Sep 7, 2022
Transcript
[RADIOLAB INTRO]
ANNIE MCEWEN: You guys want to introduce yourselves?
LATIF NASSER: Sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm Lulu Miller.
LULU MILLER: My name is Egg McMuffin, and I had a yogurt for breakfast.
ANNIE: Okay, never mind. Okay. [laughs]
LATIF: Latif.
LULU: Lulu.
LATIF: Radiolab.
ANNIE: All right.
LULU: And producer Annie McEwen.
ANNIE: Where should I begin? So we're heading out into the Antarctic Peninsula, which is the arm of Antarctica that kind of like, sticks up north.
LATIF: Oh, sure!
ANNIE: We're on a boat, nosing along the icy coast. And on the boat with us ...
ROBERT PITMAN: Hi, Annie.
ANNIE: Hi!
ANNIE: Is this grizzled, mustachioed sea guy.
ANNIE: Are you Robert or Bob?
ROBERT PITMAN: Bob is good.
ANNIE: Okay.
ANNIE: Named Bob Pitman.
ROBERT PITMAN: I'm a whale biologist with the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University.
ANNIE: And while Bob's first love ...
ROBERT PITMAN: Uh, boobies.
LATIF: Hmm.
LULU: Hmm.
ROBERT PITMAN: Are a favorite bird of mine.
LATIF: Ah.
ANNIE: ... is sea birds ...
ROBERT PITMAN: I can talk booby any time.
ANNIE: He was down in Antarctica to study something a little bigger.
ROBERT PITMAN: Yeah, so there's a type of killer whale down there that feeds predominantly on seals.
ANNIE: And the way they hunt these seals is kind of amazing. They'll swim around looking for one that's lying on an ice floe. When they find it, all together ...
ROBERT PITMAN: ... shoulder-to-shoulder, furiously beating their flukes ...
ANNIE: ... they charge towards that seal and just before they hit it ...
ROBERT PITMAN: They dive under it, kick their tails up, create a perfect little wave and wash the seal off.
ANNIE: And then the seal's in the water, and they eat the seal.
LATIF: Clever!
LULU: Wow.
ANNIE: Yeah, so that's like this kind of amazing thing that Bob is down there to see.
LATIF: Yeah.
ROBERT PITMAN: But ...
ANNIE: During that trip, Bob also saw something else, and it was this something else that I called him up about. Because while at first glance, it just seemed to be one of those animal stories that we've all heard before, what it was actually hinting at was this whole universe, this epic throwdown, these deeply complex lives lived completely beyond our gaze. And the whole thing just sent me wondering, like, freshly wondering what the hell is going on in the ocean?
LULU: Ooh!
LATIF: Whoa!
LULU: Okay.
ANNIE: All right, okay. This actually evolves over three separate encounters. So encounter one.
ROBERT PITMAN: The first time we saw something that got our attention ...
ANNIE: Bob and his team were on their boat.
ROBERT PITMAN: ... and we had located our killer whales.
ANNIE: He could see their tall, black dorsal fins poking up out of the water, flashes of their white eye markings.
ROBERT PITMAN: They have an amazing paint job.
ANNIE: And it looked like there were about 10 of them sort of hanging out in this little pod. But as their boat got closer, Bob saw that in their midst ...
ROBERT PITMAN: There were two very large humpbacks.
ANNIE: Humpback whales.
LULU: Hmm.
ANNIE: These guys are sort of darkish gray, about twice as long as a killer whale with these giant, knobbly, barnacled fins. And for Bob, seeing them hanging out with killer whales—especially the mammal-eating kind—was weird. Because killer whales eat humpbacks. Usually only when they're smaller, like when they're calves or juveniles, but still ...
LATIF: Just, like, nomenclature-wise, like, I thought they were now orc—like, that they were rebranded as orcas because "killer whales" feels like too mean to them. But is that ...?
ANNIE: Well, do you know what "orca" means?
LATIF: No.
ANNIE: I learned this recently. It actually means "whale from hell."
LATIF: [gasps]
ANNIE: Like, loosely speaking, it means "whale from hell."
LATIF: What?
ANNIE: Or "jar from hell." Like, it's ...
LATIF: Jar from hell?
ANNIE: Or "vessel from hell." Like, it's a—you know, it is maybe—is that better than "killer whale?" . Anyways, so humpbacks and these whales from hell hanging out together, it's a weird gathering.
ROBERT PITMAN: Yeah. The humpbacks were clearly agitated.
ANNIE: Slapping the water with their tails.
ROBERT PITMAN: Hitting the water with their flippers.
ANNIE: And kind of growling.
ROBERT PITMAN: Well, bellowing.
ANNIE: Bellowing.
ROBERT PITMAN: Like, "Urf!"
ANNIE: And Bob and his crew, watching this commotion from the boat deck get kind of excited because they think ...
ROBERT PITMAN: Hey, maybe these killer whales are attacking these large adult humpbacks. Nobody's ever seen that before. But as we got in a little closer, we could see that the killer whales were swimming right around them, but seemed a little bit distracted.
ANNIE: There didn't seem to be any attacking or threatening going on. And then the killer whales just swam off.
ROBERT PITMAN: Right.
ANNIE: And Bob was like, "Hmm."
ROBERT PITMAN: It didn't make any sense to us.
ANNIE: But then the film guy on the boat who's been filming this whole thing, he comes up to Bob with this camera and he says ...
ROBERT PITMAN: "Hey, take a look at this." And in his footage ...
ANNIE: You zoom in amidst all the splashing and the fins, you can see this little silvery head poking up out of the water.
ROBERT PITMAN: A Weddell seal that was there between the two humpbacks. Once we saw that it's like, oh yeah, now this makes sense.
ANNIE: Bob thought the killer whales must have just been trying to get at the seal.
ROBERT PITMAN: And the seal was hiding out among the humpbacks.
LATIF: Smart seal.
ANNIE: Right. And the humpbacks were just annoyed the killer whales were bothering them.
ROBERT PITMAN: They may not even have known that the seal was there.
LULU: Hmm.
ANNIE: And so with the mystery of that sort of cleared up …
ROBERT PITMAN: Kind of tied it together for us.
ANNIE: ... Bob and his team catch up with their pod of killer whales.
ROBERT PITMAN: And about 20 minutes later, we had our next encounter.
ANNIE: Encounter number two.
ROBERT PITMAN: We found them with another seal, a crabeater seal.
ANNIE: This one was lying on an ice floe. And the killer whales were using their heads to push that ice floe ...
ROBERT PITMAN: ... into the open, and were getting ready to wave wash this guy.
ANNIE: But as the killer whales are closing in ...
ROBERT PITMAN: All of a sudden, the two humpbacks that we left 20 minutes earlier are right there among them.
