Yum, Troglobites!

Today on the show we’re gonna take a BITE out of TROGLOBITES! What happens deep in the cold, dark depths of caves? How does anything stay alive down there? What happens when you don’t need eyes? Find out with guest, Michael Swaim.

Footnotes:

1. Mexican blind cavefish!
2. Cave wolf spider!
3. Texas blind salamander! 
4. THE OLM! Aka "Human fish..." 
5. Cave leeches, oh dear...
6. White cave velvet worm :3 
7. All Yesterdays book!

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Creature Future production of I Heart Radio. I'm
your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we're going
to take a bite out of troglobytes figuratively speaking, what
happens in the deep, cold, dark depths of caves? How
does anything stay alive down there? What happens when you

(00:28):
just don't need eyes? What kind of creepy crawleys might
rush against you in the dark caverns of the world,
and are there real life cave dragons? Discover this more
as we answer the angel question, is that a spelio
them in your pocket? Hord? Are you just you get
the joke? To get the joke? Joining me today to
talk cave critters is co host of the Small Beans

(00:51):
podcast network and video manager for I g N and
coyote lover Michael Swain. Oh, thank you for having me, Katie.
He's actually part coyote where coyote, yeah, and a cave
dwelling mammal. Myself and I've often wondered in this cave

(01:11):
of quarantine, how can anything live down there? So I'm
very excited that that's the topic today. Well, you know,
a cave dwelling human is a troglodyt. I have only
heard of trilobites and truck weight trilo dit or troglodyt.
It's troglow byte is the critters. See this is like

(01:35):
a crazy mash up word. I don't know about this.
Troglow diet is a human being who lives in a cave,
whereas troglow byte is any little critter that lives in
exclusively in caves. Oh, I love learning new words. Okay,
so the critter that lives in a cave, that's me.
I'm both that's you, right, as long as you only

(01:57):
live in caves, you never emerge from your cave, which
and that's basically true right now, I don't need We're
all troglobites to a certain extent, and trilobites. So what
is a troglo bite. It is an animal species who
lives exclusively in caves or underground, and they can go

(02:19):
through very very strange adaptations. Now, this is why I'm
having you on, Michael for this one, because you mentioned
to me you're really interested in animals that like kind
of these weird almost aliens on Earth that don't have
eyes or just very strange adaptations. Oh yeah, tired of
graves or anything that you go so far down in

(02:40):
the ocean that it's just you and James Cameron and
the pressure is so intense. Nothing should be there. That's
what I astound me about life. Katie's like, there doesn't
need to be life everywhere, does that? But for some reason,
you're like in this uh, spacelike void at the bottom
of the sea by this volcanic eruption. There's these little

(03:02):
critters that live down there, and you're like freaking why.
But yeah, anything that's shaped weird because it just shouldn't
be here right. Well, and you mentioned the deep sea,
but I kind of wanted to take you into the
cave systems of the world because I think that's something
where we don't even really think about life being in caves.

(03:22):
It's like in the deep sea, we're like, yeah, okay,
we've got our deep submarine and then we've got some
kind of ghoulish looking anglerfish and bioluminescence, and we've kind
of become accustomed to the aliens that live in the
deep sea. But like, when you go in a cave system,
it's like well, wait, why is anything in here? Like you,
you know, in the entrance to the caves, like the

(03:43):
mouths of caves, you you know, there's bats and and
so on. But like to get deep in a cave
where there's no light and it's just perfectly still and
silent and cold, and you're like, well, why would anything
be down here? But that's exactly what we're going to
talk about. So animals that live deep in caves often
go through very weird adaptations, so depigmentation, the loss of

(04:08):
skin pigment. There are no evolutionary pressures to have any pigment.
There's the loss of eyesight or even the eyes themselves,
and longer antenna and legs to better since their environment.
So you get some very very creepy like centipedes with
really long legs and long antenna, the trifecta of nightmare fuel. Essentially. Well,

(04:31):
it's interesting because fear in in our experience is so
tied up with things the other, the unknown, things that
seem alien, and so things that are shaped by forces
that we don't have to deal with, and vice versa.
They are not affected by forces, you know, on the
evolutionary time scale. It's like they've they've had such a

(04:51):
different experience that they're so different than me that they
freaked me out. I think there's also something like because
as he Men's, we do have an evolutionary history where
we probably did live in caves at some point. I mean,
we have evidence of humans dwelling in caves, but we
probably had a fear of going too deep into the cave,

(05:13):
you know, where there's no light. I think that to me,
at least, there's this uncanny fear as as you go
deeper into a cave. And I've been to, you know,
the tourist caves where you don't really have to worry
too much, like they're a guided tour you're not like
spelunking on your own, which can be actually very dangerous.
But uh, when there are sections where they're like guiding
you and there's like not that much light around because

(05:35):
they don't want to light up the whole cave system.
They want the lights in just a few particular areas.
And there's actually a good reason for that. But in
these areas where it's just like really dark and you're
sliding along these narrow passage boys, it's just something so
claustrophobic and creepy about it. I went caving in Belize
in real life, which seems so distant now, but yeah,

(06:00):
we went swimming through a pass where it was literally
pitch black, you know, like deep beneath the earth, the
guts of the earth, in a way that I've never
experienced anywhere else, completely silent, really really existentially terrifying and horrible.
And now you're gonna tell me there's stuff alive down there,

(06:22):
and I don't want to know. Yeah, swimming in complete
darkness and silence is so creepy to me. It's like
it's like um sensory deprivation tank, but you never know
when something's going to brush against your foot, and I come, well,
I comforted myself by thinking, this is like the moon,
though just filled with water. Nothing lives down here, And

(06:43):
now all you're about to shatter all those illusions and
ruin my va, ruin the best vacation of my life. Retroactively,
thank you. So there are cave dwellers that were familiar
with like bats or rats or you know, a little
mammals that like to sleep in caves, and these are
called troglo zines. So they are just occasional visitors to caves.

(07:06):
So even bats that live like in the mouths of caves,
they only live part time in the caves. They will
come out to eat insects or fruit uh and and
fly around, and they come back in the cave to
sleep uh. So they are not true trogloe bites because
they don't spend their whole life in the cave, whereas
trogloe bites spend their entire time in the caves and

(07:29):
often deep in the caves. So there are actually three
main zones in the caves. There's the entrance zone, with
lots of life, lots of vegetation. You can even have
flowering plants there um often really beautiful. Actually, there's the
twilight zone yea, where there's just a little bit of

(07:50):
light can reach into the cave. It's cool and moist.
There are some vegetation that can thrive there, like ferns
and mosses, so they're getting just enough light to photosynthesize um.
But then there's the dark zone where no light reaches uh.
And yet plants can still grow here. Vegetation can still

(08:13):
grow here um, not not just plants, but also fung
gis so algae, fungi and slime mold can grow here. Uh.
They can't photosynthesize, so they have to use different metabolic pathways.
So fungi can live off of bat guano, which is
full of nutrients delicious, Uh, alge, you don't have to

(08:34):
tell me about the nutritious delicious properties of bad water.
Algae can grow without photosynthesis through other versions of metabolism,
such as breaking down sugar found in their environment, probably
from waste organic material um and in the zone life

(08:55):
can also thrive. Now it seems like weird that you
could still have life except for may be little like
bacteria or something living here. But as you have support
for some algae and funga, you can also have other
forms of life and it supports a whole ecosystem. One
honorable mention for life that exists in caves not naturally

