Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Mini Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show Screaming Yeah, Animals that scream,
Speaker 1: Animals that's sing, Animals that scream an sing from the
Speaker 1: teeniest tiniest screams to some of the loudest owls in
Speaker 1: the animal kingdom. Discover this some more as we answer
Speaker 1: the age old question how much would you pay for
Speaker 1: your own personal security system? Would you pay them in blood?
Speaker 1: Joining me today is friend of the Pod, co host
Speaker 1: of George Center and Lower after Hours, Will Pull aka
Speaker 1: Christy Ever got you mean?
Speaker 2: Welcome? Thank you for having me again, Katie. I think
Speaker 2: this is my third time on here. I'm a three peter.
Speaker 2: I'm super excited.
Speaker 1: That's right. Should be receiving in the male of fruit basket?
Speaker 2: Oh good, yeah? Good? Now what kind of fruit should
Speaker 2: I expect? Well, you know, citing like a tally up
Speaker 2: a pineapple. Okay, I just.
Speaker 1: Get an apple, a regular apple. It's actually about just
Speaker 1: an apple, an apple in it?
Speaker 2: Is there an actual basket or are you just mailing
Speaker 2: me a single apple with a stamp on it?
Speaker 1: It's it's an apple wrapped in an appkin. Okay, and
Speaker 1: then once you get to five yeah, once you get
Speaker 1: to five episodes, it'll be an apple tied to a banana.
Speaker 2: Tied to a banana? How okay? All right? I was
Speaker 2: curious how you were going to fasten it. That seems
Speaker 2: difficult and I don't think that's going to survive the postage,
Speaker 2: but I appreciate your effort.
Speaker 1: And uh, ten episodes in, I'll thrown thrown a handful
Speaker 1: of grapes. So get excited.
Speaker 2: I cannot. I cannot wait for for the rotten fruit
Speaker 2: to show up in the mailbox. So excited for this.
Speaker 1: So did you know that animals screw sometimes?
Speaker 2: So the when I think of animals screaming. We used
Speaker 2: to have a pet, pot belly pig, and when I
Speaker 2: would try to get his name was Spud. And whenever
Speaker 2: I would try to get Spud to cooperate with me,
Speaker 2: whenever I'd have to pick him up, that little dude,
Speaker 2: it's the wildest, most blood curdling scream you have ever heard.
Speaker 2: I don't know if your listeners are familiar with the
Speaker 2: sound like a pig makes, or just how loud they
Speaker 2: can get but it's it's incredible, and the first time
Speaker 2: it happened, it startled me so so much like it uh,
Speaker 2: it completely uh catches you off guard.
Speaker 1: I feel like pig screams too, are uncannily humanoid in
Speaker 1: a way that's really it's you can distinguish it from
Speaker 1: a human scream, but there's a definitely a humanoid aspect
Speaker 1: to it that's very unsettling.
Speaker 2: I agree. I agree. Similar to those goats, the compilations
Speaker 2: yea oats that scream. Some of my favorite videos are
Speaker 2: when people take like metal songs or heavy music and
Speaker 2: then they put the goat screams as the tracks to it.
Speaker 2: It's so good.
Speaker 1: There's one the let the Bodies hit the floor, Let
Speaker 1: the bodies hit the floor with animals sounds, and they've
Speaker 1: got like a screaming kackatoo a goat in there, kucka burrah.
Speaker 1: It's really good. I love it. It's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite videos.
Speaker 2: Fantastic I've heard. I think the one that comes to
Speaker 2: mind as I think there's a system of a down
Speaker 2: mashup with like the song Chop Suey and yeah, the
Speaker 2: screaming goats.
Speaker 1: That's really good. Yeah, No, that's that's incredible. I love that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, like, there are a lot of animals.
Speaker 1: We know that they can make loud sounds, sometimes they
Speaker 1: can scream. But I think something that is is potentially
Speaker 1: surprising to people is that in sex can also scream.
Speaker 1: In fact, bees can scream for help, which is cute
Speaker 1: and terrifying.
Speaker 2: It is it is, and I imagine these screams are
Speaker 2: inaudible to the human ear.
Speaker 1: That's not necessarily true. So remember the Asian murder hornets
Speaker 1: that we were freaking out about, I think kind of
Speaker 1: near the beginning of the pandemic. So we got a
Speaker 1: little bit sidetracked there, but.
Speaker 2: Absolutely the the the uh man, what a pleasant thought
Speaker 2: like that that the murder hornets were back before the
Speaker 2: world completely had gone Yeah. That that that's a that's
Speaker 2: a that's almost like a nice thing to reminisce on.
