Greetings, MerFriends. This is Professor Darya Aban from Atlantis University, curator of the Aquatopia Amphigory of Lost Creatures. It’s the Dog Days of Podcasting — the annual challenge where podcasting personalities from land and sea attempt to post an episode a day during the month of August. You landwalkers call our mostly aquatic planet Earth. Your record-keeping is similarly questionable. Therefore I bring you this lecture series, introducing you to some of Aquatopia’s more notable creations.

This pair makes the same argument for stubbornness from two opposite directions. One needs no water at all. The other needed almost none to begin with. Judge for yourselves which of them made the wiser bargain.

Burrowbrock (Meles obstinatus)

Burrowbrock is a badger that never received the memo about needing an ocean. It digs whether or not there is water to justify the digging — a habit our field researchers find almost mermaid-like, and landwalker researchers find simply confusing. It naps half-submerged when convenient, bone-dry when not, and defends its patch of ground with the seriousness of a border dispute. Coastal villagers tell of a guardian spirit that judges travelers by their manners. We have met Burrowbrock. It is not a guardian spirit. It is cranky, and mistaken for mythology by anyone who has never been properly introduced.

Burrowbrock needs no ocean at all. Our second creature tonight needed almost none to begin with.

Camelocant (Camelus latimeria)

Camelocant answers a question no one asked: what happens when a living fossil drifts into brackish water and meets a camel that wandered too far off course. The hump remains, buoyant and useless for anything but flotation. The legs have gone to thick, lobed fins, better suited to silt than sand. The face keeps the camel’s famous indifference; the tail keeps the coelacanth’s total lack of urgency. It can go weeks without feeding — less patience than simple confidence that food will eventually give up and come to it. Desert traders once claimed the ones that wandered too far into the flats came back changed. They were not wrong. They were describing a merger. The least surprising love story in this bestiary: two creatures built to outlast everyone, finding each other anyway.

Ignorance drowns. Wisdom swims. Remember to check out the megafeed at  DogDaysOfPodcasting.com to hear everyone participating and visit BathtubMermaid.com  to listen to this episode. Keep swimming and resist. Class Dismissed.