Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to Creature feature, the show where we
Speaker 1: dive into the brains of humans and animals and discover
Speaker 1: that even though we may seem different on the inside,
Speaker 1: we're just a bunch of pink goo. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology. And did
Speaker 1: you know that if you say my last name really fast,
Speaker 1: it sounds like gullible? No, it doesn't, that's a trick. Yes,
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about getting bamboozled, pulling Shenanigan's, having the
Speaker 1: wool pulled over your eyes, getting can by caterpillars, and
Speaker 1: hoaxed by horses. So first we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: sexy scams. Pandas are notoriously bad at sex. Male pandas
Speaker 1: are terrible at knowing when a female is in the
Speaker 1: mood for sex, and even if they do happen to
Speaker 1: make it to third base, they have no idea what
Speaker 1: to do next. And the wild females have their pick
Speaker 1: of the litter. They can select a mate from a
Speaker 1: group of males, but in captivity there's limited options, so
Speaker 1: mating is often awkward and unsuccessful. Animal care takes are
Speaker 1: taking a novel approach their bamboos, holding these pandas into
Speaker 1: getting good at sex. The Shingdo Panda Breeding and Research
Speaker 1: Center in Sichuan, China tricks male pandas into doing sexercize,
Speaker 1: getting up on their hind legs and working out their
Speaker 1: pelvic muscles by holding an apple just out of reach.
Speaker 1: Apple hungry pandas don't realize that as they wobble on
Speaker 1: their hind legs trying to get a bite of that
Speaker 1: sweet fruit, they're really working out their hips to be
Speaker 1: better at making them moves on a DTF female. This
Speaker 1: is one of the very few, if only, examples of
Speaker 1: one species tricking another species into being better at mating.
Speaker 1: And it's probably because we humans are a bunch of weirdos.
Speaker 1: But when you explore the animal kingdom, you'll find a
Speaker 1: great deal of sexual bamboozles. Amongst these perverted connartist creatures.
Speaker 1: Joining me today is actress, comedian Daily Zeygeister and host
Speaker 1: of the show Scam Goddess Lacey Mosley. Hey, welcome, Thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. Of course, uh ill of that
Speaker 1: these pandas all they wanted was an apple, and they
Speaker 1: got tricked into being really great at grinding. If only
Speaker 1: we could do this for real mint, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: just like dangle talco just out of right, and they're
Speaker 1: like trying to get a taco like the football. You
Speaker 1: can watch football, but it has to be up this
Speaker 1: high and you have to stand here eat this popsicle
Speaker 1: wide not reason, Oh my goodness. But that's also so
Speaker 1: it's just making them better at thrusting. How do they
Speaker 1: get them to like engage with the females. Isn't that
Speaker 1: the problem that they don't even know they're like, it's
Speaker 1: a good question. I feel like it's to make it
Speaker 1: so that when they do happen to under like the
Speaker 1: female is literally saying like come get this vagina please,
Speaker 1: and the males are like okay, then they kind of
Speaker 1: know what to do because otherwise they're just not in
Speaker 1: the habit of using their pelvis. I guess, so they
Speaker 1: would just like land on top of them, like is
Speaker 1: it happening, We're doing it right, you're fueling it? Is
Speaker 1: this good for you? Oh? Pandas uh, So I want
Speaker 1: to take you on a trip to Deception Island, which
Speaker 1: is a real voice okay, yes, so it's named Deception
Speaker 1: Island because it looks like a normal island. But it's
Speaker 1: actually a caldera, which is a ring around an active volcano.
Speaker 1: So it's like it looks like solid land, but then
Speaker 1: if you get in, it's just this ring of islands
Speaker 1: and then ocean. So is it like when those volcanoes
Speaker 1: like robbed and then they make those ocean islands. It's
Speaker 1: like one of those islands. Oh yeah, there's like nothing
Speaker 1: on those. Well this one actually has things on it,
Speaker 1: and it's got kind of funny and in silly history,
Speaker 1: um so, various countries have tried to declare it belongs
Speaker 1: to them. Um So, in UM two and argentinean exploratory
Speaker 1: party came to Deception Island and they just left signs
Speaker 1: and painted flags marking the territory as being Argentinia. I
Speaker 1: mean that's normally how used to work that way. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what we did on the Moon, right, right, if
Speaker 1: we went to the Moon. I mean that's true, when
Speaker 1: we pretended to go to the Moon, we just put
Speaker 1: a flag there and we're like, I guess it's American USA. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we put the flag here. I mean that's north. Like
Speaker 1: that's really like back in the day. I truly don't
Speaker 1: know how anyone owns land land owning is a scam
Speaker 1: and it still is a scam. It was like whoever
Speaker 1: got there first, or like whoever killed everyone? That's how
Speaker 1: you got it? Well, like I did you just hear
Speaker 1: the thing where Trump was talking about how he kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to buy Greenland. No, he said so many
Speaker 1: crazy things that he does, but it was one of
Speaker 1: those things where I'm like, wait, how do you buy
Speaker 1: a country? And then I was like wait, how do
Speaker 1: people get countries in the first place other than just
Speaker 1: like war and like yep. It was like people got together,
Speaker 1: like we're going to decide that this is I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what happened to America. America had people on it
Speaker 1: that Native Americans and Columbus came and stuck a flag out. Look,
Speaker 1: I discovered it, dude, No, I discovered it. We're here.
Speaker 1: What about No, No, don't see anything, don't hear anything.
Speaker 1: La la la la la, this is my land. Now.
Speaker 1: That's how Thanksgiving happened. About the story we get so
Speaker 1: a year later after the Argentinean ship like just put
Speaker 1: some flags in. They're like it's ours now, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: like a British ship being extremely petty in British returned
Speaker 1: and just like removed the signs and the flags and
Speaker 1: they're like, nope, it's British again. Um, so they owned
Speaker 1: it in the first place. I don't know. I mean no,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone really owned it. I think it's
Speaker 1: under some kind of like shared Antarctic territory treaty. Um.
Speaker 1: And then in the nineties sixties the volcano became active
Speaker 1: again and it destroyed British and Chilean scientific stations. So
Speaker 1: they kind of gived up, like they gave up on
Speaker 1: like trying to decide who owned it because it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's full of lava. No, no, you can have it
Speaker 1: Argentina and you can have a great Britain keep ant
Speaker 1: taxes on it. That right, Argentina got a good deal
Speaker 1: out of that. Then. Well, the best part about Deception
Speaker 1: Island is it's home to chin strap penguins, which are
Speaker 1: cute little penguins who they themselves are little deceivers living
Speaker 1: on Deception Island? Is it? Okay? They were, Well they're penguins. Wait,
Speaker 1: so it's cold there, so it's an act of antarctic Yeah,
Speaker 1: it or near an antarctic. So the chin strap penguins
Speaker 1: and penguins in general have what's called counter shading. So
Speaker 1: you may wonder, like why would you be uh so
Speaker 1: like like where those little tuxedos if you want to
Speaker 1: like blend in and be noticed, um, But by being
Speaker 1: darker on the top and lighter on the bottom, they
Speaker 1: actually appear flat in one dimensional from the top and
Speaker 1: from the bottoms. So like if they're swimming, uh, and
Speaker 1: the leopard seals or whatever it's hunting them, you know
Speaker 1: they will appear just flat. So if I want to
Speaker 1: avoid like shark attacks, like I should swim in a tuxedo. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is h that is true. Everyone in Florida should
Speaker 1: be on the beach in a TUXI should wear you
Speaker 1: should wear it like a but like a texedo, um wetsuit.
Speaker 1: So like James Bond, Yeah, doesn't James. Isn't that what
Speaker 1: James Bond does? He like has a tuxedo under his
Speaker 1: wetsuit right like he like swims ashore and his wet
Speaker 1: suiting takes it off. It's just a TEXI am I
Speaker 1: imagining that? Or was that in like or was that
Speaker 1: in like Austin Powers And I just feel like I
Speaker 1: don't know, I truly don't know, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: It's it's a funny concept though, Like I guess so
Speaker 1: if you seem flat, then animals are like, I don't
Speaker 1: want that because it's flat. Like because so normal three
Speaker 1: dimensional object, like when you have a sphere, it's like
Speaker 1: it's you see the highlight on the top because the
Speaker 1: sun is hitting it, and then like it's shaded towards
Speaker 1: the bottom. So then that's how like you you can
Speaker 1: tell like, oh, this is a three dimensional object. This
Speaker 1: is a ball, and then like if you're an animal
Speaker 1: approaching from above or blow especially in water, it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: this is an object that is three dimensional and therefore
Speaker 1: I can put it in my mouth. Um. So like
Speaker 1: if it's flat and you can't do it, yeah, you're not.
Speaker 1: It's not like signaling because like if you just see
Speaker 1: like an advertisement for like a hamburger, you don't try. Well,
Speaker 1: most people don't. I sometimes give it a lick just
Speaker 1: in case, just in case that they've like Willy Wonka asked, taste. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Wait, did they have scratching licks? I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. I don't think they we were licking. We
Speaker 1: were like with those markers where it was sniff, but
Speaker 1: they little bit like grapes. It's never tasted like grapes,
Speaker 1: but it felt like grapes too after a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: i'fter sniffing it long enough, everything everything feels like grapes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So um. Here's another fun instance of this time. The
Speaker 1: chin strap penguins were the were the bamboozled Party. So
Speaker 1: in two thousand four, Roy and Silo, two male chin
Speaker 1: strap penguins at the Central Park Zoo. Um. They were
Speaker 1: famous for being a couple. Um, and they were both males,
Speaker 1: so they couldn't conceive naturally, so they adopted a rock
Speaker 1: thinking that it was an egg. Um, so they kept
Speaker 1: trying to hatch it like sat on the rock and
Speaker 1: they were totally fooled by this. So sweet and so sad.
Speaker 1: I know, the penguin community won't let the gay penguin,
Speaker 1: why can't they adopt another person's egg. Well, the zoo
Speaker 1: keepers actually ended up replacing the rock with a fertile egg,
Speaker 1: and the couple hatched it enraged raised the chick ah,
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. I bet they raised it to be some
Speaker 1: kind of deviant penguin to see see why can't p
Speaker 1: will be really like this was in two thousand and
Speaker 1: four too, So it's like, I feel like the zookeepers
Speaker 1: were better at being nice to the penguin than like
Speaker 1: penguins more rights than gay people. Ah, that is unfortunate. Um.
Speaker 1: And then one more little bamboos all that these chin
Speaker 1: strap penguins like to do. And we've actually talked about
Speaker 1: this a bit on the show about the Adelaide penguins
Speaker 1: who also do this. Um. So they create their nests
Speaker 1: out of pebbles because like I don't know, in Antarctic
Speaker 1: or on this on Deception Island, there's not much to
Speaker 1: work with volcanic you're gonna be sleeping on rocks. So
Speaker 1: they will steal pebbles from each other while they're not
Speaker 1: looking to make their nests better. And we actually, I
Speaker 1: think we talked about this on the first or second episode,
Speaker 1: but this is a kind of new update where researchers
Speaker 1: have found that while both males and females will make
Speaker 1: nests and they'll both steal from each other, in these
Speaker 1: chin strap popular Aians, the males are bigger assholes. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, duh, But so males are more active in
Speaker 1: stealing stones, they're more aggressive when defending their nests, and
Speaker 1: they use larger stones because they're probably compensating, right, a
Speaker 1: large stone penguin anything compensating for a bad career. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then females are more likely to have their rocks stolen.
Speaker 1: So I know, so y'all are stealing from the weaker.
