You're listening to Worms and Dead, the paleontology podcast
that tells evolution's most embarrassing and bizarre stories
about worms. I'm Megan Weatherall, and I
forgot to make Amy film this intro with me.
But we are two living scientists who are really excited about
dead worms. Yeah.
So this episode features worms. I imagine you're not surprised,
but you will be, as we redeem ourselves for not knowing that
an arrow worm was not merely A euphemism for penis worms.
In our defense, legitimately all worms look like euphemisms for
penises, but these ones happen to be particularly toothy, and
with the help of climate change, they might be helping to spread
a particularly unsettling bacteria.
Like always, our podcast is not for kids, though of course Amy's
book The Fossil Keeper's Treasure is.
Our podcast is instead for adults who like science and
never grew out of finding Dick jokes funny.
And given the topic, you should expect a lot of those in this
episode. I'm so excited because I have no
idea I'm coming in just a blank slate.
Over here right with worms God, let's get that worm bucket nice
and full. This is this is a, this is a
redemption episode fundamentally for a very small YouTube
interaction that I had where I, we posted that Burgess Shale
like exquisite preservation episode.
And I mentioned that there were lots of animals in there and
someone commented like arrow worms.
And I thought that was a euphemism for penis worm.
And it turns out pervert. I mean, penis worms have a lot
of names. So I was just like, hell yeah.
I mean like again though, like what penises are you seeing I
guess. My goodness.
Yeah, Well, OK, we're not talking about penis worms.
We're talking about I would call them.
They look kind of like penis wear mermaids that are wearing
an Elizabethan collar. So get that mental picture in
your head. It's fancy.
It is. I had to add like a fancy wig.
I think that's fair. There is no evidence that they
didn't have one. Absence of evidence is proof of
concept. Right?
That's. What that?
That's totally how it goes, yes. Yes, so today's episode is going
to be about arrow worms, which, fun fact, are not penis worms.
So that's fact #1 and I have to admit, I was a little worried
going into it. So I had thought they were penis
worms. Turns out they weren't.
And then I was like, oh, they must be Bobbitt worms because
the guy who commented was or or gal or not binary.
I don't know what your gender is, but the person who commented
was sad that they had been misled into listening to an
episode that did not feature arrow worms.
Which implied to me Arrow Worms at least one fan in the.
World like, who would have thought?
So I thought, OK, well if they're not penis worms, they
must be those crazy ass Bobbitt worms that people like to show.
Which are also just a different, like just making fun of a penis
thing. Yeah, so those are those are not
arrow worms. So Bobbitt worms are the the
crazy bristly things that live in the sand and.
Okay, okay, okay. Like nightmares, you and people
on TikTok. I don't know what country this
is from, but you can hold like pieces of fish over the beach
and this fucking nightmare tremors like creature comes out
and attacks it. I think they're then using the
Bobbitt worm to fish for other things.
But yeah, they're called Bobbitt worms after Lorena Bobbitt, who
cut off. Yeah, so from penis to penis
lopper. But none of those are arrow
worms, because worm. OK, OK.
Just like. I've got my Venn diagrams in my
head right now, so there's three now.
Now we have 3. Arrow worms are nothing like
what we've talked about. So there are, according to
Wikipedia at least currently, 31 recognized phyla, or in the
Kingdom Animalia. Of those 31 phyla, I would say
in my personal opinion, 'cause I went through all 31 and looked
at them, I would call approximately 15 of those worms.
Some of them other people have referred to as worms.
It's like half. Yes, because worm is a body plan
that, as it turns out, real common.
If it don't broke, why fix it? Exactly.
And worms, one big thing that they all do have is that they
are all bilaterally symmetrical, right?
So even though they're a long tube, OK, they are bilaterally
symmetrical, they're not radial, right?
That's that's worm feature #1 right, All worms share that
feature. So if they're freaky dicky on
one side, they're freaky dicky on the other.
Side exactly. Equally freaky dicky on both
sides. Not fiddler crap esque, although
that would also be fine. That's still bilateral.
Bilateralian bilateral arrowworms are in a phylum of
their own called Cheda Gnatha. Cheda Gnatha Chedagnath.
They're Chedagnaths. Oh, so something about?
Jaws, yes. So something about jaws and
depending on how flattering the researcher is being, that's
either interpreted as long hair jaw or spine jaw.
So both gross options, but they are realistic.
So Chedagnaths are they are like 130 living species and some
fossil species, as we will discuss, they're mostly pretty
small. They're mostly like zooplankton.
So even though there's only like 130 species, they're actually so
common the individuals of those species that they can make up to
like 30% of the zooplankton in an area.
So they're pretty well studied because they're kind of a big
component of the microscopic bullshit that other cooler
animals eat. Right.
So that all the things I care about are just dining on
aeroworms, OK? So they get up to about 10
centimeters long, but most of them are pretty small They're on
like the millimeter scale and most of them are planktonic and
pelagic, meaning that they they float around in the ocean.
