Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show, we're talking about Weird Little Guys,
Speaker 1: animals that are a wee bit freaky and also a
Speaker 1: bit we We're going to get progressively littler and weirder
Speaker 1: as we go on, from a cryptid that is essentially
Speaker 1: a tiny sandworm from Dune to an even smaller animal
Speaker 1: that likes to get ahead of home security. These animals
Speaker 1: have disvised some odd evolutionary strategies, and of course, our
Speaker 1: last weird Little Guy is one of the tiniest, most
Speaker 1: maniacal mass murderers on the planet. Discover this and more
Speaker 1: as we answer the age old question why do so
Speaker 1: many snails get turned into murder raves against their will?
Speaker 1: Joining me today as host of the podcast Weird Little Guys.
Speaker 1: Mother to my two favorite we influencers, Internet's Belunker Molly.
Speaker 2: Kunger, Welcome, Hey Katie, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to have you because I have been
Speaker 1: following you and your two little weenies Bucan Auto for
Speaker 1: a long time and it's very cool to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Uh and I I do hope that maybe the boys
Speaker 1: will come and give a statement about snacks they have
Speaker 1: they have been exiled.
Speaker 2: They really want to podcast, But the producer complains the producer,
Speaker 2: I see, yeah, no, I'm I'm super excited to be
Speaker 2: on IM was telling you the other day, like I
Speaker 2: have been the secret third guest on every episode of
Speaker 2: this show for six years. You guys just can't hear me.
Speaker 1: Uh so that's what that that whispering was in my head.
Speaker 1: Good to know. I'm I'm fine and I'm normal. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm really excited. So your podcast is sadly,
Speaker 1: it's not about cool animals. It's about not very cool people,
Speaker 1: right wing extremists who are weird little guys. And so
Speaker 1: you know, in a way though, like examining a person
Speaker 1: is similar to looking at evolutionary biology because you have
Speaker 1: to dig in to human behaviors that are kind of
Speaker 1: strange and sometimes destructive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know it's your show is about weird little
Speaker 2: guys too, Except for you it's like a cool bug,
Speaker 2: and for me it's like a guy who has a
Speaker 2: framed picture of Hitler on his bedside table.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like, yeah, same set.
Speaker 2: Of terminology, very different application.
Speaker 1: Right exactly Like I I it does seem like there
Speaker 1: are fewer Hitler adjacent animals. So yeah, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about these guys, and the criteria is they have
Speaker 1: to be small and they have to be super weird.
Speaker 1: And we're going to go from big and not well
Speaker 1: I guess not big, but like the big guest one
Speaker 1: and also in my opinion, the least weird one to
Speaker 1: the smallest and the incredibly most weird one. And so
Speaker 1: our first one is the marsupial moles, which I mean
Speaker 1: they are I think, very strange but also adorable in
Speaker 1: a way.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm looking at this guy and at first look
Speaker 2: the first picture, it kind of looks like he's got
Speaker 2: a little hamster maybe in his hands. But then you
Speaker 2: see his face. Then you see his face and that
Speaker 2: it's not a hamster.
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't mean it's like the face is very
Speaker 1: strange because it doesn't quite it's hard to tell its
Speaker 1: face from its butt. First of all, Like you look
Speaker 1: at my face, well, the one where he's you see
Speaker 1: the little claws and it's looking at you, that is
Speaker 1: definitely the face. Yes, where it's in the guy's hands.
Speaker 1: And then you see something that kind of looks like
Speaker 1: a nose. That's actually the butt. Oh that's the tail. Yeah. No, see,
Speaker 1: I first that it is like that looks like a
Speaker 1: little face, but that is actually the butt. And then
Speaker 1: sometimes when you look at the face, you think that
Speaker 1: that might be the butt because you can't see any eyes.
Speaker 1: And the reason you can't see any eyes is because
Speaker 1: there aren't really any eyes. All right. These guys are
Speaker 1: despite being called marsupial moles, they are not moles. They're
Speaker 1: not true moles. They're found in desert regions of Australia,
Speaker 1: and they do look like gold colored moles, but they're not.
Speaker 1: And they're also not to be confused with the species
Speaker 1: the golden mole, which is also not a mole and
Speaker 1: is found in Africa, not Australia. So there's moles which
Speaker 1: are just moles. Then there's the golden mole, which is
Speaker 1: not a mole, but it's found in Africa, and then
Speaker 1: there's the marsupial mole, which is found in Australia, which
Speaker 1: is not a mole, but it is a marsupial.
Speaker 2: You know, usually if I'm not sure if something is
Speaker 2: a mole. I'll try to see a dermatologist, but.
Speaker 3: This is.
Speaker 1: You either have to see a dermatologist or an evolutionary biologist.
Speaker 1: And it's very important to figure out which. I can't
Speaker 1: get over the fact of the butt and the face.
Speaker 1: It's very it's very hard to determine the butt in
Speaker 1: the face from each other.
Speaker 2: Because I guess, so that's the anus, but those look
Speaker 2: like nostrils to me.
Speaker 1: I don't know which picture the first. Okay, so the
Speaker 1: first image of the of the guy with his hands
Speaker 1: out is holding a little guy, uh, and it has
Speaker 1: like part of it that has like a little fleshy nub.
Speaker 1: That is the butt. Everything else everything else is the face.
Speaker 2: Oh that is the face. Okay, yes, okay, So those
Speaker 2: are nostrils.
Speaker 1: Those are nostrils. And I look.
Speaker 2: To be fair to him. Beautiful golden color. This sort
Speaker 2: of like strawberry blonde, sun kissed likes to my hairstylist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the color that like I want for
Speaker 1: my hair. And yet his face is just so off putting,
Speaker 1: so like they live all of their lives underground, and
Speaker 1: so they don't really need eyes anymore, so their eyes
Speaker 1: are entirely covered by skin. And only this like vestigial
Speaker 1: lens remains under the skin, and their ears are basically
Speaker 1: just these two little pinholes. And so sometimes when you
Speaker 1: look at it, I think it looks like you might
Speaker 1: be able to see like its eyes, and those are
Speaker 1: probably actually the ears. So like you see a couple
Speaker 1: of little like weird dots, it's like, oh, are those eyeballs,
Speaker 1: It's like that might just be ear holes.
Speaker 2: And so their vestigial eyes still sense like light and
Speaker 2: dark or just nothing.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like they really do much of anything. Also,
Speaker 1: we don't know a lot about them because we rarely,
Speaker 1: if ever get to like study them and look at them,
Speaker 1: because they are incredible. They are like very cryptic, very
Speaker 1: very difficult to spot because the shy they're very shy.
Speaker 1: So there's actually two species of marsupial mole, the southern
Speaker 1: marsupial mole called the it's jarret jari and the northern
Speaker 1: marsupial mole called the kekara tool. I pronounce that like
Speaker 1: I have potatoes in my mouth. But they are they
Speaker 1: are marsupials and they're found only in Australia. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they are one of the most difficult to photograph and
Speaker 1: to document marsupials. They are incredibly reclusive, and so they
Speaker 1: also don't create their own burrows. They use the burrows
Speaker 1: or sorry, they don't create their own burrows. They actually
Speaker 1: swim under the earth, so they don't create like a
Speaker 1: permanent burrow. They dig in this like sandy soil and
Speaker 1: then like behind them, the soil just like closes in
Speaker 1: after them. So that's another reason they're really hard to
Speaker 1: document is that there's not like a burrow you can find, like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a Mars supial mole burrow, we know to
Speaker 1: hang out here to see one pop out. They just
Speaker 1: leave no trace, and they swim through the sand, you know,
Speaker 1: like those guys from Dune.
Speaker 2: How do they breathe?
Speaker 1: So they are specifically designed such that they can essentially
Speaker 1: have enough space to like they create like a little
Speaker 1: pocket in front of them. And they're because they're loose, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: with their with their little claws, they can create like
Speaker 1: a little pocket in front of them, or they can breathe. Also,
Speaker 1: it's very very sandy, so air basically can disseminate through
Speaker 1: the sand. And they are also like that's why their
Speaker 1: eyes are covered in skin. Otherwise they just be getting
Speaker 1: sand in their eyes all the time, and they don't
Speaker 1: really need their eyes in the situation. They probably use
Speaker 1: their sense of smell and sense of feel to identify
Speaker 1: and locate prey and to move around. And they their
Speaker 1: ears again like also, because their ears are so flat,
Speaker 1: just these tiny pinholes, they can they probably use their
Speaker 1: ears as the sensory organs, but they are small enough
Speaker 1: such that sand doesn't get in them. Also, I mentioned
Speaker 1: they are marsupials, and so they do have a pouch.
Speaker 1: But the pouch, you know how like the pouch of
Speaker 1: a kangaroo. It's sort of like facing up like a
Speaker 1: little pocket. Oh, they gotta put their bases, they do exactly.
Speaker 1: It's backwards because if they move forward, like imagine if
Speaker 1: you have like a kangaroo pocket and you're moving through
Speaker 1: the sand, you're just collecting sand in your pocket, and
Speaker 1: that's not gonna be good for your tiny little babies
Speaker 1: in there. So there's this backwards and so which works
Speaker 1: out great for the little tiny Joey's that will crawl
Speaker 1: up into the pocket. And they have two teets in there,
Speaker 1: so they can support two little Joey's inside of this
Speaker 1: pouch at once.
