August 24, 2021 • 40 mins
Fish covered in thick coats of fur, fish with strange spines, fish with the beard or chin whiskers of a wise old sage… The water offers up many mysteries, and in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore accounts of furry trout, ancient marvels, otters and fish that kind of look like they have hair.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe mccormaking. Today
I wanted to start off by doing one of my
favorite things to to kick off a Stuff to Blow
(00:23):
Your Mind episode, which is go back more than a
hundred years and read an article about what kinds of
animals there are? And I think this one's especially who
because it concerns the animals of Iceland. So this was
published in a periodical called the Scottish Review I believe,
in the year nineteen hundred by an author named Olaf Davidson.
(00:45):
And it's an article called the Folklore of Icelandic Fishes
in which Davidson catalogs examples of both totally mundane animals,
like you know, talking about different kinds of whales and
fish and sharks and things, but then also bizarre stories
of the boreal realms about you know, uh, weird deadly
(01:05):
creatures of the waters. And there are just some great
stories in here, some of which he seems to source
at least partially from Icelandic newspapers and other ones. I
guess he's drawing more on just general folklore. Um, so,
the first one I wanted to mention is is great
he He talks about something called the coil eel or
(01:26):
rock all, which is something like a cross between a
fish and a wire saw. So just let me read
from Davidson here. The coil eel or rock all is
about two ft in length and lives chiefly in ditches
or stagnant pools, but is sometimes found in running waters.
If any animal or human being puts foot into the
(01:48):
water where it is, the eel coils itself round their
leg and cuts into the bone or even takes it
right off. Frequently. Yeah, yeah, wire saw right. This frequently
happens with horses, but cheap escape because their legs are
too slender for the eel to work upon. How the
(02:08):
cutting is done is a point on which opinions differ.
Some say that the venom in the eel is so
strong that it corrodes the flesh and bone. Others say
that the eel has fins as sharp as the teeth
of a saw and does the work with these. It
is also said to have thin scales as hard as iron,
and its flesh is poisonous. Wow, this is incredible. It's
(02:30):
like the swimming guillotine, a very good comparison. You need
to get like a an Icelandic wizard who's got one
of these on a leash that he can throw. Yeah,
that would be great. I mean, these these are this
is a great hard gimmick right here. Yeah, and and uh,
it's even got an origin story. The rock All was
allegedly created, according to the tails, when a wizard once
(02:52):
breathed life into a dead, half rotten eel, thus creating
this poisonous animal. Oh my goodness that this needs to
go into a monster manual right here. Yeah. It also
strikes me as like a good way to convince your
children not to step in puddles. Yes, yes, the rock
All made lurk in the puddles? Yeah, do you ever,
by the way, go through And I know some kids
(03:14):
do this, Some kids have a real like puddle splashing
stomping phase. I don't know if you ever dealt with that,
but I've definitely definitely went through a puddle splashing uh
phase for sure. Yeah, I mean I can't deny it's fun.
But okay, So Davidson goes on to another one. There
there's one called the ohfu oogie, which is a fish
(03:34):
that has backwards facing fins and which swims in reverse
tail first. And then there's another one that he calls
the sea mouse. But I think what he's referring to
is now called the rabbit fish or the rat fish
scientific name Chimera monst rosa. Uh. This is a This
is a cartilaginous fish of the North Atlantic and Mediterranean
(03:57):
that can grow to about one point five meters in length.
And so the legend that Davidson recounts about this animal again,
this is probably now the rabbit fish. But what he's
calling the sea mouse is that it swims so ferociously
that the sea foams ahead of its path, and that
it can open its jaws wide enough to swallow an
(04:18):
entire boat, which is not true. But I did want
to read his anecdote about this quote. On one occasion,
two men were out at sea on the East coast
in an open boat, while near them was a French
fishing vessel. Uh. They had been fishing quietly for some
time when they heard a tremendous noise out to sea,
and at once suspected that it was caused by a
(04:40):
sea mouse. In a short time, they saw it, coming
in the midst of a white foaming wave and making
straight for their boat. The men were so scared that
they could do nothing to save themselves. The Frenchman saw
their danger and ran their schooner right in the way
of the monster, which however still kept the same course
and speed, and struck the vessel with such force as
(05:02):
to cant it over to one side. The sea mouse
continued to press against the ship for a little while,
and during that time the men were taken on board.
Then it disappeared and the men afterwards road to land.
So okay, saying this fish could like actually knock a
ship over, uh, definitely not true about that species. If
there is any truth to this story at all, it's
(05:23):
it's obviously not about a rabbit fish. Um. But also
to confuse things even further, there actually is a marine
animal now commonly known as a sea mouse, but it
is not a fish at all, but a marine poly
keyed worm, usually about three to six inches in length, which, uh,
this will be relevant to what we're talking about today,
is often covering in something that looks kind of like
(05:44):
a sparkly fur now and and this is an interesting
organism to be to be sure, but I also looked
up a picture of the rabbit fish, and it is
interesting that its head does have kind of the appearance
of a rabbit's head. It had I can set definitely
see the comparison. There, something about the way that the
eyes or are structured. Uh, it has has this kind
(06:07):
of rabbit looking skull. Um. But but then again, I'm
also reading that they can grow to the five feet
in length. So I guess if one of these creatures
was to slam into the side of your boat, it
could at least startle you. It could at least be
a moment that could then be exaggerated into greater threat
and tails. Yeah, I guess that's reasonable. I mean, I'm
(06:29):
picturing boats of a size in this story where that
wouldn't really make sense because it's talking about like a schooner,
right the I don't know how big is a schooner.
Can a schooner be small enough to be severely disturbed
by a by a one point five meter fish? I mean,
if your imagination is there, it can certainly certainly be alarming,
(06:49):
I imagine to confuse things about that story even further, Uh,
this so called rabbit fish Camira monstrosa. That is one
type of fish called rabbit fish, but then there's also
a totally different type of fish, also called a rabbit
fish that's not related. So lots to throw you off
right there, But anyway, I wanted to get to the
final citation I want to make from from Olaf Davidson's
(07:12):
article here because it concerns the topic that we're going
to be getting into over the next couple of episodes.
So here he goes on my favorite part. On the
shores of lakes in the north of Iceland, there have
sometimes been found strange and ugly fishes resembling trout, which
neither dogs nor birds of prey would eat. These were
(07:32):
doubtless specimens of the shaggy trout or load selunger, also
a very poisonous fish. One of these was cast on
shore at Savina Votten in eighteen fifty four, and an
illustration of it is given in the newspaper nor Dury
for eighteen fifty five. It was very unlike in ordinary trout,
(07:52):
both in shape and in color. On its lower jaw
and its neck, it had reddish hair forming a kind
of beard. There were also hairy patches on its sides.
And hair on its fins, so there can be no
doubt it was a shaggy trout, though the writer of
the article in Nordury does not say so. Now I'm
(08:13):
suspecting that wizard again. Yeah, I mean one I'm wondering.
Iceland is not super densely populated, right, so you know,
you have a few larger cities and then the little settlements,
especially around the coasts all around, but then big parts
of the inner country are you know, mostly uninhabited. So
I wonder is that wizard territory? Is that where the
(08:33):
wizards are out there making fish with beards? Yeah, I
mean there aren't enough people around to really mess with,
so yeah, they're doing terrible things to fish. But this
is by no means the only account of the shaggy
trout or the furry trout of Iceland. I found more
about this this local lore in an article in the
Paris Review by David Buckspan from sixteen, which is actually
(08:57):
about something totally different. It's not an article about Icelandic legends.
