SciShow Tangents - Spooky Month: Caves with Brennan Lee Mulligan!

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

There's a chill in the air and a shudder in our bones...it's Spooky Month! Come along with us on a treacherous journey full of mischief, mayhem, and many marvelously mysterious guests! Steady yourself, for who knows what frights lurk around the corner...In our first Spooky Month episode we dare to venture into the cold, dark world of caves. Joining us on our search for hidden knowledge deep within the earth is the estimably terrifying Brennan Lee Mulligan! SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! A big thank you to Patreon subscribers Garth Riley and Glenn Trewitt for helping to make the show possible!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen[This, That, or the Other: Deep Trouble]Optymistychna Cave in UkrainePlura Cave in NorwayVeryovkina Cave in Georgia (the country)https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36097300https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/veryovkina-cave-deepesthttps://mineralseducationcoalition.org/minerals-database/gypsum/https://saltworkconsultants.com/downloads/31.%20Dissolution%202-%20Caves.pdfhttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/262182704_Fractal_dimensions_of_cave_for_exemplary_gypsum_cave-mazes_of_Western_Ukrainehttps://bora.uib.no/bora-xmlui/handle/1956/10413?locale-attribute=en https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-97292-3_9 https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2499&context=ijs[The Gauntlet]Madagascar cave graveyardArmenia wine caveBosnia & Herzegovina cave barely moving animalDevil’s Hole cave in NevadaCheese storage caves in the U.S.Mexico cave with giant formations[Ask the Science Couch]Science of cave climate in cheese/wine production https://www.wineenthusiast.com/culture/wine/underground-wine-caves-good/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214289419306088#https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/missouri-cheese-caves-historyhttps://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-stockpile-cheese-missouri-caves/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2213329116300260Patreon bonus: “Subsurface access points” or caves in non-Earth places like the Moon and Marshttps://www.usgs.gov/centers/astrogeology-science-center/news/caves-across-solar-systemhttps://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/what-we-do/applications/subsurface-access/https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/lunar-pits-could-shelter-astronauts-reveal-details-of-how-man-in-the-moon-formed/  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02302-y.epdf [Butt One More Thing]Indigenous Caribbean cave art from 1200-1400s, carved from moonmilk or painted using guano compoundshttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440317301413?via%3Dihubhttps://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-05389-8

You're listening to a Complexly Podcast. Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the frightly competitive science knowledge scream case. I'm your ghost Hank Gangrene and joining me this week as always is mad scientist Scary Riley. Hello, I devoured Sam. Both of them. Remember this, the clone too.

The clone. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. The old calendar on the wall says it's Halloween time once more. And as you know, here at SciShow Tangents, we love to get into the Halloween spirit. And this year is no different. October is spooky month and we have invited some ghoulish guests over to Tangents Manor to join us this month. In fact, I think I hear one of them approaching the door now.

Why it's mystery guest Brennan Lee Mulligan, dropout host, dropout writer, performer, and just amazing storyteller of all kinds of stories. Oh my gosh, and my friend Brennan, hello. Hello, I am the surprise guest. I have come to your door to haunt the SciShow with a poem, which is either for me to recite now or later. Or potentially later.

Great. Whatever works best for you. I love that we started out and you were the very first thing you were was loud. I just it's very on-brand. That could be a personal issue or the gain on my microphone. Let me know once again what's better for you. Did you, because I did, end up at a friend group of people pleasers who no one cares at all how they feel, but they only want to make someone else in the room feel better. And so no one can ever decide what restaurant to go to

because no one has an opinion because that would be too much for the group. What's nice is I feel like I have combined that people pleasing instinct with an East Coast bluntness, which means that from time to time, I'll be like, hey, what would you how what would work best for you? What's how can I how can I be of service? What can I do? And someone will be like, do what makes you happy? And I'll be like, motherfucker, what do you think I'm doing right now?

What do you think I'm doing right now? That is very specific. I can't get happy unless you're happy. So I am very much looking out for number one right now. Can I curse on this show? I already did. We can certainly we can certainly bleep you if we need to. So I am happy at a lot of places if people are like, we're going out to dinner. Where would you like to go?

I'll be like, anywhere is great. But what's off the table? What's the deal breaker? What is the restaurant that's just too spooky for your colon to handle? You know, I have an iron stomach and and a metabolism like a furnace. However, gustatorially, I will not. there are certain things I will not indulge. And the big one is going to a chain for a type of cuisine that the place I'm in is known for outside of chains.

Like you're not going to the Olive Garden in Italy. This is what you're telling me. I'm not gonna go to the Olive Garden in Tuscany. That's a big bright red line for me food wise. For me it's anything spicy. Like if someone says the only food available is spicy food here. If we're going somewhere it's spicy wing night,

they don't even make the normal ones. Then I will go, but I will not eat the food. Again, the people pleasing. I'll show up, wanna be with my friends, I need that good for my heart attitude, but otherwise my butt will explode. I will pay for it later. It will be bad in the mouth, bad in the tummy,

bad in the butt, all bad. No nourishment, no enjoyment out of it. I can't handle it. I wasn't built for this. I'm so sorry. Yes. I just want some potatoes. That is in fact what my mom, who is Malaysian,

would cook spicy curry for the rest of my family who would enjoy a flavorful curry, Malaysian curry, full of like, I don't know, all kinds of spices. And what would Sari get? A boiled potato on the side, on a little plate, until I would grow up and have a more fortified stomach and eat the spicy food, but it never happened. So I would just get my boiled potato throughout childhood.

