Mystery of the Sea Circles

We’ve all heard about crop circles, and the entirely terrestrial reason they pop up in the occasional wheat field. But what about strange circles on the bottom of the sea? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick discuss the mystery of these ephemeral patterns and what scientists discovered about their origin. 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to
Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick and Robert. Are you going to make us
tread into some unsolved mysteries today? Oh yeah, We're gonna
get into some classic Unsolved Mysteries territory at least to

(00:24):
kick off this episode. Oh boy, do dick a dick
a do do do dick a dick a duty? There
you go. That takes me back back to the eighties
and nineties, especially around nineteen itself, because that is the
year that an episode of Unsolved Mysteries aired that touched
on crop circles Kingdom. Yeah, I remember there because they

(00:46):
weren't always just unsolved murderers and disappearances and Matthew McConaughey
screaming in a like a driveway somewhere. They got increasingly
into these, um, these paranormal things. It's right, these paranormal topics.
I don't know if it was just like the TV
I watched when I was a kid, like for for

(01:06):
whatever reason, whatever happened to be on in my house,
or if this is what TV was like in the nineties.
I remember nineties TV was just wall to wall paranormal cryptids, conspiracies,
stuff like that. Was that like what every show was about?
Or is that just what my parents were watching? Or
I mean for me, a lot of it was just

(01:27):
it was what was on, and then it was what
you gravitated towards. There are only so many channels, and
you watch TV at it's uh, you know, at its pace,
and so I would for whatever reason tune in and
watch and solve mysteries or in search of or whatever
kind of you know, cryptid pseudo scientific show happened to

(01:47):
be on. But yeah, I remember one of the things
that I was really convinced of from television when I
was a child. I must have been in second grade
or something, and I was like, oh, definitely aliens are real,
and that's abs salutely one of my issues. And those
crop circles, those are awesome and they were definitely aliens. Yeah,
the crop circles definitely were part of this the overall

(02:09):
sort of unsolved mysteries argument for the existence of aliens, right,
you had it was almost like a holy trinity of
UFO sightings, alien abduction experiences, and then those crop circles. Yeah,
you had the physical proof, the the experience, and just
the sighting of things in the sky. It just it
just felt like, here's the complete argument. Yeah, exactly. So

(02:31):
the crop circles were the one part of it where
you didn't have to rely on somebody's eyewitness testimony. It
was just like, here's the evidence. What else could have
made these circles. It turns out maybe a lot of
things could have, especially like people. But um, but some
of you look at some of the circles and you
can see why people were convinced, Because I am quite
impressed by the artistry of a good mini crop circles.

(02:53):
You go and like google these images. In some cases
I'm like, why aren't these hoaxters just like artists? Some
of them are quite beautiful. Oh yeah. I mean for
anyone who hasn't seen photos of crop circles, which I'll
be surprised if you haven't do a search see these things,
they are impressive in many cases. Uh. They begin popping

(03:14):
up in the nineteen seventies, mostly in the UK, and
they had these just increasingly elaborate patterns. You know, they
started off kind of simple and they just got more
and more elaborate, to the point where it becomes it
becomes kind of difficult at times. So look at it
and think of just a few human hoaxters running around
in the night. Now, to be perfectly clear, we should

(03:34):
explain the exact physical reality of what a crop circle is. Generally,
it's in a field, often like a cereal, you know,
like a grain like wheat field or something like that,
where there would be tall stalks of something, of plants,
and that they get flattened in a pattern that's usually
circular in nature and often increasingly complex as the years

(03:54):
go on. Yeah, I have to also throw and even
though I don't recall if I if if you had
crop circles showing up in corn fields, I think maybe, yeah,
maybe so. But I feel like there's also the fact
that that you had children of the corn and it's
it's infinite sequels popping up around the same time. So
there was this idea in especially like the Zeitgeist to

(04:17):
the VHS store going Child, that large scale agriculture is
is just inherently creepy. Yes, well, there's it showed up
in the X Files a lot. There would be like
X Files episodes where they stumble onto a big, scary
farm and something's happening there. There's like the farm where
they had the bees, these genetically engineered bees or something. Okay,

(04:38):
so you got genetically engineered bees, you've got what he
who walks between the rows I think was the love
crafty and entity and the original children of the corn.
And then you have these complex, at times geometric patterns
that are just carefully lined up out there in the
middle of a field. Now, I think the obvious implication
if you haven't delved into this literal nature, is that,

(05:00):
like space ships are landing, and for some reason, they
always land where there is tall vegetation near civilization to
be photographed. And another thing is that crop circles often
don't look all that impressive if you're standing on the ground,
but if you take a picture from up above, they
look really cool. But the idea is like a ship
lands and it makes these patterns. Yeah, I just got
like the cookie cutter pattern of the ship. But but

(05:23):
then there were other explanations as well. Well, it's maybe
not the ship just landing, but it's some sort of
alien communication, or it's some sort of mystic earth energy
such as orgone energy, oh boy, um or everything else
under the sun, including big big Foot a whole or boot.
He just occasionally morphs to have a big circular foot. Well,

(05:44):
you know, every night big Foot goes out there and
just starts pushing down the wheat until he forms his
complex geometric pattern. I don't know, we'll come back to
that theory later and just have to say, um, but
you had a whole whole organization's whole publications popping up.
I'd just go even so far as to say, you
have sort of a system of paranormal paranormal belief springing

(06:07):
up around these patterns. Now, as Carl Sagan points out
in the Demon Haunted World, he spends a little time
talking about crop circles. He says that at least some
scientifically minded folks or folks with some degree of scientific training,
did present some theories that were still a little fringy,
but at least based more in in observable reality. There

(06:30):
were theories that there was some sort of strange whirlwind,
like a columnar vortex or a ring vortex. Uh. There
were also those who said, okay, but it's gotta be
ball lightning, ball lightning, it is probably involved. I mean, obviously,
I don't think crop circles are caused by aliens, but
I think a lot of these other explanations are also
not maybe not as unlikely as aliens, but pretty unlikely.

