WEBVTT - From the Vault: Mud, Part 2 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:08.720 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. It is Saturday, 0:00:08.800 --> 0:00:11.800 time for another vault. And hey, if you listen last Saturday, 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:13.840 you know what's up this week. It's Mud Part two, 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:17.439 So sink in and enjoy more of this exploration. This 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:22.440 one originally published seven eleven, twenty twenty three. 0:00:23.640 --> 0:00:27.640 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:35.320 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:35.400 --> 0:00:36.239 name is Robert. 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:39.040 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part 0:00:39.080 --> 0:00:43.440 two of our series on mud. Now. In the last episode, 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:47.919 we talked about some sort of definitional constraints on the 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:50.760 idea of mud, and yes, it is the mud you're 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:55.120 thinking of, as in wet soil, typically composed of small 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:59.280 particles of the silt or clay particle size variety. But 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:03.240 we also talked about mud in the sort of geohistory 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:06.679 of Earth, in the history of how the continents were 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:12.440 colonized by early plants and animals terrestrial life, and how 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:16.320 the presence of mud sort of was sort of driven 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:21.000 by the presence of plants on Earth's continents, and then 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:23.640 how the build up of mud on the continents from 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:27.120 there sort of shaped the way the continents developed. But 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.920 before that, we also talked about a passage in The 0:01:30.959 --> 0:01:34.880 Fairy Queen, which is a late sixteenth century English epic 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:39.160 poem by the poet Edmund Spencer, in which the author 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:42.479 talks about his belief that the mud of the Nile, 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:46.960 and maybe just mud in general, spawns monsters. And I 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:49.760 knew we were not done with the idea of monsters 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:52.080 that grow out of mud. Surely there's going to be 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:54.000 a lot of that going around. And Rob, I think 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:55.320 you had one as well, didn't you. 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:58.600 Yeah. I actually looked into this a little bit last 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:02.919 year because I worked a mud monster into the script 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:05.920 I wrote for Thirteen Days of Halloween last year, and 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:10.440 I was looking for inspiration regarding mud monsters, and at 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:12.800 least at the time, I didn't find as many as 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:15.680 I thought I would, But I did find one really 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:19.520 interesting one. This one is a yokai from Japanese traditions, 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:24.920 and it's known as the Dora Tabo. This name means 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:29.800 either mud man or rice paddy man, and this yokai 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:34.639 is generally described and depicted as a humanoid made out 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:37.639 of mud, or at least a torso of a humanoid 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:39.799 made out of mud, emerging from the mud of a 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:44.480 rice patty, grasping with its arms and staring out through 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:48.200 a single eye in its head as it wails at 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:48.600 the night. 0:02:49.200 --> 0:02:51.799 It's brutal looking. It's got a kind of mud skeleton 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:54.640 like you can see the ribs at least. 0:02:55.080 --> 0:03:00.320 Yeah, it's a frightening looking yokai, that's for sure. Of course, 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:04.720 frightening in yokai doesn't necessarily mean it's going to try 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:08.240 to kill you, And well that's how it basically breaks 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:11.040 down in this one. I have a really fun yochai 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:14.839 book that my son and I read last year. This 0:03:14.919 --> 0:03:20.520 is from Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt titled Yokai Attack. 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:22.919 It's a fun little book that has some great illustrations, 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:26.680 and they point out that the Doro Tabo is not 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:30.760 generally believed to be dangerous. It cries and frightens those 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:33.880 who encounter it, but that's about it. Some traditions say 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:36.880 that it originated as a man who lost his hard 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:41.520 won farmland and now haunting the rice fields, cries for 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:43.800 its return in the night, wait. 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:46.720 The return of the fields. Like as the mud monster, 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:48.920 he wants to now again be the rightful owner of 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:49.560 the fields. 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:51.680 Yeah, yeah, you know, it's like this was my place 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:53.880 and now you've taken it from me, you know, basically 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:58.440 haunting one oh one. Right. But the authors here also 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:01.960 share that the Doro Tabos origins go back at least 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:06.560 as far as Sakan Toriyama's famous eighteenth century Yokai book 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:09.640 Tales of Monsters Than and Now, and while it might 0:04:09.720 --> 0:04:12.520 be based on pre existing folk tales, they think it's 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:17.360 more likely the creation of Toriyama himself. And yeah, it's 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:21.000 one of these things where it's the frightening spirit here 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:24.160 loses some of its appeal when it seems that it 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:26.280 might have been little more than the embodiment of a 0:04:26.320 --> 0:04:29.960 crude sexual metaphor to stick a pole in the rice patty. 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:34.760 So maybe its origins are less spooky and more just 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:40.320 kind of skeezy. But still, and the thing is, you 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:41.440 can see that too if you look at some of 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:45.680 these illustrations. I mean, it's the monster's appearance is vaguely phallic, 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:50.240 and the authors point out that Sakan may have been 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:54.000 referencing brothels that were located north of Edo Castle at 0:04:54.000 --> 0:04:57.760 the time. But whatever the road to get there, the 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:00.760 result is a pretty cool looking mud monster. 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:03.760 Now, while we're on the topic of the intersection between 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:08.320 mud and monsters, there is a movie example that I 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:10.880 know we have to talk about. It's one not of 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:15.200 a monster made of mud, but of a hero who 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:19.320 must defeat a monster by using mud. And you horror 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:21.359 movie geeks out there, I know you already know the 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:25.080 one we're thinking of. It occurs in the transition to 0:05:25.120 --> 0:05:28.640 the third act in the original Predator, the movie starring 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:32.359 Arnold Schwarzenegger and basically every other guy with muscles that 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:35.279 you could think of in nineteen eighty seven. So, I 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:37.040 know a lot of you have probably seen this movie, 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:38.800 but just in case you have, ut I'll explain the 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:42.120 setup to the mud scene. So the premise of the 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:44.919 movie is that Arnold Schwarzenegger is leading a group of 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:48.960 private military contractors on a hit for the CIA in 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:53.160 the jungle somewhere in Central America. Unbeknownst to them, they 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:56.440 just happen to be jumping right into the hunting grounds 0:05:56.760 --> 0:06:00.320 of an alien from another planet who likes to come 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:04.240 to war zones on Earth to hunt humans for sport. 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:07.040 Yeah, he likes it hot, he likes it violent, and 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:08.040 that's why he's here. 