The Gila Monster, Part 1

In this series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the biology, history and mythology of the gila monster, the venomous lizard with surprising connections to modern pharmacology. (part 1 of 3)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

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.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
In this episode and suffsequent episodes of Stuff to Blow
Your Mind, we are going to be talking about the
HeLa Monster. I don't know about you, Joe, but the
HeLa monster has long been one of my favorite herbs,
in part clearly because it's the only it was, I think,
at least growing up, the only natural world animal for
me officially labeled as a monster. So that's certainly connected

(00:42):
with me as a kid. I mean, you had Cookie Monster,
you had the HeLa Monster, So there is a natural
attraction there, though there to be clear, as we'll be discussing,
there are plenty of other reasons to love these.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Creatures definitely attractive and also includes some hidden monstrous It's
like there are some of the things that might make
it the most monstrous are things that you wouldn't see
just looking at a picture of the lizard taken in
nature and like a National geographic magazine. One of the
most monstrous things about it, not to skip too far ahead,

(01:16):
is the way like its bones look or its skull
looks if you don't have all the cute, kind of fleshy,
pudgy scan around it that. I'm sure we'll discuss that
in more detail later, but that was a real shocker
for me when I in this episode came across a
CT scan of a HeLa monster head. It's got some

(01:37):
stuff going on.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's gonna be fun to get into
all of that. But just on the surface, you know,
they don't necessarily look all that monstrous. If you've gotten
to see one live, then you've probably seen one at
a zoo, as I have. That's the only place I've
ever seen live HeLa monsters, and you know, they're generally
not doing much. They're just letting there. You know, you

(02:00):
might suspect they are fake because they're they're just resting,
and they spend a lot of time doing just that,
but still visually very interesting. They have that signature pink
slash orange and black colorization, and their general character, at
least in my opinion, is this is kind of adorable,
kind of comfy. There's something kind of laid back about

(02:22):
these lizards.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
I don't recall if I've seen a HeLa monster at
a zoo, but I've seen another Heloderma lizard, very similar species,
the Mexican beaded lizard.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, I think that one is maybe a little more
common at zoos. I know the zoo here in Atlanta
used to have some HeLa monsters and they might have
them again now. I haven't been in several months.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
When I was recently looking at one of these things
at a zoo with my daughter, it did not move
at all. It was just a big kind of a
just a log in its tank, just sitting there, and
she didn't seem all that interested in it, maybe because
it wasn't moving.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Did you did you not remind her that this is
a monster? You were looking at a monster, real life monster?

Speaker 3 (03:02):
Didn't break through?

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well, where do these monsters live where? They are native
to the southwestern United States and to the northwestern Mexican
state of Sonora, But they are a rare sighting in
the wild. So just some personal documentation here. I have
family uncle and aunt on my wife's side in Arizona.
They've lived there since nineteen sixty nine, and they've always

(03:26):
been very active and outdoorsy, you know, going on hikes,
horseback riding, that sort of thing, you know, always getting
out there, and they're still getting out there, and I
had to ask them both about it, texting them earlier
in the week, and each of them has only ever
seen a HeLa monster once in the wild. One of
them saw a HeLa monster on a hiking trail, crossing

(03:49):
the trail, and then another saw one sunning itself on
some rocks during a morning horse ride. So I think
this is just a small sample size, and I'd love
to hear from any other people who've spent significant amounts
of time within the range of the Heela Monster. But
I think it does speak volumes for how secluded these
creatures tend to be.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Yeah, you are not likely to see them very often
for two reasons, I would say. One is that they
tend to spend the majority of their time hiding in
burrows or in shelters, and then the other part is
that when they are out in the open, they have
these color patterns on them, which actually can help them
blend in quite well. You might have seen one and
not seen it.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, Yeah, it'd be interesting to discuss their camouflage in
these episodes because it's kind of My understanding is it's
kind of both. It's like on one hand, from a distance,
their colorization can lead can lead to a camouflaged effect,
make them more difficult to see. But then when you
get closer, it is more of an alarming visual signature

(04:51):
warning you you should not mess with this creature for
reasons that we will discuss now. I've of course been
visiting Arizona for I think it this point almost twenty years,
and I've certainly never seen one of these creatures in
the wild. It's always been in the back of my
mind It's like a helo monster episode would be good.
But it was actually on my recent visit to Denver, Colorado,

(05:12):
that I decided, oh yeah, definitely need to pull the
trigger on this. This is a place well outside the
HeLa monsters range. But there was a great volunteer led
exhibit at the museum titled Nature's Medicine Cabinet, which featured
helo monsters among various other profile organisms that had either
been traditionally used in human medicine generally plants as well

(05:34):
as animals that had come into play had come to
play a key role due to advancements in peptides. Of note,
while helas don't naturally live in Denver, the city played
host to the only known human fatality from a helo
monster bite in the last century, when a man who
kept them as pets in Denver suffered a fatal bite.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
I think there is a disputed case of acclaimed HeLa
monster death from nineteen thirty or so, but one of
the authors we're going to talk about casts some doubt
on the veracity of that one. But yeah, I also
read about the same case in Colorado. But as we
will discuss later on, while the venom of the heel
monster is quite a cocktail, it is incredibly potent. It

(06:20):
There are a lot of documented helo monster bites and
almost none of them have resulted in death, So very potent,
something you absolutely do not want to experience for reasons
that we will talk about, but usually not fatal.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, and to be clear, we'll drive this again and
again as well. This is not a creature you need
to be afraid of. Your chances of an encountering one
in the wild are so rare. Really, the people who
have been bitten by them are generally actively handling them.
They have sought them out, or they have them as pets,
and so that's just not going to happen. If you

(06:56):
were if you were doing anything outdoors or indoors within
thee of the HeLa monster. There's a long list of
things that are more dangerous to you ahead of that.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
Yeah, that's the I was reading the exact same thing.
It's not like you might read about rattlesnake bites, where
sometimes it's just a chance encounter. You step in the
wrong place, so you accidentally come across one and there's
a strike. With the heel monster, it is almost entirely
a case of people intentionally messing with these animals that
results in bites. It's not one where they're going to

(07:26):
sneak up and get you.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah. Absolutely. But before we dive in a little bit
more here, I just want to mention a couple of
sources that we were referring to here. I guess the
big one is Biology of HeLa Monsters and Beaded Lizards
by Daniel D. Beck, University of California Press.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
Yeah. I looked up Daniel D.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
Beck.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
He's a biology professor. I think he's retired now, but
he was affiliated with Central Washington University.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, And then text that I was at more general
herb text that I've been looking at as a slightly
older piece from Age published nineteen ninety eight, though I
think the addition I have is a more revised edition
from like two thousand and five. It is Encyclopedia of
Reptiles and Amphibian second Edition by Harold G. Kauger and
Richard G. Zwiffel. Also a nice text. And we're also

(08:14):
going to refer to some more recent studies concerning the
HeLa Monster, because one of the amazing things that I've
seen pointed out is that despite the fact that the
HeLa Monster is pretty famous, it is like a sports mascot,
and you know, and everybody knows about it. It's shown
up in numerous films, sometimes at least once, well more
than once in the starring role, not necessarily Oscar worthy pictures.

