Invasion of the Globsters, Part 2

upon our shores and perplex onlookers. Now, last time we tended to focus on globsters that are of a sort of maybe you could call like the standard class globster, which is something that is sort of off white, gray or pale pink and color. Huge blob like in shape, maybe multi ton no apparent skeleton or bones, no apparent eyes, no apparent head covered in will find hairs or stringy

fibrous substances, kind of a rubbery texture, your classic beach blob. Yeah, And as we discussed and explored in that episode, it's almost always a safe bet to go with the explanation that it's a big old piece of rotting whale blubber. In fact, if someone if you're out in the world, you know, in the next over the next few months, and someone says, hey, did you see this headline about

this strange creature that washed up you. You can just go ahead and say, oh, yeah, that's probably whale blubber, and you have a very good chance of being correct. You can you can really feel like a Sherlock Holmes in this scenario. Yeah, you'll be right most of the time.

But we should acknowledge that there is also another, well, I don't know if it'd be one class, you could say, a whole range of other classes of globsters, which are you know, some form of mysterious dead organic matter that washes up on a beach and defies initial classification and people don't automatically know exactly what kind of animal it is. That it might be a new species or some kind of sea monster or sea serpent. And that's what we're going to talk about today, the globsters that are not

just whale blubber or some type of whale tissue. Right. One of the key examples that you come up with our our globsters that are interpreted as being a plesiosaur. Yes, this is one of the biggest classes of other globsters out there. The plesiosaur form the kind of like long

neck reptile with weird little paddle fins, the lockness monster. Yeah, but the thing is, you can you can just go ahead and forget about the lockness monster for a second, because the lockness monster does not exist, never existed, but the plesiosaur did. And it's uh, you know, it's it is. It is an amazing thing, like we should wake up every day in amazement that giant marine reptiles once ruled our seas. Yeah. Well, a point of clarification. Sometimes plesiosaurs,

they get lumped in with dinosaurs. Weren't dinosaurs more than pterosaurs were dinosaurs. Plesiosaurs were seed dwelling reptiles, right, Yes, though, I have to I have to admit I myself will sometimes mistakenly refer to a tarrasaur as a dinosaur, and my six year old son will correct me. They're not actually dinosaurs, Dad, they're tarrasaurs. Good on him, he's flexing those pedantic muscles early. Yes, I mean, that's just good

training for adulthood, nobody. The kind of person everybody loves most is the person who corrects them about what kind of animal something is. Yes, well, you know you have to work on that too, that's that's the story of of of raising a child, right. Um, the difficult part is yet convincing them that there is a time and a place to correct people on this and this sort of thing. And in granted some adults never learned that lesson.

But anyway, to come back to Tanessy, it is important to acknowledge Nessy because NeSSI is a great example of how we have this well worn cryptid trope uh to turn to when we find a strange creature that in some way resembles a prehistoric marine lizard. And so it is a great form to turn to because for starters, nothing alive today really looks like a plesiosur in the same way that nothing to the live today really looks like say a sauropod or any number of prehistoric animal forms.

I mean nothing, I mean nothing outside of you know, a chicken looks like a t rex, but you know, certainly not at that scale. But but at the same time, these forms are famous and and if certain animals decay in just the right way, underlying you know, bones or ligaments may create the illusion of a long neck and a small head emerging from a bulky Torso So what happens is. On several different occasions, basking sharks have been

misidentified as plesiosaurs. This due to their prominent snouts or noses, which is the namesteak, the namesake of their genus uh set O rhinus ketos, which is marine monster in Greek plus rhinos meaning nose, and with it so with the underlying basking mouth rotted away because these are big, you know, filter feeders. Uh, it looks like the remnants look like a small head on a long neck. One of the most prominent examples of this that you still see everywhere.

You go to any cryptozoological website and they will have this picture is this This this thing that was pulled up by a Japanese fishing trawler, the zoo Maru in ninety seven. Again, this picture still makes a round sometimes as part of a creepy pasta. I've even I've seen it used in that way, and it is an unsettling image. It looks like there is this long necked, small headed creature with like two or at least two probably like

four limbs trailing off of it. Some sort of underlying structure, uh, you know, it could be a skeleton, so it's easy to look at that and think, oh, my goodness, that is that's that's nesty, that's that's e Plesius are right,

but it's not right. Uh. You know. One of the books we're looking at for this was Abominable Science Origins of the YETI, uh Nessy and More by Daniel Lockston and Donald R. Prothero, and it provides an excellent illustration of how this sort of thing would occur, exactly like how the flesh would rot away to create this false impression of e Plesiosaur. It's on page to fourteen in a Kindle edition. Yeah, there's actually ah, there's a great guy.