Speaker 2: It's god, how big are they? They got to be
Speaker 2: like the size of like my pinky nail.
Speaker 1: They're like they're probably the size of rice when they
Speaker 1: come out. I don't you know, they are tiny. They've
Speaker 1: got to be tiny, gotta be teeny teeny town.
Speaker 2: That's a tiny guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a tiny guy. They got there probably just
Speaker 1: look like little pitty bitty maggots. Like honestly, it's imagining
Speaker 1: a mammal being that small. Yeah. Right, It's like it's weird.
Speaker 2: That's bug size.
Speaker 1: Bugs are that big. Yeah. But it's like it's in
Speaker 1: a way you can think about these things. It's like
Speaker 1: almost kind of like weird mobile fetuses because like they've
Speaker 1: finished their development inside the pouch, so they it's a say,
Speaker 1: it's a similar situation with say, like any other marsupial. Right,
Speaker 1: you have this underdeveloped baby that comes out and it's tiny,
Speaker 1: very very very tiny, can't really do much. The only
Speaker 1: thing it can do is it has this instinct to
Speaker 1: crawl until it reaches a teat and it makes this
Speaker 1: incredible journey from the vagina to the pouch. And but
Speaker 1: it's just like this little tiny flesh jelly bean that
Speaker 1: like that's all I can do, yees, I mean, and
Speaker 1: it's like like with little tiny limbs, and then it
Speaker 1: will like inside the pouch, that's where it develops and
Speaker 1: gets bigger. It actually develops like features that are recognizable
Speaker 1: as something other than this, like weird little flesh bean.
Speaker 2: And I guess it's you know, it's day to day.
Speaker 2: Doesn't really change after that, it's just blind and digging'.
Speaker 1: Just yeah exactly. I mean. The thing is this is
Speaker 1: that these marsupial malls life is just like digging. And
Speaker 1: at first it's digging and looking for a teat, and
Speaker 1: then it's digging and looking for bugs, uh and lizards
Speaker 1: and things. And yeah, they I mean they appear to
Speaker 1: be pretty like adept predators. Like in the very few
Speaker 1: photographs of them, we have seen them being able to
Speaker 1: chow down on lizards, on centipedes, so it probably is
Speaker 1: a good hunter. It seems again like these are very
Speaker 1: understudied because of how difficult they are to document.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this picture of him chowing down on a lizard,
Speaker 2: like if you just showed me that one without the
Speaker 2: one where he looks like a little hamster, and then yeah,
Speaker 2: the one where it looks a little bit more like
Speaker 2: a If I just saw this picture, I don't think
Speaker 2: I could fathom what I'm looking at because it's he's
Speaker 2: sort of hunched over, folded in half, and you see
Speaker 2: his non face, and the lizard is halfway inside of him,
Speaker 2: and he's gripping the back half of the lizard with
Speaker 2: what look like crab claws.
Speaker 1: Right, this almost looks like sort of a like some
Speaker 1: kind of weird ocean creature, right, like, right, a fuzzy crab,
Speaker 1: which there are furry crabs, by the way, so I
Speaker 1: wouldn't judge you for thinking this is a furry crab.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it has these two claws, right, these two
Speaker 1: large claws. It has other fingers, but the two ones
Speaker 1: that you can see are the large ones that it
Speaker 1: uses for digging. And that its nose is kind of
Speaker 1: weird because its nose is reinforced with this leathery thick
Speaker 1: skin on the top of its head, so kind of.
Speaker 2: Like you have armadilla in the nose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of like a cling on situation, in
Speaker 1: armadillo situation. And then again, no visible eyes. The eyes
Speaker 1: are covered in skin, and the ears there's no external
Speaker 1: ears like humans, you know, we have an external ear.
Speaker 1: Birds don't have that external ear, so they just have
Speaker 1: the ear holes, and so it's the same thing with these.
Speaker 1: They don't have any external ears, they just have the
Speaker 1: ear hole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this looks like if you if like the sort
Speaker 2: of sentient AI that makes those like weird Jesus pictures
Speaker 2: on Facebook, if it were to create like a marmaset
Speaker 2: hermit crab.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just like this does seem like if you
Speaker 1: gave the AI the prompt, like you know, crab hamster,
Speaker 1: and then also it was like click, like if this
Speaker 1: image means something to you.
Speaker 2: It's that lizard's birthday and no one, no one wished
Speaker 2: him happy birthday.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. And yeah, and I mean it fits right.
Speaker 1: The hands are weird. It's got weird hands, not enough fingers. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I love it. I am. I feel like I need
Speaker 1: to do It's kind of hard in podcast form because
Speaker 1: it's so visual, but I need to do something about
Speaker 1: like all of the weird AI generated animals where it's like,
Speaker 1: look at this real animal and then it's like a
Speaker 1: bird with like feet and or yeah it's like, well
Speaker 1: no that's not that's not what that is. But I
Speaker 1: feel like it's gonna get harder and harder, right because
Speaker 1: there are there are indeed like there, I think that
Speaker 1: there are animals out there that are so weird. It's
Speaker 1: still something that is weirder than what AI could come
Speaker 1: up with.
Speaker 2: Right, Like, there's so many weird animals out there. You
Speaker 2: don't need to make up fake ones. There's real ones.
Speaker 2: There's real ones that you're not going to believe.
Speaker 1: But how am I going to trick your aunt into
Speaker 1: reposting my my thing on Facebook?
Speaker 2: Like and share if you want to like it your birthday?
Speaker 1: Look at this army person coming home from the war,
Speaker 1: like in Share, and it's just a marsupial mole dress
Speaker 1: and fatigues.
Speaker 2: You know, I think he would look good in camo.
Speaker 1: He would. He's naturally camouflage because of that golden color
Speaker 1: of dirt. Yeah, with the red sand, it's like this
Speaker 1: sort of reddish sand. So there's already a bit of
Speaker 1: camouflage there.
Speaker 2: But you know, people say redheads shouldn't wear green. I
Speaker 2: think that's nonsense. I think he would be great in olive.
Speaker 1: I so I am a somewhat redhead and I wear
Speaker 1: green all the time, So I don't I don't agree
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 2: And I don't subscribe to that, right, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't, That's not my religion. But like, yeah, me
Speaker 1: and him are gonna definitely be fashion tip sharing because
Speaker 1: I think our coloring is quite similar. And also you
Speaker 1: know the fact that I don't have external ears and
Speaker 1: my eyes are covered in skin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those headphones are just attached to nothing.
Speaker 1: They're just going right in the holes, straight into the holes.
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, So these guys are are very weird
Speaker 1: and they all so we can't like, yes, they are
Speaker 1: very difficult to document in the wild, So some people
Speaker 1: might wonder, well, why don't we just like catch a
Speaker 1: couple of them and then like breed them so that
Speaker 1: we can observe them in captivity or maybe have them
Speaker 1: as cool pets, because look at how the cute they are.
Speaker 1: They are. They have some very specific like survival requirements,
Speaker 1: and so they have never been successfully kept in captivity
Speaker 1: for more than a month before they die, and so
Speaker 1: they do not they don't work in captivity, which I
Speaker 1: think it's both sad but also adds to their allure,
Speaker 1: like they will choose death over being captured. It's not
Speaker 1: really them choosing death. What it is is probably their
Speaker 1: diet and their temperature needs and stuff are probably extremely narrow,
Speaker 1: Like they probably have a very very specific ecological niche,
Speaker 1: and so trying to recreate that in an artificial environment
Speaker 1: is just really really difficult, and we've never been able
Speaker 1: to do it.
Speaker 2: But don't really know exactly what it is, the missing
Speaker 2: ingredient is exactly.
Speaker 1: We're not exactly sure. I would assume that they have
Speaker 1: probably like because they're small, this would be my guess
Speaker 1: from that, I'm sighting my butt. My butt is the
Speaker 1: citation here. But because they're quite small, I imagine their
Speaker 1: metabolism is pretty demanding. You know. Also with all that
Speaker 1: digging through the sand, you know, they probably have quite
Speaker 1: a rapid metabolism, and they probably have to eat a lot,
Speaker 1: and they probably have to eat a lot of various
Speaker 1: prey items with like a very specific nutrition profile and so.
Speaker 1: And also because these are desert animals, they probably have
Speaker 1: a very specific temperature kind of like regulatory systems in
Speaker 1: terms of like you know, they they stay in the sand,
Speaker 1: and you know, these desert environments, like they probably have
Speaker 1: like these the specific temperature range that they can tolerate
Speaker 1: inside of the sand in this desert and so if
Speaker 1: you take them out of that environment, and also you
Speaker 1: aren't providing them with the exact like mixture of you know, arthropods, lizards,
Speaker 1: whatever else they're eating, who knows. Yeah, I can see
Speaker 1: why they wouldn't survive that.
Speaker 2: I think he just wants to be left alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what. They just want to swim around
Speaker 1: in dirt and eat lizards. And I get it.
Speaker 2: He's free.
Speaker 1: He's free and also kind of looks like Millhouse. I
Speaker 1: think there's this one photo of them, like it's the
Speaker 1: last one where he's eating the centipede and it's just
Speaker 1: got kind of a little bit of a Millhouse face.
