Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature, feature of production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied
Speaker 1: psychology and evolutionary biology, and I could be the hive
Speaker 1: mind of a flock of super intelligent birds or just
Speaker 1: a regular human girl. You decide today on the show.
Speaker 1: It's Animal Crossing time, the Nintendo Switch game that has
Speaker 1: infected everyone's brain like some kind of parasitoid wasp. In
Speaker 1: the game, you create a village made of your animal friends,
Speaker 1: and part of your journey includes collecting fish, bugs, and
Speaker 1: fossils so you can hand them over to your good
Speaker 1: pal Blathers, the museum curator owl. This game allows you
Speaker 1: to get information from Blathers about various specimens and fossils.
Speaker 1: Some of these facts sound beyond belief, but are they?
Speaker 1: Today we'll be fact checking some Blathers facts about evolutionary biology.
Speaker 1: Can goldfish grow bigger than a foot? Do they have
Speaker 1: teeth in their throats? Can tarantulas shoot butt hair at you?
Speaker 1: Discover this and more as we answer the angel question.
Speaker 1: What is Blathers the owl hiding? So for those of
Speaker 1: you haven't played Animal Crossing, it's a cute life simulation
Speaker 1: game that has become one of the most popular video
Speaker 1: games to play right now. You play as a person
Speaker 1: trying to start up a quaint village, but Twist, all
Speaker 1: the villagers are animals. Disclaimer here, I haven't actually played
Speaker 1: the game because I can't get my plebeian hands on switch.
Speaker 1: And also this is not an ad. Nintendo hasn't given
Speaker 1: me a damn thing for this episode, but hey, if
Speaker 1: you're from Nintendo and want to give me a switch,
Speaker 1: I won't complain. I've been watching gameplay videos of it
Speaker 1: because I love the fact that you get to be
Speaker 1: a virtual evolutionary biologist or paleontologist discovering specimens and fossils,
Speaker 1: and I was surprised to discover that the items you
Speaker 1: can collect are nonfictional. The game does a pretty good
Speaker 1: job of giving you real, fat acts about real life
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology, but I did want to do a deep
Speaker 1: dive to examine these facts to see if they're true
Speaker 1: and to find even more surprising details that Bladers didn't
Speaker 1: tell you. Joining me today are my friends actor writer
Speaker 1: comedian Maggie may Fish and writer director Adam Ganzer, and
Speaker 1: they both host a new comedy podcast called I'll Show
Speaker 1: you mine if you show me yours. Welcome you, guys,
Speaker 1: I thank you. I am so excited to talk to
Speaker 1: you guys about Animal Crossing now. Full disclosure, I actually
Speaker 1: haven't played it because I can't get my hands on
Speaker 1: a switch. But I love the game. I've been watching
Speaker 1: trying to live vicariously through other people who are playing it,
Speaker 1: watching videos. Do you guys both play Animal Crossing? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: In fact, our islands are currently uh in a in
Speaker 1: a rebellion arrival Adam. Yeah, Adam is trying to slowly
Speaker 1: take over my island. I've been planting items, I've been
Speaker 1: doing leave behind on her island. Uh. But yeah, I've
Speaker 1: played over forty hours of Animal Crossing KG. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of it's a lot of crossing, and I've done that.
Speaker 1: I can't take it back. I guess. One of my
Speaker 1: favorite things about the game is the fact you can
Speaker 1: collect specimens including fossils, bugs, and I guess fish, aquatic
Speaker 1: animals and show them to a little owl named Blathers,
Speaker 1: who will tell you Blathers facts about the things that
Speaker 1: you are delivering to him, because he is starting a
Speaker 1: museum and you are donating these items to the museum
Speaker 1: and as I was watching these gameplay videos and getting
Speaker 1: really into it, I was thinking, like, actually, these facts
Speaker 1: sound mostly true, and I was really curious to explore
Speaker 1: the Blathers facts and see how much of it is true,
Speaker 1: if there's anything that could use further explanation. So I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to do a deep dive, deep critique on Blathers.
Speaker 1: And you know, maybe drag Blathers a little bit, but
Speaker 1: not too much. I mean, he's a sleep half the
Speaker 1: day that the museum is open. So if anyone's going
Speaker 1: to be dragged to the Animal Crossing University, you know
Speaker 1: it's probably the person sleeping on the job. Right. He's
Speaker 1: also an academic, he can he can stand the critique, right.
Speaker 1: This is pres just review her review. So in this
Speaker 1: first part, I want to talk about the aquatic animals
Speaker 1: that you can catch in the game and turn into Blathers.
Speaker 1: So I love his enthusiasm for explaining all these facts.
Speaker 1: It is adorable. And I'm going to try to do
Speaker 1: a Blathers voice. I'm going to do some quotes from Flowers. Uh,
Speaker 1: and let's see. I imagine him as being British, right,
Speaker 1: because he says what you know, like, yeah, it's implying
Speaker 1: he also, I think he's wearing a tie all the time,
Speaker 1: if correctly, and an argyle sweater vests, so there's no
Speaker 1: way he's not British. So when you turn a goldfish
Speaker 1: into blathers, he says a bunch of stuff. But one
Speaker 1: of the blathers facts, he says, is why they can
Speaker 1: grow up to a foot in length. And so let's
Speaker 1: look at whether this is true. So what do you
Speaker 1: guys think about this blathers fact two or false? A
Speaker 1: goldfish up to a foot? Can't they get can't they
Speaker 1: get larger than that? Am I wrong? Adam? Dude, No,
Speaker 1: no goldfish will survive that long in a ganzer home.
Speaker 1: Uh so could you eat them? Is that? Well? Just
Speaker 1: just you know, containers too small for their ambitions. I
Speaker 1: guess I don't know. I'm gonna say this is false
Speaker 1: because a foot seems impossible to me. So Maggie you're
Speaker 1: saying they can grow bigger, and Adam you're saying that
Speaker 1: there's no way they could grow up to a foot.
Speaker 1: I'm going well, before I reveal all to you, first,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about what exactly a goldfish is.
Speaker 1: So there are many different varieties of goldfish. The most
Speaker 1: iconic goldfish is the kerasas aratus, which is a freshwater
Speaker 1: carp that was a result of selective breeding in ancient China.
Speaker 1: And one myth about goldfish is that they are one
Speaker 1: of the stupidest animals in the world. And while they're
Speaker 1: certainly not the smartest, they are a lot smarter than
Speaker 1: they're given credit for. They can you know, those saying
Speaker 1: like having the memory of a goldfish, saying they have
Speaker 1: like a three second memory. All that that is not true.
Speaker 1: It's slander against the goldfish. And they can retain memories
Speaker 1: for up to three months, and they can even recognize
Speaker 1: their owners and learn not to be shy around them.
Speaker 1: Some will even him up to you and beg for
Speaker 1: food because they recognize that I had no idea. Wow,
Speaker 1: so you can make you can get a friendly goldfish.
Speaker 1: That's possible for that should be friendly, but you have
Speaker 1: to work on that relationship. Yeah, yeah, I gotta I
Speaker 1: gotta goldfish in college and it died. Uh within a day,
Speaker 1: it died. Uh. It was really sad. I was really
Speaker 1: messed up about it for the next It was shockingly
Speaker 1: affected me. Um. I don't know if I was very
Speaker 1: fragile at the time, or just like did you win
Speaker 1: it in a carnival? How did you obtain it? What
Speaker 1: we bought it from the past store? And like presumably
Speaker 1: there was something you know wrong with it beforehand, because
Speaker 1: I don't think you did anything wrong, but just seeing
Speaker 1: him up ended the day after, you know, deciding to
Speaker 1: get a pet with your roommate, it's a real judgment.
Speaker 1: It's a real judgment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's why I see, Kagie. I'm gonna live different now.
Speaker 1: I'm already I've already I already have things to repent of.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna live different in light of this because every
Speaker 1: goldfish I've ever had was forced on me, like by
Speaker 1: a carnival or something. So I never thought of it
Speaker 1: as like, oh, this is a real friend opportunity, right,
Speaker 1: I thought of it is more like a like a
Speaker 1: visually pleasing chore. I see, sort of a fishy responsibility, right.
Speaker 1: And now I'm gonna live differently because I could I
Speaker 1: could have a friendly goldfish, Maggie, that might happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're changing lives, Katie, And I'm gonna about to blow
Speaker 1: your minds with more goldfish facts. So it's interesting you
Speaker 1: both are sort of correct about the goldfish. So, Adam
Speaker 1: you mentioned you don't think they can get very large
Speaker 1: in tanks, and Maggie you said you think they can
Speaker 1: grow over a foot in length, and you are both correct,
Speaker 1: although I guess I would say Maggie is more correct. Sorry, so,
Speaker 1: but he keep score this at one point at um,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, point three points. Uh yeah, in
Speaker 1: tank environments, goldfish do not grow very large. And why
Speaker 1: is this? Well, when I was a kid and I
Speaker 1: heard this like, oh, goldfish can't grow because they're in
Speaker 1: a tank, I thought there was some I guess awareness
Speaker 1: of how big their tanks were, and like something in
Speaker 1: their brain was like, well, we can't grow that big,
Speaker 1: so we gotta we gotta stunt this growth. But that's
Speaker 1: actually not really true. So goldfish can, like Blathers suggests,
Speaker 1: grow up to a foot in length, and actually there
Speaker 1: have been goldfish recorded that have been even longer. And
Speaker 1: goldfish are actually indeterminate growers, not indeterminate showers. Sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: I am Adam. Did you know I'm Maggie's dad. Because
Speaker 1: of all the dad jokes, I'll accept this fact because
Speaker 1: I've already I need to I need to catch up
Speaker 1: in points so point for atom from me. So indeterminate
Speaker 1: grower means that they don't stop growing at adulthood and
Speaker 1: they can keep growing basically as long as they're getting
Speaker 1: the right resources, nutrition, and are healthy enough. Obviously, their
Speaker 1: growth does slow down significantly once they're adults, so we
Speaker 1: don't have like just infinitely large goldfish, but they can
Speaker 1: in theory keep growing until they die. And in fish
Speaker 1: bowls or small tanks, because the water quality is typically poor,
Speaker 1: the goldfish growth is stunted. So it's actually not the
Speaker 1: dimensions of the tank but the quality of the water.
