Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday. You know
Speaker 2: where we're going. We're going to the vault for an
Speaker 2: elder episode of the show. This one from last year
Speaker 2: aired on April nineteenth, that's twenty twenty two, and it
Speaker 2: is the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, Part one, where we
Speaker 2: explore the strange tale of a sort of vegetable mammal
Speaker 2: hybrid from far away.
Speaker 1: Yeah. These were a lot of fun, so I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: Last week's episodes discussed contemplations of plant and memory and
Speaker 1: other topics that can blur our understanding of the animal
Speaker 1: plant divide. And while we were talking about all of this,
Speaker 1: I mentioned very briefly that hybrid creatures of myth and
Speaker 1: legend often serve, among other purposes, as a kind of
Speaker 1: reflection on the similarities and differences between animals and plants,
Speaker 1: and at times maybe a contemplation of places where the
Speaker 1: distinction becomes a little confusing for one reason or another.
Speaker 1: So I thought we might discuss one of them this
Speaker 1: week in greater detail, and that is the vegetable Lamb
Speaker 1: of Tartary. This is one of those creatures I thought
Speaker 1: I might do like a short form monster fact on.
Speaker 1: But the more I looked into it, the more it
Speaker 1: seemed to have legs.
Speaker 2: Oh, very nice. So you were drawn to this? Was
Speaker 2: this a nominative determinism thing? I?
Speaker 1: Well, this is one I had been vaguely familiar with,
Speaker 1: in part because it does pop up in various bestiaries
Speaker 1: and monster books. Jorge Lewis Borges wrote about it and
Speaker 1: was enticed by it. But yeah, when you start looking
Speaker 1: into it, there's a lot more to it than just
Speaker 1: a simple definition and explanation of what it was or wasn't.
Speaker 2: Well, this was clearly one of the most popular fantastic
Speaker 2: creatures of medieval bestiaries. It's all over the place, and
Speaker 2: it's treated with varying degrees of credulity, more credulity early
Speaker 2: on and less later on.
Speaker 1: That's right, so it's It was referred to as the
Speaker 1: vegetable Lamb of Chartary by Sir Thomas Brown and his
Speaker 1: sixteen forty six work Pseudodoxia Epidemica, and it was known
Speaker 1: by many other names as well. Two of the first
Speaker 1: sources I looked at concerning this where, of course, the
Speaker 1: Carol Rose's books The Book of Monsters, and also the
Speaker 1: writings of Jorge Lewis Borges. They point out in their
Speaker 1: works that the creature is also known as the boor
Speaker 1: Mets or the Barromets. That's a prime, that's an important
Speaker 1: name that comes up a lot. There's also the polypodium boromets,
Speaker 1: the Chinese polypodium, the lycopodium or Chinese lycopodium, the jadua,
Speaker 1: the Scythian lamb, and I've also seen it referred to
Speaker 1: as the Tartar lamb, and we'll get into the differences.
Speaker 1: But the basic description of the Boromets or the baro Mets,
Speaker 1: as Borges and Rose catalog respectfully, is that it's a
Speaker 1: plant shaped like a sheep that grows out of the ground,
Speaker 1: and if you cut it open, you'll find the insides
Speaker 1: are exactly what you would find if you cut open
Speaker 1: an actual lamb or sheep, blood, flesh, bones, et cetera.
Speaker 1: People allegedly encountered this strange thing in parts of Asia
Speaker 1: and then brought back stories about it which were elaborated upon.
Speaker 2: Yes, and there's a great principle at play here, which
Speaker 2: is the same as a friend of my cousin's principle.
Speaker 2: You know that you place the origin of your really
Speaker 2: cool story sort of several links or geographically far away,
Speaker 2: so that it's harder to check up on. Because again,
Speaker 2: this is something that was said to exist in the
Speaker 2: land of Tartary, and a European chronicler in the Middle
Speaker 2: Ages saying that a wondrous life form is found in
Speaker 2: Tartary is not especially helpful to a reader who might
Speaker 2: want to look for evidence of this thing beyond the
Speaker 2: text they're reading, or especially if they want to go
Speaker 2: try to find it in the real world. Since the
Speaker 2: European medieval concept of Tartary was a huge and vaguely
Speaker 2: defined area of land, it's not like saying it's in Chicago.
Speaker 1: Right, And it's a large area of land that not
Speaker 1: much was known about to Europeans prior to the eighteenth century.
Speaker 2: Right. A lot of it was these fantastical travel books,
Speaker 2: like some of the ones we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 1: So this was, Yes, the European name for the vast
Speaker 1: stretch of Asia that was north of the then borders
Speaker 1: of China, India, and Persia as understood by the west.
Speaker 2: Right, you can think of it broadly as the central
Speaker 2: and northern area of the Asian mainland, including parts of
Speaker 2: what today would be Central Asia and Siberia, but running
Speaker 2: all the way down to the Himalayas, including Kazakhstan and Mongolia,
Speaker 2: what is today part of China, and the whole eastern
Speaker 2: part of Russia. So this is a huge stretch of land.
Speaker 2: This is not being very specific at all to say
Speaker 2: that something is in Tartary, which is actually great because
Speaker 2: if you want to get away with weaving a tall
Speaker 2: tail for a European audience, this is an excellent place
Speaker 2: to set it. It's a vast much of it is
Speaker 2: sparsely populated, very little is known or understood by the reader,
Speaker 2: so it's going to be very difficult to check up
Speaker 2: on your story at that time. Now, one more thing
Speaker 2: before we get started looking at some of these great
Speaker 2: old sources is there's a really great more recent source
Speaker 2: tracing the history of the vegetable lamb of Tartari legend
Speaker 2: and offering what I think is a very convincing argument
Speaker 2: about its natural origins. And we'll get more into the
Speaker 2: explanation of the natural origins in part two of this series.
Speaker 2: I think today we're going to focus more on the
Speaker 2: legend itself and its development. But this source was by
Speaker 2: a nineteenth century English naturalist named Henry Lee, and it's
Speaker 2: called The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, published in eighteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be referring to that work repeatedly throughout
Speaker 2: these episodes. But a little bit about Henry Lee. He
Speaker 2: was apparently an aquarium a naturalist and an aquarium manager,
Speaker 2: and he published books in the eighteen seventies and eighties
Speaker 2: investigating claims of various sea monsters and offering natural explanations
Speaker 2: for these sightings and stories. He seems to me to
Speaker 2: be a very early model of the skeptical cryptozoologist.
Speaker 1: All right, But before we get into the realm of
Speaker 1: skeptical cryptozoologists, let's back it way up. Let's deal with
Speaker 1: some less reputable sources by authors that may not have
Speaker 1: been actual people, at least in one case.
Speaker 2: Interstage left, Sir John Mandeville.
