May 28, 2013 • 22 mins
Extreme Mammals Part II: In this two-part Stuff to Blow Your Mind series, Robert and Julie discuss the amazing world of prehistoric mammals and count down their favorite weird warm bloods from the smallest to largest.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, my name is Julie Douglas,
and this is a part two. This is In our
last episode, we talked about wine mammals are amazing. Wine
prehistoric mammals are so extreme in their form, and then
(00:26):
we began to explore some of our ten favorite prehistoric mammals,
ten favorite extreme prehistoric mammals, and we got through about
three of them. And this episode is the continuation of
that list. So if you like, go back and listen
to the other episodes so you'll get an idea of
how we started rolling on this. But if not, if
you're you know, if your your iTunes skipped to the
(00:47):
last episode, don't be afraid to plow forward with this one. Indeed,
and just to mention it, Extreme Mammals is an exhibit
that is organized by the American Museum of Natural History,
and that is what got us into all this craziness
in the first place, because they have a wonderful exhibit
detailing these extreme mammals. All right, well, first off, in
this episode, let's talk about what I assume to be
(01:10):
your personal favorite, because you've already blogged about it once.
So UH introduced us to macro Kenia. Ah, yes, macro
Kenia thin legs, long neck, prehensile snout, about ten ft long,
and five hundred to one thousand pounds. We think, Uh.
Technically the macro kenya belonged to a family of ungulates,
(01:30):
which are hooved animals, and is a distant cousin of
a horse. Yeah, and it evolved independently in South America
and uh in the roughly equoin direction here. So now
those who's I should say, those are three toad who
feet which are which which are really in a way
come kind of more like a rhinos. This this is
one of those creatures that that kind of bleeds over
into different models because it kind of looks like a
(01:51):
camel in its basic dimensions. Then it has those three
toad who feet, they're a little more like a rhino.
There's a certain horsiness to it. Uh, And mamoth mammothest
is the big thing because of course it's trunk yes,
or suspected trunk yes. So if you if you see
this in the exhibit, um, if you're like me, you
automatically go to Sesame Street and you begin to think
(02:12):
about stuff upogus because this is what it looks like.
In fact, I kind of wanted to pet it. I
wanted to talk to it. It's amazing, and it is
sort of a jigsaw puzzle of animals. It's sort of
like the platypus in the sense that, um, you can
see you can see the influence of different animals. Yeah,
it's basically the jazz funk um blues fusion of animals,
(02:34):
I think. And certainly he really does look like snuffle
up agus. The illustrations we see of in are are
really cute. Yeah, that long trunk would have been used
to feed on low lying leaves of grass, but it's
horse like teeth point to this idea that it would
have also been chomping on grass. But the weirdest thing
about this this this guy, is that the nostrils are
(02:57):
right up on top of the head. And at first
it was thought that this feature would give the macrocanias
some sort of aquatic leg up. In other words, they
could maybe weighed in the water. But more likely it's
just the ideal position for the kind of hose nose
sports like. Basically, because people look at it, and you
might say, well, how do we know that thing had
an elephants? Now, how do we know I had a
(03:18):
little trunk going on up there? And it's because of
the position of those nostrils. Now, I did find reference
to an older theory that this positioning of the nostrils
meant that it had its nostrils had lips, which ended
up not being the theory that everyone's stuck with because
I mean, you can't even find an artist illustration of
what that would have looked like. And that's probably just
as well, because unless maybe Picasso had had illustrated it. See,
(03:42):
let's turn our attention now to a very very cool
glyptodont and this is something that is called data chorus. Yeah,
data chorus is pretty pretty awesome. And I think I
had a toy of this guy. So and everyone will
probably recognize this one because it's certainly an outlandish example
of an extreme mammal because nothing really quite looks like
it today. First of all, I mean there's shades of it,
(04:04):
shadows of it in some animals, but nothing quite like this.
First of all, armored suit. So I'm thinking about tortoise here,
like a giant tortoise big as a car. Yeah kind
of yeah, very Armadilla esque in a way, except harder,
Like you can we have remnants to this thing, and
like a child can climb underneath it. Um so for starters, Yeah,
(04:24):
covered with armor and then bony club at the end
of its tail. That looks like a medieval mace. Yes,
I saw that, and I was like, that is an
amazing I mean, you look at that example in nature
and to know that humans fashion tools that were similar
is just amazing. Whether or not they had the reference point, Yeah,
whether or not they had the reference point or not,
(04:45):
or it just came out of their imagination. That's what
I think is so cool about this guy. Um. Now,
a tale like that, of course it raises the instant
question what did it use it for? Because we look
at it and west I think, oh, it's a mace.