(08:38):
But you can't blame the Helo Monster. That's more the
agents of fault forgetting the Helo Monster these gigs. But movies, Yeah,
that's sort of they and some more recent films in
that sort of vein. But yeah, despite it being such
a well known creature, there are certain aspects of its
biology that are as yet not fully understood or certainly

(09:00):
where we've been catching up in recent years figuring exactly
how they work. All right, Well, let's dive into it
a bit more. What sort of lizard is the HeLa monster.

(09:20):
Let's narrow it down. They're technically beaded lizards of the
family helo dermat today and its sole genus Heloderma. It's
a small family, small genus with previously, I believe only
five recognized extant species native to the Americas, including the
HeLa monster, the Mexican beaded lizard, and the Guatemalan beaded lizard. Historically,

(09:43):
we thought there were only two Mexican beated lizard and
the Helo monster. So many older sources are going to
reflect that all of them are venomous, the only venomous
extant lizards, and the Helo monster is generally singled out
as being the only literal venomous lizard native to the
United States.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
I had a bit of confusion when I was reading
about this, because several sources I was reading refer to
the Heloderma lizards, the small family of species, as the
only venomous lizards on Earth, and yet there are some
other lizard species I think, mostly monitor lizards like the
Komodo dragon, that also do have some kind of venom.

(10:22):
I think this might come down to distinctions that specialists
make about, like how the venom is delivered and what
its primary function is. So there is some other venom
in lizards out there, but these in some special way
are like the most primarily venomous lizards.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah, to be clear, Yeah, the monitor
lizards of Africa, Asia, Indonesia, and Australia are also venomous
and thought to be thought to be closely related in
the grand scheme of things here. And this does include
the mighty komodo dragons of Indonesia, which have an anticoagulant
and I believe neurotoxic venom, but mostly is noted for

(11:02):
its blood thinning properties. So, like you know, a komodo
dragon bites its prey, it inflicts a pretty dire wound,
and a wound that is also going to drain out
a lot faster.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
Years ago, I remember us talking about this idea that
had been floating around for a long time that the
komodo dragon in particular had weaponized pathogenic bacteria in its
mouth so that it would like bite its prey. I
guess the idea is it would bite its prey and
this would cause an infection and then later the komodo
dragon could take advantage of this and take down the prey.

(11:39):
This apparently used to be a pretty popular theory, but
recent research has turned against it. So I was reading
some articles about this, quoting a toxicologist named Brian Frye
at the University of Queensland who talks about how actually
komodo dragon mouths are not especially they don't have a
specially dangerous bacteria in them. In fact, they're relatively clean

(12:00):
as far as animal mouths go. Kimodo dragons spend a
lot of time cleaning their mouths, kind of licking and
smacking their lips and rubbing their heads on things in
the environment, like rubbing their mouths against leaves to try
to clean them off after meals. So you have this
old idea of the kimodo dragons with rotting meat in
their teeth or something, and this kind host bacteria that

(12:21):
will infect the prey animal after it gets a bite
from the komodo dragon. That seems to be not really
the case. Their mouths are not really different from the
mouths of other carnivores, and fry says that they just
don't have enough bacteria in their mouths to really harm
an injured animal anymore than you would expect a bite
of any animal too.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yeah. Yeah, and this makes sense on several grounds. For starters,
we know that while komodo dragons are voracious eaters, they
consume something like all but twelve percent of a body,
tearing it apart with their strong foe loombs and serrated teeth, which,
by the way, sets monitor lizards in general apart from
most reptiles, aside from I believe sea turtles in that

(13:06):
they're not swallowing prey whole. They're you know, tearing it up.
They but but yeah, they're they're in their own way fastidious.
They take care to sling out the contents of intestines
before they eat them, and their small young avoid cannibalization
by their gigantic elders, in part by rolling around in
such filth.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
Interesting. Yeah, so that they're too smelly to eat, I guess, yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yeah, that in common. They also like tend to stick
to the trees, so yeah, they're they're too young to
get along with the big kimodos. They stay up in
the trees. As they grow in size, they come down.
But kmodo dragons grow throughout their lives, like you know
a lot of reptile species that we've discussed. So there's
there's still going to be a mismatch, and you're gonna
have these situations where komodo drag the large ones have

(13:55):
taken down prey and or are scavenging prey, and so
there's some sort of large, smelly feast to be had.
The big dragons are going to have primary access to that.
The younger dragons, the ones that are there, they're big
enough to come down from the trees, but they're not
big enough to get in on the buffet. They're going
to go around in this circle, this kind of uh,

(14:18):
this circle of that's like a nervous circle that's going
around the feeding area, an appeasement circle, I believe it's
sometimes referred to as where they're just kind of hanging
around making it clear that they are not contesting the
kill at all, They are not attempting to get in,
but they are ready to do clean up after the
main meal has taken place. So, yeah, kimodos in and

(14:40):
of themselves instant endlessly fascinating as well, you know, enormous
predatory lizards and yeah, so I guess the other thing
thinking about this whole this this again this idea that
there was harmful bacteria in their saliva, which you see
that in the older sources and even in not so
old sources. They so kind of you see, kind of

(15:01):
like a halfway holding onto that concept where they're saying, Okay,
there's a toxin, there's a venom in play, but also
the bacteria. But you know, when you look at the
full equation of what they have, their strength, their teeth,
their anticoagulant, venom, they certainly don't need a bacterially potent
bite to get the job done. I suspect some of

