Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Barnacles

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why barnacles are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode. And hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Barnacles. Known for being crusty. Famous for being oceany. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why barnacles are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie, hello. Yeah, that's me. Hello. Thank you for matching the voice I did for some reason.

Thank you. We keep going higher and higher. Yeah. Folks, I'm so excited, again, just like last week and before, to be on the Maximum Fun Network and with my new co-host, Katie Golden. And we have the Discord going, too. I also I realized we're taping this shortly before announcing that news to folks. So I have not received most of your reactions in this moment when I'm taping it, but I'm very excited about them. I gave a hint to patrons that there would be news the week we're taping this.

And a few of you correctly guessed specifically what network we're joining. I did. I put like a little rocket ship emoji in the title of the post. That's probably how you sussed it out, because that is a symbol of maximum fun. But congrats to Connor Dirksen, Caroline Gaston and Jimmy Rulo, to name a few, for solving the emoji riddle and guessing where we are. It's a good thing that we didn't join the Elon Musk podcast network. That did not happen. On Mars. Very limited oxygen here.

It's true. You can get sponsorship from Emerald Mines either way. You don't have to work with that guy. And that's our sponsor, folks. Emerald Mines. They're green and they're great. They're certainly not green in terms of the environment. Also, human labor practices, not great, not good.

The irony of emeralds, but that's not our topic today. Forget it. Because thank you so much to Sarah Stella, especially your patience, Sarah, as you put this together. Our topic this week is barnacles. Katie, what's your relationship to or opinion of barnacles? They're great. I love them so much. There are so many animals in the ocean who have this lifestyle of just like, eh, I'm not going to move anymore.

I'm done. That's it. Here's the thing. If folks are longtime listeners, they know that I have a phobia of sea creatures. I'm not doing a bit. I find them creepy crawly and they mess me up. But like specifically most of the ones that stay in one place are one of my big phobias. My number one phobia is jellyfish.

We have a whole episode about it. But anemones and wiggly spongy stuff, I really don't like. Barnacles are on the easier side of that for me. Because when you see them far away, it's just a little crusty lump. And that's not so wiggly. But yeah, boy oh boy. The sea is full of stuff that's just like, I'm not a plant, but I'm going to root. I'm going to stay where I am.

Yeah, I mean, like you see them from far away and it's just a whale's acne. And you get close and it's like, uh-oh, tendrils. Yeah, teen whales. I never thought of them that way yet. Right. Doing a bunch of research on this, I was like, great, I'm sure I'll see a small crusty lump. And then all kinds of little diagrams and close-ups of the wiggly parts, the cirri, they are called, like the modified legs that are inside barnacles. We'll have pictures for folks.

They gave me the willies throughout researching. Can you imagine just having one of those like little tendrily legs fluttering against your cheek? Just like. OK, I mean, I'm on the verge of leaving, but sure, we'll keep going. I'm mean to Alex. This is a new thing I'm doing. But yeah, whale's acne is very funny. That's the other way I know these is cool whales or like wooden ships in history.

And they set dress it to have barnacles on it. It's a, it's a big like marine people thing. I've also been reading the Tintin comics for the first time. And Captain Haddock says blustering barnacles when he's mad. Most of the time. marine people thing. I've also been reading the Tintin comics for the first time, and Captain Haddock says blustering barnacles when he's mad most of the time. That's like most of the comic. That's good. It's a swear word in SpongeBob, too. Like barnacles is, I guess, a cuss in SpongeBob. I guess it's just something about the crunchiness of the word in English. I don't know. Yeah. Barnacles. It feels it's a good it's a good hard sailor word. And as we explore the sea here, we have stats and numbers

this week. But before that, I want to do one big takeaway about what these animals are, because, you know, if folks are marine biology experts, maybe they knew some of this, but it was all surprising to me. And here we go into takeaway number one. Barnacles are crustaceans that begin life as free-floating larvae fathered by astounding penises. That's a whole set of stuff there. They're crustaceans. They begin life as free-floating larvae that are not in one place. And amazing penises are involved in the reproduction.

Yeah, they're pretty weird. And I love that they are related to crabs and lobsters. It's like crab. Okay, got it. Lobster. Yes, great. Barnacle. Barnacle.

And it's just this weird little beak thing with legs coming out of its beak mouth thing. And it's just gone completely wild. Right. It's like, okay, the crustaceans are all like scrabbling around. That's a core thing. Yeah. Scuttling. But no.

Yeah. Scuttling, crawling, you know, creeping even. But the barnacle has gone off the rails with the design of the crustacean, which I do love the ingenuity of just like, no, what if I repurpose my legs to be creepy little tongue things? Right. It's like, yeah, they're almost like when I played laser tag as a kid, right? Like there were a lot of kids who ran around the laser tag room trying to shoot people in all sorts of different places. And then there were a few kids who just camped and they would camp in one spot and pick people off.

And that feels like the barnacle choice. Like it's just so different from what I think is fun about laser tag. Spawn campers. They're like, I got these legs that could move me around or I could glue myself to a whale. Yes. Honestly, I kind of do. I kind of do vibe with that. Just like, you know, I got legs. They walk me around pretty good. But if I could glue myself to a whale and just cruise. Right. It's not a bad idea. Whales swim in either way.

Right. Right. Exactly. The trains of the sea. And a barnacle is like a boxcar stowaway, like a 1930s hobo. I like that. That's cool. Yeah.

