Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Future production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we are
Speaker 1: talking about the elephant in the room, or rather the
Speaker 1: elephant that's not in the room, because we are talking
Speaker 1: about elephants that aren't elephants. How is this possible? Well,
Speaker 1: you're about to find out. From a tiny elephant, to
Speaker 1: an elephant that defies reasonable proportions, to an elephant with
Speaker 1: a strange superpower. These are all elephants, but they're not
Speaker 1: actually elephants. Joining me today to talk about these elephants
Speaker 1: who are elephant Imposts is friend of the show, the
Speaker 1: audio genius behind Fake Doctor's Real Friends, Boss Level and
Speaker 1: New one Upsmanship, d J. Danil. Welcome, so thrilled to
Speaker 1: be back, especially to talk about elephants that are an elephants. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I love elephants, big old, big old gray and
Speaker 1: brown with the big old trunks, floppy ears. We're not
Speaker 1: talking about those today. They Yeah, we're talking about animals
Speaker 1: who are called elephants, but they are not in fact elephants,
Speaker 1: and I love that. One of the naming conventions in
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology is like this animal kind of looks like
Speaker 1: another animal, so we're just gonna put that animal's name
Speaker 1: in this animal's name. Uh So, you know, like rhinoceros beetles,
Speaker 1: like you're like a rhino. We can't. We ran out
Speaker 1: of names, so now you're getting that name every everybody.
Speaker 1: Everybody's just passing around their names till everything is an
Speaker 1: amalgamation of other names, right exactly. I mean, like, where's
Speaker 1: the creativity why you call like a rhinoceros beetle like
Speaker 1: a jungus or something. I don't know. I like that jungus,
Speaker 1: does it has it? I'm horrified to like look that
Speaker 1: up on Urban Dictionary to find out it means something terrible.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I do like that jungus. It's undoubtedly some
Speaker 1: prison drug that you make by doing something doing some
Speaker 1: hard jungus. Um No, I don't endorse doing jungis on
Speaker 1: this podcast. But uh So, the first thing I want
Speaker 1: to talk about is a one of my favorite animals.
Speaker 1: And I I don't know, if you listeners out there
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter if you want to, you can.
Speaker 1: I'm not stopping you. Katie Katie Golden on Twitter dot
Speaker 1: org Twitter dot Net. Um. But yeah, I I shared
Speaker 1: with the world the elephant true and uh not to
Speaker 1: toot my own horn, but my tweet did do some numbers.
Speaker 1: People did numbers. It did numbers. People were wild about
Speaker 1: these elephant shrews. Um, And I can't blame them because
Speaker 1: I'm wild about elephant shrews. They are amazing. And I
Speaker 1: on Twitter if you do want to look up the
Speaker 1: thread I shared elephant shrews yawning, which is the best
Speaker 1: thing you will ever see with your eyeballs, so adorable.
Speaker 1: It is amazing. So elephant shrews are these weird little
Speaker 1: dudes who are found in Africa. Who I guess the
Speaker 1: best way to describe them is they have the body
Speaker 1: of a mouse and the snoot of an elephant. I guess,
Speaker 1: kind of an abbreviated snoop. Yeah, it's not quite as
Speaker 1: long and wrinkly as an elephant snoop, but it is
Speaker 1: an elongated snoot, so like a little mouse, but if
Speaker 1: you like, pulled on the nose out until you know,
Speaker 1: stretched out a little bit, kind of kind of a
Speaker 1: hoovell shrew. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Uh. And
Speaker 1: there are many different species of elephant shrew. But they
Speaker 1: all have one thing in common. They're completely ridiculous looking,
Speaker 1: and they have a wiggly little snoot. And they also
Speaker 1: so instead of kind of like waddling around on like
Speaker 1: really short feet like I see like uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think um mice uh and kind of have like
Speaker 1: shorter stub your legs, these elephant shrews actually have longer legs.
Speaker 1: So they have this very like kind of almost runaway
Speaker 1: ready sort of long legged strut that I really admire.
Speaker 1: They're really they are. They are models. They are America's
Speaker 1: next top shrew. They are working I believe it is
Speaker 1: called but with the E W E R K I
Speaker 1: and so yeah, so they're they're very agile, but their
Speaker 1: faces are incredible. Like I said, there are many different
Speaker 1: species of elephant shrews. They all have like slightly different faces.
Speaker 1: Some of them have like big mouse like ears and
Speaker 1: maybe a slightly shorter nose, although it's still it's still
Speaker 1: long and pointy. Others have really long faces and like
Speaker 1: short and stubby ears. Some of them kind of look
Speaker 1: more like maybe an ant eater. Some of them look
Speaker 1: more like a mouse, but they're all elephant shrews. Adorable.
Speaker 1: They're really super cute. They are super cute. I love
Speaker 1: it when I love the cuteness of animals that have
Speaker 1: kind of strange distinctive feature like this long like tubular
Speaker 1: wiggly nose. It's just it's yea. It gives them a
Speaker 1: uniqueness where it's like, you know, you don't have to
Speaker 1: win me over always with just the puppy dog face,
Speaker 1: big eyes, like you've got a weird wiggly nose. I
Speaker 1: love you, your door. I'm starting to think that long
Speaker 1: wiggly nos is like a positive trait in general. I
Speaker 1: think about my aunt eaters, which also have a very
Speaker 1: long snout or or what will correct me whatever that
Speaker 1: thing is coming off of their face. It is so cute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a long snout. It's so cute. It is very cute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it's called. The technical term for
Speaker 1: these things is a proboscis, which is that's a great name. Now,
Speaker 1: that is a good name. I'm glad that we do
Speaker 1: have some creativity and naming things in evolutionary biology, because like,
Speaker 1: what was it like a what did I call it?
Speaker 1: A jungis jungis and then proboscis, I just I like those.
Speaker 1: It's a good word. Yeah, definitely a solid word. Just
Speaker 1: a positive, a positive attribute in the natural space. Big
Speaker 1: snoot bigot fans only I can't think of a big snoot.
Speaker 1: I don't like a pronounced proboscis. Yes, very good and
Speaker 1: uh So these are called elephant shrews, Dan, can you
Speaker 1: guess who they are more related to? Elephants or shrews? Well,
Speaker 1: sho Katie, looking at this picture right here, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: you know, my gut tells me shrew. Yeah, well you
Speaker 1: are wrong. Uh what what that's right? Suck on it? Uh.
Speaker 1: You know my goal here is to humiliate my guests.
Speaker 1: So I've been subverted, played right into my my sweaty hands.
