Thinking Sideways: Mongolian Death Worm

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking sideways. I don't. I'm not stories of things we
simply don't know the answer too. Well, Hey there, everybody,
and welcome to Thinking Sideways. As always on Steve joined

(00:27):
my my beloved co host. Well hey there, well, hey,
there is my signature lying. I know. I'm sorry. I
always make fun Yeah, you know, trying to be on radio. No, no, really, Well,
this week, ladies and gentlemen, we've of course got another
little mysterious story for you. And it's not just mysterious

(00:49):
as scary as hell. Well, you know, it's funny. As
I've found this and started looking it up, I realized
that it's kind of going into territory we've never gone
into before, which is cryptozoology. Actually we've been there. We've
covered the troop of cobra quite extensively, not really, but yeah,
and the the fairies count then, and I don't think

(01:11):
fairies count. We talked about the Yetti or Bigfoot. We've
talked of the state Marshmallow Yettie, Yeah, we did. I
was thinking about It's like, why haven't we ever gone
into the realm of cryptozoology yet? We just haven't gotten
there yet. We're just know we're getting around to it. Okay,
there's a lot of unsolved mysteries out there, Steve. We've
just scratched the surface, not even touched the tip of

(01:34):
the iceberg. Yeah, and we got to do this once
a week. Only once a week do we get to
solve the mystery, you know. So there's that's true. We
don't have enough time to Maybe we should go to
five days a week. I don't have time for that
time for that. No, I do not. I do not. Well,
let's let's go into the story. What we're gonna talk

(01:55):
about today is the Mongolian death word. I love that
it does have the most awesome name ever, death worm.
It sounds like a metal band. It's like the death Ship.
Yeah right, death the death Star. We haven't covered that
one yet. I'll do it next week. I know you will.

(02:19):
The story. If the name of this creature didn't already
clue anybody in, it's the Mongolian death worm. Is from Mongolia, which,
if you don't know your geography, Mongolia is north of China.
It's connected to Russia. It's in that whole upper region

(02:40):
of the European continent. Are they not in Europe, It's
in Asia. It's like yes, but yeah they're not. Yeah,
it's not so much connected to Russia, but the borders
Russia and Russian sort of ran the country for a
long time, kind of dominated. It isn't Mongolia the reason
that the Great Wall of China exists. I believe that
the Mongolians were the invaders. Yes, yea, so we'll just

(03:02):
do that also for all of you who you know
need your Mulan references. All right, Well, the Mongol death
worm not a creature that you, evidently, according to local lore,
want to ever meet nor mess with. Deadly as hell deadly.
That's why they call it. The death is the jury room. Yeah,

(03:24):
the paper cuff, the death worm, the mildly annoying worm. Yeah, absolutely,
Let's be honest. Aren't most worms mildly annoying? There are
a lot of gross Yeah. They only come out when
it's like wet and rainy. I actually really like regular worms.
They do great things in my yard, know they do.
But when they kind out, when they come out of

(03:44):
the woodwork and you have to look at them, that
kind of gross. Yeah, I don't think so. How can
you tell what they're facing, what their butt is? I
don't have to because there were a worm, and I
just don't care. I throw them back into the dirt
and say, away with you, a little one, and don't
eat that stuff. I hope you say that every time
you do anything to a worm. Away with you, little one.

(04:06):
Let's say, like wash my hands, now, I just wipe
a momba pants. Okay, Well, here's the thing. We're gonna
say this right from the outset. The Mongolian death worm
has never been confirmed to exist. So this is truly cryptozoology.
No carcass, no life specimen um, you know, no pictures

(04:26):
of it, no audio. But I don't know what audio
worm would bake, so now that doesn't exist either. And
then the sound of a body hitting the ground. I
was going to say it would be like rumbling underground,
right because it tunnels. Apparently it does make ripples in
I mean, I'm just saying we've all learned from dune

(04:48):
critters and critters. But tremors, yeah, that they kind of
make the noise. I kind of do have that awesome
Hollywood sound effect. Well, let's let's let's start talking about
the death worm a little bit, talking about the specifics
about the death worm. It's really huge, No, not actually

(05:09):
According to the locals who believe in the death worm, it's,
as we said, found in the Mongolian desert in the
Gobi Desert, actually is not the Mongolian but the Toby Desert,
and it only comes out during the hottest months of
the year, which evidently are June and July. And you're
likely to see the death worm right after a heavy rain,

(05:31):
just like normal worm, just like normal work. I wonder
how many times you get a heavy rain in the
Gobi Desert in June and July. I don't think it has.
It's probably all that often. Yeah, that's why you don't
see why you exactly according to the locals, they they
call it and I'm doing my best on this pronunciation
all goy hi, probably badly pronounced, but it's not pretty

(05:55):
good to me. Yeah, loosely translated, that translates to intestine
worm or large intestine worm, and that's supposed to be
in reference to the fact that it's red in color,
kind of blood like, and the size, which is evidently
supposed to be about the size of a human intestine

(06:18):
around I'm guessing is what they mean, because the human
testine is actually really really long, maybe also long maybe
never mind, I'll bring my theories up later. Okay. So
some say that it has dark red splotches on it,
so red spots, darker red spots. It's supposed to be

(06:39):
between two to five ft long, which I believe equates
to about one to one and a half meters long.
I did do the math to figure that out. Why
would you do it in the meters because everything reported
it meters so that I remembered what I saw. And
this is a description that really I don't know how

