Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Woolly Mammoths Worked

Transcript

How Woolly Mammoths Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: This episode of Stuff You Should Know is sponsored by Squarespace.
0:04
Speaker 1: Whether you need a landing page, a beautiful gallery of
0:06
Speaker 1: professional blogger, an online store, it's all possible with the
0:10
Speaker 1: square Space website. Go to squarespace dot com and set
0:14
Speaker 1: your website apart. Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know
0:19
Speaker 1: Frondhouse Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:28
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's
0:31
Speaker 1: Jerry over there. So this is Stuff you should Know
0:36
Speaker 1: before you started. I want to say best of luck
0:40
Speaker 1: to mind. You means wonderful, great best friends Brandon and Laurel,
0:44
Speaker 1: who are at this moment in the delivery room blow
0:47
Speaker 1: Laurel's water broke. They're expecting their firstborn child. Wow. So
0:51
Speaker 1: by the time this releases, it will be like six
0:53
Speaker 1: years old. Yeah, pretty much, because we we have a
0:56
Speaker 1: six year Yeah, so good luck guys. It's great. Yeah.
1:00
Speaker 1: You should tell him that personally so they actually hear this.
1:03
Speaker 1: I recorded it. That's enough. They'll give what they get
1:07
Speaker 1: and be happy with it. Yeah. You you uh excited
1:14
Speaker 1: about willy mammoths? I am you? Are you not? I
1:17
Speaker 1: think it's I think they're wonderful, wily anything plus also
1:21
Speaker 1: like a wooly mammoth. They were. They were sweet, good natured.
1:27
Speaker 1: They could take a joke at their own expense, but
1:30
Speaker 1: they weren't self deprecating. They just you know, had a
1:33
Speaker 1: good sense of humor. Yeah, anything related to an elephant,
1:37
Speaker 1: okay in my book, Yeah, I agreed. I have a
1:39
Speaker 1: very big love for that animal. Well, it's a big animal,
1:44
Speaker 1: deserves a lot of love, and they're just wonderful in
1:46
Speaker 1: every way that they grieve over their dead. Oh God,
1:50
Speaker 1: there's this one story about Domini. I believe it's the
1:53
Speaker 1: name of the elephant that um. I think he or
1:59
Speaker 1: she was a zoo and had like a best friend,
2:03
Speaker 1: and the best friend died and this elephant could not
2:06
Speaker 1: get over it, and she died of I think the
2:09
Speaker 1: zoo keepers like, she died of a broken heart. You
2:11
Speaker 1: can't take that she she grieved herself to death. Um.
2:14
Speaker 1: And I think the story is even more tragic than that.
2:16
Speaker 1: I'm not doing it justice, but just go go research
2:19
Speaker 1: Domini the elephant d A m A N. I You're like, whatever,
2:21
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny, right, he'll tickle your ribs. I
2:25
Speaker 1: don't know if I did it justice. Did it come
2:27
Speaker 1: across as funny stupid elephant? Well, you know what's even
2:34
Speaker 1: cuter than a wooly mammoth? Oh yeah, Well, what's cuter
2:37
Speaker 1: than an elephant is an elephant with hair. So that's
2:40
Speaker 1: a wily mammoth, okay, or a mastodon, as we'll talk
2:43
Speaker 1: about a little bit. Those are different, totally different. Yeah,
2:46
Speaker 1: but they have hair. Not as much, yeah, but they
2:49
Speaker 1: have hair. Yeah, but you wouldn't look at it and
2:50
Speaker 1: be like, oh, that's wooly. You just be like, that's
2:53
Speaker 1: kind of hairy, yeah, stubborly. But the only thing cuter
2:57
Speaker 1: than a hairy elephant is a tiny hairry elephant. And
3:01
Speaker 1: there was a place, well there still is a place
3:04
Speaker 1: called Wrangel Island and they don't have them anymore. But
3:08
Speaker 1: at one point, not too long ago, in the grand
3:12
Speaker 1: scheme of you know, the history of everything, right, uh,
3:17
Speaker 1: the Wrangel Island mammoths roamed the earth. And they are
3:23
Speaker 1: how tall are they? Like human height? Right at the shoulder?
3:26
Speaker 1: They were four to six ft tall. Oh man, So yeah,
3:29
Speaker 1: it's like a mini wooly mammoth, give me one. And
3:31
Speaker 1: they were directly descended from the wooly mammoths they just
3:35
Speaker 1: ended up on this island, and the island is pretty good.
3:37
Speaker 1: Size is the size of Delaware from what I understand.
3:41
Speaker 1: But that's small enough. But that's small enough, well for
3:43
Speaker 1: an island, you know, but it's small enough that that
3:46
Speaker 1: they became dwarf. They went under that. Um what's that
3:50
Speaker 1: process called where a population lands on an island and
3:54
Speaker 1: it immediately begins to diminish in size. I don't know,
3:58
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of that island fever, something weird like that.
4:01
Speaker 1: Because they wanted to ride the roller coasters on the way,
4:03
Speaker 1: you'd have to be bigger. Maybe they were scared of
4:05
Speaker 1: roller coasters, That's what I meant. They're like, we're getting
4:07
Speaker 1: out of here and we're gonna shrink, so we couldn't
4:10
Speaker 1: possibly go on a roller coaster. But they butchered that one.
4:14
Speaker 1: They were around for you, butcher them like a Wrangel
4:17
Speaker 1: Island wooly mammoth. So they were around, uh until about
4:22
Speaker 1: three thousand years ago, something like thirty years ago. I
4:26
Speaker 1: think they were the last of their kind. Were on
4:29
Speaker 1: Wrangle Island in six b C. And dude, by that time,
4:33
Speaker 1: the pyramids were already a thousand years old. Like people,
4:36
Speaker 1: they shared territory with people, but most I shouldn't say most,
4:43
Speaker 1: A lot of the wooly mammoths, especially the ones that
4:46
Speaker 1: lived at the end of the Place of Steem place
4:48
Speaker 1: to scene. That's a tough one to say that scene,
4:51
Speaker 1: is it not. Yes, I think that's right, but I
4:54
Speaker 1: always want to like take continents and switch them around
4:57
Speaker 1: and shuffle it up. Well, you're an anarchist, yeah, especially
5:01
Speaker 1: with words. Um, I even hate the word anarchists. You
5:05
Speaker 1: call it anarchist. Yeah, yeah, but uh, I mean that
5:10
Speaker 1: threw me off. Sorry, Yeah, man, what was I saying? Oh? Yeah,
5:15
Speaker 1: they did coexist with humans. Yeah, Like it's the one
5:19
Speaker 1: thing the flint Stones were right about. When you see
5:21
Speaker 1: a big willy mammoth in Fred flint Stone, that was
5:24
Speaker 1: entirely possible that the dinosaurs, the Brnos source all that
5:28
Speaker 1: stuff just fantasy. And if that wily mammoth on the
5:31
Speaker 1: flint Stones was used to watch a car or some
5:35
Speaker 1: other household chore, completely real, right. Yeah. They were very
5:40
Speaker 1: helpful in addition to having a great sense of humor.
5:42
Speaker 1: They would help you out around the house. That was
5:45
Speaker 1: one of my favorite parts of The flint Stones. I
5:47
Speaker 1: remember when I was a kid watching that and just
5:49
Speaker 1: being so tickled every time a bird's beak was used
5:52
Speaker 1: to play a record, and they were always just like
5:55
Speaker 1: so willingly, like just tilt me down and I'll play
5:57
Speaker 1: your record. Yeah, I love that stuff. And then every
6:00
Speaker 1: once in a a while but they would thank the animal
6:02
Speaker 1: and the animal be like oh man, most of the days.
