September 17, 2025 • 55 mins
I'm joined by science journalist and author Cara Giaimo, to meet some of the real-life sea monsters from her book, Leaving the Ocean Was a Mistake. From tent-mouthed fish who kiss each other competitively, to ping-pong ball sponges that fooled the navy, these animals from every layer in the ocean have both cool life advice and freaky adaptations. Discover all this and more as we answer the age-old question: how do you enforce your boundaries when you're spineless?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show, we're going to talk about
some weird, wet, and sometimes mucusy sea creatures. No matter
how strange they seem, their behavior isn't always so different
from us terrestrial animals, and maybe we can learn how
(00:28):
to live a little from them. From the sunlight to
the abyssle zone. We're going to go over some of
the weirdest citizens of the sea. Because joining me today
is science writer for The New York Times and author
of the new book Leaving the Ocean Was a Mistake.
Life Lessons from Sixty Sea Creatures. Kara Jaimo.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Welcome, Hi, Katie. It's great to be back.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah, I got a.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Copy of the book.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
It's very enchanting. I love all of it. The illustrations
by Vlad Sinkovic areautiful. And then you have coupled with
it these amazing nuggets of knowledge wisdom about each of
these sea creatures, and I feel like it gives you
a really beautiful, charming sense of how wildly diverse the
(01:18):
ocean is. And all these really weird things that are
so like, they're so unusual, and it goes beyond sort
of just like kind of the sea creatures we know,
like sharks, jellyfish, et cetera. I mean that there are
there are definitely ones that you will know in this
(01:38):
book and really interesting facts about them as well. But yeah,
I love it because it really gives a nice sense
of how weird these animals can be and nonsensical they
can be. Yeah, I mean, I want to talk about
the subjects of your book a little bit, but first,
of these sixty sea creatures you wrote about, are there
(02:01):
any that really were kind of your favorites or close
to your favorite or the weirdest one that you were
most surprised to write about?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
I mean I found the research and writing process for
this book actually maybe surprisingly surprising, considering that I do
write a lot about.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Weird little critters.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
But the ocean was a little bit of a zone
for me that I had not thoroughly explored, So I
kept being excited at surprise to like run into a
weird guy. I think one of my favorites. Let me
just flip and find it in my own book. There's
like a special interspecies friendship which I always love between
(02:44):
this really huge, kind of scary looking jellyfish and this
really tiny fish. So it's the giant Phantom jelly which
is like a really very big jellyfish. It's bell so like,
you know, the top part is the size of like
your rige bean bag chair, and then it has these
really long arms that I wrote are like haunted drapes,
(03:05):
so it's sort of like a haunted looking jellyfish. And
then it has this tiny friend, this little white fish
called the pelagic brachela, and they just like are always
found together.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Like the funny thing about doing research.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
For this book is also that a lot of these
creatures have only been seen three or four times total
in the history of like recorded anything. But every time
scientists and researchers have seen this big jellyfish, it's had
a little fish friend.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So I think that's kind of nice.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
And do they have any ideas as to why these
guys are buddies?
Speaker 2 (03:38):
No, they don't.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
I don't think anyone has really looked into it. Like
deep sea research is hilarious because they're just kind of like,
I mean, not to you know, sell anyone short. But
all they can really do is be like, hey, look
at that guy. Oh he's gone. I hope I see
him again.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Sometimes we check out this weirdo we found. Yeah, anyway,
never seen him again. Yeah, that's this is something that happens.
Like where I'm researching for the show things about deep
sea creatures, I find one that's like, oh, this looks
incredibly gnarly. It must have so much interesting research done
(04:14):
on it. And no, not for a lack of wanting,
but it is very difficult to observe them and the
wild and often, like when you actually get specimens to
the surface, they just are not at all like what
they are in the ocean. You can't observe their behaviors
(04:35):
physically they might explode because when they're deep enough they don't.
They aren't actually designed to be able to survive totally.
And are you know PSI's up here, which is relatively
light compared to the crushing depths, so there's sort of
an explosion rather than an implosion. Yes, So they're really
(04:57):
hard to study. So so when we do find these
weird things, sometimes all we can do is speculate, right,
like look at behaviors of other animals, we say, there's
a lot of like symbiotic behaviors where you know, I
mean like one could imagine like maybe this little fish
is able to get some protection from the jellyfish. Maybe
(05:20):
it's eating some of the crumbs that the jellyfish is collected,
and maybe that helps with the jellyfish's hygiene, maybe it
helps attract other prey, the.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Movement of the fish.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
All of this is I pulled all of this out
of my butt, Like this is not these are not
real facts. This is just there's so many potential possibilities
for this friendship that we have between them, because they're
like some this happens also with like terrestrial animals where
you'll just have like this very odd like almost it's
(05:57):
a buddy comedy because they don't seem like they would
work together. These tarantulas and micro highlight frogs where they're
just like heaty tiny little guys, little frogs, and then
these giant spiders and you think like, oh, the spider's
gonna eat that little guy. They don't, and they have
this like great relationship like Timone and Pumba. But yeah,
(06:22):
I love that. I have picked out some of my
favorites from the book and I've gone sort of in
order of descent, so like from the top of the
ocean to the bottom, which I also like in the
book that because I always get confused about ocean depths.
I'm like, yeah, pleagic zone, benthic zone, and then I
(06:43):
kind of like, I don't know, and then it gets
really dark yep, and I get confused. So I really
appreciate the structure of the zone of the book where
we go from the sunlight zone all the way down
to be a bus zone to the very bottom.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
And you'll see like, oh, I'm sorry, no, go ahead,
you'll see like we my editor and I kind of
made this plot where as the creatures get deeper. Not
only did the illustrations get darker, because that's just what
makes sense, but the advice goes from being like maybe
a little bit cheesy to being like super surreal and weird,
(07:22):
because the idea is that these deep sea creatures like
are going to be even more out of touch with
our lives than the ones that are closer to us.
But there's still something to take from even the.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Most strange advice.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, and I hope it made uh to be clear,
like these like as you learn about each of these animals.
They are also giving you some life advice, which I
appreciate and I do need. So I do you appreciate
their their advice, but particularly actually this first one is
great advice for me. I like to be a nice person,
(07:54):
but when when you are like a friendly person, it's
also really important establish firm boundaries, which is the gloomy
octopus's specialty. I love octopuses. I can't talk about it
the enough. They're so they're so intro like, they're so
intelligent and kind of mystical, but then they're also surprisingly
(08:17):
spunky sometimes, which I love. So talk about a little
bit this this gloomy octopus who does not have a
backbone but has a backbone.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
So I really like this advice too, And I think
one of my sisters said that this is her favorite
piece of advice in the book. So the advice that
the gloomy octopus is giving to us is never be
afraid to set and enforce your boundaries. And the behavioral
observation that this advice comes from is that gloomy octopuses
are mostly solitary, like they spend a lot of their
(08:51):
time alone, like many octopuses, do, and if their neighbors
get too close to them, they will throw stuff at
them like shells, dirt and algae based whatever's around, in
order to kind of keep that boundary literally sort of like,
don't come any closer to me. I'm chilling by myself.
I don't need your intrusion here. I don't care how
curious you are. I don't care what you need. Like
(09:12):
this is my alone time almost all the time, so
that is that is kind of funny. I think this
gloomy octopus research came from one of my favorite research sites,
which is the two group octopus living sites Octopolus and Octlantis,
which are both off the coast of Australia, and we're
discovered by Australian scuba divers and snorkelers, and these are
(09:36):
places where octopuses actually do live together, which again is
as far as we know, kind of rare because they
like to be on their own. But these places are
so filled with it's like the undersea topography attracted so
many shellfish that the octopus has just started hanging out
and eating all the shellfish and then throwing the shells away.
And then when they see the shells away, they would
make beautiful sort of like structures that could be used
(09:58):
at octopus houses. So they're all like, okay, let's just
stay here. And then they ended up living in almost
like a little octopus city. And then they're like, oh no,
I hate living in a city.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I want to be on my own. And so at
that point they started throwing stuff at each other.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I love that. I think this happens probably with a
lot of introverts, where you find like a hobby that
introverts enjoy, from magic, the gathering to crocheting, whatever it is,
and then you're like, well, it's really convenient to share
the hobby with other people. And then you join a
(10:35):
bunch of groups. Ah, here's like a croche group, and
then and it's great because we can share yarn. And
then you're like, oh right, but I'm also very shy. Yes,
I forgot I forgot that detail. I love octopuses are
so relatable. This behavior reminds me a little bit of
the day octopus, which is another unique one in that
(10:57):
it does seem to have a relationship with other animals,
not necessarily other octopuses, but it seems to hunt with
other fish. They'll have sort of like the large groups
of these smaller predatory fish that kind of hang out
with the octopus. It's a little bit of a question
of like they are the fish just hanging out because
the octopus will act like a lawnmower and churn up
(11:20):
all this stuff and then the fish can benefit or
is it more of a mutualistic relationship. I think researchers
are kind of on the side of it being mutualistic
because the octopus seems to be able to benefit from
following the fish, like finding where the fish the fish
may be better at finding like prey, but then the
fish can't get to it because you have these coral
(11:43):
reefs that have a lot of nooks and crannies maybe
even like sand or rocks in the way that the
fish can't get at because the prey has learned how
to hide really well. So then the octopus can get
in there and flush it out. But sometimes the octopus
will give one of these little fish that it tolerates
really well a smack get smack with a tenticle, and
(12:07):
so researchers think maybe it's something where one of the
fish crosses a line isn't really cooperating in the hunt well, enough,
but it's it's just like it. It makes me think
of sort of those old tapestries you see with like
hunters with all their hunting dogs with these like but
it's these octopuses with a bunch of me going around.
(12:29):
I don't, I don't. I do not suggest that anyone
smacks their hunting dogs. I think that this is only
acceptable when it's done by an octopus because they're their
legs are so squishy.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Yes, yeah, okay, it's just more of like a it's
more of a communication than a violence.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Maybe, yes, yeah, exactly. That's what's so interesting to me,
because like the octopus could turn around, Like if a
fish is annoying it, why isn't the octopus just turning around,
grabbing it and eating it?
