Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Coelacanths Work

Episode Date: July 5, 2025

Coelacanths are incredibly interesting as far as fish go. For one, they were thought to have gone the way of the dinosaur, along with the dinosaur. They also give birth to live fish and tend to dwell more than 800 feet below the ocean's surface. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Learn all about these fascinating creatures in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, a different type of podcast. You, the listener, ask the questions. Did George Washington really cut down a cherry tree? Were JFK and Marilyn Monroe having an affair? And I find the answers. I'm so glad you asked me this question. This is such a ridiculous story. You can listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never

forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile.

Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. Happy weekend. I hope you're having a lovely, lovely Saturday wherever you are in the world. We're gonna jump back in time to June 6th, 2017 to talk about coelacanths.

How coelacanths work? What in the world is a coelacanth? Uh, I think I kind of remember. Check it out right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Brighton, Jerry Jerome Rowland. I'm just the whole House Stuff Works gang here to present to you stuff you should know.

All three of us. How you doing? I'm good. Yeah? Yeah. I'm a little caffeinated, I should warn you. Oh. A little bit, like when teeth are about to just come right out of my face. That's not good.

You know, we did a video about coelacanths one time. Yeah, like, was it this day in history about when they were discovered? Yeah. I ran across it. Because Smac is familiar to me and you know the constant fear we have of recording an entire podcast over is sort of always there. Yeah, the fear that sometimes comes true. Yeah.

So I definitely went back and looked and I was like I knew we did something. Yeah, we were trapped in a shipping container, right? I didn't watch it. I didn't either. I just saw enough to say, oh yeah, I remember that one. That really weird, weird thing we did. But this is really cool, I think. I do too.

Coelacanth's were, well, they're interesting. Despite what the How Stuff Works article would lead you to believe. It was it was, yeah, it was a little thin, wasn't it? A little bit. It was all right. Okay. But luckily the rest of the internet is there for us. Right. Thanks especially to Smithsonian and Mental Floss for this one, right?

Yeah, that Mental Floss article was kind of neat actually. It was. So, you want to go back to the beginning? Actually, the second beginning, maybe? Oh, well, I don't know what you're talking about now. It's just... Okay, well, follow me. We'll go back to the very beginning.

We'll go back to something about 400 million years ago. During the Devonian period, which is aka the rise of the fish. Yes. The age of the fish, right? And in this Devonian period, there's a lot, a lot of stuff going on. Things have been swimming around for a while. On Earth, there's a nice atmosphere that's developed. The things in the ocean are starting to say, oh, what's out there?

I want to see what's on land. Yeah, maybe I can just crawl out and see. Yeah. I want to taste clover. So they start trying. And during this period, there was the progression from the sea to the land. And one of those things that was starting to develop legs to get onto land was called the coelacanth. was starting to develop legs to get on the land, it was called the Coelacanth. Yeah, which A, it means hollow spine, which we'll get to. There's a reason for that.

And B, it's spelled C-O-E-L-A-C-A-N-T-H, which is not how you would think it might be spelled. No. Or pronounced, rather. Right. Either one. But it's Coelacanth. It is Coelacanth. And what it is, is a fish that is, like you said, been around for a long, long time.

It's kind of funny looking. And we'll get into all the physical characteristics that make it unusual in a sec, but it is notable mainly for the fact that everyone thought it was gone forever until it was suddenly discovered, this thing that swam with the dinosaurs was discovered anew in the 1930s and then again a little bit later on. Yeah, because it was, it pops up for the first time around 407 million years ago, I think I said. And then it just drops off 80 million years ago.

So they said, well, a lot of stuff went the way of the dinosaur around the time the dinosaurs went away. So that's probably what happened to the Coelacanth. So it was quite a big surprise in the 1930s when a trawler that was out fishing, a trawler called the Nareen, which is captained by Hendrik Goosen off the coast of South Africa, came in and as was Captain Goosen's want,

he contacted the director of the local museum in East London, a woman named Ms. Marjorie Courtney Latimer. And she used to come over and look at the fish loads this guy would bring in because they were buddies. Yeah. And he gave her a call like normal and said, I got a load. You want to come look at it?