LULU: [gasps]
ANNIE: They just kind of appear out of nowhere, making a huge commotion.
ROBERT PITMAN: Swimming around the ice floe.
ANNIE: Slashing their flippers and slapping their tails.
ROBERT PITMAN: And bellowing.
ANNIE: And soon after ...
ROBERT PITMAN: ... the killer whales tired of this pretty quickly and just left.
ANNIE: And hearing this, I thought oh my gosh, this really sounds like the humpbacks are rushing in to save this seal.
LATIF: Yeah.
ANNIE: But Bob was like, you know, not so fast.
ROBERT PITMAN: They still may not have known that the seal was there.
LULU: Hmm.
ANNIE: And that actually this looks a heck of a lot like something that ..."
[ARCHIVE CLIP: It's a young raven. He's after a messing.]
ANNIE: ... a lot of birds do.
ROBERT PITMAN: I think everybody has seen small birds chasing a hawk around their neighborhood.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: The fieldfares, screaming with anger, converge on their enemy. They mob him.]
ROBERT PITMAN: What's called "mobbing behavior."
ANNIE: The smaller birds just basically pestering the bigger bird.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: And now they bomb him with their droppings]
ANNIE: Until it leaves.
ROBERT PITMAN: So I figured that's what these humpback whales were doing. They were just trying to drive these killer whales out of the neighborhood.
ANNIE: And Bob thought, "That's cool." And he sort of closed the book on the whole thing until ...
ROBERT PITMAN: A few days later ...
ANNIE: The third encounter.
ROBERT PITMAN: So we're back on the boat ...
ANNIE: Once again following their killer whales. And once again ...
ROBERT PITMAN: They had a Weddell seal on an ice floe, and were circling around and getting ready to make a wave.
ANNIE: Bob and his team were ready, their cameras were rolling. And then out of the corner of his eye, Bob sees ...
ROBERT PITMAN: Another pair of humpback whales.
ANNIE: Different ones?
ROBERT PITMAN: Different ones.
ANNIE: Just kind of on the periphery of the scene. But he doesn't have much of a chance to think about it because at that moment ...
ROBERT PITMAN: ... the killer whales ...
ANNIE: ... charge together at the seal, and as one dives under the ice, creating a wave that knocks the seal into the water. Now what the seal should do, and what Bob was expecting it to do at this moment is pull itself back up onto the safety of the ice. But it doesn't do that. Instead, it starts swimming out into open water.
ROBERT PITMAN: Which is what the killer whales hope for.
ANNIE: And they charge after it.
LULU: In a hundred-meter sprint, who wins: the killer whale or a seal?
ANNIE: One hundred percent a killer whale.
LULU: So this is like certain death.
ANNIE: Oh, yeah. But then Bob notices that that seal ...
ROBERT PITMAN: Is heading straight toward these humpbacks.
LULU: [gasps]
ROBERT PITMAN: And ...
ANNIE: In one fluid motion as the seal reaches them, one of the humpbacks ...
ROBERT PITMAN: ... rolls over on its back. And as the seal was starting to swim over it ...
ANNIE: The humpback drops its flippers, arches its back ...
ROBERT PITMAN: ... and lifted this seal completely out of the water.
ANNIE: And it just holds it there out of the reach of the killer whales.
LULU: Wait, what?
LATIF: Wow!
ANNIE: And after a few moments of this, the seal, its eyes these two giant black circles in its head ...
ROBERT PITMAN: Because freaked out about being lifted up out of the water on the chest of this humpback.
LULU: Yeah.
ANNIE: ... starts to try to get off.
ROBERT PITMAN: It was flailing around.
ANNIE: And it begins to slip off the whale belly. But then very gently ...
ROBERT PITMAN: ... the humpback lifts this one-ton flipper up against the seal, and nudges it back up into the middle of its chest to keep it from sliding off.
ANNIE: And watching this ...
ROBERT PITMAN: Oh my God.
ANNIE: Bob cannot deny that ...
ROBERT PITMAN: These humpbacks are trying to protect these seals from these attacking killer whales.
ANNIE: The killer whales broke off and left.
ROBERT PITMAN: And the seal slides off and swims over and hauls out on some nearby ice.
ANNIE: And Bob, the other scientists on the boat, the boat captain, no one has ever heard of this. No one can explain it.
ROBERT PITMAN: When we got back to the United States ...
ANNIE: Bob gets home to San Diego, California.
ROBERT PITMAN: Started poking around, talking to some colleagues and doing some literature review.
ANNIE: He wrote up a short article about what he'd seen.
ROBERT PITMAN: Posted it on a marine mammal listserv.
ANNIE: Along with a question: has anyone out there ever seen an interaction like this? And over the following days and weeks, Bob's inbox was flooded with over a hundred accounts saying yes.
LULU: Hmm.
LATIF: Hmm.
ANNIE: People had seen humpbacks fighting off killer whales from their prey up and down the west coast of Canada and the United States.
ROBERT PITMAN: Also reports from Australia and Africa, South America and, you know, Antarctica.
ANNIE: Wow! This is the humpback community of the world.
ROBERT PITMAN: Yeah. And there were some interesting patterns that came out of it.
ANNIE: They learned that, more often than not, it was the humpbacks starting the fights. They were the ones initiating the interactions with the killer whales.
ROBERT PITMAN: And in just about every case, the killer whales eventually moved on. They just gave up. There was no way around these humpbacks.
ANNIE: Bob learned that it was both female and male humpbacks doing this rescuing thing. They would sometimes do it alone, sometimes in groups. But the wildest part of these accounts that flooded in was that what these humpbacks were rescuing ...
ROBERT PITMAN: Only 11 percent were other humpbacks.
ANNIE: Only 11 percent of all this work they were doing was for the benefit of their own species, meaning that a giant 89 percent of the time they were saving something else.
LATIF: What were they saving?
ROBERT PITMAN: Uh, well ...
ANNIE: So many things.
ROBERT PITMAN: Two species of whales.
ANNIE: Gray whales, minke whales.
ROBERT PITMAN: A porpoise.
ANNIE: Dall's porpoise.
ROBERT PITMAN: Seals.
ANNIE: Weddle seals. Crabeater seals. Harbor seals. Northern elephant seals.
ROBERT PITMAN: Sea lions.
ANNIE: Steller's sea lions, California sea lions.
ROBERT PITMAN: And one very large fish. An ocean sunfish. Here was something that was quite remarkable behavior, it'd been witnessed quite a few times, but nobody'd ever pulled them together and tried to make sense of it.
[NEWS CLIP: Are humpback whales really vigilante sea beasts that guard the world from killer whales?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, speaker: They're the heroes of a grateful ocean.]
