Extreme Mammals Part II

three of them. And this episode is the continuation of that list. So if you like, go back and listen to the other episodes so you'll get an idea of how we started rolling on this. But if not, if you're you know, if your your iTunes skipped to the

last episode, don't be afraid to plow forward with this one. Indeed, and just to mention it, Extreme Mammals is an exhibit that is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, and that is what got us into all this craziness in the first place, because they have a wonderful exhibit detailing these extreme mammals. All right, well, first off, in this episode, let's talk about what I assume to be your personal favorite, because you've already blogged about it once.

So UH introduced us to macro Kenia. Ah, yes, macro Kenia thin legs, long neck, prehensile snout, about ten ft long, and five hundred to one thousand pounds. We think, Uh. Technically the macro kenya belonged to a family of ungulates, which are hooved animals, and is a distant cousin of a horse. Yeah, and it evolved independently in South America and uh in the roughly equoin direction here. So now those who's I should say, those are three toad who feet which are which which are really in a way

come kind of more like a rhinos. This this is one of those creatures that that kind of bleeds over into different models because it kind of looks like a camel in its basic dimensions. Then it has those three toad who feet, they're a little more like a rhino. There's a certain horsiness to it. Uh, And mamoth mammothest is the big thing because of course it's trunk yes,

or suspected trunk yes. So if you if you see this in the exhibit, um, if you're like me, you automatically go to Sesame Street and you begin to think about stuff upogus because this is what it looks like. In fact, I kind of wanted to pet it. I wanted to talk to it. It's amazing, and it is sort of a jigsaw puzzle of animals. It's sort of like the platypus in the sense that, um, you can

see you can see the influence of different animals. Yeah, it's basically the jazz funk um blues fusion of animals, I think. And certainly he really does look like snuffle up agus. The illustrations we see of in are are really cute. Yeah, that long trunk would have been used to feed on low lying leaves of grass, but it's horse like teeth point to this idea that it would have also been chomping on grass. But the weirdest thing about this this this guy, is that the nostrils are

right up on top of the head. And at first it was thought that this feature would give the macrocanias some sort of aquatic leg up. In other words, they could maybe weighed in the water. But more likely it's just the ideal position for the kind of hose nose sports like. Basically, because people look at it, and you might say, well, how do we know that thing had an elephants? Now, how do we know I had a little trunk going on up there? And it's because of

the position of those nostrils. Now, I did find reference to an older theory that this positioning of the nostrils meant that it had its nostrils had lips, which ended up not being the theory that everyone's stuck with because I mean, you can't even find an artist illustration of what that would have looked like. And that's probably just as well, because unless maybe Picasso had had illustrated it. See, let's turn our attention now to a very very cool

glyptodont and this is something that is called data chorus. Yeah, data chorus is pretty pretty awesome. And I think I had a toy of this guy. So and everyone will probably recognize this one because it's certainly an outlandish example of an extreme mammal because nothing really quite looks like it today. First of all, I mean there's shades of it, shadows of it in some animals, but nothing quite like this. First of all, armored suit. So I'm thinking about tortoise here,

like a giant tortoise big as a car. Yeah kind of yeah, very Armadilla esque in a way, except harder, Like you can we have remnants to this thing, and like a child can climb underneath it. Um so for starters, Yeah, covered with armor and then bony club at the end of its tail. That looks like a medieval mace. Yes, I saw that, and I was like, that is an amazing I mean, you look at that example in nature and to know that humans fashion tools that were similar

is just amazing. Whether or not they had the reference point, Yeah, whether or not they had the reference point or not, or it just came out of their imagination. That's what I think is so cool about this guy. Um. Now, a tale like that, of course it raises the instant question what did it use it for? Because we look at it and west I think, oh, it's a mace. I bet he swung that thing around or she I keep you in heat. But I'm going back to my

old childhood. Uh you know, I imagine the mamas males, so he or she what we would think, Oh, it must have swung that make tail around and just clocked enemies left and right while the creature was trying to to eat its it. It's vegetation, but it's one of those things where we have different theories about what it consists of. Yeah, well, there's an idea that it was used to thwart would be suitors, right, so you would wrestle with your tails and made the victor when the spoils. Right.