Speaker 1: Second to I have to bring feminism to penguin. I
Speaker 1: mean they already got gay rights. I don't know. And
Speaker 1: if the whole island is made up of pebbles, like
Speaker 1: why I think you're stealing specifically from people to be
Speaker 1: petty because it's like you're just get pebbles that aren't well.
Speaker 1: I think the researchers also found that if you if
Speaker 1: you have more rocks around your nest, and the more rocks,
Speaker 1: I think the better because it keeps the eggs um
Speaker 1: warmer because it like elevates a little bit off of
Speaker 1: the cold ground um. And so like there's just natural
Speaker 1: like stone loss over time because of weather or penguins
Speaker 1: or like people running around, well it's not people, but
Speaker 1: penguins running around and ars like playing tugo war with
Speaker 1: a flag saying no it's miling, No, it's milan um.
Speaker 1: So if you have more rocks to begin with I
Speaker 1: think you're just in a better place like as as
Speaker 1: you start to lose rocks um later on. So there's
Speaker 1: a motivation to steal um. But you know, it's probably
Speaker 1: also a little bit of pettiness where it's like because like,
Speaker 1: why go out and get your own rock when you
Speaker 1: can just like steal rocks from your neighbor. That's true
Speaker 1: if your neighbor is like right next door, we don't
Speaker 1: have to go to the shore line. Yeah. And also
Speaker 1: like equal pay, you know, women who aren't making as much.
Speaker 1: That's true for every like like twelve rocks the male
Speaker 1: penguins make the females make like six and a half.
Speaker 1: I don't actually know you were going I was believing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not a good feminist, especially not a
Speaker 1: good penguin feminist. Uh So, next, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about gelatas, which sounds delicious, but it's uh it sounds
Speaker 1: like gelato and I want gelata now, but it's not. So.
Speaker 1: These are species of Old world monkey. They're found in
Speaker 1: the Ethiopian highlands. They kind of look like baboons, but
Speaker 1: they're just close relatives um there. But they have that
Speaker 1: but they have that nice but Um, they're also called
Speaker 1: bleeding heart monkeys because they have a red patch on
Speaker 1: their chest. Um. But there's also this is not the
Speaker 1: reason they're called that, but it seems to also make
Speaker 1: sense because they will sometimes cheat on each other and
Speaker 1: then get mad about it. Um. So they have an
Speaker 1: actually super complex social structure that is hard for me
Speaker 1: to wrap my head around. Um. They form multi level societies. Uh.
Speaker 1: The smallest unit of their societies are reproductive units. It's
Speaker 1: just like a sex club where it's like, uh, um,
Speaker 1: it's like a dozen or so females and three or
Speaker 1: four males. Usually only one of the males is mating
Speaker 1: with the females um at once. So it's like a
Speaker 1: orgy yeah yeah, but it's like an orgy organization or
Speaker 1: georg um. And then the next step of gelata society
Speaker 1: is the bands, and they're made up of about thirty
Speaker 1: reproductive units. So it's like a bunch of these sex
Speaker 1: clubs come together for like a convention sex emporia, and
Speaker 1: there are herds that are like temporary convoys made up
Speaker 1: of these reports sex cloud right more like so the
Speaker 1: basic structure sex road trip fucking. Right. Then it's like
Speaker 1: how big? How big? Is the level of fucking right right, right?
Speaker 1: So are you in like a small country town. We've
Speaker 1: got three horses, that's all we're fucking. And then you know,
Speaker 1: it grows into like a Metropolitans say like, where's the
Speaker 1: where's the l a of Like, I mean, are we
Speaker 1: so different? Every like? Are you know? It's just more
Speaker 1: people in a place having sex or less. You know,
Speaker 1: like the difference between a librarian and in and out
Speaker 1: is the number of people having said Yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: focus back on that little that smallest unit, which is
Speaker 1: the little sex club of like a dozen females and
Speaker 1: one to four males, and then one of the males
Speaker 1: is supposed to be the only one reproducing. Um, even
Speaker 1: though that's supposed to be the case. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: they like to cheat, so uh, sometimes they will cheat
Speaker 1: on him with another male, which I mean, come on,
Speaker 1: he's already got like twelve females. That's double standards, like
Speaker 1: you women, right, Um, So these cheating pairs have been
Speaker 1: studied in these observations, you know, like scientists just out
Speaker 1: there watching these Uh gelata is just fucking science is
Speaker 1: science for science? Um? So often gelattes will vocalize while mating,
Speaker 1: like making like happy noises like oh yeah yeah yeah
Speaker 1: yeah yeah this yeah yeah goal. Um. So while they're cheating,
Speaker 1: they actually keep those sex moons to a minimum so
Speaker 1: they're more quiet. Um. So they just they just like
Speaker 1: they're just like, yes, yes, I find this quite this,
Speaker 1: this is quite enjoyable. Yes right there and also there
Speaker 1: and in addition there yeah good day wow. So they
Speaker 1: know they're doing something yeah. Um. And if they're caught,
Speaker 1: the the mail that got cheated on will get really
Speaker 1: mad and throw a fet and like attack them and yeah,
Speaker 1: just like a real soap opera going on. Um, now
Speaker 1: when they get caught Like, I wonder is there someone
Speaker 1: telling them that that's so interesting? I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: feel like they just happened upon it, like they were
Speaker 1: going behind a tree, like like wait a minute, there's
Speaker 1: just like a trail of like clothes and shoes. Um.
Speaker 1: So the society may kind of seem unfair to females
Speaker 1: at first, but sort of like how lions, it's like
Speaker 1: seen as like oh these are um, you know, patriarchy.
Speaker 1: It's actually in some ways more of a matriarchy, which
Speaker 1: is surprising. So females can basically elect their sex mayor
Speaker 1: by um. So, males will sometimes try to take over
Speaker 1: like a little sex group. Um And if the females
Speaker 1: like their sex mayor who gets to mate with him,
Speaker 1: then they'll support him and they'll fight off the other male.
Speaker 1: But if he's doing a bad job at being mayor
Speaker 1: of sex, they'll be like, no, dude, you're out office,
Speaker 1: that's packed up, and then that comes along. But how
Speaker 1: do you know if the new guy is going to
Speaker 1: be good at sex? Or is it just like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't like our old guy. I guess gamble on
Speaker 1: pretty much. Yeah, I know he could never find a
Speaker 1: clid and we just retired, right, And like some males
Speaker 1: will typically assert their dominance not by violence but by
Speaker 1: occurring favor with the females by grooming them. So if
Speaker 1: he's like really bad at it, then I imagine they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna try this new guy because you suck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you were never really had charming. We were like yo jokes,
Speaker 1: but really, what I mean it was I was faking.
Speaker 1: I was faking it. I was taking those sex screams.
Speaker 1: Um So, now we're gonna go onto some more dastardly
Speaker 1: sex capades. Um So, fireflies are pretty spectacular and romantic.
Speaker 1: Like I always like, you know, in romance, you're like
Speaker 1: you want to kiss in a field of fire flies,
Speaker 1: except you don't because then there's probably mosquitoes around and
Speaker 1: hitting the fun up and catching flireflies something kill them,
Speaker 1: Like what you're doing a jar full of fireflies that
Speaker 1: are dead in the morning, childhood. Um, So they'll flash
Speaker 1: their luminous butts at each other to attract mates and
Speaker 1: like in a sort of sex morse code to be
Speaker 1: like you know b B B b B, which is
Speaker 1: like Netflix and Chill. Um, Now what is is it
Speaker 1: like Amazon Prime and Chill? Have we moved on from
Speaker 1: Netflix and Chill? No, because Amazon Prime doesn't. The thing
Speaker 1: about Netflix is it has that like automatic like so
Speaker 1: because like you don't have to be like you're know,
Speaker 1: like in the middle of like you know, getting the
Speaker 1: cheeks clapped, and then it's like are you still watching
Speaker 1: so you can like binge watch the Good Place while
Speaker 1: having sex. Yes, yes, and it'll stay on for at
Speaker 1: least four hours. Yeah, just like just love that ted
Speaker 1: Dance right now that probably think it goes back to
Speaker 1: the home screen and next thing you no, you're just
Speaker 1: looking at I don't know landscapes. Yeah, because like if
Speaker 1: you don't want to, you don't want to like have
Speaker 1: sex and then have it go to the Great British
Speaker 1: Bake Off, because I mean that show is great, but
Speaker 1: it is the anti aphrodisiac. Yeah, right, exactly, you needed
Speaker 1: to keep playing whatever movie or whatever series that you're watching,
Speaker 1: especially if you have roommates, right right, wait, what would
Speaker 1: the roommates would suspect something off? Like if I think
Speaker 1: they probably start hearing sex noises if I live alone now,
Speaker 1: thank god, but I think they start hearing the sex noises.
Speaker 1: All right, so you kind of needed as kind of
Speaker 1: a scrambling right right, right, But if it's like if
Speaker 1: there's that, it's sort of like when there's that dead
Speaker 1: air and then like the screen goes black and then
Speaker 1: you just see yourself like oh yeah, also, do you
Speaker 1: want to see your own reflection of you? It's gonna
Speaker 1: be because it's not gonna be like important, It's gonna
Speaker 1: be extremely unflattering. It's gonna be your your butt in
Speaker 1: a way you've never seen it before. That is not becoming. Uh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't all look like that's how I imagine I look,
Speaker 1: you know, for years. I didn't know that people were
Speaker 1: having sex with the lights off. I was having sex
Speaker 1: with the lights on all like, oh god, I'm having
Speaker 1: sex with this new guy. I gotta I can my
Speaker 1: poses together. Okay, Well, speaking of sex with the lights on? Uh,
Speaker 1: these fireflies uh, so they do their little beef their
Speaker 1: butts do the flashing lights. Uh. And then but there's
Speaker 1: a serial killer living amongst these innocent fireflies, who's all
Speaker 1: they want to do is have sex with each other.
Speaker 1: So photerus firefly females are called the fim fatales of
Speaker 1: the fireflies. The woman whom snap women. Have you seen
Speaker 1: the ads for that? Like like like why do women kill? Yes?
Speaker 1: I feel like because they want to get it girl
Speaker 1: kill those people? Yes, I actually no curb literally sla
Speaker 1: it's literally slag. So they live in North America. Um.
Speaker 1: They mimic the flashing pattern of firefly females of other species,
Speaker 1: so they're like deeping with their their shiny butts. Like, hey,
Speaker 1: I would like to have sex. Come over here now,
Speaker 1: I would like to have sex as well, like a
Speaker 1: little NiFe and the male fireflies like what's the knife emoji?
Speaker 1: Because of how sharp art sex will be, you know
Speaker 1: that's a funny story. Uh. So when the mail comes
Speaker 1: over ready to bone, then the photorists will just eat them,
Speaker 1: just be like, hey, thanks for showing up, munch, give
Speaker 1: me dick forest like the black woodows. And then she's like, okay,
Speaker 1: now you die right right right? Which is uh you know,
Speaker 1: like with spiders and mantis is at least they actually
Speaker 1: do have sex. But this the mail gets literally nothing
Speaker 1: except death love it. So this is a form of
Speaker 1: aggressive mimicries. Mimicry comes in many different forms. We'll talk
Speaker 1: more about it later, but aggressive mimicry is when it's
Speaker 1: a predator or a parasite using the mimicry to attack
Speaker 1: their target. Um so uh, but the them fatil fireflight
Speaker 1: in her defense, has a really good reason to do this. Um.
Speaker 1: First of all, have you ever like had the like
Speaker 1: tender dates where it's just they're super annoying and they're
Speaker 1: always like sending you weird pickup lines or like weird erotica.