Speaker 1: That's right, the book The Sir John Mandeville's Travels from
Speaker 1: thirteen fifty C. Now, the first thing you're probably asking is, Okay,
Speaker 1: who's this John Mandevil guy that's going to tell me
Speaker 1: about his travels? Well, Mandevell is the supposed author of
Speaker 1: the Travels of Sir John Mandevil, a travel memoir that
Speaker 1: circulated during the mid fourteenth century, and this individual was
Speaker 1: said to have been an English knight. But it's widely
Speaker 1: thought that this individual did not actually exist, and that
Speaker 1: the true author may have been a Flemish monk, perhaps
Speaker 1: one Gen DeLonge, who was himself a prolific writer and
Speaker 1: a collector of various travel logs. But I think it's
Speaker 1: still it's not something we're one hundred percent certain on,
Speaker 1: but I've seen some sources that indicate that this guy
Speaker 1: is a possible bet, just because he was sort of
Speaker 1: all the interests and resources lined up well.
Speaker 2: One of the wonderful things about reading Sir John Mandeville
Speaker 2: is if you find one of the archaic original texts,
Speaker 2: the spellings of all the English words like, you can
Speaker 2: sort of make sense of it as a modern English
Speaker 2: reader if you labor through it. But the spellings are
Speaker 2: just tremendous. He calls himself a Night of Ingel One
Speaker 2: Night with a y, and England is spelled I N
Speaker 2: G E l O N D Oh my heart.
Speaker 1: That's great. I should also point out that there's there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of work over the years just analyzing
Speaker 1: how much of this book is Again, the author was
Speaker 1: not a real person, but how much of this may
Speaker 1: have been based on somebody's actual travels versus how much
Speaker 1: of it is just pure invention or generated off of
Speaker 1: the backs of other works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's difficult to tell that. I think it's pretty
Speaker 2: clear that his story of the vegetable lamb of Tartary
Speaker 2: is a fabrication because number one, he claims to have
Speaker 2: seen it himself, and as we'll get to it, we're
Speaker 2: pretty sure nothing of this description ever actually existed, and
Speaker 2: it may be a garbled version of sightings of something
Speaker 2: that did really exist, but it wouldn't look anything like
Speaker 2: what John Mandevil describes, right, So the fact that he
Speaker 2: claims to see it and his description does not match
Speaker 2: anything in nature, including real plants that could have inspired it,
Speaker 2: That seems to point to this just being made up,
Speaker 2: But it could but it's also likely that he based
Speaker 2: this story on something else. That he read from maybe
Speaker 2: one hundred years before him or even earlier. His encounter
Speaker 2: with the alleged Lamb of Tartari comes in the twenty
Speaker 2: sixth chapter of this travel book, where he is describing
Speaker 2: the curiosities he came across in the dominion of the
Speaker 2: cham of Tartari.
Speaker 1: All right, here's the bet. I'm gonna read it here,
Speaker 1: and my copy has the original spellings in it, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to try and lean into those spellings. Okay.
Speaker 1: Quote and there grow with a manner of fruit as
Speaker 1: though it were Gored's, and when they been ripe men
Speaker 1: cutting him at and then find in within a little
Speaker 1: beast in flesh, in bond and blood as though it
Speaker 1: were a little lamb without in wool.
Speaker 2: Fruit is f r u y t y and and
Speaker 2: Gord's's gowerdies.
Speaker 1: G O w r d E s yea love it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's it's worth looking up just to to take
Speaker 1: in these spellings. And I have to say, I when
Speaker 1: I read this, in my mind, I'm reading it in
Speaker 1: the voice of Mary from the British comedy Ghosts, who's
Speaker 1: like this medieval peasant ghost who I can easily imagine
Speaker 1: going through this this this statement here.
Speaker 2: You know who I really want to get a reading
Speaker 2: of the I want to get Matt Barry to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be good too. I could do a
Speaker 1: whole audiobook of the travels of John Mandifal.
Speaker 2: It were a little lomb without in wool. Wait wait
Speaker 2: a minute, So you cut it off there, and that's
Speaker 2: that's a great part of the quote. But the quote
Speaker 2: does go on. Do you mind if I feature the
Speaker 2: next sentence?
Speaker 1: Go for it?
Speaker 2: Okay? After that it's uh no, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: do a Matt Berry voice. It's and men eaten both
Speaker 2: the fruit and the beast, and that is a great
Speaker 2: marvel of that fruit I have eaten, although it were wonderful.
Speaker 2: But that I know well that God is marvelous in
Speaker 2: his workies W. E. R. K Ees. So let's review
Speaker 2: what we know from Mandeville now, right. So in Tartary,
Speaker 2: there is a plant that grows a fruit that resembles
Speaker 2: a gourd. And when these gourds are ripe, you can
Speaker 2: cut them open and inside you will find a tiny
Speaker 2: beast that is exactly like a lamb. Like a real
Speaker 2: lamb doesn't just look like one. It has meat and bone,
Speaker 2: and blood, and men in Tartary will eat these little lambs.
Speaker 2: John Mandeville says, I myself ate one too, and it
Speaker 2: was delicious. And the existence of the lamb of Tartary
Speaker 2: is so marvelous that it proves the greatness of God.
Speaker 1: Wow, this is a great source. I saw the baby,
Speaker 1: and the baby looked at me.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, the baby looked at you. Oh no, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Chief Wygum is all the subsequent chroniclers who report on
Speaker 2: this passage.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I just love every part. I mean, just
Speaker 1: the idea that you it looks like a lamb and
Speaker 1: you cut it open and it's got it's not on
Speaker 1: the online. Does it bleed and have flesh but it
Speaker 1: has bones? Yeah, it's it's and this is not. There
Speaker 1: is even more. There are more layers of the absurd
Speaker 1: that will come in later tellings.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Mandeville seems to be one of the earliest widespread
Speaker 2: accounts of the lamb in medieval European sources, but the
Speaker 2: legend is repeated with many variations in books of the
Speaker 2: following centuries up until people start getting skeptical, I think,
Speaker 2: basically during the Enlightenment. But another one we should look
Speaker 2: at before we try to trace any farther forward or backward.
Speaker 2: Is the one by Thomas Brown in the mid seventeenth century.
Speaker 1: Right in the book Pseudodoxia Epidemica. This is sixteen forty six.
Speaker 1: Now Thomas Brown, this was certainly a real historic person
Speaker 1: who lives sixteen oh five through sixteen eighty two. An
Speaker 1: English author, physician, and polymath. He wrote on numerous topics,
Speaker 1: but was best known for Religio Medici, a very popular
Speaker 1: work of the day on the connections between science and religion.
