Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: How tall are you? That's pretty good, Lady Hyde right
Speaker 1: for Lady Hid. Yeah, I'm a giant. No, it's I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's on the brand, but not so much. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: well I'm I'm six three, which is like a good
Speaker 1: a good level of height, Like I think of that
Speaker 1: as pretty tall. Actually well, I mean it's it's tall,
Speaker 1: but it's it's not. I mean, it's a little inconvenient.
Speaker 1: I do bump my head a lot and forget a
Speaker 1: lot of things as a result. But but it's it's not.
Speaker 1: It was a little more than I would just I
Speaker 1: would just have terminal brain injuries from running into things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is My family would say, it looks like you got
Speaker 1: some Dutch in you, Dutch because the Dutch are tall. Well,
Speaker 1: there you go. But some people are taller than others,
Speaker 1: for some people and for many things. Uh, we're really
Speaker 1: getting into the area of gigantism. We're getting into areas
Speaker 1: where it's amazing, into areas where it's it's kind of sad,
Speaker 1: but well, And keep in mind too that humans are
Speaker 1: already considered megafauna to some degree, right, Like we're pretty
Speaker 1: much dominating the mammal um species here, So when you
Speaker 1: think of the ability to grow even larger, it seems
Speaker 1: a bit odd, but it does happen. Um. This is
Speaker 1: known as acromegaly and uh. It is usually a disorder
Speaker 1: of the tuitary gland. Usually there's a tumor that grows
Speaker 1: there and it causes UM the body just to continue growing,
Speaker 1: particularly in puberty when you are growing anyway, so your
Speaker 1: bones get very very large, a lot of human growth
Speaker 1: hormone pumping out, increasing the bone sizes, which of course
Speaker 1: makes the body bigger. This isn't corrected, which we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about in a minute. Again, you actually end up
Speaker 1: having or or organ omegaly, wit which case you have
Speaker 1: the organs getting bigger in size too. And yes, you
Speaker 1: end up with an individual that's very tall or can
Speaker 1: be very tall. Not everyone with this condition ends up
Speaker 1: becoming a legit giant, right, particularly if you get this
Speaker 1: condition as an adult already. So which you find is that, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, your tongue starts to swall get very large,
Speaker 1: and that can lead to a host of problems, problems
Speaker 1: like hypertension, high blood pressure, diabetes, sleep atna, breathing and
Speaker 1: stops during sleep, carpal tunnel syndrome UM and then and
Speaker 1: then again as as organ omegaly, hits sets in even
Speaker 1: more problems, you know, especially a higher incidence of heart disease.
Speaker 1: So sadly you see these a lot of these individuals,
Speaker 1: they they they are giants. They become they reach these
Speaker 1: this great stature and uh and especially with with the
Speaker 1: individuals that have have a gigantism that involved themselves and
Speaker 1: in the entertainment industry, we end up getting this, uh,
Speaker 1: this grandiose vision of them as just superman, you know,
Speaker 1: strong men. And in many cases they are very strong individuals.
Speaker 1: But but later in life, uh, it often takes a
Speaker 1: real toll on them, right, because you think about all
Speaker 1: of that blood that needs to be pumping to all
Speaker 1: those now oversized organs. It is very streshful in the body.
Speaker 1: And when you talk about superhero component of that, I
Speaker 1: instantly think of Andre the Giant. Yes, uh, Andre Rusumov,
Speaker 1: the wrestler actor Frenchman. Uh. Yeah, he only lived to
Speaker 1: the age of forty six, but he was seven ft
Speaker 1: seven ft tall uh and five pounds at the end
Speaker 1: he was he chose not to be treated uh and
Speaker 1: died of cardiac complications from the disease. But he's definitely
Speaker 1: a legend as far as modern day TV and film
Speaker 1: era giants goes. Oh yeah, I always think of him
Speaker 1: in The Princess Pride. Yeah, because he's a wonderful movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: wonderful movie. He was great in that he was He
Speaker 1: was a larger than life character both on the screen
Speaker 1: and inside the ring and outside where he he allegedly
Speaker 1: had just an amazing um ability to drink alcohol. Could
Speaker 1: just I'm sure he want most of those contests out
Speaker 1: of style. And you still have individuals with gigantism that
Speaker 1: are involved in um entertainment and pro wrestling today. Pro
Speaker 1: wrestling alone, you have you have Paul White who wrestles
Speaker 1: as his big show. You have this guy, there's an
Speaker 1: Indian gentleman by the name of of Dolph singh Arana
Speaker 1: who wrestles as the Great Kaleigue, various other individuals. So
Speaker 1: because you have stature like that, inevitably some guy with
Speaker 1: a few bucks is gonna come up to and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: have you ever considered being an entertainment? Um? And then
Speaker 1: you have. There are other characters of note as well.
Speaker 1: There's a there was a man by the name of
Speaker 1: Maurice Killett who was who was a Russian born French
Speaker 1: professional wrestler who wrestled under the name the French Angel.
Speaker 1: And he died back in again in fifty four. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a man by the name of Rondo Hatton who
Speaker 1: was an American actor. He died in six but he
Speaker 1: became really iconic is playing these uh, these grotesque thug
Speaker 1: type characters and a lot of old B movies and
Speaker 1: and he was he was rather iconic. In fact. Um,
Speaker 1: I believe the character of Shrek is actually based on
Speaker 1: his general physical appearance, because he had a very brutish
Speaker 1: look to her, you know. Um. And then of course
Speaker 1: there's Richard Kyle who played Jaws, and then James Bond movies,
Speaker 1: the old James. Yeah, he's he's still with us um
Speaker 1: um over seven ft tall. I think he's he's shrunk
Speaker 1: a little, just with age, you know, you kind of
Speaker 1: end up stooping over a bit. But but the list
Speaker 1: of other individuals who've who've who've had at least treated
Speaker 1: acromegay is pretty interesting because it includes some surprises. For instance,
Speaker 1: you were surprised at Tony Robbins. Yes, actually yeah, I
Speaker 1: said that. I thought I just thought it was his
Speaker 1: oversized ego that I was perceiving. Yeah, you just thought
Speaker 1: it who was larger than life? And because he is,
Speaker 1: and he is he's six ft seven um poet Walls Stevens.