(15:21):
this also goes back to prior interpretations of the Komodo
dragon as being primarily scavengers. In part this may have
been due to the fact that you would see them,
you know, all hanging out around this rotting kill. But
nowadays we know that they are very capable hunters, bringing
down things like water buffaloes and deer, and they are

(15:43):
in fact apex predators in their environments.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
Yeah, so attacking live prey, going after it, taking it
down with strength, with jaws, all that stuff. Yeah, and
the help of some venom as well.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah, Yeah, I think the idea is, yeah, they get
a really good bite in. If the prey makes it
away from them, they're not going to make it too
far and they're going to succumb to those injuries.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
But again to emphasize, based on what I was reading,
it seems like komodo dragons are not going to be
as dependent on their venom for a hunting and predation
as like most venomous snakes are.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah, like you can think of a venomous snake almost
as a sniper, whereas the komodo dragon is more like
artillery I guess, and some similar interpretations are going to
transition into and I'm certainly going to apply to what
we're going to be talking about with the HeLa Monster.
So coming back to the Helo monster, what does this
name mean? You know, I think, going back to childhood interpretations,

(16:40):
this is you know, we encounter the word HeLa. It
is spelled g i l a. This leads to a
number of early mispronunciations as we talk about the Gila monster. Perhaps,
but it is HeLa and it is named for the
HeLa River basin of New Mexico and Arizona, where it
was once plentiful. The scientific name is Heloderma suspectum, which

(17:01):
translates to suspicious wart skin, with the suspart coming from
nineteenth century paleontologist and biologist Edward Drinker Cope. Some of
you may remember that name. He was one of the
key individuals in the paleontologist Bone Wars.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
Yeah. So, according to that book by Beck, the reason
that these lizards were suspicious to Cope was that Cope
suspected that they were venomous but couldn't be sure. And
this was actually an unsettled issue for like hundreds of years,
the different naturalists making opposing claims about whether HeLa monsters

(17:38):
were venomous or not. It wasn't until around the nineteen twenties,
by Beck's reckoning, that enough evidence had been marshaled to
convince basically everybody in the field that they were truly venomous,
and yet the species name stuck. So I think it's
funny that HeLa monsters are in their scientific name forever suspected,
even though they are one hundred percent guilty, poor critters.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
I think it is telling that this was such this
remains such an open question because, as we'll discuss, anyone
who has ever actually been bitten by a HeLa monster.
There's no doubt concerning this. Well.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Beck tells a funny story where one of the guys
who was arguing, no, they're not venomous, got a bite
from a HeLa monster and apparently it wasn't that bad.
So maybe it was just a dry bite. I don't know,
Like we'll talk later about the venomation mechanism, So maybe
this guy got a quick little nip without much venom,
you know, mashed in or something. Yeah, it was like,

(18:37):
no big deal. I don't think they're venomous. I would
love to compare that to other accounts of bites from
these things, which are epic to read. But I wanted
to note another interesting thing about their scientific names. So
the genus name again is a Heloderma. The species name
suspect them. Suspect them because they were suspected of being venomous,

(18:58):
and they were. But the the genus name can be interpreted,
like you said, as wardy skin, though more literally it
comes from the Greek that means skin of nails or
skin of studs. This will relate to a biological feature
we'll talk about in a minute called the osteoderms, but
so heloderma. The derma of course means skin, but the

(19:21):
helopart comes from the Greek word helos, referring to a
nail or a stud, or more specifically, the flat head
of a nail, So these are nail skin. There are
pin head lizards in a way. I'm thinking of Doug Bradley.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yeah, yeah, I think pinhead lizard is a nice nickname
for the HeLa monster. Yeah, because warts, they're not really warts.
Beads I think is a better physical description of what
we're looking at. These, as you mentioned, are in fact
bony osteoderms that do indeed provide an armor layer for
the HeLa monster as well as their beaded and monitor

(19:58):
lizard can. I frequently see it compared to various medieval
armors such as chain mail, you know, pretty obvious thing
to compare it to, though this can be confusing as
osteoderms do not overlap. I've read the lizards also have
scales atop these osteoderms as well, and osteoderms can fuse
with the skeleton and with the Helo monster, they specifically

(20:19):
fuse with their skulls, creating just a very memorable skull
if you were an easy skull. Yeah, if you were
not behind the wheel of a car, or I don't know,
non jury do it. I don't know whatever you're doing.
Or you shouldn't look at your phone or your computer screen.
If you are able, look them up. Look up some
images of Helo monster skulls alongside Helo monster fleshed heads,

(20:42):
and it's pretty pretty memorable, and I would say pretty metal.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
Another thing, if you get a chance to look up,
is a picture of a CT scan of a HeLa
monster head, which I came across in a paper that
I think we were both looking out for this episode
by Gordon W. S Hewitt at all. Lead author is Shwett.
So this is a paper about I think it's mainly
about female female aggression fighting between Heela monsters. But it

(21:08):
just throws in in the middle of the paper here
are some CT scans of Helo monster heads. It gives
you top view, bottom view, lateral view. Especially the lateral
view of the head. It doesn't look real. It looks
like an illustration of a dragon. Because so you have
these osteoderms, like we've been talking about, these kind of
bulbous little beads, these wardy shaped, little bony patches covering

(21:32):
the entire head, and then also a little bit less
densely grouped but also covering the neck. And then the
head just terminates in these empty eye sockets and these
teeth that look like something out of a fantasy. They're
a horrible, just long, spiny, spear tip looking teeth that

(21:52):
look more like a drawing than like nature.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
It really, if you didn't know what a helo monster's
skull looks like, you might suspect that this is a
Halloween decoration that you buy at lows in like late September. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Yeah, it looks like dragons from movies. It looks like
one of the things from Game of Thrones. Yeah, like
a dragon the head with ridiculous teeth.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah yeah, absolutely gnarly. And again it's an interesting juxtaposition.
When you look at a fleshed, fully fleshed HeLa monster,
I would say, you know, with that signature black and
pink orange color scheme, I tend to think they look
kind of sweet, you know, a little bit lazy, a
little bit silly. Yeah, totally not the same sinister vibes.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
They often have sweet looking eyes. They're just looking at
you like, hey, what's up.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah. Absolutely, though to be clear, do not attempt to
love them in a physical manner. No love from a farm.

Speaker 4 (22:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
So, I'll see other descriptions that are important here. There's
stocky lizards with broad heads and short fat tails, where
they indeed use these tails for fat storage.

