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Speaker 1: And now for traffic, we take you to week Way

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Speaker 1: Ray in the Channel five sky skiff. Hey, Jim, we're

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Speaker 1: pretty clear of sandstorms across much of the dune seed

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Speaker 1: this morning, so that's great news for skyhopper and land

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Speaker 1: speeder traffic. So far, however, we're already seeing a bit

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Speaker 1: of pre wunt to eve classic traffic heading into moss Aspec. Plus,

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Speaker 1: things are grinding to a halt out near the Great

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Speaker 1: Pit of Carcoon and the walp rats are play and

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Speaker 1: as it looks like the huts are hosting another multi

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Speaker 1: skiff Sarlac offering. Always best to steer clear unless you've

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Speaker 1: got an invite, especially if you've got an invite. All

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Speaker 1: too true. Ray. Now let's check in with Merge surgeon

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Speaker 1: on for a look at this week's solar activity. Looks

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Speaker 1: like we're in for a double helping of solar flares.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 1: here we are finally here in a galaxy far far away.

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Speaker 1: I did not think we would end up doing Star

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Speaker 1: Wars content, especially so close to May fourth, but not

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Speaker 1: on it. Things are getting strange. Yeah. Now, fittingly, we're

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Speaker 1: recording this episode on May the fourth, but that that

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Speaker 1: just benefits the two of us. The listeners are gonna

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Speaker 1: get it a little later. However, since the May the

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Speaker 1: fourth like sales begin before May the fourth, I think

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Speaker 1: it's okay to assume that May the fourth is just

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Speaker 1: generally a a you know, a multi day even multi

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Speaker 1: week affair in which we celebrate Star Wars. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: like Christmas gradually creeps out to the edges. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: thirty days of May the fourth or what have you. Uh. Now,

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Speaker 1: so you've been going on a Star Wars expedition in

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Speaker 1: your house, right, Yeah? Yeah, we've been watching all the

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Speaker 1: all the movies. We also watched The Mandalorian. I think

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Speaker 1: at this point we've watched everything except the most recent one,

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Speaker 1: and we're going to catch that one tonight because it

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Speaker 1: just dropped on Disney Plus. But yeah, we've been we've

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Speaker 1: been full, full blown into the Star Wars um and

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Speaker 1: it's been It's been pretty fun because I've i think

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Speaker 1: I've been personally been like several different stereotypical Star Wars

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Speaker 1: fans over the years. I was born in seventy eight,

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Speaker 1: so the original trilogy and their associated toys were just

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Speaker 1: a key part of my childhood and uh and just

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Speaker 1: as aspects of their structure were based on you know,

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Speaker 1: archetypes of comparative mythology. You know, these films introduced many

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Speaker 1: of us to some of these mythic energies. So I

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Speaker 1: remember loving these films as a child. I remember lapsing

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Speaker 1: somewhat during what I think of as like the Star

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Speaker 1: Wars dark Age of the early and mid nineties. I

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Speaker 1: think that's when I was getting like the Star Wars

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Speaker 1: Insider fan magazine. Oh cool, yeah, and he'd kind of

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Speaker 1: gone uh underground. I mean, I don't want to say

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Speaker 1: undergund because obviously there was there was still tons of

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Speaker 1: content coming out and the you know, the Expanded Universe

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Speaker 1: and so forth. There were books, there were comics, there

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Speaker 1: were there were games, but it wasn't as as prevalent

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Speaker 1: uh in the pop culture at that time. But of

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Speaker 1: course it was gearing up because then came, uh, the

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Speaker 1: the prequels, right um uh. Now, I I too remember

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Speaker 1: reading some of the extended Universe stuff and getting into

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Speaker 1: that and the like the late nineties but then we

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Speaker 1: had Phantom Menace, and I remember being first of all,

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Speaker 1: like super excited for it, and then I was a

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Speaker 1: bit of a prequel apologist there for a bit regarding

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Speaker 1: the Phantom Menace, and then I became kind of a

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Speaker 1: snarky fan who focused only on the flaws of the

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Speaker 1: prequel films. And I'd say I didn't fully recover from

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Speaker 1: that until I watched The Mandalorian with my family, uh,

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Speaker 1: and we all loved it. And then we started watching

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Speaker 1: all the films again. And and now I'm I'm leaning

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Speaker 1: into the force. I'm I'm I'm just saying, I'm enjoying

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Speaker 1: all of them. I've enjoyed each film that I've watched,

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Speaker 1: and and she really kind of tried to watch them,

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Speaker 1: you know, with my son, but also kind of threw

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Speaker 1: his eyes. And it's been a blast. What are his favorites?

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Speaker 1: He tells me that his favorites are the Phantom Menace

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Speaker 1: and let's see Phantom Menace and Return of the Jedi,

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Speaker 1: but especially Phantom Menace. He in fact requested that we

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Speaker 1: watched that one again, and so we watched half of

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Speaker 1: it last night. Those it does not escape my attention

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Speaker 1: that those are the two that have the highest quotient

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Speaker 1: of cuteness content they do, they have they have cuteness,

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Speaker 1: But then also they just have a ton of creatures.

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Speaker 1: And I think that's also key because like The Phantom Menace,

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Speaker 1: most of it takes place on like a dinosaur ridden uh,

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Speaker 1: you know planet where there's just you know, monster after

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Speaker 1: monster after monster, and and yeah, you have the comic

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Speaker 1: elements as well, and you have an actual child in it,

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Speaker 1: which I think also is adds this kind of anchor

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Speaker 1: for younger viewers, the going against what I was just

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Speaker 1: saying about cuteness. Obviously, Return of the Jedi is where

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Speaker 1: we get the the e Walks, the classic Teddy Bear planet.

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Speaker 1: But the first half of Return of the Jedi its

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Speaker 1: just when we rewatched it not too long ago, I

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Speaker 1: was like, man, I love this wasn't when I was

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Speaker 1: a kid. But the first half of this movie is gross.

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Speaker 1: It is full of like just like like nasty, slimy

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Speaker 1: critters everywhere and and and horrible monsters and uh. And

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Speaker 1: I would say, actually, the thing maybe that stands out

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Speaker 1: the most in my mind is going to be the

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Speaker 1: subject of today's episode, which is the Sarlac. Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: the Sarlac features heavily into this portion of the film,

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Speaker 1: and it is it's just something that just captures. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It certainly captures the young imagination, you know, here's this pit,

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Speaker 1: here is this thing. And I think it it also

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Speaker 1: played well with the action figures growing up, because you

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Speaker 1: could you could pretty much make a star lack there was.

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Speaker 1: I don't think there was a star lak Um like

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Speaker 1: action play set or anything, because how wrong you are,

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Speaker 1: really they had one because I was just thinking you

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Speaker 1: just had You had dirt, you had holes, you had

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Speaker 1: things you could do with like a bedspread, and you

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Speaker 1: had instant Sarlac Robert. I want you to scroll all

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Speaker 1: the way down to the bottom of our notes and

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Speaker 1: have a look at the images I've attached for you.

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Speaker 1: I thought these would fill you with joy. This comes

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Speaker 1: from a board game that I found evidence of on

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Speaker 1: the internet late last night. I think. Uh. It's called

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Speaker 1: Battle at Sarlac's Pit. It was released at the same

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Speaker 1: time as the movie, or sometime around the movie, I guess,

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Speaker 1: to help promote it. And it is a It is

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Speaker 1: a board game with a Sarlac, like a cardboard Sarlac

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Speaker 1: cone set up, and then it's got a little barge

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Speaker 1: or skiff on top where it looks like you you

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Speaker 1: you play with miniatures of Han Solo, Luke, Skywalker, Chewbacca,

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Speaker 1: and I guess maybe that's also it's supposed to be Leiah.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to tell. The miniatures are not

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Speaker 1: super detailed, and you have to fight your way through these,

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Speaker 1: you know, green pig face guards and Boba that to

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Speaker 1: to confront Jab of the Hut, and I guess if

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Speaker 1: you lose, you fall off into the star Lack's mouth. Ha.

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Speaker 1: Well that it looks beautiful. I mean, especially the cover

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Speaker 1: art in this box looks incredible, and then the set

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Speaker 1: itself is is pretty ingenious, especially given the time. I

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Speaker 1: can't obviously, I can't speak for the the actual gameplay,

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Speaker 1: but it looks intriguing. Yeah, I've never seen this before. Well,

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Speaker 1: I know you're a miniatures guy, so I was wondering

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Speaker 1: if you might end up looking this thing up. I

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Speaker 1: might have to the miniatures. It looks like the miniatures

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Speaker 1: are supplied poorly painted, or perhaps they're supplied unpainted, and

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Speaker 1: what we're looking at here is the work of a

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Speaker 1: child roughly painting them. I can't tell, but yeah, I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna have to look into this more. This this is interesting.

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Speaker 1: If I had known this existed when I was a kid,

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Speaker 1: I would have insisted on it. So I guess we should.

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Speaker 1: We can assume that most listeners have probably seen Return

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Speaker 1: of the Jedi, don't the star Lack doesn't need a

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Speaker 1: lot of explaining, but just to do the very basics,

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Speaker 1: we should explain what happens in the movie. So the

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Speaker 1: role in the plot is you remember our heroes Luke Skywalker,

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Speaker 1: Han Solo, Chewbacca. Uh, they are sentenced to death by

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Speaker 1: the gangster Job of the Hut. He's the big slug

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Speaker 1: guy and Job Job of the Hut says the method

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Speaker 1: of execution for these three heroes is going to be

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Speaker 1: a kind of alien desert version of the Pirates walking

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Speaker 1: of the plank, Right, you know, they're gonna be forced

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Speaker 1: to walk the plank off of this floating barge or

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Speaker 1: this floating boat type thing into this hole in the desert,

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Speaker 1: and the Droid C three p O translates job as

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Speaker 1: execution order. He says, you will therefore be taken to

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Speaker 1: the dune sea, this big desert and cast into the

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Speaker 1: pit of Carcoon, the nesting place of the all powerful

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Speaker 1: Sarlac in his belly. You will find a new definition

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Speaker 1: of pain and suffering as you are slowly digested over

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Speaker 1: a thousand years. And I'm not gonna lie that concept

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Speaker 1: haunted me as a child. I was like, slowly digested

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Speaker 1: over a thousand years? Wouldn't it be over? Are sooner

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Speaker 1: than that? Yeah, there's this idea that it extends your suffering,

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Speaker 1: that it is to enter into the star Lack is

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Speaker 1: to kind of enter into an underworld or an afterlife

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Speaker 1: of pain. It's like going to hell. Yeah, yeah, a

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Speaker 1: hell of digestion. And I also love how in C

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Speaker 1: three pos translation there's this idea, Yeah, that's that's not

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Speaker 1: only the Sarlac, it is the all powerful Sarlac. There's

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Speaker 1: this idea that it is a thing that is revered,

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Speaker 1: that it almost has a divine quality to it. And certainly,

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Speaker 1: as we see in the film, it's not something that

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Speaker 1: is defeated. It is not something that is really truly overcome.

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Speaker 1: It is just avoided and escaped at best. Well, it's

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Speaker 1: not really the enemy, right, it's kind of the setting.

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Speaker 1: It's the threat in the setting. It's kind of in

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Speaker 1: the way that in most zombie movies the zombies are

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Speaker 1: not really the enemy. They're more like a hostile environment

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Speaker 1: in which the drama between the characters is set. Usually

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Speaker 1: in a zombie MOVI, you've got a human villain, and

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Speaker 1: the same is true here. Clearly the villain is Jab

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Speaker 1: of the Hut, not the not the Sarlac. And of

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Speaker 1: course so it's very satisfying when when Leah chokes out

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Speaker 1: Jab of the Hut, that's like a great you know,

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Speaker 1: defeat of the villain scene. But there's no need to

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Speaker 1: kill the Sarlac. It's just doing its thing in the desert,

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Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, there's this It has this quality where

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Speaker 1: the star Lac is kind of like a pet. It's

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Speaker 1: kind of like a pampered pet of of javas much

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Speaker 1: like the rain corps is that we see earlier in

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Speaker 1: the film. But it also feels like something that is

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Speaker 1: greater than job and certainly it's something that will will

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Speaker 1: outlive Java. Yeah. So one thing I really liked about

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Speaker 1: this monster when I was a kid um was something

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Speaker 1: about the way that the monster was presented visually the

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Speaker 1: pit of Carcoon and the Sarlac. It was that the

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Speaker 1: monster wasn't just in a pit. The monster was the pit. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And and so to explain this a little bit more,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like a presented visually as a bio

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Speaker 1: geological hybrid, like a cave or a hole in the

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Speaker 1: ground that has tentacle tongues and eats bounty hunters alive.

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Speaker 1: You can't tell where the animal stops and the earth begins.

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Speaker 1: And as a point of comparison, I think i'd i'd

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Speaker 1: use the appeal of like the bio mechanical artwork of

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Speaker 1: hr Geiger that and how that influenced the creation of

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Speaker 1: the xenomorph in the Alien films. Xenomorph is basically supposed

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Speaker 1: to be an animal, but it has tons of body

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Speaker 1: features that look like parts of industrial machines. It's an

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Speaker 1: animal made out of tubes and hoses and hinges and pistons.

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Speaker 1: And I think I always thought the Starlac was cool

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Speaker 1: because it was like this, but with geology instead of machinery. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It's it's a mouth that is the earth. It looks

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Speaker 1: like the teeth are coming out of rock or coming

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Speaker 1: out of the sand. And Uh. Of course this is

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Speaker 1: all predicated on the fact that I grew up watching

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Speaker 1: the versions of these movies before the special edition remasters.

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Speaker 1: So the version I'm used to seeing is the original,

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Speaker 1: where it's just the gaping mouth that blends into the

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Speaker 1: earth and has these rings of inward facing teeth and

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Speaker 1: the tentacles that reach out from who knows where and

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Speaker 1: grab things. When the remasters came, of course, they added

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Speaker 1: a big c g I beak poking up out of

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Speaker 1: the pit, which sort of eliminates some of that bio

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Speaker 1: geological magic. I try these days not to be one

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Speaker 1: of the guys who's just constantly shrieking about how Lucas

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Speaker 1: ruined things and complaining about remasters and prequels and all that,

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Speaker 1: but I will say I do not like this change.

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Speaker 1: I think it's creepier in the original version without the

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Speaker 1: c g I beak. I like it when it's just

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Speaker 1: the hole in the earth, the cave with teeth. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I I certainly grew up with the the unedited version

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Speaker 1: as well, and so that's that's probably the version that

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Speaker 1: was It's cemented in my mind the most, and I

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Speaker 1: used to feel I think a lot stronger about it

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Speaker 1: where I'm like, Nope, original Starla only, but I don't

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Speaker 1: know I can I'm okay with the the redesign I

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Speaker 1: just wish that the c G I would maybe get another,

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Speaker 1: you know, a fresh coat of paint to make it

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Speaker 1: look a little sleeker. But but still like I also,

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Speaker 1: I understand that they are part of the original concept

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Speaker 1: was that it would have those elements, but they weren't

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Speaker 1: able to make it happen because they just didn't have

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Speaker 1: the budget of the technology to implement it at the time. Um.

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Speaker 1: But but I and I also think that the addition

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Speaker 1: of the plant like elements doesn't completely take away from

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Speaker 1: what you were describing, this idea of the monster as

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Speaker 1: as pit, the monster as Earth. Um, there's something very primal,

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Speaker 1: primordial even about about the star lac And you know,

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Speaker 1: some people, I think a lot to like to criticize

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Speaker 1: Lucas and you know that they want to go all

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Speaker 1: in on this idea that well, Lucas depended on all

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Speaker 1: these other creative people and anything that he got right

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Speaker 1: he only did accidentally. But I suspect that you know

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Speaker 1: that he was really onto something with this idea of

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Speaker 1: the star Lac. Um. I think they're there is something

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Speaker 1: intentionally primordial about it. And well, and we'll get into

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Speaker 1: that as we go. Well, I think it just it

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Speaker 1: suggests the magical thinking that that that is so common

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Speaker 1: in human culture that characterizes caves and pits in the

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Speaker 1: earth as a mouth. I mean that kind of that

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Speaker 1: kind of language is extremely common. Yeah, So before we

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Speaker 1: get a little bit more into some mythic parallels for

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Speaker 1: the star Lac, I want to talk just a little

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Speaker 1: bit more about its presumed biology and its biology is

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Speaker 1: presented uh in Cannon, and also just a little interpretation

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Speaker 1: on our part. So obviously, the vast majority of the

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Speaker 1: star Lacks bulk is hidden beneath the sand, leaving only

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Speaker 1: its spiked, entacled mouth exposed. Now, presumably the star Lac

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Speaker 1: just normally, you know, waits there. It doesn't move. It

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Speaker 1: just waits first, you know, some creature to fall into it.