And she was like, it's two days before Christmas and it's blazing hot out. Don't forget we're in South Africa at the time. And she's like, I don't feel like it. But the world was saved. The world of ichthyology was saved this day because this lady, Marjorie Courtney Latimer, was so nice that she decided to go look at the fish anyway just to wish the captain and his crew a Merry

Christmas. So, she takes a look at this fish and here is her quote as she recounted. That wasn't her quote at the time. Her quote at the time was probably a South African expletive. But she said later, I picked away the layers of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. And of course, only a fish lover can find this thing truly beautiful. Yeah.

Because it's kind of ugly. It is. It was five feet long, a pale mauvey blue with faint flecks of white spots. It had an iridescent silver blue green sheen all over. It was covered in hard scales and it had four limb-like fins and a strange little puppy dog tail. Not literally, of course. It was such, which would be great though, actually. That's the dog fish that has that. It was such a beautiful fish, more like a big china ornament, but I didn't know what it was.

And it was pretty faithful that she was called in to look at this thing because it ended up being one of the most important zoological finds of history probably. Of the 20th century at least, for sure. Yeah, this woman's curiosity, something in her said, this is weird, this is unusual, this is something worth looking into. So she took it with her. This thing was like five feet long, just under two meters, about a hundred and how many pounds? 127 pounds. This is a significant fish.

And Ms. Courtney Latimer talked her way into a cab with it. She took a cab back to the East London Museum with this fish stuffed in the back seat. And she took it to the taxidermist and had it stuffed. Unfortunately, the taxidermist wasn't completely aware of how to preserve a fish for identification and threw out the skeleton and the gills, which are what you need to idea fish apparently. Well, she probably should have said something. Well, she... Like this is no ordinary mount.

Yeah, right, she probably should have. Or maybe she did and he just ignored her. He's like, I'm not gonna get bossed around by a woman's 1938. So she contacts a guy named J.L.B. Smith, who is an ichthyologist. He's the head of the ichthyology department at a university in Gramstown and a PhD in chemistry. He's a smart guy, and he's the local fish expert as far as she knows.

Yeah, and they're pals, and so she said, hey, I've got this weird-looking fish. And then Smith, his quote was, I told myself sternly not to be a fool, but there was something about that sketch. And apparently it was sketch. She sent him a sketch of the fish to begin with. Yeah. That seized upon my imagination and told me

that this was something very far beyond the usual run of fishes in our seas. And luckily, even though the fish was, I guess, mounted in a traditional form, which, like you said, takes away how you can identify it, she was able to preserve some of the scales. And somehow from these scales, he was able to say, this is a colicanth, coelacanth. Well, that's what he said at first, and she went, it's pronounced coelacanth. He's like, oh, apparently he said when he saw that scale and identified it positively as a coelacanth,

his quote was, if I'd met a dinosaur in the street, I wouldn't have been more astonished. I like that guy. Little hyperbole there, but I like it. So he, I mean, this is seriously, this is like the zoological find of the century and would be for the next 60 something years, right? So he very magnanimously says, you know what?

I'm going to name this thing after you. And he named it as a new species, Latimeria chalumnae, because, well, obviously her name was Courtney Latimer. Courtney hyphen Latimeria chalumne, because, well, obviously her name was Courtney Latimer. Yeah. Courtney hyphen Latimer. Yes. And it was found in the Chalumne River at the mouth of it where it hits the coast off of the eastern coast of South Africa. So that's a great name.

It's perfect. Yeah. It really puts it in a place and time. So they have now discovered this thing. They realized that they have a big find on their hands. They thought this thing had long been extinct by tens of millions of years. And so they started to research

and try and learn more about this fish, which is no ordinary fish. No, but I mean, so this was 1938, right? Yeah. And it was the only one that had been found for another 60 years. Yeah. I mean, there's only so much you can find

from a stuffed fish, but it did prove, because it had been caught alive, it wasn't like they pulled up a fossil or a dead fish, it had been alive when it was caught. Yeah they pulled up a fossil or a dead fish. It had been alive when it was caught. Yeah, I think it was attached to another fish. Oh, really? Like potentially trying to eat it. Oh, okay.

