Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lambin. This is the Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in non mythical creatures, ideas and monsters. In time, I'd like to turn our attention once more to the world of Jim Henson's nineteen eighty six fantasy film Labyrinth, where a vast shifting maze surrounds the Goblin King's castle full of various hazards, traps, and riddles. It is not uncommon to encounter the Goblin army in these parts, as they tend to such important work as tormenting good natured beasts like Ludo. In the film, Sarah encounters several heavily armored goblins engaging in just such work with nipper sticks. These are long sticks or cudgels with a strange bity creature perched toward the end of the stick. These creatures are hairless and pink, Their eyes remain closed, and they seem unwilling or incapable of leaving the end of the stick that they cling to with clod hands and feet. While the goblins don't bother to explain the origin of the nipper sticks, and the bestiaries and novelizations I turn to are equally silent on the matter. One is struck by a sense of new born or larval morphology in the nipper beast. It has not yet opened its eyes, It does not move on its own, it has not grown hair. Its only defining behavior is to bite at any and everything it can with its pronounced sharp teeth. Larval aggression is very much reality in the animal world. It is common among nursery mates, generally due to resource limitations. Some salamanders and frogs even develop cannibal morphs with larger teeth and mouths to gobble up nursery mats when resources are tight. While horrific sounding to us, this is just the survival economics of the wild. It's also one way of interpreting the large mouths and teeth of the nippers. Larvae have many enemies, however, so it also bodes well for larvae to fend off predators as well as cannibal adults of the same species. It has been theorized that the dorsal spines on metallic blue lady beetle larvae serve to protect them against attacks by the larvae of other species species that often boast the speed, maneuverability and mandibles to take out susceptible larvae. This according to intragilled predation among Lady Beetles and a green lace wing by Macaud and Grant from the Bulletin of Intomological Research in two thousand and seven. In short, larvae and babies generally have a great deal development left to do, sometimes in quite a hurry, but in some cases it makes sense to front load that development with an outsized ability to defend yourself or to consume your competitors. One can easily imagine the goblins of the Goblin City in Labyrinth capitalizing on these adaptations for their own nasty weaponry. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Hi, my name is Robert Lambin. This is the Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in non mythical creatures, ideas and monsters. In time, I'd like to turn our attention once more to the world of Jim Henson's nineteen eighty six fantasy film Labyrinth, where a vast shifting maze surrounds the Goblin King's castle full of various hazards, traps, and riddles. It is not uncommon to encounter the Goblin army in these parts, as they tend to such important work as tormenting good natured beasts like Ludo. In the film, Sarah encounters several heavily armored goblins engaging in just such work with nipper sticks. These are long sticks or cudgels with a strange bity creature perched toward the end of the stick. These creatures are hairless and pink, Their eyes remain closed, and they seem unwilling or incapable of leaving the end of the stick that they cling to with clod hands and feet. While the goblins don't bother to explain the origin of the nipper sticks, and the bestiaries and novelizations I turn to are equally silent on the matter. One is struck by a sense of new born or larval morphology in the nipper beast. It has not yet opened its eyes, It does not move on its own, it has not grown hair. Its only defining behavior is to bite at any and everything it can with its pronounced sharp teeth. Larval aggression is very much reality in the animal world. It is common among nursery mates, generally due to resource limitations. Some salamanders and frogs even develop cannibal morphs with larger teeth and mouths to gobble up nursery mats when resources are tight. While horrific sounding to us, this is just the survival economics of the wild. It's also one way of interpreting the large mouths and teeth of the nippers. Larvae have many enemies, however, so it also bodes well for larvae to fend off predators as well as cannibal adults of the same species. It has been theorized that the dorsal spines on metallic blue lady beetle larvae serve to protect them against attacks by the larvae of other species species that often boast the speed, maneuverability and mandibles to take out susceptible larvae. This according to intragilled predation among Lady Beetles and a green lace wing by Macaud and Grant from the Bulletin of Intomological Research in two thousand and seven. In short, larvae and babies generally have a great deal development left to do, sometimes in quite a hurry, but in some cases it makes sense to front load that development with an outsized ability to defend yourself or to consume your competitors. One can easily imagine the goblins of the Goblin City in Labyrinth capitalizing on these adaptations for their own nasty weaponry. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.