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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 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday. You know

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Speaker 2: where we're going. We're going to the vault for an

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Speaker 2: elder episode of the show. This one from last year

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Speaker 2: aired on April nineteenth, that's twenty twenty two, and it

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Speaker 2: is the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, Part one, where we

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Speaker 2: explore the strange tale of a sort of vegetable mammal

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Speaker 2: hybrid from far away.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. These were a lot of fun, so I hope

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Speaker 1: you enjoy.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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

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Speaker 1: is Robert.

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Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: Last week's episodes discussed contemplations of plant and memory and

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Speaker 1: other topics that can blur our understanding of the animal

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Speaker 1: plant divide. And while we were talking about all of this,

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Speaker 1: I mentioned very briefly that hybrid creatures of myth and

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Speaker 1: legend often serve, among other purposes, as a kind of

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Speaker 1: reflection on the similarities and differences between animals and plants,

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Speaker 1: and at times maybe a contemplation of places where the

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Speaker 1: distinction becomes a little confusing for one reason or another.

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Speaker 1: So I thought we might discuss one of them this

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Speaker 1: week in greater detail, and that is the vegetable Lamb

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Speaker 1: of Tartary. This is one of those creatures I thought

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Speaker 1: I might do like a short form monster fact on.

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Speaker 1: But the more I looked into it, the more it

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Speaker 1: seemed to have legs.

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Speaker 2: Oh, very nice. So you were drawn to this? Was

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Speaker 2: this a nominative determinism thing? I?

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Speaker 1: Well, this is one I had been vaguely familiar with,

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Speaker 1: in part because it does pop up in various bestiaries

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Speaker 1: and monster books. Jorge Lewis Borges wrote about it and

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Speaker 1: was enticed by it. But yeah, when you start looking

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Speaker 1: into it, there's a lot more to it than just

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Speaker 1: a simple definition and explanation of what it was or wasn't.

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Speaker 2: Well, this was clearly one of the most popular fantastic

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Speaker 2: creatures of medieval bestiaries. It's all over the place, and

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Speaker 2: it's treated with varying degrees of credulity, more credulity early

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Speaker 2: on and less later on.

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Speaker 1: That's right, so it's It was referred to as the

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Speaker 1: vegetable Lamb of Chartary by Sir Thomas Brown and his

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Speaker 1: sixteen forty six work Pseudodoxia Epidemica, and it was known

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Speaker 1: by many other names as well. Two of the first

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Speaker 1: sources I looked at concerning this where, of course, the

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Speaker 1: Carol Rose's books The Book of Monsters, and also the

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Speaker 1: writings of Jorge Lewis Borges. They point out in their

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Speaker 1: works that the creature is also known as the boor

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Speaker 1: Mets or the Barromets. That's a prime, that's an important

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Speaker 1: name that comes up a lot. There's also the polypodium boromets,

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Speaker 1: the Chinese polypodium, the lycopodium or Chinese lycopodium, the jadua,

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Speaker 1: the Scythian lamb, and I've also seen it referred to

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Speaker 1: as the Tartar lamb, and we'll get into the differences.

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Speaker 1: But the basic description of the Boromets or the baro Mets,

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Speaker 1: as Borges and Rose catalog respectfully, is that it's a

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Speaker 1: plant shaped like a sheep that grows out of the ground,

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Speaker 1: and if you cut it open, you'll find the insides

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Speaker 1: are exactly what you would find if you cut open

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Speaker 1: an actual lamb or sheep, blood, flesh, bones, et cetera.

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Speaker 1: People allegedly encountered this strange thing in parts of Asia

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Speaker 1: and then brought back stories about it which were elaborated upon.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and there's a great principle at play here, which

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Speaker 2: is the same as a friend of my cousin's principle.

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Speaker 2: You know that you place the origin of your really

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Speaker 2: cool story sort of several links or geographically far away,

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Speaker 2: so that it's harder to check up on. Because again,

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Speaker 2: this is something that was said to exist in the

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Speaker 2: land of Tartary, and a European chronicler in the Middle

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Speaker 2: Ages saying that a wondrous life form is found in

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Speaker 2: Tartary is not especially helpful to a reader who might

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Speaker 2: want to look for evidence of this thing beyond the

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Speaker 2: text they're reading, or especially if they want to go

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Speaker 2: try to find it in the real world. Since the

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Speaker 2: European medieval concept of Tartary was a huge and vaguely

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Speaker 2: defined area of land, it's not like saying it's in Chicago.

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Speaker 1: Right, And it's a large area of land that not

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Speaker 1: much was known about to Europeans prior to the eighteenth century.

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Speaker 2: Right. A lot of it was these fantastical travel books,

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Speaker 2: like some of the ones we're going to talk about today.

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Speaker 1: So this was, Yes, the European name for the vast

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Speaker 1: stretch of Asia that was north of the then borders

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Speaker 1: of China, India, and Persia as understood by the west.

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Speaker 2: Right, you can think of it broadly as the central

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Speaker 2: and northern area of the Asian mainland, including parts of

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Speaker 2: what today would be Central Asia and Siberia, but running

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Speaker 2: all the way down to the Himalayas, including Kazakhstan and Mongolia,

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Speaker 2: what is today part of China, and the whole eastern

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Speaker 2: part of Russia. So this is a huge stretch of land.

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Speaker 2: This is not being very specific at all to say

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Speaker 2: that something is in Tartary, which is actually great because

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Speaker 2: if you want to get away with weaving a tall

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Speaker 2: tail for a European audience, this is an excellent place

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Speaker 2: to set it. It's a vast much of it is

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Speaker 2: sparsely populated, very little is known or understood by the reader,

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Speaker 2: so it's going to be very difficult to check up

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Speaker 2: on your story at that time. Now, one more thing

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Speaker 2: before we get started looking at some of these great

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Speaker 2: old sources is there's a really great more recent source

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Speaker 2: tracing the history of the vegetable lamb of Tartari legend

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Speaker 2: and offering what I think is a very convincing argument

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Speaker 2: about its natural origins. And we'll get more into the

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Speaker 2: explanation of the natural origins in part two of this series.

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Speaker 2: I think today we're going to focus more on the

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Speaker 2: legend itself and its development. But this source was by

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Speaker 2: a nineteenth century English naturalist named Henry Lee, and it's

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Speaker 2: called The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, published in eighteen eighty seven.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to be referring to that work repeatedly throughout

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Speaker 2: these episodes. But a little bit about Henry Lee. He

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Speaker 2: was apparently an aquarium a naturalist and an aquarium manager,

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Speaker 2: and he published books in the eighteen seventies and eighties

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Speaker 2: investigating claims of various sea monsters and offering natural explanations

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Speaker 2: for these sightings and stories. He seems to me to

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Speaker 2: be a very early model of the skeptical cryptozoologist.

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Speaker 1: All right, But before we get into the realm of

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Speaker 1: skeptical cryptozoologists, let's back it way up. Let's deal with

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Speaker 1: some less reputable sources by authors that may not have

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Speaker 1: been actual people, at least in one case.

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Speaker 2: Interstage left, Sir John Mandeville.

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Speaker 1: That's right, the book The Sir John Mandeville's Travels from

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Speaker 1: thirteen fifty C. Now, the first thing you're probably asking is, Okay,

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Speaker 1: who's this John Mandevil guy that's going to tell me

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Speaker 1: about his travels? Well, Mandevell is the supposed author of

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Speaker 1: the Travels of Sir John Mandevil, a travel memoir that

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Speaker 1: circulated during the mid fourteenth century, and this individual was

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Speaker 1: said to have been an English knight. But it's widely

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Speaker 1: thought that this individual did not actually exist, and that

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Speaker 1: the true author may have been a Flemish monk, perhaps

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Speaker 1: one Gen DeLonge, who was himself a prolific writer and

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Speaker 1: a collector of various travel logs. But I think it's

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Speaker 1: still it's not something we're one hundred percent certain on,

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Speaker 1: but I've seen some sources that indicate that this guy

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Speaker 1: is a possible bet, just because he was sort of

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Speaker 1: all the interests and resources lined up well.

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Speaker 2: One of the wonderful things about reading Sir John Mandeville

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Speaker 2: is if you find one of the archaic original texts,

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Speaker 2: the spellings of all the English words like, you can

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Speaker 2: sort of make sense of it as a modern English

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Speaker 2: reader if you labor through it. But the spellings are

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Speaker 2: just tremendous. He calls himself a Night of Ingel One

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Speaker 2: Night with a y, and England is spelled I N

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Speaker 2: G E l O N D Oh my heart.