ANNIE: All right. So Bob's paper got some traction in the pop science world, and the word that started getting kicked around, sort of the same word that always gets kicked around was ...
[NEWS CLIP: Altruism.]
ANNIE: ... "Altruism."
[NEWS CLIP: Humpback whales may very well be altruistic.]
ROBERT PITMAN: We define altruism something like a behavior of an animal that benefits another at its own expense.
ANNIE: And what the humpbacks are doing is technically altruism.
ROBERT PITMAN: If they go in and save a seal, it costs them time and energy, and they get absolutely nothing out of it.
ANNIE: And hearing this, I'm tempted, along with a lot of other soft-hearted folks, to attribute this to—what else? Compassion.
[NEWS CLIP: We all love it when someone stands up to a bully.]
ANNIE: But Bob says ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, speaker: Aren't these gentle giants?]
ROBERT PITMAN: Nope.
ANNIE: ... the same thing that's always said.
ROBERT PITMAN: Biologically it doesn't make sense. Animals don't go out of their way to help other animals. And if you see an instance where it looks like they are, there's probably something going on there that you haven't accounted for.
ANNIE: Hmm.
ROBERT PITMAN: So then the question is: what are they getting out of it?
ANNIE: What is in it for the humpback whales?
ROBERT PITMAN: Yeah.
ANNIE: And for me, I thought surely the case of a seal hovering on the belly of a humpback whale would be kind of a tricky one for a scientist to pack neatly away into a box. But actually, Bob was like, this is pretty simple.
ROBERT PITMAN: Yes.
ANNIE: What we're seeing here is kin selection.
ROBERT PITMAN: We think that kin selection is probably what's behind this apparent altruism in humpbacks.
ANNIE: The idea is if you're a humpback swimming along, hear a killer whale attacking something, rush to the defense and it turns out it's a humpback calf ...
ROBERT PITMAN: It might be a grandson of yours, or it could be a niece or something. So ...
ANNIE: This habit of saving stuff from killer whales ...
ROBERT PITMAN: ... it's worth it to them in the long run because they might be saving the life of a relative.
ANNIE: And therefore, some of their own genes.
ROBERT PITMAN: Right.
ANNIE: But wouldn't they know that the thing they're saving is one of them pretty quickly? And wouldn't they just stop and turn around if it was just a seal and not maybe their cousin?
ROBERT PITMAN: Well, I think for the humpbacks, all they have to know is when you hear those mammal-eating killer whales calling, it's time to go over there and break up the party. And that means regardless of the species being attacked, if they do this enough times, then they're gonna end up possibly saving a relative of theirs. So individually, these cases can be altruistic, but in the long run they're doing it for their own self interest.
ANNIE: Altruism by accident is kind of how he says it.
LULU: Hmm.
ANNIE: But I think—I think somehow, like, it's hard getting the image of the seal on the belly ...
LATIF: Yeah!
ANNIE: ... you know, of the whale out of my head. And then I talked to these two other marine biologists about something that they saw a few years later.
NANCY BLACK: Yes.
ANNIE: And if in the last story we heard the standard battle play out, in this next one ...
NANCY BLACK: That—that was an absolutely mind-blowing experience.
ANNIE: ... we blow the whole framework apart.
LATIF: That's coming up right after the break.
LULU: All right.
LATIF: Latif.
LULU: Lulu. Radiolab.
LATIF: We're resurfacing. Back from the break.
ANNIE: Hi there!
NANCY BLACK: Okay, now you're on my ear.
ANNIE: All right!
LULU: With producer Annie McEwen.
ANNIE: So I reached out to these two marine biologists ...
NANCY BLACK: Nancy Black.
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: Alisa Schulman-Janiger.
ANNIE: Because a few years after Bob saw the whale lift the seal down in Antarctica, they both saw a very, very different showdown between humpbacks and killer whales. This one off the coast of California.
NANCY BLACK: Yeah.
ANNIE: In Monterey Bay.
ANNIE: So maybe just paint the scene for me. Where are we?
NANCY BLACK: It was an absolutely gorgeous day. Flat, calm seas, sunny.
ANNIE: Nancy and Alisa are on one of their whale-watching boats, and what they're watching are humpbacks eating the heck out of krill. You know, those sort of teeny, tiny animals.
NANCY BLACK: Small, shrimp-like organisms.
ANNIE: That hang out together by the billions. And humpbacks ...
NANCY BLACK: ... they look to find great swarms of these.
ANNIE: And they have to eat a lot of these, as well as some other types of small fish. So these humpbacks that Nancy and Alisa are watching are just bulking up on krill because they've just traveled from the south where they've spent the winter, up to Monterey Bay. And crazily, during that journey they lose almost a third of their own body weight.
LATIF: It's so crazy.
LULU: Wow.
ANNIE: Because they don't really eat—they don't really eat while they take that journey. So it's spring.
NANCY BLACK: There's so much food around for those humpbacks, and they were doing non-stop feeding.
ANNIE: And Nancy and Alisa are trying to ID them.
NANCY BLACK: Photograph individual humpback whales to see who all was there.
ANNIE: And they do this for a few hours until ...
NANCY BLACK: About five minutes after 12 that day ...
ANNIE: They get a call over the radio from another whale-watching boat.
NANCY BLACK: And they said, "We have killer whales, and it looks like they're attacking a gray whale mom and calf."
ANNIE: A pod of killer whales are attacking a gray whale calf and trying to separate it from its mother.
LATIF: Hmm.
NANCY BLACK: And we weren't that far, so of course we, you know ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alisa Schulman-Janiger: May 3. Got an attack on a gray whale cow-calf pair.]
NANCY BLACK: ... dashed over there.
ANNIE: And as soon as they arrived, they began filming.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alisa Schulman-Janiger: Females are the two 16s. I haven't gotten a good look at the male yet.]
ANNIE: Basically, you see this sort of like, roiling knot in the water.
NANCY BLACK: Lots of splashing and lots of commotion going on. There were 10 different killer whales there.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nancy Black: It's a jagged fin female.]
ANNIE: Their black fins popping up to the surface where they take a breath, dive back under. And somewhere in that knot is the gray whale mom and the baby gray whale that the killer whales are just trying to pummel with their heads.
NANCY BLACK: And hold it down to drown it.
ANNIE: Whenever the gray whale calf could, it would break the surface, take a huge breath.
NANCY BLACK: So it's really kind of hyperventilating and I'm sure was very tired.
LULU: Oh!
ANNIE: And in the midst of this ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nancy Black: There's two humpbacks interfering with the calf.]
ANNIE: ... are these two humpbacks.
LATIF: Wow!
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nancy Black: Humpbacks are trumpet blowing.]