(06:51):
But again, these were impressive patterns, and you know, they
were elaborate, they were beautiful, and they sometimes seem to
have been created in like near two to three hour
windows in the dark. And there would be additional accounts
of of how say, oh, well, there were no footsteps scene,
there were no flashlight scene, all of this adding to
the mystery and and making it seem, you know, increasingly

(07:11):
unlikely that humans had anything to do with this at all.
I don't know. I mean, I've already alluded to my theory,
which I think is pretty much the common theory that
people would have, is that these things are made by
people who are creating them on purpose as hoaxes or
art or whatever. I've never seen any crop circle as
impressive and even beautiful as some of them are. That
doesn't look like something that could have been created by

(07:32):
some people with a plan and some rope and a
board exactly. Now. I'll come back to Bigfoot at the
very end of this episode. But no indeed, Um, every
crop circle that has ever been reported is entirely consistent
with human activity, with human causation and human hoax making.
There's not a single crop circle that has ever been

(07:54):
observed where where experts will have weighed in and said, Yep,
there's no way humans could have done that. And in
every case humans could have done it, done it, and
humans did do it. Um is delightful and fun. As
most of the fringe explanations are, they're completely unnecessary when
we the human hoaxters are right here. In particular to

(08:15):
human hoaxters who made the headlines in Doug Bauer and
Dave Chorley announced that they had been making crop circles
for fifteen years. Who these were two Southampton residents in
the UK, And they said that they used first a
heavy steel security bar that you would like, you know,
far adoor with UH. They used that. Then they moved

(08:36):
on to planks and ropes and they were and then
they would use these to just push down the uh,
the wheat pushed down whatever the cereal crop happened to be.
And they were inspired by UFO stories and they started
doing it just for fun and it became progressively better
at it this time went on more daring in their execution,
and as people begin to follow their their were their works,

(08:58):
their exploits. They followed the literature as well, and would
even mess with them by intentionally throwing off interpretations, like
somebody might be commenting on, oh, well, there's this clockwise pattern,
and then so the next one they would do a
counterclockwise pattern, just to mess with them. Like they really
got into the spirit of the thing. And then you
have copycat crop circles popping up in the UK and

(09:20):
beyond the UK. It begins to take on a life
of its own. But then eventually they grew they grew
tired of the hoax. They were getting older. I think
they were in their sixties at this point. They realized
they couldn't carry it on forever UM and there was
just just less satisfying to do. So they were having
There was also some some difficulties in UM in dealing
with copycats, because there were some there's some pretty shoddy

(09:41):
work out there, and they apparently started trying to incorporate
like a d D because they were, you know, Doug
and Dave making sure that they kind of signed their work.
And this was of course interpreted by by by some
of the quote unquote experts as being some other kind
of alien glyph. Yeah dooms day um, but so yeah,

(10:01):
they came clean. Less elaborate crop circles continued, of course,
and as Sagan pointed out in the demon Haunted World quote,
as always, the confession of the hoax is greatly overshadowed
by the sustained initial excitement. Many have heard of the
pictograms in Serial Grains and their alleged UFO connection, but

(10:22):
draw a blink when the names of Bower and Chorley,
or the very idea that the whole business may maybe
a hoax are raised. I mean, this is a problem
that goes beyond just hoaxes, right, This is a problem
of any time there's an interesting story that turns out
to be untrue, and I would say unfortunately, as interesting
as the real world is, you do have to consider

(10:44):
the fact that, like, the more shocking or more attention
grabbing a story is probably the more suspicious you should
be of it, right, because that you know, there's a
natural selection effect on what kinds of stories get picked
up and repeated and shared on media and on the
internet these days, and all that that they just kind
of naturally, things that are very attention catching bubble to

(11:04):
the surface, and they have a better shot at getting
that kind of reach as a story than something that
is maybe more likely to be true but less attention grabbing.
And this is true of like scientific studies. I feel
like the ones that are most likely to later get
retracted are the ones that are like, wow, that's a
really weird result. And then the retraction doesn't usually get

(11:26):
noticed nearly as much, right, because that's just not that interesting,
and it will be like either the initial flawed study
or you know, or it'll be some story about a
flawed study that will continue to make the rounds on
social media, and then somebody else has to say, actually,
you know that this was retracted later on or this
was disproven. Well, then you always got to worry if
by bringing up the story again to mention the fact

(11:48):
that it's not actually true, you're just spreading the original
false story, even if you make clear that it's not true. Yeah,
I mean, I'm engaging with the post, right, and that's
probably it's probably being rewarded. In the Almighty Algorithm and
the Illusory Truth Effect, which we did a couple of
episodes about if people have been exposed to an idea,
even in the context of it being explained as being untrue,

(12:08):
they're more likely to believe it later. Right. And if
you really invested in the idea of crop circles being
you know, the communications from essentially the gods, right, uh,
then you probably have some spin on it. Right. Well,
these two guys came forward and claimed responsibility for some
of them, or maybe you know, some shadowy organization the
Illuminati paid these guys to come forward to Friday off

