Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for tuning in. Uh, my name is Ben and this
Speaker 1: is uh, this is a pretty weird sitch, wouldn't you
Speaker 1: say a little bit. I mean, we're in a bit
Speaker 1: of a weird sitch right now. We're in a hotel
Speaker 1: room in Orlando, Florida with our dear friend Matt Frederick
Speaker 1: sitting on the floor recording us like an absolute boss,
Speaker 1: a super producer that freshick by default, and that I
Speaker 1: can I consist the vibe we have held the we
Speaker 1: have held back the amazing power of your hairy carry impressions. Uh,
Speaker 1: the southern gentleman you do as well. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: like one long tease because Matt, you're you're not actually
Speaker 1: on this this episode yet, but the fans demand that
Speaker 1: you make an appearance at some point. They have demanded
Speaker 1: it many a time, and we have demanded it. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna happen. That's that's that's that's a promise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so great. That counts as verbal consent. So now, uh,
Speaker 1: let's see. This is an episode that we did with
Speaker 1: our good friend Katie Golden of Creature Feature fame, right,
Speaker 1: and we wanted to uh, we wanted to share this
Speaker 1: with you. Make it easy to find this. Uh No,
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say that. Uh. You and
Speaker 1: I as always on Creature Feature, we talked with a brilliant,
Speaker 1: awesome friend who taught us terrible, terrible things, absolutely terrible
Speaker 1: nightmare fuel type material. We had a slide show of
Speaker 1: just bizarre animal adaptations that we were paging through as
Speaker 1: we had this conversation. We went on this journey with
Speaker 1: Katie Golden. Um, word to the wise, this is a
Speaker 1: little different in in more ways than one for our show.
Speaker 1: In the we swear on this one. Oh that's right. Yes,
Speaker 1: we do use some choice language. In our defense, I
Speaker 1: argue it is apt and we need to be explicit. Look,
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I learned a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff about elephants. One main thing about elephants that
Speaker 1: would rather not know. Yeah, as opposed to stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know. Um, it's stuff that we
Speaker 1: never wanted to know. What on earth are we talking about?
Speaker 1: You are about to find out? Roll the tape. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Feature, the show where we explore all
Speaker 1: the weird things in nature that your seventh grade biology
Speaker 1: teacher was too much of a who to teach you.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Golden, I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and
Speaker 1: i'm your host of many parasites. Today we're talking about
Speaker 1: anatomy that just seems well made up, like if you
Speaker 1: gave Salvador Dalis some bad weed and told them to
Speaker 1: invent some animals. We're answering some of the weirdest questions
Speaker 1: about evolution and anatomy, like how do woodpeckers keep from
Speaker 1: scrambling their brains? White animals have not one, not two,
Speaker 1: but three vaginas? Why would a doctor want to sew
Speaker 1: your leg on backwards? Discover this and more as we
Speaker 1: answer the age old question what are some of the
Speaker 1: most bodacious boobs in the animal kingdom? So medical science
Speaker 1: has advanced to the point where we now have a
Speaker 1: pretty good idea of human anatomy the heartbones connected to
Speaker 1: the leg bone and whatever. But we haven't always been
Speaker 1: so intimately familiar with our inner workings. In fact, we
Speaker 1: used to have some pretty fantastical ideas about how the
Speaker 1: human body worked before doctors decided to dig up dead
Speaker 1: bodies and really settled the matter once and for all.
Speaker 1: For instance, in the late seventeen hundreds, phrenology was the
Speaker 1: quote science of measuring someone's psychology by feeling their head bumps,
Speaker 1: the theory being that the different parts of the brain
Speaker 1: controlled different emotions, so when they worked out more, they
Speaker 1: got more swollen something. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, had theorized that the heart was where your
Speaker 1: consciousness resided, and the brain and other organs were simply
Speaker 1: cooling mechanisms to keep the heart cool for some reason.
Speaker 1: And in the eighteenth century, the Preformationism theory held that
Speaker 1: each sperm contained a tiny, fully developed human that simply
Speaker 1: grew larger in the woman's womb like one of those
Speaker 1: you know, like grow your own dinosaur capsules. This all
Speaker 1: sounds crazy and stupid, and well, yeah it is, but
Speaker 1: we're about to discuss even crazier and stupid or sounding
Speaker 1: anatomy that is actually scientifically accurate. Joining me today are
Speaker 1: the hosts of the podcast Ridiculous History, Nold Brown and
Speaker 1: Ben Bolan. Welcome you guys, Thanks for having us. I'm
Speaker 1: excited to see some weird animals as the slideshoe in
Speaker 1: front of me, promises, Well we say that now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't looked ahead, I have not cheated. I'm ready
Speaker 1: to be like you know, I'm ready to give a
Speaker 1: completely realistic reaction and challenge. Yeah, this may challenge some
Speaker 1: of our preformationist or preformist us. Uh did I did
Speaker 1: I get that right? I think it's performationism. Performation is
Speaker 1: m Yeah. Yeah, so let's be open minded. We think
Speaker 1: the performationism. Uh, science is pretty solid. Uh, I mean
Speaker 1: willing to be wrong. I mean it is just like
Speaker 1: you know, I mean I don't know how else of
Speaker 1: fetus is supposed to develop what like, although the thing
Speaker 1: with the performationism that's interesting is that the ideas that
Speaker 1: it's already this fully formed human that just didn't exists
Speaker 1: inside you. Then like is there does that fully formed
Speaker 1: human also have like a fully formed human? Like is
Speaker 1: it fetuses all the way down? Yes, it's basically like
Speaker 1: cabbage patch here rules you know, like I don't know
Speaker 1: what that means exactly, but you know, I have no
Speaker 1: idea what what cabbage patch kids? You mean? Just like
Speaker 1: cabbage Patch kids just kind of are like they just
Speaker 1: are birthed into existence, like fully form from the cabbage
Speaker 1: cabbage right right, So maybe that's the the cabbage sub
Speaker 1: discipline performation is. Yeah, now that I think about, I
Speaker 1: went to there's a place in Georgia called baby Land General.
Speaker 1: It's like where the cabbage patch babies are born. And
Speaker 1: there's a really creepy tree that they shove the cabbage
Speaker 1: patch babies out of and that's how their birthed into
Speaker 1: the world is through this magical tree and their heads
Speaker 1: pop up, their heads. I've been there too. It's a
Speaker 1: really creepy place. Is this This is like a real
Speaker 1: what are you what the yah? What are you guys
Speaker 1: talking about? It's called baby Land General Hospital, and it's
Speaker 1: like the home of like where it's like in the
Speaker 1: town I think it's called Cleveland, Georgia, where cabbage patch
Speaker 1: babies were invented by you know, Jonathan cabbage Patch. It's
Speaker 1: the only thing in the town too. It's this mansion
Speaker 1: that used to be their house and it really does
Speaker 1: look like a creepy kind of like a psych ward
Speaker 1: or something like that. It's a very strange place and
Speaker 1: kids have birthday parties there. So it's like actually affiliated
Speaker 1: with the cabbage patch company. Absolutely, yes, HQ. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: send you a weird YouTube link after this episode. They
Speaker 1: have a really really serious collection Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol
Speaker 1: paintings of cabbage patch kids are all over the wall
Speaker 1: pictures of celebrities. But that's neither here nor there, really isn't.
Speaker 1: That is pretty messed up. But we're about to get
Speaker 1: even more messed up, you guys. Um, So have you
Speaker 1: given much thought to woodpeckers? Actually? Yes, I grew up
Speaker 1: with some woodpeckers in our yard, and I was always
Speaker 1: disappointed because they seemed radically different in comparison to the
Speaker 1: other woodpeckers I saw in the media, like woody woodpeck
Speaker 1: These were just these very like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say agro but very myopically focused birds who just kept
Speaker 1: hitting their heads against trees, and it blew my mind.
Speaker 1: I did understand. My parents explained to me that they
Speaker 1: were doing that to eat bugs. Is that correct? Yeah? So,
Speaker 1: uh they do actually, as their name implies, peck wood Uh.
Speaker 1: And they'll bang their heads against the tree with their
Speaker 1: their well, they're they're banging their banks against the tree
Speaker 1: bark to create these holes so that they can reach inside.
Speaker 1: And it's but for the insects, you know, to eat
Speaker 1: up some ants or larva or whatever is living in
Speaker 1: the tree bark. They also will do it to help
Speaker 1: themselves nest, So sometimes they pull away tree bark to
Speaker 1: access holes in the tree, uh to nest there, to
Speaker 1: to increase the size of a hole and excavate there
Speaker 1: a little nesting area. They also do something called drumming,
Speaker 1: where it's just wrapping against the tree for seemingly the
Speaker 1: only purpose is uh sexual behavior like mating mating call.
Speaker 1: But as people may know, if if there's any metal
Speaker 1: fans out there, like head banging is extremely unpleasant. Even
Speaker 1: when you're just banging your head against air, it it's disorienting,
Speaker 1: it hurts. So you can imagine that if you're banging
Speaker 1: your head against solid wood, that would be pretty unpleasant
Speaker 1: and probably give you a lot of head injuries. So
Speaker 1: it's really incredible when you think about how rapid these
Speaker 1: little jackhammers are going and how that seems like that
Speaker 1: would instantly destroy their tiny little bird brains and smack
Speaker 1: their skulls and just explode their heads. But uh, there
Speaker 1: you have developed a few very interesting evolutionary traits that
Speaker 1: allow them to uh keep on head banging without actually
Speaker 1: getting brain damage. So first of all, kind of the
Speaker 1: obvious one is that they have thickened skulls uh, and
Speaker 1: they have powerful neck muscles for for that control. Another
Speaker 1: more subtle one is that the beak is actually kind
Speaker 1: of designed for shock absorption. So they've got this or
Speaker 1: bite and the top of the beak is more fleshy
Speaker 1: than the lower beak, which is bonier. So then that
Speaker 1: directs the force of the impact towards the lower beak um,
Speaker 1: and then that directs it away from the brain case area.
Speaker 1: But you guys are here for the real gross, weird stuff,
Speaker 1: so one more trick up their sleeves or well, I
Speaker 1: guess up, there's skull. UM. I want to talk to
Speaker 1: you about woodpecker tongues. They're very interesting and weird. So
Speaker 1: woodpeckers often have pretty long tongues. Uh. They're covered in
Speaker 1: sticky barbs so that they can stick it into those
Speaker 1: tree holes uh to slurp up ants and larva um.
Speaker 1: Someone peckers species have shorter tongues with more bristles, So
Speaker 1: there there's variety amongst the woodpecker species, but for many
Speaker 1: of them, uh, it has to be long. So that
Speaker 1: they can get get in there and get those ants
Speaker 1: out of the wood. So, but we don't see woodpeckers
Speaker 1: just with this tongue flopping out. And they're not like
Speaker 1: hummingbirds where they have a really long beak. So where
Speaker 1: where do they keep it? Well, it's in its skull.
Speaker 1: It winds up kind of like a measuring tape. It
Speaker 1: literally will wrap around the back of their head and
Speaker 1: up over their skull and then towards their nasal cavity.
