Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: I know what everyone has been thinking, especially following the
Speaker 1: the episode we did about slug reproduction. When is the
Speaker 1: episode on vomit coming? Because because I know I wanted
Speaker 1: to vomit during the research for that one. Uh, And
Speaker 1: so this episode is about vomit, but not just about
Speaker 1: the human vomit, because that's kind of boring. It's about
Speaker 1: what happens when you look beyond human vomit and when
Speaker 1: you we re reexamine regurgitation from a larger and it's
Speaker 1: many merits from a larger biological viewpoint. We're gonna look
Speaker 1: at regurgitation the way God looks at regurgitation. It's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, all right, So let's let's get into regurgitation.
Speaker 1: But before we look at the animal world for some
Speaker 1: wonderful examples of it. I can't help but to to
Speaker 1: look at us as humans here and the ways in
Speaker 1: which we were regurgitate and why we do it. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, certainly it helps when we have eaten something
Speaker 1: that's rancid, and our stomach needs to get rid of
Speaker 1: it as soon as possible, because that's ultimately the main
Speaker 1: reason the humans vomit is because there's something that we
Speaker 1: we ingested it then we need to get out. And
Speaker 1: it's a good thing to have. Not all animals can
Speaker 1: can do this. Um, some animals that eat something bad,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of it's in there, you know, and
Speaker 1: they're gonna have to roll with it. But with humans,
Speaker 1: we eat something that's good, that's noxious and and potentially dangerous,
Speaker 1: we can vomit it back up and then reevaluate it
Speaker 1: and like many animals, eat it again if it deserves
Speaker 1: re eating. If it deserves re eating, well, that meat
Speaker 1: left was so good. And now ask your dog about
Speaker 1: this one, and I'm sure they'll explain, all right, So
Speaker 1: that we hate doing it. It's the thing most of
Speaker 1: the and in many cases, I mean, I can think
Speaker 1: of a few times in my life where I really
Speaker 1: needed to vomit, and and a good doubt of vomiting
Speaker 1: would have really been beneficial to my well being. Open
Speaker 1: up to us, tell us when why I don't remember
Speaker 1: the day I didn't market on the calendar, But you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you've you're a little under the weather, or you ingested, uh,
Speaker 1: something you shouldn't have that night before, and then you're
Speaker 1: you're ill and you don't want to vomit because it's
Speaker 1: it is a stressful experience. It's like you're it kind
Speaker 1: of blows you up. You're you're suddenly you're you're you're
Speaker 1: just rattling. Your body's rattling, and your your your high energy,
Speaker 1: and it's, uh, it's an unpleasant experience for this stuff
Speaker 1: to come out of your mouth and it tastes bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, anyone, everyone I think is probably vomited this
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast. If you haven't, I would love
Speaker 1: to hear why that is the case. But everyone is vomited.
Speaker 1: You know. It's unpleasant and a lot of times we
Speaker 1: avoid doing it even when we should. Well, you know what,
Speaker 1: if if you ever need to vomit, I'm just here
Speaker 1: to tell you that I will hold your hair back
Speaker 1: for you. Well, thank you, sure, But here's something I
Speaker 1: will never do. I will never premasticate something for you. Okay,
Speaker 1: So when I'm talking about promostication here, when I'm talking
Speaker 1: about I'm talking about chewing up food, coating it with
Speaker 1: my lovely saliva and then depositing it into probably an
Speaker 1: infant's mouth, because that's generally how it's been done with humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: birds do it, we'll discuss Mice have also been observed
Speaker 1: to do this, and intimate makes sense for humans to
Speaker 1: do it. And granted, this is not food that has
Speaker 1: been swallowed and then properly like regurgitated from the gut. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no bial in it, right, but it has been
Speaker 1: it has been chewed up. And think of what baby
Speaker 1: food is. What is baby food but pre chewed food.
Speaker 1: You're just you just want a robot to show it
Speaker 1: instead of a human. Yeah, and it seems kind of gross,
Speaker 1: but really, I mean this has been done since time immemorial, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you didn't have a blender, pre blender days,
Speaker 1: you didn't have a grinder, this is what you did.
Speaker 1: And it actually makes sense because saliva is enzyme rich
Speaker 1: and this helps to break down food and it also
Speaker 1: contains antibodies which might coat food proteins, making them less allergenic.