A little bindle full of barnacle stuff. Barnacle paraphernalia in there. Yeah. This takeaway here, there's a lot of marine biology. It's really cool. And the key sources are a piece written for National Geographic in 2013 by science writer Ed Young. Ah, yes, Ed Young. The Atlantic now and other things.

I also, with any topic like this, I have to clarify, I mean, the Atlantic, the magazine, not The Atlantic, the ocean. Anyway, it's not in the water. The other source is an amazing book. It's called Darwin's Backyard, How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory. Author is James T. Costa, professor of biology at Western Carolina University. Go mountain boomers. But that's the other source here. Because there are many barnacle species in the world and they all live their adult lives fixed to one location. And that is all I knew about them before researching them. I didn't think about like, how do they spread? Do they have any other life stages? Like how does an animal just pop up like whale acne everywhere? And it turns out there's a whole thing going on that's way more interesting. Yeah. Yeah. When an animal sticks in one spot, it's called being sessile. There are a lot of these kinds of animals in the ocean. And it is every time you see something that it's like, wait a minute, that's not a plant and that's not a rock. That is an

animal, but it's stuck in one spot if you look into its history of being its its many life stages those are usually very wacky and fun and weird okay that's good to know i if if folks suggest an anemone episode i'm gonna sweat for a week trying to research it but there's probably interesting stuff about how they propagate from place to place. That's probably cool. Yeah. So it's probably cool. I don't want to hear about it. Yeah. But looking at it's the worst. I can almost read about it, but every marine biology book, they're like, obviously you're here for lavish closeup pictures that we took with amazing underwater cameras. Right. And I'm like, no, but okay. I used to tickle them. I grew up in San Diego, so I lived near the beach and I could go visit the tide pools. And I, I love just like tickling

them and their little, little anemone mouths, which isn't really, I mean, it's, you know, in their tentacles and just kind of tickled them and they'd close up. They'd get all angry at you. It's fun. You don't look like you're having fun. I was briefly in my mind palace for sea creatures don't exist. Now I'm back. But really, shout out to everybody with non-logical phobias. They're great. Anyway. So barnacles, yeah, they're crustaceans. Their closest relatives are crabs and lobsters and shrimp. And if you want to get super detailed about it, crustaceans are arthropods, and arthropods are invertebrates with hard exoskeletons. So that's one of the more obvious barnacle crustacean things, like they're invertebrates and they have hard exoskeletons on them. But this basic thing of like barnacles are crustaceans, apparently it's relatively new

scientific knowledge. This was first published and described in any kind of journal in 1830. A British army surgeon named John Vaughan Thompson, he gave the first generally accurate account of the barnacle life cycle. This was also debated as soon as he published it, and there was an ongoing fight for a few more decades about what barnacles are. People said, no, they're mollusks or they're other animal types. But the breakthrough came from Thompson observing the barnacle larval stage because he used something called a plankton net, which is a net just where the gaps are very tiny and caught some barnacle larvae. And then he held onto them and kept them alive and watched them grow into adult barnacles. And so he said, oh, okay, well, they are a thing before that. Great.

into adult barnacles. And so he said, oh, okay, well, they are a thing before that. Great. Yeah. Yeah. Because their larval stages do not look like what you would expect them to look like. They don't really look like what you would expect anything to look like, in my opinion. They look very, very alien. Yeah. They look like bug monsters, but so tiny too. And I was thinking of the Zerg in starcraft when i was looking at pictures it's sort of like that but it's a miniature tiny species that's just born yeah yeah telling you you got to build more pylons or whatever i forgot how to play starcraft pylon seems right it's in space you're at war there's no time to think about it space war with bug monsters yeah but these ones are tiny and in the ocean and everywhere everywhere yeah this is

a global animal they're in salt water all over the world and uh yeah there's different species but in general they all start as a tiny free swimming larvae with one eye and with a set of projecting structures for swimming. Thompson named this the Noplius stage of barnacle life. And that name has stuck around. And I had never heard of this guy. It seems like this is sort of his main contribution to zoology and science. Yeah. I mean, it's the unsung hero who really, really gets into barnacles specifically. Yeah. And it seems like generally just wanting to scoop up the sea and see what you get. It's a real opposite of my mentality about sea creatures. Like I'm panning for gold in the sea. I'm going to just do the lottery of critters. Let's see what happens. I mean, there are so, so many of these very, these microscopic, usually there's a bunch of larval stages of various different kinds of sea life from fish to, you know, mollusks to crustaceans, all of these things.

And like, you know, yeah, there, there, there are so many, it's. They actually comprise like the greatest daily migration of animals because they will come up to the surface of the ocean at night en masse and then go down deeper into the ocean during the day to avoid predation. So it's really incredible. There's this whole ecosystem of little tiny itty bitty babies in the ocean that you can't see with your naked eye. And that move is like barnacle larvae or all sorts of little things? All sorts of little things. Wow. That's cool. It's like Muppet babies, but like thousands of species of little critters in the ocean.

but like thousands of species of little critters in the ocean. And of course, also things that never grow to large sizes, like other types of zooplankton. Muppet babies, and also you said they're avoiding predators. I'm imagining the deep sea is full of that human lady's feet that walk through Muppet babies. They're avoiding that. And I like just hearing the words of this too. I don't want to see it.