It's a reversal of the shrink rapping thing you know that we know we talked about when we did the

episode with Katie Golden of Creature Feature. You know this idea that sometimes when paleo artists are trying to figure out how to draw what a dinosaur looks like, they essentially just like wrap the skin as tightly around the bones as possible, and so we end up with a dinosaur or any kind of extinct animal that looks like a very like slim, very slim, slender interpretation of what the bones were kind of like the bones have been shrink wrapped by the skin, but in fact many animals

are They've got all kinds of tissues that are not fossilized don't show up in the bones. So maybe we should be imagining dinosaurs as as plumper, fat or more more fluffy creatures. And uh, this is like the opposite of that procedure where we pull up the bones and then you're we're actually maybe it's the same thing. You're imagining a shrink wrapped version of what these cartilaginous remains

are from the basking shark. And if you were to do the shrink wrapped version of the cartilaginous remains, they look what would look kind of like a plesiosaur exactly, you know, when when alive. The head of a basking shark is something like five feet across, but it's skeleton is made of cartilage, and those huge jaws that it have they quickly wrought away and it leaves behind what looks like a small skull at the end of a

long spine. Another example of this this exact same situation occurred in eighteen o eight with the strong say beast, this is a this is a classic globster. Yeah, washed ashore on the island of Stronsay in the Orkney Islands, Scottish anatomist John Barclay thought that it was surely the remains of a sea serpent, and it caused quite a stir at the time, especially in the media. Though anonymoust to Sir Everard Home, who was a belief based in London at the at the time, he dismissed it. I'm

almost immediately saying that's a decaying basking shark. Uh. And others backed him up on this, But so there were other people who jumped to Barclay's defense, saying that this was clearly the remains of a long necked beast with three pairs of paws or wings, along with hair like bristles down its back. Now, one place I have frequently seen claims of people trying to validate the existence of plesiosaur remains found coming out of the ocean is among

Young Earth creationists. Well, I guess they sometimes seem keen on the idea that there are still dinosaurs out there, or there are still animals that we now know to be ancient extinct animals. Uh, you know they're because they've compressed the timeline of Earth history to a tiny fraction of what it really is. I think they're motivated to think that things that we think have been extinct for millions of years are actually still somewhere in a jungle

or somewhere in the deep ocean. If your agenda is to take geological time and fit it within the time frame of human language, then that's probably solid step to make. But but the thing is, even people without that agenda in mind, I mean, they still can fall into this

uh under this way of the plesiosaur interpretation. I mean that there were a couple, at least a couple of scientists in Japan who supported the plis are the pleas sr interpretation of that that Zeromorrow case from seven uh, which is kind of baffling, But but I guess who wouldn't want to believe It comes back to the whole, you know, situation of finding either a dead sasquatch or a dead chimpanzee in your backyard. One of them is

far more likely, but one is amazing. Well, I you know, I'm a plesiosaur molder like I would love to believe that that would be wonderful if we discovered that some kind of branch of plesiosaurs had survived into the modern age at this point. You know, it seems kind of unlikely, but you know, the ocean is big. Who knows. It's just that these cases are not actually good evidence of that.

So I still maintain that there's far less excuse for going with the plesiosaur explanation today or even in nineteen

seventy seven. But as Lockston and Prothero pointed out in their book Abominable, Abominable Science, we should realize a few things about about the early nineteenth century when considering these earlier examples, like the strong state beast, they write, quote, by nineteenth century standards, the ink was hardly dry on newspaper reports of the sea serpent siding around Gloucester in eighteen seventeen, when ichthyosaurs were shown to be reptiles in

eighteen twenty one. The first nearly complete plesiosaur skeleton was described in eighteen twenty four in a presentation before the Geological Society of London at the same meeting that announced the first dinosaur genus name, Megalosaurus. Almost immediately naturalists made the connection to sea serpents. So you've still got contemporary reports of sea serpent sightings. People are just discovering remains of these ancient you know, gigantic reptiles. And so, you know,

why not put two and two together. Maybe these these remains were discovering are the sea serpents that people claim to see out on the waters. Yeah, And you had people like the likes of geologist Robert Bakewell stating that he was inclined to believe that something like ichosaurs were likely alive today. He stated this in the eighteen thirty

three textbook Introduction to Geology. Well, I mean, it's not without precedent that an ancient marine species thought to have been extinct for for millions of years or so is actually discovered to still be alive today. That one of the most commonly sided examples is the lobe finned fish the seila can't. Yes, But because one has been found to exist does not suggest that necessarily another world be found, right,

