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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. It is Saturday,

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Speaker 1: time for another vault. And hey, if you listen last Saturday,

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Speaker 1: you know what's up this week. It's Mud Part two,

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Speaker 1: So sink in and enjoy more of this exploration. This

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Speaker 1: one originally published seven eleven, twenty twenty three.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part

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Speaker 3: two of our series on mud. Now. In the last episode,

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Speaker 3: we talked about some sort of definitional constraints on the

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Speaker 3: idea of mud, and yes, it is the mud you're

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Speaker 3: thinking of, as in wet soil, typically composed of small

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Speaker 3: particles of the silt or clay particle size variety. But

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Speaker 3: we also talked about mud in the sort of geohistory

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Speaker 3: of Earth, in the history of how the continents were

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Speaker 3: colonized by early plants and animals terrestrial life, and how

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Speaker 3: the presence of mud sort of was sort of driven

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Speaker 3: by the presence of plants on Earth's continents, and then

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Speaker 3: how the build up of mud on the continents from

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Speaker 3: there sort of shaped the way the continents developed. But

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Speaker 3: before that, we also talked about a passage in The

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Speaker 3: Fairy Queen, which is a late sixteenth century English epic

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Speaker 3: poem by the poet Edmund Spencer, in which the author

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Speaker 3: talks about his belief that the mud of the Nile,

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Speaker 3: and maybe just mud in general, spawns monsters. And I

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Speaker 3: knew we were not done with the idea of monsters

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Speaker 3: that grow out of mud. Surely there's going to be

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Speaker 3: a lot of that going around. And Rob, I think

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Speaker 3: you had one as well, didn't you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I actually looked into this a little bit last

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Speaker 1: year because I worked a mud monster into the script

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Speaker 1: I wrote for Thirteen Days of Halloween last year, and

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Speaker 1: I was looking for inspiration regarding mud monsters, and at

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Speaker 1: least at the time, I didn't find as many as

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Speaker 1: I thought I would, But I did find one really

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Speaker 1: interesting one. This one is a yokai from Japanese traditions,

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Speaker 1: and it's known as the Dora Tabo. This name means

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Speaker 1: either mud man or rice paddy man, and this yokai

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Speaker 1: is generally described and depicted as a humanoid made out

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Speaker 1: of mud, or at least a torso of a humanoid

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Speaker 1: made out of mud, emerging from the mud of a

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Speaker 1: rice patty, grasping with its arms and staring out through

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Speaker 1: a single eye in its head as it wails at

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Speaker 1: the night.

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Speaker 3: It's brutal looking. It's got a kind of mud skeleton

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Speaker 3: like you can see the ribs at least.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a frightening looking yokai, that's for sure. Of course,

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Speaker 1: frightening in yokai doesn't necessarily mean it's going to try

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Speaker 1: to kill you, And well that's how it basically breaks

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Speaker 1: down in this one. I have a really fun yochai

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Speaker 1: book that my son and I read last year. This

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Speaker 1: is from Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt titled Yokai Attack.

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Speaker 1: It's a fun little book that has some great illustrations,

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Speaker 1: and they point out that the Doro Tabo is not

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Speaker 1: generally believed to be dangerous. It cries and frightens those

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Speaker 1: who encounter it, but that's about it. Some traditions say

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Speaker 1: that it originated as a man who lost his hard

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Speaker 1: won farmland and now haunting the rice fields, cries for

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Speaker 1: its return in the night, wait.

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Speaker 3: The return of the fields. Like as the mud monster,

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Speaker 3: he wants to now again be the rightful owner of

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Speaker 3: the fields.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, it's like this was my place

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Speaker 1: and now you've taken it from me, you know, basically

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Speaker 1: haunting one oh one. Right. But the authors here also

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Speaker 1: share that the Doro Tabos origins go back at least

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Speaker 1: as far as Sakan Toriyama's famous eighteenth century Yokai book

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Speaker 1: Tales of Monsters Than and Now, and while it might

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Speaker 1: be based on pre existing folk tales, they think it's

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Speaker 1: more likely the creation of Toriyama himself. And yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: one of these things where it's the frightening spirit here

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Speaker 1: loses some of its appeal when it seems that it

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Speaker 1: might have been little more than the embodiment of a

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Speaker 1: crude sexual metaphor to stick a pole in the rice patty.

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Speaker 1: So maybe its origins are less spooky and more just

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Speaker 1: kind of skeezy. But still, and the thing is, you

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Speaker 1: can see that too if you look at some of

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Speaker 1: these illustrations. I mean, it's the monster's appearance is vaguely phallic,

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Speaker 1: and the authors point out that Sakan may have been

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Speaker 1: referencing brothels that were located north of Edo Castle at

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Speaker 1: the time. But whatever the road to get there, the

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Speaker 1: result is a pretty cool looking mud monster.

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Speaker 3: Now, while we're on the topic of the intersection between

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Speaker 3: mud and monsters, there is a movie example that I

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Speaker 3: know we have to talk about. It's one not of

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Speaker 3: a monster made of mud, but of a hero who

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Speaker 3: must defeat a monster by using mud. And you horror

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Speaker 3: movie geeks out there, I know you already know the

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Speaker 3: one we're thinking of. It occurs in the transition to

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Speaker 3: the third act in the original Predator, the movie starring

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Speaker 3: Arnold Schwarzenegger and basically every other guy with muscles that

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Speaker 3: you could think of in nineteen eighty seven. So, I

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Speaker 3: know a lot of you have probably seen this movie,

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Speaker 3: but just in case you have, ut I'll explain the

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Speaker 3: setup to the mud scene. So the premise of the

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Speaker 3: movie is that Arnold Schwarzenegger is leading a group of

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Speaker 3: private military contractors on a hit for the CIA in

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Speaker 3: the jungle somewhere in Central America. Unbeknownst to them, they

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Speaker 3: just happen to be jumping right into the hunting grounds

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Speaker 3: of an alien from another planet who likes to come

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Speaker 3: to war zones on Earth to hunt humans for sport.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he likes it hot, he likes it violent, and

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Speaker 1: that's why he's here.

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Speaker 3: That's right, And I always took it to mean that,

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Speaker 3: like the predator seeks out war zones because it's like,

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Speaker 3: you know, the humans aren't gonna notice as much that

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Speaker 3: people are going missing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, there's always a lot of there's already distress, there's

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Speaker 1: already people vanishing. It can get in and do its

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Speaker 1: thing without having to worry about stirring up the locals

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Speaker 1: too much.

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Speaker 3: Oh, but it's also because the predator wants to hunt

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Speaker 3: like the toughest, like armed humans, Like he's specifically looking

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Speaker 3: for humans of the Arnold Schwarzenegger with a machine gun variety.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So in this movie, the alien has all kinds of

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Speaker 3: technology that gives the alien an advantage over humans. So,

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Speaker 3: for example, it can put on a cloaking device that

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Speaker 3: makes it nearly invisible to the naked eye. But it

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Speaker 3: also has a huge advantage in that instead of just

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Speaker 3: seeing the world in the visible spectrum of life like

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Speaker 3: we do, it sees in infrared. So the body heat

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Speaker 3: of a living organism really pops out of the background,

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Speaker 3: making any warm blooded animal easy to track in the forest.

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Speaker 3: So by the end of the second act of the movie,

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Speaker 3: this alien has trophy hunted Arnold Schwarzenegger's entire team, only

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Speaker 3: Arnold has left, and just when you think he's done for,

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Speaker 3: he ends up he's running away from the alien. He

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Speaker 3: ends up crawling on his belly across a muddy river bank,

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Speaker 3: so that his entire body ends up covered in mud.

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Speaker 3: And I will note that the mud. I was just

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Speaker 3: thinking back on the scene. It does appear to have

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Speaker 3: a lot of clay sized particles. I think that's a

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Speaker 3: clay rich mud.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it does look look very clay rich.

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Speaker 3: But anyway, so yeah, Arnold Swartzenegger ends up total. He's

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Speaker 3: totally covered in mud. He's lying there on the river

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Speaker 3: bank waiting for the predator to finish him off, and

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Speaker 3: to his surprise, suddenly it seems like this alien hunter

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Speaker 3: can't see him. The mud has made him invisible to

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Speaker 3: the alien. So finally he has an advantage to even

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Speaker 3: the playing field against this enemy with overwhelming technology, and

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Speaker 3: sort of that sets up the big conflict in the

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Speaker 3: third act. It's a great twist. I remember when I

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Speaker 3: first saw the movie as a kid, I thought it

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Speaker 3: was genius.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty great, and it's been very influential because you

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Speaker 1: see this either directly referenced in so many films to

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Speaker 1: come afterwards, or films will find sort of a new

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Speaker 1: way to do the same thing, like our hero accidentally

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Speaker 1: finds some sort of protection from from some sort of

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Speaker 1: an enemy, or you know, accidentally finds this key strategy

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Speaker 1: that they can employ against said enemy.

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Speaker 3: Now, while if I remember correctly, I think nobody in

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Speaker 3: the movie actually explains how this works. You're just left

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Speaker 3: to sort of figure it out for yourself. But the

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Speaker 3: way it is presumed to work is that by covering

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Speaker 3: his body in mud, Arnold Schwarzenegger here has masked his

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Speaker 3: the heat signature of his body because it's now the

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Speaker 3: mud is the same temperature as the rest of the environment,

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Speaker 3: so he just blends in.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, now, this is a scene that's a lot of

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Speaker 1: fun to dissect, and maybe maybe almost too fun to dissect,

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Speaker 1: Like you can get a little too wrapped up in

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Speaker 1: trying to break down whether this will work or not,

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Speaker 1: and you have to at the end of the day

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Speaker 1: remind yourself, well, we need to experience it through the

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Speaker 1: you know, the cinematic excitement of the scene. But still

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Speaker 1: there are a couple of key conversations about this. I

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Speaker 1: found one that was really interesting that I had not

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Speaker 1: run across before from a book titled The Sensory Modes

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Speaker 1: of Animal Rhetorics by alex Ey Parrish, and at one

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Speaker 1: point in the book, Parish examines this scene and it

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Speaker 1: seems to have a mostly high opinion of the sequence.

