June 30, 2026 • 58 mins
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 2 of 3)
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey wasn't too stuff to blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back today with the second part in our series
on the HeLa monster and its close relatives, the beaded lizards.
In part one of this series, we talked about the
basic biology and distinguishing characteristics of these lizards, their armored skin,
their nest rating behavior, and their awesome and terrible venom
(00:39):
which they deliver by chewing into the flesh of those
that dare to threaten them. If you haven't heard part one,
we would recommend you go back and listen to that
one before you listen to today's episode. But today we're
back to discuss more about the Heloderma lizards as they're called,
including traditional beliefs, historical misconceptions, and about their evolutionary history.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Now, a couple of texts that we highlighted in the
last episode as being two of our major sources. One
of them is Encyclopedia of Reptiles and Amphibians, second Edition
by Coger and Zwiffel that came out in nineteen ninety eight.
I think the version I had was two thousand and
five reprint, but then more essentially to what we're talking
about here today, Biology of HeLa Monsters and Beaded Lizards
(01:25):
by Daniel de Beck from the University of California Press.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
That's a good book. And I looked up Daniel Dbeck
last time. He's a biology professor affiliated with Central Washington University.
I believe retired now.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah. Yeah, And certainly our knowledge of HeLa monsters continues
to expand and grow, and so in this episode, in
the next episode, in the last episode as well, we're
also drawing on more recent sources. But I wanted to
turn back the clock here and talk a little bit
about the helo monsters status as a so called living fossil.
(02:00):
As we mentioned before, we're talking about the helodermatiday lizards here,
and they've existed as a group for at least sixty
five million years, going back to the Late Cretaceous, with
various species calling what is now North America home. The
direct lineage of the helo monster dealing with Heloderma here
(02:21):
and its ancestors actually survived the Cretaceous Paeogene mass extinction event,
the KPg mass extinction event or roughly sixty six million
years ago. This is the same cataclysmic event that wiped
out the non avian dinosaurs, and the reason for HeLa
(02:43):
monster helo monster type organisms surviving is probably apparent to
a number of you already. We've already talked about what
the HeLa monster does, how the HeLa monster lives, and
you might well survive how it could survive, say a
massive asteroid impact that you know, wipes out a huge
(03:03):
number of species, especially the larger species. Because we're dealing
with a burrowing creature that loves to eat eggs, specifically
with the HeLa monsters we know it today, the eggs
of birds and also of other burrowing reptiles.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
That does mean that at least some of its prey
species are going to be surviving the mass extinction.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely so. And we'll have a little bit
more about this in a bit. But but yeah, so
you have modern beaded lizards and various fossil relatives that
are that are considered to belong to the clade of
North Northern Hemisphere angamorph lizards known as monster saria, which
(03:44):
sounds so awesome you might think it's made up and
I guess, yeah, it is made up. It's made up
by scientists, but this is this is the terminology and
basically monster Saria. They've existed since the Cretaceous, and not
only in North America, historically throughout Eurasia. The oldest fossils
were actually found in Japan. Among these different monster Saria species,
(04:06):
you have the so called giant Paleosenewa canadensis, which would
have been smaller than a contemporary komodo dragon. At it
was like one to two meters, so somewhere in the
range of three foot three inches to six foot seven inches,
but still sizable. And it's called canadensis because it was
found in what is now Alberta, Canada. Another species, more
(04:29):
recently discovered and also sized like a large non komodo
monitor lizard, is the species bog Amandal, found in what
is now Utah. And yes, it's fully named after the
Lord of the Rings. Stuff.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
That's amazing. I was going to say before you even
got to that, like it sounds like the name of
the fortress of the Necromancer is like dol Gadour or something.
It's where the witch king lives.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, so let's you know, we love some word of
the Rings content on this show, So let's break it down.
The genus Bog comes from the Orc chief to Bulk
of the North, son of Azog. In The Hobbit, this
is a major figure at the Battle of Five Armies,
and if you watch Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies you might
remember him. It has this. I think he's entirely a
(05:13):
CGI created being, but an imposing one, kind of like
a gray skinned almost I don't know, almost like sort
of like large shaved chimpanzee style Orc.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I don't think I ever made it that far in
the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies. I love his Lord of
the Rings movies. I think I got about halfway through
the Hobbit trilogy.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
It is. I think many people would agree too much
movie for that adaptation. Two fine, three may be a
little bit too many, but you know, your mileage may vary,
and maybe, folks, maybe in time we'll come back around
to those. Okay. The species name here, though, Amandal is
this is also Lord of the Rings reference. I'm just
gonna read from the paper here titled new Monstrosar Specimens
(05:59):
from the Chai Parowitz Formation of Utah reveal unexpected richness
of large bodied lizards in Late Cretaceous North America. This
came out in twenty twenty five by Woolly at All.
They explain that amandahal quote is derived from the fictional
Elvish Sindarin language and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit,
The Lord of the Rings, The Similarian and other works,
(06:21):
a combination of ammon Elvish Sindarin for mound and doll
Elvish Sindarin for head, named for the mound like fused
osteoderms that cover the skull. We talked about this, you know,
with modern helo monsters today, the little bone like nuggets
that are in their skin that serve to give them
(06:43):
this added protection, it actually fuses with their skull, creating
these very sinister looking, as you describe them, pinhead style skulls. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
And in a way, that's what the name of the
genus means in Greek, so that the Heloderma lizards derma
skin Helo comes from the Greek word for nail or studs,
so they are like nail skin lizards, I think, referring
to sort of the flat heads of nails, but that
would be Yeah, These bone beads that are embedded in
their skin and eventually fused with their skull. It forms
(07:15):
a kind of armor. But also because they're sort of
round and separated, less densely packed in some parts of
the body than others that do kind of have a
pinhead pattern.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah yeah, so I solute the naming here of this creature.
So many monstersary species were indeed specialized nest raiders. With
the larger ones and this again we're talking about, you know,
pre KPg extinction, these would have been the larger ones
that raided dinosaur nests, so they would then specialized dinosaur
(07:47):
nest raiders, which is pretty crazy to think about. But
then after the KPg extinction event, the larger species, these
are going to be the ones that go extinct, and
that makes sense because the eggs they're depending on the
nests that they're rating those species are extinct now as well,
so they quickly die out. But the smaller ones, they're
(08:09):
the ones that are able to survive, to survive based
on their burrowing lifestyle and their dependence on the nests
of the surviving species and the nests that they're raiding,
the burrows that they're living in, like these would constitute
sheltered micro habitats. So you know, it's like the creatures
who are thriving at living underground to some degree had
(08:32):
at least that going for them in this cataclysmic period
following the extinction event.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
I feel like this has come up several times on
the show recently, but always interesting to see this pattern
that lineages that survived the KPg extinction often were burrowing
species and species that at least spend part of their
life digging in holes underground.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it seems to be. You know, it's
there are all sorts of different niches that organisms will
find themselves in, but some are going to be more
vulnerable to events like this, and others are going to
provide some degree of protection. So in the book Biology
of HeLa Monsters and Beaded Lizards, Daniel de Beck points
(09:18):
out that our modern Monstersoria specimens share a more recent
common ancestor with snakes than they do with most other lizards,
and he drives this home with this nice little tidbit
I'm going to read here quote more like snakes on legs,
Helodermatid lizards are indeed a walking contradiction. These lizards probably
(09:39):
shouldn't still be here. Most other genera on the Earth
twenty three million years ago have either moved on to
extinction or evolved into new lineages. In this driving home,
of course, the fact that HeLa monsters have remained essentially
unchanged for thirty million years, like living time capsules from
a prior age.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Interesting to see the connection to snakes, even though you know,
you'd think the big morphological difference would would mean that
they're very far apart. Snakes have no legs and heloderma
do have legs. But you can see the connection with
the venom, can't you that? You know that like unlike
most other lizards which don't have venom, the heloderma do.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, absolutely, so it's yeah, interesting to make those connections here.
All right, let's begin to get into some of the
kind of a broad selection of different, largely false ideas
(10:46):
about what helo monsters are all about and what they
are up to. We're going to be getting into folk beliefs,
traditional beliefs, mythologies, and this covers a lot of ground.
We're gonna be talking a little bit about indigenous belief
about the helo monster and traditions about the helo monster.
Some of which do cross over into the realm of
(11:07):
the imagination, and then others actually line up rather well
with what we see, you know, and what is observable
about the nature of HeLa monsters. And then we're also
going to get into a lot of like so when
you get into the colonial era, you're gonna have settlers
coming in and they're going to have their own layers
of misinformation and ideas about what Helo monsters are all about.
(11:28):
Some of this is going to be taken from indigenous beliefs,
other stuff may have other sources entirely. So this is
going to be a fun area to get into. And
let's begin with with some of the indigenous beliefs and
ideas about the HeLa monster. Several of these were profiled
in Beck's book about the HeLa Monster, and a lot
(11:51):
of a number of these do involve the indigenous people
of the Scenarian Desert that we've talked about before on
the show before the Thought of Them, and he Beck
outlines some of the following bits of lore here from
this group as well with some other groups. He points
out that the particularly here, the Oftum, believe that an
(12:14):
encounter with a HeLa monster could cause an outbreak of
sores on the feet or body, and that it could
cause nursing mothers to lose their milk. These sibstance symptoms
could then be magically treated by tying a red cloth
around the lizard or a fetish of the lizard that
had been carved from the rib of sowaru. And then
there was also a special use of song that could
(12:35):
be used in treating the outbreak. So, I mean, as
you know, as far as ritual beliefs go, nothing too
out of line there. I mean, we can imagine some
sort of I can imagine some sort of scenario where
one might have I don't know, tread on some of
the spent venom of the HeLa monster. Not impossible to
(12:56):
get that on your feet, certainly not impossible to get
that somewhere on your body. I don't know about the
nursing mothers, but you know, things of this nature do
factor into a lot of the myth and lore surrounding
venoms and toxins in different native belief systems.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Well, yeah, as we talked about last time, it's certainly
true that the venom of the heal A monster is
not just a simple venom with one effect. It is
a potent, complex cocktail with tons of different bioactive agents
in it, all having different ranges of effects. So yeah,
you can imagine that there would be there could be
(13:38):
different effects of the venom that are not even part
of the normal list of things that manifest you know,
that are most often documented, like pain and you know,
low blood pressure and sweats and things like that.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, and you're gonna you're gonna end up like we
talked about, how with Western commentators and biologists and naturalists
you've had so much disagreement for so long about whether
they were even venomous. So you can imagine sort of
a similar disconnect existing even in indigenous people because I
think for the most part, if I'm judging everything correctly here,
(14:14):
people would know to be wary of the HeLa monster,
would maybe not seek it out. How many people were
actually getting bitten by it, and then if they are
being bitten by it, how much venom is being delivered?
And this is going to be sort of your body
of evidence out of which to build on your expectations. Yeah, yeah,
not counting into effecting sort of like the magical and
(14:35):
religious layers that end up being put on top of
everything as well. Let's see. Beck also mentions that the
Pema people, who I think are also called the acamel Authem,
they had a belief that if a prospective father killed
a Helo monster, his baby could become feverish and then
a song remedy would be necessary to heal the child.