ANNIE: And they're charging around.
NANCY BLACK: Lots of slashing. One humpback positioned itself next to the calf, trying to keep the killer whales away.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alisa Schulman-Janiger: Humpbacks are real upset.]
ANNIE: Nancy and Alisa watch this for a few minutes.
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: And then ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alisa Schulman-Janiger: Where's the calf?]
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: ... the calf went down.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alisa Schulman-Janiger: I don't see the calf.]
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: There was absolute quiet. No one was at the surface. I'm sure the killer whales were drowning the calf at that moment and keeping it from coming up.
ANNIE: And then in the video ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nancy Black: Just saw the mom.]
ANNIE: You see the gray whale mom leaving. And typically, moms don't leave calves unless they're dead.
LULU: Oh! So her dead baby is in the water and the killer whales just eat it?
ANNIE: Actually, no. Because they can't. Because weirdly ...
NANCY BLACK: The humpback whales did not take off.
ANNIE: Even though the calf is dead and the battle's over ...
NANCY BLACK: They stayed there, and they were not quiet.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nancy Black: The humpbacks are really moving around and rolling, slashing.]
NANCY BLACK: They were staying very close to where the killer whales were, and repeatedly diving where that gray whale calf had gone down and died.
LULU: Whoa!
ANNIE: They continue this for about 10 minutes, and then ...
NANCY BLACK: Charging in from the distance ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nancy Black: Oh boy!]
ANNIE: Three more humpbacks arrive.
LATIF: Whoa!
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nancy Black: More coming into the area. Got right in there.]
ANNIE: Slashing their fins at any killer whales that would come near the carcass.
NANCY BLACK: And then a couple more humpbacks arrive.
LULU: What?
NANCY BLACK: Charging over in this big agitated state.
ANNIE: And then more come.
NANCY BLACK: Flipper to flipper, side by side, facing the killer whales.
ANNIE: And a lot of these are the same ones that Nancy and Alisa were watching eat earlier that same day.
NANCY BLACK: They actually left the feeding, they were feeding on krill.
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: Some came from three miles away or four miles away.
ANNIE: And the gray whale calf is definitely dead. There's nothing left to defend. But the humpbacks just keep coming. And the killer whales are just trying to deke around them and get a bite of the carcass. But at this point, there were just so many humpbacks. Ultimately, a total of 16.
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: At least 16.
LULU: Wow!
LATIF: Whoa!
ANNIE: That had rushed in from near and far to join the fight.
ANNIE: Like, how much time goes by?
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: Well, we ended up being there until sunset.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alisa Schulman-Janiger: Seven hours later, the humpback whales are still right with the killer whales.]
ANNIE: They've been going strong for seven hours.
LULU: Oh my gosh.
LATIF: Wow!
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: When we finally left, there wasn't any more light to really get good images. And even as we were leaving, there were still humpbacks just "woo-woo!" Just really loud exhalations. They were still tail slashing and still extremely loud vocalizations.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nancy Black: Lots of trumpeting.]
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: It was crazy!
ANNIE: So you don't actually know how long that they did it for?
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: We don't know how long—how long they were there. I mean, they could have been there for hours more.
ANNIE: So what are they doing? I mean, it sounds like you're just more—like, what was your—what was your feeling?
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: Well, I was just pretty much blown away by everything that was going on because there was so—again, there was so much food around, and the humpbacks were, during their prime feeding season, ignoring the prey.
ANNIE: Are there other examples of that in the animal kingdom? Of rather than feeding yourself, you're gonna prevent your enemy from feeding?
NANCY BLACK: Yeah, not that I know of. No.
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: Several of the humpback whales that we were with had killer whale tooth rakes on their flukes which definitely show that they had survived a killer whale attack, and have experience with either being attacked as a calf, or being a mom who is trying to protect her calf, or being another humpback whale that was with that mom and calf trying to protect it.
ANNIE: Do you mean to say that they've either lost a calf of their own, or they have themselves been attacked as a calf and they remember this?
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: Oh, absolutely they'd remember that.
ANNIE: Oh!
ANNIE: It almost feels like, in this case, lived experience was beating out, or at least joining with evolution. And I was like, does—so is this revenge we're looking at? Like, is that what we're seeing here?
LATIF: Revenge!
LULU: Oh my God!
ANNIE: Could it be that, instead of humpbacks swimming through the ocean saving helpless animals, they're actually scouring the seas, carrying with them battle scars of their own near miss or the memory of losing their calves? Ignoring their own hunger pangs and trying to prevent their enemy from feeding? I mean, this is like the classic definition of revenge. Like, revenge ruins your life too because you are so focused on hurting the other, you know, your enemy that you—your own life is falling apart.
NANCY BLACK: Yeah, that's—that's interesting.
ANNIE: But Nancy and Alisa—and rightly so—were kinda like, "Revenge?"
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: Revenge? I don't think we know enough.
NANCY BLACK: Yeah. Like, I couldn't even guess about that.
ANNIE: Right. Right.
ANNIE: Okay, so admittedly the revenge thing is too far, but I think, you know, at this level of sacrifice, it's difficult to imagine this all just boiling down to self-interest.
LATIF: Right.
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: So ...
ANNIE: But ...
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: ... there's a whole lot going on that we don't know.
ANNIE: ... then Alisa told me one more story, really just this scene.
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: There was an attack of killer whales on a gray whale calf.
ANNIE: It was a similar situation. Killer whales killed a gray whale calf, humpbacks were there to prevent the killer whales from eating the calf.
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: But what was fascinating is that the next day we went back to that area where the attack had occurred on the 22nd of April. It was gray with billowing fog kind of coming toward us and breaking away a bit, and we found killer whales circling around the gray whale calf carcass. And then we saw a couple of humpback whales.
ANNIE: Hmm.
ALISA SCHULMAN-JANIGER: And then the killer whales left in the fog, and those two humpbacks, they didn't follow the killer whales, they didn't chase them. And we decided to stay with the humpbacks that were staying near the gray whale calf carcass to see what would happen. And what they did with that calf's carcass is something that nobody's ever seen before. Everything was extremely slow motion. Turning upside down and looking at the calf. Touching it with the flipper, very gently pushing their head against it. Moving the carcass between them. The motion, the slowest motion you could imagine. It was surreal. It was like a dream. Was just one of the most amazing things I've seen in my life. And it looked a lot like what we associate with grief.
ROBERT PITMAN: There was a couple of the accounts that people talked about a carcass of a seal would be there, and a humpback whale would come up next to it and lift its flipper up out of the water and just touch the seal with the very tip of it. And I have to admit, you know, when I read that myself, it, you know, kind of makes you wonder what might be going on there, but you're always better off to—to go with the idea that these animals are acting in their own best interests.
