Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Coelacanths Work
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
- 0:04Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
- 0:14Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry, Jerome Roland, just
- 0:18Speaker 1: the whole the whole House Stuff Works gang here to
- 0:22Speaker 1: present to you stuff you should know, all three of us.
- 0:27Speaker 1: Are you doing good? Yeah? Yeah, Oh I'm a little caffeinated.
- 0:32Speaker 1: I should warn you a little bit, like when teeth
- 0:34Speaker 1: are about to just come right out of my face.
- 0:36Speaker 1: That's not good. Uh. You know, we did a video
- 0:40Speaker 1: about Cela Cants one time. Yeah, like was it this
- 0:43Speaker 1: day in history about when they were discovered. I ran
- 0:46Speaker 1: across it because it smacked is familiar to me, and
- 0:49Speaker 1: you know, the constant fear we have of recording an
- 0:52Speaker 1: entire podcast over uh is sort of always there. Yeah,
- 0:56Speaker 1: the fear that sometimes comes true. Yeah. So I definitely
- 1:00Speaker 1: went back and looked, and I was like, I new
- 1:01Speaker 1: we did something. Yeah, we were trapped in a shipping container, right.
- 1:05Speaker 1: I didn't watch it. I didn't either enough to say,
- 1:08Speaker 1: oh yeah I remember that. Yeah, that really weird, weird
- 1:12Speaker 1: thing we did. But this is really cool. I think
- 1:15Speaker 1: I need to Seela Cants were um, well they're interesting,
- 1:20Speaker 1: despite what the House Stuff Works article would lead you
- 1:23Speaker 1: to believe. It was. Yeah, it was a little thin,
- 1:26Speaker 1: was a little bit. It was all right. But luckily
- 1:30Speaker 1: the rest of the Internet is there for us. Right,
- 1:33Speaker 1: thanks especially to Smithsonian and mental Floss for this one. Right, Yeah,
- 1:38Speaker 1: that mental plus article is kind of neat, actually it was.
- 1:42Speaker 1: So you want to go back to the beginning, actually
- 1:46Speaker 1: the second beginning. Maybe, Well, I don't know what you're
- 1:50Speaker 1: talking about now, so just okay, Well we'll go back
- 1:54Speaker 1: to the very beginning. We'll go back to something about
- 1:57Speaker 1: four million years ago, doing the Devonian period, which is
- 2:02Speaker 1: a k a. The Rise of the Fish the Age
- 2:05Speaker 1: of the Fish, right, And in this Devonian period, there's
- 2:09Speaker 1: a lot a lot of stuff going on. Things have
- 2:12Speaker 1: been swimming around for a while on Earth. There's a
- 2:16Speaker 1: nice atmosphere that's developed. The things in the ocean are
- 2:19Speaker 1: starting to say, oh, what's out there? I want to
- 2:21Speaker 1: see what's on land. I want to just crawl out
- 2:24Speaker 1: and see. Yeah, I want to taste clover. So they
- 2:28Speaker 1: start trying. And during this period there was the progression
- 2:32Speaker 1: from the sea to the land, and one of those
- 2:37Speaker 1: things that was starting to develop legs to get onto
- 2:41Speaker 1: land was called the Ceila cant yeah, which um A
- 2:46Speaker 1: it means hollow spine, which is we'll get to there's
- 2:51Speaker 1: a reason for that. And B it's spelled c O
- 2:55Speaker 1: E l A c A n t h, which is uh,
- 3:00Speaker 1: you know, not how you would think it might be
- 3:02Speaker 1: spelled or pronounced rather either one. But it's sela camp.
- 3:06Speaker 1: It is sela can uh. And what it is is
- 3:09Speaker 1: a fish that is um, like you said, been around
- 3:13Speaker 1: for a long long time. It's um kind of funny looking.
- 3:16Speaker 1: And we'll get into all the physical characteristics that make
- 3:19Speaker 1: it unusual uh in a sec. But it is notable, uh,
- 3:24Speaker 1: mainly for the fact that everyone thought it was gone
- 3:28Speaker 1: forever until it was suddenly discovered. This thing that that
- 3:33Speaker 1: swam with the dinosaurs was discovered a new in the
- 3:37Speaker 1: nineteen thirties and then again a little bit later on. Yeah,
- 3:40Speaker 1: because it was it pops up for the first time
- 3:44Speaker 1: around um, four hundred and seven million years ago, I think,
- 3:47Speaker 1: I said, and and then it just drops off eighty
- 3:51Speaker 1: million years ago. So they said, well, a lot of
- 3:54Speaker 1: stuff when the way of the dinosaur around the time
- 3:57Speaker 1: the dinosaurs went away. Um, so that's probably what happened
- 4:01Speaker 1: to the Cela can't, so it was quite a big surprise.
- 4:04Speaker 1: In the nineteen thirties when a trawler um that was
- 4:09Speaker 1: out fishing, a trawler called the Narine which is keptain
- 4:12Speaker 1: by Hendrik Goossen off the coast of South Africa, came
- 4:17Speaker 1: in and as was Captain Goosen's want, he contacted the
- 4:22Speaker 1: director of the local museum in East London, woman named
- 4:25Speaker 1: Miss Marjorie Courtney Latimer, and she used to come over
- 4:29Speaker 1: and look at the fish loads this guy would bring
- 4:32Speaker 1: in because they were buddies and he's He gave her
- 4:35Speaker 1: a call like normal and said, I got to load
- 4:36Speaker 1: you want to come look at it? And she was like,
- 4:38Speaker 1: it's two days before Christmas and his blazing hot out.
- 4:42Speaker 1: Don't forget where in South Africa at the time, and
- 4:45Speaker 1: she's like, I don't feel like it. But the world
- 4:49Speaker 1: was saved, the world of ich theology was saved this
- 4:54Speaker 1: day because this lady Marjorie Courtney Latimer was so nice
- 5:00Speaker 1: that she decided to go look at the fish anyway,
- 5:02Speaker 1: just to wish the captain and his crew a merry Christmas.
