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 on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time. And this is going to be yet another omnibus episode, collecting four previous related Monster Fact entries. These are going to cover my recent journey into the Star Trek universe, so I hope you enjoy these. Let's go ahead and kick things off with the Andrians. In this episode, I'd like to begin a series on various aliens and creatures from the Star Trek universe. Now, first of all, I will be the first to admit that I am not an expert in Trek lore, but I very fondly remember as a kid in the nineties watching reruns of Star Trek the Next Generation every weeknight at nine PM. So fondly remember a book that I had to special order from the local bookstore, Star Trek The Worlds of the Federation, written and illustrated by Laura Johnson writing as Shane Johnson. This was an encyclopedic collection of alien profiles. Think of it as a monster manual. If you will, covering thirty two different Federation member alien species, as well as a number of neutral and hostile aliens. This was a nineteen eighty nine publication, so it's far from current and is not considered part of current Trek canon, and I'm to understand some Trek writers took issue with some of the entries. Still, it's a book that meant a lot to me as a young Treky, and I suspect it meant a lot to others from this time period as well, So I'm going to go ahead and cite it along with some other sources, with the caveat that again, it's not canon much in the same way I cited the Dune Encyclopedia in some of my Dune related entries. With all of that in mind, let's turn to the Andrians. These blueskin, white haired, antinny equipped aliens are iconic original series aliens, but they were rather exotic for me, as they're virtually absent from both Star Trek the Next Generation and Star Trek Deep Space nine, which constituted my prime Trek viewing. The reasoning for their absence, according to the excellent Memory Alpha, was largely twofold. First of all, Trek creator Gene Roddenberry preferred that many original series aliens be avoided in favor of new ones on the next generation. Secondly, the makeup was allegedly difficult to get right and avoid looking silly. They overcame these hurdles and subsequent shows, and in the current Star Trek Strange New World series, which I'm enjoying quite a bit, we encounter an albinos subspecies of Andrians known as the Nar, as well as an Andrian Special Forces officer, and neither of these aliens looks remotely silly. But let's come back to the biology of the Andorians of the Federation describes them as a mix of mammalian and reptilian features, with both an endoskeleton and a limited exoskeleton, and the antennae are described as enhancing otherwise colorblind vision with a quote complex matrix of light sensitive cones in addition to auditory functions. All of this together would amount to an enhanced sense of sight and smell. Fair enough obvious sense organs do sense organ things. Antennay interrestrial organisms remember very greatly, and depending on the species, may utilize senses of touch, air, motion, heat, vibration, smell, or taste, But again, the Worlds of the Federation came out in nineteen eighty nine before A particular nineteen ninety three episode of the Next Generation shed a great deal of canonical light on the biology of Star Trek. The episode titled The Chase, which I specifically remember from my childhood, revealed the reason so many Star Trek alien species are humanoid and resemble each other, often with minor alterations to facial and cranial features. All of this via a revelation of ancient intentional pan spermia via a single advanced progenitor humanoid species. In other words, all of these Trek species look similar not because they're all humans in makeup, but rather because a single ancestor species spread their own DNA among the various worlds to see them. I've always found this to be a clever way of addressing the seeming lack of biological diversity in many of the core Tract civilizations. Now you might reasonably wonder, okay, fine, but realistically, would these distantly related species still look so similar to each other? Well? Susan and Robert Jenkins explore this question in their book The Biology of Star Trek, published in nineteen ninety eight. They point out that based on what we know about evolution, it's not at all unreasonable. The evolutionary clock runs slowly, they write, and it has a built in bias against major overhauls. Because speciation is brought about by multiple random changes in DNA, and the changes must allow the organism to survive and reproduce, small changes are favored over large ones. Small changes are less likely to compromise the tested survivability of the original. Given this constraint, two species that start out alike remain similar over a rather long time, even under different sets of environmental pressures. They add that particular environmental pressures would of course have their impact, and a trend towards facial symmetry would likely stay in place. They go into greater detail in this great book about not only the speculative biology of all of this, but also the connections between human facial cues and the way we imagine the facial features of tracks aliens, and they do get around to considering the andorians. They point out that while nothing resembling a human with antennae exists in the natural world, we of course do have mammalian species with enhanced whiskers, and I would point out that we have other things like the unique robosis of the star No's mole and the twin feelers of the tentacled snake to get into the reptile world. For the Andorians, however, they propose an interesting notion. Perhaps the Andorian home world contains multiple atmospheric variations, and this results in various microclimates, requiring enhanced sensation of atmospheric content, temperature, and pressure for any species that regularly travels outside of a narrow region or microclimate. They even go so far as to discuss how tissues in human embryos might develop into antennae under the right survival pressures. Quote. Human embryos have several segments called embryonic pharyngeal arches in what will become the head and the neck. They supply the developing tissue for jaws and some neck organs. In fish, However, the pharyngeal arches develop into gills because these structures have been adapted for very different purposes. They might evolve to provide the organ substrate for the nervous tissue in an antenna like organ. More broadly, they point out that added sense organs could potentially detect any number of factors in a given environment, provided there was an evolutionary incentive to do so. Memory Alpha provides little canonical data on all of this, as far as I could tell, but it does point out that we know that Andrian an Kenny can be moved independently via voluntary muscle control, that they regenerate if they are injured or blasted off, and they also seem to play a role in balance and gesticulation and of course therefore communication. I think all this is quite reasonable. Now, coming back to Star Trek's Strange New Worlds, the Enar character Himmer in that show is depicted as having been born sightless, but is more than able to make up for his lack of sight in part due to his other senses as a member of an antennae equipped and Dorian subspecies. All right, Next up, The Trouble with Triples not discuss the various creatures of the Star Trek universe, without of course considering the tribles of Iota geminorum for a world home to an abundance of carnivorous reptiles, in addition to the vaguely mammalian Trible, which seems to serve as a basic prey species for all the space lizards. The Triple is, of course, a small furry creature with no discernible limbs or features. Really, its only means of defending itself, at least against humanoids, is to basically tranquilize the humanoid with a gentle cooing effect. The trouble with Tribles, of course, is their incredible rate of reproduction. They are even reportedly born already pregnant, and can quickly overrun any given ecosystem or starship that they are introduced into. In their natural habitat, they eat and reproduce as quickly as possible, but their numbers are kept in check, presumably by their many voracious predators. But on a federation star, yes, this is where the trouble occurs. With no predators, plentiful food, and a crew overcome by their adorable cuteness, their population very quickly spirals out of control. The creatures debuted in a nineteen sixty seven episode of the original Star Trek series, but the Grimlins franchise of the eighties and nineties treads on similar ground. Adorable fur babies that get entirely out of hand due to a mix of ineptitude, human vulnerability to cuteness, and a reproductive system clearly evolve for different parameters. I've speculated elsewhere that maguai might depend on a desert, if not an extraterrestrial environment for their biology to make sense and likewise unsuftible your mind. We've talked about the role of cuteness, both among humans and cuteness between humans and non human animals. It is a potent force that manipulates us. For the Triple, the stabilizing factor is the severity of its ecosystem. On the Triple home world, triples presumably die in vast numbers, and their prolific reproduction rate merely allows them to keep up. We see variations of this in the natural world here on Earth as well. In general, we see the basic quality quantity tradeoff. In practice, some organisms err on the side of producing few high quality offspring, while others simply produce offspring in vast numbers. The predators can't eat all of them, and a select few survive to reproduce as adults. In sea turtles, for example, somewhere on the order of two out of a thousand eggs actually makes it to adulthood, surviving the gamut of consumers along the way. We can also think of the triple in terms of predator satiation, by which prey briefly and periodically occur at such high population densities that the predators can't possibly eat them all. Periodical cicadas, which many of you will be experiencing yet again this year, are an example of this. So it would seem possible that might work in a similar manner, periodically reproducing in such numbers that they simply overwhelm their many reptilian predators. Now, given that tribles are vaguely mammals, we might also compare them to such prolific terrestrial warm bloods as the European rabbit, infamous for its own rapid reproduction rate. According to the Texas Invasive Species Institute, an eighteen fifty nine introduction of a mere twenty four European rabbits into Australia led to a population of more than six hundred million in less than a century. The tribles ultimately are a fantastic commentary on what can happen when a species is