Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Future production of My Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, it's a
Speaker 1: conspiracy from human conspiracies involving animals, to literal conspiracies of lemurs,
Speaker 1: to a conspiracy of slander against some of the world's
Speaker 1: most misunderstood animals. We're getting out our thumb tax and
Speaker 1: corkboards to connect the dots and sometimes spots. We're also
Speaker 1: going to reveal the answer to last week's guests Who's
Speaker 1: talking Mystery Animal sound contest Discover the s'moor as we
Speaker 1: answered the angel question, should you trust that cat across
Speaker 1: the street or is it c I A joining me
Speaker 1: today to redacted and Redacted is host of the hit
Speaker 1: podcasts Ridiculous History and Stuff they Don't Want You to Know,
Speaker 1: Ben Bolan. Katie, thank you so much for having me
Speaker 1: on this show. This is this is amazing. We have
Speaker 1: we have hung out together on air before, and I
Speaker 1: have I've definitely learned some things that surprised I remember
Speaker 1: I was I was gonna say, and in some cases
Speaker 1: haunted me. I will never look at woodpeckers the same
Speaker 1: I know what's going on with their tongues now. And
Speaker 1: you told me that there was going to be a
Speaker 1: conspiracy episode of Creature feature. When you said that, my
Speaker 1: mind went in a million places. But I cannot wait
Speaker 1: to dive into this with you. Yes, yes, I I
Speaker 1: feel like conspiracy theories have gotten really stupid lately. I
Speaker 1: mean just low, low effort, dumb the stuff, the anti
Speaker 1: VAXX stuff. It's just really you're just gonna take horse medicine,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, like like that's not the kind of
Speaker 1: animal conspiracy that that eye indoors personally, you know, leave
Speaker 1: the horses alone. Yeah, let him. Let you know, horse
Speaker 1: medicine should be for horses. And I know that's something
Speaker 1: that a lot of hot take. Yeah, fans of recreational
Speaker 1: academine hate me for that one. But but the the
Speaker 1: point of the matter is, Yeah, with with the term
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory, it's often, especially the modern day, associated with
Speaker 1: things that are maybe politically frauds, or things that start
Speaker 1: with a a grain of some grain of often misunderstood truth,
Speaker 1: right and then or some iteration of an older conspiracy theory,
Speaker 1: and they spin out in the age of ubiquitous community cation,
Speaker 1: and social media so on stuff they once you know,
Speaker 1: we apply critical thinking to think to everything that you
Speaker 1: could imagine occurring on an X Files episode basically and
Speaker 1: H and animals I think can be a surprisingly big
Speaker 1: part of this. A lot of people maybe aren't aware
Speaker 1: of just how many strange allegations there have been about
Speaker 1: what humans do with animals and against animals themselves throughout
Speaker 1: the span of civilization. Yeah, there's a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: folklore when it comes to animals. We I love to
Speaker 1: talk about it on the show the from dolphins river
Speaker 1: dolphins that emerge from the water and seduced your daughters
Speaker 1: to animals that, oh, people are licking these toads to
Speaker 1: get high. There's all sorts of all sorts of fun
Speaker 1: like little Old Wives tales, sometimes they turn out to
Speaker 1: be true. Um. But in terms of like real animal conspiracies,
Speaker 1: I was surprised to find how many, like actual verifiable
Speaker 1: conspiracies do involve animals. Uh. And I'm I'm talking about
Speaker 1: real like we're really getting conspiracies like c I a
Speaker 1: level we're going to be put on a list somewhere
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories that we're going to talk about. Uh, because
Speaker 1: like if you thought like, Okay, yeah, you're probably gonna
Speaker 1: do sort of like conspiracy like animal like a squirrel
Speaker 1: stealing another squirrel's nut, and that does happen. But now
Speaker 1: I'm actually going to talk about literal ci a conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories or sorry, literal CIA conspiracies involving animals during the
Speaker 1: Cold War. I think I I think I have an
Speaker 1: inkling of where we're going, and Katie, I love that
Speaker 1: you have. You have made a very important distinction already,
Speaker 1: a brilliant distinction, which is between the distinct between something
Speaker 1: we would call a conspiracy theory, which is also the
Speaker 1: way it's used is not is not. People aren't using
Speaker 1: the scientific definition of theory when they're saying conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: I bet, I bet bees run television. I bet its bees,
Speaker 1: like think about it, other than the one one channel
Speaker 1: that has a peacock as a mascot the rest of
Speaker 1: its bees. But but there the other idea, like the
Speaker 1: thing you specifically mentioned here with the CIA is you
Speaker 1: said conspiracy not conspiracy theory. I guess in the case
Speaker 1: of television, it would be a conspiracy. I'm sorry, banned,
Speaker 1: banned from the show forever. But but but you're You're
Speaker 1: absolutely right, and that's something that Um, that's something that
Speaker 1: people should be aware of in the in the in
Speaker 1: the modern world, and in even historical anecdotes. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: if something there are proven conspiracies, and then conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: often are just masquerading is fact right exactly? I mean
Speaker 1: you know, a conspiracy you can sometimes like FOIA like
Speaker 1: Freedom of Information Act request document, actually read about it,
Speaker 1: real documents find out that there was indeed a conspiracy,
Speaker 1: Whereas a conspiracy theory is you're up late one night
Speaker 1: and you're like, I bet birds are all surveillance drones
Speaker 1: and you're you're up drinking coffee trying to take photos
Speaker 1: of the birds. Um, yeah, that's but yeah, in this case,
Speaker 1: these are as far as they can be verified, verified conspiracies. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course the Cold War was chock full of
Speaker 1: conspiracies because of all the spycraft going on, all the
Speaker 1: fun little games we played when we both US and
Speaker 1: the USSR had nuclear weapons that could wipe out all
Speaker 1: life on Earth. What a fun, fun time that was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the US trained animals to do spy work during the
Speaker 1: Cold War because the c I A is frightening lee weird,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, these these guys control so much,
Speaker 1: they have so much to do with geopolitics, the CIA,
Speaker 1: and then they're really just a bunch of dudes going
Speaker 1: like bet I could train a spider, but I could
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah. I always imagine this, you know, whenever here,
Speaker 1: especially about Cold War era plans, whether it's assassination attempts
Speaker 1: against Castro of Fidel Castro or something like that, or
Speaker 1: whether it's the stuff that we're describing. My my first
Speaker 1: thought as always like, what is it? What is it
Speaker 1: like in their you know, pitch room, and they have
Speaker 1: the equivalent of that is somebody, you know, is there
Speaker 1: like a mental image with a bunch of scrawled out
Speaker 1: fans on a blackboard, a bunch of crumpled paper, and
Speaker 1: then people just holding their heads in their hands. And
Speaker 1: then somebody's like, no, yea spiders. Yeah, yeah, I imagine
Speaker 1: some guy just like tossing pencils up into the ceiling, going,
Speaker 1: you know what, we should try out birds birds as spies.
Speaker 1: Birds would make good spies. You guys remember birds? Right?
Speaker 1: Remember birds? Yes, you said you said Russia was not
Speaker 1: that far as far as the crow flies. That got
Speaker 1: me thinking. That got me thinking hard I like how
Speaker 1: increasingly bio you know, like boys forget about it and
Speaker 1: forget about it. We'll deal with these Russians, no worries.
Speaker 1: So the c i A in fact recruited some of
Speaker 1: the most talented animal trainers, people who had studied B. F.
Speaker 1: Skinner's techniques. So B. F. Skinner was, of course the
Speaker 1: psychology is who came up with the Skinner box a
Speaker 1: k a. Operant conditioning. You can place a test animal
Speaker 1: like a rat, into a box and reward it with food, or,
Speaker 1: if you're unscrupulous, punish it with a slight electric shock,
Speaker 1: and through reward or punishment, you can teach it to
Speaker 1: pull the right lever to get the reward. So this
Speaker 1: idea that you could take an animal as seemingly simple
Speaker 1: as a rat. Obviously we know that rats are quite
Speaker 1: complicated and intelligent, but you could train them to operate
Speaker 1: levers or or turn on a series of lights or
Speaker 1: something in order to receive the best reward or avoid
Speaker 1: the electric shock that it might receive was kind of
Speaker 1: a revelation. But so so these animal behavioral experts who
Speaker 1: framebee of Skinners techniques, who were these really good animal
Speaker 1: experts able to train animals in really unbelievable ways were
Speaker 1: recruited by the CIA for Cold War Shenanigans. So one
Speaker 1: of the animal trainers recruited by the c i A
Speaker 1: was Bob Bailey, an animal trainer who worked for animal
Speaker 1: behavior enterprises in Hot Springs, Arkansas. So he trained animals
Speaker 1: to perform in roadside attractions, including something that was called
Speaker 1: the i Q Zoo, where children and their parents could
Speaker 1: watch chickens play tic tac toe or raccoons play basketball.
Speaker 1: Just a fun All American time quick question, Katie, So,
Speaker 1: I I have heard of i Q Zoo, but I
Speaker 1: know this is something a lot of folks listening in
Speaker 1: today are going to wonder as well. Are the chickens
Speaker 1: really playing tic tac toe? Are are these animals that
Speaker 1: appear to be doing you know, cute, c human and
Speaker 1: eligent things? How in there? Oh right? We can literally
Speaker 1: say in their bird brains, at least in the case
Speaker 1: of the chicken, what What's what's happening in? Uh? In
Speaker 1: this scenario often what is really happening is a Clever
Speaker 1: Hans sort of situation. So Clever Hans was that horse
Speaker 1: that could quote unquote do math and uh it was
Speaker 1: a horse. Uh. That was training. I think it was
Speaker 1: back in the around the turn of the century. And
Speaker 1: it could stomp. Uh. So you would give it a
Speaker 1: math problem and it would, you know, stop, like what's
Speaker 1: two plus two? And it stopped four times eight plus ten.
Speaker 1: It's stomp eighteen times. But it was actually looking to
Speaker 1: cues from its owner, subtle cues of when to stop stomping.
Speaker 1: And that's how it did math. So still using being
Speaker 1: very intelligent, but no, not actually doing math. Now, with
Speaker 1: chickens being trained to play tic tac toe, of course
Speaker 1: they are likely not thinking through the rules of tic
Speaker 1: tac toe. They don't understand the concept of the game.