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Speaker 1: You know, some of the mega fauna of tattooings, such

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Speaker 1: as the do back or the bantha. You know, it

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Speaker 1: just waits for them to wander close enough to fall

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Speaker 1: in or succumb to the fast moving grasping tentacles. And

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Speaker 1: if this, you know, seems a rare enough occurrence, we

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Speaker 1: have to consider that it's it has an alleged one

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Speaker 1: thousand year digestive cycle. So presumably it has a slow

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Speaker 1: enough metabolism that it doesn't need just regular feedings. It

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Speaker 1: can get by on the odd banthera that just falls in.

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Speaker 1: And then on top of that, we have to consider

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Speaker 1: that this star lac might be in a privileged situation

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Speaker 1: as well, sustained by regular feedings from Job as pleasure barges,

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Speaker 1: because let's face it, Job is the type of fellow

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Speaker 1: that's liable to just throw people into the sarlac on

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Speaker 1: a weekly or bi weekly basis, So we may not

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Speaker 1: be observing the sarlac in its natural environment. This this

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Speaker 1: could be a domesticated sarlac of sorts. Yeah, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think we have to take that into into account now. Um,

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Speaker 1: in terms of, like, you know, turning to the literature

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Speaker 1: for you know, explanations of something like the sarlac, uh,

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Speaker 1: that can be a bit confusing because, first of all,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's presented as it is in the movie,

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Speaker 1: and I think a fair amount of mystery about it

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Speaker 1: is ideal. Like, for instance, C three Po doesn't turn

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Speaker 1: to you and explain everything about the star lack. He

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Speaker 1: doesn't go into a big ten minute monologue about it,

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Speaker 1: because you're supposed to do some of the work, right

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Speaker 1: it's supposed to inspire you, right, Yeah, I mean what's

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Speaker 1: cool about it is that you can't see so much

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Speaker 1: of it. It's a mystery, it's hidden under the earth.

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Speaker 1: I think some of that would be spoiled if you've

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Speaker 1: got a better look at it, or you've got c

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Speaker 1: three po explaining its whole life history. As much as

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Speaker 1: I would have wanted that when I was a kid,

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Speaker 1: and we were talking recently about like children, you know,

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Speaker 1: being obsessed with Cannon and the stories they love and

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Speaker 1: like wanting to know all the details, I mean, I

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Speaker 1: bet when I was like eight, I would have just

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Speaker 1: wish that the Star Wars movies included like Star Wars

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Speaker 1: illustrated encyclopedia pages as as like scenes throughout them. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: it works better as a mystery. I think that's my

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Speaker 1: adult mind. Yeah. Now that being said, it this, this

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Speaker 1: sort of mystery has inspired lots of people, and so

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Speaker 1: you have you have a number of different, uh you know,

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Speaker 1: expanded universe treatments of the Star lac as well as

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Speaker 1: compendiums that attempt to explain to some degree what the

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Speaker 1: Star Lack is. And you're gonna deal with, you know,

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Speaker 1: conflicting accounts and uh, and and so forth if you

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Speaker 1: start looking at all of those. But I do want

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Speaker 1: to touch on some ideas that were presented in a

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Speaker 1: relatively new book that came out, Star Wars Alien Archive,

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Speaker 1: which I've been reading with my son. Uh. It's you know,

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Speaker 1: it's basically a you know, a monstrous compendium, a monster

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Speaker 1: manual of Star Wars aliens, and it's pretty fun. It

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Speaker 1: has these fabulous illustrations in it, and it you know,

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Speaker 1: doesn't have everything that shows up in the Star Wars

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Speaker 1: films and TV shows, but it has quite a bit, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, everything from you know, from from major characters

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Speaker 1: and and and major aliens to even a few things that,

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Speaker 1: for instance, only show up in one of the e

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Speaker 1: Walks movies. So it's a fun collection. Naturally, of course

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Speaker 1: there's an entry on the Mighty Sarlac. So I just

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00:18:05,760 --> 00:18:08,240
Speaker 1: want to touch on a few of the key points,

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Speaker 1: uh that that are that are made in this Lucasfilm

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Speaker 1: Press book. First of all, it's described as quote terrifying

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Speaker 1: carnivorous beast, and this seems to fall more on the

341
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Speaker 1: animal side of interpretation. Some people try, and I guess,

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Speaker 1: explain the Starlac as being more of a plant. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and it is sometimes described as reproducing by spores, which

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Speaker 1: leads in list to more of a you know, fungal explanation.

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Speaker 1: But of course none of this is exactly limiting when

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Speaker 1: we're ultimately talking about an alien life form that may

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Speaker 1: you know, easily skew the lines that we draw on

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Speaker 1: Earth between one kingdom and another. That's exactly right, I mean, yeah,

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Speaker 1: if we want to be real technical sticklers, the difference

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Speaker 1: between plants and animals is an evolutionary division that you know,

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Speaker 1: there they are different clades. You can sort their histories differently,

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Speaker 1: and you know, animals arising on other planets might be

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Speaker 1: animal like and that they might move around quickly or

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Speaker 1: something like that. Or they might be plant like in

355
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Speaker 1: that their sessile and the photosynthesize or whatever. But uh,

356
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Speaker 1: but yeah, they would not be descended from these kingdoms,

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00:19:13,680 --> 00:19:17,479
Speaker 1: so those sortings wouldn't necessarily even make sense. Yeah. Plus,

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Speaker 1: oh man, there's a whole additional, uh deep end we

359
00:19:20,680 --> 00:19:23,320
Speaker 1: could get into if we tried to figure out how

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Speaker 1: we consider life in the Star Wars universe, a universe

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Speaker 1: where not only do we have um life you know,

362
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Speaker 1: certainly arising on a plethora of different worlds. But also

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Speaker 1: you have interstellar life still life that is clinging to asteroids.

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Speaker 1: You have pan spermia and colonization taking place that you

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Speaker 1: know at you know, at various points in galactic history.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot to unpack their deep space evolution. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's right, the minox they live in a vacuum. How

368
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Speaker 1: is that possible? I don't think a large animal would

369
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Speaker 1: do that. Yeah. Well, that would be a fun one

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Speaker 1: to come back to at some point, maybe maybe, maybe

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Speaker 1: some some people have written on that topic. Um okay.

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Speaker 1: A few other points from the Alien Archive book. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They to point out that the star lac of Carcoon

374
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Speaker 1: is sustained at least in part by sacrifices and executions

375
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Speaker 1: by the huts. But they also say that adults are

376
00:20:16,280 --> 00:20:19,440
Speaker 1: lacks such as this one can also release an odor

377
00:20:19,760 --> 00:20:24,000
Speaker 1: that attracts nearby herbivores to the pit. Oh okay, So

378
00:20:24,040 --> 00:20:26,760
Speaker 1: that answer I I that would answer a question that

379
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Speaker 1: I had because I was thinking about how a sarlac

380
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Speaker 1: would normally eat if it's just this, you know, sessile

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Speaker 1: pit in the desert. Most sessile trap predators have some

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Speaker 1: way of assuring that prey will fall in like sessile

383
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Speaker 1: predators in the ocean will often try to maximize their

384
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Speaker 1: catch by doing their best to latch on in places

385
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Speaker 1: where the current will carry unfortunate prey animals right by them. Otherwise,

386
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Speaker 1: trap predators like some that we'll talk about in a bit,

387
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Speaker 1: like insects that that lay traps in the ground, need

388
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Speaker 1: to find a place where, you know, places that are

389
00:21:00,840 --> 00:21:03,800
Speaker 1: naturally trafficked by prey, places where you know, ants or

390
00:21:03,840 --> 00:21:07,320
Speaker 1: beetles or whatever going to be walking by. Another option

391
00:21:07,440 --> 00:21:10,680
Speaker 1: is to look more at the realm of of plants,

392
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Speaker 1: which you know, let's say, like carnivorous plants like the

393
00:21:13,200 --> 00:21:15,719
Speaker 1: picture plant that's not an animal, but it is a

394
00:21:15,760 --> 00:21:19,960
Speaker 1: predatory organism that functions as a trap pit. And yeah,

395
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Speaker 1: it uses smells to attract animals to it. Yeah, so

396
00:21:23,760 --> 00:21:26,720
Speaker 1: perhaps we might imagine that, um, you know, say that

397
00:21:26,880 --> 00:21:31,320
Speaker 1: the sarlac releases uh uh, some sort of odor that

398
00:21:31,920 --> 00:21:35,000
Speaker 1: mega fauno would associate with an oasis, you know, or

399
00:21:35,240 --> 00:21:38,520
Speaker 1: with with with plant life, and therefore it brings them in.

400
00:21:38,560 --> 00:21:40,119
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to bring them in all the way, right,

401
00:21:40,160 --> 00:21:42,840
Speaker 1: because those tentacles will do the rest of of the job.

402
00:21:43,400 --> 00:21:45,919
Speaker 1: The shifting sand will do you know the rest of

403
00:21:45,920 --> 00:21:49,600
Speaker 1: the work. But but perhaps this odor will be enough

404
00:21:49,640 --> 00:21:52,440
Speaker 1: to just bring in some food. That makes a lot

405
00:21:52,440 --> 00:21:54,440
Speaker 1: more sense than what I had in mind. Yeah, because

406
00:21:54,440 --> 00:21:56,119
Speaker 1: I was just trying to think. Okay, so it just

407
00:21:56,200 --> 00:21:58,919
Speaker 1: waits until a banta wanders and seems like you'd be

408
00:21:58,920 --> 00:22:03,359
Speaker 1: waiting a long time yea once a millennium. The Alien

409
00:22:03,480 --> 00:22:07,200
Speaker 1: Archive also points out that the creature has several stomachs,

410
00:22:07,200 --> 00:22:09,359
Speaker 1: which you know, I guess makes sense given a lengthy

411
00:22:10,200 --> 00:22:13,760
Speaker 1: digestive process. Also says that it's average length is of

412
00:22:13,880 --> 00:22:18,560
Speaker 1: one and this is interesting. It contends that younger star

413
00:22:18,680 --> 00:22:23,320
Speaker 1: Lacks are capable of moving about to capture food, which, um,

414
00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:26,080
Speaker 1: which is an interesting detail. But I think one that

415
00:22:26,400 --> 00:22:29,560
Speaker 1: you brought up is is kind of supported by an

416
00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:33,399
Speaker 1: old Super Nintendo game, right, Oh that's right. Yeah, So

417
00:22:33,520 --> 00:22:35,760
Speaker 1: I I was trying to remember, don't you fight a

418
00:22:35,840 --> 00:22:39,320
Speaker 1: sarlac in like the old Super Nintendo Superstar Wars game?

419
00:22:39,920 --> 00:22:42,359
Speaker 1: So I looked up the boss fight on YouTube. Robert,

420
00:22:42,359 --> 00:22:45,199
Speaker 1: did you watch it? I did. Yes, It's terrible. It

421
00:22:45,240 --> 00:22:47,760
Speaker 1: doesn't capture the star Lac magic at all because it's

422
00:22:47,800 --> 00:22:49,879
Speaker 1: not a pit. It's just like a big worm that

423
00:22:49,960 --> 00:22:52,439
Speaker 1: comes up out of the ground and it moves around

424
00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:54,960
Speaker 1: and spits rocks at you. That's not a star Lac.

425
00:22:55,200 --> 00:22:57,960
Speaker 1: But but maybe it's supposed to be a young Starlac

426
00:22:58,040 --> 00:23:00,480
Speaker 1: a different part of its life cycle. I I guess.

427
00:23:00,520 --> 00:23:02,720
Speaker 1: So if we were, if we were to force ourselves

428
00:23:02,800 --> 00:23:06,000
Speaker 1: to to take that boss fight and incorporate it into

429
00:23:06,200 --> 00:23:08,160
Speaker 1: into Star Wars canon, I think that's the only way

430
00:23:08,160 --> 00:23:12,400
Speaker 1: you could go that Basically we'd be looking at, uh,

431
00:23:12,440 --> 00:23:15,120
Speaker 1: you know, say a four part lifespan that goes like this.

432
00:23:15,440 --> 00:23:18,080
Speaker 1: You have a spore of the star lack that's carried

433
00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:20,280
Speaker 1: by the you know, the dust storms. Then you have

434
00:23:20,320 --> 00:23:23,119
Speaker 1: some sort of burrowing larva, and then you have a

435
00:23:23,280 --> 00:23:27,240
Speaker 1: sandworm esque burrowing juvenile like we see in the Super

436
00:23:27,320 --> 00:23:30,600
Speaker 1: in ne S game. And then that eventually, if it survives,

437
00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:33,600
Speaker 1: will become a stationary adult like we see in Return

438
00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:36,240
Speaker 1: of the Jedi. That is very interesting, and it's also

439
00:23:36,320 --> 00:23:39,240
Speaker 1: interesting how that is going to be the exact inverse

440
00:23:39,560 --> 00:23:42,240
Speaker 1: of some examples. Will look at from the from the

441
00:23:42,320 --> 00:23:45,320
Speaker 1: natural world in a bit where there are things that

442
00:23:45,359 --> 00:23:48,560
Speaker 1: are only a trap predator for part of their life cycle,

443
00:23:48,600 --> 00:23:52,000
Speaker 1: but it actually comes at the beginning rather than the end. Yeah,

444
00:23:52,040 --> 00:23:55,840
Speaker 1: that's true. Uh, it's interesting that if we were to

445
00:23:55,960 --> 00:23:59,160
Speaker 1: really look for some potential real world analogs that match

446
00:23:59,240 --> 00:24:04,280
Speaker 1: this basic uh you know, four part transformation, I'd say

447
00:24:04,320 --> 00:24:08,560
Speaker 1: that something like this mostly resembles the life cycles uh

448
00:24:08,760 --> 00:24:11,800
Speaker 1: that we would see in uh say corals or perhaps

449
00:24:11,840 --> 00:24:14,760
Speaker 1: a barnacle, both of which we've discussed in depth on

450
00:24:14,800 --> 00:24:18,159
Speaker 1: the show before. Um, you know the idea that this

451
00:24:18,200 --> 00:24:21,480
Speaker 1: is something that is free swimming earlier in its development,

452
00:24:21,520 --> 00:24:24,520
Speaker 1: but then initially eventually puts down roots and stays there

453
00:24:25,040 --> 00:24:27,840
Speaker 1: for the rest of its life. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, well,

454
00:24:27,840 --> 00:24:29,480
Speaker 1: maybe we need to take a break, but when we

455
00:24:29,520 --> 00:24:32,520
Speaker 1: come back, we can talk about Pitt monster mythology and

456
00:24:32,680 --> 00:24:36,520
Speaker 1: about h pit trap predators in the natural world. All right,

457
00:24:36,560 --> 00:24:42,960
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Than alright, we're back now. Either

458
00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 1: way you look at it, h I'd say the star

459
00:24:45,400 --> 00:24:49,280
Speaker 1: Lack is a creature with with fittingly deep mythological roots.