Speaker 1: And obviously when you have a smaller tank, it's almost
Speaker 1: impossible to have enough water flow a good uh sort
Speaker 1: of microbiome in the tank that is healthy enough for
Speaker 1: the goldfish. So if you have a goldfish in a bowl,
Speaker 1: it's not going to live very long and it's not
Speaker 1: going to grow very big because a bowl is not
Speaker 1: a great environment for a goldfish. If you have like
Speaker 1: a a big old fish tank with a nice filter
Speaker 1: and like, you know, twenty gallons or more, it might
Speaker 1: live a little longer and grow a little bigger. If
Speaker 1: you had a wall sized aquarium Maggie, and then like
Speaker 1: all that was in it was like three goldfish that
Speaker 1: are six ft long. Yeah, that would really crush you
Speaker 1: would that would really crush. That would really crush you joke,
Speaker 1: But I have thought of something like that, like get
Speaker 1: just a huge tank and put like a one goldfish
Speaker 1: in there and see how big I can get them. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel less bad that mine just uped
Speaker 1: and died, you know, with when it because it was
Speaker 1: a small tank that we bought. So yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel a lot better about it. I still I want
Speaker 1: to know more about this pet. I want to know
Speaker 1: more about this journey to get a gold dish and
Speaker 1: how that happens. But I don't want to distract from
Speaker 1: the content of this podcast. You know. That's that's more
Speaker 1: for for our podcast. To find out more about Maggie's
Speaker 1: journey to get a goldfish, check out the podcast I'll
Speaker 1: show you my goldfish if you show me your girlish. Well, so,
Speaker 1: in ideal circumstances, their lifespan is a lot longer than
Speaker 1: you might guess. They can live over ten years, and
Speaker 1: one goldfish reached a record of living to forty three
Speaker 1: years old, and that's you know, longer than Jesus, sorry
Speaker 1: to say, long enough to buy a motorcycle and make
Speaker 1: some different choices. You know, get that, get that midlife crisis,
Speaker 1: get a tramp stamp, you know, get a new goldfish
Speaker 1: wife like yeah, or hook up with a beta on
Speaker 1: the side. Now we're imagining that, so onto the here's
Speaker 1: the real the real meat of the issue, the goldfish
Speaker 1: meat is how big these guys can get. So it's
Speaker 1: hard to say what their actual maximum sizes, but what
Speaker 1: we have on record is a nineteen inch goldfish or
Speaker 1: cimeters so blathers they can grow over a foot in
Speaker 1: length a m hmm. And if you guys check out,
Speaker 1: I do have a photo in the notes of a
Speaker 1: an eighteen inch goldfish, just so you get an idea
Speaker 1: of how big big, what a big boy that is?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I thought that looks like a totally
Speaker 1: different kind of fish, right, either a very tiny woman
Speaker 1: or a very large goldfish. It looks like a red snapper.
Speaker 1: And I only think that because of animal crossing, But
Speaker 1: that's that's what it looks like. Well, what's interesting is
Speaker 1: goldfish are actually a type of carp and carp, as
Speaker 1: you may know, can get quite large. And speaking of carp, actually,
Speaker 1: let's listen to another Blathers fact about carp. So here
Speaker 1: we go getting into character as Blathers, Oh the corp.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen their teeth? For your sake, I
Speaker 1: hope you have not. Carp have teeth in their throats,
Speaker 1: strong enough to crunch on hard things like shes and fingers.
Speaker 1: A good rule of thumb when dealing with other species
Speaker 1: is to keep your fingers out of their mouths. Although
Speaker 1: having neither thumbs nor fingers, I'm quite safe from this
Speaker 1: little fellow. I appreciate all the bows you're doing at
Speaker 1: the end too. I think you, Katy, You and Blathers
Speaker 1: are very similar in the spirit essence. I do feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is true, I need like more argyle sweaters. I
Speaker 1: had one in college, kind of grew out of. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I need a sweater vest to really fully embrace who
Speaker 1: I am. So let's let's look at this claim, this
Speaker 1: outrageous claim that Blathers is making that carp have teeth
Speaker 1: in their throat. Doesn't seem like that would be real,
Speaker 1: But let's go on a learning journey. They're like a
Speaker 1: slack pit. Is that what you're telling me? Well, so first,
Speaker 1: what are carp Obviously, goldfish are a species of carp
Speaker 1: as our koi fish. Carp are a large family of
Speaker 1: freshwater fish known as cyprin and a, and indeed, fish
Speaker 1: that are in the carp family, including goldfish, do have
Speaker 1: throat teeth. Just picture that for a minute. Let's let's
Speaker 1: sink in. So do all fishes, including my family, our
Speaker 1: throat tease. We all get them removed at age two. Yes,
Speaker 1: sort of like getting your wisdom teeth out. It's the
Speaker 1: throat teeth. Oh yeah, you kind of just choke it down.
Speaker 1: And so scientifically speaking, these throat teeth are pharyngeal teeth,
Speaker 1: and they are teeth that grow out of the pharyngeal
Speaker 1: bone in the throat. So if you guys check out
Speaker 1: the document, there is a picture of these throat teeth,
Speaker 1: which is cool to look at. Oh I was thinking
Speaker 1: like little spines or something. No, just teeth. That's a
Speaker 1: whole set of jaws or something, but in the throat.
Speaker 1: So it's not just carp that have throat teeth. There
Speaker 1: are some species of fish who also have pharyngeal teeth,
Speaker 1: like clown loaches, and they actually can make clicking noises
Speaker 1: with the teeth, which is great. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: love that that sounds just totally not creepy to hear
Speaker 1: clicking and you look over and there's a clown loach
Speaker 1: and it's clacking its throat teeth together. I feel like
Speaker 1: that fish was doomed to be creepy. When it was
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you know, it's it's fade sealed. It's
Speaker 1: got that big clown energy, the creepy clown my throat
Speaker 1: and then just laughter forever. So you might wonder why
Speaker 1: fish have throat teeth? Why do you guys think fish
Speaker 1: have throat teeth? I'm gonna go ahead and let the
Speaker 1: point leader, uh, start off with this, start off answering
Speaker 1: this one. Well, I know why we have throat teeth.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and let the point leader tell
Speaker 1: us why that fact too. Well. I mean, like you know,
Speaker 1: I birds, you know, have rocks in their in their
Speaker 1: throats gizzards up food a gizzard, So uh is it
Speaker 1: a is it a similar similar fashion? Is it? Like?
Speaker 1: Is it like a cow's stomach where there's like just
Speaker 1: phases of chewing. You are absolutely correct. The throat teeth
Speaker 1: help them grind food as it passes through their throat.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting you mentioned bird gizzards. We might actually
Speaker 1: cover that later in the podcast, so look forward to that.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about one more fish, the bitterling,
Speaker 1: which is a fish you can catch and give to
Speaker 1: blothers in animal crossing. So here's Blathers on the bitterlings.
Speaker 1: Bitterlings hide their eggs inside large bivalves like clams, where
Speaker 1: the young can stay safe untail grown. The bitterling isn't sneaky, No,
Speaker 1: they're young help keep the bivalve healthy by eating invading parasites.
Speaker 1: It's a wonderful bit of evolutionary deal making, don't you think,
Speaker 1: each one keeping the other safe? Though eating parasites does
Speaker 1: not sound like a happy childhood. Is that why the
Speaker 1: fish is so bitter? Dad? Again, Blothers is essentially me. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of puns and animal crossing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is why. God I need to get my hands,
Speaker 1: my my grubby little hands on the switch. It's it's
Speaker 1: like sold out everywhere though, So I am having some trouble,
Speaker 1: but I will I will get it somehow, in some way.
Speaker 1: You can't open a present or or collect a bug
Speaker 1: without the game insisting on a pun like forcing forcing
Speaker 1: upon down your God, I can only get so jealous.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Katie, you should just like keep your eye
Speaker 1: out for any balloons that kind of just are floating
Speaker 1: by your house or whatever, just window. You never know.
Speaker 1: So unfortunately, I do have to take my my dear
Speaker 1: friend Blathers to task here because he is a little
Speaker 1: off on this fact, although there are some really interesting
Speaker 1: things about the bitterlings that he is correct about. So
Speaker 1: first of all, bitterlings, again, we're talking carp on this show. God,
Speaker 1: this is a real carpy show. So bitterlings are a
Speaker 1: genus of fish in the car up family. They are
Speaker 1: a small leaf shaped fish who only grow about four
Speaker 1: inches or eleven centimeters. They do, indeed, lay their eggs
Speaker 1: inside freshwater mollusks such as muscles. So it's a really
Speaker 1: kind of twisted way of doing child rearing, sort of
Speaker 1: outsourcing child rearing forcibly. So it's like alien it's like
Speaker 1: alien rules. Yeah, yeah, Alien invaders exactly. Yeah. John Hurt
Speaker 1: is a mollusk in this situation and maybe in the
Speaker 1: movie too, may be true and a moss just just
Speaker 1: so people know, like a mousque includes things like muscles clams,
Speaker 1: those are bivalves. So the female will stick an ovipositor,
Speaker 1: which is basically a long tube that you pump eggs
Speaker 1: out of. Think of like a boba straw, but in reverse.