ANNIE: Hmm. So what would—how would you explain that?
ROBERT PITMAN: I'm not sure. I'm not sure what was going on there. I—you know, I just put it out there.
LATIF: This whole story just makes you realize how big and complicated and profound the oceans are, and how we're really just—we're just on the surface level here. And in general, we just grasp a tiny fraction of what happens on this planet.
ANNIE: Right. It reminds us, like, how much we still don't know.
LATIF: Yeah!
ANNIE: And I feel like those moments where I see that the thing I thought I knew I really don't know, like, that's when the universe gets big again. Like, I just want to not know more!
LATIF: Coming up, another story from the sea. This time we dive into the ocean depths and witness a heroic feat unequaled by any other species on this planet. Stay with us.
LATIF: This episode was reported and produced by the amphibious Annie McEwen, who also JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. This is Radiolab. And Annie McEwen ...
ANNIE: Yep.
JAD: Well, what've you got for me?
ANNIE: Well, first of all ...
ANNIE: Robert, let me just get the levels on you.
ROBERT KRULWICH: Okay, I'm here.
ANNIE: ... we've got Robert. And second of all, I have a hero. And a story that—I don't know, I just feel like it's exactly the kind of story that we all need right now at this moment.
JAD: Okay. Let's go!
ANNIE: Okay, so let's start with our main character.
BRUCE ROBISON: [clears throat] Excuse me.
JAD: This is our hero?
BRUCE ROBISON: Oh no, no, no, no.
ANNIE: No. Well, our main storyteller, I guess.
BRUCE ROBISON: My name is Bruce Robison. Reaching out to you from KAZU in Monterey, California. California State University, Monterey Bay.
ANNIE: Whoa, thank you!
ROBERT: You got it all in there!
ANNIE: I know, that was very well done.
ANNIE: So Bruce is a deep sea explorer.
BRUCE ROBISON: I'm a Southern California beach kid who just kept going out deeper and deeper.
ROBERT: [laughs]
ANNIE: These days he works at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. And basically he and his team, they'll go out on a boat with a little remote sub that they drop into the water with a camera and see what they can see.
BRUCE ROBISON: It's really exciting, because there's all of these cool animals.
ROBERT: Well, I'm just curious, like, did you just go out onto the ocean and then look down? Went, "Oh!" Or did—how does it begin, this story?
BRUCE ROBISON: Well, one day ...
ANNIE: This is back in April of 2007.
BRUCE ROBISON: We're on a ship called Western Flyer.
ANNIE: They're on one of their runs checking out sea life, and they're just off the coast over this giant, underwater canyon, the Monterey Canyon.
BRUCE ROBISON: Pretty much the—the same scale and scope as the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
JAD: There's an underwater Grand Canyon in Monterey Bay?
ANNIE: That's right.
JAD: Wow.
ANNIE: And on this day, Bruce and his team drop their little robot sub down into the water.
BRUCE ROBISON: A little less than a mile down.
ANNIE: Which doesn't seem like a lot, but imagine going down the length of the Empire State Building. And then go down another Empire State Building.
JAD: Oh my God.
ANNIE: And then go down another Empire State Building. And then go down, like, maybe a few more floors. Like, maybe 10 more floors of that Empire State Building.
JAD: That's just—that makes me a little bit dizzy.
BRUCE ROBISON: The darkness is overwhelming. You can look up and say, "Maybe the surface is up that way." But the last little photons have given up. And yet it is punctuated by sparkles and twinkles and flashes all around. The majority of animals that live there make their own light, and you can hear scritches and squeaks and thumps around you.
ANNIE: Right. Oh Bruce, I'm noticing that your chair is rather vocal.
BRUCE ROBISON: Ah.
ANNIE: It seems like it's squeaking. Unless that's Robert. Is that you Robert?
ROBERT: That's my imitation of a ship at sea. That's ...
ANNIE: [laughs] It's not quite working for me. It sounds a lot like a chair.
ROBERT: No, no. It's his fault. It's not mine. You're rocking.
BRUCE ROBISON: Well I'll try not—I'll ...
ROBERT: Yeah.
ANNIE: Anyway, they're down there in the darkness and they flick on this little headlight. And sweeping this cone of light around in front of them, they see the silty seafloor, a few rocky outcrops. When into that cone of light, wanders ...
BRUCE ROBISON: An octopus moving towards the rock across the sea floor.
ANNIE: Our hero. Using her arms to sort of pull and glide and roll herself along.
BRUCE ROBISON: She was kind of purpley-gray, dark, mottled. There was a crescent-shaped scar on one arm and a circular scar elsewhere.
ANNIE: Cool. Like tattoos.
BRUCE ROBISON: Yeah.
ROBERT: Well just so we get a sense of size, can you fit her on your lap? Or could you wear her as a hat?
BRUCE ROBISON: Ah, okay. The mantle, the roundy part, was as big as a healthy cantaloupe.
ANNIE: Oh.
ROBERT: Oh. How long are the tentacles?
BRUCE ROBISON: Foot-and-a-half long. They're very stretchy.
ROBERT: Ooh.
BRUCE ROBISON: Anyway ...
ANNIE: When they went back in the robot sub a month later ...
BRUCE ROBISON: That same octopus was up on a vertical face on the rock, sitting on a clutch of eggs.
ANNIE: Her body covering the eggs. Each of her arms ...
BRUCE ROBISON: Curled in a little spiral, tucked into position.
ROBERT: How many babies was she sitting on?
BRUCE ROBISON: 160.
ROBERT: Are they jellybean-sized, or ...?
BRUCE ROBISON: Yeah, that's a good approximation.
ANNIE: And Bruce and his team were like ...
BRUCE ROBISON: Oh!
ANNIE: ... this is great!
BRUCE ROBISON: We know within about a month when the eggs were laid.
ANNIE: And they'd often wondered, like, how long does it take for octopus eggs to hatch?
ROBERT: Does science not know about the brooding period of octopuses?
BRUCE ROBISON: Not deep-]water ones.
ROBERT: Oh!
ANNIE: Which was a totally different species of octopus, and could have totally a different way of doing things for all they knew.
BRUCE ROBISON: We know so little about life in the deep sea that something like this can be very illuminating.
ROBERT: Did you have a name for her other than, like, 1006-B?
BRUCE ROBISON: We just called her Octomom.
ROBERT: Octomom. [laughs]
ANNIE: Oh, beautiful.
ANNIE: So whenever they were out at sea and had time in their schedule, they'd toss in the robot sub, drop down ...
BRUCE ROBISON: And have a look ...