artificially transplanted from one ecosystem into another. Now, how long would it take tribles to overrun the starship Enterprise. Well, that is a question that you have to throw some math at. And in twenty twenty student researchers at the University of Leicester made science headlines with a paper in the journal Physics Special Topics. Their answer four points five days. All right. Next up the Seti Eels. In a rare case of synchronicity with the news cycle, which is all about brain worms of late, I decided to devote this Trek themed episode to the dreaded Seti eels of Seti Alpha five. You will, of course remember them from the nineteen eighty two film Star Trek two, The Wrath of Khan, in which thowd twentieth century eugenics war tyrant Khan Noonan Singh, played by the superb Ricardo Montaban, uses larval Seti eels to torture and control two Enterprise crew members in his quest for vengeance. We also learned that Seti eels, native to the harsh world sing was exiled to by Starfleet, killed many of Khan's people, including his wife. The setiworm is a burrowing desert creature, but its larva, we're told by singh crawl in through the ear canals of host creatures to wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex, rendering the host organism highly susceptible to suggestion. Madness and death follow as the eel grows, unless the eel is removed or leaves of its own accord. The latter occurs with First Officer Chekhov, though the reason is uncertain. Was it responding to danger, had it lost control of its host? Was it in fact leaving the host in order to continue its life cycle. We don't know any of these answers, in part because Captain Kirk instantly vaporizes the escaping eel, turning once more to the non canonical Star Trek. The Worlds of the Federation, written and illustrated by Laura Johnson written as Shane Johnson back in nineteen eighty nine, the author largely shares what we already know from the movie. Adult Seti eels, one of the few native species to survive on the planet, grow to lengths of fourteen inches and carry their young in tissue or armor folds on their backs until such time as they leave the parent for a host organism. In life signs the biology of Star Trek. Susan and Robert Jenkins briefly discuss the seti eel in context with other neural parasites and symbians of the Trek universe, and there are several classifying The possession we see with the seti eel is a kind of quote co conscious mind control, with the hosts made helpless by the superseding power of the parasite. Presumably, the whole reason for subduing the host organism is to keep it from interfering with the larva's occupation of set organism, and we might assume that the seti eel also eats the tissue that it presumably burrows through to reach the cerebral cortex. The mind control aspect of this fictional parasitic scenario is, of course vary, in keeping with numerous example from the natural terrestrial world, including various parasitoid wasps, flatworms, hair worms, protozoans, fungi, and more. In broad strokes, we see parasites that alter host behavior to help complete their own life cycle. This may mean mere survival or positioning of the host in such a way that a desirable new host will consume the current host. Now with the SETI eel. We certainly see the former survival, but not so much the latter eel controlled humans don't seem to do anything other than obey fellow humans, though one could make a case that this alone might lead to say, uninfected human being either being expelled, which would at least be a choice. You can imagine scenarios in which this would put the current host organism in a position to, say, be near water, or near another organism that it needs to enter, perhaps some sort of a predator. Or you could also make the argument that well, okay, a human that is so easily controlled by fellow humans is going to remain in close proximity with humans, and perhaps it just needs to enter a new host organism once it's done munching and constricting inside that individual skull. Either way, we also have to acknowledge that humanoids, and remember in the Trek universe, most or all humanoid species are very distantly related to each other. Humanoids might not be the desired vector for the parasite, and in the world of actual terrestrial parasite studies, we do see dangerous results from parasites winding up either in the wrong host or the wrong part of the right host. Now, I've long found this one of the more horrifying aspects of sci fi space horror, and particularly sci fi space related body horror, human interactions with hostile biology that simply didn't evolve to deal with human beings. The xenomorphic threats of the Alien film franchise are great examples of this. Of course, on one hand, the creatures we see in the films are highly adaptive and make use of host DNA in the acquisition of their adult forms. They have evolved and or been engineered to make quick study and use of new bodies. But the other horrifying way to think about it is that here is a creature that is truly an alien within the host body. It doesn't know what it's doing in there, and much like the scene in twenty twelve's Prometheus with the robotic surgery pod, this combination of high skill and lower context for the target body runs the risk of heading into very grizzly territory. Still, we don't have to invoke Alien to make the seti eel terrifying. The implantation scene in Wrath of Khan remains