Speaker 1: This surprised me. He was only six three So it
Speaker 1: wasn't you know, as an as noticeable a case of gigantism.
Speaker 1: But it was a pretty tall individual. This is a
Speaker 1: guy who wrote the poem The Emperor of ice Cream.
Speaker 1: Another works um the the Roman emperor um maxim Maximinus,
Speaker 1: the first who reigned from two thirty five to thirty eight.
Speaker 1: According to um Um Herodians Historia Augusta, he was eight
Speaker 1: foot six inches in height. But that's somewhat doubtful that
Speaker 1: he was actually that tall. But but still, um, there
Speaker 1: was a giant from from the the history books. And
Speaker 1: uh and and really you can it look like a
Speaker 1: whole list of individuals you can you can find out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention Sandy Allen. She was the world's
Speaker 1: largest or tallest woman at seven seven and one quarter inch.
Speaker 1: And she actually was a wonderful educator and and um
Speaker 1: a lot of her education materials centered around differences she was.
Speaker 1: She was definitely trying to promote that with other kids
Speaker 1: and respecting other differences. So um, So, a lot of
Speaker 1: these individuals may have made a buck or two off
Speaker 1: of their stature, or it may have provided them with
Speaker 1: opportunities that they wouldn't have otherwise had. But but a
Speaker 1: lot of them were really fascinating and successful individuals in
Speaker 1: their own right that had nothing to do with their height.
Speaker 1: Maybe Wall of Stevens um poetic gifts were you know,
Speaker 1: if he was a shorter man, he would have had them.
Speaker 1: But but I think that's a difficult argument. It's hard
Speaker 1: to say that's right. But as you mentioned, there is
Speaker 1: treatment for this. One of it is one of the
Speaker 1: treatments is surgical removal of the actually get in there
Speaker 1: and remove the thing that is causing all of this
Speaker 1: and checked growth. Right, And Sandy Allen actually had that
Speaker 1: when she was twenty years old, but nonetheless, at the
Speaker 1: age of fifty three, she still passed away because again
Speaker 1: at that point, you know, she had reached such a
Speaker 1: height and her organs were so large that it did
Speaker 1: attack her body. And then there are other methods of
Speaker 1: treating it um that you can also use medication to
Speaker 1: halt the hormone and and then also some individuals undergo
Speaker 1: radiation treatments as well. Yeah, and we should probably I
Speaker 1: don't know if we mentioned that before, but because of
Speaker 1: the tumor on the tutary gland, what is happening is
Speaker 1: you're getting an excess amount of growth hormones that are
Speaker 1: shooting out, so that that is the root cause, right, So,
Speaker 1: and so you can't take medication to to check that,
Speaker 1: but but in many cases they often just go for
Speaker 1: the more you know, certain cure. I guess um. But
Speaker 1: we're not just here to talk about humans that are large.
Speaker 1: We're we're also here to talk about animals that became
Speaker 1: true giants. And of course, when you're talking about gigantic animals,
Speaker 1: you can't help but to think of our friends, the dinosaurs, Yeah, immediately, right,
Speaker 1: And most of the reason for that is because we
Speaker 1: don't really um get to see small bones of dinosaurs
Speaker 1: because they don't preserve the well, so the bones that
Speaker 1: we see exhibited in museums usually belong to the behemoth,
Speaker 1: So immediately we think about these guys um which they
Speaker 1: definitely had gigantism um or I guess you could say
Speaker 1: in the natural world at that time. For the composition
Speaker 1: of the elements in the world that they were living in,
Speaker 1: this made most sense for them, some some animals depending
Speaker 1: on their resources and energy. Yeah, and there's a theory
Speaker 1: too that it was basically an arms race of size,
Speaker 1: because the larger the organism is, the fewer predators it has.
Speaker 1: Because you're, you know, this gigantic, hulking beast, uh not
Speaker 1: everything is going to be able to really eat you
Speaker 1: or stand a chance of even taking you down. It's
Speaker 1: gonna come and like pulling your leg and you need
Speaker 1: to stop on it. So there's an evolutionary advantage to
Speaker 1: uh to to having a larger body and a larger statue,
Speaker 1: even if it comes with with certain negatives as well,
Speaker 1: such as obviously you have to eat more food, and
Speaker 1: then that also affects uh the rate at which young developed,
Speaker 1: and in various other approcreative necessities. Yeah, and it said
Speaker 1: that sura pods were particularly um at an advantage for
Speaker 1: this because they could have you know, a decent size
Speaker 1: of of of young uns, and they could protect them
Speaker 1: all and then they could pretty much rapidly grow to
Speaker 1: these very huge sizes. And again another advantage of that
Speaker 1: is you can stomp out the competition literally literally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're actually um. From a Scientific American article called is
Speaker 1: there any evolutionary advantage to gigantism um, They these sore
Speaker 1: pods are actually called the first true giants of the land.
Speaker 1: And they were small headed, long necked, that's probably what
Speaker 1: you're thinking of when you think about a sore pod.
