Bloody Weird

lizards to a fish whose blood runs ice cold. Discover this and more as we answer the age old question is ghost Blood a good band name or is it already taken? Joining me today to cover blood are the weirdos behind Dog, Sean Baby and Rubert Brockway. Welcome. I studied bud light and volleyball. I studied blood blood. If you're going to be great, sweet blood blood blood blood blood, blood, blood blood is that you know? They did they sing that song at Vampire College? Oh yeah, I mean all

the time. I went there, clearly and uh did not graduate washed out of that like I do just everything. If being a gifted kid really screwed me, I thought I could coast through Blood College. But it's tough, and they do, Greg, they do. Greg stands it's where they drink blood from some guy named Greg. I like that one. That's cute. I love it when jokes cute and say say, I like that one. That's cute. Speaking you're cute. I

made something for you. I did this once. Uh in rehearsal it did not go well, so we might want to just cut all this. But here we go. Can you hear that? Okay, yes, I'm playing. I'm playing the piano. It worries me Brockway, Katie and the and it's me five out of five at red my feet discussing blood

field chimpanzees. I look at chimps that way. This is that old Joni Mitchell's song from the movie Coda My I've had on We've been on Katie's show three times now, learned about giant bears and maybe cow it's the Klowaka jokes that I recall. We really don't know creature. Uh, the features. I was waiting. I was waiting. I knew that was alright, alright, that was it? Can I play

that without getting a sued into oblivion? I got it from like a deep cut YouTube karaoke track, So maybe I tried to find the one with the fewest number of views, but that might be it might be the most litigious of them. Actually, best best case scenario, you could cut the music and just have Sean going acapella on that and this heartbreaking solo melody for five minutes. Well, this has been a great use of the first the

first ten minutes of the podcast. Thanks. I gave that a four percent chance of you keeping but and here we are. That's accurate. Something like that, something like that pops into your head at four am. It's like, you know what, tomorrow, I'm gonna sing this on the podcast. Yeah, No, that's I keep keep rolling with those instincts. It's gonna it's it's really gonna far in this business. Kid. We're anyway. Back to blood, Yeah, back to blood. So today we're

all about blood. Blood is great. We need it for being alive generally. And the cool thing about blood is that most living organisms have some version of it. Most animals have blood, and the blood they have. We've all met Greg, we've all tasted Greg, we've all done a Greg stand and we're not proud of it. And blood is well you drained Greg in seventy three seconds. Rep. Greg, Sweet baby, sweet Angel. But the so yes, the blood of other animals can be very different from our own.

Take the horseshoe crab please. The Atlantic horseshoe crab is four fifty million years old, I mean as a species. Uh. And their blood is this bright blue color. It is not red. It is blue. Is that the picture I'm looking at? It looks refreshing, It does, doesn't It looks kind of like a blueberry smoothie. Yeah. I can taste that. It would be like kind of a blue raspberry fizz kind Yeah. Yeah. So is this like a horseshoe crab milking assembly line? Yes, it is. That's disgusting. It is.

Feel like there should be some kind of a law against that. This is illegal what they're doing. Right, No, but there should. We'll actually get more into the morality of that in a little bit. But your instincts that this seems bad is actually correct. Good good instincts to spot that something is wrong with the blood drinking assembly. Okay, it's a bunch of monsters and there's bright blue blood coming out of their buttholes. Now, I my instinct say,

wholes off about this? Soft? No, a very soft no. I can get talked into it. I'm no city slicker. But when I hear the word blood factory, something seems liky about that. So yes, Horse Atlantic horseshoe crabs are invertebrates, and they are a species that are over four hundred and fifty million years old, older than the dinosaurs, truly

ancient creatures. Individually, they only live to be up to around forty years old, which I still think is impressive for Yeah, exactly, and visually they really do look like some kind of ancient creature. They don't really look like crabs. They are not. They aren't. In fact, crabs are not all that closely related to them. They're much more closely related to spiders and scorpions, and they are if you've never seen a horseshoe crab, they're basically like a dome

with a tail and legs and gross rat tail. Yeah, yes, they deserve the butt. Whole blood factory maybe evolved from like an empty shoe and a rat tail, you know what I mean? Like, maybe do something, some wings, some horns, I don't care, try out something, maybe just a face of any kind. This is what self confidence looks like, Sean. This is they discovered themselves. If it ain't broke don't

evolve it. You're gonna shame these horseshoe crabs as if they're supposed to go on Instagram and do what everyone else is doing. They've got their own style, and that style is dome, legs and tail. So there's something respectable about that. They're just doing their things for them. Yeah, so they're there's kind of like muddy gray color um. On one side, of course, they look sort of like a weird sort of a rigid dome with the tail.

On the other side, you see all their legs. So that tail that they have is not really a tale. It's called a tellson, which is actually, yeah, tellson. It's like if you've seen a shrimp before, Have you guys seen a shrimp before? Ever seen a shrimp? Never heard about these little guys? How can you have a jumbo shrimp? Tell me to explain that to me. Why don't you drive on the parkway of a park on the driveway watermelon smash? Yeah, exactly. So the tail of a shrimp,

that little fan thing that's actually the shrimps tellson. Whereas for the horseshoe crab, it is this long and pointy thing. So they use this tellson both for swimming and foreseeing. They have a cluster of photo receptors on their tail, which you know. Uh, so they sort of have a face. It's just spread out across the telson. It's spread out across the whole body. Because they have nine eyes. Not only do they have that, they have a not only

do they have to disagree with that decision. You guys are coming around way too fast on the side of blood factory. I'm still with blood factory. I just would like that to know that I disagree with having nine eyes and sprawled a face, sprawled across a tail. I think that's disagreement, is noted um put it. We'll put a pin in that, see if we can, you know, get a scrum, get a meet and going about that. But yeah, so they have nine eyes. They have a pair of compound eyes. They have a pair of small

lateral eyes right behind the compound eyes. They have two pairs of eyes near the front of the crab, and they have one single eye in the middle. Uh. And that there's a middle pair of eyes that can detect UV light. But otherwise they have pretty poor vision. Uh. Even with all of these eyes, they have good Yeah, they have these large rudimentary rods and cones. I mean, remember these are four hundred and fifty million years old.