I bet he swung that thing around or she I
keep you in heat. But I'm going back to my
old childhood. Uh you know, I imagine the mamas males,
(05:08):
so he or she what we would think, Oh, it
must have swung that make tail around and just clocked
enemies left and right while the creature was trying to
to eat its it. It's vegetation, but it's one of
those things where we have different theories about what it
consists of. Yeah, well, there's an idea that it was
used to thwart would be suitors, right, so you would
(05:29):
wrestle with your tails and made the victor when the spoils. Right.
So it's a little bit just like elk locking horns. Right. Um.
But then there's also the idea that it was used
as a weapon to try to defend itself and then demolition.
I'm just kidding. Well, um, I guess I do like
the idea that is weird as this creature creature looked,
(05:50):
it was so sexy that it had to literally fight
suitors off with a spiked club. Well, yeah, so that's
my interpretation. I like that. Okay. The name actually means
pestle tail, referring to how if the spikes were removed,
then the tail would resemble a pistel. So you just
have to hook it up with a little mortar and
they can just grind some ancient herbs. Yeah, there you go.
(06:11):
Oh it's stumping grounds were modern day South America, as
were most of these ambles. By the way, South America
seems to be the epicenter of it. Pakistan's got some
winnerds as well. Mr lived as recently as ten thousand
years ago, and that's why we have some really great
fossilized remains of its shell al right. Next on the
list is is one that I was really amazed, amazed
(06:32):
by when I was looking at the pictures. There are
a number of crazy elephants that pop up in your
in anyone's exploration of prehistoric mammals, and we're gonna get
to some other crazy ones as well, But this one,
uh is in a way, it's not that crazy because
it basically it looks like a modern elephant, but with
shorter legs, and it would have been a woodland packaderm
(06:53):
roaming through Europe and Asia. It's about ten feet tall
three meters. But the Ananochists was really the It could
have been the ultimate war elephant. Like you just look
at this thing and you're like, that is a that
is a born war machine, the Ananarchist, because uh, it
had ten to thirteen foot long tusks that's three or
four meters and that is nearly as long as the
(07:15):
rest of the creatures. So imagine an elephant with just
enormous tuss tusks that they go out straight, uh, the
length of its own body. Just javelins of tuts. That's
what I initially thought of as javelins, and I sort
of imagined it running and trying to do its little
Olympic sport or you think it would just like at
the end of the day, the ananarchists would just have
(07:36):
to set aside an hour or two just to unskewer
the creatures. That's the other thing as I imagined, Yeah,
shish kebab of enemies piled up on these tusks um
And obviously it would would have been great for sort
of warfare or fending off other animals, but it also
would have been really helpful in digging, digging roots up,
(07:57):
digging plants up. Exactly. Although I feel like, if you're
this animal, you feel great about everything head on right,
you feel really protected, but everything else and because it's
gotta be unwieldy to try to move these tusks around,
so I would feel very vulnerable in the back. Yeah,
I realized that with all these I cannot look at
pictures of prehistoric mammals or dinosaurs without falling back into
(08:20):
this childhood thinking where I'm like, oh, how would that
one fight that one I'm playing playing like battle matchmaker
of each of these, like, oh, what would the what
would it be like of an an anarchist were to
actually square off with a triceratops. You know, so, well,
let's let's go through the other animals and if the
end of the podcast, let's try to figure out what
(08:40):
the fantasy square off would be. Although that's pretty good
right there. Yeah, alright, So the next one I want
to talk about is a giant giant rodent. Yeah, if
there is ever a rodent of unusual size or r
o us, this is the guy. Yeah, telecomus giganticisms. It
comes from the Late miles An epic about eleven million
(09:03):
years ago to five million years um Argentina the size
of a small rhinoceros and could weigh up to pounds. Yeah,
seven ft long roadent, the largest of the Dino Mayads
would be terrible mice. Probably the largest rodent ever to
walk the Earth's I mean the size of a small brhino,
(09:24):
like like a big hairy hippopotamus. Yeah that is six
ft long, okay, well six point six inches right, two
meters long. I mean again, I know that it's a
sort of anthropomorphosizing that I'm doing, but not really. But really,
if you look at the rodents that exist right now
and you try to imagine them, you know, six ft
(09:46):
six inches long. Yeah, this was just a broot of
a rodent and uh and one of the more extreme
examples you can find. And it's a testament to rodents
that two of them made the list. We have both
a horned wrath and a giant rat. So there you go. Alright,
we're gonna take a quick break and when we come
back we will finish this list. We have some some
more amazing creatures to run through before it's all said
(10:09):
and done, so stick with us. All right, we're back,
and we are now moving on to one of my
all time favorites, just in terms of just sheer weirdness
that you encounter the first time you crack open up
(10:30):
an illustrated book of ka stark mammals. I'm talking, of course,
about old platty flatty belladon uh ten foot high three
ms um packaderm roamed Europe, Asia Africa, known for his
shoveled teeth. These are flattened tusks that form a shovel
like projection from the bottom of their their mouth in
(10:52):
a way it looks like weird um inverted buck teeth
coming out and then on top of that a very
flat trunk. So it's just about the weirdest like drug
induced idea of an elephant you could possibly think of. Uh,
And of course it already existed. Um yeah, it's You
(11:12):
know what is amazing is if you look at a
picture of a shovel and you look at a picture
of its mouth and the lower jaw, you see the
same exact design narrow at the top and then fluting
out at the bottom and then capped off by two
squared off insize or teeth. It's amazing. It's like a sport.
So you look at this guy, you look at these
shovel teeth tusk rather and you wonder, how does this
(11:36):
guy live his life? What is this adaptation gaining him?
And to understand that, you have to realize what kind
of world, uh platty would have lived in a world
of grasslands and winding shallow rivers full of plant life.
So the theory is that the platty would grip the
plant life between his flattened trunk and those flattened tusks
(11:57):
after shoveling into it and then then rearing up with
rip the plants away from the mud and then use
the trunk to pull it into the mouth. Yeah, there
was this idea that it was just there just to
shovel things up. Right, after all, we're talking about a
creature that's two tons um a lot of food that
has to be shoveled into it. But those teeth, those
(12:17):
teeth may have been used as a saw because they're
they're split down the middle, right. If you look at
the picture, that's what makes it looks like two teeth.
The idea is that that's uh, that's where the plant
material could be captured and then sort of the friction
of those teeth could then saw it. Yeah. Now this creature, though,
is again highly specialized, so that also makes them incredibly
(12:40):
vulnerable to environmental change. I think in the last episode
of Maybe the Business, example of a shop opens up
during the height of the bacon baked goods craze and
is selling bacon flavored doughnuts literally like hotcakes, I guess,
um selling these like crazy and as long as is
the fad is really let's baked and flavor everything and
(13:01):
let's eat bacon flavor donuts. They're gonna make just lots
and lots of money. But then when that falls out
of out of favor, when people realize that that's a
gross way to live your life. Then knowing that business
is going to fail. Likewise with these guys with platty uh,
there comes to time when this uh there is just
not abundant winding shallow rivers full of plant life uh
too to feast upon, and so the form dies out.
(13:24):
It's true. So, as we had talked about in in
the first episode Maths, extinction can happen for a number
of reasons. It could be and we have seen instances
of human hunting uh knocking out quite a few creatures,
but also atmospheric changes. As you just discussed a comment
hitting there are all sorts of things that an animal
must be able to adjust you and probably can't do
(13:45):
so within the limited amount of time that they are
you know, present, or that particular uh subspecies is present. Yes,
now we have basically one creature left on our top ten,
but we have another one that was included as a
as kind of an honorary mentioned. So we want to
we want to talk about this creature first we're of
(14:05):
course talking about the giant sloth. The megathereum, twenty ft
high six meters, roamed around Bolivian Peru and weighed as
much as three tons. Yeah. So I mean, can you
imagine six thousand pounds coming at you, covered in dark hair,
huge claws, and it could walk on its him legs
(14:26):
like a bear. Yeah, and he would eat you alive
if you were a treat swallow you hold you were
a vegetation on the top of the tree, because this yeah,
this guy could rear up on those hind legs, use
those three cloud four ft to grab onto some tree
limbs and then just start grazing the tree tops if
they were in the in reach. Yeah, lived as recently
as eight thousand years ago. In ground slots are members
(14:48):
of the South American group that Zen Arthur, which contains
modern tree sloughs, which we've talked about quite a bit,
and eaters and armadillos. Yeah, it's an incredible specimen. And
I understand basically just would poop and caves like crazy too. Well,
you know, poop was quite a topic, you know, when
we discussed tree slots modern day ones, because as you know,
(15:08):
they spend about a week up in the tree tops
and then they come down once week to defecate. It's
a It's an interesting creature because in in basic form
and the illustrations that we have with them, based on
the scut of the skulltal even it's uh, it essentially
looks like a giant sloth. If you were you were
to say, hey, I wonder what a giant relative of
of the modern day slot would look like. This is
what you would draw. But the way it lived its
(15:30):
life was was probably rather different. You know. Again, it's
not climbing up, it's not our boreal obviously, but does
clause those curled claws, which are sort of a benchmark
of of sloth are just amazing there. So that's an
amazing creature. But the final one we're gonna get to
on this list is is really even more amazing, and
(15:52):
is is definitely one of like the top examples of
you know, browsing through illustrations of prehistoric mammals, you see
this thing and you just you almost cannot believe it.
Like and when I even when I look at images
of this creature today, I can understand a little bit
the mindset of a person that would just completely reject
all of this science and say there's no way that
(16:13):
could exist. This is you're just making all this up
because we're of course talking about the enormous injuries. Otherium,
which is a rhino like hornless giant horse looking just behemoth.