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Right?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Like there's something I mean, it's probably a pretty careful
calculation where it's like, if it's a larger fish that
is going to be more of a struggle, that's probably
not worth it to the octopus. But also there's probably
some recognition of like, hey, we're working together pretty well
in general. Killing something that is helping me doesn't do
(13:19):
any good for me, But teaching it a lesson with
a little sort of limp noodled whack is you know,
constructive only in this circumstance. I'm usually very much a pacifist,
but you know, when you're literally don't have a spine,
I don't know what else you can do to enforce
your boundaries with You might have to throw some stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
The way they throw this stuff is cool too, Just
before we move on, they'll like scoop it up with
their arms, and then they'll sometimes use their little siphons
that they have to like blow it.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Oh amazing, like leaf flowers. Yeah, exactly, that's incredible. We
see that in like captive octopuses too, where they'll either
use their own siphons so like push things around, or
they learn to use the the pumps in their tanks,
and they'll like take maybe like something that's floating. Like
sometimes researchals will kind of leave little toys for them,
(14:14):
not they're not real toys, but it's like I've heard,
like empty plastic bottles or something, and then the octopus
likes to play fetch with themselves by like throwing it
in the current. Yeah. So they're very clever and also
sometimes a little bit cranky, which I love. Yeah. So
another this is kind of like going in the wildly
opposite direction. But hump back whales like one of the
(14:37):
largest vertebrates in the world that lives in the ocean.
It's it's always interesting to me because they're so whales
are so huge. The assumption I think is that we
should know pretty much everything about them because they're the
biggest animal in the world. They're mammals like us, they're vertebrates.
(14:59):
They're so present in our popular culture. But then when
you get to these like relatively large whales, the research
is a lot thinner than you would think because it's
just so hard to like observe them and kind of
station yourself, Like, yes, we see them when they're migrating,
but then when they're like deep in the ocean in
(15:20):
their element, there's a lot of behaviors that we kind
of miss. So I really love it when we do
find something really interesting about them, because they're really really complicated.
So I love you talk about like people I think
are generally aware of whale song that they sing. They
have unique songs, and they're socially intelligent. But what you
(15:44):
talk about, I think is a pretty interesting fact that
I don't think people would be as familiar with in
terms of their their song repertoires.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
Yeah, so this is super fun and something I've had
in my mind since I first wrote about it, maybe
like six years ago, just because of the new study
came out and I happened to see it. But like
you said, yeah, humpback whales are known for singing. Their
songs are quite famous. There are like recordings of them
that you can buy in cool New age stores to
(16:16):
this day. And then everybody knows what their songs sound like.
They're very like haunting and beautiful and exactly and basically
like songs are a cultural thing for them, and different
populations of these whales who meet at particular breeding grounds
all around the world will have like certain songs, and
(16:38):
those songs will change from year to year, but they'll
all kind of like have their their favorite songs that
they all sing together. But researchers notice that different populations
were sort of like borrowing from each other's songs and
like remixing little bits into their own songs.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
And they were like, how is this happening? When are
they hanging out? And they figured out that there is
like this place in the South Pacific specifically where whales.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
In the area all come and hang out and sing
together and like kind of teach each other maybe or
like listen to each other's songs. And then when they
depart again, that's when this like remixing happens. When they're
sort of like, I heard this really cool thing that
this guy from way far away was doing, and now
I'm going to try to do it. And so yeah,
it's this very cool cultural spot off the coast of
(17:25):
New Zealand that I like to call a humpback whale
karaoke zone where.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Everybody comes and tries out each other's music. And so
that's amazing.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
The advice that we kind of took from that for
the book is share your art with friends and don't
be weird about copyright.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, I completely agree with that.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Fair use.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Whales understand fair use exactly. Why why doesn't YouTube? Yeah,
I love that. I mean it is really interesting, like
it is. I think we when it comes to animals
that have songs, even animals that are arguably less complicated
and intelligent versus wales, like songbirds, you do see a
(18:09):
lot of evidence of local dialects and then cultural shifts,
generational shifts in song choice. Birds are also influenced by
when they like migrate and they encounter maybe birds that
have like a different dialect from them, they then start
to kind of shift their songs a little bit. So
there's a lot of this like kind of I think,
(18:33):
you know, when you have an animal who learns their
songs and their calls, like, because there are plenty of
like say songbirds or animals that make a certain kind
of call, who are just born basically with a pre
programmed thing that they do. Usually it's very simple because
you don't have a lot of sort of space to
(18:56):
write really complicated programming in an in a newborn animal's brain.
But for the ones that have really complicated repertoires, that's
almost always through learning, which is the case for whales,
which is the case for songbirds. And when you have that,
then you almost it seems almost inevitable that you're gonna
(19:17):
have like cultural changes in cultural influence because it's since
it's a learning process, since they have to learn from
those around them, there's there's like really interesting evolution of
songs of groups of like and then you see the
influence of other groups. So it's much more I think
(19:38):
similar to like you'll find in animals who are learners
that kind of they when you whenever you have different
populations of them, you inevitably have kind of different cultural
habits and then those influencing each other, which I find
really really interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
And like.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
When and I first wrote about this, one of the
commenters on the article was like, why do we call
these songs, which, like, I don't know, that's a whole
question in itself. But then this person said, like, maybe
these whales are exchanging information, Like maybe this is a
form of oral storytelling or like passing along stuff from
like this is what it's like in my part of
(20:20):
the ocean right now, Like if you come through, look
out for that octopus who's throwing shit or whatever. And yeah,
I thought that was really interesting too, because I know
there are more and more attempts to kind of decode
whale language, and I have a lot of thoughts about that,
but this could be, yeah, a way of them not
(20:41):
only like having fun, but like telling each other important stuff,
the same way that humans do in songs and other
species as well.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
I definitely think there could be something too whales communicating
information through their song. I would my guess would be
it's probably not like the same kind of like grammatical
structure as human language has. But maybe there's something some
other way that they're communicating that just does not not
(21:11):
how we use language, But that doesn't mean it's not
a form of language or communication.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
It's so funny to think about, because like, I don't
know humans. We have this spoken language that we use
for so so many things, and then we have a
written equivalent, and like to an outside observer, I don't
I think it would be pretty hard to figure out
that those things were connected, or that this thing we're
doing with our mouths is necessarily communicating, because we do
(21:37):
so many other things. So sometimes I think about, like
when we were watching whales and listening to them, we're
like sort of like aliens trying to figure out like
what they're doing. And if aliens were watching us, they
might be like, oh, humans communicate through the length of
their hair, or like humans communicate through like the weird
things they do with their hands, like as they're moving
their mouths, like they wouldn't necessarily.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Italians do, for sure, and I should know I live
in Italy. That part's true.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, but like we have to.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Yeah, it's so easy to like map map our own
stuff onto other creatures, and to some extent that's helpful
because we all do share needs and drives and a
certain evolutionary history.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
But it only can go so far.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, exactly, we can overdo it with putting sort of
human feelings onto animals, but we can also underdo it
where we just like, of course, we're going to share
a lot of characteristics with animals. We're all we've all
evolved on the same sort of stuff as they have
in general, so there's going to be some similarities. I
(22:44):
do want to talk about the sarcastic French head before
that break. I love these guys so much. They're this
sort of like when they're just kind of in their
normal state, they're kind of this awkwardly shaped brown fish
with this huge head and kind of a slim body.
They just look a little bit funky. There's nothing to
(23:05):
me they like. They're not intimidating at all. They're just
kind of like a weirdly shaped little fish. But then
when they're competing with each other, they have this really
like it's both kind of It can be viewed as
scary or funny, I think, depending on your perspective. But yeah,
(23:27):
you want to talk a little bit about their the
special party trick that they have.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
Yes, it's totally worth looking up a video of this
when anyone has the time. If this was like a
sort of magical book, I would have put a moving
image on this page because these French heads, which, like
Katie said, are sort of like cute, droopy mouthed little
fish that kind of like bop along underwater when they
(23:52):
are feeling you know, it's hard to say if they're
feeling aggressive, if they're feeling flirty, like why they do this,
but they open their mouths and their mouth opens like
like a horror movie monster.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Mouth or like yeah, like Predator from Predator, you know, yeah,
that has a little like weird sort of I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, it's like a like yeah, like a pop up tent.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
It's sort of like pop yeah, and it's suddenly like
so much bigger and like so much sort of more
like scarily angled. And uh So they do this and
one will go like wow at the other one, and
then the other one will go like waw back, and
then they sort of just like make out, like they
squish their mouths together and they like around yeah. Yeah,
(24:37):
and nobody is totally sure, like what this is about
or why they do it?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
And the top.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
Theory is like, okay, it's like an aggressive contest almost
like you know, deer with antlers, and the winner is
going to get like the best house, which is right,
It's like if you think about it as like a
human reality competition show that's on, like you know, the
HGTV or what ever, it's like yeah, fringe head house
(25:02):
makeout competition.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Honestly, the housing market is so messed up, like if
we just had a new system where it's like whoever
has the most unfoldable mouth gets the biggest house, I'm
fine with that.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
I don't know, like.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
It's I think it's it's already it's already a pretty
messed up market. Yeah, yeah, I do think that the
theory that this is like a form of like I
because it's this kind of competition happens a lot between
males with a lot of other species where yes, you
could fight each other, but both the victor and the
(25:40):
loser uh suffers some cost from that, right, could be energy,
it could be injury, it could even be killing one another. Right,
so there's a big cost involved to physically fighting with arrival.
If you're fighting over resources, over territory, over access to emails.
(26:01):
There's a motivation to fight, but actually fighting is really costly.
So a lot of animals have developed kind of a
system where they either sort of like measure each others up,
like their bodies, Like they look at their bodies and
they're like, you know, you might have two elephant seals
kind of waddle up to each other and like kind
(26:22):
of size each other up, like, Okay, who's actually gonna
win this, like before they start slamming their necks into
each other, right, because neither of them necessarily wants to fight,
because they would much rather it just be like, oh, yeah,
I know you're way bigger, like I'll be gone bye,
I'll see you. Because that's better for the one that
(26:43):
would lose, certainly, but also for the one that would win,
because the one that would win might still get injured
or at least have to waste a bunch of effort
fending off all these little guys.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
So you they.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Want to generally be able to find out like, Okay,
who's tougher, who's bigger? The only the problem is when
you have a situation where it's less clear right where
it's like, ah, we don't know who's actually gonna win.
