Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, it's a
Speaker 1: real enchanted evening with some sexy rendezvouses, rande rendezvous rendezvouses,
Speaker 1: and scandalous trysts from the loudest fishy love making in
Speaker 1: the world to amphibians having a ball. Discover this more
Speaker 1: as we answer the age old question what does ed
Speaker 1: Dean and marine biologists have in common? Joining me today
Speaker 1: is friend of the show, host of the upcomping podcast
Speaker 1: Heidi World, The Heidi flysh Story, which is coming to
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio this year, and also frog appreciator Molly Lambert. Welcome, Hello,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. I'm excited to be back
Speaker 1: on Creature Feature. Yes, yes, I am having you back
Speaker 1: because you wanted to talk about frog balls, uh, the
Speaker 1: balls of frogs that is which we will talk about
Speaker 1: at the end of the episode. Very exciting and also
Speaker 1: the rest of the episode I would say is a
Speaker 1: little bit risk a uh, we're definitely going to quack
Speaker 1: out our curse words. But you know, if you have
Speaker 1: young ears that you don't want to know about, like
Speaker 1: the love making of fish, dolphins, and frogs. You know,
Speaker 1: just consider that's what we're talking about. First, we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about the loudest, one of the loudest underwater sounds
Speaker 1: in the world, and this is due to a mass
Speaker 1: fish love fest. So there are obviously a lot of
Speaker 1: problems when it comes to over fishing. It's bad for
Speaker 1: the environment, it's bad for fish populations, it's bad for
Speaker 1: populations of animals that survive on fish. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's also bad for animals that get cotton fishing nets,
Speaker 1: bad for coral reeves. It's terrible. But perhaps the worst
Speaker 1: thing is that it is killing the vibe for these
Speaker 1: giant fish orgies. So the Gulf Corvina is a fish
Speaker 1: found in the Gulf of California between Baja California and Mexico.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's sort of just a regular looking
Speaker 1: silver fish. They're not too exciting, um, kind of just
Speaker 1: you're a very archetypical looking fish. They can grow up
Speaker 1: to be about a meter or three ft long and
Speaker 1: up to about twelve kilograms or twenty six pounds. They
Speaker 1: eat crab, sardines and other small marine mammals. There's really
Speaker 1: nothing too special about them until you consider their mating habits.
Speaker 1: Because it is it's loud, it's loud and wild, it's
Speaker 1: it's wet, it's wet, wild and wonderful. Exactly. It is
Speaker 1: a wet and wild kind of fun going on with
Speaker 1: a mass spawning event of millions of these goulf Corvina fish.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they do not keep quiet about it. Males
Speaker 1: actually have a mating call, do you really like when
Speaker 1: you think about fish, you don't really think of them
Speaker 1: as having mating calls, Right, that's like a bird's thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it makes sense. Everybody's gotta gotta have a
Speaker 1: little noise that helps them find people to make out with, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I like sort of to do a classic
Speaker 1: siren just like boop poop and then hope you know
Speaker 1: someone sees that, like, hey, you know, that's that's my
Speaker 1: that's my call, you know, car al arm poop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're perfect. That's I mean, I think that's how I
Speaker 1: found my husband. So you know, it's uh, it's a
Speaker 1: real winner of a call. And indeed, these fish have
Speaker 1: a beautiful, alluring, sexy and sensual call. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to play it for you. Try not to like dive
Speaker 1: into the ocean to romance one of these fish. Wow, sensual,
Speaker 1: it is sensual. I mean I like it. I thought
Speaker 1: kind of like a cat purring. It's comforting. I'm a
Speaker 1: strong and sensitive gulf corvina and I will inseminate your
Speaker 1: eggs kind of kind of vibe. So imagine that call,
Speaker 1: which is already pretty loud, times a million, because there
Speaker 1: are millions of these males making this call at the