Their eyes are not gonna be like the new the iPhone six there, you know, they don't have the updated technology. Nine none of them worked. Let me just maybe the tent will do it. These are like the Nokia of invertebrates. You know, they're they're built to last four fifty million years. But if you try to take an image with it, it's gonna, you know, come out like with one pixel, you look like a guar cod piece. You've got nine eyes and none of them work. I'm coming around on

the blood you know what. I'm coming around on the blood factory, damn it. So they're the eyes are really more optimized towards being able to see things in low light than being able to have a crystal clear clarity vision. I have a question is worth looking at when you're a horseshoe crab, Like, is there a lot of decisions

you make based on things you see? Are they're like, oh, look there's some some seafloor gunk over there that's more tasty than the seafloor gunk this direction, right, No, not really, it's just a vague danger acquire food and mate. That's it. Really, it's been working for a long time, to work for a long time. Yeah. So if you flip over a horseshoe crab, you you weird o you They have eight legs underneath there they have two petal helps just like spiders do those like little arms, and they have a

pair of chilis arrae. Again very spider like, because these are more closely related to spiders than they are to say, like a crab. And speaking of being spider like, they have book lungs on their underside, which if you if you know about spiders, you know that spiders also have book lungs. But whereas the spider's book lungs can breathe air,

the horseshoe crabs book lungs breathe underwater. And the reason these are called book lungs is they are kind of like flap like structures that they they kind of these thin membranes which are sort of the quote unc quote pages on which gas exchange occurs. So you know, so this is very much like a guar cod piece. I've got the pedopalps yells the gas exchange. Eight legs hold the classics. Yes, Guar as everyone everyone knows Gar, the band that has the you know, and cod pieces and

cod pieces exactly everybody. More of their albums were called Blood Factory and Loves. All of my references referenced Gallagher and Gar. I think those are the kids love both those things. Yeah, yeah, I mean, if we want to, if we want to keep it up to date for the kids these days. I guess it looks like an elden Ring cod piece. That's true, it does look like an elder Ring cod piece. I think I had that hat for I feel so bad for the kids these days that your version of Guar is elden Ring. So yeah.

The idea is that spiders and scorpions, who also have book lungs, may have may have evolved from the book gills of the horseshoe crab. Um so I think I said earlier that horseshoe crabs have book lungs, that they have book gills. I'm sorry, but the Yeah, the book lungs are very similar, but they're actually found internally in spiders and scorpions, whereas with the horseshoe crabs, their book gills are just kind of like outside of them just just like on on their underside, as if they're holding

a little accordion, but that accordion breathes for them. It seems like another bad decision. I'm just gonna say, like for something that's what four million years old, I feel like there are a few times you could have reconsidered holding your lungs outside in the air, being like, hey, hear me out, hear me out. They can also use them as legs, and they can use them to help them swim, So it'd be kind of like if we could like run with our lungs, like sticking our lungs

out of our bodies, you know, kind of running on them. No. Yes, if you knew someone who had eight legs and they pulled their lungs out so they would have ten legs, you'd probably say, buddy, I take it easy. I think you don't need to do whatever problem you're trying to fix with more legs. You could have done it with eight. I just don't think more legs solution. Let's explore other avenues. It's the same thing. Honestly, it's the same thing with

the eyes. Man. You've got this problem over and over again. It is very much like whoa, this is neat. We got some legs. Let's make some more legs. Oh an eyeball, this is great. Maybe some more eyeballs though, and and

the lungs are okay, but maybe back to legs again. Yeah, well, actually that's that's a good point because those skills, the book gills were thought to originally have been legs and then turned into into the gills, like from legs to using them to breathe legs, and then was like, wait, I need to breathe. I screwed that up. I was going to suggest that maybe the horse, you crab ladies like a guy with lung legs, and so they just sort of selectively bred for that. Yeah, that's my theory.

I'm not again, I did not major and evolutionary biology. It's just it's just a theory. I think you should consider both sides. Yeah, I mean, you know, like you're at the gym and you see someone breathing with their legs, is that it's got to do something. I guess for some people it's not for me, but I I you know, I could see being into that, right, So you guys keep like it's in my Google search a little bit. No, No, shame in that. So I know it's blood. Let's talk

about it's blood. It is blue blood, which is striking beautiful. But why is it blue? I mean, we have to in part understand why our blood is red. Horseshoe crab blood is blue because it contains a lot of copper. The copper atom containing protein hemocyanin is present. Instead of the hemoglobin found in human and other vertebrate blood. Our blood has iron atoms in them instead of copper, which is why our blood is red when oxygenated. You know how iron when it rusts, it turns red rusty blood

that I do know. One other thing about horseshoe crab blood is it it's like supercoagulating. Is that the proper term? Well? Yeah, So what's interesting is that the blue blood has a meebo sites, which is a blood cell which clots when it comes into contact with an indo TX. And so an indotoxin is found in certain bacteria's outer membranes, uh, and it can cause a lot of problems for you