Speaker 1: And the Borometz becomes even more extraordinary by the time
Speaker 1: of Brown, who writes the following quote. Much wonder is
Speaker 1: made of the boramez, that strange plant, animal or vegetable
Speaker 1: lamb of tartary, which wolve's delight to feed on, which
Speaker 1: hath the shape of a lamb, affordeth a bloody juice
Speaker 1: upon breaking and liveth while the plants be consumed about it.
Speaker 1: And that much is typically quoted. You'll find that quoted
Speaker 1: on various discuss of the Bormetz. But there's more which
Speaker 1: is insightful, because he continues, And yet, if all this
Speaker 1: be no more than the shape of a lamb in
Speaker 1: the flower or seed upon the top of the stalk,
Speaker 1: as we meet with the forms of bees, flies, and
Speaker 1: dogs in some others, he has seen nothing that shall
Speaker 1: much wonder at all. So in other words, however, if
Speaker 1: this is just something on the plant that is shaped
Speaker 1: more or less like an animal, we've seen that before
Speaker 1: and it's nothing really to write home about.
Speaker 2: But I'm wondering I can't quite tell from the text.
Speaker 2: Is he's saying that he thinks it's more likely just
Speaker 2: that it's like a flower that's shaped like a lamb.
Speaker 2: Or is he saying, well, it could be one or
Speaker 2: the other.
Speaker 1: You know, it's hard to say, right. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: easy to a lot of people seem to lean into
Speaker 1: the idea that he's saying, hey, this is real, because
Speaker 1: they leave off the skeptical part of the quote. But
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly which way the author is leaning
Speaker 1: him self here. But certainly there's a note of skepticism
Speaker 1: here that is sometimes lacking in the discussion of fantastic
Speaker 1: creatures even today.
Speaker 2: I actually looked up the context of this to see
Speaker 2: what else he's talking about in the other paragraphs around this,
Speaker 2: and in the paragraph right above his passage on the
Speaker 2: boramets or the lamb of Tartary. He's talking about, quote,
Speaker 2: the tarantula or poisonous spider of Collabria, and that magical
Speaker 2: cure of the bite thereof by music. So this is
Speaker 2: a spider whose bite is cured by music. I think.
Speaker 2: He also says that tarantulas will dance to music. I
Speaker 2: was trying to figure out what this meant, he says,
Speaker 2: quote some also affirm that the tarantula itself will dance
Speaker 2: upon certain strokes.
Speaker 4: The more you know, yeah, So I mentioned Carol Rose
Speaker 4: earlier a source i'phant turned too, and in her book Giants,
Speaker 4: Monsters and Dragons, she summarizes many the oral the overall
Speaker 4: traditions of the bora met as follows quote.
Speaker 1: In general, the Borometz was believed to be a creature
Speaker 1: with roots that held it fast. In one place, it
Speaker 1: resembled a lamb sheep with golden colored fleece. The stalk
Speaker 1: allowed it to browse the surrounding pasture, but as soon
Speaker 1: as this was consumed, the creature died of starvation. Humans
Speaker 1: or wolves then came and harvested the body, which was
Speaker 1: said to taste like crab meat. Its hooves were made
Speaker 1: of hair, which like its fleece was used by humans
Speaker 1: for weaving clothes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this seems to be a pretty good description
Speaker 2: of that other version. We have the two main models,
Speaker 2: which are very different. The one of Mandeville, which is like,
Speaker 2: there are lambs in the fruits. The fruits are like
Speaker 2: these gourds. You cut them open inside their little tiny
Speaker 2: lambs and you can eat them. And then there's this
Speaker 2: other version sighted in a bunch of sources and summarized
Speaker 2: by Rose here, where it's a full sized lamb or
Speaker 2: sheep and it is attached to the plant stem by
Speaker 2: its navel which acts like a tether, and it eats
Speaker 2: all of the vegetation around it, which I love this detail.
Speaker 2: Can only survive until it has grazed all of the
Speaker 2: plant life within the radius of its umbilical stem, and
Speaker 2: then when it can't reach any more vegetation to graze on,
Speaker 2: it starves to death and dies unless a wolf or
Speaker 2: a human gets to it first and kills it for meat.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think we'll have more on the wolf.
Speaker 1: The wolf side of the part of this changes. I
Speaker 1: love that it tastes like crab, and it's just it's
Speaker 1: just such a thing. You can also just see like
Speaker 1: this is what happens when an already fabulous account is
Speaker 1: given time to sort of fester or ripen, and also
Speaker 1: with the help of you know, books talking to other books,
Speaker 1: and translations and mistranslations taking place.
Speaker 2: Now, based on all these medieval sources I found cataloged
Speaker 2: in Lee's book, Rose's summary seems to me very correct,
Speaker 2: with one exception, which is the characterization. She says that
Speaker 2: the flea of the vegetable lamb is golden in color.
Speaker 2: But based on everything I've read, that's something that you
Speaker 2: find more in the later sources. The earlier sources, if
Speaker 2: they mentioned the color of the fleece, they describe it
Speaker 2: as pale white, and later it's only in later sources
Speaker 2: like Erasmus Darwin that changed this to golden. And Lee
Speaker 2: will will end up arguing that there's a very specific
Speaker 2: reason for this change that has to do with the
Speaker 2: rationalist explanation of the lamb given in later centuries. And
Speaker 2: in fact, since I mentioned it, maybe I should go
Speaker 2: ahead and read a passage from Erasmus Darwin. This is
Speaker 2: written much later, but in Darwin's work The Botanic Garden,
Speaker 2: which is a grand poem about the natural world, about
Speaker 2: The Plant World, written in seventeen eighty one, Darwin writes, quote,
Speaker 2: even round the poll, the flames of love aspire, and
Speaker 2: icy bosoms feel. The secret fire, cradled in snow and
Speaker 2: fanned by Arctic air, shines gentle boramets like golden hair
Speaker 2: in the earth. Each cloven foot descends and round and
Speaker 2: round her flexile necks. She bends crops the gray coral
Speaker 2: moss in hoary time, or laps with rosy tongue, the
Speaker 2: melting rhyme, eyes with mute tenderness, her distant dam and
Speaker 2: seems to bleat a vegetable lamb.
Speaker 1: Oh that's wonderful. Yeah, well, I can't top that. One
Speaker 1: of the sources I was looking at is the work
Speaker 1: Ingelbert Comfort and the Myth of the Scythian Lamb by
Speaker 1: Robert W. Caruba, and this was published in the Classical
Speaker 1: World in nineteen ninety three. In this the author points
Speaker 1: out that while the lamb is largely a product of
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, some passages by classical authors such as
Speaker 1: Herodotus and Theophrastus quote played an innocent role in its development.
