Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe
Speaker 1: McCormick and Robert. Today we're going to begin with a
Speaker 1: Florida man story. Good. Nothing like a Florida man who
Speaker 1: discovers an ancient beast of unstoppable power. All right, So
Speaker 1: the story begins in the mild late autumn on a
Speaker 1: Florida beach. It was novemb and there were two boys
Speaker 1: who went out for a bicycle ride along the beach
Speaker 1: on Anastasia Island, which is a barrier island on the
Speaker 1: Atlantic coast of Florida. I believe I've been to Anastasia Island,
Speaker 1: So yeah, how was it? Um? I seemed to recall
Speaker 1: it being fine. If I am in fact remembering correctly,
Speaker 1: If I've been there, it was great. Did you sense
Speaker 1: any apocalyptic power lurking below the waves? Um? Probably, But
Speaker 1: that's just generally how I encounter the ocean. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: apocalyptic power is inside you. If you're not thinking about
Speaker 1: the apocalyptic powers of the ocean when you stare at
Speaker 1: the ocean, you're just not looking at it, right, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's the ocean, right, yeah, yeah, well that
Speaker 1: will be a theme of today's episode, I believe. So
Speaker 1: tell me if this matches your experience. I think, generally,
Speaker 1: based on I was looking at photos, the beaches on
Speaker 1: Anna Stage Island looked like that kind of low, flat,
Speaker 1: wide beaches with white sands, not very rocky, not very steep,
Speaker 1: you know, just kind of like that the beach plane
Speaker 1: and uh so, While the two boys were out bicycling
Speaker 1: along the shore about twelve miles south of the city
Speaker 1: of St. Augustine, they came across something tremendous and sickening.
Speaker 1: It was a giant monster blob, like some kind of
Speaker 1: enormous partially deflated balloon of organic matter, stranded on the
Speaker 1: beach and half sunken into the sand under its own weight. Now,
Speaker 1: at the longest to mention, this blob was over twenty feet.
Speaker 1: It looked sort of pear shaped, like a pear shaped
Speaker 1: monster deep into decomposition. One end, which many witnesses took
Speaker 1: to be the head, was bulbous and solid and engorged,
Speaker 1: while the other end terminated in this asymmetrical base containing
Speaker 1: a number of mutilated rubbery stumps trailing off in some
Speaker 1: kind of frayed fibrous tissue, and the frayed stumps were
Speaker 1: described by some observers as tentacles or arms. Very nice,
Speaker 1: far more lovecraft Ian than most of my beach vacations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's nothing more disappointing than like digging around in the
Speaker 1: sand of the beach and thinking you have discovered at
Speaker 1: like some kind of monstrous shell, but you pull it
Speaker 1: up and it's actually just like an old shampoo bottle. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the boys went back to town to tell about
Speaker 1: their discovery. They conveyed the news about the blob monster
Speaker 1: on the beach to a local physician and amateur naturalist
Speaker 1: named Dr DeWitt Webb, who was president of the St.
Speaker 1: Augustine Scientific Society, and pretty much immediately Dr Webb came
Speaker 1: on scene to have to investigate, and eventually more precise
Speaker 1: dimensions were drawn up. So the mass was twenty one
Speaker 1: ft long, seven ft wide, about four and a half
Speaker 1: feet tall when it was dug out of the pit
Speaker 1: it had sunken into, and it was estimated to way
Speaker 1: about seven tons. And despite its blobby appearance, I have
Speaker 1: read anecdotes, I'm not quite as sure if these are true.
Speaker 1: But anecdotes from the scene that people reportedly tried hacking
Speaker 1: at the remains with an axe, and we're unable to
Speaker 1: make a dent in it this way. So while it
Speaker 1: looks very blobby, it was supposedly very tough, and this
Speaker 1: giant mass in the sand, with its blob head and
Speaker 1: mutilated arms stumps, came to be known as the st
Speaker 1: Augustine Monster. Now, of course, the first order of business
Speaker 1: was to move the dead monster, so DeWitt arranged a
Speaker 1: team of horses and men with ropes to dig the
Speaker 1: mass up out of the sand and drag it up
Speaker 1: the shore to hire ground away from the reach of
Speaker 1: high tide. And then, once it was safe from being
Speaker 1: dragged back up to see, DeWitt set about contacting the experts,
Speaker 1: because you see, DeWitt had a theory. This was the
Speaker 1: decomposed head of a gigantic octopus, never before cataloged by science.
Speaker 1: For centuries, mariners had sometimes recounted stories of octopuses so
Speaker 1: big they appeared more like land masses or groups of
Speaker 1: islands than fish, so huge they could wrap their tentacles
Speaker 1: around the hulls of ships and crack them like a
Speaker 1: melon and drag them down into the deep, and this
Speaker 1: giant killer octopus of legend was known by lots of
Speaker 1: names like the Sea Devil, the Sea mischief I like
Speaker 1: that one, or most famously as one of the forms
Speaker 1: imagined for the mythical beast of Norse lore called the Kraken.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, And of course there also have been gigantic
Speaker 1: and semi gigantic octopuses in Japanese of folklore and myth uh.
Speaker 1: I know there's a there's an there's an important one
Speaker 1: in y uh folklore as well. I think it's there's
Speaker 1: a giant tentacled creature of some kind in like I knew,
Speaker 1: or I guess that's the Japanese folklore. I don't know
Speaker 1: why the movies put it in Greek myth because I've
Speaker 1: never heard of it in Greek myth and like saying something,
Speaker 1: it's become just immersed in there, just kind of stuck
Speaker 1: in Greek mythology things. So I guess Clash of the Titans, right, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess the idea of a giant octopus
Speaker 1: that can wreck ships is just so cool you can't,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't resist putting it into whatever kind
Speaker 1: of mythology you're talking about. In fact, did you know
Speaker 1: that the giant octopus was one of the signatories of
Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independence? That's how all those signatures, right,
Speaker 1: You need a lot of arms. Um. So. There have
Speaker 1: been many different and mutually incompatible descriptions of the Kraken,
Speaker 1: but one of the most famous comes from Erica pantaped
Speaker 1: On the Bishop of Bergen in his Natural History of
Speaker 1: Norway in the seventeen fifties, who writes that it is
Speaker 1: quote the largest sea monster in the world around, flat
Speaker 1: and full of arms or branches. And uh, I believe
Speaker 1: Robert and I were talking about the us before we
Speaker 1: came on. Apparently this poem, I'm sorry to find out,
Speaker 1: has already been featured on the podcast sometime in years past.