Speaker 1: same time. In fact, it's so loud you can hear
Speaker 1: it outside the water and through the holes of ships
Speaker 1: passing near the area. It's one of the loudest sounds
Speaker 1: in the sea, only beaten by sperm, blue bowhead and
Speaker 1: fin whales. And in fact, each individual fish has a
Speaker 1: mating call of a hundred and seventy seven decibels, which
Speaker 1: is louder than a chainsaw and can actually damage the
Speaker 1: hearing of other marine animals underwater, which I do. Feel
Speaker 1: like if you're a sea turtle and you're going to
Speaker 1: like the sea turtle doctor and you're like, yeah, my
Speaker 1: hearing has been I've been getting Tonita's and it's been
Speaker 1: bad lately. It's like, well, why have you been going
Speaker 1: to rock concerts. It's like, no, it's just you know,
Speaker 1: listening to fish sex, you know, a little embarrassing. Hey,
Speaker 1: you know you're into what you're into, that's true. I
Speaker 1: really shouldn't kink shame sea turtles. I need to like
Speaker 1: cross stitch a thing to hang in my office so
Speaker 1: that I can see, like, do not kink shames turtles,
Speaker 1: so that I always remember. Unfortunately, for these fish, these
Speaker 1: loud meeting calls are a great way for fishing boats
Speaker 1: to find the fish and they will fish them on mass,
Speaker 1: which is really uncool. Speaking of kink shaming, and these
Speaker 1: poor fish are just trying to get down funky with it,
Speaker 1: and it's there being real real spawn blockers. I think
Speaker 1: it's I mean, maybe the ultimate party foul is like
Speaker 1: trying to fish you while you're trying to flirt with
Speaker 1: other fish, you know what I mean. Speaking of fishy mating,
Speaker 1: there is another species of fish that has a pretty
Speaker 1: large impact on their environment and it is salmon molly.
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with the mating cycle of salmon um?
Speaker 1: Is that when they swim upstream, yes exactly, right, spawn,
Speaker 1: yes exactly? Then yes a little bit, and I watch them,
Speaker 1: I love to watch the explore dot org bear cam
Speaker 1: nice where all the salmon are swimming and the bears
Speaker 1: just trying to like fish them out of the water.
Speaker 1: The most soothing thing. Do you ever watch that? No,
Speaker 1: but I want to know it's a bear. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: send it to you. It's so it's incredible. Explore dot Org.
Speaker 1: Guess this incredible website I talked about on every podcast
Speaker 1: because obsessed with it. It's just nature cams, live cams
Speaker 1: with their nature, and so one of them is a
Speaker 1: feed of a river in Alaska and it's just bears,
Speaker 1: bears and salmon. That's amazing. I love it and I
Speaker 1: want it incredible. I put it on all the time
Speaker 1: when I just like need to relax and don't want
Speaker 1: to watch something like narrative. I mean there's a narrative. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the narrative is a cute fuzzy bear getting a delicious
Speaker 1: snack of dying spawning fish, which is I think going
Speaker 1: to be my new favorite bedtime bedtime show to watch.
Speaker 1: That sounds incredibly relaxing. I guess unless you're you kind
Speaker 1: of identify with the salmon, then it's sort of more
Speaker 1: of a horror situation. Yeah, but you know, yeah, I
Speaker 1: love watching bears just just pulling fish out the water.
Speaker 1: It just looks so satisfying, fun, having the time of
Speaker 1: their lives, just watching like a group of teenagers descend
Speaker 1: upon the sizzlers, right exactly, just just chilling. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: thank you a link. It's actually I guess it's off
Speaker 1: season right now because it's so they but they have
Speaker 1: the greatest hits real, of course, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I like to think that the greatest hits are just
Speaker 1: some salmon getting decapitated in the bear looking so happy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For every sort of dark turn that nature takes, it's
Speaker 1: there's also an adorable side to it. For every like
Speaker 1: antelope that's ripped open, there's a cute little lion cub,
Speaker 1: you know, chewing on. It's to watanum. So anyways, salmon, yes,
Speaker 1: you're correct, Molly. They do spawn. They do go upstream.
