June 3, 2014 • 40 mins
The Troglofauna of Fraggle Rock: What do the fun-loving denizens of Jim Henson's "Fraggle Rock" have in common with real-life cave animals? Find out in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind as Robert and Julie discuss the ecology of Fraggle Rock and the show's ecological message.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you wasn't the stuff to blow
your mind? My name is Robert Lamb and um Julie Douglas. Julie,
do you remember Fraggle Rock? Didn't you care? Away? Were
reball another day? Let the music play down and rock
(00:27):
that's the one that rock. Hopefully we can't get to
hear for that. I don't know. Wouldn't that be cruel
to sue, you know, a bunch of fraggles suing us. Yeah,
that seemed like sort of anti fraggle I don't know.
We have what kind of legislation. It's just that the
governors copyright issues is in the sub world's versus the
(00:50):
surface world. So did you grow up with the show
or are you you didn't? I knew of it, and
I think that I was maybe uh too in too
at that point, like hypnotizing myself on the weekends rather
than watching Fraggle Rock. Well, it was also an HBO
thing in the States, I believe, so, so there would
(01:11):
have been that limitation as well. That would have been
high fluting back in the day. Yeah, I think I
probably saw episodes of it on CBC because my family
was living in Canada at the time, so I think
that's where I have my main Fraggle connection. Because of course,
the series ran from eight three to eighty seven. Um.
It was carried on on HBO, on CBC in Canada
(01:33):
and on u Q and on the UK's television South.
And it's um, it's a silly show, UM about creatures
living in a cave. And uh, they're various adventures, they're
various songs, their various uh comments on daily life for
us humans. All right, let me just read this little
(01:54):
bit from the Muppet Wiki. It says the vision of
Fraggle Rock, articular did by Jim Henson, was to depict
a colorful and fun world, but also a world with
a relatively complex system of symbiotic relationships between races of
creatures and allegory to the human world, where each group
was somewhat unaware of how interconnected and important they were
(02:16):
to one another. This allegorical world allowed the program to
entertain and amused by seriously exploring complex issues of prejudiced spirituality,
personal identity, environment, and social conflict. Heavy right, Yeah, I
think that's one of the amazing things about the show
is that there is this very silly level to it,
(02:38):
the surface level of fraggle Rock. But yeah, you can
start analyzing it and analyzing it, and there's a lot
of rich complexity there because you're getting into into into
these themes of of global relationships, of the ecology of
how interconnected we all are. I mean, it's ultimately that's
(02:58):
the message that Henson was trying to convey in the series,
to make it educational, almost in a sort of moral
sense as opposed to uh, strictly numbers and letters. So
you're right, because there's lots of things to explore, like
individuality versus like the common good and community and on
and on. So it's kind of fascinating. There's even like
(03:21):
an aspect of asexuality that you could go into, and
maybe one day we will, but for today's purposes, we
really wanted to introduce the Fragle rocks um because we
thought this was a great lens into cave living, cavernous
underground living and what it's like. And when we talk
about the Fraggles, by the way, we were talking about
(03:41):
these creatures that are about twenty two inches tall and
they really do sort of dominate the landscape of Fraggle Rock,
and of course Fraggle Rock is named after them. Um.
As you have mentioned, they live in the system of
natural caves. And what's interesting about these caves is that
they connect to other worlds too, Yes, to our world,
(04:02):
but also to this other world where there are these
giant creatures, right that grow radishes. And we'll talk about
the right economy in a moment and how important that is. Uh.
But you know, they kind of remind me of pack rats,
which we've talked about before, Yes, because they're also bringing
back little curios from these other worlds and the incorporating
(04:24):
and incorporating them into their their their little environment, into
their dens. Even um. Yeah, we did a whole episode
on the pack rat Um. Go back and listen to
that if you like. UM. I do want to note
that in part we're drawing from an essay by Justin
Werfel titled the Ecollege of Fraggle Rock, and this was
(04:47):
This is one of four serious essays on Fraggles in
the book The Wider Worlds of Jim Hinson, Essays on
his work and legacy Beyond the Muppet Joan Sesame Street.
This was edited by Jennifer C. Garland and and this
a Graham and this is just a really good book.
You can find it on on Amazon. It's published by
(05:07):
McFarland and it is. It's pretty terrific. If you're a
if you're a big hints and fan, a big Fraggle fan,
a big Labyrinth Dark Crystal or what have you fan,
even far Escape, check this book out because there's a
lot for your brain to you on it. Yeah, this
will be your seminal summer read. Now, before we talk
more about Fraggles and uh some of their relationships with
(05:29):
one another, let's talk about caves, because they really are
these worlds of darkness and um. In some ways, they
are very much hidden worlds. So according to National Geographic Worldwide,
caves have no visible entrance and they remain undiscovered since
their underground, hidden from the vision of satellites and inaccessible
(05:52):
to GPS signals. So it would make sense that these
things are hidden because you really have to go off
and try to explore them and map them and order
to really understand them. And the scientific study of caves
and their environments is called speleology, and the formation and
development of caves is called spaleogenesis. And that's when we
get into those ideas of stalagtites and stalagmites, um and
(06:15):
all these amazing uh formations that create this other world. Yeah,
it's just the idea that so many of these cave
environments are literally sealed off from the rest of the
world is is pretty mind blowing because we're all familiar
with sort of the basic cave environment where there's an
entrance and they're like, say, bats are living in there
(06:36):
and coming in and out, or there's a bear living
in a cave and coming in and out, or even
humans supposedly living in caves and coming in and out.
But the idea of sealed environments that have been sealed
away for millions of years, that's where it really starts
getting amazing. Yeah. It's like a basement to your house
that you never even knew about. Yeah, or a time
cat like a living time capsules where instead of of
(07:00):
course everything is staying stationary, it's changed, but it's changed
according to itself, almost its own rules, uninfluenced by the
world outside. Indeed, and you can find them all over
the place. You can find them cliffs at the edge
of a coastline being chipped away about, pounding waves um.
Some have been created from lava flows, which create a
kind of tube that hardens. And then you even have
(07:20):
caves that form and glaciers where meltwater carves tunnels at
the beginning of that water's journey to the sea. Yeah,
and in many cases we're dealing with situations where at
some point in the distant past, um, you had life
forms that ventured into the cave, right, because what is
life going to do? Life is going to seep in.
It's gonna find its niche wherever it can find it, right,
(07:43):
and so it ventures into the cave. It adapts to
sort of the twilight zone of the cave, and then
over time those forms take to the deeper, darker portions
of the cave. And then circumstances occur that cut those
environments off from the outside world. Uh. The life forms
themselves may already be evolutionarily cut off from their previous
(08:05):
forms and thus the outside world, and then they just
remain cut off until millions of years later. Uh, somebody
happens to be digging with a bacco or or or
strategically checking or strategically exploring for some sort of a
cave environment. Yeah, it's amazing to imagine all these caves
um existing because if you think about it in this way,
(08:28):
it takes about a hundred thousand years for a cave
to widen large enough to actually fit a human inside
of it. So all of this sort of deep history
has been happening unbeknownst to us and undiscovered largely by us,
and yet it is hosting just this this rich ecosystem
of all these different insects and animals and sometimes humans
(08:52):
with their bars of gold. Yeah, it's it's interesting that
imagtion how long it takes for for a cave to
even be large enough for human fit in it, because
I I love the idea of subterranean humanoids, and like
we have we have so many versions of that in
our myth and our fiction making, you know, ranging from uh,
you know, the more locks and goblins and ghoules and
(09:14):
uh on up to more modern versions like uh like that,
like the like the HUDs or the monsters in the
Descent and uh. But when you when you look at
cave biology as we're looking at in this this episode,
you see more and more that it exists in a
much smaller scale, and when you start pulling apart the
resources required for a continued existence in a in a
(09:35):
cave environment. Uh. The idea of of goblins and uh
and and and creepers in the cave just don't really
hold up. Yeah. Again, you're talking about species that survive
on a smaller scale, and the reason for that is
because there are limited resources. Right, So if you're in
a cave, there's not that much to eat, and there's
(09:56):
also a lot more predators than there are resources or prey.
I should guess, you should say. According to the National
Geographic article Discoveries in the Dark, at least a dozen
known caves from Romania to Wyoming have no ecological net
connection to the surface, means they run purely UH on
geologic substance such as sulfur compounds, methane, iron, and hydrogen
(10:18):
and eaten by specialized microbes, which in turn feed higher organisms.