Speaker 1: But Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote a fantastic poem called the Kraken,
Speaker 1: which was published in eighteen thirty and it's so good
Speaker 1: it would be a shame not to read for you again.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, let's do it. Below the thunders of the
Speaker 1: upper deep, far far beneath in the abysmal sea, his
Speaker 1: ancient dreamless, uninvaded sleep the crack and sleep is faintest
Speaker 1: sunlights flee about his shadowy sides above him swell huge
Speaker 1: sponges of millennial growth and height, and far away into
Speaker 1: the sickly light from many a wondrous grot and secret cell,
Speaker 1: unnumbered and enormous POLOPI winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
Speaker 1: They're happy. Lane for ages and will lie battening upon
Speaker 1: huge seaworms in his sleep until the latter fire shall
Speaker 1: heat the deep. Then, once by man and angels to
Speaker 1: be seen in roaring, he shall rise and on the
Speaker 1: surface die. I love the idea here that when it
Speaker 1: comes up into the light, it dies, like as soon
Speaker 1: as it enters our world, it is immediately and automatically destroyed.
Speaker 1: And I think we should keep that in mind as
Speaker 1: a metaphor for the subject of today's episode. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean when we've discussed creatures of the deep in the past,
Speaker 1: I mean that. I mean that is part of the scenario, right,
Speaker 1: Things that survive and the lightless high pressure depths. Uh,
Speaker 1: you drag them up, they're not going to necessarily retain
Speaker 1: anything like their original form, right. And I think you
Speaker 1: could also say the same happens to the imagination or
Speaker 1: the myths of sea monsters. Once you grab them and
Speaker 1: get ahold of them to take a look. Because while
Speaker 1: I think we will make a case later in the
Speaker 1: episode than in the qualified sense, sea monsters really do exist. Uh,
Speaker 1: they often don't match exactly what people tell tales of exactly.
Speaker 1: But anyway, to come back to the St. Augustine Monster,
Speaker 1: what if these legends of a monstrous octopus had been
Speaker 1: based on a real giant octopus that had never before
Speaker 1: been confirmed to exist, but had been seen by the
Speaker 1: Norse mariners of old one might have felt justified wondering
Speaker 1: if maybe this seven ton blob with its hacked up
Speaker 1: arms stumps on a Florida beach was the rotten head
Speaker 1: of a beast that had once been like the kraken
Speaker 1: when it was alive and so. One of the people
Speaker 1: that DeWitt contacted about the St. Augustine Monster was the
Speaker 1: Yale University zoologist Addison Emery Veryl, and initially based on
Speaker 1: photos and a few descriptions, Veryl was convinced by the
Speaker 1: idea that this was some new and previously unknown species
Speaker 1: of humongous octopus monster. Verill even suggested a scientific name,
Speaker 1: Octopus giguentius, was a good name. It's to the point
Speaker 1: it could have been more creative actually, like octopus kracknus,
Speaker 1: octopus ridiculous, octopus blob oculus. So based on the initial
Speaker 1: photos and descriptions that Arrol received, and by comparing the
Speaker 1: analogy of you know, the size of known octopuses veryl
Speaker 1: wrote at the time quote when living it must have
Speaker 1: had enormous arms, each one a hundred feet or more
Speaker 1: in length, each as thick as the mast of a
Speaker 1: large vessel, and armed with hundreds of saucer shaped suckers,
Speaker 1: the largest of which would have been at least a
Speaker 1: foot in diameter. And of course that description instantly brings
Speaker 1: to mind some of these classic woodcut illustrations of of
Speaker 1: an enormous octopus wrapping its arms around the masts of ships. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these match like the old sailor's legends from say
Speaker 1: Norway or from Greenland, where they'd say, you know, if
Speaker 1: you go out and in the ocean at the wrong
Speaker 1: time of year, a kracking can come up and drag
Speaker 1: your ship down. Now there's an older episode of stuff
Speaker 1: to bloatery Mine. I want to mention um where we
Speaker 1: talked about sea monsters particularly and how they relate to maps.
Speaker 1: We talked at length on that episode about a book
Speaker 1: by chet van Duzer, and one of the things that
Speaker 1: he pointed out in that book is that there was
Speaker 1: very often like a political advantage in pointing out the
Speaker 1: potential for sea monsters in certain areas, like, oh, you
Speaker 1: don't want to go you don't want to go on
Speaker 1: this trade route. Uh, you might get attacked by an octopus. Also,
Speaker 1: that's our trade route, and we would prefer to have
Speaker 1: you know, full command of it. A genius way to
Speaker 1: establish fishing rights. Yeah, it's just one of the other
Speaker 1: things here is that monsters do serve various purposes. We
Speaker 1: often discussed it on this show that you know that
Speaker 1: monsters are a way to explain something, to perhaps explain
Speaker 1: something you have found washed up on a beach, or
Speaker 1: to explain something that is less tangible some some fear
Speaker 1: in the mind. But also they can serve political purposes
Speaker 1: as well. Absolutely, Now, this is a pretty amazing thing
Speaker 1: to conclude. Right in eight you've got real physical evidence
Speaker 1: of a giant octopus from Seafarer's legends. But unfortunately it
Speaker 1: was not to be because once veryl got more dated
Speaker 1: to work with, he quickly went back on the idea
Speaker 1: that this was a giant octopus or an octopus of
Speaker 1: any kind. He wrote an article in The American Naturalist
Speaker 1: in eighteen seven, which is the year after the monster
Speaker 1: was discovered, including a lot of interesting observations about the mass.
