October 28, 2025 • 46 mins
In this twice-damned duology from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss creatures of the natural world that collect bones...
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back part two in
the Halloween season series. We're calling the Bone Collectors about
organisms in nature that form Texas chainsaw massacre style collections
of bones and other dead body parts. In the last episode,
we talked first about the extinct cave hyena Crocutispialia, which
(00:38):
was a Eurasian apex predator of the Pleistocene Epic. These
animals are famous for assembling these big pits of animal
bones that are now found preserved in caves and the
caves where they lived around the world, and that in
itself provides interesting information about the adaptive characteristics of these animals,
(00:58):
mainly the fact that we sort of talked about them
as like a tractor model predator or scavenger, that they
were strong, had these powerful jaws, and I think, maybe
for some reasons of social cooperation as well, were able
to haul large amounts of animal carcass mass from kill
sites or from scavenging sites out in the world all
(01:19):
the way back to their dens, which were often in
caves and then you find these assemblages of bones in
the caves.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah. Yeah, they're kind of like tow trucks. They're out there,
they find a carcass that's been illegally parked, and they're like, well,
we got to take this back to the garage.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
And then after that we talked about an insect native
to a small stretch of forest in a mountain range
on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, nicknamed the bone collector
caterpillar because of its unusual behavior of first of all,
living inside active spider webs and then covering its external
(01:53):
silk case with dead, dried out insect body parts shopped
from the spider's web, which there's no perfect analogy for
on our level, but I was thinking about it, like
if there were a species of bird that lived inside
a Kentucky fried chicken and primarily eight chicken scavenged from
(02:14):
people's tables, and completely covered the outside of its body
with leftover chicken bones so as not to be mistaken
by the people working there for like another chicken that
should be cooked or something.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I like it. You know, make this a terror bird
and put humans on the menu, and you've got yourself
a horror movie right here.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
I think now.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
In the case of the bone collector caterpillar, the reason
for the chopped up insect body part suit behavior is
not known with certainty, but researchers kind of suggested that
it may be a form of camouflage to protect the
caterpillar from the spider that it lives alongside. Somehow disguising
the caterpillar as trash something to be ignored. And we're
(02:56):
back today to talk about more so, Robin.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Sorry what, oh no, It's just it would be kind
of like if you were at a child's birthday party
and you covered yourself in the crust of pizza slices
and the bottom parts of cupcakes, you know, the parts
that the children buy and large do not eat, and
they would mark yourself safe from them, I guess, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Or you're a piece of Halloween candy that eats Halloween candy,
that disguises yourself by covering yourself in candy wrappers.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
There you go, that work.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
You would look like, what's already done with? I don't
need to pay attention to that anymore. That's for mom
and dad to clean up. Yeah, now, rob, if you
don't mind I was going to kick things off today
looking at a wasp. Would you like to do that?
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, I'm always game for another horror story from the
world of the wasp.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
There's a lot to choose from there. So in the
last episode, since we talked about the bone collector caterpillar,
I guess it's obvious that we've expanded our criteria for
collectors beyond literal bones. We're not just looking at uses
for the internal skeletons of vertebrate animals. Because to be frank,
you know, I was looking at a lot of things
we could have talked about. I think some of the
(04:11):
best examples just come from the invertebrate world. That's where
a lot of the best stuff happens. So I wanted
to kick things off by talking about another insect example,
and that is the bone house wasp. The scientific name
for the species is Deuterogenia osorium. Ooh yeah, And that
species name, you might hear that in your brain there osorium.
(04:32):
That comes from the word ossuary if you're not familiar.
And ossuary is a storage space that could be a
box or something bigger, like a whole room or a
hall for the storage of human bones often used in
places where burial space is limited or at a premium,
So a common practice in many places would be that
(04:54):
when a person dies, they are buried or entombed in
a temporary spot. Later, maybe a year later, after the
decomposition of the soft tissue, the bones are cleaned and
removed from the temporary burial space and transferred to an ossuary,
which could be a bone box or a chest, or
a space beneath the tomb, or just like a whole
(05:17):
bone building. Sometimes there are places with shelves crammed with
bones or rooms lined with bones. It's just another place
to put the bones. Now, why would a species of
wasp be named after a bone storage box, Well, we
will answer that question. This wasp was described in a
paper from twenty fourteen called a Unique Nest Protection Strategy
(05:40):
in a New Species of Spider Wasp, published in the
Journal Plus One by authors Michael Stobb, Michael ol Choudong Xu,
and Alexandra Maria Klein, and I was reading a bit
of background. Apparently, these insects were collected during a biodiversity
survey in the forests of Jungshi Province in southeast China,
(06:02):
where the researchers collected more than eight hundred chambered nests
from the wild and in the environment you would usually
find these nests. You would find them sometimes like dug
into the earth, or you would also find them maybe
in natural cavities or holes that have been bored into
pieces of wood. It'll be kind of like deep tube
(06:24):
shaped chambers, either in earth or in wood or something
like that. So these chambered nests, they were found in
the wild and then they were brought back to the
laboratory so that the researchers could examine the nests and
rear the larvae. In the larvae inside quote here we
describe a surprising nesting behavior that was previously unknown in
(06:44):
the entire animal kingdom, the use of a vestibular cell
filled with dead ants. So some houses have a mud room,
you know, sort of the outer room between the front
door and then where the house proper begins. These nests
have an anti chamber like that, called the vestibular cell.
(07:05):
It's an ant room and it's filled with dead ant bodies.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Rob I've got.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
A photo of a cross section of a nest for
you to look at in the outline here, so you
can see the nest has a what you might think
of as a shotgun house design. It's deep and narrow
and deeper. You have what are called the brood cells.
This is where the wasp eggs are protected, sealed in
with these cemented doors made of maybe plant material, soil, debris,
(07:34):
and mud. And then in the outermost chamber you can
see this dusty jumble of mangled ant skeletons, just a
wad of dead ants.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Oh wow, yeah, this is incredible and you know, for
many of us, speaking at least for the two of us,
but I think a lot of people out there. You've
grown up in an area that had a lot of
dirt dobber wafts or mud dabbers, various names, you would
inevitably figure out that they do a similar thing with spiders,
where you'd find this cache of spiders hidden away inside
(08:08):
their mud nests.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Oh, these wasps do that with spiders too. We're actually
going to get a two for one here. Oh yeah, yeah,
so we're going to get ants and spiders in the
same nest. It's a smorgasboard of invertebrate horror. But so
the question is why.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
The ant bone room.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
While the authors discuss they start the paper by talking
about different evolutionary specializations in reproductive strategy, noting that certain
wasp species will specialize in trying to protect and ensure
the survival of a smaller number of total eggs compared
(08:48):
to the majority of their close insect relatives, which lay
more eggs but invest less in the survival of each one.
So the majority of soft flies and wasp females will
be able to lay hundreds of eggs in a lifetime.
But what the authors call the quote more advanced solitary
nest provisioning hymenoptera that they sometimes lay only a dozen
(09:12):
eggs or so, or even less than that in the
lifetime of a single female. So lay far fewer eggs,
but do a lot more to protect each one. And
the bone house wasp is in the latter group, the
kind that invests a lot more in each egg. It
is a solitary nest provisioning wasp in the family Pompility.
(09:32):
The pompility are also known as the spider hunting wasps.
And here we come back to what you talked about
with the spiders earlier. Within this family, Curiously, the adults
actually don't eat spiders. The adults feed mostly on plant nectar,
and they're vegetarians. They are not generally carnivores, and yet
(09:54):
they are some of the most fearful predators in a
way in nature, I guess, depending on how you want
to use the word predator. They're not eating spiders, but
they do attack spiders with a painful, paralyzing venom, not
so that the adults themselves can eat the spiders, but
so that the spiders can be entombed as a live,
(10:18):
non decomposing food source for their growing young. So yes,
these spiders in many cases, in most cases, will be
eaten alive in a paralyzed state. So the life cycle
for a spider hunting wasp usually goes like this. You
have adults, which you can feed on floral nectar. They
produce this paralyzing sting. They use the paralyzing sting to
(10:40):
attack and immobilize a spider, then they carry the spider away.
They lay their eggs alongside the paralyzed spider inside a
protected nest of some sort, often a hole or a
tube of some kind closed to the outside, to protect
the egg and the larva once it hatches, and I
(11:00):
guess presumably also to protect the spider as a food
source from being stolen. You know, you want to lock
up the fridge.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Hey, just don't leave that lane around.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
Yeah yeah, it's like a bare box, you know, the roadbox.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah. And so the larvae hatch inside these protected nests
and they eat the spiders, usually starting instinctually with non
vital body parts, eating you know, eat, chewing through the
cuticle on the outside of the spider, eating the body
parts first that will not be lethal to the spider,
(11:33):
and then finally working their ways to the vital organs,
you know, eating the heart and the central nervous system
and stuff. And the goal is to keep the paralyzed
spider alive as long as possible so that it doesn't decompose.
