September 16, 2010 • 29 mins
Biospeleology is the scientific study of cave organisms and ecosystems. In this episode, amateur biospeleologists Josh and Chuck explore the dark, dank world of caves and the weird and wonderful creatures that live in them.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
(00:21):
and there's an hell yeah, and it's dark and dank, dank, creepy.
Remember that word dank? I do? Is that not a
word anymore? Not really? Okay? Um, Hey, how are you?
Thanks for meeting me here? Of course I've got the invitation.
I couldn't resist. Um. Did you like the fact that
(00:44):
I gave you the invitation in cutout letters from magazine? Yeah?
Dealed with the kiss. It's very nice. Uh so Chuck,
we are here in a cave, yeah, man, And the
reason why is because we're talking about something thing called
bio speleology. That's a big word. It is saying, biospeleology.
(01:06):
Bio speleology. Yes, Um, you've heard of spelunking, Yeah done,
minor spelunking, yeah, I mean not deep. But I love
cave so I think they're really cool. So if you've
gone caving or spelunking, probably caving where they're like harnesses
and ropes and like helmets with lights on the top.
(01:27):
Okay you want, Yes, that was it was me and
my brother. You know, like poking around. Spelunking is like
where you go into a cave and you like go
into a cave like you may die. Yeah, but it's recreational. Yes,
that's what differentiates It differentiates from spi spiology, which is
slogy speleology which is cave research, and bio speleology is
(01:53):
cave research on the life inside that cave. Bingo, And
there's actually quite a bit of life. We only figured
this out as recently as the seventeen hundreds. Um, But
once we did figure it out, we realized that there's
some really awesome, creepy, creaky life in caves. Like you
sent me a cool picture of basically a faceless salamander, right, yeah,
(02:15):
that's the proteus salamander, and that's yeah, that's one of
the seventeen hundreds. They saw this thing and they were like, WHOA,
something's different. Well, the first thing that I think they
noticed that was different was that it was a foot long, um,
and that's a big salamander. Can you imagine seeing that
thing though with no eyes, no face, Yeah, no face.
It's just like ahead. Did you ever see um? I
(02:37):
think it was a Twilight Zone the movie, one of those.
And you don't remember the kid who like created this
whole like cartoon world and his sister. He didn't like
his sister talking bad. She was missing the mouth, and
she sat there and watched cartoons the whole time. It
is creepy, and the salamanders creepy in much the same way. Yeah,
slightly less because it's not a human. You know, we're
(02:59):
not hard wired to really be disturbed by faceless salamanders
like we are mouthless humans. But it's along the same lines, right.
They did that in the Matrix too. Kean had the
no mouth in that one tee but you could sort
of see the makeup, and that just bug me. Yeah,
it wasn't that good. There's also plenty of slightly less
exotic um life in in caves. You've got beetles, you've
(03:21):
got worms, kind of crickets. Cricket bats of course, are
the stars of caves, right um. And it turns out
from reading this article how cave biology works, I guess
all of if not most, if not all, of the
life in caves is based on well they basically they're
(03:42):
descended from above ground dwelling species, right, Yeah, I was
kind of surprised. I was also surprised to learned that
there were shrimp in caves for some reason that just
I don't know. I could see like cave shrimp being
some exotic you know, I think you would find it a
a four star restaurant because it tastes different because it's
never like seen the sun. They were um like over
(04:05):
the shoulder furs, very like big wooden clothes. But yeah,
you're right. They weren't necessarily born there, but they made
their way down there and in the process called regressive evolution, right,
and fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy will
recognize this because it's pretty much what Gollum did. Yeah remember, yeah, yeah,
(04:27):
I mean that's pretty much regressive evolution within a single organism,
which never happens, right, but this was this is over
the course of many, many generations, right, Yeah, they would
like not devolved, it's called regressive evolution. They would actually
lose features to adapt to the environment rather than you know,
gain features. Right. Well, I mean, if you think about it,
(04:49):
with the faceless salamander that had no eyes. If it
lives in complete darkness, constant darkness, there's no reason for
it to have eyes, so it might as well just
not have them and maybe put it up for an
energy elsewhere. Yeah, you've seen the one of the common
uh pictures of aliens from outer space. You always see
as the sort of the big head, the huge eyes
(05:11):
and the little nostrils without a nose, the Whitney Striber
communion aliens, right, and then it's the holes for ears
but not ears. My buddy Jerry always thought that these
were like super evolved humans from the future and that like,
we don't need the structure of the nose, We just
need the nostrils. We don't need the structure of the ears,
we just need the hole. And eventually and our brains
(05:33):
are getting bigger. So he was like, that's why they
got the big heads, that's why they don't have nose,
They just have nostrils, and kind of blew me away.
I was like, Wow, maybe they are like humans from
the future. He's like, and George Washington grew him exactly.
You guys are laying on top of your car um
speaking of aliens, have you ever seen bad taste? And
speaking of Peter Jackson crazy Now you haven't so. Peter Jackson,
(05:56):
the guy who did UM The Lord of the Rings.
He directs this horrible schlock graphically violent UM movie called
Bad Taste in you have to see it. Well, he
did another one too. UM. I can't remember the name
of it, but the same thing. Yeah, he started out
doing like schlocky horror like movies. It's it's pretty it's
(06:19):
worth seeing. What does that have to do with this? Um?
Aliens and Peter Jackson got you alrighty, thanks for that.
We have been going off on a good tangent in
a while. No, you know that felt good. Thanks. Well,
you know what, woodsman, this is very nice out here
and all, but I feel like we should, you know,
get back to the office. Yeah, you're right, let's go, Jerry,
(06:47):
so check. We talked about regressive evolution, right, um. And
it's not just the loss of eyes, you lose skim pigmentation. Um.
And you also we found that long cave organisms, cave
dwelling organisms, their metabolism is super efficient because there's so
little food down there that um, they have to make
(07:09):
do with what they have. It's like, um, if you
are if you have to have a section of your
intestine removed, you like basically spend the rest of your life.