(14:57):
And let's see, then we also have the people also
known as the Siri, and they believe that the bite
of the HeLa monster was in fact dangerous, but also
held that it could spit as well at a range
of four meters or so.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
This spitting will show up again in different branches of
hel A monster lore. But this is not an isolated belief.
There have been a lot of people in history that
thought that like a you know, a spitting snake or something,
that they could spit venom at you.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah, and it's quite quite interesting again getting into the
snake connection here, because we of course do have venom
spitters in the reptile world, but they're the spitting cobras
of Asia and Africa, remarkable creatures. I was actually just
researching them over the weekend for a different project, and
I remember how we said that while snakes generally use
(15:48):
their venom offensively, while the beaded lizard venom serves a
defensive purpose. Well, spitting cobras are kind of an exception
to that snake rule we outlined. They can still administer
to their venom via a bite, but they've evolved to
be able to spit their venom as well, with remarkable
accuracy and via like, it's not one of these situations where, oh,
(16:10):
they learned the trick of spitting their own venom. No,
they've evolved special teeth, special venom apertures that are different
from that of non spitting cobras, and then the snake
venom itself changed as well over the course of their evolution.
So snake venom often targets the nervous system and or
(16:31):
the heart, with some also boasting tissue destroying properties. Spitting
cobras have evolved a venom that maximizes intense pain and
tissue destruction over everything else as a defensive weapon, seemingly
against mammals and arguably maybe even against early human hominine species.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Yeah, so the spitting mechanism itself makes sense if you
just imagine, like, what kinds of situation that behavior would
be most effective. That makes sense. As a defensive behavior,
you can you know, try to keep something away from you.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Like I can bite you if we
need to do this a close range. But if we
tangle it close range, you know, there's a chance you're
going to break my spine. And I don't want to
just bite you, and I want to be able to
escape as well. So let's handle this at a distance first, which,
of course is what's going on with all sorts of
(17:29):
defensive displays and so forth. So anyway, the idea of
spitting your venom at an adversary certainly not unprecedented in
the reptile world, but it would be quite an upgrade
if HeLa monsters were actually doing this, and to be sure,
they are not. Now where does it come from? You know,
we'll get into this, but you know, on one hand,
(17:51):
you have things like exaggeration just in you know, like
this is a creature that can buy you. What if
it can spit too? And then how much of this
is anthromorphism, because what do we do? We spit all
the time, especially if you watch Cowboy movies. People out
in the desert, they love to spit. So why not
have a lizard with venom? And its mouth spitting at
anything that's getting in its way. Or is this like
(18:14):
a misreading of what the HeLa monster is doing with
its defensive mouth opening display. It's interesting too. I want
to mention that Beck sites in this particular version of
the myth that the HeLa monster can spit at a
four meter range, which is beyond but not too much
more beyond the range of actual spitting cobras, so like
(18:35):
for as far as venom spinners go, like that would
be reasonable if this was what this creature was actually
capable of. Let's see other indigenous beliefs that Beck outlines
in his book. This one's also really fascinating. HeLa monsters
could control the weather by communicating with the storm spirit,
and that spotting one was a sign of impending rain.
(18:57):
Now you know, we can't comment on any actual communication
between HeLa monsters and deities or supernatural beings, but helo
monsters are more active during monsoon season and will surface
on cloudy, humid days. I was reading some various news
articles from Arizona that also outlined this as being essentially true,
(19:19):
that if you see a helo monster, it could very
well be an indicator that seasonal conditions are right for rain.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah. Beck says that the Apaches believe this is well,
and he shares an interesting indigenous account of the Helo
monster's hide. I'm just going to read a quote here
from him this time. He says, the thauna Athum explained
the origin of Helo monsters brightly colored osteoderms as an
outcome of the first Soaru Wine Festival. We talked about
(19:49):
this in our episodes on the Soaru. This it would
be like a seasonal harvesting of the fruit where the
food fruit is consumed and made into various food products
consumed on this and also made into a ritual wine.
He said, this the outcome of the first Soaru Wine Festival,
held long ago. Humans and animals alike were invited and
(20:09):
everyone wanted to look his or her best. HeLa monster
came festooned with bright pebbles gathered to make a colorful
and endurable coat, which is still worn to this day.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Oh that's cool.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
He also there's another little bit that he shares. He
says the quote, the bony osteoderms of the HeLa monster
have earned it the title of well armored warrior of
the Navajo Old Navajo warrior tales tell of mortals who
wore flint armor and looked like the Heela Monster the protector.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Interesting, and I like that both of these accounts can
look at the skin of the Heela Monster, at the
bumps or the beads and have different readings on them.
That one story is about them being decorative, that it
is a creature trying to appear colorful and beautiful for
the festival, for the Sowaro wine festival, and then the
(21:03):
other one is about armor. Right, it's ready for war.
And either interpretation kind of makes sense because the Heel
Monster is both. It is both decorated with these color
patterns that we talked about last time, which can have
multiple uses. You might think of them as camouflage in
one sense, but also warning markers and you know when
you're looking up closer. But also the bumps are literally armor.
(21:27):
The osteoderm serve protective purpose.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah, yeah, pretty fascinating here. Let's see regarding Mexican beaded lizards.
Apparently there are full traditions that its tail is powerful
and capable of summoning lightning strikes. I don't know if
there's actually anything to that. It's kind of hard for
me to imagine a scenario where that could be accurate.
(21:51):
But again, getting into this idea that all of these
beaded lizards are going to have similar lifestyles that they're living,
and they are going to be tied monsoon season emergencies
and humidity. So there is this connection to rain and storm.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
That's right. Yeah, So they're more likely to come out
of the burrows when conditions are right for rain to happen.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah. And therefore, if you're out and about and there
are a bunch of beaded lizards walking around, you might
think it's possible there's a lightning storm brewing. Maybe I
should seek cover. And then finally, I've ran across this
particular creature on a website titled a Book of Creatures
that I've come across before, looking up mythological beings and
(22:34):
so forth, a cool website, and the author of this
website cites this supposed mayan tradition of a beaded lizard
known as es shown peds kinskin, and the idea here
is that this beaded lizard can give you a headache
like a severe migraine, just by biting your shadow. And
(22:57):
the author here. It's a sided article a couple of
older sources from nineteen nineteen, nineteen thirty one, but outside
of those sources, I couldn't find anything else about it.
But still an interesting concept here, because again, all these
beaded lizards are going to have similar properties. And I
love the idea. I mean, I love the idea of
any kind of magical creature interacting with the shadow. We've
(23:19):
talked about these on the show before. But it also
is a great way of thinking about the venom. The
venom is so potent that it doesn't even even have
to bite you to deliver it. It could just bite your
shadow and you're going to be stuck with some symptoms.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
That's amazing. Well, actually that is a good segue, if
you're all right, moving on to talk about some fumes
and odors to yeah, to get into this next section
I looked into, and that is about HeLa monster breath
and HeLa monster fog. So I started looking into this
because of a funny passage I came across. This was
(23:54):
in an article published in Scientific American in September nineteen
o six by an author named D. A.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Willie.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
The article is just called HeLa monsters, and it rehashes
some points of the at this time still ongoing debate
about to what extent the creatures are venomous. We talked
about this last time. There was this back and forth
for a long time about whether they're venomous or not. Finally,
by about the nineteen twenties it was fully settled. Everybody
(24:24):
agreed they were venomous. But at this point it's still
nineteen oh six, and Willie describes their osteoderms. He's sorrying
about their armor, few other biological behavioral facts, and then
eventually gets to the following passage. I'm going to read
from da Willie quote. When angered, it emits its breath
in a succession of quick gasps. The breath is very fetid,
(24:48):
and its odor can be detected at some little distance
from the lizard. It is supposed that this is one
way in which the monster catches the insects and small
animals which form a part of its food supply, the
foul gas overcoming them. Oh wow, yeah, So it's a
little unclear exactly what he's saying there. Is he just like, oh,
(25:11):
the gas is so stinky that it, I don't know,
paralyzes them and then the monster can get it. Or
is it that it literally has poisoned breath, that its
breath kills these things and then the lizard can eat
at its leisure. I don't know. It's a little bit vague,
and I think that may reflect the fact that there
was significant variation in the underlying lore that Willy is
(25:33):
referring to here.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah. I mean, if true, this would be amazing, right,
because this would be unlike any natural world organism that
I'm instantly thinking of that's using some sort of an
actual chemical projectile from its mouth as an offensive weapon
to bring down prey.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Well, not a liquid chemical like a Yeah, that's using
actually like projected like gas.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah, it's like a dragon if it were, Yes, if
it were just lit a flame, it would be a dragon. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Unfortunately this is not true, but it was very interesting
to me as a belief, so I went looking to
see if I could find any credible sources addressing this
claim in more detail, and I did so. This is
the subject of a very good section in a book
from nineteen fifty six called The HeLa Monster and Its Allies.
The relationships, habits, and behavior of the Lizards of the
(26:27):
family Helodermatidy by the American herpetologist Charles M. Bogert and
the Mexican herpetologist and ornithologist Raphael Martin del Campo. This
was published by the American Museum of Natural History, and
again it was nineteen fifty six. So the book as
a whole is mainly focused on biology, but Bogert and
(26:49):
del Campo have a whole section where they track the
history of popular beliefs and misconceptions about these lizards. Among
the beliefs they look into are one. We just talked
about the idea that the helo monster spits venom Not true.
It is venomous, but it doesn't spit. That it does
not have an anus, That's what I said. No anus
(27:11):
for helo monsters. Also not true, or I mean maybe
slightly true, in that it doesn't have an anus like
a mammal has a cloaca, you know, yeah, what a reptile. Technically, yes,
the kloaca is the all purpose, the all purpose back
door for a reptile. So the kloaca handles urine, feces,
reproductive material. It's the it does it all but anyway,
(27:36):
so but that's not true. These lizards do have a cloaca.
But the other myth that they look at is that
it emits pungent or even poisonous fumes, particularly through its breath.
According to the author's, stories about the breath and odor
of the HeLa monster are among the earliest stories appearing
(27:58):
in the literature. So let's just run through some of
the examples they talk about. They discuss an author named
Sumacrast who mentions not the breath but the odor in
papers appearing in three different languages. So these are papers
in French, Spanish, and English, two of them in eighteen
sixty four, one in eighteen sixty nine. The paper that's
(28:20):
in English has a passage that says, quote, the body
of the heloderma usually exhales a strong and nauseous odor,
the intensity of which increases at the period when the
two sexes seek each other for the purpose of copulation.