- 5:05Speaker 1: So she takes a look at this fish and here
- 5:09Speaker 1: is her quote. Uh as she recounted. It wasn't her
- 5:13Speaker 1: quote at the time or quote at the time, it's
- 5:15Speaker 1: probably a South African expletive, but she said later I
- 5:20Speaker 1: picked away the layers of slime to reveal the most
- 5:23Speaker 1: beautiful fish I had ever seen. Uh. And of course
- 5:26Speaker 1: only a fish lover can find this thing truly beautiful,
- 5:30Speaker 1: because it's kind of ugly. It was five ft long,
- 5:33Speaker 1: a pale mauve blue with faint flecks of whitish spots
- 5:37Speaker 1: that had an iridescent silver blue green sheen all over.
- 5:41Speaker 1: It was covered in hard scales, and it had four
- 5:43Speaker 1: limb like fins and a strange little puppy dog tail.
- 5:48Speaker 1: Uh not literally, of course. Uh, it was such which
- 5:51Speaker 1: would be great though actually that's the dog fish that
- 5:55Speaker 1: has that. It was such a beautiful fish, more like
- 5:57Speaker 1: a big China ornament. But I didn't know what it was.
- 6:00Speaker 1: And um, it was pretty faithful that she was called
- 6:04Speaker 1: in uh to look at this thing, because it ended
- 6:07Speaker 1: up being one of the most important zoological finds of
- 6:11Speaker 1: you know, history, probably of the twentieth century at least
- 6:14Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, this woman's curiosity, Um, something in her said,
- 6:21Speaker 1: this is weird, this is unusual, this is this is
- 6:24Speaker 1: something worth looking into. So she took it with her.
- 6:27Speaker 1: This thing was like five ft long, just under two ms,
- 6:31Speaker 1: about a hundred and how many pounds seven pounds. This
- 6:34Speaker 1: is a significant fish and uh ms, Courtney Latimer talked
- 6:39Speaker 1: her way into a cab with it. She took a
- 6:41Speaker 1: cab back to the East London Museum with this fish
- 6:45Speaker 1: stuffed in the back seat. And um, she took it
- 6:49Speaker 1: to the taxidermist and had it stuffed. Unfortunately, the taxidermist
- 6:52Speaker 1: wasn't completely aware of how to preserve a fish for
- 6:56Speaker 1: identification and throughout the skeleton and the gills, which to
- 7:00Speaker 1: what you need for for um the idea fish. Apparently, well,
- 7:05Speaker 1: she probably should have said something. Well she she like,
- 7:09Speaker 1: this is no ordinary mount. Yeah, right, she probably should have,
- 7:13Speaker 1: or maybe she did, and he just ignored her. He's like,
- 7:16Speaker 1: I'm not getta get boss dround by one. So she
- 7:20Speaker 1: contacts a guy named j. LB. Smith who is an
- 7:24Speaker 1: ich theologist. He's the head of the ichthyology department at
- 7:27Speaker 1: the university in Graham's Town and PhD in chemistry. Um,
- 7:33Speaker 1: he's a smart guy and he's the local fish expert
- 7:36Speaker 1: as far as she knows. Yeah, and their their pals,
- 7:39Speaker 1: and so she said, hey, I've got this. Uh, we're
- 7:42Speaker 1: looking fish. And then Smith his quote was, I told
- 7:45Speaker 1: myself sternly not to be a fool, but there was
- 7:48Speaker 1: something about that sketch uh, and apparently it was it
- 7:52Speaker 1: was sketched. She sent him a sketch of the fish
- 7:54Speaker 1: to begin with. Uh that seized upon my imagination and
- 7:58Speaker 1: told me that this was something very far beyond the
- 8:00Speaker 1: usual run of fishes in our seas. Uh. And luckily,
- 8:04Speaker 1: even though the fish was um um, I guess mounted
- 8:08Speaker 1: in a traditional form, which, like you said, takes away.
- 8:10Speaker 1: It's how you can identify it. She was able to
- 8:14Speaker 1: preserve some of the scales, and somehow from these scales
- 8:18Speaker 1: he was able to say, this is a Cola Cant
- 8:21Speaker 1: Seela canth. Well that's what he said at first, and
- 8:23Speaker 1: she was pronounce Cela can't. He's like, oh, apparently he
- 8:27Speaker 1: said when he saw that scale and I and identified
- 8:30Speaker 1: it positively as a Steela Cant. His quote was, if
- 8:33Speaker 1: I'd bet a dinosaur in the street, I wouldn't have
- 8:35Speaker 1: been more astonished. I like that guy. A little hyperbole there,
- 8:40Speaker 1: but I like it so he um, I mean, this
- 8:43Speaker 1: is seriously, this is like the zoological find of the
- 8:45Speaker 1: century and would be for the next sixties something years.
- 8:49Speaker 1: So he very magnanimously said, you know what, I'm going
- 8:53Speaker 1: to name this thing after you, and he named it
- 8:57Speaker 1: as a new species. Let him marry Chilumny because, um, well,
- 9:04Speaker 1: obviously her name is Courtney Latimer, Courtney hyphen Latimer. And
- 9:09Speaker 1: it was found in the Chilumna River at the mouth
- 9:12Speaker 1: of it where it hits the coast off the eastern
- 9:16Speaker 1: coast of South Africa. So that's a great name. It's
- 9:19Speaker 1: it's perfect. It really puts it in a place in time. Uh.
- 9:23Speaker 1: So they have now discovered this thing. They realized that
- 9:27Speaker 1: they have a big find on their hands. Um. They
- 9:29Speaker 1: thought this thing had long been extinct by tens of
- 9:33Speaker 1: millions of years. Uh. And so they started to research
- 9:38Speaker 1: and you know, try and learn more about this fish. Yeah,
- 9:41Speaker 1: which is no ordinary fish. No, but I mean this
- 9:44Speaker 1: was so this is right, and it was the only
- 9:48Speaker 1: one that had been found for another sixty years. Yeah,
- 9:53Speaker 1: I mean, there's only so much you can find from
- 9:55Speaker 1: a stuffed fish. But it did prove because it have
- 10:00Speaker 1: been caught alive. It wasn't like they pulled up a
- 10:02Speaker 1: fossil or a dead fish. It had been alive when
- 10:05Speaker 1: it was caught. Yeah, I think it was attached to
- 10:07Speaker 1: another fish, like potentially trying to eat it, which is
- 10:11Speaker 1: one of the uh well, not unusual but interesting things
- 10:15Speaker 1: about the Cela canth is that it's a it eats meat. Well,
- 10:18Speaker 1: there's a lot of unusual things about the Cela camp um.