Male nurse because their metabolism is used to like taking
its time absorbing nutrients, So if there's less place for
it to go, we we become malnurished. These guys are
(07:30):
like the exact opposite. It's like hypermetabolism. And so as
a result, we're figuring out that we can really learn
a lot by studying freaks of nature, right, Well, yeah,
and they said they look at fish because I didn't
know that a lot of our water, uh passes through
a cave ecosystem at some point, and so they'll study
like fish and how they live in the water to
study water quality that we end up drinking, which is
(07:52):
kind of crazy too. Yeah, you're drinking stuff that cave
shrimp has been in. Cave shrimp is pooped in the
water that you're drinking. Monkey Eat, Push me Dead Alive.
I think that was the movie. I think you're right,
it's funny how it comes back like that. We also,
um can learn a lot from studying the their lack
(08:14):
of eyes of normal eye development, right, Remember the Asian
Orange podcast. Remember those kids that were born without eyes?
How does that happen? Jeans are responsible for that. Well,
you learn it by comparing, say, an eyelis proteuce salamander
to a regular salamander and figure out what jeans they lack.
It's pretty cool. Yeah, humans are smarter, so Chuck, we
(08:36):
started to go into the caves. We figured out why
people are going into caves when they started going in.
What are we finding there? Well, they you find one
of three categories of species in a cave. Noticed it
didn't say species. People often say species, species or warsh
(08:57):
Have you ever been when to say warsh, I mean neither.
The first one is uh? Is it a trogolo sine i? Yeah,
troczin uh and trogolos is Greek for cave, Zenos is
Greek for guests, And so as you would or stranger,
and as you would imagine, this is uh a cave visitor.
(09:20):
And the three branches here of the things you will
find there, they categorize them depending on how much time
they spend in the cave. So they spend the least
amount of time and they can come and go when
they want to, and they go in there for specific reasons,
like a bear to hibernate or to nest or to
give birth, so probably for shelter talking bears, skunks, coons, moths,
(09:46):
right right, So that's number one. Bats as well make
that list as they make that list as well. Okay, yeah,
because they hibernate in there, right and poop, which will
get to in a little bit because that's important, so
us number two. The other The next one is trogolo files,
which means m Cave lovers. Yeah. I like that name,
(10:06):
which is like, hey, cave, how's it going. They just
like you're looking good and none. Yeah, they love it
so much that they actually enjoy being in there. Right.
These described species that are um capable of living inside
or outside of caves, but they love the caves so
they decided to stick around there. Um, so you've got
like beetles, worms, frogs, that kind of stuff. These things
(10:28):
could live outside of the caves, but they tend to
spend their their lifetimes inside of caves. And they'll go
out to to get food a lot of times and
then bring it back in, which will also get to
that's a good thing to do, that, Yes it is, man,
there's foreshadowing going on all the place. The third one, schuckers, Yeah,
that that's the creepiest one obviously is the troglo bites
(10:49):
and bios for life obviously, and this these are the
ones that never leave. They can't leave. They will die
outside of the cave. Yeah. I thought that was a
bit of of a stretch to go from bios of bites. Now, Well,
I mean you've got a files there. Those were good
ones and then bites. Yeah, should be chruglob chrug lobios.
(11:12):
It's good. Uh. And these these little guys have adapted
so well. Like I said, they can't leave. These are
the ones that either have eyes that don't work well
or don't have eyes at all. Not much pigmentation like
the salamander we talked about was sort of a almost
a translucent pink pink a shoe. And they they have
adaptive metabolisms so they don't have a lot of food
(11:36):
nutrients down there, so they don't need it to live.
They're the ones with the hypermetabolisms, right, and what else
the oh, the legs and antenna are longer to help them,
you know, find food when there is food. So let's
talk about food, man, Well let's talk about the different
places you're gonna find these things, right, so I like
(11:56):
think I think one of the reasons I'm I like
this cave biology article or k biology in general, is
um that everything's divided up so neatly and cleanly. Right. Yeah,
So we've got the three different kinds of um organisms.
You've got uh, trug laws and these right, trouglo files
truglo bites. There's also three different segments of a cave, right,
(12:20):
and they all fit in each one. And the second
one is a great great name too. Yeah. The first
one is the entrance zone, and that's um. You still
obviously will have some sunlight coming in and out, recessive sunlight,
and that means you can have some plant life a
little bit. You've got bears sleeping. You've got bear sleeping,
You've got coon sleeping. Uh, they're nesting, laying eggs and
(12:41):
what have you. You've got some moss, snails, owls. And
this is in the in the in this cool picture too.
It really it's kind of creepy looking. That's like a
Lead Dempsey picture. Yeah, I'm sure it is. So that's
the first one, but the second one is the really
good one, the twilight zone, and it's called You're about
to enter the twilight Zone. And you mentioned twilight zone earlier.
(13:06):
Yeah with the kid who that did you? I feel
like I'm about to wake up. Really, this didn't happen.
Uh in the twilight Zone. This is the middle zone
and there is a little bit of light and there
can be a little bit of plant life, but don't
count on it. No, but there's gonna be plenty of
mushrooms and probably some albino mushrooms. Well that's plant life, right, Yeah,
(13:30):
well it's fungus okay, So yeah, it's in the plant Kingdom. Uh.
And the temperature there is um, we should mention that
the temperature and the entrance zone varies obviously according to
the weather outside, but it gets a little more static
in the twilight Zone. I just love saying that. And uh,
it's very moist and very cool. And that is where
(13:53):
the trunk lessene lives. Spiders, millipedes, bats, moths right, um.
And I think Trocolo files you'll find those here as well,
hanging out too. And I guess, I mean, don't you
imagine that this is where Rod Serling got the name
for twilight Zone, because think about he was talking about
this place between this world and another world, you know,
(14:16):
that thin fibrous transition place. And this is the this
is that to look that up. I can't believe we
didn't already. That's the third one. This is a good one.