6:08
Speaker 1: So the Wrangel Island mammoths for around until about years ago, um,
6:14
Speaker 1: and they survived the extinction of the rest of the
6:17
Speaker 1: mammoths about four thousand years earlier. Right, Yeah, And if
6:20
Speaker 1: we're talking, like if you look at the dinosaurs, they
6:23
Speaker 1: left us sixty five million years ago, So this is
6:25
Speaker 1: all very recent stuff. Like people hunted wooly mammoths and
6:31
Speaker 1: ate them and use their bones and tusks and wore
6:34
Speaker 1: their skin, I imagine, and uh not worshiped well we
6:40
Speaker 1: don't really know for sure, but at least revered them
6:43
Speaker 1: enough to put them in their cave art. Uh. So
6:46
Speaker 1: this is all kind of really cool stuff to me.
6:47
Speaker 1: We know a lot about them compared to a lot
6:49
Speaker 1: of other extinct species, right, but where they went remains
6:53
Speaker 1: a mystery a bit. Yeah, I mean it's definitely not definitive,
6:57
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of theories. But there's really they
7:00
Speaker 1: melted remember that one? Yeah, what was that from? It
7:06
Speaker 1: was from one of our earlier podcasts. That was my
7:08
Speaker 1: personal theory on like where like the proto humans one
7:12
Speaker 1: or something. I don't even know they melted. Yeah, I
7:14
Speaker 1: forgot all about that. That's an old one. And not
7:17
Speaker 1: only that, my friend, but um, we have they have
7:21
Speaker 1: like relatives, distant cousins still roaming the earth today because
7:26
Speaker 1: if you look at the African bush and the African
7:29
Speaker 1: forest elephants and the Asian elephant actually the closest, it's
7:34
Speaker 1: very close. Yeah not, I mean it's close and distant.
7:39
Speaker 1: If that makes sense, It doesn't. How do you mean? Well,
7:45
Speaker 1: I mean it's close enough to say it's the closest relative.
7:47
Speaker 1: But they're still distant cousins. You know, they don't have
7:50
Speaker 1: the hair or the high sloping back or the curly
7:53
Speaker 1: tusk right or yeah with the finger like grippers. Yeah yeah, um,
7:57
Speaker 1: but they're still pretty close close enough that some mad
8:00
Speaker 1: scientists are like Wickham resurrect wooly Mammoth's using the Asian
8:04
Speaker 1: elephant because we have DNA right like when they found
8:09
Speaker 1: and they have found a lot of these carcasses. Some
8:12
Speaker 1: some of them really intact. I mean enough, like there's
8:16
Speaker 1: brain and bone and blood and uh yeah, basically the
8:20
Speaker 1: whole thing. It's just the slightly mummified so there's like
8:24
Speaker 1: water loss. Other than that, it's all there. Like there's
8:27
Speaker 1: one called um man this is tough word to say,
8:31
Speaker 1: and there's another another continent Switchero. My brain wants to
8:34
Speaker 1: pull liuba it means love in Russian. Was just a
8:38
Speaker 1: little guy, yeah, the little baby. Yeah, this was not
8:42
Speaker 1: a miniature. It was actually a calf right, It was
8:45
Speaker 1: a baby baby wooly mammoth um. I think maybe like
8:49
Speaker 1: a month old or something like that. But it was
8:52
Speaker 1: still die. Yeah. And and then in lifness would have
8:56
Speaker 1: weighed about um a hundred a hundred kilos or two
9:01
Speaker 1: pounds now a hundred pounds fifty kilos. That's missing half
9:05
Speaker 1: of its um weight and water while it was alive
9:08
Speaker 1: when you'd want to pick it up and now now
9:12
Speaker 1: you just kind of patted on the head and be
9:14
Speaker 1: like you stay over there. Yeah. When was that found?
9:16
Speaker 1: Two thousand seven? Yeah, and um it was found perfectly
9:19
Speaker 1: preserved because apparently she had been colonized by a um
9:25
Speaker 1: uh some sort of lactic acid producing bacteria that effectively
9:30
Speaker 1: pickled her. So it preserved her, but it also made
9:33
Speaker 1: her very unappetizing scavengers too. She tasted weird, right, So, um,
9:39
Speaker 1: she's a really good example of a wooly mammoth. And
9:42
Speaker 1: I can't remember how many tens of thousands of years
9:45
Speaker 1: old she is, but she's pretty old. So we do
9:48
Speaker 1: have this access to all these great specimens, and they've
9:53
Speaker 1: figured out that about the shelf life of viable DNA
9:57
Speaker 1: is a million years So there's plenty of wooly ammoths
10:00
Speaker 1: that who's DNA we have access to that's much younger
10:03
Speaker 1: than a million years old. And yeah, we'll talk about it.
10:06
Speaker 1: But some people are like, let's bring them back, let's
10:09
Speaker 1: de extinct them. Yeah, tricky territory. Oh yeah, but so
10:14
Speaker 1: Willie mammoth pretty cute. It's not a sabretooth tiger, right,
10:19
Speaker 1: that's not tricky. You just don't do that. But the
10:22
Speaker 1: kind of the long and the short of all this,
10:23
Speaker 1: with the distant cousins and all of the uh preserved
10:27
Speaker 1: carcasses we found is that we have a really robust
10:31
Speaker 1: picture of how these things lived and what they were like.
10:35
Speaker 1: And um, I guess we'll take a break here and
10:37
Speaker 1: we'll get a little bit into their you know, they're
10:40
Speaker 1: nine to five. Job, we'll go back to the mammoth world.
11:01
Speaker 1: All right. So if you picture in your mind a
11:04
Speaker 1: wooly mammoth, you might think, all right, frozen waste land.
11:10
Speaker 1: Uh and like Siberia, Right, they just eat like snow Wrong,
11:16
Speaker 1: snow cones. That's wrong. I'm sure they appreciated again, snow cone.
11:21
Speaker 1: They like Italian nights more than the snow cone. They're
11:24
Speaker 1: a little more European. But what was actually going on
11:28
Speaker 1: is they were they were trotting upon land what was
11:30
Speaker 1: called a mammoth step st e p pe mm hmm,
11:36
Speaker 1: not the step variety. Sure there's an extra p. Yeah,
11:41
Speaker 1: like a steppy boy. It's not pronounced steppi is it? No? Okay, No,
11:46
Speaker 1: when you first encountered the word, it is uh. And
11:50
Speaker 1: this is this was basically it was sort of a
11:55
Speaker 1: unique time in the in the history of planet Earth
11:58
Speaker 1: in that it was rich. These areas were rich with
12:02
Speaker 1: stuff for them to eat, just like overloaded with vegetation. Yeah.
12:07
Speaker 1: One thing, were veggie eaters. Yeah, they were, they were
12:10
Speaker 1: um actually um grassland grazers. You can call them. So
12:15
Speaker 1: they ate long um long grasses sedges, which is like
12:20
Speaker 1: a fake grass, but all intends of purposes. Yeah, they
12:24
Speaker 1: come upon a basil field. Man, it was all over
12:26
Speaker 1: like oh man, it's Italian night. So um, they ate
12:31
Speaker 1: grasses and they were herbivores and they ate this pretty
12:37
Speaker 1: specific diet and it certainly wasn't snow based and it
12:41
Speaker 1: was definitely cooler, which is I think another reason why
12:43
Speaker 1: people think, um they they they lived in a frozen wasteland. Well,
12:50
Speaker 1: because they needed that coat, they did. And the reason
12:53
Speaker 1: why is because they were living in the Pleistocene, which
12:55
Speaker 1: was definitely it was a series of ice ages, right. Um,
13:00
Speaker 1: so it was colder. It's like five to ten degrease
13:02
Speaker 1: celsius colder than it is globally now. But the the
13:08
Speaker 1: whole ecosystem was just utterly different than what it is today.
