July 5, 2025 • 40 mins
Coelacanths are incredibly interesting as far as fish go. For one, they were thought to have gone the way of the dinosaur, along with the dinosaur. They also give birth to live fish and tend to dwell more than 800 feet below the ocean's surface. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Learn all about these fascinating creatures in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, Happy weekend.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I hope you're having a lovely, lovely Saturday wherever you
are in the world. We're gonna jump back in time
to June six, twenty seventeen to talk about Sela cants,
how Cela cants work. What in the world is a
Cela cant? I think I kind of remember. Check it
out right now.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry, Jerome Roland, just the whole
house Stuff Works Gang here to present to you Stuff
you should.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Know, all three of us. How you doing. I'm good? Yeah, yeah,
Oh I'm a little caffeinated.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I should warn you, oh a little bit, like when
teeth are to just come right out of my face.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
That's not good.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
You know, we did a video about Cela cants one time.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Yeah, like was it this day in history about when
they were discovered?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah. I ran across because it smacked as familiar to me.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
And you know, the constant fear we have of recording
an entire podcast over is sort of always there.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Yeah, the fear that sometimes comes true.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, So I definitely went back and looked, and I
was like, I knew he did something.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Yeah, we were trapped in a shipping container.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Right, I didn't watch it. I didn't either.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Enough to say, oh, yeah I remember that one. Yeah,
that really weird, weird thing we did.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
But this is really cool. I think I do too.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Cela cants were well, they're interesting, despite what the house
Stuff Works article.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Would lead you to believe.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Oh it was, Yeah, it was a little thin, wasn't
it a little bit? It was all right, okay, but
luckily the rest of the Internet is.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
There for us.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Right, thanks especially to Smithsonian and Mental floss for this one.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Right, Yeah, that mental Flass article is kind of neat,
actually it was.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
So you want to go back to the beginning, actually
the second beginning maybe.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Oh, well, I don't know what you're talking about now, so.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Just okay, well follow me. We'll go back to the
very beginning. We'll go back to something about four hundred
million years ago, okay, during the Devonian period, which is
aka the Rise of the fish, Yes, the Age of
the Fish. Right, And in this Devonian period there's a
lot a lot of stuff going on. Things have been
(02:37):
swimming around for a while on Earth. There's a nice
atmosphere that's developed. The things in the ocean are starting
to say, oh, what's out there? I want to see
what's on land?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, I want can just crawl out and see.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Yeah, I want to taste clover. So they start trying.
And during this period there was the progression from the
sea to the lane.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
And one of those things that was starting to develop
legs to get onto land was called the Cela canth.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, which A it means hollow spine, which is we'll
get to there's a reason for that. And B it's
spelled ceo E l A c A n t h,
which is, you know, not how you would think it
might be spelled.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
No or pronounced rather right, either one. But it's Cela camp.
It is Cela camp.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And what it is is a fish that is, like
you said, been around for a long long time. It's
kind of funny looking, and we'll get into all the
physical characteristics that make it unusual in a sect, but
it is notable mainly for the fact that everyone thought
it was gone forever until it was suddenly discovered. This
(03:57):
thing that that swam with the dinosaurs was discovered anew
in the nineteen thirties, right, and then again a little
bit later on.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Yeah, because it was it pops up for the first
time around four hundred and seven million years ago, I think,
I said, and then it just drops off eighty million
years ago. So they said, well, a lot of stuff
went the way of the dinosaur around the time the
dinosaurs went away, so that's probably what happened to the
(04:26):
Cela canth So it was quite a big surprise. In
the nineteen thirties when a trawler that was out fishing,
a trawler called the Narreen which is captained by Hendrik
Goosen off the coast of South Africa, came in and
as was Captain Goosen's wont he contacted the director of
(04:47):
the local museum in East London, a woman named Miss
Marjorie Courtney Latimer, and she used to come over and
look at the fish loads this guy would bring in
because they were buddies. Yeah, And he gave her a
call like normal and said, I got a load, you
want to come look at it? And she was like,
it's two days before Christmas and is blazing hot out.
Don't forget we're in South Africa at the time, huh.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
And she's like, I.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Don't feel like it, but the world was saved. The
world of ichthyology was saved this day. Yeah, because this lady,
Marjorie Courtney Latimer was so nice that she decided to
go look at the fish anyway, just to wish the
captain and his crew a merry Christmas.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
So she takes a look at this fish.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
And here is her quote as she recounted. It wasn't
her quote at the time or quote at the time.
It's probably a South African explative, right, but she said later,
I picked away the layers of slime to reveal the
most beautiful fish I had ever seen. And of course
only a fish lover can find this thing truly beautiful, Yeah,
(05:55):
because it's kind of ugly it is. It was five
feet long, a pale mauve blue with faint flecks of
whiter spots. It had an iridescent silver blue green sheen
all over. It was covered in hard scales, and it
had four limb like fins and a strange little puppy
dog tail. Not literally, of course, it was such which
(06:16):
would be great, though actually it did.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
That's the dogfish that has that.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
It was such a beautiful fish, more like a big
China ornament. But I didn't know what it was. And
it was pretty faithful that she was called in to
look at this thing, because it ended up being one
of the most important zoological finds of you know, history,
probably of the.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Twentieth century at least. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, this woman's curiosity,
something in her said, this is weird, this is unusual,
this is this is something worth looking into. So she
took it with her. This thing was like five feet long,
just under two meters, about one hundred and how many pounds.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
One hundred and twenty seven pounds. This is a.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
Significant fish, Yeah, and Mss Courtney Latimer talked her way
into a cab with it.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
She took a cab back.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
To the East London Museum with this fish stuffed in
the back seat, and she took it to the taxidermist
and had it stuffed. Unfortunately, the taxidermist wasn't completely aware
of how to preserve a fish for identification and threw
out the skeleton and the gills, which are what you
need for.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
The idea fish.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Apparently, well, she probably should have said something, well, she like,
this is no ordinary mount.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, right, she probably should have, or maybe she did,
and he just ignored her.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
He's like, I'm not going to get boss drawn by
a woman's nineteen thirty eight. So she contacts a guy
named J. L. B. Smith, who is an ichthyologist. He's
the head of the ichthyology department at a university in
Grahamstown and PhD in chemistry. He's a smart guy and
he's the the local fish expert as far as she knows.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, and their pals and so she said, hey, I've
got this weird looking fish. And then Smith his quote
was I told myself sternly not to be a fool,
but there was something about that sketch, and apparently it
was sketch.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
She sent him a sketch of the fish to begin with.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, that seized upon my imagination and told me that
this was something very far beyond the usual run of
fishes in our seas.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
And luckily, even though.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
The fish was, I guess mounted in a traditional form, which,
like you said, takes away, it's how you can identify it,
she was able to preserve some of the scales, and
somehow from these scales he was able to say, this
is a cola cant seala cant Well, that's what he said.
At first, and she went his pronounced seala cant.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
He's like, oh, apparently, he said when he saw that
scale and I and identified it positively as a seala cant.