Speaker 1: Don't think about that actually, but the they will kind
Speaker 1: of get their ovipositor into the muscle or another freshwater
Speaker 1: bivalve and deposit a couple of eggs into the muscle's gills,
Speaker 1: and then a male will mosey on over and shoot
Speaker 1: their sperm into the intake siphon of the muscle, which
Speaker 1: then comes in fertilizes the eggs that are forced into
Speaker 1: the gills of the muscle, and then those eggs will
Speaker 1: develop into baby fish, which is cute. Like the CD
Speaker 1: motel of the Animal Kingdom. Yeah, yep, if all sex
Speaker 1: was conducted through air events, Yeah, that's like, which is
Speaker 1: really how you have to do it in the age
Speaker 1: of the quarantine anyway. Yeah, this is actually really good
Speaker 1: social disc seeing mating advice, like just using a muscle
Speaker 1: as a proxy my friends, O nore, Oh that didn't
Speaker 1: do it for you. Meg's well to me, I'm like
Speaker 1: picturing something, you know, like procreating in your ear and
Speaker 1: then suddenly fall out. Momusk does remind you of a mouth,
Speaker 1: by the way, it's like it's basically a tongue with
Speaker 1: a shell on it. So it didn't he didn't take
Speaker 1: like a clamshell and use it as a little puppet,
Speaker 1: be like, hey, buddy, you're feeling crabby today, Well I'll
Speaker 1: clam up. Yeck yeck chack yack jack. This is my
Speaker 1: soft pitch to write for animal crossing. By the way,
Speaker 1: I think I think you are instantly signed on. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would do amazing. That DLC is gonna be all yours.
Speaker 1: So the baby fish also called fry also called larva,
Speaker 1: which is decidedly a less cute name, so I'll keep
Speaker 1: calling it a baby fish. They live inside the host
Speaker 1: and leave when they've grown large enough. So I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if Blathers is actually correct that bitterlings are in
Speaker 1: a mutualistic relationship with the muscles. So mutualism is when
Speaker 1: both species are in a symbiotic relationship in which they
Speaker 1: both benefit. In this case, I'm pretty sure the bitter
Speaker 1: lings are actually parasites. So a study published in two
Speaker 1: thousand six in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology by right
Speaker 1: yard at all found that the bitter ling is a
Speaker 1: parasite to the muscle. The bitterling imposes costs on the
Speaker 1: muscle and does not reciprocate any benefits to the muscle.
Speaker 1: So it used to be thought that the muscle larva
Speaker 1: would actually infect bitterling fish, so there was sort of
Speaker 1: this trade off, like I'll infect you with my babies,
Speaker 1: you infect me with your babies. But actually it was
Speaker 1: found that the baby bitterlings are especially good at avoiding
Speaker 1: getting infected by muscle larva. So it will cost the
Speaker 1: bivalve precious oxygen and food because the baby fish are
Speaker 1: inside the muscle sucking up all their oxygen, eating up
Speaker 1: all their food, and it feeds on basically any bits
Speaker 1: of organic matter that enters the bivalve. There's no evidence
Speaker 1: that they exclusively feed on parasites. It's just whatever they
Speaker 1: want to eat in there they eat. So yeah, they
Speaker 1: they're just kind of freeloaders. Great, awesome do it? I
Speaker 1: mean whatever, Like the system is against them, so you know,
Speaker 1: whatever they have to do to make it work for
Speaker 1: the Wait wait, wait are we are we taking the
Speaker 1: side of the bitterlings, like they're like they're progressive protesters.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: So Occupy, Occupy Muscle, Wall Street, Occupy Muscle. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a fish. You know, I'm biased. So her name is
Speaker 1: Maggie May fish not not for like, it's not just
Speaker 1: a surname. She's a fish, don't. You guys can't. This
Speaker 1: is an audio medium, so you can't see. But she
Speaker 1: is actually a fish. Yeah, I got I got babies
Speaker 1: cooking in a cooking in my scallops in the freezer.
Speaker 1: Oh grass, I read a very weird mood today, you guys.
Speaker 1: So this is great. This is also wonderful. The good
Speaker 1: news in this story is that the bitterling babies are
Speaker 1: safe from predators while they are inside of the muscle,
Speaker 1: and they actually have to develop some interesting adaptations to
Speaker 1: survive inside of a bi valve. So first they have
Speaker 1: developed ways to anchor down amidst the flow of water
Speaker 1: through the bi valve. Because like a bi valve has
Speaker 1: an intakes siphon and an outtakes siphon where they pull
Speaker 1: in water and they push out water. So there's a
Speaker 1: current inside of the bi valve. So the baby bitterling
Speaker 1: has to kind of anchor itself down and and they
Speaker 1: have like sometimes they have like spikes or like these
Speaker 1: quote Mickey Mouse ears, these like protrusions on the side
Speaker 1: of their heads that really helped them just like wedge
Speaker 1: into the gills in the muscles, and it also they
Speaker 1: just really sinister. They have like Mickey Mouse ear as well.
Speaker 1: They I don't think it's too strong a word to say,
Speaker 1: force themselves into an unwilling muscles mouth and in the
Speaker 1: of their it's not like in the it would be
Speaker 1: like the equivalent of like a humans lungs. It's like
Speaker 1: in their gills. So it's like, I'm just gonna live
Speaker 1: in your guilt, right, only you know it doesn't cutely
Speaker 1: summon magic brooms to like do its tasks. And I
Speaker 1: just I just formally retract my endorsement of these, uh
Speaker 1: these fish. I was trying to tell you. I was like, bro,
Speaker 1: I don't think this is the side you want to
Speaker 1: live these nester Mickey mouse fish. Well, let's let's try
Speaker 1: to take the side of the mollusks. Now, so muscles
Speaker 1: are mollusks, but another mollusk is actually the squid. So
Speaker 1: let's hear a blathers fact about squids. Many molluscs, like
Speaker 1: snails and clams, have shells, but the squid's body is
Speaker 1: almost completely soft. The exception is a long narrow bit
Speaker 1: of hard material going through its main body, the last
Speaker 1: remnant of its shell. Of course, having a shell inside
Speaker 1: is not the best practice. Perhaps they lost the owner's manure.
Speaker 1: Keep expecting KG to just float away with an umbrella
Speaker 1: help some other achieve their dreams. So Blathers is correct
Speaker 1: that squid are mollusks and they are almost completely soft,
Speaker 1: and squidh sheet. So let's talk about this whole thing
Speaker 1: with squids and shells and what is what the heck
Speaker 1: is going on? Why are clams a mollusk and squid
Speaker 1: a mollusk but they are so different? How come come
Speaker 1: I'm not this hypothetical question. I'm setting I'm setting myself
Speaker 1: up to drop some some dank squid facts. Don't you worry?
Speaker 1: I was gonna say it was like, that's far beyond
Speaker 1: my pay grade as about blaster dang minds with squid facts. Sorry, kidney,
Speaker 1: So squid do, indeed like blatherers, to just have a
Speaker 1: remnant of a shell inside them. It's called a pin
Speaker 1: and it is actually a leaf shaped structure made of
Speaker 1: kiton that serves as a sort of backbone for the squid.
Speaker 1: And I want to also talk about a relative of
Speaker 1: the squid, the octopus us, because octopuses do not have
Speaker 1: any internal shell. They are hard percent squishy, just they
Speaker 1: can squeeze in and out of any tiny opening because
Speaker 1: they don't got no bones, no shell, nothing, just a
Speaker 1: hundred percent squish. That's how I like them. That's how
Speaker 1: I like my tentacled creatures from the sea. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're their beaks are tough like that's the only hard
Speaker 1: part of them is their beaks. And they're resolved. They
Speaker 1: do have a hard resolve, but their beaks and their resolve, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are resolved, that's true. You can see and you
Speaker 1: can see an army of octopus is doing some real
Speaker 1: damage down there. They have got together, yeah, if they ever,
Speaker 1: they ever colluded. So we've actually talked about this on
Speaker 1: the show before, on the episode on a Date with Nature.
Speaker 1: But there is only one octopus that actually has a shell,
Speaker 1: and it is the female argonaut octopus who has a
Speaker 1: thin shell which is actually in a case, it looks
Speaker 1: like a non the list shell and she floats around
Speaker 1: in it and it helps protect her eggs and it
Speaker 1: is quite spectacular looking. I forgot to put in image
Speaker 1: of that, guys, but if you just google it, it's
Speaker 1: really cool. Look at argonau octopus shell, it's very pretty.
Speaker 1: Other than the argonaut octopus, octopuses do not have shells
Speaker 1: and they have no internal shells. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about why squid and octopuses and other cephalopods decided to
Speaker 1: ditch the shell like is it as Blathers suggested that
Speaker 1: they lost the owner's manual. Well, it's actually a little
Speaker 1: more complex than that, sorry Blathers. When you look at
Speaker 1: the evolutionary history of squid, octopuses, and cephalopods, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of early iterations of the octopus and the squid.
Speaker 1: They did have shells, but it was a trade off
Speaker 1: between mobility and armor. So a shell gives you nice armor,
Speaker 1: but it makes you a lot slower and less agile,
Speaker 1: and it seemed that mobility one out in the evolutionary race.
Speaker 1: Being able to move around quickly and nimbly allowed the
Speaker 1: cephalopods to evade predators while still being able to catch prey.
Speaker 1: Extinct cephalopods with shells died out because according to University
Speaker 1: of Bristol paleo biologist Jacob Vinther quote, they couldn't keep
Speaker 1: up with the new shell ass kids on the block.
