September 6, 2012 • 40 mins
Finally, a podcast about Andre the Giant, dinosaurs and Nuralagus rex the bunny king. In this episode, Julie and Robert discuss gigantism. What causes some humans to become giants? Why are island ecosystems like Wonderland? Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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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 and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
How tall are you? That's pretty good, Lady Hyde right
for Lady Hid. Yeah, I'm a giant. No, it's I mean, yeah,
(00:24):
it's on the brand, but not so much. I mean, yeah,
well I'm I'm six three, which is like a good
a good level of height, Like I think of that
as pretty tall. Actually well, I mean it's it's tall,
but it's it's not. I mean, it's a little inconvenient.
I do bump my head a lot and forget a
lot of things as a result. But but it's it's not.
(00:45):
It was a little more than I would just I
would just have terminal brain injuries from running into things. Yeah.
Is My family would say, it looks like you got
some Dutch in you, Dutch because the Dutch are tall. Well,
there you go. But some people are taller than others,
for some people and for many things. Uh, we're really
getting into the area of gigantism. We're getting into areas
(01:06):
where it's amazing, into areas where it's it's kind of sad,
but well, And keep in mind too that humans are
already considered megafauna to some degree, right, Like we're pretty
much dominating the mammal um species here, So when you
think of the ability to grow even larger, it seems
a bit odd, but it does happen. Um. This is
(01:29):
known as acromegaly and uh. It is usually a disorder
of the tuitary gland. Usually there's a tumor that grows
there and it causes UM the body just to continue growing,
particularly in puberty when you are growing anyway, so your
bones get very very large, a lot of human growth
hormone pumping out, increasing the bone sizes, which of course
(01:51):
makes the body bigger. This isn't corrected, which we're gonna
talk about in a minute. Again, you actually end up
having or or organ omegaly, wit which case you have
the organs getting bigger in size too. And yes, you
end up with an individual that's very tall or can
be very tall. Not everyone with this condition ends up
becoming a legit giant, right, particularly if you get this
(02:13):
condition as an adult already. So which you find is that, like,
for instance, your tongue starts to swall get very large,
and that can lead to a host of problems, problems
like hypertension, high blood pressure, diabetes, sleep atna, breathing and
stops during sleep, carpal tunnel syndrome UM and then and
then again as as organ omegaly, hits sets in even
(02:37):
more problems, you know, especially a higher incidence of heart disease.
So sadly you see these a lot of these individuals,
they they they are giants. They become they reach these
this great stature and uh and especially with with the
individuals that have have a gigantism that involved themselves and
in the entertainment industry, we end up getting this, uh,
(02:58):
this grandiose vision of them as just superman, you know,
strong men. And in many cases they are very strong individuals.
But but later in life, uh, it often takes a
real toll on them, right, because you think about all
of that blood that needs to be pumping to all
those now oversized organs. It is very streshful in the body.
And when you talk about superhero component of that, I
(03:19):
instantly think of Andre the Giant. Yes, uh, Andre Rusumov,
the wrestler actor Frenchman. Uh. Yeah, he only lived to
the age of forty six, but he was seven ft
seven ft tall uh and five pounds at the end
he was he chose not to be treated uh and
(03:41):
died of cardiac complications from the disease. But he's definitely
a legend as far as modern day TV and film
era giants goes. Oh yeah, I always think of him
in The Princess Pride. Yeah, because he's a wonderful movie. Yeah,
wonderful movie. He was great in that he was He
was a larger than life character both on the screen
and inside the ring and outside where he he allegedly
(04:04):
had just an amazing um ability to drink alcohol. Could
just I'm sure he want most of those contests out
of style. And you still have individuals with gigantism that
are involved in um entertainment and pro wrestling today. Pro
wrestling alone, you have you have Paul White who wrestles
(04:25):
as his big show. You have this guy, there's an
Indian gentleman by the name of of Dolph singh Arana
who wrestles as the Great Kaleigue, various other individuals. So
because you have stature like that, inevitably some guy with
a few bucks is gonna come up to and be like, hey,
have you ever considered being an entertainment? Um? And then
you have. There are other characters of note as well.
(04:47):
There's a there was a man by the name of
Maurice Killett who was who was a Russian born French
professional wrestler who wrestled under the name the French Angel.
And he died back in again in fifty four. Um.
There's a man by the name of Rondo Hatton who
was an American actor. He died in six but he
became really iconic is playing these uh, these grotesque thug
(05:09):
type characters and a lot of old B movies and
and he was he was rather iconic. In fact. Um,
I believe the character of Shrek is actually based on
his general physical appearance, because he had a very brutish
look to her, you know. Um. And then of course
there's Richard Kyle who played Jaws, and then James Bond movies,
the old James. Yeah, he's he's still with us um
(05:31):
um over seven ft tall. I think he's he's shrunk
a little, just with age, you know, you kind of
end up stooping over a bit. But but the list
of other individuals who've who've who've had at least treated
acromegay is pretty interesting because it includes some surprises. For instance,
you were surprised at Tony Robbins. Yes, actually yeah, I
(05:54):
said that. I thought I just thought it was his
oversized ego that I was perceiving. Yeah, you just thought
it who was larger than life? And because he is,
and he is he's six ft seven um poet Walls Stevens.
This surprised me. He was only six three So it
wasn't you know, as an as noticeable a case of gigantism.
But it was a pretty tall individual. This is a
(06:15):
guy who wrote the poem The Emperor of ice Cream.
Another works um the the Roman emperor um maxim Maximinus,
the first who reigned from two thirty five to thirty eight.
According to um Um Herodians Historia Augusta, he was eight
foot six inches in height. But that's somewhat doubtful that
(06:38):
he was actually that tall. But but still, um, there
was a giant from from the the history books. And
uh and and really you can it look like a
whole list of individuals you can you can find out. Yeah,
I wanted to mention Sandy Allen. She was the world's
largest or tallest woman at seven seven and one quarter inch.
And she actually was a wonderful educator and and um
(07:01):
a lot of her education materials centered around differences she was.
She was definitely trying to promote that with other kids
and respecting other differences. So um, So, a lot of
these individuals may have made a buck or two off
of their stature, or it may have provided them with
opportunities that they wouldn't have otherwise had. But but a
lot of them were really fascinating and successful individuals in
(07:24):
their own right that had nothing to do with their height.
Maybe Wall of Stevens um poetic gifts were you know,
if he was a shorter man, he would have had them.
But but I think that's a difficult argument. It's hard
to say that's right. But as you mentioned, there is
treatment for this. One of it is one of the
treatments is surgical removal of the actually get in there
and remove the thing that is causing all of this
(07:46):
and checked growth. Right, And Sandy Allen actually had that
when she was twenty years old, but nonetheless, at the
age of fifty three, she still passed away because again
at that point, you know, she had reached such a
height and her organs were so large that it did
attack her body. And then there are other methods of
treating it um that you can also use medication to
halt the hormone and and then also some individuals undergo
(08:11):
radiation treatments as well. Yeah, and we should probably I
don't know if we mentioned that before, but because of
the tumor on the tutary gland, what is happening is
you're getting an excess amount of growth hormones that are
shooting out, so that that is the root cause, right, So,
and so you can't take medication to to check that,
but but in many cases they often just go for
the more you know, certain cure. I guess um. But
(08:35):
we're not just here to talk about humans that are large.
We're we're also here to talk about animals that became
true giants. And of course, when you're talking about gigantic animals,
you can't help but to think of our friends, the dinosaurs, Yeah, immediately, right,
And most of the reason for that is because we
don't really um get to see small bones of dinosaurs
(08:58):
because they don't preserve the well, so the bones that
we see exhibited in museums usually belong to the behemoth,
So immediately we think about these guys um which they
definitely had gigantism um or I guess you could say
in the natural world at that time. For the composition
of the elements in the world that they were living in,
(09:20):
this made most sense for them, some some animals depending
on their resources and energy. Yeah, and there's a theory
too that it was basically an arms race of size,
because the larger the organism is, the fewer predators it has.
Because you're, you know, this gigantic, hulking beast, uh not
everything is going to be able to really eat you
or stand a chance of even taking you down. It's
(09:41):
gonna come and like pulling your leg and you need
to stop on it. So there's an evolutionary advantage to
uh to to having a larger body and a larger statue,
even if it comes with with certain negatives as well,
such as obviously you have to eat more food, and
then that also affects uh the rate at which young developed,
and in various other approcreative necessities. Yeah, and it said
(10:06):
that sura pods were particularly um at an advantage for
this because they could have you know, a decent size
of of of young uns, and they could protect them
all and then they could pretty much rapidly grow to
these very huge sizes. And again another advantage of that
is you can stomp out the competition literally literally. Yeah,
(10:27):
they're actually um. From a Scientific American article called is
there any evolutionary advantage to gigantism um, They these sore
pods are actually called the first true giants of the land.
And they were small headed, long necked, that's probably what
you're thinking of when you think about a sore pod.
