Realms of Myth Playlist, Part 9: Wound Mouth of the Undying Hydra

From myth to biology, the hydra hungers and grows.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop dot com.
Hey wasn't the stuff to blow your mind? My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager and Robert hydra Hi.
So this is our hydro episode. We're coming back to

(00:24):
some monster science here, and man, you know, previously we've
done that Osadax worm, and I feel like the smaller
the animals that we look at within the oceans, well
some high dra fresh water actually, but the just the
creepier and more alien to get And this is really
like something out of Nightmares if it was blown up

(00:44):
to human size. Yeah. Indeed, the hydra is such a
phenomenal little creature, and it's one that I feel like
a lot of us have some level of familiarity with.
I feel like this is one that pops up in
like middle school science textbooks, but they're so there's so
much more here than I remember being exposed to. And
new research just continues to roll out on these little, uh,

(01:06):
these kids. It really it seems like a fertile ground
for research, you know, in terms of like trying to
figure out And we're gonna talk a lot about this
today because the research on the mouths in particular is
relatively recent. It's in the last two weeks. Yeah, indeed,
we did some content on this for How Stuff Works. Now,
so we're going to dive into the hydra talk about
it's anatomy, talk about what makes their weird mouths work,

(01:28):
how their tentacles work, all this stuff. They're very loft, crafty,
and but before we get to that, I just want
to remind you our audience. We think that we might
have a lot of new listeners out there. We've been
hearing from some of you. We see some of the
numbers going up a little bit there, and hey, we
don't just do a podcast, right Robert, Joe and I
all right for How Stuff Works, And you can pretty
much find everything that we do at stuff to Blow

(01:50):
your Mind dot com and in particular, if you want
to keep up with what we're doing and what we're
working on, we're on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler at Blow
the Mind and we do everything they're from post you
know what's going on with the show videos. Were working
on what we're writing about, but we also kind of
curate some weird science stuff that we find along the way. Yeah,
and we pop up on periscope a little bit Friday's

(02:12):
noon Eastern Standard time. Uh. Sometimes we have to skip sometimes, uh,
you know, something comes up, But for the most part,
we try and make that a weekly. Yeah, that's an
ideal time if you want to, you know, chat with us.
It's not really one on one, but it's a it's
a good opportunity to ask us some questions in person,
see what our faces look like. A lot of people
seem to be very surprised by what we we look

(02:32):
like in person. I'd love to see like renderings of
what people think we actually look like, like like like
criminal profile drawings. Okay, so let's talk about hydros. Yeah.
So if you're not familiar with the actual creature, the
actual hydros that you encounter in various fresh water and
occasionally saltwater environments, then you're probably familiar with the hydra

(02:55):
of myth uh in particular the Learnean high hydra, so
name because it lived in the marshes of Larna in
our goal lists. Uh. So this is a you know,
just a staple of Greek mythology, also known as the
ex Yeah, and it's also a staple of dn D manuals.
I mean, I think I've been reading about hydras since

(03:16):
I was probably like five or six years old, whether
it's in D and D or in comic books. Are
watching old like I don't know, I want to say,
like Clash of the Titans or stuff like that, there
must have had a hydra in there somewhere. Yeah, I mean,
it's a it's a classic monster and it's I mean,
it's just it's thematically just such a sound creature because
essentially you have this vast dog like body on this creature.

(03:38):
It lives in the swamps there, and it has several
snaky heads. Now how many that depends on the telling.
Sometimes it's nine, sometimes it's fifty, sometimes a hundred, sometimes
up to a thousand um and each of these heads
has poison breath. But only one of these heads is immortal, right, Yeah,
And so that brings us into the whole Hercules Smith basically,

(04:00):
which is, you know, where this learnee and Hydra kind
of ties into at least where the myth changes over
time in terms of how many heads there are and
sort of what the superpowers of the hydra are. So
in the in this Hercules myth, Hercules has to perform
twelve labors, uh, the second of his labors is killing
a hydra. Uh. And of course it had many heads,

(04:22):
but later stories, not the original story, but in later stories.
This is the thing that we all know about the hydra,
right for every time you chop off ahead, two more
grow to take its place. Uh. And so in the
story Hercules, I think it's like a cousin or somebody
like that to help him. Yeah, here's a chariot driver,
I think, okay, and they cauterize the wounds on top

(04:44):
of the heads before more heads can grow back, uh,
with fire asuming ahead, then reaching with a torque to
burn the next classic D and D boss. Yeah. So
so that's really where this whole you know, myth of
hydra came from. And I'm going to have to assume that, uh,
we had the myth of the hydra before we had

(05:06):
found the animal hydra in our waters, or at least
had an understanding enough of them to name it after
this mythical monster. Oh yeah. But indeed the two were
perfect for each other. It's almost like the myth was
there just waiting for the science exactly catch up with it.
Because the regeneration is that he's a huge aspect of
both the mythological monster and the real world creature. Um,

(05:29):
they both got lots of tentacles, they both are voracious creatures,
they both have huge mouths. And there's the immortality things.
Well we'll get to that as far as the real
creature goes. But of course with the with the mythological monster,
one head is immortal, and after Hercules has finished stabbing
and burning all these other heads has to take the
immortal head and bury it underneath the rock. You know.

