Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And it is cactus Time here on the podcast. We're going to be talking about what is I think arguably the most iconic species of cactus. Joe and I were actually having a conversation though off mic, trying to decide exactly how we are going to agree to pronounce this cactus.
We are talking about the sowarro cactus, but there are different versions of the pronunciation floating around out there, and I do want to apologize to my Arizona family for not one hundred percent remembering how they were pronouncing it. But I feel like I've heard it a number of different ways in different places.
So I was like watching interviews with researchers who work on this type of cactus, and what I was hearing most often then was so worrow. But then we look it up and the dictionary says, well, you can either do saguaro or sowara, and so there I'm just kind of lost. So we're going with sowarrow because I don't know, it seems like we're splitting the difference.
Yeah, but our apologies if we are doing it wrong here. Certainly, if any of you out there have thoughts about how it should be pronounced, do right in and we can carry on from there. This is probably gonna be, I think, a two parter, and this is going to be part one, so it's entirely possible our pronunciation will shift between part one and part two depending on feedback. We'll see how it goes.
Or maybe we should just use the scientific name the whole time, because I think you've got a whole story on that, right.
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about the scientific classification for the suarrow. This is something I've been going out to Arizona for years and seeing these things, and I've always been impressed by them. But I think I should certainly have read the scientist name before, but I've just kind of let it pass through me, I guess, without really thinking about it. And it wasn't until researching this episode that I was like, huh, it's called Carnegia, Gigantia
and Carnegia. Yeah, that's that's an interesting name for this particular Because to be clear, we'll go ahead and get into a little bit about it. We're talking about a cactus that grows in the Sonoran Desert, and it's it's probably the most defining example of the flora there the Sonoran Desert. To remind everyone, I think we discussed it briefly in one of our previous desert episodes, the Carshner
Caverns episode. Actually, actually this is a desert that dips more or less straight down from the southern limits of the higher elevation Mojave Great Basin and Colorado Plateau Deserts and dives down around the Gulf of California on both sides. So, all told, the desert ecosystem here covers parts of the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora, Baja California, Baja California, sir and then also parts of the southwestern US states of Arizona and California.
Yeah. So, actually, the geographic range of the Souarro cactus is more limited than you might guess based on the way it's used in say, movies and TV shows, where if you watch westerns, you know, Western shows set in the American West, you could be forgiven for thinking that the suaro is basically everywhere west of the Mississippi. I mean, it's just like it's in all of the Westerns, whether they're said in Texas or Wyoming or Nevada or you know, wherever.
It's just like, Okay, we're somewhere. It's it's somewhere dry. We're somewhere out to the west, and we've got this cactus. The arms are pointing up, and that's how you know where we are.
Yeah, and where in reality, it's not even all of the Sonoran Desert. Really only slight extensions of the range goes in California. Nothing on the Baja Peninsula, I believe, mostly concentrated in a slice of territory that extends from somewhat northwest of Phoenix in South just south below Guimus in Mexico. So again, not even the whole Sonoran Desert,
but a sizable amount. But yeah, if you're watching Westerns, and if you're watching old cartoons set and not even old cartoons like in cartoons in general, or playing video games that have a setting with the desert, you're gonna you're gonna probably see depictions of the Suaro everywhere, even in video like in Super Mario games in front of the pyramids presumably of Egypt, though I guess it's some sort of Super Mario world. But yeah, it would make
you think, oh, well, these things are just everywhere. But no, it's even just a slim part of North America where you'll find it.
I've actually got a note about suarrow in video games to get to in a few minutes. Oh, I'm excited, we'll get there.
Oh yeah, again, this is like the poster child of you know, realistically of Sonoran desert cacti, but then also just the most icon iconic cactus period. You know, I was I was in a yoga class earlier today, and we're always doing a pose with our arms called cactus pose. This is where your arms go up like this. I guess it's kind of like a Some might say it's more like a football goal sort of a scenario, but generally refer to as cactus pose. And uh and I
didn't even think about it until today. You know, I've been reading about about the Sorrow all week, and I'm like, oh, yeah, it's a soorrow post basically, like that is what that is? How iconic this particular species of cactus is.
Right, because cactus pose, you could just be a column, so it's great, or it could be like you do a kind of twister tangle thing because you're a prickly pear or something.