It kind of keeps the spider alive while entombed, to
take advantage of the spider's living physiology, like it's immune
(11:53):
system as a natural preservative.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah. I mean it may sound cruel to us, but
you know, it's a wasp larva eat spider world out there.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
I mean, it's efficient, waste not want not.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
So they oh and then finally, of course, the larvae
they mature, they might pupate, emerge from the nest to
become these nectivorous adults and repeat the cycle. So everything
I just said is also the case for the bone
house wasp. These are these spider hunting solitary wasps. But
what separates the bonehouse wasp from its nest provisioning kin
(12:27):
is that the bone house wasp also goes to the
extra trouble of provisioning the nest with an outer chamber
what the authors of the paper will call again a
vestibular cell crammed with dead ants. Now, when I was
first reading about this, and I hadn't gotten to the
reasoning part of it yet, the first place my brain
(12:48):
went was, oh, bonus snack. Right, so you got your
spider and then you've got something else. My young will
emerge extra well fed because not only do they get
to eat a paralyzed spider alive bit by bit, they
also get to eat some ants for dessert. But no,
the ants are not there to be eaten. In fact,
the ants in the vestibular chamber are completely ignored by
(13:11):
the larvae. The larvae never eat or come into contact
with them.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Wow, okay, all right, so what are they for? Right? Yeah?
They can't be a decorative garnish. Surely they have to
have some purpose.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, they're closed up in there, right, so what are
they for? Interestingly, the authors note that many other Hymenoptera
species construct tubular nests with these outer chambers or vestibular cells,
but they're usually empty, and at the time of this
paper their function was not really known because previous research
(13:46):
had thought, well, you know, maybe these are protective in
some way, this outer empty chamber, it protects the brood inside,
But previous research had not shown these vestibular cells to
have any protective benefit for the eggs or larvae inside.
So what are they for? Because to be clear, protection
is a concern. I mean, these organisms sound very fearsome
(14:08):
because what they attack spiders and they paralyze them and
they eat them alive. But still the young are vulnerable.
You know, you can have an adult parasitoid or predator
parasite of another species attack the nest, and the young,
the eggs or the larvae will be very vulnerable.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
Inside.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
There are other wasp and fly species that will readily
attack the nests and eat the eggs and larvae of
these solitary spider hunting wasps if they can get in there.
So the brood inside would benefit from protection. But these
commonly found empty vestibular cells don't seem to provide much,
if any protection, at least as far as we can tell. Experimentally. However,
(14:48):
the authors of this paper found that when the vestibular
chamber is stuffed with dead ants, it seems it actually
does provide a protective advantage. The dead ants help keep
nest parasites and predators out. So how do they do that? Well,
the authors raise a couple of possibilities which are not
(15:08):
mutually exclusive, chemical camouflage and chemical defense. Quote ants produce
a diverse array of organic compounds, including species specific cuticular
hydrocarbons or cchs, which are a central part of the
nest mate recognition system. Being long chained molecules of low volatility,
(15:32):
cchs persist on the cuticula of dead Hymenoptera for a
long time period, thus giving do Osarium nests the scent
of an ant colony. So you've got these cuticular hydrocarbons
that these chemical signals that persist on the body of
dead ants for a long time, and they keep the
(15:54):
brood chambers of the young wasps smelling like an ant colony,
and if you are an inse, even a predator or
a parasite, you usually don't want to mess with an
ant colony. It's like in Grand Theft Auto when you
like go on the military base or something. You know,
it's just like instant, overwhelming defensive response.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Yes, yeah, it's it's quite a heist. As we alluded
to in the last episode. You can have specialists that
can do it, but it is it's a high risk environment.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
The author is right quote. In this context, we find
it particularly interesting that the numerically dominating ant species ind
Osarium nests is p astuda, an aggressive, large bodied, and
common species in the study region that has a powerful sting.
So they seem to be not just collecting any ant.
(16:41):
They're trying to get a certain kind of ant in
this dead ant room. And what they're selecting for the
ant bone box is an ant that is big and
ferocious with nasty venom, is stinky, and is common and
likely to have been encountered by local nest attacking insects.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yes, oh wow, Okay, now it's all coming together.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
The author's right quote. The proposed function of the ant
chamber is most effective against predators that break the nest
and against parasitic wasps that penetrate the nest with their
long ovipositor that would be an egg laying appendage, so
trying to put their own eggs inside the nest. Such
parasitoids attacked other trapped nesting wasps, including other pompility in
(17:26):
the study region, and may also attack Doosarium by penetrating
the wood that contains naturally the nest cavity. However, such
species were never found in nests of Doosarium, which was
only attacked by parasitoids which entered the nest prior to
the construction of the ant chamber. So the ant chambers
(17:46):
keep the bad guys out and they protect the brood within.
And the authors note again that this is the first
case of a species of wasp found in nature to
build a nest chamber full of ant carcasses. Wonder nature is.
But getting back to our horror movie parallels. You know,
last time we were talking about some distinctions different kinds
(18:07):
of things that can be signaled when in a horror
context you encounter a big collection of bones, you have
like the Midden style collection of bones, where it just
you know, it suggests non intelligent chaotic predation. This is
just a trash pile that signals lots of death versus
the carefully assembled or curated collection of bones that are
(18:31):
creepy in a different way that suggests fascination or kind
of aberrant obsessions or behavior. This example makes me think
about the sort of Texas chainsaw massacre implications in a
different way. You know, what if you imagine, okay, the
saw your family and the Texas chainsaw masker. Yeah, they
got a bunch of bones around, But we always assume
(18:53):
that it's because they're being aggressive. What if it's not
because they're trying to terrify their victims for the fun
of it. They're not salting the meat. What if it
is to frighten onlookers in a defensive way, much like
the ants in this nest, to get them to stay
away from the house, avoid the brood.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, yeah, that is kind of the vibe here. It's
so fascinating to think about because again we're talking about
an animal that is harvesting other animals, but not for food,
but for essentially building materials and to serve as a
protective barrier. Yeah, and I mean it's really hard to
(19:33):
think of any other species. I'm just off the top
of my head outside of human beings that actually do
this sort of thing where I look to the natural
world and identify one living species not as food but
as something that should be killed for other purposes.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah, that is interesting, and to be fair, I don't
think this too closely. Could actually fit the events of
TCM if you watch it, but I don't know. I'm
imagining an alternate version of TCM where they line the
outside of the house with like, I don't know, they've
they've gone out and gotten a bunch of malt like guards. Yeah,
security guards from all kinds of places, and then they
just post up the security guard uniforms outside their house.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Mmmm yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's not something that necessarily
translates completely to the human world, but within the world
of like insect communication, you can see how it would
speak volumes.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Either way, I think this definitely fits more into the
curated assemblage of remains than into the chaotic midden formula,
because these are not leftovers, like they were put in
there for a reason.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Right right, Yeah, this is a great example. All right.
I have a couple of other examples I want to
get to here in this episode. I'm gonna start though,
by returning to the decapod world. As we mentioned in
(21:02):
the last episode, hermit crabs are essentially the crab superstars
of pilfering the quote unquote bones. Again, we're being a
little liberal in our usage of the word bones of
the dead for their own use, the bones in this
case being the shells of mollusks that they use as
their own armor.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Hm.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
But they are not the only decapods to get in
in this sort of action. Famously, we also have the
decorator crabs of the Superfamily majority. Now, not every species
in this family is a decorator crab. It's more broadly
considered I think the home of the spider crabs, but
still that's where we find decorator crabs. And there are
(21:46):
also other crabs outside of the superfamily that use similar adaptations,
such as the kelp crab. And we also might compare
this to the way pom Pom crabs or boxer crabs
carry sea enemies around one in each claw or one
on each claw, kind of brandishing them as living weapons.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Yeah yeah, Well, these things have come up on the
show a bit before, and I never thought about them
in a creepy context or in a bone collector kind
of way, go thinking, okay, maybe they're attaching various sessile
organisms to their back. This seems kind of hospitable in
a way.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
I mean, they're grabbing animals and using them as weapons.
It would be like if there was a guy running
around the subway with a rat in each hand, chasing
at your people. You know, we would be it would
be a little off putting.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Yeah, But with the crabs, it's so cute.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Yeah, all right, so let's consider this this next example then, yeah,
the decorator crabs. So essentially, what decorator crabs do is
they camouflage themselves by considering their living environment, you know,
but not simply mimicking it with you know, their coloration
or their morphology, but by taking bits of that environment,
(22:58):
living parts of that environment in many cases, and sticking
that to their body. Essentially, they have the cetae on
their backs, like on their carapace. These are like little
hooklike often compared to velcrow situations, all over their shell
and this allows them to just reach out, strip a
(23:21):
little some living or non living portion of their environment
and just slap it on there and then this becomes
part of their protective array. Has pointed out in a
nineteen eighty Scientific American article about decorator crabs by Mary
kay Wixton, other kinds of seta on the shell are
more sensory, and their job is not to hold stuff
(23:43):
in place so much, but to sort of keep track
of where everything is. So it would seem to be
a situation where it's not just completely slap dash. It's
carefully arranged. They are decorating to a certain degree. Things
go in the right place, and they have to remain there.