Speaker 1: I love it when biologists try to like use hip
Speaker 1: lingo and they always quote something that style. It's it's
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen or whereenever this article was written, and it's
Speaker 1: like the new shellless kids on the block. It again,
Speaker 1: brow these new, these new dank cephalopods are are straight
Speaker 1: up naked yo. Mm hmmm. So there is writ those
Speaker 1: manuals too. I think letter writing, letter writing gigs coming
Speaker 1: out of this one for KG. So the nautilus is
Speaker 1: actually the only living suffle pod that has a true
Speaker 1: full shell, and it is it basically has remained unchanged
Speaker 1: for hundreds of millions of years. So if you kind
Speaker 1: of want an idea of how these early squid and
Speaker 1: octopus relatives may have looked, you can look to the nautilus.
Speaker 1: Some octopus is actually kind of split the difference between
Speaker 1: being able to remain mobile and having armor. So the
Speaker 1: coconut octopus will find discarded bivalve shells such as a clamshell,
Speaker 1: and they'll carry it around and then close it around
Speaker 1: itself to form a shelter when threatened. And they're called
Speaker 1: coconut octopus because they also do the same thing with
Speaker 1: coconut shells. So if you guys click on that link
Speaker 1: I have highlighted here, you can take a look at
Speaker 1: this in action. It is very cute. These things are
Speaker 1: like Batman, like a utility belt of clamshells, and like
Speaker 1: they get these new versions of shells that are slightly
Speaker 1: more flexible but give more armor like Batman does every movie. Right,
Speaker 1: they don't have superpowers, they just have the gear. They
Speaker 1: have the gadgets. Is there anything in video games or like,
Speaker 1: I guess like pop culture that is similar to that,
Speaker 1: like something that carries around a shell and then hides
Speaker 1: in it and pops out of it. Because I feel
Speaker 1: like there is something, but it's on the tip of
Speaker 1: my tongue. I can't think of what it is. What's
Speaker 1: her face? From Pokemon Topeka? What's her name? Well, all
Speaker 1: the Pokemon essentially are carried around in balls. Well that's
Speaker 1: true enough. Also, like shamus Uh from what Metroid? No Metroid? No? Wait,
Speaker 1: what metroid? Sammus from Shamus Shamush the Irish metroid got
Speaker 1: got to deal with these gosh Day metroids. Oh those
Speaker 1: and they are get me the marth ball. Why don't
Speaker 1: we so often gravitate towards video games where progress can
Speaker 1: be made. In Animal Crossing you build a village, and
Speaker 1: other games you gain levels or powers, or armor or
Speaker 1: in game currency. Is it escapism? Research data has indicated
Speaker 1: it's not just a desire to escape reality, but to
Speaker 1: fulfill certain psychological needs such as competency, autonomy, and into relatedness.
Speaker 1: We like to feel accomplished at a task, and video
Speaker 1: games makes it easy to press through a skill in
Speaker 1: a very clear and quantitative way. We also like the
Speaker 1: feeling of being in control of ourselves. I know that
Speaker 1: when I'm gaming, I often find myself just jumping around,
Speaker 1: jumping to things, just to see that I can, even
Speaker 1: though it has nothing to do with the actual goal
Speaker 1: of the game. I think it might just be my
Speaker 1: mind feeling satisfaction and having control over my avatar. And
Speaker 1: we also like to feel as if we have an
Speaker 1: impact on our community. That's why there are so many
Speaker 1: online games. One of the most popular features of Animal
Speaker 1: Crossing is the online community elements. Getting these needs fulfilled
Speaker 1: your games isn't necessarily negative. As long as you're also
Speaker 1: trying to get them through other things in your life
Speaker 1: as well. That is to say, take potty breaks your nerds.
Speaker 1: When we return, we'll talk about one of Blathers favorite subjects,
Speaker 1: bugs in animal crossing Blothers is let's say, I'm not
Speaker 1: a huge fan of bugs. I'm not sure why, given
Speaker 1: that he's an owl and Alice generally love to eat bugs.
Speaker 1: But why are so many people afraid of these creepy crawley's.
Speaker 1: While any insects are, in my opinion, beautiful and harmless,
Speaker 1: even helpful, certain bug like creatures can in fact be dangerous.
Speaker 1: A few spiders who aren't really bugs, but arachnets can
Speaker 1: be venomous, and many other insects can sting, bite, or,
Speaker 1: as we'll find out, launch their horrible butt hair at
Speaker 1: you and give you a nasty rash. I don't think
Speaker 1: this is a reason to hate our many legged friends,
Speaker 1: but to admire their ingenuity, especially in the butt hair department,
Speaker 1: which will now discuss the bug kingdom gets real varied
Speaker 1: in what they accept in animal crossing. I believe snails
Speaker 1: those are a mollusk, gastropod, terrestrial gastrocod stupid, They also
Speaker 1: called like a hermit crab a bug, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that's quite right, but you know whatever, bloss This
Speaker 1: is where I got a little I got a little
Speaker 1: sass for Blathers on this. No, no no, no, I mean
Speaker 1: I have sass for Blathers too, because he blothers is
Speaker 1: very anti anti bug any time, very anti bug. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every time you present him a bug, he freaks out,
Speaker 1: has like panics, expresses his disdain for bugs while simultaneously
Speaker 1: assuring you that he will give the bug a good home.
Speaker 1: But he spends most of his time calling them horrid creatures.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, Blathers, are you going to give
Speaker 1: them a good home? Yeah? Also, like he eats bugs,
Speaker 1: so like sweetie, that's an eating disorder, Like that's nothing
Speaker 1: to joke about, right, Well, he guys, okay, he is
Speaker 1: an owl, so he would be eating small vertebrates. You
Speaker 1: think that that we're an animal crossing logic, my friend? People,
Speaker 1: all right, but have you ever seen a mouse? Villager?
Speaker 1: Isn't there isn't there a rat that there's there's mice
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, there's like I don't know if lately
Speaker 1: did they ever go missing? I have not seen that
Speaker 1: So I want to go over some of blathers facts
Speaker 1: about what he calls bugs. They're not always bugs. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, we're gonna talk about tarantulas, which are arachnids.
Speaker 1: So he when he's delivering this, he is terrified because
Speaker 1: he is very scared of them. But let's let's take
Speaker 1: a listen to what Blathers has to say about tarantula's.
Speaker 1: It is a fact tarantulas have barbed belly hair. These
Speaker 1: awful erecteds loose their spiky, itchy hairs to protect them
Speaker 1: from predators. But seeing how tarantulas prey on frogs, mice,
Speaker 1: and even birds, one must ask who needs protecting from whom? Who? Who?
Speaker 1: Indeed who? So Blathers is suggesting that tarantula have spiky,
Speaker 1: itchy hair that they can shoot at predators to protect themselves,
Speaker 1: which sounds totally made up, But this is very very true.
Speaker 1: These spiky, itchy, barbed hairs are actually called rdicating hairs,
Speaker 1: and they are found on tarantula's, some species of caterpillars,
Speaker 1: and also even some species of plants. So rdicating hairs
Speaker 1: grow on the tarantula's abdomen and it's usually like a
Speaker 1: patch of distinct hair like you know, tarantulas are fuzzy
Speaker 1: all over. Not all of those hairs are these rdicating hairs.
Speaker 1: There's usually just like a little patch near the back
Speaker 1: of their abdomen kind of looks like it's on their butt.
Speaker 1: It's not their butt, but if it was a butt,
Speaker 1: I guess that's where it would be. Yeah, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm fine saying that they're shooting their sharp hairs like
Speaker 1: a blow dart out of theirs. I'm okay, I'm okay
Speaker 1: saying that. Yeah, it's not like it's it's like if
Speaker 1: you had like a hairy but like on the actual cheeks,
Speaker 1: not like from the sorry to get crude, everybody, but
Speaker 1: not from the behole, but like on top of the butt,
Speaker 1: and you have harry Harry butt, and then you shoot
Speaker 1: those hairs off in your enemy's face. Yeah, that that is.
Speaker 1: That is what That is. A dart that you could
Speaker 1: shoot out of the side of your butt cheek right
Speaker 1: exactly like that. So the way they shoot these hairs
Speaker 1: is they actually use their hind legs to kick off
Speaker 1: the hairs, like as if like if you have a
Speaker 1: stack of money and you're doing doing the flip thing
Speaker 1: where you're just like you're just spreading the money out
Speaker 1: with your hand, except instead of money, it's sharp hairs
Speaker 1: that hurt and burn when they touch you. What a
Speaker 1: nightmare creature. And if you guys take a look at
Speaker 1: figure five. I didn't actually label these, but you know
Speaker 1: it's on the document, you can see a trantula. It's
Speaker 1: a conspicuous bald spot on its rear end. And that
Speaker 1: is a bald patch that is a result of it
Speaker 1: kicking off all of its urdicating hairs, which will only
Speaker 1: regraw after it molts. So how many times does it
Speaker 1: get to shoot it's prayer whatever with those dart hairs
Speaker 1: a good number of times because it doesn't go I
Speaker 1: don't think it goes bald like the first on the
Speaker 1: first shot. You've gotta keep shooting it until you really
Speaker 1: wear away that patch, and then when it molts, it'll
Speaker 1: grow a new patch. So it's it's got a good
Speaker 1: supply of butt hairs. So it's like a it's like
Speaker 1: a paintball clip or something pretty much. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: is the sound that tarantula's make when they are dusting
Speaker 1: off their butt hairs at your face. Another things that
Speaker 1: Blathers asserts is that tarantula's don't need protecting from anything,
Speaker 1: and Blathers that's just anti tarantula bias, because tarantulas have
Speaker 1: a lot to be afraid of, and it's something that
Speaker 1: Blathers should know about, which is wasps. So actually Blathers
Speaker 1: does have a lot to say about wasps. Have you
Speaker 1: guys gotten stung by wasps? Much? I I intentionally got
Speaker 1: stung by one just to keep my aesthetic of the
Speaker 1: conqueror alive when I went to Maggie's Island the first time.
