Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Future production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we're talking
Speaker 1: about animal hobbies. While us humans are all trying to
Speaker 1: figure out our favorite hobbies to occupy our time, animals
Speaker 1: are already running crocheting and baking circles around us. We're
Speaker 1: talking be Baker's web spinners, carpenters, fake astronomers, and dolphin Shenanigans.
Speaker 1: Discovered this more as we answered the angel question do
Speaker 1: you really want to know what a bee mom's secret
Speaker 1: ingredient is? Joining me today is stand up comedian host
Speaker 1: of the podcast You Can Tell Me Anything, and my
Speaker 1: friend Theresa Lee. Thanks for having me, Katie, of course
Speaker 1: it's good to see you. So today we're talking about
Speaker 1: hobby ease and what we've been doing to kind of
Speaker 1: like stay you know, relatively emotionally stable at this time
Speaker 1: um and how animals, how animals do like their hobbies
Speaker 1: and how they stay alive much like we're trying to
Speaker 1: do now. So what are some of the hobbies that
Speaker 1: you've picked up to kind of cope with the new
Speaker 1: the new lifestyle. First, I have to say, this is
Speaker 1: a marker of how long we've been at Quarantine is
Speaker 1: I've been able to do your podcast twice during that's right,
Speaker 1: your second this is our second Quarantine episode. That's my
Speaker 1: how I mark time now is how many times I've
Speaker 1: done this. I don't even remember the more four times,
Speaker 1: to be honest, Like when I think back to actually
Speaker 1: recording in a studio, I was like, oh, yeah, it
Speaker 1: used to be in a studio, not just I do.
Speaker 1: I do prefer the for me just because I was
Speaker 1: doing all the like, I was very like bootstrapping my podcast.
Speaker 1: So it has been easier to get people to do
Speaker 1: it over zoom than when I had to make them
Speaker 1: drive to me. Yeah. But as but as the editor
Speaker 1: of this podcast, I have to say, I'm starting to
Speaker 1: dislike the sounds of cars and the sounds of planes.
Speaker 1: It makes me viscerally angry when I hear a plane
Speaker 1: fly over. Now. But yeah, so how have you like
Speaker 1: picked up any hobbies Like I've been crocheting a lot. Um,
Speaker 1: I learned how to crochet. Yeah, I do have some
Speaker 1: quarantine hobbies. I Um, I'm learning to code and that's
Speaker 1: a bit. It's very real I think like that feels
Speaker 1: like a step up from a hobby, that feels like
Speaker 1: a life skill. I don't know when it's me. It's
Speaker 1: definitely because I years ago. I mean, I've always been
Speaker 1: interested in robots and the Singularity, but I was researching
Speaker 1: AI more for like a pilotis writing. And then now
Speaker 1: I just actually want to have app ideas I want
Speaker 1: to make. And I think it's because I don't have
Speaker 1: stand up so I've been actively putting together stupid ideas.
Speaker 1: That's one I also got into, like I wish I
Speaker 1: actually had like a house I could work on, but
Speaker 1: the very little I can do in my apartment, I
Speaker 1: realize I really like power tools, so I bow my
Speaker 1: I brought my boyfriend's drill and put up like a
Speaker 1: wall of mirrors to make a little dance studio. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been really fun slash probably unhealthy because I'm obsesssaying
Speaker 1: over things I shouldn't be doing. I also have like
Speaker 1: I have renovation envy. I live in a very small apartment.
Speaker 1: I don't think our lease would allow me to break
Speaker 1: down a wall or anything. Also, my neighbors probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: like that me bursting into their living room. But so
Speaker 1: we are talking about the things that animals do. Like
Speaker 1: now we think it's like really trendy to do all
Speaker 1: of these hobbies like crocheting and breadmaking, but these are
Speaker 1: things that animals have been doing for millennia. And first
Speaker 1: I want to talk about bees and how they are
Speaker 1: a little pastry chefs. They're incredible. We don't think about
Speaker 1: animals doing baking, right because like that's like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: you need to be a human with thumbs and like
Speaker 1: a chef's hat to be able to like do baking.
Speaker 1: But bees are incredible when it comes to food preparation.
Speaker 1: And I want to talk about something literally called bee
Speaker 1: bread because bees don't just make honey, they also make bread.
Speaker 1: What exactly I was, It's like one of those things
Speaker 1: where you learn about this and it just seems so whimsical,
Speaker 1: like like you imagine a bunch of fairies at a
Speaker 1: tea party with some bees and they're sharing bee bread
Speaker 1: and the bees are like, yeah, I regurgitated it myself.
Speaker 1: But it's it is pretty incredible actually, this whole process.
Speaker 1: So honey is great for bees and that it contains
Speaker 1: a lot of sugar which helps give them nutrition and
Speaker 1: helps them give nutrients to their growing larva, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't have that much protein, and so that's where bee
Speaker 1: bread comes in, and that's where they get a lot
Speaker 1: of their proteins. So be bread or ambrosia is a
Speaker 1: bit of bee confection that they create by collecting pollen.
Speaker 1: So when bees go from flower to flower, they collect
Speaker 1: pollen all over their bodies. And that's not just sort
Speaker 1: of a byproduct of them collecting nectar. Obviously it helps
Speaker 1: the flowers because that's how flowers are pollinated. A bee
Speaker 1: gets in there, gets all in the flower sex organs,
Speaker 1: rummages around, goes to another flower, and then uh pollinates that.
Speaker 1: It's all very very kinky stuff. But um, they also
Speaker 1: intentionally collect the pollen so their bodies are covered in hair.
Speaker 1: That's why they're so adorable. And yeah, now, I mean like, look,
Speaker 1: what what's the point of shaving these days? We need
Speaker 1: we need it to collect the pollen. Is how else
Speaker 1: are we going to make this bee bread? So they
Speaker 1: will clean their faces off. Their fore legs have little
Speaker 1: built in combs that they can comb the pollen off
Speaker 1: of their little faces. That's like when they do the
Speaker 1: cute little I love that you're doing. People can't hear
Speaker 1: this on the pod, but Katie is doing a little
Speaker 1: b impression and a toute. I've got to I've got
Speaker 1: to embody the bee with a little dealers going all
Speaker 1: over my face. I have to become the bee. Become
Speaker 1: the bee. So then they pass all of the pollen
Speaker 1: they've collected off of their faces to their metal set
Speaker 1: of legs, so they have three pairs of legs and
Speaker 1: they move the pollen like a conveyor belt down to
Speaker 1: the back pair of legs, their hind legs that actually
Speaker 1: have a built in basket for pollen called corbricula. So
Speaker 1: the curricula is a cavity in the hind legs surrounded
Speaker 1: by hair um so that when they like pack in
Speaker 1: the pollen, it just sticks in there. It's literally a
Speaker 1: little basket in their legs. Wow. I mean, I wonder
Speaker 1: what which came first, the kangaroo or beat that is.
Speaker 1: I think it was bees. Actually, yeah, I'm gonna say bees.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I think it's that makes sense because they're
Speaker 1: a little more like bugs and Jurassic Park or whatever.
Speaker 1: I feel like, Yeah, I think there weren't kangaroos and
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park skeletally yea similar, very similar, very similar. You know,
Speaker 1: marsupials are a bit of a strange kind of evolutionary detour.
Speaker 1: I do think that if you like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like a velociraptor versus a kangaroo. I feel like people
Speaker 1: in Australia, what do you think kangaroos are pretty ornery.
Speaker 1: I'd give them a run for their their money. The
Speaker 1: hop thank you, I'm sorry. I apologize for missing that one. Everyone.
Speaker 1: So they basically pack in this pollen ball, using collected
Speaker 1: nectar and saliva to turn it into this tidy little lump,
Speaker 1: and then they can so much that it's like a
Speaker 1: third of their weight. So they're caring just these It's
Speaker 1: actually kind of funny to see them because they just
Speaker 1: have these big, old like um balls connected to their
Speaker 1: legs that they're flying around on. And then they returned
Speaker 1: to the hive and they have that beautiful hive structure
Speaker 1: where you have these honeycomb all the little cells, and
Speaker 1: they shove the water of pollen into an empty cell
Speaker 1: um and then put a bit of nectar on top
Speaker 1: to seal it in and then just let it marinate
Speaker 1: in the juices of like saliva nectar and then all
Speaker 1: of this pollen and then it turns into be bread
Speaker 1: which that they can um either the adults can eat
Speaker 1: later they can also like collect it and then use
Speaker 1: it to feed their young and um people sometimes eat it,
Speaker 1: although I'm not sure, Like there's often these claims about
Speaker 1: health benefits of eating beeB it, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that there's anything that's really um backed up by research.
