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SYSK Selects: Jellyfish - Even Cooler Than Octopi? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Hello, everyone, It's October sixt What No, but this is
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Chuck from the future past telling you to listen to
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the selects pick for the week Jellyfish colon even cooler
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: than the OCTOPI you decide. Welcome to Stuff You should Know,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant with Jerry st You should know. Oh man,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: let's start over all right, Well, that's okay. How you doing.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm jet black still, I'm coming out of
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: it for sure, but yeah, I'm a little jetlike. I
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: just was explaining off Mike that my body is at
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: four thirty or five every morning. Does get up, dummy?
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It's ten fifteen eleven, And I go, no, it's not.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: It's dark. No internal struggle. And it's a British voice too.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: It's like, get up, you need your beans and blood,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: sausage and import pies. How was that? Oh man, I
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: want another one so bad, you know? Save that? Okay? Uh?
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: My jet leg is not so much pronounced in the morning,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: it's just at nine thirty at night. I fall over
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: wherever I'm standing or said, you're just like cooking in
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: a walk and you just fall face for it. First
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: you noticed the burned face. Yeah, that's dangerous. Well it
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: hurt pretty bad because that walk grease gets pretty hot,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: it does walk. What is this? What walks? Who walks? Still? Dude?
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: You kidney? No dark continents of people watch? Oh well sure,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: but I just I guess I just imagined like wearing
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: a tennis or tied around my back. And I didn't
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: say fond should you're having a fond part of boiling cheese.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: That's pretty seventies. You know what, if you ever want
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: a fond dupot and like because you think it'd be
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: fun to have a fond party, don't buy one new.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Just go to a goodwill. I went for like three dollars. Yeah,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: you mean I have an unused one? Is it pea green?
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I would cook out of a
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: pea green anything? No? Yeah, all right, no, I wouldn't
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: pe green refrigerator. I wouldn't need out of it p
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: green car. I just throw up any time I want
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: to go drop uh, I'll tell you what I am
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: excited about though. Yeah, this is now officially my second
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: favorite seafaring creature after octopus, Yeah for sure. Yeah, and
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: this was close to like the jellyfish was really tugging
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: at my heartstrings. Yeah, and the and the octopus just
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: kept saying, you know what, remember me, remember the gramatophores.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Watch this bam. It looks at like something completely different.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: And then I remember it. I was like, all right, octopus,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: you're right, jellyfish can't do that. I'm Rocky the squirrel. Now,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I'm a romance soldier, I'm a cornucopia of vegetables in
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: an oil painting. Uh. They are pretty cool. Yeah, but
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the jellyfish is really amazing. Yeah. The octopus is though
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: they're like they're doing it on purpose. The jellyfish just
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: accidentally kind of stumbles backwards into awesomeness. You know, well
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: after five million years of practice, maybe seven, Yeah, we'll see.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: It's amazing. So when you're talking about jellyfish, a lot
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: of people say, well, there's a jellyfish, that's a jellyfish,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: that's a jellyfish. That lady walking down the street with
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the leash got a jellyfish on the end of right,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: and and you would say jellyfish, jellyfish, comb, jelly dog,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: or weird cat lady who walks her cat. Yeah, that's unwholesome.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: That's as unwholesome as walking a jellyfish down this street
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: on a leash. So there are such things as comb jellies,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: and there's jellyfish, and you out there who's lived maybe
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: ten twenty years on this planet or more, we've probably
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: seen them both. But it turns out that they look
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: very similar. But as we're finding out, as we get
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: deeper and deeper into using genetics to do taxonomy rather
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: than our peepers, that doesn't necessarily mean they're related. And
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: actually there's there's some tremendous debate between just how closely
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: related jellyfish and comb jellies are. Tremendous debate. Yes, we're
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: very subdued. It depends on where you are among like
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: fifty people. If you're in the jellyfish department of some
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I'll bet it gets nuts
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: a little vigorous. Yeah, they down some some old English
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: forty uh right, malt liquor and argue and to get
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: out the brass knuckles about taxonomy. Uh so that the
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: two phila they are different. Uh, we're talking respectively for
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: jellyfish and comb jellies. Uh, nadaria and ton afera. Yeah, nice,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: and there's seas before. Both of them are both silent,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: so it looks like centa bites and sephora. Yeah. Cento bytes. Yeah,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: what is that a centerbon? That's no center bites. They
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: were the monsters in hell Raiser. Oh I thought it
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: was like a centabon that was in handy bite sized pieces.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: That's a cinabyte. These are cento bites. Gotcha? Where where
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: did this research come from? By the way, a big
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: shout out Smithsonian. They have a site called the Ocean
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Portal amazing that has all sorts of great stuff on it. Yeah,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: you can't go wrong with Smithsonian. That's their their logo.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: There's there's this that forms the basis of this one.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: But I also want to give a huge shout out
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: to another article I read a while back that I
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: went back and reread. Actually it's called They're taking Over
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: and it was a New York View Books article on it. Yeah. Uh,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: well reviewed a book on jellyfish, Yes, specifically jellyfish blooms
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: or when you'll see on the news like, oh my gosh,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: there's five thousand jellyfish right here, right now, or thirty
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: three thousand square miles of jellyfish. But we'll get to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: were getting ahead of ourselves. So there's jellyfish and comb
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: jellies and there we don't know if they're related. They
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: look a lot like they're very much. Um, they seem related,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk about both. Yes, right, so let's
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: talk about him, Chuck. All right, Well we'll start off
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: with the body, uh, because well they're kind of all body. Uh.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: They both jellyfish income jellies have they have a lot
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: of differences, but you know, when you look under the hood,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: they have a lot of similarities, which is why you
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: would expect when people use their peepers they would just think, well, yeah,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: of course you have the same look at them. Yeah,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: don't don't think too don't overthink it. That was early science.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Don't overthink it. So both of them have a couple