- 10:22Speaker 1: So fast forward another sixty years exactly um in Indonesia,
- 10:28Speaker 1: which is on the other side of the Indian Ocean,
- 10:30Speaker 1: the eastern side of the Indian Ocean. It was actually
- 10:34Speaker 1: first seen in by a biologist named Mark Erdmann who
- 10:38Speaker 1: was in Indonesia doing his PhD dissertation, and he saw
- 10:41Speaker 1: a Cela cant in the market. That's crazy, that's a
- 10:44Speaker 1: sela can't what's that doing here? So apparently he put
- 10:47Speaker 1: a bit of a bounty out on it with the locals,
- 10:50Speaker 1: and within a year by they had brought him freshly
- 10:55Speaker 1: caught one, which is quite a task. Yeah, it's finding
- 11:00Speaker 1: a uh once thought extinct fish. Yeah, it's a big one. Well,
- 11:05Speaker 1: and we'll get to a little bit why. It's even
- 11:08Speaker 1: tougher than you would think to So the one that
- 11:11Speaker 1: Erdman found was brown, right, Yeah, it was a little
- 11:14Speaker 1: bit different color, right, the one like uh Courtney Lattimer described,
- 11:19Speaker 1: those are known to be like steel blue. This is
- 11:22Speaker 1: a brown a little smaller than the one that Courtney
- 11:25Speaker 1: Lattimer found. Um. And so eventually when Erdman got his
- 11:30Speaker 1: hands on that one, um, he described it as a
- 11:34Speaker 1: new species. Yeah. I mean, uh, it turns out that
- 11:38Speaker 1: at one point, um, you know, hundreds of millions of
- 11:41Speaker 1: years ago, there were you know, potentially over a hundred
- 11:44Speaker 1: different varieties of this fish. Uh, and they came in
- 11:47Speaker 1: all shapes and sizes. Um. These obviously were pretty big,
- 11:50Speaker 1: but there were some that were smaller and faster. Uh.
- 11:55Speaker 1: Basically just kind of a wide variety. And as far
- 11:58Speaker 1: as we know, I think are the the only two
- 12:01Speaker 1: known survivors, yes, so far. Yeah, the one that Corney
- 12:07Speaker 1: Latimer founder known as the West Indian Ocean Seila Cant.
- 12:11Speaker 1: Those are the blue ones, and they're typically found off
- 12:14Speaker 1: of the west, you know, the east coast of Africa,
- 12:18Speaker 1: south of Kenya. I believe, um, down to about the
- 12:23Speaker 1: Cormoros Islands. I think that's they're actually also known as
- 12:27Speaker 1: the Cormoros Islands Celia Cant because there's that's that seems
- 12:31Speaker 1: to be where they inhabit the most or the highest
- 12:34Speaker 1: density of them is Yeah, and UM, some of the
- 12:37Speaker 1: weird some of the weirdos that have well, we assumed
- 12:41Speaker 1: that they've been extinct, but you never know. One of
- 12:44Speaker 1: them was toothless, uh and over ten feet long. That
- 12:48Speaker 1: was the megalo se La canthus very appropriately, Uh, some
- 12:52Speaker 1: of them said forget you, ocean, I'm gonna go to
- 12:54Speaker 1: the freshwater. So they were actually freshwater Cela cants at
- 12:58Speaker 1: one time. And like I said, some of them were
- 13:00Speaker 1: slow and ambushed prey somewhere uh, smaller and faster. But
- 13:06Speaker 1: they've pretty much universally all been predators from what I've seen,
- 13:11Speaker 1: and the two species that are alive today that we
- 13:14Speaker 1: know of UM are aside from that Megalis Cela cant
- 13:19Speaker 1: um tend to be a little bigger than the the
- 13:21Speaker 1: extinct species, which UM I read is a good it's
- 13:27Speaker 1: a good example of why they shouldn't be called living fossils,
- 13:30Speaker 1: which is what they're frequently called. Yeah, that's Darwin's term
- 13:34Speaker 1: for something that UM basically never changed. Uh. And they've
- 13:39Speaker 1: actually studied the genome of the Cela cant and found
- 13:43Speaker 1: that they very much haven't changed and the kind of
- 13:46Speaker 1: the main reason is they haven't had to. Um, they've
- 13:49Speaker 1: kind of stayed in the same places. And when you
- 13:52Speaker 1: stay in the same places and you eat the same stuff,
- 13:55Speaker 1: then maybe you don't change so much. I read the
- 13:58Speaker 1: I read the opposite of that, they have changed enough
- 14:01Speaker 1: that they that they have been evolving in a good
- 14:04Speaker 1: example of that is that they're bigger than they used
- 14:06Speaker 1: to be. Interesting. Yeah, but the two species that are
- 14:09Speaker 1: alive today, Um, they have traced their genomes back and
- 14:14Speaker 1: decided that they've been separated for several million years at least. Yeah,
- 14:18Speaker 1: this one. Uh, they finally got the full genome and
- 14:21Speaker 1: they said that, uh, it does indeed match the fish's
- 14:25Speaker 1: appearance of slower evolution and a journal published in Nature
- 14:29Speaker 1: because they have a slower rate of substitution. Um. Basically,
- 14:34Speaker 1: she the doctor, well, yeah, I guess she has a doctor.
- 14:39Speaker 1: Just sounded weird to say that. The doctor the researcher
- 14:42Speaker 1: who was also a doctor, who was she said it
- 14:44Speaker 1: may reflect the fact that they do not need to
- 14:46Speaker 1: evolve quickly because they've lived in relatively unchanging environment whe
- 14:50Speaker 1: there are a few predators. Uh, and they basically haven't
- 14:54Speaker 1: needed to change over time like other organisms. Well, that
- 14:57Speaker 1: brings up another thing too, there's a there's a big
- 15:00Speaker 1: why would they just drop off of the fossil record
- 15:02Speaker 1: if they've been around this whole time, if they didn't
- 15:05Speaker 1: just go extinct eighty or sixty five million years ago.
