Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Feature production of iHeart Radio. Creature Feature.
Speaker 2: It's Creature Cringle Times, a holiday special about our furry friends.
Speaker 2: Today we'll learn how hibernation works and what's up with
Speaker 2: these chaby bears, snail hiberneters.
Speaker 1: Slivers with fat taiales join us. Says we learn and
Speaker 1: love in their.
Speaker 2: Sleepy little penguins perfect power naps. It's a sleepy, cozy
Speaker 2: winter time.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Feature production of iHeart Radio. I'm your
Speaker 1: host of Many Parasites Katie Golden. I studied psychology and
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology, and on today's special Cringle Time show, we're
Speaker 1: getting cozy and snugly and talking about the warl world's best,
Speaker 1: most creative, and most interesting sleepers. From hibernations to teeny naps,
Speaker 1: these winter animals know how to catch a few holiday z's.
Speaker 2: Happy Creature Ring, Happy Creature Ring, a big Creature.
Speaker 1: Joining me today is comedian and host of the podcast
Speaker 1: Jeff Has Cool Friends and Other great podcasts. Jeff May welcome.
Speaker 3: Hey, I just woke up. This is great. Yeah, fact
Speaker 3: I just dehibernated. Be mad? Yeah.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite way to get cozy during the winter.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you're still in La, right, I am.
Speaker 1: It doesn't get too cold there, but it's still nice
Speaker 1: to get cozy.
Speaker 3: So it actually gets really cold inside. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you remember La, but there's no insulation in any
Speaker 3: of the houses, so for example, like in my house
Speaker 3: right now, it's like the high fifties. So yeah, not
Speaker 3: what you would think would be great. I actually prefer
Speaker 3: a fireplace. Yeah, airplace. I had a fire last night.
Speaker 3: It was delightful. That really is something for me. It's
Speaker 3: getting pricey, getting a little pricey. The wood has gone up,
Speaker 3: But I do like that. I like being inside where
Speaker 3: it is not bad while the weather is bad.
Speaker 1: It's the best feeling. It's the best. I'm finally living
Speaker 1: somewhere where it does occasionally snow, which I love. And
Speaker 1: I also just like being inside watching either rain or snow.
Speaker 1: But you're cozy and you're warm, and you're under a blanket,
Speaker 1: maybe you even have a hot drink. It's just such
Speaker 1: a good feel. It's like this intense smugness about your
Speaker 1: position versus like the weather outside. It's like a very
Speaker 1: cozy smugness and I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it turns out that the weather outside is actually frightful.
Speaker 1: Right, But the fire inside meanwhile, that's delightful, right, that
Speaker 1: can be delightful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I very much am that as a new Englander.
Speaker 3: Like snow is two is two things for me. One,
Speaker 3: it is a dangerous labor because you have to like
Speaker 3: shovel your driveway or you know, you have to drive
Speaker 3: extra specially careful carefully. I don't know I didn't add
Speaker 3: an adverb into that sentence. But then on top of
Speaker 3: that too, like being inside when it snows is the best,
Speaker 3: right Yeah, no, you like you forget you're just sitting there.
Speaker 3: Although when I was a homeowner, I would look outside
Speaker 3: and see the snow and be like, yeah, should I
Speaker 3: go free shovel right now? So it's not super bad tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Like that's the energy that I was bringing to home ownership,
Speaker 3: real dad energy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I've never had a home while I lived, like
Speaker 1: a suburban home where I'd actually have to shovel snow
Speaker 1: or deal with it. So I've always just had a
Speaker 1: good time in the snow because i haven't had a
Speaker 1: car or home while being in an area with snow.
Speaker 3: So that's the labor of snow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, disappears right, exactly. But yeah, very very on theme,
Speaker 1: because today we are talking about animals who do their
Speaker 1: best to avoid the discomforts of winter in bad weather
Speaker 1: and we'll just sleep it off, but in very specific
Speaker 1: physiological ways. So first we're going to talk about bears
Speaker 1: and this idea of bear hibernation. Now there's going to
Speaker 1: be a twist here, so get ready for that. But
Speaker 1: first let's talk about fat Bear Week. So have you
Speaker 1: heard of fat Bear Week?
Speaker 3: I love fat Bear Week so good. Of course, standard
Speaker 3: bear Week as a Massachusetts former Massachusetts residence Bear Week
Speaker 3: itself of course very popular in Provincetown in the summer.
Speaker 3: Fat Bear Week, that is a winter holiday.
Speaker 1: The Fat Bear Week is a celebration by the Cadmeae
Speaker 1: National Park and Preserve in Alaska of the bears in
Speaker 1: the park putting on their winter weight. This year, it
Speaker 1: happened in October and ended on what the Park Service
Speaker 1: calls fat Bear Tuesday. So the way it works is
Speaker 1: that the public is allowed to watch the bears on
Speaker 1: these park cams and then vote online at fatbearweek dot org. Obviously,
Speaker 1: fat Bear Week has already happened, so a winner has
Speaker 1: been crowned. It was a female bear named Grazier, who
Speaker 1: is a light brown bear with blonde, fluffy ears, who
Speaker 1: is described by the Fat Bear Week website as a
Speaker 1: very tough lady. She's raised two sets of cubs and
Speaker 1: is so protected of her cubs. She'll go on the
Speaker 1: offense against male bears who get too close, even bears
Speaker 1: that are bigger than herself. She is famous for being
Speaker 1: the most defensive bold mother bear in the current bear
Speaker 1: lineup in Catmi National Park.
Speaker 3: I love this, I love all this information, but I
Speaker 3: do feel like we did sort of gloss over the
Speaker 3: fact that they do Fat Bear Tuesday, yeah, which is
Speaker 3: what Mardi Gras d'Ors or something like that, like it's
Speaker 3: Mardi Gras, yeah, yeah, yeah. But for bears, I love.
Speaker 3: I love all of that energy in there. And I
Speaker 3: love that she just partied. She's got some bead around,
Speaker 3: beads around her neck, and she is just chasing dudes off.
Speaker 3: I love that about her.
Speaker 1: Yes, and she and these bears. Every year, bears put
Speaker 1: on an enormous amount of weight in the summer and
Speaker 1: fall uh to survive the winter, and so the point
Speaker 1: of Fat Bear Week is to celebrate these bears and
Speaker 1: all their girth and you know, pick out one of
Speaker 1: the bears who has one. I mean, it's like, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's necessarily just a way in right, they're
Speaker 1: not because they're not weighing these bears. It's not all
Speaker 1: just about the size. It's about the public's favorite. So
Speaker 1: the favorite one usually it's one that has indeed put
Speaker 1: on a bunch of weight. But there's you know, other
Speaker 1: aspects to their personality that can win them votes.
Speaker 3: Now, the photo that you shared first off, must hug bear. Yeah, bear,
Speaker 3: it's friend. And then the information that you shared bear
Speaker 3: is not friend.
Speaker 1: Bear is not friend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's also but also bear's friend.
Speaker 1: This is the contradiction of bear. This is the biggest
Speaker 1: sort of like it is an The oxymoron of the
Speaker 1: bear is that they look like the world's most huggable animal,
Speaker 1: and in fact, they may be one of the world's
Speaker 1: least huggable animals in terms of the speed with which
Speaker 1: they could rind your bones from flesh and absolutely turn
Speaker 1: you into a sort of meat and bone salad. Is
Speaker 1: it's very impressive, like you know so, But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, they do look really huggable a friend, Yes,
Speaker 1: like if I had to, if I had to be
Speaker 1: executed for some reason, for one of my many crimes.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'd want to do execution by bear hug, Like,
Speaker 1: let me hug a bear. Yeah, death by bear where
Speaker 1: I give it a hug and it, you know, does
Speaker 1: its thing and at least I go out on a
Speaker 1: high note and you get to help out fat bear week,
Speaker 1: right exactly.
Speaker 3: Be like I'm going to feed myself to my favorite
Speaker 3: bear that I have put money on.
Speaker 1: I become part of the bear. In reality, this would
Speaker 1: be really bad because then once the bear gets a
Speaker 1: taste of delicious human, it would probably go after other
Speaker 1: people and then they'd euthanize the bear.
Speaker 3: It is it? Historically speaking, we don't taste great? Is that?
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: I know that like sharks, sharks aren't actually fans of
Speaker 3: our flavor. It's I think it's a.
