7: Asian Elephant & Immortal Jellyfish

Ellen: Hello! This is Ellen Weatherford.

Christian: And this is Christian Weatherford.

Ellen: And we're here with Just the Zoo of Us! This is the animal review podcast where we review and rate your favorite species of animals out of 10 on the three categories of effectiveness, ingenuity and aesthetics. Christian and I are not zoological experts, but we do a lot of research to prepare for our show and we try our best to make sure we're giving you good information from good sources.

Christian: So definitely don't put yourself in danger on our part.

Ellen: We cannot be held accountable for any animal related deaths that may occur as a result of you taking us too seriously. But if we do get something wrong and you know that because you are a zoological expert, please feel free to reach out to us. We can be connected with on Twitter or Facebook or Gmail. I will provide all that information at the end as we're wrapping up.

Christian: So, what do you have for us this week?

Ellen: So I am going first this week because last week Christian went first. So this animal was sent into us by Jennifer Whitehurst. Jennifer Whitehurst requested that I talk to you today about our dear friends, the Asian elephant.

Christian: Oh, this is a big one.

Ellen: This is a very big animal, although not as big as the African elephant. I'll, I'll talk to you a little bit about how you can tell the difference between the two in just a second. Before I do, I want to say that I got my information from the Smithsonian Zoo, National Geographic and a Scientific American article about the science in elephant cognition. So to introduce you to our new friends, the Asian elephants, their adult size as an average of six to 12 feet at the shoulder or 1.8 to 3.8 meters. So that's big. It's a big one.

Christian: That's two people.

Ellen: That's at the shoulder. So at the shoulder they are six to 12 feet tall. That's also between 6,000 and 12,000 pounds or 2,750 and 5,420 kilograms. So many, many tons. So like I said, this is a little bit smaller than African elephants. The Asian elephant, as the name implies, is located in South Eastern Asia. You're mostly going to find these in India and the surrounding area. Their taxonomic family is Elephantidae along with their African elephant cousins. Their closest living relative outside of African elephants, as you actually mentioned in our very first episode, are the manatees in the dugongs in the order of Sirenia. So that's, that's other than the hyrax, which is a little bit more farther removed from the elephants, the manatees in the dugongs are their closest cousins. So inside the elephant family there are African and Asian elephants and actually inside of Asian elephants there are four subspecies of Asian elephants.

Ellen: There's the Sri Lankan, the Sumatran, the Indian, and the Borneo. And listen, I'm just kind of going to be talking about the Asian elephant in general. The scientific name of the Asian elephant is Elephas maximus. Within Elephas maximus there's a few other subspecies, but I'm just going to kind of talk about, with broad strokes, the Asian elephant. So the easiest way to tell that you're looking at an Asian elephant instead of an African elephant is to look at their ears. African elephants have ears that are shaped like Africa. So when you look at their ears, they're much, much bigger than Asian elephant ears. They're big and they're, they're more broad at the top and narrow down towards the bottom and they do look like the continent of Africa. Some other differences are that Asian elephants have a differently shaped head. So their head has these twin domes on the top of it and kind of bulges out more. They have more of a rounded forehead. Another big difference is that all African elephants have tusks, but not all Asian elephants have tusks. Only males have tusks, and only some males have tasks.

Christian: Okay. Is there anywhere on the planet where one might run into both elephants naturally?

Ellen: I mean... The zoo?

Christian: Well,l true, but like the, their territories of course don't...

Ellen: No, I don't think so. Cause the African elephant is more made for like the desert in the drier climate.

Christian: Yeah. Like it's truly confined to the African continent.

Ellen: The Asian elephant requires massive amounts of water so they really couldn't thrive in that kind of environment.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: But so kind of jumping right into my rating, we're going to start with effectiveness as we typically do. Now effectiveness if you haven't listened to us before is just how well the animal is built to do the things it is trying to do. So these are typically body features that it has, or physical traits that it has that it has developed to do what it's doing. So for effectiveness, I gave the Asian elephant and 9 out of 10.

Christian: Wow.

Ellen: Yeah. This is a big animal. This is a tank of a beast. So first up, I want to talk about the trunk. The trunk is as you've seen this, this long appendage coming out of the elephant's face. The trunk is actually both the nose and the upper lip fused together. Some people I think maybe assume that it's just their nose, but it's, it's actually both. It's, it's the nose and also the top of their mouth. So I actually always kind of had this, maybe it's because of cartoons, in cartoons they'll show an elephant putting its trunk in the water and then like drinking water through its nose like a straw?

Christian: Right.