And they appeared at the beginning of that time, about
two hundred million years ago UM and uh, some of
(10:50):
these predatory dinosaurs exceeded one ton. Towards the end of
the Jurassic ministre pods reached ten to twenty tons, and
some weighed as much as twenty or excuse me, fifty tons,
and a few may have exceeded a hundred tons and
a hundred and fifty feet in length, which is actually
rivaling um, some of our largest modern whales because because
(11:13):
as we've mentioned before, the blue whale is still the
largest organism um the large certainly. Yeah, that's tricky too, Yeah,
because we discussed in our Largest Organism episode. Um, depending
on how you defined organism, you can actually get into
some even larger things that are not vertebrates, but but
certainly the largest vertebrate that has ever lived, the blue whale. Um. So,
(11:37):
and of course you think about tyrannosaurs dominant meat eaters
of the late cretitious area, or scavengers whatever, the hot
theory of the moment happens to be exactly. They grew
slowly until they were teenagers and they were marauding in
moby um, and then they went through a growth spurt,
becoming five times larger in just seven years. So again
(11:57):
we're talking about I mean, the period of growth of
here is is pretty amazing. Um, when you become five
times larger. If you think about a teenager right now,
they maybe have a couple more inches that they're gonna
lop on, but they're certainly not going to become twenty
ft tall. Yeah, it's it's just crazy to think about
the amount of Like in the Milk podcast we mentioned
about about baby blue whales taking on like three pounds
(12:20):
of body weight a day as they feed off their
mother's milk. So um, Yeah, the amount of growth taking
place with these gigantic organisms is just incredible. Yeah, and
I wanted to to mention a couple of other advantages
to being so large before we talk about disadvantages. Your
metabolic rate decreases with increasing size, so for instance, um,
(12:42):
you only need to take in five percent of if
you're an elephant, for instance, you only need to take
in five percent of your own weight, whereas a shrew
or a mousee needs to eat more than its weight
each day to survive. Yeah, there's a there's actually you'll
hear that that that stat There are out a lot
to when people make that make the point that the
shrew is the most ravenous creature on the planet because
(13:04):
it's just it has to eat so much as he
constantly to survive. And they actually made a movie ages
that really horrible be movie that they they lampooda mystery
signs the thousand called the Giant Shrews or was it
the Killer Shrews, I can't remember, but the basic thing
was that they had these giant shrews who were running
around there were the size of dogs that of course
(13:25):
we're dogs with really bad costumes, breaped over them. And
then the idea was that the shrew is just incredibly
dangerous and if we're ever ever able to reach the
side of like a dog, then they would be the
most dangerous things ever. But of course this we've just
mentioned here, the appetite really plays into their size. That
the shrew became larger, they would be playing the violin
under our tree, having a couple of grapes and being like,
(13:47):
hey guys, totally chilled out. Um, was this made in
the fifties. Yes, there seems to be a real obsession
with gigantism during that time period. Oh yeah, you saw
they were giant scorpions, giant spiders, giant ants them what
was the movie ants? There was a lot of fun
these to show that on on the on the the
cable channels back in the day when they were like
(14:09):
think grandpap Monster hosted a Saturday morning Monster movie show
and remember that, and they would play that, They would
play Islanded Dr Moreau, these studies type of films. But
the giant ants, all all these things. Yeah, well these
were also easy animals to implement in a B movie
because if you have a giant ant, all you needed
to just just get some ants in there. Uh, do
(14:31):
some you know, mess with perspective, uh dubby on an
actual ant and just make it look larger, although inevitably
they always have a puppet of whatever animal. Yeah, you
need the head which is with the pincher so it
can grab a lady and picture exactly better than that,
just throw in the ants and have some people react
to it. It's like early c g I. Alright, So,
(14:53):
so other than being featured in b phones, why might
you not want to be a giant? H Really, if
you are a dinosaur, for starters, all that mass that
that allows you to stomp others out actually kind of
hems you in because you can't fly, you can't run,
you can't climb or burrow into the ground to take cover.
So your your whole defensive tactic is, hey, I'm this
(15:14):
hulking thing and you can't take me down. But then
say you have a pack of velociraptors that come around
and they're like, actually we can because we can work
together and we're patient, and you're not going anywhere exactly exactly.
You're a very large target force, and because they're at
the top of the food chain, there are less of them,
and the chances for extinction actually become greater as well. Right,
(15:34):
large organism having to depend on a lot of other
organisms underneath it, even if most of them are just grass. Uh,
and then you wipe that out and there you go. Yeah. Um.
And this was really interesting to Sarah de Charred, Doctoral
Canada at North Carolina State has studied the plants available
during the age of dinosaurs, and she thinks that during
the Jurassic, when vegetation with fibrous and low nutrient, it
(15:57):
would make sense to have a lot bigger bell eas
really what we're talking about here, because they acted a
huge vat for fermentation. But she says that when flowering
plants with high nutrient contents came along, it was actually
a boon too smaller dinos because I gave them an
evolutionary advantage because that was just the hit that they needed. Um.
(16:17):
So it's kind of interesting to look at it that way.
And I also wanted to mention too, although not dinosaurs,
there is a tale of Paleozoic dragonflies that may have
existed three million years ago. And how big were these things, uh,
wingspan of two and a half feet. And they think
this is still a bit of a theory, but this
(16:39):
is owing to the planets. Then oxygen makeup of more
than so it was these auction levels that actually spawned
this dragonfly. Wow. Well that's interesting to imagine, especially during
mating season when they do their thing, you know. Yeah,
I mean, can you imagine it would be debauchery if
today we looked at the window and saw in such
great detail and such largeness the mating. Yeah, dragonflies are great.
(17:02):
I love him. But you know what I love even
more in this Uh. And we're moving forward a bit
here from from dinosaurs. I love dinosaurs. I love them
as a kid, but you kind of get I kind
of got used to it at an early age. It's
the idea that it used to be giant lizards, even
though just as a tangent, I had to I was
trying to convince, um, um, I have a kid that,
(17:25):
like a four year old that I watched and over
a babysitting Uh. He had some toy dinosaurs and I'm
and I and I told him it's like, you know
those are real, right, And he's like, no, it's just
a toy. It was like that's heartbreaking. Um, he'll learn.
But but but I got used to the idea pretty
early on. Yes, there were giant dinosaurs at one point
or another, and for some reason, giant mammals that and
(17:46):
and giant birds that was always a much more exciting
idea to me, Like it it felt newer, I guess
you know, it wasn't as um as uh as covered
in the childhood science literature. So so anytime, even today,
when I see like a like a picture of a
giant sloth or or or certainly these giant birds, I'm
(18:08):
I'm really impressed. The giant birds are really kind of
heartbreaking though, because so many of these where we're not
even prehistoric creatures, they lived until very recent time. Yeah,
I was gonna say, let's talk about these more modern
terrestrial animals, which gigientis um. Yeah, there was a species
of bird called the host eagle um that reached a
height of eight point five feet. It was a fierce
(18:30):
predator that lived in New Zealand and U Sadly, it
went to extinct about five hundred years ago due to
human hunting and habitat encroachment, which again is just kind
of sad because it's like, oh, we almost reached the
point where we could have seen these and and photographed
them and maybe conserve them, but they they blinked out
just a little too soon. And then there are others.
(18:52):
There's the the elephant bird, which was ten feet tall
that lived on Madagascar and it uh it went on
sometime in seventeenth century and they think. Uh. There's also
of course the moa, which was the great flightless bird
of New Zealand. Uh and it probably went away about
seven hundred years ago when the may always wiped them
(19:14):
out because they're just they're these big birds. They've evolved
to to to pretty much do whatever they want within
a limited environment. But then suddenly you have an invasive
organism around. You have humans who are like the velociraptors
we mentioned earlier. They're smart, they're patient, they're cunning, and
they know that they can work together to take this
animal down and eat it. And then since it's a
(19:35):
larger organism, um that you know, they're fewer of them.
Uh reproduction time plays into this as well. They're much
more easily wiped out. So everyone feasts on moa for
a little bit and then there's no more. Yeah. I mean,
it is mind boggling to think the amount in different
types of animals that have gone extinct um, not just
because of manning causes, but even something that I believe
(19:56):
it was during the Order of Vicinian period. They're supposed
to be like a just a proliferation of different species
that were then wiped out at the end of that period.
