EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Tom "Blowfish" Hird, host of EarthxTV's "Ocean Wonders," discusses all things weird, bright, and beautiful living in the world's oceans.
About Ocean Wonders:
Heavy-metal marine biologist, Tom “the Blowfish” Hird, comes face to face with incredible sea creatures and conducts mind-blowing experiments to reveal the secrets and mysteries of our oceans.
Watch Wednesdays on EarthX
EarthX
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
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#EarthDay #Environment #Sustainability #Eco-friendly #Conservation #EarthxTV #EarthX
Tom "Blowfish" Hird, host of EarthxTV's "Ocean Wonders," discusses all things weird, bright, and beautiful living in the world's oceans.
About Ocean Wonders:
Heavy-metal marine biologist, Tom “the Blowfish” Hird, comes face to face with incredible sea creatures and conducts mind-blowing experiments to reveal the secrets and mysteries of our oceans.
Watch Wednesdays on EarthX
EarthX
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Follow Us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthxtv/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/earthxtv
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/earthxtv
How to watch:
United States:
- Spectrum
- AT&T U-verse (1267)
- DIRECTV (267)
- Philo
- FuboTV
- Plex
- Fire TV
#EarthDay #Environment #Sustainability #Eco-friendly #Conservation #EarthxTV #EarthX
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TVTranscript
00:00So these are my weird and wonderful creatures from the deep and here we have the humble barnacle
00:06It's one that people know they'll see quite often. But you know, what is it? What is the barnacle?
00:10Okay, cuz it looks well, it looks kind of like a snail like a mollusk, right?
00:15Well, actually that thing in there is a crustacean so it's related to shrimp
00:20Lobsters crabs all that kind of thing
00:22In fact, the barnacle is best described as a shrimp lying on its back with its head glued to the rock
00:28That uses its super hairy arms like there to kick food into its mouth as you can see there
00:35Those are the hairy arms coming out filter feeding getting all that delicious plankton the soup of the sea
00:40Chucking it into its mouth. That's not a barnacle. That was a shiny. Sorry. I'm gonna be using this one. Sorry Randy. Sorry
00:46back on this one now
00:49Fabulous creatures very very successful. You see them all over the rocks, which is good. But um
00:55How how do they get that they're fixed in one place, how do you get more barnacles?
00:59Well, this barnacle here is showing us how because the barnacle happens to have the longest penis to body size in the world
01:08This massive schlong. That's a technical term
01:11Can be used to reach between individual barnacles for a bit of the old house your father and that's a British term
01:18But it's very very useful because of course they can't move to mate
01:22So they have to have that very long prehensile
01:26Member to go and see all its different friends
01:30It's kind of like a swingers party, but nobody moves. It's very good. So
01:37They've given me a TV show, I don't know what they were thinking
01:41They pay me for this nonsense, right?
01:43I'm gonna skip on to another one. That's a barnacle arm. At least I hope it is
01:48No
01:50It's no idea what that is, right? Let's make another one happen
01:54There we go. Okay, the jellyfish. This is a good one. I like jellyfish. So
01:59Probably one of the first organized sort of life on earth before jellyfish
02:04It was just kind of slimes and like single cells
02:07But jellyfish and potentially sponges were the first things that you could recognize as creatures now
02:13Jellyfish may seem very very simple. You know, they certainly are very basic body plan, but it's those
02:19Tentacles that make them so very very cool. So we all know jellyfish can sting right some jellyfish things
02:26Like getting stung by some nettles or a wasp or something
02:31There are other jellyfish that can sting you and kill you in six minutes
02:35All right, don't mess with the jellyfish unless you're a sea turtle unless you're a sea turtle in which case you can buff it
02:42I don't know what this giant murder. Panda is doing orca of their own creatures
02:46They're just like the thugs of the sea
02:48But it that sting is very very cool and it works in a very very simple but effective way
02:54So all across their tentacles, they have thousands of these things called nematocytes
03:00Those are the actual stinging parts of the cells and if I am timing this, right? I
03:07Think I am brilliant. Here we go
03:10Here's a living representation of what happens when something gets stung by a jellyfish. So here I have a van
03:18And this thing here. This is my nematocyst
03:22Okay
03:22So it's a harpoon hidden inside a cell that can fire out in two milliseconds
03:29In fact the pressure inside an individual nematocyst
03:33Here's an individual nematocyst
03:34The pressure in there is the same as a diving cylinder and when they fire you can see they pop out in their
03:41Thousands like that very very cool. So let's see what it looks like
03:45They sent me I had c4. They gave me c4. I mean, I wouldn't have given me this laser pointer
03:52but anyway, so you can see there that's the the cell representation of the nematocyst firing into its prey and
03:59The first thing it does is obviously jellyfish you get stung they're sticky it latches on to you
04:04So it's got that barbed end hooks into its prey, but that's not the end of it. Okay, because okay stuck to something
04:10What do you do then? Well, if you're a jellyfish, you don't have teeth
04:13You need to start digesting your prey and that's when this comes in
04:17So that isn't a silly string that is actually highly venomous
04:21Toxin and the jellyfish starts pumping the toxin into the cell that digests the cell and then
04:28boom
04:29The cell will explode
04:31Okay, how cool is that? Just this is just an excuse for me to show you blowing up a van
04:35We just watch that in slow-mo for the next 10 minutes. I'll be fine
04:39But that's how jellyfish works
04:41You've got to imagine you've got thousands of nematocysts sticking on to thousands of cells and blowing them all up
04:46That is why there are some jellyfish that can kill you in six minutes
04:51boom cop all of that
04:53Guys he's a handsome chap any if you kind of like going for Shrek's or like Lord of the Rings extras, right play