Speaker 1: Unit is feeling better than the person you're talking to, exactly.
Speaker 1: The benefit is feeling like a fairy queen who reigns
Speaker 1: over the realm of bees, and like have your tiny
Speaker 1: tea set with your little bee bread. Does the bread
Speaker 1: like actually baked like by the sun or why do
Speaker 1: they call it? It's just it's sort of an oven
Speaker 1: less bread. I think they call that's a good question.
Speaker 1: Why they call it bread. I guess it's just they
Speaker 1: look a little bit like buns. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's the reason why. That's how that's how it forms
Speaker 1: in my mind, but yeah, I think it's just because
Speaker 1: they store it in a pantry and it's a solid,
Speaker 1: you know, it's more of a solid than like honey.
Speaker 1: Is so kind of seems bread like, and you know,
Speaker 1: as humans we can technically eat it because it's pollen
Speaker 1: and stuff, but I think there's like some complications with it,
Speaker 1: like it can actually trigger allergies and some people I
Speaker 1: can also, I think have like um, which does as
Speaker 1: well a lot of you know, celia. That's true, that's true.
Speaker 1: I wonder if like if like if you have like
Speaker 1: could you although I thought there's like some crossover if
Speaker 1: you have a gluten intolerance and like potential other allergies.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so it's not um. It's not necessarily always
Speaker 1: good to just eat. But you know, it's like, I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of funny whenever it's like whenever there's
Speaker 1: something that an animal makes, humans are just like, oh
Speaker 1: if I eat that, maybe I'll like gain the powers
Speaker 1: of a bee. That's funny. Yeah, I wonder It's almost
Speaker 1: like I feel like we would learn more by trying
Speaker 1: to do what they are their version of what they're doing,
Speaker 1: instead of just taking it from the Like what would
Speaker 1: are I mean, I don't know, it sounds gross, but
Speaker 1: like could are are we not using our saliva in
Speaker 1: the right way, like human saliva and crumbs? Maybe if
Speaker 1: we collected by ch of pollen and pack it just
Speaker 1: like lick it into a ball. You know. You know
Speaker 1: what freaks me out about saliva is when you chew
Speaker 1: on gum or like suck on a hard candy, you're
Speaker 1: just like eating your flavored saliva because the candy goes
Speaker 1: down so parts of it. It's a but you're digesting
Speaker 1: it and you're you're like melting it in your mouth
Speaker 1: with your saliva, so you are sucking down like flavored
Speaker 1: sugary saliva. I suppose I guess that doesn't bother me
Speaker 1: that much. I'm trying to think of what. I don't
Speaker 1: know why it doesn't bother because I'm think it was
Speaker 1: the opposite. It's spitting out the saliva, which that feels
Speaker 1: grosser than just swallowing, right, that's true. I feel like
Speaker 1: saliva when it's still in your mouth is fair game.
Speaker 1: Once the saliva leaves your mouth, then you know, you
Speaker 1: swallow your own saliva all the time. But if someone
Speaker 1: was like, okay, spitting this cup, and I do it
Speaker 1: because I like to blindly follow instruction, and then they're like,
Speaker 1: now drink this saliva, I'd be horrified and wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to do it, even though that i'd like happily slip
Speaker 1: down my own saliva, like when it's still in my mouth, right, true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never understood when couples shar toothbrushes. That's always gross.
Speaker 1: But then it's like, technically the saliva, it's not what
Speaker 1: bothers me. But I think it's this idea that it's
Speaker 1: a cleaning device. And I'm like, I don't know, I'll like,
Speaker 1: you know, kiss my significant other, but sharing a spoon
Speaker 1: is it's fine, I'll do it, but it's still there's
Speaker 1: a slight thing of like I don't know though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll like lick the inside of your mouth, and I'll
Speaker 1: lick your teeth, but I will not use the same spoon. Right,
Speaker 1: I'll use my tongue to floss your teeth. But sharing
Speaker 1: a spoon, licking the same ice cream, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. So another be that does some confection
Speaker 1: that looks delicious. I don't know if it would actually
Speaker 1: taste good, but I do want to eat it. It
Speaker 1: is the blue orchard mason bees. Now, these are gorgeous
Speaker 1: little bees. They are different from honey bees in that
Speaker 1: they are their wild bees and they do not live
Speaker 1: in hives. Honey bees are considered somewhat domesticated because they
Speaker 1: are not from North America. They're not indigenous to North America.
Speaker 1: We introduce them to help us pollinate in agriculture and
Speaker 1: obviously for their honey because it's delicious. But blue orchard
Speaker 1: mason bees, as well as other types of wild bees,
Speaker 1: they are native to North America. They are solitary bees,
Speaker 1: so every female bees will have her own babies, and
Speaker 1: they do not live in hives. They're uh, they're not
Speaker 1: intolerant of each other, though they sometimes live in like
Speaker 1: apartment complexes where it's like they all make their burrows
Speaker 1: in the same area. In fact, like farmers will often
Speaker 1: create artific a shell apartment complexes for the bees because
Speaker 1: they love them. They use them for pollinating their crops.
Speaker 1: Wait are there, so there's no queen bee because they
Speaker 1: all have their own Are their kings are there? Like? Okay,
Speaker 1: now it's still a society. It's just a free for all.
Speaker 1: And they're these big competitions for males to try to
Speaker 1: mate with females, and every female will have her own offspring,
Speaker 1: and they like to live in hollowed out branches. So
Speaker 1: just basically a little hole that they can just fit into,
Speaker 1: and they will make their own nest by going out
Speaker 1: and collecting clay, picking it up with their mandibles, flying
Speaker 1: it back to that hollow twig, and then lining the
Speaker 1: inside so they might make this nice clay lined den,
Speaker 1: and then they go about creating. They look like they're
Speaker 1: scoops of sorebet um for their offspring. That is a
Speaker 1: mixture of pollen and nectar and probablybly a lot of
Speaker 1: their saliva. Saliva gets everywhere in nature. I hate to
Speaker 1: say it, um, you're probably eating a lot of bee
Speaker 1: saliva with with the honey, which shouldn't be a problem.
Speaker 1: It's great, but so like I said, they're excellent pollinators.
Speaker 1: They even though they are their populations are much smaller
Speaker 1: than honey bees. Hive structures are great for creating huge
Speaker 1: populations because the queen bee is so well cared for
Speaker 1: that she pumps out enormous numbers of offspring every day
Speaker 1: and everyone in the hive is just ensuring the success
Speaker 1: of these offspring. So it's it's they are able to
Speaker 1: maintain a huge population, whereas solitary bees since every um,
Speaker 1: basically every mother is only producing a few offspring. Uh,
Speaker 1: they just aren't as populous as the other as the
Speaker 1: hive introduced species of bees. But each individual bee is
Speaker 1: a much better pollinator than each individual need be. They
Speaker 1: really are very busy and they get They just traveled
Speaker 1: to so many different flowers. They're excellent pollinators, great for agriculture.
Speaker 1: It's like a smaller classroom versus a bigger classroom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one queen overseas the whole hive versus exactly it's accepted.
Speaker 1: I don't know that better works. I was trying to
Speaker 1: think of a metaphor it, but then I'm like, that
Speaker 1: feels too political. Was to try to be political? Well,
Speaker 1: what Teresa is trying to say is that we should
Speaker 1: use bees to teach our children. And I do like
Speaker 1: this bold new direction for American for educational system. You know,
Speaker 1: where's the Yeah, maybe those bee mothers could take on
Speaker 1: a few human children, right, feed them just like shove
Speaker 1: pollen and spit and our kids mouths, and nourish them.
Speaker 1: I would have to be watched, my kid, I would live,
Speaker 1: I too would littally watch. There's no bees in federal
Speaker 1: prison right now? Oh? Did I mention that blue orchard
Speaker 1: mason bees are blue? They're very they're very cute. I
Speaker 1: love bees. They have sort of a shiny they're very fuzzy,
Speaker 1: but then like they're under that, their exoskeleton has this
Speaker 1: kind of like shiny iridescent blue color that's very pretty.
Speaker 1: They are so cute. So they're almost like flies, but
Speaker 1: like cute. Yeah, because they don't have like the striped
Speaker 1: they don't have the striped pattern that honey bees have.
