Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and I like to dive into the
Speaker 1: brains of humans and animals and see that, hey, we're
Speaker 1: not so different after all. I mean, you guys legs too. Right.
Speaker 1: Today on the show Part in My Turkey, Welcome to
Speaker 1: Domestication Station, as we talk about the weird and wild
Speaker 1: world of artificial selection, giant chickens, turkeys, swoll cows, oh my,
Speaker 1: discover these animals and more. As we asked the angel question,
Speaker 1: if Arnold Schwartzenegger was a chicken, what would he look like?
Speaker 1: So the ancestors of the chicken can be traced back
Speaker 1: to one bird, the jungle fowl. The red jungle fowl
Speaker 1: and maybe some hybridization of the gray. Jungle fowl is
Speaker 1: the single ancestor of all domesticated chickens. Their native to
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia, India and Sri Lanka. They were first domesticated
Speaker 1: in India over five thousand years ago. The jungle fowl,
Speaker 1: at least the males, look somewhat similar to the image
Speaker 1: of the rooster you may be picturing, though they're a
Speaker 1: bit smaller. The females are also leaner than their domesticated counterparts.
Speaker 1: They only fly short distances, and the males do an
Speaker 1: interesting behavior called tidbitding, where they entice females with a
Speaker 1: bit of food that they pick up and drop repeatedly.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a bad dinner day, Am alright, am alright.
Speaker 1: The jungle fowl is likely the single common ancestor of
Speaker 1: all modern chickens. For a time, there was a theory
Speaker 1: that there was a species called Gallus gigantius, a hypothetical
Speaker 1: extinct chicken that some believed existed based on bone fragments.
Speaker 1: It's a huge bird that loomed over the jungle fowl,
Speaker 1: and some believe that this interbreeding created the medium sized
Speaker 1: domesticated chicken. However, this is likely not the case. Those
Speaker 1: bone fragments were probably another chicken known as the Malayan fowl,
Speaker 1: a very large breed of domes sticated chicken. These boys
Speaker 1: are a tall drink of water, standing over thirty six
Speaker 1: inches high, with legs for days. The point of this
Speaker 1: story is that artificial selection, the act of domestication, can
Speaker 1: be so transformative. It's easy to mistake a certain domesticated
Speaker 1: animal for an entirely different species. Today we'll be looking
Speaker 1: at the completely insane amount of morphological diversity among domesticated
Speaker 1: animals and the horrific, beautiful, messed up things humans have
Speaker 1: done playing god with animals. Joining me today is my
Speaker 1: good friend, podcaster host, a gamefully unemployed and best bad
Speaker 1: movie ever, owner of a demon cat, and all around
Speaker 1: cool guy, David Bell. Hi, so good to have you here.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on. I'm very excited beyond Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love your cat. By the way, she's a great cat.
Speaker 1: She is objectively better than me, well well as a presence,
Speaker 1: she's I'm a better human. She commands more in terms
Speaker 1: of just fear, respect that comes from year perhaps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's real feral yeah. Um. So I first want to
Speaker 1: say that I got a lot of the info for
Speaker 1: this episode from there's this beautiful book called Unnatural Selection.
Speaker 1: It's by Katrina Van Grow. She's a science author and
Speaker 1: an incredible illustrator and overall just way more talented than
Speaker 1: I will ever hope to be. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's true. She can draw a chicken, though, she can
Speaker 1: draw a chicken like I've never seen anyone draw a
Speaker 1: chicken before. Yeah, that skill has limited applications though, joll
Speaker 1: me like one of your fit French chickens cat Katrina. Now,
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful book. I think it's a book that
Speaker 1: anyone can read through, even if you don't have a
Speaker 1: deeper knowledge of evolutionary biology. It's just very well written
Speaker 1: and beautifully illustrated. I highly recommend it. Yeah, how can
Speaker 1: you not like chickens? How can you not? It has
Speaker 1: so many It's not just chickens, it's also sheep and
Speaker 1: pigs and dogs and cows, and also all the domesticated
Speaker 1: animals that humans have concocted, which are often uniformly horrifying.
Speaker 1: It's I think it's like the ultimate revenge. As we
Speaker 1: were living in caves and like terrified for our lives,
Speaker 1: and we're like, we're not just gonna kill these animals.
Speaker 1: We're gonna We're gonna just slowly change what they are fundamentally.
Speaker 1: We will bend their bones to our will. We will
Speaker 1: create a dystopian universe for these animals. We will take
Speaker 1: that wolf and crush its skull into the shape of
Speaker 1: a chihuahua, make it unrecognizable. Yeah. So, so we are
Speaker 1: indeed sort were monsters were godlike monsters. So first I
Speaker 1: want to start out with something simple or seemingly simple.
Speaker 1: The broiler chickens. So the broiler chicken is probably if
Speaker 1: you eat chicken, it's probably what you had for lunch.
Speaker 1: It's bread specifically for meat production. Now I should start
Speaker 1: out with the caveat Dave, you are a vegetarian. This
Speaker 1: is true, and I've brought you here today to tort you.
Speaker 1: It's okay. I'm not, as we were saying before this.
Speaker 1: I I've been a vegetarian since fifth grade, since I
Speaker 1: was I don't know eight, I don't know what what
Speaker 1: age you are in fifth grade? Uh, and I never
Speaker 1: I just did it because I thought it was gross.
Speaker 1: I'm not against like, I'm not very preachy about it.
Speaker 1: I don't get bothered by I would probably eat a
Speaker 1: very um exotic animal for the hell of it. Like
Speaker 1: if you if you gave me a baby, Yoda, I
Speaker 1: would eat babies, you know, because a little snack. It
Speaker 1: looks delicious, It looks delicious like jellybelly. Yeah. See, I
Speaker 1: just don't like me. I mean, I mean, there's definitely
Speaker 1: animal rights aspect in that, but you know, I think
Speaker 1: it's great. Uh, so this is going to be an
Speaker 1: interesting podcast. I think it'll be interesting to get your
Speaker 1: perspective of someone who isn't addicted to the flesh of
Speaker 1: living animals. The broiler chicken is a modern breed that
Speaker 1: was actually concocted in the nineteen fifties, and they have
Speaker 1: been domesticated to accumulate weight quickly, so that at around
Speaker 1: four to seven weeks of age, they're already ready for slaughter.
Speaker 1: They have white feathers, which means the reason they are
Speaker 1: white is so that after being plucked, their corpse looks
Speaker 1: more delicious because with brown feathers you can actually see
Speaker 1: little pin feathers, and I guess people are disgusted knowing
Speaker 1: that the meat they're eating was once a bird, so
Speaker 1: with the white feathers, you can't really see it. So
Speaker 1: it's like, oh good, just a clean chicken carcass that
Speaker 1: I'm sure just dropped out of the sky. We should
Speaker 1: all aspire to have more delicious looking corpses, that is
Speaker 1: I yeah, you know, I mean it's it's one of
Speaker 1: my big goals is to die gorgeous and delicious looking.
Speaker 1: Due to the way the chickens were selectively bred to
Speaker 1: accumulate mass as quickly as possible. Their muscular skeletal structure
Speaker 1: precludes natural mating. We have we've screwed these guys up,
Speaker 1: these poor little fellows. So they're they're large breasts make
Speaker 1: it difficult for mounting to occur. Now want to say breasts,
Speaker 1: I don't mean human like breasts. It's it's the chest
Speaker 1: area where you have the muscles, and it's the breast
Speaker 1: that you eat. You know, not needed Dave, but other people,
Speaker 1: those of us who have this the sanguine desire for flesh.
Speaker 1: So to make more chickens, here's the thing. What do
Speaker 1: you do when you have chickens that are functionally celibate
Speaker 1: because they're weird round chicken bodies are too awkward to mate. Well,
Speaker 1: the farming industry uses artificial insemination on a select few
Speaker 1: breeding stock of these chickens. So those are the only
Speaker 1: chickens that will be allowed to live past four to
Speaker 1: seven weeks because they're slaughtered before they even reach sexual maturity.
Speaker 1: And the way they collect well, okay, this is sorry,
Speaker 1: this gets a little blue, but it's science, so I
Speaker 1: have to do it. So they give males a back
Speaker 1: massage until you know they popple chicken chicken bowner back massage. Yes,
Speaker 1: so they that's what does it for chicken, that's what
Speaker 1: does it for male chickens. And so they pitch a
Speaker 1: little chicken tint and then they well, YadA, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 1: they collect the semen. That's a job. That's a job
Speaker 1: of someone that's that is a career. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: say I almost feel like the second part, while dirtier,
Speaker 1: is better than the first part of arousing, essentially arousing
Speaker 1: the chicken. It's less emotionally fraught. Yes, because if I'm
Speaker 1: giving a chicken essential back massage, I've made a connection
Speaker 1: with this chicken. What if the chicken looks me in
Speaker 1: the eye? What's a connection? Oh no, what if you
Speaker 1: feel connected on a spiritual level to this chicken. I
Speaker 1: mean you've shared a moment and you'll never be able
Speaker 1: to unshare that moment, right, whether or not you're willing
Speaker 1: to admit it. You have shared a moment. Yes, and
Speaker 1: the chicken may become meat at some point. So what
Speaker 1: do you do then? You can't? You can't eat a
Speaker 1: chicken after you've shared a back rub with the can
Speaker 1: I don't know, you just drink away the nightmares or something.