And one of the examples they point out in this article,
there's Israel's Alien Cave, which was uncovered accidentally in May
two d and six by excavation, and it was probably
sealed they think for a million years. All right, this
(10:38):
was it. So there's this tiny little ecosystem and they're
fueled by warm groundwater laced with sulfur that in turn
fed microbes and at least ten previously unknown crustaceans and
other creatures. And one of the crazy things about this
too is that the area where around this cave had
been inhabited for just ages and ages and no one
had uncovered it until then. So it really drives home
(11:01):
the question how many little ecosystems are buried away just
in our immediate vicinity that we've just that we've never
happened upon, that are just thriving on their own, or
if not thriving, at least barely getting by. Because we
we'll discuss these are often very fragile environments. But but
but how many such worlds are out there just hidden
from us? Well? And also we've we've touched on this before.
(11:25):
Caves could be a rich source of possible antibiotics for
us because, as we know from microbiologists Hazel Barton, who
also splunks you know, looking for um for for for
a possible bacteria that could be used particularly against superbugs,
which is pretty much wiping out our current arsenal of antibiotics.
(11:50):
Um She is saying that, you know, an antibiotic is
really a very complex chemical compound. It's not something that
can be synthesized in a meaningful way or an easy way.
And she's saying that caves that they're kind of biodiversity
and these special circumstances could be growing the next sort
(12:12):
of antibiotic that can help us to battle with these superbugs.
All right, So let's talk about some of these creatures
that live in caves, the trogla fauna if you will. Yes, Now,
we have basically three different types of trog fun are
we we divide them up into three different categories. And
these three categories really depend on how attached to the
(12:34):
cave they really are, how dependent they are in the
cave versus the outside world versus the surface world. Yeah,
because if you have an insect spider, let's say, hanging
out near the cave's entrance, it's going to be vastly
different from its counterpart deep deep inside. And in fact,
you could say that this, uh, this spider hanging out
(12:56):
is just really a tourist. You could call this insect
a troglazin. Yeah. This comes from the Greek words troglos
meaning cave and zenos meaning guests. And these are animals
that use the cave for shelter but don't complete their
life cycle there. So bats are actually the best example
of this, all right, And they live in the caves.
(13:16):
They they you know, they reproduce their raise, they're young,
but they also leave and they have to leave, uh,
every night in order to to to obtain that that
precious food. Other examples that are less a snazzy. You
have bears, which which may live in the cave, may
hibernate in the cave, but obviously they have to leave
the cave. They are essentially creatures of the surface world. Um,
(13:39):
raccoons and uh and yeah, so these are guests of
the cave as the as the name implies, spirits of
dead pirates. Well, okay, you could you could throw that
in as well gold bars. Yeah, yeah, So any creature
unnatural and natural that is living in the cave, living
some portion of its life cycle in the cave, but
is not there all the time. But then you have
(14:01):
another category called trouble files, which is cave lovers, right file,
And we're talking about worms, crickets, crayfish, and salamander. Also
beatles who live off the dung piles produced by bats.
And here you see them completing their life cycles in
a cave. But they can also survive above ground, and
(14:23):
they get I kind of think about it as Persephone
right in her deal with Hades. Oh, yes, she was
stolen away to the to the the underworld by Hades.
But since he's stole her and due to some sort
of and they worked it out with these sort of
contract like she only ate like three pomegranate seeds, therefore
she could go up for the following seasons of the year.
(14:44):
And so I think that that's why we have spring, right,
She's allowed to come back. And the Trocoal files are similar,
you know, they've got a little bit of a pact
with the cave in that way. Yeah. I like to
think of it in terms of, say someone listens to
the doors or what's what's a more hardcore example. Let's
say Fish. Let's say someone who listens to the band Fish,
take the trogo Zanes again their guests of the cave.
(15:05):
They can come, they can come and go, but they're
they're not They're not there all the time. So as
a Fish listener, the trogo Zane listens to Fish, but
also listens to to other bands and other musical options
fairly frequently. And then with the Trogolo Files, uh, This
is a fish listener who listens to fish most of
the time, but they can branch out, they can listen
(15:26):
to other types of music. But the next group we're
going to talk about talk about the trogolo byte. These
are obligate cave denizens. They live exclusively in the cave.
And this would be the fish fan who can only
listen to fish, who cannot listen to anything outside of
of their their their personal listening niche. Yeah, I think
(15:49):
about that spider who maybe started out at the cave entrance,
went in a little bit more. Let's say that it's uh,
it's progeny then began to adapt itself, and then progeny
said it's offspring said hey, I'm gonna go way back there.
That looks awesome back there. And then another generation of
those spiders adapted even more, and all of a sudden,
(16:12):
they are completely wetted to this space because they have
changed so much to adapt to it that they could
no longer go out to the entrance of that cave. Right.
Not only are they adapting more and more to survive
on the resources provided to them exclusively in the deeper
portions of the cave, but they've given up the adaptations
they need to survive in the sunlit world. Chief among these,
(16:35):
of course pigmentation, which is more than just uh, you know,
colorful decorations on our skin. It's it helps, but its
protects us against a UV rays from the sun. So
without the sun, there's no need for for our bodies
to invest in that kind of protect protection. You also
don't need that sort of camouflage or that level of it,
because most of the creatures that deep in the cave
(16:56):
they are without sight. Yeah, so it doesn't matter if
you're essentially just pale gas fly wide or even translucent,
because the site isn't really an issue anymore. But you
get these other great adaptations, like you get longer limbs
or longer antennae, which really allow you to have a
more exquisite system to ferret out sensations around you. Yeah,
(17:19):
because you need to touch more of the area around you,
so you have more um appendages with which to touch it,
longer appendages with which to touch your surroundings. You're more
dependent upon sound or even just slight two sensations across
the skin. Changes in air quality, for instance. And this
is where it gets really freaky diki though, because the
sort of creatures that we know and love are vastly
(17:41):
different deep within the cave. And I'm talking about a
pseudo scorpion, for instance, that doesn't have a stinging tail
instead injects venom with its claws. Wow. Yeah, so it's
got this adaptation of like, well, let me, let me
just throw this venom out here in the claw area,
because it's a lot easier for me to get to
my prey because I have more as as I had
(18:03):
said earlier, exquisitely attuned um senses. Now now other trogobytes
include um and and just to to back up on that,
trogless again means cave and bios means life. So this
is cave life and it's purest sense really. And among
the troglobytes we find various types of crayfish and shrimp, cavefish, salamanders,
(18:25):
various insects, arachnis. As we've discussed. Another crucial thing about
adapting to that ecology, adapting to that environment in the
cave is that this is not a in the same
way we discussed the vampire bat in the past, where
the vampire bat is adapting to a diet that is
not a rich diet. Uh. These these creatures have adapted
(18:47):
to thrive in a world that is not rich in resources,
so they have to survive on less and they have
to have a metabolism that can allow for long periods
of famine. Yes, so they have a much lower metabolism.
And in a sense, these are sort of extrem a files, right,
because they're living in extreme conditions and as a result,
this kind of changes their lifespan. Um, you had mentioned
(19:09):
the crayfish. There's the crayfish of Shelta Cape, Alabama, which
mates around its hundredth year and can live over one
and fifty years. Yeah, that is that is pretty amazing.
Here it is it's a century old, and it's it's
still breeding or steven just getting around the break reaching
maturity of sexual maturity and then and then it has
(19:32):
another half century or even Uh. I've seen even estimates
of up to a hundred and seventy five year lifespans
for these creatures. It's crazy. Yeah, it's nuts. And then
you just have some creatures that are visibly strange, they
are otherworldly to us, like the Proteus anguinus, which is
an ulm or a salamander, and it has a serpentine body,
(19:54):
and it's of course it's translucent looking. It's covered by
that that whitest translucent skin, and it has too freely
pink gills at the back of its head. And what
I love about this is at the first written account
of it eats back to nine, in which finally the
scholar Jennez Aicard Vossavor disputed the belief that these alms
(20:15):
were baby dragons. That's how strange they are. People were like, oh,
that must be a baby dragon. Yeah, this, this is
something so fantastic. It must be making our more fantastic
ideas a reality. Um yeah. Some of the other creatures
that we ran across, um there of course rimipedes, and
these are pretty amazing. You've probably seen them before. They
(20:37):
look kind of like centipedes from another planet. Really, um
and these are Earth's most primitive living crustacean. They dwell
in saltwater coastal caves across the globe, and it's believed
that they may have started out over a hundred million
years ago when the supercontinent Pangaea was first breaking up.
