00:00It's no surprise that northern Arizona is a very dry place. It's a desert, but sometimes they get
00:06a lot of rain. And that is exactly what happened the last week and a half of July of this
00:12year.
00:12The region got almost five inches of rain, which is nearly 13 centimeters. And when it rains so
00:19much in the desert, these temporary ponds known as vernal pools form. And at Wipaki National Monument,
00:27some visitors noticed these tadpole-like creatures swimming in one of the pools. So they quickly
00:34alerted the rangers and they said, hey, I saw the tadpoles in the pond at the ball court.
00:40There it is. Look at that. It looks like a little alien. Turns out it's a crustacean.
00:46Oh, yeah. Oh, here's the ball court. What is the ball court for? Do you know?
00:51Right. So the indigenous people of the region built this ceremonial ball court. And we're
00:57actually not sure what its purpose was. I did ask the ranger if it was used for something similar
01:04like the Maya ballgame. But she says they're just not sure. It's actually not in the same shape as
01:10the Maya ballgame court. So perhaps it's entirely different. But...
01:15Great breeding ground to just hold a lot of these little creatures. Yeah.
01:19Right. It's perfect for the vernal pool that formed. So to learn what this visitor was talking about,
01:26one of the rangers, I spoke with her. Her name is Lauren Carter, a lead interpretation ranger at
01:31Wipaki National Monument. She went down and scooped one up. You're looking at her hand right there.
01:36She says these creatures are known as triops. And they look like little mini horseshoe crabs with three
01:43eyes. And yeah, look at those eyes there. So it has two compound eyes, which are common among
01:49arthropods, which is this massive group that includes insects, arachnids, scorpions, crustaceans. I
01:56mentioned this particular creature is a crustacean. And then it has a third eye. Look at that little dot
02:02between its two main eyes. Oh, it's so zen. I know. It looks very wise. So that third eye actually
02:11senses light.
02:11Mm hmm. And the third eye is actually quite common among arthropods. And it turns out like,
02:18for example, bees, they have their two compound eyes and they have three simple eyes. So this one
02:26is very prominent. You can see it right in the middle. But yeah, it's got three eyes and that's
02:32how it got its name. Triops means three eyes in Greek. Cool. So how long can they stay dormant?
02:40That's that's kind of their survival trick. It's so dry in the desert. They can stay in their eggs for
02:46decades. And then once there's a heavy rainfall and these vernal pools form, they pop to life,
02:53they hatch. And within hours, they start gobbling up as much food as possible. So they can filter feed,
03:00they can nibble on, you know, seeds and leaves and roots. If it's like a scarce food situation,
03:09they can even cannibalize each other. Oh, no. So I feel bad for the smaller ones. They're probably
03:15more the prey for the larger triops. Is that probably what happened to his poor little missing
03:20left arm there? Because I'm looking at these other ones, you know, from stock images and they seem a little
03:26more even. I did notice that. Yeah, I'm not sure how he broke his little appendage. Poor dude. Yeah.
03:33At least it doesn't appear he was entirely eaten or whatever happened to him. Yeah. Tell me more
03:41about these little creatures. They're kind of cool looking. I know. So after they've eaten a lot,
03:45they molt a few times, you know, their crustaceans, just like crabs and lobsters. And then they reach
03:51adulthood really fast, just over a week, I think eight or nine days, they reach adulthood. And
03:56they're ready to mate again, start the next generation. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. And you can
04:02tell by looking at this photo, but they're not that big. They're about 1.5 inches long, which is,
04:08you know, about four centimeters. And they have a few nicknames. So, you know, they're called triops.
04:15That's their genus name. But sometimes they're called tadpole shrimp. They're also known as
04:21dinosaur shrimp, because they have this long evolutionary history. Their ancestors date back
04:27to the Denovian period, which lasted from 419 million to 359 million years ago. And they look
04:36pretty much the same as their ancestors did. It's really impressive.
04:40Yeah. I mean, but because they're so old, like, can we call them living fossils?
04:46Oh, my gosh, I'm really glad you asked that. Because this is, I think this is a term that gets
04:51thrown around. But it turns out that a lot of scientists really hate it. And Carter, the ranger
04:57I spoke with, she told me, I don't like the term living fossil, because it causes a misunderstanding
05:04with the public that they haven't changed at all. But they have changed, they have evolved. It's just
05:10that the outward appearance of them is very similar to what they were millions of years ago. So put
05:16another way, they do look the same, but they are not the same, they have evolved, their internal
05:24processes are different, at least some of them. So, yeah, finding. And this is all just because of that
05:32insane reign that they had. Yeah, yeah, they were, I guess the pond lasted three to four weeks,
05:40is what Carter told me. So, you know, I said they reach adulthood quite rapidly. And then it's time
05:46to mate. So how do they meet? You know, a male and a female might find each other and the
05:51female will lay
05:52eggs. But their circumstances are so, it's so interesting, like maybe they won't be able to find
06:00a partner of the opposite sex. And it turns out that triops are hermaphrodites as well,
06:05which means they have both male and female organs. So they have that flexibility. And they're also
06:14parthenogenic, which means the females can produce offspring from unfertilized eggs. So they don't
06:21need a male to spawn the next generation. More power to them. And that's why they've been around for so
06:29long. That's, that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's a pretty cool superpower.
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