It is twenty tons about towns. Uh. It's horse like
(16:36):
in the neck, I think, and somewhat in the face,
although it's got a lot of rhino in it and
evolved from an earlier five ft tall relative called a
hierro code on which which again and and just in
when you start looking at all these these evolutionary examples
and how they tie together, uh, it's always really difficult
to wrap them our our minds around the periods of
(16:57):
time that are that are transpiring between these forms. But
it's it's it's just blows my mind to think that this,
this enormous giant, this titan, uh, evolved from something that
was just five ft tall. Well, yeah, and you know
you're familiar with what we know as the largest land
mammal now an elephant, Right, that doesn't really blow our mind.
(17:17):
But if you were to, you know, bundle four of
those together and come up with this creature, it is
just enormous elephant vult. This creature it is um. It
was an herbivore and it lived in the forest of
Central Asia between thirty four and twenty three million years ago. Yeah,
it's teeth are really cool too. Um. I mean you
look at it and you barely even notice it as
(17:39):
the mouth, it's so enormous. But if you were just
to take a look at its teeth. Uh, it only
had two front teeth on the top and two below
in the upper pair pointing down like tusks, and the
lower pair we're pointing forwards. And it probably also had
a long, flexible upper lip which allowed it to graze
twenty six foot treetops. Now, I mean you probably thinking, okay,
(18:00):
it's huge. It's you know, it's twenty towns forty pounds.
It's got to shovel a ton of vegetation into it.
It's an herbivore, so most likely when the environment changed
and when it didn't have enough to forage, it went
by the wayside. Um. I mean, you look at a
creature like that, and that's pretty obvious that that might
have been the circumstance. Yeah, and this creature lived in
(18:21):
the Pakistan also China, well, when I go to China
later this year, I'm going to keep an eye out
just in case I see one. Um. Well, you've stood
under a replica of one, so now you're pretty familiar
with it. And um, you know, anytime I think about
this creature too, I can't help but think of Stephen
King's The Mist, which is an awesome novella that he
(18:42):
did about like this mist rolling in and has all
these strange creatures roaming about in it. And uh, at
one point they drive a vehicle under this enormous quadruped.
It's at least I think it was a quadruped stalking
across the than the night land here and uh and
and that one always reminds me of this particular creature. Also,
the add Ats and Empire strikes Back, the big four
(19:03):
legged waters, those were supposedly based on this creature as well. Uh,
that's interesting. I'm trying to think about whether or not
you could drive a car underneath it. Um, but I
remember maybe a smart car. Yeah, yeah, I think you
could because because there are some some illustrations out there
of like paleontologists standing next to it, as one possibly
(19:24):
could what that would look like. And it's again just towering,
just dwarfs us and and really just is just a
mind blowing thing to think about that these creatures wants
roam the earth in small, close knit families and now
they are just part of a n But hey, we're
the one percent. We're still were still alive, we are
still a species on this earth. We haven't quite seen
(19:46):
an end of that yet. So, fellow humans, if you
have some thoughts on this excellent list that we've put together,
I'm gonna go and stay it's excellent since I think
it is. Oh we did? Did you decide on a matchup?
Are you going with anachus versus t Rex? Well? Um, well, anachis,
let's see anarchist versus another mammal on our list? That
(20:06):
would be that that would be ideal, wouldn't I guess
I might go with mm hmm. This is a tough one.
You know. I'm not going to put my crania anything
we have in spiders on this list. And then we
have some lovers on this list, you know, like like
old Platty Belladon. I think he was more of a
lover and I'm not going to put him in there
against anarchist. So um, I don't know. I think that
(20:29):
I'm my epigolis a horn to dent. I think that
that's a smaller, scrappier, yes, extreme mammal, and perhaps it
could do some damage. Okay, all right, I'd see that.
I'd play that out with a pair of plastic creatures
on the living room floor. So, fellow humans, fellow one
(20:51):
per centers of the mammalian existence, um, let us know
what you think about this. Uh. Granted, these were our
personal picks, are the ones that called out to us
the most. So there are many, many, many so there, Yeah,
there are many, many more, and there's some that almost
made the list, especially when you get into the weird
packet germs. And oh there are a whole bunch of
Rhinocera Risks relatives that had crazy horns as well, and
(21:13):
I would have loved to included some of those, but
but we had to leave him off. So let us
know what your favorite extreme prehistoric mammal is. We would
love to hear from you. You can find us online
in a number of places, because we basically exist online
for all you know, we don't even exist in the flesh.