It was both your Malaysian and Irish roots. Really clashing and not a beautiful way. Yeah, but my sister loves spice. Great. They really split it between siblings, I think, where I got none of that. My grandfather was told by his doctor that he needed to start eating more fish and less red meat and so he would always take us to a restaurant called Shoney's whereupon he would get fish and chips, which I don't think is what his doctor meant by fish. But I hated Shoney's so much because we would always be at, we would always be at Shoney's and it felt like a mistake of a place.

It felt like it was like you, like we had intentionally created a restaurant that was the worst we could do. And this is like my 12 year old palette when I would have been perfectly happy with a tortilla with mayonnaise on it. There was a Shoney's that I went to with my grandma in Tennessee.

And it was really wild because it was something where it was like, there would be like a pomp and circumstance and a gravitas. Yes. Put on your nice shirt. It made you think it was supposed to be good. Hey, we're going to Shoney's. And then we would get there and I would be like, this is for all intents and purposes, a Southern Denny's. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. Like this is a, this is a Denny's. You've taken me to a Denny's. You know what I'm saying? Like this is a, you've taken me to a Denny's. You've hoodwinked me into going to a Denny's. And it would be wild because it would be like, I don't know, it was like something reversed. It was like the fact that this is a chain makes it special, which is the opposite in like the Northeast where you'd go like, no, the chains are like,

you want to go to the greasy spoon diner that is not part of a chain. That's where magic lives. That's actually the special place. What are we gonna make a big deal out of going to Perkins? Give me a break. Give me a break. I'm sure I'm gonna make a lot of enemies

with our Shonys' opinions because probably lots of people out there really love their Shonys. But it was just, was not for me and also made me feel awkward that my grandfather was trying to take care of his heart condition by eating fried fish sandwiches. Every week here on SciShow Tangents we get together to try to unnerve, disgust and horrify each other with science facts while also trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory and for candy, which we will be awarding as we play. And at the end of the episode, one of us will be crowned the King of Halloween.

Now, as always, we're going to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem. It's from Brennan. Ahem. Are you ready for a terrifying epic poem? Bear not. No, I don't think so. This is my best, my best Vincent Price. There once was a man subterranean who said, how does one tell the terrain is in? If it's naturally formed and by sun never warmed, then a cavern or cave you are staying in. How many limericks you getting on this show?

Huh? Yes, there's been limericks. Hank is usually the maker of limerick. Yeah, I often go limerick because I am pan. I'm panicked. And but that, I mean, to terrain is in a thank you. Thank you. The topic of the day is caves.

Brennan wanted to talk about caves, and so we're gonna talk about caves. But before we dive in, we're going to take a short break and then be back to define what the heck a cave is. Welcome back, Sari. What's a cave? If you listen to that freaking limerick, you know. It's pretty much it. Opening in the ground.

Yeah. You can go inside. There's a guy in there. You can go, you can go inside. Wait, what's the last one? There's always a man in there. No, there's always a man in there. You can go inside. Wait, what's the last one? There's always a man in there. No, there's always a man in there. Yeah, Hank really zeroed in on the part

that I was not worried about. You can go in them. And I'm like, I think Sarah said there's a man in there. There's a man in there. Well, I was referring to the man in the limerick who was in there. Yeah. Parentheses, there's a man in there sometimes.

Just someone in an enormous like howl caverns and being like, I don't think this is a cave. I don't see a man in here. Where's the cave man? You've heard of cave man, haven't you? That's what that is. That's him, that's him. I like the idea that it's like spread in the Brandon Sanderson universe where there's a cave,

and then as soon as there's a cave, a man manifests inside of it, and he is the caveman. And that is how caves work. And no one knows about this. It's a very important scientific fact that is well misunderstood. It's still a cave if I can't get in it, certainly. So this is where I think the geologists just simply don't care. I think they love when people love a rock. And so they're just like, call it what you want. Call it a cave, call it a cavern. As long as it's naturally formed, and there are lots of different processes by which an

opening can form in a rock. But if a human makes it, then we have all kinds of names for that. You have a mine, you have a quarry, you have well, you just have straight up holes. But if it is an opening in a rock that you can't fit in, that you can just stick your hand in, probably just a hole, not a cave.

But if you can walk inside, if you become a man in a cave, or a woman in a cave, or a non-binary person in a cave, then you're like, hey, this is a cave. Okay, but if I could fit in it, but no one can get in it, is it still a cave? Like you can't get to it. It's like sealed off. Oh, it's sealed off.

