Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Future production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we're going
Speaker 1: to take a bite out of troglobytes figuratively speaking, what
Speaker 1: happens in the deep, cold, dark depths of caves? How
Speaker 1: does anything stay alive down there? What happens when you
Speaker 1: just don't need eyes? What kind of creepy crawleys might
Speaker 1: rush against you in the dark caverns of the world,
Speaker 1: and are there real life cave dragons? Discover this more
Speaker 1: as we answer the angel question, is that a spelio
Speaker 1: them in your pocket? Hord? Are you just you get
Speaker 1: the joke? To get the joke? Joining me today to
Speaker 1: talk cave critters is co host of the Small Beans
Speaker 1: podcast network and video manager for I g N and
Speaker 1: coyote lover Michael Swain. Oh, thank you for having me, Katie.
Speaker 1: He's actually part coyote where coyote, yeah, and a cave
Speaker 1: dwelling mammal. Myself and I've often wondered in this cave
Speaker 1: of quarantine, how can anything live down there? So I'm
Speaker 1: very excited that that's the topic today. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: a cave dwelling human is a troglodyt. I have only
Speaker 1: heard of trilobites and truck weight trilo dit or troglodyt.
Speaker 1: It's troglow byte is the critters. See this is like
Speaker 1: a crazy mash up word. I don't know about this.
Speaker 1: Troglow diet is a human being who lives in a cave,
Speaker 1: whereas troglow byte is any little critter that lives in
Speaker 1: exclusively in caves. Oh, I love learning new words. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the critter that lives in a cave, that's me.
Speaker 1: I'm both that's you, right, as long as you only
Speaker 1: live in caves, you never emerge from your cave, which
Speaker 1: and that's basically true right now, I don't need We're
Speaker 1: all troglobites to a certain extent, and trilobites. So what
Speaker 1: is a troglo bite. It is an animal species who
Speaker 1: lives exclusively in caves or underground, and they can go
Speaker 1: through very very strange adaptations. Now, this is why I'm
Speaker 1: having you on, Michael for this one, because you mentioned
Speaker 1: to me you're really interested in animals that like kind
Speaker 1: of these weird almost aliens on Earth that don't have
Speaker 1: eyes or just very strange adaptations. Oh yeah, tired of
Speaker 1: graves or anything that you go so far down in
Speaker 1: the ocean that it's just you and James Cameron and
Speaker 1: the pressure is so intense. Nothing should be there. That's
Speaker 1: what I astound me about life. Katie's like, there doesn't
Speaker 1: need to be life everywhere, does that? But for some reason,
Speaker 1: you're like in this uh, spacelike void at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the sea by this volcanic eruption. There's these little
Speaker 1: critters that live down there, and you're like freaking why.
Speaker 1: But yeah, anything that's shaped weird because it just shouldn't
Speaker 1: be here right. Well, and you mentioned the deep sea,
Speaker 1: but I kind of wanted to take you into the
Speaker 1: cave systems of the world because I think that's something
Speaker 1: where we don't even really think about life being in caves.
Speaker 1: It's like in the deep sea, we're like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we've got our deep submarine and then we've got some
Speaker 1: kind of ghoulish looking anglerfish and bioluminescence, and we've kind
Speaker 1: of become accustomed to the aliens that live in the
Speaker 1: deep sea. But like, when you go in a cave system,
Speaker 1: it's like well, wait, why is anything in here? Like you,
Speaker 1: you know, in the entrance to the caves, like the
Speaker 1: mouths of caves, you you know, there's bats and and
Speaker 1: so on. But like to get deep in a cave
Speaker 1: where there's no light and it's just perfectly still and
Speaker 1: silent and cold, and you're like, well, why would anything
Speaker 1: be down here? But that's exactly what we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about. So animals that live deep in caves often
Speaker 1: go through very weird adaptations, so depigmentation, the loss of
Speaker 1: skin pigment. There are no evolutionary pressures to have any pigment.
Speaker 1: There's the loss of eyesight or even the eyes themselves,
Speaker 1: and longer antenna and legs to better since their environment.
Speaker 1: So you get some very very creepy like centipedes with
Speaker 1: really long legs and long antenna, the trifecta of nightmare fuel. Essentially. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because fear in in our experience is so
Speaker 1: tied up with things the other, the unknown, things that
Speaker 1: seem alien, and so things that are shaped by forces
Speaker 1: that we don't have to deal with, and vice versa.
Speaker 1: They are not affected by forces, you know, on the
Speaker 1: evolutionary time scale. It's like they've they've had such a
Speaker 1: different experience that they're so different than me that they
Speaker 1: freaked me out. I think there's also something like because
Speaker 1: as he Men's, we do have an evolutionary history where
Speaker 1: we probably did live in caves at some point. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have evidence of humans dwelling in caves, but we
Speaker 1: probably had a fear of going too deep into the cave,
Speaker 1: you know, where there's no light. I think that to me,
Speaker 1: at least, there's this uncanny fear as as you go
Speaker 1: deeper into a cave. And I've been to, you know,
Speaker 1: the tourist caves where you don't really have to worry
Speaker 1: too much, like they're a guided tour you're not like
Speaker 1: spelunking on your own, which can be actually very dangerous.
Speaker 1: But uh, when there are sections where they're like guiding
Speaker 1: you and there's like not that much light around because
Speaker 1: they don't want to light up the whole cave system.
Speaker 1: They want the lights in just a few particular areas.
Speaker 1: And there's actually a good reason for that. But in
Speaker 1: these areas where it's just like really dark and you're
Speaker 1: sliding along these narrow passage boys, it's just something so
Speaker 1: claustrophobic and creepy about it. I went caving in Belize
Speaker 1: in real life, which seems so distant now, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we went swimming through a pass where it was literally
Speaker 1: pitch black, you know, like deep beneath the earth, the
Speaker 1: guts of the earth, in a way that I've never
Speaker 1: experienced anywhere else, completely silent, really really existentially terrifying and horrible.
Speaker 1: And now you're gonna tell me there's stuff alive down there,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to know. Yeah, swimming in complete
Speaker 1: darkness and silence is so creepy to me. It's like
Speaker 1: it's like um sensory deprivation tank, but you never know
Speaker 1: when something's going to brush against your foot, and I come, well,
Speaker 1: I comforted myself by thinking, this is like the moon,
Speaker 1: though just filled with water. Nothing lives down here, And
Speaker 1: now all you're about to shatter all those illusions and
Speaker 1: ruin my va, ruin the best vacation of my life. Retroactively,
Speaker 1: thank you. So there are cave dwellers that were familiar
Speaker 1: with like bats or rats or you know, a little
Speaker 1: mammals that like to sleep in caves, and these are
Speaker 1: called troglo zines. So they are just occasional visitors to caves.
Speaker 1: So even bats that live like in the mouths of caves,
Speaker 1: they only live part time in the caves. They will
Speaker 1: come out to eat insects or fruit uh and and
Speaker 1: fly around, and they come back in the cave to
Speaker 1: sleep uh. So they are not true trogloe bites because
Speaker 1: they don't spend their whole life in the cave, whereas
Speaker 1: trogloe bites spend their entire time in the caves and
Speaker 1: often deep in the caves. So there are actually three
Speaker 1: main zones in the caves. There's the entrance zone, with
Speaker 1: lots of life, lots of vegetation. You can even have
Speaker 1: flowering plants there um often really beautiful. Actually, there's the
Speaker 1: twilight zone yea, where there's just a little bit of
Speaker 1: light can reach into the cave. It's cool and moist.
Speaker 1: There are some vegetation that can thrive there, like ferns
Speaker 1: and mosses, so they're getting just enough light to photosynthesize um.
Speaker 1: But then there's the dark zone where no light reaches uh.
Speaker 1: And yet plants can still grow here. Vegetation can still
Speaker 1: grow here um, not not just plants, but also fung
Speaker 1: gis so algae, fungi and slime mold can grow here. Uh.
Speaker 1: They can't photosynthesize, so they have to use different metabolic pathways.
Speaker 1: So fungi can live off of bat guano, which is
Speaker 1: full of nutrients delicious, Uh, alge, you don't have to
Speaker 1: tell me about the nutritious delicious properties of bad water.
Speaker 1: Algae can grow without photosynthesis through other versions of metabolism,
Speaker 1: such as breaking down sugar found in their environment, probably
Speaker 1: from waste organic material um and in the zone life
Speaker 1: can also thrive. Now it seems like weird that you
Speaker 1: could still have life except for may be little like
Speaker 1: bacteria or something living here. But as you have support
Speaker 1: for some algae and funga, you can also have other
Speaker 1: forms of life and it supports a whole ecosystem. One
Speaker 1: honorable mention for life that exists in caves not naturally
Speaker 1: is lamp and flora. So this is sneaky algae that
Speaker 1: comes into cave systems through water flows or introduced by
Speaker 1: animals or humans, that grow exclusively in lamplight. Introduced by humans.
Speaker 1: What I mean, We put lights in caves, so algae
Speaker 1: comes into caves. Normally it would just die off, but
Speaker 1: then it's like, hey, well there's a light in here.
