just blasterbeams shooting
Speaker 3: back and forth. I really liked the way that they
Speaker 3: used the trick with the harpoons and the tow cables around.
Speaker 3: They use that to trip up the walker legs and
Speaker 3: knock them down, really like action scenes with the tactile
Speaker 3: all change up like that, where there's like a different
Speaker 3: kind of I don't know, substance being deployed. And I
Speaker 3: remember liking the Ewok battle in Empire or Sorry in
Speaker 3: Jedi for the same reason, though that one maybe didn't
Speaker 3: age quite as gloriously for me personally, but it's still great.
Speaker 2: Well, you love a good booby trap, and yeah both
Speaker 2: have traps. Both of these involved setting traps for big
Speaker 2: lumbering like machines, so uh and uh yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: I obviously I love Empire Strikes Back as well. It's
Speaker 2: one of these weird films though for me that I
Speaker 2: saw it so early on, like like as a as
Speaker 2: a tiny child, and like grew up with it and
Speaker 2: grew up with the toys from this movie, grew up
Speaker 2: with the world of this movie. It's almost like growing
Speaker 2: up like within a religion or a certain culture that
Speaker 2: you It was only much later that I really sat
Speaker 2: down and thought about, well, Okay, this is why I
Speaker 2: liked it, this is why it connected with me, and
Speaker 2: these are the things that's that are legitimately great about it,
Speaker 2: because yeah, it was just all around me. In fact,
Speaker 2: I had to bring this in. I have my Tonton
Speaker 2: action figure, our action accessory from when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: showing that off on the video for folks who have
Speaker 2: the video. I didn't keep most of those things, but
Speaker 2: I did keep the Tonton. And I think that there
Speaker 2: are only a few aliens that I connected with so
Speaker 2: much that I had to like hold on to them
Speaker 2: in one way or another. There's this, There's Max Reebo,
Speaker 2: There's a few others like that. In the I had
Speaker 2: to keep the Tonton.
Speaker 3: You showed me earlier. Can you let the people those
Speaker 3: who are watching on video, can you see the hinge
Speaker 3: where the action figure goes into the back of the
Speaker 3: ton Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, right here, So there was also a saddle, there
Speaker 2: were you know, accessories and all. But but yeah, there
Speaker 2: was this little place where you just stick the feet
Speaker 2: directly into the back of the tonton, which is not
Speaker 2: how it actually worked in the show, but something like that,
Speaker 2: of course occurs.
Speaker 3: Why did they make horses like that that you can
Speaker 3: ride inside?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I wonder if this was a common
Speaker 2: toy build. I don't know. Toy historians will have to
Speaker 2: ride in and let us know if this trick was
Speaker 2: ever employed with just straight up like Cowboy and horse
Speaker 2: action figure sets.
Speaker 3: All right, well, maybe we should just jump right in
Speaker 3: and talk a bit about the give a sketch of
Speaker 3: the fictional world of the planet Hawth.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm gonna ahead and mention a book. I
Speaker 2: have a number of different like Star Wars bestiaries, and
Speaker 2: one is full of droids, So I guess it's a
Speaker 2: I don't know what you would call that droid technical guide.
Speaker 2: But this one here, this is a field guide from
Speaker 2: Star Wars. The wildlife of Star Wars a field guide.
Speaker 2: This one was by Tyrrel Whitlach and Bob Carral. They're
Speaker 2: both from two thousand and one. Both of these authors,
Speaker 2: by the way, are interesting figures in the history of
Speaker 2: Star Wars because Corral wrote co wrote the nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: four film The Ewok Adventure, and Whitlatch, an illustrator with
Speaker 2: a background in zoology, served as a principal creature designer
Speaker 2: for Star Wars Episode one, The Phantom Menace, which of
Speaker 2: course has a lot of great creatures in it. Okay, so,
Speaker 2: uh let's provide just a little overview of Hath First,
Speaker 2: just a reminder, and actually before I do the reminder,
Speaker 2: I'm going to give our standard sort of geek disclaimer here. Uh,
Speaker 2: Joe and I are not experts on Star Wars lore.
Speaker 2: We we we love a lot of it. We know
Speaker 2: what we love. But you know, there's this is not
Speaker 2: going to be like a a lore dump sort of episode.
Speaker 2: So there are things that we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: that might not completely sync up with canon or extended
Speaker 2: universe and the various different like religious divisions within Star
Speaker 2: Wars fandom. Uh So, you know, refer to Wookipedia if
Speaker 2: you have any additional questions, but certainly right in if
Speaker 2: you have, you know, if you if you do want
Speaker 2: to say yes, but actually, uh, right in, well, we're
Speaker 2: happy to have those conversations.
Speaker 3: I feel more inclined to give the non expertise caveats
Speaker 3: about like scientific domains, I would say, when it comes
Speaker 3: to star Ward. Not even George Lucas is an expert
Speaker 3: in Star Wars.
Speaker 2: I firmly believe things like this, like it ends up
Speaker 2: belonging to everybody, so you can take what you want
Speaker 2: and make that be your Star Wars, make that be
Speaker 2: your universe, and so forth. So, you know, trying not
Speaker 2: to get to me, trying not to get to in
Speaker 2: a rut over any of it. But at any rate,
Speaker 2: let's talk about haw Hawk is the sixth planet where
Speaker 2: I understand, revolving around a small lower level blue white sun.
Speaker 2: As we all know, it's frigid. It's a frozen world,
Speaker 2: mostly known to humans anyway for its vast glacier fields
Speaker 2: and snow drifts. It also has a breathable atmosphere, which
Speaker 2: from our point of view is a big deal. But
Speaker 2: I guess within the Star Wars universe is not that exceptional.
Speaker 2: There are playing planets that have atmospheres that most humanoids
Speaker 2: can breathe.
Speaker 3: Seems like almost all of them, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, as the Wildlife of Star Wars field Guide
Speaker 2: points out, there is a currently a great deal of
Speaker 2: geothermal heat that never fully reaches the surface, yet adequately
Speaker 2: warms various underground crake, underground caves, and grottos. So the
Speaker 2: surface is also frequently pelted with castaways from the nearby
Speaker 2: meteor belt. But still life persists on the planet and
Speaker 2: to a great degree within the planet. So in these
Speaker 2: various caves of rock, caves of ice, there's life down there,
Speaker 2: and in particular where to understand, there's like nd in
Speaker 2: plant matter, because there seems to be enough plant matter
Speaker 2: on this world for an herbiv war population to thrive.
Speaker 2: And these are of course the tontons. We mainly see
Speaker 2: the one tonton species. I think in the movies this
Speaker 2: is sometimes referred to as the giant tonton. But as
Speaker 2: this book gets into and various other bits of Star
Speaker 2: Wars you know, extended lore, have explored, there may be
Speaker 2: as many as fifteen tons ton species, and so you
Speaker 2: have like smaller tontons that are like crawling or climbing tontons,
Speaker 2: and this just happens to be the biggest one that
Speaker 2: can be domesticated or at least utilized as a steed
Speaker 2: by humanoid visitors to this world.
Speaker 3: Now that I think about it, the movie never actually
Speaker 3: says that the tontons are herbivores, does it. You just
Speaker 3: assume that since you see one get attacked by the wampa,
Speaker 3: a larger, obviously carnivorous animal. So at least in my brain,
Speaker 3: it went like, oh, okay, tontons are prey, therefore they
Speaker 3: are herbivores. And I guess because animals that we ride
Speaker 3: in reality tend to be herbivores. I know, if there
Speaker 3: are any standard carnivorous animals that people ride as a
Speaker 3: regular thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's weird enough that the carnivorous feline cat
Speaker 2: is in such close proximity to us, you know, an
Speaker 2: hot meat eater. But but yeah, I don't think we
Speaker 2: ever see the tontons eating the movie. But yeah, we
Speaker 2: just it's implied. It's or we just assume that they
Speaker 2: eat plants, so therefore there must be enough plant on
Speaker 2: Hoth or in Hath to sustain a sizable population of tontons,
Speaker 2: and there are enough tontons to sustain some population of
Speaker 2: apex predators the wamp interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but as you're alluding to, those plants must be
Speaker 3: mostly in places that we don't see in the film,
Speaker 3: because again we just see these like glaciers and ice field. Right,
Speaker 3: there's obviously not much to eat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they must be eating something that is under the snow,
Speaker 2: under the eyes in one way or another. And geothormally
Speaker 2: thermally heated cavern seems like a good enough beat. So
Speaker 2: what does a tantan look like? I think most of
Speaker 2: you are probably picturing it, but I or you if
Speaker 2: you have video you saw me hold up the toy
Speaker 2: and you're in that case, maybe reminded that it. It
Speaker 2: kind of looks like a cross between a ram, a goat,
Speaker 2: and a dinosaur.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's very good. Yes, like theropod dinosaur posture
Speaker 3: on the two back legs with the large hips and
Speaker 3: then a counterbalancing tail and a big upper body. But
Speaker 3: then yeah, a kind of fluffy, furry kind of appearance,
Speaker 3: more like a goat with those rams horns, and then
Speaker 3: the face is a little bit goat and also just
Speaker 3: a little bit muppet a little bit luf dragon sort of.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I don't know if this makes sense, but
Speaker 2: I used to think that they kind of look like
Speaker 2: George Washington in the face. I don't know if that
Speaker 2: makes a lot of sense, but I'll hold it up here.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I just as a kid, I would
Speaker 2: look at that and think it kind of looks like
Speaker 2: the guy on the dollar bill. But maybe that was
Speaker 2: just me.