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Speaker 1: That's great. I should also point out that there's there's

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Speaker 1: been a lot of work over the years just analyzing

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Speaker 1: how much of this book is Again, the author was

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Speaker 1: not a real person, but how much of this may

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Speaker 1: have been based on somebody's actual travels versus how much

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Speaker 1: of it is just pure invention or generated off of

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Speaker 1: the backs of other works.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's difficult to tell that. I think it's pretty

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Speaker 2: clear that his story of the vegetable lamb of Tartary

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Speaker 2: is a fabrication because number one, he claims to have

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Speaker 2: seen it himself, and as we'll get to it, we're

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Speaker 2: pretty sure nothing of this description ever actually existed, and

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Speaker 2: it may be a garbled version of sightings of something

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Speaker 2: that did really exist, but it wouldn't look anything like

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Speaker 2: what John Mandevil describes, right, So the fact that he

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Speaker 2: claims to see it and his description does not match

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Speaker 2: anything in nature, including real plants that could have inspired it,

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Speaker 2: That seems to point to this just being made up,

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Speaker 2: But it could but it's also likely that he based

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Speaker 2: this story on something else. That he read from maybe

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Speaker 2: one hundred years before him or even earlier. His encounter

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Speaker 2: with the alleged Lamb of Tartari comes in the twenty

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Speaker 2: sixth chapter of this travel book, where he is describing

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Speaker 2: the curiosities he came across in the dominion of the

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Speaker 2: cham of Tartari.

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Speaker 1: All right, here's the bet. I'm gonna read it here,

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Speaker 1: and my copy has the original spellings in it, so

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Speaker 1: I'm going to try and lean into those spellings. Okay.

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Speaker 1: Quote and there grow with a manner of fruit as

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Speaker 1: though it were Gored's, and when they been ripe men

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Speaker 1: cutting him at and then find in within a little

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Speaker 1: beast in flesh, in bond and blood as though it

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Speaker 1: were a little lamb without in wool.

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Speaker 2: Fruit is f r u y t y and and

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Speaker 2: Gord's's gowerdies.

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Speaker 1: G O w r d E s yea love it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So it's it's worth looking up just to to take

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Speaker 1: in these spellings. And I have to say, I when

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Speaker 1: I read this, in my mind, I'm reading it in

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Speaker 1: the voice of Mary from the British comedy Ghosts, who's

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Speaker 1: like this medieval peasant ghost who I can easily imagine

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Speaker 1: going through this this this statement here.

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Speaker 2: You know who I really want to get a reading

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Speaker 2: of the I want to get Matt Barry to do it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be good too. I could do a

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Speaker 1: whole audiobook of the travels of John Mandifal.

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Speaker 2: It were a little lomb without in wool. Wait wait

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Speaker 2: a minute, So you cut it off there, and that's

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Speaker 2: that's a great part of the quote. But the quote

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Speaker 2: does go on. Do you mind if I feature the

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Speaker 2: next sentence?

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Speaker 1: Go for it?

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Speaker 2: Okay? After that it's uh no, I'm not going to

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Speaker 2: do a Matt Berry voice. It's and men eaten both

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Speaker 2: the fruit and the beast, and that is a great

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Speaker 2: marvel of that fruit I have eaten, although it were wonderful.

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Speaker 2: But that I know well that God is marvelous in

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Speaker 2: his workies W. E. R. K Ees. So let's review

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Speaker 2: what we know from Mandeville now, right. So in Tartary,

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Speaker 2: there is a plant that grows a fruit that resembles

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Speaker 2: a gourd. And when these gourds are ripe, you can

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Speaker 2: cut them open and inside you will find a tiny

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Speaker 2: beast that is exactly like a lamb. Like a real

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Speaker 2: lamb doesn't just look like one. It has meat and bone,

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Speaker 2: and blood, and men in Tartary will eat these little lambs.

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Speaker 2: John Mandeville says, I myself ate one too, and it

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Speaker 2: was delicious. And the existence of the lamb of Tartary

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Speaker 2: is so marvelous that it proves the greatness of God.

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Speaker 1: Wow, this is a great source. I saw the baby,

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Speaker 1: and the baby looked at me.

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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, the baby looked at you. Oh no, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: Chief Wygum is all the subsequent chroniclers who report on

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Speaker 2: this passage.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So I just love every part. I mean, just

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Speaker 1: the idea that you it looks like a lamb and

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Speaker 1: you cut it open and it's got it's not on

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Speaker 1: the online. Does it bleed and have flesh but it

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Speaker 1: has bones? Yeah, it's it's and this is not. There

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Speaker 1: is even more. There are more layers of the absurd

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Speaker 1: that will come in later tellings.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Mandeville seems to be one of the earliest widespread

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Speaker 2: accounts of the lamb in medieval European sources, but the

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Speaker 2: legend is repeated with many variations in books of the

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Speaker 2: following centuries up until people start getting skeptical, I think,

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Speaker 2: basically during the Enlightenment. But another one we should look

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Speaker 2: at before we try to trace any farther forward or backward.

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Speaker 2: Is the one by Thomas Brown in the mid seventeenth century.

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Speaker 1: Right in the book Pseudodoxia Epidemica. This is sixteen forty six.

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Speaker 1: Now Thomas Brown, this was certainly a real historic person

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Speaker 1: who lives sixteen oh five through sixteen eighty two. An

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Speaker 1: English author, physician, and polymath. He wrote on numerous topics,

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Speaker 1: but was best known for Religio Medici, a very popular

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Speaker 1: work of the day on the connections between science and religion.

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Speaker 1: And the Borometz becomes even more extraordinary by the time

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Speaker 1: of Brown, who writes the following quote. Much wonder is

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Speaker 1: made of the boramez, that strange plant, animal or vegetable

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Speaker 1: lamb of tartary, which wolve's delight to feed on, which

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Speaker 1: hath the shape of a lamb, affordeth a bloody juice

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Speaker 1: upon breaking and liveth while the plants be consumed about it.

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Speaker 1: And that much is typically quoted. You'll find that quoted

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Speaker 1: on various discuss of the Bormetz. But there's more which

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Speaker 1: is insightful, because he continues, And yet, if all this

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Speaker 1: be no more than the shape of a lamb in

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Speaker 1: the flower or seed upon the top of the stalk,

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Speaker 1: as we meet with the forms of bees, flies, and

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Speaker 1: dogs in some others, he has seen nothing that shall

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Speaker 1: much wonder at all. So in other words, however, if

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Speaker 1: this is just something on the plant that is shaped

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Speaker 1: more or less like an animal, we've seen that before

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Speaker 1: and it's nothing really to write home about.

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Speaker 2: But I'm wondering I can't quite tell from the text.

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Speaker 2: Is he's saying that he thinks it's more likely just

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Speaker 2: that it's like a flower that's shaped like a lamb.

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Speaker 2: Or is he saying, well, it could be one or

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Speaker 2: the other.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's hard to say, right. I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: easy to a lot of people seem to lean into

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Speaker 1: the idea that he's saying, hey, this is real, because

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Speaker 1: they leave off the skeptical part of the quote. But

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly which way the author is leaning

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Speaker 1: him self here. But certainly there's a note of skepticism

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Speaker 1: here that is sometimes lacking in the discussion of fantastic

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Speaker 1: creatures even today.

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Speaker 2: I actually looked up the context of this to see

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Speaker 2: what else he's talking about in the other paragraphs around this,

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Speaker 2: and in the paragraph right above his passage on the

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Speaker 2: boramets or the lamb of Tartary. He's talking about, quote,

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Speaker 2: the tarantula or poisonous spider of Collabria, and that magical

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Speaker 2: cure of the bite thereof by music. So this is

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Speaker 2: a spider whose bite is cured by music. I think.

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Speaker 2: He also says that tarantulas will dance to music. I

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Speaker 2: was trying to figure out what this meant, he says,

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Speaker 2: quote some also affirm that the tarantula itself will dance

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Speaker 2: upon certain strokes.

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Speaker 4: The more you know, yeah, So I mentioned Carol Rose

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Speaker 4: earlier a source i'phant turned too, and in her book Giants,

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Speaker 4: Monsters and Dragons, she summarizes many the oral the overall

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Speaker 4: traditions of the bora met as follows quote.

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Speaker 1: In general, the Borometz was believed to be a creature

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Speaker 1: with roots that held it fast. In one place, it

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Speaker 1: resembled a lamb sheep with golden colored fleece. The stalk

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Speaker 1: allowed it to browse the surrounding pasture, but as soon

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Speaker 1: as this was consumed, the creature died of starvation. Humans

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Speaker 1: or wolves then came and harvested the body, which was

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Speaker 1: said to taste like crab meat. Its hooves were made

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Speaker 1: of hair, which like its fleece was used by humans

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Speaker 1: for weaving clothes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so this seems to be a pretty good description

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Speaker 2: of that other version. We have the two main models,

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Speaker 2: which are very different. The one of Mandeville, which is like,

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Speaker 2: there are lambs in the fruits. The fruits are like

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Speaker 2: these gourds. You cut them open inside their little tiny

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Speaker 2: lambs and you can eat them. And then there's this

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Speaker 2: other version sighted in a bunch of sources and summarized

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Speaker 2: by Rose here, where it's a full sized lamb or

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Speaker 2: sheep and it is attached to the plant stem by

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Speaker 2: its navel which acts like a tether, and it eats

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Speaker 2: all of the vegetation around it, which I love this detail.

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Speaker 2: Can only survive until it has grazed all of the

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Speaker 2: plant life within the radius of its umbilical stem, and

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Speaker 2: then when it can't reach any more vegetation to graze on,

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Speaker 2: it starves to death and dies unless a wolf or

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Speaker 2: a human gets to it first and kills it for meat.

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Speaker 1: Right, And I think we'll have more on the wolf.