Speaker 4 (23:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:11):
So they often get a bunch of their meals in
one part of the year and then store up that
energy as fat reserves in the tail, which they can
then live off of for the leaner parts of the year.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
That's right, I've read that. Yeah, their meals are few
and far between, somewhere between five and ten meals per
year for a helo monster. So. Beaded lizards in general
spend most of their time in burrows and they avoid
extreme temperatures, so only during cooler spring months are they
going to come out during the day at all. They
forage on the ground, but can also climb trees as well.

(23:45):
Even the helo monster who if you again, if you certainly,
if you've seen them at the zoo or in some
sort of you know, enclosed environment like that, they don't
really look like they're going to be scaling a lot
of trees. They look like they are very ground based
and certainly under round based. But you have to consider
what their favorite meals are, and so they're they're foraging,

(24:07):
but what are they foraging for. They're generally looking for
eggs and young prey, so young mammalian prey generally like
rodents or I believe baby rabbits also come up as
a favorite.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
They love little cottontails, baby birds, eggs. They're nest raiders,
nest rating specialists, and so.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
You got to go where the nests are, and certainly
with a lot of bird species, they may be up
in the in the trees, and so that is where
the HeLa monster will go. If you look around and on,
you can find some images of HeLa monsters possibly in
the act of climbing, or at least they're halfway up
a tree or small tree. Anyway, again, you have to
consider their environments and what constitutes a tree and helo

(24:49):
monster land.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
Yeah, they're not going to be a lot of sorry,
is it going to be a lot of desert stuff
like maybe mesquite or pelleverity?

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, not going to be yeah,
redwoods or gigantic trees of that that nature. Uh, but yeah,
they so some of the nests and an opportunities to
feed are going to be up high, but a lot
of them are going to be in the ground, and
so they can use their powerful fore limbs to go
after those nests as well. Uh. And they yeah, and

(25:19):
according to Beck and his work, they feed almost exclusively
on vertebrate nest contents. They'll eat other things as well,
but vertebrate nest contents that's what they go for.

Speaker 4 (25:29):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
Beck explains that few other lizards or snakes are really
going to share this uh, this this niche because it
is a challenging one to choose in life. We see
this with other examples of of of organisms where if
you have a very specialized diet, uh, it may bring richness,
but it also can bring you know, seasonable availability and

(25:53):
so forth. So so that's definitely in play here. Egg
layers and and and eating animals are going to be
you know, more active at certain times of the year
that's when they're going to produce. But also if you
are eating mostly eggs or the young, these are prize commodities,
a lot of energy goes into creating them, and then

(26:15):
this could and then a lot of energy is going
to go into either secreting them away or actively protecting them.
So so that is also a factor. And to even
find them, especially if they're hidden in some way, you
have to be pretty sensitive to their uh, to to
their their their their their chemical signal. You have to
have a very chemically sensitive organism and in organism that

(26:36):
has a pretty good memory. So so again you have
to factor that into the evolutionary direction that monitor that
these uh, these beaded lizards and specifically uh, the HeLa
monster have gone uh, so you have to have you
end up with a devoted egg eater slash baby eater,
nest rat or that has to go for long stretches

(26:58):
without being able to eat. And indeed we see that
with the Helo monsters diet again, eating five to ten
times a year, and those meals are not going to
be evenly spread out now they get at their Their
activity also ticks up during other key moments, of course,
during breeding season and mate selection season. This is when

(27:21):
the males of the Helo monsters are going to compete
through what is often described as fierce combat, though I'm
to understand it's mostly intense wrestling with some nibs. So
they're going to bite each other, but they're not going
to go full on venom inducing bites. These are going
to be I'm not going to say loving bites. They're
still done in an offensive way. They're still competing, but yeah,

(27:48):
not going to be full on bites. The mating takes
place in late spring, resulting in up to a dozen eggs,
which require ten months before hatching.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
So like in a lot of other species, you're going
to have, especially males, competing with each each other for
opportunities to mate.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yes, absolutely, Yeah, they're going to wrestle around, they're going
to nib each other, and then it's going to you know,
lead to mate selection and the production of these eggs.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Now, this is where we're going to come back to
that study we referenced already from Shuitt. This is a
twenty twenty three study from cal poly Pomona and it
concerns female female aggression in the HeLa monster and they
found that, Okay, this is you know, definitely the case
when males fight each other intense wrestling but mostly just
nibbing at each other with their mouths. But when females

(28:36):
fight each other, and they may fight each other for
a few different reasons, you know, territorial defense, an acquisition,
mate defense, parental care slash cannibalism prevention. When the females fight,
they really don't hold anything bite. They're full on bites here,
which is which is interesting, Like they're not going it's

(28:57):
like they're not competing for mating here. They are just
all out like for instance, defending their young and or
preventing cannibalism from occurring. Because again, helo monsters are nest raiders,
they are not above rating other heelo monster nests.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
The authors of the study talk about reasons why the
intensity and the violence of the fighting between the females
might be greater than that of the competition between males,
and one idea they talk about that I thought was
interesting is that it could be because the males have
a ritualized system for handling intersex conflict. So because they

(29:40):
have this system of competing with one another for mates,
they have this ritualized wrestling type of thing where they
can sort of have a proxy for all out fighting
by competing to show endurance in wrestling or these displays,
which is another interesting example of something we've talked about
on the show before of like a lot of the

(30:02):
things we see in nature that we think of as
fighting or aggression are actually ways of avoiding fighting or aggression.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
M hmm.

Speaker 3 (30:12):
It's kind of a kind of an interesting paradox there,
Like some of the most aggressive stuff you might see
animals doing is actually behaviors they have evolved in order
to avoid all out violence.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah, yeah, this is This is always fascinating anytime it
comes up. You know that we have we certainly have
more extreme cases where essentially, like two males can just
stare each other down. One has a clear size advantage
or some other clear advantage. The other one's just going
to back down. It's like, okay, we don't even have
to fight. We can see how this would play out.
And this is kind of more like sort of a

(30:45):
downstream version of a similar scenario. It's like like, okay,
we can sort of go fifty percent in this battle,
and then we know how a full one hundred percent
battle between the two of us would go. But we
don't need to go there. You know, the winner wants
to go on in mate, the loser would like to
go on and successfully mate and or win other competitions.