Speaker 1: Fat to like bone ratio. And also we have clothing,
Speaker 1: and I think all of that is kind of off.
Speaker 1: But there are frogs legs, Yeah, there are, Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: a little We're just not It's like like with insects, right,
Speaker 1: like we are not used to eating insects. I mean
Speaker 1: some cultures, certainly they do eat insects. But when you're
Speaker 1: raised in a culture where you don't eat them, if
Speaker 1: someone's like, here, you have this cricket and you're like, ah,
Speaker 1: this kind of feels weird. But it doesn't mean the
Speaker 1: cricket tastes bad. It's just that you're not used to it.
Speaker 1: So for a lot of animals, I would think they're
Speaker 1: just not used to the human taste and or texture.
Speaker 1: But there are a copy Yeah, it's like it's an
Speaker 1: acquired taste. But certainly there are animals like polar bears
Speaker 1: who will absolutely look at a human and be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could, I could chow down on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean in nature there's there's options, but if
Speaker 3: there's no options, they're like women to eat that obviously.
Speaker 1: Right of course. Yeah, and bears will potentially eat people.
Speaker 1: I mean typically though, like even grizzly bears don't generally
Speaker 1: go after humans, but but they can. They will if,
Speaker 1: especially if they feel threatened or you try to get
Speaker 1: close to them.
Speaker 3: Or they do a lot of cocaine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, there's that Cocaine Bear movie, which is
Speaker 1: really kind of I feel like a're really setting a
Speaker 1: bad example for bears, and I feel like we need
Speaker 1: to do like a dare program for bears like bear
Speaker 1: beardar to teach them that no cocaine is actually really
Speaker 1: bad for bears. Don't do it just because you saw
Speaker 1: a bear on the movies.
Speaker 3: Maybe you could do it not being so lame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you know.
Speaker 3: With that, maybe stop trying to ruin the party.
Speaker 1: You know, I just I want my bears thick and
Speaker 1: fat and full of salmon.
Speaker 3: So bear body shaming are you because.
Speaker 1: No I'm saying that, I'm I'm I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: the best bears are fat bears.
Speaker 3: Okay, well I'm saying all bears are beautiful. So like
Speaker 3: mark that down. Put that in the notes for people
Speaker 3: when they listen.
Speaker 1: To by bears. So why do these bears put on
Speaker 1: so much weight? It's not just to look amazing. It
Speaker 1: is which you can actually see these before after photos
Speaker 1: of these bears.
Speaker 3: If you go to Rubenesque Bears.
Speaker 1: They are Rubenesque bears. Go to explore dot org slash
Speaker 1: meet the dash Bears. I'll put that link in the footnotes.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's really cool because you can see live
Speaker 1: streams of parks, old videos of bears like eating fish
Speaker 1: and stuff, and also the before after pictures of bears
Speaker 1: after having bulked up. But yeah, they put on this
Speaker 1: huge amount of fat so that they can get through
Speaker 1: the winter, and they go into this state of dormancy
Speaker 1: during the winter. This is often called hibernation. But if
Speaker 1: you're being really picky, bears are not true hibernators. It's
Speaker 1: kind of weird because they're like kind of the poster
Speaker 1: bear for hibernation, and yet what they do in the
Speaker 1: winter is technically not exactly hibernation. So hibernation is a
Speaker 1: type of prolonged inactivity characterized by physiological changes where the
Speaker 1: rate of breathing is slowed, the heart rate is slowed,
Speaker 1: and body temperature drops. This helps slow the metabolism so
Speaker 1: the animal can live off of their energy stores and
Speaker 1: survive the winter, which is generally harsh and nutrient poor,
Speaker 1: and so lots of animals hibernate, from rodents to bats,
Speaker 1: but technically bears do not hibernate. They do enter a
Speaker 1: state of torpoor, which just means a state of reduced
Speaker 1: activity and which includes a lot of sleep, a lot
Speaker 1: of rest, a lot of like not really doing anything.
Speaker 1: Celebrities just like us, just like just like podcasters. There
Speaker 1: are some physio logical changes that bears go through, including
Speaker 1: bulking up their heart rate, breathing and metal ballic rate
Speaker 1: do slow down when they are in deep sleep, but
Speaker 1: their body temperature does not drop, and they can actually
Speaker 1: wake up relatively easy, which is unlike hibernators. In fact,
Speaker 1: female bears generally have to wake up from their torpoor
Speaker 1: in order to give birth during the winter, which is
Speaker 1: when they typically give birth. So they'll be, you know,
Speaker 1: in the state of torpoor, snooze in and be like, op,
Speaker 1: gotta gotta wake up, gotta gotta push out a few cups. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this winter dormancy that bears go through is still
Speaker 1: really impressive. They can go for months without needing to
Speaker 1: urinate or defecate. The poop in their intestines actually remains
Speaker 1: there whatever's left before because they go before they hibernate.
Speaker 1: So they have like basically this fecal plug. They're very like,
Speaker 1: I guess, hard and thick, and it stays in the intestines.
Speaker 1: It's slow moving, and then it just kind of like
Speaker 1: dries out. The intestines absorb a lot of the fluids
Speaker 1: from this fecal matter and then it forms this hard
Speaker 1: plug and so this, their intestines basically slow down, their
Speaker 1: kidney function grinds to a halt, and they don't urinate.
Speaker 1: Like you know that feeling when you're super cozy in bed,
Speaker 1: you're really warm and it's cold and like you have
Speaker 1: to peep, but you're like it can wait, Like I
Speaker 1: know I should get up and pee, but it can wait,
Speaker 1: and you just stay in bed and you're like, ah,
Speaker 1: I should pee, but then you don't, and then you
Speaker 1: dream about like trying to find a bathroom, but you
Speaker 1: can't find one all because you just don't want to
Speaker 1: leave bed because it's too warm.
Speaker 3: You know what's funny is I have this weird, insane
Speaker 3: fear of being the bed. I don't know why, Like
Speaker 3: I've nevergett had then to have that fear, but I do.
Speaker 3: I have that fear. And so if that feeling, if
Speaker 3: I'm cozy in bed and that feeling hits, I'm like,
Speaker 3: I gotta do this or else I'm going to pee
Speaker 3: the bed and everyone will find out they'll have to
Speaker 3: buy a new mattress. Like I very much have that
Speaker 3: thought in my head at all.
Speaker 1: I like to roll the dye. Someday it might burn me,
Speaker 1: but I like to roll that dye. Yeah. Actually, so
Speaker 1: with the with the urination for bears, they can still
Speaker 1: produce urea, but what they do is they recycle it
Speaker 1: into proteins and that means they don't have to pee
Speaker 1: and they there because while they're you know, in their
Speaker 1: state of torpor, they are converting the fat that they've
Speaker 1: built up into usable nutrients to keep them alive, to
Speaker 1: keep their muscle mouse from deteriorating. So they're living off
Speaker 1: of that. So even though that process does create urea,
Speaker 1: they recycle that into helping them build muscle. There is
Speaker 1: actually a paper studying the bear eurothelium, which is the
Speaker 1: lining of the urinary tract. The paper is called the
Speaker 1: eurothelium of a hibernator, the American Black Bear. So like
Speaker 1: just so you know, like a lot of people still
Speaker 1: call what bears do hibernation, even like researchers and biologists,
Speaker 1: even though.
Speaker 3: It's colloquialism at this point. Yeah, like it's a widely
Speaker 3: It's like when literally and figuratively are now interchangeable because
Speaker 3: the language has accepted it as.
Speaker 1: So yeah, no, exactly, and it's like it's a subtle distinction, right,
Speaker 1: Like true hibernators their body temperature drops and bears theres don't.
Speaker 1: They can wake up easier, so it's like it's a
Speaker 1: subtle delineation.
Speaker 3: My question for your New England listeners is when Katie
Speaker 3: said black Bear, did you guys immediately because of what
Speaker 3: we've been talking about, did all of you start thinking
Speaker 3: about Clark's Trading Post in New Hampshire. Because Clark's Trading
Speaker 3: Post is a very famous New England attraction that is
Speaker 3: propagated and sort of pushed as this big trained black
Speaker 3: Bear haven. It is the most New England kind of
Speaker 3: quote theme park slash experience that you could possibly imagine,
Speaker 3: where it's just trained black bears and weird stuff the
Speaker 3: whole time, but it's an aggressively New England thing.
