Monster Mash: Mummies and Trolls

Be careful of the cars that are driving around. If you're driving, be careful of tricker treaters, and of course be careful of the walking dead, particularly uh, the ancient Egyptian mummies that may stir to lie in their very museums throughout the world and then start walking the streets because they tend to be they tend to be understandably

piste off. Before we go to the undead roaming around us, I do want to point out, do not eat this popcorn balls or candied apples, alright, folks, if it's not prepackaged, don't put in your mouth because it might have a spider in it. Well, there have been reasonably showing up and stuff like those people are really people real, yeah, all right, but let's get to the real right here, because that's just sort of a sidebar, let's talk about

the debt. Yes, so the ongoing mummy crisis. So have most of you familiar with this, You've got you know, word of it on NPR, what have you. Uh? So you have these dried up bodies. They were once the honored dead of ancient Egypt, especially prepared for a journey into the afterlife. And uh. And you can imagine they're thinking, you know, when they lay down for their final rest, they think they're gonna wake up in the second Aaru,

the fields of Russias. So they're gonna be on this we on this fabricous journey into the afterlife where they have all these magical powers and uh. And they can sort of warp the world to their to their desires. But instead they're waking up in like a Baltimore museum or in some German grandfather's attic, and they're upset. Yeah, they're they're in plexiglass. People are taking pictures of them. Yeah, So what's happening here? Why are the ancient ancient Egyptian

mummies coming back to life? Well to understand and this, we have to talk about something that exists, uh, not only in the unnatural world of walking dead, but in the natural world of actual organisms, and that of course is an hydrobiosis. That's right. Before we get to anhydro biosis.

Let me just mention though, that that the way that mummies were prepared really has a lot to do with this, with the way that they were sort of reconstituted, and as we know it um when we look at the Egyptian mummification process, it's a pretty amazing thing that they did, given that none of this was written down as far as we know, but we do know that after the lights were sort of shut out in the brain, that the Egyptians would actually remove all internal organs from the body,

sometimes keeping the heart intact, and then the body was salted for thirty days in order to remove the moisture from the body. And then they had all sorts of perfumed oils and resins put on their skin, and they were wrapped several several several times. If they were super fancy royal people, then they got the sarcophagus or they got you some sort of painted face. So just keep that in mind when we talk about this idea of an hydrobiosis and some of the mummies that we see

out there on the street. Yes. Uh, an hydrobiosis means life without water, and it is a state of actual suspended animation in a dry meadow biologic condition. In other words, the specimen survives without water and without undergoing metamorphosis for

an extended period of time. Now we can look at the year seventeen o two, the father of microbiology, Anthony van Lewin Hook, who discovered that when dry and lifeless dust or what looked to be lifeless dust from a gutter roof which we rehydrated with clean water, small as he calls it, amcules became active within an hour, variously adhering to the glass, sometimes creeping along it, and sometimes swimming about. So those were some of our first cues

about this process. Yeah, and we we see various examples of this in the natural world. For instance, if you've ever ordered a pack of sea monkeys, you've you've seen I've seen this. Now sea monkeys will not last in a package for ten thousand years. But uh, there are there are other animals and organisms and plants out there that do stretch the limit a little a little further.

For instance, there's there the so called resurrection plants. Uh. Sometimes they go by the name resurrection plant rose of Jericho uh simpera viva, meaning everlasting, and they are especially good at anhydrobiosis, so they enter a dry, dormant state between the rain, between rain seasons that may last years. And elsewhere in the plant Kingdom, we've seen lotus seeds

that have germinated successfully after a millennium in the dust. Yeah, that's what's so amazing about these resurrection plants is that they could go for you know, years and years and years, and when it finally rains, then they sort of flower out and they absorb all of that rain. So it is this rehydration process that's amazing to me. And then

we have nematode worms. Yeah, nematode worms are are also capable of this and actually a number of multicellular animals are known to uh to bounce back after this extended period of dryness. Also, our friends the water bears. Yes, I love these guys. They're about a millimeter long, their arthropods, and they're found usually in moist places like moss and lychen, but they can survive anywhere. Yeah, and we will, we will definitely come back and do a full episode on

