Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature 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 I really love birds. I just
Speaker 1: can't get enough of them. Dang birds. Today on the
Speaker 1: show Winter is Coming, Remember that from the Dragons show. Well,
Speaker 1: we won't be talking about the Dragon show, but we
Speaker 1: will be talking about how animals prepare for the winter,
Speaker 1: from hibernation to magical wardrobe changes to cryogenic freezing. Discover
Speaker 1: this more as we answer the angel question, when, if ever,
Speaker 1: is the right time to breathe through your butt? What
Speaker 1: is hibernation? How do you distinguish hibernation from a really,
Speaker 1: really long nap. While there are definitely some distinctive features
Speaker 1: of hibernation, like many behaviors and evolutionary biology, it's hard
Speaker 1: to get away with one easy definition. But one thing's
Speaker 1: for sure. Hibernation isn't just an extreme nap. It's more
Speaker 1: akin to stasis, like something you'd come up within a
Speaker 1: science fiction setting. There are many ways that animals cope
Speaker 1: with the winter, and we'll discuss some of the wildest
Speaker 1: winter adaptations. So let's start with this most famous method
Speaker 1: and reveal the weird and sci fi details beyond our
Speaker 1: childhood image of a really sleepy bear in to nightcap.
Speaker 1: Joining me today to prepare for winter as comedian, writer
Speaker 1: and co host of The Bechdel Cast. Caitlin Durante. Hello,
Speaker 1: I'm also a sleepy bear. We're here in our pijamas.
Speaker 1: I'll talked in you know, old timey bed, very very cozy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so listen to this when you're driving and just let
Speaker 1: yourself drift off. Yes, very safe. How much do you
Speaker 1: know about hibernation? You know what? Not a ton? Um my.
Speaker 1: My personal favorite bear is, of course Paddington. And do
Speaker 1: not believe that Paddington hibernates uh in uh any of
Speaker 1: the movies, right, I don't remember him ever doing that
Speaker 1: or in the books and the novels the series. Perhaps
Speaker 1: Peruvian bears do not hibernate. Well, they wouldn't need to
Speaker 1: write for the winter, makes sense because a tropical issue environment. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: so um. Yeah, there hasn't been a lot of hibernation
Speaker 1: visibility on screen, at least that I've seen. And that
Speaker 1: and I only ever learned things if I see them
Speaker 1: in movies, right, And and that's that's with the Bechdel
Speaker 1: cast you guys talk about movies and sort of from
Speaker 1: a from the perspective of like, hey, are there women
Speaker 1: in movies? Yeah? We should we should find Usually not, Yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes you know, it's just like what was we forgot
Speaker 1: to put women in here? And then you put them
Speaker 1: in and then they've just spent the whole time talking
Speaker 1: about boys. Yeah. I think that hibernation is one of
Speaker 1: those things that we learn about briefly in school and
Speaker 1: it's just like, oh, bear school to sleep for the winter,
Speaker 1: and then there's not much else learn about it. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe the education system is better now, like I think
Speaker 1: that maybe children are smarter than we ever used to be.
Speaker 1: But yeah, let's get into some of the details about
Speaker 1: it that I think are really bizarre. And it's one
Speaker 1: of these things that everybody kind of knows about hibernation,
Speaker 1: but when you actually look at the the scientific facts
Speaker 1: behind it, it gets a lot weirder than you expect. So,
Speaker 1: hibernation occurs during the winter. In summer, there are there's
Speaker 1: like a summer form of hibernation called estivation. It occurs
Speaker 1: in mammals, for reptiles and amphibians, it's called broomation. So
Speaker 1: it's a similar thing, but it's not called hibernation. Um.
Speaker 1: The only exception is the common poor will, which is
Speaker 1: a nocturnal bird species in the family of night jars,
Speaker 1: and it goes into a state of torpor for weeks
Speaker 1: or months at a time, and this is I think
Speaker 1: the only bird species that's known to do this. Of
Speaker 1: the mammals that do hibernation, bears, squirrel, chipmunks, bats, skunks, hedgehogs,
Speaker 1: and dwarf and fat tailed lemurs are among them. And
Speaker 1: dwarf and pat tailed lemurs are actually some of the
Speaker 1: only primates known to hibernate, and they can go up
Speaker 1: to ten minutes without breathing when they're hibernating. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this is where we get into some of the
Speaker 1: things about hibernation that makes it really clear it's not
Speaker 1: just sleeping, it's not just a nap. So to prepare
Speaker 1: for hibernation, the body temperature drastically drops and brain activity
Speaker 1: greatly decreases to a coma like state, and the metabolism
Speaker 1: slows so that you can basically be in this coma
Speaker 1: state without dying of starvation, and the heart rate can
Speaker 1: drop drastically, so a grisly bear's heart goes from about
Speaker 1: eighty four beats per minute to nineteen beats per minute,
Speaker 1: which is pretty crazy. And there's the mechanism of how
Speaker 1: this works is really interesting for a bear. So the
Speaker 1: heart isn't da imaged, which you would think it would.
Speaker 1: So like, if a heart beat slows too much in
Speaker 1: like a human, you're going to really damage the heart,
Speaker 1: which could be fatal because the blood builds up in
Speaker 1: the left ventricle and then that can cause the ventricle
Speaker 1: to expand and become damaged. And yeah, that's no good.
Speaker 1: You don't you don't want your heart to be like
Speaker 1: an overly full water balloon essentially, I mean when we
Speaker 1: learned about I mean, speaking of wintertime, the Grinch, when
Speaker 1: his heart grows three sizes, he would die. He would die,
Speaker 1: He would die. That would be very bad. Well unless
Speaker 1: I don't know what species the Grinch is, but maybe
Speaker 1: there's something about his heart that I don't I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think he would most certainly suffer an aortic dissection
Speaker 1: from that, Like there's not you know, let's let's fix
Speaker 1: grinch to be accurate, so that the Grinch dies and
Speaker 1: everyone is sad. So in the bear, Well, maybe the
Speaker 1: grinch has some special heart. Uh. Theologists like a bear, right,
Speaker 1: So so the bears left ventricle stiffens, so as the
Speaker 1: blood pools in it from not beating as much, it
Speaker 1: doesn't damage the muscle and the heartbeat is significantly weakened
Speaker 1: so that that stiffer heart muscle won't be damaged by
Speaker 1: the left h or so Okay, the the left atrium
Speaker 1: pumps blood into the left ventricle, and so if the
Speaker 1: left atrium is like really pumping hard blood into a
Speaker 1: stiff surface of the left atrium, it's like taking a
Speaker 1: water balloon full of blood and like smashing it against
Speaker 1: a brick wall. It's kind of like every Thursday. Well
Speaker 1: it is cathartic, but instead of smashing, if you kind
Speaker 1: of just like gently press it against the wall and
Speaker 1: there's like a little opening where the blood can school
Speaker 1: shout like, then you know you've got a functioning heart,
Speaker 1: is what I'm saying. So that's impressive. But a chipmunk's
Speaker 1: heart rate slows from two hundred beats per minute to
Speaker 1: only about five, which is that decreases wild Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it really it's it's almost like they're in the state
Speaker 1: of almost death, like almost it's like one beat for
Speaker 1: every ten seconds. Yeah, yeah, it's I mean if we
Speaker 1: if we got anywhere near that, you'd be dead. That
Speaker 1: it's just you can't survive that kind of slow heartbeat.