Speaker 1: And the way that it does this is actually even
Speaker 1: weirder than just the fact that it winds its tongue
Speaker 1: around around its school, because I think that that fact
Speaker 1: is maybe out there. Um. But how it does so.
Speaker 1: First of all, the tongue is bifurcated in the back,
Speaker 1: which means split into um. So think like a reverse
Speaker 1: snake tongue, where instead of coming out and then splitting
Speaker 1: at the end, it's like it's split at the sort
Speaker 1: of uh up in the mouth and then it comes
Speaker 1: together into one point um and uh. So the reason
Speaker 1: it has this length is actually that its tongue is
Speaker 1: not just tongue flesh. It's partially made out of bone.
Speaker 1: So there's this bone called the hyroid bone. And so
Speaker 1: if you guys could just put your fingers near your
Speaker 1: throat where your tricky is, you know, gently, don't strangle yourself.
Speaker 1: Don't don't do that. Um yeah yeah, So up along
Speaker 1: the front of your throat where your tricky is and
Speaker 1: where your jaw meets your your trichya basically and you
Speaker 1: should feel a couple of bony kind of protrusions. Do
Speaker 1: you feel that that's the that's the hyroid bone. So, uh,
Speaker 1: it's the sub metrical kind of butterfly shaped bone. Um.
Speaker 1: It supports an anchors the tongue and it helps in swallowing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And woodpeckers, these bones wrap all the way around the
Speaker 1: skull and up towards their nasal cavities, and it's all
Speaker 1: covered in tongue tissue. So they basically have bony tongues
Speaker 1: uh that wind around their skull. And I actually sent
Speaker 1: you guys that that picture of it in the slide show. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was I was gonna ask, are there's the same
Speaker 1: bird like the two images, Like you're seeing how the
Speaker 1: tongue is deployed. Got it? Okay? Yeah, exactly. And I
Speaker 1: question too here because in this illustration which is fascinating,
Speaker 1: not yet disturbing all the go with fascinating. I see
Speaker 1: that the tongue has this barbed tip on there is
Speaker 1: that bone as well. No, that's just that's just tongue bristles.
Speaker 1: So the tip of the tongue is just tongue kind
Speaker 1: of like ours, but like it the bone it attaches
Speaker 1: to the tongue way back there where you have that
Speaker 1: that dual structure. But I think those barbs are it's
Speaker 1: sort of like you know how cat tongues are spiky,
Speaker 1: So when a tongue has retracted, the bone winds all
Speaker 1: the way around the skull. And not only does this
Speaker 1: have a nice nifty storage place for the tongue to go,
Speaker 1: it also offers extra structural support and shock absorption for
Speaker 1: when the woodpeckers smashing its face against a tree. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like you it's like having a
Speaker 1: weird tongue helmet inside your your head. I have kind
Speaker 1: of a dumb question. Maybe it's not dumb question. Presumably woodpeckers,
Speaker 1: outside of their superpower ability to you know, smash their
Speaker 1: heads against trees and not get brain damage, have all
Speaker 1: the same stuff that other birds have, Like why is
Speaker 1: it advantageous to them to eat in such a bizarre
Speaker 1: and uncomfortable way. I mean, it's finding a niche really,
Speaker 1: because you have a lot of competition for insects that
Speaker 1: are easily available. If you're able to get into the
Speaker 1: tree bark where other birds can't access it, you've just
Speaker 1: opened up this whole mind of food that you don't
Speaker 1: really have as much competition for. So that's that's finding
Speaker 1: their niche and their specialized hunting strategy. Uh, that is
Speaker 1: really advantageous. So like if you can't, you know, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of birds who will try to get
Speaker 1: insects that are kind of embarked that are more easily accessible.
Speaker 1: So once you start developing adaptations where you can get
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper into the bark and get more and
Speaker 1: more insects, you're going to do a lot better than
Speaker 1: those that you're competing with. I also have a question,
Speaker 1: and I hope it's not super dumbling, but here goes.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shoot my shot first. The woodpecker. Now I
Speaker 1: can see that tongue and a highoid apparatus. It reminds
Speaker 1: me in some ways of an ant eater, in some
Speaker 1: kind of like parallel evolution thing. But my question is,
Speaker 1: given that this, given that this bird has adapted to
Speaker 1: prevent I guess, concussions and brain damage from its very
Speaker 1: specific life choices. Uh, how effective is it? Are there
Speaker 1: woodpeckers that get concussions or brain damage? Is that anything
Speaker 1: that can happen? Yeah, Actually there was a recent study
Speaker 1: that showed that woodpeckers do still get some structural damage
Speaker 1: that's consistent with CT injury like football players get. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's so it's not effective, but certainly you can
Speaker 1: imagine that without these protective structures, they just instantly scramble
Speaker 1: their eggs or brains, their brain eggs, the old brain egg.
Speaker 1: So there's one other. There's actually a couple other weird
Speaker 1: adaptations that they have to help protect them from the
Speaker 1: blunt force trauma of repeatedly smacking themselves against the tree. Uh.
Speaker 1: Their brains are extra dry, so they don't have as
Speaker 1: many fluids surrounding the brains, so they don't just like uh,
Speaker 1: and I guess this, I think this is the scientific terminology,
Speaker 1: so their brains don't slash around a lot. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then they also have nictating membrane, which is that weird
Speaker 1: transparent eyelid that you'll see on your cat, and that
Speaker 1: covers their eye as they're pecking. So it's like a
Speaker 1: set of goggles. So because otherwise their eyeballs would probably
Speaker 1: pop out. Wow, because of the constant impact. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: force of that, you know, Like it's sort of like
Speaker 1: if you're riding a bike and you the bike is
Speaker 1: suddenly stop, you'll fly off a bike that but with eyeballs.
Speaker 1: I had a similar experience like that with one of
Speaker 1: those birds scooters recently, So I totally understand this scenario, right, Right,
Speaker 1: Is it a coincidence that it's called a bird scooter? No,
Speaker 1: that was my point. No, it's not. It's absolutely not
Speaker 1: a question. It makes me uniquely qualified to have this conversation, right,
Speaker 1: you're basically an ornithologist now. No, Actually, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I think I probably told you this last time
Speaker 1: we were on. But I am definitely afraid of birds
Speaker 1: and woodpeckers in particular, just just the more freaky the adaptation,
Speaker 1: the worse. Like I have nightmare where I wake up
Speaker 1: and there's like woodpeckers under my covers and I wake
Speaker 1: up like in a cold sweat, and and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's a thing that I struggle with. Um so I'm
Speaker 1: pretty triggered right now actually, but trying to hold I'm
Speaker 1: trying to hold it together. Well you know. I mean
Speaker 1: I did present you with a nice diagram showing its
Speaker 1: tongue wrapping around its skull, uh, and how long it
Speaker 1: is and how pointy it is, and I'm sure that
Speaker 1: will help. Yep, Yeah, feeling good. Well, if you're uncomfortable
Speaker 1: with birds, why don't we pivot to something a little
Speaker 1: less less weird. Uh kangaroo vaginas? Oh finally, yeah great,
Speaker 1: I'm here for it. So kangaroos, wombats, kualas, Tasmanian devils. Uh.
Speaker 1: These marsupials have three vaginas. Uh. So first of all,
Speaker 1: I want you to get your minds out of the gutter. Uh.
Speaker 1: They don't have three volva's. It's not like the alien
Speaker 1: and total recall where she's got uh you know, the
Speaker 1: three breasts. Um, it's not the Australia version of that,
Speaker 1: right right, So it's not just like three volva's just
Speaker 1: kind of like randomly placed on the kangaroo somewhere. Um.
Speaker 1: So the vagina this is it's gonna be a little
Speaker 1: bit of sex. Said here, the vagina is an inside
Speaker 1: organ um. It's the canal that you do use sex
Speaker 1: inside that sperm travels up and babies come out of.
Speaker 1: That's where a menstruation and discharge come out. And that's
Speaker 1: also where Gwyneth Paltrow puts her jade eggs in. That's
Speaker 1: what the vagina is. That's what we're talking about. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, we we like to use our imaginations
Speaker 1: on this show. I wanted you to imagine a naked
Speaker 1: female kangaroo, so and so, a kangaroo not like wearing
Speaker 1: a suit or something like boxing, no boxing gloves, totally naked.
Speaker 1: So it's gonna it's gonna have a normal looking kangaroo
Speaker 1: volva as far as kangaroo volva's go. But once you
Speaker 1: look inside the kangaroo, the vagina splits off into three canals.
Speaker 1: Uh that meat back up sort of like a weird
Speaker 1: steering wheel or like a no smoking logo or like
Speaker 1: that that London like subway logo, the underground logo. So
Speaker 1: if you actually you guys, proceed in the slide show,
Speaker 1: you can see, oh yeah, the interesting complex sort of
Speaker 1: it looks a little bit like a French horn Honestly,
Speaker 1: I know what this means, but I just want to
Speaker 1: point out that there's a one diagram. It says middle vagina,
Speaker 1: Joey travels down, and that just I just like saying
Speaker 1: that out loud. Just Joey travels down. I mean, Joey
Speaker 1: likes to take the middle of vagina. He really, that's
Speaker 1: classic the path of least resistance. You know that middle
Speaker 1: vagina exactly. I mean, Joey could be more adventurous, but
Speaker 1: that that refers to, you know, the juvenile kangaroo, right, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so Joey is a baby kangaroo. I have a question
Speaker 1: looking looking at this, which it also looks like it
Speaker 1: might be a made up musical instrument in a sci
Speaker 1: fi film, like a Doctor SEUs book, or like the
Speaker 1: Fifth Element or Doctor SEUs or something in Huville, But
Speaker 1: apparently it's very real. Um. I have always heard that kangaroos,
Speaker 1: female kangaroos are an animal that can either suspend its
Speaker 1: pregnancy or some somehow control when and how it gives birth,
Speaker 1: or when it gives birth at least. Is that correct?
Speaker 1: Or is that something that my college friends made up
Speaker 1: when we were hanging out too late at night. Yeah?
Speaker 1: So it can kind of time it. UM. So what
Speaker 1: the beauty of the kangaroo reproductive system is that it
Speaker 1: can have three Joey's at once, basically and at different
Speaker 1: stages of developments. So you've got one Joey that is
Speaker 1: think of it as like a toddler, where it's like
Speaker 1: outside of the pouch, walking around, you know, maybe still
Speaker 1: like reaching in the pouch for milk and stuff, but
Speaker 1: it's a it's a sort of what what you would
Speaker 1: associate Joey to look like. Um. And then you have
Speaker 1: the second one, which is the Joey that is inside
Speaker 1: of the pouch. So that's usually uh, the really young
Speaker 1: Joey that's either at a very early stage of its
Speaker 1: development when it looks like those weird little pink jellybeans,
Speaker 1: or it's a little older, but it's so it's developing
Speaker 1: inside of the pouch. And then you have a third
Speaker 1: Joey that is still developing inside of the uterus or
Speaker 1: traveling down. You know, once the middle Joey leaves the
Speaker 1: pouch and that one uh starts to travel down and
Speaker 1: leave uh and then makes that heroic crawl from the
Speaker 1: vagina to the pouch, which is kind of incredible. So
Speaker 1: I don't think they can consciously control it, like you know, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got this. This Joey is a real
Speaker 1: pain in the in the the real pain in the
Speaker 1: middle of vagina. So I'm gonna stall off that other,
Speaker 1: that other Joey. But yeah, there is a this timing
Speaker 1: allows them to perpetually pregnant. It's like an assembly line
Speaker 1: of Joey's. So what's interesting is some biologists think that
Speaker 1: so as you can see from the diagram, the middle
Speaker 1: vagina is a little narrower than the other ones um
Speaker 1: and some biologists think this is why Joey's are born
Speaker 1: so premature, because it's just too narrow for a bigger baby.