(07:01):
to quantify. It's supposed to be as thick as a
man's arm, so that means my forearm, my bicep, Schwarzenegger's bicep,
like I don't know whose arm this is in reference to, Well,
probably the Mongolian's arm, and they're probably a little smaller
than ours. Maybe maybe the creature has no scales on

(07:23):
its body, so it's got smooth skin. And it doesn't
have eyes or a mouth or any kind of sensory organs.
It doesn't have a mouth that are visible. People can't
tell probably well, and and let me hear let me,
let me get to this next bit, and that'll kind
of maybe help us a little bit. Is it's not

(07:43):
you have an earthworm. They're tapered and they come to
a point on both ends. According to the lore the
death worm, it ends bluntly at both ends, so it's
it just tapers along, rounds off and it's done. So
it's not as if it's got a flat end and
a point the end. It's it's the same on both sides,
and so people can't tell according to this that what

(08:06):
end is, what what's front, what's back, just like a
regular worm, as you said, Okay, okay, Now there are
accounts that say that it has uh, it does have teeth.
It does have a mouth, and that mouth is filled
with sharp teeth, rows and rows of sharp teeth, yes,

(08:27):
which when it attached you allows it to drill straight
through your body, just like spinning around wildly and just
like right like the lamp rays that we have to
damn right, yeah, justsgusting. Well you can see their mouths
when they've got a big sucker mouthful of teeth and
then they just kind of drill into something right in

(08:48):
that how they do that into the side of fish
and stuff like that. Usually Yeah, yeah, that's uh, that's
that's a brutal way to kill something, and so I
I never want to meet one of these things. It
will do it to me, like when I go deer hunting,
you know, like I could just like grab him and
chew my way through them their side like that. But
I usually shoot him because I'm a nice guy. Never

(09:09):
mind the catching them while running and chewing gun because
it's more humane. I think we're just learning something about
Joe and the fact that he apparently has a rotator
drill of a mouth. Yeah, that we haven't been seeing
this whole time. I don't want I don't want to
know what other secrets he's keeping. I don't either. It's
in the basement. Yeah, let's let's let's keep going here.

(09:33):
The death worm, it's got quite a few tricks up
its sleeve for how it will defend itself. Oh, because
the drill mouth wasn't enough. Exactly okay, exactly sure. The
first is that when threatened, it can change its skin
color from red to yellow. It can spit poison at

(09:53):
its enemy, so it's projects some kind of yellowish poison.
And as a on topper, Oh, by the way, it
produces electricity. You can electrocut you totally electricity. I recall
reading a tale about some herdsman reported that they it's
like zapped an entire herd of camels and kill them.
All that was. That was one of the stories that

(10:17):
that I came across. Let's see what else if we
got here about this worm. I think we've talked about
regular earthworms, and it's probably pretty important for people to
kind of get an idea what this thing is supposed
to look like. Is it doesn't look like a regular
earthworm in terms of you know, earthworms are kind of
they're slimy and they're gooey. Well, it can't be a

(10:38):
regular earthworm because it's in the desert and earthworms have
really permeable skin to let water in and out. So
it's it's not like you would think of as the texture.
That's why I pointed out it's got no scales, but
smooth skin makes me think that would be like kind
of a dry skin might have. It might actually have
small scales, because nobody ever seems to get too close

(10:59):
to this or really large like. So something that I
will likely be referencing this whole episode long is the
dune worms, right, And they didn't have like scales per se.
It was each section was one great like scale scale
that would be possible too, And those were handy to
you because you could like catch a ride by hooking.

(11:21):
You're working your hooks underneath those things and then drive them.
Totally was I was researching this. I was totally watching
that scene on Yeah, he rides it up, but I
didn't try to pronounce it the you know, to put
it in the story, because I could not pronounce the
word that they used for the worm and due a
complicated like a very complicated made up language. Yeah, I

(11:44):
forgot s been so long since I've read that. The way,
if there's any any listeners out there who are movie
directors or a movie pretty serious, could you guys do
a remake and do it right this time? That would
be nice, Okay, because as you pointed out to me,
you know, they made a Longolian deathware movie. What it

(12:04):
looked surprisingly shockingly like a combination of the worms from
Tremors and Dune. Yeah it was a lot bigger, Yeah,
giantly huge. Well, we're way off track already. This is
going to keep happening, I can tell um. Uh, let's see,

(12:25):
so Joe had talked about this. There's there's a bunch
of stories about how deadly it is. And Joe had
talked about the herd of camel that had walked over
it and it shocked the crap out of him and
killed him from the ground, right, It just stuck its
tail up a little bit, and well it was underground,
and they walked over the ground and disturbed it. Yeah.
When yeah, that noise, what was that noise? That one

(12:48):
right there? Uh, there is another story where there was
a man in the desert and he had an iron
rod in his hand for fun. Yeah, you just sitting
around board poking it in the sand, and suddenly fell
over dead. And when his friends came over to see
what was going on, there was a Mongolian deathworm squirming

(13:11):
in the sand where he had been poking the rod,
So obviously he had poked it and it had shocked
him and killed him. They didn't pick up the rod
and poked the worm some more, maybe because they had
just seen their friend full over dead. I don't know.
In conjunction with the electricity, as we talked about, it
has the poison thing going on quite accurately, accurately, and

(13:34):
evidently that whatever toxin that's in it is also on
its skin. Because if you touch it it will kill you.
So and yeah, so super deadly. Yeah yeah, I actually
think that, like cobra venom, isn't it if you get
that stuff on your hand, it will make you sick.

