The Fish Had Fur, Part 1

because it concerns the animals of Iceland. So this was published in a periodical called the Scottish Review I believe, in the year nineteen hundred by an author named Olaf Davidson. And it's an article called the Folklore of Icelandic Fishes in which Davidson catalogs examples of both totally mundane animals, like you know, talking about different kinds of whales and fish and sharks and things, but then also bizarre stories of the boreal realms about you know, uh, weird deadly

creatures of the waters. And there are just some great stories in here, some of which he seems to source at least partially from Icelandic newspapers and other ones. I guess he's drawing more on just general folklore. Um, so, the first one I wanted to mention is is great he He talks about something called the coil eel or rock all, which is something like a cross between a fish and a wire saw. So just let me read

from Davidson here. The coil eel or rock all is about two ft in length and lives chiefly in ditches or stagnant pools, but is sometimes found in running waters. If any animal or human being puts foot into the water where it is, the eel coils itself round their leg and cuts into the bone or even takes it right off. Frequently. Yeah, yeah, wire saw right. This frequently happens with horses, but cheap escape because their legs are

too slender for the eel to work upon. How the cutting is done is a point on which opinions differ. Some say that the venom in the eel is so strong that it corrodes the flesh and bone. Others say that the eel has fins as sharp as the teeth of a saw and does the work with these. It is also said to have thin scales as hard as iron, and its flesh is poisonous. Wow, this is incredible. It's like the swimming guillotine, a very good comparison. You need to get like a an Icelandic wizard who's got one

of these on a leash that he can throw. Yeah, that would be great. I mean, these these are this is a great hard gimmick right here. Yeah, and and uh, it's even got an origin story. The rock All was allegedly created, according to the tails, when a wizard once breathed life into a dead, half rotten eel, thus creating this poisonous animal. Oh my goodness that this needs to go into a monster manual right here. Yeah. It also strikes me as like a good way to convince your

children not to step in puddles. Yes, yes, the rock All made lurk in the puddles? Yeah, do you ever, by the way, go through And I know some kids do this, Some kids have a real like puddle splashing stomping phase. I don't know if you ever dealt with that, but I've definitely definitely went through a puddle splashing uh phase for sure. Yeah, I mean I can't deny it's fun.

But okay, So Davidson goes on to another one. There there's one called the ohfu oogie, which is a fish that has backwards facing fins and which swims in reverse tail first. And then there's another one that he calls the sea mouse. But I think what he's referring to is now called the rabbit fish or the rat fish scientific name Chimera monst rosa. Uh. This is a This is a cartilaginous fish of the North Atlantic and Mediterranean that can grow to about one point five meters in length.

And so the legend that Davidson recounts about this animal again, this is probably now the rabbit fish. But what he's calling the sea mouse is that it swims so ferociously that the sea foams ahead of its path, and that it can open its jaws wide enough to swallow an entire boat, which is not true. But I did want to read his anecdote about this quote. On one occasion, two men were out at sea on the East coast in an open boat, while near them was a French

fishing vessel. Uh. They had been fishing quietly for some time when they heard a tremendous noise out to sea, and at once suspected that it was caused by a sea mouse. In a short time, they saw it, coming in the midst of a white foaming wave and making straight for their boat. The men were so scared that

they could do nothing to save themselves. The Frenchman saw their danger and ran their schooner right in the way of the monster, which however still kept the same course and speed, and struck the vessel with such force as to cant it over to one side. The sea mouse continued to press against the ship for a little while, and during that time the men were taken on board. Then it disappeared and the men afterwards road to land. So okay, saying this fish could like actually knock a

ship over, uh, definitely not true about that species. If there is any truth to this story at all, it's

it's obviously not about a rabbit fish. Um. But also to confuse things even further, there actually is a marine animal now commonly known as a sea mouse, but it is not a fish at all, but a marine poly keyed worm, usually about three to six inches in length, which, uh, this will be relevant to what we're talking about today, is often covering in something that looks kind of like a sparkly fur now and and this is an interesting organism to be to be sure, but I also looked