Speaker 1: But it is incredible that they're basic. And like one
Speaker 1: thing is if you wake up a hibernating animal like
Speaker 1: a squirrel, the effort, it takes them a long time
Speaker 1: to wake up. They can't just like instantly awake because
Speaker 1: their body has to essentially come back to life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from this state of Stasi is kind of like that
Speaker 1: scene in Austin Powers, like he gets frozen and they
Speaker 1: unfreeze them and then he goes through all of this
Speaker 1: like you know, hilarious unfreezing process in feminist text Austin Power. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: uh you know, and it's really funny because we get
Speaker 1: to see his But comedy at its highest form, it's
Speaker 1: it's you have to go to years of comedy school
Speaker 1: to reach that level. So so the breathing rate also
Speaker 1: drops dramatically as there's less of a demand for oxygen
Speaker 1: because your heart rate is so slow. Like I said,
Speaker 1: it takes a while to wake up from. And in fact,
Speaker 1: if they're waking prematurely for some reason, that can be
Speaker 1: really disastrous because that takes so much energy to wake
Speaker 1: up from the whole point of hibernation or or partially
Speaker 1: the point is to preserve your your energy stores throughout
Speaker 1: the winter because the food supply drops, so you're inducing
Speaker 1: the state of near death where you're not consuming energies
Speaker 1: so you can survive. And so if you wake up
Speaker 1: use all this energy to wake up, you're kind of screwed.
Speaker 1: So it's really important to set your alarm clock like
Speaker 1: your little any chipmunk alarm clock right. Other ways, it's
Speaker 1: like when your your battery on your phone, is it
Speaker 1: like two percent, but you still need to call your
Speaker 1: lift home. And it's like, what if I call this lift,
Speaker 1: It's going to make my phone die and then I
Speaker 1: won't actually be able to take the run. It's just
Speaker 1: like that, you know what I'm saying. Chipmunks are exactly
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, yeah, that's I mean, I couldn't put
Speaker 1: it more precisely myself. You're welcome. Chimps are lifts. That
Speaker 1: would be cool though, just like you call it a
Speaker 1: giant like a giant chipmunk. Yeah, it's like the cat
Speaker 1: bus thing. Yeah, and then you can just like put
Speaker 1: all your belongings in his little cheeks. Cute. Why isn't
Speaker 1: that a thing? Well, because it would probably kill us,
Speaker 1: I guess. So some scientists are hibernation purists and don't
Speaker 1: really think bears qualify as true hibernators because their body
Speaker 1: temperature doesn't drop that much and it's not too hard
Speaker 1: for the bears to wake up. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of whatever your opinion is if you're in science,
Speaker 1: different science, Like some people are like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's close enough to hibernation. Hybernation is a spectrum, and
Speaker 1: we need to respect that. It is actually literally described
Speaker 1: as a spectrum. So yeah, you're exactly right. So animals
Speaker 1: who are hibernating don't typically eat, although some do require
Speaker 1: little food stores, so they'll wake up briefly from hibernation,
Speaker 1: nibble on their little snack, and then go back into hibernation.
Speaker 1: They also don't poop or p and they don't produce.
Speaker 1: They don't produce fecal matter because their whole digestive system
Speaker 1: is slowed to crawl, if not like shut down entirely.
Speaker 1: And they do produce uria, which is like the main
Speaker 1: ingredient in urine, but the body is able to break
Speaker 1: break it down and recycle it, like bears break down
Speaker 1: uria into amino acids and recycle it. Yeah, so they're
Speaker 1: not just like full of p although the pissing the
Speaker 1: bed right exactly? Uh, you put bears like paw and yeah,
Speaker 1: no to p or I'm sure we're angry. So how
Speaker 1: do animals know when to go into hibernation? Is it
Speaker 1: based on like the like they know it's Academy Awards
Speaker 1: season coming up, or like, you know what, what's sort
Speaker 1: of the thing like the well, I mean when Paddington
Speaker 1: Too didn't get nominated or did get nominated but didn't win,
Speaker 1: He's like, well, I got to go into hibernation now
Speaker 1: just to cope with this subs my guest. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that if you don't if weather's not a
Speaker 1: reason to go into hibernation, trying to cope with an
Speaker 1: oscar snub surely is. Yeah. So in researchers discovered calendar
Speaker 1: cells inside animals who undergo physiological changes during winter, such
Speaker 1: as hibernation, and these cells are located inside a structure
Speaker 1: within the tour a gland called the pars to barrel us.
Speaker 1: The cells change what proteins they produce during the year
Speaker 1: in response to the amount of daylight. Actually, humans have
Speaker 1: a similar structure as the pars to to barrel it
Speaker 1: to the pars to barrel us. Yeah, that's that's exactly
Speaker 1: right to me parts to barrel us, which indicates that
Speaker 1: we may also have some sort of internal calendar and
Speaker 1: research even though we don't hibernate obviously yourself, yes, so
Speaker 1: you're your heart essentially stops and you stop pooping and
Speaker 1: peeing and yeah every winter. Wow, that's that's pretty marvel
Speaker 1: or you're not getting enough fiber. I'm just constantly constipated.
Speaker 1: That's it's you know, just call hibernation. Then it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem so bad. So there is a potential area of
Speaker 1: research suggesting that our immunity may change depending on the season,
Speaker 1: which means like maybe our immune system is giving us
Speaker 1: more protection based on like when we will most need it,
Speaker 1: and then that could potentially be regulated by this pars
Speaker 1: to barrel us got nailed it. So many animals who
Speaker 1: hibernate will prepare a din and insulate it with fur, dirt, vegetation,
Speaker 1: other cozy things. Uh, some animals will both bulke up
Speaker 1: before hibernation, eating massive amounts of food. This is often
Speaker 1: like large omnivores or carnivores like bears, while others will
Speaker 1: store food in their dens, meaning they'll wake up occasionally
Speaker 1: to eat. This is often the tiniest hibernators, like mice
Speaker 1: and chipmunks, because they're little, tiny bodies can't store enough
Speaker 1: fat and their metabolism can't slow down enough to keep
Speaker 1: them alive throughout the entire winter. They need they need
Speaker 1: their snacks and fact chipmunks will really they'll like steal
Speaker 1: from each other. They'll fight over food stores. It gets
Speaker 1: quite quite nasty. There should be a movie about this, yeah,
Speaker 1: like oh, like a gritty reboot of Alvin and the Chipmunks,
Speaker 1: like the squeak Wiel where it's just like it's like
Speaker 1: the Irishman, Yeah, like like I hear you know where
Speaker 1: my nuts are? You do know? You do know you
Speaker 1: will have to die, But it's all those squeaky chipmunk
Speaker 1: voices of like kill. It's like, oh mean caddi Talvin's
Speaker 1: hid intermid I know. But actually some of the best
Speaker 1: hibernators are guess what, I bet you won't guess this
Speaker 1: is where I'm which which species? Yeah, um, oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: some of the best oh um, raccoons. That's a good guess.
Speaker 1: But it's wrong because obviously I love to do this,
Speaker 1: just spring a question on my guest because it makes
Speaker 1: me feel so smugly superior because I have all the
Speaker 1: answers written down. So some of the best hibernators are bats,
Speaker 1: which is surprising, right, So big brown bouts in the
Speaker 1: wild can hibernate for around sixty days, but in captivity,
Speaker 1: one of these guys broke the record at three hundred
Speaker 1: forty four days. That's almost an entire year. That's almost
Speaker 1: an entire year. It was. This is actually a little sad.
Speaker 1: It was kept in a refrigerator in a lab environment
Speaker 1: to see how long it would hibernate, and it eventually
Speaker 1: died of starvation. Like cool scientists like once he like
Speaker 1: got to three forty four days, you couldn't just be like,
Speaker 1: all right, buddy, that's long enough, Like wake up, let's
Speaker 1: get you some nachos. She's talk. But sometimes it's sometimes
Speaker 1: a little gruesome. So the for a lot about species.