But anyway, it just doesn't boggle the mind to try
to imagine all different types of flora and fauna. But
not all the giants went away. We stall some rather
gigantic animals around today. They're worth mentioning. Oh yes, the
(20:18):
colossal squid. Yes, and we're we're doing another podcast on
intelligence of cephalopods um, so there's gonna be even more
squid content there. But the colossal squid reaches some pretty
phenomenal links. Yep. Actually, the squid was accidentally caught by
New Zealand fisherman in two thousand and seven, weighing in
(20:40):
at one thousand pounds and spanning fourteen ft. Here's something
that really, um, kind of rattles me a bit. It's
i uh, nearly ten inches in diameter, so imagine nearly
a foot long eye staring back at you. Uh So
that I think, particularly rattling from squid. Eyes are amazing, um,
(21:03):
especially when you're talking about something that big and the
biggest eye of any animal really very similar to our
I actually um, and we'll talk more about that in
our gigant or excuse me, in our cephalopod podcast. So
when we're talking about things like like the colossal squid
and and also various other giant animals that live in
the deep, we're getting into the area of deep siege
gigantism um. Particularly you see this uh in invertebrates, crustaceans,
(21:26):
uh and other creatures where they'll they're they'll have cousins
that live in fresh water or shallow or not fresh
water but shallower waters and uh, and they'll be much smaller.
But in the deep and the cold, cold deep, they
grow toal enormous size. And part of it is the cold.
Scientists think they say that you look at the at
(21:47):
the temperature and body body size, and the bigger animals
have smaller surface to volume ratio, so they can more
effectively conserve body heat in those cold environments. So would
be to their advantage to grow bigger. Yeah, it's kind
of like having a fur coat undersea fur couch. Yeah,
it's just and there's more of me. So I got
that way. I can I can go down into these lightless,
(22:08):
chilly depths and it doesn't really affect me that much.
Where if I were this splender little creature than you know,
not so much. There's this idea too, that we haven't
quite even gotten a grasp of how large some of
these creatures are. This is from Discovering News. Um It
says that squid beaks found in the stomachs of sperm
whales have actually dwarfed the beak on the Colossal Squid
Museum specimen that we just spoke of, suggesting that even
(22:30):
more colossal squids work in the cold, dark deep. Yeah,
we just haven't seen them yet. I mean, for the
longest we had, we had never managed to capture footage
of a live giant squid. And I remember the day
that they that we actually had had that footage when
a few years back and suddenly was on YouTube everywhere,
and it wasn't really even that impressive of footage, but
(22:52):
it felt kind of heartbreaking because you're like, oh, you know,
there's a mystery that we can check off the list. Yeah. Yeah,
although I mean incredibly cooled be able to verify right.
Um From the same Discovery News article by Jennifer Viegas.
They were actually talking about, or she was actually talking
about how these creatures may have grown to such a
large size too because of the lengths that they have
(23:13):
to go to, UM to find food. When you're a
small creature, UM, even if you're eating a lot that
your kingdom, um, your your domain in which you hunt
for prey is relatively small. But when you receive larger size,
you're having to really really go out there and hunt.
You're covering a vast underwater territory, which may be why
(23:35):
the Humboldt squid have have shown up Monterey Bay and
in various different places. They're still trying to figure out why.
What's the explanation for that? But um, but it does
play into morphology for for sure. All Right, and we're
gonna take a quick break. But when we get back,
we're going to talk about, um what what could be
horrific to some people something called a hissing cockroach. Um
(23:58):
if the madagas art hissing cock roach and it's quite large,
talk about that some other insects. All Right, we're back, UM,
We're headed to the Madagascar for correct is Madagascar is
one of places that you you see a lot in
and UH in dealing with unique organisms, because you're talking
(24:20):
about an island that is uh that is that is
set aside from from the rest of the continent. And
of course this is where you encounter lemurs, the only
place you encounter lemurs outside of a zoo. Uh and
the lemur would not necessarily be able to survive elsewhere,
but here they have evolved and uh and and fill
the niche rather nicely that doesn't exist elsewhere. Yeah, let's
(24:44):
talk about that. That's that lack of predators and competition
that drives some the size of these creatures. And this
is called island gigantism. It is a biological phenomenon um
that that is present for animals that live on isolated islands,
and they tend to grow bigger and bigger again because
they don't have anything running after it um and because
everything is pretty plentiful, right, it's like a corny copia
(25:05):
of food out fair for them. Yeah, I mean it's
I mean it really, it comes down a lot of
it comes down to them living in a protected environment.
In many of these cases, you have an ecosystem that
is set aside from the rest that whatever, what other
kind of predators are roaming around on the continent at large,
they're not necessarily here, or that the predators that are here, um,
(25:26):
they don't have access to the same prey. So you
end up with a kind of microcosm into itself where
different rules end up applying. Yeah, and according to Pilliontologes
for ginny million, uh, island species evolved faster than mainland species,
particularly over shorter time intervals of years to thousands of years,
So you really do get to see that the proof
(25:48):
of the putting much faster in these environments. One example
of an older island giant that I ran across in
this to Discovery News article. Um but uh, five to
three million years ago, you had a creature um known
as the Miraculous Rex, which lived on the small island
(26:11):
of Minorca, and it weighed about twenty six point four pounds.
It had no enemies, and it was essentially a giant
bunny rabbit. Oh, I've seen pictures of this kind of
like Night of the Leapist, except the other the other thing.
Not only did it grow larger, but it grows larger
and has no need of predors. It doesn't need a hop,
it doesn't need ginormous ears with which to hear everything.
(26:31):
It doesn't need big eyes with which to see everything,
So it kind of loses those features. Just kind of
like an aging prize fighter or something, you know, just
lets it the gut go and it no longer has
the reflexes it needs to fight because it doesn't need them.
But still it's a pretty impressive creature that you had. Essentially,
rabbits I will I will say that the photo I
saw it did it did kind of look puggy. It
(26:51):
didn't look like it had been, you know, screwing around
that much because it did one like from an evolutionary
point of view, it's like I don't need you know,
if you if you're not working out, you don't keep
the muscles. And it's kind of the similar thing as
evolution rolls out, you know, uh, if you don't need
those ears and then eventually you're gonna lose them. Yeah,
you can tell that it abandoned its bofe uh Managus
(27:14):
scar hissing cockroach, as I mentioned before, found in at
a guess car office of Face coast of Africa, the
largest living cockroach and the only known insight capable of
hissing by forcing air through its spiricles. These are breathing
holes rather than rubbing their appendages together. And happy do
these guys good? About three inches long by one inch,
(27:36):
which doesn't seem entirely huge until you actually see one
in person. Yeah, I've heard of people traveling there. And uh,
you know, you're you're you're sleeping through the night and
then your cell phone rings and you pick it up
and you're actually picking up a hissing cockroach answering it.
And since you're in a you're not really all that awake.
You're not having like a five minute conversation with the
(27:58):
abdomen of a cock right, and little do you know
that hissing sound is actually mating calls, so you're being wooed? Yeah? Yeah, um,
actually do. Atlanta has some hitsing cockroaches that they'll bring
out every once in a while. It's a frequent a
frequent exhibited zoos. I don't know if they're easy to
shift or easy to keep or he's gonna handle. They're
(28:19):
not gonna bite you, and they're huge and grows. Some
little boys just good guy got yeah yeah, and the
girls they love them too, um and uh yeah, the
males have horns too, so it makes them look really interesting. Now,
if they flew, that would be that would be my night.
But that's another thing. You get big like that, you
don't need wings, right. Well, that's the other thing too.
There's the limits to morphology here and that. Um, you know,
(28:41):
if it's to your advantage to get larger and larger, great,
you're going to do it. But once it inhibits your ability.
So if if the cockroach was a creature that flew
in the first place, um, and I know there are
some but mainly cockroaches do not fly. But let's say,
for instance, a bird, if it became so large it
was on the precipice of not being able to fly
(29:03):
anymore than it would. That's that's where the constraint comes.
That's where the morphology of the outer limits of it
just end. Yeah. We mentioned some of this in our
Godzilla Barbie King Calling episode where we talk about giant
organisms and uh and certainly the larger it's it's worth
remembering that. Say, take take a beetle. You know, even
like a fairly large beetle, it's a in a sense,
(29:27):
it's a physically perfect thing. Like everything about its proportions
and its size is perfect for the size at which
it exists. If you were to to somehow magically in
large beetle, it wouldn't be able to function at a
larger size because it's exoskeleton, right. This is more than
just armoring. It's more than just a tough, shiny jacket
(29:49):
that the beetle wears like this is a structural skeleton
that that holds in its insect guts and uh and
uh and and and protects it from the outside world.
And if you were to increase the size of a beetle,
then you also have to really increase the thickness of
the exoskeleton, and it just becomes an impossible equation rather quickly.
It's just amazing, which whine you don't see really large
(30:10):
organisms outside of the dark crystal that have a large,
you know, armor like exo skeletons. Well, and to me though,
it's just so such a testament to nature and how
cool it is that it can adapt to that in
the first place. Um that dwarfism or gigantism can take place,
the shrinking or the increasing like that. Um I also
wanted to mention the giant Wetta of New Zealand Uh.
(30:33):
It's genus name is dina Krita and it's Greek for
terrible grasshopper because they look at the size of your
hand right now, that is how large this little booger is. Um.