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:10.080 That's right, And I always took it to mean that, 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:14.080 like the predator seeks out war zones because it's like, 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:16.240 you know, the humans aren't gonna notice as much that 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:17.240 people are going missing. 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:21.880 Yeah, there's always a lot of there's already distress, there's 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:25.120 already people vanishing. It can get in and do its 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:28.080 thing without having to worry about stirring up the locals 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:28.520 too much. 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:32.080 Oh, but it's also because the predator wants to hunt 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:36.839 like the toughest, like armed humans, Like he's specifically looking 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:40.640 for humans of the Arnold Schwarzenegger with a machine gun variety. 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:41.760 Yeah. 0:06:41.880 --> 0:06:43.560 So in this movie, the alien has all kinds of 0:06:43.680 --> 0:06:48.320 technology that gives the alien an advantage over humans. So, 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:51.240 for example, it can put on a cloaking device that 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:54.279 makes it nearly invisible to the naked eye. But it 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:57.359 also has a huge advantage in that instead of just 0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:00.240 seeing the world in the visible spectrum of life like 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:04.679 we do, it sees in infrared. So the body heat 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:08.479 of a living organism really pops out of the background, 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:12.560 making any warm blooded animal easy to track in the forest. 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:14.800 So by the end of the second act of the movie, 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:19.760 this alien has trophy hunted Arnold Schwarzenegger's entire team, only 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:22.360 Arnold has left, and just when you think he's done for, 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:25.200 he ends up he's running away from the alien. He 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:28.880 ends up crawling on his belly across a muddy river bank, 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:32.880 so that his entire body ends up covered in mud. 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:35.320 And I will note that the mud. I was just 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:37.280 thinking back on the scene. It does appear to have 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:39.440 a lot of clay sized particles. I think that's a 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:40.440 clay rich mud. 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:42.640 Yeah, it does look look very clay rich. 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.520 But anyway, so yeah, Arnold Swartzenegger ends up total. He's 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:48.400 totally covered in mud. He's lying there on the river 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:52.320 bank waiting for the predator to finish him off, and 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:56.040 to his surprise, suddenly it seems like this alien hunter 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:59.640 can't see him. The mud has made him invisible to 0:07:59.760 --> 0:08:03.400 the alien. So finally he has an advantage to even 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:07.400 the playing field against this enemy with overwhelming technology, and 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:09.680 sort of that sets up the big conflict in the 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:12.200 third act. It's a great twist. I remember when I 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:13.880 first saw the movie as a kid, I thought it 0:08:13.920 --> 0:08:14.680 was genius. 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:19.440 It's pretty great, and it's been very influential because you 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:23.040 see this either directly referenced in so many films to 0:08:23.080 --> 0:08:26.280 come afterwards, or films will find sort of a new 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:30.760 way to do the same thing, like our hero accidentally 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:35.320 finds some sort of protection from from some sort of 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:39.839 an enemy, or you know, accidentally finds this key strategy 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:41.800 that they can employ against said enemy. 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:45.520 Now, while if I remember correctly, I think nobody in 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:48.360 the movie actually explains how this works. You're just left 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:51.000 to sort of figure it out for yourself. But the 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:53.920 way it is presumed to work is that by covering 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:58.080 his body in mud, Arnold Schwarzenegger here has masked his 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:01.400 the heat signature of his body because it's now the 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.079 mud is the same temperature as the rest of the environment, 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:05.439 so he just blends in. 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:08.320 Yeah, now, this is a scene that's a lot of 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:12.360 fun to dissect, and maybe maybe almost too fun to dissect, 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:14.160 Like you can get a little too wrapped up in 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:16.360 trying to break down whether this will work or not, 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:17.559 and you have to at the end of the day 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:20.440 remind yourself, well, we need to experience it through the 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:25.959 you know, the cinematic excitement of the scene. But still 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:30.400 there are a couple of key conversations about this. I 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:32.480 found one that was really interesting that I had not 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:36.640 run across before from a book titled The Sensory Modes 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:40.880 of Animal Rhetorics by alex Ey Parrish, and at one 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:43.520 point in the book, Parish examines this scene and it 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:46.120 seems to have a mostly high opinion of the sequence. 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:49.680 He points out that quote, infrared radiation is nearly impossible 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:51.960 to detect through any amount of water, so the wet 0:09:52.080 --> 0:09:55.880 mud masks Dutch's heat signature. Dutch is the character that 0:09:56.000 --> 0:09:59.640 Arnold plays from the Predator once his high tech mass 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:03.079 becomes damaged in one of the earlier struggles. I think 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:04.800 one of the It's been a while since I've seen 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:08.360 Predator in its entirety, but I think part of it too, 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:12.360 is that the Predator sees an infrared but it has 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:15.680 kind of like a it sees everything in infrared, and 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:18.280 it has some of these technological filters that can throw 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:20.480 on to sort of refine that a bit. 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:23.480 Yes, and it may it may have lost some of 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:27.680 its capabilities in previous combat. Yeah, I'm not sure. Though. 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:30.040 Now we'll come back to sort of the you know, 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:32.480 the science of this. I should point out though, that 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:35.720 I believe Parrish's main interest in this is not really 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:39.880 about like the direct infrared radiation and thermal science of 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:44.800 the scenario, but he's he's more interested on this sort 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:49.000 of this idea of this being an interaction between two 0:10:49.080 --> 0:10:55.280 beings with entirely different sensory understandings of the world. And 0:10:55.320 --> 0:10:58.000 he likes this example because quote Dutch is able to 0:10:58.040 --> 0:11:02.280 think outside his own lived exprience and quickly adapt to 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:06.640 an alien way of sensing the world. So humans can't 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:10.439 detect infrared radiation without the aid of technology, and therefore 0:11:10.480 --> 0:11:12.880 most of us are just essentially blind to this realm 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:16.000 of senses, the direct experience of it, certainly, but also 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:18.800 perhaps just sort of the idea of it. And know, 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:24.680 you throw in a very stressful, life threatening situation like 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:27.079 that depicted in the movie, and you know it adds 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:29.640 his extra layer to it. So it's kind of neat that. Ultimately, 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:33.400 the quality that Dutch has that makes them an effective 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:35.760 hero in the movie is not that he has big 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:37.920 muscles or he can blow things up. He can do 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:39.920 all of those things, unless those skills seem to serve 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:43.200 him well against other humans, But at this point in 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:46.160 the movie, it is essentially he's essentially about to be killed. 