Speaker 3: I honestly can't say I see it, but I'm trying.
Speaker 2: Okay, So what is this? Is it a mammal? Is
Speaker 2: it a reptile? Well, some of the lore books would
Speaker 2: say it is a repto mammalian creature, So some sort
Speaker 2: of warm blooded creature with scales, fur, and thick blubber.
Speaker 2: The let's see sort of some other things worth mentioning.
Speaker 2: The field Guide here says, you know, I think the
Speaker 2: other thing that is established in the movie is that
Speaker 2: they smell bad. Characters are always commenting on this. The
Speaker 2: field Guide says that they can somehow turn this odor off,
Speaker 2: or at least cease to produce it while resting or
Speaker 2: holding up with young so as not to attract predators.
Speaker 2: Though given that they seem to have only one predator.
Speaker 2: Perhaps that predator just simply doesn't depend on smell. I
Speaker 2: don't know, I'm just throwing that out there.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Well, now, I never thought about this. I always
Speaker 3: just assumed the idea that they smell bad is like
Speaker 3: people who aren't used to being around farm animals might
Speaker 3: think that farm animals smell bad. But I guess the
Speaker 3: other place you could go is that they have an
Speaker 3: incredibly like biologically intentional, pungent odor like a skunk, that
Speaker 3: is somehow used for something.
Speaker 2: Right right like you could be I mean, certainly, it
Speaker 2: could be a way of communicating. It could be you know,
Speaker 2: it could be marking their territory. It could be the
Speaker 2: result of some sort of you know, some of the
Speaker 2: oils in their coat or somehow pungent. Or it could
Speaker 2: indeed be something that is, you know, signaling stay away
Speaker 2: from me, like don't eat me, Wampa, I smell terrible.
Speaker 2: It could be defense. It could even be a signal
Speaker 2: that there perhaps is something that they consume that makes
Speaker 2: them potentially toxic for a predator to consume. And we
Speaker 2: may come back to that idea here in a bit.
Speaker 2: Interesting Okay, Now, as a kid, I'm not sure I
Speaker 2: ever really made that connection between tonton and dinosaur though
Speaker 2: I just I was super into dinosaurs. I really love
Speaker 2: Star Wars, but I didn't like think of them as
Speaker 2: being really all that connected somehow.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: The toys probably even interacted with each other, but I
Speaker 2: just thought of the tonton more as a kind of
Speaker 2: goat or ram like monster.
Speaker 3: Well, can I offer one reason that I think our
Speaker 3: brains might not have gone to this connection, even though
Speaker 3: morphologically it seems so obvious. And it's the Taunton exists
Speaker 3: on an ice world. And at least when I was
Speaker 3: growing up, I would have said dinosaurs existed in a
Speaker 3: hot weather and in hot weather only. I don't think
Speaker 3: when I was a kid, I would have even entertained
Speaker 3: the possibility that there could be a dinosaur on an
Speaker 3: icy snowy world. But now I start to wonder, Yeah,
Speaker 3: what exactly was the temperature range of environments that could
Speaker 3: be occupied by dinosaurs? What do we know about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a fascinating topic, and I think you're
Speaker 2: right on because when we were kids, we're looking at
Speaker 2: various excellent examples of paleo art and what's happening. It's
Speaker 2: a tropical environment, there's a volcano erupting in the background,
Speaker 2: there are no snow flurries, there's no ice, and you know,
Speaker 2: and they and all the dinosaurs are presented as being
Speaker 2: just very large reptile creatures that we instantly associate with
Speaker 2: warmer climates.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they live in hell in literal like me,
Speaker 3: molten lava environment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, to be clear, we are
Speaker 2: talking about a distant Earth that was on the whole warmer.
Speaker 2: And I think this idea of dinosaurs living in a
Speaker 2: warm world and a kind of a tropical environment certainly
Speaker 2: was more of the mainstay back in nineteen eighty and
Speaker 2: even fifteen years ago. I think this was more common,
Speaker 2: but paleontology increasingly paints a picture of prehistoric settings in
Speaker 2: which dinosaurs sometimes lived in colder climates. So, and this
Speaker 2: would actually include bipedal therapods. Bipedal therapods are among the
Speaker 2: remains found in what is now southeastern Australia, which over
Speaker 2: one hundred and ten million years ago, would have existed
Speaker 2: within the Cretaceous Antarctic Circle. Is explored in the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty article How Dinosaurs Thrived in the Snow by Riley
Speaker 2: Black For Smithsonian Magazine. This region was a temperate rainforest,
Speaker 2: but it's three months dark. Winters would have been harsh,
Speaker 2: featuring snow and ice. We also have evidence from the
Speaker 2: Prince Creek formation in northern i Alaska. This suggests similar
Speaker 2: snow dinos from that part of the world as well. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't think I would have been able to tell
Speaker 3: you before reading up for this episode that there were
Speaker 3: actually dinosaurs that lived above the Arctic Circle during the
Speaker 3: Cretaceous period or during the Mesozoic generally, that there were
Speaker 3: dinosaurs that you know, they probably had similar kinds of
Speaker 3: adaptations to many larger animals that live in far northern
Speaker 3: or southern climates near polar climates today. But yeah, we
Speaker 3: know there were some large dinosaurs that lived up there,
Speaker 3: and that raises a lot of interesting questions like did
Speaker 3: they survive by migration or did they have extreme life
Speaker 3: adaptations to stay up in those kinds of conditions year round.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of these questions I think
Speaker 2: are still being discussed and we're still working out the answers.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you'd be dealing with situations where for like
Speaker 2: three months out of the year, this region might be
Speaker 2: shrouded in darkness and subject to some extreme temperatures, and
Speaker 2: yet the dinosaurs seem to have existed there at least
Speaker 2: some populations of them remained through these periods. So I
Speaker 2: was reading a bit more about this in Paleontology snow
Speaker 2: Falling on Dinosaurs by Fluorian Modespakta. This was published in
Speaker 2: Current Biology twenty twenty one, and the author points out that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: we used to think that dinosaur activity was limited more
Speaker 2: towards the warmer climates on a warmer Earth, but paleontology
Speaker 2: finds in southern Australia in Antarctica as well, and then
Speaker 2: also Northern Siberia and Northern Canada have challenged those assumptions.
Speaker 2: Prince Creek formation findings have painted a picture of considerable
Speaker 2: polar dino diversity from seven different families plus one bird.
Speaker 2: And this includes large and small bodied dinos. It includes
Speaker 2: both herbivores and carnivores. And this also includes the facultatively
Speaker 2: bipedal hydrosaur that was once thought to be a separate
Speaker 2: species and had a rarely had its own name, but
Speaker 2: has now thought I think to basically be a variety
Speaker 2: of the Edmontosaurus. But that could change. These things change
Speaker 2: but yeah, it paints this picture. And we've seen this
Speaker 2: in more more recent and updated paleol art, and I
Speaker 2: believe it's made its way into some of the big
Speaker 2: budget computer animated documentaries about prehistoric life, where we're now
Speaker 2: seeing images of dinosaurs things we would even you know, identify, readibly, readily,
Speaker 2: even with feathers, as dinosaurs roaming about in some sort
Speaker 2: of a snowy, icy setting. Now, without getting into the
Speaker 2: larger topic of broad dinosaur metabolism, the consensus today tends
Speaker 2: to be that therapod dinosaurs were likely warm blooded, and
Speaker 2: the same is likely true for the Edmontosaurus as well.
Speaker 2: And as you know, it's interesting to think about about
Speaker 2: this our current take on all this when considering the
Speaker 2: tanton because when the when the Tonton was conceived, I
Speaker 2: don't think there was any sense of like, hey, I
Speaker 2: think dinosaurs actually were warm blooded and lived in snowy environments.