one of the greatest moments of space horror. In a franchise, we don't generally associate with it. And finally, we're going to learn about the Horta. In today's episode. I'm going to round out this initial batch of Star Trek selections, and I'm going to go with a listener suggestion from one of our mini gems, the Horta of Janus six. As we learn in the original Trek episode The Devil in the Dark, the horta is a large, subterranean heap shaped organism entirely silicone based rather than carbon based. It tunnels through the rock via powerful acidic secretions, which it can also use defensively. Exceedingly long lived, the entire population of horta dies out every sixty thousand years, with the exception of a single mother horta, which tends to the spherical eggs that will produce the next generation of this amazing species. While the Horta are reclusive and ultimately peaceful, they can prove lethal in confrontations, such as the one with a Federation mining colony in the Devil in the Dark, which ultimately required the intervention of a Vulcan mind meld. In the non canonical Star Trek, the Worlds of the Federation by Laura Johnson written as Shane Johnson from nineteen eighty nine. We learned that the miners and Horta would eventually work together on Janus six following this reconciliation. Now, I distinctly remember watching this episode of the classic Star Trek as a kid, and I remember enjoying the alien monster based suspense and its thought provoking treatment of interaction between intelligent but radically different alien species, and looking back on it now, it certainly has that Star Trek optimism that is often lacking in our modern sci fi. It's no surprise that this one is often held up as one of the best original Star Trek episodes. In Life Signs the Biology of Star Trek Susan and Robert Jenkins, the authors here discuss the singular nature of the Orta in Trek. The Federation was apparently not accustomed to the presence of silicon based life, and had therefore missed the Horta's presence on Jenus six in their scans. Entirely later on in tracks, similar mistakes were made with the microbrains of Vlara three and the space born crystalline entity. This all underlies a known challenge in astrobiology, we ultimately have only one model of life upon which to base our observations, and it happens to be earthlife. We're told that Janus six never developed carbon based life beyond a few spore producing plants as well as some algae, but it did boast minerals and heavy metals, and the authors stress that while silicon based reactions occur much more slowly compared to carbon based reactions, a planet like Janus six might, in theory have the minerals to catalyze the chemical reactions needed for a silicon based life. Now, in the larger realm of science fiction, silicon based organisms are not uncommon. The alien Xenomorpho is sometimes described as silicone based, or at least partially silicone based, and there are numerous ways this is explained to factor in with their carbon based bodies. Other examples include the Kaiju of Pacific Rim, the Exogoths of Star Wars, and the Easter Island headed Lithodia Rexians of Marvel Comics. However, as outlined by Charles Q. Choi in the space dot Com article, silicon based life may be more than just science fiction from twenty seventeen, various experts speculate that silicon based or silicone encompassing life is very possible. Silicone and carbon are similar in many ways. Silicon is one of the most common elements in the universe, and chemist have artificially synthesized organosilicone molecules composed of both silicone and carbon, so by some estimations, silicon based life of some sort may be out there somewhere, whether we know of it or not. Back to Trek, the Jinkins stress that the Horta might actually reproduce and reason too much like a carbon based organism in this episode of Anything. But then again, this is where science and philosophy butt heads. Star Trek is ultimately about the hope, if not the reality, of making contact, settling differences, and figuring out how to move forward, both as an interstellar community within the fiction and as a terrestrial species here on Earth in reality. As much as I love my various nihilistic sci fi visions and various examples of space horror, I feel more and more like I need the Star Trek vision in my life. As in aside, I'll mention that there's actually an underground geographic positioning technology here on Earth. Named after the Star Trek Horta. It is, of course, say backronym, which stands for Honeywell or Retrieval and Tunneling AID. All right, there you have it. I hope you enjoy this, so I keep doing these omnibus episodes because it's a better way to do like a rerun essentially on a Wednesday. And I've also heard from some listeners that they prefer to listen to these short form episodes batched together into a longer omnibus series. So I'm going to keep doing this as long as it remains popular. As long as the folks seem to enjoy them, I enjoy putting them together. If you have recommendations for other Star Trek creatures you'd like for me to cover in a future series of Star Trek episodes, or if you have suggestions related to other you know franchises, comic books, movies, literary settings of folkloric traditions, mythologies, and more, write in I would love to hear from you. 