Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Listener mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Joe McCormick. My regular co host Robert
Speaker 2: Lamb is out today, so I'm going to be recording
Speaker 2: this episode solo. But don't worry. Rob will be back
Speaker 2: on Mike with me next time. It's Monday, the day
Speaker 2: of each week that we read back messages from the
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If you would
Speaker 2: like to get in touch, you can write us at
Speaker 2: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Whatever
Speaker 2: you want to send us fine. We appreciate feedback to
Speaker 2: recent episodes, especially if you have something interesting to add
Speaker 2: to something we have talked about. Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 2: start off today with a response to an older series
Speaker 2: of episodes we did on throwing behavior in non human animals,
Speaker 2: and one of the big examples we talked about in
Speaker 2: that series was a paper about octopuses doing something that
Speaker 2: looked like deliberate targeted throwing of inanimate objects like shells
Speaker 2: and clumps of sediment at each other and I think
Speaker 2: occasionally at fish, but mostly at each other for getting
Speaker 2: in one another's personal space and I do recall there
Speaker 2: was some ambiguity about whether that was the right interpretation
Speaker 2: of the behavior or not. Was it actually targeted throwing
Speaker 2: or just something that kind of looked that way because
Speaker 2: they were kicking up dust or sediment for some other reason.
Speaker 2: And continuing the theme of octopuses and animal throwing, Nathan writes, Hi, Robert,
Speaker 2: Joe and Carney a shout out to the mailbot. I
Speaker 2: just finished listening to your episodes on animals throwing things
Speaker 2: when I saw an interesting article on the CBC. There
Speaker 2: had been video caught of a sea lion and octopus
Speaker 2: fighting off the cost of Nanaimo, British Columbia, which is
Speaker 2: definitely not typical octopus stomping grounds. In the video, the
Speaker 2: sea lion picks up the octopus and throws it across
Speaker 2: the surface of the water with surprising force at least twice.
Speaker 2: In the article, Andrew Trites, director of the Marine Mammal
Speaker 2: Research Unit at the University of British Columbia, says that
Speaker 2: sea lions will bite down hard on one tentacle, then
Speaker 2: fling the octopus in an effort to tear the arm off.
Speaker 2: This is apparently the safest way for them to pray
Speaker 2: on octopus, as otherwise the octopus can suffocate the sea
Speaker 2: lion with its many tentacles. Thanks for all your great work,
Speaker 2: and though behind currently, my wife Olivia and I never
Speaker 2: miss an episode. Thanks Nathan. Well, Nathan, thank you for
Speaker 2: sending this in. So I went and looked up the
Speaker 2: CBC article you referenced. It's from November seventeenth, twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three by Andrew Kurjada. If you want to look this up, folks,
Speaker 2: it is called Swimmer witnesses Surprise Fight between between octopus
Speaker 2: and Sea Lion, and the video is attached with the article.
Speaker 2: The video is pretty cool, so you can see this
Speaker 2: marine mammal repeatedly breaching the water's surface, seeming to kind
Speaker 2: of gasp and struggle at something, and then a couple
Speaker 2: of times it does suddenly whip its head around and
Speaker 2: fling something from its jaws, and it looks to me
Speaker 2: like immediately after it does that, especially in at least
Speaker 2: one instance, but maybe in a couple of them, the
Speaker 2: sea lion is working its jaws, maybe like it's chewing
Speaker 2: on something. And according to this researcher that Nathan mentioned,
Speaker 2: Andrew Tritz, who is the marine biologist quoted in the
Speaker 2: article the sea lion in the video was a stellar
Speaker 2: sea lion, and that's a species name spelled ste ll
Speaker 2: e Er, one of the two species found in these waters,
Speaker 2: along with the California sea lion. I'll read a direct
Speaker 2: quote from Trites explaining this behavior in the article quote.