- 15:08Speaker 1: The um only explanation I've seen is that the places
- 15:12Speaker 1: where the fossils turned up where areas conducive to fossilization,
- 15:16Speaker 1: Like there was a lot of sentiment that could turn
- 15:18Speaker 1: bone into rock. And then the areas that the living
- 15:21Speaker 1: uh species live at now are not conducive to that
- 15:25Speaker 1: kind of thing, possibly because they're mostly living around volcanic
- 15:29Speaker 1: rock that doesn't necessarily produce fossils. You want to take
- 15:33Speaker 1: a break, Yeah, let's take a break and we'll get
- 15:35Speaker 1: back and talk a little bit about this funny fish.
- 16:00Speaker 1: All right, So we talked a little bit about what
- 16:02Speaker 1: makes the Celo camp such a interesting critter. Um. Can
- 16:07Speaker 1: a critter be a fish? Yeah? Have you heard of
- 16:09Speaker 1: the cuttle fish? That's a critter? If there ever was
- 16:12Speaker 1: a cuddly critter. Uh So, here are some remarkable things
- 16:16Speaker 1: about the Cela camp um. They can live as deep
- 16:20Speaker 1: I mean, they're deep water dwellers. They can live as
- 16:22Speaker 1: deep as two thousand or more feet, but generally, uh,
- 16:27Speaker 1: they think the UM I think they generally live about
- 16:32Speaker 1: five eight hundred feet and what they call the twilight zone,
- 16:35Speaker 1: which is still pretty deep. That Remember our cave episode, Yeah,
- 16:39Speaker 1: UM that had the same thing. Remember there was like
- 16:42Speaker 1: organisms that live in the dark, organisms that live in
- 16:45Speaker 1: the twilight zone, and organisms that live in the lighted zone. Yeah,
- 16:48Speaker 1: these guys live in that threshold between light and dark
- 16:51Speaker 1: in the ocean. And they um apparently are nocturnal hunters. Yeah,
- 16:56Speaker 1: they come out at night, Uh, kind of stay hidden.
- 17:00Speaker 1: Most of these habitats are are caves, right that they
- 17:05Speaker 1: tend to stay in. But there's one off of Tasmania
- 17:08Speaker 1: that do not live in caves, and so they have
- 17:10Speaker 1: officially been placed on an endangered list because they don't
- 17:13Speaker 1: have the protection from bycatch that these other cave dwellers have.
- 17:20Speaker 1: That makes sense, Yeah, so they the average day in
- 17:24Speaker 1: the life of a cila can't at least the cave
- 17:27Speaker 1: dwelling UM species. They they'll you know, the during the daytime,
- 17:31Speaker 1: they're hanging out in a cave. They'll hang out in
- 17:33Speaker 1: a cave with I've seen between up the twelve to sixteen.
- 17:37Speaker 1: Other Ceila cants have coffee. Yeah, maybe just talk, you know,
- 17:41Speaker 1: talk about their night and then as nightfalls, they'll leave
- 17:45Speaker 1: their caves and they'll they'll go hunting. And like you said,
- 17:48Speaker 1: their um carnivorous predators. Um, they do that passive by
- 17:53Speaker 1: catch thing for the most part right where they let
- 17:56Speaker 1: the the current bring the food to them. But they
- 18:02Speaker 1: just basically hang out and wait for a cuttle fish.
- 18:05Speaker 1: It's one thing. They eat squids, other cephalopods, some fishes,
- 18:11Speaker 1: but they seem to not um show aggression towards one
- 18:14Speaker 1: another from what I understand. Yeah, and um, while they
- 18:18Speaker 1: are passive hunters, they do have an unusual feature which is,
- 18:22Speaker 1: like we said, one of many. But they have what's
- 18:24Speaker 1: called a rostral organ, which just means it's in the
- 18:27Speaker 1: nasal region and their snout uh, and it's filled with
- 18:30Speaker 1: a jellylike substance that they think uh. And they think
- 18:35Speaker 1: most of this stuff. I mean, they've done a lot
- 18:37Speaker 1: of good studying, but for something so rare, you can't
- 18:40Speaker 1: you know, be super sure. But they think that it
- 18:42Speaker 1: detects low level electrical signals and frequencies from prey. Yeah,
- 18:48Speaker 1: like a shark or array. Yeah, it's an electrosensory organ
- 18:51Speaker 1: where when living tissue contacts water, it can make an
- 18:55Speaker 1: electrical impulse that can be picked up. Yeah, and this
- 18:58Speaker 1: cool mental floss articles at eleven um eleven things about
- 19:03Speaker 1: the sea. Look ant, I can't remember how it was put,
- 19:06Speaker 1: but just eleven interesting features, eleven fishy facts. Unfortunately that's
- 19:13Speaker 1: why I forgot it, uh title aside, it's an interesting article.