up a picture of the rabbit fish, and it is interesting that its head does have kind of the appearance of a rabbit's head. It had I can set definitely see the comparison. There, something about the way that the eyes or are structured. Uh, it has has this kind of rabbit looking skull. Um. But but then again, I'm also reading that they can grow to the five feet in length. So I guess if one of these creatures was to slam into the side of your boat, it

could at least startle you. It could at least be a moment that could then be exaggerated into greater threat and tails. Yeah, I guess that's reasonable. I mean, I'm picturing boats of a size in this story where that wouldn't really make sense because it's talking about like a schooner, right the I don't know how big is a schooner. Can a schooner be small enough to be severely disturbed

by a by a one point five meter fish? I mean, if your imagination is there, it can certainly certainly be alarming, I imagine to confuse things about that story even further, Uh, this so called rabbit fish Camira monstrosa. That is one type of fish called rabbit fish, but then there's also a totally different type of fish, also called a rabbit

fish that's not related. So lots to throw you off right there, But anyway, I wanted to get to the final citation I want to make from from Olaf Davidson's article here because it concerns the topic that we're going to be getting into over the next couple of episodes. So here he goes on my favorite part. On the shores of lakes in the north of Iceland, there have sometimes been found strange and ugly fishes resembling trout, which

neither dogs nor birds of prey would eat. These were doubtless specimens of the shaggy trout or load selunger, also a very poisonous fish. One of these was cast on shore at Savina Votten in eighteen fifty four, and an illustration of it is given in the newspaper nor Dury for eighteen fifty five. It was very unlike in ordinary trout, both in shape and in color. On its lower jaw and its neck, it had reddish hair forming a kind of beard. There were also hairy patches on its sides.

And hair on its fins, so there can be no doubt it was a shaggy trout, though the writer of the article in Nordury does not say so. Now I'm suspecting that wizard again. Yeah, I mean one I'm wondering. Iceland is not super densely populated, right, so you know, you have a few larger cities and then the little settlements, especially around the coasts all around, but then big parts of the inner country are you know, mostly uninhabited. So I wonder is that wizard territory? Is that where the

wizards are out there making fish with beards? Yeah, I mean there aren't enough people around to really mess with, so yeah, they're doing terrible things to fish. But this is by no means the only account of the shaggy trout or the furry trout of Iceland. I found more about this this local lore in an article in the Paris Review by David Buckspan from sixteen, which is actually about something totally different. It's not an article about Icelandic legends.

It is about a speaking event with an Icelandic novelist who goes by the name Sean spelled s j o in but pronounced Sean and you might know him as a collaborator with Bjorke. He apparently wrote lyrics for some of her songs, and I think they've performed in bands together at least at some point. Um. But then at a certain part in the evening at the speaking thing, Sean turns to explaining his personal obsession with this shaggy trout legend of Iceland, and he definitely expands on what

we've just established. So he does say, yeah, there's an animal allegedly known as the furry trout. It looks the same as a normal trout, except it's covered in fur, which is a little different than what Davidson said. Davidson said it looked very different from a regular trout. But Sean goes on to say that according to the legend, you might be fishing for a school of regular trout with a net and then suddenly one of them there in your net is completely covered in fur, and it's

just right there with the other ones. But he there's the really interesting variation. Olaf Davidson says that the common belief is that the shaggy trout is poisonous, so you shouldn't need it because it could hurt you. Maybe make you sick or kill you. But Sean says that the legend he learned when he was nine years old was that if a man ate the furry trout, he would become pregnant and he would end up having to give birth through his scrotum. Okay, well, I have some doubts

and some questions about that that last claim. Yes, and he actually even describes like the birthing procedure, which involves like the scrotum swelling with the child and like you have to get a knife and lay him on a table and all that. It's you can go read the article if you want. Uh. But then is it a normal human child or is it like a fish person? Oh, I think it's just a human child. After that where I don't know, he doesn't really go into what the

implications for the child is. But anyway, the more I got interested in the store is the more I discovered that there are, in fact stories from all over the world about various types of furry fish. And so that's what I wanted to look into for the next couple of episodes here, because I think you you may well agree that fish generally do not have fur, So we wanted to talk about like what these stories are and

where they come from and what might explain them. Yeah, and and these are going to cover a fair amount of ground. We're gonna get into some legends and mythology. We're going to talk about some some some some definite uh, denizens of the of the the actual oceans and lakes and rivers of our world. Uh, and then also some possible like misinterpretations of natural creatures. So there's there's a lot on the table here with the furry fish, and

