Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: In this episode and suffsequent episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind, we are going to be talking about the
Speaker 2: HeLa Monster. I don't know about you, Joe, but the
Speaker 2: HeLa monster has long been one of my favorite herbs,
Speaker 2: in part clearly because it's the only it was, I think,
Speaker 2: at least growing up, the only natural world animal for
Speaker 2: me officially labeled as a monster. So that's certainly connected
Speaker 2: with me as a kid. I mean, you had Cookie Monster,
Speaker 2: you had the HeLa Monster, So there is a natural
Speaker 2: attraction there, though there to be clear, as we'll be discussing,
Speaker 2: there are plenty of other reasons to love these.
Speaker 3: Creatures definitely attractive and also includes some hidden monstrous It's
Speaker 3: like there are some of the things that might make
Speaker 3: it the most monstrous are things that you wouldn't see
Speaker 3: just looking at a picture of the lizard taken in
Speaker 3: nature and like a National geographic magazine. One of the
Speaker 3: most monstrous things about it, not to skip too far ahead,
Speaker 3: is the way like its bones look or its skull
Speaker 3: looks if you don't have all the cute, kind of fleshy,
Speaker 3: pudgy scan around it that. I'm sure we'll discuss that
Speaker 3: in more detail later, but that was a real shocker
Speaker 3: for me when I in this episode came across a
Speaker 3: CT scan of a HeLa monster head. It's got some
Speaker 3: stuff going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's gonna be fun to get into
Speaker 2: all of that. But just on the surface, you know,
Speaker 2: they don't necessarily look all that monstrous. If you've gotten
Speaker 2: to see one live, then you've probably seen one at
Speaker 2: a zoo, as I have. That's the only place I've
Speaker 2: ever seen live HeLa monsters, and you know, they're generally
Speaker 2: not doing much. They're just letting there. You know, you
Speaker 2: might suspect they are fake because they're they're just resting,
Speaker 2: and they spend a lot of time doing just that,
Speaker 2: but still visually very interesting. They have that signature pink
Speaker 2: slash orange and black colorization, and their general character, at
Speaker 2: least in my opinion, is this is kind of adorable,
Speaker 2: kind of comfy. There's something kind of laid back about
Speaker 2: these lizards.
Speaker 3: I don't recall if I've seen a HeLa monster at
Speaker 3: a zoo, but I've seen another Heloderma lizard, very similar species,
Speaker 3: the Mexican beaded lizard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that one is maybe a little more
Speaker 2: common at zoos. I know the zoo here in Atlanta
Speaker 2: used to have some HeLa monsters and they might have
Speaker 2: them again now. I haven't been in several months.
Speaker 3: When I was recently looking at one of these things
Speaker 3: at a zoo with my daughter, it did not move
Speaker 3: at all. It was just a big kind of a
Speaker 3: just a log in its tank, just sitting there, and
Speaker 3: she didn't seem all that interested in it, maybe because
Speaker 3: it wasn't moving.
Speaker 2: Did you did you not remind her that this is
Speaker 2: a monster? You were looking at a monster, real life monster?
Speaker 3: Didn't break through?
Speaker 2: Well, where do these monsters live where? They are native
Speaker 2: to the southwestern United States and to the northwestern Mexican
Speaker 2: state of Sonora, But they are a rare sighting in
Speaker 2: the wild. So just some personal documentation here. I have
Speaker 2: family uncle and aunt on my wife's side in Arizona.
Speaker 2: They've lived there since nineteen sixty nine, and they've always
Speaker 2: been very active and outdoorsy, you know, going on hikes,
Speaker 2: horseback riding, that sort of thing, you know, always getting
Speaker 2: out there, and they're still getting out there, and I
Speaker 2: had to ask them both about it, texting them earlier
Speaker 2: in the week, and each of them has only ever
Speaker 2: seen a HeLa monster once in the wild. One of
Speaker 2: them saw a HeLa monster on a hiking trail, crossing
Speaker 2: the trail, and then another saw one sunning itself on
Speaker 2: some rocks during a morning horse ride. So I think
Speaker 2: this is just a small sample size, and I'd love
Speaker 2: to hear from any other people who've spent significant amounts
Speaker 2: of time within the range of the Heela Monster. But
Speaker 2: I think it does speak volumes for how secluded these
Speaker 2: creatures tend to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you are not likely to see them very often
Speaker 3: for two reasons, I would say. One is that they
Speaker 3: tend to spend the majority of their time hiding in
Speaker 3: burrows or in shelters, and then the other part is
Speaker 3: that when they are out in the open, they have
Speaker 3: these color patterns on them, which actually can help them
Speaker 3: blend in quite well. You might have seen one and
Speaker 3: not seen it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it'd be interesting to discuss their camouflage in
Speaker 2: these episodes because it's kind of My understanding is it's
Speaker 2: kind of both. It's like on one hand, from a distance,
Speaker 2: their colorization can lead can lead to a camouflaged effect,
Speaker 2: make them more difficult to see. But then when you
Speaker 2: get closer, it is more of an alarming visual signature
Speaker 2: warning you you should not mess with this creature for
Speaker 2: reasons that we will discuss now. I've of course been
Speaker 2: visiting Arizona for I think it this point almost twenty years,
Speaker 2: and I've certainly never seen one of these creatures in
Speaker 2: the wild. It's always been in the back of my
Speaker 2: mind It's like a helo monster episode would be good.
Speaker 2: But it was actually on my recent visit to Denver, Colorado,
Speaker 2: that I decided, oh yeah, definitely need to pull the
Speaker 2: trigger on this. This is a place well outside the
Speaker 2: HeLa monsters range. But there was a great volunteer led
Speaker 2: exhibit at the museum titled Nature's Medicine Cabinet, which featured
Speaker 2: helo monsters among various other profile organisms that had either
Speaker 2: been traditionally used in human medicine generally plants as well
Speaker 2: as animals that had come into play had come to
Speaker 2: play a key role due to advancements in peptides. Of note,
Speaker 2: while helas don't naturally live in Denver, the city played
Speaker 2: host to the only known human fatality from a helo
Speaker 2: monster bite in the last century, when a man who
Speaker 2: kept them as pets in Denver suffered a fatal bite.
Speaker 3: I think there is a disputed case of acclaimed HeLa
Speaker 3: monster death from nineteen thirty or so, but one of
Speaker 3: the authors we're going to talk about casts some doubt
Speaker 3: on the veracity of that one. But yeah, I also
Speaker 3: read about the same case in Colorado. But as we
Speaker 3: will discuss later on, while the venom of the heel
Speaker 3: monster is quite a cocktail, it is incredibly potent. It
Speaker 3: There are a lot of documented helo monster bites and
Speaker 3: almost none of them have resulted in death, So very potent,
Speaker 3: something you absolutely do not want to experience for reasons
Speaker 3: that we will talk about, but usually not fatal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and to be clear, we'll drive this again and
Speaker 2: again as well. This is not a creature you need
Speaker 2: to be afraid of. Your chances of an encountering one
Speaker 2: in the wild are so rare. Really, the people who
Speaker 2: have been bitten by them are generally actively handling them.
Speaker 2: They have sought them out, or they have them as pets,
Speaker 2: and so that's just not going to happen. If you
Speaker 2: were if you were doing anything outdoors or indoors within
Speaker 2: thee of the HeLa monster. There's a long list of
Speaker 2: things that are more dangerous to you ahead of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the I was reading the exact same thing.
Speaker 3: It's not like you might read about rattlesnake bites, where
Speaker 3: sometimes it's just a chance encounter. You step in the
Speaker 3: wrong place, so you accidentally come across one and there's
Speaker 3: a strike. With the heel monster, it is almost entirely
Speaker 3: a case of people intentionally messing with these animals that
Speaker 3: results in bites. It's not one where they're going to
Speaker 3: sneak up and get you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. But before we dive in a little bit
Speaker 2: more here, I just want to mention a couple of
Speaker 2: sources that we were referring to here. I guess the
Speaker 2: big one is Biology of HeLa Monsters and Beaded Lizards
Speaker 2: by Daniel D. Beck, University of California Press.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I looked up Daniel D.