Speaker 1: But they are likely able to be trained to use
Speaker 1: visual cues of the tic tac toe board uh in
Speaker 1: order to do the thing that they know will get
Speaker 1: them the treats. So they could probably do some pattern recognition,
Speaker 1: but they don't think like I am winning at this
Speaker 1: game of tic tac toe. I am mr Chicken. I
Speaker 1: cannot wait for my corn reward. Uh. Okay. But to
Speaker 1: the c the c I a UM operatives or agents
Speaker 1: who were considering this guy specifically as an asset, where
Speaker 1: they is this like a movie moment that people might
Speaker 1: see in um in a heist film, like where where
Speaker 1: you know? In a heist film, and there's always like
Speaker 1: the ringleader folks who go and observe a special and
Speaker 1: then say, you know, like that's our that's our first
Speaker 1: guy picks a lot like this one. It's two of
Speaker 1: them driving on a road trip to do some c
Speaker 1: I A spooky stuff and then like some of the
Speaker 1: spy work, it's so easy. I think a chicken could
Speaker 1: do it. And then they see a chicken playing tic
Speaker 1: tac too. He's like, I got an idea, I got
Speaker 1: an idea. White bulb, anybody else feel that light bulb
Speaker 1: over my head? Uh? The chicken cross the road to
Speaker 1: spy on the rooskis the the original and redacted punchline
Speaker 1: to that joke. So this is uh, And it wasn't
Speaker 1: a joke in the beginning. So this this really happens.
Speaker 1: So what did they? What? How? Like how do you
Speaker 1: how do you start that conversation if you're the c
Speaker 1: I A like, do you is it? Is it like
Speaker 1: that Willem Dafoe me where you're like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: something of a tic tac toist myself or something to
Speaker 1: the chicken. You're talking to the chicken. Yeah, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I gotta say I'm impressed with your work here, Mr
Speaker 1: Mr Kluks. Sorry, It's just you could imagine, like I
Speaker 1: love the CIA operative, like bypassing the human trainer right
Speaker 1: and then just talking directly to the chicken like fingers
Speaker 1: steeple the little pile of corn on the table. Listen,
Speaker 1: Mrs Nugget, I'm very interested in what you're doing here
Speaker 1: at this organization. Here's my card. Yeah, yeah, no, it's
Speaker 1: it is. If it sounds kind of silly and absurd,
Speaker 1: I mean it is, it's uh. But you know, the
Speaker 1: c i A like got wind of these these trainers,
Speaker 1: fabulous trainers at the i Q Zoo. The trainers would
Speaker 1: use the same methods they used to train a chicken
Speaker 1: to play tic tac toe or raccoon to play basketball
Speaker 1: to help the c i A create animals for use
Speaker 1: of sp eyes during the Cold War. So this included
Speaker 1: cats and pigeons and ravens. Um Bob Bailey, the trainer
Speaker 1: we're talking about, also helped train dolphins for military use.
Speaker 1: So uh, you know, a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of shady animal stuff going on here. One
Speaker 1: of the things that UH that Bob Bailey and his
Speaker 1: other animal trainers did during the Cold War was trained
Speaker 1: ravens the bird to fly to a location and drop
Speaker 1: would appeared to be a piece of fallen roof slate,
Speaker 1: but actually it contained a spy microphone inside of it.
Speaker 1: So a raven would land on a roof, a piece
Speaker 1: of slate would like drop down somewhere. You wouldn't think
Speaker 1: much of it. You just think like a piece of
Speaker 1: the roof, uh fell down, and then the raven would
Speaker 1: fly off and there's it would leave a microphone there
Speaker 1: in its place. That's a pretty actually so far of
Speaker 1: the like the three that we've named, that one's not
Speaker 1: a terrible idea of Ravens are so crazily intelligent. They're
Speaker 1: very smart, Yeah, Corvid's including ravens and crows. Yes, very
Speaker 1: very intelligent. Trainable in the sense that if it sees
Speaker 1: a benefit to your relationship, maybe you could get it
Speaker 1: to do something. It's not not like a dog that
Speaker 1: is naturally willing to work along with humans. But yes,
Speaker 1: they are strictly speaking trainable. And yeah, that that in
Speaker 1: terms of spycraft is rather impressive. Also, I think I
Speaker 1: read that Raven is also the name of a male
Speaker 1: spy who is meant to seduce people. So, uh, thet
Speaker 1: to black Widow. I'm not sure if that's what that's
Speaker 1: just the Marvel name for it, but yeah, but I
Speaker 1: think it's from Yeah, I think the spy me is
Speaker 1: um actually confirmed it, which is which is a thing
Speaker 1: we're not doing a bit, that's yeah, yeah, because you know,
Speaker 1: spy spy work. Eas since I like those kinds of
Speaker 1: things were used in spy work, it's hard to know
Speaker 1: like how successfully and how often, but definitely yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I guess these Ravens were not really seducing
Speaker 1: anyone necessarily. They were just dropping microphones on on window ledges.
Speaker 1: But so that that plot is actually kind of cool
Speaker 1: and interesting. But other things they tried to do are
Speaker 1: a little more you know, shows that maybe are bloated,
Speaker 1: uh military and spy budget, we're not always used to
Speaker 1: the best that we could have done with that money,
Speaker 1: such as trying to train arthropods like bedbugs, mosquitoes, or
Speaker 1: ticks to detect the approach of humans. Now, to be fair,
Speaker 1: it's not a terrible idea. Bad bugs, mosquitoes are ticks
Speaker 1: are parasites that will feed on humans. So the idea
Speaker 1: that they would maybe get a little bit excited at
Speaker 1: the approach of a human. It's not it's not dumb,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not a bad idea that the trick is.
Speaker 1: You know, how do you train a mosquito? Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: I can I'm not an expert, but I can also
Speaker 1: already imagine there would have to be a lot of
Speaker 1: science that I am not aware of, or there would
Speaker 1: have to be some mosquitoes that are much more intelligent
Speaker 1: than I have ever acknowledged. And if that is the case,
Speaker 1: then I would like to get in front of this
Speaker 1: and apologize wholeheartedly to the entire mosquito population. Luckily, you're
Speaker 1: probably never going to have to pay for your anti
Speaker 1: mosquito crimes and mosquito court because indeed, they are not
Speaker 1: very smart. Another problems they don't live very long, So
Speaker 1: you go to the trouble to train a mosquito and
Speaker 1: then you're gonna be dead pretty soon. So you got
Speaker 1: to train a whole new generation mosquitoes. But yeah, they
Speaker 1: did see some potential use of mosquitoes to see like, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe a mosquito could detect an incoming human uh, the
Speaker 1: other insects that they tried on. It didn't really work
Speaker 1: that well. Um, But yeah, I don't think that technology
Speaker 1: was ever really useful. I think modern technology like you know,
Speaker 1: heat sensing, vision and and things was much It just
Speaker 1: there was no way to compete with the evolving technology
Speaker 1: like mosquito. Having a mosquito in a jar to see
Speaker 1: if someone was approaching turns out not to have been
Speaker 1: the amazing military technology to win the Cold War. I
Speaker 1: didn't think I'd be saying the sentence today. But with
Speaker 1: with all due respect to uh, both both the members
Speaker 1: of the CIA and the mosquitoes in question, you're you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right. It's not it's an idea that has an
Speaker 1: understandable genesis or evolution, right A. Mosquitoes and these other
Speaker 1: parasites can rely on people for sustenance, so they're smart.
Speaker 1: They're smart enough to find people on their own right
Speaker 1: or quote unquote smart enough. So maybe we can just
Speaker 1: sort of weaponize this or focus it. But I do
Speaker 1: think one thing we should mention when we're talking about
Speaker 1: these stories, which are by the way, just going to
Speaker 1: get more ridiculous, folks, is that when when intelligence agencies,
Speaker 1: especially especially the CIA and some some of the other, uh,
Speaker 1: some of the other, like their foreign counterparts during the
Speaker 1: Cold War, when they had these ideas that seem so
Speaker 1: out of the box, they were kind of first they
Speaker 1: were on a mad search for any kind of edge. Secondly,
Speaker 1: there was not a ton of oversight, so you could
Speaker 1: have this thing where people are just sort of like yes,
Speaker 1: ending themselves into stuff that feels most insufferable. Improv troup
Speaker 1: it is, and it's the only improv troup with a
Speaker 1: lot of money, right, So this is so that's that's
Speaker 1: what happens. It's it's highly unlikely that some some person
Speaker 1: just walked into the CIA headquarters and like clapped their hands, yeah,
Speaker 1: and stopped everything and said I had the most I like,
Speaker 1: I got stung by a mosquito when I was coming
Speaker 1: to work. And it's guys, it was like the when
Speaker 1: the apple fell on Isaac Newton. I just saved us
Speaker 1: me Harold Hill, mosquito salesman. Yeah. It just it like
Speaker 1: drifts that way over time. And also, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: the c I A doing all sorts of experiments with LSD.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was some you know, as if none
Speaker 1: of them tried it, I mean, come on, come on,
Speaker 1: but didn't pan out? Huh No, no, I didn't really.
Speaker 1: Another thing that didn't quite pan out is, of course,
Speaker 1: you may have heard of this, the cyborg cat spy.
Speaker 1: That's one of my favorite ones. Yeah, because I have
Speaker 1: I full disclosure, folks, I have two cats that live
Speaker 1: with me, and I, like a lot of people, during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, I was, you know, Katie, you and I
Speaker 1: are making a ton of podcasts, right, so I had
Speaker 1: I started recording at home and now these cats are
Speaker 1: just like the worst producers I've ever worked with. And
Speaker 1: I have to be careful because they so that they
Speaker 1: don't hear me. But cats already, um, from what I understand,
Speaker 1: occupy a pretty interesting position in human society in terms
Speaker 1: of relationship with us, because there's a there's an open question.
Speaker 1: I guess the way it gets phrased in layman terms
Speaker 1: is the open question is did cats domesticate themselves? Like?
Speaker 1: To what degree are they? Would? Would you consider them,
Speaker 1: um domesticated? Would it be the same way as something
Speaker 1: like a dog? Are they? And then you know the
Speaker 1: big question. The reason that question is important here, I imagine,
Speaker 1: is because the next question is can you train them
Speaker 1: like a dog, right, what this is all the So
Speaker 1: I believe this experiment occurs before that other study which
Speaker 1: is way more recent that seems to indicate cats do
Speaker 1: know their name and they do know when you're talking
Speaker 1: to them. They simply don't care. Yeah, they just don't
Speaker 1: choose to acknology you at this time, which is their choice. Well,
Speaker 1: to answer your question, which is something that I think
Speaker 1: comes up a lot, because of course, I think we're
Speaker 1: very naturally curious about the two most popular pets in
Speaker 1: the world's dogs and cats. I love them both. I
Speaker 1: can't pick a favorite. I have a dog, I'm hoping
Speaker 1: to soon get a cat, so I'm on both teams. Um,
Speaker 1: but like, uh yeah, I think in terms of domestication,
Speaker 1: for sure, dogs are far more domesticated than cats. It's
Speaker 1: just that is that is how it is in terms
Speaker 1: of genetics and in terms of our history with them.