(05:50):
I gotta say, like when I was reading some of
the research on like specifically like looking at how the
mouths work on real life hydra's, I was a little
taken aback by some of this is kind of brutal,
the things that they do to these animals to figure out,
you know, how how they tick basically. And uh and
I gotta wonder if some some grad student out there
has re enacted the Hercules myth like by cutting off

(06:13):
each of this little hydra's tentacles and then burning it
with a match stick or something like that to see
to see if there's some accuracy there. Um, let's hope,
I hope not. Uh So, just to round out the
mythology here before we get into the bulk of the
episode being the science. So the the each of the
heads had poisoned breath. And so after Hercules has has

(06:36):
slain this creature, uh, he's able to dip arrows in
the poison blood and use them as deadly weapons, so
deadly that they even led to his own accidental death
at the hands of his wife Dianaa, at least according
to Sophocles tragedy uh Truckinian women. So see, that's what
happens when you mess with Hydra. You may even be

(06:58):
able to eventually kill them, but it will come back
around at you at the end. Yeah. And if you
create magical monster blood poisoned weapons, don't belive those things
that um. And just a one one note on where
the hydra comes from in the in Greek myth, the
Hydra is the offspring of Typhon, a primordial monster that's
kind of in the same vein as tim At and Leviathan,

(07:21):
and also the offspring of Kidna, the mother of all monsters,
and also the Starbucks coffee mermaid. That's that's a cute pairing.
I didn't realize that that sort of like Tamat style
creature had origins pre D and D. Yeah, yeah, indeed, yeah,
back to very ancient times, some of the older Smith cycles.

(07:42):
And then of course many of you probably in present
day are also aware of the terminology Hydra from the
Marvel Universe movies because it plays a big part in that,
especially I think on the Agents of Shield TV show.
But Hydra is the fictional organization in the comics and
in the movies that's sort of like a uh, just
all purpose terrorist organization with the premise that you know,

(08:05):
you cut one head off, two more growtive tickets place right,
So there's like secret Hydra agents everywhere and they're manipulating
events to take over society basically. You know. That reminds
me that this is another case where we have this
accidental synchronicity between the two episodes that we're recording this week,
and I'm not sure I think they will likely publish
in the same week as well. But here we're talking

(08:25):
about the Hydra and the Hydra uh. Not only is
it symbolically potent uh in dealing with this fictional terrorist organization,
but it's often used as a metaphor for problems that
are difficult to solve. Slice one head off to grow
up so the good grow back in its place. And
we are also talking about wicked problems this week, which

(08:45):
is essentially the same deal. Problems that are almost, if
not impossible to tackle because every time you try and
solve the problem, the problem changes. Yeah. It's the hydra
of society's ills, I suppose, and like any attempts policy
to try to fix that hydra cut off one of
its has got causes even more problems. Yeah. Well yeah,

(09:06):
so there's a preview of what we're also going to
be talking about this week. I don't know what or
they're going to be released in, but this hydra thing,
it's it is kind of uncanny to me, how like
we came up with this fictional beast and then we
find this tiny little creature. What are they? The biggest
they get is like points six inches? Right, Yeah, they're

(09:27):
they're they're pretty tiny. Uh, And it's it's, uh, it
fits that metaphor perfectly. It's like it's like that's a
really good, uh version of art, you know what I mean,
Like art reflecting life and then like the uh, the
circle of life comes back around and gives us exactly
what we've imagined. So let's get into the biology a

(09:48):
little bit. So, um, I we already have a cool
picture picked out to go with this episode, so there's
a good chance you're you're already looking at that, or
you've or this just hearing us talk about it so
far as caused you to do a Google image search.
But essentially, this little creature looks like a little tube
with the little kind of stringy, wiry tentacles coming out

(10:09):
of one end, and sometimes you see the buds as well,
because as well discussed, uh, it's one of the more
remarkable ways that it reproduces is via a sexual budding,
which I like to think of as you know, it's
it's the Grimlins and Maguai way of reproduction, where simply
little buds pop out and then they pop off, and
then those buds become individuals. I think the other pop