Speaker 1: The heart rate can go from a thousand beats per
Speaker 1: minute when they're actively flying to only about twenty five
Speaker 1: and some species abouts only need to take a breath
Speaker 1: every forty five minutes or even up to two hours
Speaker 1: during hibernation. That's it's they're like almost you wouldn't be able.
Speaker 1: You would think here's a dead bat, but it's not.
Speaker 1: The North American red bat can lower its body temperature
Speaker 1: to freezing point and can even survive its body tissues
Speaker 1: freezing due in part to its thick fur, extremely a
Speaker 1: low heart rate, and it's high red blood cell count,
Speaker 1: which is really crazy. It's I think one of the
Speaker 1: only mammals I know of that can really just kind
Speaker 1: of shake off having tissue frozen like that without getting
Speaker 1: frost bite. Right yeah, I I I certainly can't. If
Speaker 1: I call it side and it's lower than fifty degrees,
Speaker 1: forget about it. The first thing that happens to me
Speaker 1: when it gets cold is my nose just starts running
Speaker 1: like a faucet, just streams and streams of like fluid
Speaker 1: and snot. I used to live on the East Coast,
Speaker 1: and then it would be great. You know, you go
Speaker 1: out and it's snowing, it's beautiful, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I got to take a photo of me in the snow,
Speaker 1: and I turned the camera around him just it just
Speaker 1: streaming every hole in my face streaming with with fluid. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then like you you like you're because like the
Speaker 1: wind's like your eyeballs freeze over. Does that happen to
Speaker 1: anyone else because it did to me? But yeah, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I cannot withstand anyma of cold. Yeah, they're so good
Speaker 1: for those bats, Yeah, that they've really I'm just so
Speaker 1: it's kind of shocking to me that bats. I don't
Speaker 1: even really you don't think of bats as the traditional
Speaker 1: winter animal. But they're really good, really good hibernators. So proud,
Speaker 1: so proud. So why don't humans hibernate? The most obvious
Speaker 1: reason is that our ancestors didn't originally evolve in the
Speaker 1: frigid tundra, so primates don't generally need to hibernate. But
Speaker 1: it's not unheard of for primate to hibernate. Like I
Speaker 1: mentioned before, one of the only types of primates who
Speaker 1: truly hibernates our dwarf lemur species in Madagascar. The only
Speaker 1: other primate known to hibernate is the pygmy slow loris,
Speaker 1: a tiny primate from Southeast Asia who can interstates of
Speaker 1: tour poor for up to sixty three hours at a time.
Speaker 1: But these regions in Madagascar and Southeast Asia only dropped
Speaker 1: to about forty degrees in the winter, certainly not as
Speaker 1: cold as the frigid areas where animals generally hibernate. So
Speaker 1: why do these small primitive primates do it. It's speculated
Speaker 1: that hibernation for small animals not only protects them from
Speaker 1: the colder, harsh or climate during the winter, but to
Speaker 1: stay hidden away from predators who may be seeking to
Speaker 1: pack on extra calories. This may be another reason why
Speaker 1: humans don't need a hibernate. While we certainly have needed
Speaker 1: to fear some predators in our evolutionary history, our line
Speaker 1: of primates are larger, with more ways to defend ourselves
Speaker 1: than to bundle up and hide away, and when we
Speaker 1: started to migrate into colder regions, we already had our big,
Speaker 1: nerdy human brains to figure out other ways to adapt
Speaker 1: to the cold. But maybe in the future humans will
Speaker 1: need a hibernate, like when we start to become space explorers.
Speaker 1: NASA is teaming up with Professor of Pharmacology and anesthhusiologist
Speaker 1: doctor Rob Hinning to explore ways to induce hibernation in humans.
Speaker 1: After all, animals can hibernate without losing too much muscle
Speaker 1: tone due to how they slow their metabolism down. This
Speaker 1: would be of great use to space station dwellers who
Speaker 1: often must compensate for their weightlessness with exercises, which still
Speaker 1: doesn't make up for their loss in muscle tone and
Speaker 1: bone mass. So figuring out how to copy the animals
Speaker 1: technique for hibernating would be great for astronauts. Or hear
Speaker 1: me out alternative idea, Bears in Space. Bears in Space.
Speaker 1: When we return, we'll check out some Arctic adapters who
Speaker 1: go through a spectacular wardrobe change that's even more dazzling
Speaker 1: than those ugly holiday sweaters. I love home cooked meals,
Speaker 1: but what I don't really loves grocery shopping. I swear
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Speaker 1: type of person who could just like make risotto, But
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Speaker 1: That's Hello fresh dot Com slash Creature nine and use
Speaker 1: code cream each your nine. Imagine it's the dead of
Speaker 1: winter and you're snugly tucked in a remote cottage that
Speaker 1: your peepa left you. It's a quaint old home, all
Speaker 1: snowed in, but You've got hot cocoa and cans of
Speaker 1: your favorite type of beans, so you're all set for winter.
Speaker 1: You're in your little fur lined bed, all cozy and comfortable.
Speaker 1: You think back to your time with the local villagers
Speaker 1: who warned you to be quiet when you go home
Speaker 1: to your peepa's old cottage for a terrifying invisible beast
Speaker 1: roams these snow covered hills and kills anything that dares
Speaker 1: breathe too loudly. You chuckle to yourself, these villagers are
Speaker 1: probably bored and have a bit of cabin fever to
Speaker 1: invent such a ridiculous monster. But as you're drifting off
Speaker 1: to sleep, you hear a weird sound, a soft crunching,
Speaker 1: like the snow over your roof is being gently pressed
Speaker 1: upon Santa's reindeer. Perhaps. Then you hear a muffled sound,
Speaker 1: as if someone's making snow angels on the roof. You
Speaker 1: start to get a little nervous and think back to
Speaker 1: what the villagers said. You hold your breath, trying not
Speaker 1: to make a sound. You hear a scraping and what
Speaker 1: sounds like a huge vacuum sucking up snow. Then silence,
Speaker 1: just the soft pattering of snowfall. It's been several minutes,
Speaker 1: so finally you exhale. That's when suddenly boom, the whole
Speaker 1: house shakes, and then again boom boom, until finally crash,
Speaker 1: a huge face instead of jaws crashes through the ceiling.
Speaker 1: You've just been the victim of one of the cutest
Speaker 1: Arctic adapters, the Arctic fox terrifying so for humans, of course,
Speaker 1: there are no threat. They're about eighteen to long, not
Speaker 1: including the tail, and about seven to seventeen pounds, so
Speaker 1: like a little doggie, and like you probably guessed it,
Speaker 1: lives in the Arctic. They live in burrows and snow tunnels,
Speaker 1: and they can survive temperatures as low as negative fifty
Speaker 1: eight degrees fahrenheit. That is pretty chili pretty cold, yep.
Speaker 1: Their coats change from being tan and brown in the
Speaker 1: summer to fluffy white in the winter, and the coats
Speaker 1: help them keep warm and camouflaged, both in terms of
Speaker 1: hunting and from being hunted because they too have predators,
Speaker 1: so they're huge. Fluffy tail is used to wrap themselves
Speaker 1: up like a blanket. Is very cute. They're omnivores and
Speaker 1: will eat berries and scraps that they find They're very
Speaker 1: opportunistic because they have to be. They live in such
Speaker 1: a hostile environment. They'll even store bird eggs in their
Speaker 1: dens as snacks for later. So food can be very
Speaker 1: scarce in the tundra, and they will sometimes tail after
Speaker 1: polar bears and eat their leftovers. And they can travel
Speaker 1: up to sixty miles a day and search for food,
Speaker 1: which I don't think I've ever walked even like more
Speaker 1: than two miles for food. I mean that, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is quite a distance our polar bears one of their predators,
Speaker 1: or they have to have to worry about polar bears.