13:12
Speaker 1: So like if you did manage to bring back Willy
13:14
Speaker 1: Mammoth and you put him on the Siberian step, they'd
13:17
Speaker 1: be like, well, I'm going to starve. There's nothing here
13:20
Speaker 1: for me to eat. Things have changed. If you put
13:22
Speaker 1: them in Arizona or New Mexico or someplace where it
13:26
Speaker 1: might kind of look the same with the shrubbery and
13:30
Speaker 1: brush and grasses. Uh, they would say, no, I can't
13:34
Speaker 1: live here either, kind of die here too. It's too hot.
13:37
Speaker 1: Why did you bring me back? Really didn't think this through,
13:41
Speaker 1: that's right. But what you also had, though, is a
13:44
Speaker 1: pretty nice I mean, it was colder, but it was
13:47
Speaker 1: it was kind of nice weather for a wily mammoth.
13:50
Speaker 1: It was the sea levels had dropped, so it exposed
13:53
Speaker 1: all this great land for them to roam, and it
13:55
Speaker 1: was very breezy and clear and kind of lovely, easy, freezy, beautiful, easy, breezy,
14:01
Speaker 1: beautiful for wooly mammoth. Yeah. Because again, well we'll talk
14:06
Speaker 1: about their coat. Actually, we can talk about it right now.
14:09
Speaker 1: So their coat was, um, are you familiar with a
14:12
Speaker 1: musk ox? Oh? Yeah, it was like that. It was
14:15
Speaker 1: like a skirt of long hair. But beneath that was
14:20
Speaker 1: wooly undercoat that really kept them warm. Yeah, the outer coat,
14:24
Speaker 1: and we've talked about a lot of mammals, most of
14:26
Speaker 1: them have like layers of different kinds of fur. But um,
14:29
Speaker 1: the outer coat was the guard for and then under
14:31
Speaker 1: like you said, was the the wooly undercoat. And below
14:36
Speaker 1: that they had an inch of skin, very oily, and
14:39
Speaker 1: below that they had three to four inches of fat
14:42
Speaker 1: and all of this stuff made them nice and cozy
14:45
Speaker 1: and warm. But they were de delicious to eat man
14:51
Speaker 1: oily skin inches of fat. Yeah, I'm just gonna ignore that,
14:58
Speaker 1: all right, Uh, twenty hours a day they spent eating,
15:02
Speaker 1: I guess, fattening themselves up for for me, for you.
15:07
Speaker 1: So they would just roam around and eat man and
15:09
Speaker 1: get along with each other. They were you know, I
15:12
Speaker 1: was about to say peaceful, which they kind of were
15:15
Speaker 1: unless they were infringed upon. And you don't want to
15:17
Speaker 1: mess with the willie mammoth alone, right, No, they they
15:21
Speaker 1: This article puts it that in a standing fight they
15:23
Speaker 1: could take all commerce. They were definitely like they could
15:28
Speaker 1: defend themselves. And for the most part, apparently the major
15:32
Speaker 1: predators of the day um would not have taken a
15:36
Speaker 1: healthy adult mammothon. They would have like maybe followed a
15:41
Speaker 1: herd because the mammoth's um you were. If you saw
15:44
Speaker 1: a single mammoth, it was a male, or if you
15:47
Speaker 1: saw a herd of them, it was females and calves
15:50
Speaker 1: female calves, yeah right, or it could be male calves
15:53
Speaker 1: or nursing still before they went off on their own teenager.
15:57
Speaker 1: They sent them off pretty young though, I think maybe
16:00
Speaker 1: starting when they were teenagers. Um. And either way, no
16:06
Speaker 1: short faced bear or sabretooth tiger is going to take
16:11
Speaker 1: on one of these guys by themselves. It would be
16:12
Speaker 1: like a calf that fell behind yeah, um, or like
16:18
Speaker 1: uh one that was sick or dying or trapped in
16:22
Speaker 1: like a tar pit. You would leap out with your
16:25
Speaker 1: clob spear, my knife and fork and have dinner my
16:29
Speaker 1: napkin tied around my neck. Uh. And they were they did,
16:34
Speaker 1: you know, share their their area with these fearsome creatures
16:37
Speaker 1: like the sabretooth tiger. And there was actually something called
16:40
Speaker 1: a wooly rhinoceros, which is exactly what you think it is. Yeah,
16:44
Speaker 1: I'll bet you would not want to mess with that.
16:46
Speaker 1: I'd want to scratch him behind the ear. Oh, rhinocero.
16:50
Speaker 1: I are tough and mean. I know. That's the problem
16:53
Speaker 1: with me. As I see these things, and I think,
16:56
Speaker 1: like a big tiger, I think all that guy needs
16:58
Speaker 1: is he looks like my Yeah, you know you should
17:01
Speaker 1: not go a little just to give him a good
17:03
Speaker 1: scratch behind the ear. And they're like, oh, well, I
17:05
Speaker 1: kind of like this guy, he's not up to get me.
17:07
Speaker 1: That's not what they do, I know. But that's why
17:10
Speaker 1: I don't take Safari's I'd be the dope that you
17:14
Speaker 1: know tried to pet the cheetah. Oh my god, did
17:17
Speaker 1: you see the video of the woman who got out
17:19
Speaker 1: of her car in a tiger preserve and was like
17:23
Speaker 1: the just like a it's like a like a security camera,
17:27
Speaker 1: so it's a steady shot. And I don't know what
17:30
Speaker 1: the lady was doing out of the car. I think
17:32
Speaker 1: maybe in China, and she's just standing there one second,
17:36
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, the tiger comes in frame
17:38
Speaker 1: and just pulls her right out of frame. And then
17:40
Speaker 1: like her sister and husband get out of the car,
17:46
Speaker 1: and I think her sister was killed as well, and
17:48
Speaker 1: the husband like just runs back and dives into the car.
17:51
Speaker 1: But what were they doing out of the car, And
17:54
Speaker 1: like this huge tiger at least the size of the
17:57
Speaker 1: woman just comes and just grabs her. Was nuts, well,
18:00
Speaker 1: really disturbing. Yeah, I don't want to see that. Then
18:02
Speaker 1: you probably shouldn't. You'd still be like I'd still pet
18:06
Speaker 1: that tiger. No, I wouldn't pet that tiger. You put
18:10
Speaker 1: that another one. What was the name of the grizzly Man,
18:13
Speaker 1: Timothy tread Well or Treadway. I think tread well Man. Yeah,
18:19
Speaker 1: that was a disturbing The best you should that was
18:24
Speaker 1: the best part was a terrible You should narrate everything.
18:29
Speaker 1: He should. He should do every commercial, voice over, every documentary,
18:34
Speaker 1: just you name it. He should do this podcast. They
18:37
Speaker 1: should go back and redo the voiceover the Alec Baldwin
18:40
Speaker 1: did for the Royal. Tannon bombs Burner put a different
18:45
Speaker 1: spin on things. I think Royal was born in the avenue.