Speaker 1: Now. Yeah, we were like, oh, we gotta worry about
Speaker 1: these giant bees and then oops, no, that wasn't it. No, No,
Speaker 1: we were ye, but yeah, so so there was some uh,
Speaker 1: some worry and still some worry about them because they
Speaker 1: were found in North America and our North American bees
Speaker 1: are woefully unprepared for the presence of these giant hornets
Speaker 1: because they are very adept at murdering and ripping a
Speaker 1: bee colony to shreds, to literal shreds. They dismember the
Speaker 1: bodies of these poor little honeybees. But of course these
Speaker 1: are invasive species, and when you go to their native
Speaker 1: territory in Asian countries, Asian honey bees have actually evolved
Speaker 1: a number of coping strategies for dealing with these giant
Speaker 1: murder hornets. So one of these strategies is a honey
Speaker 1: curdling scream. So obviously you may have an image of
Speaker 1: like b movie Jerry Seinfeld screaming into the camera with
Speaker 1: his weird little cgi bee teeth, which I hate so much.
Speaker 2: What's with all these murders?
Speaker 1: You murdy my whole my whole family. What's that you're
Speaker 1: digesting my body parts?
Speaker 2: Okay, you do a much better Jerry Seinfeld impression than
Speaker 2: I do. And by buy better, I mean it's terrible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's bad. Good, it's bad. Don't worry. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be bad.
Speaker 2: That's what makes it so good, That's what makes it good.
Speaker 1: So don't worry. Though, beads do not scream with their mouths.
Speaker 1: They actually scream with their butts.
Speaker 2: We's somehow I knew it was gonna be the butt,
Speaker 2: and it still surprised me when you say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's always the butt, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It is it with insects. Yes, everything happens with the butt.
Speaker 1: Everything, everything, all the time. You know that sign in
Speaker 1: that Japanese amusement park that went viral like a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago where it was like, please scream inside
Speaker 1: your heart because it was at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: pandemic and it was like they didn't want people to
Speaker 1: scream and release a bunch of saliva everywhere, so it
Speaker 1: was please scream inside of your heart to write while
Speaker 1: writing this roller coaster.
Speaker 2: I missed that somehow, But that's such a beautiful and
Speaker 2: poetic like I feel like a lot of people are
Speaker 2: screaming inside of their heart at all times these days. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: evergreen sign.
Speaker 1: Yes for the bees, it's actually please scream with your butt.
Speaker 1: So they point their posteriors in the air and beat
Speaker 1: their wings against their abdomen while running. So it's like
Speaker 1: if you were terrified, you like pointed your butt in
Speaker 1: the air and started slapping your thighs and then screaming
Speaker 1: as you ran.
Speaker 2: Damn. Okay, so I was picturing an ace ventura moment
Speaker 2: where the bee is bent over, like spreading the butt
Speaker 2: and talking out of its butt. So not an ace ventura, no.
Speaker 1: No, more like you're running with your butt in the
Speaker 1: air while you're slapping it, and your slaps are so
Speaker 1: loud they sound like a scream. So yeah, So this
Speaker 1: causes a high pitched shrieking sound.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's similar to how stridulation and other insects like crickets,
Speaker 1: will stridulate by rubbing things against their abdomen. For the bees,
Speaker 1: it's the beating of the wings against their abdomen that
Speaker 1: creates this percussive sound that is at such a high
Speaker 1: frequency it sounds like a scream, and it alerts other
Speaker 1: Asian honey bees to the presence of a giant hornet.
Speaker 1: It's also used to warn its comrades of other types
Speaker 1: of hornets, like the Vespa sore hornet, which is another
Speaker 1: large hornet who is very similar to the giant hornet,
Speaker 1: also hunts and packs and attacks beehives. So they've got
Speaker 1: a few hornet species to worry about, these poor honey bees.
Speaker 1: But the most unsettling thing about this scream is how
Speaker 1: eerily human like it sounds. So researcher doctor Heather Medela
Speaker 1: said to The New York Times quote, I would get
Speaker 1: chills and start to worry about them. Even though the
Speaker 1: recordings are from years ago and the bees are long dead.
Speaker 1: There's something very human and recognizable in the sounds.
Speaker 2: So that's spooky.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Unfortunately, I looked. I tried to find audio of
Speaker 1: the bee screams. I couldn't find it. I'll keep looking
Speaker 1: and if I find it, I will definitely share with
Speaker 1: you guys, but it'll too Yeah.
Speaker 2: I wonder if you did you happen to learn whether
Speaker 2: the screams were distinct depending on the type of hornet
Speaker 2: attacking the colony.
Speaker 1: That's a really good question. I don't know if there
Speaker 1: are individual screams for this species of hornet, but there's
Speaker 1: definitely an alarm call. I think that means hornet intruder.
Speaker 1: But that's a I mean, that's a really good question.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be too shocked if they had different kinds
Speaker 1: of sounds for different types of threats, but as far
Speaker 1: as I know, there's sort of one general. Hey, there's
Speaker 1: a hornet it's going to decapitate us. This is bad,
Speaker 1: sort of right, but drumming and.
Speaker 2: Do these honey bees. I've seen video before where bees
Speaker 2: will swarm a hornet, yes, and overheat the hornet basically
Speaker 2: like using their wings to increase their body temperature to
Speaker 2: the point where it can't survive.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely correct. This is the other tactic that
Speaker 1: these Asian honey bees will use. It's a remarkable behavior
Speaker 1: because they will cover the hornet and just like they
Speaker 1: just like you said, they will actually boil it alive.
