Welcome to Creature, feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we're talking about deep sea legs, some of the weirdest appendages in the deep sea, from the legs that do everything from walking to breathing to three D printed worms. Discover this and more as we answer the angel question, do those legs go all the
way up? Yes, yes they do. Joining me is friend of the show, producer host of the podcast Rough Stuff as well as shooting threes, Bridget Greenberg.
Welcome, Hey, thank you, thank you for having me.
So good to have you back where I'm back from summer summer break and we're going right directly into the yourdest parts of the ocean, back into the sea from whence we came back from whence we came into that soup of life. Yeah, find out what we've been swimming in all summer. Yeah, so it's it's definitely a weird one. We start out with deep sea spiders, are you, oh boy, have you ever seen these little critters? They're not I would not say they're cute exactly.
I don't oh, God, Yeah, they look like aliens.
From Aliens, they do look.
Like face huggers. They got that nice sort of jointed legs that seemed like they would attach well onto your face.
Yeah, yeah, I can't say I've seen these guys. I I knew we were going to get some creepy guys in this one. Well, it's that's That's kind of the point.
Deep sea it gets pretty weird. Most of the ocean is weird, but like the deeper get usually weirder. You get so. Sea spiders are not arachnids, so they're not splant the same land spider. They're not spiders, but they are related to spiders. They're related to spiders, scorpions, mites, and actually horseshoe crabs as well. They're all members of the subphylum Chilliserata, which you know.
I love that band.
Yeah, cellis Serata, what a wonderful phrase. The strangest thing about them is that they are all legs. They do not really have a true abdomen. Oh, they just kind of have a simple juncture point at which all the legs connect. They they do typically have like a proboscis maybe some chillisserra, those like little mouth parts. But yeah, in terms of an actual like abdomen with room in it for there to be organs, there's not a lot going on there.
Yeah, they are just legs. I yeah, I just saw a picture of its center and it's just like all the joints mashed together at some point.
Pretty much. It's it's it's it's very strange. And there's a wide variety of the many, many mini species of sea spiders. The smallest species are just a few millimeters in diameter, whereas the largest, uh Colasendais colossalia, has a leg span over two feet long. So you know, it could could wrap around your head. It probably won't, Yeah, it probably won't, but it could. So that's fun to think about.
How Yeah, I.
Feel like, well, how how how deep down are these guys?
I mean they're found it's still they're all yeah, probably not. I mean, I don't think they are generally interested in human beings. They don't attack humans or any large animals there. They are carnivored, but all their prey is soft bodied sea animals like sea and enemies. They're actually not considered predators because they rarely kill their victims. They generally stick their proboscis in suck out some of the juices from say like a cea an enemy and then move on.
And the cea an enemy rarely ever dies from the attacks, so they're actually considered parasites more than they're considered predators.
But like friendly little guys, they're not trying to hurt.
Yeah, they just need they need to get that bag of an enemy soup.
Yum mmmm, that's yeah.
The so there's just like a whole somewhere where all the business is done and the rest.
Is leg Yeah. So yeah, they have like a proboscis that can suck stuff in, but where like the problem is, they don't really have much of an abdomen. So where do all the organs go?
Because you got where's the spider?
They gotta have organs? Well, uh, let's uh, let's talk about it.
Uh.
It turns out that basically their legs do everything. They house their organs. They do a bunch of stuff in addition to you know, walking. Uh, they are responsible for all the other things that the spider, the sea spider can do.
Uh.
Let's talk about the Nati sea spider, which it's naughty as in knotted like a like a Sailorman's.
Not naughty sea spider.
Naughty not naughty as in like not on Santa's list, sea spider, the spiders, and bad These are Nazi sea spiders as Yeah. They're also known as uh pic no ganem literally so uh as the name suggests. Uh. It's limbs look kind of like you took some sort of off white rope and just tied a bunch of outs in it. Uh. But yeah, they they have they have those legs they got they got eight of them. They kind of look like an alien spider made out of white bindie straws. So uh. They are the tail tail
of a rat king, but it's just tail. That's yeah, that's probably like they're they're kind of preboscous area. Actually it might not be. That might be there, and I'm get a little turned around with these guys.