But you can find us at stuff to bow your mind,
dot com. That's the mothership. That's the main page. You
can also find us on Facebook, where we are stuff
(21:35):
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Below the mind at Discovery dot com. For more on
(22:01):
this and thousands of other topics, visit how staff works
dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, my name is Julie Douglas,
and this is a part two. This is In our
last episode, we talked about wine mammals are amazing. Wine
prehistoric mammals are so extreme in their form, and then
(00:26):
we began to explore some of our ten favorite prehistoric mammals,
ten favorite extreme prehistoric mammals, and we got through about
three of them. And this episode is the continuation of
that list. So if you like, go back and listen
to the other episodes so you'll get an idea of
how we started rolling on this. But if not, if
you're you know, if your your iTunes skipped to the
(00:47):
last episode, don't be afraid to plow forward with this one. Indeed,
and just to mention it, Extreme Mammals is an exhibit
that is organized by the American Museum of Natural History,
and that is what got us into all this craziness
in the first place, because they have a wonderful exhibit
detailing these extreme mammals. All right, well, first off, in
this episode, let's talk about what I assume to be
(01:10):
your personal favorite, because you've already blogged about it once.
So UH introduced us to macro Kenia. Ah, yes, macro
Kenia thin legs, long neck, prehensile snout, about ten ft long,
and five hundred to one thousand pounds. We think, Uh.
Technically the macro kenya belonged to a family of ungulates,
(01:30):
which are hooved animals, and is a distant cousin of
a horse. Yeah, and it evolved independently in South America
and uh in the roughly equoin direction here. So now
those who's I should say, those are three toad who
feet which are which which are really in a way
come kind of more like a rhinos. This this is
one of those creatures that that kind of bleeds over
into different models because it kind of looks like a
(01:51):
camel in its basic dimensions. Then it has those three
toad who feet, they're a little more like a rhino.
There's a certain horsiness to it. Uh, And mamoth mammothest
is the big thing because of course it's trunk yes,
or suspected trunk yes. So if you if you see
this in the exhibit, um, if you're like me, you
automatically go to Sesame Street and you begin to think
(02:12):
about stuff upogus because this is what it looks like.
In fact, I kind of wanted to pet it. I
wanted to talk to it. It's amazing, and it is
sort of a jigsaw puzzle of animals. It's sort of
like the platypus in the sense that, um, you can
see you can see the influence of different animals. Yeah,
it's basically the jazz funk um blues fusion of animals,
(02:34):
I think. And certainly he really does look like snuffle
up agus. The illustrations we see of in are are
really cute. Yeah, that long trunk would have been used
to feed on low lying leaves of grass, but it's
horse like teeth point to this idea that it would
have also been chomping on grass. But the weirdest thing
about this this this guy, is that the nostrils are
(02:57):
right up on top of the head. And at first
it was thought that this feature would give the macrocanias
some sort of aquatic leg up. In other words, they
could maybe weighed in the water. But more likely it's
just the ideal position for the kind of hose nose
sports like. Basically, because people look at it, and you
might say, well, how do we know that thing had
an elephants? Now, how do we know I had a
(03:18):
little trunk going on up there? And it's because of
the position of those nostrils. Now, I did find reference
to an older theory that this positioning of the nostrils
meant that it had its nostrils had lips, which ended
up not being the theory that everyone's stuck with because
I mean, you can't even find an artist illustration of
what that would have looked like. And that's probably just
as well, because unless maybe Picasso had had illustrated it. See,
(03:42):
let's turn our attention now to a very very cool
glyptodont and this is something that is called data chorus. Yeah,
data chorus is pretty pretty awesome. And I think I
had a toy of this guy. So and everyone will
probably recognize this one because it's certainly an outlandish example
of an extreme mammal because nothing really quite looks like
it today. First of all, I mean there's shades of it,
(04:04):
shadows of it in some animals, but nothing quite like this.
First of all, armored suit. So I'm thinking about tortoise here,
like a giant tortoise big as a car. Yeah kind
of yeah, very Armadilla esque in a way, except harder,
Like you can we have remnants to this thing, and
like a child can climb underneath it. Um so for starters, Yeah,
(04:24):
covered with armor and then bony club at the end
of its tail. That looks like a medieval mace. Yes,
I saw that, and I was like, that is an
amazing I mean, you look at that example in nature
and to know that humans fashion tools that were similar
is just amazing. Whether or not they had the reference point, Yeah,
whether or not they had the reference point or not,
(04:45):
or it just came out of their imagination. That's what
I think is so cool about this guy. Um. Now,
a tale like that, of course it raises the instant
question what did it use it for? Because we look
at it and west I think, oh, it's a mace.
I bet he swung that thing around or she I
keep you in heat. But I'm going back to my
old childhood. Uh you know, I imagine the mamas males,
(05:08):
so he or she what we would think, Oh, it
must have swung that make tail around and just clocked
enemies left and right while the creature was trying to
to eat its it. It's vegetation, but it's one of
those things where we have different theories about what it
consists of. Yeah, well, there's an idea that it was
used to thwart would be suitors, right, so you would
(05:29):
wrestle with your tails and made the victor when the spoils. Right.