His quote was, if I'd met a dinosaur in the street,
I't have been more astonished.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
I like that guy, a little hyperbole there, but I
like it.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
So he I mean, this is seriously, this is like
the zoological find of the century and would be for
the next sixty something years. Right, So he very magnanimously says,
you know what, I'm going to name this thing after you,
and he named it as a new species, Latimeria chilumnae,
(09:26):
because well, obviously her name is Courtney Latimer. Yeah, Courtney
hyphen Latimer.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
And it was found in the Chilumna River at the
mouth of it where it hits the coast off of
the eastern coast of South Africa.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
So that's a great name.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
It's perfect. Yeah, it really puts it in a place
in time.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
So they have now discovered this thing, they realize that
they have a big find on their hands. They thought
this thing had long been extinct by tens of millions
of years, and so they started to research and you know,
trying to learn more about this fish.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, which is no ordinary fish.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
No, but I mean this was so this was nineteen
thirty eight, right, Yeah, and it was the only one
that had been found for another sixty years.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:18):
I mean there's only so much you can find from
a stuffed fish. But it did prove because it had
been caught alive. It wasn't like they pulled up a
fossil or a dead fish. It had been alive when
it was caught.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
I think it was attached to another fish. Oh, really,
like potentially trying to eat it. Oh, okay, which is
one of the well, not unusual but interesting things about
the Sela camp is that it's it eats meat.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Well, there's a lot of unusual things about the Cela camp. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
So fast forward another sixty years exactly in Indonesia, which
is on the other side of the Indian Ocean, the
eastern side of the Indian Ocean. It was actually first
seen in nineth ninety seven by a biologist named Mark
Erdman who was in Indonesia doing his PhD dissertation, and
he saw a Cela cant in the market.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
That's crazy, that's a cela.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Can't what's that doing here? So apparently he put a
bit of a bounty out on it with the locals,
and within a year, by nineteen ninety eight, they had
brought him a freshly caught one.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah, which is quite a task.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Yeah, it's finding a once thought extinct fish. Yeah, it's
a big one. Well, and we'll get to a little
bit why. It's even tougher than you would think too.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Sure. So the one that Erdman found was brown, right, Yeah,
it was a little bit different color.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Right, the one like Courtney Latimer described, those are known
to be like steel blue. This is brown, a little
smaller than the one that Courtney Latimer found. And so
eventually when Erdman got his hands on that one, he
described it as a new species.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I mean, it turns out that at one point, you know,
hundreds of millions of years ago, there were you know,
potentially over one hundred different varieties of this fish, and
they came in all shapes and sizes. These obviously were
pretty big, but there were some that were smaller and faster.
Basically just kind of a wide variety. And as far
(12:23):
as we know, I think, are these the only two
known survivors?
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Yes, so far?
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Yeah, the one that Corney Latimer founder known as the
West Indian Ocean Seala camp those are the blue ones.
They're typically found off of the west, you know, the
east coast of Africa, south of Kenya, I believe, yeah,
down to about the Cormeros Islands. I think that's they're
(12:51):
actually also known as the Cormeroos Islands sela cant because
there's that's that seems to be where they inhabit the
most or the highest density of them is Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
And some of the weird some of the weirdos that
have well, we assume that they've been extinct, but you
never know. One of them was toothless and over ten
feet long. That was the megalo se Lacanthus very appropriately
some of them said, forget you, ocean, I'm going to
go to the fresh water.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
So there were actually freshwater selacants at one time.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And like I said, some of them were slow and
ambushed prey somewhere smaller and faster. But they've pretty much
universally all been predators from what I've seen.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
Right, And the two species that are alive today that
we know of are aside from that megalis Selacanth tend
to be a little bigger than the extinct species. Yeah,
which I read is a good it's a good example
of why they shouldn't be called living fossils, which is
(13:55):
what they're frequently called.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, that's Darwin's term for something that basically never changed.
And they've actually studied the genome of the selacant and
found that they very much haven't changed. And the kind
of the main reason is they haven't had to. They've
kind of stayed in the same places. And when you
(14:17):
say in the same places and you eat the same stuff,
then maybe you don't change so much.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Read.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
I read the opposite of that that they have changed
enough that they that they have been evolving, and a
good example of that is that they're bigger than they
used to be.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Oh interesting.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Yeah, but the two species that are alive today, they
have traced their genomes back and decided that they've been
separated for several million years at least.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, this one, they finally got the full genome and
they said that it does indeed match the fish's appearance
of slower evolution, and a journal published in Nature because
they have a slower rate of substitution.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Basically, she's the the doctor.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Well, yeah, I guess she is a doctor. Just sounded
weird to say that.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
The doctor the researcher who was also a doctor, Yeah,
who was She said it may reflect the fact that
they do not need to evolve quickly because they've lived
in relatively unchanging environment where there are a few predators,
and they basically haven't needed to change over time like
other organisms.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Well, that brings up another thing too. There's a big
question why would they just drop off of the fossil
record if they've been around this whole time, if they
didn't just go extinct eighty or sixty five million years ago.
The only explanation I've seen is that the places where
the fossils turned up were areas conducive to fossilization, Like
there's a lot of sentiment that could turn bone into rock,
(15:44):
and then the areas that the living species live at
now are not conducive to that kind of thing, possibly
because they're mostly living around volcanic rock that doesn't necessarily
produce fossils.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
You want to take a break, Yeah, let's take a break,
go back and talk a little bit about this funny fish.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Sevy shit.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
All right, So we've talked a little bit about what
makes the Sela camp such a interesting critter.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Can a critter be a fish? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Have you heard of the cuddlefish? That's a critter if
there ever.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Was, Yeah, a cuddly critter. So here are some remarkable
things about the Cela camp. They can live as deep
I mean they're deep water dwellers. They can live as
deep as two thousand or more feet, but generally they
think the I think they generally live about five hundred
(16:57):
to eight hundred feet and what they call the twilight zone, right, which.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Is still pretty deep.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Remember our cave episode, Yeah, that had the same thing.
Remember there was like organisms that live in the dark,
organisms that live in the twilight zone, and organisms that
live in the lighted zone. Yeah, these guys live in
that threshold between light and dark and the ocean. And
they apparently are nocturnal hunters.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, they come out at night, kind of stay hidden.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Most of these habitats are caves, right, that they tend
to stay in. But there's one off of Tasmania that
do not live in caves, and so they have officially
been placed on an endangered list because they don't have
the protection from bycatch that these other cave dwellers have.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Right, that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Yeah, So the average day or in the life of
Azila canth or at least the cave dwelling species, they'll
you know, during the day time, they're hanging out in
a cave. They'll hang out in a cave with I've
seen between up to twelve to sixteen other sela camps.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, have a little coffee, Yeah, maybe just talk.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Yeah, you know, talk about their night and then as
night falls, they'll leave their caves and they they'll go hunting.
And like you said, they're carnivorous predators. They do that
passive bycatch thing for the most part right where they
let the current bring the food to them.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
But they.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Just basically hang out and wait for a cuttlefish. It's
one thing. They eat, squids, other cephalopods, some fishes, but
they seem to not show aggression toward one another from
what I understand.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, and while they are passive hunters, they do have
an unusual feature which is, like we said, one of many.