I think, yeah, I think everybody's gonna be pleasantly surprised. Now. The shaggy trout of Iceland is actually one of several reports of furry fish that are collected in a book that I was looking at called The Beasts That Hide from Man, Seeking the World's Last Undiscovered Animals, by an author named Carl Schucker. I think this was originally published

in two thousands three. I might have been looking at an addition from but Shooker is a British crypto zoologist, and as you may well know, crypto zoologist can mean extremely different things, right, So it could be a clear skeptical, responsible researcher who tries to investigate reports of animals that are not well documented or not documented at all by by regular scientific methods, and find out if these reports can in fact be confirmed. And there are cases like this.

There are cases of, for example, of animals thought to be long extinct but then turning up extant in the world today. For example, the sela can't the type of lobe finned fish that was thought to be long extinct, but then live specimens were found. But on the other hand, of course we know, if you know, if you're a fan of like certain types of TV documentaries or whatever, a cryptozoologist could also be a self applied label for somebody who says that they have a big foot corps

in their freezer, but you're not allowed to look at it. Yeah, Yeah, there's a there's a broad spectrum in the crypto zoology world, right, And so I think, from at least what I was looking at in this book, I think Shooker seems to be closer to the former. Somebody who's you know, trying to responsibly apply, uh, you know, reasonable skeptical methods of investigation to reports of perhaps not well documented animals. There may be something I missed, but at least in the

parts of the book I was looking at. He he does not seem to treat reports of strange animals with automatic credulity and and certainly not talk like the big foot freezer guy. But anyway, a useful thing about this book is whatever the actual explanations for these reports, it is useful in itself just to collect the reports, right uh, to say, Okay, what are people saying about, for example, furry fish, whether or not there actually is such a thing or something that we can identify that could have

been mistaken for such a thing. At least you know, what are people saying? And so that's what he does in this chapter. He's got at least five different examples. And so the next thing I wanted to talk about was another one that that I came across because I found in this chapter, and this is Marco Polo's hairy Fish.

So this story is originally told in the Travels of Marco Polo, which is the English title of a thirteenth century Italian travelogue written by a guy named Rusticello or perhaps Rusticiano of Pisa, based on the accounts of Marco Polo, the Venetian merchant, diplomat and explorer of of great renown.

I'm sure you know who Marco Polo is. Yes, if, if, even if you are not super familiar within you know the pool name of Marco Polo, which, by the way, the last pool I was at, or one of the most recent pools I was at, they had a sign that said no Marco Polo. Marco Polo was explicitly banned

from the pool. Why what is it dangerous? I got the impression that it was just maybe annoying because they were, like, you know, people were living near the pool, and therefore they didn't want to hear children say Marco Polo over

and over again. But occasionally a child would get in the pool start saying Marco Polo, and the more rule oriented children would would remind them that it was not allowed, and then some would try and do it, do Marco Polo with different words, and and and other kids or sometimes adults would be like, no, no, you can't, you can't just do that. It's still Marco Polo. No, instead of Marco Polo, you do Rusty Cello or Rusty Chano. You know, Rusty Cello. Yeah, wouldn't work. Not not allowed,

not allowed. I forget, what's kind of variations. They were trying, um very obvious ones like you know, um pool cleaner fish or something, you know, just based on the first two things they saw. Well anyway, so I found out about this story of a furry fish because of this passage from Shooker's book. But then I actually went and looked up the original text to put the claim in

its full context. So this passage from Marco Polo's account, which is the version translated to English by Ronald Latham for for Penguin, is describing a marvelous city that Marco Polo calls King Pai, but which I believe corresponds to the modern day city of Hung Sho. And so at the time he entered the city, Marco Polo was operating under the aegis of Kubla Khan. That that's a bit if you don't know much about Marco Polo's journeys. He had a relationship with the court of the cons I

think uh at least going back through his father. But he was favored by by the court of Kubla Khan. And so he was not only a merchant and a trader and explorer, but he also operated as a diplomat on behalf of Koplakan, and at the time of his visit to this city that is now known as hung Show, the cons had conquered it. So there are a couple of names to define ahead of time, so this paragraph

makes sense. He mentions a figure named King fak Fur, who was the original ruler of Kingsai before it was conquered, and then he also mentions Bayon, who was a Mongol general who commanded the armies of Kubla Khan during the conquest of Song dynasty China. So the account goes, let me tell you now of a marvel that occurred when

