Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show, we're talking about the creatures
Speaker 1: of Fallout, from the rad roaches to the like weird
Speaker 1: naked mole rap mutants.
Speaker 2: Is this accurate?
Speaker 1: What this actually happened? What do we know about how
Speaker 1: animals might survive nuclear radiation? Discover this so more as
Speaker 1: we answer the age old question what kind of bogus.
Speaker 3: Pr campaign our cockroach is running?
Speaker 1: Joining me today is friend of the show, host of
Speaker 1: George Center the podcast Will Pull, also.
Speaker 3: Known as Christy Aamagucci Mane.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Thank you, Katie. I appreciate you having me again.
Speaker 2: Glad to be back and talking about this weird video
Speaker 2: game that my kids are obsessed with. I'm thrilled to
Speaker 2: discuss this. I've been I've been doing research, mainly through
Speaker 2: my children by asking them questions about the Fallout series
Speaker 2: in the world, and they are They've they've been like
Speaker 2: kind of side eyeing me, like why am I asking
Speaker 2: about all of this all of a sudden. So I'm
Speaker 2: looking forward to being educated so I can go back
Speaker 2: to them and sound like I know what the hell
Speaker 2: I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Yes, so, I mean using your kids for experiments is
Speaker 1: very foul out. But yeah, I've actually so, I've played
Speaker 1: Fallout New Vegas. I have not played the other games,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of them I do want to play,
Speaker 1: like the really the first ones, the super old one
Speaker 1: with the like sprites and isometrics that looks that looks
Speaker 1: like fun. And I have watched the show. I've got
Speaker 1: like two episodes left. So I'm actually not going to
Speaker 1: do any spoilers for either the show or the games.
Speaker 1: So if you are currently watching the show where you
Speaker 1: want to play the games, do not worry.
Speaker 3: There's no spoilers.
Speaker 1: Unless you would count like talking about the flora and
Speaker 1: fauna of the universe as a spoiler. But personally, I
Speaker 1: don't really consider it that we're just going to talk
Speaker 1: about like these animals that we see in the show
Speaker 1: and the games, and whether it actually makes sense for
Speaker 1: them to be that way, and what would have to
Speaker 1: happen for us to actually see these weird mutations in
Speaker 1: these monstrosities the series.
Speaker 2: I love Walton Goggins. He's probably my favorite creature from
Speaker 2: the series, so far that I have seen, so I
Speaker 2: don't know if he counts necessarily. I guess he's considered
Speaker 2: a ghoul, yes, And I don't know what the rules
Speaker 2: are in the universe of the video game that makes
Speaker 2: him a ghoul exactly, or why he is, how he
Speaker 2: kind of came to be the way he is. Yes,
Speaker 2: so it does he count. Are we going to be
Speaker 2: talking about gules in this series?
Speaker 1: I mean, I wasn't gonna go too in depth about
Speaker 1: it because that's sort of squarely in this science fiction
Speaker 1: region where it's like, when humans are exposed to radiation,
Speaker 1: really we just don't do very well. So the idea
Speaker 1: that happen, Yeah, the idea that so the the Gules
Speaker 1: are humans in the in the games and in the
Speaker 1: show that are exposed to radiation and instead of dying horribly,
Speaker 1: they kind of look like sort of like zombies, but
Speaker 1: they're still cognizant and they can live a really long time.
Speaker 1: They're essentially immortal, but then they can go kind of
Speaker 1: it's like they can go feral. So if they don't
Speaker 1: get enough of I don't know, it's unclear in the
Speaker 1: games why this happens, but in this show, I think
Speaker 1: it's like, if you don't get enough of a certain substance,
Speaker 1: you can basically lose your mind and turn into a zombies.
Speaker 2: So it's like the it's like the comic book fantasy
Speaker 2: version of what we wish would happen if we were
Speaker 2: exposed to nuclear Radiationally, yes, this is it's like Bruce Banner.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: In truth, there's not the levels of radiation one when
Speaker 1: be exposed to in sort of a post nuclear apocalypse situation,
Speaker 1: I don't think would improve your longevity. There's like some
Speaker 1: research in that into whether really really low doses of
Speaker 1: radiation can actually be good for you because it can
Speaker 1: kind of encourage anti oxidants in your body, like the
Speaker 1: production of these anti free radicals, and so in order
Speaker 1: to actually kind of combat the radiation, your body may
Speaker 1: also combat other disease and stuff. But it's it's the
Speaker 1: research on it is not super clear, which is why
Speaker 1: you should not like intentionally expose yourself to low levels
Speaker 1: of radiation because it could also just give you cancer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just a little too much of a good thing,
Speaker 2: is is uh Yeah, Yeah, it turns on a dime
Speaker 2: real quick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a it's not something to like it's
Speaker 1: not something to experiment with like a keto diet or
Speaker 1: you know, like I'm going to try cutting milk out
Speaker 1: of my diet or whatever. It's like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: try just a little bit of radiation to make see
Speaker 1: if it makes me immortal. It's probably not gonna work out.
Speaker 1: So that I.
Speaker 2: Feel like that's why people that fly a lot are
Speaker 2: probably doing with those body scanners.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you get.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there's just a little little dost morning dust
Speaker 2: every every time you fly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the first thing we're going to talk about is
Speaker 1: the I guess I don't know, probably people would argue
Speaker 1: this with me, but they seem like the most iconic
Speaker 1: creature of the Fallout franchise, the red roaches, these giant
Speaker 1: cockroaches that have been radiated, of course, falling neatly into
Speaker 1: the stereotype of roaches being the one thing that could
Speaker 1: survive a nuclear war. So I'm sure you've like heard that,
Speaker 1: like roaches would survive anything, they'd survive a nuclear war.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have heard that. That was like always like
Speaker 2: a cool factor, like alongside the fact that you could
Speaker 2: cut a roach's head off and it would survive, for
Speaker 2: like it would it would keep on living, it would
Speaker 2: starve to death essentially like it, it would keep functioning,
Speaker 2: but just wouldn't have the capacity to eat. So, yes,
Speaker 2: that that was that was what like twinkies and roaches
Speaker 2: were the only things that would like survive a nuclear
Speaker 2: holocaust basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is not necessarily true. I mean that Actually
Speaker 1: the head thing is more true.
Speaker 3: In terms of, like it depends on how much of the.
Speaker 1: Head you cut off, right, like if you cut off
Speaker 1: so like there's parts of the head you can cut
Speaker 1: off and the roach will still somewhat function until obviously
Speaker 1: it can no longer survive. But the same is actually
Speaker 1: somewhat true of chickens. If you accidentally missed their basically
Speaker 1: the part of the the the brain stem, they can theoretically,
Speaker 1: and in one instance in real life survive. There was
Speaker 1: one chicken that got its head cut off and it
Speaker 1: but the chopping missed a large section of its brain stem.