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Speaker 1: The wolf side of the part of this changes. I

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Speaker 1: love that it tastes like crab, and it's just it's

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Speaker 1: just such a thing. You can also just see like

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Speaker 1: this is what happens when an already fabulous account is

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Speaker 1: given time to sort of fester or ripen, and also

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Speaker 1: with the help of you know, books talking to other books,

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Speaker 1: and translations and mistranslations taking place.

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Speaker 2: Now, based on all these medieval sources I found cataloged

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Speaker 2: in Lee's book, Rose's summary seems to me very correct,

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Speaker 2: with one exception, which is the characterization. She says that

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Speaker 2: the flea of the vegetable lamb is golden in color.

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Speaker 2: But based on everything I've read, that's something that you

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Speaker 2: find more in the later sources. The earlier sources, if

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Speaker 2: they mentioned the color of the fleece, they describe it

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Speaker 2: as pale white, and later it's only in later sources

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Speaker 2: like Erasmus Darwin that changed this to golden. And Lee

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Speaker 2: will will end up arguing that there's a very specific

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Speaker 2: reason for this change that has to do with the

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Speaker 2: rationalist explanation of the lamb given in later centuries. And

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Speaker 2: in fact, since I mentioned it, maybe I should go

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Speaker 2: ahead and read a passage from Erasmus Darwin. This is

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Speaker 2: written much later, but in Darwin's work The Botanic Garden,

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Speaker 2: which is a grand poem about the natural world, about

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Speaker 2: The Plant World, written in seventeen eighty one, Darwin writes, quote,

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Speaker 2: even round the poll, the flames of love aspire, and

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Speaker 2: icy bosoms feel. The secret fire, cradled in snow and

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Speaker 2: fanned by Arctic air, shines gentle boramets like golden hair

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Speaker 2: in the earth. Each cloven foot descends and round and

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Speaker 2: round her flexile necks. She bends crops the gray coral

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Speaker 2: moss in hoary time, or laps with rosy tongue, the

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Speaker 2: melting rhyme, eyes with mute tenderness, her distant dam and

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Speaker 2: seems to bleat a vegetable lamb.

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Speaker 1: Oh that's wonderful. Yeah, well, I can't top that. One

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Speaker 1: of the sources I was looking at is the work

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Speaker 1: Ingelbert Comfort and the Myth of the Scythian Lamb by

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Speaker 1: Robert W. Caruba, and this was published in the Classical

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Speaker 1: World in nineteen ninety three. In this the author points

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Speaker 1: out that while the lamb is largely a product of

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Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, some passages by classical authors such as

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Speaker 1: Herodotus and Theophrastus quote played an innocent role in its development.

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Speaker 1: And we'll have more on those two authors in a pit. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I think we'll have to revisit the links to Herodotus

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Speaker 2: and the other Greek authors in Part two, because that

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Speaker 2: ties directly into what I think is probably the best

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Speaker 2: theory for explaining the lamb legend. But it is I

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Speaker 2: think worth noting in this part some other works preceding

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Speaker 2: the story as told by John Mandeville, and I guess

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Speaker 2: we'll come back to those in just a little bit.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, Karupa also describes the lamb as a zoophyte,

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Speaker 1: which is an actual classification or was actual classification for

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Speaker 1: plant like animals, And this kind of comes back to

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Speaker 1: our larger discussion that we were having having last week

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Speaker 1: on the show. So the sessile nature of plants is

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Speaker 1: a big part of their identity, but we do have

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Speaker 1: non plants and even animals that have taken on similar

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Speaker 1: modes of existence. However, I do wonder if it's correct

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Speaker 1: to think of the lamb here fantastic as it may be,

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Speaker 1: as a plant like animal or an animal like plant.

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Speaker 1: In my notes, I kept wanting to refer to it

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Speaker 1: as the creature, but then felt weird about calling it

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Speaker 1: a creature when it really seems more like a creature

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Speaker 1: like plant.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know exactly what takes taxonomic precedence there.

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Speaker 2: I mean, obviously, in the real world, there are plants

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Speaker 2: that have interesting characteristics of animals, like the ones we

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Speaker 2: talked about in the episodes from last week, the sensitive

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Speaker 2: plant Mimosa putico, which shows rapid movement. Of course, the

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Speaker 2: venus flytrap is another example. These seis monastic movements that

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Speaker 2: allow a plant to have movement on the timescale you

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Speaker 2: would normally only associate with an animal. And then of

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Speaker 2: course you can have animals that have characteristics we would

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Speaker 2: associate with plants that might animals that might look like

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Speaker 2: plants in some way. They have some kind of camouflage

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Speaker 2: that looks like vegetation. I think of the you know,

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Speaker 2: like the sloths that look like they're covered in some

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Speaker 2: kind of plant life. Or there are even some animals

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Speaker 2: that have the power to absorb energy from the sunlight

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Speaker 2: like plants do, like I believe there are there are

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Speaker 2: certain salamanders that have evolved ways to do this, and

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Speaker 2: there might be a seak cucumber example. So you can

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Speaker 2: find characteristics normally associated with one in the other. But

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Speaker 2: then again, there are no such things as animal plant

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Speaker 2: combinations like animals and plants are too far removed, too

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Speaker 2: far removed in the tree of life to like inter

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Speaker 2: breed or anything like that, right, right, But nevertheless, we

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Speaker 2: do get this concept in the Middle Ages of the zoophyte.

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Speaker 2: One I was reading about in the same context as

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Speaker 2: the vegetable lamb of Tartary was the so called barnacle

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Speaker 2: goose myth. I think there are different ways this has

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Speaker 2: been conceptualized, but there's like a type of goose that

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Speaker 2: at various times in history has been thought to bud

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Speaker 2: off of barnacles, like in the water. So it's not

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Speaker 2: actually a land animal or a bird, it's actually some

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00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:49,160
Speaker 2: kind of fish or water animal. Or they even say

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Speaker 2: that this goose maybe came out of trees. So it's

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Speaker 2: okay to eat this goose on Fridays, even if you're

403
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Speaker 2: supposed to fast from meat on Fridays, because it's not

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Speaker 2: actually a bird, it is a plant.

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Speaker 1: That reminds me of our episode The Furry Fish, in

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Speaker 1: which we were discussing otters a bit. Uh, And if

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Speaker 1: you didn't listen to it, why would we discuss otters

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00:23:09,440 --> 00:23:11,159
Speaker 1: in an episode about the furry fish. Well, that was

409
00:23:11,160 --> 00:23:14,240
Speaker 1: because in some places there were discussions, Well, what do

410
00:23:14,280 --> 00:23:16,720
Speaker 1: we call the otter like? Is it lives in the water,

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Speaker 1: It does things that seem very fish like. Therefore, is

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Speaker 1: it okay for us to to to eat the flesh

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Speaker 1: of the otter as if it were a fish? Is

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00:23:26,880 --> 00:23:30,560
Speaker 1: it going to be is it going to be subject

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Speaker 1: to the same rules concerning dietary rules concerning the consumption

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Speaker 1: of non fish meat that sort of thing.

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Speaker 2: That kind of thing just doesn't really fly anymore, does it. Like,

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Speaker 2: you can't you can't bring a goose to a vegan

419
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Speaker 2: pot luck and say no, this goose came off of

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Speaker 2: a tree. It was it's actually a fruit.

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Speaker 1: Well, we can't say it yet, but something we might

422
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Speaker 1: get into in a later episode or even in the

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Speaker 1: next episode a little bit is will we reach the

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Speaker 1: day when you can do that? When you can't say no,

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00:24:00,680 --> 00:24:03,040
Speaker 1: this goose meat is all right because it was not

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Speaker 1: harvested from the wild. It was grown off of something

427
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Speaker 1: I picked it this morning. Another example that sometimes mentioned

428
00:24:11,760 --> 00:24:15,479
Speaker 1: in terms of zoophytes from Chinese traditions. It frequently comes up,

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Speaker 1: is that of court aceps. This is, of course, when

430
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Speaker 1: you have court aceps, you have these parasitic funguses that

431
00:24:21,119 --> 00:24:24,680
Speaker 1: will overtake an insect, resulting in something They would certainly

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00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:27,080
Speaker 1: be confusing and difficult to classify if you didn't know

433
00:24:27,119 --> 00:24:29,520
Speaker 1: what was going on. These have long been a part

434
00:24:29,560 --> 00:24:34,680
Speaker 1: of Chinese traditional medicine, quite popular, and I remember when

435
00:24:34,680 --> 00:24:37,560
Speaker 1: I was last in China about I think nine years ago,

436
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:40,240
Speaker 1: I remember seeing an entire storefront filled with these, and

437
00:24:40,280 --> 00:24:42,919
Speaker 1: you can still you can find court aceps for sale

438
00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:50,080
Speaker 1: anywhere Chinese traditional medicine and Chinese traditional medical products are sold.

439
00:24:50,720 --> 00:24:53,879
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's quite If you just look at one

440
00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:55,560
Speaker 1: of these specimens, it's quote you can see where the

441
00:24:55,560 --> 00:24:58,679
Speaker 1: confusion might might occur, and you might think, well, this

442
00:24:58,760 --> 00:25:01,520
Speaker 1: is clearly neither not quite an animal, but it's not

443
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:02,680
Speaker 1: quite something else either.

444
00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:03,560
Speaker 2: Yeah.