Speaker 1: So the uh if you guessed that the elephant shrew
Speaker 1: is actually in fact more related to the elephant, you
Speaker 1: are correct. As strange as it may seem, these tiny
Speaker 1: shrew like mammals are more closely related to the huge
Speaker 1: elephant than they are too shrews. And again, most most
Speaker 1: of these are little. They're like mouse sized fits in
Speaker 1: your palm. They are also called singis. Uh. They're found
Speaker 1: exclusively in Africa. They are actually more closely related to
Speaker 1: elephants then two shrews. I mean, they're not extremely close
Speaker 1: to elephants. I wouldn't say they're like cousins or anything
Speaker 1: like that, but yeah, just it is interesting. I mean phylogenetically,
Speaker 1: they are closer on that branching tree of life to
Speaker 1: the elephant than to the shrew, despite their small size
Speaker 1: and generally shrew like appearance. Very shrew like, yes, but yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are a lot of different species, but they
Speaker 1: all have that long, wiggly nose that they used to
Speaker 1: sniff around and locate insects. And this is nose is
Speaker 1: a very interesting thing because it can be moved around, uh,
Speaker 1: to sniff and search and pinpoint prey. So they can
Speaker 1: like wiggle it from side to side. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: got some it's certainly not as versatile and mobile as
Speaker 1: an elephant's trunk, but they can't. They can move it
Speaker 1: and so like like as if you're using a metal detector,
Speaker 1: they're using it as a smells detector. Got it. They're
Speaker 1: sweeping the ground exactly, and so they can find tasty
Speaker 1: insects to eat their insect gang. That makes sense. They
Speaker 1: are tiny, okay, okay, and even though they are not
Speaker 1: really that related to ant eaters. They can use their
Speaker 1: long tongues to flick small insects into their mouths like
Speaker 1: an ant eater, but for bigger bugs, they actually got
Speaker 1: a crunch down with their little mouths. So uh. But
Speaker 1: here's the problem. Because they have that long snoot. If
Speaker 1: they just try to like eat direct like eat it
Speaker 1: off the ground directly in front of them, they're snoop
Speaker 1: walk in and get in the way. It's a problem.
Speaker 1: And so what they have to do is they approach
Speaker 1: it from the side, so they like turn their heads
Speaker 1: and say they've got like a big juicy grub or earthworm,
Speaker 1: and they put it like in the side of their
Speaker 1: mouth like bugs bunny eating a carrot. And then and
Speaker 1: then like they hold it, they pin the prey down,
Speaker 1: the earthworm or whatever with their with their little front paws.
Speaker 1: Like have you ever seen like a dog eating a
Speaker 1: bone and it's got the bone way too much? Literally
Speaker 1: all the time every day. Katie, my little puppy, Kelly,
Speaker 1: she is none on that bone and just like holding
Speaker 1: it down like we're going to take it from her,
Speaker 1: Like Kelly go off chew that bone all day long. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, my dog always acts like I'm jealous of
Speaker 1: the thing that I literally just gave her like five
Speaker 1: seconds ago. She carries it off. Yeah, I just I
Speaker 1: handed it to you and said enjoy, And now you're
Speaker 1: looking at me like I'm going to steal it. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's what these uh, these little elephant shrews do,
Speaker 1: but with like juicy worms. Uh. It's adorable. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then it like apparently they're very messy eaters, so they
Speaker 1: have to like lick up all the crumbs of the
Speaker 1: beetles and grubs that they spill everywhere with their little tongues.
Speaker 1: So just a door bowl I would love. They don't
Speaker 1: eat spaghetti, but I'd love to see one go go
Speaker 1: on and plate of spaghetti and see that, see that
Speaker 1: whole scene. That would be really uh man, it seems
Speaker 1: so daunting for this little shrew, but that would be
Speaker 1: such an adorable trip to see them just like go
Speaker 1: off on some spaghetti, just going with hand on the noodle.
Speaker 1: That's like if I could have like an like one
Speaker 1: free pass for like an unethical thing with in terms
Speaker 1: of animals, it would be to see elephant shrews eat
Speaker 1: a plate of spaghetti, maybe like two of them at
Speaker 1: the same time, and they get one noodle and then
Speaker 1: they kiss like in they kiss in like uh like
Speaker 1: the tramp, but then they like slurk up. The nose
Speaker 1: also gets in their mouth because it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a noodle. You know, that would be really funny. There's
Speaker 1: there's wow. Okay, I love that image. That's very funny.
Speaker 1: So there are two plenty species of elephant shrew. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of them out there. Yeah, and some
Speaker 1: are small and gray and more miss like, but some
Speaker 1: are larger and they have a different coloration, like they
Speaker 1: can be black in this kind of rusty red color,
Speaker 1: but they all have long, sort of mouse like tails.
Speaker 1: The largest elephant true is the gray faced singy with
Speaker 1: black red and gray coloration, who is about one point
Speaker 1: seven five pounds or point eight kilograms. Uh and including
Speaker 1: the tail, it's over twenty inches long, so fifty six centimeters,
Speaker 1: so you know, like not huge but sizeable. It's relatively significant.
Speaker 1: I mean I was definitely looking at them thinking they
Speaker 1: were tiny, tiny. Yeah, that's that's that's that's larger than
Speaker 1: I thought they were. Okay, that's that's even cuter. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it's very cut But a lot of them are tiny
Speaker 1: so like the smallest elephant trewe species are the short
Speaker 1: eared elephant shrewe, which way about an ounce or twenty
Speaker 1: eight grams and are four inches long or ten centimeters.
Speaker 1: So little guy, popular, little baby. I would get so
Speaker 1: nervous about animals that are too small to even see
Speaker 1: sometimes because they're so cute, but it's like they're so
Speaker 1: prone to us large feet beasts. I would hate. I
Speaker 1: would hate to be just walking around the you know wherever.
Speaker 1: What sorry you said they were in Africa as a
Speaker 1: particular region of Africa they're in. I mean they are
Speaker 1: found in like sort of scrubby, grassy areas. I think
Speaker 1: they're found kind of all over because there's so many species,
Speaker 1: but I think the majority of them are let me
Speaker 1: see here. Uh yeah, I think they're they're found um
Speaker 1: found mostly in the sort of southern parts of Africa.
Speaker 1: Uh So, but you know, they're they're like kind of
Speaker 1: different areas that they um inhabits. Sometimes forested areas, sometimes
Speaker 1: more scrubby areas. There's some that live in like more
Speaker 1: of the like arid mountain regions, so a lot of
Speaker 1: different species will have their own niches. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think they tend to be in the southern regions of Africa.