Speaker 1: And they appeared at the beginning of that time, about
Speaker 1: two hundred million years ago UM and uh, some of
Speaker 1: these predatory dinosaurs exceeded one ton. Towards the end of
Speaker 1: the Jurassic ministre pods reached ten to twenty tons, and
Speaker 1: some weighed as much as twenty or excuse me, fifty tons,
Speaker 1: and a few may have exceeded a hundred tons and
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty feet in length, which is actually
Speaker 1: rivaling um, some of our largest modern whales because because
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned before, the blue whale is still the
Speaker 1: largest organism um the large certainly. Yeah, that's tricky too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we discussed in our Largest Organism episode. Um, depending
Speaker 1: on how you defined organism, you can actually get into
Speaker 1: some even larger things that are not vertebrates, but but
Speaker 1: certainly the largest vertebrate that has ever lived, the blue whale. Um. So,
Speaker 1: and of course you think about tyrannosaurs dominant meat eaters
Speaker 1: of the late cretitious area, or scavengers whatever, the hot
Speaker 1: theory of the moment happens to be exactly. They grew
Speaker 1: slowly until they were teenagers and they were marauding in
Speaker 1: moby um, and then they went through a growth spurt,
Speaker 1: becoming five times larger in just seven years. So again
Speaker 1: we're talking about I mean, the period of growth of
Speaker 1: here is is pretty amazing. Um, when you become five
Speaker 1: times larger. If you think about a teenager right now,
Speaker 1: they maybe have a couple more inches that they're gonna
Speaker 1: lop on, but they're certainly not going to become twenty
Speaker 1: ft tall. Yeah, it's it's just crazy to think about
Speaker 1: the amount of Like in the Milk podcast we mentioned
Speaker 1: about about baby blue whales taking on like three pounds
Speaker 1: of body weight a day as they feed off their
Speaker 1: mother's milk. So um, Yeah, the amount of growth taking
Speaker 1: place with these gigantic organisms is just incredible. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to to mention a couple of other advantages
Speaker 1: to being so large before we talk about disadvantages. Your
Speaker 1: metabolic rate decreases with increasing size, so for instance, um,
Speaker 1: you only need to take in five percent of if
Speaker 1: you're an elephant, for instance, you only need to take
Speaker 1: in five percent of your own weight, whereas a shrew
Speaker 1: or a mousee needs to eat more than its weight
Speaker 1: each day to survive. Yeah, there's a there's actually you'll
Speaker 1: hear that that that stat There are out a lot
Speaker 1: to when people make that make the point that the
Speaker 1: shrew is the most ravenous creature on the planet because
Speaker 1: it's just it has to eat so much as he
Speaker 1: constantly to survive. And they actually made a movie ages
Speaker 1: that really horrible be movie that they they lampooda mystery
Speaker 1: signs the thousand called the Giant Shrews or was it
Speaker 1: the Killer Shrews, I can't remember, but the basic thing
Speaker 1: was that they had these giant shrews who were running
Speaker 1: around there were the size of dogs that of course
Speaker 1: we're dogs with really bad costumes, breaped over them. And
Speaker 1: then the idea was that the shrew is just incredibly
Speaker 1: dangerous and if we're ever ever able to reach the
Speaker 1: side of like a dog, then they would be the
Speaker 1: most dangerous things ever. But of course this we've just
Speaker 1: mentioned here, the appetite really plays into their size. That
Speaker 1: the shrew became larger, they would be playing the violin
Speaker 1: under our tree, having a couple of grapes and being like,
Speaker 1: hey guys, totally chilled out. Um, was this made in
Speaker 1: the fifties. Yes, there seems to be a real obsession
Speaker 1: with gigantism during that time period. Oh yeah, you saw
Speaker 1: they were giant scorpions, giant spiders, giant ants them what
Speaker 1: was the movie ants? There was a lot of fun
Speaker 1: these to show that on on the on the the
Speaker 1: cable channels back in the day when they were like
Speaker 1: think grandpap Monster hosted a Saturday morning Monster movie show
Speaker 1: and remember that, and they would play that, They would
Speaker 1: play Islanded Dr Moreau, these studies type of films. But
Speaker 1: the giant ants, all all these things. Yeah, well these
Speaker 1: were also easy animals to implement in a B movie
Speaker 1: because if you have a giant ant, all you needed
Speaker 1: to just just get some ants in there. Uh, do
Speaker 1: some you know, mess with perspective, uh dubby on an
Speaker 1: actual ant and just make it look larger, although inevitably
Speaker 1: they always have a puppet of whatever animal. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: need the head which is with the pincher so it
Speaker 1: can grab a lady and picture exactly better than that,
Speaker 1: just throw in the ants and have some people react
Speaker 1: to it. It's like early c g I. Alright, So,
Speaker 1: so other than being featured in b phones, why might
Speaker 1: you not want to be a giant? H Really, if
Speaker 1: you are a dinosaur, for starters, all that mass that
Speaker 1: that allows you to stomp others out actually kind of
Speaker 1: hems you in because you can't fly, you can't run,
Speaker 1: you can't climb or burrow into the ground to take cover.