Speaker 2: You know. It seems more like a clear Sci fi
Speaker 2: hybridization of mammals and reptiles, which of course is a
Speaker 2: great way to try and conceive what alien life forms
Speaker 2: in an alien world might look like. If you look
Speaker 2: at some of the Ralph McCrory early sketches for what
Speaker 2: a ton tan was going to be. They're fascinating because
Speaker 2: they kind of look like they look more like large
Speaker 2: rodents or kind of like weird furry kangaroos.
Speaker 3: Well, I see two different illustrations that you've included in
Speaker 3: the outline here, I'd say, in the left one, yeah,
Speaker 3: I see the large rodent. It looks like a big
Speaker 3: mouse with a long shaggy tail and huge hind legs, bite,
Speaker 3: big bipedal mouse. And then the one on the right
Speaker 3: to me just looks like a furry velociraptor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it does.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But it's also interesting to think about this as Okay,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like a you know, thought experiment of
Speaker 2: like what if reptiles could live in a snowy environment. Well,
Speaker 2: they'd have to be furry, they'd have to be kind
Speaker 2: of half mammal, right, But you know, we increasingly, I guess,
Speaker 2: realize that this isn't really necessary. A creature like this
Speaker 2: without fur, though possibly with considerable feathers, could certainly work
Speaker 2: in an environment similar to hawk and as we've discussed
Speaker 2: before in the show, the penguin is just a great
Speaker 2: example of how a dinosaur descendant does just fine in
Speaker 2: a polar climate.
Speaker 3: That's true. Penguins are dinosaurs, Yeah, the strange thing to
Speaker 3: think about.
Speaker 2: Now. We'll come back to some other scenes with tontons
Speaker 2: here in a bit, but there's one scene involving the
Speaker 2: tonton in Empire Strikes Back that is I'm sure already
Speaker 2: on everybody's minds, and we teased it out a little earlier,
Speaker 2: and that is, you know what happens inside of a
Speaker 2: tonton sometimes.
Speaker 3: Sometimes sometimes what can be made of what's inside a
Speaker 3: tonton if you're too cold? Yeah, So to set up
Speaker 3: this scene at the beginning of the movie, Luke Skywalker
Speaker 3: is out scouting. He's on the surface of Hawk, the
Speaker 3: snowy world, on a tonton when he gets attacked and
Speaker 3: dragged away by a wampa. And we're gonna come back
Speaker 3: and talk about the wampa later in this episode, but
Speaker 3: it is shown to be some kind of bipedal, carnivorous beast,
Speaker 3: like a predatory, abominable snowman.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Luke later escapes the wampa's ice cave and then he
Speaker 3: stumbles out into the snow as night is falling. So
Speaker 3: it's going to be getting even colder on Hawth and
Speaker 3: there he has a vision of his dead master, Obi
Speaker 3: Wan Kenobi Obi Wan is telling him, Hey, gotta go
Speaker 3: say hi to Yoda, Gotta go visit Yoda, And so
Speaker 3: Luke is there in the cold saying Yoda, diego bus system. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Han solo back at the rebel base. He learns that
Speaker 3: Luke has not come in for the night, and so
Speaker 3: he gets concerned about his friend and then rides out
Speaker 3: on his own Tonton looking for him. So Han finds
Speaker 3: Luke already collapsed in snow and delirious, and right when
Speaker 3: Han gets there, his own Taunton dies. So improvising Han
Speaker 3: takes Luke's lightsaber. I think this is the only time
Speaker 3: in the main series we see Han solo using a lightsaber.
Speaker 3: But he takes Luke's lightsaber and then he awkwardly turns
Speaker 3: it on and slices open the Taunton belly, showing these
Speaker 3: guts bulging out, many of which look like like transparent,
Speaker 3: slimy white balloons. Kind of gross little appearance, and then
Speaker 3: Han shoves the semi conscious loop inside the Tnton. We
Speaker 3: don't see this directly happening. We get the Tonton in
Speaker 3: the foreground and then you see something's happening on the
Speaker 3: other side. You get some squishing sound effects, and Han says,
Speaker 3: you know, it might not smell good, but it'll keep
Speaker 3: him warm until Han is able to build the shelter.
Speaker 3: And we don't see what happens after that until the
Speaker 3: next morning when the search party is out in the
Speaker 3: snow speeders and they find that our heroes have survived
Speaker 3: survived the night. So yeah, we don't see anything between
Speaker 3: stuffing Luke into the guts and the next morning when
Speaker 3: they're all right. But it does work, we are told.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: First of all, I was wondering, are there any direct
Speaker 3: biological parallels to this? Is there an organism in nature
Speaker 3: that kills another large organism and then crawls inside it
Speaker 3: for warmth in snowy conditions? And maybe I overlooked something,
Speaker 3: But I was searching for something like this for a
Speaker 3: long time and didn't find anything that really fit the bill.
Speaker 3: So as far as I can tell, there is nothing
Speaker 3: in nature like this. There are animals that crawl inside
Speaker 3: other dead organisms, but they tend to do this for
Speaker 3: reasons other than seeking warmth. Like there are animals that
Speaker 3: will make use of the physical structure of another dead animal,
Speaker 3: like the bones of another dead animal, to provide some
Speaker 3: kind of shelter, maybe sheltering protection in the rib cage
Speaker 3: of a larger animal, using that as a wind break
Speaker 3: or something. Or there are animals, there are plenty of
Speaker 3: animals that go inside another animal to eat that animal
Speaker 3: or to lay their eggs in there, but they're using
Speaker 3: the flesh as an energy source, not trying to capture
Speaker 3: and make use of the residual warmth of the stead animal.
Speaker 3: So again, if listeners out there have a great example
Speaker 3: from nature of an animal that actually goes inside another
Speaker 3: animal just to capture the residual warmth after that animal's death,
Speaker 3: let us know. Contact that stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 3: dot com, because I would love to find one. But
Speaker 3: I don't think there's an example of that except humans.
Speaker 3: There are some stories I want to talk about in
Speaker 3: human history.
Speaker 2: Before we get into that, I will add that there's
Speaker 2: something you can do that doesn't involve cutting open another animal.
Speaker 2: And we've already mentioned in passing the penguin, but we
Speaker 2: see this with all sorts of species. But just getting
Speaker 2: really close to another organism is a great way to
Speaker 2: share heat with that organism, and we see this in penguins,
Speaker 2: we see this in humans. We see this in relationships
Speaker 2: like humans and dogs, dogs and cats, cats and humans,
Speaker 2: where on a cold day these organisms will come together
Speaker 2: and share heat without actually crawling inside each other's bodies,
Speaker 2: though it may seem like like your cat may want
Speaker 2: to do this on really cold days.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I guess that would have been the next
Speaker 3: best option. If there were no Tonton there, and if
Speaker 3: Han did not have a shelter that he could build,
Speaker 3: I guess they'd just have to kind of huddle up
Speaker 3: and snuggle and see if they can make it through.
Speaker 3: But I think the prospect for Luke in that situation
Speaker 3: would not be very good. So yeah, the question the
Speaker 3: next question to look at is are there any historical
Speaker 3: analogs of the Tonton sleeping bag scene? And I think
Speaker 3: the answer is yes.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: When I started searching for stories like this, initially, I
Speaker 3: found a lot of sources bringing up the American frontiersman
Speaker 3: and fur trapper Hugh Glass, who lived roughly seventeen eighty
Speaker 3: three to eighteen thirty three. A fictionalized version of this
Speaker 3: historical figure is the main character of the twenty fifteen
Speaker 3: film The Revenant. This character is played by Leonardo DiCaprio
Speaker 3: in the movie, and in the movie there is a
Speaker 3: scene where the character based on Hugh Glass survives a
Speaker 3: freezing night I think a blizzard by gutting a horse
Speaker 3: and crawling into the body for warmth. However, from what
Speaker 3: I could find, this story is a fictional invention for
Speaker 3: the film, not something based on not based on anything
Speaker 3: that actually happened in the life of Hugh Glass. But
Speaker 3: I did find one apparently real and very well documented
Speaker 3: account from much more recently so. One of my main
Speaker 3: sources here is an article in The Washington Post from
Speaker 3: February twenty sixteen by Karen Bruiliard, and the title of
Speaker 3: the article is, move over, DiCaprio, this man really did
Speaker 3: survive the cold inside a dead horse.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Again the title, they're referencing the scene in The Revenant.
Speaker 3: And then I'm just going to read like a lead
Speaker 3: paragraph from this article quote. If you're wondering whether the
Speaker 3: carcass as tent technique would work in real life, let
Speaker 3: us introduce you to Richard Daily sixty eight, who is
Speaker 3: very likely one of the few Americans who has sheltered
Speaker 3: inside a horse.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm just saying this better has been really necessary.