It is about a speaking event with an Icelandic novelist
who goes by the name Sean spelled s j o
in but pronounced Sean and you might know him as
a collaborator with Bjorke. He apparently wrote lyrics for some
of her songs, and I think they've performed in bands
together at least at some point. Um. But then at
(09:19):
a certain part in the evening at the speaking thing,
Sean turns to explaining his personal obsession with this shaggy
trout legend of Iceland, and he definitely expands on what
we've just established. So he does say, yeah, there's an
animal allegedly known as the furry trout. It looks the
same as a normal trout, except it's covered in fur,
(09:40):
which is a little different than what Davidson said. Davidson
said it looked very different from a regular trout. But
Sean goes on to say that according to the legend,
you might be fishing for a school of regular trout
with a net and then suddenly one of them there
in your net is completely covered in fur, and it's
just right there with the other ones. But he there's
(10:00):
the really interesting variation. Olaf Davidson says that the common
belief is that the shaggy trout is poisonous, so you
shouldn't need it because it could hurt you. Maybe make
you sick or kill you. But Sean says that the
legend he learned when he was nine years old was
that if a man ate the furry trout, he would
become pregnant and he would end up having to give
birth through his scrotum. Okay, well, I have some doubts
(10:24):
and some questions about that that last claim. Yes, and
he actually even describes like the birthing procedure, which involves
like the scrotum swelling with the child and like you
have to get a knife and lay him on a
table and all that. It's you can go read the
article if you want. Uh. But then is it a
normal human child or is it like a fish person? Oh,
I think it's just a human child. After that where
(10:46):
I don't know, he doesn't really go into what the
implications for the child is. But anyway, the more I
got interested in the store is the more I discovered
that there are, in fact stories from all over the
world about various types of furry fish. And so that's
(11:10):
what I wanted to look into for the next couple
of episodes here, because I think you you may well
agree that fish generally do not have fur, So we
wanted to talk about like what these stories are and
where they come from and what might explain them. Yeah,
and and these are going to cover a fair amount
of ground. We're gonna get into some legends and mythology.
We're going to talk about some some some some definite uh,
(11:34):
denizens of the of the the actual oceans and lakes
and rivers of our world. Uh, and then also some
possible like misinterpretations of natural creatures. So there's there's a
lot on the table here with the furry fish, and
I think, yeah, I think everybody's gonna be pleasantly surprised. Now.
The shaggy trout of Iceland is actually one of several
(11:56):
reports of furry fish that are collected in a book
that I was looking at called The Beasts That Hide
from Man, Seeking the World's Last Undiscovered Animals, by an
author named Carl Schucker. I think this was originally published
in two thousands three. I might have been looking at
an addition from but Shooker is a British crypto zoologist,
(12:20):
and as you may well know, crypto zoologist can mean
extremely different things, right, So it could be a clear skeptical,
responsible researcher who tries to investigate reports of animals that
are not well documented or not documented at all by
by regular scientific methods, and find out if these reports
(12:40):
can in fact be confirmed. And there are cases like this.
There are cases of, for example, of animals thought to
be long extinct but then turning up extant in the
world today. For example, the sela can't the type of
lobe finned fish that was thought to be long extinct,
but then live specimens were found. But on the other hand,
of course we know, if you know, if you're a
(13:01):
fan of like certain types of TV documentaries or whatever,
a cryptozoologist could also be a self applied label for
somebody who says that they have a big foot corps
in their freezer, but you're not allowed to look at it. Yeah, Yeah,
there's a there's a broad spectrum in the crypto zoology world, right,
And so I think, from at least what I was
(13:21):
looking at in this book, I think Shooker seems to
be closer to the former. Somebody who's you know, trying
to responsibly apply, uh, you know, reasonable skeptical methods of
investigation to reports of perhaps not well documented animals. There
may be something I missed, but at least in the
parts of the book I was looking at. He he
does not seem to treat reports of strange animals with
(13:44):
automatic credulity and and certainly not talk like the big
foot freezer guy. But anyway, a useful thing about this
book is whatever the actual explanations for these reports, it
is useful in itself just to collect the reports, right uh,
to say, Okay, what are people saying about, for example,
furry fish, whether or not there actually is such a
(14:04):
thing or something that we can identify that could have
been mistaken for such a thing. At least you know,
what are people saying? And so that's what he does
in this chapter. He's got at least five different examples.
And so the next thing I wanted to talk about
was another one that that I came across because I
found in this chapter, and this is Marco Polo's hairy Fish.
So this story is originally told in the Travels of
(14:28):
Marco Polo, which is the English title of a thirteenth
century Italian travelogue written by a guy named Rusticello or
perhaps Rusticiano of Pisa, based on the accounts of Marco Polo,
the Venetian merchant, diplomat and explorer of of great renown.
I'm sure you know who Marco Polo is. Yes, if, if,
(14:50):
even if you are not super familiar within you know
the pool name of Marco Polo, which, by the way,
the last pool I was at, or one of the
most recent pools I was at, they had a sign
that said no Marco Polo. Marco Polo was explicitly banned
from the pool. Why what is it dangerous? I got
the impression that it was just maybe annoying because they were, like,
(15:11):
you know, people were living near the pool, and therefore
they didn't want to hear children say Marco Polo over
and over again. But occasionally a child would get in
the pool start saying Marco Polo, and the more rule
oriented children would would remind them that it was not allowed,
and then some would try and do it, do Marco
Polo with different words, and and and other kids or
(15:34):
sometimes adults would be like, no, no, you can't, you
can't just do that. It's still Marco Polo. No, instead
of Marco Polo, you do Rusty Cello or Rusty Chano.
You know, Rusty Cello. Yeah, wouldn't work. Not not allowed,
not allowed. I forget, what's kind of variations. They were trying,
um very obvious ones like you know, um pool cleaner
fish or something, you know, just based on the first
(15:56):
two things they saw. Well anyway, so I found out
about this story of a furry fish because of this
passage from Shooker's book. But then I actually went and
looked up the original text to put the claim in
its full context. So this passage from Marco Polo's account,
which is the version translated to English by Ronald Latham
for for Penguin, is describing a marvelous city that Marco
(16:20):
Polo calls King Pai, but which I believe corresponds to
the modern day city of Hung Sho. And so at
the time he entered the city, Marco Polo was operating
under the aegis of Kubla Khan. That that's a bit
if you don't know much about Marco Polo's journeys. He
had a relationship with the court of the cons I
think uh at least going back through his father. But
(16:43):
he was favored by by the court of Kubla Khan.
And so he was not only a merchant and a
trader and explorer, but he also operated as a diplomat
on behalf of Koplakan, and at the time of his
visit to this city that is now known as hung Show,
the cons had conquered it. So there are a couple
of names to define ahead of time, so this paragraph
(17:03):
makes sense. He mentions a figure named King fak Fur,
who was the original ruler of Kingsai before it was conquered,
and then he also mentions Bayon, who was a Mongol
general who commanded the armies of Kubla Khan during the
conquest of Song dynasty China. So the account goes, let
me tell you now of a marvel that occurred when
(17:24):
Bayon was besieging this city. It happened after King fak
Fur had taken to flight, that a multitude of the
town's folk were fleeing by boat by way of a broad,
deep river that flows past one side of the city.
All of a sudden, while they were actually on the river,
the water completely dried up, so that Bayon, on learning
(17:45):
the news, came to this part and compelled all the
fugitives to return to the city. And a fish was
found lying high and dry across the river bed. And
what a fish for it was fully one hundred paces long,
but its girth was by all means proportionate to its length.
Its whole body was hairy. Many people ate of it,
(18:06):
and many of those who did so died. Mr Marco,
as he relates, saw the head of this fish with
his own eyes in a certain temple of the Idols.
Now we should put some caveats in, right, because there
are several reasons the story is already coming to us
in a kind of hazy fashion. Right. We're getting it
through several layers. This is an account written by Mr
(18:28):
Rusty Cello Rusty Chano of Pisa, based allegedly on the
accounts of Marco Polo, who claims that he saw the
head of this fish with his own eyes. But it
sounds like he must have at best heard second hand
the accounts of the story about the river drying up,
revealing the giant hairy fish a hundred paces long, and
(18:48):
then the people eating it and dying from it. Right,
because the story is saying, oh, the head is preserved
in this particular temple, and this is the backstory on
that head. Right now, While I think they're good jumping
off points to to start thinking about possibilities, I don't
think we can be too sure that either of these accounts,
either the Icelandic furry fish or Marco Polo's hairy fish
(19:10):
and in Hung Joe Uh, that they are necessarily based
on anything real than anybody actually saw. These could be
you know, fanciful imaginative stories people made up, or they
could be based on something. But I do think it's
interesting that in either case that both of these hairy
fish so far are regarded as poisonous and harmful to eat. Yeah,
(19:31):
this is very interesting, and I was particularly fascinated by
this Chinese um account or this Chinese episode. It was
like technically a Venetian account, but decided to read a
little bit more about it. So I was looking at
a C. Mules Marco Polo's descriptions of Quinsai, and the
author here basically looks at this everything that Marco Polo
(19:52):
has to say about the city, and it's analyzing it
and comparing it to other accounts and Chinese historical accounts,
and the there says that they can find no mention
of this this fish in Chinese sources detailing the siege
in question. However, he says that roughly forty years before
Polo's visit, strange aquatic creatures had been reported in the river.