- 19:17Speaker 1: And um. One of the things that they don't know
- 19:20Speaker 1: why they do, and I have a feeling it has
- 19:21Speaker 1: to do with that electrical frequency, is they will swim
- 19:24Speaker 1: nose down, um for up to two full minutes, which
- 19:28Speaker 1: is weird for a fish. It just kind of hovering
- 19:31Speaker 1: in place, headstanding, right, Yeah, and I guess I mean
- 19:35Speaker 1: if they have that nasal uh bag of a jelly
- 19:40Speaker 1: that helps them locate fish, I would imagine that's what
- 19:42Speaker 1: they're doing there, right. I imagine it like tonto, like
- 19:45Speaker 1: holding a railroad track, you know. Yeah, I think it's
- 19:49Speaker 1: the same thing basically. So um, when they catch their prey,
- 19:55Speaker 1: they eat them, and they can eat stuff that's way
- 19:58Speaker 1: bigger than them because I again, which is this is
- 20:02Speaker 1: um unique to see the cants among living things They
- 20:06Speaker 1: have a hinge in their cranium that allows basically their
- 20:09Speaker 1: head is convertible. The top of their skull can retract,
- 20:13Speaker 1: allowing their mouth to open really wide, so they can
- 20:16Speaker 1: eat a large, large cuttle fish. Yeah. And I think
- 20:20Speaker 1: the that feature also allows it to uh, their mouth
- 20:24Speaker 1: to close with like much greater force with extreme prejudice. Yeah,
- 20:28Speaker 1: like when it's unhinged um emotionally and physically, it can
- 20:34Speaker 1: really close that mouth, uh, super hard. They hate themselves
- 20:37Speaker 1: for eating cuttle so I just can't stop. So those
- 20:41Speaker 1: are just a couple of the features. Another is um
- 20:45Speaker 1: and we mentioned earlier that the name literally translates into
- 20:48Speaker 1: hollow spine. Uh. This is because they have what's called
- 20:52Speaker 1: a noo chord, which is a hollow pressurized tube filled
- 20:56Speaker 1: with oil where a lot of fish start this way
- 21:02Speaker 1: and then they'll eventually get a spine. But this doesn't
- 21:04Speaker 1: go away, right, And not just fish vertebrates apparently, um,
- 21:07Speaker 1: there's a lot of mammals that go through this, I
- 21:09Speaker 1: think possibly even humans. In the embryo and the sela
- 21:13Speaker 1: cancer says, I'm good with the noto coorse, I'm gonna
- 21:15Speaker 1: stick here, I'm gonna stop here, which is strange. It
- 21:18Speaker 1: is strange. You want to hear some more stranges. I
- 21:20Speaker 1: could do this all day. Well, it's a strange fish.
- 21:23Speaker 1: Cela canth um. We don't quite understand how they reproduce,
- 21:29Speaker 1: and the reason why is because males don't seem to
- 21:34Speaker 1: have any sex parts. They don't have junk. They think
- 21:38Speaker 1: possibly males grow it when they need it, but it's otherwise,
- 21:43Speaker 1: it's it's not around to growers. They're not showers right exctly,
- 21:47Speaker 1: that's exactly right. So we have no idea how they reproduce,
- 21:52Speaker 1: but we know that the um the mode of reproduction
- 21:55Speaker 1: is called uh ovo viviparity, which is how for the
- 22:01Speaker 1: eggs that the female has get fertilized. Once they're fertilized,
- 22:05Speaker 1: they just state or the eggs developed in the female,
- 22:10Speaker 1: and then they hatch in the female, and then the
- 22:15Speaker 1: live fishes continue to just date. Oh and like the
- 22:18Speaker 1: whole period last like three years before they're born. So
- 22:22Speaker 1: they go from egg to being hatched to being born
- 22:27Speaker 1: within a three year period. And so apparently this does
- 22:31Speaker 1: not make the mom Cela can't very happy, and sometimes
- 22:35Speaker 1: she will try to eat her newborn pups. So supposedly
- 22:40Speaker 1: Cela can't pups, that's what they're called. Can dive really deep,
- 22:44Speaker 1: very quickly the moment they're born to get away from mom,
- 22:46Speaker 1: to get away from their mom, who's like three years
- 22:50Speaker 1: three years paging Dr Freud. Yeah, uh yeah, I think
- 22:56Speaker 1: sharks maybe the only other uh fish that give the
- 23:00Speaker 1: live little ones? Is that right? I mean most fish
- 23:06Speaker 1: lay eggs, right, so that it's definitely unusual. Yeah, it's
- 23:10Speaker 1: it may not be new unique. Um. But the other
- 23:14Speaker 1: thing about their their sexy time is there's also a
- 23:16Speaker 1: theory that, um, they are monogamousts. In a German team. Um,
- 23:25Speaker 1: they had a couple of corpses of too pregnant. Um.
- 23:29Speaker 1: I believe that the African version, yeah, the Ladimir chlumni
- 23:34Speaker 1: and uh because what was I remember the other one?
- 23:36Speaker 1: It was Ladimir something else. For the Indonesian version, we'll
- 23:41Speaker 1: just go with that for now. I was practicing pronouncing
- 23:44Speaker 1: it Latimer menadoensis. Okay, wow, thanks. Uh. So they analyze
- 23:50Speaker 1: these two pregnant ladies, unfortunately that we're no longer with us,
- 23:54Speaker 1: and they found out that they had like most definitely
- 23:58Speaker 1: had a single father, which they said was unusual because
- 24:02Speaker 1: one of them had twenty six little baby pups inside
- 24:07Speaker 1: of her, right, and they um, they thought at first, well,
- 24:11Speaker 1: maybe it's because the Cela cant is so rare that
- 24:15Speaker 1: the female wouldn't have opportunity to mate with more than
- 24:17Speaker 1: one male. And they said, well wait a minute, well no,
- 24:20Speaker 1: not necessarily, once they found out that they stayed to
- 24:23Speaker 1: hang out together. Yeah, in caves all day long. What
- 24:25Speaker 1: else are you gonna do? Once general hospitals over just
- 24:29Speaker 1: looking around and everybody like, whoa, what do you want
- 24:32Speaker 1: to do? Yeah, that's a good point. All right, Well
- 24:35Speaker 1: let's uh ponder that and take another break, and uh
- 24:39Speaker 1: we'll finish up with even more interesting things about the
- 24:42Speaker 1: ceila cant. Yeah, alright, so these guys have live babies.
- 25:08Speaker 1: They might mate with a single mate. Good day. They
- 25:12Speaker 1: have they can unhinge their jaw to eat more. They
- 25:16Speaker 1: have a jelly filled thing in there, nostra that the
- 25:22Speaker 1: that the texts electricity, The texts electricity. I know I'm
- 25:27Speaker 1: having trouble thing to text. Uh what else? This is
- 25:31Speaker 1: sort of a recap. They have oil filled spine, oil
- 25:34Speaker 1: filled spine, and they're they're just good with They're like,
- 25:37Speaker 1: I don't need a real spine. This one is my favorite.