They do have some swimming skills, but not they can't
resist the ocean. They're very small and some of
them are benthic, meaning that they do find a rock and they
they anchor town. But nobody talked about those
ones, because apparently those ones nobody cares about.
Well, they're probably a little bit harder to get to, I guess.
But I'm like, already I am just like, who?
Who was advocating for these? Like I'm so surprised they just
don't check any box. Like I interact with people who
are like, they only care about like the most basic dinosaurs.
And so then when I hear about people who care about actual
weird things, I'm like. What?
Yeah, and. It gives me faith.
To this viewer who commented, you were correct, they are
insane and I went down a very weird rabbit hole with them.
So to start out this rabbit hole, I did initially come into
this episode being like, maybe I'll just do an overview of
worms because arrow worms don't sound like they're that cool
because they're not Bobbitt worms, they're not penis worms.
Those are the only worms I care about.
So what's left? They're interesting, they're
weird, and they're interesting. So go ahead and some of them are
dead and some of them are dead. Let's go ahead and Scroll down
to the very first Shadek Nathed, the very first.
OK? OK.
And why don't you describe it first?
Picture, it's this elongate tube.
I mean, it, it, it looks like, yeah, it kind of looks like a
paramecium, you know, like it's kind of see through, but you can
still see that there's some goopy like body parts in there.
But yeah, very elongated, kind of running parallel almost squid
like in some ways. But I mean, if you took the
outline, Adam and Eve does sell, you know, shit that looks like
that to put in your holes. So it is still kind of phallic.
Yes. So I'm just saying, well, it's a
word, but really. Small.
They're all phallic. That's like a fundamental
aspect, yeah. So it's it's see through its
head is on the right hand side of the image.
OK, that helps actually. So what are the balls on the
left hand? Those are balls because all of
them are her. Oh my God.
Yay yay. I did it.
Yeah.
So they're all hermaphrodites and they have their Seminole
vesicles I think are down by their tail, which I believe is
where those balls are. And they reproduce by basically
Pearl necklacing one another and then sperm like goes and kind of
squirms down the body into the correct holes.
Romantic, but it does make me wonder if they could like.
Beautiful. Basically self inseminate via
sit up or something right? Like a real, real danger of
abdominal exercise. See, I know, that's why.
That's why I don't do ABS. Exactly.
You don't want to self inseminate.
I don't actually pay attention as to whether or not the
openings or the Pearl necklace holes were on the back or the
front, but I'm not sure I could tell what was.
The worm? What is the back or the front?
Exactly, exactly. I suspect they're equally
flexible in either direction. But the, the thing that I
thought was so funny looking on this creature is so First off,
this is transparent. And most of them are
transparent. Very few of them are opaque.
Most of them you can see through.
And in addition to being kind of like a worm shape, it has a tail
fluke, kind of like a whale. OK, right.
It's got like A and they all have that.
Yep, it's got a tail fluke. And then it's got like these
additional fins. So they do have fins, which is
why I think they look kind of like little wormy mermaids.
That's that was my thought. And so as far as the Elizabethan
collar. I would like really more like
wormy manatees like that is like that's actually the back of a
manatee. That's like what that looks but
manatees are like. Probably inspired the myth of
mermaids. Yeah, manatees are mermaids.
It's the exact same thing. This is just a more realistic
fuck your beauty standards sort of.
Yes, exactly. This is my kind of mermaid, yes.
Exactly so the we the jaw is present on this picture, but you
can't really tell because it's translucent and everything about
it is kind of translucent and its mouth is closed so it's a
little hard to tell so let's Scroll down to the next picture
so you can see it in full glory I'm.
Scared. Oh my God.
I mean I'm having a lot of thoughts, but one of my first
thoughts was cat penis. And that really describes who we
are as people. Horrible.
I know it's true. It's true.
It is. It's almost like a flower that's
blooming, but instead of nice petals, it's like bilateral
blades, which I'm assuming to be the teeth kind of sticking out
of both sides. It's not a full like cup of it's
just on either side. And then they have like a little
Muppet face, mouth that's still closed, but their teeth are
somehow sticking out and it's really terrifying.
Yeah. So the teeth of the arrow worm,
these different spines, they have longer ones that are
grasping spines that are intended to help them grab
things. And then they have shorter ones
that are, I don't know what they are, but they're not grasping
that. That's the limit of what I
learned about them. So these spines in all of the
like illustrations of fossils, they keep like putting them all
the way down around the neck, which is why I think it always
looks like an Elizabethan collar and you'll see some
reconstructions later. But they also just kind of look
like a nightmare face. Like that's not you're being
you're graying grasp by little spines for sure.
So the reason that they have these?
Horror movie. Yes.
Is that most of these are not manatee esque in their behavior.
