WEBVTT - Ouroboros: The Tail-Eating Serpent 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.960 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:14.240 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:16.640 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie, 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:19.200 those are some interesting ear rings you have on there. Oh, 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:24.520 thank you, my aura borus ear rings. They are the 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:28.600 aar borus snake and it's actually curling and biting its 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:31.280 tail in its mouth. Well that's the illusion actually when 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:33.720 it's in my ear Yes, the Aora borus. You know, 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:36.160 we recently did that episode on symbols, and we talked 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:39.400 a little bit about powerful symbols, ancient symbols, symbols that 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:43.120 just resonate with meaning and continue to do so just 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:46.400 across thousands and thousands of years of human history. And 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:50.240 the aura borus is a fantastic example of this. Uh. 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:53.199 Sometimes it's depicted as a more of a snake. Sometimes 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:56.640 it's more of a dragon or a lizard looking creature, 0:00:57.280 --> 0:01:00.400 and it is always biting its own tail and or 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:03.360 consuming its own tail, So the tail is going in 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:07.000 the mouth, and it instantly even if you're not familiar 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:09.840 with any of the the the historic interpretations of the 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:13.680 o reborus, it instantly draws certain ideas to the forefront 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.840 the idea of on a very simple level, like the 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:21.720 consumption of oneself auto cannibalism, but also the idea that 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:23.920 what is what's going to happen? What is happening with 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:26.360 the serpent eating its own tail? How long can it 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:32.600 can maintain this, this self devouring movement before it can't 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:35.200 eat itself anymore? Does it get to the point where 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:38.560 it just blinks out into nothing or is this a 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:42.440 continuing cycle? Is it not only eating itself but emerging 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:46.240 from itself? Okay, so it's the whole idea of like, uh, 0:01:46.640 --> 0:01:50.880 you're either descending into nothingness or you're coming from nothingness. Yeah. 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:53.040 So I wanted to point out that rat snakes, along 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:55.080 with some other species of snakes, have been known to 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:58.320 swallow their tails um in an act of as you say, 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:01.880 auto cannibalism, although this has seen primarily in captivitying when 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:05.360 they're cages that are small. Yeah. Um, so it is 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:09.640 something that exists in nature, but largely the rbrus has, 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:13.240 as you say, come to symbolize this idea of rebirth, 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:17.840 uh infinity in this continuity, this this wheel of cycles 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:21.639 that you've actually talked about before in terms of some Sara. Yeah, yeah, 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:24.200 I mean it's essentially it's a it's a cosmic serpent, 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:26.160 and there are a lot of cosmic serpents and world 0:02:26.200 --> 0:02:29.799 serpents in mythology, I mean, ranging from the Leviathan that's 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:32.440 mentioned in the Old Testament, Uh, comes up in the 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:37.160 Book of job or the organ Mander, the giant be 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:40.120 steel serpent that plays a role in Ragnar Rock in 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:42.560 the End of the World, and the or wards resonates 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:46.760 with these ideas of self consumption. Uh, it's continuing to emerge, 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:50.680 and you might even draw that if this process is disturbed, 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:52.960 it might well mean the end of time. So it's 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:57.040 a circle of eternity. It takes our linear existence and 0:02:57.080 --> 0:02:59.320 turns it on its head, turns it into the cyclical 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:04.200 form that at once makes more sense and that it 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:08.079 ties back to our cyclical understanding of life. But also 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:10.920 it's kind of mind blowing in and on itself because 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:13.119 you again you try to figure out how how would 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:15.120 this work in real life. It's kind of like an 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:18.760 extra painting, like the oldest possible extra painting. As I said, 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:23.440 the bors dates back to ancient times. Uh, the pretty 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:26.880 much the earliest one that we've ever encountered comes comes 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:29.880 from Egypt, from the what we refer to as the 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:32.160 Enigmatic Book of the nether World. And that's just a 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:35.040 name we came up for it. It's in great and 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:37.520 not you and I, but we as modern humans are 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:40.760 ultimately modern humans. It was fine and found engraved in 0:03:40.760 --> 0:03:44.040 a shrine of Tuton common Uh and in it we 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:46.880 see a figure named He who rides the hours, and 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:49.600 both the head and the feet of this figure surrounded 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:53.040 