Futility Closet - 111-Japanese Fire Balloons

Episode Date: June 27, 2016

Toward the end of World War II, Japan launched a strange new attack on the United States: thousands of paper balloons that would sail 5,000 miles to drop bombs on the American mainland. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast, we'll tell the curious story of the Japanese fire balloons, the world's first intercontinental weapon. We'll also discuss how to tell time by cannon and puzzle over how to find a lost tortoise. Sources for our feature on Japanese fire balloons: Ross Coen, Fu-Go, 2014. James M. Powles, "Silent Destruction: Japanese Balloon Bombs," World War II 17:6 (February 2003), 64. Edwin L. Pierce and R C. Mikesh, "Japan's Balloon Bombers," Naval History 6:1 (Spring 1992), 53. Lisa Murphy, "One Small Moment," American History 30:2 (June 1995), 66. Larry Tanglen, "Terror Floated Over Montana: Japanese World War II Balloon Bombs, 1944-1945," Montana: The Magazine of Western History 52:4 (Winter 2002), 76-79. Henry Stevenson, "Balloon Bombs: Japan to North America," B.C. Historical News 28:3 (Summer 1995), 22-23. Associated Press, "Japanese Balloon Bombs Launched in Homeland," May 30, 1945. Associated Press, "Japanese Launch Balloon Bombs Against United States From Their Home Islands," May 30, 1945. Associated Press, "Balloon Bombs Fall One by One for Miles Over West Coast Area," May 30, 1945. Russell Brines, "Japs Gave Up Balloon Bomb System After Launching 9,000 of Them," Associated Press, Oct. 2, 1945. "Enemy Balloons Are Still Found," Spokane Daily Chronicle, Feb. 5, 1946. Hal Schindler, "Utah Was Spared Damage By Japan's Floating Weapons," Salt Lake Tribune, May 5, 1995. Listener mail: Wikipedia, "Time Ball" (accessed June 16, 2016). Wikipedia, "Nelson Monument, Edinburgh" (accessed June 16, 2016). "One O'Clock Gun," Edinburgh Castle, Historic Environment Scotland. "Places to Visit in Scotland - One O'Clock Gun, Edinburgh Castle," Rampant Scotland. "Tributes to Castle's Tam the Gun," BBC News, Nov. 17, 2005. Sofiane Kennouche, "Edinburgh Castle: A Short History of the One O’Clock Gun," Scotsman, Jan. 27, 2016. Here's a time gun map of Edinburgh from 1861: "For every additional circle of distance from the Castle, subtract one second from the instant of the report of the 'Time-Gun' to give the exact moment of 1 o'clock." Additional details are here. "The Smallest Artillerist," San Francisco Call, June 20, 1895. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was devised by Sharon Ross. Here are two corroborating links (warning -- these spoil the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from a court-ordered rainstorm to a homicidal piano. This is episode 111. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. Toward the end of World War II, Japan launched a strange new attack on the United States. Thousands of paper balloons that would sail 5,000 miles to drop bombs on the American mainland.

In today's show, we'll tell the curious story of the Japanese fire balloons, the world's first intercontinental weapon. We'll also discuss how to tell time by cannon and puzzle over how to find a lost tortoise. On Saturday, May 5th, 1945, the Reverend Archie Mitchell set out for a picnic lunch and a day of fishing on Gearheart Mountain in south central Oregon. He was the new pastor of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in nearby Bly, Oregon, and with him were his wife, Elsie, who was five months pregnant with their first child, and five children from his Sunday school class, ages 11 through 14. They drove up the south slope of the mountain to an altitude of about 5,000 feet when they met a road crew who told them that it was too snowy to go any higher on the mountain,

so they turned around in their car, went down a little ways, and found a place to stop. Elsie and the children got out of the car, and Archie was parking it when he saw Elsie and the children about 50 yards away, standing in a circle, looking down at something on the ground. Elsie, his wife, called to him and said, look what we found. It looks like some kind of balloon. One of the children reached down to pick up the object, and Archie was just starting to shout a warning when a huge explosion tore through the forest. Richard Barnhouse, who was one of the Forest Service road crew, later said, as Mr. Mitchell stopped his car, there was a terrible explosion. Twigs flew through the air, pine needles began to fall, dead branches and dust and dead logs went up.