Speaker 1: You can see his mouth just full on on the cynipede.
Speaker 1: Really gross.
Speaker 2: Yeah, god, yeah, Again, if I didn't know what I
Speaker 2: was looking at, I would not It's hard. I would
Speaker 2: not be in the right like branch of the tree
Speaker 2: of creatures.
Speaker 1: Well, it doesn't. The problem is that, again, it doesn't
Speaker 1: really have a face, so you don't even know what's
Speaker 1: a mouth until you see something going inside of it.
Speaker 2: And because he's got those like long I mean, I guess,
Speaker 2: I guess they're fingers, but they really look like claws.
Speaker 1: They are claws. So they are the like keratin part
Speaker 1: of the Yeah, so that's like a claw they have
Speaker 1: like more like they don't just have two digits in
Speaker 1: the front, but that is those are the two that
Speaker 1: are like long claws. It's like sort of a you know,
Speaker 1: like two toed sloths, they like have those really long
Speaker 1: claws in the front. Yeah, it's it's it's like that,
Speaker 1: except in a tiny eldric torror beyond our comprehension.
Speaker 2: Like, of course Australia has a faceless, hairy hermit crab
Speaker 2: that eats lizards holes. Of course they do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, one of their least
Speaker 1: scary animals. I guess. All right, well we are gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break, and then when we get back,
Speaker 1: we are going to talk about a very very specialized
Speaker 1: I'm going to say, we go from no face to
Speaker 1: a face that has like a very important job be scary.
Speaker 1: All right, so we're back. We're going to talk about ants, now,
Speaker 1: which you know we're used to our little ants, usually
Speaker 1: Argentina ants that invade our kitchens and eat our cereals,
Speaker 1: but there is a lot of different species of ants
Speaker 1: all over the world. Ants live pretty much everywhere and
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a type of ant. Noticed
Speaker 1: I didn't say species, but a type of ant called
Speaker 1: a doorhead ant. And these are ants that have heads
Speaker 1: that are doors. You're nodding. You're nodding, but you look concerned.
Speaker 2: I mean there's carpenter ants right right right, makes sense
Speaker 2: that they're be other sorts of carpentry adjacent ants. These
Speaker 2: ones are door right right.
Speaker 1: Remember like Game of Thrones, I only watched some of
Speaker 1: that show, but there was the one guy and it
Speaker 1: turned out so his name was Ho Door. And it
Speaker 1: turned out that that was him saying hold the door
Speaker 1: because a little kid brain featured him and so then
Speaker 1: like he but his brain got two zapped from the
Speaker 1: past future. So then all he could say is ho door.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so his travel element is still a little lost
Speaker 2: on me. We're watching it again right now, so maybe
Speaker 2: I'm gonna figure it out this time.
Speaker 1: He's a special boy with mind time powers, and so
Speaker 1: he turns this guy into his Like God, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's seems like I don't know how to say this.
Speaker 1: It's like all he can do is like it's a
Speaker 1: man who's an entire purpose is to hold a door.
Speaker 1: So that this boy wizard survives and that's the plot
Speaker 1: of Game of Thrones, Folks, that's actually the whole show.
Speaker 1: I think that's the whole show. Yes, there might be
Speaker 1: some lizards in it. I don't remember, but that's these ants.
Speaker 1: These ants entire purpose in life is door. So there
Speaker 1: is a scientific term for this. It's called phragmosis. It
Speaker 1: is an animal using itself its body as a protective barrier.
Speaker 1: And I think that certain species of ants are some
Speaker 1: of the most wild examples of this because they have
Speaker 1: evolved a head shape that acts as a door. So
Speaker 1: I showed you some pictures of the shape of this
Speaker 1: ant's head. It's like flat and kind of wedge shaped
Speaker 1: and it fits really good in holes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this picture of him sort of backed into a hole,
Speaker 2: it looks like so it looks like he's plugging this hole.
Speaker 2: In a close up picture of a tree, like the
Speaker 2: tree bark, and there's a hole in the tree bark,
Speaker 2: and perfectly filling the hole is the top of this
Speaker 2: guy's head. It looks like someone's driven a nail into.
Speaker 1: The tree exactly. And I don't mean to like gender
Speaker 1: police bozands, but technically this is a female. The males
Speaker 1: I don't think gets a cool job. They mostly hang
Speaker 1: around and they might do some work, but usually they
Speaker 1: are there mostly for breeding.
Speaker 2: So the boys don't have the cool head.
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't. There could be a species
Speaker 1: where the boys get a cool head, but I don't
Speaker 1: know of one. I think all of these examples are
Speaker 1: the females get the cool doorheads and the fellas. You know,
Speaker 1: the fellas don't get the doorhead, which seems like sexism.
Speaker 1: But you know, but.
Speaker 2: How many doors need to be? Like does everybody in
Speaker 2: the have this or is it a special job.
Speaker 1: It's a special job. And it's weird because this happens
Speaker 1: in many different species of ants. Some of the species
Speaker 1: are related and some of the species are less related.
Speaker 1: Uh so, uh, basically, this door this doorhead happens in
Speaker 1: some species of ants, and sometimes it pops up like
Speaker 1: basically different times in evolution, like a you know, parallel
Speaker 1: evolution or convergent evolution.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is not like you said, this is
Speaker 2: not a species of ant. It's a kind of ant.
Speaker 1: So it's like right, exactly, so it's a certain job.
Speaker 1: It's an ant job, so like you're born for this job, exactly,
Speaker 1: so it's like sold you have soldier ants, you have
Speaker 1: worker ants, you have the queen ants, and you have
Speaker 1: door ants.
Speaker 2: My job is door.
Speaker 1: My job is door. I do door really good. I
Speaker 1: was born to be door really literally born to be door.
Speaker 1: And so let's uh, this occurs like in a lot
Speaker 1: of species. So I'll high like one species just as
Speaker 1: an example. So in the New World, the Cephalotes genus
Speaker 1: is a genus of ants that in which this occurs.
Speaker 1: And then in the Old World, the Caribera genus also
Speaker 1: has many species of ants that have this trait. I
Speaker 1: looked into the name Caribera genus. I thought maybe they
Speaker 1: were named after care bears, but I couldn't find any
Speaker 1: confirmation of that. So let me if you named those ants,
Speaker 1: let me know, like, did you name them after care bears?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's certainly not the same vibe, but I
Speaker 2: guess it's well, I mean she is she is caring
Speaker 2: for her family, that is true.
Speaker 1: Also, name care bears have different jobs like one bear,
Speaker 1: like on their tummies, whereas like right, my job is heart,
Speaker 1: my job is hugs, and my job is rainbow. And
Speaker 1: so for these it's like they would just have like
Speaker 1: a door on their tummies and it's like my job
Speaker 1: is door, except that it's their heads that are shaped
Speaker 1: like a tray, Like you know, it's like that robot
Speaker 1: in Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, the one where
Speaker 1: it's the robot whose head is like it's like flat,
Speaker 1: and it's like, I'm I'm a tray. And then there's
Speaker 1: one that's like trash can shaped and it's like I'm
Speaker 1: trash can. Maybe I'm not.
Speaker 2: I only know the two I'm a Star Wars guy.
Speaker 2: There's like there's the little trash can one, and then
Speaker 2: there's the tall golden one.
Speaker 1: Is the other right, well, there's the dome. There's like
Speaker 1: the ballard shape one, the dome one which is R
Speaker 1: two D two, and then there's the tall like golden one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's c P three British one three either C three
Speaker 1: PO or c P three. Oh I forgot he's the British.
Speaker 1: He's he's English. And then the little guy's beep from
Speaker 1: Beep area or something. He beeps and but I thought
Speaker 1: there was a scene in one of the movies where
Speaker 1: they go to like robot it was like a robot
Speaker 1: black to Tin Sight or something where they're like tormenting robots,
Speaker 1: and I thought they like, I think they turned the
Speaker 1: little guy into tray, Like they put a tray on
Speaker 1: his head. Torment your tray now, and we're.
Speaker 2: Gonna get We're gonna get torn apart, Katie. We're gonna
Speaker 2: get torn apart by the starboys.
Speaker 1: You know what, starboys come at me. I'm not the
Speaker 1: one who's like making all these so many other Star
Speaker 1: Wars shows that make you, guys all angry, even though
Speaker 1: they're giving you more Star Wars, which just makes you
Speaker 1: angrier and angrier. You're in a you're in a hell
Speaker 1: of your own design. They they sent themselves to the
Speaker 1: robot Torture Facility exactly. It's a robot black site of
Speaker 1: your mind. We are talking about ants, though not robots,
Speaker 1: and their heads are shaped like doors, and so so
Speaker 1: the Cephalotes genus. There's a species called Cephalotes rowaryu, also
Speaker 1: known as turtle ants, who live in the Sonoran Desert.
Speaker 1: They live in the trunks and limbs of trees that
Speaker 1: have been bored into buy beetles. So the ants co
Speaker 1: opt these holes in tunnels for their own colony, and
Speaker 1: some of the ants develop into a specialized class of
Speaker 1: soldiers with flat disc like heads that are able to
Speaker 1: block up the holes. And these are the door headed ant,
Speaker 1: and this ant species lives its entire life in the tree.