Ellen: Like drinking water through the trunk as if they were just swallowing it through the trunk. But that's not how they do it. They actually just pick up the water, like they can suck it up into the trunk, but then they loop their trunk back around and point it into their mouth and like shoot the water into their mouth. So they do drink water through their mouth. They just use the trunk to get it there. So the trunk is super cool. They have, at the end of the trunk is this little protrusion that's called a finger and it's, it's just this little nub that kind of sticks out that gives them a little extra dexterity with their trunk so that they can kind of like grip things better with it. So the Asian elephant has one finger that's at the top of the end of the trunk, but African elephants actually have two, they have one at the top and one at the bottom. So that whole trunk is super, super flexible because there are no bones, no cartilage in the trunk itself. There's some cartilage at the base, but the rest of it is just muscle. It's just muscle and skin. That's it. So it's really, really flexible. They have a lot of control over it. They can use it delicately but since it's all muscle they also have a lot of power with it. They can lift up heavy logs with their trunk. They can move things out of their way, but they can also, like you've, you've probably seen videos of elephants doing things like playing instruments and painting with their trunks so you know, wide range of things that they can do with their trunk. They use it for pretty much everything. They breathe with it, they eat with it, they smell things with it. They touch and investigate their surroundings with it. They make sounds like they trumpet out of their trunk. It's very cute. They, they use it to drink water by squirting water into their mouth and they also communicate with each other with their trunks. They they, that's how they kind of talk to each other is by- like non verbally, they communicate with each other with their trunks. So the trunk is just a really amazing appendage like for an animal that evolved without digits on their, like, "hands," without hands, really. This is an animal that doesn't have a lot of dexterity in its appendages, but it just kinda made its own appendage was like, well, how about we'll make one that's like kind of better than hands, a little bit.

Christian: I feel like the finger that they have on the end of their trunks is analogous with, you know how the manatees have that prehensile upper lip.

Ellen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It, it wasn't something that I had thought about before hearing you explain the manatees- the nature of the manatee's lip, but now that you've said that, it makes more sense to me to see the, see the similarities between the elephant's trunk and the manatee's lip.

Christian: Now, can they use their trunk for snorkeling as portrayed in several media?

Ellen: Well, yeah. I mean the, they love to swim in the water. Elephants love to play in the water and swim and they do use their trunk to like, breathe while they're swimming.

Christian: Impressive.

Ellen: Yeah, that's a, that's a thing. They, they know how to do that and they love it. It's a lot of fun. So the next thing I want to talk about is their tusks. These are modified incisors, so their, they're teeth that just grow outward and the tusks actually grow continually throughout the elephant's life. They just grow and grow and grow and grow and grow. They don't stop. So these are really, really versatile. They used them for a lot of stuff. They use them to dig for salt, they- like in the ground, elephants need to eat salt, so they will use their tusks to dig in the ground and find salt. They will strip trees, like strip bark off of their trees or they'll fight each other with their tasks.

Christian: So lots of things they use those for. Now I mentioned that only some male Asian elephants have tusks. No female Asian elephants have tusks. So among subspecies of Asian elephants, some of them have higher percentages of males with tusks than others. So some of them, 90% of the males have tusks, some of them, 5 or 10% of the males have tusks. So what this suggests is that they are responding to the ivory trade. So this is a response to elephants being poached for their tusks. As that gene to produce tusks is being selected against, fewer and fewer elephants are being born with that gene that produces tusks.

Ellen: Well, take that, ivory trade.

Christian: I mean, also take that, elephants... Like it's not, there are no winners here. This is a lose lose.

Ellen: That's true.

Ellen: Yeah. I mentioned how big the elephant is. Now, when you're that big, you have to kind of come up with ways to support your own weight. So the manatee has water on its side, right? Manatee lives in water. Water has got its back. It doesn't really have to do too much to support its weight. But the elephant does, cause it lives on land and it's so heavy. So, there's some interesting adaptations that the elephants body has made to keep itself standing. The legs are stacked vertically beneath the body, rather than being angled to the sides like you would see in most other quadruped animals. So in most other animals with this sort of body structure, like four legged animals, the legs are sort of carried to the side and like angled. But with the elephant, the legs are just directly underneath them. This makes it so that when they're in a resting position, they can just plop their weight down on their legs rather than having to like, use leg muscles to keep themselves up. They can just rest on their legs.

Christian: Oh... That sounds nice, actually.

Ellen: So... Yeah, they can, they can sleep standing up because of this. Like they don't have to use muscle power to stand up so they can stand for extremely long periods of time and sleep that way. Yeah. Because they're not using any energy to stand up and also the, the bones in our legs don't have the marrow cavities that other mammals do. So how our bones will have this cavity in the middle of them with marrow inside, they don't have that. It's pure bone all the way through in there. It's an extremely dense and an extremely strong bone. Also because they're so big, they need to eat massive amounts of food. This is a 165 to 330 pounds per day. That is 74 to 150 kilograms of food per day. That's like, a human body worth of vegetation per day and about 50 gallons or 189 liters of water per day.

Ellen: So like I said earlier, they need a lot of water. Now when I'm looking at the effectiveness of an animal for an herbivore, I would typically look at any sort of methods that they have of protecting themselves from predators. I would look at their defense. I would look at if they have any sort of like if they have horns, if they have things that they can use to to take out their predators. What the elephant has to protect itself is literally just how enormous it is. Its sheer size. Nobody is going to step to this elephant like...

Christian: It's wielding physics, basically.

Ellen: That is its weapon! It's weapon is mass! This thing is so big! It's so big that like even apex predators will be like, nah, nah, nah. Like even like, lions and tigers, that could be like in packs and stuff. They'll leave them alone.

Christian: Yeah, they'd be like, "hey if you die by some other reason, you know, let us know, we'll come eat you, but otherwise..."