So it's a little bit just like elk locking horns. Right. Um. But then there's also the idea that it was used as a weapon to try to defend itself and then demolition. I'm just kidding. Well, um, I guess I do like the idea that is weird as this creature creature looked, it was so sexy that it had to literally fight suitors off with a spiked club. Well, yeah, so that's my interpretation. I like that. Okay. The name actually means pestle tail, referring to how if the spikes were removed,

then the tail would resemble a pistel. So you just have to hook it up with a little mortar and they can just grind some ancient herbs. Yeah, there you go. Oh it's stumping grounds were modern day South America, as were most of these ambles. By the way, South America seems to be the epicenter of it. Pakistan's got some winnerds as well. Mr lived as recently as ten thousand years ago, and that's why we have some really great

fossilized remains of its shell al right. Next on the list is is one that I was really amazed, amazed by when I was looking at the pictures. There are a number of crazy elephants that pop up in your in anyone's exploration of prehistoric mammals, and we're gonna get to some other crazy ones as well, But this one, uh is in a way, it's not that crazy because it basically it looks like a modern elephant, but with shorter legs, and it would have been a woodland packaderm

roaming through Europe and Asia. It's about ten feet tall three meters. But the Ananochists was really the It could have been the ultimate war elephant. Like you just look at this thing and you're like, that is a that is a born war machine, the Ananarchist, because uh, it had ten to thirteen foot long tusks that's three or four meters and that is nearly as long as the rest of the creatures. So imagine an elephant with just enormous tuss tusks that they go out straight, uh, the

length of its own body. Just javelins of tuts. That's what I initially thought of as javelins, and I sort of imagined it running and trying to do its little Olympic sport or you think it would just like at the end of the day, the ananarchists would just have to set aside an hour or two just to unskewer

the creatures. That's the other thing as I imagined, Yeah, shish kebab of enemies piled up on these tusks um And obviously it would would have been great for sort of warfare or fending off other animals, but it also would have been really helpful in digging, digging roots up,

digging plants up. Exactly. Although I feel like, if you're this animal, you feel great about everything head on right, you feel really protected, but everything else and because it's gotta be unwieldy to try to move these tusks around,

so I would feel very vulnerable in the back. Yeah, I realized that with all these I cannot look at pictures of prehistoric mammals or dinosaurs without falling back into this childhood thinking where I'm like, oh, how would that one fight that one I'm playing playing like battle matchmaker of each of these, like, oh, what would the what would it be like of an an anarchist were to

actually square off with a triceratops. You know, so, well, let's let's go through the other animals and if the end of the podcast, let's try to figure out what the fantasy square off would be. Although that's pretty good right there. Yeah, alright, So the next one I want to talk about is a giant giant rodent. Yeah, if there is ever a rodent of unusual size or r

o us, this is the guy. Yeah, telecomus giganticisms. It comes from the Late miles An epic about eleven million years ago to five million years um Argentina the size of a small rhinoceros and could weigh up to pounds. Yeah, seven ft long roadent, the largest of the Dino Mayads would be terrible mice. Probably the largest rodent ever to walk the Earth's I mean the size of a small brhino, like like a big hairy hippopotamus. Yeah that is six ft long, okay, well six point six inches right, two

meters long. I mean again, I know that it's a sort of anthropomorphosizing that I'm doing, but not really. But really, if you look at the rodents that exist right now and you try to imagine them, you know, six ft six inches long. Yeah, this was just a broot of a rodent and uh and one of the more extreme examples you can find. And it's a testament to rodents that two of them made the list. We have both

a horned wrath and a giant rat. So there you go. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back we will finish this list. We have some some more amazing creatures to run through before it's all said and done, so stick with us. All right, we're back, and we are now moving on to one of my all time favorites, just in terms of just sheer weirdness that you encounter the first time you crack open up

an illustrated book of ka stark mammals. I'm talking, of course, about old platty flatty belladon uh ten foot high three ms um packaderm roamed Europe, Asia Africa, known for his shoveled teeth. These are flattened tusks that form a shovel like projection from the bottom of their their mouth in a way it looks like weird um inverted buck teeth coming out and then on top of that a very flat trunk. So it's just about the weirdest like drug

induced idea of an elephant you could possibly think of. Uh, And of course it already existed. Um yeah, it's You know what is amazing is if you look at a picture of a shovel and you look at a picture of its mouth and the lower jaw, you see the same exact design narrow at the top and then fluting out at the bottom and then capped off by two squared off insize or teeth. It's amazing. It's like a sport.