Speaker 1: They eat pollen, and they've actually developed the ability to
Speaker 1: glide like a controlled glide. They splay out their little legs,
Speaker 1: it's really cute, and then sort of guide their way
Speaker 1: back to the tree so that if they fall off
Speaker 1: of a limb, they don't have to fall all the
Speaker 1: way to the ground, which would be fine, they wouldn't die,
Speaker 1: it's just they have to walk all the way back
Speaker 1: and that sucks. So they glide back to the tree
Speaker 1: so that hopefully they don't have to walk all the
Speaker 1: way up from the ground back to the tree.
Speaker 2: So the flying squirrel situation cooking here exactly.
Speaker 1: They've got the doorheads and the flying squirrel and so yeah,
Speaker 1: you just have this whole basically cast of ants who
Speaker 1: are there to serve as doors in case of attacks
Speaker 1: and to protect the colony. But in some species it's
Speaker 1: the queen herself who is door which I admire. In
Speaker 1: a leader in bliffer A Data conops of Brazil, the
Speaker 1: queen has a thick, disc like doorhead that she can
Speaker 1: use to block the brood chamber from threats. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It's just like she has big flat doorhead and she
Speaker 1: when she senses a threat to block the entrance, and
Speaker 1: then her workers can gain entrance into the brood chamber
Speaker 1: by knocking on her doorhead like knock, not queen, it's me.
Speaker 2: There's like a special like a secret handshake kind of
Speaker 2: knock I it.
Speaker 1: Perhaps, you know, that's a really interesting idea. I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly how whether it's pheromones or if it's a
Speaker 1: pattern of knocking that she recognizes. It might be combination
Speaker 1: of the two. But that's a very good question. And
Speaker 1: but I do really like, look, if I'm going to
Speaker 1: live in a monarchy, I want it where my queen
Speaker 1: is also my door and I can knock on my
Speaker 1: like like she's.
Speaker 2: Putting her body on the line here for exact exactly
Speaker 2: right like door. Conversely, it could be that she's, you know,
Speaker 2: such a malicious ruler that she knows that she can't
Speaker 2: trust anyone, that only she can truly protect the brood chamber.
Speaker 1: She can't even trust a door, so like she has
Speaker 1: to be her own door. Yeah, that's the that's the
Speaker 1: true sort of boss babe like that. That's like the
Speaker 1: peak of boss babe is like you have to be
Speaker 1: your own door.
Speaker 2: Like I'm not just the monarch here, like I am
Speaker 2: the facility I am, right, I am everything.
Speaker 1: I am the actual building.
Speaker 2: Right like I'm I'm i am brooding in here, but
Speaker 2: I am also the brood chamber.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. She she can do it all, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean she is really having it all. She's leaning
Speaker 1: in ladies. Uh, you two can have a family of
Speaker 1: like five hundred members, be a queen, a CEO, and
Speaker 1: a door.
Speaker 2: How does she do it?
Speaker 1: How does she do it? Yeah? I do really love this,
Speaker 1: I mean with aunts. I think what's important to remember
Speaker 1: is that the whole purpose like of a colony in
Speaker 1: a hierarchy is that they are It just means that
Speaker 1: these genes get pushed forward to the next generation. Right, So,
Speaker 1: like the queen is going to act like a door
Speaker 1: if it means that she's more likely to have her
Speaker 1: genes pass on to the next generation you're gonna.
Speaker 2: Have if door is working.
Speaker 1: If door is working for them, they're gonna go door
Speaker 1: and you know, like, yeah, it is, it is. It
Speaker 1: is wild though, how specialized, like you know, ant species
Speaker 1: have becommon how you have these? Because it is it's
Speaker 1: when we think about evolution rate and natural selection, we think, well,
Speaker 1: like makes a lot of sense for an individual to
Speaker 1: want to reproduce on its own, because otherwise, how does
Speaker 1: it work? Right? Because like, if you're self sacrificing, then
Speaker 1: your genes don't necessarily get passed on, because then if
Speaker 1: you're just spending all your time being door and not breeding.
Speaker 2: How does that work?
Speaker 1: The very good question that doorhead girl is not breeding
Speaker 1: right except for the queen version who the other ones?
Speaker 1: And it plays into the larger question of how do
Speaker 1: colonies work in the first place? So the way that
Speaker 1: I mean first of all, how our rules assigned. Usually
Speaker 1: that's some kind of pheromone signal, so like hey we
Speaker 1: need more soldiers. There's like a pheromone that goes out
Speaker 1: where it's like, hey, we need more soldiers. Usually it
Speaker 1: can even be something where it's like if a queen
Speaker 1: has died or there's no queen, the queen uses like
Speaker 1: a basically queen suppressing pheromone, so new queens aren't born.
Speaker 1: But if that queen is gone, new queens are then born.
Speaker 1: If you have an imbalance of soldiers to workers. The
Speaker 1: that pheromone imbalance, that those pheromone signals actually can inhibit
Speaker 1: certain stages in the fetal development of these these offspring
Speaker 1: in the egg and so at the last stage of development,
Speaker 1: that's when they can like turn into like a worker
Speaker 1: or a door. And so in these colonies, like I
Speaker 1: think the way that they determine like who is door
Speaker 1: is basically just like again like this this gradient, this
Speaker 1: concentration of pheromones that determines like well, who needs to
Speaker 1: be a soldier, who needs to be a worker, and
Speaker 1: do we need more doors? And so like that that's
Speaker 1: how it happens on sort of a mechanical level. You
Speaker 1: look like you have a question.
Speaker 2: Oh now I'm just thinking, like how did so many
Speaker 2: different species of ants independently arrive at doorhead? Like who
Speaker 2: is the first first cool aunt to be? Like you know,
Speaker 2: I bet my head would fit in that hole and
Speaker 2: it would be so helpful to everyone if I just
Speaker 2: stood here like that, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's interesting because I think part
Speaker 1: of it it's like probably sold first, it's soldiers, right,
Speaker 1: because they would have bigger heads guarding it. They have
Speaker 1: bigger heads because that would accommodate larger mandibles and allow
Speaker 1: them to attack better. Uh, and then you probably have
Speaker 1: soldiers who are like, I'm going to be at the
Speaker 1: entrance because that is where the threat is coming from.
Speaker 1: So I have like essentially they're tiny computers, right, So
Speaker 1: they're like they are being guided by pheromones, by smells,
Speaker 1: and so they are like, Okay, there is a threat
Speaker 1: at the entrance, and so I'm going to go there.
Speaker 1: And so maybe some of them their heads were so
Speaker 1: big for combat, they actually when they were just there
Speaker 1: in the door, the ones with the heads that were
Speaker 1: just a little bit of a better fit for the
Speaker 1: door of the colony, like, we're really effective and so
Speaker 1: that like and now we get into like okay, but
Speaker 1: then how do they pass on their jeans? Right, because
Speaker 1: these door ants aren't necessarily reproducing. Well, it has to
Speaker 1: do with how ants are very unique in terms of
Speaker 1: having haploid diploid. Actually, I shouldn't say ants are unique.
Speaker 1: A lot of use social organisms like ants, bees, termites,
Speaker 1: they have a genetic system haploid diploid, which sounds really confusing,
Speaker 1: but essentially what it means is that these the genes
Speaker 1: of this colony, these sisters are basically like more related
Speaker 1: to each other and to like the offspring into like
Speaker 1: the queen and her genes than they are to their
Speaker 1: own offspring. So, like, what that means is that essentially,
Speaker 1: even if you have the queen being the only one reproducing,
Speaker 1: maybe one queen, maybe multiple queens, but you know, just
Speaker 1: the ones that are reproducing, then those the components of
Speaker 1: the queen. The queen's genetics are reflected in the workers.
Speaker 1: So if you have a worker who has an interesting
Speaker 1: mutation that benefits the colony, those are very similar to
Speaker 1: the genes that the queen is already passing down to
Speaker 1: the new generation. So if that, if those are positive
Speaker 1: genes that are helping the colony survive, those are reflected
Speaker 1: in the queen's genetic makeup because they're almost like clones
Speaker 1: of each other. They're not quite clones, but they're very
Speaker 1: very genetically similar. But so, like, how does selection work.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, if these some of these ants
Speaker 2: have the mutation, they're all coming from the queen, so
Speaker 2: she's producing offspring with that mutation sometimes but not other times.
Speaker 2: What is the selection pressure if that, like the ones
Speaker 2: with the genes are not more likely to reproduce because
Speaker 2: they're not the ones reproducing. I guess they're more likely
Speaker 2: to survive.
Speaker 1: They're more likely to keep the queen reproducing, and so
Speaker 1: the queen's genes, the queen's genes are being reflected in
Speaker 1: these ants. This is what's wild, right, It's like her
Speaker 1: if essentially you have these ants that are keeping the
Speaker 1: queen safe and so she keeps reproducing. And even though
Speaker 1: the ants aren't necessarily surviving, they are so similar to
Speaker 1: what the queen set of genes are, right, Like like
Speaker 1: for female offspring, she's essentially just like pushing out her
Speaker 1: own genes. They do actually get some genes from the father,
Speaker 1: but the male offspring only get genes from the mother.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, And so.