Speaker 1: So you look at when you may not recognize it
Speaker 1: as a B, it is a B. And like I
Speaker 1: was saying, so they create basically this long tube that
Speaker 1: is their din made out of clay inside a hollow twig,
Speaker 1: and then they start collecting pollen and nectar and creating
Speaker 1: little balls of It's basically a confectionery treat for their offspring,
Speaker 1: and that they will put into the tube. And they
Speaker 1: will lay a single egg on each of these balls
Speaker 1: of pollen and nectar that they've collected and then seal
Speaker 1: that in with a little bit more clay. Then move
Speaker 1: on to this next compartment in the tube, lay another
Speaker 1: egg on top of like a ball of this confection
Speaker 1: this nectar all in mix, and then seal that in.
Speaker 1: So they create like basically it's food and then egg
Speaker 1: on top of the food wall, food egg wall, food
Speaker 1: egg wall until they run out of space essentially, and
Speaker 1: the food is It looks beautiful, especially when these bees
Speaker 1: are using pollen from plants that have colorful pollens. So
Speaker 1: there's flowers that have purple pollen. So when they use
Speaker 1: purple pollen, they make purple balls of food and it
Speaker 1: looks gorgeous. It looks delicious. It actually looks a lot
Speaker 1: like like ube ice cream or sorbet. It's I want
Speaker 1: to eat it, but it's not like when you go
Speaker 1: to those fancy ice like salt and straw and like lavender,
Speaker 1: and yes, exactly I love salt and straw. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it does look like a lavender sorbet, but the larvae
Speaker 1: on it doesn't look that up to kind of take
Speaker 1: the baby bee. It looks like a little jelly. But
Speaker 1: if it's about too wormy looking for my taste, Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to eat. I don't want to eat
Speaker 1: baby bees. But it is very It is cute somehow,
Speaker 1: there's just something so charming about that, Like Mommy made
Speaker 1: you a ball of like nectar and pollen sorbet, and
Speaker 1: then you grow up eating it and then they weave
Speaker 1: themselves a little cocoon and they come out next season
Speaker 1: as adult bees and then they burst through the clay walls. Wow,
Speaker 1: so they don't even go check on them. So that
Speaker 1: the whole thing is I feel like, you know what
Speaker 1: that I would wouldn't mind being a part if that's
Speaker 1: if I could just um save up a ton of
Speaker 1: like Kraft mac and cheese and then ballow it up
Speaker 1: and like lay my egg in a ball and just
Speaker 1: be like I'm gonna go summer and France, and I'll
Speaker 1: when I come back, you're going to be a teenager
Speaker 1: and I'll say hi to you. Then that like just
Speaker 1: let them eat their way through their teens. Yeah, giant
Speaker 1: ball of here's like a giant dag would esk sandwich
Speaker 1: for you that will last your entire childhood, Eat up,
Speaker 1: see you by good luck hat like with a like
Speaker 1: a little like here's your lunch from mom, and it'll
Speaker 1: last you for your entire entire larval state. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: my type of parenting. Yeah I could sometimes. Meal prep
Speaker 1: is the difference between a tasty dinner and a toxic one.
Speaker 1: Loggerhead strikes a small, unassuming bird who likes to impale
Speaker 1: its prey on thorns are able to snack on toxic
Speaker 1: prey items by impaling them and leaving them out on
Speaker 1: the spit for a few days for their toxins to degrade.
Speaker 1: They'll impale toxic monarch, butterflies, lubber, grasshoppers, and toads and
Speaker 1: wait until these ghoulish kebabs are ready to eat. When
Speaker 1: we return, we're going to talk about more animal hobbies,
Speaker 1: and my fellow knitters and crow shares out there are
Speaker 1: gonna want to stay tuned for this. Spiders are the
Speaker 1: most famous silk spinners in the animal kingdom, from Charlotte's
Speaker 1: Web to the Greek myth of Arachne, who foolishly challenged
Speaker 1: a goddess to a weaving contest and was transformed into
Speaker 1: a spider for her troubles. In fact, that's where the
Speaker 1: term Arachney for spider comes from. But spiders are the
Speaker 1: only master spinners in the arthropod world. Oh, there's a
Speaker 1: there is a um house centipede in my bathtub, right? No? I,
Speaker 1: Actually there's very few insects that really bother me, But
Speaker 1: of them are silver fish, which don't scare me, but
Speaker 1: they like gross me out. I don't like them. Cockroaches again,
Speaker 1: they don't really scare me, but they gross me out
Speaker 1: because they're just like so like oily and nasty. And
Speaker 1: then the third one is how centipedes because they have
Speaker 1: too many legs. In my opinion, I don't like it.
Speaker 1: I don't care for it. I don't get scared of spiders,
Speaker 1: but how cinimpedes, it's just it's too much. It's like
Speaker 1: you've got too many segments, you've got too many legs.
Speaker 1: So I got a plastic cup and I put it
Speaker 1: over the house cinipede in the bathtub, and I think
Speaker 1: I've solved it. I think I've solved the problem. We'll
Speaker 1: just have a plastic cup in the bathtub decoration. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's there. I'll like glue it down and
Speaker 1: with like seal it off and it's just like, hey,
Speaker 1: look it's you know, that's the classic cup in the
Speaker 1: shower kind of one thing. I feel like I took that.
Speaker 1: Being home literally all day working is like if I
Speaker 1: see a bug at work, like I might not like it,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't feel like it's my bug. When I
Speaker 1: see a bug in my home, I'm like, it's it's
Speaker 1: like another else to feed, Like if you don't, I
Speaker 1: gotta move this bug outside, or if I don't move it,
Speaker 1: then later I'm gonna wake up in the middle then
Speaker 1: and be like did this bug is it still? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's to like go like crawl into my eyesocket and
Speaker 1: live in the space. Spiders don't do that. Bugs generally
Speaker 1: don't do that. I I actually don't. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of bugs that I'm very tolerant of. Most bugs,
Speaker 1: like I said, like even spiders. Sometimes I'll move them
Speaker 1: outside just because if it's like big enough, I don't
Speaker 1: want to like get startled and smoosh it. If it's
Speaker 1: small enough, like I will just let it chill out
Speaker 1: because it's probably eating insects for me and I enjoy that.
Speaker 1: But you know, and then like you know, beatles, like
Speaker 1: when they get in, like I send them outside because
Speaker 1: like what are they going to do in here? There's nothing,
Speaker 1: there's nothing for them here. But yeah, so I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: thanks for the application. It's not gonna work out. I
Speaker 1: just don't think there's anything for you to do, Beetle, Like, right,
Speaker 1: you're a June beetle. I don't think there's room for you.
Speaker 1: My apartment is like two hundred square feet. I might
Speaker 1: be down for a spider if if I could communicate,
Speaker 1: because they do start on me. But you're right, they
Speaker 1: are they're helping me eat insects. But I think if
Speaker 1: I could be like spider, like how you said sorry,
Speaker 1: you said like helping me eat insects like you you
Speaker 1: both are like I have to do my working on
Speaker 1: a big bulb insects. You like, I don't think I
Speaker 1: can finish this. I would say, oh, hey, would you
Speaker 1: like do you want to finish this? I'm done? Wait, Katie,
Speaker 1: you don't eat your insects when there's no spiders. Somebody
Speaker 1: just kidding. I just don't have a problem finishing all
Speaker 1: my insects. True, true, Yeah, that's right. Waste not um.
Speaker 1: If I could be like, hey, spider, I've cleared at
Speaker 1: this quarter for you, and like every once in a
Speaker 1: while check on you it, that's where you could be.
Speaker 1: Please don't come out when I'm eating. You'll startle me.
Speaker 1: Like we could make it work, but honestly, I've yet
Speaker 1: to find a spider that's going to follow my rules.
Speaker 1: So I do feel like maybe if you if you
Speaker 1: set up like a little home for it, maybe then
Speaker 1: I'd get a hint, like a tiny welcome matt, and
Speaker 1: it would have to have eight welcome mats, because yeah,
Speaker 1: eight welcome mats, like eight pairs of little fuzzy bunny
Speaker 1: slippers and like like an easy chair and like a
Speaker 1: copy of Arachnids Monthly um with that you know, centerfold
Speaker 1: of Like, you know, that's very adorable and might actually
Speaker 1: make be less afraid of spiders. Yeah. I think if
Speaker 1: you're afraid of spiders and you make your spot your
Speaker 1: house spiders like a little spider house, that will It's
Speaker 1: just like it changes the game, you know. It's like
Speaker 1: now they're now they're a renter. So there you go. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: speaking of spiders, one thing that sometimes bothers me about
Speaker 1: Spider Man, amongst many other problems with the comic book universe,
Speaker 1: is the fact he shoots webs out of his hands.