And what an amazing thing, because this is just going on without the knowledge of people who don't think about it. And that Anoplius stage is also pretty brief. Apparently most barnacle species from birth to adulthood, that's about six months. There's a couple cycles of life stage before that, but they start as anoplius, they swim around, they eat, and then they grow as they eat. And then there's an intermediate stage of life called being a cyprid. This is the second stage of being a barnacle. That's where they stop eating and they develop specialized antennae. And then the antennae

feel out a solid location to live for the rest of their lives. and then the antennae feel out a solid location to live for the rest of their lives and then the antennae produce a glue-like substance to attach to that location so there's a middle stage too yeah yeah i love that's my favorite part just like gonna excrete some quick cement out of my antenna and then just smash my head into a whale butt or rock or ship. And there, there we go for the rest of my life. Yay. Did it. Yeah. Yeah. My forehead can go here is the biggest decision of their lives. There are definitely days I just want to face plant to a whale and not think about it anymore, you know? It is.

Like, when I was a little kid, I was pretty shy and occasionally I would just hide my head under stuff. It feels like that's barnacle teenagerdom into adulthood is like, no. But then reaching for food for the rest of your life with your CRI, your little legs. Right, right. Well, I guess now that I'm here, yes. Passively scooping up Dorito dust. I'm sure they'd love it. We haven't tested it.

Because, yeah, once they do that, not only is stage one their baby's swimming around, and that's also how they spread, right? They need to get around to new locations. The Cyprid stage, they find a place to stop. And then once they have attached with their Cyprid glue, they proceed into adulthood. They produce a new, stronger glue. There's like an adult glue to really fix on.

Adult glue for manly men and adults. Tactical glue, yes. And then they also start secreting protective calcareous plates. So that gives them a shell on themselves. And then they begin eating again. Apparently also that Cyprid stage, since they're not eating, they get more and more aggressive about like, got a plant, got a plant, because eventually they'll get hungry. I also feel that very much. I also feel that very much. As I'm hungry, I got to find a place to sort of cement my butt and then find food. It's an instinct I think we can all sort of appreciate.

Right. Me and Barnacles, when the hot new restaurant opens in the city, I'm like, but how long do I have to wait? But how long am I going to be standing outside though? Right. Eventually my face goes directly into the wall and I excrete a glue out of my eyes. Uh, and then I scanned the QR code for the venue. Like, okay, good. Oh man. Yeah. And, and this, all of this is more interesting to me than barnacle adulthood like the one thing i knew about barnacles is just fine and then the rest of this is wild this is really interesting yeah really it is it is interesting to me because the most iconic part of a lot of the life cycles of these animals like barnacles it's like you see the adult form

it is what it is uh and then there's this whole hidden sort of life because like barnacles. It's like you see the adult form. It is what it is. And then there's this whole hidden sort of life because like we can't, the larvae stage are so small. You don't really see them. We don't really experience them that much, but they have this whole like other life that goes on before they turn into the thing that we know them as. Yeah, it's amazing. I also was surprised to learn how there was sort of a burst of learning about this. John Vaughan Thompson observes and then publishes this in 1830. And apparently that kicks off a debate and also an 1830s surge in the study of barnacles. And later in the show, we'll talk especially about Charles Darwin getting into this, but like all the leading lights of especially British science, there started to be a fixation

on barnacles. We really need to get to know this animal specifically. Yeah, the barnacle boom, followed by the barnacle bust, of course. I made both of those things up, but yes. I guess all the words start with B, right? Like barnacle bubble. Sure. It's even oceanic. There's barnacles in them hills. Yeah. No, I love that. I love that barnacles were chic for a time and I wish they had remained so. Yeah, they really didn't. Like 1830s, 1840s, people were like, this is the hottest thing. And then everybody moved on, except for a few wonderful scientists today.

Yeah. Yeah. The barnacle wave. Yeah. No, it's too bad. We got to bring them back. You know, like, I think that young people will bring back old styles. Like, let's bring back barnacles.

Just going to a vintage store, like trying to convince the barnacles to unglue and re-glue onto you like come on come on and they're they're all like no i put my head into the wall of l train vintage at williamsburg i'm staying here thanks avatar way of water but just barnacle cut like space barnacles you know i think it could be cool kate winslet learning to glue her head to a wall for eight minutes. Like, wow, eight whole minutes of doing that's amazing. Really cool. And as this wave of study happens, there's just such an amazing flip from we really don't know much about barnacles to scientists, especially British scientists, are trying to find out everything. And one of the first things guys like Darwin started observing is barnacle penises.

They're like, I have to record and, and share the amazing barnacle penis with everyone. Of course. What a boys club. Yeah, I guess there's that too. And also like shout out to listeners who, as soon as they saw this would be a topic said, look into barnacle penises. And I took it. I was like, I trust you guys.

I'm not going to block you for messaging me. This kind of thing. I'm going to look into it. And they were right. It's amazing. It turns out that because barnacles are in fixed locations as adults, most barnacle species have developed a very incredible and extendable penis where they will just reach all the way into another barnacle from across the way to fertilize

them. Yeah. Just like a big bindi straw. Right. But it's a penis, yes. Yeah. And we'll have pictures. I worked for you folks.