Speaker 1: They are anadromus, which means that they spend their adult
Speaker 1: lives in the saltwater ocean and then to spawn, they
Speaker 1: swim up into freshwater streams where they're young will hatch,
Speaker 1: and then the young salmon will migrate back out to
Speaker 1: the ocean, which is a really fascinating life cycle. It's
Speaker 1: unusual for fish to be able to transition from salt
Speaker 1: water to freshwater and back. But even more interesting is
Speaker 1: that samina are architects of the river environment. So fish
Speaker 1: mating often involves external fertilization, So the female will lay
Speaker 1: her eggs and the male will pass over the eggs,
Speaker 1: releases sperm, fertilize them externally, and then hey, presta, you're done,
Speaker 1: which you know, sufficient at least, maybe not all that intimate,
Speaker 1: but definitely efficient. Hey, efficient can be intimate sometimes if
Speaker 1: you're on the go, I gotta get it in streamlined intimacy.
Speaker 1: So basically, once the eggs are fertilized, the male's job
Speaker 1: is somewhat done, but the theme ale will continue to
Speaker 1: do a little bit of parental care for these eggs.
Speaker 1: So she will lay her eggs in a little trench
Speaker 1: that she's dug, and the male will fertilize it. And
Speaker 1: then the female will actually bury the eggs in rocks,
Speaker 1: which you know, she's sort of artfully placing these rocks
Speaker 1: so she's not crushing the eggs, so this will protect them.
Speaker 1: And this is called a red which I think it's
Speaker 1: because there's like an Irish word red, which means to
Speaker 1: make something ready. So basically, you know, she tidies up
Speaker 1: this area, covers the eggs with rocks, and then she
Speaker 1: will protect them for ten days and then die because
Speaker 1: they are similar paris, meaning that they spawn once and
Speaker 1: then die in a beautiful, beautiful cycle. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: just like all these sort of zombies amon like that.
Speaker 1: The stress of spawning is so intense and they use
Speaker 1: up so much energy that their immune system kind of
Speaker 1: fails and they just start falling apart even while they're
Speaker 1: still alive. So they look like a bunch of zombie fish. Uh,
Speaker 1: And they use their last act to try to try
Speaker 1: to protect their their young eggs. So you know, who
Speaker 1: doesn't love a zombie fish. The act that the female
Speaker 1: takes in digging up these trenches to protect her eggs
Speaker 1: actually has a massive impact on the environment. So the
Speaker 1: digging up of sediment and the movement of the rocks
Speaker 1: are thought to have a big impact on the river system.
Speaker 1: She is actually releasing small rocks and sediments into the
Speaker 1: current of the water that can pick these up and away,
Speaker 1: which exposes more bedrock to the power of the water,
Speaker 1: which can cause more erosion, and even though it may
Speaker 1: not be a really strong effect for a single fish
Speaker 1: during one mating season, researchers have actually modeled this behavior
Speaker 1: and scaled it up to millions of years and found
Speaker 1: a significant impact on shaping the terrain. Uh. There was
Speaker 1: a paper called Sex that Moves Mountains the influence of
Speaker 1: spawning fish on river profiles over geological time scales, which,
Speaker 1: you know, I really do appreciate when researchers try to
Speaker 1: make their titled sexy, and I think it is charming.
Speaker 1: Charming is not really the word awe inspiring that salmon
Speaker 1: sex can terraform the earth, like what is Elon Musk
Speaker 1: done lately? I don't think the same can be said
Speaker 1: for him. Absolutely not. It's I think like that could
Speaker 1: be sort of a response to whenever Elon Musk starts
Speaker 1: crying about terraforming Mars or whatever, it's like, well, salmon
Speaker 1: terraform earth just by having sex. So you know, call
Speaker 1: me when you do that. Thank you, bye bye bye.
Speaker 1: So now we're going to move on to some mammalian romance,
Speaker 1: but we are staying in the water because we're talking
Speaker 1: about dolphin mating habits, which when you think about it,
Speaker 1: it's a little strange. Typically mammals will mate outside of
Speaker 1: the ocean, and our biology is not really suited for
Speaker 1: submerged mating, whereas dolphins have some interesting adaptations to manage this.