460
00:24:49,960 --> 00:24:52,400
Speaker 1: It is in essence as you as you pointed out,

461
00:24:52,560 --> 00:24:55,879
Speaker 1: the earth swallowing up the living, with key ties to

462
00:24:56,160 --> 00:25:01,800
Speaker 1: understandings and interpretations of earthquakes sink whole just caves in general,

463
00:25:01,840 --> 00:25:05,600
Speaker 1: but also other land based catastrophes. So, in preparing for

464
00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 1: this episode, I wanted to look something up, something that

465
00:25:08,880 --> 00:25:11,240
Speaker 1: I've always assumed because you see it in movies. You

466
00:25:11,240 --> 00:25:13,000
Speaker 1: know the scene in the movie where there is an

467
00:25:13,040 --> 00:25:17,160
Speaker 1: earthquake and the ground opens up, there's this giant fissure,

468
00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:21,359
Speaker 1: then everything just disappears super deep into the earth. Uh.

469
00:25:21,520 --> 00:25:24,080
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute, does that happen in

470
00:25:24,119 --> 00:25:27,800
Speaker 1: real life? Basically? From what I could tell most of

471
00:25:27,840 --> 00:25:31,640
Speaker 1: the time, No, I think it's not, in principle impossible.

472
00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:34,680
Speaker 1: But generally in earthquakes there might be you know, fissures

473
00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:36,720
Speaker 1: that form in the ground, but they don't You don't

474
00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:39,639
Speaker 1: get these deep chasms going down into the belly of

475
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:42,600
Speaker 1: the earth that you know, swallow people and buildings. Hold

476
00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:45,280
Speaker 1: that if that happens at all, that does not happen

477
00:25:45,440 --> 00:25:49,800
Speaker 1: very often. Yeah, that that specifically happens in the Force Awakens.

478
00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:52,159
Speaker 1: Remember when Ray is having that duel with Kylo Wren

479
00:25:52,160 --> 00:25:55,520
Speaker 1: and then the the the earth shakes and suddenly there's

480
00:25:55,600 --> 00:25:59,040
Speaker 1: this this deep gulf between them, which is, you know,

481
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:02,520
Speaker 1: awesome in a film, but maybe not that likely uh

482
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:05,960
Speaker 1: in the real world. Yeah, but it's interesting that So

483
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:09,000
Speaker 1: if this doesn't actually happen in reality, or at least

484
00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 1: doesn't happen often enough for people to you know, really

485
00:26:11,800 --> 00:26:13,439
Speaker 1: see it and make a meme out of it in

486
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:15,919
Speaker 1: their culture. Where does this idea come from? Because it

487
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:18,640
Speaker 1: goes way back, the idea that the earth like cracks

488
00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 1: open and swallows people whole. Right, Yeah, I remember, like, well,

489
00:26:22,600 --> 00:26:24,960
Speaker 1: first of all, I probably saw it in various films

490
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:28,959
Speaker 1: growing up as well, but I specifically remember having an

491
00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:33,760
Speaker 1: illustrated um Bible stories book and it had an illustration

492
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:36,600
Speaker 1: of of what I what I seem to remember being

493
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:39,320
Speaker 1: the this episode from the Book of Numbers in the

494
00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 1: Old Testament, which this is the the King James version quote,

495
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:46,920
Speaker 1: and the earth opened its mouth and swallow them up

496
00:26:47,200 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 1: with their households, and all the men with Cora, with

497
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:55,240
Speaker 1: all their goods. Wow. Well yeah, that's basically what the

498
00:26:55,240 --> 00:26:59,280
Speaker 1: Earthquake movie pictures. Yeah, so you know it's it's I

499
00:26:59,280 --> 00:27:02,520
Speaker 1: guess it's a pretty deeply set idea in that respect.

500
00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:05,200
Speaker 1: So I was looking around to see if I could

501
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:09,399
Speaker 1: come across any other like specific ideas of monsters or

502
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 1: gods or you know, the adventures of a hero that

503
00:27:12,720 --> 00:27:16,399
Speaker 1: involves something like the Sarlac. And what I what I

504
00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:18,919
Speaker 1: came across is maybe not a you know a directly

505
00:27:19,280 --> 00:27:22,480
Speaker 1: related example, but but I think once I explain it,

506
00:27:22,520 --> 00:27:24,720
Speaker 1: people will see a number of parallels that are pretty

507
00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:29,760
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. This is from the Mesoamerican mythology of the Aztecs,

508
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:34,800
Speaker 1: the earth goddess tlou Tekutali that is t l A

509
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:37,840
Speaker 1: l t e c u h t l I and

510
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:42,920
Speaker 1: most translations, and man, she's a really interesting earth goddess.

511
00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:49,480
Speaker 1: And yes, so for starters, she embodies a typical primordial

512
00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:54,120
Speaker 1: god goddess archetype of a divided and dismembered form who

513
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:58,159
Speaker 1: scattered pieces constitute the world, and we see that a

514
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:03,640
Speaker 1: lot in mythologies. But she is also monstrous, incorporating amphibian

515
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:07,239
Speaker 1: and reptile morphology, and she is also presented as an

516
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:10,800
Speaker 1: eater of the dead, so the blood of human sacrifice

517
00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:13,679
Speaker 1: flows into the earth to feed her, and she is

518
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 1: often depicted with a flint knife between her teeth and

519
00:28:17,320 --> 00:28:20,840
Speaker 1: or rivers of blood flowing from her mouth. She's also

520
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:24,159
Speaker 1: seen as a boundary deity, bridging the world of a

521
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:27,600
Speaker 1: living to Micklin the world of the dead, and her

522
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:31,399
Speaker 1: role here is essentially one of of maintaining balance, and

523
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:36,280
Speaker 1: therefore sacrifices made to her are about keeping into the

524
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:39,240
Speaker 1: balance of the world's together. I mean, she is the earth,

525
00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:42,440
Speaker 1: and she is also this bridge between our world and

526
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:44,400
Speaker 1: the world of the dead. And when you look at

527
00:28:44,640 --> 00:28:47,120
Speaker 1: likenesses of her, this is also interesting. Her likeness was

528
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:50,560
Speaker 1: often carved into the base of sculptures, you know, where

529
00:28:50,720 --> 00:28:53,080
Speaker 1: humans could not see them once the sculpture was in

530
00:28:53,160 --> 00:28:56,719
Speaker 1: place where the sculpture touched the earth. So you know

531
00:28:56,760 --> 00:28:59,040
Speaker 1: that the living would not see this. It's it's as

532
00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:03,320
Speaker 1: if it was only to be seen by her. Interesting. Now,

533
00:29:03,320 --> 00:29:05,680
Speaker 1: her color was red, which is of course the color

534
00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:09,480
Speaker 1: for blood associated with sacrifice, but red was also the

535
00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:12,400
Speaker 1: color of sunset because at night she was said to

536
00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:14,680
Speaker 1: consume the sun. We think of the you know, the

537
00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:19,000
Speaker 1: setting sun. Uh seemingly too to be consumed by the

538
00:29:19,040 --> 00:29:21,880
Speaker 1: earth and then night sets in Yeah, and this is

539
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:24,800
Speaker 1: a motif we see in other mythologies from around the world.

540
00:29:24,800 --> 00:29:27,560
Speaker 1: I think there are the god or the monster that

541
00:29:27,640 --> 00:29:30,520
Speaker 1: eats the sun appears in Egyptian mythology I believe in

542
00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:34,720
Speaker 1: in Hindu stories. Yes, yes, indeed, Now, if you look

543
00:29:34,840 --> 00:29:39,600
Speaker 1: up some interpretations of this goddess Uh, you'll find at

544
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:41,840
Speaker 1: least a couple of different versions. One is more of

545
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:45,320
Speaker 1: a uh, you know, more of a just a monstrous

546
00:29:45,400 --> 00:29:48,720
Speaker 1: feminine form. But there's another one that's really interesting where

547
00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 1: it's kind of the squat toadlike creature with its mouth

548
00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 1: open skyward towards the eagle and uh. And this one

549
00:29:56,680 --> 00:29:58,760
Speaker 1: really makes me think of the starlight because it is

550
00:29:58,840 --> 00:30:03,960
Speaker 1: like a mouth opened wide towards the heavens now. I

551
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:05,840
Speaker 1: think all this is interesting in context of the star

552
00:30:05,960 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 1: Lak because the star Lak two is presented as something

553
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:12,600
Speaker 1: that is perhaps divine and to some degree immortal, and

554
00:30:13,120 --> 00:30:17,360
Speaker 1: an entity that demands sacrificial victims as well, and something

555
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:21,480
Speaker 1: of a gateway between our world and a hellish underworld. Again,

556
00:30:21,520 --> 00:30:24,480
Speaker 1: think back to that, to that idea of a thousand

557
00:30:24,560 --> 00:30:29,000
Speaker 1: years of digestion in the belly of the star lak Um.

558
00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:31,880
Speaker 1: I remember this was explored to a wonderful effect in

559
00:30:32,640 --> 00:30:36,120
Speaker 1: a short story. This was by um an author by

560
00:30:36,120 --> 00:30:41,080
Speaker 1: the name of Daniel keys Moran published under the name J. D. Montgomery,

561
00:30:41,160 --> 00:30:45,160
Speaker 1: and it was in a short story collection called Tale

562
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:48,880
Speaker 1: from Jabas Palace titled a bar of like that The

563
00:30:48,920 --> 00:30:51,880
Speaker 1: Tale of Boba Fette Um And I haven't read it

564
00:30:51,920 --> 00:30:54,719
Speaker 1: since junior high school, but I remember really loving it

565
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:57,360
Speaker 1: because it it kind of scratched that itch of like, oh,

566
00:30:57,440 --> 00:30:59,920
Speaker 1: I must know how Boba Fette escapes from the star Lack.

567
00:31:00,480 --> 00:31:03,000
Speaker 1: You know, you must write it for me, make it happen.

568
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:06,200
Speaker 1: Uh And so it succeeded in that, but it also

569
00:31:06,760 --> 00:31:10,360
Speaker 1: presented digestion in the Starlac as being this kind of

570
00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:14,360
Speaker 1: sentient immortality of pain. I have so many thoughts about this.

571
00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:17,120
Speaker 1: Uh So, first of all, I'm thinking about all of

572
00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 1: the like sort of off label Star Wars fiction that

573
00:31:21,160 --> 00:31:23,680
Speaker 1: I read in the nineties. I didn't read as much

574
00:31:23,680 --> 00:31:25,479
Speaker 1: of it as some people did, but I do remember

575
00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:28,280
Speaker 1: I read some series of books that involved people who

576
00:31:28,320 --> 00:31:31,640
Speaker 1: had three eyes and like a whole bunch of weirdness.

577
00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:33,760
Speaker 1: But the other thing is, I'm sorry if this is

578
00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:36,400
Speaker 1: a is a frivolous side trail that I've got to

579
00:31:36,440 --> 00:31:38,600
Speaker 1: ask you, Robert, do you have an opinion on the

580
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: belch the star Lac burp oh after fat falls in? Yeah,

581
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:45,880
Speaker 1: it doesn't fat fall in? And then and then the

582
00:31:45,920 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 1: thing just it burps it. I'm not mistaken about this, right, No, No,

583
00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:53,000
Speaker 1: I believe it does burp um pro burb or anti

584
00:31:53,040 --> 00:31:56,680
Speaker 1: berb I guess I'm I'm pro burb It's it's fun

585
00:31:56,920 --> 00:31:59,040
Speaker 1: it's funny. I was probably there was probably a point

586
00:31:59,280 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 1: that I'm not specif typically remembering in my Star Wars

587
00:32:01,920 --> 00:32:04,040
Speaker 1: worst fandom, where I probably thought I was above it

588
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:06,560
Speaker 1: and thought that that belt should be edited out because

589
00:32:06,600 --> 00:32:09,680
Speaker 1: I also didn't want any indication that Fett was gone

590
00:32:10,040 --> 00:32:12,400
Speaker 1: and that a belt should be uh you know his

591
00:32:12,600 --> 00:32:15,840
Speaker 1: um uh you know his tombstone. But you know, I

592
00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:18,080
Speaker 1: don't really have any strong opinions about it now. It

593
00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:22,560
Speaker 1: seemed an ignominious end for this, this much beloved minor character,

594
00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:25,600
Speaker 1: and uh, I think I think it bothered me when

595
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:27,680
Speaker 1: I was younger, when I also thought Boba Fette was

596
00:32:27,720 --> 00:32:30,520
Speaker 1: so cool. I just gotta say, I'm about to earn

597
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:32,240
Speaker 1: us all the hate mail we're going to get for

598
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 1: the rest of the year. Boba Fette's armor looks cool,

599
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:39,040
Speaker 1: but I don't actually get what is just like, mind

600
00:32:39,200 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 1: meltingly amazing about him. Two people, I just feel like

601
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:44,720
Speaker 1: he's a kind of cool looking character. He's got like

602
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 1: five lines. Yeah, yeah, I think it comes back to

603
00:32:48,160 --> 00:32:50,720
Speaker 1: like the less you know, right, there was mystery about

604
00:32:50,840 --> 00:32:54,680
Speaker 1: really all those bounty hunters and um, you know, who

605
00:32:54,720 --> 00:32:57,760
Speaker 1: were these guys? What what was their deal? You know what?

606
00:32:57,760 --> 00:32:59,760
Speaker 1: What was the I like the one that's got like

607
00:32:59,800 --> 00:33:03,120
Speaker 1: in sec dies like a fly's head. Yeah, he's good.

608
00:33:03,240 --> 00:33:06,280
Speaker 1: Or the reptilian one with the long arms. And I'm sorry,

609
00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 1: I know they all have names and species and uh

610
00:33:08,960 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 1: I if I had my alien archive book in front

611
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:14,120
Speaker 1: of me, I would look them up. But but basically

612
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:16,600
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful rogues gallery. Well. I don't have a

613
00:33:16,600 --> 00:33:18,960
Speaker 1: firm position on the burp, but you know what, I'll

614
00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:22,320
Speaker 1: support you in your decision, so so have me on board.

615
00:33:22,360 --> 00:33:25,480
Speaker 1: I'm probb too. Yeah, I mean it's star Lag getting

616
00:33:25,760 --> 00:33:27,840
Speaker 1: a good laugh there. I I think I think it

617
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:30,560
Speaker 1: was well received by my son. Now, I want to

618
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about mythology here because I

619
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:36,960
Speaker 1: feel like there's an excellent connection to be made um Specifically,

620
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:41,640
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about a parallel here in Greek mythology, where

621
00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:45,640
Speaker 1: of course we have Skilla and Charybdis, the twin oceanic

622
00:33:45,720 --> 00:33:51,120
Speaker 1: dangers that Odysseus must sail between the very horns of dilemma. Uh.

623
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:54,920
Speaker 1: These are magnificent monstrosities. Oh yeah, the classics. I mean,

624
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:58,040
Speaker 1: like the ultimate sea monster. How could you beat it? Yeah?

625
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:01,800
Speaker 1: So Charybdis. I I think it's the most obvious analog here.

626
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:06,480
Speaker 1: An underwater monster of varying description that above water is

627
00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:09,640
Speaker 1: just seen as this massive whirlpool that threatens to swallow

628
00:34:09,719 --> 00:34:13,279
Speaker 1: up any ship that comes near it. Meanwhile, Skilla is

629
00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:16,560
Speaker 1: this multi headed beast that plucks men from their ships.

630
00:34:16,880 --> 00:34:21,040
Speaker 1: Now the star Lack basically incorporates elements from both of

631
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 1: these monsters, because we have to remember that, Okay, Tattooing

632
00:34:24,320 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 1: is a desert world, but the dune sea has all

633
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:30,759
Speaker 1: of these oceanic qualities to it as well. And in fact,

634
00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:33,040
Speaker 1: I mean the whole encounter in Return of the Jedi

635
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:36,600
Speaker 1: is essentially the sci Fi mash up of nautical and

636
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:39,880
Speaker 1: swashbuckling tropes. Oh yeah, I mean, I think that's the

637
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:42,040
Speaker 1: thing people might not realize if they're not familiar with

638
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:45,000
Speaker 1: the old Errol Flynn pirate movies and stuff like that.