But they have what's called a rostral organ which just
means it's in the nasal region and their snout and
it's filled with a jelly like substance that they think,
and they think most of this stuff. I mean, they've
(19:01):
done a lot of good studying, but for something so rare,
you can't be super sure. But they think that it
detects low level electrical signals and frequencies from prey.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah, like a shark or a ray. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
It's an electro sensory organ where when living tissue contacts water,
it can make an electrical impulse that can be picked up.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
And this cool Mental Floss article is I think eleven
eleven things about the sei loocanth. I can't remember how
it was put, but just eleven interesting features.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Eleven fishy facts was that it.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Unfortunately that's why I forgot it title aside, it's an
interesting article. And one of the things that they don't
know why they do, and I have a feeling it
has to do with that electrical frequency, is they'll swim
nose down for up to two full minutes, which is
weird for a fish.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
They're just kind of hovering in place, head standing, right.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah, yeah, And I guess I mean, if they have
that nasal bag of jelly that helps them locate fish,
I would imagine that's what they're doing there.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Right, I imagine it like tonto, like holding a railroad track,
you know, Yeah, I think it's the same thing.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Basically, So.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
When they catch their prey, they eat them, and they
can eat stuff that's way bigger than them because again,
which is this is unique to see the cants among
living things. They have a hinge in their cranium that
allows basically their head is convertible, the top of their
skull can retract, allowing their mouth to open really wide,
(20:41):
so they can eat a large, large cuttlefish.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
And I think that feature also allows it to their
mouth to close with like much greater.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Force with extreme prejudice.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, like when it's unhinged emotionally, and basically it can
really close that mouth super hard.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
They hate themselves for eating cuttle fish, so they just
can't stop.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
So those are just a couple of the features.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Another is, and we mentioned earlier that the name literally
translates into hollow spine. This is because they have what's
called a notochord, which is a hollow pressurized tube filled
with oil where a lot of fish start this way
and then they'll eventually get a spine. But this doesn't
(21:29):
go away.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Right, and not just fish vertebrates apparently there's a lot
of mammals that go through this, I think possibly even
humans in the embryo.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
And the selacanther just says, I'm good with the notochord.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
I'm going to stick here. Yeah, I'm going to stop here.
Which is strange. It is strange. You want to hear
some more stranges. I could do this all day.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Well, it's a strange fish.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Celacanth. We don't quite understand how they reproduce, and the
reason why is because males don't seem to have any
sex parts.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
They don't have junk.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
They think possibly males grow it when they need it,
but it's otherwise. It's it's not around the showers, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
So we have no idea how they reproduce, but we
know that the mode of reproduction is called ovo viviparity,
which is, however the eggs that the female has get fertilized.
Once they're fertilized, they gestate or the eggs develop in
the female, and then they hatch in the female. Yeah,
(22:38):
and then the live fishes continue to gestate and like
the whole period lasts like three years before they're born.
So they go from egg to being hatched to being
born within a three year period, and so apparently this
does not make the mom. Sila can't very happy, and
(22:59):
sometimes she will try to eat her newborn pups.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
So supposedly selacanth pups that's what they're called, can dive
really deep, very quickly the moment they're born, to get
away from mom, to get away from their mom, who's
like three years.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah, three years, paging doctor Freud.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, I think sharks may be the only other fish
that give birth the live little ones.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
I mean most fish lay eggs, right, so it's definitely unusual.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yeah, it may not be unique.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
But the other thing about their sexy time is there's
also a theory that they are monogamous.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
In twenty thirteen, a German team they had a couple
of corpses are too pregnant. I believe the African version, Yeah,
the Vladimir Chlumne and because what was I don't remember
what the other one was, it was Latimir something else.
For the Indonesian version.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Yeah, we'll just go with that for now.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
I was practicing pronouncing it Latimera menadoensis.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Okay, wow, thanks, nice work.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
So they analyze these two pregnant ladies unfortunately that we're
no longer with us. And they found out that they had,
like most definitely had a single father.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah, which they said was unusual.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Sure, because one of them had twenty six, twenty six
little baby pups inside.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
Of her, right, And they they thought at first, well,
maybe it's because the celacanth is so rare that the
female wouldn't have opportunity to mate with more than one male.
And they said, well, wait a minute, well that's true. Well, no,
not necessarily. Once they found out that they stayed.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
They hang out together.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
Yeah, in caves all day long. What else are you
going to do once general Hospital's over? Just looking around
at everybody, like, well, what do you want to do?
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
All right, Well let's ponder that and take another break
and we'll finish up with even more interesting things about
the Seila.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Camp Sevy shit.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
All right, so these guys have live babies. They might
mate with a single mate. Good a they have They
can unhinge their jaw to eat more. They have a
jelly filled thing in their.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Nastra that detects electricity, detects electricity.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
I know I'm having trouble saying to text.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Uh what else? This is sort of a recap.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
They have an oil filled spine.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Oil filled spine they're just good with. They're like, I
don't need a real spine.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
This one's my favorite. They were long thought to be
the missing link between the fishes yea and the tetrapods,
which are land dwelling for lambed animals.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yeah, because a notable thing I don't think we mentioned
yet is this thing has well. I think I did
a quote from Miss Latimir Courtney Latimir. But they have
four fins that smooth, sort of like you would think
legs would move if a fish could swim out onto
the beach.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Legs and arms. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Can you remember how Shaggy walked and Scooby Doo do
just like that. That's basically how a cila can't swim. Yeah,
And the fact that their fins are suspiciously arm like
in appearance just made people think that even more. What's more,
their arms, what are called lobes, are attached by a
(26:54):
bone that is compared to the humorous in humans. Yeah,
so a lot of people said, well, that's it. It's
the missing link. The celacanth is a missing link. Between
the fish and the land dwelling for limbed animals, and
apparently once the genome came around, he said, no.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
It's a little disappointing. They said, yes, we're all related.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
Technically, we are all what are known as sarcopterygians, okay, man,
which means we are fleshy limb vertebrates.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
So we're all that gross.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
So we are related, but it's not like our direct ancestor.
In fact, we're more closely related to the lungfish than
the selacanth. But the celacanth holds its place of honor,
is probably living on something of its own branch, and
is a very close cousin, if not bro of the lungfish.
So we're related by marriage.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
To the cela.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Can't say, but we legally we probably could marry a celacanth, sure,
and have it not be super creepy, right, except for
the fact that it's a fish.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Right, you feel it's a fleshy lobe thin stroking the
back of your head as you kiss it.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
I got something for you that was I'm just walking
right past that one. They taste gross, so don't think
it's some weird delicacy, right, not? You know that there
are that many of them to eat, but apparently if
you do eat them, they can make you sick because
these things are filled with urea, with oil, with wax.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Ester and fat. Yeap, like ninety eight point five percent fat.
That's just an skull. Oh I thought that was the
whole body.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
No, it's it's brain occupies one point five percent of
the area inside its skull. The other ninety eight point
five percent is fat.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
And that's at the point that they're an adult, right. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Supposedly their brains are bigger proportionately when they're younger.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
And they just stay there. Yeah, they're frozen in perpetual
like I guess.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Toddlerhood pretty much. They love life.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
Yeah, no responsibilities, no bills.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah, exactly what else I got one for you, okay.
Prestigial lungs.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Oh yeah, man, I love these things.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
So they grow.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
They had CT scans done and this is from the
mental article of these embryos, and they start growing little
lungs early in the gestation period and it slows down
a bit, and then by the time they're an adult,
the organ serves no purpose.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, it's just there. Yep, that's a good one. It is.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
It was It's almost like the ceilacanth was an attempt,
an evolutionary attempt, and it's just like, I'm gonna scrap
this design.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Let's move on to the lungfish. Yeah maybe so. You know.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
One of the things that struck me though, Chuck, was
when they were talking about how a couple of females
that had fully formed young in them ready to be born.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Were caught.