Speaker 1: Got it very cool? Um? Yeah, well, I just would
Speaker 1: hate to see get stepped on by some other large beasts.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like in the southern anges of Africa
Speaker 1: there are some large beasts that they could in fact
Speaker 1: get stepped on by, and I pray for them. Well,
Speaker 1: don't be too worried about them, because they are surprisingly
Speaker 1: good at evading danger and probably easily evade being stepped
Speaker 1: on by you because they are extremely fast. Their legs
Speaker 1: are relatively long for their bodies, and some species, like
Speaker 1: the western rock elephant true which is one of the
Speaker 1: smaller species one of these little mouths like cuties, they
Speaker 1: can run up to seventeen miles or hour or twenty
Speaker 1: eight kilometers an hour. Yes, yeah, those long legs, Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: those long legs really help them out. The legs really
Speaker 1: do it. Holy smokes. Okay. In fact, certain species of
Speaker 1: elephant shrews will maintain specific roots for themselves by trimming
Speaker 1: grass so like they will create hiking pans or little
Speaker 1: roads for themselves that they can run along. These like
Speaker 1: little running trails, and usually they lead to some kind
Speaker 1: of safety. But this allows them to run without tripping
Speaker 1: over anything away from predators. So, uh, it is really
Speaker 1: cute because these just look like teeny tying mouse roads
Speaker 1: and that's essentially what they are. Wow, I have I unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I have more questions. I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is part of the research,
Speaker 1: but like seventeen for a beast, for for a beast,
Speaker 1: for an animal that's small, feels like proportionally super fast. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is like that is so fast right there? It is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it'd be. I mean I can't God, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I can do the math. But let's say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. As I was saying, I was like, that
Speaker 1: seems like this seems like one of those math problems
Speaker 1: you get in here. So a road to run this
Speaker 1: distance in this amount of time. Let's pretend that I
Speaker 1: did the math and it's like a human running like
Speaker 1: a hundred miles per hour. I don't know that. I mean,
Speaker 1: like honestly, size wise, that feels about right, That seems right.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know, but I'm going to say,
Speaker 1: like we're we're like maybe a hundred probably more than
Speaker 1: a hundred times bigger than these so times definitely, I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's how math works. Probably that's how math works. Definitely,
Speaker 1: that's how supportive. That's fast fast. Yeah, it's like, not
Speaker 1: only are they really fast runners, but they will like
Speaker 1: design their own running tracks so that it's something's coming
Speaker 1: at them, and they have memorized these tracks the know
Speaker 1: how to run along them, whereas their predator doesn't, so
Speaker 1: they can really quickly zip around and it's it's like
Speaker 1: a super smart thing for them to do. It's really amazing.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. I love that great animal. Yeah, big, big,
Speaker 1: big fan. Actually, their brains, even though they're tiny and
Speaker 1: their brains are small proportional to their body size, their
Speaker 1: brains are relatively large for like when you compare other
Speaker 1: animals their size, So they may be you know, it's
Speaker 1: always difficult to measure a different species intelligence, but they
Speaker 1: may be a little bit um. You know, they've got
Speaker 1: some wits about them. I would suspect brains. I mean,
Speaker 1: look into their eyes, Look into their eyes and tell
Speaker 1: me that they they're not thinking about stuff, planning things,
Speaker 1: making plans, having feelings. And another really awesome little trick
Speaker 1: they have is that at night they go into version
Speaker 1: of brief hibernation called torpoor, so they slow down their
Speaker 1: bodies metabolism, and that way they are able to conserve energy,
Speaker 1: which is really important if you're going to run seventeen
Speaker 1: miles per hour and be so small and need that
Speaker 1: constant diet of insects. So you can basically just put
Speaker 1: yourself in sort of a version of stasis overnight so
Speaker 1: that you're not burning as much of that fuel and
Speaker 1: you can start your day ready to run along, you know,
Speaker 1: put on your tiny little elephant true hiking or running
Speaker 1: shoes and your your little teeny tiny nikes ready to
Speaker 1: go there. Yeah, And in terms of their social lives,
Speaker 1: they're relatively solitary. I don't usually quote Wikipedia, but I
Speaker 1: have to because I found uh this from Wikipedia, Spilling
Speaker 1: Spilling the tea about the romantic lives of short eared
Speaker 1: elephants shows let's hear it, the mess they are messy.
Speaker 1: They are. They are toxic and messy. So quote, although
Speaker 1: they live in pairs, the partners do not care much
Speaker 1: for each other, and their sole purpose of even associating
Speaker 1: with the opposite sex is for reproduction. You just got
Speaker 1: red by Wikipedia. Harsh. Just baby, it's just baby making.
Speaker 1: That's come on, there's so much more to life than that.
Speaker 1: I know, Like, are you just going to grow together
Speaker 1: as partners if you're just all about the got to
Speaker 1: have to baby just running away from commitment like they
Speaker 1: run along their little paths that they make explode. Pa,
Speaker 1: got him God roasted, Get read. And then here's an
Speaker 1: adorable family moment for these elephant shrews. Baby elephant shrews,
Speaker 1: once they are weaned off of milk, are fed mashed
Speaker 1: up insects that the female elephant true stores in her
Speaker 1: cheek pouches. Love it a little mommy throw up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: baby food, but man, shoot up worms love it, that's all.
Speaker 1: My mother had chewed up worms. I mean protein, right,
Speaker 1: a lot of protein. You do what you gotta do.
Speaker 1: She said, this is a scoopful of dirt and proves
Speaker 1: your immune system. I was like, hey, you know better
Speaker 1: than I do. I'm a baby. You said that to her? Hey? Did?
Speaker 1: I said, yeah? I deferred to you, mother. I'm a baby. Indeed,
Speaker 1: I'm a baby. Yeah, yeah, no, that's a I can't
Speaker 1: imagine that too. I can see saying that baby. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I just I love these elephant shoes. They're there.
Speaker 1: They have an audacity to them to even exist like
Speaker 1: this that I love. I respect them for it. I mean,
Speaker 1: the speed is something bad is very is both very
Speaker 1: impressive to me and also kind of like a there's
Speaker 1: a reason that they exist. Still, there's a reason that
Speaker 1: we have these beasts, that that they're able to just
Speaker 1: skiter away from any situation and do so with elegance,
Speaker 1: with grace, also with a plan of the tracks. Amazing. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: uh no, sorry, an elephant true plan. Yeah, perfect, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we love we love a Paltrow. I've had like, I
Speaker 1: think six of this much water in the last three hours.
Speaker 1: I've resorted to jug life. Have one of those, one
Speaker 1: of those huge analogenes. I need I need a big
Speaker 1: old I need. I need a big old water jug,
Speaker 1: just like I do. I have a backpack for hiking.
Speaker 1: I should just fill that up with water. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: I've got a camelbag. I should be utilizing that. Throw
Speaker 1: that on. Just sitting there tying, yeah, no, this is
Speaker 1: this is gonna improve my work, my work productivity. How
Speaker 1: does she do it? Constantly drinking water? I'm constantly drinking
Speaker 1: and urinating. That is my whole life now, drinking urinating.
Speaker 1: I've just become a tube. Um, So sadly we must
Speaker 1: move on from the elephant trewe even though I love
Speaker 1: them so much, and talk about the other elephant in
Speaker 1: the room, who, again, not a real elephant. This is
Speaker 1: the elephant nose fish. Boiler alert fans. It is also
Speaker 1: adorable if you want, like a mermaid version of the elephant. True,
Speaker 1: it is the elephant nose fish. Unlike the elephant. True,
Speaker 1: these are a fish, so they're not super related to elephants.
Speaker 1: And you know, oh man, I was ready for you
Speaker 1: to give you the question again. I was gonna be like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: surely this one that's maybe not related. I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't look into this, and maybe I should have. But
Speaker 1: I know, like fish are so old and there's so
Speaker 1: many of them that there are some fish I believe
Speaker 1: that are more related to like mammals and other terrestrial
Speaker 1: animals than they are to other fish, because it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it's just it's such a like
Speaker 1: there's so many fish and it covers such a huge
Speaker 1: amount of time. Some of them are going to be closer,
Speaker 1: more closely related to us than they are too, like
Speaker 1: some other fish that's way more ancient, way more different
Speaker 1: huh yeah, wow, that is I mean, I I guess
Speaker 1: I guess that tracks. But that also that's still I mean,
Speaker 1: that's still surprised me that I could be swimming out
Speaker 1: there with no fishies and one of them sipers in
Speaker 1: my ear. You know, you're not so different to you
Speaker 1: and I like, yeah, you're my brother from another spawn
Speaker 1: mother YouTube, spawned in a pool of hundreds of your
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters. Yes, well not really what Yeah, it
Speaker 1: must be weird for fish like you just like you
Speaker 1: poop out the eggs and like spread some fertilizer on them, right,
Speaker 1: and then they make babies something like that. Um, it's
Speaker 1: like me and my bougan Dailia. Yeah yeah, just growing
Speaker 1: a crop of babies. Uh so babies. Yeah. So there
Speaker 1: are so elephant fish. It's not just one species of fish.
Speaker 1: There are many species of elephant fish or elephant nosed fish.
Speaker 1: Uh and actually you know, hey, they are also found
Speaker 1: in Africa. They are raith and fish found in fresh
Speaker 1: water river systems in Africa. They are usually gray or
Speaker 1: black or brown. They've got um they're kind of uh
Speaker 1: a longer fish like they're not like sort of the
Speaker 1: chubby type of fish like a goldfish, there's a little
Speaker 1: bit longer. They can grow to be around nine inches
Speaker 1: or twenty three centimeters long, so they're not that's small. Um,
Speaker 1: but they're not, you know, they're not huge. Um. They've
Speaker 1: got like there, uh it's called their dorsal and anal fin.