Which is one of the, well, not unusual, but interesting things about the coelacanth is that it eats meat. Oh, there's a lot of unusual things about the coelacanth. Yeah. So fast forward another 60 years exactly in Indonesia, which is on the other side of the Indian Ocean, the eastern side of the Indian Ocean. It was actually first seen in 1997 by a biologist named Mark Erdman, who was in Indonesia doing his PhD dissertation, and he saw a coelacanth in the market.

That's crazy. He's like, that's a coelacanth in the market. That's crazy. That's a coelacanth. What's that doing here? So apparently he put a bit of a bounty out on it with the locals and within a year, by 1998, they had brought him a freshly caught one. Yeah, which is quite a task. Yeah, it's finding a once thought extinct fish.

Yeah. It's a big one. Well, and we'll get to a little bit why it's even tougher than you would think too. Sure. So the one that Erdman found was brown, right? Yeah, it was a little bit different color. Right. The one like Courtney Latimer described, those are known to be like steel blue.

This is a brown a little smaller than the one that Courtney Latimer found. And so eventually when Erdman got his hands on that one, he described it as a new species. Yeah, I mean, it turns out that at one point, you know, hundreds of millions of years ago, there were, you know, potentially over a hundred different varieties of this fish. And they came in all shapes and sizes. These obviously were pretty big, but there were some that were smaller and faster, basically just kind of a wide variety.

And as far as we know, I think are these the only two known survivors? Yes. So far. Yeah. The one that Courtney Latimer found are known as the West Indian Ocean coelacanth. Those are the blue ones. They're typically found off of the west, no, the east coast of Africa, south of Kenya, I believe. Yeah.

Down to about the Cormoros Islands. I think that they're actually also known as the Cormoros Islands, Ceyla Cance, because that seems to be where they inhabit the most, or the highest density of them is. Yeah, and some of the weirdos that have, well, we assume that they've been extinct, but you never know. One of them was toothless and over 10 feet long. That was the Megalocelecanthus.

Very appropriately named. Some of them said, forget you, ocean. I'm going to go to the freshwater. So there were actually freshwater coelacanths at one time. Like I said, some of them were slow and ambushed prey. Some were smaller and faster, but they've pretty much universally all been predators, from what I've seen.

Right, and the two species that are alive today that we know of are, aside from that megalos, coelacanth, tend to be a little bigger than the extinct species, which I read is a good example of why they shouldn't be called living fossils, which is what they're frequently called. Yeah, that's Darwin's term for something that basically never changed. Right.

And they've actually studied the genome of the coelacanth and found that they very much haven't changed. And kind of the main reason is they haven't had to. They've kind of stayed in the same places. And when you stay in the same places and you eat the same stuff, then maybe you don't change so much. I read the opposite of that, that they have changed enough that they have been evolving. And a good example of that is that they're bigger than they used to be.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. But the two species that are alive today, they have traced their genomes back and decided that they've been separated for several million years at least. Yeah, this one, they finally got the full genome and they said that it does indeed match the fish's appearance of slower evolution in a journal published in Nature because they have a slower rate of substitution. Gotcha. Basically, she's the doctor. Well, yeah, I guess she is a doctor.

It just sounded weird to say that. The doctor? The researcher who is also a doctor. She said it may reflect the fact that they do not need to evolve quickly because they've lived in relatively unchanging environment where there are few predators and they basically haven't needed to change over time like other organisms.

Well, that brings up another thing too. There's a big question. Why would they just drop off of the fossil record if they've been around this whole time? If they didn't just go extinct 80 or 65 million years ago. The only explanation I've seen is that the places where the fossils turned up were areas conducive to fossilization. Like there was a lot of sediment that could turn bone into rock. And then the areas that the living species live at now are not conducive to that kind of thing,

possibly because they're mostly living around volcanic rock that doesn't necessarily produce fossils. You want to take a break? Yeah, let's take a break and we'll get back and talk a little bit about this funny fish. American history is full of wise people. Well women said something like, you know, 99.99% of war is diarrhea and 1% is glory. Those founding fathers were gossipy AF and they loved to cut each other down. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, the show where you send us your questions about American history and I find the answers, including the nuggets of wisdom our history has to offer. Hamilton pauses and then he says, the greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar.

And Jefferson writes in his diary, this proves that Hamilton is for a dictator based on corruption. My favorite line was what Neil Armstrong said. It would have been harder to fake it than to do it. Listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never

forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers, and more to explore the stories that shape us, on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep diving book talk theories, and obsessing over book to screen casts for years.