Speaker 1: So that's why they have to make that crazy crawl
Speaker 1: from the vagina to the pouch. If you if you
Speaker 1: don't know what I'm talking about, Joey's are born very tiny,
Speaker 1: like they look like little little gross pink beans, and
Speaker 1: then they have to they crawl all and there. They
Speaker 1: look like an embryo. They don't look like they're fully developed,
Speaker 1: and they're not. And then they crawl from after they
Speaker 1: give birth, they crawl from the vagina and they go
Speaker 1: all the way up into the pouch, so that having
Speaker 1: that narrow middle vagina is like, maybe that's why this
Speaker 1: is this happens. Oh. They also it's important to note
Speaker 1: that they have two uteruses to uterie. I see that. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and that's actually not too uncommon. Um, they're bifurcated uter
Speaker 1: i in deer's, cats, dogs, elephants, whales, and a lot
Speaker 1: of other cool animal ladies. Uh. In fact, humans only
Speaker 1: having one uterus were more of the weird ones. I
Speaker 1: guess I've always thought that, Yeah, it's just one more
Speaker 1: thing to shame women about. You only have one uterus?
Speaker 1: What's wrong with you? Boy? Oh no, I'm not associated
Speaker 1: with that at all. I did notice so, um when
Speaker 1: when I've seen pictures of Joey's and how how they're
Speaker 1: so they're so newly formed and undeveloped. It's pretty amazing
Speaker 1: that they can instinctually climb up the parents body towards
Speaker 1: that that pouch. But the pouch always weirded me out,
Speaker 1: Like is the I never thought I'd say this on
Speaker 1: the air. Is this treble vagina adaptation? Is it something
Speaker 1: that occurred around the same time that the pouch was developing?
Speaker 1: Or like, what, why and how that's my question. Why
Speaker 1: and how? I just I'm baffled, just why, just why.
Speaker 1: It's a really good question. It's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a mystery, at least to me, UM, because I was
Speaker 1: trying to find why exactly they have three vaginas. And
Speaker 1: so there's a few theories. One is that um, male
Speaker 1: marsuvials actually have a two pronged penises, so maybe they
Speaker 1: can do double time fertilizing the vagina um. But actually
Speaker 1: kangaroos do not have the two pronged uh penises, which
Speaker 1: I guess is really unlucky for the lady kangaroos. UM.
Speaker 1: But so that's that's one theory. But it could also
Speaker 1: be helpful for creating like that endless perpetual Joey production machine. Um.
Speaker 1: You got one in the pouch, one in the oven,
Speaker 1: one fending for himself. Um. And you know, uh, I
Speaker 1: I would really like to hear if there are any
Speaker 1: marsupial biologists out there if they have any theories about
Speaker 1: why they have three vaginas. But there's one other thing,
Speaker 1: and it's I think, so first we have to kind
Speaker 1: of talk about, um, you know, uh, what a spandrel
Speaker 1: of evolution is. Have you guys heard of that term,
Speaker 1: I note, so, uh spandrel is the term that comes
Speaker 1: from architecture. Actually, so the spandrel is this triangular wedge
Speaker 1: between and archway and like uh ceiling. So uh it
Speaker 1: actually serves no inherent purpose other than being a structural byproducts.
Speaker 1: So you have the arch and then the ceiling, and
Speaker 1: then where that kind of like meets you you have
Speaker 1: that little wedge where it's like the the where the
Speaker 1: semicircle meets that kind of triangle um and uh so
Speaker 1: uh it was coined as a term to mean an
Speaker 1: anatomical feature of evolution that's just kind of a result
Speaker 1: of how the animal got built. It has no inherent purpose.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, it's kind of like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I guess like you could also describe it as like
Speaker 1: the taint like of of evolution because it's like it
Speaker 1: doesn't serve any purpose. It's just there because you gotta
Speaker 1: you gotta have a place between the the front in
Speaker 1: the back. Um so. Uh So there's a possibility that
Speaker 1: having the three canals is like a spandrel of having
Speaker 1: to uterie um and that the fact that they have
Speaker 1: it's that for some reason they want a separate birthing canal.
Speaker 1: And then just the fact that we're typically speaking in
Speaker 1: many structures are symmetrical, just in terms of how they
Speaker 1: developed in the fetus. But you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it's really it's kind of a mystery. And we'll
Speaker 1: actually see kind of in another animal maybe a proto
Speaker 1: kind of a proto pouch, which is really interesting. Uh.
Speaker 1: Later on that will discuss, But first I want to
Speaker 1: take you guys on the imagination train to imagination station.
Speaker 1: So this one's actually really easy. Just imagine an elephant
Speaker 1: in your head, close your eyes. Got it there and
Speaker 1: such kind eyes and all of its elephant e goodness,
Speaker 1: does it have big tusks? Now you're doing You're doing
Speaker 1: it wrong. It's female elephant. I didn't expect that, did you. Um,
Speaker 1: Now imagine that with it is a smaller elephant. Little baby?
Speaker 1: Is it? Cute? Oho able? Little baby? Now that baby elephant,
Speaker 1: he's gonna be hungry and it's got to drink milk
Speaker 1: from its mother. How does it do this? We're like
Speaker 1: like trying to imagine where do you think it's getting
Speaker 1: the milk from? Maybe through the trunk maybe how maybe
Speaker 1: they're like secret elephant utters? Have you ever have you
Speaker 1: ever tried to imagine this like an elephants utters? No,
Speaker 1: this is this is a first for me, Katie. It's
Speaker 1: never come up. It's never come up in my line
Speaker 1: of thinking, right right, Well, you know because like you don't.
Speaker 1: It's not just like cow arders attached to the elephant.
Speaker 1: So it's well, I gotta tell you guys this. Did
Speaker 1: you know that elephants have big old honkers honkers as
Speaker 1: it noses. No, No, they got big old, very big
Speaker 1: old set of very human looking boobs. So if you
Speaker 1: advance in your slide show, oh my goodness. So I'm
Speaker 1: not doing a pearl clutch situation right now. What I'm
Speaker 1: doing is like they literally look like those fake boobs
Speaker 1: you buy it like the joke store, like because the
Speaker 1: scale is all off kind of the elephants so very
Speaker 1: close together, and they're very close together, and they look
Speaker 1: like yeah that there. Wow. I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: to use the word traumatized. But when I first when
Speaker 1: I first looked at this, I was pretty uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, Okay, how many things in this slide
Speaker 1: show or photo shopped? I'd better be a good sport
Speaker 1: about this. But if I were in the wild, I've
Speaker 1: only seen elephants in you know, zoos or nature preserves.
Speaker 1: So if I were in the wild and I saw
Speaker 1: a busty elephant running at me, I would freak out
Speaker 1: and trampled. I'd be tramped, I'd be I would die
Speaker 1: trampled by the feet or by the boobs. I don't know,
Speaker 1: that's them. I love the I love the caption you
Speaker 1: have on this slide to it just says very non
Speaker 1: you know, it's just like a very matter of factly
Speaker 1: some hot elephant hits. Katie. Yeah, it's it's you. Guys.
Speaker 1: Are welcome for the slideshow. By the way, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: see if I can post the slide show online actually
Speaker 1: for the listener. Um. But is this like something they
Speaker 1: always have and that I've just never noticed noticed? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well they have it so when they're when they're nursing,
Speaker 1: they definitely swell up. But but yeah, I mean they
Speaker 1: they've this is not new. It's not like a twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen weird new millennial thing like they've always had Elephants
Speaker 1: have always had breasts. Um. And also, I would encourage
Speaker 1: my listeners to google elephants boobs um and do it
Speaker 1: with the safe search off for sure um and and
Speaker 1: just just roll those die. Uh. So what's really interesting
Speaker 1: about the elephant mammary glands is that they are some
Speaker 1: of the most human looking boobs on an animal that
Speaker 1: I've actually ever seen, and that includes primates, because if
Speaker 1: you think of primate boobs, they actually, you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're pretty small, they're kind of flat as kansas um.
Speaker 1: But the elephants actually have more extensive breast tissue. So
Speaker 1: the reason their breast tissue is so voluptuous is so
Speaker 1: the baby elephant can reach better. Because elephants are big,
Speaker 1: baby elephants are less big, and that's tricky. And it's
Speaker 1: also interesting because those boobs are in the front, like
Speaker 1: on their chest, like you would see in a human,
Speaker 1: which you may wonder like why aren't they in the back,
Speaker 1: like uh, you know, a cow or something. So there's
Speaker 1: a very simple reason. The back just has no room
Speaker 1: for boobs, and this has to do with how they
Speaker 1: give birth. So in order to give birth and not
Speaker 1: drop a little baby Dumbo on his sweet little head
Speaker 1: and kill them immediately. Uh, the vagina is actually under
Speaker 1: the elephant, like between her legs, so the calf doesn't
Speaker 1: have as far to go. So in other unguleets you
Speaker 1: may know, like like in cow's the vaginal opening is
Speaker 1: it kind of like closer to the butt, like near
Speaker 1: the tail um, and so the calf kind of drops
Speaker 1: a little bit. If that happened with an elephant, that
Speaker 1: would be really bad for the baby. Uh I see, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah right, So because they give birth down there and
Speaker 1: that's where the vaginal opening is, there's just no room
Speaker 1: for the breasts. Uh So that's why they're between on
Speaker 1: their chest. Okay, sorry, I'm catching up the speeding. Just
Speaker 1: I'm a little baffled. And this is changing changing some things,
Speaker 1: for changing how you look at elephants, literally elephants like
Speaker 1: Mark trunk shop here. Yeah, I guess so, I guess so.
Speaker 1: I mean because elephants are already such amazing and intelligent
Speaker 1: creatures and cognitively, the more we learn about them, the
Speaker 1: more we learn that their thought processes are are very,
Speaker 1: very sophisticated, and they feel increasingly, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say human like, but increasingly like a pure species in
Speaker 1: some ways. So now finding out I do I do
Speaker 1: want to interrupt you to say I do like that
Speaker 1: you're thinking about the elephant's mind, not just her chest.