I looked at this. And Ed Young in particular says some species achieve penis extension of eight times their body length. Yeah. So that's an early number. Eight times the length of the barnacle's body. That's how long the penis can be reaching into another. yeah I do love that I love that you know it's this unassuming little thing and then you know it turns out just the longest appendage ever yeah just I mean how else are they

it's always really funny to me when you have an evolutionary problem okay I'm sessile I'm stuck to this rock how am I going to meet other eligible barnacle rats? And it's like, well, okay. I can't reach them. I can't walk over to them. So what about just a really long penis? What about it? Right. What about it? Why not? Yeah. Like that was almost all other species said, well well i just won't fix in one location all the time and barnacles said well my penis will come to you great right exactly

it's uh it's the dijoner it's it's not delivery it's dijoner it's not dijoner either it's dijono It's DiGiorno. Is that the mean name real Italians call DiGiorno's? Right? Like once you have the real pizza, then you poop on it with this other name. No, I think it's my stubborn Americanism coming out of me after being stuck in Italy for so long. And as far as the whole animal kingdom goes, barnacles are uniquely committed to building up a penis. Apparently barnacles have the largest penises in the animal kingdom compared to their body size. It's not simply the biggest, apparently the largest animal penis belongs to the blue whale, but that's only a tiny,

largest animal penis belongs to the blue whale, but that's only a tiny, that's almost boring, like sure. Uh, cause that's, but that's just a tiny fraction of a blue whale's mass, uh, for barnacle body size, their penis is uniquely large. Right. It's like, it's the proportion. It's, uh, you know, to barnacle size to penis proportion is the most impressive, barnacle size to penis proportion is the most impressive, which, you know, like, congrats, guys. Good job, I guess. And the other thing about it is congrats to like, all the barnacles in a vaguely gendered way, because it turns out that barnacles are hermaphrodites, and specifically a kind called functionally sequential hermaphrodites. California Academy of Sciences says that they act either as a male or female at any point in time, not both at the same time, but they just choose to begin acting as one or the other.

So also when you have a set of barnacles on something, you get this complex back and forth of barnacles choosing to be males and fertilize each other or choose to receive fertilization. It's sort of a whole team operation. Right. And by like choose, it's usually they are responding to some kind of environmental stimuli that would cause this like shift from functionality, right? Yeah. And yeah, it's a experience that is very alien to me. We're back to these being aliens because their larvae look like Zerg and then they're doing this sort of interplay to reproduce that is amazing. Are you going to talk about there's the barnacle where there's the little males that will inject themselves into the females and actually become part of the female and become like sperm producing cells no i didn't run across that that's amazing it's cool it's it's

what it's a species of barnacle that does this and it's fun because also they will talk more in a bit about how many kinds of barnacles there are there's an amazing amount but also like so many when folks reached out and said, hey, you've got to talk about the giant barnacle penises, it turns out that it doesn't apply to all barnacles. And there is new research about some that do not do this. Because Ed Young talks about this in 2013. So forget the 1830s.

In 2013, graduate student Marjan Barazande of the University of Alberta, go golden bears and go pandas. They have two sports mascots, but Marjan Barizande recorded observations of a pretty major barnacle species called the goose barnacle, scientific name Polycypus polymerus. But this was like breaking barnacle penis news in 2013, which is that the goose barnacle does not do this long reach. It does a different behavior called sperm casting, where they launch their sperm into the surrounding water for other barnacles to sieve out. And so the journal Nature has pictures of a goose barnacle penis with its legs, and they're about the same size. It's not like a remarkably huge penis like the others. Sperm casting. It's like podcasting,

but with sperm. Oh, no, it is the same kind of word. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is. I think that's really interesting because you have different barnacle species all with the same problem, right? Like, oh, right, I stuck myself to a rock or to a whale. How do I get together and mate with someone else? And then different species have different techniques. It's incredible. Yeah.

And this solution that the goose barnacle chose, apparently sperm casting is also done by sea sponges, by coral, by some mollusks. There's going to be a humongous variety of barnacles we won't totally be able to cover because so many of them have chosen different solutions to different problems over the evolutionary period. It's amazing. It's great. Yeah. And correct me if I'm wrong, but sperm casting is sort of like the confetti style of like, hey, you know what? We just see if you get that, you know, just like tossing it out there, seeing who catches it. It's fun. It's kind of a celebratory version of mating, I think. Yeah, it is. It seems lower pressure, I guess. Right. Like you didn't come all this way to

make it happen. So, you know, you can just do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just low pressure. Just like, Hey, you know, smoke if you got them. I don't know. I'm realizing I'm going too deep into particle psychology. They don't have one. They're different from us. But yeah, this whole thing, it's all, again, relatively new news. We kind of began figuring out what these animals are less than 200 years ago in the 1830s. And major new discoveries are still coming all the time because there's so many species and there's just so much to find out about these tiny crustaceans. Because again, crustaceans, they're sort of like crabs and lobsters,

even though they don't look it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that is the thing about the ocean. There's so many species of animals and they don't always make themselves particularly easy to study. First of all, they're in the water. So then we'd have to be in the water too.

And that's harder to do than it sounds like. Yes, we have boats. But like, how do you get your boat to the right place where they are and the right depth and track them? And so, yes, it's tough. It's tough to study ocean animals. And plus, people like me are removing ourselves from the process. We're like, this is spooky. And then everybody else is like, you're just being irrational. And I'm like, I know. this is spooky. And then everybody else is like, you're just being irrational. And I'm like, I know. I mean, it is kind of spooky. I don't have a phobia of marine animals, but I agree they're spooky. That's kind of why I like them. So like, I don't think they're not spooky. I think they're very spooky. They're very weird. It's super, super weird. They're like the most alien thing you're going to find on Earth. So, no, I agree with you that they're very spooky, but I dig that. But I can totally see how that would be unpleasant to experience.

Yeah, good. We're all on the same non-sea creature team. I like it. Yeah, good. We're all on the same non-sea creature team. I like it. Well, I know that was a very big takeaway. Next, we have some stats and numbers here, and then another takeaway. And our next fascinating thing, it's this quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called... Let the stats fall when it numbers. We will stand tall and count them all together. Let the stats fall.