(13:55):
That No, it won't kill you. You don't you absorb it,
didn't it makes you sick. It's like when people get
snake venom shot in their eye and it blinds them temporarily.
I think it's the same thing as you absorb it
and your body reacts to it, which is gross, but
it's evidently what this little critter is capable of doing. Oh,
I guess I just kind of envisioned that it would

(14:16):
be like really corrosive, So it just kind of like
eat its way through your skin into your blood and
kill you. And and the stories say that the venom
is so corrosive that it will it will corrode iron. Yeah,
so it would. It would just eat its way into
your blood system and then kill you, open up, veins,
keep going. It's like alien blood, aliens, aliens just like

(14:39):
those gets sprayed with it, acidic blood and you bleed out,
You're you're you're cooked. Very where does it live? According
to the locals, like we said it's Indigobe desert, but
they say that they have seen it around the black soxel,

(14:59):
which is it's either a bush or a small tree
that's in the desert. And they say to that you're
guaranteed to see a death worm there if there is
another plant that is growing there, which is called the
desert thumb or gosh. I can't remember what what language
it is. They call it the Tartu, yeah, tartouth, and

(15:23):
I can't remember which language that comes from. And that
evidently has some weird parasitic relationship with the the black
soxhole apparently likes to grow on the route to the
and they say that when those two are living in conjunction,
that's when you're likely to find the Mongolian deathworm. And
there's been a lot of conjecture of well, maybe it

(15:45):
feeds on the roots of the two and that's how
it makes it's poison. I don't know. Again, this is
just the story of saying that's where you'll find it
is when you because my in my brain I was like, wow,
I wonder if those trees together like produce a hallucined
gen of some kind and people are just seeing their
roots my brain went right. They were like, oh, maybe

(16:10):
they feed on the roots, and I'm like, they're probably
just hallucinating. I'll tell you what I am. When I
get high, I usually choose not to see things like
death worms. I'm glad that you can choose that. I
think many people that I know of are able to
do that. But I just I could don't see death
worms when I'm doing mushrooms or anything like that. Well
that's because you're not in Mongolia. Yeah, maybe you're on

(16:33):
your couch watching Tom and Jerry, and Mongolians are a
little different, I suppose there. There hasn't been a lot
written in English for many, many years about the Mongolian deathworm,
and I think we alluded this a little bit earlier.
In part of that is because of the fact that
Mongolia was controlled by the Soviets, so anything in their

(16:55):
language is not the same. So anything that was translated
from mongol and usually got translated into Russian and then
maybe bits and pieces of it would be about the
death worm, and then it could slowly get brought over
into English. But the first thing that it was ever
written in English about this creature it was in six

(17:18):
by a professor by the name of Roy Chapman Andrews.
Evidently he traveled to Mongolia. The people's they're told him
there was some high ranking official that that that told
him about this creature. They offered him some kind of
reward if he could find one. But he wrote about

(17:39):
it in a book he wrote, which was called On
the Trail of Ancient Man. But it was pretty obvious
that Andrews didn't believe them, and he didn't actually think
it was true because he wrote about it, but he
was real skeptical in his first writing. He followed up
like six years later with another book and he talked
about it again and he added a little bit, but
still he was very hassi mystic. Yeah, I think that

(18:01):
I think it was there. Skeptical is the word you're
thinking of it. It's like the skeptical is. One of
the things that he noticed is that everybody talked about
having a friend of a friend of a cousin who
had seen one for sure, you know, so everybody believed it,
but nobody he ever talked to everything firsthand. Nobody And yeah,
in fact, no, there's nobody out there who's ever seen

(18:22):
one firsthand that we all know of anyway, I'm getting
ahead of you. Well, we'll not too far ahead. That's okay,
We're gonna we're gonna get a little more into here,
because there's there's been a lot of people who have
been trying to find the death worm. And those old
writings that I talked about from the twenties aren't the
only stuff. Once the Soviet Union started to crumble and

(18:42):
things started coming out and other writings, that's how we
heard about it. So a lot of the stuff that
you find it tends to be repeated. Well, and we
know enough about the Soviet Union in Russia to know
that they suppressed things all the time. They know a
lot of stuff about alien in cryptozo ously. Yeah. Well,

(19:05):
and you know I talked about the fact that the
Mongolian language the writings have been translated into Russian. Some
of that writing had actually been translated by a very
specific guy by the name of Ivan Mackerel. Mackerel Mackerel,
I think that's how you say his name, And he's

(19:26):
a he's a check native. He evidently learned about the
death worm back in the nineteen eighties. He became enamored
with the idea, and he decided that he had to
find this creature, and so he started launching expeditions to
find it. He made his first trip to the Gobie
in and it was obviously wasn't just him. He took

(19:48):
along a bunch of people with him, and then he
did it again in two and a lot of the
stuff that he wrote was obviously things that he had
heard from either natives or in writing. But once he
went looking for it, well that's where the whole thing
kind of falls apart. Okay, we've we've been talking about

(20:09):
two very specific movie creatures so far done and Tremors. Yeah, okay,
Doom came out in four Tremors came out in movies. Movies,
was right, Yeah, you're right, I'm talking about the movie.
And this guy did his first trip in nine. He

(20:31):
and his fellow researchers evidently were enamored with the movie
and believed that it was the key to finding the
Mongolian deathworm. Uh huh, Well, in the book and how
things happened because it was based on like they're talking
about the secret knowledge. So are these the guys that

(20:52):
basically created thumpers, Like, yes, that's exactly right. They would
pound on the ground with their hands and feet they
had machines. They using small explosives to create the thumping
to try and call these creatures to the surface. Okay,
I know we're all staring each other kind of dumbfounded.