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: of major cell layers, the external epidermis and then the
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: internal one called the gastrodermist. And in between those is
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: what you think of as jellyfish. Yeah, that's the mesoglia, yeah,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: which is a great name for that, and it's the filling. Yeah,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: it's it's nine. And in fact, jellyfish and come jellies
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: are about water. Yeah, seawater actually salt and water. They're
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: basically made up of the sea. I saw it put somewhere. Yeah,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: you know, it's amazing. Um. So they have basically one
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: mouth where um stuff goes in and comes out. It's
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: like a U mouth and oral anis basically I don't
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: even know if they refer to it as a mouth.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Do they like somewhere in this thing? Didn't they called
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: it literally like a body hole or something. Yeah, it's
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty basic, basic organism, but it does a
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: lot of things. Yeah, so it's not Yeah, when you
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: think of mouth, you just think eating. Not necessarily, Hey,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: let's put some sperm and egg in there too. It's
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: like all purpose. Yeah, but they don't necessarily need in
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: a mouth for eating because apparently they can absorb nutrients
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: like just through their skin. Yeah, so they have they
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: don't have a stomach, they don't have intestines, they don't
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: have lungs. They're just like, get in my get in
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: my skin nutrients yeah, and oxygen, And if you think
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: about it, then they don't need lungs. They don't need
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: like a they don't need a mouth, so they don't
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: need to chew. All this stuff requires a lot of energy.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: They actually are extraordinarily efficient organisms, so they get a
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: lot more energy out of the stuff that they take
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: in than other things, which actually gives them a huge
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: advantages we'll see later. Uh. So the outer cells, they
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: have this epidermis, like we said, and it has what's
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: called a nerve net, and it's just this net of
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: nerves literally, um, and that it's it's it's their nervous
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: system basically, and it's the it's the most basic, Um,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: I guess, brain like structure of any organism on the planet,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: of any multicellular organism. I guess that's right. And so
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: in the nerve net, not only does it have nerves,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: it also has some sort of specialized cells, like some
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: that detect light so they can know that they need
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: to move away from that boat spotlight. Uh, and then
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: some that tell them whether they're moving up or down
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: or whether they're upside down. Yeah, big dummies, that's a
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: that's a big one. You think about it. But I mean,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: like that's if you don't have eyeballs. No, But this
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: is the weird part. Man, this is so disturbing to me.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: This is almost as disturbing as squid having beaks. Some
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: types of jellies, box jellies, in particular um box jellyfish
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: have eyes. They have retinas lenses, but they don't have
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: a brain. So scientists are like, how what how are
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: you processing these images that you're clearly taking in and
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: responding to, Like, we've shown you pictures of like um
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Sheryl lad and you like gave a thumbs up. So
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: obviously you can use these eyes, but how are you
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: sorting these images? You know? Yeah, they think it's that
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: that nerve ring, but they're not sure, right, and that's
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: a ring around Uh, it's concentration of nerves basically that
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: they haven't figured out yet. But they think that's there
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: in is the secret. It would be like, um, it
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: would be like now, I can't come with a good analogy.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: There's a million of them out there, but I'm not
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: still jet Like I guess I just want to apologize
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: to everybody because that could have been I was on
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: the edge of my seat. Uh. Uh. So comb jellies
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: they have a few things that the regular jelly does
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: not have. Uh. Most notably the comb their name for
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: these uh silia, these giant fuse cilia. There's eight rows
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: up and down their bodies and they basically are their
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: ways of locomotive neck like little bitty oars paddling around
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: in the water. And there are other animals that do this,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: but the comb jelly is the largest one to do
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: this and to use this kind of locomotion. And it
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: looks like a rainbow if you look one up, but
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: you think it might be bioluminescent, but it's not. It's
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: just light catching the cilia and scattering it. It's beautiful,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: It is quite beautiful. But that's the thing that that
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: separates comb jellies from jelly jellyfish most um pronounced lee right, Yeah,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: because a lot of their activities and just the stuff
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: that they do, it's fairly similar the TV they watch,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: but their means of locomotion are are really the big,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: huge distinction. Yeah. The A lot of the comb jellies
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: have a single pair just two tentacles, but it looks
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: like more because they branch out um and they use
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: those like little fishing lines because they have sticky cells
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: uh color blast at the end. And this is different
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: uh big time than jellyfish. They don't sting. No, they
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: use um gluey, which is pretty neat, so you won't
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: be stung by a comb jelly. So just swim up
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: and hug one. They love it when you do that. So. Um,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: when you think of a jellyfish, like a true jelly
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: is what what they're called. Um there you think of
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: like kind of this bell shaped umbrella shaped thing with
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: the tentacles hanging down. Beautiful. And if it's a jellyfish,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: that's actually one of two forms that it will take
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: in its lifetime. Right, Um, it's that's the medusa form,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: and it's it's the adult form. There's a juvenile form
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: called the all up and um. Depending on when it
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: is in its life cycle, it will either be in
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: a medusa form a polyp form. Yeah, and we'll get
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: into the little more of the life cycle. But a
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: polyp can end up becoming a medusa or just might
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: be happy as little polyp and to stay as a
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: poly up and create more meducea. Yeah, and the polyp
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: looks like um, it almost looks like a plant. It
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: looks like a little stalk attached to something, usually the
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: sand or as we'll see, maybe a oil rig out
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the ocean or something, or share
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: a lad. That's right, because she's she's a deep water