It is among the heaviest insects on Earth, winging three
times more than a mouse, and apparently in captivity, if
you offer it a carrot, it will eat it. I
(30:54):
think I've seen pictures of that. Yeah, Allison, actually are
the science editor Alson Ladermilk sent us a photo of
That's that's where I had seen that. It was pretty funny.
I thought she kept it could be. I don't know
if she said, I'm assuming that this little guy could
actually have a conversation with you, And remember thinking, yes, indeed,
I think he could. Yeah. Um, we mentioned New Zealand again,
(31:17):
the giant birds. It was very much a bird world
for for the longest. So again, you get into situations
where you have an island or or a large body
body of land that is set aside from the rest
of the world, and you see a certain amount of
competition fall on the wayside, and and then you can
see some very unique organisms, very large organisms grow to
(31:40):
dominance and it is this Wonderland effect. Actually, there's there's
something called the Wonderland effect um in which is alluding
to Alice and one pill makes you larger, one pill
makes you smaller. Well, now I'm thinking of the song
one Pitt. It is a great truck. But yeah, Alison Wonderland,
she she shrinks, she increases um. In nineteen sixty four,
(32:02):
biologists J. Bristol Foster studied insular gigantism in dwarfism, and
he came to the conclusion that rodents, for instance, tend
towards gigantism, while carnivores uh legama forests like rabbits and
hairs and rto dactyls, deers, hippos and other even towed
ungulates are more likely to become dwarfed um. And overall,
(32:23):
amongst mammal species that colonized islands, big ones have a
tendency to shrink, while small ones are able to get larger.
So again it's like it's a new world and the
occupants of this new world have to change their ways.
And again I'm sort of personifying evolution here to a
certain extent, and which for which I to some of
you do apologize. But but yeah, they find themselves in
(32:45):
this new world and they realize they're gonna have to
change their ways to survive. They're gonna have to cut
the budget or they're gonna have to ramp up their activity.
And uh, and so you see the smaller animals becoming bigger,
the bigger animals having to really cut down and become smaller. Yeah,
and it really they really haven't quite figured out what
drives um some species becoming larger and some remaining the same,
(33:07):
or some becoming smaller on these islands, because they don't
know if it's because the species arrived um there and
there was already another species quite similar to it, a snake,
for instance, and uh, it decided, okay, it's best here
if I just shrink or I stayed the same. One
of the things that really surprised me when we were
researching this was the situation with the Komodo dragon, which
(33:28):
we generally think of as an example of island gigantism.
It's the largest lizard we have. It's a ten ft
long way three pounds. Back when the show was with
that stuff to blow your mind or stuff in the
science claud that did the Komodo dragon episode that may
have been I think from I think it was from
the last Yeah, it may have been a lad episode.
But at the time I remember reading all these amazing
(33:51):
things with the Kumodo dragon. You just keep thinking, oh,
it's a giant, it's a dragon. But there's the theory
that this is actually a case of the island dwarfism
because Komodo dragons they live on the Isle of Komodo
U in Indonesia, but they also live on the on
this other island called Flores, And on Flora's they have
they've found fossil evidence of a much larger um dragon,
(34:14):
if you will, that would have been twenty three ft
long and would have weighed third over thirteen hundred pounds.
And so the idea is that the Komodo is the
the island dwarf of this amazing creature, which just turns
everybody's thinking on it. Right, it's very interesting. It doesn't
make the Komodo dragon anything less awesome or any less
they living uh dinosaur in a sense, it's still a
(34:37):
giant wizard. Yeah, yeah, you can't take that away from it.
You never try and take anything away from Komodo track,
that's right. It'll take your toe all right, So there's
just a nice second introduction to the world of gigantics.
I'm certainly we could sit here all day and and
and talk about other well known or less well known
giant animals. Certainly we didn't say anything about gallops, tortoise
(34:58):
or Japanese spider TRAbs. These are all wonderful animals in
their own right and worth looking into. Definitely worth looking
at a couple of pictures, especially that Japanese spider crab.
It's all legs. Um. Yeah. So, and we will talk
about dwarfism another time. Dwarf is ms. That is certainly
a podcast topic onto itself, is and especially if you
(35:18):
talk about that human beings and when why are some
people smaller in stature in cases of actual dwarfism among
humans and other similar situations. So like that this old
podcast and human morphology throughout the ages from and what
extent is being tall? Uh, you know, not all that
ideal anyway, Maybe we should be shorter. I don't know.
(35:40):
You can pick the apples really easily, so like, I mean,
you have that advantage over me. Yeah, but I'm not
that good at climbing the tree if I was smaller,
you know, I would be a little lower to the
ground that are able to climb out there and get
them anyway. True, yeah, all right, well let's call the
robot over here and listen to some male all right,
we have a couple of bits of listener mail here
(36:03):
that come to us from fans on Facebook. So so
I guess it wasn't really email. It was more fan
messaging through the Facebook. It was communication communication. Um, this
is apparently how the young kids are communicating now. Anyway,
they're not using their email accounts, right, this is what
I hear on the street. This st I heard this morning. Well, anyway,
(36:24):
Abigail rights and says, I laughed when I saw your
screen podcast because I put your podcast on in the
car on the way home from daycare to keep my
infant from screaming. I think it might be Robert's voice
because it also worked when he did a voice for
the Stuff you Should Know Shark Week Special, which just
published a couple of weeks ago, and go check that out.
(36:45):
Was Josh and Shuck. Anyway, I digress. When I was
in girl Scout camp, we used to play a game
called roller Coaster. They line us up at the edge
of the field and when the council yelled go, we'd
take a deep breath and start running and screaming at
the same time. You kept running until you couldn't scream anymore.
The point of the game was to get the furthest
As a kid, it was such a joy to be
given the freedom to unleash the screen. But the true
(37:07):
value of the game became apparent when I became a counselor.
Not only was it an amazing way to get out
the frustration of managing pen kids seven, but it also
tired them out, making them easier to manage. It wasn't
until then that I realized one of the counselors always
won the game. New listener and always enjoy your podcast.
Thank you for helping me make my ride home more peaceful.
(37:29):
That's awesome. So that's kind of like a form of
primal screen therapy. And I'm I'm glad that my voice
has this effect on this job. Yeah, just maybe we'll
record a track of me just uh, you know, saying
nursery rhymes. I was going to say, you could you
could do that. It could be like Jack and Jill
went up the Hill or not necessarily like that, but yeah, yeah,
(37:51):
I saw a YouTube video where a kid had the
same reaction but to but to uh to rap lyrics
by Piggy where seen that. It's pretty pretty amazing because
it's like hillbe screaming his head off and then they
start playing some biggie and it just just chills that
look so um but again, probably not good for the
kids u um vocabulary. Later on, maybe that's what he's
(38:16):
going to there his nuance, So it depends what he's
aiming to do in life, I guess. We also heard
from Nathan on Facebook Nathan Ryton and says, I have
really been enjoying your podcast. I just listened to the
horror episode. I too saw the Google VHS cover art
at an age when those movies uh were out of
my reach. Maybe it was my age or personal phobia,
but I couldn't get out of get it out of
my head. And again, for those of you were just
(38:37):
tuning in, this was a nineties video cover that showed
out grotesque little grimlin monster coming out of a toilet
with like razor teeth and fancy suspenders. It was really
stupid but but kind of mortifying anyway. Nathan that the
fancy suspenders, well yeah, that's what makes it so ridiculous
why we were in suspenders and why are they so clean?
You just came out of the toilet. Um Anyway, Nathan continues,
(39:01):
I went through a stage in my life where I
always brought some sort of weapon into the bathroom with me.
I think it also has to do with the fact
that everyone feels vulnerable with their pants around her ankles.
Makes for a slow getaway. I've told friends about it,
but usually get the you're alone there, look keep up
the great work. So indeed, I when I brought up googlies,
it was because it did kind of traumatize me and
(39:23):
did make me think twice about sitting on a toilet
for fear that a suspended monster would come out of
the whole and and eat me. And uh, I never
even thought to bring a weapon to the toilet with me.
I'm glad I didn't fall into that pattern. But you know,
there's actually, uh there, there's a lot of research about
this pinker effect and evolution about how you have to
(39:45):
feel safe. Obviously, I mean, it makes a lot of
sense if you're going to avoid your bowels. Yeah, it's
not something we can do on the move, really, I
mean maybe you can train yourself to it, but to
do it, but but generally not so much. That's right.
You never knew when when a saber tooth tiger is
around the corner of Google's and your toilet. Yeah, all right, Well, hey,
(40:07):
if you guys have something to share with us, if
you have a particularly favorite example of gigantis um, be
it an amazing prehistoric animal, an amazing living animal, or
some individual out of wrestling or entertainment, or or just
just general history, but we'd love to hear about them.