Speaker 1: So this dark, dark seed has been planted into the
Speaker 1: female's reproductive tract and more of these cute little abominations
Speaker 1: are born. So this paradox of non mating animals being
Speaker 1: propagated through selection is only really seen in nature in
Speaker 1: the context of youth social insects like bees and ants,
Speaker 1: and also naked mole rats, which is the only youth
Speaker 1: social mammal. So you social means there's a queen and
Speaker 1: you have a colony of workers who all work to
Speaker 1: aid the queen, and they don't individually reproduce. Are you
Speaker 1: telling me there's a queen mole rat? Yes, naked moret
Speaker 1: that's amazing and I think we've talked about it on
Speaker 1: the show before. But they are grotesquely large, just like
Speaker 1: a queen bee. Where queen bee is huge and pumps
Speaker 1: out a bunch of baby, the queen naked mole rat
Speaker 1: is huge and pumps out a bunch of babies. And
Speaker 1: it's the only like mammal is the mole rat that
Speaker 1: does that. Yeah, the only mammal that has a colony
Speaker 1: structure like a bee is the naked morat. Should we
Speaker 1: be worried about that? They live beneath us in vast colonies.
Speaker 1: So no, I don't see what the problem is. So
Speaker 1: in these chunky broiler chickens, the genes that regulate muscle
Speaker 1: growth are just switched off, which allows them to continue
Speaker 1: developing muscle way past what is normal or good for
Speaker 1: the chicken, so their skeleton remains the same, meaning they
Speaker 1: suffer a lack of mobility due to their skeletons being
Speaker 1: unable to properly function under their massive musculature. Muscular true.
Speaker 1: Uh so even when they're raised outdoors, this is pretty heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: The chickens aren't able to show high levels of activities
Speaker 1: due to physical weakness because they're just they're too swoll,
Speaker 1: They're too muscled, and they don't like walking too swallow.
Speaker 1: That's what it is. Too much muscles, muscles. It's a
Speaker 1: common problem that I have is too many muscles. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I will get up off the couch and actually do something,
Speaker 1: but too many muscles. This gun show is heavy. This guy,
Speaker 1: I know you've got two tickets to the gun show,
Speaker 1: but you'll have to come to me. So keep in
Speaker 1: mind as we look at other chicken species that even
Speaker 1: the standard generic meat chicken is insanely constructed, it doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense, and it is only made for human consumption,
Speaker 1: which is you know, I'm not a I'm not a vegetarian.
Speaker 1: I try to do my best to eat ethically in
Speaker 1: terms of like not eating too much meat. But regardless
Speaker 1: of your stance on vegetarianism, I think we can all
Speaker 1: agree that what we've done to chickens is it's an abomination.
Speaker 1: It is an abomination. Ye that's uh. This is where
Speaker 1: personally I became more because as I got older, I
Speaker 1: got a little more like because when you're vegetarian, other
Speaker 1: vegetarians are like, oh, let's let's talk about it, which
Speaker 1: is the most boring thing in the world. But the
Speaker 1: animal rights aspect, I've met vegans who will eat hunted meat,
Speaker 1: and that makes so much more sense where it's it's
Speaker 1: not the eat like I do think whenever I hear
Speaker 1: people being like, I'm trying to not eat means like,
Speaker 1: why that's your clearly I think designed to eat meat.
Speaker 1: We seem to be. Don't fight that, but it's the
Speaker 1: way we eat meat. Is if we if everyone cut
Speaker 1: back on meat or looked for more humane farm raising
Speaker 1: practices when purchasing meat, I think that would be great.
Speaker 1: You know what, go to home depot, get a hammer,
Speaker 1: and walk out into the woods and just get some meat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just whatever you find, don't care what kind of mean
Speaker 1: it is. So now let's talk about the Dong Tow,
Speaker 1: which is a Vietnamese chicken breed that was created as
Speaker 1: a result of a mutation that made thick, old feet,
Speaker 1: big old chunky feet. Now, this is prep starts the
Speaker 1: image portion of the podcast for day that well, because
Speaker 1: feet are delicious. This is again it feels like it's revenge.
Speaker 1: So what's interesting about these chickens is actually, compared to
Speaker 1: the much more normal looking broiler chicken, they have a
Speaker 1: higher quality of life because they don't actually seem to
Speaker 1: be too impeded by their thickle hobbit feet. So they
Speaker 1: just stomp around and these big old leg warmers made
Speaker 1: out of flesh. We made the more powerful. No, don't
Speaker 1: do that. We have made their feet giant and thick
Speaker 1: like hulk cans. So yeah, they look like they're wearing
Speaker 1: leg warmers made out of flesh. As always, I'm going
Speaker 1: to include lots of links in the show notes so
Speaker 1: you can look upon this Bauschian nightmare they live up
Speaker 1: to about a year before being slaughtered, so again actually
Speaker 1: more fortunate than the standard broiler chicken. The they are
Speaker 1: their feet are so big as a result of a
Speaker 1: mutation that causes their feet to grow uncontrollably. And they're
Speaker 1: also known as the dragon chicken, probably because they're gonna
Speaker 1: kill us once they catch on to what we've done.
Speaker 1: You know, they'll they'll look in the mirror and be like,
Speaker 1: what am I? They've been probably like stomping on mice
Speaker 1: this whole time, got a thirst for blood and yeah,
Speaker 1: next they're splattered with blood. What am I? Am I
Speaker 1: a monster? So these guys are actually worth around two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars per chicken. They're so prized for those thick,
Speaker 1: juicy feet, and the feet are that's what we're after
Speaker 1: is those feet to eat, eat the feet. They are
Speaker 1: considered a culinary delicacy. Oh yeah, I have more pictures
Speaker 1: I forgot here you go, Oh my god, they look glorious.
Speaker 1: They're just like boots, like remember eug boots, like egg
Speaker 1: boots made out of pink flesh. Yeah, yeah, which is yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure a thing you could make exist. Go out
Speaker 1: and collect meat and make sure are these feet? Any
Speaker 1: good have you got? No, I haven't eaten these feet.
Speaker 1: They must be somewhere. Welcome to my new podcast called
Speaker 1: Did I Eat these Feet? No? I haven't. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm I Maybe I would try it
Speaker 1: just for the sake of it, but I don't think
Speaker 1: I could afford two. The worst thing that could happen
Speaker 1: is you try and you love it, right exactly, because
Speaker 1: then I would have to that would become my whole
Speaker 1: life is raising and eating the feet from these chickens.
Speaker 1: But then I would feel bad about eating their feet.
Speaker 1: So I'd probably do some kind of horror show thing
Speaker 1: where I amputate their feet and then just give them
Speaker 1: robot legs. No, but then robot legs, Oh yeah, why
Speaker 1: don't we just do robot legs for these chickens? Work out?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's cruel and horrific, But at the same time,
Speaker 1: robot leg chickens, I think I think they'd be fine
Speaker 1: with it if they could. We gave them the ability
Speaker 1: to like jump really high, right, yeah, Mecca, Mecca chickens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then we just released them in the nature and
Speaker 1: like every now and then, you're gonna you're gonna encounter
Speaker 1: a robot chicken. But it's fine, right, and it'll be like, listen,
Speaker 1: I know one day you my children will come back
Speaker 1: to kill me for the crimes I've done against you.