(20:13):
This would have been the summer of twelve thirty nine.
Quote Chao Yu Kon reported that recently, while he was
watching the violence of the boar. Now just a quick
description of what the boar is, and this will make
sense if you think back to the passage that that
that Joe just read. Uh, this is a bore current,
a rare natural phenomenon in which the leading edge of
(20:36):
an incoming tide forms a wave or waves of water
that travels up a body of water and reverses the
direction of the current. Anyway, the author continues, Um, while
he was watching the violence of the boar, he had
suddenly seen strange creatures which were neither dragons nor fishes
in shoals, ruffling up their bristles and raising their spines.
(21:00):
And he wished to report and announced to the emperor
that he proposed to use powerful crossbows and guns. And
there's a question mark after guns, So I'm not sure
if the particular terminology is in question there or whatnot?
Um to remove this ill omened portent whoa so this
along with other accounts and quote the sight of some
monstrous skull or tooth which may well have been shown
(21:22):
in some temple um and they also point out that
a large tooth was actually shown as Buddhist tooth at
the time. All of this may may have then been
cobbled together and you know, reformed into the account we
just looked at. Okay, so it's possible that the account
we're getting, I guess third hand at this point through
Marco Polo's uh biographer here is some sort of half
(21:47):
remembered synthesis or reassemblage of these other pieces that we're
seeing in Chinese sources. Right now, this is conjecture on
my part, but I'm reading that the the sing Tang
river here was no own to at least sometimes have
yang Z River dolphins in it um now their namesake river.
The Z is several hundred miles north, but at least
(22:10):
prior to the nineteen fifties there were sightings of dolphins
in this river. So I can't help but wonder if
this might have been a case of a half rotted
river dolphin washing up. Because tissue and fibers on rotting fish, dolphins,
and whales can sometimes take on shocking forms that maybe
that then can be connected to various myths and legends
(22:31):
or theories about cryptids. Oh yeah, I mean that. We
actually did a couple of episodes. It was a few
years back at this point about globsters, the which is
the nickname for these objects. You know, these sort of
masses of biomaterial that will often wash up on beaches
and be proclaimed monsters. You know, they get their own
(22:53):
article in the Daily Mail and it's oh, here's a
dragon from the sea. And most of the time, I'm
they're whales. Not every time, but most of the time
there's some type of whale in some stage of decomposition
which can truly take on bizarre appearances. Yeah. For example,
consider the Sacklin Island wooly whale, which was washed up
(23:15):
on Sacklin Island in Russia back in you can find
pictures on this. The spelling is s A K H
A L I N. It looks weird and it does
look furry. But one of the chief theories here is
that this is just a dolphin carcass, that this is
a dolphin carcass that is decayed. It's a dolphin globster.
(23:37):
So I again this is conjecture on my part, but
it makes me wonder if that might have been what
we were looking at. It would also explain why eating
the flesh of this creature might not be a great
choice for your digestion or your overall health. Right. So
if this were the origin of the story from Keensai
or hang Joe, now, um, it would be that some
(23:59):
in some way the water washed back and revealed the
carcass of a large, perhaps young c river dolphin or
some other type of aquatic mammal that was dead sitting
there on the bank in some stage of decomposition. It's
the fibers of its body kind of looked like hair
in a weird way that you know, we've we've seen
(24:20):
with other globsters before. Somebody decided to eat it, and
obviously it made them sick because this is rotten meat.
And then somehow that got estranged and gave rise to
this legend. Yeah, or you can also imagine how it
could have just been a situation where the thing was
clearly foul and someone wisely said I don't think anyone
(24:42):
should eat this, and eventually that becomes I heard somebody
ate it and they died. But then I heard that
I heard that several people ate it and they died,
So I don't know. There you can easily imagine various
ways that the the story could form based on just
this one weird encounter with a st range globster body
in the water. Yeah, so we don't know, but I
(25:04):
do think that's a reasonable possibility to imagine as an
inspiration for these types of stories. And in fact, in
his book, Shooker sort of goes to the same place.
He says, Yeah, it's possible that this is a this
is a half remembered story about a decomposing animal body
of some kind, And of course the decomposing flesh would
have made people sick if they tried to eat it.
(25:24):
And again the other half being that, yes, often decomposing
flesh really does look hairy in a certain way. Than Now,
there's another interesting possibility about explanations that I wanted to
come back to, which has to do with parasitic infections
(25:46):
in fish. So think back to that first example I
mentioned of the furry fish claim, the one from Olaf
Davidson's reports of the shaggy trout of Iceland. Just to
refresh here on what Davidson says about the one example
hold that is reported in the newspaper nor Dury in
eighteen fifty five, which he says must be an example
of a shaggy trout. He says that it's that it's
(26:09):
lower jaw and its neck had reddish hair, forming a
kind of beard, and there were also hairy patches on
its side and hair on its fins, so there can
be no doubt it was a shaggy trout. But then
he also says it was unlike an ordinary trout in
both shape and in color, but he doesn't explain much
more about what he means by that, so I'm not
(26:29):
quite sure. I don't know if that means unlike in
terms of just like these patches on it, or if
it's also just like a differently shaped fish, and in
which case it probably originally wasn't a trout, and I'm
not sure what it was. But anyway, when raising the
story in his book, Karl Schuker mentions one possible explanation,
which is, what if these stories are based on observations
(26:50):
not of furry trout, but of trout that are suffering
from some kind of infection, such as a fungus that
covers their body with patches of mysilia. So there could
be a number of types of parasites and infections that
could lead to this misimpression. But one type of infection
that I've seen uh singled out as a possible inspiration
(27:13):
for furry trout legends is an oama site called Saprolegnia
or saprolegnia so. Oama sites are sometimes known as water molds.
They are a class of eukaryotic micro organisms that used
to be considered fungi, I believe due to their morphological
similarities to fungus, but I think now they're understood to
(27:35):
be a more separate branch of the tree of life.
But there are a number of different types of Oama
sites that can form parasitic relationships with fish and shellfish,
causing disease and eventually death in the hosts. And there's
this genus called Saprolegnia in particular, which has been singled
out as a possible source of these myths since when
(27:58):
an adult fish is in act did it can display
lesions or discolored patches on its skin, which in some
cases do look kind of furry or even sometimes like
cotton and rob I've just got a couple of pictures
for you to look at. One is of a man
holding up a salmon caught from a river that does
have these mold like patches appearing along it's its dorsal side. Yeah,
(28:22):
it does look like there's something wrong with this fish,
like something bad happened to a fish. And uh, the
other pictures shared there does have more of a hair
like quality to it. It looks like there's some kind
of whispery white sideburns and some whispery white hair on
the top of the fish's head. Yeah, and there are
other types of infections. One problem is if you're just
(28:43):
like doing an image search for this, you can't always
be sure what type of infection you're looking at. Because
there's another thing that I think is a more bacterial
infection called cotton wool disease in fish that also kind
of looks like cotton sprouting out on on these fish.