Speaker 1: And we'll have more on those two authors in a pit. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think we'll have to revisit the links to Herodotus
Speaker 2: and the other Greek authors in Part two, because that
Speaker 2: ties directly into what I think is probably the best
Speaker 2: theory for explaining the lamb legend. But it is I
Speaker 2: think worth noting in this part some other works preceding
Speaker 2: the story as told by John Mandeville, and I guess
Speaker 2: we'll come back to those in just a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, Karupa also describes the lamb as a zoophyte,
Speaker 1: which is an actual classification or was actual classification for
Speaker 1: plant like animals, And this kind of comes back to
Speaker 1: our larger discussion that we were having having last week
Speaker 1: on the show. So the sessile nature of plants is
Speaker 1: a big part of their identity, but we do have
Speaker 1: non plants and even animals that have taken on similar
Speaker 1: modes of existence. However, I do wonder if it's correct
Speaker 1: to think of the lamb here fantastic as it may be,
Speaker 1: as a plant like animal or an animal like plant.
Speaker 1: In my notes, I kept wanting to refer to it
Speaker 1: as the creature, but then felt weird about calling it
Speaker 1: a creature when it really seems more like a creature
Speaker 1: like plant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know exactly what takes taxonomic precedence there.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously, in the real world, there are plants
Speaker 2: that have interesting characteristics of animals, like the ones we
Speaker 2: talked about in the episodes from last week, the sensitive
Speaker 2: plant Mimosa putico, which shows rapid movement. Of course, the
Speaker 2: venus flytrap is another example. These seis monastic movements that
Speaker 2: allow a plant to have movement on the timescale you
Speaker 2: would normally only associate with an animal. And then of
Speaker 2: course you can have animals that have characteristics we would
Speaker 2: associate with plants that might animals that might look like
Speaker 2: plants in some way. They have some kind of camouflage
Speaker 2: that looks like vegetation. I think of the you know,
Speaker 2: like the sloths that look like they're covered in some
Speaker 2: kind of plant life. Or there are even some animals
Speaker 2: that have the power to absorb energy from the sunlight
Speaker 2: like plants do, like I believe there are there are
Speaker 2: certain salamanders that have evolved ways to do this, and
Speaker 2: there might be a seak cucumber example. So you can
Speaker 2: find characteristics normally associated with one in the other. But
Speaker 2: then again, there are no such things as animal plant
Speaker 2: combinations like animals and plants are too far removed, too
Speaker 2: far removed in the tree of life to like inter
Speaker 2: breed or anything like that, right, right, But nevertheless, we
Speaker 2: do get this concept in the Middle Ages of the zoophyte.
Speaker 2: One I was reading about in the same context as
Speaker 2: the vegetable lamb of Tartary was the so called barnacle
Speaker 2: goose myth. I think there are different ways this has
Speaker 2: been conceptualized, but there's like a type of goose that
Speaker 2: at various times in history has been thought to bud
Speaker 2: off of barnacles, like in the water. So it's not
Speaker 2: actually a land animal or a bird, it's actually some
Speaker 2: kind of fish or water animal. Or they even say
Speaker 2: that this goose maybe came out of trees. So it's
Speaker 2: okay to eat this goose on Fridays, even if you're
Speaker 2: supposed to fast from meat on Fridays, because it's not
Speaker 2: actually a bird, it is a plant.
Speaker 1: That reminds me of our episode The Furry Fish, in
Speaker 1: which we were discussing otters a bit. Uh, And if
Speaker 1: you didn't listen to it, why would we discuss otters
Speaker 1: in an episode about the furry fish. Well, that was
Speaker 1: because in some places there were discussions, Well, what do
Speaker 1: we call the otter like? Is it lives in the water,
Speaker 1: It does things that seem very fish like. Therefore, is
Speaker 1: it okay for us to to to eat the flesh
Speaker 1: of the otter as if it were a fish? Is
Speaker 1: it going to be is it going to be subject
Speaker 1: to the same rules concerning dietary rules concerning the consumption
Speaker 1: of non fish meat that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: That kind of thing just doesn't really fly anymore, does it. Like,
Speaker 2: you can't you can't bring a goose to a vegan
Speaker 2: pot luck and say no, this goose came off of
Speaker 2: a tree. It was it's actually a fruit.
Speaker 1: Well, we can't say it yet, but something we might
Speaker 1: get into in a later episode or even in the
Speaker 1: next episode a little bit is will we reach the
Speaker 1: day when you can do that? When you can't say no,
Speaker 1: this goose meat is all right because it was not
Speaker 1: harvested from the wild. It was grown off of something
Speaker 1: I picked it this morning. Another example that sometimes mentioned
Speaker 1: in terms of zoophytes from Chinese traditions. It frequently comes up,
Speaker 1: is that of court aceps. This is, of course, when
Speaker 1: you have court aceps, you have these parasitic funguses that
Speaker 1: will overtake an insect, resulting in something They would certainly
Speaker 1: be confusing and difficult to classify if you didn't know
Speaker 1: what was going on. These have long been a part
Speaker 1: of Chinese traditional medicine, quite popular, and I remember when
Speaker 1: I was last in China about I think nine years ago,
Speaker 1: I remember seeing an entire storefront filled with these, and
Speaker 1: you can still you can find court aceps for sale
Speaker 1: anywhere Chinese traditional medicine and Chinese traditional medical products are sold.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's quite If you just look at one
Speaker 1: of these specimens, it's quote you can see where the
Speaker 1: confusion might might occur, and you might think, well, this
Speaker 1: is clearly neither not quite an animal, but it's not
Speaker 1: quite something else either.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if things like this exist, I mean, why not
Speaker 1: a vegetable lamb? Right?
Speaker 2: Well, we can talk about why not later on, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean one wants to have some you know, give
Speaker 2: some leeway to medieval thinkers, because if you don't have
Speaker 2: a theory that helps you organize claims about the natural
Speaker 2: world indeplausible and implausible, you do at least know, well,
Speaker 2: the natural world is full of surprising things, So why
Speaker 2: not a vegetable lamb, Why not a plant that grows
Speaker 2: a mammal out of it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, going back to that work by Karuba, the
Speaker 1: author points to ways that the idea was popularized later
Speaker 1: on by such writers as doctor Rasmus Darwin, who we
Speaker 1: quoted earlier with the bleeding quote. There we also have
Speaker 1: Guero Lama Cardano and Julius Caesar Scalager. But Karuba here
Speaker 1: is chiefly dealing with the work of Ingelbert Comfort on
Speaker 1: the subject. Kamfor was a German naturalist who lived sixteen
Speaker 1: fifty one through seventeen sixteen, and who was actually himself
Speaker 1: widely traveled, having toured Russia, Persia, India, Southeast Asia and Japan.
