Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, I'm answering
Speaker 1: your emails. I asked for your pet pictures and animal questions,
Speaker 1: and you gave them to me. Thanks. So without further ado,
Speaker 1: let's talk about how bugs taste, graveyard dogs, juvenile delinquent birds,
Speaker 1: and existential questions about evolution. Discover the summores, me answer
Speaker 1: the truly age old questions zebras black with white stripes
Speaker 1: or white with black stripes and are they related to
Speaker 1: the band The White Stripes. So here is my first email.
Speaker 1: Hello Katie and the rest of the Creature Feature team.
Speaker 1: My name is Ayumi. She knows z Aki, she her,
Speaker 1: and I love your podcast so much. I've been trying
Speaker 1: to catch up on the pod, but also keep listening
Speaker 1: to newer episodes immediately and I'm just endlessly delighted with
Speaker 1: the je episode. Thank you. I am writing this after
Speaker 1: having listened to your delightful Bunny episode with Joel Monique,
Speaker 1: who was also delightful. I agree Joel is delightful. So first,
Speaker 1: a kind of response Firstly, of course, Pika in terms
Speaker 1: of the written form, looks similar to Pikachu, but has
Speaker 1: a different pronunciation. Pikachu's name comes from pika, pika and
Speaker 1: automonopeia for sparkling or shocking all that makes sense, and
Speaker 1: chow the automonopeia for mice equivalent to squeak, so you
Speaker 1: could say Pikachu's name means spark squeak or light squeak.
Speaker 1: I love that. Also, you made comments about rabbits having
Speaker 1: ears big enough to fly, and it made me think
Speaker 1: of something interesting about Japanese and rabbits. One of the
Speaker 1: most complicated aspects of the language is that we have
Speaker 1: a million ways to count things. Sure, there's a standard
Speaker 1: way to go one to three, but we have a
Speaker 1: different word to count balls versus sticks versus chop sticks,
Speaker 1: and in that regard, we have a different counter for
Speaker 1: animals and other non humans versus birds. Like you can
Speaker 1: count birds with the standard epiki niki san biki, but
Speaker 1: why would you. Rabbits are special in that they are
Speaker 1: not birds, but they also have traditionally been counted with
Speaker 1: the bird counter ichi niua sanba because in the past,
Speaker 1: when there have been bands on eating meat, bird meat
Speaker 1: was not considered part of that legal definition. It's considered
Speaker 1: different the way some people today might not quote eat
Speaker 1: meat but eat fish no problem. So since rabbits have
Speaker 1: these long ears that could be seen as wings, we
Speaker 1: counted them legally as birds and ate them up. Oh no, Also,
Speaker 1: I have some questions. First question, A lot of robots
Speaker 1: in sci fi are made to look like humans. But
Speaker 1: what animals do you think, structurally would make a good
Speaker 1: robot inspiration. I know there are robot dogs, but they
Speaker 1: seem to all be cops for some reason. Second question,
Speaker 1: I have a podcast dedicated to the magic called girl genre,
Speaker 1: and one aspect of the genre are mascots, which stem
Speaker 1: from the idea of which is familiars. While the most
Speaker 1: famous is alien cat Luna from Sailor Moon and her Family.
Speaker 1: Over the years, many magical girls before and since have
Speaker 1: had animal companions, some of whom are distinctly based on
Speaker 1: specific animals, and others that are vaguely an amalgamation of them.