We're kind of the same size. And then they actually
have to fight, and it can be pretty pretty grizzly
with all sorts of animals, like from from deer to
(27:16):
elf and seals to lions. But then with these French heads,
which I find really interesting. Of course we don't know,
and so this is a little bit it's out of
my butte university, but kind of like an educated butt,
so you know, take from it what you will. It
seems like they have kind of come up with maybe
a like a symbolic display of fitness, right with like
(27:38):
jaw size, right, because jaw size is a that would
be like a fairly honest signal of fitness in a
lot of ways. But their jaws are very like ornamental
and weird in a way that it makes it seem
like they're kind of trying to send a strong signal
to each other of like, hey, I'm really tough, to
the point where it's become very much like a ritualistic
(28:01):
dance where they almost have it seems like they've almost
completely done away with the any kind of realistic fighting
and it's more like a sports game, right, and then
the loser of this like weird kissing sport goes off,
and then the winner gets the nice house. So it's
I think it's really interesting. There's definitely some kind of
(28:24):
communication going on here where they have sort of traded
in actual weaponry for kind of a more symbolic like hey,
like the flag I'm waving is bigger than yours, so
like that's how we're gonna settle this.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
I've just been watching this video of them on loop.
It's in the New York Times rite up of this paper,
which I didn't write. It's by Jason din But the
video is just like they're in a little tank, the
two fringe heads. They are like approximately the same size,
and one of them is in this like really sweet
looking house, which is a shell, and the other one
(28:58):
doesn't seem to have a house, and so the one
without a house is like, ugh, fine, I guess I
better try to go get a house. He goes up
to the shell, and the one in the shell just
kind of like rises out of the shell and it's
like it is time for me, like you said, to
perform the ritual and just like opens his mouth like waw,
and the other one's like fine, and it's like wah,
(29:18):
and they just press their mouths together. And then the one,
the loser who doesn't live in the shell, it doesn't
take that long for him to be like okay, like
I had to try, you know, like you said, it's
not really like a It doesn't seem that high stakes.
It seems a little bit more like there's two guys
in the weight room and one of them isn't done
with his reps yet, and the other one's trying to
(29:40):
get on the bench, and they have a little like
right yeh, and then order is restored.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
It's like a little dance you do when you're on
the sidewalk and you're both kind of like figuring out
who shouldn't do exactly left versus the right. I'm really
bad at that. I do that all the time. But yeah,
it's it's really it is really funny to me how
they've you know, like again, we like Kara was saying,
we don't exactly know why they do this, but it
definitely seems like some kind of ritualistic, symbolic placeholder for
(30:11):
actual aggression, actual fighting, some form of communication that is
helping them to resolve conflict, which is I think really nice. Yeah,
a nice, nice lesson. We can learn from them totally.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
And the advice that we have for them is, if
you can solve it with fighting, you can probably solve
it with smooching exactly.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
I agree with that.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
I think the world needs more giant tint flap smooching
versus fighting. We're going to take a quick break and
then when we come back, we're gonna head deeper down
into the Twilight Zone, which is not just the rod
Sterling Show, but an actual part of the ocean, and
then even deeper as we discuss some of the amazing animals.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
From Kara's book.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
All Right, so now we're in the twilight Zone, just
a little darker. There's still light there, but it's definitely
getting a little dimmer. But the one I want to
talk about is the sea elephant, which not to be
confused with like elephant seals or elephant nose fish. These
(31:24):
are snails and they're really I found one photo of
it being held by I guess like a fisherman who
found it, and it's got the doofiest little face like
in the water. Like when they're in the water, they
are kind of hard to see because they're very transparent,
and they're kind of they looked sort of like this
ghostly outline. They they don't even look three dimensional really.
(31:48):
They look like a weird light pencil sketch of some
kind of weird globby snail shaped critter. And they don't
have shells, so they're just like all blobular. But then
when this guy has them in his hand, it's like
looking directly into the camera and you can see a
little face and they've got these long proboscises that look
(32:09):
like elephant noses. But it just looks like this weird
little elephant cartoon. Yeah, just the stupidest looking animal I've
seen in a while. So, uh, do you want to
talk a little bit about the elephant snail?
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Yeah, I mean sorry, the sea elephant.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Yeah, the sea elephant.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
Something truly amazing about doing research for this book was
like I had no idea like how many different sort
of tiny, little translucent guys are just like floating around
like hoping.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
For the best in there.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
Kind of just like okay, like I can move in
three dimensions, I being tossed about.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I have few defenses, and I'm just gonna try to
make this work. Yeah, and the sea elephant is one
of them.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
And so yes, long time back and evolutionary history, these
guys had shells and presumably they lived, you know, on
the bottom or somewhere else where gravity would pull them
down and they had the protection of their shell, but
they evolved to live in the open water instead, totally shellless.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
They have this really funky long nose.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
Like you said, which is super cute, and they kind
of just like tumble around in the water column and
even though they don't have a shell to curl up inside,
they still curl, which I think is really cute. They're
in sort of like a summersault shape most of the time.
And so the advice that they are giving is remember
your roots, remember the snail times, even if you're in
(33:36):
a evolutionary stage that is maybe a bit more scary
and free falling.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
I'm always trying to be humble and remember the snail time.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Yeah, but yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Mean, they're interesting because they're movements. They even if they
don't like ambulate really fast in one direction, their movements
can be surprisingly like they're they're moving around quite a bit,
like if you compare it to say terrestrial snails movement
or even like a c snail's movement, Like they can
move around quite a bit, it just doesn't seem to
(34:08):
like propel them much in one direction. There's a lot
of like floundering, which I think is really cute. But yeah,
that the the the sort of like, well, why would
they like shells seem really helpful?
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Why did they lose their shells?
Speaker 1 (34:24):
That actually happens quite a bit in the ocean, where
you'll have something that starts out with a shell and
then loses it, like with a lot of molluscs. So
like cephalopods, like squid and octopuses, they used to have
like their common ancestor had like a shell that was
pretty weird like for some of them, like some of these,
(34:45):
like squid ancestors had like a giant conical shell that
looks like this like sort of giant unicorn horn type
thing that when you look at it, it's like all right,
I mean I get it, but it's a little much.
And so thought is that. I mean, you still have
nautiluses that have their shells, but for them, you know,
(35:06):
like for squid and octopuses, they don't have them and
they just probably like they got out competed by predators
that came along that had better defenses, and so they
went into the niche of being squishy, being to fit
into things and being able to hide under stuff, and
then as predators being to squished themselves into narrow passages that.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
They can get stuff out of.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
So I could not I found scant information on the clephant.
It seems like these are one of the ones where
we basically know they exist, that they're weird, and they
have eyes, we know that, but otherwise what exactly they're
(35:49):
up to is a little bit of a mystery. They're
one of these one of these weird guys that we
kind of know that what they look like, we know
they have eyeballs, uh, and that they used to have shells.
But then otherwise we're like, what do you doing, little guy?
And it's like, I don't know, just being being a
(36:10):
little guy, being a transparent little guy, trying not to
get eaten.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
A lot of these, I mean, you mentioned this, a
lot of these snails and these shellless snails are also
like very ferocious predators. Like supposedly this c elephant is
a ferocious predator. It's just kind of hard to imagine. Yeah,
there's always going to be a smaller, more translucent guy
than you around to eat in.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
These Yeah, there, schnalls is a little bit vacuum like,
so I can because they've got mouth parts at.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
The very tip. So if you're if you're.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Like a little planktonic creature, I could see this being intimidating.
But to me, it is a premium goofass, So it's
really hard to imagine them as predators. Before we move
on to the deeper zones of the ocean, I want
to talk about the fire breathing shrimp. Yes, honestly, it
looks more like they're barfing up sort of like supernatural ecdoplasm.
(37:03):
But let's talk a little bit about their very very
unique defense mechanism totally.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
So one cool thing about the ocean is that some
creatures can like either create or use bioluminescence, which is
like biologically produced light because they're especially when you get
deeper in the ocean, there's not a lot of natural
light that makes its way down there. So if you
can make your own light, or you can get like
(37:32):
a bacteria to make light that you can use.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
That's my preferred method. Get the bacteria to do the
work for me.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
You can kind of have this cool signaling like goo
that you can use however you want. And you know,
the anglerfish famously sometimes use it to like lure other
fish by just having like a little beacon and the
fish come over. But the fire everything shrimp, who I agree,
they gave him a very dignified name, but he's really
(38:01):
just barfing. He stores up this bioluminescent blue colored goo
in an organ called the hippato pancreas, which I don't
believe that humans have, but I guess I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
And then when for.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Sure we do, I don't know if we have a
hippado pancreas.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
If we do, maybe it's filled with glowing goo, so
that could be a cool thing to discover at some point.
But this guy, he stores this, uh, this goo in
hishippato pancreas, and he if he gets scared or threatened,
he's just like blah.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
And then the blue gooo comes out. When it hits
the water, it lights up.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
It's almost like if you crack a glow stick right
that triggers the light. And then the predator is like, WHOA,
where the bluegoo come from? Gets freaked out, and this
scrimp shrimp can escape.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
So it's a really good Yeah, yeah, it's a it's
a similar like you do see that with Like so
squid have the the ink that they can release, which
is a similarly defensive like, ah, you're threatening me, Like
here's a distruction, you know, like if anyone watches King
of the Hill, it's the dale Gripple's pocket sand that
he throws at you, like pocket sand you know, gets away.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Terrestrial animals there are forgot what they're named. They're there
the there's a few baby birds actually who use either
projectile vomiting or pooping to ward off predators where it's like, ah,
you know, like you're coming at me, here's like some
startling vomit.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
So it is.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
It is a technique, but I don't think I know
of any other defensive vomitters who bio use bioluminescence. Like
certainly you can use bioluminescence as sort of defensive distracting posturing.
That usually have seen that in animals that have actual
structures on their body that contain the bioluminescent gel. Whereas
(39:55):
these guys just like they have it you know, in
their in their patto pang grease and then vomit it up,
which is a very unique method of distracting predators. It's
it's very it's pretty. It's the prettiest vomit I think
I've seen.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Yeah, it's very pretty.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
So now let's move down to the midnight zone. Just
to briefly mention the Ping Pong tree sponge seems like
it might have almost accidentally caused an international incident because
it is this is one of those things where it's like,
it looks like it comes from one of those sort
of pulp sci fi books where they imagine an alien landscape,
(40:39):
and this is like the alien tree you'd find on
an alien planet, which also, for some reason, also has
beautiful women on it, and that's never explained. But this
is like, this is a really weird looking thing that
does not look it neither looks like a living creature.
It looks artificial, nor does it look like an animal,
(41:00):
which it is.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
It has a wonderful name, the Ping Pong tree sponge,
because that's what it looks like. Yes, so what you
hinted at is that I read that when US Navy
officers first saw the Ping Pong tree sponge in underwater
surveillance photos, they thought that it was like a Russian
device that was spying on the ocean. Granted I saw
(41:25):
this only in one source, but I felt like I
had to include it because I really want to know more.