Speaker 1: His book History of Japan was the main Western source
Speaker 1: on Japan for nearly two centuries. So he's kind of
Speaker 1: the ideal individual to weigh in on the lamb of Tartary,
Speaker 1: and so he does. He Now, as far as the
Speaker 1: Karuba here goes, he begins by citing yet another description
Speaker 1: of this marvel, this time from the writings of French
Speaker 1: botanist Claude Duay, and this one was apparently highly influential
Speaker 1: during the eighteenth century. Quote in Tartary there are seeds
Speaker 1: which are like the seeds of gourds, only shorter in size,
Speaker 1: which grow and blossom like a stem to the navel
Speaker 1: of an animal, which is called aboromets in their language,
Speaker 1: I e. Lamb, because it resembles a and all its
Speaker 1: limbs from head to foot. Its hooves are clothing. Its
Speaker 1: skin is soft, its wool is adapted for clothing. But
Speaker 1: it has no horns, only hairs on its head, which
Speaker 1: grow and are intertwined like horns. Its height is half
Speaker 1: a cubit and more according to those who speak of
Speaker 1: this wondrous thing. Its taste is like the flesh of fish.
Speaker 1: It's blood as sweet as honey, and it lives as
Speaker 1: long as there is herbage within range of the stem
Speaker 1: from which it derives its life. If the herbage is
Speaker 1: destroyed or perishes, the animal also dies away. It has
Speaker 1: rest from all beasts and birds of prey, except the wolf,
Speaker 1: which seeks to destroy it.
Speaker 2: Wonder why only the wolf?
Speaker 1: I don't know, only the wolf, and I guess in
Speaker 1: some tellings people.
Speaker 2: But okay, so this time, it's flesh tastes like fish,
Speaker 2: its blood is as sweet as honey, and it lives
Speaker 2: until the wolf gets it or again it eats all
Speaker 2: of the herbage within reach of the stem.
Speaker 1: Right. So Comfer was interested in this, and in Comfort's
Speaker 1: writing he discusses the origin of the word as he
Speaker 1: derived at the boromets or boramets to the Slavac baran
Speaker 1: and the Persian baret, both meaning sheep apparently, but he
Speaker 1: also points out that the actual Scythian sheep is rather
Speaker 1: different from the common variety of sheep in Germany. He says,
Speaker 1: it's bigger, it has different I believe it is later
Speaker 1: described as a massive tail, and it has a massive
Speaker 1: fat that drags around behind it. It's fat and meat
Speaker 1: and are both delicious, and it's hide is prized as well.
Speaker 1: I don't know quite what to make of this description
Speaker 1: of a massive fat tail, and Karuba doesn't really go
Speaker 1: into it. But having related this, Comfort is basically saying, okay, look, granted,
Speaker 1: the sheep over there don't look quite like the sheep
Speaker 1: we have here. But when I was traveling in regions
Speaker 1: you know that would have been familiar with this. Surely
Speaker 1: no one knew what I was talking about. No one
Speaker 1: had ever heard of a borometz as described in these traditions,
Speaker 1: and so he ruled that it is quote pure fiction
Speaker 1: and fable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems to me that while the story was
Speaker 2: taken as generally true by authors in the Middle Ages,
Speaker 2: by like the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, authors who wrote
Speaker 2: about it seemed to be more often skeptical. Like. Another
Speaker 2: one who is skeptical not so much of the initial
Speaker 2: reports but of their interpretation was the seventeenth century German
Speaker 2: polymath athanacious Kircher, who's come up on the podcast several
Speaker 2: times before. Apparently, Kercher wrote quote. Some authors have regarded
Speaker 2: it as an animal, some as a plant, whilst others
Speaker 2: have classified it as a true zoophyte. In order not
Speaker 2: to multiply miracles, we assert that it is a plant,
Speaker 2: though its form be that of a quadruped and the
Speaker 2: juice beneath its willy covering bee blood which flows. If
Speaker 2: an incision be made in its these things will not
Speaker 2: move us. It will be found to be a plant.
Speaker 2: And I was like, WHOA tell it like it is?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think once this series is over, Kircher
Speaker 2: will be vindicated. But it's interesting how certain he is
Speaker 2: in this writing of this thing he's never seen for himself.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, the thing is if you have even
Speaker 1: even a halfway broad familiarity with plants of many of
Speaker 1: any given region, you know, there's a good chance you'll
Speaker 1: be familiar with things that do resemble, say blood, like
Speaker 1: if you know anything about beats, then the idea that
Speaker 1: some sort of plant has blood in it or something
Speaker 1: that looks like blood shouldn't be that shocking.
Speaker 2: In fact, this brings to mind something we talked about
Speaker 2: in our episode on beans. You remember that strange observation
Speaker 2: from the ancient world that the Pythagoreans did not eat beans,
Speaker 2: And in fact, there's even a story. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: hard to know if it's true, but there's a claim
Speaker 2: that Pythagoras died being pursued by a violent mob because
Speaker 2: he was running away from them, but he wouldn't run
Speaker 2: through a bean field, because I don't know. That's a
Speaker 2: strange thing to wonder why, And so people want to
Speaker 2: know what's the secret of the beans. Why does Pythagoras
Speaker 2: have this bean problem? And there were a lot of
Speaker 2: different explanations we talked about in that episode, but one
Speaker 2: of the possibilities was the modern observation that bean plants
Speaker 2: sometimes appear to bleed like bean plants have these little
Speaker 2: nodes in their roots that can become infected with a
Speaker 2: bacterium known as rhizobium. And I think if you cut
Speaker 2: these open, these bacterial nodes actually produce a hemoglobin like
Speaker 2: molecule that works pretty much the same way as the
Speaker 2: hemoglobin in our blood, binding with oxygen. And the result
Speaker 2: is that if you cut these things open, you get
Speaker 2: this red juice coming out of them that looks almost
Speaker 2: exactly like human blood. So somebody might have cut a
Speaker 2: bean plant open and been like, WHOA, this thing is
Speaker 2: bleeding like a human, or at least like an animal.
Speaker 2: So so I don't know, maybe we shouldn't need these things.