And so now you find them, you find them all
(20:58):
over in these these these these aquifier environments, these underground
the layers of water bearing permeable rock. And that's what
must be so exciting for biologists is to to find
these new species just you know, crack over one of
these caves and all of a sudden say, oh, I
actually at the adaptations and and just look at the
(21:19):
biodiversity present here that we have no idea even existed. Yeah.
It's kind of like backing up the clock and saying, well,
what if what if we had gone this direction instead
of this direction and seeing that alternate timeline of evolution uh, innocence. Uh,
That's kind of what it's like when when we're peering
into these these these environments. You're right, it is like
a time capsule in that sense. And we continue to
(21:40):
find all these new creatures and we give them some
pretty amazing names. I was reading about some of these
that have been named after Japanese movie monsters. For instance,
there's the swimming Mathra or Pleo Mathra. There's the strong
Godzilla or Godzillius rob robust Us, and then there's the
nome Godzilla, the god Godzillo Noomus, which which are withdraw
(22:03):
all these fantastic names for wagnism. All right, we're gonna
take a quick break, and when we get back, we're
gonna get into some serious discussion about the Fraggles. All right,
we're back. I think that really is that John Goodman
was in shud Yeah, it's a it's a bit part
(22:25):
that he's in there. All right, even better? All right,
so let's get back to these fraggles and because then
we have a sort of the baseline idea of kve
ecology and what dwells within it can't help but just
kind of looking at these guys and saying, all right,
what's going on there? Yeah, And that is indeed what
Justin Verfel did in his his essay in the in
(22:46):
the Hinton book that we mentioned earlier, looking at Fraggle
Rock as not not just the TV show, but the
environment portrayed there, looking at the various creatures, especially the
three primary creatures that we're going to discussed, and trying
to make sense of them in terms of real world ecology,
real world science, which this is an area I love
(23:07):
to explore in my own work, you know, comparing something
unnatural with something natural and seeing how they line up,
and often it's surprising how well they do. And uh
and yeah, certainly we see that there with the fraggle.
So let's let's start with the title organism the frackle. Yes,
they are a very carefree lot. They spend most of
their time playing, exploring, and generally enjoying themselves. Are all
(23:29):
about individualism, and they live on a diet of vegetables, now, radishes.
That is pretty much like if they had a food pyramid,
it would be like radish would would occupy probably about
that space. And um. Now, radishes are also used in
construction of something called deuser sticks, and we'll get to
(23:50):
that in a second. But they munch on that quite
a bit. Uh. Fraggles have the unique ability to share dreams.
I love this. Whoa, yeah, I forgot about this, this
particular their power. Yeah. If they touch their heads together
before falling asleep, they can enter the dream of the
other fraggle. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so they do the
sort of like drift thing. Wow, that is that is impressive.
(24:11):
I can't. That just makes my imagination run wild with
like with possibility. What would the human culture be like
if we could do that? I mean, in a sense
we find ways to do that, but not an organic level.
That's on the books. Oh, man, Well, they should call
it like fraggialization or dream fragglization. That should be the process.
Frackle drift, ye, fraggle drift. Alright, So these guys are
(24:32):
the fraggles. Um they share this cave or this environment,
I should say, with the users, who are starkly different
from them. Yeah, while the fraggles kind of strike me
as if I was to connect them to real world biology,
I would say that maybe they evolved from some form
of lemur. They seem like a kind of a cave
lemur type of a creature, whereas the dousers are a
(24:55):
little they're smaller friends for starters and marriages six inches,
and they're a little more uh insect like they have
antenna and they build constantly. They're kind of you can
almost think of them in terms of social insects, like
social builders, like like wasps and bees, except they're living
in caves and be their building things that look like
(25:18):
bridges and little towers and just the stuff that looks
like human construction projects. And their primary construction material is
composed of or made from rash, so it remains edible
to anybody who's into eating radishes, namely the fraggles Yeah,
we'll talk more about that and why this is really
important and there are parallels in ecology with that. But yeah,
(25:41):
the deusers are absolutely dedicated to their work and nothing
but their work, and they're not about the individual, they
are about the community. But then you have something called ditzes.
There are tiny little creatures that give off light. They
are bioluminescent. Yeah, they're kind of kind of like fairies
almost to just float around lighting up this cave environment.
(26:02):
And that's and that's also crucial. We'll discuss that. So
these are the three main species. Now, just to run
through them real quick, Well, this is we could almost
think this is a game show. Um trogo phon a
game show. Uh, I'm gonna name each one and you
tell me if you think that this creature would be
a trogo trocolateazine, a trocolo file, or a chocolate bite
fraggle fraggle. I think would be a troglo bite. No,
(26:28):
excuse me, trogolo file because they obviously they go outside
to forage for radishes. Yes, yeah, I would say they
would be a trago file or you could almost make
the argument of their trogolo they're trogo zines since they
have to go out to get those radishes. Well, yeah,
I guess you could. But but then that brings up
the question if the radish Well, that's a question they
end up answering. Right, if the radishes on the surface
(26:48):
are not available, then there are disastrous Now how about
the how about the users, the dousers I'm a little
sketchier on because they also are dependent on the radishes.
But that's just their their industry, right, not necessarily the
basis of their diet. But if they're they're so tied
(27:11):
to their work that they would they would die and
they actually there's even one instance where they might have
to relocate. So I'm going to say they're trogle zine
as well. I mean, you could make the argument that,
I mean, do they bring the radishes down. I'm under
the working assumption here that the fraggles bring the radishes
down and then the users use that radish material. So
(27:33):
if they're not, actually, if they're dependent upon another organism
that is a troglo file or Trocola zine, they could
potentially themselves be trocolo bytes. I don't know, I feel
like I feel like this is this is up for debate,
but this is a game our listeners can play as
well vote on the user issue. Uh troco zine, trocol file,
(27:55):
trocolo bite. Uh. Likewise, the Dizzies are a little hard
to nail down as well, but they they seem a
little more on the trogolo bytes scale. I would say
the truggle byte because they seem to have their counterparts
and glow worms, which we know exists in caves in
New Zealand and Australian and they also give off light,
so uh, there's a possibility that they could be true
trocole bytes. So why are we talking about all these guys, Well,
(28:17):
because of course they are exhibiting something called mutualism, which
is really important in ecosystems. Yes, um, in this in
this instance, we've touched a little of this already. But
the fraggle eats a host of pilfer vegetables, the radishes
key among these. They forge this from the surface, they
bring it home where it plays a pivotal role in
the in their ecology and the overall ecology of Fraggle Rock.
(28:40):
So again, it basically goes down like this, Fraggles eat
the radishes. Users uh themselves seem to eat some sort
of custard based food pellet perhaps uh, perhaps something they
get from a fungus. I don't know, we never really
there are a lot of questions about that. But they
use the radishes and they're building materials and and fraggles
(29:00):
in turn eat the douzer building constructions. There will walk
through and they'll destroy part of it, kind of like
Godzilla's and uh and and Munchett down because it's edible.
And in doing this, they're kind of rolling, they're kind
of playing the role of the decomposer because they're instead
of like an insect may eat dead animal parts, you know,
just that keeps dead animals and from piling up all
(29:22):
around us breaking down those materials. Uh. The fraggle is
breaking down the douser materials, which in turn makes room
for more douzer construction. And we actually see what happens
when the Fraggles stopped eating the these uh crazy constructions
by the deusers. And in fact, his episode one or six,
and it is called the Preachification of Convincing John. This
(29:47):
is the one that Jonathan Strickland was telling us, this
is the one you gotta watch it. It's not the
one that made him cry as a child that's a
different one, which one made him cry. Oh, I can't mean.
There's some sort of circumstance where there are a couple
of the Fraggles were stuck in the case and they
thought they were going to die. He said that it
was interesting because they were so explicit in there about
like the actual they might die, which was a concept
(30:08):
you know as a child that you're trying to figure
out and the actual threat of it um being experienced.