I can think of one or two famous giants off
hand for history that we didn't mention, but I'll leave
(40:28):
our listeners to come up with those, guys challenge. Yeah,
you can find us on Facebook again, where we are
stuff to blow your mind. You can also find us
on Twitter, where our handle is blow the Mind, and
you can always drop us a line at blew the
Mind at discovery dot com for more on this and
(40:51):
thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff 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 and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
How tall are you? That's pretty good, Lady Hyde right
for Lady Hid. Yeah, I'm a giant. No, it's I mean, yeah,
(00:24):
it's on the brand, but not so much. I mean, yeah,
well I'm I'm six three, which is like a good
a good level of height, Like I think of that
as pretty tall. Actually well, I mean it's it's tall,
but it's it's not. I mean, it's a little inconvenient.
I do bump my head a lot and forget a
lot of things as a result. But but it's it's not.
(00:45):
It was a little more than I would just I
would just have terminal brain injuries from running into things. Yeah.
Is My family would say, it looks like you got
some Dutch in you, Dutch because the Dutch are tall. Well,
there you go. But some people are taller than others,
for some people and for many things. Uh, we're really
getting into the area of gigantism. We're getting into areas
(01:06):
where it's amazing, into areas where it's it's kind of sad,
but well, And keep in mind too that humans are
already considered megafauna to some degree, right, Like we're pretty
much dominating the mammal um species here, So when you
think of the ability to grow even larger, it seems
a bit odd, but it does happen. Um. This is
(01:29):
known as acromegaly and uh. It is usually a disorder
of the tuitary gland. Usually there's a tumor that grows
there and it causes UM the body just to continue growing,
particularly in puberty when you are growing anyway, so your
bones get very very large, a lot of human growth
hormone pumping out, increasing the bone sizes, which of course
(01:51):
makes the body bigger. This isn't corrected, which we're gonna
talk about in a minute. Again, you actually end up
having or or organ omegaly, wit which case you have
the organs getting bigger in size too. And yes, you
end up with an individual that's very tall or can
be very tall. Not everyone with this condition ends up
becoming a legit giant, right, particularly if you get this
(02:13):
condition as an adult already. So which you find is that, like,
for instance, your tongue starts to swall get very large,
and that can lead to a host of problems, problems
like hypertension, high blood pressure, diabetes, sleep atna, breathing and
stops during sleep, carpal tunnel syndrome UM and then and
then again as as organ omegaly, hits sets in even
(02:37):
more problems, you know, especially a higher incidence of heart disease.
So sadly you see these a lot of these individuals,
they they they are giants. They become they reach these
this great stature and uh and especially with with the
individuals that have have a gigantism that involved themselves and
in the entertainment industry, we end up getting this, uh,
(02:58):
this grandiose vision of them as just superman, you know,
strong men. And in many cases they are very strong individuals.
But but later in life, uh, it often takes a
real toll on them, right, because you think about all
of that blood that needs to be pumping to all
those now oversized organs. It is very streshful in the body.
And when you talk about superhero component of that, I
(03:19):
instantly think of Andre the Giant. Yes, uh, Andre Rusumov,
the wrestler actor Frenchman. Uh. Yeah, he only lived to
the age of forty six, but he was seven ft
seven ft tall uh and five pounds at the end
he was he chose not to be treated uh and
(03:41):
died of cardiac complications from the disease. But he's definitely
a legend as far as modern day TV and film
era giants goes. Oh yeah, I always think of him
in The Princess Pride. Yeah, because he's a wonderful movie. Yeah,
wonderful movie. He was great in that he was He
was a larger than life character both on the screen
and inside the ring and outside where he he allegedly
(04:04):
had just an amazing um ability to drink alcohol. Could
just I'm sure he want most of those contests out
of style. And you still have individuals with gigantism that
are involved in um entertainment and pro wrestling today. Pro
wrestling alone, you have you have Paul White who wrestles
(04:25):
as his big show. You have this guy, there's an
Indian gentleman by the name of of Dolph singh Arana
who wrestles as the Great Kaleigue, various other individuals. So
because you have stature like that, inevitably some guy with
a few bucks is gonna come up to and be like, hey,
have you ever considered being an entertainment? Um? And then
you have. There are other characters of note as well.
(04:47):
There's a there was a man by the name of
Maurice Killett who was who was a Russian born French
professional wrestler who wrestled under the name the French Angel.
And he died back in again in fifty four. Um.
There's a man by the name of Rondo Hatton who
was an American actor. He died in six but he
became really iconic is playing these uh, these grotesque thug
(05:09):
type characters and a lot of old B movies and
and he was he was rather iconic. In fact. Um,
I believe the character of Shrek is actually based on
his general physical appearance, because he had a very brutish
look to her, you know. Um. And then of course
there's Richard Kyle who played Jaws, and then James Bond movies,
the old James. Yeah, he's he's still with us um
(05:31):
um over seven ft tall. I think he's he's shrunk
a little, just with age, you know, you kind of
end up stooping over a bit. But but the list
of other individuals who've who've who've had at least treated
acromegay is pretty interesting because it includes some surprises. For instance,
you were surprised at Tony Robbins. Yes, actually yeah, I
(05:54):
said that. I thought I just thought it was his
oversized ego that I was perceiving. Yeah, you just thought
it who was larger than life? And because he is,
and he is he's six ft seven um poet Walls Stevens.
This surprised me. He was only six three So it
wasn't you know, as an as noticeable a case of gigantism.
But it was a pretty tall individual. This is a
(06:15):
guy who wrote the poem The Emperor of ice Cream.
Another works um the the Roman emperor um maxim Maximinus,
the first who reigned from two thirty five to thirty eight.
According to um Um Herodians Historia Augusta, he was eight
foot six inches in height. But that's somewhat doubtful that
(06:38):
he was actually that tall. But but still, um, there
was a giant from from the the history books. And
uh and and really you can it look like a
whole list of individuals you can you can find out. Yeah,
I wanted to mention Sandy Allen. She was the world's
largest or tallest woman at seven seven and one quarter inch.
And she actually was a wonderful educator and and um
(07:01):
a lot of her education materials centered around differences she was.
She was definitely trying to promote that with other kids
and respecting other differences. So um, So, a lot of
these individuals may have made a buck or two off
of their stature, or it may have provided them with
opportunities that they wouldn't have otherwise had. But but a
lot of them were really fascinating and successful individuals in
(07:24):
their own right that had nothing to do with their height.
Maybe Wall of Stevens um poetic gifts were you know,
if he was a shorter man, he would have had them.
But but I think that's a difficult argument. It's hard
to say that's right. But as you mentioned, there is
treatment for this. One of it is one of the
treatments is surgical removal of the actually get in there
and remove the thing that is causing all of this
(07:46):
and checked growth. Right, And Sandy Allen actually had that
when she was twenty years old, but nonetheless, at the
age of fifty three, she still passed away because again
at that point, you know, she had reached such a
height and her organs were so large that it did
attack her body. And then there are other methods of
treating it um that you can also use medication to
halt the hormone and and then also some individuals undergo
(08:11):
radiation treatments as well. Yeah, and we should probably I
don't know if we mentioned that before, but because of
the tumor on the tutary gland, what is happening is
you're getting an excess amount of growth hormones that are
shooting out, so that that is the root cause, right, So,
and so you can't take medication to to check that,
but but in many cases they often just go for
the more you know, certain cure. I guess um. But
(08:35):
we're not just here to talk about humans that are large.
We're we're also here to talk about animals that became
true giants. And of course, when you're talking about gigantic animals,
you can't help but to think of our friends, the dinosaurs, Yeah, immediately, right,
And most of the reason for that is because we
don't really um get to see small bones of dinosaurs
(08:58):
because they don't preserve the well, so the bones that
we see exhibited in museums usually belong to the behemoth,
So immediately we think about these guys um which they
definitely had gigantism um or I guess you could say
in the natural world at that time. For the composition
of the elements in the world that they were living in,
(09:20):
this made most sense for them, some some animals depending
on their resources and energy. Yeah, and there's a theory
too that it was basically an arms race of size,
because the larger the organism is, the fewer predators it has.
Because you're, you know, this gigantic, hulking beast, uh not
everything is going to be able to really eat you
or stand a chance of even taking you down. It's
(09:41):
gonna come and like pulling your leg and you need
to stop on it. So there's an evolutionary advantage to
uh to to having a larger body and a larger statue,
even if it comes with with certain negatives as well,
such as obviously you have to eat more food, and
then that also affects uh the rate at which young developed,
and in various other approcreative necessities. Yeah, and it said
(10:06):
that sura pods were particularly um at an advantage for
this because they could have you know, a decent size
of of of young uns, and they could protect them
all and then they could pretty much rapidly grow to
these very huge sizes. And again another advantage of that
is you can stomp out the competition literally literally. Yeah,
(10:27):
they're actually um. From a Scientific American article called is
there any evolutionary advantage to gigantism um, They these sore
pods are actually called the first true giants of the land.
And they were small headed, long necked, that's probably what
you're thinking of when you think about a sore pod.