He and a couple of the road crew ran down the slope and they found Archie kneeling over his wife, beating at her burning clothes with his bare hands. The bodies of the children lay scattered around a hole in the earth that was about five feet across. It had been a very big explosion. All four of the boys had been killed instantly, and 13-year-old Joan Patsky, who had discovered the balloon, the only girl, remained conscious for just a few moments and then died. And then Elsie Mitchell, Archie's wife, died within a few minutes. Archie was the only survivor of the blast. At the time, no one in Bly knew what this was or where it had come from, what had occasioned the explosion. But the six deaths were actually the result of an ingenious Japanese plan

to make war on the American mainland by floating bombs across the Pacific on paper balloons, which was something no one had ever thought to do before. The balloons had come from another part of the war, actually, from the South Pacific. They'd been devised to be launched from ships to interfere with American planes that were taking off from airfields on Guadalcanal. But when the battle in the South Pacific turned against the Japanese, they started to consider redesigning the balloons for an assault on North America. For several years, the Japanese Army and Navy had been studying the upper winds in the stratosphere, and they discovered a river of air at about the 30,000-foot level that traveled west to east, which is what

we now know as the jet stream, but was little understood at the time. And that, they realized, could carry a balloon all the way across the Pacific, a distance of more than 5,000 miles in just three days. So they got the idea that if they could attach a bomb to the balloon, it would be carried into the American, and I guess the Canadian, mainland and hopefully cause some havoc there. A balloon bearing a bomb could kill people, destroy buildings, and start forest fires. They hoped that this might cause enough havoc, if they sent enough balloons over, that it would cause enough chaos to divert U.S. resources away from the Pacific theater of the war, where things weren't going very well for them. They named these balloons Fugo, which means windship weapon. It's basically a hydrogen balloon, a big one, about 33 feet in diameter, that carried anti-personnel and incendiary bombs. 33 feet in diameter.

They'd carry during anti-personnel and incendiary bombs. And primitive as they were, these balloons were the world's first intercontinental weapons, the first weapons to be sent or targeted

from one continent to the other. Just simple paper balloons. They actually made two types of these. The first ones were of rubberized silk. They made only about

300 of those. They were sort of glorified weather balloons with radio equipment just to send across in the jet stream just to see if this whole idea would work, if you could send a balloon all equipment just to send across in the jet stream just to see if this whole idea would work if you could send a balloon all the way across the pacific on the jet stream and when that proved out to be fairly encouraging they started working on these

paper balloons designed to bomb north america each balloon was basically a hydrogen balloon made of three or four layers of tissue paper held together with hydrocellulose adhesive and then lacquered to waterproof the bag. The balloons carried incendiary bombs, which were capable of starting fires, and anti-personnel devices in the hope that whatever casualties they could manage to cause would create panic and hinder the war effort. Were they supposed to detonate, though, when they hit the ground? Because apparently this one didn't until the child touched it? Well, the one that was

found in Bly had managed to land without going off, but that was actually sort of a malfunction. I think actually the design of these things for 1944 is pretty sophisticated, I think, considering they were the first of their kinds. The way it was supposed to work is that the balloon would drift along

between 30,000 and 38,000 feet to keep it in the jet stream. And they had enough equipment that if they drifted higher than that, perhaps because of the warming of the sun's rays, a valve would open and release some hydrogen so they'd come down again. If they drifted too low, then they'd drop a sandbag and float back up again. That is pretty sophisticated. Each balloon had 32 sandbags. So what would happen is when they dropped the last sandbag,