It's hard to tell.
It's a little hard to tell, but yeah.
Mostly legs.
It's mostly legs. They're very confusing looking. But researchers at the University of Wisconsin Madison, in conjunction with the University of Vienna, looked into the naughty sea spider to explore a question, why do see spiders keep all their organs in their legs rather than in an abdomen. So the researchers found that the sea spiders are missing a key hawks gene. So hawks genes are a group of genes that control body development, and so this missing gene is
one that would normally control abdominal growth. And they just don't have it, don't need it. They simply don't do it, don't it, don't need it, don't want to donat it. For some reason, it seems that the gene controlling abdominal development was deleted in an ancestor of the sea spiders, and they ended up compensating by storing all their organs in their legs. And they truly use their legs for everything. They walk with them. They breathe through their legs.
I don't know why that got me.
Well, it gets worse. Females eject eggs out of their legs ah, and males will fertilize the eggs and then attach them to special baskets on his legs until they hatch.
Oh, which is nice.
Yeah you got the men spiders have pockets.
Too, Yeah, exactly, I mean the man sea spiders do a lot of the child care there by carrying around the fertilized eggs, so you know, stay at home dads.
And they're convenient pants pockets exactly.
It's like cargo shorts, but eight legs of those and yeah, and you breathe an excrete out of them. So it's nice, an elegant solution to not having Yeah. The funny thing is that even though they have found sort of the genetic uh blueplant print for why they don't have an abdomen, they don't really know why this happened. It just seemed to potentially have been a little bit of an oopsy goofa mups and then the sea spiders just rolled with it.
It's like, actually, we don't really need this. Everything fits all good in our legs and we're still we're still along, it's still hugging along. Don't don't need all this abdominal stuff. Yeah, and they made it, yeah yeah, uh yeah, because it's it's thought that they were they had a common ancestor who did have an abdomen and we're more like land spiders at some point and then they're just like, ah, I want to do something different, more unique.
Keep it all in the legs.
Yeah, I don't need anything else just these legs and this weird tongue stra.
Yeah, that's right, the proboscis. The uh. It's really interesting because the hardest part of the study was apparently being able to get sea spider samples, because it's really hard to raise them in captivity. They apparently do not like it much. They're very strange and very finicky about their food. But the University of Vienna painstakingly found the specific types
of sea and enemies that they like. They kind of like offer them this buffet of sea and enemies and then they like make sure that they're allowing the individual sea spiders to like pick out sea and enemies that they like, and they're like, great, we're gonna house you with these now so you can like eat them. And yeah, it was apparently not easy, but the University of Vienna has figured it out, so they have a lab where they breed these things.
Wow yeah yeakie.
Yeah. Well, you know, when you don't have a stomach, you're going to be picky about what you eat.
They do have, but yeah, it's it's in their legs.
Yeah that is.
Oh, I don't know why, Like I'm not uh, I'm not a big spider person. I'm not freaked out by spiders at all, but the idea of breathing through your legs really is creepy.
Yeah, you didn't like that. I could.
I don't know why. I don't know why that reaction, but breathing through your legs. Don't like it?
It's different. It's different for people. I mean we sometimes till it's like you gotta let your feet breathe. Yeah, let your dogs, your dogs are barking, take up your shoes, let your feet breathe. But yeah, it's very literal with these guys.
Yeah, uh, that is. And they're weird.
They're very particular about their I kind of like that. They're they're culinary expert.
Yeah.
Yeah, they're piggy little guys.
I highly encourage you all listening to just look at the various species of sea spiders because they're very strange looking. They're very uncanny. You really do see, Like I think for things like alien.
It's a bit of a roar shock.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it's there's a lot of there's a lot of cool designs. If you're like a sci fi artist or writer or whatever, oh for sure, look up these guys. They're great inspiration. They look very Yeah, they look very upsetting in a cool kind of deep sea way.
So yeah, and it looks like these like the Naughty spiders. I'm sure there are joints, but look a little more fluid than some of the big prickly face hugger looking guys. They kind of looked like those. Yeah, they look like those jelly like hands that you used to get that used to slap on car windows.