Speaker 1: And this is really important because I just read a
Speaker 1: really interesting article in the New York or it's called
Speaker 1: the peanut Puzzle, and it looks at the extreme uptick
Speaker 1: in peanut allergies and kids, and and allergies in general
Speaker 1: and children. And some of the idea is that um
Speaker 1: in undeveloped countries you see far less instances of food
Speaker 1: allergies and kids, and it may because of this premastication
Speaker 1: with infants. So if you've got a six month old,
Speaker 1: they're being exposed to some of these more allergenic foods,
Speaker 1: but they they're coated so it doesn't really take effect
Speaker 1: in their bodies. Wow, that that is that's a really
Speaker 1: fascinating idea. I mean, that really kind of blew my
Speaker 1: mind a bit because I guess I wasn't really familiar
Speaker 1: with the with the longstanding traditions of of chewing food
Speaker 1: for a human child, though of course I've seen footage
Speaker 1: of it, you know, now that I think about it,
Speaker 1: I've seen like clips of of like a mother in Africa,
Speaker 1: like chewing a bit on something and then and giving
Speaker 1: that food to the kid, you know, not a straight up,
Speaker 1: you know, bird mouth kind of situation. Because I think
Speaker 1: that's the that's the vision that that we think of
Speaker 1: when we instantly hear about this. We think of one bird,
Speaker 1: you know, just wretching into another bird's mouth, And I've
Speaker 1: seen it played for laughs for disgusting laughs on like
Speaker 1: an episode of Saturday Night Live once where somebody's food
Speaker 1: was being chewed for them and spit and do another
Speaker 1: person's mouth, and you know, everyone just loses it because
Speaker 1: that's so gross. But as you explained, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's part of our biological heritage. Yeah, it's just probably
Speaker 1: not something that you're going to see in America, like
Speaker 1: you know, in shopping malls, mother's premascating food and then
Speaker 1: spitting it into the chilren's mouth, unless you are Alicia Silverstone, right,
Speaker 1: because this happened last year. She was caught on video
Speaker 1: doing this with her child. People freaked out, but you
Speaker 1: know there are merits to doing that. Well, they freak
Speaker 1: out over over breastfeeding. I think it was was it
Speaker 1: it was either Covington, Georgia or Conyers, Georgia. Somewhere out there,
Speaker 1: just outside of Atlanta, a woman was is breastfaiting a
Speaker 1: child at one of the bigger chain restaurants. I forget which,
Speaker 1: and I probably shouldn't say it if I did remember,
Speaker 1: but somebody called the police. Well, I mean, which is insane. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is an armed breasts going to get you what
Speaker 1: if she had been if she'd been chewing her food
Speaker 1: for the kid, I mean, goodness knows that would that
Speaker 1: would have been just instant police call right there. Well,
Speaker 1: what I'd like to think is that some people would
Speaker 1: be so horrified that they began puking, and then other
Speaker 1: people would begin people sypathetic vomiting. Synthetic vomiting, yes, um okay,
Speaker 1: So so we've seen, you know, the rigurgitation and humans,
Speaker 1: and then of course when we over eat, over consume,
Speaker 1: or we eat something rancid, we vomit um. But what
Speaker 1: about people who vomit for their art? Ah? Yes, the
Speaker 1: professional regurgitator, the performance vomitter. This was and this is
Speaker 1: that we've we've briefly mentioned, um, the what were they
Speaker 1: called the performance um flags, the flashuns, the flatwists or yeah,
Speaker 1: the flats flat you artists. Yeah, because he would have
Speaker 1: this in the in the old circus environment. People were
Speaker 1: getting up there and they're using their skill to the
Speaker 1: entertainment of everyone. Everyone finds farting hilarious in the right
Speaker 1: circumstances and do varying degrees. And then likewise, like I said,
Speaker 1: vomiting is gross and it's shocking, and like everything that
Speaker 1: is gross and shocking, it has a tendency to elicit laughter. Well,
Speaker 1: Millie Brown is the regurgitation regurgitation artist in question here,
Speaker 1: and she has one piece that she's done. She's done
Speaker 1: several apparently, but this one is a contemporary artist. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with her. I'm more familiar with the
Speaker 1: older like you know, the old photos of Carney Carney regurgitators. No,
Speaker 1: I mean she does it up. I mean it's pretty
Speaker 1: much performance artist type of work, although she does use
Speaker 1: a canvas. So let me just explain this video to