Speaker 1: But this is this is the way you must learn
Speaker 1: the rage so that you may grow strong. Speaking of which,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the shamow and Ko Shamo chicken, which
Speaker 1: is a chicken with disturbingly upright posture. Now, I gotta
Speaker 1: show you a video of this little guy. Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I don't know how I feel about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just just let it sink in that you're seeing a
Speaker 1: chicken with perfectly upright posture walking around. Yeah, for people listening,
Speaker 1: it just looks like a what a person in a
Speaker 1: chicken costume would look like. Yes, it's uncomfortable is the
Speaker 1: word I would use to describe these chickens. And kind
Speaker 1: of cute. Here's a picture of a big one. So
Speaker 1: they look curious. They look like they're it's like your
Speaker 1: cat seeing a hearing a noise and like getting on
Speaker 1: its hime legs. Any uh, any Charlie Chaplin fans out there,
Speaker 1: there was remember gold Rush. There was a scene in
Speaker 1: gold Rush for there was a man in a giant
Speaker 1: chicken costume walking around, and it was because in the
Speaker 1: requires a little background on the film gold Rush, but
Speaker 1: they were starving in a cabin in the woods and
Speaker 1: the snow, and so they started hallucinating each other's food,
Speaker 1: and so you just saw them as this big chicken
Speaker 1: walking around. It looks like that, but obviously not human sized. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean any Looney Tunes cartoon as well, if they're
Speaker 1: like on an island or start hallucinating like your big sausage. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the coach Shamo is a former fighting cock breed
Speaker 1: from Japan. Over time, breeders selected for upright posture as
Speaker 1: an ornamental breed, meaning these are generally not used for consumption.
Speaker 1: It's just imagine a chicken. Now, imagine that chicken just
Speaker 1: sort of ironed out, straightened out, a chicken with a
Speaker 1: lot of confidence. So you said ornamental, they're not. Are
Speaker 1: they still for fighting? Are they just pets? I think
Speaker 1: some Shamo chickens are still used for fighting, unfortunately, But
Speaker 1: I think some of the like the co Shamo and
Speaker 1: these these really upright ones, I think they're just used
Speaker 1: as pets and four shows and things like that. Get
Speaker 1: one of those you know, they're really some of these.
Speaker 1: I do now want pet chickens from these, but I
Speaker 1: also find it a little horrifying that we've done this.
Speaker 1: It's it's a grotesque thing. Right. The way I think
Speaker 1: of it is like if presented with one yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I would be like one wound up on my doorstep
Speaker 1: in a little little baby bundle like with a little
Speaker 1: note saying please take care of me. I would adopt
Speaker 1: it and make it my son. Exactly. It's the same
Speaker 1: as my stance with eating exotic things. If someone was
Speaker 1: like a cooked a baby baby, yoda yoda for you,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, well, I don't condone what you want
Speaker 1: to get ways the baby. Yeah, but it's here right exactly.
Speaker 1: It's that I would so have. It's only to just
Speaker 1: terrify my guests walking around. So it's similar to the
Speaker 1: English powder, which is not a chicken but a type
Speaker 1: of pigeon. And this is another bird that has been
Speaker 1: bred to have a very weird upright posture, very long legs,
Speaker 1: and also it has an inflatable neck pouch. So this
Speaker 1: is the inflatable crop is something that most pigeons have.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think all pigeons male pigeons have that,
Speaker 1: and it's uh used in mating display and to kind
Speaker 1: of show off your your confidence level as a pigeon.
Speaker 1: But over time, breeders have selected for the biggest inflatable crops,
Speaker 1: which is the neck pouch, and the most upright posture
Speaker 1: resulting and this little guy, I'm going to show you
Speaker 1: a video. Oh I love them. Look at those balloon faces.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, they looked so proud. They're very proud.
Speaker 1: So they imagine imagine a beard, but it's a balloon
Speaker 1: of feathers and then very long legs and fluffy feathery feet. Yes,
Speaker 1: I would put a little tuxedo on one, and I
Speaker 1: would tell people that it was a person who was
Speaker 1: cursed to become a chicken. What would its name would
Speaker 1: be like, Lord Byron Vaughn. Yeah, I think that's solid,
Speaker 1: Lord Byron Monocle, Duke of Western Shore. So they've been
Speaker 1: selected to have the most excitable temperaments. So they're always
Speaker 1: popping that that big old neck pouch. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: So wait, they're angry too. They're excited, not angry, Well,
Speaker 1: they could be angry. I don't know what pigeon excitement
Speaker 1: Isn't necessarily like they're either constantly aroused or constantly angry,
Speaker 1: or maybe a mixture. Probably a mixture. Probably a mixture.
Speaker 1: Where's my sensual BackRub? So now onto. Maybe the cutest
Speaker 1: of the chickens are the silky chickens. These are the
Speaker 1: lapdogs of the chicken world. They have been bred to
Speaker 1: have a sweet temperament and to be soft and fluffy.
Speaker 1: They look made up. They look like a Jim Henson puppet.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, they look exactly like a Jim Henson.
Speaker 1: They're really fluffy. They're they have these really fluffy, downy feathers.
Speaker 1: I'm going to show you a video because it really
Speaker 1: has to sink in that they're real animals. Once you
Speaker 1: see them moving around, oh my god, being a chicken
Speaker 1: from other positions, it looks like you would be looking
Speaker 1: at like a dog. Yes, it looks they look fluffy
Speaker 1: like a little dog. Here's a bunch of them with
Speaker 1: with cool little little poof balls on their heads. Man,
Speaker 1: they look like um. They used to sell these puppets
Speaker 1: where it was like, there's I had one of those puppets.
Speaker 1: I wish. Yeah, it's like a big fluffy puppet in labyrinth.
Speaker 1: Those weird goblins that dance. Well, it looks. The reason
Speaker 1: it looks so similar to Jim Henson puppets is that
Speaker 1: they I think Jim Henson puppets use feathers for some
Speaker 1: of their fluffy are ones. The amount of animals that
Speaker 1: were slaughtered to those uppets, I don't think they were
Speaker 1: Jim Henson. Oh no, So it was likely bread from
Speaker 1: the Chinese silk chicken. In the Some of the eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds Dutch breeders claimed that the silky was a chicken
Speaker 1: crossbread with a rabbit because people in the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: were dumb as rocks. It's true they are kept as
Speaker 1: ornamental pet birds or do eggs sitting for other breeds,
Speaker 1: as they are very quote brooding birds, which doesn't mean
Speaker 1: they're off in the corner going like nobody unders stoned
Speaker 1: onto me. It means that they like to sit on eggs,
Speaker 1: and they're very good egg sitters. So the way their
Speaker 1: feathers work is that the feathers have no barber cells,
Speaker 1: which are microscopic hooks on feathers that allow them to
Speaker 1: retain their feather shape. Have you ever like screwed up
Speaker 1: a feather? You know what? I mean, where you take
Speaker 1: a feather that's perfectly coming, you go the wrong way, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then it's screwed up forever. That's because you've broken
Speaker 1: apart those barber cells which are actually hooking onto it
Speaker 1: and giving it that structure. Hands, yes, exactly, exactly, So
Speaker 1: these do not have barber cells. So all their feathers
Speaker 1: are essentially down and soft and fluffy, and they look
Speaker 1: like the most wonderful thing to touch. And there's other
Speaker 1: chickens that actually have structural abnormalities with their feathers, such
Speaker 1: as curly feathers, like the frizzled chicken. You gotta see this.
Speaker 1: This is this chicken, isn't this is me as a
Speaker 1: chicken if I became a chicken. It's got really curly hair.
Speaker 1: It's got wonderful locks of curly right, And that actually
Speaker 1: results from a lopsided structure of the feather, where like
Speaker 1: one side of the feather is structured out of sync
Speaker 1: with the other side so that it curls up. It's
Speaker 1: really funny, so onto. Perhaps my favorite of the chickens
Speaker 1: uh is the Arnold Schwarzenegger chicken, also known as the
Speaker 1: Malaysian cerama. It is a tiny angry looking chicken with
Speaker 1: a huge puffed out chest and upright posture like the shamow,
Speaker 1: a huge chest like the broiler chicken. And it's one
Speaker 1: of the smallest breeds in the world. And I can't
Speaker 1: even do it justice verbally. Here's a picture of it.
Speaker 1: It looks like a looting to his cartoon. It looks
Speaker 1: like a little chicken that's trying to act tough. Yes,
Speaker 1: that has like a big temper because what it's it's
Speaker 1: also bred so that its wings are straight down, so
Speaker 1: it looks like it's at attention, like a soldier, a
Speaker 1: tiny soldier chicken. In fact, in Malaysia they're also called
Speaker 1: a brave warrior or archangel chickens due to their brave
Speaker 1: stance they are. The chicks of this chicken are about
Speaker 1: the size of a human thumb. They're teeny tiny, and
Speaker 1: the adults are about I would say, about the size
Speaker 1: of a larger grapefruit, maybe a grapefruit. Okay, sorry, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know what kind of football you're playing with.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know how, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't sports. You don't sports. Yeah, they they're also uh,
Speaker 1: they don't weigh that much. They're about I think they're
Speaker 1: under like five grams or something. Why would we do this?
Speaker 1: Why would because adorable because it's like a this is
Speaker 1: you keep talking about wanting to eat a baby Yoda?