Ellen: Yeah, "if you die, drop me a line real quick. Just let me subscribe to your death mailing list." So the babies, if they get separated from their herd, they can be vulnerable. But even then since they do typically travel in herds, this is usually not a problem. So sheer size. They got it. And then you know, they also have the, if they are a male with tusks then they also have that going for them. But that's really just icing on the cake, right? Yeah. So I only deducted one point in contrast to the African elephant, which is larger and they all have tusks. So I, that's why I gave it one point off, cause I figured I was like, you know, this is the smaller of the elephants. It's a little less good at defending itself, but still a 9. It's still a 9. That's great.

Ellen: So. Ingenuity, this is the category where we talk about how clever the animal is at dealing with the problems it faces. So this could be tool use, this could be helpful behaviors, this could be some really clever solutions that it's come up with for some unique challenges in its environment. So for the Asian elephant, I gave it a perfect score, a 10 out of 10 for ingenuity.

Christian: Dang.

Ellen: Elephants are so intelligent that elephant cognition is its own Wikipedia page. There is a whole page dedicated to elephant cognition. They have been at this point now thoroughly studied because they're way smarter than we thought they were. So for a long time we were testing their intelligence using the same sort of methods we used to test the intelligence of, for example, chimpanzees and gorillas using tools that are familiar to us and usable to us, but not usable by elephants. So things like, like very small sticks or you know, just just things that an elephant didn't have the equipment to operate.

Christian: Sure.

Ellen: So more recently, scientists have come up with more elephant-friendly intelligence tests and they're passing with flying colors.

Christian: Excellent.

Ellen: I'll give you a story. An Asian elephant at the Smithsonian National Zoo named Kandula demonstrated problem solving by moving a large plastic cube beneath a treat that was kept too high for him to reach. So there was a treat tied up in a tree out of reach, he couldn't reach it, hee was like, "hmm, how can I get up there?" He found a, just a big old plastic cube that was sitting in his enclosure and he like moved it over underneath the tree and then stood on the cube and reached up and reached the treat. So like was able to look around and be like, "hmm, which of these things can I move and also can support my weight?" And he figured it out and he reached the tree.

Christian: That's awesome.

Ellen: Yeah! So in the wild, they also use tools. They will use those tusks to break branches off of trees and then use their trunk to pick up the branch of the tree and swat away flies with it. This is like a regular thing that they do.

Christian: That's pretty cool.

Ellen: Yeah. So they swat away flies with tree branches, they will use logs or large rocks to break through electric fences.

Christian: Oh nooo...

Ellen: Yeah, because they figured out that electric fences will hurt them. They figured out that, of course they know that they could just barrel right through a fence, no problem. But they know that some fences will hurt them very badly because they electrified. So they're like, "hmm, we need to take it out some other way other than using our entire body." So rather than just yeeting themselves through the fence, they have decided to start using battering rams, and just pick up a log and break through the electric fence and then they can get through without getting hurt. So they've really solved the electric fence puzzle.

Christian: The third Lord of the rings movie is starting to make more sense now.

Ellen: ...oh no...

Christian: You don't get that reference. Nevermind.

Ellen: I don't... I'll, I'll leave it in, but it's not for me. So elephants also, I know you're going to appreciate this: Elephants use their trunk to throw mud onto their bodies, which they use a sunscreen.

Christian: Ellen says I appreciate this because I have a very fair-toned skin.

Ellen: You have a fair complexion and you need a lot of sunscreen and we have an astronomical sunscreen budget.

Christian: Hehe, astronomical. SUN screen.

Ellen: ...Ugh. Yikes. All right. So I, I figured this would be a good opportunity for you to relate to the elephant. This is a friend to you. This is a friend to you. By bonding over your affinity for sunscreen. So something else that's really smart that the elephants do is their communication and their social structure. Elephants in the wild live in herds of females who are all related to each other somehow. So males typically will live with the herd when they're babies, but once they grow up and they're adults, they leave the herd and kind of live on their own. Sometimes they'll group up into little like bachelor pads and just kind of have, have a little boys' night. But, um-

Christian: It's probably the same groups tearing down electric fences.

Ellen: Out with the lads! So they... But typically it's that if you see an elephant herd, they're probably all females other than the babies, which could be males. Since they live in these herds, they have these really, really intricate relationships and they have very sophisticated ways of communicating with each other. So they have a lot of vocal communication that they do. They will trumpet at each other. They have groans, even have little squeaks that they do that are pretty cute. It's, they have a lot of, a lot of sounds that they produce to talk to each other. But nonverbally, they talk to each other by touching each other with their trunks, there's something that they do where they show trust in each other by putting their trunk in the other elephant's mouth. So they put the trunk in the other elephant's mouth and that's a show of trust because they are accepting the risk that that elephant could bite them.

Christian: Huh.

Ellen: So by like showing the other elephant like I understand that you could bite me and I'm choosing to put my trunk in your mouth anyway, itt shows that you trust each other. Over long distances, they also communicate by using infrasonic rumbling. This is that extremely low pitched rumbling sound that we mentioned in the okapi episode. They use this, these rumbling sounds that I saw in one article compared it to the purring of a cat. It's a similar like structure as a cat purring, but so I'm going to call it purring. But by "purring," they can communicate with each other up to 2 miles or 3.2 kilometers away, so two miles apart. They can hear each other.

Christian: That's a big rumble.