Speaker 1: you really quickly because we really don't need to spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time on this, but it is kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. Um. She has basically these glasses of different
Speaker 1: colored liquids. It's the rainbow of colors, and so she
Speaker 1: takes yellow, she she drinks it, she lets it settle,
Speaker 1: and then she regurgitates that onto the campus, onto a
Speaker 1: white campus. No, you think that's you know, odd. She
Speaker 1: also has two opera singers in the background clad in
Speaker 1: all white. Um, and they are seeing my favorite aria
Speaker 1: by the way, don't pa, And it's you know, this
Speaker 1: beautiful opera song in this aria, and and and of
Speaker 1: course she's regurgitating onto the campus. This video is definitely
Speaker 1: going to go up on the block post that accompanies
Speaker 1: this episode. So I mean, you know what, I appreciated
Speaker 1: it because she did put some thought into the colors
Speaker 1: she used. It is a rainbow of colors. It's not
Speaker 1: just brown vomit on a campus, and it's that's thoughtful. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's some color too, because the color makes all the difference.
Speaker 1: I found that when I recolored an image of the slug,
Speaker 1: it repulsed me less. So you can sep colorful vomit
Speaker 1: would would have the same thing. Yeah you don't know this,
Speaker 1: but but Robert is still kind of working through the
Speaker 1: issues with slugs and and finding ways to deal with
Speaker 1: them because you've been posting on the on slugs a
Speaker 1: lot and stuff and having to deal with the imagery,
Speaker 1: and it helped a little bit. I think I do
Speaker 1: respect them more as his organisms, especially after I read
Speaker 1: some and look at I did a post about the
Speaker 1: question deuced slugs trip on psilocybin when they eat psilocybin mushrooms,
Speaker 1: and uh, I found all this I didn't find really
Speaker 1: a definitive definitive advance a on that. But I end
Speaker 1: up finding some really cool stuff about slug intelligence. And
Speaker 1: there's some arguments that say that their cognitive abilities are
Speaker 1: really not that far off from like a rat or
Speaker 1: a pigeon. So so if you don't know for sure
Speaker 1: whether or nothing good, who listen it? But if you
Speaker 1: look at their their cognitive abilities, yeah, there are a
Speaker 1: lot smarter than than I gave them credit for. And
Speaker 1: I'm not sure just how how much how it makes
Speaker 1: me feel better or if it makes me work. Lets
Speaker 1: take over the world, Robert Lamb. But we're but back
Speaker 1: to vonit back to the issue at hand. All right,
Speaker 1: let's look at some instances of regurgitation in the insect world. Yes,
Speaker 1: the insect world, and and the and the world of
Speaker 1: iractnets UM offers some excellent examples. UM. For instance, spiders
Speaker 1: arachnets regurgitate this enzyme rich bath of caustic goo. Uh.
Speaker 1: They either regurgitated onto their prey, and this is in
Speaker 1: cases where they sort of shred the meat a little
Speaker 1: They shred it up a little bit and then they
Speaker 1: vomit onto it and the enzymes break it down, or
Speaker 1: they regurgitate into uh, their prey. For instance, the widow
Speaker 1: spider and many crab spiders forced these enzymes, forced this
Speaker 1: vomit into a hole that they make in the prey,
Speaker 1: and then they suck it all back out like a slurpie.
Speaker 1: So they apply the the the grotesque costic chemical, let
Speaker 1: it break down and turn everything into this uh, this
Speaker 1: this meat smoothie, and then they slurp all of it
Speaker 1: back up. Yeah, And it's really brilliant the way that
Speaker 1: they do this because they get this ball is going
Speaker 1: of ball us is basically a ball of insects, and
Speaker 1: then uh, you know, they've got to get all the
Speaker 1: crunchy parts down because they can't spend a lot of
Speaker 1: energy trying to break this down, so they are vomiting
Speaker 1: on it and essentially making it a protein shake for themselves,
Speaker 1: is slurping it back up. Um. But it's it is
Speaker 1: a very I think it's a very cool problems they're
Speaker 1: kind of using. It's a form of external digestion. And
Speaker 1: you see the same thing with the house fly, of course,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people are going to be familiar
Speaker 1: with this from David Cronenberg's adaptation of the fly, which
Speaker 1: which is of course a marvelous R rated horror film
Speaker 1: that manages to discussed on of this real level, but
Speaker 1: also it gets you thinking and and has you know,
Speaker 1: various cultural overtones as well. One of my favorite films.