Speaker 1: For instance, even three months after its initial discovery, the
Speaker 1: monster had not shown noticeable advance of decomposition. Instead, Veryl
Speaker 1: said that it had resisted decay and stayed pretty much
Speaker 1: as it was when it was first found. That's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. Veryl also said that he had initially been
Speaker 1: misled by incorrect descriptions of the mass, including a report
Speaker 1: from a Mr. Wilson that a thirty six foot long
Speaker 1: arm had been found attached to the part of the monster,
Speaker 1: to one part of the monster, and buried alongside it,
Speaker 1: and this turned out to be untrue. But the real
Speaker 1: death of the huge octopus hypothesis was when Veryl received
Speaker 1: some samples of the tissue from de Witt. And according
Speaker 1: to Varyl, even a quick glance at these sections of
Speaker 1: the blob would tell you they were not octopus tissue.
Speaker 1: And I'll just read a section of his description some
Speaker 1: abridgements quote. They are white and so tough that it
Speaker 1: is hard to cut them, even with a razor, and
Speaker 1: yet they are somewhat flexible and elastic. The fibers are
Speaker 1: much interlaced in all directions and are of all sizes
Speaker 1: up to the size of course twine and small cords. Naturally,
Speaker 1: most of the interior parts had decomposed long before it
Speaker 1: was open, so that we lack details on the interior structure. Externally,
Speaker 1: there is but little trace of cuticle. The surface is
Speaker 1: close grained and somewhat rough, with occasional gray patches of
Speaker 1: what maybe remnants of the outer skin, much altered by decay.
Speaker 1: The thick masses contain a slight amount of oil and
Speaker 1: smell like rancid whale oil, but they sink quickly in
Speaker 1: water owing to their great density, and later he says
Speaker 1: it's toughness and elasticity remind one of the properties of
Speaker 1: thick vulcanized rubber um. And here we're getting closer to
Speaker 1: the truth, right, So veryl concluded, based on his experience
Speaker 1: with marine animal tissues, it was the integument, meaning the
Speaker 1: tough outer skin from the head of a dead sperm whale,
Speaker 1: though possibly a sick or unusually shaped one. But this
Speaker 1: amazing monster, this astonishing evidence of the Great King Octopus
Speaker 1: battened upon huge sea worms until the latter fire heated
Speaker 1: the deep. You know, he turned out to be nothing
Speaker 1: but a multi ton blob of dead, partially decomposed skin
Speaker 1: and bits of other tissue from a sperm whale. And
Speaker 1: it's crazy how that can be a disappointing answer, you know,
Speaker 1: to say, actually, it's not the flesh of of an
Speaker 1: undersea giant. It's the flesh of an even larger undersea giant,
Speaker 1: just one that we're more familiar with exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: the sperm whale is a sea monster. I mean there
Speaker 1: there is clearly reason to believe that some sea monster
Speaker 1: legends are based on observations of actual animals. And they're
Speaker 1: not monsters. They're animals we know about that are amazing, gigantic, fascinating, strange,
Speaker 1: terrifying creatures in their own right. And the sperm whale
Speaker 1: is absolutely one of the creatures that still retain many
Speaker 1: of their mysteries. Uh So, you know, it's not even
Speaker 1: like we have a full understanding of these creatures. And
Speaker 1: you know, consume at a zoo or something or an aquarium. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the great whales are are enigmas in many respects.
Speaker 1: I mean, they are they are, they're they're beautiful, holly,
Speaker 1: blameless creatures, but they're not giant octopuses. Yeah. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you can blame them for anything, you can blame
Speaker 1: them once dead for inspiring a lot of back and
Speaker 1: forth about new types of giant octopuses or monsters discovered.
Speaker 1: Because despite a highly reputable zoologist solving the mystery of
Speaker 1: the St. Augustine Monster within a year of its discovery, right,
Speaker 1: this was eighteen. This is with within less than a
Speaker 1: year of the thing being found. That despite this, the
Speaker 1: giant octopus theory persisted for a long time, I mean
Speaker 1: a really long time, and not just in the halls
Speaker 1: of cryptid mania, but in respectable mainstream publications. It still
Speaker 1: gets brought up when when people talk about blobs washed
Speaker 1: ashore in recent years, the idea that maybe this was
Speaker 1: a giant octopus in St. Augustine and they figured out
Speaker 1: what it actually was like a less than a year later.
Speaker 1: So this is gonna be the subject of this episode
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and the following a
Speaker 1: two part look at globsters. Now we'll define globster more
Speaker 1: rigorously as we go on in this episode, but you
Speaker 1: might be able to guess already what it is. Basically,
Speaker 1: it is a blob of life washed ashore on a
Speaker 1: beach that gives rise to many questions and speculation. Mysterious
Speaker 1: rancid goo. But yeah, you might be wondering, how could
Speaker 1: there be two episodes worth of stuff to talk about?
Speaker 1: It has wonderful connections to see monster legends, to to
Speaker 1: to really interesting science. Uh this is this turned out
Speaker 1: to be a very rich topic. No pun intended about
Speaker 1: the richness of whale blubber. Yeah, it has legs, even
Speaker 1: if you know globsters themselves don't really have ages anymore,
Speaker 1: or if they the only limbs they have are the
Speaker 1: hacked up freight arms, and that those are good enough. Alright, well,
Speaker 1: I think we should take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back we will go go a little bit
Speaker 1: further into discussing what is a globster? Thank, thank Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So this is the sort of thing we
Speaker 1: see pop up here and there, you know, anywhere the
Speaker 1: natural world touches human civilization, and quite often inexpert biological
Speaker 1: assessments occur of what remains. And then I love, I
Speaker 1: love a good goo. Yeah. I mean in many cases too,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be looking at situations where it is an
Speaker 1: expert who is who is passing judgment on the globster
Speaker 1: or the strange jelly that's washed up. But they might
Speaker 1: not be an expert in say marine biology. Uh, they
Speaker 1: might be an expert in another area. So it's not
Speaker 1: just you know, local buffoons marching drunkenly up and down
Speaker 1: the coast and encountering strange remains. Well. Remember from the
Speaker 1: story that we started with with the St. August steam monster,
Speaker 1: Addison Emery Veril himself, this noted zoologist. He at first
Speaker 1: thought it was a giant octopus of shipwrecking size. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was only once he had the samples in front
Speaker 1: of him and better photographs to look at and stuff
Speaker 1: that he had, that he realized like, oh no, I
Speaker 1: I've made a big mistake. So a couple of other
Speaker 1: examples of similar scenarios that that I want to discuss here.