Speaker 1: Is that the one where like the bears stand on
Speaker 1: their hind legs or something.
Speaker 3: For They do a lot of stuff. They climb up
Speaker 3: poles for fun, they like roll around in barrels, they
Speaker 3: eat ice cream, they live like they do. I'm assuming
Speaker 3: that the version of ice cream that they have is
Speaker 3: something that they make for the bears. I'm not going
Speaker 3: to pretend that I know enough about Clark's Trading Post
Speaker 3: to guarantee you that these are not abused bears. But
Speaker 3: what I can tell you is I have seen the
Speaker 3: bears many times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean yeah, I don't want to make any
Speaker 1: judgments not knowing exactly what what it is, but in general,
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical. I'm always skeptical of like when animals are
Speaker 1: in entertainment, like SeaWorld or this Clark's Trading Post.
Speaker 3: But yeah, and nothing can be like, oh, well, we've
Speaker 3: been doing it for so long. I'm like, yeah, that
Speaker 3: kind of makes me feel like, you guys did it worse? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's Clark's Bears. Do they call it Clark's Bears now?
Speaker 3: They literally changed the name named Clark's Trading Post until
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen. This is huge.
Speaker 1: I mean, it does make sense if your main thing
Speaker 1: is bears to have bears in the title, because like
Speaker 1: when it's like Clark's Trading Post, that sounds super boring.
Speaker 1: If you're like Clark's Bears that eat ice cream, now
Speaker 1: you've got something.
Speaker 3: If you do a quick cursory Google image search, the
Speaker 3: second photo will give you the entire gist of what
Speaker 3: Clark's Bears. I hate saying that Clark's Trading Post is
Speaker 3: all about because there's like a weird mountain man that
Speaker 3: like chases the train tour, there's trained bears. It is
Speaker 3: a glorious experience. And coming on here talking about bears,
Speaker 3: I would feel like it was my duty to at
Speaker 3: least say there is an absolute trained bear theme park
Speaker 3: that was from my health.
Speaker 1: There's like a bear in a small car. Look, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna lie and say like I don't get some
Speaker 1: kind of you know, enjoyment out of seeing a bear
Speaker 1: in a tiny car. But I don't think this is
Speaker 1: probably the best thing.
Speaker 3: For the bears, probably not the most ethical.
Speaker 1: Not probably not the most ethical thing for these bears.
Speaker 3: I get it, you know, like I understand that they're
Speaker 3: my footprints are bloody in the world of of of
Speaker 3: consumption and entertainment, I recognize this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you know this is this is exploitation
Speaker 1: is woven into the fabric of America. What can you say,
Speaker 1: but uh, but in this uh, in this paper, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, like talking about bears in tiny cars sounds
Speaker 1: really interesting. But what about it paper on the Eurothelium, Jeff,
Speaker 1: does that not also sound Yeah? Exactly so. So they
Speaker 1: My point in bringing up this paper is that it
Speaker 1: actually so they like were doing studies of the bear
Speaker 1: urinary track because of this interesting way in which these
Speaker 1: bears hibernate and they don't urinate like during hibernation. But
Speaker 1: like so they went through this whole thing of like
Speaker 1: they used euthanized bears to like look at their urinary tracts,
Speaker 1: and in this section where they were they had discussed
Speaker 1: the properties of these euthanized bears, like the cause why
Speaker 1: they were euthanized, you know, very sad like some of
Speaker 1: them like hit by car or abandoned driven by another bear,
Speaker 1: by a tiny car driven by another bear. Horrifying bears.
Speaker 3: I worked at a trucking company where a truck driver
Speaker 3: ran over a bear. Oh yeah, and just like didn't
Speaker 3: report it. He just kept going realized and then like
Speaker 3: immediately all of his lights went on, just like Abbs
Speaker 3: destroyed his truck. Yeah no, he ran over a bear.
Speaker 1: Yeah you can't. I also think you have to report it,
Speaker 1: right if.
Speaker 3: You hit a bear, you'd think so, And I think
Speaker 3: he thought he might.
Speaker 1: Not have to and then do I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 3: Well, especially if you're a bear law doctor, trailer shuts
Speaker 3: down and you're like, well, there's no way of getting
Speaker 3: around this, I hit a bear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so that's very unfortunate. But there were some
Speaker 1: bears that were euthanized because they were called nuisance bears,
Speaker 1: which I guess is the technical term for bears who
Speaker 1: are interacting with humans in a less than ideal way.
Speaker 1: Col bears, no exactly, I mean rebel bears, bear rebels
Speaker 1: without a cause.
Speaker 3: I just add out some pause.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean pretty sure they don't have pause anymore.
Speaker 1: They've probably been have some other researchers studying bear pause,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean it is. It's one of those
Speaker 1: things where it's like I get it right, Like if
Speaker 1: you have a bear who's going around neighborhoods, you know,
Speaker 1: getting into stuff and like interacting with humans or being aggressive,
Speaker 1: Like I get why they have to euthanize them, but like,
Speaker 1: do we have to add insult to injury by calling
Speaker 1: them nuisance bears? That feels like we're blaming the bears
Speaker 1: way too much. Like it's not really the bear's fault
Speaker 1: that there's like a suburb near them that has trash
Speaker 1: cans full of ice cream that they can get and
Speaker 1: then when they do it.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, Yeah, they got to do
Speaker 3: what deer did and just create a new disease for
Speaker 3: to combat suburban sprawl. Like lime disease exists because the
Speaker 3: deer were like, screw these guys starting Connecticut, by the way,
Speaker 3: another New England tradition. Oh yeah, bears and lime disease.
Speaker 3: Is there nothing we can't do, Like.
Speaker 1: There are a ton of lime in Martha's vineyard. Probably
Speaker 1: I think there's like because like it's like weird. It's
Speaker 1: something that like there's a lot of lime disease and
Speaker 1: like wealthy people because they all get it from Martha's
Speaker 1: vineyard or somewhere nearby.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it would make sense too, because here's the here's
Speaker 3: the tragedy is the more outside you are, the more
Speaker 3: apt you are to get it because deer ticks are
Speaker 3: a much harder to spot tick, yeah than your standard
Speaker 3: would tick. So yeah, so we would, we would. We
Speaker 3: were taught, you know, because I grew up in the
Speaker 3: eighties and nineties, so that was when lime disease was
Speaker 3: like all the rage. Yeah, so so we were we
Speaker 3: had to be very very careful to look out for
Speaker 3: those and my brother ended up getting it.
Speaker 1: Oh oh no, I'm sorry, it's his fault.
Speaker 3: These bears. However, they're not nuisances. They're just cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, like calling them like nuisance bears, it's like,
Speaker 1: could we call them something else, like, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: cool bears.
Speaker 3: The spirits had to take out some cool bears and
Speaker 3: everybody would get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like we had to ethanize the bear for being
Speaker 1: too cool, which is a tragedy, but you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, like, yeah, this is like the this is
Speaker 1: the body and Clyde of bears. It's you know, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it. I get why they have to use
Speaker 1: the nize them, but can we give them a nicer label? Anyways,
Speaker 1: So after winter, bears will emerge from their dens and
Speaker 1: their metabolism will slowly kick back into gear. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: will lap up snow fleas to kind of like as
Speaker 1: an appetizer before they fully get their appetite. So, snow
Speaker 1: fleas are actually tiny black springtail hexapods. They're these little
Speaker 1: little hexapods that can survive and live in snow. We
Speaker 1: actually did a podcast about this, I think last winter,
Speaker 1: about ice worms. So they're not really fleas. They're not parasites,
Speaker 1: but they feed on organic matter in leaf litter and
Speaker 1: in snow and they're teeny tiny, but there's so many
Speaker 1: of them that base these bears are like great protein popsicles,
Speaker 1: and we'll like lick at like melting snow or the
Speaker 1: leaf litter and just have kind of like these like
Speaker 1: protein popsicles that looks like kind of a really organic
Speaker 1: mint ice cream. But the mint chips are bugs.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I mean, let's give that a dry let's call
Speaker 3: saltan straw and have the next flavor saltan straw.
Speaker 1: So I miss saltan stra so much. I think it's
Speaker 1: a California thing, right.
Speaker 3: It's a West Coast thing. I believe it's actually a
Speaker 3: Portland thing to say.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, so it's a West Coast thing. Man, if
Speaker 1: you live on the West Coast or you visit the
Speaker 1: West Coast, saltan Straw is the best ice cream place
Speaker 1: I've ever been.