Speaker 4 (30:12):
It's like that was a lot of the Seila camp
population that got wiped out with those two caught fish.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Yeah. I mean, if there are only hundreds, then everyone matters. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
They think that there's possibly about a thousand of the
ones that live around Indonesia.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
And far fewer of the ones.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
That live off of the west coast of Africa on
the western side of the Indian Ocean, and as a result,
both of them are on the endangered species list. They're
both protected. The problem is is that if something happens
to these species and these species die out this time,
the whole order is gone for good this time around. Yeah,
(30:56):
unless we revide them with some of.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Their Yeah, all right, I got one last one and
this was on Mental Floss's list as well, under the
title A prominent hematologist once wrote a selacanth operetta, So
that's an attention grabber. Apparently in nineteen seventy five there
was a man named Charles Rand of Long Island University,
(31:23):
and he was a hematologist and was doing some work
with the celacanth, and this was when the big revelation
was they learned that it gave birth to live young
and he, I guess, was a music guy and decided
to write a little operetta about this discovery, titled a
(31:43):
Cela Camp's lament or Quintuplets at fifty fathoms can be
fun all song to the tune of various Gilbert and
Sullivan songs.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Right, that's a hematologist for you. Wow. Sure, I have
no comment on that. Well, I mean it speaks for itself,
other than I wish this was on tape somewhere.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Surely it's on YouTube. Everything's on YouTube, you think, Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
You want to go over some of these other quote
living fossils end quote.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
Yeah, so again there was there's some fishes out there
that may have made the jump kind of to land
or almost did, or what have you.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
But there's there's.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
Some interesting fishes that are worth mentioning.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Speaking of making the jump. Did you see that shark
that jumped into the boat the other day? No, there
was a fisherman and I guess the shark just did
you know one of their famous Uh there was a
great white Oh god, did one of its breeches where
they just jump out of the water. And this thing
did that and landed in a dude's fishing boat.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
And he he got banged around a little bit, but
was not like, you know, a bitten or anything, and
basically went into his little control room, I think, and
called for help. And this shark like, I mean, it
was kind of sad. I think the chark just died.
But there were pictures of it. It's huge. It's like
eight feet long. Oh it's not a little guy.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, can you imagine? No, my god, that guy did
the right thing. He ran. He pooped his pants too. Yeah.
I may have jumped into the water had that happened.
All right, So living fossils, the bowfin.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
Yeah, the dogfish, mudfish or grindle, I like dogfish.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Yeah. This guy, I looked all these up.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
He lives in the Mississippi River basin, in the Great
Lakes and other places and are pretty mean supposedly like
eats small mammals, snakes, frogs, other fish. Yeah, like they'll
go after you. Right, It's sort of normal looking, just
sort of a long fish. Nothing remarkable as appearance wise, though.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
I'll tell you one that's remarkable appearance wise is the gar.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah. You know, I just saw a long nosed gar.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
They are so ugly last weekend and I was like,
it was floating dead in a lake. I was like,
what in the world. Because I went by it at first,
I was like, was that a swordfish?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Right?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Well, no, it's not a swordfish, right, but in the
long nose ones, I mean this thing had you had
a twelve inch beak?
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Oh, I mean it look prehistoric.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
Yeah, they very much do look prehistoric, which is one
of the reasons why they're called a living fossil. And
they are just mean. Apparently they're known to kill other fish,
even not even to eat them, yeah, just because they
were in their way. Basically like you see this nose. Yeah,
and you can't eat gar. They're inedible and as a
matter of fact, if you eat their eggs, it will
(34:40):
kill you. They're very toxic to humans yea. And they
just go around killing other fish, So they're not the
best thing to have in your lake if you like
the fish and a lake.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
No, and they did you ever see Vernon, Florida the documentary? No,
I've never seen that one by the great Errol Morris.
It has one of the interviews, it's one of my favorites,
with guy talking about talking about the garfish.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Really. Yeah, I gotta see that one. Come across one
of those.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
Oh boy, I finally saw a thin blue line for
the first time.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Oh yeah, that's a good one. It is really good.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
You probably saw it after the parody of documentary, Now, yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
I definitely did. I saw the documentary now.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Which they nail like. It's like perfect. They really do.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
One of the great shows. What's the next hagfish? Yeah,
mud dwellers.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Yeah, they basically look like eels, but they're fish. But
the interesting thing about hagfish, aside from the fact that
they don't have any eyes, is that they eat fish
from the inside out.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
I think you underplayed it when you said they basically
look like eels. It looks like something out of Dune. Okay,
like the body looks like an eel, But have you
seen the front end of this thing?
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Sure? It's frightening. Oh yeah. And to think about that
crawling up in you and eating it from the inside out.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Right, Because if you're dead or dying fish and you're like,
oh man, I hope I hurry up and die before
hagfish finds me. Yeah, and a hagfish swims down your
throat and then each you from the inside out. That's
a bad day. That's not a good death.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
No.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
And then lastly, what about the sturgeon.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
I love the sturgeon.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Did you know that they they are both fresh water
and saltwater here in North America.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
I did not know that. But I know one thing
is they're huge.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Yeah, they get up to like twenty feet long.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, And I didn't I didn't see any pictures of
in that big. But I've seen pictures of fishermen with
like sturgeon that look like they're at least eight or
nine feet long, right, and they're crazy looking.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Well, the reason I was surprised that they are largely
North America is I always associate them with the Baltic area,
where they they're The Beluga sturgeon is prized for its cavear.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
I always think of I think sturgeon.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Well I didn't realize that that's where beluga came from either. Yeah,
and they have armor like skin and they're they're these
retractable mouths that I guess there are different varieties, but
some of them look almost like alligators from like the
head forward.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
Yeah, they're weird looking fish. Yeah, but they don't want
to hurt anybody. They just want you to eat their eggs.
Is that true?
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yeah, they're like the giving tree of the lake. All right,
up with sturgeon, you got anything else? I got nothing else.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
But if you want to know more about living fossils,
like you know, sela, cants or us right, you can
type those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com.
And since I said search bar, it's time for a
listener mail.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
I'm going to call this my mom married Bob doro. Oh.
I like this one. You see that one, right?
Speaker 2 (37:41):
And I thought it was because that was the subject line, right,
And then the very first line of the email was
sorry about that attention grabbing subject line, right, And I
thought it was a lie because a lot of times
people say something remarkable in the subject line that is
completely false, which always ticks me off.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Sure, but this is true.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
My mom married the wonderful, talented and sweet Bob Doro
twenty three years ago. And if you didn't listen to
the show, Bob Dora was part of the genius behind
Schoolhouse Rock.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
You know, the original genius.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
It was wonderful to hear you, too, speak so highly
of him in your recent podcast. My own family listens
to you guys a lot, so to hear you speak
of our Bob with such reverence it warmed our hearts.
When you mentioned early in your podcast that you wished
you could have gotten Bob on the show, I wanted
to jump through my phone to say I can make
that happen. Bob learned about you guys about two weeks
(38:34):
ago when we took a short road trip for Mother's
Day and listened to the Grave Robbing episode. How awesome
is that?
Speaker 4 (38:41):
I know the guy listened to us right before we
released the Schoolhouse Rock episode. Yeah, so he was primed
and ready to hear us mention it fortuitous.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
He chuckled often during the ride, and when we got
to our destination, he asked something to the effect of
who are those comedy guys?