And now I get to talk to the people making the magic. So if you've ever fallen in love with a fictional character or cried at the last chapter or passed a book to a friend saying you have to read this, this podcast is for you. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Are there any pictures of you online? I'm not just talking about Google.

I'm talking anywhere. Clearview scrapes together images from Facebook, from LinkedIn, from Venmo accounts. That database is now being used by police departments all across the country to match criminal suspect photos. And sometimes it makes mistakes. So in this one case, two of their search results that are, I think were in the top 10 of the search results were Michael Jordan, just a picture of Michael Jordan. But cops are still using it to make arrests.

Police, they are trusting this software to lead them to the right suspect. But you're not even being told that it was used, let alone given any of the details about how it works. This is not a minority report. This is happening right now. People are getting arrested and doing actual time in jail after being picked out by a computer. I'm Dexter Thomas, host of Kill Switch, where every Wednesday we explain the right now of living in the future.

You can turn off the computer, but do not let the computer turn you off. Listen to Kill Switch in the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So we've talked a little bit about what makes the Sea Lacanth such an interesting critter. Can a critter be a fish? Yeah? Have you heard of the cuddle fish?

That's a critter if there ever was one. Yeah, a cuddly critter. So here are some remarkable things about the Sea Lacanth. They can live as deep, I mean they're deep water dwellers. They can live as deep as 2,000 or more feet, but generally they think the I Think they Generally live about 500 to 800 feet and what they call the Twilight Zone, right? Which is still pretty deep that it remember our cave episode. Yeah

That had the same thing remember there was like organisms that live in the dark, organisms that live in the Twilight Zone and organisms that live in the lighted zone. Yeah. These guys live in that threshold between light and dark in the ocean. And they apparently are nocturnal hunters. Yeah, they come out at night, kind of stay hidden. Most of these habitats are caves that they tend to stay in, but there's one off of Tasmania

that do not live in caves, and so they have officially been placed on an endangered list because they don't have the protection from bycatch that these other cave dwellers have. Right. That makes sense. Yeah. So the average day in the life of a coelacanth, at least the cave-dwelling species, during the daytime they're hanging out in a cave. They'll hang out in a cave with, I've seen between up to 12 to 16 other coelacanths. Yeah. Have a little coffee.

Yeah. Maybe just talk. Yeah. You know, talk about their night. And then as night falls, they'll leave their caves and they'll go hunting. And like you said, they're carnivorous predators. They do that passive bycatch thing for the most part, right? Where they let the current bring the food to them. But they just basically hang out and wait for a cuttlefish. It's one thing they eat.

Squids, other cephalopods, some fishes, but they seem to not show aggression toward one another, from what I understand. Yeah, and while they are passive hunters, they do have an unusual feature, which is, like we said, one of many, but they have what's called a rostral organ, which just means it's in the nasal region in their snout and it's filled with a jelly-like substance that they think, and they think most of this stuff, I mean they've done a lot of good studying, but for something so rare, you can't be super sure, but they think that it detects low-level electrical signals

and frequencies from prey. Yeah, like a shark or a ray. It's an electrosensory organ where when living tissue contacts water, it can make an electrical impulse that can be picked up. Yeah, and this cool Mental Floss article is, I think, 11 things about the coelacanth. I can't remember how it was put, but just 11 interesting features. Are you 11 fishy facts? Was that it? Unfortunately.

That's why I forgot it. Title aside, it's an interesting article. And one of the things that they don't know why they do, and I have a feeling it has to do with that electrical frequency is they'll swim nose down for up to two full minutes which is weird for a fish. They're just kind of hovering in place head standing, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I guess, I mean, if they have that nasal bag of jelly that helps them locate fish,

I would imagine that's what they're doing there, right? I imagine it like Tonto, like holding a railroad track. You know? Yeah. I think it's the same thing basically. So when they catch their prey, they eat them, and they can eat stuff that's way bigger than them, because again, which is, this is unique to coelacanths among living things.