Speaker 1: So it's still like chickened around just without off and
Speaker 1: its owner tried to like feed it by using a
Speaker 1: eye dropper to put food and water down its neck hole.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's not great, but the point is so with roaches, yeah,
Speaker 1: they can survive a lot. They're very hearty, right, But
Speaker 1: in terms of radiation, while it's true that they can
Speaker 1: survive more radiation than a human, they're a weird like
Speaker 1: poster bug for surviving nuclear falloup because they are by
Speaker 1: far not the most impressive bug. They're not actually that
Speaker 1: great at surviving radiation. They are great at exploiting human resources.
Speaker 1: They can even like karate chop parasitoid wasps that try
Speaker 1: to attack them. So, I mean, I don't love roaches
Speaker 1: because I don't want them in my house, but I
Speaker 1: really admire I admire their spirit. But yeah, in terms
Speaker 1: of radiation, they're not actually that amazing. So there's this
Speaker 1: great article called cockroaches and Radiation by Australian science communicator
Speaker 1: doctor Carl Kruzelnikki in ABC's Science that goes into how
Speaker 1: various insects can survive radiation. If you're interested, i'll have
Speaker 1: a link to it in the show notes. They are
Speaker 1: heardier than humans when it comes to radiation. So humans
Speaker 1: can survive about one hundred to two hundred rads. You
Speaker 1: will probably get radiation sickness from that amount, but it's
Speaker 1: not fatal. Radiation illness gets progressively worse and more fatal
Speaker 1: as you go from two hundred to one thousand rads,
Speaker 1: and at a thousand rads you're doomed pretty much to
Speaker 1: die in a horrible way. And this is that too,
Speaker 1: you're very likely to die. But it just gets progressively
Speaker 1: more and more bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The like I've never like calling them rads is like, yeah,
Speaker 2: like it's it's the funnest sounding way to get poisoned
Speaker 2: by something measuring something that's killing you. It's like, it's,
Speaker 2: uh like, I want, like exactly, like want to increase
Speaker 2: the amount of rads on being exposed to. No, the
Speaker 2: heck you do not. Yeah, I just it's it's hard
Speaker 2: to uh like, I've never heard that measurement before. So
Speaker 2: that's the measurement of radiation, Yes, radiation, Okay, units of radiation.
Speaker 2: I did not know that they were called rads. That's
Speaker 2: the first time that I've I've been exposed, well, no
Speaker 2: pun intended exposed to that unit of measurement.
Speaker 3: They're not typically exposed to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, so so roaches aren't the best
Speaker 2: at this. Does does the paper talk about what insect
Speaker 2: they have found to be the the most hearty? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And it comes to being exposed to this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so just for a comparison humans, the humans survival
Speaker 1: like up to around two hundred rads and we're basically
Speaker 1: okay other than that, like we can't survive higher, but
Speaker 1: it gets more less and survivable the higher it goes,
Speaker 1: until like at a thousand, it's like you're definitely dead.
Speaker 1: But even at four hundred you may very likely die
Speaker 1: at the very least, it's not going to be good.
Speaker 1: But cockroaches can survive up to six thousand rats, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, like at least three times that of humans,
Speaker 1: although after about a thousand they become infertile, so that's
Speaker 1: not great for continuing your cockroach lineage. So yeah, better
Speaker 1: than humans. But parasitoid wasps so we love to talk
Speaker 1: about these. I mentioned them earlier as getting karate chopped
Speaker 1: by cockroaches. So parasitoid wasps are wasps often quite small,
Speaker 1: that will lay their eggs inside or on top of
Speaker 1: their prey, their victims, and when the eggs hatch, the
Speaker 1: larvae either eats the victim from the inside out or
Speaker 1: it like sucks their juices from on.
Speaker 3: Top of them.
Speaker 1: They're called parasitoids because they're not only parasites, but they
Speaker 1: actually end up killing their victims, so they suck them
Speaker 1: completely dry.
Speaker 2: And one of the first episodes I was on, we
Speaker 2: talked about, uh, like the zombie snail. Yes, like like
Speaker 2: that that was just like a normal parasite, right Like,
Speaker 2: I feel like we've talked about like almost every episode
Speaker 2: I've been on, there's been some version of a parasitoid wasp.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of these these things, right, like, like
Speaker 2: the wasp. I feel like the wasp is like the
Speaker 2: the like land insect version of a crab, like everything
Speaker 2: like it just like everything ends up being a wasp
Speaker 2: at some point like that, I like, aren't ants basically
Speaker 2: like wingless wasps?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know they're they're uh, they're related
Speaker 1: to wasps distantly, but I wouldn't necessarily describe them as
Speaker 1: wingless wasps.
Speaker 2: No, Okay, Okay, I feel like I feel like there's
Speaker 2: a lot more insects that I thought were completely separate
Speaker 2: from wasps that it just turns out there another version.
Speaker 1: I see, Yeah, there's a velvet ant is actually a
Speaker 1: type of wasp.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's okay, okay, maybe that's yeah, Maybe that's what
Speaker 2: I'm thinking.
Speaker 1: Of, But a velvet ant is actually not an ant
Speaker 1: at all. It's it's just it is just straight up
Speaker 1: a species.
Speaker 2: Of wasp those misnomers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So the one you're talking about that we
Speaker 1: talked when when I had you on the show earlier
Speaker 1: is called leucochloridium. It's a parasitic flatworm that basically infects snails,
Speaker 1: turns them into a you know, a yeah, raving brute sack.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so for UH, in that case, I think
Speaker 1: the uh snail will accidentally ingest the parasite. In the
Speaker 1: case of these uh parasitoid wasps, the wasp will lay
Speaker 1: the eggs in or on the animals. So these parasitoid wasps,
Speaker 1: one of the examples being the haber break On parasitoid wasp,
Speaker 1: which is a teeny tiny wasp actually, which can be
Speaker 1: like the size of an ant, can survive nearly one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty thousand rads, who although they were sterilized
Speaker 1: around four thousand rads, So one hundred and sixty thousand
Speaker 1: that's like, you know, compared to humans, where by around
Speaker 1: four hundred rads, things are looking pretty grim. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean obviously being sterilized is not great, but still
Speaker 1: it's four thousand rads at which they are sterilized, so
Speaker 1: that's still quite a big dose of radiation. In fact,
Speaker 1: irradiated wasps often lived longer than non irradiated wasps, which
Speaker 1: is the idea was that maybe the irradiation made them
Speaker 1: a little more act, which may have made them live
Speaker 1: a little longer through some kind of like acquired fitness
Speaker 1: or increased activity like you'd given them. Essentially, wasp coffee,
Speaker 1: which is radiation, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are fitter, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if they're radiated and they live longer, but their reproductive
Speaker 1: success is worse, that doesn't make it better for them.
Speaker 1: But essentially radiations seem to be like parasitoid wasp coffee.