Bayon was besieging this city. It happened after King fak Fur had taken to flight, that a multitude of the town's folk were fleeing by boat by way of a broad, deep river that flows past one side of the city. All of a sudden, while they were actually on the river, the water completely dried up, so that Bayon, on learning the news, came to this part and compelled all the fugitives to return to the city. And a fish was

found lying high and dry across the river bed. And what a fish for it was fully one hundred paces long, but its girth was by all means proportionate to its length. Its whole body was hairy. Many people ate of it, and many of those who did so died. Mr Marco, as he relates, saw the head of this fish with his own eyes in a certain temple of the Idols. Now we should put some caveats in, right, because there are several reasons the story is already coming to us

in a kind of hazy fashion. Right. We're getting it through several layers. This is an account written by Mr Rusty Cello Rusty Chano of Pisa, based allegedly on the accounts of Marco Polo, who claims that he saw the head of this fish with his own eyes. But it sounds like he must have at best heard second hand the accounts of the story about the river drying up, revealing the giant hairy fish a hundred paces long, and

then the people eating it and dying from it. Right, because the story is saying, oh, the head is preserved in this particular temple, and this is the backstory on that head. Right now, While I think they're good jumping off points to to start thinking about possibilities, I don't think we can be too sure that either of these accounts, either the Icelandic furry fish or Marco Polo's hairy fish and in Hung Joe Uh, that they are necessarily based

on anything real than anybody actually saw. These could be you know, fanciful imaginative stories people made up, or they could be based on something. But I do think it's interesting that in either case that both of these hairy fish so far are regarded as poisonous and harmful to eat. Yeah, this is very interesting, and I was particularly fascinated by this Chinese um account or this Chinese episode. It was like technically a Venetian account, but decided to read a

little bit more about it. So I was looking at a C. Mules Marco Polo's descriptions of Quinsai, and the author here basically looks at this everything that Marco Polo has to say about the city, and it's analyzing it and comparing it to other accounts and Chinese historical accounts, and the there says that they can find no mention of this this fish in Chinese sources detailing the siege

in question. However, he says that roughly forty years before Polo's visit, strange aquatic creatures had been reported in the river. This would have been the summer of twelve thirty nine. Quote Chao Yu Kon reported that recently, while he was watching the violence of the boar. Now just a quick description of what the boar is, and this will make sense if you think back to the passage that that

that Joe just read. Uh, this is a bore current, a rare natural phenomenon in which the leading edge of an incoming tide forms a wave or waves of water that travels up a body of water and reverses the direction of the current. Anyway, the author continues, Um, while he was watching the violence of the boar, he had suddenly seen strange creatures which were neither dragons nor fishes in shoals, ruffling up their bristles and raising their spines.

And he wished to report and announced to the emperor that he proposed to use powerful crossbows and guns. And there's a question mark after guns, So I'm not sure if the particular terminology is in question there or whatnot? Um to remove this ill omened portent whoa so this along with other accounts and quote the sight of some monstrous skull or tooth which may well have been shown in some temple um and they also point out that a large tooth was actually shown as Buddhist tooth at

the time. All of this may may have then been cobbled together and you know, reformed into the account we just looked at. Okay, so it's possible that the account we're getting, I guess third hand at this point through Marco Polo's uh biographer here is some sort of half remembered synthesis or reassemblage of these other pieces that we're

seeing in Chinese sources. Right now, this is conjecture on my part, but I'm reading that the the sing Tang river here was no own to at least sometimes have yang Z River dolphins in it um now their namesake river. The Z is several hundred miles north, but at least prior to the nineteen fifties there were sightings of dolphins in this river. So I can't help but wonder if this might have been a case of a half rotted