(12:31):
of everybody. But so the aliens, they were fall guys. Well.
As fascinating as crop circles are, they are not the
only case in the world where we can find strange
geometrical designs out in nature and wonder what caused it.
So with that little tease, maybe we should take a
quick break and then come back to discuss another realm

(12:52):
of strange geometric patterns out there to be found. And
we're back, all right. So today we're not talking about
mysterious circles here in the surface realm. We're talking about
circles in the deep, where humans enjoy far less freedom
to rework the landscape with their their hoaxes and their

(13:12):
ingenuity and also far less uh ability to observe these
strange patterns circles in the deep bone DUCKA DUCKA DUCKA
duty Unsolved mysteries, ladies and gentlemen, Yes so, but in
for a while this was an unsolved mystery. But here's
the thing. Sometimes a mystery presents itself and the answer

(13:33):
is even more amazing than anything we could possibly dream
up about underwater aliens or what have you. Yeah, I
think that can be true because often, even when we
discovered that the answer to something isn't actually aliens, which
of course discovering aliens would be fascinating, discovering that the
answer is something else is more likely to tell us
something about the nature of earth life, which is very

(13:54):
relevant to us. It matters on this planet. Uh so yeah, yeah,
I love a good deep seam history, right, I mean,
of course, like a mysterious shipwreck, that's that's great, But
you know where the ships came from, right, that's not
a mystery. What about other things that mysterious sort of
just shapely anomalies in the deep? Oh yeah, I mean
they're a number of different mysteries that have popped up. Uh.

(14:17):
Sometimes they're they're a bit vague, you know, like it's
just we're not sure to what extent the physical reality
on the seafloor matches our readings or you know, sonar readings,
what what would have you. But but but sometimes those
mysteries are related to what seemed to be unnatural patterns
of formations. For instance, there's Japan's uh Yonagoony Monument, where

(14:41):
there's the Gulf of Combat Discovery, and there a whole
list of others out there with varying degrees of verification.
Though of course in the in the extreme interpretation, they're
all potentially Atlantic. They're all atlantis. That's you know, there
were there was more than one atlantis, and they all
got swallowed by the sea. That's how it works. But
but a lot of these, uh you know that I'm

(15:02):
alluding to, and we could certainly come back at some
point to a more in depth look at them. But
a lot of times it's something like, oh, well, this
is these are some curious right angles appearing on the
sea floor. Or look at these strange spherical formations, these circles,
something that maybe looks a little stone in jask or
looks like it could be the remains of an ancient
city or the remnants of something that might have been

(15:25):
man made. Yeah, there's nothing more enticing than coming across
geometric patterns that seem out of shape in the place
you find them. That's why some like ice formations, you know,
sometimes ice crystals can form in ways that look as
if they've been designed artificially, things like snow rollers and
the like. You know, that's always cool and you wonder

(15:45):
like did something make this? How did this come about?
And so today we're going to be focusing on an
underwater geometric anomaly like this. So to get geographically oriented,
we're going to travel to Japan. Okay, So we're going
to an island called a mommy Shima off the southern
coast of mainland Japan, north of Okinawa. It's a volcanic
island with a humid subtropical climates, surrounded by coral reefs,

(16:09):
and home to plenty of interesting marine life. I know
there's some like whale watching stuff around there. I think
I've also read that it's like the northernmost point of
the Dugong Territory around there. And also for some reason,
it seems like a lot of famous singers come from
this island, or at least they're listed on its Wikipedia page.
I'm not sure why why all the singers, but maybe

(16:30):
somebody has a clue there. But back in divers off
the coast of this island, found a strange anomaly in
the sea bed. So to picture it, imagine you're swimming
along over the surface of the sea floor and you've
got your scuba tank and all that, and you come
across a strange pattern of dunes in the sandy sea bottom.

(16:52):
Now they're not just random drifts of sand like you
might expect to see created by the patterns of moving water.
These elevations and depressions in the sand actually form a complex,
striking geometric shape. They're arranged in a giant circle about
two meters in diameter, so it's like six or seven

(17:12):
feet wide. And it's not just a circle, it's circles
within circles, with radial trenches, usually in different layers, dug
into the seabed, and evenly space trenches for these outer rings,
with radial trenches that extend out and then towards the center,
with this complex maze like pattern of shallow trenches and

(17:34):
veins inside an innermost disc and if I may voice
my opinion, it is creepy looking. It's a it's a
real suggestion of like forbidden geometries and coded messages from
the Hadian angels of the deep, isn't it? I mean,
absolutely it. Yeah. It has the look of saying an
eye opening on the sea floor. Yeah, but with like

(17:56):
a maze in the pupil of the eye and bone
is in the iris of the eye. Yeah. If we
if we were to do yet another stuff to blow
your mind spinoff, just for underwater stuff, I would say,
let's do that. This is the logo. Oh, it should
absolutely be Oh yeah, there's no plans to do that,
by the way, but if we did that, this would
totally be it. I just say that would be a
good choice. Now. The circular patterns in the ocean floor

(18:19):
have been known by several names. Sometimes they're called mystery circles.
Sometimes they've been called underwater crop circles. I guess that
makes sense if your crop is sand. Uh. Though funny enough,
I think there are actually like sand harvesting operations all
around the world that I think can sometimes be quite destructive.
But these are not great names. We can do better, Okay.
I propose What about poseidograms? That's nice, that's nice. It

(18:43):
could it? It conveys a sense of communication. Yeah, and
of course, see God, and this thing really does in
many ways look like a symbol or deliberate work of
art or communication. I've got a couple here. How about
protean oscillations of the Tritonian sand. Okay, that's if you're
if you're not into the whole brevity thing, but that's

