9: Axolotl & Goblin Shark

Christian: Hi, this is Christian Weatherford.

Ellen: And this is Ellen Weatherford.

Christian: And you're listening to Just the Zoo of Us, a podcast where we take your favorite animals and give them a rating from 1 to 10.

Ellen: I guess it could be zero to 10.

Christian: One of these days.

Ellen: Yeah, we haven't gotten there yet, but trust me it's coming.

Christian: We are not zoological experts. We do a lot of research and try our best to make sure we're presenting information from trustworthy sources. So if we get something wrong, hey, let us know.

Ellen: We will respond well to being called out. I promise you. And we will do our best to make it right

Christian: For sure. So, who's first this week?

Ellen: I believe I am.

Christian: What do you got for us babe?

Ellen: So earlier this week we made a post on Facebook asking you fine folks which animal we should review next, and we got a lot of suggestions and y'all were super thirsty for this one. This one was requested by Erica Carr, Amber Ocharan, and Lindsey Charlton. So thank you to all three of you who asked for this animal. And now we have arrived finally at the animal you've all been waiting for: the axolotl.

Christian: Mudkip! Just gonna get that out of the way.

Ellen: So yes, in English, this is the axolotl. I was just introducing it using the Nahuatl pronunciation, which I have butchered terribly and I'm so sorry, but it's kinda their animal, so I think they get to pick what we call it. Sure. But anyway, I'm going to be calling it the axolotl because, uh, I speak English and this is an English podcast, so that's just what I'm going to be calling it.

Christian: For now...

Ellen: I mean I don't have any plans to convert it to, you know, an ancient Aztec language podcast.

Christian: Aw, I'm going to have to change my notes now.

Ellen: Anyway, so axolotl. The scientific name is Ambystoma mexicanum. Before I really launched into it, I will let you guys know that I've got my information from National Geographic, axolotl.org and a Nature magazine article by Erik Vance in November of 2017. So I'm going to introduce you to my new friend, the axolotl. This is not a huge animal. They're only up to about a foot long. For our metric listeners, that's about 30 centimeters. They look very much like a giant tadpole, but a tadpole with these little legs and these really, really feathery frills around their face. This is Mudkip, so if you are familiar with the third generation of Pokemon, this is Mudkip, the water-type starter in generation 3. you can see the inspiration for that design with the frills around the face and also with the vertical like dorsal fin all the way down the body. So the only place in the world that you're going to find these in the wild is Lake Xochimilco, or at least what remains of it. This is an ancient, ancient, ancient lake in the southern part of Mexico City. This lake used to be part of a five lake system in the Valley of Mexico, but most of those lakes were drained to reduce flooding in Mexico City. Now, the axolotl is habitat has been reduced to just kind of these series of canals that are left behind in that area. That is the only place that you can find these in the wild in the entire world.

Christian: Wow, that's very specific.

Ellen: Yeah. It's just this one sort of lake region in Mexico. That's why these have like such a strong importance to Mexican culture because they're, you can only find them there. You can't find them anywhere else in the whole world. So the taxonomic family that axolotls are in is called Ambystomatidae. I really did my best on that. This family is also known as mole salamanders. So the Axolotl is a type of salamander.

Christian: Okay, makes sense.

Ellen: Yeah. There are 32 other species of mole salamanders in this family, such as the tiger salamander, the spotted salamander, a few other ones like that. Now, salamanders look like lizards, right? They're kind of shaped like lizards. They have the long body, they got the four legs, but they're actually not even a little bit related to lizards. They're actually amphibians.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: So they're more closely related to frogs. They have no relation to lizards, even though they kind of look like them. A lot of people mistake them for reptiles, but they're amphibians. So they breathe through their skin, like frogs do. Yep. So most other salamanders are amphibious. You know, they live on the land, but the axolotl lives exclusively in the water. So you are only going to find them in the water. They almost never come onto land. And I will describe the circumstances under which they come onto land in just a second, cause it's kind of wild. Since I'm going first I'll be introducing our rating system. So the first category we rate our animals in is effectiveness. We define this as how well the animal is physically built to do what it's trying to do. So this could be forms of defense, this could be how good it is at hunting. Basically just built in things at the animal has that gives it an edge. So for effectiveness, I gave the axolotl a 10 out of 10.

Christian: Woah!