Speaker 1: But in terms of training an animal. You can train
Speaker 1: a cat, it's very difficult, much more difficult than with
Speaker 1: a dog. Just based on I mean dogs, again, we've
Speaker 1: had this really long evolutionary history with them where they
Speaker 1: have co evolved with us to pick up on our
Speaker 1: cues that we give them our our you know, gestures
Speaker 1: are cues. They're highly attentive, and they're more social than
Speaker 1: a cat is, so they have that social intelligence is
Speaker 1: that a cat doesn't necessarily have. A cat's plenty intelligent,
Speaker 1: but it does not apply that intelligence towards being social
Speaker 1: as Nevertheless, Bob Bailey and the CIA did create a
Speaker 1: trained cyborg cat, basically a cat with acoustic devices surgically
Speaker 1: implanted in it that was trained to eavesdrop on human conversation.
Speaker 1: So half nightmare, half kind of cute concept like ah yes, spycat.
Speaker 1: But also it had all this junk implant into it,
Speaker 1: which is a little weird. So it was remote controlled
Speaker 1: by tones that were played in each of its ears,
Speaker 1: so like a sort of just a solid like beeping
Speaker 1: tone and uh one year or the other, and that
Speaker 1: would direct it to go left, right or forward. And
Speaker 1: it had a recording device implanted I believe in it's
Speaker 1: rib cage, which you know, Uh, it's a it's like
Speaker 1: a RoboCop cat, kind of a kind of a nightmare situation.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a real life cyber cat. It's interesting
Speaker 1: too that the I think for a lot of us
Speaker 1: in one as we're recording this episode. It seems like
Speaker 1: some pretty pretty advanced technology, right, and advanced conditioning I
Speaker 1: believe to somehow teach a cat to turn at a tone,
Speaker 1: to remote remotely control an animal like this, um also
Speaker 1: not great for the cat. No, that kind of invasive surgery,
Speaker 1: I imagine. No. I mean generally speaking, I don't really
Speaker 1: like the use of animals in uh in the military
Speaker 1: or in war. I just it's not not my favorite thing.
Speaker 1: Doesn't It's not very heartwarming to me. It's just kind
Speaker 1: of like, well, that's that's gotta suck. You know, war
Speaker 1: sucks for humans and animals. It's just just kind of sucks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't really like the idea of a cat being
Speaker 1: implanted with a bunch of things and it's like, all right,
Speaker 1: go spy on the Russians for us, you know, and
Speaker 1: then maybe we'll give you some wet some of the
Speaker 1: good wet food. But you know, it is it is
Speaker 1: fascinating in the sense of that first of all, that
Speaker 1: you can't train a cat to do these things, which
Speaker 1: really I mean borderline train a cat to do these things,
Speaker 1: but also that we would come up with this side
Speaker 1: It just it seems it's absurd, and I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of there's always this sort of decorum around war,
Speaker 1: that's the super serious, like we are serious people, serious
Speaker 1: men making serious decisions about the fate of the world.
Speaker 1: And it's like, let's just make a cyber cat, I
Speaker 1: don't know, just a cyber cat and set it out
Speaker 1: there and have a listen listen to people, and it's
Speaker 1: it's so wacky and crazy and goofy, and it really
Speaker 1: does kind of make you take a step back and like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, like like Cold War stuff was actually as
Speaker 1: scary as it was, and you know, the whole like, oh,
Speaker 1: we could destroy the whole planet tension going on. It's
Speaker 1: really kind of goofy. Just a bunch of nerds like
Speaker 1: threatening to kill each other. I love I love that servation.
Speaker 1: This is also for for larger context, folks. This is
Speaker 1: also when the same era during which someone in the
Speaker 1: US government said, Hey, what if we just sort of
Speaker 1: nuked the moon? You know, like that The Mr Show's
Speaker 1: sketch about that is not it. They're brilliant writers, but
Speaker 1: it didn't come from nowhere, And so I I completely
Speaker 1: see what you're saying. It's a very important point. So legit,
Speaker 1: someone in the CIA was proposing we nuke the Moon. Yes,
Speaker 1: the idea was that, uh. I can't remember if it
Speaker 1: was exactly the CIA, but there was a report in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifty nine UH that outlines plans to not
Speaker 1: not completely destroy the Moon, but to UH to deploy
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons on it and something called Project A one
Speaker 1: one nine. Because the government is usually terrible at naming
Speaker 1: things in the US and at least their secret projects,
Speaker 1: I'm only bringing this one up because they wanted to
Speaker 1: use these weapons, I think, to ultimately build a colony
Speaker 1: on the Moon. But the reason that's important for today
Speaker 1: show is that it just gives you a sense of
Speaker 1: the broad swave here, Like in this context, the idea
Speaker 1: of cyber cats is is not that crazy. Indeed, it
Speaker 1: might seem like an affordable um alternative to putting in
Speaker 1: a human asset inspy. Right. Yeah, yeah, I guess. Uh.
Speaker 1: If it's between nuking the Moon and creating an army
Speaker 1: of cyber kitties, I guess I'm team cyber kitties. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's that's a tough one. Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1: I mean, the more research you do into this, the
Speaker 1: more it's just like you realize these people were like
Speaker 1: working at the level of the CIA are often just
Speaker 1: like big kids, you know with the magnifying glass, look
Speaker 1: like burning up aunt colonies. A little scary, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean in terms of cyber Kitty, Uh, it is
Speaker 1: a sad ending to it because basically, by the accounts
Speaker 1: that seem to make the most sense, the cat was
Speaker 1: dropped off by some American operatives in in Soviet Russia
Speaker 1: to go do its spy work and then immediately run
Speaker 1: over by a taxi. Just almost immediately run over by
Speaker 1: a taxi, like um took a few daring steps to
Speaker 1: go on its little kitty mission, you know, like uh,
Speaker 1: spy music playing and this head you know, and then
Speaker 1: boom taxi. Yeah. Real sad. Some people who were part
Speaker 1: of the CIA animal training program dispute this account, but
Speaker 1: they of course they would because it's horrible and embarrassing
Speaker 1: and sad. Um. They vague, but their defense was not just.
Speaker 1: They would vaguely say like, no, the the program was promising.
Speaker 1: They didn't like say like no, of course the cat
Speaker 1: didn't die. They just was like, no, no, it was
Speaker 1: it was a promising program, very promising. Uh yeah, very promising. Uh.
Speaker 1: But Tom Vanderbilt wrote a great article for Smithsonian mag
Speaker 1: which I used a lot of this for my research
Speaker 1: for this section. Uh. And apparently he put out a
Speaker 1: request for a freedom of information of FOYA on the
Speaker 1: cat project and was met with rejection from the CIA.
Speaker 1: So this is still kept tightly under wraps. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The only unredacted information on the program basically is summarized
Speaker 1: as uh, quote, the program would not lend itself in
Speaker 1: a practical sense to our highly specialized needs. That's it.
Speaker 1: And then the rest is just redacted. So what else
Speaker 1: did they do with these damn cats? Mm hmm and why?
Speaker 1: And what was the rationale? I bet embarrassment. I bet
Speaker 1: I bet they got humiliated by these cats. I bet
Speaker 1: they got scratched, like like you know, Agent Smith reporting
Speaker 1: that he got scratched by Mr Mittens, uh, And he
Speaker 1: got very angry and Mr Mittens called him a stinky cat.
Speaker 1: And then when we went back to his office, it
Speaker 1: turns out that Mr Mittens had left him a quote
Speaker 1: unquote deliverable on his chair, and of course, so we
Speaker 1: needed to terminate the project. So I love it. I
Speaker 1: love it. It's all all the redactions are are just
Speaker 1: cute see names they gave the cats and they're embarrassed
Speaker 1: or or their names that are like would have been
Speaker 1: bad for their careers if they got out. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know where the puns go, but that that
Speaker 1: is fascinating because that that does mean that there's there
Speaker 1: is some sort of secrecy. Yeah, you know what else?
Speaker 1: You know what else been the records of the animal
Speaker 1: behavioral Enterprises, that roadside attraction company that the CIA like
Speaker 1: uh plundered for consultants. All of their records burned in
Speaker 1: a fire in nine nine. Huh, Yeah, I don't it's
Speaker 1: it's just like all their records like oops, all burned
Speaker 1: in a fire. Oh well, look, I'm not gonna say
Speaker 1: it's a conspiracy to cover up some like deep state
Speaker 1: chicken nonsense, but I'm also not going to not say that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I cut to cut to like a trail of gasoline,
Speaker 1: like drops the gasoline, and they're like around the corner
Speaker 1: Hayden in a in a nearby building. We see that
Speaker 1: just the silhouette of a chicken in a window, and
Speaker 1: it's justly yeah, exactly bark bark, bark, bark. That's how
Speaker 1: chickens cackle. That is something that Katie and I researched
Speaker 1: work bark pork pork pork bark. So yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: that's that's nuts. Though I had no idea that those
Speaker 1: right words had burned down. And we do have to say,
Speaker 1: in fairness for a long time, having records quote unquote
Speaker 1: accidentally destroyed was could be a believable thingure. I mean,
Speaker 1: fires do happen, and well, I mean like, but this
Speaker 1: is almost the nine nineties, so things things could burn
Speaker 1: down in I think more plausibly when there wasn't a
Speaker 1: ton of electronics storage is I mean, it's not quite
Speaker 1: like the age of the Internet, but that's still the
Speaker 1: kids would call it sus. Yeah, I just wonder what
Speaker 1: like sort of dark chicken psychic stuff projects, like a
Speaker 1: psychic chicken they created. We'll just never know, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe basketball playing raccoons that uh, you know, then we're
Speaker 1: trained as assassins. We'll just will never We'll never know.