But anyway back to the pretification of convincing John. Convincing
John is one of the fraggles, and he has a
lot of influence over the other fraggles, and so Mochi
is one of the fraggles, and she decides, you know what,
(30:29):
the decers they love building so much, and in these
are such intricate structures that they're building. We just come
along and chomped them. Perhaps we should respect their building,
and so she gets already stop eating them. What happens
absolute chaos, Absolute chaos. I mean you see like construction
of these Radish temples everywhere, and in fact there's so
(30:51):
much so that they're taking up space that everybody actually
occupies in their regular day to day lives and uh,
and then the dealers think, well, let's get out of here,
because these guys aren't eating it, we have no space
to build anymore. Sohow so they actually start planning to
launch out of there and explore new regions of the cave. Yeah,
it's and it's really sad. I think, like there's even
(31:12):
the seam between the user baby and her mom, and
the baby's going, why do we have to leave just
like because things just happen like this, life is hard
or something like that. And then of course we have
the ditseease that again are producing light for the in
the cave, and in turn they depend on the sound
of fraggles in order to survive. Now that's relationships. It's
(31:34):
a little harder to line up with anything in the
natural world. Um, but I'm also not discounting the possibility
that maybe it's a little more complex than that. I
don't know, Um, maybe they somehow us the sound of
the fraggles vibrations, vibrations to know where they are, or
it vibrates organism. I think it's somehow contributes to their
ability to be bioluminescent organisms, and that's somehow that spark
(31:58):
of energy is needed by the vibrations from sound. And
what happens if the did s lights go out, Well,
they just they go comatose. Really, yeah, fraggles go comatose.
Other forms of life in the cave become commatose. So
light in Fraggle Rock is not nearly a nice bonus, uh,
and something that allows us to see the characters on
(32:18):
the TV show. It is an essential part of their ecology.
So you see, if one part of this triangle is effect,
it ends up affecting all of them. And that's again
part and partial to the ecological message and the global
community message of Fraggle Rock. Yeah, and we don't know
if glow worms were to cease glowing, if they would
really seriously affect other species ability to live in the
(32:41):
caves that they dwell in. But we do know, as
you say, all of that is very fragile, and all
of it works in tandem. Yeah. I mean we see
many examples of this, But one example I grew up
with was, you know, growing up in a sort of
a rural Tennessee environment or a lot of people are
hunting deer and then having to ask them a questionable
why are they shooting? Year? What if they stopped shooting deer.
(33:01):
And then someone explains, well, if they stopped shooting the deer,
then there are too many deer. Why would that be, Well,
that's because there's nothing there are no natural predators around
to eat the deer anymore. Why are they gone as well?
Because we messed that up as well. And you get
into these uh you know all of these uh, these
butterfly effects in our in our environment where we change
one little thing or one big thing, and the ramifications
(33:23):
can be pretty intense. Well, I mean the honeybees or
an excellent example of this, the pesticides we now know
are responsible for the collapse of the honeybee colonies. And
so so again we see this interesting fragile system of
mutualism here. Now in the natural world, we see plenty
of symbiotic relationships in caves. But but as for mutualism itself,
(33:45):
you have to kind of go to a to a
much smaller scale in the caves to really see this
going on. Um, given the given the rarity of resources
in a cave of environment, there's an overwhelming sense of
selfish competition among ca fauna, as discussed in the article
What's Up down There? Microbial Diversity in Caves by Hazel
(34:05):
Aid Barton and Valm Gerado, published in a two thousand
and seven edition of micro Magazine. Quote. Because limited but
chemically complex nutrients enter the cave system, very few microbial
species are capable of encoding all the necessary uptake and
catabolic reactions to support growth. To overcome this limitation, selfish
competition for resources is replaced by cooperative and mutualistic associations
(34:29):
such as have been seen in biofilm communities. End quote.
So there's just a um, a little insight into into
the reality of mutualism in caves. It even though this
is a very resource sparse environment and there is a
lot of intense competition and lots of lots of appendages
that may grab you and push you towards some sort
(34:50):
of translucent mouth there, there still is something some mutualism
to be found. But let's talk about some of these
appendages because that's kind of fun. Ah, yes, predators. Well, um,
you know it's should should come as no surprise to
any casual fraggle observer or or even someone who's never
seen the show. Since we just mentioned how an episode
(35:10):
dealt with death, that there would be an episode that
also deals with predation, at least to some degree, and
there is indeeded an episode where we learn about the
glob an amieble like creature which apparently praise on dousers,
but it's apparently a pretty rare creature. Um. It's only
really mentioned this once. A lot of the users don't
seem to know about it. So this suggests that it
(35:31):
might reside outside the cave and simply venture inside to hunt,
which is reminiscent of a certain real life organisms such
as skunks, which if you've ever watched UM I believe
it was the Life of Mammals from David Attenborough. There's
a whole scene where they show this this cave the
cave environment, and you have, of course a colony of
bats and baby bats will sometimes fall down and they
(35:56):
have they have a chance to make it back up,
but they have to make it all the way across
the floor and then back up the wall and u
during that time on the floor they make a very
tempting snack, so tempting that you have skunks that are
venturing in from the surface world in order to to
pot them to to sort of paw them out, slap
(36:18):
them around and then eat them. Yeah, I mean skunks
don't know. They're probably like I'm gonna go to the
baby bat store. Now. They go into a cave and
have any fallen yep, okay, nice snack, thank you. You
also have something called the giant centipede, and this will
hide out on the underside of a rock and then
attack bats and they use their oversized legs to overpower
(36:39):
their prey. Yes, uh, Scalopendra gigantine. Just to drive this home,
this is a centipede that can overpower a bat, that
praise praise on mammals, which which just kind of strikes
a very uncomfortable cord with me, because it feels like
some sort of natural order has been perverted here. Centipedes
should not be praying on mammals. Those those should be
(37:01):
off the menu for you, invertebrates, unless it's unless you're
decomposing something. I think it also underscores how much the
centipede has adapted to that environment to have limbs that
long enough and that's strong enough to pin down a bat.
And if you want to learn more about that particular synapede,
there's a two thousand five study predation by giant centipedes
(37:22):
Scolopendro gigante on three species of bats in a Venezuelan cave. Uh.
Put out those connected by the University of Puerto Rico.
It's a pretty interesting read with some very terrifying images
of cinipedes latch to the ceiling of the cave and
kind of arching their back and grabbing at Dat's Yeah,
you know, I found myself. Is that the one that
(37:43):
has a slide show? Yes, yeah, I found myself sketching
a lot of those because you were so much fun.
For the most part. However, with in Fraggle Rock, we uh,
we don't see a lot of predators, we don't. We
We hear about various creatures that may or may not
pose a danger to Fraggles, but they seem to live
a pretty comfortable life for the most part. And there
(38:04):
and they're you know, certainly they're able to fret about
things that are that are a little less of substantial
given their their comfort zone. Yeah, they don't have a
lot of experience outside of their own environments, so they
kind of have to rely on different information to get through.
And that's where Uncle Matt comes into it, because he
enters the human world, which is called average space, and
(38:25):
he sends that postcards about what these crazy humans are doing,
like the fact that theraps these hard hatted people building things,
but their buildings taste awful. They do, They really do
taste awful compared to the wonderful radish. You know, I
remember watching the show as a kid and kind of
trying to imagine what the Douzer materials tasted like, And
(38:47):
now I can sort of imagine that, kind of like
kind of a sugary radish, that's what I think kind
of taste. Yeah, yeah, But although they're kind of crystalline
looking like it's almost radish sugar that they've had, which
is why they would be so delicious. They would have
to be a super normal stimuli. All right. So there
you have it, Fraggles, fraggle Rock, dousers, ditsis, the globe,
(39:13):
giant centipede, the whole nine yards. That's right, life in
a cave and what it might be like from a
true frigal rock experience perspective. Yes, now we know that
we have listeners out there who have um a lot
more hardcore experience with the Fraggles, who can who have
seen all the episodes and have gone back again and
again to feed the nostalgia. Uh. And I know that
(39:36):
you guys and gals probably have some additional information you
would like to bring to the table regarding fraggles and
how they might get into our natural world. Likewise, if
you have some tidbits about about cave college and cave biology,
we would like to share with us, be it grounded
in the real world or the world of fiction. Uh,
you can certainly get in touch with us, and we
love to discuss that with you. Yeah, let us know
(39:58):
about your your thoughts on the fraggle verse, all right,
So if you want to do that, you want to
get in touch with us, reach out to us. You'll
find us at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That is the mothership. That's where you will find all
of our podcast episodes are blog post our videos links
out to our various social media accounts, which include Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, YouTube,
where we are mind stuff show, um and uh what
(40:20):
Google Plus, who knows what? Else? Who knows what the
future will bring? Yeah, and if you'd like to get
in touch with us, you can do so by sending
us an email at blow the Mind at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Does it, how stuff works, dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you wasn't the stuff to blow
your mind? My name is Robert Lamb and um Julie Douglas. Julie,
do you remember Fraggle Rock? Didn't you care? Away? Were
reball another day? Let the music play down and rock
(00:27):
that's the one that rock. Hopefully we can't get to
hear for that. I don't know. Wouldn't that be cruel
to sue, you know, a bunch of fraggles suing us. Yeah,
that seemed like sort of anti fraggle I don't know.