Speaker 3: To the Land of Gelato, yes.
Speaker 1: But honestly, like look no offense to to northern Italy
Speaker 1: where there is some amazing gelato, saltan straw is still
Speaker 1: really holds its like it's really good. Also, like in
Speaker 1: the US they know how to make waffle cones really well,
Speaker 1: whereas here it's much more rare that you get a
Speaker 1: pasta because they're made out of dry pasta, like they.
Speaker 3: Kind of ice cream.
Speaker 1: We have a basket, yeah, they we have like a
Speaker 1: basket out of pasta. No. I mean, you know, the
Speaker 1: gelato's great, especially in Florence. But you know, like, honestly, America,
Speaker 1: you got some amazing ice cream there, so be proud.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have nailed the tastiest, most absolutely terrible.
Speaker 1: Food, right, which is why these bears are eating it
Speaker 1: at the trading post.
Speaker 3: A bear sitting there eating like ice cream and a
Speaker 3: grilled cheese or like, this doesn't seem like this is
Speaker 3: the thing they should be eating. Probably not fairy. Is
Speaker 3: dairy a big thing for bears? Because I don't really
Speaker 3: see how that would.
Speaker 1: Think so, But you know, I still feel like if
Speaker 1: I saw a nose deep into a tub of ice cream,
Speaker 1: be like, you know what? Good for her?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Let it out, girl, be there in your feelings.
Speaker 3: You've had a week. Yeah, you've earned.
Speaker 1: This, you've earned this. Well, we are going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break, but don't go to sleep. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to talk about a couple true
Speaker 1: hibernators that are perhaps not what you typically think of
Speaker 1: when you think hibernation. So, Jeff, did you know that
Speaker 1: snails hibernate?
Speaker 3: Are they true hibernator?
Speaker 1: They are true hibernators. They also estivate, so estivation is hibernation,
Speaker 1: but during hot or dry seasons. So both terrestrial and
Speaker 1: aquatic species of snails can hibernate when the temperature gets
Speaker 1: too low and estivate when the season gets too hot
Speaker 1: or dry. So during hibernation, terrestrial snails such as garden
Speaker 1: snails or fresh water snails like apple snails, will regulate
Speaker 1: their bodily processes to survive the cold, so they are
Speaker 1: true hibernators because their metabolic rate drops, their respiratory system,
Speaker 1: their circulatory system, everything like slows down, and their body
Speaker 1: temperature drops. Their body temperature actually basically has to endure
Speaker 1: the ambient cold temperature. One of the problems with freezing
Speaker 1: is that if you freeze like your cells kind of
Speaker 1: get ice crystals in them, and that's really bad. Once
Speaker 1: they start to thaw, they essentially rip apart because of
Speaker 1: these Yeah, exactly, frostbite like that is necrotic tissue because
Speaker 1: your cells have basically been torn asunder by the ice
Speaker 1: crystal formation. But the way a lot of animals, including snails,
Speaker 1: who can survive freezing work is they actually have in
Speaker 1: their blood or in the snails case, hem aloof which
Speaker 1: is basically the bug version of blood. They have anti
Speaker 1: freeze in their blood. So this is like glycerol and
Speaker 1: glucose in their blood that prevents the formation of ice crystals.
Speaker 3: You have anti freeze in your blood. Sounds like a
Speaker 3: grinch lyric that didn't make it into the song.
Speaker 1: It does, doesn't it? Man? I can hear the voice too,
Speaker 1: Can you do the voice?
Speaker 3: Earl Thurl ravenscrop It's Tony the Tiger.
Speaker 1: Oh he did, Tony the Tiger.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you listen to the song, it's literally Tony
Speaker 3: the Tiger's voice. He doesn't, he doesn't really alert in
Speaker 3: your soul, mister.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, oh my god, my mind has been blown.
Speaker 3: Two huge Christmas songs. Sorry, I always have to bring
Speaker 3: Christmas into it. Two huge Christmas songs are named are
Speaker 3: sung by people whose last name whose names are you
Speaker 3: are l. We have Burl Eves and Thorough Ravenscroft, and
Speaker 3: those are two names you do not hear every Berlin
Speaker 3: Thurrele are responsible for a good I'd say ten percent
Speaker 3: of your holiday listening.
Speaker 1: Berlin Thurle sounds like an artisan like sheets company, like
Speaker 1: a company that makes sheets, like wool sheets for your bed,
Speaker 1: and it's already yeah.
Speaker 3: They're not that comfortable, but they're like, yeah, they're sustainable,
Speaker 3: and then you're like all right, and then you try
Speaker 3: to sleep in them, you're like, this was a huge mistake.
Speaker 1: Itchy, but it costs five hundred dollars, so you do
Speaker 1: use it all the time. Burl and Thurle, the sponsor
Speaker 1: of this this week's podcast Berlin use code Creature to
Speaker 1: get ten percent off the itchiest blankets you'll ever have.
Speaker 1: But they're made out of one hundred percent human hair
Speaker 1: at Gosophical Rash, ethically sourced rat hair. So yeah, this
Speaker 1: is these snails drop their metabolic rate. They have this
Speaker 1: antifreeze in their blood. They actually these anti freezing compounds
Speaker 1: like glycerol and glucose become more concentrated in the winter,
Speaker 1: according to research by noahsaka at all. Thanks guys for
Speaker 1: cutting open snails and looking at their hemal lymph. That
Speaker 1: must have been delicious. So they also produce something called
Speaker 1: an epiphragm, which is a temporary mucous membrane that they
Speaker 1: form to reduce water loss in like hot dry conditions,
Speaker 1: or prevent water absorption during two wet conditions, to maintain
Speaker 1: a balance of their bodily fluid because if they dry
Speaker 1: completely out, that's bad. Or if they absorb too much
Speaker 1: water and then they basically don't have the right balance
Speaker 1: of fluids and salt ions, et cetera, like that can
Speaker 1: also be bad. Just like humans, we can either die
Speaker 1: of not having enough water, having too much salt, or
Speaker 1: having too much water and not enough salt.
Speaker 3: Some would say that adding another mucous membrane onto your
Speaker 3: body is gross, and I would say, you're not a snail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not a snail. You're not thinking snail.
Speaker 3: You got to think you're thinking people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know how.
Speaker 3: I probably wouldn't do great with an additional mucus membrane
Speaker 3: on me, But not a snail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like, I don't. The other cool thing
Speaker 1: about this mucous membrane, this epiphragm, is that they can
Speaker 1: use it to stick onto things. So have you ever
Speaker 1: like had a snail and it's like inside its shell,
Speaker 1: you can't see any of the like meat, of the snail.
Speaker 1: You're trying to pull it off of like a tree
Speaker 1: or a rock, but it's like stuck.
Speaker 3: No, you know what, I didn't have access to snails
Speaker 3: when I was a kid. We had slugs, but no snails.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm so sorry. That's that's a terrible childhood to
Speaker 1: not have snails.
Speaker 3: It is, well, we made up for it with the
Speaker 3: lime disease in the transmit. Well, I have lots of
Speaker 3: childhood experience somehow.
Speaker 1: San Diego, we had a lot of snails and I would,
Speaker 1: I guess, harass the snails a lot. I was curious,
Speaker 1: and so I would try to like pick them up,
Speaker 1: but they'd be like stuck, and so you kind of
Speaker 1: like try to pull them off and like it. They'd
Speaker 1: be like the suction and like you could kind of
Speaker 1: rip them off. But I'd kind of feel bad when
Speaker 1: I would do that because it feels like, oh, I
Speaker 1: did something, I broke something. Well, what that is is
Speaker 1: the epiphram. It's this temporary mucous membrane. And they would
Speaker 1: probably use this because it would be the summer it
Speaker 1: would be hot and dry, but they can also do
Speaker 1: it in the winter, both if the winter is too
Speaker 1: dry or if there's too much moisture or cold to
Speaker 1: you know, basically protect their soft, vulnerable, squishy bodies. So
Speaker 1: another thing is that I have seen on the internet
Speaker 1: too many things, but among them this factoid that snails
Speaker 1: can hibernate for three years. And that sounded wrong to me.
Speaker 1: That sounded right, That doesn't sound right. And I love
Speaker 1: it when I find something like this and find out
Speaker 1: that it's correct. This is not one of those times.