Speaker 1: That's really woke of you. Thank you. I try to
Speaker 1: be elephant woke. This is so much information though, like
Speaker 1: how how human are they? I don't well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: so to put your mind at ease, this isn't it's
Speaker 1: a it's another case of parallel evolution um. But it
Speaker 1: is really interesting because most animals don't actually have large
Speaker 1: breasts or like it's like an utter situation where their
Speaker 1: utters swell during pregnancy nursing, and certainly they don't have
Speaker 1: the kind of like large breasts that elephants have. And
Speaker 1: that's uh. Those are as I mentioned before designed to
Speaker 1: make it easier for the baby elephant to reach. But
Speaker 1: humans human breasts are actually really kind of an evolutionary mystery, um.
Speaker 1: Scientists are baffled by boobs uh and it's uh. There
Speaker 1: are a few theories, like some are nutrition, like maybe
Speaker 1: it's kind of like camel humps, where you store extra
Speaker 1: fat for neur my humps, my humps, my lovely um.
Speaker 1: One of the more popular theories that I actually think
Speaker 1: is probably more convincing is that it's sexual selection, um,
Speaker 1: that they somehow It's just kind of this thing in
Speaker 1: nature where sometimes certain characteristics are attractive because they may
Speaker 1: signal sexual maturity or uh some kind of sexual fitness,
Speaker 1: and then that trait becomes more and more exaggerated because
Speaker 1: that that signal uh is very powerful. So an example
Speaker 1: of that is, um, there are certain birds that if
Speaker 1: you give them a big egg, like a big fake egg,
Speaker 1: they care about it even more than the smaller eggs
Speaker 1: because that signal is just like really powerful. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of like potentially with breast, like the you know,
Speaker 1: having more voluptuous breasts is like this overpowering signal that
Speaker 1: just uh mesmerizes like our early human ancestor males or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's okay, I see the I see the point you're
Speaker 1: making here. I want to point out something too, like
Speaker 1: I maybe I haven't been to the zoo or on
Speaker 1: safari enough to see elephants, you know, in their natural habitat.
Speaker 1: Typically thinking them, think of them is rearing up on
Speaker 1: their back legs too too much, because the image that
Speaker 1: you have for us in the slide show is an
Speaker 1: elephant and kind of an awkward squatting position that's allowing
Speaker 1: us to see these uh, these elephant boobs. Um, but
Speaker 1: it typically wouldn't be something you would notice, I would think,
Speaker 1: right right, yeah, I mean it's uh if when they're standing.
Speaker 1: I think that's also why this is an image that
Speaker 1: is capturing so many people's attention. Um. Usually when you
Speaker 1: see an elephant there, uh, it's it's a little harder
Speaker 1: to see they're rocking tips, um because that they're angled,
Speaker 1: not in such a way to show them off. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's sometimes do that. I'm actually trying. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of trying to figure out why she is kneeling
Speaker 1: in this picture. Um. It could be to go the bathroom.
Speaker 1: It could be, um that she tripped. That's how I
Speaker 1: want to think of it, as like it's a Marilyn
Speaker 1: Monroe situation where she just kind of stumbled and she's like, oh, sorry,
Speaker 1: is my my is my beautiful chest showing exactly the
Speaker 1: baby looks like it's about to get on her back
Speaker 1: or something too. It's it's a weird situation there, baby
Speaker 1: kind of coming up behind the check on him. He's
Speaker 1: just like really embarrassing, like moms toar mom. Um. So
Speaker 1: I teased earlier that I wanted to talk about animal
Speaker 1: pouch kind of like a potential um sort of proto
Speaker 1: pouch situation. Uh. And it's actually a very interesting animal. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's called the Colugo Flying Lemur and it's actually
Speaker 1: not a lemur and it doesn't fly, so what the heck?
Speaker 1: Why you know? Yeah, is that like it's just a
Speaker 1: street name or something. Just that's that's the it's it's
Speaker 1: a type of drug. Actually, it's called Colugo Flying Lemur.
Speaker 1: It's really gonna make you, really gonna make you fly, dude.
Speaker 1: Um So they this this creature definitely looks like he's
Speaker 1: tripping balls. He's got these giant like dilated pupils. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought, yeah, I thought I could see tripping always
Speaker 1: thinking more like a studio gibli anime animal in some
Speaker 1: kind of magical woodland environment. Yeah. Sure, it looks like
Speaker 1: the lead thirteen year old me off on an adventure.
Speaker 1: So to describe this for the audience, like, it's it
Speaker 1: kind of looks like a DreamWorks version of a flying squirrel,
Speaker 1: like remember what was his name script the little squirrel
Speaker 1: from ice Age? Oh yeah, something like that. Yeah, like that,
Speaker 1: but with like big old skin flaps. Um. So, they
Speaker 1: live in Southeast Asia. They're not lemurs, but they are
Speaker 1: close relatives of primates. Um they uh, like I said,
Speaker 1: they're kind of like they look a little bit like
Speaker 1: flying squirrels, but way more fucky. Uh. They have a
Speaker 1: big flap of skin they can use to glide huge
Speaker 1: distances up to five feet without even losing that much altitude. Um,
Speaker 1: they kind of look like they should be close relatives
Speaker 1: of bats, but they're not. That's just another case of
Speaker 1: parallel evolution. UM. And they're really bad at climbing and
Speaker 1: are super clumsy, so it's it's very fortunate that they
Speaker 1: have built in parachute. They kind of climbed by like
Speaker 1: awkwardly hopping up a tree. Um. They eat shoots and leaves. Uh.
Speaker 1: And uh they actually use their skin flaps sometimes to
Speaker 1: carry their babies. Now they're not, uh, they're not. This
Speaker 1: is not necessarily like, oh, this is how uh pouches evolved,
Speaker 1: But I think it's an interesting thing where you have this,
Speaker 1: you have some anatomical feature, and then you can kind
Speaker 1: of see how potentially, like a another structure could be
Speaker 1: start to be used for caring for offspring, Like how
Speaker 1: the pouch like was evolved to be a protective area
Speaker 1: for the offspring. You have these arm flaps which are
Speaker 1: not to be used as a pouch, but then they
Speaker 1: do get used as that, and that's really interesting to me.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating. It's it's almost like a an evolutionary crossroads
Speaker 1: or adaptive crossroads, like what what will win the day?
Speaker 1: Will it be more useful to uh glide and have
Speaker 1: a built in parachute because you're crappy at climbing, or
Speaker 1: it would be more useful to have a pouch to
Speaker 1: protect you're young. I don't know exactly, And I think
Speaker 1: that's that's also what makes UH studying evolution so tricky,
Speaker 1: because you can look at a characteristic and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: clearly this evolved to like allow them to flyer something,
Speaker 1: but it could have started out as something else, like
Speaker 1: a structure. Maybe maybe it did start out as like
Speaker 1: a structure that helped with their child rearing, but then
Speaker 1: it as it got bigger, like it actually helped them
Speaker 1: with gliding, and then it turned into that. So that
Speaker 1: evolution is a twisty turny uh kind of kangaroo vagina situation, UH,
Speaker 1: where it's just like you have all these twists and
Speaker 1: turns and weirdness. So one other fun fact about them
Speaker 1: is that in order to poop, they have to lift
Speaker 1: their skin flap over their body, and it's really weird looking.
Speaker 1: If you guys, check out slide number seven. I discussed it.
Speaker 1: I am trauma. This is you know. I thought I
Speaker 1: thought I had gotten over the tough part with the
Speaker 1: elephant breast, but this is traumatizing. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: I was looking at for a second. I thought it
Speaker 1: was a weird dragon fruit. Uh is it turning? Is
Speaker 1: it turning its pouch inside out? We're seeing the inside
Speaker 1: of the pouch, like right, so it's well, it's not
Speaker 1: really a pouch. It's just this like well, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I got in the flaps. Yeah, it's like it took
Speaker 1: its cape up right, and all in the entire cape
Speaker 1: turned out to be made of asshole. It's like an
Speaker 1: animal kingdom goat. See kind of it really is? It
Speaker 1: looks prolapsed. Oh my god. Well so, uh, it's the
Speaker 1: membrane that makes up it's flap. Like on the top,
Speaker 1: it looks kind of cool because it's covered in fur,
Speaker 1: but from the bottom it's nude. It's not covered in fur,
Speaker 1: so it's all vainy and weird and pink and translucent. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's when it folds itself up, it kind of
Speaker 1: looks like it's turning itself inside out. Uh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: uh stuff of nightmares kind of a like a you
Speaker 1: know that that painter Hieronymous Bosh, like all his paintings
Speaker 1: of humans being tortured in hell, it looks like, yep,
Speaker 1: can you imagine there? But for the grace of randomized
Speaker 1: evolution go us. You know, humans aren't perfect. But I'm
Speaker 1: so glad I don't have to go through that just
Speaker 1: to use the restroom. I mean, I don't know, because
Speaker 1: like maybe if we had evolved big skin flaps, we'd
Speaker 1: consider that sexy, Like like maybe colugos have a whole
Speaker 1: category of corn that's just like skin flap. Yeah. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh. It was the worst up script videos ever.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I'm just I'm really glad that I don't
Speaker 1: have to pull my asshole over my back to use
Speaker 1: the restroom. It sounds a little sounds a little overrated,
Speaker 1: to be honest to me. What is he using to
Speaker 1: do it? I don't understand what I'm looking at. So
Speaker 1: you see, you see that that kind of line that's
Speaker 1: going down, that's that's yeah, that's like his tail bones.
Speaker 1: Uh and I got it. Okay, I see. For a
Speaker 1: second I thought he was like using his mouth to
Speaker 1: like pull it up over like that's even more disturbing.
Speaker 1: And he just kind of like exactly turns inside out
Speaker 1: and disappears and doesn't. The thing is that you don't
Speaker 1: need this to be anymore to serving. It's fine just
Speaker 1: the way, Thank you very much. Okay, great, some new
Speaker 1: nightmare fuel. Now this is really helpful. Well we can
Speaker 1: take a quick break up, but then I'm gonna throw
Speaker 1: more stuff at you. All right, I'm ready. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: steal myself. So can you look like a regular human
Speaker 1: on the outside but an alien on the inside. There
Speaker 1: was a recent news story about a ninety nine year
Speaker 1: old woman who donated her body to science medical students
Speaker 1: at Organ Health and Science University in Portland. We're using
Speaker 1: her cadaver in a gross anatomy class. When I say
Speaker 1: gross anatomy, it doesn't mean disgusting anatomy. It just means
Speaker 1: anatomy that can be seen with the naked eye. In
Speaker 1: this case, the anatomy was particularly well. Odd year old
Speaker 1: woman had lived a long and healthy life without ever
Speaker 1: knowing that her organs were backwards. Her liver and other
Speaker 1: abnominal organs grew on the left side of her body.
Speaker 1: Typically they grow on the right. It's a rare condition
Speaker 1: called sit us and versus with levi acardia. She's thought
Speaker 1: to be the oldest person to survive with this condition,
Speaker 1: and I mean, at ninety nine years old, she's probably
Speaker 1: one of the oldest people to live period. This is
Speaker 1: a one in twenty thousand condition with a typically bad outlook,
Speaker 1: where only one in fifty million lived to adulthood. So
Speaker 1: this year old woman was truly one and a billion fold.
Speaker 1: Onto your livers. We'll be right back with more wild anatomy.