The crabs they get pretty picky about this. Like if,
(24:05):
as we've discussed before, a crab a decorator crab, like
other crabs, it has to molt. Its body grows, but
its shell doesn't. They have to ditch the shell that
it outgrew and then you know, grow a new one.
And when they do this, they will have to then
reattach their zoo garden back onto their new shell as
it grows. So this is interesting to think about. Now,
(24:27):
once they reach maturity, you know, they stop molting and
they're good to go, but there are going to be
these cases where they're like, okay, this this jacket doesn't
fit me anymore, but I have all of these great
enamel pins on it and patches, so I have to
take all those off and then put them on the
new jacket, the new gene jacket, once I grow it
out of my body. So yeah, there are number of
(24:47):
interesting details concerning this practice. So, first of all, body
size apparently plays a role in all of this, has
discussed in two thousand and nine's Evolution of Decoration in
the Majodia Crab by holtgrin at All, published in the
American Naturalists. Smaller bodied crabs would seem to have a
more economically sustainable time with a strategy, and this seems
(25:10):
to break down to the idea that the more body
you have, the more hooks you have to have, and
that has, you know, a cost to it. It's like
having a whole bunch of antlers on your head as
a vertebrate. So larger decorator crabs seem to rely less
on this sort of thing, and the smaller varieties of
decorator crabs, you know, are more all in on the decoration.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Interesting, okay, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
There are also some varieties that are more passive decorators
than others. So you know, they might just stuff just
kind of sticks to them and that becomes their camouflage,
while others are definitely involved in decorating themselves. I was
looking at some much older papers about these guys, and
some of the authors really got in on comparing these
(25:56):
crabs to humans, saying that they were essentially getting dressed
when they they put stuff on. And I guess it's
hard not to make that comparison, do I look all right?
Speaker 4 (26:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Now, most famously, I think most of the when you
hear people talk about the decorator crebs, we're generally talking
about living material that has been added. So you know,
there might be some sort of algae that they're stripping
and sticking to them, or they're getting a little piece
of an anemone or a bit of a sponge slapping
that onto the shell, essentially becoming a mobile habitat for
(26:29):
sessile marine organisms. So not the bones, but the actual
living meat of their environment.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
Yes, I like this reframing here. So they are getting
the meat.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yes, And as Wixton pointed out in that paper I
referenced earlier, the exact favored materials are going to differ
from species to species, and it's also going to be
situationally specific. So I don't know if you could even
maybe even press it as far as to say, like
individually specific, but it's going to be based on what's
available to them as well, not so much the individual preference,
(26:59):
but you know, just what do they have in their area.
In general, they tend to favor organic matter that they
can strip apart with their claws, sponges again, algae and
stuff like that. They will also go for, quote, according
to Wixton, tubes secreted by polykeet worms, which sounds super
(27:19):
gross at first, it's less gross when you look into it. Basically,
these are these self secreted mineral tubes that some polykeet
worms secrete and then live in. Other worms just live
in tubes that they've bored into a substrate. So we're
talking about little mineralized worm straws turned stylish accessories for
the decorator crabs.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Wow, this wreck.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
This reminds me of the caterpillar from the last time,
which had all these things that looked like little orange
straws attached to it, but it was the spider body integument,
like from the spider molting. It would have a tube
left over that I guess used to be part of
a spider's leg and then the spider outgrew it.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yeah, you can look up pictures of this, and some
of these pictures are wild and also, I guess it
makes sense. We talk about decoration, but it is camouflage,
so some of these it's sometimes kind of hard to
really pick out and figure out what you're looking at.
But you do see these what look like tiny, little,
you know, environment colored straws stuck to the crabs bodies.
(28:20):
They'll also make use of other materials, though plant leaves
have available, and in captive environments where they've been stripped
of their decorations, Wiston points out that they'll use the
likes of quote, torn sea pansies, strips of paper, chips
of cement from the aquarium wall, and even bits of hamburger.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, I don't know. I guess they put hamburger in
there for food and they're like, what is this it'll do?
And they stick it to their bodies.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Yeah, I want more detail on the hamburger.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I couldn't find any additional day. I think it's just
they put hamburger in there, I guess to see how
they would respond to the meat, and at least one
of the crabs is like, okay, this.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
Will do to meat. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
These to be clear situations where their actual decorations were
taken away from them, so they did not have the
option of using their normal, like first choice decorations. Now,
they'll certainly make use of shell fragments. But as for
actual bones, if we're going to be like real strict
about the episode title here, it seems possible that bones
(29:25):
could be covered by the frequently cited miscellaneous detritus that
the crabs use. But it would seem that actual vertebrate
bones on the whole are just not desirable. And part
of this may be that, you know, sometimes bones are
too large, they're too massive. Other cases, the coloration might
not be ideal because again the crab seems to be selecting,
(29:49):
you know, based on what looks like my environment, and
so you can imagine that if a bone is too
bright looking, then well that might just not that might
not pass the test for the decorator crab in question. Now,
based on researcher observations of decoration and captivity, which we decided,
it seems possible that, okay, maybe you could manipulate one
into using tiny bones. But that seems like cheating. I mean,
(30:12):
it's like they're not going to put Hamburger on.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
Their bodies in the wild.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
So if you were able to trick one into using
bones well in a captive environment, that doesn't really count.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Well you've convinced me Rob. I did not think of
these these animals in a creepy way before I put
them in the cute box in my brain. But I'm
officially taking them out of the cute box. Or I'll
take half of one out of the cute box and
put the leave one half in there, put the other
half in the creepy box.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
I don't know. Aren't all crabs kind of in the
creepy and cute box at the same time. That's kind
of the crab box, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
Maybe?
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Yeah, At any rate, they're pretty fun.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
They certainly do cover themselves with a mix of living flesh,
dead flesh, and various forms of organic and inorganic detritus.
So yeah, certainly close enough for me.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Bone collector certified.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Yeah, all right, And then I want to get back
to one that I might have mentioned this one in
passing in the first episode. Uh, certainly one that's been
on my mind the whole time, especially when we're talking
about a creature's midden, and that is the midden of
the octopus, and this one was that. Yeah, this was
one of my first picks for the series, as it's
a pretty great example of a creature that not only
(31:21):
passively accumulates bones and bone like remains, but also makes
use of them.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Oh okay, so it could could be in sort of
both of our categories from the first episode, both the
chaotically assembled midden as a leftover of other activities, but
then also something that serves a purpose of its own.
It's not just a trash heap.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Right right, it is. It's in this case it is
a trash sheep, but then a trash heap that is
utilized in environment manipulation and dim manipulation, which we'll get
into in just a second. All right, So, different varieties
of octopus make use of mittens. This includes the common octopus,
the giant Pacific octopus, the gloomy octopus, and the Caribbean
(32:02):
two spot octopus just as a few examples. And we'll
get into some more specific examples here in a second.
And an octopus's midden is primarily the accumulation of shells
and bones. Outside of its den, there are also going
to be bits of rock and perhaps bits of coral
and so forth. They are kind of like mixed up
in it as well. One thing that was interesting This
(32:25):
is a kind of a tangent, but I think it
reveals a lot about the formation of middens. In some
cases the shells don't accumulate as much because hermit crabs
carry them off. So Richard F. Ambrose discussed this in
a nineteen eighty three article for Marine Behavior and Physiology,
(32:45):
citing studies of Virel's two spot octopus, which only have,
according to this older paper, some discarded remnants at their
dens twenty percent of the time without the materials forming
true middens. So again, this would seem to be a
variety of octopus that doesn't really do much with mittens.
(33:09):
And the big reason for this would seem to be
that the snails make up an extra large part of
this specific octopus species diet much more than other octopus species,
and as a result, it has mostly shells that are
hermit crabs. They get stolen and carried away by marine
hermit crabs.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Well, isn't that a beautiful little emergent efficiency in nature,
Like exactly the main kind of trash you produce is
exactly what some other organism in your environment wants as
a home.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yes, though I don't know in this case those as
we'll look at some of these other examples. Other midden
producing octopuses do make use of their heap of bones
and shells, and you know, some of those shells are
carried away if they happen to be mollis shells, and
there are hermit crabs in their environment, but they're able
to do more with them, whereas this particular species Varil's
(34:02):
two spot octopus, I guess just doesn't have that option
if most of it's most of it's midden or most
of what would be its midden are carried away by hermits.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
So one octopus's trash does not ever get to become
that same octopus as treasure because it was already treasure
to a decapod that took it.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Right right, So so yeah, on one level, the octopus
is midden is yeah, definitely this bone and shell deposit. Again,
in keeping with our her mythic ideas of dragons layers,
the cave of Carabanog and so forth, you know, look
at the bones. And I have to mention that every
(34:39):
time I've had the opportunity to go snorkeling, I always
keep a lookout for anything that might be an octopus midden,
because to observe an octopus in the lie in the
wild is a most special thing. And the one time
I really got to observe an octopus out out in
the wild while snorkeling during daylight, that was one of
(35:00):
the most magical experiences of my life. It was just amazing.