I looked so hard for more information. I might have
to do like a Foyer request or something. So if
anybody knows about the near international incident caused by the
Ping Pong tree sponge, please get in touch with me,
because there's nothing I want to know about more. But
the website I found it on is like a government website,
(41:47):
so I do believe it.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
But I just couldn't find anything.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
Else, you know.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
I mean, I just assume there's a lot of like
things during the Cold War where we almost almost blew
each other up and pass because of some kind of
weird sea creature where we're like, it's a Russian, a
Russian weapon, but it just turns out to be a
weird little sea sponge. It also, to me, it looks
kind of like a lamp you might buy in the seventies.
(42:13):
It's very it's very cool looking. But yeah, the the
you're mentioned in the book, like the structure of it
is actually not just like decorative obviously, but it's to
capture tiny crustaceans, tiny animals on these actual balls which
(42:34):
have like a bunch of little you can't really see
them from far away, but they have a bunch of
tiny little like hooks to catch little guys onto these balls.
So it's a it's functional, even though it looks like
something some kind of ikea lamp that would be called
like a bog or something.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah, it's got they're like little birds, I think, right.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Imagine, sponges are so cool because they are also predators.
They have to eat other stuff, but they can't move
when they're adults, so they need to come up with
all these weird strategies like being covered in hooky ping
pong balls.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
Yeah, no, it's amazing. They're sessile usually meaning that they
stick in one spot. But yeah, they still got to eat,
and so they've got all sorts of like weird weird
uh food gathering techniques that so now we're going to
go down to the abyssele zone. Talk about another weird
food gathering technique, the tripod fish. I love these guys
(43:37):
so much. They're very weird to see on a deep
sea camera. They look like lawn ornaments because it looks
like someone took something that's a pretty normal fish shape,
maybe a little longer. They do also have a pair
of fins that kind of look like rabbit ears, ghostly
rabbit ears, but otherwise it just kind of looks like
(43:58):
a fish. It's not that weird. But it also looks
like someone stuck them on like three rods, like two
coming from the front, one coming from near its table,
from from its tail, and then stuck them on the
ocean floor like ornamentation. Like they look like something weird
you could pick up at a discount like a home
(44:23):
supply store, where it's like these aren't selling well because
nobody wants a decorative fish, but it's these are alive.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
They aren't.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
They are real fish, and they are doing this on purpose.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
So these fish are very crafty.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
They also have to eat, but they don't want to
have to swim around and hunt for stuff. So presumably
evolutionarily they started out without these weird long feet, but
eventually they evolved because like if you sort of are
in the ocean sort of hanging out and you just
open your mouth, like the current will bring some food
to you, and what these guys eventually figured out on
(45:01):
an evolutionary timescale is like if they're about three feet
off the sand and they're opening their mouth, there's more
food because the current is like stronger up there. It's
like a sweet spot, so it's gonna bring more food
into your mouth. So they just yeah, they have developed
these tripods that allow them to kind of just like
stand three feet above the sand.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
And yeah, when you see these.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
Deep sea videos or photos of them, they're so funny
because they're just like weird. It's like you said, it's
like someone just stuck them in the sand and they're
like hanging out with their mouths open, just eating.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
It looks like a prank. It doesn't look like something
that does naturally occur, right, It looks like someone, as
a prank, stuck a bunch of fish on like weird
tripods on the seafloor just to like give researchers with
their deep sea cameras kind of a scare. But no,
they're real. Uh it's uh yeah, it's in like those
legs are like kind of fin extensions that are that
(45:56):
somehow managed to be like these kind of like tough
protrusions that keep them stuck up there. Just like I love, yeah,
I love the I love the like they say that
necessity is the mother of invention. I think laziness is
a huge contributor to invention and I really appreciate it.
(46:19):
The advice that is in your book is that you
should stretch yourself as much as possible, especially when reaching
for snacks. Yes, as as the as the wife of
a very tall person, I have developed my own evolutionary
technique to reach snacks that have been placed high up,
(46:41):
which is tongs like arm extensions. So when my husband,
like he's not trying to keep the food away from me,
he just like puts things up high because that's like
where he like, that's where he's at, you know, that's
his that's his zone. And then I'm like down here
in the abyss zone going up. But so use I
(47:03):
use tongs. So I feel like me and this fish,
I mean, this tripod fish can relate to each other
really well.
Speaker 4 (47:13):
I just wanted to mention I learned about the tripodfish
because I was writing about Costa Rican Deep Sea Expedition.
And on this expedition and a lot of expeditions that
go through the Schmidt Ocean.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Institute do this.
Speaker 4 (47:28):
They brought artists on board to kind of like be
part of it and create work that would help people
see what everybody was seeing on board. And there was
this painter, Carlos Hiller, who was painting all the stuff
they found, and he has really beautiful, sort of like
funny but also very moving tripod fish paintings.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
That I really love. So that's what got me into
this fish and I recommend looking him up.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
All right, Yeah, I got I gotta do that because
I love I mean, I love the art in the book.
It's also because like I would when I was looking
at these animals, uh, I would also like look at
photos of them. It's like no, like they they because
I was like, maybe, like this artist is interpreting that
dumb little look on this fish's face, like his kind
of creative interpretation. Like I was like, no, he got it.
(48:14):
He got the the stupid little look of this tripod
fish just waiting for food. It's very funny.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
I do.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
I do very much recommend this book. It's a it's
really a beautiful book that you can flip through and
then learn all these amazing facts.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
So I love it.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
But before we go, we got to play a little
game called Guess Who's squawking the Mystery Animal sound game.
Last week's Mister Animal sound hint was this, This poisonous
animal is a fantastic survivor, which is bad news for
anything in its path. So that should strike fear into
(49:03):
the hearts of many a invertebrate or small mammal carea.
Do you have any any guesses?
Speaker 4 (49:11):
Oh man, is this some kind of Is it like
a poison frog.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
That is very close? You're so warm, You're so warm?
Speaker 4 (49:20):
Is it like a venomous toad?
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yes, it is, so this is the cane toad. This
is the beautiful call of the cane toad. It is
well known for being invasive in Australia. I think it's
often viewed as kind of a villain because it does
destroy so many innocent marsupial lives. But it doesn't. It's
not its fault. It's from South and Central America. There
(49:49):
was no way this guy was going to get to
Australia without our help.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
So yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
It's it had no intention of being a menace until
we intervened. They are both poisonous and toxic. They're quite
large for a toad. They can grow to be around
half a foot to up to two feet in length.
I mean like usually they are somewhere between there. They're
not usually two feet long and that huge, but they
(50:17):
can get to be that big, and they have just
the most voracious appetites. You can look up There must
be videos of this with cane toads as well, but
you can look up videos of frogs and toads where
you put like an iPhone or an iPad game in
front of them, where like little things come up on
screen and they will try to eat stuff off of
the screen, like they never seem to learn that that's
(50:42):
not food. So they are really just like mouths with
a brain that can like operate the mouth, and not
a whole lot else going on, So that makes them
a big problem. They were introduced to Australia because they
had been previously introduced to islands like Pco to control
cane beetle populations. And although I still think it's not
(51:06):
good that they introduced them to these other islands, it
was more of a quote unquote success story because they
were able to control the beetle population that was ravaging
the sugar cane field. So in terms of you know,
human industry, it worked. In terms of the local wildlife.
Not a great idea, but in Australia it was a
(51:27):
double whammy because not only did you just introduce this venomous,
toxic toad that's giant and hungry to an island where
the animals have never seen this thing before in their
entire revolutionary history. It also didn't work to control the
dang beetles because the cane beetles in Australia lived on
(51:50):
the very tops of the sugar cane where the cane
toad just like, I don't know, doesn't think to look
up there. Like these cane toads are very simple. If
they see something, they eat it. They're a little like
pac men. But if they're not seeing the beetles and
it's not like, you know, directly in front of them,
they're not going to do anything about it. So the
(52:10):
beatles were fine, and then the cane toads had to eat,
so they went off and start eating everything in their path,
and so huge nightmare. But you know, also because like
predators would try to eat them, and they're toxic and poisonous,
and they hadn't co evolved with them, so they had
no defenses. They did not know, you know, they hadn't
(52:31):
learned that these toads are toxic. So just awful, an
awful nightmare. Not the toad's fault, though, The toad's just
the toad is just doing what it was born to do,
which is to eat and not be eaten. It's they're innocent,
sweet little creatures.
Speaker 3 (52:49):
That are destroying Australia.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
So onto this week's mystery sound. The hint is this.
You could find this animal in Karajaimo's book. It's not
a bird and it is not a superhero sidekick.
Speaker 3 (53:10):
All right, I hope you guys could hear that. It's
that little like.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
Sound. So, Kara, this maybe this is maybe this is
unfair or too much pressure on you, but uh, do
you have any.
Speaker 3 (53:24):
Guesses as to what this is?
Speaker 2 (53:25):
I know this one all right.
Speaker 3 (53:27):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (53:28):
I'll bleep you out if you get it right, so
everyone will know that you've won, but they won't know
how you've won.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
This is this?
Speaker 3 (53:37):
Yes, absolutely correct?
Speaker 1 (53:40):
I found there's there are like what you can hear.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
This is a video of one.
Speaker 1 (53:46):
It's not. Here's another hint. It's really not happy to
be where it is right now in this video. So
it's making this sound more out of a protest. But yeah,
you can find this animal in Kara Jaimo's book, Carol,
Why don't you tell them where they can get the book.
Speaker 4 (54:04):
Yeah, you can get this book pretty much anywhere. I
think you can buy it online. Hopefully they'll have it
at your local bookstore. I'm imagining or hoping also that
it will be in like some aquariums and stuff like that.
But yeah, just wherever you tend to find books, take
a look, and I hope you enjoy it if you grab.
Speaker 1 (54:23):
One, absolutely, I know I did, and I found mine
in the ocean. That's not true unless you unless you
define the Internet as the ocean of information. Thank you
guys so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show
and you leave a rating or review, those really do
(54:45):
help me and I read all the reviews. And thanks
to the Space Classics for their super awesome song. Exolumina
Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like
the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple
podcasts are Hey, guess what wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. I'm not your mother. I can't tell you
what to do. I can tell you that if you
(55:08):
see something weird in the ocean. Probably don't pick it up.