Speaker 1: And they do that by vibe rating their abdomens, which
Speaker 1: generates this friction in a high enough temperature to cook
Speaker 1: the hornet in the middle of their tactical wash pit.
Speaker 1: And they also by forming that ball I think they
Speaker 1: increase CO two levels, which also basically, if the boiling
Speaker 1: doesn't kill them, they suffocate it. And it is incredible.
Speaker 1: They actually have one more fun anti hornet tactic, and
Speaker 1: that is collecting animal dung and spreading it onto the
Speaker 1: entrance of their hive to ward off hornets. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of gross, but it's remarkable because bees are very fastidious.
Speaker 1: They're very clean. They even poop outside of their own
Speaker 1: hives because they want to keep things as clean and
Speaker 1: tidy as possible. They want to protect their delicate larvae
Speaker 1: from pathogens. So the fact that they were bringing poop
Speaker 1: to their hive was really confusing to researchers, seemed very counterintuitive.
Speaker 1: But sure, by placing the animal dung at the entrance,
Speaker 1: it actually wards off these hornets with a foul smell,
Speaker 1: and it's called fecal spotting. And they'll just take basically
Speaker 1: little bits of dung from all sorts of different animals
Speaker 1: and like put it sort of like a just's kind
Speaker 1: of like paint with it, very artistically, like Bob Ross, Like,
Speaker 1: now we wanna we want to put the I want
Speaker 1: to put the bear diarrhea right here. That's some nice
Speaker 1: bear diarrhea that'll really ward off those wasps. And oh
Speaker 1: and here's some here's some bobcat dung. We're gonna put
Speaker 1: the bobcat dung, and it's gonna make this really nice
Speaker 1: kind of fresco.
Speaker 2: Happy happy little logs, happy, happy.
Speaker 1: Little happy little turds.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I'm just I'm just saying I've never thought
Speaker 2: about this as like a security tactic. But if I
Speaker 2: went and collected the dog poop in my backyard and
Speaker 2: smeared it all over the front door of my house.
Speaker 2: I would not have to worry about anything showing up
Speaker 2: on my front porch. That would absolutely not. No one's
Speaker 2: visiting me. I'm not getting any packages also, so that
Speaker 2: would you know, that'd be unfortunate. But also home intruders.
Speaker 2: Nobody is going to break into my house if they
Speaker 2: start to come in or try to pry in the
Speaker 2: front door. You don't need security systems. You don't need
Speaker 2: these ring doorbells or you know, weapons for to protect
Speaker 2: your home. Just smear poop all over your front door
Speaker 2: and the entrance way. By the way, it's brilliant.
Speaker 1: This podcast is sponsored by Pooh Safe, a cheap, alternative
Speaker 1: and eco friendly solution to protecting your home.
Speaker 2: It's absolutely recycle that poop. Get out there, you know,
Speaker 2: collect it from your neighbors will love you if you're
Speaker 2: collecting their dog poop for your protection. Well they it's
Speaker 2: a wind for everybody.
Speaker 1: Well they, I sure love my neighbor who smears my
Speaker 1: dog's poop on their door.
Speaker 2: I I mean, if you know what, like, once it
Speaker 2: leaves my yard, I don't care what happens to it. Necessarily.
Speaker 2: And also I don't have to visit them. No, I
Speaker 2: don't have to to you know, uh, you know, be
Speaker 2: neighborly or anything. I still think it's I think it's
Speaker 2: a net positive or a net positive overall. Should I say.
Speaker 1: Yes? A good way to clear out guests too, Just
Speaker 1: start like, you know, laying down poop on the floor.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, this is what I do it midnight,
Speaker 1: so you might want to mosey on. This may seem drastic,
Speaker 1: right for the bees to smear poop all over their
Speaker 1: beautiful hive entrance, but if you had to face these
Speaker 1: hornets down, these hornets that are more than three times
Speaker 1: your size, you would probably scream with your butt and
Speaker 1: smear animal hung around too. So just a quick quick
Speaker 1: overview of these hornets. The giant hornets or otherwise known
Speaker 1: as the Asian murder hornets, as well as the vespers
Speaker 1: or hornets, are very formidable foes and they can decimate
Speaker 1: a honeybee colony. Just decapitate a bunch of bees, and
Speaker 1: you know they're rapid berserkers of bees. They will often
Speaker 1: attack impacts and chop up their victims into bite sized
Speaker 1: pieces that they carry back to their hornet hive where
Speaker 1: they feed the body parts to their larvae like they're
Speaker 1: feeding it into a wood chipper.
Speaker 2: So the adults such a brutal description. God, this is horrifying.
Speaker 2: I feel like like that scientists said, she feels horrible.
