Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature future production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show animals living
Speaker 1: secret lives, from secret societies to secret nighttime powers to
Speaker 1: secretly being a living animal in the first place. These
Speaker 1: critters are not letting you in their club unless you
Speaker 1: know the handshake. Discovered this more as we answered the
Speaker 1: angel question If you stab a rock, does it not bleed?
Speaker 1: Joining me today is one of my favorite science writers
Speaker 1: who has written amazing articles about all sorts of creatures
Speaker 1: for The New York Times, and she is currently working
Speaker 1: on a book for Atlas Obscure about some of the
Speaker 1: world's weirdest critters. Welcome, Kara Giamo. Welcome. I'm so excited
Speaker 1: to have you on. I'm a little starstruck because I
Speaker 1: often refer to your articles when I'm research ng for
Speaker 1: the show, so it's both weird and really exciting to
Speaker 1: be talking to you in person on the show. That's
Speaker 1: really flattering. I'm so glad that I've helped to inspire
Speaker 1: such a wacky and fun show with my writing. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. And speaking of which, I use
Speaker 1: some of your articles to help with research and inspired
Speaker 1: this very episode, including one you wrote on giraffes. So
Speaker 1: in this first section, I want to talk about this
Speaker 1: secret social lives of mammals. These are secret mammalian societies
Speaker 1: because we often are very very like egocentric, very primate centric,
Speaker 1: where we think, you know, yeah, primates are smart, guerrillas, chimps, humans, elephants,
Speaker 1: and dolphins sort of like this, yeah, you're smart too,
Speaker 1: But then when we start to talk about other animals,
Speaker 1: were like, well, they couldn't be that complicated. They can't
Speaker 1: have like friends like humans do. That doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: They're just big, um glomping things like giraffes, which don't
Speaker 1: seem like they'd be very smart. They have this huge
Speaker 1: long neck in this itty bitty head perched on top
Speaker 1: of this impossibly long body, and it just doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like they'd be someone interested in forming social bonds. But
Speaker 1: in fact they may have something like that, right, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: So first I just want to say that in my experience,
Speaker 1: a lot of the history of animal research is and
Speaker 1: plant research, to be honest, and research into any living
Speaker 1: things is um scientists starting from the point of view
Speaker 1: that oh, this thing can't be all that smarter, all
Speaker 1: that talented, and then realizing over the course of you know,
Speaker 1: years or decades that oh, actually, all these creatures can
Speaker 1: do all these incredible things that we didn't know about it.
Speaker 1: They are smart, whether it's smart socially or smart with
Speaker 1: their bodies, or just smart being able to survive or
Speaker 1: in ways that we haven't even thought of yet. So
Speaker 1: that's a really cool part of looking into this area
Speaker 1: of research. But yeah, with giraffes, I wrote about this
Speaker 1: recently for The New York Times about sort of secret
Speaker 1: giraffe social lives, and uh, yeah, it's true. They used
Speaker 1: to have this reputation of being really solitary. Um, but
Speaker 1: more and more researchers are seeing that they have really
Speaker 1: complex family groups. It's sort of like a female centric
Speaker 1: society where moms and kids and grandmothers and grandkids will
Speaker 1: hang out. Um, they do things like they more and
Speaker 1: they're dead. It's really complex. Um, it's really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because I mean my perception of giraffes, probably
Speaker 1: also based on sort of childhood stories about drafts, is
Speaker 1: they're very aloof there, nonchalant, just with their head in
Speaker 1: the clouds kind of literally eaten eaten leaves up in
Speaker 1: the trees with without much of a care in the world.
Speaker 1: But they, yeah, they they seem to actually have these
Speaker 1: social bonds and like you said, it seems to be
Speaker 1: sort of this matriarchal society, so female drafts forming friendships,
Speaker 1: having them having an emotional reaction to the death of
Speaker 1: like a calf, where they stand over for for many hours. Uh.
Speaker 1: They seem to sometimes even engage in alto parenting, which
Speaker 1: is when uh, a non parent will look after another person,
Speaker 1: another person, another giraffe's offspring, so they babysit each other's calves.
Speaker 1: And so this is something that is just recently sort
Speaker 1: of been observed. Researchers had to look at like their
Speaker 1: specific spot pattern to I d them, because it's sort
Speaker 1: of like a thumb print where when you have a
Speaker 1: spot pattern you can tell one individual from the other.
Speaker 1: But because they're so because they have that such such
Speaker 1: a like bolh Vida's kind of laid back lifestyle, it
Speaker 1: was I guess hard to tell that. Yeah, they are
Speaker 1: in fact hanging out with each other, and they do
Speaker 1: prefer the company of certain friends as just we didn't
Speaker 1: think like a giraffe and didn't observe them from the
Speaker 1: point of view of a giraffe, and so we never
Speaker 1: really caught that. Yeah, totally. I think that's something that's
Speaker 1: also a little bit egocentric about us, is that when
Speaker 1: a creature doesn't live a lifestyle that's recognizable to us,
Speaker 1: we just sometimes kind of assume that it's not interesting
Speaker 1: or not worth studying. Um. The researchers I talked to
Speaker 1: for this yeah, pointed out that giraffes especially are quite
Speaker 1: slow um and quite quiet. They don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of vocalizations. And so since humans are like really fast
Speaker 1: paced and many of us in our lives and we
Speaker 1: are constantly talking, constantly talking, I don't know anything about that.
Speaker 1: It's not like I do that for a living. Imagine
Speaker 1: a giraffe studying us. They would be like, they can't
Speaker 1: possibly be doing anything meaningful. They're just chattering constantly. We
Speaker 1: don't know what they're saying, and so we don't care. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how can they have time to think? They they're spending
Speaker 1: all their time just like yammering on and on making
Speaker 1: meats sound to their little face flaps. It's very strange
Speaker 1: making podcasts like we can't. We can't handle this. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so you're you're right. Once they figured out
Speaker 1: how to distinguish individual drafts by their spot patterns, which
Speaker 1: took a while, um, they started to see that there
Speaker 1: were these really strong connections. Um. The daycare thing is.
Speaker 1: So the allo parenting is so impressive to me because
Speaker 1: I know that it's quite hard for humans to get
Speaker 1: together and figure out childcare. So the fact that drafts
Speaker 1: can do this is is pretty sweet. Maybe we should
Speaker 1: be looking even more carefully about how they pulled us off. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of a constant theme on the
Speaker 1: show too. Whenever I tell a guest about a case
Speaker 1: of allo parenting, like, hey, look how bats and in
Speaker 1: giraffes and you know, all all these animals will sort
Speaker 1: of help each other rear their off throom. They're like,
Speaker 1: that seems like a really good idea. Especially parents who
Speaker 1: come on They're like, hey, could we do that too?
Speaker 1: Maybe that would be great? Right, And I'm not a parent,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to claim to understand this stuggle,
Speaker 1: but uh, it is interesting to think of having someone
Speaker 1: say I can't find a babysitter and you just say
Speaker 1: to them, oh, well, have you thought of finding a
Speaker 1: bunch of bats that could make like vomit food into
Speaker 1: your child's mouth every once in a while. It sounds
Speaker 1: good to me. I'm going to find a colony of
Speaker 1: vampire bats and be like, could you just fom a
Speaker 1: little bit of that nice blood into my baby's mouth
Speaker 1: when I'm not around. It's got a lot of iron,
Speaker 1: a lot of nutrients. Yeah. There's this idea called the
Speaker 1: grandmother hypothesis, which is that in certain social animals, long
Speaker 1: lived females can help their offspring uh and grand offsprings survive.
Speaker 1: And so you'll see in some animals, especially like elephants,
Speaker 1: but you also see it in giraffes where females will
Speaker 1: live long past their reproductive years, and so the ideas
Speaker 1: there is an advantage to this because they can actually
Speaker 1: offer help to the younger generations and ensure that they're
Speaker 1: their offspring and offsprings offspring actually survive, and this often
Speaker 1: will lead to more complex socialization because you you basically
Speaker 1: are able to retain more knowledge because you have an
Speaker 1: extra generation hanging around passing on wisdom and knowledge. And
Speaker 1: whether we don't know exactly yet, like how this works
Speaker 1: in giraffes. I think the even knowing that giraffes have
Speaker 1: this capability is relatively new, So who knows what hidden
Speaker 1: giraffe wisdom is getting passed on from giraffe to giraffe.
Speaker 1: Probably things like the best kinds of throat laws and
Speaker 1: leaves to eat, because imagine being a draft with a
Speaker 1: sore throat. You definitely want to get your heads together
Speaker 1: with some other drafts and figure out how to fix that.
Speaker 1: And it's not just grafts. I think that are very
Speaker 1: surprising when you learn how socially intelligent they are. One
Speaker 1: of the cutest animals that looks sort of like an
Speaker 1: over own rodent and is but doesn't seem like it
Speaker 1: has much going on in terms of intelligence are otters,
Speaker 1: which you know, there are many different species of otters.
Speaker 1: I think the most famous is probably the sea otter
Speaker 1: because they're just they're the cutest otter. I mean, I
Speaker 1: love all otters. I try not to judge based on appearance,
Speaker 1: but I think it is pretty objective that sea otters
Speaker 1: are the cutest ones. Just those little cheeks. Sea otters
Speaker 1: are extremely cute. I actually, as a child um at
Speaker 1: a summer camp, kidnapped a stuffed animal sea otter because
Speaker 1: I couldn't resist how cute he wasn't I didn't want
Speaker 1: to think about him like in the winter with no
Speaker 1: one to snuggle him. Yeah, um, so I brought him
Speaker 1: home as stuffed You kidnapped the stuff? Uh not a
Speaker 1: real one? Not a real I think that's called shoplifting. Actually, yes,
Speaker 1: I I stole him from a like a camp toy
Speaker 1: bin I see, Yeah, not technically a shop, but also
Speaker 1: probably not camplifting, atter napping and the most adorable crime,
Speaker 1: the most adorable time I've ever heard. I'm not an arc.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, I won't turn you into the outer police.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean they are they are adorable. Um.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are aware of this
Speaker 1: otter fact, which is that sea otters will use rudimentary
Speaker 1: tools to use in aiding them to crack open the
Speaker 1: shells of shellfish that they like to eat. So either
Speaker 1: it's a little rock they keep on their tommies that
Speaker 1: they just kind of uses their favorite little uh abalone
Speaker 1: shell smasher, or they also use available rocks in the water,
Speaker 1: so if there's a reef for or sort of rocky coastline,
Speaker 1: they'll smash their shellfish against those rocks as well. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's not the only instance of otter cleverness. They
Speaker 1: also use kelp forests or even human constructions both to
Speaker 1: kind of keep as a nursery for their offspring. So
Speaker 1: they just like kind of bundle their young up and
Speaker 1: uh some kelp or put them on a boat or
Speaker 1: something so that they don't float away, because that's a
Speaker 1: real concern. Aside from just their tool use and their
Speaker 1: clever use of their environment. You know, they also like
Speaker 1: hold hands, which is the cutest thing ever. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll grab their mates hand because they don't want
Speaker 1: their mate to float away because their main their main
Speaker 1: form of resting and the ocean is just floating on
Speaker 1: their backs like little boats, fuzzy cute little boats. But
Speaker 1: of course they want to stay together with their mate.
Speaker 1: They'll link hands together so they can be two ships
Speaker 1: in the notion of love and it's adorable. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: just all you have to do is you put your
Speaker 1: baby in a bunch of help so it doesn't float away,
Speaker 1: and then you can hold hands with your mate and
Speaker 1: just float around. Yes, I do. They do also carry
Speaker 1: their their young like on their tummies. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: just keeping them safe. But if they need to like
Speaker 1: get some food, like you know, go hunting, there needs
Speaker 1: to be some way to keep the baby from floating away.
Speaker 1: They also use the kelp force for themselves. They'll like
Speaker 1: tangle them up that tangle themselves up in the kelps
Speaker 1: so they don't float away. Um and while they're resting.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they have a keen sense of sort of
Speaker 1: naval protocol. Uh. They But there's some kind of interesting
Speaker 1: observational evidence that uh seems to indicate that otter intelligence
Speaker 1: goes even deeper than what we may think. So uh see,
Speaker 1: otters are not really easily available for research. They're not
Speaker 1: in a lot of zoos. Uh, you know, they're not.
Speaker 1: It's not some an animal that you can really sort
Speaker 1: of post up next to and observe for long periods
Speaker 1: of time. So it's a little difficult to research. But
Speaker 1: we have been able to do more studies on other
Speaker 1: species of otters that are more common in zoos, such
Speaker 1: as smooth coated otters. So they are not sea otters.
Speaker 1: They're fresh water otters found in Southeast Asian India, and
Speaker 1: they hunt cooperatively and will copy each other when presented
Speaker 1: with a novel problem such as food stuck in tupperware
Speaker 1: that must be open. So when researchers present them with
Speaker 1: a tupperware puzzle with some tasty food stuck inside tupperware
Speaker 1: that either pulls open or unscrews open, uh, they will
Speaker 1: learn from each other. So it might take them a
Speaker 1: while to figure out, but once one of them has
Speaker 1: figured it out, a lot of them will quickly get
Speaker 1: it because they've copied the one that finally figured it out,
Speaker 1: and the young otters are really fast at that. So
Speaker 1: the young are definitely quicker learners than the older otters,
Speaker 1: and they will copy their peers much more quickly to
Speaker 1: open up the tupperware. It's like young humans who are like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know how to use TikTok It's easy. And then
Speaker 1: the older humans they're like, I've never seen and anything
Speaker 1: like this before, a tupperware, a TikTok tack to it's
Speaker 1: not a shell. Yeah, now, what's a tik tac toe.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, the older otters are like, this shell,
Speaker 1: it's like plastic e and like it doesn't crack, Like
Speaker 1: I just don't even know how to deal with this.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, mom, it's called tupperware. Get it together. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love so embarrassing. Yeah, I just imagine these young
Speaker 1: ottors rolling their eyes clickity clacking on their little their
Speaker 1: little shell phone TikTok's like um but uh. And there's
Speaker 1: Even though this study has not been done with sea otters,
Speaker 1: there is some anecdotal evidence that seems to indicate they
Speaker 1: are also much more intelligent than perhaps we give them
Speaker 1: credit for. So. At the Monterey Bay Aquarium, an otter
Speaker 1: named kit amuses herself by creating her own puzzles. So
Speaker 1: she has a plastic board with a number of holes
Speaker 1: in it that I guess it's just sort of one
Speaker 1: of these like little ingridgment toys, but she takes it
Speaker 1: a step further by putting a shrimp on top of it,
Speaker 1: diving underneath it and trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: grab the shrimp from underneath this board. But every time
Speaker 1: she ends up getting it, and it's kind of a
Speaker 1: game of reverse whack a mole because there are these
Speaker 1: little holes and she'll like put a paw up to
Speaker 1: try to grab the shrimp wherever it is. And when
Speaker 1: she gets it, instead of just eating the shrimp, she
Speaker 1: puts it back on top of the board and dives
Speaker 1: under to try again. So this is not just a
Speaker 1: feeding activity. Uh, this is her little game that she's
Speaker 1: set up for self enrichment. That's so cute. My cat
Speaker 1: does something like that. We like to play with twisty ties.
Speaker 1: Their sisters um and one of them. If you sew
Speaker 1: the twisty tie, we'll just like chase it, get it.
Speaker 1: Like then he s hear it again, She chased it,
Speaker 1: gets it. The other one, poppy seed. If you throw
Speaker 1: the twist house, she'll go behind like four different chairs
Speaker 1: so that she has to jump through them in order
Speaker 1: to get it. She like makes it more complicated for herself.
Speaker 1: It's very cute. She's got up the challenge. Like you know,
Speaker 1: when you could be an utter. Yeah, I think there
Speaker 1: is something to that, because if you are a complex
Speaker 1: animal who's intelligent, and you have food readily available to you,
Speaker 1: like I'm sure you feed your cats, you don't make
Speaker 1: them subsist in the wild on their own. And these
Speaker 1: these otters in the zoo are are fed and taken
Speaker 1: care of, but they still need that intellectual stimulation. So
Speaker 1: cats love to play, and this otter, probably in the
Speaker 1: absence of having to find her own food and figure
Speaker 1: out how to crack open her own food, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure the zoo probably also provides enrichment activities. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's a cushy life, and so she's got to introduce
Speaker 1: an element of fun and games into it. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think humans can definitely relate to that. Yeah, very I think. Um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we're also sort of in denial about animals intelligence,
Speaker 1: especially when it makes us uncomfortable, such as the intelligence
Speaker 1: of farm animals and animals that we like to eat.
Speaker 1: And I'm I'm definitely not coming from a high horse
Speaker 1: because I personally am not a vegetarian, but I cannot
Speaker 1: deny that we do underestimate the intelligence of animals that
Speaker 1: we consume as food. And one such animals are cows.
Speaker 1: So cows may not be the smartest of barnyard animals.
Speaker 1: I think that probably goes to pigs. Um. But that
Speaker 1: does not mean that they are mindless grass munching sort
Speaker 1: of empty vessels of meat. Uh. They have performed really
Speaker 1: well at memory tasks when it comes to locating quality food. Uh.
Speaker 1: They can quickly remember a good food location or landmark
Speaker 1: within a day and remember that association for up to
Speaker 1: forty eight days, which I think might actually be better
Speaker 1: than my memories sometimes when it comes to sort of
Speaker 1: spatial navigation. And they also have a secret social life.
Speaker 1: They often have a preferred cow friend they like to
Speaker 1: hang out with and eat with. So a little more
Speaker 1: complicated than I think is always comfortable to think about
Speaker 1: considering that we farm them. Yeah, that's really really good
Speaker 1: to remember. Um. I think again, like from my perspective,
Speaker 1: pretty much all animals have have something like that, even
Speaker 1: that's legible to us that we can see as intelligence. Um,
Speaker 1: if we just look carefully. And then also on top
Speaker 1: of that, probably a lot of things that we just
Speaker 1: don't appreciate because we don't live their lives. I want
Speaker 1: to plug. I have a really a poem that I
Speaker 1: really love about cows by Lydia Is by Lydia Davis.
Speaker 1: It's just called the Cows, but it's about their movements
Speaker 1: and how they arrange themselves in space, and she makes
Speaker 1: it seem very intelligent and beautiful, which it is if
Speaker 1: you look at it the right way, I think. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, if you want to think a little deeper
Speaker 1: about cows, that poem is great and ironically excited about
Speaker 1: cow poetry. Now great a copy, thank you, but yeah,
Speaker 1: and in fact, they have recently been found that they
Speaker 1: can be trained to use the toilet, so by rewarding
Speaker 1: cows with food for peeing in a special cow toilet uh,
Speaker 1: and then also sprits ing them with a sprinkler when
Speaker 1: they go outside the toilet, which I don't think hurts them,
Speaker 1: but they don't like it. It's kind of like when
Speaker 1: you bray cat with a spray bottle. They do not
Speaker 1: like that. Not appreciated researcher was able to toilet train
Speaker 1: the cows, so the cows were able to open and
Speaker 1: close the gate to the bathroom all by themselves, go
Speaker 1: do their business and come right out. Which well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it's it's you, don't you kind of don't
Speaker 1: think of a cow. It's being capable of our perception
Speaker 1: of them as their big, dumb, messy and without really
Speaker 1: you know, much goals in life other than to eat
Speaker 1: grass and you know, past gas. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: that perception seems really new to me too, because if
Speaker 1: you think about all the older cultures and the you know,
Speaker 1: non um us cultures that like valorized cows and also
Speaker 1: even like European like Renaissance paintings of cows. They're such beautiful, amazing,
Speaker 1: peaceful animals. I think the fact the factory farming system
Speaker 1: has kind of forced us to look at them in
Speaker 1: this particular way. But I'm glad that people are starting
Speaker 1: to research their abilities. And I think I saw a
Speaker 1: study last year where cows could use VR goggles or
Speaker 1: something like Cows and Beer. Yeah, Cows of the Future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that was like to see if they
Speaker 1: could improve cows quality of life through VR, which is
Speaker 1: it's interesting and I'm not against that kind of research
Speaker 1: of it. It's also like, maybe we should just give
Speaker 1: cows a little more space outside. Yeah, right, it's kind
Speaker 1: of spooky, Like should we put cows in the matrix,
Speaker 1: like a cow matrix? Yeah? Yeah, I'm not sure about that. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think I would have to say that I don't
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know about
Speaker 1: that either. It's because then you're gonna need like a
Speaker 1: kiyamu reeves to be neo, you know, free all the
Speaker 1: cows from the cow matrix. I was waiting for it
Speaker 1: to land that one. That was really good, thank you,
Speaker 1: But yeah, the hope for the cow toilet is that
Speaker 1: it will be more sanitary for the cows that allowed
Speaker 1: them to keep their living areas clean, giving them some
Speaker 1: autonomy over their environment, as well as reducing ammonia emissions
Speaker 1: from their urine, which can be really bad when it
Speaker 1: sort of gets into the water cycle. It can like
Speaker 1: contribute to acid rain and run off that can destroy
Speaker 1: sort of wetlands and coastal areas. So cow toilets actually
Speaker 1: could be a vast improvement for for farms, but I
Speaker 1: think like that would still it's just one piece of
Speaker 1: maybe completely revamping our factory farm system, because you know,
Speaker 1: even if you're not a vegetarian, which I'm personally not
Speaker 1: a vegetarian, but I'm still extremely uncomfortable with factory farming.
Speaker 1: I think that if we're going to eat animals, we
Speaker 1: should at least have the decency to give them a
Speaker 1: good life, not just sort of basic humane treatment, but
Speaker 1: actually good quality of life where they can go outside
Speaker 1: and have fun cow times. Yeah, totally. I think that's
Speaker 1: another kind of upshot of the stuff we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: Like the more we learn about animals and how they
Speaker 1: like to enjoy life and all the different things that
Speaker 1: they do with their days, like, it's only logical and like,
Speaker 1: you know, moral that we should try to help them
Speaker 1: have lives like that, especially like you said, if we're
Speaker 1: going to eat them at the end of it. Um,
Speaker 1: I feel like we kind of owe to them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I am a vegetarian, so I have a very small soapbox,
Speaker 1: But I also understand that people make different decisions about
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Um. But yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: think if you ask your average person, they would agree
Speaker 1: that they wanted it the animals that they interact with
Speaker 1: to have good lives. Yeah, I think, And it's something
Speaker 1: that's going would require some amount of sacrifice for our
Speaker 1: own just immediate once, like probably it would require are
Speaker 1: cutting our meat consumption because we simply cannot sustain sort
Speaker 1: of the massive magnitude of cows we keep in factory
Speaker 1: farm settings. But I think that in the long run,
Speaker 1: I think that kind of thing would also be much
Speaker 1: more beneficial to humans, because I don't think factory farms
Speaker 1: are good for human workers. They put smaller farms out
Speaker 1: of business. They're not They're not great on workers rights
Speaker 1: and workers safety. We saw that during the pandemic, and
Speaker 1: and it's really bad for the environment as well. So
Speaker 1: I think that when we open our minds to maybe
Speaker 1: respecting animals we see as dumb or unimportant or expendable,
Speaker 1: we may actually kind of be able to introspect a
Speaker 1: little more about how, well, maybe we're viewing this as
Speaker 1: an inevitable thing, but if we change it, we may
Speaker 1: actually improve human life as well as well as sort
Speaker 1: of I think are moral imperative to make sure the
Speaker 1: animals that we have in our care are you know,
Speaker 1: living living, good, comfortable and enjoyable lives, even if we
Speaker 1: decide to use them as meat eventually. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's totally true and a really good point. Like we're
Speaker 1: all connected, especially now, and humans make so many decisions
Speaker 1: that affect other species. Um, it is really good to
Speaker 1: think about them through in that way and not not
Speaker 1: just about like the profit motive or whatever like we're
Speaker 1: used to having at the top of our minds. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite kinds of animal secrets is when
Speaker 1: you don't even realize it's an animal, or that it's
Speaker 1: even alive. So, uh, there are lots of animals that
Speaker 1: like to play dead, and we've talked about some of
Speaker 1: them on the show. We've talked about uh, We've talked
Speaker 1: about possums a lot. I love love possums, love their
Speaker 1: incredible playing dead trick. We've talked about hog nosed snakes.
Speaker 1: They also love to play dead. But I think sometimes
Speaker 1: it's like it seems like a fairly complicated behavior that
Speaker 1: you would expect from something like Okay, yeah, a possum
Speaker 1: is pretty intelligent, like you know, even a hog nosed snake.
Speaker 1: It's like they've they've got a sizeable brain and they
Speaker 1: can they can, you know, uh, use this to their
Speaker 1: advantage to be able to fake out a predator. But
Speaker 1: you wrote in a recent article about antline larvae who
Speaker 1: will play dead, which to me is very interesting because
Speaker 1: it is, you know, when I think about insects, they're
Speaker 1: one of the more simple animals, no judgment. I love insects.
Speaker 1: But then you take that and you even take like
Speaker 1: their larva, it's like this very complicated behavior in such
Speaker 1: a simple little package. Totally. I love insects. I read
Speaker 1: about insects a lot, and part of the reason why
Speaker 1: is because they're so surprising. Like you said, we have
Speaker 1: this image of them as simple and they are very small,
Speaker 1: and their brains are often very small. But um, while people,
Speaker 1: I think used to think of them as interesting study
Speaker 1: subjects because they thought of them as like automatons or
Speaker 1: their program to do certain things, and they have like
Speaker 1: a limited number of moves, you know, like a video
Speaker 1: game page or something. Um. We're learning that they're actually
Speaker 1: much more complex and interesting than that. Um. And that
Speaker 1: predator species like praying mantis is um are so complicated
Speaker 1: in the ways that they are able to catch bugs.
Speaker 1: And then meanwhile, pray species like antliins are actually really
Speaker 1: complicated in the ways that they avoid being eaten. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with these antline larvae, Yeah, some of them can play
Speaker 1: dead for over an hour, which is very difficult to imagine.
Speaker 1: Like if you're in a let's say, like a zombie
Speaker 1: situation and you need to pretend to be dead, like,
Speaker 1: none of us could do it for an hour. It
Speaker 1: would be way too hard. You gotta breathe, you gotta
Speaker 1: My nose would immediately be itching. Like if I had
Speaker 1: to play, it's like, oh god, but I have to
Speaker 1: itch my nose. I'd be dead in like two minutes
Speaker 1: because I'd have to itch my nose. Like just thinking
Speaker 1: about having to itch my nose makes me want to
Speaker 1: itch my nose. Yeah, so the antline larvae would all
Speaker 1: survive the zombie invasion and we would not Wow. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, stick that in your pipe and smoke at humanity. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's I think this is something that
Speaker 1: it touches upon this greater theme of like, you see
Speaker 1: this animal, it looks it doesn't look like much on
Speaker 1: the surface, like an antline larvae looks sort of like
Speaker 1: a creepy little, sort of fuzzy, spiky almost like uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like living tiny pine cone. They don't
Speaker 1: you know, they don't they don't look like much. Um,
Speaker 1: but then they have this incredibly complex behavior of playing
Speaker 1: dead and then they bank on the fact that they
Speaker 1: sort of don't look like much too, uh, kind of
Speaker 1: be bypassed by some predator. This study was really cool because, um,
Speaker 1: like even the researchers, um, you know, they didn't mean
Speaker 1: to find this out. They were something different, um. And
Speaker 1: they just had picked up a bunch of antline larvae
Speaker 1: because they wanted to weigh them, and they thought it
Speaker 1: was going to be really hard because they thought they'd
Speaker 1: be skittering around. But as soon as they put them
Speaker 1: on the scale, the larvae were just we're dead, and
Speaker 1: the researchers like, we didn't know you could do this,
Speaker 1: so they decided to sort of look into it, and
Speaker 1: they found some really impressive um time spans that they
Speaker 1: could do it for, as well as the fact that
Speaker 1: the time spend really varies, so different larvae at different
Speaker 1: times will play dead for very very different amounts of
Speaker 1: time because it's kind of a group survival strategy where
Speaker 1: like maybe like at least some will survive even if
Speaker 1: others can't, can't do it for long enough. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that almost makes me think it's similar to, you know,
Speaker 1: the the kind of like gambling thing of of if
Speaker 1: you are always consistently playing dead for a consistent amount
Speaker 1: of time, that behavior becomes easier to predict as a predator,
Speaker 1: whereas if it's very variable, the predator can't figure it out,
Speaker 1: can't predict it. So it's like with slot machines are gambling.
Speaker 1: If you can predict how the slot machine works, you
Speaker 1: basically can win at the slot machine. But if you
Speaker 1: can't predict it, it will continu you to trick you
Speaker 1: the whole time you're there, and you'll lose all your money.
Speaker 1: Not speaking from experience, I do like how one of
Speaker 1: the researchers described it as cute, how they seem to
Speaker 1: demonstrate an abundance of caution when they're playing dead. Yeah, yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm dead. Don't worry about it for hours. I love
Speaker 1: talking to researchers, especially insect researchers, because they have often
Speaker 1: such fondness for their subjects, like anybody does when I've
Speaker 1: worked with something for a long time, and they will
Speaker 1: call things cute that you would never think of when
Speaker 1: you when you do pay some attention, you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is cute. Yes, yeah, no, that's I think that
Speaker 1: is to me, an important message to get across in
Speaker 1: this podcast is things that kind of like gooey or weird.
Speaker 1: It's like yeah, but if you get to know them,
Speaker 1: they're they're charming. Sometimes animals don't even seem like they're alive,
Speaker 1: and it's not even that they're playing dead, but or
Speaker 1: physical appearance is not what you would expect to find
Speaker 1: in a living animal. Uh. And one example of this,
Speaker 1: which I think is it's really funny, it's this um
Speaker 1: recent discovery made UH in Japan is a is a
Speaker 1: pod that looks like a piece of sushi. Marine isopods
Speaker 1: are these creepy crawley arthropods that can either be small
Speaker 1: or really huge, like puppy sized. There are these tongue
Speaker 1: eating louses, which we've talked about before on the show. Uh.
Speaker 1: They kind of look like overgrown roly pulleys or pill bugs.
Speaker 1: I think it depends on which regeon you're in what
Speaker 1: you call them, but like roly pollies, pillbugs. Maybe some
Speaker 1: people call them like potato bugs. I'm not really sure
Speaker 1: what all the different names are, but uh, And the
Speaker 1: reason they look like giant pillbugs is that pillbugs are
Speaker 1: also isopods, so their terrestrial isopods. While there are also
Speaker 1: marine i pods. Usually marine isopods are this pale, ghostly white.
Speaker 1: They're a little bit creepy looking, maybe, especially ones that
Speaker 1: peek out of a fish's mouth just like you know,
Speaker 1: like ha ha, I'm I'm eating your tongue, which we
Speaker 1: actually talked about on the last episode. Off the coast
Speaker 1: of Japan's northern island Hokkaido, one of these was found
Speaker 1: that was pink and beautiful and it looked exactly like
Speaker 1: a piece of salmon sushi. It looks delicious. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at this picture. Now, Um, if it were, you know,
Speaker 1: in a little tray, I probably think it was in
Speaker 1: a tray with like some of that little like plastic grass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks it looks delicious. It looks it has that
Speaker 1: you know, white banding across it, which is actually it's
Speaker 1: its segments, but it looks pink and it's it's like
Speaker 1: and the fact that it's belly is why eat it
Speaker 1: makes it look like it's a piece of salmon sitting
Speaker 1: on top of a ball of rice, which I think
Speaker 1: is what's so funny about this is clearly there's no
Speaker 1: advantage to this. I a pod looking like a piece
Speaker 1: of sushi. This is an example of complete coincidence where
Speaker 1: we see this thing and it looks like something entirely different,
Speaker 1: but it has not evolved to look like sushi. It
Speaker 1: would be so funny if it had, if it involved,
Speaker 1: like specifically in the context of the whole Foods prepared
Speaker 1: food section. Right, it just like made its life there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I see what you're saying. It's like preying
Speaker 1: on humans. Somehow we eat it and then it becomes
Speaker 1: an indo parasite inside us. That's a really cool idea
Speaker 1: for a movie. Yeah, yeah, the secret sushi killers. The
Speaker 1: reason this one is this beautiful pink color and not
Speaker 1: its normal ghostly white pale color is thought to probably
Speaker 1: be it's diet. So the aquarium caretakers think this unusual
Speaker 1: color is because whatever fish that this little guy was
Speaker 1: a parasite on may have had more, uh more pink
Speaker 1: coloration or red coloration, and so for some reason, this
Speaker 1: this little guy was getting this from its diet. It
Speaker 1: could also potentially be a mutation. We know that with lobsters,
Speaker 1: they there are a lot of color mutations, a change
Speaker 1: in the structure of the proteins in their exoskeleton that
Speaker 1: can turn them in from bright blue to sort of
Speaker 1: an orange orange color, which you know, lobsters are not orange.
Speaker 1: They do not look like cooked lobsters in nature. They
Speaker 1: look like they have this muddy brown coloration. Right. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I just I just love that. It's like it
Speaker 1: is seafood, but not the kind of seafood you think
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, No, it's very it's very fun to
Speaker 1: think about and look at I think carriage everybody to
Speaker 1: to click through and look at this little guy speaking
Speaker 1: of something that is seafood but deceptive, is I mean,
Speaker 1: just imagine you're in a fancy restaurant and a chef
Speaker 1: just drops this big gray, craggley rock in front of you,
Speaker 1: and you know, kind of looks at you expectantly and
Speaker 1: you're just like, okay, thanks for the rock, I guess.
Speaker 1: Then the chef takes out a big butcher's knife slices
Speaker 1: into the rock, and it reveals like this marbled flesh inside.
Speaker 1: You're not on an alien planet. You are on Earth
Speaker 1: and you are lucky enough to try some meat rock
Speaker 1: known as Pyora chilensis. So this is extremely cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like it looks like a photoshop or or
Speaker 1: an alien because it literally looks like a rock that
Speaker 1: you slice into and there's a bunch of sort of
Speaker 1: reddish orange or guns inside. And this thing is actually
Speaker 1: alive and it is a Tunic hit also known as
Speaker 1: a c squirt, a much cuter name than tunicate. But
Speaker 1: we've actually talked about tunicates a little bit before on
Speaker 1: the show. How they start off life as a weird
Speaker 1: little tadpole creature and then they attached themselves to a rock,
Speaker 1: and as an adult they become completely sessile or immobile,
Speaker 1: and uh, they will grow this sort of hard cellulose
Speaker 1: like tunicate or tunate shell. Uh, it's not really a shell.
Speaker 1: It's like this. It's actually really weird because it is
Speaker 1: structurally very similar to plant cellulose, but it is obviously
Speaker 1: coming from and animal. And so for the this meat
Speaker 1: rock tunique, it it is a little different from some
Speaker 1: of the marine tunicates we've talked about before, because a
Speaker 1: lot of tunic kates are these really beautiful, bright, vibrant colors.
Speaker 1: They look almost like plants or like some kind of
Speaker 1: alien trumpet with bright purples and yellows. But Piora chilensis
Speaker 1: it just looks like a big, gray, weird rock until
Speaker 1: you cut into it. Yeah, it's really surprising to see
Speaker 1: the inside. It's really shocking. Yeah, yeah, it's it looks
Speaker 1: it looks it looks completely alien or completely made up.
Speaker 1: Looks sort of like a Cronenberg creation from one of
Speaker 1: his movies. It's called pure in Spanish, and it's commonly
Speaker 1: found off the coast of Chile. So they're often used
Speaker 1: in cuisine because those chunks of meat inside the quote
Speaker 1: unquote rock exterior are apparently quite tasty, both raw and cooked.
Speaker 1: Apparently it tastes like a stronger sea urchin with a
Speaker 1: sort of cilantro soap be taste, which I'm not going
Speaker 1: to judge because I've never actually eaten it, but to me,
Speaker 1: soapy doesn't sound like something i'd want to eat. But
Speaker 1: you know, if it is used enough, it must it
Speaker 1: must have it must have some some good flavor going
Speaker 1: on there. It's just so funny to think about, like
Speaker 1: it's such a human thing, um apparently also an otter
Speaker 1: thing to just like pick something up, crack it open
Speaker 1: and being like can I eat that? Yeah, something we
Speaker 1: share with the otters. Yeah, yeah, I mean there was
Speaker 1: there was a YouTube video of some guy like cutting
Speaker 1: into these things and like stabbing these things, and it
Speaker 1: was actually taken down for graphic content, which I think
Speaker 1: is that is kind of funny because they are all
Speaker 1: sorts of YouTube videos of people like gutting fish, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's like it's the same thing, but somehow
Speaker 1: meat Rock was a little too far for YouTube standards. Totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like I mentioned earlier, like most tunic its, the this
Speaker 1: this meat Rock starts off life as actually a mobile
Speaker 1: little tadpole thing, uh that lives in the ocean, and
Speaker 1: then it'll attach itself to a rock, and in fact,
Speaker 1: like with a lot of tunic its, it goes through
Speaker 1: this this metamorphosis where it actually depletes its brain size
Speaker 1: and increases its stomach capacity, and so it starts it
Speaker 1: really kind of emphasizes the ability to suck food in
Speaker 1: through the csiphone on Thanksgiving, right, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I mean, like brain off, mouth open. That's my philosophy.
Speaker 1: That's my Thanksgiving philosophy. And this is this little guy's philosophy.
Speaker 1: And then it grows into this this rock like uh creature,
Speaker 1: and that heart exterior called a tunic in which, like
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, it's made out of a weird animal
Speaker 1: version of cellulose uh. And then underneath that layer of
Speaker 1: tunquin is in a sort of skin and then muscle
Speaker 1: in organs, so very strange um and also even weirder
Speaker 1: and more alien is its blood is actually clear and
Speaker 1: full of vanadium, which is a rare chemical element whose
Speaker 1: role in the tunicuets circulatory system is really unclear. We
Speaker 1: don't know why. Yeah, yeah, And I can't figure out
Speaker 1: the anatomy of it. I tried, and I looked for diagrams,
Speaker 1: but it's like you cut into and there's just all
Speaker 1: these like meaty chunks, and I'm assuming one of the
Speaker 1: chunks is like the pharynx, maybe the digestive tract. Probably
Speaker 1: one of them's the gonads, which they're hermaphroditic, which allows
Speaker 1: them to reproduce a sexually or sexually, which is handy
Speaker 1: because if you're basically living your life as an immobile
Speaker 1: rock and you happen to pick a neighborhood that no
Speaker 1: other tuniquets set up shopping, you're out of luck. So
Speaker 1: you gotta be like, well, it's just me and myself
Speaker 1: and it's you know, I gotta gotta make babies somehow.
Speaker 1: This is like a good challenge for me. As I
Speaker 1: said before, I really try to see the like cool
Speaker 1: smart aspects of every creature, and the farther away you
Speaker 1: get from the human lifestyle and body plan, the more
Speaker 1: of an exercise and imagination that can be UM. And
Speaker 1: this guy is just like I have on faith um
Speaker 1: to me in my heart. He is very smart, meat
Speaker 1: rock talented, but how like what's his deal? Well, he's
Speaker 1: seeing a meat rock is very impressive. But like what else?
Speaker 1: I mean he or she and often often both like
Speaker 1: he this this little thing it's like, well, it's not
Speaker 1: always that little actually can get to be kind of
Speaker 1: a sizeable rock, uh shape sort of thingy. It it
Speaker 1: seems to like it's one of these weird things where
Speaker 1: kind of a Benjamin Buttons because it starts out life
Speaker 1: with much more brain power, much more of a nervous
Speaker 1: system that it sort of ends up at. So maybe
Speaker 1: that's that was the good decision, was getting rid of
Speaker 1: getting rid of its ability to think, and yeah, investing
Speaker 1: it all into the ability to like suck food in
Speaker 1: and filter it out and just live good life as
Speaker 1: a little gray rock. Maybe that's maybe that was that's
Speaker 1: the wisdom the whole the whole time. Yeah, good to
Speaker 1: learn front. That's a really good point. M So one
Speaker 1: of my favorite of the sort of articles that you're
Speaker 1: right are on these mysterious glowing animals that keep popping up,
Speaker 1: and it is something that I've been falling a little
Speaker 1: bit on the podcast, and it's just it seems like
Speaker 1: every month or two there's a new animal. They're like,
Speaker 1: this one glows too. So we're talking about biofluorescence in mammals,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of animals that biofluoresce like
Speaker 1: reptiles and arthropods and marine animals, but no, like seeing
Speaker 1: biofluorescence in mammals is or it was up until recently,
Speaker 1: very unexpected. Can I just give a little breakdown of
Speaker 1: the inferences between these kinds of things. Yeah, So there's
Speaker 1: a couple of different kinds of of glowing when it
Speaker 1: comes to animals. Um. So the one that we're talking
Speaker 1: about right now that has been observed in mammals recently
Speaker 1: and then before that in amphibians and some reptiles is
Speaker 1: is UV fluorescence. So when you put these animals under
Speaker 1: a UV light or expose them too strong UV light, um,
Speaker 1: they have mints or other chemicals or molecules in there
Speaker 1: for or their you know, carapaces or wherever. That kind
Speaker 1: of transfer forum the light that's being absorbed into a
Speaker 1: different color of light and admit it within the visible spectrum.
Speaker 1: So it's like if you are at like a black
Speaker 1: light party and you have a glow stick or you
Speaker 1: have like a white T shirt. Your white T shirt
Speaker 1: is doing that same thing. It's like taking in light
Speaker 1: that's invisible to you and emitting it as like a
Speaker 1: really bright blue color that you can see. So that's
Speaker 1: what those animals are doing, and then a lot of
Speaker 1: the underwater glowing from marine creatures, like marine creatures are
Speaker 1: much better at actually creating their own light. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is which is a bioluminescence not biofluoresce. Yeah, so there's
Speaker 1: two different kinds. Um, we're talking about biofluorescence, and some
Speaker 1: people argue that we shouldn't call it biofluorescence because it's
Speaker 1: not like a living property, it's like a material property.