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: dweller at this point. Um. So it looks like a
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: little plant. It's got it looks like a little stalk,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: and then the uh, tentacles are blooming out of it,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: almost like a flower. Yeah, like anemone or something like that. Yeah.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: And sometimes you see him many many of them together
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: in a colony. You think that's an amazing plant. It's
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: actually a jelly. Yeah, pretty cool if you would be
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: able to tell if you poked it with your finger.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: That's right. So the size among jellies ants and um
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: comb jellies are I mean, some of are just microscopic,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: others get pretty big. If there's one called the lion's
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: main jellyfish, which on the whole across like the whole species,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: they are the largest jellyfish known to humankind. Did you
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: see this thing? Yeah, it looks like photoshop when you
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: see a scuba diver up next to one. It definitely does.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Like the bell actually gets to be six ft wide. Yeah,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: And the tentacles are like, um long, fifty ft long,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: and some some get bigger than that. But that's you know,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: the average size of one of those. This is pretty neat. Yeah,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: I mean they're not to be feared. But swimming up
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: to something that large and that kind of creepy looking
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: is not for me, that's all. I'll say. That eats anything,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: it'll eat anything like people. Yeah, No, I won't need
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: a person. Yeah, I don't know. If they were big enough,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: it might. All right, So let's talk a little bit
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: about the various types. Um. We'll start with Nadaria, which
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: is the the jellyfish itself, not the comb. There are
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: more than ten thousand species, uh, and about four thousand
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: or fewer actually are what we think of as the
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: true jelly the medusa that we know and love, uh.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: And within that there are quite a few different types,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: one of which is the skiff a zoa. And this
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: is the most common true jellyfish that you can imagine.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: When you picture jelly fish in your mind, you're probably
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: thinking of the skiff a zoa um. The hydrozoa are
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: um impostors. Well, they're they're the ones who they spend
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: most of their time as polyps, right, So the skiff
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: a zoa spend most of their time in the medusas phase.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: The hydrozoa are the ones that look like plants at
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: the bottom and are just reproducing like mad um, and
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: they actually can come together and create what are called
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: colonial siphon of force. And that's a you know, a
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Portuguese man of war. Okay, So that is actually not
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: a true jellyfish. It's actually a collection. It's a it's
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: a colony that comes together to act like one large organism, right,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: and it's made up of persons, so like there's the
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: person that is in charge of digestion, there's the person
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: that's in charge of catching prey. There's the person that's
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: in charge of locomotion. And rather than these things being
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: body parts, they're actually individual organisms that are genetically identical
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: to one another because they all come from the same egg.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: But they're actually a colony. Does that make sense? Like,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: imagine if your organs were various actual organisms that came
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: together to make you. It's like the polyphonic spree of
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: the ocean world. Exactly. It's amazing. That's exactly what I
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: was driving at. Uh. Next up we have the Cuba
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: zoa and that's you mentioned the box jellyfish. They look
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: like a box is more squared looking. Those are the
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: most dangerous ones. Yeah. They have the most potent venom
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: and it is stuff not just of jellyfish, of any
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: animal on the planet. Yeah, the sea wasp has the
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: most powerful venom for humans, I should say the sea wasp.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: And that just awesome sounding. Yeah, it sounds like something
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: you want to avoid at all costs. Yeah. Uh so
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: these guys are the ones that have a more complex
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: nervous system, that have the the eyes right, Yeah, with
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: the corneas and things. So they're the most deadly and
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: they're looking at you. Yeah, they're saying, I'm coming for you.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: The star o zoa stalk jellyfishes, and they don't float.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: They are actually like to cling onto things and attached
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: to things, and they are mainly cold water. But all
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: you can find most all kinds are not all kinds.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: You can find some kind of jellyfish and almost any
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: kind of water, any kind of ocean water in the world. Well,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: not just that there's some thrive and freshwater. There's a
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: type of jellyfish that is um all over the Great Lakes.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: It was originally it's native to China, and they think
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: that it was brought over originally from China to England
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: in like a water lily shipment, because it was first
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: discovered in the West in like garden ponds, and it
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: somehow made its way to the Great Lakes. And now
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: there's a freshwater jellyfish that's about I think the size
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: of your thumbnail, depending on what size your thumbnail is
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: in the Great Lakes. That's a jellyfish. And it's a
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: true jellyfish. And we should say also with um jellyfish locomotion,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: they don't use the silly a like a comb jellyfish
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: does They in Medusa form x banned and contract the
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: bell right, so beautiful. And I was reading I think
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: it was a Scientific American or Popular Science, one of
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: those two all posted on the podcast Pitch, but it
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: was they some researchers examined how jellyfish move and they
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: found that not only are they like um able to
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: move when they when they expand and then contract in
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: the resting motion of their bell, of vortex actually forms
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: in the water above them and moves beneath them and
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: moves them up that way. So they're constantly moving, but
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: they're only exerting like half of the energy needed to
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: move forward. To propel forward or upward. Right, So that's
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: even one more way that they're incredibly efficient type of animal. Yeah,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: without a brain, they're pretty smart, you know what I mean. Uh,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: should we take a break? Yeah, all right, we'll take
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: a break, and we're gonna come back and dive into
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: the wonderful world of comb jellies. All right. So we
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: talked about just a few of the standard jellyfish. The
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: comb jellies are way way fewer species of the tina fours. Um,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: we're talking I think ten thousand for the other this