if it gets into your blood. And so the horseshoe crab has this protective technique of forming these very quick blood clots in response to indo toxins, which protects it from bacterial infections inside its bloodstream. So what this means is you gotta you gotta keep your blood factory super sterile or your end up making like a like a jello factory. I mean, that's just a good tip for

any blood factory, any and all blood factories. I mean general life tents are encouraged, eye wear protective eyewear, don't wear sandals, and you know, do not drink the blood jello. So correct vampire screening processes. Right, you must betray God, yes, exactly in your mission statement, Like you can't even get the business loan unless you tell the bank I will betray God. So this is like, this is like a medical facility like you said cover and I'm like, oh, okay,

this is an iPhone factory. This is like how we make wires. No, no, it's a million year old monsters and we bleed them until they give us iPhones. Relatively inefficient use of the horseshoe crab. What they're actually used for, like like you said, is in a medical context. So the fact that it clots in the presence of indotoxin makes it extremely useful because catching Indotoxins in vaccines or medical devices can mean the difference between life and death.

Like if you have, say you're like replacing a knee cap, but it's covered in bacteria, you could get sepsis and that can be fatal. But if you dunk the replacement knee cap in some horseshoe crab blood and and then it clots, then you know that it is covered in I mean, that's not how they do it. I don't think they just like dunk it, right, They just have like a hoop that squeeze it like a sponge over. I mean, it's always juice is always better fresh, right,

they got one of those. That's why you always bring a horseshoe crab with you to the doctor. Yea, exactly, that's why they why that's why your doctor has rubbed a horseshoe crab on you. Yeah. No. So so you can use the amba site from the horseshoe crab blood to test batches of vaccines to make sure that they don't have any indotoxins, which means that they are bacteria

free and that they would be safe. And so this is extremely important for medicine to make sure that we can vaccinate people without you know, having an impurity in the vaccine that could hurt people. But there is a cost to this, and that is, of course having blood factories that use bunch of right exactly, spitting in the eye of the ancient god. Surely the odd that they worship, being four million years old will return one day and we'll see this and there will be a reckoning, yeah, exactly,

just like they're gonna be so disappointed. They're probably so proud of that thing. They're like, dude, I added nine eyes, ten legs. Two of them are kind of lungs. Oh, they're gonna love this thing. And then they see this blood factory. You didn't like the tail with eye gou on its butt. It made it bright blue, so you would leave the blood alone. Specifically, that was a warning color.

Blue is God's no no color. Yeah. So, pharmaceutical companies round up around five hundred thousand horseshoe crabs a year, milk them of their blood, and then return them to the ocean, which sounds sustainable, but it's not. You can't just bleed an animal for bottles of their blood, chuck them back in the ocean and expect them to be Okay, hell you can't, says spy. There it brings some mind them just whipping them like skipping stones out into the ocean.

You're free body, just this pale, wheezing horseshoe crab, all motion, just sending blue blood like a sprinkler out of it the whole time. Please kill me, You're free, go free, Willie, whipping it like some ultimate just going for a distance. Look upon what we've done to you with nine eyes. Tell the others that the humans are the ones in charge. Yeah,

so this is a problem. The many of these quote unquote milked horseshoe crabs, which are in fact blood horseshoe crabs, will die or not successfully mate, because again, you can't just like drain an animal of its blood and expect it to be cool. We learned that from Greg. We did learn that it was pretty cool ripping peace. Gregg, You're too good for this world, and your blood was delicious. So there is a solution to this, because we do

need that those amibo sites. We need that detection to be able to make sure our vaccines and medical devices are safe and in fact, a horseshoe blood artificial arts Jesus A horseshoe blood. Artificial alternative has been invented and

is in use in Europe, so UH. The problem, however, in the US, is that the USP, which is the US Pharmacopeia, which is a US based publications guide company that sets industry standards for pharmaceuticals UH, decided that the artificial version is too untested and does not categorize it as an alternative to horseshoe crab blood, and so pharmaceutical companies do not want to use the artificial alternative instead. So I bet if you follow the money, turns out

it's probably just cheaper. Yeah, that's yeah, So in the long run, it probably wouldn't be right, Like this is sort of the This is like the curve of technology. Like when you have a new technology, the initial startup costs of it is, uh, it's usually more costly. And I don't I don't want to make any claims here because I don't know enough about medicine. I'm I'm just a simple country gallon, not a horseshoe crab doctor. I'm just a humble country podcast. I'm not some kind of

big blood factory tycoon. But to me, as though, you shouldn't milk blood out of horseshoe crabs. That's just common sense. Yeah, So the the I don't know whether like there that when they're saying that that the artificial version is not tested enough, like they could have a point. I don't know, But then we should just test it some more because this is clearly not sustainable, like you know, this big crab money, This is big crab lobbing, keeping things corrupt.