Bogert and del Campo say that there may be some
truth to this claim. They say that helo monsters do
(28:42):
possess scent glands under the base of the tail, which
discharge smelly contents through the cloaca, again further proof they
really do have cloaca, folks, it's really there, So it
could be true that they emit some kind of smell
that is attractive to the opposite sexes of the lizard,
maybe plays some role in reproduction. But then sometimes claims
(29:05):
about the odor of the HeLa get entangled with claims
about venom and toxic breath. So an author named Douges
in eighteen ninety nine mentions the odor of the HeLa
but attributes the odor to the lizard's saliva, and he
says that when Ahila quote bites with fury, one can
(29:26):
perceive an odor that is quote fetid and repugnant. Another
author around the same time, Vin Dinberg, in eighteen ninety eight,
mentions the fetid breath of the lizard. There's another account
they get into that is attributed to a mister tw
Parker of Phoenix, Arizona in eighteen seventy nine. At some
(29:48):
level this account is anonymous. I don't know if it was.
I think maybe published by an anonymous author attributing the
story to Parker. I think that might be right. But anyway,
so Parker is considered the source at some level on this,
and this account is talking about what happens when the
HeLa monster is threatened. So they say that the threatened
(30:11):
HeLa monster quote stands as erect as possible and blows
at its antagonist, sending forth a stream resembling fog and
believed by the natives to cause instant death. So I'm
trying to think, what is the author picturing here, Like
you can see the fog coming out of his mouth?
Is it visible fog? Is it like Godzilla's radiation breath?
Speaker 2 (30:34):
I mean, that's what I'm picturing. I'm picturing something that
looks like imagine what this effect would look like in
a nineteen eighties science fiction movie, you know, just it's
just the smoke pouring out of the out of a
rubber reptile's mouth.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
I mean, if it is poisonous gas coming out of
the lizard's mouth, It's hard to imagine it really being
directed very effectively like the you know, the beam breath,
because if it's really gas, it's going to quickly start
spreading and diffusing. It's just going to go in all directions,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, again, it would have to be pretty potent, I
would imagine to have any kind of an effect.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
So this account the same one attributed to or sort
of at least second and associated with the account by T. W.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Parker.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
It goes on to describe a fight between a heel
monster and a snake, which the snake survives, is badly hurt,
but survives, and then slithers away from proving that the
poison breath was not fatal or effective at paralyzing snakes.
And then the story goes on to say, quote a
saloon keeper of his meaning Parker's acquaintance, captured a monster
(31:44):
alive and kept it for the amusement of his customers.
It was tied in it, that's horrible. It was tied
in a corner. And as the floor was of earth,
as in all houses in those parts, as was the
custom at the time, the reptile burrowed a considerable whole
as a hiding place. One day, mister Parker does not
(32:05):
say that he witnessed the affair. A mouse ventured near
the hole. The monster sent forth a stream of poisoned breath,
and the mouse fell paralyzed. The monster then seized and
devoured it. One cannot wonder that with so favorable an opportunity,
no one had the wit to test the truth of
the popular belief as to the poisonous character of the
(32:28):
monster's breath by submitting to it a variety of small animals.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
I cannot believe that these drunken cowboys in this saloon
did not have the wit to conduct a few scientific experiments.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Yeah, to just send a gauntlet of small creatures at
this monster for it to breathe its fumes.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Upon, and then publish, then share this knowledge of the world.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Yeah, come on, don't you care about science? Okay? Some
more so. In a story attributed to a Colonel A. G.
Tassin published by an author named Garman in eighteen ninety
(33:12):
one in the Overland Monthly, they're talking about the breath
of the heel a monster, and Tassin says that the
breath quote in hissing is offensive and issues from a
wide open mouth in puffs of black vapor or smoke.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
So now it's black, Yeah, black.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Smoke coming out of the mouth.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Before it was white fog. Now it's black smoke. Now
it's like what movie did we watch for weird House
recently where there's like a black smoke that creeps out
envelops someone.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Oh, I know what you're talking about, but I forget folks.
We just had to do an aside for a minute
here to look up what movie this was, because I
couldn't remember, but Rob you found it. It was in
I Married a Monster from Outer Space. That's right, Yes,
Tom tryan he you know, he pulls the car aside
and he is investigating something I think, maybe something lying
(34:06):
in the road. And then suddenly you see this fog
like creep in from the side of the picture and
it envelops him and then he becomes the root ball face.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah, like creeping black smoke void. And that's what I'm
imagining here. This is a fantastic description.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Yes, so this guy is saying, Colonel Tassin says, Yep
opens up its mouth, puffs of black vapor or smoke
come out. The account attributed to Tassin goes on to say,
quote the Mexicans I have questioned all told me that
it was exceedingly poisonous, as much so as the bite,
if not more. Well, many of the Americans thought it harmless.
(34:44):
Having myself seen a chicken and a small puppy killed
by the hissing of one in their faces, I am
inclined to think that it is best to keep from
coming in contact with it. And then, reflecting on this story,
the authors Bogert and del Campo have an the side
where they say it is to be doubted that Tassin
ever did I think, meaning come in contact with it,
(35:06):
or that he ever saw a heal a monster.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
So there's so much truth in the last portion this
segment here, because you get the idea. It's like, so
much is going to be based again on what is
the sample size for your information? You know, like these
newer voices are not sure or don't think that it's venomous.
Maybe some deeper source material indicates that they are, and
(35:31):
then most people are just not encountering them, or there's
enough evidence out there that people are going to be like,
you know, I'm going to keep my distance, and by
keeping your distance, maybe you also don't drastically enhance that
sample size to fully understand what's going on.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Well I like that. Yeah. In some of these stories,
you have competing accounts that are both wrong. You have like,
on one hand, it seems to be like an argument
between one person who thinks that the breath is poisonous fog,
that it spits out black smoke, and then the other
people are like, no, it's not even venomous, and like, no,
the truth is it is venomous but it's just the bite. Yeah,
(36:10):
so yeah, anyway, So I'm not going to read all
of the accounts that they go into in full, just
to summarize a few others that were interesting. There's a
story reported in a homeopathic I think medicine journal that
a man fell asleep in a sleeping bag at a
camp in the mountains near Tucson, Arizona. He never woke up,
(36:31):
so in the morning, his companions find him dead. There's
a HeLa monster beside him, and they look all over
his body and they never find a bite. So this
proves that the HeLa monster killed him with its breath.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
This heava monster breathed on him, and that is why
he is dead.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Oh that's right.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Bogert and del Campo obviously do not believe this. There's
a story in which somebody claims that a heela monster
at a zoo in Cincinnati, Ohio killed all of the
snakes that were kept in the same cage as it
by opening its mouth and breathing poison fog at them.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Okay, if they were in separate cages, that would give
me more room to wonder. But ye, why did it
surely just bit them or something else? Happened, or oh,
the snake's just died in captivity.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
There's a common belief, apparently that the breath of the
HeLa monster could wither all of the grass and a
six foot radius around the lizard, or could turn the
grass brown.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Well, there are a lot of six foot radius spaces
in their habitat that have no grass, so that's true.
I guess there's evidence for that.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
However, you know, this is not believed by everybody who's
writing about HeLa monsters at this time. So there's skeptical
descent from an author named Garman in eighteen ninety one
who wrote that quote, the breath is no more colored
than that of human beings. Neither is it, nor could
it be any more offensive in its odor than the
incense wafted from the lips of multitudes of the representatives
(37:59):
of proudy humanity. In regard to the breath being venom laden,
that of the specimen before us certainly was not so.
Here again, it would be no very difficult undertaking to
select an army of men with whom a comparison in
this respect would undoubtedly prove complimentary to the monster.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
This date, ha smelled some ripe breath before Y's clear.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
I wonder if he was a dentist. But as he's saying,
not only is the breath not poisonous, it's not even
that foul smelling. Human breath smells worse on average. By
the nineteen forties, herpetologists were regularly publishing rebuttals of this
poisoned breath belief. Lab tests and observation repeatedly showed that
(38:44):
the heel monster does have venom in its bite, but
it does not spit its venom, and it certainly does
not breathe its venom as a toxic gas. Opinions differed
on exactly how stinky its breath was. Some authors were like, yes,
it is stinky. Helo monster has halatosis, but they generally
attribute this to its diet. Like some authors said, maybe
(39:06):
it has bad breath because it eats rotten eggs. This
is an egg eater. But experiments by Durham in nineteen
fifty one found interestingly that helo monsters tend to reject
rotten eggs. They prefer fresh eggs.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Yeah, I mean it is a nest raider, so it
would it would seems like in some cases you might
get a nest that has been neglected, but generally you're
dealing with eggs that are either cared for or left
in a position to thrive.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Yeah. So, from their own experience and research working with helas,
Bogert and del Campo say most HeLa monsters, whether captured
in the field or kept in captivity, are not especially
foul smelling, though they do give off a typical characteristic
reptile odor that is not specific to Heloderma. It's just
(39:54):
kind of that. If you've ever smelled that snake tank smell,
you know there is a reptile odor, and there can
also be a pretty foul odor when reptiles are kept
in unsanitary conditions. But if they're kept in clean you know,
cages that are cleaned, they say there's nothing all that
stinky about heal monsters. They say that indeed, if a
(40:16):
HeLa monster becomes agitated or threatened, it can, in these
situations have suddenly a more foul smelling breath. What's up
with that if it's not emitting clouds of venomous fog.
They give a different explanation. They say regurgitation under stress.
They cite multiple accounts of HeLa monsters under attack or
(40:41):
under threat vomiting up the contents of their stomach sometimes
while they are biting the offending animal. Can you imagine that,
So it's like biting you, it's inflicting again if you
haven't heard the last episode Helo Monster Bites because of
the inc incredibly painful venom, it's usually described as the
(41:02):
most painful experience people have ever had when they've been
bitten by a HeLa. You know, the venom is just excruciating,
and it's like maybe puking on your hand while it's
biting you.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
So yeah, this, so it's vomiting up its stomach contents.
I think this doesn't happen all the time, but can
happen sometimes. This lizard vomit obviously smells bad and the
smell is not venomous, but it smells bad and the
bite is venomous.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Okay, Yeah, this kind of like stress regurgitation or threat vomiting.
We've talked about this with various other organisms before. Where Like,
there are different ways of interpreting it, and it's kind
to vary from species to species. But yeah, sometimes it's
about create something, produce something foul smelling. You know, we
can imagine if you were threatened on a bus and
you did this, it might give you an advantage. Sometimes
(41:52):
with the flying creatures, like vultures, sometimes it has been
hypothesized that it could be sort of like lightening the
load for flight. You just gorge yourself in a whole
bunch of rotten flesh, but now you need to move quickly.
Maybe you lighten the load. The other is that sometimes
you have an animal that's looking to eat you, it
wants a meal, and you say you essentially bribe them
(42:15):
and say, I would prefer you not eat me. How
about I give you what I just ate. Maybe this
will interest you consolation prize. Yeah, yeah, but this seems
to at least to me, this suddenly makes a lot
of sense because if we have this threat vomiting occurring
even some of the time with HeLa monsters like that
(42:36):
seems enough to sort of confuse the scenario and encourage
some of these interpretations that we've talked about with foul breath,
but also the supposed spitting of the venom, because they're
not spitting the venom, but they might be spitting up
and then you can sort of combine those two into
one interpretation.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Possibly. Yeah, are you ready to look into the next
historical misconception.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Yeah, yeah, this was one I had not heard of
until we started putting together ideas for this episode. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
I came across it because of a blog post that
you sent me, So I'll lay out the story here.