(21:12):
Thank you. I just really again, you know, I have
those moments on this show where like I will stare
at you and it's like dumbfounded, are you kidding me?
And then remember, oh crap, we're recording something. People can't
see this face that I'm making. That is the face
that I'm making, because what Yes, they were trying to

(21:33):
make their own thumpers because they were convinced that it
was just like the creature from the books in the movie.
Do not necessarily a really brilliant assumption to make. No, no,
not not the best scientific method. And the other thing
about you know, the sand worms in Dune is that
whenever they caught the slightest vibration, they came zipping along
because they wanted to eat you. And then the Mongolian deathworm,

(21:56):
it seems it's kind of shy. He might hear the
thought and then go the other direct. Exactly likely. I mean,
he's not going to come and try to charge up
and eat a human being. Yeah, And and there's there's
since he's since Ivan's done his I think he did
two or three that I know of expeditions, there's been
at least a dozen that I found record of people

(22:17):
going looking for the Mongolian death worm. The last one
I think I saw was in two thousand ten or
two thousand twelve somebody I think was from somebody from
the forty in Institute forty times, which I know I've
sent you stuff from both of you, which anybody who
hasn't ever gone at times. At times it's kind of
a fun read. They have some funny stuff up there.

(22:38):
But they funded an episode their expedition for this people
to go out and people were using ultra lights to
fly around the area so that they weren't disturbing the
ground to try to find him, because they were thinking,
as Joe was saying, maybe they're really shy and they
can tell when you're coming. And maybe it's just that
when you're sitting around you catch them unaware in the surface.

(23:01):
I don't know. That's though. About the extent of the
information that we have about the Goalie and death worm,
there must be some really great theories about this. Oh yeah,
oh yeah, and trust me. I've found a bunch of
fun ones that I even made one up. You know,
I actually made one up in the spot too. I
was going to say, I have to. I mean, I have.

(23:22):
The one I've already told you is that they're high.
I think it's there. What is that? Yeah, but I
think it's actually much more sinister than this. I mean,
people think see the worm and they think, well, we're
looking at a two to five ft long worm here.
But what if it's not a worm? What if it's
just like the tentacle of some gigantic creature under the
ground exactly Santulu. Yeah, yeah, so that's just that's just

(23:49):
something I thought it'd so out. I was going to say,
it's like a leftover from accidental human sacrifices. Yeah, it's
just actual bits of intestine journe about that's really really disturbing.
Thank you for sharing it. Can we get to the
actual theories and up that disgusting one that you just
brought up? Really, I'm thinking I didn't think of intestines

(24:11):
when I said the large intestine worm, but now I am.
It is grossing me up. Oh, by the way, I
think I already said this, but just in case. We
said there was like a dozen of expeditions, and I
think I also covered that nobody's actually found this thing
right now, and not only they're not found one, they
haven't found a carcass, they haven't found a skeleton anything.

(24:31):
By the way, Um, this is another fun thing that
I've I've heard is that the Mongolian deathworm doesn't slither,
you know how like a snake slithers along. It either
rolls like a sausage down a hill, or it's like,
have you ever seen a grub? You dig up a
grub and they just kind of flail back and forth.
Does this make sense? You know? They C shape one

(24:54):
way and then they flail into a C shape the other. Yeah,
that's how it gets around. Okay, but here, hey, what
what you know? What do we know? We're not a
venom spinning electricity producing crazy creature. Absolutely, But hey, well
that's style doesn't matter at that point. For those of

(25:14):
you who are out there though, who are thinking about
going out to the Gobi and looking for these things,
I'm going to give you a great clue as to
how to find evidence that they exist. Okay, I'll wait
till the end. Oh, come on here, Now how about
you you create your own evidence. Well, yeah, you can
do that. Well, here's here's how to get a clue.

(25:34):
I think the black socks all, which is a small
treer shrub that lives in the goby. And of course
there's that little that little thing, the desert thumb that
likes to hang out with the with the bush and
Mongolian death worm just loves the hell out of those things.
So all you gotta do is you go to an
area where the low and local natives say that you're

(25:54):
likely to find him on Gooldian deathworm, and you find
these things and you dig up the sand around the bushes,
put it in the large containers, take it back to
the lab. Soaking water, drain the water off, distill the water.
And the residue left should be an incredible poison, because
as these things move through the sand, they are going
to leave some residual some residual chemicals behind on the

(26:16):
sand because it's on their skin. It's on their skin,
so they're gonna leave a residue of this deadly poison.
So all you gotta do is, like I said, soak
to sand, drain it off, distill the water, do some
lab and alice on it and see what deadly chemicals.
The one flaw in that is assuming that the deadly
poison that's on their skin is always there. In other words,