Speaker 2: The challenge for a sea lion is to swallow an
Speaker 2: octopus without the octopus using it eight arms to grab
Speaker 2: onto the sea lion's head while it is being swallowed whole,
Speaker 2: the sea lion would suffocate. The sea lion's solution is
Speaker 2: to bite down onto one arm at a time and
Speaker 2: fling the octopus's body with all its force to rip
Speaker 2: off an arm to swallow hole. They do it at
Speaker 2: the surface because they can get more torque in the
Speaker 2: air than they can underwater. I missed that detail about
Speaker 2: I'm swallowing the octopus armhole, so maybe it's not chewing.
Speaker 2: I don't know. The jaw working could be something else,
Speaker 2: but anyway, this would explain why the sea lion was
Speaker 2: poking its head up above the water to do this.
Speaker 2: That is trying to get more torque when it flings
Speaker 2: its you know, whips its neck around to throw the
Speaker 2: octopus and try to rip the arm off. Another consideration
Speaker 2: mentioned in the CBC article is that the octopus not
Speaker 2: only threatens to suffocate the sea lion that is preying
Speaker 2: on it, it can also wrap itself around a predatory
Speaker 2: mammal's head like a sort of kill monster mask and
Speaker 2: bite with its beak. Also worth considering that octopuses are venomous,
Speaker 2: So yeah, it makes sense that the sea lion is
Speaker 2: really eager to get the octopus away from its face,
Speaker 2: even while trying to eat part of the octopus's body. Now,
Speaker 2: this behavior brings me back to an issue we talked
Speaker 2: about in that series on animal throwing behavior, which was
Speaker 2: the cognitive distinction between throwing behavior that seems to be
Speaker 2: for the purpose of affecting the projectile versus throwing that's
Speaker 2: designed to affect the target. So, for example, throwing a
Speaker 2: nut against a rock to crack the nut versus throwing
Speaker 2: a rock at a target animal to make it, I
Speaker 2: don't know, leave you to hurt the animal, or to
Speaker 2: make it go away and leave you alone. There is
Speaker 2: implicitly different cognition involved. In one case, you already have
Speaker 2: the object you want to affect in your possession, and
Speaker 2: you throw it in order to change something about it,
Speaker 2: maybe to damage it, or just to get it away
Speaker 2: from you to change its location. In the other case,
Speaker 2: the target you want to influence is at a distance
Speaker 2: from your body, and the projectile is a third party
Speaker 2: tool you're using to cause that effect at distance. In
Speaker 2: this case, I think it's pretty clear that the throwing
Speaker 2: is to affect the projectile, not a target, and it's
Speaker 2: in two ways. The goal is number one, to rip
Speaker 2: part of the octopus's body off so that it can
Speaker 2: be eaten, but then also just to get the other
Speaker 2: arms and the beak away from the sea lion's face.
Speaker 2: So anyway, many thanks, Nathan Okay onto another message leading
Speaker 2: to some interesting facts about animal behavior. So Troy wrote
Speaker 2: to us in response to a previous listener mail after
Speaker 2: our Weird House Cinema episode on Critters. Critters is a
Speaker 2: mainline Gromlin's movie series about little monster hedgehogs from space
Speaker 2: that love to eat. The movie we covered was the
Speaker 2: original film from nineteen eighty six, but a previous listener
Speaker 2: brought up the fact that in the sequel from nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight, which is Critters to the main course, the
Speaker 2: crits at one point glom onto one another to form
Speaker 2: a gigantic ball that rolls around, smashing people and generating mayhem.
Speaker 2: And the question came up whether there are real world
Speaker 2: examples of animals that agglomerate together to serve a collective
Speaker 2: destructive purpose like this? Are there animals that will form
Speaker 2: giant balls out of their bodies? And the answer is yes.
Speaker 2: The one answer I could think of on the spot
Speaker 2: when we read this first male was the bivouac formed
Speaker 2: by colonies of army ants. I think driver ants too.
Speaker 2: The bivouac is essentially a mobile protective nest made by
Speaker 2: the ants out of their own bodies, by ants out
Speaker 2: of ants, living ants. So the colony will form this
Speaker 2: kind of cyclopean mass made out of hundreds of thousands
Speaker 2: of worker ants that gather around the queen and her
Speaker 2: larvae to protect them when the foraging column comes to rest.