Yeah, they're a little meteor like. They're a little softer looking, but yeah, some of the spindly ones do kind of look like they're made out of weird toothpicks. Apparently. There was a movie that came out in twenty twenty called h Abissel Spider, which is about a giant sea spider. Yeah, I think it's designed seems to be more based on land spiders because it does have like a body. I think it would have been creepier if they had gone with the sort of classic sea spider layout.
Yeah, no, that would have been because, Yeah, the center of it is so unsettling. It's just like when you put knuckles together.
Yeah, exactly, which is really it's really more of the face hugger design from Alien but Yeah, it looks like uh abyssal spider is just just looks like a giant tarantula that's like floating in the water, which to me is just kind of funny because if you've ever seen an actual spiders reaction, like a land a terrestrial, true spiders reaction to water, it's never dignified.
No, No, it's very floppy.
There's always a a there's always a sort of like Scooby Doo trying to escape a ghost skidaddle or whatever. A spider yeah running water, Yeah, like like you know they're going nowhere.
Yeah, exactly. This is just a big old tarantula.
Yeah, I don't know, missed opportunity. Yeah, so that's my advice. Next next uh cool movie. Uh. I was gonna say villain, but can we really say? I guess monster is.
Yeah, I guess it's whose side you're taking.
Is it alien from Aliens, A villain or a monster?
Yeah, who's to say. It depends on the movie too, it depends on the franchise.
It's just doing what it was born to do. Yeah. Anyways, we're gonna take a quick break and when we get back, we're gonna talk about more. Abystle horrors. Uh that have cool technology. All right, so, uh bread jet, We're gonna talk about bristle worms, also known as Paula keats, which is a much cuter name than what they look like.
I feel like I know these guys.
Yeah, gross, they're pretty strange.
There were oh god, and they got.
Weird heads, right, And it's so a lot of things are called worms, but they're not like at all related to actual worms like earthworms. These are actually related to earthworms. They are extremely diverse. There's many, many, many species of them. There's other over ten thousand of these little little nightmare fuel guys, and they're all very different. They have Some of them look more like say, the sandworms from Dune. Some of them look sort of like weird mop heads.
It's just there's so many, and they're so varied, and they're so strange. I do love them. Some are actually a bit pretty, I would say, in a weird way. Still a little bit disquieting, but you know, like they're coming like bright red. Some of them are sort of iridescent or gold, yeah, yeah, like feathery ones. It's they come in all sizes and shapes and they're they're truly very interesting U're We're going back to the University of Vienna, which is apparently just.
Doing some weird They're finding all the weird guys and bringing them there.
They have a lab where they are just bringing all the Eldrich horrors of the world.
Ye, so to watch out for them. Yeah.
So they have been studying bristle worms, and bristleworms have this amazing ability, which is that they are really good at regenerating lost body parts. Uh, they're actually better than terrestrial earthworms at like if you cut them and half at regenerating because like sometimes with an earthworm you can do that, you can cut it and it'll but most of the time when you bisect an earthworm, it just dies.
Yeah, no, that makes sense. They have sensitive parts.
Yeah, but these guys are actually quite good at it. They are also really good at regenerating their limbs. At this University of Vienna, they are studying Platinarus dumorellly no dumer really doo marelli doroom rill eye Platinarus dou marilli, which is a species of bristleworm that lives in coastal waters. It's pretty small, it only grows about three centimeters. It's amber and color, and it has a bunch of bristle like protrusions on the side of its body. Most bristle
worms do that. It's in the name. They are very bristly, like you could put them on as a fake mustache if you know, like you know how like in Davy the Pirates of the Caribbean. Oh yeah, octopus man with the tentacles for like a beard. I could also imagine some other guy like, yeah, you know.
But just a mustache. That is a bristleworm.