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: is about a hundred fifty. Yeah, not even hundred fifty. Yeah,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: But they're saying that it's possible that these are just
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: the ones we are aware of because um, we've encountered
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: them in coastal waters, that they may be way more
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: in deep sea. Yeah, they don't know much about those guys, right, right.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: And the ones that are in deep see that we've
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: encountered tend to be so fragile that we can't collect them. Yeah,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: because they're not tough, because they don't to put up
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: with the you know, their merrids and waves and yeah,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: they just float out there and yeah, you look at
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: them too hard. And they crumble. Um. So one type
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: of a comb jelly is uh sodipid uh and they
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: are all around their spherical or oval. They have those
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: branch tentacles that we talked about. Those tentacles are a
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: little unique and that they can actually draw them back
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: into the body when it's cold, yeah, which is pretty cool.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Really okay, so I believe uh yeah. And they have
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: like sheets on the sides of their mouths that it
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: draws back into which is pretty cool amazing. Um. Then
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: there's low baits uh, which have lobes on the sides,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: right yeah, um, and that's about it. They have the
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: lobes and that's what they're known for baroids. These are
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: kind of cool. These are the dudes that have no tentacles.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: So the way they eat is they have a big,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: big mouth that draws in a lot of stuff and
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: then a very tight, almost zipper like thing that shuts
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: and then they can shut that mouth really hard and
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: just mush all that stuff up. Well. They they have
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: silia inside their mouths that act like teeds that pull
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: their prey apart alive teeth tooth teeth. Yeah, oh man,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: it's weird. Jet leg um. But the little the teeth
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: just pick it like their prey and just pull them apart.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: It dissolves them, basically mechanically amazing. Have you ever seen
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: a video of um, the uh, the pelican who's just
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: standing there and there's a pigeon like on the ground
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: right in front of him, and all of a sudden
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: the pigeon the pelican just eats the pigeon, and the
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: pigeons like trying to get out of the pelicans like
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: huge mouth, and the pelicans just sitting there like nothing's happening.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And then finally like the pigeon stops moving. It is
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: really disturbing because you you you know, like pelicans don't
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: normally eat live pigeons, so there's like there's something wrong
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: with this pelican or it was just then steely reserve,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: like no remorse whatsoever. Yeah, it's a it's a disconcerting video,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: especially if you're a pigeon lover, which I'm not. I'm
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: it sound like I hate pigeons, but you don't want
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: to see him get you know, eaten eaten by a pelican. Yeah,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: it's it's weird. It's totally strange. Where do you find
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: this stuff? It's around so weird. I think you may
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: showed me that one. Yeah. You guys always have a
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: lot of weird videos at your fingertips. You and you
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: we were just always talking about, like did you see
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: the one where you know, the pelican ate the pigeon. Yeah,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: I guess so that's pretty neat. Um Comb jellies distribution wise,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: they are also all over the oceans. Uh. They do
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: perform a little warmer water though, but you can't find
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: them anywhere, right. Um. So we're talking earlier about the
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: fact that they are from different phyla and that there's this,
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: you know, drunken argument going on among scientists at the
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Monterey Bay aquari about how how closely related they are. Um.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: They used to all be described as uh sellin slinarata,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: which is hollow bellied. Oh yeah, makes sense, But they don't.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: They don't say that anymore. And if you want to
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: be ridiculed by your peers, call them that. But some
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: people say, you know, their sister groups. Some people say, nope,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: they're not even that closely related. Uh So the debate
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: rages on. I guess yep. So, Um, what what's interesting
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: is that we even know how long jellies have been
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: around because there they have no solid parts. Yeah, you'd
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: think it'd be hard to find a fossil. They have
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: gelatinous parts, they don't have any hardened parts. Yeah, that
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: would be fossilized easily. But there have been some discoveries,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: some amazing discoveries of jellyfish and um comb jellies from
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: about five million years ago. It's the I believe, the
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: oldest known specimens found. And there's this one found in
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Utah because apparently Utah used to be a shallow inland
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: sea and it had these jellyfish in it. And I
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: guess something happened to this jellyfish. It was crushed by
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: a rock, something a lot of pressure, I would think,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: but all of a sudden it just captured it. Because
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: it's it's like a perfect it's like a drawing of
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the jellyfish in a rock. Um And it's the oldest
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: fossil and it's five million years old. So it was
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: a pretty lucky find actually to find this, this jellyfish
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: that should not have been fossilized, that was fossilized. So
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: we do know that there um about two hundred or
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty million years older than fish fish
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: weren't even around by then. Um, and they think that
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: possibly sea comb or jelly comb or sorry, comb jellies
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: were Um, it's possible they were the earliest animals to
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: branch off, even more even earlier than sponges. Well, didn't
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: they find that the jellyfish was the first animal in
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: the sea that didn't just float along like a dummy,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: that actually used muscles to swim places. Yeah, and it
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: was possible it was the comb jellies that did that.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: So it's possible that comb jellies branched off from the
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: tree of life, so it's just one type of animal.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Then all of a sudden, there's a comb jelly. Right,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: what is this black magic you speak of? Right? And
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: then maybe the jellyfish at some later point branched off
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: of the comb jelly right. Um, But either way, it
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: would have been the comb jelly and or the jellyfish
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: that were the first to say we're going this way. Yeah,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: you guys are just floating around like a bunch of
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: morons waiting for food to hit You were embarrassed for you. Well,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: speaking of food, they are all carnivorous and they eat,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: like you said, they'll eat anything. They love plankton, but