Speaker 2: Beck.
Speaker 3: He's a biology professor. I think he's retired now, but
Speaker 3: he was affiliated with Central Washington University.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then text that I was at more general
Speaker 2: herb text that I've been looking at as a slightly
Speaker 2: older piece from Age published nineteen ninety eight, though I
Speaker 2: think the addition I have is a more revised edition
Speaker 2: from like two thousand and five. It is Encyclopedia of
Speaker 2: Reptiles and Amphibian second Edition by Harold G. Kauger and
Speaker 2: Richard G. Zwiffel. Also a nice text. And we're also
Speaker 2: going to refer to some more recent studies concerning the
Speaker 2: HeLa Monster, because one of the amazing things that I've
Speaker 2: seen pointed out is that despite the fact that the
Speaker 2: HeLa Monster is pretty famous, it is like a sports mascot,
Speaker 2: and you know, and everybody knows about it. It's shown
Speaker 2: up in numerous films, sometimes at least once, well more
Speaker 2: than once in the starring role, not necessarily Oscar worthy pictures.
Speaker 2: But you can't blame the Helo Monster. That's more the
Speaker 2: agents of fault forgetting the Helo Monster these gigs. But movies, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's sort of they and some more recent films in
Speaker 2: that sort of vein. But yeah, despite it being such
Speaker 2: a well known creature, there are certain aspects of its
Speaker 2: biology that are as yet not fully understood or certainly
Speaker 2: where we've been catching up in recent years figuring exactly
Speaker 2: how they work. All right, Well, let's dive into it
Speaker 2: a bit more. What sort of lizard is the HeLa monster.
Speaker 2: Let's narrow it down. They're technically beaded lizards of the
Speaker 2: family helo dermat today and its sole genus Heloderma. It's
Speaker 2: a small family, small genus with previously, I believe only
Speaker 2: five recognized extant species native to the Americas, including the
Speaker 2: HeLa monster, the Mexican beaded lizard, and the Guatemalan beaded lizard. Historically,
Speaker 2: we thought there were only two Mexican beated lizard and
Speaker 2: the Helo monster. So many older sources are going to
Speaker 2: reflect that all of them are venomous, the only venomous
Speaker 2: extant lizards, and the Helo monster is generally singled out
Speaker 2: as being the only literal venomous lizard native to the
Speaker 2: United States.
Speaker 3: I had a bit of confusion when I was reading
Speaker 3: about this, because several sources I was reading refer to
Speaker 3: the Heloderma lizards, the small family of species, as the
Speaker 3: only venomous lizards on Earth, and yet there are some
Speaker 3: other lizard species I think, mostly monitor lizards like the
Speaker 3: Komodo dragon, that also do have some kind of venom.
Speaker 3: I think this might come down to distinctions that specialists
Speaker 3: make about, like how the venom is delivered and what
Speaker 3: its primary function is. So there is some other venom
Speaker 3: in lizards out there, but these in some special way
Speaker 3: are like the most primarily venomous lizards.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah, to be clear, Yeah, the monitor
Speaker 2: lizards of Africa, Asia, Indonesia, and Australia are also venomous
Speaker 2: and thought to be thought to be closely related in
Speaker 2: the grand scheme of things here. And this does include
Speaker 2: the mighty komodo dragons of Indonesia, which have an anticoagulant
Speaker 2: and I believe neurotoxic venom, but mostly is noted for
Speaker 2: its blood thinning properties. So, like you know, a komodo
Speaker 2: dragon bites its prey, it inflicts a pretty dire wound,
Speaker 2: and a wound that is also going to drain out
Speaker 2: a lot faster.
Speaker 3: Years ago, I remember us talking about this idea that
Speaker 3: had been floating around for a long time that the
Speaker 3: komodo dragon in particular had weaponized pathogenic bacteria in its
Speaker 3: mouth so that it would like bite its prey. I
Speaker 3: guess the idea is it would bite its prey and
Speaker 3: this would cause an infection and then later the komodo
Speaker 3: dragon could take advantage of this and take down the prey.
Speaker 3: This apparently used to be a pretty popular theory, but
Speaker 3: recent research has turned against it. So I was reading
Speaker 3: some articles about this, quoting a toxicologist named Brian Frye
Speaker 3: at the University of Queensland who talks about how actually
Speaker 3: komodo dragon mouths are not especially they don't have a
Speaker 3: specially dangerous bacteria in them. In fact, they're relatively clean
Speaker 3: as far as animal mouths go. Kimodo dragons spend a
Speaker 3: lot of time cleaning their mouths, kind of licking and
Speaker 3: smacking their lips and rubbing their heads on things in
Speaker 3: the environment, like rubbing their mouths against leaves to try
Speaker 3: to clean them off after meals. So you have this
Speaker 3: old idea of the kimodo dragons with rotting meat in
Speaker 3: their teeth or something, and this kind host bacteria that
Speaker 3: will infect the prey animal after it gets a bite
Speaker 3: from the komodo dragon. That seems to be not really
Speaker 3: the case. Their mouths are not really different from the
Speaker 3: mouths of other carnivores, and fry says that they just
Speaker 3: don't have enough bacteria in their mouths to really harm
Speaker 3: an injured animal anymore than you would expect a bite
Speaker 3: of any animal too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and this makes sense on several grounds. For starters,
Speaker 2: we know that while komodo dragons are voracious eaters, they
Speaker 2: consume something like all but twelve percent of a body,
Speaker 2: tearing it apart with their strong foe loombs and serrated teeth, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, sets monitor lizards in general apart from
Speaker 2: most reptiles, aside from I believe sea turtles in that
Speaker 2: they're not swallowing prey whole. They're you know, tearing it up.
Speaker 2: They but but yeah, they're they're in their own way fastidious.
Speaker 2: They take care to sling out the contents of intestines
Speaker 2: before they eat them, and their small young avoid cannibalization
Speaker 2: by their gigantic elders, in part by rolling around in
Speaker 2: such filth.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Yeah, so that they're too smelly to eat, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that in common. They also like tend to stick
Speaker 2: to the trees, so yeah, they're they're too young to
Speaker 2: get along with the big kimodos. They stay up in
Speaker 2: the trees. As they grow in size, they come down.
Speaker 2: But kmodo dragons grow throughout their lives, like you know
Speaker 2: a lot of reptile species that we've discussed. So there's
Speaker 2: there's still going to be a mismatch, and you're gonna
Speaker 2: have these situations where komodo drag the large ones have
Speaker 2: taken down prey and or are scavenging prey, and so
Speaker 2: there's some sort of large, smelly feast to be had.
Speaker 2: The big dragons are going to have primary access to that.
Speaker 2: The younger dragons, the ones that are there, they're big
Speaker 2: enough to come down from the trees, but they're not
Speaker 2: big enough to get in on the buffet. They're going
Speaker 2: to go around in this circle, this kind of uh,
Speaker 2: this circle of that's like a nervous circle that's going
Speaker 2: around the feeding area, an appeasement circle, I believe it's
Speaker 2: sometimes referred to as where they're just kind of hanging
Speaker 2: around making it clear that they are not contesting the
Speaker 2: kill at all, They are not attempting to get in,
Speaker 2: but they are ready to do clean up after the
Speaker 2: main meal has taken place. So, yeah, kimodos in and
Speaker 2: of themselves instant endlessly fascinating as well, you know, enormous
Speaker 2: predatory lizards and yeah, so I guess the other thing
Speaker 2: thinking about this whole this this again this idea that
Speaker 2: there was harmful bacteria in their saliva, which you see
Speaker 2: that in the older sources and even in not so
Speaker 2: old sources. They so kind of you see, kind of
Speaker 2: like a halfway holding onto that concept where they're saying, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's a toxin, there's a venom in play, but also
Speaker 2: the bacteria. But you know, when you look at the
Speaker 2: full equation of what they have, their strength, their teeth,
Speaker 2: their anticoagulant, venom, they certainly don't need a bacterially potent
Speaker 2: bite to get the job done. I suspect some of
Speaker 2: this also goes back to prior interpretations of the Komodo
Speaker 2: dragon as being primarily scavengers. In part this may have
Speaker 2: been due to the fact that you would see them,
Speaker 2: you know, all hanging out around this rotting kill. But
Speaker 2: nowadays we know that they are very capable hunters, bringing
Speaker 2: down things like water buffaloes and deer, and they are
Speaker 2: in fact apex predators in their environments.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so attacking live prey, going after it, taking it
Speaker 3: down with strength, with jaws, all that stuff. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: the help of some venom as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I think the idea is, yeah, they get
Speaker 2: a really good bite in. If the prey makes it
Speaker 2: away from them, they're not going to make it too
Speaker 2: far and they're going to succumb to those injuries.