Speaker 2: She like can can feel the connection listening to those recordings,
Speaker 2: I'm empathizing with these bees right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just based on the horror that they go through. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The reason they have this, like using the baby as
Speaker 1: the wood chipper technique is that adult hornets cannot eat
Speaker 1: solid food, you know those that those hourglass figures that
Speaker 1: they have to keep with that very thin waste. Food
Speaker 1: cannot pass through that that is any any thicker than
Speaker 1: a liquid. So the adults chew up the body parts
Speaker 1: and then spit this paste into the larva's mouths, and
Speaker 1: then the larva digest it and create this kind of
Speaker 1: like protein syrup, a protein shake, and then regurgitate that
Speaker 1: for the adults to eat. So you know what a
Speaker 1: cute family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, seriously, I want a sequel to B movie. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I want it. I want it done like a
Speaker 2: a like in a dramatic, like a drama. Yeah, just
Speaker 2: like a horror like drama style, completely serious, where we
Speaker 2: actually get to see the horrors of what it's like
Speaker 2: to be a bee and fend your family off from
Speaker 2: these wasps.
Speaker 1: I want a remake of Game of Thrones, but it's bees.
Speaker 1: And if you've listened to this podcast before, you know
Speaker 1: that bees and wasps really deal in themselves to Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones style dramatization. I mean, these hornets not only
Speaker 1: attack honeybees, but they even attack other hornet species. They
Speaker 1: even attack their own species, like if there's another hive
Speaker 1: of their own species, sometimes they'll go in and do
Speaker 1: red wedding style, kill everyone, but then also eat them.
Speaker 1: So yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: So they're they're hunting for their dinner.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, say, hey, you know sustainable. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: we did just talk about bees screaming with their butts
Speaker 1: and horror before getting murdered in terrible fashion. So I
Speaker 1: thought I'd lighten the moon with some singing lemurs.
Speaker 2: Cool singing mur like okay, so we're talking like Madagascar.
Speaker 1: Saw Yeah exactly. Prince Julian is that that character when
Speaker 1: he thinks? So yeah, I like to move it, move it,
Speaker 1: that whole thing. Yeah. Yes, the early two thousands called
Speaker 1: they want their sort of dated CGI movie back.
Speaker 2: A timely reference on I.
Speaker 1: Love it though, because you're absolutely right that lemurs are
Speaker 1: from Madagascar. So that movie where you see you know,
Speaker 1: you have these many species of lemurs all together. They
Speaker 1: may not do a whole dance number and singing number together,
Speaker 1: but indeed Madagascar is where you will find all of
Speaker 1: the world species of lemurs. And there are many cool,
Speaker 1: awesome species of lemur uh and one of them possibly
Speaker 1: one of the lesser known ones, but a incredible species
Speaker 1: that should be more famous is the injury or Baba Coodo.
Speaker 1: So the Injury is one of the largest lemurs in
Speaker 1: the world, like all lemurs, lives exclusively in Madagascar, and
Speaker 1: they are critically endangered, which is a shame because they
Speaker 1: are absolutely amazing. So these injury weigh up to about
Speaker 1: twenty pounds or nine point five kilograms and grow up
Speaker 1: to about twenty eight inches or seventy two centimeters long,
Speaker 1: so you know, bigger than a cat, maybe a medium
Speaker 1: sized dog. They are adorable. They look like teddy bears.
Speaker 1: They have black and white fur and yellow eyes. Their
Speaker 1: faces have this black, fluffy fur with these tufted black
Speaker 1: ears that look like an extra fluffy teddy bear and
Speaker 1: they have these short, stubby tails, which is very rare.
Speaker 1: In fact, they're the only lemurs that have lost their
Speaker 1: tails to this extent.
Speaker 2: So they look, Oh, that's unfortunate, that's cute. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: guess so. But if I was, if I'm a lemur,
Speaker 2: I want to tail to swing from, like that's one
Speaker 2: of the coolest things about you know, living in a
Speaker 2: tree for that.
Speaker 1: But they don't, as I'll discuss it, or they don't
Speaker 1: really need it. They do live in trees, but they
Speaker 1: don't need their tail, and there's an interesting explanation for that. Actually,
Speaker 1: they are so big that one of the main purposes
Speaker 1: of these tails for lemurs actually isn't to hang from trees. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is for stabilization. And this is true of a
Speaker 1: lot of primate species. It helps them stabilize. It's true
Speaker 1: they can uh. Primates that have prehensile tables, sorry, prehensile
Speaker 1: tails can wrap them around branches to hold on to things,
Speaker 1: or even use them to like grip things like leaves.
Speaker 1: They typically use it to balance their their leaps and
Speaker 1: their jumps and movement, and that's the same thing for lemurs.
Speaker 1: So lemurs like to leap from branch to branch, and
Speaker 1: they will use these tails as sort of almost like
Speaker 1: mid air rudders to help balance them as they glide.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, the bigger you get, the less
Speaker 1: a tail is going to do actually in terms of balance,
Speaker 1: and because the injury is so big, one of the
Speaker 1: biggest lemurs it is, these tails sort of become less useful.