Yeah, or you're like a ural cactus, like get down and just make a ball. Yeah, it's like be more specific yogis.
Yeah, it's like saying animal pose.
Yeahs. But this also brings up another thing about the suaro that's so iconic is that it lends itself very easily to our anthropomorphizing it. You know, because they're tall, they have a like, I don't want to overstate it, like it's not like these things universally look like people, and they are, you know, and they're often taller than people. They don't always have the two arms, but they're close enough. And granted, you know, things don't have to be very
close for them for us to answerpromorphize them. But yeah, we see them and we think of some sort of a towering human form, sometimes with limbs reaching towards the sky.
I remember drawing this cacti all the time when I was a kid. I think in part because I liked drawing desert scenes and they were sort of characteristic flora of the desert. I you know, I wasn't making geographic distinctions so I'm sure if I was trying to draw the pyramids, I would draw it, you know, suaro cactus.
But also because of what you're talking about, because they have that anthropomorphic quality, you could put sunglasses and a hat on them, and I certainly did, but I would go a step beyond and say, actually, they're not just anthropomorphic, they're friendly. They're a certain type of anthropomorphic because of the posture of the arms. Now, as you say correctly, it's not just that they always have a central column
in two arms, but sometimes in nature they do. Sometimes they got weirder arrangements, but you really do see that two arm human arrangement out there in the world sometimes, and because of the posture of the arms, they appear to be either saying hello with one arm raised above the other, or cheering with both arms raised, or maybe doing the you know, the field goal like you were saying the football field goal.
I guess it's also cornholio arms, right, that's right, Beavis, Yeah, I need to But yeah, either way, it is a positive kind of posture.
It suggests a friendliness. Whether you're saying hello or cheering, that's a that's positive emotion in the posture. So I don't know. It's it's not the only thing in nature that looks like a human standing up, but it's kind of cheery in the way that it resembles a human.
Yeah, and I mean there are a number of things also playing into this. For the vast majority of cases, they are not harmful to people. You know they are. There is a gentle giant sense to them. And they are pretty much the tallest natural organisms within their ecosystem, and so they really stand out, you know, they are. They are the giants of their ecosystem, of the snorin desert.
I wanted a minute ago, you were talking about their use as as like sprites or decoration in video games, sometimes just in the background. But I was remembering this also, not think you mentioned Super Mario World. I don't particularly remember that, But I have a more obscure video game memory, which is of a game called Bunks Adventure for the Turbographics sixteen. I was playing a little off the beaten path,
and I was a kid. There were some This is a game where you play as sounds weird to describe. I think you are a baby caveman who fights little dinosaurs and you know, infected mammals and stuff by headbutting it. Your head is your weapons, so you head butt things and you can, you know, so you run around these prehistoric landscapes full of dinosaurs. You know, let's put aside the well actually of you know, dinosaurs and humans living
at the same time. But you're battling dinosaurs by headbutting them. And one of the levels takes place in the desert, and there are indeed these cactus enemies and they're clearly siguaro modeled because they they've got arms like this, or sometimes they flip the arms one up and one down, but you know they're they're doing the bent arms like that, and they've got the central column. And they also have zany faces with yellow eyes going like whoa, whoa, whoa,
and you know, going oh with their mouth. They're kind of doing the they're kind of doing the YouTube thumbnail face or it's like wow, uh and uh. I think if you jumped on them they would they would poke you. So that's what But this burned in my memory as a child. I'm sure when I was drawing cacti, I was drawing those things.
Now they're not wearing sunglasses, but there does appear to be a deret actyl that is wearing sunglasses here? Is that true?
Yeah, that's right, Okay, I don't remember. I think that's just another thing to headbutt. Yeah, when when all you've got is ahead, the world looks like a nail.
All right, So let's come back to this name. That is a scientific name for the war the suaro cactus Carnegia gigantia. All right, So gigantia makes sense, you know, giant. Clearly this is a big cactus. But where do we get carnegia? Uh, some of you might be wondering, Hey, is this cactus by any chance named after Andrew Carnegie? The sky is bored American steel industrialist of the late Gilded Age and early Progressive Age.
That's what I was wondering.