Ellen: Yeah. It's a really big purr. Since it is so low pitched, nobody else can hear it. It's just them. They can communicate with each other over vast distances without giving away their positions to anybody else. This is the same thing the okapis do to kind of sneak around predators, but it's just really cool. They can communicate with each other this way for breeding and warning each other of predators that could be threatening to their young and just kind of keeping in touch with each other when they're all like, out, maybe they're out foraging for food or something. They all kind of keep tabs on each other and know where they are.

Christian: That's cool.

Ellen: Yeah. Elephants are extremely empathetic to each other. They cooperate with their other herd members. A lot of the articles that I read about like tests of their intelligence showed them working together to solve puzzles that were built in such a way that none of them could have completed the puzzle alone and they had to figure out that they needed to work together to solve the puzzle. And then when they would solve the puzzle, if they succeeded, they would celebrate together.

Christian: Aww!

Ellen: Yeah, they would like, they would like trumpet all happily and like touch each other with their trunks and like do a little happy elephant dance. So they like celebrate each other. They will mourn their dead, like, if one of them, if a member of the herd dies, they'll all just grieve and they'll bury their dead. They cover them in dirt and twigs. This is like one of the only other animals besides humans that has some sort of like, death ritual. They, they'll bury the bodies of dead elephants. They also, even when they're elephants that they do not know, they still show reverence to the remains of other dead elephants. So if a herd of elephants is just kind of like traveling and they pass the skeleton of another elephant, they'll like stop and check it out and... And like, and they'll get really, really quiet and they'll come up and like run their trunks over the bones and really like investigate it and be very- they'll be very, very quiet and respectful and they don't do that to the dead bodies of any other animal. They only do it to other elephants.

Christian: That's interesting that they can identify the skeleton is having been one of their own.

Ellen: Yeah. Like they're very, very aware of what an elephant is. I imagine even like, especially if it's an Asian elephant with not a lot- what else was it going to be? With bones that big? Hey, what else is it?

Christian: Oh, it's the whale that ended up hundreds of miles away.

Ellen: You know, the rain forest-dwelling whale. So when they can see that another member of their herd is stressed out or upset, they will comfort each other. So if an elephant sees that another elephant is showing signs of discomfort, like maybe they have their ears standing up or they seem kind of agitated, the elephant that sees that will go up and like stroke it gently with its trunk and like try to get it to calm down. So they're, you know, they see in another elephant that something is wrong and they'll go and like try to help it feel better.

Christian: That's so cute!

Ellen: It's the best ever! So they're, they're really supportive of each other and just very sweet and gentle to each other. There's also evidence to suggest that some elephants are self aware. So that whole test where like, they put a giant mirror up in a, in an elephant enclosure and painted x's on the foreheads of the elephants. And once the elephants kind of figured out what they were looking at, so at first they looked at it and they responded the way that elephants would respond to seeing another elephant. But then I think they tried to reach their trunks up behind the mirror to see if it was a wall with another elephant on the- with an elephant on the other side of it, but when they found out that it wasn't and they figured out what they were looking at, some of the elephants would touch the x on their forehead showing that they recognized it, that they recognize that they were looking at themselves and were like, "oh, what's this on my face?" So yeah, I, there's- maybe not all of them, cause not all of them responded the same way, but at least some elephants were able to identify themselves in the mirror. Yeah. So all of this is just to say the elephants just have incredible cognition and just are so incredibly smart. Now elephant mental health can suffer when they're not stimulated or provided with an adequate environment for proper socialization. So especially if they're kept alone, that's really, really bad. The elephant is probably definitely gonna suffer. But even if they're kept with other elephants, but in a- maybe in an enclosure that's way too small for them to move around freely, or an enclosure that doesn't have enough to occupy them, that they could get bored, their health starts to decline. And that really takes a big toll on their physical like, body health as well. So the more we're learning about how intelligent the elephants are, the more zoos are being faced with this kind of ethical dilemma about keeping elephants in a zoo environment that's not ready for them.

Christian: Right.

Ellen: So the Detroit Zoo actually responded to this by just shutting down it's elephant exhibit. They had two Asian elephants in the Detroit Zoo and they moved them to a 30 acre sanctuary.

Christian: Oh, that's so nice.

Ellen: It was really nice of them because they recognize that the elephants' health was not doing well and the elephants just weren't thriving in the environment that they were providing for them, so they just sent them to this sanctuary that gave them a lot of open space to roam in. So different zoos are taking different approaches to these new understandings of how smart elephants are. Some zoos are responding by expanding their exhibits and giving them a lot more enrichment and giving them a lot more activities and things to do and just kind of tailoring their exhibits to better meet the needs of the elephants. So, a few different ways you can go about this. I'm not going to dive too much into the ethical argument cause that's not what the show is about. So overall, 10 out of 10 perfect score for ingenuity. I kind of feel like I have kind of set the standard. This is, this is like other than maybe, I dunno, dolphins and and like primates and stuff, I don't think you're going to get much better than this.

Christian: Makes sense.

Ellen: Aesthetics: 8 out of 10 for the Asian elephant. They're a little, I think they're less cute than the African elephant. I think the African elephant is a little cuter, but the Asian elephant is still really adorable, especially the babies. There's a whole subreddit called r/babyelephangifts and it's just little baby elephants just being so incredibly charming. Everything they do is perfect and great. So I hate to keep comparing them to the African elephant, but I mean , they- 8 out of 10 that's still really good.

Christian: Sure.