Speaker 1: Now I understand there's like different versions of Spider Man.
Speaker 1: There's like the version where it's like he like makes
Speaker 1: his web spinners out of technology, which always kind of
Speaker 1: bothered me because it's like he was bitten by a
Speaker 1: radioactive spider and then he creates webs in a lab
Speaker 1: and puts them in cannuses on his wrists. It's like,
Speaker 1: but true, you know, it was just a suggestion. It
Speaker 1: was like I like that idea of I like where
Speaker 1: you're going with that. Now I will just do most
Speaker 1: of the other work, right, Like, so you're only spider
Speaker 1: powers are climbing up walls and having good punches, Like
Speaker 1: that's boring. And then there's like the movie version with
Speaker 1: Toby McGuire where he like shoots it out of his
Speaker 1: wrists for some reason and he's like, oh, how does
Speaker 1: this work? And then he squeezes his hands and it
Speaker 1: comes out, which is equally baffling because really with spiders,
Speaker 1: it comes out of the sort of rear end of
Speaker 1: their abdomens. And so that's that's how. So really Peter
Speaker 1: Parker should be kind of spewing it sort of near
Speaker 1: his tailbone, kind of not not out the butt, not
Speaker 1: like out of the venus, but near the butt, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, maybe with a fun like sound
Speaker 1: as he goes. But so, if you really want Peter
Speaker 1: Parker to sling webs out of his hands, he shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been bitten by a radioactive spider. It should have
Speaker 1: been a radioactive web spinner web spinners are an insect
Speaker 1: that live all over the world in tropical and subtropical regions.
Speaker 1: And the males kind of are unassuming looking. They look
Speaker 1: like long winged ants. They just kind of don't you know,
Speaker 1: you would see when and not really think of anything.
Speaker 1: Females are actually the ones that do not have wings,
Speaker 1: and they have these like big doofy looking front legs
Speaker 1: that look like little paddles. And this is where they
Speaker 1: have the spider man powers because out of their front
Speaker 1: feet they spew stick the strands of very fine silk.
Speaker 1: So um. Females uh look a little they kind of
Speaker 1: look like long termites, you know, like a termite, but
Speaker 1: just sort of stretched out with those like weird little
Speaker 1: paddle feet. And they live like to live like in
Speaker 1: the king wood, like under a log or something, and
Speaker 1: they will create these intricate silken tunnels out of these
Speaker 1: threads from their front feet, and the tunnels, which are
Speaker 1: called galleries, helped protect the web spinners from the elements
Speaker 1: and from predators and from getting rained on. So they
Speaker 1: will literally take their little feet where they have the
Speaker 1: a bunch of little hair like protrusions that come out
Speaker 1: of their feet that um actually each of those hair
Speaker 1: like protrusion spits out a strand of very very thin
Speaker 1: thread and it's actually the I think it's like the
Speaker 1: thinnest silk strands in nature created by an insect. And
Speaker 1: then so like it it's a bunch of strands at once.
Speaker 1: And then they just move their little feet back and
Speaker 1: forth like they're at a loom, you know, like the
Speaker 1: the shuttle in a loom where you pass that back
Speaker 1: and forth. They're just doing that with their feet, like
Speaker 1: back and forth and back and forth. It's so fine.
Speaker 1: It looks like, yeah, it almost looks like it's just
Speaker 1: like a piece of fabric. Yeah, yeah, it looks it
Speaker 1: looks like um, I mean, it looks a little bit
Speaker 1: like cobwebs or or like a silk or something. It's
Speaker 1: it's actually it's very pretty to me. It uh in
Speaker 1: sort of like a Gothic like you know, haunted, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, like Victorian haunted cheek. So basically,
Speaker 1: these web spinners make all these little tunnels out of
Speaker 1: silk and they can live comfortably inside because they like
Speaker 1: to feed on lichen and moss, which is plentiful in
Speaker 1: the rotting wood that they are building this and the
Speaker 1: silk canopies are so well made it'll catch the rain
Speaker 1: as it falls down, and in fact, when water falls
Speaker 1: on it, it like gets absorbed by the webbing and
Speaker 1: it actually changes the structure of the webbing so it
Speaker 1: becomes even more water resistance. So it's amazing in terms
Speaker 1: of how it is so weather proof, and so they
Speaker 1: can live there there, their offspring can live comfortably in there,
Speaker 1: and they can actually be really social. So a bunch
Speaker 1: of web spinners can work together to create a bunch
Speaker 1: of like uh galleries and like webbing together. And even
Speaker 1: though they don't necessarily live in colonies, um exactly, it's
Speaker 1: still like their neighbors, and they're they're not too fussed
Speaker 1: about sharing their their handiwork because it benefits all of
Speaker 1: them to basically, once you've got a web spin or
Speaker 1: making these things, and then more web spinners come in
Speaker 1: the mix, you start to get these very elaborate structures
Speaker 1: of canopies and it helps all of them. One thing
Speaker 1: that's kind of funny is they can don't really turn
Speaker 1: off their web spinning feet on que like it's sort
Speaker 1: of the pressure that makes those silk injectors work. So
Speaker 1: if they walk on their feet, just like normally it
Speaker 1: will leave behind a trail of sticky thread that they
Speaker 1: can get tangled in. So if they want to walk forwards,
Speaker 1: they actually have to walk on their tippy toes like
Speaker 1: a little ballerina so that they don't trigger the web spinners.
Speaker 1: And so if they're trying to evade a predator and
Speaker 1: they're like walking on their tippy toes away, it's really
Speaker 1: kind of cute and pathetic. But normally to evade a predator,
Speaker 1: because they can't move very fast on their tippy toes,
Speaker 1: they will shimmy backwards and back away from the predator
Speaker 1: because that way they can still like walk on the
Speaker 1: flats of their feet. And even though it leaves behind
Speaker 1: strands of webbing, like, they won't get tangled in it
Speaker 1: because they're moving backwards. So either way, like looking at
Speaker 1: them trying to evade predators is really cute and sad.
Speaker 1: Just leave them alone. All they want to do is
Speaker 1: crochet and stay inside, just like me. It's cute that
Speaker 1: I like the idea that to build like a town,
Speaker 1: everyone has to build it. Like imagine if everyone in
Speaker 1: l A in order to use the highways, you had
Speaker 1: to like help build it, like traffic. It would help
Speaker 1: traffic so much if like, you have to help build
Speaker 1: the road that you want to drive on, and you
Speaker 1: would treat it better, and you would drive safer, and
Speaker 1: you would just be nicer to the people on the
Speaker 1: road because you all built it together. So wait, if
Speaker 1: we all build things together and work together, you mean
Speaker 1: it might improve our quality of life? That sounds like socialism.
Speaker 1: You're right, it was stupid. Why did I even say
Speaker 1: you're right? Dumb dumb dum. Reviewer from like weed Goku
Speaker 1: sixty nine says, like Teresa Len not only introduced politics
Speaker 1: by saying our children should be educated by bees, but
Speaker 1: started talking about be socialism propaganda another crafty insect. I'd
Speaker 1: like to talk about our carpenter ants. Now, if you
Speaker 1: live in an area that carpenter ants uh frequent, you
Speaker 1: may already be familiar with these and perhaps have a
Speaker 1: rather antagonistic relationship with them, because they are similar to
Speaker 1: termites and that they carve out. Would unlike termites, they
Speaker 1: don't actually ever consume. Would they just rip it out
Speaker 1: with their mandibles to construct themselves a colony. So sometimes
Speaker 1: when you think you may have termites, but you see
Speaker 1: these big piles of like sawdust that is actually carpenter
Speaker 1: ants because they leave behind these big piles of sawdust
Speaker 1: that they are not eating. So carpenter ants are ants
Speaker 1: who carve out these extensive structures. Usually they prefer rotting wood, um,
Speaker 1: but sometimes they will attack like human structures that is
Speaker 1: made out of lumber if it's soft enough, and they
Speaker 1: will basically like dig out all of the wood between you.
Speaker 1: How like trees have rings, and then like in between
Speaker 1: each ring, you have like this new growth and like
Speaker 1: this like kind of old growth and the new growth
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, so on and so forth, and then
Speaker 1: you have um the tree rings and that's used to
Speaker 1: sort of like date it. Well, the ants will like
Speaker 1: carve out between the rings, and then what that does
Speaker 1: is it gives them all of these little like concentric
Speaker 1: walkways that they can use, uh and travel throughout the colony.