445
00:25:03,680 --> 00:25:05,560
Speaker 1: So if things like this exist, I mean, why not

446
00:25:05,800 --> 00:25:06,960
Speaker 1: a vegetable lamb? Right?

447
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:09,280
Speaker 2: Well, we can talk about why not later on, but yeah,

448
00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 2: I mean one wants to have some you know, give

449
00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:16,560
Speaker 2: some leeway to medieval thinkers, because if you don't have

450
00:25:16,840 --> 00:25:21,320
Speaker 2: a theory that helps you organize claims about the natural

451
00:25:21,359 --> 00:25:25,320
Speaker 2: world indeplausible and implausible, you do at least know, well,

452
00:25:25,359 --> 00:25:28,200
Speaker 2: the natural world is full of surprising things, So why

453
00:25:28,240 --> 00:25:31,400
Speaker 2: not a vegetable lamb, Why not a plant that grows

454
00:25:31,400 --> 00:25:32,399
Speaker 2: a mammal out of it?

455
00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:36,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, going back to that work by Karuba, the

456
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:41,000
Speaker 1: author points to ways that the idea was popularized later

457
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:44,080
Speaker 1: on by such writers as doctor Rasmus Darwin, who we

458
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:48,760
Speaker 1: quoted earlier with the bleeding quote. There we also have

459
00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:56,080
Speaker 1: Guero Lama Cardano and Julius Caesar Scalager. But Karuba here

460
00:25:56,160 --> 00:25:59,840
Speaker 1: is chiefly dealing with the work of Ingelbert Comfort on

461
00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:03,200
Speaker 1: the subject. Kamfor was a German naturalist who lived sixteen

462
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:07,440
Speaker 1: fifty one through seventeen sixteen, and who was actually himself

463
00:26:07,520 --> 00:26:13,480
Speaker 1: widely traveled, having toured Russia, Persia, India, Southeast Asia and Japan.

464
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:17,840
Speaker 1: His book History of Japan was the main Western source

465
00:26:17,880 --> 00:26:20,960
Speaker 1: on Japan for nearly two centuries. So he's kind of

466
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:25,320
Speaker 1: the ideal individual to weigh in on the lamb of Tartary,

467
00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:33,600
Speaker 1: and so he does. He Now, as far as the

468
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: Karuba here goes, he begins by citing yet another description

469
00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:39,919
Speaker 1: of this marvel, this time from the writings of French

470
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 1: botanist Claude Duay, and this one was apparently highly influential

471
00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 1: during the eighteenth century. Quote in Tartary there are seeds

472
00:26:48,000 --> 00:26:51,000
Speaker 1: which are like the seeds of gourds, only shorter in size,

473
00:26:51,040 --> 00:26:54,159
Speaker 1: which grow and blossom like a stem to the navel

474
00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:57,560
Speaker 1: of an animal, which is called aboromets in their language,

475
00:26:57,960 --> 00:27:00,720
Speaker 1: I e. Lamb, because it resembles a and all its

476
00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:04,000
Speaker 1: limbs from head to foot. Its hooves are clothing. Its

477
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:07,199
Speaker 1: skin is soft, its wool is adapted for clothing. But

478
00:27:07,280 --> 00:27:10,359
Speaker 1: it has no horns, only hairs on its head, which

479
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:14,359
Speaker 1: grow and are intertwined like horns. Its height is half

480
00:27:14,359 --> 00:27:17,480
Speaker 1: a cubit and more according to those who speak of

481
00:27:17,560 --> 00:27:21,359
Speaker 1: this wondrous thing. Its taste is like the flesh of fish.

482
00:27:21,800 --> 00:27:24,680
Speaker 1: It's blood as sweet as honey, and it lives as

483
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 1: long as there is herbage within range of the stem

484
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:30,920
Speaker 1: from which it derives its life. If the herbage is

485
00:27:30,960 --> 00:27:35,480
Speaker 1: destroyed or perishes, the animal also dies away. It has

486
00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:39,959
Speaker 1: rest from all beasts and birds of prey, except the wolf,

487
00:27:40,359 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 1: which seeks to destroy it.

488
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:45,119
Speaker 2: Wonder why only the wolf?

489
00:27:45,640 --> 00:27:47,679
Speaker 1: I don't know, only the wolf, and I guess in

490
00:27:47,720 --> 00:27:48,639
Speaker 1: some tellings people.

491
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:51,879
Speaker 2: But okay, so this time, it's flesh tastes like fish,

492
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:54,879
Speaker 2: its blood is as sweet as honey, and it lives

493
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:57,400
Speaker 2: until the wolf gets it or again it eats all

494
00:27:57,440 --> 00:27:59,840
Speaker 2: of the herbage within reach of the stem.

495
00:28:00,359 --> 00:28:04,600
Speaker 1: Right. So Comfer was interested in this, and in Comfort's

496
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:09,520
Speaker 1: writing he discusses the origin of the word as he

497
00:28:09,560 --> 00:28:14,280
Speaker 1: derived at the boromets or boramets to the Slavac baran

498
00:28:14,680 --> 00:28:19,159
Speaker 1: and the Persian baret, both meaning sheep apparently, but he

499
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 1: also points out that the actual Scythian sheep is rather

500
00:28:24,160 --> 00:28:27,200
Speaker 1: different from the common variety of sheep in Germany. He says,

501
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:30,800
Speaker 1: it's bigger, it has different I believe it is later

502
00:28:30,840 --> 00:28:33,879
Speaker 1: described as a massive tail, and it has a massive

503
00:28:33,920 --> 00:28:37,200
Speaker 1: fat that drags around behind it. It's fat and meat

504
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:40,640
Speaker 1: and are both delicious, and it's hide is prized as well.

505
00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:44,320
Speaker 1: I don't know quite what to make of this description

506
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:48,800
Speaker 1: of a massive fat tail, and Karuba doesn't really go

507
00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 1: into it. But having related this, Comfort is basically saying, okay, look, granted,

508
00:28:56,560 --> 00:28:58,960
Speaker 1: the sheep over there don't look quite like the sheep

509
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:03,080
Speaker 1: we have here. But when I was traveling in regions

510
00:29:03,360 --> 00:29:05,800
Speaker 1: you know that would have been familiar with this. Surely

511
00:29:06,160 --> 00:29:08,200
Speaker 1: no one knew what I was talking about. No one

512
00:29:08,240 --> 00:29:11,520
Speaker 1: had ever heard of a borometz as described in these traditions,

513
00:29:11,760 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 1: and so he ruled that it is quote pure fiction

514
00:29:14,520 --> 00:29:15,120
Speaker 1: and fable.

515
00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:17,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems to me that while the story was

516
00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:21,560
Speaker 2: taken as generally true by authors in the Middle Ages,

517
00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 2: by like the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, authors who wrote

518
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:28,080
Speaker 2: about it seemed to be more often skeptical. Like. Another

519
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 2: one who is skeptical not so much of the initial

520
00:29:31,640 --> 00:29:35,840
Speaker 2: reports but of their interpretation was the seventeenth century German

521
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 2: polymath athanacious Kircher, who's come up on the podcast several

522
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 2: times before. Apparently, Kercher wrote quote. Some authors have regarded

523
00:29:43,280 --> 00:29:46,160
Speaker 2: it as an animal, some as a plant, whilst others

524
00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:49,240
Speaker 2: have classified it as a true zoophyte. In order not

525
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:52,520
Speaker 2: to multiply miracles, we assert that it is a plant,

526
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:55,360
Speaker 2: though its form be that of a quadruped and the

527
00:29:55,440 --> 00:29:58,440
Speaker 2: juice beneath its willy covering bee blood which flows. If

528
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:01,640
Speaker 2: an incision be made in its these things will not

529
00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:04,800
Speaker 2: move us. It will be found to be a plant.

530
00:30:04,960 --> 00:30:07,320
Speaker 2: And I was like, WHOA tell it like it is?

531
00:30:07,360 --> 00:30:10,840
Speaker 2: I mean, I think once this series is over, Kircher

532
00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 2: will be vindicated. But it's interesting how certain he is

533
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:18,320
Speaker 2: in this writing of this thing he's never seen for himself.

534
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:20,560
Speaker 1: Well, you know, the thing is if you have even

535
00:30:21,600 --> 00:30:26,560
Speaker 1: even a halfway broad familiarity with plants of many of

536
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:28,920
Speaker 1: any given region, you know, there's a good chance you'll

537
00:30:28,920 --> 00:30:32,720
Speaker 1: be familiar with things that do resemble, say blood, like

538
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 1: if you know anything about beats, then the idea that

539
00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:39,560
Speaker 1: some sort of plant has blood in it or something

540
00:30:39,560 --> 00:30:41,400
Speaker 1: that looks like blood shouldn't be that shocking.