Speaker 1: But there's a problem in terms of research because it's
Speaker 1: actually pretty difficult to connect research on the mating habits
Speaker 1: of large marine mammals because they're under the water and
Speaker 1: they're big. So, uh it's sounds kind of like it
Speaker 1: would be obvious to know like the mechanics of sex
Speaker 1: with dolphins, but it's actually pretty uh, pretty difficult, pretty
Speaker 1: tricky to uh, you know, monitor without being a huge pervert.
Speaker 1: And as we'll talk about soon, like all the ways
Speaker 1: in which they try to study dolphins sex just makes
Speaker 1: them seem like serial killers. There are a few necessary
Speaker 1: adaptations that dolphins have to have for sex underwater, because
Speaker 1: salt water is actually a spermicide, so they need to
Speaker 1: make the uterus waterproof, otherwise they wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: have a success ustible copulation because the salt water would
Speaker 1: immediately destroy any of the male sperm. So female dolphins
Speaker 1: actually have these very convoluted vaginal canals with a lot
Speaker 1: of folds in it and a mucastle lining that protects
Speaker 1: the entrance of the cervix. Yeah, they're like kind of
Speaker 1: accordions shaped. It's wow, like a duck kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of like a duck. They're not exactly corkscrew shaped
Speaker 1: like ducks are. For those of you out there who
Speaker 1: have not had the privilege of hearing about uh duck genitals.
Speaker 1: The males have corkscrew shaped penises and the females have
Speaker 1: corkscrew shaped vaginas in sort of a arms race for
Speaker 1: the females to try to have more control over whose
Speaker 1: sperm she allows UH to fertilize her eggs. So dolphins
Speaker 1: have sort of a similar situation. It's made more complicated
Speaker 1: by the fact that they need to make sure that
Speaker 1: the saltwater doesn't enter the uterus and kill the sperm.
Speaker 1: And male penises for dolphins are not weirdly shaped. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess they are in the general sense, but they're
Speaker 1: not like a corkscrew shaped like ducks are. So the
Speaker 1: folds actually in the female dolphins vagina are surrounded by
Speaker 1: muscles that may be able to essentially seal off the
Speaker 1: entrance to the cervix to prevent saltwater from reaching it,
Speaker 1: which has this sort of side benefit or even a
Speaker 1: major benefit of potentially allowing her to control whether the
Speaker 1: sperm ever reaches her cervix, so giving her sperm choice
Speaker 1: control over incimination, so she can just like get a
Speaker 1: bunch of sperm in there and then just like like
Speaker 1: close off the sheet. That is the theory. Yes, I
Speaker 1: don't think that that conclusively, No, yeah, yeah, And there
Speaker 1: are a lot of instances in the animal kingdom of
Speaker 1: females exerting this sort of reproductive choice where they're able
Speaker 1: to control whether the sperm actually reaches their eggs or
Speaker 1: you know, whose sperm they use. They can like save
Speaker 1: different sperm packets, and it's really interesting. And so I
Speaker 1: think it is like for especially for mega fauna, something
Speaker 1: big like a dolphin. It is really interesting to see
Speaker 1: this kind of uh possible reproductive choice that the female
Speaker 1: dolphins are able to use. But to even understand the
Speaker 1: mechanics of dolphins sex is really difficult. You can try
Speaker 1: to like go underwater with some cameras, but that's not
Speaker 1: gonna help you understand all that much. As there are
Speaker 1: these techniques that researchers can use for really little critters
Speaker 1: like insects where they can flash freeze them with liquid
Speaker 1: nitrogen during mating and then basically be able to like
Speaker 1: cut them open and see how their genitals interlock. Ah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a real, real Edgeen territory here. I guess I
Speaker 1: should issue sort of a warning that it's gonna get
Speaker 1: worse from here on out. We're we're this is like
Speaker 1: serial killer Edgeen body parts horror. So if you don't
Speaker 1: want to listen about that, you know, maybe maybe skip
Speaker 1: the next the next section, it's like dolphins serial killer horror,
Speaker 1: which is even scarier. Yeah, they've got the perfect horror
Speaker 1: movie scream just going the whole time. But so researchers
Speaker 1: have to rely on the frozen body parts of dead
Speaker 1: dolphins in order to study the mechanics of mating. So
Speaker 1: they'll use frozen dolphin genitals of a variety of species
Speaker 1: to recreate mating by artificially inflating the male's penis and
Speaker 1: then trying to fit it into the frozen vagina and
Speaker 1: then doing a CT scan to document this unholy abomination
Speaker 1: that I don't understand. How you know, the FBI hasn't
Speaker 1: just like burst down their door. Sorry, I was just
Speaker 1: like I don't have it. I'm trying to think of
Speaker 1: a joke, and I'm just like, ah, I know, it's
Speaker 1: just it is just kind of it's just kind of horrifying.