ANNIE: ... at Octomom. They dropped down in May and there she is, a little figure huddled on the rock. A month or so later, there she is again sitting on her eggs and warding off predators.
BRUCE ROBISON: Crabs and shrimps on the rock who would've loved to chow down on her eggs.
ROBERT: So let's say I'm a crab and I see some lady sitting on 160 babies. So I figure my odds are pretty good that I can scarf at least six of them.
BRUCE ROBISON: Not a chance.
ROBERT: Oh.
BRUCE ROBISON: She is vigilant and relentless.
ROBERT: Couldn't I bite her?
BRUCE ROBISON: Nope.
ROBERT: Or what about ...
BRUCE ROBISON: Nope.
ROBERT: No.
ANNIE: Yeah, what happens if a crab bites her?
ROBERT: Yeah. Or pinces her?
BRUCE ROBISON: She would squeeze the heck out of it.
ROBERT: Okay.
ANNIE: Couple months after that, they're zooming in towards the rock and, oh!
BRUCE ROBISON: There she is.
ANNIE: Cleaning the eggs with an arm. Like la, la, la, la, la.
BRUCE ROBISON: And you can see the baby octopus inside the egg after a while.
ANNIE: Next visit ...
BRUCE ROBISON: Still there.
ANNIE: Couple months after that ...
BRUCE ROBISON: Um ... oh!
ANNIE: There she is. Same old spot.
BRUCE ROBISON: Ah.
ANNIE: October. Still there?
BRUCE ROBISON: You bet.
ANNIE: November?
BRUCE ROBISON: Yes!
ANNIE: Curled around her babies, cleaning them, protecting them.
BRUCE ROBISON: Mm-hmm.
ANNIE: And it's now been around, like, six months, something like that? And Bruce and his team start to notice that she was changing.
BRUCE ROBISON: She became very pale. She clearly lost weight. And you could see over time that her eyes began to get cloudy. I say the human counterpart might be cataracts.
ANNIE: And according to Bruce, for an octopus this is normal.
BRUCE ROBISON: Most octopuses that we know about do not feed while they're brooding.
ROBERT: At all?
BRUCE ROBISON: At all.
JAD: Oh, she's—she's stuck to the rock with her jellybeans ...
ANNIE: She's there.
JAD: ... that entire time?
ANNIE: Yeah. She hasn't moved.
ROBERT: So that would mean that she was starving.
BRUCE ROBISON: Yes.
ANNIE: And not just starving, but starving to death.
YAN WANG: Octopus moms die after they reproduce.
ANNIE: Who is this?
YAN WANG: Oh! This is Yan.
ANNIE: I know. I'm just kidding. [laughs]
YAN WANG: [laughs] I was like, I'll talk to whatever voice is coming through the headphones but ...
ANNIE: So Yan Wang ...
YAN WANG: I'm an evolutionary neuroscientist.
ANNIE: ... she's a postdoc at Princeton, but she did her PhD research on reproduction and death in the octopus. Now she studied a shallow-water species of octopus, which tend to have a very short life.
YAN WANG: It typically only lives for a year.
JAD: Really?
ANNIE: Yeah.
JAD: That's it for an octopus?
ANNIE: I know. Isn't that crazy?
JAD: That seems—I mean, there's all the attention they get as being these brainy creatures.
ANNIE: I know.
JAD: And to think they're so ephemeral.
ANNIE: Now the deep-sea species like Octomom probably live a little longer than that. We don't actually know exactly how long. But Yan told me that all octopuses have a sort of similar life story. Like, when you're a kid, you're just growing ...
YAN WANG: So you're just eating everything.
ANNIE: ... then you hit puberty. You gotta find a mate that won't eat you. Apparently that's a big risk. And when you do finally find that mate ...
YAN WANG: The male octopus reaches with one of its arms into the mantle ...
ANNIE: The big balloon-y part of his body.
YAN WANG: Reaches in there and removes a sperm packet.
ANNIE: And he tucks it inside the female's mantle. "Here you go." And that's it. That's their sex. YAN WANG: The female can essentially decide when she wants to fertilize her eggs, because once she lays them, you know, she's not gonna move them.
ANNIE: So yeah, she has to go do all of her favorite things one last time before she switches over.
YAN WANG: [laughs] Her last hurrah.
ANNIE: [laughs] Exactly.
YAN WANG: Her rumspringa.
ANNIE: Totally.
YAN WANG: Yeah.
ANNIE: But when she decides the time is right, she'll find a safe spot and lay her eggs.
YAN WANG: Then as the eggs are about to hatch, she dies.
ANNIE: Now the shallow-water species of octopus that Yan studies, this sitting and taking care of your eggs phase doesn't last that long, only about a month. But with Octomom, since they knew virtually nothing about the species, the question was how long would it go? How long would she sit on those eggs, not eating, slowly dying?
ROBERT: How often—are you visiting her every month or two? Or every three months? Or ...
BRUCE ROBISON: No, no, no. It was—there wasn't a regular pattern. This was sort of bootleg science. We were out there doing other things that we were supposed to do as part of our project up in the water column. And if we had a little extra dive time we'd sneak down and check her out.
ANNIE: Which they did month after month after month after month.
JAD: If you keep counting, how far does it go?
ANNIE: Well, like, let's say—let's say, year one.
JAD: Year?
ANNIE: Yeah.
JAD: Oh, wow!
ANNIE: Year one, they drop down. She's looking pretty rough. And there are all these crabs crawling around. And they're scientists but they're also kind of having a hard time watching this octopus suffer, for lack of a better word.
BRUCE ROBISON: And one of the things that we tried, was we went down once and broke a couple legs off a crab.
ANNIE: With the robot? With the robot?
BRUCE ROBISON: Yeah. We have manipulator arms. We can do all kinds of neat stuff.
ANNIE: [laughs]
BRUCE ROBISON: So we broke off a couple of crab legs and offered them to her. She—she wouldn't have anything to do with it. We tried that oh, two, three times.
ROBERT: Whoa.
ANNIE: And one time in year two ...
JAD: Year two?
ANNIE: ... they drop down and they see that she is being circled by crabs.
JAD: What?
BRUCE ROBISON: Looking as though they were trying to mass an attack, if you will.
ANNIE: Like, how many?
BRUCE ROBISON: Three or four.
ANNIE: She's, like, very weak at this point. And these crabs are, like, circling her, like you imagine with pitchforks, like around a witch at a stake or something.
JAD: Oh, back! Back you devils!
ANNIE: [laughs] And Bruce and his team are like, "Oh my God! Like, what's gonna happen?" You know, "Could this be the end?"
BRUCE ROBISON: And all right, so we—we couldn't hang around and ...