Speaker 1: You know, I haven't had any of that. No one
Speaker 1: has ever sent me a penis picture unsolicited. I don't know, really,
Speaker 1: Maybe I have a face that says I don't want
Speaker 1: to see your penut. I actually have not gotten that
Speaker 1: many Dick pics, and I'm partially happy, mostly happy. A
Speaker 1: tiny bit of me is offended, right, I know, I'm
Speaker 1: actually I want to know before I go. I wanna
Speaker 1: know before we eat a Mealup, I have explicitly asked
Speaker 1: for Dick Dick pick picks. So Addictic is a tiny antelope.
Speaker 1: It's very cute, and nobody sent me one, so I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know, Please send me tiny ante.
Speaker 1: So she also like, isn't this kind of cannibalism because
Speaker 1: she's a firefly like a different species, but they don't
Speaker 1: eat like I don't know. Well, um, well, so this
Speaker 1: one is carnivorous um and uh it also has a
Speaker 1: really good reason for eating them, other than because they're annoying. Uh.
Speaker 1: So she sucks the juices out of them, and these
Speaker 1: juices have chemicals that are essential for her self defense.
Speaker 1: So when attacked by predators, fireflies release droplets of blood
Speaker 1: containing luci boufagins. I don't know, you've tried. You try
Speaker 1: to you try to pronounce it lucid lucibouf agins. That
Speaker 1: sounds better than what I said, but still wrong. So
Speaker 1: these lucibith figgins deter spiders and birds. They're like unpalatable
Speaker 1: and the killer female fireflies don't produce their own lucibithigans,
Speaker 1: so she eats hapless, sex hungry males of the actual
Speaker 1: species who do produce it, so that she can suck
Speaker 1: out those sweet lucibithagans. Makes sense, means them, she needs them,
Speaker 1: She needs them, maybe have everything. Of course, they just
Speaker 1: aren't floored with the defense stuff, and we have to,
Speaker 1: like exactly, we have to literally suck it out of
Speaker 1: men so selfish. So fireflies aren't the only animals out
Speaker 1: there who get preyed upon by a sexy seductor. Humans
Speaker 1: are often the victims of romance scammers, people who go
Speaker 1: online and pretend to be some hot guy from Italy
Speaker 1: who just needs five hundred dollars for that plane ticket
Speaker 1: to visit you. Researchers looked into the issue of romance
Speaker 1: scams and catfishing and found there are some shared personality
Speaker 1: traits among those who get scammed. It's not just being gullible.
Speaker 1: No matter how smart you are, you're always susceptible but
Speaker 1: have been conned, especially if it taps into one of
Speaker 1: your vulnerabilities. People who are targeted by romance scammers tended
Speaker 1: to score higher on a romantic belief scale and believed
Speaker 1: in things such as love finds a Way or love
Speaker 1: at first sight and there was one true soulmate out there. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, it's hard to blame the victims when
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of rom coms out there hawking these
Speaker 1: same ideas, teaching us that it's normal for some hot
Speaker 1: Italian stranger to declare their love to us and fly
Speaker 1: halfway across the world to meet us. One way to
Speaker 1: inoculate yourself against scammers, maybe to become the scammer, at
Speaker 1: least to pretend to become a scammer. When we get back,
Speaker 1: we'll discuss how learning to impersonate can help both humans
Speaker 1: and animals survive. I'm sure you've heard endless chatter about
Speaker 1: fake news. Some news story or Twitter talks about fake news,
Speaker 1: and then that story gets called out for being fake news,
Speaker 1: and then there's such an endless back and forth between
Speaker 1: people yelling fake news. How are you supposed to be
Speaker 1: able to sift through what's real and what's fake. There
Speaker 1: are fact checking websites out there, but they themselves may
Speaker 1: have their own biases, and there's no fact checkers checking
Speaker 1: the fact checkers. So instead of taking someone's else's word
Speaker 1: for it, there may be a way for you to
Speaker 1: become an expert propaganda and misinformation detector by becoming a
Speaker 1: misinformation and propagandist. A University of Cambridge study created a
Speaker 1: game where you become the propagandist. It introduces you and
Speaker 1: teaches you how to master six techniques of spreading misinformation, polarization,
Speaker 1: invoking emotions, spreading conspiracy theories, tralling people online, deflecting blame,
Speaker 1: and impersonating fake accounts. Of course, this is not a
Speaker 1: complete list of all the various ways that propaganda is spread,
Speaker 1: but it's start. The goal of the game is to
Speaker 1: gather followers and credibilities metrics which are programmed into the game.
Speaker 1: The researchers found that participants who played the game became
Speaker 1: better at identifying made up news headlines when tested. In fact,
Speaker 1: the greatest improvement in skepticism was found amongst those who
Speaker 1: were initially more gullible. This is very encouraging because it
Speaker 1: means we can learn to become more savvy consumers of media.
Speaker 1: Or maybe I just made up the soul study. Huh huh, No,
Speaker 1: I didn't or did I know? I didn't? You can
Speaker 1: look it up. It's by John rousen Beak and Sander
Speaker 1: van der Linden, published in Paul Grave Communications five, article
Speaker 1: number six two nineteen. Or was it that last name
Speaker 1: sounded hell of fake? I know Sandra vander Linden. Sandra
Speaker 1: vander Linen. Yeah, it's like like one of those like
Speaker 1: Lisa and Bart pranks, Like like, I'm Sandra vander Linden.
Speaker 1: Can I speak to seymore butts a study published in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Buttology. No, that's legit though, that as
Speaker 1: a scammer and I'm a professed SCAMMERA I tell me
Speaker 1: why I've running small scams and cons um The more
Speaker 1: you know about scams, the better you aren't identifying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's like tell tell signs that once you start
Speaker 1: to get your finger on it, you're like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: Like because if you if you have long enough to think,
Speaker 1: so what it is about gullibility to It is about
Speaker 1: how desperate you are to want something, like if you
Speaker 1: want it really badly. And three it's also sometimes about time,
Speaker 1: like if someone catches you when you're like really sleepy,
Speaker 1: or you're in a rush, or you don't have time
Speaker 1: to really think about what they're saying to you, perfect
Speaker 1: opportunity to scam, right, Which is kind of crazy because
Speaker 1: that's when people read the news, like in the morning,
Speaker 1: right before work, like when you're sort of in a rush,
Speaker 1: or like if you're like checking Twitter, like when you're
Speaker 1: on break and you don't have a lot of time
Speaker 1: right right, right exactly, so you're not always on your
Speaker 1: a game. So if there's like a news story that's
Speaker 1: like you know, like birds aren't real, Like you're like, yeah, sure, okay, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: actually on the news, girl I said, is not real.
Speaker 1: Drones they're watching they're watching this girl. That's what they
Speaker 1: said last night at eleven, Like sure, fine, I'll believe that. Also,
Speaker 1: romance scams are like a hundred forty three million dollar industry,
Speaker 1: are you kidding? So much money is made off romance
Speaker 1: scams um, And a lot of it is because people
Speaker 1: were just so lonely, and I think that's so sad,
Speaker 1: it's really said. And they tend to skew older too, right, yes,
Speaker 1: and also like but older and also younger, like young
Speaker 1: women and men with a lot of disposable income, especially
Speaker 1: like they're very susceptible because they know when you're younger,
Speaker 1: Like I remember when I was nineteen, like people say
Speaker 1: stuff to me. They made no sense. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: until I became like an adult that I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: or like my one of my ex boyfriends in college
Speaker 1: had a whole sugar daddy, and I know something was off,
Speaker 1: but he had a sugar daddy. It was like like,
Speaker 1: like okay, So we went to school and our campus
Speaker 1: was like ten minutes away from his internship, which was downtown.
Speaker 1: So he if they worked late, the sugar daddy would
Speaker 1: get them a hotel and they would stay downtown and
Speaker 1: he lived him andutes a wife from home. I was like,
Speaker 1: you don't ever need to stay at home? This man?
Speaker 1: What is And I was young though, so I was like,
Speaker 1: I guess that's how they'd be working in the bank
Speaker 1: in the industry. I don't know. I don't work in
Speaker 1: the bank. Weirdly sweaty at the bank. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: They had robes that were like he would tell me, honest,
Speaker 1: I don't know why did not put two two together.
Speaker 1: It was like robes that were monogramed. I was like,
Speaker 1: bank robes. You know what the bank bankers were, you
Speaker 1: know what the bank? You know what the bank when
Speaker 1: they have the robes, the terry cloth robes. Don't know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. You need those robes to handle
Speaker 1: the money, don't make it weird. I wonder if there's
Speaker 1: like a perfect age at which we are immune to scam.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's got to be like thirty five
Speaker 1: and that's it. Yeah. I feel like at thirty five
Speaker 1: you're probably lie a little bit more of a skeptic,
Speaker 1: but you're not like old enough that you're like worried about.
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm trying to say is like when
Speaker 1: you get older, you all you also start to fall
Speaker 1: out of the way of technology. So the thirty five,
Speaker 1: I feel like you're in tune with all the technology
Speaker 1: that's currently happening. You probably know how to text and
Speaker 1: cinemogs and Skype, FaceTime and everything. But I feel like
Speaker 1: the older you get, because there's grandpa scams to grand
Speaker 1: parents scams and um and those on average grandparents are
Speaker 1: sending like nine thousand dollars to scammers that's so sad,
Speaker 1: who are pretending to be their grandchildren. And with Facebook
Speaker 1: you can get on Facebook and learn everything you need
Speaker 1: to know about someone, click around to find their grandchildren. UM,
Speaker 1: and even people put have videos so you can learn
Speaker 1: how to mimic people's voices. It's so easily with deep fake.
Speaker 1: Now it's it's that's game over. Like once someone deep
Speaker 1: fakes a video of you going like, hey, Grandma, it's me.
Speaker 1: I need nine thousand dollars for bail, and that's what
Speaker 1: they do. They call UM. Actually just did a show
Speaker 1: about one where the phone call started as like, don't
Speaker 1: be afraid. It's me. I'm your grandson's defense attorney. He
Speaker 1: got into a d U I accident, and he starts
Speaker 1: off with don't be afraid. I trust it so much,
Speaker 1: don't be afraid. So but the thing is going to
Speaker 1: be afraid. But he told me not to, so chill.
Speaker 1: I'm good naturally. When I pick up the phone, I'm afraid, right,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm on pins and needles when I answer
Speaker 1: the calling, waiting for someone to reassure me not to
Speaker 1: be afraid. But that's the thing, though, is like when
Speaker 1: you learn certain scams or get into like scamming, you
Speaker 1: start to hear things like that and you go, what
Speaker 1: the like this is great. But if you're not involved
Speaker 1: in that stuff, like your study was saying, I think
Speaker 1: that you're less likely to pinpoint it sometimes, like if
Speaker 1: they catch you at the right time because they call
Speaker 1: late at night or really really early in the morning
Speaker 1: to write. Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like UM.
Speaker 1: As a former UM psychology study research assistant, I was
Speaker 1: basically running scams as well, because you just you have
Speaker 1: to lie to people in order to test them because
Speaker 1: they can't know what you're testing otherwise that influences the results.
Speaker 1: So there were some really weird studies. One of them
Speaker 1: was I had to convince these guys that we had
Speaker 1: a special camera that monitored their sexual arousal by looking
Speaker 1: at their pupil dilation, and then we showed them a
Speaker 1: sexy video. And like I had to be really in college,
Speaker 1: I was not cool. I just wasn't cool, and I
Speaker 1: had I wasn't able to really I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to lie. I was just you know, kind of kind
Speaker 1: of doofy and stuff. And you have like such an
Speaker 1: honest face though you have like these bright blue eyes.