Ellen: Ten, perfect score.

Christian: Alright, I gotta hear this.

Ellen: Yeah. So as I mentioned just a minute ago, the axolotl lives entirely in the water and does not come onto land like most other salamanders do. This is because when you are thinking of an axolotl, what you're imagining is actually their juvenile form. This is not a fully grown, mature adult. Well, they're mature, but this is not like the adult form of the axolotl. This is basically their, kind of in between their like, baby larval form and their adult form. It's kind of like their tadpole form just with legs.

Christian: So like their... Second evolution.

Ellen: Yeah. This is the second stage. This is the Marshstomp of their life cycle. So, now here's the thing, that is their juvenile form... They stay in that form for their entire life, which can be up to 15 years.

Christian: Soooo.... What's the next thing?

Ellen: So they do actually have an adult form. It's just they almost never ever, ever metamorphosize into it. Almost never. There are very, very, very particular circumstances that have to occur for it to metamorphose into the adult form. So the adult form, it looks more like a regular old salamander. It's kind of, it's whole body changes. Those feathery gills retract into the body, the lungs change so that it can breathe air, the eyes start to bulge out from the face, their skin gets really, really thick to keep it from drying out above the water, and it really just changes form entirely. It looks more like... what you would see, like a regular salamander looks like. Yeah. Now that adult form, they almost never will turn into that. And the ones that do metamorphose into their adult form usually do not survive for more than a year after that. So they can live up to 15 years in their like, juvenile form, but once they're in their adult form, they've got like less than a year left.

Christian: Woah...

Ellen: Yeah. So this process of staying in your juvenile form for your entire life is called neoteny. This is the concept of staying in your juvenile form forever. This is actually not very uncommon for salamanders. Like there are other salamanders that do this. So for the axolotl, this is an adaptation to an iodine deficiency in their environment. Iodine stimulates their thyroid to trigger the metamorphosis into adulthood. So where they live, their diet is low in iodine. So without getting iodine, they just stay in their juvenile form forever because their body never gets that trigger. So lab experiments have showed that you can force metamorphosis by exposing the axolotl to iodine. In lab environments, they gave the axolotl an iodine injection and they turned into the adult form.

Christian: Wow.

Ellen: Yeah. It's very, very stressful. And people that keep these as pets basically say, don't do that. Don't, don't get your axolotl to metamorphose because it's very unhealthy for it. That is kind of an explanation for the axolotl's lifecycle that I found pretty interesting because it's an interesting adaptation to a deficiency in their diet, in their environment that kind of lets them thrive in a changing ecosystem.

Christian: So, can they breed in their juvenile form?

Christian: Yes.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: Yes. Yep. They reach sexual maturity in their juvenile form.

Christian: That makes me wonder what the point is of their final stage, then.

Ellen: At this point it's vestigial, right? They don't need it anymore. They don't use it. Actually in the wild, they don't do it at all.

Christian: Oh Man. What if humans had something like this? Like, oh if I eat... I don't know, too many tacos...

Ellen: Well, there's a lot of things in the axolotl that human researchers are trying to see if we can apply those concepts to humans. So the axolotl has an actual real life superpower. Like, Marvel comics superpower. When a human loses a limb and it has a wound, an open wound, the wound gets covered up with skin tissue, scars over, you know, like say say you lose a, your arm. Your arm just kind of grow skin over that place and then you know, you just have skin there forever.

Christian: Well, I don't know if it grows there. I know when the surgically, when they repair it, they, they pull the skin over and stitch it.

Ellen: The point being when a human has an open wound, it just gets covered over with skin tissue. You know, if you lost a limb then just skin grows there and then that's the end of it.

Christian: Sure.

Ellen: Not so for the axolotl. When an axolotl is wounded, the cells near the wound convert into stem cells. So all of the cells near that wound convert into stem cells, and also other cells farther away from the wound start to actually move towards the injury and also convert into stem cells. Those stem cells then reconstruct any missing parts- bones, skin, nerves, anything as though it were growing in the egg all over again. Yeah, so this is really, really helpful for them because axolotls, will often fight each other, like for dominance or for whatever, and it's pretty common for their fights to result in them taking limbs off of each other. These are not big animals. They're pretty little, it's not that hard to just kind of yank one of their little legs off.

Christian: Right.