But all prehistoric marine life forms are on the table, right. Uh. And to to put this time period in context, you know, the the early nineteenth century. To put it in context of a past episode of stuff to blow your mind, the bathosphere would not descend for another century like so that's where we were too in our understanding of the ocean and what kind of animals live there. I think

these were the This might even been before. I forget when this happened, but they we were talking about in the Bathisphere episode, how people tried to figure out what was deep in the ocean before we had, you know, anything that could go down there. And there were the days of the drag lines where you just drag a bucket along under you know, behind a ship and see if you could pull anything up in it. It seems

remarkably crude technology. Now, yeah, just a death bucket to pull things up and see what kind of flesh you managed to snare and if it exploded by the time it got to the surface. Right, all right, well, I guess we should take a quick break and when we come back we will discuss some more non whale globsters from the Globster Hall of Fame. Thank you, thank you. Alright,

we're back now. One thing I wondered about is how long have people been reporting globsters, Like how far back does the does the Sun article about the beach blob go? That's true, because if it, certainly this would seem like the kind of thing that would have occurred throughout human history. Of course it would I mean nothing like nothing that we know have changed suddenly in the seventeenth century to make this stuff start happening. So, uh, let's take a

look at old Plenty of the Elder. This is kind of a late appearance, for Plenty usually shows up earlier in an episode. That's true. Yeah, well he's making of

fashionable appearances. Okay. So Plenty of the Elder in his Natural History is in a section talking about nereads, which are the sea nymphs or the ocean fairies or mermaids, and he writes about how the governor of Gaul once wrote a letter to Caesar Augustus reporting that a number of dead nereads had washed up on shore in his territory and that their quote mournful song moreover, when dying

has been heard a long way off by the coast dwellers. Uh. Later he writes, during the rule of Tiberius, in an island off the coast of the province of Leone, the receding ocean tide left more than three hundred monsters at the same time of marvelous variety and size, and an equal number on the coast of the Saints and among the rest elephants and rams, with only a white streak to resemble horns, and also many neriads. And then later he writes about a couple of other monsters cast cast shore.

One story quote, the skeleton of the monster twitch Andromeda, and the story was exposed, was brought by Marcus Scaurus from the town of Jaffa in Judea and shown at Rome among the rest of the marvels during his his uh edile ship. It was forty ft long, the height of the ribs exceeding the elephants of India, and the

spine being one foot and six inches thick. Well, this all sounds exactly like what we've been talking about, like people finding strange bodies, strange flesh upon the shores and turning to mythological explanations or it just I mean, really it almost almost of the you know, uh, it's it's almost unfair to say mythology in these cases because in some of these cases we're talking about just sort of

unexpected understanding of the more mysterious corners of the world. Well, yeah, I mean this was a time for which mythology I think was in some ways kind of blended with history. Might not always be clear to these people which of these myths were true and to what extent or were

they based on actual historical events. So if you've got a story of your your classic heroes like Perseus or whatever, and there's a sea monster in them, I don't know, maybe that story happened, and maybe the c monster is real and this. Oh and you know what, I found some really big bones or a big, old, confusing pile

of flesh on the beach. I bet it was that sea monster, right, And then of course we have to we have to recognize that if these things are occurring throughout history, we have possibly the reverse situation occurring where you have just a story about a sea monster and then you find these weird remains and you're like, well, this must be the form, and then that informs the myth. Yeah. Now, we just we've discussed creatures like this on the show

in the past, especially Triton's and neriads, mermaids and whatnot. Uh, And you know, I believe we discussed the link between mermaid myths and the sightings of real life marine mammals and even occasionally sightings of cephalopods. But I wonder too if actual human remains ever factored into these observations as well. Oh so, like like kind of bloated dead human corpses washing up on the beach and people and say, ah, these are the dead sea nymphs. Yeah, I mean we've