They have a hinge in their cranium that allows basically their head is convertible. The top of their skull can retract allowing their mouth to open really wide. So they can eat a large, large cuttlefish. Yeah. And I think the that feature also allows it to their mouth to close with much greater force. With extreme prejudice. Yeah, like when it's unhinged emotionally and physically, it can really close that mouth super hard.

They hate themselves for eating cuttlefish. I guess so. They just can't stop. So those are just a couple of the features. Another is, and we mentioned earlier that the name literally translates into hollow spine. This is because they have what's called a notochord, which is a hollow pressurized tube filled with oil where a lot of fish start this way and then they'll eventually get a spine but this doesn't go away. Right. And not just fish vertebrates.

Apparently, there's a lot of mammals that go through this. I think possibly even humans in the embryo. And the coelacanth just says, I'm good with the notochord. I'm going to stick here. Yeah. I'm going to stop here. Which is strange. It is strange.

You want to hear some more stranges? I could do this all day. Well, it's a strange fish. Coelacanth, we don't quite understand how they reproduce. And the reason why is because males don't seem to have any sex parts. They don't have junk. They think possibly males grow it when they need it, but otherwise it's not around.

They're growers, they're not showers. Right, exactly. That's exactly right. So we have no idea how they reproduce, but we know that the mode of reproduction is called ovoviviparity, which is however the eggs that the female has get fertilized, once they're fertilized, they gestate, or the eggs develop in the female, and then they hatch in the female.

And then the live fishes continue to gestate and like the whole period lasts like three years before they're born. So they go from egg to being hatched to being born within a three year period. And so apparently this does not make the mom coelacanth very happy. And sometimes she will try to eat her newborn pups. So supposedly coelacanth pups, that's what they're called, can dive really deep, very quickly, the moment they're born. To get away from mom.

To get away from their mom, who's like three years. Yeah. Three years. Paging Dr. Freud. Yeah. Yeah, I think sharks may be the only other fish that give birth to live little ones. Is that right? I think so. I mean, most fish lay eggs. Right.

So it's definitely unusual. Yeah, it may not be unique. But the other thing about their sexy time is there's also a theory that they are monogamists. I saw that too. In 2013, a German team, they had a couple of corpses of two pregnant, I believe the African version, yeah, the Latamera Cholumne, and because, what was the, I don't remember what the other one was, it was Latamera something else for the Indonesian version. Yeah. We'll just go with that for now.

I was practicing pronouncing it, Latamera menodoensis. Okay, wow. Yeah. We'll just go with that for now. I was practicing pronouncing it, Latimeromenodoensis. Okay, wow. Thanks. Nice work. So they analyzed these two pregnant ladies, unfortunately, that were no longer with us, and they found out that they had like most definitely had a single father, which they said was unusual. Sure.

Because one of them had 26 little baby pups inside of her. Right. And they thought at first, well, maybe it's because the coelacanth is so rare that the female wouldn't have opportunity to mate with more than one male. And they said, well, wait a minute. Well, that's true. Well, no, not necessarily. Once they found out that they stay... They hang out together. Yeah, in caves all day long. Well, that's true. Well, no, not necessarily. Once they found out that they stay. They hang out together. Yeah, in caves all day long.

What else are you going to do? Once General Hospital is over, just looking around at everybody like, well, what do you want to do? Yeah. That's a good point. All right. Well, let's ponder that and take another break. And we'll finish up with even more interesting things about the Sila camp.

American history is full of wise people. Well women said something like, you know, 99.99% of war is diarrhea and 1% is glory. Those founding fathers were gossipy AF and they loved to cut each other down. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, the show where you send us your questions about American history and I find the answers, including the nuggets of wisdom our history has to offer.

Hamilton pauses and then he says, the greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar. And Jefferson writes in his diary, this proves that Hamilton is for a dictator based on corruption. My favorite line was what Neil Armstrong said, it would have been harder to fake it than to do it. Listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget.

I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers, and more to explore the stories that shape us, on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep-diving book talk theories, and obsessing over book-to-screen casts for years. And now, I get to talk to the people making the magic.

So if you've ever fallen in love with a fictional character, or cried at the last chapter, or passed a book to a friend saying, you have to read this. This podcast is for you. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are there any pictures of you online? I'm not just talking about Google, I'm talking anywhere. Clearview scrapes together images from Facebook, from LinkedIn, from Venmo accounts.