Speaker 1: It's like, I get that it's research, and I'm fairly
Speaker 1: certain the researchers are good, normal people, because I've never
Speaker 1: met a nasty marine biologist, but damn you guys, like
Speaker 1: whoever wrote that grant must be a genius, because how
Speaker 1: you write that without getting arrested, I have no idea.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, we're looking for some government funds. Um, well,
Speaker 1: basically what we've done is we've frozen a bunch of
Speaker 1: dolphin penises and vaginas and we're just we're just kind
Speaker 1: of kind of put them together like legos, you know
Speaker 1: how you do that? You know, So we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna need a grant for that. Yeah, No, that's it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, science is fascinating, it's absolutely incredible. Uh So
Speaker 1: you know, if you gotta, if you gotta sometimes mash
Speaker 1: some like dolphin popsicles made out of their genitals together
Speaker 1: in the name of better understanding their biology, I guess
Speaker 1: I guess it's cool, you know, all right, Well, so
Speaker 1: through this research, they actually found that different species of
Speaker 1: dolphins seem to have different interlocking shapes, if that makes sense,
Speaker 1: which seems to indicate that there's different levels of sex
Speaker 1: based competition. Where in some species they're very competitive, so
Speaker 1: the females are kind of have evolved a vagina that
Speaker 1: is able to thwart male insemination more, whereas other species
Speaker 1: they don't have those kinds of mechanisms. So it's really
Speaker 1: interesting to see how, you know, we think about animals
Speaker 1: competing maybe in terms of food, or competing against other species,
Speaker 1: or competing for a mate, but there's also competition involved
Speaker 1: when it comes down to basically who gets to decide
Speaker 1: um what you know, what goes on during reproduction and
Speaker 1: whose sperm you get to use. And they're they're even
Speaker 1: animals that will collect sperm from different males and you know,
Speaker 1: use which one is the strongest. And it's really it's
Speaker 1: really interesting and obviously also really sometimes disturbing when researchers
Speaker 1: have to pick through frozen, frozen dolphin wieners. Just the
Speaker 1: mental image I think is enough for me right now. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm you're lucky you only have a mental image in
Speaker 1: researching this, I found a slide show that was at
Speaker 1: like a lecture of just a bunch of different you
Speaker 1: like animal uterus is and I wish I hadn't seen that.
Speaker 1: I wish you hadn't seen it too. Thank you all.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Alright, So now this is your favorite topic, Molly.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about toad set balls, and I'm
Speaker 1: talking about not like toad uh testicles. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: big balls of toads all having a good time. Question Mark,
Speaker 1: you actually uh talked about this on a previous episode
Speaker 1: where I had you and I think on the Squid
Speaker 1: Games episode, right, Molly, Yes, that's right, and you were
Speaker 1: sort of saying you think that there are these uh
Speaker 1: toads or frogs that form these big sort of mosh
Speaker 1: pit balls of sexual activity. And indeed you're absolutely right. Uh.
Speaker 1: First one that we're going to talk about is the
Speaker 1: western toad, which is found all along the West of
Speaker 1: America's so that's Canada, the US, and Mexico in the
Speaker 1: western regions. It's this inconspicuous little green and brown toad.
Speaker 1: It grows about two to five inches long, which is
Speaker 1: six to thirteen centimeters. It's found in forests meadows and bogs,
Speaker 1: and it seems like a pretty vanilla toad. Again, doesn't
Speaker 1: seem that interesting when you're just looking at this little toad,
Speaker 1: But it's actually what is known as an explosive breeder,
Speaker 1: which means that they made in huge flash mobs during
Speaker 1: breeding season. So usually it happens right after it rains.