(09:15):
is lamp and flora. So this is sneaky algae that
comes into cave systems through water flows or introduced by
animals or humans, that grow exclusively in lamplight. Introduced by humans.
What I mean, We put lights in caves, so algae
comes into caves. Normally it would just die off, but

(09:38):
then it's like, hey, well there's a light in here.
That's cool, and it hangs around and it lives, okay,
But is it genetically or evolutionarily branched from other algae
or is that just the word that defines algae that
figured this system out. It's just so a cave gets
a lot of input from the outside world. Animals like

(10:02):
bats will come in and out, humans will come in
and out. Water flows. That's probably where a lot of
the algae is coming in from water flows from the surface.
So if this algae comes from the surface, you have
these little, you know, little bits of algae that come
in and then they are really good at colonizing places
wherever they can. If you've ever had a fish tank,

(10:22):
you know how even the smallest amount of algae can
get in there and just coat the entire tank in
like a week. So it's very very hardy. So if
a little bit gets in on an animal's fur through
the water and then it finds the spot of light,
it's going to flourish. So yeah, it's actually a problem
because it's not supposed to be there. It normally would

(10:44):
just kind of die off because it doesn't have access
to light and only it's especially evolved algae cousins that
live in the cave system should be able to survive,
so it's actually an invasive species. It's not really necessarily
good for the cave ecosystem to have that ace of algae,
and it's also not necessarily good for um anthropologists because

(11:05):
like if cave algae starts to grow over like say
old cave paintings, that's really destructive in that so bad
lamp and flora naty. We kind of bread it on
ourselves though it's true, it's true. Um So, I think
there's this concept that like in caves, like deep in caves,
it shouldn't be livable. Some people have the idea that

(11:29):
there's not oxygen in caves, that there couldn't be water
flow in caves, or that it would get like way
too cold. And it's interesting because there are many caves
that are totally fine in terms of being able to
live in them because there's constant airflow. There may be
multiple openings to a cave, and due to the difference

(11:50):
in temperature between the cave and outside, you actually have
a pressure differential that causes airflow. That doesn't mean all
caves are oxygenated, so there are some caves that have
high levels of carbon dioxide or methane. So CEO two
can get into a cave system through water flows and
gas change, gas exchange through vegetation or organic decay flora

(12:15):
or fauna respiration and metabolism, or it may actually sink
to the bottom of really deep caves. It's heavier than
than the surrounding air, and then the air flow doesn't
reach down to the bottom of the cave and it
can't like lift it out and ventilate it. So like
there are some caves if you get really down deep,

(12:36):
down low and there's not enough air flow, Uh, it's
actually quite dangerous because there can be pockets of c
O two down there. These are called foul air caves,
and they can be deadly, so be careful, don't That's
why we bring canaries into coal mines, right, yeah, yes,
for that exact I don't think it canary could warn
you of a collapse. It was just for gas pockets.

(12:58):
I think, for gas pockets for CEO to methane for
carbon monoxide. Yes, my smarty, dumb question is what about
vitamin D. You're talking about getting so little sun that
they have no like pigment in their skin. I thought
that's where we got vitamin D and you needed that
to live. That's why I always thought there wasn't life
in case. That's interesting. Yeah, I mean you you do

(13:19):
get vitamin D through sunlight, but you can also get
nutrients through other ways. So like you look at like
the algae right, normally it only can to metabolize through photosynthesis,
and it gets it's nutrients through sugars instead with getting
things like vitamin D. I would suspect like they get
some of it from their diet, and there's probably their

(13:41):
bodies are just better able to survive without higher levels
of vitamin D. Awesome, It's yeah, it's just again seems
like everywhere else in the whole universe, as far as
we can tell, the norm is you can't have life here.

(14:01):
There's no it's raining acid or whatever that there's no life,
or of the time it's just avoid there's nothing there,
there's no resources for anything to live. And yet on Earth,
in this tiny pocket where we do have life, it's
like it's trying extra hard to make up for their
not being life elsewhere. It's just everywhere. I mean, if

(14:22):
there is a pocket for it to fill, it will
fill it. Nature abhors a vacuum probably also abhors room
bas I mean my dog abhors room bas so I
imagine nature would as well. But yeah, no, it's any
time there is any pocket for life to fill basically,
if it can, if it can reach there and it
can physically actually do it, it'll fill it. It's just

(14:43):
it's kind of inevitable. Caves can be cold. They can
be sort of They're usually on the cool side. They
don't necessarily have to be freezing um. In fact, like
cave temperatures are often very stable throughout the year. They
can Some caves are like fifty degrees fair and high
throughout the entire year and barely changes a single degree

(15:04):
um because it's sheltered from weather in the sun, so
most caves stay at a pretty constant temperature. They can
be quite cold. They can be uh, you know, sort
of moderately temperature. Actually, deep caves can be warmer because
they're closer to geothermal activity. The temperature in the cave
depends on where the cave is in the world, how

(15:25):
deep it is, you know, what the weather is on
the outside, because like if you're in a really sunny
area and it heats everything on the outside you will
get in and it's a shallow cave. You will get
some of that through the cave, but it's they're generally
like a stable kind of cool temperature. UM. And there's
often water flow in cave systems, so like streams and

(15:47):
rivers on the surface will sometimes like just whoop, fall
right down a hole and enter a cave and you'll
get an underground cave river stream. Um. What you're describing
is nicer than my home that I have in as
a human supposedly master of this earth. Is It's got
a water feature, it's a steady fifty degrees at all times,

(16:11):
no heating bill, it's a standing caves. Sound amazing. I'm
going to live in a cave, I know, no joke.
Like when I visited my first cave, I really thought, Man,
this would actually be nice to live in if I
had internet, If you could get internet down there, if
lack of sunshine didn't affect us emotionally so much. That's
all that I wonder if the troglo zines are like depressed,

(16:35):
do they ever feel actually visit the surface frequently? So
those are like I don't think so, how's the pattern
recognition does troglow mean cave. Yes, boom, score one for
Michael's all right, Uh okay, awesome. It can so just

(17:00):
mean recluse though in addition to like caves. Oh that
was a google it pause. Ha, that's now I see.
That's an extra sweet point as if you force Katie
to google something, I think that's a wham creature feature.
Oh that's my secret though, is I'm actually just kind
of a dumb dumb who knows how to use Google

(17:22):
very good. That's such bowl because our video feeds are
on and I'm watching you with this information off the
top of your head, like it ain't I wrote notes.
It's all notes and Googling shattered the reality podcast, the
fantasy that I'm that I'm not just a dum dumb
with Google. Well, I'll just at the beginning of this,

(17:44):
I thought the more I learned, the more I would
be creeped out by the things are that are in
caves and never want to visit a cave. And indeed,
that portion probably still is coming scrolling through some of
the images on the dock. But uh, so far, you're
making me want live in a cave and it's a
safe cave. You can visit it it's it's actually really

(18:06):
cool to visit a cave. Visit a a cave that
has been deemed safe for humans to visit, preferably do
one of the ones that has tour guides and such
in it, because like remember, as I mentioned before, there
can be foul air caves that can just silently kill you.
You can get stuck in little areas of caves, so
they can actually be very dangerous. But normally the caves