Speaker 1: And then they create sort of a nursery area and
Speaker 1: then all of these like satellite colonies. So they're basically
Speaker 1: creating like a wooden city. It's really incredible and um
Speaker 1: for in terms of like in forests, this is actually
Speaker 1: great because again they like decaying trees and they do
Speaker 1: a really wonderful job of clearing out like decaying trees
Speaker 1: and helping with the decomposition process. You know, when you
Speaker 1: have like a big tree that falls down in a forest,
Speaker 1: as you start to break that tree up into its
Speaker 1: comp posit parts and using them and then feeding on them,
Speaker 1: you actually you know that that's a good process of
Speaker 1: decay that helps the forest kind of regrow and have
Speaker 1: like you you have this microbiome of these organisms that
Speaker 1: flourish and uh, then you can have new plants that
Speaker 1: that take its place, and like you know, you have
Speaker 1: soil that can become more fertile and it's so it's
Speaker 1: very useful. Um. And that's interesting this idea of like
Speaker 1: going after rotting or decaying because normally to the human eye,
Speaker 1: we think like, oh, that's like you see something dead
Speaker 1: and you feel like it's death, but actually or you
Speaker 1: see bugs and you think death, but the reality is
Speaker 1: full of life. So that's exactly interesting way to think
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah. I remember when I was in sixth
Speaker 1: grade camp we had um we would go on these
Speaker 1: hikes and we each had our own like hike tour
Speaker 1: guide and ours was obsessed with talking about decay, like
Speaker 1: the decaying cycle. And at the time, like I was
Speaker 1: a very scared little sixth grader. I was terrified of
Speaker 1: being away from home. Um, and like I was just
Speaker 1: like living in in fear, like in this camp and
Speaker 1: like there are bats everywhere. I was like, everyone's gonna
Speaker 1: get rabies, We're gonna get killed by a serial killer.
Speaker 1: Now I'm on this hike with like this crazy lady
Speaker 1: who's like talking about decomposition, and she's like, do you
Speaker 1: kids want to see a dead horse? And everyone's like hey,
Speaker 1: And so she takes us to this pile of hair
Speaker 1: and teeth that was like a dead horse. She's like,
Speaker 1: I know this may seem gross to you, but this
Speaker 1: is actually a beautiful part of life. It is decay
Speaker 1: is just as much of a part of life as
Speaker 1: life is. And at the time, it's like, are you crazy?
Speaker 1: You showed us a dead pony, like Twilight Sparkle is
Speaker 1: dead and you're just showing it to us. No. I
Speaker 1: understand where she's coming from, because when you have decay
Speaker 1: in a forest, that means huge amounts of life that
Speaker 1: springs from the decaying, whether it's a horse carcass or
Speaker 1: a tree carcass. I feel like there's like an age appropriate,
Speaker 1: like you've got to be a full adult and you've
Speaker 1: under stood life before you see that, because I could
Speaker 1: really fuck you up. Yeah, see that too young. I
Speaker 1: turned out fine. I'm fine, don't worry. I turned out fine.
Speaker 1: Now you can totally tell by how much I talk
Speaker 1: about parasites and like dead things and grows stuff on
Speaker 1: this show that that it was actually perfect that I
Speaker 1: learned by seeing a dead horse in sixth grade, and
Speaker 1: it was a good growing experience. I think you need
Speaker 1: to build a welcome map for dead horses in your house.
Speaker 1: That's true that I think that would heal me, Like
Speaker 1: next to my eight welcome maps for the spider, just
Speaker 1: have like one one welcome map for like welcome dead horses.
Speaker 1: I'm like a horse girl, but for dead and decayed horses.
Speaker 1: So another interesting thing about carpenter ants is that, um
Speaker 1: they have different jobs. So like in an ant colony
Speaker 1: of like different jobs, you have the mean ant, you
Speaker 1: have the worker ants. You sometimes in some ant colonies
Speaker 1: you'll have like soldier ants that are like bigger and bulkier. UM.
Speaker 1: With carpenter ants, they have worker ants, and they also
Speaker 1: have what are called honey pot ants UM, which also
Speaker 1: occur in other species of ants as well, but honey
Speaker 1: pot ants are a type of worker ant whose job
Speaker 1: is to become a living pantry for other ants by
Speaker 1: eating so much that they basically turn into food balloons.
Speaker 1: So they consume huge amounts of food and it turns
Speaker 1: into this like sweet sugary liquid in their abdomens. And
Speaker 1: but it's so much of it. I mean, well, I
Speaker 1: know you said abdomen, but this photo, it just looks
Speaker 1: like it's got a juicy booty. Yeah, this might be
Speaker 1: my vibe. I feel like this ant. You're vibing with
Speaker 1: this ant. Yeah, this is who I am. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it. It basically turns itself into a water balloon
Speaker 1: of food, like you get it. It is. It's actually
Speaker 1: kind of pretty. So like you see it, it's like
Speaker 1: it looks like it's but um, it's just filled with
Speaker 1: it's just this like amber orb of it's a juicy
Speaker 1: Okay you missed. You miss those shorts that say juicy
Speaker 1: on the back. Yes, I never got to have one
Speaker 1: because they were the actual ones were expensive. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: never got I never got those as a kid. I
Speaker 1: was a very like straight lace little kid. I would
Speaker 1: never get like a thing that's a juicy on my butt.
Speaker 1: Now I'm thinking of like just crocheting my own juicy
Speaker 1: just shorts. I took wood wood shop in middle school.
Speaker 1: I was like one of two girls in the class.
Speaker 1: And for our final project, which was freestyle like do
Speaker 1: whatever you want, I made a plaque that said naughty
Speaker 1: or Nice And it was a picture of an angel
Speaker 1: in the devil with the words naughty or nice, and
Speaker 1: I just painted flames on the naughty nice angel wings
Speaker 1: on the nice. Literally, everybody's like, why are you in
Speaker 1: this class? Like working, but you're kidding, that's amazing. What
Speaker 1: do you mean? Why are you in this class? Were
Speaker 1: like boys, They weren't man called the real man would
Speaker 1: congratulate you on your artistry. Were like trying to do.
Speaker 1: They were like, I want to make use power tolls.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, guess what those power tolls you
Speaker 1: thought were so cool? I use them? And I made
Speaker 1: it's a cute little not your nice plaque. That's amazing,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. That's what I instead of like a live
Speaker 1: laugh love plaque, I want like naughty or nice or
Speaker 1: like hail Satan with these honey pot ants. Actually, sometimes
Speaker 1: people will eat them because basically they're like little little
Speaker 1: uh what's it called, not juicy fruit water gushers. Gushers,
Speaker 1: they're like little living gushers because they are full of
Speaker 1: sugary goo and they are apparently very delicious. If you
Speaker 1: can get past the fact that your gushers, it might
Speaker 1: be better for you than gushers. Gushers are just chemicals,
Speaker 1: that's true. I'm actually grossed out by gush ers. Something
Speaker 1: about it, Like you're like chewing on this thing and
Speaker 1: it pops in your mouth. It's very like pustular that
Speaker 1: I don't like, you know what I mean? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like these Yeah they should make if they marketed
Speaker 1: these ants and just be like, do you like your
Speaker 1: gushers with the head and legs on them? That's a
Speaker 1: good marketing technique, Like would you like a gusher but
Speaker 1: it's alive and it's got a head and legs. They
Speaker 1: do that already in marketing of candy, Like, Hi, kids,
Speaker 1: I'm living candy, murder me I want to be eaten? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's up with that? I wonder if there's like an
Speaker 1: innate hunter gather vibe that we have, Like why do
Speaker 1: we of all the mascots for eminem's why did we
Speaker 1: just make them alive? We crave murder. It's because we
Speaker 1: feel like hunting for we Yeah, we want to feel
Speaker 1: like when we like chase down nerds, they're cute little
Speaker 1: things that like are literally running away from us and
Speaker 1: that we eat, and you know, I mean that's wild.
Speaker 1: Maybe your quarantine hobby could be starting a gustatory adventure
Speaker 1: when it comes to eating insects. While I don't suggest
Speaker 1: picking up random bugs and putting them in your mouth,
Speaker 1: insects and other arthropods our beloved food all over the world,
Speaker 1: our culture is just biased against them. Cooked scorpions, sand
Speaker 1: stinger apparently tastes like soft shell crab. Roasted grubs reportedly
Speaker 1: tastes like bacon meal. Worms have a slightly crunchy, nutty flavor.