(10:31):
culture metaphor that works pretty well here, and you you
use this in that video about hydras is John Carpenter's
the thing. I end up thinking about the thing a
lot when we've been researching this, and that it's basically
this shape shifting kind of alien monster with tentacles. It
doesn't have the properties of the thing, and that like

(10:51):
it can assume the form of your friend, right, and
particularly your friend. But as a just monster in general,
it's it's pretty disgusting how it how it does it's business. Yeah,
it has some wonderful, wacky attributes for sure. So all
hydra are niderians like jellyfish like corals, and Niderians have

(11:11):
been around for over six hundred million in years. So
this is, uh, this is an effective model and effective
branch of life's vast tree. Here and here's a brief
breakdown on just the general kind of anatomy of hydras
in general. We're gonna be mainly talking about a subspecies
called hydro Vulgaris today, which is a great names. But

(11:34):
so yeah, like like Roberts said, they're all members of
the Nideria phylum, and Nideria has a sea in front
of it to see as siglent we had to look
that up actually, uh. And they share the same stinging
tentacle and radial symmetrical body plan. So in the way
that humans are sort of bisymmetrically split, their rai radially

(11:56):
symmetrically split. They also have two sheets of tissue that
comprised their body. There's the external ectoderm and the internal endoderm,
and these line the gastro vascular cavity inside their bodies.
And this will be important when we talk about the mouths. Yeah,
this this ties into the recent experiment that will be discussing.

(12:16):
But they're basically polyps with a slender stalk. And then
there's the row of tentacles that surround this mouth at
like a disc base. They're they're like a Lovecraft monster,
Like I want to say, they're like, what is it?
The the ygets the yig. Yeah, I made one of those. Somebody,
some Lovecraft I and Cthulu fan out there is going
to correct me, but it sounds like one of this

(12:36):
very specific Lovecraft creatures to me. Uh. But basically what
happens is small animals smaller than the point six inches
of the hydra blunder into these tentacles. They get stung
and paralyzed, and then the tentacles immediately retract and draw
these animals into the mouth. Most hydra are are pretty
small there. They can be front between one millimeter in

(13:00):
five millimeters, but the ones that we're gonna be talking
about today, the vulgaris, are around point six inches fifteen
millimeters long. Uh, And they also expel their gastro vascular
fluids from their mouth so that they can shrink back
down in size. Right, So like there you go. That's
another like crazy alien monster thing that they just like

(13:20):
puke out all of the fluids inside of their guts
and that simply so that they can kind of shrink
down and hide basically. Yeah. But then again, I mean
you anybody who has a pet that expelling era that fantastic. Yeah,
it's just a daily One of my dogs just did
that yesterday. That's true. Um, there's also we're not going

(13:42):
to spend a lot of time on this particular subspecies,
but there's the green hydra and the green hydra green
in color because they have a symbiotic relationship with an
algae called zoo clarella, and these live inside the hydra's
endodermal cells, and these algae perform photosynthesis and produce sugars
the hydro subsequently uses while the hydra eating all these

(14:03):
creatures that come by provide these algae with nitrogen in return,
and because of the photosynthetic process that's going on, that
makes the hydra look green, and subsequently they can go
several weeks without food as long as they get adequate
light because they're basically living off of these symbia its
symbiotes that are inside of them. Um. So, like we said,

(14:26):
some hydra and freshwater summer in the ocean. The most
common ones live in the clean waters here in North America.
Hydra usually attach themselves to vegetation that's underwater or sometimes
underwater twigs and rocks. They basically, you know, hang out
and wait for things to float by that they can
trap and eat. And the way that they stick is

(14:46):
they produce this mucous secretion from their basil disk. Now
this is really interesting. When they're stationary, they can also travel.
And the way that they do this is they bend
their columns slightly and they attack watch their tentacles to
something else and then they release the basil disk that's
attached and they let it swing over to something else

(15:07):
and then glom onto that and a scientists call this
summersaulting in hydros. That's pretty fascinating as well. Can you
cut again, like just like with the osidax, can imagine
if these things were human sized and you just saw
it like swing across at you with its entire body
opening up to swallow you. Yeah, it's such just a

(15:27):
it's it's such an alien creature. Uh. And I mean
it's it's more fantastic than most of the things we
dream up and in sort of the human scale of
weird off worldlife. Uh. Even like the way that they
eat is gross. Like we'll talk about the mouth in
detail in a second, but when they're done eating, hydras
expel any of their undigestive remains from their mouth. Uh.