Speaker 2: And of course they have to do this because they
Speaker 2: can't form a permanent nest structure, say like with tunnels
Speaker 2: in the ground or a mound like some other types
Speaker 2: of ants or usocial insects, because the colony it forges
Speaker 2: so much that it always has to keep moving to
Speaker 2: find new feeding sources, so they have to take their
Speaker 2: nest with them. So the nest is made out of
Speaker 2: the colony, out of the ant's own bodies. So the
Speaker 2: worker ants grip each other's legs to form this cohesive
Speaker 2: structure around the queen for the resting period, and then
Speaker 2: when it's time to move again, the bivouac dissolves and
Speaker 2: the ants go on their way. Now, Troy writes to
Speaker 2: us with another example of stunningly weird agglomeration behavior in animals,
Speaker 2: and it might not be a surprise that it's also
Speaker 2: from the order of Hymenoptera. So he brings up the
Speaker 2: behavior known as bee bawling or sometimes heat balling in honeybees.
Speaker 2: This is a really interesting defensive strategy that has been
Speaker 2: documented in the Asian honeybee. I was reading about it
Speaker 2: in paper specifically on the Japanese honeybee, which is APIs
Speaker 2: serana japonica, and it works to protect the bees colonies
Speaker 2: against attacks by predatory hornets such as the Asian giant
Speaker 2: hornet Vespa mandarinia. And it seems like this is actually
Speaker 2: a pretty complex interspecies relationship. Just one example. I was
Speaker 2: reading about that there is some evidence of information exchange
Speaker 2: between bees and hornets that can sometimes avert failed predation
Speaker 2: attempts that would be costly for both parties. So maybe
Speaker 2: bees can do behaviors that let the hornets know that
Speaker 2: the bees see the hornets and thus are preparing their defenses,
Speaker 2: and thus the hornets can just avoid attacking them in
Speaker 2: the first place because probably won't be successful and it
Speaker 2: will just hurt both sides. But if a hornet does
Speaker 2: decide to attack a hive of Asian honeybees, the main
Speaker 2: lethal defensive strategy available to the bees is to surround
Speaker 2: the hornet in a tight cluster and then violently vibrate
Speaker 2: their flight muscles. So this tight ball of vibrating bees
Speaker 2: quickly increases in temperature. It gets hot, and the structure
Speaker 2: of the beat of the bee ball traps the heat,
Speaker 2: and it also traps carbon dioxide inside. And this combination
Speaker 2: of heat and CO two density kills the hornet but
Speaker 2: allows most of the bees to survive. And interestingly, though,
Speaker 2: of course Japanese honeybees can sting, I've read that they
Speaker 2: rarely use their stingers against predatory hornets. The ball is
Speaker 2: all you need. Also, I just wanted to mention while
Speaker 2: I was reading about this, I came across a related
Speaker 2: fact concerning another defensive strategy used by Asian honeybee colonies
Speaker 2: against hornet attacks. And this was in a paper by
Speaker 2: Matila at All published in Plus one in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: The paper is called honeybees APIs serrana use animal feces
Speaker 2: as a tool to defend colonies against group attack by
Speaker 2: giant hornets Vespas sorore And yeah, so you heard it
Speaker 2: there in the title. This paper documented Asian honeybees responding
Speaker 2: to threats from predatory hornets by foraging for animal feces
Speaker 2: such as water buffalo dung, bringing that animal dung back
Speaker 2: to the hive, and smearing it around the entrance to
Speaker 2: the hive. To read from the abstract here quote Fecal
Speaker 2: spotting increased after colonies were exposed, either to naturally occurring
Speaker 2: attacks or to chemicals that scout hornets use to target
Speaker 2: colonies for mass attack. Spotting continued for days after attack ceased,
Speaker 2: and occurred in response to Vesper sorore, which frequently landed
Speaker 2: at and chewed on entrances to breach nests, but not
Speaker 2: Vespa velutina, a smaller hornet that rarely landed at entrances.
