317: Silkhenge

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to brain junk. I'm Amy Barton. [00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trey Scurr. And today is everything you never knew you wanted to know about. Silkhenge. [00:00:12] Speaker A: Silkhenge. [00:00:14] Speaker B: Silkhenge. [00:00:15] Speaker A: I'm not. I'm intrigued. [00:00:18] Speaker B: It's mysterious. It's strange. Okay. So let me tell you. There's this structure. They found it in the amazonian forest. It's a spiraling tower in the middle of a circular fence. Okay. The fence almost looks like a still shot of right after a raindrop hits water. Not straight up and down. It kind of curves out a little bit. [00:00:40] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Okay. [00:00:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And this fence is ringed with supporting. [00:00:43] Speaker A: Sort of like a barrel. [00:00:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Except leaning out instead of in towards this. Spiraling. [00:00:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. [00:00:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. And then you've got supporting lines, kind of like barbed wire fence going, you know, like maybe four or five rows of this fencing around it. [00:01:02] Speaker A: So it's serious fencing. [00:01:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Super impressive. It's 2 cm wide. [00:01:07] Speaker A: What? Can I look it up now? [00:01:10] Speaker B: Yeah. No. So go ahead and type in silk henge. All one word. [00:01:15] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [00:01:16] Speaker B: This little thing will fit on the tip of your finger. [00:01:19] Speaker A: Had to take out a space there. Oh. [00:01:23] Speaker B: And I. I saw an image of this on Instagram, and my first thought was, this is AI. [00:01:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Wild. Oh, my gosh. And there's a picture of it sitting by a fingernail. And you could fit all of it on your pinky. [00:01:39] Speaker B: Yeah, on your pinky. [00:01:41] Speaker A: Fingernail. [00:01:42] Speaker B: Yeah. So some details that I left out. It's all white. It looks like webbing, like it's woven together. It's kind of mysterious looking. It's very small. And it was reported in 2013 by a Georgia tech graduate student, troy Alexander. [00:02:00] Speaker A: What date did you just say? [00:02:01] Speaker B: What's that? [00:02:02] Speaker A: How long ago? [00:02:02] Speaker B: What's 2013? [00:02:04] Speaker A: That's recent. [00:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah, super recent. Right. And when you google it, you're gonna find lots of images. When this guy found it, no one had taken a picture of it before. He was at the Tambopata research Center in the peruvian Amazon. [00:02:19] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:02:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And so I went back and I was looking at Reddit posts, like, because he found one stuck to the bottom of a tarp. He took the picture, and then he was posting it on Reddit. Does anybody know what this is? Is it aliens? [00:02:36] Speaker A: That's a fair question. It's weird looking because what did you mention? In the middle, there's a cone shape that looks like the old school oil thing where in a really old cartoon they go, ka tink, ka tink. And they push the bottom of this little thing. And. [00:02:51] Speaker B: Oh, yes, it kinda has. If you made a dollop of whipped cream and then, like, stretch the point way up. [00:02:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Like a Hershey kiss with a flag up. [00:03:00] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. But it's very skinny. And remember, it's also really small. So he saw it and thought that maybe it was a moth cocoon that hadn't gotten finished. Like, somebody started weaving it. Because these. [00:03:15] Speaker A: It does look unfinished, sort of. [00:03:17] Speaker B: Yeah, these fence post y looking sort of things. It's very. I mean, it does. It looks like a fence made out of webbing of some kind. So the spire in the middle, when you zoom in really close, it's made out of tiny threads. It looks kind of like a drop spindle. Too. Many researchers thought maybe it was a spider leaving this thing. [00:03:40] Speaker A: Are you doing this? Are you doing a spider episode, Trace? [00:03:43] Speaker B: I am doing a spider episode. [00:03:45] Speaker A: What? [00:03:46] Speaker B: I know, voluntarily, I know it pains me, but here's the thing. All I looked at while looking at this, aside from pictures that popped up around my search, which were horrible, was teeny tiny spiders. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Not long after his discovery of this one that he took a picture of a tambopada scientist Phil Torres and University of Florida entomologist, they were like, what the heck is this Silkhenge thing? They went out to look to try to find more. And along a 650 foot long part of a trail, they're looking under all the leaves, they're looking under all the rocks. They're looking on the tree trunks. They found 45 of these henges. [00:04:33] Speaker A: Oh, so suddenly they're everywhere. [00:04:36] Speaker B: Yeah, they were everywhere, but no one who was not from the area and a scientist had noticed these before. I was looking at the wayback archive. That's the thing. That's just like, taking pictures of everything on the Internet. [00:04:51] Speaker A: Yeah, the wayback machine. [00:04:53] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. It's amazing. There's a National Geographic article that mentions this 45 Hengese. Well, so they set up video equipment because they're. They're all like, we have no idea what this is. [00:05:06] Speaker A: What is happening? [00:05:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Is it an egg case? Is it. What is it? So they, they set up cameras and they videoed spiders, little, teeny, tiny, golden colored spiders hatching from one of the towers down at the bottom. So you've got this fence ring, and remember, it's just the size of your fingertip, a fence ring. And then in the middle, that dollop with this long tower coming off of it, one to three spiders hatch just a couple out from the bottom. Of the dollop in the middle of this fence. [00:05:43] Speaker A: Mm hmm. [00:05:44] Speaker B: They are remarkably cute. [00:05:46] Speaker A: Microscopic little guys. [00:05:48] Speaker B: They're so cute. If they were in person, they'd give me the heebie jeebies, but they were really tiny. They were on a video. They were very cute. And so one of the things that they wondered about was, what's with the fence? [00:06:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, mom is gone. This is your best chance. Stay in here. Once you're big enough to get out, you can be free. [00:06:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And the fence, I mean, is very small. You know, if it's 2 cm across, it's. It's, you know, tiny. Teeny tiny. Is it to keep predators out? Question mark. Is it to. Some people thought, because often it was on the underside of a leaf, was it to keep water from rolling into the nest in the middle? And then these researchers that were out noticed that it was an area that had a lot of mites flying around. [00:06:38] Speaker A: Oh, yes. Hungry little mites. [00:06:42] Speaker B: Well, yeah, some of the fences had mites stuck in them. [00:06:47] Speaker A: Oh, this is a natural food source. [00:06:51] Speaker B: So it might be that it's a grocery store that she's leaving behind. [00:06:56] Speaker A: Brilliant. This is the equivalent of the latchkey kid of the spider world. [00:07:02] Speaker B: I know. She's like, okay, I'm leaving you here. And also, if there's only one or two spiders per nest, that's the thing that's really stumping them, because there's not very many. In one video, I did see the spider had hatched, and he just crawled over the fence. No big deal. So, yeah, they just don't really know. [00:07:23] Speaker A: Weird. They're not sticking around to eat stuff. There's potentially not a real big reason. [00:07:31] Speaker B: Or. Or maybe they do. I mean, we don't. We don't know. And here's the other thing. So it's a little, teeny tiny, golden colored spider. Okay. It's on the tip of your finger. So, yeah, teeny, teeny tiny. [00:07:44] Speaker A: Like freckles, eyes. It's so little. [00:07:45] Speaker B: Yes. And they don't know what kind of spider it is. [00:07:51] Speaker A: Really. Like, it's a new spider. [00:07:53] Speaker B: Well, okay, so this, I I went. I learned so much about spiders. I, you know, people, hey, if you have a phobia, research, it. It makes it easier. Not at all. [00:08:04] Speaker A: It's like a tiny golden tarantula to me. Like, a little bit fuzzy. And like those cat eye spiders, it's got a big rear end butt. Mm hmm. [00:08:13] Speaker B: Yeah. But here's the thing. Identifying spiders is usually done in two ways. One is morphology. So what does it look like, and how do you describe it? Well, they use an adult to do that kind of identification because babies don't look often exactly like. [00:08:33] Speaker A: True. [00:08:34] Speaker B: They would look as adults, and so they can't make an identification that way. So they were doing something called DNA barcoding. So you know that spiders on a particular part of their genes have a little bit of code, and that's very specific to spiders. Usually it's in this area. And so what they do is they took that chunk of DNA and they get the barcode, and it's this run of, you know, T's and C's and G's and A's. [00:09:06] Speaker A: So then can they find a family? [00:09:08] Speaker B: Well, they put it into the database, and nothing came up 100%. So it's new, or it's just a spider that we know what it looks like morphologically, and so we haven't done a DNA code on it. Cause they're like, oh, yeah, everybody knows that's the. [00:09:26] Speaker A: Oh, it's a generic blah blah spider. [00:09:29] Speaker B: Exactly. And