ROBERT: Oh, man! You are not the kind of people—we would not hire you! If we—if we were following somebody who was under attack by a group of crabs who had written—drawn a circle of death around her and said, "No one shall pass!" We would not go back upstairs. We would stay.
BRUCE ROBISON: [laughs] We had other things on our agenda.
JAD: Oh, come on! They just—they ...
ANNIE: I know!
JAD: They grabbed the crab last time.
ANNIE: I know! I know!
JAD: Just, like, shoo them away with the arms.
ANNIE: That's what—I know. But they would come right back. I mean, they can't guard her.
JAD: But they leave her there in the dark being circled by crabs? Oh!
BRUCE ROBISON: That was at the beginning of a week-long trip.
ANNIE: So they're out at sea, doing their research. And all the while they're thinking, "What happened to Octomom and the crabs?"
BRUCE ROBISON: So on our way back home we thought, "Let's go check. Let's see how things are."
ANNIE: They drop in the sub. They drop down. They drop down, down, down, down, down, down. Biting their nails ...
BRUCE ROBISON: As we try to find our way into the rock. And we're searching, searching, searching.
ANNIE: And then there! A white blob in the darkness.
BRUCE ROBISON: It was like, ah! Okay, good. There she is. There she is. Still there.
ANNIE: And there are no crabs around her anymore. But ...
BRUCE ROBISON: There were crab parts all over the sea floor below her.
ROBERT: So she killed them?
BRUCE ROBISON: Yes.
ANNIE: So she's ...
JAD: [laughs] Yes!
ANNIE: ... in her weakened state torn them apart with her arms.
JAD: Oh my God!
BRUCE ROBISON: All the folks in the control room on the ship and the pilots were all going, "Yay!" [laughs]
ANNIE: So you left for a week and during that time she fought, like, the battle of her life.
BRUCE ROBISON: That's right.
ROBERT: Missed the whole thing.
ANNIE: And they're counting the eggs every single time, and she is still at 160.
BRUCE ROBISON: We never saw any evidence that anybody had picked off one of the eggs.
ROBERT: Not a one?
BRUCE ROBISON: Nope.
JAD: This is heroic!
ANNIE: It is heroic. She was wasting away and would eventually have to die, but it would have to be timed right with the hatching of the babies.
JAD: Yeah.
ANNIE: Because if she were to lose her grip and drift off of the eggs, then a crab could come and just, you know, have a huge brunch. I mean, there was this tension of her holding on until ...
ROBERT: They were ready.
BRUCE ROBISON: Yes.
ROBERT: Well, doesn't it seem to you, like, there's people like, you know, say, "I'm gonna be dying tonight, but I'm gonna wait for Johnny to come home."
ANNIE: [laughs] Yeah.
ROBERT: And then Johnny bursts through the door and they look and exchange a glance. And then, poof! Mommy dies. It sort of feels a little like that.
ANNIE: Let's move on to year three.
JAD: What?
ANNIE: She's still there.
JAD: Three years?
ANNIE: Yeah, like ...
JAD: This is ...
ANNIE: I know! She's getting worse and worse.
JAD: I cannot—this is horrible and amazing at the same time.
ANNIE: I know! She has not eaten anything. They are, like, aghast. She is just like this titan. Year four—we move onto year four. Like, it's just, like, unbelievable time.
JAD: Oh my God.
ANNIE: Let me give you a sense of, like, what is happening. So 2007, that's when they saw her. Boris Yeltsin dies.
JAD: [laughs]
ANNIE: First iPhone released for sale in the USA. Big moments.
JAD: [laughs]
ANNIE: 2008, the economy crashes. Obama is elected. Like, these huge things are happening, right up—right upstairs from her. She's just still doing that same thing.
JAD: [laughs]
ANNIE: 2009. Usain Bolt breaks the world record for the 100-meter dash.
JAD: Bitcoin. I think bitcoin happened somewhere in there.
ANNIE: Bitcoin, okay. 2009, Michael Jackson dies.
JAD: Wow.
ANNIE: 2010, those Chilean miners are rescued after 69 days.
JAD: Oh my God.
ANNIE: I don't know if you remember that.
JAD: Yeah, of course.
ANNIE: They were trapped underground.
JAD: Wow.
ANNIE: Haiti has a huge earthquake. The worst they ever had in 200 years. 2011—we're moving onto 2011 now, the Arab Spring.
JAD: Oh my God!
ANNIE: Same-sex marriage is legalized in New York state. Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs, and Osama Bin Laden all die.
JAD: All the while, Octomom has been sitting there withering, but killing crabs that come for her babies.
ANNIE: Yeah.
JAD: Wow.
ANNIE: Like, not eating, but somehow remaining vigilant.
JAD: Just seems so crazy to me. Like, why would—why would evolution make an animal that needs to gestate her babies that long?
ANNIE: Well, we don't know. Bruce and Yan both said that maybe it's because it's so cold down there that everything happens more slowly. Or maybe you need super developed babies because it's such a harsh environment. But basically, it's still a mystery. Like, they don't even know if Octomom is, like, this crazy freak of nature, or if she's ordinary. Like, she's the only octopus of this species that anyone has ever watched do this.
JAD: Huh.
ANNIE: But my question was how. How can she survive this? Like, how can she just sit there not eating for four years, and not just—just die?
YAN WANG: It's just a totally bizarre thing, right?
ANNIE: It sounds like magic.
YAN WANG: [laughs]
ANNIE: Lucky for us, this is exactly what Yan studied for her PhD. How does Octomom manage to stay alive and defend her eggs, not moving, no food, for over four years?
YAN WANG: Right, so we just didn't know ...
ANNIE: Well, Yan says the answer lies in a very peculiar fact about the octopus's brain, which helps her pull off these last few deeply essential beats of her life.
YAN WANG: If we were to think about the nervous system as, say, like an orchestra.
ANNIE: To understand how this works, Yan says you can think of all the different parts of the octopus's brain as different sections in an orchestra.
YAN WANG: You know, like, the brass is gonna take care of, like, vision or something like that. Or, you know, the strings are taking care of motor functions and things like that.
ANNIE: Maybe the bass is regulating heartbeat. The woodwinds taking care of memory. And as she swims along living her octopus life, the whole orchestra is playing. All the instruments doing their jobs. But as she lays her eggs, there's a shift.
YAN WANG: A shutting down of processes that are normally functioning to keep the body going.
ANNIE: Every instrument in that orchestra starts to hush.
YAN WANG: Everybody going quiet.
ANNIE: Except there's this one section of the orchestra ...
YAN WANG: Yeah, the optic glands. These are, like, two really tiny—they're kind of the size of, you know, a grain of rice.
ANNIE: They sit right between her eyes.
YAN WANG: They have their solo at this point.