Speaker 1: Here it is? Are these getting eaten? No? No, I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I mean you could. I mean it
Speaker 1: would be like maybe like a thimbleful of me a
Speaker 1: tiny although we do eat quail and the really only
Speaker 1: happ anything, right, Yeah, well that is true. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: will find if there's a way to eat something, we
Speaker 1: will find it. So the next one is I like
Speaker 1: to call it the goth chicken. It is the I
Speaker 1: Am Semoni chicken, which is jet black all the way through.
Speaker 1: So it is possibly the most deeply pigmented animal on
Speaker 1: the planet because even its bones and internal organs are
Speaker 1: jet black. So it originates from Indonesia. It's that goth.
Speaker 1: It is deep. This is not this is like typo negative. God, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this isn't. This isn't. Oh I dyed one strand of
Speaker 1: my hair red and I'm goth. Now this is this
Speaker 1: is like I only wear nine inch nails shirts and
Speaker 1: my shoes lace up to my butt hole. Mindless self
Speaker 1: indulgence concerts. Yes, yes, this is. This is I have
Speaker 1: permanently tattooed dark makeup and shaved off my eyebrows. Goth
Speaker 1: the are the most These are the most goth that
Speaker 1: you can achieve. If your bones are black, that's the
Speaker 1: most goth. They are from Indonesia. They have a mutation
Speaker 1: known as dermo fibro melanosis, which is so normally chickens
Speaker 1: and other animals have genes in skin, feather, hair, or
Speaker 1: fur follicular cells that control color. So the genes and
Speaker 1: these cells basically send out a request for melano blasts,
Speaker 1: which are cells that develop into melanocytes, which is these
Speaker 1: are all just fancy words to say that these are
Speaker 1: cells that control pigment. And so if you have the
Speaker 1: gene in the cell, it's like, hey, pigment, come over here,
Speaker 1: give me some red color on these locks. Like that.
Speaker 1: That's that's how it works. But usually your bones don't
Speaker 1: have that gene. Your bones aren't like, hey, red hair gene,
Speaker 1: come over here and make my bones red. In the
Speaker 1: I am so many chickens. Cells in the bones and
Speaker 1: other organs and feathers erroneously have the genes that ask
Speaker 1: for melana sites to come over, meaning they have black bones,
Speaker 1: which is a called like a mismigration of the milan in.
Speaker 1: It's the coolest thing I think an animal can do,
Speaker 1: to have black bones. I think that's the coolest thing.
Speaker 1: It apparently makes the meat taste different. I don't know
Speaker 1: why we're eating the black bones chickens for the bones well,
Speaker 1: but the problem is these are clearly demon chickens, and
Speaker 1: we were basically, if you eat one of these chickens,
Speaker 1: I think that you will willingly signed onto Satan's army.
Speaker 1: Is one of his Oh yeah, Satan was like, I'm
Speaker 1: putting these demon birds in and see who eats them.
Speaker 1: Right now, I think about it's kind of a bummer
Speaker 1: to have awesome bones because there's only one way to
Speaker 1: get to those bones, and it's not a pleasant way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's only one way to get to them bones. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a good that's a good catchphrase. I like
Speaker 1: that only one way to get to them bones. So
Speaker 1: it's a total restructuring of the genome to create these
Speaker 1: goth chickens, possibly being traced back to a single bird. Now,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting thing in evolution because this is
Speaker 1: known as a macro mutation. Where it's like one huge mutation.
Speaker 1: So usually traits are developed over long periods of time,
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, just to
Speaker 1: get a slightly different trade or just to get a
Speaker 1: new trade, whereas there are macro mutations where just boom,
Speaker 1: suddenly your bones are black. Uh, And so the idea
Speaker 1: of macro mutations as being a driving force of evolution
Speaker 1: is mostly debunked. It was called mutationism, which argued big
Speaker 1: steps rather than small gradual changes, had to be responsible
Speaker 1: for evolutionary progress. But this theory was mostly debunked by
Speaker 1: Darwin's national selection and Mandelian genetics that showed mostly when
Speaker 1: you have a huge like a big mutation, it's typically
Speaker 1: bad for the animal, and better to have these smaller
Speaker 1: mutations that don't hurt yet that kind of work towards
Speaker 1: maybe a more advantageous trait. Yeah, if your bones went
Speaker 1: black overnight, very worrying. The hopeful monster is the name
Speaker 1: for the model of an animal who has a macro
Speaker 1: mutation that would become successful, And it was a model
Speaker 1: in n that is definitely never caught on and was
Speaker 1: widely ridiculed. But the hopeful monster model actually works well
Speaker 1: with artificial selection because humans are weirdos and we love
Speaker 1: to see crazy, insane animals that have black bones and
Speaker 1: huge chunky feet. We are the most like perverse of
Speaker 1: the species on this planet. We didn't, Yeah, we do
Speaker 1: love an underdog, and by underdog, like a dog with
Speaker 1: an underbyte that we've breke right exactly. I've seen viral
Speaker 1: images that suggest the eggs of the i Am Smani
Speaker 1: Goth chicken are black, but in my research it appears
Speaker 1: the eggs are like pink. The black eggs are likely
Speaker 1: a hoax. Images online of these jet black eggs maybe
Speaker 1: Oakudani black eggs regular chicken eggs that turn black after
Speaker 1: being boiled in Owaka Dani Valley, Hakone, Japan's hot springs,
Speaker 1: where the sulfur in the water causes a chemical reaction,
Speaker 1: turning the egg shells black and birds. Egg pigment comes
Speaker 1: from the reproductive tract. The squishy yolk and white of
Speaker 1: the egg is covered in calcium carbonate from special shell
Speaker 1: glands as they make their way down the bird uterus,
Speaker 1: then they're covered in a layer of protective protein. At
Speaker 1: this point, patterns and pigments may be added from special
Speaker 1: glands that spray paint the eggs. It's like a factory
Speaker 1: conveyor belt made out of chicken uterus. This process takes
Speaker 1: only about twenty four hours. Those specialized pigment blasting glands
Speaker 1: can be so in utably precise that they're time to
Speaker 1: fire at certain times to produce specific coloration and patterning,
Speaker 1: often camouflage for each egg. When we return, get out
Speaker 1: your hands in construction paper. It's turkey time. Gobble, gobble, everybody,
Speaker 1: it's turkey time. You know what a turkey is. It's
Speaker 1: roughly the shape of your hand plus some construction paper
Speaker 1: beaks and feet. The turkey, unlike the chicken, is indigenous
Speaker 1: to the America's Native Americans have been domesticating turkeys for
Speaker 1: over one thousand, five hundred years. The ancestors of the
Speaker 1: modern day turkey meligress, Gallopevo, the wild turkey, have been
Speaker 1: linked to bone fragments, along with archaeological finds of fences
Speaker 1: and cages and corn in Central Mexico dated back to
Speaker 1: eight hundred BC, indicating that all ready the turkey was
Speaker 1: being held captive. Nowadays, the turkey that's on your table
Speaker 1: is a far gobble from the colorful blue red, pink,
Speaker 1: and purple wild turkeys. So let's talk a bit about
Speaker 1: this noble creature who are once nominated by Benjamin Franklin
Speaker 1: to be the national bird, as Franklin considered them to
Speaker 1: be a bird of courage. God, I wish we had
Speaker 1: gone that route. Can you imagine how uch cooler America
Speaker 1: would have been. He's not wrong. They are a bird
Speaker 1: of courage, they really are. They are better. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: a better analogy for America where they run in places
Speaker 1: and tack people and freak everybody. It really I mean,
Speaker 1: but I think if we had gone with the turkey,
Speaker 1: we would have been a more humble nation because we
Speaker 1: would have been looking into a mirror, right, yes, a
Speaker 1: turkey shaped mirror. Oh yeah, And like there'd be a
Speaker 1: little turkeys on like the top of flag pools and
Speaker 1: like maybe like everything, we'd have busts of turkeys, Like
Speaker 1: presidential candidates would pose next to a turkey. God, it
Speaker 1: would have been so much better. He was, so we
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't be eating them. I don't think once a
Speaker 1: year we'd be eating eagles instead. And eagles are they're
Speaker 1: like in certain places, they're past like like if you
Speaker 1: go to Alaska, you can just yeah, you can eat
Speaker 1: the eagle. I think I cannot fact check that right now,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure if we can. If you can
Speaker 1: just eat eagles, if it's true, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's If it's true, Alaska, that should be their state
Speaker 1: motto because that's eagles. You can eat eagles here. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's I don't think it's legal to eat eagles.