(15:50):
And they'll they'll eat you know, any of the following
a small invertebrates that are around their side, something like
an analid worm or rhodifer or insect larvae. Uh. And
they eat small crustaceans as well, like Daphnea, kiterus and
the cyclops. Yeah. Now the cyclops is very interesting. Um.
And this is one that I've touched on and passed

(16:11):
Monster Science Monster the weak content because it is uh
back to what you said earlier about how at this
scale you find so many interesting creatures. The cyclops is
it's pretty much the only monocular organism on the planet.
It has one primitive eye and that's it. Uh. And
and you just don't find that anywhere else, Like everything

(16:33):
else goes with the two eye design, but not not
this guy, you know. And and that's interesting too because
I haven't spent time researching the cyclop but I have
to say, it's the same kind of thing, right, Like
I'm imagining, Uh, we have the myth of the cyclops,
this giant with one eye. Uh, you know, basically like
was an ogre that killed in eight people. Uh. And

(16:54):
then we find this thing underwater and we're like, oh,
this has one eye. Cool, We've already got something like
name it after that. And it keeps sheep weirdly and yeah,
underwater sheep um. So it's interesting. A lot of the
stuff that I was reading, there's like sort of like
at home experiments that are recommended that you can do
with hydra um. If you can, you know, capture them

(17:16):
in the in the waters of North America, then you
can bring them home. You can kind of observe how
their tentacles work, and um, you can actually like at home,
use what's called light microscopy to look at hydra is
the same way that they did in this study that
we're about to talk about. And you basically put a
pipe onto a slide with a few drops of water
and add a cover slip over the you know, the

(17:37):
hydra that you're looking at. You use light under a
microscope and you can kind of get the same effect.
I'm sure they're using much more precise tools in these
studies that we're talking about. Yeah, and this is one
of the reasons I think a lot of people have
some experience with a hydra from the past, because it's
an easy and very interesting creature to acquire and look at,
and just under a classroom microscope. So like this in

(17:58):
the paramecium. These are these are critters that are easy
to acquire and interesting to watch. So tentacles. Yes, the
whole time I was researching the hydra. Yesterday I actually
posted this on our Twitter feed. I had this song
from have you ever heard of this Lovecraft adaptation that's
like Fiddler on the Roof but it's called the Shaga

(18:21):
on the Roof. I've heard of them, I've never really
listened to them. There's just a song called Tentacles, and
I had that in my head as we're researching the hydra. Well, indeed,
the hydra does have tentacles, and uh, it uses these
tentacles as you might expect for catching prey, also for
self defense. If something you know threatens it. And hydro

(18:41):
tentacles contain barbed poison containing nidosts, and they use these
two stun animals like the water fleas like cyclops before
eating them alive. Uh, and again to protect themselves from
attacks by other animals. Yeah, I'm kind of curious. I
didn't see anything about this, but I wonder to a
animal our size, what a hydra sting feels like. Um,

(19:04):
I didn't see anything about that, but surely there must
be some people out there who have been stung by
hydra when they're just I don't know, like walking around
through shallow water or something like that. Well, I I
would tend to doubt we could even register that might
be true, and then it would be difficult to just
trying to figure out what it would be like. I'm
not sure how you equate like the human nervous system

(19:27):
to exactly to a water fulle nervous system, but I
imagine you could probably say it's it's rather traumatic because
it's enough to stun the prey to where the wound
mouth can do its thing. Even even more evidence that
we need to grow a giant hydra, or at least
to human size, hydro, so we can see what it
feels like. Right. This goes back to that guy that

(19:48):
we talked about in the Ignobles episode who just stung
himself with bees. Just see what all the various beastings
felt like. Oh and by the way, it's worth pointing
out that all members of the Nideria family used ni
Dorset cells to catch their prey. So you find these
employed again, Uh, coral jellyfish the same sort of stingy

(20:09):
powers permeate the entire group. But there we go. We
know what a jellyfish sting feels like, at least some
of us too. Yeah, so I get that would probably
a good sort of benchmark for what this might be
like for the creature that unfortunately wanders within tentacle Raine
in his creature. Uh. And these tentacles are referred to
as stinging organelles uh. And they basically are hollow threads

(20:34):
that are inside the tentacles that shoot out. There's basically
like a pressure release inside the tentacle itself. When they
sense the prey, they shoot out this thread and the
thread that contains a capsule of the neurotoxin that actually
does the stinging. Uh. And they actually harpoon their prey
with this too. So the way that that's described, it

(20:55):
makes me imagine that there's some kind of barb or
something like that involved that helps them to drag the
prey in as well when they retracted towards their mouth. Yes, indeed,
a lot of the literature mentions like a barbed mechanic there.
So yeah, I believe they are almost Yeah, they are
very much harpooning them. Now Here's another interesting thing about
the hydra is that scientists have long observed that they

(21:18):
react to light. But but how because you look at
the hydra's basic anatomy. We haven't mentioned eyes thus far,
but there are cyclops. There's no cyclops. They do not
have a side organ, uh. But but they're responding to
to light. Light plays into their their feeding habits. So
what's going on sounds like the slime that I did