Speaker 1: It's it's just like a fin that um come. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's just the location of the fin um.
Speaker 1: But it forms is kind of like triangle um or
Speaker 1: like this this sort of diamond shape on their back,
Speaker 1: which is that it's pretty neat. It's a pretty neat
Speaker 1: looking fish, all things considered. And then, but the moment
Speaker 1: we've all been waiting for is the newt the proboscis,
Speaker 1: the proboscus Scott. I love saying proboscis. I gotta say
Speaker 1: it like Richard Nixon, the proboscis. Al Right, enough of that,
Speaker 1: I guess. Um. So, yeah, they have a long proboscis
Speaker 1: and it looks like this long nose, like they're like
Speaker 1: you took an ant eater and a fish and you
Speaker 1: jumbled their DNA up in some kind of ungodly science experiment.
Speaker 1: But it's not actually a nose, so it sure looks
Speaker 1: like a nose. But it's not. It is actually a
Speaker 1: protrusion of their lower jaw, which actually, now that I
Speaker 1: say it, that is a little more similar to the
Speaker 1: ant eater because the ant eaters whole proboscis, like it
Speaker 1: is not just a nose. Their mouth parts are actually
Speaker 1: located on the end of that long proboscis, as is
Speaker 1: the case for this fish. WHOA So okay, you said.
Speaker 1: You said it's an extension of their lower jaw. That's right.
Speaker 1: So is it kind of like a big old underbyte.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, their mouth does occur like there. So
Speaker 1: some of them their mouths are actually like located closer
Speaker 1: to their face, so it really is just like this
Speaker 1: long protrusion of their lower jaw that like sticks out.
Speaker 1: But then I think that some of them, like their
Speaker 1: mouth is it is kind of closer to the end
Speaker 1: of that weird underbite, so like some of them have
Speaker 1: more of like the tube mouth with like just like
Speaker 1: little mouth parts on the very near the tip, and
Speaker 1: some of them just have like this long underbite, more
Speaker 1: of a Jim Carrey in the mask situation. But it
Speaker 1: got it. Yeah. Oh, and I should say that there
Speaker 1: is another species. There's another fish that is called an
Speaker 1: elephant fish, but it is not related to these elephant
Speaker 1: uh nose fish. So like, um, the Australian ghost shark
Speaker 1: is sometimes called the elephant fish, but unrelated. Um. And
Speaker 1: I don't I don't quite agree with calling them an
Speaker 1: elephant fish because I don't think they look as like
Speaker 1: an elephant as as these guys do. But it does
Speaker 1: have does have kind of like a long, like weird,
Speaker 1: long twirly proboscus. So I guess that's why, uh it's
Speaker 1: called that. But yeah, no, these are elephant nose fish
Speaker 1: elephant fish, but they are unrelated to the Australian ghost shark. Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: a ghost shack, but that that proboscis right, that extension
Speaker 1: of their lower jaw. It has a name, and it's
Speaker 1: a good one. It is called the sna An organ. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now an organ. Man. If I had to guess the
Speaker 1: country of origin on that one, it's French. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it is called the schnells An organ. I am
Speaker 1: really hoping this is actually what it's called, not like
Speaker 1: some elaborate prank by the study authors of these biology papers.
Speaker 1: It's like, if we call it a sns an organ,
Speaker 1: can we convince podcasters that out, like just as it's
Speaker 1: a real name and not just like some undergrad is.
Speaker 1: Like I'm just going to call it now as an
Speaker 1: organ and see if anyone notices. Someone had a lot
Speaker 1: of fun at the lab that day, Like, hey, you
Speaker 1: think I think we can just we can just slip
Speaker 1: this by, right. I feel like that's like most of
Speaker 1: how these names and evolutionary biology come to be. It's
Speaker 1: just like someone like slipping a word into a paper
Speaker 1: to see if anyone notices I call this Schnells an
Speaker 1: organ proboscis exactly. So, yeah, the schnell is an organ
Speaker 1: as well as other parts of these elephant fish body
Speaker 1: is actually covered in electro receptors, which will be really
Speaker 1: important information about one minute from now. But first we
Speaker 1: got to talk about the elephant fishes. But because it
Speaker 1: generates a weak electric field with that but it Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, so to be clear, elephant fishes don't really
Speaker 1: have a but like humans do in its tail like
Speaker 1: at the back side of it. It has this special
Speaker 1: electric organ that generates a weak electric field. Huh, so
Speaker 1: what is the what is the purposes said electric field? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really interesting. So by generating this weak electric pulse.
Speaker 1: It can create like it's creating like this field around itself,
Speaker 1: and then that field interacts with objects that gets in
Speaker 1: its way, so like it could be some smaller fish,
Speaker 1: it could be a rock, whatever it's gonna like bump
Speaker 1: into this electric field. And remember how I said that
Speaker 1: it has electro receptors as well. Now it can sense
Speaker 1: its own electric field, and when something disrupts it, this
Speaker 1: fish knows that something is there. So it's a form
Speaker 1: of being able to detect its environment even in low visibility.
Speaker 1: So it can detect its prey, it can detect plants,
Speaker 1: it can detect stickles. It's kind of like in a
Speaker 1: Lucy Goosey way. It's kind of like how bats will
Speaker 1: use their their sonar, yeah, sure, where they like send
Speaker 1: out a pulse of sound and then the location location
Speaker 1: a little bit. They send out the signal and then
Speaker 1: when it comes back to them, they are able to
Speaker 1: tell like, hey, this is uh, there's something there. Now
Speaker 1: this is slightly different because instead of it like you know,
Speaker 1: they they these fish kind of detect the disturbance in
Speaker 1: the field, a disturbance in the force around them, and
Speaker 1: they can sense that and use that to hunt or
Speaker 1: also to avoid obstacles or avoid predators. Wow, that's really
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, first of all, amazing love to have
Speaker 1: a little force field. That's dope. Yeah, So I guess my,
Speaker 1: I guess. My next question is do they share a
Speaker 1: trait with the elephant true of being pecularly fast? Because
Speaker 1: once they get that data, what do they do with it?
Speaker 1: Are they I think that they are. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know if they are particularly fast compared to other fish,
Speaker 1: but they do have an advantage because if they are
Speaker 1: in sort of low visibility, like something is kind of
Speaker 1: silty or like in these sort of freshwater systems, you
Speaker 1: may often have some some silt or debris, and so
Speaker 1: if they are in this environment and you can't really
Speaker 1: see very well with your eyes, they are going to
Speaker 1: have a an advantage where they can zero in on
Speaker 1: their prey avoid obstacles, whereas, like you know, their prey
Speaker 1: like smaller fish or invertebrates, may not be able to
Speaker 1: see so well. And so this is actually it's interesting
Speaker 1: because this is actually the same technique used by platypus.