Speaker 2: Moderate to heavy fecal spotting suppressed attempts by vsrore to
Speaker 2: penetrate nests by lowering the incidents of multiple hornet attacks
Speaker 2: and substantially reducing the likelihood of them approaching and chewing
Speaker 2: on entrances. We argue that APIs Serrana forages for animal
Speaker 2: feces because it has properties that repel this deadly predator
Speaker 2: from nest entrances, providing the first report of tool use
Speaker 2: by honeybees and the first evidence that they forage for
Speaker 2: solids that are not derived from plants. So what are
Speaker 2: these properties of animal dung that would work to keep
Speaker 2: the hornets away? The authors say they do not know yet. Also,
Speaker 2: just to note that if you dig into the paper,
Speaker 2: they do qualify the claim that this is the first
Speaker 2: documentation of tool use in honey because as usual with
Speaker 2: studies about tool use in animals, there is disagreement about
Speaker 2: what the criteria are, and there have been other observations
Speaker 2: that could qualify as tool use and bees depending on
Speaker 2: your criteria. All right, this next message comes from Chuck
Speaker 2: and it is a response to our series of episodes
Speaker 2: on the invention of the crossbow. Specifically, this is Chuck
Speaker 2: from San Diego. Chuck from San Diego says Dear Robert,
Speaker 2: Joe and JJ, thanks again for your interesting, thoughtful, and
Speaker 2: informative content. I think, like many of your listeners, I
Speaker 2: don't normally have a reason in my daily life to
Speaker 2: ponder many of the topics you discuss in depth, but
Speaker 2: I'm glad you do it for me. Often your discussion
Speaker 2: reminds me to consider topics in new ways or simply
Speaker 2: unlock cherished memories. That's a long winded way of saying,
Speaker 2: you guys enrich my life. Case in point crossbows. Oh,
Speaker 2: thank you, Chuck. That means a lot about crossbows. Chuck says,
Speaker 2: I personally found the discussion of crossbows as a quote
Speaker 2: evil weapon fascinating, considering two formative memories that I have
Speaker 2: that counter that notion. The first is from the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty movie Hawk the Slayer. This sword and sorcery film,
Speaker 2: a good selection for weird house cinema, actually stars Jack
Speaker 2: Palance as the evil Voltan and John Terry as the
Speaker 2: titular Hawk. Hawk must gather a ragtag band of heroes
Speaker 2: to defeat Voltan and restore order and goodness to the Land.
Speaker 2: The film is not good, but it does have its moments,
Speaker 2: especially in some of the character and action choices. One
Speaker 2: of the heroes, played by William Morgan Shepherd is Ranulf,
Speaker 2: who loses a hand and replaces it with a repeating
Speaker 2: crossbow fed by a clip of bolts with an insane
Speaker 2: rate of fire. To eight year old me watching it
Speaker 2: for the first time in nineteen eighty, this was the
Speaker 2: coolest weapon ever. Of course, because of Ranulf, repeat eating
Speaker 2: crossbows ended up in later D and D campaigns. I
Speaker 2: guess Chuck means his own D and D campaigns. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure, or Chuck, do you mean that this like
Speaker 2: inspired the creators of the D and D players guides
Speaker 2: to well, I don't know, yeah, right in clarify if
Speaker 2: you want, Chuck goes on. The second memory is from
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty three Atari Arcade light gun game Crossbow.
Speaker 2: This cabinet had a near life sized version of a
Speaker 2: crossbow that players had to use to defend their adventuring
Speaker 2: allies as they slowly moved from left to right across
Speaker 2: hazard filled screens. Eventually, the players had to find and
Speaker 2: shoot the Master of Darkness to win the game, as
Speaker 2: your life meter, your adventuring allies on screen were essentially
Speaker 2: useless think endless escort quest. So it was up to
Speaker 2: only you and your trusty crossbow to save the land
Speaker 2: from darkness. Thanks again for all you do, and my
Speaker 2: very best wishes to you and your families this holiday season, Sincerely,
Speaker 2: Chuck from San Diego. Well, thank you so much, Chuck,
Speaker 2: and saying back to you and yours. So I have
Speaker 2: never seen Hawk the Slayer, but I just looked up
Speaker 2: the poster before recording here, and I guess this is
Speaker 2: supposed to be John Terry as Hawk here, but it's
Speaker 2: just Han Solo. The costume is exactly the same, folks.