18:50
Speaker 1: Now that's a good herzog. It's not bad. All you
18:54
Speaker 1: have to do is try and do it like an
18:55
Speaker 1: evil mad german scientist or something. Colonel clink Colonel clink um,
19:02
Speaker 1: where were we? We were talking about how um they
19:05
Speaker 1: could defend themselves. You'd still want to pet him, and
19:09
Speaker 1: they'd probably be okay with you petting them. They just
19:11
Speaker 1: accidentally trample you. Yeah, exactly. Elephant. Uh, those little calves
19:17
Speaker 1: were born in the springtime. Uh. And here's something that
19:20
Speaker 1: will come into factor later when they were wiped from
19:23
Speaker 1: the planet. They have a very long gestation period. It's
19:26
Speaker 1: twenty two months, so you know they're not pumping out
19:30
Speaker 1: these calves with great regularity. It takes a long time,
19:34
Speaker 1: almost two years. Yeah, that's that's a while. So they
19:37
Speaker 1: would have been impregnated I guess, uh summer, late summer
19:42
Speaker 1: a year previous, and then born in the spring because
19:46
Speaker 1: they adapted to do that because there was more to eat,
19:50
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, that makes sense. It's like, it's lovely.
19:54
Speaker 1: There's stuff blooming everywhere. Look at that basil field and
19:57
Speaker 1: so it We don't know exactly what they're society was like,
20:04
Speaker 1: but just based on modern elephants, paleontologists have surmised that
20:08
Speaker 1: they were very social. Most likely. There's mammoth track ways
20:12
Speaker 1: that we've found fossilized footprints UM that show a number
20:17
Speaker 1: of mammoths walking side by side and amongst one another
20:21
Speaker 1: UM and they're clearly different size footprints. So there's different
20:27
Speaker 1: generations all walking together, which would indicate that they probably
20:30
Speaker 1: have similar societies to elephants. Right, the dead and stuff
20:34
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, defend their dead, grieve over them, man,
20:37
Speaker 1: it's really tough. UM. And that they probably came together
20:43
Speaker 1: in annual migrations, although the evidence for that is still lacking.
20:47
Speaker 1: And if they did migrate, I think I saw somewhere
20:50
Speaker 1: that they probably didn't go more than four miles. So
20:52
Speaker 1: still that's I don't go more than four dred miles
20:55
Speaker 1: when I walk. I don't either anymore, So hats off
20:59
Speaker 1: to the manuths are walking that far. When they would
21:02
Speaker 1: go into heat the female, Like many mammals and many animals,
21:08
Speaker 1: there would be a competition of sorts among the men, uh, everywhere,
21:12
Speaker 1: from you know, puffing their chest out and flaunting to
21:16
Speaker 1: just straight up fighting with one another. I guess if
21:19
Speaker 1: times were tough, there weren't a lot of ladies around.
21:22
Speaker 1: And and that is a lot like the modern elephant
21:24
Speaker 1: as well. Uh. And and that they had what's called
21:27
Speaker 1: a must gland u s t not musk, which is
21:34
Speaker 1: easy to say, must must. It's even when you've been
21:40
Speaker 1: drinking a lot. I don't know that's exactly what it
21:42
Speaker 1: sounds like. Or if you're Cindy Brady right, or if
21:46
Speaker 1: you're missing a tooth right, Oh yeah, you're getting psyched.
21:53
Speaker 1: I am getting psyched. And I'm also I was like,
21:56
Speaker 1: can I just get it done before this, Like I'm
21:58
Speaker 1: going to Paris for three it's for God's sakes. And
22:01
Speaker 1: I was reading about Paris and they're like, if you
22:03
Speaker 1: don't want to stand out, you know, Americans are kind
22:05
Speaker 1: of if you want to blend in American French or preasons,
22:08
Speaker 1: kind of chic, like you know, you should you know,
22:12
Speaker 1: clean cut, and you know you shouldn't wear T shirts
22:15
Speaker 1: and shorts and tenny shoes. And it's like, man, I'm
22:18
Speaker 1: going to be the most American dude. They're you might
22:22
Speaker 1: as well just go with it, where like there's nothing
22:24
Speaker 1: chic about me. Yeah, just walk around your me and
22:26
Speaker 1: these and an ill fitting T shirt and flip flops
22:29
Speaker 1: is like born in the USA T shirt? Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah,
22:32
Speaker 1: with an American eagle on your head. Yeah, and on
22:35
Speaker 1: the back it says have you seen my tooth? They're
22:40
Speaker 1: gonna love you. Yeah, we'll see. Well, we're also going
22:47
Speaker 1: to the land of bad dentistry? So or is that
22:50
Speaker 1: in the UK? They're gonna welcome us with me with
22:52
Speaker 1: open arms. Oh yeah, they're gonna be like he's one
22:55
Speaker 1: of us. Is that a thing still? I thought? No,
22:58
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's gotten better, but it's still a joke
23:01
Speaker 1: that we can make. Oh god, I think so, or
23:03
Speaker 1: Mike Myers can We'll find out we have no idea,
23:06
Speaker 1: how our humor is gonna go over there probably fall flat.
23:09
Speaker 1: I we'll see um. All right, So there they have
23:13
Speaker 1: the musk gland and that secretes a fluid which um.
23:18
Speaker 1: And I think that just sort of it says here
23:22
Speaker 1: it establishes their higher they're mating hierarchy there. It's like
23:25
Speaker 1: a pheromone gland. Yeah, so whoever has the musk not
23:29
Speaker 1: must oh desecrete musk. I'm sure you could call it that,
23:35
Speaker 1: or it secretes must Let's talk about their tusks, because
23:40
Speaker 1: here's something I didn't know. The tusks actually have evolved
23:46
Speaker 1: from their incisors. And then I mean it makes perfect sense.
23:50
Speaker 1: It's like Lisa Simpson with that um where she didn't
23:56
Speaker 1: have a dental plan, so like her tooth was gonna
23:59
Speaker 1: grow up through her. Remember that they have like a
24:02
Speaker 1: projection or something. Yeah remember that? Uh yeah, that's exactly
24:07
Speaker 1: what it's like. Actually these outward Yeah, and they twist around.
24:11
Speaker 1: You know, if you've seen pictures of mammoths before, if not,
24:13
Speaker 1: look one up and it's not like a standard just
24:16
Speaker 1: curby elephant tusk. It's just beautiful the way it swoops around. Yeah,
24:20
Speaker 1: and I believe like they could get up to like
24:22
Speaker 1: sixteen ft long. It's enormous. That's a big tusk. Uh.
24:27
Speaker 1: And we'll talk a little more about how they were used.
24:30
Speaker 1: But they here here to me is one of the
24:32
Speaker 1: saddest things. They go through. Well, first of all, their
24:36
Speaker 1: other teeth are foot long, their molars, which is remarkable.
24:40
Speaker 1: And they go through six sets of teeth like the
24:44
Speaker 1: modern elephant, over a sixty year lifespan. And they die
24:49
Speaker 1: after the last set of teeth is worn out. Yeah,
24:52
Speaker 1: and that's just like the saddest thing ever. They their
24:55
Speaker 1: last prune and kilo. Yeah, Like I guess they I
24:58
Speaker 1: mean to me because he human, I assume they sense
25:01
Speaker 1: this like this, this is it? Well that and then
25:05
Speaker 1: they see me stalking on with my knife and fork
25:07
Speaker 1: and napkin because I wouldn't kill a mammoth. I just
25:10
Speaker 1: eat it after a diet of natural causes. Oh well,
25:13
Speaker 1: that's different. You just waited out until they had a
25:16
Speaker 1: loss of teeth. I'm like a jackal or a vulture.