Speaker 1: Are there any animals you think who would look like
Speaker 1: great companions to magical girls, whether they fight crime or
Speaker 1: simply want to use magic while living more or less
Speaker 1: a mundane existence. I hope you're having a swell day
Speaker 1: full of burbs au me she no Zaki. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for all those cool linguistic facts and am
Speaker 1: I love that rabbits were kind of classified as birds
Speaker 1: just so you could eat them, poor buddies. But they
Speaker 1: do have those big years, which I guess could be
Speaker 1: mistaken for wings. So in answer to your question the
Speaker 1: first question of which animals would make cool robots, Uh, well,
Speaker 1: I kind of want to look at some of the
Speaker 1: animal inspired robots that actually exist and are very strange.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite genre of machines are machines based
Speaker 1: on birds, because it's so counterintuitive. We figured out how
Speaker 1: to make machines fly like airplanes, helicopters, and drones, but
Speaker 1: we also insist on making ornithopters or machines designed to
Speaker 1: fly like birds. Instead of using spinning rotors, they actually
Speaker 1: use flapping wings to fly. So the first person to
Speaker 1: try to invent an ornithopter, at least the first recorded
Speaker 1: person with Leonardo da Vinci, who designed one of the
Speaker 1: first ornithopters, but his designs never really got off the ground,
Speaker 1: so to speak. It was designed to hold a human
Speaker 1: and flap large membranous wings with foot pedals, but it
Speaker 1: didn't really work. The first ornithopter to achieve flight was
Speaker 1: built in France in eighteen seventy one. It was the
Speaker 1: size of a small songbird and used a wind up
Speaker 1: rubber band to flap the wings. In nineteen o two,
Speaker 1: an ornithopter large enough to hold a human was built,
Speaker 1: but it was unable to fly, so whoops, didn't really work.
Speaker 1: I think that the most efficient way to get a
Speaker 1: human to fly is actually the gliding method, which we
Speaker 1: found with planes and even with the non motor propelled
Speaker 1: early planes made by the Right brothers. But nevertheless, in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two the first successful manned ornithopter was built
Speaker 1: by Adelbert Schmidt, who managed to fly about sixty feet
Speaker 1: or eighteen meters in a small plane with flapping wings
Speaker 1: that used a bicycle chain mechanism. It's much less efficient
Speaker 1: than gliding planes we use. In fact, this is also
Speaker 1: true of birds, so large birds such as condors and
Speaker 1: albatrosses tend to use gliding rather than flapping or most
Speaker 1: of their air time. So for humans, heavy humans are
Speaker 1: a heavy plane, it makes much more sense to use
Speaker 1: gliding motion uh basically lift from air, going over and
Speaker 1: under the wing the ber Neowly effect to achieve lift
Speaker 1: and flight. Rather than flapping big wings. It's just the
Speaker 1: bigger you are flapping starts to make less sense in
Speaker 1: terms of physics of flying. In the nineteen sixties, larger
Speaker 1: ornithopters with a wingspan of eight feet were built by
Speaker 1: Perceval Spencer. They used an internal combustion engine to flap
Speaker 1: the wings and were able to fly successfully. It's just
Speaker 1: kind of wild to me that we already figured out
Speaker 1: how planes work, but we still insist on trying to
Speaker 1: make a big mechanical bird, which I don't know, I
Speaker 1: think that's great. Um. Other weird robots that were making
Speaker 1: that I think is worth mentioning is the octopus robot,
Speaker 1: a sawft bodied robot who can swim and grab things
Speaker 1: with its arms. All include links to us some videos
Speaker 1: of all these guys in the show notes. But it's
Speaker 1: really really weird. The you know, you think of a
Speaker 1: robot is being made out of metal, but when you
Speaker 1: start to make a robot out of like silicon and
Speaker 1: like you see these like undulating floppy arms, very uncanny. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are fish robots who undulate very convincingly like fish
Speaker 1: it's it's again a kind of Uncanny Valley, but with fish,
Speaker 1: Like the Uncanny Valley is full of robot fish. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you know I'm into it. Besto Robotics, which I
Speaker 1: believe is a German company, has made underwater jellyfish robots,
Speaker 1: so basically soft bodied robots that undulate their arms like
Speaker 1: jellyfish would. Um. But they've also made an air jellyfish,
Speaker 1: so like I believe it's a helium inflated balloon and
Speaker 1: then a ring of robotic arms, so it loats like
Speaker 1: a jellyfish, but in the air. It's really cool, really
Speaker 1: really cool. Okay. So part two of the question is
Speaker 1: what would make some good Magical Girls sidekick animals? There
Speaker 1: are so many, so many real life animals that look
Speaker 1: like they'd come from a Magical Girl manga or anime.