Ellen: So yeah, their body can completely rebuild itself. Like with no, no transplant, no graft, nothing. It just does it on its own.

Christian: That's incredible.

Ellen: Yeah. So they can regenerate entire limbs as well as their spinal cord, part of their brain, and their heart.

Christian: Wow.

Ellen: They can regenerate parts of their brain. Yeah. So this whole regeneration process takes typically for an axolotl around 40 to 50 days. So about a month, like about a month and a half.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: You know, an axolotl loses an arm, you come back about a month and a half later, it now has the correct number of arms. It's like it never happened. That all is really neat. Okay. It can grow its own parts. Now here's where it gets wild. You can take part of an axolotl such as like, tissue from its eye or something that, attach it to a different part of its body, like its leg, and it will still regenerate. That axolotl now has an eye growing on its leg.

Christian: That's not good.

Ellen: This is a Mr potato head of an animal. You can just kinda stick parts wherever and it grows totally fine.

Christian: Oh no...

Ellen: Yeah. So this will even work with completely different specimens. So you can take one leg from one axolotl and stick it on another one and that leg will grow.

Christian: I'm uncomfortable.

Ellen: They know this works because they have genetically modified some axolotls to produce the green fluorescent protein, the protein that glows really, really bright green under UV lighting. This is not only super cool, looks awesome, very... I mean, can I say lit?

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: It's so cool looking and it looks great, but it also helps scientists, you know, take a look at what's going on inside their bodies. So for the sake of the example I'm about to give you, I'm going to call the axolotl with the green fluorescent protein, I'm going to call it a glowing one.

Christian: Excellent.

Ellen: Scientists were able to observe that transplanting a part from a glowing one to a non-glowing one caused the non-glowing one to begin growing new parts... that glowed.

Christian: Huh.

Ellen: Showing that it was repairing its body using stem cells from the glowing one. So like they would put a glowing leg on a non-glowing axolotl. Now it has a glowing leg, yeah, because it's the same one you took for the other one, but later on say it loses a part of its spine and regrows its own spine, the spine will grow back glowing even though that was not part they took from the other one.

Christian: Huh.

Ellen: So like it's taking stem cells from the leg it got from the glowing one and repurposing it in its own body and they still blow.

Christian: That's crazy.

Ellen: Yeah. This is just so cool. Obviously its ability to regenerate its body is pretty dope. So that has led to it being extensively researched in labs. This is like one of the most heavily researched animals in the world.

Christian: Makes sense.

Ellen: Yeah. Obviously we got to figure out what's going on with this dude. So scientists are hoping to find information about the regenerative process in the axolotl's body in hopes that it can be applied to human regeneration, hoping that we can apply these sorts of concepts to things like cancer treatments and MS treatments and things like that.

Christian: Plus, you know, glowing body parts.

Ellen: Yeah. That's also so cool. That's so cool.

Christian: I don't know if that's a goal of the research, but...

Ellen: Probably not. So, yeah, I mean I figured, I mean if the name of the game is not dying, the axolotls kind of have this one cornered, right? This is some Deadpool, Wolverine nonsense.

Christian: Sure. A little stretched out over time, but that's okay.

Ellen: I mean, it takes them a little while, but like give them a minute. Right? Like they got about a 15 year lifespan, right? What's a month and a half going to hurt? I'm just saying, okay, let's give you a month and a half and see what kind of body parts you can regrow with a month and a half.

Christian: I can regrow... Fingernails?

Ellen: Yeah. And hair? Great. Awesome, nicely done. So yeah, I figured that warranted a perfect score in effectiveness. So moving on to our next category, we have ingenuity. We define ingenuity as the behaviors that this animal has displayed that show some sort of cleverness in dealing with their environment and creatively problem solving, creatively solving the problems that they encounter in their lives. So I gave the axolotl a 5 out of 10 for ingenuity. That's not great, but it's not terrible either.