That database is now being used by police departments all across the country to match criminal suspect photos. And sometimes it makes mistakes. So in this one case, two of the search results that are, I think we're in the top 10 of the search results were Michael Jordan, a picture of Michael Jordan. But cops are still using it to make arrests. Police, they are trusting this software to lead them to the right suspect.

But you're not even being told that it was used, let alone given any of the details about how it works. This is not a minority report. This is happening right now. People are getting arrested and doing actual time in jail after being picked out by a computer. I'm Dexter Thomas, host of Kill Switch, where every Wednesday we explain the right now of living in the future.

You can turn off the computer, but do not let the computer turn you off. Listen to Kill Switch in the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever guys have live babies. They might mate with a single mate. They have, they can unhinge their jaw to eat more. They have a jelly-filled thing in their nastra. That detects electricity Detects electricity. I know I'm having trouble saying detects to you What else this is sort of a recap they have an oil-filled spine oil-filled spine there they're just good with they're like

I don't need a real spine. This one's my favorite. They were long thought to be the missing link between the fishes and the tetrapods, which are land-dwelling four-limbed animals. Yeah, because a notable thing I don't think we mentioned yet is this thing has, well, I think I did in a quote from Miss Latimer, Courtney Latimer, but they have four fins that move sort of like you would think legs would move if a fish could swim out onto the beach. Legs and arms. Yeah.

Like you remember how Shaggy walked in Scooby-Doo? I do. Just like that. That's basically how a Coelacanth swims. Yeah. And the fact that their fins are suspiciously arm-like in appearance just made people think that even more. What's more, their arms, what are called lobes, are attached by a bone that is compared to the humerus in humans.

So a lot of people said, well, that's it. It's the missing link. The coelacanth is the missing link between the fish and the land-dwelling forlorn animals. And apparently, once the genome came around, they said, no. A little disappointing. They said, yes, we're all related. Technically, we are all what are known as sarcopterigians.

Okay. Man. Which means we are fleshy-limbed vertebrates. So we're all that. Gross. So we are related, but it's not like our direct ancestor. In fact, we're more closely related to the lungfish than the coelacanth. But the coelacanth holds its place of honor as probably living on something of its own branch

and is a very close cousin, if not bro, of the lungfish. So we're related by marriage to the coelacanth, say. But legally we probably could marry a coelacanth. Sure. And have it not be super creepy. Right. Except for the fact that it's a fish. Right.

You feel its fleshy lobe fin stroking the back of your head as you kiss it? I got something for you. That was... I'm just walking right past that one. They taste gross, so don't think it's some weird delicacy. Right. Not, you know, that there are that many of them to eat. But apparently, if you do eat them, they can make you sick. Because these things are filled with urea, with oil, with wax ester, and fat.

Like 98.5% fat. That's just in its skull. Oh, I thought that was the whole body. No, its brain occupies 1.5% of the area inside its skull. The other 98.5% is fat. And that's at the point that they're an adult. Right, yeah, supposedly their brains are bigger proportionately when they're younger.

And they just stay there. Yeah. They're frozen in perpetual, like, I guess, toddlerhood. Pretty much, they love life. Yeah. No responsibilities, no bills. Mom and dad wipe up after them. They love life. Yeah. No responsibilities. No bills. They just want to watch. Mom and dad wipe up after them.

Yeah, exactly. What else? Oh, I got one for you. Okay. Vestigial lungs. Oh, yeah. Man, I love these things. So, they grow.

They had CT scans done, and this is from the Mental Floss article, of these embryos, and they start growing little lungs early in the gestation period, and it slows down a bit, and then by the time they're an adult, the organ serves no purpose. Yeah, it's just there. Yep. That's a good one. It is. It's almost like the coelac's a good one. It is. It's almost like the coelacanth was an attempt, an evolutionary attempt.

And it's just like, I'm going to scrap this design. Let's move on to the long fish. Yeah, maybe so. One of the things that struck me though, Chuck, was when they were talking about how a couple of females that had fully formed young in them ready to be born were caught. That was a lot of the coelacanth population that got wiped out with those two caught fish. Yeah, I mean if there are possibly about a thousand of the ones that live around Indonesia,

and far fewer of the ones that live off of the west coast of Africa on the western side of the Indian Ocean. And as a result, both of them are on the endangered species list. They're both protected. The problem is, is that if something happens to these species, and these species die out this time, the whole order is gone for good this time around. Yeah.