by an ora bors serpent uh. That is designated is 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:56.840 me Hin the Enveloper, and that comes from about the 0:03:56.880 --> 0:03:59.680 fourteenth century v C. But elsewhere in China and the 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:02.480 Near Ease, we see examples of it in the neolithic 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:05.320 yang Shao culture that thrived in the Yellow River between 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:08.800 five thousand and three thousand BC, and so it just 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:11.480 continues to carry on from there. There's some scholars that 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:13.920 believe that there's a link between the the yin yang 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:18.960 symbol of the opposing forces swirling together, classic Asian symbol, 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:22.000 that there's a connection between that and the aura borus 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:25.440 you see later on. The Gnostics looked at it as 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:28.760 the soul of the world. The alchemists prized it Uh. 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:31.520 It ends up interpreted in other mythologies as well, in 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:35.120 some South American traditions as well as in uh some 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:37.360 of the ancient Mapa mondays that we were talking about 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:40.080 in our Sea Monsters episode. You see the Great Tale 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:42.240 of our in Serpent as a beast that encircles the 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:45.640 known world or the known oceans. It becomes something that 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:49.520 represents the limits of our geographical understanding and perhaps our 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:52.760 cosmic understanding as well. Yeah, that's interesting because in Norse 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:56.200 mythology it comes to represent this idea of the surcumference 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:58.480 of the world here right, And I wanted to mention 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:01.160 that there's a really starkly pet will hand drawn are 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:04.400 a borus that dates back from or back to ancient Egypt, 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:06.920 and it has the writing all is one inscribed in 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:09.440 the middle, which kind of speaks a bit too zen 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:13.560 buddhism um. So yeah, you have all these different ancient 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:18.080 civilizations embracing this symbol, and I thought that's really powerful 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:21.200 and cool and and actually if you look at even 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:24.960 someone like the German chemist August Cakel who dreamed of 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:28.039 a snake that seized a talentso mouth of that was 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:31.839 inspiration for him figuring out that benzine had a ring 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:36.440 like molecular structure, So it's definitely ingrained in our conscious 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:38.440 and I think it's interesting that it may even relate 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:41.719 to the yenang. Yeah. Now, and speaking of consciousness, Carl 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:44.360 Young had this to say about it. He did. He 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:47.640 was talking about the alchemist's fundness for the ora borus, 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:49.719 and he says, the alchemist, who in their own way 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:53.240 knew more about the nature of the individualization process than 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:56.000 we moderns do, express this paradox to the symbol of 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:58.080 the ora borus, the snake that eats its own tail. 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:00.560 The ora borus has been said to have a meaning 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:03.520 of infinity or wholeness. In the age old image of 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:06.599 the ara Borus lies the thought of devouring oneself and 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:10.800 turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:13.599 to the more astute alchemist that the prima material of 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:16.400 the art was man himself. The ora Borus is a 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:20.040 dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:23.560 of the shadow. This feedback process is at the same 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:25.880 time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.400 the ara Borus that he slays himself and brings himself 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:31.800 to life. Fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:35.560 symbolizes the one who proceeds from the clash of opposites, 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:38.760 and he therefore constitutes the secret of the prima material, 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:43.560 which unquestionably stems from man's consciousness. Now, of course, I 0:06:43.600 --> 0:06:46.200 can't help to wonder if the Matrix ever really worked 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:49.400 the Ora Borus into its plotlines. It should have if 0:06:49.400 --> 0:06:51.120 it hadn't, because it's got the whole the one thing though, 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:52.440 I was kind of tuning out a little bit in 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:53.880 the third one, but it seems like that's where it 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:57.760 would have shown up. Um. Well, okay, so maybe maybe 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:01.760 the Matrix didn't take hold of that imagery. But you know, 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:03.960 as we said, this did get kind of buried into 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:08.360 people's consciousness. And then of course you have or subconscious 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:11.760 you have people taking on the r brs in a 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:15.040 folk tale like fashion and sort of incorporating into the boogeyman, 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:19.040 which is interesting. You're talking about hoop snakes, I believe, Um, yes, now, 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:21.640 this is this is a