The Naming of the Shrew

Sometimes unbelievable things are all the rage, while others are lost in the shuffle of life. Today's tour will give you a glimpse into both kinds of curiosities.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
to the Cabinet of Curiosities. It happened with a bang.

(00:29):
A zoologist named Harold Strumkey had made a groundbreaking discovery
of a new species of shrew and was excited to
exhibit it to his peers. Strumkey, born in Strasburg, Germany,
was the curator of the Museum of the Darwin Institute.
He had come across a rare kind of animal known
as a rhino grade. Rhino grades had evolved over millions

(00:51):
of years into one nine species of shrew like mammals
that ran the gamut of biological function and form. For example,
there were some were shaped like worms, as well as
enormous carnivores that hunted for their prey like lions. But
despite their variety, many of the rhino grades had one
thing in common their noses. They used their noses to

(01:13):
move around and travel long distances. One species could even
launch itself into the air using its nose. The autopterics
or ear wing would flap its ears to fly backwards
controlling direction with its nose like a built in rudder.
The island where these animals lived had been discovered by
a Swedish soldier who had been held captive in a

(01:33):
Japanese pow camp. The vessel head escaped in had crashed
on Haiayi, a small Pacific archipelago, and he quickly noticed
the odd mammals roaming the landscape using only their noses.
There had been a civilization of people living there too,
but they've been unprepared for the soldiers unwanted companion the
common cold. The germs ravaged the local population, killing all

(01:56):
seven hundred of them in a short time, But the
soldiers discovery had found its way to Stumpy, who worked
tirelessly categorizing and sorting the rhinal grades into two groups,
single and multi noosed mammals. It was at this same
time when Stunkey began to work on a book of
his new research. Not only did some of these animals

(02:17):
flap their ears or bounce on their noses, some walked
upside down on four noses while their hands and feet
stuck straight up in the air. He compiled all the
information he had gathered into his nineteen fifty seven book
The Snouters, Form and Life of the Rhinal Grades. Stunkeys
discovery was the breakthrough of a lifetime, and it was

(02:38):
imperative that it be shared with the world. So he
invited zoologists and road and experts from all over the
world to join him on HAIII for a conference to
discuss his findings. And as I said at the beginning,
it happened with the bang. During the nineteen fifties. You see,
the United States had decided to carry out tests of
its nuclear arsenal in what it thought was a remote location.

(03:00):
Unbeknownst military officials at the time, the island chain they'd
selected for their tests was not, in fact uninhabited. While
they were there, a test bomb went off and in
an instant wiped out everything in its path. The islands
all sunk into the sea, the researchers were obliterated, and
the rhino grade entia were gone forever. All that remained

(03:23):
of the different species was Stunkey's book, which was translated
into English in nineteen sixty seven. But don't feel too
bad for the people and animals that were lost in
the blast. They didn't feel a thing when it happened,
because it never did those shrews that had bounced on
their noses or glided using their ears. They never existed,
neither did any of the researchers, or even the island

(03:45):
for that matter. The whole ordeal had started as a
scientific joke taken to the extreme. Harold strum Key had
been the pen name of German zoologist Geolf Steiner. Steiner
really was born in Strasbourg in nineteen oh ay, but
he never traveled to a remote archipelago. Steiner had been
an illustrator during World War Two and had drawn a

(04:07):
tiny mammal that walked on its nose based on descriptions
by poet Christian Morgenstern. Soon the snouters, as he called them,
started walking their way into his lectures and professional work.
He kept adding to their story, too, fleshing out their
biology and behaviors, until his fun little hobby had taken
on a life of its own. He included anatomical sketches,

(04:30):
wrote fake journal articles, and constructed a world for his
creatures that was so scientifically accurate that his colleagues had
become captivated by it as well. In fact, the first
chapter of his book was published in the nineteen sixty
seven issue of the American Museum of Natural History's official magazine,
without comment or critique. Two readers the snouters were living

(04:51):
breathing rodents, just like rats or mice. Steiner's hoax lives
on today. Academic papers continued to be published about his work,
as though it's still being researched. There are even real
animals bearing Strumkey's name, including a shrewd rat that lives
in Indonesia. It has a short snout like a pig's
and a set of long teeth. Although this roadent walks

(05:14):
on four legs, not its nose, But that doesn't mean
there couldn't be a creature out there like the one
Steiner described, just waiting to be discovered. To find it,
I suppose that will just have to follow our nose.