Speaker 1: Essentially, I there's a whole charts that you can work
Speaker 1: out that shows how this works.
Speaker 2: But essentially there's so much going on inside the ant hill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot going on. So essentially, if these
Speaker 1: female ants reproduced with like a male ant, they would
Speaker 1: be like less related to their offspring than they would
Speaker 1: be related to the brothers that they're their queen is
Speaker 1: pushing out. That Also, their reproduction is forcibly suppressed by
Speaker 1: the queen's pheromones or even by like violence. So it's
Speaker 1: not just that they don't ever have any instinct. They
Speaker 1: do sometimes have instinct to try to reproduce, but then
Speaker 1: that is suppressed by pheromones. It's also suppressed by like
Speaker 1: there's no just monarchies, there's really no just monarchies. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, but the way that the way that that
Speaker 1: selection works, and this is like this is something that
Speaker 1: has been like hotly debated a lot, right like like
Speaker 1: this is a very good question and committed so confusing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the ant forms are just going crazy right now.
Speaker 1: But essentially it is that you have you have a
Speaker 1: library of genes and normally, well not normally, but in
Speaker 1: a lot of organisms like like mammals like humans non
Speaker 1: non use social organism, meaning organisms where we reproduce on
Speaker 1: our own and we don't have like a reproducing queen
Speaker 1: or group of reproducers. If we have a good library
Speaker 1: of genes that has some just like either stability or
Speaker 1: good mutations or something like, we're passing that library down.
Speaker 1: In this use social situation, you have your library of
Speaker 1: genes that you would potentially pass down to an offspring.
Speaker 1: Is so similar to what your queen is passing down
Speaker 1: to her offspring, and it's like it's so related to
Speaker 1: that that the chances are that if you had some
Speaker 1: kind of mutation that gave you a doorhead and protected
Speaker 1: your colony from invaders, the queen already has that gene
Speaker 1: in her library that she's already passing down. And so
Speaker 1: the fact that colony is kind of evolutions working through
Speaker 1: the queen alone, but her offspring are in her workers,
Speaker 1: which who are all related to her. All her offspring
Speaker 1: are helping her pass down her genes, which are also
Speaker 1: reflected in them. So if her workers are having these
Speaker 1: positive mutations, that makes the colonies chance of survival better.
Speaker 1: She's already like passing down those kinds of jeens, right, So.
Speaker 2: It's not like if there's a one random mutation, she's
Speaker 2: gonna make a lot of those guys because she's making
Speaker 2: all of them. That makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, She's like and like, you could have a queen
Speaker 1: who has a random mutation which is like ants, I
Speaker 1: don't know, being really stupid, let's say, like just not
Speaker 1: being very good at their job, being terrible doors Like
Speaker 1: they're like some wasp knocks on the door and they're
Speaker 1: like all right, come on in.
Speaker 2: The Golden lap of guard dogs.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, exactly, like oh did you come? Yeah, just
Speaker 1: like super happy for any visitor. Then you know that
Speaker 1: might that colony might not survive, and so the queen
Speaker 1: herself is not going to pass on the like bad
Speaker 1: door jeans. Right, So then you have evolutioning working in
Speaker 1: that way. And we're actually gonna in the next section
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about this in a really weird
Speaker 1: way where we're getting even tinier and even weirder, and
Speaker 1: we're talking about this kind of like group activity that
Speaker 1: gets even creepier.
Speaker 2: Oh god, we have one more question about the door
Speaker 2: sorry fig out, Okay, okay. In both of these pictures
Speaker 2: where the doorhead is being the doorman the door girl,
Speaker 2: she's blocking the old door girl boss, the shape of
Speaker 2: the head is a perfect flush fit with the hole.
Speaker 2: Is there some sort of carpentry involved where they're like
Speaker 2: nibbling it out to be exactly right or these just
Speaker 2: beautiful coincidences.
Speaker 1: That's a really good question. There are some invertebrates where
Speaker 1: they practice this type of like door carpentry, like trapdoor spiders,
Speaker 1: where they actually do sculpt the entrance so that it
Speaker 1: is it matches their body, and they even do things
Speaker 1: like add like stuff to their body, like trapdoor spiders,
Speaker 1: they will like add stuff and then like they create
Speaker 1: this very flush and also camouflage door. And these photographs,
Speaker 1: I think that it's just this is actually probably more
Speaker 1: of a human photography bias. I would say that the
Speaker 1: even took the pictures that look the coolest, took the
Speaker 1: coolest picture. That would be my guess, because if you
Speaker 1: look at the one of the earlier pictures, you see
Speaker 1: that there is a gap in the door. It's not
Speaker 1: a perfect flush fit with that opening. There's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a gap. Still really effective, right, like if
Speaker 1: it's a large thing, try to get down, no, but
Speaker 1: you know, still it is an effective door. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the one that like literally looks like a nail in
Speaker 1: like a piece of wood, I would say that is
Speaker 1: probably because a photographer saw that and it's like that
Speaker 1: is a really cool example of it. So this is
Speaker 1: another I mean, it's a very good question because like
Speaker 1: sometimes biology, like our perception of biology is also framed
Speaker 1: through our own biases and our own desire for really
Speaker 1: cool examples. But yeah, I mean, but your your question
Speaker 1: of like do they do carpentry. It's there's so many
Speaker 1: species of ants in so many cases of this like
Speaker 1: door headed business. And it's also a relatively recent, like
Speaker 1: within the past few decades, like relatively recent discovery about
Speaker 1: these ants that like, uh like for a lot of
Speaker 1: ants like species. They thought that these doorheaded ants were
Speaker 1: entirely different species of ants because they looked so different,
Speaker 1: and then they discovered like, no, these are actually the
Speaker 1: same species of ants. This is just like a class
Speaker 1: of the the within this colony. And so I think
Speaker 1: it's completely feasible that there could be a species of
Speaker 1: ant that tries like in the one that I talked about,
Speaker 1: the one that lives in the snoor and desert. They
Speaker 1: use pre existing holes, so I don't know that they
Speaker 1: actually you know, modified the hole so much. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: But I think it's it's it's definitely within the realm
Speaker 1: of possibility because you do see that kind of behavior,
Speaker 1: and like other arthropods, you even see that behavior in like,
Speaker 1: uh in two cans or yeah, in two cans, who
Speaker 1: are two cans are hornbills? I think it's two cans
Speaker 1: and two cans.
Speaker 2: All those big big tropical birds look the same, do you, huh?
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a bird bird, bigot.
Speaker 2: I thought you were a bird's rights activist.
Speaker 1: I you know what you got me? I'm uh, I
Speaker 1: am only a keyboard bird right to activists when you
Speaker 1: get me in real life? Am I really there standing
Speaker 1: in line with the birds? Yeah, it is two cans,
Speaker 1: so they will like go nest in like tree hollows.
Speaker 1: Horn bills are completely different environment. I don't know what
Speaker 1: I was thinking. Okay, with two cans, they will nest
Speaker 1: in these tree hollows, and then they use their own
Speaker 1: feces and also like mud and other like fibers and
Speaker 1: stuff to like narrow the whole.
Speaker 2: I liked.
Speaker 1: And then the mother too can will use her body
Speaker 1: as a way to keep snakes out of like her
Speaker 1: her nest. So that and then basically it's so small
Speaker 1: even she can't get out of the hole, so she
Speaker 1: completely relies on the male to go around and feed
Speaker 1: her and her chicks once they hatch. So there are
Speaker 1: it is beautiful, right, you know, covered in their own feces,
Speaker 1: being kept, creating a door frame out of feces, and
Speaker 1: then putting your own body on the line and then
Speaker 1: having your husband get you groceries it's like that is
Speaker 1: that's the American traditionalism that I want.
Speaker 2: Right, Like, let's return to door.
Speaker 1: Return to door, women's women's places as the door. All right,
Speaker 1: so we are going to take a quick break and
Speaker 1: when we get back, we are going to talk about
Speaker 1: the teensiest and also weird ziest animal on our list today.
Speaker 2: This looks gross.
Speaker 1: It's very great. Wait what are you I don't know
Speaker 1: what you're looking at.
Speaker 2: Oh this last picture? Oh is that just that's the.
Speaker 1: That's just another ant Oh that's that's the queen aunt here.
Speaker 1: Let me get you a picture actually of this guy.
Speaker 2: Okay, because this looks nutst.
Speaker 1: Now we've already talked about anasts. We're about to get
Speaker 1: even nastier. But it's kind of hard. We're on it's
Speaker 1: a nasty on such a small scale. It's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to depict the nastiness on the tiny scale. I'll
Speaker 1: give it a shot, though, all Right, So we are
Speaker 1: going to talk about one of the tiniest and weirdest
Speaker 1: animals out there. And guess what it is? A parasite,
Speaker 1: Because I at you know what parasites are some of
Speaker 1: the coolest animals. Like I really got into evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: at least in college. Like I got addicted to it
Speaker 1: because of a class I took on parasites, and it's like, no,
Speaker 1: this is this is too cool because there they are
Speaker 1: such sophisticated strategists. When it comes to reproduction, it is
Speaker 1: really messed up and dare I say a little bit perverted.
Speaker 1: I'm not king shaming, but it is a little bit.