creature that stems from lumberjack 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:25.239 folklore of Wisconsin in Minnesota during the nineteenth and early 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:28.320 twentieth century. The they're often generally just referred to in 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:31.240 general as the fearsome critters. And I really believe this 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:36.360 is an underappreciated area of monsters, probably because, I mean, 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:38.400 part of it is that, on one hand, these monsters 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:40.920 were used to sort of describe weird noises that you'd 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:44.200 encounter in a lonely landscape. But they were also used 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:46.520 to lighten the mood around camp. So they were they 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:49.560 were silly, they were exaggerated, they were fun. And so 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:51.640 the example of the hoop snake is here you have 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:56.239 a highly colored snake and extremely poisonous and aggressive of course, 0:07:56.760 --> 0:07:59.720 like any monster should be. And it moves by taking 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:02.400 its hail in its mouth and then jumping up and 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:05.600 rolling like a hoop at high speeds. So again it's 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:08.240 it's a it's a predator. It'll definitely come after a human. 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:13.880 The lumberjack, so specifically lumberjacks. When you're wearing those check shirts, 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:16.640 your your toast, Yeah, they see you, and you're making 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:18.880 all that noise of that axe. And so the hoop 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:20.640 snakes running at you. What are you gonna do? What's 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:22.680 your defense? This thing just barreling towards you. You know, 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:25.560 it's just poisonous, is all get out my ax, you 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:29.040 no accident, gonna work one move, one move? What do 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:31.760 you do? Uh well, oh I jumped through it. Yes, 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:34.720 you dive through the center of the hoop, and then 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:37.400 a This confuses the hoop snake, and then the the 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:40.520 the hoop snake cannot stop. It just keeps on rolling. 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:45.000 So that's how the lumberjacks supposedly survived the motions of 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:47.079 the hoop snake. Yeah, I love it because I love 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:49.400 this idea that you have a snake taking its tail 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:52.319 into its mouth and all of a sudden becoming you know, mobile, 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:55.560 and just rolling after someone and then trying to sting 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:59.560 someone with its tail. So it's great imagery. But while 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:02.040 the hoop or also called the mud snake, cannot stay 0:09:02.080 --> 0:09:05.079 with its tail, it does have a hard spine back 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:10.320 that could draw blood when it thrashes vigorously. So some 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:12.880 of this is observing snakes in the way they lay 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:15.600 around and and and may appear to have a hoop 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:18.440 like form, and and thinking, hey, you know what if 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:19.960 that thing were to take its tail in its mouth 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:22.640 like this sort of image that's ingrained in my psyche, 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:25.520 and it were to roll around like a like a 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:28.440 hoop toy, well, and in fact that actually does happen, 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:31.760 although not with snakes, right. Yes. The the amazing thing 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:35.760 about this is that there are creatures that are you know, 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:40.520 serpentine in form essentially, that do roll up. And certainly 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:42.640 a lot of creatures roll up, I mean humans when 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:45.319 when we get in our fetal position for a little 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:48.280 you know, lonely sleep or something, or are you know 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:52.040 cats sleeping on the couch whatever, A lot of creatures 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:54.440 roll up into a form. But they don't roll across 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:57.680 the ground in that curled form. But you do see 0:09:57.679 --> 0:09:59.800 that in at least a couple of usually, but you 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:01.960 do see this activity in a couple of different creators. 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:06.080 First of all, the mount Lyle salamander, and uh, like 0:10:06.120 --> 0:10:09.480 a lot of salamanders, it curls up, but it also 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:13.120 uses this as a no nonsense defense measure. Um. It 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:15.560 makes its home on the steep slopes of California's Sierra 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:18.880 Nevada Mountains. And what does this sucker do if something 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:22.160 threatened it, Well, it curls up, rolls away, or if 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:25.120 it needs to get down that steep terrain really quickly. 0:10:25.400 --> 0:10:28.840 What's the best way to do it? Roll up, roll up? Yeah, 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:31.240 and just then you're going down the hill. Yeah, because 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:34.160 then all of your like internal origans are all protected too, 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:36.240 because you know, not only from a predator, but if 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:39.360 you're going down rocky terrain and you're bumping along the way, 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:42.720 it makes sense that you would, you know, decrease the 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:46.680 friction on your body and increase locomotion as you're going down. Yeah. 