then it would just start dropping the next thing in line, which was an incendiary bomb. The hope was that 32 was the right number, that by the time it got to the 32nd sandbag, it would hopefully be over the mainland of North America and start just dropping. Oh, so I see. So the bomb was supposed to drop separate from the balloon, but this one had stayed attached somehow. Right. Yeah. Some of them just didn't work the way they were intended because there was so much, you know, it's 5,000 miles and this is all just being done for the first time. So that's what happened in Oregon. The only thing left of the balloon, oh, the other thing that I liked about this is after it drops the last bomb, it lights a fuse, which sets off a different bomb and destroys the whole balloon. So

there won't be any evidence of what had happened. So hopefully the Americans would only realize that all these forest fires were starting in the pacific northwest but they wouldn't know why and they wouldn't think to blame it on japan which was thousands of miles away across the ocean so that they thought of considering this the first time anyone had ever done this i thought it was very well thought through and actually pretty effective uh the one thing they couldn't do was really control the things or all even understand what was happening a 1945 article says they were intended for psychological effect and create confusion rather than to do real damage one japanese official after the war said they had no eyes and we couldn't direct them where to go

but the united states is a big place and we figured they would land somewhere uh so they put together a great number of these balloons and started launching them they were launched from 21 launch pads at three sites along the east coast of Japan's main island, Honshu. The first balloon went up on November 3, 1944. We don't know how many went up, and altogether they planned to launch between 10,000 and 15,000 through that winter of 1944 up through March 1945. But after the war, they destroyed their records,

so we don't know to this day exactly how many were made. It's thought that about 10,000 were built and that somewhere between 6,000 and 9,300 were actually launched. But we don't know for sure, which is a bit worrying because the American West and Canadian West is a huge place. And there could still be someone out there that came down and that no one to this day has happened to come across yet, some of which may bear live bombs yet. How many of these reached north america is unknown estimates range from 300 to 1000 so there's just no way to know what is known is that the remains of some 200 have been found to date the thing that really saved uh the americans was that the japanese had figured out was that the the jet stream was strongest between november and

april so the balloons could cross the pac Pacific in three or four days during that period. But if you live in America, you know that between November and April is when the Pacific Northwest is at its wettest, because those are the winter months, and so any incendiary bomb that goes off there is unlikely to start a fire. And in fact, the balloons never did start any fires. So the timing was just off. The Americans knew that none of this was going on

until the balloons started showing up, and then they had to put two and two together pretty quickly. Uh, United States Navy patrol craft discovered one of the first sort of weather balloons floating off San Pedro, Los Angeles, uh, in November, 1944, shortly after it had come over. And then before the end of November, more balloons were found in Wyoming and Montana and the national and state agencies there were put on heightened alert, but nobody quite knew what to make of these yet. Just balloons were showing up in the American West, and no one knew where they were coming from. Or what their purpose was, right? Yes, and it gets kind of scary. On December 6, 1944, four people near a coal mine near Thermopolis, Wyoming reported seeing a parachute in the air with lighted flares, and after hearing a whistling noise, heard an explosion and saw smoke. And if you didn't know

what these things were, and you're out in the middle of Wyoming, it would be hard to know what to make of that. Five days later, two woodcutters reported finding a parachute in the Montana mountains. Investigators found

it was a paper balloon attached to a small incendiary bomb, which was very hard to explain at the time because Japan's so far away. That wouldn't be your first thought.

Eventually, they figured out the balloons were made by the Japanese somehow and the government started a full investigation involving all government agencies, national, state, and local, as well as the Navy and the FBI. And they asked forest rangers to report balloon landings and any parts that were recovered, which eventually started to happen. They sent those to the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C. for analysis, and the rubberized balloons, as I said, turned out to be weather balloons, and the paper ones were a bit harder to understand.