(18:28):
that you can go to as a tourist on guided
tours are very safe. So one of the coolest things
about caves just architecturally is of course the beautiful interior
with chandeliers and columns, and it looks like it was
created by some kind of like Phantom of the Opera
who lives underground. So this These formations are typically caused

(18:54):
from groundwater that seeps down into the earth and drips
down into caves like underground rain, and this results in
mineral deposit on the cave's roof or floor and creates
stillag tights on the roof and stillag mites on the
floor and other cave formations. All cave formations are known

(19:14):
as spelio thembs. They can be things like straws. So
these are like hollow tubes that hang from the ceiling.
Draperies that are mineral deposits that look like curtains. Uh.
There are columns that look like columns, yes, uh. And
they're also flow stone flow stones that look like these

(19:34):
big mounds. They almost look like they're fluid, but if
you touch them, they're solid. They kind of look like
a big melted ice cream scoop essentially, but they're actually solid.
Also in the in the twilight zone of that cave
and Belize, which is my only real cave experience, Uh,
maybe this is flow stone. But there was a room
that looked like the surface of a brain. Like the
wall on the floors. It looks like you're on a

(19:56):
giant brain, you know what I mean. That's sort of wobbly.
That's so cool. Pattern. Yeah, there are all sorts of
different cave formations. I can't name them all because I'm
not an expert. But there are things that are called
like bacon because they have striations. They're like things that
look like egg yolks. It all depends on the type
of mineral deposits and the way that it was formed.

(20:19):
That forms these different Oh you'll see I've seen pictures
online of um it's like they discovered this in Peru
and there's people standing on crystals that are so huge
that it looks like cg from Harry Potter movies. Caves
are way more varietous than I think we think. Yes,
I think of them as like a smooth rock hole,
but it's way more than half. Yeah, I mean there

(20:40):
are things from from ice caves to lava caves. Caves
made of ice and caves made of cool lava. So yeah,
and so all these cave formations are going to depend
on the type of mineral deposit. Most are made out
of calcium carbonate, which is actually the minerals that are
also found in sea shells and egg shells and pearls.

(21:02):
So you know, this sort of like pallid, ghostly cave
color sometimes sort of like I don't know what, it's
almost like semi translucent translution, semi translution. Jesus Christ, what
the hell semi translucent failed it And they are really beautiful.
We also see those in like in seashells and pearls. Uh,

(21:24):
and so yeah, material it's not Yeah, I don't often
see like an actual pearl leescent cave um structure, but
they're all they do have like a sort of like
shimmer or sheen, and and that those are often the
calcium carbonate um structures, but there are many types of

(21:45):
minerals that form different types of speliotombs. Uh. And you know, actually,
one cool thing is that there is an interesting psychological
phenomenon that you can experience if you go down in
a cave called paara idolia, which is where you see
faces or shapes or figures in ambiguous patterns and you
interpret that as like a face or a person. So

(22:08):
there are a lot of caves where they're like, oh,
look this is these are these figures in a cave
that's like it looks like a human or it looks
like spirits or a ghost, and it looks like a
ghostly figure haunting the cave. And it's really because we
are really good at interpreting ambiguous patterns as faces in
humanoid shapes. So that's a fun creepy thing you can

(22:29):
experience when you go down in the cave and you
see a column and it kind of looks like a
human being. My understanding is that's because it's it's historically
been so important to recognize one another, right, like I
I've met that other human before, I know who they are.
Oh that's Katie. Katie doesn't try and kill me with rocks,
said Katie in the past, So that pattern will probably persist.

(22:50):
So like, yeah, we've become so key to recognize faces.
That's why two dots in a line looks like a
face to it's not. But you know, a random cross
hatch pattern doesn't look like anything. It's just such that
as a primal pattern, right. Why you see it everywhere? Yeah,
you say, see shapes and people and clouds and tree leaves. Yeah,

(23:12):
I mean it's we devote so much of our brain
to pattern recognition, especially social pattern recognition, because we are
our whole survival as a species husband because of our
ability to socialize with one another, so we have it's
just so much brain power devoted to that that when
you toss something in the brain, it's gonna run run

(23:34):
that algorithm. I love that characterization of it, that you're
handing the brain like a bunch of random stimulus and
it's like, I don't know a face face, It couldn't
be a guy's face. Imagine your eyes is just funnels
that you're tossing information and it's got to get sorted
out by your brain. Is like a sweaty middle manager. Jeez,

(23:56):
what is this? I don't know, human whatever. I don't
got time for this slagtites coming at me. I don't
know what all this craft is. It's cave people, I
don't know. It's a run. Sometimes these structures like stillagtites, stalagmites,
or other spelio thimbs are formed by microbes. So microbes

(24:20):
like cyanobacteria can deposit minerals and form structures, and diatoms,
which are unicellular algae, can also create mineral deposits. When
they die, they actually leave behind their hard shells made
of silica. Have you ever purchased dietomaceous earth? Yes? It

(24:41):
keeps bugs off of some of our flowers. Yes, yes,
I think when they crawl through it, it like shreds
their insides or something. It's my understands. It desiccates them.
It sucks all the moisture out of them, like like
a millions of little terrible finally killing he man or
some ship. Right, it sucks out the moisture and kills them.

(25:04):
Because these are they're extremely dry, and that dietemaceous earth
is made out of millions, millions of skeletons of dead dietons,
these little unicellular algae. So we're using in like a
nearly infinite, relatively infinite number of corpses to murder more animals.

(25:26):
Corpses exactly. Yes, So life doesn't just come in the
form of microbes or dietoms. There are actual things you
can see with the naked human eye that can actually
be surprisingly big, that live in caves. I just imagine
you're like that wall is made of a bunch of
catshells piled up their husks harden when they die. I'm

(25:50):
talking about living animals living a live crawling animals that
you go down in the cave and it can brush
up against you in the darkness, in the cold darkness
and utter silence, and suddenly you feel something slimy or
fuzzy crawling against your hand. And slagmite is three dogs
in a trench coat. We'll talk more about that when

(26:13):
we return. So let's talk some trocolobites. So in the
dark zone of the caves, no light is getting in,

(26:35):
so you don't really need eyes, do you, I guess
you don't need them, but you can't want them for face.
It's just like it's just a common courtesy to have eyes.
Who cares? Who would even see them? There's no light
that comes down. Why is it a guess? If you

(26:56):
don't have eyes, then I don't need eyes. If we
both don't have nobody has eyes. I guess like if
you're trying to wink at someone, then you would just
like say, wink, which makes it harder to be subtle
about it because you're like, you know, but I would
I would assume I would want some other strategy for
navigation and traversal. Then M yeah, no, you would you

(27:18):
definitely want to have down, Yes you do. Well, let's
talk about the Mexican blind cave fish. When you don't
need eyes, why don't you just keep them just for fun?
If you don't need them in a cave like, it
doesn't seem like they would do any harm, So why
not keep the mania? I wonder if it reshapes your
whole head, because in some ways it feels like the

(27:40):
head is has is shaped the way it is to
have a place for Yeah, so does the skull close up?
Did you never have eyes to begin with? Well? The
Mexican blind cave fish has answers to your questions. So
technically this is the same species as the Mexican tetra,

(28:03):
which is a normal looking little fish that lives on
the surface in streams and it has perlescent pink scales
and only grows to be about the length of a finger.
It just looks like kind of typical aquarium fish. Uh,
And they have eyeballs. They normal looking little fish, but
the blind cave variant is a pale, ghostly white and