(31:05):
It serves everyone's best interest if this is how it
plays out.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
I guess it usually only works out for like a
maybe a younger individual that doesn't look as strong but
could actually win in a fight, like would not win
the bluff, but would win the fight. But that you know,
that's not going to happen all that often, right, Right,
One more thing I did want to mention from this
Schwitt study, So it talks about another thing that was

(31:31):
missing from the male male aggression usually but was present
in the female female aggression. Was so they will bite,
do it full on biting, and also will do this
thing they call lateral rotation. Did you get to this
part here where they're like they compared it actually to
the crocodilian death.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
So you know, if you've seen crocodile sometimes when they
get a bite of something, either grasping part of a
prey animal that still or just getting part of a carcass,
you know, like even baby crocodilians that are trying to
tear off pieces of flesh from from an already dead
carcass or something. You know, they'll get a bite of
something in their mouth and instinctually just start spinning about

(32:14):
wildly in the water. And so in the study, I
thought it's interesting that even though these lizards are not
super closely related to crocodilians, they have a similar impulse.
I guess maybe you know, they are these elongated reptiles,
so they grab hold and then they just start spinning around.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
If you like. Like I have watched any number of
like b movies from the fifties and sixties that feature
dinosaurs which are actually elongated lizards, some monitors, you know,
some beaded lizards for example, engaging in combat with each
other that they're generally you're going to see this sort

(32:51):
of wrestling going on. Yeah, bite and then roll, Yeah,
a lot of rolling around.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
Oh. But another thing they mentioned in this paper is
the role of armored protection in these fights. Like the
osteoderms themselves the little bony warts under the skin.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, yeah, this does seem to aid them in these
contests between males. Also protects them against would be predators,
as does their venomous bite. More on this in a second.
And also that colorization, as we mentioned, it serves as
both warning and camouflage. So Beck points out that the
color patterns seem to serve as camo at a distance,

(33:29):
but a warning close up. A warning, of course, of
their venom, which, at least in their current form, contrary
to every reptile outside of the heloderm lizards, has no
offensive or predatory purpose. It's purely defensive. You know. You
can contrast this again with the komodo dragons, who you know,

(33:51):
they have venom, but it aids to some degree in
bringing down their prey helo monsters. And there can they
just have this really powerful, full chemical weapon on hand
as a defense. And it's kind of puzzling, right. It's
like if you showed up at someone's house and the
house and you're like, hey, what's that over there, it's like, oh, yeah,

(34:11):
that's my self defense system. It's saren gas. I just
keep it on hand. It would raise questions like why
do you have sarin gas as a like a home
defense system? Like did you have it for some other
purpose originally and you just have kept it around for this.
It's an odd choice.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
Now. One thing that's interesting is it does seem to
be the case that the venom of the heel a
monster is almost entirely or entirely for defense. But this
was not always known. For a long time, it was
a contentious issue or a source of confusion, like was
it for predation or was it for defense? It does
seem to be for defense, and we'll talk about reasons

(34:49):
for that later, and they're pretty interesting. But I wanted
to talk briefly about the heel a monster bite and
its venom So again, one of my main sources is
going to be that book by Daniel Beck, The Biology
of HeLa Monsters and Beaded Lizards, But I was also
reading some other sources we can talk about as we
go along. As we mentioned earlier, the Heloderma lizards are

(35:12):
known for being among the few, or depending on your definitions,
the only venomous lizards on Earth. But it took a
long time to get to full agreement among everybody in
the specialist sort of herpetology community that these lizards were
actually venomous. Beca gives this kind of chronicle of the
history of this controversy, talking about how in the later

(35:35):
half of the nineteenth century you did have inklings of venomousness,
some people had made reports of this kind. He says
that some of the sources at this time comment on
the quote vile nature of Heloderma. I love these, you know,
in the older sources they're not as clinical and they're
not as clinical and reserved as modern sources are, and

(35:57):
talking about these reptiles, they make kind of moral judgment
from the animals they talk about, but also that you know,
some authors in the late later nineteenth century looked at
things like, well, it's teeth have these grooves in them,
what are those grooves for? That could be for delivering
venom of some sort. And then in the eighteen eighties

(36:18):
there were some dissections of Hiloderma looking at their venom
glands and experiments which showed that Heloderma saliva was toxic
to other animals. But this did not settle the matter,
because then more research was published later in the same
decade showing that Heloderma saliva had no toxic effects. Beck
thinks that this false negative about the toxicity of the

(36:41):
saliva was probably a result of samples being collected wrong.
He doesn't elaborate, but I wonder if this means somehow
that the researchers were collecting saliva that did not have
venom in it, because as we'll mention, it's you know,
the venom is sort of is injected from glands into mouth.

(37:01):
In the eighteen nineties, researchers extracted venom directly from heloderma
venom glands and injected it into small vertebrates, which resulted
in death. But then others remained skeptical. Here's the thing
I alluded to earlier. There was this one researcher named Snow,
last named Snow who got a helo monster bite, and

(37:22):
he was like, Eh, no big deal. I don't think
they're venomous. So maybe he just got a dry bite
with little or no venom delivered unclear, But Beck also
quotes an author named Goodfellow, writing in the year nineteen
oh seven, who says, you know, at this point the
case is closed. It is not venomous. It can be
conclusively demonstrated. Quote that the bite of the monster is innocuous.

(37:44):
Per se as we know this was completely wrong, And
in nineteen thirteen a book was published by the Carnegie
Institute of Washington that had details on extensive experiments by
eleven different contributors on the venom of Hiloderma, and this
book and then subsequent papers in the following decade finally

(38:05):
had everybody convinced that the lizards were venomous. So it
seems like by the nineteen twenties. Everybody's on the same page. Okay,
yes they are venomous. So to picture how Heloderma in
venomation works, it helps to contrast it with the other
venomous reptile you're probably thinking of, which is venomous snakes.