Speaker 1: The longest they can hibernate, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: is around four months. And so I do not know
Speaker 1: where this three years figure comes from. It seems like
Speaker 1: it is maybe a rumor or something that keeps getting repeated.
Speaker 1: But I could not find any like real sources for
Speaker 1: this three years thing. I have seen that there are
Speaker 1: multiple studies that they do over the course of two
Speaker 1: to three years, and so I wonder someone was like
Speaker 1: skimming one of these studies and said, like, study period
Speaker 1: was two to three years, and they're like, oh, that
Speaker 1: must be how long the snail's hibernating, and it's like, no,
Speaker 1: that's the duration of the study.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So come on, guys, you know how this works.
Speaker 3: You know words, this is academia come on, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, to be fair, a lot of academic papers
Speaker 1: are very difficult to understand, and dare I say it
Speaker 1: sometimes written poorly in a way that's hard to comprehend.
Speaker 1: But yeah, still like, uh, this seems to be wrong.
Speaker 1: If someone out there is like, hey, I actually know
Speaker 1: where this comes from, or that you think it is
Speaker 1: real and you have a source, you could send that
Speaker 1: to me. I would love to be wrong about this
Speaker 1: because hibernating for three years as a snail sounds super chill.
Speaker 1: That's like ultimate cozy.
Speaker 3: I just don't It also seems a little wasteful, like
Speaker 3: how long are you living, man.
Speaker 1: I don't know, three and a half years.
Speaker 3: We might want to readjust what we're doing with our
Speaker 3: time here? Our time management needs to be fixed.
Speaker 1: Maybe the snail shell is like a pokey ball and
Speaker 1: there's like a whole universe in there though, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like to the snail, this could.
Speaker 3: Be what an effective Pokemon that would be right to
Speaker 3: get out immediately gets pikachuwed to death? All right, it
Speaker 3: didn't react quick enough.
Speaker 1: It's well, you know, snails have their strengths. Combat is
Speaker 1: not generally one of them.
Speaker 3: But you know, I mean, to be fair, there might
Speaker 3: be a snail Pokemon that I have no idea.
Speaker 1: There has to be there. I'm googling snail Pokemon because
Speaker 1: there there has to be snail Pokemon. It's like weirdly, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's mag mag Cargo, which is a magnum snail. It
Speaker 1: looks like it's made out of lava an obsidian.
Speaker 3: I mean that sounds like a pretty bad ass snail. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there you go, so subsidian and lava snail. There's some
Speaker 3: going to pick that one up off a tree.
Speaker 1: There's some aquatic looking snails like Ohmannite omanite. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Have you ever done a creek feature that was just
Speaker 3: like sort of about the sort of apocrypha of pokemony
Speaker 3: just play it a real episode?
Speaker 1: Well no, So I actually had Ellen Weatherford, she hosts
Speaker 1: a podcast called Just the Zoo of Us, and we
Speaker 1: talked about Pokemon and then like the real life animals
Speaker 1: that are seem to either have inspired these Pokemon or
Speaker 1: by coincidence, these Pokemon are very much like real life animals.
Speaker 3: So or that or that one magician that sued Pokemon.
Speaker 1: Someone sued Pokemon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Urigeller. Urigeller had like an injunction on one of
Speaker 3: the characters because it was clearly a dig on him.
Speaker 3: It was like this really corrupt It was this corrupt
Speaker 3: magician that would like hold a spoon and he was
Speaker 3: famous for like us as a spoon bender that ended
Speaker 3: up becoming sort of revealed as a fraud.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it was this whole thing. He'd like just
Speaker 3: he just rescinded the lawsuit like very recently.
Speaker 1: But I thought that was like a I thought that
Speaker 1: the fake spoon bending was like a classic thing, right.
Speaker 3: Like I think it's because of your igeller. Really yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it was like a whole thing with Carson. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 3: I mean I think it was like famously like that's
Speaker 3: where like he's the fame famously debunked magician and it
Speaker 3: was like this big scandal and uh so he like
Speaker 3: just recently rescinded his lawsuit or complaint and like apologized
Speaker 3: to like the children of the world for like has.
Speaker 1: He apologized to spoons, because like what the hell of
Speaker 1: the spoon's done that He's just like I'm gonna bend
Speaker 1: this perfectly good spoon.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know, the spoons not have feelings?
Speaker 3: Am I a utensilist? If I say that, I just.
Speaker 1: Think it's sad to be a spoon and then not
Speaker 1: get used for ice cream instead get bent by a jerk.
Speaker 3: Or get kidnapped by a dish.
Speaker 1: Right man, the dish ran away with that spoon, But
Speaker 1: did it ask the spoon for It's what it wanted
Speaker 1: to do? I don't think so. So. Yeah, snails, they
Speaker 1: can hibernate and uh with that anti freeze in their
Speaker 1: hemal lymph and but they do not. I have not
Speaker 1: seen anything to indicate they can hibernate for three years.
Speaker 1: They can hibernate for around four months, which I still
Speaker 1: think is pretty impressive. Now we're going, yeah, no, that's
Speaker 1: good man, Like, why are we making stuff up? That's
Speaker 1: pretty impressive. One of my favorite hibernators is actually a
Speaker 1: completely different animal. This one's acutie. It's the fat tailed
Speaker 1: dwarf leamur. So uh oh, yeah, I shared a cute
Speaker 1: little photo with you. These are cute little babies that
Speaker 1: I want to cuddle. Yeah yeah, so fat tailed dwarf lemurs.
Speaker 1: You may have guessed it. They have fat tails. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about why so uh. They are primates found
Speaker 1: in Madagascar. They're pretty small. They're only about seven ounces
Speaker 1: in the summer and nine ounces when they fatten those
Speaker 1: tails up in the winter. And you know, Jeff, can
Speaker 1: you guess why they fatten their tails up in the winter.
Speaker 3: I don't feel like I need to guess on this one.
Speaker 3: I feel like it's pretty much been established that this
Speaker 3: is where they store their fat and nutrients, yes, for
Speaker 3: their torpor or their their hibernation or whatever.
Speaker 1: They can do exactly exactly, so these can be considered
Speaker 1: true hibernators because they kind of meet all the requirements.
Speaker 1: Their metabolism slows down, their heart rate, breathing all slows down,
Speaker 1: and their temperature drops, and that fat tail allows them
Speaker 1: to hibernate without needing to feed. So just as bears
Speaker 1: developed that big belly for winter, these dwarf flamers developed
Speaker 1: this like fat tail. They put all their fat in
Speaker 1: this tail. I mean, we see this in other animals
Speaker 1: right where they kind of store fat in these localized
Speaker 1: regions like a camel's hump, not filled with water, actually
Speaker 1: filled with fat to allow them to survive long periods
Speaker 1: of time without eating. But this means that fat tailed
Speaker 1: dwarf lemurs are actually the only primates known to hibernate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is really interesting, so exciting for them. Yeah, good
Speaker 1: for them. Look at these little guys.
Speaker 3: What what what Mada Gascar movie? Do they address that in?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, you know what? Like they have so many
Speaker 1: fun like like actual animals in those movies, like fosses
Speaker 1: and a bunch of different lemurs who I think I
Speaker 1: think basically all of the lemur characters are actual lemurs, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think they made any lemurs up. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of them, like Matta Gascar is lemur Land
Speaker 1: essentially so that there could.
Speaker 3: Definitely eat ice cream and they play around in barrel.
Speaker 1: Pretty much the closest thing lemurs get to a resort.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like it's it's like a lot of these
Speaker 1: these lemurs are endemic to Madagascar, meaning they're not found
Speaker 1: anywhere else. So there is this research center called Duke
Speaker 1: Lemur Center, and they've done a lot of research on
Speaker 1: lemurs in general, including these fat tailed dwarf lemers.
Speaker 3: You say Duke, you just mean like Duke University.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's Duke Lemur Center. Be fun, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know what, Like I feel like I would I
Speaker 1: would love to be a card carrying member of the
Speaker 1: Duke Lemur Center. So they've done all this research on
Speaker 1: these dwarf fat tailed dwarf lemurs. It's actually really cute
Speaker 1: because they have they have like lemurs that they studied
Speaker 1: that are in captivity. But they, you know, they make
Speaker 1: sure their environment is really really good and they like
Speaker 1: to hibernate and sleep in like little nooks and crannies
Speaker 1: inside trees, and so they've you know, done all these
Speaker 1: things where they try to like recreate these spaces for
Speaker 1: them and apparently like they've had basically these cute little
Speaker 1: like fabric nests and like all these like very cozy
Speaker 1: looking things. But their favorite thing is PVC pipes. Like
Speaker 1: the lemurs love going to sleep in PVC pipes. Same, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: Like you want to just curl up into a little
Speaker 1: ball and be in a PVC pipe? Who doesn't?