Speaker 3: But again to emphasize, based on what I was reading,
Speaker 3: it seems like komodo dragons are not going to be
Speaker 3: as dependent on their venom for a hunting and predation
Speaker 3: as like most venomous snakes are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you can think of a venomous snake almost
Speaker 2: as a sniper, whereas the komodo dragon is more like
Speaker 2: artillery I guess, and some similar interpretations are going to
Speaker 2: transition into and I'm certainly going to apply to what
Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about with the HeLa Monster.
Speaker 2: So coming back to the Helo monster, what does this
Speaker 2: name mean? You know, I think, going back to childhood interpretations,
Speaker 2: this is you know, we encounter the word HeLa. It
Speaker 2: is spelled g i l a. This leads to a
Speaker 2: number of early mispronunciations as we talk about the Gila monster. Perhaps,
Speaker 2: but it is HeLa and it is named for the
Speaker 2: HeLa River basin of New Mexico and Arizona, where it
Speaker 2: was once plentiful. The scientific name is Heloderma suspectum, which
Speaker 2: translates to suspicious wart skin, with the suspart coming from
Speaker 2: nineteenth century paleontologist and biologist Edward Drinker Cope. Some of
Speaker 2: you may remember that name. He was one of the
Speaker 2: key individuals in the paleontologist Bone Wars.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, according to that book by Beck, the reason
Speaker 3: that these lizards were suspicious to Cope was that Cope
Speaker 3: suspected that they were venomous but couldn't be sure. And
Speaker 3: this was actually an unsettled issue for like hundreds of years,
Speaker 3: the different naturalists making opposing claims about whether HeLa monsters
Speaker 3: were venomous or not. It wasn't until around the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 3: by Beck's reckoning, that enough evidence had been marshaled to
Speaker 3: convince basically everybody in the field that they were truly venomous,
Speaker 3: and yet the species name stuck. So I think it's
Speaker 3: funny that HeLa monsters are in their scientific name forever suspected,
Speaker 3: even though they are one hundred percent guilty, poor critters.
Speaker 2: I think it is telling that this was such this
Speaker 2: remains such an open question because, as we'll discuss, anyone
Speaker 2: who has ever actually been bitten by a HeLa monster.
Speaker 2: There's no doubt concerning this. Well.
Speaker 3: Beck tells a funny story where one of the guys
Speaker 3: who was arguing, no, they're not venomous, got a bite
Speaker 3: from a HeLa monster and apparently it wasn't that bad.
Speaker 3: So maybe it was just a dry bite. I don't know,
Speaker 3: Like we'll talk later about the venomation mechanism, So maybe
Speaker 3: this guy got a quick little nip without much venom,
Speaker 3: you know, mashed in or something. Yeah, it was like,
Speaker 3: no big deal. I don't think they're venomous. I would
Speaker 3: love to compare that to other accounts of bites from
Speaker 3: these things, which are epic to read. But I wanted
Speaker 3: to note another interesting thing about their scientific names. So
Speaker 3: the genus name again is a Heloderma. The species name
Speaker 3: suspect them. Suspect them because they were suspected of being venomous,
Speaker 3: and they were. But the the genus name can be interpreted,
Speaker 3: like you said, as wardy skin, though more literally it
Speaker 3: comes from the Greek that means skin of nails or
Speaker 3: skin of studs. This will relate to a biological feature
Speaker 3: we'll talk about in a minute called the osteoderms, but
Speaker 3: so heloderma. The derma of course means skin, but the
Speaker 3: helopart comes from the Greek word helos, referring to a
Speaker 3: nail or a stud, or more specifically, the flat head
Speaker 3: of a nail, So these are nail skin. There are
Speaker 3: pin head lizards in a way. I'm thinking of Doug Bradley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think pinhead lizard is a nice nickname
Speaker 2: for the HeLa monster. Yeah, because warts, they're not really warts.
Speaker 2: Beads I think is a better physical description of what
Speaker 2: we're looking at. These, as you mentioned, are in fact
Speaker 2: bony osteoderms that do indeed provide an armor layer for
Speaker 2: the HeLa monster as well as their beaded and monitor
Speaker 2: lizard can. I frequently see it compared to various medieval
Speaker 2: armors such as chain mail, you know, pretty obvious thing
Speaker 2: to compare it to, though this can be confusing as
Speaker 2: osteoderms do not overlap. I've read the lizards also have
Speaker 2: scales atop these osteoderms as well, and osteoderms can fuse
Speaker 2: with the skeleton and with the Helo monster, they specifically
Speaker 2: fuse with their skulls, creating just a very memorable skull
Speaker 2: if you were an easy skull. Yeah, if you were
Speaker 2: not behind the wheel of a car, or I don't know,
Speaker 2: non jury do it. I don't know whatever you're doing.
Speaker 2: Or you shouldn't look at your phone or your computer screen.
Speaker 2: If you are able, look them up. Look up some
Speaker 2: images of Helo monster skulls alongside Helo monster fleshed heads,
Speaker 2: and it's pretty pretty memorable, and I would say pretty metal.
Speaker 3: Another thing, if you get a chance to look up,
Speaker 3: is a picture of a CT scan of a HeLa
Speaker 3: monster head, which I came across in a paper that
Speaker 3: I think we were both looking out for this episode
Speaker 3: by Gordon W. S Hewitt at all. Lead author is Shwett.
Speaker 3: So this is a paper about I think it's mainly
Speaker 3: about female female aggression fighting between Heela monsters. But it
Speaker 3: just throws in in the middle of the paper here
Speaker 3: are some CT scans of Helo monster heads. It gives
Speaker 3: you top view, bottom view, lateral view. Especially the lateral
Speaker 3: view of the head. It doesn't look real. It looks
Speaker 3: like an illustration of a dragon. Because so you have
Speaker 3: these osteoderms, like we've been talking about, these kind of
Speaker 3: bulbous little beads, these wardy shaped, little bony patches covering
Speaker 3: the entire head, and then also a little bit less
Speaker 3: densely grouped but also covering the neck. And then the
Speaker 3: head just terminates in these empty eye sockets and these
Speaker 3: teeth that look like something out of a fantasy. They're
Speaker 3: a horrible, just long, spiny, spear tip looking teeth that
Speaker 3: look more like a drawing than like nature.
Speaker 2: It really, if you didn't know what a helo monster's
Speaker 2: skull looks like, you might suspect that this is a
Speaker 2: Halloween decoration that you buy at lows in like late September. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks like dragons from movies. It looks like
Speaker 3: one of the things from Game of Thrones. Yeah, like
Speaker 3: a dragon the head with ridiculous teeth.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, absolutely gnarly. And again it's an interesting juxtaposition.
Speaker 2: When you look at a fleshed, fully fleshed HeLa monster,
Speaker 2: I would say, you know, with that signature black and
Speaker 2: pink orange color scheme, I tend to think they look
Speaker 2: kind of sweet, you know, a little bit lazy, a
Speaker 2: little bit silly. Yeah, totally not the same sinister vibes.
Speaker 3: They often have sweet looking eyes. They're just looking at
Speaker 3: you like, hey, what's up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, though to be clear, do not attempt to
Speaker 2: love them in a physical manner. No love from a farm.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, I'll see other descriptions that are important here. There's
Speaker 2: stocky lizards with broad heads and short fat tails, where
Speaker 2: they indeed use these tails for fat storage.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they often get a bunch of their meals in
Speaker 3: one part of the year and then store up that
Speaker 3: energy as fat reserves in the tail, which they can
Speaker 3: then live off of for the leaner parts of the year.