Speaker 1: They basically have to worry about anything, even like red
Speaker 1: foxes will hunt them sometimes. Yeah, they they're you know,
Speaker 1: not the They're not the big big kid on the block,
Speaker 1: I would say. But yeah, as long as they give
Speaker 1: the polar bears their space, and the polar bears like
Speaker 1: bigger kills, than they'll just eat the scraps, the leftovers.
Speaker 1: So when winter intensifies and there are no scraps to scavenge,
Speaker 1: they have to become killers themselves. So they're big. Ears
Speaker 1: have such sensitive hearing that they can listen for tiny rodents,
Speaker 1: mainly limmings, deep under the snow and find their exact location.
Speaker 1: So once a rodent is located, they can dig into
Speaker 1: the snow. Or even more excitingly, they like to spring
Speaker 1: up and then dive into the snow. And it's seen videos.
Speaker 1: It's very cute. You want to look at one right now.
Speaker 1: It's really funny because they hop right up and then
Speaker 1: just face plant right into the snow, but then do
Speaker 1: a little before that, they do a little like toe touch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're doing a little digging because they found they found
Speaker 1: their location, and the snow can be really hard and icy,
Speaker 1: so they're trying to break through down into the burrow.
Speaker 1: So they do big hop. Oh, that was a good one.
Speaker 1: If this snow is too soft, they can get kind
Speaker 1: of stuck and they kick their little legs in the air,
Speaker 1: and if it's too hard, they'll just like bounce off
Speaker 1: of it. So they have to get pretty good at
Speaker 1: determining like where's the best place to dive in otherwise
Speaker 1: it gets really embarrassing their butts just right in the
Speaker 1: air and they're flailing around. But when they get it,
Speaker 1: when they get it right, they can snatch a little
Speaker 1: limbing right out of its bed. Also, I had no
Speaker 1: idea that lemmings were real things. Until just now, I
Speaker 1: thought they were just that little computer game. Now they're real,
Speaker 1: although they don't all run off of a cliff at
Speaker 1: the same time. That's a that's a myth perpetrated by
Speaker 1: the evil documentarian and the street. So yeah, it looks
Speaker 1: like ritualistic face planting. It's extremely cute, and they can
Speaker 1: smell limming popsicles two ft under the snow. So what's
Speaker 1: I think is interesting is people usually see the Arctic
Speaker 1: fox when they're completely fluffy in their white winter coat,
Speaker 1: but they don't see them between seasons as much. And
Speaker 1: it's very funny. I don't know what that looks like.
Speaker 1: So let me show you. Here's the fox with these
Speaker 1: spotty patches of his coat growing in. Looks a little scraggly.
Speaker 1: That's still cute, still very very patchy. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: here here he is shedding the coat. Would be like springtime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is shot in springtime. It kind of looks like
Speaker 1: what would you say, It looks like, um, oh, good grief.
Speaker 1: Um it does look like good grief. It's it's not fun.
Speaker 1: It's just like I'm trying to think of like what
Speaker 1: like maybe like Jack Nicholson as he's like getting as
Speaker 1: he's you know, getting up there in age, think a
Speaker 1: bit haggard, and bits are falling off of him sort
Speaker 1: of an in sort of chunks. Yeah, yeah, now I
Speaker 1: see that. I do see that. But still cute in
Speaker 1: some sort of ineffable way. So other animals obviously change
Speaker 1: their coats during the winter as well, including snowshoe hairs, stoats,
Speaker 1: peery caribou, and the snowy owl. And uh, one thing
Speaker 1: that's interesting is kind of like, how do you think,
Speaker 1: Like how do they do this? Like it seems it
Speaker 1: seems magical that they know every winter just to change
Speaker 1: their coat. So one thing is that the fur itself
Speaker 1: isn't changing color like once it's already grown, because base
Speaker 1: hair for like, once it's already grown, it's not that
Speaker 1: part of it is not really alive anymore. So it's
Speaker 1: the hair follicles themselves that are changing at that level,
Speaker 1: so they have to grow a totally new coat. So
Speaker 1: similar to animals that undergo hibernation, they have a body
Speaker 1: clock that triggers hormonal changes that causes the change and
Speaker 1: growth of denser white coats from the follicular level and
Speaker 1: so that's why between seasons you see these kind of
Speaker 1: Jack Nicholson esk patchy with the with the weird little
Speaker 1: little tufts of white hair growing in or or and
Speaker 1: then like in the springtime, they shed it, so it
Speaker 1: all comes out in these big tufts and I think
Speaker 1: it's to me really cute, just like they look like
Speaker 1: they ran through a chicken coop, but then they got
Speaker 1: sticky and then all covered in feathers. That's a great description.
Speaker 1: But there is an animal that also has a coat change.
Speaker 1: I don't think you'd ever guess what it is, and
Speaker 1: the method that it doesn't is really crazy. So blog,
Speaker 1: a whale actually molt their skin every summer, and their
Speaker 1: skin over time will become a little more yellow and
Speaker 1: a little more marred. And that's not good for wanting
Speaker 1: to blend in with the ice. Especially in the winter.
Speaker 1: As you know, they're surrounded by these icy um icebergs
Speaker 1: and they actually do molt, and they in order to
Speaker 1: get that old layer of skin to come off, they
Speaker 1: have a spa day or multiple spot. Treat yourself, treat yourself,
Speaker 1: self care, but lugas know about self care. I could
Speaker 1: take a lesson from a blue we really all could.
Speaker 1: They're great. We we talked about the amount of previous episode.
Speaker 1: They are one of the only whales who can actually
Speaker 1: swivel their heads freely, which means that they can communicate
Speaker 1: by looking at each other and using expressions more than
Speaker 1: other whales. Yeah, so I I just I look because
Speaker 1: now I'm imagining them like kind filing down their back
Speaker 1: and just like throwing their head back and looking really content.
Speaker 1: Which it's like an herbal Essence commercial. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: that would be so good in an herbal Essence commercial,
Speaker 1: like you know, just like, yeah, tell me about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they will rub their bodies on gravel or river
Speaker 1: sand to help exfoliate the outer layer of skin, and
Speaker 1: this reveals that icy white skin underneath that will blend
Speaker 1: in better with their surroundings. And yeah, I just I
Speaker 1: want to. I would love to join Belugas on a
Speaker 1: spawt a. Now I don't my objective wouldn't be to
Speaker 1: look more icy white than I already with all my
Speaker 1: blue veins popping out everywhere, right, I mean it's sounds
Speaker 1: just being exfoliated feels nice. You know. I do an
Speaker 1: apricot scrub on my face sometimes and then you know,
Speaker 1: you leave the shower feeling refreshed and reach you of
Speaker 1: an Yeah, I get it. There are certain skin exfoliating
Speaker 1: products that advertise that you'll see the like pilled up
Speaker 1: layers of skin to slough off your body, and it's
Speaker 1: that's an extreme level. That is a dedication to the
Speaker 1: exfoliation that I feel like Blugas would really appreciate. Like
Speaker 1: if you can't see your skin kind of coming up
Speaker 1: in clumps, like, is it really exfoliation? Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: see extreme extreme. Yeah. Yeah. I went to a spa
Speaker 1: where they offered that treatment where apparently they just really
Speaker 1: scrub you down until you're raw and like get all
Speaker 1: the dead skin off. And I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: my dead skin can hang around a little while longer.
Speaker 1: That's okay, okay, you know what, you know what, it'll
Speaker 1: leave when it wants to leave. Right throughout human history,
Speaker 1: we've had to figure out how to adapt the coldness
Speaker 1: of winter and in some cases camouflage ourselves against the snow.