This one took some digging to try to sort out.
But in a few blog posts, including an article you
sent me from the Utah Museum of Natural History and
then also an article cited by that article, I came
(43:36):
across references to an alleged historical practice of pioneer members
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints
aka the Mormons, claiming that they used helo monster bodies
to brew sacred potions or oils which were used for
(43:58):
religious purposes. Now I'm gonna go ahead and give you
my conclusion that I think this is almost certainly not
historically true. But I at least wanted to run this
lead down and figure out, like, where's this coming from,
what's the deal? So here's the best I could piece together.
The story originally appeared in a newspaper called the Poche
(44:21):
Daily Record or the Poche Record. Pyosh is a town
in eastern Nevada. The version that other sources usually cite
is a reprint in the Tombstone Epitaph out of Tombstone, Arizona,
in June eighteen eighty one. So I went hunting in
newspaper archives because mostly this is just presented as an excerpt,
(44:44):
and I was like, I've got to be able to
find the full text of this article and figure out
what if I can get any context, Like, what's it
talking about. So I went hunting in newspaper archives and
had trouble finding either of these two articles that are cited,
but I eventually turned up a different reprint, one appearing
in the Laredo Times on August third, eighteen eighty one,
(45:08):
under the title novel use of HeLa Monsters. Are you
ready for this?
Speaker 2 (45:12):
Rob Let's have it.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
The story reads in full on Sunday afternoon, a couple
of men who were walking through the meadow at Panaka,
this is another town in eastern Nevada, had their attention
attracted by the antics of a couple of HeLa monsters,
as they are called in this section, amusing themselves playing
in the sun. Now they're about to do some science facts.
(45:36):
These HeLa monsters are an amphibious reptile similar in form
and action to an alligator, but different in color and
weigh from seven to nine pounds. They are not very
numerous in the vicinity of Panaka, owing to the fact
that the Mormons kill them for the purpose of obtaining
(45:58):
oil from their fatty flash.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
I mean a lot to unpack there to state the obvious.
They are not amphibious, and they are not like alligators.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
Not really, no, I mean except I mean they got
four feet and the tail.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Very broad and sense you could compare it to an alligator,
I guess.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
But they have a head with teeth and two eyes,
you know.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
So the story goes on to say, immediately after these
curious reptiles are killed, they are sent down to Saint George, Utah.
And I looked this up. I didn't know this already,
but Saint George was the location of a major LDS
temple at this time. It was the first one constructed
in Utah, dedicated in eighteen seventy seven. So the story says, yeah,
(46:47):
after the Mormons kill these lizards, they take them down
to Saint George, Utah, and their bodies quote are deposited
in the basement of the temple or house of worship,
where a huge boiler stands ready to receive them. Here,
they are kept boiling for two or three days, the
oil in the meantime being skimmed with a wooden ladle
(47:08):
resembling a spoon in its construction. This oil is then
placed in earthen jars, which contain three gallons each and
are hermetically sealed. When this is accomplished, the jars are
removed to the baptismal hall when it is ready for
baptizing and anointing Latter Day Saints.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Okay, that's a lot. That's a lot to take in.
Speaker 3 (47:32):
Do you have the same feeling that I do when
I'm reading this? It just has the word to word
prose feel of somebody making something up, Like the part
about how the wooden ladle. They use a wooden ladle
resembling a spoon in its construction. It just kind of
feels like I need some kind of physical detail here
(47:53):
about how they skim the oil off of the vat.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
I don't know. Yeah, it's like we know what the
ladele looks like.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
So, based on my own additional research, I do not
think this story is true. The Latter Day Saints do
have rituals that involve anointing with oil. From everything I
was reading, this is usually olive oil. It might be
olive oil prepared in a special way. I could not
find any sources by Mormons themselves talking about doing this
(48:23):
with HeLa monsters, and I couldn't find anything else, even
by non Mormons, documenting this, except for one more article
in Western newspapers from around the same time, which I
think might be a variation or expansion on the same
article I just read. I'll come back to that in
a minute. So you've got the lack of corroborating evidence.
(48:45):
On one hand, I would also place this in the
historical context of how in the eighteen eighties it seems
to me that it was common for Western US newspapers
run by non Mormons to print stuff that was just
designed to make Mormons look bad and to stir up
fear and hatred against them. So you get sensational stories
(49:08):
about polygamy and secret rituals taking place in the basement,
often with sexual implications. I think, to make it more
sensational and get people read in the papers. And so
these anti Mormon rhetorical practices could include like taking a
story that is basically true and then dwelling on or
(49:29):
exaggerating it if it's something that would make people think
badly about Mormons generally, or it could include wholesale fabrication.
And though I can't be one hundred percent sure, I
suspect this story is more like the latter it's some
kind of case of fabrication of a calumny against Mormons.
And of course this same kind of propaganda is still
(49:50):
very common today, used to stir up fear and hatred
against minority groups of various types. You can think about
fabricated stories about immigrants and refugees eating people's pets, a
similar kind of principle at work. You're just trying to
animate people, stirring them up against against a minority group
of some kind.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
Yeah, like, focus on the things that are legitimately different
in beliefs, practices, and lifestyles, and then further drive the
wedge by adding in exaggerations and just purely fabricated information
as well.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
Yeah. So, in the case of this particular story, my
best guess is that it is a concoction and the
main ingredients are true knowledge that the Latter day Saints
practice some form of anointing with oil they do that
belief that HeLa monsters are disgusting, fetid, vile creatures as
they were often described at the time, and then just
(50:44):
kind of putting these things together and being like, yeah,
Mormons probably would use like rotten lizard oil in their
in their blasphemies.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
And also tying sort of like people to place here right.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Yes, yeah, yeah. So adding to my reasons for belief
that this is fabricated, there is another more detailed version
of the story that appears to be like the same article,
or at least an article from around the same time,
making similar claims, which I have found floating around in quotation.
I haven't found the full text of this one, but
(51:17):
this comes from a post on a website called history
Net by an author named Richard Lapidas from twenty eleven,
and the post is titled the HeLa Monster had a
Killer Reputation. Lapidas says he is quoting a reprint of
the same story I just read from the Posh Daily Record.
The reprint he's he says he's quoting, appears in the
(51:39):
Tombstone Epitaph June sixteenth, eighteen eighty one, but while it
is on the same subject, it has totally different language
and some different claims. So this excerpt reads, quote, Mormons,
stricken with remorse, congregate from different parts of the Utah
territory to this Saint George Temple during the conference, then
may be seen the which is religiously preserved cast on
(52:03):
the water by the officiating bishop, while poor deluded men
and women avail themselves of its efficiency, as they imagine,
by entering this tank and bathing in it, thus believing
by so doing that they are entitled to a corner
in heaven.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
So yeah, so this is just this reads like, you know,
like made up accounts of Satanic rituals.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
Yes, so yeah, yeah. The in this version, it's more
obvious based on the language that the author is trying
to just insult Latter day Saints, saying they engage in nasty, stupid,
religiously illegitimate practices. So the authorial intent does not one
hundred percent prove that the claim about boiling Helo monsters
(52:47):
is untrue, but I think it even further reduces the
credibility of these couple of newspaper stories, which again are
the only sources that I could find. So my best
guess is that nobody ever did this. But assuming that
I'm right about that, I think this does still say
something interesting about historically how helo monsters were thought of.
That if you're trying to make up like a weird
(53:10):
slander against a group of people, you'd be like, oh, yeah,
they they boil these disgusting, vile lizards and they use
their oil in rituals that they do in their temples.
But I was also like actually trying to think about
what if this were true, how many lizards would you
have to boil to get like to fill up all
(53:31):
these these gallony free gallon earthenware jugs with just lizard oil?
How much oil is in a single lizard. I have
not done the meat math on it, but I'm a
little skeptical, like how many hel monsters are there and
would it really would the population support that kind of harvesting?
Speaker 2 (53:47):
Yeah, I have it. Yeah. And then also like the
whole bit about oh, you don't see many helo monsters
around these parts because they've been harvested for oil. I
mean like that's one of those things where it's like,
look around you, do you see any helo monsters? Well?
Probably not, because, as we mentioned, they spend the vast
majority of their lives and their burrows and you're not
going to see them around. So it's like they, you know,
(54:08):
just through the normal course of their of their lives,
they can support nonsense like this because they're not out
and about.
Speaker 3 (54:16):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Until you said that,
I didn't actually connect it back to the claim in
the article that the heel monsters are not very numerous
in the vicinity of Panaka. But it doesn't actually say
that there's been like a reduction in their numbers. It
just says not very numerous. I mean, that's got to
be because the Mormons are killing them all.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
Yeah. Also not knowing off the top of my head,
what the you know, the environment of the Panaka and
the surrounding region happens to be. Yeah, I mean it
could in theory be an area where they're just they
just don't live there anyway. I don't know, due to
differences in elevation, humidity, and so forth. Yeah, it could
be out getting arranged for all I know.
Speaker 3 (54:53):
Like, it doesn't say like they used to be numerous
and they're not anymore. It's just like they're not very numerous.
We all know what that means.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
Yeah, yeah, so I think we can we can safely
then file this one away as false.
Speaker 3 (55:06):
Right, I am pretty sure this never happened, But I
would be interested to get actual evidence to the contrary,
Like if there are Mormon sources talking about doing this,
I'd want to know, like what, what's the logic behind it?
What are they thinking? Yeah, that would be interesting, but
I am I have extreme doubts about yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
Yeah, because animal based products do factor into various religious
traditions around the world. So like if if this was
like setting aside, like you know, the anti LDS slander
involved here, if this were the case, it wouldn't actually
be that weird compared to anything else that's done in
any other religion, Like it's just lizard oil they're talking
(55:47):
about here. So but again, does not seem to be
the case. But this will This will be an interesting
place to cut off this episode because in our next episode,
we're gonna be one more episode about the Heala monster.
We are going to it into the very real role
that helo monsters have played in modern pharmacology. So we're
going to be talking about helo monsters and medicine and
(56:12):
if there are any indigenous medical medicinal practices that involve
the Helo Monster, we will likely mention them in that episode.
All right, well, we're going to go ahead and close
out this episode, but again, we'd love to hear from
everyone out there. You know, we haven't finished the series
on the Helo Monster yet, but if you have anything
you want to share about the Helo Monster experiences you've
(56:34):
had with Helo Monster sightings that you've had out in
the natural world or even at zoos and so forth
right in we would love to hear from you. Just
a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
(56:55):
a weird film on Weird House Cinema. We would ask
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(57:17):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind, and we appreciate you listening
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lent us your ears and maybe.
Speaker 3 (57:29):
Your eyes 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,
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say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
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Speaker 1 (57:51):
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 Fabe Rick shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey wasn't too stuff to blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back today with the second part in our series
on the HeLa monster and its close relatives, the beaded lizards.