But eventually, they realized what was happening. On January 18th, the Naval Research Laboratory announced, it is now presumable that the Japanese have succeeded in designing a balloon which is capable of reaching the United States and Canada from the western Pacific carrying incendiaries and other devices. It must be assumed that a considerable number are coming over. But that's all they knew. American authorities determined that the greatest danger was wildfire, and they set up paratrooper firefighters accordingly. But as I say, no fires actually occurred because of the time of year. It was just too wet for anything to actually start burning. Altogether, though, I have to say, for a first try, it was a very successful project. Altogether, these balloons landed in 18 U.S. and five canadian territories they landed as far east as michigan um one thing that really hurt the japanese project is the foresight of the americans they realized

that the japanese had no way to tell how well they were doing they could just loft these balloons up hopefully into the air and trust that they would come some down somewhere in the american mainland but had no way to know directly what was happening so they realized that they were trusting on intercepted American radio and newspaper reports to tell what was happening. And there was sort of a voluntary censorship movement. The censorship office, this was voluntary, but widely followed. They said, if you could just please keep quiet about any balloons that people are finding, then we can keep the Japanese in the dark about how successful their program was. And that actually worked quite well. The news media cooperated fully, and it wasn't until after the war that the Japanese learned the true results of the project.

In fact, since they'd heard no reports from American media, the Japanese canceled the project in the month before the Mitchells' outing. So that explosion I described at the beginning happened a month after the whole project was canceled. It's just balloons were still coming over and still being discovered. Well, and also since the Japanese intended this to have mostly a psychological effect, there's not going to be a psychological effect if the public doesn't know about it. That's right. And I was thinking you could argue

that it's kind of tragedy then that a picnicking couple, the wife and these five children were killed when they could have been warned. But you could also argue that if they had warned the public, this one group might have been saved,

but the Japanese would have heard those reports and been encouraged to send even more balloons. Right, and it would have produced a lot of widespread panic, possibly, and anxiety. I mean, I guess it's hard to say exactly what would have happened, but it does seem like there were sound reasons for keeping this as quiet as they could. The Japanese had actually planned a second balloon campaign for the dry summer months, which probably would have been but it does seem like there were sound reasons for keeping this as quiet as they could the japanese had actually planned a second balloon campaign for the dry summer months

which probably would have been more effective but they stopped all work on the fugo project near the end of april 1945 it was expensive and allied air raids were destroying factories and they couldn't get any feedback on how well any of this was going so they just canceled it in fact the news blackout lasted until may 1945 a week after the bligh deaths the war department acknowledged those six deaths in oregon because they had to come out now when people had actually american civilians had actually been killed they had to explain what was going on were those the only people that they know of that were killed by the balloons yes amazing those six people in one incident were the only ones who were killed in on the whole mainland um there are a couple close

calls i'm just going to mention these that came up in my research that i haven't been able to confirm but they're worth mentioning one of my sources says in washington state which experienced more hits than any other state a small boy turned the arming device on a live bomb until it was within 1 16th of an inch of detonating i don't know if that's true also a sheepherder dragged another balloon casually behind his automobile bombs and all because no one knew what these things were they didn't you wouldn't think you see a balloon you might wonder why a balloon is in your field but you'd never imagine that a bomb is attached to it um the only notable success that the project had against the american war effort was small and sort of coincidental it managed one balloon managed to destroy a transmission line bringing power from the bonneville dam to the hanford

engineering works in south central washington state which happened to be manufacturing plutonium for the Manhattan Project. This happened on March 10, 1945. The balloon short-circuited the line, cutting off all power, but the power was off for only a split second before alternate power from the Grand Coulee Dam switched in, so it was just a second. But safety systems shut down Hanford's nuclear piles, and it took three days to get them back to full operation. So that's only technical, but they could claim if someone was trying to talk this up, they could say that they managed to kill six people on the American mainland and they momentarily shut down part of the Manhattan Project. It would be, I suppose, accurate to say that.