Speaker 3: You're about to hear the whole story. You can make
Speaker 3: your own decisions about this, and many people have judged
Speaker 3: the men involved in this story. So I don't know,
Speaker 3: we'll see what we think. The event in question took
Speaker 3: place in November nineteen eighty three. At the time, Daily
Speaker 3: was so this would be three years after Empire strikes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're in a post empire world.
Speaker 3: He post empire world, yes, and that will become relevant. Actually,
Speaker 3: at the time, Daily was thirty five years old working
Speaker 3: as a firefighter in Caldwell, Idaho, which is a small
Speaker 3: city west of Boise. One day that November, Daily decided
Speaker 3: to go on a several day long hunting trip at
Speaker 3: a place called Cuddy Mountain, which is north of Caldwell
Speaker 3: near the border with Oregon, and he took along his neighbor,
Speaker 3: Stephen McCoy. They were going to be traveling on horseback.
Speaker 3: And so imagine out in the forest around this mountain,
Speaker 3: hunting on horseback for several days at a time and
Speaker 3: camping out. And the article also, I should just say
Speaker 3: mentions Daily's horse's name. The name is She's Obliging, Okay,
Speaker 3: the name it will become more tragic as the story
Speaker 3: goes on. Rob I included in the outline a picture
Speaker 3: you can see of Richard Daley and Stephen McCoy's. This
Speaker 3: is from the AP, the Associated Press article that came
Speaker 3: out on this event from November of nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 3: I mean, they look like some real, real cowboys. They're
Speaker 3: wearing cowboy hats kind of.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Steve McCoy looks like he's I mean, it's a black
Speaker 3: and white photo, but I can sense a real denim
Speaker 3: tuxedo thing going on with his outfit here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are some real cow hens right here.
Speaker 3: So the two men on their two horses went out
Speaker 3: hunting as winter was falling and it started to snow.
Speaker 3: While they were out on the mountain on the third day,
Speaker 3: they shot two large deer, and then while loading one
Speaker 3: of the carcasses onto the horse, she's obliging the horse.
Speaker 3: The horse's body at least did not oblige, and it
Speaker 3: buckled and fell under the weight, and that broke daily
Speaker 3: saddle in the process. After this, there are some shifting
Speaker 3: plans and recalculations about where to go next and what
Speaker 3: to do, but in short, they end up trudging through
Speaker 3: the snow with one of the deer carcasses but not
Speaker 3: the other one, deciding they're going to come back for
Speaker 3: the second carcass. And while they're doing this, the storm
Speaker 3: is getting worse and worse with terrible wind. In the
Speaker 3: article from the original event the event the ap article,
Speaker 3: they estimate fifty to eighty mile per hour winds. Eighty
Speaker 3: mile per hour winds are going to be like that's
Speaker 3: hurricane territory. But they also estimate earlier in this storm
Speaker 3: fifty mile per hour wind so really high winds. They
Speaker 3: say it's very cold, and it also sounds like maybe
Speaker 3: they were not I think they were sort of prepared,
Speaker 3: but not prepared enough for whether this bad. So it
Speaker 3: starts raining and they get completely soaked, and then the
Speaker 3: rain turns to sleet again, and so they are soaked
Speaker 3: to the bone, freezing out on this mountain, and they
Speaker 3: get lost and they can't find their truck. The article
Speaker 3: mentions that they were so cold they had been shivering uncontrollably,
Speaker 3: and then they stopped shivering. When you stop shivering, that's
Speaker 3: a dangerous sign of hypothermia. This is you're starting to
Speaker 3: reach life threatening conditions here. So they abandon the plan
Speaker 3: of finding the truck and focus instead on immediately building
Speaker 3: a fire. They did have matches and kindling and fuel,
Speaker 3: but it was so windy and so wet that they
Speaker 3: couldn't get a fire started. And at this point, these
Speaker 3: two guys are going into panic mode. They knew they
Speaker 3: were about to cross some points of no return and
Speaker 3: probably freeze to death. So here here, I'm also consulting
Speaker 3: that Associated Press article from nineteen eighty three that says
Speaker 3: the first thing they tried to do was Daily was like, well,
Speaker 3: I'm going to skin this deer carcass and we can
Speaker 3: wrap ourselves in the hide and that'll save us. But
Speaker 3: quoting Daily, it says, quote, I couldn't function after half
Speaker 3: the hide was skinned out, and I was watching Steve.
Speaker 3: His clothes weren't as wind resistant as mine, and he
Speaker 3: was just standing there, almost asleep and watching me. So
Speaker 3: at this point, Daily guessed that they had less than
Speaker 3: an hour until they were dead if they didn't do something,
Speaker 3: but McCoy felt that somehow he knew they would survive.
Speaker 4: Again.
Speaker 3: From the AP article, McCoy saying, I just knew that
Speaker 3: wasn't the way I was going to go, and then
Speaker 3: it narrates McCoy and Daily earlier had discussed had discussed
Speaker 3: stories they'd heard about using the body of an animal
Speaker 3: for warmth, but they put off a decision until McCoy's
Speaker 3: increasingly slurred speech alarmed them to action. Now, I want
Speaker 3: to note that this original AP article characterizes the ideas
Speaker 3: coming from stories they had heard, which is a vague
Speaker 3: and almost euphemistic sounding attribution. The twenty sixteen article from
Speaker 3: the Washington Post that has this interview with Daily is
Speaker 3: more specific. Quote by then, it was about ten pm.
Speaker 3: That's when McCoy brought up the ton Ton scene in
Speaker 3: the Empire strikes back.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, so this is fascinating. It almost feels like
Speaker 2: I'm not casting a lot of blame here, but maybe
Speaker 2: in subsequent tellings of the story, and even telling of
Speaker 2: it within a like a journalistic framework, there's maybe a
Speaker 2: tendency to lean more into the pure cowboy aesthetics of
Speaker 2: the thing.
Speaker 3: Or just not say what it was.
Speaker 2: It was like that, you know, don't bring up Star Wars.
Speaker 2: It's such a such a this is such a like
Speaker 2: a rustic story of survival. If we bring Star Wars,
Speaker 2: it's just gonna feel kind of jarring. We can bring
Speaker 2: that up in the conversation. It just feels kind of jarring, right.
Speaker 3: Well, to be clear, it's not the only story like
Speaker 3: this in reality. You know, there have been other claims
Speaker 3: of people crawling inside animals for warmth and history that
Speaker 3: are not very well documented. It seems like so maybe
Speaker 3: they could have brought that up also. But here Daily
Speaker 3: is specific. He says, yes, McCoy brought up the ton
Speaker 3: Ton scene, and the Empire strikes back.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it would, it would. There's no indication
Speaker 2: that they said this, but I mean you could say
Speaker 2: tonton me and you would know what I meant by that.
Speaker 2: You would know I need to cut open of the
Speaker 2: arge animal carcass and shove me inside it.
Speaker 3: So after this, they did not wait. They shot the horses,
Speaker 3: and they immediately got to work with the gutting. Here,
Speaker 3: I'll quote from the Washington Post quote, lest you think
Speaker 3: gutting a horse under such circumstances would be revolting, Daily
Speaker 3: recalls it as almost euphoric.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: Its guts came out all over your hands and wrists.
Speaker 3: He said, you can't imagine how good it felt. Immediately
Speaker 3: warmed you up. So at first, they thought they could
Speaker 3: shelter together inside one of the horses. That makes sense, right,
Speaker 3: You get two men in one horse, you can share
Speaker 3: each other's body heat.
Speaker 2: And horses are huge animals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, horse is very big, so you would think you
Speaker 3: could get two men inside the horse. But no, it
Speaker 3: seems like our intuitions are quite wrong here. Daily says
Speaker 3: that not only could they not both get into one horse,
Speaker 3: Daily could not even get all of himself alone into
Speaker 3: the horse's gutted body cavity. He got his upper body in,
Speaker 3: wedging his shoulders and head into the top of the
Speaker 3: rib case, but his legs were hanging out and he
Speaker 3: had to cover them with saddle blankets.
Speaker 2: Oh god, this is just this is at once like
Speaker 2: oddly kind of hilarious, but also just so grizzly and serious,
Speaker 2: Like I feel like my body doesn't even know how
Speaker 2: to react to the telling.
Speaker 3: So they each had to get inside one of the horses,
Speaker 3: and Daily describes his reaction as initially relief like warming
Speaker 3: and counteracting of the hypothermia, and then claustrophobia and disgust.
Speaker 3: He says that every couple of hours he would panic
Speaker 3: and have to get back out of the horse, but
Speaker 3: then would start shivering and freezing again and have to
Speaker 3: get back inside. Also, this fix was only temporary, they say.