In part one of this series, we talked about the
basic biology and distinguishing characteristics of these lizards, their armored skin,
their nest rating behavior, and their awesome and terrible venom
(00:39):
which they deliver by chewing into the flesh of those
that dare to threaten them. If you haven't heard part one,
we would recommend you go back and listen to that
one before you listen to today's episode. But today we're
back to discuss more about the Heloderma lizards as they're called,
including traditional beliefs, historical misconceptions, and about their evolutionary history.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Now, a couple of texts that we highlighted in the
last episode as being two of our major sources. One
of them is Encyclopedia of Reptiles and Amphibians, second Edition
by Coger and Zwiffel that came out in nineteen ninety eight.
I think the version I had was two thousand and
five reprint, but then more essentially to what we're talking
about here today, Biology of HeLa Monsters and Beaded Lizards
(01:25):
by Daniel de Beck from the University of California Press.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
That's a good book. And I looked up Daniel Dbeck
last time. He's a biology professor affiliated with Central Washington University.
I believe retired now.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah. Yeah, And certainly our knowledge of HeLa monsters continues
to expand and grow, and so in this episode, in
the next episode, in the last episode as well, we're
also drawing on more recent sources. But I wanted to
turn back the clock here and talk a little bit
about the helo monsters status as a so called living fossil.
(02:00):
As we mentioned before, we're talking about the helodermatiday lizards here,
and they've existed as a group for at least sixty
five million years, going back to the Late Cretaceous, with
various species calling what is now North America home. The
direct lineage of the helo monster dealing with Heloderma here
(02:21):
and its ancestors actually survived the Cretaceous Paeogene mass extinction event,
the KPg mass extinction event or roughly sixty six million
years ago. This is the same cataclysmic event that wiped
out the non avian dinosaurs, and the reason for HeLa
(02:43):
monster helo monster type organisms surviving is probably apparent to
a number of you already. We've already talked about what
the HeLa monster does, how the HeLa monster lives, and
you might well survive how it could survive, say a
massive asteroid impact that you know, wipes out a huge
(03:03):
number of species, especially the larger species. Because we're dealing
with a burrowing creature that loves to eat eggs, specifically
with the HeLa monsters we know it today, the eggs
of birds and also of other burrowing reptiles.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
That does mean that at least some of its prey
species are going to be surviving the mass extinction.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely so. And we'll have a little bit
more about this in a bit. But but yeah, so
you have modern beaded lizards and various fossil relatives that
are that are considered to belong to the clade of
North Northern Hemisphere angamorph lizards known as monster saria, which
(03:44):
sounds so awesome you might think it's made up and
I guess, yeah, it is made up. It's made up
by scientists, but this is this is the terminology and
basically monster Saria. They've existed since the Cretaceous, and not
only in North America, historically throughout Eurasia. The oldest fossils
were actually found in Japan. Among these different monster Saria species,
(04:06):
you have the so called giant Paleosenewa canadensis, which would
have been smaller than a contemporary komodo dragon. At it
was like one to two meters, so somewhere in the
range of three foot three inches to six foot seven inches,
but still sizable. And it's called canadensis because it was
found in what is now Alberta, Canada. Another species, more
(04:29):
recently discovered and also sized like a large non komodo
monitor lizard, is the species bog Amandal, found in what
is now Utah. And yes, it's fully named after the
Lord of the Rings. Stuff.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
That's amazing. I was going to say before you even
got to that, like it sounds like the name of
the fortress of the Necromancer is like dol Gadour or something.
It's where the witch king lives.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, so let's you know, we love some word of
the Rings content on this show, So let's break it down.
The genus Bog comes from the Orc chief to Bulk
of the North, son of Azog. In The Hobbit, this
is a major figure at the Battle of Five Armies,
and if you watch Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies you might
remember him. It has this. I think he's entirely a
(05:13):
CGI created being, but an imposing one, kind of like
a gray skinned almost I don't know, almost like sort
of like large shaved chimpanzee style Orc.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I don't think I ever made it that far in
the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies. I love his Lord of
the Rings movies. I think I got about halfway through
the Hobbit trilogy.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
It is. I think many people would agree too much
movie for that adaptation. Two fine, three may be a
little bit too many, but you know, your mileage may vary,
and maybe, folks, maybe in time we'll come back around
to those. Okay. The species name here, though, Amandal is
this is also Lord of the Rings reference. I'm just
gonna read from the paper here titled new Monstrosar Specimens
(05:59):
from the Chai Parowitz Formation of Utah reveal unexpected richness
of large bodied lizards in Late Cretaceous North America. This
came out in twenty twenty five by Woolly at All.
They explain that amandahal quote is derived from the fictional
Elvish Sindarin language and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit,
The Lord of the Rings, The Similarian and other works,
(06:21):
a combination of ammon Elvish Sindarin for mound and doll
Elvish Sindarin for head, named for the mound like fused
osteoderms that cover the skull. We talked about this, you know,
with modern helo monsters today, the little bone like nuggets
that are in their skin that serve to give them
(06:43):
this added protection, it actually fuses with their skull, creating
these very sinister looking, as you describe them, pinhead style skulls. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
And in a way, that's what the name of the
genus means in Greek, so that the Heloderma lizards derma
skin Helo comes from the Greek word for nail or studs,
so they are like nail skin lizards, I think, referring
to sort of the flat heads of nails, but that
would be Yeah, These bone beads that are embedded in
their skin and eventually fused with their skull. It forms
(07:15):
a kind of armor. But also because they're sort of
round and separated, less densely packed in some parts of
the body than others that do kind of have a
pinhead pattern.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah yeah, so I solute the naming here of this creature.
So many monstersary species were indeed specialized nest raiders. With
the larger ones and this again we're talking about, you know,
pre KPg extinction, these would have been the larger ones
that raided dinosaur nests, so they would then specialized dinosaur
(07:47):
nest raiders, which is pretty crazy to think about. But
then after the KPg extinction event, the larger species, these
are going to be the ones that go extinct, and
that makes sense because the eggs they're depending on the
nests that they're rating those species are extinct now as well,
so they quickly die out. But the smaller ones, they're
(08:09):
the ones that are able to survive, to survive based
on their burrowing lifestyle and their dependence on the nests
of the surviving species and the nests that they're raiding,
the burrows that they're living in, like these would constitute
sheltered micro habitats. So you know, it's like the creatures
who are thriving at living underground to some degree had
(08:32):
at least that going for them in this cataclysmic period
following the extinction event.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
I feel like this has come up several times on
the show recently, but always interesting to see this pattern
that lineages that survived the KPg extinction often were burrowing
species and species that at least spend part of their
life digging in holes underground.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it seems to be. You know, it's
there are all sorts of different niches that organisms will
find themselves in, but some are going to be more
vulnerable to events like this, and others are going to
provide some degree of protection. So in the book Biology
of HeLa Monsters and Beaded Lizards, Daniel de Beck points
(09:18):
out that our modern Monstersoria specimens share a more recent
common ancestor with snakes than they do with most other lizards,
and he drives this home with this nice little tidbit
I'm going to read here quote more like snakes on legs,
Helodermatid lizards are indeed a walking contradiction. These lizards probably
(09:39):
shouldn't still be here. Most other genera on the Earth
twenty three million years ago have either moved on to
extinction or evolved into new lineages. In this driving home,
of course, the fact that HeLa monsters have remained essentially
unchanged for thirty million years, like living time capsules from
a prior age.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Interesting to see the connection to snakes, even though you know,
you'd think the big morphological difference would would mean that
they're very far apart. Snakes have no legs and heloderma
do have legs. But you can see the connection with
the venom, can't you that? You know that like unlike
most other lizards which don't have venom, the heloderma do.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, absolutely, so it's yeah, interesting to make those connections here.
All right, let's begin to get into some of the
kind of a broad selection of different, largely false ideas
(10:46):
about what helo monsters are all about and what they
are up to. We're going to be getting into folk beliefs,
traditional beliefs, mythologies, and this covers a lot of ground.
We're gonna be talking a little bit about indigenous belief
about the helo monster and traditions about the helo monster.
Some of which do cross over into the realm of
(11:07):
the imagination, and then others actually line up rather well
with what we see, you know, and what is observable
about the nature of HeLa monsters. And then we're also
going to get into a lot of like so when
you get into the colonial era, you're gonna have settlers
coming in and they're going to have their own layers
of misinformation and ideas about what Helo monsters are all about.
(11:28):
Some of this is going to be taken from indigenous beliefs,
other stuff may have other sources entirely. So this is
going to be a fun area to get into. And
let's begin with with some of the indigenous beliefs and
ideas about the HeLa monster. Several of these were profiled
in Beck's book about the HeLa Monster, and a lot
(11:51):
of a number of these do involve the indigenous people
of the Scenarian Desert that we've talked about before on
the show before the Thought of Them, and he Beck
outlines some of the following bits of lore here from
this group as well with some other groups. He points
out that the particularly here, the Oftum, believe that an
(12:14):
encounter with a HeLa monster could cause an outbreak of
sores on the feet or body, and that it could
cause nursing mothers to lose their milk. These sibstance symptoms
could then be magically treated by tying a red cloth
around the lizard or a fetish of the lizard that
had been carved from the rib of sowaru. And then
there was also a special use of song that could
(12:35):
be used in treating the outbreak. So, I mean, as
you know, as far as ritual beliefs go, nothing too
out of line there. I mean, we can imagine some
sort of I can imagine some sort of scenario where
one might have I don't know, tread on some of
the spent venom of the HeLa monster. Not impossible to
(12:56):
get that on your feet, certainly not impossible to get
that somewhere on your body. I don't know about the
nursing mothers, but you know, things of this nature do
factor into a lot of the myth and lore surrounding
venoms and toxins in different native belief systems.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Well, yeah, as we talked about last time, it's certainly
true that the venom of the heal A monster is
not just a simple venom with one effect. It is
a potent, complex cocktail with tons of different bioactive agents
in it, all having different ranges of effects. So yeah,
you can imagine that there would be there could be
(13:38):
different effects of the venom that are not even part
of the normal list of things that manifest you know,
that are most often documented, like pain and you know,
low blood pressure and sweats and things like that.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, and you're gonna you're gonna end up like we
talked about, how with Western commentators and biologists and naturalists
you've had so much disagreement for so long about whether
they were even venomous. So you can imagine sort of
a similar disconnect existing even in indigenous people because I
think for the most part, if I'm judging everything correctly here,
(14:14):
people would know to be wary of the HeLa monster,
would maybe not seek it out. How many people were
actually getting bitten by it, and then if they are
being bitten by it, how much venom is being delivered?
And this is going to be sort of your body
of evidence out of which to build on your expectations. Yeah, yeah,
not counting into effecting sort of like the magical and
(14:35):
religious layers that end up being put on top of
everything as well. Let's see. Beck also mentions that the
Pema people, who I think are also called the acamel Authem,
they had a belief that if a prospective father killed
a Helo monster, his baby could become feverish and then
a song remedy would be necessary to heal the child.