25:21
Speaker 1: Would herb herban board taste better or worse than a
25:24
Speaker 1: beautiful Yeah? Yeah, grass fed? All right, Uh, chuck, let's
25:29
Speaker 1: take a break and we'll come back, and we're gonna
25:31
Speaker 1: talk about where wooly mammoth's come from, came from past tense.
25:54
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. It's gonna have been a strong
25:58
Speaker 1: my friend. So, you know, wooly mammoths resemble elephants. They
26:02
Speaker 1: have a common ancestor. And what's that. There's a very
26:06
Speaker 1: primitive Elephantine animal type of animal called the probosidian. And
26:13
Speaker 1: actually if you look at the wooly mammoth, the massed
26:16
Speaker 1: on some of those old ancient ones. Um their their
26:21
Speaker 1: order they belong to, So I think it goes species
26:24
Speaker 1: genus order, no species genus family order. Yeah, the order
26:31
Speaker 1: they belong to is um probosidia. And it's like um,
26:35
Speaker 1: like a you know, a bug has a probiscus, same thing. Uh,
26:41
Speaker 1: that's basically Greek for nose. I believe it is. So
26:46
Speaker 1: this the Greeks are just poking fun at their noses
26:49
Speaker 1: and they this uh split off from the million years ago.
26:54
Speaker 1: It split off from the mamillion tree. It's a long
26:57
Speaker 1: time ago, right, And all this is happening in a Frica.
27:00
Speaker 1: The elephant family, the probe probos probositians, they all were
27:08
Speaker 1: found in Africa. That's where they evolved and then they
27:10
Speaker 1: eventually spread out of Africa up into the Sinai and
27:13
Speaker 1: over into Europe and then up into Asia, just like
27:16
Speaker 1: humans did. Um, and I think something like seven million
27:20
Speaker 1: years ago the first mammoths developed in Africa. No, they
27:25
Speaker 1: weren't and we'll get to ye in a second. They
27:28
Speaker 1: were like they were mammoths, but they yeah, they weren't
27:31
Speaker 1: Willie like you said. They hung around in Africa for
27:34
Speaker 1: about four million years, about three million years ago they
27:37
Speaker 1: started to spread, and then about one point seven one
27:40
Speaker 1: point eight million years ago the Earth changed dramatically. It
27:44
Speaker 1: entered the Pleistocene. And again the palist scene was characterized
27:48
Speaker 1: with huge dips in global temperature. It's been a hot
27:51
Speaker 1: house up to that point, and all of a sudden
27:54
Speaker 1: it's like getting cold, and there's like glacial periods and
27:56
Speaker 1: all that. And now the mammoths are starting to adapt
28:00
Speaker 1: to the cold. Now they became wooly and um kind
28:03
Speaker 1: of differentiated from southern mammoths, uh, and became wooly mammoth's. Yeah,
28:09
Speaker 1: there was one in particular, the largest one of all,
28:12
Speaker 1: the step mammoth, and this sucker was fourteen feet and
28:17
Speaker 1: that's always at the shoulder, right, yes, And that correct,
28:20
Speaker 1: what do I don't measure from the top of the head,
28:23
Speaker 1: because you can like make yourself seem taller by lifting
28:26
Speaker 1: your head up, and they would do that when you
28:30
Speaker 1: mammoth's great sense of humor delicious really uncooperative at the doctor, right,
28:36
Speaker 1: wanted to be taller. Uh. And this one they think
28:39
Speaker 1: originated in northeastern Eurasia, and uh was the ancestor most
28:44
Speaker 1: likely of the wooly mammoth shaggy but not wooly. No,
28:49
Speaker 1: it wasn't wooly. And the wooly mammoth actually is the
28:51
Speaker 1: smallest of them all right, So not only did they
28:55
Speaker 1: adapt to the cold with their wooly coat, right, they
28:59
Speaker 1: actually had some really interesting adaptations with their blood and um.
29:04
Speaker 1: One of the things they figured out that it was
29:07
Speaker 1: that the willing mammoth had this pretty cool system where
29:11
Speaker 1: their arteries, which carried warm blood from the heart to
29:15
Speaker 1: the extremities, were really close to their blood vessels, which
29:20
Speaker 1: brought deoxygen aated cold blood from the extremities back to
29:24
Speaker 1: the heart. Well. The fact that the arterial blood vessels
29:28
Speaker 1: were close to the veins means that the warm blood
29:32
Speaker 1: would actually warm the blood in the veins on the
29:35
Speaker 1: way back to the heart, so that the heat never
29:38
Speaker 1: really made it out of the core. It kept the
29:40
Speaker 1: core very warm, which is important, um. And it meant
29:45
Speaker 1: the extremities were very cold, which is much less important
29:48
Speaker 1: as long as you still have blood flow. And then
29:52
Speaker 1: they also had this hemoglobin that could so hemoglobin clumps
29:57
Speaker 1: onto oxygen and delivers it throughout the body. Right. Well,
30:00
Speaker 1: it takes a little bit of heat energy to get
30:02
Speaker 1: the hemoglobin to let go of the oxygen, but you
30:05
Speaker 1: want as much heat energy as you can possibly have
30:07
Speaker 1: if you're wooly mammoth on the steps, right. Um. So
30:11
Speaker 1: they figured out get this by taking forty three thousand
30:15
Speaker 1: year old wooly mammoth, the na, isolating the genes that
30:20
Speaker 1: expressed hemoglobin that led to the expression of hemoglobin, and
30:25
Speaker 1: then it's inserting it into E. Coli bacteria and getting
30:28
Speaker 1: the equal light to manufacture wooly mammoth hemoglobin and then
30:33
Speaker 1: analyzing that hemoglobin. And the researchers were saying, like, if
30:37
Speaker 1: we had a live well, if we built a time
30:39
Speaker 1: machine and went back in time forty three thousand years
30:42
Speaker 1: and took blood hemoglobin from this wooly mammoth, it would
30:45
Speaker 1: be this exact same substance we've brought back wooly mammoth hemoglobin,
30:50
Speaker 1: and from studying they found out things like it required
30:53
Speaker 1: less heat energy to release oxygen, so thus conserving more heat. Well,
30:57
Speaker 1: and they're not the only ones either, Weren't there a
30:59
Speaker 1: lot or they speculate at least are a lot of
31:02
Speaker 1: cold adapted animals that had that same feature. Pretty cool. Um, alright,
31:09
Speaker 1: so the wool we're finally at the wooly smaller wooly mammoth, right, Yeah,
31:13
Speaker 1: they're the smallest of all the mammoth. Yeah, four hundred
31:15
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, and the first one of those was
31:18
Speaker 1: actually found in eighteen or six in Siberia from a
31:21
Speaker 1: botanist named mackayl Adams. And um, these dudes like they
31:28
Speaker 1: were widespread. They went as far as modern day Ireland
31:32
Speaker 1: and then across the Bearing Land Bridge or sorry, the
31:36
Speaker 1: Bearing straight was the bearing Land Bridge? Ye, the st
31:40
Speaker 1: the water. Yeah, and then they roamed the east coast
31:43
Speaker 1: of the United States and up into Canada and down
31:46
Speaker 1: into Mexico. They went even yeah, they went west in
31:50
Speaker 1: the United States and west pretty far west. Yeah, um, west,
31:55
Speaker 1: and a little bit south because at the time some
31:58
Speaker 1: of the glacial glacial is zation would come as far
32:02
Speaker 1: south as like covering Chicago entirely in a glacier. So
32:06
Speaker 1: they were a little further south. And they loved the
32:09
Speaker 1: Great Plains because the Great Plains were still the Great
32:12
Speaker 1: Plains back then. And yeah, they would eat the grasses.