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: they eat fish. They eat crustaceans. Some eat other jellyfish,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: which is disgusting. Um, and those uh neumaticist and color blasts,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: the stingers or the glue guns. Um, they are good
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: for defense. But uh, there are a hundred and fifty
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: animals that also eat the jellies. Fish and sea turtles.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: There's the sunfish loves them. Weather back seat turtles love them.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: They they journey to find them. Yeah, that's how much
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: they love them. The Chinese, Yeah, they eat human beings
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: eat jellyfish. Yeah. It's apparently a wedding delicacy in China
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: and has been for about fifteen sixteen hundred years. Yeah,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: ours is catered salmon in uh chicken Marbella. Uh yeah,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: fo thousand tons of jellyfish are caught each year in
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: fifteen countries, mainly in Southeast Asia's where they're eating these. Yeah,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: but um, I read that Georgia, our state of Georgia,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: um has a commercial jellyfish fishery. Really big Gem's jellies
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: preserved Moonshina. You totally eat jellyfish? Would sure I would
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: try it? Yeah, apparently it's also um it's served in Japan. Too,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: it's salted, which would be good. I would try raw.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: I would try raw jellyfish and sushi or something like that,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: but I would guess that salted strips and jellyfish are
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: probably vastly preferable. I'm not nearly as adventurous as you
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: with my my mouth and my stomach, but I might
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: try jellyfish, even though I'm talking about how much I
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: love it. Right, you just cry while you ate? Yeah, exactly.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: You were so beautiful once. Um. Well, I would eat
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: um wooly mammoth. Oh yeah, and you like them? Yeah? Uh,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: you gotta bring floss? Would you eat woly mammoth? Supposedly
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: that does nothing? Have you heard about that? Oh? Yeah?
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Then the new studies its flossing is no good. Well,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: we talked about that. I think what they said. It
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: depends on who you talk to. Some people are saying like, no,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: they just realize that no one's ever done a scientific
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: study to back up that flossing is good for you.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: And other people are saying like, no, they did some
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: studies and found that it doesn't do anything, which I
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: cannot believe. We either just talked about this the last
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: recording session, or we talked about it on stage. We
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: probably talked about it on stage because it came out
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: while we were in the UK. Okay, yeah, all right,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: but the idea that getting rotting food out from between
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: your teeth has no positive health benefits for you is
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: just it defies explanation. It was on stage because I
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: made a crack about missing my teeth. Oh yeah, I
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: remember now, uh. Feeding As far as them feeding on
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: other things, we talked about these tentacles that they have
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: to capture prey and these nematicists. It's amazing these basically
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: they're described in the article as venom bearing harpoons. So
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: what happens is there's a cue. Uh it's either something
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: has touched them or it's a chemical uh que that
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: something is around, and they shoot out this little harpoon
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: and within seven hundred nana seconds it's spears the prey
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: and releases a toxin. Yes, and it's it's frightening. Yeah.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: If you um, if you're a fish, you're in trouble.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: If you're another jellyfish, you're in trouble. Something smaller than
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: that you're just totally dead. And depending on the jellyfish,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: if you're a human being, you can die as a
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: matter of fact too. Yes, we talk about that, dude. Yeah,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: so the um there's the sea wasp obviously, which has
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: the most toxic venom on earth as far as humans
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: are concerned. But then there's also another type of um
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: box jellyfish that are much tinier. I think they're about
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: thumbsized or peanut sized. Yeah, you could. You don't even
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: see these things, or if you do see them and
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: they brush against you, you're probably not even gonna feel
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: the stings called ariicanji, Yeah, which is a an Aboriginal
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: word for for this type of jellyfish. Right, there's a
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: dude in the sixties, a Westerner who um was like,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: what what is with this jellyfish? I I've heard weird
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: things about it. I don't know much about it. I'm
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: gonna go out and let myself get stung by one.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Where did he get killed very easily by something at
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: any given point Australia, Yeah, exactly, because they're the ones.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: They've got the sea wasps too, and they have to
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: do with the sea wasps. Saying these little guys the
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: eru kanji. Is that how we agreed we're gonna say it. Yeah,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: iri kanji Iri kanji. So this guy survived, but he
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: um not not well, but he had a hard time
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: getting to the point where they're like, you're going to survive. Yeah,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: he was lucky to survive. So you get a sting
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: from one of these things, just a single tannicle, apparently
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: in about twenty to thirty minutes, what's called ira Kanji
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: syndrome starts to sit in and you feel it in
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: your lower back first, right, Yeah, and you don't know
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: you've been stunk. So you're just like, oh, man, like
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: I tweaked my back out there in the ocean, and
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: then things really start going south. Then you go and
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: throw up your right kidney. Yeah. And this article you
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: said said it feels like someone hits you with a
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: baseball bat and your kidneys and then comes to nausea
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: and vomiting, which continues every minute or so for around
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: twelve hours. Yeah. You get spasms in your arms and legs,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: your blood pressure increases, your skin begins to creep. It
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: says as if worms are burrowing through it. Yeah. Saw
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: I saw a video of a guy who was stung
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: and he said it felt like someone was pouring acid
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: all over my body. Yea from just being brushed by
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: this thumb sized, tiny little jellyfish. And then there's this
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: is the creepiest thing to me, says. Victims are often
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: gripped with a sense of impending doom and begged their
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: doctors to kill them. Yeah, can you imagine. And they're
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: spreading their range. Actually they found him off the coast
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: of Florida. They found him off the coast of South Africa. Jeez. Yeah,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: So yeah, they're not to be messed with, alright, So
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: down with your kanji? Right? Have you ever heard that
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: you should pee on somebody who's been stung by a jellyfish?