Speaker 1: Probably illegal, eagle illegal legal. So domesticated turkeys have white
Speaker 1: feathers unlike the natural hand turkey variety, and it's the
Speaker 1: same reason as chicken, so their corpses look more pretty
Speaker 1: and so you can't see their pin feathers if they
Speaker 1: missed a few when they defeathered them. So they're called
Speaker 1: the turkey because Europeans stupidly misidentified the American turkey as
Speaker 1: a guinea fowl from Turkey the country. But the Latin
Speaker 1: name for turkeys is gallopavo or chicken peacock, like that
Speaker 1: better chicken peacock. Yeah, this is a better name, isn't
Speaker 1: It makes it makes it feel a little weirder to
Speaker 1: eat them, like you don't eat peacock. Well, we don't,
Speaker 1: although I think you can in Elizabethan's You see. We
Speaker 1: talked about this on another podcast where I had Smart
Speaker 1: Else host on Katherine Spears. We talked about how they
Speaker 1: used to uh eat peacocks and swans and then they
Speaker 1: would stuff the swan and peacock skin back with the meat,
Speaker 1: so you would be eating the meat out of a
Speaker 1: stuffed peacock. Yeah. I lived near peacock's growing up, and
Speaker 1: they are allowed angry animals and there's ever a bird
Speaker 1: that deserved to get eaten. We had a peacock take
Speaker 1: my family hostage when I was a little kid, just
Speaker 1: landed in our yard, stayed there. We fed it bread
Speaker 1: and it would scream at us. It was great. I
Speaker 1: missed that peacock. So the wild Turkey's bit and Bob's
Speaker 1: are all male sexual displays. So that big old fantail
Speaker 1: all the neck business going on. So the fleshy head
Speaker 1: bump bumps are called car uncles. The fleshy protuberance that
Speaker 1: comes off the beak is called the snood. That throat
Speaker 1: dangles called the wattle, and the chest feathers are called
Speaker 1: the beard. So the snood, which is that dangle thing
Speaker 1: that comes off the beak is like a beak weener,
Speaker 1: because when the male is displaying to females, the snood
Speaker 1: becomes erect, so the beard is like the pups. Yeah sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean if we're doing the beak weener, the yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it is, it's it's like straightens out it
Speaker 1: because yeah that. So to entice the female, the turkey
Speaker 1: will puff out its chest feathers and tail feathers, its
Speaker 1: struts and does a ritualistic sexy sneezing with an erect
Speaker 1: snood in bright red e gorged her uncles. Then the
Speaker 1: turkey will also do body vibrations hot hot. So I
Speaker 1: want to answer a question, which is our turkeys stupid?
Speaker 1: Are they? I don't know. Probably I think that they
Speaker 1: are considered stupid, And the popular conception of turkey stupidity
Speaker 1: comes from the awkward way they walk, probably the the
Speaker 1: erect nudes that they do, and the stupid things that
Speaker 1: they do, like staring into the rain with their mouths
Speaker 1: open until they allegedly drown. So I looked into this
Speaker 1: and specifically that behavior of staring into the rain is
Speaker 1: not actually stupidity or a death wish, and there's not
Speaker 1: really evidence that they drown in any significant numbers. It's
Speaker 1: caused by an inherited condition called titanic torticol or spasms,
Speaker 1: which is a result of our domestication of them. So
Speaker 1: it's a neurological tick where the turkeys throw their heads
Speaker 1: onto their backs and point their beaks upward into the sky.
Speaker 1: I like to think that they're just asking God, why
Speaker 1: why have you done this? Right? And if they're drowning,
Speaker 1: they're just like end it. Yeah, it's not. They're not mesmerized.
Speaker 1: It's not some dude at burning Man. They're not like
Speaker 1: whoa when the rain comes towards you, like little dots
Speaker 1: man in space, it's like styles are falling on my face.
Speaker 1: So turkey advocates argue that turkeys are highly social and
Speaker 1: not as stupid as they seem, and they indeed have
Speaker 1: a lot of like social gobbles. They but they're they're
Speaker 1: actually kind of aggressive towards each other sometimes. So they're
Speaker 1: not it's all not all sunshine and roses with with
Speaker 1: the turkeys, but they are they are highly social and
Speaker 1: they Yeah, I think that they're probably not as smart
Speaker 1: as say crows or you know, these other smarter bird species,
Speaker 1: but they're probably not complete imbeciles. Did you see on
Speaker 1: the on the social media's there was a video of
Speaker 1: a turkey following a mail truck and it was apparently
Speaker 1: doing it for like a month, and it would follow
Speaker 1: it along and then whenever he'd stop and give him ale,
Speaker 1: it would like bother the mail. That's wonderful. So they're
Speaker 1: smart enough to be jerks. The Turkey Revolution come. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw a video of a bunch of turkeys just
Speaker 1: circling a cat like and I think the cat may
Speaker 1: have been dead cat, and they were just they formed
Speaker 1: this circle around the cat. And the explanation I saw
Speaker 1: of it was that the turkeys were curious. But no,
Speaker 1: that's the devil. It's the devil. That's that's some sinister stuff.
Speaker 1: Or that's like Turkey time. This cat for the Turkey Revolution.
Speaker 1: So related to the turkey. I always think of the
Speaker 1: dodo because they are another cidered stupid bird which is
Speaker 1: not actually related to the turkey. But I kind of
Speaker 1: want to give the dodo a bit of a reprieve
Speaker 1: from their perception as the dumbest animal. The turkey is
Speaker 1: more closely related to chickens than to the dodo. Uh.
Speaker 1: The dodos had brains that were about the size of
Speaker 1: a pigeon's um, which we know doesn't necessarily mean anything
Speaker 1: about intelligent, Like crow brains are pretty small and they're
Speaker 1: actually very smart, so brain size doesn't necessarily indicate anything,
Speaker 1: but it is an indication that they may not have
Speaker 1: been There's no evidence to suggest they were much dumber
Speaker 1: than a pigeon, so they were considered to be stupid
Speaker 1: due to how easy it was to round them up
Speaker 1: onto the ships of Dutch sailors on their native island.
Speaker 1: After the human invasion, the Dodo quickly went extinct in
Speaker 1: the late sixteen hundreds, and a lot of people attribute
Speaker 1: this to humans hunting them and the Dodos just being
Speaker 1: too stupid to not prevent their own mass demise. But
Speaker 1: I don't think this is necessarily true. So the reason
Speaker 1: they were easy to capture wasn't because they were stupid,
Speaker 1: but due to the fact that as island birds, they
Speaker 1: were never exposed to humans or even comparably large predators
Speaker 1: that they need a defense strategy against. Right, they're just friendly,
Speaker 1: right end, neighbor, Would you like to come over and
Speaker 1: play some yachts? Do you play yachts? And we're like, yes,
Speaker 1: get into this box here, and we'll have a great
Speaker 1: time coming to our ships. Please. Yeah. So consider the quaco,
Speaker 1: which is that adorable little mammal that's isolated two small
Speaker 1: islands off the coast of Australia. We've talked about it
Speaker 1: on the show. If you don't know what is, google
Speaker 1: that right now. They are adorable. Here let me show you.
Speaker 1: There's definitely certain species that if we decided to suddenly
Speaker 1: eat them, it would be very easy. It'd be very
Speaker 1: it would be incredibly easy to just because we just
Speaker 1: haven't and they didn't, they're gonna be like, I didn't
Speaker 1: know they do that. So here's the quaca. Oh I've
Speaker 1: seen these. Yeah, they're adorable little mammals. They have no
Speaker 1: fear of humans because they live in on island and
Speaker 1: they they're only predators are snakes, so they have they
Speaker 1: just don't associate humans with a threat, so they'll take
Speaker 1: selfies with you. Now, we are actually kind of a
Speaker 1: threat to them when we leave our litter or try
Speaker 1: to touch them or feed them and in general in general. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if we just it's so frustrating because people you
Speaker 1: can take selfies with them as long as you don't
Speaker 1: touch them and you don't feed them. This could be
Speaker 1: a perfectly fine relationship, but I feel like we're going
Speaker 1: to mess it up by like shoving Snickers bars in
Speaker 1: them because they look so cute. We have to touch things.