so we don't have it in there. Or it could be that they didn't quite get the right little section of DNA code. [00:09:40] Speaker A: I choose to think it's very exotic. [00:09:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:43] Speaker A: And heretofore unknown. [00:09:46] Speaker B: So that was 2013. They're still doing research. I did. I was looking for a really long time for a conclusive paper where they're like, we know what this is. Couldn't find it. That doesn't mean that it's not out there, but it certainly means that it's not, like, on the tip of everybody's tongue as to what this is. [00:10:09] Speaker A: This is the spider world of Sasquatch. This is spider squatch, and we found it. So you squatchers out there, keep looking, everybody. [00:10:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And also, I came across an instagram, and this gal was talking about the silk henge, and there is something called I, the letter I naturalist. It's an app. You can also look it up on your computer. And it's this place, a resource for people to put things that they're trying to identify, like photos of plants or photos of bugs. There is a silkhenge section. And so people who are on inaturalist and who have found these webs with the cone in the middle, I guess web isn't the right thing. Fence. They found the silkens. Right. You can take a picture and say where you were and where you found it. And so they found them in other places in South America, sort of set. [00:11:05] Speaker A: Up a perimeter and habitat areas. [00:11:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, and some people have guessed they think it might be in a specific family of spiders, but they don't. No one has caught anyone in the act. [00:11:22] Speaker A: Wow. It does make the world seem sort of exciting and unknown when these sort of things come up. Still, there's so much that we have too much information about in the world. So this feels like a little magic still. And that makes me happy. [00:11:37] Speaker B: It does. And of course, I was telling Beckett about this, and Beckett was like, why didn't they just take back some spiders and raise them up? And I said, that was my thought too. And the information that I found said that the babies that they collected had all died. [00:11:52] Speaker A: They don't thrive adulthood. [00:11:54] Speaker B: So perhaps they have figured that out. And hey, if you're listening to this and you're like, I know what spider it is, well, then we want to chat with you. [00:12:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Brainjunkpodcastmail.com because I send you paper once it's published. Yeah, just don't send me any photos without warning me that I'm gonna be opening it up for a spider because that's not nice. [00:12:13] Speaker A: Yeah, no, label those files for Amy. I'll look at them. [00:12:19] Speaker B: Yeah, but, yeah, that's like the silkhenge spider. It's so cool. [00:12:24] Speaker A: That's so magical and creepy. So the thing that it keeps reminding me of is the carnival ride where you step in and you stand up against the wall and they strap you in and they spin that thing like crazy. And then you get off and barf. It looks like that, but the walls are leaning out a little, like it's not structurally sound anymore. Everything is leaning out in case you're driving and did not look this up. [00:12:54] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's a perfect description because it. Yeah, like I said, when I saw a photo, I thought that has to be AI. This can't be a real thing because the fence is so perfect with these little. Like I said, it looks like there's barbed wire just like 1234 wound perfectly around it. [00:13:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it's weird. [00:13:13] Speaker B: Nature's making some cool stuff now. That was the other thing. I think it was Beckett that was like, can you imagine if you found one of these like 8ft across? [00:13:23] Speaker A: No. Oh, my goodness. It would be like that scene in Jurassic park where they're up against the electrified fence and they're on the wrong side. [00:13:33] Speaker B: Yes. [00:13:34] Speaker A: And dinosaurs are coming. [00:13:36] Speaker B: Run. Which way? Who knows? I don't know. [00:13:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you want to get eaten or electrified? You choose. [00:13:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Just don't climb the fence because there's little babies in there. [00:13:48] Speaker A: Yeah, you'll become dinner, for sure. That way. Wow. [00:13:51] Speaker B: Yeah. So check out the inaturalist. It was kind of cool. Even if you don't look up silken, it had, like, you can find your area, and people are, you know, pictures of plants, and they're like, what do you think this is? Or a bird or, you know, all this kind of stuff. You can help with research, help people identify stuff. I haven't told Chaz about it because he has the Cornell Labs birdsong identifier on his phone, and, oh, it's amazing. I could only