So it's a little bit just like elk locking horns. Right. Um.
But then there's also the idea that it was used
as a weapon to try to defend itself and then demolition.
I'm just kidding. Well, um, I guess I do like
the idea that is weird as this creature creature looked,
(05:50):
it was so sexy that it had to literally fight
suitors off with a spiked club. Well, yeah, so that's
my interpretation. I like that. Okay. The name actually means
pestle tail, referring to how if the spikes were removed,
then the tail would resemble a pistel. So you just
have to hook it up with a little mortar and
they can just grind some ancient herbs. Yeah, there you go.
(06:11):
Oh it's stumping grounds were modern day South America, as
were most of these ambles. By the way, South America
seems to be the epicenter of it. Pakistan's got some
winnerds as well. Mr lived as recently as ten thousand
years ago, and that's why we have some really great
fossilized remains of its shell al right. Next on the
list is is one that I was really amazed, amazed
(06:32):
by when I was looking at the pictures. There are
a number of crazy elephants that pop up in your
in anyone's exploration of prehistoric mammals, and we're gonna get
to some other crazy ones as well, But this one,
uh is in a way, it's not that crazy because
it basically it looks like a modern elephant, but with
shorter legs, and it would have been a woodland packaderm
(06:53):
roaming through Europe and Asia. It's about ten feet tall
three meters. But the Ananochists was really the It could
have been the ultimate war elephant. Like you just look
at this thing and you're like, that is a that
is a born war machine, the Ananarchist, because uh, it
had ten to thirteen foot long tusks that's three or
four meters and that is nearly as long as the
(07:15):
rest of the creatures. So imagine an elephant with just
enormous tuss tusks that they go out straight, uh, the
length of its own body. Just javelins of tuts. That's
what I initially thought of as javelins, and I sort
of imagined it running and trying to do its little
Olympic sport or you think it would just like at
the end of the day, the ananarchists would just have
(07:36):
to set aside an hour or two just to unskewer
the creatures. That's the other thing as I imagined, Yeah,
shish kebab of enemies piled up on these tusks um
And obviously it would would have been great for sort
of warfare or fending off other animals, but it also
would have been really helpful in digging, digging roots up,
(07:57):
digging plants up. Exactly. Although I feel like, if you're
this animal, you feel great about everything head on right,
you feel really protected, but everything else and because it's
gotta be unwieldy to try to move these tusks around,
so I would feel very vulnerable in the back. Yeah,
I realized that with all these I cannot look at
pictures of prehistoric mammals or dinosaurs without falling back into
(08:20):
this childhood thinking where I'm like, oh, how would that
one fight that one I'm playing playing like battle matchmaker
of each of these, like, oh, what would the what
would it be like of an an anarchist were to
actually square off with a triceratops. You know, so, well,
let's let's go through the other animals and if the
end of the podcast, let's try to figure out what
(08:40):
the fantasy square off would be. Although that's pretty good
right there. Yeah, alright, So the next one I want
to talk about is a giant giant rodent. Yeah, if
there is ever a rodent of unusual size or r
o us, this is the guy. Yeah, telecomus giganticisms. It
comes from the Late miles An epic about eleven million
(09:03):
years ago to five million years um Argentina the size
of a small rhinoceros and could weigh up to pounds. Yeah,
seven ft long roadent, the largest of the Dino Mayads
would be terrible mice. Probably the largest rodent ever to
walk the Earth's I mean the size of a small brhino,
(09:24):
like like a big hairy hippopotamus. Yeah that is six
ft long, okay, well six point six inches right, two
meters long. I mean again, I know that it's a
sort of anthropomorphosizing that I'm doing, but not really. But really,
if you look at the rodents that exist right now
and you try to imagine them, you know, six ft
(09:46):
six inches long. Yeah, this was just a broot of
a rodent and uh and one of the more extreme
examples you can find. And it's a testament to rodents
that two of them made the list. We have both
a horned wrath and a giant rat. So there you go. Alright,
we're gonna take a quick break and when we come
back we will finish this list. We have some some
more amazing creatures to run through before it's all said
(10:09):
and done, so stick with us. All right, we're back,
and we are now moving on to one of my
all time favorites, just in terms of just sheer weirdness
that you encounter the first time you crack open up
(10:30):
an illustrated book of ka stark mammals. I'm talking, of course,
about old platty flatty belladon uh ten foot high three
ms um packaderm roamed Europe, Asia Africa, known for his
shoveled teeth. These are flattened tusks that form a shovel
like projection from the bottom of their their mouth in
(10:52):
a way it looks like weird um inverted buck teeth
coming out and then on top of that a very
flat trunk. So it's just about the weirdest like drug
induced idea of an elephant you could possibly think of. Uh,
And of course it already existed. Um yeah, it's You
(11:12):
know what is amazing is if you look at a
picture of a shovel and you look at a picture
of its mouth and the lower jaw, you see the
same exact design narrow at the top and then fluting
out at the bottom and then capped off by two
squared off insize or teeth. It's amazing. It's like a sport.