Speaker 2: Look this up Hawk the Slayer. Am I wrong? There's
Speaker 2: like the deep v neck off white shirt with the
Speaker 2: long sleeves, black vest, dark pants, tall boots. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just Han Solo from the first Star Wars movie.
Speaker 2: And I looked up shots from the actual movie of
Speaker 2: Hawk the Slayer and his costume's a little different on screen,
Speaker 2: but that poster is Come on, shameless dudes. Also, Jack
Speaker 2: Palance as the villain has an interesting costume feature. He
Speaker 2: wears a metal helmet that only reveals one eye. The
Speaker 2: other eye gap in the helmet is covered with a
Speaker 2: steel plate, so I guess it's taking the villain with
Speaker 2: an eye patch principle to the next level. All right,
Speaker 2: next message is about Weird House Cinema. This is from Steph.
Speaker 2: Steph says, hello, gentlemen. I listened to your Weird House
Speaker 2: Cinema episode on the Butterfly Murders and, as always, really
Speaker 2: enjoyed it and wished I could see the movie myself.
Speaker 2: After hearing how rare a copy of this movie was,
Speaker 2: I pretty much gave up hope for ever seeing it
Speaker 2: and relegated myself to checking out the trailer on YouTube.
Speaker 2: I fired up my laptop and found the trailer easily,
Speaker 2: but as often happens, things got busy. Dinner had to
Speaker 2: be made and cleaned up, homework had to be finished,
Speaker 2: and kids needed baths and tucking in, so I left
Speaker 2: it until this morning. I sat down with my coffee
Speaker 2: to watch what I thought was about to be a
Speaker 2: was about a four minute trailer. Guys, it's the whole movie.
Speaker 2: I am absolutely stoked at this turn of events. I
Speaker 2: only wish it wasn't Monday morning, before I had to
Speaker 2: leave for work. I plan on revisiting this when I
Speaker 2: get home and watching the heck out of this movie.
Speaker 2: Thanks for all you do. You keep me entertained with
Speaker 2: thought provoking, deep die on the most bonkers in the
Speaker 2: best way subjects and wonderful so bad they're good movie recaps.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you too, Sincerely, Steph. Oh, thank you, Steph.
Speaker 2: Thank you for the for the nice comments, and I
Speaker 2: hope you enjoy the movie. I would I would like
Speaker 2: to once again issue a call to somebody out there
Speaker 2: who I don't know owns the rights to this or
Speaker 2: whatever put out a high quality restoration disc of The
Speaker 2: Butterfly Murders. I am I am ready to give you
Speaker 2: my money, and Steph, you'll have to let us know
Speaker 2: what you think of the movie. I hope we didn't
Speaker 2: build it up too much, but yeah, I hope you
Speaker 2: enjoyed as much as we did. Okay, one last message
Speaker 2: in response to our series on the legends of headless Ghosts, gods,
Speaker 2: and monsters. This message comes from Taylor and it describes
Speaker 2: as strange and uncanny personal experience. So I'll leave you
Speaker 2: with a with a little spooky story. At the end
Speaker 2: of today's episode, Taylor says, Hello, Robin, Joe, I just
Speaker 2: finished your two part series on headless beings and felt
Speaker 2: inclined to share a spooky personal anecdote in the stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow your mind tradition of the Halloween hangover. Who
Speaker 2: I guess we're getting a little deep in November for that,
Speaker 2: But you know what, that's all right, Taylor says. On
Speaker 2: a chilly autumn evening in my mid teens, I was
Speaker 2: cycling home from a friend's house when I spotted a
Speaker 2: strange mass of gore and feathers on the side of
Speaker 2: the road. The amorphous thing was centered in a pool
Speaker 2: of light cast by a corner street lamp. Ever curious
Speaker 2: and unsure what I beheld, I dismounted my bike to
Speaker 2: get a closer look. As I approached, in horrified fascination,
Speaker 2: the thing rose up and turned to regard me with
Speaker 2: the gory stump of its neck. I realized that the
Speaker 2: previously indistinguishable mass of bloody feathers was a decapitated chicken.
