Organisms: Heavyweight Division

thanks for listening. Well, okay, most people think it is the blue whale because it's to be fair, and it is the largest sea animal, right, yeah, for sure largest my mammal by by far larger than any dinosaur that we do. We know of two hundred tons blue whale an extensive length of a hundred and ten feet, which is pretty massive. Um. And you know, just just to put that into perspective, two hundred tons is about as heavy as eight DC nine aircraft or fifteen school buses.

A hundred and ten feet is longer than a basketball court. And about one hundred people can fit in a blue whale's mouth. On people, you can have a party in a blue wheels. You could crawl inside its heart, right, yes, you can actually, and that that's not an exaggeration. A human could crawl through its major arteries and hang out in the heart. I mean, that is that is huge. What in the world could be bigger than a blue whale.

Like imagine a blue whale going for a medical check up and like, I'm sorry, your your arteries are clogged, and they're like, oh, is it cholestaurant. It's like no, it's um, it's thirteen year olds. They're just clogged the kids in your arteries, right. I mean, if you're gonna eat thirteen year olds, just make sure they're not on a diet of potato chips and yeah, and of course they don't eat thirteen year old they eat very small creatures. Yeah,

something like you know, millions and gazellions. That's not the actual stature, but of krill. Yeah, we've talked about before, like when you have a super large organism. They are essentially crowned atop a throne that sits on a pyramid of bones and the various and these bones represent all the animals that and and b lower down on the pyramid the vegetation that has to has to die for

that animal to live. And the pyramid or blue whale is pretty vast because it's all these these these tiny organisms that it eat at the bottom, at the base of the pyramid. Yeah, but it turns up. But there there is an organism much much larger than a blue whale, and it's pyramid of destruction is really spread out for you know, thousands and thousands of acres. Wow, now I'm excited. What could this possibly be? Is it is it's some sort of even larger whale. Is it a super whale,

like a godzilla, well, a kin cong whale. I don't know. It's it's something enormous, right, yeah, yeah, okay, so yeah, we'll just cut to the chase. It is a fungus amongst us, like a giant mushroom that stands as tall as the city. Yes, it is a cousin to the white button mushroom. You know, there's cut little mushrooms that you see in the package of the grocery store. Is called Amarillaria a stoier okay, And it's known as honey mushroom for its yellowish cap and I think it's got

a fruity little essence to it. Do not eat any mushrooms, period, but let us just go I mean, except for the ones that your mom cooks for you. And gets at the grocery store. But I'm saying don't eat any wild mushrooms by any means, though apparently the ones we're talking about, they are edible for most people. But again, don't just don't know, don't eat any wild mushrooms because we talked about mushrooms. Yeah, yeah, thank you that we had to

mention that we care about your health. But this fungus actually causes amalaria root disease, which kills you know, wide swaths of conifers in many parts of the US and Canada. And so it's easy to spot where it has been because death follows and its footsteps. Yeah, but not so easy to spot where it's going or where it actually maybe in other parts. And the reason is because it's just a really pervasive disease and it's difficult to deal with because it uses these dead trees as a food base.

But it also will live in the stumps of trees that have been cut down because they're dead, right, And not only that, but it and grow through direct root contacts and graft with uninfected trees. Okay, so it can travel on via underground networks to uninfected trees and strangle those to death by stopping out all of its nutrients and then um it also and this isn't isn't quite

as common, but it can propagate through spores. So you know, you've got spores through the wind that are carrying and you know, maybe like a mile later, you know, boom, there you have a spot infecting that area. So I think it's interesting, especially that it can live in that stump for fifty years waiting for new growth. Yeah, it's so long lived. And like exaggerated earlier about a mushroom as big as a building, its size is not of

that nature. It's it's spread out over long distances. In fact, like we're talking acres and acres, Like there's one particular individual that covered over acres I believe near Mount Adams in Washington. Yeah, definitely acres and acres. There's one patch that actually covers two thousand, three hundred eighty four acres in the soil of Oregon's Blue Mountains. And this is according to Scientific American their article strange but true, the

largest organism on earth is a fungus. Wow. I think they really have to embrace that in Oregon, Oregans not which which state is Big Sky country Montana believe. Okay, well, Oregon should be a big mushroom, big fungus country. I think there are actually fungus fest and I believe this ties back to the first occurrence of discovering these massive fungus underground systems come out for Fungus Fest. Fungus Best Queen Man. I wish I had that sash, But yeah,