Speaker 1: Crickets are apparently like a combination of popcorn and almonds
Speaker 1: with a few more legs. Sounds good. No, Well, personally,
Speaker 1: I haven't quite gotten over my cultural hang ups about bugs,
Speaker 1: But maybe one of these days I'll enjoy some nice
Speaker 1: fried grubs cricket flour pancakes with a dash of honey
Speaker 1: pot and syrup. When we return, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about some star gazing with an alien danger. Imagine you're
Speaker 1: enjoying a starry sky. Wouldn't it be nice to grow
Speaker 1: wings and fly up into the stars, bathed in the
Speaker 1: glowing light of a billion distant suns. You see O
Speaker 1: Ryan and the Little Dipper, and well, actually you don't
Speaker 1: really recognize these constellations. That's strange. What's going on? Why
Speaker 1: are you suddenly stuck as if you've hit a ceiling?
Speaker 1: And what's that thing crawling towards you? Well you'll find
Speaker 1: out soon enough. Section I've just called vibing because I
Speaker 1: feel like one of the hobbies of the Quarantine twenty
Speaker 1: twenty times to try to stay I don't know, just
Speaker 1: like stick keep your spear it's up. Is just finding
Speaker 1: out ways to vibe that, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's like almost like you know, like your brain can
Speaker 1: provide like serotonin and whatever, you know, the mood enhancers.
Speaker 1: But I feel like a lot of cultures have like
Speaker 1: festival of lights in the times um, like during the
Speaker 1: you know, winter, and this photo of these lights, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like an external way to add um. You
Speaker 1: might think it's frivolous like decoration, but it's not. It's
Speaker 1: actually to produce those like happy happy hormones. Yeah, something nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like like we have to kind of think
Speaker 1: of ways, like because all of those things like festivals
Speaker 1: and rituals and gatherings, like I think it serves an
Speaker 1: extremely important purpose for human psychology and like the gathering
Speaker 1: of the Juggalos exactly, like it's a it's a yearly migration,
Speaker 1: one of the largest migrations in the natural world, that
Speaker 1: of the Juggalos. Um. But yeah, I mean it is
Speaker 1: really important obviously, like our health and not dying or
Speaker 1: killing people with COVID is more important at this time,
Speaker 1: Like that takes priority keeping people safe from a deadly disease. However,
Speaker 1: I think if we can figure out ways to like
Speaker 1: just kind of enjoy ourselves and get that like and
Speaker 1: I'm like very agnostic, but I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: to be said about like rituals and festivals in terms
Speaker 1: of that like kind of inner fulfillment there. It's there's
Speaker 1: something really like I don't know, like if you if
Speaker 1: you want to put up like like string lights or
Speaker 1: festival lights or like continue with sort of um, I
Speaker 1: guess just like do fun things like to keep you
Speaker 1: you said, lights and I did buy led lights to
Speaker 1: put up, and I just realized I put up. I
Speaker 1: bought some like space prints, like because like NASA's photographs
Speaker 1: are in the public and sometimes people print posters. I
Speaker 1: bought a bunch of Galaxy photographs and put them up.
Speaker 1: And I think, probably innately, I'm missing, yes, like my
Speaker 1: connection to nature and the sky, even though I've only
Speaker 1: lived in big cities where I really star gaze. I
Speaker 1: just maybe subconsciousness at the very least I get a
Speaker 1: little bit of it. When I'm out, I don't have
Speaker 1: it at all. I mean, like the lights of the
Speaker 1: city maybe take the place of the lights of the
Speaker 1: stars in our brains. And if we're not going out
Speaker 1: in the city at night and getting the lights and
Speaker 1: like you know, going to movies where we're getting all
Speaker 1: this light and stuff, like, maybe that part of us.
Speaker 1: It's like I like, because I share that exact thing,
Speaker 1: Like I want to just look at a night sky
Speaker 1: and look at the stars. I can't because we're in
Speaker 1: l A and um yeah, and I've been waking up
Speaker 1: with the sun not with no alarm, and it at
Speaker 1: first alarmed me, but I think it is my body
Speaker 1: being like you're at Hunter gather mode. Now you need
Speaker 1: to follow the diurnal rhythm of the sun. You just
Speaker 1: started and it's been doing that for weeks. I just
Speaker 1: I was wide open as the sun's coming up, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I guess we're awake now. Yeah, because we're
Speaker 1: talking about like lights and I love that, Like you're
Speaker 1: thinking about star gazing and stuff. I think there's something
Speaker 1: that is so aspirational about that, like when we're kind
Speaker 1: of stuck in this like survival mode and um. There
Speaker 1: is an insect that also likes to create an artificial
Speaker 1: environment of stars, and this is known as Arachno Kampa luminosa,
Speaker 1: which is also known as the glow worm. The New
Speaker 1: Zealand glow worm is that artificial environment of stars. Like
Speaker 1: what what? What are we in l a or something? Egg? Yeah,
Speaker 1: nice got him roasted, Hollywood destroyed. So these glow worms
Speaker 1: are actually the larva of a fungus gnat, so fungus net.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like a It looks a bit like
Speaker 1: a mosquito, but it does not feed on human blood.
Speaker 1: It feeds on fungus and seedlings. But their larva are
Speaker 1: glow worms and they are so creepy and beautiful. They
Speaker 1: are these transparent, long like wormy maggots, and they but
Speaker 1: they have bioluminescent butts like they're sort of caboose area.
Speaker 1: It glows blue. And they live on the ceilings of caves,
Speaker 1: so they weave silk and hammocks all along the ceiling
Speaker 1: and they actually travel through these silken hammocks um like
Speaker 1: they're on a monorail essentially, like all these like sort
Speaker 1: of mono rail uh worms going around with their glowing cabooses.
Speaker 1: But they live in these big groups and when they're
Speaker 1: all clustered together like that, they actually look a lot
Speaker 1: like us beautiful starry sky, like you're looking at an
Speaker 1: image of them, and they actually flicker as well, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to look at the video you cook, they
Speaker 1: kind of glow and flicker. So the video. Okay, so
Speaker 1: I see the string, So is that all one worm?
Speaker 1: That's a long string? There's um no that I feel
Speaker 1: like jellyfish almost where they're like yeah no, so this
Speaker 1: the worm. Those like dangling tentacle like things are actually
Speaker 1: strands of silk that the worms have constructed. So there's
Speaker 1: strands of silk that have little globs of sticky saliva
Speaker 1: on it. So they look a little bit like icicles
Speaker 1: or slagtites, but they're actually just strands of silk with
Speaker 1: with sticky fit on it. And the reason they do
Speaker 1: that is that even though they're beautiful and it looks
Speaker 1: like this fairy wonderland, these are vicious carnivores. So they
Speaker 1: will create these intricate like it's beauty. It looks like
Speaker 1: Christmas lights and like you know, like those sort of
Speaker 1: like icicle Christmas lights that angle down. It looks like
Speaker 1: an exhibit that would be at a like a music festival. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a dum festival. Yeah, it's funny that you said
Speaker 1: there they're caboss glow because I'm like, I mean, give
Speaker 1: it like five ten years. That's going to be a trend.
Speaker 1: Like some some Hollywood influencer is going to be like,
Speaker 1: have you gotten the latest surgery to get a bioluminescent ask,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, come on, I can't wait. But I'm
Speaker 1: going to light at the club. Yes, please, thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get blowing button plants and and then
Speaker 1: learn to twerk so that you know, that'll be my excuse.
Speaker 1: It's like, look, I have to learn but dances because
Speaker 1: my butt clows now I'd be depriving the world of
Speaker 1: this glowing. But I'm only half joking. I'm like bioluminescent,
Speaker 1: but especially if it's a nature, I could see this exactly.
Speaker 1: Now I'm thinking I should crochet some juicy pants. But
Speaker 1: with like bioluminescent threats, I support it. Yes, So they
Speaker 1: create so all of these like beautiful dangling threads, and
Speaker 1: then the worms themselves are bioluminescence, so the threads aren't
Speaker 1: actually glowing, but it's reflecting the bioluminescence of the worms.
Speaker 1: And all of this effect creates this dazzling lights light
Speaker 1: display that moths and other insects that are traveling through
Speaker 1: the cave will see. And moths actually use starlight to navigate,
Speaker 1: so they don't just like go towards light because they're dumb.
Speaker 1: They go towards light because they actually are able to
Speaker 1: navigate in the night sky by following the stars in
Speaker 1: the moon. And so in these caves, when you have
Speaker 1: this like fake display of twinkling stars, it disorients the moths.
Speaker 1: They fly towards the fake sky, even though it's not
Speaker 1: a sky at all, it's just the ceiling of the cave.