(26:41):
they're always damp with it, because if you're a desert creature,
always having moisture on you as a very inefficient means.
So it might be that when you touch them, their
reaction is to spurt it out of their pores, because
there are critters that when you poke them, they ooze
stuff out as a reaction, and so it could be

(27:01):
that it's not until they feel contact that they put
that out. And maybe it is that when they brush
against the rock they automatically put out the poison. It
seems inefficient to have it on them all the time. Well,
now that we're done with that, let's go into the
theories that I found. Well, they're they're not real, they're theories.
But here's the basic first theory. The whole thing is

(27:23):
a fake. The whole thing doesn't actually I mean this,
this is this is a viable thing that we have
to look at. Is that it's not real. It could
be that it's it's a story that is just a
tall tale that over the years has just gotten bigger
and bigger and bigger with each retelling, so that it's

(27:46):
just it's taken on all these fantastical abilities when it
never actually existed. I mean, it couldn't. It could have
been just one of those things that apparent in the desert.
So you're a nomad with your chill dren in the desert,
and you say, if we stopped, don't wander away, or
the death worm will get you. Exactly. I was gonna

(28:08):
say that it's probably one of those stories that parents
tell their kids to scare the crap out exactly, primarily traumatized,
but at least they don't wander off into the desert
and exactly, so that that could be that could be
one of them. Yeah, it's pretty valid, okay. And and
you think about like, you know, other methical creatures like
the snipe, you know this guy that this guy that
went off to to Mongolia and the like the president

(28:29):
of Mongolia Andrews. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and he's saying, so
I would, I would. I would love so very much
if you could find that with the Mongolian death worm hunt. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
They all have probably had a great laugh about it. Well,
there's there's some creatures that actually do exist in nature
that if we look at, could potentially be a relative

(28:53):
of or a candidate for what the death worm is. Yeah, Sicilians,
which it's it's not the from the country Sicily. This
is a breed of creature. There a E C I
L I not right, but it's pronounced very similar. They're

(29:14):
amphibians there. They're somewhere between a snake and a worm.
They they're really small. Normally they're only a couple inches long,
but there are a couple that can get up to
I don't know, about four or five ft long. They've
got no legs, their skin is smooth, and they live underground.
They don't they have itsy bitsy eyes and occasionally they

(29:37):
will come up above ground and they've got a but
they've got a weird pointed head, which according to stories,
this thing doesn't have a discernible head. So that's a problem. Uh.
The other problem is that they tend to live in
moist tropical areas, so you know, they're they're an underground

(29:58):
they're very damp, you know, the desert dwelling kind of critter. Yeah,
but you know, I mean, God knows many many thousands
and eons ago what the climate and the Gobi desert
was like that. You know, it could have one time
been a moist, lush jungle and climate. You're stealing my
thunder there, Joe, hold off on that because that that's

(30:19):
going to come up in a little bit. There's another theory.
I did it to you last week. Um, we've got
Ampi sibia, which is another kind of burrowing, legless, long
bodied creature. They're they're actually really similar to the sicilian,
except that they don't live in the same areas and

(30:41):
they don't grow nearly as large. But they are another
kind of weird little worm like long critter. They have
rings instead of scales, so kind of like the dune worms.
They've got big rings as they go down their body.
But again they don't live in the right areas. Uh,

(31:01):
there are actually and this was this was something I
found really interesting and I thought kind of could be
a match. Have you ever heard of legless lizards? So
legless lizards, they they're not a snake. They look like lizards,
but they either have small little bits of stumps for legs,

(31:22):
or there's no leg you know, maybe one set or
the other is missing, or it's a little flap of
skin where they've devolved, you know, de evolved the need
for that leg, and so they're gone, and they've the
problem with legless lizards is that they've they've got they
got they got regular scales, but there they do get big.

(31:44):
So there's one called the glass lizard. It's a legless lizard,
and it's really really gross looking. I'm looking at a
picture right now. Yeah, the leg the glass lizard can
get all five feet or longer, and it's got these
really weird grooves on both the left and the right

(32:05):
side of its body that go all the way down
its length. So the best way to describe it, it's
got to like look up the glass lizard and you'll
see ladies and gentlemen and then you'll curse me for
having had to see this nightmarish creature. But like lizards,
legless lizards would be a creature because they're a lizard
that could live in the desert easily. But they've got scales,

(32:29):
and they've got an obvious head because they're a lizard,
so they've got a pointy tail, little kind of blunt
is head lizards dot That doesn't rule them out entirely
because after all, after all, God knows when the last
human being actually soldom Mongolian deathworm exactly, and they might
have been at a distance. So I I consider the

(32:51):
legless lizard actually one of the top possibilities for what
this is. The next one is it could just actually
be a snake. The stories talk about the fact that
it has it spits a venom, which is very similar
to cobra's. Cobras are are really accurate with spitting the poison,

(33:15):
and that poison really does not do good things to people,
So they could be a snake. One of the other
descriptions that you see of the Mongolian deathworm is that
it's not it's got the blunt ends, but it's actually
got spiky protrusions on both the front and the back
of it. I'm not saying how long these spikes are,

(33:35):
so they're not like fantastically big things. They could just
be a little spiky ridges. But that's a lot like vipers.
If you think about adders and vipers, they've got a
lot of ridges on their heads, and that's something that
they used to detect vibration in the ground and in
the air. So again, this is very plausible that it