Yes, and it is absolutely the case. It is absolutely named after him.
And did he invent this cactus?
No? No, But the story is actually really interesting and ended up sort of getting like two versions of the story of the same story here. So initially I was looking at this was an article by the New York Botanical Garden. It's titled This is from twenty twenty, titled the Suaro Cactus emblematic plant of the American West and the New York Botanical Garden. This was by Barbara M. Years and this is just a little history, you know,
brief history of the cactus and its Western classification. And so I'm gonna I'm gonna roll through some of this here. So the cactus is described in the West, apparently first by US Mexico Boundary survey bytanist and explorer Charles Perry between eighteen forty eight and eighteen fifty three, though he did not bring a specimen back with him, but he brings back word and writings about them. Okay, Then Cacti botanist George Engelman expands on Perry's work and names the
new cactus serious gigantius. And I want to reference here that there's another My main book that I turned to research for this episode is The Soarro Cactus, a Natural History from the University of Arizona Press by David Yetman, Alberto Broquz, Kevin Holteen, and Michael Sanderson. An excellent book that I highly recommend. And so I'm also going to
have some additional thoughts from them. But they include in their book one of the images that Englman created of this specimen of cactus, and it is it is pretty amazing because the scale of the suaro is bonkers. They're depicting a cactus significantly larger and taller than any known specimen, and the authors of the book point out that the picture is also quote a tad romantic.
It's funny because from this illustration, I do get the real sense of it. Like if you've never seen a suarro before and you'd only seen this picture and then you came across one, you could probably recognize it. You may like, oh, that's what I saw on the picture in this book. At the same time, yeah, it does seem a little oh, it feels a little beyond real. It feels a little fantasy, like an illustration from an
alien planet. And it's got I don't know, something about the angles are a little too regular here, like it actually has kind of right angles in all the arms and the arrangement. Just feel something's a little off.
Yeah, yeah, I mean besides the size, Yeah, yeah, I mean he is I think leaning into the majesty of the suaro here and attempting to capture it and succeeding in capturing that while also kind of fudging the scale of everything, and to your point, like the desert seeming like an alien world, I mean, it does, you know,
And then that is the impression it leaves on. One I toured while I was in Arizona, toured a Frank Loyd Wright's house out there, and one of the things they said was that that right would describe the surrounding desert landscape as being like the bottom of the ocean, and then looking out on it, he felt like he was at the bottom of the sea. And so, you know, those kinds of observations I think are valid in common.
That's kind of funny because I was thinking of this illustration of the Suarro as being like a human made antenna of some sort. So if it's the bottom of the ocean, it's kind of the eltannan antenna out there in the desert, which in reality was not an antenna
but was a sponge absolutely you know, wildlife. So yeah, that is interesting, though I feel like we want to be careful at the same time that we don't sell short how giant these things can get, Like this picture might be bit exaggerated, but these things can in their maturity, can become absolutely huge. They grow to like seventy feet or something.
Yeah, yeah, a few numbers on that. So we're talking occasional heights of twelve meters or forty feet, and fifteen meters or fifty foot specimens are seen from time to time, and then the record this, according to that University of Arizona book, was a twenty three meter or seventy eight foot sorrow found near Cave Creek, Arizona, that was sadly toppled by winds in nineteen eighty six.
Okay, so above seventy feet is not impossible, but is exceptional. But it would not be unusual to get mature cacti of the species that are like fifty feet right.
The ones in this image, though, I'm thinking, are like one hundred and twenty feet. Okay, yeah, if I'm sort of like stacking my people correctly, because the image shows
some little humans in the foreground here. Yeah, all right, So pictures of the cactus are making their way back to New York, and this is the point where, according to that New York Botanical Garden article, enters New York Botanical Garden founder Nathaniel Britton and fellow botanist Joseph N. Rose and they decide at some point in this that, Okay, this cactus really needs its own genus, and they decide to name it after Andrew Carnegie and write to him
in nineteen oh two to ask his permission to do so, and that article of the New York Botanical Garden. I do really love the response, I assume via telegram that comes from Carnegie's secretary informing them that mister Carnegie quote asked me to say that he is greatly honored by the proposal and will do his best to live up to it.
Can I be as grand as a cactus right now?