Speaker 1: That's cool, and it hangs around and it lives, okay,
Speaker 1: But is it genetically or evolutionarily branched from other algae
Speaker 1: or is that just the word that defines algae that
Speaker 1: figured this system out. It's just so a cave gets
Speaker 1: a lot of input from the outside world. Animals like
Speaker 1: bats will come in and out, humans will come in
Speaker 1: and out. Water flows. That's probably where a lot of
Speaker 1: the algae is coming in from water flows from the surface.
Speaker 1: So if this algae comes from the surface, you have
Speaker 1: these little, you know, little bits of algae that come
Speaker 1: in and then they are really good at colonizing places
Speaker 1: wherever they can. If you've ever had a fish tank,
Speaker 1: you know how even the smallest amount of algae can
Speaker 1: get in there and just coat the entire tank in
Speaker 1: like a week. So it's very very hardy. So if
Speaker 1: a little bit gets in on an animal's fur through
Speaker 1: the water and then it finds the spot of light,
Speaker 1: it's going to flourish. So yeah, it's actually a problem
Speaker 1: because it's not supposed to be there. It normally would
Speaker 1: just kind of die off because it doesn't have access
Speaker 1: to light and only it's especially evolved algae cousins that
Speaker 1: live in the cave system should be able to survive,
Speaker 1: so it's actually an invasive species. It's not really necessarily
Speaker 1: good for the cave ecosystem to have that ace of algae,
Speaker 1: and it's also not necessarily good for um anthropologists because
Speaker 1: like if cave algae starts to grow over like say
Speaker 1: old cave paintings, that's really destructive in that so bad
Speaker 1: lamp and flora naty. We kind of bread it on
Speaker 1: ourselves though it's true, it's true. Um So, I think
Speaker 1: there's this concept that like in caves, like deep in caves,
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be livable. Some people have the idea that
Speaker 1: there's not oxygen in caves, that there couldn't be water
Speaker 1: flow in caves, or that it would get like way
Speaker 1: too cold. And it's interesting because there are many caves
Speaker 1: that are totally fine in terms of being able to
Speaker 1: live in them because there's constant airflow. There may be
Speaker 1: multiple openings to a cave, and due to the difference
Speaker 1: in temperature between the cave and outside, you actually have
Speaker 1: a pressure differential that causes airflow. That doesn't mean all
Speaker 1: caves are oxygenated, so there are some caves that have
Speaker 1: high levels of carbon dioxide or methane. So CEO two
Speaker 1: can get into a cave system through water flows and
Speaker 1: gas change, gas exchange through vegetation or organic decay flora
Speaker 1: or fauna respiration and metabolism, or it may actually sink
Speaker 1: to the bottom of really deep caves. It's heavier than
Speaker 1: than the surrounding air, and then the air flow doesn't
Speaker 1: reach down to the bottom of the cave and it
Speaker 1: can't like lift it out and ventilate it. So like
Speaker 1: there are some caves if you get really down deep,
Speaker 1: down low and there's not enough air flow, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: actually quite dangerous because there can be pockets of c
Speaker 1: O two down there. These are called foul air caves,
Speaker 1: and they can be deadly, so be careful, don't That's
Speaker 1: why we bring canaries into coal mines, right, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: for that exact I don't think it canary could warn
Speaker 1: you of a collapse. It was just for gas pockets.
Speaker 1: I think, for gas pockets for CEO to methane for
Speaker 1: carbon monoxide. Yes, my smarty, dumb question is what about
Speaker 1: vitamin D. You're talking about getting so little sun that
Speaker 1: they have no like pigment in their skin. I thought
Speaker 1: that's where we got vitamin D and you needed that
Speaker 1: to live. That's why I always thought there wasn't life
Speaker 1: in case. That's interesting. Yeah, I mean you you do
Speaker 1: get vitamin D through sunlight, but you can also get
Speaker 1: nutrients through other ways. So like you look at like
Speaker 1: the algae right, normally it only can to metabolize through photosynthesis,
Speaker 1: and it gets it's nutrients through sugars instead with getting
Speaker 1: things like vitamin D. I would suspect like they get
Speaker 1: some of it from their diet, and there's probably their
Speaker 1: bodies are just better able to survive without higher levels
Speaker 1: of vitamin D. Awesome, It's yeah, it's just again seems
Speaker 1: like everywhere else in the whole universe, as far as
Speaker 1: we can tell, the norm is you can't have life here.
Speaker 1: There's no it's raining acid or whatever that there's no life,
Speaker 1: or of the time it's just avoid there's nothing there,
Speaker 1: there's no resources for anything to live. And yet on Earth,
Speaker 1: in this tiny pocket where we do have life, it's
Speaker 1: like it's trying extra hard to make up for their
Speaker 1: not being life elsewhere. It's just everywhere. I mean, if
Speaker 1: there is a pocket for it to fill, it will
Speaker 1: fill it. Nature abhors a vacuum probably also abhors room
Speaker 1: bas I mean my dog abhors room bas so I
Speaker 1: imagine nature would as well. But yeah, no, it's any
Speaker 1: time there is any pocket for life to fill basically,
Speaker 1: if it can, if it can reach there and it
Speaker 1: can physically actually do it, it'll fill it. It's just
Speaker 1: it's kind of inevitable. Caves can be cold. They can
Speaker 1: be sort of They're usually on the cool side. They
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have to be freezing um. In fact, like
Speaker 1: cave temperatures are often very stable throughout the year. They
Speaker 1: can Some caves are like fifty degrees fair and high
Speaker 1: throughout the entire year and barely changes a single degree
Speaker 1: um because it's sheltered from weather in the sun, so
Speaker 1: most caves stay at a pretty constant temperature. They can
Speaker 1: be quite cold. They can be uh, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of moderately temperature. Actually, deep caves can be warmer because
Speaker 1: they're closer to geothermal activity. The temperature in the cave
Speaker 1: depends on where the cave is in the world, how
Speaker 1: deep it is, you know, what the weather is on
Speaker 1: the outside, because like if you're in a really sunny
Speaker 1: area and it heats everything on the outside you will
Speaker 1: get in and it's a shallow cave. You will get
Speaker 1: some of that through the cave, but it's they're generally
Speaker 1: like a stable kind of cool temperature. UM. And there's
Speaker 1: often water flow in cave systems, so like streams and
Speaker 1: rivers on the surface will sometimes like just whoop, fall
Speaker 1: right down a hole and enter a cave and you'll
Speaker 1: get an underground cave river stream. Um. What you're describing
Speaker 1: is nicer than my home that I have in as
Speaker 1: a human supposedly master of this earth. Is It's got
Speaker 1: a water feature, it's a steady fifty degrees at all times,
Speaker 1: no heating bill, it's a standing caves. Sound amazing. I'm
Speaker 1: going to live in a cave, I know, no joke.
Speaker 1: Like when I visited my first cave, I really thought, Man,
Speaker 1: this would actually be nice to live in if I
Speaker 1: had internet, If you could get internet down there, if
Speaker 1: lack of sunshine didn't affect us emotionally so much. That's
Speaker 1: all that I wonder if the troglo zines are like depressed,
Speaker 1: do they ever feel actually visit the surface frequently? So
Speaker 1: those are like I don't think so, how's the pattern
Speaker 1: recognition does troglow mean cave. Yes, boom, score one for
Speaker 1: Michael's all right, Uh okay, awesome. It can so just
Speaker 1: mean recluse though in addition to like caves. Oh that
Speaker 1: was a google it pause. Ha, that's now I see.
Speaker 1: That's an extra sweet point as if you force Katie
Speaker 1: to google something, I think that's a wham creature feature.
Speaker 1: Oh that's my secret though, is I'm actually just kind
Speaker 1: of a dumb dumb who knows how to use Google
Speaker 1: very good. That's such bowl because our video feeds are
Speaker 1: on and I'm watching you with this information off the
Speaker 1: top of your head, like it ain't I wrote notes.
Speaker 1: It's all notes and Googling shattered the reality podcast, the
Speaker 1: fantasy that I'm that I'm not just a dum dumb
Speaker 1: with Google. Well, I'll just at the beginning of this,
Speaker 1: I thought the more I learned, the more I would
Speaker 1: be creeped out by the things are that are in
Speaker 1: caves and never want to visit a cave. And indeed,
Speaker 1: that portion probably still is coming scrolling through some of
Speaker 1: the images on the dock. But uh, so far, you're
Speaker 1: making me want live in a cave and it's a
Speaker 1: safe cave. You can visit it it's it's actually really
Speaker 1: cool to visit a cave. Visit a a cave that
Speaker 1: has been deemed safe for humans to visit, preferably do
Speaker 1: one of the ones that has tour guides and such
Speaker 1: in it, because like remember, as I mentioned before, there
Speaker 1: can be foul air caves that can just silently kill you.