But of course octopuses are not always active when we
snorkelers are out, and even when they are, they are
masters of disguise in their environments and we're merely humans.
So I am not good at identifying an octopus as
midden in the wild.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
I'll look at things and be like, that kind of
looks like it could be a heap of shells, that
could be some bones. Maybe that is an octopus's midden,
but you know, nothing ever comes out of it.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Well, that actually makes me wonder would they make any
attempt to disguise their middens.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
As far as I know, not intentionally, you know, I
guess part of the reality is there's you know, things
are eaten all the time, things are torn apart all
the time in a marine environment, especially in like a
really diverse coral environment. So uh yeah, But this is
I guess, kind of an open question, like are there
going to be organisms that might identify an octopus as
(35:59):
midden and therefore try to take advantage of it or
steer clear of it? I would think not so much,
because one is, we'll discuss here in a minute. One
of the key things that the octopus does was with
the midden is disguise its layer and fortify its layer.
Speaker 4 (36:17):
Okay, that makes sense, And I guess.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
As you alluded to a minute ago, you know, there's
gonna be a lot of shells and other bones and
hard parts floating around or settling on the bottom of
the ocean anyway, So like it wouldn't be unusual to see.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Those for another organism.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
It's not like it's not like when we see a
bone pile in a movie.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah. Now, just because I can't spot an octopus midden
in the wild or haven't had the luck of spotting one,
that doesn't mean other humans, actual researchers and experts can't.
(36:57):
Because it kind of much like the example of the
cave hyena bone collections we discussed in last episode, Octopus
middens can actually tell us a lot about what octopus
species are eating, you know, it gives us a little
insight into what's on the menu for them, and it
can also tell us what octopus individuals are eating. And
(37:20):
this latter point is actually really key.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
Oh you can go through their trash. Yeah, yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Can go through their trash. And it's telling again, not
just about a species, but also about individuals. As discussed
in individual prey Choices of Octopuses Are they Generalist or Specialist?
By Mather at All, published twenty twelve in the journal
Current Zoology, The question they pose here may have to
be answered in terms of both species and individual given
(37:46):
that we're dealing with intelligent and adaptive predators that may
make their choices based not only on localized prey of availability,
but also individual personality differences, which I thought was a
very very interesting consideration. Like, we're dealing with a creature
that is again highly adaptive, may have a lot to
choose from in a given environment, and some of its
(38:09):
choices might not just be part of a basic equation
of like availability plus ability, and you know the abilities
of the species, but also like, what does this individual
like to do? What has it chosen to explore and
then take advantage.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Of Octopuses are intelligent enough that they might actually be
quirky individually quirky.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Yes, Yeah, another paper I looked two thousand and eighths
Octopus vulgaris. That's the common octopus, by the way, in
the Caribbean is a specializing generalist by Anderson at All,
published in the Marine Ecology Progress series. They looked at
the remains of six hundred and forty nine prey items
gathered from the middens of thirty eight dens in a
(38:54):
small area off the Caribbean island of bon Air, and
they these middens revealed thirty five species of gastropods it's
nineteen percent of the total, nineteen bivalves fifty percent, and
twenty one crustaceans thirty percent. And this particular study argued that, yes,
the common octopus is a specialized gennalist, with the population
as a whole boasting a wide choice of prey items,
(39:17):
but with narrower focus for the individual. So that would
seem to line up with what this other paper was
saying as well, But.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
A minute ago you were talking about the actual benefits
of an octopus as mitten, so that it wasn't just
a trash heap. It is thought to do something for
the octopus.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
And then this we can really think of it in
terms of a dragon or a killer rabbit. So your
killer rabbit or your dragon is producing all of these bones.
But imagine that the mythic monster in question here, first
of all, pushes or blasts all the bones that they
produce outside of their den. They don't want to sleep
on all those bones necessarily, And in the octopus's case,
(39:57):
they can use, you know, their jets to things around.
So you're accumulating your waist out there in front of
your den. With the dragon or the rabbit, we're talking
about a cave, and with the octopus, you know, we're
talking about some sort of indention in the sand, the
coral and so forth, you know, the rock, some sort
of little den they have there with sand and other
(40:19):
detritus out there already, and then an ever growing pile
of bones and bits of shell and so forth, and
so yeah, it's not just a waste disposal byproduct, but
it's also a source of defense and shelter because the
heap of shells and bones are then used by the
octopus to alter the environment. They can use it to
(40:42):
narrow or even block the entrance to the octopus's den,
camouflaging it and also fortifying it against incursion. So such
a den like it provides them a place of refuge,
but it can also serve a very much more important part,
like the most important part really in the octopus's life cycle.
(41:04):
It can serve as the place where a female octopus
lays her eggs and eventually her final resting place as
she dies tending to them. So most species of octopus
only reproduce once in their lifetime, and they enter a
fatal sinessence phase after laying that clutch of eggs. So
(41:25):
you know, it's rather interesting. It becomes their home, it
kind of becomes their tomb, but is also the place
from which the next phase of the life cycle will emerge.
And then afterwards, an octopuss den might be reused by
a new octopus seeking out a place to hold up,
or of course it could be inhabited by various other
(41:47):
marine organisms looking for some sort of little place to
burrow away. But in comparing the octopus is Midden to
dragons and other fantasy creatures. I think there's an opportunity there,
And I wonder if any body out there has explored
this idea, like some sort of dragon that uses its
bones for some sort of purpose, you know, either fortifying
(42:09):
its position or I don't know, I guess they're dragons.
They could potentially do something magical with them, like raise
all those bones. I imagine there's easily some cases where
that goes on. But the octopus would argue, no, the
best thing you can do is create. You end up
with this big, like sifting pile of bones and sand
and other materials, and you can just use that as
(42:31):
kind of like the door to your layer, opening it,
closing it, partially obscuring and so forth.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Yeah, so this is kind of similar to the wasp
and ant example.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Here.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Once again it's a case of defensive use of the
bones or remains of another animal.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, you know, and in this case that
these bones are the result of their own consumption, unlike
the ants. But yeah, they are using them for a
novel purpose. To come back to your Texas chainsaw massacre example,
it would be like if the saw your family. We're
using the bones not only as decorations, but as like
(43:09):
actual like fences to keep people out, like physical barriers.
I guess that's the only thing that makes sense. Oh,
I can't really say environmental disguise, but.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
Well, I was thinking, like, what about lining their driveway
with bones in a way that like narrows the approach
of vehicles to the home. You know, you're trying to
funnel them into a particular area. Yeah, so yeah, you
said that the octopuses could like narrow you know, or
control the shape of the opening or the aperture to
their den with the bones.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Yeah, there's a lot we can learn from the Sawyer clan.
I think that's what we're saying.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
Putting a bunch of sharp bones out on the road
in front of the house to puncture the tires of
trucks that are going by. Yeah yeah, I guess that's
that's getting away from the octopus example.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
But well, things become increasingly more complicated when you start
injecting them into the human world. But I think the
spirit is still there.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
You know, here's a funny thing. Imagine octopuses they developed
their own technological civilization, their own art, their own genres
of literature. They discovered that they had a taste for
horror as well. They liked being scared for fun. Now,
try to imagine the culture's equivalent of bone imagery, because
(44:25):
they've only got one hard part, right, it's just the beak,
So they couldn't have a whole bunch of different bones
for horror imagery. It would just be beaks.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
I guess you're right.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Yeah, their pirate flag is just a beak. Every piece
of skullar bone imagery we have could only be beak.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
That would be their Halloween decoration.
Speaker 4 (44:44):
Yeah, all right? Does that do it for the bone collectors?