Speaker 1: Sometimes animals are so strange scientists don't believe they're real.
Speaker 1: This was the case when the platypus was discovered in
Speaker 1: sevent The biologist George Shaw couldn't believe that the platypus
Speaker 1: specimen he was looking at was real. After all, platypus
Speaker 1: has what looks like a duck's bill and a beaver's
Speaker 1: tail with no nipples, and it lays eggs. Surely, people
Speaker 1: thought it must be a hoax. But as you know,
Speaker 1: the platypus is very real as are the freaky fantastical
Speaker 1: animals were about to discuss these animals may not have
Speaker 1: heard of Alright, guys, So I want you to imagine
Speaker 1: that you're walking in the beautiful forests of Southeast Asia. Awesome.
Speaker 1: You're there among trees and plants and various wildlife, and
Speaker 1: suddenly you smell the delicious scent of popcorn. You look around.
Speaker 1: There's no theaters to be found here, it's a forest.
Speaker 1: Suddenly you see what looks like a cross between a lorex,
Speaker 1: a bear cat, and a monkey. It's the bent a Wrong.
Speaker 1: Is it? Is this the source of this popcorn smell? Yes,
Speaker 1: it is, which we will discuss. Uh do you guys?
Speaker 1: See I sent you that image of the bent Wrong
Speaker 1: just chilling on a tree. It's a mood for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And uh and the second image I show you you
Speaker 1: can see how shaggy it is and how thick its
Speaker 1: tail is. It is a chunky, chunky tail. So um,
Speaker 1: it looks like a Doctor Seuss creature to me, like
Speaker 1: like an old gnar or like a Jim Hinson. Oh
Speaker 1: you know, like in the dark crystal the what what
Speaker 1: are those the sears? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: kind of looks like that. So it's um uh, like
Speaker 1: I said, it's found in Southeast Asia. It looks it's
Speaker 1: like black and gray, shaggy, big tufted ears. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: a big honey badger. But its face is like floppity.
Speaker 1: It looks like a It also seems like it does
Speaker 1: give a fuck. It's got kind of kind eyes. It
Speaker 1: looks like it would give you wisdom and kind of
Speaker 1: like take you under its wing and nurture you as
Speaker 1: a traveler, like in the jungle. I think that's that's
Speaker 1: what I'm picturing. Maybe in the first picture. In the
Speaker 1: second picture though, the eyes, and maybe it's the gradation
Speaker 1: of the facial hair. But in the second picture it
Speaker 1: looks like a villain. It's like the first picture is
Speaker 1: sort of the Simba or Mufasa and the second pictures
Speaker 1: the scar version. Oh man, they should have they should
Speaker 1: have made the Lion King remake with bin t wrongs.
Speaker 1: That would have been so much better. I know that
Speaker 1: they didn't answer my tweets, but there's always next reboot,
Speaker 1: right is it? Is it a prehensile tail? I mean, like, okay,
Speaker 1: got it? It is indeed, so prehensile means it can
Speaker 1: grasp and hold things, and it can do that. In fact,
Speaker 1: when they're young, they can actually hang by their tails.
Speaker 1: But when they get older, they're just too fat, too heavy,
Speaker 1: as you said, so that adaptation becomes less helpful as
Speaker 1: they get older, or like does it does it still
Speaker 1: serve a purpose for them, still serves a purpose, still
Speaker 1: allows them to balance as they climb on trees. And
Speaker 1: you know, for for young bin t wrong, that's maybe
Speaker 1: less adept at climbing. That being able to actually support
Speaker 1: their whole way on a tree is very much more useful,
Speaker 1: probably than an adult. So it's actually not a cat
Speaker 1: or a bear. It is. Try to guess like some
Speaker 1: of its closest relatives. Okay, not cats, not bears, not badgers.
Speaker 1: Uh your cat? Uh yeah? Maybe like uh oh, what's
Speaker 1: what's the one? Um? Whatever? Red panda is Well, actually
Speaker 1: your closest with the cat's guests. So they're member of
Speaker 1: the Vivarid family, which includes palm civets and genets, which
Speaker 1: civits and genets look like cats, but they aren't. Civets
Speaker 1: are the ones that make the great but disturbing coffee, Yes,
Speaker 1: the poop coffee. I think you're right about that, Yes,
Speaker 1: so they eat these coffee beans and then they poop
Speaker 1: it out, and then you collect the pooped out beans
Speaker 1: and drink that up as your your nice hot poopy
Speaker 1: bean juice in the morning. It's really expensive. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love my expensive poopy hot bean juice. So they're related
Speaker 1: to cats, but they're also related to hyenas and weasels,
Speaker 1: so that whole sort of group of I know, hyenas
Speaker 1: seemed like a kind of weird, like you would think
Speaker 1: they would be more related to dogs. But there that's
Speaker 1: actually also parallel evolution, which we talked about a lot today.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so that's what that thing is. This bent
Speaker 1: a wrong. It's omnivorous and uh, it's about four ft
Speaker 1: long from head to tail. Uh. The tail is about
Speaker 1: as long as the body, so it's like a two
Speaker 1: ft long tail two foot long body. Uh. They weigh
Speaker 1: about fifty pounds, so you know, like a slight kind
Speaker 1: of a big dog. They're like a big dog, ah,
Speaker 1: with a bunch of shaggy fur and eyes that have
Speaker 1: seen into the heart and soul of the universe. Um.
Speaker 1: Females are actually larger than males, which is pretty rare
Speaker 1: amongst mammals. Usually male mammals are larger than females as
Speaker 1: you know, and um insects, the female is often larger. So,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned earlier, they're famous for smelling like popcorn
Speaker 1: or corn chips, a real yummy smell, and that that nice, pleasant,
Speaker 1: popcorny smell is coming from their scrotal or volval glands.
Speaker 1: Oh it's their steak. Yeah, it's their musk. So they
Speaker 1: have they have some scent glands located near their genitals
Speaker 1: that they used to mark and uh that it smells
Speaker 1: like fresh buttery popcorn. Wait a minute, So I think
Speaker 1: I heard and didn't believe one time that vanilla extract,
Speaker 1: something from vanilla extract comes from like beaver scent glands.
Speaker 1: Is that true? I don't know. I don't think. So what, well,
Speaker 1: it seems to make sense based on what you're saying. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, like vanilla extract. I thought vanilla extract came
Speaker 1: for the vanilla bean plan for sure, But I but
Speaker 1: I heard, I heard there was like a synthetic version
Speaker 1: of it that came from like beaver scent pouches. But
Speaker 1: you know, people say all kinds of stuff, but at
Speaker 1: the same time, like what they can't bottle this Uh,
Speaker 1: this gland juice and make buttered popcorn. And I don't
Speaker 1: know that's a good question. I'm actually I actually looked
Speaker 1: up beaver butt uh and vanilla and I found a
Speaker 1: National Geographic article that says beaver butts emitt good use
Speaker 1: for vanilla flavoring. Yeah, substitute vanilla flavor uh and then
Speaker 1: sometimes raspberry or strawberry. It's called castareum um and the
Speaker 1: U s f d A list castoreum as generally regarded
Speaker 1: as safe. I wish that they would, like do like,
Speaker 1: generally regarded as safe but disgusting. Yeah. Also, I just
Speaker 1: sound when last fact about that. I also found castorium
Speaker 1: was used in Sweden to flavor schnops and they have
Speaker 1: one called Literally it translates in English to beaver shout.
Speaker 1: It's it's beaver butt juice booze. This. This is weird too,
Speaker 1: because now I'm thinking, like, when I go to movie theaters,
Speaker 1: am I smelling actual popcorn? Or am I smelling bent
Speaker 1: a wrong booty? Probably not bent wrongs unless you're in
Speaker 1: a forest in Southeast Asia. Okay, I mean it is interesting.
Speaker 1: I think these are pretty These are threatened or endangered animals.
Speaker 1: Um otherwise it'd be great to harvest their butt juices
Speaker 1: to make artificial popcorn. Can people keep these as pets
Speaker 1: or do they? I don't know. They shouldn't and you
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to. But do people keep exotic animals as
Speaker 1: past that they definitely shouldn't. I mean that does happen. Um.
Speaker 1: They are at the San Diego Zoo. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: looked up the They say that they get fed a
Speaker 1: iet that includes primate biscuits, which is so cute, sounding
Speaker 1: like we made you a little special biscuit. Bent Wrongs
Speaker 1: aren't primates, but I guess that they are have a
Speaker 1: similar diet because they're omnivorous. Are they intelligent, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think they're, you know, about as intelligent as like
Speaker 1: a like a weasel or a cat, which is to say,
Speaker 1: possibly like just containing the wisdom of the universe. But
Speaker 1: sometimes they sit there and like their own butt hole
Speaker 1: for hours, so it's hard to know. It's because of
Speaker 1: the popcorn smells. Man, if my butthole smell like popcorn. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then one other cool fact is that they can
Speaker 1: turn their ankles and eighty degrees, so in theory they
Speaker 1: could open doors like no too far, too far. So
Speaker 1: if you if you're like at home and you suddenly
Speaker 1: hear a door creak open and the scent of popcorn
Speaker 1: wasps in the air, and you hear the footsteps and
Speaker 1: a black, shaggy figure. It's probably me, actually, and I've
Speaker 1: come over and brought some some popcorn and I'm covered
Speaker 1: in dog hair. Classic, right, I'm loving the horror movie
Speaker 1: set up here. So now let's go back to imagination Land,
Speaker 1: imagination station, home of the brain. Uh So, now imagine
Speaker 1: you're in the grasslands of South America. You smell something
Speaker 1: distinct and it's not popcorn, but yes, it's the unmistakable
Speaker 1: odor of that dank ass or my dude, some four twenties,
Speaker 1: some of that old devil lettuce. You look around, ready
Speaker 1: to choke it up with someone, but instead you see
Speaker 1: a deer. No wait, that's no, dear. It comes closer
Speaker 1: and closer, with long, long, spindly legs, a red body
Speaker 1: of black mane, the tail of a fox, and the
Speaker 1: head of a wolf. So this is the main wolves,
Speaker 1: which is not a wolf, and they're not a fox
Speaker 1: but a distinct species of kenid. So if you guys,
Speaker 1: I've sent you a picture of this this guy, and
Speaker 1: it's really incredible looking because its legs do not look
Speaker 1: like they go with the animal. It's got a real
Speaker 1: set of gams. Now, yeah, it's it's also it's all
Speaker 1: kinds of wrong, You're right, Like the proportions seem off,
Speaker 1: like the head size versus the legs, and it's got
Speaker 1: this dainty little posture with the front legs crossed over
Speaker 1: each other and has come hither look and these kind
Speaker 1: of look I'm working through some feelings right now. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: a k A wolf Maine. Because it smells like it
Speaker 1: smells like weed apparently right, it does smell like weed
Speaker 1: in fact, but how much cooler can this wolf? It
Speaker 1: looks like it looks like, again, like a character you
Speaker 1: would see in Spirited Away or something from No. It
Speaker 1: totally looks like the spirit of the forest, like the
Speaker 1: human face and spirit or oh yeah, Princess Monon Okay,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. And it smells like we this cat is
Speaker 1: this is too cool for school? So yeah, they have urine,
Speaker 1: uh that they used to mark their territory. And it
Speaker 1: smells so strongly of marijuana that at the Rotterdam Zoo
Speaker 1: where they kept main wolves, cops were looking around, uh,
Speaker 1: scouring the zoo for pot smokers because they're like, we
Speaker 1: keep we keep smelling pot. But it was just wolf
Speaker 1: pe weird. Okay, I think it's less cool now that
Speaker 1: I know it's the urine that smells like marijuana. But
Speaker 1: still I visited in the zoo. Wait a minute, are
Speaker 1: you saying it's not okay to smoke weed at the
Speaker 1: Rotterdam Zoo? I guess not. That's my that's my take away,
Speaker 1: you know what. I actually, when I was researching this,
Speaker 1: that was the most surprising thing to me. Not that
Speaker 1: their pa smells like marijuana, because like, I'm so used
Speaker 1: to whatever weird animal things they get up to. But
Speaker 1: the fact that, like in Rotterdam, they're so in vested
Speaker 1: in stopping people from smoking pot at the zoo blows
Speaker 1: my mind. It's like a known issue with the Rotterdam.