Speaker 1: We do have to take a quick break, but when
Speaker 1: we get back, we are going to talk about another
Speaker 1: animal conspiracy, this time with no humans involved. So we
Speaker 1: have talked about CIA conspiracies where they trained cyber kiddies. Uh,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's um, like, are we the only
Speaker 1: animals who can actually form a conspiracy? Uh? You know,
Speaker 1: is it our humans just uniquely devious, uniquely plotting? And
Speaker 1: I would say no. In fact, there is a very
Speaker 1: real conspiracy out there. You'll have to go to the
Speaker 1: island of Madagascar to find them. Because a group of
Speaker 1: lemurs is a conspiracy. What that's the name, that's the
Speaker 1: group name. That is the group name. A group lemurs
Speaker 1: is called a conspiracy. Now, likely they get this name
Speaker 1: because they like to huddle up together as if they
Speaker 1: are planning something. Um, but maybe that's not too far
Speaker 1: from the truth. So first let's talk about what lemurs are.
Speaker 1: There are actually many species of lemurs, all found on
Speaker 1: the island of Madagascar, which is an island that has
Speaker 1: an incredible amount of biodiversity. Uh. Lemurs are primates. They
Speaker 1: are quite social, and they're typically arboreal, so they live
Speaker 1: in or near trees. The most well known example of
Speaker 1: a lemur is a ring tailed lemur. Oh yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so yes, and uh literally there's not too much the
Speaker 1: name their ring tailed lemurs because of that distinctive pattern
Speaker 1: on their tails, right exactly. I always thought lemurs were
Speaker 1: so fascinating because you know, not everybody would think of
Speaker 1: them immediately when they think of primates, right, but they
Speaker 1: have but they have a I think they have some
Speaker 1: surprising surprising behavioral aspects to them social animal would right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, so lemurs are interesting because they are primates, um.
Speaker 1: But they're very they don't have the face of like
Speaker 1: you know, a typical like what you would see on
Speaker 1: a monkey or an ape. Uh. And they are thought
Speaker 1: to be much more a much sort of earlier offshoot
Speaker 1: of the primate phylogenetic tree, and so they're a little
Speaker 1: little less developed, a little less intelligent. Uh and uh
Speaker 1: sort of like in our evolutionary path from sort of
Speaker 1: like tree shrew like animals to humans. The lemurs are
Speaker 1: a fairly early little branch off the tree. However, they
Speaker 1: do have some pretty interesting social behaviors. They also are
Speaker 1: extremely diverse. So the I think the ring tailed lemur
Speaker 1: is probably the most well known example. They've got that
Speaker 1: ring tail, they've got the cute little mascara, so they're
Speaker 1: very photogenic. Um. But there are lots of different lemurs. Actually,
Speaker 1: the smallest lemur is the mouse lemur uh, and specifically
Speaker 1: the species that is the smallest of the mouse lemurs
Speaker 1: is Madam Bertha's mouse Lemur or maybe Madame berte Is.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. It might be a German Madam Bertha's
Speaker 1: or Madam Berta's uh mouse lemur. That name sounds straight
Speaker 1: from a children's Yeah, to be honest, but ve get
Speaker 1: that Madam's burt mouse lema out of the tea room.
Speaker 1: It doesn't belong in the tea room once upon a time.
Speaker 1: And then very yeah, exactly this this and these these
Speaker 1: dudes are tiny, tidy tiny, like I'm always fascinated by
Speaker 1: uh when I when I see animals like this, like
Speaker 1: if you well, I'm maybe I'm saying if you're if
Speaker 1: you're like most people because I want to feel better
Speaker 1: about my incorrect assumption here. But when if if I
Speaker 1: saw a picture Madame Bertez or no, if I just
Speaker 1: saw a picture of any mouse slimmer, I would think
Speaker 1: the immediately, immediately, the same thing, and I would be like,
Speaker 1: that's a rodent, right, surely, that's a matter that's mouth size.
Speaker 1: They're rats bigger, well, they kind of look like mice too,
Speaker 1: So it only reaches up to about under four inches long,
Speaker 1: which is nine centimeters and just about an ounce, which
Speaker 1: is about thirty grams, and they got mouse like ears,
Speaker 1: little mousey face. They have a thick tail, so a thick,
Speaker 1: preinsile tail. But they look like grumpy, cute little mice.
Speaker 1: They're adorable, very fluffy, looks like um looks a little
Speaker 1: bit like a chinchilla with a really long thick tail
Speaker 1: and bigger eyes, bigger front facing eyes. That's the big
Speaker 1: difference between them and like a rodent, a typical rodent.
Speaker 1: They have those front facing eyes, which is typical of
Speaker 1: predators or foragers who really need very good uh eye sight,
Speaker 1: whereas a lot of rodents don't have the front facing
Speaker 1: eyes they have. It's a little more side to side. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So these are actually lemurs, not mice. Uh. They're not
Speaker 1: the most complex of the lemurs in terms of their
Speaker 1: social behaviors. They're not antisocial. They'll sometimes chill together, but
Speaker 1: they don't really form complex groups like the ringtailed lemur.
Speaker 1: And they mostly forage for food and trees. They're very opportunistic.
Speaker 1: They'll eat fruit, but they'll also eat insects. Uh. And yeah,
Speaker 1: they are they are absolutely adorable. Ringtailed lemurs, on the
Speaker 1: other candor, are bigger They're about the size of a cat,
Speaker 1: with a long, bushy ringed tail, bright orange eyes, and
Speaker 1: a fantastic smoky eyeshadow that I'm highly jealous of. Got
Speaker 1: gray fur on its back, white tufted ears, a white belly.
Speaker 1: They're also adorable, absolutely adorable. Uh, And they are highly social.
Speaker 1: They form large social groups of around thirty individuals and
Speaker 1: they live in a matriarchy. That's right, that's right. We
Speaker 1: got we got one, we want we won one, gals,
Speaker 1: and these are these are pretty big societies too. You know,
Speaker 1: just thirty individual jewels is pretty impressive. Are they So
Speaker 1: if they're matriarchal, then are they also are are these
Speaker 1: groupings largely like family based or do they have different
Speaker 1: and I guess my other I have so many questions
Speaker 1: because these are fascinating. So we know that sometimes there's
Speaker 1: inter group conflict between other like other kinds of primates, right,
Speaker 1: you know, chimpanzees and one side of the forest will
Speaker 1: say you guys, total bastards chips to the other side
Speaker 1: of the force. Do do lemurs typically like are they
Speaker 1: known for exhibiting uh, inter group aggression of any sort?
Speaker 1: Or is it more like we're cool, You're cool? I
Speaker 1: guess what I'm asking is what's their vibe. Their vibe
Speaker 1: is it's not It's sometimes very chill and sometimes it's
Speaker 1: not chill. Dude, it's not chill at all. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: they go from they go from being very chill to
Speaker 1: being kind of unchilled, but in a little bit of
Speaker 1: a chill way. I'll explain in detail. So, uh yeah.
Speaker 1: So they are a matriarchy, and they do have a
Speaker 1: core to each of their troops, which usually is family
Speaker 1: members or relatives of female lemurs. They're not they don't
Speaker 1: all have to be related, but usually you have this
Speaker 1: core group of female lemurs. Sometimes they can be relatives.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they will come in and join a new group. Um,
Speaker 1: but they are they're the core of that group. And
Speaker 1: then there is a hierarchy amongst them. Usually the strongest,
Speaker 1: most dominant females went out in terms of you know
Speaker 1: who they get to boss around and and access to
Speaker 1: mating opportunities. But in terms of males, males are typically
Speaker 1: automatically um more subordinate to any of the females in
Speaker 1: the group, and males don't really have a hierarchy that much.
Speaker 1: They do have one loosely based on their age. So
Speaker 1: the older males are going to be UH take precedence
Speaker 1: over the younger males and the groups. But males kind
Speaker 1: of like are like satellites to these lemur troops because
Speaker 1: they will sometimes stay with a troop and then sometimes
Speaker 1: they'll move off to another another troop of lemurs. And
Speaker 1: this is a thing that often happens in UH social
Speaker 1: groups of animals, like even lions. This is the case
Speaker 1: because you have UH, you'll have males who really are
Speaker 1: kind of a temporary presence, either they move off to
Speaker 1: a new group, or they die fighting a new male
Speaker 1: who comes in, or or are chased out by new males.
Speaker 1: Because the females kind of are the core of the
Speaker 1: prides for lions and with lemurs, not only are they
Speaker 1: the core group of these these troops, they also are
Speaker 1: socially dominant, so they do actually have conflicts and so
Speaker 1: one of the ways that males will resolve conflicts with
Speaker 1: one another is and it can be conflict over territory,
Speaker 1: it can be over mating opportunities, and often troops will
Speaker 1: will conflict somewhat with this. But they UH have what
Speaker 1: are known as stink fights where the UH, both male
Speaker 1: and female lemurs have some glands uh, near their butts
Speaker 1: that they can use to mark their tail, mark their
Speaker 1: tails and their territories. And they also have males have
Speaker 1: these very stinky spurs on their wrists that uh it's
Speaker 1: basically a gland, a stink gland with their musk and
Speaker 1: a spur on there is that they can use to
Speaker 1: scratch at a tree and leave their marking, but they
Speaker 1: can also rub it all over their tails and anoint
Speaker 1: their tail with their own personal brand of stink. And
Speaker 1: then when they are in a conflict with other males,
Speaker 1: they will waft their stinky tail at them until one
Speaker 1: of them gives up. Wait, wait, that's the fight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they do have physical fights, but often animals
Speaker 1: will attempt to establish who would be the most likely
Speaker 1: to win the fight without actually doing the fight, so
Speaker 1: that because it's costly to fight. Uh. This is often
Speaker 1: the case with like say, let me see what's another example. Oh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of animals, like a lot of fish
Speaker 1: species who will compare jaw size or reptiles. They'll open
Speaker 1: their mouths and try to see who's got the bigger mouth,
Speaker 1: and then they whoever gets the bigger mouth wins because
Speaker 1: then they get to avoid actually fighting each other, and
Speaker 1: it's just assumed, Okay, you have a bigger mouth, you
Speaker 1: could probably chomp me better. Well, let's assume you would
Speaker 1: win this fight, and then neither of us have to
Speaker 1: get injured fighting. So yeah, so it's a similar thing
Speaker 1: with the lemurs. It's like they do resort to physical
Speaker 1: fighting sometimes, um, but in order to reduce some of
Speaker 1: the injuries having a non physical fight of like, look,
Speaker 1: I've got a stronger musk than you. I'm just overall,
Speaker 1: I've got a better stage presence than you. Just give up, bro,
Speaker 1: like and then yeah, I'm picturing a victory the some
Speaker 1: I don't want to anthropomorphize, of course, Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: well they we're going for But it's just as a
Speaker 1: as a human analog, I'm picturing like, how would you know, uh,
Speaker 1: college dive bar fights go if if humans did this,
Speaker 1: like if someone like they that compared bo with their
Speaker 1: arms up. College guys don't do that. I feel like
Speaker 1: they do. I feel like it might depend on the
Speaker 1: school or the bar. I feel like they definitely do,
Speaker 1: like check it out, check out my gym stink, brad stink.