It could vomit, glowing stuff at you, or cover your
hand in mucus, or poison you. Any of those things
could happen. You don't know, but do admire it because
the ocean is beautiful. I'll see you next Wednesday.
Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show, we're going to talk about
some weird, wet, and sometimes mucusy sea creatures. No matter
how strange they seem, their behavior isn't always so different
from us terrestrial animals, and maybe we can learn how
(00:28):
to live a little from them. From the sunlight to
the abyssle zone. We're going to go over some of
the weirdest citizens of the sea. Because joining me today
is science writer for The New York Times and author
of the new book Leaving the Ocean Was a Mistake.
Life Lessons from Sixty Sea Creatures. Kara Jaimo.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Welcome, Hi, Katie. It's great to be back.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah, I got a.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Copy of the book.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
It's very enchanting. I love all of it. The illustrations
by Vlad Sinkovic areautiful. And then you have coupled with
it these amazing nuggets of knowledge wisdom about each of
these sea creatures, and I feel like it gives you
a really beautiful, charming sense of how wildly diverse the
(01:18):
ocean is. And all these really weird things that are
so like, they're so unusual, and it goes beyond sort
of just like kind of the sea creatures we know,
like sharks, jellyfish, et cetera. I mean that there are
there are definitely ones that you will know in this
(01:38):
book and really interesting facts about them as well. But yeah,
I love it because it really gives a nice sense
of how weird these animals can be and nonsensical they
can be. Yeah, I mean, I want to talk about
the subjects of your book a little bit, but first,
of these sixty sea creatures you wrote about, are there
(02:01):
any that really were kind of your favorites or close
to your favorite or the weirdest one that you were
most surprised to write about?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
I mean I found the research and writing process for
this book actually maybe surprisingly surprising, considering that I do
write a lot about.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Weird little critters.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
But the ocean was a little bit of a zone
for me that I had not thoroughly explored, So I
kept being excited at surprise to like run into a
weird guy. I think one of my favorites. Let me
just flip and find it in my own book. There's
like a special interspecies friendship which I always love between
(02:44):
this really huge, kind of scary looking jellyfish and this
really tiny fish. So it's the giant Phantom jelly which
is like a really very big jellyfish. It's bell so like,
you know, the top part is the size of like
your rige bean bag chair, and then it has these
really long arms that I wrote are like haunted drapes,
(03:05):
so it's sort of like a haunted looking jellyfish. And
then it has this tiny friend, this little white fish
called the pelagic brachela, and they just like are always
found together.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Like the funny thing about doing research.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
For this book is also that a lot of these
creatures have only been seen three or four times total
in the history of like recorded anything. But every time
scientists and researchers have seen this big jellyfish, it's had
a little fish friend.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So I think that's kind of nice.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
And do they have any ideas as to why these
guys are buddies?
Speaker 2 (03:38):
No, they don't.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
I don't think anyone has really looked into it. Like
deep sea research is hilarious because they're just kind of like,
I mean, not to you know, sell anyone short. But
all they can really do is be like, hey, look
at that guy. Oh he's gone. I hope I see
him again.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Sometimes we check out this weirdo we found. Yeah, anyway,
never seen him again. Yeah, that's this is something that happens.
Like where I'm researching for the show things about deep
sea creatures, I find one that's like, oh, this looks
incredibly gnarly. It must have so much interesting research done
(04:14):
on it. And no, not for a lack of wanting,
but it is very difficult to observe them and the
wild and often, like when you actually get specimens to
the surface, they just are not at all like what
they are in the ocean. You can't observe their behaviors
(04:35):
physically they might explode because when they're deep enough they don't.
They aren't actually designed to be able to survive totally.
And are you know PSI's up here, which is relatively
light compared to the crushing depths, so there's sort of
an explosion rather than an implosion. Yes, So they're really
(04:57):
hard to study. So so when we do find these
weird things, sometimes all we can do is speculate, right,
like look at behaviors of other animals, we say, there's
a lot of like symbiotic behaviors where you know, I
mean like one could imagine like maybe this little fish
is able to get some protection from the jellyfish. Maybe
(05:20):
it's eating some of the crumbs that the jellyfish is collected,
and maybe that helps with the jellyfish's hygiene, maybe it
helps attract other prey, the.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Movement of the fish.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
All of this is I pulled all of this out
of my butt, Like this is not these are not
real facts. This is just there's so many potential possibilities
for this friendship that we have between them, because they're
like some this happens also with like terrestrial animals where
you'll just have like this very odd like almost it's
(05:57):
a buddy comedy because they don't seem like they would
work together. These tarantulas and micro highlight frogs where they're
just like heaty tiny little guys, little frogs, and then
these giant spiders and you think like, oh, the spider's
gonna eat that little guy. They don't, and they have
this like great relationship like Timone and Pumba. But yeah,
(06:22):
I love that. I have picked out some of my
favorites from the book and I've gone sort of in
order of descent, so like from the top of the
ocean to the bottom, which I also like in the
book that because I always get confused about ocean depths.
I'm like, yeah, pleagic zone, benthic zone, and then I
(06:43):
kind of like, I don't know, and then it gets
really dark yep, and I get confused. So I really
appreciate the structure of the zone of the book where
we go from the sunlight zone all the way down
to be a bus zone to the very bottom.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
And you'll see like, oh, I'm sorry, no, go ahead,
you'll see like we my editor and I kind of
made this plot where as the creatures get deeper. Not
only did the illustrations get darker, because that's just what
makes sense, but the advice goes from being like maybe
a little bit cheesy to being like super surreal and weird,
(07:22):
because the idea is that these deep sea creatures like
are going to be even more out of touch with
our lives than the ones that are closer to us.
But there's still something to take from even the.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Most strange advice.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, and I hope it made uh to be clear,
like these like as you learn about each of these animals.
They are also giving you some life advice, which I
appreciate and I do need. So I do you appreciate
their their advice, but particularly actually this first one is
great advice for me. I like to be a nice person,
(07:54):
but when when you are like a friendly person, it's
also really important establish firm boundaries, which is the gloomy
octopus's specialty. I love octopuses. I can't talk about it
the enough. They're so they're so intro like, they're so
intelligent and kind of mystical, but then they're also surprisingly
(08:17):
spunky sometimes, which I love. So talk about a little
bit this this gloomy octopus who does not have a
backbone but has a backbone.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
So I really like this advice too, And I think
one of my sisters said that this is her favorite
piece of advice in the book. So the advice that
the gloomy octopus is giving to us is never be
afraid to set and enforce your boundaries. And the behavioral
observation that this advice comes from is that gloomy octopuses
are mostly solitary, like they spend a lot of their
(08:51):
time alone, like many octopuses, do, and if their neighbors
get too close to them, they will throw stuff at
them like shells, dirt and algae based whatever's around, in
order to kind of keep that boundary literally sort of like,
don't come any closer to me. I'm chilling by myself.
I don't need your intrusion here. I don't care how
curious you are. I don't care what you need. Like
(09:12):
this is my alone time almost all the time, so
that is that is kind of funny. I think this
gloomy octopus research came from one of my favorite research sites,
which is the two group octopus living sites Octopolus and Octlantis,
which are both off the coast of Australia, and we're
discovered by Australian scuba divers and snorkelers, and these are
(09:36):
places where octopuses actually do live together, which again is
as far as we know, kind of rare because they
like to be on their own. But these places are
so filled with it's like the undersea topography attracted so
many shellfish that the octopus has just started hanging out
and eating all the shellfish and then throwing the shells away.
And then when they see the shells away, they would
make beautiful sort of like structures that could be used
(09:58):
at octopus houses. So they're all like, okay, let's just
stay here. And then they ended up living in almost
like a little octopus city. And then they're like, oh no,
I hate living in a city.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I want to be on my own. And so at
that point they started throwing stuff at each other.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I love that. I think this happens probably with a
lot of introverts, where you find like a hobby that
introverts enjoy, from magic, the gathering to crocheting, whatever it is,
and then you're like, well, it's really convenient to share
the hobby with other people. And then you join a
(10:35):
bunch of groups. Ah, here's like a croche group, and
then and it's great because we can share yarn. And
then you're like, oh right, but I'm also very shy. Yes,
I forgot I forgot that detail. I love octopuses are
so relatable. This behavior reminds me a little bit of
the day octopus, which is another unique one in that
(10:57):
it does seem to have a relationship with other animals,
not necessarily other octopuses, but it seems to hunt with
other fish. They'll have sort of like the large groups
of these smaller predatory fish that kind of hang out
with the octopus. It's a little bit of a question
of like they are the fish just hanging out because
the octopus will act like a lawnmower and churn up
(11:20):
all this stuff and then the fish can benefit or
is it more of a mutualistic relationship. I think researchers
are kind of on the side of it being mutualistic
because the octopus seems to be able to benefit from
following the fish, like finding where the fish the fish
may be better at finding like prey, but then the
fish can't get to it because you have these coral
(11:43):
reefs that have a lot of nooks and crannies maybe
even like sand or rocks in the way that the
fish can't get at because the prey has learned how
to hide really well. So then the octopus can get
in there and flush it out. But sometimes the octopus
will give one of these little fish that it tolerates
really well a smack get smack with a tenticle, and
(12:07):
so researchers think maybe it's something where one of the
fish crosses a line isn't really cooperating in the hunt well, enough,
but it's it's just like it. It makes me think
of sort of those old tapestries you see with like
hunters with all their hunting dogs with these like but
it's these octopuses with a bunch of me going around.
(12:29):
I don't, I don't. I do not suggest that anyone
smacks their hunting dogs. I think that this is only
acceptable when it's done by an octopus because they're their
legs are so squishy.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Yes, yeah, okay, it's just more of like a it's
more of a communication than a violence.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Maybe, yes, yeah, exactly. That's what's so interesting to me,
because like the octopus could turn around, Like if a
fish is annoying it, why isn't the octopus just turning around,
grabbing it and eating it?