Speaker 1: And then they land into these sticky hanging threads and
Speaker 1: become trapped. And as a glow worm feels a moth
Speaker 1: vibrating their thread, they will reel in the thread and
Speaker 1: eat the poor moth that thought it was flying towards starlight.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's so sad. I mean, I hate moths,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean, but what we do when we
Speaker 1: moved to big cities, which is all getting trapped in
Speaker 1: the web. It's that's exactly what liberal lies, socialism, l
Speaker 1: A is just it's a little people don't know this,
Speaker 1: but there's actually just a giant glow worm that eats everybody.
Speaker 1: The earthquakes are the vibrations. That's right. Look it up. People.
Speaker 1: Do you do your research? Don't you love it when
Speaker 1: someone like proposes a crazy conspiracy theory, You're like, what
Speaker 1: are you talking about? When I eat you do your research.
Speaker 1: Every single time I've seen a documentary about conspiracy theorists,
Speaker 1: the one person, like the doctor or the expert, who
Speaker 1: was like, so I did, and it's like within minutes,
Speaker 1: like and I disproved them immediately. It's like anyone's like
Speaker 1: look it up. It's like, okay, I did. It's very
Speaker 1: easy to disprove you, but you're not looking at the
Speaker 1: right websites. Then if you ignore all of these other
Speaker 1: books and then you just look at this one thread
Speaker 1: written by this one blogger who's anonymous, but he keeps
Speaker 1: it that way to protect himself and he doesn't back
Speaker 1: it up with anything, but trust me, it's real. Like, OK,
Speaker 1: Twitter is run by big glow Worm and everyone knows it.
Speaker 1: So if you read sources by big glow worm, guess
Speaker 1: what they're gonna deny that a giant glow worm lives
Speaker 1: in l a and consumes everybody. Wake up sheeple. Anyways, UM,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting because like the glow worms are so
Speaker 1: committed to the grift, they actually there's like multiple glow
Speaker 1: worm colonies within one cave, so a bunch of like
Speaker 1: groups of glow worms that all kind of similar to
Speaker 1: the web spinner where they kind of share their um.
Speaker 1: They're woven silken runways a little bit or not runways,
Speaker 1: sort of like railways and um. But the different colonies
Speaker 1: also seem to collaborate. So one colony will have a
Speaker 1: cycle where they're glowing and attracting insects, and then they'll
Speaker 1: sort of like shut off and then another colony will
Speaker 1: take their turn glowing, and it's relatively news to research,
Speaker 1: so it's not exactly researchers aren't exactly sure why they
Speaker 1: seem to take turns. Maybe it's like sort of a
Speaker 1: way to ensure that the cave is sort of glowing
Speaker 1: at all times, so you're always sort of getting a
Speaker 1: flow of insects, but it's not going just to one
Speaker 1: colony because they probably can't handle that many moths at once,
Speaker 1: So you're sort of like working together to create a
Speaker 1: eternally fake starlet sky to trick moths, but then making
Speaker 1: sure all of the colonies sort of like get sort
Speaker 1: of equal distributions of food. Again socialism. And then the
Speaker 1: last thing I want to talk about is just so
Speaker 1: charming and fun. It is a fun little game that
Speaker 1: dolphins play. So dolphins are very playful, intelligent creatures, and
Speaker 1: dolphins and other cetaceans like belugas like to do fun
Speaker 1: underwater vape tricks, except not with vape, just with air.
Speaker 1: So you know how like people with like I don't
Speaker 1: have anything against vaping really I vape culture though sometimes
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, we're so it's someone who
Speaker 1: has dedicated their life to doing doing vape tricks. You know,
Speaker 1: I think they're awesome. I love to see a vape trick.
Speaker 1: I Uh, the lady doth protests too much, I think,
Speaker 1: but I do want to. A couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: when we were cracked, I thought it would before. I
Speaker 1: never ended up doing this, but this is one of
Speaker 1: those ideas. I was like, if I have too much time,
Speaker 1: I'll do this. I wanted to write a step up
Speaker 1: but with a kid who wanted to go to school
Speaker 1: for competing vape tricks. Yeah, but mom, I want to
Speaker 1: I don't want to go to college. I want to vape.
Speaker 1: I want to be a vape bard. Now it is,
Speaker 1: it is. I actually love to see a vape trick.
Speaker 1: Those are those are pretty sick and tight and cool.
Speaker 1: But dolphins, Katie's doing the check. I'm doing it exactly,
Speaker 1: just taking a big, big half of vape. As they say,
Speaker 1: as the kids say, don't they say that, you know
Speaker 1: you're just gonna go and do some vape. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do some vape and blow some sick clouds. I'm very cool.
Speaker 1: Love me, zoomers, love me so dolphins. Hey, zoomers, you
Speaker 1: may think dolphins boring right. No, turns out they love
Speaker 1: to do sick vape tricks to under the water, So
Speaker 1: they will blow bubble rings underwater um using nothing but
Speaker 1: their blowhole and little flipper tricks where they will create
Speaker 1: a vortex by moving the water with their flipper, they'll
Speaker 1: create a spinning vortex. They'll use their blowhole to blow
Speaker 1: a bubble of air towards the vortex, and as it
Speaker 1: gets caught up in the vortex, it creates this perfect,
Speaker 1: beautiful shimmering ring of air under the water. You know
Speaker 1: that scene in like the Hobbit where Gandalff is like
Speaker 1: check this, check this out, froat, I'm gonna blow like
Speaker 1: or no, no, wait. He's sitting with Bilbo and Bilbo
Speaker 1: blows like a smoke ring and Gandalff is like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. Check this out, and he blows like
Speaker 1: a whole like boat out of smoke out of his pipe. Okay,
Speaker 1: Gandalf like, chill out. You know, I have no idea
Speaker 1: if this is real or not. I mean, it sounds
Speaker 1: like something that could happen, but it also sounds like
Speaker 1: a joke with the Gandalff thing. I guess I don't know.
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings well enough to know if this
Speaker 1: is a joke about Lord of the Rings or if
Speaker 1: this is true. Yeah, it's a fictional like the movie
Speaker 1: is fictional on account of all the magic and stuff.
Speaker 1: But it did happen. I mean, like, if this is
Speaker 1: from it, I know, I'm just kidding and giving me
Speaker 1: a hard time whether it's aren't real, tore Tha, No,
Speaker 1: it does happen in the movie. I don't remember if
Speaker 1: it actually happens in the books. Um, please don't hurt me,
Speaker 1: Tolkien fans, I don't remember the books that well. But yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it definitely happens in the movie. And it's always I
Speaker 1: always feel like Gandolf is kind of being a jerk
Speaker 1: because it's like, oh, you can smoke blow like a ring,
Speaker 1: Like I can make a boat out of smoke. Because
Speaker 1: I'm a wizard. It's like, yeah, we know your magic
Speaker 1: and stuff, like you know, it's just but this is
Speaker 1: how I feel like the dolphins are flexing on us,
Speaker 1: where it's like, oh, you can blow a smoke ring.
Speaker 1: I guess that's cool. I can make a shimmering ring
Speaker 1: of air underwater that is shiny and beautiful, and they
Speaker 1: will do all sorts of trick with the rings, so
Speaker 1: they can manipulate it. They can push it forward or
Speaker 1: make it like do a spin. They'll even like blow
Speaker 1: like a second ring and then like join them together
Speaker 1: so that it forms one big ring. And when you
Speaker 1: watch a video of them, which I will include in
Speaker 1: the show, notes, like, it's very clear they are just
Speaker 1: having a good time. There doesn't seem to be any
Speaker 1: purpose to this. Now, dolphins do use bubbles as tools.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'll create bubble nets where they basically swim in
Speaker 1: a circle around a group of fish and then blow
Speaker 1: a bunch of like bubbles and or like use their
Speaker 1: uh flippers to store up a bunch of bubbles and
Speaker 1: the water and that traps the fish in this column
Speaker 1: of bubbles and then they use that to hunt. But
Speaker 1: with these bubble rings, there's no seemingly no practical purpose
Speaker 1: to it. It's just for fun. They're just playing. It's
Speaker 1: it's and they seem to understand the physics of the
Speaker 1: bubble ring, not just in how they like interact with
Speaker 1: it and like push it around and play with it,
Speaker 1: but they also there's researchers that observe them doing this,
Speaker 1: and they found that like you know the trick where
Speaker 1: they do like the first bubble ring, and then they
Speaker 1: do a second one and then join them together. The
Speaker 1: dolphins would only do that if the first bubble ring
Speaker 1: was structurally stable, so they like the dolphins learn like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this bubble ring is like looks really good and stable,
Speaker 1: so I can blow a second one to join with
Speaker 1: the first one. So that means they know how this works.