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Speaker 1: He points out that quote, infrared radiation is nearly impossible

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Speaker 1: to detect through any amount of water, so the wet

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Speaker 1: mud masks Dutch's heat signature. Dutch is the character that

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Speaker 1: Arnold plays from the Predator once his high tech mass

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Speaker 1: becomes damaged in one of the earlier struggles. I think

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Speaker 1: one of the It's been a while since I've seen

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Speaker 1: Predator in its entirety, but I think part of it too,

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Speaker 1: is that the Predator sees an infrared but it has

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Speaker 1: kind of like a it sees everything in infrared, and

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Speaker 1: it has some of these technological filters that can throw

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Speaker 1: on to sort of refine that a bit.

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Speaker 3: Yes, and it may it may have lost some of

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Speaker 3: its capabilities in previous combat. Yeah, I'm not sure. Though.

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Speaker 1: Now we'll come back to sort of the you know,

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Speaker 1: the science of this. I should point out though, that

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Speaker 1: I believe Parrish's main interest in this is not really

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Speaker 1: about like the direct infrared radiation and thermal science of

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Speaker 1: the scenario, but he's he's more interested on this sort

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Speaker 1: of this idea of this being an interaction between two

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Speaker 1: beings with entirely different sensory understandings of the world. And

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Speaker 1: he likes this example because quote Dutch is able to

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Speaker 1: think outside his own lived exprience and quickly adapt to

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Speaker 1: an alien way of sensing the world. So humans can't

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Speaker 1: detect infrared radiation without the aid of technology, and therefore

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Speaker 1: most of us are just essentially blind to this realm

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Speaker 1: of senses, the direct experience of it, certainly, but also

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Speaker 1: perhaps just sort of the idea of it. And know,

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Speaker 1: you throw in a very stressful, life threatening situation like

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Speaker 1: that depicted in the movie, and you know it adds

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Speaker 1: his extra layer to it. So it's kind of neat that. Ultimately,

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Speaker 1: the quality that Dutch has that makes them an effective

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Speaker 1: hero in the movie is not that he has big

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Speaker 1: muscles or he can blow things up. He can do

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Speaker 1: all of those things, unless those skills seem to serve

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Speaker 1: him well against other humans, But at this point in

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Speaker 1: the movie, it is essentially he's essentially about to be killed.

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Speaker 1: His only his trick to surviving is being able to

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Speaker 1: think outside of the human experience and realize why I'm

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Speaker 1: part of its luck too. Obviously that he just happened

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Speaker 1: to get so muddy, happened to fall into that water.

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Speaker 1: But then the you know, being swift enough to realize, oh,

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Speaker 1: this is what is happening. This is what has given

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Speaker 1: me the edge.

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Speaker 3: Yes, But I guess that brings us back to the

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Speaker 3: question of would something like this work in real life, Like,

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Speaker 3: I don't know, how would it change your infrared heat

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Speaker 3: signature to cover your body in mud?

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Speaker 1: Well, as I know a number of you out there

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Speaker 1: are familiar with this already because we have I think

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of crossover between our listeners and viewers

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Speaker 1: of the TV show MythBusters. But yeah, there is an

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Speaker 1: episode of MythBusters that busted this myth. They experimented with

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Speaker 1: a thermographic camera and they found that it would work,

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Speaker 1: but would only work for a very brief amount of

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Speaker 1: time until the mud heated up from the human body

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Speaker 1: temperature underneath it. Hmm. Okay, And I've seen some other

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Speaker 1: analyzes that line up with this as well, arguing that okay,

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Speaker 1: it could work, but probably not for as long as

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Speaker 1: it seems to work in the movie also based on

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Speaker 1: how relative little mud is involved. So I take that

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Speaker 1: to mean if Arnold aka dots here had just been

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Speaker 1: completely mud monstered himself, like he didn't even look like

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Speaker 1: Arnold anymore, you could make a better case for it working.

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Speaker 1: But then it would have looked a little silly like.

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Speaker 1: Part of the appeal of the scene too, is that

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Speaker 1: you know, Arnold's face and muscles are covered with this

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Speaker 1: clay like mud slime.

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Speaker 3: You can still see the muscles clearly defined, but he

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Speaker 3: looks like he's sort of covered in gray paint.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, now, Joe, I think you've seen this as well.

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Speaker 1: But the twenty twenty two film Prey cleverly adapts this,

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Speaker 1: having our hero in this movie, instead of covering themselves

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Speaker 1: with mud, they ing just a traditional medicine that it's

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Speaker 1: described as it lowers one's body temperature through medicinal means

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Speaker 1: and is able to then give the hero the same advantage.

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Speaker 3: Over the predator. That was a good twist.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, now, I guess you could argue that Dutch was

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Speaker 1: also cooling his body temperature because you know, he first

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Speaker 1: jumps off a waterfall I think, into this water, then

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Speaker 1: he gets covered in the mud. But I can't imagine

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Speaker 1: that this on its own would have been enough to

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Speaker 1: make a difference, Like it wouldn't have really, It's not

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Speaker 1: like he was jumping into like freezing water down there. However,

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Speaker 1: this is just occurring to me now. If we think

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Speaker 1: of what we see in Predator as sort of the

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Speaker 1: myth that spawned by some sort of an event that

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Speaker 1: actually happened, I could imagine a situation where Okay, Dutch

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Speaker 1: is running for his life, jumps into the cold water,

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Speaker 1: crawls through the mud, is covered with the mud, but

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Speaker 1: instead of then having a direct confrontation with the predator,

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Speaker 1: already has some distance and the predator is not able

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Speaker 1: to scan him from a distance in this short time

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Speaker 1: it takes for him to then get the rest of

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Speaker 1: the way out of range and find a place to hide.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, or in the real world scenario just has a

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Speaker 3: much thicker coating of mud, like they didn't have to

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Speaker 3: be concerned in the real world about making sure you

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Speaker 3: could still tell it was arnold.

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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, but then I guess you're doing like there

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Speaker 1: are all sorts of complications that arise there too, like

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Speaker 1: how much mud can you cake on? Your body without

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Speaker 1: it slouching off. How can you move with all that

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Speaker 1: mud on your body? So there are limitations there as well,

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Speaker 1: I think if memory serves and it could be wrong

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Speaker 1: on this, I think in the MythBusters episode they found

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Speaker 1: that there were ways to to sort of mask your

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Speaker 1: your your heat signature, but you had to, you know,

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Speaker 1: use some sort of like a thermal suit to do that.

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Speaker 3: Well, I was just thinking, if you if you make

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Speaker 3: it so that you're not giving off a visible heat signature,

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Speaker 3: wouldn't that just mean you're retaining the heat and therefore

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Speaker 3: you would get really hot?

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Speaker 1: Hmm. Well, you know, in this we're getting really into

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Speaker 1: the more and more into the thermal regulation side of

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Speaker 1: the whole scenario, which is fortunate because as we venture

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Speaker 1: into the world of real life and animals that often

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Speaker 1: cake themselves in mud, wallow and mud and ultimately use

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Speaker 1: mud for other things, you don't really find animals covering

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Speaker 1: themselves in mud to mask their I our signature. But

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Speaker 1: we're going to look at several examples here of animals

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Speaker 1: using mud for various purposes in their lives, and I

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Speaker 1: think we're going to begin with probably the most notable example,

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Speaker 1: the most famous example of a mud loving animal.

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Speaker 3: That's right. So, one family of animals whose relationship with

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Speaker 3: mud is quite well known is the family Suidy, the

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Speaker 3: family containing all the animals commonly known as hogs, pigs, porkers,

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Speaker 3: and swine, most notably to humans SEUs domesticus, the common

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Speaker 3: domestic pig now pigs, along with plenty of other animals

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Speaker 3: like elephants, rhinoceroses, some bovids, etc. Wallow in mud, and

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Speaker 3: wallowing is defined as coating the body surface with mud,

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Speaker 3: often simply by lying in a pit of muddy water,

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Speaker 3: or even sort of rolling around or wiggling in a

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Speaker 3: pit of muddy water. But when I thought about it,

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Speaker 3: I realized I didn't really know why pigs wallow. My

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Speaker 3: best guess was that it had something to do with temperature,

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Speaker 3: but I didn't know. So to answer this question, I

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Speaker 3: dug up a paper, a paper in an animal behavior

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Speaker 3: journal exploring exactly the question of why pigs wallow in mud.

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Speaker 3: So the article was by Mark Braca called Review of

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Speaker 3: Wallowing in Pigs, Description of the behavior and its motivational

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Speaker 3: basis in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science from the

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Speaker 3: year twenty eleven. And there's some interesting motivating context for

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Speaker 3: this paper, which is that it was really aimed at

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Speaker 3: informing decisions about animal welfare in a domestic context or

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Speaker 3: in agriculture, because, of course people keep pigs domestically as

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Speaker 3: a farm species and sometimes even as pets, so to

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Speaker 3: treat them humanely means understanding what their needs are. And

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Speaker 3: it has been widely observed that pigs wallow in mud

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Speaker 3: when they can. So is this something that pigs need

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Speaker 3: to do for their well being? And if so, why

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Speaker 3: do they need to do it?

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Speaker 1: So?

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Speaker 3: The paper consists of a literature review of the existing

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Speaker 3: evidence on why domestic pigs and related species such as

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Speaker 3: wild boares coat their bodies in mud. I guess the

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Speaker 3: first question is what does this actually look like? Well, like,

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Speaker 3: when pigs and wild pigs and bores wallow, what do

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Speaker 3: they do? Bracket writes that if a pre existing pool

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Speaker 3: of mud is not available, pigs will often make their own.