Does it become a cave the moment we dig down into it and are like, and we're in it, then it's a cave. I think you would say it was still like an underground cavern, but yes, I think typically caves have an opening. I really like the idea that like the language literally changes the moment a human steps foot inside of it. What would it be called prior to human contact?

It's a cavern. Wait, a cavern is an un... Is a cave that has not known the touch of man? I think a cavern is both a cave and a cavern. So it's like it's an inclusive category. Cavern has caves in it, but it's bigger than caves. Gotcha. And I'm just talking out of my butt, but I like it anyway.

I feel like if geologists don't care, we do. And so we get to figure it out on our own. Anecdotally, I love when scientists fully don't care. I love when scientists are like, hey, man, you need to learn like a hundred times more about this to even know why this is a conversation we can't. It's the it's the great Stephen Jay Gould quote about I've been studying fish for, you know, decades and I've come to the conclusion there's no such thing as fish, which is like my favorite. That's the best. And I'm now I'm looking if there is such thing as caves.

Because I know that there's several times there have been caves that you you just happen upon when you're like mining for one thing or another and I like the idea that like it's not a cave until a person gets in there. There are caves that have been sealed so like one of my favorite caves is the mobile cave. I hope this is not in the game, but it is a cave in Romania that was sealed off for a while and by a while I mean 5.5 million years so a long, and there's a whole cave ecosystem of organisms that existed without the light. And then we reopened it up.

And so when it was sealed and there were animals living it, there were not men living in it, but there were stuff living in it. And I still think it was their cave. And then we opened it and just called it a cave. But what was it? They probably had their own non-language name for it at some point. I don't know, what would a little shrimp call a cave if it was blind and living in the dark

with all his friends? You have to be able to use words for the cavern to turn into a cave. And they can't. Wow. It doesn't have to be a person, but it has to be a language user. So if you put a dolphin in a cave, maybe. There are a lot of sea caves. Which I have to...

It doesn't have to be full of air. It can be full of water, for sure. I love that. Of the topics that I was interested in talking about, I was really interested in talking about this one because I think caves are a great meeting point between science and I'm a humanities guy. And so there's a lot of caves have a mythic significance. There's a symbology to them. People can't stop people cannot stop talking about caves. The people want caves. They love them. They love what's going on in them. There's magic associated with them and they can't get enough

So I love it. To me It doesn't seem like they should happen because one of the things I know about the ground is that it's solid full of Stuff it's full of solids. I've been I've touched it. I've dug in it I've been in the ground like the idea that it just like occasionally is full of nothing That's like that's not supposed to be how that is. And so they seem magical. It's like when there's an earthquake and like the whole world moves, I'm like, no, that's not how that's supposed to work.

The earth is solid. The earth stays in the same place. But this is like a less scary version of that because it's static and I and it's there all of the time and you can know about it. But just like a big hole where nothing is. Why didn't that get filled up by something? Sarah, you mentioned that there are many processes by which caves are created. And I agree with Hank's point that it flies in the face of God's law that caves

could exist. And are there some processes that are like the most common and are there some really weird edge cases of like, what's the strangest way a cave gets made? There's like one cave where you're like, yeah, that cave, your guess is as good as mine. That should not exist. Ooh, that, that I'm not sure. I think scientists are pretty good at at least guessing. Yeah. Here's one. If, if, if a, if an animal big enough dies and gets buried and then it rots and then it's just a big animal shaped cave, it's like a dinosaur brontosaurus cave. This is I'm making this up or it's a blue whale cave or it's just the inside of a blue whale.

You just walk in there and you're like, I don't know, this thing's kind of made of the earth. And so why isn't that not a cave? But I know that's all I've got. But what are the normal ways for caves to get made? Most of caves are solution caves, or what they're called solution caves, which is when water dissolves rock in some way. There's a lot of rocks, limestone, gypsum, salts

that are easily dissolvable by moving water, by flowing water, by water, even sitting still and just eroding away at it slowly. And so those are most of the caves that we see. A lot of the labyrinthine caves that we see are made from water. The ones I see on TikTok where the guy is making a mistake. Yes. Yeah.

Sea caves like this, too, it's just ocean water instead of like groundwater, stuff underground. There are lava tube caves. Those are the fastest forming kind of caves where some lava flow cools and forms this outer shell, but then the inside is still molten and it drains out in a different way. And so then you get this whole tube of lava rock. There are tectonic caves. So we've got the tectonic plates shifting around. Sometimes they just shift away from each other and create an opening in the earth. That one feels like the most oops kind of cave where it wasn't there. And then all of a sudden there's a gaping maw in the earth.

What's wild to me about that is the idea of a vacuum. The idea that tectonic plates would separate and could create air pockets without that air coming from somewhere. You know what I mean? If it moved away, it would have to be there's a collapse. So structurally, what's going on? Probably there's water. There's a lot of water down there. And so probably the water takes that space, would be my guess. And then the air takes the water space from over the water. And then eventually the water drains away space, would be my guess. And then the air takes the water space from over the water. And then eventually the water drains away or something. Those lava tube caves are incredibly freaky.