At this point, you may have a number of thoughts about on this. You know, you might well find it horrid to imagine that this long time din of the desert that humans had known about for millennia should be named after a New York City industrialist, robber baron, if you will. And I'm not saying that that judgment is
completely invalid. But on the other hand, Carnegie became a devoted philanthropist late in life, and funds from his fortune helped establish for starters the Desert Botanical Laboratory, founded near Tucson, and I believe nineteen oh three in addition to various
other philanthropic venturers championing things like world peace, education, scientific research. So, in short, if you're looking at all the various monopoly maned tycoons of the day, Andrew Carnegie is arguably not the worst by any stretch of the imagination.
I haven't done enough reading comment confidently on that, but it's true. My general impression is, yeah, that he's more invested in philanthropy than some of the others of his time, and certainly than some of our time.
Yeah. Yeah, But you still might say, well, does he deserve to have a cactus named after him? Maybe not.
And the interesting thing is, I don't think even Carnegie thought that a cactus should be named after him, Because when I was well, when I finally got to the part of the University of Arizona book that I referenced earlier where they talk about the Carnegie situation, the way they tell it is that the Desert Laboratory in Tucson, Yes, acquired much of its early funding from Carnegie, and they invited him out to visit the site, and during his visit,
they showed him some suarros and told him that the plant had been named for him in like a blatant attempt to flatter him, and he did not take it well that he saw this as just naked pandering and was like, you know, how, why are you renaming this Like surely this species was already known to humans. It's too you know, outrageous and obvious a specimen that you know.
He did not like this. He did continue to fund the Desert the Desert Laboratory, however, and I'm assuming if we're to sort of piece these two stories is together. His secretary at least responds with a nice note later on, but it sounds like in the moment he maybe did not see this as is a great thing that the skeptics was being named after him, and then did not see why it was necessary and again saw it as just naked pandering.
Well, I can appreciate not wanting to be pandered to in that way, And in my case, if somebody tried to name a species after me, I think I would be embarrassed.
You heard it here, folks. If you're out there listening and you're thinking about naming a species after Joe McCormick, do not do it.
That's going to happen. You never know I mean, I'm not gonna be mad, but I'm not asking for that.
What have you discovered though?
I don't know I'd find that unlikely, but who knows. Where were we though? But oh wait, so but doesn't it retain the Carnegie name? So it is an issue like he didn't love this, but they was like, well, we already had the place cards printed out.
Yeah, it's stuck like that is still the Suaro's scientific classification. You can anywhere you read about it. So I had read about it in the past, clearly when I'd gone to various like desert botanical gardens and so forth, but I hadn't really noticed it and questioned the name until this research.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, maybe it blends enough in with some other biological sounding words like carnegiea carnotaurus kind of or is it like carnos something sounds like meat or flesh.
I don't know, yeah, Or it's one of those things where at first I was like is it named after Carnegie? And then like, well, maybe it's not named after the most obvious Carnegie out there. I'm just jumped to conclusions. But no, the conclusion would be correct, all right, So we already talked about just how tall this particular cactus can get. It is indeed a desert giant, the tallest and largest cactus in the United States, and the tallest
deser planned in the US as well. If you dip down into the territory of Mexico proper, there is a variety of related cactus called the Mexican giant cardone or the elephant cactus, and that one can grow larger. Though. This is one of those things where it's like, what is the tallest cactus now versus what is the tallest cactus ever? You can kind of go back and forth
on that. But the authors of the University of Arizona book note that the exceptional specimen from Cave Creek, Arizona, the one that was like seventy eight feet tall, This would have dwarfed the oldest known living cactus species today. Presumably they're referring to an elephant cactus. Yeah, but still, anyway you slice it, really tall cactus. They're the tallest plants in there in their ecosystem, and yeah, they really stand out. They define their part of the Sonoran Desert.