Speaker 3: I really do? I really do want them.
Speaker 1: That's what That's how I like. Whenever I'm like working
Speaker 1: with my plumbing, I'm like, man, I wish I could
Speaker 1: shrink down and curl up and go to sleep in
Speaker 1: this you trap.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I hope they don't fall asleep in a potato
Speaker 3: gun though, because that could be a problem, could be a.
Speaker 1: Problem, could be really cool, but you know, just a
Speaker 1: matter of perspective. So yeah, the their research has found
Speaker 1: that these uh fat tailed dwarf lemurs can rouse from
Speaker 1: hibernation every six to two days and hibernate for up
Speaker 1: to seven months. So just because you're hibernating doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you can't occasionally, like wake up during the winter. Like
Speaker 1: some hibernators, especially like smaller hibernators, will wake up occasionally
Speaker 1: to move around, maybe even eat something like if they
Speaker 1: have something stored, and then go back. Yeah, exactly, But
Speaker 1: it is harder for hibernators to wake up in response
Speaker 1: to say, a threat, versus just torpor. So if you're
Speaker 1: just in torpor, you can wake up more quickly if
Speaker 1: there's something threatening. If you're in hibernation, it's actually a
Speaker 1: good deal more difficult for your body to rouse from
Speaker 1: that even if there's a threat. So finding a good
Speaker 1: hidden PVC pipe is very important. Because these guys live
Speaker 1: in Madagascar. They're not protecting themselves from the cold and
Speaker 1: the snow because it doesn't get that cold in Madagascar.
Speaker 1: It's instead believe that they're protecting themselves from drought, where
Speaker 1: like in the winter because it's really hard to get
Speaker 1: enough nutrients. So like they feed on insects, fruits, and flowers,
Speaker 1: and so these things are going to be harder to
Speaker 1: find during a drought, and so they're just like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna eat a bunch of stuff, put it all in
Speaker 1: my tail fat, and then when there's not as much
Speaker 1: food around, just go to sleep.
Speaker 3: Go to sleep with my big fat tail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just wrap that, man. You could also use it
Speaker 1: as a pillow. It's just it's such a good idea,
Speaker 1: like this is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lot of opportunities with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, absolutely, I store the food I eat in my
Speaker 3: ass a lot too, So that makes it, does it?
Speaker 1: Is? You know like Thanksgiving butt is a more comfortable butt.
Speaker 3: I gotta say, yeah, you're we're in prime. But right now,
Speaker 3: these these these months that we've been in, you know,
Speaker 3: it's just like really we're getting ready to hibernate as.
Speaker 1: Humans, though we don't really get to. We don't like
Speaker 1: store all our fat like in one perfect pillowy location.
Speaker 1: It goes wherever it goes, usually based on a combination
Speaker 1: of genetics and your activity or whatever. But it would
Speaker 1: be really nice if it's like, yeah, I just want
Speaker 1: my fat to go in like my butt or my
Speaker 1: tail so I can use it as a pillow. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like these dwarf lemurs really have it figured
Speaker 1: out west. So yeah. Also, according to this Duke Leamer
Speaker 1: Center's research, these little guys tales account for around forty
Speaker 1: percent of their body weight, and during hibernation, their breathing
Speaker 1: can drop to a rate of about one breath per
Speaker 1: ten minutes and their heart rate drops to about one
Speaker 1: beat every ten seconds.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's it's pretty great. That's like college I
Speaker 3: mean college athlete level.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know that some people can't hold their
Speaker 1: breath for a really long time, like they're divers who
Speaker 1: like work on it and practice it. I think there
Speaker 1: are some divers who can get near that level, right
Speaker 1: of holding your breath for that long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know that they're like like three minutes tends
Speaker 3: to be like the a big threshold for people like
Speaker 3: your average person. And then it was it ranks up.
Speaker 3: I remember I was running for a while and I
Speaker 3: got my heart rate tested when I was running, and
Speaker 3: it was like really good. It was like forty two
Speaker 3: beats a minute or something like that.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 3: It was like really impressive. My breath holding is so bad.
Speaker 3: I don't know how to do it. T train it.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I don't think I can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just I did a quick Google search and apparently,
Speaker 1: like there are some professional divers who have held their
Speaker 1: breath for over twenty minutes, which is just ridiculous. You
Speaker 1: can't do you can't. I want to caution everyone, you
Speaker 1: cannot do that. You can't, just like you cannot decide
Speaker 1: I'm going to go try to do that. There have
Speaker 1: been people who have drowned trying to hold their breath
Speaker 1: in the pool, Like people who are practicing, like say
Speaker 1: they want to be a good surfer or a good
Speaker 1: diver or something, and they practice holding their breath. If
Speaker 1: you want to do that, you need a buddy. You
Speaker 1: need to be there with someone, because if you do
Speaker 1: that alone, you can lose consciousness and drown, which and
Speaker 1: it has happened really sadly. But yeah, to work your
Speaker 1: way up to that long it takes I would imagine
Speaker 1: years and years of practice. And you know it's not
Speaker 1: it's like any kind of like you can't just like
Speaker 1: lift an enormous weight because you decide to try really
Speaker 1: hard one day but you know it is true that
Speaker 1: with like you can responsibly trained to hold your breath
Speaker 1: for longer, with a coach or someone to spot you,
Speaker 1: or just on a thing to couch, a fainting couch.
Speaker 1: That's what they were invented for.
Speaker 3: To hold your breath in the Victorian age.
Speaker 1: Anyways, we're gonna take a quick break and when we
Speaker 1: get back, we're gonna talk about penguin micro sleeps. All right,
Speaker 1: we are back, and Jeff, penguins are cute.
Speaker 3: Right, I think that, well sort of. There's that one
Speaker 3: with the red eyes and the yellow.
Speaker 1: Hair like a rock hopper penguin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna say no that that's an ugly
Speaker 3: ass penguin.
Speaker 1: Well, chin strap penguins are some of the cutest penguins.
Speaker 1: They They are these little guys who live on islands
Speaker 1: near the Antarctic or Southern Pacific Ocean waters. They have
Speaker 1: this characteristic strap of black feathers that go under their chin,
Speaker 1: and then they also have like a black cap on
Speaker 1: their heads, so it looks like they're wearing like a
Speaker 1: little black helmet with like a chin strap.
Speaker 3: It looks like they have little cartoon faces.
Speaker 1: They're adorable and I must have one. I must, I
Speaker 1: must illegally acquire this penguin. So uh, they they are adorable.
Speaker 1: Uh and they are, but they're they're not the biggest penguins.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And they have a lot of stuff to worry about.
Speaker 1: So how do they get a good night's sleep? Well,
Speaker 1: there was some research by Leborel a all, sorry, let
Speaker 1: me do that again because I got too French with
Speaker 1: that Liborel at all, who strapped sensors onto the chin straps.
Speaker 1: So they already got their chin straps. Now they got
Speaker 1: sensor straps. These are strapped strap penguins.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And they measured their brain activity and motion. They used
Speaker 1: like this remote electro encephalogram uh. And they found that
Speaker 1: the penguins engaged in my grow sleeps, which were four
Speaker 1: second long bouts of dozing, so like four second naps
Speaker 1: around ten thousand times a day.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, like in my head, I'm like is there,
Speaker 3: I'm like doing the medal? Are there forty thousand seconds?
Speaker 1: Yeah? That's forty no, no, yeah, there are forty thousand
Speaker 1: seconds in a day because this is about eleven hours
Speaker 1: of tiny naps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's ninety thousand seconds in a day. Roughly. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 3: that map is probably wrong.
Speaker 1: Math No, that sounds right ish almost sure almost so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: forty thousand seconds of tiny naps, which is about eleven
Speaker 1: hours total of tiny naps. And so this is really interesting,
Speaker 1: right because you'd think, like, well, but sleep in order
Speaker 1: to be good sleep, you need like long sleep. You
Speaker 1: need to like really kind of get into it. You
Speaker 1: can't just have like little tiny sleeps.