We have what kind of legislation. It's just that the
governors copyright issues is in the sub world's versus the
(00:50):
surface world. So did you grow up with the show
or are you you didn't? I knew of it, and
I think that I was maybe uh too in too
at that point, like hypnotizing myself on the weekends rather
than watching Fraggle Rock. Well, it was also an HBO
thing in the States, I believe, so, so there would
(01:11):
have been that limitation as well. That would have been
high fluting back in the day. Yeah, I think I
probably saw episodes of it on CBC because my family
was living in Canada at the time, so I think
that's where I have my main Fraggle connection. Because of course,
the series ran from eight three to eighty seven. Um.
It was carried on on HBO, on CBC in Canada
(01:33):
and on u Q and on the UK's television South.
And it's um, it's a silly show, UM about creatures
living in a cave. And uh, they're various adventures, they're
various songs, their various uh comments on daily life for
us humans. All right, let me just read this little
(01:54):
bit from the Muppet Wiki. It says the vision of
Fraggle Rock, articular did by Jim Henson, was to depict
a colorful and fun world, but also a world with
a relatively complex system of symbiotic relationships between races of
creatures and allegory to the human world, where each group
was somewhat unaware of how interconnected and important they were
(02:16):
to one another. This allegorical world allowed the program to
entertain and amused by seriously exploring complex issues of prejudiced spirituality,
personal identity, environment, and social conflict. Heavy right, Yeah, I
think that's one of the amazing things about the show
is that there is this very silly level to it,
(02:38):
the surface level of fraggle Rock. But yeah, you can
start analyzing it and analyzing it, and there's a lot
of rich complexity there because you're getting into into into
these themes of of global relationships, of the ecology of
how interconnected we all are. I mean, it's ultimately that's
(02:58):
the message that Henson was trying to convey in the series,
to make it educational, almost in a sort of moral
sense as opposed to uh, strictly numbers and letters. So
you're right, because there's lots of things to explore, like
individuality versus like the common good and community and on
and on. So it's kind of fascinating. There's even like
(03:21):
an aspect of asexuality that you could go into, and
maybe one day we will, but for today's purposes, we
really wanted to introduce the Fragle rocks um because we
thought this was a great lens into cave living, cavernous
underground living and what it's like. And when we talk
about the Fraggles, by the way, we were talking about
(03:41):
these creatures that are about twenty two inches tall and
they really do sort of dominate the landscape of Fraggle Rock,
and of course Fraggle Rock is named after them. Um.
As you have mentioned, they live in the system of
natural caves. And what's interesting about these caves is that
they connect to other worlds too, Yes, to our world,
(04:02):
but also to this other world where there are these
giant creatures, right that grow radishes. And we'll talk about
the right economy in a moment and how important that is. Uh.
But you know, they kind of remind me of pack rats,
which we've talked about before, Yes, because they're also bringing
back little curios from these other worlds and the incorporating
(04:24):
and incorporating them into their their their little environment, into
their dens. Even um. Yeah, we did a whole episode
on the pack rat Um. Go back and listen to
that if you like. UM. I do want to note
that in part we're drawing from an essay by Justin
Werfel titled the Ecollege of Fraggle Rock, and this was
(04:47):
This is one of four serious essays on Fraggles in
the book The Wider Worlds of Jim Hinson, Essays on
his work and legacy Beyond the Muppet Joan Sesame Street.
This was edited by Jennifer C. Garland and and this
a Graham and this is just a really good book.
You can find it on on Amazon. It's published by
(05:07):
McFarland and it is. It's pretty terrific. If you're a
if you're a big hints and fan, a big Fraggle fan,
a big Labyrinth Dark Crystal or what have you fan,
even far Escape, check this book out because there's a
lot for your brain to you on it. Yeah, this
will be your seminal summer read. Now, before we talk
more about Fraggles and uh some of their relationships with
(05:29):
one another, let's talk about caves, because they really are
these worlds of darkness and um. In some ways, they
are very much hidden worlds. So according to National Geographic Worldwide,
caves have no visible entrance and they remain undiscovered since
their underground, hidden from the vision of satellites and inaccessible
(05:52):
to GPS signals. So it would make sense that these
things are hidden because you really have to go off
and try to explore them and map them and order
to really understand them. And the scientific study of caves
and their environments is called speleology, and the formation and
development of caves is called spaleogenesis. And that's when we
get into those ideas of stalagtites and stalagmites, um and
(06:15):
all these amazing uh formations that create this other world. Yeah,
it's just the idea that so many of these cave
environments are literally sealed off from the rest of the
world is is pretty mind blowing because we're all familiar
with sort of the basic cave environment where there's an
entrance and they're like, say, bats are living in there
(06:36):
and coming in and out, or there's a bear living
in a cave and coming in and out, or even
humans supposedly living in caves and coming in and out.
But the idea of sealed environments that have been sealed
away for millions of years, that's where it really starts
getting amazing. Yeah. It's like a basement to your house
that you never even knew about. Yeah, or a time
cat like a living time capsules where instead of of
(07:00):
course everything is staying stationary, it's changed, but it's changed
according to itself, almost its own rules, uninfluenced by the
world outside. Indeed, and you can find them all over
the place. You can find them cliffs at the edge
of a coastline being chipped away about, pounding waves um.
Some have been created from lava flows, which create a
kind of tube that hardens. And then you even have
(07:20):
caves that form and glaciers where meltwater carves tunnels at
the beginning of that water's journey to the sea. Yeah,
and in many cases we're dealing with situations where at
some point in the distant past, um, you had life
forms that ventured into the cave, right, because what is
life going to do? Life is going to seep in.
It's gonna find its niche wherever it can find it, right,
(07:43):
and so it ventures into the cave. It adapts to
sort of the twilight zone of the cave, and then
over time those forms take to the deeper, darker portions
of the cave. And then circumstances occur that cut those
environments off from the outside world. Uh. The life forms
themselves may already be evolutionarily cut off from their previous
(08:05):
forms and thus the outside world, and then they just
remain cut off until millions of years later. Uh, somebody
happens to be digging with a bacco or or or
strategically checking or strategically exploring for some sort of a
cave environment. Yeah, it's amazing to imagine all these caves
um existing because if you think about it in this way,
(08:28):
it takes about a hundred thousand years for a cave
to widen large enough to actually fit a human inside
of it. So all of this sort of deep history
has been happening unbeknownst to us and undiscovered largely by us,
and yet it is hosting just this this rich ecosystem
of all these different insects and animals and sometimes humans
(08:52):
with their bars of gold. Yeah, it's it's interesting that
imagtion how long it takes for for a cave to
even be large enough for human fit in it, because
I I love the idea of subterranean humanoids, and like
we have we have so many versions of that in
our myth and our fiction making, you know, ranging from uh,
you know, the more locks and goblins and ghoules and
(09:14):
uh on up to more modern versions like uh like that,
like the like the HUDs or the monsters in the
Descent and uh. But when you when you look at
cave biology as we're looking at in this this episode,
you see more and more that it exists in a
much smaller scale, and when you start pulling apart the
resources required for a continued existence in a in a
(09:35):
cave environment. Uh. The idea of of goblins and uh
and and and creepers in the cave just don't really
hold up. Yeah. Again, you're talking about species that survive
on a smaller scale, and the reason for that is
because there are limited resources. Right, So if you're in
a cave, there's not that much to eat, and there's
(09:56):
also a lot more predators than there are resources or prey.
I should guess, you should say. According to the National
Geographic article Discoveries in the Dark, at least a dozen
known caves from Romania to Wyoming have no ecological net
connection to the surface, means they run purely UH on
geologic substance such as sulfur compounds, methane, iron, and hydrogen
(10:18):
and eaten by specialized microbes, which in turn feed higher organisms.