Speaker 1: But that big white winter blanket presents another problem, snow blindness.
Speaker 1: Snow blindness, also known as photocare titus, is damaged to
Speaker 1: the eyes caused by u V rays from the sun,
Speaker 1: sort of like an eyeball sunburn. It's painful and it
Speaker 1: can cause temporary loss and vision. When sunlight reflects off snow,
Speaker 1: eighty percent of UV radiation is reflected back. That's a
Speaker 1: nifty reminder to always wear sunscreen and sunglasses even in
Speaker 1: the winter. But how did we cope with snowblindness before
Speaker 1: we had sunglasses like in prehistoric times? Well, short answer,
Speaker 1: we actually did have sunglasses. Prehistoric people who lived in
Speaker 1: the Arctic Circle invented snow goggles over four thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: These goggles were carved from bone antlers or walrus ivory. Later,
Speaker 1: they could be carved from driftwood. They were carved to
Speaker 1: fit the wearer's eyes with a thin, long, horizontal slit
Speaker 1: to see out of. This slit allowed the wear to
Speaker 1: see while minimizing the amount of reflected you be light
Speaker 1: from entering the eye. Sometimes a black suit was rubbed
Speaker 1: inside the goggles to cut down on glare. In some ways,
Speaker 1: these goggles remain superior to modern goggles as they don't
Speaker 1: ice over in harsh conditions. That's why these goggles, the
Speaker 1: first ever sunglasses, remained a vital piece of equipment for
Speaker 1: people of the Arctic Circle for thousands of years, and
Speaker 1: though they weren't necessarily designed to be fashionable, they look
Speaker 1: pretty dang cool too. Speaking of cool, when we return,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how some animals survive being turned into
Speaker 1: living popsicles. Well, the holidays are coming up, and that
Speaker 1: means traveling and travel really stresses me out. But this
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Speaker 1: because I haven't away travel suitcase. Away suitcases are thoughtfully
Speaker 1: designed to make travel easier and less unpredictable. They have
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Speaker 1: Away suitcases make lightweight and durable suitcases. They're made to
Speaker 1: last a lifetime of travel, and with a limited lifetime warranty,
Speaker 1: they'll replace or fix your bag if it ever gets damaged.
Speaker 1: One of the most stressful things about travel for me
Speaker 1: is packing and trying to get everything in the suitcase
Speaker 1: and worrying about it overflowing and not being lit on
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Speaker 1: inner built in compression pad. You can pack in more
Speaker 1: and it will always be the same dimensions. It's also
Speaker 1: really easy to move around. It's got four three sixty
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Speaker 1: traveling with a rectangular plastic butler who carries all my
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Speaker 1: travel dot Com. Slash creature and use promo code creature
Speaker 1: during checkout for twenty dollars off a suitcase. When Jack
Speaker 1: frost nips at your toes, sometimes he bites off a
Speaker 1: whole chunk. Frost Bite is damage to the tissues, usually
Speaker 1: on extremities such as fingers, toes, and noses, as a
Speaker 1: result of being exposed to extreme low temperatures. While frostbite
Speaker 1: may not seem like a great coping strategy, the fact
Speaker 1: that your extremities suffer frostbite first is caused in part
Speaker 1: by your body's last ditch effort to save itself in
Speaker 1: freezing temperatures. The blood vessels throughout the body narrow, which
Speaker 1: is called vaso constriction. This prevents heat from escaping out
Speaker 1: your extremities, keeping it inside towards the more vital parts
Speaker 1: of your body, such as your brain, guts, and chest. Normally,
Speaker 1: this only results in cold, maybe slightly painful fingers and toes,
Speaker 1: but if you don't warm up soon, the process of
Speaker 1: frostbite will begin. First comes frost imp where the extremities
Speaker 1: start to lose feeling and go unnaturally pale. Blood flow
Speaker 1: to the outer parts of your body is reduced to
Speaker 1: the point where the tissues will start to become damaged
Speaker 1: if not warmed up soon enough. Frost nip can even
Speaker 1: result in a sunburned like injury due to the surface
Speaker 1: of the skin being frozen off, but this is not
Speaker 1: as concerning as frost bite. If you don't warm your
Speaker 1: fingers and toes and thyme, your tissues will fall below
Speaker 1: freezing point and ice crystals start to form in the cells.
Speaker 1: Ice crystals, biologically speaking, are taking time bombs for cells,
Speaker 1: either destroying them during the freezing process itself or causing
Speaker 1: the cells to rupture when they start to thaw. This
Speaker 1: is why frost bite must be treated carefully and not
Speaker 1: warmed up too fast, or the damage will be even
Speaker 1: more severe. Frost Bite can range in superficial damage and
Speaker 1: blisters to the skin to the loss of entire digits
Speaker 1: or body parts if muscle and other tissues are affected.
Speaker 1: Humans aren't really built to endure being frozen, but some
Speaker 1: animals cope with being popsicles surprisingly well. So I know
Speaker 1: that we have a lot of hopes that Walt Disney's
Speaker 1: frozen head could be brought back to life if you unthought.
Speaker 1: Of course, Walt Disney's head wasn't frozen. Don't see it anyways.
Speaker 1: One of the problems with cryogenics and humans is sure
Speaker 1: you could freeze a body, but unthawing it is really
Speaker 1: difficult to do without those ice crystals, just like rupturing
Speaker 1: the cells due to the nature that the cells will
Speaker 1: contain liquid and then if the liquid density changes, that
Speaker 1: can just burst open cell um. But you know, we're
Speaker 1: not the only animals on Earth, and some animals actually
Speaker 1: manage this fabulously well. So would frogs. We've actually talked
Speaker 1: about on the show in our Eat Prey Diet episode.
Speaker 1: But I think they bear another mention because they can
Speaker 1: remain frozen at zero degrees fahrenheit for up to seven months.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, they're found all over North America, in including
Speaker 1: in boreal forests. There this little brown frog. They're very
Speaker 1: unassuming looking. They don't look like some kind of science
Speaker 1: fiction Star Wars blue you know, baby Yoda things. Um.
Speaker 1: And they go through a process of partially freezing than
Speaker 1: rethawing over and over again until the glucose levels in
Speaker 1: their cells and their cells rise to an abnormal degree.
Speaker 1: And glucose, which is also you know, sugars can actually
Speaker 1: act as an anti freeze. Now that doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: can like eat a bunch of sugar and then survive
Speaker 1: being frozen. But these frogs, by introducing the high glucose
Speaker 1: levels inside each of their cells, will protect the cells
Speaker 1: from the freezing process, keeping water inside the cells, which
Speaker 1: keeps them alive and in suspended animation. So like the
Speaker 1: wood frogs becomes so frozen, they're like literally like a rock.
Speaker 1: You could throw it against a brick wall and they'd shower.
Speaker 1: Something I do every Friday. Yeah you know that Thursdays,
Speaker 1: the blood balloon against the brick wall. Friday is smashing
Speaker 1: frozen frogs against it. I mean it is like we
Speaker 1: all need ways to blow off steam exactly. And if
Speaker 1: blowing off steam means shattering a bunch of frozen wood frogs,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm not going to judge that. I think
Speaker 1: I would, but right, I mean I blow off steam
Speaker 1: by like, you know, making things out of clay, so
Speaker 1: that's much less making pottery. Yeah, you know, smashing frogs.
Speaker 1: It's all the same thing, right, It's it's therapeutic self care. Yes,
Speaker 1: is what you should do. I want to have a
Speaker 1: spot day with belugas and then we could have great
Speaker 1: fun just smashing frozen frogs. It's what is the alternative
Speaker 1: rock band smashing Frogs? Right? Yeah? I play the clarinet,
Speaker 1: so I love if you bring any instruments to this.