Ellen: Axolotls are predators. They prey on anything that can fit in their mouths. This could be worms, bugs, small fish, things like that. Now the way that they catch prey is pretty interesting. They have this really, really wide mouth. So if they were to just lunge forward to try to grab something, they would be pushing water forward and pushing the prey away and be likely to miss. So they do something a little different. They catch their prey by very, very quickly opening their super big mouths, and what that does when they open it so quickly, it creates a vacuum that sucks water inside their mouths. If they do that close enough to prey, it sucks the prey into the mouth. I thought that was pretty neat, right? They're not just kind of jumping out at their prey. They're actually like using physics to pull the prey into their mouths.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: So that was pretty neat. I also gave them a couple of points for this kind of adorable thing that they do. So axolotls, being amphibians and not fish- so fish have swim bladders, right, to keep them upright in the water. Amphibians don't have that. Axolotls swallow rocks and pebbles, and this weighs down their belly, which keeps them upright in the water.

Christian: Okay!

Ellen: So it keeps them from like tilting side to side, or it just keeps them balanced better. When they intentionally swallow rocks like this, these are called gastroliths, like rocks in the belly. This is actually a pretty common practice among aquatic animals that don't have swim bladders, cause if you have a swim bladder, you don't need to do this. But if you don't and you live in the water pretty much full time, you kind of need something to keep you stable. Like seals do this, a lot of frog tadpoles do this when they're still living in the water. This is a common thing. It's just axolotls will also swallow rocks and pebbles. In captivity, when you keep an axolotl with gravel as a substrate in their tank, you'll find them swallowing bits of gravel, like off the bottom of the tank, they'll pick it up and eat it and it helps them swim better. It improves their accuracy when trying to catch their food.

Christian: Well cool, it's like a ballast or something.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. So it's like a keel that has given them a good way of neutralizing a disadvantage that they have of not having a swim bladder.

Christian: Sure.

Ellen: So otherwise, not a whole lot to be said for the ingenuity of the axolotl. I mean, I don't think we expected too much from a salamander. Right?

Christian: Not exactly known to be tool users.

Ellen: No. I mean, if someone told me I had the ingenuity of a salamander, I think I would feel a little insulted. You have the wit of a salamander. That doesn't sound good, does it?

Christian: Sounds old timey.

Ellen: Oh, I like it though. It is kind of cute. So yeah, 5 out of 10 for ingenuity. And moving on to my final category for the axolotl, aesthetics: 9 out of 10. Easy. Clutch. He's got it. Cute mud, mud, Kipp, soft boy, permanent smiley face. They had, oh gosh, they're so cute. Just they have this really just content, happy look, and they look so soft and they're just adorable. Especially they have those really, really soft, feathery gills that like, some of them are frillier than others. Some of them are like, big and fluffy and look like ostrich feathers. But some of them are a little more subtle. It's kinda funny how much like, variation you'll see in the faces of the axolotls. So they're, they're very cute. 9 out of 10.

Ellen: So to summarize, that's a 10 out of 10 for effectiveness, a 5 out of 10 for ingenuity and a 9 out of 10 for aesthetics bringing us to an 8 out of 10 overall for the axolotl.

Christian: Good score.

Ellen: Yes, this is good animal. So going to wrap up with a couple of final points about the axolotl. These are super popular as both pets and research subjects. Actually there are way, way, way more in captivity than there are in the wild. So their conservation status is critically endangered. I got a lot of information on their conservation from a Nature Magazine article titled "Biology's Beloved Amphibian, the Axolotl is Racing Towards Extinction" by Erik Vance in November of 2017. So some of the primary threats to the axolotl in their native environment, they are very vulnerable to non-native fish. A lot of fish like carp, tilapia, mojarra, fish like that were introduced to Lake Xochimilco in the late 20th century.

Ellen: This was in like the sixties, seventies, eighties, they were introduced to that area actually to kind of like encourage people in that area to eat more fish, like to promote healthier diets. But these fish are now eating up axolotl like crazy. Especially when they're eggs or larva, they're very vulnerable to these larger fish. So that's threat number one. Threat number two: treatment facilities are releasing a lot of waste from Mexico City's sewer system into Xochimilco so that heavily, heavily, heavily pollutes the water with ammonia and all these other toxic substances that are really dangerous, especially to the axolotl, since being an amphibian in the water, they breathe through their skin so they're breathing all that toxic water. That's just a couple of the threats to the axolotl other than of course, you know, habitat loss. They, with all of these lakes being drained, they lost a ton of their habitat and are now kind of confined to these narrow canal areas.

Ellen: There are some efforts being made to increase their numbers. A lot of people are releasing captive bred axolotl is into the wild and that's worked a little bit, but not a lot and it probably won't be a viable longterm plan until the bigger threats are addressed.