Unless we revive them with some of their DNA. Yeah. All right, I got one last one. Okay. And this was on Mental Floss's list as well. Okay. Under the title, a prominent hematologist once wrote a coelacanth operetta. So that's an attention grabber.

Yeah. Apparently in 1975, there was a man named Charles Rand of Long Island University, and he was a hematologist and was doing some work with the Coelacanth. And this was when the big revelation was, when they learned that it gave birth to live young. And he, I guess, was a music guy and decided to write a little operetta about this discovery titled, A Coelacanth's Lament or Quintuplets at 50 Fathoms Can Be Fun. All sung to the tune of various Gilbert and Sullivan songs.

Right. How about that? That's a hematologist for you. Wow. For sure. I have no comment on that. I mean, it speaks for itself. Other than I wish this was on tape somewhere.

Surely, it's on YouTube. Everything's on YouTube. You think? I mean it speaks for itself other than I wish this was on tape somewhere Surely it's on YouTube. Everything's on YouTube you think yeah, sure You want to go over some of these other quote living fossils in quote? Yeah So again there was there's some fishes out there that may have made the jump Kinda to land or almost did or what have you but, but there's some interesting fishes that are worth mentioning. Speaking of making the jump, did you see that shark that jumped into the boat the other day? No. There was a fisherman and I guess the shark just did, you know, one of their famous, it was a great white. Oh, God.

Did one of its breaches where they just jump out of the water and this thing did that and landed in a dude's fishing boat. Wow. where they just jump out of the water. And this thing did that and landed in a dude's fishing boat. And he got banged around a little bit, but was not bitten or anything. And basically went into his little control room, I think, and called for help. And this shark, I mean, it was kind of sad. I think the shark just died. But there are pictures of it. It's huge. It's like eight feet long.

It was not a little guy. Do you imagine? No. My God. That's like eight feet long. Oh my god. It's not a little guy. Yeah. Do you imagine? No. My god. That guy did the right thing. He ran. And he pooped his pants too. Yeah. I may have jumped into the water had that happened. All right. So, living fossils. The bowfin.

Yeah. The dogfish, mudfish, or grindle. I like dogfish. Yeah. This guy, I looked all these up. He lives in the Mississippi River Basin, in the Great Lakes and other places, and are pretty mean, supposedly. Like, eats small mammals, snakes, frogs, other fish. Like, they'll go after you. Right. It's sort of normal looking, just sort of a long fish. Nothing remarkable as appearance wise though. I'll tell you one that's remarkable appearance wise is the gar.

Yeah, you know, I just saw a long-nosed gar. They are so ugly. Last weekend and I was like, it was floating dead in a lake. I was like, what in the world? Because I went by it at first, I was like, was that a swordfish? Well, no, it's not a swordfish. But in the long-nosed ones, I mean, this thing had a, he had a 12-inch beak. I mean, it looked prehistoric. Yeah, they very much do look prehistoric, which is one of the reasons why they're called a living fossil. And they are just mean. Apparently, they're known to kill other fish, not even to eat them, just because they were

in their way, basically. Yeah, like you see this nose? Yeah. And you can't eat gar, they're inedible. And as a matter of fact, if you eat their eggs, it will kill you. They're very toxic to humans. And they just go around killing other fish. So, they're not the best thing to have in your lake if you like to fish in a lake.

No, and they, did you ever see Vernon, Florida, the documentary? No, I've never seen that one. By the great Errol Morris, it has one of the interviews, it's one of my favorites, is with a guy talking about, talking about the garfish. Oh really? Yeah.

I got to see that one. Come across one of those, oh boy. I finally saw a thin blue Line for the first time. Oh yeah, that's a good one. It is really good. You probably saw it after the parody of Documentary Now. Yep, I definitely did. I saw the Documentary Now one first.

Which they nailed, it's like perfect. They really do. One of the great shows. What's next, Hagfish? Yeah. Mud dwellers? Yeah, they basically look like eels, but they're fish. But the interesting thing about hagfish,

aside from the fact that they don't have any eyes, is that they eat fish from the inside out. Yeah, I think you underplayed it when you said they basically look like eels. It looks like something out of Dune. Okay. Like the body looks like an eel, but have you seen the front end of this thing?