Third one is the dark zone. This is the creepy
slag tight This is where you're going to find no
light whatsoever, no UM change in temperature, no UM weather,
(14:39):
and definitely no vegetation at all. Right, yeah, creep but
lots of trocolo bytes. Yeah, you're gonna find lots of
footlong salamanders that have no faces. Did you see The Descent?
That movie kind of a not too great horror movie.
I know what you're talking about. Them These girls go
caving deep deep, and there there are these psych I
think they were human end from way back when that
(15:01):
never left the cave. But they're basically like human trocolobytes.
It was in the woods sort of maybe, so the
um We're gonna get some mail for that one. I
think the problem with the Dark Zone is there's organisms
running around that are alive and healthy. Uh. That kind
(15:25):
of flies in the face of this um rule of
thumb here on planet Earth that everything uh is kept
alive by the sun, right right, If there's no light whatsoever?
How are animals in the dark zone allowed to live?
Food chain? Which I guess still I mean, she didn't
really draw the conclusion that the food chain depends on
(15:49):
the sun, but I guess that's what it means, right, right,
The sun still comes into play, just not deep down
within their right they get the um they benefit from
photosynthesis the lee rather than proximately. Uh So, you know,
if there's gonna how do you get food deep down
(16:09):
in the cave. One way is, and I didn't even
consider this is by flooding. Right when the waters rise,
it'll just wash things in there that the animals can eat, right,
And it's it's rather than a food chain. I mean,
the food chain is actually a good way to describe it.
It's almost like a food bucket brigade, you know what
I mean. So, like you have you have food maybe
washed in um leaves, twigs, sticks or actual food um,
(16:35):
maybe a dead raccoon um, and then things feast on
it in the entrant zone, right, and then things that
are things that are living in the twilight zone can
feast on those things that ate it in the entrant zone,
and then it just kind of goes and goes until
you finally reach the dark zone and then they're eating
(16:55):
you know, maybe four times removed what washed into the
entrant zone, right right, Yeah, Well, and that's just one
way it gets in watching. Another way is your favorite
thing guano bat poop, which is a really good fertilizer.
Is it that you can usually buy it at um nurseries? Really? Yeah,
(17:15):
Well there's lots of it, because I've seen the specials
where there's like mounds, like mountains of bat poop because
they're there for months on end, right hibernating and they're
all just pooping. That's all they're doing, eating and pooping,
and it stinks to um. You can't eat it right
away though, isn't that right? Or like they can't just
feed on the poop initially didn't have to decompose. Well,
(17:38):
it depends you've got decomposers muture organisms that are actually
eating the poop, right, So bat guano is a food
source for these these organisms at the very bottom of
the bio speleology food bucket brigade, right, the unsung heroes. Yeah, well,
so they decompose that they break it down for themselves,
turning into food themselves. But they're also leaving the trains
(18:00):
is byproducts, and these decomposers of micro organisms make make
up food for slightly larger organisms, right, like um, millipedes
and centipedes and other small insects, right, and then it
just kind of goes up from up to the apex,
which is the predators. Yeah, it's a food pyramid, which
(18:22):
really all all ecosystems are at the top of of predators.
And there's going to be the smaller well, the larger
the animal, the fewer there are of them. You know,
if you compare sharks to plankton, there's a lot more
plankton than sharks in the ocean. Good point. One of
the things that really creeped me out, And this one's
gonna keep me awake tonight. Uh. The insects get bigger
(18:45):
and bigger, centipedes, spider salamanders, and then uh, apparently some
centipedes are so big that they can feed on bats.
That's what I want to see. I do too, actually,
And it's kind of like, why mess around with guano
and wait for the whole food chain thing to happen,
to go right to the source and eat the bat,
you know. Yeah, the heck of a centipede. That's yeah,
(19:08):
I'd like to see that too. We're gonna look for
some video of that after this. Okay, So how do
these guys get in there? And these researchers um very carefully.
You gotta look out for crazy hillbillies who have um
regressively evolved. You have to not fall off of ledges,
(19:29):
you have to go through very narrow crevasses, watch out
for bears initially, and I'm sure the entrance zone can
be a little dodgy definitely. And um, I guess we
said that bio speleology or speleology in general is um
a pretty recent feel of the science that couple hundred
years old. Um. And we figured out pretty quick though
(19:52):
that these are almost pristine ecosystems. And when we show
up and we're cover it in fungi or bacteria or whatever, um,
we introduced that to that that ecosystem and can cause
its collapse pretty quick. Yeah. Debbie Bronco, my buddy who
(20:12):
you met as well, who wrote this, pointed out that
even just like shedding like lent off of your shirt
or Dan driff or Dan Driff off your head, off
your scaby head can can start a reaction that can
like destroy the ecosystem potentially, right creepy, And there's something
that there's nothing sadder than seeing a footlong faceless salamander
(20:34):
die and you know that it was because of your
your version of smallpox. You would know it was sad,
though you wouldn't be able to tell. It just looked
like the faceless beast that it was. Are you happy?
I had another point to make, but I can't remember
it right now. Were you going to make the point
about the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of But go ahead, Well,
(20:56):
the US passed an act that said if you go
into a cave, you and you spray paint and cave
go to jail. You go to jail. You can't spray
paint in a cave. Well, maybe that was my point
was that that's pretty recent. Like I get the feeling
because they didn't explore caves until sort of recently as
far as if you talk about how long science has
been around, so I think caves have kind of just
(21:19):
been ignored, or maybe hundreds of years ago they were
like I ain't going in there. No, there's no or
maybe they didn't think there was a reason too there
was anything worth finding in there. Plus, they're just really scary.
I think that more than anything that's kept us out
ain't going in there. I would like to do this
though that like the the caves and the snots. Is
(21:41):
that what they're called? Yeah? Those are those are really neat. Yeah,
the underground water like it's a it's fascinating to me.