Speaker 1: You can get stuck in little areas of caves, so
Speaker 1: they can actually be very dangerous. But normally the caves
Speaker 1: that you can go to as a tourist on guided
Speaker 1: tours are very safe. So one of the coolest things
Speaker 1: about caves just architecturally is of course the beautiful interior
Speaker 1: with chandeliers and columns, and it looks like it was
Speaker 1: created by some kind of like Phantom of the Opera
Speaker 1: who lives underground. So this These formations are typically caused
Speaker 1: from groundwater that seeps down into the earth and drips
Speaker 1: down into caves like underground rain, and this results in
Speaker 1: mineral deposit on the cave's roof or floor and creates
Speaker 1: stillag tights on the roof and stillag mites on the
Speaker 1: floor and other cave formations. All cave formations are known
Speaker 1: as spelio thembs. They can be things like straws. So
Speaker 1: these are like hollow tubes that hang from the ceiling.
Speaker 1: Draperies that are mineral deposits that look like curtains. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are columns that look like columns, yes, uh. And
Speaker 1: they're also flow stone flow stones that look like these
Speaker 1: big mounds. They almost look like they're fluid, but if
Speaker 1: you touch them, they're solid. They kind of look like
Speaker 1: a big melted ice cream scoop essentially, but they're actually solid.
Speaker 1: Also in the in the twilight zone of that cave
Speaker 1: and Belize, which is my only real cave experience, Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe this is flow stone. But there was a room
Speaker 1: that looked like the surface of a brain. Like the
Speaker 1: wall on the floors. It looks like you're on a
Speaker 1: giant brain, you know what I mean. That's sort of wobbly.
Speaker 1: That's so cool. Pattern. Yeah, there are all sorts of
Speaker 1: different cave formations. I can't name them all because I'm
Speaker 1: not an expert. But there are things that are called
Speaker 1: like bacon because they have striations. They're like things that
Speaker 1: look like egg yolks. It all depends on the type
Speaker 1: of mineral deposits and the way that it was formed.
Speaker 1: That forms these different Oh you'll see I've seen pictures
Speaker 1: online of um it's like they discovered this in Peru
Speaker 1: and there's people standing on crystals that are so huge
Speaker 1: that it looks like cg from Harry Potter movies. Caves
Speaker 1: are way more varietous than I think we think. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think of them as like a smooth rock hole,
Speaker 1: but it's way more than half. Yeah, I mean there
Speaker 1: are things from from ice caves to lava caves. Caves
Speaker 1: made of ice and caves made of cool lava. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and so all these cave formations are going to depend
Speaker 1: on the type of mineral deposit. Most are made out
Speaker 1: of calcium carbonate, which is actually the minerals that are
Speaker 1: also found in sea shells and egg shells and pearls.
Speaker 1: So you know, this sort of like pallid, ghostly cave
Speaker 1: color sometimes sort of like I don't know what, it's
Speaker 1: almost like semi translucent translution, semi translution. Jesus Christ, what
Speaker 1: the hell semi translucent failed it And they are really beautiful.
Speaker 1: We also see those in like in seashells and pearls. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, material it's not Yeah, I don't often
Speaker 1: see like an actual pearl leescent cave um structure, but
Speaker 1: they're all they do have like a sort of like
Speaker 1: shimmer or sheen, and and that those are often the
Speaker 1: calcium carbonate um structures, but there are many types of
Speaker 1: minerals that form different types of speliotombs. Uh. And you know, actually,
Speaker 1: one cool thing is that there is an interesting psychological
Speaker 1: phenomenon that you can experience if you go down in
Speaker 1: a cave called paara idolia, which is where you see
Speaker 1: faces or shapes or figures in ambiguous patterns and you
Speaker 1: interpret that as like a face or a person. So
Speaker 1: there are a lot of caves where they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: look this is these are these figures in a cave
Speaker 1: that's like it looks like a human or it looks
Speaker 1: like spirits or a ghost, and it looks like a
Speaker 1: ghostly figure haunting the cave. And it's really because we
Speaker 1: are really good at interpreting ambiguous patterns as faces in
Speaker 1: humanoid shapes. So that's a fun creepy thing you can
Speaker 1: experience when you go down in the cave and you
Speaker 1: see a column and it kind of looks like a
Speaker 1: human being. My understanding is that's because it's it's historically
Speaker 1: been so important to recognize one another, right, like I
Speaker 1: I've met that other human before, I know who they are.
Speaker 1: Oh that's Katie. Katie doesn't try and kill me with rocks,
Speaker 1: said Katie in the past, So that pattern will probably persist.
Speaker 1: So like, yeah, we've become so key to recognize faces.
Speaker 1: That's why two dots in a line looks like a
Speaker 1: face to it's not. But you know, a random cross
Speaker 1: hatch pattern doesn't look like anything. It's just such that
Speaker 1: as a primal pattern, right. Why you see it everywhere? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you say, see shapes and people and clouds and tree leaves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's we devote so much of our brain
Speaker 1: to pattern recognition, especially social pattern recognition, because we are
Speaker 1: our whole survival as a species husband because of our
Speaker 1: ability to socialize with one another, so we have it's
Speaker 1: just so much brain power devoted to that that when
Speaker 1: you toss something in the brain, it's gonna run run
Speaker 1: that algorithm. I love that characterization of it, that you're
Speaker 1: handing the brain like a bunch of random stimulus and
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't know a face face, It couldn't
Speaker 1: be a guy's face. Imagine your eyes is just funnels
Speaker 1: that you're tossing information and it's got to get sorted
Speaker 1: out by your brain. Is like a sweaty middle manager. Jeez,
Speaker 1: what is this? I don't know, human whatever. I don't
Speaker 1: got time for this slagtites coming at me. I don't
Speaker 1: know what all this craft is. It's cave people, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's a run. Sometimes these structures like stillagtites, stalagmites,
Speaker 1: or other spelio thimbs are formed by microbes. So microbes
Speaker 1: like cyanobacteria can deposit minerals and form structures, and diatoms,
Speaker 1: which are unicellular algae, can also create mineral deposits. When
Speaker 1: they die, they actually leave behind their hard shells made
Speaker 1: of silica. Have you ever purchased dietomaceous earth? Yes? It
Speaker 1: keeps bugs off of some of our flowers. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I think when they crawl through it, it like shreds
Speaker 1: their insides or something. It's my understands. It desiccates them.
Speaker 1: It sucks all the moisture out of them, like like
Speaker 1: a millions of little terrible finally killing he man or
Speaker 1: some ship. Right, it sucks out the moisture and kills them.
Speaker 1: Because these are they're extremely dry, and that dietemaceous earth
Speaker 1: is made out of millions, millions of skeletons of dead dietons,
Speaker 1: these little unicellular algae. So we're using in like a
Speaker 1: nearly infinite, relatively infinite number of corpses to murder more animals.
Speaker 1: Corpses exactly. Yes, So life doesn't just come in the
Speaker 1: form of microbes or dietoms. There are actual things you
Speaker 1: can see with the naked human eye that can actually
Speaker 1: be surprisingly big, that live in caves. I just imagine
Speaker 1: you're like that wall is made of a bunch of
Speaker 1: catshells piled up their husks harden when they die. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about living animals living a live crawling animals that
Speaker 1: you go down in the cave and it can brush
Speaker 1: up against you in the darkness, in the cold darkness
Speaker 1: and utter silence, and suddenly you feel something slimy or
Speaker 1: fuzzy crawling against your hand. And slagmite is three dogs
Speaker 1: in a trench coat. We'll talk more about that when
Speaker 1: we return. So let's talk some trocolobites. So in the
Speaker 1: dark zone of the caves, no light is getting in,
Speaker 1: so you don't really need eyes, do you, I guess
Speaker 1: you don't need them, but you can't want them for face.
Speaker 1: It's just like it's just a common courtesy to have eyes.
Speaker 1: Who cares? Who would even see them? There's no light
Speaker 1: that comes down. Why is it a guess? If you
Speaker 1: don't have eyes, then I don't need eyes. If we
Speaker 1: both don't have nobody has eyes. I guess like if
Speaker 1: you're trying to wink at someone, then you would just
Speaker 1: like say, wink, which makes it harder to be subtle
Speaker 1: about it because you're like, you know, but I would
Speaker 1: I would assume I would want some other strategy for
Speaker 1: navigation and traversal. Then M yeah, no, you would you
Speaker 1: definitely want to have down, Yes you do. Well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the Mexican blind cave fish. When you don't
Speaker 1: need eyes, why don't you just keep them just for fun?
Speaker 1: If you don't need them in a cave like, it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like they would do any harm, So why
Speaker 1: not keep the mania? I wonder if it reshapes your
Speaker 1: whole head, because in some ways it feels like the
Speaker 1: head is has is shaped the way it is to
Speaker 1: have a place for Yeah, so does the skull close up?
Speaker 1: Did you never have eyes to begin with? Well? The
Speaker 1: Mexican blind cave fish has answers to your questions. So
Speaker 1: technically this is the same species as the Mexican tetra,
Speaker 1: which is a normal looking little fish that lives on
Speaker 1: the surface in streams and it has perlescent pink scales
Speaker 1: and only grows to be about the length of a finger.
Speaker 1: It just looks like kind of typical aquarium fish. Uh,
Speaker 1: And they have eyeballs. They normal looking little fish, but
Speaker 1: the blind cave variant is a pale, ghostly white and
Speaker 1: has no eyes. They just have this featureless, smooth face.