Brother Reginald Jones, and he's got a mustache and it's a bristle worm. So yeah, they have a bunch of bristle like protrusions from the sides of their bodies. And bristleworms. Uh, these guys are really really good at regenerating it. When they lose their bristles, they just build them right back. So at the University of Vienna, researchers looked at this p Dummerlli uh in an amazing study called dynamic Microvilli sculpt the bristles at nanometric scale. Uh yeah, it's a
it's a catchy title. So they found evidence that these bristleworms have specialized cells called ketoblast in each of its bristles. And so what these cells do is they actually extend like an arm from the cell that deposits a little bit of kitan, which is a sort of tough building block used for a lot of invertebrates. And the study authors said that the process is a lot like three D printing in the way that three D printers work, where they move an arm around and then deposit a
little little beat of that that. Oh that's super postic. Yeah, that's convenient. Yeah, And it's interesting because these bristles, like when you get down to the very small microscopic level,
they have things structures on the bristles. They're not just all smooth sort of like yeah, they have like little tooth like projections, and so they create it's like this kind of conveyor belt of it starts to create the bristle and then it's like, ah, here's the part where we build a little tooth and then they just like kind of pop that out and it's yeah, they're they are working from sort of It works very very much like a three D printer, where they have the model
which comes from the bristleworms genes, no doubt, and then they just sort of are able to reconstruct this limb in a way that is not it's like how it's supposed to be. It's not sort of like scar tissue or kind of weird or wonky. It's just like exactly what the original design is.
Wow, that's so no, Like because like when we break an elbow and it grows back, it's a little cracky, there's.
Scars, weird.
Yeah, No, it's a lot. It's a lot smoother of a process, which is really interesting. Apparently some of these tissues, like some of this the functioning of these keto blasts is sort of similar to our inner ear cells and our inner ears, at least the skin of our inner ears. It's really good at you know, sort of rebuilding itself. We have it's basically a conveyor belt of skin in
our inner ears. It's a little gross, but one way that like earwax as it's produced like exits your ears, that the skin in your ear is kind of constantly growing and pushing stuff out like a conveyor belt as the new skin is growing, and so there's kind of
a similarity there. So they're hoping that given that there's some similarities with that, that maybe understanding these cells could also help us understand say, like because there's some structures of the inner ears that don't don't repair themselves quite as well, right, And so the hope is that, hey, maybe we could find out how these bristleworms do it, Like we could find out how to potentially create cells in human in our ears that will like repair the
very delicate little organs inside our ears.
You know, it seems with a lot of these animals, it's like don't have delicate organs, so you can't replace it. Just feels like they're all legs. They're all one thing. Right, Keep it simple, human.
Keep it simple. I don't think the future therapies will be us sticking bristleworms inside of our ears for them to rebuild ourselves.
But that sounds horrible.
You know what if we like create a human bristleworm hybrid and you just kind of stick it in your ear and it works like a little three D printer.
I'm opting out at that point. I am not sticking worms in my ear, not doing it.
You just don't have the constitution for the future.
I don't have for things.
Any story about things crawling into people's ears, don't.
Like it I have.
Yeah, I actually share your opinion on that. I don't.
I don't.
I have red a lot of I can't stop myself. It sounds like the worst thing I've read stories of, like like a little bugs or something crawling in your Oh.
Yeah, spiders like laying eggs in people's ears. I don't know how true that is.
That so spiders generally don't want to do that. Spiders don't like that whole thing of like you eat. I don't know one hundred spiders a year because they're always crawling in your mouth. If spiders were that stupid, they would not be very successful. Yeah, animals, so they don't much. No, so they they generally don't want to crawl in your mouth. It's a probably too moist and damp for them, probably
smells weird. It's not something they want to do. It's pretty difficult for a spider to mistake your mouth for a good place to hide. It doesn't happen. Ears stuff, though. I think that while it really is extremely rare, it might actually be more likely to happen than the spider crawling in your mouth. I don't. I think the cases in which like a spider or any kind of insect crawls in your ear and lays eggs is just astronomically small, don't You don't have to worry about it happening. It
will not happen to you. It's like good to take that off the list of things, right, like you can, like it's the same thing as like winning the lottery, except for in one case. In either case you won't be happy because of tax. But yeah, I mean they're like I have red leg. Like, if you do have something like a bug in your ear, do not chase after it with a que tip because apparently this simply scares the bug and we'll drive it deeper deeper into
your ear. You want to go to a medical professional because, first of all, it might not be a bug. It could be something wrong with your hearing. You want to get assessed. And the case that it is a bug, they can flush that out with some watery and that'll get that that'll get that little guy right out of there. So yeah, if you if you're experiencing ear spiders, do go to the doctor. To the doctor, right, you know.