639
00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:47,960
Speaker 1: But clearly they're walking the plank off the skiff. This

640
00:34:48,040 --> 00:34:50,080
Speaker 1: is supposed to be boats on the ocean. Job of

641
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:54,040
Speaker 1: the Hut is an evil pirate captain. Yes, yes, so,

642
00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:57,000
Speaker 1: I mean it makes perfect sense that the cryptis analog

643
00:34:57,360 --> 00:35:01,359
Speaker 1: here becomes very clear. And I should also point out

644
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:04,759
Speaker 1: that for anybody out there who maybe a Percy Jackson fan.

645
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:09,680
Speaker 1: In uh, the film adaptation Percy of Percy Jackson Sea

646
00:35:09,680 --> 00:35:13,359
Speaker 1: of Monsters, it has a wonderful crybdis in it. Uh,

647
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:16,200
Speaker 1: Crybta shows up and really takes on a very star

648
00:35:16,320 --> 00:35:20,120
Speaker 1: lackey in appearance, no doubt playing up on this connection. Yeah,

649
00:35:20,200 --> 00:35:22,520
Speaker 1: you attached an image. It is a very good looking

650
00:35:22,560 --> 00:35:25,000
Speaker 1: mall and it's got the inward facing spike teeth. I

651
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 1: like it a lot. Yeah, it's it's quite it's quite

652
00:35:27,560 --> 00:35:30,080
Speaker 1: a wonderful sequence. Like if you if you just want

653
00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:31,840
Speaker 1: to check it out for no other reason, check it

654
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:34,799
Speaker 1: out for that. Uh, it's pretty fun as well. Uh. Now,

655
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:37,680
Speaker 1: my son and my wife who have read the book

656
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:40,440
Speaker 1: tell me that in the book, uh, both Skilla and

657
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:43,279
Speaker 1: cryb does show up, but in the movie we're just

658
00:35:43,320 --> 00:35:47,000
Speaker 1: stuck with the whirlpool. But still the whirlpool is fabulous. Now,

659
00:35:47,040 --> 00:35:49,640
Speaker 1: I think maybe it's time to turn to the natural

660
00:35:49,640 --> 00:35:52,600
Speaker 1: world and look at some animals that that even here

661
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:56,120
Speaker 1: on Earth somewhat mimic the sarlac. Now, there there might

662
00:35:56,160 --> 00:35:59,200
Speaker 1: be one that you out there are already thinking of,

663
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:02,640
Speaker 1: because it's it's it's quite monstrously close though on a

664
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:05,600
Speaker 1: much smaller scale, and that would be, of course, the

665
00:36:05,640 --> 00:36:09,840
Speaker 1: ant lion. Yes, uh, the ant lion is is certainly

666
00:36:09,960 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: the first place that my mind goes when I think

667
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:14,640
Speaker 1: of the star lac because it's also something that I

668
00:36:14,719 --> 00:36:17,960
Speaker 1: definitely remember encountering as a child. Getting to see the

669
00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:20,680
Speaker 1: ant lions in action. Uh, you know, and try and

670
00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:22,799
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately try and trigger them to you know,

671
00:36:22,840 --> 00:36:24,759
Speaker 1: try and get them to to eat the ends of

672
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:27,319
Speaker 1: sticks and whatnot, which I'm not recommending you do, but

673
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:30,360
Speaker 1: if you get a chance to observe an ant lion

674
00:36:30,520 --> 00:36:33,239
Speaker 1: in the wild, it's worth checking out. Robert, where did

675
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:36,040
Speaker 1: you encounter them? Were you in the Southwest? I know,

676
00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:41,239
Speaker 1: in Arizona or wherever? Uh this, I definitely remember encountering

677
00:36:41,280 --> 00:36:45,239
Speaker 1: them in Tennessee. Actually, yeah, like this would have been

678
00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:51,200
Speaker 1: um north western Tennessee. I remember encountering them there. Maybe

679
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:53,480
Speaker 1: my mind was primed for Arizona because I just know

680
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:56,360
Speaker 1: that that's where they shot the star Lac scenes. I

681
00:36:56,400 --> 00:36:58,839
Speaker 1: think it was near Yuma that they did that. But yeah,

682
00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:00,960
Speaker 1: I guess the rain ing of the ant lion is

683
00:37:01,040 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 1: much wider. Yeah, I mean it needs sand or loose soil.

684
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:08,719
Speaker 1: But uh, I understand it's fairly widespread. Now, I will say,

685
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:11,839
Speaker 1: I am just recalling a childhood memory here. It is

686
00:37:12,120 --> 00:37:14,759
Speaker 1: entirely possible that I was observing something else and thought

687
00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 1: it was an ant lion, or that my memory has

688
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:20,759
Speaker 1: some other has become altered one way or another. But

689
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:22,960
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I saw an antline. Oh, I'm not

690
00:37:23,040 --> 00:37:26,320
Speaker 1: doubting you. The ant lion, as we alluded to earlier

691
00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:28,719
Speaker 1: when we were talking about life cycles of of the

692
00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:32,279
Speaker 1: possible sarlac or or analogs in the natural world, the

693
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:35,320
Speaker 1: ant lion, as we know it is, is actually mainly

694
00:37:35,600 --> 00:37:40,040
Speaker 1: one stage of the life of a certain insect. That's right,

695
00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:43,440
Speaker 1: it's the it's the larval form of a rather nondescript

696
00:37:43,920 --> 00:37:47,920
Speaker 1: of flying romellion today, insect of which there are some

697
00:37:47,960 --> 00:37:52,120
Speaker 1: two thousand individual species. So, in other words, the ant lion,

698
00:37:52,200 --> 00:37:55,400
Speaker 1: the larval form here is a high is highly interesting

699
00:37:55,400 --> 00:37:59,000
Speaker 1: and unique, while the adult form is basically a short lived,

700
00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:02,120
Speaker 1: I mean, very short lived flying nothing that is far

701
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:06,879
Speaker 1: less studied. I mean, when you got you got one

702
00:38:06,920 --> 00:38:09,560
Speaker 1: stage of your life cycle where you become a sarlac,

703
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:11,920
Speaker 1: you're just not going to get a lot of attention

704
00:38:12,040 --> 00:38:13,760
Speaker 1: for the part of your life where you grow wings

705
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:17,160
Speaker 1: and fly around and land on plants. Yeah. So let's

706
00:38:17,160 --> 00:38:20,080
Speaker 1: talk about the larval form first. So the larval ant lion,

707
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:22,160
Speaker 1: and I recommend looking at the picture of this anyone

708
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:25,280
Speaker 1: if you you have seen an illustration, because it's really gnarly.

709
00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:29,600
Speaker 1: It has this globular abdomen, a narrow head in a

710
00:38:29,680 --> 00:38:34,120
Speaker 1: set of vicious sickle shaped mandibles. Some species but not all,

711
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:37,480
Speaker 1: famously make their home at the bottom of a shallow pit,

712
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:41,200
Speaker 1: a shallow pit trap that they make themselves, uh. And

713
00:38:41,239 --> 00:38:44,840
Speaker 1: then they produce this by burrowing backwards in a circle,

714
00:38:45,160 --> 00:38:47,960
Speaker 1: flicking loose soil or sand out of the way as

715
00:38:48,040 --> 00:38:51,600
Speaker 1: they go. And then once they're situated, only those twin

716
00:38:51,680 --> 00:38:54,719
Speaker 1: mandibles remain visible, poking out of the bottom of this

717
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:57,600
Speaker 1: sand pit. Yeah. So, so they form this thing, like

718
00:38:57,600 --> 00:38:59,879
Speaker 1: you're saying, by sort of digging around in the con

719
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:04,440
Speaker 1: goal in a conical shape, going backwards, flinging the sand

720
00:39:04,480 --> 00:39:08,040
Speaker 1: out until they've created this pit that's got these sort

721
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:11,040
Speaker 1: of perfectly sloped conical sides. It's like a you know,

722
00:39:11,160 --> 00:39:14,520
Speaker 1: like a coffee filter sort of uh. And it reminds

723
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:18,080
Speaker 1: me of the episodes we did about spiderweb cognition because, um,

724
00:39:18,640 --> 00:39:22,160
Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting to think about the underlying algorithms

725
00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:25,319
Speaker 1: in an animal's brain, like in the spider's brain that

726
00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:27,719
Speaker 1: produced the web, or in the ant lion's brain that

727
00:39:27,920 --> 00:39:30,800
Speaker 1: enable it to make these perfect little conical pit traps.

728
00:39:31,160 --> 00:39:32,959
Speaker 1: And I remember one of the things we talked about

729
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:36,160
Speaker 1: in that other episode about spiderweb cognition was how beautiful

730
00:39:36,200 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 1: and complex patterns emerge in spiderwebs, even based on extremely

731
00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:44,759
Speaker 1: simple algorithms for spinning, which, of course, the spiders can

732
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:47,839
Speaker 1: vary to adapt to environmental conditions. And I think there

733
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:51,120
Speaker 1: are some environmental variables that that work on ant lions

734
00:39:51,160 --> 00:39:54,000
Speaker 1: as well. This might include things like the depth of

735
00:39:54,080 --> 00:39:56,920
Speaker 1: the sand and the grain size. I was looking at

736
00:39:56,920 --> 00:39:59,600
Speaker 1: one study that said apparently ant lions and a similar

737
00:39:59,640 --> 00:40:03,239
Speaker 1: prejuctor are called worm lions tend to prefer finer and

738
00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:07,800
Speaker 1: deeper sand. The finer sand, I'm sure better to trap

739
00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:11,080
Speaker 1: you with. Exactly, so, how does this trapping work? Well?

740
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:14,480
Speaker 1: When ants or other small insects fall into the pit,

741
00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 1: the ant lion throws up more sand, like flicks more

742
00:40:18,680 --> 00:40:22,719
Speaker 1: sand up towards the would be victim in order to

743
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:25,880
Speaker 1: keep them from escaping and then they grapple their victim

744
00:40:25,960 --> 00:40:29,440
Speaker 1: at the bottom of that pit, piercing their body with

745
00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:32,680
Speaker 1: those mandibles and sucking out the fluids. Afterwards, the ant

746
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:36,640
Speaker 1: lion flicks the desiccated corpse out and then resets the

747
00:40:36,680 --> 00:40:39,640
Speaker 1: pit for its next meal. Yeah. The and you can

748
00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 1: look up video of this of them literally just throwing

749
00:40:42,520 --> 00:40:45,640
Speaker 1: like desiccated ant bodies out of their pit, just chucking

750
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:49,120
Speaker 1: them off to the side. Yeah, literally a dead soldier. Now,

751
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:51,319
Speaker 1: I can't remember if we mentioned, but the antline does

752
00:40:51,400 --> 00:40:54,400
Speaker 1: have it does have chemicals on its side when it

753
00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:56,680
Speaker 1: attacks the victim that falls down to the bottom of

754
00:40:56,719 --> 00:41:00,879
Speaker 1: the pit. So it's uh, it's piercing mandibles, the it's

755
00:41:00,920 --> 00:41:04,600
Speaker 1: pincer type things injective venom to the prey. But then

756
00:41:04,640 --> 00:41:07,799
Speaker 1: also they've got a digestive enzyme that they use much

757
00:41:07,840 --> 00:41:10,680
Speaker 1: like some of the spider feeding stuff that we've talked about,

758
00:41:10,960 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 1: where they can inject the enzyme that sort of melts

759
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:16,640
Speaker 1: the guts of the prey animal and then allows some

760
00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:20,600
Speaker 1: easy slurping. Now, like the sarlac, the ant lion benefits

761
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:23,319
Speaker 1: from a really slow metabolism. The ant lion can go

762
00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:26,640
Speaker 1: months without food and get this does not even have

763
00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:30,800
Speaker 1: an anus, it simply puts off defecation until it assumes

764
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:34,000
Speaker 1: it's a mature and final form. And this is something

765
00:41:34,040 --> 00:41:37,719
Speaker 1: we see in other larval forms as well, um elsewhere

766
00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:41,360
Speaker 1: in the animal kingdom, where basically the creatures an eating machine.

767
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:43,640
Speaker 1: It's just about eating and eating, and it can in

768
00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:48,200
Speaker 1: some cases just put off pooping until it has reached

769
00:41:48,239 --> 00:41:52,279
Speaker 1: that final morphological form that is going to obtain. Yeah,

770
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:54,480
Speaker 1: let's stick on this for a second. In case that

771
00:41:54,560 --> 00:41:57,760
Speaker 1: just went by you, the ant lion in its larval

772
00:41:57,880 --> 00:42:01,239
Speaker 1: stage does not have an anus and cannot poop, and

773
00:42:01,280 --> 00:42:03,920
Speaker 1: this goes on for the entire larval stage of its

774
00:42:03,960 --> 00:42:07,920
Speaker 1: life cycle, which can last for up to three years. Right, no,

775
00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:11,080
Speaker 1: anis you got your poop in for three years? So

776
00:42:11,120 --> 00:42:13,840
Speaker 1: I guess imagine if like we only grew in anus

777
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 1: and became able to defecate when we turned eighteen or something,

778
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: you know, the parents talking about how you know you'll

779
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:23,560
Speaker 1: poop when you're older, you'll understand then Oh man, I mean,

780
00:42:23,760 --> 00:42:26,200
Speaker 1: I guess I have mixed thoughts about that, because on

781
00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:28,440
Speaker 1: one hand, not having to poop is is that mean

782
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:32,160
Speaker 1: it's really everyone's dream? But on the other hand, being

783
00:42:32,239 --> 00:42:35,680
Speaker 1: filled with an increasing amount of poop is everyone's nightmare.

784
00:42:35,760 --> 00:42:38,080
Speaker 1: So uh, I guess it just comes down to the

785
00:42:38,200 --> 00:42:41,200
Speaker 1: like you either extreme you you don't want either extreme,

786
00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:44,160
Speaker 1: you want the balance of normal human pooping. Now, the

787
00:42:44,160 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 1: funny thing is that there are some skewed ways where

788
00:42:47,239 --> 00:42:52,040
Speaker 1: we conceptualize animal life cycles, insect life cycles and stuff.

789
00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:54,680
Speaker 1: Because we're talking about how when the antline is done

790
00:42:54,680 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 1: with its pit trap larval stage, it then matures and

791
00:42:57,560 --> 00:43:01,200
Speaker 1: becomes an adult. But this adult stage age lasts for

792
00:43:01,239 --> 00:43:04,080
Speaker 1: a much shorter period than its larval stage does, so

793
00:43:04,120 --> 00:43:06,800
Speaker 1: in a weird way, you shouldn't think of its adult

794
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:11,240
Speaker 1: phase as like its normal life right right, yeah, because

795
00:43:11,800 --> 00:43:14,319
Speaker 1: again you mentioned that the larval stage will live like

796
00:43:14,360 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 1: about three years, but the flying adult stage lives for

797
00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:20,920
Speaker 1: a mere twenty five days or so. So really it's

798
00:43:20,960 --> 00:43:23,480
Speaker 1: adult form is just its last hurrah. You know this

799
00:43:23,560 --> 00:43:26,600
Speaker 1: is about it just well, I guess, finally pooping, but

800
00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:31,560
Speaker 1: also and more importantly reproducing. Right, yes, Now, this would

801
00:43:31,560 --> 00:43:33,399
Speaker 1: sort of answer the question for me that I had

802
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:35,680
Speaker 1: when we were beginning to work on this episode. I

803
00:43:35,719 --> 00:43:38,359
Speaker 1: was wondering, like, does a star lac poop if its

804
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:40,440
Speaker 1: whole body is under the ground, if it does poop.

805
00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:44,680
Speaker 1: Where does the poop go? Now, you hypothesized, Robert, You

806
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:46,640
Speaker 1: were like, well, maybe it doesn't poop, just like the

807
00:43:46,680 --> 00:43:49,719
Speaker 1: antline doesn't poop. But the airline's got a poop eventually,

808
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:51,840
Speaker 1: it's got the next stage of its life cycle. And

809
00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:53,560
Speaker 1: as far as we know, the star lac does not.