Speaker 1: So your your whole defensive tactic is, hey, I'm this
Speaker 1: hulking thing and you can't take me down. But then
Speaker 1: say you have a pack of velociraptors that come around
Speaker 1: and they're like, actually we can because we can work
Speaker 1: together and we're patient, and you're not going anywhere exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: You're a very large target force, and because they're at
Speaker 1: the top of the food chain, there are less of them,
Speaker 1: and the chances for extinction actually become greater as well. Right,
Speaker 1: large organism having to depend on a lot of other
Speaker 1: organisms underneath it, even if most of them are just grass. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then you wipe that out and there you go. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And this was really interesting to Sarah de Charred, Doctoral
Speaker 1: Canada at North Carolina State has studied the plants available
Speaker 1: during the age of dinosaurs, and she thinks that during
Speaker 1: the Jurassic, when vegetation with fibrous and low nutrient, it
Speaker 1: would make sense to have a lot bigger bell eas
Speaker 1: really what we're talking about here, because they acted a
Speaker 1: huge vat for fermentation. But she says that when flowering
Speaker 1: plants with high nutrient contents came along, it was actually
Speaker 1: a boon too smaller dinos because I gave them an
Speaker 1: evolutionary advantage because that was just the hit that they needed. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of interesting to look at it that way.
Speaker 1: And I also wanted to mention too, although not dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: there is a tale of Paleozoic dragonflies that may have
Speaker 1: existed three million years ago. And how big were these things, uh,
Speaker 1: wingspan of two and a half feet. And they think
Speaker 1: this is still a bit of a theory, but this
Speaker 1: is owing to the planets. Then oxygen makeup of more
Speaker 1: than so it was these auction levels that actually spawned
Speaker 1: this dragonfly. Wow. Well that's interesting to imagine, especially during
Speaker 1: mating season when they do their thing, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine it would be debauchery if
Speaker 1: today we looked at the window and saw in such
Speaker 1: great detail and such largeness the mating. Yeah, dragonflies are great.
Speaker 1: I love him. But you know what I love even
Speaker 1: more in this Uh. And we're moving forward a bit
Speaker 1: here from from dinosaurs. I love dinosaurs. I love them
Speaker 1: as a kid, but you kind of get I kind
Speaker 1: of got used to it at an early age. It's
Speaker 1: the idea that it used to be giant lizards, even
Speaker 1: though just as a tangent, I had to I was
Speaker 1: trying to convince, um, um, I have a kid that,
Speaker 1: like a four year old that I watched and over
Speaker 1: a babysitting Uh. He had some toy dinosaurs and I'm
Speaker 1: and I and I told him it's like, you know
Speaker 1: those are real, right, And he's like, no, it's just
Speaker 1: a toy. It was like that's heartbreaking. Um, he'll learn.
Speaker 1: But but but I got used to the idea pretty
Speaker 1: early on. Yes, there were giant dinosaurs at one point
Speaker 1: or another, and for some reason, giant mammals that and
Speaker 1: and giant birds that was always a much more exciting
Speaker 1: idea to me, Like it it felt newer, I guess
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't as um as uh as covered
Speaker 1: in the childhood science literature. So so anytime, even today,
Speaker 1: when I see like a like a picture of a
Speaker 1: giant sloth or or or certainly these giant birds, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm really impressed. The giant birds are really kind of
Speaker 1: heartbreaking though, because so many of these where we're not
Speaker 1: even prehistoric creatures, they lived until very recent time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, let's talk about these more modern
Speaker 1: terrestrial animals, which gigientis um. Yeah, there was a species
Speaker 1: of bird called the host eagle um that reached a
Speaker 1: height of eight point five feet. It was a fierce
Speaker 1: predator that lived in New Zealand and U Sadly, it
Speaker 1: went to extinct about five hundred years ago due to
Speaker 1: human hunting and habitat encroachment, which again is just kind
Speaker 1: of sad because it's like, oh, we almost reached the
Speaker 1: point where we could have seen these and and photographed
Speaker 1: them and maybe conserve them, but they they blinked out
Speaker 1: just a little too soon. And then there are others.
Speaker 1: There's the the elephant bird, which was ten feet tall
Speaker 1: that lived on Madagascar and it uh it went on
Speaker 1: sometime in seventeenth century and they think. Uh. There's also
Speaker 1: of course the moa, which was the great flightless bird
Speaker 1: of New Zealand. Uh and it probably went away about
Speaker 1: seven hundred years ago when the may always wiped them
Speaker 1: out because they're just they're these big birds. They've evolved
Speaker 1: to to to pretty much do whatever they want within
Speaker 1: a limited environment. But then suddenly you have an invasive
Speaker 1: organism around. You have humans who are like the velociraptors
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier. They're smart, they're patient, they're cunning, and
Speaker 1: they know that they can work together to take this
Speaker 1: animal down and eat it. And then since it's a
Speaker 1: larger organism, um that you know, they're fewer of them.
Speaker 1: Uh reproduction time plays into this as well. They're much
Speaker 1: more easily wiped out. So everyone feasts on moa for
Speaker 1: a little bit and then there's no more. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is mind boggling to think the amount in different
Speaker 1: types of animals that have gone extinct um, not just
Speaker 1: because of manning causes, but even something that I believe
Speaker 1: it was during the Order of Vicinian period. They're supposed
Speaker 1: to be like a just a proliferation of different species
Speaker 1: that were then wiped out at the end of that period.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it just doesn't boggle the mind to try
Speaker 1: to imagine all different types of flora and fauna. But
Speaker 1: not all the giants went away. We stall some rather
Speaker 1: gigantic animals around today. They're worth mentioning. Oh yes, the
Speaker 1: colossal squid. Yes, and we're we're doing another podcast on
Speaker 1: intelligence of cephalopods um, so there's gonna be even more
Speaker 1: squid content there. But the colossal squid reaches some pretty
Speaker 1: phenomenal links. Yep. Actually, the squid was accidentally caught by
Speaker 1: New Zealand fisherman in two thousand and seven, weighing in
Speaker 1: at one thousand pounds and spanning fourteen ft. Here's something
Speaker 1: that really, um, kind of rattles me a bit. It's
Speaker 1: i uh, nearly ten inches in diameter, so imagine nearly
Speaker 1: a foot long eye staring back at you. Uh So
Speaker 1: that I think, particularly rattling from squid. Eyes are amazing, um,
Speaker 1: especially when you're talking about something that big and the
Speaker 1: biggest eye of any animal really very similar to our
Speaker 1: I actually um, and we'll talk more about that in
Speaker 1: our gigant or excuse me, in our cephalopod podcast. So
Speaker 1: when we're talking about things like like the colossal squid
Speaker 1: and and also various other giant animals that live in
Speaker 1: the deep, we're getting into the area of deep siege
Speaker 1: gigantism um. Particularly you see this uh in invertebrates, crustaceans,
Speaker 1: uh and other creatures where they'll they're they'll have cousins
Speaker 1: that live in fresh water or shallow or not fresh
Speaker 1: water but shallower waters and uh, and they'll be much smaller.