Speaker 1: But one of the traits that the scientist Brundle played
Speaker 1: by Jeff Jeff goldbluin to fantastic effect. One of the
Speaker 1: traits he he gets from the fly is this a
Speaker 1: feeding uh ability to vomit forth these ensigns onto something
Speaker 1: he wants to eat. I think he does it onto
Speaker 1: like some twinkies for this, for this video he's making
Speaker 1: for his employers, or kind of his diary. Uh vombits
Speaker 1: under the twinkies. Let's it sort of set for a
Speaker 1: second and then sucks it all back up. Okay, So
Speaker 1: when we describe to you what the houseflay does, I
Speaker 1: want you to just keep his image in your brain,
Speaker 1: Like put Jeff Goldbloom's face on this housefly that we
Speaker 1: talk about. Okay, because consider the housefly. It's flying around
Speaker 1: your house in your kitchen, driving you nuts. It lands
Speaker 1: on a piece of food, maybe a little morsel of sugar,
Speaker 1: and it's got to break it down, so it scrubs
Speaker 1: the dry food substance with the bristles on the end
Speaker 1: of its probostis um. This frees up the food particles
Speaker 1: shreds it up. Yea. And then the second step is
Speaker 1: a little bit like when you add hot water to
Speaker 1: instant oatmeal, only instead of hot water, the housefly adds
Speaker 1: a mixture of its saliva and digestive juices. Sounds delicious,
Speaker 1: and that's when it vomits the saliva and digestive material
Speaker 1: onto its meal. In a few seconds pass where it
Speaker 1: all the breakdown and then yeah, deffical bloom sex at
Speaker 1: all back up. Yeah, I mean it's it's the shredding
Speaker 1: and the is key here too, because I mean think
Speaker 1: of think like when you make a smoothie in the morning, Um,
Speaker 1: you want like small bits. You add a protein powder,
Speaker 1: not a protein chunk. So that's right, because Unlis, your
Speaker 1: blade is like a super blade, right, I can really
Speaker 1: break that down. Um. So then the fly, uh, if
Speaker 1: it can't adequately break down food enough or to pass
Speaker 1: through a tube that leads into its stomach, the fly
Speaker 1: it sense it's food down a different tube to an
Speaker 1: intersect called the crop, and then the fly may pass
Speaker 1: the bubble dissolving food multiple times between the crop and
Speaker 1: the mouth, back and forth, back and forth, regularly applying
Speaker 1: fresh saliva, so eventually all of that gets liquefied. It's delightful.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's disgusting from a human point
Speaker 1: of view, but it makes perfect sense for these these
Speaker 1: creatures because they're not gonna You look at an animal
Speaker 1: that's not going to be able to necessarily, you know,
Speaker 1: chew its food up. It needs to do these things externally,
Speaker 1: in the same way that we've ternalized a lot of
Speaker 1: our process eating processes through cooking. Well, I can't cook well,
Speaker 1: I can't use the kitchen, so fly is gonna depend
Speaker 1: on it's uh, it's time honored method of external digestion.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a part in Charlotte's Web when Um
Speaker 1: Wilbur the pig meets Charlotte and he's completely disgusted by
Speaker 1: seeing her knock out her prey and is judging her.
Speaker 1: And it's really funny because she has this whole exchange
Speaker 1: with him like you are. So you know, um, living
Speaker 1: in the rarefied airs over there with your food brought
Speaker 1: to you. I have to work from my food, and
Speaker 1: I'm genetically programmed to do this. So that's awesome. I
Speaker 1: had either I'd forgotten about that, or maybe I maybe
Speaker 1: I haven't read Charlotte's Web and I've only seen the movie,
Speaker 1: and maybe that didn't make it into the movie. I
Speaker 1: don't remember. It was a nice little exchange. I liked it.