Speaker 2: I can already envision an Instagram ad for like lightly
Speaker 2: radiated coffee as like a new like grift, you know,
Speaker 2: like like you know how you know how there's these
Speaker 2: like trends in the health and wellness community or like
Speaker 2: suddenly suddenly everybody needs to do Uh, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think of one. Now, coffee aenemas or
Speaker 2: activated charcoal or uh, you know whatever whatever like their current.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. Uh, you know, uh get sun in between
Speaker 2: your butt cheeks, you know, uh that that type of
Speaker 2: thing I could I could imagine there being like a
Speaker 2: like you were saying, like light doses of radiation have
Speaker 2: been found to free up antioxidants. Will we radiate our
Speaker 2: coffee slightly? Yeah, and give you a healthy dose each morning?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a reason that we do things like our cts,
Speaker 1: randomized controlled trials and health and safety testing because you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, the Fallout series is a great, uh a
Speaker 1: great way to look at what happens when we experiment
Speaker 1: wildly with things without any concern for users aation, sure so,
Speaker 1: uh but yeah, the the it is for these wa right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're a parasitoid wasps, parasitoid wasp, things are looking
Speaker 1: pretty good for you in terms of nuclear fallout. So
Speaker 1: you know, if I just find it strange that cockroaches
Speaker 1: are the famous ones, like these are the ones that
Speaker 1: would survive. Like, actually, parasitoid wasps are much more likely.
Speaker 1: First of all, they're smaller, so they require less nutrition
Speaker 1: than a cockroach. And fruitflies are also extremely can sustain
Speaker 1: a good amount of radiation, so there would be conceivably
Speaker 1: some other insects for the parasitoid wasp to feed on.
Speaker 1: So as long as some vegetation survives, right, some sources
Speaker 1: of food, for like a fruit fly, parasitoid wasps could
Speaker 1: survive and prey on the fruit fly, right, So you
Speaker 1: could have like a little some mini ecosystems of fruit
Speaker 1: flies and other insects parasitoid wasps. So I feel like
Speaker 1: if I was if I was a game developer or
Speaker 1: writer for the show, you can hire me, by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm I've got room in my skalededule to talk about
Speaker 1: parasitoid wasps with you. I would have something like this
Speaker 1: where it's like, sure, make it huge and menacing and
Speaker 1: legs and humans. That would be really fun. It's not,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know that there would be evolutionary
Speaker 1: pressure to make things big and this we'll actually talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2: That's actually one of the main questions I have is like,
Speaker 2: is there any real basis for the inclination to make
Speaker 2: these animals big. That's a great question from nuclear nuclear fallout,
Speaker 2: So we would not have to get into it right now,
Speaker 2: but well.
Speaker 1: You know, we will very very shortly I just want
Speaker 1: to say that I would, you know, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to have a scene where a mutated parasitoid wasp lays
Speaker 1: eggs in you and then you they burst out of
Speaker 1: you like your pinata full of baby wasps.
Speaker 2: I think that would both.
Speaker 1: Be somewhat based in science but also have some of
Speaker 1: the fun you know science fiction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, body horror.
Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly, just free ideas you know out there for
Speaker 1: you for all the Hollywood execs listening to this show
Speaker 1: about evolutionary biology. Yes, but we're gonna take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we get back, we are going to
Speaker 1: answer that question of of whether it would really be
Speaker 1: better for animals to get bigger after nuclear war? Right?
Speaker 3: Is this something likely to happen?
Speaker 1: Are we just going to get giant axe a Lotel's giant.
Speaker 3: Weird bears and stuff? So we will be right back.
Speaker 1: So the TV show, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the games are set roughly two hundred years after the
Speaker 1: bombs drop. So would this be enough time for these
Speaker 1: huge evolutionary changes to take place? Would radiation speed up
Speaker 1: evolution this much? Now I know that there's like in
Speaker 1: Fallout lore, without getting into spoilers, there's stuff other than
Speaker 1: radiation driving some of the mutations in people and animals.
Speaker 1: So it's not all just like natural selection and radiation.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about this idea because like, I don't
Speaker 1: think this is too much of a spoiler, but in
Speaker 1: the show, it's like, explain that these cockroaches, right, they
Speaker 1: got really big to feed on, like bigger prey, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, let's talk about whether this would happen or
Speaker 1: whether things could evolve that quickly. I mean, the thing
Speaker 1: that is quasi true is that radiation does increase the
Speaker 1: rate of genetic mutations. Usually that's not a good thing, right, Like,
Speaker 1: usually that's just cancer or an unviable pregnancy. I think
Speaker 1: two hundred years is a little bit short of a
Speaker 1: time span for things to change so dramatically. Sure, things
Speaker 1: could get a little bigger or a little smaller in
Speaker 1: that amount of time you could have. I mean there
Speaker 1: are some like we can't observe some evolutionary changes within
Speaker 1: our lifetimes, right, Like you know the famous example of
Speaker 1: like beak shape in Darwin's finches, Right Like, they will
Speaker 1: change over seasons in terms of which kinds of seeds
Speaker 1: are more available, So you can sometimes get these observable
Speaker 1: changes within shorter periods of time, within say two hundred years, Yes,
Speaker 1: you could get observable evolutionary changes, but would you get
Speaker 1: giant rad roaches like huge bugs?
Speaker 3: Would this happen?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: And it also it also kind of depends on how
Speaker 2: short the generations are from animal to animal, right, Like
Speaker 2: the gestation period for like large land mammals is a
Speaker 2: lot longer than it is for fruitflies. Yes, so the
Speaker 2: fruit fruitflies, you know, they have like a lifespan of
Speaker 2: three days in some of them, some of the species,
Speaker 2: I think, so like that you would in those two
Speaker 2: hundred years, you would have thousands and thousands of generations
Speaker 2: of fruitflies that could evolve, you know, cool lasers that
Speaker 2: shoot out of their foreheads versus versus, like a giant
Speaker 2: bear or a giant salamander.
Speaker 3: No, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Giant lasers are more likely to evolve out of insects
Speaker 1: than like a there No, but that is correct. Like
Speaker 1: the smaller and more prolific the well, I guess it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be small, but generally speaking, the more
Speaker 1: prolific an animal is, the more fagundity, and the shorter
Speaker 1: the lifespan, the quicker the evolution will be if such
Speaker 1: if evolutionary pressures exist on it. So a great example
Speaker 1: is like viruses in bacteria, they evolve very rapidly because
Speaker 1: the pressure is there on them to evolve. They're in
Speaker 1: a very fast paced arms race with our immune systems,
Speaker 1: and they are they reproduce and replicate at incredible speeds,
Speaker 1: an incredible rate. So we see evolution happen in viruses
Speaker 1: and bacteria in real time, right like it happens within
Speaker 1: a year. That's why we have like you know, yearly
Speaker 1: flow mutants that give us different versions of the flu
Speaker 1: covid mutates, you know, and so we have to like
Speaker 1: have updates on vaccines. So you know, we do see
Speaker 1: rapid evolution in in things like bacteria and viruses and
Speaker 1: you know, and so like in insects, you you can
Speaker 1: see perhaps more rapid evolution. I would say that in
Speaker 1: order for us to get big bugs, we need to
Speaker 1: consider a few things. So, like insects did used to
Speaker 1: be really big, including not only insects, but also just
Speaker 1: arthropods in general during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, with
Speaker 1: the kind of famous examples of the giant dragonfly, like
Speaker 1: insect that had an over two foot wing span, which
Speaker 1: is around seventy serat that yeah.