When you see people walking in a big cavern with stalactites and stalagmites, you're like, yes, this is exactly where you should be. Venture into the earth and gain hidden knowledge. And you see someone in a lava tube cave and you are like, there is only one piece of knowledge here and you don't want it, get out.

There is, this is a bad cave, get out of the lava cave. We have to figure out where the word cave comes from, but I did just get reminded of my favorite geological fact, which is that ice is a rock. And so would just a hole, like a big old hole in a glacier, would that be a kind of lava cave? Oh, I think it would be kind of cave. There's lots of glacier caves. That's a glacier ice cave yeah and then if the glacier was surrounded by rock and then the glacier

melted that would also be a cave. You could have a cave within a cave at that point. But I assume all of these words are related cavity. There's another one that I thought of that I forgot. But yes, they are all related. Very straightforward etymology this time. There's the Latin cavern, and that became the French cav, which means seller. And then we borrowed that and we said, let's call it cave. Let's change the a sound and call it a cave instead. So we didn't have like a word for caves.

We just had like a word for an empty space. Just like a like a cavity in something. The word cav, that same root word forms cavalry because the very first horses came out of holes in the ground. Sorry, that's no, it's because of all the holes in a horse. Yeah. Horses have a ton of holes in their mouth, but it's just a lot of holes in horses. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. You know, the seven secret holes in the horse.

The secret horse holes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got you. But the old cavalrymen had to memorize before you were given your spear. They don't tell you about the last one until you until the last day of training. Until you pass the test and Until you pass the test. And then you know the secret horse hole. Yeah. So yeah. Well, I'm glad that we're passing on great knowledge to the people of the world.

And now that I feel like I know what a cave is, maybe less than I did before, but anyway, that means it's time to move on to the quiz portion of our show. Our first sinister game is called Deep Trouble. Because caving involves such very safe activities as crawling on your stomach across jagged rocks and rappelling hundreds of meters into the darkness, it might surprise you to learn that caves can be dangerous. And some of them are more hazardous than others. The following holes in the ground have made a variety of most dangerous caves list, I'm going to give you the cave's name and a little information about it, and your job is to identify the

thing that makes it uniquely horrifying. Number one, the Optimus-Nichka Cave in Ukraine is one of the longest in the world, with 264 kilometers explored so far. But why is it so dangerous? Is it because the air pressure reaches four atmospheres deep in the cave? Or because the walls are made of gypsum and frequently collapse? Or because of massive underground springs that flood the cave without warning? A, B, or C? I think Optimus Prime is at the very end and he is ready to crush you. He turns into a bad guy when he's in the bottom of the cave.

That's where he sleeps. The all spark is back there. I am gonna say C. I think it's springs. I think springs. That is often, yes. It's a dangerous cave thing. Optimitia.

Optimitia. That sounds like it's gonna squish you. I'm gonna keep with squish. I'm gonna say A, air pressure. Air pressure. In fact, you are both incorrect. Although the name of the cave means optimistic, that's not how I'm left feeling about your chances if you go exploring down there. Most of the cave is gypsum, which is one of the softest minerals,

measuring at just a two on the Mohs hardness scale. And I know that we are always all thinking about the Mohs hardness scale. That means big chunks of it can collapse with the slightest vibration, which it doesn't tend to experience because usually people leave it alone. But then we were like, no, I can't. Can I just say the the thought that I cannot think of a more stereotypically Russophone thing than then there's a cave that has a type of rock that kills you and Everyone in that region agrees that what kills you is optimism. You know what I'm saying?

Like oh my god, he died because the rock fell on him. No, he died because he believed in himself like That is wild that is a wild thing to name that cave I That is wild. That is a wild thing to name that cave. I mean, there's an awful lot, just like human culture generally, there's an awful lot of death because you believed too hard. I just feel like in America, we would be like, this is, we named this cave dangerous. This is a dangerous cave. Yeah. And then being like, we named this cave

after the cultural mistake you made by going into it. Yeah. The most, the cave isn't dangerous. You're an idiot. You're an idiot. Yeah, it's your fault. The cave is doing exactly what it should be doing. The cave can kill no one if there's no one in it.

That's, it's very easy to avoid. If I describe for you an animal which can only bite you if you walk into its mouth, that is not a dangerous animal. You understand? The animal is not the problem. Question number two. Plura Cave in Norway stretches approximately 3,000 meters long and is full of gorgeous marble carved out by highly alkaline calcareous water created by long-dead marine organisms. Why should you avoid it on your next trip to Norway?

A, because you have to dive a half a kilometer through an ice cold pond just to gain entrance to the cave. B, three meter long stalactites frequently fall from the ceiling of the main gallery. Or C, decomposing organic compounds have made the air almost entirely carbon dioxide. I'm going to pick C because it's the most fun if it's true. Now you know how to play our games. It's Norway. You're going there's fjords and it's cold.

I'm going to say it's the dot. Splunkers do all kinds of things. They would only find this by doing some diving and then posture up and finding a cave. A fair amount of that. Well, the answer is indeed a and it is even longer to swim out. While the main room of the cave in the center is dry, it's almost a full kilometer swim from there to the exit, and multiple people have died trying to make the full trip.