Speaker 1: First of all, the idea of star jelly. I've talked
Speaker 1: about this on the show before. It's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite examples, and not just because it's so closely mirrors
Speaker 1: the opening of the classic films. You know, the blob
Speaker 1: from in the remake, and eight in which a hobo
Speaker 1: pokest a meteorite and an owze inside of it, climbs
Speaker 1: up the stick or down the stick and consumes his hand.
Speaker 1: In these cases, that was star jelly. What you have
Speaker 1: is an amateur sees a shooting star in the sky
Speaker 1: and then attempts to find it to find the resulting meteorite.
Speaker 1: And so they go kicking around the woods, paying attention
Speaker 1: to stuff that they normally wouldn't deal with, or an
Speaker 1: encounter and certainly wouldn't analyze. And finally they happened across
Speaker 1: some glob of fun guy or decaying organic material, and
Speaker 1: they become convinced that this is what fell to earth.
Speaker 1: This is the star jelly. I wonder, what's the funniest
Speaker 1: substance ever ever believed to be star jelly? Like, was
Speaker 1: there ever, just like a pile of bare vomit that
Speaker 1: became star jelly? Or candy, you know, like some sort
Speaker 1: of gummy candy, perhaps like a bag of marshmallows left
Speaker 1: out in the rain, yeah, or a cake left out
Speaker 1: in the rain. Who knows. Um. Now. Another example that
Speaker 1: comes to mind sewer blobs such as the Cameron Village
Speaker 1: sewer blob in Raleigh, North Carolina. Lovely you might remember
Speaker 1: this one joke. This one was something of a YouTube
Speaker 1: celebrity back in two thousand nine, uh well before the start.
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember like blogging for How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: at the time, and I think I think Marshall Brain
Speaker 1: did some some blog posts about about this particular sewer blob.
Speaker 1: Because what happened is you had this gross footage emerge
Speaker 1: of a pulsating blob in the sewers, and the footage
Speaker 1: score just a lot of blob and unknown organism headlines.
Speaker 1: But it all turned out to be a colony of
Speaker 1: tube effects worms a k a. Sledge worms or sewer worms.
Speaker 1: And they're just a tube five segmented worm species that
Speaker 1: naturally reside in lakes and rivers gobbling up bacteria. But
Speaker 1: they can survive on very little oxygen and have a
Speaker 1: knack for thriving in heavily polluted areas full of organic material. Wonderful.
Speaker 1: So a sewer is totally their jam. So what brought
Speaker 1: them to Raleigh? Do we know? Uh, not particularly Raleigh.
Speaker 1: It's just the sewer system there, you know there that
Speaker 1: they just have a knack for thriving inside of the
Speaker 1: artificial um parameters of a human sewage system, and then
Speaker 1: they just end up in these big pulsating masses. So
Speaker 1: there could be sewer worm blobs all over the place.
Speaker 1: There just happened to be one that went viral in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: what's the alchemy for becoming a tube SuperStar's a lot
Speaker 1: of it's just luck. This was this was the glob
Speaker 1: that was destined for for superstardom. This is the blobby pie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sadly there was a few years before Pizza Rat, so
Speaker 1: the sewer blob and Pizza Rat did not get to
Speaker 1: like team up in a buddy cop film. But you know,
Speaker 1: I still hold out hope for the future. But coming
Speaker 1: back to the the oceanic variety of mysterious blobs, the
Speaker 1: crazy thing is you still see these headlines all the time. Heck,
Speaker 1: just this month in nineteen uh, the Sun Fabulous bastion
Speaker 1: of journalistic integrity. Uh, they gave us this headline. Mystery
Speaker 1: sea creature dubbed Donald Trump's hair hairpiece leaves experts stumped
Speaker 1: after a yellow blob is spotted off Australia. Okay, who
Speaker 1: dubbed it that the author of this article or that
Speaker 1: comes to us from the sun. Weirdly, I mean, I
Speaker 1: admit that's a good headline. Yeah, weirdly enough. Fox News
Speaker 1: ran an article in the simber of listing some of
Speaker 1: the more noteworthy globsters to wash up on shores just
Speaker 1: in I mean, there's always a blob here there that'll
Speaker 1: that'll get somebody's attention and there will be an article
Speaker 1: about it, who knows, in the Daily Mail, maybe saying
Speaker 1: it's an alien. Yeah, I mean, it's always gonna make
Speaker 1: a headline, right because you get to say, mysterious blob, globster,
Speaker 1: what have you? Has washed upon the shore? You want
Speaker 1: to see that picture and then you you're intrigued by
Speaker 1: the mystery. And the selected entries are in that Fox
Speaker 1: newspiece for an example, it's a good sampling of the
Speaker 1: sort of strange blobs that are often reported unidentified whole
Speaker 1: or partial sea jellies or jellyfish, slabs of decaying whale
Speaker 1: and weird fish remains, and sometimes it is actually the
Speaker 1: remains of a cephalopotter seems to be including the odd
Speaker 1: remains of a giant squid. For instance, there was a
Speaker 1: noteworthy giant squid that washed up in August of eighteen
Speaker 1: on the coast of New Zealand, like undeniably, uh, just
Speaker 1: a whole giant squid. And you see pick the pictures
Speaker 1: of the two gentlemen who found it, like laying next
Speaker 1: to it and posing with it. Wait, do you know
Speaker 1: if it was giant squid or colossal squid? Oh? Is
Speaker 1: our friend Archie Furey Artois. I think just because I
Speaker 1: think of the colossal squid as being the one in
Speaker 1: the Southern Ocean, But I guess they're giant squid down
Speaker 1: there too. Now, the term globster itself emerges in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two with from a similar part of the world,
Speaker 1: with the Tasmanian globster. This is a twenty ft in
Speaker 1: unidentified carcass that washed up washed ashore in western Tasmania.