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Speaker 3: They will like dig to make their own wallow, and

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Speaker 3: the pit of mud or muddy water where pigs wallow

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Speaker 3: the verb is called a wallow the noun so it's

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Speaker 3: kind of like how you shower in the shower. They

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Speaker 3: wallow in the wallow. When a wallow is available, the

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Speaker 3: pig will usually begin by rooting, which means repeatedly pushing

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Speaker 3: the snout in and sort of rooting and digging in

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Speaker 3: the mud, and then they will enter the mud with

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Speaker 3: the four body first, headside first, and then wiggle and

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Speaker 3: roll around in the mud, sometimes until much of the

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Speaker 3: body or occasionally even the whole body is covered in mud. Now,

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Speaker 3: how much of their body they submerge in the mud

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Speaker 3: has been observed to correlate somewhat with temperature. According to

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Speaker 3: mcgloone in nineteen ninety nine, when the temperature is above freezing,

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Speaker 3: pigs will stand in the cool water. When the temperature

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Speaker 3: goes up from there, more often they will lie down

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Speaker 3: with their utters submerged in the water, and when it's

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Speaker 3: even hotter, they will sometimes like roll around and coat

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Speaker 3: most or all even of the body in mud. But

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Speaker 3: more often the parts of the body they get coated

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Speaker 3: in mud are the sides and the underside. The author says,

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Speaker 3: if the wallow is deep enough and the temperature is

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Speaker 3: high enough, sometimes a sow will submerge its entire body,

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Speaker 3: so only the head and the snout is poking out.

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Speaker 3: But on hot days it's normal for a pig to

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Speaker 3: keep fifty to seventy five percent of its body surface

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Speaker 3: covered in mud. Now, some observers do note that pigs

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Speaker 3: will exhibit wallowing behavior even in cold weather. That'll come

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Speaker 3: back in a bit, but they just they clearly do

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Speaker 3: it more often in hot weather. Apparently becomes really prevalent

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Speaker 3: around seventeen to twenty one degrees celsius, which is about

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Speaker 3: sixty three to seventy degrees fahrenheit. So sometimes a pig

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Speaker 3: will stand or lie down in the mud and just

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Speaker 3: hang out there. Other times, the pig will get in

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Speaker 3: the mud, get a coat of the mud, and then

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Speaker 3: leave and let it evaporate as the pig goes about

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Speaker 3: its business, maybe returning later to get another coat. Pigs

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Speaker 3: are often seen scratching off their coats of dried mud

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Speaker 3: against a tree or other scratching post type object. So

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Speaker 3: you might get in the mud, get mud all over

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Speaker 3: your skin, let the mud dry, and then scratch against

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Speaker 3: a tree to get the dried mud off. But what

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Speaker 3: purpose biologically does mud wallowing serve. Well, one of the

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Speaker 3: most obvious and widely recognized benefits is thermoregulation. As we

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Speaker 3: were talking about wallowing in mud, clearly helps pigs keep cool.

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Speaker 3: Pigs actually have comparatively little in terms of internal biological

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Speaker 3: mechanisms for fighting off the heat, especially compared to some

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Speaker 3: other species. They have fewer sweat glands than humans. For instance,

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Speaker 3: And there was a paragraph in this paper that actually

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Speaker 3: made me feel so much emotion about what it's like

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Speaker 3: to be a pig, about how hot it must be

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Speaker 3: to be a pig, especially a domestic pig. Do you

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Speaker 3: mind if I read this.

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Speaker 1: Rob, Yes, let's do so.

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Speaker 3: Bracher writes. For several reasons, pigs are prone to overheating.

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Speaker 3: Their sweat glands are hardly responsive to elevated temperatures, Subcutaneous

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Speaker 3: fat may result in a relatively high insulation value, and

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Speaker 3: their barrel shaped body reduced this body surface to body

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Speaker 3: mass ratio, and this reduces heat exchange. In addition, compared

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Speaker 3: to wild boar, domesticated pigs have shorter snouts and this

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Speaker 3: reduces their ability to pant. Furthermore, while domesticated pigs have

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Speaker 3: sparse hair cover and larger ears, their ears are not

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Speaker 3: very mobile and vascularized as in the case of elephants,

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Speaker 3: and their circulatory system has a limited capacity. Finally, pigs

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Speaker 3: may be producing considerable amounts of heat eg due to

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Speaker 3: muscular activity and feeding, fighting and play, and very high

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Speaker 3: production levels, growing up to about one kilogram per pig

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Speaker 3: per day, producing up to thirty piglets per sou per year.

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Speaker 3: So this just sounds like pigs are busy getting and

404
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Speaker 3: stayin hot. It is hot to be a pig, you

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Speaker 3: need to find ways to cool off. So because of

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Speaker 3: the convergence of all these limitations and their vulnerability to heat,

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Speaker 3: pigs have to supplement their basic internal or anatomical cooling

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Speaker 3: capabilities with behavioral ones. And this could in some cases

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Speaker 3: be as simple as reducing your movement and seeking out

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Speaker 3: shade when the sun is high, But it also includes wallowing.

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Speaker 3: So strong is a pig's desire to wallow that in

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Speaker 3: some cases, if water and mud are not available in

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Speaker 3: the pig's environment, they will lie down against any wet

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Speaker 3: surface they can find, or even lie against their own

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Speaker 3: feces and urine. Pigs really want to get their skin wet.

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Speaker 3: But it's interesting to consider the complexity of how the

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Speaker 3: wallowing works, like it's more complex than simply the way

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Speaker 3: we would jump in water, say, get in the pool

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Speaker 3: to cool off. We all know that it is cooler

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Speaker 3: to be in the pool than out of the pool,

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Speaker 3: and studies show this is of course true with the

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Speaker 3: puddles of mud and pig habitats, even if they're in

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Speaker 3: direct sun. But this is not just about the time

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Speaker 3: that the pig is physically in the mud in the wallow,

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Speaker 3: because if you think of the pool analogy, when your

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Speaker 3: skin is wet as you slowly dry off, it takes

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Speaker 3: a lot of energy to turn the water clinging to

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Speaker 3: your skin into water vapor, and that results in a

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Speaker 3: heat transfer from your body to the water as it

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Speaker 3: makes that costly phase transition into vapor. So you can

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Speaker 3: think of why you feel cold after you get out

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Speaker 3: of the shower, even if the shower water was hot.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a great point, and with I found

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Speaker 1: this with a child. This this period of transition between

435
00:24:29,359 --> 00:24:31,800
Speaker 1: getting out of the swimming pool and going you know,

436
00:24:31,840 --> 00:24:34,000
Speaker 1: back into the house or the room or whatever like

437
00:24:34,040 --> 00:24:38,200
Speaker 1: this is pivotal. Smaller bodies thrown into the mix as well,

438
00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:40,600
Speaker 1: because yeah, they're instantly colder when they get out of

439
00:24:40,600 --> 00:24:42,359
Speaker 1: the pool, but they cannot go back in the pool,

440
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:44,600
Speaker 1: and you're going to I think we have diminishing returns

441
00:24:44,600 --> 00:24:47,600
Speaker 1: of trying to heat back up in the pool, and

442
00:24:47,640 --> 00:24:51,240
Speaker 1: for you know, again a small bodied child, this is

443
00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:54,600
Speaker 1: gonna be an even more dire situation. They need those towels,

444
00:24:54,640 --> 00:24:57,560
Speaker 1: They need to get to a warm shower somewhere as

445
00:24:57,640 --> 00:24:59,400
Speaker 1: they can warm back up right.

446
00:24:59,440 --> 00:25:01,400
Speaker 3: And this is all so actually the same principle by

447
00:25:01,400 --> 00:25:04,480
Speaker 3: which sweat cools your body, water evaporating from the skin

448
00:25:04,560 --> 00:25:08,679
Speaker 3: makes your body cooler. It's a cooling technique. But another

449
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:10,960
Speaker 3: thing you might know from getting out of the pool

450
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:14,520
Speaker 3: is that water drips and evaporates off of the skin

451
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:18,119
Speaker 3: pretty quickly. So once you leave the pool or the shower,

452
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:22,960
Speaker 3: whatever it is, the cooling potential of evaporation is relatively

453
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:26,440
Speaker 3: short lived, probably on the order of just minutes under

454
00:25:26,480 --> 00:25:29,840
Speaker 3: a hot sun. I'm reminded of a time I was

455
00:25:30,640 --> 00:25:35,200
Speaker 3: hiking in a Big Bin National Park in Texas under

456
00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:37,960
Speaker 3: you know, this is a desert environment where like the

457
00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:42,160
Speaker 3: sun is beating down and I remember I was very hot.