541
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:44,080
Speaker 2: In fact, this brings to mind something we talked about

542
00:30:44,120 --> 00:30:48,280
Speaker 2: in our episode on beans. You remember that strange observation

543
00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:53,800
Speaker 2: from the ancient world that the Pythagoreans did not eat beans,

544
00:30:53,840 --> 00:30:55,800
Speaker 2: And in fact, there's even a story. I mean, it's

545
00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:57,480
Speaker 2: hard to know if it's true, but there's a claim

546
00:30:57,520 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 2: that Pythagoras died being pursued by a violent mob because

547
00:31:01,640 --> 00:31:04,000
Speaker 2: he was running away from them, but he wouldn't run

548
00:31:04,040 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 2: through a bean field, because I don't know. That's a

549
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:09,360
Speaker 2: strange thing to wonder why, And so people want to

550
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:13,120
Speaker 2: know what's the secret of the beans. Why does Pythagoras

551
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:15,960
Speaker 2: have this bean problem? And there were a lot of

552
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:19,040
Speaker 2: different explanations we talked about in that episode, but one

553
00:31:19,120 --> 00:31:24,440
Speaker 2: of the possibilities was the modern observation that bean plants

554
00:31:24,520 --> 00:31:28,320
Speaker 2: sometimes appear to bleed like bean plants have these little

555
00:31:28,800 --> 00:31:32,000
Speaker 2: nodes in their roots that can become infected with a

556
00:31:32,040 --> 00:31:36,520
Speaker 2: bacterium known as rhizobium. And I think if you cut

557
00:31:36,560 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 2: these open, these bacterial nodes actually produce a hemoglobin like

558
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:45,920
Speaker 2: molecule that works pretty much the same way as the

559
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:51,000
Speaker 2: hemoglobin in our blood, binding with oxygen. And the result

560
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:53,240
Speaker 2: is that if you cut these things open, you get

561
00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:55,720
Speaker 2: this red juice coming out of them that looks almost

562
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:58,560
Speaker 2: exactly like human blood. So somebody might have cut a

563
00:31:58,600 --> 00:32:00,800
Speaker 2: bean plant open and been like, WHOA, this thing is

564
00:32:00,840 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 2: bleeding like a human, or at least like an animal.

565
00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:07,560
Speaker 2: So so I don't know, maybe we shouldn't need these things.

566
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:09,479
Speaker 2: Maybe they have the souls of our ancestors in them

567
00:32:09,560 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 2: or something. You can imagine a similar thing going on

568
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:14,680
Speaker 2: with some other plant, right, you know, you could observe

569
00:32:14,760 --> 00:32:18,000
Speaker 2: that it might produce a juice that looks shockingly like

570
00:32:18,080 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 2: animal blood.

571
00:32:19,320 --> 00:32:23,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, I don't really I don't cook with with,

572
00:32:23,800 --> 00:32:26,800
Speaker 1: you know, meats that have blood in them anymore. But

573
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:30,440
Speaker 1: on the when I do cook with beats, and I'm

574
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:34,400
Speaker 1: like cutting beats, I'm always just taken by how horrific

575
00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 1: everything looks. You know, yes, it's you know, I feel

576
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:39,240
Speaker 1: like I'm in a horror movie because I'm covered with

577
00:32:39,280 --> 00:32:42,040
Speaker 1: this red juice and I'm holding a butcher knife and

578
00:32:42,080 --> 00:32:42,600
Speaker 1: so forth.

579
00:32:42,840 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll save you. If you're eating beats for the

580
00:32:45,080 --> 00:32:47,200
Speaker 2: first time, let me save you some googling. If you

581
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:50,080
Speaker 2: go to the bathroom later, you're not dying, that's normal.

582
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, just remember that you had beats earlier.

583
00:32:53,640 --> 00:32:59,880
Speaker 2: Yeah.

584
00:33:00,520 --> 00:33:04,680
Speaker 1: Anyway, back to Karuba and his writing's on Comfort here

585
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:10,160
Speaker 1: from from here. In his work, Comfort goes on to

586
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:13,480
Speaker 1: discuss the possible origins of the myth, and this is

587
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:15,240
Speaker 1: what Karuba has to say about it is how he

588
00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:18,200
Speaker 1: summarizes it. Quote. As to the origin of the myth,

589
00:33:18,520 --> 00:33:22,680
Speaker 1: Comfort can only speculate that the museum specimens of delicate

590
00:33:22,800 --> 00:33:27,720
Speaker 1: fetal fur can easily be confused with vegetable substance, and

591
00:33:27,760 --> 00:33:33,360
Speaker 1: that geological distance, linguistic misunderstanding, and the inclination to believe

592
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:38,520
Speaker 1: in wonders or prodigies provide the explanation. Comfort's account is

593
00:33:38,560 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 1: noteworthy because it debunked the myth by eyewitness investigation, provided

594
00:33:43,360 --> 00:33:47,760
Speaker 1: a first detailed description of the real Scythian lamb. You

595
00:33:47,800 --> 00:33:52,000
Speaker 1: know that's the one with the supposed fat tale and

596
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:54,760
Speaker 1: practice is associated with it. You know what people do

597
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:57,240
Speaker 1: with it that they like to eat, eat it, and

598
00:33:57,600 --> 00:34:00,520
Speaker 1: you know they use the hide and attempted to explain

599
00:34:00,800 --> 00:34:02,760
Speaker 1: rationally the origin of the myth.

600
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:06,880
Speaker 2: This is similar to what Lee says actually about Camphor.

601
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:11,000
Speaker 2: He says that he thinks that Camphor got the rational

602
00:34:11,040 --> 00:34:13,760
Speaker 2: explanation of the myth wrong, like he thinks for many

603
00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:17,719
Speaker 2: reasons it is not actually it was not actually inspired

604
00:34:17,800 --> 00:34:22,160
Speaker 2: by this practices of harvesting the hides of fetal Scythian lambs.

605
00:34:22,600 --> 00:34:25,000
Speaker 2: But at least that Camphor was like, no, let's look

606
00:34:25,040 --> 00:34:29,960
Speaker 2: for an explanation that's more biologically plausible than a plant

607
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:31,440
Speaker 2: that grows into a mammal.

608
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:34,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, one of the things. And maybe this

609
00:34:34,719 --> 00:34:36,319
Speaker 1: is one of the things that's so attracted me about

610
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:39,319
Speaker 1: the weirdness of the vegetable lamb of Chartari is that,

611
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:43,200
Speaker 1: in its most elaborate form, it seems like such a

612
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 1: contradiction to our other tales of the fantastics. So many

613
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:50,080
Speaker 1: creatures you encounter in a medieval bestiaria or any kind

614
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:54,920
Speaker 1: of folklore mythology. The wilder the form, the more dangerous,

615
00:34:54,960 --> 00:34:58,120
Speaker 1: the more mysterious, the further away from human culture. And

616
00:34:58,160 --> 00:35:00,640
Speaker 1: this is a thing that is like the domes lamb

617
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:05,560
Speaker 1: made even more harmless. You know. It's just the fantastic

618
00:35:05,600 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 1: but mundane qualities of the of the vegetable lamb.

619
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:12,839
Speaker 2: Right, It's not something that is fearsome and free and

620
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:17,360
Speaker 2: uncontrollable and all that. It's it's something that's like a

621
00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:21,480
Speaker 2: standard part of animal agriculture, except it's just like mixing

622
00:35:21,520 --> 00:35:24,960
Speaker 2: these different categories together. It's an utterly mundane part of life.

623
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:28,280
Speaker 2: It's like a story about a psychic TV dinner.

624
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:33,040
Speaker 1: It's just you know, yeah, it's so it really seems

625
00:35:33,080 --> 00:35:36,120
Speaker 1: to buck the trend in so many ways. And and

626
00:35:36,400 --> 00:35:38,960
Speaker 1: I'm I'm guessing maybe that's why people were fascinated back

627
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:41,080
Speaker 1: then as well. You know, like, you know, everybody was

628
00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:43,200
Speaker 1: into the You're always into the idea of dragons and

629
00:35:43,239 --> 00:35:46,040
Speaker 1: strange snakes and yeah, all the monsters of the sea.

630
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:52,319
Speaker 1: But here's something that just sounds crazy and and uh

631
00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:54,680
Speaker 1: and and it's helpless out there, you know. I mean

632
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:57,000
Speaker 1: the wolves are just coming up and chopping these things.

633
00:35:57,320 --> 00:36:00,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, you feel sad for it when you hear the myth. Yeah,

634
00:36:01,160 --> 00:36:03,840
Speaker 2: like if the wolves don't get it, it's it's doomed.