Speaker 1: But in the deep and the cold, cold deep, they
Speaker 1: grow toal enormous size. And part of it is the cold.
Speaker 1: Scientists think they say that you look at the at
Speaker 1: the temperature and body body size, and the bigger animals
Speaker 1: have smaller surface to volume ratio, so they can more
Speaker 1: effectively conserve body heat in those cold environments. So would
Speaker 1: be to their advantage to grow bigger. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like having a fur coat undersea fur couch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just and there's more of me. So I got
Speaker 1: that way. I can I can go down into these lightless,
Speaker 1: chilly depths and it doesn't really affect me that much.
Speaker 1: Where if I were this splender little creature than you know,
Speaker 1: not so much. There's this idea too, that we haven't
Speaker 1: quite even gotten a grasp of how large some of
Speaker 1: these creatures are. This is from Discovering News. Um It
Speaker 1: says that squid beaks found in the stomachs of sperm
Speaker 1: whales have actually dwarfed the beak on the Colossal Squid
Speaker 1: Museum specimen that we just spoke of, suggesting that even
Speaker 1: more colossal squids work in the cold, dark deep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just haven't seen them yet. I mean, for the
Speaker 1: longest we had, we had never managed to capture footage
Speaker 1: of a live giant squid. And I remember the day
Speaker 1: that they that we actually had had that footage when
Speaker 1: a few years back and suddenly was on YouTube everywhere,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't really even that impressive of footage, but
Speaker 1: it felt kind of heartbreaking because you're like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a mystery that we can check off the list. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although I mean incredibly cooled be able to verify right.
Speaker 1: Um From the same Discovery News article by Jennifer Viegas.
Speaker 1: They were actually talking about, or she was actually talking
Speaker 1: about how these creatures may have grown to such a
Speaker 1: large size too because of the lengths that they have
Speaker 1: to go to, UM to find food. When you're a
Speaker 1: small creature, UM, even if you're eating a lot that
Speaker 1: your kingdom, um, your your domain in which you hunt
Speaker 1: for prey is relatively small. But when you receive larger size,
Speaker 1: you're having to really really go out there and hunt.
Speaker 1: You're covering a vast underwater territory, which may be why
Speaker 1: the Humboldt squid have have shown up Monterey Bay and
Speaker 1: in various different places. They're still trying to figure out why.
Speaker 1: What's the explanation for that? But um, but it does
Speaker 1: play into morphology for for sure. All Right, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break. But when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about, um what what could be
Speaker 1: horrific to some people something called a hissing cockroach. Um
Speaker 1: if the madagas art hissing cock roach and it's quite large,
Speaker 1: talk about that some other insects. All Right, we're back, UM,
Speaker 1: We're headed to the Madagascar for correct is Madagascar is
Speaker 1: one of places that you you see a lot in
Speaker 1: and UH in dealing with unique organisms, because you're talking
Speaker 1: about an island that is uh that is that is
Speaker 1: set aside from from the rest of the continent. And
Speaker 1: of course this is where you encounter lemurs, the only
Speaker 1: place you encounter lemurs outside of a zoo. Uh and
Speaker 1: the lemur would not necessarily be able to survive elsewhere,
Speaker 1: but here they have evolved and uh and and fill
Speaker 1: the niche rather nicely that doesn't exist elsewhere. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk about that. That's that lack of predators and competition
Speaker 1: that drives some the size of these creatures. And this
Speaker 1: is called island gigantism. It is a biological phenomenon um
Speaker 1: that that is present for animals that live on isolated islands,
Speaker 1: and they tend to grow bigger and bigger again because
Speaker 1: they don't have anything running after it um and because
Speaker 1: everything is pretty plentiful, right, it's like a corny copia
Speaker 1: of food out fair for them. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: I mean it really, it comes down a lot of
Speaker 1: it comes down to them living in a protected environment.
Speaker 1: In many of these cases, you have an ecosystem that
Speaker 1: is set aside from the rest that whatever, what other
Speaker 1: kind of predators are roaming around on the continent at large,
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily here, or that the predators that are here, um,
Speaker 1: they don't have access to the same prey. So you
Speaker 1: end up with a kind of microcosm into itself where
Speaker 1: different rules end up applying. Yeah, and according to Pilliontologes
Speaker 1: for ginny million, uh, island species evolved faster than mainland species,
Speaker 1: particularly over shorter time intervals of years to thousands of years,
Speaker 1: So you really do get to see that the proof
Speaker 1: of the putting much faster in these environments. One example
Speaker 1: of an older island giant that I ran across in
Speaker 1: this to Discovery News article. Um but uh, five to
Speaker 1: three million years ago, you had a creature um known
Speaker 1: as the Miraculous Rex, which lived on the small island
Speaker 1: of Minorca, and it weighed about twenty six point four pounds.