458
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:45,200
Speaker 3: So I took like an icy water bottle that I had,

459
00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:47,840
Speaker 3: and I poured the water just all over myself, like

460
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:50,600
Speaker 3: on my head and down my back, so my shirt

461
00:25:50,760 --> 00:25:53,919
Speaker 3: was soaked in water. And I remember, so I was like, okay,

462
00:25:53,920 --> 00:25:56,479
Speaker 3: so I'll be good. You know, I'm like wet with

463
00:25:56,560 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 3: this icy water. My clothes are wet. I should be

464
00:25:59,280 --> 00:26:01,240
Speaker 3: good for a while, but I don't know how long

465
00:26:01,280 --> 00:26:03,800
Speaker 3: it was, but it felt like within fifteen minutes I

466
00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:08,560
Speaker 3: was bone dry. So being wet and evaporating helps you

467
00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:11,399
Speaker 3: cool off, but it doesn't last that long. Here's the

468
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:16,160
Speaker 3: genius of mud wallowing. These studies unwallowing show that an

469
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:20,080
Speaker 3: animal such as a wild pig, coated in mud stays

470
00:26:20,160 --> 00:26:23,360
Speaker 3: wet much longer after getting out of the wallow than

471
00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:27,359
Speaker 3: the same animal coated in water alone. Mud keeps you

472
00:26:27,440 --> 00:26:31,399
Speaker 3: wet longer than water and the mud Essentially, it seems

473
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:35,080
Speaker 3: like it helps create a matrix for trapping water against

474
00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:38,959
Speaker 3: the skin, which will still provide the benefits of evaporative

475
00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:42,399
Speaker 3: cooling as it dries. But the mud may take hours

476
00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:45,800
Speaker 3: to fully dry into a crust, while water alone is

477
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:49,000
Speaker 3: gone in minutes. To read from the study here, quote

478
00:26:49,280 --> 00:26:51,919
Speaker 3: wallowing in mud leaves a coat of mud on the

479
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:56,520
Speaker 3: pig's lateral and ventral surfaces and limbs. This superficial layer

480
00:26:56,560 --> 00:27:00,639
Speaker 3: of caked mud assists in relieving hyperthermia through a vaporation,

481
00:27:01,040 --> 00:27:04,840
Speaker 3: acting as a kind of quote wet suit, helping to

482
00:27:04,920 --> 00:27:07,840
Speaker 3: keep cool in a warm environment. Water in mud on

483
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:10,800
Speaker 3: the skin of a pig took two hours to evaporate

484
00:27:11,119 --> 00:27:14,639
Speaker 3: compared to fifteen minutes when water alone was used, and

485
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:18,160
Speaker 3: the evaporation rate was seven hundred to eight hundred grams

486
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:22,399
Speaker 3: per hour per meter squared. Hence, mud is more effective

487
00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:26,480
Speaker 3: than clean water in temperature control because mud allows the

488
00:27:26,520 --> 00:27:31,280
Speaker 3: evaporation process to continue for a longer time, so for

489
00:27:31,520 --> 00:27:35,480
Speaker 3: cooling the body in hot conditions, mud is an upgrade

490
00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:36,520
Speaker 3: from clean water.

491
00:27:36,920 --> 00:27:39,879
Speaker 1: All right, that makes sense. Yeah, it's the water just

492
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:42,359
Speaker 1: flows right off you. The water evaporates, but the mud,

493
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:51,560
Speaker 1: the mud sticks.

494
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:56,360
Speaker 3: So thermal regulation seems to be the most widely accepted

495
00:27:56,400 --> 00:27:58,919
Speaker 3: explanation for why pigs wallow, and the one with the

496
00:27:58,920 --> 00:28:02,040
Speaker 3: most evidence behind it, but there are a ton of

497
00:28:02,080 --> 00:28:06,480
Speaker 3: other possible or partial explanations that have been offered. And

498
00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:11,120
Speaker 3: one reason for this is that there have been observations

499
00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:14,760
Speaker 3: that while pigs wallow less in cold weather, they still

500
00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:17,920
Speaker 3: wallow some. So if they're doing it even when it's

501
00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:22,000
Speaker 3: like really cold outside, it probably must serve some purpose

502
00:28:22,160 --> 00:28:25,280
Speaker 3: in addition, you know, like some other purpose in addition

503
00:28:25,359 --> 00:28:28,480
Speaker 3: to just avoiding overheating. So what are some of the

504
00:28:28,520 --> 00:28:31,560
Speaker 3: other explanations that have been offered. Well, a number of

505
00:28:31,600 --> 00:28:35,159
Speaker 3: them have to do with various types of grooming in skincare.

506
00:28:35,440 --> 00:28:39,640
Speaker 3: So imagine this pig has ectoparasites on its skin. It

507
00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 3: might have fleas or lice or ticks or something. The

508
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:46,960
Speaker 3: pig cannot reach back and pick all these parasites off.

509
00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:51,920
Speaker 3: Pig is, unfortunately, by way of evolution, stuck in barrel mode.

510
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:55,280
Speaker 3: But the pig can wallow and by getting in the

511
00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:59,360
Speaker 3: mud and lying in it, wiggling around, wiggling around, that

512
00:28:59,440 --> 00:29:03,760
Speaker 3: may kill or dislodge some of those parasites. But then

513
00:29:04,120 --> 00:29:07,200
Speaker 3: the benefits continue even after the pig gets up out

514
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:09,760
Speaker 3: of the mud and the mud dries into a crust.

515
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:14,080
Speaker 3: The pig can go scratch its body against posts like

516
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:17,360
Speaker 3: trees or the pin wall or whatever to remove the

517
00:29:17,440 --> 00:29:21,680
Speaker 3: mud crust and probably remove trapped parasites along with it.

518
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 1: Oh, I'd never thought about that.

519
00:29:24,120 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this has been documented as an anti parasite

520
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:33,040
Speaker 3: behavior in water buffaloes. It is assumed by many to

521
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:38,440
Speaker 3: serve the same function in pigs, but there's some countervailing

522
00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:42,479
Speaker 3: evidence that. Like the author here sites a study from

523
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 3: two thousand and five that looked for evidence that wallowing

524
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:48,520
Speaker 3: reduced parasite loads in wild boar and actually did not

525
00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:52,240
Speaker 3: find any correlation. So the picture on that one seems mixed.

526
00:29:52,800 --> 00:29:55,600
Speaker 3: But there's also it's also been proposed that maybe having

527
00:29:55,640 --> 00:29:59,640
Speaker 3: a layer of mud helps protect pigs from biting insects

528
00:29:59,680 --> 00:30:03,120
Speaker 3: like flo and mosquitoes. That would make sense, and furthermore,

529
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:07,840
Speaker 3: a layer of mud could also help provide protection against sunburn,

530
00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:12,160
Speaker 3: to which domestic pigs are susceptible. Domestic pigs can get sunburned.

531
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:15,920
Speaker 3: Being relatively hairless and not having a lot of natural

532
00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:21,160
Speaker 3: skin protection against the sun, they are vulnerable to sunburn.

533
00:30:21,400 --> 00:30:24,000
Speaker 3: Though I was thinking it's interesting that usually the mud

534
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:26,760
Speaker 3: ends up on the sides and the underside of the pig,

535
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:30,040
Speaker 3: more so than on the back of the pig, which

536
00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 3: would be the part that's in the most direct sunlight.

537
00:30:32,640 --> 00:30:36,920
Speaker 3: But I don't know few other possible ideas. Maybe there's

538
00:30:36,920 --> 00:30:40,719
Speaker 3: some kind of health benefit not related to heat. Pigs

539
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:43,800
Speaker 3: have been observed to wallow more when they are suffering

540
00:30:43,840 --> 00:30:48,520
Speaker 3: from disease, and it's also been hypothesized that pigs wallow

541
00:30:48,560 --> 00:30:52,400
Speaker 3: in order to perhaps disinfect wounds because mud in some

542
00:30:52,480 --> 00:30:59,440
Speaker 3: cases can have bacteriocytal properties, but this is another hypothesis

543
00:30:59,480 --> 00:31:02,840
Speaker 3: that was not There was found to be no correlation

544
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:04,880
Speaker 3: in that same two thousand and five study that found

545
00:31:04,920 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 3: no correlation with parasites on wild boar. At least, there

546
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:12,320
Speaker 3: are other ideas that maybe it has some relationship to

547
00:31:12,360 --> 00:31:16,800
Speaker 3: sexual behavior, such as scent marking or advertising mate fitness,

548
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:20,880
Speaker 3: but this also seems uncertain. So I'd say the picture

549
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:26,040
Speaker 3: is definitely plays a role in thermoregulation, and the fact

550
00:31:26,120 --> 00:31:29,520
Speaker 3: that pigs also do it when it's very cold makes

551
00:31:29,520 --> 00:31:32,000
Speaker 3: it seem like maybe it may have some other functions

552
00:31:32,040 --> 00:31:34,800
Speaker 3: as well, but we're less certain about what those are.

553
00:31:35,320 --> 00:31:38,160
Speaker 1: This is all fascinating. Yeah, with pigs and mud, I

554
00:31:38,200 --> 00:31:40,840
Speaker 1: just always I kind of just had the loose understanding

555
00:31:40,880 --> 00:31:43,200
Speaker 1: while they're doing it to cool down. But yeah, it

556
00:31:43,200 --> 00:31:46,760
Speaker 1: sounds like it's sounds like there are more dimensions to that,

557
00:31:47,080 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 1: And ultimately, these additional dimensions cast light on many of

558
00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:53,880
Speaker 1: the various other examples of wallowing and mud behavior that

559
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:56,360
Speaker 1: you see in animals. You know, and we're certainly not

560
00:31:56,360 --> 00:31:59,600
Speaker 1: going to get into all of these examples today, but

561
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:02,960
Speaker 1: you can see how a number of these explanations can

562
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:06,400
Speaker 1: and do line up with these other species.

563
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:09,920
Speaker 3: Right, so you might you know, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippos, water

564
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 3: buffalo other bovids all engage in wallowing behaviors, and to

565
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:19,920
Speaker 3: some extent they probably share some of the same biological purposes.