635
00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 2: To starve to death pretty quick, because you know it's

636
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:10,480
Speaker 2: only got that short radius of stem length to eat

637
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:13,839
Speaker 2: the vegetation from right. Well, okay, there's one more thing

638
00:36:13,880 --> 00:36:15,759
Speaker 2: I wanted to get to from the Henry Lee book,

639
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:20,640
Speaker 2: which is that Lee actually includes analysis of similar legends

640
00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:23,040
Speaker 2: that are traced back to a little bit before the

641
00:36:23,120 --> 00:36:26,040
Speaker 2: time of Sir John Mandevil. Okay, so this is about

642
00:36:26,040 --> 00:36:28,120
Speaker 2: to turn into a chain of citations for a minute,

643
00:36:28,120 --> 00:36:30,319
Speaker 2: but it gets pretty interesting, so stick with me. So

644
00:36:30,920 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 2: Henry Lee notices first that Claude Durray, when you were

645
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:37,400
Speaker 2: talking about earlier in a work called the Istoire Admirab,

646
00:36:38,600 --> 00:36:40,400
Speaker 2: I don't know how you say that in French. Admirable

647
00:36:40,640 --> 00:36:45,400
Speaker 2: Admirab des plant in sixteen oh five writes that he

648
00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:49,640
Speaker 2: once read in a Latin version of the of the

649
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:53,640
Speaker 2: Jewish commentary work the Jerusalem Talmud, a claim attributed to

650
00:36:53,680 --> 00:36:58,800
Speaker 2: an Ethiopian scholar named Moses Chusensus quote that there was

651
00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:02,400
Speaker 2: a certain country the earth which bore a zoophyte or

652
00:37:02,480 --> 00:37:07,200
Speaker 2: plant animal called in Hebrew Jedua. It was in form

653
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:09,600
Speaker 2: like a lamb, and from its navel grew a stem

654
00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:12,560
Speaker 2: or root by which this zoophyte or plant animal was

655
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 2: fixed attached like a gored to the soil below the

656
00:37:16,239 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 2: surface of the ground, and according to the length of

657
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:22,000
Speaker 2: its stem or root, it devoured all the herbage which

658
00:37:22,040 --> 00:37:24,560
Speaker 2: it was able to reach within the circle of its tether.

659
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:28,600
Speaker 2: The hunters who went in search of this creature were

660
00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:32,080
Speaker 2: unable to capture or remove it until they had succeeded

661
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:35,640
Speaker 2: in cutting the stem by well aimed arrows or darts.

662
00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:39,680
Speaker 2: When the animal immediately fell prostrate to the earth and died,

663
00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:45,520
Speaker 2: its bones being placed with certain ceremonies and incantations in

664
00:37:45,719 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 2: the mouth of one desiring to foretell the future, he

665
00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:54,040
Speaker 2: was instantly seized with a spirit of divination and endowed

666
00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:55,480
Speaker 2: with the gift of prophecy.

667
00:37:55,920 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so.

668
00:37:56,960 --> 00:37:59,680
Speaker 2: That's a new wrinkle. Okay, So this lamb is not

669
00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:02,839
Speaker 2: only a vegetable that's tethered to the ground by stem.

670
00:38:03,120 --> 00:38:05,080
Speaker 2: You have to kill it by severing the stem with

671
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:07,840
Speaker 2: arrows or darts. They don't say why in this source,

672
00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 2: but we'll get to another one in a minute. And

673
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:12,480
Speaker 2: then it falls down, and then you take this lamb's

674
00:38:12,640 --> 00:38:15,400
Speaker 2: bones and you put the bones in your mouth with

675
00:38:15,920 --> 00:38:19,080
Speaker 2: special magic spells that allow you to tell the future.

676
00:38:19,480 --> 00:38:21,760
Speaker 1: That's interesting because yeah, so many of these other accounts

677
00:38:21,760 --> 00:38:23,279
Speaker 1: we are looking at they just say, oh, well, it

678
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:25,400
Speaker 1: tastes great, it tastes like fish, it tastes like crab.

679
00:38:25,760 --> 00:38:27,640
Speaker 1: It's just really good to eat and you can use

680
00:38:27,680 --> 00:38:31,080
Speaker 1: the hide, and you know, generally that's in most traditions,

681
00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:33,319
Speaker 1: like that's what you're concerned with with the body of

682
00:38:33,360 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 1: an animal. But then of course when you're dealing with

683
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:38,520
Speaker 1: the with the body of a plant and the parts

684
00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:41,319
Speaker 1: of a plant. You know, as we've got into a

685
00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:44,360
Speaker 1: bit in last week's episodes, I mean, you know, history

686
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:48,239
Speaker 1: is a tale of humans figuring out how to use

687
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 1: different parts of the plant, what it will do, what

688
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:52,960
Speaker 1: it seems to do, you know, and figuring out all

689
00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:55,840
Speaker 1: the ways that the natural chemical properties and chemical weapons

690
00:38:55,840 --> 00:38:58,520
Speaker 1: and defenses off the plant can be used for for

691
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:02,399
Speaker 1: curative reasons or preventative reasons. And so in this yeah,

692
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:05,000
Speaker 1: we're kind of leaning more into the plantiness of it

693
00:39:05,080 --> 00:39:07,520
Speaker 1: that it's going to have. They're going to be effects

694
00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:10,400
Speaker 1: to eating it, and you know, certainly these are magical effects,

695
00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:12,480
Speaker 1: but there are effects. Nonetheless.

696
00:39:12,960 --> 00:39:14,400
Speaker 2: Oh, I thought you were going to go in the

697
00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:17,600
Speaker 2: direction of wondering about psychopharmacology. So if this is a play.

698
00:39:18,880 --> 00:39:20,680
Speaker 2: You put it in your mouth and then you can

699
00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:21,480
Speaker 2: see the future.

700
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:24,359
Speaker 1: Okay, well no, I mean that's that's part of it too.

701
00:39:24,480 --> 00:39:28,320
Speaker 2: Yeah. So anyway, this is Deray referring back to what

702
00:39:28,480 --> 00:39:31,800
Speaker 2: he calls the Jerusalem Talmud. Technically, there are two major

703
00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:35,400
Speaker 2: Talmud traditions. I think that the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmud.

704
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:39,560
Speaker 2: And the Talmud is the text of Jewish rabbinical law,

705
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:42,640
Speaker 2: so it includes records of oral teaching and Judaism and

706
00:39:43,120 --> 00:39:46,879
Speaker 2: commentary on the Torah and things like that. So Lee

707
00:39:46,960 --> 00:39:49,960
Speaker 2: says that he went searching for this story in the

708
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:51,920
Speaker 2: Talmud and he couldn't find it, so he had to

709
00:39:51,920 --> 00:39:56,040
Speaker 2: consult a scholar named Reverend Doctor Hermann Adler, who was

710
00:39:56,160 --> 00:39:59,440
Speaker 2: Chief Rabbi Delegate of the United Congregations of the British Empire.

711
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:00,920
Speaker 2: So this would have been at the time that Lee

712
00:40:01,080 --> 00:40:03,279
Speaker 2: was writing in the eighteen eighties. And he says that

713
00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:06,279
Speaker 2: Adler was actually able to find the real source. So

714
00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:09,879
Speaker 2: this goes back to from before John Mandeville. So it's

715
00:40:09,920 --> 00:40:14,120
Speaker 2: in a section of the Jerusalem Talmud called the Mishna Kilaim,

716
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:17,760
Speaker 2: and there is a section here that reads as quote.

717
00:40:17,800 --> 00:40:22,320
Speaker 2: Creatures called abne hasada or literally lords of the field

718
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:26,120
Speaker 2: are regarded as beasts. And there is a variant reading

719
00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:30,640
Speaker 2: of abne hasada meaning stones of the field, not lords

720
00:40:30,680 --> 00:40:33,279
Speaker 2: of the field. And so Adler was writing about this,

721
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:36,440
Speaker 2: and he found that there was a medieval commentary on

722
00:40:36,719 --> 00:40:41,040
Speaker 2: this passage written by a Rabbi Simon of Sins, which

723
00:40:41,080 --> 00:40:44,239
Speaker 2: is a place in France. And Rabbi Simon lived in

724
00:40:44,280 --> 00:40:48,680
Speaker 2: the twelfth and early thirteenth century, and he writes quote,

725
00:40:49,040 --> 00:40:51,719
Speaker 2: it is stated in the Jerusalem Talmud that this is

726
00:40:51,719 --> 00:40:55,560
Speaker 2: a human being of the mountains. It lives by means

727
00:40:55,600 --> 00:40:59,120
Speaker 2: of its navel. If its naveal be cut, it cannot live.

728
00:40:59,600 --> 00:41:02,279
Speaker 2: I have heard in the name of Rabbi Meyer, the

729
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:06,320
Speaker 2: son of Calanaimus of Spire, that this is the animal

730
00:41:06,440 --> 00:41:11,000
Speaker 2: called Jedua. This is the Jedui mentioned in scripture literally

731
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:17,920
Speaker 2: wizard from Leviticus nineteen. With its bones. Witchcraft is practiced.

732
00:41:18,280 --> 00:41:21,279
Speaker 2: A kind of large stem issues from a root in

733
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:25,120
Speaker 2: the earth on which this animal called jadua grows, just

734
00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 2: as gourds and melons, Only the jadua has in all

735
00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:32,840
Speaker 2: respects a human shape in face, body, hands, and feet.

736
00:41:33,400 --> 00:41:35,960
Speaker 2: By its navel. It is joined to the stem that

737
00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:39,600
Speaker 2: issues from the root. No creature can approach within the

738
00:41:39,680 --> 00:41:43,200
Speaker 2: tether of the stem, for it seizes and kills them.

739
00:41:43,560 --> 00:41:46,160
Speaker 2: Within the tether of the stem, it devours the herbage

740
00:41:46,200 --> 00:41:48,680
Speaker 2: all around. When they want to capture it, no man

741
00:41:48,760 --> 00:41:51,239
Speaker 2: dares approach, but they tear it the stem until it

742
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:55,160
Speaker 2: is ruptured, whereupon the animal dies. And then there's another

743
00:41:55,200 --> 00:42:00,440
Speaker 2: commentator named Rabbi Obadia Obadia of Bourbon Ooro that adds

744
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:03,120
Speaker 2: that you have to use arrows to sever the stem,

745
00:42:03,160 --> 00:42:06,160
Speaker 2: presumably because you can't get close enough to hack at

746
00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:08,239
Speaker 2: it with the sword or the jeduo will kill you.