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I think it does now. Folks out there, you might
have some other examples that have come to mind. You're like, hey,
what about this organism? What about that one? Well, write
in because we would love to either discuss those on
future episodes of Listener, may here in the Stuff to
Blow your Mind podcast feed, or who knows, if we
get enough recommendations, maybe we have the ammo to do
a part three, either later this year or next year
(45:10):
when Halloween rolls around once again.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
In the meantime, we would like to remind everyone out
there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday,
short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set
aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to send
us your own example of a bone collecting organism that
does something interesting with the remains of other animals. If
you would like to suggest a topic for the future,
or just to say hello, you can email us at
contact that's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(46:25):
M
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back part two in
the Halloween season series. We're calling the Bone Collectors about
organisms in nature that form Texas chainsaw massacre style collections
of bones and other dead body parts. In the last episode,
we talked first about the extinct cave hyena Crocutispialia, which
(00:38):
was a Eurasian apex predator of the Pleistocene Epic. These
animals are famous for assembling these big pits of animal
bones that are now found preserved in caves and the
caves where they lived around the world, and that in
itself provides interesting information about the adaptive characteristics of these animals,
(00:58):
mainly the fact that we sort of talked about them
as like a tractor model predator or scavenger, that they
were strong, had these powerful jaws, and I think, maybe
for some reasons of social cooperation as well, were able
to haul large amounts of animal carcass mass from kill
sites or from scavenging sites out in the world all
(01:19):
the way back to their dens, which were often in
caves and then you find these assemblages of bones in
the caves.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah. Yeah, they're kind of like tow trucks. They're out there,
they find a carcass that's been illegally parked, and they're like, well,
we got to take this back to the garage.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
And then after that we talked about an insect native
to a small stretch of forest in a mountain range
on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, nicknamed the bone collector
caterpillar because of its unusual behavior of first of all,
living inside active spider webs and then covering its external
(01:53):
silk case with dead, dried out insect body parts shopped
from the spider's web, which there's no perfect analogy for
on our level, but I was thinking about it, like
if there were a species of bird that lived inside
a Kentucky fried chicken and primarily eight chicken scavenged from
(02:14):
people's tables, and completely covered the outside of its body
with leftover chicken bones so as not to be mistaken
by the people working there for like another chicken that
should be cooked or something.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I like it. You know, make this a terror bird
and put humans on the menu, and you've got yourself
a horror movie right here.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
I think now.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
In the case of the bone collector caterpillar, the reason
for the chopped up insect body part suit behavior is
not known with certainty, but researchers kind of suggested that
it may be a form of camouflage to protect the
caterpillar from the spider that it lives alongside. Somehow disguising
the caterpillar as trash something to be ignored. And we're
(02:56):
back today to talk about more so, Robin.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Sorry what, oh no, It's just it would be kind
of like if you were at a child's birthday party
and you covered yourself in the crust of pizza slices
and the bottom parts of cupcakes, you know, the parts
that the children buy and large do not eat, and
they would mark yourself safe from them, I guess, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Or you're a piece of Halloween candy that eats Halloween candy,
that disguises yourself by covering yourself in candy wrappers.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
There you go, that work.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
You would look like, what's already done with? I don't
need to pay attention to that anymore. That's for mom
and dad to clean up. Yeah, now, rob, if you
don't mind I was going to kick things off today
looking at a wasp. Would you like to do that?
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, I'm always game for another horror story from the
world of the wasp.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
There's a lot to choose from there. So in the
last episode, since we talked about the bone collector caterpillar,
I guess it's obvious that we've expanded our criteria for
collectors beyond literal bones. We're not just looking at uses
for the internal skeletons of vertebrate animals. Because to be frank,
you know, I was looking at a lot of things
we could have talked about. I think some of the
(04:11):
best examples just come from the invertebrate world. That's where
a lot of the best stuff happens. So I wanted
to kick things off by talking about another insect example,
and that is the bone house wasp. The scientific name
for the species is Deuterogenia osorium. Ooh yeah, And that
species name, you might hear that in your brain there osorium.
(04:32):
That comes from the word ossuary if you're not familiar.
And ossuary is a storage space that could be a
box or something bigger, like a whole room or a
hall for the storage of human bones often used in
places where burial space is limited or at a premium,
So a common practice in many places would be that
(04:54):
when a person dies, they are buried or entombed in
a temporary spot. Later, maybe a year later, after the
decomposition of the soft tissue, the bones are cleaned and
removed from the temporary burial space and transferred to an ossuary,
which could be a bone box or a chest, or
a space beneath the tomb, or just like a whole
(05:17):
bone building. Sometimes there are places with shelves crammed with
bones or rooms lined with bones. It's just another place
to put the bones. Now, why would a species of
wasp be named after a bone storage box, Well, we
will answer that question. This wasp was described in a
paper from twenty fourteen called a Unique Nest Protection Strategy
(05:40):
in a New Species of Spider Wasp, published in the
Journal Plus One by authors Michael Stobb, Michael ol Choudong Xu,
and Alexandra Maria Klein, and I was reading a bit
of background. Apparently, these insects were collected during a biodiversity
survey in the forests of Jungshi Province in southeast China,
(06:02):
where the researchers collected more than eight hundred chambered nests
from the wild and in the environment you would usually
find these nests. You would find them sometimes like dug
into the earth, or you would also find them maybe
in natural cavities or holes that have been bored into
pieces of wood. It'll be kind of like deep tube
(06:24):
shaped chambers, either in earth or in wood or something
like that. So these chambered nests, they were found in
the wild and then they were brought back to the
laboratory so that the researchers could examine the nests and
rear the larvae. In the larvae inside quote here we
describe a surprising nesting behavior that was previously unknown in
(06:44):
the entire animal kingdom, the use of a vestibular cell
filled with dead ants. So some houses have a mud room,
you know, sort of the outer room between the front
door and then where the house proper begins. These nests
have an anti chamber like that, called the vestibular cell.
(07:05):
It's an ant room and it's filled with dead ant bodies.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Rob I've got.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
A photo of a cross section of a nest for
you to look at in the outline here, so you
can see the nest has a what you might think
of as a shotgun house design. It's deep and narrow
and deeper. You have what are called the brood cells.
This is where the wasp eggs are protected, sealed in
with these cemented doors made of maybe plant material, soil, debris,
(07:34):
and mud. And then in the outermost chamber you can
see this dusty jumble of mangled ant skeletons, just a
wad of dead ants.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Oh wow, yeah, this is incredible and you know, for
many of us, speaking at least for the two of us,
but I think a lot of people out there. You've
grown up in an area that had a lot of
dirt dobber wafts or mud dabbers, various names, you would
inevitably figure out that they do a similar thing with spiders,
where you'd find this cache of spiders hidden away inside
(08:08):
their mud nests.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Oh, these wasps do that with spiders too. We're actually
going to get a two for one here. Oh yeah, yeah,
so we're going to get ants and spiders in the
same nest. It's a smorgasboard of invertebrate horror. But so
the question is why.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
The ant bone room.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
While the authors discuss they start the paper by talking
about different evolutionary specializations in reproductive strategy, noting that certain
wasp species will specialize in trying to protect and ensure
the survival of a smaller number of total eggs compared
(08:48):
to the majority of their close insect relatives, which lay
more eggs but invest less in the survival of each one.
So the majority of soft flies and wasp females will
be able to lay hundreds of eggs in a lifetime.
But what the authors call the quote more advanced solitary
nest provisioning hymenoptera that they sometimes lay only a dozen
(09:12):
eggs or so, or even less than that in the
lifetime of a single female. So lay far fewer eggs,
but do a lot more to protect each one. And
the bone house wasp is in the latter group, the
kind that invests a lot more in each egg. It
is a solitary nest provisioning wasp in the family Pompility.
(09:32):
The pompility are also known as the spider hunting wasps.
And here we come back to what you talked about
with the spiders earlier. Within this family, Curiously, the adults
actually don't eat spiders. The adults feed mostly on plant nectar,
and they're vegetarians. They are not generally carnivores, and yet
(09:54):
they are some of the most fearful predators in a
way in nature, I guess, depending on how you want
to use the word predator. They're not eating spiders, but
they do attack spiders with a painful, paralyzing venom, not
so that the adults themselves can eat the spiders, but
so that the spiders can be entombed as a live,
(10:18):
non decomposing food source for their growing young. So yes,
these spiders in many cases, in most cases, will be
eaten alive in a paralyzed state. So the life cycle
for a spider hunting wasp usually goes like this. You
have adults, which you can feed on floral nectar. They
produce this paralyzing sting. They use the paralyzing sting to
(10:40):
attack and immobilize a spider, then they carry the spider away.
They lay their eggs alongside the paralyzed spider inside a
protected nest of some sort, often a hole or a
tube of some kind closed to the outside, to protect
the egg and the larva once it hatches, and I
(11:00):
guess presumably also to protect the spider as a food
source from being stolen. You know, you want to lock
up the fridge.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Hey, just don't leave that lane around.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
Yeah yeah, it's like a bare box, you know, the roadbox.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah. And so the larvae hatch inside these protected nests
and they eat the spiders, usually starting instinctually with non
vital body parts, eating you know, eat, chewing through the
cuticle on the outside of the spider, eating the body
parts first that will not be lethal to the spider,
(11:33):
and then finally working their ways to the vital organs,
you know, eating the heart and the central nervous system
and stuff. And the goal is to keep the paralyzed
spider alive as long as possible so that it doesn't decompose.