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:50.200 His only his trick to surviving is being able to 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:54.560 think outside of the human experience and realize why I'm 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:56.880 part of its luck too. Obviously that he just happened 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:59.160 to get so muddy, happened to fall into that water. 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:04.600 But then the you know, being swift enough to realize, oh, 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:07.520 this is what is happening. This is what has given 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:08.080 me the edge. 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:10.599 Yes, But I guess that brings us back to the 0:12:10.679 --> 0:12:13.320 question of would something like this work in real life, Like, 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:17.040 I don't know, how would it change your infrared heat 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:19.000 signature to cover your body in mud? 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:21.920 Well, as I know a number of you out there 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:23.840 are familiar with this already because we have I think 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:27.560 there's a lot of crossover between our listeners and viewers 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:30.800 of the TV show MythBusters. But yeah, there is an 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:35.880 episode of MythBusters that busted this myth. They experimented with 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:40.160 a thermographic camera and they found that it would work, 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:43.120 but would only work for a very brief amount of 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:46.319 time until the mud heated up from the human body 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:51.280 temperature underneath it. Hmm. Okay, And I've seen some other 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:55.480 analyzes that line up with this as well, arguing that okay, 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:58.880 it could work, but probably not for as long as 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:02.480 it seems to work in the movie also based on 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:06.160 how relative little mud is involved. So I take that 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:10.120 to mean if Arnold aka dots here had just been 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:13.600 completely mud monstered himself, like he didn't even look like 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:17.360 Arnold anymore, you could make a better case for it working. 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:19.520 But then it would have looked a little silly like. 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:22.080 Part of the appeal of the scene too, is that 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:25.240 you know, Arnold's face and muscles are covered with this 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:27.160 clay like mud slime. 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:31.760 You can still see the muscles clearly defined, but he 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:34.120 looks like he's sort of covered in gray paint. 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:38.920 Yeah, now, Joe, I think you've seen this as well. 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:42.680 But the twenty twenty two film Prey cleverly adapts this, 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:46.600 having our hero in this movie, instead of covering themselves 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:50.800 with mud, they ing just a traditional medicine that it's 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:55.720 described as it lowers one's body temperature through medicinal means 0:13:56.400 --> 0:14:00.360 and is able to then give the hero the same advantage. 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:02.079 Over the predator. That was a good twist. 0:14:02.520 --> 0:14:05.120 Yeah, now, I guess you could argue that Dutch was 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:07.600 also cooling his body temperature because you know, he first 0:14:07.679 --> 0:14:10.800 jumps off a waterfall I think, into this water, then 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:14.119 he gets covered in the mud. But I can't imagine 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:16.240 that this on its own would have been enough to 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:18.240 make a difference, Like it wouldn't have really, It's not 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:22.880 like he was jumping into like freezing water down there. However, 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:25.240 this is just occurring to me now. If we think 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:27.640 of what we see in Predator as sort of the 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:30.720 myth that spawned by some sort of an event that 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:34.840 actually happened, I could imagine a situation where Okay, Dutch 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:37.640 is running for his life, jumps into the cold water, 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:40.080 crawls through the mud, is covered with the mud, but 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:42.960 instead of then having a direct confrontation with the predator, 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:47.440 already has some distance and the predator is not able 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:49.680 to scan him from a distance in this short time 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:51.600 it takes for him to then get the rest of 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.920 the way out of range and find a place to hide. 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:58.680 Yeah, or in the real world scenario just has a 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:00.840 much thicker coating of mud, like they didn't have to 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:03.400 be concerned in the real world about making sure you 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:05.120 could still tell it was arnold. 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:08.320 Right, Yeah, but then I guess you're doing like there 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:10.440 are all sorts of complications that arise there too, like 0:15:10.480 --> 0:15:13.800 how much mud can you cake on? Your body without 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:17.080 it slouching off. How can you move with all that 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:20.440 mud on your body? So there are limitations there as well, 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:23.120 I think if memory serves and it could be wrong 0:15:23.160 --> 0:15:26.760 on this, I think in the MythBusters episode they found 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:29.800 that there were ways to to sort of mask your 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:32.600 your your heat signature, but you had to, you know, 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:35.360 use some sort of like a thermal suit to do that. 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:38.200 Well, I was just thinking, if you if you make 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:41.240 it so that you're not giving off a visible heat signature, 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:43.960 wouldn't that just mean you're retaining the heat and therefore 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:45.240 you would get really hot? 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:49.280 Hmm. Well, you know, in this we're getting really into 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:53.640 the more and more into the thermal regulation side of 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:57.400 the whole scenario, which is fortunate because as we venture 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:01.640 into the world of real life and animals that often 0:16:01.720 --> 0:16:04.880 cake themselves in mud, wallow and mud and ultimately use 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:08.080 mud for other things, you don't really find animals covering 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:11.760 themselves in mud to mask their I our signature. But 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:14.600 we're going to look at several examples here of animals 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:19.360 using mud for various purposes in their lives, and I 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:22.840 think we're going to begin with probably the most notable example, 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:26.400 the most famous example of a mud loving animal. 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:30.800 That's right. So, one family of animals whose relationship with 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:34.640 mud is quite well known is the family Suidy, the 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:39.720 family containing all the animals commonly known as hogs, pigs, porkers, 0:16:39.720 --> 0:16:44.640 and swine, most notably to humans SEUs domesticus, the common 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:49.960 domestic pig now pigs, along with plenty of other animals 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:56.000 like elephants, rhinoceroses, some bovids, etc. Wallow in mud, and 0:16:56.240 --> 0:17:00.680 wallowing is defined as coating the body surface with mud, 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:05.040 often simply by lying in a pit of muddy water, 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:08.280 or even sort of rolling around or wiggling in a 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:11.040 pit of muddy water. But when I thought about it, 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:15.359 I realized I didn't really know why pigs wallow. My 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:18.480 best guess was that it had something to do with temperature, 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:21.760 but I didn't know. So to answer this question, I 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:24.680 dug up a paper, a paper in an animal behavior 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:29.760 journal exploring exactly the question of why pigs wallow in mud. 