Speaker 1: And this is this is a quote from that particular story.
Speaker 1: Scottish biologist and writer Ivan T. Sanderson coined this term
Speaker 1: globster uh in covering the story, and it beat out
Speaker 1: Sea Santa, which was the term used by another journalist
Speaker 1: covering the story as being like the the term that
Speaker 1: would remain part of the crypto zoological lexicon see Santo.
Speaker 1: Where does that come? We'll see it. It's it doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense to me. Jiggles a bowl full of jelly.
Speaker 1: I guess just a bad headline. Globsters clearly the way
Speaker 1: to go now. Sanderson was also a sci fi rider.
Speaker 1: He wrote about nature, travel, and the paranormal. He's most
Speaker 1: remembered today as being something of a cryptozoologist, but uh
Speaker 1: the the article he wrote included this description. It was
Speaker 1: initially covered with fine hair. There were five or six
Speaker 1: gill like hairless slits on each side of the four parts.
Speaker 1: There were four large hanging lobes in the front and
Speaker 1: between the center pair with a smooth, gullet like orifice.
Speaker 1: The margin of the hind part had cushioned like protuberances,
Speaker 1: and each of these carried a single row of spines,
Speaker 1: sharp and hard, about as thick as a pencil and
Speaker 1: quill like. It had a resilient flesh which appeared to
Speaker 1: be composed of numerous tendon like threads welded together in
Speaker 1: a fatty substance. So that sounds a lot like the
Speaker 1: St Augustine monster in many respects, very much kind of
Speaker 1: kind of fatty, kind of fibrous blob like with like
Speaker 1: hairs are weird little frayed fibery bits that that are
Speaker 1: hard to identify. Yeah, it would um, it would not
Speaker 1: be surprising to discover that this had come from almost anything, right,
Speaker 1: you know, like you when you see an object like this,
Speaker 1: it's it's just not obvious that this is clearly one
Speaker 1: thing or another. And to be fair, I mean again,
Speaker 1: think about the mysteries of the seat. Under the curtain
Speaker 1: of the deep. There there lie great, uh you know,
Speaker 1: great things probably still to be discovered, and so that
Speaker 1: this is one of the things that I think sometimes
Speaker 1: people do it sort of annoys me. Is like mocking
Speaker 1: ancient people's for believing in sea monsters, because it is
Speaker 1: true that many ancient encyclopedists and beast hearists and seagoers
Speaker 1: described creatures which probably never existed. But I would positive
Speaker 1: that the belief in sea monsters, generally, especially in the
Speaker 1: ancient world and even up until you know, recent centuries,
Speaker 1: was a completely reasonable and valid thing to believe. And
Speaker 1: in any cases, sea monsters did exist. We just now
Speaker 1: have more accurate descriptions of them, and we call them
Speaker 1: by different names. The sperm whale, the blue whale, the
Speaker 1: giant squid, the sunfish, the lion's main jellyfish. So like
Speaker 1: an ancient sailor from Phoenicia or somewhere tells you there's
Speaker 1: a monster of the deep with tin arms taller than
Speaker 1: the height of seven men, with eyes bigger than your head,
Speaker 1: he would essentially be telling the truth about a giant squid.
Speaker 1: Though now we have more accurate ways of documenting these
Speaker 1: creatures when we encounter them, and we've we've certainly narrowed
Speaker 1: the list of giant sea creatures that we think are
Speaker 1: likely to actually exist. But some sea monsters do exist.
Speaker 1: They're just animals, and the ocean is full of amazing, rare, huge, terrifying,
Speaker 1: fascinating creatures, and sometimes even before modern marine zoology and
Speaker 1: documentaries like Blue Planet, people would come across them somehow.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways that people have long been
Speaker 1: encountering sea monsters like this is in the form much
Speaker 1: like the St. Augustine monster, washed ashore or pulled up
Speaker 1: on a line or in a net, dead decomposing, suggesting
Speaker 1: an original form and a sort of once or twice
Speaker 1: removed fashion, you know, like melted, alienated blob like yeah,
Speaker 1: and ultimately like partially exploded, Yeah, by by virtue of
Speaker 1: being pulled out of the depths. Yeah, not to mention well,
Speaker 1: I mean you mentioned exploded exploding whales or a whole
Speaker 1: other thing that we can talk about sometime. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think it's very useful though, to think about how sea
Speaker 1: monsters were discussed in olden days. Um For instance, St.
Speaker 1: Augustine wrote that a monster is ultimately part of God's
Speaker 1: plan and uh an adornment of the universe that can
Speaker 1: also teach us about the dangers of sin. But again
Speaker 1: a part of God's plan, a part of the natural world.
Speaker 1: So these were not, you know, described as being demons
Speaker 1: per se. They were just uh, creatures that we did
Speaker 1: not know much about, and we're noteworthy for some of
Speaker 1: the are uh there their attributes. Thirteenth century theologian Thomas
Speaker 1: of Contemporary devoted one book entirely to see monsters and
Speaker 1: another to fish of the sea. And the dividing line
Speaker 1: between the two rarity and size, that is what determined
Speaker 1: to see monster. Is it extremely rare and or is
Speaker 1: it particularly enormous? I mean, those would also be things
Speaker 1: that would tend to describe top predators. They are not
Speaker 1: nearly as many of them and they tend to be bigger.
Speaker 1: Chet banduser who referenced earlier he wrote, he brought this
Speaker 1: up in the excellent Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps,
Speaker 1: and in that book he chose to define sea monsters
Speaker 1: as quote aquatic creatures thought astonishing and exotic and classical
Speaker 1: medieval or Renaissance times, and that that covers a lot
Speaker 1: of ground, considering, you know, how little was known about
Speaker 1: the ocean depths in those times and the creatures that
Speaker 1: live there. And uh, you know, we if we've covered
Speaker 1: on the show before, it's always we're stressing how much
Speaker 1: remains for us to understand today, even if we can
Speaker 1: safely rule out the number of true giants that remain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I would say that when the sea gives up
Speaker 1: some kind of mysterious mass, I think it is okay
Speaker 1: to have the impulse to to be amazed by it.