Speaker 2: That is I can't I can't picture something that big. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in the insect form flying around my head.
Speaker 3: Like I just eagle sized dragonfly.
Speaker 2: Yeah that that is terrifying and fascinating at the same time.
Speaker 2: Like yeah it uh oh man, the stuff of nightmares, nightmares.
Speaker 2: I would love what Yeah, I would be. I would
Speaker 2: be like I would be so morbidly curious. I would
Speaker 2: get killed by one because I imagine they have like
Speaker 2: giant pinchers, like their teeth or something.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, they probably would go after larger prey.
Speaker 1: I don't think human size though, I mean no.
Speaker 2: No, no, probably, and I would just get Maybe I
Speaker 2: would just lose a finger or something.
Speaker 3: You know, potentially.
Speaker 1: But okay, quick question, big bug, which one, if you
Speaker 1: could choose, which one would you have as a pet?
Speaker 2: Okay, uh, probably a roly poly c. It would be
Speaker 2: like a giant insect armadillo, you know, and like all
Speaker 2: those all this tiny little uh some people call him pill.
Speaker 2: I guess I always knew him as roly Polis. Probably
Speaker 2: roly Polis. Those are always my favorite bugs to play with,
Speaker 2: like get in the yard.
Speaker 1: You know what's fun about that is they are terrestrial
Speaker 1: isopods and there are actually marine isopods which are very
Speaker 1: closely related.
Speaker 2: That do get right. Yeah, yeah, could.
Speaker 1: Technically have a giant roly poly as a pet if
Speaker 1: you're willing to kind of go deep diving in the ocean.
Speaker 2: That is. That is very true. Uh, And they are
Speaker 2: the giant isopods that I have seen are like they
Speaker 2: don't look real. They don't look real like I've seen.
Speaker 2: There is a restaurant in in I believe, uh Japan
Speaker 2: that does isopod ramen uh and get giant isopod ramen
Speaker 2: if you if you google this, like it's real.
Speaker 3: It's real giant i pods that they use.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh man, it's like that.
Speaker 1: It's like those scenes in Emperor's New Groove where they're
Speaker 1: eating the giant isopods.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I was I said Japan, But taype A
Speaker 2: is the the place that they have it. Uh it
Speaker 2: is uh absolutely Like yeah, it's like the size, it's
Speaker 2: bigger than the bowl. Yeah, it's bigger than the bowl
Speaker 2: that they serve it in. Well it's a sweet yeah,
Speaker 2: sorry not to not to take it to like.
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not like a vegetarian, so I would
Speaker 1: be a hypocrite if I were not to condone the eating.
Speaker 2: I just don't think. I don't think I could eat
Speaker 2: like I've never I've had like chocolate covered ants before,
Speaker 2: and they just don't they just don't taste like anything.
Speaker 2: Kind of yeah, exactly, But but I don't know that
Speaker 2: I could do that.
Speaker 1: We're to socialized to not see insects as food. It's
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's I think it's a problem.
Speaker 1: I'm very pro bug eating. Anyways, the let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about these giant bugs. How do they get so big?
Speaker 1: One of the reasons was the high oxygen levels that
Speaker 1: allowed large insects to breed through spiracles, which are tiny
Speaker 1: air channels distributed throughout their bodies that would help the
Speaker 1: dispersal of oxygen. And so you really want a very
Speaker 1: high concentration of oxygen in order for that to sustain
Speaker 1: a large insect body. But another thing is that birds.
Speaker 1: There weren't really birds dominating at this time, and so
Speaker 1: as birds became more dominant, they became predators and competitors
Speaker 1: with these insects, and they out competed them and so
Speaker 1: insects got real small, which sounds counterintuitive, right, Like, well,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're smaller, doesn't that make you more
Speaker 1: easily grabbed? Not necessarily, right, Like, the smaller you are,
Speaker 1: the faster, more nimble you are, the harder it is
Speaker 1: to catch you, Like what would be easier to catch
Speaker 1: like a pigeon or a hummingbird. Like a pigeon, it's
Speaker 1: much easier to grab.
Speaker 2: And all it ever matters is it's not about the
Speaker 2: size of the species. Is just passing the genetics. That's it.
Speaker 2: That's all that ever matters. So whatever whatever traits you
Speaker 2: can evolve to help you avoid predation is the thing
Speaker 2: that is going to be propagated throughout the speci.
Speaker 1: Like if you live one hundred years and you're built
Speaker 1: like a tank, but you have like one offspring in
Speaker 1: your lifespan and you require a lot of food, you
Speaker 1: may be less likely to survive than like a mayfly
Speaker 1: that lives a day and has one hundred.
Speaker 2: Offspring yep, exactly right.
Speaker 1: Basically, what you want for giant bugs is high oxygen
Speaker 1: levels and no birds, which is like a nightmare for
Speaker 1: me because I love birds and I hate oxygen. I'm
Speaker 1: neutral about oxygen.
Speaker 3: It's good. I like it.
Speaker 1: I like to breathe it. So what would happen after
Speaker 1: a nuke or a bunch of nukes. I'm not like
Speaker 1: a doomsday expert. One of the things I do know, though,
Speaker 1: is the nuclear winter is one of the most feared outcomes.
Speaker 1: That is, when smoking debris from the bombs and resulting
Speaker 1: destruction of like a bunch of buildings in Earth and
Speaker 1: everything would kind of form these huge clouds kind of
Speaker 1: like after a volcanic eruption, and would cover the Earth,
Speaker 1: blocking out sunlight and causing a huge drop in temperature,
Speaker 1: and would last for like years. Like there's different app
Speaker 1: Like I've seen estimations from like ten years to fifty years,
Speaker 1: ten years, Like I don't know, let's just go with
Speaker 1: ten years, right, to be as you know, optimistic as.
Speaker 3: Possible, because I love altimism.
Speaker 1: Sure, so right, it would this kind of like this
Speaker 1: nuclear winter would potentially kill off a lot of vegetation
Speaker 1: because plants need photosynthesis, and so if you're blocking out
Speaker 1: the sun, you may kill off a large portion of plants.
Speaker 1: This would lower oxygen levels and decrease resources, and would
Speaker 1: be likely to kill off larger animals so really it
Speaker 1: would be the tiny insects or even microscopic animals like
Speaker 1: tartar grades or non animals like bacteria that would be
Speaker 1: most likely to survive in this circumstance. And it seems
Speaker 1: like evolutionary pressures would actually drive animals and organisms to
Speaker 1: be more small and require less nutrition rather than being big.
Speaker 2: And this is how this is also the nuclear version.
Speaker 2: This is how you get Cormac McCarthy's the road, right, like.
Speaker 1: The eaten babies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like this is how you get that that
Speaker 2: result with a nuclear winter. And this is what this
Speaker 2: is essentially what like did in most of the large dinosaurs, right.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah exactly, there was a there was a
Speaker 1: meteor strike and then all the debris and just a
Speaker 1: huge dip in nutrition and rapid climate change that meant
Speaker 1: that they could not get their nutritional needs met. However,
Speaker 1: uh you know, the sort of ancestors to mammals survived.