But it remains a popular cave diving spot. No. If you say the sentence, multiple people have died on the way out. Why? Why is that popular? Why? I don't know. Everest exists. You could just stay in there, I guess you could go in because apparently people don't die on the way in. So just stay. Start a little start a little community in there. I've seen the videos of the wild subatic caves in South America where the water density

changes part way through so you go underwater twice? There's like an underwater water? No, that's weird. It's awesome. Yeah, weird hyper salinity. That's so sick. It's super dense so it like sits down there. hyper-hyper-celinity. That's so sick. Super dense. So it like sits down there.

Very cool. And it kind of is like flowing. It's like you see it's like a new water. You're like underwater and you're like, look, double water. And then you're like, and then if you go down there, that's definitely how you meet like an ancient serpent god, which I keep bringing this back to. But that's I really do think that's how caves work. I'm so I'm so surprised that that's how you feel about caves.

Hidden knowledge in the earth. All right, we've got another cave for us to talk about. We've got Voryavkina Cave in Georgia, the country, not the state. It's the deepest cave in the world at 2,222 meters. It's a type of cave formation called a glaciocarst, meaning that it was carved by glacial activity. Why should you visit Georgia's other natural wonders instead? Is it A, because sulfur from the rock makes the caves air toxic with hydrogen sulfide, B, millions of bats live in the cave,

some carrying viruses that have yet to be studied, or C, the temperature can reach a bone chilling four degrees Celsius. B. Millions of bats. Lots of bats. Also on brand, sea serpent bats. I'm going to guess very cold. It's probably very cold and very high pressure in that deep hole. The answer was that it's just really cold. Although there are several things about this cave that make it uninviting. The temperature is at the top of the list.

While most caves have cool temperatures that don't fluctuate much, Verovkina carries the tradition of its glacial forebear being downright frigid. Though honestly, I would go there before any of the other caves on our list. I still like to think there's millions of bats in there, and I don't and I stand by picking what to me would make the world more whimsical with each answer. Yeah, no, that is the whole point. You are not expected to know the answers. I'll tell you that. And who knows? There could be bats. If it's the deepest cave in the world, dig deeper. Find those bats. Find those bats. Find be bats. If it's the deepest cave in the world, dig deeper. Find those bats.

Find those bats. Find those bats. Well, Sari, that means that you got two points to Brennan's none. But do I have whimsy? Who knows? You have. You do. I've seen you have whimsy. Thanks, Hank. I appreciate that. Next up, we're going to take a short break. and then Sam, who is sadly not here, has made another devious game for us. Welcome back, everybody! If our players have not been horrified enough, they're going to be horrified now.

Our next game is even more awful. It's the Gauntlet! We're doing a gauntlet! Sam is making us do a gauntlet from the grave! The Gauntlet is the ultimate game of science, knowledge, strategy, and treachery. It's like a haunted house of facts and information, and no one knows what's going on when you're inside of it. In The Gauntlet, you and your opponent will face a series of six questions of decreasing

difficulty. I will alternate asking each of you the questions from six to one, and when asked a question, you may choose to answer or to pass. This is like the Cones of Dunshire of trivia games. It's about the cones. If you choose to answer, a correct answer gets you the amount of points equal to the question's number,

but an incorrect answer loses you those same points. So question six is six points, five is five and so on. If you answer incorrectly, your opponent will have the opportunity to steal. And if they answer correctly, they get the points, but if they answer incorrectly, they do not lose the points. If you pass, your opponent gets asked the next question, which is slightly less difficult. After we have gone through all the questions, the passes are asked again and cannot be skipped a second time. On the second pass through the questions, no points are lost and there is no stealing.

And a warning, questions and answers to later questions may contain clues to the answers of earlier ones. Now, prepare to enter the Gauntlet Caves Edition. Brennan, you will go first. Number six, in 2017 an underwater cave was discovered in Madagascar that was full of the bones of hundreds of kinds of what animal?

Whales. Well, he's gonna go for it and get negative six points, everybody. Great. That was not right. You said you have to answer right away, right? No. Okay.

I love the gauntlet though, because it makes you, you never know what's going on. I, actually, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling optimistic, or whatever that word was. Let's keep going. Okay. Sari, do you get to try and steal if he gets it wrong? Yes.

Do I steal now? Do I have to go fast? You can try. No, I mean, great. That's also wrong. But now Sari, you get another question. And this question is number five. In 2007, archaeologists discovered the oldest known winery in a cave in Armenia. Within a thousand years, in what year do you think the researchers think this winery was

built? Pass. I don't know anything about time. Brennan, question number four. For some cave-dwelling creatures, there isn't really a lot to do, and nobody exemplifies this better than a particular cave-dwelling animal in Bosnia and Herzegovina that was observed sitting in the exact same spot for seven years. What kind of animal was it? Whale.

Oh, sorry, hint. Yes, keep going. Sorry, sorry. I didn't know there was a hint. Give me the hint. Here's a hint. It's not a great hint't know there was a hint. Give me the hint. Here's a hint. It's not a great hint, but it's a hint.