Speaker 2: That's right, I've read that. Yeah, their meals are few
Speaker 2: and far between, somewhere between five and ten meals per
Speaker 2: year for a helo monster. So. Beaded lizards in general
Speaker 2: spend most of their time in burrows and they avoid
Speaker 2: extreme temperatures, so only during cooler spring months are they
Speaker 2: going to come out during the day at all. They
Speaker 2: forage on the ground, but can also climb trees as well.
Speaker 2: Even the helo monster who if you again, if you certainly,
Speaker 2: if you've seen them at the zoo or in some
Speaker 2: sort of you know, enclosed environment like that, they don't
Speaker 2: really look like they're going to be scaling a lot
Speaker 2: of trees. They look like they are very ground based
Speaker 2: and certainly under round based. But you have to consider
Speaker 2: what their favorite meals are, and so they're they're foraging,
Speaker 2: but what are they foraging for. They're generally looking for
Speaker 2: eggs and young prey, so young mammalian prey generally like
Speaker 2: rodents or I believe baby rabbits also come up as
Speaker 2: a favorite.
Speaker 3: They love little cottontails, baby birds, eggs. They're nest raiders,
Speaker 3: nest rating specialists, and so.
Speaker 2: You got to go where the nests are, and certainly
Speaker 2: with a lot of bird species, they may be up
Speaker 2: in the in the trees, and so that is where
Speaker 2: the HeLa monster will go. If you look around and on,
Speaker 2: you can find some images of HeLa monsters possibly in
Speaker 2: the act of climbing, or at least they're halfway up
Speaker 2: a tree or small tree. Anyway, again, you have to
Speaker 2: consider their environments and what constitutes a tree and helo
Speaker 2: monster land.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're not going to be a lot of sorry,
Speaker 3: is it going to be a lot of desert stuff
Speaker 3: like maybe mesquite or pelleverity?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, not going to be yeah,
Speaker 2: redwoods or gigantic trees of that that nature. Uh, but yeah,
Speaker 2: they so some of the nests and an opportunities to
Speaker 2: feed are going to be up high, but a lot
Speaker 2: of them are going to be in the ground, and
Speaker 2: so they can use their powerful fore limbs to go
Speaker 2: after those nests as well. Uh. And they yeah, and
Speaker 2: according to Beck and his work, they feed almost exclusively
Speaker 2: on vertebrate nest contents. They'll eat other things as well,
Speaker 2: but vertebrate nest contents that's what they go for.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: Beck explains that few other lizards or snakes are really
Speaker 2: going to share this uh, this this niche because it
Speaker 2: is a challenging one to choose in life. We see
Speaker 2: this with other examples of of of organisms where if
Speaker 2: you have a very specialized diet, uh, it may bring richness,
Speaker 2: but it also can bring you know, seasonable availability and
Speaker 2: so forth. So so that's definitely in play here. Egg
Speaker 2: layers and and and eating animals are going to be
Speaker 2: you know, more active at certain times of the year
Speaker 2: that's when they're going to produce. But also if you
Speaker 2: are eating mostly eggs or the young, these are prize commodities,
Speaker 2: a lot of energy goes into creating them, and then
Speaker 2: this could and then a lot of energy is going
Speaker 2: to go into either secreting them away or actively protecting them.
Speaker 2: So so that is also a factor. And to even
Speaker 2: find them, especially if they're hidden in some way, you
Speaker 2: have to be pretty sensitive to their uh, to to
Speaker 2: their their their their their chemical signal. You have to
Speaker 2: have a very chemically sensitive organism and in organism that
Speaker 2: has a pretty good memory. So so again you have
Speaker 2: to factor that into the evolutionary direction that monitor that
Speaker 2: these uh, these beaded lizards and specifically uh, the HeLa
Speaker 2: monster have gone uh, so you have to have you
Speaker 2: end up with a devoted egg eater slash baby eater,
Speaker 2: nest rat or that has to go for long stretches
Speaker 2: without being able to eat. And indeed we see that
Speaker 2: with the Helo monsters diet again, eating five to ten
Speaker 2: times a year, and those meals are not going to
Speaker 2: be evenly spread out now they get at their Their
Speaker 2: activity also ticks up during other key moments, of course,
Speaker 2: during breeding season and mate selection season. This is when
Speaker 2: the males of the Helo monsters are going to compete
Speaker 2: through what is often described as fierce combat, though I'm
Speaker 2: to understand it's mostly intense wrestling with some nibs. So
Speaker 2: they're going to bite each other, but they're not going
Speaker 2: to go full on venom inducing bites. These are going
Speaker 2: to be I'm not going to say loving bites. They're
Speaker 2: still done in an offensive way. They're still competing, but yeah,
Speaker 2: not going to be full on bites. The mating takes
Speaker 2: place in late spring, resulting in up to a dozen eggs,
Speaker 2: which require ten months before hatching.
Speaker 3: So like in a lot of other species, you're going
Speaker 3: to have, especially males, competing with each each other for
Speaker 3: opportunities to mate.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, Yeah, they're going to wrestle around, they're going
Speaker 2: to nib each other, and then it's going to you know,
Speaker 2: lead to mate selection and the production of these eggs.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, this is where we're going to come back to
Speaker 2: that study we referenced already from Shuitt. This is a
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three study from cal poly Pomona and it
Speaker 2: concerns female female aggression in the HeLa monster and they
Speaker 2: found that, Okay, this is you know, definitely the case
Speaker 2: when males fight each other intense wrestling but mostly just
Speaker 2: nibbing at each other with their mouths. But when females
Speaker 2: fight each other, and they may fight each other for
Speaker 2: a few different reasons, you know, territorial defense, an acquisition,
Speaker 2: mate defense, parental care slash cannibalism prevention. When the females fight,
Speaker 2: they really don't hold anything bite. They're full on bites here,
Speaker 2: which is which is interesting, Like they're not going it's
Speaker 2: like they're not competing for mating here. They are just
Speaker 2: all out like for instance, defending their young and or
Speaker 2: preventing cannibalism from occurring. Because again, helo monsters are nest raiders,
Speaker 2: they are not above rating other heelo monster nests.
Speaker 3: The authors of the study talk about reasons why the
Speaker 3: intensity and the violence of the fighting between the females
Speaker 3: might be greater than that of the competition between males,
Speaker 3: and one idea they talk about that I thought was
Speaker 3: interesting is that it could be because the males have
Speaker 3: a ritualized system for handling intersex conflict. So because they
Speaker 3: have this system of competing with one another for mates,
Speaker 3: they have this ritualized wrestling type of thing where they
Speaker 3: can sort of have a proxy for all out fighting
Speaker 3: by competing to show endurance in wrestling or these displays,
Speaker 3: which is another interesting example of something we've talked about
Speaker 3: on the show before of like a lot of the
Speaker 3: things we see in nature that we think of as
Speaker 3: fighting or aggression are actually ways of avoiding fighting or aggression.
Speaker 2: M hmm.
Speaker 3: It's kind of a kind of an interesting paradox there,
Speaker 3: Like some of the most aggressive stuff you might see
Speaker 3: animals doing is actually behaviors they have evolved in order
Speaker 3: to avoid all out violence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is This is always fascinating anytime it
Speaker 2: comes up. You know that we have we certainly have
Speaker 2: more extreme cases where essentially, like two males can just
Speaker 2: stare each other down. One has a clear size advantage
Speaker 2: or some other clear advantage. The other one's just going
Speaker 2: to back down. It's like, okay, we don't even have
Speaker 2: to fight. We can see how this would play out.
Speaker 2: And this is kind of more like sort of a
Speaker 2: downstream version of a similar scenario. It's like like, okay,
Speaker 2: we can sort of go fifty percent in this battle,
Speaker 2: and then we know how a full one hundred percent
Speaker 2: battle between the two of us would go. But we
Speaker 2: don't need to go there. You know, the winner wants
Speaker 2: to go on in mate, the loser would like to
Speaker 2: go on and successfully mate and or win other competitions.