Speaker 1: But I think it's okay because they're talking about a
Speaker 1: material property in a living things. Yeah, it's really it's
Speaker 1: really wild. Yeah, I mean yeah, so so marine life,
Speaker 1: you're right, absolutely right, Like there's a lot of bioluminescence,
Speaker 1: So that that's the kind of thing you see in
Speaker 1: angler fish or zooplankton, uh, diatoms sometimes um or or
Speaker 1: even like things like fox fire fungus will bioluminous. I
Speaker 1: think that's the action for bioluminous but um but that
Speaker 1: is where the glow is produced by a chemical reaction
Speaker 1: and it is visible with the naked human eye. Typically biofluorescence,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, is actually the animal skin or fur
Speaker 1: or whatever, or it doesn't have to be an animal
Speaker 1: can even be minerals or plants absorbing UV light and
Speaker 1: then re emitting it at a different wavelength. And we
Speaker 1: can only see that when we are basically pumping in
Speaker 1: uh UV light and then seeing it re emitted in
Speaker 1: a longer wavelength than it was originally. And there there
Speaker 1: are also actually, to even get more confusing, there are
Speaker 1: marine animals that bio fluoresce and so bioluminous. Uh So,
Speaker 1: sharks do not are not bioluminescent, They don't provide their
Speaker 1: own chemical reaction that makes them glow, but they do biofluoress,
Speaker 1: so they will glow under UV light. And there's some
Speaker 1: debate about like what this does, like is sharks are
Speaker 1: sharks using this social communication? Um. But even stranger is
Speaker 1: the fact that we're just finding more and more mammals
Speaker 1: who biofluoress, which you know, a reminder that is the
Speaker 1: UV light thing. So there is an ever growing list.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go through, uh some of the ones
Speaker 1: that I have compiled. Uh So, one of the more
Speaker 1: recent ones is the spring hair, which you just wrote
Speaker 1: about in the New York Times, which has maybe one
Speaker 1: of the coolest patterns of biofluorescence because they seems to
Speaker 1: like be these orange and pink glowing swirls like some
Speaker 1: kind of alice in Wonderland creature. Yeah, it's like a pokemon.
Speaker 1: I think they're really cool. That's my favorite one too.
Speaker 1: That's the most recent one that's been sort of like
Speaker 1: officially described. It's mostly one research group that's really digging
Speaker 1: into this right now, although even like people from zoos
Speaker 1: and people in their backyards are doing some like less
Speaker 1: rigorous experimentation with it or exploration with it. But the
Speaker 1: spring hair is amazing and the patchiness of the pattern
Speaker 1: is really cool because, like when you're talking about a
Speaker 1: material property, people who don't think that. The question for
Speaker 1: a lot of people is like does this fluorescence have
Speaker 1: any utility for the animal? Like can the animals doesn't
Speaker 1: help the animals see each other or actually like see
Speaker 1: each other less well, or be seen by predators less well,
Speaker 1: because you can imagine like if your fur is absorbing
Speaker 1: UV light and then emitting it at a different wavelength,
Speaker 1: like maybe you're actually hiding from a predator that can
Speaker 1: see UV light and would otherwise see this light reflected
Speaker 1: off of you. Um, so it could be actually like
Speaker 1: a camouflage mechanism. But people really argue about whether or
Speaker 1: not that's true. And the thing about the spring hair
Speaker 1: having like a patchy pattern is that some of like
Speaker 1: the hair is not um different in other ways, right,
Speaker 1: like why would some of the hairs be fluorescing and
Speaker 1: some of them not if it was just the I
Speaker 1: are the h I are on, Yeah, the fur is
Speaker 1: all the same, and so if the pattern is different
Speaker 1: but the fur is otherwise the same, then maybe the
Speaker 1: pattern does have some sort of utility or else, like
Speaker 1: why would it be there. So that's really exciting to me.
Speaker 1: And different hairs h A R E have different pattern um.
Speaker 1: That is really Yeah, that is so cool and it's
Speaker 1: it kind of makes me think of sort of the
Speaker 1: the shark biofluorescence, where they also have these different patterns.
Speaker 1: So uh. Some researchers are wondering if this is a
Speaker 1: social thing, like a way to identify different individuals, But
Speaker 1: it's hard to know because we would first that they
Speaker 1: must be able to actually see it. And I think
Speaker 1: there's some evidence that shark guys are able to see
Speaker 1: uh UV light, but I don't think we know. We
Speaker 1: don't necessarily know about the spring hair yet. UM, which
Speaker 1: by the way, is an absolutely adorable animal. Spring hair
Speaker 1: is a it's a large rodent that looks like you
Speaker 1: crossed a kangaroo with a mouse. And uh they and
Speaker 1: they actually live in uh the southern tip of Africa,
Speaker 1: so uh, they are not a marsupial, but they do
Speaker 1: kind of look like a marsupial um. But what I mean,
Speaker 1: that's one of the weird things though about these glowing animals.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if this is just an artifact
Speaker 1: of the way the research is going, like are we
Speaker 1: testing this on more marsupials and monotreams or something, because
Speaker 1: it seems like a lot of these animals that are
Speaker 1: biofluorescing are either monotreams meaning like platypuses or kidnas, or
Speaker 1: are um marsupials like wombats, Tasmanian devils, bilbies, possums, bandicoots.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, it's it's so strange. I can I can
Speaker 1: answer at least part of that question. The flipping answer
Speaker 1: is that Australia is really weird. All the animals in
Speaker 1: Australia are really weird. I don't know what they're getting
Speaker 1: up to at any given five um. But that's that's
Speaker 1: that's not my real answer, which is that, um, the
Speaker 1: group that is studying this really rigorously thinks that the
Speaker 1: things that these animals have in common so far are
Speaker 1: that they are like crepuscular nocturnal, so they're active at
Speaker 1: night and in the evening and at dawn, which is
Speaker 1: like also a time when the light conditions are different
Speaker 1: obviously than during the day. UM, And that they're not
Speaker 1: predators like their their prey animals mostly or at least
Speaker 1: they have predators. So that kind of also supports the
Speaker 1: idea that maybe they are using this to hide somehow. UM.
Speaker 1: The Australia thing is because so outside of that group
Speaker 1: that is doing like a little bit of more rigorous experimentation,
Speaker 1: there are places that have done just sort of like
Speaker 1: shine a black light all around in the museum and
Speaker 1: see what happens. And one of those people, one of
Speaker 1: those groups was an Australian museum that did a lot
Speaker 1: of light shining on their like taxidermed bilbies and stuff
Speaker 1: and found a lot of glowing. But it hasn't been
Speaker 1: sort of rigorously um verified. So there's clues that maybe
Speaker 1: these Australian mammals all have this, but it hasn't really
Speaker 1: been shown yet. The ones that have it has been
Speaker 1: shown for um more definitively are platypus, the flying squirrel,
Speaker 1: or at least um some species of flying squirrel, some
Speaker 1: species of a possum. Yes, and the spring hair. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I think this is so interesting, and it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where once you kind of open up
Speaker 1: that Pandora's box of shining black lights on mammals to
Speaker 1: see which one of them glows, it's like, well, we
Speaker 1: have to keep going until we've tested it on every
Speaker 1: animal because it could be like we may be seeing
Speaker 1: some pattern, but until we know which animals do this,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, it could be that we just haven't
Speaker 1: we haven't shown black lights on on enough animals. And
Speaker 1: I feel like one of the difficulties is you can't
Speaker 1: just walk up to a nocturnal animal with a black
Speaker 1: light and like, could you hold still? Well, I see
Speaker 1: if you're glowing, because they're not gonna they're not going
Speaker 1: to react kindly to that. In fact, it seems like
Speaker 1: a lot of the tests are either done on already
Speaker 1: dead animals that have been taxidermine or people just going
Speaker 1: out to the roads at night and shining a black
Speaker 1: light on roadkill, which I love it, but it's one
Speaker 1: of the more questionable activities you're me as a researcher.
Speaker 1: I feel like if a police officer stopped you and
Speaker 1: you're it's like, well what are you doing, It's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I just you know, I'm shotting this black light on
Speaker 1: a road kill to see if you know some of
Speaker 1: them glow. You need a cover story. You're getting arrested
Speaker 1: for that. But sure, I like the spring hair study
Speaker 1: because they I don't think they could do this with
Speaker 1: the platypus one, but for that one, they were able to, um,
Speaker 1: go to a zoo and find some spring hairs and
Speaker 1: like give them peanuts and take pictures of them. Um.