You don't have to be Sherlock to figure it out. Whale. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. You don't have to be Sherlock to figure it out. John Watson. That's a good that's a good guess. It's still, still incorrect. It's the caveman.

It's the caveman. You said Bosnia Herzegovina, so immediately my head went to axolotl, but that's not where those live, so I don't know. No, no, but not a terrible, not a terrible vibe for a cave dwelling animal. They definitely, there are some, plenty of amphibians in caves.

Sari gets to try and steal now. What do you think it might have been? Yeah, you get to try and steal Brennan's. Sari should also get four guesses because I guessed whale twice and then John Watson and then Axel Ode kind of sneakily. Okay, I'm guessing.

Whale whale, Irene Adler and. A fish? Can I, do I have to be more specific? A cave fish? I can, I can tell you that it's not a fish. Well, then I got it wrong. Cause that was my real guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but it's-

Well, I blew my first three guesses. And then- You really did. So far we've guessed cave whale four times in total. It's gotta be the answer at some point. That's maybe by process of elimination. Is that how the gauntlet works? Yeah, no, we'll get there.

All right, number three, can you get a point? Now you can answer, we can get the answer. Do we learn either of those? We don't know what it was in Madagascar either. I thought we'd go through again. We don't go through again if you both guess? We can go through again. Let's just do more guesses.

We can get some more whale questions. I'm come coming on size show to leave with the same. No, you'll eventually know. Ignorance. I'm not coming here to walk stunned and dazed through a life of no answers to hard questions like I do every day of my life. For God's sake, tell me the still animal hiding in the cave in Bosnia. You won't get there. Okay.

We'll get there. Sari, question of... Yes. We will run through the questions again and the answers will be no. No, you didn't. That's a pre-question answer. Sorry, sorry. The question is, Devil's Hole is a fairly unassuming looking geothermal pool in Nevada,

but beneath the surface of the water is a cavern that's at least 400 feet deep, though its actual bottom has never been seen by human eyes. Devil Hole is the only habitat of what critically endangered fish species? This is the first one I actually know the answer to. Is it the... A devil... A bony-eared ass fish? Is that the guy?

Is that where he lives? No, no, no. My buddy, my pal. It's not the bony-eared ass fish, though that's a? Is that where he lives? No, no, no. My buddy, my pal. It's not the bony-eared ass fish, though that's a great fish. I love him. Brennan, would you like to try and steal? Yes, I would. Whales are not fish.

Oh, yes. That's why your question is kind of confusing me. I think can I challenge? Can I challenge and say that whales are not technically fish and so therefore the whales that are hiding in Devil's Hole would not be considered an endangered fish species? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that's my challenge. All right, you're wrong.

But you can. Dang it. You do get a chance to answer number two. Okay. And maybe, maybe, there's a potential opportunity here. You might already know about the stockpiles of government-owned cheese, totaling about 300 million pounds, stored and converted limestone mines. But do you know in which state the majority of these stockpiles are in?

That's not easy. There's a one in 50 chance, though, I guess. I think these are in the United Kingdom. Right. You said 50 states name a U.S. state that might have a lot of cheese in a mine. All right, I'm going to say Wisconsin. Oh, that was a great guess. But no, Sarah, you want to try and steal?

Name another state. I think I know. Oh, do you know? Because we have a friend that lives in the state. It's in the cave with the cheese. Yeah, she's the cheese. She's the cavewoman, right? Like the platonic ideal of a cavewoman.

No, it's Missouri. Question. It is Missouri. We got points, everybody. We've got points. Still deep in the negative, but yes, we got some some movement up and down. If it had been in the UK, I would have said it was in Wales. That's not a state and down. If it had been in the UK, I would have said it was in Wales. That's not a state. No.

I mean, I guess it is a state in the broader geopolitical sense. Yes, yes, yes. All right, Brennan, you go. No, I think Sari gets this one, too, because she just stole in 2000. Miners in Mexico discovered a cave full of the giant version of this geological formation that you might be used to seeing in alternative healing stores.

A crystal? That's right. Okay. Yes. Giant crystals. Are you gonna make me name a rock? Quartzite? No.

Suitable for cleansing the auras of giant lemurs, these crystals measure up to 36 feet in length and weigh up to 55 tons. Put that on your windowsill, get some good dreams. There you go. That's right. All right, and now I'm going to add, going back through and then we find out

because we're going through the second pass. So number six, to Brennan, in 2017, an underwater cave was discovered in Madagascar full of the bones of what kind of animal? Fish? No, hint, I just said it. Oh, you just said lemurs, lemurs. What kind of lemurs?

Ring-tailed? No, no, the crystals were big, so the lemurs were... Bigger. Yeah, they're big, giant lemurs. Giant lemurs, giant lemurs. Giant lemurs, giant lemurs. Enormous lemurs. Huge. Several different species of giant lemur were found in the cave.