Speaker 1: Here are just a few. There's the Japanese war flying squirrels,
Speaker 1: who can glide through the air with skin flaps. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they look more adorable than Pikachu. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: they are absolutely adorable. There are giant purple squirrels found
Speaker 1: in India called Indian giant squirrels. They are enormous squirrels
Speaker 1: with huge tails. Their body length is about a foot
Speaker 1: or thirty centimeters. Tail length is about a foot and
Speaker 1: six inches or forty five centimeters. And their coat colors
Speaker 1: are beautiful. They range from reddish brown to maroon with
Speaker 1: patches of yellowish cream colored fur on their arms, face, tail,
Speaker 1: and belly. Uh, and they're not ture. Fur color kind
Speaker 1: of looks like a rainbow of beautiful colors. And they
Speaker 1: just look so festive and definitely look like they belong
Speaker 1: in um Magical Girl anime. And if your Magical Girl
Speaker 1: isn't squeamish about squay mates like lizards and snakes, there
Speaker 1: are some really cool dudes like the armadilla lizard that
Speaker 1: looks like a tiny dragon in it bites its own
Speaker 1: tail to form a little ball. And there are rainbow
Speaker 1: snakes who scales are iridescent enshine like a rainbow. Definitely
Speaker 1: lots of really cool animals that would be right at
Speaker 1: home in an anime. So, um, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break, but then I will be back with some
Speaker 1: more spooky listener questions. All right, and we're back, and
Speaker 1: here is another listener question. Uh, and I believe this
Speaker 1: was about the episode we just did with bridget about
Speaker 1: the fact that the planet is haunted. Um. All right,
Speaker 1: so here is the email. Dear Katie. When you said
Speaker 1: ghost dogs on the most recent episode, my first thought
Speaker 1: was about the English folk tale of the church grim
Speaker 1: or graveyard grim. I don't know if it ever actually happened,
Speaker 1: but the basic idea is that before a church could
Speaker 1: be built or graveyard established on a new piece of land,
Speaker 1: a dog should be buried there so that its soul
Speaker 1: would be a permanent guardian against evil and shepherd the
Speaker 1: freshly interred to the afterlife. The various versions in details
Speaker 1: of this folk tale can be quite dark, but I
Speaker 1: prefer to think of them as eternal good boys, mostly
Speaker 1: because I grew up next to a cemetery and our
Speaker 1: dogs definitely thought it was their job to guard it.
Speaker 1: As the dogs passed away, we would bury them in
Speaker 1: the backyard. A few years ago, my parents sold the house,
Speaker 1: which was torn down so that the cemetery could expand
Speaker 1: onto the land. When I really start to miss them,
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty nice to imagine that they're there to
Speaker 1: comfort the mourners and befriend the dearly departed. Oh that's
Speaker 1: so sweet. On a more lighthearted note, I have knowingly
Speaker 1: eaten bugs, and my review is pretty bland. First there
Speaker 1: were the meal worms. They pretty much taste like whatever
Speaker 1: you cook them in, and the hard bits get stuck
Speaker 1: in your teeth like popcorn colonels grows. Second was the
Speaker 1: chocolate chirp cookie, which you might guess was a chocolate
Speaker 1: chip cookie with feeder crickets baked in on the top.
Speaker 1: They had a mild sort of nutty flavor and a
Speaker 1: papery texture that my uncle said was from the wings
Speaker 1: shrug emoji. Oh God. Overall, I would eat bugs again
Speaker 1: without too much fuss, but only if I really had to.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for making this podcast, sincerely, Gretchen.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Gretchen. Oh and then, just as
Speaker 1: an added email, someone else mentioned the mouth feel of bugs,
Speaker 1: so I thought I would add that in as well.
Speaker 1: Here here's another email. Hi, there, I've eaten lots of bugs.