810
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:56,960
Speaker 1: It's not gonna eventually grow wings, grow ananus, and then

811
00:43:57,000 --> 00:43:59,880
Speaker 1: fly off somewhere to poop everything that has accumulated over

812
00:43:59,920 --> 00:44:02,319
Speaker 1: the thousands of years. So what's going on with the

813
00:44:02,360 --> 00:44:05,200
Speaker 1: star lac? Well, it does make me think it could

814
00:44:05,960 --> 00:44:08,440
Speaker 1: this is just me, you know, spitball in here. But

815
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:13,000
Speaker 1: perhaps if there is anything it cannot digest, maybe it's

816
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:15,600
Speaker 1: spits it back out kind of like an owl will

817
00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:18,400
Speaker 1: do you know with something that it you know that

818
00:44:18,480 --> 00:44:21,040
Speaker 1: it is swallowed, you know, the various bones and whatnot.

819
00:44:21,760 --> 00:44:26,000
Speaker 1: Or perhaps there is this just like terminal digestion going

820
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:30,200
Speaker 1: on inside the star lac. You know, it's just digesting

821
00:44:30,200 --> 00:44:33,040
Speaker 1: and digesting, and at the end of this there's just

822
00:44:33,160 --> 00:44:36,360
Speaker 1: nothing like maybe it's just that efficient. I can see that,

823
00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:38,399
Speaker 1: But I also like the idea of the two way

824
00:44:38,400 --> 00:44:41,279
Speaker 1: digestive system. There are organisms like that that live in

825
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:44,520
Speaker 1: the ocean mainly like the hydra I believe has a

826
00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:48,520
Speaker 1: has a two way digestive system where it basically eats

827
00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:51,480
Speaker 1: and poops through the same opening. That's right, Yeah, I

828
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:54,040
Speaker 1: think we went into that on our episode about the

829
00:44:54,040 --> 00:44:56,880
Speaker 1: evolution of the anus um. So yeah, there are there

830
00:44:56,880 --> 00:45:00,719
Speaker 1: are various models for this that we see throughout the

831
00:45:00,719 --> 00:45:03,239
Speaker 1: evolution of life on Earth. It could be, uh, you know,

832
00:45:03,360 --> 00:45:05,319
Speaker 1: used to explain it another way of looking at it

833
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:08,280
Speaker 1: would be something down there under the ground is pooping

834
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:11,359
Speaker 1: for the sarlac, but we don't really know what sort

835
00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:15,120
Speaker 1: of underground environment it is pooping into. Like there could

836
00:45:15,160 --> 00:45:19,400
Speaker 1: be a pretty rich under underground world on tattooing, right,

837
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:22,280
Speaker 1: I mean, there could be you know, organisms that depend

838
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 1: on the poop of the sarlac for food or or

839
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:29,759
Speaker 1: for shelter in the same way that the poop of

840
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:33,000
Speaker 1: of of large you know, megafauna are essential to the

841
00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:35,919
Speaker 1: life cycles of organisms here on the surface of Earth.

842
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:39,359
Speaker 1: Here's one for you. Here's here's my hypothesis. Okay, the

843
00:45:39,440 --> 00:45:45,440
Speaker 1: sarlac secretes an acidic compound that slowly over time dissolves

844
00:45:45,480 --> 00:45:49,600
Speaker 1: the bedrock, dissolves the sedimentary rock down below where it

845
00:45:49,719 --> 00:45:53,160
Speaker 1: is resting in the ground and forms a karst cavity

846
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:56,319
Speaker 1: in the ground, basically creates its own poop cave and

847
00:45:56,360 --> 00:45:59,759
Speaker 1: then poops into the cave. H what do you think?

848
00:46:00,200 --> 00:46:02,759
Speaker 1: I like it? I like it. You could have a

849
00:46:02,840 --> 00:46:06,160
Speaker 1: whole uh, you know, a whole aspect of tattooing society

850
00:46:06,200 --> 00:46:09,000
Speaker 1: where like jawas are out there trying to dig down

851
00:46:09,080 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 1: to get those poop reserves from the star lacks, you know,

852
00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:14,760
Speaker 1: like especially if it's like ancient poop reserves of the sarlac,

853
00:46:14,840 --> 00:46:18,320
Speaker 1: it's aged and uh you know, highly valuable for something

854
00:46:18,400 --> 00:46:20,759
Speaker 1: or another. I'm sure. Uh oh, I've got it, the

855
00:46:20,800 --> 00:46:25,439
Speaker 1: most sought after fertilizer in the universe. Yes, the poop

856
00:46:25,520 --> 00:46:30,239
Speaker 1: must flow. Yes. Now, I mentioned earlier that not all

857
00:46:30,440 --> 00:46:33,799
Speaker 1: ant lions um are are going to be these these uh,

858
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:38,640
Speaker 1: these pit digging um trapped predators. You also have some

859
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:42,560
Speaker 1: that that that have other modes of existence. And we

860
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:46,160
Speaker 1: see this also with owl flies, which are uh an

861
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:49,600
Speaker 1: organism that look very similar as larva and also live

862
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 1: as ambush predators in the soil. They look again a

863
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:56,399
Speaker 1: lot like ant lions, but while it seems like they

864
00:46:56,440 --> 00:46:58,920
Speaker 1: have been known to obscure their lower bodies with sand

865
00:46:58,920 --> 00:47:02,600
Speaker 1: and debris. The al fly larva don't seem to engage

866
00:47:02,600 --> 00:47:05,800
Speaker 1: in the sort of robust pit based and stationary ambush

867
00:47:05,840 --> 00:47:10,080
Speaker 1: tactics that we see with those most notable species of antlions. Now,

868
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:13,000
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier that there is a very similar pit

869
00:47:13,080 --> 00:47:16,600
Speaker 1: trap predator which has a hunting strategy almost identical to

870
00:47:16,680 --> 00:47:19,160
Speaker 1: that of the ant lion, and this is a winged

871
00:47:19,160 --> 00:47:23,800
Speaker 1: insect family called Vermilion a day known as the worm lions.

872
00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:26,840
Speaker 1: I think this might actually be an even closer parallel

873
00:47:26,920 --> 00:47:30,960
Speaker 1: to the sarlac because it is a striking worm and

874
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:33,640
Speaker 1: in this way it kind of resembles the tentacles of

875
00:47:33,640 --> 00:47:36,719
Speaker 1: the carcoon, uh of the star lack of the pit

876
00:47:36,800 --> 00:47:40,719
Speaker 1: of carcoon. So despite how similar their pit trap strategies are,

877
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:44,759
Speaker 1: I was reading that interestingly, worm lions are not closely

878
00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:49,040
Speaker 1: related to ant lions. This appears to be another interesting

879
00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:53,520
Speaker 1: example of convergent evolution where in totally different ways, uh,

880
00:47:53,600 --> 00:47:57,520
Speaker 1: different organisms have discovered basically the same way to to

881
00:47:57,920 --> 00:48:00,239
Speaker 1: make a living, and in this case it's digging these

882
00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:03,480
Speaker 1: conical pit traps in the sand. Another thing I was

883
00:48:03,520 --> 00:48:07,040
Speaker 1: wondering is like, why do the conical pits look so similar?

884
00:48:07,320 --> 00:48:10,360
Speaker 1: If the hunters are not closely related, wouldn't the pits

885
00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:13,920
Speaker 1: be kind of more different for these different animals. Apparently

886
00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:16,840
Speaker 1: has to do with maths or like the geometry of

887
00:48:16,880 --> 00:48:20,480
Speaker 1: how sediments lay at an angle. Uh. The angles of

888
00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:22,799
Speaker 1: the pit slopes are determined by what's known as the

889
00:48:22,840 --> 00:48:26,719
Speaker 1: angle of repose, which is the steepest angle at which

890
00:48:26,719 --> 00:48:32,399
Speaker 1: a sloping surface formed of a loose material is stable. Interesting,

891
00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:34,800
Speaker 1: so you'll see that kind of like on the edges

892
00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:37,920
Speaker 1: of mountains where they're sediments sliding down, it will settle

893
00:48:37,960 --> 00:48:40,839
Speaker 1: into a certain angle that is stable. If it gets

894
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:43,120
Speaker 1: any steeper than that, it will start to collapse in

895
00:48:43,160 --> 00:48:46,520
Speaker 1: an avalancheal form. Yeah, that that makes sense. I should

896
00:48:46,520 --> 00:48:49,560
Speaker 1: also add that everyone should definitely look up a picture

897
00:48:49,680 --> 00:48:52,880
Speaker 1: of the worm lion because it is very very cool

898
00:48:52,880 --> 00:48:56,120
Speaker 1: looking at It has I think you mentioned like tentacle

899
00:48:56,400 --> 00:49:00,399
Speaker 1: like protrusions around its head. Uh, Like the image I'm

900
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:03,040
Speaker 1: looking at here looks like four of them. Oh, and

901
00:49:03,160 --> 00:49:06,680
Speaker 1: that it's body just itself looks like a tentacle. It

902
00:49:06,760 --> 00:49:09,719
Speaker 1: is the organism, but like when it's wrapping around an

903
00:49:09,760 --> 00:49:12,920
Speaker 1: ant or beetle or something that's falling into the trap. Uh,

904
00:49:13,000 --> 00:49:15,719
Speaker 1: it looks kind of like a sarlac tentacle. Yeah, like

905
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:19,759
Speaker 1: it's segmented, but but appears far more prehensile than you know,

906
00:49:20,160 --> 00:49:23,560
Speaker 1: something like a normal earthworm. But there is another organism

907
00:49:23,600 --> 00:49:26,200
Speaker 1: that's parallel to the sarlac in some ways I think

908
00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:29,279
Speaker 1: we should definitely talk about, and that is the predatory

909
00:49:29,360 --> 00:49:35,440
Speaker 1: polycute worm known as unisy afrodetois yes, also known as

910
00:49:35,440 --> 00:49:38,160
Speaker 1: a sand striker uh, and it has some other names

911
00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:40,279
Speaker 1: I'm not going to mention here on the show, but

912
00:49:40,600 --> 00:49:42,880
Speaker 1: that have been informally applied to it. But it is

913
00:49:43,040 --> 00:49:47,640
Speaker 1: essentially a rainbow colored marine deathworm and it buries itself

914
00:49:47,640 --> 00:49:51,319
Speaker 1: in the sand, ready to strike at passing prey. They

915
00:49:51,320 --> 00:49:54,560
Speaker 1: can reach lengths of nearly nine point eight feeders or

916
00:49:54,600 --> 00:49:58,840
Speaker 1: two pots, but most of its segmented body remains coiled

917
00:49:58,840 --> 00:50:02,120
Speaker 1: in the sand as an array of five antennae to

918
00:50:02,200 --> 00:50:04,560
Speaker 1: help it since prey, a feature that I think is

919
00:50:04,600 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 1: reminiscent of of you know, this idea that the sarlac

920
00:50:08,160 --> 00:50:10,680
Speaker 1: might have a root like systems of system of feelers,

921
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:13,160
Speaker 1: spines and tentacles, which you see in some of these

922
00:50:13,400 --> 00:50:16,080
Speaker 1: illustrations that try to get to the heart of the

923
00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:19,799
Speaker 1: star lac. But the sand striker. Here it strikes with

924
00:50:19,840 --> 00:50:25,560
Speaker 1: incredible speed, whipping out its mandible studded farynx to capture prey. Yeah,

925
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:28,239
Speaker 1: I think let's dwell on this just a little bit

926
00:50:28,239 --> 00:50:30,719
Speaker 1: more because this might have gone past really fast. This

927
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:33,840
Speaker 1: is a predatory worm buries on the sand, attacks and

928
00:50:33,920 --> 00:50:35,920
Speaker 1: it grows to like ten feet long. This is a

929
00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:39,480
Speaker 1: ten ft long or you know, three meter worm that

930
00:50:39,560 --> 00:50:42,200
Speaker 1: preys on fish and other animals in the sea. So

931
00:50:42,239 --> 00:50:44,759
Speaker 1: it'll just have its little head poking out. But if

932
00:50:44,760 --> 00:50:46,880
Speaker 1: you were to keep pulling this worm up out of

933
00:50:46,880 --> 00:50:48,960
Speaker 1: the ground, you could end up with like the magician's

934
00:50:49,000 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 1: scarf situation where it just keeps coming out as ten

935
00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:57,080
Speaker 1: ft long. I was reading that sometimes it's it's pincer

936
00:50:57,120 --> 00:51:03,040
Speaker 1: attack is so powerful that it chops pray fish in half. Uh.

937
00:51:03,080 --> 00:51:05,799
Speaker 1: And I was reading a Scientific American blog post from

938
00:51:05,880 --> 00:51:09,680
Speaker 1: from by writer named Becky Crew about these animals, and

939
00:51:10,000 --> 00:51:13,600
Speaker 1: she drew my attention to this one story about how

940
00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:16,960
Speaker 1: back in two thousand nine, at a marine aquarium in

941
00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:21,720
Speaker 1: a town called New key In in England, aquarium keepers

942
00:51:21,800 --> 00:51:25,719
Speaker 1: noticed that in this one tank the coral on display

943
00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:30,040
Speaker 1: and some of the fish and stuff kept accumulating weird damage.

944
00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:33,120
Speaker 1: It was as if something inside the tank was like

945
00:51:33,239 --> 00:51:37,120
Speaker 1: chopping parts of the coral formation off and killing the animals,

946
00:51:37,400 --> 00:51:40,000
Speaker 1: and there was no obvious culprit in the tank. So

947
00:51:40,040 --> 00:51:42,880
Speaker 1: they had to like remove rocks and coral and plants

948
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:44,880
Speaker 1: from this tank one at a time to find out

949
00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:48,640
Speaker 1: what was causing the attacks. And a curator named Matt

950
00:51:48,719 --> 00:51:51,279
Speaker 1: Slater was quoted in the Daily Mail at the time

951
00:51:51,320 --> 00:51:55,040
Speaker 1: talking about what happened. He said, quote, something was guzzling

952
00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:58,000
Speaker 1: our reef, but we had no idea what. We also

953
00:51:58,080 --> 00:52:01,480
Speaker 1: found an injured tank fish, so we laid traps, but

954
00:52:01,600 --> 00:52:04,560
Speaker 1: they got ripped apart in the night. That worm must

955
00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:07,760
Speaker 1: have obliterated the traps. The bait was full of hooks

956
00:52:07,800 --> 00:52:12,399
Speaker 1: which he must have just digested. Uh So, I don't

957
00:52:12,440 --> 00:52:14,759
Speaker 1: know if that sounds kind of hard to believe, but

958
00:52:14,880 --> 00:52:18,040
Speaker 1: if that's true, it would kind of mirror the sarlac

959
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:20,640
Speaker 1: digestion thing. But in any case, like it does seem

960
00:52:20,680 --> 00:52:23,080
Speaker 1: to be the case that they had one of these worms.

961
00:52:23,760 --> 00:52:27,080
Speaker 1: Uh One of these worms burrowed down in the bottom

962
00:52:27,120 --> 00:52:30,080
Speaker 1: of the tank, so the workers discovered that there was

963
00:52:30,120 --> 00:52:33,759
Speaker 1: a stowaway sarlac. Like this predatory burrowing sea worm was

964
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:36,400
Speaker 1: hiding down in the sediment at the bottom, and it

965
00:52:36,520 --> 00:52:39,840
Speaker 1: had probably snuck in among the coral that were transplated

966
00:52:39,840 --> 00:52:43,239
Speaker 1: into the transplanted into the tank years before and had

967
00:52:43,280 --> 00:52:47,439
Speaker 1: just grown there and hiding ever since. But this also

968
00:52:47,480 --> 00:52:50,440
Speaker 1: made me think, so this worm is fast, powerful, venomous,

969
00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:53,480
Speaker 1: mostly hidden down in the ground or down in the sediment.