Speaker 1: So and also birds survived, and birds are dinosaurs. They
Speaker 1: are just the dinosaurs that are left and they're hilarious
Speaker 1: and adorable. Uh so yeah, exactly, So a lot of
Speaker 1: things did survive in that case. And so I do
Speaker 1: think that following a nuclear winter, even though I cannot
Speaker 1: stress enough.
Speaker 3: That would be really bad.
Speaker 1: Because like, the thing that I care about is I.
Speaker 2: Don't want to trying to avoid that people.
Speaker 1: I don't want millions of people, including myself, to suffer
Speaker 1: and die.
Speaker 3: That's not good.
Speaker 2: How I don't want to eat babies. I don't eat Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean like jelly babies, you know, the like British.
Speaker 2: I'd wait, wait, what we'll hold on. I do not
Speaker 2: know what a jelly.
Speaker 1: It's like a sour pouch kid without the good flavor.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's not candy in the shape of a baby.
Speaker 1: It is candy in.
Speaker 3: The shape of a baby. A jelly.
Speaker 2: Oh why would you make that as a candy? What
Speaker 2: is that?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, we're gonna take this candy and put
Speaker 1: look lo, it'll bye billy, a little bye billy.
Speaker 3: You can you eat that? Will?
Speaker 2: All right? I don't want something inside of me. I
Speaker 2: don't want to to awaken anything.
Speaker 1: So, uh, you know, I do think that there would
Speaker 1: be a good amount of things, maybe even including people,
Speaker 1: that could survive this. It would be awful, uh, no
Speaker 1: mistake about it. But so what would happen after nuclear
Speaker 1: winter dissipates? Right, because say it takes ten years, a
Speaker 1: lot of things die off, a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: you'd probably awful. But after that ten years, what could
Speaker 1: happen would be with the sun and with a lot
Speaker 1: of megafauna maybe dying off, like being eaten or dying
Speaker 1: of starvation, you may actually have a period of time
Speaker 1: where a lot of plant growth could bounce back. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm not no stradomis in terms of nuclear war, so
Speaker 1: this might not happen, but like you could conceivably have
Speaker 1: like it might take hundreds, if not thousands of years,
Speaker 1: or if not hundreds of thousands of years, you may
Speaker 1: actually have a new carboniferous period where you have a
Speaker 1: bunch of plant life and not a lot of large
Speaker 1: animals to be eating the plants, and maybe even not
Speaker 1: a lot of birds to be eating the insects. And
Speaker 1: so I could imagine a situation in which you have
Speaker 1: the planet does recover in a way. Maybe humans don't,
Speaker 1: maybe large mammals don't. Maybe you have a huge die
Speaker 1: off of a bunch of species, But then I would
Speaker 1: expect insects and plants to eventually make a comeback. And
Speaker 1: in that case, yeah, you could have giant bug I
Speaker 1: just don't know that we'd be around to see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it uh it based on what you said about
Speaker 2: the radiation levels and stuff. I don't I don't know
Speaker 2: that we would we would we would be able to
Speaker 2: hang with all the other the other creatures are around
Speaker 2: there and the the the oxygen levels that you're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's possible, right, like I I it
Speaker 1: is strictly speaking possible that a small amount of humans
Speaker 1: could survive, and especially if you're in a region that's
Speaker 1: like not you know, completely irradiated, right, Like if we
Speaker 1: can dive around two hundred rads and there are if
Speaker 1: there are areas where it like falls below that, right,
Speaker 1: and I think it's possible for humanity to survive, Like,
Speaker 1: would we survive thousands or hundreds of thousands of years
Speaker 1: after that by the time that you have like maybe
Speaker 1: a new carboniferous period, I don't know. Maybe.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean that's where the fallout shelters come in, right,
Speaker 2: right exactly, So that's if we can survive underground and
Speaker 2: these these uh these shelters, then then maybe we could stick.
Speaker 1: It's wonderful, not suspicious at all. Shelters where that ever happens. Uh.
Speaker 1: All right, So we are going to take a quick
Speaker 1: break and then we're going to talk about a critter
Speaker 1: from the show that I think is kind of the
Speaker 1: most spectacular one, which is the Goldper, which is basically
Speaker 1: a giant axe a lottle with a bunch of fingers
Speaker 1: for teeth. And we will talk about it when we
Speaker 1: get back from the break. So yeah, one of the
Speaker 1: I guess the most fun monstrosities in the show is
Speaker 1: the called this golper. It's a giant axe a lottle
Speaker 1: and it's got like hundreds of fingers lining its mouth
Speaker 1: and throat that it uses I guess kind of as
Speaker 1: as teeth.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, Like they did a great job, fantastic yeah. Uh,
Speaker 2: the like the when when when it opens its mouth
Speaker 2: like like they did. They did a fantastic job depicting
Speaker 2: that thing. Yes, it was horrifying looking. Uh. And I
Speaker 2: love the axe a lottle like that that. It's one
Speaker 2: of the cutest animals in existence and they did such
Speaker 2: a good job making it a nightmare.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I love ACX lottels. They're adorable. They are really
Speaker 1: interesting as well. And I uh, you know, when I'm
Speaker 1: talking about my skepticism about whether this is accurate. I
Speaker 1: want to emphasize I still really love the show. I
Speaker 1: don't think this is a flaw of the show. I
Speaker 1: think it's okay to get weird and creative with things.
Speaker 3: And have all out. Is not meant to be as scientific.
Speaker 1: Yeah, picture, it's not meant to be like this is
Speaker 1: exactly what would happen. It's meant to be fun, entertaining,
Speaker 1: and you know, have some interesting philosophical ideas.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 1: So I am having fun and being entertained, So it's
Speaker 1: doing its job. But let's talk about this giant ax
Speaker 1: a Lottel so would like we've already talked about how
Speaker 1: the evolutionary pressures following the immense destruction of a nuclear
Speaker 1: apocalypse would probably not favor larger animals in the short run,
Speaker 1: right like in the few hundred years following that, Like,
Speaker 1: being big means having higher nutritional demands, unless your metabolism
Speaker 1: is really really slow, in which case you would not
Speaker 1: be moving around as fast as this thing is depicted
Speaker 1: as moving in the show. So like, you could potentially
Speaker 1: be a large animal but have a really slow metabolism
Speaker 1: so you don't require a lot of food very quickly,
Speaker 1: and that might be a good survival technique. Like the
Speaker 1: Greenland shark is this huge shark, but it's so slow
Speaker 1: and it has a really slow metabolism and it Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it could survive, but the at this like very
Speaker 1: like vicious fast predator of the ax Lottle.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical. The fingers in the mouth, let's talk about
Speaker 1: those human fingers in on the axe Lottle's mouth. Maybe
Speaker 1: not exactly scientifically accurate, but I love this so much
Speaker 1: because it actually reminds me of of penguin mouths. Have
Speaker 1: you ever looked straight down the mouth of a penguin?