Speaker 1: And so someone's like, oh, you want to go, you
Speaker 1: want to go, and then they're like raised their arms
Speaker 1: and they're going you sure, you sure? Guys take their
Speaker 1: shirts off before fighting is to like, like, you want
Speaker 1: to sniff these pits, bra I'm kind of lonely, That's
Speaker 1: why I lash out. No. But but like the other
Speaker 1: the other comparison would be reps. This is slightly more apt,
Speaker 1: though this is not to be clear scientifically, It's not
Speaker 1: the same thing as as a mus cardinal plan there.
Speaker 1: But what if what if people were like, oh, you
Speaker 1: wanta you want to go? You want to go, dude,
Speaker 1: let's settle this uh old school Milwaukee style, and then
Speaker 1: they just like start farting at each other. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think no, I bet they do do that right
Speaker 1: into confirm Directed all to Benjamin Bolan on Twitter. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, so but this does I mean. You make
Speaker 1: a brilliant point though, like the idea of avoiding injury
Speaker 1: the wild win possible. Yeah, absolutely, because if you are
Speaker 1: like so, especially among com specifics, that means like members
Speaker 1: of your own species, you're not fighting them to eat
Speaker 1: them typically sometimes sometimes, but you're not actually going to
Speaker 1: gain anything from injuring them other than reducing competition, gaining
Speaker 1: access to territory and mates. So if you can have
Speaker 1: your like quote unquote fight like basically sports, you know,
Speaker 1: a fake a sport is kind of like a fake
Speaker 1: you know, fight between two teams, and then you can
Speaker 1: kind of be like, Okay, we're pretty sure we would win,
Speaker 1: so we don't none of us have to get our
Speaker 1: eyes cloded out right, Like we don't. We don't have
Speaker 1: to go through that. So like, uh, not chill on
Speaker 1: one hand, but kind of chill on the other hand.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like going to the going to the
Speaker 1: beach and having a really intense surfing contest where it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe someone's cutting into your wave. It's like
Speaker 1: both chill vibes in on chill at the same time.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a form me chill paradox. That's a
Speaker 1: quotable for this episode. Yes, But another cool thing about
Speaker 1: these little guys, I love them so much. They sunbathe
Speaker 1: regularly and they will sit in the lotus position with
Speaker 1: their arms outstretched, their their heads up, just sort of
Speaker 1: sitting on like um with their knees up like a
Speaker 1: human and just like chilling out in the sun. And
Speaker 1: they look like they're doing yoga and it's it's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's so it's such such good vibes. I'm pulling up
Speaker 1: a picture now and I've I recognize some of these
Speaker 1: things from my my years in the meme minds of
Speaker 1: the Internet. This is probably my favorite thing in the
Speaker 1: episode because this is the energy that we, I think
Speaker 1: all primates need, you know, I I cannot imagine see
Speaker 1: this in real life. Like if you are if you
Speaker 1: live in this area, is it just normal or you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's just the lemur. Yeah, just a
Speaker 1: chill vibes lemur. I mean I think so. Yeah. Just
Speaker 1: they like to they like to sun themselves. They're there.
Speaker 1: Fur on their bellies is a little thinner than their
Speaker 1: fur on their back, which is good for thermoregulation when
Speaker 1: it's hot. But when they want to warm up, they
Speaker 1: gotta they gotta sunbathe their bellies, so, which is why
Speaker 1: it's lighter colored to right, Yeah, exactly. So they love
Speaker 1: and also they per when they're happy. What is going
Speaker 1: on with these dudes? What is so I did not
Speaker 1: know that was a primate thing. Yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: it's not exactly, but lemurs do it. So you know,
Speaker 1: primates make a lot of vocalizations, but purring when they're happy.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's a that's definitely a lemur lemur thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's it is. It is weird because again, while
Speaker 1: these are primates, they are not very like us. They're
Speaker 1: they're not much like us at all except maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit of their ability to scheme. So I didn't
Speaker 1: bring them up just because the name for a group
Speaker 1: of lemurs is a conspiracy of lemurs. They are able to,
Speaker 1: in a very basic sense, conspire, So what uh. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of research on lemur intelligence because of course
Speaker 1: we're interested in the evolutionary trajectory of primate intelligence, and
Speaker 1: it's assumed that they're not really that smart that you
Speaker 1: know they're and you know, there's so shure they're they're adorable,
Speaker 1: like they per the best animal ever, but maybe they're
Speaker 1: not that intelligent. However, there's some research that seems to
Speaker 1: suggest they do have some tricks up their cute little sleeves,
Speaker 1: which is they are able to plot a theft out
Speaker 1: and so they will be presented with some treats in
Speaker 1: some boxes and they know that if a researcher who's
Speaker 1: in the room catches them trying to get a treat,
Speaker 1: the researcher will cut off access to that treat uh
Speaker 1: And so they will not try to get the treat
Speaker 1: when the researcher is watching, but as soon as the
Speaker 1: reacher researcher turns their back, then they'll go for it.
Speaker 1: And they time their their treat extraction based on whether
Speaker 1: the researcher is looking at the treats or if the
Speaker 1: researcher has their back turned so right, so they are
Speaker 1: intelligent enough they understand that they cannot get away with
Speaker 1: a crime if they are currently being surveilled. So it
Speaker 1: may seem like a low bar or intelligence, but it's
Speaker 1: it is actually quite impressive. It's something that dogs are
Speaker 1: capable of, and dogs are highly socially intelligent. They co
Speaker 1: evolved with us, we may you know, in fact, a
Speaker 1: lot of primate research is like being replaced with dog
Speaker 1: research because dogs are we've discovered over the years so
Speaker 1: highly socially intelligent that that a lot of kind of
Speaker 1: research that is hard to do with primates because you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to do it ethically, it's you know, logistically,
Speaker 1: but with a dog, you can have someone bring their
Speaker 1: pet dog in to do a study where they get
Speaker 1: treats and it's great and it's fine. So that's pretty
Speaker 1: amazing too, because that's patterns, pattern recognition. That's um object
Speaker 1: permanence of a sort, right, Yes, theory of mind, a
Speaker 1: very basic basic theory of mind, where they show an
Speaker 1: understanding that if that this other being, this human researcher
Speaker 1: has a visual perspective, and that visual perspective, if it
Speaker 1: is on them, they can't get away with stealing, and
Speaker 1: if it's directed somewhere else they can get away with stealing.
Speaker 1: It's very good. Um, of course there's a limit, will
Speaker 1: limit to their intelligence. They found that they do not
Speaker 1: seem to understand how to keep things on the down low. Uh.
Speaker 1: So if you need to keep things quiet, Lemur is
Speaker 1: not your guy to get for your heist. Uh. They
Speaker 1: found that when they rigged boxes with a booby trap
Speaker 1: of like bells to make some noise, so they reach
Speaker 1: their hand and the treat box and then some little
Speaker 1: jingle bells go off, and then the researcher notices and
Speaker 1: they don't get their treat Lemurs couldn't couldn't understand this
Speaker 1: cons stuff. They did not show any preference. They kept
Speaker 1: you know, triggering the jingle bell alarm, the very very
Speaker 1: clever jingle bell alarm system, and I kept getting caught
Speaker 1: in the act. So, you know, really easy security to
Speaker 1: stop a lemur from stealing your stuff. Not you don't
Speaker 1: have to invest a lot in a security system. I see.
Speaker 1: And so this might be part of the reason that
Speaker 1: despite their comparatively high intelligence, they wouldn't be the best spies. Well,
Speaker 1: there are number of First off, the KGB would have
Speaker 1: been like, what why is that? Don't you'll tell me boris?
Speaker 1: Have you seen? Is lemur indigenous to this area? I
Speaker 1: did not think so, No, he's you know, what is
Speaker 1: this weird raccoon? Yeah? Like stock Naya. I get to
Speaker 1: make these jokes because I'm roughly half Russian, so I'm allowed.
Speaker 1: You're allowed this. This is uh is interesting because um,
Speaker 1: when you first said they wouldn't be great at keeping
Speaker 1: things on the down low, I did anthropomorphis and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: these are the these lemurs are the If they add
Speaker 1: social media, they would be the open sharers. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: imagine they would. Though, well, maybe we could train them
Speaker 1: to use social media, because we have been able to
Speaker 1: train them to use touch screens. So there was a
Speaker 1: study that showed that they could figure out how to
Speaker 1: use a touch screen to get Sugarcube rewards by clicking
Speaker 1: the correct symbol on the touch screens. So it's the
Speaker 1: only matter of time before they get their little stinky
Speaker 1: paws on Twitter. They're gonna be all over Twitter and
Speaker 1: Instagram and they'll it'll be the minute stink fights on Twitter.
Speaker 1: That's what we should call Twitter fights. To stink fights.
Speaker 1: They would be like, uh, yeah, they would. They would
Speaker 1: probably also use a lot of abbreviations. They would be
Speaker 1: like today is hard a f but I uh but tbh,
Speaker 1: I just won I R L wave mistink and then
Speaker 1: oh d lowell and uh. People would love it. People
Speaker 1: would love a Lemur on the internet. On the Internet
Speaker 1: would yeah, it'd be an internet sensation, book deals, movie deals, influencer,
Speaker 1: uh influencer, you know, just game over, game over. But
Speaker 1: there's okay, But that's that's interesting because I know one
Speaker 1: of the one of the thoughts at least that I'm
Speaker 1: aware of about, well, what Lemur intelligence can show the
Speaker 1: human species um about our own story, right, because we're
Speaker 1: so self obsessed, is is that they their intelligence is
Speaker 1: at least partially. I don't know what the if there
Speaker 1: is a causal relationship or how you would how you
Speaker 1: would articulate this, but their relationship with one another, their
Speaker 1: social aspect is like an inherent force of intelligence, right yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you are an animal and your means for survival
Speaker 1: is social, the idea is that being social requires a
Speaker 1: lot of intelligence. So it's something that because you are
Speaker 1: having to on a very rapid basis use your cognitive
Speaker 1: skills to understand what another individual in your group is doing,
Speaker 1: what their motivations are, what what you are, how your
Speaker 1: interaction with this individual is gonna fly out. So the
Speaker 1: in so general terms, the more so the more social
Speaker 1: and animal is often they can reach greater heights of intelligence.