05:02Play you
05:03Molecular beast. Here we go. What have we got now the lobster? I'm big fan of the lobster
05:08Okay, and not by eating them about not seeing them in the ocean
05:11So there they are now
05:13Obviously the first thing we know about lobsters is they've got those big claws and I would like to point out they are blue
05:18Don't believe those lying cartoons. All right, you see the red lobster. No, no. No, that's a restaurant
05:23Lobsters are blue
05:25Now of those two claws, you've got one big massive crushing claw
05:28You can see it there and then one slicing and dicing claw and that means that this bad boy can eat pretty much whatever he wants
05:35He can crack open shells crack open bone with one and he can tear and rend flesh with the other
05:41They're serious job one of these guys easy take your finger off. No problems with that
05:46But of course lobsters like like the rest of us they have the trials and tribulations of life and
05:51Lobsters occasionally have to settle their differences. Maybe they've got particularly nice hole. Maybe they're arguing over who's gonna win the Premier League
05:58I don't know. This is lobster sort of community stuff
06:01I'm not I'm not involved with that. But what I can tell you is that lobsters do fight fair
06:06All right, they don't use their claws when lobsters fight
06:10They know that they're all packing and no one wants to get the face ripped off with one of those big meat cleavers
06:16So when lobsters fight they hold their claws out of the way and proceed to we in each other's faces
06:23Because lobsters excrete they pee from their nose
06:28This is the world's greatest pissing contest
06:32They get their claws out the way and they start jetting urine at each other and it's in that urine that contains a lot of
06:38Chemicals that allow lobsters to figure out who's the strongest who is the toughest?
06:43Very very clever because the claw really is damaging
06:46Now what I've got here is just an example of how the claw actually works
06:50Because yes, there's a lot of power coming down to crush it as you can see here crushing a very soft piece of fruit
06:57Very underwhelming after watching that van explode, but never mind
07:00But you might also have seen in restaurants and stuff if you see the lobsters in there if these claws are so strong
07:06How come they're a little elastic band holds them shut because and you sit here
07:11Most of the muscle in that big meaty claw is designed to close it
07:15It's not designed to open it and that's represented by we've got this red banding here
07:19That's the muscle closing the claw and then the blue banding there is the muscle opening it. So it's all
07:25Involved in doing this and not in doing that hence why you can keep them closed with just a tiny elastic band
07:34Seeing what's next. I've no idea. What's next play?
07:38Way there we go. What is next? Oh the mantis shrimp. This is a good one. I like this. So this
07:45Technicolored murder machine fabulous animal not very big on the about sort of so kind of size tiny little creature. Very very clever. So
07:53Let's talk about those eyes those eyes right each individual. Eye has
07:59Trinocular vision, right both our eyes combined give us binocular vision, but just one of their eyes has
08:07Trinocular vision. All right, they can see colors. We can't even imagine
08:11We have three color sensitive cells in our eyes. They have upwards of 30
08:17All right, so they can see things we can't even imagine
08:19They can also see UV light infrared light and all these kind of polarized lights
08:25In fact, they have a very special secret way of communicating you might notice that on the front of them
08:31They've got these wonderful flappy paddles again another technical term. They are you can see in there
08:36They will actually use those panels to send signals to each other by reflecting polarized light
08:41The only other mantis shrimp can see but this this is the real deal here
08:45Well, this is why the mantis shrimps on my real that punching power. Boom. Look at that
08:52That's not just knocked his claw off look at that amazing they can punch
08:56So very hard that they will kill most animals outright
09:01Okay, they have the same punching force as a 0.22 caliber bullet
09:07They can punch so hard that they split water when they punch and you can't split water
09:14Physics doesn't like that. So as the water tears apart and then forms back together
09:19It actually pumps out a tiny little lightning bolt so these guys can punch lightning which is amazing
09:26The way they do it is very very simple. They don't have a huge massive muscle like the lobster
09:30They just use a bit of physics. So you see here
09:33This is a representation of the claw and we've got this area up here known as the saddle and it's like a bow and arrow
09:39You've got all the tension which is held weirdly in the shell. Okay, so the shell
09:45Compresses and by compressing the shell it holds a lot of power and then when it lets go it fires that claw forwards
09:52I don't know why that's footage of me playing a guitar. That was really random
09:56Okay, but back to reality. Apparently, here we go
09:59So when it fires forwards it fires forwards with a huge amount of power allowing it to punch through many a thing and this was an
10:06excuse apparently for me to fire a cannon
10:09They pay me to do this. They actually pay me to do this
10:13So here we see a cannon punching its way through some
10:16hardened blocks of old oak timber that stuff was as hard as steel and this is just trying to give you a
10:23Representation of what happens if we scaled up the mantis shrimp, so it wasn't this big punching crabs, but it was this big punching us
10:31Now I wish you could actually sort of you know
10:33Get the sound effects and this and all that jazz but you can see huge amount of power going on here
10:37And even then this doesn't cover just how powerful the mantis shrimp is put it this way if you had the same
10:45Acceleration in your arm to throw that punch. You'd be able to throw a tennis ball to the moon. All right
10:51Seriously cool critter blowing the top off there and smacking that crab. I feel sorry for the crab
10:58Right. Okay. That is the end of my little slide stuff, but not the end of the nonsense that continues
11:04so a couple of other weird creatures for you
11:07There is an animal in the deep sea called the hairy anglerfish, right?