Speaker 1: So it's not just that they don't have eyes, it's
Speaker 1: actually the part of the brain responsible for vision is
Speaker 1: smaller than that of their surface dwelling relatives, so it
Speaker 1: seems like they've ditched everything they can that has to
Speaker 1: do with vision. So technically there's still this like immature
Speaker 1: eye structure underneath the skin, but the lack of blood
Speaker 1: flow to the eyes during development causes them to remain
Speaker 1: underdeveloped vestigial structures. So basically, like the skin grows over it,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like they have eyes, so at some
Speaker 1: point in their fetal development, they just don't receive the
Speaker 1: nutrients to the eyes that they need, so they don't
Speaker 1: develop them, and when they hatched here they are eyeless fish.
Speaker 1: And what's so interesting about this is that there this
Speaker 1: uh surface Mexican tetra. It's not even a different species,
Speaker 1: although some uh some people to argue like they're different
Speaker 1: enough physically that would make them different species, but in
Speaker 1: terms of genetics they're actually extremely similar. So it seems
Speaker 1: like there is something that happens in development, possibly environmentally,
Speaker 1: like in terms of gene expression, that causes them such
Speaker 1: a dramatic change in terms of their development in the
Speaker 1: underground species, and in terms of what the benefit is
Speaker 1: to not having the it's that vision is actually really costly.
Speaker 1: It's a very complicated thing to be able to see
Speaker 1: stuff and process it. I mean, like you know, you
Speaker 1: got your computer. You know how much energy your graphics
Speaker 1: card uses, right, not even considering the processing, like the
Speaker 1: fact that your brain decodes and makes sense of it
Speaker 1: and try and turns it into an idea of what's
Speaker 1: going on around you, right, that must be very exhausting
Speaker 1: from that brain anthropomorphized brains point, you need a you
Speaker 1: need a real hardcore GPU, and you need a hardcore CPU.
Speaker 1: I mean I've learned about this in terms of computers,
Speaker 1: trying to run cyberpunk on my dang old computer. But
Speaker 1: and it exploded. It did the most punk thing of all,
Speaker 1: took my money and ran away. But the but with animals,
Speaker 1: you know, including us, it takes a lot of processing
Speaker 1: to be able to use vision. So photoreceptive cells and
Speaker 1: neurons require a lot of energy. In fact, in a
Speaker 1: study on the Mexican tetra's both the surface dwelling sided
Speaker 1: variety and the cave dwelling blind variety, they found a
Speaker 1: fifteen percent reduction in energy consumption in the blind cave variants,
Speaker 1: So they're saving a lot of energy. Moneies a lot
Speaker 1: of those a TP dollars a TP coin. They can't
Speaker 1: watch wond division. Yeah, no, I will say. It also
Speaker 1: takes away my greatest aversion to that dish where you
Speaker 1: eat a whole fish and it's like the head is
Speaker 1: still on. Oh yeah, the eyes staring at you accusingly.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to come into a podcast about animals
Speaker 1: and just talk about eating them so clearly, but this
Speaker 1: blind cave fish that I'm looking at, it looks like
Speaker 1: it's all good tasty meat because you don't have to
Speaker 1: feel guilty. It can't look at you. There's nothing. It's
Speaker 1: the head. Meat could frown, It can crown judgmentally, Like,
Speaker 1: come on, guy, I went deep into a cave and
Speaker 1: you're still gonna dig me up and eat me. It's
Speaker 1: your it's a you problem. But this energy saving purpose
Speaker 1: that they found in these fish seems like a pretty
Speaker 1: good blueprint for why other animals basically ditch their eyes
Speaker 1: when they're they're under under caves. Now, you know, obviously
Speaker 1: it's it's not been established that this causes them to
Speaker 1: lose their eyes or if there's some environmental thing in
Speaker 1: the cave where they're not you know, like basically they
Speaker 1: are not getting enough nutrients, so they are putting it
Speaker 1: all towards the systems that are most important to function.
Speaker 1: Something like that. But yeah, it's like, if you don't
Speaker 1: need eyes in an environment where getting nutrients is actually
Speaker 1: quite difficult, it makes sense to get rid of them.
Speaker 1: You just don't need them. Yeah, But uh, I bet
Speaker 1: you're wondering, well, hey, gosh, what are some of these
Speaker 1: other animals that don't have eyeballs? Well, I'm glad you asked.
Speaker 1: I didn't, But if we must go for it, if
Speaker 1: that's where we are, I will live in it with you. Katie. Well,
Speaker 1: do you like wolves? Do you like wolves with no eyeballs? Really?
Speaker 1: I can't believe you're about to tell me about some
Speaker 1: cave wolf with no eyeballs. It's actually a cave wolf spider.
Speaker 1: I just thought you scared. I thought I would. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like, you know, like I start with wolf
Speaker 1: and then you're scared, like a wolf annihilist demon wolf,
Speaker 1: and now we've kind of like gone to spider and
Speaker 1: you're actually calmed down, which is great because normally people like, oh, no, spider,
Speaker 1: but I want you to love this spider. Spiders don't
Speaker 1: bother me as much as most. That's good. That's good
Speaker 1: path here. So this is the eyelis pale cave wolf spider,
Speaker 1: which actually, now that they think about it, it goes
Speaker 1: with a teenage mutant ninja turtle cadence. I list something
Speaker 1: cave will spider, eyeless pale cave with spider. So this
Speaker 1: is the Kawaie cave wolf spider, which is found in
Speaker 1: caves formed by lava flows in Kawaite, so their surface
Speaker 1: dwelling relatives. The wolf spiders have large eyes and the
Speaker 1: cave wolf spiders. Just they don't have any eyes, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's a similar situation with the Mexican tetrup So
Speaker 1: in terms of visuals, their abdomen is kind of a
Speaker 1: silvery pale white, and their legs are light reddish brown.
Speaker 1: It's actually quite a nice look, you know. It's it's
Speaker 1: a it's sort of a fall to winter, which I like. Um.
Speaker 1: They grow to be about an inch in diameter, which
Speaker 1: you know, it's about the size of a silver dollar coin.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not so bad. They're also totally harmless
Speaker 1: to humans, just some little cute cave spiders that maybe
Speaker 1: lands on your hands and give you a little kiss. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they come from the lava lands. Yeah, that's good,
Speaker 1: that's auspicious. They feed on teeny tiny cave crustaceans that
Speaker 1: looks sort of like a cross between a shrimp and
Speaker 1: a pillbug, but transparent. They're they're really tiny, they're under
Speaker 1: ten millimeters long. Uh. And because they don't have eyes,
Speaker 1: they actually have in enhanced spidy senses of touch, taste,
Speaker 1: and smell. Now, but you're wondering, like, well, wait, how
Speaker 1: does the spider smell? They don't got a nose, you
Speaker 1: know what the heck, although it'd be cute, imagine a
Speaker 1: spire was just like a little little nose, you know,
Speaker 1: like a little red red nose there. Well, I figured
Speaker 1: the caboose, the big you know that, what is it
Speaker 1: called a thorax, the big ball. Yeah, the abdomen, the
Speaker 1: big ball on the end of a spider that doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to have any function. Is there some kind of
Speaker 1: nose hidden in there? You crack that open and there's
Speaker 1: a nose in there. There's no nose hidden in the abdomen. Well,
Speaker 1: they have sensory organs all over their body, on their
Speaker 1: legs and in terms of hairs covering their entire body,
Speaker 1: including their abdomens, so in terms of a nose, really
Speaker 1: could think of their legs and their petal palps, those
Speaker 1: little armlike things near their face as a bunch of
Speaker 1: noses because they have uh, chemosensory organs on that and
Speaker 1: chemosensory receptors that allow them basically to taste what they're touching.
Speaker 1: And the little hairs all over their bodies are very
Speaker 1: sensitive to vibration and is how they hear. So basically
Speaker 1: they're covered in noses and ears. Doesn't that make spiders
Speaker 1: seem more friendly and it It kind of gives me
Speaker 1: a whole new appreciation for spider sense. It's yeah, they
Speaker 1: do kind of have. They're just like a walking mass
Speaker 1: of general awareness all around them at all times. That's
Speaker 1: the comforting spiders. It's not like there's eyes in the
Speaker 1: back of your head. It's like, no, all around my
Speaker 1: whole my skin is looking at you. Well, their hair
Speaker 1: is technically yeah. Also, the caveable spider is a really
Speaker 1: good mommy. She will carry her egg sack protectively in
Speaker 1: her mouth parts until they hatch. It's cute. She's just
Speaker 1: failing to eat her children. She's both a failure and
Speaker 1: proponent of infanticide. We're missing you know, she's a bad gourmand.
Speaker 1: But mom, so you know, there's almost a pun in there.
Speaker 1: It's a trade off. This also has me wondering, so
Speaker 1: does it It presumably must save resources then too by
Speaker 1: foregoing the site pathway, right, it seems like yeah. Based
Speaker 1: on this study with the tutra, it seems that either
Speaker 1: it's an evolutionary trait where by basically these spiders that
Speaker 1: ditched the eyes had a leg up eight legs up
Speaker 1: on the other spiders. I don't apologize for that, but uh,
Speaker 1: you know, so by by reducing their energy costs by
Speaker 1: ditching the eyes, maybe they have an evolutionary advantage or
Speaker 1: because nutrients are so sparse somehow, like in development, it's
Speaker 1: like the eyes end up not developing because that does
Speaker 1: take a lot of energy during development, and because there's
Speaker 1: like sort of a paucity of energy, those just like
Speaker 1: getting neglected. But then they end up not needing them anyways.