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: I've seen friends, so that's not true. And they've actually
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: found that could make it worse. Yeah, but there's actually
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: some science to it. Right, So if you get if
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: you get stung by a jellyfish, if it's technacle hits you,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: and and you're stung by a nematicist, there may be
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: some leftover ones still attached to your arm, right, and
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: you want to get rid of those. But if you
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: get rid of them, if you pour they just fresh
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: water on them, you're gonna trigger You're gonna trigger the
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: little harpoons inside because they're held in place by a
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: specific concentration of salutes. Right, so if you change that
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: concentration by hitting it with freshwater, you're gonna set them off.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: You seawater because they're held in check in seawater normally.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: So you see water to wash it off, and then
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: you take a credit card and scrape the rest of
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: them off. But some kind of you know, what if
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: you if you don't have your credit card on you,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: sure if you're not. But supposedly you're supposed to keep
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: sand out of it, which is tough to do. Sure,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: I did the beach. I did it. Don't be dumb
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: on it. Years back on the what you do in
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: the chair, all sorts of weird stuff you remember, all right, Well,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: getting back to the feeding. Uh, we covered the harpoon.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Themis of the jelly, but the comb jelly like we
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: talked about earlier that um, this is the neumaticis they
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: have the glue instead of the venom. So what they
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: do is they just send out that fishing line and
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: release that sticky glue and it reels whatever it catches
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: right on into the mouth. Pretty cool, like something being
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: sucked towards the death star. Yeah, exact a tractor beam.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: You got caught in attractor beam. Basically, should we take
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: a break. Oh wait, there was one other thing, so
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: one type of comb jelly. This is so awesome. They
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: actually eat true jellies, and then they take their nomadicists
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: and use them for their own hunting. How like? How
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: so they think they absorbed them and shoot them out
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: in their teammates save them? Yeah, they took him in
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: their cheek for later. Can they get an unlimited supply
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: of these? I don't know. It's curious if you could
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: see one with like three hundred of them. Look, look
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: how many I've eaten. It's like, don't be a pig.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Sure you spit some of those out. Uh now, can
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: we take a break? Yes? All right. By the way,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: we just satisfied that one listener because you rejected my break.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's true. How about that man a lie?
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: All right, we'll be back and talk a little bit
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: about defense. All right, So I promised talk of defense. Um,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: these things you've probably seen, jellyfish and comb jellies that
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: produce light, this bioluminescence. Although when I said earlier, the
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: comb jelly when it looks colorful, that is not bioluminescence.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: They are still bioluminescent, just not in that way right,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: so confusing. They actually do produce light. Uh, they have
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: these proteins that have a chemical reaction to produce this
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: blue and green light when something might touch it. And yeah,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: like moon jellies are well known for this. Yeah, and
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: they're not exactly sure why, but they think that this
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: could be a defensive mechanism to like either scare someone
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: trying to eat you by turning a light on their
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: face or turning a light on and attracting something larger
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: to eat that thing. Either way, they think it's defense.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: And then alternately, some jellyfish have um camouflage actually not
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: as good as the US No, no, no, no, not
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: at all, but I mean obviously some are are most
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: are transparent. It's pretty good camouflage um. And then some
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: of the deep sea ones are actually red. They produce
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: a red pigment and the red apparently is very very
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: difficult to see in deep water, which is like two
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: or more where there's no light. Yeah, you think it
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: would be black, but they say that the red is
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: easier to produce and exactly, so black would work. It's
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: just you try making black pigment. You can't and reds
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: the same down there. Yeah, it's all black. It's all
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: the same. So um, some of them do that, and
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: then others have just red pigment in their gut that
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: if they eat a bioluminescent organism, it's not going to
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: accidentally attract a predator to come check them out. Interesting. See,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: this is really the octopus is threatened in my heart
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: still a little bit now that I'm talking about this man,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: it's unstable. We'll see. I'll give a final vote at
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: the end. So to me, this is now we get
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: to the most amazing part, well, one of the most
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: amazing parts about jelly's sexy. Yeah so, which is not
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: very sexy, no, although it's like every kind of sex
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: you can imagine jellyfish engage in, and not just different
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: species like individuals. Some are hermaphroditic, some are sexually divided,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: some are a sexual yep, some yeah, some reproduce a
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: sexually sometimes in some species like the moon jelly, I
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: believe they'll all get together in one big mass and
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: just start swapping sperms and eggs. Yep, spit them out
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: of that mouth, hoole. There, get some boxed wine. The
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: parties on put on, Michael Bolton, though your house, your
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: house keys in a big wooden bowl right now, you
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: have it. That's the jellyfish way. Uh So the medusa
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: that that you know and love is the main true
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: jelly They spawn. So what they do is they release
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: a bunch of eggs and sperm into the open ocean
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of times altogether. And they do this from
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: their mouth hole and take it in in their mouth hole,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: and uh, the sperm meets the egg and that's how
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: it happens. Yeah, ideally or um in some kinds, the uh,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: the eggs stay in the mouth of the female and