Speaker 1: So you've got all these really cute, like little model
Speaker 1: posts of the very passive, beautiful glowing springares eating a
Speaker 1: peanut yea, rather than these poor mangled road kill glowing
Speaker 1: hands that totally it's a smushed, smushed platypus that that
Speaker 1: glows a beautiful color. Um. But just to kind of
Speaker 1: give everyone a sense of the magnitude of how many
Speaker 1: of these animals have shown some signs of biofluorescence UM
Speaker 1: and what they look like. Uh, here here's a probably
Speaker 1: in complete list I've compiled of who's glowing and what
Speaker 1: they kind of look like. So, uh, sort of bluish
Speaker 1: green glow all over their bodies. It seems like platypus
Speaker 1: uh and wombat maybe weakly bright white glowing spines seems
Speaker 1: to happen with a kidneas Tasmanian devils, which are interesting
Speaker 1: because they are now I they may have some predators,
Speaker 1: but they're mostly the predator themselves and they get into
Speaker 1: conflicts with each other, but not as much with other animals.
Speaker 1: But they do have seem to have some biofluorescence, especially
Speaker 1: around their faces um which kind of it's like they
Speaker 1: have like blue highlighted features. Uh. Flying squirrels tend to
Speaker 1: have glowing underbellies. So there are a few species of
Speaker 1: flying squirrels that seem to biofluoresce and they have these
Speaker 1: like p glowing under belly which is adorable. Greater bilbies
Speaker 1: seem to have glowing white ears, and then ghost bats
Speaker 1: are very appropriately named, seemed to have glowing yellow wings. Again,
Speaker 1: just to reiterate, this is all under UV light, so
Speaker 1: we can't see this with the naked eye um striped
Speaker 1: possum may have some sort of highlighter pink glowing abilities,
Speaker 1: and crefts gliders, which are sort of like a sugar
Speaker 1: glider or flying squirrel in appearance, seem to have glowing
Speaker 1: blue bellies, which I think is interesting because you have
Speaker 1: the flying squirrels which have glowing pink bellies, and then
Speaker 1: another glider and its belly glows blue um, and then
Speaker 1: these I saw some indication that they do glow, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't find like what color they glow. But long
Speaker 1: nosed bandicoots anti chinas and tree kangaroos maybe with a
Speaker 1: big maybe there's like a really old um observation of
Speaker 1: tree kangaroos. I don't think they've like replicated that, partially
Speaker 1: because tree kangaroos are very very very rare, and I
Speaker 1: think like, weren't they recently like thought to have been
Speaker 1: They were thought to have been very completely extinct and
Speaker 1: then like recently they kind of found some wild population
Speaker 1: or am I getting that confused with another animal? Oh?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not up on my tree kangaroos,
Speaker 1: but I hope they're okay, you're not to date on
Speaker 1: your tree kangaroo trivia. Yeah, No, there there are there
Speaker 1: are certain species of tree kangaroos which were thought to
Speaker 1: have been extinct up until and that was the Wanda
Speaker 1: Boy tree kangaroo. Um. So yeah, it's they're elusive, so
Speaker 1: we don't know, we don't know they're glowing secrets. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's it's wild to me how there are
Speaker 1: so many animals. That's like, you know, we've never tried
Speaker 1: shining a black We've never taken these animals to array
Speaker 1: wave in their lives, and so we don't know if
Speaker 1: they glow like someone at Cotchella under a black light.
Speaker 1: So there's really only one solution, which is to do
Speaker 1: like a sort of Noah's Ark style rave. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: one pair of every species in the same place, and
Speaker 1: we just go for it exactly and everybody gets like
Speaker 1: a wrist band since yeah, the most exclusive rave in
Speaker 1: the world, the Noah's are Grave. I love that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it is really curious and as far as I know,
Speaker 1: and please correct me if I'm wrong, care, but we
Speaker 1: still don't know exactly why they glow like this. The
Speaker 1: the answer has yet to been definitively proven or even
Speaker 1: thoroughly studied. Yeah, nobody really knows, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people argue that there couldn't possibly be a reason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually it's one of my favorite types of scientific question,
Speaker 1: which is the like really st eric one that still
Speaker 1: inspires ferocious angry debate. Yes, I love it when biologists
Speaker 1: get mad. I know, it's really fun. People have. Often
Speaker 1: the people who you know, discover this have maybe a
Speaker 1: bit of a vested interest in it being um having
Speaker 1: some sort of use, although of course they're also a
Speaker 1: rigorous scientists and they want to prove it for sure.
Speaker 1: So often I'll talk to the authors of the papers
Speaker 1: and they'll have a bunch of theories, and then I'll
Speaker 1: talk to somebody outside and they'll say, like, no way,
Speaker 1: you know, or we have to do so much more
Speaker 1: work to even get close to that. But people have
Speaker 1: come up with some really good theories. What are some
Speaker 1: of those theories that you've heard without you know, this
Speaker 1: is clearly we don't know yet whether any of these
Speaker 1: are true without further study totally. So UM. One of
Speaker 1: the ones is what I mentioned before, UM, in terms
Speaker 1: of hiding from predators through camouflage, so making themselves actually
Speaker 1: sort of counterintuitively less visible because obviously, like if you
Speaker 1: saw a platypus. Even in the moonlight, you wouldn't see
Speaker 1: it glowing. It would just look like a normal platypus,
Speaker 1: unless you happen to have a black light, because as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, you were a freaky researcher looking for kill
Speaker 1: with a black light. UM So, I think one of
Speaker 1: the kind of confusing things that you have to remember
Speaker 1: when you're reading studies like this is like the pictures
Speaker 1: that we show to um like demonstrate the phenomenon, that's
Speaker 1: not what you would see in real life without a
Speaker 1: black light, not what another platypus would see. So you
Speaker 1: kind of have to like move one step beyond that
Speaker 1: and think about, um, okay, so what what another platypus
Speaker 1: see or what would a platypus predator see? And a
Speaker 1: lot of predators yet can see UV light much better
Speaker 1: than people can, and so it's possible that a platypus
Speaker 1: that would normally be reflecting this UV light so that
Speaker 1: it was visible, is instead absorbing it and transmitting a
Speaker 1: different frequency, so the predator actually maybe can see it
Speaker 1: a little bit worse. So that's one possibility. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like the wearing the black turtleneck in a heist movie.
Speaker 1: Because black will absorb light, and so you know, when
Speaker 1: you try to shine a light off of a black turtleneck,
Speaker 1: the museum guards don't see. And you can steal the
Speaker 1: diamond and you can shine a black light on all
Speaker 1: those specimens in the downstairs rooms. Yeah, or steal the
Speaker 1: hook down or both if you're having a really good
Speaker 1: because because these animals are often crepuscular or nocturnal, you're
Speaker 1: not getting a huge amount of like UV light at
Speaker 1: night at all. So it's that makes it more mysterious
Speaker 1: where it's you know, they're not they're not absorbing huge
Speaker 1: amounts of UV light. We can only see it because
Speaker 1: we sort of pump them with this like little mini
Speaker 1: UV light ray that makes them, you know, leak out
Speaker 1: all these longer wavelengths of visible light that we can
Speaker 1: see after we are just like pumping them chopped full
Speaker 1: of UV light. Yeah. Another theorious that, like as we
Speaker 1: know you be, light can be kind of harmful cells um,
Speaker 1: and so some people think that maybe by sort of
Speaker 1: taking it in and transforming it, the fur is protecting
Speaker 1: like the vulnerable skin from being exposed to UV. Almost
Speaker 1: love that I would love some kind of like sunscreen
Speaker 1: that also biofluorescence, so I can like, during the day
Speaker 1: protect my red head, protect like my redhead skin from
Speaker 1: the sun, and then at night go to rave and
Speaker 1: it's like, instance, party all night, not get skin cancer
Speaker 1: during the day. One of the coolest examples that I've
Speaker 1: seen lately. I wrote this up like last month for
Speaker 1: the New York Times. UM was there's this these species
Speaker 1: of paper wasps and and uh oh I saw your
Speaker 1: article on that. I'm excited. Yeah, it's cool. Um. It's
Speaker 1: mostly the coolest ones are in Vietnam, but they're found
Speaker 1: in other places as well. And the larva of these wasps,
Speaker 1: you know, spin their own cocoons out of silk and
Speaker 1: kind of stay in there while they're a better morphosizing UM,
Speaker 1: and so are metamorphizing. And that they found that again
Speaker 1: by accident because of their ubi lights. UM found that
Speaker 1: the silk of the cocoon is really really strongly UV fluorescent,
Speaker 1: like way stronger than anything yet discovered in nature. It's like,
Speaker 1: that's bright green. It looks like I mean, it almost
Speaker 1: looks brighter than a glow stick to me. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: super bright. It's almost like like if a tree was
Speaker 1: growing like a tennis ball. You're like, yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really cool. And uh. One of the researchers said to
Speaker 1: me that his theory and again like it's this really
Speaker 1: requires further testing, is that when the larvae are metamorphizing
Speaker 1: into wasps, they need you know, photo period signals. They
Speaker 1: need to know how long the days are because that
Speaker 1: helps them figure out like when it's time to do
Speaker 1: certain things. So they need to be have access to
Speaker 1: the light conditions of the forest, but they maybe want
Speaker 1: to be protected from UV. So by having these little
Speaker 1: glowing um, you know, not glowing but biofluorescent cocoon caps,
Speaker 1: maybe it's like keeping the UV out while still letting
Speaker 1: the light inside. So almost like you have of um,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like a little led in your
Speaker 1: room that tells you when it's light out without exposing
Speaker 1: you to the light. Like maybe you're a vampire or
Speaker 1: something and you need to stay time and when it's
Speaker 1: not but you don't want to be exposed to the
Speaker 1: having a windows treated with some kind of like UV
Speaker 1: protection like you get on sunk totally yeah exactly, um,
Speaker 1: and so looks really fluorescent, but to them it's like
Speaker 1: a protective but information giving yeah, which is really cool,
Speaker 1: which I think is it's like another one of these
Speaker 1: things that we have to we can't be so like
Speaker 1: you know, anthrocentric or anthropocentric, where we uh, we think
Speaker 1: that in terms of like, well, they're glowing to us
Speaker 1: when we flash the the the black light on it.