Speaker 1: I traveled around Southeast Asian the military most of the time.
Speaker 1: The whole cooked bug is just a salty, crunchy treat
Speaker 1: sold as street food. While in Thailand I had delicious
Speaker 1: cook scorpion. Their stinger was removed, but the claus had
Speaker 1: the crunchy, then soft taste you talked about on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks Kendra and Kindred sent me a picture of a
Speaker 1: dog wearing a scarf, which I love. Uh. Yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you both so much for your review of the mouth
Speaker 1: field bugs. Uh. It sounds a little bit like popcorn shrimp,
Speaker 1: which I already like. When I have popcorn shrimp, I
Speaker 1: like get halfway through a plate of it and then
Speaker 1: suddenly get this gross sensation that I'm eating like sea bugs.
Speaker 1: So thank you for reinforcing that. No, I'm kidding, but
Speaker 1: that is Yeah, that's very interesting. I think I think
Speaker 1: a lot of the texture and stuff it's like similar
Speaker 1: to a lot of foods we already eat. It's just
Speaker 1: psychological why we don't like it when it comes to bugs,
Speaker 1: Like you know, a bug might taste the same as
Speaker 1: like a lobster texture or shrimp texture, or like a
Speaker 1: popcorn texture, but then just the idea of it being
Speaker 1: an insect can be can turn people off of it.
Speaker 1: But that's all just cultural. And Gretchen, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for bringing the grim in your stories about your dogs. Um.
Speaker 1: I think we talked about the grim a long time
Speaker 1: ago on the show one of the earlier episodes. I
Speaker 1: think it was called were Wolf there Wolf in February.
Speaker 1: I think I might have mentioned on the show that
Speaker 1: I was wondering if the dogs association with the graveyard
Speaker 1: was similar to crows, where they're attracted to the smells
Speaker 1: of the fresh burial sites because they have such a
Speaker 1: keen sense of smell. And I wonder if dogs would
Speaker 1: sometimes come and like sniff around the graveyard and then
Speaker 1: people would associate them as spirits of the graveyard, protective spirits.
Speaker 1: But yeah, dogs are so good at smelling um bodies,
Speaker 1: and they have such a keen sense of smell that
Speaker 1: they're actually used to recover bodies human remains detection dogs
Speaker 1: are the best at finding das of any tool that
Speaker 1: we have. Uh. They're trained to detect the chemicals that
Speaker 1: come off of cadavers, and they need to be trained.
Speaker 1: And because they need to be trained, guess what that means.
Speaker 1: They have to be trained by sniffing and playing Hide
Speaker 1: and go seek with real dead body parts, which horrifying,
Speaker 1: but weirdly cute but still horrifying. I keep vacillating between
Speaker 1: cute and horrifying. But now let's move along from the
Speaker 1: topic of death to the topic of birth. The birth
Speaker 1: of baby birds. All right, here is an email. Hi Katie,
Speaker 1: my name is Patrick and I like birds. So I
Speaker 1: just listened to your Jurassic Park debunking episode and absolutely
Speaker 1: loved it. In your viewer question, you talked about the
Speaker 1: imprinting of birds to their mother and father, or what
Speaker 1: they see as their mom and dad. Then I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if you touched on this in another podcast, but
Speaker 1: cowbirds do we know how their brains are wired that
Speaker 1: they don't try to mate with the birds that raise them,
Speaker 1: rather than knowing to just lay their eggs in those nests. Basically,
Speaker 1: why don't cowbirds imprint on their adoptive parents? Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your email, Patrick, This is a brilliant
Speaker 1: question and actually when I hadn't thought about. So, just
Speaker 1: to give some background, cowbirds are a type of brood
Speaker 1: parasite bird similar to cuckoos, who lay their eggs in
Speaker 1: a host bird's nest so they get pregnant. They find
Speaker 1: an unsuspecting host bird's nest, lay their eggs in it,
Speaker 1: and make basically trick other birds into raising their own young.