I mean this stuff is is pretty crazy. It just moves from roots system to roots system old roots systems. It's some serious fungus. I guess if you could say that it has a cousin in the form of our malaria gallica, which is less easy to find because it doesn't like wipe out things and it's a path quite as much. But it's so widely distributed in the rocky mountains. And again it also you know, it's it's it's in

the ground. It's feeding on things and uh on hardwoods and uh it's pretty widespread too, but it's it's harder to really pinpoint exactly how big uh those organisms are. Yeah, and the fungus was actually discovered when a team of fortunate forestry scientists set out to map out the population of this pathogenic fungus in eastern Oregon, and they paired fungal samples and Petrie dishes to see if they fused, which is a sign that they were from the same

genetic individual. Yeah, that's the really key thing here. This is not a population. This is one genetic individual. Right. It seems like it seems sort of unfair to say, oh, well, how could this be one organism, But and in fact it is the same genetic individual. And they also use

DNA fingerprinting to determine where one individual fungus ended. So yeah, there's a biology professor by the name of Tom Volk, And in terms of talking about what constitutes an individual organism, he says, it's one set of genetically identical cells that are in communication with one another, that have a sort of common purpose or at least can coordinate themselves to do something. And isn't that very much like you know humans, right, I mean, you have all these functions in your your

body that are coordinating with one another. For me to even like be gesticulating with my hands right now, like I like to do. Yeah, well, we're not as good about coordinating things, I guess within our own body. Yeah, But I mean if I mean I think you're talking about human culture as a whole. No, no, no, I'm talking about like within my own body, within my own

little meat sack. I have old sorts of signals and we're all hopefully on the same page and trying to you know, I'm an individual, right, right, individual organism right, and see what you're getting. A's like, how many individuals make an uber individual? Right? Right? And individual? I met

a individual? I like that. Yeah, And that's important to note because you would think that, like the mushrooms or the fungus um, that you think of it as more like this collection of when in fact, it's one organism working in concert, and that is why it is so huge. Yeah.

We've talked about in the past of microbes in our gut and bacterial colonies in our body, and how you break it all down, and it's like, that's what we are, you know, we are all these tiny communities that make a larger community than the being itself is engaged with other beings and it's just an endless maze circle and the spiral that kind of thing. Now, there are other particularly large organisms. I found it interesting that a case

can be made for an aspen clone in Utah. This comprises approximately forty seven thousand stems of roots, sprouts, origin, and covering up out a hundred and six acres. So it looks like you look at a picture of it, and it's called the Pando clone and fish like National Forest Southern Utah. It looks like a forest. You don't say, wow, look at that organism. You go, oh, look at all those trees. They're kind of boring looking, But actually they're

genetically identical their clones. So you can make the argument that is one organism covering that that's territory, and yet that still isn't as large exactly. Another big contender, of course, is the or if it's not really a contender, it's pretty much by this fungus. But the genant sequoias, of course, can get the pretty huge. They can exceed a thousand tons and they're they're really impressive to see, but not

as impressive size wise as the fungus. Let's take a quick break and when we get back, let's talk about how this fungus communicates this message of hey, let's be one big organism and take over the world when we return. All right, we're back, okay, So We've talked about this fungus how it grows primarily along tree route via hype, which are fine filaments that matted together in excrete digestive enzymes. Oh,

there you go. How cool is that the fungus also has the unique ability to extend these flat shoestring like structures and that bridges the gap between food sources and expanding the reach of the fungus. Yeah. I saw a picture of these root like hair like structures and it looks just like it's kind of like nasty black hair like maybe you just like unclogged a drain or some things. Yeah, it's like it's it's pretty much what it looks like. Yeah,

like kind of you know, seaweedy. Yeah, also too, maybe not quite as thick, but yeah, the very stringy and uh yeah, it's not pretty stuff. But it does the job. And I think it's fascinating that it does that, that it it all pulls together to extend that reach so that if there is no food source that can travel you know, a couple of feet down or fifty yards down to you know, basically strangle off a tree system,

uh and its roots and get those nutrients for itself. Yeah, The plant world is a pretty it's a much slower world than the animal world. It moves at a at at a much slower pace, but it itself is a

pretty violent and competitive world. There was a great episode of Believe It Was Life um the BBC Discovery compunction, and they did a great job of taking footage of plants, of vines growing and speeding it up, and you really get to see the plant world more like the pace that it is this by putting it more in a human framework and h and it's just as as cruel

and vicious and competitive as the animal world. You know. Recently, I was in Belize and we were inland in the jungle area of the Lemoni ruins, and there was this incredible tree, actually there were several of them, but one with just completely stood out and it was I don't it was an incredibly tall tree, like hundred feet tall, but it had been encased by this um vine like

a strangler fig type of thing. Yeah, and it had grown so thick it had basically created a sarcophagus around this tree with all of these very thick some in some cases like a foot in diameter thick vines coming down and that tree was dying underneath. It is completely lethal. But as you said, you know, these things happened really slowly, and who knows, it could be another fifty years before

that tree dies. But to see that, to see this this um, this vine choking off this tree, it's just it's sort of brought to mind this idea of um, the the invisible world, you know, happening before our very eyes.