Speaker 1: It had no enemies, and it was essentially a giant
Speaker 1: bunny rabbit. Oh, I've seen pictures of this kind of
Speaker 1: like Night of the Leapist, except the other the other thing.
Speaker 1: Not only did it grow larger, but it grows larger
Speaker 1: and has no need of predors. It doesn't need a hop,
Speaker 1: it doesn't need ginormous ears with which to hear everything.
Speaker 1: It doesn't need big eyes with which to see everything,
Speaker 1: So it kind of loses those features. Just kind of
Speaker 1: like an aging prize fighter or something, you know, just
Speaker 1: lets it the gut go and it no longer has
Speaker 1: the reflexes it needs to fight because it doesn't need them.
Speaker 1: But still it's a pretty impressive creature that you had. Essentially,
Speaker 1: rabbits I will I will say that the photo I
Speaker 1: saw it did it did kind of look puggy. It
Speaker 1: didn't look like it had been, you know, screwing around
Speaker 1: that much because it did one like from an evolutionary
Speaker 1: point of view, it's like I don't need you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you're not working out, you don't keep
Speaker 1: the muscles. And it's kind of the similar thing as
Speaker 1: evolution rolls out, you know, uh, if you don't need
Speaker 1: those ears and then eventually you're gonna lose them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can tell that it abandoned its bofe uh Managus
Speaker 1: scar hissing cockroach, as I mentioned before, found in at
Speaker 1: a guess car office of Face coast of Africa, the
Speaker 1: largest living cockroach and the only known insight capable of
Speaker 1: hissing by forcing air through its spiricles. These are breathing
Speaker 1: holes rather than rubbing their appendages together. And happy do
Speaker 1: these guys good? About three inches long by one inch,
Speaker 1: which doesn't seem entirely huge until you actually see one
Speaker 1: in person. Yeah, I've heard of people traveling there. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're you're sleeping through the night and
Speaker 1: then your cell phone rings and you pick it up
Speaker 1: and you're actually picking up a hissing cockroach answering it.
Speaker 1: And since you're in a you're not really all that awake.
Speaker 1: You're not having like a five minute conversation with the
Speaker 1: abdomen of a cock right, and little do you know
Speaker 1: that hissing sound is actually mating calls, so you're being wooed? Yeah? Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: actually do. Atlanta has some hitsing cockroaches that they'll bring
Speaker 1: out every once in a while. It's a frequent a
Speaker 1: frequent exhibited zoos. I don't know if they're easy to
Speaker 1: shift or easy to keep or he's gonna handle. They're
Speaker 1: not gonna bite you, and they're huge and grows. Some
Speaker 1: little boys just good guy got yeah yeah, and the
Speaker 1: girls they love them too, um and uh yeah, the
Speaker 1: males have horns too, so it makes them look really interesting. Now,
Speaker 1: if they flew, that would be that would be my night.
Speaker 1: But that's another thing. You get big like that, you
Speaker 1: don't need wings, right. Well, that's the other thing too.
Speaker 1: There's the limits to morphology here and that. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's to your advantage to get larger and larger, great,
Speaker 1: you're going to do it. But once it inhibits your ability.
Speaker 1: So if if the cockroach was a creature that flew
Speaker 1: in the first place, um, and I know there are
Speaker 1: some but mainly cockroaches do not fly. But let's say,
Speaker 1: for instance, a bird, if it became so large it
Speaker 1: was on the precipice of not being able to fly
Speaker 1: anymore than it would. That's that's where the constraint comes.
Speaker 1: That's where the morphology of the outer limits of it
Speaker 1: just end. Yeah. We mentioned some of this in our
Speaker 1: Godzilla Barbie King Calling episode where we talk about giant
Speaker 1: organisms and uh and certainly the larger it's it's worth
Speaker 1: remembering that. Say, take take a beetle. You know, even
Speaker 1: like a fairly large beetle, it's a in a sense,
Speaker 1: it's a physically perfect thing. Like everything about its proportions
Speaker 1: and its size is perfect for the size at which
Speaker 1: it exists. If you were to to somehow magically in
Speaker 1: large beetle, it wouldn't be able to function at a
Speaker 1: larger size because it's exoskeleton, right. This is more than
Speaker 1: just armoring. It's more than just a tough, shiny jacket
Speaker 1: that the beetle wears like this is a structural skeleton
Speaker 1: that that holds in its insect guts and uh and
Speaker 1: uh and and and protects it from the outside world.
Speaker 1: And if you were to increase the size of a beetle,
Speaker 1: then you also have to really increase the thickness of
Speaker 1: the exoskeleton, and it just becomes an impossible equation rather quickly.
Speaker 1: It's just amazing, which whine you don't see really large
Speaker 1: organisms outside of the dark crystal that have a large,
Speaker 1: you know, armor like exo skeletons. Well, and to me though,
Speaker 1: it's just so such a testament to nature and how
Speaker 1: cool it is that it can adapt to that in
Speaker 1: the first place. Um that dwarfism or gigantism can take place,
Speaker 1: the shrinking or the increasing like that. Um I also
Speaker 1: wanted to mention the giant Wetta of New Zealand Uh.
Speaker 1: It's genus name is dina Krita and it's Greek for
Speaker 1: terrible grasshopper because they look at the size of your
Speaker 1: hand right now, that is how large this little booger is. Um.
Speaker 1: It is among the heaviest insects on Earth, winging three
Speaker 1: times more than a mouse, and apparently in captivity, if
Speaker 1: you offer it a carrot, it will eat it. I
Speaker 1: think I've seen pictures of that. Yeah, Allison, actually are
Speaker 1: the science editor Alson Ladermilk sent us a photo of
Speaker 1: That's that's where I had seen that. It was pretty funny.