566
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:23,400
Speaker 3: In fact, there was an interesting passage I did want

567
00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:26,680
Speaker 3: to read from this paper about the evolution of wallowing,

568
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:30,720
Speaker 3: so the author rights quote. Wallowing, defined widely as covering

569
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:33,719
Speaker 3: the body surface with a mud like substance, is common

570
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:38,440
Speaker 3: in mammals such as servids, carnivores and primates. Pigs, however,

571
00:32:38,560 --> 00:32:44,120
Speaker 3: prefer to wallow more specifically in mud, mainly for thermoregulatory

572
00:32:44,160 --> 00:32:48,000
Speaker 3: reasons for cooling, and in this respect it resembles mud

573
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:53,640
Speaker 3: wallowing seen and other large animals giant tortoises, crocodiles, elephant, seals,

574
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:58,440
Speaker 3: and in particular in the large hairless mega herbivores such

575
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:03,840
Speaker 3: as elephants, rhinos, and water buffalo. Pigs probably also descended

576
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:09,400
Speaker 3: from a large ancestor. By contrast to for example, the horse,

577
00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:13,720
Speaker 3: an odd toed ungulate whose ancestor, the eohippus, was far

578
00:33:13,840 --> 00:33:18,800
Speaker 3: smaller than his descendant. So if I get what the

579
00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:21,719
Speaker 3: author is going for, here it sounds like he's suggesting

580
00:33:21,760 --> 00:33:26,560
Speaker 3: that it's interesting that these species that engage in wallowing

581
00:33:26,560 --> 00:33:31,160
Speaker 3: today tended to be things that had large bodied ancestors. Obviously,

582
00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:35,040
Speaker 3: having a large body means that your cooling needs are

583
00:33:35,040 --> 00:33:38,360
Speaker 3: more acute. And you know, a horse, on the other hand,

584
00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:42,120
Speaker 3: evolves from something with a small body that has less

585
00:33:42,120 --> 00:33:43,280
Speaker 3: acute cooling needs.

586
00:33:43,680 --> 00:33:48,040
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. And yeah, the Galapagos tortoise in particular, I

587
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 1: mentioned the giant tortoises. Yeah, this is a great example.

588
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:54,600
Speaker 1: I got to I mean, my family and I got

589
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:57,320
Speaker 1: to go out and see some of these animals in

590
00:33:57,360 --> 00:34:00,240
Speaker 1: the wild. And there was one particular morning where, yeah,

591
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:02,480
Speaker 1: a lot of the tortoises had not yet emerged from

592
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:05,479
Speaker 1: their nightly mud. Some were just coming out, but some

593
00:34:05,520 --> 00:34:09,600
Speaker 1: were still just you know, firmly parked in alone in

594
00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:12,640
Speaker 1: this kind of wallow of mud, and it was going

595
00:34:12,719 --> 00:34:14,520
Speaker 1: to be maybe a little bit the morning was going

596
00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:16,200
Speaker 1: to have to warm up a bit before they started

597
00:34:16,239 --> 00:34:17,160
Speaker 1: coming back out again.

598
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 3: But of course, the animal uses of mud are by

599
00:34:20,520 --> 00:34:24,360
Speaker 3: no means limited to wallowing and thermoregulation. I mean, in

600
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:26,840
Speaker 3: a way you can almost think mud is not quite

601
00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:29,480
Speaker 3: like water, but it is close to like water in

602
00:34:29,520 --> 00:34:31,880
Speaker 3: that it is a material and a habitat.

603
00:34:32,160 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 1: That's right, and there are various other things that animals

604
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:40,080
Speaker 1: do with mud that are worth mentioning here. One neat

605
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:44,919
Speaker 1: place to start is geopogy. This is something that's been

606
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:48,240
Speaker 1: known of an animals since at least the time of Galen,

607
00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:51,600
Speaker 1: and it's been known that you many animals on occasion

608
00:34:51,640 --> 00:34:55,680
Speaker 1: will eat soil or clay or something that might be

609
00:34:55,760 --> 00:34:58,680
Speaker 1: considered mud. This is one of the issues in talking

610
00:34:58,719 --> 00:35:01,880
Speaker 1: about how animimals use mud, as we fall back into

611
00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:07,040
Speaker 1: the issue of definitions that we discussed in the first episode.

612
00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:10,719
Speaker 1: What's mud, what's not mud? What is more? What would

613
00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 1: you more consider silt and sand and so forth? When

614
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:19,360
Speaker 1: does mud become dirt? So all of those questions and

615
00:35:19,520 --> 00:35:22,560
Speaker 1: uncertainties remain in effect, but at least in some of

616
00:35:22,600 --> 00:35:25,600
Speaker 1: these cases, animals would be eating something that you might

617
00:35:26,760 --> 00:35:31,319
Speaker 1: define as mud. There are three main reasons for them

618
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:34,680
Speaker 1: to do this that are recognized. One is to control parasites,

619
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:40,120
Speaker 1: I believe endo parasites in this regard. Another is for

620
00:35:40,280 --> 00:35:44,480
Speaker 1: mineral contents such as iron, sodium, and magnesium something in

621
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:48,200
Speaker 1: the mud that they need for their diet. Another factor

622
00:35:48,280 --> 00:35:52,239
Speaker 1: is to help metabolize toxic compounds. You know. They are

623
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:54,600
Speaker 1: various examples of this in the Animal Kingdom, where at

624
00:35:54,640 --> 00:35:58,440
Speaker 1: least during part of a season, an animal bite might

625
00:35:58,480 --> 00:36:01,439
Speaker 1: be forced to eat some plants that are a little

626
00:36:01,560 --> 00:36:07,400
Speaker 1: rougher on the gut, and the added mud or dirt

627
00:36:07,440 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: into the system will help sort of balance all of

628
00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:13,680
Speaker 1: that out. Geofogy also factors into some human traditions as well,

629
00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:18,080
Speaker 1: sometimes as a medicinal practice or other times as part

630
00:36:18,080 --> 00:36:23,680
Speaker 1: of a survival dietary substitution practice. Though again we're focusing

631
00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:26,240
Speaker 1: on mud here, and this ultimately goes beyond just mud,

632
00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:28,480
Speaker 1: so it's a stretch, I think, to spend too much

633
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:31,400
Speaker 1: time on it, but mud is certainly on the table

634
00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:35,320
Speaker 1: in the Animal Kingdom. Now. Another big one, of course,

635
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:39,800
Speaker 1: is building with mud. Humans, we should note, are famous

636
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 1: for building with earth and mud is a big part

637
00:36:42,640 --> 00:36:44,640
Speaker 1: of that, and we're going to discuss more about humans

638
00:36:44,640 --> 00:36:47,400
Speaker 1: specifically in the next episode. But of course we're not

639
00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:50,960
Speaker 1: the only animals to make our homes out of mud.

640
00:36:51,520 --> 00:36:55,279
Speaker 1: There are a few key examples to discuss here. I

641
00:36:55,280 --> 00:36:57,359
Speaker 1: think one of the most impressive, though, and one that

642
00:36:57,400 --> 00:36:59,759
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people, if not everyone, out there.

643
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:03,400
Speaker 1: All some experience with is that of the mud dauber

644
00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:05,920
Speaker 1: or the dirt dauber or the mud wasp.

645
00:37:06,280 --> 00:37:08,879
Speaker 3: As a child, I remember really wondering what the word

646
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:09,840
Speaker 3: dauber meant.

647
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:13,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I grew up hearing of them as dirt daubers,

648
00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:16,520
Speaker 1: which is kind of a silly name. And also since

649
00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:19,040
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's mud, that's I mean, ultimately it's mud.

650
00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:20,600
Speaker 1: But then the mud dries. That's another one of the

651
00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:25,000
Speaker 1: definitional problems here is that is then mud mud only

652
00:37:25,040 --> 00:37:27,200
Speaker 1: remains mud for a little bit and then it becomes

653
00:37:27,640 --> 00:37:31,560
Speaker 1: like dried mud or dirt and so forth. But anyway, yeah,

654
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:34,279
Speaker 1: the mud wasp, I'll call them mud the mud wasp

655
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 1: moving forward, because it sounds a little more serious. These

656
00:37:36,680 --> 00:37:40,359
Speaker 1: are various species of I believe, two different families of

657
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:44,239
Speaker 1: parasitoid wasps. I definitely encountered these a lot during my

658
00:37:44,280 --> 00:37:48,560
Speaker 1: own childhood. The resulting nests kind of look like imagine

659
00:37:48,560 --> 00:37:52,920
Speaker 1: a like a pan flute composed of cylinders that instead

660
00:37:52,920 --> 00:37:54,400
Speaker 1: of being made out of you know, some sort of

661
00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:57,720
Speaker 1: you know, like metal tubing or bone tubing or wooden

662
00:37:57,760 --> 00:37:59,880
Speaker 1: tubing or what have you. Instead, those are made out

663
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:05,279
Speaker 1: cylinders of dried mud. And if, when say cleaning out

664
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:07,719
Speaker 1: an old shed or something, you happen to break some

665
00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:11,880
Speaker 1: of these cylinders open, well, there's an additional level of surprise.

666
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 1: You might find that they are full of the remains

667
00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:20,680
Speaker 1: of tiny spiders, because while the adults are typically nectar drinkers,

668
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:25,000
Speaker 1: the young require the meat and the bodies of host

669
00:38:25,080 --> 00:38:28,440
Speaker 1: organisms in the form of spiders, which they cram in

670
00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:32,320
Speaker 1: these cylinders by the dozen. If you've never seen this before,

671
00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:35,520
Speaker 1: I highly recommend looking up some images on your favorite

672
00:38:36,080 --> 00:38:41,360
Speaker 1: image search system because it's grizzly. These chambers are just

673
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:44,640
Speaker 1: filled with the remains of spiders because they need to

674
00:38:44,680 --> 00:38:48,960
Speaker 1: be in there. The young can hatch in or on

675
00:38:49,080 --> 00:38:52,759
Speaker 1: these spiders and then consume their precious meat. Now an

676
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:57,759
Speaker 1: interesting wrinkle considering mud wasp nests, however, is that, as

677
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:01,120
Speaker 1: you may have noticed, while they'll naturally build their nests

678
00:39:01,160 --> 00:39:06,080
Speaker 1: on naturally occurring wood or naturally occurring rock conditions, human

679
00:39:06,160 --> 00:39:11,200
Speaker 1: structures of varying styles and materials often offer great environments

680
00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:14,640
Speaker 1: for them. Particularly, you know, if it's something that's exposed

681
00:39:14,920 --> 00:39:17,000
Speaker 1: to the elements at all, if it's open at all,

682
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:22,360
Speaker 1: So barns, sheds, this sort of thing. These are often

683
00:39:22,880 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 1: significantly encrusted in mud wasp nests, to the point that

684
00:39:27,680 --> 00:39:31,319
Speaker 1: someone may have to come around eventually and scrape them off.