Speaker 1 (38:57):
They're good? Man. That made me feel good.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
And then to have the Schoolhouse Rock episode pop up
a few weeks later.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
It was like, whoa.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
You guys were spot on in your characterization of Bob
as a creative genius. A lot of his genius comes
from his hard work. The age of ninety three, he
is still traveling the world taking gigs.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
My mom often complains that he doesn't know how to
say no. Thank you for giving Bob in Schoolhouse rockets
proper due.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Next time you.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Come up the coast the northeast, that is, we'll be there,
and I'm sure Bob won't say no. And that is
from Pete, I guess his step son. Yeah, and Pete
sending a picture of he and Bob and that's.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Him in the flesh. It's pretty awesome, pretty neat, And you.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Should go to www dot Bob doro ru gh dot
com and just check it out.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Ninety three and going strong, nice going, Bob.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
Thanks for listening to us, and thank you Pete for
writing in to let us know that we were spot
on about what a great guy he is.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah, we were genuinely thrilled to hear this.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
Yeah, if you want a annuinely thrill us, you can
send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi everyone, Happy weekend.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I hope you're having a lovely, lovely Saturday wherever you
are in the world. We're gonna jump back in time
to June six, twenty seventeen to talk about Sela cants,
how Cela cants work. What in the world is a
Cela cant? I think I kind of remember. Check it
out right now.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry, Jerome Roland, just the whole
house Stuff Works Gang here to present to you Stuff
you should.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Know, all three of us. How you doing. I'm good? Yeah, yeah,
Oh I'm a little caffeinated.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I should warn you, oh a little bit, like when
teeth are to just come right out of my face.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
That's not good.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
You know, we did a video about Cela cants one time.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Yeah, like was it this day in history about when
they were discovered?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah. I ran across because it smacked as familiar to me.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
And you know, the constant fear we have of recording
an entire podcast over is sort of always there.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Yeah, the fear that sometimes comes true.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, So I definitely went back and looked, and I
was like, I knew he did something.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Yeah, we were trapped in a shipping container.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Right, I didn't watch it. I didn't either.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Enough to say, oh, yeah I remember that one. Yeah,
that really weird, weird thing we did.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
But this is really cool. I think I do too.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Cela cants were well, they're interesting, despite what the house
Stuff Works article.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Would lead you to believe.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Oh it was, Yeah, it was a little thin, wasn't
it a little bit? It was all right, okay, but
luckily the rest of the Internet is.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
There for us.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Right, thanks especially to Smithsonian and Mental floss for this one.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Right, Yeah, that mental Flass article is kind of neat,
actually it was.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
So you want to go back to the beginning, actually
the second beginning maybe.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Oh, well, I don't know what you're talking about now, so.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Just okay, well follow me. We'll go back to the
very beginning. We'll go back to something about four hundred
million years ago, okay, during the Devonian period, which is
aka the Rise of the fish, Yes, the Age of
the Fish. Right, And in this Devonian period there's a
lot a lot of stuff going on. Things have been
(02:37):
swimming around for a while on Earth. There's a nice
atmosphere that's developed. The things in the ocean are starting
to say, oh, what's out there? I want to see
what's on land?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, I want can just crawl out and see.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Yeah, I want to taste clover. So they start trying.
And during this period there was the progression from the
sea to the lane.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
And one of those things that was starting to develop
legs to get onto land was called the Cela canth.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, which A it means hollow spine, which is we'll
get to there's a reason for that. And B it's
spelled ceo E l A c A n t h,
which is, you know, not how you would think it
might be spelled.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
No or pronounced rather right, either one. But it's Cela camp.
It is Cela camp.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And what it is is a fish that is, like
you said, been around for a long long time. It's
kind of funny looking, and we'll get into all the
physical characteristics that make it unusual in a sect, but
it is notable mainly for the fact that everyone thought
it was gone forever until it was suddenly discovered. This
(03:57):
thing that that swam with the dinosaurs was discovered anew
in the nineteen thirties, right, and then again a little
bit later on.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Yeah, because it was it pops up for the first
time around four hundred and seven million years ago, I think,
I said, and then it just drops off eighty million
years ago. So they said, well, a lot of stuff
went the way of the dinosaur around the time the
dinosaurs went away, so that's probably what happened to the
(04:26):
Cela canth So it was quite a big surprise. In
the nineteen thirties when a trawler that was out fishing,
a trawler called the Narreen which is captained by Hendrik
Goosen off the coast of South Africa, came in and
as was Captain Goosen's wont he contacted the director of
(04:47):
the local museum in East London, a woman named Miss
Marjorie Courtney Latimer, and she used to come over and
look at the fish loads this guy would bring in
because they were buddies. Yeah, And he gave her a
call like normal and said, I got a load, you
want to come look at it? And she was like,
it's two days before Christmas and is blazing hot out.
Don't forget we're in South Africa at the time, huh.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
And she's like, I.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Don't feel like it, but the world was saved. The
world of ichthyology was saved this day. Yeah, because this lady,
Marjorie Courtney Latimer was so nice that she decided to
go look at the fish anyway, just to wish the
captain and his crew a merry Christmas.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
So she takes a look at this fish.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
And here is her quote as she recounted. It wasn't
her quote at the time or quote at the time.
It's probably a South African explative, right, but she said later,
I picked away the layers of slime to reveal the
most beautiful fish I had ever seen. And of course
only a fish lover can find this thing truly beautiful, Yeah,
(05:55):
because it's kind of ugly it is. It was five
feet long, a pale mauve blue with faint flecks of
whiter spots. It had an iridescent silver blue green sheen
all over. It was covered in hard scales, and it
had four limb like fins and a strange little puppy
dog tail. Not literally, of course, it was such which
(06:16):
would be great, though actually it did.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
That's the dogfish that has that.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
It was such a beautiful fish, more like a big
China ornament. But I didn't know what it was. And
it was pretty faithful that she was called in to
look at this thing, because it ended up being one
of the most important zoological finds of you know, history,
probably of the.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Twentieth century at least. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, this woman's curiosity,
something in her said, this is weird, this is unusual,
this is this is something worth looking into. So she
took it with her. This thing was like five feet long,
just under two meters, about one hundred and how many pounds.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
One hundred and twenty seven pounds. This is a.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
Significant fish, Yeah, and Mss Courtney Latimer talked her way
into a cab with it.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
She took a cab back.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
To the East London Museum with this fish stuffed in
the back seat, and she took it to the taxidermist
and had it stuffed. Unfortunately, the taxidermist wasn't completely aware
of how to preserve a fish for identification and threw
out the skeleton and the gills, which are what you
need for.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
The idea fish.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Apparently, well, she probably should have said something, well, she like,
this is no ordinary mount.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, right, she probably should have, or maybe she did,
and he just ignored her.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
He's like, I'm not going to get boss drawn by
a woman's nineteen thirty eight. So she contacts a guy
named J. L. B. Smith, who is an ichthyologist. He's
the head of the ichthyology department at a university in
Grahamstown and PhD in chemistry. He's a smart guy and
he's the the local fish expert as far as she knows.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, and their pals and so she said, hey, I've
got this weird looking fish. And then Smith his quote
was I told myself sternly not to be a fool,
but there was something about that sketch, and apparently it
was sketch.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
She sent him a sketch of the fish to begin with.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, that seized upon my imagination and told me that
this was something very far beyond the usual run of
fishes in our seas.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
And luckily, even though.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
The fish was, I guess mounted in a traditional form, which,
like you said, takes away, it's how you can identify it,
she was able to preserve some of the scales, and
somehow from these scales he was able to say, this
is a cola cant seala cant Well, that's what he said.
At first, and she went his pronounced seala cant.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
He's like, oh, apparently, he said when he saw that
scale and I and identified it positively as a seala cant.