But that's a different organism causing it. But anyway, just
to learn more about saparolegnia, I was looking at a
(29:05):
book by Kurt Lemore and Sophien Commune, who are researchers
at the University of Tennessee. Both of them I believe
called um Oamacite Genetics and Genomics, Diversity Interactions and research tools,
And this is an academic book about uh these types
of parasites and micro organisms, and there's a part of
(29:26):
this about Saparolegnia in particular. So this species is Saparolegnia parasitica,
which the author's claim is a devastating pathogen on freshwater
fish species, which has contributed to significant damage in global
fish farming. And in the past, this and some other
fish related related fish pathogens were controlled by anti microbial
(29:50):
that Originally I think it was actually a die. The
dye is called malachite green, but it was found to
have these alleged anti microbial properties. But then this use
was scaled back after concerns arose about possible carcinogenic effects
on the fish and on consumers of the fish that
were treated with this die. So as of the time
(30:11):
this book was written or published in two thousand nine,
the the this was still a problem with the freshwater fisheries,
I think, especially with with fish farming. But in the
case of fur that forms on the skin of the
infected fish, this would actually not be hair, but it
would be my celia or the part of the microbial
(30:32):
colony that begins as these little hype often seen in
fungus that forms these hair like branches which can spread
out in in these patches on the skin. I think
they often begin originally at like a like a wound
or maybe some kind of opening in the skin. I
think they can attack the gills or they can attack
a wound, But then once they have established a colony
(30:55):
within the skin, they can kind of spread out from there,
and it's bad for the fish. Obviously, they will will
from the outer layer from the skin UH, and the
and the scales begin to invade down further into the
muscle tissue, which can eventually kill the fish over time.
But on the other hand, I think we wouldn't want
to be too bullish about attributing all of these stories
(31:17):
of furry fish to observations of infections of this kind
UH for one reason, because the while these infections can
form patches on fish that look strange, and sometimes these
patches in certain types of parasites can look kind of
hairy or cottony or wooly, they don't form coats of
fur that surround the full fish as described in some
(31:40):
of these legends. Yeah, we'd be talking something that would
be loosely describable as patches of fur, patches of weird
hair on a fish, which is it's different than a
shaggy fish, right, And so I think this explanation can
actually go too far and become a misconception of a zone. So,
(32:01):
for example, I was looking at modern allegations of furry fish,
which do still exist. I think I was reading one
story about a some people who were claiming that a
bunch of furry fish were created in a river when
there had been an accident and a bunch of hair
tonic was spilled into the river. So yuck, yuck. Yeah.
But anyway, so this one example is something I found
(32:23):
documented on Snopes in an article by Dan Evan from
May of And this actually was not surprisingly from a
chain email, but a photo and report that was posted
to a Wisconsin local news website. And so it's got
a photo of a guy dressed up, you know, like
he's out fishing in the cold, and he is holding
(32:44):
a fish that is completely covered in white fur. It
looks like a it's got a fish head, but then
the rest of it is just like a polar bear's arm. Yeah,
and well, yeah, I don't know what exactly is going
on here, but um, it's an image that makes me suspicious.
This looks like a This fish should be mounted on
a wall and when there's movement in the room, it
(33:05):
should move and sing. Um, there's something it just it
has a look of fake grey to me, which is
not to say it's not legitimate, but it has the
look of fake gray for sure. It's the Christmas edition
of the Billy Bass. It sings Christmas carols? Yeah, no,
what is it? What would it be if it was
the Billy Bass, it wouldn't be like classic carols. It
(33:26):
would be Santa Claus is coming too town. What did
Billy did Billy Bass sing Christmas songs? No? No, no,
I'm saying if there were a Christmas version of the
Big Mouth Billy Bass, what did the Big Mouth Billy
Bass actually sing? This is again a robotic fake trout
that you would buy off the TV. Yeah, these things
were great, truly remarkable achievement of culture. Um. They sang
(33:47):
take Me to the River that song they sang. I
think one saying Y M C A. And that's all
I remember. There may have been others. Okay, did you
have one? Are you just remembering the t the TV?
You never had one? No, okay, well, call out to listeners.
Do you have one on the wall of your house
right now? Inside We're out? Doesn't matter what does it
(34:07):
still work or is it? Is it dying now? Or
as electronics sing this warped, sad, slowed down version of
the song. Oh man, that would that would be great. Okay,
I'm quitting the show. My career from now on is
I'm going to be a DJ. I'm gonna make beats
entirely out of samples from dying big mouth billy basses
to anyway anyway, Okay, back to so, back to the
(34:32):
this image of what looks like a Christmas themed uh
billy bass. So the allegation accompanying this photograph originally, this
is documented in that Snopes article goes like this says,
wanted to share rather remarkable catch I had this afternoon.
I was fishing in the Minominee River while some trout
were packed into a bottleneck. I caught a few, and
(34:54):
nothing was out of the ordinary until I reeled this
one in. I've never seen anything like it. I contact
did a local wildlife official and they referred to it
as a rare, furbearing trout. They went on to explain
that this was an extreme case of saprolegnia or cotton mold. Apparently,
old Great Lakes legends spoke of these as a uniquely
(35:14):
evolved trout species that existed only in the deepest, coldest
parts of the lake and needed the fur to stay warm.
I doubt it will make my Cabella's non traditional mount wall,
but I'm still excited to reel in a genuine Wisconsin legend.
You have my permission to share and use this photo
in any form if you'd like. Uh, and then uh
the person gives their credits. I don't want to say
(35:34):
this in case this is not actually the person who
did the hoax. Uh So so okay, so you look
that up if you want to know who to track
it down to. But um, but you got one on us. Okay,
this is definitely not actually a furry trout, and it's
also definitely not actually a case of saprolegnia because the
the fur just does not grow like that. Having looked
(35:56):
at a lot of images, now I can tell by
looking at it. Uh, the this this is a deliberate hoax. Now,
I guess it could be a situation where we don't
know who the perpetrator of the hoax might be could
be someone could have made such a fish us you know,
manufactured such a specimen and throwing it into the water,
and then it's uh, you know, acquired by someone else,
(36:18):
always a possibility. Just seating the world with with beauty.
I don't know if this is this is that would
be beauty. I mean, I'm all for catch and release,
but not like this, not like this, Yes, not like this,
I I agree, but so yeah, so I think this
is actually going a little too far with the possible
explanation for the origins of these legends based in these
parasitic infections, because it's it's trying to reconcile two things
(36:42):
that are just very different. One is that people when
they hear a story about a furry trout or imagining
a trout covered in fur like a mammal. And then
on the other hand, you've got this possible explanation that
is real science, but it is something that can explain
weird looking blotches and matches on a fish that can
in some cases have kind of like furree hype or
(37:05):
mys celia growing out of them. Huh yeah, yeah, I
can see how that would work well, well, they're just
not the same. So you would have to imagine there's
a process in between of like a sort of exaggerating
or extrapolating an original observation into something totally different. I
like the tidbit to of the legend being that this
(37:25):
is how the fish of the deep stay warm, which
I think is also kind of kind of telling in
all of this, because obviously fish do not need fur
coats to to operate in cold waters, right. We have
too many examples of a fish that do just fine
and they have no fur. But as mammals, you know,
(37:45):
we we know that that the the other mammals in
our world to survive in winter, they frequently do require
fur coats, and then we require fur coats made of
them in order for us to survive. And so you know,
we get into sort of an abstra act, you know,
comparison of of rather different physiologies here. Oh yeah, and
it also ignores several things like would fur actually keep
(38:08):
you warm if it was wet? No, I don't think
it would. In fact, marine mammals that need to keep
their bodies warm in very very cold water, are they
covered in fur? No? They actually lost there? For these
are evolved from creatures that used to have for and
they adapted to deep, deep water and extreme cold temperatures
(38:29):
in part by losing their fur and having other adaptations
in their body to help maintain their internal temperature. But
could they require fur coats if they leave the water
to go about their business on the land? Ah, there
you go. Maybe have some wizard sells them such a coat. Okay,
you bring it back around. This is a tricky fish wizard.
(38:49):
All right. Well, maybe we need to call part one there,
but we will be back with so much more furry
fish next time. Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna go to some
some really interesting places. Well, even ask the question, is
an otter of fish? The answer may surprise you. In
the meantime, if you would like to check out other
episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we have core
(39:09):
episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to Blow
your Mind podcast feed, you'll find Artifact episodes on Wednesday,
Little Listener Mail on Monday. On the weekends, we have
a Vault episode that's a rerunning on Friday, we do
a little Weird How Cinema. That's just our way of
closing out the week by setting most of the science
aside and just looking at a weird film. Huge thanks
as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
(39:33):
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, just to say hello, you
can email us at contact and Stuff to Blow Your
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My heart Radio,
(39:56):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're
listening to your favorite show, I Don't Be fourt
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe mccormaking. Today
I wanted to start off by doing one of my
favorite things to to kick off a Stuff to Blow
(00:23):
Your Mind episode, which is go back more than a
hundred years and read an article about what kinds of
animals there are? And I think this one's especially who
because it concerns the animals of Iceland. So this was
published in a periodical called the Scottish Review I believe,
in the year nineteen hundred by an author named Olaf Davidson.