Speaker 1: So either way, I'm not really sure that we quite
Speaker 1: know which way that that works yet, but uh, but yeah,
Speaker 1: either way, it's an energy saving mechanism. You know. It's
Speaker 1: making me I'm going the other way in my mind.
Speaker 1: And like, because humans, by all accounts, we have access
Speaker 1: to extra resources more than we strictly need to survive,
Speaker 1: well now we do, we didn't used to. But I'm
Speaker 1: wondering when we can start converting that into like six
Speaker 1: seven extra eyes. I want a cone in the middle
Speaker 1: of my back that senses electromagnetic waves or something like that.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, no, I mean like a basically a
Speaker 1: lot of animals do have that extra eyes. Just hit me,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't want extra eyes electro reception like sharks.
Speaker 1: Do you have that um just like we will. But
Speaker 1: I want, like, I want that to be the new
Speaker 1: like wealth status symbol, where the more resources you have,
Speaker 1: just the more eyes you have. Bezos Bezos covered in eyeballs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's the richest man. And just look at him. He's
Speaker 1: covered in eyeballs. Clearly, if he was served to me
Speaker 1: like fully cooked, I would not eat him. He's all eyeballs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's all eyeballs looking up at you accusingly. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I feel like when I'm eating a fish, or I
Speaker 1: guess eating Jeff Bezos like I like it's my duty
Speaker 1: to be able to look them in the eye and
Speaker 1: eat them like the fish. I was going to say,
Speaker 1: who my kid, I would devour Jeff Bezos for the
Speaker 1: good of the world. Take that hit. Sorry, man, you're
Speaker 1: you're holding too many resources. You've got to get slowly eaten.
Speaker 1: I can't speak to Jeff Bezos eyeballs, But for fish,
Speaker 1: eyeballs are actually quite tasty. They taste a little bit
Speaker 1: like row. That's what everyone always says when they're trying
Speaker 1: to get you to eat a fish. Eyeball coincidence, I
Speaker 1: think not. You never hear anyone casually mentioning delicious fish
Speaker 1: eyeballs when it's right there staring at you. Good fish
Speaker 1: cheek is good too. Anyways, I but you're wondering, well, hey,
Speaker 1: this is all great and good and everything, but are
Speaker 1: there dragons that live in caves? Like I've been told
Speaker 1: by fantasy? I was wondering that. It's surprising that you
Speaker 1: picked that off the top of my brain since we
Speaker 1: haven't talked about anything even adjacent to that. But yes, Katie,
Speaker 1: I was. I can see it in your eyeballs, accusingly
Speaker 1: looking at me. Little dragons. Well, yes, indeed you can
Speaker 1: if you slightly change the definition of dragon. But there
Speaker 1: are little animals that to me look like cave dragons.
Speaker 1: And they may not be what you would expect in
Speaker 1: like a like a Lord of the Rings book, but
Speaker 1: I think they're really cool. So let's start out with
Speaker 1: the Texas blind salamander. So these are aquatic, cave dwelling
Speaker 1: neontinous salamanders, which sounds complicated, I will explain it. So
Speaker 1: they live in Texas, so you know they've got little
Speaker 1: cowboy hats and cowboy boots uh in cave systems found
Speaker 1: in San Marcos Hayes County. They are eyeless. Now they
Speaker 1: do have sort of underdeveloped eyes in there, but it's
Speaker 1: covered in skin and they aren't functional. And uh, Michael,
Speaker 1: do you know about axlotls? I do, and they look
Speaker 1: a lot like axlts. They do because axelattles are also
Speaker 1: uh Neotonus salamanders. So what do I mean by that?
Speaker 1: So neatony means that an animal retains juvenile traits throughout
Speaker 1: their adult life. So salamanders are amphibians that are similar
Speaker 1: to frogs. They have a larval form, so you know
Speaker 1: how frogs have tadpoles. Salamanders have a juvenile form that
Speaker 1: is aquatic. They have long paddle like tails and branching
Speaker 1: external gills that kind of look like sideburns. So if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen an axilattle, they usually have those pink
Speaker 1: or reddish like sideburns. Those are the their external gills.
Speaker 1: So axilattles and this Texas blind salamander never grow out
Speaker 1: of their larval form. They just get bigger. They're like
Speaker 1: if a human being, like a baby, instead of like
Speaker 1: developing adult characteristics, just got larger like a giant. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, it's like the average white American male.
Speaker 1: They never sure and they grow sideburns. They just grow
Speaker 1: sideburns and say they're matured big man babies with sideburns.
Speaker 1: I'm a drag. You know. It's like like, Honey, I
Speaker 1: blew up the kid. There was the Honey, I shrunk
Speaker 1: the kid, which a classic, and then Honey, I blew
Speaker 1: up the kid, which not so much. But I did
Speaker 1: see it and I remember it. Yeah, but not as classic,
Speaker 1: not as classic as Honey, I shrunk the kids. That
Speaker 1: was genuine classic, Honey, I blew up the kids, like
Speaker 1: genuinely upset me when I watched as a kid, because
Speaker 1: like there's a scene where the baby almost eats his
Speaker 1: big sister or something. I'm like, ah, that's no disturbing imagery.
Speaker 1: That's by giant baby is not something I want to
Speaker 1: think about anyways. Uh, that is the living reality with
Speaker 1: these salamanders. They are giant babies acxlottles and the Texas
Speaker 1: blind salamanders. So even a better level of like a
Speaker 1: giant baby with no eyes, you know, imagine it. Let
Speaker 1: that sink in a little bit. If this was like
Speaker 1: a newborn baby and it just got bigger but it
Speaker 1: didn't mature. Yeah, and it had no eyeballs. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: long as I'm sporting those cool ass sideburns signature burns,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be like, this baby's all right, and it
Speaker 1: can breathe underwater. So unlike excel attles, the Texas blind
Speaker 1: salamander is adapted to cave life, so that's why it
Speaker 1: has ditched his eyes, and it's also very little pigmentation.
Speaker 1: Excelttles sometimes are sort of a pale color, but their
Speaker 1: gills are often like a little more vibrant, and they're
Speaker 1: also um, darker colors that x flotteles come and whereas
Speaker 1: the blind cave salamander is typically that sort of ghostly,
Speaker 1: ghostly white that most things are in caves. Um. But
Speaker 1: even stranger still is the um. So the um is
Speaker 1: also called the human fish by vocals. Oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: that's just immediately scary. I know the name somehow, the
Speaker 1: name the home, and that it's called the human fish.
Speaker 1: It's just it makes you think it's creepier than it
Speaker 1: even is. Because I'm looking at a picture of it,
Speaker 1: I'm like, it doesn't deserve a name that foreboding. It's
Speaker 1: got all sorts of just that, that sort of baba
Speaker 1: yaga creepy energy, so they are found only in the
Speaker 1: underground rivers that flow through limestone bedrock in central and
Speaker 1: southeastern Europe. It's eyes are underdeveloped, and just like the
Speaker 1: Texas blind salamander, it is neatonick um. What makes the
Speaker 1: home even spookier is how long it is. It looks
Speaker 1: very snake like. It has these tiny legs that are
Speaker 1: actually really funny because like it's got this pretty long,
Speaker 1: impressive body and just these like little tiny legs that
Speaker 1: don't look like they can function very well well. It's
Speaker 1: front legs only have three toes and sort of the
Speaker 1: typical four, and its hind legs only have two toes.
Speaker 1: So they're just they don't need eyes. They don't need toes.
Speaker 1: Their legs are tiny, little like just like little. They
Speaker 1: don't really do much the way towards becoming a snake. Like,
Speaker 1: let's let's drop the crap. You're a snake. Just become
Speaker 1: a snake. Just become a little sea noodle. So they
Speaker 1: can actually grow to be quite long. They can grow
Speaker 1: to be over a foot or thirty centimeters long. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they because they don't have eyes, uh, in order
Speaker 1: to hunt for their prey. They are very sensitive to taste, smell,
Speaker 1: and sound, allowing them to catch little critters like little
Speaker 1: little cave other cave dwelling insects, and underwater critters without sight,
Speaker 1: So their inner ears allow them to sense vibrations and
Speaker 1: to pinpoint the location using the orientation of these sensory
Speaker 1: cells to calculate where the sound source is coming from.
Speaker 1: So you've got kind of like these surround sound sensory
Speaker 1: cells inside the ear, and then by knowing which cell
Speaker 1: is picking up the sound the loudest, they can basically
Speaker 1: calculate in their brain like where the sound is coming
Speaker 1: from and find find that unfortunate little creature that it's
Speaker 1: going to eat. Also, they could love to be up
Speaker 1: to about sixty years old. Yeah, their maximum lifespan has
Speaker 1: been calculated to be over a hundred years old. It's
Speaker 1: always interesting when a little tiny guy lives very long.