And one of the examples they point out in this article,
there's Israel's Alien Cave, which was uncovered accidentally in May
two d and six by excavation, and it was probably
sealed they think for a million years. All right, this
(10:38):
was it. So there's this tiny little ecosystem and they're
fueled by warm groundwater laced with sulfur that in turn
fed microbes and at least ten previously unknown crustaceans and
other creatures. And one of the crazy things about this
too is that the area where around this cave had
been inhabited for just ages and ages and no one
had uncovered it until then. So it really drives home
(11:01):
the question how many little ecosystems are buried away just
in our immediate vicinity that we've just that we've never
happened upon, that are just thriving on their own, or
if not thriving, at least barely getting by. Because we
we'll discuss these are often very fragile environments. But but
but how many such worlds are out there just hidden
from us? Well? And also we've we've touched on this before.
(11:25):
Caves could be a rich source of possible antibiotics for
us because, as we know from microbiologists Hazel Barton, who
also splunks you know, looking for um for for for
a possible bacteria that could be used particularly against superbugs,
which is pretty much wiping out our current arsenal of antibiotics.
(11:50):
Um She is saying that, you know, an antibiotic is
really a very complex chemical compound. It's not something that
can be synthesized in a meaningful way or an easy way.
And she's saying that caves that they're kind of biodiversity
and these special circumstances could be growing the next sort
(12:12):
of antibiotic that can help us to battle with these superbugs.
All right, So let's talk about some of these creatures
that live in caves, the trogla fauna if you will. Yes, Now,
we have basically three different types of trog fun are
we we divide them up into three different categories. And
these three categories really depend on how attached to the
(12:34):
cave they really are, how dependent they are in the
cave versus the outside world versus the surface world. Yeah,
because if you have an insect spider, let's say, hanging
out near the cave's entrance, it's going to be vastly
different from its counterpart deep deep inside. And in fact,
you could say that this, uh, this spider hanging out
(12:56):
is just really a tourist. You could call this insect
a troglazin. Yeah. This comes from the Greek words troglos
meaning cave and zenos meaning guests. And these are animals
that use the cave for shelter but don't complete their
life cycle there. So bats are actually the best example
of this, all right, And they live in the caves.
(13:16):
They they you know, they reproduce their raise, they're young,
but they also leave and they have to leave, uh,
every night in order to to to obtain that that
precious food. Other examples that are less a snazzy. You
have bears, which which may live in the cave, may
hibernate in the cave, but obviously they have to leave
the cave. They are essentially creatures of the surface world. Um,
(13:39):
raccoons and uh and yeah, so these are guests of
the cave as the as the name implies, spirits of
dead pirates. Well, okay, you could you could throw that
in as well gold bars. Yeah, yeah, So any creature
unnatural and natural that is living in the cave, living
some portion of its life cycle in the cave, but
is not there all the time. But then you have
(14:01):
another category called trouble files, which is cave lovers, right file,
And we're talking about worms, crickets, crayfish, and salamander. Also
beatles who live off the dung piles produced by bats.
And here you see them completing their life cycles in
a cave. But they can also survive above ground, and
(14:23):
they get I kind of think about it as Persephone
right in her deal with Hades. Oh, yes, she was
stolen away to the to the the underworld by Hades.
But since he's stole her and due to some sort
of and they worked it out with these sort of
contract like she only ate like three pomegranate seeds, therefore
she could go up for the following seasons of the year.
(14:44):
And so I think that that's why we have spring, right,
She's allowed to come back. And the Trocoal files are similar,
you know, they've got a little bit of a pact
with the cave in that way. Yeah. I like to
think of it in terms of, say someone listens to
the doors or what's what's a more hardcore example. Let's
say Fish. Let's say someone who listens to the band Fish,
take the trogo Zanes again their guests of the cave.
(15:05):
They can come, they can come and go, but they're
they're not They're not there all the time. So as
a Fish listener, the trogo Zane listens to Fish, but
also listens to to other bands and other musical options
fairly frequently. And then with the Trogolo Files, uh, This
is a fish listener who listens to fish most of
the time, but they can branch out, they can listen
(15:26):
to other types of music. But the next group we're
going to talk about talk about the trogolo byte. These
are obligate cave denizens. They live exclusively in the cave.
And this would be the fish fan who can only
listen to fish, who cannot listen to anything outside of
of their their their personal listening niche. Yeah, I think
(15:49):
about that spider who maybe started out at the cave entrance,
went in a little bit more. Let's say that it's uh,
it's progeny then began to adapt itself, and then progeny
said it's offspring said hey, I'm gonna go way back there.
That looks awesome back there. And then another generation of
those spiders adapted even more, and all of a sudden,
(16:12):
they are completely wetted to this space because they have
changed so much to adapt to it that they could
no longer go out to the entrance of that cave. Right.
Not only are they adapting more and more to survive
on the resources provided to them exclusively in the deeper
portions of the cave, but they've given up the adaptations
they need to survive in the sunlit world. Chief among these,
(16:35):
of course pigmentation, which is more than just uh, you know,
colorful decorations on our skin. It's it helps, but its
protects us against a UV rays from the sun. So
without the sun, there's no need for for our bodies
to invest in that kind of protect protection. You also
don't need that sort of camouflage or that level of it,
because most of the creatures that deep in the cave
(16:56):
they are without sight. Yeah, so it doesn't matter if
you're essentially just pale gas fly wide or even translucent,
because the site isn't really an issue anymore. But you
get these other great adaptations, like you get longer limbs
or longer antennae, which really allow you to have a
more exquisite system to ferret out sensations around you. Yeah,
(17:19):
because you need to touch more of the area around you,
so you have more um appendages with which to touch it,
longer appendages with which to touch your surroundings. You're more
dependent upon sound or even just slight two sensations across
the skin. Changes in air quality, for instance. And this
is where it gets really freaky diki though, because the
sort of creatures that we know and love are vastly
(17:41):
different deep within the cave. And I'm talking about a
pseudo scorpion, for instance, that doesn't have a stinging tail
instead injects venom with its claws. Wow. Yeah, so it's
got this adaptation of like, well, let me, let me
just throw this venom out here in the claw area,
because it's a lot easier for me to get to
my prey because I have more as as I had
(18:03):
said earlier, exquisitely attuned um senses. Now now other trogobytes
include um and and just to to back up on that,
trogless again means cave and bios means life. So this
is cave life and it's purest sense really. And among
the troglobytes we find various types of crayfish and shrimp, cavefish, salamanders,
(18:25):
various insects, arachnis. As we've discussed. Another crucial thing about
adapting to that ecology, adapting to that environment in the
cave is that this is not a in the same
way we discussed the vampire bat in the past, where
the vampire bat is adapting to a diet that is
not a rich diet. Uh. These these creatures have adapted
(18:47):
to thrive in a world that is not rich in resources,
so they have to survive on less and they have
to have a metabolism that can allow for long periods
of famine. Yes, so they have a much lower metabolism.
And in a sense, these are sort of extrem a files, right,
because they're living in extreme conditions and as a result,
this kind of changes their lifespan. Um, you had mentioned
(19:09):
the crayfish. There's the crayfish of Shelta Cape, Alabama, which
mates around its hundredth year and can live over one
and fifty years. Yeah, that is that is pretty amazing.
Here it is it's a century old, and it's it's
still breeding or steven just getting around the break reaching
maturity of sexual maturity and then and then it has
(19:32):
another half century or even Uh. I've seen even estimates
of up to a hundred and seventy five year lifespans
for these creatures. It's crazy. Yeah, it's nuts. And then
you just have some creatures that are visibly strange, they
are otherworldly to us, like the Proteus anguinus, which is
an ulm or a salamander, and it has a serpentine body,
(19:54):
and it's of course it's translucent looking. It's covered by
that that whitest translucent skin, and it has too freely
pink gills at the back of its head. And what
I love about this is at the first written account
of it eats back to nine, in which finally the
scholar Jennez Aicard Vossavor disputed the belief that these alms
(20:15):
were baby dragons. That's how strange they are. People were like, oh,
that must be a baby dragon. Yeah, this, this is
something so fantastic. It must be making our more fantastic
ideas a reality. Um yeah. Some of the other creatures
that we ran across, um there of course rimipedes, and
these are pretty amazing. You've probably seen them before. They
(20:37):
look kind of like centipedes from another planet. Really, um
and these are Earth's most primitive living crustacean. They dwell
in saltwater coastal caves across the globe, and it's believed
that they may have started out over a hundred million
years ago when the supercontinent Pangaea was first breaking up.