we have looked. At example, I looked around for specific discussion of this, and I couldn't find anything. And maybe it's out there though, and I just didn't happen upon it. But you know, in discussing the Kappa in Japanese folklore, we talked about how they are aspects of that myth. They're based upon misinterpretations of of of bloated bodies, the

bodies of drowning victims. So it doesn't seem that remote a possibility that one could misinterpret the human remains found on a shore, you know, the remains of some fishing vessel, or even a vessel in a time of war, provided that the the decay was substantial enough or unique enough. Yeah. I feel like we're developing an interesting parallel to like Adrian Mayer's geomethology, where the idea that maybe ancient people's discovered dinosaur fossils or other kinds of fossilized bone remains

and developed the ideas of mythical beasts from them. Here, I guess we're talking more like bio mythology, like recently dead creatures and corpses found or blobs found could give you ideas of the types of mythical monsters and creatures that inhabit the hidden part of the world, you know, and looking around it more like recent examples of supposed cryptozoological creatures. I did find at least one example where

it's this weird bipedal looking creature. It appears hairless and has this kind of quasi human appearance to it, and the likely explanation is that it was a sloth. Whoa yeah, So so you know, you could have a situation where somehow this animal is wound up in the water, it's dead, it's lost its hair, and it is no longer quite recognizable as what it was and now occupies this kind of strange in between space. Well, it makes me think

about the New Jersey Beach monster. I think you've probably seen pictures of this, which is what do they ultimately decided it likely was like a raccoon. Yes, they did run across this one Yeah, it's just this hairless, gross looking little demon mammal without you know, it's smooth all over dead on a beach in New Jersey, and people

now think, oh, it's probably just a raccoon. But regardless of what you know, they may have made of human remains on the beach, they were inevitably encountering chunks of blubber. They were encountering things like basking sharks, perhaps the remnants of marine mammals such as manatees or doo gongs. So there's plenty of stuff there to to lend itself to monstrous interpretations. Yes, I'm so sorry. I've got to clarify. I said New Jersey it was the Montauk Monster. I

was wrong. It was the New York beach mont talk. Oh yes, yes, sorry about that. New Jersey sea monster is an entirely different scenario. By the way, myriads and Triton's uh play an important part in Transgenesis, the sci fi podcast that is publishing January thirty one, two thousand nineteen. I hope everyone that listens to the show will check it out. You can find out more about it at Transgenesis dot show. That's right, check it out. Now, Robert, are you ready to talk about a sea monster or

wonderful beast? Do I get to choose between the two? Are they one and the same? They are one and the same, But you will get to choose which one you think it is? All right, let's do it, okay, now, I so I came across evidence of a seventeenth century lobster washed ashore in Ireland, and this is a glorious thing it was. I'm going to make the case that this was pretty clearly a giant squid of the genus

arctotis uh. It was written up in a pamphlet published in London in sixty four, and the pamphlet is usually known by its opening line, which is a true and perfect account of the miraculous sea monster or wonderful fish.

The pamphlet continues, lately taken in Ireland, bigger than an ox, yet without legs, bones, fins or scales, with two heads, and ten horns of ten or eleven foot long, on eight of which horns there grew knobs about the bigness of a cloak, button in shape like crowns or coronets, to the number of a hundred on each horn, which we're all too open and had rows of teeth within them. That does sound a lot like a giant squid. I

think we're getting there. So. The pamphlet tells the story about a man named James Steward who was riding by the seaside in the west of Ireland, and quote, as the tide was coming in, perceived at a distance something of a strange bigness to make towards the shore. At first he apprehended it might be some horse that might have been caught away with the violence of the tide,

and having recovered himself, was now swimming to land. But approaching nearer on a closer view, he was infinitely surprised and amazed, not so much at the bigness, which yet he found to exceed that of a horse, which he first took it for in the body, as at the uncouth shape, and a number of strange horns of great length, which rendered it not a little terrible to behold, insomuch that he durst not go near it, lest it should destroy both him and his horse. So we got the

dramatic set up. Steward goes off and gets help from a couple who live nearby, and they use ropes to drag it up on the beach. This they could do, though the account says that when they tried to touch the horns quote, they found there on shells like coronets with teeth within them, which got hold of their hands and fingers, so that they were glad to let them go. So they come back the next day with a bigger company,