(00:45):
And it's an article called the Folklore of Icelandic Fishes
in which Davidson catalogs examples of both totally mundane animals,
like you know, talking about different kinds of whales and
fish and sharks and things, but then also bizarre stories
of the boreal realms about you know, uh, weird deadly
(01:05):
creatures of the waters. And there are just some great
stories in here, some of which he seems to source
at least partially from Icelandic newspapers and other ones. I
guess he's drawing more on just general folklore. Um, so,
the first one I wanted to mention is is great
he He talks about something called the coil eel or
(01:26):
rock all, which is something like a cross between a
fish and a wire saw. So just let me read
from Davidson here. The coil eel or rock all is
about two ft in length and lives chiefly in ditches
or stagnant pools, but is sometimes found in running waters.
If any animal or human being puts foot into the
(01:48):
water where it is, the eel coils itself round their
leg and cuts into the bone or even takes it
right off. Frequently. Yeah, yeah, wire saw right. This frequently
happens with horses, but cheap escape because their legs are
too slender for the eel to work upon. How the
(02:08):
cutting is done is a point on which opinions differ.
Some say that the venom in the eel is so
strong that it corrodes the flesh and bone. Others say
that the eel has fins as sharp as the teeth
of a saw and does the work with these. It
is also said to have thin scales as hard as iron,
and its flesh is poisonous. Wow, this is incredible. It's
(02:30):
like the swimming guillotine, a very good comparison. You need
to get like a an Icelandic wizard who's got one
of these on a leash that he can throw. Yeah,
that would be great. I mean, these these are this
is a great hard gimmick right here. Yeah, and and uh,
it's even got an origin story. The rock All was
allegedly created, according to the tails, when a wizard once
(02:52):
breathed life into a dead, half rotten eel, thus creating
this poisonous animal. Oh my goodness that this needs to
go into a monster manual right here. Yeah. It also
strikes me as like a good way to convince your
children not to step in puddles. Yes, yes, the rock
All made lurk in the puddles? Yeah, do you ever,
by the way, go through And I know some kids
(03:14):
do this, Some kids have a real like puddle splashing
stomping phase. I don't know if you ever dealt with that,
but I've definitely definitely went through a puddle splashing uh
phase for sure. Yeah, I mean I can't deny it's fun.
But okay, So Davidson goes on to another one. There
there's one called the ohfu oogie, which is a fish
(03:34):
that has backwards facing fins and which swims in reverse
tail first. And then there's another one that he calls
the sea mouse. But I think what he's referring to
is now called the rabbit fish or the rat fish
scientific name Chimera monst rosa. Uh. This is a This
is a cartilaginous fish of the North Atlantic and Mediterranean
(03:57):
that can grow to about one point five meters in length.
And so the legend that Davidson recounts about this animal again,
this is probably now the rabbit fish. But what he's
calling the sea mouse is that it swims so ferociously
that the sea foams ahead of its path, and that
it can open its jaws wide enough to swallow an
(04:18):
entire boat, which is not true. But I did want
to read his anecdote about this quote. On one occasion,
two men were out at sea on the East coast
in an open boat, while near them was a French
fishing vessel. Uh. They had been fishing quietly for some
time when they heard a tremendous noise out to sea,
and at once suspected that it was caused by a
(04:40):
sea mouse. In a short time, they saw it, coming
in the midst of a white foaming wave and making
straight for their boat. The men were so scared that
they could do nothing to save themselves. The Frenchman saw
their danger and ran their schooner right in the way
of the monster, which however still kept the same course
and speed, and struck the vessel with such force as
(05:02):
to cant it over to one side. The sea mouse
continued to press against the ship for a little while,
and during that time the men were taken on board.
Then it disappeared and the men afterwards road to land.
So okay, saying this fish could like actually knock a
ship over, uh, definitely not true about that species. If
there is any truth to this story at all, it's
(05:23):
it's obviously not about a rabbit fish. Um. But also
to confuse things even further, there actually is a marine
animal now commonly known as a sea mouse, but it
is not a fish at all, but a marine poly
keyed worm, usually about three to six inches in length, which, uh,
this will be relevant to what we're talking about today,
is often covering in something that looks kind of like
(05:44):
a sparkly fur now and and this is an interesting
organism to be to be sure, but I also looked
up a picture of the rabbit fish, and it is
interesting that its head does have kind of the appearance
of a rabbit's head. It had I can set definitely
see the comparison. There, something about the way that the
eyes or are structured. Uh, it has has this kind
(06:07):
of rabbit looking skull. Um. But but then again, I'm
also reading that they can grow to the five feet
in length. So I guess if one of these creatures
was to slam into the side of your boat, it
could at least startle you. It could at least be
a moment that could then be exaggerated into greater threat
and tails. Yeah, I guess that's reasonable. I mean, I'm
(06:29):
picturing boats of a size in this story where that
wouldn't really make sense because it's talking about like a schooner,
right the I don't know how big is a schooner.
Can a schooner be small enough to be severely disturbed
by a by a one point five meter fish? I mean,
if your imagination is there, it can certainly certainly be alarming,
(06:49):
I imagine to confuse things about that story even further, Uh,
this so called rabbit fish Camira monstrosa. That is one
type of fish called rabbit fish, but then there's also
a totally different type of fish, also called a rabbit
fish that's not related. So lots to throw you off
right there, But anyway, I wanted to get to the
final citation I want to make from from Olaf Davidson's
(07:12):
article here because it concerns the topic that we're going
to be getting into over the next couple of episodes.
So here he goes on my favorite part. On the
shores of lakes in the north of Iceland, there have
sometimes been found strange and ugly fishes resembling trout, which
neither dogs nor birds of prey would eat. These were
(07:32):
doubtless specimens of the shaggy trout or load selunger, also
a very poisonous fish. One of these was cast on
shore at Savina Votten in eighteen fifty four, and an
illustration of it is given in the newspaper nor Dury
for eighteen fifty five. It was very unlike in ordinary trout,
(07:52):
both in shape and in color. On its lower jaw
and its neck, it had reddish hair forming a kind
of beard. There were also hairy patches on its sides.
And hair on its fins, so there can be no
doubt it was a shaggy trout, though the writer of
the article in Nordury does not say so. Now I'm
(08:13):
suspecting that wizard again. Yeah, I mean one I'm wondering.
Iceland is not super densely populated, right, so you know,
you have a few larger cities and then the little settlements,
especially around the coasts all around, but then big parts
of the inner country are you know, mostly uninhabited. So
I wonder is that wizard territory? Is that where the
(08:33):
wizards are out there making fish with beards? Yeah, I
mean there aren't enough people around to really mess with,
so yeah, they're doing terrible things to fish. But this
is by no means the only account of the shaggy
trout or the furry trout of Iceland. I found more
about this this local lore in an article in the
Paris Review by David Buckspan from sixteen, which is actually
(08:57):
about something totally different. It's not an article about Icelandic legends.