Speaker 2: I mean, the number of the number of parasites that
Speaker 2: rely on us getting our own poop in our mouths
Speaker 2: is incredible. They've been so successful we are disgusting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's using our own potty grossness against us,
Speaker 1: which seems unfair, but you know, they they're they have
Speaker 1: they have no rule book really in terms of ethics,
Speaker 1: which will become very clear with these ones. So we
Speaker 1: are talking about haplorc haplorcus uh pumelio parasite. So uh
Speaker 1: a Star Wars villain, Yeah, Star Wars batto batto parasito
Speaker 1: Uh so yeah Haplorcus pumilio.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: These are microscopic flatworms that infect snails and then fish, birds,
Speaker 1: and mammals, usually in that order.
Speaker 2: Oh, they're working their way up.
Speaker 1: They are working They're working their way up. They're girl
Speaker 1: busting their way up. They are found in Asia, Africa,
Speaker 1: and the Middle East. So yeah, let's start with the
Speaker 1: life cycle of these little flatworms. They first lay their
Speaker 1: eggs and their eggs are ingested accidentally by a snail.
Speaker 1: They develop inside the snail and then starts to clone itself.
Speaker 1: They will then be ingested by a fish, which is
Speaker 1: another intermediate host, where they can continue to develop into
Speaker 1: a juvenile form. And then finally they are ingested by
Speaker 1: a bird or a mammal where they develop into adults
Speaker 1: and reproduce sexually. They lay eggs which are then pooped
Speaker 1: out by the bird or mammal and the cycle can continue.
Speaker 1: So they go through a cloning stage and then like
Speaker 1: just basically growing up in various animals until they reach
Speaker 1: adulthood and then they have a big horny orgy inside
Speaker 1: a bird or a mammal and then they lay their eggs.
Speaker 2: It's like the inverse of that the Children's song where
Speaker 2: you swallow the bird to catch the spider to eat
Speaker 2: the fly.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm talking about, Yeah, it is, it's
Speaker 1: kind of backwards. Yeah, that was a creepy thing to
Speaker 1: me though, the lady eating all those animals, presumably still alive.
Speaker 1: And then I guess, like's like, why did you swallow
Speaker 1: a whole cat just because you eat a spider? Right?
Speaker 1: And then like she and then she dies and I
Speaker 1: can only eat I only assume she dies in like
Speaker 1: a huge meat explosion, because like she's like she swallows
Speaker 1: a horse or something and then she dies, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you try to swallow a horse, you just explode.
Speaker 2: I mean maybe she had a parasite. This sounds like
Speaker 2: parasite behavior.
Speaker 1: I think she had some kind of brain parasite that
Speaker 1: turned her into a horrible abomination. But anyways, it's great
Speaker 1: the things we teach her children.
Speaker 2: So like a person can get this though, like if.
Speaker 1: Yes, actually a person can be infected with this, it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like you you know, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't think it actually is too dangerous. I think it
Speaker 1: might make you sick, but I don't think it'll kill you,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it'll like mind control you, and
Speaker 1: you certainly won't like explode. You might get is that
Speaker 1: the worm talking kitty? Which one? Which worm? You might
Speaker 1: get diarrhea though, which is never a good time. So
Speaker 1: uh but but yeah, let's let's back up before you
Speaker 1: judge these adorable little babies. Uh, let's back up.
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm being set up.
Speaker 1: No, you're not. And your water is safe to drink,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. So, like the first host that
Speaker 1: the H. Pumilio in fact is this snail, So inside
Speaker 1: of the snail, it clones itself, and many of these
Speaker 1: clones are exact copies, so they go through both asexual
Speaker 1: reproduction where they're cloning themselves and sexual reproduction later once
Speaker 1: they are mature, they will sexually reproduce with other members
Speaker 1: of their species and lay eggs. So during this cloning period,
Speaker 1: something really strange happens. Because so far this is like
Speaker 1: kind of standard ish parasite behavior, like you have a
Speaker 1: bunch of like intermediate hosts and you go through both
Speaker 1: asexual and sexual reproduction yahn boring snoozefest. But in this species,
Speaker 1: they actually create a very specialized clone that is sterile,
Speaker 1: so this clone can't reproduce. It has a tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: body about five percent size of a normal clone. They
Speaker 1: are super duper aggressive and they have giant mouths, so
Speaker 1: essentially they are a clone where it's just like an
Speaker 1: aggressive mouth, like if you cloned yourself but it turned
Speaker 1: out like a chihuahua version of you. So it's not
Speaker 1: making clones of itself. It's making minions. It is making minions.
Speaker 1: It's making both. Actually it's making clones and the clones
Speaker 1: are making clones and and it's like but then the
Speaker 1: it's also making minion clones that, yeah, are like I
Speaker 1: guess minions are like the despicable mean minions are those
Speaker 1: just like grous Janette.
Speaker 2: I think that there's so much minion low. I do
Speaker 2: not mean to take us into million lore. I don't
Speaker 2: know anything. There's like so much going to do they are?
Speaker 1: Do they have like an anus? Like what is like
Speaker 1: a is it?
Speaker 2: There's no way minions have genitals.
Speaker 1: No, well not genitals, but they think you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just saying they definitely don't. They probab have chloaca, right,
Speaker 1: Like they may produce a sexually, but then they probably
Speaker 1: have like some kind of like how do they reproduce?
Speaker 2: I think they eat, so they definitely have a hole.
Speaker 1: Right, They've got to have an anus, so but then
Speaker 1: they also like do they reproduce by like like asexually
Speaker 1: sort of like do they like I.
Speaker 2: Just kind of assumed they didn't.
Speaker 1: You mean, like God created it, like the fixed amount
Speaker 1: of minions.
Speaker 2: Like there's some sort of spawn point for them, and
Speaker 2: these I don't know, is it like maybe it's like
Speaker 2: an it's an ant colony thing. There is there's one queen.
Speaker 1: Like so grew is they reproducing queen and he like
Speaker 1: births these minions. Uh, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I need to look more into this. I need
Speaker 2: to look more into But okay, so this guy, so
Speaker 2: they're making he's making real clones, clones of himself that
Speaker 2: look like him. Yeah, but then also he's creating from
Speaker 2: his own genetic library these tiny monsters.
Speaker 1: Exactly, You've got it. So these clones have a very
Speaker 1: specific job. It is to kill any other parasite that
Speaker 1: it comes across that is not its own clone colony.
Speaker 2: So so what you're saying is this is medicine.
Speaker 1: It's medicine that tries to ruin any competition for other
Speaker 1: medicine and taking over your body.
Speaker 2: So like, if you have a lot of parasites, you
Speaker 2: should just try to get this one.
Speaker 1: It's just like that Simpsons joke where if you have
Speaker 1: enough diseases, they all cancel each other out through they
Speaker 1: can't pink.
Speaker 2: I think about that scene so often, considering I probably
Speaker 2: saw that episode one time in elementary school.
Speaker 1: It just makes so much sense in terms of biology.
Speaker 1: I think that I've even seen that like cited in
Speaker 1: certain papers about like viral interference and stuff. It's really funny,
Speaker 1: but like it's uh so yeah, they they uh within
Speaker 1: this snow. This is like snails have such a rough life,
Speaker 1: like salt is bad for them. Uh, people eat some
Speaker 1: of them and like other people hate them because they're
Speaker 1: gross when you step on those. Yeah, I really feel
Speaker 1: for snails, Like their name is literally like uh you know,
Speaker 1: like snail mail, Like it's slow. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: feel a lot of sympathy for them because they get
Speaker 1: so many parasites. And then it's just like so within
Speaker 1: the snail, there's gonna be other parasites with other species
Speaker 1: of parasitic flatworms or maybe even like the same members
Speaker 1: of like the same species inside but like different like individuals,
Speaker 1: different kind of clones.
Speaker 2: Right, So they're they're fighting it out with their their
Speaker 2: fellow worm.
Speaker 1: They're fighting it out with their fellow worm. It's warm
Speaker 1: against worm, but not it's not clone against clone. It's
Speaker 1: like clone against the same clone. It is clone against.
Speaker 2: Making their little army.
Speaker 1: Right, it's clone war where it's all clones, oops, all clones.
Speaker 1: So much Star Wars considered. I've really never I'm not
Speaker 1: a big Star Wars person either. I just know that
Speaker 1: the cultural sort of key points.
Speaker 2: He's in the milliu right, imagine, Okay, so he's making
Speaker 2: he's making a little army, and he's fighting all the other.
Speaker 1: Parasites exactly and so well the specifically it's these weird
Speaker 1: tiny like mini me minions that are like mostly mouth
Speaker 1: and very aggressive. So they'll like their entire job is
Speaker 1: to latch onto these other little flatworms and suck out
Speaker 1: their inside. So they latch on and suck out their
Speaker 1: insides and that's it, job completed.
Speaker 2: So they just so the little evil Chihuahua clones, they
Speaker 2: latch onto like a competing worm and just slurp its
Speaker 2: juice out.
Speaker 1: That's right, you got it? Tight?
Speaker 2: Yeah, cool, cool cool, And this is just happening inside
Speaker 2: the snake and.
Speaker 1: That's like in the in like the clones, whole job
Speaker 1: is to that this, like the minion clones, whole job
Speaker 1: is just to do that, like to slurp about the inside,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't like really benefit it in any way
Speaker 1: because I mean, this is just its instinct to do it.