Speaker 1: I thought she kept it could be. I don't know
Speaker 1: if she said, I'm assuming that this little guy could
Speaker 1: actually have a conversation with you, And remember thinking, yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: I think he could. Yeah. Um, we mentioned New Zealand again,
Speaker 1: the giant birds. It was very much a bird world
Speaker 1: for for the longest. So again, you get into situations
Speaker 1: where you have an island or or a large body
Speaker 1: body of land that is set aside from the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, and you see a certain amount of
Speaker 1: competition fall on the wayside, and and then you can
Speaker 1: see some very unique organisms, very large organisms grow to
Speaker 1: dominance and it is this Wonderland effect. Actually, there's there's
Speaker 1: something called the Wonderland effect um in which is alluding
Speaker 1: to Alice and one pill makes you larger, one pill
Speaker 1: makes you smaller. Well, now I'm thinking of the song
Speaker 1: one Pitt. It is a great truck. But yeah, Alison Wonderland,
Speaker 1: she she shrinks, she increases um. In nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: biologists J. Bristol Foster studied insular gigantism in dwarfism, and
Speaker 1: he came to the conclusion that rodents, for instance, tend
Speaker 1: towards gigantism, while carnivores uh legama forests like rabbits and
Speaker 1: hairs and rto dactyls, deers, hippos and other even towed
Speaker 1: ungulates are more likely to become dwarfed um. And overall,
Speaker 1: amongst mammal species that colonized islands, big ones have a
Speaker 1: tendency to shrink, while small ones are able to get larger.
Speaker 1: So again it's like it's a new world and the
Speaker 1: occupants of this new world have to change their ways.
Speaker 1: And again I'm sort of personifying evolution here to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, and which for which I to some of
Speaker 1: you do apologize. But but yeah, they find themselves in
Speaker 1: this new world and they realize they're gonna have to
Speaker 1: change their ways to survive. They're gonna have to cut
Speaker 1: the budget or they're gonna have to ramp up their activity.
Speaker 1: And uh, and so you see the smaller animals becoming bigger,
Speaker 1: the bigger animals having to really cut down and become smaller. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it really they really haven't quite figured out what
Speaker 1: drives um some species becoming larger and some remaining the same,
Speaker 1: or some becoming smaller on these islands, because they don't
Speaker 1: know if it's because the species arrived um there and
Speaker 1: there was already another species quite similar to it, a snake,
Speaker 1: for instance, and uh, it decided, okay, it's best here
Speaker 1: if I just shrink or I stayed the same. One
Speaker 1: of the things that really surprised me when we were
Speaker 1: researching this was the situation with the Komodo dragon, which
Speaker 1: we generally think of as an example of island gigantism.
Speaker 1: It's the largest lizard we have. It's a ten ft
Speaker 1: long way three pounds. Back when the show was with
Speaker 1: that stuff to blow your mind or stuff in the
Speaker 1: science claud that did the Komodo dragon episode that may
Speaker 1: have been I think from I think it was from
Speaker 1: the last Yeah, it may have been a lad episode.
Speaker 1: But at the time I remember reading all these amazing
Speaker 1: things with the Kumodo dragon. You just keep thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a giant, it's a dragon. But there's the theory
Speaker 1: that this is actually a case of the island dwarfism
Speaker 1: because Komodo dragons they live on the Isle of Komodo
Speaker 1: U in Indonesia, but they also live on the on
Speaker 1: this other island called Flores, And on Flora's they have
Speaker 1: they've found fossil evidence of a much larger um dragon,
Speaker 1: if you will, that would have been twenty three ft
Speaker 1: long and would have weighed third over thirteen hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: And so the idea is that the Komodo is the
Speaker 1: the island dwarf of this amazing creature, which just turns
Speaker 1: everybody's thinking on it. Right, it's very interesting. It doesn't
Speaker 1: make the Komodo dragon anything less awesome or any less
Speaker 1: they living uh dinosaur in a sense, it's still a
Speaker 1: giant wizard. Yeah, yeah, you can't take that away from it.
Speaker 1: You never try and take anything away from Komodo track,
Speaker 1: that's right. It'll take your toe all right, So there's
Speaker 1: just a nice second introduction to the world of gigantics.
Speaker 1: I'm certainly we could sit here all day and and
Speaker 1: and talk about other well known or less well known
Speaker 1: giant animals. Certainly we didn't say anything about gallops, tortoise
Speaker 1: or Japanese spider TRAbs. These are all wonderful animals in
Speaker 1: their own right and worth looking into. Definitely worth looking
Speaker 1: at a couple of pictures, especially that Japanese spider crab.
Speaker 1: It's all legs. Um. Yeah. So, and we will talk
Speaker 1: about dwarfism another time. Dwarf is ms. That is certainly
Speaker 1: a podcast topic onto itself, is and especially if you
Speaker 1: talk about that human beings and when why are some
Speaker 1: people smaller in stature in cases of actual dwarfism among
Speaker 1: humans and other similar situations. So like that this old
Speaker 1: podcast and human morphology throughout the ages from and what
Speaker 1: extent is being tall? Uh, you know, not all that
Speaker 1: ideal anyway, Maybe we should be shorter. I don't know.