ANNIE: And would that be the opera singer, or who is that? Who is everyone quieting to hear?
YAN WANG: Well, let me think about this. It would not be, you know, a very common instrument. It's not a huge part of the brain. So it wouldn't really be a string. I don't think it would be like a wind instrument. Or maybe it would be a weird one, you know, like a bassoon or something like that. One where there's just one or two in a full orchestra.
ANNIE: Okay, I like that.
ANNIE: So as all the other parts of the nervous system begin to drop away, the bassoon, these tiny grains of rice, have their moment. They're playing a very complicated chemical song that Yan is only just beginning to piece together. But she knows that part of the work they're doing is triggering a bunch of different chemicals.
YAN WANG: Things like steroids and its insulin that enable it to stay alive without additional food intake.
ANNIE: And so all the while she's down there, years and years, being visited again and again by this robot, on the outside, she looks like a very old lady—pale skin, cataracts, flabby muscles. A little pale blob in the darkness all alone. But on the inside, she's very much alive. Alive in this incredibly centered, focused way. Year after year after year after year, she's playing her heart out.
ANNIE: Um, Bruce? I just want to remind you about the chair thing.
BRUCE ROBISON: Oh, sorry.
ANNIE: No problem, no problem.
BRUCE ROBISON: All right. Dylan's offered me a—a better chair. Let's say a more silent chair, so let me pick up my butt out of this one.
ROBERT: Okay.
BRUCE ROBISON: Move it over to another one. Thank you, Dylan.
ANNIE: Did you have—did you have moments where you were, like, out buying eggs, bicycling, you know, cleaning the car, and just had this moment like, "Oh! She's there. I know exactly where she is. She's doing her job." Like, these little moments of you living your life and her just constantly working as a mother?
BRUCE ROBISON: Yeah, I thought about her all the time.
JAD: Okay, so we are at year four, or—is that where we are?
ANNIE: So we're at year four and a half.
BRUCE ROBISON: Four and a half years!
ROBERT: Shh! [laughs]
JAD: Is that the world record for longest brooding period on planet Earth?
ANNIE: Yeah, it is.
JAD: Whoa!
BRUCE ROBISON: We had—we had been there a month before and she was still there, looking pretty haggard I've gotta say, but she was hanging in there. And then one day we dropped down, and we're flying in towards the rock.
ANNIE: He's watching the screen up on the ship, just seeing darkness. Then there's the rocky outcrop. There's her spot.
BRUCE ROBISON: And she wasn't there. We couldn't see her.
JAD: What do you—what does that mean? Does that mean ...?
BRUCE ROBISON: We knew we were at the right place, we could see the—the patch on the rock. And there were all of these tattered egg cases just in the spot where she had been.
ROBERT: Tattered egg cases means that the babies had been born?
BRUCE ROBISON: Well, the first thing we did was search. Are there babies on the rock? Are the babies still here? Or did any of them survive? Or was it some sort of apocalyptic demise at the hands of all those hungry-looking crabs?
ANNIE: So they're frantically sort of searching around the rock. Searching and searching and searching. And then they begin to see little babies that are her species. And they see a little baby here ...
JAD: Aww. No way!
ANNIE: And a little baby there.
BRUCE ROBISON: Little octopuses crawling around.
ROBERT: Oh!
BRUCE ROBISON: They'd been feeding and growing, and it was pretty clear that they were hatchlings from that clutch of eggs that we had observed.
ANNIE: Did they look like her? Like all the same little—there's the crescent—the crescent shape and the ...
ROBERT: [laughs]
BRUCE ROBISON: Sadly, no. And they were quite a bit smaller.
ANNIE: Yeah.
BRUCE ROBISON: But it was clear they were—they were the same species.
ANNIE: And did you see her?
BRUCE ROBISON: Nope. I'm certain that she had been consumed by some scavenger.
JAD: Oh my God. But you just want—you just want to give her a moment just to see it.
ANNIE: Yeah. Well, we kinda asked Bruce, like, can you help us imagine what that moment might have been like for her?
ROBERT: Since you don't know, because you missed it as usual, the actual big moment. Could you ...
BRUCE ROBISON: [laughs] I must have gone out for a hamburger or something.
ANNIE: Yes!
ROBERT: [laughs] Could you, just in your mind's eye, imagine the last moment here? Like, was she dusting the eggs or were the eggs beginning to hatch? Or what ...
BRUCE ROBISON: We suspected she stayed there until the last one had hatched.
ANNIE: You mean watching them?
BRUCE ROBISON: Mmm, maybe not watching them but feeling them. Guarding them.
ANNIE: Oh my gosh, that's amazing!
BRUCE ROBISON: They are—they are devoted moms.
ANNIE: So she would feel this activity that was new underneath her, and then know that it was time to finally let go?
BRUCE ROBISON: Right. Okay, relax Mom. It's over. You did—you did your job.
ANNIE: So cool. It's like handing off the baton of life.
JAD: Yeah.
YAN WANG: Yeah.
ANNIE: I love thinking about this story right now because we're all, like, kind of—I don't know, just needing to, like, hold on. There's this, like, sense of holding on.
JAD: Yeah.
ANNIE: And waiting and being patient. And just like, I don't know, having faith and that kind of thing. You know ...
JAD: Yeah.
ANNIE: ... just kind of like being still and holding on. That she is just like giving us such a great model for it.
JAD: Wow, you know it's—what—hold on one second, I just have to put an end to this madness. Give me a second.
ANNIE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go for it.
JAD: Emil, Taj, don't come in here. I'm working. Oh my God. You know what I think about is the ...
ANNIE: What?
JAD: ... it's so interesting. This is like the op—this is like the absolutely wrong soundtrack to the story that you're telling.
ANNIE: Oh, the kids. [laughs]
JAD: You were talking about a mother sort of lovingly ...
ANNIE: Oh ...
JAD: ... suffering and then dying on behalf of her jellybeans, and I have these kids who are just like, literally running around like savages right now because they're stir crazy. No, you know what I think? I think about it like, it's so beautiful and heroic and poignant. But then I think about, like, she's not telling—like [laughs]—if you take the story away and you just imagine her experience, she's in the darkness for five years. And, like, I wonder if she—I wonder—she has no conception of anything except—that somehow, the disconnect between the experience she's having and the story we're telling about it is everything that I need to think about right now, because we're all trying to protect our jellybeans in a way. But—but then if you think about the experience of that it's just—can feel frightening and lonely and dark, you know?
JAD: Thanks, Annie.
ANNIE: You're welcome.
JAD: This story was reported and produced by Annie McEwen with musical help from Alex Overington. And a very big thank you to our bassoon player Brad Balliett, who provided the soundtrack for Octomom's darkest hours and finest moment.
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