Speaker 1: They like to breed it in aquatic environments like ponds,
Speaker 1: calm rivers, or springs, and so like, when the conditions
Speaker 1: are right, when the mood is right, there's just this
Speaker 1: explosion of mating activity, which is complete chaos. I love it.
Speaker 1: I learned about mating balls, I think, um because I
Speaker 1: would just get really mad at like evolutionary psychology people,
Speaker 1: which is like, well it's used always for like men's
Speaker 1: rights type stuff. So there was all this stuff always
Speaker 1: about like well men have to like spread their seed
Speaker 1: to the most you know, people possible because that's like
Speaker 1: what nature does, blah blah blah. And then it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: guess what else happens in nature? Like a lady frog
Speaker 1: it's like a hundred dude frogs to collect all their sperm,
Speaker 1: or like a lady dolphins with all the dolphins and
Speaker 1: then like decide switch dolphin she wants Like they all
Speaker 1: used it to frame it as like male selection chooses everything,
Speaker 1: you know, and I was like, actually, it's all chaos.
Speaker 1: And also the idea even mammalian creatures would reflect like
Speaker 1: human sexual behavior. It's also just like not necessarily and
Speaker 1: also it's not that scientific, Like people are different from
Speaker 1: each other too. You know, some frogs want to pack
Speaker 1: all the frogs, and some frogs just wanna one frog
Speaker 1: at a time, and some frogs don't want to pack
Speaker 1: any frogs at all. You know, that's what that's what
Speaker 1: makes up life beautiful. They're not necessarily very picky about
Speaker 1: what they are trying to hump as we'll talk about soon.
Speaker 1: But no, I do completely agree with you. I get
Speaker 1: I get frustrated with pop evolutionary psychology. I studied both
Speaker 1: psychology and evolutionary biology, which I always say in my intro.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting is like I could by studying sort
Speaker 1: of the separate disciplines. Is like, there's very clear distinctions
Speaker 1: to me about what you can infer through evolutionary adaptations
Speaker 1: the path of evolution versus an individual psychology. Obviously, psychology
Speaker 1: in general, like our our brains in our physiology is
Speaker 1: a result of evolution. But to try to pin a
Speaker 1: thread from a specific behavior and wind it all the
Speaker 1: way back hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago
Speaker 1: to some path and evolution is extremely difficult. And anyone
Speaker 1: making that claim just suspicious and think it's also socialized.
Speaker 1: I think I think it's like even like there was
Speaker 1: some study I think it was Bonobo's, but just about
Speaker 1: how different tribes of monkeys acted had different behaviors and
Speaker 1: that were based around like what other tribes of money
Speaker 1: and so I think also it's like like people who
Speaker 1: are really into evopsych and just being like this is hardwired.
Speaker 1: This is how it is. It's like, well, it's also socialized,
Speaker 1: and like if you ignore how how much everyone is socialized,
Speaker 1: especially socialized into like sexual identity and roles and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and you're just like, you know, caveman have
Speaker 1: to hunt. Like also like the hunting and gathering thing
Speaker 1: isn't true. I just I'm this is my my platform.
Speaker 1: I'm big on this topic. You're preaching to the choir here.
Speaker 1: Monkeys and other apes do definitely have culture in in
Speaker 1: my humble opinion, based on how different different groups different
Speaker 1: troops of primates will have different behaviors, like they're specific
Speaker 1: types of tool use and communication methods that they'll use.
Speaker 1: Even different groups of like cetaceans which are whales and uh,
Speaker 1: dolphins will have like different dialects. So yeah, culture like
Speaker 1: socialization is really important in terms of behavior, which is
Speaker 1: true both in humans and in animals. It's always wild
Speaker 1: to me when people try to point to nature for
Speaker 1: some kind of like socially conservative norm because they very
Speaker 1: rarely know what nature is actually up to, which is
Speaker 1: some real freaky stuff. So um, which we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about now. So the next time like someone tries
Speaker 1: to say like, oh, this isn't natural or whatever, remember
Speaker 1: the western toad because because they like to form giant
Speaker 1: sex balls where they're all just trying to hump each other, uh, indiscriminately.