Speaker 1: Is so uh yes. So they also use electro reception
Speaker 1: where they can detect the weak electric activity of of
Speaker 1: their prey. And they also live in sort of silty
Speaker 1: freshwater environments where they there may be low visibility. And
Speaker 1: so it's really interesting you have two completely unrelated animals
Speaker 1: both using a similar system so that they can hunt
Speaker 1: for prey, avoid obstacles when they are in this kind
Speaker 1: of like muddy silty situation. Perfect. Yeah, okay, so they
Speaker 1: got they got the jump on, They got to jump
Speaker 1: on their enemies, try to face them, try to oppose them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like if you use a smoke bomb and then
Speaker 1: you sneak up on you know. Uh yeah, it is
Speaker 1: really interesting it. But also they do have another similarity
Speaker 1: to the elephant, true, which is they have a large
Speaker 1: brain to body mass ratio. They probably need a lot
Speaker 1: of processing power for that complex electro reception. But it's
Speaker 1: also thought this may be a relatively intelligent fish, especially
Speaker 1: compared to its size. Wow. Cool they I mean, like,
Speaker 1: you know, to have to have all that advanced technology,
Speaker 1: to have all that radar on board, I imagine that
Speaker 1: you know, that's kind of translate into some form of smarts. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: use that information effectively. That's that's smarts in its own way.
Speaker 1: You gotta know how to calibrate yours an organ organ
Speaker 1: I literally forgot for a second. I know, I had
Speaker 1: to remind you is an organ Nelson organs. This fish
Speaker 1: has a Schnaston organ. We find very fascinating. Love that
Speaker 1: love that one more elephant. This is the last elephant
Speaker 1: of the day that is also not an elephant. But
Speaker 1: we've talked about two elephants that are an elephant true
Speaker 1: and an elephant fish a k a. Elephant nose fish.
Speaker 1: But they're kind of small, you know, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: not like microscopic, but you know, ma size to about
Speaker 1: you know, a little over a foot long. You know,
Speaker 1: they're certainly not elephant in their proportions. And they were
Speaker 1: named elephants such and such because of that proboscis. Now
Speaker 1: this animal was named elephant due to its ridiculous proportions.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous size. This is the elephant bird. Have you
Speaker 1: ever thought about like what a you know, how like
Speaker 1: humans we have extinct ancestors, right, we have these apes
Speaker 1: these Uh god, I just forgot all of human evolution.
Speaker 1: But you know what I mean, yeah, humans, yes, here
Speaker 1: you go, so like, but like, have you ever thought
Speaker 1: about like that for big bird? Because big bird is
Speaker 1: much like a human bipedal um complex language. Um. You know, uh,
Speaker 1: like what would the ancestor to big bird look like,
Speaker 1: because like, uh, it would have to be some kind
Speaker 1: of large flightless bird because big birds, I mean it
Speaker 1: uses its wings. Now, the big bird to like, I
Speaker 1: guess as kind of hands rudimentary hands, um, but it
Speaker 1: does it is. It is flightless. Um. And big bird
Speaker 1: is also quite large. It's eight ft and two inches,
Speaker 1: which is two point five meters. So yeah, that is
Speaker 1: I mean, the name really does fit. It's like, big
Speaker 1: bird looks very cuddly, but I also feel like I
Speaker 1: would be intimidated to, like, you know, just look up
Speaker 1: at this big yellow bird because big bird is literally
Speaker 1: that big which quite large. Oh, it's it's quite it's
Speaker 1: quite large. And also you know, okay, so let's let's
Speaker 1: let's be real sesame street big bird Like yeah great,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, what what a what a what
Speaker 1: a sweet, warm, cuddly you know, creature being for sure.
Speaker 1: But if you're seeing a raw, untamed big bird out
Speaker 1: in the wild, raw big bird, we're talking, we're talking,
Speaker 1: we're talking primal uncensored big bird. Are you going to
Speaker 1: come up to you and be trying to poke your
Speaker 1: face distance yea, my distance. Birds do not back around, No,
Speaker 1: they really don't. I think it is worth noting that
Speaker 1: birds are dinosaurs, that that's not an exaggeration or like
Speaker 1: a joke. Like they are literally dinosaurs, and the fact
Speaker 1: we call them birds not dinosaurs is just sort of
Speaker 1: it's just factually inaccurate. Yeah, I mean it is inaccurate.
Speaker 1: They're they're literally dinosaurs. There's I mean, it's I suppose
Speaker 1: like if you really like you can make a distinction
Speaker 1: between birds and like dinosaurs, but a lot of like
Speaker 1: bird researchers feel like there's no reason to separate them
Speaker 1: from uh dinosaurs completely. So they are they are a type.
Speaker 1: They are a form of dinosaur or that is still
Speaker 1: alive and and so you know, you could say that
Speaker 1: like the ostrich is big bird's ancestor, but I don't
Speaker 1: think so, because ostriches are only around seven ft tall,
Speaker 1: and they just don't have the meatiness of the big bird,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Oh, I mean, well, you know,
Speaker 1: if they really did have the meatness of the big bird,
Speaker 1: I would be even you know, kind of more horrified. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just fem so cautious of birds out in the wild.
Speaker 1: There's there's definitely a level of bird that I am
Speaker 1: comfortable facing down. I had this, there's okay, have you
Speaker 1: had if you're on the show, Yes, if you want away,
Speaker 1: if you want to of course, classic friend of the
Speaker 1: Friend of the pod, Friend of the many pods, if
Speaker 1: you want way. He has a stance that he could
Speaker 1: fight a gorilla, which is of course ridiculous. Never couldn't happen.
Speaker 1: But there's there's definitely I definitely have a little hubers
Speaker 1: when it comes to certain animals. Birds do not fit
Speaker 1: into the category of ubris of where I'm like, I
Speaker 1: could take bird. I could take a bird, could be
Speaker 1: like a bird that I can hold in my hand.
Speaker 1: But like even like geese, like I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: find with the geese. They are mean. They're mean, they
Speaker 1: are serious, and they when like you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of animals will offer empty threats, not birds, no empty
Speaker 1: They're coming from you up, They're gonna peck your face, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean. And like it's like even the nerdy birds
Speaker 1: like Corvid's like they hold a grudge because like you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, these are sort of the nerdier birds
Speaker 1: are smart. They don't have a lot of brawn, but
Speaker 1: they will remember. They teach their young to like if
Speaker 1: you mess with them, they will teach their offspring to
Speaker 1: hate you. The whole horror movie about this whole movie
Speaker 1: about this a documented snakes on a plane. The government's
Speaker 1: covering it up. That exactly on the point. Yes, So,
Speaker 1: given given your your cautious attitudes towards birds, how would
Speaker 1: you feel about a bird that was nearly tin eat
Speaker 1: tall or three meters one thousand and six hundred pounds
Speaker 1: or seven hundred and thirty ms, the heaviest and tallest
Speaker 1: bird in the history of the earth. So I mean,
Speaker 1: so with great awe and reverence, am I trying to
Speaker 1: with this bird? Zero percent? But I might trying to
Speaker 1: show somebody a cool video of this bird, like walking
Speaker 1: through a village and everybody's like, oh my god, look
Speaker 1: this bird. Or it's like walking into like a town square.
Speaker 1: There's like a bunch of people in the market and
Speaker 1: then this bird just like walks through and people are
Speaker 1: just like, I'm out, Yeah, that's that's what I support.
Speaker 1: It's the kai Je of birds. But this was a
Speaker 1: real bird called the elephant bird who lived in Madagascar.
Speaker 1: So of course, of course Madagascar the home of every
Speaker 1: wild looking everything like Earth's foreign planet. Yes, islands, islands
Speaker 1: do stuff because like when you have an island, you
Speaker 1: have this like interesting. I think it's like you you
Speaker 1: have an isolated system and stuff just goes wild. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's like scientific, but that's my opinion.