Speaker 1: Everyone goes there to get high. Well, I mean, you
Speaker 1: can smoke weed openly in Rotterdam, right, I guess what
Speaker 1: I was. I don't know. I guess not at the
Speaker 1: zoo though maybe not. It's for children. You got to
Speaker 1: stick to your your hashbars and you have like the
Speaker 1: proprietor I'm thinking of pulp fiction. Now it's four twenty
Speaker 1: pm right now, just definitely in here in Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: It's only one here. Um. That is funny though for
Speaker 1: twenty dude. Uh So, like I said, main wolves aren't
Speaker 1: actually wolves. Uh. They are this this species of canad
Speaker 1: that um uh evolved these like weird deer like legs. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they kind of look like a fox. A deer
Speaker 1: and a wolf had an orgy and just like popped out.
Speaker 1: There's a weird animal. Um. So they're about three ft
Speaker 1: tall and they weigh about fifty pounds, so again kind
Speaker 1: of like uh purports like their proportions are all different,
Speaker 1: but they're about the size of a bent a wrong
Speaker 1: um And Uh. They're omnivores and they're solitary hunters, so
Speaker 1: they're not really like wolves in their social structure. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're this is cute. They're actually monogamous. So they lived
Speaker 1: together with their life partner and they'll um stick together.
Speaker 1: And so I think they think their partner do hunt
Speaker 1: together to some extent, but I don't think they actually
Speaker 1: work together in the same way that like a wolf
Speaker 1: pack structure does. But they do stick with one partner
Speaker 1: typically speaking, which is really cute. And they also have
Speaker 1: a roarer bark, which is really unique. Wow, that's it
Speaker 1: does kind of sound like like death metal screaming. Imagine
Speaker 1: hearing that that, like like you smell weed and you're
Speaker 1: smoking weed and you hear that. Yeah. Oh I couldn't
Speaker 1: deal with that. So you're one of your stoner metal
Speaker 1: brethren are coming to join you, you know, because they're
Speaker 1: they're out there vocalizing and that's so. Now I want
Speaker 1: to move on to one of the most unfortunate looking
Speaker 1: monkeys I've ever seen. So this is the black and white,
Speaker 1: young and snub nosed monkey. They're Old world monkeys who
Speaker 1: live in China, and they lack nasal bones and they
Speaker 1: have vibrant, huge pink lips. Uh And honestly, they kind
Speaker 1: of look like those pictures of like when someone gets
Speaker 1: plastic surgery and it goes terribly wrong. Uh. So I
Speaker 1: showed you guys that picture. As you can see, they
Speaker 1: have no nose and just these huge, buluptuous lips. Mean,
Speaker 1: it looks like a photoshop fail. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 1: I mean it really does. The lips look very uncanny Valley.
Speaker 1: The tone of them doesn't match anything else on their body.
Speaker 1: It looks like absolutely all mixed up. I was so,
Speaker 1: I was so taken with the nose. I've seen these
Speaker 1: monkeys before, and I remember I was in a conversation
Speaker 1: with someone about what they do when it rains, like
Speaker 1: they can't look up because the water would get into
Speaker 1: their nasal passages. But I never noticed the lips. I
Speaker 1: was so taken by the nose. And now these yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd agree, I'd agree with you, man. These these lips
Speaker 1: look photo shops from real like Kylie General lips. Yeah. Why, well,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm asking that question continually here. Well
Speaker 1: to know why, first, let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: their habitat. They're one of the um highest altitude of
Speaker 1: all the primates. They live around fifteen thousand feet above
Speaker 1: sea level UM. The reason cold at these high altitudes
Speaker 1: mean that if they had a nose, it would probably
Speaker 1: just get frost bite all the time. So they just
Speaker 1: don't have one. That's how they solve that problem, is
Speaker 1: like nose keeps falling off, Well, just don't just don't
Speaker 1: be born with enough um. And yeah, when it's it rains,
Speaker 1: they'll also sneeze a lot because it gets in their nose.
Speaker 1: And they have to sneeze it out um, and there's
Speaker 1: not that much food and nourishment up here, so they
Speaker 1: actually have evolved to be able to eat lichen off
Speaker 1: of trees, which normally you can't really digestive, but they've
Speaker 1: developed special digestive techniques for being able to get nutrition
Speaker 1: from the lichen um. And as for those juicy lips, uh,
Speaker 1: that actually could be sexual selection, which is really interesting
Speaker 1: because just like in humans, how big red, plump lips
Speaker 1: are considered attractive. This may be considered attractive among these
Speaker 1: numb those monkeys, but it's more important for the males
Speaker 1: to have these big, red, juicy lips. Um. It's also
Speaker 1: it tends to happen where the older males have redder
Speaker 1: and thicker lips, so that could be a dominant signal.
Speaker 1: It could be a sexual maturity signal. And it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's just it's so great. It's like they look like
Speaker 1: they have had way too many fillers in their lips. No,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a terrible idea. It's a bad idea.
Speaker 1: Don't do it. But it looks like that like someone
Speaker 1: like put a vacuum hose against their mouth and then
Speaker 1: pull it away and have these like big lips. But
Speaker 1: they're definitely these are just things they're born with that
Speaker 1: increase I guess in their extreme nature as the animal ages. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh man, how are they doing, like in terms of
Speaker 1: like as a species, are they prevalent or are they
Speaker 1: They're very they're very threatened, uh, you know, and endangered
Speaker 1: their um. They have a very small population size so
Speaker 1: in the just like severals of thousands um so uh.
Speaker 1: And they also have such a unique habitat that uh.
Speaker 1: And they're so isolated. Uh, there's actually a little bit
Speaker 1: of genetic bottleneck. Uh. So researchers have like looked at
Speaker 1: their genome and found lack of diversity because they are
Speaker 1: such a small population and so insular, which is always
Speaker 1: a little bit of a concern with a unique species
Speaker 1: like this, because, um, when you lack a certain amount
Speaker 1: of genetic diversity, if a change to their environment happens
Speaker 1: or some kind of new disease pops up, they are
Speaker 1: much less likely to be able to cope with that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're you know, maybe you were onto something with
Speaker 1: the Kylie gener kind of earlier, because if you could
Speaker 1: get her on board with this, uh and get her
Speaker 1: to post some stuff on Instagram. Oh yeah, if we
Speaker 1: if we could make these monkeys Instagram models like Instagram
Speaker 1: stars like that that, and then people would get on
Speaker 1: board with protecting their them monkey influencers. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I can't believe nobody else has the time come. You know,
Speaker 1: if you went in for an amputation and the surgeon
Speaker 1: sowed your leg on backwards, you might think you've got
Speaker 1: a medical malpractice case. But in some cases this is
Speaker 1: an intentional procedure. Rotation plasty is a procedure in which
Speaker 1: the leg is amputated, usually to exercise bone cancer. Then
Speaker 1: the lower part of the leg, if healthy, is reattached
Speaker 1: to the thigh backwards. The purpose of this is to
Speaker 1: create an knee using the foot. The ankle has the
Speaker 1: same hinge motion as the knee, just backwards, so rotating
Speaker 1: it gives the same locomotion as the knee. This allows
Speaker 1: people who have had an amputation to have a better
Speaker 1: range of motion and to adapt prosthetics with more ease,
Speaker 1: being able to operate a below the knee process thesis
Speaker 1: more easily. It may look a bit strange, but it's
Speaker 1: an innovative procedure that can give people a better quality
Speaker 1: of light. It just goes to show you so called
Speaker 1: weird anatomy can be incredibly useful. When we get back,
Speaker 1: we'll look at some of the more intimidating examples of
Speaker 1: animal anatomy. Dinosaurs. They're big, leathery, with bony claws and
Speaker 1: pointy heads. Our conception of what dinosaurs look like maybe
Speaker 1: a misconception due to what's called shrink rapping. Shrink Rapping
Speaker 1: is when paleo artists artists who try to reconstruct what
Speaker 1: an animal looks like based on its fossil record, don't
Speaker 1: include as much muscle, tissue and fat as an animal
Speaker 1: may have in reality had, which makes them look bony
Speaker 1: and skeletal, sunken, sort of like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.
Speaker 1: In the book Yesterday's Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs
Speaker 1: and other Prehistoric Animals, artists made a series of pictures
Speaker 1: of what did it look like if you did the
Speaker 1: classic shrink rapping artistic rendering of living species based on
Speaker 1: their skeletons. Suddenly, swans are horrible monsters with needle like
Speaker 1: pointy arms. Baboons and squirrels look like grotesque demons. In fact,
Speaker 1: as we now know, dinosaurs may have been feathery and
Speaker 1: brightly colored, maybe even a little chubby. Sometimes a t
Speaker 1: rex may have looked more like a giant threatening chicken.
Speaker 1: As we'll find out, our concept of what animals can
Speaker 1: look like may need to be expanded, and we'll start
Speaker 1: out with a very large, extinct monster who flew the skies.
Speaker 1: Sorry you guys fans of the Jurassic Park thing franchise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the first one was really good, and then
Speaker 1: the most recent one was pretty okay, But the ones
Speaker 1: in between, I wasn't a huge fan. Maybe you just
Speaker 1: maybe you just got older and lost the magic of
Speaker 1: the Jurassic magic. Jurassic Park one totally holds up on
Speaker 1: repeat viewings, Like even though like it was like the
Speaker 1: effects looked really great. I can actually I can verify
Speaker 1: that because when I was a kid, I was too
Speaker 1: scared to watch Jurassic Park. Um, and then I watched
Speaker 1: it as an adult, and it really does hold up.