747
00:42:08,920 --> 00:42:10,840
Speaker 2: And I think this is really interesting. So if you

748
00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:14,360
Speaker 2: go back even earlier than Mandevill, of course Mandeville wasn't

749
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:17,439
Speaker 2: telling the story about it being this beast on the tether.

750
00:42:17,600 --> 00:42:20,160
Speaker 2: Mandeville's version was the gourd fruits that had the little

751
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:23,160
Speaker 2: lambs inside. But if you go back earlier than these

752
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 2: other stories, you have this version that's similar in pretty

753
00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:28,759
Speaker 2: much every way, except it's not a lamb. It's like

754
00:42:28,800 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 2: a human shape.

755
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:32,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is fascinating. First of all, I love how

756
00:42:33,000 --> 00:42:35,520
Speaker 1: all these later accounts were looking at They're all about

757
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:39,279
Speaker 1: that herbage. It's all about eatting up that herbage. But yeah,

758
00:42:39,520 --> 00:42:43,040
Speaker 1: here with this, we have this, we have this, this

759
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:45,600
Speaker 1: ferocious version of it, something that's more in keeping with

760
00:42:46,080 --> 00:42:48,160
Speaker 1: what we were saying, what you tend to want to

761
00:42:48,200 --> 00:42:52,520
Speaker 1: expect from the wild world of myth and monsters, something

762
00:42:52,760 --> 00:42:55,439
Speaker 1: you dare not approach, and if you do, you better

763
00:42:55,520 --> 00:42:59,440
Speaker 1: know exactly where its weak spot is. And yeah, so

764
00:42:59,520 --> 00:43:03,279
Speaker 1: it's I mean, I guess this is kind of a

765
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:10,480
Speaker 1: you have shades of umbilical cords and mammals here being

766
00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:15,759
Speaker 1: compared two plants being rooted to the soil. And of

767
00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:17,720
Speaker 1: course not only plants, but this would have been observed

768
00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:20,520
Speaker 1: with things like mushrooms as well, with stems emerging from

769
00:43:20,520 --> 00:43:24,600
Speaker 1: the soil and so forth. Yeah, and then I guess

770
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:29,560
Speaker 1: one would imagine then that essentially you have converging mythologies

771
00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:32,840
Speaker 1: about things that are not plants rooted to the ground.

772
00:43:33,280 --> 00:43:37,279
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's so strange and interesting. And anyway, I

773
00:43:37,520 --> 00:43:40,200
Speaker 2: think in the next episode is when we'll have to

774
00:43:40,239 --> 00:43:43,800
Speaker 2: come back to discuss some of the rational theories about

775
00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:47,040
Speaker 2: the origin of the myth, and I think there's some

776
00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:50,160
Speaker 2: pretty good explanations on offer, especially the one by Henry Lee,

777
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:52,719
Speaker 2: but there are multiple ones that have been put forward

778
00:43:52,719 --> 00:43:55,960
Speaker 2: over the years. One last thing before we wrap up

779
00:43:55,960 --> 00:43:59,919
Speaker 2: this episode is I wanted to mention how reading about

780
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:03,520
Speaker 2: the history of this mythological creature really makes me think

781
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:08,480
Speaker 2: about the benefits of having an evolutionary perspective on biology, because,

782
00:44:08,520 --> 00:44:11,759
Speaker 2: of course, in nature is full of surprises, shocking surprises,

783
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:16,320
Speaker 2: but it also obeys deterministic physical laws, the most important

784
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:19,640
Speaker 2: of which are probably common descent and evolution by natural selection.

785
00:44:20,520 --> 00:44:24,160
Speaker 2: And I think having an evolutionary perspective on life can

786
00:44:24,200 --> 00:44:28,240
Speaker 2: help you sort out which types of surprising claims about

787
00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:32,120
Speaker 2: nature are actually plausible in which are not so. The

788
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:36,319
Speaker 2: idea of a lamb that grows from a plant is

789
00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:40,440
Speaker 2: not really remotely plausible if you understand that complex multicellular

790
00:44:40,480 --> 00:44:44,239
Speaker 2: life forms arise only by varying and building upon the

791
00:44:44,239 --> 00:44:47,840
Speaker 2: morphology of direct ancestors. You know, plants and animals arise

792
00:44:47,880 --> 00:44:51,640
Speaker 2: from different chains of ancestors that diverged more than one

793
00:44:51,680 --> 00:44:54,719
Speaker 2: point five billion years ago. So given what we know

794
00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:58,799
Speaker 2: about plants and animals today, you're not going to get

795
00:44:58,800 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 2: a plant that grows quadrupedal mammalians with bones and blood

796
00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:05,960
Speaker 2: and fur out of it. Like, you know, there are

797
00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:09,560
Speaker 2: tons of shocking, amazing things about the natural world, but

798
00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:13,480
Speaker 2: they're shocking and amazing within something that makes sense, cladistically,

799
00:45:13,560 --> 00:45:17,279
Speaker 2: within something that makes sense from the ancestors they emerge from.

800
00:45:17,600 --> 00:45:21,360
Speaker 2: There's no physically plausible scenario in which a plant like

801
00:45:21,440 --> 00:45:23,680
Speaker 2: that exists, given what we know about the history of

802
00:45:23,719 --> 00:45:26,720
Speaker 2: life on Earth. But the authors of the Middle Ages,

803
00:45:27,360 --> 00:45:30,439
Speaker 2: even if they were intelligent and well informed people, were

804
00:45:30,480 --> 00:45:33,440
Speaker 2: not armed with a theory of biology that would allow

805
00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:37,800
Speaker 2: them to tell the difference between an extraordinary but physically

806
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:40,319
Speaker 2: plausible claim about nature, and there are tons of those

807
00:45:40,360 --> 00:45:42,640
Speaker 2: that turn out to be true, and a claim that

808
00:45:42,880 --> 00:45:46,759
Speaker 2: just simply wouldn't happen because it doesn't make sense. Though,

809
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:49,800
Speaker 2: I think it's also interesting that even without a theory,

810
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:53,480
Speaker 2: even without a formal scientific theory explaining why this organism

811
00:45:53,960 --> 00:45:57,280
Speaker 2: is pretty much impossible within the context of known Earth life,

812
00:45:57,800 --> 00:46:01,319
Speaker 2: some people of the pre evil, the pre Darwin past

813
00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:05,240
Speaker 2: had some kind of intuition that caused them to reject

814
00:46:05,320 --> 00:46:08,279
Speaker 2: this story. Like Kercher, for example, he wasn't the only one,

815
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:11,160
Speaker 2: but you know, affamacious Kircher looks at these stories, he says, no,

816
00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:13,600
Speaker 2: this is people are just getting confused. This is a

817
00:46:13,640 --> 00:46:18,120
Speaker 2: planned and so even without a theory of evolution, some

818
00:46:18,200 --> 00:46:20,759
Speaker 2: people were able to look at that story and think, Nah,

819
00:46:20,840 --> 00:46:23,200
Speaker 2: nature is full of wonders, but that's not one of them,

820
00:46:23,640 --> 00:46:26,680
Speaker 2: And I wonder, like, what are those intuitions? That's an

821
00:46:26,719 --> 00:46:28,120
Speaker 2: interesting question on its own.

822
00:46:28,560 --> 00:46:31,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because it's likewise, it's hard for us to

823
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:36,040
Speaker 1: divorce ourselves from our basic understanding of the differences between

824
00:46:36,040 --> 00:46:39,680
Speaker 1: plant and animals, you know. Yeah, Like my mind instantly

825
00:46:39,719 --> 00:46:42,279
Speaker 1: goes to some of the just really amazing examples of

826
00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:46,480
Speaker 1: mimicry in the world, you know, and a lot of

827
00:46:46,480 --> 00:46:49,000
Speaker 1: times they are just really really amazing, but there are

828
00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:50,799
Speaker 1: sort of limits to them. You know. It's like this,

829
00:46:51,000 --> 00:46:54,960
Speaker 1: here's an organism that has evolved over time to have

830
00:46:55,040 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 1: part of its anatomy or some function of its anatomy

831
00:46:58,480 --> 00:47:00,600
Speaker 1: resembling that of another world organism.

832
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:02,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, well there.

833
00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:04,359
Speaker 1: Are various examples of this, but like one simple one

834
00:47:04,400 --> 00:47:09,840
Speaker 1: is a non toxic organism resembling the coloration of a

835
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 1: toxic organism organism, right, but that's but there's a limit

836
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:16,440
Speaker 1: to it, right. It's not like where the act of

837
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:20,440
Speaker 1: mimicry also involves having the toxin you know, right, and

838
00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:21,319
Speaker 1: so forth.

839
00:47:21,160 --> 00:47:24,120
Speaker 2: Not without a long intervening period of having to develop

840
00:47:24,160 --> 00:47:25,280
Speaker 2: that yeah.