river dolphin washing up. Because tissue and fibers on rotting fish, dolphins, and whales can sometimes take on shocking forms that maybe that then can be connected to various myths and legends or theories about cryptids. Oh yeah, I mean that. We actually did a couple of episodes. It was a few years back at this point about globsters, the which is the nickname for these objects. You know, these sort of masses of biomaterial that will often wash up on beaches

and be proclaimed monsters. You know, they get their own article in the Daily Mail and it's oh, here's a dragon from the sea. And most of the time, I'm they're whales. Not every time, but most of the time there's some type of whale in some stage of decomposition which can truly take on bizarre appearances. Yeah. For example, consider the Sacklin Island wooly whale, which was washed up on Sacklin Island in Russia back in you can find

pictures on this. The spelling is s A K H A L I N. It looks weird and it does look furry. But one of the chief theories here is that this is just a dolphin carcass, that this is a dolphin carcass that is decayed. It's a dolphin globster. So I again this is conjecture on my part, but it makes me wonder if that might have been what we were looking at. It would also explain why eating the flesh of this creature might not be a great

choice for your digestion or your overall health. Right. So if this were the origin of the story from Keensai or hang Joe, now, um, it would be that some in some way the water washed back and revealed the carcass of a large, perhaps young c river dolphin or some other type of aquatic mammal that was dead sitting there on the bank in some stage of decomposition. It's the fibers of its body kind of looked like hair in a weird way that you know, we've we've seen

with other globsters before. Somebody decided to eat it, and obviously it made them sick because this is rotten meat. And then somehow that got estranged and gave rise to this legend. Yeah, or you can also imagine how it could have just been a situation where the thing was clearly foul and someone wisely said I don't think anyone should eat this, and eventually that becomes I heard somebody ate it and they died. But then I heard that I heard that several people ate it and they died,

So I don't know. There you can easily imagine various ways that the the story could form based on just this one weird encounter with a st range globster body in the water. Yeah, so we don't know, but I do think that's a reasonable possibility to imagine as an inspiration for these types of stories. And in fact, in his book, Shooker sort of goes to the same place.

He says, Yeah, it's possible that this is a this is a half remembered story about a decomposing animal body of some kind, And of course the decomposing flesh would have made people sick if they tried to eat it. And again the other half being that, yes, often decomposing flesh really does look hairy in a certain way. Than Now, there's another interesting possibility about explanations that I wanted to come back to, which has to do with parasitic infections

in fish. So think back to that first example I mentioned of the furry fish claim, the one from Olaf Davidson's reports of the shaggy trout of Iceland. Just to refresh here on what Davidson says about the one example hold that is reported in the newspaper nor Dury in eighteen fifty five, which he says must be an example

of a shaggy trout. He says that it's that it's lower jaw and its neck had reddish hair, forming a kind of beard, and there were also hairy patches on its side and hair on its fins, so there can be no doubt it was a shaggy trout. But then he also says it was unlike an ordinary trout in both shape and in color, but he doesn't explain much more about what he means by that, so I'm not

quite sure. I don't know if that means unlike in terms of just like these patches on it, or if it's also just like a differently shaped fish, and in which case it probably originally wasn't a trout, and I'm not sure what it was. But anyway, when raising the story in his book, Karl Schuker mentions one possible explanation, which is, what if these stories are based on observations not of furry trout, but of trout that are suffering from some kind of infection, such as a fungus that

covers their body with patches of mysilia. So there could be a number of types of parasites and infections that could lead to this misimpression. But one type of infection that I've seen uh singled out as a possible inspiration for furry trout legends is an oama site called Saprolegnia or saprolegnia so. Oama sites are sometimes known as water molds.

They are a class of eukaryotic micro organisms that used to be considered fungi, I believe due to their morphological similarities to fungus, but I think now they're understood to be a more separate branch of the tree of life. But there are a number of different types of Oama sites that can form parasitic relationships with fish and shellfish,

causing disease and eventually death in the hosts. And there's this genus called Saprolegnia in particular, which has been singled out as a possible source of these myths since when an adult fish is in act did it can display lesions or discolored patches on its skin, which in some cases do look kind of furry or even sometimes like cotton and rob I've just got a couple of pictures for you to look at. One is of a man holding up a salmon caught from a river that does

have these mold like patches appearing along it's its dorsal side. Yeah, it does look like there's something wrong with this fish, like something bad happened to a fish. And uh, the other pictures shared there does have more of a hair like quality to it. It looks like there's some kind of whispery white sideburns and some whispery white hair on the top of the fish's head. Yeah, and there are

other types of infections. One problem is if you're just like doing an image search for this, you can't always be sure what type of infection you're looking at. Because there's another thing that I think is a more bacterial infection called cotton wool disease in fish that also kind of looks like cotton sprouting out on on these fish.