970
00:52:53,560 --> 00:52:57,040
Speaker 1: How can prey animals defend themselves? Well, actually, I found

971
00:52:57,080 --> 00:53:00,000
Speaker 1: an interesting article about this where there is one stress

972
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:03,600
Speaker 1: rategy that's been uncovered and it was published in Scientific

973
00:53:03,600 --> 00:53:07,520
Speaker 1: Reports in It was by jose La Shot and Daniel

974
00:53:07,719 --> 00:53:12,680
Speaker 1: hog Walker Nagle called novel Mobbing Strategies on a fish

975
00:53:12,680 --> 00:53:17,160
Speaker 1: population against a sessile analid predator And basically the authors

976
00:53:17,200 --> 00:53:20,480
Speaker 1: here described this weird thing where these fish a type

977
00:53:20,520 --> 00:53:26,319
Speaker 1: of bream called Scalopsis athanus. They would where like one

978
00:53:26,360 --> 00:53:29,520
Speaker 1: fish would find one of these worms, would be near

979
00:53:29,560 --> 00:53:32,719
Speaker 1: it and discover it was there and would start spitting

980
00:53:32,960 --> 00:53:36,920
Speaker 1: jets of water toward the worm, and then other fish

981
00:53:36,920 --> 00:53:39,560
Speaker 1: would join in. These prey fish would join in this

982
00:53:39,640 --> 00:53:42,960
Speaker 1: mobbing behavior where they would all gather around and start

983
00:53:43,320 --> 00:53:46,200
Speaker 1: spitting these jets of water towards the worm, which apparently

984
00:53:46,239 --> 00:53:50,040
Speaker 1: caused the worm to retract down into the sediment. I'm

985
00:53:50,040 --> 00:53:52,239
Speaker 1: not sure exactly what's going on there. I mean, so

986
00:53:52,280 --> 00:53:55,280
Speaker 1: obviously this is some kind of group defensive behavior against

987
00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:58,360
Speaker 1: a predator when the predator's location is discovered. But it

988
00:53:58,440 --> 00:54:00,640
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if anything similar go on with the

989
00:54:00,680 --> 00:54:03,000
Speaker 1: sarlac or would it even need to Like, would you

990
00:54:03,040 --> 00:54:06,160
Speaker 1: need to have Banta's like spitting jets of air at

991
00:54:06,160 --> 00:54:08,240
Speaker 1: a starlac or something, or could they just stay away

992
00:54:08,280 --> 00:54:10,600
Speaker 1: from it? Yeah? I guess that's the thing about a

993
00:54:10,719 --> 00:54:15,000
Speaker 1: land based scenario versus the marine scenario, is that on

994
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:17,840
Speaker 1: the land once, unless you were a you know, in

995
00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:21,120
Speaker 1: a flying creature, by the time you got close enough

996
00:54:21,160 --> 00:54:23,200
Speaker 1: to the star lac to really be in danger to

997
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:26,680
Speaker 1: really need to spit at it, it's probably too late. Yeah,

998
00:54:26,719 --> 00:54:28,520
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, I think part of this this

999
00:54:28,640 --> 00:54:32,880
Speaker 1: behavior though, might just be not necessarily in like harming

1000
00:54:33,040 --> 00:54:36,000
Speaker 1: the worm or something, but in alerting the other con

1001
00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:39,279
Speaker 1: specifics to its location. So you can imagine something like

1002
00:54:39,320 --> 00:54:41,560
Speaker 1: that for trap predators too. I mean, I would. I

1003
00:54:41,600 --> 00:54:43,600
Speaker 1: don't know of any evidence like this, but I wouldn't

1004
00:54:43,640 --> 00:54:46,520
Speaker 1: be surprised if there are some types of ants or

1005
00:54:46,640 --> 00:54:49,759
Speaker 1: other prey insects of the ant lion that have some

1006
00:54:49,840 --> 00:54:54,640
Speaker 1: kind of group defense strategy where when one species identifies

1007
00:54:54,680 --> 00:54:57,160
Speaker 1: an ant lion pit, it can kind of like you know,

1008
00:54:57,280 --> 00:55:00,480
Speaker 1: sound the alarm and alert the others to to to

1009
00:55:00,560 --> 00:55:02,600
Speaker 1: what's happening there. I don't know of any evidence of that,

1010
00:55:02,640 --> 00:55:05,040
Speaker 1: but I would not be surprised to find out something

1011
00:55:05,080 --> 00:55:07,480
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, so you know, I think maybe the

1012
00:55:07,840 --> 00:55:12,120
Speaker 1: banthers might have some sort of um, some sort of

1013
00:55:12,160 --> 00:55:15,480
Speaker 1: the strategy to deal with that. Now, um, Ultimately, the

1014
00:55:15,520 --> 00:55:18,800
Speaker 1: sea is home to other bottom dwelling ambush predators as well,

1015
00:55:18,920 --> 00:55:21,720
Speaker 1: more than we could conceivably list in the in the

1016
00:55:21,719 --> 00:55:23,640
Speaker 1: the episode here. But you have things like the devil

1017
00:55:23,719 --> 00:55:26,839
Speaker 1: scorpion fish and the ward eye star gazer, and if

1018
00:55:26,840 --> 00:55:30,799
Speaker 1: you watch enough, um, you know, underwater documentaries, you'll see

1019
00:55:30,840 --> 00:55:34,000
Speaker 1: some of these bizarre and wondrous creatures. All Right, we

1020
00:55:34,040 --> 00:55:36,120
Speaker 1: need to take another break, but we'll be right back

1021
00:55:36,160 --> 00:55:43,640
Speaker 1: to discuss digestion for a thousand years. Thank Alright, we're back. Okay,

1022
00:55:43,680 --> 00:55:45,400
Speaker 1: So I think we need to finish up today by

1023
00:55:45,440 --> 00:55:48,839
Speaker 1: talking about the idea of the star lacks really slow digestion.

1024
00:55:48,960 --> 00:55:51,640
Speaker 1: Remember C. Three p O says that when you fall

1025
00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:55,160
Speaker 1: into the all powerful starlac again. I'm not maybe things

1026
00:55:55,239 --> 00:55:56,919
Speaker 1: this can come up again. I'm not quite sure why

1027
00:55:56,920 --> 00:56:00,400
Speaker 1: the star lack is all powerful. It seems relatively powerful

1028
00:56:00,440 --> 00:56:03,080
Speaker 1: within its own mouth and the range right around there,

1029
00:56:03,120 --> 00:56:10,120
Speaker 1: but beyond its powers rapidly diminish. Um Uh. But c

1030
00:56:10,560 --> 00:56:13,040
Speaker 1: P says in there in the belly, you will find

1031
00:56:13,040 --> 00:56:16,280
Speaker 1: a new definition of pain and suffering as you're slowly digested.

1032
00:56:16,320 --> 00:56:19,760
Speaker 1: Over a thousand years now, we've already discussed the slow

1033
00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:23,560
Speaker 1: metabolism and of the eating machine, the ant lion. But

1034
00:56:23,640 --> 00:56:26,600
Speaker 1: I want to look at another emblem of slow digestion,

1035
00:56:26,719 --> 00:56:29,600
Speaker 1: this time of mammal I think we should look at

1036
00:56:29,640 --> 00:56:33,439
Speaker 1: the sloth. And now there are a lot of ways

1037
00:56:33,480 --> 00:56:37,399
Speaker 1: actually that sloths have been observed to be generally slow. Right,

1038
00:56:37,520 --> 00:56:41,000
Speaker 1: the name, their English name is not a coincidence. Uh.

1039
00:56:41,040 --> 00:56:44,719
Speaker 1: And this this slowness does extend not just to their

1040
00:56:44,760 --> 00:56:47,000
Speaker 1: movements through the trees. You know, if you watch them

1041
00:56:47,040 --> 00:56:49,640
Speaker 1: climb something, they tend to be very slow moving creatures.

1042
00:56:50,000 --> 00:56:54,280
Speaker 1: But their slowness extends down to the chemical, the biochemical

1043
00:56:54,360 --> 00:56:57,680
Speaker 1: level within their bodies. I was looking at a study

1044
00:56:57,760 --> 00:57:02,280
Speaker 1: by Jonathan and Pauli ms Karaiah Peery, Emily D. Fountain

1045
00:57:02,680 --> 00:57:07,400
Speaker 1: and William H. Kerasov called arboreal foliovores limit their energetic

1046
00:57:07,440 --> 00:57:11,200
Speaker 1: output all the way to slothfulness in The American Naturalist

1047
00:57:11,280 --> 00:57:14,719
Speaker 1: in sixteen. And the authors here are trying to explore

1048
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:20,480
Speaker 1: possible reasons that animals they call arboreal folivores animals that

1049
00:57:21,160 --> 00:57:23,640
Speaker 1: eat tree leaves, hang out in the trees, eat eat

1050
00:57:23,720 --> 00:57:27,400
Speaker 1: leaves from trees, why they are relatively rare compared to

1051
00:57:27,440 --> 00:57:29,880
Speaker 1: some other types of animals and do not display as

1052
00:57:29,960 --> 00:57:33,760
Speaker 1: much adaptive radiation as some other animals. And adaptive radiation

1053
00:57:33,800 --> 00:57:37,160
Speaker 1: here means, uh, you know, diversifying of the species into

1054
00:57:37,200 --> 00:57:41,000
Speaker 1: different ecological niches, basically like evolving into many different types

1055
00:57:41,040 --> 00:57:44,600
Speaker 1: and variations to fill ecological niches. You don't see a

1056
00:57:44,600 --> 00:57:47,840
Speaker 1: lot of this with animals like sloths. And so they

1057
00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:50,760
Speaker 1: point out that, you know, like mature tree leaves that

1058
00:57:50,920 --> 00:57:54,520
Speaker 1: the dietary the main diet source of these animals like sloths,

1059
00:57:54,520 --> 00:57:57,320
Speaker 1: and there are other animals like this two Pandas Koalas

1060
00:57:57,360 --> 00:58:00,480
Speaker 1: and so forth. Mature tree leaves are not a high

1061
00:58:00,600 --> 00:58:03,680
Speaker 1: quality food. They tend to be tough and woody. Often

1062
00:58:03,680 --> 00:58:06,160
Speaker 1: they've got some kind of poisons or tannins or some

1063
00:58:06,240 --> 00:58:10,560
Speaker 1: kind of unpleasant chemical in them. It's generally really difficult

1064
00:58:10,720 --> 00:58:15,440
Speaker 1: to live by eating, digesting, and extracting energy from mature

1065
00:58:15,520 --> 00:58:20,080
Speaker 1: tree leaves, but sloths do it. So maybe the energy

1066
00:58:20,160 --> 00:58:24,960
Speaker 1: constraints on these animals have somehow controlled their spread and evolution.

1067
00:58:25,360 --> 00:58:28,600
Speaker 1: So the authors here wanted to measure the metabolic rates

1068
00:58:28,640 --> 00:58:32,320
Speaker 1: of sloths in Costa Rica, and they write, quote, we

1069
00:58:32,560 --> 00:58:37,400
Speaker 1: quantified the field metabolic rate or FMR, movement and body

1070
00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:42,000
Speaker 1: temperature for syn topic two and three toed sloths, extreme

1071
00:58:42,240 --> 00:58:46,960
Speaker 1: arboreal fullivorees that differ in their degree of specialization. Both

1072
00:58:47,000 --> 00:58:51,600
Speaker 1: species expended little energy, but three toed sloths possessed the

1073
00:58:51,640 --> 00:58:55,880
Speaker 1: lowest FMR recorded for any mammal. And so the three

1074
00:58:55,920 --> 00:58:58,880
Speaker 1: toed sloth lives on a on a field metabolic rate

1075
00:58:58,920 --> 00:59:01,200
Speaker 1: of a hundred and sixty two kill a jewels per

1076
00:59:01,280 --> 00:59:04,480
Speaker 1: day per kilogram of body weight. Now that number alone

1077
00:59:04,560 --> 00:59:06,560
Speaker 1: might not mean much to you, but comparing it to

1078
00:59:06,640 --> 00:59:10,360
Speaker 1: other animals, uh, it's way lower than say the howler monkey,

1079
00:59:10,800 --> 00:59:14,320
Speaker 1: who who has a field metabolic grade of five hundred

1080
00:59:14,320 --> 00:59:17,080
Speaker 1: and eighty three killer jewels per day per kilogram of

1081
00:59:17,080 --> 00:59:20,400
Speaker 1: body weight. It's lower than koalas at four hundred and

1082
00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:24,280
Speaker 1: ten even the giant panda is more at five The

1083
00:59:24,720 --> 00:59:28,960
Speaker 1: three toads lost is the lowest ever measured uh at

1084
00:59:28,960 --> 00:59:30,960
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty two kill a jewels per day

1085
00:59:30,960 --> 00:59:33,520
Speaker 1: per kilogram, And so in a way it is a

1086
00:59:33,600 --> 00:59:39,360
Speaker 1: profound evolutionary experiment in slowing everything down. And this is

1087
00:59:39,440 --> 00:59:42,560
Speaker 1: historically in a kind of funny and interesting way lad

1088
00:59:42,680 --> 00:59:47,960
Speaker 1: some thinkers to view sloths as as some kind of

1089
00:59:48,440 --> 00:59:51,680
Speaker 1: like like that there's a problem with their existence, that

1090
00:59:51,720 --> 00:59:55,120
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with them, Like the Count de Buffon,

1091
00:59:55,520 --> 00:59:58,280
Speaker 1: you know, George Louis la Clerk, Count of Pafon, who

1092
00:59:58,320 --> 01:00:00,640
Speaker 1: we talked about in our Age of the Earth episode,

1093
01:00:00,680 --> 01:00:03,840
Speaker 1: because he did some experiments trying to uh, trying to

1094
01:00:03,880 --> 01:00:06,240
Speaker 1: determine the age of the Earth based on I believe

1095
01:00:06,320 --> 01:00:07,960
Speaker 1: his idea had to do with like how long it

1096
01:00:08,000 --> 01:00:10,600
Speaker 1: would take the Earth to cool to its current temperature.

1097
01:00:10,960 --> 01:00:15,080
Speaker 1: But he wrote this huge, multi volume natural history work

1098
01:00:15,160 --> 01:00:17,760
Speaker 1: during his life where he tried to become you know,

1099
01:00:17,840 --> 01:00:21,280
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century uh plenty of the elder, you know,

1100
01:00:21,320 --> 01:00:24,400
Speaker 1: to catalog all of the stuff in the world and

1101
01:00:24,440 --> 01:00:27,800
Speaker 1: tell you all about it. And his section on sloths

1102
01:00:28,080 --> 01:00:31,720
Speaker 1: is is kind of hilarious. Are you ready for this Robert, Yeah,

1103
01:00:32,080 --> 01:00:35,840
Speaker 1: let's bring it on, Okay, so he says. These animals

1104
01:00:35,840 --> 01:00:39,800
Speaker 1: have neither incisive nor canine teeth. Their eyes are dull

1105
01:00:39,960 --> 01:00:43,280
Speaker 1: and almost concealed with hair. Their mouths are wide, and

1106
01:00:43,280 --> 01:00:46,400
Speaker 1: their lips thick and heavy. Their fur is course and

1107
01:00:46,480 --> 01:00:50,640
Speaker 1: looks like dried grass. Their thighs seem almost disjointed from

1108
01:00:50,640 --> 01:00:54,480
Speaker 1: the haunches, their legs very short and badly shaped. They

1109
01:00:54,480 --> 01:00:58,080
Speaker 1: have no soles to their feet, nor toe is separately movable,

1110
01:00:58,280 --> 01:01:01,120
Speaker 1: but only two or three claws like sessively long and

1111
01:01:01,240 --> 01:01:04,920
Speaker 1: crooked downwards, which move together and are only useful to

1112
01:01:04,960 --> 01:01:09,640
Speaker 1: the animal in climbing. Slowness, stupidity, and even habitual pain

1113
01:01:10,120 --> 01:01:14,400
Speaker 1: result from its uncouth conformation. They have no arms, either

1114
01:01:14,480 --> 01:01:17,840
Speaker 1: to attack or defend themselves, nor are they furnished with

1115
01:01:17,880 --> 01:01:21,160
Speaker 1: any means of security, as they can neither scratch up

1116
01:01:21,200 --> 01:01:24,480
Speaker 1: the earth nor seek for safety by flight. But confined

1117
01:01:24,560 --> 01:01:27,200
Speaker 1: to a small spot of ground or to the tree

1118
01:01:27,280 --> 01:01:30,480
Speaker 1: under which they are brought forth, they remain prisoners in

1119
01:01:30,520 --> 01:01:34,000
Speaker 1: the midst of an extended space, unable to move more

1120
01:01:34,040 --> 01:01:37,120
Speaker 1: than three feet in an hour. They climb with difficulty

1121
01:01:37,160 --> 01:01:40,760
Speaker 1: and pain, and their plaintive and interrupted cry they dare

1122
01:01:40,840 --> 01:01:44,600
Speaker 1: only utter by night. After some more moralizing about how

1123
01:01:44,600 --> 01:01:48,000
Speaker 1: awful they are, he says, uh, we have already observed

1124
01:01:48,000 --> 01:01:51,560
Speaker 1: that it seems as if all that could be does exist,

1125
01:01:52,040 --> 01:01:55,160
Speaker 1: And of this the sloths appear to be a striking proof.