Speaker 3: By about two am, which is about four to five
Speaker 3: hours after the horses were killed, the carcasses had cooled
Speaker 3: significantly and were no longer providing much warmth. By five am,
Speaker 3: the men were again shivering uncontrollably. At that point they
Speaker 3: felt that they could get out of the horse and
Speaker 3: continue looking for their truck, which the ap article says
Speaker 3: turned out to be only about a mile and a
Speaker 3: quarter from where they had been. So one of those
Speaker 3: things where if they'd just not known where to go,
Speaker 3: they wouldn't you know, they could have just made it
Speaker 3: to their truck.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But as we've discussed before, like people become lost
Speaker 2: in wilderness scenarios all the time, not that far from
Speaker 2: some sort of point of reference or possible refuge. It's
Speaker 2: just that's what happens to the human mind when we
Speaker 2: get lost in the woods without you know, with the
Speaker 2: caveat that's you know, certain preparations and certain knowledge can
Speaker 2: make the difference, but not always.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, when you don't know where to go,
Speaker 3: you don't know where to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then extenuating conditions with the horrible weather and
Speaker 2: and you know, shivering cold understandable.
Speaker 3: So they both survived the incident. But when word got
Speaker 3: out about this, many locals were outraged at the two men.
Speaker 3: The article says that some accuse them of doing this
Speaker 3: as a publicity stunt. I don't know if that means
Speaker 3: that they thought that the men made the story up,
Speaker 3: or if they like actually did it but just for fame.
Speaker 3: The latter idea seems crazy to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because in this scenario, they would have both killed
Speaker 2: their horses in order to achieve this slight level of fame,
Speaker 2: and it just doesn't seem very reasonable.
Speaker 3: Apparently McCoy was deeply shaken by these events and moved
Speaker 3: away from the area not long after. But then, to
Speaker 3: quote from towards the end of that article, it says,
Speaker 3: quote Silvana Daily, Richard Daly's wife, said he later took
Speaker 3: her to see the dead horse's bones, another trip laden
Speaker 3: with misadventures. Everything to Richard is, Gee, this is a
Speaker 3: lot farther than I remembered, she said. So there is
Speaker 3: one case where it's very well documented that some eyes
Speaker 3: actually were on the verge of freezing to death, crawled
Speaker 3: inside of a large, recently dead animal carcass and did
Speaker 3: manage to survive, probably due to being inside the dead animal.
Speaker 3: So but my question was, Okay, it works in this scenario.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess we don't know for sure whether
Speaker 3: they would have died otherwise, but it seems likely it
Speaker 3: worked in this scenario. But would this normally work? Is
Speaker 3: this something that generally has some validity as a survival technique?
Speaker 3: Went around reading several different articles and experiments that looked
Speaker 3: into this in different ways. So I read a twenty
Speaker 3: fifteen article in Slate by Laura Bradley, which again was
Speaker 3: connected to the scene in the Revenant film. This article
Speaker 3: consulted a couple of experts on the question, and it
Speaker 3: quotes one named Robert Reid, who is a research wildlife
Speaker 3: biologist with the USGS. Reid says he thinks, yes, at
Speaker 3: least temporarily, a large animal carcass will provide residual heat,
Speaker 3: but it will start to cool right after death, so
Speaker 3: this is going to be temporary. He estimates that a
Speaker 3: very large animal like a moose or an elk would
Speaker 3: buy you about six hours worth of heat. Remember that
Speaker 3: Daily said that the horse stopped being warm after four
Speaker 3: to five hours, And when you really think about it,
Speaker 3: once the horse stops being warm, that's not just like
Speaker 3: a net, you know, like no benefit. That actually becomes
Speaker 3: worse than being out of the horse, right because you're
Speaker 3: in this like colder thing that's wet around you. It
Speaker 3: is going to be sapping heat from you.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's it's like a really gross version of
Speaker 2: what happens when it's when you or maybe at your
Speaker 2: house and you'd decide, hey, it's a cold night, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna take a hot bath. Well that hot bath is
Speaker 2: great at first, but then it becomes a slightly less
Speaker 2: hot bath, then it becomes a warm bath, and if
Speaker 2: you stay in long enough, it becomes a cold bath.
Speaker 2: And yeah, getting out of that, you're going to be
Speaker 2: even worse off than when you went in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's obviously going to be bad to be
Speaker 3: in this cooling in this cooling, wet environment inside the animal.
Speaker 3: But the other thing is animal bodies are wet inside,
Speaker 3: so getting inside to be almost you know, wet, So
Speaker 3: getting inside one gets you wet, and so once you
Speaker 3: get out of the animal, you'll also now be wet
Speaker 3: because you have been inside this wet dead animal. Then
Speaker 3: again in the daily story, you know that they were
Speaker 3: already soaked earlier from the rain and the sleet, so
Speaker 3: kind of at that point, like what do you have
Speaker 3: to lose? But but yeah, you like you don't want
Speaker 3: in a situation where you are at risk of freezing,
Speaker 3: getting wet is generally going to make your situation much
Speaker 3: much worse. A commonly cited figure is that you lose
Speaker 3: body heats something like twenty to twenty five times faster
Speaker 3: if you're wet than if you're dry. So like, getting
Speaker 3: wet is the last thing you want to happen in
Speaker 3: a in a cold survival so situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we've all seen survival scenarios, at least
Speaker 2: in movies where individual gets you know, falls into the
Speaker 2: water in a wintery environment. Like the next thing they've
Speaker 2: got to do is get out of those wet clothes
Speaker 2: and warm up by the fire. Like the wet clothes
Speaker 2: absolutely have to come off. Exactly better to be naked
Speaker 2: in the cold than in wet clothes.
Speaker 3: You cannot stay wet when it's cold. That is really dangerous. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Read also mentions some other things. For example, dead animals
Speaker 3: can quickly attract predators such as wolves or bears or
Speaker 3: perhaps in our hothcase, wampas. So that could add to
Speaker 3: your troubles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, them is going to be like this is a
Speaker 2: tr duncan here, this is perfect.
Speaker 3: There you go. I would also add infection risk from
Speaker 3: all those animal guts. But once again, if you are
Speaker 3: about to freeze to death anyway, I would say other
Speaker 3: concerns take a back seat. And yes, read thinks that
Speaker 3: on balance, getting inside the large dead animal would probably
Speaker 3: buy you a few hours of survival. And you know
Speaker 3: this all, I guess depends on other variables in the scene,
Speaker 3: like how long does it take Han to build the
Speaker 3: survival shelter. The movie doesn't say what resources are available
Speaker 3: once the shelter is built. Is it just a tin
Speaker 3: or does it have heaters and dry towels and things
Speaker 3: like that? Like all this makes a difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And you know, coming back to what you
Speaker 2: said about infection risk, I mean Luke survives, and he does,
Speaker 2: He's going into the Boca tank that's going to BIOT
Speaker 2: take care of everything, so they can worry about that
Speaker 2: later if he survives.
Speaker 3: Okay, another way in on the question of would this
Speaker 3: normally work, the MythBusters tried yes, I would you know,
Speaker 3: good good on them. So this was episode two oh eight.
Speaker 3: It was a Star Wars special. Uh and I wasn't
Speaker 3: able to watch this. I'm relying on a summary of
Speaker 3: the episode from myth results dot com. This is a
Speaker 3: website that tracks all of the episodes and what they found.
Speaker 3: So in this experiment, they made a model ton ton
Speaker 3: out of a big chunk of phone with an outer
Speaker 3: layer of synthetic skin and fur lining, and then they
Speaker 3: gave it some artificial internal organs so that it would
Speaker 3: retain and conduct heat somewhat like a real body. In
Speaker 3: this test, they also used an in house dummy called thermoboy,
Speaker 3: which I think they had originally made to test something
Speaker 3: from the movie Titanic, but they had constructed it to
Speaker 3: simulate thermal properties of a human body. So it has
Speaker 3: like an internal heater and a circulatory system to simulate
Speaker 3: human metabolism and heat distribution. And then they simulated the
Speaker 3: conditions of Hawth by building an insulated chamber lined with
Speaker 3: dry ice within an industrial freezer, creating conditions of negative
Speaker 3: forty degrees celsius. Then for the test, they heated the
Speaker 3: dummy and the tonton body to body temperatures of ninety
Speaker 3: nine degrees fahrenheit or thirty seven degrees celsius, and they
Speaker 3: monitored the temperature of the dummy, reasoning that Luke would
Speaker 3: die if his body temperature fell to eighty two degrees
Speaker 3: fahrenheit or twenty eight degrees celsius. And after the two
Speaker 3: point five hours that they estimated it would take Han
Speaker 3: to build the shelter. I don't know if that's a
Speaker 3: good guess or not. I don't know how taken.