Some as large as gorillas. How they got in that cave is a mystery. The bones don't show a lot of evidence that the animals were eaten. So it's just full of intact, dead giant lemurs. Maybe they fell in there. Maybe they just decided that was their burial ground. We don't know. Well done, Brennan.

You got those six points back. Sari, in 2007, archaeologists discovered the oldest known winery in a cave in Armenia with a thousand years. What do you think, when you think that was built? There's no penalty anymore. There's no penalty anymore. I wasn't listening to the questions close enough.

I want to say, make a fool of myself because I still didn't learn time. 800 common era. Incorrect. It was sometime between 4100 and 4000 BC. So these are old caves. They found a clay basin that they think the ancient vinters stopped grapes in and a a vat possibly that was used for fermentation. Also cups, grape vines, grape seeds. They also

found the oldest known shoe in the same cave complex. Oldest shoe. I guess we had to have an old shoe. And there it is. First, it was a wine stomping shoe, probably. That is an old shoe. They don't make them like that anymore. No, I don't think my shoes are going to be here 6,000 years from now. Brennan, we are back to this weird cave animal in Bosnia and Herzegovina that was observed sitting in the same spot for seven years. You don't have to be Sherlock to figure it out, but you kind of do.

And is it this thing where is some other question you gave a hint about what this was? No, there may be there was supposed to be, but I missed it if there was. It's you probably have never even heard of this kind of animal, which will make it harder. You need to be Sherlock to figure it out. OK, and it's in a cave. Yeah, and it's not the it's not the fish from the devil's hole question. Is it a devil? It's the devil.

The devil! Satan himself. You cracked it. He was very still. He doesn't have much to do these days because we're all such good people. In fact, it was an om. Have you ever heard of an om? I have not heard of an om.

What the hell is an om? They are blind cave salamanders. They have no predators where they live. And they only mate every 12 years. So they don't have to do much but wait around and just wait for like a shrimp or snail to swim past them. And the seven-year Olm is a bit of an outlier, but in that same cave, most of the Olms only moved about 32 feet over the course of a decade. If you imagine an axolotl, an olm is like, it's demonic, cause it's like the mirror image that you see

when you're scared. Yeah, yes. I mean, it looks so much like an axolotl, I feel like we should have given it to him, but. I mean, I'll tell you what this dude looks like. It looked like a sperm with four little bitty legs. Yeah. No, it does look very sperm-y.

But everywhere where the axolotl is like cuddly and round, it's long. It's long and pointy and has no eyes. It's the naturally demonic shape. Long, no eyes. Okay, back to Sari. Do you know anything about this fish that lives in Devil's Hole?

Okay. A rare fish in Devil's Hole? Okay, a rare fish in Devil's Hole, a deep, is it a kind of salmon? That'd be weird. No, it would be weird. I thought of the weirdest possible thing. A migratory fish that lives in a single case. Okay, well if you phrase it like that, I sound a little bit dumb.

But a bunch of salmon down there being like, I tell you, we got turned around. This is maybe maybe there's a little salty second water at the bottom. And that's how they just go up and down and up and down. That is they go up and down to the between the two waters. That could be their migration. The Devil's Hole pupfish is a one inch long fish. As one of the first species protected by the Endangered Species Act in 2013,

their population hit an all time low of 35. They are doing much better these days because they have hit a 25 year population high of 191. Way to go, pupfish! It's been doing it in there! They're little cuties! Look at these guys! I want to go visit them. I've always wanted to go visit the Devil's Hole pupfish. They're like a beautiful blue. They're like a little gem-like blue fish and they just hang out in a hole.

They're extremely sensitive. Like the water level of the cave goes up and down and it's like, they're about to go extinct. Like that's, I mean, it's high water. We don't even know how they got there. It's really wild. The Darwinian, the thing he said about, you know, like the misunderstanding of survival of the fittest, which was the idea of like animals getting like jacked and scary when really what fittest means is to their environment. Yeah.

And you look at like these little pupfish or an olm, it's like all these different strategies to survive. And it's like you have these powerful apex predators and then you have a salamander being like I'm going to go where nothing's happening and stop moving. Like that is a really sad way to get ahead, but it's gonna work. Congratulations on your 32 feet traveled per decade. Well, we've got our final episode count

of Brennan has negative six, Sari has two. That's what the gauntlet will do to us. Sari got nothing out of all of that and Brennan managed to get the less than nothing. Congratulations. The king of Halloween. I also say he's the king of Halloween. Yeah, but it's Brennan.

So I just met him. I'm a people pleaser. I just met a guy. Take the crown, take the crown. It's great. Honestly, I don't deserve it. And I had a ball and that's what counts. And ultimately, you know, the important thing is I guessed whale as many times as I wanted.

Yeah. And maybe you could have been right one of those times, but now it's time for Ask the Science Couch where we ask a question to our couch of razor sharp, spooky, tiffy minds. Sari, what do we got? At MaxRBMC on YouTube asked, why are caves good environments to mature cheese in? Cava wine?