Speaker 1: But this this minion does not reproduce, you know, it'll
Speaker 1: just kind of like die off eventually. It doesn't. It
Speaker 1: never reaches the stage of it doesn't clone itself. It
Speaker 1: doesn't like reproduce, it's not really propagating, so it just
Speaker 1: kind of like it's sort.
Speaker 2: Of an independent living creature. Yes, it's it's doomed to
Speaker 2: live and die only as a rabid worm slurping clone exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's eleven. So yeah, essentially they turn this like
Speaker 1: snail into a clone clone factory battleground.
Speaker 2: How's the snail feeling?
Speaker 1: Not great?
Speaker 2: Is the snail good? So yeah, first it's.
Speaker 1: Great because the snail the presence of these these parasites
Speaker 1: actually triggers the snail to have a stronger shell and
Speaker 1: bigger body, which is like, hey, this is pretty good
Speaker 1: for the snail survival. But eventually, like that's like the
Speaker 1: only reason that the parasite is having that happen for
Speaker 1: the snail is that it wants the snail to survive
Speaker 1: long enough for it to breed these more clones, right,
Speaker 1: so that once the snail is inevitably eaten by like
Speaker 1: a fish or something, and a lot of these parasites
Speaker 1: like that. I didn't read anything necessarily about how the H.
Speaker 1: Pumilio makes the snail a better target for fish, but
Speaker 1: in a lot of species, like Leucochloridium is an example
Speaker 1: of one that like it infects snails and then like
Speaker 1: makes the snail's etocks. Basically it creates these brood sacks
Speaker 1: that are inside the snail's eyestalks and then they like
Speaker 1: undulate and like they look.
Speaker 2: Like these like rapes like a homing exactly.
Speaker 1: Like a homing again, that make them more attractive to birds.
Speaker 1: And so I imagine there could be something going on here
Speaker 1: where even though the snail at first might be benefited
Speaker 1: by these parasites because it makes them tougher, clone factories
Speaker 1: like it might actually make them more vulnerable to predation
Speaker 1: in the end, So it's not so much the parasites
Speaker 1: are not benefiting the snail in any real sense at
Speaker 1: least or at least in the long run. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It's I just love that you've got this
Speaker 1: thing that it's like, well, I'm going to create of
Speaker 1: my own flesh, just like a little weapon, and its
Speaker 1: entire purpose is just second guts out of my enemies.
Speaker 2: And so once the snail gets eaten, do they start
Speaker 2: this process over again in the new host.
Speaker 1: No, so they begin to develop, they develop into juveniles
Speaker 1: in like the fish, and then once the fish is
Speaker 1: eaten by like a bird or mammal, then that is
Speaker 1: when they develop into adults and so like, uh.
Speaker 2: Really have to get eaten several times.
Speaker 1: So this is one of the reasons that it's so
Speaker 1: important to develop so many clones is that you know,
Speaker 1: any kind of like waste that the animals create, or
Speaker 1: if like want a fish like eats part of like
Speaker 1: if a fish gets eaten by another fish, or like
Speaker 1: fish eats part of a snail and another fish eats
Speaker 1: another little part of the snail or something. You want
Speaker 1: as many clones as you can, because it is like
Speaker 1: a relay RaSE to get into eventually get into a
Speaker 1: bird or a mammal so that you can like reproduce
Speaker 1: with other of these h pumelias and layer eggs and
Speaker 1: so yeah, just like strengthen numbers because that raises the
Speaker 1: statistical probability that you're eventually going to reach the end
Speaker 1: goal of the final animal.
Speaker 2: What a powerful like commitment to evolution, right, just the
Speaker 2: likelihood of going like the seafloor to the stomach of
Speaker 2: a bird and you have to go to get there.
Speaker 1: They gotta, they gotta get there. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: just you know, it has worked out enough times that
Speaker 1: it sticks around.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess the snail is a popular seaside snack.
Speaker 1: Look, they're crunchy and they've got a creamy sinner.
Speaker 2: I don't so it has to go. It has to
Speaker 2: go snail, fish, bird or can What if? What if
Speaker 2: the bird eats the snail?
Speaker 1: I think that's too soon. I think that it has
Speaker 1: too soon. Yeah, like it, I think it's got to
Speaker 1: go into the fish first to.
Speaker 2: Have sort of a fish adolescence, right, And these.
Speaker 1: I mean, the the helpful thing is that these snails
Speaker 1: I think are semi aquatic. They hang around the water
Speaker 1: a lot. So it's like like that the snails that
Speaker 1: they infect are very likely to be eaten by a fish.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, so like they have they have chosen
Speaker 1: a pretty likely.
Speaker 2: Path that like, yeah, I mean it's working for them,
Speaker 2: it's working.
Speaker 1: They're making it work. This strategy does seem to be working,
Speaker 1: and it's horrible, but hey, sure is effective.
Speaker 2: That's a disgusting creature. Yeah, I respect him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you gotta respect it. At least it's not a
Speaker 1: Nazi though.
Speaker 2: But he's definitely a weird little guy. Like that's the
Speaker 2: weirdest littless guy.
Speaker 1: He's the littlest guy, and he's very very weird.
Speaker 2: He's up to some like weird sexual stuff. If he's
Speaker 2: harming his neighbors, like, that's that's a weird little guy.
Speaker 1: For it's a bunch of weird little perverts. And then
Speaker 1: they clone more perverts and they throw a big pervert
Speaker 1: party inside of a snail.
Speaker 2: And they have yeah, a like small violent asexual minions.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that guy could be on my show.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, I mean it's it does kind of sound
Speaker 1: like some weird cults.
Speaker 2: But he's just violent in cell minions.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. There you go, there you go. Uh So
Speaker 1: next time you can call someone an h Pumelio specialized
Speaker 1: clone and they won't even know they're being insulted and
Speaker 1: you might get a wedgie. So I'm not liable for that,
Speaker 1: all right, So before we go, we do got to
Speaker 1: play a little game called the Mystery Animal Sound Game.
Speaker 1: Every week I play a mystery animal sound, and you
Speaker 1: the listener, and you the guests, try to guess who
Speaker 1: is making up sound, also known as gets who's squawking?
Speaker 2: Which is I never win, never win, you know, it's hard.
Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't win a lot of these because I
Speaker 1: get to do it backwards, which is fun for me
Speaker 1: because I get to accurately like smug and smart and like, oh, really,
Speaker 1: you didn't guess the animal sound that I looked up.
Speaker 2: I knew that was a kind of frog that no
Speaker 2: one's ever heard of exactly.
Speaker 1: So last week's Mystery animal sound hint was this. These
Speaker 1: sounds were pitch shifted down to sound like a certain
Speaker 1: movie star animals. They are, in fact in the clade
Speaker 1: you're probably thinking of, but maybe not quite how you're
Speaker 1: imagining them.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Cute.
Speaker 2: Those were dinosaurs. Yeah, I'm gonna say that you have
Speaker 2: a recording of dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: You know what, Molly, You are actually absolutely correct.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And you are correct because this is a audio recording
Speaker 1: that has been pit shifted down of the only living
Speaker 1: dinosaurs around today, which are birds, and this is the
Speaker 1: original audio. So as you say fighting, they are fighting,
Speaker 1: You are correct. So two for two. You say you've
Speaker 1: never won this game, you have won this game. So yes,
Speaker 1: these are these are two birds who are fighting. Birds
Speaker 1: are dinosaurs. They are the only living dinosaurs that have survived.
Speaker 1: And so when you slow down their audio, it is
Speaker 1: a glimpse into maybe speculatively, what dinosaurs may have sounded like, right,
Speaker 1: because they are so closely related and so like the
Speaker 1: dinosaurs that we're thinking about, like t rex, right like
Speaker 1: maybe they like or you know, take any any dinosaur
Speaker 1: that you can think of, right like, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: these like large reptiles that are related to birds, and
Speaker 1: birds are are technically dinosaurs, and so potentially this could
Speaker 1: be what they sounded like. So bonus round. Can you
Speaker 1: guess the species? Like? There are two different species of
Speaker 1: birds fighting here? Can you guess one or two of
Speaker 1: who whom is fighting? Oh?
Speaker 2: My god? What even kinds of birds are there?
Speaker 1: Chickens? I don't know.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a big bird with that like big
Speaker 2: sort of honking sound that it had going. That's like
Speaker 2: a big guy. H what kinds of birds exist? For
Speaker 2: some reason? I want to say like an ibis because
Speaker 2: just because they have those like big faces that I
Speaker 2: feel like they would make a big honking sound. But
Speaker 2: I don't know who he would be fighting?
Speaker 1: You are, You're really close, You're like circling it. Do
Speaker 1: you want me to just tell you.
Speaker 2: Do Flamingos sound like that? No, Domingo be fighting. They
Speaker 2: look peaceable.