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Right?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Like there's something I mean, it's probably a pretty careful
calculation where it's like, if it's a larger fish that
is going to be more of a struggle, that's probably
not worth it to the octopus. But also there's probably
some recognition of like, hey, we're working together pretty well
in general. Killing something that is helping me doesn't do
(13:19):
any good for me, But teaching it a lesson with
a little sort of limp noodled whack is you know,
constructive only in this circumstance. I'm usually very much a pacifist,
but you know, when you're literally don't have a spine,
I don't know what else you can do to enforce
your boundaries with You might have to throw some stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
The way they throw this stuff is cool too, Just
before we move on, they'll like scoop it up with
their arms, and then they'll sometimes use their little siphons
that they have to like blow it.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Oh amazing, like leaf flowers. Yeah, exactly, that's incredible. We
see that in like captive octopuses too, where they'll either
use their own siphons so like push things around, or
they learn to use the the pumps in their tanks,
and they'll like take maybe like something that's floating. Like
sometimes researchals will kind of leave little toys for them,
(14:14):
not they're not real toys, but it's like I've heard,
like empty plastic bottles or something, and then the octopus
likes to play fetch with themselves by like throwing it
in the current. Yeah. So they're very clever and also
sometimes a little bit cranky, which I love. Yeah. So
another this is kind of like going in the wildly
opposite direction. But hump back whales like one of the
(14:37):
largest vertebrates in the world that lives in the ocean.
It's it's always interesting to me because they're so whales
are so huge. The assumption I think is that we
should know pretty much everything about them because they're the
biggest animal in the world. They're mammals like us, they're vertebrates.
(14:59):
They're so present in our popular culture. But then when
you get to these like relatively large whales, the research
is a lot thinner than you would think because it's
just so hard to like observe them and kind of
station yourself, Like, yes, we see them when they're migrating,
but then when they're like deep in the ocean in
(15:20):
their element, there's a lot of behaviors that we kind
of miss. So I really love it when we do
find something really interesting about them, because they're really really complicated.
So I love you talk about like people I think
are generally aware of whale song that they sing. They
have unique songs, and they're socially intelligent. But what you
(15:44):
talk about, I think is a pretty interesting fact that
I don't think people would be as familiar with in
terms of their their song repertoires.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
Yeah, so this is super fun and something I've had
in my mind since I first wrote about it, maybe
like six years ago, just because of the new study
came out and I happened to see it. But like
you said, yeah, humpback whales are known for singing. Their
songs are quite famous. There are like recordings of them
that you can buy in cool New age stores to
(16:16):
this day. And then everybody knows what their songs sound like.
They're very like haunting and beautiful and exactly and basically
like songs are a cultural thing for them, and different
populations of these whales who meet at particular breeding grounds
all around the world will have like certain songs, and
(16:38):
those songs will change from year to year, but they'll
all kind of like have their their favorite songs that
they all sing together. But researchers notice that different populations
were sort of like borrowing from each other's songs and
like remixing little bits into their own songs.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
And they were like, how is this happening? When are
they hanging out? And they figured out that there is
like this place in the South Pacific specifically where whales.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
In the area all come and hang out and sing
together and like kind of teach each other maybe or
like listen to each other's songs. And then when they
depart again, that's when this like remixing happens. When they're
sort of like, I heard this really cool thing that
this guy from way far away was doing, and now
I'm going to try to do it. And so yeah,
it's this very cool cultural spot off the coast of
(17:25):
New Zealand that I like to call a humpback whale
karaoke zone where.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Everybody comes and tries out each other's music. And so
that's amazing.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
The advice that we kind of took from that for
the book is share your art with friends and don't
be weird about copyright.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, I completely agree with that.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Fair use.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Whales understand fair use exactly. Why why doesn't YouTube? Yeah,
I love that. I mean it is really interesting, like
it is. I think we when it comes to animals
that have songs, even animals that are arguably less complicated
and intelligent versus wales, like songbirds, you do see a
(18:09):
lot of evidence of local dialects and then cultural shifts,
generational shifts in song choice. Birds are also influenced by
when they like migrate and they encounter maybe birds that
have like a different dialect from them, they then start
to kind of shift their songs a little bit. So
there's a lot of this like kind of I think,
(18:33):
you know, when you have an animal who learns their
songs and their calls, like, because there are plenty of
like say songbirds or animals that make a certain kind
of call, who are just born basically with a pre
programmed thing that they do. Usually it's very simple because
you don't have a lot of sort of space to
(18:56):
write really complicated programming in an in a newborn animal's brain.
But for the ones that have really complicated repertoires, that's
almost always through learning, which is the case for whales,
which is the case for songbirds. And when you have that,
then you almost it seems almost inevitable that you're gonna
(19:17):
have like cultural changes in cultural influence because it's since
it's a learning process, since they have to learn from
those around them, there's there's like really interesting evolution of
songs of groups of like and then you see the
influence of other groups. So it's much more I think
(19:38):
similar to like you'll find in animals who are learners
that kind of they when you whenever you have different
populations of them, you inevitably have kind of different cultural
habits and then those influencing each other, which I find
really really interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
And like.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
When and I first wrote about this, one of the
commenters on the article was like, why do we call
these songs, which, like, I don't know, that's a whole
question in itself. But then this person said, like, maybe
these whales are exchanging information, Like maybe this is a
form of oral storytelling or like passing along stuff from
like this is what it's like in my part of
(20:20):
the ocean right now, Like if you come through, look
out for that octopus who's throwing shit or whatever. And yeah,
I thought that was really interesting too, because I know
there are more and more attempts to kind of decode
whale language, and I have a lot of thoughts about that,
but this could be, yeah, a way of them not
(20:41):
only like having fun, but like telling each other important stuff,
the same way that humans do in songs and other
species as well.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
I definitely think there could be something too whales communicating
information through their song. I would my guess would be
it's probably not like the same kind of like grammatical
structure as human language has. But maybe there's something some
other way that they're communicating that just does not not
(21:11):
how we use language, But that doesn't mean it's not
a form of language or communication.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
It's so funny to think about, because like, I don't
know humans. We have this spoken language that we use
for so so many things, and then we have a
written equivalent, and like to an outside observer, I don't
I think it would be pretty hard to figure out
that those things were connected, or that this thing we're
doing with our mouths is necessarily communicating, because we do
(21:37):
so many other things. So sometimes I think about, like
when we were watching whales and listening to them, we're
like sort of like aliens trying to figure out like
what they're doing. And if aliens were watching us, they
might be like, oh, humans communicate through the length of
their hair, or like humans communicate through like the weird
things they do with their hands, like as they're moving
their mouths, like they wouldn't necessarily.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Italians do, for sure, and I should know I live
in Italy. That part's true.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, but like we have to.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Yeah, it's so easy to like map map our own
stuff onto other creatures, and to some extent that's helpful
because we all do share needs and drives and a
certain evolutionary history.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
But it only can go so far.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, exactly, we can overdo it with putting sort of
human feelings onto animals, but we can also underdo it
where we just like, of course, we're going to share
a lot of characteristics with animals. We're all we've all
evolved on the same sort of stuff as they have
in general, so there's going to be some similarities. I
(22:44):
do want to talk about the sarcastic French head before
that break. I love these guys so much. They're this
sort of like when they're just kind of in their
normal state, they're kind of this awkwardly shaped brown fish
with this huge head and kind of a slim body.
They just look a little bit funky. There's nothing to
(23:05):
me they like. They're not intimidating at all. They're just
kind of like a weirdly shaped little fish. But then
when they're competing with each other, they have this really
like it's both kind of It can be viewed as
scary or funny, I think, depending on your perspective. But yeah,
(23:27):
you want to talk a little bit about their the
special party trick that they have.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
Yes, it's totally worth looking up a video of this
when anyone has the time. If this was like a
sort of magical book, I would have put a moving
image on this page because these French heads, which, like
Katie said, are sort of like cute, droopy mouthed little
fish that kind of like bop along underwater when they
(23:52):
are feeling you know, it's hard to say if they're
feeling aggressive, if they're feeling flirty, like why they do this,
but they open their mouths and their mouth opens like
like a horror movie monster.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Mouth or like yeah, like Predator from Predator, you know, yeah,
that has a little like weird sort of I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, it's like a like yeah, like a pop up tent.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
It's sort of like pop yeah, and it's suddenly like
so much bigger and like so much sort of more
like scarily angled. And uh So they do this and
one will go like wow at the other one, and
then the other one will go like waw back, and
then they sort of just like make out, like they
squish their mouths together and they like around yeah. Yeah,
(24:37):
and nobody is totally sure, like what this is about
or why they do it?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
And the top.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
Theory is like, okay, it's like an aggressive contest almost
like you know, deer with antlers, and the winner is
going to get like the best house, which is right,
It's like if you think about it as like a
human reality competition show that's on, like you know, the
HGTV or what ever, it's like yeah, fringe head house
(25:02):
makeout competition.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Honestly, the housing market is so messed up, like if
we just had a new system where it's like whoever
has the most unfoldable mouth gets the biggest house, I'm
fine with that.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
I don't know, like.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
It's I think it's it's already it's already a pretty
messed up market. Yeah, yeah, I do think that the
theory that this is like a form of like I
because it's this kind of competition happens a lot between
males with a lot of other species where yes, you
could fight each other, but both the victor and the
(25:40):
loser uh suffers some cost from that, right, could be energy,
it could be injury, it could even be killing one another. Right,
so there's a big cost involved to physically fighting with arrival.
If you're fighting over resources, over territory, over access to emails.
(26:01):
There's a motivation to fight, but actually fighting is really costly.
So a lot of animals have developed kind of a
system where they either sort of like measure each others up,
like their bodies, Like they look at their bodies and
they're like, you know, you might have two elephant seals
kind of waddle up to each other and like kind
(26:22):
of size each other up, like, Okay, who's actually gonna
win this, like before they start slamming their necks into
each other, right, because neither of them necessarily wants to fight,
because they would much rather it just be like, oh, yeah,
I know you're way bigger, like I'll be gone bye,
I'll see you. Because that's better for the one that
(26:43):
would lose, certainly, but also for the one that would win,
because the one that would win might still get injured
or at least have to waste a bunch of effort
fending off all these little guys.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
So you they.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Want to generally be able to find out like, Okay,
who's tougher, who's bigger? The only the problem is when
you have a situation where it's less clear right where
it's like, ah, we don't know who's actually gonna win.
We're kind of the same size. And then they actually
have to fight, and it can be pretty pretty grizzly
with all sorts of animals, like from from deer to
(27:16):
elf and seals to lions. But then with these French heads,
which I find really interesting. Of course we don't know,
and so this is a little bit it's out of
my butte university, but kind of like an educated butt,
so you know, take from it what you will. It
seems like they have kind of come up with maybe
a like a symbolic display of fitness, right with like
(27:38):
jaw size, right, because jaw size is a that would
be like a fairly honest signal of fitness in a
lot of ways. But their jaws are very like ornamental
and weird in a way that it makes it seem
like they're kind of trying to send a strong signal
to each other of like, hey, I'm really tough, to
the point where it's become very much like a ritualistic
(28:01):
dance where they almost have it seems like they've almost
completely done away with the any kind of realistic fighting
and it's more like a sports game, right, and then
the loser of this like weird kissing sport goes off,
and then the winner gets the nice house. So it's
I think it's really interesting. There's definitely some kind of
(28:24):
communication going on here where they have sort of traded
in actual weaponry for kind of a more symbolic like hey,
like the flag I'm waving is bigger than yours, so
like that's how we're gonna settle this.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
I've just been watching this video of them on loop.