- 25:39Speaker 1: They were long thought to be the missing link between
- 25:44Speaker 1: fishes and the tetrapods, which are land dwelling four limbed animals. Yeah,
- 25:50Speaker 1: because a notable thing I don't think we mentioned yet
- 25:53Speaker 1: is this thing has well, I think I didn't a
- 25:55Speaker 1: quote from miss Ladimir Courtney Ladimir, but they have four
- 26:00Speaker 1: are fins that smooth, sort of like you would think
- 26:04Speaker 1: legs would move if a fish could swim out onto
- 26:07Speaker 1: the beach. Legs and arms. Remember how Shaggy walked in
- 26:10Speaker 1: Scooby Doo, Just like that. That's basically how a ceila
- 26:14Speaker 1: can't swims. And the fact that they're their fins are
- 26:18Speaker 1: suspiciously arm like in appearance just made people think that
- 26:23Speaker 1: even more. What's more, their arms, what are called lobes,
- 26:27Speaker 1: are attached by a bone that is compared to the
- 26:31Speaker 1: humorous in humans. So a lot of people said, well,
- 26:34Speaker 1: that's it. It's a missing link. The cela can't is
- 26:36Speaker 1: a missing link between the fish and the land dwelling
- 26:40Speaker 1: four limbed animals. And apparently once the genome came around
- 26:45Speaker 1: and said now a little disappointing, they said, yes, we're
- 26:48Speaker 1: all related. Technically, we are all um what are known
- 26:52Speaker 1: as sarcopterygians okay um, which means we are fleshy limb vertebrates.
- 27:02Speaker 1: So we're all that. So we are related, but it's
- 27:05Speaker 1: not like our direct ancestor. In fact, we're more closely
- 27:08Speaker 1: related to the lungfish than the seila can'ts. But the
- 27:12Speaker 1: seila can'ts holds this place of honors, probably living on
- 27:15Speaker 1: something of its own branch uh and is a very
- 27:19Speaker 1: close cousin, if not bro, of the lung fish. So
- 27:22Speaker 1: we're related by marriage right to the seal It can't say,
- 27:27Speaker 1: but we legally we probably could marry a sela can't
- 27:31Speaker 1: and have it not be super creepy except for the
- 27:33Speaker 1: thet it's a fish. I feel it's a fleshy, lobed
- 27:37Speaker 1: thin stroking the back of your head as you kiss it.
- 27:41Speaker 1: I got something for you that was I'm just walking
- 27:44Speaker 1: right past that one. Um. They taste gross, so don't
- 27:48Speaker 1: think it's some weird delicacy, right, uh not? You know
- 27:52Speaker 1: that there are that many of them to eat, But
- 27:54Speaker 1: apparently if you do eat them, they can make you
- 27:56Speaker 1: sick because these things are filled with urea, with oil,
- 28:03Speaker 1: with wax, esther and fat like ninety eight point five
- 28:08Speaker 1: percent fat. That's just in its skull. Oh I thought
- 28:11Speaker 1: that was the whole body. No, it's it's brain occupies
- 28:15Speaker 1: one point five of the area inside its skull. The
- 28:21Speaker 1: other is fat. And that's at the point that they're
- 28:25Speaker 1: an adult, right. Yeah. Supposedly their brains are bigger proportionately
- 28:29Speaker 1: when they're younger, and they just stay there. Yeah, they're
- 28:32Speaker 1: frozen in uh, perpetual like I guess toddler hood pretty much.
- 28:38Speaker 1: They love life. Yeah, no responsibilities, no bills, exactly. What
- 28:47Speaker 1: else I got one for you? Okay. Vestigial lungs Oh yeah, man,
- 28:54Speaker 1: I love these things. So they grow, They had CT
- 28:59Speaker 1: scans done and this is from the mental flass article
- 29:02Speaker 1: of these embryos, and they start growing little lungs uh
- 29:07Speaker 1: early in the gestation period and it slows down a bit,
- 29:13Speaker 1: and then by the time they're an adult, the organ
- 29:15Speaker 1: serves no purpose. Yeah, it's just there. Yep, that's a
- 29:21Speaker 1: good one. It is. It was. It's almost like the
- 29:24Speaker 1: Cela canth was an attempt and evolutionary attempt, and it's
- 29:29Speaker 1: just like, I'm gonna scrap this design. Let's move on
- 29:32Speaker 1: to the long fish. Yeah maybe so you know, um,
- 29:37Speaker 1: one of the things that struck me though, Chuck, was
- 29:38Speaker 1: when they were talking about how a couple of females
- 29:41Speaker 1: that had fully formed young yeah in them, ready to
- 29:45Speaker 1: be born, were caught. It's like that was a lot
- 29:49Speaker 1: of the Cela canth population that got wiped out with
- 29:51Speaker 1: those two caught fish. Yeah. I mean, if there are
- 29:54Speaker 1: only hundreds, then everyone matters. Yeah. They think that there's
- 29:59Speaker 1: possibly about a th thousand of the ones that live
- 30:02Speaker 1: around Indonesia and far fewer of the ones that live
- 30:08Speaker 1: off of the west coast of Africa on the western
- 30:11Speaker 1: side of the Indian Ocean. Um. And as a result,
- 30:15Speaker 1: both of them are on the Endangered Species list. They're
- 30:18Speaker 1: both protected. The problem is that if something happens to
- 30:23Speaker 1: these species and these species die out this time, the
- 30:26Speaker 1: whole order is gone, um for good this time around. Yeah,
- 30:31Speaker 1: unless we revive them, uh with some of their DNA. Alright,
- 30:36Speaker 1: I got one last one um And this was on
- 30:40Speaker 1: Mental Flosses list as well, under the title A prominent
- 30:45Speaker 1: hematologist once wrote a celacanth operetta A right, So that's
- 30:50Speaker 1: an attention grabber. Apparently there was a man named Charles
- 30:54Speaker 1: Rand of Long Guideland University, and he was a hematologist,
- 31:00Speaker 1: and um was doing some work with the Cela Camp
- 31:03Speaker 1: and uh, this is when the big revelation was. They
- 31:06Speaker 1: learned that it gave birth to live young. And he,
- 31:09Speaker 1: I guess, was a music guy and decided to write
- 31:15Speaker 1: a little operetta about this discovery titled a Cila Camp's
- 31:19Speaker 1: Lament or Quinn Tuplets at fifty fathoms can be fun
- 31:25Speaker 1: all song to the tune of various Gilbert and Sullivan songs. Right,
- 31:32Speaker 1: that's a hematologist for you. I have no comment on that. Well,
- 31:38Speaker 1: I mean it speaks for itself other than I wish
- 31:41Speaker 1: this was on tape somewhere. Surely it's on YouTube. Everything's
- 31:45Speaker 1: on YouTube, you think, yeah, sure, you want to go
- 31:48Speaker 1: over some of these other quote living fossils end quote Yeah, Um,
- 31:52Speaker 1: so again there was there's some fishes out there that
- 31:56Speaker 1: may have made the jump kinda to land or on
- 32:00Speaker 1: most did or what have you. But there's there's some
- 32:03Speaker 1: interesting fishes that are worth mentioning. Speaking of making the jump,
- 32:07Speaker 1: did you see that shark that jumped into the boat
- 32:09Speaker 1: the other day? There was a fisherman, Uh, and I
- 32:12Speaker 1: guess the shark just did you know one of their
- 32:14Speaker 1: famous uh it was a great white did one of
- 32:17Speaker 1: its breeches where they just jump out of the water.