Speaker 1: I sort of play the ukulele. Bad leading twenty years, right,
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I think we have a band. I
Speaker 1: think that's a band. That's band. We did it. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: Smashing Frogs the band we did it. Clarinet and ukulele
Speaker 1: neither very good, but it is band now. So there's
Speaker 1: another contender for the best animal at enduring popsicle nous,
Speaker 1: which is the Siberian salamander. So this is found in
Speaker 1: well Siberia and Northeast Asia in wet woods, so that's
Speaker 1: like wooded areas where you have ponds and such. So
Speaker 1: they can survive being frozen at negative twenty two degrees fahrenheit,
Speaker 1: but for shorter periods of time. So that's a colder
Speaker 1: temperature than the wood frogs, but they can't last quite
Speaker 1: as long. They can last up to forty five days,
Speaker 1: but they also have a lower survival rate, so they're
Speaker 1: sort of the more risk takers. So it is the
Speaker 1: idea that like ponds that they live in will like
Speaker 1: freeze over and then they'll but they'll survive like within
Speaker 1: the frozen frozen in the permafrost. Yeah yeah, so um.
Speaker 1: Though there are stories of these salamanders surviving being frozen
Speaker 1: in permafrost for years and waking up like, those haven't
Speaker 1: really been confirmed. Uh scientifically, it kind of seems unlikely
Speaker 1: given that laboratory research shows they can only survive like
Speaker 1: forty five days in But I guess it's technically possible.
Speaker 1: I just don't I'm pretty doubtful. But like, let's Siberian
Speaker 1: find out, right, Let's put a bunch of Siberian salamanders
Speaker 1: like in the snow and see how they do. And
Speaker 1: sit there for you know, several years, several years. I
Speaker 1: can't wait. I mean, if if we have enough water
Speaker 1: balloons full of blood and enough frozen frogs and our
Speaker 1: blooga friends, then you know we'll be fine. So now
Speaker 1: I want to talk about painted turtles. So these are
Speaker 1: pretty red and yellow streaked turtles that are found in
Speaker 1: North America and they live on land and in freshwater
Speaker 1: aquatic environments. And painted turtles don't hibernate. They brewmate because
Speaker 1: they're reptiles and I am a really pedantic person, so
Speaker 1: they breathe through their asses during winter to survive. This
Speaker 1: is my favorite part. When their ponds freeze over, they
Speaker 1: can't rise to the surface to take a breath, which
Speaker 1: is seems like a pretty bad problem to have when
Speaker 1: you need to breathe, because you know, they're not fish.
Speaker 1: So since they can't breathe using their lungs, they'll use
Speaker 1: their little butt holes. And actually a turtles butt hole
Speaker 1: is a cloaca, and a cloaca is the all purpose
Speaker 1: butt of reptiles, birds, amphibians, and sharks, and also monotreams
Speaker 1: such as platypus. They all have cloaca. The cloaca is
Speaker 1: the whole that can do everything. So it can it
Speaker 1: can excrete, open urine, it can reproduce, it houses the
Speaker 1: reproductive organs, it can lay eggs. It's just it's like
Speaker 1: triple threat and yes for disgusting things that bodies do.
Speaker 1: It's the omnihole omni hoole. Yes. So the blood vessels
Speaker 1: around the cloaca are able to extract oxygen from water molecules,
Speaker 1: so they engage in chloacal respiration, which is butt breathing,
Speaker 1: and their chloac as sucking oxygen from the water like
Speaker 1: but gills. Incredible, that's my favorite thing so far today. Yes,
Speaker 1: if we could just breathe with our butts a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, swimming would be so much easier because your
Speaker 1: butt is usually submerged. You can extract the oxygen. You know.
Speaker 1: They used to try to save people who were drowning
Speaker 1: victims by throwing smoke in into their butt hole. And
Speaker 1: that's like, yes, and it's I mean it's true and
Speaker 1: that it happened. It's not true in that help, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's where I think that's where the same showing
Speaker 1: smoke up my ass comes from, because yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: it doesn't actually do anything, but it's acting as if
Speaker 1: you're helping. So yeah, and it was thought that this
Speaker 1: would revive someone suffering from drowning. And I guess the
Speaker 1: only way it would work is just the surprise of
Speaker 1: someone blowing smoke up your butt might kind of bring
Speaker 1: you back. But I don't think there was any actual
Speaker 1: How would that even work, Like you put a tube
Speaker 1: and they would have like a special butt pipe. I
Speaker 1: think that they stuck in the butt and then blow
Speaker 1: smoke up the butt. I don't know why they thought
Speaker 1: that would work. I what era are we talking about here,
Speaker 1: just like to early dred I think at it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't know anything back then about you know, we
Speaker 1: were we thought we could just go into a human
Speaker 1: body and toss things around and see what happened. Those
Speaker 1: were the days of like, yeah, you have like seven
Speaker 1: types of bile in your body and nothing else. Right,
Speaker 1: let's put slugs in your eyes just you know, see
Speaker 1: what happens. I don't know. I don't know. I'm trying.
Speaker 1: I am a I'm a medical doctor in seventeen fifty,
Speaker 1: and I don't know. No one knows. Let's let's breathe
Speaker 1: through our butts and just smash some frozen frogs and
Speaker 1: maybe that'll cure your consumption. I don't know. I am
Speaker 1: trying my best. My name is Hironymous Jay fits Welling,
Speaker 1: and I am trying my best. Good name. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Now I want to talk about something pretty cute. And
Speaker 1: it is so like if you don't have the special
Speaker 1: trick of breathing through your butt or being able to
Speaker 1: be be frozen solid, what do you do and how
Speaker 1: do you evolve in a short period of time to
Speaker 1: survive just freezing cold temperatures? So I want to talk
Speaker 1: about wild Yakut horses. They are found in Yakushia in Siberia,
Speaker 1: and they can survive temperatures as low as ninety negative
Speaker 1: ninety four degrees fahrenheit. Wow, which is fairly cold. I
Speaker 1: would say, so little a little chili. So these are
Speaker 1: horses that are thirteen hands. Now, I'm not a horse girl.
Speaker 1: I don't know what hands are or what that means,
Speaker 1: like if they have thirteen hands, what's going on? So
Speaker 1: I looked it up. Apparently a hand is four inches
Speaker 1: and the you measure it at the horses highest point
Speaker 1: of the withers. Oh, the horse with horse withers of course, Now,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what withers were, so I looked that
Speaker 1: up to and apparently the withers is the ridge between
Speaker 1: the shoulder blades of the horse. So you put your
Speaker 1: hands on the withers, you have to have four inch hands.
Speaker 1: I guess you put your hands are exactly four inches.
Speaker 1: I he'd be great at measuring horses. The new Career
Speaker 1: ad wanted someone with exactly four inch hands to measure horses.
Speaker 1: So I guess that's like at it is four ft
Speaker 1: tall at the highest point between the shoulders. Is what
Speaker 1: hands means? You know? Come over here, horse people, I
Speaker 1: just want to talk to you for a second. Why
Speaker 1: why why? Yeah? Because I think hands are only ever
Speaker 1: used to measure specifically horses. I don't think any other
Speaker 1: and I mean slide into my mention. I might be
Speaker 1: wrong about this, but do horses not like a tape measure?
Speaker 1: Do they get real? Do they get angry at a
Speaker 1: tape measure? Is this why hands are necessary? Desperate for
Speaker 1: human contact? See, they just they don't it's too informal.
Speaker 1: They want the laying of the hands. They want exactly.