Internal Japanese propaganda, the propaganda they gave to their own people, said these balloons were causing havoc and devastation around America, but they really didn't. No forest fires were ever verified as having been caused by the enemy balloons. And those six deaths in Oregon, the five children and Elsie Mitchell, were actually not only just the only deaths caused by the balloons to date, but in fact, the only casualties due to enemy action on the U.S. mainland during the whole war. So in a backwards way, you could say that's a feather in their cap, I suppose, that the project had managed to do what no one else had a memorial today is located on at the site of the bligh explosion several japanese civilians have visited the monument and planted cherry trees as a symbol of peace there

and as i said we may not be done with this yet since the end of the war more than a dozen balloon parts have been found and reported some as recently as 2014 two years ago really given the number of balloons that might have reached North America, and given the size of the American West, some hundreds of unexploded balloon bombs may still be out there, so be careful. Our podcast is supported primarily by our fantastic patrons who make it possible for us to keep making the show.

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where you'll find outtakes and extralateral thinking puzzles, and learn what's going on behind the scenes of the show, as well as what Sasha, the show mascot, has been doing lately. Thanks so much to everyone who helps support the show. In episode 108, we learned about Ruth Belleville, who made a living by setting her watch precisely at the Greenwich Observatory and carrying the accurate time to her customers around London. Ian Hutchinson wrote to us and said, your show about the Greenwich Time Lady reminded me of a story I heard while visiting Edinburgh Castle in Scotland. They similarly had a big orb they'd drop to signal the time each day, but additionally, especially in foggy conditions, they'd set off a cannon at 1pm sharp every day

except Sundays. There were even maps printed to take into account the latency due to the speed of the sound. It seems they perhaps keep up this tradition even today. I love your show so much. It is the highlight of my Mondays. Thank you, Ian. And to answer your question, yes, they do still have both traditions today. The time ball is actually dropped at Nelson Monument near Edinburgh Castle. It's a very large ball made of wood and covered in zinc that weighs 1,680 pounds or 762 kilograms. It was installed in 1853 to serve as a time signal to the ships in the port at Leith or on the Firth of Forth so they could precisely set their chronometers and was designed to be triggered by a clock in the adjacent city observatory to which it was connected with an underground wire. The Timeball was damaged in a storm in 2007 after being in operation for over 150 years, but it was restored in 2009

and has again resumed daily operation, if anyone wants to go see it. However, it's now operated manually, so I would guess that it's no longer precise enough to set your chronometers by. As Greg had mentioned in episode 108, time balls were one early way that people tried to broadcast the exact time to groups of people, particularly mariners. The first one was built in Portsmouth, England in 1829, and many others were built, particularly in port cities, in the years that followed that. and many others were built, particularly in port cities, in the years that followed that.

Some are still in existence today, mainly as tourist attractions, as the introduction of radio signals in the 1920s mostly made the time balls obsolete. The most well-known version of the time ball still in operation today is probably the New Year's Eve ball drop in Times Square in New York City. I never put that together until you told me about it, and it seems so obvious now. What a strange custom that is, that we drop a ball to mark the new year. Right, and that was started in 1907 and was directly inspired by the older time balls.

I never thought of that. Yeah. The difference with the one in New York City is that it actually marks the time when it hits the bottom, whereas normally the time is marked when the ball starts to drop. So they've got the one in New York City timed precisely for exactly what the descent is. And they don't normally just do it once a year for most other time balls.