(38:25):
In a venomous snake, the venom glands and the venom
conducting teeth the fangs are in the upper jaw. In
most venomous snakes, the fangs will produce deep puncture wounds
with a bite, and then the snake's venom glands, often
located sort of behind or under the eyes, inject venom

(38:45):
through ducts into the wound through holes in the hollow fangs.
On the other hand, in Heloderma suspectum, the helo monster,
the venom glands are in the lower jaw, and the
venom conducting teeth are mostly the lower teeth, So the
venom conducting teeth here are not going to be injecting

(39:06):
venom like the fangs of a cobra. If you see
the venom glands of Heloderma illustrated, they sort of make
the lizard look a bit jowy. There's a Don Corleone
thing going on and the venom glands. So there are
these multi lobed little protuberances on the lower jaw. They
line the lower jaw and you can see them in
like three or four lobes down there, and each little

(39:28):
plump lobe is connected to the gums via a duct.
So the HeLa monster has very sharp, long teeth with
grooves running up the teeth from the base, and when
the lizard bites, venom is expressed from the glands out
through the ducts, flooding around the base of the teeth,
and then it is conducted up the teeth and into

(39:51):
the wounds of the bite victim via capillary action. So
the same way that if you have a very thin straw,
you can see liquid just natured truly climb up the straw,
even without any suction being applied. It's just the capillary
action caused by the surface tension of the liquid it
wants to climb up through the very narrow channel. Same
thing happens. It climbs up through the teeth and is

(40:12):
conducted into the wound. But there's also just getting venom
into the wound through good old fashioned mashing and grinding.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Yeah, that's that's I think one of the really telling
things about the HeLa monster is that it has to
chew the venom into the target, which certainly feels like
a less sort of biotechnolog technologically advanced delivery system compared
to like a you know, a cobra or a viper
that you could almost think of their fangs as being
like little hypodermic needles.

Speaker 3 (40:41):
Yes, I mean, as we know, there is no up
or down in evolution, so there's no actual like you know,
more or less sophisticated in a way. That's that's just
sort of an interpretive overlay that we put on things
that doesn't really connect anything real in nature. But it
does feel that way. It feels like a less specialize,
less sophisticated method of delivery for venom than something like

(41:04):
cobra fangs.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Right, And we can certainly understand this a lot more
by just thinking and continue to discuss how a helo
monster uses its venom, like what role it has in
its life as opposed to venomous snakes. But the way
the Helo monster is going about it, it seems to
work well for the Helo monster.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
In this book, chapter Beck explains one interesting idea related
to how the helodermal lizards prepare to deliver their venom.
So if you approach one of these things, and again
I recommend if you're out in nature, don't mess with them,
keep your distance. But if something approaches, a threatened or
agitated helodermal lizard will often open and close its jaws

(42:00):
repeatedly at whatever is bothering it, exposing, for one thing,
sort of showing off the inside of the mouth, exposing
this pink, purple white inside of the mouth is very
different color is usually than the outside of the animal,
so that can be kind of visually shocking to see
when it spreads its jaws wide, and this is often
interpreted as a threat display, but Beck mentions that it

(42:23):
might have another function, which is that the opening and
closing of the jaws could serve to express venom from
the glands into the mouth and then to better coat
all the teeth with venom rather than only the pairs
of teeth in the middle lower jaw that have the
venom ducts right beneath them.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
Oh wow, it's kind of like one of those fighting
games where you charge up an attack, you know, yeah, yeah,
either rapidly pushing that button or like holding back or
holding down a button.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
I was thinking of in D and D, like applying
poison to all of your arrows before the light starts.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yes, that's a good one too.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
However, one thing you can say about Helo monster in
venomation is if the delivery system feels unsophisticated, the chewing
venom into the wound feels a little crude, the venom
itself is highly sophisticated. It is this fascinating, diverse, complex
cocktail of dozens of different bioactive agents, compounds, proteins, peptides,

(43:23):
all hormones, all different kinds of things, producing a wide
range of toxic effects. And there are some sources that
indicate it might be a more than the some of
its parts kind of situation where scientists have done a
lot of work isolating individual toxins from the Helo Monster's

(43:44):
venom and trying to understand them and trying to see
what they do. Of course, this will have major implications
for pharmaceuticals that we can probably discuss in the next
part in the series or at some point in the series.
So a huge array of interesting and powerful bio active
agents throughout this venom, but in some cases it has
been found that certain toxins within the venom are more

(44:07):
potent within the venom at what they do than they
are when they're isolated. So again, it might be more
than the sum of its parts. And of course some
of these things found in the venom or have been
the source of revolutionary drug discoveries. Again, we'll come back
to that, but I want to talk first about just
what's it like to be bitten by a HeLa monster.

(44:29):
First of all, incredibly unbelievably painful. People often describe it
as like being on fire. There is a fire that
you can't put out in your flesh. Another simile that
I have seen multiple times is molten hot lava has
entered your bloodstream. It's like something is burning hot and

(44:51):
it is flowing inside you now. And this is because
in many cases, the excruciating pain is not only localized
at the the source of the bite. It is there,
but it also tends to radiate back toward the core
of the body. So, for example, people who are bitten
on the hand often describe a sense of extreme, unbearable

(45:12):
burning pain that climbs up the arm and into the shoulder,
which creates distress in itself because there's this feeling of
how far is it going to go and when is
it going to stop. People who have experienced it usually
say it is the worst pain they have ever felt.
Beyond that, there are a bunch of systemic effects that

(45:33):
have been documented, some frequently, some occasionally, so it's not
always exactly the same array of effects, and I can't
list every reaction ever documented, but the large list includes
reduction in blood flow through the carotid artery, which is
going to mean reduced blood flow to the head and
the brain, a drop in blood pressure. Tachycardia is a

(45:56):
rapid heart rate when resting, and just general cardio weirdness
messing with your heart rate and your circulation. General trouble breathing,
a lot of different kinds of strange breathing, maybe shortness
of breath or difficulty with breathing in different ways. Edema,
which is swelling caused by fluid retention in body tissues.