They are predators and they're specifically described over and
over again as ambush predators. Which, OK, they're eating
zooplankton so I don't know how fucking subtle.
They need to be like, where are they hiding?
Yeah, right. Floating in the ocean I think
ambush predators in in the the sense that it's being used in
worm world means they hold still and don't chase things.
They just if it bumps into them they attack it.
So that's how you avoid getting attacked by an arrow.
Worm is just don't touch it. Run into it right?
So I do. I do feel like ambush predators
is sort of like how all like slugs and snails have like
really epic common names like cascade, axe tails, scarlet back
tail drum. Like it's sure it's propaganda,
I think, to try and make these animals sound cooler.
Coming straight from a slug and snail specialist, you heard it
here first. Yeah, it is propaganda.
Yeah, I participate, right? Yeah.
Well, you gotta gotta do. It's capitalism, everyone.
It's not our fault. It's capitalism.
Exactly. These worms, being worms are
soft bodied. It is obviously somewhat
difficult for them to fossilize, which is why they probably
should have come up in the Burgess Shale episode because
they are preserved in Burgess shales and other idiacorin.
Wow, super old. Yes, Huh.
But that's where their junk is. I'm so conflicted about how life
fucked first. I'd really like someone to
answer that question for me. Well.
Because I'm, I'm thinking a little bit about the gonopods,
but like the gonopods of millipedes was weird.
And then it was like, yeah, but they're super old.
So maybe that's like old school. But these guys are older and
they're like, teeth are in a place that I would generally
think teeth go and their balls are in places I would generally.
So I'm just Mother Nature. You keep me on my toes.
So I want you to Scroll down to see some of the exceptional
preservation of these worms. Oh, OK.
So this, this particular fossil from the Chengjian biota?
Yeah, it had the subtitle. An undoubted Early Canberra.
An undoubted good for you guys. Which I don't know about you,
but if I saw that I would have doubts.
I well, my life is full of doubts, so it's I doubt
everything. But the first thing I thought is
like, I've been looking up some because I'm going to visit you
and I've been looking up some pictographs from our old neck of
the woods that are all done in like ochre and shit.
And that's what like this looks like, like a like a very faded
wall painting from early man like, because it's kind of
stained with like a red color. I'm assuming that's like an iron
staining. And that's the only part that
you can kind of tell is not just a a rock is that there's like,
and then, yeah, they've got some arrows pointing to some features
that I'm like, sure. But I would never.
I would never. I would be like, moving on.
Yeah. And 1mm, Holy fuck.
It's tiny. OK.
Yeah, fuck that. I wouldn't ever see this.
I would never. I would just.
I would never. No good for them.
That's great. Yeah.
Someone cares. So if you Scroll down, you can
see their little doodles where they've actually made it clear
what they're saying. And I, I agree, I think they're
correct that this, this is not me saying absolutely not.
That's not a thing but cool. I would never pick up on this.
This is harder to see for me than fossil urine like that's.
And I think it's we've talked a lot about this.
It's like very ink blot test like I in that lower left one I
see and then in the middle drawing I see boobies I.
See boobs. The one above is like a weird
little Dick. Yep.
So it tells you a lot about me. So there you go.
But yeah, the one on the bottom, the boob one, it's like a boob
that's being held up with like a cool tassel tank top or
something like that. Whatever.
Those are like teeth, but they kind of do look like little
frills or something like yeah, it's like I could I could design
a cool top to look like this. Yeah, but I wouldn't ever be
able to say yes, this is the mouthpiece and the get all those
labels. Nope, Nope, Nope.
I'm out. I'm out.
If you go to the next slide, you're going to see another
extremely beautiful specimen from the Burgess.
Oh, OK. I actually so the first one is
Edie Akron, so it's older. They're Burgess, so they're both
Cambrian. These are technically Middle
Cambrian. OK, OK, because these ones, I'm
like a little bit more on board and the top gives me a little
bit better idea of why they even call it an arrow worm.
Because I've been like, what about this looks like an arrow
to somebody, you know, or it's common name.
And then, yeah, those, it's like the little things in the
artichoke that I scoop out. That's what's making up its
mouthpieces there. Yeah, see, I'm just craving
artichoke. It does look like an like a
little artichoke flower, like the inside of an artichoke.
Or like a Thistle, any type of Thistle.
It's kind of given me Thistle vibes.
Yeah, this is where we really get into the mermaid lore is
with the reconstruction. That's on the next.
Page Oh, I'm so excited OK, oh wow oh I'm so conflicted like it
has wings like a maxi pad. It's like got a body, but then
it's got these like wings on the side that are very menstrual
pad. And then it's got like a fucking
Ankylos or club tail. And then it's got like if you
know a guy who's balding, but only like on the top of his
head, but he still has the hair around the ring.
And then he got stuck in like a windstorm and it all just blew
up at the same time. Like maybe that's your
Elizabethan collar. I I get like old man with
Skullet in the wind. Or like old man who got 2
extremely large false lashes placed on his face.