Speaker 1: And we see this kind of as a as a
Speaker 1: as a theme. So like, uh, dolphins, elephants, primates all
Speaker 1: very social. Some of the most intelligent animals. See, we
Speaker 1: see it with birds as well. Some of the most
Speaker 1: intelligent birds are highly social, corvids, crows, ravens, magpies, very social, parents,
Speaker 1: very intelligent, highly social. They live in huge colonies sometimes
Speaker 1: of hundreds of individuals. So yeah, being social really really
Speaker 1: helps you wise up because your survival. It then doesn't
Speaker 1: rely so heavily on just your physical abilities but also
Speaker 1: your mental abilities to be able to get along with
Speaker 1: your group and provide things for your group and then
Speaker 1: you will get things in return. And so yeah, you um,
Speaker 1: it's it is very interesting to me. It seems like
Speaker 1: most of the it doesn't mean that if you are social,
Speaker 1: you will necessarily uh evolved to have a really very
Speaker 1: high intelligence or or meta cognition like humans do, but
Speaker 1: it is one of the things that seems to um
Speaker 1: really you know, be a determinant of of intelligence. Now, counterpoint,
Speaker 1: you can have something that's not social at all, like
Speaker 1: an octopus that's evolved its brain completely independently from humans, uh,
Speaker 1: And I mean it like they branched off so early.
Speaker 1: We're basically branched off at the point of like a
Speaker 1: worm thing with like just a few yurons, like our
Speaker 1: common ancestor is like yeah, basically like a little flesh
Speaker 1: tube with maybe some neurons, and then they evolved their
Speaker 1: own set of eyes, their own brain independently from mammals
Speaker 1: and humans. And they're very intelligent and they're not social.
Speaker 1: So there is I would not say that the only
Speaker 1: intelligent animals are social. There does seem to be a correlation,
Speaker 1: but it is. It's crazy because octopus octopuses are the
Speaker 1: most alien thing we can really have access to on
Speaker 1: this planet, and they're very intelligent, very and they seem
Speaker 1: to have a sort of you know, obviously we can't
Speaker 1: get inside their heads, but they seem to have a
Speaker 1: curiosity about humans. So yeah, very interesting. Well also with
Speaker 1: the with the idea of the octopus. Their octopus is
Speaker 1: what fascinates me. And I think this happens to you
Speaker 1: as well. Can you find yourself in these in these
Speaker 1: rabbit holes? Right? And for me, the rabbit holes are
Speaker 1: often towards the end of the night, you know, when
Speaker 1: when I should be Yeah, two am, it's it's the
Speaker 1: best time to google stuff. It's the time to go,
Speaker 1: you know. And then for me it's like I'll I'll
Speaker 1: whipout like my old textbooks and start trying to trying
Speaker 1: to figure out some weirdly fictional scenario I've made my head.
Speaker 1: And the main thing for me with with octopuses is
Speaker 1: I would love to find a way to extend their lifespan.
Speaker 1: A lot of anti octopus people are against this, of course,
Speaker 1: but but just imagine what your mothers against octopuses. I
Speaker 1: hate them. Yes, yes, that's that's a different now. But
Speaker 1: the problem with that is like, um, well it's not
Speaker 1: a problem. Be great for spycraft kind of maybe at
Speaker 1: least for maritime surveillance, but you're right about octopus intelligence,
Speaker 1: and you know there is a way actually to extend
Speaker 1: their lifespan. Is it surgical? It is surgical, So if
Speaker 1: you remove it is it is basically I forgot what
Speaker 1: the name of the organ is still me, but it
Speaker 1: is basically a hormone gland similar to like the um,
Speaker 1: the thyroid and a human that will release release basically
Speaker 1: sex hormones for the octopus. And if you remove this
Speaker 1: in a female, uh, it does not die immediately after
Speaker 1: basically caring for it's it's a brood of eggs. So
Speaker 1: normally in the wild the female will mate, um, it
Speaker 1: will lay a bunch of eggs in sort of this
Speaker 1: like beautiful it almost looks like a strand of of
Speaker 1: jewels or beads, and then it will aerate them. It
Speaker 1: doesn't eat this whole time. It starves itself for months
Speaker 1: and months and it'll gently aerate the water and oxygenate
Speaker 1: the water and take care of these eggs, and then
Speaker 1: it will die because it's malnourished. Uh. And it's spent months,
Speaker 1: just like expending all of its energy into making sure
Speaker 1: that its eggs have the best chance of survival. If
Speaker 1: you remove either sever or remove this gland, the octopus
Speaker 1: females no longer have this instinct and they do not
Speaker 1: care for their brood and they continue living. So that's
Speaker 1: the trade off. So like I, I remember, we've read
Speaker 1: some of the same things. You know, this is this
Speaker 1: is one of those moments where I have the I
Speaker 1: don't know if this happened to you, but I have
Speaker 1: the like the dark night of the research soul where
Speaker 1: you know, I noticed the time and I go, oh
Speaker 1: boits it is for a um, I've learned a lot
Speaker 1: about octopus surgery. Maybe I can maybe I could tell people.
Speaker 1: That's why are you a subscriber of Octopus Surgery Monthly too? Yes? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm actually in the Octopus Surgery of the Month club.
Speaker 1: I love that you get a new surgical implement every month. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I have no idea how I y octopus surgery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what that's what you and I are going into
Speaker 1: as a side hustle for podcasts like the Pandemics when
Speaker 1: we're off on everyone all right, yes, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a gig economy, you know, really octopus surgery train.
Speaker 1: You got to train all your life for new things.
Speaker 1: And uh so it appears to that, like now I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of the nature of quote unquote conspiracy in the
Speaker 1: animal world with lemurs. I I believe that I have
Speaker 1: underestimated them. I have no idea that they were this intelligent, because,
Speaker 1: as you said, the fact that they are kind of
Speaker 1: an earlier offshoot of the things that eventually down the
Speaker 1: line become human beings made me sort of assume, quite
Speaker 1: incorrectly that they were also an intelligence. This is this
Speaker 1: is fascinating. I mean, I know, I know that there
Speaker 1: is a like, uh compelling physiological reason for the sunning,
Speaker 1: as you as you explained, But I'm I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: choose to think they're meditating. I mean, you know what,
Speaker 1: like we don't we don't know. Maybe they do get
Speaker 1: I'm sure they probably get some kind of psychological um
Speaker 1: benefits from that because they're relaxed there with their buds.
Speaker 1: They got sons out buns out. I'm sure it's a
Speaker 1: relaxing it may even be meditative experience for them. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't rule it out, but we do have to take
Speaker 1: a break. When we return, I want to quickly cover
Speaker 1: one of the most infuriating stories I've ever covered on
Speaker 1: the show. It is a conspiracy to frame snakes for
Speaker 1: the evil deeds of humans. And then finally we will
Speaker 1: reveal the answer to last week's guests who's talking mystery
Speaker 1: sound contest? So we will be right back. So, Ben I,
Speaker 1: this actually lived jet makes me really mad, So I
Speaker 1: don't want to spend too much time dwelling and stewing
Speaker 1: on it, but it was something that I discovered in
Speaker 1: my research and I just it's yeah, it makes me angry.
Speaker 1: So one of the most despicable types of conspiracies is
Speaker 1: to frame someone for your own misdeeds when you agree,
Speaker 1: like if you you're framing someone for a horrible thing
Speaker 1: that you committed, that's just the lowest of the low
Speaker 1: and it's it's even worse when you already take someone
Speaker 1: who's kind of a social outcast or a misfit and
Speaker 1: you frame them for something you do. And in this case, uh,
Speaker 1: snakes and birds of prey are being set up to
Speaker 1: look like the bad guy in videos that really portray
Speaker 1: human uh human evil. So in this case, snakes and
Speaker 1: birds of prey are being set up to look like
Speaker 1: the bad guy and videos where it is actually human
Speaker 1: committing the evil act. So, according to National Geographics Dina Maron, Uh,
Speaker 1: there is apparently a trend of YouTube videos that portray
Speaker 1: daring quote unquote animal rescues. So, for instance, there's a
Speaker 1: hapless gibbon being attacked by a Burmese python and then
Speaker 1: a brave person steps in and saves the gibbon. Or
Speaker 1: a crocodile is about to chomp down on a duck
Speaker 1: and some hero steps in and saves the duck. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: I think listeners of the podcast and probably YouTube and
Speaker 1: like you already sense something's wrong here because uh, intervening
Speaker 1: in nature when like a predator is about to eat
Speaker 1: its typical prey is you know, it's it's I understand
Speaker 1: the empathetic response you have, but it'd be kind of
Speaker 1: like if an alien came down to Earth and then
Speaker 1: smacked burger out of your hand as you were just
Speaker 1: about to eat it, uh, you know, or or even
Speaker 1: an apple and said Hey, that apple is a living
Speaker 1: thing too, and smacks it out of your hand and
Speaker 1: then you can't eat. Uh. So you know animal rescues
Speaker 1: where someone is intervening with the predator prey dynamic, it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I guess you saved that cute duck, but now that
Speaker 1: crocodile won't have a meal. So uh and you know
Speaker 1: that it's uh, animals gotta eat too, they got to
Speaker 1: eat to live. Yeah, there's there's something, um although it
Speaker 1: surely well intentioned, there's there's something incredibly um self important
Speaker 1: you could argue about entering, Yeah, entering into this this
Speaker 1: huge system, this grand like this grand story that was
Speaker 1: doing just fine before we got on the scene. Like
Speaker 1: like I think, you know, we have to understand that
Speaker 1: if if the croc a dial or the alligator could
Speaker 1: think in historical terms like this, human beings would be
Speaker 1: a very new, in somewhat irritating thing, you know, like
Speaker 1: what what it would be? It's the alien smacking the apple, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, And I think that's a very I think
Speaker 1: that's a very smart way to put it. Um And
Speaker 1: I know that there are arguments to four intervening in
Speaker 1: some situations like protecting maybe some animal that's already endangered
Speaker 1: from an invasive species. Of course, that's that's kind of
Speaker 1: an exception, like protecting a pet from a wild animal.
Speaker 1: And I totally understand the empathy that people feel when
Speaker 1: they see a predator eat some prey. Like I as
Speaker 1: much as I love predator species, I love snakes, I
Speaker 1: love birds of prey. Doesn't mean I don't feel bad
Speaker 1: for the prey that they're about too about to eat.