(14:57):
And let's see, then we also have the people also
known as the Siri, and they believe that the bite
of the HeLa monster was in fact dangerous, but also
held that it could spit as well at a range
of four meters or so.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
This spitting will show up again in different branches of
hel A monster lore. But this is not an isolated belief.
There have been a lot of people in history that
thought that like a you know, a spitting snake or something,
that they could spit venom at you.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah, and it's quite quite interesting again getting into the
snake connection here, because we of course do have venom
spitters in the reptile world, but they're the spitting cobras
of Asia and Africa, remarkable creatures. I was actually just
researching them over the weekend for a different project, and
I remember how we said that while snakes generally use
(15:48):
their venom offensively, while the beaded lizard venom serves a
defensive purpose. Well, spitting cobras are kind of an exception
to that snake rule we outlined. They can still administer
to their venom via a bite, but they've evolved to
be able to spit their venom as well, with remarkable
accuracy and via like, it's not one of these situations where, oh,
(16:10):
they learned the trick of spitting their own venom. No,
they've evolved special teeth, special venom apertures that are different
from that of non spitting cobras, and then the snake
venom itself changed as well over the course of their evolution.
So snake venom often targets the nervous system and or
(16:31):
the heart, with some also boasting tissue destroying properties. Spitting
cobras have evolved a venom that maximizes intense pain and
tissue destruction over everything else as a defensive weapon, seemingly
against mammals and arguably maybe even against early human hominine species.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Yeah, so the spitting mechanism itself makes sense if you
just imagine, like, what kinds of situation that behavior would
be most effective. That makes sense. As a defensive behavior,
you can you know, try to keep something away from you.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Like I can bite you if we
need to do this a close range. But if we
tangle it close range, you know, there's a chance you're
going to break my spine. And I don't want to
just bite you, and I want to be able to
escape as well. So let's handle this at a distance first, which,
of course is what's going on with all sorts of
(17:29):
defensive displays and so forth. So anyway, the idea of
spitting your venom at an adversary certainly not unprecedented in
the reptile world, but it would be quite an upgrade
if HeLa monsters were actually doing this, and to be sure,
they are not. Now where does it come from? You know,
we'll get into this, but you know, on one hand,
(17:51):
you have things like exaggeration just in you know, like
this is a creature that can buy you. What if
it can spit too? And then how much of this
is anthromorphism, because what do we do? We spit all
the time, especially if you watch Cowboy movies. People out
in the desert, they love to spit. So why not
have a lizard with venom? And its mouth spitting at
anything that's getting in its way. Or is this like
(18:14):
a misreading of what the HeLa monster is doing with
its defensive mouth opening display. It's interesting too. I want
to mention that Beck sites in this particular version of
the myth that the HeLa monster can spit at a
four meter range, which is beyond but not too much
more beyond the range of actual spitting cobras, so like
(18:35):
for as far as venom spinners go, like that would
be reasonable if this was what this creature was actually
capable of. Let's see other indigenous beliefs that Beck outlines
in his book. This one's also really fascinating. HeLa monsters
could control the weather by communicating with the storm spirit,
and that spotting one was a sign of impending rain.
(18:57):
Now you know, we can't comment on any actual communication
between HeLa monsters and deities or supernatural beings, but helo
monsters are more active during monsoon season and will surface
on cloudy, humid days. I was reading some various news
articles from Arizona that also outlined this as being essentially true,
(19:19):
that if you see a helo monster, it could very
well be an indicator that seasonal conditions are right for rain.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah. Beck says that the Apaches believe this is well,
and he shares an interesting indigenous account of the Helo
monster's hide. I'm just going to read a quote here
from him this time. He says, the thauna Athum explained
the origin of Helo monsters brightly colored osteoderms as an
outcome of the first Soaru Wine Festival. We talked about
(19:49):
this in our episodes on the Soaru. This it would
be like a seasonal harvesting of the fruit where the
food fruit is consumed and made into various food products
consumed on this and also made into a ritual wine.
He said, this the outcome of the first Soaru Wine Festival,
held long ago. Humans and animals alike were invited and
(20:09):
everyone wanted to look his or her best. HeLa monster
came festooned with bright pebbles gathered to make a colorful
and endurable coat, which is still worn to this day.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Oh that's cool.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
He also there's another little bit that he shares. He
says the quote, the bony osteoderms of the HeLa monster
have earned it the title of well armored warrior of
the Navajo Old Navajo warrior tales tell of mortals who
wore flint armor and looked like the Heela Monster the protector.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Interesting, and I like that both of these accounts can
look at the skin of the Heela Monster, at the
bumps or the beads and have different readings on them.
That one story is about them being decorative, that it
is a creature trying to appear colorful and beautiful for
the festival, for the Sowaro wine festival, and then the
(21:03):
other one is about armor. Right, it's ready for war.
And either interpretation kind of makes sense because the Heel
Monster is both. It is both decorated with these color
patterns that we talked about last time, which can have
multiple uses. You might think of them as camouflage in
one sense, but also warning markers and you know when
you're looking up closer. But also the bumps are literally armor.
(21:27):
The osteoderm serve protective purpose.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah, yeah, pretty fascinating here. Let's see regarding Mexican beaded lizards.
Apparently there are full traditions that its tail is powerful
and capable of summoning lightning strikes. I don't know if
there's actually anything to that. It's kind of hard for
me to imagine a scenario where that could be accurate.
(21:51):
But again, getting into this idea that all of these
beaded lizards are going to have similar lifestyles that they're living,
and they are going to be tied monsoon season emergencies
and humidity. So there is this connection to rain and storm.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
That's right. Yeah, So they're more likely to come out
of the burrows when conditions are right for rain to happen.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah. And therefore, if you're out and about and there
are a bunch of beaded lizards walking around, you might
think it's possible there's a lightning storm brewing. Maybe I
should seek cover. And then finally, I've ran across this
particular creature on a website titled a Book of Creatures
that I've come across before, looking up mythological beings and
(22:34):
so forth, a cool website, and the author of this
website cites this supposed mayan tradition of a beaded lizard
known as es shown peds kinskin, and the idea here
is that this beaded lizard can give you a headache
like a severe migraine, just by biting your shadow. And
(22:57):
the author here. It's a sided article a couple of
older sources from nineteen nineteen, nineteen thirty one, but outside
of those sources, I couldn't find anything else about it.
But still an interesting concept here, because again, all these
beaded lizards are going to have similar properties. And I
love the idea. I mean, I love the idea of
any kind of magical creature interacting with the shadow. We've
(23:19):
talked about these on the show before. But it also
is a great way of thinking about the venom. The
venom is so potent that it doesn't even even have
to bite you to deliver it. It could just bite your
shadow and you're going to be stuck with some symptoms.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
That's amazing. Well, actually that is a good segue, if
you're all right, moving on to talk about some fumes
and odors to yeah, to get into this next section
I looked into, and that is about HeLa monster breath
and HeLa monster fog. So I started looking into this
because of a funny passage I came across. This was
(23:54):
in an article published in Scientific American in September nineteen
o six by an author named D. A.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Willie.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
The article is just called HeLa monsters, and it rehashes
some points of the at this time still ongoing debate
about to what extent the creatures are venomous. We talked
about this last time. There was this back and forth
for a long time about whether they're venomous or not. Finally,
by about the nineteen twenties it was fully settled. Everybody
(24:24):
agreed they were venomous. But at this point it's still
nineteen oh six, and Willie describes their osteoderms. He's sorrying
about their armor, few other biological behavioral facts, and then
eventually gets to the following passage. I'm going to read
from da Willie quote. When angered, it emits its breath
in a succession of quick gasps. The breath is very fetid,
(24:48):
and its odor can be detected at some little distance
from the lizard. It is supposed that this is one
way in which the monster catches the insects and small
animals which form a part of its food supply, the
foul gas overcoming them. Oh wow, yeah, So it's a
little unclear exactly what he's saying there. Is he just like, oh,
(25:11):
the gas is so stinky that it, I don't know,
paralyzes them and then the monster can get it. Or
is it that it literally has poisoned breath, that its
breath kills these things and then the lizard can eat
at its leisure. I don't know. It's a little bit vague,
and I think that may reflect the fact that there
was significant variation in the underlying lore that Willy is
(25:33):
referring to here.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah. I mean, if true, this would be amazing, right,
because this would be unlike any natural world organism that
I'm instantly thinking of that's using some sort of an
actual chemical projectile from its mouth as an offensive weapon
to bring down prey.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Well, not a liquid chemical like a Yeah, that's using
actually like projected like gas.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah, it's like a dragon if it were, Yes, if
it were just lit a flame, it would be a dragon. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Unfortunately this is not true, but it was very interesting
to me as a belief, so I went looking to
see if I could find any credible sources addressing this
claim in more detail, and I did so. This is
the subject of a very good section in a book
from nineteen fifty six called The HeLa Monster and Its Allies.
The relationships, habits, and behavior of the Lizards of the
(26:27):
family Helodermatidy by the American herpetologist Charles M. Bogert and
the Mexican herpetologist and ornithologist Raphael Martin del Campo. This
was published by the American Museum of Natural History, and
again it was nineteen fifty six. So the book as
a whole is mainly focused on biology, but Bogert and
(26:49):
del Campo have a whole section where they track the
history of popular beliefs and misconceptions about these lizards. Among
the beliefs they look into are one. We just talked
about the idea that the helo monster spits venom Not true.
It is venomous, but it doesn't spit. That it does
not have an anus, That's what I said. No anus
(27:11):
for helo monsters. Also not true, or I mean maybe
slightly true, in that it doesn't have an anus like
a mammal has a cloaca, you know, yeah, what a reptile. Technically, yes,
the kloaca is the all purpose, the all purpose back
door for a reptile. So the kloaca handles urine, feces,
reproductive material. It's the it does it all but anyway,
(27:36):
so but that's not true. These lizards do have a cloaca.
But the other myth that they look at is that
it emits pungent or even poisonous fumes, particularly through its breath.
According to the author's, stories about the breath and odor
of the HeLa monster are among the earliest stories appearing
(27:58):
in the literature. So let's just run through some of
the examples they talk about. They discuss an author named
Sumacrast who mentions not the breath but the odor in
papers appearing in three different languages. So these are papers
in French, Spanish, and English, two of them in eighteen
sixty four, one in eighteen sixty nine. The paper that's
(28:20):
in English has a passage that says, quote, the body
of the heloderma usually exhales a strong and nauseous odor,
the intensity of which increases at the period when the
two sexes seek each other for the purpose of copulation.
Bogert and del Campo say that there may be some
truth to this claim. They say that helo monsters do
(28:42):
possess scent glands under the base of the tail, which
discharge smelly contents through the cloaca, again further proof they
really do have cloaca, folks, it's really there, So it
could be true that they emit some kind of smell
that is attractive to the opposite sexes of the lizard,
maybe plays some role in reproduction. But then sometimes claims
(29:05):
about the odor of the HeLa get entangled with claims
about venom and toxic breath. So an author named Douges
in eighteen ninety nine mentions the odor of the HeLa
but attributes the odor to the lizard's saliva, and he
says that when Ahila quote bites with fury, one can
(29:26):
perceive an odor that is quote fetid and repugnant. Another
author around the same time, Vin Dinberg, in eighteen ninety eight,
mentions the fetid breath of the lizard. There's another account
they get into that is attributed to a mister tw
Parker of Phoenix, Arizona in eighteen seventy nine. At some
(29:48):
level this account is anonymous. I don't know if it was.