It's in the New York Times rite up of this paper,
which I didn't write. It's by Jason din But the
video is just like they're in a little tank, the
two fringe heads. They are like approximately the same size,
and one of them is in this like really sweet
looking house, which is a shell, and the other one
(28:58):
doesn't seem to have a house, and so the one
without a house is like, ugh, fine, I guess I
better try to go get a house. He goes up
to the shell, and the one in the shell just
kind of like rises out of the shell and it's
like it is time for me, like you said, to
perform the ritual and just like opens his mouth like waw,
and the other one's like fine, and it's like wah,
(29:18):
and they just press their mouths together. And then the one,
the loser who doesn't live in the shell, it doesn't
take that long for him to be like okay, like
I had to try, you know, like you said, it's
not really like a It doesn't seem that high stakes.
It seems a little bit more like there's two guys
in the weight room and one of them isn't done
with his reps yet, and the other one's trying to
(29:40):
get on the bench, and they have a little like
right yeh, and then order is restored.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
It's like a little dance you do when you're on
the sidewalk and you're both kind of like figuring out
who shouldn't do exactly left versus the right. I'm really
bad at that. I do that all the time. But yeah,
it's it's really it is really funny to me how
they've you know, like again, we like Kara was saying,
we don't exactly know why they do this, but it
definitely seems like some kind of ritualistic, symbolic placeholder for
(30:11):
actual aggression, actual fighting, some form of communication that is
helping them to resolve conflict, which is I think really nice. Yeah,
a nice, nice lesson. We can learn from them totally.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
And the advice that we have for them is, if
you can solve it with fighting, you can probably solve
it with smooching exactly.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
I agree with that.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
I think the world needs more giant tint flap smooching
versus fighting. We're going to take a quick break and
then when we come back, we're gonna head deeper down
into the Twilight Zone, which is not just the rod
Sterling Show, but an actual part of the ocean, and
then even deeper as we discuss some of the amazing animals.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
From Kara's book.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
All Right, so now we're in the twilight Zone, just
a little darker. There's still light there, but it's definitely
getting a little dimmer. But the one I want to
talk about is the sea elephant, which not to be
confused with like elephant seals or elephant nose fish. These
(31:24):
are snails and they're really I found one photo of
it being held by I guess like a fisherman who
found it, and it's got the doofiest little face like
in the water. Like when they're in the water, they
are kind of hard to see because they're very transparent,
and they're kind of they looked sort of like this
ghostly outline. They they don't even look three dimensional really.
(31:48):
They look like a weird light pencil sketch of some
kind of weird globby snail shaped critter. And they don't
have shells, so they're just like all blobular. But then
when this guy has them in his hand, it's like
looking directly into the camera and you can see a
little face and they've got these long proboscises that look
(32:09):
like elephant noses. But it just looks like this weird
little elephant cartoon. Yeah, just the stupidest looking animal I've
seen in a while. So, uh, do you want to
talk a little bit about the elephant snail?
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Yeah, I mean sorry, the sea elephant.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Yeah, the sea elephant.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
Something truly amazing about doing research for this book was
like I had no idea like how many different sort
of tiny, little translucent guys are just like floating around
like hoping.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
For the best in there.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
Kind of just like okay, like I can move in
three dimensions, I being tossed about.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I have few defenses, and I'm just gonna try to
make this work. Yeah, and the sea elephant is one
of them.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
And so yes, long time back and evolutionary history, these
guys had shells and presumably they lived, you know, on
the bottom or somewhere else where gravity would pull them
down and they had the protection of their shell, but
they evolved to live in the open water instead, totally shellless.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
They have this really funky long nose.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
Like you said, which is super cute, and they kind
of just like tumble around in the water column and
even though they don't have a shell to curl up inside,
they still curl, which I think is really cute. They're
in sort of like a summersault shape most of the time.
And so the advice that they are giving is remember
your roots, remember the snail times, even if you're in
(33:36):
a evolutionary stage that is maybe a bit more scary
and free falling.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
I'm always trying to be humble and remember the snail time.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Yeah, but yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Mean, they're interesting because they're movements. They even if they
don't like ambulate really fast in one direction, their movements
can be surprisingly like they're they're moving around quite a bit,
like if you compare it to say terrestrial snails movement
or even like a c snail's movement, Like they can
move around quite a bit, it just doesn't seem to
(34:08):
like propel them much in one direction. There's a lot
of like floundering, which I think is really cute. But yeah,
that the the the sort of like, well, why would
they like shells seem really helpful?
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Why did they lose their shells?
Speaker 1 (34:24):
That actually happens quite a bit in the ocean, where
you'll have something that starts out with a shell and
then loses it, like with a lot of molluscs. So
like cephalopods, like squid and octopuses, they used to have
like their common ancestor had like a shell that was
pretty weird like for some of them, like some of these,
(34:45):
like squid ancestors had like a giant conical shell that
looks like this like sort of giant unicorn horn type
thing that when you look at it, it's like all right,
I mean I get it, but it's a little much.
And so thought is that. I mean, you still have
nautiluses that have their shells, but for them, you know,
(35:06):
like for squid and octopuses, they don't have them and
they just probably like they got out competed by predators
that came along that had better defenses, and so they
went into the niche of being squishy, being to fit
into things and being able to hide under stuff, and
then as predators being to squished themselves into narrow passages that.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
They can get stuff out of.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
So I could not I found scant information on the clephant.
It seems like these are one of the ones where
we basically know they exist, that they're weird, and they
have eyes, we know that, but otherwise what exactly they're
(35:49):
up to is a little bit of a mystery. They're
one of these one of these weird guys that we
kind of know that what they look like, we know
they have eyeballs, uh, and that they used to have shells.
But then otherwise we're like, what do you doing, little guy?
And it's like, I don't know, just being being a
(36:10):
little guy, being a transparent little guy, trying not to
get eaten.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
A lot of these, I mean, you mentioned this, a
lot of these snails and these shellless snails are also
like very ferocious predators. Like supposedly this c elephant is
a ferocious predator. It's just kind of hard to imagine. Yeah,
there's always going to be a smaller, more translucent guy
than you around to eat in.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
These Yeah, there, schnalls is a little bit vacuum like,
so I can because they've got mouth parts at.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
The very tip. So if you're if you're.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Like a little planktonic creature, I could see this being intimidating.
But to me, it is a premium goofass, So it's
really hard to imagine them as predators. Before we move
on to the deeper zones of the ocean, I want
to talk about the fire breathing shrimp. Yes, honestly, it
looks more like they're barfing up sort of like supernatural ecdoplasm.
(37:03):
But let's talk a little bit about their very very
unique defense mechanism totally.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
So one cool thing about the ocean is that some
creatures can like either create or use bioluminescence, which is
like biologically produced light because they're especially when you get
deeper in the ocean, there's not a lot of natural
light that makes its way down there. So if you
can make your own light, or you can get like
(37:32):
a bacteria to make light that you can use.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
That's my preferred method. Get the bacteria to do the
work for me.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
You can kind of have this cool signaling like goo
that you can use however you want. And you know,
the anglerfish famously sometimes use it to like lure other
fish by just having like a little beacon and the
fish come over. But the fire everything shrimp, who I agree,
they gave him a very dignified name, but he's really
(38:01):
just barfing. He stores up this bioluminescent blue colored goo
in an organ called the hippato pancreas, which I don't
believe that humans have, but I guess I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
And then when for.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Sure we do, I don't know if we have a
hippado pancreas.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
If we do, maybe it's filled with glowing goo, so
that could be a cool thing to discover at some point.
But this guy, he stores this, uh, this goo in
hishippato pancreas, and he if he gets scared or threatened,
he's just like blah.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
And then the blue gooo comes out. When it hits
the water, it lights up.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
It's almost like if you crack a glow stick right
that triggers the light. And then the predator is like, WHOA,
where the bluegoo come from? Gets freaked out, and this
scrimp shrimp can escape.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
So it's a really good Yeah, yeah, it's a it's
a similar like you do see that with Like so
squid have the the ink that they can release, which
is a similarly defensive like, ah, you're threatening me, Like
here's a distruction, you know, like if anyone watches King
of the Hill, it's the dale Gripple's pocket sand that
he throws at you, like pocket sand you know, gets away.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Terrestrial animals there are forgot what they're named. They're there
the there's a few baby birds actually who use either
projectile vomiting or pooping to ward off predators where it's like, ah,
you know, like you're coming at me, here's like some
startling vomit.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
So it is.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
It is a technique, but I don't think I know
of any other defensive vomitters who bio use bioluminescence. Like
certainly you can use bioluminescence as sort of defensive distracting posturing.
That usually have seen that in animals that have actual
structures on their body that contain the bioluminescent gel. Whereas
(39:55):
these guys just like they have it you know, in
their in their patto pang grease and then vomit it up,
which is a very unique method of distracting predators. It's
it's very it's pretty. It's the prettiest vomit I think
I've seen.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Yeah, it's very pretty.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
So now let's move down to the midnight zone. Just
to briefly mention the Ping Pong tree sponge seems like
it might have almost accidentally caused an international incident because
it is this is one of those things where it's like,
it looks like it comes from one of those sort
of pulp sci fi books where they imagine an alien landscape,
(40:39):
and this is like the alien tree you'd find on
an alien planet, which also, for some reason, also has
beautiful women on it, and that's never explained. But this
is like, this is a really weird looking thing that
does not look it neither looks like a living creature.
It looks artificial, nor does it look like an animal,
(41:00):
which it is.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
It has a wonderful name, the Ping Pong tree sponge,
because that's what it looks like. Yes, so what you
hinted at is that I read that when US Navy
officers first saw the Ping Pong tree sponge in underwater
surveillance photos, they thought that it was like a Russian
device that was spying on the ocean. Granted I saw
(41:25):
this only in one source, but I felt like I
had to include it because I really want to know more.