(33:57):
just could be a really venom is really shy snake,
that's true. Yeah, So somebody comes along and it startles it,
and what does it do. It stands up and it
spits venom atom and then burrows into the ground. And
then the story just grows from there. So the electricity
part of it, and maybe it was attacked on later on. Yeah,

(34:18):
place like they go to the desert, I could totally
see a place like that having a big, scary, poisonous snakes.
And I'm not skeptical about that. No, I'm not at
all snakes. There's a lot of varieties of snakes. Reh.
This is also stealing your thunder a little bit because
I know where we're headed in terms of theories. But
you know, there's such a thing as an electric eel,

(34:39):
And if the desert was once a huge sea, I
don't know what everything was once a huge sea, right,
So I mean, you know, I guess in my mind
it's possible that it evolved into something more snake like.
But also let's let's go, let's go there. But because

(35:00):
but as far as you know, electric eel going, you know,
evolving into the dry land variant that has is the
ability to store and not electrical energy to drop a
herd of cattles camels in my mind, not to like
reveal what I think about this story, but in my mind,
that's an obvious like that that that bid is is

(35:22):
that's easy to toss out the window. I understand that. Well,
and let's let's run down that. We'll just we'll just
jump ahead to that theory, because this is the theory
that I came up with on my own. So I
admit that I'm grasping a strauss and I can't think
of the phrase when you take loose bits of related
data and draw conclusion from them. But that's that's what
I did to to come up with this maybe plause

(35:43):
possible theory. Yeah, it's called making things up. Okay, that's
that's what I thought it was. According to legends of
the region, what is now the Gobi Desert, a hundred
to two hundred thousand years ago was a giant into
inland lake, and at some point whatever land mass or

(36:06):
geologic structure that was holding that lake in place gave
way and that lake drain, so the whole area no
longer is full of water. Well, if it's a giant
inland sea, it's going to have some kind of fish
in it. So now let's step back to what Devin
said about the electric eel. The electric eel is one

(36:28):
of six different species that are on the planet that
make electricity to shock, stunt kill, prayer or predators. And
they've all done so independently, and I did some research
on it's really kind of interesting. They've all used the
same gene, which is yeah, it's it's very interesting unique,
and yet they're all very sting rays and all of that.

(36:51):
That they're electric rays, not sting rays. So you're arguing
a favorite intelligent designs that what you're saying. But what
I'm saying. What I'm saying here is let's just say
that in that inland, see something like the electric eel,
which by the way, is not a fish. It's a lungfish.

(37:11):
It breathes oxygen through its mouth, so electric eels have
to come up and take the yes exactly. So, if
there's something like a lungfish that can make electricity in
this sea, and the sea doesn't just drain in one
giant torrential outpour, it's slowly drain over over a couple

(37:35):
of centuries or thousands of years, thousand years, these creatures,
which already your air breathers, could slowly learn to adapt
and burrow in the mud, and then when the mud
went away, they went deeper into damper soil and sand
down below to stay cool and moist, which would make
sense when people say the thing only comes up when

(37:57):
there's a heavy rain, because it's got to come all
the way to the surface to get air, and it
would only be when the ground was super wet that
they would be able to conduct enough electricity to send
that to somebody who was standing near it. Do you
see where I'm heading with this? No one totally grasping

(38:18):
at straws on this one, but it like, okay, well
I could, I could see, And I guess that the
other argument would be if it's seen around a tree,
a tree needs water, right, so there's definitely like deeper wells.
And I don't know if there's something about the combination
of those two that means that there's more moisture or
whatever to support both of them in the middle of

(38:42):
this desert, or maybe it just like you know, that
little parasitic plant a little thumb desert. And I think
I obviously don't understand how evolution works that well. And
and again I'm not I'm not going to say that
I understand evolution clear enough this could happen, but just

(39:03):
one and two and three I could see now that
could happen. Yeah, I mean, it's entirely a possibility. It is,
But you know, I still you'd think that somebody would
have come across one of these things, unless that they
always lived that far down in the sand because it's
nice and cool and damp, and it's only when it's heavy,
heavy rains that they come out. I mean, I don't know. Again,

(39:25):
I realized I'm grasping a straws on our final theory.
It's actually an extinct creature. Okay. People have been living
in that region for eons, as Joe said, So it
is quite possible that there was something similar in one
form or another to the death worm that was in

(39:48):
the region and it died out either through you know,
evolution made it run an extinction, or people freaked out
and they hunted it, or they killed it out of
fear or what over the case, maybe it may be
that there was a creature like that at one point
there and it's no longer there. But the story is

(40:08):
stuck around. That's that's also entirely possible. Yeah, that's possible.
Although you know, I would think they would have come
across a skeleton because there's been a lot of digging
in the Gobi Desert. I mean, there's a lot of
dinosaurs bones buried in that desert, and there's been a
lot of expeditions, a lot of a lot of big
old dinos have been dug up out of the Gobi.

