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Jellyfish: Even Cooler than Octopi? · Stuff You Should Know

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