1126
01:01:55,440 --> 01:01:58,880
Speaker 1: They constitute the last term of existence in the order

1127
01:01:58,920 --> 01:02:02,640
Speaker 1: of animals endowed with flesh and blood. One more defect

1128
01:02:02,760 --> 01:02:06,439
Speaker 1: and they could not have existed. Oh my goodness, Now

1129
01:02:06,520 --> 01:02:09,720
Speaker 1: I think this is funny because like in some ways, uh,

1130
01:02:10,040 --> 01:02:14,040
Speaker 1: you know, Bafon was considered a very you know, learned

1131
01:02:14,120 --> 01:02:17,360
Speaker 1: man of his day. But like just the amazing ignorance

1132
01:02:17,400 --> 01:02:20,959
Speaker 1: of this is just like, given what we know about

1133
01:02:21,000 --> 01:02:23,680
Speaker 1: animals now. And le Clark had all kinds of terrible ideas.

1134
01:02:23,760 --> 01:02:27,560
Speaker 1: You know, he he endorsed scientific racism. He believed that

1135
01:02:27,640 --> 01:02:31,680
Speaker 1: like the animals of the New World were somehow inferior

1136
01:02:31,720 --> 01:02:35,000
Speaker 1: to the animals of the Old world. Uh, there's all

1137
01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:38,000
Speaker 1: this weird, genuine disgust in his writing when he talks

1138
01:02:38,040 --> 01:02:41,200
Speaker 1: about animals found in North and South America. So he

1139
01:02:41,240 --> 01:02:45,280
Speaker 1: had all these extremely misguided theories. Because all this stuff

1140
01:02:45,320 --> 01:02:49,040
Speaker 1: that he characterizes as defects with this species, I think

1141
01:02:49,120 --> 01:02:51,040
Speaker 1: we would probably look at and say, I don't know,

1142
01:02:51,080 --> 01:02:56,000
Speaker 1: given our modern evolutionary understanding, you are probably not understanding

1143
01:02:56,040 --> 01:03:00,680
Speaker 1: these correctly. These are probably not actually defects, these are adaptations.

1144
01:03:01,400 --> 01:03:04,400
Speaker 1: His his thinking falls prey to the naive version of

1145
01:03:04,560 --> 01:03:07,120
Speaker 1: survival of the fittest, as you know, the fittest, not

1146
01:03:07,280 --> 01:03:09,760
Speaker 1: as in best adapted to its environment, but as like

1147
01:03:10,160 --> 01:03:14,920
Speaker 1: the toughest, the buffest, the biggest, sharpest teeth and so forth. Yeah. Absolutely,

1148
01:03:14,960 --> 01:03:19,200
Speaker 1: I mean it's um in his his description of the sloth,

1149
01:03:19,280 --> 01:03:21,840
Speaker 1: really it comes off like a like a dis track,

1150
01:03:22,280 --> 01:03:25,480
Speaker 1: you know, against against the slot. It also reminds me

1151
01:03:25,520 --> 01:03:28,240
Speaker 1: a little bit of of Darwin's descriptions of the with

1152
01:03:28,320 --> 01:03:30,920
Speaker 1: the marine iguanas. Oh yeah, the iguanas of the glob.

1153
01:03:31,160 --> 01:03:33,960
Speaker 1: I mean Darwin didn't normally fall into this way of thinking,

1154
01:03:34,000 --> 01:03:38,320
Speaker 1: but occasionally there was some animal he didn't like. Yeah,

1155
01:03:38,720 --> 01:03:42,920
Speaker 1: but the sloth, like the main like counter arguments. In

1156
01:03:42,960 --> 01:03:45,560
Speaker 1: addition to to what we said here about the true

1157
01:03:45,640 --> 01:03:49,120
Speaker 1: nature of adaptation, I would also you know, put forth,

1158
01:03:49,160 --> 01:03:52,200
Speaker 1: at first of all, sloths tend to be cute. That

1159
01:03:52,240 --> 01:03:55,360
Speaker 1: tends to be our interpretation of them, especially baby sloths

1160
01:03:55,440 --> 01:03:58,640
Speaker 1: or slothes if you're using the British pronunciation but but

1161
01:03:58,720 --> 01:04:02,280
Speaker 1: also the adults there's a certain an adorable nous to them.

1162
01:04:02,320 --> 01:04:05,680
Speaker 1: And I have to say when when I was in

1163
01:04:05,920 --> 01:04:08,360
Speaker 1: Costa Rica with my family and we went on a hike,

1164
01:04:08,600 --> 01:04:11,880
Speaker 1: uh through the forest there and we got to see

1165
01:04:11,960 --> 01:04:15,200
Speaker 1: got a glimpse a wild sloth like where we you know,

1166
01:04:15,240 --> 01:04:18,000
Speaker 1: had to stand there for several minutes and watch what

1167
01:04:18,240 --> 01:04:21,840
Speaker 1: was presumed to be a sloth finally move and slowly

1168
01:04:22,080 --> 01:04:26,280
Speaker 1: confirm it's it's sloth hood Like that was a genuinely

1169
01:04:26,360 --> 01:04:28,840
Speaker 1: magical moment. Like that has to be one of one

1170
01:04:28,880 --> 01:04:32,520
Speaker 1: of my top interactions with wildlife ever. Like it just

1171
01:04:32,640 --> 01:04:37,440
Speaker 1: it truly felt like magic and time was standing still. Um. So,

1172
01:04:37,600 --> 01:04:39,800
Speaker 1: I you know, it's it's very difficult for me to

1173
01:04:39,800 --> 01:04:42,560
Speaker 1: to put my put myself in the mindset of of

1174
01:04:42,800 --> 01:04:47,920
Speaker 1: sloth hating um worldview. I think Buffon would think you're

1175
01:04:47,920 --> 01:04:50,680
Speaker 1: a sucker, But yeah, I think he was quite clearly wrong.

1176
01:04:51,600 --> 01:04:55,160
Speaker 1: Like the sloths, including the extremely slow, yes very slow

1177
01:04:55,280 --> 01:04:58,400
Speaker 1: three tote sloth, are incredibly well adapted to their environments

1178
01:04:58,400 --> 01:05:01,920
Speaker 1: in very interesting ways. I was reading an article about

1179
01:05:01,920 --> 01:05:05,840
Speaker 1: this on the Conversation from sixteen by a British zoologist

1180
01:05:05,920 --> 01:05:09,360
Speaker 1: named Becky Cliff who I believe she either currently works

1181
01:05:09,480 --> 01:05:13,080
Speaker 1: or has worked in a sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica, so,

1182
01:05:13,200 --> 01:05:15,160
Speaker 1: you know, doing a lot of hands on work with sloths.

1183
01:05:15,560 --> 01:05:19,280
Speaker 1: Um and and so she's writing about these adaptations. She says,

1184
01:05:19,320 --> 01:05:21,800
Speaker 1: of course, it's true that sloths are slow in pretty

1185
01:05:21,880 --> 01:05:25,280
Speaker 1: much every way. At the sloth sanctuary she works out

1186
01:05:25,320 --> 01:05:29,280
Speaker 1: in Costa Rica, they use these sloth backpacks two track

1187
01:05:29,400 --> 01:05:31,960
Speaker 1: sloth movement in the wild. And yes, it's true they

1188
01:05:32,320 --> 01:05:35,240
Speaker 1: move very slowly and they move very little. But there's

1189
01:05:35,280 --> 01:05:38,919
Speaker 1: a reason for this. It's not weakness. It is strategic

1190
01:05:39,000 --> 01:05:43,240
Speaker 1: in an evolutionary sense. Slow movement uses a lot less

1191
01:05:43,400 --> 01:05:47,320
Speaker 1: energy than fast movement. Remember that metabolic discovery we were

1192
01:05:47,360 --> 01:05:50,760
Speaker 1: talking about earlier. Three toad sloths have the slowest metabolism

1193
01:05:50,800 --> 01:05:53,920
Speaker 1: of any known mammal. In a weird way, they're almost

1194
01:05:53,960 --> 01:05:55,880
Speaker 1: like you can imagine them kind of like going through

1195
01:05:55,880 --> 01:05:59,040
Speaker 1: a convergent evolution thing, but across kingdoms of life. They're

1196
01:05:59,040 --> 01:06:03,200
Speaker 1: trying to slowly over the eons converge with plants. Uh,

1197
01:06:03,440 --> 01:06:06,560
Speaker 1: you know, like so too. And to make this possible,

1198
01:06:07,080 --> 01:06:09,640
Speaker 1: you know, this this low metabolic rate. Of course, they

1199
01:06:09,680 --> 01:06:13,120
Speaker 1: move very slowly, but they also regulate their body temperature

1200
01:06:13,200 --> 01:06:17,040
Speaker 1: differently than most mammals. Do you know. Mammals have their

1201
01:06:17,080 --> 01:06:19,560
Speaker 1: warm blooded they have thermoregulation, they've got to keep their

1202
01:06:19,600 --> 01:06:23,880
Speaker 1: body temperature up through internal chemical means. But sloths manage

1203
01:06:23,880 --> 01:06:26,720
Speaker 1: a much lower body temperature than your average mammal. They

1204
01:06:26,760 --> 01:06:28,959
Speaker 1: they tend to go it around thirty two point seven

1205
01:06:28,960 --> 01:06:32,600
Speaker 1: degrees celsius or ninety one degrees fahrenheit. That's a full like, uh,

1206
01:06:32,640 --> 01:06:35,360
Speaker 1: you know, seven or eight degrees lower than our average

1207
01:06:35,360 --> 01:06:39,480
Speaker 1: body temperature. And uh. Cliff mentions that their metabolic rate

1208
01:06:39,560 --> 01:06:43,400
Speaker 1: is somewhere between forty two seventy four per cent of

1209
01:06:43,440 --> 01:06:46,400
Speaker 1: what you would expect for an animal of its body mass.

1210
01:06:46,440 --> 01:06:50,240
Speaker 1: So they're they're they're going way underweight on energy needs.

1211
01:06:51,280 --> 01:06:53,640
Speaker 1: And so the question might be, well, why live like this?

1212
01:06:53,760 --> 01:06:56,160
Speaker 1: Why would you be so slow have such a relatively

1213
01:06:56,200 --> 01:06:59,440
Speaker 1: cool body and all that. Again, it's cheap, it's mega

1214
01:06:59,600 --> 01:07:04,080
Speaker 1: chi Sloths require much less food energy than other mammals

1215
01:07:04,080 --> 01:07:06,960
Speaker 1: of similar size. They can eat this, you know, this

1216
01:07:07,040 --> 01:07:09,240
Speaker 1: kind of bad food. I mean, it wouldn't be bad

1217
01:07:09,280 --> 01:07:12,120
Speaker 1: from their point of view, but it's low caloric density.

1218
01:07:12,200 --> 01:07:15,600
Speaker 1: This food like tough fibrous tree leaves, and they don't

1219
01:07:15,640 --> 01:07:17,840
Speaker 1: even need to eat all that much of it. Usually,

1220
01:07:17,840 --> 01:07:20,560
Speaker 1: if you're an animal that's subsisting on tough plant matter,

1221
01:07:20,880 --> 01:07:23,320
Speaker 1: you have to eat a ton of it to survive.

1222
01:07:23,760 --> 01:07:26,440
Speaker 1: Cliff points out that howler monkeys, who also live in

1223
01:07:26,480 --> 01:07:28,840
Speaker 1: the trees and eat tough leaves, they have to eat

1224
01:07:28,960 --> 01:07:32,480
Speaker 1: three times as much food per kilogram of body mass

1225
01:07:32,520 --> 01:07:36,040
Speaker 1: as the sloth does, and so requiring three times less

1226
01:07:36,080 --> 01:07:39,000
Speaker 1: food than something else in your niche opens up all

1227
01:07:39,120 --> 01:07:43,120
Speaker 1: kinds of possibilities for survival. So the sloth might not

1228
01:07:43,240 --> 01:07:46,080
Speaker 1: be lean and fast moving in a physical movement sense,

1229
01:07:46,120 --> 01:07:48,520
Speaker 1: but in a chemical sense, it is lean. It is

1230
01:07:48,560 --> 01:07:50,920
Speaker 1: like it has a lot to work with. It's got

1231
01:07:51,000 --> 01:07:53,560
Speaker 1: this wiggle room. But here's another thing we get to

1232
01:07:53,680 --> 01:07:57,480
Speaker 1: with sloth. Sloth metabolism in a in a way that's

1233
01:07:57,480 --> 01:08:01,000
Speaker 1: related to their very slow metabolism. They all so digest

1234
01:08:01,120 --> 01:08:04,760
Speaker 1: food really slow. And this brings us back to the sarlac.

1235
01:08:05,520 --> 01:08:08,040
Speaker 1: Cliff points at research saying, well, so we we don't

1236
01:08:08,040 --> 01:08:11,520
Speaker 1: know the exact rate, uh you know, the exact bounded

1237
01:08:11,600 --> 01:08:14,360
Speaker 1: rates of sloth digestion, but there are estimates that it

1238
01:08:14,400 --> 01:08:18,280
Speaker 1: takes food between like a hundred and fifty seven hours

1239
01:08:18,840 --> 01:08:22,280
Speaker 1: or up to twelve hundred hours to pass through the

1240
01:08:22,320 --> 01:08:25,800
Speaker 1: slots digestive system. So the upper end of this estimate

1241
01:08:25,880 --> 01:08:29,280
Speaker 1: would be like fifty days. Um. And you can imagine,

1242
01:08:29,320 --> 01:08:31,840
Speaker 1: you know, having having your food waste in your body

1243
01:08:31,960 --> 01:08:35,960
Speaker 1: for that long. Robert, you said before we came on

1244
01:08:36,000 --> 01:08:38,880
Speaker 1: to record today that you have actually watched video of

1245
01:08:38,880 --> 01:08:42,200
Speaker 1: a sloth pooping. You people at home, If you have

1246
01:08:42,280 --> 01:08:45,280
Speaker 1: not seen this, you should look it up. It's fair warning.

1247
01:08:45,400 --> 01:08:49,519
Speaker 1: It looks kind of traumatic, like there's a lot coming out. Yeah,

1248
01:08:49,560 --> 01:08:51,880
Speaker 1: And I mean, the other interesting thing about slots pooping

1249
01:08:51,920 --> 01:08:54,200
Speaker 1: is that, of course they have to climb down to

1250
01:08:54,320 --> 01:08:57,160
Speaker 1: do it. Uh. They don't just poop out of the branches.

1251
01:08:57,280 --> 01:09:00,600
Speaker 1: They return to the earth to carry this out. Yeah.