Speaker 1: My daughter's reading it right now, so um, knee deep
Speaker 1: in it? All right? So should we take a break
Speaker 1: here and and then get to more vomit afterwards? All right,
Speaker 1: we're back discussing regurgitation. We just talked about our friends
Speaker 1: the fly, a friend, the spider of the way Charlotte
Speaker 1: and Brundle take care of their their their lunches. So
Speaker 1: now we're gonna talk about a few other animals of
Speaker 1: note and Pico. We're going to talk about the probosis monkey. Well,
Speaker 1: the probosis meaning nose. This is the guy with the
Speaker 1: big nose. Yeah. You've probably seen these monkeys before. Uh.
Speaker 1: They of course use regurgitation. Yeah, and it's interesting because
Speaker 1: their use of their up chuck, which they basically they do,
Speaker 1: consort of a cut chewing kind of a thing. They
Speaker 1: they vomited it back up into their mouth. They reach
Speaker 1: you it around a little bit and then they swallow
Speaker 1: it um and for most like guerrillas, humans, you know,
Speaker 1: other primates, if this is done on a semi regular basis,
Speaker 1: it's considered pathological. It's not natural, and it's pinitually harmful
Speaker 1: because you're you're just not you don't have the plumbing
Speaker 1: to really handle that much caustic stuff moving around all
Speaker 1: the time. Ye I mean, think about us humans, The
Speaker 1: enamel will just wear off of our teeth if we
Speaker 1: were always vomiting exactly. But researchers found and this from
Speaker 1: a paper that appeared in the Royal Society Biology Letters,
Speaker 1: they found it that the digestive track of this particular
Speaker 1: monkey is drastically different from that of humans and gray apes.
Speaker 1: So what you have when you look inside the the
Speaker 1: proboscis monkey's mouth, you find a distinct chambered for stomach
Speaker 1: where bacterial digestion occurs prior to the glandular stomach. So
Speaker 1: you end up, you know, having more of this, uh
Speaker 1: really more what you end up thinking about in terms
Speaker 1: of the digestion system of a cow. What I really
Speaker 1: like about this study is is is how it was conducted. Um.
Speaker 1: The scientists were actually in a boat and they were
Speaker 1: on the Kimbot Kenna botanag And River in Malaysia. And
Speaker 1: so they're sitting there watching these these monkeys from a
Speaker 1: distance during the early morning the late afternoon for three
Speaker 1: months vomiting. And they concentrated on twenty three different monkeys
Speaker 1: that were videotaped regurgitating and re chewing. And then when
Speaker 1: this happened, the monkey's abdomen would contract and the primate
Speaker 1: would stick its tongue outside its person mouth, which I
Speaker 1: think it's just you know, that's got to be one
Speaker 1: of those points in your job where you're kind of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm on a boat watching regurgitating probostis monkey. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean they already look kind of like Jimmy Duranny anyway,
Speaker 1: so they you know, they're they're already amusing to watch,
Speaker 1: and then they have this peculiar way of going about
Speaker 1: the meal. Yeah, just vomiting on the banks the river.
Speaker 1: So this brings us around to my favorite vomiting animal
Speaker 1: really at the moment, because a lot of this is
Speaker 1: new to me is the is the vulture the turkey vulture. Well,
Speaker 1: they're kind of like the Ninja's the experts at vomiting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's really fast. We have an article and
Speaker 1: how stif works about it, and you should you should
Speaker 1: definitely check that out if you're you're into this as
Speaker 1: a topic. But let's let's set the stage. The Turkey vulture,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar, is, of course a scavenger haunts
Speaker 1: the sky, eyes wheeling around and big big circles, uh,
Speaker 1: looking for some dead prey to go feast stone. They
Speaker 1: find a carcass and then it's on. It's time for
Speaker 1: the meal land and to start tearing apart this rancid
Speaker 1: thing and eating it. So what do you need in
Speaker 1: order to live your life on a diet of rancid flesh? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, you don't want a lot of feathers
Speaker 1: around your face getting mucked up, right, and you needed
Speaker 1: kind of surgically clean up there. Yeah. Um. Second of all,
Speaker 1: you probably want some like great a stomach acid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean think of if you're you're like me, say,
Speaker 1: I'm not really used to eating certain types of like
Speaker 1: junk food, I guess, uh, and probably not used to
Speaker 1: eating a lot of meat. But so if I'm in
Speaker 1: a situation where I end up really eating more than
Speaker 1: I should and really choweling down, on on on, just
Speaker 1: too much redneat. I start feeling a little ill, like
Speaker 1: my stomach cannot handle it. I don't have the cast
Speaker 1: iron stomach that some people have, and the vulture really does.