Speaker 1: I feel like if you tell me things, I would
Speaker 1: believe them. Um. Yeah, it's it's my honest face a
Speaker 1: k A looking always startled or as if someone has
Speaker 1: farted in the room. Hey, it works. I have the
Speaker 1: face of a liar people. People know what I'm talking.
Speaker 1: If I'm breathing, I'm lying. And I mean if I
Speaker 1: worked real hard to convince people when I am lying,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that. But then I have the face
Speaker 1: of a gullible person. So um so I had to
Speaker 1: somehow um And then the guys would sometimes question me
Speaker 1: like say like, wait, how can a camera tell like
Speaker 1: I'm aroused? And it's like you know, by detecting your
Speaker 1: pupils And they're like, well, am I aroused right now?
Speaker 1: Like I don't know. If I don'tbout the camera, I
Speaker 1: can't tell that guy's a scamera. It was like sounds
Speaker 1: like bullshit. Um So, I don't think I got too.
Speaker 1: I didn't get good at scamming people or I didn't
Speaker 1: get good at like lying, but I did learn like
Speaker 1: to just not trust anyone because if I couldn't trust me,
Speaker 1: who can I trust? Right? And that's the thing too,
Speaker 1: is it like also your experience is right, that'll all
Speaker 1: lo catered to, Like how easily your scam if you're
Speaker 1: someone who's had more privileged life. You know, people in
Speaker 1: your life have genuinely not been shady. If you have
Speaker 1: access to a lot of money, those people easiest to scam. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you've been insulated in a bubble and everyone's treated
Speaker 1: you well up until, Like, you don't know how other
Speaker 1: people live. So someone does tell you, like they work
Speaker 1: in diamond dealing, and it's dangerous that people are following them.
Speaker 1: I'm like the arrested development, Like how much can bananas
Speaker 1: cost twelve dollars? Just thirty dollars? I mean, I think
Speaker 1: because I do look kind of innocent, I think like
Speaker 1: a lot of people have tried to take advantage of me,
Speaker 1: so I've kind of learned a lot over the years.
Speaker 1: Um And, like I like I remember in high school,
Speaker 1: I was super global. People were always teasing me and
Speaker 1: like bullying me in a sort of funny way that
Speaker 1: like even now I can like that was pretty funny.
Speaker 1: But like, um so the only person looking back fondly
Speaker 1: on the bullying, right, I think about well, I mean
Speaker 1: I was I was bullying. That was not so fun.
Speaker 1: But you know the fun bowling where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: look at the ceiling, Katie and I would or like like, oh,
Speaker 1: did you know if you like shake a salt salt
Speaker 1: shaker on your tongue, you can like taste it. The
Speaker 1: i'm they're like looking like I'm, you know, jerking someone off.
Speaker 1: So another thing you can't trust is caterpillars. What a
Speaker 1: seg Oh I'm great at segways. On this show, um so, Um,
Speaker 1: we're going to learn that just like humans can defend
Speaker 1: ourselves by learning to mimic our predators, so can animals.
Speaker 1: And we're going to start off with a very naughty
Speaker 1: little caterpillar. Um So. The hawk moth caterpillar of Central
Speaker 1: and South America mimics the look of vipers by inflating
Speaker 1: itself like a balloon a snake. Right, So they have
Speaker 1: these big fake eye spots and fake reptile scales, and
Speaker 1: they puff up their front parts and wave them around
Speaker 1: to look like a snake head. They'll even like undulate
Speaker 1: and do monks strikes. So I've got a video of
Speaker 1: this alright, So here's the hawksmouth caterpillar. That's the cat.
Speaker 1: Oh my, it looks like a snake. This is crazy.
Speaker 1: It looks so it like twists itself around. Um, and
Speaker 1: then it like inflates itself, just like part of it
Speaker 1: so part of it still skinny, and then it kind
Speaker 1: of creates a bulb at one end that looks like
Speaker 1: a snakehead. And it's extremely convincing like that. Even even
Speaker 1: biologists and researchers who know about this caterpillar and are
Speaker 1: actively looking for it, when they see it there start yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's we're so um programmed to be afraid of
Speaker 1: snakes that if you see this, you're going to jump.
Speaker 1: Now the fake has at all. This Is this the
Speaker 1: butt part of the caterpillar? I think it's the front part. Actually,
Speaker 1: oh wow, because I thought it was eaten. Now I
Speaker 1: think that is. I think that is the front part.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, because I was like, that would be fly
Speaker 1: if you could just make it look like a snake
Speaker 1: but you could just eat Yeah. There are examples. So
Speaker 1: auto mimicry is a type of mimicry where you are
Speaker 1: mimicking your own body parts. So there are caterpillars and
Speaker 1: animals that have eyes on their butt um and there's um,
Speaker 1: there's this owl called the it's like the northern North
Speaker 1: American pygmy owl that has eyes on the back of
Speaker 1: its head. Um here's a picture of that, so you
Speaker 1: can see from a distance that you would just think
Speaker 1: and it's looking at you right exactly, and alics can
Speaker 1: swivel their heads around. So um, this is like the
Speaker 1: next technology. They're like women need, like walking home at night,
Speaker 1: a whole face on the back of my head. I
Speaker 1: feel like if you had two faces, that would be
Speaker 1: enough of a deterrent, like like this pitch has two
Speaker 1: faces crazier than um. Well actually so um. In uh
Speaker 1: In Indian Bangladesh, in tiger territory, people used to try
Speaker 1: to wear mank on the back of their heads to
Speaker 1: prevent tiger attacks because they would attack you from behind. Um.
Speaker 1: But this only they were only able to do it
Speaker 1: for a few months because reportedly the tigers like cut
Speaker 1: onto it and they learned to differentiate between the fake
Speaker 1: mask and like the real face. Right now, that's very smart.
Speaker 1: So I wonder who who was the first guy to
Speaker 1: get attacked. He was like, no, no no, not, don't worry,
Speaker 1: I got my face mask. Do the first one. It's
Speaker 1: like it's just a really bad face mask. And then
Speaker 1: they turned around in their face also looks like that.
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know what we're wrong. It
Speaker 1: was a perfect resemblance. Um so Uh. That is a
Speaker 1: form of the The caterpillar pretending to be a form
Speaker 1: is a form of Baitsian mimicry. So that's a harmless
Speaker 1: animal mimicking a dangerous animal animal in order to scare
Speaker 1: off would be attackers. Uh so uh. In addition to
Speaker 1: the UM caterpillar, other examples are tasty butterflies mimicking UM.
Speaker 1: The epi semitic coloration of unpalatable butterflies and moths, like
Speaker 1: butterflies that will make like if a bird eats that butterfly,
Speaker 1: it'll vomit. Those tend to be like like green and red. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like these bright colors like monarchs are a good example. UM.
Speaker 1: Monarchs aren't delicious, no, um. They do look delicious though buttery.
Speaker 1: There's there's a complex math to this actually, because if
Speaker 1: you have too many UM mimics who taste great mimicking
Speaker 1: the unpalatable mimics. Uh, then the it gets all skewed
Speaker 1: where predators don't learn, so they'll just like because the
Speaker 1: signal has too much noise. The predators lead all these
Speaker 1: tasty molds and only occasionally eat the moth or the butterfly.
Speaker 1: That is actually toxic. So they're kind of messing up
Speaker 1: the game for the person who is toxic because they's like,
Speaker 1: I don't take my chances right exactly, Like if like
Speaker 1: most ice cream you ate tasted great, but like one
Speaker 1: once in a hundred like it tasted like ass like,
Speaker 1: then you'd still eat ice cream, right, Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: probably would risk of that as Yeah. So so this
Speaker 1: really is kind of ruining it for the people who
Speaker 1: had the armor, right exactly. So the populations actually you
Speaker 1: see like these populations rising in declining as they kind
Speaker 1: of balance out because there has to be this balance
Speaker 1: of mimic population to the actual true signal population. Um. So.
Speaker 1: Another example, and this is just kind of funny, is
Speaker 1: there be flies who are totally harmless that look like bees.
Speaker 1: But they're really funny because they're just these little they
Speaker 1: look like little poofballs with with eyes and they're they're
Speaker 1: just harmless flies. But I would never look like these.
Speaker 1: I've never known if I've seen a bee fly before.
Speaker 1: I think the first time I saw one was um,
Speaker 1: I think I saw one in the Sequoias um and
Speaker 1: it was really funny because it like I thought it
Speaker 1: was a be but it was also a lot less
Speaker 1: agile than it looks like a great value brand, like
Speaker 1: one of those ice cream trucks serving like like pocket
Speaker 1: Monster like ice creams where it's like Pikachu but it's
Speaker 1: all melty to never were it's it's sponge Guy, the
Speaker 1: ice cream poke Man. Get a Pokemon, I scream. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like this would work on humans too, Like
Speaker 1: you know, how um, Like when the whole tide pod
Speaker 1: thing was a mean and people were making like tide
Speaker 1: pod jello shots and tide pod colored uh like cupcakes
Speaker 1: and cookies like as a joke. But I feel like
Speaker 1: if someone handed me a jello shot that looked like
Speaker 1: a tide pod, I wouldn't want to eat it because
Speaker 1: it would disgust weight. I would feel like I was
Speaker 1: maybe going to eat a tide pot. Right. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like how um, I think they're there. There's been
Speaker 1: some research to show that when you have a certain
Speaker 1: flavor associated with cleaning products in a country, like there's
Speaker 1: less gum that comes in that flavor, whereas like if
Speaker 1: in another country, like the gum or that kind of
Speaker 1: flavoring isn't like a minty flavor being used in cleaning products.
Speaker 1: It's not, it's less likely to be to be because
Speaker 1: you don't want to consume it, right exactly. Oh that
Speaker 1: makes total sense. I would turn me off to I
Speaker 1: wonder what kind of gum they're eating in Mexico because
Speaker 1: flavor um and it's all delicious. Why do they make
Speaker 1: it look so good? They make it look too good.
Speaker 1: It's like a bright color like candy apple, grein and
Speaker 1: sin and blue, and the smells like candy does. And
Speaker 1: then I'm like, but I can't eat it? But or
Speaker 1: can I can? I? I mean we learned with tide pots.
Speaker 1: Have you have you seen those um like their coffee
Speaker 1: mug shaped like toilets? Yeah? I don't understand it because
Speaker 1: any anytime, like there's some cute see things like oh,
Speaker 1: here's a cookie, but it's shaped like a pupa emoji,
Speaker 1: or like here's like it's eat poop. Yeah. Somebody had
Speaker 1: a baby shower cake once and they had a very
Speaker 1: realistic vagina yeah with like the baby you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe the vagina alone with the baby hand
Speaker 1: was coming down. It was like would you like to
Speaker 1: eat this pussy? Yeah, a lot of people would like
Speaker 1: to eat a pussy. Um, But but it was like baby, baby, baby.
Speaker 1: I want to say coitus, but that's mad birth reaching
Speaker 1: the baby is yeah, And I was like they did
Speaker 1: as a joke, and I'm like, also, I don't want
Speaker 1: to eat I don't ever want to eat a baby
Speaker 1: shaped cake. Um. But also I saw I saw a
Speaker 1: baby cake where it was like the stomach was transparent.
Speaker 1: It was like this baby fetus in this transparent jello stomach.
Speaker 1: I don't under we've just because we can doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we should. Yeah, our society, man, I would eat a
Speaker 1: cake shaped like a baby, though, I don't know. If
Speaker 1: I give you a little baby foot, I already want
Speaker 1: to eat baby cheek. I don't literally want to eat
Speaker 1: a baby. But it's like nibble, that's true, just like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just like suez um. So there's another kind of mimicry
Speaker 1: called Mularian mimicry, when it's two or more dangerous animals
Speaker 1: that develop a similar look um so that that signal,
Speaker 1: Like we talked about, it's important that predators actually learned
Speaker 1: that that signal so they don't eat you otherwise it's useless.