Speaker 1: But it's just, you know, it's a it's a fact
Speaker 1: of life that, you know, snakes gotta eat, and sometimes
Speaker 1: snakes gonna eat something cute. But the thing is, that's
Speaker 1: not just what's wrong with these videos. It's something much, much,
Speaker 1: much worse. So according to herpetologists and other wildlife experts
Speaker 1: who have reviewed these videos, and I'm not gonna say
Speaker 1: which ones because I just they don't deserve the clicks. So,
Speaker 1: but such as the one with the Burmese python and
Speaker 1: the gibbon, uh that that they watch these videos and
Speaker 1: they say these are definitely faked, and uh so that
Speaker 1: means that some butt hole grabbed a Burmese python, tossed
Speaker 1: it onto a gibbon, and then staged a heroic rescue,
Speaker 1: traumatizing both a gibbon and a python in the process,
Speaker 1: just for YouTube views. Terrible, terrible, So there were a
Speaker 1: few tip offs that the video was fake. According to
Speaker 1: herpetologist Mark Alia, as we've talked about in the show before,
Speaker 1: uh pythons are ambush predators. It may not seem like, hey,
Speaker 1: they don't have legs, how can they run up and
Speaker 1: ambush you? But they're they're sneaky. They will uh sneak
Speaker 1: up on their price. Sometimes I'll even drop down. They
Speaker 1: can get up a tree and then drop down on you,
Speaker 1: quite a terrifying prospect um. And then they bite down
Speaker 1: onto their prey, because that's important. If you're trying to
Speaker 1: coil yourself around some prey that's trying to get away
Speaker 1: from you, you may not be fast enough to coil
Speaker 1: around before it runs away, but if you bite down
Speaker 1: and then you start wrapping around them, that's it. That's
Speaker 1: game over for that that animal that you're about to eat.
Speaker 1: They're also typically nocturnal, so most of their hunting is
Speaker 1: done at night, but in these rescue videos, miraculously, for
Speaker 1: the benefit of good videography, all of these are happening
Speaker 1: during the day. Go figure. Also in this video, the
Speaker 1: herpetologist noticed that the Burmese python, which basically always bites
Speaker 1: down its prey before wrapping around it, was not biting
Speaker 1: the given so it shot during the day, was not
Speaker 1: biting the gibbon, just kind of was flopped over it
Speaker 1: looped around it. It seemed extremely likely, if not absolutely certain,
Speaker 1: that this was a faked video where the person put
Speaker 1: the python on the given and terrified the poor little gibbon,
Speaker 1: probably confused the python, maybe even traumatize the python as well,
Speaker 1: because they don't like being handled. They don't want to
Speaker 1: be scratched like. They don't even typically eat gibbons. They
Speaker 1: will if they're big enough and they see an opportunity,
Speaker 1: but they they'll mostly eat you know, um more like
Speaker 1: a rodent or rabbits um. I'm also gonna just you know,
Speaker 1: as a not a herpetologist, I'm gonna just throw it
Speaker 1: out there. I think I think most snakes don't like
Speaker 1: being thrown. I would imagine no, no, no, I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I don't think snakes like being thrown. I
Speaker 1: don't think they like. In fact, they may not seem
Speaker 1: like delicate creatures, but they are they they are they
Speaker 1: don't like being man handled. They can get very stressed out. Um,
Speaker 1: And so yeah, you don't. You don't want to just like,
Speaker 1: you know, man handle a snake for YouTube videos. You
Speaker 1: don't want to traumatize a given for YouTube views. It's
Speaker 1: completely ridiculous. Um. Other videos are clearly staged because they
Speaker 1: use the same damn snake over and over again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so of course, maybe, like when you look at a snake,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm not going to act high in
Speaker 1: mighty if I saw one python and then I saw
Speaker 1: another python, I'm not going to be able to tell
Speaker 1: necessarily the difference between the two pythons. They're gonna look
Speaker 1: the same to me. But in fact, they do have
Speaker 1: facial markings that are very specific to each individual. So
Speaker 1: if you study these videos and you look at their
Speaker 1: facial markings, you can see it's the same individual python
Speaker 1: used in multiple video. So this poor python just keeps
Speaker 1: getting like involved in these videos where it's like placed
Speaker 1: with some cuter animal I suppose, and then the rescuer
Speaker 1: grabs it away from it. Whereas this python is like,
Speaker 1: I'm literally not doing it. Why are you doing this?
Speaker 1: Like I'm just being a snake, you know, just I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to snake. I'm a big living pool noodle,
Speaker 1: and you won't leave me alone, right, You're throwing me
Speaker 1: at things, Yeah, tearing me off things, and now I'm
Speaker 1: the bad guy. Oh, I see, I'm the bad guy
Speaker 1: because I want lunch and you keep like shoving some
Speaker 1: lunch in my face and I don't even really want
Speaker 1: to eat it. But then you're like, no bad snake,
Speaker 1: and then then you get a million YouTube views? What
Speaker 1: is this? Yeah, it's horrible. This gibbon hates me nowt
Speaker 1: Like what like that is? That's another that's another uh
Speaker 1: weird human analog. What if what if you met someone
Speaker 1: because someone else just threw them at right right? You know,
Speaker 1: but your personal I don't want to even if they're
Speaker 1: the nicest person. Yeah, you know, they're still always going
Speaker 1: to be in your head the person that got thrown
Speaker 1: at you. Yeah, that's like a rock. It's a very
Speaker 1: awkward situation. But yeah, I mean like it's it's very
Speaker 1: it's very clearly animal abuse, very cruel. Uh. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: can see like if a bird of prey is in
Speaker 1: one of these videos of like hey falcon, leave that
Speaker 1: random like smaller animal alone, that you know, we've arbitrarily
Speaker 1: decided you should not eat you know, while we eat
Speaker 1: our burgers and so on. Yeah, the falcons in these
Speaker 1: videos will sometimes have their wings clips, so and ornithologists
Speaker 1: can see like, yeah, it's it's had its wings clip.
Speaker 1: It can't fly away. It's it's a it's horrible, um
Speaker 1: and you know it's It's just it's one of these
Speaker 1: things where my feeling is that nature is so incredible
Speaker 1: on its own. I mean, we talked about lemur sting
Speaker 1: fights right like that that you can there are so
Speaker 1: many there's so many things we don't need these sensational
Speaker 1: uh fake videos. And it's the thing that I think
Speaker 1: makes me the most angry about this is it praise
Speaker 1: on people's sense of empathy. Um. So I don't I
Speaker 1: have no anger towards people who watch these videos and
Speaker 1: like them, because I don't think that they are getting duped.
Speaker 1: Uh And of course you're not, like, it's not you
Speaker 1: don't even have to be stupid. I don't think like
Speaker 1: someone who watches this video and thinks it's a genuine video.
Speaker 1: It's like you don't expect someone to like kidnap a
Speaker 1: snake and throw it on a given and use it
Speaker 1: in multiple videos. That's just not something you're expecting. And
Speaker 1: our empathy response is very strong. We see this given,
Speaker 1: we can clearly see this given is scared, and we
Speaker 1: feel the and we're like, I want someone to go
Speaker 1: save that gibbon, and then someone does and you feel relief.
Speaker 1: That's very natural human empathy. It's nothing to be ashamed of.
Speaker 1: It's nothing that I think is wrong or bad. But
Speaker 1: it's so so slimy to take advantage of human empathy
Speaker 1: like that. It makes my skin crawl. I absolutely agree.
Speaker 1: And if you want to see incredible moments in nature,
Speaker 1: there's there are a lot of things out there. There
Speaker 1: are documentaries, there are you know, amateur videos made in
Speaker 1: good faith by people who are seeing these amazing things
Speaker 1: take place, like gibbons sing you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: and you you can you can watch that. That's that's
Speaker 1: pretty um inspiring now, genre of music wise, this singing
Speaker 1: may not be for everybody, but it is real. It's
Speaker 1: not faked to um just kind of prey on our
Speaker 1: own psychological tendencies. And snakes, you know, I know, snakes
Speaker 1: like a given song aren't for everybody, but they are
Speaker 1: They are amazing amazing creatures. You know, I like they're
Speaker 1: playing life on hard mode, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: no legs, no arms for just just tube, just tube
Speaker 1: in it. Yeah, I mean, I mean it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's very frustrating for me as someone who I
Speaker 1: think is I really love the less I guess they're
Speaker 1: sort of the less charismatic uh species of animals, the
Speaker 1: less gregarious animals that get really popular because I love
Speaker 1: you know, like we love pandas and koalas and and
Speaker 1: uh and cute little monkeys, and of course I love
Speaker 1: those animals too. Um, but I think things like snakes
Speaker 1: and spiders and hawks and um, you know, bats, these
Speaker 1: are all these are all amazing animals that also deserve
Speaker 1: our respect. And so it's just so infuriating when someone
Speaker 1: is first of all abusing animals and then doing it
Speaker 1: in a video where they're like kind of getting you
Speaker 1: to manipulating you emotionally to hate the snake for just
Speaker 1: snaking around. In terms of spotting these fake videos, um,
Speaker 1: it can be tricky. And again I do not people
Speaker 1: who get like taken in by these videos. You're not dumb.
Speaker 1: It's just you're being manipulated by someone who has no scruples,
Speaker 1: and it's like, of course you see a snake attack,
Speaker 1: given it's your first thought isn't like maybe someone carefully
Speaker 1: doctored this um. But if you want to know some
Speaker 1: tips to kind of like look, see if you can
Speaker 1: spot the fake video. One thing is if you notice
Speaker 1: the channel has a bunch of animal rescue things that
Speaker 1: are similar highly unlikely, So like if they're constantly saving
Speaker 1: some animal from like a snake or a hawk or
Speaker 1: a crocodile, and it's like the same channel those things,
Speaker 1: first of all, just don't You don't encounter that very often.
Speaker 1: A lot of predators are nocturnal, so you're not going
Speaker 1: to see them during the day. It's very difficult to
Speaker 1: catch those things on camera documentaries like Planet Earth where
Speaker 1: you see these incredible and gory scenes where you see
Speaker 1: a shark like tear seal and half or something horrific,
Speaker 1: or you know, you see lions like takedown some some prey.