(19:03):
a good one. Or another one I have is Sirenian
spiro graphs. Yes, I feel you on that one. Oh
my god. It is like a spirograph, like those uh things,
what is that toy called? It called a spirograph, But
we don't have one in our households, so I'm not
completely sure. I never had one as a kid either.
The inner disc especially really, because you've got these like

(19:24):
radial trenches going out towards the outer edges. But this
inner disc, especially with the more the weird or more
maze like structure, it reminds me of a spirograph sort of,
or kind of like you know those Celtic not designs
I see, people. I don't really know anything about what
those are. I think they have some kind of cultural significance.
I don't know anything about him, but it looks kind
of like that Millhouse would have loved this. Millhouse, Yeah

(19:47):
I did. It wasn't Millhouse spirograph enthusiasts. Oh, I don't know.
It seemed to recall that he was, Well, if he
goes down scuba diving off the coast of this island,
everything maybe coming up Millhouse because he might be likely
to come across one of these. But the question is
what causes them now they're sighting in nineteen wasn't the
only time they've ever appeared. Other divers have apparently spotted

(20:09):
them across the years, no doubt, always making people wonder
about the messages from the alien deep or elaborate unannounced
like underwater art projects. And to go back to some
of those crop circle theories, it's easy to imagine that
someone might have seen these and contemplated some sort of
strange vortices in the deep being behind it. You know,
some sort of uh, you know, vortex swirling up the

(20:31):
sand and leaving this pattern. You can maybe imagine something
like that. It feels almost too deliberate or designed to
be that way, but you know, some sometimes things in
nature can be deceiving, like we were just talking about,
like some formations of ice look really like they were designed,
but they're not. They just grow that way. I mean,
you look at a snowflake, right, I mean, it's we're
all kind of over it. We've all seen snowflakes. We

(20:53):
know the complexity and beauty of of the crystals. But
if you if you take a step back, can you
sort of you know, clean the slate and look at it?
And this is absolutely amazing to behold. It looks like
something that has been designed, and all that just tells
you that our intuitions about what looks natural and what
looks designed or sometimes sort of on track, but they

(21:14):
can be way off base too. Right now, if we
consider the idea of design for these things, like if
they were some sort of underwater art project like the
crop circles, if they've been made by hoaxters or or artists,
people who wanted others to come see what they had done,
I would have wondered, how would a human expect them
to be discovered? With them being down on the seabed,

(21:35):
and with them being so ephemeral in nature. I mean,
these are not monuments made of bronze. They're not even
crop circles with flattened grass and plants. Their their patterns
carved in underwater sand. So they're liable to be washed
away by the whimsical you know, mechanics of water and
marine life in almost no time and probably a matter
of days. Who would make such a thing, Well, you

(21:56):
might say Dug and Dave from earlier. I mean in
a weird way that the time frame would match up
ninety one they're done with crop circles ninety Suddenly their
circles on the bottom of the sea. Maybe they learned,
they got their scuba licenses and they set out for Japan.
Uh No, that's not what happened. But but you know,
if we were to compare this to human art, I

(22:18):
would say the nearest examples I can think of sand
castles or the mandalas of colored sand and Tibetan customs.
Except you know, as we alluded to earlier, they're they're
not only fleeting, but they're in places of extremely limited
human traffic. Yeah, you would only expect to like scuba
divers to find these, right, and then you know, there

(22:39):
there there, there may be in areas where they just
aren't that many. Well, there aren't that many scuba divers
just period, compared to the rest of the human population.
Uh I certainly compared to other creatures living in the sea,
and so that most of them might just go unobserved.
It would be like if I decided to build a
tiny stone hinge out of barbecue pork ribs in the

(22:59):
middle of a rain forest. You know, like nobody's gonna
see it, and it's beginna gonna be gone. You know,
probably almost immediately. Some ambitious artists out there is taking note, though, Robert,
you know, actually I can see that being a great
art project if you just leave a camera filming it,
like put put food out in the rainforest of various kinds,
and just time laps watch what happens to it. That

(23:21):
is art. Well there we were going into this a
little bit in our old episode Unfinished on various unfinished
pieces of art and art that is intentionally unfinished, and
I think we've talked a little bit about art that
is intentionally fleeting to I mean, various sculptures that have
been made out of something that will decay um or
if certainly the self shredding piece of art that banks

(23:41):
see uh, debut. You know that's sort of pretty good.
That was pretty good. I did like that. So it's
not to say that these patterns are like beyond the
pale when it comes to human art, Like, yeah, humans
could conceivably do this. We are weird creatures, but the
actual explanation is even weirder. So we're gonna take one

(24:04):
more break and when we come back, we'll see if
you managed to guess. So you have one more ad
break to try and guess what is causing the pattern.
Thank thank alright, we're back. Okay, So now we're going
to get to the real explanation for the underwater crop circles.
So around two thousand eleven two thousand twelve, a team

(24:25):
of researchers named Hiroshi Kawase yoji Okata who also I
think is an underwater photographer who documented these these patterns,
and Kimiyaki Ito. They finally performed research to confirm the
origin and function of these underwater mystery circles. The results
were published in Nature Scientific Reports. And here's what we

(24:48):
found out. The real culprit is fish sex. Fish sex
always weirder than aliens. You're right, and we're never going
to run out of amazement for fish sex. We talked
about this with Mara Hart, like the marine marine reproduction
is just like it's the what's what's the magical thing?
The endless bag you just reach in and the bag
of holding I guess or the magic well, yeah, you