Speaker 1: And there was some research done looking at how like
Speaker 1: tail masks basically no longer if they had a tail,
Speaker 1: it just wouldn't really help them stabilize their leaping.
Speaker 2: So it makes sense.
Speaker 1: Instead they have this cute little stubby tail that I think.
Speaker 2: What, how do you spell that again?
Speaker 1: Injury injury, I in dri or baba koto.
Speaker 2: There we go. Okay, oh my god, he is so cute. Okay,
Speaker 2: I was looking at the wrong time. Wow, you were
Speaker 2: not kidding about the Teddy Bear thing. Like the big
Speaker 2: he's almost got like a Mickey Mouse shaped outline of
Speaker 2: a face and ears. That's absurd.
Speaker 1: Lemurs are so absolutely adorable, like a cartoon Teddy Bear,
Speaker 1: extra fluffy cartoon Teddy Bear.
Speaker 2: Do these things blink? It doesn't look like they can
Speaker 2: blinky blink. Maybe I'm sure they can, but like it's
Speaker 2: the most high on methamphetamines, like the animal in the
Speaker 2: Animal Kingdom.
Speaker 1: It does look like they would win a staring contest
Speaker 1: with you easily, or like you would get one of
Speaker 1: these as a teddy bear and you'd sit it at
Speaker 1: the foot of your bed and wake up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night and it'd be staring at you.
Speaker 2: It looks like an animatronic, like that's you know, the
Speaker 2: the unblinking eyes of like a you know, showbiz pizza
Speaker 2: or Chuck E cheese or something. It gives off that
Speaker 2: vibe when I look at one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I see that. I think it's a creepy cute thing.
Speaker 1: Though it's like, yes, yeah, it's the I think it's
Speaker 1: because of the yellow eyes and little pupils. They look
Speaker 1: very alert. So despite maybe looking like a creepy animatronic
Speaker 1: sometimes or a cute animatronic, whatever your opinion, they are,
Speaker 1: their behavior is very cute. So they have little family units.
Speaker 1: They are monogamous and they stay in family groups, and
Speaker 1: they are very playful and like to wrestle for fun,
Speaker 1: especially females. Another wind for feminism, so they are extremely
Speaker 1: difficult to keep in captivity. They actually typically only last
Speaker 1: like a year in captivity, despite the fact that they
Speaker 1: can live up to eighteen years in the wild, and
Speaker 1: this is likely due to their extremely specialized diet that
Speaker 1: is very difficult to replicate. So they only seem to
Speaker 1: eat certain foods at certain times of days, and it's
Speaker 1: a variety of foods, so leaves, seeds, flowers, fruit, and bark.
Speaker 1: But they have this specialized diet where they eat a
Speaker 1: certain thing at a certain time of day and it
Speaker 1: helps them digest it better, which you just cannot replicate
Speaker 1: in captivity.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, yeah, too stressed out the follow their regimen probably, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, being handled by people or being in an
Speaker 2: enclosed environment. Yeah, that's I mean, that's I'm glad that
Speaker 2: they have realized that are these So they these aren't
Speaker 2: really kept. You can't see these anywhere but in the wild, basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, and they are one of the
Speaker 1: They are actually the only lemur that communicates through singing,
Speaker 1: and they are very musically talented, so their calls sort
Speaker 1: of sound like airhorn blasts. Not only are these calls loud,
Speaker 1: but they also follow musical patterns. So there was a
Speaker 1: study done at the University of turin Italy that found
Speaker 1: that their calls were used for a number of types
Speaker 1: of communication, to locate family, to establish territory, and to
Speaker 1: do sing offs with neighbors. And it can be either
Speaker 1: to establish a connection between neighbors, to communicate about mating
Speaker 1: or environmental conditions, territory boundaries, or warnings of predators. And
Speaker 1: it is actually interesting in that they seem to follow
Speaker 1: a musical pattern. So I'm gonna have you listen to
Speaker 1: a sample of some of these injuries singing. So this
Speaker 1: is actually, wow, a female singing with her mate and
Speaker 1: her son. So a little family, the von Trapp family
Speaker 1: singing group.
Speaker 2: So was that was that was one uh, like continuous
Speaker 2: song there or or samples from from many.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one continuous song.
Speaker 2: Oh cool, okay, okay, you were not kidding about the
Speaker 2: the air hoorn.
Speaker 1: Cow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like Jamaican airhorns, like you would hear
Speaker 2: it like, yeah, some reggaetone or something. Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 2: That's and and it also has like kind of a
Speaker 2: like a humpback whale quality to some of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I can hear that. Yeah. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's adorable because it's a family singing together, mother,
Speaker 1: father and son. And they often sing in duets, and
Speaker 1: I don't know if you noticed, but they were harmonizing there.
Speaker 1: They would have one singing one tone to the other
Speaker 1: in a slightly different tone, and singing together in these duets.