They like the old ways here, So I would test it. I would jam it up into a milked horseshoe crab, asked him how he's feeling is that, I'm not sure it's ethical, but I think that would be my first idea. Your you should send your resume into the blood factory, because that's the kind of crabb kind of initiative they like. So yeah, I think that, you know, I agree, I think that, like the monitor, like, we just need to

make the monetary incentives. They're like, look, you have to you have to research this artificial alternative because we cannot just keep bleeding literally bleeding the horseshoe crabs dry until they all die. Like first of all, I mean, I think they're rat even though they've got those extra butt eyes, and like also, if we run out of them, then we can't do this thing anyway, Like we can't test medicine anyway, So we have to switch to something before

we just kill all the horseshoe crabs. You know what it is for me, it's it's the straps in this picture. There's this picture, this blood factory assembly line, and they're all strapped in with those big black rubber torture straps. Something. I just if you ever need like an indicator that this isn't kosher, it's when you need to like strapple another living thing with those big black rubber jack Ryan

torture straps. Yeah, I got a bunch of those. Inline You've got to stop and think, huh Now, I've never seen this beach chill. I've never strapped something. And the lab tech like wearing leather with the whip, and you know that's a little excessive. There's something about like it's not like they're being bled into like fancy vets. It like looks like a bunch of like two Leader bottles they've taken that it looks delicious. That's why it looks

like Fanta. Just this is how Fantas made everybody. Fanta' is the Brazilian word for crab tragedy. I should kind of look like like delicious crab claws, like when you get the shell taken off just right, Like can you eat a horseshoe crab? I don't think, really, are they good? I have no idea. I don't eat shell fish in general because I don't trust. It's just they're shifting. I don't like them. It sounds like, uh, they're kind of rubbery. Maybe I don't know. They don't look like they're good

super taste, don't look like a good crab. You don't make it four or fifty million years. They do come with their own bull sort of. That's fun. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah you get to keep it afterwards, right, you make some new pads out of it. These poor freaking crabs, Like first we will bleed you at the blood factory, and then we will plan to eat you as a soup in your own body bowl. And let's clear, it's not even because you're good. If you're not even tasty,

you're just here. Ah, we got we gotta protect the horseshoe crabs. But yeah, their populations are declining. That is not good we gotta, we gotta find a solution so we can live with the horseshoe crabs in harmony. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for saying all those terrible things about horseshoe crabs. Apology, except they're filthy and disgusting, and now I find out we have them to thank for spiders, which is not a positive. Well common ancestor, but yeah, but blame blame

us home, blame I blame them for spiders. I find them pretty disgusting. But I don't think blood factory disgusting. I don't want to hang out like this Saturday. I don't want to hang out with a bunch of horseshoe crabs. But maybe maybe I guess I'm opposed to like factory line extinction. Yeah, like maybe that's a bit for Like if I met a guy and he says, and I said,

what do you do for work? And he says, oh, I make the rubber straps to strap down horse and crabs so we can bleed him drying the blood factor, I consider punching him in the face for you, Katie, for you, Okay, That's what That's what Greg did, and we were all cool with that. This is a This is a strong I like at this strong campaign like that you could make a button out of Like. I guess maybe I'm against the blood factories shrug. I'm two out of ten in favor of horshe crabs. So, guys,

I know this little green lizard fellow. You do? Who is he? He's Yeah, he's a ski skink. That's a skink. Yep, that's a new Guinea Skies skink, skink skin. I was right about the new Guinea part. Yeah. No, it's a new Guinea skink. That's right. That's a that's astonishing to me. So you know a thing. My daughter loves reptiles. We read a lot of reptile that's adorable. Love you. Yeah, your daughter taught you about the new Guinea skink. That's great. Do you know why I'm bringing up I'm being so

like freaking condescending right now. Do you know why I brought up the new Guinea skink? Well, Katie, I bet he has very silly blood, very silly. Yes, it makes a noise when you take it. It's a little slide whistle noise when you cut him. Yeah. No, So I don't know if I know why I think he has a weird like like bacteria in his blood. Okay, so they have a weird thing in their blood that should kill them, that is what you're thinking of. So New

Guinea lizard blood is a lovely bright green color. It looks like, you know, zombie blood from some kind of b movie. It is ridiculous looking. First, I wanna say that I found out most of this stuff from an article from one of my favorite science writers and young uh. He also writes my favorite science article titles like this one, which is these lizards are full of green blood that should kill them. Good good title. It is so uh. Skinks in the genus Frosinohema have green blood. So they

live only in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. One of these species is actually called the green blooded skink. Just kind of advertising that. I don't like that. That feels that feels derogatory. Green blooded skink. That's a car sword in a fantasy novel. Yeah. This it's very funny, very very funny name. Uh. The this is a slender, green, shiny lizard with green blood and organs as well, So it's basically green through and through and it is you know,

so for the horseshoe crab blood. We talked about how it's blood is blue because that is oxidized copper, which you know, like you got a penny and it oxidizes, it kind of turns blue. And our blood is red because when it's oxidizes, it is that's like iron rusting, that is red. Is it turquoise? Is this one turquoise? Does he have turquoise in his blood? No? No, so he Uh, it's strange. It has nothing to do with this.

The skink actually has hemoglobin and red blood cells just like humans do, so their blood Bible rights should be red, right, Yeah, they're oxiden transport system is iron based, just like ours. So why do they have this green blood? Well, the ants there is they actually have just get tore up and it lasts for the entire year. They are very festive. Ah yeah yeah they it's just like they drink some of that Starbucks, the green stuff, and you know it

gets right in your blood. It does, so yeah, I know, they actually have green zombie blood. So when red blood cells die, macrophages get to work. So macrophages are sort of like the pac Man of our cells. They eat dead cells. Pac Man, Pacman's They are the pac Man's of our bodies, and they eat dead cells and recycle them for parts, so they're all involved in our immune system. They will ingest dangerous intruders as well as our own dead cells to kind of break them down so we

can reuse them for scrap. So we macrophages break down a red uh, break down a dead red blood cell. They will recycle the iron. And recycling the iron actually has like a chemical byproduct called bill of Verdon, which is a green toxin. So you can actually see this when you get a bruise, Like have you ever had a kind of nasty bruise that turns sort of green? Sure? Sure, yeah, yeah. I do a lot of a lot of ill advised stunts.