I think maybe published by an anonymous author attributing the
story to Parker. I think that might be right. But anyway,
so Parker is considered the source at some level on this,
and this account is talking about what happens when the
HeLa monster is threatened. So they say that the threatened
(30:11):
HeLa monster quote stands as erect as possible and blows
at its antagonist, sending forth a stream resembling fog and
believed by the natives to cause instant death. So I'm
trying to think, what is the author picturing here, Like
you can see the fog coming out of his mouth?
Is it visible fog? Is it like Godzilla's radiation breath?
Speaker 2 (30:34):
I mean, that's what I'm picturing. I'm picturing something that
looks like imagine what this effect would look like in
a nineteen eighties science fiction movie, you know, just it's
just the smoke pouring out of the out of a
rubber reptile's mouth.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
I mean, if it is poisonous gas coming out of
the lizard's mouth, It's hard to imagine it really being
directed very effectively like the you know, the beam breath,
because if it's really gas, it's going to quickly start
spreading and diffusing. It's just going to go in all directions,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, again, it would have to be pretty potent, I
would imagine to have any kind of an effect.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
So this account the same one attributed to or sort
of at least second and associated with the account by T. W.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Parker.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
It goes on to describe a fight between a heel
monster and a snake, which the snake survives, is badly hurt,
but survives, and then slithers away from proving that the
poison breath was not fatal or effective at paralyzing snakes.
And then the story goes on to say, quote a
saloon keeper of his meaning Parker's acquaintance, captured a monster
(31:44):
alive and kept it for the amusement of his customers.
It was tied in it, that's horrible. It was tied
in a corner. And as the floor was of earth,
as in all houses in those parts, as was the
custom at the time, the reptile burrowed a considerable whole
as a hiding place. One day, mister Parker does not
(32:05):
say that he witnessed the affair. A mouse ventured near
the hole. The monster sent forth a stream of poisoned breath,
and the mouse fell paralyzed. The monster then seized and
devoured it. One cannot wonder that with so favorable an opportunity,
no one had the wit to test the truth of
the popular belief as to the poisonous character of the
(32:28):
monster's breath by submitting to it a variety of small animals.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
I cannot believe that these drunken cowboys in this saloon
did not have the wit to conduct a few scientific experiments.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Yeah, to just send a gauntlet of small creatures at
this monster for it to breathe its fumes.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Upon, and then publish, then share this knowledge of the world.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Yeah, come on, don't you care about science? Okay? Some
more so. In a story attributed to a Colonel A. G.
Tassin published by an author named Garman in eighteen ninety
(33:12):
one in the Overland Monthly, they're talking about the breath
of the heel a monster, and Tassin says that the
breath quote in hissing is offensive and issues from a
wide open mouth in puffs of black vapor or smoke.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
So now it's black, Yeah, black.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Smoke coming out of the mouth.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Before it was white fog. Now it's black smoke. Now
it's like what movie did we watch for weird House
recently where there's like a black smoke that creeps out
envelops someone.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Oh, I know what you're talking about, but I forget folks.
We just had to do an aside for a minute
here to look up what movie this was, because I
couldn't remember, but Rob you found it. It was in
I Married a Monster from Outer Space. That's right, Yes,
Tom tryan he you know, he pulls the car aside
and he is investigating something I think, maybe something lying
(34:06):
in the road. And then suddenly you see this fog
like creep in from the side of the picture and
it envelops him and then he becomes the root ball face.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah, like creeping black smoke void. And that's what I'm
imagining here. This is a fantastic description.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Yes, so this guy is saying, Colonel Tassin says, Yep
opens up its mouth, puffs of black vapor or smoke
come out. The account attributed to Tassin goes on to say,
quote the Mexicans I have questioned all told me that
it was exceedingly poisonous, as much so as the bite,
if not more. Well, many of the Americans thought it harmless.
(34:44):
Having myself seen a chicken and a small puppy killed
by the hissing of one in their faces, I am
inclined to think that it is best to keep from
coming in contact with it. And then, reflecting on this story,
the authors Bogert and del Campo have an the side
where they say it is to be doubted that Tassin
ever did I think, meaning come in contact with it,
(35:06):
or that he ever saw a heal a monster.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
So there's so much truth in the last portion this
segment here, because you get the idea. It's like, so
much is going to be based again on what is
the sample size for your information? You know, like these
newer voices are not sure or don't think that it's venomous.
Maybe some deeper source material indicates that they are, and
(35:31):
then most people are just not encountering them, or there's
enough evidence out there that people are going to be like,
you know, I'm going to keep my distance, and by
keeping your distance, maybe you also don't drastically enhance that
sample size to fully understand what's going on.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Well I like that. Yeah. In some of these stories,
you have competing accounts that are both wrong. You have like,
on one hand, it seems to be like an argument
between one person who thinks that the breath is poisonous fog,
that it spits out black smoke, and then the other
people are like, no, it's not even venomous, and like, no,
the truth is it is venomous but it's just the bite. Yeah,
(36:10):
so yeah, anyway, So I'm not going to read all
of the accounts that they go into in full, just
to summarize a few others that were interesting. There's a
story reported in a homeopathic I think medicine journal that
a man fell asleep in a sleeping bag at a
camp in the mountains near Tucson, Arizona. He never woke up,
(36:31):
so in the morning, his companions find him dead. There's
a HeLa monster beside him, and they look all over
his body and they never find a bite. So this
proves that the HeLa monster killed him with its breath.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
This heava monster breathed on him, and that is why
he is dead.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Oh that's right.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Bogert and del Campo obviously do not believe this. There's
a story in which somebody claims that a heela monster
at a zoo in Cincinnati, Ohio killed all of the
snakes that were kept in the same cage as it
by opening its mouth and breathing poison fog at them.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Okay, if they were in separate cages, that would give
me more room to wonder. But ye, why did it
surely just bit them or something else? Happened, or oh,
the snake's just died in captivity.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
There's a common belief, apparently that the breath of the
HeLa monster could wither all of the grass and a
six foot radius around the lizard, or could turn the
grass brown.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Well, there are a lot of six foot radius spaces
in their habitat that have no grass, so that's true.
I guess there's evidence for that.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
However, you know, this is not believed by everybody who's
writing about HeLa monsters at this time. So there's skeptical
descent from an author named Garman in eighteen ninety one
who wrote that quote, the breath is no more colored
than that of human beings. Neither is it, nor could
it be any more offensive in its odor than the
incense wafted from the lips of multitudes of the representatives
(37:59):
of proudy humanity. In regard to the breath being venom laden,
that of the specimen before us certainly was not so.
Here again, it would be no very difficult undertaking to
select an army of men with whom a comparison in
this respect would undoubtedly prove complimentary to the monster.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
This date, ha smelled some ripe breath before Y's clear.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
I wonder if he was a dentist. But as he's saying,
not only is the breath not poisonous, it's not even
that foul smelling. Human breath smells worse on average. By
the nineteen forties, herpetologists were regularly publishing rebuttals of this
poisoned breath belief. Lab tests and observation repeatedly showed that
(38:44):
the heel monster does have venom in its bite, but
it does not spit its venom, and it certainly does
not breathe its venom as a toxic gas. Opinions differed
on exactly how stinky its breath was. Some authors were like, yes,
it is stinky. Helo monster has halatosis, but they generally
attribute this to its diet. Like some authors said, maybe
(39:06):
it has bad breath because it eats rotten eggs. This
is an egg eater. But experiments by Durham in nineteen
fifty one found interestingly that helo monsters tend to reject
rotten eggs. They prefer fresh eggs.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Yeah, I mean it is a nest raider, so it
would it would seems like in some cases you might
get a nest that has been neglected, but generally you're
dealing with eggs that are either cared for or left
in a position to thrive.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Yeah. So, from their own experience and research working with helas,
Bogert and del Campo say most HeLa monsters, whether captured
in the field or kept in captivity, are not especially
foul smelling, though they do give off a typical characteristic
reptile odor that is not specific to Heloderma. It's just
(39:54):
kind of that. If you've ever smelled that snake tank smell,
you know there is a reptile odor, and there can
also be a pretty foul odor when reptiles are kept
in unsanitary conditions. But if they're kept in clean you know,
cages that are cleaned, they say there's nothing all that
stinky about heal monsters. They say that indeed, if a
(40:16):
HeLa monster becomes agitated or threatened, it can, in these
situations have suddenly a more foul smelling breath. What's up
with that if it's not emitting clouds of venomous fog.
They give a different explanation. They say regurgitation under stress.
They cite multiple accounts of HeLa monsters under attack or
(40:41):
under threat vomiting up the contents of their stomach sometimes
while they are biting the offending animal. Can you imagine that,
So it's like biting you, it's inflicting again if you
haven't heard the last episode Helo Monster Bites because of
the inc incredibly painful venom, it's usually described as the
(41:02):
most painful experience people have ever had when they've been
bitten by a HeLa. You know, the venom is just excruciating,
and it's like maybe puking on your hand while it's
biting you.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
So yeah, this, so it's vomiting up its stomach contents.
I think this doesn't happen all the time, but can
happen sometimes. This lizard vomit obviously smells bad and the
smell is not venomous, but it smells bad and the
bite is venomous.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Okay, Yeah, this kind of like stress regurgitation or threat vomiting.
We've talked about this with various other organisms before. Where Like,
there are different ways of interpreting it, and it's kind
to vary from species to species. But yeah, sometimes it's
about create something, produce something foul smelling. You know, we
can imagine if you were threatened on a bus and
you did this, it might give you an advantage. Sometimes
(41:52):
with the flying creatures, like vultures, sometimes it has been
hypothesized that it could be sort of like lightening the
load for flight. You just gorge yourself in a whole
bunch of rotten flesh, but now you need to move quickly.
Maybe you lighten the load. The other is that sometimes
you have an animal that's looking to eat you, it
wants a meal, and you say you essentially bribe them
(42:15):
and say, I would prefer you not eat me. How
about I give you what I just ate. Maybe this
will interest you consolation prize. Yeah, yeah, but this seems
to at least to me, this suddenly makes a lot
of sense because if we have this threat vomiting occurring
even some of the time with HeLa monsters like that
(42:36):
seems enough to sort of confuse the scenario and encourage
some of these interpretations that we've talked about with foul breath,
but also the supposed spitting of the venom, because they're
not spitting the venom, but they might be spitting up
and then you can sort of combine those two into
one interpretation.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Possibly. Yeah, are you ready to look into the next
historical misconception.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Yeah, yeah, this was one I had not heard of
until we started putting together ideas for this episode. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
I came across it because of a blog post that
you sent me, So I'll lay out the story here.