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:34.960 So the article was by Mark Braca called Review of 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:38.760 Wallowing in Pigs, Description of the behavior and its motivational 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:42.439 basis in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science from the 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:46.119 year twenty eleven. And there's some interesting motivating context for 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:48.600 this paper, which is that it was really aimed at 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:54.320 informing decisions about animal welfare in a domestic context or 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:57.959 in agriculture, because, of course people keep pigs domestically as 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:01.600 a farm species and sometimes even as pets, so to 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:06.440 treat them humanely means understanding what their needs are. And 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:09.879 it has been widely observed that pigs wallow in mud 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:13.320 when they can. So is this something that pigs need 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:16.359 to do for their well being? And if so, why 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:17.360 do they need to do it? 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:18.000 So? 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:21.240 The paper consists of a literature review of the existing 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:24.719 evidence on why domestic pigs and related species such as 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:28.399 wild boares coat their bodies in mud. I guess the 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:31.000 first question is what does this actually look like? Well, like, 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:34.040 when pigs and wild pigs and bores wallow, what do 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:38.320 they do? Bracket writes that if a pre existing pool 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:41.720 of mud is not available, pigs will often make their own. 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:44.239 They will like dig to make their own wallow, and 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:48.400 the pit of mud or muddy water where pigs wallow 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:51.480 the verb is called a wallow the noun so it's 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:53.840 kind of like how you shower in the shower. They 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:57.879 wallow in the wallow. When a wallow is available, the 0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:02.440 pig will usually begin by rooting, which means repeatedly pushing 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:06.000 the snout in and sort of rooting and digging in 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:08.359 the mud, and then they will enter the mud with 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:12.720 the four body first, headside first, and then wiggle and 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.439 roll around in the mud, sometimes until much of the 0:19:15.480 --> 0:19:19.600 body or occasionally even the whole body is covered in mud. Now, 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:21.880 how much of their body they submerge in the mud 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:25.879 has been observed to correlate somewhat with temperature. According to 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:29.800 mcgloone in nineteen ninety nine, when the temperature is above freezing, 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:33.760 pigs will stand in the cool water. When the temperature 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:37.200 goes up from there, more often they will lie down 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:40.520 with their utters submerged in the water, and when it's 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:43.639 even hotter, they will sometimes like roll around and coat 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:47.879 most or all even of the body in mud. But 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:50.280 more often the parts of the body they get coated 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:54.480 in mud are the sides and the underside. The author says, 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:56.840 if the wallow is deep enough and the temperature is 0:19:56.920 --> 0:20:00.960 high enough, sometimes a sow will submerge its entire body, 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:03.680 so only the head and the snout is poking out. 0:20:04.160 --> 0:20:06.639 But on hot days it's normal for a pig to 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:10.720 keep fifty to seventy five percent of its body surface 0:20:10.840 --> 0:20:14.840 covered in mud. Now, some observers do note that pigs 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:18.280 will exhibit wallowing behavior even in cold weather. That'll come 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:21.119 back in a bit, but they just they clearly do 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:24.840 it more often in hot weather. Apparently becomes really prevalent 0:20:25.160 --> 0:20:28.480 around seventeen to twenty one degrees celsius, which is about 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:32.280 sixty three to seventy degrees fahrenheit. So sometimes a pig 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:35.359 will stand or lie down in the mud and just 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:38.320 hang out there. Other times, the pig will get in 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:40.320 the mud, get a coat of the mud, and then 0:20:40.480 --> 0:20:43.080 leave and let it evaporate as the pig goes about 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:47.359 its business, maybe returning later to get another coat. Pigs 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:50.600 are often seen scratching off their coats of dried mud 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:54.880 against a tree or other scratching post type object. So 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:56.880 you might get in the mud, get mud all over 0:20:56.920 --> 0:20:59.560 your skin, let the mud dry, and then scratch against 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:02.880 a tree to get the dried mud off. But what 0:21:03.040 --> 0:21:07.240 purpose biologically does mud wallowing serve. Well, one of the 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:13.000 most obvious and widely recognized benefits is thermoregulation. As we 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:17.879 were talking about wallowing in mud, clearly helps pigs keep cool. 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:22.960 Pigs actually have comparatively little in terms of internal biological 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:26.000 mechanisms for fighting off the heat, especially compared to some 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:30.120 other species. They have fewer sweat glands than humans. For instance, 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:33.640 And there was a paragraph in this paper that actually 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:36.720 made me feel so much emotion about what it's like 0:21:36.800 --> 0:21:39.480 to be a pig, about how hot it must be 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:42.320 to be a pig, especially a domestic pig. Do you 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:43.280 mind if I read this. 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:45.439 Rob, Yes, let's do so. 0:21:45.560 --> 0:21:49.679 Bracher writes. For several reasons, pigs are prone to overheating. 0:21:49.880 --> 0:21:54.480 Their sweat glands are hardly responsive to elevated temperatures, Subcutaneous 0:21:54.520 --> 0:21:58.080 fat may result in a relatively high insulation value, and 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:01.520 their barrel shaped body reduced this body surface to body 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:06.320 mass ratio, and this reduces heat exchange. In addition, compared 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:09.880 to wild boar, domesticated pigs have shorter snouts and this 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:14.280 reduces their ability to pant. Furthermore, while domesticated pigs have 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:18.040 sparse hair cover and larger ears, their ears are not 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:21.560 very mobile and vascularized as in the case of elephants, 0:22:21.800 --> 0:22:26.080 and their circulatory system has a limited capacity. Finally, pigs 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:29.080 may be producing considerable amounts of heat eg due to 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:33.280 muscular activity and feeding, fighting and play, and very high 0:22:33.280 --> 0:22:36.760 production levels, growing up to about one kilogram per pig 0:22:36.880 --> 0:22:40.879 per day, producing up to thirty piglets per sou per year. 0:22:41.400 --> 0:22:44.679 So this just sounds like pigs are busy getting and 0:22:44.800 --> 0:22:47.159 stayin hot. It is hot to be a pig, you 0:22:47.240 --> 0:22:50.280 need to find ways to cool off. So because of 0:22:50.359 --> 0:22:54.240 the convergence of all these limitations and their vulnerability to heat, 0:22:54.760 --> 0:22:59.320 pigs have to supplement their basic internal or anatomical cooling 0:22:59.320 --> 0:23:03.359 capabilities with behavioral ones. And this could in some cases 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:06.960 be as simple as reducing your movement and seeking out 0:23:07.000 --> 0:23:10.680 shade when the sun is high, But it also includes wallowing. 