And I remember being really struck by them the first time that I visited Arizona because when you leave the airport in Phoenix, they're basically there. Like, they don't just dot the landscape outside of the city. You will find them throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Yeah, speaking to their size and interactions with humans, maybe this is a good place to mention. You know, there is at least one famous souaro cactus related death which I was reading about. I got there actually by way of a song. So there is a song by so I've read somewhere about the song. I went and listened
to the song. It's by a Texas band called the Austin Lounge Lizards, and it is a Western style ballad that I think is somewhat satirical because it is talking about this character sort of going out and suiting up for battle against a cactus. And so it's telling the true to life story of a guy named David Grundman who was crushed by a falling souarro after he shot
it in. I guess it was the year nineteen eighty one, I think, because I was looking for a little more on this and I found a New York Times article from nineteen eighty two which says, quote last February twenty seven, year old David M. Grundman took to the desert near here with a shotgun and two rifles and began blasting away at a twenty three foot tall Souarro cactus. The cactus, mortally wounded by the gunfire, suddenly toppled over on mister Grundman,
crushing him to death. From that, it does kind of sound like the whole thing fell over from the trunk, But based on other summaries of the story I was reading, it sounds more like one of the arms fell off and like it fell onto his car and killed him. So I'm not sure exactly which version of the story is correct there, but yet it is verified that it in some way this guy was killed by shooting at a cactus until it fell on him.
Well, you know, we do not take delight in human death here on stuff will blow your mind. But yeah, there is something about the story that maybe inspires morbid humor. I don't know. Maybe it's the fact that it kind of reminds one of Don Quixote going up against the windmills or something, you know, And you know, it seems like a on the whole very avoidable death as long as you don't go out and start shooting at the basis of cacti that are not asking for it.
It does raise questions, Yes, what did the cactus do to provoke this? It doesn't seem like anything could have could have been been justifiable. So yeah, so it seems not advisable to go shooting at cactus, especially if you're standing close to them. But yeah, not really at all. I mean, why do you need to shoot a cactus?
Yeah, I think there's part of this situation too, might be like a basic tendency to misunderstand not how big they are, but also just how heavy they are.
Oh yeah, because you might assume they're they're kind of like soft and light or something.
Yeah, or like a like an inflatable from a used car dealership or something. But now these are stout. They can get quite heavy. They're like eighty percent water. I believe that's the percent. I will come back to it here in a bit, but yeah, these are these are these are hefty, hefty specimens. Now, before we talk more about the sorrow, I wanted to talk a little bit about cactuses in general, cactus origins and getting into why the cactus unlike other succulents are native to the Americus.
So I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on this, but basically, here's the here's the quick and dirty version. So cactus origins in general date back to the mid Tertiary period, so roughly twenty three to forty million years ago we're talking about with this period, and it concerns a period when we had like a great drying out on a kind of harsh earth. This great drying out allowed the evolution of various life forms that could survive
and or exploit dry, cooler temperatures and low rainfall. So the authors of that University of Arizona book right that this was a time during which the North American horses, large South American birds, giant crocs, and prehistoric whales did very well. And it's also when the oldest cactus species seem to have diverged around thirty five million years ago in South America, and this would have been long after the split from Africa, thus the American isolation of the cactus.
So after these new this new type of plant life gains a foothold, cactuses continue to spread and evolve and fill new niches in response, to changing ecosystems, and eventually we reach the point where today we have between something like fourteen hundred and eighteen hundred and fifty cactus species across one hundred and twenty five genera. You'll find cactus. The numbers vary depending on who's doing accounting, but you'll
find cactuses as far north as into Canada. But in general they grow small and fewer the farther north you go after a certain point. And as we'll come back to, part of this has to do with a cactus species ability to survive freezes. But you know, cactuses come in all forms. They fill various plant in inches, and they range from very small and shrub like things to huge treelike plants like the souarro. Again, these are the largest of the tree like cacti.
Now, you mentioned that you know they have this sensitivity to climate factors, and that's not only true for cacti as a whole, but it is true even within a species. So I don't know, I don't want to over undercut you if you plan to talk about this later, but one thing I was reading about was that you find very different growth patterns for swaro itself depending on just like what side of a mountain it's on.
Yeah, Like, for instance, I'm to understand the aerials space different differently on on cacti than this suaros, depending on where they're growing. These are the little the little like nubs that the spines grow out of. Oh okay, yeah, so yeah, speaking of spines, obviously cacti differ from plants and that they have these spines. These like when you draw a cactus as a child, what are you drawing on there? You're drawing the little spines, Like that's probably one of the most.