So you look at this guy, you look at these
shovel teeth tusk rather and you wonder, how does this
(11:36):
guy live his life? What is this adaptation gaining him?
And to understand that, you have to realize what kind
of world, uh platty would have lived in a world
of grasslands and winding shallow rivers full of plant life.
So the theory is that the platty would grip the
plant life between his flattened trunk and those flattened tusks
(11:57):
after shoveling into it and then then rearing up with
rip the plants away from the mud and then use
the trunk to pull it into the mouth. Yeah, there
was this idea that it was just there just to
shovel things up. Right, after all, we're talking about a
creature that's two tons um a lot of food that
has to be shoveled into it. But those teeth, those
(12:17):
teeth may have been used as a saw because they're
they're split down the middle, right. If you look at
the picture, that's what makes it looks like two teeth.
The idea is that that's uh, that's where the plant
material could be captured and then sort of the friction
of those teeth could then saw it. Yeah. Now this creature, though,
is again highly specialized, so that also makes them incredibly
(12:40):
vulnerable to environmental change. I think in the last episode
of Maybe the Business, example of a shop opens up
during the height of the bacon baked goods craze and
is selling bacon flavored doughnuts literally like hotcakes, I guess,
um selling these like crazy and as long as is
the fad is really let's baked and flavor everything and
(13:01):
let's eat bacon flavor donuts. They're gonna make just lots
and lots of money. But then when that falls out
of out of favor, when people realize that that's a
gross way to live your life. Then knowing that business
is going to fail. Likewise with these guys with platty uh,
there comes to time when this uh there is just
not abundant winding shallow rivers full of plant life uh
too to feast upon, and so the form dies out.
(13:24):
It's true. So, as we had talked about in in
the first episode Maths, extinction can happen for a number
of reasons. It could be and we have seen instances
of human hunting uh knocking out quite a few creatures,
but also atmospheric changes. As you just discussed a comment
hitting there are all sorts of things that an animal
must be able to adjust you and probably can't do
(13:45):
so within the limited amount of time that they are
you know, present, or that particular uh subspecies is present. Yes,
now we have basically one creature left on our top ten,
but we have another one that was included as a
as kind of an honorary mentioned. So we want to
we want to talk about this creature first we're of
(14:05):
course talking about the giant sloth. The megathereum, twenty ft
high six meters, roamed around Bolivian Peru and weighed as
much as three tons. Yeah. So I mean, can you
imagine six thousand pounds coming at you, covered in dark hair,
huge claws, and it could walk on its him legs
(14:26):
like a bear. Yeah, and he would eat you alive
if you were a treat swallow you hold you were
a vegetation on the top of the tree, because this yeah,
this guy could rear up on those hind legs, use
those three cloud four ft to grab onto some tree
limbs and then just start grazing the tree tops if
they were in the in reach. Yeah, lived as recently
as eight thousand years ago. In ground slots are members
(14:48):
of the South American group that Zen Arthur, which contains
modern tree sloughs, which we've talked about quite a bit,
and eaters and armadillos. Yeah, it's an incredible specimen. And
I understand basically just would poop and caves like crazy too. Well,
you know, poop was quite a topic, you know, when
we discussed tree slots modern day ones, because as you know,
(15:08):
they spend about a week up in the tree tops
and then they come down once week to defecate. It's
a It's an interesting creature because in in basic form
and the illustrations that we have with them, based on
the scut of the skulltal even it's uh, it essentially
looks like a giant sloth. If you were you were
to say, hey, I wonder what a giant relative of
of the modern day slot would look like. This is
what you would draw. But the way it lived its
(15:30):
life was was probably rather different. You know. Again, it's
not climbing up, it's not our boreal obviously, but does
clause those curled claws, which are sort of a benchmark
of of sloth are just amazing there. So that's an
amazing creature. But the final one we're gonna get to
on this list is is really even more amazing, and
(15:52):
is is definitely one of like the top examples of
you know, browsing through illustrations of prehistoric mammals, you see
this thing and you just you almost cannot believe it.
Like and when I even when I look at images
of this creature today, I can understand a little bit
the mindset of a person that would just completely reject
all of this science and say there's no way that
(16:13):
could exist. This is you're just making all this up
because we're of course talking about the enormous injuries. Otherium,
which is a rhino like hornless giant horse looking just behemoth.