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: the male just shoots sperm out into the water and
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: the sperm find their way into the mouth. It's a
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: way to go, yeah, Or they fertilize outside in the water,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: like you were saying. Um. And then in others there
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: they don't even necessarily get together. Yeah, they'll just be
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: like a pollop will just be sitting there spewing out
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: sperm or eggs. Gam eats like a all day long
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: huh one one type spews out like forty through forty
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: six thousand a day, every day, all the time. Um,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: And then the whole idea is that eventually maybe it'll
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: run into another gam eat and fertilize out. That's the
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: comb jelly actually, Oh is that a comb that does that? Okay.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: The polyps are the ones that are a sexual and
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: they just bud and divide in half basically to produce
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: a little identical buddy. And then that can stay a polyp,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: or it can eventually become a medusa. Yeah, because that's
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: the thing, like the polyp is a it's a stage
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: of a jellyfish, the jellyfish life cycle. It can be
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: which can be it? Yeah, you can you can just
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: stay a polyp, or you can eventually become a medusa. Yeah,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: And we didn't say that the the Depending on the jellyfish,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: it might live for a few weeks or a year.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Apparently they do better in captivity and tend to live
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: up to several years in captivity. I get the idea.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: They're pretty fragile out there in the ocean. Yeah. Um,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: but they can reproduce so frequently and so early on
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: in their life cycle, um that they can populate an
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: area very quickly to despite having a very short lifespan. Uh.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: And then in the polyp stage, some species can stay
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: there for well, basically almost indefinitely, and just sit there
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: and reproduce. There's a type of reproduction in the polyp
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: stage where um, it's called strobe lation, and the little
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: polyp is sitting there just shooting off these little discs,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: ten to fifteen at a time. And they found that
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: depending on the temperature of the water, um, and the
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: warmer the water, the more they strobo late um, they'll
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: there'll be more and more jellyfish that they just kind
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: of shoot off like this article put it like shooting
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: off clay pigeons, right, and then each one just transforms
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: into a medusa. Man, that's amazing. Octopus. Yeah, it's in trouble. Uh.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: And then oh, this is super cool. The Tautopsis neutricula.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: It is basically immortal. It is a hydrozoan and it
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: can actually revert back to the poly up stage after
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: the medusa stage through trans differentiation and live forever essentially
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: unless it gets killed obviously by something. Uh. And it
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: is the only animal that anyone knows of that can
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: do this. Yeah, amazing. There's another type of teratopsis to that. Um.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: When it dies, it disintegrates, but it sells some cells
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: as it's as it's decaying, come back and form another individual. Yea.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: So it basically fertilizes itself using its dying body and regenerates.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: This is like, yeah, it's tapped into the force. All right.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: So we talked earlier about these jellyfish blooms, um or
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: outbreaks or plagues, worms what else. That's okay, Um, it's
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: great that these things are proliferating like other species that aren't.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: But it can get out of hand. It can interfere
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: with people. Uh, it can interfere with machinery at power
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: plants on the coast, cause power outage, outages fisheries. Yeah,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: they can get in the way where people are trying
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: to fish for something else. Ah, they're getting their jellyfish. Yeah.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: And there's been examples of all this stuff happening over time,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Like they shut down the USS Ronald Reagan once, which
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: is a nuclear powered warship, because it got a bunch
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: of jellyfish got sucked up into the cooling system. Um.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: They've shut down power plants in India, in Japan, in
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: the Philippines. Um. And they think there's there's if there's
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: a debate over whether comb jellies and jellyfish are related.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: There's a huge bait over whether or not we're seeing
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: a natural outcome of uh, just jellyfish life cycles blooms,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: like this is just happening. Yeah, is this a normal
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: thing or are we humans contributing to it? And if
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: we humans are contributing to it, they basically say, there's
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: probably one of four ways that this is happening. Yeah.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: One of them is overfishing basically just less competition for food. Uh.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: They they're eating this zooplankton, and if other fish that
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: normally eat that aren't there, then the jellyfish like sweet
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: more for me, think buffet open. Apparently jellyfish students are
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: not known to go on diets. They just gorge themselves constantly.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: Really Yeah, what else nutrients? Yeah, when we uh, when
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: we release fertilizers from crop land in two areas where
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: jellyfish live, we can cause algia blooms. It runs off
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: eventually into the sea. Yeah, and it I actually can
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: deplete oxygen. So there's two things. One, you've got a
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: bunch of zooplankton and phytoplankton, which, um, well, I guess
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: they're eating the zooplankton that jellyfish eat, right, and then
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: you have lower oxygen, which jellyfish can live in and
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: survive in a lot more easily because again they have
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: a much lower metabolism than most other organisms that they're
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: competing for food with. So their competition again is dying off.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: While they're just like, this is great, I'll just keep
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: eating moral they thank you humans for putting all this
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: nitrogen and phosphorus in the water. You start to get
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: the idea why these things have been around for five
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: seven hundred million years. They can compete uh climate change
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: with the warming ocean. UM. Some of those jellies love it. UH.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: Their embryos and larvae developed better and more quickly, so
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: the populations grow more quickly, and a lot of them
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: prefer that warmer water, so they say bring it on, yeah,
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: and they're actually like it's There was at least one