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:48.480 And it's by these kind of rubbery too, so it 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:50.520 absorbs the impact of the bounce. This it's not like 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:52.160 if you were I would roll up in a ball 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:54.720 and then head off down a steep slope. It would 0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:58.160 break us. But if we put a little salamander suit on, yeah, 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:00.360 well maybe then and then we curled. I wonder if 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:02.120 there's ever been a superhero that does this, has like 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:04.880 a salamander suit, and they kind of do They can 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:06.840 roll kind of like Metroid. I guess when they need 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:10.000 a barrel over some enemies or get away from him. 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:13.600 I like this, like Sally the Salamander superhero. Yeah. Yeah, 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.880 or by the way, it could be a great transhuman feature, 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:21.200 Yes right, because I wouldn't mind that honestly, I could 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:23.680 roll down some hills, yes, and there you know, And 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:25.520 the cool thing about this is it's not just this 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:29.719 one salamander that does it. There's also the pearl moth caterpillar, 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:32.000 and this one does a similar thing. If it meets 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:35.880 a predator, it anchors it's rear to the ground, recoils rapidly, 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:40.760 and then rolls away backward like a tire mouth to tail. 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:42.600 Oh no, it gets even better in this. It's like 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:45.280 very start to start to slay. Is that when it 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:49.040 rears up and it curls into that wheel, it does 0:11:49.080 --> 0:11:51.680 a it's kind of springs backwards, so it's a back 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:54.679 flip into a like an inverted tire form, and then 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:56.960 it rolls away. Yeah, and it's bright green and so 0:11:57.040 --> 0:11:59.040 it's sort of like beautiful and and then there's a 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:03.840 bunch of music playing in the background of multicultural instruments. Yeah. 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:07.040 So so these are both creatures great examples of hoops 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:11.640 snake like abilities in actual animals. Yeah. And the cool 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:14.360 thing about that caterpillar is that it moves some forty 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:18.360 times faster than its normal pace, and it goes from 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:22.520 flat and stationary to rolling in about sixty milliseconds. I mean, 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:26.079 that's an insane short amount of time. They're in fact um, 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:29.959 this is inspired AI designers to look at this particular 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:35.160 bit of biomimicry in robotics for that very reason. Alright, 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:39.920 so we've talked about the wheeling around curling up, but 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:42.920 I don't hear any tailbiting. Well, for tail bitting, we 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:46.400 need to go to the armadillo girdled lizard, which was 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:53.479 formerly known as prince no it's formally known as Cordialis catafractice, 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:57.880 but now is or a Boris catafractice. So it's actually 0:12:58.000 --> 0:13:01.240 named for the world consuming serpent. Because this particular South 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:04.000 African lizard, it's a small little guy six and a 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:07.160 half to eight and a half inches or centimeters in length, 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:11.080 and when threatened they curl up, they bite the tip 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:13.880 of their tail and sort of hold themselves there. So 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:16.600 when they're doing this they're curling up there, they're very spiny. 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:18.920 They have all these spiny scales, so when they curl 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:21.760 up in the ball like that, they're they're covering their 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:25.319 vulnerable bellies. Yeah. I was thinking about how their names 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:28.960 are so descriptive, the girdled lizard, the armadilla girdled lizard, 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:33.520 because it really does look like these rowse girdling of 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:36.120 plates that are fringed with those spiky points, and so 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:38.120 as you say, when it curls up and it's just 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:41.120 you don't even want to touch it, you don't even 0:13:41.160 --> 0:13:43.280 try to get to it soft under a belly. Yeah, 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:46.320 and they look absolutely adorable. If you do a Google 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:48.319 image search on these guys, or if you do a 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:51.440 YouTube search, you'll probably find find a clip from one 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:54.880 of Attonborough's BBC shows where he's blowing up and plucking 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:56.840 one out of the rocks and holding it up because 0:13:56.880 --> 0:13:59.240 they'll they'll bite their little tails and they look like 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:02.320 just an a door rble, like beautiful sculpted or a boris, 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:05.480 and they'll remain that way for some time because they're threatened. 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:07.559 So they're they're like, well, I'm not taking any chances. 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:10.880 I'm gonna stay here biting my own tail, holding myself 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:14.280 in place in this defensive posture until I know everything's clear. 