(28:26):
has no eyes. They just have this featureless, smooth face.
So it's not just that they don't have eyes, it's
actually the part of the brain responsible for vision is
smaller than that of their surface dwelling relatives, so it
seems like they've ditched everything they can that has to

(28:47):
do with vision. So technically there's still this like immature
eye structure underneath the skin, but the lack of blood
flow to the eyes during development causes them to remain
underdeveloped vestigial structures. So basically, like the skin grows over it,
it doesn't look like they have eyes, so at some

(29:09):
point in their fetal development, they just don't receive the
nutrients to the eyes that they need, so they don't
develop them, and when they hatched here they are eyeless fish.
And what's so interesting about this is that there this
uh surface Mexican tetra. It's not even a different species,
although some uh some people to argue like they're different

(29:32):
enough physically that would make them different species, but in
terms of genetics they're actually extremely similar. So it seems
like there is something that happens in development, possibly environmentally,
like in terms of gene expression, that causes them such
a dramatic change in terms of their development in the

(29:53):
underground species, and in terms of what the benefit is
to not having the it's that vision is actually really costly.
It's a very complicated thing to be able to see
stuff and process it. I mean, like you know, you
got your computer. You know how much energy your graphics
card uses, right, not even considering the processing, like the

(30:15):
fact that your brain decodes and makes sense of it
and try and turns it into an idea of what's
going on around you, right, that must be very exhausting
from that brain anthropomorphized brains point, you need a you
need a real hardcore GPU, and you need a hardcore CPU.
I mean I've learned about this in terms of computers,
trying to run cyberpunk on my dang old computer. But

(30:39):
and it exploded. It did the most punk thing of all,
took my money and ran away. But the but with animals,
you know, including us, it takes a lot of processing
to be able to use vision. So photoreceptive cells and
neurons require a lot of energy. In fact, in a
study on the Mexican tetra's both the surface dwelling sided

(31:03):
variety and the cave dwelling blind variety, they found a
fifteen percent reduction in energy consumption in the blind cave variants,
So they're saving a lot of energy. Moneies a lot
of those a TP dollars a TP coin. They can't
watch wond division. Yeah, no, I will say. It also

(31:26):
takes away my greatest aversion to that dish where you
eat a whole fish and it's like the head is
still on. Oh yeah, the eyes staring at you accusingly.
I don't mean to come into a podcast about animals
and just talk about eating them so clearly, but this
blind cave fish that I'm looking at, it looks like
it's all good tasty meat because you don't have to

(31:48):
feel guilty. It can't look at you. There's nothing. It's
the head. Meat could frown, It can crown judgmentally, Like,
come on, guy, I went deep into a cave and
you're still gonna dig me up and eat me. It's
your it's a you problem. But this energy saving purpose

(32:09):
that they found in these fish seems like a pretty
good blueprint for why other animals basically ditch their eyes
when they're they're under under caves. Now, you know, obviously
it's it's not been established that this causes them to
lose their eyes or if there's some environmental thing in
the cave where they're not you know, like basically they

(32:30):
are not getting enough nutrients, so they are putting it
all towards the systems that are most important to function.
Something like that. But yeah, it's like, if you don't
need eyes in an environment where getting nutrients is actually
quite difficult, it makes sense to get rid of them.
You just don't need them. Yeah, But uh, I bet

(32:53):
you're wondering, well, hey, gosh, what are some of these
other animals that don't have eyeballs? Well, I'm glad you asked.
I didn't, But if we must go for it, if
that's where we are, I will live in it with you. Katie. Well,
do you like wolves? Do you like wolves with no eyeballs? Really?

(33:14):
I can't believe you're about to tell me about some
cave wolf with no eyeballs. It's actually a cave wolf spider.
I just thought you scared. I thought I would. It's
sort of like, you know, like I start with wolf
and then you're scared, like a wolf annihilist demon wolf,
and now we've kind of like gone to spider and

(33:36):
you're actually calmed down, which is great because normally people like, oh, no, spider,
but I want you to love this spider. Spiders don't
bother me as much as most. That's good. That's good
path here. So this is the eyelis pale cave wolf spider,
which actually, now that they think about it, it goes
with a teenage mutant ninja turtle cadence. I list something

(33:59):
cave will spider, eyeless pale cave with spider. So this
is the Kawaie cave wolf spider, which is found in
caves formed by lava flows in Kawaite, so their surface
dwelling relatives. The wolf spiders have large eyes and the

(34:20):
cave wolf spiders. Just they don't have any eyes, you know.
So it's a similar situation with the Mexican tetrup So
in terms of visuals, their abdomen is kind of a
silvery pale white, and their legs are light reddish brown.
It's actually quite a nice look, you know. It's it's
a it's sort of a fall to winter, which I like. Um.

(34:42):
They grow to be about an inch in diameter, which
you know, it's about the size of a silver dollar coin.
You know, it's not so bad. They're also totally harmless
to humans, just some little cute cave spiders that maybe
lands on your hands and give you a little kiss. Uh.
And they come from the lava lands. Yeah, that's good,

(35:05):
that's auspicious. They feed on teeny tiny cave crustaceans that
looks sort of like a cross between a shrimp and
a pillbug, but transparent. They're they're really tiny, they're under
ten millimeters long. Uh. And because they don't have eyes,
they actually have in enhanced spidy senses of touch, taste,

(35:28):
and smell. Now, but you're wondering, like, well, wait, how
does the spider smell? They don't got a nose, you
know what the heck, although it'd be cute, imagine a
spire was just like a little little nose, you know,
like a little red red nose there. Well, I figured
the caboose, the big you know that, what is it
called a thorax, the big ball. Yeah, the abdomen, the

(35:51):
big ball on the end of a spider that doesn't
seem to have any function. Is there some kind of
nose hidden in there? You crack that open and there's
a nose in there. There's no nose hidden in the abdomen. Well,
they have sensory organs all over their body, on their
legs and in terms of hairs covering their entire body,

(36:13):
including their abdomens, so in terms of a nose, really
could think of their legs and their petal palps, those
little armlike things near their face as a bunch of
noses because they have uh, chemosensory organs on that and
chemosensory receptors that allow them basically to taste what they're touching.

(36:34):
And the little hairs all over their bodies are very
sensitive to vibration and is how they hear. So basically
they're covered in noses and ears. Doesn't that make spiders
seem more friendly and it It kind of gives me
a whole new appreciation for spider sense. It's yeah, they
do kind of have. They're just like a walking mass

(36:55):
of general awareness all around them at all times. That's
the comforting spiders. It's not like there's eyes in the
back of your head. It's like, no, all around my
whole my skin is looking at you. Well, their hair
is technically yeah. Also, the caveable spider is a really
good mommy. She will carry her egg sack protectively in

(37:18):
her mouth parts until they hatch. It's cute. She's just
failing to eat her children. She's both a failure and
proponent of infanticide. We're missing you know, she's a bad gourmand.
But mom, so you know, there's almost a pun in there.
It's a trade off. This also has me wondering, so

(37:42):
does it It presumably must save resources then too by
foregoing the site pathway, right, it seems like yeah. Based
on this study with the tutra, it seems that either
it's an evolutionary trait where by basically these spiders that
ditched the eyes had a leg up eight legs up

(38:03):
on the other spiders. I don't apologize for that, but uh,
you know, so by by reducing their energy costs by
ditching the eyes, maybe they have an evolutionary advantage or
because nutrients are so sparse somehow, like in development, it's
like the eyes end up not developing because that does
take a lot of energy during development, and because there's

(38:27):
like sort of a paucity of energy, those just like
getting neglected. But then they end up not needing them anyways.
So either way, I'm not really sure that we quite
know which way that that works yet, but uh, but yeah,
either way, it's an energy saving mechanism. You know. It's
making me I'm going the other way in my mind.