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 on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time. And this is going to be yet another omnibus episode, collecting four previous related Monster Fact entries. These are going to cover my recent journey into the Star Trek universe, so I hope you enjoy these. Let's go ahead and kick things off with the Andrians. In this episode, I'd like to begin a series on various aliens and creatures from the Star Trek universe. Now, first of all, I will be the first to admit that I am not an expert in Trek lore, but I very fondly remember as a kid in the nineties watching reruns of Star Trek the Next Generation every weeknight at nine PM. So fondly remember a book that I had to special order from the local bookstore, Star Trek The Worlds of the Federation, written and illustrated by Laura Johnson writing as Shane Johnson. This was an encyclopedic collection of alien profiles. Think of it as a monster manual. If you will, covering thirty two different Federation member alien species, as well as a number of neutral and hostile aliens. This was a nineteen eighty nine publication, so it's far from current and is not considered part of current Trek canon, and I'm to understand some Trek writers took issue with some of the entries. Still, it's a book that meant a lot to me as a young Treky, and I suspect it meant a lot to others from this time period as well, So I'm going to go ahead and cite it along with some other sources, with the caveat that again, it's not canon much in the same way I cited the Dune Encyclopedia in some of my Dune related entries. With all of that in mind, let's turn to the Andrians. These blueskin, white haired, antinny equipped aliens are iconic original series aliens, but they were rather exotic for me, as they're virtually absent from both Star Trek the Next Generation and Star Trek Deep Space nine, which constituted my prime Trek viewing. The reasoning for their absence, according to the excellent Memory Alpha, was largely twofold. First of all, Trek creator Gene Roddenberry preferred that many original series aliens be avoided in favor of new ones on the next generation. Secondly, the makeup was allegedly difficult to get right and avoid looking silly. They overcame these hurdles and subsequent shows, and in the current Star Trek Strange New World series, which I'm enjoying quite a bit, we encounter an albinos subspecies of Andrians known as the Nar, as well as an Andrian Special Forces officer, and neither of these aliens looks remotely silly. But let's come back to the biology of the Andorians of the Federation describes them as a mix of mammalian and reptilian features, with both an endoskeleton and a limited exoskeleton, and the antennae are described as enhancing otherwise colorblind vision with a quote complex matrix of light sensitive cones in addition to auditory functions. All of this together would amount to an enhanced sense of sight and smell. Fair enough obvious sense organs do sense organ things. Antennay interrestrial organisms remember very greatly, and depending on the species, may utilize senses of touch, air, motion, heat, vibration, smell, or taste, But again, the Worlds of the Federation came out in nineteen eighty nine before A particular nineteen ninety three episode of the Next Generation shed a great deal of canonical light on the biology of Star Trek. The episode titled The Chase, which I specifically remember from my childhood, revealed the reason so many Star Trek alien species are humanoid and resemble each other, often with minor alterations to facial and cranial features. All of this via a revelation of ancient intentional pan spermia via a single advanced progenitor humanoid species. In other words, all of these Trek species look similar not because they're all humans in makeup, but rather because a single ancestor species spread their own DNA among the various worlds to see them. I've always found this to be a clever way of addressing the seeming lack of biological diversity in many of the core Tract civilizations. Now you might reasonably wonder, okay, fine, but realistically, would these distantly related species still look so similar to each other? Well? Susan and Robert Jenkins explore this question in their book The Biology of Star Trek, published in nineteen ninety eight. They point out that based on what we know about evolution, it's not at all unreasonable. The evolutionary clock runs slowly, they write, and it has a built in bias against major overhauls. Because speciation is brought about by multiple random changes in DNA, and the changes must allow the organism to survive and reproduce, small changes are favored over large ones. Small changes are less likely to compromise the tested survivability of the original. Given this constraint, two species that start out alike remain similar over a rather long time, even under different sets of environmental pressures. They add that particular environmental pressures would of course have their impact, and a trend towards facial symmetry would likely stay in place. They go into greater detail in this great book about not only the speculative biology of all of this, but also the connections between human facial cues and the way we imagine the facial features of tracks aliens, and they do get around to considering the andorians. They point out that while nothing resembling a human with antennae exists in the natural world, we of course do have mammalian species with enhanced whiskers, and I would point out