Speaker 1: So when you have too dangerous um or toxic animals
Speaker 1: teaming up looking alike than their signal is going to
Speaker 1: be even stronger. So an example of this is the
Speaker 1: viceroy and monarch butterflies that are both mildly toxic um
Speaker 1: too toxic uh, and they look very similar. They basically
Speaker 1: look the same. It's really hard to differentiate them. And
Speaker 1: there's actually some human example. So evolutionary zoologist Thomas in
Speaker 1: Shatt claims that marketers engage in this Mularian mimicry where
Speaker 1: products are colored similarly to signal brand identification better. So
Speaker 1: that would kind of be like baits and mimicry, so
Speaker 1: like a some coke off brand, like trying to look
Speaker 1: like a coke bottle or having the same like Dr
Speaker 1: Pepper and Mr Pitts exactly exactly um, or like the
Speaker 1: I can't believe it's not butter. Have you seen like
Speaker 1: all the variations of that where it's like butter, No,
Speaker 1: I can't believe it. It's like, how don't know it's
Speaker 1: not It's like the same kind of swooping texts like
Speaker 1: like the blue on yellow or whatever it is, it's
Speaker 1: like butter. Nah, maybe no, this isn't butter or is
Speaker 1: it the taste of butter? Perhaps kind of butter but
Speaker 1: not really, but is it Maybe we don't know the
Speaker 1: cousin of butter or you be the judge, and I
Speaker 1: would go for that. I mean, that's I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what Walmart is a great value product is literally so
Speaker 1: close to cheerios cheery boys. And then the kind of
Speaker 1: Mularian mimicry where it's like their signal boosting each other
Speaker 1: is like chip flavors often have similar colors, so like
Speaker 1: cool ranch is like blue, and like, um, like salt
Speaker 1: and vinegar is like green exactly um and like sort
Speaker 1: of like red and yellow is just like you know,
Speaker 1: basic basic chip. Yeah. Um So that's kind of interesting
Speaker 1: to me. It's like butterflies do it and chips do it.
Speaker 1: Um So, there's other forms, interesting forms of defensive mimicry.
Speaker 1: Um So, there are these three snakes who live in
Speaker 1: North Central and South America who look almost identical, the
Speaker 1: milk snake, the false coral snakes, and the deadly coral snakes.
Speaker 1: Um So, the milk snakes are harmless, the false coral
Speaker 1: snakes are moderately toxic and venomous. Um and the deadly
Speaker 1: coral snakes are um So, there's a nemonic device to
Speaker 1: try to tell the difference between these snakes. Um, it
Speaker 1: goes red on yellow kills a fellow, red on black
Speaker 1: venom black, or there's another one that's like red touches black,
Speaker 1: it's a friend of jack. Red touches yellow, it's a
Speaker 1: bad for a fellow. Or I didn't mean to do that,
Speaker 1: as like Italian, it's a bad for a Red touches yellow,
Speaker 1: you're a dead fellow. Red touches black, you're okay, jack. Um,
Speaker 1: I've never been able to learn these because I'm just
Speaker 1: like red on yellow good for a fellow, Red on black,
Speaker 1: you're okay, Jack. You know it's completely confusing to close,
Speaker 1: but like you should, regardless of whether they confuse you,
Speaker 1: you should completely ignore these poems. They are useless. Researchers
Speaker 1: have found that there's no reliable color pattern that can
Speaker 1: help you determine the harmless snakes from the deadly coral snakes.
Speaker 1: So if you see like red touches yellow, just like,
Speaker 1: stay away from these snakes, right, don't be like, okay,
Speaker 1: red touches yellow or red touches black, rob it all
Speaker 1: over your back. Um, So you might think that in
Speaker 1: this case, the milk snake and the false coral snakes
Speaker 1: are mimicking the deadly coral snake as a kind of
Speaker 1: Baitsia mimicry, but it's Some biologists actually argue that this
Speaker 1: is called Martensian mimicry um, where a deadly animal mimics
Speaker 1: a less deadly but still harmful animal, because if you're deadly,
Speaker 1: it's hard to teach a predator a lesson because if
Speaker 1: they eat you, then they die, but you also die,
Speaker 1: so nobody learns anything. So if you mimic a slightly
Speaker 1: less deadly animal but that's still toxic, then the predators live,
Speaker 1: but they learned that that is a yucky snake, and
Speaker 1: then they won't eat you, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: convoluted thing, and it's not it's somewhat controversial. Snake. I
Speaker 1: can't tell my friends about the snake that I ate.
Speaker 1: If I'm did right exactly, you can't do that anyways.
Speaker 1: I've found people don't like it. I hate a snake
Speaker 1: last week, and then then they're like, okay, well, do
Speaker 1: snakes tastes good? Alligator don't think they taste super good.
Speaker 1: I think it's hard to cook them without them getting
Speaker 1: really chalky. Yeah, and like dried out they're just useless
Speaker 1: little news like biting noodles UMDs. Uh. So um, there's
Speaker 1: also Gilbertian um emicry, so this is an interesting one. Uh.
Speaker 1: Here's an example. So, passion flowers um have developed growths
Speaker 1: that look like butterfly eggs to deter butterflies from laying
Speaker 1: their eggs on them, exposing them to caterpillars. So, um,
Speaker 1: it's basically Gilbertian mimicry is you're the victim of parasites
Speaker 1: that then mimics the parasite in order to trick the
Speaker 1: parasite into not bothering you. Right, So this is like
Speaker 1: if um, oh, this is so dark, but it's like
Speaker 1: if someone shooting and you just lay down and pretend
Speaker 1: you've already been shot pretty much um. And so it's
Speaker 1: like these these passion flowers actually have developed growths that
Speaker 1: look like butterfly eggs. So the butterfly who normally likes
Speaker 1: to lay their eggs on these flowers will look at
Speaker 1: that and be like, oh, there's already competition here, I
Speaker 1: can't do it. Or it also attracts predators of the butterflies,
Speaker 1: and then that's good because that then kills any butterflies
Speaker 1: that will come and lay their eggs. Um, because it
Speaker 1: kind of just keeps them around, like there's probably gonna
Speaker 1: be some butterflies back soon and munch on. I feel
Speaker 1: like this would be like if you got a scammer
Speaker 1: calling you and then you tried to scam this camera,
Speaker 1: Like like if they're like, can you give me your
Speaker 1: social Security number? And you're like, oh, I don't know
Speaker 1: what a social security number is? Could you give me
Speaker 1: yours as an example? Yeah? Wait, repeat it, thank you?
Speaker 1: Or like what's your driver's license? It's all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you're giving up on the information. UM. And then
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about automimicry. UM. That's the
Speaker 1: that's where you're mimicking your own body parts where it's
Speaker 1: like the eyes on the back of your head. UM.
Speaker 1: Actually you know the that Gilbert Tian Memicry reminds me of. UM.
Speaker 1: I think his name is James Veach. Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen his stuff? He's like he um, scammers email him,
Speaker 1: and then he like scams the scammers for comedy where
Speaker 1: he like, uh, like they'll they'll like try to get
Speaker 1: him to do a scam and then he tries to
Speaker 1: keep them engaged as long as possible, where he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm in, But then he like starts like tormenting them
Speaker 1: by being like, you know, can you send me a
Speaker 1: photo of the briefcase scammers? I haven't seen that, but
Speaker 1: scammers have to be really good at photoshop or its
Speaker 1: like a requirement. Um, and I can't imagine like him
Speaker 1: like putting them through like can you send me the
Speaker 1: bank statement? Like and they have to go to work
Speaker 1: making it all the comp or they're like they'll say
Speaker 1: like you've won this thing, and he's like, oh, I
Speaker 1: heard about that in the newspaper. So I also get
Speaker 1: a free toaster, right, And they're like, no, there's no
Speaker 1: free toasters, Like well what about this? And each shows
Speaker 1: like an advertisement for their scam, but it says like
Speaker 1: and a free toaster. It's it's so good. There's one
Speaker 1: example of mimicry and evolutionary biology that isn't just unique,
Speaker 1: it's freaky, and like many freaky things in nature, it's
Speaker 1: all because of this weird fungus. Imagine a fungus that
Speaker 1: infects your body, hijacks your biology to make you look
Speaker 1: and smell like a delicious dessert. This is exactly what
Speaker 1: the disco micat Fungus monil in the Vaccini quorum bosy
Speaker 1: fungus do, or as I like to call them, because
Speaker 1: that's impossible to pronounce, the blueberry fucker. The blueberry fucker
Speaker 1: fungus infects the leaves of the blueberry plant and causes
Speaker 1: them to secrete sweet nectar like substance. Pollinators like bees
Speaker 1: come to sip at this sugary hoax, and the fungus
Speaker 1: hitches right on the bee. Then, when the bee moves
Speaker 1: on to a blueberry flower, the fungus infects the flowers
Speaker 1: reproductive system. Then the fungus hijacks the flowers ovaries, using
Speaker 1: them to produce mummified, inedible blueberries containing the fungus, which
Speaker 1: hibernate over the winter and goes on to infect the
Speaker 1: plant again in the spring. This is one of the
Speaker 1: only cases in nature where a parasitic organism forces another organism,
Speaker 1: in this case the blueberry plant, to engage in mimicry,
Speaker 1: and then uses a patsy in this case, the bee,
Speaker 1: to infect the plant. Not only does it force the
Speaker 1: blueberry to smell delicious, it also alters its ultra violet coloration,
Speaker 1: making the leaves give off a flower signal to the bees.
Speaker 1: The blueberry fucker fungus runs one of the most complicated,
Speaker 1: dastardly scams in nature. When we return, we'll discuss how
Speaker 1: sometimes all we need to do to bamboozle someone is
Speaker 1: to just act casual and blend into the crowd. Sometimes
Speaker 1: the best way to trick someone is to act like
Speaker 1: what you're doing is totally normal. The greatest strength of
Speaker 1: humans can also be our greatest weakness. We are highly
Speaker 1: socially intelligent, and we depend on social groups to survive,
Speaker 1: and other words, were a bunch of conformists. There's a
Speaker 1: famous study in psychology that puts us to the test
Speaker 1: it in an almost unnecessarily humiliating way. The elevator experiment
Speaker 1: was part of the Ash Conformity experiments that looked at
Speaker 1: how people coped with group pressures. Now imagine that you
Speaker 1: normally enter an elevator. You get in, face the wall
Speaker 1: with the doors and all the buttons, and wait while
Speaker 1: desperately holding in that part. And the elevator experiment experimenters
Speaker 1: placed research assistance in the elevator who were instructed to
Speaker 1: face the back wall when they got in with their
Speaker 1: backs turned away from the doors like a couple of idiots,
Speaker 1: except when an unexpecting bystandard got in the elevator, they
Speaker 1: copied the two research assistants, also turning away to face
Speaker 1: the back. So are we all just a bunch of
Speaker 1: stupid cheap well? The ash conformity experiments revealed that while
Speaker 1: people are heavily pressured by crowds and conforming, we're also
Speaker 1: extremely willing to listen to reason. His research show that
Speaker 1: it only took one person going like, hey, why the
Speaker 1: hell are you guys standing backward? You assholes to prevent
Speaker 1: people from falling for the group think um, which, I
Speaker 1: feel like I would be easily tricked by this elevator
Speaker 1: experiment because I've been an elevator where they open on
Speaker 1: one side and then like I'm standing there, you know,
Speaker 1: like like a door like facing the doors, and then
Speaker 1: like ding, and then I hear like from the kind
Speaker 1: of like what there's like a big target on the
Speaker 1: bread that has those elevators where like they open on
Speaker 1: the other side when you go out. I would definitely
Speaker 1: fall for this because like I'm also the type of
Speaker 1: person and like black people joke about this. Alive is
Speaker 1: like if we see other people running, we will start
Speaker 1: running to and we don't need to know why we're
Speaker 1: running or what we're running from or where we're running to.