(38:47):
And like, because humans, by all accounts, we have access
to extra resources more than we strictly need to survive,
well now we do, we didn't used to. But I'm
wondering when we can start converting that into like six
seven extra eyes. I want a cone in the middle
of my back that senses electromagnetic waves or something like that.

(39:07):
You know, Yeah, no, I mean like a basically a
lot of animals do have that extra eyes. Just hit me,
I don't. I don't want extra eyes electro reception like sharks.
Do you have that um just like we will. But
I want, like, I want that to be the new

(39:28):
like wealth status symbol, where the more resources you have,
just the more eyes you have. Bezos Bezos covered in eyeballs. Yeah,
he's the richest man. And just look at him. He's
covered in eyeballs. Clearly, if he was served to me

(39:48):
like fully cooked, I would not eat him. He's all eyeballs. Yeah,
he's all eyeballs looking up at you accusingly. I don't know.
I feel like when I'm eating a fish, or I
guess eating Jeff Bezos like I like it's my duty
to be able to look them in the eye and
eat them like the fish. I was going to say,
who my kid, I would devour Jeff Bezos for the
good of the world. Take that hit. Sorry, man, you're

(40:13):
you're holding too many resources. You've got to get slowly eaten.
I can't speak to Jeff Bezos eyeballs, But for fish,
eyeballs are actually quite tasty. They taste a little bit
like row. That's what everyone always says when they're trying
to get you to eat a fish. Eyeball coincidence, I
think not. You never hear anyone casually mentioning delicious fish

(40:33):
eyeballs when it's right there staring at you. Good fish
cheek is good too. Anyways, I but you're wondering, well, hey,
this is all great and good and everything, but are
there dragons that live in caves? Like I've been told
by fantasy? I was wondering that. It's surprising that you
picked that off the top of my brain since we

(40:53):
haven't talked about anything even adjacent to that. But yes, Katie,
I was. I can see it in your eyeballs, accusingly
looking at me. Little dragons. Well, yes, indeed you can
if you slightly change the definition of dragon. But there
are little animals that to me look like cave dragons.
And they may not be what you would expect in

(41:15):
like a like a Lord of the Rings book, but
I think they're really cool. So let's start out with
the Texas blind salamander. So these are aquatic, cave dwelling
neontinous salamanders, which sounds complicated, I will explain it. So
they live in Texas, so you know they've got little

(41:37):
cowboy hats and cowboy boots uh in cave systems found
in San Marcos Hayes County. They are eyeless. Now they
do have sort of underdeveloped eyes in there, but it's
covered in skin and they aren't functional. And uh, Michael,
do you know about axlotls? I do, and they look

(42:01):
a lot like axlts. They do because axelattles are also
uh Neotonus salamanders. So what do I mean by that?
So neatony means that an animal retains juvenile traits throughout
their adult life. So salamanders are amphibians that are similar

(42:23):
to frogs. They have a larval form, so you know
how frogs have tadpoles. Salamanders have a juvenile form that
is aquatic. They have long paddle like tails and branching
external gills that kind of look like sideburns. So if
you've ever seen an axilattle, they usually have those pink
or reddish like sideburns. Those are the their external gills.

(42:44):
So axilattles and this Texas blind salamander never grow out
of their larval form. They just get bigger. They're like
if a human being, like a baby, instead of like
developing adult characteristics, just got larger like a giant. I
was gonna say, it's like the average white American male.
They never sure and they grow sideburns. They just grow

(43:07):
sideburns and say they're matured big man babies with sideburns.
I'm a drag. You know. It's like like, Honey, I
blew up the kid. There was the Honey, I shrunk
the kid, which a classic, and then Honey, I blew
up the kid, which not so much. But I did
see it and I remember it. Yeah, but not as classic,
not as classic as Honey, I shrunk the kids. That

(43:29):
was genuine classic, Honey, I blew up the kids, like
genuinely upset me when I watched as a kid, because
like there's a scene where the baby almost eats his
big sister or something. I'm like, ah, that's no disturbing imagery.
That's by giant baby is not something I want to
think about anyways. Uh, that is the living reality with
these salamanders. They are giant babies acxlottles and the Texas

(43:52):
blind salamanders. So even a better level of like a
giant baby with no eyes, you know, imagine it. Let
that sink in a little bit. If this was like
a newborn baby and it just got bigger but it
didn't mature. Yeah, and it had no eyeballs. Yeah, as
long as I'm sporting those cool ass sideburns signature burns,

(44:15):
I'm gonna be like, this baby's all right, and it
can breathe underwater. So unlike excel attles, the Texas blind
salamander is adapted to cave life, so that's why it
has ditched his eyes, and it's also very little pigmentation.
Excelttles sometimes are sort of a pale color, but their
gills are often like a little more vibrant, and they're

(44:38):
also um, darker colors that x flotteles come and whereas
the blind cave salamander is typically that sort of ghostly,
ghostly white that most things are in caves. Um. But
even stranger still is the um. So the um is
also called the human fish by vocals. Oh my goodness,

(45:02):
that's just immediately scary. I know the name somehow, the
name the home, and that it's called the human fish.
It's just it makes you think it's creepier than it
even is. Because I'm looking at a picture of it,
I'm like, it doesn't deserve a name that foreboding. It's
got all sorts of just that, that sort of baba
yaga creepy energy, so they are found only in the

(45:25):
underground rivers that flow through limestone bedrock in central and
southeastern Europe. It's eyes are underdeveloped, and just like the
Texas blind salamander, it is neatonick um. What makes the
home even spookier is how long it is. It looks

(45:45):
very snake like. It has these tiny legs that are
actually really funny because like it's got this pretty long,
impressive body and just these like little tiny legs that
don't look like they can function very well well. It's
front legs only have three toes and sort of the
typical four, and its hind legs only have two toes.
So they're just they don't need eyes. They don't need toes.

(46:07):
Their legs are tiny, little like just like little. They
don't really do much the way towards becoming a snake. Like,
let's let's drop the crap. You're a snake. Just become
a snake. Just become a little sea noodle. So they
can actually grow to be quite long. They can grow
to be over a foot or thirty centimeters long. Uh.

(46:30):
And they because they don't have eyes, uh, in order
to hunt for their prey. They are very sensitive to taste, smell,
and sound, allowing them to catch little critters like little
little cave other cave dwelling insects, and underwater critters without sight,
So their inner ears allow them to sense vibrations and

(46:52):
to pinpoint the location using the orientation of these sensory
cells to calculate where the sound source is coming from.
So you've got kind of like these surround sound sensory
cells inside the ear, and then by knowing which cell
is picking up the sound the loudest, they can basically
calculate in their brain like where the sound is coming

(47:12):
from and find find that unfortunate little creature that it's
going to eat. Also, they could love to be up
to about sixty years old. Yeah, their maximum lifespan has
been calculated to be over a hundred years old. It's
always interesting when a little tiny guy lives very long.