Speaker 2: Shelter, right, We never see it, not really.
Speaker 3: Well, you kind of see some snow piled up in
Speaker 3: a few poles, but no, you don't get a good
Speaker 3: look at.
Speaker 2: It, because that would be making a huge difference. Like,
Speaker 2: are we talking some sort of a sci fi collapsible
Speaker 2: thing where he just like pushes a button whil a
Speaker 2: shelter or is Han about to make some snow bricks
Speaker 2: and build some sort of an IgG loose sculptuous structure
Speaker 2: out there on the ice.
Speaker 3: You know. I saw something online about some kind of
Speaker 3: Star Wars media. I think that had said Mace Windu
Speaker 3: carries something called a wallet tent or something. Oh okay,
Speaker 3: it's like a little thing that fits in the pocket
Speaker 3: and you can flip it out and press a button
Speaker 3: and it turns into a full sized tint immediately. Obviously
Speaker 3: it'd be good for Honda of something like this, but
Speaker 3: the movie makes it sound like it's gonna take him
Speaker 3: a while, which is why he has to get Luke
Speaker 3: in the Taunton. If you had one of the those
Speaker 3: things and it would just instantly assembly, you don't think
Speaker 3: the Tonton would be necessary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the rebellion clearly doesn't have the resources of the
Speaker 2: Galactic Republic, so I guess that makes sense.
Speaker 3: So let's see anyway. Yeah, they said after the two
Speaker 3: point five hours that it would take on to build
Speaker 3: the shelter. In their guests, the dummy Luke's body had
Speaker 3: only gone down to ninety two degrees fahrenheit or thirty
Speaker 3: three degrees celsia's, which is not good but not fatal
Speaker 3: by their estimation. So they deemed the Tonton survival sleeping
Speaker 3: bag plausible and not a long term solution, but it
Speaker 3: would probably buy Luke's survival for two and a half
Speaker 3: hours in their view. Now, on the other hand, I
Speaker 3: found an interesting argument that given other specifics of the scene,
Speaker 3: in Empire or assumptions about what was going on there,
Speaker 3: This would actually not save Luke. This was an article
Speaker 3: from twenty twelve by a writer named Keith Veronese I Believe,
Speaker 3: originally for Io nine but now hosted on Gizmoto. In
Speaker 3: this article, Verinese uses Newton's law of cooling, which is
Speaker 3: a real reliable method for modeling a cooling body after death.
Speaker 3: It's not just for a cooling body after death, but
Speaker 3: it is used to model that, among other things, and
Speaker 3: it is used in reality by forensic investigators to determine
Speaker 3: time of death and murder victims. Because you know, if
Speaker 3: you have a fairly stable environmental temperature and you know
Speaker 3: what that temperature is roughly, you can guess about how
Speaker 3: long it takes for a body to cool in that environment.
Speaker 3: So Varnese in this article does the math and comes
Speaker 3: up with a few estimates based on Luke's starting body
Speaker 3: temperature and the ambient surroundings of Hawth, which he estimates
Speaker 3: our negative sixty degrees celsius at night. So he says,
Speaker 3: if Luke starts at normal body temperature, Hans got a
Speaker 3: little bit under an hour before the time he needs
Speaker 3: to get Luke dry and warm in the shelter in
Speaker 3: order to avoid severe hypothermia and risk of death. He says,
Speaker 3: if Luke starts already with mild hypothermia, which he kind
Speaker 3: of seems to have in the movie, given the sluggishness
Speaker 3: and confusion, Han has only about forty seven minutes. And
Speaker 3: I think the difference between this estimate and the mythbuster's
Speaker 3: result is not just like theory versus the simulated experiment.
Speaker 3: I think it's at least in part due to environmental
Speaker 3: temperature differences. So the MythBusters use that freezer that's negative
Speaker 3: forty degrees celsius. This thought experiment uses negative sixty degrees.
Speaker 3: So anyway, I would say in summary, I'm not a
Speaker 3: survival wilderness survival expert, so you know, don't plan your
Speaker 3: survival around anything you've heard on this show. We're just
Speaker 3: doing our best based on what we read. But my
Speaker 3: best understanding based on everything we've read here is that
Speaker 3: crawling inside a recently dead tonton or other large animal
Speaker 3: can probably buy you some survival time protecting you from
Speaker 3: the cold. Yes, it can do that, but maybe not
Speaker 3: as much time as you would think. Somewhere on the
Speaker 3: order of less than an hour on the shorter end
Speaker 3: to maybe four to six hours, depending on a bunch
Speaker 3: of factors like your starting body temperature, your body mass,
Speaker 3: the animals starting body temperature, the animal's body mass, and
Speaker 3: of course the outside temperature and conditions, and then even
Speaker 3: other things that you might not think about, like how
Speaker 3: much of your body you can get inside the animal,
Speaker 3: because like, here's the guy you know in that one
Speaker 3: story where he's like, well, I can crawl inside a horse,
Speaker 3: but it turns out, nope, not enough room inside the
Speaker 3: horse for me to get in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like if the tonton hadn't been big enough, like
Speaker 2: couldn't have fit all of Luke in there, he might
Speaker 2: have lost an arm or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: In one of the articles I was reading, they consult
Speaker 3: a guy who I think was just being a little
Speaker 3: too happy go lucky about the experiment. He was like,
Speaker 3: if you really want to do it right, so you
Speaker 3: can get your whole body inside and close up the incision,
Speaker 3: you should also cut out the animal's trachea so you
Speaker 3: can use it as a breathing tube.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, Okay, that's it.
Speaker 3: And then of course you know this, it could possibly
Speaker 3: buy you a short amount of time to stave off
Speaker 3: severe hypothermia. But it comes with many dangers and downsides
Speaker 3: besides just being gross. You know, you got the exposure
Speaker 3: to potentially pathogenic bacteria, could attract predators, it gets you
Speaker 3: wet if you're not already wet, and probably some other stuff.
Speaker 3: I'm not even thinking.
Speaker 4: Who knows.
Speaker 2: Well, that's fascinating, you know. I trust On Solo, so
Speaker 2: when he does this in the film, I assume this
Speaker 2: is absolutely the best option. He's not going to mess around.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I really had no idea exactly how this
Speaker 2: matched up with reality or about that amazing but again
Speaker 2: post Empire example of someone actually doing something similar to
Speaker 2: this in the.
Speaker 3: Wild, seemingly inspired by the film.
Speaker 2: Yeah crazy.
Speaker 3: Now, if I can offer a critique of Han Solo's form,
Speaker 3: I would say the movie really makes it look like
Speaker 3: Han Solo does not appropriately gut the animals.
Speaker 2: Doesn't guide it at all.
Speaker 3: No, I don't see anything coming out. I just see
Speaker 3: the slice. You see the guts kind of pup, kind
Speaker 3: of splooping out a little bit, but he doesn't pull
Speaker 3: them out, so he's not creating a cavity inside. It
Speaker 3: seems like he is over stuffing this couch here with
Speaker 3: Luke's body going in. Just get in there, kid, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know if there's gonna be room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you did this raise his other questions about I
Speaker 2: don't remember if they established how long the republic, I'm
Speaker 2: sorry the rebellion had been on hath like, how long
Speaker 2: have people been coming here? How long did it take
Speaker 2: to do at least partially domesticate the tontons? You know?
Speaker 2: How much like folk knowledge is there about Well, if
Speaker 2: you get into a jam, you need to cut one
Speaker 2: of these tontons open and shove your friend inside of it.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. Maybe this is lore that exists with
Speaker 2: other planets as well, that's true.
Speaker 3: We don't know if Han is doing something that he
Speaker 3: just thought of in the moment, or if he has
Speaker 3: received wisdom about this. That's true.
Speaker 4: We don't know, all right.
Speaker 2: Well, for the rest of the episode, we're going to
Speaker 2: turn back to the Wampa, and I do want to
Speaker 2: want to show off that I am. I'm drinking my
Speaker 2: water from my Wampa tiki mug here whilst we record this.
