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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamman. This is the Monster Fact,

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Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

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Speaker 2: focusing in on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time.

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Speaker 2: This entry will offer few surprises to Interstellar listeners of

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Speaker 2: the fourth millennium. They're likely all too familiar with the

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Speaker 2: so called autogouls of Groombridge Station. But for historic listeners,

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Speaker 2: say from the twenty first century, we shall now unpack

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Speaker 2: this monstrous horror, and fair warning, there's some gross brain

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Speaker 2: stuff in this one, along with a little science. We'll

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Speaker 2: skip the details of planetary colonization and Interstellar's civilization for

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Speaker 2: the moment and just get to the grizzly bits. Conflict

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Speaker 2: between Megas Days takes multiple forms, from official sporting events

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Speaker 2: like hyper Accelerator Ball to acts of espionage and assassination.

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Speaker 2: As attacks on actual infrastructure are universally banned and considered heretical,

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Speaker 2: the so called plague weapons represent the worst case scenario

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Speaker 2: in these conflicts, bioweapons designed to impact a station's population center.

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Speaker 2: Some plague weapons have more in common with traditional illnesses,

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Speaker 2: but others are designed to spread terror and fear. This

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Speaker 2: was seemingly the intent regarding what would come to be

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Speaker 2: known as the auto ghoule plague, an attempt it seems

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Speaker 2: to create a viral zombie infection that inspires an intense

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Speaker 2: hunger for human brains, as with the zombie seen in

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Speaker 2: popular Earth cinemas. The plague didn't work quite as well

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Speaker 2: as advertised or intended. However, while it inspired an intense

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Speaker 2: hunger for brain matter in an infected individual, the hunger

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Speaker 2: turned inward. Instead of becoming cannibals, they became auto cannibals

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Speaker 2: or autoghoules, and turned their hunger on their own gray matter.

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Speaker 2: The plague hit differently depending on personality types. Some autogoules

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Speaker 2: tucked into their own brains as quickly as possible and

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Speaker 2: with whatever tools were readily available, be it a can

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Speaker 2: opener or a Class five plasma cutter. Other individuals took

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Speaker 2: a more thoughtful approach to the endeavor and took their time.

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Speaker 2: Either way brutal and sloppy or surgical and downright culinary,

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Speaker 2: the results were always the same. There's only so much

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Speaker 2: of your own brain you can consume before you cease

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Speaker 2: to consume anything at all. On Earth. However, we do

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Speaker 2: have at least a couple of creatures that, in one

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Speaker 2: way or another do consume their own brains. As pointed

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Speaker 2: out by Christopher Vaughn on Stanford Medicine's Scope blog in

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Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, the star tunicate or C squirt is

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Speaker 2: our closest evolutionary relative among marine invertebrates. It begins life

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Speaker 2: as a creature about the size of a tadpole with

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Speaker 2: two brains. It's free swimming at this point, but eventually

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Speaker 2: it finds a nice place to settle down on a

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Speaker 2: rock among other members of its kind. And at this

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Speaker 2: point it settles into sedentary life. And as one of

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Speaker 2: its two brains was devoted to sea navigation, well there's

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Speaker 2: no reason to keep that second brain around. This brain

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Speaker 2: dissolves and is reabsorbed by the sea squirtz body. Gross maybe,

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Speaker 2: but as Vaughan points out, the creature is of great

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Speaker 2: interest to neuroscientists, as the genes associated with neurodegeneration and

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Speaker 2: sea squirts are closely associated with human genes involved in

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Speaker 2: neuro degeneration. The other creature of notice the common shrew,

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Speaker 2: as Dino Grendoni discusses in a twenty twenty two Animalia

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Speaker 2: column for The Washington Post. The shrew is too tiny

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Speaker 2: to migrate and too hyper to hibernate during the winter,

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Speaker 2: so it downgrades its own brain size, essentially consuming as

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Speaker 2: much as a fourth of its own brain mass, and

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Speaker 2: then it regrows it in the spring. As the author discusses,

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Speaker 2: experiments reveal that shrew's do trade off problem solving abilities

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Speaker 2: for lower energy expenditures during this period of time. Remember,

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Speaker 2: brain power requires a lot of energy, as with the

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Speaker 2: s squirt. The hope here is that further study will

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Speaker 2: reveal new treatments for neurodegenerative diseases in human beings. Now,

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Speaker 2: to come back to the Autogoule plague of the fourth millennium,

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Speaker 2: we can't blame it entirely on human plague makers. It's

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Speaker 2: possible that ancient pathogens local to the Groombridge system played

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Speaker 2: a role in the weapons corruption. Alien hieroglyphics and hollow

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Speaker 2: steels tell of a species unnamed by the chroniclers, vaguely

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Speaker 2: humanoid beings who, when threatened, violently ejected their own brain

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Speaker 2: out through their face as a projectile against aggressors. This

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Speaker 2: act was no doubt shocking, distracting, and perhaps even blinding.

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Speaker 2: We have no idea if it was like being hit

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Speaker 2: with a brain boxing glove or a brain water balloon.

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Speaker 2: Either way, even as the brain was mid flight, the

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Speaker 2: creature was already rapidly regenerating its neural matter, allowing it

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Speaker 2: to continue functioning and even launch a follow up projectile

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Speaker 2: brain attack with another fully developed brain. Alien records are faint,

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Speaker 2: but seem to describe a rapid fire ability to suggests

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Speaker 2: a neural regeneration rate far beyond anything we see on Earth.

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Speaker 2: The brain launchers of Groombridge System thus raise even more

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Speaker 2: questions about the autogules of Groombridge Station, but answers are

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Speaker 2: far from forthcoming. Tune in for additional episodes of The

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Speaker 2: Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us

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Speaker 2: at contact that's Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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