Speaker 1: And since have a cast iron stomach, I mean, this
Speaker 1: animal has evolved to thrive on rancid uh meat that
Speaker 1: would just sicken and maybe even kill another animal. I
Speaker 1: mean they've actually shown that the uh, the the enzymes
Speaker 1: in the vultures gut are capable of handling some pretty
Speaker 1: horrible pathogens because they have to be, because that's the
Speaker 1: nature of what they eat. You're talking about anthrax too, right.
Speaker 1: They they have found scores of anthrax in their feces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the evidence that it passed through um. So yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: their their guts, their their acids are so effective that
Speaker 1: they can break down some of these virus bacteria in
Speaker 1: the same way that I have. Alina Um can poop
Speaker 1: the prickly pair pins right out without any problem. I mean,
Speaker 1: the same way the vulture can poop out the these
Speaker 1: anthrax spores that would be problematic to another creature. Christ
Speaker 1: and conger Um, the one of the co hosts for
Speaker 1: Stuff Mom Never Told You, has an article about vultures,
Speaker 1: and in it, she says in a study on white
Speaker 1: back vultures that pH levels and their stomachs were between
Speaker 1: A one and a two. That measurement is comparable to
Speaker 1: gastric and hydrochloric acid from the human stomach, and it's
Speaker 1: far more corrosive than acid rain, which has a pH
Speaker 1: between four and five. It was also more acidic than
Speaker 1: the stomach contents of other conniverse birds, including carons and
Speaker 1: barn owls and barne owls. By the way, we've talked
Speaker 1: about their pellets before. Yes, um, you know they can't
Speaker 1: really break down the bones or the teeth of what
Speaker 1: they eat, so they have to regurgitate it into these
Speaker 1: little pellets. Yeah, quite lovely. Didn't you get some for
Speaker 1: for the holidays? Oh? No, I was thinking about it.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about at one point, and then we
Speaker 1: did a podcast where I accidentally referred to the pellets
Speaker 1: as poop, and then I heard from all the owls
Speaker 1: who are the fan. Yeah, the pellets at the fan,
Speaker 1: and the owls are rightfully upset with me over that one.
Speaker 1: But but I'm hoping to please the vultures in this podcast.
Speaker 1: I think we're getting everything more or less. Right, Um, So,
Speaker 1: the thing about their vomiting, when when a vulture does vomit,
Speaker 1: and again, as we've estab pushed, animals vomit, so the
Speaker 1: fact that a vulture vomits is not that big of
Speaker 1: a of a deal. But but there's a there's a
Speaker 1: lot of there's been a fair amount of thinking about
Speaker 1: why they do it, because they'll do it when they're threatened,
Speaker 1: right when they're threatened, and and they want to do
Speaker 1: a little bit of defensive vomiting. Now, one thing to
Speaker 1: keep in mind when a when a when a buzzard,
Speaker 1: when a turkey vulture is is threatened, it's probably in
Speaker 1: a situation where it's it's hanging around this dead body.
Speaker 1: It's hanging around this body, eating and eating and eating
Speaker 1: its heavy. Yeah, and then suddenly some humans are poking around,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's a lion, maybe it's some other birds,
Speaker 1: it's an eagle, something else is suddenly intruding on them,
Speaker 1: and it's an issue. So what does the vulture do?
Speaker 1: The vulture vomits. Now, there are a few different interpretations
Speaker 1: to take care. One of them is that it's a
Speaker 1: purely defensive measure. They have all this awful stuff in
Speaker 1: their gut, all of this uh this ranted meat and
Speaker 1: just and caustic enzymes. Somebody's messing with you. Spit up
Speaker 1: hawk of the stuff, Adam, and see what happened, and
Speaker 1: see how they take it. You know, don't make me
Speaker 1: vomit acid on you. That's kind of the proposition here.