685
00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:34,400
Speaker 1: I think I've even seen them form on window panes,

686
00:39:34,440 --> 00:39:38,040
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. In some cases, they're even building

687
00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:42,120
Speaker 1: their own mud dwellings on human dwellings or creations that

688
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:43,920
Speaker 1: are made out of mud or stone or earth of

689
00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:46,640
Speaker 1: some sort. And they've been doing this for a very

690
00:39:46,680 --> 00:39:51,000
Speaker 1: long time. In fact, as pointed out by Finch at

691
00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:53,439
Speaker 1: All in a twenty nineteen paper I was looking at

692
00:39:53,800 --> 00:39:59,440
Speaker 1: in coordinary geochronology, the radiocarbon dating of these nests, when

693
00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:03,360
Speaker 1: attached to things like ancient human rock art and relatively

694
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:08,200
Speaker 1: open rock dwellings, can be incredibly insightful. So we're talking

695
00:40:08,280 --> 00:40:13,840
Speaker 1: like late Plustocene nests here, which which have fossilized. The

696
00:40:14,160 --> 00:40:19,160
Speaker 1: primary innovator of this approach was an Australian geochronologist named

697
00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:22,960
Speaker 1: Richard Burt Roberts Bert being like the nickname you can

698
00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:26,680
Speaker 1: call him Bert apparently, and the hope was that, given

699
00:40:26,719 --> 00:40:30,399
Speaker 1: the wide world distribution of mud wasps, this would become

700
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:35,520
Speaker 1: something of a standard tool for dating certain sites of

701
00:40:35,640 --> 00:40:38,920
Speaker 1: archaeological interests. I've read some other papers that seem to

702
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 1: indicate that this didn't quite come to pass. There might

703
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:45,320
Speaker 1: actually be limited practical value, but it's still pretty interesting

704
00:40:45,320 --> 00:40:48,799
Speaker 1: and apparently maybe in some cases can be incredibly insightful

705
00:40:49,280 --> 00:41:01,520
Speaker 1: when dating something of conditions are just right, all right.

706
00:41:01,560 --> 00:41:06,040
Speaker 1: So that's some added detail on a case of an

707
00:41:06,120 --> 00:41:08,719
Speaker 1: organism using mud that, again I think a lot of

708
00:41:08,760 --> 00:41:12,160
Speaker 1: us are familiar with due to the distribution of mud wasps,

709
00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 1: and also, you know, is a fairly safe thing to

710
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:19,280
Speaker 1: encounter as a kid. But an example I wasn't familiar

711
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:21,520
Speaker 1: with concerns fiddler crabs.

712
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:25,200
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, now, if I recall, fiddler crabs played a

713
00:41:25,480 --> 00:41:28,200
Speaker 3: big role in our series called The Lesser of Two

714
00:41:28,280 --> 00:41:30,400
Speaker 3: Crab Claws about asymmetry and nature.

715
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:33,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and here they are once more, or at

716
00:41:33,960 --> 00:41:39,319
Speaker 1: least two species of fiddler crab. Anyway, So I was

717
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:41,760
Speaker 1: reading about this in a two thousand and three article

718
00:41:41,760 --> 00:41:46,200
Speaker 1: by Christy at All published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology,

719
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:48,680
Speaker 1: and they pointed out that you have there are a

720
00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:52,480
Speaker 1: couple of key examples of fiddler crabs that do something

721
00:41:52,520 --> 00:41:55,680
Speaker 1: interesting with the materials that they bring out of their burrows.

722
00:41:55,960 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 1: So obviously, one of the things about digging a burrow

723
00:41:58,239 --> 00:41:59,640
Speaker 1: is you got to bring all that dirt up right.

724
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:01,760
Speaker 1: It's kind of like in the movie The Great Escape.

725
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:03,160
Speaker 1: What do you do with all that extra dirt from

726
00:42:03,200 --> 00:42:05,680
Speaker 1: digging the tunnels. You can't just stup in one place

727
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:09,279
Speaker 1: because then the guards will notice. So you've got to

728
00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:11,040
Speaker 1: sneak it around. You've got to put it in the

729
00:42:11,040 --> 00:42:14,919
Speaker 1: cuffs of your pants and secretly deposit it just all

730
00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 1: over the yard.

731
00:42:15,840 --> 00:42:17,719
Speaker 3: Man, how much dirt can you fit in the cuff

732
00:42:17,760 --> 00:42:18,840
Speaker 3: of your pants.

733
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:20,839
Speaker 1: Well, a little bit at a time, or as much

734
00:42:20,880 --> 00:42:24,440
Speaker 1: as possible at a time to try to avoid detection.

735
00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:27,759
Speaker 1: But you know, the crabs don't have to worry about that.

736
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:32,080
Speaker 1: So the crabs bring these materials out of the burrow,

737
00:42:32,640 --> 00:42:36,800
Speaker 1: and in a couple of species, you see male fiddler

738
00:42:36,840 --> 00:42:41,799
Speaker 1: crabs essentially to some degree building something out of it

739
00:42:41,960 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 1: next to their burrow. For instance, there's the musical fiddler crab.

740
00:42:46,560 --> 00:42:50,839
Speaker 1: This is Leptusa musica, and this one will build what

741
00:42:50,880 --> 00:42:53,600
Speaker 1: it's called a sand hood next to the burrow. So

742
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:55,440
Speaker 1: this is just like I mean, picture kind of like

743
00:42:55,480 --> 00:42:59,120
Speaker 1: a pile of sand. The image that I found of it,

744
00:42:59,120 --> 00:43:04,640
Speaker 1: it looks kind of like wave, though it's kind of

745
00:43:04,640 --> 00:43:07,400
Speaker 1: like a sail made out of piled sand. It's roughly

746
00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:09,240
Speaker 1: the same height as the crab.

747
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:11,920
Speaker 3: I think of it as sort of a popped collar

748
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:14,320
Speaker 3: around the neck hole of the burrow entrance.

749
00:43:14,960 --> 00:43:17,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's reasonable. Now you would be

750
00:43:17,960 --> 00:43:20,400
Speaker 1: fair and saying, well, that sounds a lot like sand

751
00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:23,759
Speaker 1: and significantly less like mud guys, But don't worry. There's

752
00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:27,680
Speaker 1: another one, and this is Bebe's Fiddler Crab. Bbe's Fiddler

753
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:33,120
Speaker 1: Crab sometimes builds mud pillars next to their burrows, and

754
00:43:33,760 --> 00:43:38,600
Speaker 1: this seems to help them attract females for mating. H Now,

755
00:43:38,640 --> 00:43:40,480
Speaker 1: as the authors point out here, this is where it

756
00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:45,120
Speaker 1: it's more interesting is apparently females do seem to prefer

757
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:49,040
Speaker 1: going over and hanging out near males and burrows that

758
00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:51,759
Speaker 1: have a mud tower, or in the case of the

759
00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:57,400
Speaker 1: musical fiddler Crab, that sand hood. They do seem to

760
00:43:57,400 --> 00:44:00,840
Speaker 1: prefer it, but the practice might not have evolved for

761
00:44:01,040 --> 00:44:03,520
Speaker 1: makee choice. So, in other words, a lot of times

762
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:05,399
Speaker 1: things like this occur, and we talk about it being

763
00:44:05,440 --> 00:44:07,799
Speaker 1: like a signal of fitness, like saying, look, I mean,

764
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:10,080
Speaker 1: clearly I'm the one to mate with because look what

765
00:44:10,239 --> 00:44:12,440
Speaker 1: I have throught, you know, look at this thing that

766
00:44:12,480 --> 00:44:14,520
Speaker 1: I can. Look how much sand I can pile up, right,

767
00:44:15,200 --> 00:44:16,800
Speaker 1: And that seems to be kind of like our basic

768
00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:19,560
Speaker 1: way of understanding it. They argue in this paper that

769
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:23,880
Speaker 1: it may serve These may serve as sensory traps, providing

770
00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:28,720
Speaker 1: shelter for crabs, which crabs, you know, crave to avoid predators.

771
00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:31,279
Speaker 1: If you've ever walked around on the beach, you know

772
00:44:31,320 --> 00:44:34,000
Speaker 1: how this works. The crab doesn't really want to be

773
00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:36,960
Speaker 1: moving out in the open for long. It prefers to

774
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:41,840
Speaker 1: stick to to crevices and shadows because and of course

775
00:44:42,040 --> 00:44:44,759
Speaker 1: holes and burrows could because there's safety there. And so

776
00:44:44,840 --> 00:44:48,360
Speaker 1: the idea here is that selection pressure emerges out of

777
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:53,640
Speaker 1: the increased survivability of shade building mail fiddler crabs. So

778
00:44:53,680 --> 00:44:57,560
Speaker 1: the fiddler crabs that have their sand or their mud

779
00:44:57,640 --> 00:45:00,200
Speaker 1: piled in such a way as to allow for a

780
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:03,560
Speaker 1: little extra shade, a little extra shelter for themselves and

781
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:07,440
Speaker 1: for females they might be mating with. Uh, these are

782
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 1: the ones that tend to survive.

783
00:45:09,120 --> 00:45:12,279
Speaker 3: Hmm. Okay, so not just a mate signal, but an

784
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:16,399
Speaker 3: actual uh actually useful for survival, right right?