Speaker 1: It's really good. Uh, it's got quotables. Even even just
Speaker 1: the way the story is structured, you'd still very watchable.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that, as as you pointed out, Katie,
Speaker 1: science is showing us that dinosaurs, what we call dinosaurs
Speaker 1: may have had a ton of feathers, right, instead of
Speaker 1: just scaly skin. Yeah, they may have been a little
Speaker 1: fluffy chicken like creatures. Um, like imagine a t rex,
Speaker 1: but just like a big old chicken with big old
Speaker 1: fluffy feathers. They could have been colorful. They could have
Speaker 1: had like, um, like gol or pouches and head bonds
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, exactly. I think artists are now reimagining
Speaker 1: dinosaurs more to be more fancy and I love that.
Speaker 1: And one group of dinosaurs that I think we have
Speaker 1: a certain conception about them but it is a misconception
Speaker 1: is the pterosaurs. So parosaurs are think like the pterodactyl,
Speaker 1: that's one species of pterosaur, and they're not actually dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: They're winged reptiles that are extinct that are of the
Speaker 1: Mesozoic era. So they are just defined as this group
Speaker 1: of extinct reptile that would have these you know, they
Speaker 1: have those leathery wings that they can use to fly
Speaker 1: like a pterodactyl. But I want to talk about one
Speaker 1: of the most incredible species of pterosaurs, which is the
Speaker 1: cats acts north Ropy. Does that sound right? Yeah? Is
Speaker 1: um it's a reference to Maya culture. Yes, that feathery serpent.
Speaker 1: God right, the plume serpent and this this thing is
Speaker 1: I have to ask just looking at maybe a recreation
Speaker 1: or a model of this. Uh, my first question is
Speaker 1: could it actually fly? Because that head is ginormous. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it could have flown. The scientists
Speaker 1: actually there were like physicists trying to figure out whether
Speaker 1: this thing could fly. And it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a controversial debate, but most researchers, I think agree that
Speaker 1: it could indeed fly. Um, which is insane looking at
Speaker 1: it because so far our listeners it was it looks
Speaker 1: sort of pterodactyl like, but it was as tall as
Speaker 1: a giraffe with a thirty five ft wingspan. It's about
Speaker 1: the size of a S S No. One two airplane. Um.
Speaker 1: It has a long, sharp pointed beak and a really muscular,
Speaker 1: stiff neck. Uh. And so when they're on the ground, uh,
Speaker 1: they can fold their wings kind of like I mean
Speaker 1: like when you see in uh fantasy movies how dragons
Speaker 1: walk on the ground, where when they don't have fore legs,
Speaker 1: like uh in Game of Thrones, how the dragons would
Speaker 1: walk on they're folded up wings. That's exactly how these
Speaker 1: guys would walk on the ground. Paleontologists think, Uh, so
Speaker 1: they actually have a um sort of physical structure similar
Speaker 1: to large ungulates like giraffes, So they may have been
Speaker 1: able to walk UM with a similar ease as a giraffe. UM.
Speaker 1: Probably not quite as good because of those big old
Speaker 1: flappity wings UM and uh. Some researchers actually think that
Speaker 1: they could have made transcontinental flights because they're just so
Speaker 1: dang big, and they may be caught the right thermal
Speaker 1: or something in for a while. So looking at this thing, though,
Speaker 1: like I mean, I leave flying out of it. I
Speaker 1: don't feel like they'd be able to stand up right.
Speaker 1: The head is so huge. I feel like they would
Speaker 1: just like topple over. But I guess the only the
Speaker 1: only explanation there is was the beak like really light
Speaker 1: or something like does it just looks so top heavy
Speaker 1: and unwieldy. I mean, I think it's just their their vertebrae.
Speaker 1: If you look at um a skeletal uh, the fossil
Speaker 1: and the skeleton of it, their vertebrae were huge, just
Speaker 1: these really thick, thick structures UM. And then couple that
Speaker 1: with some really swollen neck muscles, and then I think
Speaker 1: a beak, which is you know, a lot of their
Speaker 1: head is, you know, the the beak structure, even though
Speaker 1: that's quite large, it is hollow for the most part.
Speaker 1: And then you know, the head is obviously pretty heavy,
Speaker 1: but then that the little bump on top of the
Speaker 1: fleshy bump on top of their beak is probably pretty
Speaker 1: light too, So I can see how they do it
Speaker 1: because like if their neck vertebrae are just real chunky, yeah,
Speaker 1: they definitely have feathers. They may have had feathers, so
Speaker 1: there's evidence other pterosaurs had primitive feathers to keep them warm.
Speaker 1: So there's a real good chance that they were just big, feathery,
Speaker 1: huge monsters, which is pretty incredible. So in DARPA, you know,
Speaker 1: the defense contracting company that they like to do robots
Speaker 1: and weird technology stuff, they used one of these guys,
Speaker 1: the cats akodalists north Ropy as a model for an
Speaker 1: unmanned ornithopter uh so that's a flying vehicle that uses
Speaker 1: flapping wing motions. And it was this unmanned flying uh
Speaker 1: like tarosaur. Vehicle was eighteen feet and had a weight
Speaker 1: of forty pounds. And I can't find out what Like,
Speaker 1: I think they just have it in a museum because
Speaker 1: I it doesn't sound like it worked too good. No,
Speaker 1: but that would be funny because like now we have drones,
Speaker 1: which are less funny, but the like if drones just
Speaker 1: like we're big things that were like flapping their wings
Speaker 1: trying to go unnoticed, like don't mind me, normal giant
Speaker 1: pterodactyl sore. Yeah, that's you know, there's a reason that
Speaker 1: we don't catch a lot of ornithopters at the airport
Speaker 1: now it right, Yeah, it's not when you can have
Speaker 1: a plane like structure where you the energy is not
Speaker 1: in the flapping motion but rather uh fuel situation, that
Speaker 1: is a lot better. But they didn't learn their lesson
Speaker 1: because in two thousand and nine they created a hummingbird
Speaker 1: sized ornithopter um, which it actually worked a lot better.
Speaker 1: It looks like and it's really creepy, and I guess
Speaker 1: now we kind of have to worry that maybe a
Speaker 1: hummingbird is a government robot. Have you guys heard of that? Like,
Speaker 1: birds aren't real campaign I support that entirely. I'm just
Speaker 1: putting that out there. Um. I hate to say this,
Speaker 1: but this is another feather in their cap. So to speak,
Speaker 1: because they did create robot hummingbirds. Um. I'm always getting
Speaker 1: harassed about that because I owned the pro bird rights
Speaker 1: Twitter account. Um, so people are always like saying, well,
Speaker 1: did you know birds aren't real? Um, which is offensive
Speaker 1: to me and my people. Actually, yeah, we get a
Speaker 1: lot of that on our other show stuff. They don't
Speaker 1: want you to know, but it's mainly from flat earthers,
Speaker 1: So we feel your pain on that. Yes, yeah, really
Speaker 1: like just people writing in and saying like that the
Speaker 1: Earth is flat and yeah, basically you guys are that.
Speaker 1: You guys are idiots, and uh, you know, get off
Speaker 1: your high horse. I'll send you I'll send you some
Speaker 1: some choice words. Typically, I've been a victim of some
Speaker 1: rebuttal videos to regarding the flat Earth, and I found
Speaker 1: them massively in youring. So you know, if you're fighting
Speaker 1: a good fight, whether bird rights or the shape of
Speaker 1: the planet, you just gotta you gotta take the long game. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm actually a kangaroo vagina earther. I think that's the shape,
Speaker 1: you know. I have been reading the blog of your organization,
Speaker 1: the Kangaroo Vagina Earthers uh dot blog spot dot yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I gotta say I. I, uh, I don't entirely agree,
Speaker 1: but I think you raised some valid and fascinating points.
Speaker 1: Would you agree nor? Oh? Absolutely? I just want to
Speaker 1: I just want to start a conversation. I'm just looking
Speaker 1: for a new movement to get behind, you know, and this,
Speaker 1: this seems like the one for me. Well, you, guys,
Speaker 1: I want to take you back to imagination station. M
Speaker 1: imagineer trapesing through the zag Gross mountains of western Iran
Speaker 1: and suddenly you see a spider crawling on a rock.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's a spider. But maybe you listen to
Speaker 1: this podcast, so you know that most spiders are friends. Uh,
Speaker 1: And you reached down to pet the spider, which I'm
Speaker 1: not actually recommending that you do that. Don't pet spiders,
Speaker 1: you know some of them are venomous, but also just
Speaker 1: like they don't want to be pet by you. But
Speaker 1: you do it for some reason, and suddenly the rock
Speaker 1: transforms into a viper and eats your face. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's brutal. Twist. I want to talk about something called
Speaker 1: the spider tailed horned viper, which is how it sounds like. Um,
Speaker 1: it is found in Iran. Uh, in the in western Iran,
Speaker 1: like in the mountains. Uh. It has a unique adaptation
Speaker 1: to lure in birds to prey upon, So it has
Speaker 1: uh what's called a caudle lure, which is science words
Speaker 1: for a bamboozl tale. The tail ends in a bulb,
Speaker 1: and along the tail are these elongated spindle e scales
Speaker 1: that kind of look like insect legs. So the total
Speaker 1: effect is that it looks like this weird spider. And
Speaker 1: then what the snake does is it kind of twirls
Speaker 1: and slowly moves its tail around, and the effect looks
Speaker 1: extremely convincingly like a crawling spider. When I first saw this,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was looking at, so I
Speaker 1: just thought it was like a spider crawling around. And
Speaker 1: then suddenly this viper appears out of nowhere, because yeah,
Speaker 1: the the viper itself has camouflage, so it blends right
Speaker 1: in with the rocks, except that its tail, which sticks
Speaker 1: out and looks like a spider. So the birds all
Speaker 1: they see is this juicy looking spider moving around, and
Speaker 1: then they go and attack the tail. And there was
Speaker 1: one video I particularly liked because uh it showed a
Speaker 1: bird attack the tail that it thought was the spider,
Speaker 1: and then the viper kind of like um lunges at it,
Speaker 1: and the bird flies away temporarily, and then it comes
Speaker 1: back and attacks the spider or the fake spider tail again,
Speaker 1: and then the snake like eats. It's just does not
Speaker 1: learn its lesson. Oh man, But I want to say,
Speaker 1: like this, this viper needs to get a job with
Speaker 1: like the Jim Henson Company, because there's some serious finesse
Speaker 1: to this, like puppeteering with this fake spider. I mean
Speaker 1: it's not just I mean it's there's some real subtlety
Speaker 1: to the way the thing moves to make it look
Speaker 1: like a crawling creature. And you're right, like, I was
Speaker 1: totally taken vipers. I'm like, what am I looking at?
Speaker 1: I thought it was a rock with a spider crawling
Speaker 1: on And then yeah, the plot twist is when you
Speaker 1: realize the viper's there the whole time, right right exactly.
Speaker 1: The Viper's just like eat is me? I am? I
Speaker 1: am kermit? The spider do not worry. So it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting because this looks like, uh, this is an amazing adaptation.
Speaker 1: It reminds me very much of the adaptation that rattlesnakes have.