that we have other things like the unique robosis of the star No's mole and the twin feelers of the tentacled snake to get into the reptile world. For the Andorians, however, they propose an interesting notion. Perhaps the Andorian home world contains multiple atmospheric variations, and this results in various microclimates, requiring enhanced sensation of atmospheric content, temperature, and pressure for any species that regularly travels outside of a narrow region or microclimate. They even go so far as to discuss how tissues in human embryos might develop into antennae under the right survival pressures. Quote. Human embryos have several segments called embryonic pharyngeal arches in what will become the head and the neck. They supply the developing tissue for jaws and some neck organs. In fish, However, the pharyngeal arches develop into gills because these structures have been adapted for very different purposes. They might evolve to provide the organ substrate for the nervous tissue in an antenna like organ. More broadly, they point out that added sense organs could potentially detect any number of factors in a given environment, provided there was an evolutionary incentive to do so. Memory Alpha provides little canonical data on all of this, as far as I could tell, but it does point out that we know that Andrian an Kenny can be moved independently via voluntary muscle control, that they regenerate if they are injured or blasted off, and they also seem to play a role in balance and gesticulation and of course therefore communication. I think all this is quite reasonable. Now, coming back to Star Trek's Strange New Worlds, the Enar character Himmer in that show is depicted as having been born sightless, but is more than able to make up for his lack of sight in part due to his other senses as a member of an antennae equipped and Dorian subspecies. All right, Next up, The Trouble with Triples not discuss the various creatures of the Star Trek universe, without of course considering the tribles of Iota geminorum for a world home to an abundance of carnivorous reptiles, in addition to the vaguely mammalian Trible, which seems to serve as a basic prey species for all the space lizards. The Triple is, of course, a small furry creature with no discernible limbs or features. Really, its only means of defending itself, at least against humanoids, is to basically tranquilize the humanoid with a gentle cooing effect. The trouble with Tribles, of course, is their incredible rate of reproduction. They are even reportedly born already pregnant, and can quickly overrun any given ecosystem or starship that they are introduced into. In their natural habitat, they eat and reproduce as quickly as possible, but their numbers are kept in check, presumably by their many voracious predators. But on a federation star, yes, this is where the trouble occurs. With no predators, plentiful food, and a crew overcome by their adorable cuteness, their population very quickly spirals out of control. The creatures debuted in a nineteen sixty seven episode of the original Star Trek series, but the Grimlins franchise of the eighties and nineties treads on similar ground. Adorable fur babies that get entirely out of hand due to a mix of ineptitude, human vulnerability to cuteness, and a reproductive system clearly evolve for different parameters. I've speculated elsewhere that maguai might depend on a desert, if not an extraterrestrial environment for their biology to make sense and likewise unsuftible your mind. We've talked about the role of cuteness, both among humans and cuteness between humans and non human animals. It is a potent force that manipulates us. For the Triple, the stabilizing factor is the severity of its ecosystem. On the Triple home world, triples presumably die in vast numbers, and their prolific reproduction rate merely allows them to keep up. We see variations of this in the natural world here on Earth as well. In general, we see the basic quality quantity tradeoff. In practice, some organisms err on the side of producing few high quality offspring, while others simply produce offspring in vast numbers. The predators can't eat all of them, and a select few survive to reproduce as adults. In sea turtles, for example, somewhere on the order of two out of a thousand eggs actually makes it to adulthood, surviving the gamut of consumers along the way. We can also think of the triple in terms of predator satiation, by which prey briefly and periodically occur at such high population densities that the predators can't possibly eat them all. Periodical cicadas, which many of you will be experiencing yet again this year, are an example of this. So it would seem possible that might work in a similar manner, periodically reproducing in such numbers that they simply overwhelm their many reptilian predators. Now, given that tribles are vaguely mammals, we might also compare them to such prolific terrestrial warm bloods as the European rabbit, infamous for its own rapid reproduction rate. According to the Texas Invasive Species Institute, an eighteen fifty nine introduction of a mere twenty four European rabbits into Australia led to a population of more than six hundred million in less than a century. The tribles ultimately are a fantastic commentary on what can happen when a species is artificially transplanted from one ecosystem into another. Now, how long would it take tribles to