(25:10):
just never run out. There's always more interesting weird mating
and reproduction practices under the waves. Now certainly finished listening
to this episode before you go in search of footage,
but there is some fabulous footage of what we're gonna
be talking about here in our devoted Attenborough viewers probably
guest from the very beginning because the fifth episode of
the six part TV series Life Stories from a couple

(25:32):
of years back has some amazing footage of the circles
and then the fish sex responsible for it. If you're
a Netflix viewer in the United States, then you have
access to this show as of this recording. Did that
come out? Yes? I believe you did. Yeah. I actually
went and watched this, especially after you recommended it, and
it is wonderful to watch. It's also kind of funny,

(25:54):
but be just beautifully filmed too, and they do a
great job revealing what has been created the sand. It's
a BBC Nature documentary. You know, they know how to
do it. So specifically, these forbidden geometries were caused by
the mating rituals of a genus of puffer fishes called
torqua jenner, which in Latin I believe means something about
making circles. I think like the Latin word torquise can

(26:17):
be translated as necklace, but I'm not fully sure about
that translation. I think there's something going on there anyway. Specifically,
the species in question is now called Torqua jenner album maculosis,
or the white spotted puffer fish, and Robert IV included
an image for us to look at here. I'm sorry
you at home can't see it, but we'll do our

(26:38):
best to describe it. He's a small but magnificent little specimen. Yeah,
if you're looking up this episode at Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com, I will include uh an image
of these fish below the fold. You know, so it's
not to spoil it for anybody, but you might look
at them and you're you're gonna instantly recognize that this
is some kind of of puffer fish. You know, they

(27:00):
the distinctive kind of head shape and face, and sometimes
it is very much like a face. If you've ever
been doing aquarium and you've got to take a picture
of them with your smartphone, sometimes it will do the
like the little facial identification square over their little face. Yeah,
or if you and then if it's yeah, they were like, oh,
I see the face. Let's let's frame this up. And

(27:20):
then when you go to put that photo on social media,
it may say, hey, don't you wanna tag the toadfish
here or auto tag isn't this your friend Jeffrey? Yeah,
this is this is probably Jeffrey or harn or one
of these other people. Um. Now, one of the things
THO is when you look at this particular puffer fish,
you might think, well, this this guy is not that flashy. Uh. Now,

(27:42):
to be fair, he's still a beautiful fish. All the
members of the family uh Tetrio Dante de Rio are beautiful.
Because we're talking about puffer fish, puffers, balloon fish, blowfish,
blow ease, bubble fish, globefish, swell fish, toadfish, toady's, honey toads,
sugar toads, and the mighty sea squab um. Now they

(28:04):
are related to porcupine fish, but they're not. But the
porcupine fish are not actually part of this family. Still,
they're they're all amazing creatures. So many of them are toxic.
They can move their eyes independently, some can actually alter
their patterns for camouflage purposes, and puffers can of course
inflate their bodies with water or even air if they're
out of the water to form an imposing people to

(28:26):
take on the form of an imposing spiked sphere, you know,
kind of like the head of a medieval mace. And
is this the reason that they often look kind of
strangely shaped to begin with? Yeah, sometimes they have a
very boxy appearance. But anyway, back back to t albu maculosis.
Here he's beautiful, but unlike the rest of the family,
he's he's not that flashy. He doesn't have amazing glittering colorization,

(28:49):
he doesn't have a bunch of cool spines. So when
it comes to catching the eyes of the potential mate,
he has other tools up his sleeve, exactly right, And
that's where this underwater sign in the sand comes in.
If the male wants to mate, he carves the sacred sign.
It's like a like like a like a hoboglyph for
for breeding. Yeah, it's not except instead of like good

(29:11):
beans here or whatever, it's like good mating here. Uh
So we've heard of males in the animal kingdom before
who advertise mating fitness with big tails or loud songs
or bright colors. But this, this building of what looks
like geometric hard in the sand of the seabed is
a strange and fascinating form of mate attraction. Now, of course,

(29:32):
these puffer fish would not be the only animals that
build a physical structure to attract mates. One example to
immediately comes to mind that we've talked about on the
show before is bower birds, where males build these elaborate
nests to attract females for mating. Yeah. And if you
want to talk about nature documentary superstars, that bower birds
have definitely enjoyed a lot of screen time. Yeah. They

(29:56):
craft these these structures that entail form and color. Is
that you know there are purely statements of fitness. They're
not building structures to live in. It's all about communicating
with a potential mate. Another interesting thing about bower birds though,
that that sometimes I forget if I'm watching like one
documentary covering one species and not another species is that

(30:18):
some species of bower bird are rather plain looking, kind
of fitting the uh you know, the the the form
we've been talking about here, a creature that is not
flashy but does something flashy and yet at the same
time you have creatures like the flame bower bird, which
has has kind of the same color scheme as those
bright orange dismemberment prone fieries and Jim Hanson's labyrinth. Do

(30:40):
you remember those creatures. He looks to me like a
Days of Thunder sunset. He does. Yeah, he looks. He's
actually's brighter than the fier He's he's brighter, just about
brighter than any sunset I've seen. He looks as bright
as like the most obnoxious slushy you might purchase at
roadside slushy stand. He's something from that flipbook that to
the tables at Chili's. Yeah, exactly. So he's he's this

(31:03):
is already a really bright specimen. So it's almost kind
of amazing to realize that that he's going he's going
to step beyond, he's going to create this this impressive
bower to bring in a mate. Now, one interesting thing
about bower birds is that, you know, you see this
contrast between like flashy colors that they would show off,
which are often a sign of like mate fitness that
males can use to signal attractiveness to females, but also

(31:26):
building these nests is that I I have read that
there is sometimes a trade off there, like the flashier
looking bower birds build less elaborate nests and the ones
that look, let you know, more drab and have less
colors and stuff build more elaborate nests, presumably as like
a compensation mechanism. It's like, hey, I don't have all

(31:46):
the you know, the flashy outfits, but I can build
a really good house. Well that's reassuring. It feels like
there's still some balance to the universe. Now. Another bird
that I really love for for its nest building capabilities
as an advertisement of mate fitness is known as the
brush turkey Alectura lethomi. And these these are pretty funny.