Speaker 2: Do they have like all the turned in like kind
Speaker 2: of spikes, those spiky mouths. Yeah, I saw. I saw
Speaker 2: the I saw an image of the inside of a
Speaker 2: leatherback turtles same thing, yes as well. Yeah, yeah, they
Speaker 2: are absolute nightmares.
Speaker 1: It's like these leatherback turtle you know, see turtles, leather
Speaker 1: back turtles, penguins adorable, you know, you want to They're
Speaker 1: like the stars of a Pixar movie, and then you
Speaker 1: look in their mouths and you're looking into a circle
Speaker 1: of hell. Yes, it's it's actually quite devious because these
Speaker 1: mouths are designed to allow fish to enter in one way,
Speaker 1: but like road spikes, not be able to get out
Speaker 1: the other way. You know, like you go to a
Speaker 1: parking lot and they have like the spikes that don't
Speaker 1: allow you to back up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the it's the hotel California.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: You can check in, but you can never leave exactly.
Speaker 1: And it smells like fish, yes, so yeah, no exactly.
Speaker 1: So I actually really appreciate because I feel like these fingers,
Speaker 1: the way that the show portrayed them is that they're
Speaker 1: like keeping stuff from coming back out, so it like
Speaker 1: takes a lot of force to actually pull anything back out. Also,
Speaker 1: using a an ax lottel as this like mutant is
Speaker 1: I think a smart choice. Again, I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: I think that evolution would favor really huge animals in
Speaker 1: this period of time, But salamanders can get really big.
Speaker 1: There is a species of salamanders, the South China giant salamander,
Speaker 1: who can grow to be nearly six feet long. It's like,
Speaker 1: when I learned about this, I thought it was fake.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is no, this is a photoshop,
Speaker 1: This isn't real. If there was a giant salamander. I
Speaker 1: would have already heard about this. This is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like when I was a teenager or
Speaker 1: in college or something, I was like young enough to
Speaker 1: have never seen this, but also old enough to be like,
Speaker 1: I would know about this if it existed, right, Like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like fantastical creature.
Speaker 3: Why wouldn't anyone have told me? But yeah, it's this.
Speaker 1: It's a huge salamander and they exist and they're amazing looking,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, it's like I think technically an axe
Speaker 1: lottel could get to be huge like this. And also
Speaker 1: axe lottls are an interesting pick for this for the
Speaker 1: reason that they can regenerate their limbs, so they and
Speaker 1: axi lottels, by the way, are basically the same as salamanders,
Speaker 1: except that axi lottels are neotonous, meaning that they retain
Speaker 1: the juvenile traits of a salamander. A salamander goes through
Speaker 1: a metamorphosis and it has a juvenile form, and then
Speaker 1: it metamorphosizes into an adult form, and that adult form
Speaker 1: can either be aquatic, semi aquatic, or semi terrestrial.
Speaker 3: The axi lottel is.
Speaker 1: Permanently retaining those juvenile traits throughout its whole life. You
Speaker 1: can actually inject an axi lottle with iodide and it
Speaker 1: will force it to transform into basically a salamander, but
Speaker 1: naturally they do not change. And it's actually they're kind
Speaker 1: of like the dog, like a dog is to a wolf,
Speaker 1: as a axi lottl is to a salamander. Although axi
Speaker 1: lottels were not domesticated in the same way that dogs were,
Speaker 1: dog retain a lot of like puppy like traits that
Speaker 1: wolves have, like the floppy ears, the friendliness, the playfulness,
Speaker 1: the barking. Those are all traits that wolf puppies have,
Speaker 1: but wolf adults do not. So dogs are kind of
Speaker 1: like neotonous versions of wolves, uh, and they retain that
Speaker 1: throughout their whole lives. And in the same way, axe
Speaker 1: lottels are the juvenile form of salamanders, but in that species,
Speaker 1: in axe lottles, they retain that those characteristics.
Speaker 2: I love salamanders absolutely, They're like they're like gummy lizards.
Speaker 2: I love them, you know. It's they're they're like they
Speaker 2: look almost like translucent. Sometimes like they they look like
Speaker 2: like there should be instead of gummy worms and gummy bears,
Speaker 2: there should be gummy salamanders, like as a candy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then I feel bad eating them.
Speaker 2: I guess. Yeah, i'd feel worse about the salamanders than
Speaker 2: the jelly babies. Yeah, probably, but that I absolutely love
Speaker 2: love saladmanders. They come in all sorts of really rad
Speaker 2: looking colors.
Speaker 1: Too, designs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, really cool.
Speaker 1: It is important some salamanders will have like a skin toxin,
Speaker 1: so don't cuddle random salamanders. They can also lick one, Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't lick one. Don't cuddle them. Also, even if they
Speaker 1: are harmless, sometimes like handling them can be harmful for them.
Speaker 2: But they absorb stuff through their skins a lot of
Speaker 2: their environments, so if you have like chemicals or stuff
Speaker 2: on your hand that you can.
Speaker 1: You can exactly exactly. But I also love them. And
Speaker 1: if you like see one and you want to just
Speaker 1: like hang out with it and be like, hey, bud,
Speaker 1: how's it going? Nothing wrong with that making friends with
Speaker 1: the salamander. So yeah, I do really love I love
Speaker 1: this creature. I don't think it would happen right, like
Speaker 1: I've said, with a lot of this stuff, but man,
Speaker 1: i'd love the use of the ax lottel in this design,
Speaker 1: and I do.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: I think it's like it's something that it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the human fingers, And I know I'm not gonna do spoilers,
Speaker 1: but I know there's like an explanation for it kind
Speaker 1: of that's implied at some point in the show, but
Speaker 1: again not very likely, but still really cool. And I
Speaker 1: love that they kind of are like the design of
Speaker 1: the denticles that you see in penguins and sea turtles
Speaker 1: and yeah turtles.
Speaker 2: Yeah it uh Like at the I think you just
Speaker 2: nailed it. Like at the end of like any and
Speaker 2: all discussion you can have about like these animals or
Speaker 2: any design from the show, is it cool? Yes, then
Speaker 2: then that's all that matters. Like that that, like I
Speaker 2: get you want to find like follow some kind of logic,
Speaker 2: is like here's the here's the rules to the universe.
Speaker 2: This is what's causing all of these cool designs. But
Speaker 2: at the end of it, like take a cool looking
Speaker 2: animal like the axe lotel and then just make it
Speaker 2: menacing and even cooler and add some Cronenberg style body
Speaker 2: horror to it and and make it giant, and it's
Speaker 2: like that is awesome. That is a really really rad animal.
Speaker 1: And I like and I think like it's like because
Speaker 1: they do combine some even if it's not scientifically feasible
Speaker 1: or scientifically probable, I would say they do have like
Speaker 1: smart design choices for these things, right, like the giant
Speaker 1: the giant salamander design in terms of like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: would make sense that its mouth is like that so
Speaker 1: it can trap prey. I love that. I love the
Speaker 1: creativity of that. Another thing I really love and appreciate
Speaker 1: about the Fallout series is the giant mole rats.