Love drawing those.
Fun.
I would I would draw a cactus with like a marker, the green part with a marker and then get a little mechanical pencil and do all the spines.
M hmm.
Yeah, yeah, that was fun.
Yeah, and yeah. These are evolutionarily derived from leaves, which like new shoots, flowers, and fruits on a cactus, they grow out of. These areoles, which the authors of the University of Arizona book describe as felty lumps on the cactus. And yeah, they're distributed in different ways in different species, and even within a single species, things can laid out a little bit differently. Except for a few primitive cactus species.
Cactuses generally lack leaves, though some species like the Prickly pair, produce rudimentary leaves early in development. Leaves, though, are in general too costly and too much of a water loss for a cactus. There are also a few isolated cactus species that lack spines. Now with the soarro, the spines are white, up to five centimeters in length and space generally around three centimeters apart. The spines, as it turns out, produce rings as the plant grows and as it ages,
which botanists can then date. And why do cactuses in general have spines? Well, well, I think we know the most obvious reason, and that is to punish those that would attempt to touch them, hug them, eat of them, and so forth, to provide protection right mainly against herbivores. But in addition to this, cactus spines boast various other
purposes that are pretty fascinating. But also it may not seem as as obvious, you know, and of course all these different things can work together at the same time. But they can provide shade against sunburn for the for these plants in their desert environments, they can trap heat and help with freeze protection in colder climates. In some species, spines may also help in moisture harvesting. Like you read about these different cactuses that basically like drink the fog
and so forth. Cactus fruits also tend to be spiny as well, protecting the fruits until they've reached the point where they can ripen. At least, so there are a number of different cactus fruits that as they ripen, the spines kind of become less operational, so that the fruit can then be eaten, the seeds can be spread, and so forth. And though of course in this you get into corresponding adaptations from all the organisms involved. You know,
some animals have spine management adaptations or techniques. Let's see, on top of this, have cactus flowers in general, they tend to be very colorful and stand out to attract pollinators. I think we'll come back to some of that regarding the souarro. And then also we should know that cacti compensate for their lack of leaves by carrying out photosynthesis through the skin and outer stems.
So this is why the stem itself of the cactus is often green then that's because that's where the photosynthesis is happening, is where the chlorophyll.
Needs to be right right, and also where the water ends up being stored. So the authors of the University of Arizona book point out that during the driest parts of the year, the souaro's water it's excellent water conservation is very obvious because they'll remain very green while upland trees and shrubs basically become just brown and dried up in appearance, even though they're still alive. They just they basically look dead, but the cactus is still green now.
Souarros are columnar cacti, which means that their stem or trunk and sometimes their limbs resemble columns. You know that they're pretty, uh, pretty vertical in their structure for the most part, not counting you know, in the arms and so forth. But like a column, it is a strong, stable structure. Uh. The sorrow in particular boasts the system
of ribs. These are rod like woody structures inside the cactus that provides strength and durability and as a if these cactus specimens are hurt or certainly after they die, this this rib like structure remains and it begins to create these very vivid, like spectacular scenes for the onlooker.
You will see examples of this, and it can take on this, you know, almost kind of ghoulish appearance, because again, already we look at these cac dyeing, we think about humans, and we compare them to humans, and now we see something that looks like bones inside of them.
Looks almost like a cross between bones and veins. Yeah yeah, but it does have very much the appearance unlike other plants. I can think of as the appearance of skin pulled back from a human being and you're seeing the structures underneath.
Yeah yeah. Also reminds me very much of the monster from I'm Married an alien from outer Space.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, a bit of that. But Robi, particularly what I was just saying applies to one picture I put in the outline for you to look at of one where it's the outer covering that originally had the spines and the green flesh is not completely gone, but it is sort of peeling away, and so there's a big window to look in at the underlying rib structure, and it does look somewhat grotesque, and yeah, it looks like it looks like one of those eighteenth cent illustrations
of like a you know, a dissection of a human body and showing the layers underneath with the nerves and the veins and everything.