Numbers totals. We will add sums. PEMDAS them all. Add stats fall. Now I want a movie where Daniel Craig is a statistician, but he does some combination of his Southern accent and his James Bond character. Yeah, a little Knives Out James Bond number man. I'm into it. Yeah. Because 007 is one number. We can go so much beyond that. Right. I'm into it. Yeah. Because 007 is one number.

We can go so much beyond that. Right. Like, come on. Right. 008 even. I can count. If you put 007 into like Excel or something, it would just turn it into seven. Right.

Like it would make it totally uncool. Yeah. It's tough. Yeah. It's that's not. Redundant. I don't understand quite why you need the two zeros beforehand. Maybe they originally meant it to be 0.07 or something, but then they dropped the decimal. But that's just irresponsible. Yeah.

That's not good data management. Come on. We're just turning it to M and the modern ones where M's always like, you're a dinosaur, Bond. You're a dinosaur. We have other systems now. And then he goes and saves the day. We don't use the Dewey Decimal System anymore, Bond. He drops his library books on surprise. Like, what? Now he's geek. Folks, that Stats and Numbers name, by the way, that was submitted by Arden Halloran. Thank you, Arden. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SifPod at gmail.com or through the new SifPod Discord, where there's a channel for it. And first number, it ties into some stuff we've been talking about, because the number is more than 1,400.

And more than 1,400 is the number of world barnacle species. There's a bunch. It's not just the one kind I had seen on whales, I thought. Yeah. There's lots of little ones getting in there, having fun, doing their own little system of mating and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah. It turns out there's a few pretty universal barnacle traits, mainly that they live in a fixed location and live in saltwater. But the U.S. National Park Service says there's more than 1,400. Also, several hundred of those are commonly known as acorn barnacles. That's sort of a broad name for a lot of them.

And acorn barnacles are what I felt like I had seen before, like the little conical crusty kind. But also there's a bunch of differences within that. There's some barnacles that attach directly to a surface. There's some that attach with a stalk or with a stalk-like structure called a peduncle, which is just a fun word, folks. Take it home. Yeah. And then there's also like extreme specificity of how barnacles live the national marine sanctuary foundation is another source here it's a national non-profit in

the u.s they say there's a species called coronula diaderma that only lives on humpback whales that one kind of whale there's also cryptolepus r racionecti. Cryptolepus racionecti. That only lives on the gray whale species. So barnacles are like surprisingly picky about where they live and how they do it. Kind of fussy. Yeah. I don't know. It's interesting to me that they are so highly specialized that they are fussy about which kind of whale they live on. Yeah, it's all whales to me. But they're like, no, I'm a right whale. You get out of town.

I'm a humpback whale barnacle. More like a wrong whale. I mean, I guess it makes sense. You do want to be pretty particular when you're going to stay in the same location for the rest of your life. You want to make sure you're hanging out with your own species. Otherwise, how are you going to do any mating? Oh, that's true. Well, I'm glad I'm glad they don't have human psychology.

Exactly. Because the pressure. I know they're trying hard at it. And people who studied them say they really do think about exactly where they're going to live. But like we'd all, humans having to think that way, we'd all just sweat out of our clothes. We'd be like, this is terrible. Oh man. I, I, I get horrible decision anxiety and decision fatigue. If I had to pick one spot to sit for the rest of my life. Oh my God. I'm already, I'm already breathing heavy. That's not good. I don't like it. I don't want to be a barnacle. Don't make me be a barnacle. Record scratch. I'm a barnacle. How'd I end up like this? Anyways.

Speaking of sticking to stuff, the next number here is August 2021. So recently, August 2021, that is when a team of MIT engineers and a Mayo Clinic doctor announced a potential medical breakthrough derived by imitating barnacle glue. They believe we have found an amazing new medical glue and surgical glue for human wounds and human surgeries that they figured out by like imitating and studying the properties of barnacle glue. That's really interesting. So I guess it's something that is inert enough that you could use it on the body and it doesn't like, maybe like what is, what are the benefits to this kind of barnacle derived glue in terms of using in a medical context?

The barnacle glue is basically a template they copied and then they made something as human safe as possible, which is human safe. But the barnacle glue, they make a natural glue made of sticky protein molecules that are suspended in a water repelling oil. molecules that are suspended in a water repelling oil. You have sticky protein and then it's suspended in an oil that also repels water, like keeps the seawater out to keep the bond up. Interesting. And also apparently it's just incredibly strong. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, they say that barnacle glue has adhesive strength of up to 60 pounds per square inch, which is simply a lot. Yeah, I just, I, it is, it is kind of surprising to me when I like just that if you've ever been a child and you were on the beach and you're trying to like rip like a barnacle off of something, you know, it's like, it's really hard.

Like it's the same thing with a lot of these like um sessile animals like I used to try because you know when you're a child you don't have a full sense of empathy for things like barnacles or uh muscles and stuff so you try to like rip them off of stuff and it was hard it was very difficult I guess I didn't fully probe that at the top of the show like you've handled barnacles and touched them and dealt with them and dealt with them boy have i um yeah no i mean like you know they're not super common like on the beach because usually they're not like attached to uh stuff close at least where i grew up like like in San Diego. But yeah, you could see,

especially on piers and stuff, sometimes you'd see them. And yeah, trying to get a handle on them. They're sticky. Yeah. And I feel like so many people just never try to remove them from anything, but it turns out people who deal with boats and marine areas are doing it a lot and it's a pain. It's very hard. They're just really on their... Boat acne. Boat acne, yeah. And then to our benefit, this MIT team, what they did in 2021 is they combined a polymer with a specific mix of an organic ester and then a fibrous sugar called chitosan. Combined all that, froze that, and then suspended it in

medical-grade silicone oil. And the results, this is recent enough that I couldn't find news about this getting used in regular surgeries and in the wider practice of medicine, but they say that this new medical glue is a biocompatible paste. It can adhere to surfaces even when they are covered in water or covered in blood. And then it can form a tight seal within about 15 seconds of application. Hmm. I mean, that's fascinating and exciting, but how does it taste? Because it sounds like it might taste kind of good. I probably shouldn't try it. I'm going to guess that's not a good idea. I imagined myself like trying it on the, and then my mouth is stuck together. It's just the podcast is over.