841
00:47:24,920 --> 00:47:28,480
Speaker 1: Right, right, or likewise, you know, part of an animal

842
00:47:28,600 --> 00:47:31,719
Speaker 1: resembling a false head, it doesn't actually that head doesn't

843
00:47:31,760 --> 00:47:36,759
Speaker 1: have functional eyeballs inside it, and so forth. Right, But

844
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:38,360
Speaker 1: but but yeah, it's hard to put yourself in the

845
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:40,960
Speaker 1: mindset where you don't have some of these basic laws

846
00:47:40,960 --> 00:47:43,359
Speaker 1: in place and these basic differences in place in your mind.

847
00:47:43,760 --> 00:47:46,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just don't know what goes and what doesn't. Yeah,

848
00:47:47,080 --> 00:47:49,320
Speaker 2: I mean it is actually interesting reading some of the

849
00:47:49,719 --> 00:47:53,320
Speaker 2: reasons given by these by these late medieval authors or

850
00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:57,160
Speaker 2: Renaissance authors that came before they had a theory of evolution,

851
00:47:57,280 --> 00:47:59,920
Speaker 2: but they had other reasons, some of which are spurio

852
00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:05,200
Speaker 2: but interesting to read through. Like you mentioned earlier, a

853
00:48:05,239 --> 00:48:12,239
Speaker 2: guy named Girolamo Cardano. This was an author of Pavia,

854
00:48:12,400 --> 00:48:16,279
Speaker 2: and he was writing in the mid sixteenth century, and

855
00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:20,680
Speaker 2: I remember he argued that this plant animal thing couldn't

856
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:26,279
Speaker 2: really exist because in order to have blood, it has

857
00:48:26,360 --> 00:48:29,400
Speaker 2: to have a heart, and the soil that the plant

858
00:48:29,480 --> 00:48:33,000
Speaker 2: was growing in did not have enough heat to create

859
00:48:33,040 --> 00:48:33,399
Speaker 2: a heart.

860
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:35,879
Speaker 1: That's what he said, All right, Well, I mean it's

861
00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:37,120
Speaker 1: his reason it's irrationale.

862
00:48:38,800 --> 00:48:40,800
Speaker 2: I mean, I think he's sort of on the right track,

863
00:48:40,880 --> 00:48:43,319
Speaker 2: but it also sounds kind of ad hoc. It's like

864
00:48:43,320 --> 00:48:44,680
Speaker 2: he's just sort of making this up.

865
00:48:46,560 --> 00:48:48,640
Speaker 1: Well, you know, to take it in another direction here,

866
00:48:48,760 --> 00:48:50,600
Speaker 1: Like I was thinking back to some of the things

867
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:53,040
Speaker 1: we discussed last week, and Okay, so the idea that

868
00:48:53,080 --> 00:48:55,000
Speaker 1: you would have a plant that would grow and it

869
00:48:55,040 --> 00:48:58,200
Speaker 1: would essentially grow itself a sheep, and that sheep would

870
00:48:58,280 --> 00:49:02,000
Speaker 1: eat the plants growing around, you know, feast on the herbage,

871
00:49:03,120 --> 00:49:08,600
Speaker 1: and like the basic relationship there between this plan and

872
00:49:08,600 --> 00:49:11,560
Speaker 1: the plant surrounding it is not that crazy. I mean,

873
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:13,880
Speaker 1: one of the things we discussed is that sometimes the

874
00:49:13,960 --> 00:49:16,560
Speaker 1: places where you see the most dynamic interactions in the

875
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:21,600
Speaker 1: plant world are between one plant and another. Remind competition, yeah, competition,

876
00:49:22,239 --> 00:49:24,360
Speaker 1: even if it's just you know, like two beam plants

877
00:49:24,920 --> 00:49:27,000
Speaker 1: looking at the same pole, not looking at it, you know,

878
00:49:27,080 --> 00:49:30,279
Speaker 1: sensing the same pole, sensing each other, and there's a

879
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:34,400
Speaker 1: competition for that resource. And then in some cases, you know,

880
00:49:35,239 --> 00:49:38,160
Speaker 1: the competition that's taking place, it's not being you know,

881
00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:42,360
Speaker 1: there's no need for some sort of fabulous sheep morph

882
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:44,960
Speaker 1: that grows out of the plant because the battle is

883
00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:48,239
Speaker 1: taking place at the chemical level, you know, it's a

884
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:51,360
Speaker 1: more subtle battle. It's not, and it's not a battle

885
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:54,160
Speaker 1: that's taking place within the human realm and with the

886
00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:57,560
Speaker 1: human time. It's taking place on the level of plant time.

887
00:49:57,600 --> 00:49:59,799
Speaker 1: And therefore, for the most part, we do not.

888
00:49:59,719 --> 00:50:02,200
Speaker 2: See Yeah, and I see what you're getting at there,

889
00:50:02,239 --> 00:50:05,839
Speaker 2: because some attempts to explain the origin of this myth

890
00:50:05,840 --> 00:50:08,920
Speaker 2: have looked into, well, what are some plants that essentially

891
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:12,240
Speaker 2: rob all of the area surrounding the plant of nutrition

892
00:50:12,480 --> 00:50:16,439
Speaker 2: or poison its neighbors or something that plants that keep

893
00:50:16,520 --> 00:50:18,759
Speaker 2: other plants from getting anywhere near them to make it

894
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:21,640
Speaker 2: look like they're surrounded by these patches of barren earth.

895
00:50:22,040 --> 00:50:24,440
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, But anyway, I think we'll have to wait

896
00:50:24,520 --> 00:50:27,480
Speaker 2: until part two to come back and explore those explanations.

897
00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:31,239
Speaker 1: That's right. But in the meantime, we would love to

898
00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:33,000
Speaker 1: hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts on

899
00:50:33,040 --> 00:50:36,240
Speaker 1: the vegetable lamb of Tartary and just you know, basically

900
00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:39,680
Speaker 1: plants in general, the weirdness of plants, the weirdness of

901
00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:45,000
Speaker 1: mythic and legendary plants as well. I'm also kind of

902
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:48,359
Speaker 1: surprised there's not a Pokemon of this thing, because I was,

903
00:50:48,680 --> 00:50:50,680
Speaker 1: I was, I've been. My son has been showing me

904
00:50:50,719 --> 00:50:54,359
Speaker 1: a lot of Pokemon creatures in his book that he has,

905
00:50:54,480 --> 00:50:58,200
Speaker 1: his big compendium. It's it's a besty area of Pokemon,

906
00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:02,080
Speaker 1: which I applaud and often have fantastic forms, and sometimes

907
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:05,560
Speaker 1: they have forms that remind me a little bit of

908
00:51:05,680 --> 00:51:09,200
Speaker 1: vegetable lamb. Here, Like there's a creature that has like

909
00:51:09,280 --> 00:51:13,400
Speaker 1: the legs of a turtle, but then it's instead of

910
00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:15,359
Speaker 1: a shell, it has like an apple pie. And then

911
00:51:15,680 --> 00:51:17,800
Speaker 1: you know, so there are a number of different creatures

912
00:51:17,800 --> 00:51:20,799
Speaker 1: in there that have kind of animal and vegetable properties,

913
00:51:22,239 --> 00:51:24,879
Speaker 1: you know, intertwined, and I feel like the vegetable Lamb

914
00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:27,759
Speaker 1: of Tartary should have been in there. So I guess,

915
00:51:27,760 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 1: Pokemon masters, if you are out there, the people who

916
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:35,480
Speaker 1: make these things, when you create some more Pokemon monsters,

917
00:51:36,160 --> 00:51:38,200
Speaker 1: consider making the Lamb of Tartary. I don't know what

918
00:51:38,239 --> 00:51:40,560
Speaker 1: the three different evolutions would be, but I'm sure you'll

919
00:51:40,560 --> 00:51:41,160
Speaker 1: figure it out.

920
00:51:41,280 --> 00:51:41,839
Speaker 2: Tell them right.

921
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:46,960
Speaker 1: I know you're listening Pokemon designers. In the meantime, if

922
00:51:46,960 --> 00:51:48,680
Speaker 1: you would like to listen to other episodes and stuff

923
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:50,920
Speaker 1: to blow your mind, you can find Core episodes on

924
00:51:51,000 --> 00:51:53,319
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind

925
00:51:53,360 --> 00:51:56,560
Speaker 1: podcast feed We have listener mail on Monday, short form

926
00:51:56,719 --> 00:52:00,279
Speaker 1: monster fact or Artifact on Wednesday, and on Fridays we

927
00:52:00,320 --> 00:52:03,120
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a

928
00:52:03,160 --> 00:52:05,120
Speaker 1: weird film on Weird House Cinema.

929
00:52:05,360 --> 00:52:08,319
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

930
00:52:08,400 --> 00:52:11,120
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch

931
00:52:11,120 --> 00:52:13,480
Speaker 2: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,

932
00:52:13,560 --> 00:52:15,360
Speaker 2: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to

933
00:52:15,400 --> 00:52:18,080
Speaker 2: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff

934
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:27,080
Speaker 2: to Blow your Mind dot com.

935
00:52:27,239 --> 00:52:30,160
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

936
00:52:30,280 --> 00:52:33,040
Speaker 3: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

937
00:52:33,200 --> 00:52:50,759
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.