Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lambin. This is the Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: focusing in non mythical creatures, ideas and monsters. In time,
Speaker 2: I'd like to turn our attention once more to the
Speaker 2: world of Jim Henson's nineteen eighty six fantasy film Labyrinth,
Speaker 2: where a vast shifting maze surrounds the Goblin King's castle
Speaker 2: full of various hazards, traps, and riddles. It is not
Speaker 2: uncommon to encounter the Goblin army in these parts, as
Speaker 2: they tend to such important work as tormenting good natured
Speaker 2: beasts like Ludo. In the film, Sarah encounters several heavily
Speaker 2: armored goblins engaging in just such work with nipper sticks.
Speaker 2: These are long sticks or cudgels with a strange bity
Speaker 2: creature perched toward the end of the stick. These creatures
Speaker 2: are hairless and pink, Their eyes remain closed, and they
Speaker 2: seem unwilling or incapable of leaving the end of the
Speaker 2: stick that they cling to with clod hands and feet.
Speaker 2: While the goblins don't bother to explain the origin of
Speaker 2: the nipper sticks, and the bestiaries and novelizations I turn
Speaker 2: to are equally silent on the matter. One is struck
Speaker 2: by a sense of new born or larval morphology in
Speaker 2: the nipper beast. It has not yet opened its eyes,
Speaker 2: It does not move on its own, it has not
Speaker 2: grown hair. Its only defining behavior is to bite at
Speaker 2: any and everything it can with its pronounced sharp teeth.
Speaker 2: Larval aggression is very much reality in the animal world.
Speaker 2: It is common among nursery mates, generally due to resource limitations.
Speaker 2: Some salamanders and frogs even develop cannibal morphs with larger
Speaker 2: teeth and mouths to gobble up nursery mats when resources
Speaker 2: are tight. While horrific sounding to us, this is just
Speaker 2: the survival economics of the wild. It's also one way
Speaker 2: of interpreting the large mouths and teeth of the nippers.
Speaker 2: Larvae have many enemies, however, so it also bodes well
Speaker 2: for larvae to fend off predators as well as cannibal
Speaker 2: adults of the same species. It has been theorized that
Speaker 2: the dorsal spines on metallic blue lady beetle larvae serve
Speaker 2: to protect them against attacks by the larvae of other
Speaker 2: species species that often boast the speed, maneuverability and mandibles
Speaker 2: to take out susceptible larvae. This according to intragilled predation
Speaker 2: among Lady Beetles and a green lace wing by Macaud
Speaker 2: and Grant from the Bulletin of Intomological Research in two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven. In short, larvae and babies generally have
Speaker 2: a great deal development left to do, sometimes in quite
Speaker 2: a hurry, but in some cases it makes sense to
Speaker 2: front load that development with an outsized ability to defend
Speaker 2: yourself or to consume your competitors. One can easily imagine
Speaker 2: the goblins of the Goblin City in Labyrinth capitalizing on
Speaker 2: these adaptations for their own nasty weaponry. Tune in for
Speaker 2: additional episodes of The Monster Fact each week. As always,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.
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