It is about a speaking event with an Icelandic novelist
who goes by the name Sean spelled s j o
in but pronounced Sean and you might know him as
a collaborator with Bjorke. He apparently wrote lyrics for some
of her songs, and I think they've performed in bands
together at least at some point. Um. But then at
(09:19):
a certain part in the evening at the speaking thing,
Sean turns to explaining his personal obsession with this shaggy
trout legend of Iceland, and he definitely expands on what
we've just established. So he does say, yeah, there's an
animal allegedly known as the furry trout. It looks the
same as a normal trout, except it's covered in fur,
(09:40):
which is a little different than what Davidson said. Davidson
said it looked very different from a regular trout. But
Sean goes on to say that according to the legend,
you might be fishing for a school of regular trout
with a net and then suddenly one of them there
in your net is completely covered in fur, and it's
just right there with the other ones. But he there's
(10:00):
the really interesting variation. Olaf Davidson says that the common
belief is that the shaggy trout is poisonous, so you
shouldn't need it because it could hurt you. Maybe make
you sick or kill you. But Sean says that the
legend he learned when he was nine years old was
that if a man ate the furry trout, he would
become pregnant and he would end up having to give
birth through his scrotum. Okay, well, I have some doubts
(10:24):
and some questions about that that last claim. Yes, and
he actually even describes like the birthing procedure, which involves
like the scrotum swelling with the child and like you
have to get a knife and lay him on a
table and all that. It's you can go read the
article if you want. Uh. But then is it a
normal human child or is it like a fish person? Oh,
I think it's just a human child. After that where
(10:46):
I don't know, he doesn't really go into what the
implications for the child is. But anyway, the more I
got interested in the store is the more I discovered
that there are, in fact stories from all over the
world about various types of furry fish. And so that's
(11:10):
what I wanted to look into for the next couple
of episodes here, because I think you you may well
agree that fish generally do not have fur, So we
wanted to talk about like what these stories are and
where they come from and what might explain them. Yeah,
and and these are going to cover a fair amount
of ground. We're gonna get into some legends and mythology.
We're going to talk about some some some some definite uh,
(11:34):
denizens of the of the the actual oceans and lakes
and rivers of our world. Uh, and then also some
possible like misinterpretations of natural creatures. So there's there's a
lot on the table here with the furry fish, and
I think, yeah, I think everybody's gonna be pleasantly surprised. Now.
The shaggy trout of Iceland is actually one of several
(11:56):
reports of furry fish that are collected in a book
that I was looking at called The Beasts That Hide
from Man, Seeking the World's Last Undiscovered Animals, by an
author named Carl Schucker. I think this was originally published
in two thousands three. I might have been looking at
an addition from but Shooker is a British crypto zoologist,
(12:20):
and as you may well know, crypto zoologist can mean
extremely different things, right, So it could be a clear skeptical,
responsible researcher who tries to investigate reports of animals that
are not well documented or not documented at all by
by regular scientific methods, and find out if these reports
(12:40):
can in fact be confirmed. And there are cases like this.
There are cases of, for example, of animals thought to
be long extinct but then turning up extant in the
world today. For example, the sela can't the type of
lobe finned fish that was thought to be long extinct,
but then live specimens were found. But on the other hand,
of course we know, if you know, if you're a
(13:01):
fan of like certain types of TV documentaries or whatever,
a cryptozoologist could also be a self applied label for
somebody who says that they have a big foot corps
in their freezer, but you're not allowed to look at it. Yeah, Yeah,
there's a there's a broad spectrum in the crypto zoology world, right,
And so I think, from at least what I was
(13:21):
looking at in this book, I think Shooker seems to
be closer to the former. Somebody who's you know, trying
to responsibly apply, uh, you know, reasonable skeptical methods of
investigation to reports of perhaps not well documented animals. There
may be something I missed, but at least in the
parts of the book I was looking at. He he
does not seem to treat reports of strange animals with
(13:44):
automatic credulity and and certainly not talk like the big
foot freezer guy. But anyway, a useful thing about this
book is whatever the actual explanations for these reports, it
is useful in itself just to collect the reports, right uh,
to say, Okay, what are people saying about, for example,
furry fish, whether or not there actually is such a
(14:04):
thing or something that we can identify that could have
been mistaken for such a thing. At least you know,
what are people saying? And so that's what he does
in this chapter. He's got at least five different examples.
And so the next thing I wanted to talk about
was another one that that I came across because I
found in this chapter, and this is Marco Polo's hairy Fish.
So this story is originally told in the Travels of
(14:28):
Marco Polo, which is the English title of a thirteenth
century Italian travelogue written by a guy named Rusticello or
perhaps Rusticiano of Pisa, based on the accounts of Marco Polo,
the Venetian merchant, diplomat and explorer of of great renown.
I'm sure you know who Marco Polo is. Yes, if, if,
(14:50):
even if you are not super familiar within you know
the pool name of Marco Polo, which, by the way,
the last pool I was at, or one of the
most recent pools I was at, they had a sign
that said no Marco Polo. Marco Polo was explicitly banned
from the pool. Why what is it dangerous? I got
the impression that it was just maybe annoying because they were, like,
(15:11):
you know, people were living near the pool, and therefore
they didn't want to hear children say Marco Polo over
and over again. But occasionally a child would get in
the pool start saying Marco Polo, and the more rule
oriented children would would remind them that it was not allowed,
and then some would try and do it, do Marco
Polo with different words, and and and other kids or
(15:34):
sometimes adults would be like, no, no, you can't, you
can't just do that. It's still Marco Polo. No, instead
of Marco Polo, you do Rusty Cello or Rusty Chano.
You know, Rusty Cello. Yeah, wouldn't work. Not not allowed,
not allowed. I forget, what's kind of variations. They were trying,
um very obvious ones like you know, um pool cleaner
fish or something, you know, just based on the first
(15:56):
two things they saw. Well anyway, so I found out
about this story of a furry fish because of this
passage from Shooker's book. But then I actually went and
looked up the original text to put the claim in
its full context. So this passage from Marco Polo's account,
which is the version translated to English by Ronald Latham
for for Penguin, is describing a marvelous city that Marco
(16:20):
Polo calls King Pai, but which I believe corresponds to
the modern day city of Hung Sho. And so at
the time he entered the city, Marco Polo was operating
under the aegis of Kubla Khan. That that's a bit
if you don't know much about Marco Polo's journeys. He
had a relationship with the court of the cons I
think uh at least going back through his father. But
(16:43):
he was favored by by the court of Kubla Khan.
And so he was not only a merchant and a
trader and explorer, but he also operated as a diplomat
on behalf of Koplakan, and at the time of his
visit to this city that is now known as hung Show,
the cons had conquered it. So there are a couple
of names to define ahead of time, so this paragraph
(17:03):
makes sense. He mentions a figure named King fak Fur,
who was the original ruler of Kingsai before it was conquered,
and then he also mentions Bayon, who was a Mongol
general who commanded the armies of Kubla Khan during the
conquest of Song dynasty China. So the account goes, let
me tell you now of a marvel that occurred when
(17:24):
Bayon was besieging this city. It happened after King fak
Fur had taken to flight, that a multitude of the
town's folk were fleeing by boat by way of a broad,
deep river that flows past one side of the city.
All of a sudden, while they were actually on the river,
the water completely dried up, so that Bayon, on learning
(17:45):
the news, came to this part and compelled all the
fugitives to return to the city. And a fish was
found lying high and dry across the river bed. And
what a fish for it was fully one hundred paces long,
but its girth was by all means proportionate to its length.
Its whole body was hairy. Many people ate of it,
(18:06):
and many of those who did so died. Mr Marco,
as he relates, saw the head of this fish with
his own eyes in a certain temple of the Idols.
Now we should put some caveats in, right, because there
are several reasons the story is already coming to us
in a kind of hazy fashion. Right. We're getting it
through several layers. This is an account written by Mr
(18:28):
Rusty Cello Rusty Chano of Pisa, based allegedly on the
accounts of Marco Polo, who claims that he saw the
head of this fish with his own eyes. But it
sounds like he must have at best heard second hand
the accounts of the story about the river drying up,
revealing the giant hairy fish a hundred paces long, and
(18:48):
then the people eating it and dying from it. Right,
because the story is saying, oh, the head is preserved
in this particular temple, and this is the backstory on
that head. Right now, While I think they're good jumping
off points to to start thinking about possibilities, I don't
think we can be too sure that either of these accounts,
either the Icelandic furry fish or Marco Polo's hairy fish
(19:10):
and in Hung Joe Uh, that they are necessarily based
on anything real than anybody actually saw. These could be
you know, fanciful imaginative stories people made up, or they
could be based on something. But I do think it's
interesting that in either case that both of these hairy
fish so far are regarded as poisonous and harmful to eat. Yeah,
(19:31):
this is very interesting, and I was particularly fascinated by
this Chinese um account or this Chinese episode. It was
like technically a Venetian account, but decided to read a
little bit more about it. So I was looking at
a C. Mules Marco Polo's descriptions of Quinsai, and the
author here basically looks at this everything that Marco Polo
(19:52):
has to say about the city, and it's analyzing it
and comparing it to other accounts and Chinese historical accounts,
and the there says that they can find no mention
of this this fish in Chinese sources detailing the siege
in question. However, he says that roughly forty years before
Polo's visit, strange aquatic creatures had been reported in the river.