Speaker 3: So I love a naked mole rat.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: I've been obsessed with them since the fifth grade, since
Speaker 1: I got a book about them, and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: this is the best animal. It looks like a monster,
Speaker 1: but they're amazing and they're actually kind of cute if
Speaker 1: you squint and change your mental perspective.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm looking okay, I'm looking up images of the
Speaker 2: giant mora at from Fallout right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not so cute and Fallout, but.
Speaker 2: In real life, somebody's on the back of one with
Speaker 2: like a gatling gun. That sounds bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Hell Sora, I don't think i've seen any yet in
Speaker 1: this series. I haven't finished yet though, So I don't know.
Speaker 1: But they are in the games, and they're these huge
Speaker 1: mole rats, and I hate killing them in the games
Speaker 1: because I just love them so much. But I do
Speaker 1: actually think naked mole rats have a chance at surviving
Speaker 1: a nuclear apocalypse as long as they get enough food, right,
Speaker 1: as long as they get enough tubers root vegetables for
Speaker 1: them to survive and feed on. Because naked morats are
Speaker 1: actually incredibly resistant to cancer and to they seem to
Speaker 1: be somewhat more resistant to ionizing radiation when compared to
Speaker 1: mice and other rodents. They can live up to thirty years,
Speaker 1: and they live in tunnels, so I feel like it's
Speaker 1: got a lot going for them.
Speaker 2: Thirty years. Yeah, that it trips me out every time.
Speaker 2: I don't know why, but every time I learn that
Speaker 2: some creature like that, some animal has a much longer
Speaker 2: lifespan than I expected, it's it's always a trip trying
Speaker 2: to wrap my head around the fact that, like, I
Speaker 2: could see a mole rat and it could be legal
Speaker 2: drinking age and and and just I don't know, it
Speaker 2: doesn't seem like animals of that size should should live
Speaker 2: that long. But that's that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Well, there are some spiders that can actually live quite long,
Speaker 1: Like there's some I think there's like a tarantula that
Speaker 1: can live to be around thirty years. So yeah, it's crazy, right,
Speaker 1: Like you could have like you could have a tarantla
Speaker 1: or a naked mole rat and they could be there
Speaker 1: like in the uh in the Manger with Jesus and
Speaker 1: then also be there you know at the end of
Speaker 1: that story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, they could have witnessed both the Yeah.
Speaker 1: Why don't we have like any weird animals and mangers, right,
Speaker 1: like a tarantulin and naked mole rat bearing gifts, So
Speaker 1: you know, I I I really like so naked mole
Speaker 1: rats are very tough, They're very resistant. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: they're not gonna survive in the heart of a nuclear blast.
Speaker 3: But if they get.
Speaker 1: Enough vegetation, which is a big if, right given a
Speaker 1: if there's a nuclear winter, but I do think they
Speaker 1: could be a survivor would they become huge and start
Speaker 1: eating people?
Speaker 2: I hope?
Speaker 1: So I think they should do that. I want these
Speaker 1: guys to have a win.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like we've we're destroying their planet that they were
Speaker 2: just doing fine on. So we deserve it.
Speaker 1: I feel, well, you know, maybe not all of us,
Speaker 1: but like if they could just if they some how
Speaker 1: learned who the oil executives are sure, you know, like
Speaker 1: if we could just be like, hey, buddy, you know
Speaker 1: who tastes the best out of all of us, those
Speaker 1: really well fed oil execs.
Speaker 2: Or the vault tech exactly executives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I did.
Speaker 1: I really do appreciate a lot of the weird, uh,
Speaker 1: these weird creatures in the show and in the in
Speaker 1: the series especially, So Yeah, my favorite is the the
Speaker 1: axe Lottel gulper and the giant naked Morat.
Speaker 2: The naked morat has like a like it like it's
Speaker 2: the size, it's like a large rhinoceros, it looks like
Speaker 2: in some of these images. So the the idea of
Speaker 2: in their their front teeth look incredible, uh, scaled up
Speaker 2: to this size, I mean at the size they are now,
Speaker 2: they're a really fascinating creature. But uh, taking small animals,
Speaker 2: it's it's like talking about that, uh the dragonfly earlier.
Speaker 2: Being able to see like all the tiny features blown
Speaker 2: up to a specific there's like an extra level of
Speaker 2: horror to it. Uh, Like it's like the it's it's
Speaker 2: the fascination of like, honey, I shrunk the kids and
Speaker 2: you see when you see those Yeah, when you see
Speaker 2: those things scaled up. Yeah, it's like it is it's you.
Speaker 2: It really puts into focus how much of the world
Speaker 2: around you really is like alien. It's it's like you
Speaker 2: you imagine the most like far out there creature you can,
Speaker 2: like alien life form you could possibly imagine, and then
Speaker 2: more than likely there is some animal on Earth. It
Speaker 2: might be microscopic, it might be tiny, it might be
Speaker 2: you know, a couple inches long, but they it exists
Speaker 2: somewhere within our our you know, uh.
Speaker 1: Food chain, absolutely, And I mean, like I do think
Speaker 1: if there were the appropriate conditions and evolutionary pressures and
Speaker 1: naked morat could become huge, just as some like you know,
Speaker 1: there are like the biggest animals in the world, the
Speaker 1: whales then specifically the blue whale did originate from a
Speaker 1: small terrestrial like a tiny miniature deer like animal that
Speaker 1: was terrestrial, and it eventually became you know this massive
Speaker 1: through you know, hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 1: millions of years of evolution, uh, through millions of years
Speaker 1: of evolution, Yeah, became the blue whale. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: do think if you have the right conditions, we could
Speaker 1: get giant naked morats.
Speaker 2: And yeah, the whales got it right. They came out
Speaker 2: of the water and for like, screw this, we're going back.
Speaker 3: Must are going to be dolphins and just.
Speaker 2: Exactly and now we have and now you and I
Speaker 2: have like mortgages and have to pay taxes, and like
Speaker 2: you know, uh we we they they got the better
Speaker 2: end of that, dude, for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah maybe blue whales do have to pay taxes, but uh,
Speaker 1: we just can't understand like when they're when they're doing they're.
Speaker 2: Like who they're talking?
Speaker 1: All right, So before we go, we gotta play a
Speaker 1: little game called gets Who's Squawk and the Mystery Animal
Speaker 1: Sound Game. Every week I play Mystery Animal sound and.
Speaker 3: You the guest and you the listener, have to guess.
Speaker 3: Let's make that sound?
Speaker 1: Can be any animal, any animal at all, all right,
Speaker 1: So let me the hint is this. This animal makes
Speaker 1: this sound with its body.
Speaker 4: As it moves beneath your feet.
Speaker 3: Ye hear that gurgling sound?
Speaker 2: Yeah that's an animal. That's not okay, But like that
Speaker 2: sounds more like plumbing than it does like an an
Speaker 2: animal like an organic animal noise. So you said beneath
Speaker 2: my feet. I really I don't even I can't. I
Speaker 2: gotta guess something, but I can't even wrap my head
Speaker 2: around what that what that would possibly be? Uh, I'm
Speaker 2: going to guess under my feet? Can I have a hint, Katie?