785
00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:18,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think they're Their argument, if I'm understanding

786
00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:22,080
Speaker 1: them correctly, is that, yeah, it's it's more about that

787
00:45:22,120 --> 00:45:26,480
Speaker 1: survivability than any kind of signal that they're they're sending

788
00:45:26,520 --> 00:45:29,160
Speaker 1: out there, any kind of fitness signal, though, I mean,

789
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:31,359
Speaker 1: just as far as you know, I'm looking at these

790
00:45:31,400 --> 00:45:34,240
Speaker 1: pictures and I think I can't stack sand or mud

791
00:45:34,239 --> 00:45:36,440
Speaker 1: that high where it towers over me. I mean this

792
00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:38,719
Speaker 1: one of the of BB's fiddler craft.

793
00:45:38,760 --> 00:45:40,600
Speaker 3: You're thinking I should go mate with that crab.

794
00:45:42,200 --> 00:45:44,399
Speaker 1: Well, no, I mean I just admire. It's like, could

795
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:47,440
Speaker 1: I stack mud up in a pillar or a column

796
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:50,480
Speaker 1: that's twice as tall as I am? No, I would

797
00:45:50,520 --> 00:45:51,680
Speaker 1: be crushed by the mud.

798
00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:55,960
Speaker 3: Other factors are obviously hats off to the fiddler crab,

799
00:45:56,320 --> 00:45:58,720
Speaker 3: to the BB crab specifically.

800
00:45:58,400 --> 00:46:01,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. Mud, but of course is also a

801
00:46:01,320 --> 00:46:05,319
Speaker 1: nest building ingredient. Various birds collect mud in addition to

802
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:08,000
Speaker 1: other elements to build their nest, using the mud as

803
00:46:08,120 --> 00:46:08,719
Speaker 1: kind of a you know.

804
00:46:08,719 --> 00:46:09,600
Speaker 3: Glue or mortar.

805
00:46:10,080 --> 00:46:13,200
Speaker 1: Swallows are the best example of mud use in birds,

806
00:46:13,760 --> 00:46:16,440
Speaker 1: but various birds use mud to some degree. But still,

807
00:46:17,040 --> 00:46:19,239
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen a swallow nest, you should look

808
00:46:19,239 --> 00:46:22,360
Speaker 1: at one. It looks like a muddy mess. This is

809
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:25,680
Speaker 1: not the bird nest that your kindergarten teacher kept in

810
00:46:25,719 --> 00:46:28,839
Speaker 1: a shoe box to show you.

811
00:46:28,880 --> 00:46:31,120
Speaker 3: Now, this one looks like a real disaster if it

812
00:46:31,160 --> 00:46:31,760
Speaker 3: gets wet.

813
00:46:32,080 --> 00:46:34,640
Speaker 1: I should also, of course mention beavers once more. We

814
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:37,839
Speaker 1: did a series of episodes on beavers not too long ago.

815
00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:42,839
Speaker 1: Beavers obviously also use mud in their constructions, which are

816
00:46:42,880 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 1: made out of wood and mud for the most part. Yeah,

817
00:46:46,719 --> 00:46:50,680
Speaker 1: but I want to get to the best example of

818
00:46:50,760 --> 00:46:55,879
Speaker 1: a mud organism, organism that thrives on it and in it,

819
00:46:56,239 --> 00:47:00,359
Speaker 1: and that is the mud skipper. So in the last episdisode,

820
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:04,680
Speaker 1: we discussed mud as this intermediate environment that likely played

821
00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:07,520
Speaker 1: a greater role in the evolution of land animals than

822
00:47:07,560 --> 00:47:11,080
Speaker 1: we often consider. Right. It was one of the things

823
00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:13,160
Speaker 1: that I mentioned in the last episode was like you

824
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:17,080
Speaker 1: think of that that illustration, that simplistic illustration and a

825
00:47:17,080 --> 00:47:21,680
Speaker 1: lot of old science textbooks of the primary organisms coming

826
00:47:21,719 --> 00:47:24,800
Speaker 1: out of the water and taking the land, and it's generally,

827
00:47:25,080 --> 00:47:27,240
Speaker 1: you know, it looks like it's at at your local park,

828
00:47:27,719 --> 00:47:29,720
Speaker 1: or it looks like maybe it's at the beach or something.

829
00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:32,600
Speaker 1: You know, I often think of also if that Treehouse

830
00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:34,960
Speaker 1: of Horror episode where the creature crawls out of the

831
00:47:34,960 --> 00:47:37,520
Speaker 1: water and Homer Simpson sets on it or steps on it.

832
00:47:37,560 --> 00:47:38,520
Speaker 1: Africat which one it is.

833
00:47:38,840 --> 00:47:41,799
Speaker 3: I'm thinking of a fish with human feet like that,

834
00:47:42,160 --> 00:47:44,200
Speaker 3: like Julius Caesar's horse in that drawing.

835
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:48,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like we discussed like these kind of these

836
00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:52,800
Speaker 1: these muddy environments, muddy waters and muddy shores and mud flats,

837
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:55,160
Speaker 1: they were. They were probably a lot more important than

838
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:58,959
Speaker 1: we often give them credit. And even today, when you

839
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:03,200
Speaker 1: consider the mud flats found in coastal wetlands around the world,

840
00:48:03,719 --> 00:48:08,440
Speaker 1: you'll find vital ecosystems that are home to various specialized organisms.

841
00:48:09,080 --> 00:48:12,920
Speaker 1: And yeah, the mud skipper is a mud specialist. You

842
00:48:13,000 --> 00:48:16,000
Speaker 1: may like to go mudding, but the mud skipper lives

843
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:18,600
Speaker 1: in the mud. This is the mud skipper's world.

844
00:48:18,760 --> 00:48:20,560
Speaker 3: You're in my world now. Yeah.

845
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:23,680
Speaker 1: So there are twenty three extended species of mud skipper.

846
00:48:24,360 --> 00:48:28,120
Speaker 1: They're members of the vast Gabba daet family. More than

847
00:48:28,160 --> 00:48:30,799
Speaker 1: two thousand species and more than two hundred of gen era.

848
00:48:31,160 --> 00:48:33,320
Speaker 1: I've seen that count lower as well, but it's still

849
00:48:33,600 --> 00:48:36,520
Speaker 1: a lot. There are a lot of Gobi's.

850
00:48:36,080 --> 00:48:36,600
Speaker 3: In the world.

851
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:40,600
Speaker 1: But Gobi's you know what I'm talking about. Most of

852
00:48:40,640 --> 00:48:43,719
Speaker 1: you probably do Gobi's. They have kind of a telltale

853
00:48:43,760 --> 00:48:48,760
Speaker 1: look right their heads, their overall morphology, they look like Gobi's.

854
00:48:48,800 --> 00:48:51,120
Speaker 1: There's kind of I don't know how else to explain it.

855
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:53,280
Speaker 3: They all kind of look like they're saying, hey, guys,

856
00:48:53,320 --> 00:48:54,880
Speaker 3: what's going on? Exactly?

857
00:48:55,000 --> 00:48:58,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a I think there's some Gobies on SpongeBob Like.

858
00:48:58,040 --> 00:49:01,960
Speaker 1: They're very Spongebobby in there. Parents. Now they're fifteen gen

859
00:49:02,040 --> 00:49:05,040
Speaker 1: era of air breathing Goby's. But the mud skippers here

860
00:49:05,040 --> 00:49:08,719
Speaker 1: in particular, belong to the genus Periophthalmus, and they have

861
00:49:08,880 --> 00:49:12,040
Speaker 1: several defining features of note here that aid them in

862
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:16,760
Speaker 1: their muddy habitat. So, first of all, they have fused

863
00:49:16,760 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 1: pelvic fins which form a disc shaped sucker, which aid

864
00:49:20,640 --> 00:49:23,319
Speaker 1: them by allowing them to sort of attach to surfaces.

865
00:49:24,320 --> 00:49:28,120
Speaker 1: They can use these to aid themselves in climbing rocks

866
00:49:28,600 --> 00:49:32,879
Speaker 1: and even trees. Namely, now we're talking about mangroves here,

867
00:49:32,880 --> 00:49:36,120
Speaker 1: but we're talking about their roots, their trunks, their lower branches.

868
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:40,040
Speaker 1: So definitely a case of a fish that can climb

869
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:40,520
Speaker 1: a tree.

870
00:49:40,680 --> 00:49:41,600
Speaker 3: Wouldn't have thought that.

871
00:49:42,040 --> 00:49:43,840
Speaker 1: But of course this is not the only gobi that

872
00:49:43,920 --> 00:49:47,000
Speaker 1: excels at climbing. There is also a gobi that you

873
00:49:47,040 --> 00:49:50,640
Speaker 1: will find in Hawaii if you visit certain waterfalls that

874
00:49:50,640 --> 00:49:52,000
Speaker 1: I don't know if you'll get to see one. I

875
00:49:52,040 --> 00:49:53,960
Speaker 1: didn't get to see one, but I mean, you know

876
00:49:54,000 --> 00:49:57,960
Speaker 1: they're there, or they're they're sometimes there. These are the

877
00:49:58,000 --> 00:50:04,080
Speaker 1: Oapu Nopili or Stimpson scopie, and these little guys scale

878
00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:06,200
Speaker 1: the vertical cliffs of waterfalls.

879
00:50:06,680 --> 00:50:07,080
Speaker 3: Wow.

880
00:50:07,480 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, you may have seen some videos, some documentary footage

881
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:13,600
Speaker 1: about these creatures because they're they're amazing and it's an

882
00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:15,760
Speaker 1: amazing journey, especially for something so small.

883
00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:17,600
Speaker 3: You know, I knew about flying fish.

884
00:50:17,640 --> 00:50:18,160
Speaker 1: I don't know why.

885
00:50:18,200 --> 00:50:21,400
Speaker 3: I'm more impressed by climbing fish climbing up trees and

886
00:50:21,719 --> 00:50:24,400
Speaker 3: cliffs than I am with flying fish.