It's usually a daily thing, but yeah, kind of cool. The dropping of the time ball at Nelson Monument is actually triggered by the firing of the cannon that Ian mentioned at Edinburgh Castle, which is called the One O'Clock Gun and dates back to 1861. It's still fired at 1 p.m. every day except Sundays, Christmas Day, and Good Friday, and that's mostly for the amusement of tourists these days. Time balls have several disadvantages, like you have to be looking for them at just the right time, and they can be obscured by bad weather. So firing cannons or guns gets around some of those drawbacks, although I understand that the method can be rather startling for visitors who aren't expecting it. As Ian noted, one problem with time guns is the delay in the sound reaching

you if you are any distance from the gun. So to help with that, maps were issued with concentric circles drawn around the time signaling gun, showing you how much of a delay to expect in different areas. And we'll have an image in the show notes of one of those old maps. Yeah, that map is fantastic. It was just concentric circles. So I guess no matter where you lived within the vicinity, you could measure exactly when the sound would reach you. Because of the issues with the relatively slower speed of sound, mariners sometimes relied more on the puff of smoke from the cannon rather than the sound of the blast.

And of course, relying on that visual signal brings you right back to the same problems as the time balls. So some places, such as Edinburgh, seem to have just used both methods. Sort of got themselves covered there. In researching this topic, I came across the story of Staff Sergeant Tom McKay,

who was the longest serving district gunner for firing the one o'clock gun at Edinburgh Castle. He was known as Tam the Gun and became responsible for firing the gun in 1979 and held the position until 2005 when illness absolutely forced him to retire. He really kept hoping he was going to beat his illness and come back. Sergeant McKay was considered to be one of the most famous faces in Scotland and thousands of people met and photographed him every year. He actually wrote a book about his experiences on the job and apparently had spent a fair amount of his workday just answering letters that were written to him from around the world. After his death in 2005, a locomotive was named after him to commemorate his more than 25 years on the job.

Good for him. The earliest example of a time signaling gun that I was able to find dates back to 1806 in Cape Town, South Africa. And this noon gun is still fired daily at Signal Hill, as are several other time guns around the world, although different places may mark different times of the day. I actually came across an interesting story on the Cape Town time gun, and that was the June 20, 1895 edition of the San Francisco Call reported this story. At the Castle Cape Town, there is a magnificent gun worked by electricity used for giving the midday and evening time. One fine day, all the military and civilians in Cape Town

were astonished to hear the gun go off at 10.30 in the morning, an hour and a half before the proper time. All the officers were fearfully puzzled but could give no explanation whatever. The general in command of the station became furious and said there was mismanagement somewhere and gave orders for a strict search to be made by the officials for the guilty party.

And the newspaper explains that after an extensive search, failed to find the culprit, they were on the point of giving up when it was finally discovered that there was a large brown spider inside the relay that triggered the guns firing. The paper says, the general commanding the station

sent the spider to the Cape Town Museum where he is now to be seen with a card underneath him entitling him the Little Gunner and giving a full account of his adventure with the Cape Town Midday Time Gun, which proved his last adventure. On the subject of time, Ian Cadman wrote, Growing up in the UK, accurate time was part of the backdrop of life, whether this was the audible signal on the radio known as the pips or an image of a clock or a Big Ben on the TV. When I came to the USA to work for a while in the 1980s, one of the things that struck me was that there was no equivalent on radio or TV. It is quite ironic that with the advancement of technology to digital radio and TV, these signals are always delayed by a few seconds, and so are less accurate than a lady with a chronometer in her bag. That's true. I hadn't thought about that, but he's right. When I was

growing up in the U.S., you know, as a kid, you had to call a telephone number. Right, I remember doing that, calling the time, but yeah, I don't remember. I mean, they would occasionally on the radio tell you the time, but I don't think it was like precisely. Regular, you know. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense to do it that way. And Chris Owens wrote to say, thanks for another great podcast about the Greenwich Time Lady. You said a couple things during the show that made it sound like time synchronization is no longer an issue in the modern age of networks, but it totally is.