Speaker 1: It just seems counterintuitive for some reason. But I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the closest thing we get to ancient wise
Speaker 1: cave dragons. I mean, admittedly they're sort of like baby dragons.
Speaker 1: They're only about a foot long, but still, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, like the one the picture that you included
Speaker 1: in the dock almost looks exactly like a silhouette of
Speaker 1: Musho from Alan. Yeah it does. Or or the or
Speaker 1: the Dragon and spirited away. Yeah, definitely without the sideburns
Speaker 1: instead of antlers. If I had a pet one of these, though,
Speaker 1: I think I would need to paint it or find
Speaker 1: a non cruel way to brighten it up. That's the
Speaker 1: only way Google eyes online. It could use eyes and
Speaker 1: then it could yes, tape a pair of Google Eyes
Speaker 1: on the get a little a little more personable. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it works for everything. Put eyes all over
Speaker 1: its body. It doesn't. I have some. I have some
Speaker 1: adhesive Google eyes that I just put on things around
Speaker 1: the house. It's fun. You mean, you give you give
Speaker 1: this home a wicked paint job, and you're gonna be cruising. Dude. Look,
Speaker 1: you slept some races and stripes on it, you slept
Speaker 1: eyes on it, and bang, you're the Calisi of the
Speaker 1: cave system. You got a cave dragon, my friend. M So,
Speaker 1: now I want to talk about some very rare cave
Speaker 1: finds that you will only find in a few caves,
Speaker 1: and it is hard to access them. These are limited
Speaker 1: access cave critters. So what comes to mind when I
Speaker 1: say cave leeches, Like, how does that make you feel?
Speaker 1: Where are you at with cave leeches? Well, i'll tell you, Katie,
Speaker 1: not great. I thought of leeches as something that I
Speaker 1: had to be on the cusp of manhood with my
Speaker 1: friends in the woods and submerging myself in a filthy
Speaker 1: puddle to get attacked by. And when you mentioned cave leeches,
Speaker 1: it makes it sound like they could be elsewhere, like
Speaker 1: not in the water, not in stagnant water. I'm hoping
Speaker 1: to find out that these still are only in water.
Speaker 1: Are they limited to water? They are, Oh thank god.
Speaker 1: Although I do like the idea of them sort of
Speaker 1: hanging from the ceiling of thin bat like yeah, like
Speaker 1: hanging I from the ceiling then it drops down on
Speaker 1: you and out. Yeah yeah, yeah, not quite now they
Speaker 1: are still They are actually aquatic leeches, so that is
Speaker 1: a comforting thing. They are called Croata branchus MS. Tro vi,
Speaker 1: a k a arpo badella MS. Trovi. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: split the different call them little cavy leeches. That's I've
Speaker 1: got think going to be easier for everyone. They are
Speaker 1: found in one of the deepest caves in the world,
Speaker 1: They are endemic, meaning they are only found in the
Speaker 1: northern vil Bit cave systems in Croatia. They were discovered
Speaker 1: in the deepest cave in Croatia, Lucina Jama. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: if I mispronounced that, which is fourteen hundreds, which is
Speaker 1: one thousand, four hundred and thirty meters or four thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred and ninety four feet deep. Pretty it's deep
Speaker 1: enough that I have no conception. It's right. If you've
Speaker 1: seen the Empire State Building there, you go google Empire
Speaker 1: State Building? How big? How big? Computers? Say very big? Big?
Speaker 1: Say computer? It is uh one thousand, four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty four ft tall, So that's like three points something
Speaker 1: for this is almost Yeah, so this is like four thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred ninety four divided by one thousand, four hundred
Speaker 1: fifty four doing it in my head, I'm kidding three close. No,
Speaker 1: it's a it's about like three and a half times
Speaker 1: the tallness of the Empire State Building according to Google math. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's again seemingly unnecessary. Yeah, it doesn't seems a little
Speaker 1: showing off. Showing off, But I also like that that's
Speaker 1: how far this cave. Leach is, right, now right. So
Speaker 1: part of the cave is a five hundred and thirteen
Speaker 1: meter or one thousand, six d and eighty three ft
Speaker 1: free fall hole, so taller than the Empire State building.
Speaker 1: Just a hole, just basically the lobby of the cave
Speaker 1: where the leach, just a free fall hole. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the deepest hole in the world. So the
Speaker 1: legion doesn't fall from the ceiling on you. You follow
Speaker 1: from the ceiling onto the leach. Technically yes, technically yes,
Speaker 1: So this is They're found in the deepest hole in
Speaker 1: the world, also known as my heart. Anyways, um, imagine
Speaker 1: being one of the researchers who descended into this pitch black,
Speaker 1: cold hole with nothing but a rope between you and oblivion.
Speaker 1: Imagine if you fell and you're, oh, my god, I
Speaker 1: can't believe we survived. What broke our fall? Leeches? It's okay,
Speaker 1: these cave leeches broke my fall. Thank god. These man
Speaker 1: eating leeches broken my fault from the tallest hole in
Speaker 1: the world. Speaking of unnecessary, it's unnecessary that there's life
Speaker 1: there and that we ever knew about it. There's no
Speaker 1: reason for human to go out down there and find
Speaker 1: out that these are there, These are down there. Okay,
Speaker 1: but isn't that like the most human thing there is. Like,
Speaker 1: that's a big hole. I'm gonna go down in that hole, yeah,
Speaker 1: and get to the very bottom and find out what
Speaker 1: freaking bug lives there. I know what's in that hole.
Speaker 1: There's screams of the damned in there. Well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go and check that out. Something with no eyes is
Speaker 1: calling to me from that hole. Something is calling to
Speaker 1: me saying I will devour you, and then the screams
Speaker 1: of the damned. I'm gonna go down in there. Uh.
Speaker 1: It makes my butt like invert on itself to think about.
Speaker 1: So these cave leeches live in streams in the depths
Speaker 1: of these caves, and pretty cool, pretty frigid streams there
Speaker 1: at water temperatures of about four degrees celsius or forty
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit, so chilly, you know, pretty chilly. They have
Speaker 1: no eyes, which is not super surprising. I mean, leeches
Speaker 1: only have eye spots. They don't have like big cute
Speaker 1: puppy eyed normally, so it's not that different. A leech
Speaker 1: is already just like a living lump of slime. As
Speaker 1: far as I there are living lumps of slime like slime.
Speaker 1: Leeches are more like a a goon noodle with a
Speaker 1: sucky part and classic suck face Google classic. They're the
Speaker 1: sucker mouth of the cave. Leach is actually not used
Speaker 1: to suck blood. Researchers don't think they survive on blood
Speaker 1: sucking because there are simply not enough animals with enough
Speaker 1: blood down there too for them to suck on. There
Speaker 1: aren't normally, there aren't tasty humans that just like decided
Speaker 1: to descend down on a rope for these leeches to
Speaker 1: feed on. So, uh, they don't really know what they
Speaker 1: feed on. Um, maybe there's just like a race of
Speaker 1: yettis that live down there that they feed on. But
Speaker 1: they eat all the discarded vestigial eyeballs that now you
Speaker 1: guys going to use these eyeballs now, all right where
Speaker 1: Bezos chucks all his extra eyes every year his yearly
Speaker 1: eye purge to get rid of all those eyeballs. So
Speaker 1: the mouth, the sucker mouth, is actually ringed in tentacles.
Speaker 1: This just gets better and better, doesn't it. And the
Speaker 1: function of these tentacles and the mouth is unclear, but
Speaker 1: the powerful sucker seems to be able to help it.
Speaker 1: Cling to rock surfaces underwater and to actually crawl along. Uh.
Speaker 1: They have what looks like legs on each of their sides,
Speaker 1: but these are actually just little flesh projections that researchers
Speaker 1: think serves some sort of respiratory function, So gas exchange
Speaker 1: may occur along the surface area of these projections. Like
Speaker 1: they're just external gills and they're kind of flat and
Speaker 1: they move by undulating like caterpillars. So basically it has
Speaker 1: an oral sucker, uh it's mouth, and it's got a
Speaker 1: posterior sucker on its butt, and it like uses each
Speaker 1: of the suckers to like move along a rock underwater.
Speaker 1: So it's like just but it's like the mouth but
Speaker 1: mouth but mouth. But yeah, it's butt sucks and its
Speaker 1: mouth sucks. Yeah, but it's but suckings way funnier than
Speaker 1: it's mouth. It sucks at moving, but sucks at moving.