But yeah, I I won't recount the stories, first of all, because I'm not sure how true they are but also they're really disgusting of people being like like, I had like a bug in my ear and then I like tried to get it out with some tweezers and it all went terribly awry. Yeah.
No, I went to summer camp. We've heard those stories.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. They sound a little apocryphal to me. It's something that just happens so rarely that if someone's like, yeah, this happened to me, I would be pretty skeptical. Yeah, are like, yeah, my uncle had like spiders in his ears. It's like spiders, old spiders. Uncles are always telling you about the spiders and rarely is it true? Rarely, so you don't you don't got to worry about that so much.
I had a question about these guys, what are the bristles. I'm guessing the bristles help them like filter feed.
It's actually a lot of it has to do with a local motion, so like moving around and also protection making them not like for for some of the sort of harrier bristles, that's gonna make them less appealing to eat. It kind of depends on the species. For some of them, like the bristles, uh just work as a bunch of little legs that help them walk around on the seafloor. Some of them use them to swim. They're like pleagic swimmers, so they'll swim in the ocean, open, open ocean for
some of them. Yeah, some of them are burrowing, so it helps them burrow. It really just like depends on the species. They have a lot of different types of of uh uses for these bristles.
Yeah, I guess, yeah, that makes sense.
They have to be built back so specifically, and you lose one. It's that because they're covered, you would think they could lose a few without it needing to be built back.
But yeah, if it's too many, then you got a problem. Some of them actually have venomous bristles, so like irritating venomous bristles. So you don't they look really soft and fluffy, but you.
Do not don't touch them.
You don't want to touch them.
No, Yeah, that's often true with the with the bugs and the words that look fluffy, don't.
The ones that look the fluffiest bugs are often gonna give you the worst rash. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah, the real bummer. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and then when we get back, we're gonna talk about one of my favorite cryptids because it's real and uh yeah, he's a he's a real cutie. All right, So we're we're gonna talk about, uh not the giant squid, because I think everyone's pretty familiar with giant squids. They're real,
they're cool, they're huge, they're very elusive. This one is even more elusive. It is the big Finn squid, so it has incredibly long they're not technically legs, they're arms. But you know who's a leg an arm? Come on, who's counting? Yeah?
Not with these guys.
Yeah, so bridget I, I implore you to look up image of the big Finn squid.
Yeah, there's one, and it's a clearly shot.
There's a couple of these that are shot in like night vision, and they're very ominous.
Very very creepy. There's a famous one which was shot by one of these deep sea cameras and it looks like a it looks like a movie alien. We're kind of back to the real alien looking guys. Got kind of a green tint to it due to the camera
filter and the squid's head. It's not really a head, so it's called a mantle, but it kind of looks like a weird alien head with weird little floppy ears, and then it's got these like long appendages that they start out where they kind of are they go out at a right degree angle and then just drop down.
So it's yeah, it's very marionette.
Right, Like, it kind of looks like a giant virus. It's very weird looking. It does not look real.
No, it looks like a giant ants head. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it's really freaky looking. Yeah, it is a real animal. So this is a big fin squid and it has sort of a pretty normal squid mantle, although the fins, so like squids have these fins on the sides of their mantles, are are quite large, like they're sort of, yeah, sort of the dumbos of the squid world.
Everything about this guy seems quite large.
Yeah. So, like it's interesting because you would think that they would call it the long arm squid because that is perhaps the more notable features. So the reason they're called big fin squid is that there for the longest time, we had no obviously no video of them or images of them because they are just so deep, such deep sea creatures. They live around twenty thousand feet over twenty thousand feet, that's great. So specimens are really really hard
to come by. So the ones that they did tend to get that would wash ashore were actually juveniles, and juveniles have sort of the big the big fins, but they don't have the big legs yet. So old school researchers and biologists would see these and say, like they got a big fin. They had no idea that as adults they have these enormous arms. So, yeah, the big fin squid probably has the longest arm to body ratio
of any squid out there. They grow, these arms grow to be over twenty five feet long, which is around eight meters. Yeah, and that's.