(40:28):
But if it's a little creature, though, it might have
really fine bones that just get broke up really easy,
possibly or no bones, could have no bonestebrates don't have
there an invertebrate, they have no bones, and if it
had some kind of um carapace or shell to it,

(40:50):
that would potentially break down if it was like an
insect of some kind or even no, I mean, I
don't know that a worm would leave a fossil unless
it was under like a really real the mud or
something like that that dies in the mud and it
wants up getting preserved. Yeah, but if it's not in
the mud, it's you know, there's no bones, it's just
like basically flash that decays. And and if there's no one,

(41:12):
if there's not hard enough ground to pack around it
to leave the impression, then we have no impression of it. Yeah, anyway,
so it seems possible we just haven't found it. I'm
sure there's I mean, I'm sure, like you know, for
every living creature on the planet today, I'm sure there's
probably ten or a hundred that have gone extinct, so
there could have been something like that very simply. Yeah, well,

(41:33):
what I mean, what what do you guys? What do
you guys think? What's your favorite theory? My favorite theory
is that it's probably just a local legend. Although you know,
I think that they can they can easily put a
bunch of just oversized rat traps around some of those
plants and and nab some of those things. I think
that that might be called for. That is such an

(41:54):
effective effective means. I'm sure that will totally work those
sticky traps. Yeah, yeah, roach motels and I'm talking about
rat traps to kind of go snap with the cheese
and everything. And then the best thing about it is
you you tie wire like a cable to it and
stick a stick like a steel rod into the ground

(42:14):
to ground it so you'll totally drained it of a
selectricity or something that're not a fan of that at all.
I like your theory, actually, yeah, the like weird slow
lungfish evolution situation. I think it's I like it. I
personally like it, though mine is fun. I think it's

(42:36):
probably just a really shy snake. I really I have
the feeling that it's a very shy snake. A lot
of the quote unquote illustrations that you see of it,
I mean, the people just making up what they want.
They're things that are reminiscent of dune or tremor worms
sticking out of the sand. You can't see its bottom

(42:57):
half because it's sticking out, and I can there are
snakes that that burrow and then pop their heads out
and look around. And I could totally see somebody seeing
that from a distance and it's spitting or freaking out
and burrowing back in and having no idea and starting
a story. That's kind of why I think, that's why
I lean towards a snake. Well, yeah, I'm sure there's

(43:18):
snakes in the Gobi though, And and the thing that
is is the locals know those snakes and they're probably
not gonna mistake snakes. There's there's all kinds of you know,
new things that are found all the time because they
just stay away from people. They're just so afraid or
not afraid, but they just instinctually stay away from people.
And when you're in the desert, you're not walking by yourself,

(43:40):
you're walking with a bunch of people, critters or machinery.
You're gonna make a bunch of noise and vibration which
is assigned to hide. But well, it's true that there
are there are definitely creatures were still finding new species.
So it's it's entirely possible that's something like this exists.
I doubt as quite as fantastical, scary and gross and

(44:01):
now an enormous and everything like that. But you know,
I I tend to there could be something the basis
might be some extremely bent of a snake. You know
that that might be the where it came from. Well,
if you if you have your own theory and you
want to tell us what that is, you are more
than welcome to share that with us. If you go
to our website Thinking Sideways podcast dot com, you can

(44:25):
leave a comment on the website. All of the episodes,
of course, are on the website, so you can listen
to any of them there or if you prefer to
download them. iTunes tends to be the primary avenue folks
go through. Find us on iTunes, download, subscribe, leave us
a comment and a rating. We love to hear from
people for that. Um, if you don't have you forget

(44:47):
to to download a show and you realize you know
one's come out, you can always go ahead and find
us on Stitcher and just stream it over any mobile device.
We are on Facebook, so we've got the Facebook page
and the Facebook grew. We're we're sharing stuff on their
people seem to be enjoying it and having a good time,
so you can track us down there, and anything you
want to share you can share right there as well.

(45:08):
And of course we have our email address, which is
Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com, and you can
send us an email with your thoughts. If you're a
Mongolian deathworm and you want us to get the story straight,
you can if you figure out how to type, you
can send us an email. You know we're gonna get
emails that are just like and then a follow up

(45:31):
angry email, why is the keyboard on my computer melted
after it sent you this? At the bottom underneath Mongolian deathworms,
says sent from my iPhone. Yeah, I know they're everywhere.
I can see this happening. You know. I think the
other thing about the Mongolian death worms, if there are
any of you out there a lot. What I want

(45:52):
to know is, if you guys are so incredibly scarily dangerous,
why don't you all gang up and invade Ulambator. You
can easily slaughter all the human inhabitants and the whole
city yourself. I don't even know where that's at. That's Mongolia,
Capital Mongolia. Okay, I figured it was your Mongolia. But yeah,
I think it would be really cool. I think they

(46:12):
should just team up and invade Russia. I'd be kind
of cool they could. But anyway, so what we're talking about,
we're moving We're moving on from that because we have
a we have a couple of listener emails that that
we got that we wanted to share. We got a
couple of good ones share well as as opposed to

(46:33):
the usual nasty ones. Yeah, exactly, Devin, you want to
you wanna read the first one? Sure? All right, let's
hear it's ready. Okay, this one is from Hunter Hey, Hunter,
was his name hunter? Or is the a hunter? I
don't know. He might be a hunter, but his name
is hunter. Okay, he says, Hey, Thinking Sideways Crew. I

(46:55):
am a butcher by trade and spend lots of times
working in the cold. The time passes with hours of
music can podcasts every single work day. By far, the
most anticipated podcast is indeed the Thinking Sideways podcast. You
are intelligent and witty and most importantly entertaining. Y'all managed
to cover theories ranging from the mundane to the supernatural
without seeming condescending to either side. Having three hosts with