water bears at some point. In the future because they're just too cool. Yeah. They can withstand temperatures ranging from nearly absolute zero to above the boiling point of water. They can hold up to massive doses of radiation as as NASA has found out um over a century, over a century without food or water, and they can even exist in the vacuum of space. And to top it all off, they're kind of cute. They they are kind of cuddly looking, and they don't really quite look like

a bear. I guess they look as as much like a bear as anything on that scale is going to look like a bear. They just chubby, little cute things. And they also have the awesomeness of an hydrobiosis. All right, so what you're saying, Well, those are plants. Those are some tiny animals. But but what about the the human body? Is there any science, any natural world science that can explain the unnatural resurrection of a dried out mummy. Well we're gonna take a quick break and when we come

back we will discuss just that. Okay, we're back, and we're talking about whether or not those mummies that we're seeing in news footage, if if they are just walk around because of anihydrobiosis or if it's some sort of DARPA experiment gone wrong. Yeah, it's the thing about humans

and an anhydrobiosis. The the reason that our examples involved very small animals and plant tissue is because there's a great deal of desiccation damage that it can occur to a tissue when it's dried out, even if it's you know, expertly dried out, so that even it's not just a simple matter of takeaway water and then add water back. Uh, there are a number of other things that have to be in play for that to be possible. That's right.

There is a paper called ana hydro Biotic Potential in Man Implications in Medicine which was published in Medical Hypotheses by Pereira and Locus sent Us. Yes, Brazilian researchers who believe that that that the anhydrobiosis is potentially an area that we that we might exploit in order to preserve tissues. Not so. I mean, we can you can get really sci fi about it and imagine mummies being sent to other planets, uh to colonize it and build space pyramids.

But for the most part they're interested in terms of uh, we have donor organs wouldn't be to dry those out, store those in in this in this this dry setting, and then add water and implant them as needed. Now, yeah, that this is their idea behind all this, that mammals and humans have a cryptic ani hydrobiotic ability, which they say has not been discovered yet because of an unknown

specific preconditioning stage that is necessary. They're saying it's there, we sh haven't discovered it, and if we can, then it could be a huge boon to the way that we um operate on a medical level. Now, research blogger aiden or Sten has called out a few problems with this hypothesis. So that might make you feel a little bit better about the mummies you see in the street.

I don't know, he says. First, and a hydrobiotic survival is advantageous only if a species lives in a habitat that is periodically desiccated, meaning dehydrated, and if the species has no means of surviving the dry period, So he says, with a few exceptions, and a hydrobiosis is normally seen in microscopic animals and he's just larger animals, especially most humans, UM can deal with the drying of our habitats by migrating to a wetter habitat, or preventing body loss from

or or preventing water loss from their bodies. The second problem, he says, is that it's really unlikely that the ability to survive and anihydro biosis will be retained if there's no need for it. Yeah, like, why keep that special feature around in an organism if there's no benefit to it, Right, That's exactly the saying. If a trait becomes unnecessary, it

may persist, be lost, or become a vestige. But really there's probably not this ability to reconstitute our organs unless there's magic involved, which is probably the case with these these these mummies. They're there, So what's happening here? You know, they're they're roaming the street. They're forcibly removing our brains

with coat hangers in some cases. And we can only assume that what's happening is atmospheric moisture raises them from their slumber in search of life giving water and you know, a little little BC style vengeance, So you think it's some equal parts reconstitution with the mummy's curse. They're trying to avenge the people who have put men plexiglass and stared at them. Yeah, because they're they're They're not supposed to be waking up in a Baltimore mar museum or

a German attic. They're supposed to be waking up in the afterlife, or at least wake up in their tombs with all their stuff still there. But they're on the other side of the globe. You're right, No, it's it's it's that's upsetting, and the violence is understanding, particularly the Egyptian mummies, right, because they really bought into this idea of the afterlife is a beautiful thing, not necessarily a scary thing like we do more in our modern day