So you look at this guy, you look at these shovel teeth tusk rather and you wonder, how does this guy live his life? What is this adaptation gaining him? And to understand that, you have to realize what kind of world, uh platty would have lived in a world of grasslands and winding shallow rivers full of plant life.

So the theory is that the platty would grip the plant life between his flattened trunk and those flattened tusks after shoveling into it and then then rearing up with rip the plants away from the mud and then use the trunk to pull it into the mouth. Yeah, there was this idea that it was just there just to shovel things up. Right, after all, we're talking about a creature that's two tons um a lot of food that

has to be shoveled into it. But those teeth, those teeth may have been used as a saw because they're they're split down the middle, right. If you look at the picture, that's what makes it looks like two teeth. The idea is that that's uh, that's where the plant material could be captured and then sort of the friction of those teeth could then saw it. Yeah. Now this creature, though, is again highly specialized, so that also makes them incredibly

vulnerable to environmental change. I think in the last episode of Maybe the Business, example of a shop opens up during the height of the bacon baked goods craze and is selling bacon flavored doughnuts literally like hotcakes, I guess, um selling these like crazy and as long as is the fad is really let's baked and flavor everything and let's eat bacon flavor donuts. They're gonna make just lots and lots of money. But then when that falls out of out of favor, when people realize that that's a

gross way to live your life. Then knowing that business is going to fail. Likewise with these guys with platty uh, there comes to time when this uh there is just not abundant winding shallow rivers full of plant life uh too to feast upon, and so the form dies out. It's true. So, as we had talked about in in the first episode Maths, extinction can happen for a number of reasons. It could be and we have seen instances of human hunting uh knocking out quite a few creatures,

but also atmospheric changes. As you just discussed a comment hitting there are all sorts of things that an animal must be able to adjust you and probably can't do so within the limited amount of time that they are you know, present, or that particular uh subspecies is present. Yes, now we have basically one creature left on our top ten, but we have another one that was included as a as kind of an honorary mentioned. So we want to we want to talk about this creature first we're of

course talking about the giant sloth. The megathereum, twenty ft high six meters, roamed around Bolivian Peru and weighed as much as three tons. Yeah. So I mean, can you imagine six thousand pounds coming at you, covered in dark hair, huge claws, and it could walk on its him legs

like a bear. Yeah, and he would eat you alive if you were a treat swallow you hold you were a vegetation on the top of the tree, because this yeah, this guy could rear up on those hind legs, use those three cloud four ft to grab onto some tree limbs and then just start grazing the tree tops if they were in the in reach. Yeah, lived as recently

as eight thousand years ago. In ground slots are members of the South American group that Zen Arthur, which contains modern tree sloughs, which we've talked about quite a bit, and eaters and armadillos. Yeah, it's an incredible specimen. And I understand basically just would poop and caves like crazy too. Well, you know, poop was quite a topic, you know, when we discussed tree slots modern day ones, because as you know, they spend about a week up in the tree tops

and then they come down once week to defecate. It's a It's an interesting creature because in in basic form and the illustrations that we have with them, based on the scut of the skulltal even it's uh, it essentially looks like a giant sloth. If you were you were to say, hey, I wonder what a giant relative of of the modern day slot would look like. This is what you would draw. But the way it lived its

life was was probably rather different. You know. Again, it's not climbing up, it's not our boreal obviously, but does clause those curled claws, which are sort of a benchmark of of sloth are just amazing there. So that's an

amazing creature. But the final one we're gonna get to on this list is is really even more amazing, and is is definitely one of like the top examples of you know, browsing through illustrations of prehistoric mammals, you see this thing and you just you almost cannot believe it. Like and when I even when I look at images of this creature today, I can understand a little bit the mindset of a person that would just completely reject all of this science and say there's no way that

could exist. This is you're just making all this up because we're of course talking about the enormous injuries. Otherium, which is a rhino like hornless giant horse looking just behemoth.