I want someone to like email us and say, hey, guys,
I do this, and I'd love to fly heat down
and take you spe linking. I think the coolest stuff
may have done something and saying no tastes maybe we'll see. Um,
(22:04):
so you got anything else? I guess the one thing
that um we took away from this is that instead
of stranger danger, you could also say zenos danger if
you're in Greece, and they'd be like, we get the
zenos part, but I didn't catch the second. Uh. If
you want to learn about cave biology or bio speleology,
(22:25):
you should type in cave biology or bio speleology in
the search bar at how stuff works dot com. There's
some pretty cool illustrations in there. Um and uh, or
google a proteus salamander too. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Get
it's creepy. Folk show. It's a creepy like ten times.
I wonder also we were talking about guano and being
(22:47):
a fertilizer. I wonder if um, the bat guano fertilizer
market is contributing to declineing cave ecosystems. It's got to
go in there and harvest it in the dark own, right.
I know. One thing we did forget was she made
a point that they are concerned that climate change is
not going to be too good for for what's in
(23:09):
the cave because they kind of depend on that constant
temperature in the dark zone. Right. You know, we we
can get used to changes in temperature. These organisms like
literally don't experience the temperature change in generations and generations.
I would imagine even a couple of degrees could could
wipe them out. And plus also we've got the um
white nose syndrome facing our bat populations. Yeah, what is that?
(23:31):
We talked about it before, I remember, um, I can't
remember how it came up, but we were talking about
bats with like little fungus on their nose and it
was killing like entire populations of bats and it's just
they're dropping by the millions and our our I guess.
Bat researchers are like, we have no idea what's going on.
We don't know how to fight this. And it's actually
a big problem because if you hate mosquitoes, brother, you
(23:54):
better like bats. They can eat up to six mosquitoes
in an hour. I need to get some bats, somebody
part you do. It's awful. You can actually put up
a bat house. Really, yeah, they sell them, um, usually
at nurseries. Again, you know a lot about bats. We
had a bat in our um chimney and it uh.
We did a little research and found out that's like
(24:15):
one of the worst things that could happen to you
as a family having bad luck. No, just like health risks.
If you wake up in a bad luck to have
a batbew, it probably is bad luck to run over graves. Really,
I heard good. Um, if you wake up in a
room and there's a bat in the corner, you have
(24:36):
to kill that bat and go right to the hospital.
Because people are often known to sleep through being bitten
by a bat bats Carrie rabies, so if you wake up,
you might not know that you were bitten and you
need to go get checked out. That funny people do. Well.
I'm a like sleeper. There's no way. Are you really
(24:57):
big time? Oh my goodness, I'm a heavy sleeper. Yeah.
It's like I got hit in the head with going
in there. I think she's recalling her Guatemal experience. The snoring.
That's right. Uh, is that it? I think that's it.
I think that's it. Man. Yeah, okay, well, then let's
just go right to the the listener mail. There's no listener mail.
This is plugfest. Okay, yes, hell, let's do it, Chuck,
(25:19):
go ahead. Oh, I guess we should start with Atlanta October.
The time is still being worked out, but we're gonna
do like a door's open at this time and then
trivia starts at this time. It'll it'll be in the
evening hours, of course. Yeah, at a place called Five
Seasons Brewing Company there on the West Side. They have
a few locations, but the one we're gonna be at
is on the West Side. Um, not too far away
(25:41):
from downtown by Georgia Tech boo and um. We're going
to be playing trivia. Anybody who wants to come play us.
We're taking all comers. It's free. Yeah, you gotta buy
your own drinks. I imagine we'll have some s Y
s K swag and some house support swag. But we
definitely will. They'll probably be some other podcas casters, um,
some other house stuff works podcasters. There were assembling our
(26:04):
team right now. Yeah, we're trying to. We're more on
that later, but we're sending out emails to some people
that may or may not want to join us. Yes,
so please come uh October that's a Wednesday, right, Yeah,
it's gonna be awesome. It's not to be messed. They
got a cool scene there on the roof. It's gonna
have the downtown be nice and cooled off by then.
It's gonna be nice. Yeah, it's gonna be way cool.
So that's and we welcome our friends from Florida. We've
(26:27):
already gotten some guff because I said Floridians will be
turned away at the door. Well maybe we should say
University of Florida. People aren't welcome. If you show up
with a Florida Gator shirt, you're just asking for it.
That's all I'm saying there. Yes, anything else now, Well,
we're gonna in on our trivia tour after that to
five or six cities, gonna end up in Austin and
(26:48):
the other cities are kind of being worked out, and
we appreciate those of you on Facebook who have lobbied
for your city. Uh, we're taking that into consideration, of course.
And Facebook is a great place to interact with us. Yeah,
we've got a fan page, um Facebook slash stuff. You
should know. We also have a Twitter feed it's hit
or miss in how funny it is at s Y
(27:11):
s K podcast one word um and Uh, we also
have a Cuba team that's closing in Man. We just
hit two hundred and thirty thousand dollars in donations. Yeah,
we we are trying to hit the two fifty thousand
dollar mark by our one year anniversary. Will make that
which is October sixth I believe K seven dot org
(27:33):
k I v a dot org slash team slash stuff
you should know team singular not plural. And finally, our
friends in Guatemala and co ed you can They have
left the campaign open if you still want to text
five dollars to two zero to two two. Didn't that
how it works? You text the words stuff to two
zero two two two and you can donate five dollars
(27:56):
and by uh, I think we've raised over fifteen thousand
dollars now the stuff you should know, Army. It's a
good good cause. Yeah, it's a way good cause. And
that's a lot of a lot of dough for them,
you know. That's what like three computer centers in full
or textbooks for life for like thousands and thousands of kids.
So we appreciate their work. And that's an ongoing campaign
(28:16):
right now. And we have a super cool blog to Chuck.
People don't go to the blog. It's all happening on
Facebook these days. You know how it works. I like
the blog too, you know these kids, Well, your blog
posts are awesome. Alright. Well, yeah, that's another thing too.
I don't know if anyone knows. Every week Mr Charles W.
Chuck Bryant does a little round up, a little additional
(28:38):
info about whatever podcast we released that week on the
blogs at how stuff Works dot com. So you can
check that out every Friday. Um. And that's that, man.