They probably get caught in stuff all the time.
Just get all tangled. They're twenty times longer than the mantle of this guid, which is an incredible sort of body ratio.
So much legs, yeah, really really really.
Going going all legs. The only reason we know this is because of deep sea cameras. I don't think we have really any complete specimens of an adult with all the legs intact. And yeah, so like it's in addition to just having really long legs. I think one of the weirdest aspects to them is that they look like they kind of have elbows, right, because they stick out at a ninety degree angle and then drop down as if they have like a joint there, which they almost
certainly do not have a joint there. It has something more to do with the musculature of the arms, not that they have like a bindy joint there most likely.
Okay, so it's all still arms. So the babies were probably just like up until the little the.
Drop right exactly exactly, so so yeah, it's it's all part of their arms. But yeah, it's a very it's a very weird thing because we don't necessarily know why they hold them out like this. I mean when possibility is just so they don't get so tangled, right, like keep them keep them separate so they.
Don't get entangled. Yeah.
Yeah, Like if you've ever played around with a marionette and the strings get all tangled when you let the strings get together and other it's arrangement with that little crossbar type handle thinging. Yeah, yeah, poor guys always be like we also we also don't know why they have such long arms. Also, the like our sort of videos and images of it are pretty limited. So all we've seen of these guys is them just sort of flow around pretty passively.
Yeah.
I can't imagine those at that length that's that helpful for swimming.
Yeah, no, I don't think that they are really probably meant for swimming. The fin itself is probably the most useful part for swimming. I do have what I'm going to share with you a pretty incredible video of one of these guys swimming around in the chat here.
I got to see how these guys move, and.
You'll be able to see that. This is from a distance, so that's why it looks so small, but you can kind of see that it is using that giant fin rather than its tentacles to swim.
Yeah, that is not how I expected this thing to move. That is right, very strange. Yeah, his head looks is a lot flatter, I guess, or it looks I guess.
Those are just the fins.
Yeah, those are those are mostly the fins. It's got sort of like the solid the solid part of the mantle and then the the fins doing a lot of the work. Usually squids. Also, we'll be able to move using jet propulsion. To buy squeezing water out, so it's probably doing something like that as well. It's hard to see though. We just don't. We don't have a lot of data to go on with these guys.
But yeah, I'm sure they figured it out. But this looks like a horrible way to swim. It looks like it's getting pushed around quite a bit.
I think it probably relies on currents a lot to move around. Yeah, it would be my guess, but yeah, we don't. We don't really know how they feed. Like one of the speculations about their long arms is that they use it to like catch prey up and then that's how they like the prey gets all tangled up. Yeah, exactly, but truly, like it's just not really known exactly why they're so weird.
Yeah, these are all such good like sci fi alien villain looking guys. Especially this this picture with the night vision of it, like coming from the deep, looks very like Star Trek alien villain.
Uh yeah, bring me to your leader.
It's very strange. It's also a little funny because it does look a little bit like you just kind of like tied a bunch of spaghettis together and toss them in the ocean.
Yeah.
So it's at the same time very very eerie looking but also a little bit silly.
Yeah it's it's arms too big.
Yeah, it's arms is too big. It should should work on that.
Yeah, and they're so skinny too. It really feels like it's all ahead and then it just gets like tangled.
Yeah, I mean, I it has to happen. It's all arms.
Well, yeah, I guess, I mean there's not a bunch of I mean, I guess it depends down there. There's not a bunch of stuff for it to get stuck on.
Yeah, but like they also think the arms might be sticky, so then, oh.
That would be a real inconvenience.
It'd be really tough. But maybe that's exactly what they need to like get stuff in there. They figured it out, right, Yeah, it's really figured it out. It's really it's really wild. And also what's weird is that they're not it's not just like some remote like little corner of the Mariana Trench where these guys live. They're all over the globe at these depths. Wow, so they must have it's they
must have a pretty good strategy for survival. So we just We just can't fathom what that is because they're so strange looking.
That is so weird. Yeah, that's why stuff that deep is so fascinating. It is truly like a completely different world. Yeah, that you have to learn that these creatures have to survive in and that they're good at that.