(47:33):
It just seems counterintuitive for some reason. But I mean,
this is the closest thing we get to ancient wise
cave dragons. I mean, admittedly they're sort of like baby dragons.
They're only about a foot long, but still, I mean,
you know, like the one the picture that you included
in the dock almost looks exactly like a silhouette of

(47:56):
Musho from Alan. Yeah it does. Or or the or
the Dragon and spirited away. Yeah, definitely without the sideburns
instead of antlers. If I had a pet one of these, though,
I think I would need to paint it or find
a non cruel way to brighten it up. That's the

(48:18):
only way Google eyes online. It could use eyes and
then it could yes, tape a pair of Google Eyes
on the get a little a little more personable. I mean,
I think it works for everything. Put eyes all over
its body. It doesn't. I have some. I have some
adhesive Google eyes that I just put on things around
the house. It's fun. You mean, you give you give

(48:41):
this home a wicked paint job, and you're gonna be cruising. Dude. Look,
you slept some races and stripes on it, you slept
eyes on it, and bang, you're the Calisi of the
cave system. You got a cave dragon, my friend. M So,

(49:04):
now I want to talk about some very rare cave
finds that you will only find in a few caves,
and it is hard to access them. These are limited
access cave critters. So what comes to mind when I
say cave leeches, Like, how does that make you feel?

(49:26):
Where are you at with cave leeches? Well, i'll tell you, Katie,
not great. I thought of leeches as something that I
had to be on the cusp of manhood with my
friends in the woods and submerging myself in a filthy
puddle to get attacked by. And when you mentioned cave leeches,

(49:48):
it makes it sound like they could be elsewhere, like
not in the water, not in stagnant water. I'm hoping
to find out that these still are only in water.
Are they limited to water? They are, Oh thank god.
Although I do like the idea of them sort of
hanging from the ceiling of thin bat like yeah, like
hanging I from the ceiling then it drops down on

(50:09):
you and out. Yeah yeah, yeah, not quite now they
are still They are actually aquatic leeches, so that is
a comforting thing. They are called Croata branchus MS. Tro vi,
a k a arpo badella MS. Trovi. I'm just gonna
split the different call them little cavy leeches. That's I've

(50:32):
got think going to be easier for everyone. They are
found in one of the deepest caves in the world,
They are endemic, meaning they are only found in the
northern vil Bit cave systems in Croatia. They were discovered
in the deepest cave in Croatia, Lucina Jama. I'm sorry

(50:54):
if I mispronounced that, which is fourteen hundreds, which is
one thousand, four hundred and thirty meters or four thousand,
six hundred and ninety four feet deep. Pretty it's deep
enough that I have no conception. It's right. If you've

(51:17):
seen the Empire State Building there, you go google Empire
State Building? How big? How big? Computers? Say very big? Big?
Say computer? It is uh one thousand, four hundred and

(51:37):
fifty four ft tall, So that's like three points something
for this is almost Yeah, so this is like four thousand,
six hundred ninety four divided by one thousand, four hundred
fifty four doing it in my head, I'm kidding three close. No,

(51:59):
it's a it's about like three and a half times
the tallness of the Empire State Building according to Google math. Yeah,
that's again seemingly unnecessary. Yeah, it doesn't seems a little
showing off. Showing off, But I also like that that's
how far this cave. Leach is, right, now right. So

(52:24):
part of the cave is a five hundred and thirteen
meter or one thousand, six d and eighty three ft
free fall hole, so taller than the Empire State building.
Just a hole, just basically the lobby of the cave
where the leach, just a free fall hole. You know. Yeah,
this is the deepest hole in the world. So the

(52:46):
legion doesn't fall from the ceiling on you. You follow
from the ceiling onto the leach. Technically yes, technically yes,
So this is They're found in the deepest hole in
the world, also known as my heart. Anyways, um, imagine
being one of the researchers who descended into this pitch black,

(53:09):
cold hole with nothing but a rope between you and oblivion.
Imagine if you fell and you're, oh, my god, I
can't believe we survived. What broke our fall? Leeches? It's okay,
these cave leeches broke my fall. Thank god. These man

(53:31):
eating leeches broken my fault from the tallest hole in
the world. Speaking of unnecessary, it's unnecessary that there's life
there and that we ever knew about it. There's no
reason for human to go out down there and find
out that these are there, These are down there. Okay,
but isn't that like the most human thing there is. Like,

(53:53):
that's a big hole. I'm gonna go down in that hole, yeah,
and get to the very bottom and find out what
freaking bug lives there. I know what's in that hole.
There's screams of the damned in there. Well, I'm gonna
go and check that out. Something with no eyes is
calling to me from that hole. Something is calling to
me saying I will devour you, and then the screams

(54:14):
of the damned. I'm gonna go down in there. Uh.
It makes my butt like invert on itself to think about.
So these cave leeches live in streams in the depths
of these caves, and pretty cool, pretty frigid streams there

(54:34):
at water temperatures of about four degrees celsius or forty
degrees fahrenheit, so chilly, you know, pretty chilly. They have
no eyes, which is not super surprising. I mean, leeches
only have eye spots. They don't have like big cute
puppy eyed normally, so it's not that different. A leech

(54:55):
is already just like a living lump of slime. As
far as I there are living lumps of slime like slime.
Leeches are more like a a goon noodle with a
sucky part and classic suck face Google classic. They're the
sucker mouth of the cave. Leach is actually not used

(55:19):
to suck blood. Researchers don't think they survive on blood
sucking because there are simply not enough animals with enough
blood down there too for them to suck on. There
aren't normally, there aren't tasty humans that just like decided
to descend down on a rope for these leeches to

(55:40):
feed on. So, uh, they don't really know what they
feed on. Um, maybe there's just like a race of
yettis that live down there that they feed on. But
they eat all the discarded vestigial eyeballs that now you
guys going to use these eyeballs now, all right where
Bezos chucks all his extra eyes every year his yearly

(56:03):
eye purge to get rid of all those eyeballs. So
the mouth, the sucker mouth, is actually ringed in tentacles.
This just gets better and better, doesn't it. And the
function of these tentacles and the mouth is unclear, but
the powerful sucker seems to be able to help it.
Cling to rock surfaces underwater and to actually crawl along. Uh.

(56:28):
They have what looks like legs on each of their sides,
but these are actually just little flesh projections that researchers
think serves some sort of respiratory function, So gas exchange
may occur along the surface area of these projections. Like
they're just external gills and they're kind of flat and

(56:50):
they move by undulating like caterpillars. So basically it has
an oral sucker, uh it's mouth, and it's got a
posterior sucker on its butt, and it like uses each
of the suckers to like move along a rock underwater.
So it's like just but it's like the mouth but
mouth but mouth. But yeah, it's butt sucks and its

(57:12):
mouth sucks. Yeah, but it's but suckings way funnier than
it's mouth. It sucks at moving, but sucks at moving.
And it has these things that should be legs if
you're looking at it, but they're not legs. But that's
inherently hilarious. Um. But I will say that the scariest
thing about this, I think is that you don't know

(57:33):
what stuff is for. I don't like that here. It's
one thing to have a tentacle ring, right, but then
to go what is it for? Oh, don't worry about it,
it's just yet. It's the mysteries that are you know,
really the zest of life, Like what are those mouth
tentacles for? We don't know. Life would be boring and