Speaker 2: Those of you with video can see that if not
Speaker 2: look it up, you can find these things everywhere. But yeah,
Speaker 2: The Wampa is, as we discussed, kind of like a
Speaker 2: big yetty, like a big abominable snowman, you know, large,
Speaker 2: at least partially bipedal creature, has a gorilla like locomotion,
Speaker 2: and the creature is certainly terrifying an Empire. But we
Speaker 2: don't even in the theatrical cut. We don't even get
Speaker 2: to see some of these additional sequences, right.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's right. Yeah, there are deleted scenes from Empire.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they were fully even filmed, but
Speaker 3: at least planned and partially filmed scenes where I think
Speaker 3: it's while the Empire is attacking the rebel base on
Speaker 3: Hawk that also some wampas get loose in the base,
Speaker 3: and I think you get to see a wampa like
Speaker 3: grabbing a storm trooper and yanking it behind a doorway
Speaker 3: or something. Yeah, it's been a while since I've seen it,
Speaker 3: but I remember it being funny.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The main thing we see from it, of course, is
Speaker 2: that scene where it ambushes Luke, who, to be clear,
Speaker 2: is you know, not a full blown Jedi yet, but
Speaker 2: is a Jedi in training. He has heightened human abilities,
Speaker 2: and this thing still gets the upper hand on him.
Speaker 2: It knocks him out, takes him back to a cave
Speaker 2: and has affixed him to the ceiling. We'll come back
Speaker 2: to how this supposedly works, but he doesn't have long.
Speaker 2: He manages to use the force to get his lightsaber,
Speaker 2: free himself and what slice the arm off of the
Speaker 2: creature and make his at least temporary escape, and then
Speaker 2: luckily Han Solo saves it.
Speaker 3: Now, speaking of different versions of the film, am I
Speaker 3: correct that some of the great looking Wampa stuff in
Speaker 3: the version of the movie that I've seen more recently
Speaker 3: is actually like part of the Star Wars. I don't
Speaker 3: know that second round of versions of the film they did,
Speaker 3: Like I remember less of the Wampa in the version
Speaker 3: I grew up with than the version I have in
Speaker 3: my blue right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's It's tough, isn't it looking back at
Speaker 2: those those revamped versions that came out ahead of the prequels,
Speaker 2: because some of the things that they added are kind
Speaker 2: of obvious and obnoxious and maybe don't work that well.
Speaker 3: Not great cgi, yeah, but others. But this is like
Speaker 3: a practical yeah, yeah, practical insertion here. This is probably,
Speaker 3: you know, off the top of my head, maybe the
Speaker 3: best practical thing they did in those those those remixes,
Speaker 3: those revamped versions of the episodes, but any rate in
Speaker 3: the version that I most recently saw, I certainly think
Speaker 3: it to be a frightening creature. Yeah, it looks great.
Speaker 2: So the film definitely positions the the Wampa as an
Speaker 2: ambush predator and also does most of the lore. Like
Speaker 2: the Star wars Field guy that I've been referring to,
Speaker 2: they talk about it as an ambush predator, and they
Speaker 2: also discuss how, you know, clearly this is not a
Speaker 2: creature that is capable of running down a Tonton in
Speaker 2: a dead chase like we see tontons out, you know,
Speaker 2: running around, Uh, you know, they're they run their stop
Speaker 2: motion so there their their gait is a little bit funny,
Speaker 2: but you get the impression that they can move when
Speaker 2: they want to move. And another interesting thing about it
Speaker 2: is that, you know, we can compare the tonton to
Speaker 2: creatures like an ostridge or a giraffe, and we know
Speaker 2: that from those creatures interactions with potential predators that it's
Speaker 2: not just running that the that you know some that
Speaker 2: these creatures can do. They can also kick, and we
Speaker 2: can look at a tontan's basic build because those big
Speaker 2: claws and those big muscular leg and you can easily
Speaker 2: imagine this thing just kicking the hell out of a
Speaker 2: wampa should a wampa get too close. So it makes
Speaker 2: sense that if a wampa were to actually bring down,
Speaker 2: especially one of these larger tonton species, it would have
Speaker 2: to really get the drop on them. It would would
Speaker 2: have to depend on some sort of ambush scenario.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other thing, I've looked at other texts that have
Speaker 2: talked about the wampa's tendency to infiltrate cave systems, something
Speaker 2: that I think does factor into those deleted scenes for Empire.
Speaker 2: You know, what are they doing down here where the
Speaker 2: bases are? Well, it's because that's what wampas do. They
Speaker 2: know that life on howth is in the caves. That's
Speaker 2: where their prey can be found, and so you can
Speaker 2: delve after them. That makes a lot of sense as well.
Speaker 2: And you know, we do see something like this with
Speaker 2: cave environments in our own world, with predators or scavengers
Speaker 2: entering certain caves to take advantage of certain high concentrations
Speaker 2: of bats, and you know that might be to actively
Speaker 2: prey on the bats, to actively hunt the bats or
Speaker 2: ambush them in some fashion, like catch them leaving the
Speaker 2: cave at a at a certain you know, choke point,
Speaker 2: or to scavenge what falls from the bats, such as
Speaker 2: you know, I guano, but also potentially dead bats or
Speaker 2: young bats and so forth. But I think a slightly
Speaker 2: you know, more apt comparison might be looking at the
Speaker 2: way certain predators invade ant colonies or beehives. And I
Speaker 2: think that the beehives are a great example. Is what
Speaker 2: the death said moth. Now, I don't think the Wampa
Speaker 2: is probably taking advantage of any scent masking deception strategies here,
Speaker 2: but I can see it thriving in this capacity, you know,
Speaker 2: like you know, going to creep into the caves, find
Speaker 2: those caves where the tontons are bedded down for the
Speaker 2: night or where they have their young, and then that's
Speaker 2: when you're gonna jump and make off with one or
Speaker 2: two of them. Interesting Now in Empire Strikes back, of course, again,
Speaker 2: Luke is frozen feet first to the ceiling in a
Speaker 2: Wampa's ice cave, and within the heat of the moment,
Speaker 2: I don't know that I ever really questioned how does
Speaker 2: this happen? What possibly caused this to occur. Oh I did.
Speaker 3: I thought that was pretty cool. I liked that when
Speaker 3: I was a kid, And you know what, I got
Speaker 3: the answer. I don't know if this is you know,
Speaker 3: lucas approved cannon answer, at least in the old days
Speaker 3: how it used to go. But one answer came from
Speaker 3: the old Super Empire Strikes Back video game for the
Speaker 3: Super Nintendo, in which in the hot stages, you fight
Speaker 3: a lot of wampas and you find out that they
Speaker 3: have freezing breath, so they can breathe on you and
Speaker 3: that freezes you solid for a second like Sub Zero
Speaker 3: and Mortal Kombat, and they can kind of swipe at
Speaker 3: you until you unfreeze and bust out. So what I
Speaker 3: learned from this is that a wampa can go hoof,
Speaker 3: you know, like huff on your feet and then freeze
Speaker 3: them solid into a wall.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, well that that that works because I
Speaker 2: had never really really thought about it. But the field guides,
Speaker 2: I believe, makes the case that essentially what the wampa
Speaker 2: would do is pick you up, uh like stick your
Speaker 2: feet in its mouth, I guess, or somehow get it
Speaker 2: saliva on your feet nice and wet, and then like
Speaker 2: stick you up to the ice, and I guess hold
Speaker 2: you as if it's like super glueing you until your
Speaker 2: feet have frozen in place.
Speaker 3: They have to clamp you for a minute, wouldn't they.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, unless unless they did have the freezer cure.
Speaker 2: The freezing breath would help in this scenario, maybe make
Speaker 2: it a little less awkward.
Speaker 3: I guess so.
Speaker 2: But if this were, this would also while the wampa
Speaker 2: was holding you up there, the wampa is essentially hugging you,
Speaker 2: so that would also maybe help you survive a little
Speaker 2: bit some of that wampa body heat.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 2: Now. The authors of the Wildlife of Star Wars a
Speaker 2: field guide, they also present the idea that wampas in
Speaker 2: pale prey on large icicles and or in a day
Speaker 2: to sticking them to the ceiling with their saliva, and
Speaker 2: that this is also in the salivaccount. They mentioned that
Speaker 2: the saliva may be somehow an anesthetic. Indeed, one of
Speaker 2: the books three Wampa illustrations that I've included, this one
Speaker 2: here for you Joe, depicts a mother wampa tending to
Speaker 2: her younglings in a cave where no fewer than four
Speaker 2: tontons are hanging.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: And these are I believe some of them may be
Speaker 2: hanging just from their feet froze into the ceiling, but
Speaker 2: some are pierced through the lower legs by meat hook
Speaker 2: like upward thrusting ice spikes. Yikes, Yeah, so I don't
Speaker 2: I don't know to what extent this is actually described
Speaker 2: in some of the extended you know universe material, but
Speaker 2: pretty grizzly detailed to include here, and of course not
Speaker 2: just grizzly. It brings to mind terrestrial butcher birds, shrike,
Speaker 2: you know cases where you'll have you know, actual birds
Speaker 2: on our on our on our world, not a Star
Speaker 2: Wars universe. They use plant thorns to tear and store
Speaker 2: the bodies of insects and small rodents, as well as
Speaker 2: detoxify certain insects, such as the eastern luber grasshopper. So
Speaker 2: the Star Wars authors don't the Star Wars Fuel Guide
Speaker 2: authors don't really get into this, but it does make
Speaker 2: me wonder, Okay, if they're sometimes used to detoxify meat
Speaker 2: in the case of actual terrestrial birds, what if the
Speaker 2: wampa is dealing with the tontons like could stink to
Speaker 2: some degree by sticking them up there? Like again, tontons
Speaker 2: are famously stinky. What if they are toxic, and essentially
Speaker 2: the wampa has to detoxify the meat before it can eat.