Speaker 1: Oh you did you do that intentionally? I just figured
Speaker 1: that I was having a bad time. Yeah, having a
Speaker 1: bad time. It's fine either way. It added to the
Speaker 1: conqueror asthetic, did it not? Now I caught I caught
Speaker 1: five wasps in a row the other day. So you're
Speaker 1: talking to uh, you're talking to a wasp a wasp
Speaker 1: expert over here. You really are. I'm gonna tell you what.
Speaker 1: The trancelors don't have to fear, and that's me with
Speaker 1: a net because I cannot catch one of them no
Speaker 1: matter what I do. They're they're having a party in
Speaker 1: a parade when they see me coming. So in the game,
Speaker 1: if you are unlucky or lucky. I guess if you're
Speaker 1: at um, if you try to chop down a tree,
Speaker 1: sometimes you accidentally run into a wasp us and the
Speaker 1: wasps will attack you and your face gets all beat
Speaker 1: up and it's a whole thing. This is what Blathers
Speaker 1: has to say if you turn a wasp into his museum.
Speaker 1: Wasps are sometimes called meat bees because they eat meat,
Speaker 1: meat of almost any sort. And then Blathers gets really
Speaker 1: nervous starts sweating aggressive predators with venomous stings. Wasps not
Speaker 1: only hunt and eat other insects, they paralyze their prey.
Speaker 1: Didn't drag their victims home alive, leaving them for their
Speaker 1: larva to feed upon. So this again seems beyond belief,
Speaker 1: and again Blathers is totally correct. So wasps do eat meat,
Speaker 1: and they are I would say, maybe one of the
Speaker 1: most insidious insects out there. They are. They're pretty creepy.
Speaker 1: They're they're like the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's of the
Speaker 1: insect world. Yeah, yeah, something about them, the kind of
Speaker 1: their jib, just something about it. So, wasps are a
Speaker 1: group of insects within the Hymenoptera order, which includes bees, ants,
Speaker 1: and soft flies. There are both solitary wasps and social
Speaker 1: wasps who form group nests. So in animal crossing, because
Speaker 1: you get into a swarm of wasps that I'll attack you,
Speaker 1: those would be the social wasps. Whereas if you come
Speaker 1: across like one solitary wasp with its own little din,
Speaker 1: that is, you know, going to be a solitary wasp.
Speaker 1: Some species of wasps do indeed paralyze their prey, drag
Speaker 1: them into their dens for their larva to slowly consume,
Speaker 1: sometimes over many weeks. So just when they paralyze their prey,
Speaker 1: when are they dead? At what point is the prey
Speaker 1: actually dead? I mean that's a hard question to answer
Speaker 1: because they get eaten up over a long period of time.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, how would you like if you have
Speaker 1: leftovers at one point? Are the leftovers dead? Uh, they're
Speaker 1: dead at the point in which I cooked them. But
Speaker 1: but but like, is this like Starlac again? Is this
Speaker 1: Starlac rules where it's like they're slowly subjected to pain
Speaker 1: and torture over a thousand years? Is it like that? Basically?
Speaker 1: But usually only up to around a month? Only a month,
Speaker 1: but in bug time, that's a millennia. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean, that's true. That is true. It's like a
Speaker 1: billion years in bug time. So the spider wasp and
Speaker 1: tarantula hawk wasp are pros at this. So Blathers was
Speaker 1: just saying that tarantulas have nothing to fear, but he
Speaker 1: knows about wasps and wasps. Wasps can subject tarantulas to
Speaker 1: the most horrific fate imaginable, imaginable for any creature. So
Speaker 1: wasps who lay their larva on or in a victim
Speaker 1: to be slowly eaten are called parasitoid wasps because their
Speaker 1: larva live as parasites on their victims. Some species of
Speaker 1: parasitoid wasp larva saved the spider's vital organs for the
Speaker 1: very last so their food lives and stays fresher longer. Maggie,
Speaker 1: you've sounded weirdly interested in that. Yeah, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's what I do with my lucky charms. I leave
Speaker 1: all the marshmallows to the end, and I just feel
Speaker 1: like I get it. Just imagine the luxy charms are
Speaker 1: actual lives. Then you realize how maniacal that is. In
Speaker 1: this case, the lucky charms are the tarantula's lungs, another
Speaker 1: vital organs. Yeah. Whatever, however, you can empathize with these wasps,
Speaker 1: I guess. So. Some harrisitoid wasps even control their praise brains.
Speaker 1: They will lay their larva on or in orb weaver spiders.
Speaker 1: So orb weavers are a group of spiders that we
Speaker 1: have these beautiful, elaborate webs. But when the wasp lays
Speaker 1: her eggs in the orb spider, either like inside them
Speaker 1: or on top of them, the wasp larva actually starts
Speaker 1: to interfere with the spider's brain functioning, and it makes
Speaker 1: them weave these little cocoons that keep the larva safe,
Speaker 1: and then as thanks, I guess for weaving it a
Speaker 1: little crib, the larva feed on the poor spider and
Speaker 1: then eventually just kind of like chucks its dead body
Speaker 1: out of the crib. Truly truly dark, dark dark in
Speaker 1: a profound way. I feel like I'm just making Blathers
Speaker 1: case more for why he hates he hates bugs. But
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's cool they kill their babysitters.
Speaker 1: I'll say that on the record. Put me down in
Speaker 1: the pro column on that issue. Next, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about mantis is because Blathers has a lot to
Speaker 1: say about mantis is So if you turn a mantis
Speaker 1: into Blathers, this is what he has to say. And
Speaker 1: though mantises tend to eat bugs and spiders, mantises have
Speaker 1: been known to dine on small animals too. And those
Speaker 1: eerie eyes, Oh my, did you know it has five
Speaker 1: of them? Two big ones and three small. I shall
Speaker 1: faint if I think of it further. So again Blathers
Speaker 1: is correct about this. So mantises are adept killers, and
Speaker 1: larger species are able to feed on small vertebrates like frogs, lizards, snake,
Speaker 1: mice and even hummingbirds. It's one of those shocking things
Speaker 1: to see this insect just grab a hummingbird out of
Speaker 1: midair and start snacking on it. Yeah, I've never seen that?
Speaker 1: Is this? Am I just missing? Am I watching the
Speaker 1: wrong planet? Earth? Is there like a dark one planet?
Speaker 1: Is it like Planet Earth Nights or something like? Just
Speaker 1: like a dark planet Earth? Vice after dark? David Attenborough
Speaker 1: just really let's loose. He's like, he's like got a
Speaker 1: giant bong. He's like, check out these montases. Three fists
Speaker 1: the jack to start, but I was ready to go.
Speaker 1: I think they have a real intimidating aura, real cursed
Speaker 1: oura going on, because they have those long, scythe like arms,
Speaker 1: they are really quick when they strike, and they have
Speaker 1: these big, creepy eyes that seem to follow you everywhere.
Speaker 1: So they're are multiple species of mantis is who can
Speaker 1: feed on hummingbirds. And these are females that can grow
Speaker 1: around two to three inches long. And these females were
Speaker 1: observed mating and snatching hummingbirds out of midair like a
Speaker 1: real boss martch like doing them simultaneously. Yeah. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounds like that episode of Seinfeld where George like combines
Speaker 1: all of his passions into one strange super passion. That's
Speaker 1: exactly that is that. Yep, they are the George Seinfeld's wait,
Speaker 1: his name is not George Steinfeld, the George will Stands
Speaker 1: of the natural world. Yeah, it's like a real Caligula
Speaker 1: opulation operation over there in Mantisville. So, like Blathers said,
Speaker 1: mantises do indeed have five eyes, even though if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen a mantis, it looks like they only have two.
Speaker 1: So the two eyes you've probably noticed are their large
Speaker 1: compound eyes. But in addition, they have three tiny eyes
Speaker 1: on the top of their heads used for detecting light
Speaker 1: and dark, while those big compound eyes are able to
Speaker 1: see depth and movement, which allows them to snatch hummingbirds
Speaker 1: out of the freaking air. And so it's it's it's
Speaker 1: just kind of one of those things where I've when
Speaker 1: I think of a mantis, I think, yeah, two eyed mantis.
Speaker 1: Then they just have a bunch of secret extra eyes
Speaker 1: that apparently a dedicated to grabbing hummingbirds. They're like bilbill
Speaker 1: trying to get the ring back right, hummingbirds out of
Speaker 1: the air. I just love I love a secret eye.
Speaker 1: Like you thought I only had two eyes. I got
Speaker 1: a secret eye. Where is it? So many eyes? It's
Speaker 1: like under my under my hairline, part my hair, and
Speaker 1: there's an eyeball right next to the throat toeth there's
Speaker 1: some there, got secret teeth. I got secret eyes. What
Speaker 1: else do I have a secret thing of? That's really
Speaker 1: That's really it. It's I kind of want all these things.
Speaker 1: I just want all these parts added, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to get a souped up package. I got a
Speaker 1: secret finger somewhere. Yeah. The mantis is compound eyes are
Speaker 1: actually really interesting too. When you've if you've seen a mantis.
Speaker 1: It looks like they have pupils, right. Have you guys
Speaker 1: noticed that just right in the center. Yeah, yeah, always
Speaker 1: kind of following you around. Yeah yeah, I feel well.
Speaker 1: So these are actually pseudo pupils. So light is absorbed
Speaker 1: into the compound eye due to the angle of you know,
Speaker 1: like what a compound is eye is you have like
Speaker 1: this bunch of facets all over this eye, and so
Speaker 1: when light goes in, it's entering it at this angle
Speaker 1: and it absorbs the light in. So there's a dark
Speaker 1: spot that is actually kind of an optical illusion that
Speaker 1: looks like a pupil, but really it's where the is
Speaker 1: getting absorbed by the compound I So there's a lack
Speaker 1: of light there. It's kind of like you know how
Speaker 1: a shiny ball will have that highlight on it that
Speaker 1: seems to follow you around when you move the ball.