And they appeared at the beginning of that time, about
two hundred million years ago UM and uh, some of
(10:50):
these predatory dinosaurs exceeded one ton. Towards the end of
the Jurassic ministre pods reached ten to twenty tons, and
some weighed as much as twenty or excuse me, fifty tons,
and a few may have exceeded a hundred tons and
a hundred and fifty feet in length, which is actually
rivaling um, some of our largest modern whales because because
(11:13):
as we've mentioned before, the blue whale is still the
largest organism um the large certainly. Yeah, that's tricky too, Yeah,
because we discussed in our Largest Organism episode. Um, depending
on how you defined organism, you can actually get into
some even larger things that are not vertebrates, but but
certainly the largest vertebrate that has ever lived, the blue whale. Um. So,
(11:37):
and of course you think about tyrannosaurs dominant meat eaters
of the late cretitious area, or scavengers whatever, the hot
theory of the moment happens to be exactly. They grew
slowly until they were teenagers and they were marauding in
moby um, and then they went through a growth spurt,
becoming five times larger in just seven years. So again
(11:57):
we're talking about I mean, the period of growth of
here is is pretty amazing. Um, when you become five
times larger. If you think about a teenager right now,
they maybe have a couple more inches that they're gonna
lop on, but they're certainly not going to become twenty
ft tall. Yeah, it's it's just crazy to think about
the amount of Like in the Milk podcast we mentioned
about about baby blue whales taking on like three pounds
(12:20):
of body weight a day as they feed off their
mother's milk. So um, Yeah, the amount of growth taking
place with these gigantic organisms is just incredible. Yeah, and
I wanted to to mention a couple of other advantages
to being so large before we talk about disadvantages. Your
metabolic rate decreases with increasing size, so for instance, um,
(12:42):
you only need to take in five percent of if
you're an elephant, for instance, you only need to take
in five percent of your own weight, whereas a shrew
or a mousee needs to eat more than its weight
each day to survive. Yeah, there's a there's actually you'll
hear that that that stat There are out a lot
to when people make that make the point that the
shrew is the most ravenous creature on the planet because
(13:04):
it's just it has to eat so much as he
constantly to survive. And they actually made a movie ages
that really horrible be movie that they they lampooda mystery
signs the thousand called the Giant Shrews or was it
the Killer Shrews, I can't remember, but the basic thing
was that they had these giant shrews who were running
around there were the size of dogs that of course
(13:25):
we're dogs with really bad costumes, breaped over them. And
then the idea was that the shrew is just incredibly
dangerous and if we're ever ever able to reach the
side of like a dog, then they would be the
most dangerous things ever. But of course this we've just
mentioned here, the appetite really plays into their size. That
the shrew became larger, they would be playing the violin
under our tree, having a couple of grapes and being like,
(13:47):
hey guys, totally chilled out. Um, was this made in
the fifties. Yes, there seems to be a real obsession
with gigantism during that time period. Oh yeah, you saw
they were giant scorpions, giant spiders, giant ants them what
was the movie ants? There was a lot of fun
these to show that on on the on the the
cable channels back in the day when they were like
(14:09):
think grandpap Monster hosted a Saturday morning Monster movie show
and remember that, and they would play that, They would
play Islanded Dr Moreau, these studies type of films. But
the giant ants, all all these things. Yeah, well these
were also easy animals to implement in a B movie
because if you have a giant ant, all you needed
to just just get some ants in there. Uh, do
(14:31):
some you know, mess with perspective, uh dubby on an
actual ant and just make it look larger, although inevitably
they always have a puppet of whatever animal. Yeah, you
need the head which is with the pincher so it
can grab a lady and picture exactly better than that,
just throw in the ants and have some people react
to it. It's like early c g I. Alright, So,
(14:53):
so other than being featured in b phones, why might
you not want to be a giant? H Really, if
you are a dinosaur, for starters, all that mass that
that allows you to stomp others out actually kind of
hems you in because you can't fly, you can't run,
you can't climb or burrow into the ground to take cover.
So your your whole defensive tactic is, hey, I'm this
(15:14):
hulking thing and you can't take me down. But then
say you have a pack of velociraptors that come around
and they're like, actually we can because we can work
together and we're patient, and you're not going anywhere exactly exactly.
You're a very large target force, and because they're at
the top of the food chain, there are less of them,
and the chances for extinction actually become greater as well. Right,
(15:34):
large organism having to depend on a lot of other
organisms underneath it, even if most of them are just grass. Uh,
and then you wipe that out and there you go. Yeah. Um.
And this was really interesting to Sarah de Charred, Doctoral
Canada at North Carolina State has studied the plants available
during the age of dinosaurs, and she thinks that during
the Jurassic, when vegetation with fibrous and low nutrient, it
(15:57):
would make sense to have a lot bigger bell eas
really what we're talking about here, because they acted a
huge vat for fermentation. But she says that when flowering
plants with high nutrient contents came along, it was actually
a boon too smaller dinos because I gave them an
evolutionary advantage because that was just the hit that they needed. Um.
(16:17):
So it's kind of interesting to look at it that way.
And I also wanted to mention too, although not dinosaurs,
there is a tale of Paleozoic dragonflies that may have
existed three million years ago. And how big were these things, uh,
wingspan of two and a half feet. And they think
this is still a bit of a theory, but this
(16:39):
is owing to the planets. Then oxygen makeup of more
than so it was these auction levels that actually spawned
this dragonfly. Wow. Well that's interesting to imagine, especially during
mating season when they do their thing, you know. Yeah,
I mean, can you imagine it would be debauchery if
today we looked at the window and saw in such
great detail and such largeness the mating. Yeah, dragonflies are great.
(17:02):
I love him. But you know what I love even
more in this Uh. And we're moving forward a bit
here from from dinosaurs. I love dinosaurs. I love them
as a kid, but you kind of get I kind
of got used to it at an early age. It's
the idea that it used to be giant lizards, even
though just as a tangent, I had to I was
trying to convince, um, um, I have a kid that,
(17:25):
like a four year old that I watched and over
a babysitting Uh. He had some toy dinosaurs and I'm
and I and I told him it's like, you know
those are real, right, And he's like, no, it's just
a toy. It was like that's heartbreaking. Um, he'll learn.
But but but I got used to the idea pretty
early on. Yes, there were giant dinosaurs at one point
or another, and for some reason, giant mammals that and
(17:46):
and giant birds that was always a much more exciting
idea to me, Like it it felt newer, I guess
you know, it wasn't as um as uh as covered
in the childhood science literature. So so anytime, even today,
when I see like a like a picture of a
giant sloth or or or certainly these giant birds, I'm
(18:08):
I'm really impressed. The giant birds are really kind of
heartbreaking though, because so many of these where we're not
even prehistoric creatures, they lived until very recent time. Yeah,
I was gonna say, let's talk about these more modern
terrestrial animals, which gigientis um. Yeah, there was a species
of bird called the host eagle um that reached a
height of eight point five feet. It was a fierce
(18:30):
predator that lived in New Zealand and U Sadly, it
went to extinct about five hundred years ago due to
human hunting and habitat encroachment, which again is just kind
of sad because it's like, oh, we almost reached the
point where we could have seen these and and photographed
them and maybe conserve them, but they they blinked out
just a little too soon. And then there are others.
(18:52):
There's the the elephant bird, which was ten feet tall
that lived on Madagascar and it uh it went on
sometime in seventeenth century and they think. Uh. There's also
of course the moa, which was the great flightless bird
of New Zealand. Uh and it probably went away about
seven hundred years ago when the may always wiped them
(19:14):
out because they're just they're these big birds. They've evolved
to to to pretty much do whatever they want within
a limited environment. But then suddenly you have an invasive
organism around. You have humans who are like the velociraptors
we mentioned earlier. They're smart, they're patient, they're cunning, and
they know that they can work together to take this
animal down and eat it. And then since it's a
(19:35):
larger organism, um that you know, they're fewer of them.
Uh reproduction time plays into this as well. They're much
more easily wiped out. So everyone feasts on moa for
a little bit and then there's no more. Yeah. I mean,
it is mind boggling to think the amount in different
types of animals that have gone extinct um, not just
because of manning causes, but even something that I believe
(19:56):
it was during the Order of Vicinian period. They're supposed
to be like a just a proliferation of different species
that were then wiped out at the end of that period.
But anyway, it just doesn't boggle the mind to try
to imagine all different types of flora and fauna. But
not all the giants went away. We stall some rather
gigantic animals around today. They're worth mentioning. Oh yes, the
(20:18):
colossal squid. Yes, and we're we're doing another podcast on
intelligence of cephalopods um, so there's gonna be even more
squid content there. But the colossal squid reaches some pretty
phenomenal links. Yep. Actually, the squid was accidentally caught by
New Zealand fisherman in two thousand and seven, weighing in
(20:40):
at one thousand pounds and spanning fourteen ft. Here's something
that really, um, kind of rattles me a bit. It's
i uh, nearly ten inches in diameter, so imagine nearly
a foot long eye staring back at you. Uh So
that I think, particularly rattling from squid. Eyes are amazing, um,
(21:03):
especially when you're talking about something that big and the
biggest eye of any animal really very similar to our
I actually um, and we'll talk more about that in
our gigant or excuse me, in our cephalopod podcast. So
when we're talking about things like like the colossal squid
and and also various other giant animals that live in
the deep, we're getting into the area of deep siege
gigantism um. Particularly you see this uh in invertebrates, crustaceans,
(21:26):
uh and other creatures where they'll they're they'll have cousins
that live in fresh water or shallow or not fresh
water but shallower waters and uh, and they'll be much smaller.