Speaker 2: Maybe they have the souls of our ancestors in them
Speaker 2: or something. You can imagine a similar thing going on
Speaker 2: with some other plant, right, you know, you could observe
Speaker 2: that it might produce a juice that looks shockingly like
Speaker 2: animal blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, I don't really I don't cook with with,
Speaker 1: you know, meats that have blood in them anymore. But
Speaker 1: on the when I do cook with beats, and I'm
Speaker 1: like cutting beats, I'm always just taken by how horrific
Speaker 1: everything looks. You know, yes, it's you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm in a horror movie because I'm covered with
Speaker 1: this red juice and I'm holding a butcher knife and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll save you. If you're eating beats for the
Speaker 2: first time, let me save you some googling. If you
Speaker 2: go to the bathroom later, you're not dying, that's normal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just remember that you had beats earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, back to Karuba and his writing's on Comfort here
Speaker 1: from from here. In his work, Comfort goes on to
Speaker 1: discuss the possible origins of the myth, and this is
Speaker 1: what Karuba has to say about it is how he
Speaker 1: summarizes it. Quote. As to the origin of the myth,
Speaker 1: Comfort can only speculate that the museum specimens of delicate
Speaker 1: fetal fur can easily be confused with vegetable substance, and
Speaker 1: that geological distance, linguistic misunderstanding, and the inclination to believe
Speaker 1: in wonders or prodigies provide the explanation. Comfort's account is
Speaker 1: noteworthy because it debunked the myth by eyewitness investigation, provided
Speaker 1: a first detailed description of the real Scythian lamb. You
Speaker 1: know that's the one with the supposed fat tale and
Speaker 1: practice is associated with it. You know what people do
Speaker 1: with it that they like to eat, eat it, and
Speaker 1: you know they use the hide and attempted to explain
Speaker 1: rationally the origin of the myth.
Speaker 2: This is similar to what Lee says actually about Camphor.
Speaker 2: He says that he thinks that Camphor got the rational
Speaker 2: explanation of the myth wrong, like he thinks for many
Speaker 2: reasons it is not actually it was not actually inspired
Speaker 2: by this practices of harvesting the hides of fetal Scythian lambs.
Speaker 2: But at least that Camphor was like, no, let's look
Speaker 2: for an explanation that's more biologically plausible than a plant
Speaker 2: that grows into a mammal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, one of the things. And maybe this
Speaker 1: is one of the things that's so attracted me about
Speaker 1: the weirdness of the vegetable lamb of Chartari is that,
Speaker 1: in its most elaborate form, it seems like such a
Speaker 1: contradiction to our other tales of the fantastics. So many
Speaker 1: creatures you encounter in a medieval bestiaria or any kind
Speaker 1: of folklore mythology. The wilder the form, the more dangerous,
Speaker 1: the more mysterious, the further away from human culture. And
Speaker 1: this is a thing that is like the domes lamb
Speaker 1: made even more harmless. You know. It's just the fantastic
Speaker 1: but mundane qualities of the of the vegetable lamb.
Speaker 2: Right, It's not something that is fearsome and free and
Speaker 2: uncontrollable and all that. It's it's something that's like a
Speaker 2: standard part of animal agriculture, except it's just like mixing
Speaker 2: these different categories together. It's an utterly mundane part of life.
Speaker 2: It's like a story about a psychic TV dinner.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, yeah, it's so it really seems
Speaker 1: to buck the trend in so many ways. And and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm guessing maybe that's why people were fascinated back
Speaker 1: then as well. You know, like, you know, everybody was
Speaker 1: into the You're always into the idea of dragons and
Speaker 1: strange snakes and yeah, all the monsters of the sea.
Speaker 1: But here's something that just sounds crazy and and uh
Speaker 1: and and it's helpless out there, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: the wolves are just coming up and chopping these things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you feel sad for it when you hear the myth. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like if the wolves don't get it, it's it's doomed.
Speaker 2: To starve to death pretty quick, because you know it's
Speaker 2: only got that short radius of stem length to eat
Speaker 2: the vegetation from right. Well, okay, there's one more thing
Speaker 2: I wanted to get to from the Henry Lee book,
Speaker 2: which is that Lee actually includes analysis of similar legends
Speaker 2: that are traced back to a little bit before the
Speaker 2: time of Sir John Mandevil. Okay, so this is about
Speaker 2: to turn into a chain of citations for a minute,
Speaker 2: but it gets pretty interesting, so stick with me. So
Speaker 2: Henry Lee notices first that Claude Durray, when you were
Speaker 2: talking about earlier in a work called the Istoire Admirab,
Speaker 2: I don't know how you say that in French. Admirable
Speaker 2: Admirab des plant in sixteen oh five writes that he
Speaker 2: once read in a Latin version of the of the
Speaker 2: Jewish commentary work the Jerusalem Talmud, a claim attributed to
Speaker 2: an Ethiopian scholar named Moses Chusensus quote that there was
Speaker 2: a certain country the earth which bore a zoophyte or
Speaker 2: plant animal called in Hebrew Jedua. It was in form
Speaker 2: like a lamb, and from its navel grew a stem
Speaker 2: or root by which this zoophyte or plant animal was
Speaker 2: fixed attached like a gored to the soil below the
Speaker 2: surface of the ground, and according to the length of
Speaker 2: its stem or root, it devoured all the herbage which
Speaker 2: it was able to reach within the circle of its tether.
Speaker 2: The hunters who went in search of this creature were
Speaker 2: unable to capture or remove it until they had succeeded
Speaker 2: in cutting the stem by well aimed arrows or darts.
Speaker 2: When the animal immediately fell prostrate to the earth and died,
Speaker 2: its bones being placed with certain ceremonies and incantations in
Speaker 2: the mouth of one desiring to foretell the future, he
Speaker 2: was instantly seized with a spirit of divination and endowed
Speaker 2: with the gift of prophecy.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so.
Speaker 2: That's a new wrinkle. Okay, So this lamb is not
Speaker 2: only a vegetable that's tethered to the ground by stem.
Speaker 2: You have to kill it by severing the stem with
Speaker 2: arrows or darts. They don't say why in this source,
Speaker 2: but we'll get to another one in a minute. And
Speaker 2: then it falls down, and then you take this lamb's
Speaker 2: bones and you put the bones in your mouth with
Speaker 2: special magic spells that allow you to tell the future.
Speaker 1: That's interesting because yeah, so many of these other accounts
Speaker 1: we are looking at they just say, oh, well, it
Speaker 1: tastes great, it tastes like fish, it tastes like crab.
Speaker 1: It's just really good to eat and you can use
Speaker 1: the hide, and you know, generally that's in most traditions,
Speaker 1: like that's what you're concerned with with the body of
Speaker 1: an animal. But then of course when you're dealing with
Speaker 1: the with the body of a plant and the parts
Speaker 1: of a plant. You know, as we've got into a
Speaker 1: bit in last week's episodes, I mean, you know, history
Speaker 1: is a tale of humans figuring out how to use
Speaker 1: different parts of the plant, what it will do, what
Speaker 1: it seems to do, you know, and figuring out all
Speaker 1: the ways that the natural chemical properties and chemical weapons
Speaker 1: and defenses off the plant can be used for for
Speaker 1: curative reasons or preventative reasons. And so in this yeah,
Speaker 1: we're kind of leaning more into the plantiness of it
Speaker 1: that it's going to have. They're going to be effects
Speaker 1: to eating it, and you know, certainly these are magical effects,
Speaker 1: but there are effects. Nonetheless.