(32:07):
I think they're one of my favorites. Um So, there
are species of megapode, which is the type of bird.
Of course, megapode means huge foot, and the males of
this species build these gigantic mounds of rotting compost, often
as big as a car like one to one point
five meters high and four meters wide out of soil

(32:27):
and dead plant matter and just rotting stuff. And these
are nests they used to attract females, and they're not
merely an esthetic statement, like, you know, why wouldn't you
like to come hang out on my gigantic pile of
rot The decomposition of dead stuff that's taking place in
the mound actually generates a lot of heat which helps
keep the females eggs warm when she lays them on

(32:49):
the mound. She's chosen and they apparently the brush turkeys
even reportedly regulate the temperature of the mound by adding
a removing plant matter if the temperature isn't just right,
it's brilliant. But as you can imagine, building like a
car sized amount of rotting plant matter is not an
easy task, you know. So a turkey does this, it

(33:09):
might take him a month to do it, and it
can basically like wear him to death to do this thing.
So you've got to think about the real stakes that
are taking place in nature here. Just building this big
compost heap to mate in. This is a This is
a serious investment that could be thought of as like
a life or death proposition. And this brings us back
to the white spotted puffer fish. What what are its reasons? Right?

(33:31):
Like what it's it's it's making an investment here of
what sort of investment? Yeah, exactly when you look at
these strange, ephemeral carvings in the loose sentiment of the
sea floor, what is the male puffer fish doing? And
why is the female attracted? And also, I mean consider
the amazing disparity in scale with the amount of work

(33:52):
we're talking about here, because these patterns that are carved
in the sand are up to two meters across, which
is like six or seven feet. Meanwhile, this fish that
makes them is only like ten to twelve centimeters long,
maybe about five inches. So to get a sense of
the scale of this and the work involved, I want
to quote our friend and recent guests on the show,
the marine biologist Mara Hart, from her book Sex in

(34:15):
the Sea. She writes, quote, next time you visit a beach,
imagine building a giant sand wheel with radiating spokes and
troughs that stretch over one feet across. Now, imagine carving
the whole thing by scooting around on your bottom, which
is basically what this male fish does. This tiny fish
that could fit in the palm of your hand, builds

(34:36):
this giant elaborate artwork by rubbing its body and fins
along on the sand, vibrating its pectoral fins, anal fin,
and tail fin, and pushing its ventral surface which means
it's underbelly, into the sand to sort of push it
down and forward. And after he's carved these peaks and
valleys into the sand, he also further decorates the carving

(34:58):
with bits of material he lines, like coral and pieces
of seashell that go up on the along these radial lines. Apparently,
this usually takes about a week of constant work to
make the design like this. And as we've been saying,
it's like it's totally ephemeral. This nest that it builds
in the sand will soon be churned away by the sea.
So why all this work now? One idea is that

(35:21):
this elaborate design helps the female find the male puffer fish, right,
because when you make a design like this, it creates
an unnatural pattern of contrast and bright and dark patches
along the seafloor and the sand attracts the female's eye
on the otherwise monotonous bottom of the ocean. Right, It's
it's like it's a roadside billboard advertising Hey here, I

(35:44):
am right now. This might be part of the explanation.
It probably does help her see him, but it's clearly
not all of it. So I want to refer to
a study by the authors I mentioned earlier, by uh Kawasi,
Okada and Itto. And this is their study from in
Scientific Reports, roll of huge geometric circular structures in the

(36:04):
reproduction of a marine pufferfish. So the researchers here hypothesized,
based on their observations that something about the quality of
the nest plays a role in mate choice, like you
build a better nest and you get a better chance
at mating. But they had not identified what all of
those qualities of an attractive nest were. Though here's one

(36:24):
possible element that comes out of their research. They found
that the creation of the structure is probably not just aesthetic.
It's not just that the female likes the way it looks.
It actually does something. And what they found is that
the process of digging the radial trenches, when the mail
goes through and digs these radial lines that go out

(36:45):
to make the outer circle of the pattern. It tends
to stir up fine grained particles of sand and helps
push them towards the center of the circle, so that
the finished product of this symbol, nest should contain very
fine sediment at its hub. Now, if a female begins
to approach the nest, the male will usually fan the

(37:06):
central disk of this fine sediment to churn up a
cloud in the water, and then he'll swim back and
forth through the cloud that he's churned up. And if
the female likes what she sees, she will enter the
nest area and travel to the center where these shallow
designs and the finest sand particles are. And if she
does this, the male will usually dart back and forth
a few times around the nest in a display of

(37:28):
some kind. I remember in in the section in her book,
Maura Heart mentions that it's hard not to think of
him being like, did you see this part? I made
this and this too? I mean he looks kind of proud. Yeah,
I mean that they're they're cute little fish. Yeah, I
mean they're they're cute little fish. It's very difficult not
to anthropomorphizes them. Again. You're coming back to that that
their distinctive sort of head and face shape. Yeah, if