and by then the beast was dead. And after that they gave a further description, saying that the body was smooth and without scales or bones, and that it had two heads and two eyes, quote, of an oval form and of extraordinary bigness. Now, I think this has pretty much got to be a giant squid, especially when talking when they talk about the size of the eyes, because the eyes of a giant squid are extremely remarkable or organs. They've got a maximum diameter of around twenty five centimeters

or ten inches. I've also seen slightly larger estimates of around thirty centimeters or about twelve inches, And the eyes of the giant squid and their southern Southern Ocean cousins, the colossal squid, are by far the biggest eyes in nature. Like they're often compared to the size of dinner plates. Uh. The one I like is that they're bigger in diameter than a standard basketball. They don't have irises or eyelids. Their eyes are not filled with jelly like fluid like ours,

but rather they're just filled with water. And so I've read that after the squid dies, their eyes just kind of like collapse like a deflat bag. Um. They're made for extreme light sensitivity in the pitch dark of the ocean more than five hundred meters down. And I was reading an interesting piece in Scientific American from twelve by Katherine Harmon about research on the purpose of those huge eyes,

because why why do they need eyes that big? Like the next biggest eyes in nature are the eyes of the sword fish, and they're literally like a third of the size of the squid's eye. These eyes are like three pent of the next biggest eyes in nature. Uh, the entire eye of a swordfish would fit inside the

giant squid's pupil. On top of this, there's the fact that beyond a certain size, scientists have generally found really diminishing returns in eye bigness, where in most cases it just does not pay off at all for an animal to have an eye any larger than an orange, It consumes a lot of energy, it's very vulnerable, and it doesn't see much better than anything bigger than an orange. I mean, you think of some of the of the animals that have that are known for having the most

impressive eyesight, and that the eyes aren't that big. Eyes aren't that big. You're you're generally dealing with different varieties of bird. Yeah, that's exactly correct. So what are the squid using these triple huge eyes for? Well? Study found that while a squid's huge eye is not generally better at seeing, it's not just it's not like better at seeing everything. It is better at seeing one extremely specific kind of visual information, which is subtle changes in contrast

caused by large objects at a distance. Oh, I bet, I know what that large object is. That's right. So imagine what, in fact a squid might be most likely to be on the lookout for, Robert, you know the answer, the sperm whale. That's right. So imagine the body of a sperm whale diving through the Black Ocean five meters

down and as it travels. What the scientists were pointing out is that you know, as as a sperm whale dives through the water, it will probably disturb and trigger the bioluminous the luminescence of tiny organisms here and there as it rushes through the water column. And most of the time it does not pay to have foot wide eyes. But the one exception is if you're going to be looking around for huge objects in the pelagic darkness, then

gigantic eyes are where it's at and five down. The researchers figure that a squid can spot an approaching sperm whale at a hundred and twenty meters, giving it a chance to escape. Of course, the whales don't really need sight to hunt in the dark because they use sound based decolocation. This is amazing and but it does make perfect sense, you know, because the sperm whale is the uh, the giant squid eater par excellence. Yeah. Yeah, we love to think of the giant squid as like the ultimate crazy,

scary ocean monster. But it's a prey animal. Yeah, I mean, of course it preys on other things, but like but a sperm whale. When sperm whales are found, sometimes they will have guts full of beaks, you know, because the squid it's mostly got soft body parts that are easy to digest, except for this one hard body part, the beak, which which you know, you open up a sperm whale stomach and you you may may just be beak city in there. All right, we're gonna take a quick break,

but we'll be right back. Thank thank and we're back. So back to the sea monster or wonderful fish. Uh So, Another thing the pamphlet says is on the cloak button

shaped crowns upon its horns. The pamphlet points out, quote the resemblance of a pearl, which was to open and shut as a little mouth, and had within it a row of teeth, so that it should seem beside the mouth of a little head, which we shall describe by and by this monster received nourishment for its body at eight hundred several places for that to number, or thereabouts, did the crowns on all eight horns amount. So they're saying they think that this this creature eats with its suckers.