Speaker 1: That's my bumper, bumper sticker on my car back. Another
Speaker 1: idea is that it empty empty systomach chamber so they
Speaker 1: can take off because otherwise they're just weighed down with
Speaker 1: all of that nasty carre. Yeah, because they've been gorging themselves.
Speaker 1: Meals maybe few and far between for a vulture, so
Speaker 1: when it's available, they eat and eat and eat. And
Speaker 1: if you've got to take off in a hurry, you
Speaker 1: may have to lighten the lobe. So that's another theory.
Speaker 1: But the third theory is the grossest and and and
Speaker 1: really the most magnificent, and that is the situation where
Speaker 1: all right, I'm a buzzard, I'm just stuffing myself and
Speaker 1: all this meat, and so suddenly there's just like this
Speaker 1: eagle showing up, or there's a or there's a coyote
Speaker 1: or something getting a little too close to my business.
Speaker 1: And uh, I'm I'm a bird, so I know that
Speaker 1: other animals may want to eat me. I'm I'm a
Speaker 1: prey animal too many. Uh so what can I do
Speaker 1: to save myself? Well? Sure, okay, maybe I could spit
Speaker 1: some half it on them, all right, that might work.
Speaker 1: It's pretty vile stuff. Or I could just lighten the
Speaker 1: load and try to get away. But vultures can be
Speaker 1: kind of gaky, you know. It's not like there, it's
Speaker 1: not like they're able to just instantly just shoot off
Speaker 1: like a rocket. So the theory here is that when
Speaker 1: they vomited forth this this ransomness, they're actually providing a bribe.
Speaker 1: They're saying, don't eat me. Who eat this? And and
Speaker 1: certainly like it was in one of the sources I
Speaker 1: was looking at, I believe this was on the Turkey
Speaker 1: vulture website, the Vulture Vulture Society dot homestead dot com.
Speaker 1: They have a lot of cool facts about them. They
Speaker 1: pointed out the eagles eat it right up. The eagles
Speaker 1: presented with some vulture vomit. Doubere like, yeah, that looks
Speaker 1: great that thanks for preparing that for me. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: like fog off to them. They're like, oh, delicacy. Yeah maybe,
Speaker 1: so I'd like to imagine the turkey buzzard saying though, like,
Speaker 1: if you keep me alive, I can regurgitate ten meals
Speaker 1: as many as you want. If you kill me, you
Speaker 1: only get one. Yeah, I mean it's also like, if
Speaker 1: you you know, here is something here, go ahead and
Speaker 1: eat this. You can eat this, or you can try
Speaker 1: and fight me to the death. And I have claws
Speaker 1: and I have a beak, and I might not be
Speaker 1: the most furious creature on on the planet, but I'm
Speaker 1: a harder meal. Here's the easy meal. So why not yet?
Speaker 1: Why don't you have it? I know it's already digested
Speaker 1: for you. Yeah, already toted. Yeah, I don't know. That's
Speaker 1: a nice little peace offering. Um, so you know what
Speaker 1: we have not thrown into the mix. Here's urine. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, this just would not be a complete podcast
Speaker 1: talking about vultures in volment without the urine. It's just
Speaker 1: like a bonus that you get to have your end
Speaker 1: in this podcast as well. And this is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about how you don't want feathers generally around
Speaker 1: the head because it needs to sort of remain surgically clear.
Speaker 1: So they can go in after some meat and get
Speaker 1: it all dirty. But of course they're also going to
Speaker 1: be stepping through some pretty rancid stuff as well. So
Speaker 1: to disinfect their legs, they'll urinate down their legs and
Speaker 1: uh and and and I find that there's a certain
Speaker 1: gross but that admirable um economy to that. It's incredibly practical, right,
Speaker 1: because you're getting rid of some of the lingering pathogens
Speaker 1: that that you've been trumping along with. I like to
Speaker 1: think of that. Somewhere out there there is a performance
Speaker 1: artist who that does some sort of vulture urinating canvas.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, you expect all this from
Speaker 1: a vulture, right, because they're not very cute looking. They're
Speaker 1: sort of dastardly looking. You expect that they urinate themselves
Speaker 1: and they vomit up piece meals. But there are other
Speaker 1: creatures out there that have some pretty smooth moves themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they don't necessarily look the part at first glance.