Speaker 1: So it's so it must be have something to do
Speaker 1: with the glowing nature of this that gives them an advantage,
Speaker 1: but could be completely unrelated to the fact that they
Speaker 1: they buy O fluoresce. It could have to do with
Speaker 1: like the way they absorb the UV light. It could
Speaker 1: be thermoregulation, uh, which is sometimes the case with like
Speaker 1: these There are these snakes that have this iridescence to
Speaker 1: their scales. It's beautiful and so you think, well, is
Speaker 1: this like, uh some kind of mate selection because it's
Speaker 1: so beautiful. Well, no, they don't care. Uh. It's probably
Speaker 1: more to do with the fact that structurally these scales
Speaker 1: are made so that they can absorb heat um better,
Speaker 1: such that they can thermoregulate, so not getting too cold
Speaker 1: and not getting too hot. So the fact that they
Speaker 1: look like magical fairy princess snakes is just incidental, But
Speaker 1: it's the it's the thermoregulation that's important. So something similar
Speaker 1: could be going on with these uv patterns where it
Speaker 1: could it could either be that it's helping them, you know,
Speaker 1: absorb uvy raise either for their benefit or to protect
Speaker 1: them from the harm, or you know, for some kind
Speaker 1: of thermoregulation, or it could be um could be completely incidental.
Speaker 1: So it could be that the structure of the the
Speaker 1: proteins and the fur that like our biofluorescing just happened
Speaker 1: to biofluoresce, but they are structured in such a way
Speaker 1: that makes the fur like more protective for the animal
Speaker 1: or healthier. And in evolutionary biology, this is typically referred
Speaker 1: to as an evolutionary spandrel, So it's when something happens
Speaker 1: in evolution like there's some structure or some trait and
Speaker 1: it is incidental. So it's a byproduct of other structures
Speaker 1: that are necessary for an animal's evolutionary survival. And I
Speaker 1: think it comes from architecture, which I know a great
Speaker 1: deal less about, but I think it's basically when you
Speaker 1: have an archway, you have like these places where the
Speaker 1: arch meets the wall, and so it's like this chunk
Speaker 1: of basically unused space. So architects it off and like
Speaker 1: decorate these these spandrels with designs, and then people would
Speaker 1: sometimes wonder like what is this, What is the structural
Speaker 1: purpose of this? And it's like, well, there's no structural purpose.
Speaker 1: It's just there because it has to be there because
Speaker 1: of the way the arch meets the wall, and so
Speaker 1: you might as well decorated as an architect. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so before we go, we have to answer the question
Speaker 1: from last week of guests who's talking? So every week
Speaker 1: I play a mystery animal sound and you the listener,
Speaker 1: and you the guests, try to guess, Hey, who's talking?
Speaker 1: Who the heck is that? And just as a reminder,
Speaker 1: last week's hint is that its name sounds like a
Speaker 1: collaboration between a biologist, a heavy metal band, and a hairdresser.
Speaker 1: Kind of sounds like a man drake or uh, scary baby.
Speaker 1: It's actually, yeah, I think I know exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: It's my cat peppercorn when she wants to go out ros.
Speaker 1: How did you know? How did you get into my
Speaker 1: house to record peppercorn? Yet? Well, do you have any
Speaker 1: guesses other than peppercorns? Okay, so you said a biologist,
Speaker 1: a metal band, and a hairdresser got together to name
Speaker 1: this thing. So it's probably like a bird with something
Speaker 1: weird on its head, but that's usually the answer. Um,
Speaker 1: this screaming mohawk parakeet is my god, you're you're so close.
Speaker 1: You're a little bit off by like the alum and
Speaker 1: actual animals, but in terms of the name, in terms
Speaker 1: of the actual name, you're very close. So this is
Speaker 1: actually the screaming Harry armadillo. Oh, what is an armadillo.
Speaker 1: It's an armadillo. So this is found in South America
Speaker 1: and it is indeed in armadillo. It is indeed Harry,
Speaker 1: and it does in fact scream as you just heard.
Speaker 1: If you pick one up, they start shrieking uh. And
Speaker 1: it is thought that this is sort of the like
Speaker 1: um car alarm effect because they're not really that social,
Speaker 1: so this is not thought to be a warning call
Speaker 1: to other individuals in its species, but it's thought to
Speaker 1: either startle predators when they pick them up, or to
Speaker 1: make a predator afraid that an even bigger predator is
Speaker 1: going to approach, which I think is a really interesting gambit.
Speaker 1: We've seen in a few prey animals where they will
Speaker 1: just make huge commotion and then that freaks out the predator.
Speaker 1: That's like, well, okay, I was trying to go in
Speaker 1: this sneakily, but if you're screaming like something bigger might
Speaker 1: come and actually eat me while I'm trying to eat you.
Speaker 1: So I think it worked on me because uh, it's
Speaker 1: just it's sounds like a demon baby m hmm. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I would definitely put it down if it did that.
Speaker 1: All right, And now onto this week's mystery animal sound.
Speaker 1: Here's a hint, not so fast. This isn't who you
Speaker 1: think it is, kar Do you have any guesses? This
Speaker 1: is a very sneaky and tricky one. So it sounds
Speaker 1: like that despite how it sounds, it's not an adorable
Speaker 1: small bird who will help me get dressed for the ball. Um,
Speaker 1: So no, I don't. I have no idea. I I've
Speaker 1: been extremely sneaky with this one. I'm I almost feel
Speaker 1: a little mean about it, but I still keep my
Speaker 1: lips tightly sealed until next week when we reveal the answer.
Speaker 1: And if you out there listeners think you know what
Speaker 1: this is, you can write to me a Creature feature
Speaker 1: Pot at gmail dot com, Creature feature Pot on Instagram,
Speaker 1: or Creature feet Pot on Twitter. That's e E teeth.
Speaker 1: That is something very different. Um. But Karen, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining me today. Uh, and for giving
Speaker 1: all your wisdom and insight. Uh that usually I would
Speaker 1: have to go and read your articles to get Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is in some ways more efficient. In some ways
Speaker 1: probably a lot less efficient. But I really appreciate being
Speaker 1: invited on and I had a great time. Well where
Speaker 1: can people find all your awesome articles? And where can
Speaker 1: people find you online? Yeah? So I'm on Twitter at
Speaker 1: see j jimo that's ce j G. I A I
Speaker 1: m o um and then I right pretty frequently for
Speaker 1: The New York Times. And I'm working on this book
Speaker 1: for Alice Obscura that won't be up for a while,
Speaker 1: but when it is, I will tell you where you
Speaker 1: can get it. I'm excited for that. Uh. And of
Speaker 1: course I just told you where you can find the
Speaker 1: podcast online. You can find me online at Katie Golden
Speaker 1: on Twitter. I don't always tweet about animals, but when
Speaker 1: I do, it's they're really weird. Yeah, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you
Speaker 1: leave a rating and review, I will just be grateful
Speaker 1: forever and ever. I'll never forget it. I actually do
Speaker 1: read all the reviews and I really appreciate all of them,
Speaker 1: and thank you so much for to the Space Classics
Speaker 1: where they're super awesome. Song x Alumina Creature features a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the
Speaker 1: one you just heard, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcast, or Hey guess what, I don't care. Where
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. You can do it
Speaker 1: from inside of Meat Rock. See if I care, I
Speaker 1: don't judge you. See you next Wednesday. M