And so now you find them, you find them all
(20:58):
over in these these these these aquifier environments, these underground
the layers of water bearing permeable rock. And that's what
must be so exciting for biologists is to to find
these new species just you know, crack over one of
these caves and all of a sudden say, oh, I
actually at the adaptations and and just look at the
(21:19):
biodiversity present here that we have no idea even existed. Yeah.
It's kind of like backing up the clock and saying, well,
what if what if we had gone this direction instead
of this direction and seeing that alternate timeline of evolution uh, innocence. Uh,
That's kind of what it's like when when we're peering
into these these these environments. You're right, it is like
a time capsule in that sense. And we continue to
(21:40):
find all these new creatures and we give them some
pretty amazing names. I was reading about some of these
that have been named after Japanese movie monsters. For instance,
there's the swimming Mathra or Pleo Mathra. There's the strong
Godzilla or Godzillius rob robust Us, and then there's the
nome Godzilla, the god Godzillo Noomus, which which are withdraw
(22:03):
all these fantastic names for wagnism. All right, we're gonna
take a quick break, and when we get back, we're
gonna get into some serious discussion about the Fraggles. All right,
we're back. I think that really is that John Goodman
was in shud Yeah, it's a it's a bit part
(22:25):
that he's in there. All right, even better? All right,
so let's get back to these fraggles and because then
we have a sort of the baseline idea of kve
ecology and what dwells within it can't help but just
kind of looking at these guys and saying, all right,
what's going on there? Yeah, And that is indeed what
Justin Verfel did in his his essay in the in
(22:46):
the Hinton book that we mentioned earlier, looking at Fraggle
Rock as not not just the TV show, but the
environment portrayed there, looking at the various creatures, especially the
three primary creatures that we're going to discussed, and trying
to make sense of them in terms of real world ecology,
real world science, which this is an area I love
(23:07):
to explore in my own work, you know, comparing something
unnatural with something natural and seeing how they line up,
and often it's surprising how well they do. And uh
and yeah, certainly we see that there with the fraggle.
So let's let's start with the title organism the frackle. Yes,
they are a very carefree lot. They spend most of
their time playing, exploring, and generally enjoying themselves. Are all
(23:29):
about individualism, and they live on a diet of vegetables, now, radishes.
That is pretty much like if they had a food pyramid,
it would be like radish would would occupy probably about
that space. And um. Now, radishes are also used in
construction of something called deuser sticks, and we'll get to
(23:50):
that in a second. But they munch on that quite
a bit. Uh. Fraggles have the unique ability to share dreams.
I love this. Whoa, yeah, I forgot about this, this
particular their power. Yeah. If they touch their heads together
before falling asleep, they can enter the dream of the
other fraggle. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so they do the
sort of like drift thing. Wow, that is that is impressive.
(24:11):
I can't. That just makes my imagination run wild with
like with possibility. What would the human culture be like
if we could do that? I mean, in a sense
we find ways to do that, but not an organic level.
That's on the books. Oh, man, Well, they should call
it like fraggialization or dream fragglization. That should be the process.
Frackle drift, ye, fraggle drift. Alright, So these guys are
(24:32):
the fraggles. Um they share this cave or this environment,
I should say, with the users, who are starkly different
from them. Yeah, while the fraggles kind of strike me
as if I was to connect them to real world biology,
I would say that maybe they evolved from some form
of lemur. They seem like a kind of a cave
lemur type of a creature, whereas the dousers are a
(24:55):
little they're smaller friends for starters and marriages six inches,
and they're a little more uh insect like they have
antenna and they build constantly. They're kind of you can
almost think of them in terms of social insects, like
social builders, like like wasps and bees, except they're living
in caves and be their building things that look like
(25:18):
bridges and little towers and just the stuff that looks
like human construction projects. And their primary construction material is
composed of or made from rash, so it remains edible
to anybody who's into eating radishes, namely the fraggles Yeah,
we'll talk more about that and why this is really
important and there are parallels in ecology with that. But yeah,
(25:41):
the deusers are absolutely dedicated to their work and nothing
but their work, and they're not about the individual, they
are about the community. But then you have something called ditzes.
There are tiny little creatures that give off light. They
are bioluminescent. Yeah, they're kind of kind of like fairies
almost to just float around lighting up this cave environment.
(26:02):
And that's and that's also crucial. We'll discuss that. So
these are the three main species. Now, just to run
through them real quick, Well, this is we could almost
think this is a game show. Um trogo phon a
game show. Uh, I'm gonna name each one and you
tell me if you think that this creature would be
a trogo trocolateazine, a trocolo file, or a chocolate bite
fraggle fraggle. I think would be a troglo bite. No,
(26:28):
excuse me, trogolo file because they obviously they go outside
to forage for radishes. Yes, yeah, I would say they
would be a trago file or you could almost make
the argument of their trogolo they're trogo zines since they
have to go out to get those radishes. Well, yeah,
I guess you could. But but then that brings up
the question if the radish Well, that's a question they
end up answering. Right, if the radishes on the surface
(26:48):
are not available, then there are disastrous Now how about
the how about the users, the dousers I'm a little
sketchier on because they also are dependent on the radishes.
But that's just their their industry, right, not necessarily the
basis of their diet. But if they're they're so tied
(27:11):
to their work that they would they would die and
they actually there's even one instance where they might have
to relocate. So I'm going to say they're trogle zine
as well. I mean, you could make the argument that,
I mean, do they bring the radishes down. I'm under
the working assumption here that the fraggles bring the radishes
down and then the users use that radish material. So
(27:33):
if they're not, actually, if they're dependent upon another organism
that is a troglo file or Trocola zine, they could
potentially themselves be trocolo bytes. I don't know, I feel
like I feel like this is this is up for debate,
but this is a game our listeners can play as
well vote on the user issue. Uh troco zine, trocol file,
(27:55):
trocolo bite. Uh. Likewise, the Dizzies are a little hard
to nail down as well, but they they seem a
little more on the trogolo bytes scale. I would say
the truggle byte because they seem to have their counterparts
and glow worms, which we know exists in caves in
New Zealand and Australian and they also give off light,
so uh, there's a possibility that they could be true
trocole bytes. So why are we talking about all these guys, Well,
(28:17):
because of course they are exhibiting something called mutualism, which
is really important in ecosystems. Yes, um, in this in
this instance, we've touched a little of this already. But
the fraggle eats a host of pilfer vegetables, the radishes
key among these. They forge this from the surface, they
bring it home where it plays a pivotal role in
the in their ecology and the overall ecology of Fraggle Rock.
(28:40):
So again, it basically goes down like this, Fraggles eat
the radishes. Users uh themselves seem to eat some sort
of custard based food pellet perhaps uh, perhaps something they
get from a fungus. I don't know, we never really
there are a lot of questions about that. But they
use the radishes and they're building materials and and fraggles
(29:00):
in turn eat the douzer building constructions. There will walk
through and they'll destroy part of it, kind of like
Godzilla's and uh and and Munchett down because it's edible.
And in doing this, they're kind of rolling, they're kind
of playing the role of the decomposer because they're instead
of like an insect may eat dead animal parts, you know,
just that keeps dead animals and from piling up all
(29:22):
around us breaking down those materials. Uh. The fraggle is
breaking down the douser materials, which in turn makes room
for more douzer construction. And we actually see what happens
when the Fraggles stopped eating the these uh crazy constructions
by the deusers. And in fact, his episode one or six,
and it is called the Preachification of Convincing John. This
(29:47):
is the one that Jonathan Strickland was telling us, this
is the one you gotta watch it. It's not the
one that made him cry as a child that's a
different one, which one made him cry. Oh, I can't mean.
There's some sort of circumstance where there are a couple
of the Fraggles were stuck in the case and they
thought they were going to die. He said that it
was interesting because they were so explicit in there about
like the actual they might die, which was a concept
(30:08):
you know as a child that you're trying to figure
out and the actual threat of it um being experienced.