Speaker 1: So this is actually a case of rude parasitism, but
Speaker 1: it's very cute because they're baby birds um, But of
Speaker 1: course the question is, like birds when they're learning bird calls,
Speaker 1: when they're learning behaviors, they pick it up from their parents,
Speaker 1: so they imprint upon their parents. They learned bird song
Speaker 1: from their parents, and often when you have cases of
Speaker 1: a bird being raised by a different bird families say,
Speaker 1: like in a research setting, they have found that birds
Speaker 1: will actually pick up the song of their adoptive parents.
Speaker 1: So why doesn't this happen with cowbirds is a really
Speaker 1: really good question and one that is of interest to
Speaker 1: researchers because it seems that parasitic brooding birds are resistant
Speaker 1: to imprinting by their host families and still grow up
Speaker 1: to have cowbird songs, cowbird behaviors, or cuckoo songs and
Speaker 1: cuckoo behaviors, which is kind of mind blowing because either
Speaker 1: these birds are an exception in their development or there's
Speaker 1: something sneaky going on, and some recent research seems to
Speaker 1: indicate there's something sneaky going on. So a recent study
Speaker 1: that was published in the Journal of Animal Behavior found
Speaker 1: that juvenile cowbirds leave their host nests at dusk and
Speaker 1: return in the morning. So there are a bunch of
Speaker 1: juvenile delinquent cowbirds who sneak off at night to go
Speaker 1: hang out with other cowbirds I assume probably listen for
Speaker 1: the cause of other cowbirds, and maybe they actually sneakily
Speaker 1: go and learn cowbird behaviors away from their host nest
Speaker 1: and then return to go get fed and everything. So
Speaker 1: this must be when they're fledgling, so capable of limited
Speaker 1: amounts of flight. So yeah, it's really really an interesting
Speaker 1: question when you have basically a parasite that has to
Speaker 1: figure out other ways to have the normal experience of
Speaker 1: a bird growing up because they have managed to bypass
Speaker 1: the whole need to feed their babies, but their babies
Speaker 1: still need to somehow learn um how to be an
Speaker 1: adult cowbird. So really interesting stuff. I'll keep my eyes
Speaker 1: open for more studies about this. But thank you so much, Patrick,
Speaker 1: that is a really really good question. Uh. And with that,
Speaker 1: we're going to take another real quick break, but then
Speaker 1: we will be back with yet another question of kind
Speaker 1: of an existential nature. And we are back, and there
Speaker 1: is a question I really wanted to answer. I think
Speaker 1: I got more than one questions like this, but I
Speaker 1: M really think this is important to address, all right,
Speaker 1: So here is the email. Hi, Katie, I love your podcast.
Speaker 1: It's the best. Thank you. As a newer ecology student,
Speaker 1: it seems like in every species and population I learned about,
Speaker 1: the idea for quote winning at evolution in life is
Speaker 1: to stay alive and just reproduce. This is super weird
Speaker 1: to me in human context because I never want children,
Speaker 1: logistics simplified by being gay too, But as a humble
Speaker 1: human organism who wants to win at life, would the
Speaker 1: equivalent for me be donating my eggs when life but
Speaker 1: also wash my hands clean of overpopulation issues. It seems
Speaker 1: completely healthy to ask my favorite evolutionary biology podcast or
Speaker 1: my personal reproductive questions, So tell me what to do.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Kayla, Well, thank you so much for your question. Kayla.
Speaker 1: First of all, I feel very underqualified to answer such
Speaker 1: a philosophical, philosophical and existent, uh existential question. Wow. So
Speaker 1: I can't even say the words, and yet you're asking
Speaker 1: for my advice. But yeah, it is one I wanted
Speaker 1: to address on the show because so when I talk
Speaker 1: about evolution sometimes I use kind of shorthand, like you know,
Speaker 1: if you get this trait, like you win at the
Speaker 1: evolutionary game, like say you you have some kind of
Speaker 1: um adaptation and it's like all right, and then if
Speaker 1: you have this adaptation and then you survive long enough
Speaker 1: to reproduce, then it's there. You've wanted. You've wanted this
Speaker 1: game of evolution. But this is all in terms of
Speaker 1: explaining the reasons for why you see these evolutionary patterns.