Speaker 1: And it has these things that should be legs if
Speaker 1: you're looking at it, but they're not legs. But that's
Speaker 1: inherently hilarious. Um. But I will say that the scariest
Speaker 1: thing about this, I think is that you don't know
Speaker 1: what stuff is for. I don't like that here. It's
Speaker 1: one thing to have a tentacle ring, right, but then
Speaker 1: to go what is it for? Oh, don't worry about it,
Speaker 1: it's just yet. It's the mysteries that are you know,
Speaker 1: really the zest of life, Like what are those mouth
Speaker 1: tentacles for? We don't know. Life would be boring and
Speaker 1: bland if we didn't if we knew what that leach was. Second,
Speaker 1: if we knew like what every mouth tentacle did, that
Speaker 1: would like, what would life be? Then life would be
Speaker 1: without the mysteries of mouth tentacles. That would be sad
Speaker 1: to me. Tentacle mas are the spice of life, as
Speaker 1: they said, really is carpet d M tentacles mouth tentacles? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they don't know what they feed on. Maybe
Speaker 1: you spooky, but I'm gonna guess something tiny that's on
Speaker 1: the rocks. Probably probably, Yeah, they may like even feed
Speaker 1: on algae, who knows, who knows. So the last cave
Speaker 1: cutie that we're going to talk about is the white
Speaker 1: cave velvet worm. So if you've been listening to the
Speaker 1: podcast for a while, you know I've got a soft
Speaker 1: spot for velvet worms. They are one of the cutest
Speaker 1: little booties in the world. Um My Twitter banner is
Speaker 1: made up of velvet worms. They are just there's something
Speaker 1: so cute about them, and so velvet warm ORMs just
Speaker 1: as a refresher. They are a phylum of species of small,
Speaker 1: pinky size normally sometimes even smaller adorable like velvety worm
Speaker 1: like critters. So they are actually not technically worms. They
Speaker 1: are a branch off of pan arthur poda. Uh so
Speaker 1: they are a sort of distinct branch from like uh,
Speaker 1: insects and stuff. They're their own phylum, their own their
Speaker 1: own brand. You know, it's all about brand integrity for
Speaker 1: these guys. And they have a bunch of cute little
Speaker 1: chubby legs, these chubby little antenna and they like to
Speaker 1: squirt sticky sticky spray from glands near their mouth that
Speaker 1: they used to stick on to prey so that they
Speaker 1: can eat it. Oh so they do eat prey. So
Speaker 1: you love them anyway, even though they take life. I mean,
Speaker 1: cats do that. Well. I know, I'm not judging you
Speaker 1: for that, I'm just establishing it. They look like they
Speaker 1: have httle leg warmers on each and every one legs.
Speaker 1: They're pretty cute. For some reason, I thought they would
Speaker 1: be herbiferous based on that fact, Yeah, they do look
Speaker 1: like they would like delicately by its legs. Well. Non
Speaker 1: cave dwelling velvet worms come in a variety of beautiful colors,
Speaker 1: like purples or blues. Sometimes they have like yellow racing
Speaker 1: stripes there. I think, really beautiful, and they do look
Speaker 1: like they're made out of velvet. They have this incredible
Speaker 1: skin texture that allows them to retain moisture because they
Speaker 1: like to live in moist environments, and they're they're apparently
Speaker 1: actually also very soft. So you know, do I want
Speaker 1: to pet one? Yeah? Oh man, okay, yeah, I'm googling
Speaker 1: images of the ones that live on land. Are very cute,
Speaker 1: very cute, just a little, just a little like little
Speaker 1: chunksters Pixar. They do. Yes, they're very cute. They look
Speaker 1: like some kind of like toy worm, like a little
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I had a glow warm
Speaker 1: toy that you squeezed it and it would glow and
Speaker 1: it had this like soft, chunky body that I would
Speaker 1: hug um and it had a human face, and that
Speaker 1: part I didn't much care for, but the other aspects
Speaker 1: of the glow worm it was very fun and cute. Um.
Speaker 1: But cave velvet worms are a ghostly white and they
Speaker 1: are that. Actually, there's not that much known about them.
Speaker 1: They don't know like if they don't have eyes at
Speaker 1: least I couldn't find any research on whether or not
Speaker 1: they have eyes. My suspicion probably not. Why would they
Speaker 1: need them? Uh? And they they have this ability to
Speaker 1: squeeze their jiggling little bodies in the cracks and crevices,
Speaker 1: which makes them very well adapted to cave life. They're
Speaker 1: like cave kitties, you know how like cats can just
Speaker 1: like squeeze underdoors. They're just like that, except they've got
Speaker 1: lots of little legs and the cat has some legs
Speaker 1: for the you yea, I have been owned. I just
Speaker 1: got owned by the cat. So they are found only
Speaker 1: in two cave systems in table mountains South Africa. Due
Speaker 1: to the limited area and how few specimens have been found,
Speaker 1: they are considered vulnerable. So you know, these little little ghosts,
Speaker 1: they look like some kind of ghost pokemon, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, ghost type or they could all be
Speaker 1: hiding in cracks and would we even know that's true?
Speaker 1: That's true. It's actually a very good better. We better
Speaker 1: go to the world's deepest hole to find out get
Speaker 1: in that whole scientific these mad, mad people who figure
Speaker 1: this stuff out jump in a hole, I mean, like
Speaker 1: the world's deepest hole to look for some worms. If
Speaker 1: I wasn't so scared of the effects that gravity has
Speaker 1: on my body when it meets the floor in you know,
Speaker 1: like the potential energy that would go into my body
Speaker 1: after jumping off of a thing, and then you know
Speaker 1: what happens at the end of that, I definitely want
Speaker 1: to jump in all who would? You would? Wouldn't you? Weirdo?
Speaker 1: Aren't what's wrong with the seven or eight kinds of
Speaker 1: animals that I know we have around those here in
Speaker 1: the surface world. It's enough animals be satisfied that don't
Speaker 1: need to define these eyeliss velvet worms that live deep
Speaker 1: in the bowels the I guess you do, or you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have a podcast. Are some people that do like
Speaker 1: jump into basically like these big holes, and I think
Speaker 1: they either like have a parachute or a bungee cord.
Speaker 1: I think it's a parachute. It's like basically base jumping,
Speaker 1: except seemingly extremely dangerous because like you can't see the bottom. Oh,
Speaker 1: just basse jumping into a hole that's deep enough that Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hate it. I don't like it. I don't like
Speaker 1: to think about it. It makes makes my but like
Speaker 1: crawl up my mouth. The white cave velvet worm is
Speaker 1: down there looking up at us, like, these guys are crazy.
Speaker 1: What are all those eyes for? Oh god? They have
Speaker 1: so many eyes, have these big jelly balls. Actually, if
Speaker 1: you didn't have eyes, eyes would be gross. They would,
Speaker 1: wouldn't they. It's like their head is mostly solid, but
Speaker 1: they have these like weird jelly balls move around. I mean,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have the visual of it, right, So you
Speaker 1: don't have sights, so you don't have the visual of eyeballs.
Speaker 1: If you don't have eyes like that, well you don't
Speaker 1: know what they look like, but you can feel them
Speaker 1: and like how glucy they are. Like imagine you're feeling something.
Speaker 1: You're like, okay, like the human, like I feel that,
Speaker 1: what the hell are these things? And you're honking at them?
Speaker 1: And they're like goopy and squishy? Your eyes smell weird? Human?
Speaker 1: You got stink eyes. Well, I think that is going
Speaker 1: to do it for all of the cave animals. But
Speaker 1: before we go, I do want to answer a listener
Speaker 1: question now, This has to do with actually topic we
Speaker 1: talked about a couple episodes ago about dinosaars. So here
Speaker 1: is the question. Since the vast majority of what we
Speaker 1: know about dinosaur appearances based off of bones, what about
Speaker 1: the possibility of things that wouldn't be preserved that would
Speaker 1: affect their appearance. Like if we only had the bones
Speaker 1: of a penguin, we probably wouldn't be able to recreate
Speaker 1: their unique appearance with their tuxedo coloring or secret knees
Speaker 1: or peacock tail feathers, or hippos incredibly thick skin or
Speaker 1: elephant trunks and ears. I've got to assume there's tons
Speaker 1: of examples of defining but non obvious traits of modern
Speaker 1: animals that wouldn't be preserved through a future fossil record.
Speaker 1: Do you think we're not being creative enough with what
Speaker 1: dinosaurs could have looked like? And this is from Stephen.
Speaker 1: This is a great question and one that has kind
Speaker 1: of caused a revolution in ter terms of paleo art
Speaker 1: and paleontologists understanding of dinosaurs. So it is true that
Speaker 1: are classic view of sort of like the Jurassic Park, like, uh,
Speaker 1: dinosaur that has like green or brown and like scaly,
Speaker 1: just like giant lizards essentially is probably way too limited.
Speaker 1: So what you're describing in terms of like not knowing
Speaker 1: what animals look like and and actually um sometimes, like
Speaker 1: with dinosaurs and other fossils, we imagine them being much
Speaker 1: more skeletal and bony than they may have been. This
Speaker 1: is called shrink wrapping. It's basically when a an extinct
Speaker 1: animal that we only have fossil records of we're trying
Speaker 1: to recreate them. We don't give them enough flesh. We're like, okay,
Speaker 1: here's their bones. They probably had some muscles, and so
Speaker 1: when we try to imagine them, they kind of look
Speaker 1: bony and skeletal. There is this amazing book called All
Speaker 1: Yesterday's Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals.