Speaker 1: Didn't wonder what it is. I mean, it's it's not
Speaker 1: unreasonable to say this could be evidence of something very
Speaker 1: weird and interesting. But you also shouldn't jump to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that now you've discovered a gigantic oxpus, that's the thing,
Speaker 1: and this is one of the crucial errors that you
Speaker 1: see over and over again, right, is what is this
Speaker 1: more likely to be? Is it more likely to be
Speaker 1: a creature that there has never been hard evidence for
Speaker 1: that we do not know to actually exist, or is
Speaker 1: this perhaps the remains or part of the remains of
Speaker 1: something that we do know to exist. Now one of those,
Speaker 1: one of those possibilities is certainly more exciting than the others.
Speaker 1: Who doesn't want to be the first person to discover
Speaker 1: proof of some amazing beast. I mean, if you find
Speaker 1: some sort of rotting um primate in your backyard, I
Speaker 1: know I want it to be Bigfoot, as opposed to
Speaker 1: just somebody's you know, pet chimpanzee that escaped and that
Speaker 1: its tragic end in my backyard. But one of those
Speaker 1: is far more likely to be the case than the other. Well,
Speaker 1: one of them you're going to be far more likely
Speaker 1: to sell for a big score of money than the other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, honestly, I don't know what a dead
Speaker 1: champion chimpanzee goes for on the the like local black market,
Speaker 1: but probably not as much as Bigfoot. In a cooler
Speaker 1: I wonder what is the largest the highest price a
Speaker 1: supposed Bigfoot in a frozen block of ice has ever
Speaker 1: sold for I don't know, probably a pretty penny. So
Speaker 1: I think we should try to define globsters a little
Speaker 1: bit more um to to get a get a more
Speaker 1: rigorous idea of what we're talking about to fit into
Speaker 1: this category. So a lot of somewhat different looking things
Speaker 1: have been classified as globsters. What do all of them
Speaker 1: have in common? I'll positive list of some universal criteria.
Speaker 1: This is This is my universal globster checklist. Number one
Speaker 1: comes from the sea, Number two appears to be organic
Speaker 1: in nature, Number three but does not currently appear to
Speaker 1: be alive, and number four defies initial classification. So it's
Speaker 1: definitely a globster when the c gives up some dead organism,
Speaker 1: and it's at least initially hard to tell what kind
Speaker 1: of organism it is. But beyond that, there are some
Speaker 1: other major features common to many, but not all, things
Speaker 1: called globsters. One is that usually the object is large,
Speaker 1: like multi ton. Usually it looks really gross or unusual
Speaker 1: and makes people think they've discovered a new species or
Speaker 1: a monster, or an abnormally large specimen of a known species,
Speaker 1: like a gigantic octopus. Occasionally, bright colors come up, especially
Speaker 1: if the specimen is uh something that is related to
Speaker 1: a c jelly, but certainly not in these cases where
Speaker 1: it is ultimately part of a whale. Yeah, I'd say
Speaker 1: the most common physical description is big old blob, horrible odor,
Speaker 1: off white gray or pale pink color, uh, blob like shape,
Speaker 1: no apparent skeleton or bones, no apparent eyes, no apparent head,
Speaker 1: covered in fine hairs or stringy substances, in a kind
Speaker 1: of rubbery texture. Did I just see you shiver, Robert? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did. Um, It's just it's something. It's just that description, right,
Speaker 1: It's just so loathsome to imagine. I'm surprised. I usually
Speaker 1: think of you as a person who has a quite
Speaker 1: strong constitution with regards to to gross and nicky things.
Speaker 1: I don't know, the CEA will offer up some some
Speaker 1: things to challenge us, that's for sure. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about some other examples of globsters, because because there are
Speaker 1: many and we are not going to be able to
Speaker 1: cover them all today. I mean to do it to
Speaker 1: to mention a point already made just Ineen. You had
Speaker 1: multiple examples of globsters popping up washing ashore for humans
Speaker 1: to find. So let's see. Let's let's let's go through them.
Speaker 1: Here we've talked about the Tasmanian globster here uh O
Speaker 1: g lobster from nineteen sixty. There's also the Bermuda blob
Speaker 1: from nineteen which was described as two and a half
Speaker 1: to three three ft thick, very wide and fibrous, with
Speaker 1: five arms or legs, rather like a disfigured star. It
Speaker 1: had no bones, cartilage, visible openings, or odor. This one
Speaker 1: was probably the remains of a whale carcass, by the way.
Speaker 1: Another one is the Hebrides Islands globster from nineteen nine,
Speaker 1: and there's a description of this one that's included in
Speaker 1: a paper that came back to several times in researching
Speaker 1: this um, how to Tell a Sea Monster Molecular Discrimination
Speaker 1: of Large Marine Animals of the North Atlantic, published in
Speaker 1: the Biological Bulls Bulletin in two thousand and two by
Speaker 1: car at All quote. It had what appeared to be
Speaker 1: a head at one end, a curved back, and seemed
Speaker 1: to be covered with eating away flesh or even a
Speaker 1: furry skin, and was twelve ft long. And it had
Speaker 1: all these shapes like ms along its back. Now there
Speaker 1: was a nantucket blob that was supposedly it was like
Speaker 1: a big blubbl blubberry looking thing. Uh, there was what
Speaker 1: us a Newfoundland blob. Yeah, this was in uh St.
Speaker 1: Bernard's Fortune Bay. And I used to live in Newfoundland,
Speaker 1: so I'm pretty sure I've been to this, uh this area.
Speaker 1: I never saw anything like this, but but Newfoundland you
Speaker 1: do see all sorts of interesting things wash up on
Speaker 1: the shore. Uh described as an enormous rotting whitish mass
Speaker 1: five point six meters long and five ms wide, no head,
Speaker 1: no tail, all bleached tissue, rough, fringed with material that
Speaker 1: looked like hair, but was actually quote a braided tissue
Speaker 1: mixed with seaweed and sand, seven or eight lobes or slits.