Speaker 1: It's not really winning or a victory in any kind
Speaker 1: of like human sense or moral sense or anything. So
Speaker 1: the thing is like humans are a unique species and
Speaker 1: that we actually get to question whether it's worth playing
Speaker 1: the game of evolution and if that's the most important
Speaker 1: thing of life. I mean, maybe there are other species
Speaker 1: that have some metacognition. I don't know, maybe elephants and dolphins,
Speaker 1: some other primates have some ability to kind of have
Speaker 1: a metic cognition other than just their instincts. Um, but
Speaker 1: you know, uh, generally speaking, I think humans are the
Speaker 1: most advanced in terms of we are actually able to
Speaker 1: question our own existence. We are able to question our
Speaker 1: own environment and have discussions about it like we're doing
Speaker 1: right now. And what that means is that we get
Speaker 1: to not be controlled by like evolution necessarily. So there's
Speaker 1: no sacred meaning to evolution. It's not like it is
Speaker 1: what it is. It's like any kind of biological process.
Speaker 1: It doesn't dictate morality and it doesn't dictate value for humans. So,
Speaker 1: for example, uh, there are frogs who will eat their
Speaker 1: own babies because it makes a lot of sense in
Speaker 1: terms of evolution. If they have a surplus of young,
Speaker 1: they will eat some of these babies and it increases
Speaker 1: the chance of their own survival to make even more babies.
Speaker 1: But certainly eating babies doesn't mean morality, even if it's
Speaker 1: a successful evolutionary strategy for some animals. We cannot learn
Speaker 1: morality from baby eating frogs. And when you think about like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this frog is being unethical, Well, cannot frog really be
Speaker 1: ethical or not ethical? I don't know. I don't really
Speaker 1: think so. But humans can. So we are very distinct
Speaker 1: and we have developed a sense of morality and senses
Speaker 1: of value, and I guess just like have experience beyond
Speaker 1: that of something like a frog. So we've also evolved,
Speaker 1: not just on the individual body level, but on a
Speaker 1: societal level. Our our culture, and our society is constantly evolving.
Speaker 1: And what all of this means is that we get
Speaker 1: to break free from some of the chains of natural
Speaker 1: selection and evolution. Like we get to recognize the value
Speaker 1: in a single human lifetime and human experience just existing
Speaker 1: and enjoying life, being conscious, having thoughts, you know, loving people,
Speaker 1: loving things. You know that all I think has intrinsic value. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not something like, oh, well is this good or
Speaker 1: not for evolution, It doesn't really matter because we just
Speaker 1: just being able to be alive and be exist and
Speaker 1: be aware and you know, have fulfillment and enjoyment is
Speaker 1: to me, because I'm making this decision with my own flaw,
Speaker 1: Sophie is to me a really valuable thing. It's even
Speaker 1: to me valuable for animals. Like if I have a
Speaker 1: pet dog, you know, she's spayed, she's not going to
Speaker 1: have any puppies, but her life is so important to me.
Speaker 1: You know she's and I hope that she's very happy too,
Speaker 1: and she has a really happy life, so you know
Speaker 1: she she's Uh, even if that's not you know, good
Speaker 1: quote evolutionarily speaking, it's a good thing for the world
Speaker 1: in terms of um keeping dogs happy and and and
Speaker 1: safe and and it's good for me because she makes
Speaker 1: me happy. So you get to define what is meaningful
Speaker 1: to you, like what is winning at life for you?
Speaker 1: Is that there's no reason that that means producing offspring.
Speaker 1: It doesn't need to have any intrinsic value to you.
Speaker 1: It could like, if you want to have children, because
Speaker 1: you want to have children, you know that that will
Speaker 1: have meaning to you. And if you don't want to
Speaker 1: have children, that doesn't need to have any meaning to you.