Speaker 1: It's like that, except instead of reflecting the light back
Speaker 1: at you, it's absorbing all the lightning like a black hole.
Speaker 1: It's stealing the light from the world, is what's what
Speaker 1: you're telling me? Yes, this is true. Their eyes are
Speaker 1: drinking light. So what a what a cool creature sucking
Speaker 1: the light out of the world. The magnificent mantis a
Speaker 1: noble creature. How do compound eyes work? Arthur pods, insects
Speaker 1: and crustaceans have compound eyes, and I made of a
Speaker 1: bunch of tiny light sensing units. Each facet of a
Speaker 1: compound eye consists of a cornia lens and photoreceptor cells.
Speaker 1: These facets are called ama titia. There can be as
Speaker 1: few as five alma titia to up to thirty thousand,
Speaker 1: depending on the animal. Mantises have about ten thousand amatidia.
Speaker 1: Each of these photoreceptive units send a little piece of
Speaker 1: a visual puzzle to the brain, which the brain assembles
Speaker 1: into a whole image. The resulting image will have bad resolution,
Speaker 1: but the benefit is that it gives the insect a
Speaker 1: huge view angle, allowing them to detect danger or prey
Speaker 1: all around them. Think of how hard it is to
Speaker 1: sneak up on a fly and swatt it. They have
Speaker 1: an imax panoramic view around them, and they can see
Speaker 1: you trying to be slick with your swater. When we return,
Speaker 1: I promise you'll understand this stupid joke. What's a fly's
Speaker 1: favorite fossil? A cobra lighte. This paleontology humor everyone's favorite
Speaker 1: kind will be right back. How are fossils formed? There
Speaker 1: are actually a few ways that organic matter can be
Speaker 1: preserved into a fossil. There's cast fossils, where a specimen
Speaker 1: gets trapped in sediment and their bodies dissolve, leaving an
Speaker 1: impression in the rock that forms around them, or the inverse,
Speaker 1: where a sediment gets trapped in a skull shell or
Speaker 1: other hollow part of an organism and forms an internal mold.
Speaker 1: There's also per mineralization, when an organism gets varied in
Speaker 1: sediment before it decays, groundwater can fill their empty body cavities.
Speaker 1: This groundwater is full of minerals, which then fills the
Speaker 1: empty space, forming a fossil. Pair mineralization can be so
Speaker 1: precise it can preserve the cellular structure of plants. Pair
Speaker 1: mineralization is one of the processes that results in petrification,
Speaker 1: the transformation of organic material into minerals. Sometimes surprising types
Speaker 1: of organic material can be turned into stone. And that's
Speaker 1: why I've got you round trip ticket to defecation station
Speaker 1: to all aboard the excrement Express. You guys find many
Speaker 1: fossils in animal crossing at least four a day, sometimes
Speaker 1: five is there a fifth one. Sometimes I thought it
Speaker 1: was always four. I don't know. I think I find five,
Speaker 1: but maybe I'm wrong, or maybe in a better island,
Speaker 1: I knew your island conquer I gotta conquer it, your
Speaker 1: fossil rich island. I see, I see why Adams trying
Speaker 1: to conquer your island. Now, as soon as I get
Speaker 1: a switch, Katie's coming for your fossils, especially your copper lights.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to talk a little bit about copper lights.
Speaker 1: So when you bring a copper light to Blathers, this
Speaker 1: is what he says. Copper lights are, in fact, bits
Speaker 1: of fossilized feces. Who you The copper light from certain
Speaker 1: plant eating dinosaurs has been found to contain small pebble.
Speaker 1: This tells us that these dinosaurs, like many modern birds,
Speaker 1: ate rocks to help grind their greens in their bellies.
Speaker 1: Who knew? Who? Who? Who? Indeed, you're really taken, You
Speaker 1: really taken to the character. I think. Thank you. This
Speaker 1: is also my audition audition tape for Animal Crossing, the
Speaker 1: live action motion capture film movie. If you think that
Speaker 1: you're you're mistaken, it's happening. Just trust me. Directed by
Speaker 1: Tom Hooper. Oh yeah, oh, it's a musical. I just
Speaker 1: hope it's like human faces on animals is my dream. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's very cats the musical. But I actually
Speaker 1: I still hope that they talk in animal crossing. That's
Speaker 1: sort of like weird weird speech that probably yeah, speak faces.
Speaker 1: I want my my human face on an owl. And
Speaker 1: I'm just going like that's a that's a movie. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like it's like Koyana Scottsie. So, copper lights
Speaker 1: are indeed fossilized poop. Don't be too afraid to touch
Speaker 1: copper lights. Like most fossils, most of the poop has
Speaker 1: been replaced by minerals over hundreds of millions of years,
Speaker 1: but they do hilariously keep their poop shape like good
Speaker 1: fossils really look just like, you know, a turd. I
Speaker 1: got a couple of pictures of those in the notes
Speaker 1: if you want to check them out. Yeah, I saw that.
Speaker 1: Thank you to help me visualize it. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: want to know what ancient poop looks like, there it is.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm gonna include links to these ancient poops
Speaker 1: in the show notes. You know it. I did know that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew it instinctively, so they had some fiber in
Speaker 1: their diet. These these dinosaurs, they did, and they also
Speaker 1: had rocks in their diet. And I want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit, actually, Maggie, I think you talked about
Speaker 1: this earlier about how birds have little rocks in and this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about bird digestion. Bird digestion, Bird digestion.
Speaker 1: It's bird digestion coca. It's my new my new segment
Speaker 1: in the show called Bird Digestion Corner, which I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'll do every week probably maybe. So birds do indeed
Speaker 1: eat rocks to help them digest food. So birds hate
Speaker 1: to break it to you guys, they don't really have teeth,
Speaker 1: and their beaks are good for pecking, ripping and cracking,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they have spines in their beaks that help
Speaker 1: them catch fish. But they don't have teeth and they
Speaker 1: can't really grind food up, so they will pick small,
Speaker 1: sharp rocks or really gritty sand and swallow it up.
Speaker 1: And then once a rock has been swallowed by an
Speaker 1: animal for digestion purposes, it is then known as a
Speaker 1: gastro lith So these sand or rocks will go into
Speaker 1: a specialized muscular part of the stomach called the gizzard,
Speaker 1: and birds who eat food that requires grinding, like grain,
Speaker 1: seeds and vegetation, the tiny rocks and the gizzard grinds
Speaker 1: up this food. In fact, when I had parakeets, I
Speaker 1: had to give them this special It was like this
Speaker 1: kind of sandy little tiny grains of rock and just
Speaker 1: a little tray of that so they could swallow it,
Speaker 1: so they could eat the seeds that they ate. Oh
Speaker 1: and what happens when they're finished, when they've smoothed out
Speaker 1: those stones. I mean I think that it just kind
Speaker 1: of gets expelled like once. It's a once. It's sort
Speaker 1: of a fine enough powder to go through their digestive system.
Speaker 1: It just like passes through them, you know, like when
Speaker 1: you eat rocks picked up by smaller creatures. Yeah. Usually
Speaker 1: when I passed them, I then use them to skip
Speaker 1: across a lake because they're all now. It just kind
Speaker 1: of aim aimed towards the lake. See see how much
Speaker 1: velocity you can get on that thing. Yet you gotta
Speaker 1: get a good spin on it too. Yeah, you'll get
Speaker 1: four or five skips, Maggie if you got so what's
Speaker 1: interesting and a fact that blather is kind of glosses over.
Speaker 1: Maybe because it's too personal. Is he doesn't talk about
Speaker 1: owl digestion suspiciously suspiciously, which is interesting because again I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: like you guys keep in good track of those rodent villagers.
Speaker 1: You haven't noticed any missing mice or anything, because owls
Speaker 1: poop out pellets. Yeah yeah, yeah, well they don't poop
Speaker 1: them out, They actually hork them out. They thrown't They regurgitate.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's it. If they if they ever let
Speaker 1: you build a p I center or a cop a
Speaker 1: cop station of your crossing island, we'll get to the bottom, promise.
Speaker 1: I mean, it would make forensics. It would make root
Speaker 1: forensics really easy, because you know, Blothers is at the
Speaker 1: police station going, I don't know anything about the missing
Speaker 1: Mr Mousey, and then he just like regurgitates a little
Speaker 1: mouse skeleton and like his little hat and the shirt
Speaker 1: he was wearing. Yeah, and he also gives you the
Speaker 1: cute nickname that only the mouse would have given you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you think about it. Squeaker huh oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that Squeakers was murdered. Nobody said anything
Speaker 1: about Squeak as being murdered. So in birds of prey
Speaker 1: like owls, the gizzard serves a different function, so it
Speaker 1: is actually a filter for all the inedible parts of
Speaker 1: their prey, like bones and fur. So owls swallow their
Speaker 1: prey hole or ripped them up into edible chunks, real
Speaker 1: cute blathers. But they don't chew, so those saw fleshy
Speaker 1: bits of the prey get ground up by the muscular
Speaker 1: contractions in the gizzard, while the hard, indigestible parts get
Speaker 1: compacted into pellets, which the owl later just kind of barfs.
Speaker 1: Back up, I'm sorry, the cheet says, horks back up.
Speaker 1: In my notes, I did write horks. They do hork
Speaker 1: it back up. I insists on that word being they
Speaker 1: hork it back up. That is the scientific term for it.
Speaker 1: Love that sometimes when I'm writing these notes, I get
Speaker 1: a little creative, just to make, you know, to make
Speaker 1: a little fun for me, just sometimes just one for Katie.