Speaker 1: For instance, the fulmer, which means foul goal because it
Speaker 1: essentially looks like a seagull and it's one of these
Speaker 1: these these the type of birds that makes its home.
Speaker 1: And you know, Rocky little purchases that they find on
Speaker 1: cliff sides, and if something comes and messes with them
Speaker 1: and poses a threat, they will projectile vomit at their
Speaker 1: at at the intruder. And this is a straight up
Speaker 1: there's no if hands and butts about it. They're projectile
Speaker 1: vomiting to cause a distress to their attacker. You know,
Speaker 1: I kind of thought about them as the kittens of
Speaker 1: the bird world because they are white feathered and there.
Speaker 1: They're cute looking, I will say it, and you just
Speaker 1: don't expect this sort of filth that comes projectile vomiting
Speaker 1: from their mouth. Yeah, it's orange, It stinks of rotten fish,
Speaker 1: and it's like really oily and sticky, Like it didn't
Speaker 1: come off all that easy, uh Like for a human.
Speaker 1: If you're climbing up there checking out birds and you
Speaker 1: get vomited on, you're gonna have to go home and
Speaker 1: you know, really shower and scribe to get it off.
Speaker 1: If you're a bird and you're messing with a former,
Speaker 1: then you've got this awful stuff on your on your feathers,
Speaker 1: and you can actually interfere with your ability to fly.
Speaker 1: So not only annoying, but potentially lethal weapon in that
Speaker 1: regard and if you were a bird and you recovered this,
Speaker 1: and you should take to the water. The gut oil
Speaker 1: of the full more chick causes the birds to lose
Speaker 1: their buoyancy and they drown. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: death vomit. Yea death vomit orange death vomit from the
Speaker 1: foul goals that look like kitten birds. Yeah, now that's
Speaker 1: speaking of kittens that we we should bring it back
Speaker 1: around though to two again, to humans and uh and
Speaker 1: our expectations of vomit versus animal expectations and even children
Speaker 1: because as adult humans we end up with this idea
Speaker 1: that you know, vomit is to be avoided at all costs.
Speaker 1: Then you invite a dog into your house and the
Speaker 1: dog is vomiting and eating its own vomit, or you
Speaker 1: bring in a cat which just goes off like a
Speaker 1: time bomb all the time. Just vomit becomes a part
Speaker 1: of your your daily life. And then if you have
Speaker 1: a child, then even more so, they're just constantly vomiting.
Speaker 1: It's true. I've been vomitated on in spectacular ways. I
Speaker 1: have to say. Yeah, my my mom is a kindergarten
Speaker 1: teacher and and she I once mentioned it to her
Speaker 1: about children vomiting, because we have My nephew vomited in
Speaker 1: the back of the car when we were taking them
Speaker 1: somewhere and just happened all of a sudden. The other one,
Speaker 1: uh my, the niece, she was complaining of stomach problems,
Speaker 1: but then he vomited and it was a huge mess.
Speaker 1: And I mentioned to my mom and she's like, oh, yeah, kids,
Speaker 1: those age you know, like kindergarten age, kids, first grade,
Speaker 1: they just vomit all the time. They'll just be doing something,
Speaker 1: They'll be coloring and then just vomit. It's true, and
Speaker 1: they just keep going. They just pop a breath mat
Speaker 1: and keep going. And then eventually they get a little
Speaker 1: older and they begin to believe this, this lie that
Speaker 1: vomiting isn't the part of who we are, and boy
Speaker 1: are they wrong. So there you have it, vomit Um.
Speaker 1: We would love to hear your stories on vomit if
Speaker 1: you are things that you would like to share with us, um,
Speaker 1: your encounters with vomit in the Alien Kingdom, preferably not
Speaker 1: just that time that you objected and it was spectacular,
Speaker 1: but but more of it. Just sort of telling stories
Speaker 1: of vomit animals that you've seen that seemed to be
Speaker 1: engaging in weak agrotation and in a unique or fashion
Speaker 1: a cool way, let us know about it. You can
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