Speaker 1: So because they have this what's called an explosive breeding event,
Speaker 1: the males obviously are trying to find a female and
Speaker 1: they unfortunately don't have a mating call, so they have
Speaker 1: to be very active in trying to find a female.
Speaker 1: And as a friend of the show, Greg Polly, who
Speaker 1: have had on before to talk about herbs herpetology, who
Speaker 1: is a curator at the Natural History Museum of Los
Speaker 1: Angeles has described these male toad mating strategies like this quote.
Speaker 1: They basically jump on everything that seems reasonably toadlike. So
Speaker 1: the male toads have a high rate of um sort
Speaker 1: of misfires here, so they'll try to jump on clumps
Speaker 1: of mud, random garbage, other male toads. And actually male
Speaker 1: toads have a special chirp that they used to signal
Speaker 1: other males that like, hey, I don't actually have eggs
Speaker 1: for your bud. And this is the chirp which you
Speaker 1: can hear if you pick up one of these toads,
Speaker 1: which I don't recommend, but this is what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: So that is the call for let go of me.
Speaker 1: I do not have eggs. The way these big mating
Speaker 1: balls form is that competition for females is really fierce.
Speaker 1: As I said before, these toads aren't very bright when
Speaker 1: it comes to finding a female. So once someone finds
Speaker 1: a fe male, it can lead to this domino effect
Speaker 1: of other toads trying to jump on the bandwagon, and
Speaker 1: it just creates this mating ball which sounds like a
Speaker 1: real bad deal for the female. And I suppose it is,
Speaker 1: but females do have a choice in who they actually
Speaker 1: mate with. So the way that mating works is that
Speaker 1: the females will release a string of eggs that the
Speaker 1: males release sperm onto. So it's external fertilization. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: like with the salmon. And so they like squeeze out
Speaker 1: the string of eggs that are connected by this very
Speaker 1: thick mucus. So it's kind of like this conveyor belt.
Speaker 1: And the male attaches himself to the female by holding
Speaker 1: onto her, not so that they can have any internal insemination,
Speaker 1: it so that he is right there ready to fertilize
Speaker 1: the eggs as they come out, sort of like you
Speaker 1: know that scene and I Love Lucy where she's trying
Speaker 1: to get all the candies in her mouth, except that
Speaker 1: Lucy would be a male toad trying to inseminate the candies.
Speaker 1: Is this metaphor working, Oh, it's working perfectly for me.
Speaker 1: I'm following exactly. Great good. I'm a very good science educator.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So the female doesn't have to release her
Speaker 1: eggs if she doesn't want to for these males. So, uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes if she's nonplussed by the male, doesn't want to
Speaker 1: mate with them. She'll just scrape them off like against
Speaker 1: a tree root, uh, which is you know, sometimes what
Speaker 1: you gotta do and you've got a clinger. This uh
Speaker 1: is actually not the weirdest amphibian sex out there. There
Speaker 1: is a frog sex death cult in the Amazon, which
Speaker 1: is another free band name enjoy that everybody. The Amazonian
Speaker 1: rainforest frog Ranella proboscietta is a small, rusty, brown, own
Speaker 1: leaf shaped frog which is usually under an inch long.