Speaker 1: And this is from that car at All paper. The
Speaker 1: state of that the decay here made identification impossible, but
Speaker 1: morphology ruled out a giant squid and suggested either the
Speaker 1: remains of a basking shark or any of several whale
Speaker 1: species found in the surrounding Newfoundland waters. Uh car at
Speaker 1: All rule that, based on genetic sequences that they were
Speaker 1: able to um you know, to to determine from the
Speaker 1: from the sample of the remains, it is without doubt,
Speaker 1: the remains of a sperm whale. Yeah, familiar story by
Speaker 1: this point. Now. In two thousand three, a twelve meter wide,
Speaker 1: thirteen ton specimen of glorious blobbinus washed up on the
Speaker 1: coast of Chile at a place called Los Mouaremos Beach,
Speaker 1: and according to a BBC News article on the specimen
Speaker 1: from July of two thousand three, researchers in Santiago thought
Speaker 1: that at first it might be some new species of
Speaker 1: giant octopus or squid. James Mead, a zoologist at the
Speaker 1: Smithsonian Institution in Washington, disagreed, telling the BBC quote, I
Speaker 1: don't have enough data to say it's an octopus or
Speaker 1: it's a whale, but I would hazard a bet that
Speaker 1: when it gets firmly identified, it'll be a whale. And
Speaker 1: I've got a photo of it here. It looks what
Speaker 1: does it look like, Robert, I mean, it looks like
Speaker 1: a giant eldric of a creature. Certainly you don't look
Speaker 1: at it and think, oh, that's part of a whale. No,
Speaker 1: it looks kind of it could be a cathulu head.
Speaker 1: It's sort of got things that look like arms or
Speaker 1: tentacles and that comes through based on the photos, because
Speaker 1: in the BBC article, another whale expert disagrees with me,
Speaker 1: saying that based on the photos it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: whale tissue. It lacks a distinctive collagen matrix. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then after that the article goes full cracking quote European zoologists,
Speaker 1: and the author does not say who, it just says
Speaker 1: European zoologists said it closely resembled descriptions of a bizarre
Speaker 1: specimen found in Florida in eighteen six that was named
Speaker 1: Octopus giganteus, which has confounded experts ever since. Seems odd
Speaker 1: to me that the BBC is still floating no pun intended,
Speaker 1: and the gigantic octopus explanation in two thousand three. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially when you look at all these cases, the ones
Speaker 1: we've we've looked at in some of the stuff we're
Speaker 1: about to discuss in a bit here, it seems like
Speaker 1: the whale explanation is generally the safe bet. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: because remember Veril, the expert at the time positively identified.
Speaker 1: He said, look, I've seen what these samples are like.
Speaker 1: This is conclusively sperm whale tissue that was back in
Speaker 1: eight and over a hundred years later, like a hundred
Speaker 1: and six years later, we're still like, I think maybe
Speaker 1: this was a giant octopus that was on the beach
Speaker 1: in Florida. But you know what, we can do the
Speaker 1: lab work. That's a wonderful, glorious capability we have. Now
Speaker 1: you mentioned the lab results with a couple of these
Speaker 1: other blobs. So what was the Chilean blob that people
Speaker 1: are saying is maybe a new giant octopus. Well, there
Speaker 1: was a paper published in the Biological Bulletin in two
Speaker 1: thousand four by Pierce Massy, Curtis Smith, Olivaria, and mal
Speaker 1: gel And this was called Microscopic, Biochemical and Molecular Characteristics
Speaker 1: of the Chilean Blob and a comparison with the remains
Speaker 1: of other sea monsters colon nothing but whales. So you
Speaker 1: can guess where this one's going. They used electron microscopy
Speaker 1: to reveal that the Chilean blob was quote largely composed
Speaker 1: of an a cellular fibrous network reminiscent of the college
Speaker 1: and fiber net network in whale blubber. They also use
Speaker 1: DNA analysis to determine that the blob was a one
Speaker 1: match for the DNA of sperm whales quote. These results
Speaker 1: unequivocally demonstrate that the chill An blob is the almost
Speaker 1: completely decomposed remains of the blubber layer of a sperm whale,
Speaker 1: and in fact, the authors point out that, despite lingering
Speaker 1: cryptozoological interest, every single one of the globsters we mentioned
Speaker 1: in the list a minute ago, I think all of them,
Speaker 1: if not all of them, most of them are mentioned
Speaker 1: in this list. Uh, and the st Augustine monster that
Speaker 1: we started by talking about, have also been shown by
Speaker 1: modern sample analysis to have been the decomposed remains of whales,
Speaker 1: usually sperm whales, but definitely whales. So far it's all whales. Alright. Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's take a quick break, and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to talk about whale flesh.
Speaker 1: We're gonna discuss why and how whale flesh ends up
Speaker 1: masquerading as strange, unexplained creatures from the deep. Thank thank
Speaker 1: thank Alright, we're back. So we've got all these stories
Speaker 1: of a blob, a globster, a big mass of some
Speaker 1: kind washing up on a beach somewhere, getting pulled up
Speaker 1: by a trawler, appearing somewhere from the depths, looking like
Speaker 1: a a cathoulu head or a giant octopus, a crack in,
Speaker 1: some kind of squid creature, and and always so far
Speaker 1: turning out to be part of a dead whale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Because here's the deal. If you're looking for a sea monster,
Speaker 1: whales are it kinda And likewise, if a giant hunk
Speaker 1: of something formally living washes up on the shore, you
Speaker 1: have to at least consider that it stems from some
Speaker 1: of the largest denizens of the sea. And indeed, that
Speaker 1: classification of animals that includes not only the largest animals
Speaker 1: alive today with the largest animals that have ever lived.
Speaker 1: The larger adult whales, as we've discussed in the show before,
Speaker 1: are largely untouchable in the natural world. Modern whales. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have to contend with human ships, pollution, and they've
Speaker 1: had to survive the horrors of the whaling industry in
Speaker 1: the past. Uh. And in some cases they do have
Speaker 1: to contend with the orca, the wolves of the sea.