Speaker 2: Oh, I thought you were going to go in the
Speaker 2: direction of wondering about psychopharmacology. So if this is a play.
Speaker 2: You put it in your mouth and then you can
Speaker 2: see the future.
Speaker 1: Okay, well no, I mean that's that's part of it too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So anyway, this is Deray referring back to what
Speaker 2: he calls the Jerusalem Talmud. Technically, there are two major
Speaker 2: Talmud traditions. I think that the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmud.
Speaker 2: And the Talmud is the text of Jewish rabbinical law,
Speaker 2: so it includes records of oral teaching and Judaism and
Speaker 2: commentary on the Torah and things like that. So Lee
Speaker 2: says that he went searching for this story in the
Speaker 2: Talmud and he couldn't find it, so he had to
Speaker 2: consult a scholar named Reverend Doctor Hermann Adler, who was
Speaker 2: Chief Rabbi Delegate of the United Congregations of the British Empire.
Speaker 2: So this would have been at the time that Lee
Speaker 2: was writing in the eighteen eighties. And he says that
Speaker 2: Adler was actually able to find the real source. So
Speaker 2: this goes back to from before John Mandeville. So it's
Speaker 2: in a section of the Jerusalem Talmud called the Mishna Kilaim,
Speaker 2: and there is a section here that reads as quote.
Speaker 2: Creatures called abne hasada or literally lords of the field
Speaker 2: are regarded as beasts. And there is a variant reading
Speaker 2: of abne hasada meaning stones of the field, not lords
Speaker 2: of the field. And so Adler was writing about this,
Speaker 2: and he found that there was a medieval commentary on
Speaker 2: this passage written by a Rabbi Simon of Sins, which
Speaker 2: is a place in France. And Rabbi Simon lived in
Speaker 2: the twelfth and early thirteenth century, and he writes quote,
Speaker 2: it is stated in the Jerusalem Talmud that this is
Speaker 2: a human being of the mountains. It lives by means
Speaker 2: of its navel. If its naveal be cut, it cannot live.
Speaker 2: I have heard in the name of Rabbi Meyer, the
Speaker 2: son of Calanaimus of Spire, that this is the animal
Speaker 2: called Jedua. This is the Jedui mentioned in scripture literally
Speaker 2: wizard from Leviticus nineteen. With its bones. Witchcraft is practiced.
Speaker 2: A kind of large stem issues from a root in
Speaker 2: the earth on which this animal called jadua grows, just
Speaker 2: as gourds and melons, Only the jadua has in all
Speaker 2: respects a human shape in face, body, hands, and feet.
Speaker 2: By its navel. It is joined to the stem that
Speaker 2: issues from the root. No creature can approach within the
Speaker 2: tether of the stem, for it seizes and kills them.
Speaker 2: Within the tether of the stem, it devours the herbage
Speaker 2: all around. When they want to capture it, no man
Speaker 2: dares approach, but they tear it the stem until it
Speaker 2: is ruptured, whereupon the animal dies. And then there's another
Speaker 2: commentator named Rabbi Obadia Obadia of Bourbon Ooro that adds
Speaker 2: that you have to use arrows to sever the stem,
Speaker 2: presumably because you can't get close enough to hack at
Speaker 2: it with the sword or the jeduo will kill you.
Speaker 2: And I think this is really interesting. So if you
Speaker 2: go back even earlier than Mandevill, of course Mandeville wasn't
Speaker 2: telling the story about it being this beast on the tether.
Speaker 2: Mandeville's version was the gourd fruits that had the little
Speaker 2: lambs inside. But if you go back earlier than these
Speaker 2: other stories, you have this version that's similar in pretty
Speaker 2: much every way, except it's not a lamb. It's like
Speaker 2: a human shape.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is fascinating. First of all, I love how
Speaker 1: all these later accounts were looking at They're all about
Speaker 1: that herbage. It's all about eatting up that herbage. But yeah,
Speaker 1: here with this, we have this, we have this, this
Speaker 1: ferocious version of it, something that's more in keeping with
Speaker 1: what we were saying, what you tend to want to
Speaker 1: expect from the wild world of myth and monsters, something
Speaker 1: you dare not approach, and if you do, you better
Speaker 1: know exactly where its weak spot is. And yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's I mean, I guess this is kind of a
Speaker 1: you have shades of umbilical cords and mammals here being
Speaker 1: compared two plants being rooted to the soil. And of
Speaker 1: course not only plants, but this would have been observed
Speaker 1: with things like mushrooms as well, with stems emerging from
Speaker 1: the soil and so forth. Yeah, and then I guess
Speaker 1: one would imagine then that essentially you have converging mythologies
Speaker 1: about things that are not plants rooted to the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's so strange and interesting. And anyway, I
Speaker 2: think in the next episode is when we'll have to
Speaker 2: come back to discuss some of the rational theories about
Speaker 2: the origin of the myth, and I think there's some
Speaker 2: pretty good explanations on offer, especially the one by Henry Lee,
Speaker 2: but there are multiple ones that have been put forward
Speaker 2: over the years. One last thing before we wrap up
Speaker 2: this episode is I wanted to mention how reading about
Speaker 2: the history of this mythological creature really makes me think
Speaker 2: about the benefits of having an evolutionary perspective on biology, because,
Speaker 2: of course, in nature is full of surprises, shocking surprises,
Speaker 2: but it also obeys deterministic physical laws, the most important
Speaker 2: of which are probably common descent and evolution by natural selection.
Speaker 2: And I think having an evolutionary perspective on life can
Speaker 2: help you sort out which types of surprising claims about
Speaker 2: nature are actually plausible in which are not so. The
Speaker 2: idea of a lamb that grows from a plant is
Speaker 2: not really remotely plausible if you understand that complex multicellular
Speaker 2: life forms arise only by varying and building upon the
Speaker 2: morphology of direct ancestors. You know, plants and animals arise
Speaker 2: from different chains of ancestors that diverged more than one
Speaker 2: point five billion years ago. So given what we know
Speaker 2: about plants and animals today, you're not going to get
Speaker 2: a plant that grows quadrupedal mammalians with bones and blood
Speaker 2: and fur out of it. Like, you know, there are
Speaker 2: tons of shocking, amazing things about the natural world, but
Speaker 2: they're shocking and amazing within something that makes sense, cladistically,
Speaker 2: within something that makes sense from the ancestors they emerge from.