0:23:11.320 --> 0:23:14.119 So strong is a pig's desire to wallow that in 0:23:14.160 --> 0:23:17.280 some cases, if water and mud are not available in 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:20.400 the pig's environment, they will lie down against any wet 0:23:20.480 --> 0:23:23.080 surface they can find, or even lie against their own 0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:26.639 feces and urine. Pigs really want to get their skin wet. 0:23:27.560 --> 0:23:30.679 But it's interesting to consider the complexity of how the 0:23:30.720 --> 0:23:34.720 wallowing works, like it's more complex than simply the way 0:23:34.720 --> 0:23:37.000 we would jump in water, say, get in the pool 0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:39.280 to cool off. We all know that it is cooler 0:23:39.320 --> 0:23:41.479 to be in the pool than out of the pool, 0:23:42.359 --> 0:23:44.560 and studies show this is of course true with the 0:23:44.680 --> 0:23:47.359 puddles of mud and pig habitats, even if they're in 0:23:47.440 --> 0:23:50.880 direct sun. But this is not just about the time 0:23:50.920 --> 0:23:54.240 that the pig is physically in the mud in the wallow, 0:23:54.640 --> 0:23:57.360 because if you think of the pool analogy, when your 0:23:57.359 --> 0:24:00.840 skin is wet as you slowly dry off, it takes 0:24:00.880 --> 0:24:03.879 a lot of energy to turn the water clinging to 0:24:03.960 --> 0:24:07.879 your skin into water vapor, and that results in a 0:24:07.920 --> 0:24:11.199 heat transfer from your body to the water as it 0:24:11.240 --> 0:24:15.280 makes that costly phase transition into vapor. So you can 0:24:15.320 --> 0:24:17.800 think of why you feel cold after you get out 0:24:17.840 --> 0:24:21.080 of the shower, even if the shower water was hot. 0:24:21.800 --> 0:24:25.560 Yeah, this is a great point, and with I found 0:24:25.560 --> 0:24:29.320 this with a child. This this period of transition between 0:24:29.359 --> 0:24:31.800 getting out of the swimming pool and going you know, 0:24:31.840 --> 0:24:34.000 back into the house or the room or whatever like 0:24:34.040 --> 0:24:38.200 this is pivotal. Smaller bodies thrown into the mix as well, 0:24:38.400 --> 0:24:40.600 because yeah, they're instantly colder when they get out of 0:24:40.600 --> 0:24:42.359 the pool, but they cannot go back in the pool, 0:24:42.560 --> 0:24:44.600 and you're going to I think we have diminishing returns 0:24:44.600 --> 0:24:47.600 of trying to heat back up in the pool, and 0:24:47.640 --> 0:24:51.240 for you know, again a small bodied child, this is 0:24:51.280 --> 0:24:54.600 gonna be an even more dire situation. They need those towels, 0:24:54.640 --> 0:24:57.560 They need to get to a warm shower somewhere as 0:24:57.640 --> 0:24:59.400 they can warm back up right. 0:24:59.440 --> 0:25:01.400 And this is all so actually the same principle by 0:25:01.400 --> 0:25:04.480 which sweat cools your body, water evaporating from the skin 0:25:04.560 --> 0:25:08.679 makes your body cooler. It's a cooling technique. But another 0:25:08.720 --> 0:25:10.960 thing you might know from getting out of the pool 0:25:11.160 --> 0:25:14.520 is that water drips and evaporates off of the skin 0:25:14.680 --> 0:25:18.119 pretty quickly. So once you leave the pool or the shower, 0:25:18.200 --> 0:25:22.960 whatever it is, the cooling potential of evaporation is relatively 0:25:23.000 --> 0:25:26.440 short lived, probably on the order of just minutes under 0:25:26.480 --> 0:25:29.840 a hot sun. I'm reminded of a time I was 0:25:30.640 --> 0:25:35.200 hiking in a Big Bin National Park in Texas under 0:25:35.320 --> 0:25:37.960 you know, this is a desert environment where like the 0:25:38.040 --> 0:25:42.160 sun is beating down and I remember I was very hot. 0:25:42.240 --> 0:25:45.200 So I took like an icy water bottle that I had, 0:25:45.240 --> 0:25:47.840 and I poured the water just all over myself, like 0:25:47.920 --> 0:25:50.600 on my head and down my back, so my shirt 0:25:50.760 --> 0:25:53.919 was soaked in water. And I remember, so I was like, okay, 0:25:53.920 --> 0:25:56.479 so I'll be good. You know, I'm like wet with 0:25:56.560 --> 0:25:59.280 this icy water. My clothes are wet. I should be 0:25:59.280 --> 0:26:01.240 good for a while, but I don't know how long 0:26:01.280 --> 0:26:03.800 it was, but it felt like within fifteen minutes I 0:26:03.880 --> 0:26:08.560 was bone dry. So being wet and evaporating helps you 0:26:08.600 --> 0:26:11.399 cool off, but it doesn't last that long. Here's the 0:26:11.440 --> 0:26:16.160 genius of mud wallowing. These studies unwallowing show that an 0:26:16.200 --> 0:26:20.080 animal such as a wild pig, coated in mud stays 0:26:20.160 --> 0:26:23.360 wet much longer after getting out of the wallow than 0:26:23.400 --> 0:26:27.359 the same animal coated in water alone. Mud keeps you 0:26:27.440 --> 0:26:31.399 wet longer than water and the mud Essentially, it seems 0:26:31.400 --> 0:26:35.080 like it helps create a matrix for trapping water against 0:26:35.080 --> 0:26:38.959 the skin, which will still provide the benefits of evaporative 0:26:39.000 --> 0:26:42.399 cooling as it dries. But the mud may take hours 0:26:42.440 --> 0:26:45.800 to fully dry into a crust, while water alone is 0:26:45.840 --> 0:26:49.000 gone in minutes. To read from the study here, quote 0:26:49.280 --> 0:26:51.919 wallowing in mud leaves a coat of mud on the 0:26:52.000 --> 0:26:56.520 pig's lateral and ventral surfaces and limbs. This superficial layer 0:26:56.560 --> 0:27:00.639 of caked mud assists in relieving hyperthermia through a vaporation, 0:27:01.040 --> 0:27:04.840 acting as a kind of quote wet suit, helping to 0:27:04.920 --> 0:27:07.840 keep cool in a warm environment. Water in mud on 0:27:07.880 --> 0:27:10.800 the skin of a pig took two hours to evaporate 0:27:11.119 --> 0:27:14.639 compared to fifteen minutes when water alone was used, and 0:27:14.680 --> 0:27:18.160 the evaporation rate was seven hundred to eight hundred grams 0:27:18.200 --> 0:27:22.399 per hour per meter squared. Hence, mud is more effective 0:27:22.480 --> 0:27:26.480 than clean water in temperature control because mud allows the 0:27:26.520 --> 0:27:31.280 evaporation process to continue for a longer time, so for 0:27:31.520 --> 0:27:35.480 cooling the body in hot conditions, mud is an upgrade 0:27:35.560 --> 0:27:36.520 from clean water. 0:27:36.920 --> 0:27:39.879 All right, that makes sense. Yeah, it's the water just 0:27:39.920 --> 0:27:42.359 flows right off you. The water evaporates, but the mud, 0:27:42.400 --> 0:27:51.560 the mud sticks. 0:27:52.880 --> 0:27:56.360 So thermal regulation seems to be the most widely accepted 0:27:56.400 --> 0:27:58.919 explanation for why pigs wallow, and the one with the 0:27:58.920 --> 0:28:02.040 most evidence behind it, but there are a ton of 0:28:02.080 --> 0:28:06.480 other possible or partial explanations that have been offered. And 0:28:06.600 --> 0:28:11.120 one reason for this is that there have been observations 0:28:11.160 --> 0:28:14.760 that while pigs wallow less in cold weather, they still 0:28:14.800 --> 0:28:17.920 wallow some. So if they're doing it even when it's 0:28:17.960 --> 0:28:22.000 like really cold outside, it probably must serve some purpose 0:28:22.160 --> 0:28:25.280 in addition, you know, like some other purpose in addition 0:28:25.359 --> 0:28:28.480 to just avoiding overheating. So what are some of the 0:28:28.520 --> 0:28:31.560 other explanations that have been offered. Well, a number of 0:28:31.600 --> 0:28:35.159 them have to do with various types of grooming in skincare. 0:28:35.440 --> 0:28:39.640 So imagine this pig has ectoparasites on its skin. It 0:28:39.760 --> 0:28:43.240 might have fleas or lice or ticks or something. The 0:28:43.280 --> 0:28:46.960 pig cannot reach back and pick all these parasites off. 0:28:47.040 --> 0:28:51.920 Pig is, unfortunately, by way of evolution, stuck in barrel mode. 0:28:52.520 --> 0:28:55.280 But the pig can wallow and by getting in the 0:28:55.400 --> 0:28:59.360 mud and lying in it, wiggling around, wiggling around, that 0:28:59.440 --> 0:29:03.760 may kill or dislodge some of those parasites. But then 0:29:04.120 --> 0:29:07.200 the benefits continue even after the pig gets up out 0:29:07.200 --> 0:29:09.760 of the mud and the mud dries into a crust. 0:29:10.200 --> 0:29:14.080 The pig can go scratch its body against posts like 0:29:14.200 --> 0:29:17.360 trees or the pin wall or whatever to remove the 0:29:17.440 --> 0:29:21.680 mud crust and probably remove trapped parasites along with it. 0:29:22.240 --> 0:29:23.600 Oh, I'd never thought about that. 0:29:24.120 --> 0:29:28.840 Yeah, So this has been documented as an anti parasite 0:29:28.880 --> 0:29:33.040 behavior in water buffaloes. It is assumed by many to 0:29:33.200 --> 0:29:38.440 serve the same function in pigs, but there's some countervailing 0:29:38.480 --> 0:29:42.479 evidence that. Like the author here sites a study from 0:29:42.480 --> 0:29:45.600 two thousand and five that looked for evidence that wallowing 0:29:45.680 --> 0:29:48.520 reduced parasite loads in wild boar and actually did not 0:29:48.680 --> 0:29:52.240 find any correlation. So the picture on that one seems mixed. 0:29:52.800 --> 0:29:55.600 But there's also it's also been proposed that maybe having 0:29:55.640 --> 0:29:59.640 a layer of mud helps protect pigs from biting insects 0:29:59.680 --> 0:30:03.120 like flo and mosquitoes. That would make sense, and furthermore, 0:30:03.240 --> 0:30:07.840 a layer of mud could also help provide protection against sunburn, 0:30:07.960 --> 0:30:12.160 to which domestic pigs are susceptible. Domestic pigs can get sunburned. 0:30:12.200 --> 0:30:15.920 Being relatively hairless and not having a lot of natural 0:30:16.000 --> 0:30:21.160 skin protection against the sun, they are vulnerable to sunburn. 0:30:21.400 --> 0:30:24.000 Though I was thinking it's interesting that usually the mud 0:30:24.080 --> 0:30:26.760 ends up on the sides and the underside of the pig, 0:30:26.880 --> 0:30:30.040 more so than on the back of the pig, which 0:30:30.040 --> 0:30:32.520 would be the part that's in the most direct sunlight. 0:30:32.640 --> 0:30:36.920 But I don't know few other possible ideas. Maybe there's 0:30:36.920 --> 0:30:40.719 some kind of health benefit not related to heat. Pigs 0:30:40.760 --> 0:30:43.800 have been observed to wallow more when they are suffering 0:30:43.840 --> 0:30:48.520 from disease, and it's also been hypothesized that pigs wallow 0:30:48.560 --> 0:30:52.400 in order to perhaps disinfect wounds because mud in some 0:30:52.480 --> 0:30:59.440 cases can have bacteriocytal properties, but this is another hypothesis 0:30:59.480 --> 0:31:02.840 that was not There was found to be no correlation 0:31:02.960 --> 0:31:04.880 in that same two thousand and five study that found 0:31:04.920 --> 0:31:09.560 no correlation with parasites on wild boar. At least, there 0:31:09.600 --> 0:31:12.320 are other ideas that maybe it has some relationship to 0:31:12.360 --> 0:31:16.800 sexual behavior, such as scent marking or advertising mate fitness, 0:31:17.200 --> 0:31:20.880 but this also seems uncertain. So I'd say the picture 0:31:21.000 --> 0:31:26.040 is definitely plays a role in thermoregulation, and the fact 0:31:26.120 --> 0:31:29.520 that pigs also do it when it's very cold makes 0:31:29.520 --> 0:31:32.000 it seem like maybe it may have some other functions 0:31:32.040 --> 0:31:34.800 as well, but we're less certain about what those are. 0:31:35.320 --> 0:31:38.160 This is all fascinating. Yeah, with pigs and mud, I 0:31:38.200 --> 0:31:40.840 just always I kind of just had the loose understanding 0:31:40.880 --> 0:31:43.200 while they're doing it to cool down. But yeah, it 0:31:43.200 --> 0:31:46.760 sounds like it's sounds like there are more dimensions to that, 0:31:47.080 --> 0:31:50.320 And ultimately, these additional dimensions cast light on many of 0:31:50.360 --> 0:31:53.880 the various other examples of wallowing and mud behavior that 0:31:53.920 --> 0:31:56.360 you see in animals. You know, and we're certainly not 0:31:56.360 --> 0:31:59.600 going to get into all of these examples today, but 0:32:00.040 --> 0:32:02.960 you can see how a number of these explanations can 0:32:03.000 --> 0:32:06.400 and do line up with these other species. 