His quote was, if I'd met a dinosaur in the street,
I't have been more astonished.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
I like that guy, a little hyperbole there, but I
like it.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
So he I mean, this is seriously, this is like
the zoological find of the century and would be for
the next sixty something years. Right, So he very magnanimously says,
you know what, I'm going to name this thing after you,
and he named it as a new species, Latimeria chilumnae,
(09:26):
because well, obviously her name is Courtney Latimer. Yeah, Courtney
hyphen Latimer.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
And it was found in the Chilumna River at the
mouth of it where it hits the coast off of
the eastern coast of South Africa.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
So that's a great name.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
It's perfect. Yeah, it really puts it in a place
in time.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
So they have now discovered this thing, they realize that
they have a big find on their hands. They thought
this thing had long been extinct by tens of millions
of years, and so they started to research and you know,
trying to learn more about this fish.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, which is no ordinary fish.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
No, but I mean this was so this was nineteen
thirty eight, right, Yeah, and it was the only one
that had been found for another sixty years.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:18):
I mean there's only so much you can find from
a stuffed fish. But it did prove because it had
been caught alive. It wasn't like they pulled up a
fossil or a dead fish. It had been alive when
it was caught.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
I think it was attached to another fish. Oh, really,
like potentially trying to eat it. Oh, okay, which is
one of the well, not unusual but interesting things about
the Sela camp is that it's it eats meat.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Well, there's a lot of unusual things about the Cela camp. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
So fast forward another sixty years exactly in Indonesia, which
is on the other side of the Indian Ocean, the
eastern side of the Indian Ocean. It was actually first
seen in nineth ninety seven by a biologist named Mark
Erdman who was in Indonesia doing his PhD dissertation, and
he saw a Cela cant in the market.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
That's crazy, that's a cela.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Can't what's that doing here? So apparently he put a
bit of a bounty out on it with the locals,
and within a year, by nineteen ninety eight, they had
brought him a freshly caught one.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah, which is quite a task.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Yeah, it's finding a once thought extinct fish. Yeah, it's
a big one. Well, and we'll get to a little
bit why. It's even tougher than you would think too.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Sure. So the one that Erdman found was brown, right, Yeah,
it was a little bit different color.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Right, the one like Courtney Latimer described, those are known
to be like steel blue. This is brown, a little
smaller than the one that Courtney Latimer found. And so
eventually when Erdman got his hands on that one, he
described it as a new species.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I mean, it turns out that at one point, you know,
hundreds of millions of years ago, there were you know,
potentially over one hundred different varieties of this fish, and
they came in all shapes and sizes. These obviously were
pretty big, but there were some that were smaller and faster.
Basically just kind of a wide variety. And as far
(12:23):
as we know, I think, are these the only two
known survivors?
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Yes, so far?
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Yeah, the one that Corney Latimer founder known as the
West Indian Ocean Seala camp those are the blue ones.
They're typically found off of the west, you know, the
east coast of Africa, south of Kenya, I believe, yeah,
down to about the Cormeros Islands. I think that's they're
(12:51):
actually also known as the Cormeroos Islands sela cant because
there's that's that seems to be where they inhabit the
most or the highest density of them is Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
And some of the weird some of the weirdos that
have well, we assume that they've been extinct, but you
never know. One of them was toothless and over ten
feet long. That was the megalo se Lacanthus very appropriately
some of them said, forget you, ocean, I'm going to
go to the fresh water.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
So there were actually freshwater selacants at one time.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And like I said, some of them were slow and
ambushed prey somewhere smaller and faster. But they've pretty much
universally all been predators from what I've seen.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
Right, And the two species that are alive today that
we know of are aside from that megalis Selacanth tend
to be a little bigger than the extinct species. Yeah,
which I read is a good it's a good example
of why they shouldn't be called living fossils, which is
(13:55):
what they're frequently called.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, that's Darwin's term for something that basically never changed.
And they've actually studied the genome of the selacant and
found that they very much haven't changed. And the kind
of the main reason is they haven't had to. They've
kind of stayed in the same places. And when you
(14:17):
say in the same places and you eat the same stuff,
then maybe you don't change so much.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Read.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
I read the opposite of that that they have changed
enough that they that they have been evolving, and a
good example of that is that they're bigger than they
used to be.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Oh interesting.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Yeah, but the two species that are alive today, they
have traced their genomes back and decided that they've been
separated for several million years at least.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, this one, they finally got the full genome and
they said that it does indeed match the fish's appearance
of slower evolution, and a journal published in Nature because
they have a slower rate of substitution.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Basically, she's the the doctor.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Well, yeah, I guess she is a doctor. Just sounded
weird to say that.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
The doctor the researcher who was also a doctor, Yeah,
who was She said it may reflect the fact that
they do not need to evolve quickly because they've lived
in relatively unchanging environment where there are a few predators,
and they basically haven't needed to change over time like
other organisms.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Well, that brings up another thing too. There's a big
question why would they just drop off of the fossil
record if they've been around this whole time, if they
didn't just go extinct eighty or sixty five million years ago.
The only explanation I've seen is that the places where
the fossils turned up were areas conducive to fossilization, Like
there's a lot of sentiment that could turn bone into rock,
(15:44):
and then the areas that the living species live at
now are not conducive to that kind of thing, possibly
because they're mostly living around volcanic rock that doesn't necessarily
produce fossils.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
You want to take a break, Yeah, let's take a break,
go back and talk a little bit about this funny fish.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Sevy shit.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
All right, So we've talked a little bit about what
makes the Sela camp such a interesting critter.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Can a critter be a fish? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Have you heard of the cuddlefish? That's a critter if
there ever.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Was, Yeah, a cuddly critter. So here are some remarkable
things about the Cela camp. They can live as deep
I mean they're deep water dwellers. They can live as
deep as two thousand or more feet, but generally they
think the I think they generally live about five hundred
(16:57):
to eight hundred feet and what they call the twilight zone, right, which.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Is still pretty deep.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Remember our cave episode, Yeah, that had the same thing.
Remember there was like organisms that live in the dark,
organisms that live in the twilight zone, and organisms that
live in the lighted zone. Yeah, these guys live in
that threshold between light and dark and the ocean. And
they apparently are nocturnal hunters.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, they come out at night, kind of stay hidden.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Most of these habitats are caves, right, that they tend
to stay in. But there's one off of Tasmania that
do not live in caves, and so they have officially
been placed on an endangered list because they don't have
the protection from bycatch that these other cave dwellers have.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Right, that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Yeah, So the average day or in the life of
Azila canth or at least the cave dwelling species, they'll
you know, during the day time, they're hanging out in
a cave. They'll hang out in a cave with I've
seen between up to twelve to sixteen other sela camps.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, have a little coffee, Yeah, maybe just talk.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Yeah, you know, talk about their night and then as
night falls, they'll leave their caves and they they'll go hunting.
And like you said, they're carnivorous predators. They do that
passive bycatch thing for the most part right where they
let the current bring the food to them.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
But they.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Just basically hang out and wait for a cuttlefish. It's
one thing. They eat, squids, other cephalopods, some fishes, but
they seem to not show aggression toward one another from
what I understand.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, and while they are passive hunters, they do have
an unusual feature which is, like we said, one of many.
But they have what's called a rostral organ which just
means it's in the nasal region and their snout and
it's filled with a jelly like substance that they think,
and they think most of this stuff. I mean, they've
(19:01):
done a lot of good studying, but for something so rare,
you can't be super sure. But they think that it
detects low level electrical signals and frequencies from prey.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah, like a shark or a ray. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
It's an electro sensory organ where when living tissue contacts water,
it can make an electrical impulse that can be picked up.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
And this cool Mental Floss article is I think eleven
eleven things about the sei loocanth. I can't remember how
it was put, but just eleven interesting features.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Eleven fishy facts was that it.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Unfortunately that's why I forgot it title aside, it's an
interesting article. And one of the things that they don't
know why they do, and I have a feeling it
has to do with that electrical frequency, is they'll swim
nose down for up to two full minutes, which is
weird for a fish.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
They're just kind of hovering in place, head standing, right.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah, yeah, And I guess I mean, if they have
that nasal bag of jelly that helps them locate fish,
I would imagine that's what they're doing there.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Right, I imagine it like tonto, like holding a railroad track,
you know, Yeah, I think it's the same thing.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Basically, So.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
When they catch their prey, they eat them, and they
can eat stuff that's way bigger than them because again,
which is this is unique to see the cants among
living things. They have a hinge in their cranium that
allows basically their head is convertible, the top of their
skull can retract, allowing their mouth to open really wide,
(20:41):
so they can eat a large, large cuttlefish.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
And I think that feature also allows it to their
mouth to close with like much greater.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Force with extreme prejudice.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, like when it's unhinged emotionally, and basically it can
really close that mouth super hard.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
They hate themselves for eating cuttle fish, so they just
can't stop.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
So those are just a couple of the features.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Another is, and we mentioned earlier that the name literally
translates into hollow spine. This is because they have what's
called a notochord, which is a hollow pressurized tube filled
with oil where a lot of fish start this way
and then they'll eventually get a spine. But this doesn't
(21:29):
go away.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Right, and not just fish vertebrates apparently there's a lot
of mammals that go through this, I think possibly even
humans in the embryo.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
And the selacanther just says, I'm good with the notochord.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
I'm going to stick here. Yeah, I'm going to stop here.