Speaker 1: It's an illustrated book that critiques the way that we've
Speaker 1: classically envisioned dinosaurs, and there are these great illustrations in
Speaker 1: it that shows like how we might envision living animals
Speaker 1: like baboons and swans and hippos and zebras just based
Speaker 1: on their fossils, and they look horrible. They look like monsters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they all look like like Jurassic Park creatures. The baboon
Speaker 1: looks the most. The baboon looks like a velociraptor essentially
Speaker 1: from Jurassic Park, with just different mandibles basically, and the
Speaker 1: swan has like these sides. It's like the wing bones, right,
Speaker 1: and it's like they've imagined it without feathers. I imagine
Speaker 1: if you just found a bone that was just a
Speaker 1: V shape and you were like, I'm pretty confident they
Speaker 1: flew with this and it was all filled in with
Speaker 1: all these feathers. Even though you were right, people would
Speaker 1: be like, that's kind of a stretch. So you can
Speaker 1: see how this happens. It totally makes sense, right eapy too, Right,
Speaker 1: So fossils are often incomplete, even when it comes to bones,
Speaker 1: but they also don't often record things like feathers, color,
Speaker 1: skin texture. Uh, It's true. We can get some sense
Speaker 1: of fat and muscle based on bone density and structure.
Speaker 1: I think like there's some probably advancement in terms of
Speaker 1: like understanding how muscle fits to bone and using sort
Speaker 1: of the structure of bone and bone density to like
Speaker 1: be like, okay, this probably supported more weight, so we
Speaker 1: could like reconstruct some of the tissue and fat um.
Speaker 1: And but unless there's a cast of skin, tissue or feathers.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to know what's going on the outside
Speaker 1: of the animals. So like you know how turkeys have
Speaker 1: those like dangly things under their chins and over their beak.
Speaker 1: The water, the water and the snood. We wouldn't know
Speaker 1: if like t rex had like a wattle, like a
Speaker 1: big gin wattle. What if we finally clone, you know,
Speaker 1: like we clone a wooly mammoth and it just looks
Speaker 1: like two big birds staple together, and we're like, that
Speaker 1: is not what it was gonna look like. Well, look
Speaker 1: at that thing. It's crazy. I mean, I think like
Speaker 1: with the wooly mammoth, we have a better understanding of
Speaker 1: what they probably look like because of their living relatives.
Speaker 1: They're close living relatives, and also some of them, all
Speaker 1: their flesh was actually frozen because they have a lot
Speaker 1: of uh you know, they lived in these very cold
Speaker 1: and so we do have flesh samples. We have limited, yeah,
Speaker 1: of of mammoth's. Yeah, I think there was even like
Speaker 1: a whole or partial baby mammoth that was frozen that
Speaker 1: we have. Um doesn't mean we have complete DNA, but
Speaker 1: we actually we do have like an idea of what
Speaker 1: they look like. Um, but dinosaurs we don't have that.
Speaker 1: But we very occasionally will have things like feather imprints
Speaker 1: or or skin fossilized skin. Very rarely does that happen
Speaker 1: because organic material typically would decay or be eaten or
Speaker 1: you know, basically um become too ruin or just completely
Speaker 1: decayed before it would have a chance to fossilize. The
Speaker 1: only time that organic material like skin could survive and
Speaker 1: be fossilized if it was like almost immediately buried. And
Speaker 1: then this, this mineralization happened where basically all the bits
Speaker 1: of organic material is replaced by a mineral and uh
Speaker 1: preserves the look of the tissue. And it does happen,
Speaker 1: it's very rare. UM and even then, like you don't
Speaker 1: have a necessarily an understanding of pigmentation, like you don't
Speaker 1: know like what it would look like. And we're but
Speaker 1: even in that, we're starting to get a little better
Speaker 1: at that. There are sometimes melanosomes that are fossilized. So
Speaker 1: milanosomes are an organelle that will determine pigment. UH. So
Speaker 1: paleontologists can see a milanisome and like, hey, this one
Speaker 1: looks like this is a milannisome that would create a
Speaker 1: black pigment and be able to make some determination of like, hey,
Speaker 1: we think that maybe this this skin might have been black,
Speaker 1: or like this feather might have been black. So we're
Speaker 1: getting a little better at at those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: We're taking the pale out of paleontology. I should I'm
Speaker 1: sorry if if remembersomes need a tagline, there you go. Ye. So,
Speaker 1: most likely the image of just like brown all of colored, green,
Speaker 1: scaly lizard dinosaurs is outdated. I mean, there probably were
Speaker 1: dinosaurs that looked like that. I don't. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like they aren't. You know, they did share a
Speaker 1: common ancestor with modern day reptiles. Um they were, but
Speaker 1: they we do know that some of them have feathers,
Speaker 1: and maybe they had fleshy ornaments, like imagine like you
Speaker 1: know a lot of birds have these eye ornaments. This
Speaker 1: oscillated turkey has these big blue basically it looks like
Speaker 1: these blue dots all around its eyes blue eyeline or
Speaker 1: a lot of seabirds have these magnificent little like fleshy
Speaker 1: eyeliner and dinosaurs may have had that. So maybe uh,
Speaker 1: maybe it's t rex. Maybe it's mable line. We don't know,
Speaker 1: we're not sure what they sounded like, too, Is that right?
Speaker 1: I mean, I got to imagine the roar of the
Speaker 1: t rex we hear in the Jurassic Park is just
Speaker 1: as speculative, right, there's some I think there's like some
Speaker 1: research about that. And I think that based on like
Speaker 1: some like they're they're trying to basically reconstruct dinosaurs and uh,
Speaker 1: using like something like what we know about vocalization of
Speaker 1: living animals like birds, the living dinosaurs of today, and
Speaker 1: using that to try to figure out, like what another
Speaker 1: dinosaur would sound like. And I think I read something
Speaker 1: that seemed to indicate that they may have had very
Speaker 1: bird like sounds based on some of their like vocal structures,
Speaker 1: Like but just imagine like a very deep throated bird
Speaker 1: like sound for some of these like bigger dinosaurs, which
Speaker 1: is actually a little scary, pretty intimidating. Yeah, a velociy
Speaker 1: after went gobble gobble, but really deep mother, before you
Speaker 1: get eviscerated. Yeah, but this is a great question. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for it, And definitely check out that
Speaker 1: all Yesterday's book or at least like google it and
Speaker 1: look at the illustrations because those are They're incredible. I
Speaker 1: love them so much. The shrink raft modern animals are great.
Speaker 1: It's great. It's really gives you a perspective, like how
Speaker 1: much information we lose and like what you know future
Speaker 1: generations or like future aliens. I guess who come and
Speaker 1: visit our ravaged earth. We'll find it like reconstruct us.
Speaker 1: I wonder, like what a shrink wrapped human would look like,
Speaker 1: just like skeletor, like we're all, yeah, skeletor, Yeah, that's hey,
Speaker 1: send him some fan art shrink rapped humans. God, horrifying
Speaker 1: fan art. Slender Man came, oh god, oh man, you're right? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that that Oh I love I like that. I like
Speaker 1: that head fanne. He doesn't needy, he doesn't need eyes.
Speaker 1: Why would he need eyes. He's got all of those,
Speaker 1: like those receptors on his long arms, just like a spider. Hey,
Speaker 1: we brought a full circle. Well, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today, Michael. Where can people find you?
Speaker 1: Where can the cave leeches find you? Oh? Hi, cave
Speaker 1: leech is I'm over at patreon dot com slash small beans,
Speaker 1: and if you're on Twitter, I'm at symbol. Then the
Speaker 1: name Swain. Then the underscore symbol than Corp c O
Speaker 1: r P Rich. I I'm more and more ashamed of
Speaker 1: as corporations ravage and destroy everything you hold. Dear, it's you.
Speaker 1: You're the corporate big cat that I'm I'm complaining about.
Speaker 1: I'm the one hoarding eyes all over my body. It's
Speaker 1: me and you can find us on the internet at
Speaker 1: Creature feature Pot on Instagram, at Creature feet pot on
Speaker 1: Twitter that's f f et and something like a creature.
Speaker 1: You can also email me your horrifying fan art of
Speaker 1: human beings, shrink wrapt or your questions or cute animal pictures.
Speaker 1: I'm good with cute animal pictures to uh Creature feature
Speaker 1: Pod at gmail dot com. I'm also you know, I'm
Speaker 1: Katie Golden. You can find me on Twitter just search
Speaker 1: searching searching on Twitter and pro bird writes. I do
Speaker 1: that one too, where I'm a bird. Surprise, I'm a bird.
Speaker 1: I thank you guys so much for listening. Oh also, hey,
Speaker 1: if you review the podcast, I will read it and
Speaker 1: it will warm my little little bird heart and I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. I really do read all of them,
Speaker 1: and they really do mean a lot to me. It
Speaker 1: makes me happy. Thank you. So much for everyone who
Speaker 1: leaves a review. I super appreciate that creat Your feature
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: like the one you just heard, visit me I Heard
Speaker 1: Radio app Apple podcasts, or hey guess what? Why have
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Speaker 1: the Space Classics for their super awesome song ex Alumina
Speaker 1: See you next Wednesday. I kind of inverse the order
Speaker 1: of the outro. I wonder if people are going to
Speaker 1: be upset about that. I don't know, Viva la deference,
Speaker 1: vivla extra eyes or lack of eyes. Everything's great teach
Speaker 1: there on. Bye guys,