Yes, they do kind of look like. Yeah, that's yeah.
Yep, I could see that too. Right.
If your entire hairdo was like a false lash sticking upwards.
Yes. And those are its teeth.
Yep. So they're like, out all the
time. Yeah.
Pretty. Oh, I think they can kind of
fold down a little bit, but they don't go into it.
I don't know, the other part is definitely still giving penis
vibes. I mean.
It's a super penis. See this.
This is like, yeah, this. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a
lot. It's, it's taken me all sorts of
places right now. But you know, life is beautiful.
Who am I to judge? Yeah, life is beautiful.
And I think even with these two examples, you can kind of tell
why the fossil record of arrow worms is sometimes disputed.
I think that these are these two that I've just shown you are
like pretty good examples of, like, nice specimens.
But you can see how other less nice specimens would just be
kind of like a BLOB. Yeah, right.
But it turns out that the fossil record of arrow worms does
probably go back into the idiacrine, and it's not fossils
that look quite like this. And initially, they were not
recognized as arrow worms. They were recognized as
ancestors of connodonts because they look very much like
Connodon elements. A connodon, if you're not
familiar, is basically like an eel thing.
We mostly knew it from its teeth, and people didn't know
what its teeth actually were because they look fucking
insane. And chaitignath teeth, they look
kind of like giant spines. And some of those look sort of
like basic bitch conodont teeth. Like they don't look like
they're the cool crazy conodonts.
They look like a precursor, hence the name protoconodont.
But now paleontologists think that most, if not all
protoconodonts are actually Chedagnas, because I guess
Chedagnath teeth are. Like they're made out of like, I
don't know, like keratin or something Like they're, they're
softer than you might imagine. They're not phosphatized this.
Is an enamel. Yeah, it's not enamel, it's
phosphatized. But there was a research paper
that came out like 10 years ago that said, well, actually if you
cut open the protoconidant teeth, they grow in the same
manner. So we think that probably these
teeth phosphatize as part of the diagenetic process.
So you do get hard teeth eventually, but it's only it's
like part of their fossilization.
So not while they're alive. They only have hard teeth as
they're becoming rock. I mean they have hard teeth.
So then why are we even talking about that?
Like, is that like it's helping them out now?
It's not like what? People wanted to you had to
cross compare them because it's like this animal has relatively
soft teeth that shouldn't per mineralize.
How do these hard per mineralize things relate?
And it turns out that they do per mineralize, even though they
are kind of on the border of soft tissue essentially in a
living chaitic Nah. So they wouldn't have been, they
would have been fairly like flexible like they would have
been not as pokey as I think they might be OK.
Yeah, because I mean, they're catching so plankton, so like,
you know, you don't have to. Fair, fair, excellent point.
But my question is how does that process actually happen?
Because it looks kind of cry noidy in that it's like here I
used to use my feather arms and then I help funnel it down to my
mouth next to my butt hole or like you know, it's like.
Their mouth is next to their. And why do they have a name
about Jaws? Do they ever even open this or
are these just like. I'm just very confused about how
food gets in. The spine collar it one of
them's grasping because it helps to grab things, pray and the
other ones help to I think tear it up and put it in its mouth.
So like they are like they're like peda pulps, but not sex
pedal pulps on spiders, right? Like they're, they're it's a
it's mouth. It's a mouth and they have a
hole that they put the food in and it's functionally what I'm
trying. So they don't even have a true
jaw that opens like I traditionally think of.
No. So the jaw is this feather
feathery frill around them that they're oh, see.
OK, so there's so it. Is kind of like rhynoid arms in
a little way. Like.
Right. OK, fucking weirdos.
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geopedalfabric.com now, OK? Yeah, so they have records of
these crazy protoconodont teeth going back into the Ediacrin.
But if you thought that soft bodied ones were hard to see, go
ahead and Scroll down. Well, the next one is pretty
easy. They're like you could that's
from the exact same site as one of the soft bodied.
So you can pretty clearly see that they are spikes, although I
don't know that. Edward Scissorhands.
Yeah, looks like Edward Scissorhands spikes, but the one
that's down below it is keratinized one or not
keratinized. They're like coal peels, almost
like. Oh, OK.
Yeah, yeah. 'Cause to get these and all
contidant elements, they like dissolve things in acids and
crazy different chemicals to get them to float up to the top.
Like they don't sit there and prep out like micro millimeter
sized teeth. They collect them after they
float. I know, right?
Yeah. Come on, hash is shortcuts, OK?
I mean, you, you use what you got to use.
I still like OK Good for you guys for trying to to answer the
questions that apparently keep some people up at night.
This also just gave me like squid beak kind of vibes right
off the bat too. Yeah, I don't know that even if
I did manage to separate that from the sediment, I would go,
hey animal as opposed to hey, weird mineral.