Lizard I turned green, amateur stunt work. I do a lot of like stair work, yeah too, falling up stairs, Yeah, my favorite for it yet. But sometimes he just stands at the top of stairs and says terribly mean things. Do people push him? A lot of it's unrelated to stunt work. It's my my favorite stunt is a woman goes what as she falls down stairs? As that's my

sort of yeah. So yes, so that that green hue you see is actually your red blood cells that were destroyed in your stair escapade that are now being recycled for their iron. And that byproduct is the Bill of Verden. That is that green color, and that will that will kill me. That will kill me. Should get that out as soon as possible. Yes, So a high amount of

that will kill you. So it is toxic, and Bill of Verden, you don't really have to worry about it when you just get a normal bruise because it is filtered by the liver. Oh you're oh did you? Oh no, well, actually you know there is something called um green You know how there is oh shoot, come on, it's a green never well, you know how there's yellow jaundice due to the liver not functioning properly. There's actually there's green jaundice. Uh.

That is also due to the liver not functioning properly. Yeah, and yellow jaundice is actually you know how I said, like Bill of Verdon, that green stuff is the byproduct of the the iron being recycled in your blood. Um bill arubin is just a further broken down version of Bill of Verdon's So, and that bill ubin is actually yellow. So the byproduct goes from green to then yellow. That's also why sometimes when you see like your your brewis it can go from sort of a green to like

a yellow color later on. Uh. And so that's also the cause of yellow jaundice. So yes, you can't actually get green and yellow jaundice, which means your liver isn't functioning properly. U. Sometimes like babies will get it because their liver is just not like if there's an issue and it's not working fast enough. So uh, yeah, that it is. It can be bad in humans. And so the fact that the lizards are chock full of this toxic green blood byproduct is really weird. They fall down

a lot of stairs. That would be kind of cute though, like a little slinky, like a little like it's a slinky. It's a little skinky cute. So are the lizards, like how are they doing this? Uh, it's not conclusively known. We might have solved it today. Yeah, So how they're able to survive such high levels of billiard and that um green byproduct is not conclusively known. There are some theories about why they have this in their blood. Uh. So the green blood of these lizards didn't evolve from

a single common ancestor. Instead, there seems to be multiple times of this evolving in these skinks, in a case of parallel evolution, meaning there must have been some very strong ecological pressure on these lizards to pump themselves full of toxic blood. And the answer pure pressure birds, and pure pressure birds mocking them like, yeah, look at us, we can fly. It's like, oh yeah, well my blood is great. An idiot, make your blood green, stupid. Mine

was a real guest. I thought it was birds. No, well no, well no, so I figured, like a bird wouldn't want to eat you if you're poisonous, right, like you know, like when a when a bug pretends to be poisonous and the birds like, oh I don't want to eat that snake or whatever. Yeah, I mean that's not it's not a bad idea, right, But the answer I mean, like, I think the issue with that is just that is a There are other ways you can

evade birds, whereas like pumping yourself full of toxic blood. Umbrella, it's much better. Just wait, umbrella. Oh right, I see what you mean. Certain certain apps certain a right, you can docs the birds could yeah, cyberbully, right, So there are a lot of techniques you can do against birds, but what this blood may have actually evolved in response to would be malaria. So a certain species of malaria causing single celled Plasmodium is exclusively a parasite for the

green blooded lizards. And so I'm gonna I'm kind of working backwards here. Uh So, the theory is that a long time ago, the lizards were coping with pretty bad malaria, and these malaria causing parasites were so bad that it drove these lizards to toxifying their own blood to get the malaria under control over generations of natural selection. Because this green blood actually seems to neutralize the the malaria parasite.

That's that plasmodium that causes malaria, that causes malaria. Yeah, and so the fact that the reason that researchers believe this is there is actually a species of Plasmodium, this little tiny unicellular organism that is such a troublemaker and causes malaria. There's this one species that specializes on the green blooded lizards and only on them. Now, the reason that points towards the green blooded lizards actually evolving this blood to try to evade malaria counterintuitively, is that it

is evidence of an evolutionary arms race. The fact that this um parasite had to specialize for the green blood meant probably that the parasite and the lizard were trying to out maneuver each other when it came to UH to infecting the lizard, and so it is one of the only like malaria parasites that managed to out evolve the lizards toxic blood and continue to be a parasite, whereas other malaria causing parasites just couldn't deal with this

toxic blood. So UH it is it is. It didn't even work, all this work for the green blood and it still didn't get rid of the malaria. It's still worked in the UH in the sense that these lizards are still alive, and so they must have survived that evolutionary pressure, and like having one species of malaria Plasmodium is better than like a bunch of them. I suppose poison me, or poison you, poison you all poison you.