(20:13):
This would have been the summer of twelve thirty nine.
Quote Chao Yu Kon reported that recently, while he was
watching the violence of the boar. Now just a quick
description of what the boar is, and this will make
sense if you think back to the passage that that
that Joe just read. Uh, this is a bore current,
a rare natural phenomenon in which the leading edge of
(20:36):
an incoming tide forms a wave or waves of water
that travels up a body of water and reverses the
direction of the current. Anyway, the author continues, Um, while
he was watching the violence of the boar, he had
suddenly seen strange creatures which were neither dragons nor fishes
in shoals, ruffling up their bristles and raising their spines.
(21:00):
And he wished to report and announced to the emperor
that he proposed to use powerful crossbows and guns. And
there's a question mark after guns, So I'm not sure
if the particular terminology is in question there or whatnot?
Um to remove this ill omened portent whoa so this
along with other accounts and quote the sight of some
monstrous skull or tooth which may well have been shown
(21:22):
in some temple um and they also point out that
a large tooth was actually shown as Buddhist tooth at
the time. All of this may may have then been
cobbled together and you know, reformed into the account we
just looked at. Okay, so it's possible that the account
we're getting, I guess third hand at this point through
Marco Polo's uh biographer here is some sort of half
(21:47):
remembered synthesis or reassemblage of these other pieces that we're
seeing in Chinese sources. Right now, this is conjecture on
my part, but I'm reading that the the sing Tang
river here was no own to at least sometimes have
yang Z River dolphins in it um now their namesake river.
The Z is several hundred miles north, but at least
(22:10):
prior to the nineteen fifties there were sightings of dolphins
in this river. So I can't help but wonder if
this might have been a case of a half rotted
river dolphin washing up. Because tissue and fibers on rotting fish, dolphins,
and whales can sometimes take on shocking forms that maybe
that then can be connected to various myths and legends
(22:31):
or theories about cryptids. Oh yeah, I mean that. We
actually did a couple of episodes. It was a few
years back at this point about globsters, the which is
the nickname for these objects. You know, these sort of
masses of biomaterial that will often wash up on beaches
and be proclaimed monsters. You know, they get their own
(22:53):
article in the Daily Mail and it's oh, here's a
dragon from the sea. And most of the time, I'm
they're whales. Not every time, but most of the time
there's some type of whale in some stage of decomposition
which can truly take on bizarre appearances. Yeah. For example,
consider the Sacklin Island wooly whale, which was washed up
(23:15):
on Sacklin Island in Russia back in you can find
pictures on this. The spelling is s A K H
A L I N. It looks weird and it does
look furry. But one of the chief theories here is
that this is just a dolphin carcass, that this is
a dolphin carcass that is decayed. It's a dolphin globster.
(23:37):
So I again this is conjecture on my part, but
it makes me wonder if that might have been what
we were looking at. It would also explain why eating
the flesh of this creature might not be a great
choice for your digestion or your overall health. Right. So
if this were the origin of the story from Keensai
or hang Joe, now, um, it would be that some
(23:59):
in some way the water washed back and revealed the
carcass of a large, perhaps young c river dolphin or
some other type of aquatic mammal that was dead sitting
there on the bank in some stage of decomposition. It's
the fibers of its body kind of looked like hair
in a weird way that you know, we've we've seen
(24:20):
with other globsters before. Somebody decided to eat it, and
obviously it made them sick because this is rotten meat.
And then somehow that got estranged and gave rise to
this legend. Yeah, or you can also imagine how it
could have just been a situation where the thing was
clearly foul and someone wisely said I don't think anyone
(24:42):
should eat this, and eventually that becomes I heard somebody
ate it and they died. But then I heard that
I heard that several people ate it and they died,
So I don't know. There you can easily imagine various
ways that the the story could form based on just
this one weird encounter with a st range globster body
in the water. Yeah, so we don't know, but I
(25:04):
do think that's a reasonable possibility to imagine as an
inspiration for these types of stories. And in fact, in
his book, Shooker sort of goes to the same place.
He says, Yeah, it's possible that this is a this
is a half remembered story about a decomposing animal body
of some kind, And of course the decomposing flesh would
have made people sick if they tried to eat it.
(25:24):
And again the other half being that, yes, often decomposing
flesh really does look hairy in a certain way. Than Now,
there's another interesting possibility about explanations that I wanted to
come back to, which has to do with parasitic infections
(25:46):
in fish. So think back to that first example I
mentioned of the furry fish claim, the one from Olaf
Davidson's reports of the shaggy trout of Iceland. Just to
refresh here on what Davidson says about the one example
hold that is reported in the newspaper nor Dury in
eighteen fifty five, which he says must be an example
of a shaggy trout. He says that it's that it's
(26:09):
lower jaw and its neck had reddish hair, forming a
kind of beard, and there were also hairy patches on
its side and hair on its fins, so there can
be no doubt it was a shaggy trout. But then
he also says it was unlike an ordinary trout in
both shape and in color, but he doesn't explain much
more about what he means by that, so I'm not
(26:29):
quite sure. I don't know if that means unlike in
terms of just like these patches on it, or if
it's also just like a differently shaped fish, and in
which case it probably originally wasn't a trout, and I'm
not sure what it was. But anyway, when raising the
story in his book, Karl Schuker mentions one possible explanation,
which is, what if these stories are based on observations
(26:50):
not of furry trout, but of trout that are suffering
from some kind of infection, such as a fungus that
covers their body with patches of mysilia. So there could
be a number of types of parasites and infections that
could lead to this misimpression. But one type of infection
that I've seen uh singled out as a possible inspiration
(27:13):
for furry trout legends is an oama site called Saprolegnia
or saprolegnia so. Oama sites are sometimes known as water molds.
They are a class of eukaryotic micro organisms that used
to be considered fungi, I believe due to their morphological
similarities to fungus, but I think now they're understood to
(27:35):
be a more separate branch of the tree of life.
But there are a number of different types of Oama
sites that can form parasitic relationships with fish and shellfish,
causing disease and eventually death in the hosts. And there's
this genus called Saprolegnia in particular, which has been singled
out as a possible source of these myths since when
(27:58):
an adult fish is in act did it can display
lesions or discolored patches on its skin, which in some
cases do look kind of furry or even sometimes like
cotton and rob I've just got a couple of pictures
for you to look at. One is of a man
holding up a salmon caught from a river that does
have these mold like patches appearing along it's its dorsal side. Yeah,
(28:22):
it does look like there's something wrong with this fish,
like something bad happened to a fish. And uh, the
other pictures shared there does have more of a hair
like quality to it. It looks like there's some kind
of whispery white sideburns and some whispery white hair on
the top of the fish's head. Yeah, and there are
other types of infections. One problem is if you're just
(28:43):
like doing an image search for this, you can't always
be sure what type of infection you're looking at. Because
there's another thing that I think is a more bacterial
infection called cotton wool disease in fish that also kind
of looks like cotton sprouting out on on these fish.