overrun the starship Enterprise. Well, that is a question that you have to throw some math at. And in twenty twenty student researchers at the University of Leicester made science headlines with a paper in the journal Physics Special Topics. Their answer four points five days. All right. Next up the Seti Eels. In a rare case of synchronicity with the news cycle, which is all about brain worms of late, I decided to devote this Trek themed episode to the dreaded Seti eels of Seti Alpha five. You will, of course remember them from the nineteen eighty two film Star Trek two, The Wrath of Khan, in which thowd twentieth century eugenics war tyrant Khan Noonan Singh, played by the superb Ricardo Montaban, uses larval Seti eels to torture and control two Enterprise crew members in his quest for vengeance. We also learned that Seti eels, native to the harsh world sing was exiled to by Starfleet, killed many of Khan's people, including his wife. The setiworm is a burrowing desert creature, but its larva, we're told by singh crawl in through the ear canals of host creatures to wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex, rendering the host organism highly susceptible to suggestion. Madness and death follow as the eel grows, unless the eel is removed or leaves of its own accord. The latter occurs with First Officer Chekhov, though the reason is uncertain. Was it responding to danger, had it lost control of its host? Was it in fact leaving the host in order to continue its life cycle. We don't know any of these answers, in part because Captain Kirk instantly vaporizes the escaping eel, turning once more to the non canonical Star Trek. The Worlds of the Federation, written and illustrated by Laura Johnson written as Shane Johnson back in nineteen eighty nine, the author largely shares what we already know from the movie. Adult Seti eels, one of the few native species to survive on the planet, grow to lengths of fourteen inches and carry their young in tissue or armor folds on their backs until such time as they leave the parent for a host organism. In life signs the biology of Star Trek. Susan and Robert Jenkins briefly discuss the seti eel in context with other neural parasites and symbians of the Trek universe, and there are several classifying The possession we see with the seti eel is a kind of quote co conscious mind control, with the hosts made helpless by the superseding power of the parasite. Presumably, the whole reason for subduing the host organism is to keep it from interfering with the larva's occupation of set organism, and we might assume that the seti eel also eats the tissue that it presumably burrows through to reach the cerebral cortex. The mind control aspect of this fictional parasitic scenario is, of course vary, in keeping with numerous example from the natural terrestrial world, including various parasitoid wasps, flatworms, hair worms, protozoans, fungi, and more. In broad strokes, we see parasites that alter host behavior to help complete their own life cycle. This may mean mere survival or positioning of the host in such a way that a desirable new host will consume the current host. Now with the SETI eel. We certainly see the former survival, but not so much the latter eel controlled humans don't seem to do anything other than obey fellow humans, though one could make a case that this alone might lead to say, uninfected human being either being expelled, which would at least be a choice. You can imagine scenarios in which this would put the current host organism in a position to, say, be near water, or near another organism that it needs to enter, perhaps some sort of a predator. Or you could also make the argument that well, okay, a human that is so easily controlled by fellow humans is going to remain in close proximity with humans, and perhaps it just needs to enter a new host organism once it's done munching and constricting inside that individual skull. Either way, we also have to acknowledge that humanoids, and remember in the Trek universe, most or all humanoid species are very distantly related to each other. Humanoids might not be the desired vector for the parasite, and in the world of actual terrestrial parasite studies, we do see dangerous results from parasites winding up either in the wrong host or the wrong part of the right host. Now, I've long found this one of the more horrifying aspects of sci fi space horror, and particularly sci fi space related body horror, human interactions with hostile biology that simply didn't evolve to deal with human beings. The xenomorphic threats of the Alien film franchise are great examples of this. Of course, on one hand, the creatures we see in the films are highly adaptive and make use of host DNA in the acquisition of their adult forms. They have evolved and or been engineered to make quick study and use of new bodies. But the other horrifying way to think about it is that here is a creature that is truly an alien within the host body. It doesn't know what it's doing in there, and much like the scene in twenty twelve's Prometheus with the robotic surgery pod, this combination of high skill and lower context for the target body runs the risk of heading into very grizzly territory. Still, we don't have to invoke Alien to make the seti eel terrifying. The implantation scene in Wrath of Khan remains one of the greatest moments of space horror. In a franchise, we don't generally associate with