Speaker 1: We do have to touch a little belly. There's no
Speaker 1: way I can't. They can't bite, though they they'll they'll
Speaker 1: only allow so much interaction before they bite to So
Speaker 1: I feel like the dodos may have been similar to
Speaker 1: the quaca. So like, if they had been alive today,
Speaker 1: maybe we would would have taken a bunch of selfies
Speaker 1: with them. And they're stupid, happy little faces. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: we knew better, right, But if you're like showing up
Speaker 1: on island, you're like, I'm really hungry and these birds
Speaker 1: are walking up like high. Yeah. Actually, so far from
Speaker 1: being the plump and juicy victim of dinner time, Dodos
Speaker 1: probably didn't die out because of overhunting. In fact, their
Speaker 1: meat was not necessarily all that great anyways. The really
Speaker 1: juicy looking dodo image comes from captive, over fed dodos,
Speaker 1: whereas wild dodos probably died out due to the animal
Speaker 1: hitchhikers that invaded along with the sailors, so namely rats, rats,
Speaker 1: and other invasive species, likely eight dodo eggs, and out
Speaker 1: competed them for food until they were driven to extinction,
Speaker 1: which is happens very easily on these islands. It happens
Speaker 1: to birds on islands when cats are introduced, because the
Speaker 1: birds just they don't have a natural predator as efficient
Speaker 1: as a cat, and then the cat comes in and
Speaker 1: just cleans that island up. Cats were an apocalypse for
Speaker 1: certain because we yeah, they were just what get on
Speaker 1: our boats and we'd be like, I guess we have
Speaker 1: cats now, which is how anybody ever gets a cat,
Speaker 1: and then we just bring them somewhere and be like
Speaker 1: all right, get out and then just wreak havoc. Yep.
Speaker 1: Just I mean maybe that's why the turkeys celebrated the
Speaker 1: cat's death. Yea, the great destroyer has been killed, it
Speaker 1: has been felled. Now the greater turkey demon can take
Speaker 1: its place. It does make sense. And I think about
Speaker 1: it that like if if you see a bunch of
Speaker 1: anything circling a dead thing in a celebratory way, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, oh, that's the murderer, right right. Yeah, generally speaking, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's I think the turkeys were probably right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: most likely hashtag those turkeys were right. Turkeys were right?
Speaker 1: So why do we eat turkey? Okay, smart says, I
Speaker 1: know a bunch of you just said because they taste good.
Speaker 1: But hold on, there are all sorts of animals we
Speaker 1: eat who could be candidates for Thanksgiving dinner. Fickleness and
Speaker 1: human culture can shape the fates of domesticated animals, particularly
Speaker 1: the turkey. Originally, eating turkey on holidays was likely practical.
Speaker 1: The turkey was a large bird, enough to feed a
Speaker 1: whole family, and slaughtering a turkey was more economical than
Speaker 1: a whole cow or a chicken, who was valued for
Speaker 1: its eggs and more succulent meat. Ham and brined cork
Speaker 1: was a staple, but wasn't considered special enough for a feast.
Speaker 1: In eight President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, and
Speaker 1: turkeys already had the honor of being the centerpiece of
Speaker 1: the feast in American culture. Lucky then, in the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: turkeys had become associated with the working class, so the
Speaker 1: wealthy turned to game and beef to feel fancy. And
Speaker 1: thanks to Charles Dickens, a Christmas Carol and Scrooge is
Speaker 1: generous gift of a Christmas turkey. The turkey became a
Speaker 1: popular Christmas staple. It's a Christmas miracle, but not for
Speaker 1: the turkey. The turkeys died. When we return, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about man's best fried friends. So did we originally domesticate
Speaker 1: dogs to snack on them? A new study proposes that
Speaker 1: wolves were originally domesticated, at least in part for their meat.
Speaker 1: The study suggests that there was a single domestication event
Speaker 1: and that all domesticated dogs are descendants of these wolf
Speaker 1: ancestors from about fourteen thousand years ago. At these archaeological sites,
Speaker 1: ancient dog bones with marks that suggested they were butchered
Speaker 1: for their meat were found. But fortunately for our canine friends,
Speaker 1: eventually we discovered that they were worth more to us
Speaker 1: seated next to the table than on it. I wonder
Speaker 1: sometimes when I look at my dog, I I go
Speaker 1: to I'm going to eat you, I'm going to eat
Speaker 1: Is that like an instinct, some kind of deep instinct?
Speaker 1: I think, so, yeah, I think we know dogs are delicious.
Speaker 1: Now it makes sense. The moment we discover new animal,
Speaker 1: I think the first thing we do is a taste test,
Speaker 1: and then it's yeah, are they worth more as meat
Speaker 1: or are they worth more as a pet. I think
Speaker 1: about this with um, like if the apocalypse happens. If
Speaker 1: you have a dog, there's that loyalty where you're like
Speaker 1: like if there's no food around, and you're like, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna eat my dog. But eventually you'd be like, man,
Speaker 1: that dog looks pretty good. Um and the Honor Party
Speaker 1: famously in their journal road after they ate their dogs
Speaker 1: like it was a good dog. Yeah, it was doing
Speaker 1: a little joke there as they stared down cannibalism and death. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's why I think cats tend to be like I
Speaker 1: think as pets they have more of the power because
Speaker 1: I think if I was faced with a situation where
Speaker 1: I was darving and I had my cat, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: it's hardly a meal, Like what's the point? I might
Speaker 1: as well just keep it around. My My dog is
Speaker 1: fun sized, though she would be a little snack, A
Speaker 1: little snack yeah, but not yeah again like with a
Speaker 1: little dog, It's like, I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: worth it. It's interesting because I do think the smaller
Speaker 1: smaller the dog, the more the power dynamic shifts as well,
Speaker 1: like the dog knows like you're not going to eat me,
Speaker 1: not even worth it, Yeah exactly. That's why they're so pushy,
Speaker 1: like what are you gonna do about it? What are
Speaker 1: you gonna do about it? Yeah? Yeah. So it is
Speaker 1: interesting because when you compare dogs to pigs, you do
Speaker 1: find that pigs are similarly intelligent to dogs, at least
Speaker 1: domesticated pigs. Pigs are on the way they're being promoted
Speaker 1: to pet soon, I believe. I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: I don't think we're gonna drop our pig eating habits.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I try not to eat it just
Speaker 1: because it creeps me out thinking about because like I
Speaker 1: just associated it with eating a dog. Aren't they also,
Speaker 1: like I know, like they're pretty close to humans, like
Speaker 1: in terms of like their mass and like the there.
Speaker 1: Like it's not that they're like genetically close to us
Speaker 1: or anything. But when I think a pig flesh, I think, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably what a human I have heard that. I've
Speaker 1: heard that human meat would taste like pig, but I
Speaker 1: can't confirm that, having not ever eating a human. Clearly
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know. I mean, I mean, come on, right,
Speaker 1: you know, not even out of curiosity, not even a
Speaker 1: reasonable amount of just curiosity of tasting it once come
Speaker 1: on anyways, So domesticated pigs are quite smart and are
Speaker 1: comparably intelligent to dogs. In fact, a recent study showed
Speaker 1: that pigs are capable of understanding how mirrors work, which
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure dogs have been able to do so.
Speaker 1: So they may not know whether the image in the
Speaker 1: mirror is of themselves, but they can triangulate their location
Speaker 1: based on mirrors and use the mirrors to find food.
Speaker 1: So a lot of pig intelligence is food motivated, which honestly,
Speaker 1: same same my i Q jumps up like a hundred
Speaker 1: points when food is involved. So pigs also know how
Speaker 1: to deceive other pigs. So if one pig is trying
Speaker 1: to follow another pig to find where the food is,
Speaker 1: the pig being followed will try to throw off the
Speaker 1: other pig from its trail, like yeah, exactly. So it's
Speaker 1: incredible because first you have the first layer of the
Speaker 1: pigs knowing to try to stake out the other pigs
Speaker 1: to try to find their food stash, and then the
Speaker 1: layer of like hopping in the taxi trying to lose
Speaker 1: the other pig, you know, driving into the wrong neighborhood.
Speaker 1: So the pig doesn't know where you live, wearing a
Speaker 1: pig disguise, a little pig mustache like warm rattle perg. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're just not fluffy, that's the that's the problem.
Speaker 1: If they became fluffy, we probably uh we would probably
Speaker 1: stop eating them. Well, boy, do I have news for you.
Speaker 1: There is a pig called the mangoza, which is a
Speaker 1: pig with a wooly coat like a sheep and of
Speaker 1: course not hairy like boars, which are no, no, not
Speaker 1: coarse hair, soft fluffy wool like a sheep. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: why did that happen? That's amazing. We made it happen.
Speaker 1: We shaped them. Did we just put the chia pet
Speaker 1: seeds on it? Well, according to like old Europeans, we
Speaker 1: would have cross bread it with a sheep, because god,
Speaker 1: they were so dumb, like, oh, it's got wool. Most
Speaker 1: have been crossbread with a sheep. Anyways, I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't want you about animals. If I was just
Speaker 1: like left in a vacuum and saw that thing, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, I don't know, I guess it had sex
Speaker 1: with a sheep. Well, you know I can actually Okay,
Speaker 1: so a pig and a sheep I could conceive as
Speaker 1: like an a sixteen hundreds European of believing that. But
Speaker 1: but the earlier example of the chicken and the rabbit,
Speaker 1: I would have a Rabbits can't do eggs, so I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. It's also like, there's no way you'd get
Speaker 1: those two to mate. They would just try to kill
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah. Yeah, So these are a Hungarian breed
Speaker 1: of domesticated pig. They've gone out of fashion since they
Speaker 1: provide really lean meat, and they have been replaced by
Speaker 1: more modern domesticated pigs on the meat production side of things,
Speaker 1: but they are still reared as a specialty pig, fun
Speaker 1: furry friend of ours to pretend we don't eat some populations.