It's pretty good. It's pretty good. And then I'm trying to do ads, like, I'm upbeat. I'm trying to make it work. Glowing your mouth shut with vertical glue. Well, I got a solution for you and speaking of all this stickiness two more quick numbers the first one is up to 60 percent more up to 60 percent more is the estimated increased drag on u.s navy ships due to barnacles on the

hulls like they can increase the drag in the water of the ship by up to 60% just because they're not as hydrodynamic. The barnacles just slow down the movement of a ship by 60% more than normal if they're allowed to build up enough. Wow. The Navy also says they have to increase a ship's fuel consumption by up to 40% to make up for barnacle drag. Just barnacles. That's it.

I mean, maybe barnacles are just pacifists, anti-war activists. We don't know. Maybe that's what, you know. What if we had a war and only barnacles showed up? That's a war movie for me it's just peaceful but also it's the sea it's not for me i'm out i'm back out just just rows of barnacles facing each other and it's like all right men over the top and then they just sit there and don't do anything but then the children have to fight the children children can move. Ah, deep tragedy.

This is a War Horse type film. Oh, no. And also with them attaching to larger things, the next number here is up to 1,000 pounds. Up to 1,000 pounds or about 450 kilos. That's the largest recorded amount of barnacles on a whale by weight. Oh my God, that poor whale. Jeez. He needs like a whale dermatologist at that point. Yeah. Just an unpopular whale. Oh, that's sad. But the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, they say one whale can support that colony of barnacles, nearly a thousand pounds.

Also, there's another amazing source this week. It's a piece for Hakai Magazine, which is a great nonfiction magazine about ocean stuff. The piece is by Mara Grunbaum. They say that 1,000 pounds of barnacles sounds like a lot, but if it's attached to a bigger whale, like a humpback whale, their overall weight is around 30 tons. So the 1,000 pounds of barnacles is also not that significant. And for a humpback whale, that would feel about as heavy as an extra layer of clothes on a human. Yeah. Okay. But if I had like an extra layer of clothes, but it was barnacles, I wouldn't be happy. Yeah, that's fair.

but it was barnacles, I wouldn't be happy. Yeah, that's fair. An extra layer of clothes. Oh, that's fine. But it's irremovable barnacles forever. I did choose my coat or whatever. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and like ecologically, because one of the few barnacle things I knew

is they're on whales. And it turns out ecologically, we believe that whales and barnacles have what's called a commensal relationship. I think I learned what that is from Creature Feature or from Talking to You, one of the two. Cool. And the other is not harmed, but does not benefit. Barnacles get huge benefits from being brought to a bunch of places with plankton so they can eat the plankton as they ride. They also eat bits of plants and decomposing material. They're omnivores, but they mainly eat stuff like plankton. And so barnacles love being on whales because whales are eating plankton, too. And they just get brought to all these different planktons. But then the whale doesn't seem to care either way at best they don't mind the extra weight but maybe it's like a little bit annoying yeah yeah i mean i i think in that case it does make sense to describe it as a commensal

relationship but yeah they're all these all sorts of different symbiotic relationships they're not always they're not always good for both parties but sometimes they're good for one party and the other party's like, eh, fine. I'll deal with it. Yeah. Yeah, they just go with it. I love that you called it whale acne because the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, they also say that not only are barnacles choosy about which whale species they're on and stuff, but they're choosy about where they attach to whales and they usually go for the head and chin because that's the part of the whale that aims for the plankton and it's like the richest location to be on a whale if you can pick

yeah i mean that makes sense too like because if you're like the one barnacle that chooses the butt of the whale and you're not really near other barnacles, you know, that's not a great situation. It's like if there's that one barnacle who did not get like the flyer saying where the hot new barnacle neighborhood is opening up and he's like, well, this whale butt looks pretty good. He's just there alone on the whale butt. We're all meeting at 123 Butt Street, right? Right? Where is everybody? Yeah. Well, yeah, that makes sense to me.

It is funny, though, that whales do kind of have a beard of barnacles. Yeah. Whales do kind of have like a beard of barnacles. Yeah, and apparently it's something, it's like one of the first, at least European observations of barnacles too. They've been famous for being on the faces of whales for a long time. And there was a whale that hunters named Mocha Dick that was recorded as having a head covered in barnacles. And then Mocha Dick was the whale that Herman Melville adapted into the character in book Moby Dick. And then Moby Dick is described as having barnacles on its head.

Like it's a it's one of the things people if they were listening to this podcast 200 years ago, they would come in knowing that, but not the other stuff. That's interesting. Now I feel really bad for Moby Dick, because he's getting hunted and harassed, and also he's got really bad barnacle acne, and it's just, he's being bullied. Oh, yeah. That cool jock Ahab won't let it go. Come on, man, leave me alone. man leave me alone I'm sorry I just imagined Ahab having a letterman jacket and then a letterman peg leg

you know like it's got a little school logo on it and a mascot well folks uh we're gonna keep thinking about Ahab at our end but we're also gonna take a short break and then after that we're taking a dive into the barnacle fixated mind of Charles Darwin. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam.