Speaker 1: It can take years or at the very least many
Speaker 1: months to get a really good shot of something like that,
Speaker 1: to get really good footage of predator and prey, and
Speaker 1: certainly you're not typically going to be up close and
Speaker 1: personal to that happening, You're going to freak out both
Speaker 1: the prey and the predator animals. So so typically if
Speaker 1: the channel is just like nothing, but like a bunch
Speaker 1: of these like I just saved a duck out of
Speaker 1: the mouth of a crocodile and it keeps happening, It's
Speaker 1: like that should set off a red flag. Another red
Speaker 1: flag is they're all shot during the day. You know,
Speaker 1: just look to see eight are these animals actually uh
Speaker 1: do they are the most active during the day or
Speaker 1: active during the night. That's another tip off. Um. Typically uh,
Speaker 1: sort of legit naturalists aren't going to intervene, so like
Speaker 1: there may be a video of some cool predation going on,
Speaker 1: but a naturalist or a researcher or biologist is not
Speaker 1: gonna snatch that prey out of that predator's mouth. So
Speaker 1: that typically doesn't happen in like legit videos. You might
Speaker 1: hear you might hear a narrator talking about the beautiful,
Speaker 1: slash brutal site, right right, exactly. You might hear the
Speaker 1: voice of Sir David Attenborough. Yes, yes, but David Dave,
Speaker 1: Dave's not the type of guy to intervene unless nature. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: So that those are just a few tips for spotting fakes.
Speaker 1: I've certainly been faked out by, not not by this
Speaker 1: type of video, but there have there have been like
Speaker 1: Internet videos or like wait is that real? And I
Speaker 1: think maybe it's real, and then I find out now
Speaker 1: it's completely fake. So just some tips and tricks to
Speaker 1: sort of suss out those those videos, you know, and
Speaker 1: if it seems like too incredible to be real, just
Speaker 1: like just do a little Google search. You know it's
Speaker 1: it's actually you can find out those things. And I
Speaker 1: think that's like such an important lesson, especially now when
Speaker 1: we just have so much disinformation, like through Facebook, just
Speaker 1: this constant pipeline of bull honky. It's so frustrating. We
Speaker 1: talked about the horse medicine at the beginning of the show,
Speaker 1: where people just start getting this information like don't trust science,
Speaker 1: just to trust this one terrible study that had to
Speaker 1: be retracted that maybe when you put horse medicine and
Speaker 1: a petri dish it does something to COVID And it's like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not how research works. Don't take horse medicine. Uh,
Speaker 1: you will not turn into a horse, but you might
Speaker 1: go sterile. Yeah, yes, that is that is true, folks,
Speaker 1: if if you and you can check this very easily,
Speaker 1: there is a there are indications of a distressingly high
Speaker 1: likelihood of of this horse of horse medication. One in specific,
Speaker 1: that we don't have to give airtime to uh causing
Speaker 1: sterility in men's Yeah yeah, so you know, uh, and
Speaker 1: you'll get a lot of diarrhya. So nobody needs that, uh,
Speaker 1: unless unless you're planning on a stink fight. Yeah, stay
Speaker 1: away from it. Yeah. But in terms of incredible footage
Speaker 1: that is very real. Here's an example of thing that
Speaker 1: seems like it's it's fake footage, but it's actually something
Speaker 1: that was taken by researchers. So, um, there was footage
Speaker 1: of a giant tortoise in the Schell's Archipelago stalking and
Speaker 1: killing a baby bird, which we typically have thought that
Speaker 1: giant tortoises are strict herbivores, So the fact that it
Speaker 1: went on the hunt for an adorable baby bird was
Speaker 1: not only horrible to look at, but also really surprising
Speaker 1: from a behavioral perspective. So the bird was a turn chick,
Speaker 1: very cute, very small, very lovable, and then this out
Speaker 1: of freaking just nowhere, this giant well not out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit slow, but slowly out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: this giant tortoise creeps up on it and approaches the
Speaker 1: bird and then just chomps right on its head and
Speaker 1: swallows it whole. What is that a usual thing? Nope?
Speaker 1: Uh so the general understanding is that giant tortoises are herbivores.
Speaker 1: So the fact that it ate a baby bird, and
Speaker 1: in fact not just eight but seemed to stalk and
Speaker 1: eat a baby bird is mind blowing. So now researchers
Speaker 1: are scrambling. Uh they're wondering, Okay, is this just one
Speaker 1: weird perverse turtle or is it uh turtles that do
Speaker 1: this occasionally, or is it like when certain food sources
Speaker 1: are scarce, Like, what's going on? Why are the turtles
Speaker 1: eating the baby birds? Is a sign of the apocalypse?
Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, it's a it's it just goes to
Speaker 1: show you, like, uh, you know, whenever they're these fake
Speaker 1: videos out there, it's like when you find a real video,
Speaker 1: it's usually way cooler, way more intense than any of
Speaker 1: the fake stuff, agree us. So yeah, with that, before
Speaker 1: we go, I actually want to reveal the answer to
Speaker 1: last week's guess Who's talking contests. So every week this
Speaker 1: is a new game that I am playing with you
Speaker 1: the listener and you the guests, where I play a
Speaker 1: mystery sound of any animal on the earth, and you
Speaker 1: have to guess who is making that sound? Uh, and
Speaker 1: I only give one little hint. So last week the
Speaker 1: hint was it is an argument between two Canadians and
Speaker 1: here is the sound. So do you want to guess
Speaker 1: ben who is talking in the mystery sound segment? Yes?
Speaker 1: And is there is there a clue? Yeah? Yes, Uh
Speaker 1: these are two Canadians having an intense conversation. Are they
Speaker 1: our producers? No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, kidding, our producers
Speaker 1: are not. Show has been canceled. We're sorry for the interruption.
Speaker 1: So yes, so this is um okay. Initially I was
Speaker 1: going to guess goats, because I know I've heard some
Speaker 1: strangely human like vocalization can screen pretty good. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: but given that clue, without using a lifeline or cheating
Speaker 1: via Google, I am going to guess was it Canadian geese? Oh?
Speaker 1: You're so close, but alas no. Uh So congratulations to
Speaker 1: the first three people to write in with the correct answer. Uh.
Speaker 1: Pepper Lapew Alison Key and Enrique who guessed drum roll
Speaker 1: Canada lynxes? What congratulations, Oh Canada, you guess the weird
Speaker 1: ass noise? Yeah, so these are two Canada lynxes. Uh.
Speaker 1: Canada Lynxes are fluffy, muscular swoll felines with amazing sideburns.
Speaker 1: They live in boreal forests in Canada. They also live
Speaker 1: in Alaska in the very tippy top of North America.
Speaker 1: They have amazing fluffy feet that look like egg boots
Speaker 1: that cover their toepads to keep their tipsies warm during winter. Typically,
Speaker 1: they're not very social. They don't hang out much. So
Speaker 1: the fact that someone caught on video two lynxes space
Speaker 1: to face yelling at each other having some kind of argument,
Speaker 1: probably over territory, is pretty incredible. And yes, they really
Speaker 1: do sound like two people just screaming at each other,
Speaker 1: and like you know, a Walmart arguing over some some
Speaker 1: mountain dew. You know, that's how it happens. That's what happens.
Speaker 1: And you try to take my mountain dew. I just
Speaker 1: screams some what we've we've discussed about cats earlier, I
Speaker 1: have I have much more appreciative of my own pets
Speaker 1: for not talking that way they do not talk to
Speaker 1: you in that tone of voice, not while they live
Speaker 1: under your roof. Hey, I will I will throw this
Speaker 1: mountain dew outside. Yeah, yeah, exactly, I will. I will
Speaker 1: turn this kitty tree right around. Uh yeah, you got
Speaker 1: you got all of them knows who's boss or they're
Speaker 1: gonna walk all over you, probably literally, they probably already do.
Speaker 1: It's too late. Well, so for this week, I have
Speaker 1: another mystery sound in our game of guess who's talking? Um,
Speaker 1: I will give you another hint. It is you do
Speaker 1: not want to get in a knife fight with this guy?
Speaker 1: And now here is the sound. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. All right, So Ben, you got any guesses
Speaker 1: who's making that incredible sound. Oh I'm scared to go
Speaker 1: over to here, Katie because I'm not an expert, but
Speaker 1: I want to say something about it. You say you
Speaker 1: don't want to get in a knife fight. Something about
Speaker 1: that clue, plus that sound makes me want to guess
Speaker 1: in the direction of amphibians. Maybe is there a frog
Speaker 1: that can like or frog or toad that can break
Speaker 1: its bones and kind of like again wolverine out there
Speaker 1: is It's called a hairy harry frog. But my I
Speaker 1: have a poker face on I reveal nothing to you
Speaker 1: of this game for the answer will only be revealed
Speaker 1: next Wednesday on the next episode of Creature Feature. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: you know, make your guesses if you want to. You
Speaker 1: want to bet on bowling, you might guess the Hairy
Speaker 1: Frog or make your own guesses. Uh. Not to put
Speaker 1: any pressure on you, but thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining me today. Tell the people where they can find
Speaker 1: you so they can get mad at you if you
Speaker 1: make them lose the bet. Thanks so much, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Yeah for having me on the show. You
Speaker 1: can find me in a number of places. I'm in
Speaker 1: a burst of creativity calling myself at Ben Bolan on Instagram,
Speaker 1: vo w l i N. You can find uh, you
Speaker 1: know when you're on Twitter following Katie what you should
Speaker 1: already be doing. Then you can also follow me. I'm
Speaker 1: aptin Bowlin hs W. And if you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about critical thinking applied to conspiracy theories, please do
Speaker 1: check out stuff they don't want you to know, available
Speaker 1: on you know, podcast platforms available kind of kind of
Speaker 1: petered out at the end. They're available in podcast uh yeah,
Speaker 1: And you can find me on the internet at Creature
Speaker 1: Feature Pod on Twitter, at Creature Feet Pod on Instagram,
Speaker 1: and at Creature Feet Pod at gmail dot com. And
Speaker 1: that's where you can send me in your answers to
Speaker 1: the get Who's Talking Mystery Animal sound guessing game And
Speaker 1: if you are both lucky and clever, you can get
Speaker 1: your name right out on the show if you guess
Speaker 1: the correct animal for next week's animal guessing game. And
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying the show, uh, and you leave a
Speaker 1: rating or review, it really does help me out a lot.
Speaker 1: I read all the reviews and I cherished them all,
Speaker 1: print them out, put them under my pillow, kiss them
Speaker 1: every night. Uh literally, Yes, I absolutely do that. And
Speaker 1: thanks to the Space Classics for their super awesome song
Speaker 1: Exo Lumina. Creature features a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or Hey guess what?
Speaker 1: Where have you listen to your gosh darn favorite shows?
Speaker 1: I don't judge you, not the podcast police, gosh darn it.
Speaker 1: See you next Wednesday to da