Ellen: Not perfect, but still really, really good. I think they're pretty adorable. Just to recap, that was a 9 out of 10 for effectiveness, a 10 out of 10 for ingenuity, and an 8 out of 10 for aesthetics, bringing us to an overall score of 9 out of 10 for the Asian elephant.

Christian: That's an excellent score.

Ellen: That is excellent. I think that's the best one I've given yet. I think this is, this is definitely the best animal I've done. Shh, don't tell the okapi. Okay, so I'm going to wrap up with some conservation information on the Asian elephant.

Ellen: The Asian elephant is endangered, so Asian elephants are heavily poached for their tusks and also for their skin. So the ivory trade is technically banned internationally, but there are still some domestic markets that poach elephants and trade ivory, and they are unfortunately still doing okay. There's also a lot of like people that will come into these countries and like buy ivory there and then it just, it gets really weird. It gets really complicated and hard to police. So the ivory trade has led to, you know, like I mentioned earlier, that gene for producing tusks is being selected against. So the ones that are being born with tusks are smaller and smaller and smaller, which means that elephants have like fewer and fewer tools at their disposal, right? Like elephants are supposed to have tusks and they're not anymore. So this is also leading to decreased genetic diversity just as the elephants are being killed off, you know, this is leading to more and more like inbreeding and other than just them not having tests anymore, it's really harming their population in a lot of other ways. A lot of times elephants are used for labor and for tourism, like you've seen these like elephant camps, like areas where they'll have like elephants set up where tourists can come and watch them, you know, I dunno, d,o paintings do tricks, stuff like that. So unfortunately a lot of times elephants are captured in the wild for that. They're also, they also can be used for labor. Like you- it's a big ol' elephant. You can get it to carry stuff for you if you want. But a lot of times like elephants are caught from the wild and then brought in for labor, for tourism. And unfortunately the capturing process a lot of times either hurts or kills the elephant. So that whole like, wild capture thing is, is a big threat. So that's two things, the ivory trade and the wild capture thing that are threatening them, but they're- the biggest threat to the Asian elephant is habitat loss. So as you know, the human population in South Asia is steadily rising. So infrastructure in that area is expanding a lot and it's expanding into elephant habitat. So a lot of times roads and- like large, large roads and highways will just slice right through like a forest or something that could be an elephant territory. So this ends up cutting them off from things like migratory routes, food and water sources, breeding grounds, all sorts of stuff. Like they have a really, really big territory, but if it's sliced in half, that's now a resource they don't have access to.

Christian: Right.

Ellen: And that's also isolating them from other elephant populations. Like I said earlier, the herds of elephants are all related to each other. If you want to breed with someone who's not related to you, you have to find another herd. But if the only other herd is on the other side of a highway that you can't cross, you gotta mate with your cousins. So this is resulting in inbreeding. This is lower genetic diversity and just higher mortality in general. So that that's like another side of, not just the elephants themselves dying, but the effect of them not having access to each other is, is harming their population in more ways than just like raw mortality.

Christian: Yeah, yeah.

Ellen: So also in sharing their habitat with humans is leading to conflict between the species in it. Things are getting kind of heated. So humans may come into an area, set up a farm, they're growing crops and everything. Elephant herds roaming around and they see a giant field full of crops and a flimsy fence between them and those crops. And they're like, "Aw yiss, perfect. Don't mind if I do. Let me just step right over here. All right, thank you very much." And they come in there and they, I mean, one herd of elephants could eat an entire, like an entire farms worth of crops. Like you could wake up in the morning and step out onto your farm to check on your crops and they're all gone overnight because of an elephant herd.

Christian: I mean especially if you're talking about like, personally owned farms and that kind of thing.

Ellen: Right! If it's a small farm, elephants come through and wipe out your entire supply. So a lot of times this could prompt human farmers to either kill the elephants themselves, cause they're like, well they're a nuisance and they're destroying my crops. I'm just going to kill him so I don't have to deal with them anymore. Or you know, reinforcing their farmlands with things like electric fences, which as I mentioned earlier, the Asian elephants now have a strat for. But you know, it just, it's, it's leading to more tension between the species and that's just not something that is gonna work longterm for an endangered species. So there are quite a few nonprofits all throughout the world, there are so many nonprofits throughout the world that are working really hard to alleviate those threats and protect wild Asian elephants.

Ellen: Kind of first and foremost, the World Wildlife Fund has a lot of programs that they're working on to help elephants, the Wildlife Conservation Society and even the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has an Asian elephant conservation fund. So those are all, those are all some folks that are out there with boots on the ground trying to help our elephant friends out. This is kind of like what I talked about with the shoe bill, the captive breeding program, while it does wonders for some species might not work so great for others. Right? So like for an elephant that's extremely large and extremely smart, they might not thrive in a lot of captive environments, you know, to set up a captive environment, it's going to work for an elephant requires just like a lot, a lot, a lot of work and resources. So not every conservation center is going to have the means to support elephants because they need a lot.

Christian: Right.

Ellen: So you know, just doing the best to make their natural habitat suitable for them and make it work for them is going to work way better than trying to set up any sort of like longterm captive program for them. So all in all, this is the best animal ever. I love it a lot. It's great animal. I learned a lot about elephants while looking this up and I'm really glad that I did. They're very interesting animals.