But that's a different organism causing it. But anyway, just to learn more about saparolegnia, I was looking at a book by Kurt Lemore and Sophien Commune, who are researchers at the University of Tennessee. Both of them I believe called um Oamacite Genetics and Genomics, Diversity Interactions and research tools, And this is an academic book about uh these types of parasites and micro organisms, and there's a part of

this about Saparolegnia in particular. So this species is Saparolegnia parasitica, which the author's claim is a devastating pathogen on freshwater fish species, which has contributed to significant damage in global fish farming. And in the past, this and some other fish related related fish pathogens were controlled by anti microbial that Originally I think it was actually a die. The dye is called malachite green, but it was found to

have these alleged anti microbial properties. But then this use was scaled back after concerns arose about possible carcinogenic effects on the fish and on consumers of the fish that were treated with this die. So as of the time this book was written or published in two thousand nine, the the this was still a problem with the freshwater fisheries,

I think, especially with with fish farming. But in the case of fur that forms on the skin of the infected fish, this would actually not be hair, but it would be my celia or the part of the microbial colony that begins as these little hype often seen in fungus that forms these hair like branches which can spread out in in these patches on the skin. I think they often begin originally at like a like a wound

or maybe some kind of opening in the skin. I think they can attack the gills or they can attack a wound, But then once they have established a colony within the skin, they can kind of spread out from there, and it's bad for the fish. Obviously, they will will from the outer layer from the skin UH, and the and the scales begin to invade down further into the muscle tissue, which can eventually kill the fish over time.

But on the other hand, I think we wouldn't want to be too bullish about attributing all of these stories of furry fish to observations of infections of this kind UH for one reason, because the while these infections can form patches on fish that look strange, and sometimes these patches in certain types of parasites can look kind of hairy or cottony or wooly, they don't form coats of fur that surround the full fish as described in some

of these legends. Yeah, we'd be talking something that would be loosely describable as patches of fur, patches of weird hair on a fish, which is it's different than a shaggy fish, right, And so I think this explanation can actually go too far and become a misconception of a zone. So, for example, I was looking at modern allegations of furry fish,

which do still exist. I think I was reading one story about a some people who were claiming that a bunch of furry fish were created in a river when there had been an accident and a bunch of hair tonic was spilled into the river. So yuck, yuck. Yeah. But anyway, so this one example is something I found documented on Snopes in an article by Dan Evan from May of And this actually was not surprisingly from a chain email, but a photo and report that was posted

to a Wisconsin local news website. And so it's got a photo of a guy dressed up, you know, like he's out fishing in the cold, and he is holding a fish that is completely covered in white fur. It looks like a it's got a fish head, but then the rest of it is just like a polar bear's arm. Yeah, and well, yeah, I don't know what exactly is going on here, but um, it's an image that makes me suspicious. This looks like a This fish should be mounted on a wall and when there's movement in the room, it

should move and sing. Um, there's something it just it has a look of fake grey to me, which is not to say it's not legitimate, but it has the look of fake gray for sure. It's the Christmas edition of the Billy Bass. It sings Christmas carols? Yeah, no, what is it? What would it be if it was the Billy Bass, it wouldn't be like classic carols. It would be Santa Claus is coming too town. What did

Billy did Billy Bass sing Christmas songs? No? No, no, I'm saying if there were a Christmas version of the Big Mouth Billy Bass, what did the Big Mouth Billy Bass actually sing? This is again a robotic fake trout that you would buy off the TV. Yeah, these things were great, truly remarkable achievement of culture. Um. They sang take Me to the River that song they sang. I think one saying Y M C A. And that's all I remember. There may have been others. Okay, did you

have one? Are you just remembering the t the TV? You never had one? No, okay, well, call out to listeners. Do you have one on the wall of your house right now? Inside We're out? Doesn't matter what does it still work or is it? Is it dying now? Or as electronics sing this warped, sad, slowed down version of the song. Oh man, that would that would be great. Okay, I'm quitting the show. My career from now on is