accounts of the afterlife. All right, Well, let's move on to another organism, uh that you may encounter this Halloween, another creature of the unnatural world that we can discuss with examples from the natural world, and that of course, is the troll. Now you you you originate from Michigan,

from the Northern United States? Do you have trolls in Michigan? Well, not that I know of, But I have to rethink some of the terrain because I was looking at Oslo born Folkloi's lie Luna Larsen, who lives in Minnesota, and she's the author of The Troll with No Heart in His Body, And she says that troll remains are found all over the place in Minnesota, which makes you really want to go back to Michigan and check this out.

She says that if you look at piles of rocks that could be burst trolls, and we'll talk more about that, gnarled tree roots are especially prevalent, and those are ancient trolls, and then strange land formations that could be actually the supine troll bodies, so you could actually see perhaps some of the vertebra of that troll worked into the landscapes. Is there everywhere, We're just not looking for him. Well yeah, and it makes me want to go on like the

troll Tour of Minnesota. They if anybody is listening in Minnesota and you guys need a boost there in your tourism, you got to do that. Yeah, get on it. Yeah, all right. So trolls are are interesting organisms. We start looking at the different tales that that inform us about them. Um, for instance, um, you know, we're all for mebe was sort of the idea of a grotesque culking troll. Uh,

this monstrous ogre like beasts. But did you know that, according to some accounts, Uh, the troll wives are sometimes beautiful redheads. I've heard about this. In fact, I think that you did a blog post about this, warning people of this, and you are actually had a reference picture of Christina Hendrix. Yes, she might be a troll wife. Uh. You know, she looks beautiful, she looks human, she's got red hair, right, But if you approach her then a

large male troll might attack you. You know what I love about this trope is that it perfectly plays into the old trope of the hooker with the john and the pimp. Yah. Yeah, you know, you learn a customer and then in the customer's wall it gets stolen. It's

sort of the same thing with these trolls. Yeah. And if if we're to try and understand this scenario, because ultimately we're talking about another species in which one gender of the species looks like a gender of our species, that it seems kind of crazy, But we see similar situations in the natural world, and we call it aggressive mimicry. Uh, not unlike that practiced by a female of Photinus fireflies. They mimic the mating dances of Photinas ignitius fireflies, and

they lure them end and then devour them. So the fam female role may appear as a beautiful woman as a means of attracting male humans which they're mini folk than you know, brutalize and or eat. Yeah, and now a less aggressive act. Of course, you can look at the viceroy butterflies, which actually mimic the same color and

pattering of the monarch butterflies, which are toxic. Um. Of course we don't have any luring in here, but you see all these examples in nature where uh, creatures can sort of morph a little bit, or they can mimic in order to either survive or attack. Yeah, the African swallowtail butterfly actually has like several different female morphs that exist within the specie. There's some that that that look like another butterfly species. There are some that look more

like there are more masculine in appearance. Um, it's I think an all told, they're fourteen different varieties of morphs in that particular species is pretty amazing, it really is. I mean, can you imagine being able to morph into something like fourteen different looks for yourself, fourteen different variety of of of female like morpho, morphologically distinct. It's it's

it's pretty crazy. But in the insect world, you quickly find that what seems crazy in the human world, what something that is the stuff of folk tales in the human world, is just everyday life in the insect world, right, And it makes that troll, the female troll masquerading as Christina Hendrix, seems really sort of like pretty you know, one oh one comparison. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and when we get back, we're going to

talk about the troll Hunter documentary. Hey, we're back. So we're talking about trolls. We're talking about the ways that we can look to the natural world to understand the denizens of the unnatural world. And so with trolls, who probably you know, most people are not that familiar with the whole troll life situation. But but far more likely you know, that sunlight will turn them to stone. Yeah, these are subterranean creatures. They cannot be out in daylight.