(21:39):
a recent episode of How Stuff Works Now on where
they basically figured out that down to the cellular level,
that certain slimes are able to detect and see, uh
with photosensitivity. Yeah, I mean, it's a basic aspect of
life on this earth and the cycles of night and day.
So you see even in very primitive organisms, even in
organisms very different from ourselves. Uh, there's often some mechanism

(22:02):
at work. And in two thousand twelve, researchers from the
University of California looked at the hydra and they found
that it's all about the tentacles once again. So the
tentacles are linked via a simple via a simple nervous
system to primitive light responsive cells that coordinate the hydra's
feeding behavior. And these light responsive cells contains several proteins

(22:24):
necessary for photo transduction, namely the light sensitive pro protein Option,
which regulates the firing of harbor of those harpoon light
nydocts that we've been talking about, which the uses to
sting as well as to grasp. And then they're also
these sticky is oreza which are used for anchoring and somersaulting.
So um so yeah, the the the ability to perceive light,

(22:47):
it's all tied up in those those fancy tentacles. There's
sort of now that we're talking about like how they
see and everything. I think like maybe a more accurate
D and D analogy would be a beholder because they
see through their tentacle. Yeah, yeah, I would, I think
so interesting. That's I'm glad you mentioned that because for
a while I've wanted to do some monster that we

(23:08):
monster science content about the Beholder, because I love the Beholder.
But every time I started looking into it, I think, yeah,
there's not this is such a fantastic creature. What can
I possibly grab onto here? I think I may be
wrong in this, and somebody out there correct me if
I am, But I think that whoever owns the rights
to D and D also owns their rights to the
Beholder because it's only used within that contint They're they're

(23:30):
a handful of D n D monsters that they're you know,
very much their intellectual property. That being said, educational educational
purpose why not? Yeah, and we have I bet Hydro
can cast different spells through each of their tentacles too. Yeah.
And then of course there there are Hydro knockoffs out there, Beholder.
They're there Beholder knockoffs a plenty out there in the world. Uh. So,

(23:54):
you know, I'm sure there are ways to to get
around that. Now, we through the word a sexual budding
at you before we went into our our sponsor there
for a second, Now, what does that mean exactly? It
probably sounds creepy, and that's because it is, right, it's
basically and it's it's different from what we do. Well,

(24:14):
I'd like to imagine when I whenever we look at
these various systems, right, I like to imagine them occurring
in the human body. So basically imagine that, um uh
me Christian. The way that I reproduced is that a
little tiny version of me started to grow on my arm,
and then it very slowly got bigger and bigger, and

(24:37):
it's like a little like fetus version of me. But
it's like a bulbous thing just hanging out like a
bud on my arm. And eventually it gets big enough
that it just kind of pops off and goes off
on its way. But it's genetically identical to me. Okay,
But see, the thing is, you can imagine you being
freaked out by watching this occur with a magua or

(24:59):
a grimlin. But then I can also imagine the magua
or the gremlin being completely grossed out if you try
to explain human sex. Yeah, well I'm completely grossed out
when I try to explain human sex, so I can understand. Yeah.
Uh so, yeah, let's get into the let's get into
the real nitty gritty about budding all right, So you
have various flatworms, sponges, and corals that reproduced this way,

(25:21):
but the hydra is probably our best example. So essentially,
what happens if if food and water are plentiful, so
they're playing your resources around, this is a great time
to reproduce. Uh. Then the hydra grows a series of
small bumps or buds on its body. These bumps develop
into miniature hydras and they eventually pinch off from the
parent organism to fend for themselves. And a healthy hydra,

(25:44):
you know, tends to produce new offspring every three to
four days. Again, you have the resources are right, and uh,
this is actually something if you're interested in the whole
Gremlins analogy. I did an article for how stuff works
dot com how agine Grimlin's work and that you know,
it's a very non scientific creature, you might think. So

(26:05):
I went to great pains to try and explain the
science behind them, and the hydra was extremely helpful because
I'm not gonna get into it, but essentially, think of
this resource uh situation. If there are enough resources in
a sexual budding can take place. And then you think
to the Grimlin and the magua, what causes the grimlin
and the magua to bud and produce water. Yeah, un
abundance of water. It's a desert organs. I don't think

(26:28):
hydro would be able to reproduce if you took them
out of the water be dead. Yeah they and more
to the point, yeah, the the this their living conditions
would not be suitable exactly for offspring. So it's usually
in the summer months actually that they're reproducing for the
for this very reason. Uh. And the like Robert said,
you know, the buds grow on that parent column, they

(26:49):
break free. Their genetically identical so they're you know, basically clones.
I guess we could say of one another. Uh. They
reproduce pretty rapidly as long as they have that abundant
supply of food. Now here's the crazy part. Hydra can
also produce sexually. Uh, but this is way less common

(27:10):
and basically, you know, I don't want to break it
down into the like a real fine details of this,
but my understanding is that you know, the fluids necessary
in the body parts that they grow in the organs
and everything. As that's happening on one hydra, it can
be passed to another nearby hydra causing sexual reproduction. Yeah.
My understanding is this tends to happen only in cases

(27:32):
where they're reproducing, but the conditions are pretty harsh, right, Yeah,
so this brings us to of course, we go right
from sex to talking about crazy, gross gaping mouths. Okay,
so here we are. This is the meat of the episode.
This is the new hot off the press is research.