Speaker 1: We'll figure out when we get there. We're like, there's dangerous,
Speaker 1: so we're going to just run with this group of people.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a marathon. Uh. There have been prying shows
Speaker 1: where they just like have a horde of people who
Speaker 1: start running like towards some innocent person and then the
Speaker 1: person's like, oh shit, it's like it's happening, It's finally happening,
Speaker 1: and then they start running away too. I mean that's
Speaker 1: I feel like that's not being gullible. I think that's
Speaker 1: just self preservation because usually when a bunch of people
Speaker 1: are running, you should run, And I think it's also
Speaker 1: self preservation. Sometimes I feel like when we're conforming, because
Speaker 1: it's like sometimes standing out can be dangerous exactly. But
Speaker 1: me too, me too, me as well, I know why
Speaker 1: we're doing this. I'm not even that like I would
Speaker 1: definitely do the same. I'd rather be sometimes. I mean
Speaker 1: it's like I know we're all like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: you want you don't want to conform, you don't want
Speaker 1: to be a sheep. But sometimes I kind of would
Speaker 1: rather be a sheep than like be the idiot who's like, wait,
Speaker 1: why is nobody else wat? Aay is nobody else walking?
Speaker 1: Because it's like an open man hole or right, literally,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be that one guy whose mask
Speaker 1: on the back of his head didn't work? Are my
Speaker 1: ex boyfriend who was wearing robes to the bank, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, I guess that's whatever. It doesn't think. It's
Speaker 1: like what if you want to bank, like wearing a
Speaker 1: monoground robe and you're like, but my boyfriend said, this
Speaker 1: is what? This is? What? No, where's my hotel room?
Speaker 1: Do all your business out of hotel rooms right now?
Speaker 1: So in the animal kingdom, there's something called wassmanny and mimicry,
Speaker 1: where the mimic resembles the animal that it's trying to
Speaker 1: live amongst um. So kind of like it makes me
Speaker 1: think of that meme with um, what's his name? Who's
Speaker 1: going like, hello, what's that actor's name? Oh it's Steve Yes, yes, yes, yes, hello,
Speaker 1: fellow kids, children, Yes, this is exactly that. So typically
Speaker 1: it's found in insects who are mimicking social insects like ants, bees.
Speaker 1: So here's an example there are several species of jumping
Speaker 1: spiders who do this to avoid predation and get lost
Speaker 1: in the ant crowd. So spider predators like spider wasps,
Speaker 1: which like to prey on spiders, don't like to prey
Speaker 1: on ants because ants have zero chill. They will yeah,
Speaker 1: and they will destroy you. Turn. I stepped in an
Speaker 1: ampile not too long and they descended on my foot.
Speaker 1: It was like seconds before, like my whole was yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like damn, it was accidentally, bit is get
Speaker 1: kid out here? They come outside and beat me up.
Speaker 1: I was like damn. It's like when you accidentally bump
Speaker 1: someone in the grocery store and then they just they
Speaker 1: don't accept your apology. You're like, oh, I'm sorry, and
Speaker 1: they're like what we're going asho, dare you. It's like
Speaker 1: there are people in traffic, like you cut somebody off
Speaker 1: by acts and you're like sorry that they honk at
Speaker 1: you for three blocks. Drink It's it's like it's like
Speaker 1: it's like I want there to be a horn I
Speaker 1: can press where it's like, yes, I realize I've made
Speaker 1: a mistake and I'm very sorry about it. Please stop
Speaker 1: talking at me. I understand my mistake and I will
Speaker 1: endeavor to not do it again. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: be that law. Yes, that one you have to pause
Speaker 1: and let it finish, and then it repeats. I'm really
Speaker 1: sorry that I did this action. I have apologized. I
Speaker 1: know I didn't. We all do it. I don't know
Speaker 1: why people get so angry. I don't know, but yeah,
Speaker 1: aunts turned up real quickly. They are um, they are,
Speaker 1: they are on board, uh for I feel like they're
Speaker 1: also just juiced up. I feel like they're like the
Speaker 1: roided up yes animal of the animal kingdom or of
Speaker 1: the insect kingdom, because they can like lift like ten
Speaker 1: times are a body weight. They're they're like fifty flannel bros,
Speaker 1: like all like showing up to a party and they
Speaker 1: all like sign like one of them gets their drink
Speaker 1: knocked over and they're all like you want to go.
Speaker 1: They're all on pre workout there drinking pre workout and vodka.
Speaker 1: These are the antstring for logo. Love for logo, like
Speaker 1: all the ants is simultaneously unison like flannels off off um.
Speaker 1: So these jumping spiders who mimic the ants will do
Speaker 1: a lot to try to really sell the allusions so
Speaker 1: that big um they can like the jumping spiders are
Speaker 1: actually quite small. They're pretty cute. I think they're adorable.
Speaker 1: I know, I know that's a controversial opinion about spiders
Speaker 1: being cute, But if there is a cute spider, it's
Speaker 1: the jumping spiders. UM. So I'll show you a couple
Speaker 1: of pictures of Um, here's the actual ants, and then
Speaker 1: here's the mimic. This is a spider, and then this
Speaker 1: is another spider that looks just like the ants. You
Speaker 1: can tell that the mouth is different, the mandibles are
Speaker 1: a little different. So ants have those antenna which the
Speaker 1: spiders don't have. So the spiders will wave their front
Speaker 1: legs around as if they're antenna. Um. It makes me
Speaker 1: think of those like videos where like you put human
Speaker 1: arms around a dog and it's like, look, I'm a
Speaker 1: human doing science. I love that. That reminds me of UM.
Speaker 1: One time, my girlfriends and I were trying to get
Speaker 1: into the v I P. Of this nightclub and it
Speaker 1: was like they had like really walled up and there
Speaker 1: were like some really famous people in there. And we
Speaker 1: walked by a table and there was like a bunch
Speaker 1: of cups and like supplies on it, and so we
Speaker 1: just picked that stuff up and held it over our
Speaker 1: heads like we worked there, Like excuse, that's so good
Speaker 1: to put these cups ye, jimmy, you know me, we
Speaker 1: gotta put these cups back here. I think people are
Speaker 1: so we're so willing, we want to go with the flow.
Speaker 1: We want things to be normal. That if some if
Speaker 1: you are confident and you're just like I'm here to
Speaker 1: do a job, like people's default is like oh yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got cups, you're official. I also learned in my
Speaker 1: Psychology of Marketing class that if you give people want
Speaker 1: to excuse, any excuse, they're more likely to let you
Speaker 1: do what you want. So an example, if you want
Speaker 1: to cut in a line, they can just be like
Speaker 1: I do all the time at the airport, my flight
Speaker 1: sporting like do you mind it in front of you?
Speaker 1: Works every single time, or just any excuse. It doesn't
Speaker 1: even have to do with the situation. Could be at
Speaker 1: the air I've got diabetes and then you get the line.
Speaker 1: It's like, wait, what it works? Just like what I
Speaker 1: don't know if she got diabetes, so she said she
Speaker 1: said she got to get through t s a fast
Speaker 1: because the diabetes gonna flare up. I don't get it.
Speaker 1: I have my dog has a bladder stone. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you need your start, sure, yeah, get your Starbucks faster. No,
Speaker 1: I was just gonna get a lot tame. But if
Speaker 1: you're dog like, you know how it is your dog? Yeah,
Speaker 1: okay sure. So some of these um jumping spiders that
Speaker 1: mimic ants will prey on the ants. Um. They'll like,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, they're like, I'm just a normal
Speaker 1: ants And it's like, well wait, why do you have
Speaker 1: another ant in your mouth? Billy, come back, come back
Speaker 1: behind this dirt pile. I need you to see something.
Speaker 1: So some of the some of the other find that picture.
Speaker 1: So some of the other spiders, the bigger ones that
Speaker 1: can't get away with being ant sized. Instead they just
Speaker 1: look like two ants, like carrying another ant. Um. Here
Speaker 1: it is here, it is here, it is It's so cool. Okay.
Speaker 1: So this is an image of one spider who looks
Speaker 1: like two ants. What like, here's the like it looks
Speaker 1: like one ant and then carrying another aunt because like,
Speaker 1: and it's got little eyes with anty right exactly. It's
Speaker 1: got little uh little spots in two places, so it
Speaker 1: looks like it has two sets of eyes. So it
Speaker 1: looks like a worker ant carrying like a dead or
Speaker 1: injured ant um and so it gets away with It's
Speaker 1: like it's like it's sort of the reverse of like
Speaker 1: two kids in a trench coat. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: one person looking like two adults that is insane. And
Speaker 1: then it's eating ants. Yeah, it's like just a paramedic
Speaker 1: ant here carrying the injured out actually more ant on
Speaker 1: the It's like, is that are those two ants eating
Speaker 1: another ant just doing medicine which is working on and
Speaker 1: we broke his lick scalpel. Alright, So now, um, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about zebra coloring because it's a really interesting,
Speaker 1: uh phenomenon where like you look at the zebra, it's like,
Speaker 1: that is a stupid animal because if it wants to
Speaker 1: not stand out, not be spotted by lions, like it's
Speaker 1: dumb because it's it's it almost looks like white and
Speaker 1: black right, Like it looks like it's like an alarm
Speaker 1: sign going like here's a zebra eat it um. Uh.
Speaker 1: Like it even looks like a diner, you know how
Speaker 1: like diners like have this sort of like black and
Speaker 1: white pattern like tapers like like them and dine at
Speaker 1: the zebra diner um. So actually, uh, there's a few
Speaker 1: theories as to why these stripes are advantageous and they're
Speaker 1: really wild. So um zebras are actually have some defense
Speaker 1: against predators and biting flies because of this coloring. So
Speaker 1: one way is they confuse predators with what's called motion dazzle,
Speaker 1: which is like the old razzle does the these zebras
Speaker 1: are like bootleggers from the twenties or something like kicking
Speaker 1: the hair feed up. Wait, what, like what do you
Speaker 1: mean by that? Is it like you look at them,
Speaker 1: you think you're high for a second. That's also true,
Speaker 1: but it's like so bold patterns actually can make it
Speaker 1: difficult to assess speed and direction because of a couple
Speaker 1: of um illusions. So there are two illusions at play.
Speaker 1: There's the wagon wheel effects, so like if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen I mean, we don't see wagon wheels, but it's
Speaker 1: kind of an antiquated term, like you know how well
Speaker 1: we wheel? But like when you see like a fan,
Speaker 1: like a ceiling fan, and sometimes it looks like it's
Speaker 1: going backwards in a weird way. Um, it's like the
Speaker 1: motion seems inverted when it's moving fast enough, because like
Speaker 1: the the light and dark going like light dart like dark.
Speaker 1: It's like it confuses your visual neurons and it's like
Speaker 1: because that is the same pattern as it would go
Speaker 1: in the other direction, so your brain keeps switching it
Speaker 1: back and forth. So this is similar to the barber
Speaker 1: pole illusion, which is also in effect with the zebras,
Speaker 1: where stripes on a barber pole, so it's just a
Speaker 1: rotating thing inside that. It's like got like a blue
Speaker 1: and a red band, but it looks like when you
Speaker 1: look at the pole, looks like the stripes are moving down,
Speaker 1: like um, vertically along the stripe rather than just turning around.