But that's a different organism causing it. But anyway, just
to learn more about saparolegnia, I was looking at a
(29:05):
book by Kurt Lemore and Sophien Commune, who are researchers
at the University of Tennessee. Both of them I believe
called um Oamacite Genetics and Genomics, Diversity Interactions and research tools,
And this is an academic book about uh these types
of parasites and micro organisms, and there's a part of
(29:26):
this about Saparolegnia in particular. So this species is Saparolegnia parasitica,
which the author's claim is a devastating pathogen on freshwater
fish species, which has contributed to significant damage in global
fish farming. And in the past, this and some other
fish related related fish pathogens were controlled by anti microbial
(29:50):
that Originally I think it was actually a die. The
dye is called malachite green, but it was found to
have these alleged anti microbial properties. But then this use
was scaled back after concerns arose about possible carcinogenic effects
on the fish and on consumers of the fish that
were treated with this die. So as of the time
(30:11):
this book was written or published in two thousand nine,
the the this was still a problem with the freshwater fisheries,
I think, especially with with fish farming. But in the
case of fur that forms on the skin of the
infected fish, this would actually not be hair, but it
would be my celia or the part of the microbial
(30:32):
colony that begins as these little hype often seen in
fungus that forms these hair like branches which can spread
out in in these patches on the skin. I think
they often begin originally at like a like a wound
or maybe some kind of opening in the skin. I
think they can attack the gills or they can attack
a wound, But then once they have established a colony
(30:55):
within the skin, they can kind of spread out from there,
and it's bad for the fish. Obviously, they will will
from the outer layer from the skin UH, and the
and the scales begin to invade down further into the
muscle tissue, which can eventually kill the fish over time.
But on the other hand, I think we wouldn't want
to be too bullish about attributing all of these stories
(31:17):
of furry fish to observations of infections of this kind
UH for one reason, because the while these infections can
form patches on fish that look strange, and sometimes these
patches in certain types of parasites can look kind of
hairy or cottony or wooly, they don't form coats of
fur that surround the full fish as described in some
(31:40):
of these legends. Yeah, we'd be talking something that would
be loosely describable as patches of fur, patches of weird
hair on a fish, which is it's different than a
shaggy fish, right, And so I think this explanation can
actually go too far and become a misconception of a zone. So,
(32:01):
for example, I was looking at modern allegations of furry fish,
which do still exist. I think I was reading one
story about a some people who were claiming that a
bunch of furry fish were created in a river when
there had been an accident and a bunch of hair
tonic was spilled into the river. So yuck, yuck. Yeah.
But anyway, so this one example is something I found
(32:23):
documented on Snopes in an article by Dan Evan from
May of And this actually was not surprisingly from a
chain email, but a photo and report that was posted
to a Wisconsin local news website. And so it's got
a photo of a guy dressed up, you know, like
he's out fishing in the cold, and he is holding
(32:44):
a fish that is completely covered in white fur. It
looks like a it's got a fish head, but then
the rest of it is just like a polar bear's arm. Yeah,
and well, yeah, I don't know what exactly is going
on here, but um, it's an image that makes me suspicious.
This looks like a This fish should be mounted on
a wall and when there's movement in the room, it
(33:05):
should move and sing. Um, there's something it just it
has a look of fake grey to me, which is
not to say it's not legitimate, but it has the
look of fake gray for sure. It's the Christmas edition
of the Billy Bass. It sings Christmas carols? Yeah, no,
what is it? What would it be if it was
the Billy Bass, it wouldn't be like classic carols. It
(33:26):
would be Santa Claus is coming too town. What did
Billy did Billy Bass sing Christmas songs? No? No, no,
I'm saying if there were a Christmas version of the
Big Mouth Billy Bass, what did the Big Mouth Billy
Bass actually sing? This is again a robotic fake trout
that you would buy off the TV. Yeah, these things
were great, truly remarkable achievement of culture. Um. They sang
(33:47):
take Me to the River that song they sang. I
think one saying Y M C A. And that's all
I remember. There may have been others. Okay, did you
have one? Are you just remembering the t the TV?
You never had one? No, okay, well, call out to listeners.
Do you have one on the wall of your house
right now? Inside We're out? Doesn't matter what does it
(34:07):
still work or is it? Is it dying now? Or
as electronics sing this warped, sad, slowed down version of
the song. Oh man, that would that would be great. Okay,
I'm quitting the show. My career from now on is
I'm going to be a DJ. I'm gonna make beats
entirely out of samples from dying big mouth billy basses
to anyway anyway, Okay, back to so, back to the
(34:32):
this image of what looks like a Christmas themed uh
billy bass. So the allegation accompanying this photograph originally, this
is documented in that Snopes article goes like this says,
wanted to share rather remarkable catch I had this afternoon.
I was fishing in the Minominee River while some trout
were packed into a bottleneck. I caught a few, and
(34:54):
nothing was out of the ordinary until I reeled this
one in. I've never seen anything like it. I contact
did a local wildlife official and they referred to it
as a rare, furbearing trout. They went on to explain
that this was an extreme case of saprolegnia or cotton mold. Apparently,
old Great Lakes legends spoke of these as a uniquely
(35:14):
evolved trout species that existed only in the deepest, coldest
parts of the lake and needed the fur to stay warm.
I doubt it will make my Cabella's non traditional mount wall,
but I'm still excited to reel in a genuine Wisconsin legend.
You have my permission to share and use this photo
in any form if you'd like. Uh, and then uh
the person gives their credits. I don't want to say
(35:34):
this in case this is not actually the person who
did the hoax. Uh So so okay, so you look
that up if you want to know who to track
it down to. But um, but you got one on us. Okay,
this is definitely not actually a furry trout, and it's
also definitely not actually a case of saprolegnia because the
the fur just does not grow like that. Having looked
(35:56):
at a lot of images, now I can tell by
looking at it. Uh, the this this is a deliberate hoax. Now,
I guess it could be a situation where we don't
know who the perpetrator of the hoax might be could
be someone could have made such a fish us you know,
manufactured such a specimen and throwing it into the water,
and then it's uh, you know, acquired by someone else,
(36:18):
always a possibility. Just seating the world with with beauty.
I don't know if this is this is that would
be beauty. I mean, I'm all for catch and release,
but not like this, not like this, Yes, not like this,
I I agree, but so yeah, so I think this
is actually going a little too far with the possible
explanation for the origins of these legends based in these
parasitic infections, because it's it's trying to reconcile two things
(36:42):
that are just very different. One is that people when
they hear a story about a furry trout or imagining
a trout covered in fur like a mammal. And then
on the other hand, you've got this possible explanation that
is real science, but it is something that can explain
weird looking blotches and matches on a fish that can
in some cases have kind of like furree hype or
(37:05):
mys celia growing out of them. Huh yeah, yeah, I
can see how that would work well, well, they're just
not the same. So you would have to imagine there's
a process in between of like a sort of exaggerating
or extrapolating an original observation into something totally different. I
like the tidbit to of the legend being that this
(37:25):
is how the fish of the deep stay warm, which
I think is also kind of kind of telling in
all of this, because obviously fish do not need fur
coats to to operate in cold waters, right. We have
too many examples of a fish that do just fine
and they have no fur. But as mammals, you know,
(37:45):
we we know that that the the other mammals in
our world to survive in winter, they frequently do require
fur coats, and then we require fur coats made of
them in order for us to survive. And so you know,
we get into sort of an abstra act, you know,
comparison of of rather different physiologies here. Oh yeah, and
it also ignores several things like would fur actually keep
(38:08):
you warm if it was wet? No, I don't think
it would. In fact, marine mammals that need to keep
their bodies warm in very very cold water, are they
covered in fur? No? They actually lost there? For these
are evolved from creatures that used to have for and
they adapted to deep, deep water and extreme cold temperatures
(38:29):
in part by losing their fur and having other adaptations
in their body to help maintain their internal temperature. But
could they require fur coats if they leave the water
to go about their business on the land? Ah, there
you go. Maybe have some wizard sells them such a coat. Okay,
you bring it back around. This is a tricky fish wizard.
(38:49):
All right. Well, maybe we need to call part one there,
but we will be back with so much more furry
fish next time. Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna go to some
some really interesting places. Well, even ask the question, is
an otter of fish? The answer may surprise you. In
the meantime, if you would like to check out other
episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we have core
(39:09):
episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to Blow
your Mind podcast feed, you'll find Artifact episodes on Wednesday,
Little Listener Mail on Monday. On the weekends, we have
a Vault episode that's a rerunning on Friday, we do
a little Weird How Cinema. That's just our way of
closing out the week by setting most of the science
aside and just looking at a weird film. Huge thanks
as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
(39:33):
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, just to say hello, you
can email us at contact and Stuff to Blow Your
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My heart Radio,
(39:56):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're
listening to your favorite show, I Don't Be fourt
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