It is twenty tons about towns. Uh. It's horse like in the neck, I think, and somewhat in the face, although it's got a lot of rhino in it and evolved from an earlier five ft tall relative called a hierro code on which which again and and just in when you start looking at all these these evolutionary examples and how they tie together, uh, it's always really difficult to wrap them our our minds around the periods of

time that are that are transpiring between these forms. But it's it's it's just blows my mind to think that this, this enormous giant, this titan, uh, evolved from something that was just five ft tall. Well, yeah, and you know you're familiar with what we know as the largest land mammal now an elephant, Right, that doesn't really blow our mind. But if you were to, you know, bundle four of those together and come up with this creature, it is

just enormous elephant vult. This creature it is um. It was an herbivore and it lived in the forest of Central Asia between thirty four and twenty three million years ago. Yeah, it's teeth are really cool too. Um. I mean you look at it and you barely even notice it as the mouth, it's so enormous. But if you were just to take a look at its teeth. Uh, it only had two front teeth on the top and two below in the upper pair pointing down like tusks, and the

lower pair we're pointing forwards. And it probably also had a long, flexible upper lip which allowed it to graze twenty six foot treetops. Now, I mean you probably thinking, okay, it's huge. It's you know, it's twenty towns forty pounds. It's got to shovel a ton of vegetation into it. It's an herbivore, so most likely when the environment changed and when it didn't have enough to forage, it went

by the wayside. Um. I mean, you look at a creature like that, and that's pretty obvious that that might have been the circumstance. Yeah, and this creature lived in the Pakistan also China, well, when I go to China later this year, I'm going to keep an eye out just in case I see one. Um. Well, you've stood under a replica of one, so now you're pretty familiar

with it. And um, you know, anytime I think about this creature too, I can't help but think of Stephen King's The Mist, which is an awesome novella that he did about like this mist rolling in and has all these strange creatures roaming about in it. And uh, at one point they drive a vehicle under this enormous quadruped. It's at least I think it was a quadruped stalking across the than the night land here and uh and

and that one always reminds me of this particular creature. Also, the add Ats and Empire strikes Back, the big four legged waters, those were supposedly based on this creature as well. Uh, that's interesting. I'm trying to think about whether or not you could drive a car underneath it. Um, but I remember maybe a smart car. Yeah, yeah, I think you could because because there are some some illustrations out there of like paleontologists standing next to it, as one possibly

could what that would look like. And it's again just towering, just dwarfs us and and really just is just a mind blowing thing to think about that these creatures wants roam the earth in small, close knit families and now they are just part of a n But hey, we're the one percent. We're still were still alive, we are still a species on this earth. We haven't quite seen

an end of that yet. So, fellow humans, if you have some thoughts on this excellent list that we've put together, I'm gonna go and stay it's excellent since I think it is. Oh we did? Did you decide on a matchup? Are you going with anachus versus t Rex? Well? Um, well, anachis, let's see anarchist versus another mammal on our list? That would be that that would be ideal, wouldn't I guess I might go with mm hmm. This is a tough one. You know. I'm not going to put my crania anything

we have in spiders on this list. And then we have some lovers on this list, you know, like like old Platty Belladon. I think he was more of a lover and I'm not going to put him in there against anarchist. So um, I don't know. I think that I'm my epigolis a horn to dent. I think that that's a smaller, scrappier, yes, extreme mammal, and perhaps it could do some damage. Okay, all right, I'd see that. I'd play that out with a pair of plastic creatures

on the living room floor. So, fellow humans, fellow one per centers of the mammalian existence, um, let us know what you think about this. Uh. Granted, these were our personal picks, are the ones that called out to us the most. So there are many, many, many so there, Yeah, there are many, many more, and there's some that almost made the list, especially when you get into the weird

packet germs. And oh there are a whole bunch of Rhinocera Risks relatives that had crazy horns as well, and I would have loved to included some of those, but but we had to leave him off. So let us know what your favorite extreme prehistoric mammal is. We would love to hear from you. You can find us online in a number of places, because we basically exist online for all you know, we don't even exist in the flesh. But you can find us at stuff to bow your mind,

dot com. That's the mothership. That's the main page. You can also find us on Facebook, where we are stuff to blow your mind. You can find us on Twitter where we blow the mind. You can find us on Tumbler where we are we are also stuff to bow your mind. And finally, you can find us on YouTube our video series which everyone seems to be enjoying. Our handle there is mind Stuff Show. You can always drop us a line, and we love it when you do.

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