Speaker 1: So that's because neurons in the visual cortex have what's
Speaker 1: called an aperture problem, which is that you only have
Speaker 1: a limited slice of visual information. You can't take in
Speaker 1: like everything about the geometry of like that barber pole.
Speaker 1: So when there are two interpretations which like you have,
Speaker 1: it's like with the wagon wheel illusion, like you have
Speaker 1: the visual stimulation of like the stripes going around the
Speaker 1: pole is actually very similar to how it would look
Speaker 1: like if they were traveling down. Um, that's my brain
Speaker 1: is making it seem like it's traveling. It's like it's
Speaker 1: doing that right, and and in fact, your brain actually
Speaker 1: will opt for the slower moving interpretation. I'm not really
Speaker 1: sure why it does that. I think the neurons are
Speaker 1: just lazy. They're like slow, don't worry about it. This
Speaker 1: is when our brain just starts to like make stuff up.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, we think it's moving down. We don't
Speaker 1: really know, but that's what we're gonna that's what we decided,
Speaker 1: right U. Yeah, Tom said it's moving down and around
Speaker 1: there's just loud chewing and like like McDonald's papers, like crinkly,
Speaker 1: like what moving down down. So with the zebras with
Speaker 1: their stripes, they kind of they reap the advantage of
Speaker 1: both the barber pool and the wagon wheel allusions, so
Speaker 1: like uh, and they also when they're moving as a
Speaker 1: herd um, it just turns into this giant, flickering mass
Speaker 1: that to like a line, it's like it's it's hard
Speaker 1: for it to know like what way it's moving, what
Speaker 1: it's doing, And it's also hard to pick out an
Speaker 1: individual to like eat, because like you know, if you're
Speaker 1: a line, you can't just eat all of the zebras
Speaker 1: you want to write once You probably just can't stop um,
Speaker 1: Sarah Getti spprinkle. But I mean that's another thing with scammers.
Speaker 1: You have to isolate a victim, right, Like if you
Speaker 1: try to scam a group of people, it's harder. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: because then people can start figuring it out. And you
Speaker 1: also have to pick victims who are isolated, because if
Speaker 1: a victim has too many friends and then they go,
Speaker 1: you know, there I brunch and they're like, yeah, so
Speaker 1: Ferderico told me I gotta send him seven thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and then he's gonna get his visa and then he's
Speaker 1: gonna be able to come over here. But right now
Speaker 1: he only has a flip phone and he cannot contact
Speaker 1: me or show me any pictures of him. And you're like, wait,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't do that, but but no, it's okay. His
Speaker 1: dog is bladders. Yeah, I know his dog is very
Speaker 1: much gonna die. I've never seen the dog either, No,
Speaker 1: but he once did have it bark on the phone,
Speaker 1: so I know it's real bark bark. Right. Oh, here's
Speaker 1: here's an image of the barber. Like it looks like
Speaker 1: it's like just moving moving up And even though I'm
Speaker 1: trying to tell my brain it's not my brain. Tom
Speaker 1: is like no, no, no, no, no, we told you
Speaker 1: it's going right, going up. I mean, that's what's so
Speaker 1: interesting about illusions is that even once you know the illusion,
Speaker 1: you can't unsee it, and you you all actually flip
Speaker 1: back and forth, and sometimes you can force yourself to
Speaker 1: try to see. So Another use of these stripes is
Speaker 1: they are unattractive to horse flies, which typically like to
Speaker 1: bite animals like zebras. But horseflies can't, like they're so
Speaker 1: stupid that like, and they expect light to act in
Speaker 1: a certain way. That putting like um, a dark color
Speaker 1: and a light color next to each other like that
Speaker 1: is like too confusing for them. And they they're like
Speaker 1: what you know what, never mind, we'll eat later. Come on, Tim,
Speaker 1: Like this horse is uh confusing just because it's got
Speaker 1: different colors, Like it smells like a horse and horse
Speaker 1: is broken. We don't want any of this nasty horse.
Speaker 1: Our horseflies like taking our blood out when they yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're second or juices are delicious juices, horse juice. That's
Speaker 1: the best situation though, because horse flies i't have to
Speaker 1: kill anybody. They're just come bite. That's true. Although um,
Speaker 1: like I'm not I think horse flies might sometimes carry disease,
Speaker 1: but I think that's the that's the thing that really
Speaker 1: gets you with like mosquitoes or the u C flies,
Speaker 1: Like they carry disease and then that's how they So
Speaker 1: it's not really their fault. It's the diseases that they
Speaker 1: carry a kind of blame from biting people. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a good that's kind of a chicken
Speaker 1: and the egg thing. Yeah. So like like they get
Speaker 1: the virus um or the virus directly infects them and
Speaker 1: then like they'll get it from another infected animal and
Speaker 1: then they pass it on. But they're like living good
Speaker 1: with zeka like zoidism. Yeah, yeah exactly. Um I think so.
Speaker 1: Um So, it's like they're they're the carrier, they're um So, Lacy,
Speaker 1: I was thinking we could in the show with you
Speaker 1: talking a little bit about the scams that you know
Speaker 1: about or the scams that you do. I'm really not
Speaker 1: insulting you, So I don't talk about the current scams
Speaker 1: right right, it's like you know, going, but when it's
Speaker 1: retired and then I'll talk about scam exactly. So the
Speaker 1: scam Goddess that's coming out with new episodes, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: so October one, Scam Goddess on Earwolf. We'll be out
Speaker 1: and we'll have an episode every single week. Yeah, what's happening.
Speaker 1: We're recording episodes now. It's super fun. This was a
Speaker 1: part of my inspiration for I love to see all
Speaker 1: the scammer animals and a scam scaminals. That's the kind
Speaker 1: of fat I want to have as a scaminal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what some of your advice to to scam which
Speaker 1: obviously we don't We don't endorse them scam people, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it depends on what kind of scams you're doing. If
Speaker 1: you're like scamming and hurting people that I don't approve
Speaker 1: of that, if you're scamming big faceless corp. Absolutely don't
Speaker 1: scam old people, scam old companies right exactly, Like they're
Speaker 1: they're they're scams themselves, Like they've been running scams and
Speaker 1: work scams. So they need to be like like, scam
Speaker 1: your Internet provider into giving you new like trial packages
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. That's that's that's the good scam
Speaker 1: because they're you know, like they're the scammer exactly. They've
Speaker 1: they've all ripped us off so much that we deserve.
Speaker 1: Oh this is a fun one um that I actually
Speaker 1: learned about. A listener mailed this one in. They said
Speaker 1: they retired the scams so I could share it, but
Speaker 1: I think other people should pick it up because I
Speaker 1: think it could still work. So if you have a
Speaker 1: friend and you asked and like you asked them to
Speaker 1: like send you some text messages, so basically you change
Speaker 1: their name in your phone to like insert whatever food
Speaker 1: business promotion here, so like insert Taco Bell food promotion right,
Speaker 1: So you change their name to that in your phone.
Speaker 1: Then you have them text you a text saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: you have received a deal deal of the day and
Speaker 1: it's like ten corn traps for five dollars um offered
Speaker 1: only for a limited time at participating locations. And then
Speaker 1: like you have to make sure that the date is
Speaker 1: about to expire or is already expired, but maybe just
Speaker 1: like a day or try. And then you go into
Speaker 1: like these fast food restaurants and you're like, hey, I
Speaker 1: got this deal promotion for tin five. I know it
Speaker 1: says it's about to expire, like can I use it?
Speaker 1: And a lot of times like these, like these fast
Speaker 1: food chain restaurants don't really communicate they'll honor it. Um,
Speaker 1: And I was that was a wild because at first
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to like prank the friend,
Speaker 1: and it's like it's mean your friends. It's like prank talking.
Speaker 1: That's fine. And I'm talking about those food scams. As
Speaker 1: you look up like popular concerts in the area or
Speaker 1: whatever concerts are happening that day, and then you call
Speaker 1: ahead to Chipotle and he tells them that you're on
Speaker 1: tour with whatever concept that's playing whatever venue, and that
Speaker 1: they love to have some like free burritos because this
Speaker 1: artist loves these burritos and most of the time and
Speaker 1: Sharon he loves and he's in love with the shape.
Speaker 1: I accidentally scammed a restaurant once because um, I was
Speaker 1: doing a report for school on an Italian chain restaurants.
Speaker 1: It's like a an anthropology class. I was like comparing
Speaker 1: like American Italian chains like to to authentic Italian and
Speaker 1: like what kinds of things they're like mimicking and stuff. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so I like showed up with like a clipboard.
Speaker 1: I was like writing things down because like I was
Speaker 1: trying to take notes and I didn't want to bring
Speaker 1: my whole laptop, so I was like there with a
Speaker 1: clip note like writing about the food, and they were
Speaker 1: so nice to me, and they like gave me extra bread.
Speaker 1: Came in with a clipboard. Yeah yeah, yeah, listen, a
Speaker 1: clipboard is in a scammers artillery. Okay, you gotta have
Speaker 1: a clip right right, It's like uh and I was like, wow, gosh,
Speaker 1: they sure were nice. They don't know what you're reporting.
Speaker 1: A lot of times, like food credits, may be shocked
Speaker 1: how a much stuff you can get for free, right,
Speaker 1: so if you want, um, I mean you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: they might not give you free things, but they will
Speaker 1: be really nice to you. Yeah, um I got I
Speaker 1: think I got some free bread though they get me
Speaker 1: extra bread. There are definitely people who will like impersonate
Speaker 1: famous food critics that people may not necessarily know what
Speaker 1: their faces. And then those people come in and you
Speaker 1: can get complimentary meals that way. Are saying that you're
Speaker 1: writing for like a big right. I think that's kind
Speaker 1: of mean because like if you like, if you know,
Speaker 1: like when waiters like but like also the cooks like
Speaker 1: you have some like like line cooks who are like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm really trying hard in the like as well, you
Speaker 1: gotta get this right, like Gorton Ramsey, like just screaming
Speaker 1: them out. It's like y'all solving this crap on a
Speaker 1: plata that would have never happened to me at the
Speaker 1: restaurant that I worked at ages ago, because we had
Speaker 1: photos of l a food critics were really so you
Speaker 1: knew what they're like, like putting like photos of counterfeit
Speaker 1: dollars up or putting real money n how to be
Speaker 1: onler If you did get a food back and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know who you are, you have to I'll give
Speaker 1: you the goods right like like Gordon Ramsey isn't a
Speaker 1: twelve year old boy, but like im person Nation. Scams
Speaker 1: like those are really big. The biggest thing that I
Speaker 1: tell people though, because on Scam Goddess, we spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time warning you about scams because we only
Speaker 1: want you to get involved in my scams. Now I'm
Speaker 1: running a scam. Please do give me your social Security
Speaker 1: number spinning a cup and mail it to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need it, like you wan't like meet a swamman. Okay,
Speaker 1: I already took your other water bottles. I helpfully labeled
Speaker 1: it with my credit card information. Yes, that was very
Speaker 1: helpful of you, right right, no, Um, but one of
Speaker 1: the biggest things is is like if someone calls you
Speaker 1: and they're offering you information, like you should always be
Speaker 1: watching out so like, so think about it, Like when
Speaker 1: you call your bank, like your bank basically acts like
Speaker 1: an angry ex girlfriend and interrogates you, like it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're wearing you have a Bank of America account. Okay, sure,
Speaker 1: what's yourself Okay, what's your day to birth? Okay, what's
Speaker 1: your last night? What's your first name? Was your middle name?