Speaker 1: And it's a little one for Katie, a little bit
Speaker 1: of you know, because like you can only write regurgitate
Speaker 1: so many times, for which I do, I write it
Speaker 1: a lot of times for the show. So cork it up,
Speaker 1: toss your cookies, you know, So another fossil that you
Speaker 1: can turn in two blothers is the dunk Elostius. And
Speaker 1: actually on these gameplay videos, I see a lot of
Speaker 1: people call it the dunkle Saurus, which I understand the
Speaker 1: urge to call it that because most like ancient animals
Speaker 1: do end in some kind of sourus. But this is
Speaker 1: actually the duncle Osteus. So this is what Blathers has
Speaker 1: to say when you turn in a dunk Elstius fossil.
Speaker 1: The duck Colostius flourished long before the dinosaurs, and it
Speaker 1: was so sort of armored fish. Curiously, only fossils for
Speaker 1: the head and shoulders have been found. We must simply
Speaker 1: imagine the rest. While its face was rather frightening, I
Speaker 1: like to picture a cute little tail and perhaps some
Speaker 1: fluffy paws on its fins. Such speculation is not scientific,
Speaker 1: of course, and essentially amounts to paleontological fan fiction. I
Speaker 1: own that what so Bathers run a real island dr
Speaker 1: he's writing. He did just confess that he's writing paleontological face,
Speaker 1: So I can only imagine like it's like the dunk
Speaker 1: Loostius and like Snape getting into some romantic snaphew mine
Speaker 1: just called t sex. You can imagine where it goes
Speaker 1: from there. So, unfortunately for Blathers and whatever weird fan
Speaker 1: base he has for his dunk Lostius fan fiction, the
Speaker 1: Dunkelstius probably did not have fluffy paws on its fins.
Speaker 1: But it is an interesting point he brings up because
Speaker 1: a lot of reimagining fossils is based on guesswork and
Speaker 1: creative license in terms of reconstructing something when like, so,
Speaker 1: if you only have the fossilized remains of the head
Speaker 1: and like kind of neck area, then how do you
Speaker 1: know what the rest of it looks like? So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the dunk Losties. So it
Speaker 1: was a huge fish with a frightening looking head that
Speaker 1: kind of looked like an evil digimon. There's an image
Speaker 1: there you guys should look at. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like an evil digimon. Right, I'm gonna say yes to that.
Speaker 1: But you've exposed my my bare tarantula ass. In terms
Speaker 1: of knowledge about Pokemon and Poke Bond are two very
Speaker 1: different I P s. I. Lawyers will be contacting you shortly.
Speaker 1: There's another image in the documentcy of what artists have
Speaker 1: imagined its whole body looks like, so it looks like
Speaker 1: a big, gray, frightening shark like creature. It did in
Speaker 1: fact grow up to what paleontologists think. It grew up
Speaker 1: to about twenty nine feet in length, which would be
Speaker 1: about nine meters, and weighed about a metric ton. It
Speaker 1: had a tough plated armor exterior, at least on the head,
Speaker 1: and instead of teeth, it had sharp, bony beak like
Speaker 1: plates that it used to eviscerate its victims. It went
Speaker 1: extinct about three d fifty eight million years ago, and
Speaker 1: there's no fossils of the rest of its body, so
Speaker 1: reconstruction is based on other extinct fish of its class, Placodermy,
Speaker 1: who have more extensive fossil records. But one of the
Speaker 1: problems with reconstructing fossils into animals, as you probably kind
Speaker 1: of know from the whole thing with like, we didn't
Speaker 1: used to think dinosaurs had feathers, but now we think
Speaker 1: a lot of them did. They were big, old, fluffy,
Speaker 1: chicken like creatures. So I wonder, I mean part of
Speaker 1: me wonders if the dunkle Ostius, instead of looking like
Speaker 1: a terrifying zombie, sharp arc with this evil digimon face,
Speaker 1: could actually have been really colorful with like a long
Speaker 1: flowing tail and bright vibrant colors to attract females. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't. I have no evidence of that either, but
Speaker 1: it's fun to think about. Yeah, just like two really
Speaker 1: shiny antenna you know, like a Birds of Paradise style
Speaker 1: mating swim. Why not just random dongles coming off of it? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then like when it squishes its body together the
Speaker 1: right way, it makes a different kind of face, right right,
Speaker 1: It's got or like it's got sort of a accordion,
Speaker 1: like an accordion body that makes fun noises as it
Speaker 1: swims along. Now we're sort of an alice in Wonderland territory.
Speaker 1: But I'm not as if Blathers can write fan fiction
Speaker 1: about this, this ancient fish. I want to write fan
Speaker 1: fiction about it. And I say, it was a colorful
Speaker 1: accordion boy, And I'm not here to dispute it. I'm
Speaker 1: just here to uh to cop you write it and
Speaker 1: sell it to someone. So next, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about the megaseraps. So when you turn in a megaseraps
Speaker 1: fossil to Blathers, he says, this large fellow was a
Speaker 1: bit like our modern rhinoceros but with two horns on
Speaker 1: its nose. Sadly, their small teeth restricted them to a
Speaker 1: diet of rather soft plants, and eventually they died out.
Speaker 1: I feel there is a valuable lesson to be had
Speaker 1: there about learning to enjoy a variety of foods. You
Speaker 1: know what, Okay blathers, it's a real real SMARMI easy
Speaker 1: hindsight is twenty twenty, is what I'm saying here. You
Speaker 1: are not extinct, probably eating all the mice, going like, oh,
Speaker 1: have a very diet. Right, also like right right, are
Speaker 1: you gonna lecture history? You should be better past than
Speaker 1: you were. All right? So the megaseraps, also known as
Speaker 1: the thunder beast, is indeed an extinct hinoceros like ungulates.
Speaker 1: So ungulate are hooved animals. Uh So, while they do
Speaker 1: look a lot like rhinos, they aren't super closely related
Speaker 1: to rhinos. Actually diverged from the species that evolved into
Speaker 1: rhinos earlier in the evolutionary tree, so they're actually more
Speaker 1: closely related to horses, and they're kind of goofy looking.
Speaker 1: If you guys, take check out that picture I sent you.
Speaker 1: There's a reconstruction of mega serops next to a guy
Speaker 1: like it's photoshop next to a guy that's just like
Speaker 1: casually leaning against it, which I find interesting. It's insane
Speaker 1: to me that you're that this creature is not more
Speaker 1: closely related to the rhinoceros, because it looks, according to
Speaker 1: this rendering, identical except for except for instead of having
Speaker 1: one point horn, it has the back of a hammer
Speaker 1: for a nose, you know, a slingshot nose. H yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, to be fair, I think that this rendering
Speaker 1: probably is making it perhaps more rhinoceros like than it
Speaker 1: may have been, just because it's like maybe the description
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know, it's a rhinoceros with a
Speaker 1: slingshot notes like do it, and then the artist went
Speaker 1: with that, but it's hard to know, like what they're
Speaker 1: fleshy body parts actually looked like maybe a little less
Speaker 1: rhinoceros like, but still it is convergent evolution does happen
Speaker 1: where you have animals independently evolving extremely similar characteristics, So
Speaker 1: it's possible it looked very rhinoceros like, even though the
Speaker 1: rhinoceros didn't directly descend from it. The megasar Ops was
Speaker 1: about eight feet or two point five meters tall. It
Speaker 1: was sixteen ft or five ms long and waited about
Speaker 1: three metric tons, so you know, sizeable heft, a good amount.
Speaker 1: It's it's a lot, it's a it's a lot of seraps.
Speaker 1: I would say it looks like a rhinoceros if it
Speaker 1: was made for Lord of the Rings or something, right, right, exactly,
Speaker 1: like how they sort of instead of elephants, they're only fants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're extra big with like a separate test. I mean,
Speaker 1: Jared Tulkien was a very creative guy, but I do
Speaker 1: like how you just kind of like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: only fancy, Like who cares, man, it's a book, you'll
Speaker 1: be bigger. Yeah. So yeah, their horn kind of isn't
Speaker 1: in a y shape instead of like that conical shape,
Speaker 1: so it's like a big yse. And why does this
Speaker 1: thing exist? And the answer is that it is theorized
Speaker 1: by paleontologists that this face fork was used by males
Speaker 1: as a battering ram in rivalries based on fossil records
Speaker 1: of broken ribs. Although you know, like my theory is
Speaker 1: they strung up like a rubber band on there and
Speaker 1: used it as a big old slingshot like in the flintstone.
Speaker 1: It also would make a great It would make a
Speaker 1: great like a gun sight. So if you're shot bullets
Speaker 1: rhinoceross mouth, boy, would you be accurate doing that? Natural snipers? Exactly?
Speaker 1: Nature snipers. Now I want like a sort of want
Speaker 1: some sort of like historical fiction. Of these are still
Speaker 1: alive in this cyberpunk dinosaur dinosaurs cyberpunk, and you're using
Speaker 1: one of these as like your sniper buddy, and you
Speaker 1: guys are partners, and you're you're assassinating like dinosaur Hitler
Speaker 1: or something. You're here in Luck. That almost identical game
Speaker 1: exists and it's called Rock Dinosaur. Un It pretty close.