Christian: Well thank you for that, Ellen. They're, they're very good animals.

Ellen: Yeah, they're excellent. I said the BEST, Christian.

Christian: Okay, fine. They're the best animals.

Ellen: Thank you. I have a feeling that's not going to be the last animal I say that about. So Christian, what animal do you have for us today?

Christian: So today I think I have the exact opposite of the elephant in every single way imaginable.

Ellen: Okay.

Christian: For this week I've got the immortal jellyfish.

Ellen: Oh my God.

Christian: So this little guy was submitted to us by our dear friend Kyle Rauch.

Ellen: Thank you Kyle.

Christian: Yes, thank you so much. And before I kind of dig into things, I'll just state my primary source for the information for the immortal jellyfish comes from a New York Times article titled "Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?" The author being an Nathaniel Rich.

Ellen: Thanks Nathaniel.

Christian: Yes, thank you. So Christian, can a jellyfish unlock the secrets of immortality? Stay tuned to find out more at 11 no, right now more. Right. So let's, let's talk a little bit basic info about these little guys. They're also known as the Benjamin Button Jellyfish

Ellen: Benjamin Button being the Brad Pitt movie where the guy aged backwards. Yep.

Christian: I didn't see that movie, so I can't really comment on it at all.

Ellen: I just summed it up for you. That's all that happened.

Christian: Excellent. Now, first opposite trait of the elephant is their size. So these little guys, even for jellyfish, are very small.

Ellen: Aw...

Christian: And their max diameter is 4.5 millimeters.

Ellen: Oh no, they're so little.

Christian: So that is 0.18 inches.

Ellen: Oh gosh. You wouldn't even see these little dudes, would you?

Christian: I mean, you could see them if they were, I guess within a couple of feet of you.

Ellen: Well, I couldn't with my eyes. With my special eyes.

Christian: So what, what might make that even a little bit more difficult is the majority of their body is transparent. Except for their stomach, which is red. Um, I'll comment more about that in the aesthetics section.

Ellen: I cannot wait.

Christian: They belong to the taxonomic order Anthoathecata, I don't know if I pronounced that correctly.

Ellen: Benefit of the doubt. I'm not going to fact check you on it.

Christian: Basically what, what defines that is hydrozoans that have a polyp stage. Their notable evolutionary relatives or of course other jellyfish. Now I kind of went into this kind of, assuming all, all jellyfish would've been very close to each other in terms of taxonomical hierarchy, but they actually kind of spread across a couple of different orders and what have you. So these belonged to the Cnidaria phylum, and some other things that belong there are jellyfish, soft coral, rocky coral, and anemones. So let's get right into it. Effectiveness. I gave it a 7 out of 10 and primarily because of its quote "immortality."

Ellen: Yeah. What's that all about?

Christian: So this is important. This is really important.

Ellen: With a name like that, you got to live up to it.

Christian: So first let's talk about the life cycle of the immortal jellyfish.

Ellen: Please.

Christian: The eggs develop inside the adult females. And by the way, an adult jellyfish, what you and I would think of as a, as a jellyfish, that's known as the Medusa stage.

Ellen: I love it. That's so powerful.

Christian: Right? So the eggs are then spawned and then, and then fertilized in the water-

Ellen: Can... Can I be in my Medusa phase?

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: It's an adult female, right?

Christian: Yes. Well-

Ellen: I'm in my Medusa phase!

Christian: Well, to be clear, it's not just female, it's just the adult stage of jellyfish.

Ellen: You're also in your medusa phase. We're all Medusas.

Christian: So anyway, the eggs are spawned and fertilized and then they develop into what's called planula larvae. So a little larva. I'm talking very, very small. They settle at the bottom of the ocean or on other things like docks or floating structures in the water, so they attach to these structures and attach themselves to it, and then they enter their next stage called polyp colonies. So the way I would describe this visually is a very, very small anemone almost.

Ellen: Aw, that's cute.

Christian: Except with these polyp colonies, they form several pieces and then these little polyps break off and form other jellyfish.

Ellen: Oh, okay.

Christian: So those grow into the Medusa. So That's the basic lifestyle.

Ellen: Sure. Like an egg clutch sort of.

Christian: Well, so it's interesting. It's one egg, turns into one larva, turns into a polyp colony of, of several different creatures.

Ellen: Okay.

Christian: So this becomes important a little later.

Ellen: Okay, put a pin in it.

Christian: So that's the basic life cycle of, of this kind of jellyfish. A lot of jellyfish are like this with small variations, but this is the immortal jellyfish lifecycle. So here's where the mortality comes into play. At any phase of this life cycle, this jellyfish has the ability to revert to the polyp stage.

Ellen: ...Uh...

Christian: Right?

Ellen: What??

Christian: Yeah. So, so let me, let me give you a scenario. You have a, you have a grown immortal jellyfish. Let's say it gets injured severely. So as a reaction to this, it kind of goes into a state where it starts to transform back into a polyp.

Ellen: Okay. I'm seeing where the Benjamin button comparison is coming into play.

Christian: Yeah. So it's, it's basically aging backwards.

Ellen: And it does this at will?

Christian: Well, it's usually in response to being injured, or starvation, dramatic changes in temperature...

Ellen: I also respond to stress by reverting to a childlike state.

Christian: Also when it gets sick or old.