Sure. It's frightening. Oh yeah. And to think about that crawling up in you and eating you from the inside out. Right. Because if you're a dead or dying fish and you're like, oh man, I hope I hurry up and die before a hagfish finds me. And a hagfish swims down your throat and then eats you from the inside out.

That's a bad day. That's not a good death. No. And then lastly, what about the sturgeon? Love the sturgeon. Did you know that they are both freshwater and saltwater here in North America? I did not know that, but I know one thing is they're huge. Yeah, they get up to like 20 feet long.

Yeah, and I didn't see any pictures of them that big, but I've seen pictures of fishermen with like sturgeon that look like they're at least to like 20 feet long. Yeah, and I didn't see any pictures of them that big, but I've seen pictures of fishermen with like sturgeon that look like they're at least eight or nine feet long. And they're crazy looking. Well, the reason I was surprised that they are largely North America is I always associate them with the Baltic area where the beluga sturgeon is prized for its caviar. That's what I always think of when I think sturgeon.

Well, I didn't realize that that's where Beluga came from either. And they have armor-like skin and they're these retractable mouths that... I guess there are different varieties, but some of them look almost like alligators from the head forward. Yeah, they're weird-looking fish. But they don't want to hurt anybody. They just want you to eat their eggs. Is that true? Yeah. They're like the giving tree of the lake.

All right. Up with Sturgeon. You got anything else? I got nothing else. If you want to know more about living fossils, like, you know, coelacanths. Or us. Right. You can type those words in the search bar at howstuffworks.com.

And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this, my mom married Bob Dorough. Oh, I like this one. Did you see that one? Right. And I thought it was because that was the subject line. Right. And then the very first line of the email was sorry about that attention grabbing

Subject line and I thought it was a lie because a lot of times people say something remarkable Yeah, and the subject line that is completely false. Yeah, which always ticks me off sure, but this is true My mom married the wonderful talented and sweet Bob Dorough 23 years ago, and if you didn't listen to show Bob Dorough was Part of the genius behind Schoolhouse Rock. The original genius. It was wonderful to hear you two speak so highly of him in your recent podcast. My own family listens to you guys a lot,

so to hear you speak of our Bob with such reverence, it warmed our hearts. When you mentioned early in your podcast that you wished you could have gotten Bob on the show, I wanted to jump through my phone to say I can make that happen. Bob learned about you guys about two weeks ago when we took a short road trip for Mother's Day and listened to the grave robbing episode. How awesome is that?

I know. The guy listened to us right before we released the Schoolhouse Rock episode. So he's primed and ready to hear us mention him. Fortuitous. He chuckled often during the ride and when we got to our destination he asked something to the effect of, who are those comedy guys? They're good. Man, that made me feel good.

And then to have the Schoolhouse Rock episode pop up a few weeks later, it was like, whoa! You guys were spot on in your characterization of Bob as a creative genius a lot of his genius comes from his hard work the age of 93 he is still traveling the world taking gigs that's awesome my mom often complains that he doesn't know how to say no thank you for giving Bob and schoolhouse Rockets proper do next time you come up the coast the Northeast that is we'll be there and I'm sure Bob won't say no. And that is from Pete, I guess his stepson. Yeah.

And Pete sent in a picture of he and Bob. Yeah. And that's him in the flesh. It's pretty awesome. Pretty neat. And you should go to www.BobDoro.com and just check it out. 93 and going strong. Nice going, Bob. Thanks for listening to us. and just check it out. 93 and going strong. podcast at iHeartRadio.com.

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, a different type of podcast. You the listener, ask the questions. Did George Washington really cut down a cherry tree? Were JFK and Marilyn Monroe having an affair? And I find the answers.

I'm so glad you asked me this question. This is such a ridiculous story. You can listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts where we dive into the stories that shape us on the

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But the real world is different. Managing life's challenges can be overwhelming. So what do we do? We get support. The Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council have mental health resources available for you at loveyourmindtoday.org. That's loveyourmindtoday.org. See how much further you can go when you take care of your mental health.