One of the biologists studying these lizards actually calls their blood green gold because it is so valuable to understands in terms of medicine and evolutionary biology. Let's just hope that pharmaceutical companies don't get any weird ideas and start doing another blood factory. Yeah, I was gonna say, I feel blood factory coming on. Seems like a blood factory. My knee caps swelling up. That must mean a blood

factory is coming into the neighborhood. Since I fell down those stairs, I can just send crocodile ized fish, crocodile I fish. Everybody get your crocodiles icy cold favorite album. We'll just stop bringing up the DARP. That is a fair comment to make you. No, I will talk about War four more time. Yeah, you probably can't stop talking bringing up war because we are going to talk about ghosts blood, ghost blood. See, that's my favorite war. That's

my ghost blood. That's my favorite war. Man, the ghost blood man. You know how you got You got Skippy and Tangerine and then you got ghost Blood and those are the members of the War Carl and Funkadelic you're thinking of. Oh yeah, there's there is a lot of crossover between those fan bases. Anyways, crocodile ice fish have invisible ghost blood. So fantastic. It is so good, right, very cool, it's so that I know, it's just so good I feel. It makes me feel happy just to

say that. In fact, I'll say it again. Crocodile ice fish. Wow, I messed that up already. Crocodile ice fish have invisible ghost blood. Come on, get it together. You an upstair face. You won't nine eyes and eight legs, a couple of weird leg lungs. Like, well, I'm crocodile. I's fish. I can't say it either, and I have ice fish. Crocodile

ice fish. Yes, So what's a crocodile ice fish? It is a family a fish of ray fin fish that live in the icy waters of the southern Ocean around Antarctica in temperatures of around twenty eight degrees fahrenheit or negative two point two degrees celsius. And typically they hang out on the ocean floor around there. So yeah, So these crocodile ice fish are around long, which is fifty cimeters or like a subway, right, sort of nice long sandwich.

They have long, crocodile like mouths, with sharp teeth, large eyes, and hilariously small bodies compared to their heads. That's true. It is really funny. They do look like bad fish drawings. Yeah, they look kind of like if you were drawing a fish on a piece of paper, but then you drew its head way too big, so you're run out of space, so you kind of just fit a little noodle body

in the corner. It's like you plugged in, uh fish that doesn't want to be into one of those AI programs that makes really messed up images, like a little wombo filters, and it tried to make just a fish that doesn't want to be. Yeah, computer's best stab at it depressed fish. Yeah, no exactly. Uh it is. It's kind of like it's a fish that is the embodiment of like, yeah, you're fine, I guess I'll I guess

i'll fish. I guess I got invisible ghost blood. I got big problems here, Yeah, I got I got ghost blood. What more do you want for me? Talk to me your own blood. They are the haunted Victorian child of Fish of the Sea. Yes, so they their jaws are disproportionately large for their bodies. Their mouth is kind of they kind of this like weird duck like mouth. They have large fan like fins on their dorsal and ventral sides.

They're kind of pale and coloration. They have kind of a modeled grayish blue or brown and white, and they will feed on krill and fish. Sometimes they'll eat fish around half their body length, which bold wild move for something with the little feeble noodle body in a giant head. So they don't eat ghosts. I didn't say that. Science. Science put on our show Deep Sea Monsters will prove this might explain why Antarctica is not haunted. That's right.

Another thing here on creature chairs. So their blood is in fact transparent. Their blood contains no hemoglobin, no red blood cells, and is pure plasma. They are the only vertebrate in the world who have no hemoglobin as fully mature adults. So it's weird. That's it. I lost something. Oh no, I just said it's weird. That's it and a sentence. Sorry. I made it sound like I was going to say something else, but no, I was just saying it is weird. Period. The podcast gotcha, it is weird.

You're a weird dude. Yeah, Edgar Edgar the Victorian ghost child of the scene. Yeah, Edgar, My blood is Edgar. My like a genius muppet designer tried to design him uppet that just had everything wrong with him. Most I accept your bet to make him uppet that no child will love. I can see your dead grandmother and I shall eat her and make her part of my ghost blood. That's so spooky. It is a public service that they eat ghosts. That's great. Who are you going to call

crocodile ice fish? Because then it eats the ghosts and doesn't know this is funny about it just eats them. This is a bold evolutionary ploy though, because as we've seen, this makes it immune to the blood factory syndrome. Right exactly. This is their way of in evading the blood factor, because the blood factors like can'ts in your blood here, don't don't tell your blood here? You want to wind up in a blood factory trying and not have blood?

That's a thinker, so right? How can they even be alive if their blood is just plasma and it doesn't have any of those red blood cells because the reason we have red blood cells? Can I be honest, I don't want to interrupt, but um, I know so little about blood that I didn't even think to question that. It just seemed just fine to me. I thought hemoglobin less blood. Okay, we'll sit down, gall around and let me tell you the story of blood. So the reason we have red blood just you know, let me tell

you a tale of blood. Um. So, yeah, we have red blood cells which we use to transport oxygen. And our red blood cells use an iron molecule. Sorry, let me retake that I know about blood. Don't worry. I know about blood. Okay. Our blood has harassed by the blood. The blood, the blood blood twitter Actually it's iron atoms, not iron molecules. But yes, so our blood has iron

atoms in them, which is wire. Blood is red. And remember we talked about those cute, adorable, perfectly designed horseshoe crabs. Their blood is blue when exposed to oxygen because the copper atoms in their blood. And what happens is our

iron atoms, or the horseshoe crabs. Copper atoms bind to oxygen and they will carry the oxygen with them in those blood cells, you know, through our bodies, you know, pump it through our heart and wind up in different parts of our bodies where it uh you know, leaves that oxygen and distributes it throughout our bodies for important body things that happen that use oxygen as a component in these chemical reactions that our cells need to be alive. And this fish says na, and this fish says, don't

eat it. Nah, it's all right, so right, so yeah, like that sounds great for you, buddy, but no, thinks I don't need it too cool to have blood. So they have plasma. So when you can actually separate human plasma from our blood, and it's a lot sometimes it's sort of more of a like pale like pinkish orange e color, but that's just because I think it's hard to separate it out from all of the blood cells. But pure plasma is actually more of a clear color.