And it's interesting how similar the process is to what you described with the astronomer giving the time to Belleville, then watch and clock shops buying the correct time from her, and then third-tier users buying the correct time from her, and then third tier users buying the correct time from the shops. Time synchronization in the internet is handled by a program called NTP that runs on almost all servers and in some form even on laptop and desktop computers. And for those of our listeners who, like me, can't claim a lot of familiarity

with NTP, let me try to explain that NTP stands for Network Time Protocol, and it's an internet protocol that is used to synchronize the clocks of participating computers to within a few milliseconds of Coordinated Universal Time, which is usually called UTC and is similar to what used to be called Greenwich Mean Time. Chris goes on to say, in the NTP system, there are strata of clocks. The stratum zero clocks are all super accurate official timepieces, such as the U.S. Naval Observatories clock, and that are not themselves directly connected to the net. The servers that talk directly to the stratum zero clocks are called stratum one clocks, and those are out of reach for most individuals. Those servers,

in turn, communicate with the next stratum down, the stratum two servers. In the early days of the internet, you might have to make do with stratum four or five servers just because computers were slower and couldn't handle so many requests for the time. However, in the modern era, it's not so difficult to find a stratum two clock you can connect to. Even if you just use whatever your computer defaults to, you almost certainly end up with a stratum 2 or 3 clock these days. That, combined with the high-speed internet, gives you 10 to 20 millisecond accuracy without all the hassle of carrying clocks around town. Thanks again for the great podcast. He's right. That is basically the same, that the information sort of trickles down from some authority.

Yeah. It's a lot faster now, and it's global, but it's the same problem. the information sort of trickles down from some authority. Yeah. It's a lot faster now, and it's global, but it's the same problem. Yeah. So thanks to everyone who wrote in to us. And if you have any questions or comments, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. And please remember to give me some hints on how not to mangle your name. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle i'm going to give him an interesting sounding situation and he has to figure out what's actually going on asking only yes or no questions this one comes from me oh good after a pet tortoise escapes its enclosure his worried owners spend hours looking for him finally they use the internet to get him back

what did they do? Is this true? This is true. You have to tell me where you got this. Okay, after a pet tortoise escapes its enclosure. Yes. Say it again. His married owners spend hours looking for him. Finally, they use the internet to get him back. What did they do? Does it matter where this

happens? No. Does it matter especially when? Internet's invented. Or the identities of the owners no or the tortoise no okay uh uh they use the internet yes yeah okay is that obviously is the tortoise tagged in some way no all right um does this involve other people okay are the owners are there two of them does one need to know exactly exactly? It's a family, but it doesn't matter. Okay. So they use the internet and find it.

And you said that doesn't necessarily involve other people? It does not involve any other people. So they didn't put out some just plea to neighbors saying- Correct. Okay. They did not. And they did find the tortoise in this way? They did get the tortoise.

Could we say the tortoise is prepared in some way? I mean, other than being tagged? Nope. It's not- Nope. Just a standard run of the mill tortoise. Do I need to know any more about the tortoise is prepared in some way? I mean, other than being tagged? Nope. It's not rigged up? Nope, just a standard run-of-the-mill tortoise. Do I need to know any more about the tortoise? Nope. Okay.

Does this involve mapping? No. So it's not like there's a satellite. I can't imagine you'd see a tortoise. Actually, I guess there is one thing that might help you to know about the tortoise. I take it back. About the tortoise? About the tortoise, yes. It's sex? Yes. Is it male? It is about the tortoise, I take it back. About the tortoise? About the tortoise, yes.

It's sex? Yes. Is it male? It is a male tortoise. A male tortoise. Yes, and that actually does matter. Does that tell them something about its expected behavior? Nope.

It's just a male tortoise? Yes. And that has something to do with the internet. And that's a bearing, yes. That seems like it's really important somehow. Do I need to know about tortoise behavior? I guess. I mean, does that help them predict what he was going to do, the fact that he was male?

Where he would go? No, not where he would go. But what he would do. What he would do in certain situations. Do I need to know any more about just how this is laid out, like where the enclosure was? No. Was it outdoors? Yes. Okay, like where the enclosure was? No. Was it outdoors? Yes.