It kind of keeps the spider alive while entombed, to
take advantage of the spider's living physiology, like it's immune
(11:53):
system as a natural preservative.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah. I mean it may sound cruel to us, but
you know, it's a wasp larva eat spider world out there.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
I mean, it's efficient, waste not want not.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
So they oh and then finally, of course, the larvae
they mature, they might pupate, emerge from the nest to
become these nectivorous adults and repeat the cycle. So everything
I just said is also the case for the bone
house wasp. These are these spider hunting solitary wasps. But
what separates the bonehouse wasp from its nest provisioning kin
(12:27):
is that the bone house wasp also goes to the
extra trouble of provisioning the nest with an outer chamber
what the authors of the paper will call again a
vestibular cell crammed with dead ants. Now, when I was
first reading about this, and I hadn't gotten to the
reasoning part of it yet, the first place my brain
(12:48):
went was, oh, bonus snack. Right, so you got your
spider and then you've got something else. My young will
emerge extra well fed because not only do they get
to eat a paralyzed spider alive bit by bit, they
also get to eat some ants for dessert. But no,
the ants are not there to be eaten. In fact,
the ants in the vestibular chamber are completely ignored by
(13:11):
the larvae. The larvae never eat or come into contact
with them.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Wow, okay, all right, so what are they for? Right? Yeah?
They can't be a decorative garnish. Surely they have to
have some purpose.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, they're closed up in there, right, so what are
they for? Interestingly, the authors note that many other Hymenoptera
species construct tubular nests with these outer chambers or vestibular cells,
but they're usually empty, and at the time of this
paper their function was not really known because previous research
(13:46):
had thought, well, you know, maybe these are protective in
some way, this outer empty chamber, it protects the brood inside,
But previous research had not shown these vestibular cells to
have any protective benefit for the eggs or larvae inside.
So what are they for? Because to be clear, protection
is a concern. I mean, these organisms sound very fearsome
(14:08):
because what they attack spiders and they paralyze them and
they eat them alive. But still the young are vulnerable.
You know, you can have an adult parasitoid or predator
parasite of another species attack the nest, and the young,
the eggs or the larvae will be very vulnerable.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
Inside.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
There are other wasp and fly species that will readily
attack the nests and eat the eggs and larvae of
these solitary spider hunting wasps if they can get in there.
So the brood inside would benefit from protection. But these
commonly found empty vestibular cells don't seem to provide much,
if any protection, at least as far as we can tell. Experimentally. However,
(14:48):
the authors of this paper found that when the vestibular
chamber is stuffed with dead ants, it seems it actually
does provide a protective advantage. The dead ants help keep
nest parasites and predators out. So how do they do that? Well,
the authors raise a couple of possibilities which are not
(15:08):
mutually exclusive, chemical camouflage and chemical defense. Quote ants produce
a diverse array of organic compounds, including species specific cuticular
hydrocarbons or cchs, which are a central part of the
nest mate recognition system. Being long chained molecules of low volatility,
(15:32):
cchs persist on the cuticula of dead Hymenoptera for a
long time period, thus giving do Osarium nests the scent
of an ant colony. So you've got these cuticular hydrocarbons
that these chemical signals that persist on the body of
dead ants for a long time, and they keep the
(15:54):
brood chambers of the young wasps smelling like an ant colony,
and if you are an inse, even a predator or
a parasite, you usually don't want to mess with an
ant colony. It's like in Grand Theft Auto when you
like go on the military base or something. You know,
it's just like instant, overwhelming defensive response.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Yes, yeah, it's it's quite a heist. As we alluded
to in the last episode. You can have specialists that
can do it, but it is it's a high risk environment.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
The author is right quote. In this context, we find
it particularly interesting that the numerically dominating ant species ind
Osarium nests is p astuda, an aggressive, large bodied, and
common species in the study region that has a powerful sting.
So they seem to be not just collecting any ant.
(16:41):
They're trying to get a certain kind of ant in
this dead ant room. And what they're selecting for the
ant bone box is an ant that is big and
ferocious with nasty venom, is stinky, and is common and
likely to have been encountered by local nest attacking insects.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yes, oh wow, Okay, now it's all coming together.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
The author's right quote. The proposed function of the ant
chamber is most effective against predators that break the nest
and against parasitic wasps that penetrate the nest with their
long ovipositor that would be an egg laying appendage, so
trying to put their own eggs inside the nest. Such
parasitoids attacked other trapped nesting wasps, including other pompility in
(17:26):
the study region, and may also attack Doosarium by penetrating
the wood that contains naturally the nest cavity. However, such
species were never found in nests of Doosarium, which was
only attacked by parasitoids which entered the nest prior to
the construction of the ant chamber. So the ant chambers
(17:46):
keep the bad guys out and they protect the brood within.
And the authors note again that this is the first
case of a species of wasp found in nature to
build a nest chamber full of ant carcasses. Wonder nature is.
But getting back to our horror movie parallels. You know,
last time we were talking about some distinctions different kinds
(18:07):
of things that can be signaled when in a horror
context you encounter a big collection of bones, you have
like the Midden style collection of bones, where it just
you know, it suggests non intelligent chaotic predation. This is
just a trash pile that signals lots of death versus
the carefully assembled or curated collection of bones that are
(18:31):
creepy in a different way that suggests fascination or kind
of aberrant obsessions or behavior. This example makes me think
about the sort of Texas chainsaw massacre implications in a
different way. You know, what if you imagine, okay, the
saw your family and the Texas chainsaw masker. Yeah, they
got a bunch of bones around, But we always assume
(18:53):
that it's because they're being aggressive. What if it's not
because they're trying to terrify their victims for the fun
of it. They're not salting the meat. What if it
is to frighten onlookers in a defensive way, much like
the ants in this nest, to get them to stay
away from the house, avoid the brood.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, yeah, that is kind of the vibe here. It's
so fascinating to think about because again we're talking about
an animal that is harvesting other animals, but not for food,
but for essentially building materials and to serve as a
protective barrier. Yeah, and I mean it's really hard to
(19:33):
think of any other species. I'm just off the top
of my head outside of human beings that actually do
this sort of thing where I look to the natural
world and identify one living species not as food but
as something that should be killed for other purposes.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah, that is interesting, and to be fair, I don't
think this too closely. Could actually fit the events of
TCM if you watch it, but I don't know. I'm
imagining an alternate version of TCM where they line the
outside of the house with like, I don't know, they've
they've gone out and gotten a bunch of malt like guards. Yeah,
security guards from all kinds of places, and then they
just post up the security guard uniforms outside their house.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Mmmm yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's not something that necessarily
translates completely to the human world, but within the world
of like insect communication, you can see how it would
speak volumes.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Either way, I think this definitely fits more into the
curated assemblage of remains than into the chaotic midden formula,
because these are not leftovers, like they were put in
there for a reason.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Right right, Yeah, this is a great example. All right.
I have a couple of other examples I want to
get to here in this episode. I'm gonna start though,
by returning to the decapod world. As we mentioned in
(21:02):
the last episode, hermit crabs are essentially the crab superstars
of pilfering the quote unquote bones. Again, we're being a
little liberal in our usage of the word bones of
the dead for their own use, the bones in this
case being the shells of mollusks that they use as
their own armor.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Hm.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
But they are not the only decapods to get in
in this sort of action. Famously, we also have the
decorator crabs of the Superfamily majority. Now, not every species
in this family is a decorator crab. It's more broadly
considered I think the home of the spider crabs, but
still that's where we find decorator crabs. And there are
(21:46):
also other crabs outside of the superfamily that use similar adaptations,
such as the kelp crab. And we also might compare
this to the way pom Pom crabs or boxer crabs
carry sea enemies around one in each claw or one
on each claw, kind of brandishing them as living weapons.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Yeah yeah, Well, these things have come up on the
show a bit before, and I never thought about them
in a creepy context or in a bone collector kind
of way, go thinking, okay, maybe they're attaching various sessile
organisms to their back. This seems kind of hospitable in
a way.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
I mean, they're grabbing animals and using them as weapons.
It would be like if there was a guy running
around the subway with a rat in each hand, chasing
at your people. You know, we would be it would
be a little off putting.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Yeah, But with the crabs, it's so cute.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Yeah, all right, so let's consider this this next example then, yeah,
the decorator crabs. So essentially, what decorator crabs do is
they camouflage themselves by considering their living environment, you know,
but not simply mimicking it with you know, their coloration
or their morphology, but by taking bits of that environment,
(22:58):
living parts of that environment in many cases, and sticking
that to their body. Essentially, they have the cetae on
their backs, like on their carapace. These are like little
hooklike often compared to velcrow situations, all over their shell
and this allows them to just reach out, strip a
(23:21):
little some living or non living portion of their environment
and just slap it on there and then this becomes
part of their protective array. Has pointed out in a
nineteen eighty Scientific American article about decorator crabs by Mary
kay Wixton, other kinds of seta on the shell are
more sensory, and their job is not to hold stuff
(23:43):
in place so much, but to sort of keep track
of where everything is. So it would seem to be
a situation where it's not just completely slap dash. It's
carefully arranged. They are decorating to a certain degree. Things
go in the right place, and they have to remain there.