I guess you could say, and size really mattering in nature because we've talked about morphological limits before, and we when we think about size mattering in nature, we think about predation, right, And like you said, you know there's a creature standing atop the pyramid of bones, and in terms of this fungus, it's a bit different, right because again those bones will be sort of spread out and there's no one real predator for this fungus other than

it's not but it's very broad. Yeah, it's very easy to scale. But I mean, you know, of course, again, if you if you want to survive, being larger helps, right, because you don't want to be eaten by your prey. But if you're a fungus, you've got your environmental conditions to contend with, as prey, but you're also the predator and your ability to say, pounce on the roots ums these conifers, while other plants are doing, are very much

in the hight game of like I need. We knew the sunlight is the key, so I'm going to get that sunlight. Well, other plants, the plants as opposed to fungus. But right right, so you still, yes, the size still doesn't matter because you have to spread out in order to conquer. All right, Well, we got a little extra time on this one, so let's haul out some listener mail and see what folks have been saying. Crack the seal. Oh, thank you, Ernie. Oh yes, sorry, not that seale. Why

I was thinking he's cracking a seal? Like, oh, no, he's a robot. He has no no, no, he doesn't. Yeah, I didn't care. All right, So here's a little listener mail from Jackie. Jackie rites in and says, Dear Robert and Julie, fascinating thought that tidally locked perpetual darkness. I've spent the last couple of days contemplating this in my

spare time. I'm particularly enchanted with the idea of everyone living in the twilight zone, this of course being if you had a planet that one side is always facing the sun and the other side is always facing the outer dark. Um, you would have one side of super hot, one side it's a this frigid, and then you had this ring, uh, this twilight zone that would in some cases be habitable or something good theoretically support robb life. Jackie continues, Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for

the thought provoking and story inspiring episode, Julie. Your wish for stories about this has just been granted to keep up the great and occasionally inspiring podcast. So yeah, I love it when we can inspire fictional imaginings of what's possible, you know, in an other world. And and don't be shy I send it to us. I mean, if you're wanting someone to look at your stuff, I speak for myself. I'm more than happy to look at it. Yeah. Yeah,

by all means, here's another one. Daniel writes in and says, hey, dudes, I'm listening. I kind of want to do it in a dude voice, Hey dudes, and listening to your Tidley locked episode. And you asked for an example of another author who wrote on the subject. I was immediately reminded of vun to get Sirens of Titans, where on the tidally lock mercury the intense burning of one half in the outther cold of the other meat to produce a

planet wide vibration. Spoilers aside deepen the planet are creatures who feed solely from this planet wide humming an excrete light. They have no eyes or ears, but instead or drawn to any pulses of the movie. And then he does a movie trailer, guy, boys, and even a beating heart. Read it. Time to push the thirty second button back six or seven times. Keep up the good work. So

that's that's that's cool. Sirens of Titan is the one that's been on my bookshelf forever, uh Like, I think it was one of my dad had, and I don't think he ever read it. I'm trying to continue the legacy of not getting around to read Sirens of Titans, I guess, but maybe I should, Maybe I should change that. Well, he had me excrete light about my interest is all right. Here's a little listener mail from Christie. Christie righton says high Julian Robert. I recently heard the Sword podcast and

it hit a note with me. When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me all about the stuff she grew up with, lots of antiquated stuff. One story was a pair of double bladed ceremonial Spanish great swords. Wow did you grow up? She told me they were thing like six to eight feet long with scalloped edges. I had a hard time believing her until I went to my grandmother's house and saw them on the wall. They were just as advertised. Unfortunately, I don't know what happened to them. Uh and I was ten when I

saw them, so I'm working from long term memory. They're probably in a museum somewhere. I've read many books about nights and swords this size being used, but until your podcast, I had my doubts. Having listened to the podcast, I understand they didn't weigh as much as they looked like, but on the wall they look like they waited a ton. I haven't heard too much listener mail on the subject. I'm wondering how common the scaloped edges were and if

they were only for ornamentation or served a purpose. I don't think you mentioned this aspect. Interesting. Thanks and keep up the great work Christie. Scaloped edges. I don't know that. I was gonna say. It'd have to see. I mean, there are a lot of edges that actually had some ornate etchings in it, and some I don't know the the shallowness of the scaloping, you know, because that would certainly affect the way that the sword cut. But who knows. I mean, it could be could be that it was

actually in working order. I can't help but imagine a sword that is actually edged with scalops, like like fake scalops. It would be delicious end scalops. Now I'm just thinking, yeah, yeah, potato scalops swords. All right. So that's that's all the listener mail. We have violins and more. We should also make a quick note if you're listening to this podcast and you're and you're asking you something, where are the

seven Deadly Sin podcasts? Because we've at this point when you're listening to this, I think we're like four into it, and so there are three remaining we are gonna finish the series, must Uh, Sloth and Anchor. Yeah, and those are pretty garn exciting sins, right, Yeah, three really exciting sins coming your way. So expect those in the weeks ahead, and while you're waiting for those, feel free to drop

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