But anyway back to the pretification of convincing John. Convincing
John is one of the fraggles, and he has a
lot of influence over the other fraggles, and so Mochi
is one of the fraggles, and she decides, you know what,
(30:29):
the decers they love building so much, and in these
are such intricate structures that they're building. We just come
along and chomped them. Perhaps we should respect their building,
and so she gets already stop eating them. What happens
absolute chaos, Absolute chaos. I mean you see like construction
of these Radish temples everywhere, and in fact there's so
(30:51):
much so that they're taking up space that everybody actually
occupies in their regular day to day lives and uh,
and then the dealers think, well, let's get out of here,
because these guys aren't eating it, we have no space
to build anymore. Sohow so they actually start planning to
launch out of there and explore new regions of the cave. Yeah,
it's and it's really sad. I think, like there's even
(31:12):
the seam between the user baby and her mom, and
the baby's going, why do we have to leave just
like because things just happen like this, life is hard
or something like that. And then of course we have
the ditseease that again are producing light for the in
the cave, and in turn they depend on the sound
of fraggles in order to survive. Now that's relationships. It's
(31:34):
a little harder to line up with anything in the
natural world. Um, but I'm also not discounting the possibility
that maybe it's a little more complex than that. I
don't know, Um, maybe they somehow us the sound of
the fraggles vibrations, vibrations to know where they are, or
it vibrates organism. I think it's somehow contributes to their
ability to be bioluminescent organisms, and that's somehow that spark
(31:58):
of energy is needed by the vibrations from sound. And
what happens if the did s lights go out, Well,
they just they go comatose. Really, yeah, fraggles go comatose.
Other forms of life in the cave become commatose. So
light in Fraggle Rock is not nearly a nice bonus, uh,
and something that allows us to see the characters on
(32:18):
the TV show. It is an essential part of their ecology.
So you see, if one part of this triangle is effect,
it ends up affecting all of them. And that's again
part and partial to the ecological message and the global
community message of Fraggle Rock. Yeah, and we don't know
if glow worms were to cease glowing, if they would
really seriously affect other species ability to live in the
(32:41):
caves that they dwell in. But we do know, as
you say, all of that is very fragile, and all
of it works in tandem. Yeah. I mean we see
many examples of this, But one example I grew up
with was, you know, growing up in a sort of
a rural Tennessee environment or a lot of people are
hunting deer and then having to ask them a questionable
why are they shooting? Year? What if they stopped shooting deer.
(33:01):
And then someone explains, well, if they stopped shooting the deer,
then there are too many deer. Why would that be, Well,
that's because there's nothing there are no natural predators around
to eat the deer anymore. Why are they gone as well?
Because we messed that up as well. And you get
into these uh you know all of these uh, these
butterfly effects in our in our environment where we change
one little thing or one big thing, and the ramifications
(33:23):
can be pretty intense. Well, I mean the honeybees or
an excellent example of this, the pesticides we now know
are responsible for the collapse of the honeybee colonies. And
so so again we see this interesting fragile system of
mutualism here. Now in the natural world, we see plenty
of symbiotic relationships in caves. But but as for mutualism itself,
(33:45):
you have to kind of go to a to a
much smaller scale in the caves to really see this
going on. Um, given the given the rarity of resources
in a cave of environment, there's an overwhelming sense of
selfish competition among ca fauna, as discussed in the article
What's Up down There? Microbial Diversity in Caves by Hazel
(34:05):
Aid Barton and Valm Gerado, published in a two thousand
and seven edition of micro Magazine. Quote. Because limited but
chemically complex nutrients enter the cave system, very few microbial
species are capable of encoding all the necessary uptake and
catabolic reactions to support growth. To overcome this limitation, selfish
competition for resources is replaced by cooperative and mutualistic associations
(34:29):
such as have been seen in biofilm communities. End quote.
So there's just a um, a little insight into into
the reality of mutualism in caves. It even though this
is a very resource sparse environment and there is a
lot of intense competition and lots of lots of appendages
that may grab you and push you towards some sort
(34:50):
of translucent mouth there, there still is something some mutualism
to be found. But let's talk about some of these
appendages because that's kind of fun. Ah, yes, predators. Well, um,
you know it's should should come as no surprise to
any casual fraggle observer or or even someone who's never
seen the show. Since we just mentioned how an episode
(35:10):
dealt with death, that there would be an episode that
also deals with predation, at least to some degree, and
there is indeeded an episode where we learn about the
glob an amieble like creature which apparently praise on dousers,
but it's apparently a pretty rare creature. Um. It's only
really mentioned this once. A lot of the users don't
seem to know about it. So this suggests that it
(35:31):
might reside outside the cave and simply venture inside to hunt,
which is reminiscent of a certain real life organisms such
as skunks, which if you've ever watched UM I believe
it was the Life of Mammals from David Attenborough. There's
a whole scene where they show this this cave the
cave environment, and you have, of course a colony of
bats and baby bats will sometimes fall down and they
(35:56):
have they have a chance to make it back up,
but they have to make it all the way across
the floor and then back up the wall and u
during that time on the floor they make a very
tempting snack, so tempting that you have skunks that are
venturing in from the surface world in order to to
pot them to to sort of paw them out, slap
(36:18):
them around and then eat them. Yeah, I mean skunks
don't know. They're probably like I'm gonna go to the
baby bat store. Now. They go into a cave and
have any fallen yep, okay, nice snack, thank you. You
also have something called the giant centipede, and this will
hide out on the underside of a rock and then
attack bats and they use their oversized legs to overpower
(36:39):
their prey. Yes, uh, Scalopendra gigantine. Just to drive this home,
this is a centipede that can overpower a bat, that
praise praise on mammals, which which just kind of strikes
a very uncomfortable cord with me, because it feels like
some sort of natural order has been perverted here. Centipedes
should not be praying on mammals. Those those should be
(37:01):
off the menu for you, invertebrates, unless it's unless you're
decomposing something. I think it also underscores how much the
centipede has adapted to that environment to have limbs that
long enough and that's strong enough to pin down a bat.
And if you want to learn more about that particular synapede,
there's a two thousand five study predation by giant centipedes
(37:22):
Scolopendro gigante on three species of bats in a Venezuelan cave. Uh.
Put out those connected by the University of Puerto Rico.
It's a pretty interesting read with some very terrifying images
of cinipedes latch to the ceiling of the cave and
kind of arching their back and grabbing at Dat's Yeah,
you know, I found myself. Is that the one that
(37:43):
has a slide show? Yes, yeah, I found myself sketching
a lot of those because you were so much fun.
For the most part. However, with in Fraggle Rock, we uh,
we don't see a lot of predators, we don't. We
We hear about various creatures that may or may not
pose a danger to Fraggles, but they seem to live
a pretty comfortable life for the most part. And there
(38:04):
and they're you know, certainly they're able to fret about
things that are that are a little less of substantial
given their their comfort zone. Yeah, they don't have a
lot of experience outside of their own environments, so they
kind of have to rely on different information to get through.
And that's where Uncle Matt comes into it, because he
enters the human world, which is called average space, and
(38:25):
he sends that postcards about what these crazy humans are doing,
like the fact that theraps these hard hatted people building things,
but their buildings taste awful. They do, They really do
taste awful compared to the wonderful radish. You know, I
remember watching the show as a kid and kind of
trying to imagine what the Douzer materials tasted like, And
(38:47):
now I can sort of imagine that, kind of like
kind of a sugary radish, that's what I think kind
of taste. Yeah, yeah, But although they're kind of crystalline
looking like it's almost radish sugar that they've had, which
is why they would be so delicious. They would have
to be a super normal stimuli. All right. So there
you have it, Fraggles, fraggle Rock, dousers, ditsis, the globe,
(39:13):
giant centipede, the whole nine yards. That's right, life in
a cave and what it might be like from a
true frigal rock experience perspective. Yes, now we know that
we have listeners out there who have um a lot
more hardcore experience with the Fraggles, who can who have
seen all the episodes and have gone back again and
again to feed the nostalgia. Uh. And I know that
(39:36):
you guys and gals probably have some additional information you
would like to bring to the table regarding fraggles and
how they might get into our natural world. Likewise, if
you have some tidbits about about cave college and cave biology,
we would like to share with us, be it grounded
in the real world or the world of fiction. Uh,
you can certainly get in touch with us, and we
love to discuss that with you. Yeah, let us know
(39:58):
about your your thoughts on the fraggle verse, all right,
So if you want to do that, you want to
get in touch with us, reach out to us. You'll
find us at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That is the mothership. That's where you will find all
of our podcast episodes are blog post our videos links
out to our various social media accounts, which include Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, YouTube,
where we are mind stuff show, um and uh what
(40:20):
Google Plus, who knows what? Else? Who knows what the
future will bring? Yeah, and if you'd like to get
in touch with us, you can do so by sending
us an email at blow the Mind at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Does it, how stuff works, dot com
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