Speaker 1: You can pick the apples really easily, so like, I mean,
Speaker 1: you have that advantage over me. Yeah, but I'm not
Speaker 1: that good at climbing the tree if I was smaller,
Speaker 1: you know, I would be a little lower to the
Speaker 1: ground that are able to climb out there and get
Speaker 1: them anyway. True, yeah, all right, well let's call the
Speaker 1: robot over here and listen to some male all right,
Speaker 1: we have a couple of bits of listener mail here
Speaker 1: that come to us from fans on Facebook. So so
Speaker 1: I guess it wasn't really email. It was more fan
Speaker 1: messaging through the Facebook. It was communication communication. Um, this
Speaker 1: is apparently how the young kids are communicating now. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they're not using their email accounts, right, this is what
Speaker 1: I hear on the street. This st I heard this morning. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: Abigail rights and says, I laughed when I saw your
Speaker 1: screen podcast because I put your podcast on in the
Speaker 1: car on the way home from daycare to keep my
Speaker 1: infant from screaming. I think it might be Robert's voice
Speaker 1: because it also worked when he did a voice for
Speaker 1: the Stuff you Should Know Shark Week Special, which just
Speaker 1: published a couple of weeks ago, and go check that out.
Speaker 1: Was Josh and Shuck. Anyway, I digress. When I was
Speaker 1: in girl Scout camp, we used to play a game
Speaker 1: called roller Coaster. They line us up at the edge
Speaker 1: of the field and when the council yelled go, we'd
Speaker 1: take a deep breath and start running and screaming at
Speaker 1: the same time. You kept running until you couldn't scream anymore.
Speaker 1: The point of the game was to get the furthest
Speaker 1: As a kid, it was such a joy to be
Speaker 1: given the freedom to unleash the screen. But the true
Speaker 1: value of the game became apparent when I became a counselor.
Speaker 1: Not only was it an amazing way to get out
Speaker 1: the frustration of managing pen kids seven, but it also
Speaker 1: tired them out, making them easier to manage. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until then that I realized one of the counselors always
Speaker 1: won the game. New listener and always enjoy your podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you for helping me make my ride home more peaceful.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. So that's kind of like a form of
Speaker 1: primal screen therapy. And I'm I'm glad that my voice
Speaker 1: has this effect on this job. Yeah, just maybe we'll
Speaker 1: record a track of me just uh, you know, saying
Speaker 1: nursery rhymes. I was going to say, you could you
Speaker 1: could do that. It could be like Jack and Jill
Speaker 1: went up the Hill or not necessarily like that, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw a YouTube video where a kid had the
Speaker 1: same reaction but to but to uh to rap lyrics
Speaker 1: by Piggy where seen that. It's pretty pretty amazing because
Speaker 1: it's like hillbe screaming his head off and then they
Speaker 1: start playing some biggie and it just just chills that
Speaker 1: look so um but again, probably not good for the
Speaker 1: kids u um vocabulary. Later on, maybe that's what he's
Speaker 1: going to there his nuance, So it depends what he's
Speaker 1: aiming to do in life, I guess. We also heard
Speaker 1: from Nathan on Facebook Nathan Ryton and says, I have
Speaker 1: really been enjoying your podcast. I just listened to the
Speaker 1: horror episode. I too saw the Google VHS cover art
Speaker 1: at an age when those movies uh were out of
Speaker 1: my reach. Maybe it was my age or personal phobia,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't get out of get it out of
Speaker 1: my head. And again, for those of you were just
Speaker 1: tuning in, this was a nineties video cover that showed
Speaker 1: out grotesque little grimlin monster coming out of a toilet
Speaker 1: with like razor teeth and fancy suspenders. It was really
Speaker 1: stupid but but kind of mortifying anyway. Nathan that the
Speaker 1: fancy suspenders, well yeah, that's what makes it so ridiculous
Speaker 1: why we were in suspenders and why are they so clean?
Speaker 1: You just came out of the toilet. Um Anyway, Nathan continues,
Speaker 1: I went through a stage in my life where I
Speaker 1: always brought some sort of weapon into the bathroom with me.
Speaker 1: I think it also has to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that everyone feels vulnerable with their pants around her ankles.
Speaker 1: Makes for a slow getaway. I've told friends about it,
Speaker 1: but usually get the you're alone there, look keep up
Speaker 1: the great work. So indeed, I when I brought up googlies,
Speaker 1: it was because it did kind of traumatize me and
Speaker 1: did make me think twice about sitting on a toilet
Speaker 1: for fear that a suspended monster would come out of
Speaker 1: the whole and and eat me. And uh, I never
Speaker 1: even thought to bring a weapon to the toilet with me.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I didn't fall into that pattern. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's actually, uh there, there's a lot of research about
Speaker 1: this pinker effect and evolution about how you have to
Speaker 1: feel safe. Obviously, I mean, it makes a lot of
Speaker 1: sense if you're going to avoid your bowels. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not something we can do on the move, really, I
Speaker 1: mean maybe you can train yourself to it, but to
Speaker 1: do it, but but generally not so much. That's right.
Speaker 1: You never knew when when a saber tooth tiger is
Speaker 1: around the corner of Google's and your toilet. Yeah, all right, Well, hey,
Speaker 1: if you guys have something to share with us, if
Speaker 1: you have a particularly favorite example of gigantis um, be
Speaker 1: it an amazing prehistoric animal, an amazing living animal, or
Speaker 1: some individual out of wrestling or entertainment, or or just
Speaker 1: just general history, but we'd love to hear about them.
Speaker 1: I can think of one or two famous giants off
Speaker 1: hand for history that we didn't mention, but I'll leave
Speaker 1: our listeners to come up with those, guys challenge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can find us on Facebook again, where we are
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind. You can also find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter, where our handle is blow the Mind, and
Speaker 1: you can always drop us a line at blew the
Speaker 1: Mind at discovery dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com