If this is a squid, that seems to be incorrect. But but they thought, oh, these look like tiny mouths. These are the mouth through which it eats, and they are kind of like tiny mouths they're kind of like a little leech mouths all over the arms. A giant squid has eight arms and two feeding tentacles longer than the other arms, making the tin limbs tin limbs in total,

consistent with the report of the tin horns. And of course these cloak button shaped crowns sound pretty much exactly like the toothed suckers lining the arms and the tentacle the feeding tentacle clubs of a giant squid. I've got an image here of what they look like, Robert. They're nice, real quick. I should also throw in that the tentacle armed distinction, that's another one that's easy to to refer to the tentacles of a squid when you really are

referring to to the arms. Right, But you get into, especially when you get into like weird fiction and all, the word arm is not nearly as evocative as the tentacle. You don't want to have a mini armed alien crawling out of a dimensional gateway, No, you want a many tentacled monster. Well it makes me wonder, you know, when like you hear about these ancient monsters that are described to say an apocalyptic religious visions as like an angel

with tin arms or something. If we go with the cephalopod analogy here, maybe those are things more like what people would call tentacles, not necessarily human arms with elbows and hands. I like this this reading of pretty much any certainly any biblical account. Just put in tentacles for arms or heads, and you have. You have quite a cool monster in your hands. But to be biologically rigorous,

you are correct about that distinction. There the squid has eight arms which are covered in suckers all over, and then it's got the two tentacles which are longer, and I have clubs for grabbing prey and bringing it to

the mouth. Those are the feeding tentacles. But let's come back to this, uh, this globster here, because there was mentioned to get biblical again, there was mention of horns, right, yeah, so it's got these tin horns, and then it says in the middle of the head, between all these horns, uh, we're we're assuming the horns are the arms and the tentacles.

The pamphlet says between all these horns there was a smaller head quote in shape much like the head of a hawk, looking upward, and had a strange mouth and two tongues in it, and here too, no doubt it did take much of its nourishment. And in this they are correct because this sounds like the beak and mouth of a giant squid exactly right. They mentioned the resemblance to a hawk. Giant squid actually do have hooked bird

like beaks. As we're talking about a minute ago, the sperm whale stomach might be full of beaks, and inside this beak in a giant squid is a chewing mechanism, a grinding tooth covered tongue called the radula. And here here's a crazy thing I did not remember learning about in the past. I may have, But so the mouth parts here have to process food down into tiny piece

is before it swallowed. And there's a very good reason for this because the squid, and I've read about this this in the context of the colossal squid, I believe it's also true with the giant squid. Uh. The squid has a taurus or doughnut shaped brain, and the esophagus through which it swallows food passes directly through the middle of that doughnut shaped brain, so it goes through the donut hole. So if it tries to swallow a piece of food that is too large it could literally press

against its brain. Now, imagine if when you ate there was a choking risk, but the choking risk was not of suffocation, but a risk of mashing on your cerebral cortex. I'm imagining an alien race of cephalopod beings who, in order to have hallucinogenic experiences, they swallow polyhedral dice. So that you know, different different sizes will press on their brains their donut brains in different ways produce different visions. It's called the god choking. Anyway, I know what you're thinking.

Whenever a sea monster washes up dead on a beach, the next thing they should do is figure out what did it taste like? Right? So, for experiment that people boiled some of the flesh. But the longer it boiled quote, the harder it became. It gave a very good scent as it boiled and seemed fat, But in boiling the fat hardened, and no creature, though several at diverse times were tried, would eat a bit of it, or so

much as taste of it. They don't say what creatures they tried, though, I mean, did they offer it to a cow? To a dog. What I mean a dog, I'm sure it would be up for anything. Did they offer it to a shark? I mean, there's no clues to go on here, but anyway that I mean, this just reminds me of Robert. Have you ever tried to cook calamari? I don't think I've ever tried to cook

it myself. I've only ever had it in restaurants. Well, I don't know if what is true of smaller squid is also true of larger squid, but food sized squid, which is what calamari is because I'm is overcooked and rubbery. Extremely easily boiling it can make it tough as rubber. You actually be very careful to cook it very quickly. Uh, and you know, get it out of the heat before it gets overcooked and gets super chewy. So this would be this would be why you tend to encounter it

in kind of like a flash fried uh fashion. And I bet you've had you may have like ordered calamari at a not so great restaurant and it was really tough and chewy. Yeah, I probably said, but it also probably explains why it is hard to find calamari that is not fried and of course not sushi. On the other side, like there used to be a Vietnamese place

in Atlanta. This was ages ago that that I like to go into because they had like a calamari salad and the calamari was it was baked or something, you know, so some of that I forget how it was actually prepared. It's been so long, but it was like one of the few places where it's like, oh, it's cooke calamari, it's not fried. Well, I mean, I think another way

you can get tender calamari. I'm not positive about this, but I think the other way is to like of the low and slow method, you know, low temperature, long long period of time. But I haven't tried it myself, but anyway, I've got to mention. There is also an addendum to the pamphlet at the end, which does it's been I would say I'm impressed with this seventeenth century pamphlet.