Speaker 2: It serves everyone's best interest if this is how it
Speaker 2: plays out.
Speaker 3: I guess it usually only works out for like a
Speaker 3: maybe a younger individual that doesn't look as strong but
Speaker 3: could actually win in a fight, like would not win
Speaker 3: the bluff, but would win the fight. But that you know,
Speaker 3: that's not going to happen all that often, right, Right,
Speaker 3: One more thing I did want to mention from this
Speaker 3: Schwitt study, So it talks about another thing that was
Speaker 3: missing from the male male aggression usually but was present
Speaker 3: in the female female aggression. Was so they will bite,
Speaker 3: do it full on biting, and also will do this
Speaker 3: thing they call lateral rotation. Did you get to this
Speaker 3: part here where they're like they compared it actually to
Speaker 3: the crocodilian death.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So you know, if you've seen crocodile sometimes when they
Speaker 3: get a bite of something, either grasping part of a
Speaker 3: prey animal that still or just getting part of a carcass,
Speaker 3: you know, like even baby crocodilians that are trying to
Speaker 3: tear off pieces of flesh from from an already dead
Speaker 3: carcass or something. You know, they'll get a bite of
Speaker 3: something in their mouth and instinctually just start spinning about
Speaker 3: wildly in the water. And so in the study, I
Speaker 3: thought it's interesting that even though these lizards are not
Speaker 3: super closely related to crocodilians, they have a similar impulse.
Speaker 3: I guess maybe you know, they are these elongated reptiles,
Speaker 3: so they grab hold and then they just start spinning around.
Speaker 2: If you like. Like I have watched any number of
Speaker 2: like b movies from the fifties and sixties that feature
Speaker 2: dinosaurs which are actually elongated lizards, some monitors, you know,
Speaker 2: some beaded lizards for example, engaging in combat with each
Speaker 2: other that they're generally you're going to see this sort
Speaker 2: of wrestling going on. Yeah, bite and then roll, Yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of rolling around.
Speaker 3: Oh. But another thing they mentioned in this paper is
Speaker 3: the role of armored protection in these fights. Like the
Speaker 3: osteoderms themselves the little bony warts under the skin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this does seem to aid them in these
Speaker 2: contests between males. Also protects them against would be predators,
Speaker 2: as does their venomous bite. More on this in a second.
Speaker 2: And also that colorization, as we mentioned, it serves as
Speaker 2: both warning and camouflage. So Beck points out that the
Speaker 2: color patterns seem to serve as camo at a distance,
Speaker 2: but a warning close up. A warning, of course, of
Speaker 2: their venom, which, at least in their current form, contrary
Speaker 2: to every reptile outside of the heloderm lizards, has no
Speaker 2: offensive or predatory purpose. It's purely defensive. You know. You
Speaker 2: can contrast this again with the komodo dragons, who you know,
Speaker 2: they have venom, but it aids to some degree in
Speaker 2: bringing down their prey helo monsters. And there can they
Speaker 2: just have this really powerful, full chemical weapon on hand
Speaker 2: as a defense. And it's kind of puzzling, right. It's
Speaker 2: like if you showed up at someone's house and the
Speaker 2: house and you're like, hey, what's that over there, it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's my self defense system. It's saren gas. I just
Speaker 2: keep it on hand. It would raise questions like why
Speaker 2: do you have sarin gas as a like a home
Speaker 2: defense system? Like did you have it for some other
Speaker 2: purpose originally and you just have kept it around for this.
Speaker 2: It's an odd choice.
Speaker 3: Now. One thing that's interesting is it does seem to
Speaker 3: be the case that the venom of the heel a
Speaker 3: monster is almost entirely or entirely for defense. But this
Speaker 3: was not always known. For a long time, it was
Speaker 3: a contentious issue or a source of confusion, like was
Speaker 3: it for predation or was it for defense? It does
Speaker 3: seem to be for defense, and we'll talk about reasons
Speaker 3: for that later, and they're pretty interesting. But I wanted
Speaker 3: to talk briefly about the heel a monster bite and
Speaker 3: its venom So again, one of my main sources is
Speaker 3: going to be that book by Daniel Beck, The Biology
Speaker 3: of HeLa Monsters and Beaded Lizards, But I was also
Speaker 3: reading some other sources we can talk about as we
Speaker 3: go along. As we mentioned earlier, the Heloderma lizards are
Speaker 3: known for being among the few, or depending on your definitions,
Speaker 3: the only venomous lizards on Earth. But it took a
Speaker 3: long time to get to full agreement among everybody in
Speaker 3: the specialist sort of herpetology community that these lizards were
Speaker 3: actually venomous. Beca gives this kind of chronicle of the
Speaker 3: history of this controversy, talking about how in the later
Speaker 3: half of the nineteenth century you did have inklings of venomousness,
Speaker 3: some people had made reports of this kind. He says
Speaker 3: that some of the sources at this time comment on
Speaker 3: the quote vile nature of Heloderma. I love these, you know,
Speaker 3: in the older sources they're not as clinical and they're
Speaker 3: not as clinical and reserved as modern sources are, and
Speaker 3: talking about these reptiles, they make kind of moral judgment
Speaker 3: from the animals they talk about, but also that you know,
Speaker 3: some authors in the late later nineteenth century looked at
Speaker 3: things like, well, it's teeth have these grooves in them,
Speaker 3: what are those grooves for? That could be for delivering
Speaker 3: venom of some sort. And then in the eighteen eighties
Speaker 3: there were some dissections of Hiloderma looking at their venom
Speaker 3: glands and experiments which showed that Heloderma saliva was toxic
Speaker 3: to other animals. But this did not settle the matter,
Speaker 3: because then more research was published later in the same
Speaker 3: decade showing that Heloderma saliva had no toxic effects. Beck
Speaker 3: thinks that this false negative about the toxicity of the
Speaker 3: saliva was probably a result of samples being collected wrong.
Speaker 3: He doesn't elaborate, but I wonder if this means somehow
Speaker 3: that the researchers were collecting saliva that did not have
Speaker 3: venom in it, because as we'll mention, it's you know,
Speaker 3: the venom is sort of is injected from glands into mouth.
Speaker 3: In the eighteen nineties, researchers extracted venom directly from heloderma
Speaker 3: venom glands and injected it into small vertebrates, which resulted
Speaker 3: in death. But then others remained skeptical. Here's the thing
Speaker 3: I alluded to earlier. There was this one researcher named Snow,
Speaker 3: last named Snow who got a helo monster bite, and
Speaker 3: he was like, Eh, no big deal. I don't think
Speaker 3: they're venomous. So maybe he just got a dry bite
Speaker 3: with little or no venom delivered unclear, But Beck also
Speaker 3: quotes an author named Goodfellow, writing in the year nineteen
Speaker 3: oh seven, who says, you know, at this point the
Speaker 3: case is closed. It is not venomous. It can be
Speaker 3: conclusively demonstrated. Quote that the bite of the monster is innocuous.
Speaker 3: Per se as we know this was completely wrong, And
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirteen a book was published by the Carnegie
Speaker 3: Institute of Washington that had details on extensive experiments by
Speaker 3: eleven different contributors on the venom of Hiloderma, and this
Speaker 3: book and then subsequent papers in the following decade finally
Speaker 3: had everybody convinced that the lizards were venomous. So it
Speaker 3: seems like by the nineteen twenties. Everybody's on the same page. Okay,
Speaker 3: yes they are venomous. So to picture how Heloderma in
Speaker 3: venomation works, it helps to contrast it with the other
Speaker 3: venomous reptile you're probably thinking of, which is venomous snakes.