(46:17):
I think this is going to be especially around the
area of the bite. Hypothermia which is a drop in
core body temperature, nausea and vomiting and other gastrointestinal distress
and internal hemorrhage and major organs, and the lungs, eyes,
digestive tract and other organs. I've seen people who suffered
helo monster bites talking about blood in their urine, so surprisingly,

(46:42):
despite how alarming that list is. We mentioned this earlier,
but it's kind of hard to believe that human death
from heloderma bites is very rare. There are only a
couple of possible cases of fatal bites and humans in
the past century. One of them is in dispute. Another
one was that one that's pretty recent that we talked about,

(47:04):
the one in twenty twenty four, the man in Colorado
who was bitten by a pet. And in cases where
death occurs, it seems usually to result from disturbances to breathing.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
Yeah, I've read that in general, not referring to any
specific case here, but I've read that in general the
effects of a helo monster bite can be considerably worsened
if alcohol is in the human's bloodstream. And I think
this may be applies more to some of the more
historic alleged accounts, where we can sort of imagine a

(47:34):
cowboy scenario right where cowboys bitten by the HeLa monster.
What are you going to do? Well, we got to
get out the old medical kit, which is mostly a
bottle of whiskey. Have some whiskey for that helo monster bite.
It's just going to accelerate the venom.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
I can imagine it the other way too, like the
cowboy's been getting into the whisky, which is what causes
the cowboy to start messing with the heli mons.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
Yeah exactly, because again, most of the examples that have
been recorded where someone gets bitten by helo monsters becaus
a person was actively handling a helo monster.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Yeah. So Beck mentions differing effects of the venom on
other animals. What I was just talking about was mainly
what's been documented in humans, but there have been studies
on what happens in dogs and cats and mice. Apparently,
doses that are below the lethal dose in rodents like
mice and rats tend to cause protruding eyes and periorbital bleeding.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
Bizarrely, research has found that invertebrates seem to be basically
immune to the effects of heloderma venom. So it's kind
of a special treat for US vertebrates. The LD fifty
to the extent that it's been studied, and then that's
the dose at which fifty percent of you know, the
studied animal like mice in a lab scenario are killed

(48:55):
by the venom. The ld fifty seems to vary a
lot in different studies, and this, at least in part,
seems to be because the ad mixture of venom and
saliva is not constant. But it just seems like, you know,
venom lots that are taken from these animals in nature
are just not going to be of a consistent level
of potency.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
And this of course reminds us of that, you know,
those previous accounts or someone said, oh, do don't worry
about they're not venomous. I got bit by one and
it's fine. It can be a variable amount of the
venom present in the saliva.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Now, this brings us to the question of what is
the venom for Beck discusses this extensively in the book.
Apparently for many years this was a subject of confusion
about Heloderma. Is the venom system of the HeLa monster
and the beaded lizard? Is it used for predation or defense?
In relatives like the venom of snakes, venom is mainly

(49:53):
used for predation. It can be used for defense as well,
but it's necessary for predation because the venom is used
you subdue and either kill or immobilize, and then sometimes
to digest prey. This is important because venomous snakes often
prey on animals that are relatively large and could be

(50:14):
dangerous to the predator, as in, they could inflict injuries
on the snake if they were able to fight back.
So in many venomous snakes, venom tends to cause things
like low blood pressure, blood clotting, and just tissue destruction
enzymatic destruction of tissue, often the tissue lining the blood vessels.
Some venomus snakes also make use of neurotoxins that can

(50:36):
cause muscle paralysis, and this can first of all, it
can immobilize prey, but it can also kill prey by
halting respiration, leading to death. And Beck mentions that some
snake venom may also play a role in helping snakes
pre digest their meals, which is beautiful.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
It's kind of breaking it down a little bit.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
Yeah, but there is a pretty significant difference between the
kind of invenomation we see from snakes and what we
get from heloderma. So a dose of heloderma venom from
a bite. While brutally painful, it tends to be a
little more locally concentrated in its effects, has less of

(51:17):
a tissue destroying effect, and so Beck argues that Heloderma
venom seems less specialized for subduing prey and thus is
probably more important for defense than for predation, because, again
coming back to what we talked about earlier, looking at
their ecology, how do they survive and interact with their environment?

(51:38):
Heloderma lizards are nest rating specialists. They attack eggs or
the helpless young of other animals, primarily birds and small mammals.
So there are you know, just you don't need a
venom to subdue a baby cotton tail rabbit or to
subdue an egg. You know these prey are they're not

(51:59):
very large, they're not very dangerous, and thus there's not
a big reason to see why lizards would need venom
in order to bring them down.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Like the monster setting out, it's got like this big rifle.
It's like what are you what are you hunting there?
And he's like, uh, egg doesn't make sense.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
Yeah. Also, Heloderma venom does not seem to have the
tissue destroying capacities that would indicate that it is used
to help predigest prey, like it might be in the
case of some snakes. And then Beck also talks about
how field observations don't seem to indicate that heel monsters
use their venom for predation. So he's for one thing,

(52:38):
you know, there's not like with a snake you would
need to bite and then wait for the venom to work.
I mean, so you might bite and then back off
and then attack or bite and then wait before trying
to swallow. But Beck talks about how you know the
heel monsters they're gonna eat baby rabbits or something, they
just go in and just swallow them. You know, there's

(53:00):
not like chewing, pumping, when the kind of stuff you
would see when a snake needs to envenomate a prey
animal in order to get it down. Beck does mention
that in captivity sometimes he's observed HeLa monsters chewing on
already dead mice that they're being fed, but that you know,

(53:21):
that might be something else that might be a captivity
induced behavior or something reflexive. But generally it just observations
don't lend themselves to thinking that it has a feeding
or predation function. He says, maybe it might have more
of a predation function for juvenile lizards, Okay, like a
much smaller HeLa monster going after say again a young rabbit.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
Maybe maybe rabbit.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
But it seems that it's much more effective for defense.
So the main line of defense for helodermal lizards is
going to be not venom, but hiding. They spend most
of their time hiding in shelters. Now, of course, sometimes
they have to come out of these shelters to pursue
biological objectives like looking for food or looking for mates,

(54:07):
so they go out a wandering and if they are
caught out in the open, most of these well, for
one thing, you can contrast it with what other species
of lizards do. Most lizards, if they're caught out in
the open, will just sprint away from the threat because
they can move pretty fast. Heloderma lizards they're not fast movers.
They are large, sluggish, relatively slow moving and yes, in fact,

(54:31):
there are helo monster on a treadmill tests with peak
speed clocked by Beck at one point seven kilometers per
hour wo, so not super fast movers. Instead of running,
they rely on a secondary defense, which is hiding in
plain sight, so their color patterns can help camouflage them

(54:52):
against the background, at least when the potential predator is
at a distance. So if a predator comes with within
the range the lizard senses them, the lizard will often
freeze and press their bodies flat to the ground. However,
if a predator already saw it and kept coming, the
lizard would not be able to get away quickly enough.

(55:14):
So now it makes ecological sense for them to have
a third line of defense, which is venom. So the
prescription here is bite, clamp, and hold on. Usually flood
the venom up from the glands into the ducts around
the teeth, flood the venom into the wound, and then
chew more venom into the wound for the bite victim.