32:15
Speaker 1: But they also coexisted or shared the North American continent
32:19
Speaker 1: with another type of wooly mammoth that was indigenous to
32:22
Speaker 1: North America, the Colombian or Jefferson mammoth. Yeah, that's the
32:27
Speaker 1: one that actually spent time in Mexico and Nicaragua, I
32:30
Speaker 1: think as far south as Nicaraguay, Yeah, which is yeah,
32:33
Speaker 1: it's pretty amazing. Of course, the weather was different back then, yeah,
32:36
Speaker 1: like we said, but still, I mean they were closer
32:38
Speaker 1: to the equator and it was definitely warmer. So they
32:40
Speaker 1: were a different species of wooly mammoth or of mammoth,
32:44
Speaker 1: but they were pretty closely related and I think they
32:46
Speaker 1: were actually um descended from the step mammoth as well. Yeah,
32:51
Speaker 1: and they were you know, they were they didn't need
32:53
Speaker 1: the weather just to be one thing. They were pretty adaptable. Um,
32:57
Speaker 1: not completely, as we'll see, because climate change probably did
33:00
Speaker 1: factor in h although not specifically because of like the temperature. Um, well,
33:07
Speaker 1: we might as well talk a little bit about that. Huh.
33:09
Speaker 1: Are we there yet with the temperature? Well know, like
33:12
Speaker 1: maybe where they went. Oh well, it's a big mystery.
33:15
Speaker 1: Like I was saying, no one knows case close. Well,
33:19
Speaker 1: they have some ideas, uh, and one of them is
33:21
Speaker 1: climate change. But um, like I was hinting at, not
33:25
Speaker 1: necessarily like the temperature was something that affected them. It
33:29
Speaker 1: was more how the temperature affected their habitat. Shrinking their
33:35
Speaker 1: habitat is what, ultimately I think had a lot to
33:37
Speaker 1: do with it. I think so too. There's well, there's
33:40
Speaker 1: so there are a number of theories. One was like
33:42
Speaker 1: a meteorite that never found any evidence for that. Um uh,
33:47
Speaker 1: maybe like a superbug got them doubtful. Yeah, And so
33:51
Speaker 1: it came down to humans over hunting them, which is
33:56
Speaker 1: called the overkill hypothesis, and then climate change hypothesis this
34:00
Speaker 1: and I think of those two, if I had to choose,
34:03
Speaker 1: I'm with you. I think the climate change is what
34:05
Speaker 1: got them. I think it's a little bit of both.
34:07
Speaker 1: I think ultimately it is too. But I think humans
34:10
Speaker 1: finished off something that was a process that was already inevitable. Yeah,
34:15
Speaker 1: like here, here's what happens. Here's a bad thing. If
34:18
Speaker 1: you're a mammal or any animal. It's a bad, bad
34:21
Speaker 1: mammoth day. If you're if you're ecosystem is shrinking and
34:27
Speaker 1: your available food sources shrinking, and you continue to move
34:31
Speaker 1: where that is, you become isolated and your area is
34:36
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller, and that eventually is super bad news.
34:40
Speaker 1: What you want if you're a wide ranging mammal like
34:42
Speaker 1: that is especially a big one that needs like four
34:44
Speaker 1: pounds of food today. Yeah, you want to be able
34:46
Speaker 1: to travel a long way to get as much food
34:49
Speaker 1: as you can because you're eating twentys a day. But
34:52
Speaker 1: if your habitat is shrinking, Uh, yeah, that's what I meant. Habitat,
34:56
Speaker 1: not ecosystem. That works. Yeah, it definitely works. Um. So
35:01
Speaker 1: the climate climate change melted those glaciers, sea levels rose,
35:05
Speaker 1: and then the land shrank, came cover with water yea,
35:08
Speaker 1: and the wooly mamples like looking so good. Well, plus
35:11
Speaker 1: not only that, with the changing climate and the warming
35:14
Speaker 1: of the earth or the climate, I should say, um,
35:18
Speaker 1: their their food supply, not just the amount of food,
35:22
Speaker 1: but the type of food available diminished. Like I said,
35:26
Speaker 1: you couldn't take them and put them on the Siberian
35:28
Speaker 1: step Today. It's different plants that are there. They weren't
35:31
Speaker 1: necessarily adapted to eat those things. You need certain enzymes
35:35
Speaker 1: to break down certain types of sugars and stuff like
35:37
Speaker 1: that to gain energy from it. And as their food changed,
35:41
Speaker 1: they got to be in big trouble. Um. That's the
35:44
Speaker 1: climate change hypothesis. The overkill hypothesis says that somewhere around
35:50
Speaker 1: twelve to thirteen thousand years ago, humans showed up in
35:52
Speaker 1: North America, and right about the same time, within a
35:55
Speaker 1: thousand years, there were no more wooly mammoths, and not
35:59
Speaker 1: just wooly amos. There's something called the um North American
36:03
Speaker 1: mega fawn extinction where mammals I think ninety genera, so
36:11
Speaker 1: not even species, but genera, the next level up in classification.
36:15
Speaker 1: A lot of animals, ninety of them weighing over UM
36:19
Speaker 1: I think ninety pounds. UM just all died off around
36:25
Speaker 1: the same time we covered this. Yeah, surely or like
36:31
Speaker 1: the Clovis one, maybe UM And a lot of people say, well,
36:35
Speaker 1: clearly it was humans, and it makes a lot of sense.
36:39
Speaker 1: It has some legs it's humans. A lot of people
36:42
Speaker 1: do think humans did show up around that time in
36:45
Speaker 1: North America. UM. The fact that it happens so quickly,
36:49
Speaker 1: and then the point that I think about the overkill
36:51
Speaker 1: hypothesis that really drives it home to me, although I'm
36:54
Speaker 1: more on the climate change fand wagon UM, is that
36:59
Speaker 1: these North America can mammoths would not have co evolved
37:03
Speaker 1: with humans like African ones did. So the African ones survived,
37:08
Speaker 1: the elephants down there, they survived because they covolved with
37:12
Speaker 1: humans and came to understand that humans are dangerous. The
37:15
Speaker 1: ones here in North America wouldn't have been innately afraid
37:19
Speaker 1: of humans. You've seen them as dangerous, and so it
37:21
Speaker 1: could have been easy pickens for humans. The big problem
37:25
Speaker 1: is is there's not that much evidence of humans mass
37:29
Speaker 1: hunting these things, well maybe not maths hunting. They have
37:32
Speaker 1: found um. They have found like these spears and things
37:37
Speaker 1: in mammoth bones the Clovis point, which is what we
37:40
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier. And we do know that they
37:43
Speaker 1: use their fur and they like to use their irene,
37:46
Speaker 1: they like to eat them. But the problem with that
37:48
Speaker 1: is that UM mammoth would have fed a lot of people,
37:53
Speaker 1: especially in that cold weather. You know, this natural preservation
37:56
Speaker 1: going on, so they could have lived and used that
37:59
Speaker 1: that but like a single adult or mammoth for a
38:04
Speaker 1: long time, which means they're not going to be hunting
38:07
Speaker 1: like five of them a day. Uh. And there's also
38:11
Speaker 1: evidence that they were revered somewhat by their cave art.