Speaker 1: Good news. They have gone feral in the Serbian wetlands
Speaker 1: and they are breeding with wild boars, meaning that we
Speaker 1: could have some wild, wooly wild boars in the future. No,
Speaker 1: look like they look like wigs, wigs. They look at
Speaker 1: pigs with pigs with wigs, with wigs with those fancy
Speaker 1: like Victorian Oh yeah, like the Judge wigs or the
Speaker 1: Victorian wigs, or the French those French powdered wigs. Yes,
Speaker 1: I do. I do say they're like pigs in a
Speaker 1: monty pythons let the meat cake. So speaking of wild boars,
Speaker 1: Farrell Hawk, I know this is a Dave's pet issue.
Speaker 1: I've done a lot of research. Have you heard of
Speaker 1: the Ferrell hogs that found and destroyed a cash of cocaine?
Speaker 1: Worth happened? That just happened. And we're learning about our cocaine,
Speaker 1: which is as humanity, that's our secret weapon. Yes, cocaine
Speaker 1: was always are that the sort of like when the
Speaker 1: penny drops, at least we have cocaine top card. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if the aliens come and we really got we really
Speaker 1: got a focus and like fight them, We're like, all right,
Speaker 1: everybody do cocaine. The aliens do some kind of tabulation
Speaker 1: of like their their fight want is at only T
Speaker 1: and then we do cocaine. It's like, oh no, it
Speaker 1: is off the charts, aboard, aboard, so many new screenplays. Yes,
Speaker 1: these Ferreal hogs found cocaine that was hidden in the
Speaker 1: Italian woods, and a wire chap on drug dealers caught
Speaker 1: them complaining about Ferrell hogs destroying their product. Wonderful. I
Speaker 1: just love that they're listening to this Hawaire tap like, man,
Speaker 1: those those Ferreal hogs twenty two thousand, just down the drain,
Speaker 1: will down the hog, really down the hog. I wonder,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting The hogs are just like I just
Speaker 1: want to clean everything. Everything got gotta clean. Get a
Speaker 1: clean man. This forest is dirty. Wow, No one knows
Speaker 1: how many pineheals around want account, want account. So yeah,
Speaker 1: now Ferrell hogs have a taste for cocaine. They have beautiful,
Speaker 1: luscious wooly coats. They're basically becoming Hollywood. They are. They
Speaker 1: really are just gonna give them some fancy glasses, fancy
Speaker 1: glasses and and like designer shoes, and then suddenly they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, they're there. They've made it. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: I want to talk about actual sheep called the ancon
Speaker 1: sheep or also known as the otter sheep, which is
Speaker 1: it's a sheep with dwarf is m basically so otters.
Speaker 1: By the way, we really need to start domesticating them.
Speaker 1: There's a little off topic, but I think, like otters
Speaker 1: and seals, I think they're ready. I think they want to.
Speaker 1: Are they ready? Are they ready to be? Have us
Speaker 1: shape their bones with our godlike powers unnatural selections. You
Speaker 1: watch those videos of like seals like getting attacked by
Speaker 1: killer killer whales and jumping out onto the boat like
Speaker 1: hey please, like I think that. I think if we
Speaker 1: took one home, they'd be like, all right, this is cool,
Speaker 1: this is easier cool. And they crap everywhere and bite you. Ye,
Speaker 1: I mean sure, that's when my cat does. Sounds like
Speaker 1: my dog too. So that's the little little guy. They
Speaker 1: got little stubb legs and they are now they're not
Speaker 1: an actual new species of sheep. They're just it's a
Speaker 1: sheep that basically was descended all from one mutant sheep,
Speaker 1: and they have dwarf is um, so they have shorter legs.
Speaker 1: That connective tissue isn't. There's a mutation in their jeans
Speaker 1: that just gives them that shorter skeletal structure. When you
Speaker 1: say one, it was like one little horny sheep, one
Speaker 1: little horny sheep at necessarily especially horny. It was just
Speaker 1: one sheep. And then a farmer saw this little stubby
Speaker 1: like sheep was like, not sheep can't clamb fences. Well,
Speaker 1: we're going to breathe that sheep. That is the that's
Speaker 1: the weirdest revelation I've had about this stuff. Is I
Speaker 1: looked into my cat breed, which is an American Bombay,
Speaker 1: And that's just one lady in the thirties who was like,
Speaker 1: I wanted to make little panthers. And it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: like I have had seven husbands, but have I haven't
Speaker 1: had a tiny panther. It's like ground zero these these, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It is weird how one human has the
Speaker 1: power to craft a new misshape and animal and then
Speaker 1: we're all like, oh, let me get one of those. Yes,
Speaker 1: so yeah, no, it literally the farmer that first encountered
Speaker 1: the sheep was like, well, I don't have to build
Speaker 1: tall fences because this sheep cannot jump over fences. No,
Speaker 1: that was literally the actual story, and they actually these
Speaker 1: sheep were important to Darwin because it helped him argue
Speaker 1: the case for inheriting independent characteristics from parents. So it's
Speaker 1: not always a blend of traits. So you have one
Speaker 1: really tall parent and one really short parent and then
Speaker 1: you're like medium sized. But you can have just one
Speaker 1: trait that's inherited that wins out over the other, like
Speaker 1: dominant recessive genes. Uh so yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's got stubby legs, but a big heart. So now
Speaker 1: this is exciting. I want to talk to you about
Speaker 1: swoll cows. Swoll Cows is not their real name. That's
Speaker 1: the name I gave them. And they are it is
Speaker 1: a species, or not a species, but a breed of
Speaker 1: cow called the Belgian Blue, which is a mutant cow
Speaker 1: with huge muscles. These aren't because I am aware that
Speaker 1: there are Nazi cows. Have you seen those? What? There
Speaker 1: are cows that the Nazis, specifically bread that are still
Speaker 1: around today and they're very they're very aggressive, like they
Speaker 1: do not like people. They are Nazi cows. I don't
Speaker 1: think these are the same. I'm hoping not. H I don't.
Speaker 1: I will say I highly doubt that these cows hold
Speaker 1: any Nazi beliefs. Yeah, I don't think the Nazi Nazis
Speaker 1: cows are just well I don't know. They're very aggressive,
Speaker 1: but they have a lot of anger. No, so these
Speaker 1: are these are more just like jim rat cows. So
Speaker 1: look at this, Oh, look at these bro cows. They're
Speaker 1: broke cows. They're completely yoked, totally swollen. They have not
Speaker 1: skipped leg day, any of the leg days. Just trying
Speaker 1: to tip me, bro come at me, bro trying to
Speaker 1: tip meat, like if you milk them, just like like
Speaker 1: monster energy drink. I mean you're looking at a male
Speaker 1: so if you try milking. So the their breed of
Speaker 1: beef cattle that has been selected for mutations that give
Speaker 1: the massive muscles. It's called double muscl ng similar to
Speaker 1: what I talked about with the broiler chicken. The calves
Speaker 1: are so the babies the calves are so large. Farmers
Speaker 1: have to perform cesarean sections on the mother cows to
Speaker 1: get these monster babies out of the mother. Having a
Speaker 1: small baby, Oh god, just the baby comes out with
Speaker 1: huge muscles is like, yes, hello, mother, I desire a
Speaker 1: mel feed me mouth and protein powder. Mother. It's a
Speaker 1: little disturbing. It's a real problem. I know. They're also
Speaker 1: doing this to pigs. Yeah. I don't know why we
Speaker 1: would ever give animals that were like farming and eating
Speaker 1: the ability to you know, we're sets of our own destruction.
Speaker 1: I gotta say we kind of deserve it. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna be like we design these swull guns like cows
Speaker 1: that also like we give them blade like blades sticking
Speaker 1: out of their horns, the ability to breathe, fire something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these cows are just it's muscles upon muscles upon muscles,
Speaker 1: and they look like body You know how body builders
Speaker 1: much respect to their passion in their hobby, but they do.
Speaker 1: It is sometimes a little unnerving how many muscles can
Speaker 1: get on a human body. It's like this. But cows, why,
Speaker 1: oh my god, look at the butt. It looks uncomfortably swell.