Speaker 1: Who is your mama? Who's your mom? And what's your
Speaker 1: mama's favorite car? Like like they're gonna interrogate you. I
Speaker 1: heard your mother's dog has bladderstone. What's that dog's name?
Speaker 1: I don't know. You're not gonna be able to get
Speaker 1: anybody out of your account if you can't tell me. Um. So,
Speaker 1: if a scammer calls and they're like, hey, I'm calling
Speaker 1: from your bank, and here's a reference number. A reference
Speaker 1: number is like the biggest O G scam things, Like
Speaker 1: they'll give you some made up numbers too, one zero
Speaker 1: O nine is your reference number, like and we know
Speaker 1: it's a scamp. Oh, here's one for all the dog walkers,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about the animals obviously and animal lovers.
Speaker 1: I'm sure listen to this podcast. Wags. So you've heard
Speaker 1: of WAGS, right, is that the walking dog walking service
Speaker 1: dog walking service with the app. So there's some scammers.
Speaker 1: This is a recent one that um they'll get on
Speaker 1: the Wags app and they'll schedule a dog walking session
Speaker 1: with you and then they'll cancel it and then they'll
Speaker 1: call you because on the app it's like Uber how
Speaker 1: like when you can call people because you're about to
Speaker 1: have service with them, and like you know how Uber
Speaker 1: like scramble your number when you call the Uber driver
Speaker 1: and it does the same for them for privacy. So
Speaker 1: when they've scheduled a dog walk with you, they get
Speaker 1: access to your contact information through the app. So by
Speaker 1: canceling the dog walking service that they previously booked with you,
Speaker 1: then they'll call and be like, Hey, we're calling from
Speaker 1: Wags and we just canceled your dog walking service. But
Speaker 1: don't worry, you're going to get a ten dollar cancelation fee.
Speaker 1: So then that person will go through the app and
Speaker 1: send ten dollars to the person that they just canceled
Speaker 1: the walk on then they'll be like, hey, we actually
Speaker 1: need to reverify your banking information. Um, We're like right
Speaker 1: after they've sent them money, then they take their banking
Speaker 1: information and they robbed the dog walker and it's wait
Speaker 1: wait wait, so so it's a dog walk. Wait, so
Speaker 1: who's getting scammed? Is it the person with the dog
Speaker 1: or the person who was the person who walks the dog,
Speaker 1: which is so sad because the person probably doesn't even
Speaker 1: have a dog. The scammer is just getting on the
Speaker 1: app so that they can get in contact with the
Speaker 1: dog walker. And then it's like and through the app
Speaker 1: they can pay the dog walker and make it seem
Speaker 1: like they work for the Apple. I see. It's one
Speaker 1: of those things where they dangle a little bit of
Speaker 1: money out for you and then they take all of
Speaker 1: your money. So it's like it's like, oh, I sorry,
Speaker 1: I had to cancel here, Um, let me give you
Speaker 1: ten dollars, but actually, could she give you a social
Speaker 1: Security number? Right? It's like it's like if I called
Speaker 1: an Uber driver that I had the number four because
Speaker 1: I was using the app, and I was like, hey, Tom,
Speaker 1: that Uber drivers that we actually call him from Uber?
Speaker 1: It's me um, Mr Uber from San Francisco. Um, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we just had to cancel that client. But we sent
Speaker 1: you the cancelation for you. We don't You're banking information
Speaker 1: is at a date or whatever, and then you give
Speaker 1: me the information, then I steal it. Yeah yeah, I
Speaker 1: think for me, like the general thing is like when
Speaker 1: I get a call from someone like pretending to be
Speaker 1: the I R S or something, and they're like they're like,
Speaker 1: you owe taxes, and I'm just like make me because
Speaker 1: I've actually because I've gotten like actual letters from the
Speaker 1: I R S. Because like whenever you owe taxes or something, um,
Speaker 1: the I R S will send you physical mail and
Speaker 1: they'll be like, hey, you owe some stuff like check
Speaker 1: like send us, which is so petty, Like I don't
Speaker 1: get the letter. They're like, hey, hoping this rail or
Speaker 1: go to jail. Well, I mean they actually don't really
Speaker 1: threaten you with jail typically, like there they there may
Speaker 1: be something in the letter which is like you know,
Speaker 1: like not paying these things we can't result in penalties
Speaker 1: or something, but they won't call you and be like hey,
Speaker 1: you need to pay this now or you'll go to jail.
Speaker 1: They just don't have the resources to send you to jail.
Speaker 1: They're so underfunded, like they you know, they'll try to
Speaker 1: get you to pay it, but like it's um. But
Speaker 1: if someone's calling you, it's like I'm the I R. S.
Speaker 1: And if you don't pay this, you're in danger of
Speaker 1: going to jail. It's like no, they don't. They do
Speaker 1: not have the manpower to do. That's how they call.
Speaker 1: They call like Hi, it's like maybe please listen, were
Speaker 1: trying to build a roses okay, and we just really
Speaker 1: meet right, and you know they're they're not Like it
Speaker 1: happens all the time too, especially like if you have
Speaker 1: kind of complicated taxes, um, you know, like you may
Speaker 1: make a miscalculation and they're just like, hey, this is
Speaker 1: what you owe or like hey there's something could you
Speaker 1: tell us what you want, like what you want me
Speaker 1: to both pay you and figure out what I owe.
Speaker 1: And that's literally the government's biggest scam is the oh yeah,
Speaker 1: because like Tiarbo tax uh and other like H and
Speaker 1: R Blacks and these other like tax prep like companies
Speaker 1: lobbied against legislation that would have them, uh calculate what
Speaker 1: we all and just like be like, hey, here's your
Speaker 1: bill for taxes, which I would be fine with because
Speaker 1: then it's like then I don't have to do work
Speaker 1: and oh no, no, no, I need to be able
Speaker 1: to run my scam. Honestly, my accountant is too low
Speaker 1: a biting and I'm gonna have to switch him out
Speaker 1: for more of a like a better call sault type
Speaker 1: because he'd be trying to follow all the law. And
Speaker 1: I was like, that's not why I hired you, Like,
Speaker 1: what is this? I literally like, I was shooting in Savannah,
Speaker 1: and Savannah took six percent of my earnators for shooting
Speaker 1: um and it was a series regular role, so they
Speaker 1: took a lot of money from me. And so when
Speaker 1: I found out that this was going to happen, my
Speaker 1: lork my accountant called me and he was like, hey, Lacy,
Speaker 1: so when you get to Georgia like that, it's going
Speaker 1: to be a six percent tax for an outside contractor.
Speaker 1: And I said, okay, so how can we get around that?
Speaker 1: He said, we can't. It's the law. It's like, what,
Speaker 1: oh you can side? Are you on? I need to
Speaker 1: fire you talking about side or the law? Hired shady?
Speaker 1: What I want you gotta get? You gotta get a
Speaker 1: sweatier accountant because like you know that, like in movies
Speaker 1: are always sweaty if they're like you know, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: Mine is like completely dry. He's got photos of his family.
Speaker 1: It looks like he sleeps. Well, that's not want. What's
Speaker 1: your favorite scammer like in history? Oh gosh, that's hard
Speaker 1: because I've fallen in love with a lot of scammers.
Speaker 1: One that I particularly love a lot. He's actually you
Speaker 1: heard if you heard the first episode a show that
Speaker 1: you heard about him. But it's Jerome Jacobs. I love
Speaker 1: that story. I love him so much. There's another scammer
Speaker 1: that I'm trying to get the whole story on. But
Speaker 1: there was a woman and she worked for Walmart and
Speaker 1: she made over four hundred thousand dollars by just charging
Speaker 1: customers and extra nickel for a fake item and then
Speaker 1: taking that nickel out of the register. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: And I just thought the patient that's like the office
Speaker 1: space kind of thing, right, Yeah, but yeah, that that
Speaker 1: takes a lot of She did it for many, many God,
Speaker 1: she said if people looked gullible, she'd take a quarter.
Speaker 1: I mean, who checks the receipt for like no bad
Speaker 1: especially bag fees. Now, if I saw a cord I'd
Speaker 1: just be like, it's probably like a fee for printing
Speaker 1: out the receipt or something, right, And also I feel
Speaker 1: like there's no that's probably the hot new scam is
Speaker 1: charging for bags but not actually charging for the bag,
Speaker 1: because I don't think that stores are counting how many
Speaker 1: bags that they're giving away. Um, I know they're not
Speaker 1: at rouse because that's my biggest scam. And when I
Speaker 1: get like the grocery stores, I'll get all my stuff
Speaker 1: and I'll say no bags. Then I'll pay, and then
Speaker 1: they'll close the card and then I'm like, I can't
Speaker 1: carry all this what was that again? And they don't
Speaker 1: never ring me back up for the bags and just
Speaker 1: give me the Bag's terrible. Let's self check out. They
Speaker 1: don't check Oh no, but I feel weird in the
Speaker 1: self check out, So I'll be like I got three
Speaker 1: bags when really I got y. That's funny. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: give them a little bit, a little bit at because
Speaker 1: then I'll go to the regular counter and be like like,
Speaker 1: I can't carry this grocery car troll be some bad.
Speaker 1: I think it's because with that, you're like actually giving
Speaker 1: them a chance to do it. Charge. Yeah, where it's
Speaker 1: like charge on his like the honor system. And I
Speaker 1: think it's like maybe it's feels guiltier to like because
Speaker 1: it's like it's so easy to get away with, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it challenge she loved the challenge
Speaker 1: might be it for me. I think I might just
Speaker 1: enjoy duping people. It makes me feel smart. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: so true. Why do I do that? You don't me?
Speaker 1: And that it was that? It was okay that I
Speaker 1: gave you my social Security number? Is I'm just verifying it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're going to turn that into like big investments. Right?
Speaker 1: Oh of course were credit. That's seating social Security number. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me having me so
Speaker 1: tell people where they can find you in more about
Speaker 1: the podcast. Oh great. So you can find me Um
Speaker 1: Lacey Mosley at d I V A l A c
Speaker 1: I DVA Lacey on all platforms Instagram to Twitter, Ben
Speaker 1: Mode the like. Um. You can follow scam gott Us
Speaker 1: at scam got Us pod on Twitter and on Instagram.
Speaker 1: And if you have any scams that you want to
Speaker 1: share with me that you're retiring or anytime you've been scammed, Uh,
Speaker 1: scam got his Pod at gmail dot com and don't
Speaker 1: don't scam the elderly only scam big face lost. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: please do not scam the elderly. That is so hurtful.
Speaker 1: And also, guys, watch Florida Girls on Pop tv um.
Speaker 1: The whole season is out now, so you can stream
Speaker 1: the whole thing on or you can get on iTunes
Speaker 1: or Amazon and download it. It's really fun, guys, And
Speaker 1: you can follow us on the internets. Uh Creature Feature
Speaker 1: Pod dot Com, Creature Feature Pod on Instagram, Creature Feet Pod.
Speaker 1: We couldn't get Creature Feature Pot on Twitter, Creature feet
Speaker 1: sounds like it's it's not it's f e a T.
Speaker 1: Don't type in creature f e T because you will
Speaker 1: get you will get something that's uh not endorsed by
Speaker 1: this podcast. And you can find me online at Katie
Speaker 1: Golden Um. And I'm also a bird on Twitter at
Speaker 1: pro bird Writes, where I am a real, actual, factual bird.
Speaker 1: The greatest scam ever pulled was birds because they're not
Speaker 1: they are they are real. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: have to listening to this podcast is Bird Scams, Bird
Speaker 1: is scams, Birds is Scams. And thanks to the Space
Speaker 1: Classics for their awesome song exolumina