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: study that UM looked at how jellyfish reproduced in warmer
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: water and also water that's of higher acidity, which they're
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: predicting through ocean acidification UM, which is the result of
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: higher c O two increases, and both of those suggests
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: that jellyfish are going to do just fine under the
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: climate change that we're facing. So cockroaches and jellyfish are
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: the only things that are going to be around one day. Uh.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: And then finally what they call ocean sprawl. Um, it's
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: you know what, we're building things out in the middle
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: of the ocean now, drilling platforms and docks and oil platforms. Uh,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: hard structures and jellyfish. The polyps especially that we were
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: talking about that they attached to something sand or Cheryl
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: lads belly button is not the easiest thing to attach to. Oh,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: Cheryl lad was born without a belly button. That's the
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: claim to faint. That was very insensitive of me. Uh,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: you just threw me there. So what they do love
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: to attach to is something solid, So they love, Um,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: they love attaching onto the ocean sprawl and oil rigs
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: and whatever else is out there, and they do very
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: well attached to a firm uh. Not the cher Lads
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: belly button isn't firm. It's done existing, certainly not an
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: iron girder. So. Um, there's this really great story about
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: jellyfish and just how quickly they can take over right Um,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: in the Black Sea. When a ship releases its cargo,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: is it off the coast of Germany. Yeah, No, that's
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: the North and the Baltic. Okay, don't try and screw
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: me up here. This is the Black Sea where they
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: make caviar, right, um, And actually there's some like entire
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: national economies are based on things like caviar and um,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: sardines and anchovies and just all these amazing fish. And
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: this ship apparently took on some seawater after it released
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: its cargo to keep itself stable, right, And when it
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: got to the Black Sea, it released it. And one
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: of the things that released was this type of jellyfish
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: called the sea walnut. And this is a two sounds cute.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: So the first sea walnut makes its way into the
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Black Sea. In two thousand two, the total biomass of
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: sea walnuts in the Black Sea, just the Black Sea,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: was ten times the total biomass of all the fish
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: that were taken from the world's oceans by commercial fishing.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: It got jellyfied, basically, Yeah. And they were competing with um,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: the the the other fish for the zooplankton and the
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: food source and winning big time. And so all these
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: fisheries collapsed, all these economies were in trouble, and then
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: it just so happened that some other ship had picked
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: up a different type of jellyfish that actually was a
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: natural predator of the sea wall all night and came
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: along and saved the day totally by a stroke of luck.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: To see walnut cracker. Yeah, yep, I did see that.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Actually you sent me that. That's amazing. Yep. So it
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: all worked out. Everything about jellyfish is amazing. Yeah, final
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: score for me octopus one jellyfish. Whoa, that is close.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: It is nice. Just one three pointer at the end
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: could have won it, but it didn't. Nope, it rimmed out.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: So if you want to know more you got anything else? Nope.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: You want to know more about jellyfish and comb jellies
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff, You can type those words
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: into the search part how stuff works dot com. And
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: since I said search parts time for listener mail, that's right,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: it's three pm, which means, uh, our bedtime is just
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: in about four short hours. Um. I actually tried to
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: go to bed before my one year old daughter the
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: other night. Yeah, and I said, no, that's bad parenting.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: Sure you just so you put yourself to bed. Oh wait,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: And she finally drifted off at like a thirty and
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: I was out at eight thirty two. Um, all right,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this you help me get married? Hey, guys,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: so recently got married to my beautiful wife, congratulations, with
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: whom I've been with for over eight years. While the
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: prospect of being married to her never frightened me at all,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: the thought of having to be in the center of attention,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: professing my love to my then fiance in front of
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: all of our guests and try not to look like
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: a dummy during the ceremony was how do you say, nauseatingly, frightening, terrifying.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: Excuse me, Um, yeah, Stephen was not He's not a
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: public speaker, I don't think. However, during the hours leading
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: up to the ceremony, I kept my mind occupied by
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: listening to the melodious tones of your voices teaching me
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: about well, some things I really don't remember. Honestly, I
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: was a little occupied. So we were literally just like,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: what is it called a s mr, Yeah, just his tones.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: He didn't even know what we were talking about. It
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: was just the sounds of our voices suited him, which
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: is very nice. Yeah, it is nice. Regardless, guys. Everything
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: ultimately went very well and we are both now very
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: happy to be together for good and to not have
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: to plan a wedding again. Thank you for helping me
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: get through the worst of my pre wedding anxiety. I
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: I's gonna say the worst day of my life at first.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: And for making such a terrific podcast. And that is
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Stephen Hall, who's a PhD candidate in pharmacology. Well thanks
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: a lot, Stephen, congratulations. Send us some as annex poppet
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: in the mail. He's a candidate, a PhD candidate, he
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: doesn't have access to that kind of stuff. Well, I
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: guarantee you he won't be a candidate anymore if he
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: starts sending us. There's mailing people pharmacutic give him his badge, Steven,
• 51:55
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• 51:58
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• 52:00
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• 52:02
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• 52:05
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• 52:07
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• 52:11
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• 52:16
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