If you want to get in touch with me, Chuck,
Jerry or this chair all right, yeah, let's name this
chair Frank. If you want to get in touch with
me Chuck, Jerry or Frank the chair, you can email
(29:01):
us at Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
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(29:23):
two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
(00:21):
and there's an hell yeah, and it's dark and dank, dank, creepy.
Remember that word dank? I do? Is that not a
word anymore? Not really? Okay? Um, Hey, how are you?
Thanks for meeting me here? Of course I've got the invitation.
I couldn't resist. Um. Did you like the fact that
(00:44):
I gave you the invitation in cutout letters from magazine? Yeah?
Dealed with the kiss. It's very nice. Uh so Chuck,
we are here in a cave, yeah, man, And the
reason why is because we're talking about something thing called
bio speleology. That's a big word. It is saying, biospeleology.
(01:06):
Bio speleology. Yes, Um, you've heard of spelunking, Yeah done,
minor spelunking, yeah, I mean not deep. But I love
cave so I think they're really cool. So if you've
gone caving or spelunking, probably caving where they're like harnesses
and ropes and like helmets with lights on the top.
(01:27):
Okay you want, Yes, that was it was me and
my brother. You know, like poking around. Spelunking is like
where you go into a cave and you like go
into a cave like you may die. Yeah, but it's recreational. Yes,
that's what differentiates It differentiates from spi spiology, which is
slogy speleology which is cave research, and bio speleology is
(01:53):
cave research on the life inside that cave. Bingo, And
there's actually quite a bit of life. We only figured
this out as recently as the seventeen hundreds. Um, But
once we did figure it out, we realized that there's
some really awesome, creepy, creaky life in caves. Like you
sent me a cool picture of basically a faceless salamander, right, yeah,
(02:15):
that's the proteus salamander, and that's yeah, that's one of
the seventeen hundreds. They saw this thing and they were like, WHOA,
something's different. Well, the first thing that I think they
noticed that was different was that it was a foot long, um,
and that's a big salamander. Can you imagine seeing that
thing though with no eyes, no face, Yeah, no face.
It's just like ahead. Did you ever see um? I
(02:37):
think it was a Twilight Zone the movie, one of those.
And you don't remember the kid who like created this
whole like cartoon world and his sister. He didn't like
his sister talking bad. She was missing the mouth, and
she sat there and watched cartoons the whole time. It
is creepy, and the salamanders creepy in much the same way. Yeah,
slightly less because it's not a human. You know, we're
(02:59):
not hard wired to really be disturbed by faceless salamanders
like we are mouthless humans. But it's along the same lines, right.
They did that in the Matrix too. Kean had the
no mouth in that one tee but you could sort
of see the makeup, and that just bug me. Yeah,
it wasn't that good. There's also plenty of slightly less
exotic um life in in caves. You've got beetles, you've
(03:21):
got worms, kind of crickets. Cricket bats of course, are
the stars of caves, right um. And it turns out
from reading this article how cave biology works, I guess
all of if not most, if not all, of the
life in caves is based on well they basically they're
(03:42):
descended from above ground dwelling species, right, Yeah, I was
kind of surprised. I was also surprised to learned that
there were shrimp in caves for some reason that just
I don't know. I could see like cave shrimp being
some exotic you know, I think you would find it a
a four star restaurant because it tastes different because it's
never like seen the sun. They were um like over
(04:05):
the shoulder furs, very like big wooden clothes. But yeah,
you're right. They weren't necessarily born there, but they made
their way down there and in the process called regressive evolution, right,
and fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy will
recognize this because it's pretty much what Gollum did. Yeah remember, yeah, yeah,
(04:27):
I mean that's pretty much regressive evolution within a single organism,
which never happens, right, but this was this is over
the course of many, many generations, right, Yeah, they would
like not devolved, it's called regressive evolution. They would actually
lose features to adapt to the environment rather than you know,
gain features. Right. Well, I mean, if you think about it,
(04:49):
with the faceless salamander that had no eyes. If it
lives in complete darkness, constant darkness, there's no reason for
it to have eyes, so it might as well just
not have them and maybe put it up for an
energy elsewhere. Yeah, you've seen the one of the common
uh pictures of aliens from outer space. You always see
as the sort of the big head, the huge eyes
(05:11):
and the little nostrils without a nose, the Whitney Striber
communion aliens, right, and then it's the holes for ears
but not ears. My buddy Jerry always thought that these
were like super evolved humans from the future and that like,
we don't need the structure of the nose, We just
need the nostrils. We don't need the structure of the ears,
we just need the hole. And eventually and our brains
(05:33):
are getting bigger. So he was like, that's why they
got the big heads, that's why they don't have nose,
They just have nostrils, and kind of blew me away.
I was like, Wow, maybe they are like humans from
the future. He's like, and George Washington grew him exactly.
You guys are laying on top of your car um
speaking of aliens, have you ever seen bad taste? And
speaking of Peter Jackson crazy Now you haven't so. Peter Jackson,
(05:56):
the guy who did UM The Lord of the Rings.
He directs this horrible schlock graphically violent UM movie called
Bad Taste in you have to see it. Well, he
did another one too. UM. I can't remember the name
of it, but the same thing. Yeah, he started out
doing like schlocky horror like movies. It's it's pretty it's
(06:19):
worth seeing. What does that have to do with this? Um?
Aliens and Peter Jackson got you alrighty, thanks for that.
We have been going off on a good tangent in
a while. No, you know that felt good. Thanks. Well,
you know what, woodsman, this is very nice out here
and all, but I feel like we should, you know,
get back to the office. Yeah, you're right, let's go, Jerry,
(06:47):
so check. We talked about regressive evolution, right, um. And
it's not just the loss of eyes, you lose skim pigmentation. Um.
And you also we found that long cave organisms, cave
dwelling organisms, their metabolism is super efficient because there's so
little food down there that um, they have to make
(07:09):
do with what they have. It's like, um, if you
are if you have to have a section of your
intestine removed, you like basically spend the rest of your life.