Yeah. Absolutely, Now, columnar Cacti exists throughout the Americas, but the the suaros survives far further north than any of
them due to its ability to survive mild freezes. And apparently a lot of this has to do with just the mass of the of of this particular plant, and they can because they can survive a few hours of below freezing temps like this, and on top of, on top of just like the pure mass aspect of it, it seems like there are environmental aspects of their range in the sonor and that allows them to sort of
cheap by in colder months. So this has to do with things like mountain shielding from certain wind patterns and also passive heat storage and surrounding rocks.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I'm to understand it's kind of like the gambit is, we may get freezing temperatures, but they will not law quite long enough to kill the cactus and specifically or.
To overcome our defenses against them.
Yeah, and we mentioned like differences in the sorrow depending on where it's growing. I've read that most northern Solaro specimens have spines to protect the ends of their frost sensitive branches, so they'll be like extra spine growths there that are just adding. It's like a little sweater that they've made out of themselves for themselves, out of spines.
I was thinking, it's like putting covers on your outdoor water faucets during the winter.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, except made out of spines. Now, I want to come back to that book, the Soorrow Cactus. I want to read a quick quote from it. They write that quote, since soarros are about eighty percent water, we can accurately view them as standing drums of water that are effectively sealed from the outside. They point out
that the water inside the cactus is heavy. It's laden or spiked with heavy isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen, and this actually ends up marking the tissues of organisms that consume bits of the cactus, such as you know, fruits and nectar, in a way that has allowed scientists to discover how much moisture various desert species gain from the sooro in particular.
Oh okay, so by you take an animal and then you look at the relative amount of deuterium or whatever in it's in the water in its body, you can tell if it's been getting into this cactus as opposed to just rain water or something else.
Right, And I have I have not yet taken a look at any of the specific studies that have done this, but but it is. It is reference in the book here, and I thought that was pretty fascinating. Like, you can tell do they drink of the sooro? Do they depend on it? There's like this, there's like this this water tag in their body that lets you know that they do. Yeah, now, speaking of that water, I think we may come back
to this in the next episode. But we need to stress that whatever you have seen in a cartoon or in an old Western is not a true indicator of the potability of the water inside a saro cactus. I have a vague recollection of maybe a Bugs Bunny cartoon where someone just comes up to one of these cacti and just slices it and then drinks out of it.
Yeah, that's my memory. When I was a kid, I knew I didn't know much about the desert. But I knew a few animal facts, and I knew that if you're lost in the desert, you can drink water out of a cactus.
Yeah, That's that's what we were taught via our media, and this is absolutely not the case. The water inside they're filled with water, but also high concentrations of acids and alkaloids that falls short of like outright poison, but would prove disastrous for human consumption, even in or perhaps especially in a survival scenario.
What kind of disastrous like complex It just like gives you diarrhea, Yeah, like that.
Sort of thing, Like do you on top of being trapped in the desert and dealing with dehydration, do you also need like chronic diarrhea on top of everything else? You definitely do not. So, yeah, the water inside the cactus is not good to go or anything like that. Now, you know, We'll come back to the ways that humans have used this particular species of cactus, because not to
say that it's off limits to humans. Humans have made use of the swallow cactus for thousands of years, and there are various valid ways for them to take advantage of its moisture.
But it's not just like cut and cut and chug.
Yeah, no, no cutting chug, No sticking a spiggott in it and then drinking from it like a water fountain or what have you. It's a lot more complicated than that.
Well, folks, we just looked at the time and we realized we really don't have time today to get into some of the other stuff we were going to talk about, So we're probably going to save some of those sections for next time and come back and have even more to say about them. So join us again for part two, And this will be a great place to end part one because it will direct extra special emphasis to the advice to not just cut and chug.
Yes, yes, by all means, go out into the wild and look upon these giants of the desert, but just don't mess with them, don't shoot them, don't try to drink them. Let them do their thing and you do yours. And in the next episode we'll get into a little bit more about what their thing is, and we'll talk about the way that humans have utilized the suaro cactus, you know, throughout their cohabitation with these giants.
Yeah, if you feel tempted to interact with them, you can wave back to them. You know, you can mimic their posture, you can cheer for them, you can tell them it's good.
Yeah, yeah, I think Arizona State regulations would be okay with that, not so much the blasting or the harvesting. Right, all right, we're going to close it out then, but we'll just remind everybody out there that's Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do short form episodes, and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. 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, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.