The crabs they get pretty picky about this. Like if,
(24:05):
as we've discussed before, a crab a decorator crab, like
other crabs, it has to molt. Its body grows, but
its shell doesn't. They have to ditch the shell that
it outgrew and then you know, grow a new one.
And when they do this, they will have to then
reattach their zoo garden back onto their new shell as
it grows. So this is interesting to think about. Now,
(24:27):
once they reach maturity, you know, they stop molting and
they're good to go, but there are going to be
these cases where they're like, okay, this this jacket doesn't
fit me anymore, but I have all of these great
enamel pins on it and patches, so I have to
take all those off and then put them on the
new jacket, the new gene jacket, once I grow it
out of my body. So yeah, there are number of
(24:47):
interesting details concerning this practice. So, first of all, body
size apparently plays a role in all of this, has
discussed in two thousand and nine's Evolution of Decoration in
the Majodia Crab by holtgrin at All, published in the
American Naturalists. Smaller bodied crabs would seem to have a
more economically sustainable time with a strategy, and this seems
(25:10):
to break down to the idea that the more body
you have, the more hooks you have to have, and
that has, you know, a cost to it. It's like
having a whole bunch of antlers on your head as
a vertebrate. So larger decorator crabs seem to rely less
on this sort of thing, and the smaller varieties of
decorator crabs, you know, are more all in on the decoration.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Interesting, okay, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
There are also some varieties that are more passive decorators
than others. So you know, they might just stuff just
kind of sticks to them and that becomes their camouflage,
while others are definitely involved in decorating themselves. I was
looking at some much older papers about these guys, and
some of the authors really got in on comparing these
(25:56):
crabs to humans, saying that they were essentially getting dressed
when they they put stuff on. And I guess it's
hard not to make that comparison, do I look all right?
Speaker 4 (26:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Now, most famously, I think most of the when you
hear people talk about the decorator crebs, we're generally talking
about living material that has been added. So you know,
there might be some sort of algae that they're stripping
and sticking to them, or they're getting a little piece
of an anemone or a bit of a sponge slapping
that onto the shell, essentially becoming a mobile habitat for
(26:29):
sessile marine organisms. So not the bones, but the actual
living meat of their environment.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
Yes, I like this reframing here. So they are getting
the meat.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yes, And as Wixton pointed out in that paper I
referenced earlier, the exact favored materials are going to differ
from species to species, and it's also going to be
situationally specific. So I don't know if you could even
maybe even press it as far as to say, like
individually specific, but it's going to be based on what's
available to them as well, not so much the individual preference,
(26:59):
but you know, just what do they have in their area.
In general, they tend to favor organic matter that they
can strip apart with their claws, sponges again, algae and
stuff like that. They will also go for, quote, according
to Wixton, tubes secreted by polykeet worms, which sounds super
(27:19):
gross at first, it's less gross when you look into it. Basically,
these are these self secreted mineral tubes that some polykeet
worms secrete and then live in. Other worms just live
in tubes that they've bored into a substrate. So we're
talking about little mineralized worm straws turned stylish accessories for
the decorator crabs.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Wow, this wreck.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
This reminds me of the caterpillar from the last time,
which had all these things that looked like little orange
straws attached to it, but it was the spider body integument,
like from the spider molting. It would have a tube
left over that I guess used to be part of
a spider's leg and then the spider outgrew it.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yeah, you can look up pictures of this, and some
of these pictures are wild and also, I guess it
makes sense. We talk about decoration, but it is camouflage,
so some of these it's sometimes kind of hard to
really pick out and figure out what you're looking at.
But you do see these what look like tiny, little,
you know, environment colored straws stuck to the crabs bodies.
(28:20):
They'll also make use of other materials, though plant leaves
have available, and in captive environments where they've been stripped
of their decorations, Wiston points out that they'll use the
likes of quote, torn sea pansies, strips of paper, chips
of cement from the aquarium wall, and even bits of hamburger.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, I don't know. I guess they put hamburger in
there for food and they're like, what is this it'll do?
And they stick it to their bodies.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Yeah, I want more detail on the hamburger.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I couldn't find any additional day. I think it's just
they put hamburger in there, I guess to see how
they would respond to the meat, and at least one
of the crabs is like, okay, this.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
Will do to meat. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
These to be clear situations where their actual decorations were
taken away from them, so they did not have the
option of using their normal, like first choice decorations. Now,
they'll certainly make use of shell fragments. But as for
actual bones, if we're going to be like real strict
about the episode title here, it seems possible that bones
(29:25):
could be covered by the frequently cited miscellaneous detritus that
the crabs use. But it would seem that actual vertebrate
bones on the whole are just not desirable. And part
of this may be that, you know, sometimes bones are
too large, they're too massive. Other cases, the coloration might
not be ideal because again the crab seems to be selecting,
(29:49):
you know, based on what looks like my environment, and
so you can imagine that if a bone is too
bright looking, then well that might just not that might
not pass the test for the decorator crab in question. Now,
based on researcher observations of decoration and captivity, which we decided,
it seems possible that, okay, maybe you could manipulate one
into using tiny bones. But that seems like cheating. I mean,
(30:12):
it's like they're not going to put Hamburger on.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
Their bodies in the wild.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
So if you were able to trick one into using
bones well in a captive environment, that doesn't really count.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Well you've convinced me Rob. I did not think of
these these animals in a creepy way before I put
them in the cute box in my brain. But I'm
officially taking them out of the cute box. Or I'll
take half of one out of the cute box and
put the leave one half in there, put the other
half in the creepy box.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
I don't know. Aren't all crabs kind of in the
creepy and cute box at the same time. That's kind
of the crab box, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
Maybe?
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Yeah, At any rate, they're pretty fun.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
They certainly do cover themselves with a mix of living flesh,
dead flesh, and various forms of organic and inorganic detritus.
So yeah, certainly close enough for me.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Bone collector certified.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Yeah, all right, And then I want to get back
to one that I might have mentioned this one in
passing in the first episode. Uh, certainly one that's been
on my mind the whole time, especially when we're talking
about a creature's midden, and that is the midden of
the octopus, and this one was that. Yeah, this was
one of my first picks for the series, as it's
a pretty great example of a creature that not only
(31:21):
passively accumulates bones and bone like remains, but also makes
use of them.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Oh okay, so it could could be in sort of
both of our categories from the first episode, both the
chaotically assembled midden as a leftover of other activities, but
then also something that serves a purpose of its own.
It's not just a trash heap.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Right right, it is. It's in this case it is
a trash sheep, but then a trash heap that is
utilized in environment manipulation and dim manipulation, which we'll get
into in just a second. All right, So, different varieties
of octopus make use of mittens. This includes the common octopus,
the giant Pacific octopus, the gloomy octopus, and the Caribbean
(32:02):
two spot octopus just as a few examples. And we'll
get into some more specific examples here in a second.
And an octopus's midden is primarily the accumulation of shells
and bones. Outside of its den, there are also going
to be bits of rock and perhaps bits of coral
and so forth. They are kind of like mixed up
in it as well. One thing that was interesting This
(32:25):
is a kind of a tangent, but I think it
reveals a lot about the formation of middens. In some
cases the shells don't accumulate as much because hermit crabs
carry them off. So Richard F. Ambrose discussed this in
a nineteen eighty three article for Marine Behavior and Physiology,
(32:45):
citing studies of Virel's two spot octopus, which only have,
according to this older paper, some discarded remnants at their
dens twenty percent of the time without the materials forming
true middens. So again, this would seem to be a
variety of octopus that doesn't really do much with mittens.
(33:09):
And the big reason for this would seem to be
that the snails make up an extra large part of
this specific octopus species diet much more than other octopus species,
and as a result, it has mostly shells that are
hermit crabs. They get stolen and carried away by marine
hermit crabs.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Well, isn't that a beautiful little emergent efficiency in nature,
Like exactly the main kind of trash you produce is
exactly what some other organism in your environment wants as
a home.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yes, though I don't know in this case those as
we'll look at some of these other examples. Other midden
producing octopuses do make use of their heap of bones
and shells, and you know, some of those shells are
carried away if they happen to be mollis shells, and
there are hermit crabs in their environment, but they're able
to do more with them, whereas this particular species Varil's
(34:02):
two spot octopus, I guess just doesn't have that option
if most of it's most of it's midden or most
of what would be its midden are carried away by hermits.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
So one octopus's trash does not ever get to become
that same octopus as treasure because it was already treasure
to a decapod that took it.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Right right, So so yeah, on one level, the octopus
is midden is yeah, definitely this bone and shell deposit. Again,
in keeping with our her mythic ideas of dragons layers,
the cave of Carabanog and so forth, you know, look
at the bones. And I have to mention that every
(34:39):
time I've had the opportunity to go snorkeling, I always
keep a lookout for anything that might be an octopus midden,
because to observe an octopus in the lie in the
wild is a most special thing. And the one time
I really got to observe an octopus out out in
the wild while snorkeling during daylight, that was one of
(35:00):
the most magical experiences of my life. It was just amazing.