Speaker 1: Like when you have I feel like the less interrupted
Speaker 1: other parts of the other parts of the world are
Speaker 1: the less they you know, get the influence of other
Speaker 1: species or you know, seeds or you know, every everything
Speaker 1: floats on the wind, so it's like as if nothing's
Speaker 1: getting over there, nothing's affecting it. Shout out trees. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's like that's how you get
Speaker 1: I mean certain islands, um like New Zealand or Mauritius,
Speaker 1: they have these amazing ground dwelling birds like the Kiwi's
Speaker 1: or the extinct do do because you know, you didn't
Speaker 1: have if you if you don't have too many predators
Speaker 1: that will take advantage of that, uh, then you can
Speaker 1: be just basically this big dumb bird that roams around
Speaker 1: on the ground. Of course that was and by the
Speaker 1: dodo was killed by the Dutch who came in with
Speaker 1: their cats and their dogs and their rats, which it
Speaker 1: probably wasn't the human hunting that did them in all
Speaker 1: of that. That certainly helped, but it was the cats
Speaker 1: and dogs killing them, and then the rats that they
Speaker 1: inadvertently brought that like out competed them. So those combined factors.
Speaker 1: So these closed island systems can have really really interesting animals.
Speaker 1: And these elephant birds despite its size and long ostrich
Speaker 1: like neck like, these look like they looked like ostriches
Speaker 1: on steroids, like much like meteor thicker legs, thicker necks,
Speaker 1: but they still had the long sort of ostrich like
Speaker 1: neck um. So it's like if you just if you
Speaker 1: just bulked up, yeah, bulked up an ostrich or an
Speaker 1: emu protein shakes ket ketoed all the way out, all
Speaker 1: the way ketoed. Chia seeds, you know, es seeds. I
Speaker 1: don't really know, Yeah, go ahead, no no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I was just gonna say, I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's what you do to build bulk, but
Speaker 1: it totally is ground chia seeds. Your body can process
Speaker 1: them a lot better. Sometimes regular chia seeds straight through
Speaker 1: you round chia seeds. You just sort of like just
Speaker 1: eat the powder, just crunch it down. Yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: you crush. It sounds good. It's kind of like it's
Speaker 1: kind of like so basically like for the protein shake,
Speaker 1: I am the shrew mother who's grinding up the grubs
Speaker 1: that are the chia seeds in my mouth to then
Speaker 1: feed them into my smoothie, who then feeds me. But
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, just I need to see this. I
Speaker 1: need to see this cook cooking home cooking with Danial
Speaker 1: to make a chees smoothie and he's just spitting a
Speaker 1: chea mash into a cup that's per picked. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: hope those sound effects earlier we're enough for the audience
Speaker 1: of this audio only podcast. Yeah, yeah, no, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a s mr. You just like chewing, chewing up
Speaker 1: cheese seeds. So actually, you know what, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that would actually there would be people out there into that,
Speaker 1: not that I want to find out. They follow me
Speaker 1: on twitch. Yeah, so like, yeah, it is actually it's
Speaker 1: despite looking like a beefed up ostrich, it's closest living
Speaker 1: relative is not the Ostrich but the Kiwi. And yeah,
Speaker 1: is that weird? Again? This is what the elephants true
Speaker 1: in the elephant, how how are we looking at this
Speaker 1: fish and like its close to kiwi for sure? What? Well,
Speaker 1: it's because there is a lot of parallel evolution or
Speaker 1: convergent evolution. So parallel evolution is when too pretty unrelated
Speaker 1: independent species both arrive at a similar evolutionary path because
Speaker 1: they probably had similar evolutionary pressures, whereas convergent evolutions where
Speaker 1: you have two related species who also both independently evolve
Speaker 1: similar traits, but they're they're more related than species who
Speaker 1: are involved in like parallel evolution. So parallel evolution would
Speaker 1: be like both the elephant nose fish and the platypus
Speaker 1: developing that electro reception um, whereas convergent evolution would be gosh,
Speaker 1: let me think that would be the fact that there
Speaker 1: were two species of ground sloth, the giant sloths that
Speaker 1: used to be around but are now extinct. They ended
Speaker 1: up becoming the tree sloths, two toad sloths and the
Speaker 1: three toad slavs, who are related, but they independently evolved
Speaker 1: into the two toad and the three toad slovs, So
Speaker 1: which is really interesting. So the I think they're closely
Speaker 1: related enough to ostrich is that this would be a
Speaker 1: case of parallel evolution. I'm not sure on that, but yeah, so,
Speaker 1: like these birds are becoming more ostrich like or Emu
Speaker 1: like through sort of this parallel evolution, but they are
Speaker 1: more related to the Kiwi. But like the Kiwi, the
Speaker 1: elephant bird had proportionally huge eggs, and Kiwi's are They're
Speaker 1: relatively little birds, like you know, about the size of
Speaker 1: a small I don't know, small milon, a small melon,
Speaker 1: or a small never mind a large kiwi. F Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the Kiwi lays really huge eggs compared to its
Speaker 1: body size, which I'm sorry Kiwi ladies, that sucks. But
Speaker 1: because the elephant birds also laid relatively large eggs, but
Speaker 1: they're also incredibly huge. They had bonkers, gigantic eggs, the
Speaker 1: largest eggs of any bird and likely larger than most,
Speaker 1: if not all, dinosaurs. The eggs are over a foot
Speaker 1: tall or thirty four centimeters and weighed over twenty two
Speaker 1: pounds or tens So yeah, huge, huge eggs. And so
Speaker 1: you might think that this bird is one of these
Speaker 1: ridiculous animals that died out a long time ago, long
Speaker 1: before humans ever existed, one of these like legendary mega fauna. Um.
Speaker 1: But no, they actually existed with humans for quite some time. Really, yes,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, did they absolutely terrorize us? I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess imagine looking at one of these tin foot
Speaker 1: tall monsters. I'm sure that people were scared of them.
Speaker 1: But fortunately they were frugivores, so they ate forest fruits.
Speaker 1: They had no taste for human flesh. Um. And so
Speaker 1: in sort of the contest between humans and elephant birds,
Speaker 1: humans did win in the end. Um, but they died out.
Speaker 1: Is actually a topic of some disagreement. It used to
Speaker 1: be thought that elephant birds kind of went extinct when
Speaker 1: humans arrived to Madagascar, and that this happened maybe over
Speaker 1: a thousand years ago, and they were just hunted to
Speaker 1: death by people arriving to Madagascar. But there's right, But
Speaker 1: there's new historical evidence that suggests this is not actually
Speaker 1: the case. So there. So, first of all, there may
Speaker 1: have been a sighting of the elephant bird in the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, as written down by a French explorer, but
Speaker 1: even more convincingly, newer analysis of fossils show earlier human
Speaker 1: arrival in Madagascar, which would have humans and elephant birds
Speaker 1: coexisting for around ten thousand years, So so yeah, like
Speaker 1: humans probably hung out with I mean, maybe not hung
Speaker 1: out like buddies, but you know, they were inhabiting the
Speaker 1: same island with elephant birds possibly for ten thousand years,
Speaker 1: and there was evidence of humans hunting the birds because
Speaker 1: they were like butcher marks on some of these fossils.
Speaker 1: But if they were living together for ten thousand years, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they were able to hunt them for a
Speaker 1: while without driving them to extinction. So why they went
Speaker 1: extinct is a bit of a mystery. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: possible maybe they're the human population grew larger and then
Speaker 1: they started over hunting it. But there's also the theory
Speaker 1: that it wasn't hunting but the burning of forests and
Speaker 1: pasteurization that ultimately killed off the elephant birds. So like
Speaker 1: the terror terraforming of the they're now like habitat loss essentially,
Speaker 1: which I think makes a lot of sense. A lot
Speaker 1: of species don't necessarily go extinct just because we hunt
Speaker 1: them too much, but because we destroy their habitat and
Speaker 1: they just do not have any recourse. They don't have
Speaker 1: anywhere to live or to eat, and so they die out.