Speaker 3: In a venomous snake, the venom glands and the venom
Speaker 3: conducting teeth the fangs are in the upper jaw. In
Speaker 3: most venomous snakes, the fangs will produce deep puncture wounds
Speaker 3: with a bite, and then the snake's venom glands, often
Speaker 3: located sort of behind or under the eyes, inject venom
Speaker 3: through ducts into the wound through holes in the hollow fangs.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, in Heloderma suspectum, the helo monster,
Speaker 3: the venom glands are in the lower jaw, and the
Speaker 3: venom conducting teeth are mostly the lower teeth, So the
Speaker 3: venom conducting teeth here are not going to be injecting
Speaker 3: venom like the fangs of a cobra. If you see
Speaker 3: the venom glands of Heloderma illustrated, they sort of make
Speaker 3: the lizard look a bit jowy. There's a Don Corleone
Speaker 3: thing going on and the venom glands. So there are
Speaker 3: these multi lobed little protuberances on the lower jaw. They
Speaker 3: line the lower jaw and you can see them in
Speaker 3: like three or four lobes down there, and each little
Speaker 3: plump lobe is connected to the gums via a duct.
Speaker 3: So the HeLa monster has very sharp, long teeth with
Speaker 3: grooves running up the teeth from the base, and when
Speaker 3: the lizard bites, venom is expressed from the glands out
Speaker 3: through the ducts, flooding around the base of the teeth,
Speaker 3: and then it is conducted up the teeth and into
Speaker 3: the wounds of the bite victim via capillary action. So
Speaker 3: the same way that if you have a very thin straw,
Speaker 3: you can see liquid just natured truly climb up the straw,
Speaker 3: even without any suction being applied. It's just the capillary
Speaker 3: action caused by the surface tension of the liquid it
Speaker 3: wants to climb up through the very narrow channel. Same
Speaker 3: thing happens. It climbs up through the teeth and is
Speaker 3: conducted into the wound. But there's also just getting venom
Speaker 3: into the wound through good old fashioned mashing and grinding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's I think one of the really telling
Speaker 2: things about the HeLa monster is that it has to
Speaker 2: chew the venom into the target, which certainly feels like
Speaker 2: a less sort of biotechnolog technologically advanced delivery system compared
Speaker 2: to like a you know, a cobra or a viper
Speaker 2: that you could almost think of their fangs as being
Speaker 2: like little hypodermic needles.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean, as we know, there is no up
Speaker 3: or down in evolution, so there's no actual like you know,
Speaker 3: more or less sophisticated in a way. That's that's just
Speaker 3: sort of an interpretive overlay that we put on things
Speaker 3: that doesn't really connect anything real in nature. But it
Speaker 3: does feel that way. It feels like a less specialize,
Speaker 3: less sophisticated method of delivery for venom than something like
Speaker 3: cobra fangs.
Speaker 2: Right, And we can certainly understand this a lot more
Speaker 2: by just thinking and continue to discuss how a helo
Speaker 2: monster uses its venom, like what role it has in
Speaker 2: its life as opposed to venomous snakes. But the way
Speaker 2: the Helo monster is going about it, it seems to
Speaker 2: work well for the Helo monster.
Speaker 3: In this book, chapter Beck explains one interesting idea related
Speaker 3: to how the helodermal lizards prepare to deliver their venom.
Speaker 3: So if you approach one of these things, and again
Speaker 3: I recommend if you're out in nature, don't mess with them,
Speaker 3: keep your distance. But if something approaches, a threatened or
Speaker 3: agitated helodermal lizard will often open and close its jaws
Speaker 3: repeatedly at whatever is bothering it, exposing, for one thing,
Speaker 3: sort of showing off the inside of the mouth, exposing
Speaker 3: this pink, purple white inside of the mouth is very
Speaker 3: different color is usually than the outside of the animal,
Speaker 3: so that can be kind of visually shocking to see
Speaker 3: when it spreads its jaws wide, and this is often
Speaker 3: interpreted as a threat display, but Beck mentions that it
Speaker 3: might have another function, which is that the opening and
Speaker 3: closing of the jaws could serve to express venom from
Speaker 3: the glands into the mouth and then to better coat
Speaker 3: all the teeth with venom rather than only the pairs
Speaker 3: of teeth in the middle lower jaw that have the
Speaker 3: venom ducts right beneath them.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, it's kind of like one of those fighting
Speaker 2: games where you charge up an attack, you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: either rapidly pushing that button or like holding back or
Speaker 2: holding down a button.
Speaker 3: I was thinking of in D and D, like applying
Speaker 3: poison to all of your arrows before the light starts.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's a good one too.
Speaker 3: However, one thing you can say about Helo monster in
Speaker 3: venomation is if the delivery system feels unsophisticated, the chewing
Speaker 3: venom into the wound feels a little crude, the venom
Speaker 3: itself is highly sophisticated. It is this fascinating, diverse, complex
Speaker 3: cocktail of dozens of different bioactive agents, compounds, proteins, peptides,
Speaker 3: all hormones, all different kinds of things, producing a wide
Speaker 3: range of toxic effects. And there are some sources that
Speaker 3: indicate it might be a more than the some of
Speaker 3: its parts kind of situation where scientists have done a
Speaker 3: lot of work isolating individual toxins from the Helo Monster's
Speaker 3: venom and trying to understand them and trying to see
Speaker 3: what they do. Of course, this will have major implications
Speaker 3: for pharmaceuticals that we can probably discuss in the next
Speaker 3: part in the series or at some point in the series.
Speaker 3: So a huge array of interesting and powerful bio active
Speaker 3: agents throughout this venom, but in some cases it has
Speaker 3: been found that certain toxins within the venom are more
Speaker 3: potent within the venom at what they do than they
Speaker 3: are when they're isolated. So again, it might be more
Speaker 3: than the sum of its parts. And of course some
Speaker 3: of these things found in the venom or have been
Speaker 3: the source of revolutionary drug discoveries. Again, we'll come back
Speaker 3: to that, but I want to talk first about just
Speaker 3: what's it like to be bitten by a HeLa monster.
Speaker 3: First of all, incredibly unbelievably painful. People often describe it
Speaker 3: as like being on fire. There is a fire that
Speaker 3: you can't put out in your flesh. Another simile that
Speaker 3: I have seen multiple times is molten hot lava has
Speaker 3: entered your bloodstream. It's like something is burning hot and
Speaker 3: it is flowing inside you now. And this is because
Speaker 3: in many cases, the excruciating pain is not only localized
Speaker 3: at the the source of the bite. It is there,
Speaker 3: but it also tends to radiate back toward the core
Speaker 3: of the body. So, for example, people who are bitten
Speaker 3: on the hand often describe a sense of extreme, unbearable
Speaker 3: burning pain that climbs up the arm and into the shoulder,
Speaker 3: which creates distress in itself because there's this feeling of
Speaker 3: how far is it going to go and when is
Speaker 3: it going to stop. People who have experienced it usually
Speaker 3: say it is the worst pain they have ever felt.
Speaker 3: Beyond that, there are a bunch of systemic effects that
Speaker 3: have been documented, some frequently, some occasionally, so it's not
Speaker 3: always exactly the same array of effects, and I can't
Speaker 3: list every reaction ever documented, but the large list includes
Speaker 3: reduction in blood flow through the carotid artery, which is
Speaker 3: going to mean reduced blood flow to the head and
Speaker 3: the brain, a drop in blood pressure. Tachycardia is a
Speaker 3: rapid heart rate when resting, and just general cardio weirdness
Speaker 3: messing with your heart rate and your circulation. General trouble breathing,
Speaker 3: a lot of different kinds of strange breathing, maybe shortness
Speaker 3: of breath or difficulty with breathing in different ways. Edema,
Speaker 3: which is swelling caused by fluid retention in body tissues.