(47:17):
varying beliefs makes it a bit more interesting as well.
But I've been listening to the podcast since the biogong
Pipes and ever since have tore through the backlog all
the way to the ghost blimp Um? Are there any
more from before then? If not, y'all really started strong,
with a higher production value than most starting podcasts. Either way,
y'all seem to have no intention of letting off the

(47:40):
throttle yet keep up the good work. Of course, he
has his list of favorites and his list of suggestions.
I think he must be from the South somewhere. I'm
gonna guess lots of y'alls, and he just says, you know,
thanks to Bunch for the highly intelligent entertainment, for much

(48:00):
we appreciate, and we're making your work a little easier. Yeah,
no kidding, and thanks for being a butcher. Yeah yeah,
And I don't want to have to cut him up
for myself. I don't. That's that's not that's a lot
of work. Yeah, and I did have to let Hunter
know that unfortunately the Ghost Wlimp is the first episode.

(48:23):
We don't have any hidden ones that we we we
tried out in the beginning. Unfortunately, I'm glad that he
thought that we started out at a pretty high production
value because I listened to those old ones every once
in a while and think, wow, that sounds awful. They're
in black and white with that like really annoying, like
vital like crackling. Yeah. Yeah, I discovered that it wasn't

(48:46):
so awesome to put that in after a while. Yeah, no,
I didn't put that in. Okay, Well, we've got another
email that I wanted to read, and this is from Will,
who actually is here in Portland. Will Will was us
saying that he had a chance to listen to the
Jefferson Davis eight episode, and he said he really enjoyed it.

(49:08):
And as Will said here, the interview was solid, the
subject matter was engaging, and the infographic was incredibly helpful
trying to follow the spaghetti mess of a case, which
is really a good description a lot of names in. Yeah,
the podcast itself was really long, but there's nothing you
can do about that with a bizarre case like this. Actually,

(49:31):
I think the length is really the limiting factor on
doing subjects subjects like this regularly. Two hours is a
lot of time to commit to a podcast, no matter
what subject is. I agree with that. You know, not
all of our listeners are gonna want to listen to
two hours us droning on no And you know, I
remember we used to get mail pretty frequently that said,

(49:52):
oh well, you guys should do longer shows. You should
do shows. And our shows have definitely gotten longer. You know,
we started out minute shows and now we're you know, yeah,
you know, when we sit down and we say there's
going to be a short show and it ends up
being you know, forty five minutes to an hour, and
I think that's a that's a good place for us
to be. I agree, but I think that, you know,

(50:13):
every once in a while we end up doing this
two hour long marathon, and it's always the topic. It's
the topic that drives. It's always just a weird anomaly.
But but Will goes on here, and he says, uh,
I do think it's really interesting to investigate stories like
this unsolved quote unquote multiple murders in the area or

(50:33):
in the era of c s I contrast sharply with
the crime solved tidily in an hour on our television sets.
That's true. I think that. I'm sorry. What he says is,
I think that what's really makes the Jefferson Davis eight
compelling is that eight bodies should be enough to solve

(50:54):
almost any mystery. Well, yeah, that's yeah, you know, I
started agree with that. Then again, if you're look at
stuff like the Green River killer that was that was
like what dirty bodies that was over many years. Yeah, yeah,
but I mean no, he I mean, you've both got point.
There's a lot cside that you know is available today.
And he doesn't make a good point. Everybody expects, now,

(51:16):
I'm gonna go do this and the cs I is
going to solve it in an hour and a half. Well,
it's that joke, right, is the like zoom and enhanced?
You know? I love that. Yeah, we can take a
tack on an image that has like eight pixels in it.
We can stop how you know, get a beauty, can
run it out. Yeah, I run an algorithm and everybody
always image out of that. Everybody always forget the reflection.

(51:37):
Better check the reflection. Check the reflection there. Yeah, yeah,
totally works, you know, and we forget about that. I
always do committing crimes. I'm always not looking for the mirrors,
and that's why I get Yeah. But anyway, you know
that with the Jeff Jeff Davis say, I think the
thing is too is that murder is typically the easiest

(51:57):
crime to solve because there's usually somebody got a big
jones for the other, for the murder victim, and so
it's usually pretty easy to figure that one out. But
when it's a random thing like a serial killer, for example,
which this very likely is, then it's not so easy solved,
unfortunately not or it could be a massive conspiracy of

(52:18):
criminals and the police too. So maybe they are easy
just solved, but the police just don't feel like doing it.
I don't I don't know. I don't know. Well, regardless
to Hunter and Will and everybody else, you sent us
emails in uh this week that we got. Thank you
very much. We do appreciate that suggestions. By the way, yes,

(52:39):
thank you for filling up our things back longer. Are
the hoppers? Yeah, I just I just I just put
a bunch of them in there. That's good. More planets
all right. Well, in in the spirit of trying to
keep this under an hour, we're going to go ahead
and wrap this one up this week. Guys. So I

(53:01):
hope you enjoyed the little death worm. Don't go looking
for one, and we will talk to you next week.
If you're in the Gobi Desert and Junior is alive,
Suddenly a big thunderstorm comes rolling up. Get the hell
out of dodge, so all I can say so anyway, goodbye.
We're gonna wiggle on out of here.