All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace,

because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Folks, we are back with one other takeaway for the main episode here, and it is a big one. Takeaway number two. Charles Darwin made his name as a barnacle scientist, and those studies helped pave the way for the theory of evolution.

I was about to call him Barnacle Boy kind of derisively, and then I remembered that Barnacle Boy is a character from SpongeBob. He's the sidekick to Merman. He's the sidekick to Merman. Right now I am of two minds because I've seen almost no Spongebob. So I either want to like binge it and catch up with you or just receive Spongebob information like this and be amazed every time. Either way is great yeah well the the premise is that they were these you know sort of an aquaman-esque superhero in their time but now they're retired so they're old people so barnacle boy is like 80 years old um yeah no it's uh that isn't very i love it when you know you've learned about some famous guy like Charles Darwin, and it turns out they had this very specific niche interest that got them into biology.

Or like Nabokov, like the author studied moth and butterfly genitals, and it's just, okay. Okay, man. Wow. Excellent, man. Wow. Excellent. Great. Yeah, I guess when we did our episode about eels, we found out about like Sigmund Freud having to study eel genitals early in his career. And that is later weird about genitals as a human psychologist. These guys start where they start, you know?

It's great. So Barnacle Boy, he started off with barnacles. And then what happened? Yeah, so Darwin heavily studies barnacles. And he did study other animals too. But by building up his scientific reputation with his barnacle studies, that helped him basically sell evolution once he put it out there, because it was incredibly controversial. But he was enough of a famous barnacle expert that it was harder for people to hand wave him in general. They had to actually take on the ideas a little bit more.

I mean, you got to warm them up with a crowd favorite like barnacles, and then you kind of sort of slide in the vegetables, which is evolution. He's a band. He starts playing evolution and they're like, no, play barnacles. We came for barnacles. Was this during the barnacle boom of the time? And yes, it was. It turns out his, especially Voyage on the Beagle, perfectly dovetailed with

the barnacle boom. What happens is Darwin, he first observes barnacles in the wild in 1835. That's when he was a 26 year old passenger on the Royal Navy sloop called HMS Beagle. That, that voyage ends up informing a lot of his work for the rest of his life. But when he boarded the Beagle back in 1831, he boarded to serve as the ship's naturalist while the rest of the crew surveyed the ocean. But he boarded it in 1831, and one of the few books he brought was the new scholarship by John Vaughan Thompson in 1830, arguing that barnacles are crustaceans. That publication date was extremely important for him hearing this latest information about barnacles are crustaceans. Like that publication date was extremely important for him hearing this latest information about barnacles.

That's so great. I just love how the big man himself, Charles Darwin, he stood on the shoulders of barnacles. Yeah. He themselves are also standing on the chins of whales. Wow. And then it's turtles holding up the earth below that because that's how the earth works. It's a disc held up by turtles.

And yeah. I think probably if we were being honest, it's going to be a bunch of crabs holding it up. Right. At this point, everything's a crustacean if barnacles are crustaceans, right? Like I got to err on the side of crustaceans. Right. crustaceans right like i got a air on the side of crustaceans right and you've heard of carcinization where like a species other species of animals tend to like have this sort of parallel evolution into crab form uh so yeah crab planet i'm i'm ready for it yeah here we go like and and darwin

he on the beagle he observed a lot of birds, especially finches. There were other animal studies, too. But he first sees barnacles because they're on the west coast of South America in 1835. He sees abalone mollusks where their shells are full of tiny holes. holes. And then Darwin correctly theorizes that the holes were caused by a tiny yellowish barnacle species with a somewhat parasitic behavior where it eats through the shells of abalones. He didn't know it at the time, but he observed the world's smallest species of barnacle. It's called Cryptophyallus minutus. But he didn't know exactly what he was looking at, so he took specimens of all of it and went home. But that was one of the most exciting things he saw on his voyage,

was like, look at these barnacles eating shells. Weird. Man, that could also be the start of some kind of horror, where he takes these little barnacles home and they start drilling into his head, and now it's the barnacles running the show. But I'm glad it turned out uh the other way or did it he barnacles do kind of take over his house which is great uh really really because what happens is uh darwin is on the beagle for five years total he gets home in 1836 settles down in lond, then later settles outside of London with his family. But he continues pretty intensively studying barnacles, partly because

there's a raging scientific debate into the 1840s about them. Darwin is on Thompson's side, saying that barnacles are crustaceans and have multiple life cycles. And then the multi-life cycle thing informs Darwin getting into what a lot of scientists were, which was a set of theories that they called names like transmutation or transformism. These were all forerunners of talking about evolution. And to study that, Darwin does extensive studies of domestic animal breeding, such as pigeons. And we have a whole pigeons episode. We talk about Darwin talking about those. But he also becomes close friends with other scientists

who are interested in these forerunners of evolution. And as they press him on his ideas and how he's writing about them, he decides to go really deep on barnacles. He's like, barnacles are a thing that I should explore in general because it's cutting edge. And also it might be a way to look at this idea that species over long periods of time change. I imagine just like at his home with his family, his wife looks at the kitchen table and there's a pile of barnacles there and she just kind of sighs and pushes them to the side. And then she turns around and tries to do something. And there's another pile of barnacles. And she tries to open a door.