0:32:06.240 --> 0:32:09.920 Right, so you might you know, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippos, water 0:32:10.000 --> 0:32:15.960 buffalo other bovids all engage in wallowing behaviors, and to 0:32:16.000 --> 0:32:19.920 some extent they probably share some of the same biological purposes. 0:32:20.920 --> 0:32:23.400 In fact, there was an interesting passage I did want 0:32:23.440 --> 0:32:26.680 to read from this paper about the evolution of wallowing, 0:32:26.880 --> 0:32:30.720 so the author rights quote. Wallowing, defined widely as covering 0:32:30.760 --> 0:32:33.719 the body surface with a mud like substance, is common 0:32:33.720 --> 0:32:38.440 in mammals such as servids, carnivores and primates. Pigs, however, 0:32:38.560 --> 0:32:44.120 prefer to wallow more specifically in mud, mainly for thermoregulatory 0:32:44.160 --> 0:32:48.000 reasons for cooling, and in this respect it resembles mud 0:32:48.000 --> 0:32:53.640 wallowing seen and other large animals giant tortoises, crocodiles, elephant, seals, 0:32:54.000 --> 0:32:58.440 and in particular in the large hairless mega herbivores such 0:32:58.440 --> 0:33:03.840 as elephants, rhinos, and water buffalo. Pigs probably also descended 0:33:03.880 --> 0:33:09.400 from a large ancestor. By contrast to for example, the horse, 0:33:09.600 --> 0:33:13.720 an odd toed ungulate whose ancestor, the eohippus, was far 0:33:13.840 --> 0:33:18.800 smaller than his descendant. So if I get what the 0:33:18.840 --> 0:33:21.719 author is going for, here it sounds like he's suggesting 0:33:21.760 --> 0:33:26.560 that it's interesting that these species that engage in wallowing 0:33:26.560 --> 0:33:31.160 today tended to be things that had large bodied ancestors. Obviously, 0:33:31.240 --> 0:33:35.040 having a large body means that your cooling needs are 0:33:35.040 --> 0:33:38.360 more acute. And you know, a horse, on the other hand, 0:33:38.400 --> 0:33:42.120 evolves from something with a small body that has less 0:33:42.120 --> 0:33:43.280 acute cooling needs. 0:33:43.680 --> 0:33:48.040 That's fascinating. And yeah, the Galapagos tortoise in particular, I 0:33:48.080 --> 0:33:51.440 mentioned the giant tortoises. Yeah, this is a great example. 0:33:51.880 --> 0:33:54.600 I got to I mean, my family and I got 0:33:54.600 --> 0:33:57.320 to go out and see some of these animals in 0:33:57.360 --> 0:34:00.240 the wild. And there was one particular morning where, yeah, 0:34:00.240 --> 0:34:02.480 a lot of the tortoises had not yet emerged from 0:34:02.480 --> 0:34:05.479 their nightly mud. Some were just coming out, but some 0:34:05.520 --> 0:34:09.600 were still just you know, firmly parked in alone in 0:34:09.640 --> 0:34:12.640 this kind of wallow of mud, and it was going 0:34:12.719 --> 0:34:14.520 to be maybe a little bit the morning was going 0:34:14.560 --> 0:34:16.200 to have to warm up a bit before they started 0:34:16.239 --> 0:34:17.160 coming back out again. 0:34:17.560 --> 0:34:20.480 But of course, the animal uses of mud are by 0:34:20.520 --> 0:34:24.360 no means limited to wallowing and thermoregulation. I mean, in 0:34:24.400 --> 0:34:26.840 a way you can almost think mud is not quite 0:34:26.880 --> 0:34:29.480 like water, but it is close to like water in 0:34:29.520 --> 0:34:31.880 that it is a material and a habitat. 0:34:32.160 --> 0:34:35.040 That's right, and there are various other things that animals 0:34:35.120 --> 0:34:40.080 do with mud that are worth mentioning here. One neat 0:34:40.120 --> 0:34:44.919 place to start is geopogy. This is something that's been 0:34:45.000 --> 0:34:48.240 known of an animals since at least the time of Galen, 0:34:48.680 --> 0:34:51.600 and it's been known that you many animals on occasion 0:34:51.640 --> 0:34:55.680 will eat soil or clay or something that might be 0:34:55.760 --> 0:34:58.680 considered mud. This is one of the issues in talking 0:34:58.719 --> 0:35:01.880 about how animimals use mud, as we fall back into 0:35:01.960 --> 0:35:07.040 the issue of definitions that we discussed in the first episode. 0:35:07.080 --> 0:35:10.719 What's mud, what's not mud? What is more? What would 0:35:10.760 --> 0:35:14.600 you more consider silt and sand and so forth? When 0:35:14.640 --> 0:35:19.360 does mud become dirt? So all of those questions and 0:35:19.520 --> 0:35:22.560 uncertainties remain in effect, but at least in some of 0:35:22.600 --> 0:35:25.600 these cases, animals would be eating something that you might 0:35:26.760 --> 0:35:31.319 define as mud. There are three main reasons for them 0:35:31.400 --> 0:35:34.680 to do this that are recognized. One is to control parasites, 0:35:35.239 --> 0:35:40.120 I believe endo parasites in this regard. Another is for 0:35:40.280 --> 0:35:44.480 mineral contents such as iron, sodium, and magnesium something in 0:35:44.520 --> 0:35:48.200 the mud that they need for their diet. Another factor 0:35:48.280 --> 0:35:52.239 is to help metabolize toxic compounds. You know. They are 0:35:52.280 --> 0:35:54.600 various examples of this in the Animal Kingdom, where at 0:35:54.640 --> 0:35:58.440 least during part of a season, an animal bite might 0:35:58.480 --> 0:36:01.439 be forced to eat some plants that are a little 0:36:01.560 --> 0:36:07.400 rougher on the gut, and the added mud or dirt 0:36:07.440 --> 0:36:09.480 into the system will help sort of balance all of 0:36:09.520 --> 0:36:13.680 that out. Geofogy also factors into some human traditions as well, 0:36:14.760 --> 0:36:18.080 sometimes as a medicinal practice or other times as part 0:36:18.080 --> 0:36:23.680 of a survival dietary substitution practice. Though again we're focusing 0:36:23.680 --> 0:36:26.240 on mud here, and this ultimately goes beyond just mud, 0:36:26.360 --> 0:36:28.480 so it's a stretch, I think, to spend too much 0:36:28.520 --> 0:36:31.400 time on it, but mud is certainly on the table 0:36:31.480 --> 0:36:35.320 in the Animal Kingdom. Now. Another big one, of course, 0:36:35.760 --> 0:36:39.800 is building with mud. Humans, we should note, are famous 0:36:39.840 --> 0:36:42.640 for building with earth and mud is a big part 0:36:42.640 --> 0:36:44.640 of that, and we're going to discuss more about humans 0:36:44.640 --> 0:36:47.400 specifically in the next episode. But of course we're not 0:36:47.400 --> 0:36:50.960 the only animals to make our homes out of mud. 0:36:51.520 --> 0:36:55.279 There are a few key examples to discuss here. I 0:36:55.280 --> 0:36:57.359 think one of the most impressive, though, and one that 0:36:57.400 --> 0:36:59.759 I think a lot of people, if not everyone, out there. 0:36:59.760 --> 0:37:03.400 All some experience with is that of the mud dauber 0:37:03.520 --> 0:37:05.920 or the dirt dauber or the mud wasp. 0:37:06.280 --> 0:37:08.879 As a child, I remember really wondering what the word 0:37:09.000 --> 0:37:09.840 dauber meant. 0:37:10.239 --> 0:37:13.160 Yeah, yeah, I grew up hearing of them as dirt daubers, 0:37:13.600 --> 0:37:16.520 which is kind of a silly name. And also since 0:37:16.560 --> 0:37:19.040 it's like it's it's mud, that's I mean, ultimately it's mud. 0:37:19.080 --> 0:37:20.600 But then the mud dries. That's another one of the 0:37:20.600 --> 0:37:25.000 definitional problems here is that is then mud mud only 0:37:25.040 --> 0:37:27.200 remains mud for a little bit and then it becomes 0:37:27.640 --> 0:37:31.560 like dried mud or dirt and so forth. But anyway, yeah, 0:37:31.400 --> 0:37:34.279 the mud wasp, I'll call them mud the mud wasp 0:37:34.320 --> 0:37:36.680 moving forward, because it sounds a little more serious. These 0:37:36.680 --> 0:37:40.359 are various species of I believe, two different families of 0:37:40.440 --> 0:37:44.239 parasitoid wasps. I definitely encountered these a lot during my 0:37:44.280 --> 0:37:48.560 own childhood. The resulting nests kind of look like imagine 0:37:48.560 --> 0:37:52.920 a like a pan flute composed of cylinders that instead 0:37:52.920 --> 0:37:54.400 of being made out of you know, some sort of 0:37:54.800 --> 0:37:57.720 you know, like metal tubing or bone tubing or wooden 0:37:57.760 --> 0:37:59.880 tubing or what have you. Instead, those are made out 0:38:00.160 --> 0:38:05.279 cylinders of dried mud. And if, when say cleaning out 0:38:05.280 --> 0:38:07.719 an old shed or something, you happen to break some 0:38:07.880 --> 0:38:11.880 of these cylinders open, well, there's an additional level of surprise. 0:38:12.160 --> 0:38:14.520 You might find that they are full of the remains 0:38:14.760 --> 0:38:20.680 of tiny spiders, because while the adults are typically nectar drinkers, 0:38:21.239 --> 0:38:25.000 the young require the meat and the bodies of host 0:38:25.080 --> 0:38:28.440 organisms in the form of spiders, which they cram in 0:38:28.480 --> 0:38:32.320 these cylinders by the dozen. If you've never seen this before, 0:38:32.560 --> 0:38:35.520 I highly recommend looking up some images on your favorite 0:38:36.080 --> 0:38:41.360 image search system because it's grizzly. These chambers are just 0:38:41.400 --> 0:38:44.640 filled with the remains of spiders because they need to 0:38:44.680 --> 0:38:48.960 be in there. The young can hatch in or on 0:38:49.080 --> 0:38:52.759 these spiders and then consume their precious meat. Now an 0:38:52.800 --> 0:38:57.759 interesting wrinkle considering mud wasp nests, however, is that, as 0:38:57.760 --> 0:39:01.120 you may have noticed, while they'll naturally build their nests 0:39:01.160 --> 0:39:06.080 on naturally occurring wood or naturally occurring rock conditions, human 0:39:06.160 --> 0:39:11.200 structures of varying styles and materials often offer great environments 0:39:11.239 --> 0:39:14.640 for them. Particularly, you know, if it's something that's exposed 0:39:14.920 --> 0:39:17.000 to the elements at all, if it's open at all, 0:39:17.360 --> 0:39:22.360 So barns, sheds, this sort of thing. These are often 0:39:22.880 --> 0:39:27.680 significantly encrusted in mud wasp nests, to the point that 0:39:27.680 --> 0:39:31.319 someone may have to come around eventually and scrape them off. 0:39:32.080 --> 0:39:34.400 I think I've even seen them form on window panes, 0:39:34.440 --> 0:39:38.040 that sort of thing. In some cases, they're even building 0:39:38.080 --> 0:39:42.120 their own mud dwellings on human dwellings or creations that 0:39:42.160 --> 0:39:43.920 are made out of mud or stone or earth of 0:39:43.960 --> 0:39:46.640 some sort. And they've been doing this for a very 0:39:46.680 --> 0:39:51.000 long time. In fact, as pointed out by Finch at 0:39:51.000 --> 0:39:53.439 All in a twenty nineteen paper I was looking at 0:39:53.800 --> 0:39:59.440 in coordinary geochronology, the radiocarbon dating of these nests, when 0:39:59.440 --> 0:40:03.360 attached to things like ancient human rock art and relatively 0:40:03.400 --> 0:40:08.200 open rock dwellings, can be incredibly insightful. So we're talking 0:40:08.280 --> 0:40:13.840 like late Plustocene nests here, which which have fossilized. The 0:40:14.160 --> 0:40:19.160 primary innovator of this approach was an Australian geochronologist named 0:40:19.400 --> 0:40:22.960 Richard Burt Roberts Bert being like the nickname you can 0:40:22.960 --> 0:40:26.680 call him Bert apparently, and the hope was that, given 0:40:26.719 --> 0:40:30.399 the wide world distribution of mud wasps, this would become 0:40:30.480 --> 0:40:35.520 something of a standard tool for dating certain sites of 0:40:35.640 --> 0:40:38.920 archaeological interests. I've read some other papers that seem to 0:40:38.960 --> 0:40:42.000 indicate that this didn't quite come to pass. There might 0:40:42.000 --> 0:40:45.320 actually be limited practical value, but it's still pretty interesting 0:40:45.320 --> 0:40:48.799 and apparently maybe in some cases can be incredibly insightful 0:40:49.280 --> 0:41:01.520 when dating something of conditions are just right, all right. 