I'm going to be a DJ. I'm gonna make beats entirely out of samples from dying big mouth billy basses to anyway anyway, Okay, back to so, back to the this image of what looks like a Christmas themed uh billy bass. So the allegation accompanying this photograph originally, this is documented in that Snopes article goes like this says, wanted to share rather remarkable catch I had this afternoon. I was fishing in the Minominee River while some trout

were packed into a bottleneck. I caught a few, and nothing was out of the ordinary until I reeled this one in. I've never seen anything like it. I contact did a local wildlife official and they referred to it as a rare, furbearing trout. They went on to explain

that this was an extreme case of saprolegnia or cotton mold. Apparently, old Great Lakes legends spoke of these as a uniquely evolved trout species that existed only in the deepest, coldest parts of the lake and needed the fur to stay warm. I doubt it will make my Cabella's non traditional mount wall, but I'm still excited to reel in a genuine Wisconsin legend. You have my permission to share and use this photo in any form if you'd like. Uh, and then uh

the person gives their credits. I don't want to say this in case this is not actually the person who did the hoax. Uh So so okay, so you look that up if you want to know who to track it down to. But um, but you got one on us. Okay, this is definitely not actually a furry trout, and it's also definitely not actually a case of saprolegnia because the the fur just does not grow like that. Having looked at a lot of images, now I can tell by

looking at it. Uh, the this this is a deliberate hoax. Now, I guess it could be a situation where we don't know who the perpetrator of the hoax might be could be someone could have made such a fish us you know, manufactured such a specimen and throwing it into the water, and then it's uh, you know, acquired by someone else, always a possibility. Just seating the world with with beauty. I don't know if this is this is that would

be beauty. I mean, I'm all for catch and release, but not like this, not like this, Yes, not like this, I I agree, but so yeah, so I think this is actually going a little too far with the possible explanation for the origins of these legends based in these parasitic infections, because it's it's trying to reconcile two things that are just very different. One is that people when they hear a story about a furry trout or imagining

a trout covered in fur like a mammal. And then on the other hand, you've got this possible explanation that is real science, but it is something that can explain weird looking blotches and matches on a fish that can in some cases have kind of like furree hype or mys celia growing out of them. Huh yeah, yeah, I can see how that would work well, well, they're just not the same. So you would have to imagine there's a process in between of like a sort of exaggerating

or extrapolating an original observation into something totally different. I like the tidbit to of the legend being that this is how the fish of the deep stay warm, which I think is also kind of kind of telling in all of this, because obviously fish do not need fur coats to to operate in cold waters, right. We have too many examples of a fish that do just fine

and they have no fur. But as mammals, you know, we we know that that the the other mammals in our world to survive in winter, they frequently do require fur coats, and then we require fur coats made of them in order for us to survive. And so you know, we get into sort of an abstra act, you know, comparison of of rather different physiologies here. Oh yeah, and it also ignores several things like would fur actually keep you warm if it was wet? No, I don't think

it would. In fact, marine mammals that need to keep their bodies warm in very very cold water, are they covered in fur? No? They actually lost there? For these are evolved from creatures that used to have for and they adapted to deep, deep water and extreme cold temperatures in part by losing their fur and having other adaptations in their body to help maintain their internal temperature. But could they require fur coats if they leave the water to go about their business on the land? Ah, there

you go. Maybe have some wizard sells them such a coat. Okay, you bring it back around. This is a tricky fish wizard. All right. Well, maybe we need to call part one there, but we will be back with so much more furry fish next time. Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna go to some some really interesting places. Well, even ask the question, is

an otter of fish? The answer may surprise you. In the meantime, if you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed, you'll find Artifact episodes on Wednesday, Little Listener Mail on Monday. On the weekends, we have a Vault episode that's a rerunning on Friday, we do a little Weird How Cinema. That's just our way of closing out the week by setting most of the science

aside and just looking at a weird film. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact and Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's production

of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite show, I Don't Be fourt