So this plasma will still absorb oxygen that's just kind of free floating in this plasma, which is not as an efficient transportation method as like the red blood cells going off and like handing off this package of the oxygen. And so they need to have huge hearts, huge veins, and a lot of blood proportional to their body so that they can absorb oxygen directly from the blood rather than from the red blood cells. It's like if instead of having a truck on a highway delivering oranges to

where they're needed. You just put a bunch of oranges sort of on a highway and hope it gets to where it needs to go. Their hearts are actually kind of spongy so that they can absorb oxygen directly from the blood. They also have no scales. They're smooth, and so they're able to absorb some oxygen direct lee through

their skin. And the only reason they can do this without, you know, just not just dying because it doesn't seem like it should work, is that because they live in such icy cold water, oxygen is more soluble in cold water, and so there's a greater concentration of oxygen for them to draw from. So they're basically just kind of like sponges that soak up oxygen from the water and goose it around. It's like free for all, giant heart, giant veins with a bunch of plasma throughout them. It's a

little fish with a with a big heart. He's too cool to bleed. It's too cool to bleed. Are they tasty? Are the ice fish they tasty? I have no idea. I feel like I would risk the mouth haunting. That's true, this fishing, it's actually delicious. It's like eating the ancestors of a million different ghosts act with layers of ghost flavor. I feel like it is incumbent upon me since this is a science podcast to say, like we don't know if they do eat ghosts or not, like that has

not improven yet. Yeah, we haven't observed it in the wild. But really just the secondary only in captivity to indicate Yeah, all comes razors suggests they're eating all the ghosts and no ghosts around right, you see any ghosts? Thank you ice fish. Yeah, ghosts don't exist because the ice fish did eat them. Yeah, that's the first science I've understood in this podcast so far. Yeah, there you go. So

why would they do this? Why would they turn their ghosts? Sorry, why would they turn their blood into ghosts or their ghosts in the blood? Oh that's like if you're reverse it, it's actually kind of scary, Like if ghosts was blood, he turned ghosts into blood, gasp, gasp and aways. The reason I turned ghost into blood, the reason they turned or they ditched the hemoglobin and they just have plasma is that because they're in an oxygen rich environment but

actually very iron poor environment. Getting rid of the red blood cells allowed the fish to conserve iron for other nutritional purposes since there was so little iron to be spared in their environment. Yeah, blacksmithing mostly little little shows and basic tools. If we drop some nails in the Arctic ocean, maybe we can give these poor ghost fish some blood. It's like, oh, did somebody just drop a nail on my head? You're welcome. Yea, Now I got ghost blood and a nail through my hand. My body's

way too small and a barbarious, most depressing cartoon. It's a Leven oh Edgard. So not only is their blood transparent, but like one of you was just super excited for this, it also contains anti freeze proteins. So yeah, proteins that prevent the formation of ice crystals inside the fish by binding two ice crystals as they begin to form and

stopping more ice from binding to that crystal. Because you know how like ice crystal sort of you have like one like sort of ice crystal seed and more crystals form off of that and then you start to get a bigger ice crystal. Uh. This supports my theory that they're delicious because anti freeze tastes good. It's good. I'm gonna just I'm just gonna have so many lawsuits, gonna use that song you did at the beginning, going to get a lawsuits. Shouldn't anti freeze lawsuits? Yeah, it's wonderful,

so yeah, yeah, don't. Anti freeze is bad for your body, but not for these guys. It's gonna drink it. No, but really, don't leave any freeze outside because it does taste sweet and like dogs eleat it. Don't don't put it outside. No, do not keep it covered and stored away so that both children and animals do not get to it because it's very bad or staying alone. Have any fish living in the Arctic fill them with it? Well, they already got there, So I don't think you need

to add more anti freeze to the fish. I mean you do have to top it off. Maybe, yeah, maybe I just love fish more than you. Uh yeah. They also got ghost bones though, So what do you say? This is the fish that is closest to a car? M m, this is a fish? Car? Is this fish more of a hat or a frisbee? Yeah? I can how this fishes is a room room car? I can

see that. Um, if it's the one closest to a car, I guess so, I guess so, But I do want to say I mentioned that this fish has ghost bones, and you guys were like, cool, anyways, is this fish a car. Yeah, we're on board with the ghostbones. Yeah, this is I don't joke on this podcast. I'm not messing doing a bit. No, their bones are transparent because they're so calcium deficient. Hell yeah, transparent, correct with him

being like a poor Victorian child of the sea. But my blood is made of ghosts and my bones are have no calcium. I have glass bones. Like if you encountered a ghost skeleton, that's like that's a very advanced creature, Like you you need to be a high level party too to beat a ghost skeleton. And yeah you're a fish. It's like yeah, it's because they have no calcium. They suck. Yeah. Yeah, once again betrayed by dungeons and dragons. Yeah, I know.

