The Monstrefact: The Thanapod from "Bad Traveling"

Is the viewing today, though, I want to take you back to a twenty twenty two episode of the third season of the animated series Love, Death and Robots titled Bad Traveling Now. This episode was directed by David Fincher, with Frank Balson, Jerome Den Jean, and Jennifer U. Nelson. An adapted the Neil Asher short story by none other than Andrew Kevin Walker. The setting is a fantasy twist on the age of sails, with a crew of sailors who brave alien oceans on the hunt for javel sharks,

which are harvested for their oil. The ship in our story encounters a terrible storm and is bordered by a monstrous crab called a panopod, which takes up residents below deck. Lots are then drawn among the crew to see who has to go down to deal with the monster, and our protagonist Torren winds up with the duty. Now this is where the plot gets clever. The phanopod, we learn, can use the bodies of the dead to talk, it

can puppet them. It's a nice twist that also seems to channel some of that attack of the crab monster's energy. The phanopod lays out what it wants to reach the populated island of Fate Torn strikes a deal with the monster. He will give it what he wants in exchange for his own life and a key from the captain's body.

The captain's body was previously eaten by the phanopod, so we then follow Tora and as he employs this key to unlock the captain's pistol and uses this pistol to claim control of the ship, and he puts the matter of Fadan Island to a vote. Should we bring the creature to the densely populated island or drop it off on a nearby deserted island and just tell the giant crab that this is where you wanted to go. There's

a great deal of turmoil over this. Some crew members may be more than a few simply want to give the monster what it wants, like whatever it takes. Meanwhile, it becomes clear that the monster is a parent, and now the depths of the ship are crawling with its young. It's a fun action horror ride, and the central monster, the phantopod, is just a real grotesque treat. Lots of excellent crab vibes to it as well wonderful monster design.

So Bad Traveling concerns a monstrous invasive ship born organism, but it serves as a fantastic exaggeration of the very real history and present reaction of ship born invasive species. Now, there are multiple avenues by which invasive species plant or

animal have been and are still being spread through human activities. These, as outlined in twenty eighteen's Animals and Human Society by Skeins and Tikshadi, include species introduced just for aesthetics or for as a game, species for biological control which often doesn't go well, or for fur, as well as populations of feral domestic animals, pets thoughtlessly released into the wild, and of course animal stowaways much like our phantom pod, and these occur not only via boat, they can also

occur via airplane. One example of this is the brown tree snake. This particular snake is native to eastern and northern coastal Australia, eastern Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and many islands in northwestern Melanesia. The brown tree snake is only mildly venomous to humans, but its venom packs quite a punch when comes to birds, and according to biologists Brian Frye of the University of Queensland, you know that can

pose quite a problem. The brown snake has been particularly rough on the bird population of Guam, which it apparently reached aboard Australian troop transports during the Second World War, and fry also points out that the US was still flying military planes from Guam to Hawaii at the time of the riding, and brown snakes have been intercepted at Hawaiian airports in the past, so the potential is there for plane based introduction of the species to the Hawaiian

islands as well. And as for why this particular snake is so adept at hitching rides on planes well. One reason seems to be their lasso locomotion, which allows them to climb large, smooth cylinders. But when talking about animal stowaways, especially ships play a huge role, with rats and mice standing as one of the best examples of creatures that have spread to every continent except Antarctica, where I believe the only invasive species is a variety of muscle and

these likely traveled by ship as well. But stowaways include far more than rodents and monster crabs. According to Grasping at the Routes of Biological Invasions by Hume at All, Journal of apply Tocology, two thousand and eight, stowways include organisms that foul the wholes of ships, are transported as seeds or resting stages, in soil attached to vehicles, and in ballast water, as well as in shipping containers, cargo

and air freight. So for instance, as the authors point out, brown seaweed sargasm A muticum is a great example of a stowaway species thought to have spread from its native Japan to northern France, the English South Coast, and to the Netherlands via contamination of commercial oysters and then via

drifting plants. The authors share that vessels provide numerous interior and exterior possibilities for species to spread, but one of the most pervasive is just the hull of the ship itself, so species don't need to climb inside the hull to use it the means of traveling from one far flowing island to another. They need only a fix to the outside of this vessel, this artificial island that will then drift from one place to another. There are other examples

that we can point to. Oar boreal monkeys have also spread to various places as invasive species, and there are accounts of monkeys taking up residents in a ship's rigging. It seems like most of these introductions, though, were via monkeys that were kept as pets, but still there have been accounts from this century of monkeys stowing away on vessels, such as I believe a twenty fourteen report of monkeys

who boarded in Malaysia and arrived in the Netherlands. I think in this case the monkeys were caught and caged in transit and then handed over in the Netherlands upon arrival. One of the challenges of stowing away is, of course being able to survive a lengthy sea voyage without detection and being able to just survive with some sort of

dependable food source. Mice and rats remain the best example of note, because of course they're highly skilled at living in humanity's shadow, eating what we eat or cast aside, and so forth. There are other interesting examples of animal stowaways. Invasive earthworms are a great example, spreading via transported soils and plants. Birds can also stow away. The house sparrow is thought to have spread aboard Roman ships, and this

is how they reached Great Britain. So while we don't see anything as singular and gigantic as the panopod in our own invasive ship born species, it still works nicely as a fantastic symbol of it all. None of our real world stowaways are actually aiming to reach specific destinations that they have heard about or inquired of with their puppeted corpses, but they are still ultimately following their genetic mission and taking full advantage of new environments they might

never have reached otherwise. Tune in for additional episodes of the monster fact, the artifact or animaliust Opindium each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.