Which is strange. It is strange. You want to hear
some more stranges. I could do this all day.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Well, it's a strange fish.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Celacanth. We don't quite understand how they reproduce, and the
reason why is because males don't seem to have any
sex parts.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
They don't have junk.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
They think possibly males grow it when they need it,
but it's otherwise. It's it's not around the showers, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
So we have no idea how they reproduce, but we
know that the mode of reproduction is called ovo viviparity,
which is, however the eggs that the female has get fertilized.
Once they're fertilized, they gestate or the eggs develop in
the female, and then they hatch in the female. Yeah,
(22:38):
and then the live fishes continue to gestate and like
the whole period lasts like three years before they're born.
So they go from egg to being hatched to being
born within a three year period, and so apparently this
does not make the mom. Sila can't very happy, and
(22:59):
sometimes she will try to eat her newborn pups.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
So supposedly selacanth pups that's what they're called, can dive
really deep, very quickly the moment they're born, to get
away from mom, to get away from their mom, who's
like three years.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah, three years, paging doctor Freud.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, I think sharks may be the only other fish
that give birth the live little ones.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
I mean most fish lay eggs, right, so it's definitely unusual.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yeah, it may not be unique.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
But the other thing about their sexy time is there's
also a theory that they are monogamous.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
In twenty thirteen, a German team they had a couple
of corpses are too pregnant. I believe the African version, Yeah,
the Vladimir Chlumne and because what was I don't remember
what the other one was, it was Latimir something else.
For the Indonesian version.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Yeah, we'll just go with that for now.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
I was practicing pronouncing it Latimera menadoensis.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Okay, wow, thanks, nice work.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
So they analyze these two pregnant ladies unfortunately that we're
no longer with us. And they found out that they had,
like most definitely had a single father.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah, which they said was unusual.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Sure, because one of them had twenty six, twenty six
little baby pups inside.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
Of her, right, And they they thought at first, well,
maybe it's because the celacanth is so rare that the
female wouldn't have opportunity to mate with more than one male.
And they said, well, wait a minute, well that's true. Well, no,
not necessarily. Once they found out that they stayed.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
They hang out together.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
Yeah, in caves all day long. What else are you
going to do once general Hospital's over? Just looking around
at everybody, like, well, what do you want to do?
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
All right, Well let's ponder that and take another break
and we'll finish up with even more interesting things about
the Seila.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Camp Sevy shit.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
All right, so these guys have live babies. They might
mate with a single mate. Good a they have They
can unhinge their jaw to eat more. They have a
jelly filled thing in their.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Nastra that detects electricity, detects electricity.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
I know I'm having trouble saying to text.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Uh what else? This is sort of a recap.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
They have an oil filled spine.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Oil filled spine they're just good with. They're like, I
don't need a real spine.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
This one's my favorite. They were long thought to be
the missing link between the fishes yea and the tetrapods,
which are land dwelling for lambed animals.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yeah, because a notable thing I don't think we mentioned
yet is this thing has well. I think I did
a quote from Miss Latimir Courtney Latimir. But they have
four fins that smooth, sort of like you would think
legs would move if a fish could swim out onto
the beach.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Legs and arms. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Can you remember how Shaggy walked and Scooby Doo do
just like that. That's basically how a cila can't swim. Yeah,
And the fact that their fins are suspiciously arm like
in appearance just made people think that even more. What's more,
their arms, what are called lobes, are attached by a
(26:54):
bone that is compared to the humorous in humans. Yeah,
so a lot of people said, well, that's it. It's
the missing link. The celacanth is a missing link. Between
the fish and the land dwelling for limbed animals, and
apparently once the genome came around, he said, no.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
It's a little disappointing. They said, yes, we're all related.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
Technically, we are all what are known as sarcopterygians, okay, man,
which means we are fleshy limb vertebrates.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
So we're all that gross.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
So we are related, but it's not like our direct ancestor.
In fact, we're more closely related to the lungfish than
the selacanth. But the celacanth holds its place of honor,
is probably living on something of its own branch, and
is a very close cousin, if not bro of the lungfish.
So we're related by marriage.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
To the cela.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Can't say, but we legally we probably could marry a celacanth, sure,
and have it not be super creepy, right, except for
the fact that it's a fish.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Right, you feel it's a fleshy lobe thin stroking the
back of your head as you kiss it.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
I got something for you that was I'm just walking
right past that one. They taste gross, so don't think
it's some weird delicacy, right, not? You know that there
are that many of them to eat, but apparently if
you do eat them, they can make you sick because
these things are filled with urea, with oil, with wax.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Ester and fat. Yeap, like ninety eight point five percent fat.
That's just an skull. Oh I thought that was the
whole body.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
No, it's it's brain occupies one point five percent of
the area inside its skull. The other ninety eight point
five percent is fat.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
And that's at the point that they're an adult, right. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Supposedly their brains are bigger proportionately when they're younger.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
And they just stay there. Yeah, they're frozen in perpetual
like I guess.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Toddlerhood pretty much. They love life.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
Yeah, no responsibilities, no bills.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah, exactly what else I got one for you, okay.
Prestigial lungs.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Oh yeah, man, I love these things.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
So they grow.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
They had CT scans done and this is from the
mental article of these embryos, and they start growing little
lungs early in the gestation period and it slows down
a bit, and then by the time they're an adult,
the organ serves no purpose.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, it's just there. Yep, that's a good one. It is.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
It was It's almost like the ceilacanth was an attempt,
an evolutionary attempt, and it's just like, I'm gonna scrap
this design.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Let's move on to the lungfish. Yeah maybe so. You know.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
One of the things that struck me though, Chuck, was
when they were talking about how a couple of females
that had fully formed young in them ready to be born.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Were caught.