Okay, so he was outdoors somewhere. Yes. And you said, I don't need to know where. Right, you do not need to know where. Even like topography or anything, was it? Nope. Okay. Use the internet. Okay, let me go back to where I was.

You say it doesn't involve mapping, so they're not using like some image of their house or their neighborhood. Right, they are not. Nothing like that. Did whatever they do influence the behavior of the tortoise somehow? Yes. Yes. So it's not just that it helped them find him. Right.

They actually got him. To come back. Using the internet. Yes. Okay. Using the internet and something else, like did they use the internet to trigger any other device that, like something that he could hear or? Yes, they did something that he could hear.

So they didn't just use the internet to gather information that helped them. Right, right. They actually influenced the tortoise in some way. Yes. Would you say that the, you said he could hear something? Yes. And that, okay, so that, did that mimic a female tortoise? No.

But it attracted or summoned him in some way? Yes. So he came to them? Yes. And he was just out in the yard somewhere and showed up when they did whatever this was? No. But it attracted or summoned him in some way? Yes. So he came to them? Yes. And he was just out in the yard somewhere and showed up when they did whatever this was? Yeah. And it involved a sound? Yes. Did it sound like another male tortoise? Yes. Another tortoise? Yes. Yes. Another male tortoise? Yes. Do it need to know? Was it his own voice? No. Okay. Another male tortoise, like a recording of a male tortoise. Yes. That they looked up on the internet and then played to him through a loudspeaker or something.

Yes, but it was a male tortoise doing something in particular. Was it some confrontation, some aggressive? No. Okay, and it wasn't... Was it a sound involving food or something? Like a signal that another tortoise... Would attract another tortoise, you wouldn't say he was attracted to it. He was attracted to it.

Okay. So, but it was, you would call it some, I can't believe we do this. Here's the sound, what he thinks is the sound of another male tortoise. Yes. Communicating some, you'd call it a signal? No, I don't know. It was giving him some indication. He thought he heard another male tortoise doing something and that attracted him.

Yes. But it wasn't food that he thought. It was giving him some indication. He thought he heard another male tortoise doing something and that attracted him. Yes. But it wasn't food that he thought. It was not food. And it wasn't a female tortoise? It wasn't a female tortoise, but that's just, I think there's something unusual about tortoise behavior here. But yeah, if you want to attract a male of any species. Was that it though?

I'm asking. Right. No, he was not hearing a female tortoise. He was hearing a male tortoise and he knew it was a male tortoise but he was he attracted because he expected to find a female tortoise yes okay so what was the male tortoise doing that they found on the internet mating yes that's exactly it they played videos of mating tortoises to lure their pet back home this isn't i think this is a hilarious story this was reported by the week magazine boris the tortoise had escaped his

outdoor enclosure, and the Horner family had spent hours looking for him, and finally one of their kids had the idea of playing videos of tortoise sex from YouTube. And according to The Week, there are quite a lot of such videos on YouTube. Really? And they feature the males making rather loud noises that the article calls extremely startling and can be heard for miles. And apparently that's why there's so many of them on YouTube, because you just wouldn't imagine that the tortoises would make such loud noises. And in the wild, these sounds attract other males who try to push the mating male off so they can take his place. And that's apparently what attracted Boris home. The article also stated that the sound of mating tortoises was used to voice the

velociraptors in the movie Jurassic Park. I wasn't sure whether to believe this last point, so I looked into it, and sure enough, various sources report that mating tortoises were used for the sound of velociraptors kind of barking at each other to communicate in the movie. According to CNET, the other raptor noises used in the movie were recordings of horses breathing and annoyed geese. And I didn't happen to see whose job it was to annoy the geese. But yeah, so there you go. If you lose your tortoise, that's how you get them back. That means there must be people who like played those movies on the home theater system who have pet tortoises. I mean, they must be confusing their pets here and there, I would think.

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