38:14
Speaker 1: So there are people who think that maybe it was
38:16
Speaker 1: like the buffalo with the uh Native Americans. Maybe they
38:20
Speaker 1: respected it and they managed it. Yeah, and didn't say, hey,
38:23
Speaker 1: let's kill millions of these over a span of months. Right,
38:27
Speaker 1: this is a very euro American mentality. I mean, that's
38:31
Speaker 1: where the buffalo almost went extinct, was when euro Americans
38:36
Speaker 1: came over and said, let's start shooting. That's that doesn't
38:39
Speaker 1: mean that that's what Native Americans did. And Plus also
38:43
Speaker 1: there were plenty of mammoths that when extinct. The mammoth
38:47
Speaker 1: species in the steps and in Europe when extinct two
38:51
Speaker 1: and there are humans over there for a long time,
38:55
Speaker 1: so it's not like the humans suddenly arrived everywhere. But
38:59
Speaker 1: yet the amoths died out at about the same time
39:02
Speaker 1: throughout the world. Yeah. Plus, mostly people hunted smaller game,
39:08
Speaker 1: small the medium game back then like dogs maybe, but uh,
39:13
Speaker 1: you know, a mammoth like what it was probably an
39:16
Speaker 1: intimidating kill first of all. Uh, and you know what
39:19
Speaker 1: do we do with all that stuff? So I mean
39:23
Speaker 1: it's it's like we were saying, it is a mystery
39:25
Speaker 1: still exactly what happened to him. I again my bets
39:28
Speaker 1: on climate change. But obviously humans did kill or at
39:33
Speaker 1: least butcher mammoths, But I don't think they killed them
39:37
Speaker 1: out of existence, so I agree, uh. And then that
39:41
Speaker 1: that leads us to that last point though about bringing
39:44
Speaker 1: them back. Good idea, bad idea. I mean, it's always
39:48
Speaker 1: a bad idea, isn't it. I think so. But you
39:51
Speaker 1: can also makes but do they I mean that's a
39:54
Speaker 1: pretty fatalistic view. Like you can also make the case
39:57
Speaker 1: that if you believe that humans into them to extinction,
40:01
Speaker 1: well then maybe it's our moral obligation to bring them
40:04
Speaker 1: back if we can. And that's the view I think of. Remember, um,
40:08
Speaker 1: the ten thousand Clock, ten thousand year clock episode. We
40:11
Speaker 1: did so the Long Now Foundation, Um, they're big into that,
40:16
Speaker 1: the people who made the ten thousand year clock, they're
40:18
Speaker 1: big in the de extinction movement to bringing things back
40:23
Speaker 1: and there's two ways you can do it. You can
40:24
Speaker 1: take a you can take as much viable DNA from
40:30
Speaker 1: a wooly mammoth as you can get your hands on
40:32
Speaker 1: and insert it into an Asian elephant DNA treatment. Yeah,
40:37
Speaker 1: and then make a hybrid, and then over time you
40:39
Speaker 1: breed out the Asian elephant stuff through a breeding program
40:43
Speaker 1: until you have a pure wooly mammoth. And then the
40:46
Speaker 1: other one is to take a the nucleus of a
40:51
Speaker 1: wooly mammoth cell and then plant it into an embryo. Sorry, yeah,
40:56
Speaker 1: you're right, and then you've just cloned to wooly mammoth.
41:00
Speaker 1: After it just states in a in a poor elephant,
41:04
Speaker 1: it's like, what what are you guys doing? I wonder
41:06
Speaker 1: if the elephant when it was born would be like
41:08
Speaker 1: whoa right, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, this is uh,
41:12
Speaker 1: this is a wooly man with you guys realized Rosemary's baby. Yeah,
41:16
Speaker 1: so they Um. I think there's groups working on both
41:20
Speaker 1: of those. And the ethics are questionable because I mean, like,
41:29
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's gonna sound preposterous to some people, but
41:32
Speaker 1: what about that elephant mom, Like, you know, is she
41:35
Speaker 1: gonna care for this baby. How's it going to affect her?
41:37
Speaker 1: How will it affect the baby? Um, it's just a
41:41
Speaker 1: it raises a lot of questions. And plus also everyone
41:45
Speaker 1: is pretty much in agreement that there's no way this
41:47
Speaker 1: thing could ever live in the wild, so to living
41:51
Speaker 1: captivity to charge people money to come see him. So yeah,
41:56
Speaker 1: I agree with you. No I'll eat them. But so
42:00
Speaker 1: we teased about the Mastodon earlier. Um, and you found
42:04
Speaker 1: this was a mental flass thing, right, the difference between
42:07
Speaker 1: a mammoth and the Mastodon because they coexisted here in
42:10
Speaker 1: the US. The Mammoth is not a great metal band,
42:14
Speaker 1: first of all, like Atlanta's own Mastodon, who, by the way,
42:19
Speaker 1: our old friend Chris, bass player in my band, he
42:25
Speaker 1: was at his one of his kids, or not one
42:27
Speaker 1: of his kids. You always want a kid his kids
42:28
Speaker 1: soccer game, and the lead guy from Mastodon was right there.
42:32
Speaker 1: His kid is on the same soccer team, the one
42:34
Speaker 1: with the face and neck tattoos. Yeah, that guy, that's awesome.
42:38
Speaker 1: He was like, I know who you are. By the way,
42:40
Speaker 1: fans like, yeah, let's talk soccer? Did they? Yeah? Nice? Anyway,
42:47
Speaker 1: They're just like normal people. Sure they have kids that
42:50
Speaker 1: play soccer, even though he's a metal god. Hm. But
42:54
Speaker 1: what does that have to do with the wooly mammoth?
42:56
Speaker 1: Not much? Uh. Their teeth is where you can all
43:00
Speaker 1: the big diff that's uh yeah, is that the only
43:02
Speaker 1: way these days? It's pretty clear that that's the only
43:06
Speaker 1: way to tell. Well, the hair was a little different
43:08
Speaker 1: and they don't have the high sloping back, and then
43:11
Speaker 1: tusks are a little straighter. They look a lot more
43:13
Speaker 1: like elephants than a mammoth does, because a mammoth looks
43:17
Speaker 1: elephant time, but it looks like especially when you put
43:20
Speaker 1: it next to an elephant or a mastodon, it looks
43:22
Speaker 1: like a totally different animal. Agreed. But the teeth is
43:25
Speaker 1: the giveaway. The the elephant molars, I'm sorry. The mammoth
43:31
Speaker 1: has elephant like molars and they are like cheese graters
43:35
Speaker 1: or like the sole of like a running shoe. Sure,
43:39
Speaker 1: it's used to just grind through some some leaves, grasses, lovely.
43:45
Speaker 1: The mastodon Actually the word means nipple tooth or boob tooth,
43:49
Speaker 1: which is a bit of that was a lot of
43:51
Speaker 1: fun on the playground, right. It's because they have like
43:57
Speaker 1: um conical bumps on their molars. That reminded this anatomist
44:04
Speaker 1: from the I think the early nineteenth century, George Cuvier.