(57:53):
bland if we didn't if we knew what that leach was. Second,
if we knew like what every mouth tentacle did, that
would like, what would life be? Then life would be
without the mysteries of mouth tentacles. That would be sad
to me. Tentacle mas are the spice of life, as
they said, really is carpet d M tentacles mouth tentacles? Yeah,

(58:17):
but yeah, they don't know what they feed on. Maybe
you spooky, but I'm gonna guess something tiny that's on
the rocks. Probably probably, Yeah, they may like even feed
on algae, who knows, who knows. So the last cave
cutie that we're going to talk about is the white

(58:39):
cave velvet worm. So if you've been listening to the
podcast for a while, you know I've got a soft
spot for velvet worms. They are one of the cutest
little booties in the world. Um My Twitter banner is
made up of velvet worms. They are just there's something
so cute about them, and so velvet warm ORMs just

(59:00):
as a refresher. They are a phylum of species of small,
pinky size normally sometimes even smaller adorable like velvety worm
like critters. So they are actually not technically worms. They
are a branch off of pan arthur poda. Uh so
they are a sort of distinct branch from like uh,

(59:23):
insects and stuff. They're their own phylum, their own their
own brand. You know, it's all about brand integrity for
these guys. And they have a bunch of cute little
chubby legs, these chubby little antenna and they like to
squirt sticky sticky spray from glands near their mouth that

(59:43):
they used to stick on to prey so that they
can eat it. Oh so they do eat prey. So
you love them anyway, even though they take life. I mean,
cats do that. Well. I know, I'm not judging you
for that, I'm just establishing it. They look like they
have httle leg warmers on each and every one legs.
They're pretty cute. For some reason, I thought they would

(01:00:05):
be herbiferous based on that fact, Yeah, they do look
like they would like delicately by its legs. Well. Non
cave dwelling velvet worms come in a variety of beautiful colors,
like purples or blues. Sometimes they have like yellow racing
stripes there. I think, really beautiful, and they do look

(01:00:28):
like they're made out of velvet. They have this incredible
skin texture that allows them to retain moisture because they
like to live in moist environments, and they're they're apparently
actually also very soft. So you know, do I want
to pet one? Yeah? Oh man, okay, yeah, I'm googling
images of the ones that live on land. Are very cute,

(01:00:49):
very cute, just a little, just a little like little
chunksters Pixar. They do. Yes, they're very cute. They look
like some kind of like toy worm, like a little
When I was a kid, I had a glow warm
toy that you squeezed it and it would glow and
it had this like soft, chunky body that I would
hug um and it had a human face, and that

(01:01:12):
part I didn't much care for, but the other aspects
of the glow worm it was very fun and cute. Um.
But cave velvet worms are a ghostly white and they
are that. Actually, there's not that much known about them.
They don't know like if they don't have eyes at
least I couldn't find any research on whether or not

(01:01:33):
they have eyes. My suspicion probably not. Why would they
need them? Uh? And they they have this ability to
squeeze their jiggling little bodies in the cracks and crevices,
which makes them very well adapted to cave life. They're
like cave kitties, you know how like cats can just
like squeeze underdoors. They're just like that, except they've got
lots of little legs and the cat has some legs

(01:01:59):
for the you yea, I have been owned. I just
got owned by the cat. So they are found only
in two cave systems in table mountains South Africa. Due
to the limited area and how few specimens have been found,
they are considered vulnerable. So you know, these little little ghosts,

(01:02:21):
they look like some kind of ghost pokemon, you know
what I mean, ghost type or they could all be
hiding in cracks and would we even know that's true?
That's true. It's actually a very good better. We better
go to the world's deepest hole to find out get
in that whole scientific these mad, mad people who figure
this stuff out jump in a hole, I mean, like

(01:02:45):
the world's deepest hole to look for some worms. If
I wasn't so scared of the effects that gravity has
on my body when it meets the floor in you know,
like the potential energy that would go into my body
after jumping off of a thing, and then you know
what happens at the end of that, I definitely want

(01:03:06):
to jump in all who would? You would? Wouldn't you? Weirdo?
Aren't what's wrong with the seven or eight kinds of
animals that I know we have around those here in
the surface world. It's enough animals be satisfied that don't
need to define these eyeliss velvet worms that live deep
in the bowels the I guess you do, or you

(01:03:26):
wouldn't have a podcast. Are some people that do like
jump into basically like these big holes, and I think
they either like have a parachute or a bungee cord.
I think it's a parachute. It's like basically base jumping,
except seemingly extremely dangerous because like you can't see the bottom. Oh,

(01:03:47):
just basse jumping into a hole that's deep enough that Yeah,
I hate it. I don't like it. I don't like
to think about it. It makes makes my but like
crawl up my mouth. The white cave velvet worm is
down there looking up at us, like, these guys are crazy.

(01:04:08):
What are all those eyes for? Oh god? They have
so many eyes, have these big jelly balls. Actually, if
you didn't have eyes, eyes would be gross. They would,
wouldn't they. It's like their head is mostly solid, but
they have these like weird jelly balls move around. I mean,
you wouldn't have the visual of it, right, So you

(01:04:30):
don't have sights, so you don't have the visual of eyeballs.
If you don't have eyes like that, well you don't
know what they look like, but you can feel them
and like how glucy they are. Like imagine you're feeling something.
You're like, okay, like the human, like I feel that,
what the hell are these things? And you're honking at them?
And they're like goopy and squishy? Your eyes smell weird? Human?

(01:04:55):
You got stink eyes. Well, I think that is going
to do it for all of the cave animals. But
before we go, I do want to answer a listener
question now, This has to do with actually topic we
talked about a couple episodes ago about dinosaars. So here
is the question. Since the vast majority of what we

(01:05:17):
know about dinosaur appearances based off of bones, what about
the possibility of things that wouldn't be preserved that would
affect their appearance. Like if we only had the bones
of a penguin, we probably wouldn't be able to recreate
their unique appearance with their tuxedo coloring or secret knees
or peacock tail feathers, or hippos incredibly thick skin or
elephant trunks and ears. I've got to assume there's tons

(01:05:40):
of examples of defining but non obvious traits of modern
animals that wouldn't be preserved through a future fossil record.
Do you think we're not being creative enough with what
dinosaurs could have looked like? And this is from Stephen.
This is a great question and one that has kind
of caused a revolution in ter terms of paleo art

(01:06:01):
and paleontologists understanding of dinosaurs. So it is true that
are classic view of sort of like the Jurassic Park, like, uh,
dinosaur that has like green or brown and like scaly,
just like giant lizards essentially is probably way too limited.
So what you're describing in terms of like not knowing

(01:06:24):
what animals look like and and actually um sometimes, like
with dinosaurs and other fossils, we imagine them being much
more skeletal and bony than they may have been. This
is called shrink wrapping. It's basically when a an extinct
animal that we only have fossil records of we're trying
to recreate them. We don't give them enough flesh. We're like, okay,

(01:06:48):
here's their bones. They probably had some muscles, and so
when we try to imagine them, they kind of look
bony and skeletal. There is this amazing book called All
Yesterday's Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals.
It's an illustrated book that critiques the way that we've
classically envisioned dinosaurs, and there are these great illustrations in

(01:07:12):
it that shows like how we might envision living animals
like baboons and swans and hippos and zebras just based
on their fossils, and they look horrible. They look like monsters. Yeah,
they all look like like Jurassic Park creatures. The baboon

(01:07:34):
looks the most. The baboon looks like a velociraptor essentially
from Jurassic Park, with just different mandibles basically, and the
swan has like these sides. It's like the wing bones, right,
and it's like they've imagined it without feathers. I imagine
if you just found a bone that was just a

(01:07:55):
V shape and you were like, I'm pretty confident they
flew with this and it was all filled in with
all these feathers. Even though you were right, people would
be like, that's kind of a stretch. So you can
see how this happens. It totally makes sense, right eapy too, Right,
So fossils are often incomplete, even when it comes to bones,

(01:08:17):
but they also don't often record things like feathers, color,
skin texture. Uh, It's true. We can get some sense
of fat and muscle based on bone density and structure.
I think like there's some probably advancement in terms of
like understanding how muscle fits to bone and using sort
of the structure of bone and bone density to like

(01:08:40):
be like, okay, this probably supported more weight, so we
could like reconstruct some of the tissue and fat um.
And but unless there's a cast of skin, tissue or feathers.
It's really hard to know what's going on the outside
of the animals. So like you know how turkeys have
those like dangly things under their chins and over their beak.