Speaker 1: It was poor bird ease, I know, we just came
Speaker 1: and invaded their home. I mean, like, this is so human,
Speaker 1: it tracts so clearly. Yeah, but you know we did.
Speaker 1: We meant the nice thing is we managed to live
Speaker 1: with them for ten thousand years, which I think it's
Speaker 1: a pretty pretty good, pretty good for the human track record.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's like there's some other theories too that
Speaker 1: maybe it had to do with like climate change, that
Speaker 1: these birds like start like they just couldn't cope with
Speaker 1: some changes in the climate or change the natural climate change.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I feel like at that point
Speaker 1: we probably were into the industrial era. No, no, this
Speaker 1: was long before anthropogenic climate change. There there's like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's still natural climate change, but it's the anthropogenic climate
Speaker 1: change that is. Uh, it's happening way faster than it
Speaker 1: should be happening, and you could say it could happen here. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: shout out, shout out to the Robert Evans Show, which
Speaker 1: you know it's uh, you're probably noticing it's pretty warm
Speaker 1: right now, So yes, that it is. That it is.
Speaker 1: It's like when we talk about like the effects of
Speaker 1: climate change, it's always been like, oh, this will happen
Speaker 1: sometime in the future. And I don't know. I feel
Speaker 1: like over the past ten years it's just been like, no,
Speaker 1: it's already, it's happening right now. Yeah, yeah, that was.
Speaker 1: That was the magnificent elephant bird. It is awesome. I
Speaker 1: mean like it makes an awesome steed. I think it
Speaker 1: probably would want nothing to do with me, but I
Speaker 1: would maybe bribe it with some fresh forest fruits and
Speaker 1: hopefully it wouldn't stomp my head in like a like
Speaker 1: a ripe smell on. This would be a great beast
Speaker 1: to be friends. Would be like if this was if
Speaker 1: I was running a D and D campaign, I now
Speaker 1: want this is my familiar. This, this is what I
Speaker 1: want by my side when we charged in the battle.
Speaker 1: If if not for its steed quality, at least it's
Speaker 1: pecking ability. Because wow, that that that beak looks big,
Speaker 1: big beak. Yeah, there's that. There's that viral um girl,
Speaker 1: Oh Hillary something she got Emmanuel the the Emmanuel Emmanuel
Speaker 1: Todd something or other. That video is so sweet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeahm yes, Emmanuel is an EMU. Emmanuel is part of
Speaker 1: I believe it's like a a refuge or or a farm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I literally just started following her. I can't remember what
Speaker 1: her name is Taylor Blake, and she takes these videos
Speaker 1: of of the of the farm. It's like a hobby farm,
Speaker 1: I think, like where they just take care of these animals.
Speaker 1: She'll like do videos of the various animals kind of
Speaker 1: educate people about them. And then this emu named Emmanuel
Speaker 1: will like interrupt her videos, walk in front and then
Speaker 1: knock the camera over. And it's so incredible, it's so great,
Speaker 1: and they have a wonderful, beautiful friendship and it's I
Speaker 1: just I love I love this, this friendship between human
Speaker 1: and bird, human and dinosaur um. But imagine emmanual but like, gosh,
Speaker 1: like ten times as big. Maybe that's too many times
Speaker 1: much bigger, so much bigger, because sogers are relatively like
Speaker 1: they're they're they're big for birds, but they're still shorter
Speaker 1: than humans. You know they're You can tell because you
Speaker 1: can see her like hugging him with her arm around.
Speaker 1: It's so cute. So it's very sweet. But like if
Speaker 1: if if you could have an Immanuel bird friend but
Speaker 1: just like ten feet tall, just thunderously stomping around would
Speaker 1: be scary but also great. I mean, like it's yes,
Speaker 1: great in the in the great in the grand scheme,
Speaker 1: how great it would be to have giant animals again.
Speaker 1: But also I maintain terrifying birds. Do not back around.
Speaker 1: This bird is coming to poke your eyes out. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe it just looks on you with pity and it's
Speaker 1: just like instead of like trying to kill you, it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna give you one solid push with my
Speaker 1: foot and remove you from my place. I think it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I will stomp on you if you, you know,
Speaker 1: try to take my melon away. Yes, don't take my
Speaker 1: belton away. So yeah, I mean I think we have
Speaker 1: addressed the elephant, the many elephants in the room, many
Speaker 1: elephants in the room, the many elephants, the elephant shrew,
Speaker 1: the elephant fish, the elephant bird, but we never actually
Speaker 1: addressed the an elephant, which you know, sorry past You
Speaker 1: know what, elephants, elephants have had their moment. There was
Speaker 1: just that one elephant that stomped out that woman's funeral,
Speaker 1: who was like, gosh, it was perfect, just you know what, great,
Speaker 1: I'm good with that elephants are having a moment, So
Speaker 1: all elephant should have a moment exactly that that elephant. No, no,
Speaker 1: coincidences that elephant knew what it was doing. Oh, it
Speaker 1: knew what it was doing and they never I mean
Speaker 1: and can there has to be something that went on
Speaker 1: there that you know, it's a case for POORO. Really,
Speaker 1: I'm team elephant if it wasn't clear for sure, if
Speaker 1: they want, if they want to, it's could have been
Speaker 1: the sweetest like like sweetest old woman like making cookies
Speaker 1: and this elephant just comes in and recks her life.
Speaker 1: I don't know, they see something that we don't Who
Speaker 1: knows that, who knows that woman's politics? Where the elephant
Speaker 1: was a hired hitman? You don't know? Wow? Could you imagine? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm thinking about it. Elephant. Wait, that would be
Speaker 1: so funny and hiring that's just that is a brilliant
Speaker 1: scheme right there. Someone needs to start a business of
Speaker 1: hiring elephants to kill people, because you should know the
Speaker 1: like most elephants for hire are actually undercover cops. So
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, Nial's gotta gotta make some flight plans
Speaker 1: to Mexico. Yeah, I got I got some mixed emotions
Speaker 1: about these. So does a cab apply to elephants as well?
Speaker 1: I'm only the elephants that are undercover cops. That's fair, okay, fair,
Speaker 1: not not all elephants. All elephants, okay, good hashtag No.
Speaker 1: I love elephants. They're they're great. So now I think
Speaker 1: we gotta play a little game game. It's called Guess
Speaker 1: Who's squawking? Play music? Now, Yes, it is Guess Who's squawking?
Speaker 1: The Mry Animal sound game. Every week I play a
Speaker 1: Mr Animal sound and you the listener, and you the guest,
Speaker 1: kind of guess just squawking. Last week's Mr Animals sound
Speaker 1: hint was this. You won't be surprised to learn that
Speaker 1: this is called a screaming party. But who are the
Speaker 1: party goers? Okay? Uh dnimal, can you guess who is squawking? Okay?
Speaker 1: Lots of hints in there. Police sirens, so some sort
Speaker 1: of like you know, some sort of uh domestic urban
Speaker 1: area with with with people, some kind of animal that's
Speaker 1: an emergency responder, some kind of animalison mergy responder. It
Speaker 1: feels like a smaller animal kind of a high pitched,
Speaker 1: high pitched sound. Um. It also has kind of like
Speaker 1: a ringed or like a particular kind of tambre to
Speaker 1: it that doesn't necessarily sound like a bird. Almost sounds
Speaker 1: like a bug, or maybe like some sort of like
Speaker 1: weird amphibian or something that's like an Indian that's like
Speaker 1: putting out some interesting But my gut tells me bug,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna go with I don't know if I could.