This one took some digging to try to sort out.
But in a few blog posts, including an article you
sent me from the Utah Museum of Natural History and
then also an article cited by that article, I came
(43:36):
across references to an alleged historical practice of pioneer members
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints
aka the Mormons, claiming that they used helo monster bodies
to brew sacred potions or oils which were used for
(43:58):
religious purposes. Now I'm gonna go ahead and give you
my conclusion that I think this is almost certainly not
historically true. But I at least wanted to run this
lead down and figure out, like, where's this coming from,
what's the deal? So here's the best I could piece together.
The story originally appeared in a newspaper called the Poche
(44:21):
Daily Record or the Poche Record. Pyosh is a town
in eastern Nevada. The version that other sources usually cite
is a reprint in the Tombstone Epitaph out of Tombstone, Arizona,
in June eighteen eighty one. So I went hunting in
newspaper archives because mostly this is just presented as an excerpt,
(44:44):
and I was like, I've got to be able to
find the full text of this article and figure out
what if I can get any context, Like, what's it
talking about. So I went hunting in newspaper archives and
had trouble finding either of these two articles that are cited,
but I eventually turned up a different reprint, one appearing
in the Laredo Times on August third, eighteen eighty one,
(45:08):
under the title novel use of HeLa Monsters. Are you
ready for this?
Speaker 2 (45:12):
Rob Let's have it.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
The story reads in full on Sunday afternoon, a couple
of men who were walking through the meadow at Panaka,
this is another town in eastern Nevada, had their attention
attracted by the antics of a couple of HeLa monsters,
as they are called in this section, amusing themselves playing
in the sun. Now they're about to do some science facts.
(45:36):
These HeLa monsters are an amphibious reptile similar in form
and action to an alligator, but different in color and
weigh from seven to nine pounds. They are not very
numerous in the vicinity of Panaka, owing to the fact
that the Mormons kill them for the purpose of obtaining
(45:58):
oil from their fatty flash.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
I mean a lot to unpack there to state the obvious.
They are not amphibious, and they are not like alligators.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
Not really, no, I mean except I mean they got
four feet and the tail.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Very broad and sense you could compare it to an alligator,
I guess.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
But they have a head with teeth and two eyes,
you know.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
So the story goes on to say, immediately after these
curious reptiles are killed, they are sent down to Saint George, Utah.
And I looked this up. I didn't know this already,
but Saint George was the location of a major LDS
temple at this time. It was the first one constructed
in Utah, dedicated in eighteen seventy seven. So the story says, yeah,
(46:47):
after the Mormons kill these lizards, they take them down
to Saint George, Utah, and their bodies quote are deposited
in the basement of the temple or house of worship,
where a huge boiler stands ready to receive them. Here,
they are kept boiling for two or three days, the
oil in the meantime being skimmed with a wooden ladle
(47:08):
resembling a spoon in its construction. This oil is then
placed in earthen jars, which contain three gallons each and
are hermetically sealed. When this is accomplished, the jars are
removed to the baptismal hall when it is ready for
baptizing and anointing Latter Day Saints.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Okay, that's a lot. That's a lot to take in.
Speaker 3 (47:32):
Do you have the same feeling that I do when
I'm reading this? It just has the word to word
prose feel of somebody making something up, Like the part
about how the wooden ladle. They use a wooden ladle
resembling a spoon in its construction. It just kind of
feels like I need some kind of physical detail here
(47:53):
about how they skim the oil off of the vat.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
I don't know. Yeah, it's like we know what the
ladele looks like.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
So, based on my own additional research, I do not
think this story is true. The Latter Day Saints do
have rituals that involve anointing with oil. From everything I
was reading, this is usually olive oil. It might be
olive oil prepared in a special way. I could not
find any sources by Mormons themselves talking about doing this
(48:23):
with HeLa monsters, and I couldn't find anything else, even
by non Mormons, documenting this, except for one more article
in Western newspapers from around the same time, which I
think might be a variation or expansion on the same
article I just read. I'll come back to that in
a minute. So you've got the lack of corroborating evidence.
(48:45):
On one hand, I would also place this in the
historical context of how in the eighteen eighties it seems
to me that it was common for Western US newspapers
run by non Mormons to print stuff that was just
designed to make Mormons look bad and to stir up
fear and hatred against them. So you get sensational stories
(49:08):
about polygamy and secret rituals taking place in the basement,
often with sexual implications. I think, to make it more
sensational and get people read in the papers. And so
these anti Mormon rhetorical practices could include like taking a
story that is basically true and then dwelling on or
(49:29):
exaggerating it if it's something that would make people think
badly about Mormons generally, or it could include wholesale fabrication.
And though I can't be one hundred percent sure, I
suspect this story is more like the latter it's some
kind of case of fabrication of a calumny against Mormons.
And of course this same kind of propaganda is still
(49:50):
very common today, used to stir up fear and hatred
against minority groups of various types. You can think about
fabricated stories about immigrants and refugees eating people's pets, a
similar kind of principle at work. You're just trying to
animate people, stirring them up against against a minority group
of some kind.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
Yeah, like, focus on the things that are legitimately different
in beliefs, practices, and lifestyles, and then further drive the
wedge by adding in exaggerations and just purely fabricated information
as well.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
Yeah. So, in the case of this particular story, my
best guess is that it is a concoction and the
main ingredients are true knowledge that the Latter day Saints
practice some form of anointing with oil they do that
belief that HeLa monsters are disgusting, fetid, vile creatures as
they were often described at the time, and then just
(50:44):
kind of putting these things together and being like, yeah,
Mormons probably would use like rotten lizard oil in their
in their blasphemies.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
And also tying sort of like people to place here right.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Yes, yeah, yeah. So adding to my reasons for belief
that this is fabricated, there is another more detailed version
of the story that appears to be like the same article,
or at least an article from around the same time,
making similar claims, which I have found floating around in quotation.
I haven't found the full text of this one, but
(51:17):
this comes from a post on a website called history
Net by an author named Richard Lapidas from twenty eleven,
and the post is titled the HeLa Monster had a
Killer Reputation. Lapidas says he is quoting a reprint of
the same story I just read from the Posh Daily Record.
The reprint he's he says he's quoting, appears in the
(51:39):
Tombstone Epitaph June sixteenth, eighteen eighty one, but while it
is on the same subject, it has totally different language
and some different claims. So this excerpt reads, quote, Mormons,
stricken with remorse, congregate from different parts of the Utah
territory to this Saint George Temple during the conference, then
may be seen the which is religiously preserved cast on
(52:03):
the water by the officiating bishop, while poor deluded men
and women avail themselves of its efficiency, as they imagine,
by entering this tank and bathing in it, thus believing
by so doing that they are entitled to a corner
in heaven.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
So yeah, so this is just this reads like, you know,
like made up accounts of Satanic rituals.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
Yes, so yeah, yeah. The in this version, it's more
obvious based on the language that the author is trying
to just insult Latter day Saints, saying they engage in nasty, stupid,
religiously illegitimate practices. So the authorial intent does not one
hundred percent prove that the claim about boiling Helo monsters
(52:47):
is untrue, but I think it even further reduces the
credibility of these couple of newspaper stories, which again are
the only sources that I could find. So my best
guess is that nobody ever did this. But assuming that
I'm right about that, I think this does still say
something interesting about historically how helo monsters were thought of.
That if you're trying to make up like a weird
(53:10):
slander against a group of people, you'd be like, oh, yeah,
they they boil these disgusting, vile lizards and they use
their oil in rituals that they do in their temples.
But I was also like actually trying to think about
what if this were true, how many lizards would you
have to boil to get like to fill up all
(53:31):
these these gallony free gallon earthenware jugs with just lizard oil?
How much oil is in a single lizard. I have
not done the meat math on it, but I'm a
little skeptical, like how many hel monsters are there and
would it really would the population support that kind of harvesting?
Speaker 2 (53:47):
Yeah, I have it. Yeah. And then also like the
whole bit about oh, you don't see many helo monsters
around these parts because they've been harvested for oil. I
mean like that's one of those things where it's like,
look around you, do you see any helo monsters? Well?
Probably not, because, as we mentioned, they spend the vast
majority of their lives and their burrows and you're not
going to see them around. So it's like they, you know,
(54:08):
just through the normal course of their of their lives,
they can support nonsense like this because they're not out
and about.
Speaker 3 (54:16):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Until you said that,
I didn't actually connect it back to the claim in
the article that the heel monsters are not very numerous
in the vicinity of Panaka. But it doesn't actually say
that there's been like a reduction in their numbers. It
just says not very numerous. I mean, that's got to
be because the Mormons are killing them all.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
Yeah. Also not knowing off the top of my head,
what the you know, the environment of the Panaka and
the surrounding region happens to be. Yeah, I mean it
could in theory be an area where they're just they
just don't live there anyway. I don't know, due to
differences in elevation, humidity, and so forth. Yeah, it could
be out getting arranged for all I know.
Speaker 3 (54:53):
Like, it doesn't say like they used to be numerous
and they're not anymore. It's just like they're not very numerous.
We all know what that means.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
Yeah, yeah, so I think we can we can safely
then file this one away as false.
Speaker 3 (55:06):
Right, I am pretty sure this never happened, But I
would be interested to get actual evidence to the contrary,
Like if there are Mormon sources talking about doing this,
I'd want to know, like what, what's the logic behind it?
What are they thinking? Yeah, that would be interesting, but
I am I have extreme doubts about yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
Yeah, because animal based products do factor into various religious
traditions around the world. So like if if this was
like setting aside, like you know, the anti LDS slander
involved here, if this were the case, it wouldn't actually
be that weird compared to anything else that's done in
any other religion, Like it's just lizard oil they're talking
(55:47):
about here. So but again, does not seem to be
the case. But this will This will be an interesting
place to cut off this episode because in our next episode,
we're gonna be one more episode about the Heala monster.
We are going to it into the very real role
that helo monsters have played in modern pharmacology. So we're
going to be talking about helo monsters and medicine and
(56:12):
if there are any indigenous medical medicinal practices that involve
the Helo Monster, we will likely mention them in that episode.
All right, well, we're going to go ahead and close
out this episode, but again, we'd love to hear from
everyone out there. You know, we haven't finished the series
on the Helo Monster yet, but if you have anything
you want to share about the Helo Monster experiences you've
(56:34):
had with Helo Monster sightings that you've had out in
the natural world or even at zoos and so forth
right in we would love to hear from you. Just
a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
(56:55):
a weird film on Weird House Cinema. We would ask
that wherever you get the podcast, if you have the
ability to do so, rate, review, subscribe if you are
watching on Netflix, which is an option these days for
the newer episodes, give us a thumbs up, give us
two thumbs up, and also hit that remind Me button
so that you can be reminded of future episodes of
(57:17):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind, and we appreciate you listening
or viewing whatever floats your boat, whichever way you prefer
to consume the show. We are grateful that you have
lent us your ears and maybe.
Speaker 3 (57:29):
Your eyes 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 (57:51):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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