(55:35):
This leads to the kinds of effects mentioned before, excruciating pain,
drop in blood pressure, weakness, lethargy, internal hemorrhaging. It is
not a pleasant experience. Now, Beck does note an interesting
paradox if the venom is designed to drive predators away
by making the prospect of tangling with a heloderma lizard

(55:59):
super unpleasan why does the lizard clamp on and continue
to risk injury? While the bite victim is fighting to
remove it seems kind of counterproductive if the lizard's goal
is to deter the predator and escape unharmed. Despite the
apparent paradox. Here Beck discusses existing recorded observations of HeLa

(56:24):
monsters biting both humans and dogs, and in both cases,
the bite victim does not usually react by injuring the lizard.
They will usually immediately panic and just try to get
away to get the lizard off, which the bite victim
eventually does, and in most cases this happens without the

(56:44):
death or serious injury. Without the death of the lizard
or serious injury, A couple of recorded cases have resulted
in lizard deaths, so apparently the biting and clamping is
in the field not one hundred percent safe for the lizard,
but it does. The lizard usually does get away alive,
and I think one way of interpreting this is that

(57:06):
there is just sort of a calculus a trade off
that the lizard's biology is making here. So if the
lizard can hang on longer and can chew more venom
into the wound, you are more likely to produce an
intense and overwhelming reaction in the bitten predatory animal, which

(57:26):
I think thereafter reduces the effect that the animal comes
back and still tries to kill or eat the lizard
a second time. So, even though there is risk to
the lizard from clamping on and continuing it to attack,
it doesn't have a fast, efficient venom delivery system like

(57:47):
the you know, the fangs of a viper or like
a snake that can bite quickly, inject tons of venom
really fast, and then run away. It has to sort
of keep chewing and grinding to get more venom in there.
And the evolutionary calculus has concluded that sometimes it makes
sense for the lizard to have an instinct to bite

(58:07):
and hold on and deliver more venom, even if that's
going to keep the lizard initially exposed to the predator
for longer. I think because a more venomated predatory animal
is going to be less dangerous to you after the
bite is released.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
You know, this is just pure guesswork on my part,
but the fact that in some cases we have accounts
of the lizard being killed while it's still attached, I
wonder how many of those cases are going to be
very specific a to humans and to tool using humans.
Something that of course, a hate monster would not have

(58:45):
evolved to cope with like if they have not evolved
to cope with, say a pocket knife or I don't know,
a revolver or something like that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:54):
I think that's a good point. And I think if
you just look more at the kinds of predator encounters
the lizard is going to be having in its natural environment,
what you generally get is just that the predator that
has been bitten and venomated is going to be focused
entirely on getting away from the lizard and taking care
of its wounds. The motivation to eat the lizard by

(59:15):
a natural predator is immediately deprioritized, and the lizard can
escape if it survives, you know, the biting itself.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
Yeah, I just want to get it off of me,
and then I want to get away from here. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (59:27):
So, and Beck argues that a major effect of the
tenacious bite and the prolonged in venomation maybe to promote
learning in predatory animals that it promotes, maybe in the
one instance, a learning in that individual animal that it's
not going to approach a lizard that looks like this again,

(59:47):
and could also over evolutionary time by reducing the fitness
of animals that have been bitten. It could produce evolutionary
learning instinctual learning, where like animals, the predatory animals that
avoid lizards that look like this are favored evolutionarily and
thus eventually the predator species are less likely to mess

(01:00:08):
with them.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
Okay, so it's an educational initiative. I'm the part of
the Helo monsters.

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
Anyway, it should go without saying at this point, but
I think if there's one main takeaway from all this,
it is just don't mess with helo monsters. This is
not a lizard worth poking if you find it in nature,
just you know, keep your distance, observe respectfully from afar.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
That's right, that's right, look at pictures and if you
get a chance, if you do get a chance to
see them in the wild, yes, do keep your distance.
And if you see them at a zoo, well enjoy
the treat of watching them. Probably sleep for an extended
period of time. But yeah, still fabulous animals and I
look forward to talking about them more in at least one,

(01:00:53):
possibly two more episodes, because there's a lot more to cover.
There are a lot of indigenous to about the HeLa
monster like to get into. There are various sort of
frontier myths about them as well that are pretty amusing
and in some cases maybe insightful into the way humans
were interacting with them. And then we're going to get

(01:01:14):
into their role in pharmacology totally. All right, Well, in
the meantime, I do write in if you have anything
already you want to share with us about HeLa monsters
field reports if you will. We're also open to any
kind of info you want to send in regarding Helo
monsters popping up in movies. There's a website that we

(01:01:35):
always love to check out anytime that the subject of
herbs and film comes up, and it's California herbs dot com.
They have a whole section where you can look up.
You can see what herbs have been in what movies,
and what they were doing in them, how they were treated,
and they have a listing for the HeLa monster, and
it's an interesting selection of films. I was looking at this,
and of course you have concerning Helo monsters and Beat

(01:01:56):
of the Lizards. You have some pretty obvious inclusions there,
but also like some classic westerns are just popping up
in as part of the sort of background you know
Frontier World. They pop up in Butch Casting The Sundance Kid,
for example. No, I forgot about that. Yeah, what do
they when?

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
When do they show up in the movie?

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
I think The Sundance Kid shoots a Helo monster. Oh yeah,
yeah that. They show up in various older westerns to Florida,
pache and then, of course there is the nineteen fifty
nine film The Giant HeLa Monster, in which the HeLa
Monster is played by a beaded lizard, so not even
an actual HeLa monster. They couldn't get him. His asking
price was too high. So do do write in if

(01:02:36):
you have anything to share, Just a reminder of everyone
out there. The Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a
science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
short form on Wednesday Fridays. We do Weird House Cinema.
That's when we set aside most of the serious concerns
and just talk about a weird film. Wherever you get
the show, we just asked that you rate reviews, subscribe,
give us thumbs up. Two thumbs up has to be

(01:02:59):
reminded if you are enjoying the show on Netflix, because yes,
certainly we exist as an audio podcast wherever you get
your audio podcasts, but if you go to Netflix you
can also watch us in video form, so if that
floats your boat, check it out. You know, we have
the really nice cameras so you can you can take
it all in a high quality.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
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 suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
La