There are a couple of different theories that were put forward, and we have seen some of the effects of them actually exposed to light. And I say that documentary Troll Hunter from and this was dealing with the Norwegian trolls, the jott Ners, the wringlefinches, and the Tussa lad as well as the mountain Kings. Yeah. According to the film, the noncturnal troll cannot convert vitamin D, which you know most of us in the daylit world received from sunlight.

They can't convert that into calcium. So when the troll absorbs vitamin D from direct sunlight or UV rays, their bodies rapidly suffer from acute vitamin D toxicity or we also call this hyper vitamin osis D. And we see this in humans, right, Yeah, this is in the natural world. This is an actual real thing. Um. The causes are typically you're looking at an excess of vitamin D that

abnormally boost levels of calcium in the blood. It can severy severely damaged bone, soft tissues and kidneys over time, and it's almost always caused by forms of vitamin D need a doctor's prescription. So generally what's happening is you're taking too much vitamin D is a supplement and you're experiencing uh stuff like you know, these symptoms, but also constipation,

decrease appetite, et cetera. And generally the way you fix it is you stop taking all that extra vitamin D. Now, we don't know about the constipation and trolls, but we do know that in younger trolls, the excess vitamin D causes an intense and painful build up for gas in its stomach and veins, and this results in a full body fragmentation. In other words, they explode, floating troll all over the place. Now, in the older trolls, though, according

to the troll Hunter, the veins are too constricted. They cause the expansion to occur in the creatures bones, and this reaction causes the creatures entire body to calcify, to turn into stone, to use the language of folklore. Yes, now this is all all good and well, um, but they are roaming among us, so it's something to look out for, especially the Christina Hendrix of them. Yeah, watch out for the for the for the troll wives. Um. And you know you mentioned a wife slop, when I

wonder if we're gonna know they have wife slop. Sure they have celebrity wife slop. Have they considered troll wife swop as a television show. I'm sure you've seen some of the buzz on the Internet that there's been some theories put forth that there have been troll wives on their already and we just didn't know it because again they're aggressive mimicry. Well, that's gonna make my rewatching of those series all all the more interesting now. Yeah, so

you know you've got your mummy friends out there. We should treat them kindly because again, they didn't want to be something that we just glcked at in museums or as you say, in German attics. And uh, we have learned a lot from from mummies. I mean we've been able to look at their DNA and look at disease. We've been able to to even look at their diets.

You know. So they've given us a lot. We need to give them a hand that their gifts to science and gifts to archaeology, even as they sometimes strangle archaeologists and scientists. Trolls, on the other hand, as we know, just on the Internet, they're there to be avoided. They're not given us much. Yeah, I don't know why so many of them have Internet connections, I mean, because they're under bridges, even like if they're using wireless, it's got

to disrupt your signal a bit. You know. These these are things that we should probably look at certain corporations and begin to ask them questions about why they're able to have access. Why are you granting internet access to trolls, to nocternal monsters, something that we could uncoverag they're probably sending the wives into the store to get them. That's my bet. That's the other perk of that kind of mimicry, because you can you then use the wife that appears

human to infiltrate uh, you know, human systems. Wow, this is yeah. I mean I I I'm telling you, I was about to say, as a woman, I would never say, don't trust another woman. I'm gonna look twice next time. But I exit that office store and I look at my my female co workers because possibly they could be exhibiting this aggressive mimicry. Ladder milk. All right, Well there you go, um, a couple of unnatural creatures that we

are looking at through the guise of natural science. So let us know what you think about all that, particularly trolls, particularly mummies, and the possible science behind them, as explored in various bits of media. We'd love to hear from you and uh and certainly we hope everyone out there has a happy Halloween. If you want to check out other Halloween related stuff that we've put out, and we tend to put out Halloween related stuff all year long, this is how you do it. You can go to

stuff aboule your mind dot com, that's our mothership. You can also go to various social media outlets and moving Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler and you can always get in touch with this and you can do so by sending us an email at blow the Mind at discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, does it How stuff works dot com