Speaker 1: Well, Flamingos could definitely work it out. I only ever
Speaker 1: see them just chilling get rough. No, you are you
Speaker 1: are correct that Flamingos could be could be fighting. But no,
Speaker 1: So this is a Canada goose and what looks to
Speaker 1: me but yours your ibis GISs was close because it
Speaker 1: looks to me like a juvenile Great Blue heron. So
Speaker 1: you've got these two aquatic, semi aquatic birds. You've got
Speaker 1: the Canada goose, You've got the Great Blue heron, and
Speaker 1: they are duking it out in the water. Great blue
Speaker 1: herons in Canada geese will sometimes come into conflict over
Speaker 1: territory or proximity to nesting sites, so they are just
Speaker 1: like wrestling in the water. I'll include a link to
Speaker 1: this video as well as the slowed down audio, which
Speaker 1: was done by Dane Pavitt on Twitter. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: is just really really cool to kind of recontextualize birds,
Speaker 1: like because we're so used to birds, we don't really
Speaker 1: think about them as dinosaurs because when we think about dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: we think about t rex, Brnosaurus, Ankylosaurus. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I've run out of dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: I'm obviously just very nervous about my first like real
Speaker 2: appearance on you know, the Mystery Animal sound game because
Speaker 2: obviously if a bird is doing violence, it's a goose.
Speaker 1: It's gotta be goose.
Speaker 2: That should have been my first guest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, goose. I mean the thing is kind of goose.
Speaker 1: They are very violent, but they're violent because they love
Speaker 1: their babies. They're very protective of their babies. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of aloparenting where there's like a goose who just
Speaker 1: sees some other goose babies and they're like, well, you're
Speaker 1: my babies, now I protect you. So Canada. Geese are
Speaker 1: assholes that have a purpose which is protecting babies. Swans
Speaker 1: will come for you, Yeah, they will come for you.
Speaker 1: Swans are a holes who sometimes like just are terrible,
Speaker 1: Like like male swans will sometimes kill like their own offspring.
Speaker 1: Like it's like that if the biggest a hole bird
Speaker 1: I think, at least in terms of aquatic birds, the
Speaker 1: biggest a holes I think are are swans. They are beautiful, lovely.
Speaker 1: They have certain reasons for being a holes, Like.
Speaker 2: It's because they're monarchists. They all belong to the queens.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. I don't know. I think they
Speaker 1: just as soon like attack the Queen's like body at
Speaker 1: her funeral than than bow down. They are. They are unrulable,
Speaker 1: these swans. But yeah, Canada goose. They are aggressive, and
Speaker 1: yet they are aggressive because they love their family.
Speaker 2: Yes, you have to respect. So if you've ever been
Speaker 2: to Mount Trashmore, I'm from Virginia Beach, Yeah, so it's
Speaker 2: Virginia Beach if you're not familiar with, is perfectly flat.
Speaker 2: The highest point of elevation in Virginia Beach is a
Speaker 2: park called Mount Trashmore because it used to be a
Speaker 2: landfill and they covered it up and turned it into
Speaker 2: a park for children. And the geese there. Listeners who've
Speaker 2: been to Mount Trashmore will back me up. The geese
Speaker 2: there are. I mean, it's like a gang. They'll come
Speaker 2: for you. You have to run.
Speaker 1: Oh no, are you do you think it's like safe
Speaker 1: to talk about this on the podcast, like you've already
Speaker 1: said that you live near there, Like, well, that's so.
Speaker 2: That's where I'm from. I don't live there anywhere they
Speaker 2: can't get me.
Speaker 1: So okay, well don't. Let's not. Let's not docs Molly
Speaker 1: so that the geese don't find her. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I can't go home until the keys forget about this.
Speaker 1: So it's the geese. They got a long memory. It's
Speaker 1: they're not They're not so easily going to forget your transgression.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get onto this week's an mister animals sound.
Speaker 1: The hint is this is someone's faucet leaking or is
Speaker 1: someone horny? Yeah, so ignore. I'm gonna to be fair.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, like, ignore the sound of crickets because
Speaker 1: it's not about the crickets.
Speaker 2: It's romantic and beyond.
Speaker 1: It's romantic ambiance. Exactly do you hear those little like
Speaker 1: things that sound like a little plucking.
Speaker 2: Getting sort of like getting sort of a rainforest on Beyonce.
Speaker 1: Let me play another clip so that this one my
Speaker 1: isolate this sound a little better. I want to be
Speaker 1: as fair as possible. Okay, ignore that. That's that's an owl,
Speaker 1: but that's not what we're talking about. That's what we're
Speaker 1: talking about.
Speaker 2: That sound, okay, and you said it was somebody who's horny.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I guess most animal sounds are. They're either saying They're
Speaker 2: either saying I want to fight you or I would
Speaker 2: like to get to know you right.
Speaker 1: Like like let's have sex, or I'm gonna kill you.
Speaker 1: I was like, animal too too. Yeah, but it's that
Speaker 1: like I can't quite do it.
Speaker 2: Is it some kind of small frog?
Speaker 1: That is a very interesting guess, Mollie. But we will
Speaker 1: know this.
Speaker 2: The owl. The owl threw me off in the second clip.
Speaker 2: The first clip sounded a little rain rain.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was visited a rainforest for the first time recently.
Speaker 2: We were done in Puerto Rico. We were in El
Speaker 2: Yunke rainforest and they have these little tiny frogs. They
Speaker 2: are called cokey. That's all night long.
Speaker 1: It's a cute name for a frog because.
Speaker 2: That's what they sound like. They go coqui and all night,
Speaker 2: all night, the frogs go cook. There's just millions of
Speaker 2: frogs in the rainforest. I'm horny, Hey, I'm horny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or they're trying to sell you coke.
Speaker 2: So I'm just thinking about this the strange sort of
Speaker 2: like almost birdlike, like clicky sounds that some frogs.
Speaker 1: Make a little droplets.
Speaker 2: But I'm not I'm not getting a positive reaction, so
Speaker 2: I'm thinking not a frog.
Speaker 1: Plus you let me say it. Well, uh, you know what, Actually, Molly,
Speaker 1: you are on the right track. I'm not gonna say anymore.
Speaker 2: Though, because because everyone gets to.
Speaker 1: Play, everyone getting everyone out there gets to play, including
Speaker 1: the geese that you've pissed off or are uh don't
Speaker 1: trying to hold them, don't tell them, key trying to
Speaker 1: tap this, trying to get it, get a read on this.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we will reveal the answer in next week's
Speaker 1: or the next podcast, whenever that may happen, probably next week. Mollie,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on the show. Where
Speaker 1: Can People Find You?
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. This was everything
Speaker 2: I hoped it would be. In more as a longtime listener,
Speaker 2: you can listen to my new show, Weird Little Guys.
Speaker 2: It's not as fun as this. It's much more upsetting.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating. It's really really interesting. If you're interested in
Speaker 1: the kind of like extremism pipeline, if you're interested in
Speaker 1: like I mean, like yeah, it's maybe more depressing in
Speaker 1: some ways, but it's like it is really interesting, especially
Speaker 1: in the current like kind of scary global political climate.
Speaker 1: Sorry for you.
Speaker 2: Positive review, positive review. I mean, I try to keep
Speaker 2: it fun. There's some jokes in there, but it's not
Speaker 2: four children. I saw someone was saying that they were
Speaker 2: upset that they were playing it in the car while
Speaker 2: dropping their kid off at school, and I would say,
Speaker 2: don't yeah, you know, but yeah, you can listen to
Speaker 2: Weirdle Guys anywhere you find a podcast. You can follow
Speaker 2: me on Twitter at Socialist dog Mom, where I do
Speaker 2: a lot of local politics, talk about the show, and
Speaker 2: post pictures of my two little Wiener dogs.
Speaker 1: I like her political coverage is really good, but I
Speaker 1: gotta say like the Wiener dog content is premium buck
Speaker 1: and auto, especially like we get we get live video
Speaker 1: of dogs getting snacks and like just so much good
Speaker 1: dog content. Highly recommend Love a Crunchy Snack They it
Speaker 1: is like the internet's most fine repository of dogs eating
Speaker 1: crunchy snacks. Huge recommend. Also recommend the podcast guys. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for listening. If you're enjoying this show
Speaker 1: and you leave a writing and review it tangibly helps me.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. I read every single review. I print
Speaker 1: them all out. I make like a big paper mache
Speaker 1: human being. I pretend that human being is you, and
Speaker 1: like I hang out with it, we go out on
Speaker 1: the town. I put it in like a little radio
Speaker 1: flyer wagon. I'm like, come on, listener, let's go get groceries. Anyways.
Speaker 1: Thanks also to the Space Classics for their super awesome
Speaker 1: song XO Lumina. Creature Feature is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Oh I did forget to say that. If you think
Speaker 1: you know the answer of this week's mystery animal sound,
Speaker 1: you can write to me at Creature Featurepod at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. You can also write to me questions. I
Speaker 1: will occasionally do listener Questions episodes where I answer your questions.
Speaker 1: I also try to answer some of them just through email.
Speaker 1: And you can also send me pictures of your animals,
Speaker 1: like if you have pictures of animal snack time, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to say no to that. Where was I? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know, podcasts, blah blah. iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like
Speaker 1: the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Speaker 1: podcasts or hey guess what where have you listened to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. I'm not your mother. I can't tell
Speaker 1: you what to do, and I didn't like clone a
Speaker 1: bunch of minions out there just to do my bidding,
Speaker 1: because I'm not weird normal. See you next Wednesday.