It is twenty tons about towns. Uh. It's horse like
(16:36):
in the neck, I think, and somewhat in the face,
although it's got a lot of rhino in it and
evolved from an earlier five ft tall relative called a
hierro code on which which again and and just in
when you start looking at all these these evolutionary examples
and how they tie together, uh, it's always really difficult
to wrap them our our minds around the periods of
(16:57):
time that are that are transpiring between these forms. But
it's it's it's just blows my mind to think that this,
this enormous giant, this titan, uh, evolved from something that
was just five ft tall. Well, yeah, and you know
you're familiar with what we know as the largest land
mammal now an elephant, Right, that doesn't really blow our mind.
(17:17):
But if you were to, you know, bundle four of
those together and come up with this creature, it is
just enormous elephant vult. This creature it is um. It
was an herbivore and it lived in the forest of
Central Asia between thirty four and twenty three million years ago. Yeah,
it's teeth are really cool too. Um. I mean you
look at it and you barely even notice it as
(17:39):
the mouth, it's so enormous. But if you were just
to take a look at its teeth. Uh, it only
had two front teeth on the top and two below
in the upper pair pointing down like tusks, and the
lower pair we're pointing forwards. And it probably also had
a long, flexible upper lip which allowed it to graze
twenty six foot treetops. Now, I mean you probably thinking, okay,
(18:00):
it's huge. It's you know, it's twenty towns forty pounds.
It's got to shovel a ton of vegetation into it.
It's an herbivore, so most likely when the environment changed
and when it didn't have enough to forage, it went
by the wayside. Um. I mean, you look at a
creature like that, and that's pretty obvious that that might
have been the circumstance. Yeah, and this creature lived in
(18:21):
the Pakistan also China, well, when I go to China
later this year, I'm going to keep an eye out
just in case I see one. Um. Well, you've stood
under a replica of one, so now you're pretty familiar
with it. And um, you know, anytime I think about
this creature too, I can't help but think of Stephen
King's The Mist, which is an awesome novella that he
(18:42):
did about like this mist rolling in and has all
these strange creatures roaming about in it. And uh, at
one point they drive a vehicle under this enormous quadruped.
It's at least I think it was a quadruped stalking
across the than the night land here and uh and
and that one always reminds me of this particular creature. Also,
the add Ats and Empire strikes Back, the big four
(19:03):
legged waters, those were supposedly based on this creature as well. Uh,
that's interesting. I'm trying to think about whether or not
you could drive a car underneath it. Um, but I
remember maybe a smart car. Yeah, yeah, I think you
could because because there are some some illustrations out there
of like paleontologists standing next to it, as one possibly
(19:24):
could what that would look like. And it's again just towering,
just dwarfs us and and really just is just a
mind blowing thing to think about that these creatures wants
roam the earth in small, close knit families and now
they are just part of a n But hey, we're
the one percent. We're still were still alive, we are
still a species on this earth. We haven't quite seen
(19:46):
an end of that yet. So, fellow humans, if you
have some thoughts on this excellent list that we've put together,
I'm gonna go and stay it's excellent since I think
it is. Oh we did? Did you decide on a matchup?
Are you going with anachus versus t Rex? Well? Um, well, anachis,
let's see anarchist versus another mammal on our list? That
(20:06):
would be that that would be ideal, wouldn't I guess
I might go with mm hmm. This is a tough one.
You know. I'm not going to put my crania anything
we have in spiders on this list. And then we
have some lovers on this list, you know, like like
old Platty Belladon. I think he was more of a
lover and I'm not going to put him in there
against anarchist. So um, I don't know. I think that
(20:29):
I'm my epigolis a horn to dent. I think that
that's a smaller, scrappier, yes, extreme mammal, and perhaps it
could do some damage. Okay, all right, I'd see that.
I'd play that out with a pair of plastic creatures
on the living room floor. So, fellow humans, fellow one
(20:51):
per centers of the mammalian existence, um, let us know
what you think about this. Uh. Granted, these were our
personal picks, are the ones that called out to us
the most. So there are many, many, many so there, Yeah,
there are many, many more, and there's some that almost
made the list, especially when you get into the weird
packet germs. And oh there are a whole bunch of
Rhinocera Risks relatives that had crazy horns as well, and
(21:13):
I would have loved to included some of those, but
but we had to leave him off. So let us
know what your favorite extreme prehistoric mammal is. We would
love to hear from you. You can find us online
in a number of places, because we basically exist online
for all you know, we don't even exist in the flesh.
But you can find us at stuff to bow your mind,
dot com. That's the mothership. That's the main page. You
can also find us on Facebook, where we are stuff
(21:35):
to blow your mind. You can find us on Twitter
where we blow the mind. You can find us on
Tumbler where we are we are also stuff to bow
your mind. And finally, you can find us on YouTube
our video series which everyone seems to be enjoying. Our
handle there is mind Stuff Show. You can always drop
us a line, and we love it when you do.
Below the mind at Discovery dot com. For more on
(22:01):
this and thousands of other topics, visit how staff works
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