Male nurse because their metabolism is used to like taking
its time absorbing nutrients, So if there's less place for
it to go, we we become malnurished. These guys are
(07:30):
like the exact opposite. It's like hypermetabolism. And so as
a result, we're figuring out that we can really learn
a lot by studying freaks of nature, right, Well, yeah,
and they said they look at fish because I didn't
know that a lot of our water, uh passes through
a cave ecosystem at some point, and so they'll study
like fish and how they live in the water to
study water quality that we end up drinking, which is
(07:52):
kind of crazy too. Yeah, you're drinking stuff that cave
shrimp has been in. Cave shrimp is pooped in the
water that you're drinking. Monkey Eat, Push me Dead Alive.
I think that was the movie. I think you're right,
it's funny how it comes back like that. We also,
um can learn a lot from studying the their lack
(08:14):
of eyes of normal eye development, right, Remember the Asian
Orange podcast. Remember those kids that were born without eyes?
How does that happen? Jeans are responsible for that. Well,
you learn it by comparing, say, an eyelis proteuce salamander
to a regular salamander and figure out what jeans they lack.
It's pretty cool. Yeah, humans are smarter, so Chuck, we
(08:36):
started to go into the caves. We figured out why
people are going into caves when they started going in.
What are we finding there? Well, they you find one
of three categories of species in a cave. Noticed it
didn't say species. People often say species, species or warsh
(08:57):
Have you ever been when to say warsh, I mean neither.
The first one is uh? Is it a trogolo sine i? Yeah,
troczin uh and trogolos is Greek for cave, Zenos is
Greek for guests, And so as you would or stranger,
and as you would imagine, this is uh a cave visitor.
(09:20):
And the three branches here of the things you will
find there, they categorize them depending on how much time
they spend in the cave. So they spend the least
amount of time and they can come and go when
they want to, and they go in there for specific reasons,
like a bear to hibernate or to nest or to
give birth, so probably for shelter talking bears, skunks, coons, moths,
(09:46):
right right, So that's number one. Bats as well make
that list as they make that list as well. Okay, yeah,
because they hibernate in there, right and poop, which will
get to in a little bit because that's important, so
us number two. The other The next one is trogolo files,
which means m Cave lovers. Yeah. I like that name,
(10:06):
which is like, hey, cave, how's it going. They just
like you're looking good and none. Yeah, they love it
so much that they actually enjoy being in there. Right.
These described species that are um capable of living inside
or outside of caves, but they love the caves so
they decided to stick around there. Um, so you've got
like beetles, worms, frogs, that kind of stuff. These things
(10:28):
could live outside of the caves, but they tend to
spend their their lifetimes inside of caves. And they'll go
out to to get food a lot of times and
then bring it back in, which will also get to
that's a good thing to do, that, Yes it is, man,
there's foreshadowing going on all the place. The third one, schuckers, Yeah,
that that's the creepiest one obviously is the troglo bites
(10:49):
and bios for life obviously, and this these are the
ones that never leave. They can't leave. They will die
outside of the cave. Yeah. I thought that was a
bit of of a stretch to go from bios of bites. Now, Well,
I mean you've got a files there. Those were good
ones and then bites. Yeah, should be chruglob chrug lobios.
(11:12):
It's good. Uh. And these these little guys have adapted
so well. Like I said, they can't leave. These are
the ones that either have eyes that don't work well
or don't have eyes at all. Not much pigmentation like
the salamander we talked about was sort of a almost
a translucent pink pink a shoe. And they they have
adaptive metabolisms so they don't have a lot of food
(11:36):
nutrients down there, so they don't need it to live.
They're the ones with the hypermetabolisms, right, and what else
the oh, the legs and antenna are longer to help them,
you know, find food when there is food. So let's
talk about food, man, Well let's talk about the different
places you're gonna find these things, right, so I like
(11:56):
think I think one of the reasons I'm I like
this cave biology article or k biology in general, is
um that everything's divided up so neatly and cleanly. Right. Yeah,
So we've got the three different kinds of um organisms.
You've got uh, trug laws and these right, trouglo files
truglo bites. There's also three different segments of a cave, right,
(12:20):
and they all fit in each one. And the second
one is a great great name too. Yeah. The first
one is the entrance zone, and that's um. You still
obviously will have some sunlight coming in and out, recessive sunlight,
and that means you can have some plant life a
little bit. You've got bears sleeping. You've got bear sleeping,
You've got coon sleeping. Uh, they're nesting, laying eggs and
(12:41):
what have you. You've got some moss, snails, owls. And
this is in the in the in this cool picture too.
It really it's kind of creepy looking. That's like a
Lead Dempsey picture. Yeah, I'm sure it is. So that's
the first one, but the second one is the really
good one, the twilight zone, and it's called You're about
to enter the twilight Zone. And you mentioned twilight zone earlier.
(13:06):
Yeah with the kid who that did you? I feel
like I'm about to wake up. Really, this didn't happen.
Uh in the twilight Zone. This is the middle zone
and there is a little bit of light and there
can be a little bit of plant life, but don't
count on it. No, but there's gonna be plenty of
mushrooms and probably some albino mushrooms. Well that's plant life, right, Yeah,
(13:30):
well it's fungus okay, So yeah, it's in the plant Kingdom. Uh.
And the temperature there is um, we should mention that
the temperature and the entrance zone varies obviously according to
the weather outside, but it gets a little more static
in the twilight Zone. I just love saying that. And uh,
it's very moist and very cool. And that is where
(13:53):
the trunk lessene lives. Spiders, millipedes, bats, moths right, um.
And I think Trocolo files you'll find those here as well,
hanging out too. And I guess, I mean, don't you
imagine that this is where Rod Serling got the name
for twilight Zone, because think about he was talking about
this place between this world and another world, you know,
(14:16):
that thin fibrous transition place. And this is the this
is that to look that up. I can't believe we
didn't already. That's the third one. This is a good one.
Third one is the dark zone. This is the creepy
slag tight This is where you're going to find no
light whatsoever, no UM change in temperature, no UM weather,
(14:39):
and definitely no vegetation at all. Right, yeah, creep but
lots of trocolo bytes. Yeah, you're gonna find lots of
footlong salamanders that have no faces. Did you see The Descent?