I looked so hard for more information. I might have
to do like a Foyer request or something. So if
anybody knows about the near international incident caused by the
Ping Pong tree sponge, please get in touch with me,
because there's nothing I want to know about more. But
the website I found it on is like a government website,
(41:47):
so I do believe it.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
But I just couldn't find anything.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
Else, you know.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
I mean, I just assume there's a lot of like
things during the Cold War where we almost almost blew
each other up and pass because of some kind of
weird sea creature where we're like, it's a Russian, a
Russian weapon, but it just turns out to be a
weird little sea sponge. It also, to me, it looks
kind of like a lamp you might buy in the seventies.
(42:13):
It's very it's very cool looking. But yeah, the the
you're mentioned in the book, like the structure of it
is actually not just like decorative obviously, but it's to
capture tiny crustaceans, tiny animals on these actual balls which
(42:34):
have like a bunch of little you can't really see
them from far away, but they have a bunch of
tiny little like hooks to catch little guys onto these balls.
So it's a it's functional, even though it looks like
something some kind of ikea lamp that would be called
like a bog or something.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah, it's got they're like little birds, I think, right.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Imagine, sponges are so cool because they are also predators.
They have to eat other stuff, but they can't move
when they're adults, so they need to come up with
all these weird strategies like being covered in hooky ping
pong balls.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
Yeah, no, it's amazing. They're sessile usually meaning that they
stick in one spot. But yeah, they still got to eat,
and so they've got all sorts of like weird weird
uh food gathering techniques that so now we're going to
go down to the abyssele zone. Talk about another weird
food gathering technique, the tripod fish. I love these guys
(43:37):
so much. They're very weird to see on a deep
sea camera. They look like lawn ornaments because it looks
like someone took something that's a pretty normal fish shape,
maybe a little longer. They do also have a pair
of fins that kind of look like rabbit ears, ghostly
rabbit ears, but otherwise it just kind of looks like
(43:58):
a fish. It's not that weird. But it also looks
like someone stuck them on like three rods, like two
coming from the front, one coming from near its table,
from from its tail, and then stuck them on the
ocean floor like ornamentation. Like they look like something weird
you could pick up at a discount like a home
(44:23):
supply store, where it's like these aren't selling well because
nobody wants a decorative fish, but it's these are alive.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
They aren't.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
They are real fish, and they are doing this on purpose.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
So these fish are very crafty.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
They also have to eat, but they don't want to
have to swim around and hunt for stuff. So presumably
evolutionarily they started out without these weird long feet, but
eventually they evolved because like if you sort of are
in the ocean sort of hanging out and you just
open your mouth, like the current will bring some food
to you, and what these guys eventually figured out on
(45:01):
an evolutionary timescale is like if they're about three feet
off the sand and they're opening their mouth, there's more
food because the current is like stronger up there. It's
like a sweet spot, so it's gonna bring more food
into your mouth. So they just yeah, they have developed
these tripods that allow them to kind of just like
stand three feet above the sand.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
And yeah, when you see these.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
Deep sea videos or photos of them, they're so funny
because they're just like weird. It's like you said, it's
like someone just stuck them in the sand and they're
like hanging out with their mouths open, just eating.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
It looks like a prank. It doesn't look like something
that does naturally occur, right, It looks like someone, as
a prank, stuck a bunch of fish on like weird
tripods on the seafloor just to like give researchers with
their deep sea cameras kind of a scare. But no,
they're real. Uh it's uh yeah, it's in like those
legs are like kind of fin extensions that are that
(45:56):
somehow managed to be like these kind of like tough
protrusions that keep them stuck up there. Just like I love, yeah,
I love the I love the like they say that
necessity is the mother of invention. I think laziness is
a huge contributor to invention and I really appreciate it.
(46:19):
The advice that is in your book is that you
should stretch yourself as much as possible, especially when reaching
for snacks. Yes, as as the as the wife of
a very tall person, I have developed my own evolutionary
technique to reach snacks that have been placed high up,
(46:41):
which is tongs like arm extensions. So when my husband,
like he's not trying to keep the food away from me,
he just like puts things up high because that's like
where he like, that's where he's at, you know, that's
his that's his zone. And then I'm like down here
in the abyss zone going up. But so use I
(47:03):
use tongs. So I feel like me and this fish,
I mean, this tripod fish can relate to each other
really well.
Speaker 4 (47:13):
I just wanted to mention I learned about the tripodfish
because I was writing about Costa Rican Deep Sea Expedition.
And on this expedition and a lot of expeditions that
go through the Schmidt Ocean.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Institute do this.
Speaker 4 (47:28):
They brought artists on board to kind of like be
part of it and create work that would help people
see what everybody was seeing on board. And there was
this painter, Carlos Hiller, who was painting all the stuff
they found, and he has really beautiful, sort of like
funny but also very moving tripod fish paintings.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
That I really love. So that's what got me into
this fish and I recommend looking him up.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
All right, Yeah, I got I gotta do that because
I love I mean, I love the art in the book.
It's also because like I would when I was looking
at these animals, uh, I would also like look at
photos of them. It's like no, like they they because
I was like, maybe, like this artist is interpreting that
dumb little look on this fish's face, like his kind
of creative interpretation. Like I was like, no, he got it.
(48:14):
He got the the stupid little look of this tripod
fish just waiting for food. It's very funny.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
I do.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
I do very much recommend this book. It's a it's
really a beautiful book that you can flip through and
then learn all these amazing facts.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
So I love it.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
But before we go, we got to play a little
game called Guess Who's squawking the Mystery Animal sound game.
Last week's Mister Animal sound hint was this, This poisonous
animal is a fantastic survivor, which is bad news for
anything in its path. So that should strike fear into
(49:03):
the hearts of many a invertebrate or small mammal carea.
Do you have any any guesses?
Speaker 4 (49:11):
Oh man, is this some kind of Is it like
a poison frog.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
That is very close? You're so warm, You're so warm?
Speaker 4 (49:20):
Is it like a venomous toad?
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yes, it is, so this is the cane toad. This
is the beautiful call of the cane toad. It is
well known for being invasive in Australia. I think it's
often viewed as kind of a villain because it does
destroy so many innocent marsupial lives. But it doesn't. It's
not its fault. It's from South and Central America. There
(49:49):
was no way this guy was going to get to
Australia without our help.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
So yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
It's it had no intention of being a menace until
we intervened. They are both poisonous and toxic. They're quite
large for a toad. They can grow to be around
half a foot to up to two feet in length.
I mean like usually they are somewhere between there. They're
not usually two feet long and that huge, but they
(50:17):
can get to be that big, and they have just
the most voracious appetites. You can look up There must
be videos of this with cane toads as well, but
you can look up videos of frogs and toads where
you put like an iPhone or an iPad game in
front of them, where like little things come up on
screen and they will try to eat stuff off of
the screen, like they never seem to learn that that's
(50:42):
not food. So they are really just like mouths with
a brain that can like operate the mouth, and not
a whole lot else going on, So that makes them
a big problem. They were introduced to Australia because they
had been previously introduced to islands like Pco to control
cane beetle populations. And although I still think it's not
(51:06):
good that they introduced them to these other islands, it
was more of a quote unquote success story because they
were able to control the beetle population that was ravaging
the sugar cane field. So in terms of you know,
human industry, it worked. In terms of the local wildlife.
Not a great idea, but in Australia it was a
(51:27):
double whammy because not only did you just introduce this venomous,
toxic toad that's giant and hungry to an island where
the animals have never seen this thing before in their
entire revolutionary history. It also didn't work to control the
dang beetles because the cane beetles in Australia lived on
(51:50):
the very tops of the sugar cane where the cane
toad just like, I don't know, doesn't think to look
up there. Like these cane toads are very simple. If
they see something, they eat it. They're a little like
pac men. But if they're not seeing the beetles and
it's not like, you know, directly in front of them,
they're not going to do anything about it. So the
(52:10):
beatles were fine, and then the cane toads had to eat,
so they went off and start eating everything in their path,
and so huge nightmare. But you know, also because like
predators would try to eat them, and they're toxic and poisonous,
and they hadn't co evolved with them, so they had
no defenses. They did not know, you know, they hadn't
(52:31):
learned that these toads are toxic. So just awful, an
awful nightmare. Not the toad's fault, though, The toad's just
the toad is just doing what it was born to do,
which is to eat and not be eaten. It's they're innocent,
sweet little creatures.
Speaker 3 (52:49):
That are destroying Australia.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
So onto this week's mystery sound. The hint is this.
You could find this animal in Karajaimo's book. It's not
a bird and it is not a superhero sidekick.
Speaker 3 (53:10):
All right, I hope you guys could hear that. It's
that little like.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
Sound. So, Kara, this maybe this is maybe this is
unfair or too much pressure on you, but uh, do
you have any.
Speaker 3 (53:24):
Guesses as to what this is?
Speaker 2 (53:25):
I know this one all right.
Speaker 3 (53:27):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (53:28):
I'll bleep you out if you get it right, so
everyone will know that you've won, but they won't know
how you've won.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
This is this?
Speaker 3 (53:37):
Yes, absolutely correct?
Speaker 1 (53:40):
I found there's there are like what you can hear.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
This is a video of one.
Speaker 1 (53:46):
It's not. Here's another hint. It's really not happy to
be where it is right now in this video. So
it's making this sound more out of a protest. But yeah,
you can find this animal in Kara Jaimo's book, Carol,
Why don't you tell them where they can get the book.
Speaker 4 (54:04):
Yeah, you can get this book pretty much anywhere. I
think you can buy it online. Hopefully they'll have it
at your local bookstore. I'm imagining or hoping also that
it will be in like some aquariums and stuff like that.
But yeah, just wherever you tend to find books, take
a look, and I hope you enjoy it if you grab.
Speaker 1 (54:23):
One, absolutely, I know I did, and I found mine
in the ocean. That's not true unless you unless you
define the Internet as the ocean of information. Thank you
guys so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show
and you leave a rating or review, those really do
(54:45):
help me and I read all the reviews. And thanks
to the Space Classics for their super awesome song. Exolumina
Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like
the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple
podcasts are Hey, guess what wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. I'm not your mother. I can't tell you
what to do. I can tell you that if you
(55:08):
see something weird in the ocean. Probably don't pick it up.
It could vomit, glowing stuff at you, or cover your
hand in mucus, or poison you. Any of those things
could happen. You don't know, but do admire it because
the ocean is beautiful. I'll see you next Wednesday.
Creature Feature News
Host
Katie Goldin
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