it. And finally, we're going to learn about the Horta. In today's episode. I'm going to round out this initial batch of Star Trek selections, and I'm going to go with a listener suggestion from one of our mini gems, the Horta of Janus six. As we learn in the original Trek episode The Devil in the Dark, the horta is a large, subterranean heap shaped organism entirely silicone based rather than carbon based. It tunnels through the rock via powerful acidic secretions, which it can also use defensively. Exceedingly long lived, the entire population of horta dies out every sixty thousand years, with the exception of a single mother horta, which tends to the spherical eggs that will produce the next generation of this amazing species. While the Horta are reclusive and ultimately peaceful, they can prove lethal in confrontations, such as the one with a Federation mining colony in the Devil in the Dark, which ultimately required the intervention of a Vulcan mind meld. In the non canonical Star Trek, the Worlds of the Federation by Laura Johnson written as Shane Johnson from nineteen eighty nine. We learned that the miners and Horta would eventually work together on Janus six following this reconciliation. Now, I distinctly remember watching this episode of the classic Star Trek as a kid, and I remember enjoying the alien monster based suspense and its thought provoking treatment of interaction between intelligent but radically different alien species, and looking back on it now, it certainly has that Star Trek optimism that is often lacking in our modern sci fi. It's no surprise that this one is often held up as one of the best original Star Trek episodes. In Life Signs the Biology of Star Trek Susan and Robert Jenkins, the authors here discuss the singular nature of the Orta in Trek. The Federation was apparently not accustomed to the presence of silicon based life, and had therefore missed the Horta's presence on Jenus six in their scans. Entirely later on in tracks, similar mistakes were made with the microbrains of Vlara three and the space born crystalline entity. This all underlies a known challenge in astrobiology, we ultimately have only one model of life upon which to base our observations, and it happens to be earthlife. We're told that Janus six never developed carbon based life beyond a few spore producing plants as well as some algae, but it did boast minerals and heavy metals, and the authors stress that while silicon based reactions occur much more slowly compared to carbon based reactions, a planet like Janus six might, in theory have the minerals to catalyze the chemical reactions needed for a silicon based life. Now, in the larger realm of science fiction, silicon based organisms are not uncommon. The alien Xenomorpho is sometimes described as silicone based, or at least partially silicone based, and there are numerous ways this is explained to factor in with their carbon based bodies. Other examples include the Kaiju of Pacific Rim, the Exogoths of Star Wars, and the Easter Island headed Lithodia Rexians of Marvel Comics. However, as outlined by Charles Q. Choi in the space dot Com article, silicon based life may be more than just science fiction from twenty seventeen, various experts speculate that silicon based or silicone encompassing life is very possible. Silicone and carbon are similar in many ways. Silicon is one of the most common elements in the universe, and chemist have artificially synthesized organosilicone molecules composed of both silicone and carbon, so by some estimations, silicon based life of some sort may be out there somewhere, whether we know of it or not. Back to Trek, the Jinkins stress that the Horta might actually reproduce and reason too much like a carbon based organism in this episode of Anything. But then again, this is where science and philosophy butt heads. Star Trek is ultimately about the hope, if not the reality, of making contact, settling differences, and figuring out how to move forward, both as an interstellar community within the fiction and as a terrestrial species here on Earth in reality. As much as I love my various nihilistic sci fi visions and various examples of space horror, I feel more and more like I need the Star Trek vision in my life. As in aside, I'll mention that there's actually an underground geographic positioning technology here on Earth. Named after the Star Trek Horta. It is, of course, say backronym, which stands for Honeywell or Retrieval and Tunneling AID. All right, there you have it. I hope you enjoy this, so I keep doing these omnibus episodes because it's a better way to do like a rerun essentially on a Wednesday. And I've also heard from some listeners that they prefer to listen to these short form episodes batched together into a longer omnibus series. So I'm going to keep doing this as long as it remains popular. As long as the folks seem to enjoy them, I enjoy putting them together. If you have recommendations for other Star Trek creatures you'd like for me to cover in a future series of Star Trek episodes, or if you have suggestions related to other you know franchises, comic books, movies, literary settings of folkloric traditions, mythologies, and more, write in I would love to hear from you. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Stuffed Blow your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuffed Blow your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.