Speaker 1: They understand the physics of these bubbles and like how
Speaker 1: to do sick bubble tricks. And it's they're almost like
Speaker 1: the cats of the ocean, like cats who just hunt
Speaker 1: but also play with their food and just a yard
Speaker 1: they and they do literally play with their food, like
Speaker 1: you'll see an article come out every so often where
Speaker 1: it's like dolphins like to torture seals and like you
Speaker 1: think they're cute and fun, but really they're like murderous
Speaker 1: tortures and and it's just well, I mean, have you
Speaker 1: ever had a house cat? Yeah, Like, predators like to
Speaker 1: play with humans should not be speaking. I mean we
Speaker 1: literally kill animals and then mold them into shapes of
Speaker 1: other animals and eat them like dinoats. What's up with that?
Speaker 1: That is such a crime against chickens. I'm not like
Speaker 1: and look, I I must admit I'm not a full vegetarian.
Speaker 1: I do eat chickens, but I do feel weird about
Speaker 1: disrespecting them by like forming them into dinosaurs where it's
Speaker 1: like chickens, remember when you were a mighty dinosaur and
Speaker 1: now you're just a little feathery dinosaur that we eat. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. There's that other layer. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: believe in evolution, which I don't know. I'm just kidding, Um,
Speaker 1: Teresa's cancel, don't cancel me. Yeah. No, we're definitely the worst,
Speaker 1: and we love to project like can you be these
Speaker 1: animals are hunting? It's like, well, we just read them
Speaker 1: to eat. Yeah, we uh, we do factory farming, which
Speaker 1: some might argue is more cruel. Yeah. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we are like I like really like throw the first stone,
Speaker 1: which like I do. I do eat me by the way,
Speaker 1: I just like to make observations. These are also roasting
Speaker 1: me myself. I'm not trusting any stones on anyone or like, oh,
Speaker 1: dolphinspied each other. It's like, yeah, we have, we have.
Speaker 1: We have like basically any time we're like, oh, these
Speaker 1: animals are vicious and they fight each other we have
Speaker 1: nukes that could we have enough nukes to basically destroy
Speaker 1: the planet like ten times over. So if we treated
Speaker 1: animals the way we defend male perpetrators in Hollywood when
Speaker 1: stuff gets out wherever, it's like, yeah, but like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's like how many people just two people? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: look at all these good things they do with their food.
Speaker 1: That dolphin ripped the seals head off and is playing
Speaker 1: with it like a football. It's like, but you know,
Speaker 1: he's such a he's such a nice dolphin though, dolphin,
Speaker 1: Like he's got a great career and like, dolphin, Look
Speaker 1: how many kids has that dolphin made? Laugh? You know, right,
Speaker 1: like the captain of the Dolphins soccer team potential dolphins. Uh,
Speaker 1: don't cancel dolphins. Don't cancel dolphins, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You know, like I can't, can't. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: things we should cancel. Dolphins aren't one of them. Because
Speaker 1: of all the cool bubble tricks they do. I really
Speaker 1: am kind of a sucker for the dolphin bubble bubble tricks.
Speaker 1: They like. They'll like sometimes balance sort of the bubble
Speaker 1: ring on their nose and then like whip it around
Speaker 1: and it's like dolphin. I see what you're doing. You're
Speaker 1: like one of them is eating a bubble. I saw that, Yeah, snappy,
Speaker 1: Like imagine if this was a fish chump, I could
Speaker 1: be fish anytime I want. Is there any maiding rituals
Speaker 1: to this or is this just for fun? It's hard
Speaker 1: to say, Like I wouldn't necessarily rule that out. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's any concrete research on whether it's a
Speaker 1: form of communication, because certainly they do sometime do like
Speaker 1: bubble blowing and like showboating as some form of communication.
Speaker 1: It can be used to like impress other dolphins. I
Speaker 1: don't know that it is strictly a mating routine, but
Speaker 1: I think it's possible that, like they could use it
Speaker 1: to impress the ladies, be like, hey checked this at
Speaker 1: I learned this trick. I like how it the tornatove love.
Speaker 1: I mean, while I'm hooked. Well, is the only men
Speaker 1: who did about? No? No? But I think they all
Speaker 1: do it. It's it's just fun. It's like it it's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's almost like dancing, because some people humans dance for
Speaker 1: you know, to impress the potential base, but also people
Speaker 1: just dance. Plus yeah, okay, I'm one of those people
Speaker 1: because I danced by myself alone, and it's just as fun.
Speaker 1: I was going to the book I danced for exercise.
Speaker 1: Now I have that um Switch game called Just Dance
Speaker 1: twenty and it's where like it tracks your movements somewhat
Speaker 1: uh and like rates. It's definitely not doing a great
Speaker 1: job tracking my movements because if it really could, it
Speaker 1: would give me like an f on every dance I do.
Speaker 1: But it's it's like, oh, You're a superstar. I'm like no, no, really,
Speaker 1: I'm not, like, no, you are dancing? Is how you
Speaker 1: much you feel it? I don't let the screen tell
Speaker 1: you what to do. I think that like if it had,
Speaker 1: I do want it to. Like like if I could
Speaker 1: wear a shirt that's like connected to the switch somehow
Speaker 1: and it measures how much I sweat, I feel like
Speaker 1: that would be the true measure of like how good
Speaker 1: I'm dancing, because yeah, it's very sweaty when I get
Speaker 1: into it, but it is. It is fun. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: will change into more comfortable dancing clothes to cook because
Speaker 1: I really like to cook and dance at the time,
Speaker 1: because I'll play music and I'll just dance around and
Speaker 1: then move into my living room while like you know,
Speaker 1: the waiting for the water to oil and just do
Speaker 1: a little chork number and yeah it's fun. So but
Speaker 1: I mean I think that we've basically word every hobby
Speaker 1: you could possibly meet in uh and quarantine, whether it
Speaker 1: is baking bread out of your own saliva and pollen
Speaker 1: or creating a fake starry sky with a bioluminescent. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think we got everything covered. Do you
Speaker 1: have any new hobbies do you think you're going to
Speaker 1: try out to like, like inspired by these animals? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the bioluminescent, but yeah, I'm gonna go for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Seconded agreed. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Teresa.
Speaker 1: I know you have a fun quarantine kind of entertainment
Speaker 1: thing coming if you want to talk about that a
Speaker 1: little bit. Sure. I'm doing a live show on Zoom
Speaker 1: so Socially Distant on Friday. I guess this Friday, September
Speaker 1: twenty seven pm. So you can got tickets online and
Speaker 1: it'll be fun. It's uh, I'm doing stand up with
Speaker 1: Bab's Gray and Dominique Jellen. Follow me at Larissa to
Speaker 1: you to get tickets and also if you want to
Speaker 1: buy a hat, I'm selling hats say cancel me, daddy nice.
Speaker 1: Started as a Twitter joke. People actually wanted them, and
Speaker 1: turns out they do. I but I have tell if
Speaker 1: you left um. But yeah, so follow me online. You
Speaker 1: can get them there. That's fantastic. We need to get
Speaker 1: these hats for dolphins so that like the dot like
Speaker 1: when when the dolphins get canceled, they can be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: well check out my hat. I wanted it to happen. Well,
Speaker 1: that is awesome. Check that out. You can find us
Speaker 1: at Creature feature Pot on Instagram, at Creature feet Pot
Speaker 1: on Twitter. That's f e a T not f e T.
Speaker 1: That is something very different. You can find me at
Speaker 1: Katie Golden k A T I E g O L
Speaker 1: d I N on Twitter, and you know, just Katie
Speaker 1: thoughts and so on. And as always I'm also at
Speaker 1: pro bird Rites, where I make the case that the
Speaker 1: upcoming bird revolution where birds become the dominant species, is
Speaker 1: not only inevitable but good and welcome. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you
Speaker 1: leave a rating and review, I will be eternally grateful
Speaker 1: to you. It really does help out tells the robots
Speaker 1: that were a good show and I also read all
Speaker 1: the reviews and they warm, they warm my cold, cold,
Speaker 1: spider loving heart. So thank you for that. Thanks to
Speaker 1: the Space Classics for their super awesome song. X Alumina.
Speaker 1: Creature features a production of I Heart Radio. For more
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Speaker 1: radio app, Apple Podcast, or Hey guess what. Wherever you
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Speaker 1: butt of a glow worm. See you next Wednesday.