That movie kind of a not too great horror movie.
I know what you're talking about. Them These girls go
caving deep deep, and there there are these psych I
think they were human end from way back when that
(15:01):
never left the cave. But they're basically like human trocolobytes.
It was in the woods sort of maybe, so the
um We're gonna get some mail for that one. I
think the problem with the Dark Zone is there's organisms
running around that are alive and healthy. Uh. That kind
(15:25):
of flies in the face of this um rule of
thumb here on planet Earth that everything uh is kept
alive by the sun, right right, If there's no light whatsoever?
How are animals in the dark zone allowed to live?
Food chain? Which I guess still I mean, she didn't
really draw the conclusion that the food chain depends on
(15:49):
the sun, but I guess that's what it means, right, right,
The sun still comes into play, just not deep down
within their right they get the um they benefit from
photosynthesis the lee rather than proximately. Uh So, you know,
if there's gonna how do you get food deep down
(16:09):
in the cave. One way is, and I didn't even
consider this is by flooding. Right when the waters rise,
it'll just wash things in there that the animals can eat, right,
And it's it's rather than a food chain. I mean,
the food chain is actually a good way to describe it.
It's almost like a food bucket brigade, you know what
I mean. So, like you have you have food maybe
washed in um leaves, twigs, sticks or actual food um,
(16:35):
maybe a dead raccoon um, and then things feast on
it in the entrant zone, right, and then things that
are things that are living in the twilight zone can
feast on those things that ate it in the entrant zone,
and then it just kind of goes and goes until
you finally reach the dark zone and then they're eating
(16:55):
you know, maybe four times removed what washed into the
entrant zone, right right, Yeah, Well, and that's just one
way it gets in watching. Another way is your favorite
thing guano bat poop, which is a really good fertilizer.
Is it that you can usually buy it at um nurseries? Really? Yeah,
(17:15):
Well there's lots of it, because I've seen the specials
where there's like mounds, like mountains of bat poop because
they're there for months on end, right hibernating and they're
all just pooping. That's all they're doing, eating and pooping,
and it stinks to um. You can't eat it right
away though, isn't that right? Or like they can't just
feed on the poop initially didn't have to decompose. Well,
(17:38):
it depends you've got decomposers muture organisms that are actually
eating the poop, right, So bat guano is a food
source for these these organisms at the very bottom of
the bio speleology food bucket brigade, right, the unsung heroes. Yeah, well,
so they decompose that they break it down for themselves,
turning into food themselves. But they're also leaving the trains
(18:00):
is byproducts, and these decomposers of micro organisms make make
up food for slightly larger organisms, right, like um, millipedes
and centipedes and other small insects, right, and then it
just kind of goes up from up to the apex,
which is the predators. Yeah, it's a food pyramid, which
(18:22):
really all all ecosystems are at the top of of predators.
And there's going to be the smaller well, the larger
the animal, the fewer there are of them. You know,
if you compare sharks to plankton, there's a lot more
plankton than sharks in the ocean. Good point. One of
the things that really creeped me out, And this one's
gonna keep me awake tonight. Uh. The insects get bigger
(18:45):
and bigger, centipedes, spider salamanders, and then uh, apparently some
centipedes are so big that they can feed on bats.
That's what I want to see. I do too, actually,
And it's kind of like, why mess around with guano
and wait for the whole food chain thing to happen,
to go right to the source and eat the bat,
you know. Yeah, the heck of a centipede. That's yeah,
(19:08):
I'd like to see that too. We're gonna look for
some video of that after this. Okay, So how do
these guys get in there? And these researchers um very carefully.
You gotta look out for crazy hillbillies who have um
regressively evolved. You have to not fall off of ledges,
(19:29):
you have to go through very narrow crevasses, watch out
for bears initially, and I'm sure the entrance zone can
be a little dodgy definitely. And um, I guess we
said that bio speleology or speleology in general is um
a pretty recent feel of the science that couple hundred
years old. Um. And we figured out pretty quick though
(19:52):
that these are almost pristine ecosystems. And when we show
up and we're cover it in fungi or bacteria or whatever, um,
we introduced that to that that ecosystem and can cause
its collapse pretty quick. Yeah. Debbie Bronco, my buddy who
(20:12):
you met as well, who wrote this, pointed out that
even just like shedding like lent off of your shirt
or Dan driff or Dan Driff off your head, off
your scaby head can can start a reaction that can
like destroy the ecosystem potentially, right creepy, And there's something
that there's nothing sadder than seeing a footlong faceless salamander
(20:34):
die and you know that it was because of your
your version of smallpox. You would know it was sad,
though you wouldn't be able to tell. It just looked
like the faceless beast that it was. Are you happy?
I had another point to make, but I can't remember
it right now. Were you going to make the point
about the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of But go ahead, Well,
(20:56):
the US passed an act that said if you go
into a cave, you and you spray paint and cave
go to jail. You go to jail. You can't spray
paint in a cave. Well, maybe that was my point
was that that's pretty recent. Like I get the feeling
because they didn't explore caves until sort of recently as
far as if you talk about how long science has
been around, so I think caves have kind of just
(21:19):
been ignored, or maybe hundreds of years ago they were
like I ain't going in there. No, there's no or
maybe they didn't think there was a reason too there
was anything worth finding in there. Plus, they're just really scary.
I think that more than anything that's kept us out
ain't going in there. I would like to do this
though that like the the caves and the snots. Is
(21:41):
that what they're called? Yeah? Those are those are really neat. Yeah,
the underground water like it's a it's fascinating to me.
I want someone to like email us and say, hey, guys,
I do this, and I'd love to fly heat down
and take you spe linking. I think the coolest stuff
may have done something and saying no tastes maybe we'll see. Um,
(22:04):
so you got anything else? I guess the one thing
that um we took away from this is that instead
of stranger danger, you could also say zenos danger if
you're in Greece, and they'd be like, we get the
zenos part, but I didn't catch the second. Uh. If
you want to learn about cave biology or bio speleology,
(22:25):
you should type in cave biology or bio speleology in
the search bar at how stuff works dot com. There's
some pretty cool illustrations in there. Um and uh, or
google a proteus salamander too. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Get
it's creepy. Folk show. It's a creepy like ten times.