Yeah, yeah, No, completely. I and that's how lucky are we in
paleontology that there's so many different weird places that
you can find your home. You know, I'm so proud of the.
Cosmopolitan. Really.
Yeah, Yes. Well, I mean, it's like great
for me. I don't know what I've even
saying. It's not like I have published
anything recently, but I have just like, this is fucking
great. And it's true.
It's like when I tell people when they're like, well, why did
dinosaurs matter? Which is a question I get a lot.
And I'm like, they don't, but I think they do.
And I'm like, most of the kids who start out being jazzed on
dinosaurs don't end up being dinosaur paleontologists.
Like, some folks find another weird niche in paleontology, or
they go and become like, normal scientists and healthcare
providers and things like that. And all of those things are
good. Because, I mean, I'm assuming
that this is some cool shit about just, like, life origins.
Because if they're that fucking old, that just means that and
they're still alive. That's fucking cool.
Like, that's very interesting to just be able to, yeah, dissect
some of these oldest life forms. The the discovery that
Chaedeknaths were protoconidons and that Chaedeknaths existed in
the Cambrian was pretty exciting because Chaedeknaths are
predators. So that meant that there was a
whole other trophic level in the Cambrian and maybe in the
Ediacaran as well. Basically beyond kind of what
we, we thought of it as being like their general level.
So it's predation. Predation definitely existed.
We have arrow worms. Oh, see, everyone, you it's
normal and natural to you Attack other things.
That sounded weird, but right. I mean, like that.
That is a very cool Earth story too, of that.
Yeah. As soon as there was life, there
was something trying to eat it. Eat it.
Yeah, so. Pain.
There are some wrinkles with this theory, right So.
Wow, it's a worm. It's indeed indeed a wrinkly
little worm. The the one that the paper
mentioned is that they weren't sure what the shaded Naths were
eating because if they were pelagic like most shaded Naths
are the only things that they've ever found fossil records of
were too big for a Chaicnath to take on.
So like Anomalicaris, like like a centimeter long Chaicnath is
not taking on Anomalicaris. Right, even a trilobite is too
big. Right.
Either that they were taking on things that were living on the
ocean floor, so dipping down for a snack, or they were eating
arthropod babies just like they kind of do today.
So little little baby killers, they're eating zooplankton.
Cute, right? I also just kind of love this
too, where we're like, we don't know what they were eating and
I'm like, well, they were eating something.
Yes, they existed, so they ate something just because we you
know, I love it sometimes how it's like, well, how did they
like? Well, would just.
Have to. Have more to know yet They they
definitely ate like otherwise we wouldn't have enough to
fossilize. So they're there.
The other wrinkle is that it turns out not all chaitignats
are actually predatory. So chaitignats live in tropical
waters up near the like, up near the sun.
They live all the way down in the deep sea.
They live in the Arctic. They live kind of all over the
place, even though there's only 130 living species of them.
But they did an analysis on the chaitignats that live in the
Arctic. They looked at 2 specific
species and they found that one of them was full of algae pretty
much all year round, so it was definitely an omnivore.
I think the other one they found a little bit of algae in, so it
was maybe more predatory but shaded maths just by themselves.
It turns out that those grasping those grasping arms probably
could grasp more than just prey, right?
Like if you have teeth, you can probably use those teeth to
funnel algae into your face too. And in the Arctic you don't have
copepods year round because it's the fucking Arctic.
So it makes sense that some of these animals would adapt to
become less carnivorous. Yeah, and I just thinking about
that one, it looks like they'd be, you know, using it for other
things. I think they'd be great at
butterfly kisses to each other, you know, with your eyelashes.
Like they've got the perfect equipment.
What if their mating thing or like, saying hi was to just
like, flutter their cute little jaw face tingly whisker things?
You know, just because it's used for one thing doesn't mean it
can't be fun for something else. You should see Amy's little
smirk that she has right now. I just always love it when we're
like, was it for this or that? It's like it was both.
It's always both. It's it's it's.
Personal. Or all of it.
It's always a Swiss Army knife. Yeah, like it's just so weird.
Like, I don't know in what thing in our normal lives is that this
or that. So, OK, so some of them were,
some of them are omnivores, some of them were right.
I mean that that makes sense too.
Everybody's got to be different. Can't go with the flow.
Yeah, so my last set of crazy aeroworm facts, this is where
things really went kind of sideways in my research today is
so Chaitaknath these terrifying ambush predators.
They noticed as these animals are ambushing copepods, which as
we've discussed, probably means, oh, there's a copepod bite.
Not like sort of lurking in the bushes.
It's the ocean jumping off from a boulder.
They noticed that sometimes the Chadig Nath would strike out
basically at a copepod but not eat it for whatever reason.
Like maybe it would fumble it or maybe the IT would just choose
not to eat that copepod. Who knows why they noticed that
the copepods acted weird after they got struck.