Speaker 3: Well like little Einstein's right line stegns, wasn't that his thing?
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, little naps, little cat naps, that's.
Speaker 3: True, called catnaps, penguin naps.
Speaker 1: We should call them penguin naps.
Speaker 3: I guess sittin chaps. Chin strap penguin nap.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like a really fast one that's like head
Speaker 1: down on the table and then you lift it back
Speaker 1: up so fast you get whiplash.
Speaker 3: So that means that you fell asleep and then hit
Speaker 3: the table.
Speaker 1: And then you're like, that's a chin strap nap. So,
Speaker 1: uh the yeah, they found that these penguins were still
Speaker 1: able to successfully nest, forage all the normal penguin behaviors. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the question is, well, why are they doing these
Speaker 1: micro sleeps rather than like just a full night of
Speaker 1: sleep or even like an hour nap at a time.
Speaker 1: The idea is that this might be too risky for
Speaker 1: the little penguins because the way that they they protect
Speaker 1: their offspring is they have, like you have a couple
Speaker 1: of parents that they're both looking after the egg and
Speaker 1: the chick, and so one has to like incubate the
Speaker 1: egg or keep the chick warm and protect it while
Speaker 1: the other one goes out and forge, and then they
Speaker 1: have to switch off. And so there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of time for napping in that situation, especially when you
Speaker 1: have rampaging birds like scuas who go around trying to
Speaker 1: steal eggs or chicks right from underneath these penguins. And
Speaker 1: so the penguins must be vigilant at almost all times,
Speaker 1: and even the adults have their fair share predators like
Speaker 1: leopard seals. So they've got to protect their egg, they
Speaker 1: got to protect their chick, and they have to go
Speaker 1: out and forge for like two you know, for their
Speaker 1: partner and for their chick. So it's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff going on. So like the best way it seems
Speaker 1: for them to get their rest are these four second naps,
Speaker 1: little micro naps, little micropsunds.
Speaker 3: Delightful.
Speaker 1: It does. I feel like human, like new human parents
Speaker 1: would be really envious of these micro sleeps.
Speaker 3: This is how I sleep on planes, by the way.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh it's so weird man. Plane sleep where
Speaker 1: you fall asleep and then you wake up and you're
Speaker 1: like that must have been an hour and you look
Speaker 1: at the clock and it's like that was five minutes.
Speaker 3: Three minutes. Yeah, yeah, I always think I can, Like
Speaker 3: whenever I would go home, I used to take the
Speaker 3: Red Eye and I would be like, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: going to sleep on the plane. This time. It turns
Speaker 3: out I'm too big to sleep. Yeah, Like there's no
Speaker 3: comfort when you're when you're of a certain height, like
Speaker 3: you can't comfortably sleep, there's no like you're it messes
Speaker 3: every part of your body up. And I was so
Speaker 3: stupid I forget every time, so all of my sleepes
Speaker 3: would be like me falling asleeping and wake up and
Speaker 3: be like that was eight seconds. Yeah, that was an
Speaker 3: eight second.
Speaker 1: I very much sympathize. I am a small and compact person,
Speaker 1: so I can sleep on planes. But my husband is not,
Speaker 1: and he he has a lot of trouble just even
Speaker 1: kind of like sitting planes are really like made for
Speaker 1: us sort of average smaller folk, which I think is unfair.
Speaker 3: It's like turn of the century Eastern European factory workers, right,
Speaker 3: Like that's exactly like that's when I was like house
Speaker 3: shopping back in Massachusetts, Like that's who the houses were
Speaker 3: made for half the time. So I like wouldn't fit
Speaker 3: in the room because I'd be like this is for
Speaker 3: where the tallest person was five to nine, And I'd
Speaker 3: be like, that's fair. I can't walk through this house.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to pay money for it, right, same
Speaker 3: thing with planes, Like it's tough. These penguins, however, they
Speaker 3: would do great. The imagine getting on a plane and
Speaker 3: it was just a sea of those penguins in each
Speaker 3: season would.
Speaker 1: Smell horrible, but I'd love it.
Speaker 3: Like probably it would probably be very cold in there.
Speaker 1: It would smell like rotting fish, probably like fish arts essentially.
Speaker 3: Like a Spirit airline, just like.
Speaker 1: Spirit airlines, so it wouldn't be that different actually, So yeah,
Speaker 1: that is an amazing superpower that these chin strap penguins have.
Speaker 1: I'm incredibly jealous, and I'm actually a very good napper,
Speaker 1: but my naps tend to be longer, like about an
Speaker 1: hour at least at a time, like I wish I
Speaker 1: could do really short naps. I'm sorry, I love napping
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 3: If the sun is out, I'm awake, Like, for example,
Speaker 3: like I woke up at five thirty this morning, not
Speaker 3: by choice, but I because I'm an early morning person,
Speaker 3: and once if the sun peaks through my window, my
Speaker 3: brain is immediately like you're up. And I've tried.
Speaker 1: I'm a little jealous of that. I have struggle a
Speaker 1: lot with like maintaining a good sleep schedule.
Speaker 3: I don't have a good sleep schedule. Lessons like you know,
Speaker 3: I found it out. I found that out I had
Speaker 3: done during college. I got two good paying jobs that
Speaker 3: were on opposite ends of the day. I was so
Speaker 3: at night, I was a doc worker, so I was
Speaker 3: a forklift operator basically from like six pm till ten pm,
Speaker 3: and then I was a mail sorter the next morning.
Speaker 3: Every and I would have to arrive at four am
Speaker 3: to the post office. And I was like, well, I'll
Speaker 3: just sleep four hours at night and then four hours
Speaker 3: during the day. And that's when I found out, like, oh,
Speaker 3: I've never actually slept during the day. Yeah, And I
Speaker 3: would try, and I did it, and I legitimately like
Speaker 3: went I started hallucinating. Oh god, I would see like motion,
Speaker 3: like like mailboxes would look like they were running out
Speaker 3: into the street while I was driving. It was crazy.
Speaker 1: Well some of them do do that, like you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like cartoon Ones. Yeah yeah, it was like yeah
Speaker 3: one sometimes. But yeah, so that was that was how
Speaker 3: I found that out. So I'm jealous. Anytime you mentioned
Speaker 3: somebody being able to nap, I'm super super jealous because
Speaker 3: I'm like, I wish I could do that.
Speaker 1: We got to like inject you with some like uh
Speaker 1: chin strap NA.
Speaker 3: Penguin DNA. Yeah, of man have penguin. Yeah, I think
Speaker 3: that would just be the penguin.
Speaker 1: Right, You'd just be the penguin, but instead of like
Speaker 1: kidnapping people, you would just be napping in your house.
Speaker 3: Wave the kids out of it.
Speaker 1: Well, before we go, we got to play a little
Speaker 1: game called Guess Who's squawk in the Mystery Animal Sound game.
Speaker 1: Every week I play a mystery sound that you the listener,
Speaker 1: and you the guests, try to guess who is making
Speaker 1: that sound. Last week's mystery animal sound hint was this,
Speaker 1: don't add this fuzzy fellow to your fruit salad. All right,
Speaker 1: So you said you think you know the answer, can
Speaker 1: you I do?
Speaker 3: Is this a Southern Hemisphere animal?
Speaker 1: Uh? Yes?
Speaker 3: Is it a bird?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Is it a kiwi?
Speaker 1: It is? Indeed? Good job, awesome. Congratulations to the fastest
Speaker 1: three gissers, Michael D, Jared M and Grant W.
Speaker 3: Good fun story. I eat kiwi fruit with the skin on.
Speaker 3: Oh what Yeah, I wash the skin and then I
Speaker 3: eat it. It's very tart and so it actually mixes
Speaker 3: really well with the sweetness of.
Speaker 1: The kiwi is fuzzy, man, that.
Speaker 3: Doesn't matter, So what no like honestly though, I know
Speaker 3: people probably think I'm a psychopath. I eat kiwis like
Speaker 3: a little apple, and I gotta tell you, the tartness
Speaker 3: of the skin mixed with the sweetness of the kiwi
Speaker 3: is so gosh darn delicious. And nobody's got like everybody
Speaker 3: listening to this is grossed out by it. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: I'm telling you it's amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, you'll get no argument for me that
Speaker 1: tartness is good. The hairiness, man, it's quick. I can't
Speaker 1: even deal with hair on a peach let alone a kiwi.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, if you can't handle a peach, then yeah,
Speaker 3: this is not for you.