It sounds, based on my reading, like it's a very like kind of thorough empirical description that they do a pretty good job of giving you an idea of what this thing was. Uh, it's not too sensational. But then it gets to the addendum at the end quote. We might now divert the reader a little and tell him that some Zealots, hearing of a strange creature with several heads, tin horns, and more than triple crowns, took it for the apocalyptical beast and fancied the Pope was landed in person.

And it just like us humans, we can't even have a nice pamphlet about a dead blob of sea monster flesh without bringing religion and politics into it, getting all your Protestant grievances out against the pope. Well, that reminds me of the example from from like this month's headlines that we referred in the first one, where some strange blob was found and they compared it to the current yost president. Oh yeah, I just want pure enjoyment of

sea monsters that having to think about politics. Yeah, yeah, it seems that would you. There should be plenty to talk about without bringing politics and religion into it, because here behold is a mystery of the deep cast upon the shore for our perusal. Now, I guess one thing we should say is that this is a globster by by virtue of its time in history, because this wouldn't

be classed as a globster today. I think if this thing washed ashore, people would immediately now be able to recognize that it was almost undoubtedly a large species of squid, right, Not much like the recent Australian case we mentioned in the last episode where people saw it and they're like, hey, it's a giant squid. Let's get the camera, let's put this stuck around Instagram. Well, yeah, I mean those things

are rare enough on there. Even though we know what they are and they're just animals, they are in a way like the modern equivalent of a sea monster. You've seen something rare and amazing, it's exotic. Yeah. Not for sperm whales though maybe not right they're like, yeah, I had, I had six of them yesterday. Yeah. Actually, you know, this one thing I'm not clear on or I don't remember from past research is just how often a sperm whale is eating a giant squid. I don't know either.

One thing I did come across in this research is um that a colossal squid has an extreme colossal squid is the Southern Ocean like Antarctic equivalent of a giant squid. They're around the same length, though a colossal squid has a fat or more robust body, and the colossal squid apparently has a very very slow metabolism. I guess it lives in deep cold water, and despite its gigantic size, it really doesn't have to eat very much at all

because it just doesn't move or do very much. But either way, I mean, I guess these things delicious sperm whales. I I wonder, like, do sperm whales get upset stomachs when they have too many squid and they get do they get like beak belly? One well, one would think so. But then again, if these are these are indeed a primary part of their diet, they've they've had time to

get used to it. One wonders, maybe someday, if we create the machine that allows us to talk to whales, we will that will be the first thing we ask them, right, Or maybe it's just simply the fact that it's sure, you're gonna pay for it, you're gonna get beak belly, but it just tastes so good. It's indeed, like when a when a human goes to a restaurant and eats an entire appetizer of fried calamary all By themselves. It's a terrible choice. They're gonna pay for it later, but

it sure was delicious while they were eating it. Squid the awesome blossom of the sea. All right. So there you have it. Globsters A two parter here on stuff to blow your mind. Again. We didn't cover all the globsters that have occurred and been reported by humans wandering the beaches of the world. We haven't discussed anywhere near all the amazing creatures that live in the in the ocean and sometimes wind up washed on the shore. But

we get to cover a lot of ground. I think there are some examples we didn't get to that are neither confirmed to be parts of whales, nor are they like basking sharks or squid like we talked about today, but some other kind of blobby mass that we don't quite know what it is, and uh, who knows. Maybe will come back to that in the future if people really want to hear more blobs. They love blobs, you know, we we can always we can always return to blob

Blob Island. Will do Globster three D. That will be the third one, because it'll be in three D. You can't have a monster movie that's number three without having some three D glasses. That's good. I like it. Whether whether it's whether it's whale body parts, whether it's a squid, whether it's a basking sharp or shark, or whether it's the Pope. It's all gonna look good in three D. You're gonna be glad you came and you paid the

extra dollar for the glasses. All right. Well, if you want to check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you know where to find them. You can find them wherever it is you get the podcast, wherever you get any of your podcast. You can also check us out at our home page our mothership stuff to Blow your Mind dot com that has links out to our various social media accounts. For instance, you can go check out our our group on Facebook. It's called Stuff

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