Oh, as in like their circulatory system started to slow down and
they acted paralyzed so. Yeah, OK.
What do you think's going on there?
Oh, exciting. Oh, so they've got some freaky
deaky juices coming out of their weird comb face jaw things and
they're oh which then talks about being able to do paralysis
and super deep time if that's OK.
Yes, shaded naffs are venomous and the venom, so they one of
the studies I looked at looked at six different species of
chaotic Nats, found that all of them had signs of the venom
tetrotoxin. Have you?
You've heard of Tetrotoxin before, right?
Yeah, that sounds fancy. Tell me.
More so it is, it is actually the least fancy toxin because as
we will discuss, it's fucking everywhere and every year we
find more of it somewhere else. So totrotoxin is the same toxin
that's in Japanese puffer fish. So if you eat a Japanese puffer
fish, you get sick. It's that stuff.
Because of this, it's a it's a neurotoxin.
Just straight up kill you. Yep, it's a neurotoxin.
It's it affects your sodium channels and it it causes
paralysis and muscle spasms and it's it's nasty.
It is also present in newts, rough skinned newts, those
things that crawl all. Over Oregon.
Pay for it. Yeah, I crawl all over you.
Yeah, I love them. I've seen it.
So Newts have a ton of tetrodotoxin inside of them,
which means that if you eat them, and then, and this is
important, don't puke. You can die.
If you puke, usually you're fine.
And we know this because drunk men have done that both ways.
Well, thank you for taking one for the tea.
That's how science on venomous poisonous animals happens, is
some drunk man gets dared to eat a Newt and sure enough then we
get science done so. Right, because there are some
studies you cannot set up safely or ethically to do.
I remember when I was reading all my pregnancy books that were
just like, well, we can't have women just drinking shit tons of
booze for science their entire pregnancy.
Like, but you can talk to case studies in which people did.
Maybe they didn't know they're pregnant or something.
Yeah. So it's just thank you all for
taking one for the team. So tetrodotoxin, it's present in
Japanese puffer fish, it's present in Newts and it is
present in the mouth of Chaedeknaths, which is those are
three very, very different sources, right?
Like those are three animals that are not at all related.
And so tetrodotoxin, like I swear every year we find it in
something else. It's the blue ringed octopus.
That venom is to trototoxin. Yep.
That's because the ladies will eat them and so they're like
whoop. But partly, I think partly
there's some. I was going to go down that road
with Dick hands and then again, as I said, I get too much so.
Right. Yeah.
We'll bring it back. Octopi have it, fish have it,
newts have it. Lots of different salamanders
actually have it. They're not related to one
another whatsoever. And with most of those animals,
it's like embedded in their tissues.
And it turns out it's embedded at like different levels, right?
Like if you ate just a Newt stomach you'd probably be fine
because most newts don't really have to try to stop.
Thank God I love Newt Haggis. Roast just the tiniest little
haggis just. It's the.
Tiniest little, I don't know, there's some big fucking newts.
But don't eat their gonads, because their gonads are.
Full Oh God damn it, Megan, it's got to take everything I love in
this world from that's. The same with puffer fish, man,
puffer fish gonads just well, it's a it's.
The gonads. It's the nads, huh?
Oh my nads. So you might notice a little bit
of a trend there you don't see. Oh, is that where they are in
the? You don't see tetrodotoxin in
like the stomach. You don't see it anywhere in the
digestive tract. You see it in places where it's
not getting put into the digestive tract.
You see it in the skin, you see it in the gonads, you see it in
places where it can't affect that animal because most animals
are susceptible to to trottotoxin, even the ones that
have it. So you have to not have it in
your. Stomach.
But why? If you have it in your nads, how
are you using it? How are you deploying it for?
It's just to make you poisonous. Well, it's just so that no one
tries to eat your gonads. Yeah, it's just to not get
eaten. Generally.
It's not like they expect to survive if it gets their.
OK, OK, so it's like where can I put this where it's not going to
get fucked up with the rest of my system and Take Me Out?
Oh, these worthless? Yes, OK, I'm just like what are
they doing? Like just like Pew Pew with
their dads. I don't know.
It's fun. They're not shooting eggs,
poison, not of venom for most of these animals, OK, right.
So it's accumulating in spots where it can't be something that
also effects that animal, right? So.
OK, fair. OK, there's that.
And then it's also accumulating. It's not one organ that is the
poison organ. It's not like sloths or not
sloths. It's not like Slaloris's, right,
where they have like the glands that use it.
It seems to be kind of throughout their bodies.
There's a clam that has an increasing amount of it in
Australia and they mostly notice it in like the siphon.
So like it's, it seems to be bioaccumulating.
So a lot of people have wondered if perhaps it is not internally
made, it is externally made and that they are accumulating it
specifically with bacteria. And it's complicated because
some animals like newts, the way you can test this, the, you
know, the test is if you do you make this yourself or does
something else make it and you eat that thing and right, right.