Speaker 2: There's no physically plausible scenario in which a plant like
Speaker 2: that exists, given what we know about the history of
Speaker 2: life on Earth. But the authors of the Middle Ages,
Speaker 2: even if they were intelligent and well informed people, were
Speaker 2: not armed with a theory of biology that would allow
Speaker 2: them to tell the difference between an extraordinary but physically
Speaker 2: plausible claim about nature, and there are tons of those
Speaker 2: that turn out to be true, and a claim that
Speaker 2: just simply wouldn't happen because it doesn't make sense. Though,
Speaker 2: I think it's also interesting that even without a theory,
Speaker 2: even without a formal scientific theory explaining why this organism
Speaker 2: is pretty much impossible within the context of known Earth life,
Speaker 2: some people of the pre evil, the pre Darwin past
Speaker 2: had some kind of intuition that caused them to reject
Speaker 2: this story. Like Kercher, for example, he wasn't the only one,
Speaker 2: but you know, affamacious Kircher looks at these stories, he says, no,
Speaker 2: this is people are just getting confused. This is a
Speaker 2: planned and so even without a theory of evolution, some
Speaker 2: people were able to look at that story and think, Nah,
Speaker 2: nature is full of wonders, but that's not one of them,
Speaker 2: And I wonder, like, what are those intuitions? That's an
Speaker 2: interesting question on its own.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because it's likewise, it's hard for us to
Speaker 1: divorce ourselves from our basic understanding of the differences between
Speaker 1: plant and animals, you know. Yeah, Like my mind instantly
Speaker 1: goes to some of the just really amazing examples of
Speaker 1: mimicry in the world, you know, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times they are just really really amazing, but there are
Speaker 1: sort of limits to them. You know. It's like this,
Speaker 1: here's an organism that has evolved over time to have
Speaker 1: part of its anatomy or some function of its anatomy
Speaker 1: resembling that of another world organism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, well there.
Speaker 1: Are various examples of this, but like one simple one
Speaker 1: is a non toxic organism resembling the coloration of a
Speaker 1: toxic organism organism, right, but that's but there's a limit
Speaker 1: to it, right. It's not like where the act of
Speaker 1: mimicry also involves having the toxin you know, right, and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 2: Not without a long intervening period of having to develop
Speaker 2: that yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, right, or likewise, you know, part of an animal
Speaker 1: resembling a false head, it doesn't actually that head doesn't
Speaker 1: have functional eyeballs inside it, and so forth. Right, But
Speaker 1: but but yeah, it's hard to put yourself in the
Speaker 1: mindset where you don't have some of these basic laws
Speaker 1: in place and these basic differences in place in your mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just don't know what goes and what doesn't. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it is actually interesting reading some of the
Speaker 2: reasons given by these by these late medieval authors or
Speaker 2: Renaissance authors that came before they had a theory of evolution,
Speaker 2: but they had other reasons, some of which are spurio
Speaker 2: but interesting to read through. Like you mentioned earlier, a
Speaker 2: guy named Girolamo Cardano. This was an author of Pavia,
Speaker 2: and he was writing in the mid sixteenth century, and
Speaker 2: I remember he argued that this plant animal thing couldn't
Speaker 2: really exist because in order to have blood, it has
Speaker 2: to have a heart, and the soil that the plant
Speaker 2: was growing in did not have enough heat to create
Speaker 2: a heart.
Speaker 1: That's what he said, All right, Well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: his reason it's irrationale.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think he's sort of on the right track,
Speaker 2: but it also sounds kind of ad hoc. It's like
Speaker 2: he's just sort of making this up.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, to take it in another direction here,
Speaker 1: Like I was thinking back to some of the things
Speaker 1: we discussed last week, and Okay, so the idea that
Speaker 1: you would have a plant that would grow and it
Speaker 1: would essentially grow itself a sheep, and that sheep would
Speaker 1: eat the plants growing around, you know, feast on the herbage,
Speaker 1: and like the basic relationship there between this plan and
Speaker 1: the plant surrounding it is not that crazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things we discussed is that sometimes the
Speaker 1: places where you see the most dynamic interactions in the
Speaker 1: plant world are between one plant and another. Remind competition, yeah, competition,
Speaker 1: even if it's just you know, like two beam plants
Speaker 1: looking at the same pole, not looking at it, you know,
Speaker 1: sensing the same pole, sensing each other, and there's a
Speaker 1: competition for that resource. And then in some cases, you know,
Speaker 1: the competition that's taking place, it's not being you know,
Speaker 1: there's no need for some sort of fabulous sheep morph
Speaker 1: that grows out of the plant because the battle is
Speaker 1: taking place at the chemical level, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: more subtle battle. It's not, and it's not a battle
Speaker 1: that's taking place within the human realm and with the
Speaker 1: human time. It's taking place on the level of plant time.
Speaker 1: And therefore, for the most part, we do not.
Speaker 2: See Yeah, and I see what you're getting at there,
Speaker 2: because some attempts to explain the origin of this myth
Speaker 2: have looked into, well, what are some plants that essentially
Speaker 2: rob all of the area surrounding the plant of nutrition
Speaker 2: or poison its neighbors or something that plants that keep
Speaker 2: other plants from getting anywhere near them to make it
Speaker 2: look like they're surrounded by these patches of barren earth.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, But anyway, I think we'll have to wait
Speaker 2: until part two to come back and explore those explanations.
Speaker 1: That's right. But in the meantime, we would love to
Speaker 1: hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts on
Speaker 1: the vegetable lamb of Tartary and just you know, basically
Speaker 1: plants in general, the weirdness of plants, the weirdness of
Speaker 1: mythic and legendary plants as well. I'm also kind of
Speaker 1: surprised there's not a Pokemon of this thing, because I was,
Speaker 1: I was, I've been. My son has been showing me
Speaker 1: a lot of Pokemon creatures in his book that he has,
Speaker 1: his big compendium. It's it's a besty area of Pokemon,
Speaker 1: which I applaud and often have fantastic forms, and sometimes
Speaker 1: they have forms that remind me a little bit of
Speaker 1: vegetable lamb. Here, Like there's a creature that has like
Speaker 1: the legs of a turtle, but then it's instead of
Speaker 1: a shell, it has like an apple pie. And then
Speaker 1: you know, so there are a number of different creatures
Speaker 1: in there that have kind of animal and vegetable properties,
Speaker 1: you know, intertwined, and I feel like the vegetable Lamb
Speaker 1: of Tartary should have been in there. So I guess,
Speaker 1: Pokemon masters, if you are out there, the people who
Speaker 1: make these things, when you create some more Pokemon monsters,
Speaker 1: consider making the Lamb of Tartary. I don't know what
Speaker 1: the three different evolutions would be, but I'm sure you'll
Speaker 1: figure it out.
Speaker 2: Tell them right.
Speaker 1: I know you're listening Pokemon designers. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you would like to listen to other episodes and stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind, you can find Core episodes on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed We have listener mail on Monday, short form
Speaker 1: monster fact or Artifact on Wednesday, and on Fridays we
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a
Speaker 1: weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 2: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 2: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 2: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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