Speaker 1: Pods of orc as will sometimes try to prey on
Speaker 1: sperm whales. And then, of course the younger whales are
Speaker 1: even more vulnerable in some cases. But for the vast
Speaker 1: majority of of their marine peers, the whales are just
Speaker 1: God's beyond their touch, at least until they die. That's
Speaker 1: when whale fall occurs, when the whale has has has
Speaker 1: has finally given up the ghost and it sinks and
Speaker 1: it serves as an immense bounty, a pop up ecosystem
Speaker 1: of nutrients in an ocean desert, sustaining everything from sharks
Speaker 1: to far more specialized whale googles like the bone os
Speaker 1: decks that we've discussed in the show before. It's the
Speaker 1: rotten Thanksgiving of the ocean, it is. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, certainly there are cases where whales are beached.
Speaker 1: We have an entire episode of stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind from the past about this topic, on this topic
Speaker 1: about how this occurs and or their cadavers will wash ashore. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, more or less whole. I think we've been
Speaker 1: a recognizable form right like there. If you've ever watched
Speaker 1: any of the David Attenborough Nature specials, you've seen some
Speaker 1: of these either dealing with the whale fall with a
Speaker 1: whale corpse on the bottom of the sea and looking
Speaker 1: at all the things that tear into it, or like
Speaker 1: bears munching on a whale that's washed up. Um Wow.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just it is a bounty of resources.
Speaker 1: It's like this thing that was untouchable for so long
Speaker 1: and grows to such an enormous size is suddenly um
Speaker 1: up for grabs. It's like the you know, the the
Speaker 1: the emperor has died and now the gates are undefended
Speaker 1: and everyone can just storm in and have as much
Speaker 1: gold as they want. And but then, of course we
Speaker 1: do have cases where we just get a big old
Speaker 1: hunk of blubber, just a big old hunk of blubber
Speaker 1: washing up on the shore, and then people wonder what
Speaker 1: this might be. So to to really put that together, though,
Speaker 1: to to to understand like what's going on here, we
Speaker 1: have to talk about what blubber is and what it
Speaker 1: is not. Blubber is, essentially, and I really want to
Speaker 1: tag essentially here, a thick layer of fat. But it's
Speaker 1: thicker than any fat layer you'll find elsewhere in the
Speaker 1: animal kingdom. It covers the entire body of animals such
Speaker 1: as seals, whales, and walruses, except for their fins, flippers,
Speaker 1: and flukes. It has three key roles energy storage, insulation,
Speaker 1: and buoyancy. That last one is key, of course, to
Speaker 1: our discussions here, so not or hewn from the sinking Leviathan,
Speaker 1: it may float free. And as far as thickness goes,
Speaker 1: because some of these these globsters, they do look very thick.
Speaker 1: The thickest blubber is found on the right whales who
Speaker 1: live in chilly Arctic and Antarctic waters, and it's more
Speaker 1: than a foot thick. However, the chemical properties of the
Speaker 1: blubber actually determine all three properties of the blubber. Again,
Speaker 1: the ergy storages, the insulation, the buoyancy, rather than just
Speaker 1: pure thickness. So yeah, it's important to to to think
Speaker 1: about that as being just part of the entire animals
Speaker 1: outer layer. And that's how you can get some of
Speaker 1: these large pieces. You know, it's like a big flayed
Speaker 1: hunk of blubber. It's not like just a uh you know,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily just a single isolated part of the anatomy.
Speaker 1: And not only is this blubber thicker than the fat
Speaker 1: of land animals, it also contains a lot more blood
Speaker 1: vessels and many marine bi i biologists actually consider it
Speaker 1: more of a unique connective tissue unto itself. Well, it's
Speaker 1: got that collagen matrix that that we've seen the experts
Speaker 1: talking about exactly. So, yeah, there are principles there. There,
Speaker 1: there aspects to the blubber that make it rather unique.
Speaker 1: And these attributes are one of the reasons that will
Speaker 1: end up washing the shore. But it's also one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that we may look at it and we
Speaker 1: don't associated with, say, you know, the fat on a
Speaker 1: butchered cow or pig or what have you. However, this
Speaker 1: does make me wonder I during the days like the
Speaker 1: the you know, the the peak of the whaling industry,
Speaker 1: would you be far less likely to encounter a globster
Speaker 1: sighting just because more people would have familiarity with the
Speaker 1: anatomy of whales, or perhaps they were because there are
Speaker 1: fewer of them to to wash to wash up on
Speaker 1: the shore. I don't know. That's a good point, Like
Speaker 1: people would be familiar with whaling all around and or
Speaker 1: maybe not everywhere, but you couldn't look at that and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's that's the gold of the sea right there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or indeed, would a would a a whaler or former
Speaker 1: whaler be less likely to make the globster mistake? Would
Speaker 1: they be in a position to say, oh, well, that's
Speaker 1: clearly a big old hunk of blubber. I've seen blubber before.
Speaker 1: But then again, familiarity with the living or you know,
Speaker 1: recently butchered animal is not necessarily the same as being
Speaker 1: familiar with uh. It's it's more decayed appearance. That's true.
Speaker 1: There is an estrangement of warm that comes about after
Speaker 1: the creature has died, and who knows how far that
Speaker 1: estrangement goes now. I think one of the takeaways from
Speaker 1: today's episode is that it seems like the majority of
Speaker 1: these globsters, these big blobs that wash ashore and are
Speaker 1: hard to identify our parts of whale bodies, right, But
Speaker 1: there is a whole other category of globsters that do
Speaker 1: not fit this and either could not be identified as
Speaker 1: conclusively as whale tissue or are very likely something else.
Speaker 1: And that is what we're going to focus on in
Speaker 1: the next episode. In the meantime, while you're waiting for
Speaker 1: Globsters Part two or Invasion of the Globsters, whatever we
Speaker 1: end up calling the episodes, UH, you can check out
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's our mothership.
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