Christian: Right.

Ellen: I mean, we can at least be thankful that with how popular the axolotl is outside of the wild, we can pretty much guarantee they'll never be extinct because so many of these are in like, controlled environments, but they're very rapidly approaching being extinct in the wild.

Christian: Right.

Ellen: So we have so many of these in captivity. But another problem is that a lot of the ones that we have in captivity can all be traced back to the same captive population of only like 30 or so. So there's not a lot of genetic variance among like, the captive axolotls so you're seeing a lot of inbreeding, but I mean at least we've got them, right?

Christian: Sure.

Ellen: Yeah. So we have a ton of these in captivity. We don't really have to worry so much about them going like extinct, extinct, but we do have to worry about them no longer being found where they are found, which would be really awful because they're very important to the cultural identity of this area. So, we're really rooting for the axolotl turning things around. We believe in you, axolotl!

Christian: Yeah, you can do it, Mudkip.

Ellen: We love you. I didn't pick you as my starter, but...

Christian: I did.

Ellen: Did you really?

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: What'd you name him?

Christian: I don't know.

Ellen: Okay. Yeah, that's a, that's the axolotl for you. And thank you to everybody who suggested this one. I was really happy to learn more about it and I hope you guys were too. Yeah.

Christian: Thank you for that, Ellen.

Ellen: Yeah. Anytime. Okay, baby. What you got for us?

Christian: So this week I've got a real looker of a fish that lurks the dark waters of the ocean.

Ellen: Mm. You know, there's some real cuties down there.

Christian: Oh yes. This one is known as the goblin shark.

Ellen: That's not a promising name. Does not set this one up for success in the aesthetics department.

Christian: Oh, you know it. So this one was submitted to us by my own mother, Kathi Brooks, and also our friend Michael Solon.

Ellen: Thank you both.

Christian: Yes, thank you.

Ellen: Thanks mom.

Christian: The scientific name of the Goblin Shark is Mitsukurina owstoni. So that's obviously a Japanese name, and there's some story there, but I'll get to that a little later. So I want to talk about what these guys look like. I think a lot of people have seen images of these, either in textbooks or on the web, but when they're alive they are pinkish green, but when they have died and they've been preserved, they are brown. I think a lot of people, the image they have of a goblin shark is actually a preserved specimen.

Ellen: Ohhh. Probably not a great look. Right?

Christian: Right. Cause usually in alcohol or something.

Ellen: They did not wake up like this.

Christian: It's not that much worse, but you know. So first of all, my main source for the goblin shark is from the Florida Museum.

Ellen: Thanks, Florida Museum!

Christian: Yes. Pretty much every source I found describes the goblin shark as flabby looking.

Ellen: That's not, I guess probably not a word that comes to mind when you're thinking of deep sea creatures.

Christian: Yeah. Yeah. I guess, you know, maybe when you're imagining a shark, it's um, more toned, more sturdy. Right? But I guess not so much with these guys, they look softer and cuddly, maybe. That's probably the wrong word.

Ellen: Nope. That's not it. When you said like, more toned sharks, I was thinking of like Street Sharks.

Christian: With like six pack abs?

Ellen: So not like that.

Christian: Nope. And they have a rounded fins, also. Here's a little bit surprising. I didn't realize how big these things can get.

Ellen: Okay. Tell me about it.

Christian: Average between 10 and 13 feet.

Ellen: That's not right. Is it really?

Christian: Which, for our metric listeners, is between three to four meters. So that's our average, but it has been seen to be sometimes even over 18 feet, which is 5 and a half meters.

Ellen: Yall, this is why I don't go in the water.

Christian: These some bigguns.

Ellen: No thank you.

Christian: Where they're found that actually found all over the globe in deep waters? Usually. Right. But they've found them in every major ocean, which is interesting. Um, most are found from 885 to 3,149 feet, which again in metric is 270 to 960 meters deep, but has been found up to 4,265 feet or 1300 meters.

Ellen: That's almost a mile.

Christian: That's a lot. So to put that in scale, that is almost the equivalent of three empire state buildings,

Ellen: so well past the point that light can reach in the ocean. Good. So you don't have to see their faces.

Christian: Until it's too late! Um, the taxonomic order that they belong to is the Lamniformes. And here's some interesting other animals that belong to that: what are known as mackerel sharks, it's just like a classification of sharks, and sharks that belong to that are the great white shark and basking sharks.

