Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas
Speaker 1: and monsters in time. Nothing beats a good dungeons and
Speaker 1: dragons cave environment, whether you're talking about an isolated cavern
Speaker 1: layer for a surface rampaging monster or the dark subterranean
Speaker 1: kingdoms of the under dark. Either way, there's no shortage
Speaker 1: of exotic monsters to populate these environments, and at least
Speaker 1: two of them stand out for their mimicry of stalactites
Speaker 1: and stalagmites. First, let's refresh on the nature of stalactites
Speaker 1: and stalactites. Stalactites derived from the Greek to drip is
Speaker 1: a mineral formation caused by dripping that forms on the ceiling.
Speaker 1: The corresponding formation on the floor of the cavern is
Speaker 1: a stalagmite. Some folks might keep the straight in their
Speaker 1: own heads by reminding themselves that stalactite has a C
Speaker 1: in it for ceiling and stalagmite has a G in
Speaker 1: it for ground. At any rate, let's start on the
Speaker 1: floor amid the stalagmites of D and D you'll find
Speaker 1: the occasional roper, a large, one eyed monster that mimics
Speaker 1: a silent cone of stone until an adventurer strays too close.
Speaker 1: Then its tentacles lash out and pull the victim in
Speaker 1: towards its deadly maw. Amid the stalactites, you'll find an
Speaker 1: even more fascinating creature, the Piercer. This predatory mollusk has
Speaker 1: a sharp stalactite shaped shell, enabling it to blend in
Speaker 1: on a cavern ceiling until guess what, along comes another
Speaker 1: hapless adventure and the piercer drops like the sword of
Speaker 1: Damn Maclice and hopefully skewers the poor sap to the floor.
Speaker 1: If this is a success, the piercer, or piercers, because
Speaker 1: sometimes they apparently live in groups, begin the feast. A fail, however,
Speaker 1: means the creature has to slowly crawl back up the
Speaker 1: wall to the ceiling in order to try its gravity
Speaker 1: assisted attack once more. The piercer is a fantastic monster concept,
Speaker 1: and both of these cave dwellers have been lashing out
Speaker 1: against adventurers since the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons. However,
Speaker 1: when we turn to the cave environments of the natural world,
Speaker 1: we don't find creatures that employ such tactics. While there
Speaker 1: are many amazing subterranean organisms with unique adaptations, you might
Speaker 1: well ponder over the seeming absence of stalactite and stalagmite
Speaker 1: mimics as evolutionary Developmental biologist William R. Jeffrey points out
Speaker 1: in his two thousand and nine paper Regressive Evolution in
Speaker 1: Astyanax cave fish quote. In surface dwelling animals, pig intation
Speaker 1: is used for protection from sunlight, camouflage, mimicry, and species
Speaker 1: and sex recognition, all of which are irrevalent in the
Speaker 1: dark cave environment. Jeffrey is dealing chiefly with cave fish
Speaker 1: here in this paper, but I think we can safely
Speaker 1: apply this concept to other cave dwellers as well. Again,
Speaker 1: we have to remember that these are lightless worlds, where
Speaker 1: site in the organs of sight lose their importance. Other
Speaker 1: sense has become the coin of the realm indungens and dragons. However,
Speaker 1: we have to remember that these holy fictional cave environments
Speaker 1: revolve entirely around the inevitable arrival of generally cited characters,
Speaker 1: and they're often aided by magical vision lamps and or
Speaker 1: a plethora of bioluminescent fungi. And we have to remind
Speaker 1: ourselves that mimicry in the real world doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be visual. It can certainly be auditory. For instance, the
Speaker 1: greater mouse ear bat has been observed to mimic the
Speaker 1: sounds of buzzing hornets to gear away predatory owl species. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Chinese cicadas are also known to use intra specific sexual
Speaker 1: mimicry that means males using female sounds in this case,
Speaker 1: which amounts to a similar sort of auditory deception. And hey,
Speaker 1: D and D has us covered there as well, with
Speaker 1: the Lucrata monstrous beasts said to lure in their victims
Speaker 1: by mimicking the voices of humans and other intelligent species,
Speaker 1: inspired by the half hyena half lion creatures described by
Speaker 1: Plenty of the Elder said to reside in Ethiopia, yet
Speaker 1: quote mimics the voices of men and cattle. Tune in
Speaker 1: for additional episodes of the Monster Fact each week. As always,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart Radio,
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