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't tell you the bug. But if
Speaker 1: I was going to choose a I don't know which
Speaker 1: kingdom filing class order, how far down it goes. But
Speaker 1: if I had to guess one of those, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go with insect insect interesting. And this is last
Speaker 1: week's clue, right, This is last week's clue, so you're
Speaker 1: going to reveal it now, that's right, So congratulations to
Speaker 1: a bunch of names here. The winners are h mac I,
Speaker 1: Joey P. Robert Us, and Shada, who guess correctly that
Speaker 1: these are swifts. So uh you Dan. I love the
Speaker 1: creativity of thinking these are insects. There are, in fact
Speaker 1: a lot of loud insects that come out in the summer.
Speaker 1: Cicada's will make really loud noises. But swifts are a
Speaker 1: species of birds. Always birds, sometimes it's birds. It's not
Speaker 1: always birds in this game, but sometimes it is birds.
Speaker 1: I like to switch it up. You never know when
Speaker 1: it's gonna be birds. But yeah, so, like these swifts
Speaker 1: will come out in great numbers during the summer and
Speaker 1: will form these screaming parties where they just fly around screaming.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. So that's what's art. I mean, it's interesting
Speaker 1: because while they are birds, they're very strange kind of bird.
Speaker 1: Like you look at you see them flying in this sky,
Speaker 1: just looks like a bird. You look at them close up,
Speaker 1: they look like tiny drones. And I'm not going to
Speaker 1: play into the whole like birds are just you know,
Speaker 1: conspiracy by the government, you know, blah blah blah. No,
Speaker 1: birds are real. Just because they happen to look like
Speaker 1: drones does not mean that they actually are drones. I
Speaker 1: mean some of them are FBI informants, but that's a
Speaker 1: separate issue. Um. They they just have such a sleek body,
Speaker 1: and that's because they are evolutionarily designed to spend most
Speaker 1: of their life flying in the air, barely ever stopping.
Speaker 1: So they migrate from Africa to Europe in the summer
Speaker 1: and back to Africa in the winter. And they can eat, drink,
Speaker 1: and even sleep while flying. Uh, they fly so much
Speaker 1: and they spend so little time perching or you know, resting,
Speaker 1: that their feet have little use. They do not walk,
Speaker 1: and so their feet are small and underdeveloped. Basically just
Speaker 1: these like little hooks that they can use for gripping
Speaker 1: onto the sides of buildings or trees for when they
Speaker 1: need to nest. So it's just like landing gear. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's it. It's landing gear. Right now, they are in Europe,
Speaker 1: although I think that by the yeah, they they're probably
Speaker 1: starting to leave Europe to fly back to western and
Speaker 1: Central Africa to avoid the cold temperatures of winter and
Speaker 1: follow the flow of insects because they will catch a
Speaker 1: lot of insects like in the air. Um and it
Speaker 1: is it is, Ah, they're amazing little birds. We I
Speaker 1: talked more about it on UM. I did an episode
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago called Around the World and eighty
Speaker 1: Birds was an interview with an author, Mike on one.
Speaker 1: So if you want to if you want to hear
Speaker 1: more about that, I interview an author of that book
Speaker 1: Around the World in eighty Birds, and we talk about
Speaker 1: the Swift's But yeah, amazing amazing birds loud as heck though,
Speaker 1: my god. Yeah, and they they are um. They are
Speaker 1: like they are right around here where I live in turn,
Speaker 1: and so they I've been hearing them all summer long. Yes,
Speaker 1: I like it, Though they don't, I'm enjoying it. So
Speaker 1: onto this week's mystery animal. Saydun, here's the hint. Today
Speaker 1: we just talked about elephants in the room who aren't elephants.
Speaker 1: But what about the rhinoceros in the room, who's not
Speaker 1: a rhino? What was that? What? Oh my god? So
Speaker 1: can you guess who is squawking? No, I'm kidding. I mean,
Speaker 1: so there were there were two sounds there, and I
Speaker 1: just want to clarified. There was there was like one
Speaker 1: that sounded kind of like birds in the background, but
Speaker 1: then there was a much closer sounding kind of like
Speaker 1: squeak or like a sucking noise almost. It sounds like
Speaker 1: someone sucking through the very end of a straw. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's it. Okay, I'm taking another shot in the dark here,
Speaker 1: or not shot in the dark, but but but going
Speaker 1: for like a subverted answer. It sounds like a mammal
Speaker 1: of some kind, like some sort of like rodents. M hmm,
Speaker 1: call Like I don't know if it's a maiden call
Speaker 1: or calling for help. But I'm gonna go with I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go with small rodent. Interesting. Well that that is
Speaker 1: a guess and you will not know whether or not
Speaker 1: it's true until next week when I reveal the answer
Speaker 1: to this. That's right leaving real cliffhanger. Um. But if
Speaker 1: you out there think you know who is squawking, write
Speaker 1: to me at Creature Feature Product gmail dot com. But
Speaker 1: if you have any questions you can write send me
Speaker 1: an email too. I'm also on Twitter at Katie Golden.
Speaker 1: That's GEO L d I in. Uh wait, should I
Speaker 1: spell my first name? People know it's k A t
Speaker 1: I E. Okay, the full name here It is from
Speaker 1: kidding kay A t I E g O L d
Speaker 1: I in. And then you can check out that dread
Speaker 1: of elephant. True's fun. It's it's very good, very good
Speaker 1: to see them me on because their little nose has
Speaker 1: to like go whoop up upwards. It's very funny, it's
Speaker 1: very cute, it's very um. Play podcast is online to
Speaker 1: it creat your Feet pod on Twitter. That's little different.
Speaker 1: Still where find you? You can find me all over
Speaker 1: the internet at DJ Underscore Daniel that's d A n L.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter, Twitch, Instagram, TikTok. Regrettably,
Speaker 1: you can find me on all those places and I
Speaker 1: will be And if you want to interact with me
Speaker 1: and see me, do dumb. I am live on Twitch Wednesdays,
Speaker 1: Fridays and Sundays. When does the show come out again?
Speaker 1: And said of Tuesday or Wednesday? Wednesday show? Oh perfect. Well,
Speaker 1: if you're listening on a Wednesday this evening at five
Speaker 1: p or seven pm Pacific, come check me out playing
Speaker 1: video games Twitch dot tv, slash DJ Underscore Daniel d
Speaker 1: A n L And I will see you there and
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening. If you're enjoying the
Speaker 1: show and you leave a rating or view that helps
Speaker 1: him in slee I read every single review and I
Speaker 1: really really appreciate them. They make me so happy. It
Speaker 1: makes me motivates me to keep doing the podcast. When
Speaker 1: I see your positive feedback, Uh yeah, it's great. It
Speaker 1: really helps out and I really appreciate it. And thanks
Speaker 1: to the Space Classics for their super awesome song Exo Lumina.
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Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. I don't care, I do
Speaker 1: not I literally whatever, man like, I don't know why
Speaker 1: I'm telling you what. You're clearly listening to me right now.
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Speaker 1: do it, so you know this is my favorite ct
Speaker 1: A ever. Keep doing what you're doing, then it's working.
Speaker 1: You're listening to me, you're hearing me, you're clearly doing it.
Speaker 1: See your next Wednesday.