But in the deep and the cold, cold deep, they
grow toal enormous size. And part of it is the cold.
Scientists think they say that you look at the at
(21:47):
the temperature and body body size, and the bigger animals
have smaller surface to volume ratio, so they can more
effectively conserve body heat in those cold environments. So would
be to their advantage to grow bigger. Yeah, it's kind
of like having a fur coat undersea fur couch. Yeah,
it's just and there's more of me. So I got
that way. I can I can go down into these lightless,
(22:08):
chilly depths and it doesn't really affect me that much.
Where if I were this splender little creature than you know,
not so much. There's this idea too, that we haven't
quite even gotten a grasp of how large some of
these creatures are. This is from Discovering News. Um It
says that squid beaks found in the stomachs of sperm
whales have actually dwarfed the beak on the Colossal Squid
Museum specimen that we just spoke of, suggesting that even
(22:30):
more colossal squids work in the cold, dark deep. Yeah,
we just haven't seen them yet. I mean, for the
longest we had, we had never managed to capture footage
of a live giant squid. And I remember the day
that they that we actually had had that footage when
a few years back and suddenly was on YouTube everywhere,
and it wasn't really even that impressive of footage, but
(22:52):
it felt kind of heartbreaking because you're like, oh, you know,
there's a mystery that we can check off the list. Yeah. Yeah,
although I mean incredibly cooled be able to verify right.
Um From the same Discovery News article by Jennifer Viegas.
They were actually talking about, or she was actually talking
about how these creatures may have grown to such a
large size too because of the lengths that they have
(23:13):
to go to, UM to find food. When you're a
small creature, UM, even if you're eating a lot that
your kingdom, um, your your domain in which you hunt
for prey is relatively small. But when you receive larger size,
you're having to really really go out there and hunt.
You're covering a vast underwater territory, which may be why
(23:35):
the Humboldt squid have have shown up Monterey Bay and
in various different places. They're still trying to figure out why.
What's the explanation for that? But um, but it does
play into morphology for for sure. All Right, and we're
gonna take a quick break. But when we get back,
we're going to talk about, um what what could be
horrific to some people something called a hissing cockroach. Um
(23:58):
if the madagas art hissing cock roach and it's quite large,
talk about that some other insects. All Right, we're back, UM,
We're headed to the Madagascar for correct is Madagascar is
one of places that you you see a lot in
and UH in dealing with unique organisms, because you're talking
(24:20):
about an island that is uh that is that is
set aside from from the rest of the continent. And
of course this is where you encounter lemurs, the only
place you encounter lemurs outside of a zoo. Uh and
the lemur would not necessarily be able to survive elsewhere,
but here they have evolved and uh and and fill
the niche rather nicely that doesn't exist elsewhere. Yeah, let's
(24:44):
talk about that. That's that lack of predators and competition
that drives some the size of these creatures. And this
is called island gigantism. It is a biological phenomenon um
that that is present for animals that live on isolated islands,
and they tend to grow bigger and bigger again because
they don't have anything running after it um and because
everything is pretty plentiful, right, it's like a corny copia
(25:05):
of food out fair for them. Yeah, I mean it's
I mean it really, it comes down a lot of
it comes down to them living in a protected environment.
In many of these cases, you have an ecosystem that
is set aside from the rest that whatever, what other
kind of predators are roaming around on the continent at large,
they're not necessarily here, or that the predators that are here, um,
(25:26):
they don't have access to the same prey. So you
end up with a kind of microcosm into itself where
different rules end up applying. Yeah, and according to Pilliontologes
for ginny million, uh, island species evolved faster than mainland species,
particularly over shorter time intervals of years to thousands of years,
So you really do get to see that the proof
(25:48):
of the putting much faster in these environments. One example
of an older island giant that I ran across in
this to Discovery News article. Um but uh, five to
three million years ago, you had a creature um known
as the Miraculous Rex, which lived on the small island
(26:11):
of Minorca, and it weighed about twenty six point four pounds.
It had no enemies, and it was essentially a giant
bunny rabbit. Oh, I've seen pictures of this kind of
like Night of the Leapist, except the other the other thing.
Not only did it grow larger, but it grows larger
and has no need of predors. It doesn't need a hop,
it doesn't need ginormous ears with which to hear everything.
(26:31):
It doesn't need big eyes with which to see everything,
So it kind of loses those features. Just kind of
like an aging prize fighter or something, you know, just
lets it the gut go and it no longer has
the reflexes it needs to fight because it doesn't need them.
But still it's a pretty impressive creature that you had. Essentially,
rabbits I will I will say that the photo I
saw it did it did kind of look puggy. It
(26:51):
didn't look like it had been, you know, screwing around
that much because it did one like from an evolutionary
point of view, it's like I don't need you know,
if you if you're not working out, you don't keep
the muscles. And it's kind of the similar thing as
evolution rolls out, you know, uh, if you don't need
those ears and then eventually you're gonna lose them. Yeah,
you can tell that it abandoned its bofe uh Managus
(27:14):
scar hissing cockroach, as I mentioned before, found in at
a guess car office of Face coast of Africa, the
largest living cockroach and the only known insight capable of
hissing by forcing air through its spiricles. These are breathing
holes rather than rubbing their appendages together. And happy do
these guys good? About three inches long by one inch,
(27:36):
which doesn't seem entirely huge until you actually see one
in person. Yeah, I've heard of people traveling there. And uh,
you know, you're you're you're sleeping through the night and
then your cell phone rings and you pick it up
and you're actually picking up a hissing cockroach answering it.
And since you're in a you're not really all that awake.
You're not having like a five minute conversation with the
(27:58):
abdomen of a cock right, and little do you know
that hissing sound is actually mating calls, so you're being wooed? Yeah? Yeah, um,
actually do. Atlanta has some hitsing cockroaches that they'll bring
out every once in a while. It's a frequent a
frequent exhibited zoos. I don't know if they're easy to
shift or easy to keep or he's gonna handle. They're
(28:19):
not gonna bite you, and they're huge and grows. Some
little boys just good guy got yeah yeah, and the
girls they love them too, um and uh yeah, the
males have horns too, so it makes them look really interesting. Now,
if they flew, that would be that would be my night.
But that's another thing. You get big like that, you
don't need wings, right. Well, that's the other thing too.
There's the limits to morphology here and that. Um, you know,
(28:41):
if it's to your advantage to get larger and larger, great,
you're going to do it. But once it inhibits your ability.
So if if the cockroach was a creature that flew
in the first place, um, and I know there are
some but mainly cockroaches do not fly. But let's say,
for instance, a bird, if it became so large it
was on the precipice of not being able to fly
(29:03):
anymore than it would. That's that's where the constraint comes.
That's where the morphology of the outer limits of it
just end. Yeah. We mentioned some of this in our
Godzilla Barbie King Calling episode where we talk about giant
organisms and uh and certainly the larger it's it's worth
remembering that. Say, take take a beetle. You know, even
like a fairly large beetle, it's a in a sense,
(29:27):
it's a physically perfect thing. Like everything about its proportions
and its size is perfect for the size at which
it exists. If you were to to somehow magically in
large beetle, it wouldn't be able to function at a
larger size because it's exoskeleton, right. This is more than
just armoring. It's more than just a tough, shiny jacket
(29:49):
that the beetle wears like this is a structural skeleton
that that holds in its insect guts and uh and
uh and and and protects it from the outside world.
And if you were to increase the size of a beetle,
then you also have to really increase the thickness of
the exoskeleton, and it just becomes an impossible equation rather quickly.
It's just amazing, which whine you don't see really large
(30:10):
organisms outside of the dark crystal that have a large,
you know, armor like exo skeletons. Well, and to me though,
it's just so such a testament to nature and how
cool it is that it can adapt to that in
the first place. Um that dwarfism or gigantism can take place,
the shrinking or the increasing like that. Um I also
wanted to mention the giant Wetta of New Zealand Uh.
(30:33):
It's genus name is dina Krita and it's Greek for
terrible grasshopper because they look at the size of your
hand right now, that is how large this little booger is. Um.
It is among the heaviest insects on Earth, winging three
times more than a mouse, and apparently in captivity, if
you offer it a carrot, it will eat it. I
(30:54):
think I've seen pictures of that. Yeah, Allison, actually are
the science editor Alson Ladermilk sent us a photo of
That's that's where I had seen that. It was pretty funny.