Speaker 1: Most important fact about these YaHoot horses is that they
Speaker 1: are super super super duper fluffy. They are so fluffy.
Speaker 1: They are the fluffiest horses you. Well, good news, you
Speaker 1: got pictures. I do. They're so pouffy. They look like
Speaker 1: if you, I guess, if you put a horse, a
Speaker 1: long haired horse in the dryer and just like it
Speaker 1: came out and it was just a poofball. You know,
Speaker 1: like in the cartoons where something that's not supposed to
Speaker 1: be put in a dryer comes out of a dryer
Speaker 1: and it's just a little poofball. Yeah, yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: like this. They're so fluffy. I just want to dive
Speaker 1: my face right in there. I'll put my hands on
Speaker 1: this horse. I bet your hands would disappear into the
Speaker 1: How do you even know how many hands this horses?
Speaker 1: You can't see your hands. Oh my goodness. They are
Speaker 1: very very cute. They have the thickest coat of any horse,
Speaker 1: and they're kind of chunky and compact built, which is
Speaker 1: good because you don't want to like we talked about
Speaker 1: with frostbite, the more compact you are in the cold
Speaker 1: kind of the better because your your blood doesn't have
Speaker 1: to work so hard to pump out to your extremities.
Speaker 1: They have slow metabolic rates relative to other horses, and
Speaker 1: they can dig in the snow for food like link dig, dig, dig,
Speaker 1: find find some some vegetation under all that snow. And
Speaker 1: they actually didn't evolve from native species of horses in
Speaker 1: the area. Instead, these were horses that were brought to
Speaker 1: the area by the Yakut people eight hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: around the thirteenth century. And they're an example of rapid
Speaker 1: evolutionary adaptation brought on by human interactions. So we brought
Speaker 1: we brought horses who were not adapted to this cold
Speaker 1: weather over eight hundred years ago, and over that period
Speaker 1: of time they developed these adaptations like being really really fluffy,
Speaker 1: being stout, and having that slower metabolic great and they
Speaker 1: even have anti freezing properties of glucose in the blood
Speaker 1: like frogs like the wood frogs. Not you can't freeze.
Speaker 1: You can't turn it into a horse sickle like that
Speaker 1: will work, but it does help prevent frost bite. So
Speaker 1: what would have happened based on what I know about evolution, um,
Speaker 1: which I am not an expert by any means, but
Speaker 1: I did take a few you know, anthropology classes in college.
Speaker 1: So um, so they um, they would have brought these
Speaker 1: horses over and I'm guessing most of them would have died,
Speaker 1: but the ones that happened to be maybe fluffier or
Speaker 1: like carry the genes of fluffiness would have survived, and
Speaker 1: then they would mate with each other and then keep
Speaker 1: perpetuating that trait that enabled them to survive. Thus the
Speaker 1: fluffiest horses we've ever seen. Yeah, and I'm I don't
Speaker 1: know this for a fact, but it is possible that
Speaker 1: we even helped along. Because humans are great, well, depending
Speaker 1: on how you define the word great. We're great at
Speaker 1: selective breeding and creating ridiculous speeches and animals. But in
Speaker 1: this case, because the horses were very crucial to our
Speaker 1: survival as humans, there's a good chance that we maybe
Speaker 1: people saw, like we saw horses that were doing really well,
Speaker 1: and we're like, Okay, we gotta get this this one
Speaker 1: breeding a lot of baby horses because they've survived and
Speaker 1: they're they're doing really well. You know, I think we
Speaker 1: could have It's well within our abilities to have done
Speaker 1: that at that time, So, you know, it was probably
Speaker 1: a mixture of I would say it's mostly the environmental pressures,
Speaker 1: but then maybe they were assisted in their survival by humans,
Speaker 1: and then that's how they evolved so quickly without just
Speaker 1: immediately all tying up. Actually, comparisons of the yakout horses
Speaker 1: to mammoth genome found similarities in metabolism, hair growth, and
Speaker 1: body proportions, which is an example of convergent evolution. So
Speaker 1: convergent evolution is when you have very similar traits but
Speaker 1: they evolve at different points in evolutionary history, and they're
Speaker 1: like in different species or in the same species, but
Speaker 1: at different times. So one of the important things about
Speaker 1: yea coot horses is that they are mostly wild horses,
Speaker 1: so they don't they aren't kept in pens all year round.
Speaker 1: They're not kept at a corral are kept there. They're
Speaker 1: allowed to roam wild. And your coot horse breeders have
Speaker 1: a really tough job because the horses get to go
Speaker 1: live free and wild for much of the time, and
Speaker 1: the horse breeders have to convince them to come back
Speaker 1: to get fed and get medical attention and to help
Speaker 1: them in their breeding. And so they'll drive out for
Speaker 1: miles and miles to search for these horses, and then
Speaker 1: once they get there they'll call them. They really have
Speaker 1: to convince them to come in because it's these big
Speaker 1: these herds of horses. You can't just like laugh so
Speaker 1: all the horses and have it come in you. You
Speaker 1: have to kind of it's got to be a cooperative effort,
Speaker 1: like hey, we got hey, Hey remember remember hey, Hey,
Speaker 1: it's yes. And so they also will like call them
Speaker 1: out like be like, hey, come on, Fred. The horse
Speaker 1: probably not named Fred, but you know, um, I know
Speaker 1: there's definitely a Fred. Come on, Ginger and and Jasper Jasper, Yeah,
Speaker 1: not clearly. I'm not good at measuring nor naming horses.
Speaker 1: I mean I named a bear Timmy earlier in this episode.
Speaker 1: That's a good bear name, though, sell yourself short on that. Thanks.
Speaker 1: So that's this habit of litting animals roam free and
Speaker 1: then calling them back in over long distances is actually
Speaker 1: also done in Norway and Sweden and has been done
Speaker 1: since the Middle Ages. And there's this practice called cooling,
Speaker 1: which is the term for a hurting call to let
Speaker 1: livestock no, it's time to come home. So it is
Speaker 1: a specific type of song or call that has similar
Speaker 1: mechanics to yodeling, so that it can bounce off of
Speaker 1: the hills and and really for long distances, so that
Speaker 1: livestock can hear it even when they're far off into
Speaker 1: the mountains. And typically it's a tradition carried on by
Speaker 1: women because historically they were tasked with tending to flocks
Speaker 1: and herds, although men do also carry on the tradition,
Speaker 1: and each hurd or shepherd would have their own unique
Speaker 1: call for their livestock. And this so I have a
Speaker 1: clip from a very talented cool ning singer. Her name
Speaker 1: is Joanna Genten, and she's calling her cows. All all
Speaker 1: provide a link to the full video in the show notes.
Speaker 1: I really recommend looking at it. It's it's really hauntingly beautiful.