Speaker 2: For a long moment, I stared into that next stump,
Speaker 2: and the stump seemed to stare back at me. Then,
Speaker 2: with seeming serenity, the chicken settled back into a resting position,
Speaker 2: and I went on my way. I generally have a
Speaker 2: poor memory of my personal history, but this moment was
Speaker 2: so chilling and bizarre that it is burned into my mind.
Speaker 2: I grew up in a semi rural area, and I
Speaker 2: was aware that a chicken's body could go about without
Speaker 2: its head for some hours. But who had dispatched this
Speaker 2: chicken without collecting it? How had the body wandered into
Speaker 2: the street, Why was it sitting right beneath a lamp
Speaker 2: as it as if composed to frighten me? And most importantly,
Speaker 2: how did it seem to see me without a head?
Speaker 2: As an adult and a science educator, this memory serves
Speaker 2: as an example against the false horse and rider dichotomy
Speaker 2: we tend to draw between body and head. Perhaps the
Speaker 2: chicken was under the street lamp because it was a
Speaker 2: relatively warm location in its immediate environment. Perhaps it felt
Speaker 2: the vibrations of my approaching footfalls through its feet and
Speaker 2: thus rose to regard me. And perhaps all of those
Speaker 2: stimuli were parsed and processed by an avan body bar
Speaker 2: reft of its head. I hope you and my fellow
Speaker 2: listeners enjoyed this spooky little memory. As ever, thank you
Speaker 2: for sharing your thoughtful meditations with all of us. I
Speaker 2: hope you and yours enjoy happy holidays. Taylor, Well, thank you, Taylor.
Speaker 2: That is truly a creepy story. I don't know what
Speaker 2: the best explanation of all that would be. I mean,
Speaker 2: I know there are these stories of famously Mike the
Speaker 2: headless chicken, which after being decapitated by a farmer, went
Speaker 2: on to live for something like eighteen months or something,
Speaker 2: and the explanation in that case was that the farmer
Speaker 2: had severed its head near like the base of the skull,
Speaker 2: but still most of its brain stem was intact and
Speaker 2: was able to keep regulating body function for a while.
Speaker 2: But even in other cases, I know, you know, as
Speaker 2: you say, chickens do sometimes move around for a little
Speaker 2: bit after getting their heads chopped off. But in this case, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know how to explain what you saw. Actually,
Speaker 2: the creepiest part for me is not really the fact
Speaker 2: that it was a and still sort of alive and
Speaker 2: moving around without a head, but that question you raised
Speaker 2: about how it got that way and why it was
Speaker 2: sitting there by itself, Like if a human or a
Speaker 2: predator removed its head, where'd they go? I don't know. Creepy.
Speaker 2: All right, that's going to close things out for today,
Speaker 2: but Rob and I will be back tomorrow with all
Speaker 2: new stuff for you to enjoy. We read listener mail
Speaker 2: every Monday on the show. Tuesdays and Thursdays are our
Speaker 2: core Stuff to Blow your Mind episodes about science and culture.
Speaker 2: Wednesdays we run short form episodes called the Artifact or
Speaker 2: the Monster Fact. On Fridays we take a break from
Speaker 2: our regular subject matter to do a show we call
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema, where each week we watch and discuss
Speaker 2: a weird movie. It can be great or terrible, well
Speaker 2: known or obscure. The only real criterion is that it
Speaker 2: is weird. And then on Saturdays we feature an older
Speaker 2: episode of the show from the vault Huge thanks, as
Speaker 2: always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway'd like to
Speaker 2: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 2: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 2: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 2: contact at stuffdo Blow your Mind dot com.
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