- 32:20Speaker 1: Missing did that and landed in a dude's fishing boat. Uh.
- 32:24Speaker 1: And he got banged around a little bit but was
- 32:26Speaker 1: not like, you know, a bitten or anything, and basically
- 32:29Speaker 1: went into his little control room I think, and called
- 32:31Speaker 1: for help. And this shark like, I mean, it was
- 32:34Speaker 1: kind of sad. I think the shark just died. But
- 32:37Speaker 1: there were pictures of it. It's it's huge, it's like
- 32:39Speaker 1: eight ft long. It was not a little guy. Yeah,
- 32:42Speaker 1: do you imagine? No, Oh my god, that guy did
- 32:45Speaker 1: the right thing. He ran. He pooped his pants too. Yeah.
- 32:49Speaker 1: I may have jumped into the water had that happened. Alright.
- 32:53Speaker 1: So living fossils um, the bow fin, yeah, the dog fish,
- 32:58Speaker 1: mudfish or grindel I like dog fish. Yeah, this guy,
- 33:04Speaker 1: I looked all these up, lily. He lives in the
- 33:06Speaker 1: Mississippi River basin, in the Great Lakes and other places. Um,
- 33:10Speaker 1: and are pretty mean supposedly like eats small mammals, snakes, frogs,
- 33:16Speaker 1: other fish like they'll they'll go after you. Um. It's
- 33:20Speaker 1: sort of normal looking, just sort of a long fish. Uh.
- 33:24Speaker 1: Nothing remarkable as appearance wise, though, I'll tell you one
- 33:27Speaker 1: that's remarkable appearance wises. The gar. Yeah, you know, I
- 33:31Speaker 1: just saw a long nosegar so ugly last weekend and
- 33:36Speaker 1: I was like, it was floating dead in a lake.
- 33:39Speaker 1: I was like, what in the world. Because I went
- 33:42Speaker 1: by it at first, I was like, was that a swordfish? Like, well, no,
- 33:45Speaker 1: it's not a swordfish. But in the long nose ones,
- 33:48Speaker 1: I mean this this thing had a he had a
- 33:50Speaker 1: twelve inch beak. I mean it looks prehistoric. Yeah, they
- 33:55Speaker 1: very much do look prehistoric, which is one of the
- 33:57Speaker 1: reasons why they're called a living fossil um. And they
- 34:00Speaker 1: are just mean. Apparently they're known to kill other fish,
- 34:04Speaker 1: even not even to eat them, just because they were
- 34:07Speaker 1: in their way. Basically, like you see this nose. Yeah,
- 34:10Speaker 1: and you can't eat gar. They're inedible and as a
- 34:13Speaker 1: matter of fact, if you eat their eggs, it will
- 34:15Speaker 1: kill you. They're very toxic to humans and they just
- 34:18Speaker 1: go around killing other fish, So they're not the best
- 34:21Speaker 1: thing to have in your like if you like to
- 34:23Speaker 1: fish in a lake. No, and they did you ever
- 34:26Speaker 1: see Vernon, Florida the documentary? No, I've never seen that one.
- 34:29Speaker 1: By the great Errol Morris. It has uh one of
- 34:31Speaker 1: the interviews, it's one of my favorites, as with a
- 34:35Speaker 1: guy talking about talking about the garfish. Really, yeah, I
- 34:39Speaker 1: gotta see that one. Come across one of those. Oh boy,
- 34:41Speaker 1: I finally saw a thin blue line for the first time.
- 34:44Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a good one. It's really You probably
- 34:46Speaker 1: saw it after the parody of documentary Now, I definitely did.
- 34:51Speaker 1: I saw the documentary now on which they nailed like,
- 34:54Speaker 1: it's like perfect. They really one of the great shows. Uh,
- 34:58Speaker 1: what's the next? Hagfish? Yeah, mud dwellers. Yeah, they basically
- 35:01Speaker 1: look like eels, but their fish. But the interesting thing
- 35:05Speaker 1: about hag fish, aside from the fact that they don't
- 35:07Speaker 1: have any eyes, is that they eat fish from the
- 35:11Speaker 1: inside out. Yeah. I think you underplayed it when he
- 35:14Speaker 1: said they basically look like eels. It looks like something
- 35:16Speaker 1: out of Dune. Okay, like the body looks like an eel.
- 35:19Speaker 1: But have you seen the front end of this thing? Sure,
- 35:22Speaker 1: it's frightening. And to think about that crawling up in
- 35:26Speaker 1: you and eating you from the inside out, right, because
- 35:29Speaker 1: if you're dead or dying fish and you're like, oh man,
- 35:31Speaker 1: I hope, I hurry up and die before a hagfish
- 35:34Speaker 1: five and a hagfish swims down your throat and then
- 35:38Speaker 1: eat you from the inside out. That's a bad day.
