Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb. And this is the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind, focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: Today we turn it last to the Predator franchise, but
Speaker 2: not to discuss its central Yatjaw alien Hunters. Now. We
Speaker 2: might come back to the titular Predators at some point
Speaker 2: in the future, but for today, I just want to
Speaker 2: talk about the latest installment in the series, twenty twenty
Speaker 2: five's Predator bad Lands. Here's something I never thought I'd say, Hey,
Speaker 2: the cute alien and odd couple humor in this latest
Speaker 2: Predator movie. It really worked. But hey, here we are.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of nostalgia for Predators one and two.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed most of the sequels at least on some level,
Speaker 2: and I thought twenty twenty two Prey was just a
Speaker 2: great take on the original concept. Its director Dan Tracktenberg
Speaker 2: apparently considered a slasher style follow up to Prey in
Speaker 2: which we cheer the Predators on against Nazis, which would
Speaker 2: have been something. But I'm ultimately glad they gave us
Speaker 2: this fresh action adventure approach that we got with bad
Speaker 2: Lands Again, just something different that is also a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. The movie follows a young cast aside predator
Speaker 2: runt named Deck as he seeks the ultimate prey on
Speaker 2: an alien planet. At the same time as an all
Speaker 2: android Wayland Utani research mission is also active on that
Speaker 2: planet seeking the same target. Yes, the film is something
Speaker 2: of a soft alien versus predator film, but without literal
Speaker 2: AVP action, instead pitting the alien franchisees, corporate villains, and
Speaker 2: multiple synths against our yacht jah protagonist and a damage
Speaker 2: synth named Thea. Again, it's a lot of fun. I
Speaker 2: had a lot of fun with this one. I'm still
Speaker 2: not sure if I want to see another film in
Speaker 2: which predators actually take on xenomorphs, at least not anytime soon.
Speaker 2: But hey, Predators Versus Synths was still pretty great. But
Speaker 2: let's come back to that crazy alien planet. It's presented
Speaker 2: here as a hyper dangerous ecosystem in which just about
Speaker 2: every form of fauna and flora is trying to kill you.
Speaker 2: Even its grass is razor sharp, and as you might imagine,
Speaker 2: the planet's apex predator is darned near unkillable. And this
Speaker 2: is the callusk, prized by the Yatcha as the ultimate
Speaker 2: prey and sought after by waylay Nutani for its incredible
Speaker 2: regenerative abilities. I describe the callusk as roughly a cross
Speaker 2: between a hippo, a lion, and Sonic the hedgehog. There
Speaker 2: might be a little gorilla in there as well. This
Speaker 2: towering creature, almost like a kaiju, is incredibly vicious and durable,
Speaker 2: and it boasts powers of regeneration so intense that it
Speaker 2: can bounce back in seconds from evisceration, dismemberment, decapitation, and
Speaker 2: seemingly anything short of total body fragmentation. The natural world,
Speaker 2: of course, features some regeneration star players of its own,
Speaker 2: such as tiny hydras and flat worms, and even some
Speaker 2: larger regenerators like the axolotel, but none of these organisms
Speaker 2: are capable of the sort of stealth head reattachment while
Speaker 2: Predator's back is turned action we see in the film.
Speaker 2: Even with the hydro, we're talking eighteen to seventy two
Speaker 2: hours to regrow header body. But the hydra is also
Speaker 2: worth bringing up here. In some ways it also lines
Speaker 2: up with the callous because some scientists have made the
Speaker 2: case that it's biologically immortal, not unkillable, not invulnerable minds you,
Speaker 2: but possibly immune to aging. The late sci fi author
Speaker 2: Ian M. Banks touched on this topic in his nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty seven culture novel Consider Flebus, which features an alien
Speaker 2: race called the Idherons, who are biologically immortal due to
Speaker 2: the savage, hyper competitive environment of their home world. Here's
Speaker 2: a quick quote from that novel, which is among one
Speaker 2: of my favorites. Quote. The Durans themselves had evolved on
Speaker 2: their planet Ideir as the top monster from a whole
Speaker 2: planet full of monsters. The frenetic and savage ecology of
Speaker 2: Adir in its early days had long since disappeared, and
Speaker 2: so had all the other home world monsters except those
Speaker 2: in zoos. But the Adherans had retained the intelligence that
Speaker 2: made them winners, as well as the biological immortality, which,
Speaker 2: due to the viciousness of the fight for survival back then.
Speaker 2: Not to mention, Idir's high radiation levels had been an
Speaker 2: evolutionary advantage rather than a recipe for stagnation. It's a
Speaker 2: really cool idea, and I wouldn't be surprised if it
Speaker 2: at least partially inspired the invention of the callus, but
Speaker 2: it actually runs counter to one of our leading hypotheses
Speaker 2: of aging, Thomas Kirkwood's disposable soma theory or DST. According
Speaker 2: to DST, it would be low environmentally induced mortality, not
Speaker 2: high that delays reproduction and aging. The evolutionary response to
Speaker 2: a high risk world like this, hypothetically would be to
Speaker 2: speed things up and waste few resources on long term maintenance. Plus,
Speaker 2: on a biological level, everything about the fictional callusk is
Speaker 2: just expensive. It's body size, its spines, it's tough hide,
Speaker 2: and of course that high speed and nearly all inclusive regeneration.
Speaker 2: I feel like we need a lot more information on
Speaker 2: their life cycle to understand just how all of this
Speaker 2: would fit together. Perhaps, though the callusk isn't truly biologically
Speaker 2: immortal at all, it is actually incredibly short lived, just
Speaker 2: extremely impossibly durable in the short term, and this might
Speaker 2: actually line up well with the rapid growth we see
Speaker 2: in the cask juvenile named Bud. But hey, anyway you
Speaker 2: slice it, the Callusk is still a super fun monster
Speaker 2: and a fitting obsession for both sci fi biomedical labs
Speaker 2: and alien hunters. Tune in for additional episodes of The
Speaker 2: Monster Fact the artifact or Animalius to Pendium each week.
Speaker 2: As always, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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