(01:09:00):
The water, the water and the snood. We wouldn't know
if like t rex had like a wattle, like a
big gin wattle. What if we finally clone, you know,
like we clone a wooly mammoth and it just looks
like two big birds staple together, and we're like, that
is not what it was gonna look like. Well, look

(01:09:21):
at that thing. It's crazy. I mean, I think like
with the wooly mammoth, we have a better understanding of
what they probably look like because of their living relatives.
They're close living relatives, and also some of them, all
their flesh was actually frozen because they have a lot
of uh you know, they lived in these very cold

(01:09:41):
and so we do have flesh samples. We have limited, yeah,
of of mammoth's. Yeah, I think there was even like
a whole or partial baby mammoth that was frozen that
we have. Um doesn't mean we have complete DNA, but
we actually we do have like an idea of what
they look like. Um, but dinosaurs we don't have that.

(01:10:02):
But we very occasionally will have things like feather imprints
or or skin fossilized skin. Very rarely does that happen
because organic material typically would decay or be eaten or
you know, basically um become too ruin or just completely

(01:10:23):
decayed before it would have a chance to fossilize. The
only time that organic material like skin could survive and
be fossilized if it was like almost immediately buried. And
then this, this mineralization happened where basically all the bits
of organic material is replaced by a mineral and uh

(01:10:44):
preserves the look of the tissue. And it does happen,
it's very rare. UM and even then, like you don't
have a necessarily an understanding of pigmentation, like you don't
know like what it would look like. And we're but
even in that, we're starting to get a little better
at that. There are sometimes melanosomes that are fossilized. So

(01:11:06):
milanosomes are an organelle that will determine pigment. UH. So
paleontologists can see a milanisome and like, hey, this one
looks like this is a milannisome that would create a
black pigment and be able to make some determination of like, hey,
we think that maybe this this skin might have been black,
or like this feather might have been black. So we're

(01:11:27):
getting a little better at at those kinds of things.
We're taking the pale out of paleontology. I should I'm
sorry if if remembersomes need a tagline, there you go. Ye. So,

(01:11:48):
most likely the image of just like brown all of colored, green,
scaly lizard dinosaurs is outdated. I mean, there probably were
dinosaurs that looked like that. I don't. I mean, you know,
it's like they aren't. You know, they did share a
common ancestor with modern day reptiles. Um they were, but

(01:12:10):
they we do know that some of them have feathers,
and maybe they had fleshy ornaments, like imagine like you
know a lot of birds have these eye ornaments. This
oscillated turkey has these big blue basically it looks like
these blue dots all around its eyes blue eyeline or
a lot of seabirds have these magnificent little like fleshy
eyeliner and dinosaurs may have had that. So maybe uh,

(01:12:33):
maybe it's t rex. Maybe it's mable line. We don't know,
we're not sure what they sounded like, too, Is that right?
I mean, I got to imagine the roar of the
t rex we hear in the Jurassic Park is just
as speculative, right, there's some I think there's like some
research about that. And I think that based on like

(01:12:57):
some like they're they're trying to basically reconstruct dinosaurs and uh,
using like something like what we know about vocalization of
living animals like birds, the living dinosaurs of today, and
using that to try to figure out, like what another
dinosaur would sound like. And I think I read something
that seemed to indicate that they may have had very

(01:13:18):
bird like sounds based on some of their like vocal structures,
Like but just imagine like a very deep throated bird
like sound for some of these like bigger dinosaurs, which
is actually a little scary, pretty intimidating. Yeah, a velociy
after went gobble gobble, but really deep mother, before you

(01:13:42):
get eviscerated. Yeah, but this is a great question. Thank
you so much for it, And definitely check out that
all Yesterday's book or at least like google it and
look at the illustrations because those are They're incredible. I
love them so much. The shrink raft modern animals are great.
It's great. It's really gives you a perspective, like how
much information we lose and like what you know future

(01:14:05):
generations or like future aliens. I guess who come and
visit our ravaged earth. We'll find it like reconstruct us.
I wonder, like what a shrink wrapped human would look like,
just like skeletor, like we're all, yeah, skeletor, Yeah, that's hey,
send him some fan art shrink rapped humans. God, horrifying

(01:14:30):
fan art. Slender Man came, oh god, oh man, you're right? Yeah, no,
that that Oh I love I like that. I like
that head fanne. He doesn't needy, he doesn't need eyes.
Why would he need eyes. He's got all of those,
like those receptors on his long arms, just like a spider. Hey,
we brought a full circle. Well, thank you so much

(01:14:53):
for joining me today, Michael. Where can people find you?
Where can the cave leeches find you? Oh? Hi, cave
leech is I'm over at patreon dot com slash small beans,
and if you're on Twitter, I'm at symbol. Then the
name Swain. Then the underscore symbol than Corp c O
r P Rich. I I'm more and more ashamed of

(01:15:15):
as corporations ravage and destroy everything you hold. Dear, it's you.
You're the corporate big cat that I'm I'm complaining about.
I'm the one hoarding eyes all over my body. It's
me and you can find us on the internet at
Creature feature Pot on Instagram, at Creature feet pot on
Twitter that's f f et and something like a creature.

(01:15:38):
You can also email me your horrifying fan art of
human beings, shrink wrapt or your questions or cute animal pictures.
I'm good with cute animal pictures to uh Creature feature
Pod at gmail dot com. I'm also you know, I'm
Katie Golden. You can find me on Twitter just search
searching searching on Twitter and pro bird writes. I do

(01:16:02):
that one too, where I'm a bird. Surprise, I'm a bird.
I thank you guys so much for listening. Oh also, hey,
if you review the podcast, I will read it and
it will warm my little little bird heart and I
really appreciate it. I really do read all of them,
and they really do mean a lot to me. It
makes me happy. Thank you. So much for everyone who

(01:16:25):
leaves a review. I super appreciate that creat Your feature
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
like the one you just heard, visit me I Heard
Radio app Apple podcasts, or hey guess what? Why have
you listen to your deem dang shows? And thanks to
the Space Classics for their super awesome song ex Alumina
See you next Wednesday. I kind of inverse the order

(01:16:46):
of the outro. I wonder if people are going to
be upset about that. I don't know, Viva la deference,
vivla extra eyes or lack of eyes. Everything's great teach
there on. Bye guys,