Ellen: Now, I love those.

Christian: Right?

Ellen: They have the biggest smile.

Christian: There's something interesting about that order: one of their defining characteristics is that they maintain their body temperature at a higher temperature than surrounding water, which I guess is not normal for other sharks. So that's kind of the basic rundown of what these guys look like. Effectiveness. So I'm giving them a 6 out of 10 for effectiveness, for two things mainly, the first one being they're very skilled with electrodetection. So lots of sharks have this, where they can sense electric fields and magnetic fields. And these are little, almost like pores in their skin around their nose that are called ampullae of Lorenzini.

Ellen: Ohhh.

Christian: Yeah. It's a very interesting name. The Lorenzini part is the name of the person that discovered it.

Ellen: That sounds right.

Christian: Yeah. It lets it find prey using, sensing electrical fields and magnetic fields, which is useful in very, very dark environments, right? So speaking of that, the goblin shark has a very pronounced nose. This is mostly what contributes to the name of goblin sharks. They have this big long nose that extends far past its mouth.

Ellen: A real shnozz on that one.

Christian: Yeah. Speaking of its mouth, so here's number two for effectiveness. The jaws are designed to thrust forward to catch prey. A lot of people will have seen pictures of goblin sharks with their jaws just way out there. It's bizarre.

Ellen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's gross. I hate it. Yeah. Thanks for reminding me about that.

Christian: So they have these long, thin teeth that are designed to catch slippery prey. So it's thought that these eat shrimp, octopus, squid, that kind of thing. But they also have the teeth in the back for crunching, for lack of a better term.

Ellen: Oh great! It gets scarier the further down you go.

Christian: Well, they say they think that maybe that's for crabs. Um, so back to the jaws though. So the jaws are interesting in that they are designed to just, almost like a catapult type system. In a resting state, their jaws are fully extended, so it takes effort for them to pull them back in their mouth so that when they do go for prey, they just let it go. And just a matter of how the tendons are set up, it propels forward.

Ellen: Do they have rubber bands in their jaws? What are they doing?.

Christian: Basically! Basically.

Ellen: Oh my god, this is a tension bolt, This is a tension mounted crossbow animal.

Christian: So, so I should mention these things are rarely found alive. They're usually found as a product of bycatch. So these are deep sea trawlers that are fishing for other things and they just happened to pull these up. So a lot of the times these things are dead when they find them, or they don't live for very much longer when they do. So a lot of pictures that you'll see of goblin sharks are dead goblin sharks, so that of course when they're dead, since they're not able to hold it in anymore, their jaws are fully extended. Oh yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. And that actually has caused a little bit of confusion in the past in trying to identify this species because people would find preserved specimens of the goblin shark with their jaws at varying degrees of being... Out there, I guess?

Ellen: Of uh, retraction?

Christian: Yeah. So they would think, oh, these are different species, but really in reality it was the same species. It's just, you know, this one that's jaws were halfway out, this one, it's was fully out, that kind of thing.

Ellen: Oh my gosh.

Christian: Yeah. So that causes a little bit of confusion in trying to classify them. Very, very little is known about these sharks.

Ellen: Oh, okay.

Christian: So a lot of what I'm saying is kind of, uh, you know, people are guessing. So the diet is just guessed on the kind of teeth that they have, for example.

Ellen: Sure. Well they eat, uh, dreams and joy. That's what they eat.

Christian: So I mean, I didn't have a whole lot to go on, they obviously have a problem with fishing nets. Um, but most fish do, I suppose.

Ellen: Their true weakness. But only when dead, so clearly when they're alive they can swim away.

Christian: No, no, no. You misunderstand. They, they, they get caught in the net alive.

Ellen: Oh, I see. I see.

Christian: By the time they get pulled up they're dead. Or hey die shortly thereafter.

Ellen: Suck. Get wrecked.

Christian: So back to ingenuity, I'm giving this one a 5 out of 10. Um, again, nota particularly genius animal, but it is a predator in the water, and is a fish, so I gave it a 5 out of 10. Uh, aesthetics. Oh boy, aesthetics.

Ellen: Ohh, yikes. No, this one's not good.

Christian: Um, I gave it a two. A 2 out of 10.

Ellen: That's the worst one we've had so far.