Speaker 1: And they have very flexible mouths and lips that can
Speaker 1: change the tone of these notes, so they, you know,
Speaker 1: do this like little what and so they can angle
Speaker 1: the tone. I'm not a musician, so I can't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of like the the Doppler effect, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can stretch and contract the size of the wave
Speaker 2: of the vibration coming out of your mouth, right exactly.
Speaker 2: That's so cool.
Speaker 1: And so researchers have studied these calls and found that
Speaker 1: they like to do them in a specific rhythm, a
Speaker 1: one to two ratio of beat patterns, which is actually
Speaker 1: the same type of beat pattern as found in Queens
Speaker 1: We Will Rock You, so the dun dukay dun dun dun,
Speaker 1: which is kind of interestingly musical. They also drag out
Speaker 1: the final notes of their calls, which is similar to
Speaker 1: in music when you have the retardando at the very end,
Speaker 1: where you kind of like slow down a piece of
Speaker 1: music dramatically. It seems like they do that and have
Speaker 1: this kind of flourish at the end, which is unusual
Speaker 1: for animals who use song to communicate. Typically, an animal
Speaker 1: either sticks to a pattern or they don't. They don't
Speaker 1: often like add little flourishes at the end of their song,
Speaker 1: which is very interesting, especially because Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna say, have they decoded why they
Speaker 2: do that?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. No, it's not necessarily known why
Speaker 1: they have that slow down at the end of songs.
Speaker 1: They know that they use these songs for a variety
Speaker 1: of communicy cation from anywhere to saying like hey, I'm
Speaker 1: an available mate, to hey this is our territory, or
Speaker 1: even like you know, communication like I'm over here. So
Speaker 1: there could be a purpose to that. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that it's known yet.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to pretend that it's it's just the
Speaker 2: just artist choice like they're making. They're making a decision
Speaker 2: there and and that's that's their signature style, you know. Ye,
Speaker 2: the way I write a song and I have a
Speaker 2: certain style to it. That's just there. That's their artistic interpretation,
Speaker 2: their their expression coming out.
Speaker 1: I mean, we got our appreciation from music from somewhere
Speaker 1: in our evolutionary history. Now, while we we did not
Speaker 1: evolve from lemurs, they are a primate. They are a
Speaker 1: cousin of ours, a distant cousin, a very distant one.
Speaker 1: But at some point, you know, primates had an appreciation
Speaker 1: for you know, rhythm and sound that became our human
Speaker 1: appreciation for music. So I do find that really interesting
Speaker 1: that we see another primate species, no matter how distantly
Speaker 1: related they are from us. They did branch off at
Speaker 1: a very early point in our revolution, but they have
Speaker 1: this appreciation for some kind of I mean to me,
Speaker 1: it is at the very least a predecessor to music,
Speaker 1: if not if you couldn't classify it as music. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a big fan of just musical air
Speaker 1: horn blasts. It's very festive. I kind of imagine them
Speaker 1: watching some European football together.
Speaker 2: Oh man, yeah, just breaking that out. Like I imagine
Speaker 2: they make that sound like they've eaten some fermented leaves
Speaker 2: or something, they've gotten a little tipsy around the holiday party,
Speaker 2: and then the air horne start going off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, I love it. Yeah, But like I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, they are critically endangered and conservation of the
Speaker 1: species is really really important. They can't be kept in captivity,
Speaker 1: so if their natural habitat goes, there is no way
Speaker 1: of preserving them or bringing their population back. And their
Speaker 1: habitat is threatened by deforestation and illegal mining of sapphires,
Speaker 1: which is a big problem in Madagascar. But before you
Speaker 1: get like mad at like these individual miners or something,
Speaker 1: the humans in Madagascar are suffering as well. They're being exploited.
Speaker 1: So these miners are often driven to do these extremely
Speaker 1: low paying, high intensity labor mining because you know, they're
Speaker 1: not getting enough food, they're not getting enough money, they
Speaker 1: can't feed their families, and even the local mine bosses
Speaker 1: aren't really paid that much compared to the money being
Speaker 1: made aid off of this illegal sapphire mining. Most of
Speaker 1: the money goes to the gym dealers and the retailers.
Speaker 1: So I think I'm bringing this up because I think
Speaker 1: it's often important to point out how exploitation of animals
Speaker 1: often goes hand in hand with exploitation of humans. So
Speaker 1: you know, you see that this beautiful species is being
Speaker 1: threatened by something like illegal mining, and I think sometimes
Speaker 1: people may react in this way of like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: being angry at these miners, Like don't they understand they're ignorant,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, no, they're also being exploited by
Speaker 1: this system. So it's really a systemic problem. It's not
Speaker 1: these poor people in Madagascar are just trying to make
Speaker 1: a living, who are the problem. It's this system that
Speaker 1: is causing this problem. So you know, it's important to
Speaker 1: have as much, if not more compassion for people as
Speaker 1: it is for when we're upset about animal being threatened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, direct direct the anger towards the the people that
Speaker 2: are are causing the most of it. It's like I recycle,
Speaker 2: I you know, I try not to use one use
Speaker 2: plastics and stuff. But then you know, it's it's the
Speaker 2: thing you see all the time, like look at the
Speaker 2: top one hundred most polluting corporations in the world, and
Speaker 2: it's like, there's not there's no amount of getting on
Speaker 2: the same page as a human population that can that
Speaker 2: can prevent the amount of CO two release as these
Speaker 2: corporations do. Exactly, So direct your ire at the appropriate
Speaker 2: uh people responsible exactly.