I mean like these are really kind of like, when you think about it, pretty like feeble little again, the sickly Victorian child of fish. Just like, my bones are see through there, so weak. Please don't breathe on meat hurts my bones. Drifting along the bottom, waiting, waiting for help is what they do with their whole lives. I've been pining on the ocean floor, but by my blood is still ghosts. If you x ray these fish, you

see nothing except the faces of the dead. If you x ray these fish, I feel like it would disintegrate them. That's how you cook one. That is the best preparation. That quick flash from an X ray my bones. You're melting my bones. Poof, and a little smoke goes up. Poor old fish, And that's how ghosts is born. Wonderful. A lot of learning we did on this science podcast, arguably too much. I'm never gonna be able to keep

all that in my head. I'm just gonna go with Car of the Sea ghost blood and Greg is delicious. Everybody take a little taste of Greg. Yeah, do a Greg stand? Thanks Greg? Yeah? No, the blood was great. Good job, good job learning about blood with me. But before we go, we gotta play a game. And the game is called Guess Who's squawking? And what the game is is you guess what the animal sound is, what kind of animals making it? I'll play the sound, don't worry,

I'll play it for you and you'll hear it. Oh, I thought you were going to do it. I thought you were gonna No. I mean I've been doing like everything you've been hearing, that's been that's been all me, baby, incredible. I thought you had a vast sound board. I truly am the woman of many voices. No, yeah, so yes. The hint from a last wink was does this ring a bell? And here is the sound? Okay, well, who

do you think is hawking DJ skink? Yeah that's a bird that definitely ate a skink and it disagrees with its tummy. I think it's a DJ that is also a skink, and he's here dropping his hot beats. I feel like that was just like leading up, really getting the crowd pumped, and then like if you would let that play two seconds longer, the beat would have dropped. Yeah, so that's your guest. I think he's a bellmouthed red booby. Oh my god, Sean, you're so you're so freaking clothes.

Oh I'm I am dead serious. You think I'm joking and just ribbing you for you know, you are so freaking clothes. This is the white bell bird. I was close. I knew there's gonna be a color and some kind of you wouldn't hear that and say like, I'm not gonna name that bird like the the cristed No. That. I just love that. The naming convention of birds is so ridiculous that you can just be like thighs like the crested bell, mouthed red booby, and you're like, yeah,

you're almost there. That's almost You're pretty close. Yes, So this is the white bell bird. Congratulations to Joey P, Jared M, and Cat H who all correctly guess the white bell bird. Many other listeners also correctly guessed it, but they were the first three to write in. And so white bell birds are one of the loudest birds on earth. So male white bellbirds scream at females at

rock concert levels of loudness. So they look interesting. They're kind of they look I mean, they are a white bird, but they have this very long gray wattle that hangs off of the side of its beak. You know, how like turkeys have that wattle. Uh, it is like that, but it's the length of his whole body and it just like dangles down there. Uh. It's just not sound like an appealing bird in appearance. I mean, this is how like this long flopping beak, scrotum. What do you think, ladies,

big way, That is exactly what they do. They like, wiggle their their beakscrown them in the female's faces and scream at them. And how I met my first eleven wives. Yeah, it works, it works, it works. Their calls reach a hundred and twenty five decibels, which is as loud as a Jetta and take off a siren or a pneumatic drill and right in your face before you have sex, right exactly, no, literally, So once the male has actually somehow convinced a female to come near him, he'll blast

a loud note in her face before they mate. And while she's reeling from that, right, while she's stunned and like station Christ, what are you doing sticking a wing in her ear and wiggling it around trying to regain her hearing, He's like, anyways, will you marry me? Yeah? So that's when I think about being a bird lady. I think that seems like a pretty nice life. Like all the birds are dancing for you and building you things, and they're just trying to impress you all day long.

You just pick the best one. But this seems awful imagine if they have to be in like the same jungle as those nice dancing birds and the birds that build houses, and they have to just look at them, and we're can you try that, Henry? Can you please like try building me a house or doing like a dance? Have a better ideas? Screaming in my face until I die from it? Okay, knocks back a belt of Scotch. Just yeah, well, Henry's made out of He yells. He yells real loud, and that's why I love Yeah. Oh,

you can do so much better. Female white billbirds. Yeah, go for another bird, start a new bird. Uh. So this week's mystery animal sound, the hint is this isn't a cat, it's not a dog, and despite that smell, it's not a skunk. Mm hmm. Alright, So who do you think is clocking? Frog probe? What? Frog probe? A frog probe a frog like this? The probe the probe that the frog send out when they're like not certain about something. Frog probe. Yeah, like a frog detective, like

a frog submarine. Oh, like I see a frog Okay, like a frog sonar, like a like a like a Nissan probe, but a frog probe I was gonna say Toad submarine, so I could submarine. Yeah, it's the same. We got frog Probe and we got Toad submarine. Those are the answers to beat listeners. Those are the answers Thomasin's white belted frog Probe. Oh my god, you got it? How did you know? Actually, I'm sorry, that's wrong. It's Thomas's crested frog Probe. I always get him mixed. Yeah,

I'll too bad for you. Anyways, if you think you know what is making that sound, you can write to me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com and I will reveal the answer to you next Wednesday. Sean Brockway, thank you so much for coming on to this Bloodcast Pleasure Bood, blood Cast, blood Gast. Yeah. Thanks for having us, And if you, for some reason what more from us. We can be found at our own podcast, The Dog's

Own nine thousand. They will be at the Blood Factory shutting out Blood where we are starting a blood factory and we could use some crowdsourced help a fresh blood from the blood cows. We do a lot of Joni Mitchell song parodies, a lot of crowd pleasers like that. We can be found on dog dot com and and we contain a lot of greg Yeah, full of greggy goodness talk full of that wholesome greggy goodness. Well, thank

you guys so much for listening. Uh. You can find me online a Creature Feature pod on Instagram, a Creature feet pot on Twitter. Uh. You if you are enjoying the show, you like you like blood, If you like Blood, you can leave me a rating and review and be like, hey, I like Blood. You know, as your review just be like five bloods up. Blood is great. I like Blood. Uh and yeah, and thank you so much to the Space Classics for their super awesome song excell Alumina. Creature

Feature is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the I heart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or where don't we get your Blood or podcasts Bloodcasts, Blood Fame Place, See you next Wednesday Podcast