44:08
Speaker 1: He said, well, these bumps look like breasts, so we're
44:11
Speaker 1: gonna name him breast tooth. And also, I've been out
44:14
Speaker 1: alone with my journal for far too long. Help, Yeah,
44:21
Speaker 1: you got anything else? When there's something about Thomas Jefferson,
44:25
Speaker 1: he was into the mastodons. They were actually the mastodon,
44:29
Speaker 1: the people he was convinced that there was a mammoth
44:35
Speaker 1: still alive out west. Remember Lewis and Clark episode. That
44:38
Speaker 1: was one of the reasons Lewis and Clark went out
44:40
Speaker 1: west was to look for mammothing because he was just
44:43
Speaker 1: convinced they were out there and he thought they were
44:44
Speaker 1: meat eaters. Though he did, I think he was part
44:47
Speaker 1: of that train. Ben Franklin was like, I think you
44:50
Speaker 1: could probably also eat branches and stuff, which is went
44:52
Speaker 1: mastodons eight. But the massdon became like the earliest symbol
44:56
Speaker 1: of America, an American like, ah, let's mess stuff up,
45:02
Speaker 1: let's let's kick some butt that it came from the mastodon.
45:06
Speaker 1: And the mastodon. Also, this is like a hundred years
45:09
Speaker 1: before they were finding um mammoths um. They it proved
45:17
Speaker 1: for the first time the idea of extinction. Before that,
45:20
Speaker 1: everybody's like, you're the Earth was created six thousand years ago.
45:25
Speaker 1: Everything was in the Garden of Eden. There was a flood,
45:28
Speaker 1: so we lost some things, but everything else is exactly
45:31
Speaker 1: the way it's supposed to be. And the masted on
45:34
Speaker 1: teeth that they were finding in Eventually the bones proved
45:37
Speaker 1: that there were things that had lived before that. We're
45:40
Speaker 1: not alive any longer, and extinction became a scientific thought. Amazing.
45:46
Speaker 1: That's a nice little cherry on top. Do we finish strong?
45:50
Speaker 1: We did, didn't we? And by we I mean you us,
45:53
Speaker 1: Chuck us Uh. If you want to know more about mammoths,
45:56
Speaker 1: you should type that word in the search bar at
45:58
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And since I said search,
46:01
Speaker 1: parts the time for listening to mail. Hey guys, this
46:05
Speaker 1: is my first time emailing because I was waiting for
46:07
Speaker 1: an opportunity 'll tell you some stuff you should know.
46:11
Speaker 1: I finally came today in the form of book talk
46:13
Speaker 1: with Josh and Chuck. Remember that, Yeah, in the Moonwalk episode,
46:17
Speaker 1: I think so, and uh, you said that I had
46:19
Speaker 1: said previously I didn't give a book much and I
46:21
Speaker 1: was like, I don't think I said that. Turns out
46:22
Speaker 1: I did say that. I just don't remember because I'd
46:25
Speaker 1: rarely read books that I have to put down, right,
46:29
Speaker 1: I want to say. Also one other thing, I'm sorry
46:31
Speaker 1: the guy who wrote Head full of Ghosts, Paul Tremblay.
46:34
Speaker 1: I believe um. Somebody tweeted to him and said, hey,
46:37
Speaker 1: you gotta mention in this episode, and I guess he
46:39
Speaker 1: went and listened. He was like, that was great, and no,
46:41
Speaker 1: I know how to moonwalk. And then he tweeted some
46:44
Speaker 1: time later he's like, Okay, it's been eight hours and
46:46
Speaker 1: I still have not moonwalking. Well, and I guess they're
46:49
Speaker 1: making a movie out of his his book with uh
46:53
Speaker 1: Robert Downey Jr. Oh wow, it's gonna be big. Well.
46:56
Speaker 1: I wonder if that was because of us. Probably they
46:59
Speaker 1: were like, we're kind on the fence. And then they
47:00
Speaker 1: heard our Moonwalk episode and they green lighted it. Wow.
47:04
Speaker 1: Uh so, guys, I was excited to hear you rambling
47:07
Speaker 1: about books, something I love dearly in A nice change
47:09
Speaker 1: of base for movie talk with Josh and Chuck. Not
47:13
Speaker 1: that I don't love movie talk or booze talk with
47:15
Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck. Yeah, those are the only three things
47:17
Speaker 1: we talked about. You talked about how long each give
47:20
Speaker 1: a book before you give up on it. Did you
47:22
Speaker 1: know there's a rule for that, Nancy Pearl's rule of fifty.
47:26
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of this? She says, I assume
47:30
Speaker 1: Nancy as a woman. Uh, if you're younger than fifty,
47:34
Speaker 1: you should read fifty pages before deciding to give up.
47:37
Speaker 1: And for every year older than fifty that you are
47:40
Speaker 1: subtract one page, soft one, forty nine pages, and so on.
47:44
Speaker 1: At one hundred. You judge a book by its cover. Literally,
47:50
Speaker 1: how about that? Who's this Nancy from Heart? Nancy Wilson? Nope,
47:55
Speaker 1: I'm going to see Heart soon though, Like, are they
47:58
Speaker 1: opening for somebody or that? Are the headlining? Their Cheap
48:01
Speaker 1: Trick is opening in Joan Jett? Are opening for Heart?
48:03
Speaker 1: Awesome triple bill? Yeah, that's a heck of a bill. Yeah,
48:06
Speaker 1: I can't wait. Um, So Nancy Pearl says, yeah, fifty
48:11
Speaker 1: and then subtractive page because obviously life is getting short.
48:14
Speaker 1: You don't have enough time to waste time. So by
48:17
Speaker 1: the time you're a hundred, you just look at it
48:19
Speaker 1: and go now. And you could keel over just looking
48:21
Speaker 1: at a book. You could Also, if you haven't heard
48:24
Speaker 1: of Nancy Pearl, she's great. She's probably the most famous librarian. Okay,
48:29
Speaker 1: there you go. I love that. At least, Well, is
48:33
Speaker 1: there more than one famous librarian. There's gotta be If
48:38
Speaker 1: she's the most famous, didn't have to be other famous ones.
48:42
Speaker 1: John Dewey, inventor of the Dewey decimal system. That's right,
48:45
Speaker 1: she says. At least she's up there, And she even
48:47
Speaker 1: has her own action figure librarian action figure. I just
48:52
Speaker 1: got my masters in library science last year or so.
48:54
Speaker 1: I'm a Nancy Pearl fan. Multiple professors of mine have
48:57
Speaker 1: had the action figure in their offices. I love this story.
49:01
Speaker 1: Chris Palette, he wanted to become a librarian. Oh yeah,
49:04
Speaker 1: he's He deserves an accent figure too. Oh I bet he's.
49:07
Speaker 1: He's probably uh, he's probably got a Nancy Pearl one,
49:10
Speaker 1: former host of tex Stuff and early host of co
49:13
Speaker 1: host of Stuff. You should know before I snuffed him out, right,
49:19
Speaker 1: I just I didn't like kill him. I just chloroformed
49:22
Speaker 1: him and he woke up in a library. It was like,
49:24
Speaker 1: I guess I'll get a degree. Yeah, that's exactly how
49:26
Speaker 1: I want. Anyway, I hope this email wasn't too long.
49:29
Speaker 1: I thought you'd like to know about the Rule of fifty.
49:32
Speaker 1: All the best, Erica in Boston, p s ce you
49:35
Speaker 1: in Boston and October right. Thanks a lot. We're doing
49:38
Speaker 1: a show there sure are on your sober that the
49:42
Speaker 1: Wilberth Theater. Yep, you can still get tickets at s
49:45
Speaker 1: y s K Live dot com. BAM. Thanks for the
49:47
Speaker 1: set up, Erica. If you want to set us up
49:50
Speaker 1: to plug our shows, we'd love that. You can tweet
49:53
Speaker 1: to us at s y s K Podcast. You can
49:55
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.
49:57
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast to
49:59
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
50:02
Speaker 1: at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
50:04
Speaker 1: dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
50:12
Speaker 1: Is it how Stuff Works dot com. M