Here's my guess. Very stable. That's it. Just like temperature, humidity, all the things stay the same. Yeah. I mean, it's basically that. It's temperature, humidity, light. Those are the three things that you want to control when it comes to maturing cheese, maturing wine, and the cave naturally controls all three of those things

pretty well because it's sheltered from all the rest of the chaotic atmosphere doing all the things, changing temperature, changing water content, changing light. So they're shielded. And I feel like we just found them at some point. Wine and cheese are some of the earlier foods that humans have crafted in our history. I really love that so many of our best foods were like, what if we let it spoil, but in a really specific way?

Like I like it when it gets gross, but not too gross. Fermentation, that's the, there's a lot of places like that, like aged meat, all of it, so much of the flavor of meat comes from, you don't want it fresh exactly. You want a little, you gotta get a little funky. Yeah, you need a couple chemical reactions, but you need the right ones.

And it's just the cooler temperatures, the okay level of humidity, do the right ones. If you have too much light, I think, those are usually when the chemical reactions start getting bad, you start splitting molecules that take a long time to form. I found a word called light strike. So if you expose your wine to too much light,

like sunlight, UV radiation, you get light strike, where there are off aromas. I once did that to a bottle of Diet Coke. I left it on my porch and it got lightstrike and it changed color. It was it was like tea color instead of Coke color. And then I opened it and it smelled not like it should have. But it was like a completely unopened, like it hadn't I hadn't been exposed to the air at all. Just just photons.

There was a just a glass of like unsweetened iced tea that was left on a shelf in my like childhood home. And then some plants got moved inside on that day randomly. And for like a year that tea was just in the sun. And the sort of like Sucian universe ecosystem that existed in that glass when that plant got moved, was one of the most sort of gasp inducing,

it was like, the sun, and then you kind of realize to yourself, like, oh, is this what's been happening on this planet? Is this, I Is this? Yeah. I guess this sort of rock is a glass that was left in the sun for a couple billion years. You maybe invented a new kind of kombucha. Yes, we didn't drink it.

It looked completely solid. So we. Oh no! So to drink it would have been a real task. That would be optimistic, they may say in Russia. Optimistish, yeah. And now for our listeners on Patreon, we're answering a bonus Science Scout question. Sari, what's the second question? Hale on Discord and iScoot69 on Twitter asked, do we know if there are caves on other planets?

How would we figure out if there could be exo caves? If you want to hear the answer to that question, which was largely philosophical, as well as enjoy all of the episodes totally ad-free, head over to Patreon. That's patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents at our $8 a month tier. You get new episodes ad-free and extended shenanigans as we answer a bonus Science Couch question every episode. You'll also get a link to our private Discord server and maybe also some more goodies in the future.

Who knows? Our patrons are the best and we're so grateful for their support of the show. If you wanna ask the Science Couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents. Check out our YouTube community tab where we'll send out topics for upcoming episodes every week or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on Discord. Thank

you to at FellFireFerret and at Orbiting Wombat on Twitter, also everybody else who asked us your questions for this episode. Brendan, thank you so much for joining us. What are you working on right now? You can find me at Dropout TV where I am the creator and GM for Dimension 20. And we have a bunch of amazing seasons on the way. You can find me GMing for Worlds Beyond Number, the actual play podcast that I do with Lou Wilson, Abreya Iyengar, Eric Ishii. You can find me performing on a bunch of great shows on Dropout, Game Changer,

Make Some Noise, a bunch of other stuff. And we're gonna, we are touring, so we have a show coming up at Madison Square Garden in January, which is gonna be awesome. So what a hoot. What a joy, a privilege, and an honor. And so there's a bunch of stuff coming up. Thank you so much, Brennan. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's really easy to do that. First, you can go to patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents and become a patron. Special shout out to patron Les Aker for their support. Secondly, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. That's super helpful and it helps us know what you like about the show.

And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Ceri Reilly. And I've been Brennan Lee Mulligan. Tune in next time for another spooky mystery guest. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Jess Stempert. Our associate producer is E. Schmidt.

Our editor, Seth Glicksman. Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz-Bazio. Our editorial assistants are Tabuki Trapervardi and Alex Bilow. Today's games are written by Daniel Kamisky and Sam Schultz. Our sound design is by Joseph Tudemettish. Our executive producers are Nicole Sweeney and me, Hank Green. And of course, we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you and remember, the mind is not a coffin to be filled, but a jack-o-lantern

to be lightened. But one more thing. Different human cultures have created art inside caves all over the world, including the limestone caves on Mona Island, which is about halfway between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. A 2017 research paper analyzed Mona Island cave art pieces that we think were created some time between the 11th and 15th centuries by indigenous Caribbean peoples. Most of the art was actually subtractive carvings into the once gooey,

creamy mineral precipitate called moon milk that see what certain limestone cave walls. But other art pieces were painted on using pigments made of charcoal, ochre or bat guano mixed with plant compounds. That's a fact, baby. So the but fact is just that there's poop in it. Now I thought they were gonna draw more butts. They gotta draw butts with the poop. But oh well. I would have drawn butts. They gotta draw butts with the poop. But oh well.

I would have drawn butts. If it was me, I would have drawn butts.