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:16.160 You know. In terms of design, I was thinking that 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:18.920 they look like something Cleopatra would have worn. Yeah, and 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:22.080 she was that said bring me one of those visits 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:25.080 to wrap around my wrists. And apparently they're a popular 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:28.480 pet as well for some people. Now, of course, it's 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:30.360 important to note that they while they are biting their 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:32.920 own tail, they are not eating their own tail. We 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:37.480 mentioned some examples of certainly zoocosis situations where an animal 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:39.880 that is disturbed in some way, shape or form will 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:42.400 start chewing on its tail. They're they're also tales of 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:45.360 mammals and and other creatures that bite on their own 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:47.440 tailor or eat part of their own tail. And it's 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:50.760 generally just a sad case. But there there there are 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:54.720 situations where eating your own tail is just perfectly okay 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:58.200 and perfectly economical. I'm talking about, for instance, the leopard gecko, 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:03.560 which is one of uh one of many um which 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:05.400 is one of many of the lizards that can detached 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:08.680 its own tail as a protective measure. You know, the deal. 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:12.080 They're threatened, they jettison the tail, The tail flops around 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:15.640 and spasms, and then they run off. It's on one level, 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:19.080 it's like leaving a decoy behind to distract a predator. 0:15:19.280 --> 0:15:22.000 But also it's kind of a bribe, saying, look, you're 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:24.040 not gonna eat me, but I'm gonna leave this delicious tail. 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:26.440 And in fact, the tails tend to have a lot 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:28.760 of resources in them. Uh So you know that's a 0:15:28.840 --> 0:15:33.440 it's a nice fatty piece of meat. So what happens 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:37.320 if the gecko gets away and then comes back and 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:39.640 finds that the predator that threatened it, or what it 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:41.560 thought was a predator, the threat that did not eat 0:15:41.600 --> 0:15:44.680 that tail portion, Well, I mean that could be dinner, right, yeah, 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:47.680 I mean why wasted? It's just pure economy. You know, 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:50.160 if you accidentally dropped twenty bucks out of your wallet 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:51.840 and then you walked away, and you came back and 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:53.760 nobody else had found it, you put that up back 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:55.200 up and put it back in your wallet, and and 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:57.520 the gecko does the same thing. It's like, well, if 0:15:57.520 --> 0:15:59.240 you're not gonna eat that piece of me that I 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:01.840 dropped to bribe you, then I'm going to eat it 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:05.080 myself and take those important nutrients and all that important 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:07.760 energy back into myself, which is the basis of the 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:11.480 arborous idea right off life sustaining it's giving up and 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:14.960 sustaining itself in one fluid movement. So that's the and 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:19.440 again it's a happier vision of animals eating themselves. All right, 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:21.560 let's take a quick break, and when we get back 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:32.200 we will talk about a storm arborous on Saturn. All right, 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:34.240 We're back and we're going to talk about the storm 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:38.240 that bit its own tail. This is so exciting to me. Yes, 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:41.480 this is pretty crazy. So first of all, let's talk 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:45.360 about storms here on Earth, particularly hurricanes. Okay, on Earth, 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:48.360 a hurricane feeds off the energy of warm water, okay, 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:50.760 and it leaves a cold water awake, and it just 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:52.800 grows more and more and more powerful. We all know 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:54.840 the deal with. Watch them move in, watching the weather 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:57.720 channel and whatnot, and they grow more and more powerful, 0:16:57.760 --> 0:16:59.320 and then they hit land. And when they hit land, 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:01.440 there's a lot of this struction. But then they lose 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:04.919 their energy because mountains will they sort of include them, right, 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:07.720 and their energy dissipates. Yeah, they can't. They can't feed 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:10.399 off of the land. They need to feed off of 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:16.000 the warm water. But Saturn, this massive planet that doesn't 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:19.800 have these land forms that could impede storms, which happens 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:24.720 all atmospheric disturbance. It's glorious. Yeah, And in this case, 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:27.360 what you what you had happened and this this could 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:29.560 Back in two thousand ten, this was Ford Well It's 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:34.400 first detective December track by Cassini's radio and plasma wave 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:39.639 subsystem and imaging cameras and a storm, massive storm erupts 