I wonder also we were talking about guano and being
(22:47):
a fertilizer. I wonder if um, the bat guano fertilizer
market is contributing to declineing cave ecosystems. It's got to
go in there and harvest it in the dark own, right.
I know. One thing we did forget was she made
a point that they are concerned that climate change is
not going to be too good for for what's in
(23:09):
the cave because they kind of depend on that constant
temperature in the dark zone. Right. You know, we we
can get used to changes in temperature. These organisms like
literally don't experience the temperature change in generations and generations.
I would imagine even a couple of degrees could could
wipe them out. And plus also we've got the um
white nose syndrome facing our bat populations. Yeah, what is that?
(23:31):
We talked about it before, I remember, um, I can't
remember how it came up, but we were talking about
bats with like little fungus on their nose and it
was killing like entire populations of bats and it's just
they're dropping by the millions and our our I guess.
Bat researchers are like, we have no idea what's going on.
We don't know how to fight this. And it's actually
a big problem because if you hate mosquitoes, brother, you
(23:54):
better like bats. They can eat up to six mosquitoes
in an hour. I need to get some bats, somebody
part you do. It's awful. You can actually put up
a bat house. Really, yeah, they sell them, um, usually
at nurseries. Again, you know a lot about bats. We
had a bat in our um chimney and it uh.
We did a little research and found out that's like
(24:15):
one of the worst things that could happen to you
as a family having bad luck. No, just like health risks.
If you wake up in a bad luck to have
a batbew, it probably is bad luck to run over graves. Really,
I heard good. Um, if you wake up in a
room and there's a bat in the corner, you have
(24:36):
to kill that bat and go right to the hospital.
Because people are often known to sleep through being bitten
by a bat bats Carrie rabies, so if you wake up,
you might not know that you were bitten and you
need to go get checked out. That funny people do. Well.
I'm a like sleeper. There's no way. Are you really
(24:57):
big time? Oh my goodness, I'm a heavy sleeper. Yeah.
It's like I got hit in the head with going
in there. I think she's recalling her Guatemal experience. The snoring.
That's right. Uh, is that it? I think that's it.
I think that's it. Man. Yeah, okay, well, then let's
just go right to the the listener mail. There's no listener mail.
This is plugfest. Okay, yes, hell, let's do it, Chuck,
(25:19):
go ahead. Oh, I guess we should start with Atlanta October.
The time is still being worked out, but we're gonna
do like a door's open at this time and then
trivia starts at this time. It'll it'll be in the
evening hours, of course. Yeah, at a place called Five
Seasons Brewing Company there on the West Side. They have
a few locations, but the one we're gonna be at
is on the West Side. Um, not too far away
(25:41):
from downtown by Georgia Tech boo and um. We're going
to be playing trivia. Anybody who wants to come play us.
We're taking all comers. It's free. Yeah, you gotta buy
your own drinks. I imagine we'll have some s Y
s K swag and some house support swag. But we
definitely will. They'll probably be some other podcas casters, um,
some other house stuff works podcasters. There were assembling our
(26:04):
team right now. Yeah, we're trying to. We're more on
that later, but we're sending out emails to some people
that may or may not want to join us. Yes,
so please come uh October that's a Wednesday, right, Yeah,
it's gonna be awesome. It's not to be messed. They
got a cool scene there on the roof. It's gonna
have the downtown be nice and cooled off by then.
It's gonna be nice. Yeah, it's gonna be way cool.
So that's and we welcome our friends from Florida. We've
(26:27):
already gotten some guff because I said Floridians will be
turned away at the door. Well maybe we should say
University of Florida. People aren't welcome. If you show up
with a Florida Gator shirt, you're just asking for it.
That's all I'm saying there. Yes, anything else now, Well,
we're gonna in on our trivia tour after that to
five or six cities, gonna end up in Austin and
(26:48):
the other cities are kind of being worked out, and
we appreciate those of you on Facebook who have lobbied
for your city. Uh, we're taking that into consideration, of course.
And Facebook is a great place to interact with us. Yeah,
we've got a fan page, um Facebook slash stuff. You
should know. We also have a Twitter feed it's hit
or miss in how funny it is at s Y
(27:11):
s K podcast one word um and Uh, we also
have a Cuba team that's closing in Man. We just
hit two hundred and thirty thousand dollars in donations. Yeah,
we we are trying to hit the two fifty thousand
dollar mark by our one year anniversary. Will make that
which is October sixth I believe K seven dot org
(27:33):
k I v a dot org slash team slash stuff
you should know team singular not plural. And finally, our
friends in Guatemala and co ed you can They have
left the campaign open if you still want to text
five dollars to two zero to two two. Didn't that
how it works? You text the words stuff to two
zero two two two and you can donate five dollars
(27:56):
and by uh, I think we've raised over fifteen thousand
dollars now the stuff you should know, Army. It's a
good good cause. Yeah, it's a way good cause. And
that's a lot of a lot of dough for them,
you know. That's what like three computer centers in full
or textbooks for life for like thousands and thousands of kids.
So we appreciate their work. And that's an ongoing campaign
(28:16):
right now. And we have a super cool blog to Chuck.
People don't go to the blog. It's all happening on
Facebook these days. You know how it works. I like
the blog too, you know these kids, Well, your blog
posts are awesome. Alright. Well, yeah, that's another thing too.
I don't know if anyone knows. Every week Mr Charles W.
Chuck Bryant does a little round up, a little additional
(28:38):
info about whatever podcast we released that week on the
blogs at how stuff Works dot com. So you can
check that out every Friday. Um. And that's that, man.
If you want to get in touch with me, Chuck,
Jerry or this chair all right, yeah, let's name this
chair Frank. If you want to get in touch with
me Chuck, Jerry or Frank the chair, you can email
(29:01):
us at Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.