Speaker 3: I think this is going to be especially around the
Speaker 3: area of the bite. Hypothermia which is a drop in
Speaker 3: core body temperature, nausea and vomiting and other gastrointestinal distress
Speaker 3: and internal hemorrhage and major organs, and the lungs, eyes,
Speaker 3: digestive tract and other organs. I've seen people who suffered
Speaker 3: helo monster bites talking about blood in their urine, so surprisingly,
Speaker 3: despite how alarming that list is. We mentioned this earlier,
Speaker 3: but it's kind of hard to believe that human death
Speaker 3: from heloderma bites is very rare. There are only a
Speaker 3: couple of possible cases of fatal bites and humans in
Speaker 3: the past century. One of them is in dispute. Another
Speaker 3: one was that one that's pretty recent that we talked about,
Speaker 3: the one in twenty twenty four, the man in Colorado
Speaker 3: who was bitten by a pet. And in cases where
Speaker 3: death occurs, it seems usually to result from disturbances to breathing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've read that in general, not referring to any
Speaker 2: specific case here, but I've read that in general the
Speaker 2: effects of a helo monster bite can be considerably worsened
Speaker 2: if alcohol is in the human's bloodstream. And I think
Speaker 2: this may be applies more to some of the more
Speaker 2: historic alleged accounts, where we can sort of imagine a
Speaker 2: cowboy scenario right where cowboys bitten by the HeLa monster.
Speaker 2: What are you going to do? Well, we got to
Speaker 2: get out the old medical kit, which is mostly a
Speaker 2: bottle of whiskey. Have some whiskey for that helo monster bite.
Speaker 2: It's just going to accelerate the venom.
Speaker 3: I can imagine it the other way too, like the
Speaker 3: cowboy's been getting into the whisky, which is what causes
Speaker 3: the cowboy to start messing with the heli mons.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, because again, most of the examples that have
Speaker 2: been recorded where someone gets bitten by helo monsters becaus
Speaker 2: a person was actively handling a helo monster.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Beck mentions differing effects of the venom on
Speaker 3: other animals. What I was just talking about was mainly
Speaker 3: what's been documented in humans, but there have been studies
Speaker 3: on what happens in dogs and cats and mice. Apparently,
Speaker 3: doses that are below the lethal dose in rodents like
Speaker 3: mice and rats tend to cause protruding eyes and periorbital bleeding.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: Bizarrely, research has found that invertebrates seem to be basically
Speaker 3: immune to the effects of heloderma venom. So it's kind
Speaker 3: of a special treat for US vertebrates. The LD fifty
Speaker 3: to the extent that it's been studied, and then that's
Speaker 3: the dose at which fifty percent of you know, the
Speaker 3: studied animal like mice in a lab scenario are killed
Speaker 3: by the venom. The ld fifty seems to vary a
Speaker 3: lot in different studies, and this, at least in part,
Speaker 3: seems to be because the ad mixture of venom and
Speaker 3: saliva is not constant. But it just seems like, you know,
Speaker 3: venom lots that are taken from these animals in nature
Speaker 3: are just not going to be of a consistent level
Speaker 3: of potency.
Speaker 2: And this of course reminds us of that, you know,
Speaker 2: those previous accounts or someone said, oh, do don't worry
Speaker 2: about they're not venomous. I got bit by one and
Speaker 2: it's fine. It can be a variable amount of the
Speaker 2: venom present in the saliva.
Speaker 3: Now, this brings us to the question of what is
Speaker 3: the venom for Beck discusses this extensively in the book.
Speaker 3: Apparently for many years this was a subject of confusion
Speaker 3: about Heloderma. Is the venom system of the HeLa monster
Speaker 3: and the beaded lizard? Is it used for predation or defense?
Speaker 3: In relatives like the venom of snakes, venom is mainly
Speaker 3: used for predation. It can be used for defense as well,
Speaker 3: but it's necessary for predation because the venom is used
Speaker 3: you subdue and either kill or immobilize, and then sometimes
Speaker 3: to digest prey. This is important because venomous snakes often
Speaker 3: prey on animals that are relatively large and could be
Speaker 3: dangerous to the predator, as in, they could inflict injuries
Speaker 3: on the snake if they were able to fight back.
Speaker 3: So in many venomous snakes, venom tends to cause things
Speaker 3: like low blood pressure, blood clotting, and just tissue destruction
Speaker 3: enzymatic destruction of tissue, often the tissue lining the blood vessels.
Speaker 3: Some venomus snakes also make use of neurotoxins that can
Speaker 3: cause muscle paralysis, and this can first of all, it
Speaker 3: can immobilize prey, but it can also kill prey by
Speaker 3: halting respiration, leading to death. And Beck mentions that some
Speaker 3: snake venom may also play a role in helping snakes
Speaker 3: pre digest their meals, which is beautiful.
Speaker 2: It's kind of breaking it down a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there is a pretty significant difference between the
Speaker 3: kind of invenomation we see from snakes and what we
Speaker 3: get from heloderma. So a dose of heloderma venom from
Speaker 3: a bite. While brutally painful, it tends to be a
Speaker 3: little more locally concentrated in its effects, has less of
Speaker 3: a tissue destroying effect, and so Beck argues that Heloderma
Speaker 3: venom seems less specialized for subduing prey and thus is
Speaker 3: probably more important for defense than for predation, because, again
Speaker 3: coming back to what we talked about earlier, looking at
Speaker 3: their ecology, how do they survive and interact with their environment?
Speaker 3: Heloderma lizards are nest rating specialists. They attack eggs or
Speaker 3: the helpless young of other animals, primarily birds and small mammals.
Speaker 3: So there are you know, just you don't need a
Speaker 3: venom to subdue a baby cotton tail rabbit or to
Speaker 3: subdue an egg. You know these prey are they're not
Speaker 3: very large, they're not very dangerous, and thus there's not
Speaker 3: a big reason to see why lizards would need venom
Speaker 3: in order to bring them down.
Speaker 2: Like the monster setting out, it's got like this big rifle.
Speaker 2: It's like what are you what are you hunting there?
Speaker 2: And he's like, uh, egg doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also, Heloderma venom does not seem to have the
Speaker 3: tissue destroying capacities that would indicate that it is used
Speaker 3: to help predigest prey, like it might be in the
Speaker 3: case of some snakes. And then Beck also talks about
Speaker 3: how field observations don't seem to indicate that heel monsters
Speaker 3: use their venom for predation. So he's for one thing,
Speaker 3: you know, there's not like with a snake you would
Speaker 3: need to bite and then wait for the venom to work.
Speaker 3: I mean, so you might bite and then back off
Speaker 3: and then attack or bite and then wait before trying
Speaker 3: to swallow. But Beck talks about how you know the
Speaker 3: heel monsters they're gonna eat baby rabbits or something, they
Speaker 3: just go in and just swallow them. You know, there's
Speaker 3: not like chewing, pumping, when the kind of stuff you
Speaker 3: would see when a snake needs to envenomate a prey
Speaker 3: animal in order to get it down. Beck does mention
Speaker 3: that in captivity sometimes he's observed HeLa monsters chewing on
Speaker 3: already dead mice that they're being fed, but that you know,
Speaker 3: that might be something else that might be a captivity
Speaker 3: induced behavior or something reflexive. But generally it just observations
Speaker 3: don't lend themselves to thinking that it has a feeding
Speaker 3: or predation function. He says, maybe it might have more
Speaker 3: of a predation function for juvenile lizards, Okay, like a
Speaker 3: much smaller HeLa monster going after say again a young rabbit.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe rabbit.
Speaker 3: But it seems that it's much more effective for defense.
Speaker 3: So the main line of defense for helodermal lizards is
Speaker 3: going to be not venom, but hiding. They spend most
Speaker 3: of their time hiding in shelters. Now, of course, sometimes
Speaker 3: they have to come out of these shelters to pursue
Speaker 3: biological objectives like looking for food or looking for mates,
Speaker 3: so they go out a wandering and if they are
Speaker 3: caught out in the open, most of these well, for
Speaker 3: one thing, you can contrast it with what other species
Speaker 3: of lizards do. Most lizards, if they're caught out in
Speaker 3: the open, will just sprint away from the threat because
Speaker 3: they can move pretty fast. Heloderma lizards they're not fast movers.