- 35:41Speaker 1: That's not a good death. And then lastly, what about
- 35:45Speaker 1: the sturgeon. I love the sturgeon. Did you know that
- 35:48Speaker 1: they they are both freshwater and saltwater here in North America?
- 35:53Speaker 1: I did not know that, But um, I know one
- 35:55Speaker 1: thing is they're huge. Yeah, they get up to like
- 35:58Speaker 1: twenty ft long. Yeah, and I didn't I didn't see
- 36:01Speaker 1: any pictures of him that big, but I've seen pictures
- 36:03Speaker 1: of fishermen with like sturgeon that looked like they're at
- 36:06Speaker 1: least eight or nine feet long. Uh. And they're crazy looking. Yeah. Well,
- 36:10Speaker 1: the reason I was surprised that they are largely North
- 36:13Speaker 1: America's I always associate them with, um, the Baltic area
- 36:17Speaker 1: where they they're the beluga sturgeon is prized for its
- 36:22Speaker 1: caviar I always think of, I think sturgeon. No, I
- 36:25Speaker 1: didn't realize that that's where bluga came from either. Uh.
- 36:29Speaker 1: And they have armor like skin, and they're they're these
- 36:31Speaker 1: retractable mouths that I guess there are different varieties, but
- 36:34Speaker 1: some of them look almost like alligators from like the
- 36:38Speaker 1: head forward. Yeah, they're weird looking fish. Yeah, but they
- 36:41Speaker 1: don't want to hurt anybody. They just want you to
- 36:42Speaker 1: eat their eggs. Is that true? They're like the giving
- 36:46Speaker 1: tree of the lake. All right, up with sturgeon? Uh
- 36:50Speaker 1: you anything else? I got nothing else? But if you
- 36:53Speaker 1: want to know more about living fossils, like uh, you
- 36:56Speaker 1: know Cela, cants or us Right, you can type those
- 37:00Speaker 1: words in the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
- 37:03Speaker 1: And since I said search farts, time for a listener mail.
- 37:08Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this My mom married Bob Doro. You
- 37:14Speaker 1: see that one, right? And I thought it was because
- 37:17Speaker 1: that was the subject line. And then the very first
- 37:21Speaker 1: line of the email was sorry about that attention grabbing
- 37:23Speaker 1: subject line. And I thought it was a lie because
- 37:26Speaker 1: a lot of times people say something remarkable in the
- 37:29Speaker 1: subject line that is completely false, which always ticks me off.
- 37:33Speaker 1: But this is true. Uh, my mom married the wonderful,
- 37:36Speaker 1: talented and sweet Bob Doro twenty three years ago. And uh,
- 37:40Speaker 1: if you didn't listen to the show, Bob Dora was
- 37:42Speaker 1: um part of the genius behind Schoolhouse Rock. Um, maybe
- 37:47Speaker 1: you know the original genius. It was wonderful to hear
- 37:50Speaker 1: you two speak so highly of them in your recent podcast.
- 37:52Speaker 1: My own family listens to you guys a lot, so
- 37:55Speaker 1: to hear you speak of our Bob with such reverence
- 37:57Speaker 1: it warmed our hearts. Whence you meant? You mentioned earlier
- 38:00Speaker 1: in your podcast that you wished you could have gotten
- 38:02Speaker 1: Bob on the show. I wanted to jump through my
- 38:04Speaker 1: phone to say I can make that happen. Bob learned
- 38:08Speaker 1: about you guys about two weeks ago when we took
- 38:10Speaker 1: a short road trip for Mother's Day and listen to
- 38:12Speaker 1: the grave Robbing episode. Um, how awesome is that? I
- 38:16Speaker 1: know the guy listen to us right before we released
- 38:20Speaker 1: the Schoolhouse Rock episode. Yeah, it's primed and ready to
- 38:23Speaker 1: hear us mention it fortuitous, huh. He chuckled off, and
- 38:27Speaker 1: during the ride, and when we got to our destination,
- 38:29Speaker 1: he asked something to the effect of who are those
- 38:31Speaker 1: comedy guys? They're good man. That made me feel good. Uh,
- 38:35Speaker 1: And then to have the Schoolhouse Rock episode pop up
- 38:37Speaker 1: a few weeks later, it was like whoa. You guys
- 38:40Speaker 1: were spot on in your characterization of Bob as a
- 38:42Speaker 1: creative genius. A lot of his genius comes from his
- 38:45Speaker 1: hard work. The age of ninety three, he is still
- 38:47Speaker 1: traveling the world taking gigs. Uh. My mom often complains
- 38:51Speaker 1: that he doesn't know how to say no. Thank you
- 38:53Speaker 1: for giving Bob and schoolhouse rockets proper due. Next time
- 38:56Speaker 1: you come up the coast the northeast, that is will
- 38:59Speaker 1: be there and I'm sure Bob won't say no. And
- 39:01Speaker 1: that's from Pete. Uh, I guess his stepson and um
- 39:07Speaker 1: Pete sending a picture of Pee and Bob and that's
- 39:10Speaker 1: him in the flesh. It's pretty awesome, pretty neat uh.
- 39:13Speaker 1: And you should go to www dot Bob do O
- 39:17Speaker 1: d O r O U g h dot com and
- 39:21Speaker 1: just check it out. Fanny three and going strong, Nice going, Bob.
- 39:24Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to us, and thank you Pete for
- 39:27Speaker 1: writing in to let us know that we were spot
- 39:29Speaker 1: on about what a great guy he is. Yeah, we
- 39:31Speaker 1: were genuinely thrilled to hear this. If you want to
- 39:34Speaker 1: genuinely thrill us, you can tweet to us at s
- 39:37Speaker 1: Y s K podcast or I'm at josh um Clark.
- 39:41Speaker 1: You can hang out with us on Facebook dot com
- 39:42Speaker 1: slash stuff you Should Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
- 39:46Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
- 39:49Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
- 39:51Speaker 1: at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
- 39:53Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
- 40:00Speaker 1: Is it how stuff Works dot com MHM