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Tales from the Limitless Abyss: House Cats and Hydrothermal Vents

Posted on March 11, 2026 By Andrew Thaler
Exploration

A fun new project from me and Andrew Lewin. I have a contract to write a book this year on the many ways that humans use and misuse the deep sea.

To help keep me on track and act as my accountability buddy, I’m checking in with Andrew to share some of the fun little anecdotes and stories that I’ve uncovered during the researching and writing of Limitless Abyss. Including this neat little anecdote about how the domestication of cats is connected to copper mines in Cyprus that were once ancient hydrothermal vents.

And in true rough draft fashion, I totally had eyeballs on the brain when talking about pygmy elephants and cyclopes. It’s not the elephants eye sockets that were mistaken for one giant eye, it’s their sinus cavities.

Don’t worry, they won’t all be about deep sea mining.

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