Christian: So what it has going for it, is looking at it, you can tell it's a shark. I think that much you could identify.

Ellen: Oh, bless this creature.

Christian: Uh, yeah, it's face is something out of a nightmare.

Ellen: Yeah. It's very, this is the worst one. It's so bad.

Christian: So a 6 out of 10 in effectiveness, a 5 out of 10 ingenuity, and a 2 out of 10 in aesthetics comes to an overall of 4.3 out of 10.

Ellen: Mm. That's... Okay. That's rough.

Christian: Yeah. Yeah.

Ellen: Hey y'all, this is a review show. They can't all be winners. They can't all be great.

Christian: It's interesting and mysterious. I'll give it that.

Ellen: It's cool in its own way, I guess.

Christian: Right. So some fun facts. Well, sort of fun. Conservation status, they are least concern. So they are rare, but it is thought that's more because of where they inhabit usually. And since they've been found all over the globe, it's thought that they're probably doing fine.

Ellen: Great. Awesome. So glad that out of all the animals, I'm glad that the axolotl is critically endangered, but these hellish nightmare beasts are roaming the globe without a care in the world.

Christian: So, um, I'd like to talk about where the comes from a little bit more. So the goblin shark was named by an ichthyologist, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.

Ellen: You got it. Ichthyologist.

Christian: Yay. His name was David Starr Jordan in 1898.

Ellen: Was his middle name Starr?

Christian: Yeah. With two r's.

Ellen: And neither of his names where Joe?

Christian: You behave. So he was brought the specimen by a University of Tokyo Professor Kakichi Mitsukuri, and he received it from a ship master, Alan Owston. So they took those two guys' last names to create the scientific last name.

Ellen: Okay, I see. I hear that.

Christian: Yeah. And then where the common name goblin shark came from is from the old Japanese name for that shark, which is a tenguzame. A tengu is a mythical Japanese creature depicted with a long nose and red face. So that was the English translation. So in a lot of other languages, like the Germanic languages, it's known as the elfen shark.

Ellen: Elfen?

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: Like, like an Elf?

Christian: Yeah. Yeah.

Ellen: It kind of looks like a Gerudo from the Zelda games, with that big nose. But the Gerudo are like, beautiful and elegant and they look cool. The goblin shark is a disaster. Can you imagine being the guy that found the first one of these?

Christian: Nope. Go back in there.

Ellen: I... My heart goes out to this poor soul to be the first person to look at this eldritch horror and you're like, oh my gosh, it's so horrible on the outside. And then you look inside and it's got just teeth all the way down and you're like, oh! It's the stuff of actual, literal apocalyptic being. This is a harbinger of the end of days.

Christian: Yup. It wants my soul.

Ellen: Yeah. So I... just, bless that poor shipmaster that had to be the first one to lay eyes on this.

Christian: Maybe he was friends with that professor and he was like, hey man, check this out. So yeah, that's where the name comes from. So earlier I mentioned they're usually caught as bycatch, but when they have been caught, people have tried dry salting them to eat. Um, I couldn't find...

Ellen: To absorb its power? Like why would you want to do that?

Christian: I don't know. And I couldn't really find anything on whether that's good or not. But they're pretty valuable as specimens because of that, because they are so rarely found.

Ellen: Good. Leave them that way. We don't need more of these.

Christian: People have tried to keep them in captivity, but they do not survive for long.

Ellen: Why would you want to do that? Why would you want an extended period of time for you to be around this creature?

Christian: I mean, we're talking like a couple of days or a week and then they die. That's probably because, you know, they're used to an environment that is hard to recreate in captivity.

Ellen: Yeah. Like they need like a lot of pressure, right? And so like, a highly pressurized...

Christian: Well that's the thing too, so they're found very deep, but it's thought they could also be oceanic. So, there's just not a whole lot known about them.

Ellen: I feel like there aren't a lot of like deep sea creatures that can be kept in captivity.

Christian: That's true.

Ellen: Like we've seen some, uh, deep sea creatures in aquariums, but they were mostly the things like crabs and like, I dunno, I feel like they were like bottom dwellers and just like things that didn't really require a lot of like, swimming space. So I feel like, like a very large, deep sea animal would be like, nearly impossible to recreate their habitat.

Christian: Right. Cause you know, they're used to thousands of pounds of pressure that we would not be able to recreate.