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:43.720 around thirty degrees north latitude and it begins to move 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:47.840 and eventually, within months the storm wraps around the entire planet, 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:52.720 stretching about one nine thousand miles or three thousand kilometers 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:56.520 in circumference. Uh, thundering, throwing, lightning, just going crazy, just 0:17:57.400 --> 0:17:59.679 a type of storm of the intensity of which we 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:02.399 can we can scarcely imagine here on Earth. And he 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:05.080 goes all the way on the planet and reaches its beginning, 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:08.320 reaches its tail. Yeah, because shortly after that that bright, 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:11.399 turbulent head of the storm emerged this is according to 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:14.119 fizz dot org and started moving west. It spawned a 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:17.800 clockwise spinning vortex that drifted slowly. So you're talking about 0:18:18.080 --> 0:18:22.040 seven months, as you say, covering that one hundred and 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:26.919 ninety thousand miles or three hundred thousand kilometers in circumference, 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:31.479 this massive stormhead meeting itself. And what happens when it 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:34.720 meets itself, Well, like an r barus, it sort of 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:37.959 disappears into itself and it's a it's a huge mystery 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:39.960 to scientist because we're not quite sure why the storm 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:43.920 would behave that way, but it's crazy. You can look 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:45.919 up the images of this on online, and it's just 0:18:46.000 --> 0:18:49.639 it's you know, intense stormy the entire planet and thrashed 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:52.760 for two hundred one days. And this is this is 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.720 amazing to me. It's updraft erupted with an intensity that 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:58.960 would have sucked out the entire volume of our atmosphere 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:04.119 in one fifty days. That is how massive it is. 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:06.600 That's a great word for it. But to be fair, 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:09.000 I mean, Saturn is eighty three times larger than Earth, 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:11.440 so we're talking about different stats here. Yeah, and it's 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:14.480 just an entirely different kettle of fish when it comes 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:17.679 to the atmospheric disturbances that can occur there, as is 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:21.280 typified by on Jupiter. They're the great Red storm that 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:24.000 of course looks like a giant red eye. That's that's 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:27.160 an intensity of storm that again, it's just not even 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:30.600 possible on Earth and scarcely can even be imagined by us. 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:34.840 I know, I think I smell in episode of brewing here. Alright, 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:37.399 So what other type of our bars do we have 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:41.720 outside of nature? We have something called a nano ar borus, 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:45.000 and chemists of the Script's Research Institute in California they 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:49.959 created this nanotol which is an our brand molecular switch 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:53.120 that looks like an oar borus. It's molecular tail coils 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:56.280 up and around it, it's sort of like right up 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:59.359 to its cup like head, and the molecule is used 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:03.200 to detect metals, toxins, and other pollutants in our environment. 0:20:03.240 --> 0:20:05.760 It's really cool because it's default position is the r 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:09.840 boris pocisition, but when it encounters a metal ion, its 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:13.400 middle section bends around that ion and then that springs 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:16.040 it open. So it's a good way to figure out 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:20.240 whether or not um there are metallic impurities present, or 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:23.280 if you've remediated an area of pollutants. Is a good 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:25.640 way to go back and see if it's actually been 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:30.320 completely removed from from that soil. And Ben Coxworth, writing 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:34.520 for Gizmeg, made the effought very astute observation that the 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:37.119 our borus, which is, as we have pointed out earlier 0:20:37.160 --> 0:20:41.879 associated with alchemy, has kind of come full circle with 0:20:41.960 --> 0:20:46.639 its ability to perhaps detect gold. Yeah, because what is 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:50.960 nanotechnology if not some form of alchemy? You know, that's right? 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:53.240 So now are we going to see people coming to 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:56.360 beaches with these instead of the little metal detectors? Yeah, 0:20:56.359 --> 0:21:01.440 they're just unleash a little um of classroom for goo um. 0:21:01.480 --> 0:21:04.040 You know two other things here about the horra borus. 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:09.400 One I was reminded by by Young's quote he mentions feedback. 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:12.280 When you think of a feedback loop, a feedback loop, 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:14.720 this is sort of an aa borous in its way 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:16.600 in some own sense. You know. It's like sound leaves 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:20.000 speaker goes back through the microphone into the same system 0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:21.960 and it just gets louder and louder and becomes that 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:26.840 awful whining. I've also read some theories regarding wormholes, cosmic 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:30.879