Like, Yeah, they're found all over the world and they're thriving. Yeah, looking like this, looking isn't it's inspirational for all of us. Like you can, yeah, you can look like arms, you can look like a bunch of spaghetti tied together with a kite, and you can still make it in the big deep ocean, and.
The big deep ocean twenty five thousand feet down right. That's crazy. That's so far down.
It's very far down. Speaking of far down, I got this listener question or not really a question, more of a listener comment and recommendation, which I think is very apropos for this episode. Here it is, Hi, Katie, I have been obsessed with the near daily live streams from Schmidt Ocean. They were previously exploring the deep over three thousand meters at most off the Argentinian coast, took a break,
and now they're back exploring off the Uruguay coast. I find myself oohing and I alongside the scientists with some of the unexpected discoveries cute sponges and pulpos which is octopus, and cheering when they success successfully collect a tricky sample. They also make the most beautiful short videos. Please check it out. This is from Jesse and Jesse. I did indeed check this out. It is so relaxing. I can't understand.
I don't speak Spanish, so I can't understand what they're saying, but they have very soothing voices and they, uh, it is this really interesting rig because it's a camera, but they also have this robotic arm that moves very slowly and well yeah, they'll they'll try to collect like samples
very gently, very slowly. But it's like it's this it's like this big mechanical claw and it has a bunch of tools at its disposal, like it has a little yeah, well no, it's it's it's got like it's got like little how do It's like got little bins that has the things in it that it needs. So it'll like reach over like pick up a little like shovel type thing that has a bunch of holes in it like a sieve and then pick that up to try to
grab a sample. Uh. And of course there's a lot of like weird, weird stuff down there that this camera captures. They have like if you don't have the patience for a live stream where not a lot of could be happening, or not much could be happening, like like Jesse said, there's also yeah, short videos that are really really beautiful.
But yeah, if you want, if you want something relaxing on you're trying to trying to fall asleep and you don't have philosophobia, it's a I think it's really really nice and it's I think it's great that they make this uh live stream available to everyone to watch because you can you can see sort of the process. Takes a lot of patience for these scientists because they're not just doing it, you know when they feel like it. They're just observing this for long periods of time.
This is your job.
I'm on one now. This is yeah, this is so cool that they're streaming this. Yeah, it and it is probably so exciting because it is mostly like long wormy fish without arms, like stuff you'd expect to see. But every now and again, just like one of these giant squids. Yeah, squid crosses its path.
Yeah, I'm looking at the I'm looking at the live stream now. It is uh, it's it's pretty neat. Like I'm looking. It looks like there's a lot of maybe these are eels or hagfish. They might be hagfish. I can't quite.
Quite tell. But yeah, these are armless fish.
Yeah, they they're fish. They're very very cool. But there's a bunch of them, because it really gives you a better sense of like, yeah, there are parts of the deep ocean that are not very well inhabited, but some of it it's like you get down there, there's a bunch of stuff just thriving. Yeah, and you'll have these big events. I don't know if they've ever caught anything like this, but they'll have these Uh, there's one looking
at the camera right now. It's very cute. They'll have these events where, like you know, you'll have a whale dye and fall down to the bottom of the ocean called whale fall, and you'll just have this like big feast of a ton of these deep sea animals showing up for this giant buffet, and it really shows you It shows you how much a surprising amount of life thrives where there's no light. You cannot there's no photosynthesis happening.
It's all chemo synthesis, so like chemicals being processed by bacteria that then gets eaten by larger organisms that gets eaten by animals. So like, you have this really interesting food chain at the bottom of the ocean, and it's all thanks usually to some kind of bacteria that can eat something that's normally really toxic, like cyanobacteria that can
eat poison. And then you'll have you know, larger organisms that can eat the bacteria, or even things that kind of co evolved with the bacteria, like tube worms that have back tia in them that they used to uh get food from tube worms? Are these crazy? They look like pipe organs, Yeah, and they're full of the those are in.
The Marianna's Trench.
I feel like I've seen, yes, yes, a video in a science class about those guys.
Yeah. I'm going to try to find out what we're looking at here because these are soad this is crazy.
Uh. Yeah, the the machine picked up what looks like a piece of trash, but it has a bunch of barnacles on it.