Speaker 1: Makes my teeth feel bad, like you like scraped the
Speaker 1: peach with your front teeth. It makes me want to
Speaker 1: rip my teeth out of my skull.
Speaker 3: I like it.
Speaker 1: I hate that low Anyways, this is a key.
Speaker 3: We you're like Anyways, It's like mochi. Mochi is basically
Speaker 3: ice cream covered in people's skin.
Speaker 1: It's the I can't do it. I can't do the
Speaker 1: texture of mochi either.
Speaker 3: So there's something that is skin that is people skin
Speaker 3: like people. They have approximated people's skin in the exact perfect.
Speaker 1: Way they are. They look good, but they feel bad
Speaker 1: in the mouth for me. So yeah. Kiwi birds which
Speaker 1: I would not put in my mouth because of the fuzziness. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is fantastic audio of a Kiwi call, which is
Speaker 1: very hard to on camera. This is captured by the
Speaker 1: Russell Nature Walks. It took them like three years to
Speaker 1: get this on video. I'll have the link in the
Speaker 1: show notes. This is a male Kiwi calling for his mate.
Speaker 1: Kiwis are from New Zealand. They are flightless birds with fuzzy,
Speaker 1: downy feathers and long beaks. They are actually related to
Speaker 1: ostriches EMUs and rheas, and they are the smallest of
Speaker 1: these group of birds which are called rat heites. They
Speaker 1: weigh only around five to six pounds, which is roughly
Speaker 1: two to three kilograms, and they have the largest egg
Speaker 1: to body size ratio. Their eggs weigh over half a pound,
Speaker 1: which is around fifteen percent of the kiwi's total body weight.
Speaker 1: So you know, I hope that beautiful song that the
Speaker 1: male is singing was worth lady Kiwi's for that whole process.
Speaker 3: That was like me with my mom. Oh god, I'm
Speaker 3: so tiny, and I came out pounds nine and a half.
Speaker 1: Oundsh ah, your mom's like the human kiwi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my mom like like non pregnant. My mom weighed
Speaker 3: under one hundred pounds. Oh man, I came out ten
Speaker 3: nine and a half. That's a crime.
Speaker 1: You're just like the alien chest burster.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I did actually get you could kind of.
Speaker 3: I got my foot caught in her rib so you
Speaker 3: could see like the like a little indentation of a
Speaker 3: foot at one point in time. So like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: guess that's probably pretty accurate. No, it's bad, it's bad.
Speaker 3: My mom. My mother is a saint for giving birth
Speaker 3: to me, because you was just like.
Speaker 1: Do you just reign presence upon her on Mother's Day?
Speaker 1: Just complete like she's a florist.
Speaker 3: Mother's Day is a bad day for her. Oh no,
Speaker 3: but her gift is that she gets to make the sacrifice.
Speaker 3: My mom loves loves being like a martyr. So like
Speaker 3: the fact that she gets to sacrifice her Mother's day
Speaker 3: for all of the other mothers, Well, it's the best
Speaker 3: kiss gift she could have ever gotten.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess, uh, I guess you kind of have
Speaker 1: to be a martyr tod cut to uh be a
Speaker 1: human kiwi bird. I mean that very respectfully and respectfully.
Speaker 3: So that's that is very true. She's great. She makes
Speaker 3: that exact same call, and she taught me.
Speaker 1: It's it's a beautiful call. Onto this week's mystery animal sound.
Speaker 1: The hint is this, these are the best friends to
Speaker 1: have in a gorilla style snowball fight. All right. Any
Speaker 1: guesses when.
Speaker 3: You said gorilla style you said g U E r
Speaker 3: I or is that like a homonym thing that we're
Speaker 3: doing right there?
Speaker 1: No gorilla style like warfare, not talking about gorillas the animal.
Speaker 3: Okay, Because I was going to say from the hint,
Speaker 3: only I would have said a Japanese macake or cock.
Speaker 3: I forget what that monkeys are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but no it's not not gorilla like like, okay,
Speaker 1: it is not a gorilla. I'll give you that played
Speaker 1: the sound one more time, Yes, yes I can.
Speaker 3: I don't know that. The best guess I had was
Speaker 3: Japanese macachu.
Speaker 1: That is a very good guest. Well, we will find
Speaker 1: out next time on Creature Feature who is making this sound?
Speaker 1: If you think you know out there, you can write
Speaker 1: to me at Creature Feature pot at GML dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also write to me your questions, your pictures
Speaker 1: of animals, your pets, whatever. Jeff, where can on people
Speaker 1: find you?
Speaker 3: Well, you can find me across all social media, including
Speaker 3: my YouTube at hate Their Jeff Row. I do a
Speaker 3: lot of really neat stuff. I mean, obviously we brought
Speaker 3: up Jeff has cool friends. I do the great show
Speaker 3: Tom and Jeff watch Batman with Tom Ryman, Yeah, game employed.
Speaker 3: I do a lot of shows with Adam Todd Brown
Speaker 3: on that you Don't Even Like podcast network, such as
Speaker 3: you Don't Even Like Sports, which is a sports podcast
Speaker 3: for people that hate sports.
Speaker 1: Lots of fun that ironie, it's a lot.
Speaker 3: It's most of our fans, It's why we did Why
Speaker 3: We did that show Jeff has Cool Friends. If you
Speaker 3: listen to that, you can also hear the Amazing Nerd
Speaker 3: with Dre Alvarez, which is also under the Jeff Has
Speaker 3: Cool Friends umbrella, and at patreon dot com slash Jeff May,
Speaker 3: you can act early access to unsunsed episodes with bonus content,
Speaker 3: including the exclusive ug Fine with Kim Krawl. So that's podcast.
Speaker 3: If you want to see me live and you live
Speaker 3: in southern California, I do a Mint on Card, which
Speaker 3: is my live stand up show, and a toy store
Speaker 3: and Blast in the Past on Magnolia in Burbank, California.
Speaker 3: I also open packs of trading cards. It's so fun, Katie.
Speaker 3: I opened packs of trading cards on camera every Wednesday
Speaker 3: at two o'clock Pacific on my YouTube at Hey there,
Speaker 3: Jeff Row on a show I call I Must Break.
Speaker 1: You luck Man. I would love to watch videos of
Speaker 1: people just like cutting soap up into little pieces. So
Speaker 1: oh that sounds great.
Speaker 3: Oh the sounds yeah. So there is an ASMR aspect
Speaker 3: when you open up a pack of trading cards as well,
Speaker 3: But like man, just it's so fun opening those cards
Speaker 3: and I give them away to follow up my Patreon.
Speaker 3: But it's just so fun, like it's just this glory
Speaker 3: of it's like the first childhood form of gambling.
Speaker 1: God as a kid, because you're like that it is
Speaker 1: actually it's like literally gambling though. That's the thing is,
Speaker 1: it's like it is actually gambling, but you know, but
Speaker 1: for Pokemon or whatever other trading cards. Yeah, that sounds fantastic.
Speaker 1: Do check those out. Jeff is a fantastic podcaster. And
Speaker 1: if you enjoy any of those shows, thank Jeff's mother
Speaker 1: for giving birth to a frighteningly large baby.
Speaker 3: My poor mother, Katie. It was a blast having you on.
Speaker 3: You're an absolute delight and even though we are across
Speaker 3: the world, I'm glad we are so yes right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and thank you so much for coming on, And
Speaker 1: thank you guys out there for listening. If you're enjoying
Speaker 1: the show and you leave a rating and review, that
Speaker 1: is that really helps the podcast and I read every
Speaker 1: single review. Hope you're all having a great winter time,
Speaker 1: and thank you so much to the Space Cossacks for
Speaker 1: their super awesome song Xolumina. I hope you're all cozy
Speaker 1: out there ready for your winter Hibernation, Happy Creature, Kringled
Speaker 1: Times Everyone, and uh go hug a Bear, Don't do that.
Speaker 1: Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like
Speaker 1: the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or Hey, guess what more? Have you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite show? I don't judge you. Just sip on your
Speaker 1: hot coco, watch the snow or the rain or basically
Speaker 1: nothing fall down outside, and get all cuddling cozy and
Speaker 1: I'll see you next Wednesday