So they took newts, baby Newts, I think they even hatched them
themselves and they put them in a tank and they controlled their
diet to make sure there was nothing that had to try to
toxin. Yeah, like the poison dart
frogs. Yeah, and they found that Newts
stayed poisonous, so newts make it themselves.
So they are, they're auto generating their poison.
They've like we've got an easy bake toxin oven.
Yes, OK. Whereas a lot of other animals
don't seem to be doing that. And other animals like clams and
things, those seem to be accumulating it.
And when they looked at Chaiteknaths, they were like,
well, we don't see like they don't have hollow fangs.
Those are not hollow. Those spines, they don't have
venom glands. Where are chaotic Nats getting
this tetrado toxin? And they looked at I think 4
different species of chaotic Nats and they did all of these
like bio SA, like, I don't know, dumb weird biology shit that I
don't fully understand. And they found evidence for this
one bacteria, which I have the name of somewhere, this one
bacteria, Vibrio alginolyticus, Vibrio something, something.
So there's a bacteria, and that bacteria produces tetrodotoxin.
And it turns out it's associated with a lot of different animals,
but not all animals. And it's also not the only
bacteria that can make tetrodotoxin.
So it seems like in a lot of cases it might be bacteria that
is creating the tetratotoxin that then the animal is
monopolizing to use as a defense or to use as like a predatory
thing, which is insane to me. The other insane thing is that
it's not just that we're discovering more animals that
have tetratotoxin. We are discovering tetratotoxin
in animals that did not have it before because it.
Is spreading. It's contagious.
Maybe. I mean, like, OK, that's that's
what the fuck? That's terrifying, honestly.
Yes, and it's climate change related because as the climate
warms, this bacteria Vibrio, a lot of the animals that it's
already, we don't know if it's living in symbiosis with or
these animals have like the ability to bio accumulate it
without being affected by it. So maybe they're eating it.
It's not entirely clear and it's probably going to be different
for different animals. But this bacteria seems to be
kind of linked to warmer waters. And tetrotoxin itself is more
stable chemically in acidified waters.
So as warmer, as water gets warmer and it has more carbon
dioxide dissolved in it and becomes more acidic, tetrotoxin
itself is more stable, which is important because tetrodotoxin
isn't just used as a poison. It's used by like algae as a
communication thing, like as like a pheromone.
Dinoflagellates use it as a pheromone.
So they're pushing this juice out into the water and now the
water is warmer and more acidic. So it's sticking around for
longer. So there have been now cases of
tetrodotoxin poisoning in. Written in Spain and Europe that
are not associated with puffer fish.
They are associated with clams that are now beginning to
bioaccumulate, and they see these clams that are in more
southerly waters, that are in warmer waters are more likely to
bioaccumulate dangerous levels of titratotoxin.
Oh my God, is that like what is the the paralytic shellfish
stuff? Is that similar or is that?
I think it is. I think it's the same thing.
Because that, yeah, I've known that.
I've heard, you know, with Kelly's from Alaska and.
Yeah, Alaska has a. Couple of gears.
It's like, yeah, there's like these big and it's really bad
for the dogs that go and like that's yeah, definitely can
yeah. I mean, I have someone who used
to be a marine biologist up there who was just like bucking
up all of her crabs. So you know, yeah, that's.
Oh shit. Yeah, because.
Well, I don't eat seafood because I'm such a good person
and not because I'm incredibly picky, actually, and it's
disgusting. So I'm good.
But that is freaky. That is.
That's.
Yeah. Fascinating though, too.
Yeah, it's pretty cool. So my last fact about aeroworms
is that in this paper in the 80s, there was just kind of this
throwaway comment that is just fucking insane to me, which is
that chaitignaths, there's 130 species, They're pelagic and
they get tossed around by ocean currents.
So they're very widespread, which is probably part of why
they don't have that many species because there's a lot of
mixing across the globe because they're part of the ocean
zooplankton and they get moved around quite a lot.
This paper theorized, well, they have this bacteria, they go
everywhere. Are they acting as vectors for
to trototoxin producing bacteria?
Which it sounds like there's some evidence that part of the
problem in Britain is because there are introduced puffer
fish, I guess. Too many kids were like, I I let
my puffer fish go, Yeah. Reverse Nemo.
Mummy, Mummy, what did you do with my puffer fish?
Mummy? Yeah, flushed.
It flushed. It maybe like puffer fish are
vectors for spreading tetrodotoxin.
They're like climate change revenge.
Is basically, yeah, life finds a way.
I mean, because I I was also wondering because you were like,
oh, it's this bacteria. Because I was also wondering
like if it's a bio accumulation thing.
Well, something's got to eat these arrow worms too, even
though they're predators, they're teeny.
They must be eaten. So can they cause.
And is that kind of what you mean by being a vector?