Let's see. I'm gonna I'm gonna find out what this is. Uh?
Is it just like the dead skin sack of something?
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm trying to look. I'm quickly trying to look at these could be cusk eels. Oh but that's yeah. This I'm I'm gonna get so distracted. Advice.
Yeah, video this is.
Yeah, it's gonna become a twitch stream of us reacting to this streame.
Uh, this is fantastic. Yeah, this thing is cool.
Gosh.
So it's so mesmerizing, it really is. It's it's peaceful, but then once in a while something whoa, oh there's a little scuffle going on. Something happens. Ah. Yeah, but incredible if you kind of want to get a view of life as it is down there live, which is I don't know that it's kind of cool because it's like it's not it's just happening right now, man, right deep in the ocean. You can see it. That's very cool.
It is very cool.
It is cool how busy it is, because yeah, I truly think of like yet the deep ocean as all of these kind of small creatures that you wouldn't even register as.
Right, like like pale, pale, white little things with too many legs, which certainly is true. We've talked about we see, we've seen already. Yeah, and that is true. But there's all so actual fish down here. So yeah, it's busy, yeah, busy day down on the ocean. Yeah, yeah, there's it's a bumper to bumper traffic down here.
Folks.
You thought you could avoid rush hour from the scottom the bottom off the coast of Uruguay, No, no surre. Uh yeah, fantastic. Well, thank you so much for that recommendation, Jesse, much appreciated. I've got a new, a new thing to help me procrastinate with.
Yeah, it's going to be on in the background. This is now is set to exactly.
Uh So before we go, we do got to play a little game. It's called gets Who's Squawking? The Mystery Animal sound Game. Uh So we're we're back, uh and I got fresh fresh sounds fresh from the sound bakery.
For you guys.
So we're gonna start this game right back up. This week's mystery animal sound hint is this This poisonous animal is a fantastic survivor which is bad news for anything caught in its path. So that should strike that should strike terror into your heart. Bridge. Yeah, especially if you're a small mammal. Uh So, yes, you gotta get that again. This poisonous animal is a fantastic survivor, which is bad news for anything in its path.
Oh man, And with that sound, that's difficult. I gotta I'm guessing it's some sort of snake.
Some sort of snakes, some some some some kind of snaky thingy, some sort of snaky thing, some kind of snaky thingy. That is Bridget's guess. It's a good guess. I can neither confirm nor deny.
This guess.
Uh uh. So you out there, you out there listener, If you think you know who made that sound, you can write to me at Creature Feature product gmail dot com. You can also write to me your live stream video recommendations. Do keep them animal related, but yeah, I I love to see them. Also, I will often do listener questions episodes. So the questions that you send me are some of
the most intelligent questions I have ever considered. So those help me a lot because they send me on really interesting rese journeys answering questions that I didn't even think of, so I always appreciate those. I'll still do us some more listener questions episodes now that we are back to doing fresh, new full length episodes after this summer. So thank you guys so much for listening. Bridget Where can people find you?
That's a great question.
You can find me on Instagram atport two tweets, and you can follow all the stuff Sarah and I are doing in the podcast world over at small Beads and on our instagram bs Underscore podcasting.
And where We're in the ocean benthic pleagic. Where are you at?
Uh yeah, probably probably somewhere in the tweet just like right floating around, right in the middle.
Yeah, yeah, there's no shame in that. Please please do check out bridges stuff very cool and thanks to the space cast looks for their super awesome song ex Alumina. If you're enjoying the show, please do leaving a rating or of you that's still continue to be relevant and helpful. Uh. Creature features a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or Hey guess what where of you listen
to your favorite shows. I'm not your mother. I can't tell you what to do. Don't try to clean your ears out with a bristle worm. It's not gonna Uh, it's not good for you. Just just ear drops, Just ear drops. Don't stick anything in those precious little here and holes of yours. You need them for listening to podcasts.
Treat them a spider in there, Go to the doctor.
Go to the doctor. Uh. Don't do not spray rate in your ears. Do not recommend YEP official stance of this podcast. Also, it will not happen to you. You will not get a spider in your ear. I can all clost one hundred percent guarantee it. So sue me see you next Wednesday. M hm