0:41:01.560 --> 0:41:06.040 So that's some added detail on a case of an 0:41:06.120 --> 0:41:08.719 organism using mud that, again I think a lot of 0:41:08.760 --> 0:41:12.160 us are familiar with due to the distribution of mud wasps, 0:41:12.520 --> 0:41:15.239 and also, you know, is a fairly safe thing to 0:41:15.440 --> 0:41:19.280 encounter as a kid. But an example I wasn't familiar 0:41:19.280 --> 0:41:21.520 with concerns fiddler crabs. 0:41:22.200 --> 0:41:25.200 Oh interesting, now, if I recall, fiddler crabs played a 0:41:25.480 --> 0:41:28.200 big role in our series called The Lesser of Two 0:41:28.280 --> 0:41:30.400 Crab Claws about asymmetry and nature. 0:41:30.840 --> 0:41:33.880 Yeah, yeah, and here they are once more, or at 0:41:33.960 --> 0:41:39.319 least two species of fiddler crab. Anyway, So I was 0:41:39.320 --> 0:41:41.760 reading about this in a two thousand and three article 0:41:41.760 --> 0:41:46.200 by Christy at All published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 0:41:46.800 --> 0:41:48.680 and they pointed out that you have there are a 0:41:49.000 --> 0:41:52.480 couple of key examples of fiddler crabs that do something 0:41:52.520 --> 0:41:55.680 interesting with the materials that they bring out of their burrows. 0:41:55.960 --> 0:41:57.960 So obviously, one of the things about digging a burrow 0:41:58.239 --> 0:41:59.640 is you got to bring all that dirt up right. 0:41:59.600 --> 0:42:01.760 It's kind of like in the movie The Great Escape. 0:42:01.800 --> 0:42:03.160 What do you do with all that extra dirt from 0:42:03.200 --> 0:42:05.680 digging the tunnels. You can't just stup in one place 0:42:06.000 --> 0:42:09.279 because then the guards will notice. So you've got to 0:42:09.280 --> 0:42:11.040 sneak it around. You've got to put it in the 0:42:11.040 --> 0:42:14.919 cuffs of your pants and secretly deposit it just all 0:42:14.960 --> 0:42:15.680 over the yard. 0:42:15.840 --> 0:42:17.719 Man, how much dirt can you fit in the cuff 0:42:17.760 --> 0:42:18.840 of your pants. 0:42:18.840 --> 0:42:20.839 Well, a little bit at a time, or as much 0:42:20.880 --> 0:42:24.440 as possible at a time to try to avoid detection. 0:42:25.320 --> 0:42:27.759 But you know, the crabs don't have to worry about that. 0:42:27.840 --> 0:42:32.080 So the crabs bring these materials out of the burrow, 0:42:32.640 --> 0:42:36.800 and in a couple of species, you see male fiddler 0:42:36.840 --> 0:42:41.799 crabs essentially to some degree building something out of it 0:42:41.960 --> 0:42:46.200 next to their burrow. For instance, there's the musical fiddler crab. 0:42:46.560 --> 0:42:50.839 This is Leptusa musica, and this one will build what 0:42:50.880 --> 0:42:53.600 it's called a sand hood next to the burrow. So 0:42:53.640 --> 0:42:55.440 this is just like I mean, picture kind of like 0:42:55.480 --> 0:42:59.120 a pile of sand. The image that I found of it, 0:42:59.120 --> 0:43:04.640 it looks kind of like wave, though it's kind of 0:43:04.640 --> 0:43:07.400 like a sail made out of piled sand. It's roughly 0:43:07.760 --> 0:43:09.240 the same height as the crab. 0:43:09.600 --> 0:43:11.920 I think of it as sort of a popped collar 0:43:12.040 --> 0:43:14.320 around the neck hole of the burrow entrance. 0:43:14.960 --> 0:43:17.920 Yeah, yeah, I think that's reasonable. Now you would be 0:43:17.960 --> 0:43:20.400 fair and saying, well, that sounds a lot like sand 0:43:20.480 --> 0:43:23.759 and significantly less like mud guys, But don't worry. There's 0:43:23.800 --> 0:43:27.680 another one, and this is Bebe's Fiddler Crab. Bbe's Fiddler 0:43:27.680 --> 0:43:33.120 Crab sometimes builds mud pillars next to their burrows, and 0:43:33.760 --> 0:43:38.600 this seems to help them attract females for mating. H Now, 0:43:38.640 --> 0:43:40.480 as the authors point out here, this is where it 0:43:40.480 --> 0:43:45.120 it's more interesting is apparently females do seem to prefer 0:43:45.480 --> 0:43:49.040 going over and hanging out near males and burrows that 0:43:49.200 --> 0:43:51.759 have a mud tower, or in the case of the 0:43:51.840 --> 0:43:57.400 musical fiddler Crab, that sand hood. They do seem to 0:43:57.400 --> 0:44:00.840 prefer it, but the practice might not have evolved for 0:44:01.040 --> 0:44:03.520 makee choice. So, in other words, a lot of times 0:44:03.560 --> 0:44:05.399 things like this occur, and we talk about it being 0:44:05.440 --> 0:44:07.799 like a signal of fitness, like saying, look, I mean, 0:44:07.800 --> 0:44:10.080 clearly I'm the one to mate with because look what 0:44:10.239 --> 0:44:12.440 I have throught, you know, look at this thing that 0:44:12.480 --> 0:44:14.520 I can. Look how much sand I can pile up, right, 0:44:15.200 --> 0:44:16.800 And that seems to be kind of like our basic 0:44:16.800 --> 0:44:19.560 way of understanding it. They argue in this paper that 0:44:19.640 --> 0:44:23.880 it may serve These may serve as sensory traps, providing 0:44:24.000 --> 0:44:28.720 shelter for crabs, which crabs, you know, crave to avoid predators. 0:44:28.760 --> 0:44:31.279 If you've ever walked around on the beach, you know 0:44:31.320 --> 0:44:34.000 how this works. The crab doesn't really want to be 0:44:34.400 --> 0:44:36.960 moving out in the open for long. It prefers to 0:44:37.000 --> 0:44:41.840 stick to to crevices and shadows because and of course 0:44:42.040 --> 0:44:44.759 holes and burrows could because there's safety there. And so 0:44:44.840 --> 0:44:48.360 the idea here is that selection pressure emerges out of 0:44:48.360 --> 0:44:53.640 the increased survivability of shade building mail fiddler crabs. So 0:44:53.680 --> 0:44:57.560 the fiddler crabs that have their sand or their mud 0:44:57.640 --> 0:45:00.200 piled in such a way as to allow for a 0:45:00.239 --> 0:45:03.560 little extra shade, a little extra shelter for themselves and 0:45:03.640 --> 0:45:07.440 for females they might be mating with. Uh, these are 0:45:07.440 --> 0:45:08.600 the ones that tend to survive. 0:45:09.120 --> 0:45:12.279 Hmm. Okay, so not just a mate signal, but an 0:45:12.280 --> 0:45:16.399 actual uh actually useful for survival, right right? 0:45:16.560 --> 0:45:18.920 Yeah, and I think they're Their argument, if I'm understanding 0:45:18.960 --> 0:45:22.080 them correctly, is that, yeah, it's it's more about that 0:45:22.120 --> 0:45:26.480 survivability than any kind of signal that they're they're sending 0:45:26.520 --> 0:45:29.160 out there, any kind of fitness signal, though, I mean, 0:45:29.280 --> 0:45:31.359 just as far as you know, I'm looking at these 0:45:31.400 --> 0:45:34.240 pictures and I think I can't stack sand or mud 0:45:34.239 --> 0:45:36.440 that high where it towers over me. I mean this 0:45:36.560 --> 0:45:38.719 one of the of BB's fiddler craft. 0:45:38.760 --> 0:45:40.600 You're thinking I should go mate with that crab. 0:45:42.200 --> 0:45:44.399 Well, no, I mean I just admire. It's like, could 0:45:44.440 --> 0:45:47.440 I stack mud up in a pillar or a column 0:45:47.600 --> 0:45:50.480 that's twice as tall as I am? No, I would 0:45:50.520 --> 0:45:51.680 be crushed by the mud. 0:45:52.800 --> 0:45:55.960 Other factors are obviously hats off to the fiddler crab, 0:45:56.320 --> 0:45:58.720 to the BB crab specifically. 0:45:58.400 --> 0:46:01.200 Yeah, all right. Mud, but of course is also a 0:46:01.320 --> 0:46:05.319 nest building ingredient. Various birds collect mud in addition to 0:46:05.360 --> 0:46:08.000 other elements to build their nest, using the mud as 0:46:08.120 --> 0:46:08.719 kind of a you know. 0:46:08.719 --> 0:46:09.600 Glue or mortar. 0:46:10.080 --> 0:46:13.200 Swallows are the best example of mud use in birds, 0:46:13.760 --> 0:46:16.440 but various birds use mud to some degree. But still, 0:46:17.040 --> 0:46:19.239 if you haven't seen a swallow nest, you should look 0:46:19.239 --> 0:46:22.360 at one. It looks like a muddy mess. This is 0:46:22.480 --> 0:46:25.680 not the bird nest that your kindergarten teacher kept in 0:46:25.719 --> 0:46:28.839 a shoe box to show you. 0:46:28.880 --> 0:46:31.120 Now, this one looks like a real disaster if it 0:46:31.160 --> 0:46:31.760 gets wet. 0:46:32.080 --> 0:46:34.640 I should also, of course mention beavers once more. We 0:46:34.680 --> 0:46:37.839 did a series of episodes on beavers not too long ago. 0:46:38.120 --> 0:46:42.839 Beavers obviously also use mud in their constructions, which are 0:46:42.880 --> 0:46:46.680 made out of wood and mud for the most part. Yeah, 0:46:46.719 --> 0:46:50.680 but I want to get to the best example of 0:46:50.760 --> 0:46:55.879 a mud organism, organism that thrives on it and in it, 0:46:56.239 --> 0:47:00.359 and that is the mud skipper. So in the last episdisode, 0:47:00.360 --> 0:47:04.680 we discussed mud as this intermediate environment that likely played 0:47:04.680 --> 0:47:07.520 a greater role in the evolution of land animals than 0:47:07.560 --> 0:47:11.080 we often consider. Right. It was one of the things 0:47:11.120 --> 0:47:13.160 that I mentioned in the last episode was like you 0:47:13.160 --> 0:47:17.080 think of that that illustration, that simplistic illustration and a 0:47:17.080 --> 0:47:21.680 lot of old science textbooks of the primary organisms coming 0:47:21.719 --> 0:47:24.800 out of the water and taking the land, and it's generally, 0:47:25.080 --> 0:47:27.240 you know, it looks like it's at at your local park, 0:47:27.719 --> 0:47:29.720 or it looks like maybe it's at the beach or something. 0:47:30.600 --> 0:47:32.600 You know, I often think of also if that Treehouse 0:47:32.640 --> 0:47:34.960 of Horror episode where the creature crawls out of the 0:47:34.960 --> 0:47:37.520 water and Homer Simpson sets on it or steps on it. 0:47:37.560 --> 0:47:38.520 Africat which one it is. 0:47:38.840 --> 0:47:41.799 I'm thinking of a fish with human feet like that, 0:47:42.160 --> 0:47:44.200 like Julius Caesar's horse in that drawing. 0:47:44.960 --> 0:47:48.480 Yeah, but like we discussed like these kind of these 0:47:48.600 --> 0:47:52.800 these muddy environments, muddy waters and muddy shores and mud flats, 0:47:52.800 --> 0:47:55.160 they were. They were probably a lot more important than 0:47:55.200 --> 0:47:58.959 we often give them credit. And even today, when you 0:47:59.040 --> 0:48:03.200 consider the mud flats found in coastal wetlands around the world, 0:48:03.719 --> 0:48:08.440 you'll find vital ecosystems that are home to various specialized organisms. 0:48:09.080 --> 0:48:12.920 And yeah, the mud skipper is a mud specialist. You 0:48:13.000 --> 0:48:16.000 may like to go mudding, but the mud skipper lives 0:48:16.040 --> 0:48:18.600 in the mud. This is the mud skipper's world. 