887
00:50:24,560 --> 00:50:26,839
Speaker 1: So coming back to the mud skipper though, Yeah, they

888
00:50:26,840 --> 00:50:31,240
Speaker 1: have specialized morphology for semi aquatic living on these mud flats.

889
00:50:31,760 --> 00:50:34,440
Speaker 1: They can breathe air through their skin and the lining

890
00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:38,000
Speaker 1: of their mouth the only while wet. You often see

891
00:50:38,000 --> 00:50:39,840
Speaker 1: images of them and footage of them with them with

892
00:50:39,880 --> 00:50:43,360
Speaker 1: their mouths opening and so forth. They also do this

893
00:50:43,400 --> 00:50:48,200
Speaker 1: as part of like a defensive display between males It's

894
00:50:48,239 --> 00:50:51,520
Speaker 1: a lot of great footage of that of these males

895
00:50:51,719 --> 00:50:56,239
Speaker 1: combating each other and having standoffs on the mud. They

896
00:50:56,280 --> 00:51:01,520
Speaker 1: are excellent soft sediment burrowers as well, burrowing in the mud.

897
00:51:01,719 --> 00:51:04,040
Speaker 1: This is key to their egg laying. They build these burrows,

898
00:51:04,080 --> 00:51:06,640
Speaker 1: they lay their eggs in the mud. Also, this is

899
00:51:06,680 --> 00:51:10,800
Speaker 1: how they avoid predators. They jump down those burrows get

900
00:51:10,960 --> 00:51:13,000
Speaker 1: out of sight of anything that's trying to eat them.

901
00:51:13,360 --> 00:51:16,920
Speaker 1: And they also use these for thermoregulation as well. They

902
00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:20,800
Speaker 1: also work to maintain an air pocket inside the burrow

903
00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:26,160
Speaker 1: for prolonged stays in low oxygen environments. And you might wonder, too, well,

904
00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:27,640
Speaker 1: how do they bring the mud back up? While they

905
00:51:27,640 --> 00:51:30,520
Speaker 1: bring it up in their mouths. They bring big mouthfuls

906
00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:34,040
Speaker 1: and they spit out these mud balls beside the burrow.

907
00:51:34,880 --> 00:51:38,040
Speaker 1: Joe I included an image of a mud skipper spitting

908
00:51:38,200 --> 00:51:42,040
Speaker 1: mud sort of a ball. It's not as cartoon cartoonally

909
00:51:42,280 --> 00:51:44,759
Speaker 1: ball like as you might imagine, but here's a mud

910
00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:46,320
Speaker 1: skipper spitting mud.

911
00:51:46,600 --> 00:51:48,719
Speaker 3: So this is the equivalent of you're digging a hole

912
00:51:48,760 --> 00:51:51,320
Speaker 3: in the ground with the shovel, you're throwing the mud,

913
00:51:51,440 --> 00:51:54,000
Speaker 3: or not the mud, the dirt over your shoulder. Here

914
00:51:54,200 --> 00:51:57,239
Speaker 3: it is digging in this wet mud, a sort of

915
00:51:57,360 --> 00:52:00,440
Speaker 3: tunnel in the mud, and it is spitting out the uh,

916
00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:03,520
Speaker 3: the the excess that's being voided from the cavity it's

917
00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:04,880
Speaker 3: making exactly.

918
00:52:05,040 --> 00:52:08,000
Speaker 1: Yeah. The other interesting thing about them, like they're their

919
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:11,279
Speaker 1: morphology positions, their eyes atop their head. They have these

920
00:52:11,280 --> 00:52:14,560
Speaker 1: big eyes that you might not catch what it is.

921
00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:17,560
Speaker 1: It's amazing about them when you're watching them. That makes

922
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:20,200
Speaker 1: them somehow more relatable and more human like. And part

923
00:52:20,239 --> 00:52:23,000
Speaker 1: of that is is that they blink. Uh, they've and

924
00:52:23,040 --> 00:52:26,000
Speaker 1: they evolved this independently of terrestrial tetrapods.

925
00:52:26,400 --> 00:52:29,040
Speaker 3: Well, I said this about Gobie's earlier in general. But

926
00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:33,640
Speaker 3: the yeah, the mud skippers do seem relatable in a

927
00:52:33,680 --> 00:52:35,120
Speaker 3: way that a lot of fish don't.

928
00:52:35,960 --> 00:52:38,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're just yeah, they're they're crawling around on

929
00:52:39,719 --> 00:52:43,839
Speaker 1: the mud flats. They're engaging in these standoffs with each other.

930
00:52:44,160 --> 00:52:46,080
Speaker 1: And I think the other part is like, unlike a

931
00:52:46,120 --> 00:52:49,239
Speaker 1: fish in the water, of course, in this case, they

932
00:52:49,280 --> 00:52:53,880
Speaker 1: are also interacting, you know, on on a surface. They're

933
00:52:53,920 --> 00:52:57,759
Speaker 1: they're they're out of that three D marine environment and

934
00:52:57,840 --> 00:53:00,799
Speaker 1: here they are on the mud behaving. Is these just

935
00:53:00,840 --> 00:53:04,120
Speaker 1: strange creatures that that you know that almost feel very

936
00:53:04,120 --> 00:53:07,440
Speaker 1: alien compared to anything else because they're they're they're not

937
00:53:07,880 --> 00:53:10,319
Speaker 1: exactly like anything in the water, and they're not like

938
00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:13,480
Speaker 1: anything on the land. They're they're totally doing their own thing,

939
00:53:13,800 --> 00:53:17,799
Speaker 1: and they're doing it in this strange, like muddy, kind

940
00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:19,080
Speaker 1: of slimy environment.

941
00:53:19,440 --> 00:53:21,800
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess they look like a cross between

942
00:53:22,200 --> 00:53:26,520
Speaker 3: fish and frogs, which makes sense because they are amphibious fish.

943
00:53:27,040 --> 00:53:30,160
Speaker 1: Yeah. I want to say, it's BBC's Life, one of

944
00:53:30,160 --> 00:53:34,160
Speaker 1: the David Attenboroughs that has some tremendous footage of these

945
00:53:34,160 --> 00:53:36,879
Speaker 1: guys going about their business, and I think they even

946
00:53:36,960 --> 00:53:39,960
Speaker 1: used to they put a camera down in one of

947
00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:42,640
Speaker 1: their burrows so you can see how that's that's going.

948
00:53:43,040 --> 00:53:46,520
Speaker 1: Some really remarkable footage that's from it's probably at least

949
00:53:46,520 --> 00:53:48,759
Speaker 1: ten years old now, but it's out there.

950
00:53:49,400 --> 00:53:50,440
Speaker 3: See how it's going.

951
00:53:51,239 --> 00:53:53,839
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's it's going great down there.

952
00:53:54,080 --> 00:53:56,080
Speaker 3: Now we're the ones saying, hey, guys, what's up?

953
00:53:56,320 --> 00:53:57,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right?

954
00:53:57,960 --> 00:53:59,319
Speaker 3: Should we call it there for part two?

955
00:53:59,680 --> 00:54:01,160
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think so. I mean, I think that's a

956
00:54:01,160 --> 00:54:03,920
Speaker 1: good overview of some of the ways that animals use mud,

957
00:54:04,040 --> 00:54:07,560
Speaker 1: Like most of the major categories of mud use and

958
00:54:07,680 --> 00:54:12,279
Speaker 1: some of the more exciting and notable cases. I'm sure

959
00:54:12,280 --> 00:54:14,640
Speaker 1: we left off some interesting ones, So if there's one

960
00:54:14,640 --> 00:54:16,799
Speaker 1: that you really love, just write in let us know.

961
00:54:16,960 --> 00:54:20,239
Speaker 1: We'll highlight it, perhaps in a future episode of Listener Mail,

962
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:25,719
Speaker 1: Because yeah, it's the realm of mud. Is this world

963
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:27,600
Speaker 1: that is easy. It's easy for us to take it

964
00:54:27,400 --> 00:54:30,840
Speaker 1: for granted and not realize just how versatile it is

965
00:54:30,880 --> 00:54:34,399
Speaker 1: and how essential it is for various organisms. So we're

966
00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:37,400
Speaker 1: going to have at least one more episode regarding mud

967
00:54:37,440 --> 00:54:39,400
Speaker 1: this Thursday. Tune in for that. This is going to

968
00:54:39,440 --> 00:54:40,759
Speaker 1: be the one where we're going to come back and

969
00:54:40,880 --> 00:54:43,160
Speaker 1: discuss mud and warfare a little bit, but we're also

970
00:54:43,160 --> 00:54:45,279
Speaker 1: going to discuss the importance of mud as a human

971
00:54:45,320 --> 00:54:49,080
Speaker 1: construction material or the creation of mud bricks and so forth.

972
00:54:49,560 --> 00:54:51,200
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you would like to listen to

973
00:54:51,239 --> 00:54:52,960
Speaker 1: other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you will

974
00:54:52,960 --> 00:54:55,160
Speaker 1: find them in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed.

975
00:54:56,400 --> 00:54:59,080
Speaker 1: We have our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Listener

976
00:54:59,160 --> 00:55:01,880
Speaker 1: Mail on Monday, Form Artifact or Monster Fact on Wednesday,

977
00:55:01,920 --> 00:55:04,239
Speaker 1: and on Fridays, we set aside most series concerns to

978
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:07,440
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

979
00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:11,200
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If

980
00:55:11,239 --> 00:55:12,799
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with

981
00:55:12,880 --> 00:55:15,400
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a

982
00:55:15,480 --> 00:55:17,680
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

983
00:55:17,680 --> 00:55:20,640
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

984
00:55:20,680 --> 00:55:28,680
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

985
00:55:29,080 --> 00:55:32,040
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986
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:34,879
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987
00:55:35,040 --> 00:55:51,560
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