Speaker 2: It does not have a spine, does not have a spine,
Speaker 2: does not have a spine. It's going to be something
Speaker 2: so obvious, and I'm I'm going to uh feel like
Speaker 2: a fool.
Speaker 1: It's not actually that obvious, so you don't worry about.
Speaker 2: It, Okay, okay, beneath my feet doesn't I can't think
Speaker 2: of anything that doesn't have a spine. Is it an
Speaker 2: insect of some sort?
Speaker 1: In not an insect?
Speaker 3: You're getting close?
Speaker 2: What am i?
Speaker 4: Ah?
Speaker 2: Uh? I literally can't think of an ant like an
Speaker 2: animal underground that doesn't have a spine. Like I'm just
Speaker 2: I keep going back to thinking about u like octopi
Speaker 2: and or squid or something like that, and that's not
Speaker 2: underneath my feet.
Speaker 1: Kind of you're kind of getting sort of close. So
Speaker 1: I'll just tell you it is.
Speaker 2: A snail or like a slug that.
Speaker 1: You are so close. This is the giant Gippsland earthworm.
Speaker 1: Congratulations to Marian D for guessing correctly it is what Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a giant earthworm. So the video is courtesy of
Speaker 1: Giant earthworm dot org dot.
Speaker 2: Au tay on the website.
Speaker 1: Yes, taken by the Gippsland earthworm researcher, doctor Beverly van Prague,
Speaker 1: who has been studying these worms for over thirty years.
Speaker 1: So these are huge earthworms found in Australia.
Speaker 2: They've seen before.
Speaker 1: They grow over three feet long, so that's over a
Speaker 1: meter and about an inch in diameter. But their size
Speaker 1: and width kind of change depending on like because they
Speaker 1: can stretch and squash without coming to harm, so they
Speaker 1: like their size can kind of vary, so they can
Speaker 1: like get to nearly like ten feet long or three meters,
Speaker 1: but like that's usually there.
Speaker 2: They're also thinner.
Speaker 1: Because they're like stretched out, sure, so they spin their
Speaker 1: entire lives underground. They would only come to the surface
Speaker 1: if we dig them up or they get flushed out
Speaker 1: and flooded out by rain. Right, But yeah, they they're
Speaker 1: really really cool. Changes in their habitats due to farming
Speaker 1: threatens their survival because they like really kind of loose,
Speaker 1: loamy soil and then farming and sort of artificial stuff
Speaker 1: like changes the texture of the soil. So you know,
Speaker 1: we got we gotta we gotta really consider, uh what
Speaker 1: we're doing because these are amazing and what what kind
Speaker 1: of world do we live in without giant earthworms that
Speaker 1: you could technically but should not.
Speaker 3: Use as a jump rope?
Speaker 2: Not not a world that I want to live in exactly.
Speaker 2: Can I keep one of these things as a pet?
Speaker 1: I don't know that it would survive. They've I think
Speaker 1: they've tried to have them in captivity without success, so
Speaker 1: it would be really hard to keep alive. Can you
Speaker 1: keep certain worms and insects as pets? Yes, there are
Speaker 1: some that are better candidates for pets. There's like a
Speaker 1: you're mentioning, like an I wanting an isopod. There's apparently
Speaker 1: these like domestic well, like these selectively bred isopods whose
Speaker 1: faces are meant to look like little duck faces.
Speaker 3: It's very cute. What it's you know, it's super weird
Speaker 3: and it's very cute.
Speaker 2: So okay, so that sounds like a creature from Fallout?
Speaker 2: What you just decide?
Speaker 1: You know, right, it's it'll it makes sense if you
Speaker 1: look at images. I think they're just called like duck
Speaker 1: rollly poids. I'm not sure duck isopods. Yeah, they're like
Speaker 1: they're sort of front segment is yellow, and I guess
Speaker 1: is meant to look sort of like a little duck
Speaker 1: bill or a little duck what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's cute, it does Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: And these things are selling for one hundred and a
Speaker 2: blonde rubber ducky designer isopod ultra rare. This sounds like
Speaker 2: I'm describing a Pokemon is one hundred and forty nine dollars.
Speaker 3: Well, if that's your hobby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, holy cow, I did not realize that there. I
Speaker 2: guess there's a there's a world, in a market and
Speaker 2: a niche for absolutely everything.
Speaker 3: There really is.
Speaker 2: So okay, I'm going to go buy some isopods now.
Speaker 1: I'm going to as long as they don't escape their
Speaker 1: enclosure and then cause like some kind of ducky isopod
Speaker 1: apocalypse as they take.
Speaker 3: Over the world.
Speaker 2: Wow, this is wild. There's all sorts of designer isopods
Speaker 2: with all sorts of different colorings.
Speaker 1: And where's our where's our designer worms at?
Speaker 3: That's what I want to know.
Speaker 2: Good question, great question.
Speaker 1: So onto this week's mystery animals sound. The hint is
Speaker 1: this a picture is worth a thousand words, but this
Speaker 1: critter paints a clear picture with its call, all right,
Speaker 1: you got any guesses?
Speaker 2: I'm gonna guess it's some kind of sounds like a
Speaker 2: lemur or something, or some kind of like small primates. Interesting,
Speaker 2: probably so far off. I know, I am, I know,
Speaker 2: I am. Well, I'm terrible at this game.
Speaker 1: I am terrible. I am just lucky that I don't
Speaker 1: have to be the one playing the game, because I
Speaker 1: do not think I would be very good either. But
Speaker 1: fortunately I don't have to play it because I'm.
Speaker 3: The one making it up.
Speaker 1: Uh. Anyways, if you think you know who is making
Speaker 1: that sound, you can write to me at Creature featurepot
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com and I will reveal the results
Speaker 1: next week. Well, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2: Where can the people find you my pleasure?
Speaker 1: Not in a follout shelter?
Speaker 2: Yes, I let's keep our fingers crossed. You can find
Speaker 2: me at the Wopple House on Twitter. You can find
Speaker 2: me hosting the George Center podcast each week. And yeah,
Speaker 2: that's pretty much it. Those are the only two places
Speaker 2: other than that you can catch me at work just
Speaker 2: being a boring dude during the week buying. Don't do
Speaker 2: that though, buying.
Speaker 3: Up rubber Ducky isopods at.
Speaker 1: Work exactly getting into bidding wars on rubber Ducky isopods.
Speaker 2: I really am low key considering like building a terrarium.
Speaker 1: Now I have that thought frequently, like do I.
Speaker 3: Need a terrarium?
Speaker 1: Well, thank you guys so much for listening.
Speaker 3: If you're enjoying the show.
Speaker 1: And you leave a rating end review, I read.
Speaker 3: All of them, and all of them help me tangibly
Speaker 3: help the show.
Speaker 1: And thanks to the Space Classics for there's super awesome song.
Speaker 3: Ex Alumina.
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Speaker 1: can't tell you what you to do. Seay, I live
Speaker 1: your on life. See you next Wednesday.