(05:42):
It doesn't take much for a fire to spread. It
starts with a spark, then a small flame, give it
some air and a little kindling, and it isn't long
before that flame has grown into an uncontrollable blaze. Sometimes
fires are necessary, they're deliberately set to clear old brush
to make way for new growth, and sometimes nature steps

(06:03):
in and starts the fire itself. In the everglades. For example,
fires triggered by lightning strikes engulfed the grass along the
river basin, improving water flow and habitats for local wildlife.
But not all fires healthy environment. During the mid eighteen hundreds,
fires were set to clear land for farms and railroad tracks.

(06:23):
Such a fire had been set in the Wisconsin town
of Peshtigo in October of eighteen seventy one. It had
been one of many controlled blazes started in order to
pave the way for new development. However, in unexpected weather
pattern brought in a cold front that day, and with
it came high winds. These winds spread the fire out,
causing it to grow into what experts called a firestorm.

(06:46):
Firestorms possessed specific traits that set them apart from other
kinds of fires. Flames and firestorms burn at two thousand
degrees fahrenheit or higher, with winds that blow it over
one hundred miles per hour. So as the fire spread,
it grew so large and powerful that it actually made
its way across the Peshtigo River, burning the town on

(07:07):
both sides. A flaming tornado, also called a fire whirl,
incinerated homes and train cars as it picked up and
tossed their smoldering holes into the air. Townsfolk fled as
quickly as they could, their first thought being to jump
into the river. Its waters were ice cold, despite the
flames burning on both sides. Many drowned, while others fell

(07:28):
victim to hypothermia, and those who couldn't make it out
of town in time will they succumbed to the fire
itself as it blazed across one point to million acres
of land. Before the fire started, Peshtigo, Wisconsin, had a
population of roughly seventeen hundred residents. A report filed two
years later listed the number of deceased as high as

(07:50):
twelve hundred, although the final number is thought to be
much higher. We may never know just how bad it was, though,
because town records were destroyed in the blaze. Coincidentally, at
the same time as the Peshtigo fire, another fire had
begun on the Door Peninsula in northeastern Wisconsin. It had
originally been thought that the fire in Peshtigo had gotten

(08:11):
so big and powerful that it had migrated across the
Green Bay and onto the peninsula. When that fire had
reached the small town of Robinsonville, a group of nuns
and families from the town hid inside the local church
and prayed for protection, but the fire quickly consumed the
town and lingered outside the chapel, surrounding it on all sides.

(08:32):
Everyone inside stood helpless. Ultimately, though their prayers seemed to
have worked, the church and those inside it somehow survived
the fire. About ten years after the Peshtigo and Door
Peninsula fires had been extinguished, theories surrounding their origins began
coming out of the woodwork. Perhaps they hadn't been started

(08:52):
by reckless railroad hands or over zealous farmers after all.
In fact, some people believe that fragments of a media
righte had landed in Westconson and ignited the areas where
they made impact. Scientists dispute this idea, though, as meteorites
are cold when they hit earth surface. But there is
something odd about two such large fires burning at the
same time in roughly the same area of Wisconsin. Both

(09:15):
events are relatively unheard of, and you might think two
thousand people dying over a million acres would be more
well known. But it's not surprising that nobody covered what
happened that day in Peshtigo. They probably had their hands
full with another blaze burning at the exact same time,
one that killed only three people but destroyed over seventeen

(09:37):
thousand buildings in the process. And everyone has heard of
this one, the Great Chicago Fire. I hope you've enjoyed
today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created

(10:01):
by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
learn all about it over at the World of Lore
dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,