(27:53):
We have known that these mouths exist, but we haven't
understood how they work until just recently. Yeah. For a
while we've known that this is essentially what happens. The
tentacles grab the prey, the stun prey, and then the
hydra needs to eat this prey. But the hydra in
the same way that it doesn't have recognizable eyes, it
has no recognizable mouth. It's just a clean, featureless sheet.

(28:16):
It's basil disc that we've been talking about. How's this
thing gonna eat? Well, it does that by carrying its
body open like it's Its body just opens up into
this gaping wound. And when I mean gaping, the videos
of this are phenomenal. It opens and it opens and
you think, oh, it can't possibly open anymore, but it
keeps getting wider and wider. Then the hydra's mouth is

(28:37):
larger than the hydra's body, and you just you start
screaming internally as you watch it. We've got to we've
got to put in the show notes the link to
the video that you did about this previously, because it
has video reference from that the study that we're talking
about here, and it shows that, you know, we made
a pretty good gift too, so I'll have to throw
that out as well. But yeah, it's just crazy to watch.

(28:59):
And then it swallows up the still living but stunned prey,
and then what happens. The mouth closes over them, like
just dis closes over the still living host in tombs
them within the hydra's body, and then heels completely shut again,
and then there's there's no sign that there was ever
a mouth there. And so back to that Thing analogy,

(29:20):
it's like that that scene in the Thing where they're
they're performing like surgery or something to use. It's the paddles,
that's right, paddles, and it goes to put it on
his chest and the guy's chest just completely opens up
and bites off the arms of the doctor. And this
is actually what it looks like. It's even I think

(29:40):
it's worse maybe like on the scale of the hydra's body,
because the whole body is just stretching outwards to accommodate
for this massive mouth. Yeah, it's it's really unreal to watch. Um.
But as we mentioned earlier, we knew that this took place,
We knew some of the you know, the chemical triggers involved,
but we didn't know what actual mc panics it entailed. Luckily,

(30:03):
researchers from the industry of California just this month, um March,
they released a study where they actually took hydro vulgaris
and they created transgenic hydras with fluorescent proteins in both
the that endodermal and ectodermal cell layers. So again, as

(30:24):
you mentioned earlier, to cell layers, will they put uh
they put these uh, these fluorescent proteins in both of those.
So this essentially created glowing skin layers to illuminate the
mechanics going on here. And as it turns out, the
cells don't move around as they suspected. Uh, they actually
changed their shape in order to to birth this wondrous mouth.

(30:46):
Even cell nuclei appear to deform in the process. Yeah,
and so what they also discovered is that it's all
about these things, these very basic parts of the hydro
body called my own knee. Uh, And they're like they're
described as radial contractile processes that are within the ectoderm

(31:06):
of the hydra and basically it's it's oriented as part
of their muscular process, right, So this is where it's nuts.
During that same study, they used magnesium chloride as a
muscle relaxant to see, you know, how it would affect
the hydra and the mouth opening thing, and they were
able to confirm that they couldn't open the mouth without

(31:26):
the activity of the mayonemes. And then they even tried
using menthol in one situation, the menthol was too strong
and it disintegrated the hydras upon exposure. Hercules should have
just just if he had like some Winston Salem menthol cigarettes,
he could have just put him out on the hydra neck.

(31:47):
I'm not being paid by Winston Salem to say that, Uh,
those are just the cigarettes that my mom spoke when
I was a kid. Yeah, But so if you inhibit
these myonemes, it keeps the mouth from open. So if
only there was some tiny little crustacean out there that
had a magnesium chloride spray, and it's able to keep
that mouth from killing them. Okay, So when the basil

(32:10):
disc area is closed, it's just one continuous epithel sheet,
but it has the sealed what they call septate junctions, uh.
And then it's triggered by the food, but it's also
triggered by a couple of other things indigestible materials. So,
like we're talking about earlier, we used to vomit up
inside and something called osmotic regulation, which I talked about

(32:33):
earlier as well, which is when it uses the gastrovascular
system to kind of blow out liquid from its body
so it can shrink its body down. It's a regulation
of fluid pressure inside. It's so basically intake yeah, output,
yeah exactly. And the degree of how this opens varies
between these different events, but the dynamics are all the same.