I thought she kept it could be. I don't know
if she said, I'm assuming that this little guy could
actually have a conversation with you, And remember thinking, yes, indeed,
I think he could. Yeah. Um, we mentioned New Zealand again,
(31:17):
the giant birds. It was very much a bird world
for for the longest. So again, you get into situations
where you have an island or or a large body
body of land that is set aside from the rest
of the world, and you see a certain amount of
competition fall on the wayside, and and then you can
see some very unique organisms, very large organisms grow to
(31:40):
dominance and it is this Wonderland effect. Actually, there's there's
something called the Wonderland effect um in which is alluding
to Alice and one pill makes you larger, one pill
makes you smaller. Well, now I'm thinking of the song
one Pitt. It is a great truck. But yeah, Alison Wonderland,
she she shrinks, she increases um. In nineteen sixty four,
(32:02):
biologists J. Bristol Foster studied insular gigantism in dwarfism, and
he came to the conclusion that rodents, for instance, tend
towards gigantism, while carnivores uh legama forests like rabbits and
hairs and rto dactyls, deers, hippos and other even towed
ungulates are more likely to become dwarfed um. And overall,
(32:23):
amongst mammal species that colonized islands, big ones have a
tendency to shrink, while small ones are able to get larger.
So again it's like it's a new world and the
occupants of this new world have to change their ways.
And again I'm sort of personifying evolution here to a
certain extent, and which for which I to some of
you do apologize. But but yeah, they find themselves in
(32:45):
this new world and they realize they're gonna have to
change their ways to survive. They're gonna have to cut
the budget or they're gonna have to ramp up their activity.
And uh, and so you see the smaller animals becoming bigger,
the bigger animals having to really cut down and become smaller. Yeah,
and it really they really haven't quite figured out what
drives um some species becoming larger and some remaining the same,
(33:07):
or some becoming smaller on these islands, because they don't
know if it's because the species arrived um there and
there was already another species quite similar to it, a snake,
for instance, and uh, it decided, okay, it's best here
if I just shrink or I stayed the same. One
of the things that really surprised me when we were
researching this was the situation with the Komodo dragon, which
(33:28):
we generally think of as an example of island gigantism.
It's the largest lizard we have. It's a ten ft
long way three pounds. Back when the show was with
that stuff to blow your mind or stuff in the
science claud that did the Komodo dragon episode that may
have been I think from I think it was from
the last Yeah, it may have been a lad episode.
But at the time I remember reading all these amazing
(33:51):
things with the Kumodo dragon. You just keep thinking, oh,
it's a giant, it's a dragon. But there's the theory
that this is actually a case of the island dwarfism
because Komodo dragons they live on the Isle of Komodo
U in Indonesia, but they also live on the on
this other island called Flores, And on Flora's they have
they've found fossil evidence of a much larger um dragon,
(34:14):
if you will, that would have been twenty three ft
long and would have weighed third over thirteen hundred pounds.
And so the idea is that the Komodo is the
the island dwarf of this amazing creature, which just turns
everybody's thinking on it. Right, it's very interesting. It doesn't
make the Komodo dragon anything less awesome or any less
they living uh dinosaur in a sense, it's still a
(34:37):
giant wizard. Yeah, yeah, you can't take that away from it.
You never try and take anything away from Komodo track,
that's right. It'll take your toe all right, So there's
just a nice second introduction to the world of gigantics.
I'm certainly we could sit here all day and and
and talk about other well known or less well known
giant animals. Certainly we didn't say anything about gallops, tortoise
(34:58):
or Japanese spider TRAbs. These are all wonderful animals in
their own right and worth looking into. Definitely worth looking
at a couple of pictures, especially that Japanese spider crab.
It's all legs. Um. Yeah. So, and we will talk
about dwarfism another time. Dwarf is ms. That is certainly
a podcast topic onto itself, is and especially if you
(35:18):
talk about that human beings and when why are some
people smaller in stature in cases of actual dwarfism among
humans and other similar situations. So like that this old
podcast and human morphology throughout the ages from and what
extent is being tall? Uh, you know, not all that
ideal anyway, Maybe we should be shorter. I don't know.
(35:40):
You can pick the apples really easily, so like, I mean,
you have that advantage over me. Yeah, but I'm not
that good at climbing the tree if I was smaller,
you know, I would be a little lower to the
ground that are able to climb out there and get
them anyway. True, yeah, all right, well let's call the
robot over here and listen to some male all right,
we have a couple of bits of listener mail here
(36:03):
that come to us from fans on Facebook. So so
I guess it wasn't really email. It was more fan
messaging through the Facebook. It was communication communication. Um, this
is apparently how the young kids are communicating now. Anyway,
they're not using their email accounts, right, this is what
I hear on the street. This st I heard this morning. Well, anyway,
(36:24):
Abigail rights and says, I laughed when I saw your
screen podcast because I put your podcast on in the
car on the way home from daycare to keep my
infant from screaming. I think it might be Robert's voice
because it also worked when he did a voice for
the Stuff you Should Know Shark Week Special, which just
published a couple of weeks ago, and go check that out.
(36:45):
Was Josh and Shuck. Anyway, I digress. When I was
in girl Scout camp, we used to play a game
called roller Coaster. They line us up at the edge
of the field and when the council yelled go, we'd
take a deep breath and start running and screaming at
the same time. You kept running until you couldn't scream anymore.
The point of the game was to get the furthest
As a kid, it was such a joy to be
given the freedom to unleash the screen. But the true
(37:07):
value of the game became apparent when I became a counselor.
Not only was it an amazing way to get out
the frustration of managing pen kids seven, but it also
tired them out, making them easier to manage. It wasn't
until then that I realized one of the counselors always
won the game. New listener and always enjoy your podcast.
Thank you for helping me make my ride home more peaceful.
(37:29):
That's awesome. So that's kind of like a form of
primal screen therapy. And I'm I'm glad that my voice
has this effect on this job. Yeah, just maybe we'll
record a track of me just uh, you know, saying
nursery rhymes. I was going to say, you could you
could do that. It could be like Jack and Jill
went up the Hill or not necessarily like that, but yeah, yeah,
(37:51):
I saw a YouTube video where a kid had the
same reaction but to but to uh to rap lyrics
by Piggy where seen that. It's pretty pretty amazing because
it's like hillbe screaming his head off and then they
start playing some biggie and it just just chills that
look so um but again, probably not good for the
kids u um vocabulary. Later on, maybe that's what he's
(38:16):
going to there his nuance, So it depends what he's
aiming to do in life, I guess. We also heard
from Nathan on Facebook Nathan Ryton and says, I have
really been enjoying your podcast. I just listened to the
horror episode. I too saw the Google VHS cover art
at an age when those movies uh were out of
my reach. Maybe it was my age or personal phobia,
but I couldn't get out of get it out of
my head. And again, for those of you were just
(38:37):
tuning in, this was a nineties video cover that showed
out grotesque little grimlin monster coming out of a toilet
with like razor teeth and fancy suspenders. It was really
stupid but but kind of mortifying anyway. Nathan that the
fancy suspenders, well yeah, that's what makes it so ridiculous
why we were in suspenders and why are they so clean?
You just came out of the toilet. Um Anyway, Nathan continues,
(39:01):
I went through a stage in my life where I
always brought some sort of weapon into the bathroom with me.
I think it also has to do with the fact
that everyone feels vulnerable with their pants around her ankles.
Makes for a slow getaway. I've told friends about it,
but usually get the you're alone there, look keep up
the great work. So indeed, I when I brought up googlies,
it was because it did kind of traumatize me and
(39:23):
did make me think twice about sitting on a toilet
for fear that a suspended monster would come out of
the whole and and eat me. And uh, I never
even thought to bring a weapon to the toilet with me.
I'm glad I didn't fall into that pattern. But you know,
there's actually, uh there, there's a lot of research about
this pinker effect and evolution about how you have to
(39:45):
feel safe. Obviously, I mean, it makes a lot of
sense if you're going to avoid your bowels. Yeah, it's
not something we can do on the move, really, I
mean maybe you can train yourself to it, but to
do it, but but generally not so much. That's right.
You never knew when when a saber tooth tiger is
around the corner of Google's and your toilet. Yeah, all right, Well, hey,
(40:07):
if you guys have something to share with us, if
you have a particularly favorite example of gigantis um, be
it an amazing prehistoric animal, an amazing living animal, or
some individual out of wrestling or entertainment, or or just
just general history, but we'd love to hear about them.
I can think of one or two famous giants off
hand for history that we didn't mention, but I'll leave
(40:28):
our listeners to come up with those, guys challenge. Yeah,
you can find us on Facebook again, where we are
stuff to blow your mind. You can also find us
on Twitter, where our handle is blow the Mind, and
you can always drop us a line at blew the
Mind at discovery dot com for more on this and
(40:51):
thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot
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