Speaker 1: Follow the money, follow it.
Speaker 2: Yes, always follow the money.
Speaker 1: So we talked about PHO safe earlier, right, the very
Speaker 1: environmentally friendly uh personal sort of home security system that
Speaker 1: rivals these other silly home security systems. Who's Safe Keeps
Speaker 1: protects your home twenty four to seven with the presence
Speaker 1: of foul smelling dung that you spread on your door.
Speaker 1: But I actually do have another home security system called
Speaker 1: Oxpecker Alert. It is an incredible, incredible technology of the
Speaker 1: red billed oxpeckers who can alert you to the presence
Speaker 1: of poachers of many mini meters away.
Speaker 2: Oxpecker is a very misleading name or something. I will
Speaker 2: say that much. I was I was not sure if
Speaker 2: this is going to be a bird or I did
Speaker 2: not know what kind of Okay, all right, moving away.
Speaker 1: Right, well, it is a bird. Before you finish that thought,
Speaker 1: the red billed oxpecker is a bird. It's a actually
Speaker 1: quite a pretty bird. Excellent ho would you describe this bird?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's a that's a gorgeous bird.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he's like a it's like a small tan
Speaker 1: and black bird with a yellow and red bill and
Speaker 1: these red eyes. Quite yeah, and beautiful and they like
Speaker 1: to hang out with some big friends zebras, hippos, giraffes,
Speaker 1: cattle and other large mammals of the savannah in Africa.
Speaker 1: So They even sit atop the fearsome rhino and nibble
Speaker 1: at ticks, botfly larvae and other pests. Love a good
Speaker 1: relationship there, Yeah, and it's a complicated relationship. It's really
Speaker 1: interesting because they do help their large companions by eating parasites,
Speaker 1: but they do occasionally peck little wounds into their host's
Speaker 1: skin and sip on their host's blood, which actually would
Speaker 1: make the birds themselves parasites. But there's kind of debate,
Speaker 1: right like, because you know, even though that itself is parasitic,
Speaker 1: they are also helping their hosts by getting rid of parasites.
Speaker 1: So it's like, well, do they do more harm than
Speaker 1: good or do they help more? And some of the
Speaker 1: A point in favor of the oxpecker not being a
Speaker 1: parasite but being in a mutualistic symbiotic relationship is the
Speaker 1: fact that they seem to protect black rhinos from poachers.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So black rhinos are big, tough, endangered animals with great
Speaker 1: smell and hearing, but very bad eyesight, and they are
Speaker 1: unfortunately often the victims of human poaching and they are
Speaker 1: critically endangered. So rhino researcher doctor Rohan Plots noticed that
Speaker 1: rhinos that were close enough for them to observe had
Speaker 1: no oxpeckers on their backs. They always seem to not
Speaker 1: have their little bird friends, and that made him wonder,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting coincidence. Maybe it's not a coincidence. So
Speaker 1: they did some observational studies that found that the oxpeckers
Speaker 1: helped alert the rhinos of a human's presence. So when
Speaker 1: the oxpeckers spot a human, they issue an alarm call,
Speaker 1: which is a hissing shriek, and the rhinos listen to
Speaker 1: this alarm call and we'll move away from the area.
Speaker 1: So these studies found that rhinos with oxpeckers are better
Speaker 1: at moving away from humans than rhinos without oxpeckers. And
Speaker 1: what's really interesting is the more oxpeckers they have, the
Speaker 1: better they are at being alerted. So one oxpecker is okay,
Speaker 1: but you got a whole group of five ox checkers
Speaker 1: all shrieking at your like, ah, geez, what's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah? One one one alarm on your front door is nice.
Speaker 2: But if you have all the windows uh hooked up
Speaker 2: and then your back door hooked up too, you're gonna
Speaker 2: that's you're gonna be even more safe.
Speaker 1: Exactly not. I mean, the the more alarms, the better
Speaker 1: carl alarms, air horns, everything bells.
Speaker 2: Yes, seriously, it's the home.
Speaker 1: Alone version of home security.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, seriously. I I love examples of species talking
Speaker 2: to each other. I absolutely loved. I heard a story
Speaker 2: a long time ago. I think it was on like
Speaker 2: an episode of Radio Lab or something where this this
Speaker 2: researcher tells the story of basically learning the distinct calls
Speaker 2: of monkeys and like eagles in I believe like South America,
Speaker 2: where they made distinct calls whenever a leopard was spotted.