(37:51):
the facial recognition algorithm in the computer has a hard
time telling them from human, who knows what you know,
we are very quick to look at an animal and
and see its behavior and think of it as human behavior.
But anyway, if if she is enticed, she she goes
to the center with the fine sand and they spawn.
She lays her eggs among this fine grained sediment, and
then she leaves, and then the male stays behind with

(38:13):
the nest to guard the fertilized eggs. You know, a
kind of beautiful twist here. He stays there to guard
the eggs. As the nest essentially dissolves and deteriorates around him.
All the art he has created is is steadily eroded.
Now I should point out about the spawning that they'll
they'll do this thing where the male will will will

(38:34):
bite the female's cheek. I've seen some some pictures of this.
In fact, I'll probably include a picture of this at
the bottom of the page and at stuff to bow
your mind dot com. But it's kind of endearing because
he's like, oh, he's given her a love nibble. It's
like a little kiss on the cheek. Now, another point
in all of this is that some scientists think the
ridges and grooves of the circle serve to minimize ocean

(38:57):
current at the center of the nest, and us would
protect the actual nest site from turbulence that might disturb
the eggs and expose them to predators. So the turbulent,
very turbulence that's eroding and destroying the circular artwork, it's
kind of taken a bullet for that central nesting area.
And I think also, if I understand correctly, that that
that protection from the ocean currents in the center also

(39:20):
helps keep the fine grain sand particles there that would
normally be more easily washed away by the water currents.
Now here's really interesting thing about these puffer fish. After
they hatch and and the young disappear, the male does
not reuse the nest. Instead, he goes on to build
a totally new nest for the next mating cycle, which

(39:41):
is a tremendous amount of work. Remember again, like trying
to think about building a like hundred foot wide uh
symbol in the beach sand by dragging your butt along
like that. It's just like, why go through all that
work while the old nest just continually gets washed away
into nothing Like we we don't I think often appreciate
how much of a risky investment building big nests is

(40:05):
for some animals in the wild. Like humans, you know,
we go to the gym to intentionally burn calories in
productless labor. Uh. For a fish living on the edge
of a wild energy economy, the amount of work it
takes to build an elaborate nest could potentially kill you.
It's kind of it's kind of like if what if
humans in order to mate each of his head to
make a concept album, like it was just required, Like

(40:28):
you weren't even gonna have a shot unless you you
fully rode and produce and like brought in sessions musicians
and and commission artwork and just had the full package.
And that was your communication to potential mates in the world.
You might go bankrupt during the process. You might get
terrible reviews. Friendship. This is my prog rock concept album

(40:50):
about the sill Marillion exactly, truly, it is the only
way to stand out. That's right. Reproductive fitness h exemplified there.
But anyway, Yeah, so with this question for the puffer fish,
like why make the rock opera album about the Silmarillion
new each time. Why not just like sort of like
touch up the last concept album you made. Yeah, we do,

(41:12):
like everybody most acts do, right, just do slightly retweaking
of what came before. Just do the sequel. And the
authors suggests that what's going on here is probably that
the process of mating. And then what's happening while you
know the eggs are they're waiting to hatch. It depletes
the nest of these fine grained sand particles, which are

(41:32):
somehow crucial for the female's eggs. That would make sense.
He has engineered this local environment and uh and and
now he needs to re engineer another. It's kind of
it's like he's cut down the forest, built the love hut.
The love hut is gone. Now he needs to find
a new virgin forest to uh to to to recreate
in his image. Yeah. Now, another study I just looked

(41:54):
at very quickly that I thought was kind of interesting
was also in scientific reports. It was us here in
eighteen by Missuchi, Kawasa, shin Away and Condo. And this
was called simple Rules for construction of a geometric nest
structure by puffer Fish. This answer is the question, Okay,
something must be happening in the fish's brain to tell
it how to build this underwater. You know posidogram, right,

(42:18):
So what's happening? And the study observed and formalized rules
for the creation of the nest sites, which it turned
out are actually a pretty simple algorithm that they were
able to recreate with a computer program. This kind of
reminds me of how we discussed in our episode about
spiders building webs how I really relatively simple list of
rules can lead to beautiful and haunting designs in nature,

(42:40):
Like the algorithm itself for the creation of a structure
by an animal doesn't have to be complex to create
an emergently complex final structure that that looks very impressive
to us. I mean, I imagine a lot of it
comes down to repetition. I mean, that's what we're seeing.
We're seeing patterns. We're seeing pattern patterns in the sand,
in the crops, what have you. But when you think
about the attractiveness of patterns like this, say, what does

(43:03):
the female see when she makes the choice? You know,
she's she looks at one nest versus another nest and
goes to one instead of the other, or simply goes
toward one but is not attracted enough to go to
you know, another one she comes across. I think about
these questions, like humans show broad preferences for certain kinds

(43:24):
of abstract geometrical shapes and figures over others. For example,
studies show that we broadly prefer curved and symmetrical shapes
over sharp, angled and asymmetrical shapes. And sometimes I wonder, like,
I don't know the answer to this, but I wonder
how deep do these preferences go. Is it possible that
animals with even you know, much simpler nervous systems like fish,

(43:47):
for instance, also have similar preferences in in abstract geometric shapes.
Not just that I, you know, have an avoidance behavior
when I see something that resembles a predator versus I
have an approach behavior when I see something that resembles
a mating opportunity or food. Do they have more generalized
like just geometric preference is rooted in the same kind

(44:10):
of deep elements that we have, like in our shared
evolutionary history. Yeah, I mean, I can't come, we can't help,
but come back to the fact that when we look
at these designs, that these puffer fish have created like
they are alluring to us. They captivate our imagination. Is
that a coincidence? Well, now that that's always a tricky
question when you start dealing with weird circles. You know,