Speaker 1: And there's no there's no objective winning are losing anyways,
Speaker 1: it means something different for everyone. Think of one of
Speaker 1: the huge champions of evolutions. So some of the animals
Speaker 1: who are just absolutely winning at evolution are things like mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: There are countless, countless mosquitoes, they do really well and
Speaker 1: there's very little chance of them going extinct, whereas there's
Speaker 1: like you know, pandas, where there are very few of
Speaker 1: them and there's a much higher chance that they're going extinct.
Speaker 1: But would you value a mosquito over a panda? Uh?
Speaker 1: And even though mosquitoes are you know, quote unquote winning
Speaker 1: at evolution, would you want the life of a mosquito
Speaker 1: the experience the short, very blood soaked the life of
Speaker 1: a mosquito, even though they're having hundreds of successful offspring.
Speaker 1: Probably not, because mosquitoes don't really have any much depth
Speaker 1: to their life experience. I apologize mosquitoes if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: if you if you have a very full and rich life,
Speaker 1: but I don't person mol see it's so uh. In
Speaker 1: my opinion, winning at evolution is meaningless outside of the
Speaker 1: context of just explaining like why you see some kind
Speaker 1: of evolutionary trait, because evolution just has no intrinsic value.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have any intrinsic meaning. And where in this
Speaker 1: unique position as very highly intelligent animals, humans um to
Speaker 1: be able to decide what meaning we want in life.
Speaker 1: So I think that it's you know, I've said all
Speaker 1: this in a way to like not directly answer your question,
Speaker 1: because I think that it is up to you whether
Speaker 1: you want to donate your eggs, whether that would be
Speaker 1: something that would make you happy or not. Um. I
Speaker 1: think that in terms of uh, some people see children
Speaker 1: having children, like biological children, as a way to kind
Speaker 1: of achieve immortality, maybe like, oh, well, I'm passing on,
Speaker 1: you know, my genes and achieving some immortality. But I
Speaker 1: kind of I'm not sure that's much different from just
Speaker 1: making an impact on the world and giving people memories
Speaker 1: of you, positive memories doing things that that have a
Speaker 1: lasting positive impact on people. That's that kind of cultural
Speaker 1: evolution that if you do something good in the world,
Speaker 1: it doesn't even have to be a big thing, just
Speaker 1: making other people happy. That has that lasts, you know,
Speaker 1: much longer than your lifetime or even the people that
Speaker 1: directly knew you their lifetimes, because it has this domino
Speaker 1: effect of like when you're when you're a good positive person, um,
Speaker 1: you know, you affect the people around you, and then
Speaker 1: they'll affect the people around you. So I think that
Speaker 1: there's really no answer to like, well, you know, should
Speaker 1: I have children or should I have some kind of
Speaker 1: like biological legacy. I just don't think. Uh. I think
Speaker 1: that is, you know, entirely up to you whether you
Speaker 1: want to do that or not, and it's you have
Speaker 1: to find that value from within um of of what
Speaker 1: you want. But there's no there's no objective answer to
Speaker 1: that question. There's no universal answer to that question. Um
Speaker 1: you know. So that's uh, that's me getting really philosophical.
Speaker 1: Sorry about that, everyone, I don't know. I am not
Speaker 1: a philosopher, so really kind of punching above my weight there,
Speaker 1: But I hope that is helpful in some way. Um So, now,
Speaker 1: I want to take it down to a much less
Speaker 1: existential question, seemingly very simple question. Alright, so here is
Speaker 1: the email. So this is probably a dumb question, but
Speaker 1: our zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes?
Speaker 1: Thank you Roberts. So this is actually not a dumb
Speaker 1: question at all. It's a very interesting question. I know
Speaker 1: it's it's a little bit of a cliche, but it's
Speaker 1: really really interesting because it makes you examine like some
Speaker 1: of our preconceived notions about evolution and and traits and
Speaker 1: animals and how they actually work. So zebras have black
Speaker 1: skin under their fur, and they have white and black
Speaker 1: alternating patches of fur. So in the simplest form, that
Speaker 1: is like what anatomically is going on, So you could
Speaker 1: say an answer to that question, they are black skinned
Speaker 1: with black and white stripes. And in terms of their development,
Speaker 1: embryonic zebras develop stripes in the wombs, so they start
Speaker 1: out striping. So the question of like, well, wait, you
Speaker 1: know what comes first, like the white fur the black fur,
Speaker 1: isn't such an easy question. Um. And in terms of like,
Speaker 1: in terms of animal stripes, we have this idea that
Speaker 1: like they have an underlying fur color and then stripes
Speaker 1: over that fur color. But really that's not how coloration
Speaker 1: and animals work because they it's not like they get
Speaker 1: painted over like they don't Like you don't have like
Speaker 1: a baby zebra or an embryonic zebra and then some
Speaker 1: process that like paints over them with the stripes. Actually
Speaker 1: side note, that is what happens with eggs, So not
Speaker 1: the actual chicks, but the eggs. Like if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen egg shells that have like splotches on them, that's
Speaker 1: because as they come out of the chickens reproductive track,
Speaker 1: there are glands in that that like spray them with color.
Speaker 1: So that's really interesting, but typically that is not how colorations,
Speaker 1: pigment melanin works in like animal skin and fur or scales. Um. So,
Speaker 1: all right, but I'm still going to try to answer
Speaker 1: this question definitively. So if you look into their genetics
Speaker 1: and evolutionary history, uh, like, can you find out if
Speaker 1: they started out as white furd or blackford and add
Speaker 1: added the stripes later? Um? Or like what's going on
Speaker 1: at the genetic level, Uh, you can get closer to
Speaker 1: the answers. So genetic abnormalities and zebras can result in
Speaker 1: nearly all black zebra with small white patches, And this
Speaker 1: seems to indicate that the zebra's default for color is
Speaker 1: black and the white fur results from an inhibition of
Speaker 1: melanin in stripes. So if the inhibition gene isn't working,
Speaker 1: it defaults to black. All right. Well, that's that's an
Speaker 1: interesting part of it, um. But what about the evolutionary
Speaker 1: history of zebras. Uh. The closest living relatives of zebras
Speaker 1: are horses and donkeys, but the quaga was an even
Speaker 1: closer relative before going extinct. The quago was possibly a
Speaker 1: subspecies of the zebra until it was killed off by
Speaker 1: European invaders in South Africa. It diverged from the plains
Speaker 1: zebra species a couple hundred thousand years ago. So quaggas
Speaker 1: had a diverse range of coats, but they typically were
Speaker 1: a primarily dark brown color with thin white stripes and
Speaker 1: a white belly. Sometimes they would be dark brown with
Speaker 1: both white and blackish brown stripes. So to me, us
Speaker 1: is further evidence that the striping is a result of
Speaker 1: a gene shutting off the production of the melanin. So
Speaker 1: you can have a band of brown and white or
Speaker 1: black and white or even brown black and white. But
Speaker 1: the common denominator is how much those genes are turning
Speaker 1: off the melanin production. Uh. So, in my humble, uh
Speaker 1: non zebra expert opinion, they are black with white stripes.
Speaker 1: But if you have a different idea, right into me,
Speaker 1: argue with me. Um, you know, yell at me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and you can do that by finding me online at
Speaker 1: Creature feature Pod on Instagram, at Creature feet pot on Twitter.
Speaker 1: That's f e a T not f teeth head is
Speaker 1: something very different. You can write to me, uh Creature
Speaker 1: feature Pod at gmail dot com, and you can write
Speaker 1: in your questions and hate. When I do another one
Speaker 1: of these, maybe I'll answered on air. Uh. And thank
Speaker 1: you again to everyone who wrote in with your wonderful questions.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this listening to me answer everything
Speaker 1: from existential questions about existence uh to zebra stripes. Thanks
Speaker 1: to the Space Plastics for their super awesome song ex Alumina.
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