Speaker 1: It looks uncomfortably large. And the what's interesting about these is,
Speaker 1: like I think, to show off how musclely they are,
Speaker 1: they shave some of the cow, but not all of
Speaker 1: the cow because they need some sort of like a
Speaker 1: poodle where they need some of the fur to stay warm.
Speaker 1: But they just shave the butt and specifics. Right. If
Speaker 1: you've ever seen the famous flop League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,
Speaker 1: the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, when he takes the
Speaker 1: potion turned into mister Hyde, there's a henchman that takes
Speaker 1: like a bunch of the potion and he becomes comfortably swollen. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and that's what I'm I'm looking at. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It is definitely. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of steroid use that I know can give
Speaker 1: give that look. But also I think something that happens
Speaker 1: now is like implants that you know, give you fake
Speaker 1: like in large or like like injecting um something like
Speaker 1: silkne into the muscle, which is not I wouldn't necessarily recommend,
Speaker 1: but yeah it is. It looks it looks like they're
Speaker 1: about to explode into meat with cows. Why are we
Speaker 1: doing that? Because our muscles delicious? What we muscles? Muscles?
Speaker 1: I mean it's muscles and fat essentially. Okay, So I
Speaker 1: like the idea of asking a farmer where they're doing
Speaker 1: and they're like, because I think it's funny. We were
Speaker 1: bored when we were like, we do we make the
Speaker 1: cow really like muscular the cows It's like, well, the
Speaker 1: cows were bored, so we got them lifting set, we
Speaker 1: got them a bow flex. They got really into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just a cow hunched over like, uh, they can weigh
Speaker 1: so the steer can The male cows can weigh just
Speaker 1: under three thousand pounds. Normal steer away about two thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred pounds, So that's significant. So the last animal
Speaker 1: I want to talk about is the well. It's called
Speaker 1: the Damascus goat. It's also known as the Aleppo goat,
Speaker 1: and it is well. So it's it's it's weirdo goats
Speaker 1: who have been selected for bizarre facial features. So it's
Speaker 1: from Syria, Cyprus and Lebanon. And let me get you
Speaker 1: a good picture. Here's one of these bad boys. Where
Speaker 1: what are we doing there? What's uh, what's the point
Speaker 1: of that? I look like a Star Wars creature? They
Speaker 1: do look like a Star Wars, So I don't. I think.
Speaker 1: I think that the facial feature, it's specifically bred for
Speaker 1: these facial features, kind of for the sake of it.
Speaker 1: I think they do. They do have a really impressive
Speaker 1: milk production ability, but I think it was so I
Speaker 1: think part of it may be just a side effect
Speaker 1: of breeding them for specific traits like milk production that
Speaker 1: just caused this crazy face to come about. But I
Speaker 1: do think that now they're kind of maybe leaning into it. Right.
Speaker 1: It probably started with someone like, look, if you want
Speaker 1: the best milk production, that's your goat, and they're just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but what's wrong with it? And it's like nothing. In fact,
Speaker 1: we're going to make it more that way. I think
Speaker 1: that's what happened. So it's it started out being like, huh,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, let's let's lean into this look you gotta,
Speaker 1: which I mean I think is correct in terms of fashion,
Speaker 1: like you do have to fully embrace a bold look
Speaker 1: like a like a bold culture or a statement piece.
Speaker 1: You really have to go fully on it. On the
Speaker 1: genetic level for a goat, It's an interesting they could
Speaker 1: choice we make as humans are people listening. They could
Speaker 1: legitimately sell those to Disney to have in a Star War.
Speaker 1: Yeah that these are star Wars. Yeah, like you'd see
Speaker 1: it in a Star Wars and you'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a cool creature effect. Interestingly, the kids, so they
Speaker 1: the young goats, do not look so demonic and horrible.
Speaker 1: Let me let me describe it, because I think we've
Speaker 1: gone this whole time without actually describing what it looks
Speaker 1: like they have. Well what would you say? So they
Speaker 1: have a huge forehead that it's faces the shape of
Speaker 1: a square and under bite it looks I seem bigger,
Speaker 1: but maybe not. The eyes are almost displaced, I guess
Speaker 1: because of the massive square forehead head, Yeah, like a
Speaker 1: fish head. Or if you how would you describe, like,
Speaker 1: what's just imagine an abomination like close your eyes, take
Speaker 1: a goat but smush its face into the shape of
Speaker 1: a loaf of bread. Yes, that's it. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: it looks like. And actually the kids, so the immature
Speaker 1: goats are quite cute. They have really long ears and
Speaker 1: adorable little faces, which is good because if they had
Speaker 1: these bread shaped faces, they probably couldn't nurse, they couldn't
Speaker 1: drink milk from their mother's It's only until after they
Speaker 1: hit puberty that they turn into bread face. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's we did that. Why did we do it just,
Speaker 1: oh right, just for the milk or whatever? Well, no,
Speaker 1: I think it was. It started out because we were
Speaker 1: trying to get milk or meat, and then it just
Speaker 1: turned into like, wow, look what we can do. Let's
Speaker 1: do it even more, let's make it even more. So
Speaker 1: I think we've I think we're just we're learning how
Speaker 1: to be little angry demigods and we've got to understand
Speaker 1: this power better. No one's stopping us. No one is
Speaker 1: stopping us. Though. Hopefully those swoll cows and pigs are
Speaker 1: gonna realize their power at some point and they're going
Speaker 1: to be like, it's our turn, it's our time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to change your face. I'm going to change
Speaker 1: your faces through through selective breeding, not with my fists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's our future. We're asking for it, we really are. Congratulations, humans,
Speaker 1: we have created a cow that can stop us, which
Speaker 1: is actually maybe a good thing. I was about to
Speaker 1: say considering other man made futures we have on the horizon,
Speaker 1: like Planet of the Cows wouldn't be the worst, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean because while we still have on Earth at
Speaker 1: least exactly, they probably take over and they'll be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we don't need any of this stuff. That's the thing.
Speaker 1: Why do we need this? Like that's the thing about
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes, right, Like, sure they blew up
Speaker 1: the Statue of liberty, sure they hunt humans for sport,
Speaker 1: but the planet is luscious. It's still full of life.
Speaker 1: So hey, yeah, I do want to amend this though.
Speaker 1: Cows would be a problem because the burs the methane, right,
Speaker 1: that is true, the assive protein powder shake fars. That's
Speaker 1: gotta be heinous. Yeah, that's not good. You don't want
Speaker 1: to be near that when that goes off. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining me, Dave. Do you wanna
Speaker 1: you got any animal stories? Get anythink of plug? I
Speaker 1: can plug some stuff real quick. I have a podcast
Speaker 1: network called Gamefully Unemployed. You can go to our Patreon
Speaker 1: at patreon dot com slash gamefully Unemployed. We have some
Speaker 1: exclusive podcasts on there. You can check us out on
Speaker 1: SoundCloud all sorts of stuff. I also um and I
Speaker 1: believe Katie you also do this. I write for a
Speaker 1: YouTube show called some More News. It's lovely. It's a
Speaker 1: lovely little frolic through the world of politics, the polite
Speaker 1: world of the polite world. If you want to feel
Speaker 1: real good about politics, feel good, that deep down good
Speaker 1: feeling of we're all okay, everything's going to be. This
Speaker 1: is heavy, heavy irony. Yeah, yeah, I think that's it.
Speaker 1: You can find us on the internet Creature feature Pod
Speaker 1: dot com, Creature Feature Pod on Instagram, where it's mostly
Speaker 1: pictures of my dumb dog. Creature feet Pod on Twitter
Speaker 1: that's f e A T f e E T is
Speaker 1: something very different. You can find me online at Kate
Speaker 1: Golden and of course at pro bird Rites, where I
Speaker 1: advanced the rights of birds and the eventual Turkey domination
Speaker 1: of the world. You'll be You'll be there, King, you're
Speaker 1: a queen like they'll you'll be. I'd say you'll be
Speaker 1: top pet I'll be there, token human top pet most
Speaker 1: favored of pet humans. That's what I'm certain like. If
Speaker 1: I get tummy rubs and some kibble, I'll be happy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to do a quick shout out to Castaway Podcast,
Speaker 1: which is a new podcast that points out all the
Speaker 1: podcasts that you should be podcast and we're listening to.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a podcast about podcast. It's actually really great.
Speaker 1: That's great. Now, that's great. The host is Laura Whitmore
Speaker 1: and she had a guest on The Lovely Sarah Pasco.
Speaker 1: She is a famous brit and she said really nice
Speaker 1: things about our podcast. Here a Creature feature, and I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. And it was really nice to hear
Speaker 1: in her lovely British accent because it makes it sound
Speaker 1: so much fancier. The podcast actually is thanks to the
Speaker 1: Space Classics for their super spectacular song ex Alumina. Creature
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Speaker 1: your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.