Is like they can help with the bio accumulation process as
they're as. Literally like a contagion
spreader, like the bacteria rides on them to other places,
so it doesn't even have to go into an animal that eats it.
It's way scarier. Yeah, it's that.
It's like, yeah, it's. Just hitch and a ride.
See, that is way scarier than
World War Z. Not for you.
You don't eat seafood. No, it's disgusting.
I just find that. Really.
Yeah. But then I I, I still wonder.
I mean, something's got to eat these guys too, right?
They have to be eaten. I'm sure they're eaten by
something. What?
What eats, though? Plankton.
Besides them. So, EW, that's gross.
OK, so they're just making their own weird bacterial cloak that
they take on their travels and they just start like Johnny
Appleseed of maybe toxins. Yeah, OK.
Because they have A and like the theory was basically like a lot
of animals have this. Also, Vibrio does infect people.
So like if you go and you get a cut and you get exposed to this
bacteria, it can cause like just like general wound infections.
Vibrio is one of the bacteria that can cause that.
So like Vibrio seems to be real good at doing a lot of different
things. And I also wonder if that's
maybe part of how like some of these relationships developed is
that if the bacteria is infecting you and then you just
don't happen to die, but you just incorporate it sort of like
what we did with like, you know, other chloroplasts and
mitochondria. I wonder if if that's how some
of these relationships are starting.
For sure. Right, OK, right.
They just like Co opted they're like, well, actually now that
we've recovered, we're going to borrow some of us for some of
our genetic code 0 actually, it's kind of handy for things
here and there. Oh, that's yeah.
And I was also like, right. And then they are also could
continue to spread it. If you don't kill them, then
you're also good at spreading. Because I was just at some
fucking castle in the UK. And of course there are all
these things about the trebuchet which I was like, OK, I mean,
like how they'd take like, you know, plague ridden bodies.
And like fucking. Shoot them into the castle so
that they would spread. Spread the plague around anyone.
It's like, because if you walled yourself off and no one got in,
then you wouldn't get plagued, so they would just take
disgusting plague bodies and like plague cows and things like
that and trebuchet them, catapult them into these castles
to cause everyone to get the plague and die.
Huh, Yeah, it's nice. I'm glad I didn't live then.
Thanks ancestors for getting on through though.
Thank you. I mean, isn't that the plague
kind of why people have autoimmune disorders?
Isn't that one of the theories? Is that your immune system is
overreacted because you're a descendant of someone who was
able to survive the plague. You know what?
I kind of like that better than what I hear all the time from my
mental health stuff, that it's women, your lives suck.
You're, we just hate women. Well, you have 3 because it
does, it does affect women way more than it effects men.
And I have autoimmune diseases, so it's great.
And I'm like, cool. So I'd actually prefer thinking
it's because some ancestor of mine survived by the flag and
that's why I have psoriasis, not because of generational trauma.
That's it is still generational trauma.
It's very, very. Strong bottlenecking situation.
Oh, God, yeah. I think that's really freaking
cool. And on a microscopic level, too,
that it can affect literally globally, even if it's teeny
tiny. That's right, everybody.
Climate changes. Yeah.
Going to destroy your seafood, you sick fox.
I say with a partner who just, like, loves seafood, but he was
raised on the ocean. I was born in a landlocked
state. That's my.
Excuse. Yep, Yep.
So yeah, that's what I have for you on Aeroworms and Chaitignavs
is they've been around for a long time.
No idea when they got to trototoxin, but a lot of the
species now have it and maybe you're spreading it to other
things in other places, who knows.
Do you think the ones in the like Burgess and even Ediacran
would have had those toxins? You know what I saw?
Do we know? Was they looked at four
different species? I don't know when this
particular bacteria evolved. There are other bacteria that
also produce tetrodotoxin. So it's super possible, but I
don't know how we would necessarily tell because as far
as I know, there's not like a really stable by product long
term of tetrodotoxin. So it's not like you could look
for a specific chemical in the rock and be like a signature,
right? Yeah, but maybe there is, I
don't know. But you just have to wonder if
they are. And if they are, you know,
obviously there's quite a bit of diversification.
And obviously they have evolved because they're alive and things
change. But it is like, well, they have
persisted. And a lot of things seem like
they're kind of the same as they were.
And it does make me wonder if even some of that behavior was
incredibly ancestral to to arrow worms as a whole.
I mean, yeah, as soon as there was life, there was a way to
fucking be a toxin. Just.
And there are other worms that do it, flatworms.
There's a couple species of flatworms that I guess also use
to trototoxin as like a venom, but they're terrestrial so it's
fucking everywhere guys. Worms are wow, okay, so we just
got I mean, yeah, it's like some we could just have worms in
dead. You could do a whole show worms
in. Dead.
There's a lot of other philetic cover, that's for fucking sure.
Dear God. Yeah, thank you for listening.
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It's good ASMR. Megan has a stroke.