1252
01:09:00,720 --> 01:09:04,240
Speaker 1: Uh and so Cliff rights quote. Unsurprisingly, the sloth's four

1253
01:09:04,320 --> 01:09:08,080
Speaker 1: chambered stomach is constantly full, and so more leaves can

1254
01:09:08,160 --> 01:09:11,880
Speaker 1: only be ingested when digesta leaves the stomach and enters

1255
01:09:11,920 --> 01:09:16,200
Speaker 1: the small intestine. Food intake and critically, energy expenditure are

1256
01:09:16,280 --> 01:09:20,879
Speaker 1: likely limited by digestion rate and room in the stomach. Indeed,

1257
01:09:20,920 --> 01:09:23,559
Speaker 1: the abdominal contents of a sloth can account for up

1258
01:09:23,600 --> 01:09:27,240
Speaker 1: to thirty seven percent of their body mass, so it's

1259
01:09:27,360 --> 01:09:29,840
Speaker 1: digesting for days at a time, maybe you know, a

1260
01:09:29,880 --> 01:09:33,240
Speaker 1: month or more at a time, digesting food. It's maybe

1261
01:09:33,240 --> 01:09:35,920
Speaker 1: a third of its body weight or more is the

1262
01:09:35,960 --> 01:09:38,760
Speaker 1: poop that it's got inside it right now, and it

1263
01:09:38,960 --> 01:09:41,920
Speaker 1: you know, hasn't purged yet. You can also imagine though

1264
01:09:41,920 --> 01:09:44,240
Speaker 1: that like why would it hang on this long? I

1265
01:09:44,280 --> 01:09:46,160
Speaker 1: can also imagine this having to do with what you're

1266
01:09:46,160 --> 01:09:47,840
Speaker 1: talking about, that it has to come down to the

1267
01:09:47,880 --> 01:09:52,320
Speaker 1: forest floor to do it, which is inherently a vulnerable activity.

1268
01:09:52,479 --> 01:09:55,040
Speaker 1: So and because it's slow moving, you might want to

1269
01:09:55,120 --> 01:09:58,639
Speaker 1: limit those trips down to the vulnerable position as much

1270
01:09:58,640 --> 01:10:01,800
Speaker 1: as possible. Yeah, it's if you live in a you know,

1271
01:10:01,840 --> 01:10:04,759
Speaker 1: a walk up apartment in New York and you prefer

1272
01:10:04,960 --> 01:10:09,080
Speaker 1: to um to poop in the say the jobba juice

1273
01:10:09,640 --> 01:10:12,400
Speaker 1: down on the street. I think that was the joke

1274
01:10:12,479 --> 01:10:16,280
Speaker 1: from Dirty Rock toilet image. You might limit how many

1275
01:10:16,320 --> 01:10:20,519
Speaker 1: times you'd go to the jobba juice to poop exactly. Yes, yeah,

1276
01:10:20,560 --> 01:10:23,439
Speaker 1: you might. You might wait, Awhile, there was another interesting

1277
01:10:23,479 --> 01:10:25,800
Speaker 1: fact that came up in this article, by the way,

1278
01:10:25,840 --> 01:10:29,200
Speaker 1: that the Cliff mentioned that I had never heard about before. UM, So,

1279
01:10:29,600 --> 01:10:31,640
Speaker 1: you know, the obvious question might be, how does a

1280
01:10:31,680 --> 01:10:34,000
Speaker 1: sloth of aid predators. If it's so slow, it's not

1281
01:10:34,040 --> 01:10:37,880
Speaker 1: a fighter, it doesn't run, it's a hider. Uh. So

1282
01:10:38,000 --> 01:10:41,559
Speaker 1: the sloths have to protect themselves via camouflage, and Cliff

1283
01:10:41,600 --> 01:10:44,519
Speaker 1: mentions in an article that uh that all of the

1284
01:10:44,520 --> 01:10:48,679
Speaker 1: sloth's major predators like jaguars, awesl lots, harpy eagles are

1285
01:10:48,720 --> 01:10:52,479
Speaker 1: primarily visual hunters, so camouflage can actually go a long

1286
01:10:52,479 --> 01:10:56,120
Speaker 1: way to protect you. And she points to an interesting

1287
01:10:56,479 --> 01:11:02,040
Speaker 1: suggested symbiotic relationship with algae with between sloths and algae

1288
01:11:02,080 --> 01:11:05,680
Speaker 1: that grow in the sloths for and this algae is

1289
01:11:05,720 --> 01:11:09,000
Speaker 1: apparently passed on from mother to offspring, so it is

1290
01:11:09,439 --> 01:11:15,240
Speaker 1: visual camouflage through inherited microbiota, which is pretty interesting. Yeah.

1291
01:11:15,320 --> 01:11:17,280
Speaker 1: I do have to say that time that I got

1292
01:11:17,280 --> 01:11:21,200
Speaker 1: to to see, not only see, but to to find, uh,

1293
01:11:21,280 --> 01:11:23,280
Speaker 1: the sloth in the wild, like it wasn't pointed out

1294
01:11:23,280 --> 01:11:25,559
Speaker 1: by a guide. Well, it's just the whole time I

1295
01:11:25,680 --> 01:11:27,840
Speaker 1: knew based on what the guys that told us that

1296
01:11:27,880 --> 01:11:30,800
Speaker 1: there might be sloths in the trees, we just have

1297
01:11:30,880 --> 01:11:33,160
Speaker 1: to look really hard for them, and it did. It

1298
01:11:33,200 --> 01:11:36,200
Speaker 1: took forever to see this this creature because you're just

1299
01:11:36,280 --> 01:11:41,080
Speaker 1: kind of constantly on the lookout for possible movement, possible lumps,

1300
01:11:41,560 --> 01:11:43,679
Speaker 1: uh you know in the in these you know, rich

1301
01:11:43,760 --> 01:11:46,759
Speaker 1: canopy of trees that might be a slot. And most

1302
01:11:46,760 --> 01:11:48,640
Speaker 1: of the time I was wrong, or at least I

1303
01:11:48,680 --> 01:11:51,120
Speaker 1: was unable to confirm that what I was looking at

1304
01:11:51,160 --> 01:11:54,839
Speaker 1: at a distance was a living creature at all. So

1305
01:11:54,840 --> 01:11:57,559
Speaker 1: so when it really I was more lucky than anything.

1306
01:11:57,600 --> 01:11:59,800
Speaker 1: I think that I was able to to to zero

1307
01:11:59,840 --> 01:12:02,280
Speaker 1: we in on this this lump in the trees, and

1308
01:12:02,280 --> 01:12:05,479
Speaker 1: then finally see it move and finally make out the

1309
01:12:05,520 --> 01:12:08,320
Speaker 1: movements of of an actual swath. So yeah, I imagine

1310
01:12:08,360 --> 01:12:11,600
Speaker 1: they have a you know, tremendous advantage versus predators that

1311
01:12:11,680 --> 01:12:15,000
Speaker 1: are doing the same thing, you know, on constant lookout for,

1312
01:12:15,400 --> 01:12:18,880
Speaker 1: uh for prey amid the tree limbs. I don't know this,

1313
01:12:18,960 --> 01:12:22,360
Speaker 1: but I'd also guess that slower metabolism, slower movement would

1314
01:12:22,439 --> 01:12:26,800
Speaker 1: make you less fidgety. Yeah, yeah, they're not fidgety like

1315
01:12:26,840 --> 01:12:29,000
Speaker 1: I remember. That was another thing, is like the movements

1316
01:12:29,040 --> 01:12:34,960
Speaker 1: were We're very slow and fluid and kind of far between,

1317
01:12:35,080 --> 01:12:38,120
Speaker 1: like it wasn't It was wasn't like looking for the

1318
01:12:38,160 --> 01:12:41,080
Speaker 1: movement of a traditional creature, you know, or at least

1319
01:12:41,080 --> 01:12:42,920
Speaker 1: the kind of creatures that I tend to find myself

1320
01:12:43,000 --> 01:12:44,680
Speaker 1: looking for, you know, like the movements of say a

1321
01:12:44,720 --> 01:12:47,400
Speaker 1: squirrel or a or a chipmunk or a bird of

1322
01:12:47,520 --> 01:12:50,280
Speaker 1: some sort. You know, it's a it's it's a totally

1323
01:12:50,360 --> 01:12:55,840
Speaker 1: different animal. Can we imagine a sarlac evolving over over

1324
01:12:55,880 --> 01:12:58,800
Speaker 1: a very long period, over millions of years, from some

1325
01:12:58,920 --> 01:13:03,400
Speaker 1: type of sloth like creature, like a formerly totally mobile

1326
01:13:04,040 --> 01:13:09,439
Speaker 1: creature that over time evolves too slow its metabolism and

1327
01:13:09,479 --> 01:13:13,840
Speaker 1: digestion down further and further and further in order to

1328
01:13:14,120 --> 01:13:17,800
Speaker 1: you know, survive on maybe tough dietary material like like

1329
01:13:17,880 --> 01:13:21,680
Speaker 1: plant leaves or something, uh to support this high efficiency

1330
01:13:21,880 --> 01:13:26,960
Speaker 1: of you know, a slow metabolism, highly efficient digestion. I

1331
01:13:27,000 --> 01:13:28,680
Speaker 1: wonder if there are routes like that. I mean, I

1332
01:13:28,720 --> 01:13:31,479
Speaker 1: have wondered before. Like one of the main things we

1333
01:13:31,520 --> 01:13:35,960
Speaker 1: think of is characterizing intelligent animal life is fast movement.

1334
01:13:36,640 --> 01:13:41,639
Speaker 1: But that doesn't you can understand why intelligence evolves from

1335
01:13:41,840 --> 01:13:45,080
Speaker 1: fast movement in the history of animal life, but it

1336
01:13:45,120 --> 01:13:48,040
Speaker 1: doesn't have to stay that way in terms of that association, right,

1337
01:13:48,040 --> 01:13:50,040
Speaker 1: Like you could imagine that there could be an animal

1338
01:13:50,120 --> 01:13:53,960
Speaker 1: with intelligence that just keeps evolving back down to have

1339
01:13:54,320 --> 01:13:57,639
Speaker 1: less and less need to move its body around and

1340
01:13:57,720 --> 01:14:02,160
Speaker 1: kind of becomes sessile, becomes plant. Like Yeah, I don't know,

1341
01:14:02,200 --> 01:14:04,559
Speaker 1: I mean maybe maybe millions of years in the future.

1342
01:14:04,840 --> 01:14:07,560
Speaker 1: I'm just saying there there will be ant lions that

1343
01:14:07,640 --> 01:14:10,800
Speaker 1: evolved from sloths and you know, fall into the pit

1344
01:14:10,880 --> 01:14:12,680
Speaker 1: and you'll one day get to be a part of

1345
01:14:12,720 --> 01:14:17,840
Speaker 1: their dramatic traumatic pooping. I like that. Yeah, the idea

1346
01:14:17,840 --> 01:14:21,320
Speaker 1: of a far future sessile sloth. All right, So there

1347
01:14:21,320 --> 01:14:24,000
Speaker 1: you have it. Did we expose all of the secrets

1348
01:14:24,040 --> 01:14:26,120
Speaker 1: of the star Lak? Uh? No, we did not. The

1349
01:14:26,160 --> 01:14:30,880
Speaker 1: Sarlak retains its mysteries, which I think is is, you know,

1350
01:14:30,920 --> 01:14:35,400
Speaker 1: one of the key attractions to the creature to begin with. Yeah, totally. Yeah.

1351
01:14:35,400 --> 01:14:37,360
Speaker 1: I mean you can't fully lift up the sarlac and

1352
01:14:37,400 --> 01:14:39,919
Speaker 1: peak at what's under it, but we'll have to imagine

1353
01:14:39,960 --> 01:14:42,240
Speaker 1: that there is a poop cave. Yeah, Or what if

1354
01:14:42,280 --> 01:14:44,640
Speaker 1: there's just a NonStop party in there, you know, like

1355
01:14:44,680 --> 01:14:46,800
Speaker 1: what if you had an alternate cut where Boba fett

1356
01:14:46,880 --> 01:14:48,960
Speaker 1: Is is swallowed whole by the star Lac and then

1357
01:14:48,960 --> 01:14:52,160
Speaker 1: he's just dropped into this stomach cavity that's actually just

1358
01:14:52,200 --> 01:14:55,599
Speaker 1: to really happening hang out. You know, everybody that's ever

1359
01:14:55,640 --> 01:14:58,120
Speaker 1: been eaten by it is just in there kind of chilling,

1360
01:14:58,240 --> 01:15:00,559
Speaker 1: you know. And it turns out the Starla does digest

1361
01:15:00,640 --> 01:15:03,960
Speaker 1: people instead. It has like a symbiotic relationship with you know,

1362
01:15:04,040 --> 01:15:07,160
Speaker 1: other organisms, uh, you know, beneath the surface of tattooin

1363
01:15:07,680 --> 01:15:11,080
Speaker 1: and everything like friends. Yeah, yeah, it gets lonely. It's

1364
01:15:11,080 --> 01:15:14,639
Speaker 1: an intelligent creature. It gets lonely. It needs friends. Well, Robert,

1365
01:15:14,680 --> 01:15:17,000
Speaker 1: this has been a lot of fun. Yeah, this has

1366
01:15:17,040 --> 01:15:19,880
Speaker 1: been fun. Um. It is kind of hard to believe

1367
01:15:20,000 --> 01:15:22,559
Speaker 1: this is the This is I think the first Star

1368
01:15:22,600 --> 01:15:25,360
Speaker 1: Wars episode of stuff to blow your mind. But hey,

1369
01:15:25,439 --> 01:15:27,840
Speaker 1: who knows. There's a lot of a lot of stuff

1370
01:15:27,840 --> 01:15:30,200
Speaker 1: in the Star Wars universe. Maybe we'll maybe we'll get

1371
01:15:30,240 --> 01:15:32,040
Speaker 1: up the energy to do another one of the one

1372
01:15:32,080 --> 01:15:36,679
Speaker 1: of these one day. I'm game. In the meantime, obviously,

1373
01:15:36,720 --> 01:15:38,760
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there. We know

1374
01:15:38,800 --> 01:15:41,519
Speaker 1: we have a lot of Star Wars fans, general science

1375
01:15:41,560 --> 01:15:46,439
Speaker 1: fiction fans, monster fans, uh out there amid our listeners,

1376
01:15:46,439 --> 01:15:48,880
Speaker 1: and yeah, we would love to hear your feedback on

1377
01:15:48,920 --> 01:15:52,080
Speaker 1: this episode on the Star Lac itself, your memories and

1378
01:15:52,160 --> 01:15:54,920
Speaker 1: interpretations of the star lack and indeed, if you think

1379
01:15:54,920 --> 01:15:58,000
Speaker 1: there's a strong candidate for a future episode of Stuff

1380
01:15:58,000 --> 01:16:00,519
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind related to Star Wars or any

1381
01:16:00,560 --> 01:16:04,720
Speaker 1: other work of fiction, science fiction, et cetera, let us know.

1382
01:16:05,360 --> 01:16:07,280
Speaker 1: Um we'll tell you how to get in touch with

1383
01:16:07,360 --> 01:16:09,280
Speaker 1: us here in a second, But if you just want

1384
01:16:09,320 --> 01:16:11,599
Speaker 1: to support the show, the best thing you can do

1385
01:16:11,960 --> 01:16:16,080
Speaker 1: is rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get this podcast.

1386
01:16:16,360 --> 01:16:19,120
Speaker 1: Hughes thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

1387
01:16:19,200 --> 01:16:21,280
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch

1388
01:16:21,320 --> 01:16:23,439
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,

1389
01:16:23,520 --> 01:16:25,400
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to

1390
01:16:25,439 --> 01:16:28,439
Speaker 1: say hi, you can email us at contact that Stuff

1391
01:16:28,479 --> 01:16:37,960
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your

1392
01:16:37,960 --> 01:16:40,879
Speaker 1: Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts

1393
01:16:40,880 --> 01:16:44,040
Speaker 1: for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

1394
01:16:44,120 --> 01:17:00,880
Speaker 1: or wherever you listening to your favorite shows. I PA

1395
01:17:01,120 --> 01:17:02,800
Speaker 1: had a time tack about a prone