Speaker 1: I love to rock every idea I have. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about our last fossil and last topic of today, which
Speaker 1: is the diplodocus. So if you turn in a diplodocus fossil,
Speaker 1: two blathers, this is what he has to say. Did
Speaker 1: you know that it's center of gravity was such that
Speaker 1: sitting up on its hind legs with probably easy What's more,
Speaker 1: paired with its long neck disability, greatly increased its reach
Speaker 1: for eating plants. Best of all, Diplodocus probably grew its
Speaker 1: entire life having no adult size. Wouldn't that we were
Speaker 1: all so gifted. So the Diplodocus was a very interesting
Speaker 1: dinosaur with very interesting proportions. It was a sorrow pod,
Speaker 1: which is a clade of dinosaurs with long necks and
Speaker 1: long tails. Think about like the long necks in Land
Speaker 1: before time. Yeah, every day, or you know a good
Speaker 1: old brontosaurus, same same clade, and it's interesting. So, like
Speaker 1: when he said Diplodocus probably grew its entire life, we
Speaker 1: talked about that earlier, where it's an indeterminate grower, not
Speaker 1: under indeterminate shower. So this is like the prehistoric goldfish,
Speaker 1: well only in that way. But sure I need to
Speaker 1: under I can only understand one animal with a different
Speaker 1: animal as a comparison point. Diplodocus went extinct about a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty two million years ago. It is one
Speaker 1: of the longest dinosaurs, growing around eighty feet long, which
Speaker 1: is twenty four meters, and they weighed around fourteen metric tons.
Speaker 1: So that's big, that's perfect. How big is that? How
Speaker 1: many football fields? How many buses? It is like a
Speaker 1: medium length passed from from a quarterback. Does that help you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very hopeful for me. Someone who is good at
Speaker 1: visualizing sports. So Diplodocus had a teeny tiny head compared
Speaker 1: to its body size. It's like it's got this really long,
Speaker 1: meaty neck that kind of in in this like little head.
Speaker 1: It's actually kind of funny. But if you guys just
Speaker 1: google Diplodocus, I'm actually familiar with with Mr. Diplodocus or
Speaker 1: mrs so are you. I read about seven dinosaur books
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, and I retained three names
Speaker 1: of dinosaurs and this, yeah, yeah, just briefly, wasn't the Bronosaurus.
Speaker 1: Doesn't that no longer exist? Am I wrong? I mean
Speaker 1: that classification It wasn't that. It wasn't the Bronosaurus a
Speaker 1: thing that was actually in a Patosaurus and they had
Speaker 1: the wrong head of the body. Well, but then it
Speaker 1: wasn't so there actually is now the change it back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they changed it back that there is Bronosaurus
Speaker 1: and Apodosaurus and Diplodocus. So they're all they're all they're
Speaker 1: they're all party, they're all the sauropods. But that is
Speaker 1: that is one of the hard, hard parts of being
Speaker 1: a paleontologist or a paleo biologist. It's like you just
Speaker 1: kind of have to symble dinosaurs you get it's like
Speaker 1: in a key a thing, but it's a bunch of bones,
Speaker 1: and you're just no instructions, nothing, not even the crappy
Speaker 1: I kea instructions and it's like, is this a new
Speaker 1: dinosaur or did I just get the bones mixed up
Speaker 1: with another time? It's not even an ellen key. That
Speaker 1: screws it all together either. You get nothing nothing. Because
Speaker 1: its neck was so long and heavy, it probably couldn't
Speaker 1: lift its head much higher than being parallel with the ground,
Speaker 1: So consequently it probably ate a lot of vegetation that
Speaker 1: was close to the ground, or just pushed over trees
Speaker 1: when it wanted to eat the leaves on the trees.
Speaker 1: But it is true that its center of mass was
Speaker 1: so far back on account of this really long tail,
Speaker 1: that it could probably sit up on its hind legs
Speaker 1: like a tripod, using that huge tail as a third leg,
Speaker 1: and then kind of giving it a little bit of
Speaker 1: extra heights so it could reach up into a tree.
Speaker 1: That's really not how I've ever envisioned one of these.
Speaker 1: You do think of it as just being able to
Speaker 1: like kind of nimbly lift its head up because it's
Speaker 1: such a it's a and it was a flexible neck.
Speaker 1: It just was very heavy, so the muscles required to
Speaker 1: really lift it high up would be be very difficult
Speaker 1: to lift that much weight up. So it's more likely
Speaker 1: it just kind of like tipped over like a see
Speaker 1: saw to like get it get some elevation. So you're
Speaker 1: telling me Jurassic Park is a lie. That's what you're
Speaker 1: telling me the Bracio source. But Braccio source may have
Speaker 1: been able to lift its head, I'm not I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: Like it's some of these animals could have lifted their heads.
Speaker 1: But this guy just a real, real thickle median neck there.
Speaker 1: And it also had a ridiculously long tail, even by
Speaker 1: sorrow Pod standards, just like and it gets really it's
Speaker 1: like it starts off really thick and gets thinner and thinner,
Speaker 1: and it it looks made up how long it is.
Speaker 1: In fact, the tail was so big and long the
Speaker 1: vertebra and the tail had to have quote double beams.
Speaker 1: So you know how vertebra have those little like protrusions
Speaker 1: that come out of the back of it or and
Speaker 1: on the sides, do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So those are called spine us process and they are
Speaker 1: the bony protrusions. But in addition to those spinus process
Speaker 1: that like come out on sort of the top of
Speaker 1: the spine, they had another bony protrusion on the bottom
Speaker 1: of the vertebrae. So it was like this like support
Speaker 1: extra support beam that prevented the veins in their tails
Speaker 1: from getting crushed from the weight of this massive tail.
Speaker 1: Paleontologists speculate that this long tail with over eighty vertebrae
Speaker 1: made have had a defensive function, being used to create
Speaker 1: a loud sound by cracking it like a whip. Now
Speaker 1: I think that this is actually a Blathers fact in
Speaker 1: a New Leaf. Yeah, I think it is where Blathers
Speaker 1: talks about how Diplodocus uses its tail as a whip.
Speaker 1: Computer models of sorrow pod tails show that Diplodocus and
Speaker 1: their relative Apodosaurus may have been able to crack their
Speaker 1: tails at supersonic velocities, creating a mini sonic boom like
Speaker 1: a bowl whip, which could have been as a defensive thing.
Speaker 1: Or two. I don't know who the ladies with your
Speaker 1: weird whiptail, or just to like have a great weekend
Speaker 1: just getting out there whipping your tails around. That sounds red,
Speaker 1: just cracking your tails, getting funking with it. Yeah, cracking
Speaker 1: open a diagonal beer and just whipping each other like
Speaker 1: the boys do. Yeah, these SA pods like the party
Speaker 1: were like Sara Party part damnit. SA party was better
Speaker 1: than the joke for me. Like, they can't, they can't
Speaker 1: all be winners. You know, I'm not. I'm not a
Speaker 1: blather as. I can't just pump out these great jokes
Speaker 1: with every with every dinosaur fact. But you you, you
Speaker 1: do a pretty good job. You're doing a pretty good blathers.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm like a discount blathers, dime store blathers.
Speaker 1: You're more than a discount thank you. Daughter. Oh I
Speaker 1: forgot that was happening this whole time. Oh yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: that I'm I'm Maggie. We did establish that is Cannon.
Speaker 1: We've established in previous episode where I had Maggie on
Speaker 1: and I did adopt her for me to be her
Speaker 1: dad because of the dad jokes and we were discussing
Speaker 1: Star Wars very you know, it was. It was a
Speaker 1: whole dad Yeah, the whole dad thing. You would you
Speaker 1: wouldn't like, you wouldn't get I wouldn't get it. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't understand that at all. Which connection to it? Well,
Speaker 1: thank you guys so much for joining me today. Now
Speaker 1: I usually ask do you have anything to plug? But
Speaker 1: I know for a fact you do, so get on
Speaker 1: with it. Plug that, plug that thing. Thank you for
Speaker 1: having us, uh Max, plug it up, Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having us. Yeah, So, Adam and I have
Speaker 1: a new podcast called I'll Show you Mine If you
Speaker 1: show me Years on the small Beans Network And yeah,
Speaker 1: Adam and I answer a very deep philosophical question with
Speaker 1: a favorite with a movie, U, a an album or
Speaker 1: a book and then uh maybe a book favor book.
Speaker 1: But anyways, we see what our favorite pieces of media
Speaker 1: says about us on a on a deeper level. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh pop culture or check if you will. Now,
Speaker 1: where can folks find you? They can find that podcast
Speaker 1: on the small Beans Network, which is available on any
Speaker 1: place that podcasts are available. They can find me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at the Real Games and the same on Twitch
Speaker 1: if you're into video game streaming. UM and I have
Speaker 1: a couple of the podcasts you can also find on
Speaker 1: small beans. If you are really into video games or
Speaker 1: into films, have two more podcasts there, Meg's Well. You
Speaker 1: can find me on Twitter at Maggie may Fish dot com. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you can also find my video film essays um
Speaker 1: a YouTube channel Maggie may Fix just my name and yeah,
Speaker 1: you can also follow me on Instagram also my name,
Speaker 1: so come find me here and I you can find
Speaker 1: us also on the internet. We are on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Creature Feature Pod. We are on Twitter at Creature Feet Pod.
Speaker 1: That's F eight T, not fet that's something very different.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear my Katie thoughts, can find
Speaker 1: me at Katie Golden. And as always, I am also
Speaker 1: pro bird rights, where I am fighting for the rights
Speaker 1: of birds to dominate us that. We also have shirts.
Speaker 1: I've already talked about the shirts before, but just a
Speaker 1: reminder we do got shirts. I'll include a link to
Speaker 1: that in the show notes pretty sure if I can
Speaker 1: remember to do that. Yeah, thank you guys so much
Speaker 1: for listening. If you are enjoying The Katie Facts, the
Speaker 1: Cather's Cather's Flatter, Kathy blathers, Yeah no, no, now I'm
Speaker 1: not doing I'm not going with that one. But if
Speaker 1: you're you're enjoying my My the Katie Facts, uh, please
Speaker 1: do leave a review or rating, or subscribe or download
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Speaker 1: a rating or review, I feel it in my owns
Speaker 1: and it makes me so happy. So thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening, and thanks to the Space Cossacks for
Speaker 1: their super awesome song. Ex Alumina Creature features a production
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