Ellen: Yeah. It's not, not possible. And just why would you want to? I mean like what kind of an aquarium pull would that be? Like, hey, come look death in the face.

Christian: You can't see them but they're there!

Ellen: But you wouldn't even want to see them!

Christian: Um, so it's thought that they're not very dangerous to humans. That's mostly because of how rare it would be to encounter these. But it has been said anyway, that because of their size it could be dangerous, right?

Ellen: I mean, I feel like if you see one of these and you're alive long enough from the shock of just like, if you don't just immediately have a heart attack and die of panic from seeing one, I feel like that would do you in right there. You don't even have to worry about the teeth. You're already dead. Omae wa mou shindeiru.

Christian: Dang, two Jojo references. Um, and then my final kind of thing about these things, they're thought they give birth the same way a lot of the other sharks in their order do, which are through eggs that are within the body. And the term for that is... ovovivaporous. Nope.

Ellen: Try again?

Christian: I'm gonna try that again. Ovoviviparous.

Ellen: Ovo...vivi...

Christian: Yep. So that's the term, I probably pronounced it wrong, deal with it. Uh, so that's the thought, though, and that's, that's just because, you know, they haven't actually found a pregnant female.

Ellen: I think they're gravid, right? When they have eggs. Hold on... pregnant... shark...

Christian: Doo doo, doo doo...

Ellen: I guess it would be pregnant. I thought they would be gravid cause they're eggs, but maybe not. Oh, well, okay. Anyway. Moving on.

Christian: So yeah. Um, eggs within the body of the mother, but that's just theory because they haven't actually found a pregnant specimen yet. Which kind of reminds me of... Wait, nevermind. I was gonna make a Lord of the Rings reference.

Ellen: You can make it! It's okay. There's other people listening. It's not just me.

Christian: Okay, here we go. So that reminds me of how in Lord of the Rings, specifically the Two Towers, Giml was talking about like, oh, they don't think there's any female dwarves! They think we just pop out of the ground! And then Aragorn says it's because of the beards. I thought it was funny.

Ellen: Okay. I believe you.

Christian: Thank you for your pity laugh.

Ellen: It's an "I believe in you" laugh. It's a supportive laugh.

Christian: Yaaay. So that's the goblin shark. Thanks again to mi madre and also our friend Michael.

Ellen: Yeah, thank you both for subjecting me to this terror.

Christian: And listeners, go out, look at pictures...

Ellen: Don't.

Christian: Do it.

Ellen: Nope. I don't recommend it. Okay, so now I might be biased because I am very thalassophobic, so I'm typically not too keen on our wet friends. So, hate it. Hate it a lot. No friend to me.

Christian: One of these days.

Ellen: That's just my thoughts. One of these days, what? One of these days you're going to get me in a submarine and take me to the bottom of the ocean and really show me the light?

Christian: I can show you a world...

Ellen: Don't. No.

Christian: Uh oh... A leak!

Ellen: Nope. Don't worry, I'll just kill myself. Well thank you my love. That was a really interesting experience that we've had together.

Christian: You are sooo welcome.

Ellen: I think that about does it for us. I think we're all done here today. Thank you so much for listening. You can connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Just search the title of the show. That should bring you to us. Please, if you like what you hear, please let your friends know about us. Kind of spread the word a little bit. Let people know, hey, there's this really cool podcast about animals that I've been listening to, and send them our way so that they can listen too, and yeah, we're just, we have some cool plans for things we want to do with the show takes off. So we would be really excited if you could help us kind of get the word out. If you have an animal species you want to hear us review, you can submit it to us via our Facebook page. Last week we did a Facebook post where we asked people to comment their suggestions and that worked out really, really well. Or, if you'd rather keep it a surprise, you can submit it to us at thezooofus@gmail.com. A transcript of this episode will be made available at justthezooofus.home.blog and our last kind of wrapping up little tidbit, we want to thank Louie Zong for the use of his song Adventuring off of his album Bee Sides.

Christian: Yes, thank you so much. Great Song.

Ellen: Yep, we use it as our intro and outro and um, all of his music and content is really wonderful. So go check out Louie Zong. And that's all we have for today, so thank you so much for listening.

Christian: Thanks everyone.

Ellen: Thank you. Goodbyeeee!

Christian: Bye!