but where are the badger-moles?
August 15, 2017 11:42 AM   Subscribe

Miles of tunnels in South America were excavated by enormous giant sloths. At least, scientists think they were dug by giant sloths. But they're not entirely sure. The giant armadillo, the largest living member of the family, weighs between 65 and 90 pounds and is found throughout much of South America. Its burrows are only about 16 inches in diameter and up to about 20 feet long. “So if a 90-pound animal living today digs a 16-inch by 20-foot borrow, what would dig one five feet wide and 250 feet long?” asks Frank. “There’s no explanation – not predators, not climate, not humidity. I really don’t know.”
posted by suelac (34 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
Shoggoths? I'm gonna say shoggoths.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:44 AM on August 15, 2017 [11 favorites]


Yeah, unless you accept that ancient alien nonsense, then shoggoths is the only thing that makes sense.
posted by Naberius at 11:46 AM on August 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Shoggoths? I'm gonna say shoggoths.

Right - some real mental gymnastics and wishful thinking going on here.

This is clearly the work of Ish'l-harsana, Black Sloth of the Woods with a Thousand Young.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:47 AM on August 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


Is that an April Fools' article?
posted by tracer at 11:51 AM on August 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Shoggoths actually were brought to Earth by ancient aliens, though.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:53 AM on August 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Earthbenders?
posted by kmz at 11:53 AM on August 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Is it lowbrow that I'm mostly just missing my old roleplaying group rather than engaging with the mystery?
posted by BS Artisan at 11:53 AM on August 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Man, I love this stuff. Echos of extinct animals long after they're gone? Like avocados.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:54 AM on August 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


Earthbenders?

“Badgermoles coming toward me,
Come on guys help me out!
The big bad badgermoles, who earthbend the tunnels,
Hate the wolfbats, but love the sounds!”
posted by Fizz at 11:57 AM on August 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


shurely shogsloths?
posted by lalochezia at 11:59 AM on August 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Is that an April Fools' article?

Ah. I forgot to notice the date. I'm... not sure? Damnit.
posted by suelac at 12:04 PM on August 15, 2017


It was done by a giant slor during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants
posted by Ber at 12:06 PM on August 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Hmm, Discover Magazine's "Crux" blog appears to be "weird science" articles, but not necessarily hoaxes.

I got nothin'.
posted by suelac at 12:07 PM on August 15, 2017


Hortas. Definitely Hortas.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:09 PM on August 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'm not worried.
posted by Kabanos at 12:13 PM on August 15, 2017


Minecraft
posted by zippy at 12:13 PM on August 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


“I didn’t know there was such a thing as paleoburrows,” says Frank. “I’m a geologist, a professor, and I’d never even heard of them.”. . . Until the early 2000s, in fact, hardly any burrows attributed to extinct megafauna had been described in the scientific literature.

I BEG YOUR PARDON

Giant terrestrial beavers dug some good sized burrows in North America during the Miocene. While not the same size of burrow, they're pretty impressive. (And remember kids, megafauna generally means over 100 lbs.)

Although they're probably talking about Pleistocene megafauna which then wasn't conveyed by the writer so I guess I'll cut them some slack.

Also it's real, here ya go in the journal about trace fossils, Ichnos.
posted by barchan at 12:14 PM on August 15, 2017 [14 favorites]


Yay, thank you barchan!
posted by suelac at 12:23 PM on August 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


One of the comments below the article asks "How much vodka went into the design of that graphic?" Indeed, the infographic leaves much to be desired. But apart from digging and resting and digging and resting, I wonder if the series of domes in a sequence didn't create a more structurally stable ceiling compared to a straight tunnel?
posted by Kabanos at 12:39 PM on August 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Dholes
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:42 PM on August 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


“There’s no explanation – not predators, not climate, not humidity. I really don’t know.”

I'm going to go with: El Chapo.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:44 PM on August 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Man, I love this stuff. Echos of extinct animals long after they're gone? Like avocados

You should read The Ghosts Of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms.
posted by fimbulvetr at 12:58 PM on August 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Story on blog Twilight Beasts that predates the Discover article. Has links to scholarly articles and maps showing two different styles of tunnels that have been documented.

Even earlier story on blog Georgia Before People. Has a link to Heinrich Frank's web site, containing lots of publications.

I suppose it could still be a hoax, but they're doing a damn good job of pulling it off.
posted by polecat at 1:42 PM on August 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm pretty sure they are actually kilometers of tunnels.
posted by srboisvert at 2:07 PM on August 15, 2017


The whole world is a tunnel. It is only permanence that is a hoax.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:08 PM on August 15, 2017


But apart from digging and resting and digging and resting, I wonder if the series of domes in a sequence didn't create a more structurally stable ceiling compared to a straight tunnel?

That's an interesting idea, and if the ceiling did start collapsing, that structure might help limit the collapse to one dome's length instead of allowing it to propagate down a straight tunnel indefinitely.

I was thinking that each little domed section would be a space the animal could turn around in, and that such an architecture would be easier to dig than a straight tunnel wide enough for a turn at every point.
posted by jamjam at 3:29 PM on August 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Am I the only one having flashbacks to A Walk in the Dark?
posted by drdanger at 6:56 PM on August 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Very cool, but kinda creepy too—the only thing those tunnel walls are missing are cruciforms. I don't want them discovering we're actually one of the Labyrinthine worlds.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 8:03 PM on August 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Dholes
I will see that and raise it to that to "Terrestrial Bobbit Worms" ( of course - previously).
posted by rongorongo at 10:40 PM on August 15, 2017


My understanding is that, in the canon, shoggoths are basically telepathically controlled heavy-works machinery, comprised of self-reconfiguring blobs of biological-looking stuff, engineered by one or more ancient alien civilisations.

As such, it is slightly disappointing that nobody has thought to name some sort of cloud server management/deployment tool shoggoth.
posted by acb at 2:38 AM on August 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Could be some unimaginable chthonic horror, could be Englishmen.
posted by sfenders at 5:37 AM on August 16, 2017


It was done by a giant slor during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants
That would explain the current scarcity of shuvs and zuuls.
posted by JohnFromGR at 6:54 AM on August 16, 2017


Regardless, the sheer size of the burrows is something that Frank and his colleagues are still trying to explain. Whether prehistoric sloths or armadillos were responsible, the burrows are far larger than would be necessary to shelter the animals that dug them from predators or the elements.

They were playing Minecraft. But seriously, maybe it was just fun. Build something safe for the kids to play in.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 3:51 PM on August 16, 2017


Maybe the Chilesaurous did these tunnels, then much later sloths benefited from them. Here, they had these claw front fingers and were about the right size. Maybe some diggers made it past the big dinosaur barbecue.
posted by Oyéah at 6:42 PM on August 16, 2017


« Older Wild Geology of the Pacific Northwest   |   A Sign Of Trouble: The HIV Crisis In The Deaf... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments