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 Wings Take Dream,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the world's most spectacular flyers, from the
Speaker 1: tiny and nimble hummingbird to the bird with a wingspan
Speaker 1: longer than any basketball player will discover mammalion gliders and
Speaker 1: murmurating starlings. Discover this more as we answer to the
Speaker 1: angel question, why is that flying squirrel glowing pink? Is
Speaker 1: it just bashful? Joining me today is my friend and
Speaker 1: the Daily Zygei, super producer and co host of Ethnically
Speaker 1: Ambiguous and the twitch Screamed Deckheads, Chief stews Anna Hosnie him.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having back. Thank you. I guess you have
Speaker 1: done the show I do the last time with Shrine, right,
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, I have no memory of a show
Speaker 1: after I do it. That's just how I've I've done
Speaker 1: so many podcasts. I have no memory of anything anymore.
Speaker 1: That's all right. Like like a swallow back to San
Speaker 1: Juan Capistrano. You may not remember being here or know
Speaker 1: why you're here, but here you are again. Here I
Speaker 1: am again to talk yes, the movie with Denzel Washington. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've decided to take a bit of a pivot with
Speaker 1: the pod. Animals are out, nobody cares about them anymore.
Speaker 1: But we are going to talk about the movie Flight
Speaker 1: with Denzel Washington. Oh what a great film. And now
Speaker 1: what did that airplane do? I mean, you shouldn't drink
Speaker 1: and fly an airplane, folks, that's my opinion. That's a
Speaker 1: strong opinion. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, no, we are talking
Speaker 1: about animal flighting. I gotta do a shout out to
Speaker 1: a listener who sent in a question that inspired this
Speaker 1: whole episode. Um, I will read their email right now. Hi, Katie,
Speaker 1: I was listening to the podcast today and finally came
Speaker 1: up with the question I could send in so exciting.
Speaker 1: Here it goes. We know hummingbirds in the adorable hummingbird
Speaker 1: hawk moth have a gift for hovering, but I noticed
Speaker 1: some larger songbirds can do it too. For just a moment,
Speaker 1: what's the story here? Size and weight obviously play a role,
Speaker 1: but what about similarly sized birds with the same diet
Speaker 1: and habitat. Can some of them hover while others have
Speaker 1: to get by with just boring old flying? Why please
Speaker 1: stay the most charmingest host in all the podcast land.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you, Ramon, very nice. That is a great question.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's really interesting because when we kind of
Speaker 1: think about birds flying, it's like, yeah, the birds, they
Speaker 1: flap their wings and up they go. But actually there's
Speaker 1: a lot of differences and how birds fly in the
Speaker 1: actual physics of like how a hummingbird gets in the
Speaker 1: air and how a big old vulture gets in the air,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a completely different set of physics with hummingbirds.
Speaker 1: They're teeny, toyiny little If you have you ever like
Speaker 1: held a hummingbird Anna, Oh no, no, no, I don't
Speaker 1: even I've seen them up close, like at my hummingbird feeder,
Speaker 1: I've seen them fight, but I've never I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever touched one. Yeah, I I feel like the
Speaker 1: only time I've held a hummingbird, it's been dead, which
Speaker 1: a little sad. That makes more sense as to how
Speaker 1: you would have touched it, right, Yeah, not Look, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I'm not responsible. I didn't do anything wrong. Um, but
Speaker 1: you know, like you know what you defend, you're really
Speaker 1: quickly to defend yourself. I don't know about that. Katie,
Speaker 1: this is how I found it with a ten knife
Speaker 1: in its back. And I notice saying Katie did it.
Speaker 1: I will say they fight a lot, so if one
Speaker 1: hummingbird stabbed another in the back, I would not not
Speaker 1: believe it. Yeah, they're making they're making, uh kind of
Speaker 1: like the competition between males is so fierce. We're actually
Speaker 1: going to talk about at the end of the show.
Speaker 1: The bird that's like the exact opposite when it comes
Speaker 1: to like the mating, like the hummingbirds joustics. Actually when
Speaker 1: they're competing with other males to mate, it's it's a
Speaker 1: very very brutal, very metal and another bird, a heat
Speaker 1: one of the biggest birds in the world, is actually
Speaker 1: very sweet and gentle when it comes to mating. So
Speaker 1: you can't judge a bird by how cute and small
Speaker 1: it is. But yeah, they are. They are very interesting
Speaker 1: flyers because they don't kind of do just the like
Speaker 1: flap flap flap thing. They almost vibrate with how fast
Speaker 1: they're flying. Um. And it's when you're thinking about like
Speaker 1: how different birds fly, it's sort of like a helicopter
Speaker 1: versus an airplane when it comes to hummingbirds versus bigger birds.
Speaker 1: So a helicopter is designed to be able to hover
Speaker 1: with these really quickly rotating blades that pushes air down
Speaker 1: and pushes the helicopter up, whereas like a plane basically
Speaker 1: has to get some forward movement and uses the lift
Speaker 1: of air passing over and under its wings to keep flying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so kind of a it's not exactly the same. Birds
Speaker 1: aren't helicopters. I know, like people are like, oh, birds
Speaker 1: are drones, well means blah blah blah, But no, they're
Speaker 1: they're they're designed differently than a drone. They both do
Speaker 1: spy on us, but technically slightly different physics going on
Speaker 1: with hummingbirds or hawk moths. Like, uh, the listener pointed
Speaker 1: out these these hummingbirds have a evolutionary look alike called
Speaker 1: the hummingbird hawk moth. And I've provided you with a
Speaker 1: picture of some cool example of parallel evolution there where
Speaker 1: it's a yeah, it's a humming it's a it's a
Speaker 1: moth that actually looks exactly like a hummingbird, but it's
Speaker 1: a moth. We've been lied to. I can't really even
Speaker 1: understand like what I'm looking at, Like, what is this
Speaker 1: is that its tongue in the frowers just got a
Speaker 1: little book. Yes, it's proboscus, which is essentially like a tongue.
Speaker 1: But on an insect, does that go back in its mouth? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can. It can be with drawn and like pulled
Speaker 1: back in and that SIPs nectar. Got it? Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I understand now what I'm looking at. What a surreal
Speaker 1: looking little guy because he kind of also looks like
Speaker 1: he's got like cat eyes. Yeah, And that's what's so
Speaker 1: interesting is that what looks like a pupil on it,
Speaker 1: like a cat pupil, is actually not a pupil at all.
Speaker 1: It is it's compound eyes. This occurs in actually a
Speaker 1: few insects, like mantis. Is they look like they have
Speaker 1: a pupil that's like always conveniently looking right at you,
Speaker 1: and you feel like you're being followed, like the mantiss
Speaker 1: are looking at you. And it's actually when light enters
Speaker 1: these compound eyes, it actually forms a dark spot of
Speaker 1: where all the light is getting sucked in to to
Speaker 1: the eyeball. So it's like if you have like a
Speaker 1: shiny ball and that highlight, it's like light bouncing off
Speaker 1: of the ball, so you move the ball. But the
Speaker 1: little highlight part on the ball always seems to kind
Speaker 1: of like follow you around because that's like from your
Speaker 1: angle and the goal of light, that's what's shining reflecting
Speaker 1: back at you, so you see that highlight. It's just
Speaker 1: the opposite with a compound insect eye where that's like
Speaker 1: where the light is being absorbed. So it's a dark
Speaker 1: spot that follows you around, and it looks like it
Speaker 1: has a pupil and it's watching you, but uh no,
Speaker 1: it's not. I mean, it may be watching you, it
Speaker 1: may have a whole system of surveillance came so you
Speaker 1: don't know about, but it's actually not watching you with
Speaker 1: a little pupil. Got it, Okay, I have one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, very eerily similar. They have a similar flying
Speaker 1: style too. Uh but well, we'll talk about the the
Speaker 1: bird aspect of this, because I think we're kind of
Speaker 1: used to insects being able to buzz around and fly
Speaker 1: really quickly because they're so light, like if you've ever
Speaker 1: held them off, I don't know, you haven't held a hummingbird.
Speaker 1: You don't seem to like to hold dead things, which
Speaker 1: is weird to me, but well, I've definitely picked up
Speaker 1: a dead moth and like, like I've had like dead
Speaker 1: moths like within like a space Simon, and I've picked
Speaker 1: them up and like taken them outside, but like I've
Speaker 1: never I don't understand how you would even touch a
Speaker 1: movie like a bird or a moth if it was alive,
Speaker 1: because they're just like flitting around to get away from
Speaker 1: you the whole time. Well, I've actually had a sphinx moth,
Speaker 1: which is very similar to the hawk moth land on
Speaker 1: my shirt and refused to go. But it died anyways.
Speaker 1: Sound that's a that's a fun it's like a fun
Speaker 1: story like Homeword bound. Was it like a panicking or
Speaker 1: it was like no please? I think it was probably
Speaker 1: just at the end of its life cycle and it
Speaker 1: was just like I die here, here is where I die. Interesting?
Speaker 1: You know what they say the old thing, If a
Speaker 1: moth dies on you, it's an angel gets its wings right?
Speaker 1: That is actually yeah, I have a wood plank that
Speaker 1: says that over in my kitchen Packy how dare you
Speaker 1: saying live laugh and lit moths die on your shirt?
Speaker 1: Good luck? Uh so? Yeah? So these smaller the bird
Speaker 1: basically an answer to Ramon's question when you have a
Speaker 1: smaller bird, Typically speaking, the faster it's metabolism is and
Speaker 1: the faster it can fly. So you do see a
Speaker 1: lot of small birds similar to the hummingbird that do
Speaker 1: are able to some extent do this kind of like
Speaker 1: flying hovering, move not as well as the hummingbird can,
Speaker 1: because the hummingbird has physically evolved to specialize in extremely
Speaker 1: rapid wing beats and extremely precise hovering. So depending on
Speaker 1: the species, hummingbirds can beat their wings from ten to
Speaker 1: eighty times a second, so the speed of the wings
Speaker 1: typically follows the size of the hummingbirds. The bigger the hummingbird,
Speaker 1: the slower it's wing beat relatively because it's still really
Speaker 1: really fast. But uh, giant hummingbirds who weigh in about
Speaker 1: twenty grams are the slowest, with ten to fifteen beats
Speaker 1: a second, and the amethyst wood star, a tiny hummingbird
Speaker 1: that weighs only three grams, beats its wings at about
Speaker 1: eighty beats a second, which I can't even think that fast.
Speaker 1: I can't even like it's it hurts to think about,
Speaker 1: like I try to think about like actually doing that,
Speaker 1: and it hurts my brain because I can't put that
Speaker 1: many thoughts about bird wings in one second, well one,
Speaker 1: it's it's what that purple or that amethyst color that
Speaker 1: like magenta color on its neck is the most beautiful
Speaker 1: color I've ever seen. So vibrant. Yeah, yeah, they have these,
Speaker 1: like like a lot of birds, they have these micro
Speaker 1: structures in their wings that refracts light that makes it
Speaker 1: so bright and irridescent. It's it's it looks like jewels.
Speaker 1: Um probably in part because like with jewels, like that's
Speaker 1: also has to do with like how light is refracting
Speaker 1: in the jewel, and so like you know, there they've
Speaker 1: got jewels for wings. Also, the name Amethyst wood Star,
Speaker 1: that's I feel like that's like if I went to
Speaker 1: like Malibu, I would I would meet someone named that.
Speaker 1: I'm Amethyst, would story? Would you like to try some
Speaker 1: of my essential oils? Amethyst? I just like to use
Speaker 1: oils for my feminine flow. And would you like to
Speaker 1: join me? If your name is Amethan would Star? I
Speaker 1: will do anything you say. Here's the new here's the
Speaker 1: new product. It's made out of starfish tears and um
Speaker 1: octopus but holes. Oh my god, it sounds like it
Speaker 1: will work anything obscure like octopus butt holes. I'm like,
Speaker 1: well they, I mean, why else would they be grabbing
Speaker 1: you know, octopus butt holes unless it actually works? Right right?
Speaker 1: The weird are the ingredients like this must it must
Speaker 1: work because they wouldn't go to the trouble surely. Yeah no,
Speaker 1: I would definitely someone names Amethyst would stars like, you know,
Speaker 1: try octopists, but holes. Seriously, it'll work. It's like no,
Speaker 1: I'm in, I'm in, I'm all in. Yeah. So they are,
Speaker 1: in addition to being absolutely gorgeous, just can beat their
Speaker 1: wings at a ridiculous speed, which allows them to be
Speaker 1: able to hover in air. And if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: a hummingbird up close, they can like stop in midair
Speaker 1: and just like stay there stationary staring at you U,
Speaker 1: which is really like if you ever want to wear
Speaker 1: a hat made out of hummingbird feeders, like some some
Speaker 1: guy I remember reading a story about he created a
Speaker 1: hat that was essentially a hummingbird feeder so he could
Speaker 1: sit down and watch hummingbirds come up to his face. Well,
Speaker 1: they like had SIPs of nectar, and that that seems
Speaker 1: like the life. I want a hummingbird sweeter, they would
Speaker 1: cover like right here, yes, yeah right, not opposed to that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what's interesting is these wing beats are the way
Speaker 1: that the hummingbird is shaped really influences how it uses
Speaker 1: physics to keep it afloat. So the twisted has these
Speaker 1: twisting down strokes which create lift uh, and the upstrokes
Speaker 1: also keep the bird of float because usually when a
Speaker 1: bird flaps its wings, like the down stroke pushes it
Speaker 1: up and then the upstroke doesn't really help it because
Speaker 1: it's like you're not pushing down on the air, you're
Speaker 1: just like lifting your wings back up. But the hummingbird,
Speaker 1: because of this like twisting motion of its wings at
Speaker 1: sort of a rotated angle, the upstroke actually cuts through
Speaker 1: the air in such a way that it creates these
Speaker 1: small air vortices like vortexes uh that act like tiny
Speaker 1: tornadoes uh, and through some physics that I don't quite understand,
Speaker 1: like creates kind of a vacuum that that gives the
Speaker 1: bird even more lifts. So it's like getting double duty
Speaker 1: with like pushing up on the down stroke and then
Speaker 1: also creating some kind of weird wing tornado with upstroke.
Speaker 1: A vortices is the coolest thing I've ever heard. It's
Speaker 1: just the colurel of vortex I know, but I've never
Speaker 1: even thought of that before. But that's like a vortices.
Speaker 1: Like I remember when I went to Sedona and everyone's like,
Speaker 1: you've got to find the energy vortexes, and I was like,
Speaker 1: that's just the concept of a vortex is very cool
Speaker 1: to me. And now that there's vortices, that does sound
Speaker 1: like something that Amethyst would Star would say, right, like,
Speaker 1: you gotta find the energy vortices all are. But you
Speaker 1: can definitely get with this activist. But I'll trust me.
Speaker 1: Let the octopus butthole lead you to the vortices. Open
Speaker 1: your mind to the octopus butthole. That weird teeling, tingling,
Speaker 1: numb feeling you're feeling in your fingers, that's just it working.
Speaker 1: That's the vort disease. So their wings are also very
Speaker 1: stiff and don't bend in the same way that other
Speaker 1: birds wings do, so that it allows them to do
Speaker 1: these really fast beats because if they're bending, they just
Speaker 1: won't work in the same way and creating these like
Speaker 1: slicing through the air like a blade. And so it
Speaker 1: allows them this ability to hover unlike any other bird,
Speaker 1: and larger birds typically can't hover at all. Uh. The
Speaker 1: largest one of the largest birds that can hover doesn't
Speaker 1: in a much different ways. So kestrels are a small
Speaker 1: wrapt or so a small bird of prey like a
Speaker 1: hawk or an eagle or something will take advantage of
Speaker 1: strong updrafts to hover in one place. So they'll find
Speaker 1: a windy spot and face opposite the wind direction and
Speaker 1: adjust their wings. So basically they just become like a
Speaker 1: bird kite. Uh, And this allows them to stay in
Speaker 1: one spot to look out for prey. But this is
Speaker 1: all about them being able to use available wind currents
Speaker 1: to stay afloat. They can't beat their wings fast enough
Speaker 1: to like hover by using wing beats, so a wind
Speaker 1: kite or it's like a wing kite wind kite, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing. So the bird kite's tie a string
Speaker 1: to them, and you've got yourself a cool new toy. Everybody,
Speaker 1: don't do that. I never really understood the physicality of that,
Speaker 1: But now that you're like describing in detail, like they're
Speaker 1: so interesting. We need more hummingbirds. Let's just get more birds.
Speaker 1: We know we need more humming roods, specifically humming around
Speaker 1: That's true. I mean, if you live in an area
Speaker 1: where you get hummingbirds, you can get certain plants in
Speaker 1: your garden or on your balcony that attract hummingbirds. You
Speaker 1: can also get hummingbird feeders that will attract hummingbirds in
Speaker 1: certain like You can also get like little wet wet
Speaker 1: stone things that like just have little pools of water
Speaker 1: that they like to drink from. There's definitely ways you
Speaker 1: can manipulate hummingbirds to come to your home and you
Speaker 1: can get a bunch of them. There, hummingbird feeder hat,
Speaker 1: hummingbird feeder hat. I wonder if they sell those. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna google it humming bird, the bird feed or hats
Speaker 1: safe search off, let's check it out. You can get
Speaker 1: into any seconds from Amazon. Oh, lots of people have
Speaker 1: done this. But can I buy one or do I
Speaker 1: have to make it on my own? Okay, well, there's
Speaker 1: handheld hummingbird feeders, but I don't think that's as stylish
Speaker 1: as an actual hat like they Oh, there's a red
Speaker 1: humming red hummer ring feeder, so you can wear it
Speaker 1: as a ring. I saw that right, But I want
Speaker 1: a full on hat though, is the thing? Yeah, in
Speaker 1: my head, you'll have to make one yourself. Yeah, maybe,
Speaker 1: like they can't make them because then if like a
Speaker 1: hummingbird like knocks your eyeball out, thinking your eyes delicious nectar,
Speaker 1: then they'd get sued. But there is I just looked
Speaker 1: it up as well under Good Living Guide there's this
Speaker 1: article that says hummingbird feeder hat provides a fantastic birdwatching experience.
Speaker 1: Oh do they have instructions how to make it? Well?
Speaker 1: They have there Apparently there's a many options on how
Speaker 1: to make like I Google imaged it and there's so
Speaker 1: many different versions of it. Oh yeah, there's different styles
Speaker 1: for like what kind of hats do you want to wear?
Speaker 1: Like you want to have a just a casual baseball hat.
Speaker 1: This guy's got it. He's just got like a like
Speaker 1: an apparantous attached to his baseball hat with little hummingbird feeders.
Speaker 1: But oh and she, the lady down here, has got
Speaker 1: like a sun hat with feeders attached to it and
Speaker 1: a bunch of flowers, so you can like dress it up,
Speaker 1: dress it down. A lot of people have thought about this,
Speaker 1: they have, and I congratulate them for their ingenuity. I
Speaker 1: want to do like one of those hats they wear
Speaker 1: to like horse races, you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1: The fastened what do they call the fastened fascinators. Fascinators
Speaker 1: there you go. But the big, the big ones, like
Speaker 1: the really big ones that look like like a Getty
Speaker 1: museum on your head, like that defy physics. But then
Speaker 1: with a bunch of flowers and and hummingbird feeders attached
Speaker 1: to it, and heck, why not just some bird seed
Speaker 1: on the top, you know, really go for it. A
Speaker 1: little cup of peanuts so the squirrels can get in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just you know, it's a big just a big hat
Speaker 1: with a bunch of food, hot dog on it. Let's
Speaker 1: let the seagulls come in. And you're gonna die if
Speaker 1: you put hot dogs on your hat. People are gonna
Speaker 1: come for you, or people. Birds are gonna come for your.
Speaker 1: Birds are gonna come from the people as well, people
Speaker 1: bird people. Right, Yeah, no, I know it's a risky
Speaker 1: thing to do, but I just want to be able
Speaker 1: to see a baseball lover up close. Yeah, it's great
Speaker 1: for baseball lover watching. So, speaking of gliding, the way
Speaker 1: that kestrels float in the air, it's interesting because you
Speaker 1: go from the hummingbirds, who have perfected the art of
Speaker 1: perfect hovering and perfectly precise flying mammals are not as
Speaker 1: are not as great at that, with the exception of bats,
Speaker 1: who are amazing flyers, actually quite quite good flyers, quite
Speaker 1: surprisingly efficient. Are our other attempts at flight as as
Speaker 1: mammals have been more of a kind of like just
Speaker 1: jump and let Jesus take the wheel. So we actually
Speaker 1: the last episode we talked about convergent evolution, and I
Speaker 1: didn't have time to talk about these guys, but I
Speaker 1: think they're really cool, so I couldn't resist mentioning them
Speaker 1: on the flying episodes. So flying squirrels, sugar gliders, and
Speaker 1: colugos are three entirely different species of gliding mammals who
Speaker 1: all look like they should be cousins, but they're not.
Speaker 1: It's an example of parallel evolution. So flying squirrels are
Speaker 1: a rodent in the squirrel family found in North America
Speaker 1: and Eurasia, and they are they basically are squirrel but
Speaker 1: you watch out the skin so that it's like a
Speaker 1: squirrel napkin, and then they can fly through by using
Speaker 1: these folds of skin that stretched from their forelimb ankles
Speaker 1: to their hind limb angles, and this is called a
Speaker 1: peta geum. The membrane of skin connecting their limbs and
Speaker 1: that allows them to glide. And this peta geum has
Speaker 1: evolved separately and at least two other animals. So the
Speaker 1: sugar glider, who is not a rodent, it is a
Speaker 1: marsupial in the possum family, found in Australia, New Guinea
Speaker 1: and Indonesia. Uh and it looks a lot like a
Speaker 1: flying squirrel. Yeah, I can't really tell the difference other
Speaker 1: than they have stripes on their head. Yeah, a little
Speaker 1: pink nozy, Okay, So yeah, I mean they really do
Speaker 1: look like they should be the same animal, but they're not.
Speaker 1: In fact, they're not even in the same uh same
Speaker 1: group of animal. They're they're completely different. The flying squirrels
Speaker 1: are rodents and the sugar gliders are marsupials on a
Speaker 1: completely different continent. There's such a freedom into just jumping
Speaker 1: and opening up your arms and body and letting yourself
Speaker 1: just glad on down. I know, have you seen those
Speaker 1: videos of people in squirrel suits? Like there's there those Um,
Speaker 1: It's like if if jumping out of an airplane and
Speaker 1: using a parachute isn't like scary enough for you for
Speaker 1: some reason, there's a suit you can wear where it's
Speaker 1: you have I guess parachute material that runs from your
Speaker 1: front arms to your back legs and you basically become
Speaker 1: a flying squirrel and you jump off a cliff and
Speaker 1: then just like zoom downwards. It's not safe, it's highly dangerous.
Speaker 1: A lot of people die doing it. So it's not like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've we've figured out how to make humans fly. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe like seventy percent of the time, and then and
Speaker 1: then there's a big chunk of times that it doesn't
Speaker 1: really work out well. So but yeah, watching someone do
Speaker 1: that does something like it makes my butt like pucker inwards.
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure. It's like this feeling of free
Speaker 1: falling in a dream where all of your insides start
Speaker 1: to like shrivel up, like you just ate a lemon
Speaker 1: with your butt or something. You know what i mean
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. No, I know, it's it's everything about
Speaker 1: it makes you want to like crawl into a ball. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I could. I could never know. It's I can't
Speaker 1: conceive of doing that. But yeah, I mean, these these
Speaker 1: little animals do it all the time and they're perfectly
Speaker 1: happy too. And then the the other other species are colugos,
Speaker 1: which are flying mammals found in Southeast Asia, and while
Speaker 1: they look like they should be related to sugar gliders
Speaker 1: or flying squirrels, they are actually more closely related to primates.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah they are. While they are not primates,
Speaker 1: they share common ancestor with primates. Uh. Probably they're closer
Speaker 1: relatives are things like lemurs um. But yeah, a slight
Speaker 1: difference between them and sugar gliders and flying squirrels is
Speaker 1: that they're undersides aren't as furry, so it looks a
Speaker 1: lot more horrifying from from their their bellies because they
Speaker 1: look they look they look more like a bat. Kind yeah,
Speaker 1: like a bat, but with weird wings that just stretches
Speaker 1: over its whole body. So it definitely looks like a
Speaker 1: cryptod from underneath. But when you look at the whole animal,
Speaker 1: like from the top, they're very cute. They're they're very
Speaker 1: fuzzy and cute. They do look a little bit like
Speaker 1: if you rolled out a lemur with a rolling pin
Speaker 1: and gave it weird wings rolled it out. It's funny. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's weird that they're not related, but okay, yeah, well
Speaker 1: you'll just have to take my word on it. This
Speaker 1: uh know, species thing. Okay, because they look species. They
Speaker 1: all look the same. So if you're gonna tell me
Speaker 1: they're not even in the same family, no, yeah, mm hmm, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. It's so yeah. Sometimes like mother Nature just
Speaker 1: pulls a prank on us, like you think this animal
Speaker 1: is the same as this animal. Nobody, it's not even
Speaker 1: on the same continent. Oh, such weird. It's so funny
Speaker 1: to me, how to, like we just keep evolving similar things,
Speaker 1: Like just take like a mouse and like squish it
Speaker 1: so floats like a frisbee. I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: this is like a great example of evolution of like
Speaker 1: they just all needed this, so they evolved to have
Speaker 1: it in their different spaces because they're not technically connected.
Speaker 1: But like in whatever world or whatever environment they live in,
Speaker 1: they just were like, well I need to I need
Speaker 1: to be gliding, So you need to evolve into a glider. Yeah, look,
Speaker 1: I need to. I need to be more like a
Speaker 1: kite because I've been jumping off these trees and let
Speaker 1: me tell you, when you hit the ground that is
Speaker 1: not fun like a kite. I wish I could just
Speaker 1: think that as a person, like I really I need
Speaker 1: to be more like a kite and then it would happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I mean like that's I guess that's what
Speaker 1: people thought when they developed the squirrel suit that and
Speaker 1: they wore that, and you know some of them at
Speaker 1: least survived when they do that. Well, they mean, but
Speaker 1: there's never been red It's like Red Bull evolved them.
Speaker 1: Gives probably like Red Bull sponsored squirrel suits doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like it just feels like something red will be like.
Speaker 1: And we also just jump off mountains with squirrel suits
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh my gosh, Okay, did you ever
Speaker 1: like watch those commercials as a kid and think, well,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe if I drink it and like jump off,
Speaker 1: you know, the balcony, I could actually fly Because I
Speaker 1: was definitely dumb enough to have that thought occurred to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as a kid. Uh yeah. And uh I also did
Speaker 1: the thing where it's like I took like a blanket
Speaker 1: and try to make up my own parachute and like
Speaker 1: would jump off not not too not high heights because
Speaker 1: I was smart enough to know that I would get
Speaker 1: really hurt if I did that. But uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: I definitely did try to kind of do human human
Speaker 1: squirrel action flying squirrel action and it never worked. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like there's a tech behind it
Speaker 1: that either you have to evolve your body into or
Speaker 1: Red bull has to build for you. I really convinced
Speaker 1: Red Bulls making these suits. I I think I'd be
Speaker 1: okay with like, uh, just big flaps of skin if
Speaker 1: it meant I could fly, you know, oh for sure.
Speaker 1: Like I if you could tuck them in somehow, like
Speaker 1: fold them up when you're not when they're not in use.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that'd be that'd be awesome, old them up
Speaker 1: when they're not I pocket. That's how. That's how these were.
Speaker 1: Like when you look at them when they're not flying,
Speaker 1: not gliding, they look pretty pretty cute and like poofy
Speaker 1: and fluffy. But it just turns out that they can
Speaker 1: like transformer into like a flying napkin. Yeah, we're going
Speaker 1: to take a quick break and then when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about murmurations, which is not just
Speaker 1: me mumbling into the microphone and not doing a good podcasting.
Speaker 1: It's something else and it's really cool. So we will
Speaker 1: be right back. Anna, have you ever seen a bird mrmuration?
Speaker 1: Oh you want me to lie? Of course, of course,
Speaker 1: I'm I love murmurations. I mean, God, the murmuration of
Speaker 1: four it was amazing. No, you forget that mrmuration. I
Speaker 1: know exactly what you mean. Well. Bird mermerations are basically,
Speaker 1: when you have a giant flock of birds all flying
Speaker 1: in unison, they will form these mind bending patterns in
Speaker 1: the air. And I have actually included for you in
Speaker 1: a video of some really amazing startling mrmerations if you
Speaker 1: want to check that out. I think I have seen
Speaker 1: video of this before. M hmm. Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever seen this in person though. Yeah, I've never
Speaker 1: seen bird mermerations in person because I don't I've never
Speaker 1: lived anywhere where they're like huge migratory flocks of starlings.
Speaker 1: It looks like there's like God, looks like they'd kill
Speaker 1: you if they came through you. Well yeah, if they
Speaker 1: if they like flew right through you, I think you
Speaker 1: would die. Right. Wow, that's so cool. It's so mesmerizing
Speaker 1: to look at, almost like a visual therapy where you're
Speaker 1: just taking it in and letting your mind and shut off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It's kind of almost hypnotic, like like the
Speaker 1: a hypnotic sort of psychotropic patterns that these birds are managing.
Speaker 1: So you'll look in the sky and you'll see what
Speaker 1: looks like kind of a spotty black cloud, and it's
Speaker 1: all made out of a huge flock of birds. And
Speaker 1: as they turn directions and fly, there's like patterns that
Speaker 1: like form through them, like waves of darker bands, and
Speaker 1: like as they turn like it it changes shapes, but
Speaker 1: you can actually see like a wave of like dark
Speaker 1: color like move through it as they all simultaneously shift directions,
Speaker 1: And it's beautiful and kind of intimidating too. It's like
Speaker 1: one of those things where it's like, you know when
Speaker 1: it's like you're you're in awe of something, something is awesome,
Speaker 1: like the true meaning of the word awesome. It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm actually in awe when I see this because it's
Speaker 1: so big and it's like this big blob moving in
Speaker 1: the sky. I think if I had never seen this
Speaker 1: before and didn't know what it was, I would think
Speaker 1: it was aliens. M yeah, I could see that. Also
Speaker 1: like in that movie Um the Crudes, Oh yeah, they
Speaker 1: have those like whatever when they get to that weird land,
Speaker 1: they have those creatures or like it looks like that
Speaker 1: the Starlings flying all together. But then they just come
Speaker 1: through and like eat a giant like creature like a
Speaker 1: a rhino or something by just like going by it,
Speaker 1: and then all that's left, or they come and like
Speaker 1: take it over, and then all that's left is just
Speaker 1: its bones. Right, That's what I think about. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was this the Crudes one or the Crudes too, I
Speaker 1: think too, okay to back in action. Yeah, I've only
Speaker 1: I only saw the Crudes one, I think on a
Speaker 1: on a airplane, so my memory is a little hazy
Speaker 1: of the Crudes adventures. But unfortunately, starlings do not eat flesh,
Speaker 1: so you're not actually in danger when you see one
Speaker 1: of the smmerations unless you're under it, then you might
Speaker 1: get pooped on. Uh. But yeah, So murmurations, while also
Speaker 1: looking like amazing works of art in the sky that
Speaker 1: are kind of unbelievable, they are really interesting from a
Speaker 1: scientific perspective, from a physics and from animal behavior perspective.
Speaker 1: So murmurations are patterns that occur when you see flocks
Speaker 1: of thousands of birds all flying. It's similar to like
Speaker 1: a school of fish, you know, when you see a
Speaker 1: school of fish and then they have those like waves
Speaker 1: of weird it looks like a wave of a shining
Speaker 1: color or a dark band moving through because the fish
Speaker 1: are all turning at the same time. It's like that,
Speaker 1: but in the sky. Uh. This typically happens during mass
Speaker 1: migration of European starlings. So starlings are a bird that
Speaker 1: it's a little smaller than a pigeon. It's actually really
Speaker 1: beautiful in my opinion. It's got this dark, purple eriridescent color.
Speaker 1: It's like purply black. It's got like black feathers that
Speaker 1: can like eardesks. It looks like an oil slick or
Speaker 1: something where when you when the lightships, it can like
Speaker 1: turn kind of purplely kind of green. I was gonna
Speaker 1: say it would be cool because I was looking at
Speaker 1: the photo, like if you could see those colors within
Speaker 1: the murmur or whatever that I know, I know that
Speaker 1: would be cool. I don't know if you can. I
Speaker 1: think they're too they're too probably too far away for
Speaker 1: those two colors to really register. But yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: since I've never actually seen one in person, I've only
Speaker 1: seen distant videos of them. I don't know if you can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are individually quite beautiful too. They also they're called
Speaker 1: starlings because they have these little speckles. I think it's
Speaker 1: because of the little white speckles on them that looks
Speaker 1: like stars. So they will gather in the hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands during their migration south throughout Europe. So there can
Speaker 1: be over seven hundred thousand individual jewels in a single
Speaker 1: flock of European starlings. So the question of well, why
Speaker 1: do these murmurations occur is actually more mysterious and complicated
Speaker 1: than it seems when you first think about it, because
Speaker 1: they spend sometimes forty five minutes in the sky just
Speaker 1: forming these complex patterns as they move in unison. And
Speaker 1: so the purpose of this is not really well understood
Speaker 1: even among ornithologists, which is like someone who studies birds
Speaker 1: that the bird whispers um, but uh so they're like
Speaker 1: when you think about it's like, okay, well, large flocks
Speaker 1: are protective, right, Like, if you're a bird, you want
Speaker 1: to be in a big flock, So it makes sense
Speaker 1: why there's a big group of them. Uh And by
Speaker 1: clustering with a bunch of other birds, you lessen the
Speaker 1: chance of being preyed upon. So it kind of makes
Speaker 1: sense that they would move in this big group so
Speaker 1: that part maybe not so mysterious, but why how are
Speaker 1: they forming such complex patterns? Uh? And how are they
Speaker 1: doing it? And how do they know like which direction
Speaker 1: they're supposed to go exactly exactly? So that's a big
Speaker 1: question and that part of it has actually been somewhat
Speaker 1: answered by research. So in Italy in Piazza day Chinquacento
Speaker 1: University of Rome, physicists led by Andrea Cavania and Irene
Speaker 1: Jardina have been studying starling murmurations for nearly two decades,
Speaker 1: so these are physicists interested in it. They set up
Speaker 1: multiple cameras to gather three D data on starling flocks.
Speaker 1: So starling populations in the area of Rome has increased
Speaker 1: to be in the millions millions during migration, so they
Speaker 1: set up this mass starling surveillance operation like a bird
Speaker 1: ice cream van. Don't worry about it, birds, just some
Speaker 1: normal bird ice cream. So they used all this camera
Speaker 1: data to create a computer model of the starling flocking behavior.
Speaker 1: So basically like taking in all this information they got
Speaker 1: from all these cameras and then turned it into a
Speaker 1: computer program through computer magic, and we're able to basically say, like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: figure out how they're managing to do this. And so
Speaker 1: last episode we actually talked about something called the Game
Speaker 1: of Life, which is this old timey computer game where
Speaker 1: you would just put in a few simple rules for
Speaker 1: each pixel on the screen and it would create like
Speaker 1: this amazing complexity from a few rules of pixels forming patterns.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty similar here because what these researchers found
Speaker 1: is that each startling positions itself depending on the it's
Speaker 1: seven um closest neighbors. So it basically tries to get
Speaker 1: in the center of like it's seven closest neighbors and
Speaker 1: be kind of equally distant from each of them. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like when you're driving on the freeway,
Speaker 1: Like you don't base your position on the freeway on
Speaker 1: a bunch of drivers way far away that you can't see.
Speaker 1: You just look at your the people in front of you,
Speaker 1: next to you, and behind you, and if you're a
Speaker 1: good driver, you try to like maintain sort of an
Speaker 1: equal distance like buffer around you. Reaction literally like yes, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So if one startling changes direction on the other side
Speaker 1: of the flock, that information quickly transmits to starlings that
Speaker 1: can't even see that bird because they're all very quickly
Speaker 1: reacting to their seven closest neighbors. In fact, they're so quick,
Speaker 1: uh that a bird on the edge of a flock
Speaker 1: can change its direction, causing a flock of hundreds of
Speaker 1: birds to all move in less than half a second.
Speaker 1: So information like per hundreds of birds like travels in
Speaker 1: less than half a second, which is pretty good better
Speaker 1: than my internet for sure. I think we need bird Internet, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's that quick, I'm not going to complain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they should just be in charge of our internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like spectrum the worst birds. Yeah, let's do this bird Internet.
Speaker 1: It's got to happen. They promised us fiber optics. We
Speaker 1: didn't get it. They promised us a Google Fiber. We
Speaker 1: didn't get it. I'm pitting my hopes on bird Internet.
Speaker 1: I know what I don't. I mean, there's nothing birds
Speaker 1: could do to us that Spectrum hasn't already done to us,
Speaker 1: to be honest, bird fiber right, Like, I'd rather be
Speaker 1: pooped on by a bunch of birds than deal with
Speaker 1: with the spectrum Internet. Anyways. This thus concludes our Internet
Speaker 1: roasting section of the podcast. I was pretty good. We
Speaker 1: did pretty well Internet and a right, guys, so many
Speaker 1: problems always too slow zing got them speaking truth to power,
Speaker 1: all right, But back to the birds. That's how they
Speaker 1: do that. That's how they do these incredible murmurations and um.
Speaker 1: But the question still remains of like why are they
Speaker 1: doing this? So one potentially obvious answer would be that, like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: it's protective by doing these these movements, these coordinated movements.
Speaker 1: It's intimidating to predators because it gives the predators a
Speaker 1: sense that this is a much bigger organism where it
Speaker 1: confuses the predators about like where where it's going or
Speaker 1: what it's doing. And this is actually behavior that bees
Speaker 1: will do. So a hive of bees, well sometimes all
Speaker 1: come outside the hive and like sit on the hive
Speaker 1: and then all flick their wings in in uh, like
Speaker 1: in a wave like synchronously in synchronization, and this creates
Speaker 1: what looks like these concentric waves of dark bands of
Speaker 1: color just like moving through the hive. So it looks
Speaker 1: like like a bull's eye that's like constantly expanding and contracting,
Speaker 1: and it's really mesmera. It looks like like you're being
Speaker 1: hypnotized by the bees, and it's mesmerizing and it makes
Speaker 1: the potential predators like wasps or birds that might otherwise
Speaker 1: try to like attack the hive like it. It intimidates them,
Speaker 1: and it confuses them, and it makes them not want
Speaker 1: to approach. So that's the thought of like, well, maybe
Speaker 1: this is what murmurations do. They basically scare off predators
Speaker 1: from the area or confuse them so that they give up.
Speaker 1: But one of the problems with this theory is that
Speaker 1: murmurations last so long that researchers and and animal behavioral
Speaker 1: experts think that that it doesn't quite explain, like, well,
Speaker 1: why would they be out so long? Because if you're
Speaker 1: trying to ward off predators, going back to like a
Speaker 1: roosting area is the safest place to be, So why
Speaker 1: are you spending all of this time out in the
Speaker 1: open doing this behavior that even though it may kind
Speaker 1: of help intimidate some predators, there's definitely a chance that
Speaker 1: like a peregrine falcon is going to come in and
Speaker 1: get some unlucky guy who's like on the edge of
Speaker 1: the flocks. Have they thought maybe they're just kind of
Speaker 1: like having fun. That's actually exactly what they've thought. That's
Speaker 1: a really good point. So the last one of the
Speaker 1: more recent theories about it is that they're just kind
Speaker 1: of having fun. Uh. So, starlings are actually highly intelligent.
Speaker 1: They are one of the types of birds that can
Speaker 1: figure out puzzles. They actually can mimic human voices, similar
Speaker 1: to a parrot, so they can talk. They might not
Speaker 1: know exactly what they're saying, but they can definitely talk.
Speaker 1: They are sometimes a nuisance in some areas because they
Speaker 1: can figure out how to open things, so like they
Speaker 1: can figure out how to open milk bottles, so if
Speaker 1: you get milk delivered to your door, they can get
Speaker 1: into that milk and drink the milk. So they're highly intelligent.
Speaker 1: And we know, the more intelligent and animal is the
Speaker 1: more enrichment and play that they crave. So uh, it
Speaker 1: may be that they are all essentially dancing with each other.
Speaker 1: It could be a form of social engagement that is
Speaker 1: both fun to do and also reinforces these social bonds
Speaker 1: in a big flock of individuals who might otherwise struggle
Speaker 1: to feel a connection with the bigger flock. So yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're you're exactly right that this is potentially
Speaker 1: the reason they're just having fun, which I love. Whenever
Speaker 1: we're trying to figure out some kind of weird animal behavior,
Speaker 1: and then someone's just like, well, maybe it's just farting around,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean that's what I would be doing.
Speaker 1: Let's just murmur around. It would be cool murmuring, do
Speaker 1: a little murmuring these some murmurations. Yeah, I want it once.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited about to get my second dose of
Speaker 1: the vaccine. I don't murmurate once. Once we're out of quarantine,
Speaker 1: Let's all murmurate. Let's all memorate. You want to, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's find find a place to find time. Let's
Speaker 1: all get together murmurate. I like. I like the idea
Speaker 1: of murmurating because it doesn't really sound like what you
Speaker 1: think it is. Right, we're all just out here mmorating
Speaker 1: it again, sounds like something that Amethyst would star is like,
Speaker 1: Chinlie like Hi, So we're going to meet up at
Speaker 1: the beach and we're gonna have our octopus bet holes
Speaker 1: with us, and we're gonna memorate. We're gonna murmur it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna memurate for forty five minutes and really open
Speaker 1: our consciousness that I'm actually taking a murmur it memoration
Speaker 1: class with amethysts would start teaching it so right, it's
Speaker 1: hard to get into wait listed for years. I know,
Speaker 1: I know. But the frustrating thing she's always trying to
Speaker 1: like sell you stuff like Jade's just and I've bought
Speaker 1: them all. I can't stop. She's just so convincing. It's
Speaker 1: the soft tone, you know, She's just softly saying, now
Speaker 1: we're now, we're gonna murmurate and I want you to
Speaker 1: spend five minutes with your dead octopus and little mermurate together.
Speaker 1: And what do you know about albatross? Is um that
Speaker 1: that's not the fish. It's not a fish, it's the bird.
Speaker 1: Is it a type of fish too? No? Hang on,
Speaker 1: now you've got me wondering albatross. Oh no, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of albacore, albacore. Oh wait a second, is there albatross
Speaker 1: fish as well? Albat trust fish? I googled albatross fish
Speaker 1: and Nope, that's just the name of a company. Okay,
Speaker 1: that I'm definitely thinking of albacore. Yeah, I think you're
Speaker 1: thinking of albu core. I don't know of any is
Speaker 1: called an albatross fish. Yeah, I'm thinking of albacore, albacore yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: albatross is a bird. Albacore is a type of tuna.
Speaker 1: Got it. And a manticor is like a lion, a
Speaker 1: flying lion, demon flying I'm sorry what flying flying lion?
Speaker 1: Deep amanticore? Isn't that like a lion with a scorpion tail?
Speaker 1: Manticor I've never even I've never even heard of a
Speaker 1: horde of that. It's a flying lion with a scorpion
Speaker 1: tail and a human face. Is a manticor? Oh? Oh,
Speaker 1: this is the it's from. It's I think of it
Speaker 1: as like a sphinx, right, not really a sphinx, it's
Speaker 1: a but this is male. Yeah, this is typically Uranian culture. Actually,
Speaker 1: we have the like on our there's like, that's what
Speaker 1: I've never known it was called a manticor. Maybe I
Speaker 1: think of it as like, yeah, it's like a mythical
Speaker 1: Persian creature. Wow, I've never even known that it was
Speaker 1: called amanticre news to me. Yeah, it's that is cool.
Speaker 1: What's like, what are the myths surrounding it? It's like
Speaker 1: you can't conquer it, basically, I don't know. It's like this,
Speaker 1: it's apparently like the strongest creature, mythical creature. I mean
Speaker 1: it it is a lion with a scorpion tail and
Speaker 1: it can fly, so I believe it. Yeah, it's all
Speaker 1: the thing. I only know like what it's called and
Speaker 1: Farsi because I've legitimately like never spoken about this thing.
Speaker 1: What what is it called in Farsi? It's like a
Speaker 1: It's like a maddio like something like that, like a
Speaker 1: it's very similar. Actually, now that I'm like saying it
Speaker 1: and thinking about it, it makes sense that it's a
Speaker 1: manticore because it's like madia how mad. So it's like
Speaker 1: man person or like a human. Honestly, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to trains. I'm not very good at like translating
Speaker 1: certain things from Farsi to English because I just like
Speaker 1: don't know the roots and stuff because I'm not like
Speaker 1: I didn't take Farsi in school. I'm just learned it
Speaker 1: speaking growing up in my family and like speaking kind
Speaker 1: of more of a slang Farsi. Um. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't mean to like be like now suddenly be an
Speaker 1: etymology scholar. It's mad whole, but like I don't understand
Speaker 1: why it's like man man who eats or something like
Speaker 1: that man eater. I just googled manticore etymology and it's
Speaker 1: the same thing. For Manticore, it's man. It's a from
Speaker 1: the Greek mantic chorus uh from an oh no and
Speaker 1: actually corrupt reading an Aristotle for marte corus, which is
Speaker 1: from an Old Persian word meaning man eaters. So the
Speaker 1: Greek actually got it from the Middle East. Okay, that
Speaker 1: makes sense because to me it literally mad whole means
Speaker 1: literally like man. I guess it makes sense man eat right.
Speaker 1: I couldn't connect that in my mind though in the
Speaker 1: moment when you asked me, I was like a man
Speaker 1: to eat cobetti. Obviously man eater. That makes that's so
Speaker 1: obviously in front of you. But man, you can eat.
Speaker 1: I alwaysh we had that, folks, that's the fussy saying
Speaker 1: of it. But Manticor, now it all makes sense and
Speaker 1: that and that's an English word for it. Manticore comes
Speaker 1: from from the Greek word, which in turn comes from
Speaker 1: the Old Persian words. So like it's just a big,
Speaker 1: big circle. Yeah, comes full circle. So we got from
Speaker 1: to Manticor because we started at Albatross and then we
Speaker 1: went to Albacore, and then we went to Manticora. So
Speaker 1: let's back it up to albatros. But speaking of more
Speaker 1: myths and legends, I want to talk about how the
Speaker 1: expression and albatross around your neck comes from. Have you
Speaker 1: heard that? Like expression? It's not used as much I
Speaker 1: think nowadays, but there's like this expression like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: like an albatross around my neck or this thing is
Speaker 1: a real album trust around my neck. No, I've never
Speaker 1: heard that. God, you're making me feel like an old person.
Speaker 1: I literally, like Katie, me and my friends don't talk
Speaker 1: about these kinds of things. But it's, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: to be fair, I guess I've never really heard it
Speaker 1: in real life growing up. It's just an expression, an
Speaker 1: expression I guess that used to be used more often
Speaker 1: than it is now. Well, you know, the other thing
Speaker 1: is I was raised by Persian immigrants to like, I
Speaker 1: don't know a lot of like classic American sayings or
Speaker 1: anything like that, because my parents don't. They don't say
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, you know, They're just they have
Speaker 1: their own I know, like a lot of weird Persian
Speaker 1: sayings where I'm like, what does that even mean? You know,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't translate correctly to English. But like American
Speaker 1: sayings and stuff like that are actually a big blind
Speaker 1: spot of mine. I just don't know. It might even
Speaker 1: be more of a British thing than American because I've
Speaker 1: only ever seen it, like in I've only ever i think,
Speaker 1: seen it British people use it. I've never heard it,
Speaker 1: like I've never heard it growing up. I've never heard
Speaker 1: it used it in like you know, maybe like in
Speaker 1: a New York Times article. I've seen it. But they're
Speaker 1: ridiculous people. You're right for the New York Times. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, the the legend behind this saying is actually
Speaker 1: really interesting. So even if you've never heard the term
Speaker 1: an albatross across around your neck, where it comes from
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. So it's actually, uh so an albatross around
Speaker 1: your neck just for for people who are younger than
Speaker 1: me or don't read the same weird old books or whatever. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's like it's a burden you are forced to be
Speaker 1: responsible for. So like you know, I don't know an
Speaker 1: example like, ah, this car is broken down, so it's
Speaker 1: like an albatross. It's an albatross around my neck or uh,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like something that's like holding you down
Speaker 1: when it doesn't necessarily need to be. It's like a
Speaker 1: useless almost yeah, inconvenience, but you're but you're still responsible
Speaker 1: for it, so you have to deal with it. But
Speaker 1: it's actually from a poem in the late eighteenth century
Speaker 1: written by Samuel Taylor Coolidge called the Rhyme of the
Speaker 1: Ancient Mariner. And so it's like when I say poem,
Speaker 1: it's one of those old poems where they're like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna write a book sized poems. Uh, it's it's not
Speaker 1: like one of our modern short poems. Or it's like
Speaker 1: you know, hey there, boss, here's an albatross and it
Speaker 1: makes me cross. Uh. I don't know, like if you
Speaker 1: like write a poem about an albatross, I'm like, albatross, man,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm cross about this albatross. But I'm boss, I'm
Speaker 1: the boss of albatross. But no, this was this is
Speaker 1: an old timey poem that's like thirty pages long. So
Speaker 1: I didn't read it, I'm gonna say that, Uh, but
Speaker 1: I did read the spark notes for it. And now
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a summary of the spark
Speaker 1: notes of this thirty page long poem. So basically, there's
Speaker 1: like a superstition that killing an albatross at sea brings
Speaker 1: bad luck, and I don't really I don't know where
Speaker 1: that superstition started from. I think it's like albatrosses are
Speaker 1: supposed to be like related to wind spirits or something
Speaker 1: like they're they're good wind spirits and if you kill one,
Speaker 1: you'll piss off the wind spirits, which is bad if
Speaker 1: you're a sailor. But in this poem written by this
Speaker 1: old English dude, uh, one of the sailors does kill
Speaker 1: an albatross because that's you know, just like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna kill albatross. And this causes angry spirits to push
Speaker 1: their ship into the equator, where it becomes uh be stilled,
Speaker 1: which basically the wind stop and the ship is just
Speaker 1: stuck in there, and so they're all uh going to
Speaker 1: starve and thirst to death. But still no, no, it's
Speaker 1: be calmed. Sorry it's called the calmed. But could happen,
Speaker 1: Yeah if back in the old times, like if you
Speaker 1: had a ship that runs entirely on wind power and
Speaker 1: the winds stop, you're kind of screwed if the winds
Speaker 1: don't start back up again. What about paddling? Can you
Speaker 1: get your paddles out? Or is the boat. It's a
Speaker 1: big boat, pretty big boat. I mean, the Vikings did
Speaker 1: do paddling with their big boats because they would like
Speaker 1: enslave people and make them man all the paddles. But
Speaker 1: I don't I think like if you're in like a
Speaker 1: you know, like like eighteenth century uh boat and you
Speaker 1: just got those big sales and there's no wind, you're
Speaker 1: you're kind of doomed. Um. But uh so yeah, so
Speaker 1: like all the other sailors blames the bird murderer, uh
Speaker 1: for causing this to happen, and as punishment they or
Speaker 1: him to wear the dead albatross around his neck since
Speaker 1: now they're all going to die of thirst and they're
Speaker 1: mad at them, and it's like this is your fault.
Speaker 1: Now you have to wear this albatross. That's that's very York. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did she wear a swan or something? Same thing, because
Speaker 1: the neck went around her neck and was like the
Speaker 1: halter if you will, That's what I think of immediately,
Speaker 1: and that generated so much like media controversy that she
Speaker 1: always had to address in interviews and stuff that like,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that itself an albatross around her neck. The
Speaker 1: swan dress around her neck was an albatross around her neck.
Speaker 1: I'm snapping because of how was thank you. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it that and that's that's how good I
Speaker 1: am at literary analysis or New York analysis. Anyways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the rest of the story gets really weird, so I
Speaker 1: do want to talk about it. Basically, so they're mad
Speaker 1: at this guy to make them wear a dead bird.
Speaker 1: Then the spirit of death comes on a death ship
Speaker 1: and punishes all the sailors by having them slowly die
Speaker 1: one by one, but punishes the bird murderer even more
Speaker 1: by making him undead and have to watch all his
Speaker 1: crewmates die and their corpses rot. This story goes from
Speaker 1: zero to a hundred really fast. Uh. And then the
Speaker 1: bird murderer is just like languishing on the ship and
Speaker 1: he has a change of heart and he's like staring
Speaker 1: into the ocean, going like I love all the animals
Speaker 1: in the sea. And then the spirits are like, ah,
Speaker 1: so you learned your lesson and all we had to
Speaker 1: do was kill everyone on your ship. So then the
Speaker 1: wind spirits like guide the ship back to shore. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then like a big whirlpool eats the whole ship
Speaker 1: and all the undead. Oh wait, I forgot the spirits
Speaker 1: do inhabit the rotting bodies of all his crewmates, brings
Speaker 1: them back alife enough so that they can man the
Speaker 1: ship and get it back to shore, which is I
Speaker 1: guess nice of them. But then only the mariner, the
Speaker 1: bird murder guy like escapes the ship as it's getting
Speaker 1: sucked into a whirlpool, and then he gets saved by
Speaker 1: a couple of fishers, and then he his punishment is
Speaker 1: like he has to spend eternity wandering the earth telling
Speaker 1: his bird murder story and how it's wrong to murder birds.
Speaker 1: Don't do it, or else all your friends will get
Speaker 1: turned into zombies and then suck into a whirlpool. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't like that at all. That escalated
Speaker 1: so quickly. I know. It was like, also, what is
Speaker 1: with Like why would they punish all of the other
Speaker 1: sailors like they killed them all? I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: he's like eternally damned or something. Is his punishment, He's
Speaker 1: got to tell this bird story. Oh and also he's
Speaker 1: telling the story at someone's wedding, I think, And that's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's like this old, like creepy sailor guy comes
Speaker 1: to your wedding. He's like, Mom, actually a bird murder Mbie,
Speaker 1: just bad vibes. Actually murdered a bird. Now my zombie
Speaker 1: doomed to patrol the land and tell everybody up my
Speaker 1: store about how murdered a bird. He's like that guy
Speaker 1: you start talking to not realizing you're about to be
Speaker 1: in a conversation with him for two hours, and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, wrap it up. Yeah. I had that
Speaker 1: at a cafe where someone came up to me and
Speaker 1: started crying about how like he met Katie Perry and
Speaker 1: like how she needs to take better care of her skin.
Speaker 1: And while I think that conversation was only two minutes,
Speaker 1: it's certainly felt like two hours. Well those are some
Speaker 1: thoughts that you really have to know what's going on
Speaker 1: to like engage with, like what her skin right now?
Speaker 1: And he was like full on, like sobbing and about it.
Speaker 1: And I didn't. It's a complete stranger, and like just
Speaker 1: sat at my table and was like like I just
Speaker 1: came back from a party with Katie Perry and like
Speaker 1: this girl, like she needs to take better care of herself.
Speaker 1: And it's like I don't think he was lying, But
Speaker 1: I do think it was because, like you know, we
Speaker 1: live in l A. Anything's possible. But I was scared
Speaker 1: of what was happening because I it's like I, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know Katy Perry. Maybe talk to her
Speaker 1: about this. I'm not a dermatologist either, please, sir you Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: may I enjoy my little soup and piece? Sir? No?
Speaker 1: All right, I guess we're having this conversation. Then this
Speaker 1: is great. That's like such a before time story that
Speaker 1: would never happened today. No one's lot near anyone anymore.
Speaker 1: Someone took too many drugs at Katy Perry's party, got
Speaker 1: really weepy and decided to approach a stranger about Katy
Speaker 1: Perry's a need to do better skincare regemen. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1: I feel for her anyways, that's the modern uh the
Speaker 1: rhyme of the ancient mariner tale. I guess I should
Speaker 1: write a thirty page poem about that. But albatross is
Speaker 1: this is an animal show. Let's talk about the real
Speaker 1: life albatross is and what they are. So what is
Speaker 1: an albatross? Is it just like a really big seagull? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: it's not there. You go Answer Solved podcast over. No,
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. So albatrosses are a family of some of
Speaker 1: the largest seabirds and one of the best terrestrial flyers
Speaker 1: in the world. Uh So, despite their amazing flying abilities
Speaker 1: and similar look to a seagull, albatrosses are more closely
Speaker 1: related to penguins than two seagulls, which is again another
Speaker 1: like kind of bonkers like evolutionary thing. We looked at
Speaker 1: the flying squirrel and the sugar glitter and colugo, it's
Speaker 1: like these are not at all related. Well, yeah, the
Speaker 1: the albatross is more closely related to a little waddling
Speaker 1: penguin than it is to a seagull. While I'm looking
Speaker 1: up the photos to compare, they definitely have they have
Speaker 1: like the penguin base, but they have the seagull beak.
Speaker 1: It's strange, right, because penguins are are not good flyers
Speaker 1: because they can't fly at all, they're zero flyers, but
Speaker 1: they have adapted to become very efficient swimmers, whereas albatross
Speaker 1: is adapted to become the world's most efficient flyers. So
Speaker 1: it's just kind of incredible the twists and turns that
Speaker 1: evolution can take. Yeah. Wow, So there are somewhere between
Speaker 1: thirteen to twenty four species of albatross. Uh. The reason
Speaker 1: this number is variable is that there are disagreements on
Speaker 1: some of the taxonomy, like whether there's like a species
Speaker 1: that's actually two species, or if it's one species, or
Speaker 1: if it's truly an albatross like blah blah blah. You know,
Speaker 1: I I'm not gonna get into it because I'm if I,
Speaker 1: like try to weigh in on the controversy, the albatross controversy,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get like some very angry letters from
Speaker 1: like albatross experts, like, don't at us about this. We're
Speaker 1: just two little ladies trying to figure it out. I
Speaker 1: can't get attacked by albatross twitter, I'll be ruined. So
Speaker 1: the largest albatross and one of the largest birds in
Speaker 1: the world are the wanderer albatrosses and the Southern royal
Speaker 1: albatross species who they both live around the southern Oceans,
Speaker 1: and they have the largest wingspan in the world of
Speaker 1: up to eleven feet or three point five meters. They
Speaker 1: are taller like if when they stand wing to wing. Uh,
Speaker 1: They're taller than basically every human except for maybe a
Speaker 1: few outliers. Um, are they taller than Shack? Yes? Is it? Well?
Speaker 1: I mean Shack's not eleven feet tall, right, I don't
Speaker 1: know anymore, Katie. This is because it's just a wild
Speaker 1: They're so big. I'm googling it to my Google search
Speaker 1: of hummingbird hat is shaquille emil. He is a mere
Speaker 1: seven feet one inch. All what a shrimp? A small guy.
Speaker 1: And I actually shared an image with you and and
Speaker 1: I'll share with the listeners as well. It's a full
Speaker 1: grown human being standing next to one of these birds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's like, oh, yeah, they're dinosaurs. They're dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: Is way too big? Yeah, So how what do they
Speaker 1: look like? They tend to be white with pink or
Speaker 1: yellow long beats with a downward curve at the end,
Speaker 1: and they can have gray brown and yellow markings. So
Speaker 1: their wings are often dark gray. Uh, And they have
Speaker 1: what looks like black eyeliner, sometimes very very maybe line
Speaker 1: maybe it's birds, maybe it's but it's also like a
Speaker 1: bit of a smokey eye. It's really cute. It's very good.
Speaker 1: I can't what I wouldn't give to be able to
Speaker 1: do my eyes like albatrosses do their eyes. It's very good.
Speaker 1: It's very on point. You wish you could have such
Speaker 1: great makeup. I know, I wish I could have bird eyes.
Speaker 1: It sexy eyes like a bird. So speaking of sexy eyes,
Speaker 1: albatross is mate for life and are very loving. So
Speaker 1: like I mentioned at the top of the episode, they're
Speaker 1: kind of like hummingbirds are a little jerkasses when it
Speaker 1: comes to mating. They fight, Uh, they compete with other males,
Speaker 1: and they like jous and it's kind of scary. Albatrosses
Speaker 1: are sweethearts. They're romantic. They select a mate by dancing
Speaker 1: with them. And basically it's just like a bunch of
Speaker 1: albatross is all gathered together on an island and they
Speaker 1: dance with a bunch of different partners and like the
Speaker 1: part like all on the dance floor, and then partners
Speaker 1: keep dropping off and separating until they're left with the
Speaker 1: one partner that they choose, and they dance together and
Speaker 1: they will mate for life. So they uh, throughout their
Speaker 1: courtship and throughout their life, they will continue to dance
Speaker 1: together and do little um move like little gestures of
Speaker 1: affection like beak bumps and nuzzles to maintain their relationships,
Speaker 1: so it's adorable. They'll like sit like like beak to
Speaker 1: beak and like kind of tap their beaks together lovingly.
Speaker 1: It's so cute. They even come up with their own
Speaker 1: little love language between the two of them. They have
Speaker 1: unique calls they only use with their partners. They basically
Speaker 1: come up with like loving names for each other and
Speaker 1: unique calls that they use with each other. And the
Speaker 1: only time they seek out a new partner is if
Speaker 1: one of them sadly dies, like they they're in it
Speaker 1: for the long haul ride or die, ride or die baby,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, I mean they do sometimes die, so
Speaker 1: then it's like, well, I guess we don't ride if
Speaker 1: you're dead, but you know, right or die. It's really
Speaker 1: important for them to have this monogamous of style because
Speaker 1: of the way they raise their chicks. So they have
Speaker 1: one chick at a time and as s torrible little
Speaker 1: fluff ball, uh and they will stay with the chick
Speaker 1: to guard it. So one of the parents has to
Speaker 1: stay and guard this chick because it's helpless and it
Speaker 1: would be a delicious little nugget for a predator, So
Speaker 1: one parent stays behind to protect their nest. They will
Speaker 1: do everything they can to find off predators, while the
Speaker 1: other parent will be out at sea fishing and they
Speaker 1: will collect a bunch of fish so that they can
Speaker 1: come home and they eat the fish. And what they
Speaker 1: do is they regurgitate special fish vomit uh for their
Speaker 1: chick to eat when they get back. So the birds
Speaker 1: are totally reliant on each other to remain faithful. So
Speaker 1: the bird awaiting will go without food sometimes for days
Speaker 1: or weeks with their chicken is just relying on their
Speaker 1: partner to come back. And the partner out at sea
Speaker 1: has to rely on the partner to stay with the
Speaker 1: chick uh and and keep it safe. So they alternate
Speaker 1: to like sometimes the mail will go out for fishing
Speaker 1: some since the female will go out. So I love
Speaker 1: the quality in the household right. It's a lot of
Speaker 1: trust to a lot of trust. And in addition to
Speaker 1: be adorable spouses and adorably loving parents, they are the
Speaker 1: world's most efficient flyers. So Alba trusses can rack up
Speaker 1: a massive number of frequent flyer miles uh. The wandering
Speaker 1: Alba trust that uncomfortably large one we talked about earlier
Speaker 1: can fly several million miles in a lifetime. Bird flight
Speaker 1: like not even on an airplane. They're not like getting
Speaker 1: on Delta, you know what I mean. I mean they
Speaker 1: should do, not how many miles they'd have racked up.
Speaker 1: If they did, Dude, they'd be flying for free for
Speaker 1: the rest of their lives, free vacations for the rest
Speaker 1: of their lives. It's a shame that Delta doesn't count
Speaker 1: bird miles. Their resting heart rate while flying is the
Speaker 1: same as when they're floating on water. They're able to
Speaker 1: exert very little effort and glide on strong winds. M
Speaker 1: I T. Researchers have found that the birds use roller
Speaker 1: coaster like arcs of flight to ride wind currents called
Speaker 1: dynamic soaring. So basically they use physics of these wind
Speaker 1: currents above the sea to glide and ride on them.
Speaker 1: So they'll like go down and build up momentum and
Speaker 1: go up a wind current and go down. Whoops, I
Speaker 1: bump my microphone. But I guess if I was an
Speaker 1: albatross flying, I would bunk into my microphone like that anyways. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: so they totally take advantage of the physics of air
Speaker 1: currents above the ocean, and they are able to just
Speaker 1: kind of like glide like an airplane. So like from
Speaker 1: the they're like the total opposites of the hummingbirds, both
Speaker 1: in courtship behavior and also like their their their flight
Speaker 1: where albatrosses are in it for like the long long
Speaker 1: gliding and hummingbirds are just sort of very very fast,
Speaker 1: fast and yellow birds. And these are very responsible birds
Speaker 1: that just want to settle down. Did you say yellow
Speaker 1: or yolo yolo birds? Uh? The hummingbirds are like yellow.
Speaker 1: You only live one Okay, That's what I thought you said,
Speaker 1: But then I was like, there's no way she said that. No,
Speaker 1: of course, because they like they they live fast, they
Speaker 1: have shorter lifespans. They have really fast metabolism. They gotta
Speaker 1: they gotta get from one flower to another. They they
Speaker 1: do not mate for life. They they yeah, live very
Speaker 1: fast and furious lifestyles, whereas the albatross has a very
Speaker 1: long life span and they take stuff more slowly. They
Speaker 1: kind of live more than Margaritaville lifestyle. Uh. Like. Oh,
Speaker 1: and speaking of albatross lifespans, guess how old the oldest
Speaker 1: albatross in the world is after five million miles, let's
Speaker 1: see thirty. She is seventy years old. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: and she looks fantastic. I've given you a picture of her.
Speaker 1: Her name is Wisdom the Albatross, and she is at
Speaker 1: the very least seventy years old, still rocking, amazing, amazing,
Speaker 1: smoky eye. And so she lives in Kapa, Hawaii. And
Speaker 1: she's not only the oldest albatross, she's the oldest known
Speaker 1: wild bird. So while uh, you may think like, well,
Speaker 1: there are parents that have potentially lived longer, the birds
Speaker 1: that have lived longer have been in captivity. So she's
Speaker 1: a completely wild bird and she's lives this long, which
Speaker 1: is amazing, and it's harder to live that long in
Speaker 1: the wild. Um, she's had over forty chicks in her lifetime.
Speaker 1: And while that like may not seem like a lot,
Speaker 1: they have one chick at a time. It's like a
Speaker 1: human being having forty children in a lifetime. No, I
Speaker 1: think that's a lot. Forty kids. Yeah, no, thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she's actually outlived several of her mates. She never divorced.
Speaker 1: She's never been divorced. She's just like a black widower.
Speaker 1: Yeah she but yeah, I mean like she's had successful relationships. Um,
Speaker 1: but are their deaths explained or have they all just
Speaker 1: mysteriously disappeared. He's got beak marks in his back. Ma'am. Well,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know where that came. How interesting, change, police officer.
Speaker 1: You know, I couldn't possibly be involved. Have I mentioned
Speaker 1: how beautiful your feathers are? Mrs Officer Bird? Oh well,
Speaker 1: that's comfy kind of you. How would you like to
Speaker 1: be Mrs seventy year old albatross lady? Sorry? Mr seventy
Speaker 1: year old albatross lady. Her beak is you can see
Speaker 1: her beak has some wear and tear though, like that's
Speaker 1: the beak of a seventy year old bird. That's what
Speaker 1: I found really interesting. Her feathers look impeccable, pun intended,
Speaker 1: but her beak does look marred and like old. Because
Speaker 1: I wonder if like the feathers, you know, they they
Speaker 1: probably they regenerate feathers probably more often than they regenerate
Speaker 1: like that that beak, heartbeak materially al So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: definitely like that is the beak of a seventy year
Speaker 1: old bird, A hard smoking, whiskey drinking seventy year old bird.
Speaker 1: That bird smokes for sure. You're right, you're right. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you about the time my my fourth husband.
Speaker 1: How I loved him so much. His name was Mahty.
Speaker 1: Well he got eaten by a shock, you know how
Speaker 1: it is. I told him, told him, Matty, you can't
Speaker 1: wear that bathing suit. That looks like a bunch of
Speaker 1: hot dogs or shots gonna eat you. And a shock
Speaker 1: did eat him. But God bless him. He was one
Speaker 1: of my better husband's. That's a if that bird talks,
Speaker 1: that's what it sounds like. She's like a little after by,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty fourth child. You know, I decided I
Speaker 1: was gonna, you know, get a new man. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: my thirty fifth child went to art school. I told
Speaker 1: him he should be a lawyer, but he went to
Speaker 1: art school. Nobody listens to me. They just said I
Speaker 1: They just said, don't listen to that old bird. And
Speaker 1: now here I am. I'm the smartest bird alive. Look
Speaker 1: at my eye makeup amazing. She's beautiful and she's also
Speaker 1: like it's weird because she's out of some of her
Speaker 1: the scientists who have studied her, which is I mean,
Speaker 1: kind of mind boggling. I guess, like what the scientists
Speaker 1: who banded her originally, which means like putting a leg
Speaker 1: band on them. So they can be identified actually died
Speaker 1: before this bird has. So Look, if I was going
Speaker 1: to be a bird, that's how I would do it.
Speaker 1: I would outlive every scientist who tried to stuff. I
Speaker 1: had a bood watching and that birdwatches thought he could
Speaker 1: outlive me. No way. List And I smoked five packs
Speaker 1: a day and I'm still kicking just drinking Martiniz and Martinis. Oh.
Speaker 1: I love her. It's amazing. Good for her exactly, good
Speaker 1: for her, for outliving humans, good for her probably hopefully. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope she is like a two year old bird,
Speaker 1: just rock and rocking it. How old is the bird
Speaker 1: that's like after her? Like? Is there like a large gap?
Speaker 1: Like who's the second oldest albatross? This um second oldest
Speaker 1: albo They search off second oldest albatross, nine oldest birds
Speaker 1: in the world from Oldest dot Org. For all your
Speaker 1: needs about old things good, let's see. Oh so, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll just like, let's in the episode by going through
Speaker 1: this list of oldest birds, shall we from Oldest dot Org?
Speaker 1: As you do, I'll put cue some cue, some dramatic
Speaker 1: music over this. Uh So. In Chile, uh the oldest
Speaker 1: flamingo is believed to be in her her sixties. Wow,
Speaker 1: flamingo in her sixties. Now that is like really like
Speaker 1: a retired woman of flamingo. Yeah, she still looks gorgeous.
Speaker 1: Of course they list Wisdom here. Um, now wait a minute,
Speaker 1: Oh I see so the one of the oldest birds
Speaker 1: in the world is actually a captive bird in Beardsley
Speaker 1: Zoo in Connecticut. He is a male Andean condor who
Speaker 1: is eighty years old or was. No, wait, he was
Speaker 1: eighty years old, and I don't know if he's still alive,
Speaker 1: but that is respectable. Now he does look eighty years old.
Speaker 1: I gotta say. Now it as he met Wisdom. You
Speaker 1: can't matter. You can't play matchmaker with these birds now
Speaker 1: because because they would be perfect. I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: wisdoms into like like young guys, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: young birds. Let's see a real real cougar. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: he's so handsome he is. I like his little puffy
Speaker 1: white neckroff. I think that really brings another level to
Speaker 1: his style. You know what, I actually agree with you now,
Speaker 1: I do think that he and Wisdom share a similar aesthetic.
Speaker 1: Let's let's try and get them, get them to me.
Speaker 1: I mean he may disappear. Yeah, there's another flamingo at
Speaker 1: a zoo who is at least eighty three years old. Wow,
Speaker 1: flamingos live a long time, a long day time. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize I didn't know that at all. A cockatoo
Speaker 1: at a zoo, a Brookfield zoo named Cookie the cockatoo
Speaker 1: lived to be eighty three years old. And a female
Speaker 1: green wing macaw named Poncho at Beck's Pets and Exotics
Speaker 1: uh is Or was nine two years old. In Wait,
Speaker 1: this bircha lived in a store and no one would
Speaker 1: buy him. I why would you put that thought in
Speaker 1: my head? And I'm sorry the pets I think he was.
Speaker 1: I think he was the pet stores pet. Okay, there
Speaker 1: you go. He's fine. He's living a great life. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, Fred the cockatoo, the male sulfur crusted cock
Speaker 1: a too at Bonarong Wildlife Sanctuary, was a hundred and
Speaker 1: three years old. And oh my god, Charlie, the female
Speaker 1: blue and yellow McCall caw of the health Field Nurseries
Speaker 1: in Sirie, England, was a hundred and fourteen years Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's old. That's an old bird. Cocky Bennett, he's
Speaker 1: a male sulfur crusted cockatoo owned by some Australian guy
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixteen, was a hundred and twenty years old
Speaker 1: when it died, just owned by some Australia I have
Speaker 1: to show you this ancient, goddamn bird. It's definitely looks old,
Speaker 1: like very old that birds not alive. Sadly I think
Speaker 1: it is. Oh my gosh, it looks like it's like,
Speaker 1: put me out of my misery. I know. I feel
Speaker 1: sorry for this bird because it looks like the tip
Speaker 1: of its beak is really long, which it should be.
Speaker 1: You like the tips of their beak, I guess keep
Speaker 1: growing and you should have something hard for them to
Speaker 1: chew on so it files it down. But it's just
Speaker 1: grown into this like really long protrusion. Yeah vibes you
Speaker 1: know where we were all like, I don't know about that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: poor cocky Bennett oh mannet. But you look a little old.
Speaker 1: He looks slightly like a plucked turkey. I don't mean
Speaker 1: to roast this very old bird, but I can't help it.
Speaker 1: You're roasting the bird. I'm roasting the bird. A well.
Speaker 1: I think that's where we'll end it today with me
Speaker 1: being super mean to like a geriatric bird. What are
Speaker 1: you gonna do? Well? Thank you so much for coming
Speaker 1: on the show in and discovering all the wonders of
Speaker 1: flight with me. You gonna I mean yeah, you could
Speaker 1: check out my bird diaries just kidding, I would never
Speaker 1: I have a podcast called Ethnically Ambiguous on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Network. UM you can check that out. It's all
Speaker 1: about being a person of color in America. We interview
Speaker 1: a lot of great creators. Um. Also, yeah, I produced
Speaker 1: a bunch of podcasts like Daily Side Guys, Slass Culture Ristas.
Speaker 1: This is important, just you know, out here producing up
Speaker 1: a storm. So uh and then I also uh co
Speaker 1: host a twitch stream every Tuesday night m p ST
Speaker 1: called Below It's called Deckheads. Chief stews about the Below
Speaker 1: Deck Bravo series, and we also talked about other Bravo shows,
Speaker 1: and we talked a little about the f one Netflix
Speaker 1: series and I host that with Molly Lambert. If you
Speaker 1: want to play that out, please check it out. But
Speaker 1: you can also follow me at Anna host n A
Speaker 1: A N N A H O S S N I
Speaker 1: E H if you just want to keep up with
Speaker 1: what I'm up to and see what else I'm you know,
Speaker 1: producing and putting out and yeah, so you can follow
Speaker 1: me and check out that stuff. Check out all that stuff.
Speaker 1: You can find the podcast on the internet at Creature
Speaker 1: feature Pot on Instagram, at Creature feet Pot on Twitter.
Speaker 1: That's f E A T T very different. You can
Speaker 1: also if you want to ask me questions and me
Speaker 1: email at Creature feature Pot at gmail dot com. I
Speaker 1: try to answer everyone's questions. Uh, there might be a
Speaker 1: slight lag between when you send it and when I
Speaker 1: answer it, but don't worry. I really do try to
Speaker 1: get to everyone's question and uh sometimes I will read
Speaker 1: it aloud on the show if I feel like I
Speaker 1: can get a good podcast out of it. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much for sending those in. And if you're
Speaker 1: enjoying the show and you leave a rating and review,
Speaker 1: I will love you forever. It warms my heart whenever
Speaker 1: I read a review, and it also between you and me.
Speaker 1: It's for the algorithm. Just gonna say that it's not
Speaker 1: it's not that I don't appreciate it from like like hey,
Speaker 1: like this warms my heart and it makes me personally
Speaker 1: feel good, but also from an algorithmic point of video,
Speaker 1: it's also really good. So just keep that in mind too.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the space plass Is for their super awesome
Speaker 1: song x Alumina Creature feature production by Heart Radio. For
Speaker 1: a more podcast like the one you just heard, visit
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or Hey guess what?
Speaker 1: Where iver you listen to your favorite shows? I don't
Speaker 1: judge you d next Wednesday.