imagine. I would never see his face again if he had the naturalist thing and the bird song. [00:14:23] Speaker A: Yeah. This reminds me, like, how average people can participate in science. We were just sitting in a meeting today, and our dean, his wife, is a scientist, and there is someone at the university who's doing a tick study. And so the study group at the university is collecting ticks, and so they want them from all over the community. And so he didn't realize it, but his wife, the biologist, has been bringing the neighbor's tick samples to work. And so he came in and found vials with ticks and, like, vials labeled Benny 426 the park or, you know, whatever so that they know who collected it, when and where it was found. And she's like, hey, I'm not going in today. Can you take these in? So he's participating in science whether he likes it or not. So he had vials of ticks in his suit coat? [00:15:21] Speaker B: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. [00:15:25] Speaker A: He's a good egg. And so he did it, and it gets him off of his counter. Oh, yeah. So maybe you can be a part of science in the same way, but more digitally, you don't have to bottle up your ticks and send them into the office. [00:15:39] Speaker B: Oh, no. You know, no, thank you. Although I will say, when we lived in Georgia, we had passion fruit vine, and chaz cut off a whole bunch, and he had it in a. In a big vase on the counter, and then it draped down over the counter towards the floor. [00:15:55] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:15:55] Speaker B: And it was covered with, I want to say swallowtail caterpillars. Oh, no. [00:16:00] Speaker A: You realized you'd brought a habitat in. [00:16:02] Speaker B: Oh, no. We did it on purpose because we wanted them to make cocoons and then hatch into butterflies. [00:16:06] Speaker A: Gotcha. [00:16:07] Speaker B: But, you know, you're just living like that, and then people come over and they're like, are those caterpillars? [00:16:14] Speaker A: Yeah, we put them back when they get too close to the other stuff. [00:16:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And then they hatch, and then we let them go. It's it's fine. It's fine. Don't worry about it. [00:16:24] Speaker A: The thing that creeped us out most is like, you just put them in your pockets. How tight were. What kind of lids were on those? [00:16:30] Speaker B: Not good enough. I don't care what they are. Screw top. Not good enough. [00:16:34] Speaker A: No. Two ziplocs around those, please. Or like, in a tupperware. [00:16:39] Speaker B: No. Yeah. No. Oh, man. Hey, honey, can you take these ticks to work for me? [00:16:44] Speaker A: I just found a sticky on the counter with vials of ticks. [00:16:47] Speaker B: Oh, God. [00:16:51] Speaker A: And I thought, you are the most easygoing spouse in the world. [00:16:55] Speaker B: I would need a shower. Just like, with leeches. I think when they're doing studies with leeches, I'll have to. If it's not in the episode, you'll know that it was wrong. But they like body temperature, so you put them. [00:17:06] Speaker A: Tuck them in your little pockets. [00:17:08] Speaker B: They're in a container, but they're, like, in your bra. [00:17:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Gross. [00:17:13] Speaker B: Don't love it. Don't love it. [00:17:15] Speaker A: I'm not that dedicated to research. [00:17:19] Speaker B: You're like, oh, too much science. [00:17:21] Speaker A: I know. It is fascinating the things they can learn from such a small thing, because the tick research is also climate related. [00:17:29] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:17:30] Speaker A: And, like, what the tick population is like and what's happening to it. And so they've already done a round of research and had some interesting results, and so they're delving further into that. It's amazing. So science is, there's still new stuff out there. [00:17:43] Speaker B: So much stuff. [00:17:44] Speaker A: It's exciting. [00:17:45] Speaker B: Start looking under tarps and leaves. You might find something, you might not like it. [00:17:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you are one of those people that carries leeches in your skivvies or your bra, we definitely want to hear about that experience. So you can message us on Facebook or instagram. You could go old school and go brainjunkpodcastmail.com. yeah, I don't think we want pictures for that, though. And of course, if you are delighted by chat of leeches in undergarments, like and subscribe, hit a like for this episode and subscribe so you can hear more of this quality content. Oh, and get your brain junk, podcast, mug. You can transport your ticks and your brain. Go to the merch store, everybody. There might be a better way to do that, but it's. That's one way. [00:18:40] Speaker B: That's true. [00:18:43] Speaker A: All right, Trace and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know, and I absolutely guarantee you will not be bored.