(32:54):
It basically comes down to what we were just talking about,
where the cells uh chaine shape. They morph basically to
make room for the mouth, the womb, and to put
a time stamp on it. This is all my understandings.
This is all taking place around sixty seconds, so it's
me it's it's relatively fast Yeah. So the key finding

(33:16):
here in the research, and it may not sound like
a big deal, but it is, is that they're not
rearranging their cells as previously thought. Their cell shapes are
actually changing on their own and are triggered by this process. Yeah.
And to me imagine that. Can you imagine if you
could just rearigin or not rearrange, you could change the
shape of your cells in your body, just you know,

(33:38):
at a at a triggered by one particular kind of sensation.
You know that. It kind of gets into something that
Joe and I discussed in the Dune episodes about the
the face Danswers shape shifters of the Don universe and
some of the theories about how that would actually work.
And so one of the models we looked at was
was more of like a surgical transhuman model, and the

(33:58):
other was more of a genetically engineered model. And the
genetically engineered model, I feel like it's more in keeping
with with what you're talking about. It's like at a
cellular level. Yeah, huh, yeah, I guess that makes sense.
Like when you think about like great shape shifters of
popular culture. Yeah, I mean, how's it work? You have
to look to the organisms that have a trenmendous ability
to warp their bodies to disguise their bodies. Plastic Man,

(34:23):
that's that's that's how he's got to do it. He
probably takes a line from from good old Hydro over here.
When's Plastic Man getting his movie? Gosh, you know that's
a good question, uh DC or Marvel. He's d C now,
I believe it was. He was created by another company
and then d C bought up that company. Might be wrong,
but but yeah, um DC owns him now. Who knows?

(34:43):
Who knows when that will happen. That'll be real, Zanny.
I wouldn't be surprised if the success of Deadpool leads
to a Plastic Man movie. I could see there being
uh Man, Jim Carry or somebody like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
scarier than a hydro. Okay, So one last thing about
the hydra. I mean, they've got all these cool powers,
right they I want to see a hydro movie. They

(35:05):
can stingue, They've got tentacles, they can open their crazy
mouths up. Some of them can each sunlight basically bonded
in a in a in this crazy symbiotic relationship, can Somersault.
But what else? Oh yeah, they're also undying. They're also
essentially biologically immortal. Wow, which is a rarity because I mean, basically,

(35:30):
mortality is an economic necessity. Uh, where are you gonna
invest your resources into survival or reproduction? If you focus
on the former, then don't expect to do much reproduction. Uh.
And and the opposite is is is rather true as well.
And that's why evolution generally favors those who reproduce early,

(35:50):
before all the bad stuff can happen to you. It's
it's extremely rare to find an organism that where death
is not just a part of of it's making. Death
is what the body does after it, after it has
achieved its other genetic missions. I really feel like the
hydra is ripe for some mad scientists to come along

(36:14):
and try to figure out how to graft its abilities
into a human being so that human being would be immortal.
But then, unfortunately, the side effect is that they can
only open by tearing open body. See this would be
great for comic books. Somebody should do that. Yeah, well
maybe they have already, but so the yah. But there
is a potential here because studying hydras and studying the

(36:36):
way that they don't age. I mean that that allows
us to understand a little more how aging works, how
mortality works, uh, for life as we know it. Yeah, absolutely,
by you know, by just by looking at a creature
that doesn't follow the generally accepted rules. So with the hydra,
most of their body cells or stem sales cells, they're
capable of continuous division and differentiation, tying into these regenerative

(37:00):
powers that we've been discussing. Um So when when scientists
actually get down and they started studying the mortality of
the hydra, they boast low mortality rates throughout their lives.
In the lab, this it would take four hundred years
for of a hydro population to die of natural causes.

(37:22):
Now that's a longitudinal study. Can you imagine that you'd
have to have like like fifteen sixteen generations of scientists
to work on that study. Yeah, so they have. And
here's the crazy thing hydras also have. They have consistent
fertility rates their entire lives. Uh, so they're they're constantly reproducing.