0:48:18.760 --> 0:48:20.560 You're in my world now. Yeah. 0:48:20.680 --> 0:48:23.680 So there are twenty three extended species of mud skipper. 0:48:24.360 --> 0:48:28.120 They're members of the vast Gabba daet family. More than 0:48:28.160 --> 0:48:30.799 two thousand species and more than two hundred of gen era. 0:48:31.160 --> 0:48:33.320 I've seen that count lower as well, but it's still 0:48:33.600 --> 0:48:36.520 a lot. There are a lot of Gobi's. 0:48:36.080 --> 0:48:36.600 In the world. 0:48:37.560 --> 0:48:40.600 But Gobi's you know what I'm talking about. Most of 0:48:40.640 --> 0:48:43.719 you probably do Gobi's. They have kind of a telltale 0:48:43.760 --> 0:48:48.760 look right their heads, their overall morphology, they look like Gobi's. 0:48:48.800 --> 0:48:51.120 There's kind of I don't know how else to explain it. 0:48:51.280 --> 0:48:53.280 They all kind of look like they're saying, hey, guys, 0:48:53.320 --> 0:48:54.880 what's going on? Exactly? 0:48:55.000 --> 0:48:58.040 Yeah, there's a I think there's some Gobies on SpongeBob Like. 0:48:58.040 --> 0:49:01.960 They're very Spongebobby in there. Parents. Now they're fifteen gen 0:49:02.040 --> 0:49:05.040 era of air breathing Goby's. But the mud skippers here 0:49:05.040 --> 0:49:08.719 in particular, belong to the genus Periophthalmus, and they have 0:49:08.880 --> 0:49:12.040 several defining features of note here that aid them in 0:49:12.160 --> 0:49:16.760 their muddy habitat. So, first of all, they have fused 0:49:16.760 --> 0:49:20.600 pelvic fins which form a disc shaped sucker, which aid 0:49:20.640 --> 0:49:23.319 them by allowing them to sort of attach to surfaces. 0:49:24.320 --> 0:49:28.120 They can use these to aid themselves in climbing rocks 0:49:28.600 --> 0:49:32.879 and even trees. Namely, now we're talking about mangroves here, 0:49:32.880 --> 0:49:36.120 but we're talking about their roots, their trunks, their lower branches. 0:49:37.080 --> 0:49:40.040 So definitely a case of a fish that can climb 0:49:40.040 --> 0:49:40.520 a tree. 0:49:40.680 --> 0:49:41.600 Wouldn't have thought that. 0:49:42.040 --> 0:49:43.840 But of course this is not the only gobi that 0:49:43.920 --> 0:49:47.000 excels at climbing. There is also a gobi that you 0:49:47.040 --> 0:49:50.640 will find in Hawaii if you visit certain waterfalls that 0:49:50.640 --> 0:49:52.000 I don't know if you'll get to see one. I 0:49:52.040 --> 0:49:53.960 didn't get to see one, but I mean, you know 0:49:54.000 --> 0:49:57.960 they're there, or they're they're sometimes there. These are the 0:49:58.000 --> 0:50:04.080 Oapu Nopili or Stimpson scopie, and these little guys scale 0:50:04.160 --> 0:50:06.200 the vertical cliffs of waterfalls. 0:50:06.680 --> 0:50:07.080 Wow. 0:50:07.480 --> 0:50:10.560 Yeah, you may have seen some videos, some documentary footage 0:50:10.680 --> 0:50:13.600 about these creatures because they're they're amazing and it's an 0:50:13.640 --> 0:50:15.760 amazing journey, especially for something so small. 0:50:16.120 --> 0:50:17.600 You know, I knew about flying fish. 0:50:17.640 --> 0:50:18.160 I don't know why. 0:50:18.200 --> 0:50:21.400 I'm more impressed by climbing fish climbing up trees and 0:50:21.719 --> 0:50:24.400 cliffs than I am with flying fish. 0:50:24.560 --> 0:50:26.839 So coming back to the mud skipper though, Yeah, they 0:50:26.840 --> 0:50:31.240 have specialized morphology for semi aquatic living on these mud flats. 0:50:31.760 --> 0:50:34.440 They can breathe air through their skin and the lining 0:50:34.480 --> 0:50:38.000 of their mouth the only while wet. You often see 0:50:38.000 --> 0:50:39.840 images of them and footage of them with them with 0:50:39.880 --> 0:50:43.360 their mouths opening and so forth. They also do this 0:50:43.400 --> 0:50:48.200 as part of like a defensive display between males It's 0:50:48.239 --> 0:50:51.520 a lot of great footage of that of these males 0:50:51.719 --> 0:50:56.239 combating each other and having standoffs on the mud. They 0:50:56.280 --> 0:51:01.520 are excellent soft sediment burrowers as well, burrowing in the mud. 0:51:01.719 --> 0:51:04.040 This is key to their egg laying. They build these burrows, 0:51:04.080 --> 0:51:06.640 they lay their eggs in the mud. Also, this is 0:51:06.680 --> 0:51:10.800 how they avoid predators. They jump down those burrows get 0:51:10.960 --> 0:51:13.000 out of sight of anything that's trying to eat them. 0:51:13.360 --> 0:51:16.920 And they also use these for thermoregulation as well. They 0:51:17.000 --> 0:51:20.800 also work to maintain an air pocket inside the burrow 0:51:20.960 --> 0:51:26.160 for prolonged stays in low oxygen environments. And you might wonder, too, well, 0:51:26.160 --> 0:51:27.640 how do they bring the mud back up? While they 0:51:27.640 --> 0:51:30.520 bring it up in their mouths. They bring big mouthfuls 0:51:30.560 --> 0:51:34.040 and they spit out these mud balls beside the burrow. 0:51:34.880 --> 0:51:38.040 Joe I included an image of a mud skipper spitting 0:51:38.200 --> 0:51:42.040 mud sort of a ball. It's not as cartoon cartoonally 0:51:42.280 --> 0:51:44.759 ball like as you might imagine, but here's a mud 0:51:44.760 --> 0:51:46.320 skipper spitting mud. 0:51:46.600 --> 0:51:48.719 So this is the equivalent of you're digging a hole 0:51:48.760 --> 0:51:51.320 in the ground with the shovel, you're throwing the mud, 0:51:51.440 --> 0:51:54.000 or not the mud, the dirt over your shoulder. Here 0:51:54.200 --> 0:51:57.239 it is digging in this wet mud, a sort of 0:51:57.360 --> 0:52:00.440 tunnel in the mud, and it is spitting out the uh, 0:52:00.640 --> 0:52:03.520 the the excess that's being voided from the cavity it's 0:52:03.600 --> 0:52:04.880 making exactly. 0:52:05.040 --> 0:52:08.000 Yeah. The other interesting thing about them, like they're their 0:52:08.040 --> 0:52:11.279 morphology positions, their eyes atop their head. They have these 0:52:11.280 --> 0:52:14.560 big eyes that you might not catch what it is. 0:52:14.600 --> 0:52:17.560 It's amazing about them when you're watching them. That makes 0:52:17.560 --> 0:52:20.200 them somehow more relatable and more human like. And part 0:52:20.239 --> 0:52:23.000 of that is is that they blink. Uh, they've and 0:52:23.040 --> 0:52:26.000 they evolved this independently of terrestrial tetrapods. 0:52:26.400 --> 0:52:29.040 Well, I said this about Gobie's earlier in general. But 0:52:29.120 --> 0:52:33.640 the yeah, the mud skippers do seem relatable in a 0:52:33.680 --> 0:52:35.120 way that a lot of fish don't. 0:52:35.960 --> 0:52:38.920 Yeah, and they're just yeah, they're they're crawling around on 0:52:39.719 --> 0:52:43.839 the mud flats. They're engaging in these standoffs with each other. 0:52:44.160 --> 0:52:46.080 And I think the other part is like, unlike a 0:52:46.120 --> 0:52:49.239 fish in the water, of course, in this case, they 0:52:49.280 --> 0:52:53.880 are also interacting, you know, on on a surface. They're 0:52:53.920 --> 0:52:57.759 they're they're out of that three D marine environment and 0:52:57.840 --> 0:53:00.799 here they are on the mud behaving. Is these just 0:53:00.840 --> 0:53:04.120 strange creatures that that you know that almost feel very 0:53:04.120 --> 0:53:07.440 alien compared to anything else because they're they're they're not 0:53:07.880 --> 0:53:10.319 exactly like anything in the water, and they're not like 0:53:10.360 --> 0:53:13.480 anything on the land. They're they're totally doing their own thing, 0:53:13.800 --> 0:53:17.799 and they're doing it in this strange, like muddy, kind 0:53:17.840 --> 0:53:19.080 of slimy environment. 0:53:19.440 --> 0:53:21.800 I mean, I guess they look like a cross between 0:53:22.200 --> 0:53:26.520 fish and frogs, which makes sense because they are amphibious fish. 0:53:27.040 --> 0:53:30.160 Yeah. I want to say, it's BBC's Life, one of 0:53:30.160 --> 0:53:34.160 the David Attenboroughs that has some tremendous footage of these 0:53:34.160 --> 0:53:36.879 guys going about their business, and I think they even 0:53:36.960 --> 0:53:39.960 used to they put a camera down in one of 0:53:39.960 --> 0:53:42.640 their burrows so you can see how that's that's going. 0:53:43.040 --> 0:53:46.520 Some really remarkable footage that's from it's probably at least 0:53:46.520 --> 0:53:48.759 ten years old now, but it's out there. 0:53:49.400 --> 0:53:50.440 See how it's going. 0:53:51.239 --> 0:53:53.839 Yeah, it's it's it's going great down there. 0:53:54.080 --> 0:53:56.080 Now we're the ones saying, hey, guys, what's up? 0:53:56.320 --> 0:53:57.960 Yeah, all right? 0:53:57.960 --> 0:53:59.319 Should we call it there for part two? 0:53:59.680 --> 0:54:01.160 Yeah? I think so. I mean, I think that's a 0:54:01.160 --> 0:54:03.920 good overview of some of the ways that animals use mud, 0:54:04.040 --> 0:54:07.560 Like most of the major categories of mud use and 0:54:07.680 --> 0:54:12.279 some of the more exciting and notable cases. I'm sure 0:54:12.280 --> 0:54:14.640 we left off some interesting ones, So if there's one 0:54:14.640 --> 0:54:16.799 that you really love, just write in let us know. 0:54:16.960 --> 0:54:20.239 We'll highlight it, perhaps in a future episode of Listener Mail, 0:54:21.239 --> 0:54:25.719 Because yeah, it's the realm of mud. Is this world 0:54:25.800 --> 0:54:27.600 that is easy. It's easy for us to take it 0:54:27.400 --> 0:54:30.840 for granted and not realize just how versatile it is 0:54:30.880 --> 0:54:34.399 and how essential it is for various organisms. So we're 0:54:34.400 --> 0:54:37.400 going to have at least one more episode regarding mud 0:54:37.440 --> 0:54:39.400 this Thursday. Tune in for that. This is going to 0:54:39.440 --> 0:54:40.759 be the one where we're going to come back and 0:54:40.880 --> 0:54:43.160 discuss mud and warfare a little bit, but we're also 0:54:43.160 --> 0:54:45.279 going to discuss the importance of mud as a human 0:54:45.320 --> 0:54:49.080 construction material or the creation of mud bricks and so forth. 0:54:49.560 --> 0:54:51.200 In the meantime, if you would like to listen to 0:54:51.239 --> 0:54:52.960 other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you will 0:54:52.960 --> 0:54:55.160 find them in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. 0:54:56.400 --> 0:54:59.080 We have our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Listener 0:54:59.160 --> 0:55:01.880 Mail on Monday, Form Artifact or Monster Fact on Wednesday, 0:55:01.920 --> 0:55:04.239 and on Fridays, we set aside most series concerns to 0:55:04.400 --> 0:55:07.440 just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. 0:55:07.360 --> 0:55:11.200 Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If 0:55:11.239 --> 0:55:12.799 you would like to get in touch with us with 0:55:12.880 --> 0:55:15.400 feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a 0:55:15.480 --> 0:55:17.680 topic for the future, or just to say hello, you 0:55:17.680 --> 0:55:20.640 can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your 0:55:20.680 --> 0:55:28.680 Mind dot com. 0:55:29.080 --> 0:55:32.040 Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For 0:55:32.120 --> 0:55:34.879 more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:55:35.040 --> 0:55:51.560 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.