Speaker 3: It, aging them in a way to somehow improve the
Speaker 3: texture or aroma or flavor, kind of like the way
Speaker 3: you know we do in temperature controlled caverns or environments
Speaker 3: we do age meats. Humans do that kind of thing
Speaker 3: all the time, maybe treating their ton toons like a
Speaker 3: parma ham.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I was looking around and there used to
Speaker 2: be this idea that was presented that squirrels, some squirrels
Speaker 2: might do the same thing with certain toxic mushrooms or
Speaker 2: or even you know, psychedelic mushrooms. I do not think
Speaker 2: that this is a popular interpretation today. I think this
Speaker 2: is something you've found in certain nature writings and even
Speaker 2: some mycological texts from the nineteen sixties. I think mostly
Speaker 2: the way we're we're looking at it now is Okay,
Speaker 2: you know, squirrels are going to cash away some amount
Speaker 2: of food stuffs, and you know, and and also squirrels
Speaker 2: are going to maybe be a little bit more robust
Speaker 2: and can handle things that you know, we can't eat
Speaker 2: because you know, as we've discussed the show before, they
Speaker 2: are tough as nails, so They're probably not trying to
Speaker 2: detoxify anything. But but there, at least at one point
Speaker 2: that was a possible explanation that was presented.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, when I see the extra tontons hanging
Speaker 3: from the ceiling, or the scene in the movie where
Speaker 3: Luke is hanging there, just my mind immediately goes to
Speaker 3: not a preprocessing or aging thing, but rather just a
Speaker 3: storage like storage of extra food resources.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that would also make a lot of sense
Speaker 2: that Wampa is a predator. Maybe is going to find
Speaker 2: itself in a scenario where Okay, I can't find enough
Speaker 2: to eat for vast periods of time, but then maybe
Speaker 2: I get lucky and I get to kill a whole
Speaker 2: nest of tontons, and then what do I do. Well,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna drag it all back and I'm gonna store
Speaker 2: it in a place, and then I know where the
Speaker 2: meat is, and I am going to depend on that meat,
Speaker 2: and so will perhaps any you know, wampa young ones
Speaker 2: that need to eat as well. Now, finally, the idea
Speaker 2: of them using ice spikes. This is also pretty fascinating
Speaker 2: because various terrestrial mammals, birds and fish do manipulate ice
Speaker 2: or snow in their environments and belief. We've talked about
Speaker 2: this example before in the show when we've talked about
Speaker 2: polar bears, because it's pointed out by a Gloria Dickie
Speaker 2: in a twenty twenty one Science News article polar Bears
Speaker 2: and the title of that this is one of those
Speaker 2: cases where the title of the article tells you what
Speaker 2: I'm about to tell you. Polar bears sometimes bludgeon walruses
Speaker 2: to death with stones or ice. Yes, polar bears have
Speaker 2: been observed to even throw blocks of ice at seals,
Speaker 2: and indigenous accounts report that polar bears sometimes use blocks
Speaker 2: of stone or ice to bash in the heads of walruses.
Speaker 2: As the article explains, scientists take this possibility very seriously,
Speaker 2: especially given similar behavior observed in the wild and in captivity.
Speaker 3: Interesting, especially because we're always looking for, you know, previously
Speaker 3: undiscovered examples of tool use among animals, and that would
Speaker 3: seem to be a pretty blatant use of a tool,
Speaker 3: right if they're using ice as a weapon or even
Speaker 3: as a projectile. I mean, that seems like a more
Speaker 3: an advanced form of tool use.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was looking at another article on this. This
Speaker 2: is do wild polar bears use tools when hunting walruses
Speaker 2: by sterling it all. This was published by the Arctic
Speaker 2: Institute of North America, and you know, they point out
Speaker 2: that it does seem to be the case that they're
Speaker 2: you know, they're using ice as a weapon sort of,
Speaker 2: but it's going to be limited to dealing with walruses
Speaker 2: for the most part. And the main reason here would
Speaker 2: seem to be that a walrus is a pretty risky
Speaker 2: and dangerous prey for them to go after. You know,
Speaker 2: it is a big creature, it is difficult to kill,
Speaker 2: and if you attack one, it's a very high probability
Speaker 2: you're going to suffer injury as well. And of course
Speaker 2: that's always the gambit with predators, right is it an
Speaker 2: easy meal or is it a hard meal? And what
Speaker 2: does a hard meal mean? Does that mean you end
Speaker 2: up dying after you partially secure it? So any ice
Speaker 2: weapon usage by polar bears is going to be very limited,
Speaker 2: but still amazing that they seem to do this. This
Speaker 2: seems to be within the tool chest of possibilities for them.
Speaker 2: So that being said, you know, I don't think it's
Speaker 2: that much of a stretch to imagine a wampa swinging
Speaker 2: an oversized ice cicle at a JETI does this happen
Speaker 2: in the video games that you grew up playing, you know, I.
Speaker 3: Don't know if I remember this one. I think maybe
Speaker 3: there are some other things that kick ice at you
Speaker 3: in the in the Hawk levels, but I don't know
Speaker 3: off to revisit now. I'm curious.
Speaker 2: The wampas aren't like throwing big, like video game blocks
Speaker 2: of ice, and you have.
Speaker 3: To remember that. I remember them breathing the ice breath
Speaker 3: and then slashing at you with claws. And then there's
Speaker 3: a big wampa that there's like a giant wamp of
Speaker 3: boss you have to fight in a cave. He's just like, no,
Speaker 3: he's more like he's across the top of the screen
Speaker 3: and he's kind of reaching in at you with big arms.
Speaker 3: Maybe that thing's not even a wampa. I don't remember
Speaker 3: what that is. Listeners right in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I never played the Empire game in this year's
Speaker 2: I think I played because they did one for each
Speaker 2: of the original pictures, right, I only did this the
Speaker 2: first one. I think the Empire.
Speaker 3: Game was my favorite of the three. Actually, yeah, I
Speaker 3: liked it nice though. One thing I always liked about
Speaker 3: the Return of the Jedi game for Super Nintendo is
Speaker 3: there were level there were levels where you could pick
Speaker 3: which character you wanted to play as, and you couldn't
Speaker 3: do that in the other games though. So, like you know,
Speaker 3: there's a level where you're fighting through the desert to
Speaker 3: go to Jaba's palace, and I think you could play
Speaker 3: either as maybe as Chewbacca or as Leah in her
Speaker 3: bounty hunter outfit, or as maybe as Luke I'm.
Speaker 2: Not sure, okay, but Max Rebo not in the mix.
Speaker 3: No, you could never play as Max Rebo.
Speaker 2: Okay, not yet, but hopefully one day we'll get there.
Speaker 3: I remember those games were hard, really hard. Yeah, difficult platforming.
Speaker 2: Well in that case, maybe I shouldn't. I was tempted
Speaker 2: to look them up, but I don't know if I
Speaker 2: can handle an old school platform in game these days.
Speaker 3: I don't want to discourage you too much. I mean,
Speaker 3: they're not Battle Toads or Ninja guide in or something.
Speaker 3: I mean they're hard, but they're not like old Anys
Speaker 3: Hard Guard. They're challenge hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah all right, well, listeners right in. We'd love to
Speaker 2: We know we have some Star Wars fans out there,
Speaker 2: and we'd love to hear anything you have to add
Speaker 2: to the conversation about any of this, and uh yeah.
Speaker 2: If everything goes according to plan, the next episode of
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind will be another Star Wars
Speaker 2: episode and we'll get into some additional Star Wars topics,
Speaker 2: so tune in and find out what those are going
Speaker 2: to be. Just a reminder for everyone out there that
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
Speaker 2: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short
Speaker 2: form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside
Speaker 2: most serious concerns, so just talk about a weird film
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema. And since this is Star Wars
Speaker 2: week here on Stuff to Blow your Mind, each of
Speaker 2: these episodes is going to be Star Wars themed one
Speaker 2: way or another. I think you will. You'll be pleasantly
Speaker 2: surprised what we're going to talk about on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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