Ellen: I also revert to a childlike state when I get sick or old.

Christian: So here's what's strange though, right? You know, you'll see a lot of comparisons like, oh, this would be like a chicken turning back into an egg, right?

Ellen: Yeah.

Christian: But it's not quite the same because like I said earlier, a polyp turns into multiple jellyfish.

Ellen: Oh Gosh.

Christian: So here's the thing. So even when you, when you go through the normal life cycle, all the jellyfish that come off of a single egg and polyp colony are all genetically identical.

Ellen: You must be very proud of your clones.

Christian: Ellen, with the prequel memes.

Ellen: Can I get it right this time?

Christian: Yeah, go right ahead.

Ellen: Your clones are very impressive. You must be very proud.

Christian: So, so it's the same here. So the, the jellyfish that spawn off of that, will all be genetically identical. Um, so this kind of took me down a rabbit hole of how does one identify self, which is a bit beyond the scope of this podcast. Cause it's, cause when you think about it, it's not the same as like, me transforming back into a baby. It's me melting down into the components for other, several babies.

Ellen: This leads us into the Argus's ship sort of thought experiment. Like at what point is it no longer the same thing anymore?

Christian: Yep. Yeah. Mmhmmm.

Ellen: I can tell that's what you've been doing in here for the last six hours.

Christian: It is. Who am I? So that's, that's all of its points for effectiveness.

Ellen: Only seven though? Still, for being self regenerating.

Christian: So, so keep in mind this, this is technically a biological immortality. They can still be killed and eaten.

Ellen: Oh sure. They're not invincible.

Christian: Not Dragon Ball Z immortal.

Ellen: This is not a JoJo Villain.

Christian: So ingenuity, uh, rightfully so. I gave it a one.

Ellen: Ohh, that's the worst one.

Christian: So keep in mind, it's a jellyfish.

Ellen: What, what kind of a, what kind of neurological activity is going on...

Christian: Not much. So, keep in mind the jellyfish don't have central nervous system brains like we think of with many animals.

Ellen: Is it- do they at least have nerves?

Christian: Yes. They have nerves.

Ellen: Okay. All right. They've got the uh, basis started. They've got the building blocks for a brain.

Christian: Yep, yep. And for jellyfish at this size, they're usually eating things like plankton, animals of, of that magnitude, right.

Christian: Sure. Other, other teeny tinies.

Christian: Now, at least they have locomotion, right? Cause they still have that... Jellyfish movement.

Christian: What do you call that movement?

Christian: Swooshing.

Ellen: Yeah. All right. That's what it is. Definitely swooshing. I heard David Attenborough say it.

Christian: So, yeah. 1 out of 10 engineering and for its aesthetics, I gave it a 5 out of 10.

Ellen: You're not into the Medusa look?

Christian: Well it's... I don't know.

Ellen: I guess it is kind of bleh, right?

Christian: I give it points for its minimalistic, kind of...

Ellen: Yeah. If you're into that modern sort of like futuristic, sci-fi look.

Christian: And if you look at pictures, I think the little red stomach, with the rest of their body being transparent is a neat little look. But that's really, that's really all there is to them in terms of uh, aesthetic.

Ellen: You may say 5 out of 10, but I say this is my Halloween costume idea.

Christian: You'd be like "someone punch me! Ahh" and then you throw out little copies of yourself.

Ellen: I'm going to carry around little dolls that I've made that look exactly like me, and then when I get stressed or scared, I'll just produce them from my pockets and throw them at people.

Christian: So with the 7 out of 10 effectiveness, 1 out of 10 ingenuity, 5 out of 10 aesthetics, that comes to an average of a 4.3.

Ellen: Hey, that's not good.

Christian: We kind of anticipated that with a jellyfish, I think.

Ellen: That's not great. It's not great. It really, this animal has like a gimmick.

Christian: Right? So some, some extra info, conservation status. I couldn't actually find an official conservation status for these guys, so I'm assuming they're fine.

Ellen: I think this is a thing with like animals that live in the open ocean, right? Like especially these teeny tiny animals. Like how are you going to find them?

Christian: Yeah. And these have been found all over the world in oceans. They're not like a particular place and they, they think that has partly to do with large cargo ships that use sea water as ballasts. So when they pull in water, they're pulling in, you know, these, these tiny jellyfish or maybe their eggs or larvae, what have you. So that's how they think they've gotten all over the planet, cause otherwise they're not moving very much.

Ellen: Sure. Where are they trying to go?

Christian: So now the fun story.

Ellen: Oh! I've already been having so much fun. Where are we going to go from here?

Christian: Well, make sure you're wearing your seatbelt because here we go. Uh, the article I mentioned earlier, it centers around a Japanese scientist and his name is Shin Kubota.

Ellen: Thanks Shin!

Christian: Yeah. And he is the sole and primary scientists studying these guys.

Ellen: Oh, just the one?

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: Oh, we gotta send him some fanmail.

Christian: Maybelet me, let me reword that. He is the most well known scientist because he's the only one that has these species in captivity.

Ellen: Oh, he's got some?!

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: Can you get me his address and a Japanese translator?

Christian: Just you wait. So the reason that it's impressive that he has these in captivity is because they're very difficult to take care of. Um, he has to feed them on a daily basis.

Ellen: That's a little cute. How do you feed them? I guess just like give them plankton?