Speaker 1: But I'll just play a really short clip so you
Speaker 1: get an idea of what it sounds like. And in
Speaker 1: this clip you can see the little cow it just
Speaker 1: like they're ambling on over like okay, I'm going I
Speaker 1: recognize that. So as the idea that all of the
Speaker 1: the uh animals that um get hurted by the particular
Speaker 1: herders like recognize the sound of like their specific So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so, And I think they they'll probably recognize
Speaker 1: the voice of their their herd, and they'll recognize the
Speaker 1: specific call they'll they know to come come home, because
Speaker 1: then they get fed and they get a warm place. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I really love this, the practice of letting these animals
Speaker 1: just wander around, frolic around and play and occasionally get
Speaker 1: eaten by predators. But you know, and then you're just like,
Speaker 1: all right, come home, and they're like sure, Wow, that's
Speaker 1: how man, that's how farming should be done here. You know,
Speaker 1: just let the let the let the pigs just run
Speaker 1: around the city do their thing. I've seen Babe Pig
Speaker 1: in the City. That's the exactly the renowned documentary Big
Speaker 1: in the City I love. I love the George Miller
Speaker 1: famous documentary, and I loved both of those movies. When
Speaker 1: I was a kid, I was always horrified at Everyone's
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, you'll be bake in someday and he's
Speaker 1: like what and there He's like, calm down, it's the
Speaker 1: way of things here. So I wanted to do an
Speaker 1: update to crow boarding. So a little while ago we
Speaker 1: did an episode on play and I talked about cow boarding,
Speaker 1: where there's this video of a crow picking up a
Speaker 1: metal lid to like a jar, and he walks up
Speaker 1: a snowy roof, sits on the lid and slides down
Speaker 1: and does this a few times. And of course, okay,
Speaker 1: so this is just one example. You know, maybe this
Speaker 1: is just some some luke man, you know, malfunctioning crow
Speaker 1: or something. But actually I found online that there were
Speaker 1: there have been more sightings of crows and ravens sliding
Speaker 1: down snow covered roofs just to fly back and repeat
Speaker 1: it over and over again. So this is an observed
Speaker 1: behavior that ravens and crows do and they're just doing
Speaker 1: it for fun. We don't know why they're doing it,
Speaker 1: but there seems to be no purpose. And one of
Speaker 1: the definitions of plays that it's a repetitive action that
Speaker 1: has no purpose. And then like logically you would conclude
Speaker 1: that it is just for fun or for some some
Speaker 1: pleasurable reason. And and then there's another report that birds
Speaker 1: would fly to a snow covered stump and then they
Speaker 1: would slide down the slope on their backs, and sometimes
Speaker 1: they would hold sticks as they would slide down, just
Speaker 1: like skeers. Yeah, their crow poles love that. Yeah. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they seem to do it for attention, like they'll slide
Speaker 1: down a steep and line and then it seemed to
Speaker 1: try to attract mates by showing them how cool they
Speaker 1: are at cow boarding, and sometimes they do it because
Speaker 1: there's this lodge that's been in their family for generations,
Speaker 1: and this rich kid comes. It's like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: buy your lodge and then you won't be allowed back
Speaker 1: in it. And the crows are like, we'll see about that,
Speaker 1: and then they raised them down Death Mountain, just like
Speaker 1: the plot of Oh my god, what movie is that crap?
Speaker 1: It's that it's a John Cusack movie. I think, No Runnings.
Speaker 1: It's yes, the famous movies not Running Better Off. His
Speaker 1: name is John cusa parody that plot in um in
Speaker 1: an episode of the American teen black comedy film starring
Speaker 1: John Cusack. Do I know film or do I know film?
Speaker 1: I do have a master's green screenwriting. I hate to
Speaker 1: bring it up. In the town of Okay, according to Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: in the don't of Greendale, Northern California, high school student
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah, am I totally wrong. Oh no, no, no.
Speaker 1: They try to ski the K twelve, the highest peak
Speaker 1: in towns, in hopes of getting winning back best love.
Speaker 1: All right, there's a race and who the race gets
Speaker 1: to get the woman as a reward because women are prizes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I you know, like I actually was weird. I went
Speaker 1: to this arcade and there's this big vending machine and
Speaker 1: then there's just a bunch of ladies in there as
Speaker 1: like trying to trying to like like get them, and
Speaker 1: they're like, please let us out of this giant claw machine.
Speaker 1: We're actually stuck in here because we tried to get
Speaker 1: the bears out by reaching our hands and we got
Speaker 1: sucked in. But I think that was just to add
Speaker 1: to the charm of the machine. Year sure, okay, so
Speaker 1: back to the crows who are sledding for fun. Now wait,
Speaker 1: you suggested that maybe it's like could be sort of
Speaker 1: like the winter sports version of like the day answers
Speaker 1: the birds do like mating dances, because I need a
Speaker 1: training montage to get better at it's just this little
Speaker 1: crow like lifting sticks with its feet. I would watch
Speaker 1: that training montage. I would watch a whole movie trilogy
Speaker 1: about crows snowboarding and winning the winning the crow girls
Speaker 1: as prizes, and winning the lodges as prizes. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: crow girl win skis as a prize. Sometimes the crow
Speaker 1: girl gets to ski, yes not the crow girl skis sometimes,
Speaker 1: and sometimes the lodge skis and wins the prize of
Speaker 1: a year. Yeah, yeah, you just mix it all up.
Speaker 1: Crows are in it. I think we could we could
Speaker 1: scrape this franchise and then we also need the Chipmunks
Speaker 1: as mafia stories, right, and we could have a crossover
Speaker 1: like this could be sort of the crow boarding universe
Speaker 1: that we need, like an animal cinematic universe. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: the crow boarding cinematic universe. Who got the chipmunks who
Speaker 1: are like killing each other for for acorns? We got
Speaker 1: the crows trying to win ski contests. You got Beluga
Speaker 1: like a sort of Bridesmaid's movie, but with Bluga's going
Speaker 1: out and getting a spot. But everything goes horribly wrong.
Speaker 1: But then at the end they found out the the
Speaker 1: Belugas where the friends you made along the way? Exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of content. There's a lot of mindable content, guys,
Speaker 1: mute movie people content. Yeah, exactly. Again, I'm a screenwriter.
Speaker 1: We got to start writing me screening it. Start write me,
Speaker 1: please write me crowboarding screenplay. Yes, but what we'd call it,
Speaker 1: there's got to be a pun or something. Crowboarding is
Speaker 1: a pun, but like we need an extra one just
Speaker 1: to send it over the top, Like, why is this
Speaker 1: so hard for that. Take an improv class four of
Speaker 1: us not me Corvus. Wait what is Corvus? That's the
Speaker 1: the family of the because oh I see that that
Speaker 1: mightidential slogan. Yeah, it's maybe it's a little too um,
Speaker 1: it's maybe too highbrow for the for the audience. We'll
Speaker 1: figure it out. Or if you have crow board and
Speaker 1: we'll have a raven good time. There we are there,
Speaker 1: It is there, It is there. It does. Send it
Speaker 1: to print DreamWorks, drop that up. Well, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining me today. I've had a blast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really fun, raven time even good time. Oh
Speaker 1: and there goes my audience. They're all gone out by.
Speaker 1: Sorry about that. You guys, um, do you have anything
Speaker 1: to plug? Oh? Sure, you can listen to my podcast
Speaker 1: right here on this same network, do you see you?
Speaker 1: Guys are a lot um. It is called the Beactel Cast,
Speaker 1: and we analyze movies through a feminist lens. How dare you?
Speaker 1: I know? How dare i? Um? And you can follow me.
Speaker 1: You can check that out at Bactel Cast on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram, and then you can follow me on those
Speaker 1: places as well. At Caitlyn TORONTOI you can find us
Speaker 1: on on side inside the Internet, Creature Feature Pod dot Com,
Speaker 1: Creature Feature Pod on Instagram, Creature feet Pod on Twitter.
Speaker 1: That's f e A T, not f e e T.
Speaker 1: That's something very very different. Uh. And I have been
Speaker 1: Katie Golden and you can find me on Twitter and
Speaker 1: you can also find me on Twitter at pro bird Writes,
Speaker 1: where I ensure that birds will one day take the
Speaker 1: reins to this planet and really steered in the right
Speaker 1: direction and more Birdie direction. I love it. Thanks to
Speaker 1: the Space Classics for their super groovy song ex Alumina.
Speaker 1: Creature Feature is a production of I Heart Radios How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, app podcast or where have
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows? See you next Wednesday.
Speaker 1: M h.