Speaker 4 (30:12):
It's like that was a lot of the Seila camp
population that got wiped out with those two caught fish.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Yeah. I mean, if there are only hundreds, then everyone matters. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
They think that there's possibly about a thousand of the
ones that live around Indonesia.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
And far fewer of the ones.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
That live off of the west coast of Africa on
the western side of the Indian Ocean, and as a result,
both of them are on the endangered species list. They're
both protected. The problem is is that if something happens
to these species and these species die out this time,
the whole order is gone for good this time around. Yeah,
(30:56):
unless we revide them with some of.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Their Yeah, all right, I got one last one and
this was on Mental Floss's list as well, under the
title A prominent hematologist once wrote a selacanth operetta, So
that's an attention grabber. Apparently in nineteen seventy five there
was a man named Charles Rand of Long Island University,
(31:23):
and he was a hematologist and was doing some work
with the celacanth, and this was when the big revelation
was they learned that it gave birth to live young
and he, I guess, was a music guy and decided
to write a little operetta about this discovery, titled a
(31:43):
Cela Camp's lament or Quintuplets at fifty fathoms can be
fun all song to the tune of various Gilbert and
Sullivan songs.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Right, that's a hematologist for you. Wow. Sure, I have
no comment on that. Well, I mean it speaks for itself,
other than I wish this was on tape somewhere.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Surely it's on YouTube. Everything's on YouTube, you think, Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
You want to go over some of these other quote
living fossils end quote.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
Yeah, so again there was there's some fishes out there
that may have made the jump kind of to land
or almost did, or what have you.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
But there's there's.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
Some interesting fishes that are worth mentioning.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Speaking of making the jump. Did you see that shark
that jumped into the boat the other day? No, there
was a fisherman and I guess the shark just did
you know one of their famous Uh there was a
great white Oh god, did one of its breeches where
they just jump out of the water. And this thing
did that and landed in a dude's fishing boat.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
And he he got banged around a little bit, but
was not like, you know, a bitten or anything, and
basically went into his little control room, I think, and
called for help. And this shark like, I mean, it
was kind of sad. I think the chark just died.
But there were pictures of it. It's huge. It's like
eight feet long. Oh it's not a little guy.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, can you imagine? No, my god, that guy did
the right thing. He ran. He pooped his pants too. Yeah.
I may have jumped into the water had that happened.
All right, So living fossils, the bowfin.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
Yeah, the dogfish, mudfish or grindle, I like dogfish.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Yeah. This guy, I looked all these up.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
He lives in the Mississippi River basin, in the Great
Lakes and other places and are pretty mean supposedly like
eats small mammals, snakes, frogs, other fish. Yeah, like they'll
go after you. Right, It's sort of normal looking, just
sort of a long fish. Nothing remarkable as appearance wise, though.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
I'll tell you one that's remarkable appearance wise is the gar.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah. You know, I just saw a long nosed gar.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
They are so ugly last weekend and I was like,
it was floating dead in a lake. I was like,
what in the world. Because I went by it at first,
I was like, was that a swordfish?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Right?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Well, no, it's not a swordfish, right, but in the
long nose ones, I mean this thing had you had
a twelve inch beak?
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Oh, I mean it look prehistoric.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
Yeah, they very much do look prehistoric, which is one
of the reasons why they're called a living fossil. And
they are just mean. Apparently they're known to kill other fish,
even not even to eat them, yeah, just because they
were in their way. Basically like you see this nose. Yeah,
and you can't eat gar. They're inedible and as a
matter of fact, if you eat their eggs, it will
(34:40):
kill you. They're very toxic to humans yea. And they
just go around killing other fish, So they're not the
best thing to have in your lake if you like
the fish and a lake.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
No, and they did you ever see Vernon, Florida the documentary? No,
I've never seen that one by the great Errol Morris.
It has one of the interviews, it's one of my favorites,
with guy talking about talking about the garfish.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Really. Yeah, I gotta see that one. Come across one
of those.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
Oh boy, I finally saw a thin blue line for
the first time.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Oh yeah, that's a good one. It is really good.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
You probably saw it after the parody of documentary, Now, yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
I definitely did. I saw the documentary now.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Which they nail like. It's like perfect. They really do.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
One of the great shows. What's the next hagfish? Yeah,
mud dwellers.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Yeah, they basically look like eels, but they're fish. But
the interesting thing about hagfish, aside from the fact that
they don't have any eyes, is that they eat fish
from the inside out.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
I think you underplayed it when you said they basically
look like eels. It looks like something out of Dune. Okay,
like the body looks like an eel, But have you
seen the front end of this thing?
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Sure? It's frightening. Oh yeah. And to think about that
crawling up in you and eating it from the inside out.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Right, Because if you're dead or dying fish and you're like,
oh man, I hope I hurry up and die before
hagfish finds me. Yeah, and a hagfish swims down your
throat and then each you from the inside out. That's
a bad day. That's not a good death.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
No.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
And then lastly, what about the sturgeon.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
I love the sturgeon.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Did you know that they they are both fresh water
and saltwater here in North America.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
I did not know that. But I know one thing
is they're huge.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Yeah, they get up to like twenty feet long.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, And I didn't I didn't see any pictures of
in that big. But I've seen pictures of fishermen with
like sturgeon that look like they're at least eight or
nine feet long, right, and they're crazy looking.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Well, the reason I was surprised that they are largely
North America is I always associate them with the Baltic area,
where they they're The Beluga sturgeon is prized for its cavear.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
I always think of I think sturgeon.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Well I didn't realize that that's where beluga came from either. Yeah,
and they have armor like skin and they're they're these
retractable mouths that I guess there are different varieties, but
some of them look almost like alligators from like the
head forward.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
Yeah, they're weird looking fish. Yeah, but they don't want
to hurt anybody. They just want you to eat their eggs.
Is that true?
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yeah, they're like the giving tree of the lake. All right,
up with sturgeon, you got anything else? I got nothing else.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
But if you want to know more about living fossils,
like you know, sela, cants or us right, you can
type those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com.
And since I said search bar, it's time for a
listener mail.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
I'm going to call this my mom married Bob doro. Oh.
I like this one. You see that one, right?
Speaker 2 (37:41):
And I thought it was because that was the subject line, right,
And then the very first line of the email was
sorry about that attention grabbing subject line, right, And I
thought it was a lie because a lot of times
people say something remarkable in the subject line that is
completely false, which always ticks me off.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Sure, but this is true.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
My mom married the wonderful, talented and sweet Bob Doro
twenty three years ago. And if you didn't listen to
the show, Bob Dora was part of the genius behind
Schoolhouse Rock.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
You know, the original genius.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
It was wonderful to hear you, too, speak so highly
of him in your recent podcast. My own family listens
to you guys a lot, so to hear you speak
of our Bob with such reverence it warmed our hearts.
When you mentioned early in your podcast that you wished
you could have gotten Bob on the show, I wanted
to jump through my phone to say I can make
that happen. Bob learned about you guys about two weeks
(38:34):
ago when we took a short road trip for Mother's
Day and listened to the Grave Robbing episode. How awesome
is that?
Speaker 4 (38:41):
I know the guy listened to us right before we
released the Schoolhouse Rock episode. Yeah, so he was primed
and ready to hear us mention it fortuitous.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
He chuckled often during the ride, and when we got
to our destination, he asked something to the effect of
who are those comedy guys?
Speaker 1 (38:57):
They're good? Man. That made me feel good.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
And then to have the Schoolhouse Rock episode pop up
a few weeks later.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
It was like, whoa.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
You guys were spot on in your characterization of Bob
as a creative genius. A lot of his genius comes
from his hard work. The age of ninety three, he
is still traveling the world taking gigs.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
My mom often complains that he doesn't know how to
say no. Thank you for giving Bob in Schoolhouse rockets
proper due.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Next time you.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Come up the coast the northeast, that is, we'll be there,
and I'm sure Bob won't say no. And that is
from Pete, I guess his step son. Yeah, and Pete
sending a picture of he and Bob and that's.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Him in the flesh. It's pretty awesome, pretty neat, And you.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Should go to www dot Bob doro ru gh dot
com and just check it out.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Ninety three and going strong, nice going, Bob.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
Thanks for listening to us, and thank you Pete for
writing in to let us know that we were spot
on about what a great guy he is.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah, we were genuinely thrilled to hear this.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
Yeah, if you want a annuinely thrill us, you can
send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com