(37:42):
But they also both this low mortality rate. And this
is different from say, like the desert tortoise, which has
higher mortality rates early on, but then it lowers as
they get older because you know they started get through
that bottleneck and then you know they're good to go. Now,
one important thing here is that we're talking about like
lab conditions, and lab conditions are key. So the lab

(38:04):
conditions are significantly better than the natural world conditions, especially
because they've got to sit there and wait for something
to come along that they can eat. Yeah, or who
knows what happens when uh Now, remember like what we
said where they live, they live in clean water. What
happens when you pollute that water to a hydra, Well,

(38:24):
they die. I mean water contamidation is one of the
key ways they end up dying, but also predators and disease.
You put them in in an unnatural environment, they're still
gonna They're still gonna die because you kind of ended
up having to figure out what is the perfect environment.
And certainly some of these recent studies have tried to
create essentially a heaven for paradise for hydras, including some

(38:49):
work by UM Pomona College biology researcher Professor Daniel Martinez.
He's he's looked at them multiple times. He's repeatedly found
no evidence of of sencience of aging of of of
of death natural death in these creatures um these laboratory
coddled hydra as they're sometimes referred. He even goes so

(39:12):
far as to state that an individual hydra could live
forever under the right circumstances. So we just haven't been
able to completely calibrate the hydra paradise so that the
hydra can live forever without dying. On that, what if
that's all that Heaven actually is. We're getting to some

(39:33):
real big stuff here now. If Heaven is just a
scientist trying to create an ideal environment for us to
where nothing can harm you, nothing can eat you, nothing
can contaminate you. Yeah, it's just yeah, that's the thing.
The other thing, the flip side of that is I'm wondering,
and I'm the vegetarian on the show. I'm wondering if
people eat hydra and what they taste like, like if

(39:53):
you you'd have to gather a lot of them up.
I think he would need a significant amount of hydra
to get like a hydra nugget yeggs. But what the
things like that we need to do, like a like
a marine urduccan of all the weird monsters. But we're
covering and like like put a nosadas and stuff at
full of Hydras and stuff at full of cyclops or something.

(40:15):
Uh now, um, I have to mention that the Hydra
definitely reminds me of of a species from Ian M.
Banks culture books. Uh, the Darians. Man, I am, I've
been meaning to get to this stuff because you and
other people have just been recording. Oh yeah, it's it's
a rich world and there's plenty of science. And then
I imagine he would was probably inspired by the Hydra

(40:37):
and creating uh the Adarians, because the Adarians are a
tripedal species and they hail from an incredibly harsh planet. Uh,
they're they're off. They're referred to in consider flee this
the first culture book as quote, top monster on a
planet full of monsters, and they are biologically immortal. Uh

(40:58):
they've in the books. They've all to the point where
they have space faring technology at all. But the idea
here is that, like the Hydra, it if this species
evolved in a very harsh environment where natural death didn't
need to be a part of the program, you know,
because something else was going to kill them inevitably, so

(41:20):
naturally they would thrive in another environment as almost like
uh super you know, comparatively to the other species. I'm
assuming humans are one of the other spec I mean.
The other thing is that they're in the Banks books.
They're also very warlike, if you might imagine. So, yeah,
they've hydras. Do they somersault? You can't remember if they do,

(41:41):
but they there's some weird stuff going on with their
three legs and three arms, like they have three legs
and they have two arms, and then they have this
smaller arm that folds into the chest. Interesting but even
they don't have wound mouths in their stomach. So oh yeah,
well maybe Banks didn't want to go that far. Yeah,
I'm saving that for another one. Maybe it's another creature
in one of the culture books that I have not

(42:02):
read yet. So there you have it, the hydra. Fascinating creature.
And before we get into the normal outra stuff, we've
you brought up the Outdex and we mentioned in that episode, Oh,
that would be a great name for a metal band.
This is true, and there is a metal band, so
we'll have to see about maybe featuring some of that

(42:23):
music on the next time we do a listener mail.
And then another listener sent in a YouTube clip of
him doing a bone worm song. Oh I miss that.
It's pretty great. It's like he's just jam and not
an acoustic guitar and singing all about the bones. That's great,
and I dug it. I asked him permission to use
it on a future listener mail. He said, go go

(42:44):
for it. So cool. Well, then I should also address
and this is just you know, brief because this isn't
a listener mail episode, but we had several people right
in to correct me because I refer to whale falls
as whales floating to the bottom of the ocean, and
they wanted to make sure that I knew that it
was whales sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Uh.

(43:04):
So well, so I got that a little bit wrong there,
because they would float up, presumably I knew what you meant. Yeah,
I thought you did, all right. Well, hey, if you
want to get in touch with us, if you want
to send us uh interesting metal bands, I'm want to
correct us on our grammar. Yeah, all everything is is
fair game. You can find us at stuffable your mind
dot com. That is the mothership. That's where you'll find

(43:26):
the podcast. The videos blog post links out to our
social media accounts. We are below the Mind on Twitter
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and let's see how it's Can I get in touch
with it? Well, there's always Periscope. We're on there on Friday's.
Well sometimes we do Facebook live, but we'll let you
know on those other channels. Robert just mentioned we're on
there on Friday's at noon Eastern Standard time. But the

(43:48):
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nice letter over email and you can find us at
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