Speaker 3: They are large, sluggish, relatively slow moving and yes, in fact,
Speaker 3: there are helo monster on a treadmill tests with peak
Speaker 3: speed clocked by Beck at one point seven kilometers per
Speaker 3: hour wo, so not super fast movers. Instead of running,
Speaker 3: they rely on a secondary defense, which is hiding in
Speaker 3: plain sight, so their color patterns can help camouflage them
Speaker 3: against the background, at least when the potential predator is
Speaker 3: at a distance. So if a predator comes with within
Speaker 3: the range the lizard senses them, the lizard will often
Speaker 3: freeze and press their bodies flat to the ground. However,
Speaker 3: if a predator already saw it and kept coming, the
Speaker 3: lizard would not be able to get away quickly enough.
Speaker 3: So now it makes ecological sense for them to have
Speaker 3: a third line of defense, which is venom. So the
Speaker 3: prescription here is bite, clamp, and hold on. Usually flood
Speaker 3: the venom up from the glands into the ducts around
Speaker 3: the teeth, flood the venom into the wound, and then
Speaker 3: chew more venom into the wound for the bite victim.
Speaker 3: This leads to the kinds of effects mentioned before, excruciating pain,
Speaker 3: drop in blood pressure, weakness, lethargy, internal hemorrhaging. It is
Speaker 3: not a pleasant experience. Now, Beck does note an interesting
Speaker 3: paradox if the venom is designed to drive predators away
Speaker 3: by making the prospect of tangling with a heloderma lizard
Speaker 3: super unpleasan why does the lizard clamp on and continue
Speaker 3: to risk injury? While the bite victim is fighting to
Speaker 3: remove it seems kind of counterproductive if the lizard's goal
Speaker 3: is to deter the predator and escape unharmed. Despite the
Speaker 3: apparent paradox. Here Beck discusses existing recorded observations of HeLa
Speaker 3: monsters biting both humans and dogs, and in both cases,
Speaker 3: the bite victim does not usually react by injuring the lizard.
Speaker 3: They will usually immediately panic and just try to get
Speaker 3: away to get the lizard off, which the bite victim
Speaker 3: eventually does, and in most cases this happens without the
Speaker 3: death or serious injury. Without the death of the lizard
Speaker 3: or serious injury, A couple of recorded cases have resulted
Speaker 3: in lizard deaths, so apparently the biting and clamping is
Speaker 3: in the field not one hundred percent safe for the lizard,
Speaker 3: but it does. The lizard usually does get away alive,
Speaker 3: and I think one way of interpreting this is that
Speaker 3: there is just sort of a calculus a trade off
Speaker 3: that the lizard's biology is making here. So if the
Speaker 3: lizard can hang on longer and can chew more venom
Speaker 3: into the wound, you are more likely to produce an
Speaker 3: intense and overwhelming reaction in the bitten predatory animal, which
Speaker 3: I think thereafter reduces the effect that the animal comes
Speaker 3: back and still tries to kill or eat the lizard
Speaker 3: a second time. So, even though there is risk to
Speaker 3: the lizard from clamping on and continuing it to attack,
Speaker 3: it doesn't have a fast, efficient venom delivery system like
Speaker 3: the you know, the fangs of a viper or like
Speaker 3: a snake that can bite quickly, inject tons of venom
Speaker 3: really fast, and then run away. It has to sort
Speaker 3: of keep chewing and grinding to get more venom in there.
Speaker 3: And the evolutionary calculus has concluded that sometimes it makes
Speaker 3: sense for the lizard to have an instinct to bite
Speaker 3: and hold on and deliver more venom, even if that's
Speaker 3: going to keep the lizard initially exposed to the predator
Speaker 3: for longer. I think because a more venomated predatory animal
Speaker 3: is going to be less dangerous to you after the
Speaker 3: bite is released.
Speaker 2: You know, this is just pure guesswork on my part,
Speaker 2: but the fact that in some cases we have accounts
Speaker 2: of the lizard being killed while it's still attached, I
Speaker 2: wonder how many of those cases are going to be
Speaker 2: very specific a to humans and to tool using humans.
Speaker 2: Something that of course, a hate monster would not have
Speaker 2: evolved to cope with like if they have not evolved
Speaker 2: to cope with, say a pocket knife or I don't know,
Speaker 2: a revolver or something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that's a good point. And I think if
Speaker 3: you just look more at the kinds of predator encounters
Speaker 3: the lizard is going to be having in its natural environment,
Speaker 3: what you generally get is just that the predator that
Speaker 3: has been bitten and venomated is going to be focused
Speaker 3: entirely on getting away from the lizard and taking care
Speaker 3: of its wounds. The motivation to eat the lizard by
Speaker 3: a natural predator is immediately deprioritized, and the lizard can
Speaker 3: escape if it survives, you know, the biting itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just want to get it off of me,
Speaker 2: and then I want to get away from here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, and Beck argues that a major effect of the
Speaker 3: tenacious bite and the prolonged in venomation maybe to promote
Speaker 3: learning in predatory animals that it promotes, maybe in the
Speaker 3: one instance, a learning in that individual animal that it's
Speaker 3: not going to approach a lizard that looks like this again,
Speaker 3: and could also over evolutionary time by reducing the fitness
Speaker 3: of animals that have been bitten. It could produce evolutionary
Speaker 3: learning instinctual learning, where like animals, the predatory animals that
Speaker 3: avoid lizards that look like this are favored evolutionarily and
Speaker 3: thus eventually the predator species are less likely to mess
Speaker 3: with them.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's an educational initiative. I'm the part of
Speaker 2: the Helo monsters.
Speaker 3: Anyway, it should go without saying at this point, but
Speaker 3: I think if there's one main takeaway from all this,
Speaker 3: it is just don't mess with helo monsters. This is
Speaker 3: not a lizard worth poking if you find it in nature,
Speaker 3: just you know, keep your distance, observe respectfully from afar.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, look at pictures and if you
Speaker 2: get a chance, if you do get a chance to
Speaker 2: see them in the wild, yes, do keep your distance.
Speaker 2: And if you see them at a zoo, well enjoy
Speaker 2: the treat of watching them. Probably sleep for an extended
Speaker 2: period of time. But yeah, still fabulous animals and I
Speaker 2: look forward to talking about them more in at least one,
Speaker 2: possibly two more episodes, because there's a lot more to cover.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of indigenous to about the HeLa
Speaker 2: monster like to get into. There are various sort of
Speaker 2: frontier myths about them as well that are pretty amusing
Speaker 2: and in some cases maybe insightful into the way humans
Speaker 2: were interacting with them. And then we're going to get
Speaker 2: into their role in pharmacology totally. All right, Well, in
Speaker 2: the meantime, I do write in if you have anything
Speaker 2: already you want to share with us about HeLa monsters
Speaker 2: field reports if you will. We're also open to any
Speaker 2: kind of info you want to send in regarding Helo
Speaker 2: monsters popping up in movies. There's a website that we
Speaker 2: always love to check out anytime that the subject of
Speaker 2: herbs and film comes up, and it's California herbs dot com.
Speaker 2: They have a whole section where you can look up.
Speaker 2: You can see what herbs have been in what movies,
Speaker 2: and what they were doing in them, how they were treated,
Speaker 2: and they have a listing for the HeLa monster, and
Speaker 2: it's an interesting selection of films. I was looking at this,
Speaker 2: and of course you have concerning Helo monsters and Beat
Speaker 2: of the Lizards. You have some pretty obvious inclusions there,
Speaker 2: but also like some classic westerns are just popping up
Speaker 2: in as part of the sort of background you know
Speaker 2: Frontier World. They pop up in Butch Casting The Sundance Kid,
Speaker 2: for example. No, I forgot about that. Yeah, what do
Speaker 2: they when?
Speaker 3: When do they show up in the movie?
Speaker 2: I think The Sundance Kid shoots a Helo monster. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah that. They show up in various older westerns to Florida,
Speaker 2: pache and then, of course there is the nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: nine film The Giant HeLa Monster, in which the HeLa
Speaker 2: Monster is played by a beaded lizard, so not even
Speaker 2: an actual HeLa monster. They couldn't get him. His asking
Speaker 2: price was too high. So do do write in if
Speaker 2: you have anything to share, Just a reminder of everyone
Speaker 2: out there. The Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
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