Christian: So he feeds them dried brine shrimp eggs.

Ellen: ...Not even the whole shrimp?

Christian: The eggs. Shrimp eggs. Here's what's funny: Sometimes they're too big.

Ellen: Oh nooo!

Christian: So he has to cut them in half for them... Like a father might do for their toddler.

Ellen: This is when I give Isaac grapes and I cut them in half so he doesn't choke on them. Oh my god. They're his babies!

Christian: It's very sweet.

Ellen: I really have to reach out and get a hold of this jellyfish dad.

Christian: Ohh. Oh do I have some stuff for you. So...

Ellen: I'm in love. I love this already.

Christian: So here's the next thing: He's kind of the Japanese version of Bill Nye the science guy.

Ellen: Excellent.

Christian: So he has written and performed songs about the immortal jellyfish along with other sea creatures, which you can find with a quick Google search. Uh, keep in mind they're in Japanese of course, but so he does lectures and appearances all the time in Japan and then across the world, but mostly in Japan because that's where he lives. He does kind of presentations for school-age children too. He actually has a superhero identity.

Ellen: No.

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: Stop.

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: I've had too much.

Christian: Known as Mr. Immortal Jellyfish Man.

Ellen: MISTER IMMORAL JELLYFISH MAN.

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: What else would it have been?

Christian: So he wears a white lab coat with red gloves, red sunglasses, and a red rubber hat that's meant to look like the Medusa form.

Ellen: You remember earlier when I said I had a Halloween costume idea?

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: Scratch that. That one's crumpled up in the garbage can. I have moved on.

Christian: So, so yeah, he does a lot of scientific research on these, on these little guys. Um, you know, the hope is there's some sort of application here, right? Because the thought is what these, what the immortal jellyfish is doing when it's reverting back to an earlier stage is it cells are changing into different kinds of cells, which in humans, the only thing that really does that are our stem cells. Right?

Ellen: Sure.

Christian: Uh, so the idea is, you know, maybe if we study this and we understand this process, maybe there's some sort of medical application, um, you know, maybe as extreme as halting ageing, but who knows. Um, but nnot a lot of money or resources has been poured into this. Um, he referenced that there's a rule, I don't recall the name now, but there's a rule that says, you know, the bigger the animal, the more research and interest.

Ellen: Yeah. You saw my four pages on the elephant.

Christian: Yeah. So I'm going back to that thing, right. It's almost the complete opposite of the elephan. In size, in amount of money and resources being spent on study and also conservation status. Right?

Ellen: I can't say that I know of Mr. Elephant Man though.

Christian: Yeah, that's true.

Ellen: They don't have their- there probably is an elephant themed superhero.

Christian: Yeah. Probably. There's a rhino one! Oh wait, I don't know if we can say that.

Ellen: There are no animal themed superheroes that we're aware of, especially not any Marvel or Disney properties or DC just for good measure. So thinking about like, oh, this is something that could, you know, reverse aging in make and change humanity forever. I really hope that's like his daily affirmations that he says to himself as he's cutting the eggs and half to feed to his...

Christian: Well, it's really cute because the article talks about, you know, when he does this, he's also talking to them like, "hey, eat your breakfast!"

Ellen: Oh, of course he is! Why wouldn't he be? Yeah.

Christian: So honestly for all of our listeners, I do recommend you read this article. It is a very entertaining read. Um, it kind of talks a little bit about about his personal life and what his day to day, you know, goings-ons are.

Ellen: I need to know everything about this person immediately.

Christian: And again, the name of the, the title of that article: "Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality" by Nathaniel Rich hosted on the New York Times.

Ellen: I'm so much more interested in Mr. Immortal Jellyfish Man than I am about the actual immortal jellyfish. I'm so enamored by this character you've built for me.

Christian: Right? So, check him out.

Ellen: Oh, he's, he's an icon. David Attenborough, step aside, we have a new hero now. I love him. I love all the words you said.

Christian: Well thank you.

Ellen: Those were all excellent words.

Christian: So yeah, that's the immortal jellyfish. Oh, you know, I just realized I never mentioned its scientific name: Turritopsis dohrnii.

Ellen: Turritopsis...

Christian: Dohrnii.

Ellen: Dohrnii.

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: As in from Dorne. This is a Westeros animal.

Christian: ...I don't know if we can say that either.

Ellen: Oh my gosh. HBO, please leave us alone. We paid for Game of Thrones. We deserve it. All right, well thank you Christian for telling us all about the immortal jellyfish.

Christian: Oh, anytime.

Ellen: All right, so I think that's just about it for us today. That's all we've got. You can connect with us on Twitter at @justthezooofus or on our Facebook page by searching the title of the show. If you have any animal species that you want to hear us review, you can submit them to us at thezooofus@gmail.com if you want to recommend this podcast to your friends who are Deaf or hard of hearing or just prefer to read, a transcript of this episode can be found at justthezooofus.home.blog. I would also like to wrap up by thinking Louie Zong for the use of his song "Adventuring" from the album Bee Sides, we use it as our intro and outro music and we love it.

Christian: So much.

Ellen: It's perfect. Thank you. Alright, that's all I've got.

Christian: Alright. Thanks everyone.

Ellen: Thank you so much for listening. Byeeee!

Christian: Bye!