Speaker 1: It's like the same. What did you call the caudal area, yeah,
Speaker 1: which just means tail area. Yeah. Okay, so they went
Speaker 1: into a different direction, and I gotta say, these are
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've always loved the rattlesnake adaptation because
Speaker 1: it's like they have their own Morocca, you know. But
Speaker 1: this is like a leveled up version though, right, it's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they sacrifice puppeteer. They've sacrificed percussion for puppeteering, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. If you could get like a rattlesnake
Speaker 1: and one of these vipers together, you got a show. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: You've got a whole presentation. You might get bit at
Speaker 1: the end. Yes. So, speaking of reptiles, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about the Mexican mole lizard. It's a worm, it's
Speaker 1: a snake. Nope, it's some old lizard. It's found in
Speaker 1: Baja California, and it looks like a pink, squiggly little
Speaker 1: spaghetti guy. It really does look like a warm ut
Speaker 1: on first sight. But it is actually a type of
Speaker 1: reptile in the Amphysbania group, which is warm lizards. So
Speaker 1: a lot of worm lizards just don't have legs at all.
Speaker 1: They're legless lizards. They're not snakes actually are distinct species
Speaker 1: of lizards. But this one, the Mexican mole lizard, does
Speaker 1: have legs, but they're really tiny and stubby and they
Speaker 1: only have four legs um, which is really it's very funny.
Speaker 1: So if you guys look at that little picture of it,
Speaker 1: you see it looks and they're so brightly colored pink.
Speaker 1: They look like, you know, they don't even look like
Speaker 1: real worms. They look like those gummy worms just and
Speaker 1: then but they have those little two little legs out
Speaker 1: in front that they can use to kind of burrow
Speaker 1: into soft sand. Are they dragging themselves completely with those
Speaker 1: their muscles constrict and relax like a snake's for movement. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's partially the muscles, uh, moving them along
Speaker 1: along the abdomen um and the little legs may help
Speaker 1: a little bit with movement, but it's also helping them
Speaker 1: with burrowing and crawling down holes. But yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: just like them like putting one leg out like drag
Speaker 1: and the other one is drags. So they're about eight
Speaker 1: inches long and it actually has an autonomous tail, which
Speaker 1: is think about like lizards and how you can yank
Speaker 1: their tail off. Don't do that actually be nice the lizards,
Speaker 1: but if they are caught by a predator, they can
Speaker 1: remove their tail. Uh, and the tail kind of wiggles around.
Speaker 1: So these guys have that, except unlike lizards, their tails
Speaker 1: don't regenerate, so they got like one or two shots,
Speaker 1: I guess. And uh. In fact, it's quite useful when
Speaker 1: they're bur going down and like their tail detaches because
Speaker 1: then it also plugs up the burrow and keeps the
Speaker 1: predator from getting to them. But like I said, they
Speaker 1: they can't blow their load too soon or else they're
Speaker 1: out of a tail. Yeah, geez, I've got to say. Also,
Speaker 1: these things look kind of like a slinky that someone
Speaker 1: had coated with a pink I don't know, like a
Speaker 1: pink curtain wrapping around them and then kind of just
Speaker 1: messed it up. Get it slammy. The little close up
Speaker 1: is really strange. Like on the first slide, you guy
Speaker 1: here where you've got like a long shot where it
Speaker 1: really does look like a worm minus the tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: little arms, and then it almost like made me laugh
Speaker 1: out loud when you zoom in and you see it's
Speaker 1: tiny little lizard face and these bizarre little turtle hands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of what they look like, is a little
Speaker 1: miniature turtle hands. Yeah. What how does this thing live?
Speaker 1: How does this thing survive? Why does this thing exist?
Speaker 1: I mean exist to atually? I can't really answer that
Speaker 1: for you. But actually, if you like, go down, there's
Speaker 1: a little video of it moving around, uh, and it's
Speaker 1: you can see that the little legs does help it
Speaker 1: as it's burrowing down into the sand, and you can
Speaker 1: actually see its body undulating to that the that abdominal
Speaker 1: movement of the muscles helping propel it forward. But it's
Speaker 1: kind of funny because it is just walking along with
Speaker 1: the legs to uh. So it uses the legs to
Speaker 1: dig and burrow, um, and then uh the uh. It's
Speaker 1: it's sort of a similar to how you know one
Speaker 1: imagined snake evolved where it's like, well I don't really
Speaker 1: need the back legs, but in this case, the front
Speaker 1: legs are pretty still pretty useful and cute. It is cute.
Speaker 1: It kind of looks like a little baby do you
Speaker 1: remember Dune or like tremmors, like a little baby sand
Speaker 1: worm but a door in beetlejuice. Yeah, um, but pink
Speaker 1: uh it is actually like the dune sandworms or or tremors,
Speaker 1: because it pulls its prey underground to eat them. So,
Speaker 1: like if you were a little insect size, these would
Speaker 1: be pretty horrifying. Oh yeah, yeah, I can imagine so,
Speaker 1: but now what you said. They're eight nine inches long, right,
Speaker 1: there's primarily primarily underground, so I don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about accidentally running into one on the street unless you're
Speaker 1: unless you're like in Baja California and you're like rooting
Speaker 1: around in the sand. Are they venomous at all? And
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if I missed it, And if you said that,
Speaker 1: like would they would they give you a bite? Or
Speaker 1: they might, they might buy you, But I don't think
Speaker 1: they could hurt you, and I don't think they're venomous.
Speaker 1: Looking at their face, it looks like they could. If not,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it would be so much as
Speaker 1: of a bite as like a really aggressive gumming. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they would nom at you angrily, sort of like a
Speaker 1: like an unfriendly hickey. Yes, yes, it's a great bad name.
Speaker 1: I think the unfriendly Hickies and the purple nerd bullets
Speaker 1: um So, finally, our last animal, I wanna give the blobfish.
Speaker 1: Shine some light on this blobfish and kind of clear
Speaker 1: its name a little bit, because I think it's been
Speaker 1: slandered by the media for far too long. Um So,
Speaker 1: you guys might all be familiar with the blobfish, do
Speaker 1: you guys? Have you guys seen these picture of of
Speaker 1: the blobfish before? I've seen the first one definitely, because
Speaker 1: it comes up whenever you're searching a rabbit hole for
Speaker 1: like weird creatures of the abistle planes in the ocean.
Speaker 1: Uh and it looks like it looks like a guy
Speaker 1: who's having a bad day, right, It's that it's that
Speaker 1: viral picture of like this pink, big nose deflated blobs.
Speaker 1: It kind of looks like a ziggy cartoon head exactly.
Speaker 1: Um and uh so that you know, we're probably when
Speaker 1: you think about it, you think of this little blobfish
Speaker 1: like looking like that in the ocean, just swoorn around
Speaker 1: looking sad and blobby. But this this is medialized in
Speaker 1: slander and liberal and all those bad things. Um. So.
Speaker 1: Blobfish are deep water fish that live off of the
Speaker 1: coast of guess guess guess what coast? Uh, the a
Speaker 1: Pacific coast Nope, Australia. Oh, that makes so much more sense.
Speaker 1: So the pressure at four thousand feet underwater is over
Speaker 1: a hundred times that of the surface. So for animals
Speaker 1: living down there, they've been specialized such that they can
Speaker 1: survive in these crushing depths. But just as you'd be
Speaker 1: crushed diving that deep, blobfish and other fish, when brought
Speaker 1: up to the surface will kind of explode. So the blobfish,
Speaker 1: when alive in its natural habitat, looks kind of like
Speaker 1: an ugly but relatively normal fish. So I showed you
Speaker 1: guys the picture of the blob fish when he's alive
Speaker 1: and healthy. Uh, and you can see he's actually his
Speaker 1: skin has a different texture. He's not just uniformly pink
Speaker 1: and gooey. He's got some spines on his skin, he's
Speaker 1: got some color differentiation, and he's got ice sockets and
Speaker 1: a distinctive fins. And I mean the mouth is pretty
Speaker 1: still pretty moby, to be fair, Uh, but it does
Speaker 1: it looks recognizably like a fish, just a bit of
Speaker 1: an ugly fish, right yeah, with a big floppity mouth.
Speaker 1: But once it reaches the surface, uh, it kind of
Speaker 1: turns into that weird pudding and that's why it has
Speaker 1: that distinctive ziggy look. That's that's the desecrated corpse of
Speaker 1: a blobfish. And so I think it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where that kind of demonstrates how easily we can misunderstand, uh,
Speaker 1: natural discoveries. Um because while that's not a doctored image,
Speaker 1: the one of the blobfish, there's nothing fake about it.
Speaker 1: It's just that's not how they would look in their
Speaker 1: natural environment. Um. So our conception of these these ziggy
Speaker 1: heads just kind of floating on the ocean floor is
Speaker 1: not quite correct. You know what I think would be great, Katie,
Speaker 1: is to have a have these two pictures in a
Speaker 1: p s A. Because they're great before and after, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, like meth not even once? Or
Speaker 1: what's what not even once? Yeah, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: what's a hot button issue with the ocean? Plastic straws,
Speaker 1: not even plastic stra us, ocean acidification, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: worms on hooks, not even once. Apparently tie pods are back, y'all.
Speaker 1: I've got a ten year old daughter and she informed
Speaker 1: me that tide pods are back because they now have
Speaker 1: non toxic tide pods, So the kids are really going
Speaker 1: to town like actually, ah children. Yeah, I know this.
Speaker 1: This has been a blast as always, Katie and and
Speaker 1: been looking back through our exploration today and wondering if
Speaker 1: I had to pick one adaptation for myself, what would
Speaker 1: I pick? And right now all I've got is that
Speaker 1: I feel very fortunate to be human. We're not perfect,
Speaker 1: but but there's a lot of there's a lot of
Speaker 1: weird stuff. We don't have to do this at least
Speaker 1: we don't have to pull a skin flap up over
Speaker 1: our bodies to be able to poop. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of. Yep. Well, thank you guys so much for
Speaker 1: joining me. Uh why don't you tell people where the
Speaker 1: heck they can find you? Yeah, we are Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1: We have new episodes coming out every Tuesday and Thursday.
Speaker 1: You can find us on our website Ridiculous History Show
Speaker 1: dot com. Yeah I think so. I don't really go
Speaker 1: to the website, but the best way to reach us
Speaker 1: as you can email us at Ridiculous at I heart
Speaker 1: radio dot com, or you can check me out on Instagram.
Speaker 1: I am at how now Noel Brown. You can find
Speaker 1: me getting kicked into and out of various countries and
Speaker 1: communities at at Ben Bolan on Instagram or at ben
Speaker 1: Bowland h s W on Twitter. And you can find
Speaker 1: our show Ridiculous History wherever you find your favorite podcast.
Speaker 1: It's True All of Its True. You can find us
Speaker 1: on the web at Creature feature pod dot com. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Instagram Creature feature Pod and on
Speaker 1: Twitter Creature feet Pod f e a T. Be sure
Speaker 1: to put that in or else you will get some
Speaker 1: weird images. I I've been Katie Golden. You can find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Katie Golden or also pro bird Rights,
Speaker 1: where I am really fighting against the media lies and
Speaker 1: slander about how birds aren't real. In fact they are
Speaker 1: and sometimes their tongues go inside. There's goals And thanks
Speaker 1: to the Space Classics for their awesome song Exo Lumina.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
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