Speaker 1: It's less than fifty five millimeters. Wow, I love a
Speaker 1: leaf shaped frog. Yeah, they're cute and they're kind of
Speaker 1: pretty and innocuous looking, which is why it's so shocking
Speaker 1: to find out that they are in a froggy sex
Speaker 1: death cult. Um, that's I really shouldn't do that. I
Speaker 1: need some water, but uh. The males, just like with
Speaker 1: the western toad, will form these mating balls, but they
Speaker 1: get so intense and heavy they will sometimes drown other
Speaker 1: frogs that are in this ball, including the females. But
Speaker 1: even worse is that it doesn't stop these little perverts
Speaker 1: from trying to successfully mate, so some of the frogs
Speaker 1: will actually squeeze the dead females like a tube of
Speaker 1: toothpaste to extract the eggs so he can fertilize them
Speaker 1: like an app lute little freak, which is just they
Speaker 1: look so innocent and then again boom, they're like little
Speaker 1: ed geans, little horrible monsters. I just think their neat
Speaker 1: seems cool. That is an interesting response to you know,
Speaker 1: frog sex death cult. But hey, you know, I guess
Speaker 1: all of nature should be appreciated in its uniqueness. Before
Speaker 1: we go, let's move on to the guests whose squawking
Speaker 1: mystery animal sound game? So last week, uh, I played
Speaker 1: a sound for you. You guys tried to guess it,
Speaker 1: as I do every week. Um, and the hint for
Speaker 1: last week was, if you think this is a bird
Speaker 1: or a dog, you're barking up the wrong tree. In fact,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be looking in trees at all, but in burrows.
Speaker 1: M So, Molly, do you have any guesses for who
Speaker 1: is making that sound? Um? Maybe like a mere cat?
Speaker 1: M hmmm, that's my guess, your cat or groundhog? That
Speaker 1: those are good guesses. Actually, I had some other listeners
Speaker 1: guess Prairie dogs and mere cats also got guesses like
Speaker 1: foxes or badgers. All really good guesses, but only one
Speaker 1: person got it right and that was Sarah in c
Speaker 1: with the answer barking geck So congratulations Sarah, good guessing
Speaker 1: everyone else. So barking geckos or pe garrulous like their
Speaker 1: name implies, like to bark, and they do not sound
Speaker 1: like echoes, do they. They kind of sound like some
Speaker 1: little little rodent or mammal. Oh yeah, I thought it
Speaker 1: was gonna be a little rodent. Yeah yeah, but yes
Speaker 1: they are geckos. They're found in southern Africa and arid regions,
Speaker 1: so in these kind of sandy areas where they dig
Speaker 1: these little sandy burrows, males will stick their heads out
Speaker 1: of burrows and bark trying to attract a female to
Speaker 1: his burrow. He is both he's a lazy coward and
Speaker 1: doesn't want to risk predation by going out to find
Speaker 1: a female himself, so he will make her come to
Speaker 1: him by making this little noise. But if the female
Speaker 1: likes him in mates with him, she will actually kick
Speaker 1: him out of his burrow and use it to raise
Speaker 1: their offspring, and he has to go off and dig
Speaker 1: his new burrows. So I guess you know, everything evens
Speaker 1: out in the end with these two. So now onto
Speaker 1: today's mystery animal sound here is the hint. This guy
Speaker 1: has a face that looks a bit like US President
Speaker 1: Chester A Arthur, but otherwise there's nothing American about him. So, Molly,
Speaker 1: do you have any guesses? Wow? No, something cool, something cool.
Speaker 1: That's correct, it's something cool. But for a more precise answer,
Speaker 1: tune in next week where we will reveal who is squawking.
Speaker 1: If you out there think you know, you can write
Speaker 1: to me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com
Speaker 1: and also on Twitter at Creature feet Pod that's f
Speaker 1: A T not f E T. That's something very different,
Speaker 1: and on Instagram a Creature Feature Pod. Molly, where can
Speaker 1: people find you? Thank you so much for joining me. Oh,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. You can find me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Molly Lambert and on Instagram Molly Underscore Lambert. And
Speaker 1: soon enough you'll be able to check out Heidi World.
Speaker 1: Exciting looking forward to that. What's what's Heidi World going
Speaker 1: to be about? It's about Heidi Flice, who was a
Speaker 1: Hollywood madam who almost brought Los Angeles down, um, and
Speaker 1: about why sex work needs to be decriminalized. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to that. Well, thanks for so much
Speaker 1: for having me, absolutely, thanks for thanks for coming on,
Speaker 1: and thank you to the Space Classics for their super
Speaker 1: awesome song Exo Alumina Creature features a production of I
Speaker 1: heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.