(44:31):
you know, you know, maybe it is a coincidence. You
don't want to go too far down the road of saying, oh,
it's not a coincidence. It is intended. It is part
of the grand design that these are the aliens speaking
to me. You're misinterpreting, Robert. I. I do not mean
like that. I don't mean designed. I mean like is

(44:52):
is some deep trigger in our brain that makes us
like these rounded shapes with the maze like patterns and
the radial design, and that's highly symmetrical. Do we basically
have uh an approach type reaction in the brain? You know,
it's the basis of our general favorability ideas and approach
type reaction in the brain the same way that a

(45:13):
female puffer fish would. Is there a similar mechanism underlying
it in the two brains that could even have something
to do with shared ancestry or is it just a
coincidence that you know a pufferfish likes this design? And
we also like this design. I'm sure it could be
a coincidence. I just wonder. Yeah, I mean, well, you know,
undoubtedly they've been studies that have shown that humans have
a preference for, say, our architectural designs that appear more

(45:37):
like nature, that have more natural shapes and you don't
look like giant boxes that have fallen out of the sky. Yeah,
that's true. I mean I feel like you just always
have to wonder about the what what's causing these types
of attractions and other animals, you know. Thomas Nagel famously
wrote about, you know, you can't understand what it's like
to be about um, but I wonder or maybe in

(45:58):
some ways you can understand what it's like to be
a puffer fish. You can't fully understand it, but you
might have some of the same drives that exist for
you know, hundreds of millions of years. Well, then others
would say that there is no what it is to
be a puffer fish, right, I mean, it's just that
the puffer fish is as a state, is something that
we can try and put our minds into. But it's
it's ultimately and it's it's it's it's kind of like

(46:21):
trying to to grab the sand pattern. Right. Oh, you're
backing me into a corner of making me believe that
you are just producing words that pretend they came from
a mind. Well, you know, there's that that old philosophical argument. Uh,
if if you've never wondered what it's like to be
a puffer fish, and congratulations you are a puffer fiit
I just made that one up. And if you've never

(46:43):
wondered what it's like to be a radial trench and
a puffer fish nest, you know what it's like is
just anal fin all over you. Alright, Well we're gonna
close it out right there. We've we've solved the mystery,
or we didn't solve the mystery. Um Marine biologists solved
the mystery, but we have a present into the mystery
and presented the solution in this podcast. Now with our

(47:04):
question for everyone out there is, hey, would you like
more episodes about undersea mysteries? We could do that. There's
there are plenty out there. Maybe we could come back
and talk about some of these uh alleged underwater ruins
or strange structures and forms that have been detected and
what some of the more plausible explanations are uh that
don't involve Atlantis. Oh, Robert, you just made me think

(47:25):
that even though Atlantis is a false trail, the whole
phenomenon of supposedly disappearing islands is something interesting we can
visit in the future. Oh yeah, I'm always up for
some sunken uh cities and and and lost islands for sure. Um,
speaking of of underwater mysteries and uh and and so forth.
Some of you might be thinking, Hey, Robert, you what

(47:46):
happened about that show Transgenesis you were talking about. We
did a bunch of ocean stuff to get ready for that. Yeah. Well,
the thing is that the show uh was and is
ready to go, but we were asked to hold off
on publish sing it for purely marketing reasons. So and
I apologize for anyone um who encountered some confusion over that.

(48:07):
But the show is still coming. I'm so excited to
hear it, and you should be to keep an eye
out also if you want to listen to something else.
So besides stuff to blow your mind, check out Invention.
That is the other show that Joe and I put
together every week. It is a journey through techno history
it's a look at the various inventions, big and small,
elaborate and simple or seemingly simple or seemingly elaborate, spending

(48:31):
on which one you know. We're looking at all these
inventions that have changed the course of history and change
the shape of human experience. Definitely check it out. If
you like this show, we think you'll like that show too,
so go over to Invention, subscribe, check out our episodes,
and in the meantime, head on over to stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where
we'll find all of Stuff to Blow your minds episodes,

(48:53):
you'll find links out to social media accounts. Hey, on Facebook,
you'll find our group. It is called the Stuff to
Blow Your Mind Discussion Module. It's a great place to
talk about Stuff to Blow your Mind episodes, Invention episodes,
ask us questions, suggest episodes for the future. That's where
all of that goes down, and again, rate and review

(49:13):
wherever you have a chance to do so. That is
the best way to support our shows. Big thanks as
always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison.
If you would like to get in touch with us
directly with feedback about this episode or any other, to
suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
You can email us at blow the Mind at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands

(49:45):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Bl oh Man, you know, Joe, I realized we closed

(50:12):
out the episode and I never got back around a
big Foot, you monster, I know, knowing what we know
now about about these these mysterious ce circles and the
culprit behind them. Could crop circles? Couldn't? Could An alternative
explanation couldn't have been that Bigfoot monster sasquatches and their
their their kin. We're going out into fields and creating

(50:35):
mating circles to draw in other cryptids to mate with
right there at the center of the of the crop circle.
That's how you get those squatch a cobras. Yes, anyway,
I'll leave everybody else out there to uh to to
to think about and visualize all of this. But I
said I was going to bring it back to big
big Foot later on in the episode. I just wanted

(50:56):
to make sure we close that out for you. If
you're the person who makes the Sharknado movies, squat Chicabra
comes next. If you disappoint me, I'm going to shame
you on this podcast to the end of time.