11:12Now when science first found these things, they only used to find these big fat beautiful fish
11:18Covered in hair with these great big lumps hanging off them. It sounds like me basically
11:23And they're like, well, you know, what is this is the female we know this is the female
11:28Where's the male? Where's the male for this thing?
11:30So we the science look for ages trying to find the male anglerfish couldn't find it couldn't find it
11:35Until science realized that
11:38What they got was both male and female anglerfish and they're not hermaphrodites. Well, I eat male and female at the same time
11:47Anglerfish while the female is this big beautiful creature that goes around feeding. However, she wants
11:53The male is a tiny weedy little thing with a huge nose and all he does in his brief life is
12:00Swim through the ocean
12:02Sniffing out for a female the minute he gets the scent of a female he swims right up to her without saying hello
12:09Hi, how you doing without getting a phone number or even following her on Facebook or anything like that?
12:13he swims right up to her and bites her right on the bum and
12:17Then he doesn't let go
12:19He then loses his internal organs. He starts to suck her blood through his body
12:26Hello Maggie
12:28She's given me the five-minute warning, but that means nothing to me
12:34He starts to suck her blood through his body and he physically becomes an extension of her
12:40So these lumpy bits that we were finding on female anglers were the male anglers
12:45They essentially just become hanging pods of testes that the female can use at any time to get pregnant. That's pretty weird
12:53I'm glad we don't do that
12:55You know young gentleman today if you're you know ever courting a woman
12:59Make sure you get the phone number off her first. Don't just bite her on the ass. She won't be in for that
13:04She might be in for that in which case I don't know maybe run that could be dangerous
13:08So with my so with my last five minutes, I know so many disgusting things about the ocean
13:14With my last five minutes. I talked about it. Yeah yesterday. I'll talk about it again. I love it
13:19We're gonna talk about the hagfish also known as the sly meal, okay
13:24Now this thing it's like a long tube and it's it's a fairly sort of boring fish to look at
13:30It's very very ancient fish so ancient. In fact that it doesn't have a jaw like we do
13:35Okay, because our jaw is evolved from fish
13:38Its jaw is actually like two cheese graters that go together like that
13:43We know this fish from watching it scavenge on like whale carcasses where it gets hold of a piece of flesh and then because it's
13:50so slimy and so
13:53Pliant it can just pull off chunks of flesh by tying its body into a knot and pushing the knot
13:59Down onto the prey or onto the carcass and we thought wow, this is you know, this is pretty cool
14:04These things are scavengers. That's great. But then deep ocean
14:07We know more about the surface of Mars than we do our deep ocean
14:11All right, and so only recently we found out that they're not just scavengers
14:15They're hunters because the hagfish has the other name of the slime eel
14:20And that's because they are the leading exponent in snot
14:24They can make make snot very very quickly and slime eel mucus is very very sticky
14:31They use it as defense if something comes along tries to eat them
14:34They can jet snot into the mouth of a predator clogging its gills and they can make an escape fine. Cool. No worries
14:41They use this snot not just for defense
14:43but during their predatory actions because a deep-sea robot caught one swimming along the bottom and
14:50In front of it a fish saw it coming away. Oh and went straight into the sand
14:54All right hidden the sand and the hagfish went straight for it
14:58The hagfish went into the burrow with with this fish
15:02Gripped it by its tail
15:03So the fish couldn't escape and then put its slime glands into overdrive and filled the burrow up with snot
15:11Drowning its victim in mucus. Okay basting it in slime, right?
15:16So however, you might feel about the catering here today be glad it's not done by hagfish
15:21All right, because that would be pretty grim and and I need to turn around. Okay. Yep
15:27Is that the simp the turning around symbol?
15:30Yeah
15:31Yep. Nope. Yep. Brilliant. I've got a watch of you
15:35You don't not today. We're doing the chicken dance now, are we I'm just annoying people now. It's fun, isn't it?
15:41I was filling in a slot. I've done my best and now I'm done. Thank you very much. Ladies gentlemen