But of course octopuses are not always active when we
snorkelers are out, and even when they are, they are
masters of disguise in their environments and we're merely humans.
So I am not good at identifying an octopus as
midden in the wild.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
I'll look at things and be like, that kind of
looks like it could be a heap of shells, that
could be some bones. Maybe that is an octopus's midden,
but you know, nothing ever comes out of it.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Well, that actually makes me wonder would they make any
attempt to disguise their middens.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
As far as I know, not intentionally, you know, I
guess part of the reality is there's you know, things
are eaten all the time, things are torn apart all
the time in a marine environment, especially in like a
really diverse coral environment. So uh yeah, But this is
I guess, kind of an open question, like are there
going to be organisms that might identify an octopus as
(35:59):
midden and therefore try to take advantage of it or
steer clear of it? I would think not so much,
because one is, we'll discuss here in a minute. One
of the key things that the octopus does was with
the midden is disguise its layer and fortify its layer.
Speaker 4 (36:17):
Okay, that makes sense, And I guess.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
As you alluded to a minute ago, you know, there's
gonna be a lot of shells and other bones and
hard parts floating around or settling on the bottom of
the ocean anyway, So like it wouldn't be unusual to see.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Those for another organism.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
It's not like it's not like when we see a
bone pile in a movie.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah. Now, just because I can't spot an octopus midden
in the wild or haven't had the luck of spotting one,
that doesn't mean other humans, actual researchers and experts can't.
(36:57):
Because it kind of much like the example of the
cave hyena bone collections we discussed in last episode, Octopus
middens can actually tell us a lot about what octopus
species are eating, you know, it gives us a little
insight into what's on the menu for them, and it
can also tell us what octopus individuals are eating. And
(37:20):
this latter point is actually really key.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
Oh you can go through their trash. Yeah, yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Can go through their trash. And it's telling again, not
just about a species, but also about individuals. As discussed
in individual prey Choices of Octopuses Are they Generalist or Specialist?
By Mather at All, published twenty twelve in the journal
Current Zoology, The question they pose here may have to
be answered in terms of both species and individual given
(37:46):
that we're dealing with intelligent and adaptive predators that may
make their choices based not only on localized prey of availability,
but also individual personality differences, which I thought was a
very very interesting consideration. Like, we're dealing with a creature
that is again highly adaptive, may have a lot to
choose from in a given environment, and some of its
(38:09):
choices might not just be part of a basic equation
of like availability plus ability, and you know the abilities
of the species, but also like, what does this individual
like to do? What has it chosen to explore and
then take advantage.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Of Octopuses are intelligent enough that they might actually be
quirky individually quirky.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Yes, Yeah, another paper I looked two thousand and eighths
Octopus vulgaris. That's the common octopus, by the way, in
the Caribbean is a specializing generalist by Anderson at All,
published in the Marine Ecology Progress series. They looked at
the remains of six hundred and forty nine prey items
gathered from the middens of thirty eight dens in a
(38:54):
small area off the Caribbean island of bon Air, and
they these middens revealed thirty five species of gastropods it's
nineteen percent of the total, nineteen bivalves fifty percent, and
twenty one crustaceans thirty percent. And this particular study argued that, yes,
the common octopus is a specialized gennalist, with the population
as a whole boasting a wide choice of prey items,
(39:17):
but with narrower focus for the individual. So that would
seem to line up with what this other paper was
saying as well, But.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
A minute ago you were talking about the actual benefits
of an octopus as mitten, so that it wasn't just
a trash heap. It is thought to do something for
the octopus.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
And then this we can really think of it in
terms of a dragon or a killer rabbit. So your
killer rabbit or your dragon is producing all of these bones.
But imagine that the mythic monster in question here, first
of all, pushes or blasts all the bones that they
produce outside of their den. They don't want to sleep
on all those bones necessarily, And in the octopus's case,
(39:57):
they can use, you know, their jets to things around.
So you're accumulating your waist out there in front of
your den. With the dragon or the rabbit, we're talking
about a cave, and with the octopus, you know, we're
talking about some sort of indention in the sand, the
coral and so forth, you know, the rock, some sort
of little den they have there with sand and other
(40:19):
detritus out there already, and then an ever growing pile
of bones and bits of shell and so forth, and
so yeah, it's not just a waste disposal byproduct, but
it's also a source of defense and shelter because the
heap of shells and bones are then used by the
octopus to alter the environment. They can use it to
(40:42):
narrow or even block the entrance to the octopus's den,
camouflaging it and also fortifying it against incursion. So such
a den like it provides them a place of refuge,
but it can also serve a very much more important part,
like the most important part really in the octopus's life cycle.
(41:04):
It can serve as the place where a female octopus
lays her eggs and eventually her final resting place as
she dies tending to them. So most species of octopus
only reproduce once in their lifetime, and they enter a
fatal sinessence phase after laying that clutch of eggs. So
(41:25):
you know, it's rather interesting. It becomes their home, it
kind of becomes their tomb, but is also the place
from which the next phase of the life cycle will emerge.
And then afterwards, an octopuss den might be reused by
a new octopus seeking out a place to hold up,
or of course it could be inhabited by various other
(41:47):
marine organisms looking for some sort of little place to
burrow away. But in comparing the octopus is Midden to
dragons and other fantasy creatures. I think there's an opportunity there,
And I wonder if any body out there has explored
this idea, like some sort of dragon that uses its
bones for some sort of purpose, you know, either fortifying
(42:09):
its position or I don't know, I guess they're dragons.
They could potentially do something magical with them, like raise
all those bones. I imagine there's easily some cases where
that goes on. But the octopus would argue, no, the
best thing you can do is create. You end up
with this big, like sifting pile of bones and sand
and other materials, and you can just use that as
(42:31):
kind of like the door to your layer, opening it,
closing it, partially obscuring and so forth.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Yeah, so this is kind of similar to the wasp
and ant example.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Here.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Once again it's a case of defensive use of the
bones or remains of another animal.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, you know, and in this case that
these bones are the result of their own consumption, unlike
the ants. But yeah, they are using them for a
novel purpose. To come back to your Texas chainsaw massacre example,
it would be like if the saw your family. We're
using the bones not only as decorations, but as like
(43:09):
actual like fences to keep people out, like physical barriers.
I guess that's the only thing that makes sense. Oh,
I can't really say environmental disguise, but.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
Well, I was thinking, like, what about lining their driveway
with bones in a way that like narrows the approach
of vehicles to the home. You know, you're trying to
funnel them into a particular area. Yeah, so yeah, you
said that the octopuses could like narrow you know, or
control the shape of the opening or the aperture to
their den with the bones.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Yeah, there's a lot we can learn from the Sawyer clan.
I think that's what we're saying.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
Putting a bunch of sharp bones out on the road
in front of the house to puncture the tires of
trucks that are going by. Yeah yeah, I guess that's
that's getting away from the octopus example.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
But well, things become increasingly more complicated when you start
injecting them into the human world. But I think the
spirit is still there.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
You know, here's a funny thing. Imagine octopuses they developed
their own technological civilization, their own art, their own genres
of literature. They discovered that they had a taste for
horror as well. They liked being scared for fun. Now,
try to imagine the culture's equivalent of bone imagery, because
(44:25):
they've only got one hard part, right, it's just the beak,
So they couldn't have a whole bunch of different bones
for horror imagery. It would just be beaks.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
I guess you're right.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Yeah, their pirate flag is just a beak. Every piece
of skullar bone imagery we have could only be beak.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
That would be their Halloween decoration.
Speaker 4 (44:44):
Yeah, all right? Does that do it for the bone collectors?
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I think it does now. Folks out there, you might
have some other examples that have come to mind. You're like, hey,
what about this organism? What about that one? Well, write
in because we would love to either discuss those on
future episodes of Listener, may here in the Stuff to
Blow your Mind podcast feed, or who knows, if we
get enough recommendations, maybe we have the ammo to do
a part three, either later this year or next year
(45:10):
when Halloween rolls around once again.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
In the meantime, we would like to remind everyone out
there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday,
short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set
aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to send
us your own example of a bone collecting organism that
does something interesting with the remains of other animals. If
you would like to suggest a topic for the future,
or just to say hello, you can email us at
contact that's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(46:25):
M
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