Speaker 2: And he is walking through the jungle and it's starting
Speaker 2: to get you know, dusk out, and suddenly overhead he
Speaker 2: hears the distinct call. And as he's walking through the jungle,
Speaker 2: he you know, from from area to area they're making
Speaker 2: the call. He was basically being stalked by a leopard
Speaker 2: through this jungle. Yeah, he only he only knew about
Speaker 2: it because these other animals were making their call specific
Speaker 2: to the leopard. They they made a specific call just
Speaker 2: for the leopard. When there was when the monkeys were
Speaker 2: threatened by birds of prey like an eagle or something,
Speaker 2: then they would make a different different Yeah. Exactly. So
Speaker 2: that's how he knew that there was a leopard.
Speaker 1: Following him, right, Because it matters whether where the threat
Speaker 1: is coming from, if it's from the sky, if it's
Speaker 1: a leopard, it's coming from the ground, and knowing where
Speaker 1: and and the nature of that threat is very important
Speaker 1: both for animals and human eavesdroppers. That's an incredible story.
Speaker 1: I love that. I mean in that it's it. So
Speaker 1: it's so interesting about that story is the way that
Speaker 1: human used that those other animal alarm calls is exactly
Speaker 1: the way the rhino is using the bird's alarm call.
Speaker 1: Because there's no evidence that the birds are intentionally warning
Speaker 1: the rhino of this threat. It's not like the birds
Speaker 1: are like, hey, rhino, get out of the way. They're
Speaker 1: warning each other, Yeah, this is what they've evolved to
Speaker 1: have this alert system with each other to warn themselves
Speaker 1: of a threat. But the rhino has learned that this
Speaker 1: call means humans and will use that knowledge to move away,
Speaker 1: so exactly in the same way that that human researcher
Speaker 1: is like, I've learned this call means a leopard. I'm
Speaker 1: in danger, yes, And so it's the same thing with
Speaker 1: the rhino. But even more terrifying than a leopard the human.
Speaker 2: And also like there's a bit of self preservation there,
Speaker 2: I imagine from the bird, and that if my little
Speaker 2: floating raft of food, my buffet, my tank of a
Speaker 2: buffet on the savannah gets killed by these poachers, then
Speaker 2: I'm out of a food source.
Speaker 1: It can't hurt. Yeah, it couldn't hurt for them to
Speaker 1: warn the rhino. It's again, it's hard to know whether
Speaker 1: that's just a happy coincidence or if there's any like,
Speaker 1: any sort of intention. I mean, I think it's safe
Speaker 1: to see there's probably not much of an intention for
Speaker 1: the bird to warn the rhino. I don't know if
Speaker 1: they could logic that out, but I mean, maybe a
Speaker 1: smarter bird. There are some birds that I would not
Speaker 1: necessarily be surprised that they In fact, they may sometimes
Speaker 1: use alarm calls. No, there are actually birds that use
Speaker 1: alarm calls to scare other animals away from some kind
Speaker 1: of food source so that they can get to it,
Speaker 1: so they can There are definitely bird species. I take
Speaker 1: it back. There are bird species that know what they're doing,
Speaker 1: and they can use their alarm calls to manipulate. So
Speaker 1: it's possible that these birds are somehow they do know
Speaker 1: that if they alert that the rhino will move away,
Speaker 1: which is much better for them than having to like,
Speaker 1: you know, fly away and find another another rhino to
Speaker 1: sit on. But there's no there's no evidence of that yet,
Speaker 1: so either way, this is a lovely little system. The
Speaker 1: rhino gets warned, the oxpecker gets to keep its perch,
Speaker 1: and humans get to be thwarted by a dynamic duo.
Speaker 2: Beautiful.
Speaker 1: I love it, so will a Ka Christy Yamagucci. Men.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining me. Tell tell the
Speaker 1: people where they can find you.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much for having me again. It
Speaker 2: was a delight as usual. You can find me on
Speaker 2: Twitter at wopple house w A P P l E
Speaker 2: h O U s E. And that's pretty much where
Speaker 2: I live most of the time. Not in real life.
Speaker 2: You can find me on there. I don't even know
Speaker 2: what my Instagram handle is, to be honest with you,
Speaker 2: it's long. There's underscores involved, so whenever I stupidly make
Speaker 2: a handle with underscores, I always forget where they're at.
Speaker 2: So yeah, just find me on there. You can listen
Speaker 2: to George Center pod or George Center, but at George
Speaker 2: Center Pod on Twitter and lower after hours. If you're
Speaker 2: a fan of the Dan LeBatard Show and enough of
Speaker 2: a fan that you would make a podcast about being
Speaker 2: a fan of the Dan le Batard Show, you can
Speaker 2: find me.
Speaker 1: There and thank you so much for listening. If you're
Speaker 1: enjoying the show, please leave writing and review. I read
Speaker 1: all the reviews. I love them so much. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate them all, cherish them, print them out, put them
Speaker 1: underneath my pillow, and kiss them before I go to
Speaker 1: bed at night. And thank you so much to the
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