Barnacles are on the doorknob. Yeah. Almost literally accurate. Yep. That's pretty much it. Yeah. He proceeds to do an intensive eight-year study of barnacles. He borrows the entire barnacle collection of the British Museum.

And then in that same eight-year period, Charles and his wife Emma had four children. And so they have this house in Kent, south of London, that apparently just fills with human children and hundreds of barnacle specimens. It's just both of those things are increasing all the time. Oh, man. That poor woman. Good Lord. I just imagine her being really tired, bottle-feeding a barnacle

while shoving her baby on a door or something. While her baby's grasping plankton. Well, are babies like grasping plankton from the... Babies do excrete a cement-like glue out of their faces. If you've ever seen an unhappy baby, you would know what I'm talking about. Yeah, of course. A greater mystery than the particle, the baby. Who knows? Forget it.

A greater mystery than the barnacle, the baby, who knows? Forget it. Yeah. And it got to the point where there's an anecdote where one of Darwin's kids, his son, George, was like young and talking and stuff. And so George visits a friend's home. And then his first thought about the friend's home was surprised that his friend's dad didn't have a room full of barnacle specimens. And he asked them, quote, but where does he do his barnacles? Because he just figured everybody's dad is like knee deep in barnacles all the time. It's weird. And that's when his friend's parents called the police. Right.

Like Emma Darwin says they've taken the children and Charles is like, oh, no. Although I do have more room for barnacles now, I guess. So is that bad? Is that bad actually? I don't know. Maybe it's good. How would you like a barnacle instead of a baby? We could call any of these George, right? It's a one to one replacement.

They're very tiny. We could have a bunch of Georges. Yeah. And Darwin also recorded himself as being sick of barnacles at some point. He said, quote, I hate a barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a sailor in a slow-moving ship, end quote. Because just fully eight years of analyzing and picking apart barnacles and trying to figure them out. I mean, he really did build his own prison entirely out of barnacles. So I don't know what he expected. It's like, I'm going to fill my house with barnacles.

Oh, no, I'm really sick of all these barnacles. Like, come on, buddy. Yeah, definitely did it to himself. really sick of all these barnacles. Like, come on, buddy. Yeah. Definitely did it to himself. And pigeons are cuter and more fun. Shit on that. But they do poop more. That's true.

And they're smellier. I take it all bad. Well, maybe not smellier. They coo more. I don't know. I just, I'm just thinking of all the cooing and the pooping and I'm kind of on team barnacle right now. They're all wiggling their CRI in celebration. Like, yeah. And so Darwin does that.

And then in 1853, he publishes a giant four volume compendium of all known barnacle information. Of course he does. It is groundbreaking. It's celebrated across British science. He receives the highest medal awarded by the British Royal Society, which is a famous scientific organization, his 1853 barnacle publication.

That's incredible. I love that. I mean, like imagine if he had just stopped there, he would have been world famous for barnacles. Yeah, like I think he's's possibly more famous than Thompson. He might be known and have more than a Wikipedia stub if he just quit. That's all it would have taken. This isn't totally the only thing he was working on.

And then as soon as his barnacle work is out the door, his next project is drafting a larger work on the theory of evolution. It's also an incredibly controversial idea, so he kind of keeps it secret. And then Darwin heads may know that the impetus for him finally publishing is that in 1858, a fellow scientist, Alfred Russell Wallace, sends Darwin a draft of Wallace's version of the theory. And so Darwin says, okay, I should get mine out there. I did it first. It was just secret. But he, you know, he like gets around to it because he gets this barnacle work done. And also when he publishes on the origin of species in 1859, that's only a few years after his celebrated barnacle work. And so James Costas says that like when Darwin took that leap, people had to kind of, people had to attack

his idea. They couldn't just be like, who's Charles Darwin? It was like, well, the famous barnacle man is wrong, is my argument against this. Yeah, because he was riding on the coattails of barnacles. Also, lesser known fact, he did send a box of attack barnacles to Wallace's house. And that did give him a little more of a head start to get that research out there. Like, Wallace is like, I don't care what these barnacles say.

I'm going to walk to the mailbox and mail my stuff. And then there's barnacles attached to one foot, and then to the other foot, and then slowly he's imprisoned. Oh, no. These sessile animals are slowly gluing themselves to my feet. No! No! Hey folks, that's the main episode for this week.

Welcome to the outro of the show. It's got some fun features for you. The first one is help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, barnacles are crustaceans, which begin life as free-floating larvae fathered by astounding penises. A lot of parts there. Crustaceans, free-floating larvae at first, and astounding penises. Takeaway number two, Charles Darwin made his name as a barnacle scientist, and his barnacle studies paved the way for the theory of evolution.

And then a humongous stats and numbers section in between about everything from innovative barnacle-inspired medical glue to the barnacle drag troubles of the United States Navy. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show at MaximumFun.org, members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the world's freakiest barnacles. In particular, barnacles attaching themselves to human pollution

and barnacles attaching themselves to other animals as parasites. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost 11 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of other MaxFun bonus shows. It's special audio just for you. Thank you for being somebody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things? Check out our research sources on this episode's page at sifpod.fun. Key sources this week include the book Darwin's Backyard, How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory by Professor James Acosta of

Western Carolina University. Also digital writing from places like Kaka'i Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, and the great Ed Young. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. I want to acknowledge that in my location and many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here, and that feels worth doing on each episode. Speaking of my co-host Katie Golden, please dig her weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals and science and more.

Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that?

Talk to you then.