Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to Creature Feature, the show where we
Speaker 1: feature creatures. I'm your host, Katie Golden. I studied evolutionary
Speaker 1: biology and psychology, So today on the show, we're talking
Speaker 1: about some more human and animal psychology, biology and behaviors,
Speaker 1: and I want to talk about how sometimes big things
Speaker 1: come in small packages, especially when it comes to the
Speaker 1: animal kingdom. Today we're talking the classic tale of David
Speaker 1: and Goliath. Unlikely matchups with even unlikelier conclusions. Which of
Speaker 1: these underdogs will be top dogs in this dog eat
Speaker 1: dog world? Discover this and more as we answer the
Speaker 1: age old question what's the best way to round house
Speaker 1: kick a wasp? And stay tuned, we have a special
Speaker 1: interview with Dr Greg Paully, curator, herpetologist, and snake whisperer.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure everybody knows the story of David and Goliath,
Speaker 1: the scrappy little dude fighting and taking down a giant.
Speaker 1: But what if we got it all wrong? What if
Speaker 1: David was a giant killing predator armed with a rock
Speaker 1: slinging weapon. In the natural world, it's not always so
Speaker 1: clear who the true underdog in this situation is, And
Speaker 1: in fact, there's a little David like spider who casts
Speaker 1: her own stones. She's called the bullus spider. The bolus
Speaker 1: spider group consists of several species of orb weaving spiders
Speaker 1: native to America, Australia, and Africa, who hunt not just
Speaker 1: by weaving a web, but with a handmade bullus weapon.
Speaker 1: The human version of the bullus is similar to David's weapon,
Speaker 1: though instead of a sling, it's a couple of weighted
Speaker 1: balls tied to a cord, which, when world above your
Speaker 1: head and thrown, can be used to capture animals by
Speaker 1: entangling their legs. Bolus spiders use a sticky blop on
Speaker 1: the end of a line of spider silk their prey moths,
Speaker 1: which are often much larger than the spiders themselves. The
Speaker 1: spider will dangle her bullus out like a fishing lure,
Speaker 1: then swinging as the moth gets within her range. The
Speaker 1: moth gets stuck to this dicky glove of stilk, and
Speaker 1: the spider reels it in even more sinister that glob
Speaker 1: of sticky thread is often laced with pharamones that attract mobs.
Speaker 1: The moms think they're about to meet a sexy single,
Speaker 1: but instead they meet their doom One more thing about
Speaker 1: the bullet spiders. Some species have developed a pretty creative
Speaker 1: form of camouflage. They look like bird turds. They're lumpy, shiny,
Speaker 1: white and brown abdomens are meant to mimic bird dukies,
Speaker 1: an unappetizing prospect for predators and an unexpected source of
Speaker 1: danger for prey. So if one bullet spider says to
Speaker 1: another you look like ship today, she'll say, hey, thanks.
Speaker 1: So joining me today is Alex the clam Schmidt, or
Speaker 1: as I like to call him, the itty Bitty Schmitty Committee.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be We worked. We worked on those nicknames.
Speaker 1: It's like when you have two winners, you can't choose,
Speaker 1: gotta list all the names. I also, when you were
Speaker 1: talking about the bullus is, I realized that my touchstone
Speaker 1: for those kinds of weapons are David from David and
Speaker 1: Goliath and Batman two. Yeah. Yeah, this sort of insert
Speaker 1: or a wonder woman to those kind of ensnaring West
Speaker 1: weapons with the swinging um. Batman's got the battering, doesn't he. Yeah?
Speaker 1: He well, he's he's weird because he has a whole
Speaker 1: belt of stuff. He's got a whole belt, a utility belt.
Speaker 1: We'll suddenly have a page a dork. Yes, my favorite
Speaker 1: is in the old the Batman cartoons, like Adam West Batman,
Speaker 1: but the just cartoon version, like he had anti gravity
Speaker 1: spray just belt so as they were falling down a cliff,
Speaker 1: he just deployed that anti gravity spray. So I actually
Speaker 1: have a video of the bullet spider if you want
Speaker 1: to take a look at that. Here she is, she's
Speaker 1: got her you can see it. It's like it looks
Speaker 1: like a fishing lure that she's just holding out with
Speaker 1: one of her legs and she's like, you know, doing
Speaker 1: this kind of come heather thing with it, um. And
Speaker 1: then shortly a moth is gonna just fly right right
Speaker 1: into her trap and she'll reel it in, and it's
Speaker 1: it's just so funny because it looks like they're kind
Speaker 1: of fishing, um, just like do do do waiting for
Speaker 1: him off. It's very it's very looney too. It's like
Speaker 1: dangling a carrot on a string. Yeah, like a wildly
Speaker 1: coyote situation. It's just it's it's like it lifts it
Speaker 1: when it's when the moth is nearby and there it's
Speaker 1: it snaggs it and then it reels it in and
Speaker 1: it's times like the moth can be pretty big compared
Speaker 1: to the actual spider, So it's pretty because like the
Speaker 1: problem with moths for regular spider webs is that first
Speaker 1: of all, they they're quite big. They can like, you know,
Speaker 1: tear a web. But there I was about to save feathers.
Speaker 1: But their wings have all these scales on them that
Speaker 1: can come off and allow them to escape a web.
Speaker 1: Um so interesting. Yeah, yeah, because you know, have you
Speaker 1: ever felt a moth or kind of dusty? So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's also just any time I think of an animal
Speaker 1: who eats moths, like they have completely the opposite moth
Speaker 1: opinion from me. They're like, you know, what's worth all
Speaker 1: this effort a moth? Big mouth fulled moth. Even saying
Speaker 1: moth feels saying the word moth kind of feels like
Speaker 1: how having a moth in your mouth must must be
Speaker 1: Han't that moth in your mouth? Yes? Well so another
Speaker 1: story of a spidery underdog is the golden wheel spider. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's native to southern Africa. It's kind of like a tarantula,
Speaker 1: but it's yellowish instead of black or gray, and you
Speaker 1: don't think of spiders as the victims that often, but
Speaker 1: they actually are like they they have their share of
Speaker 1: predators who um and one of them we've talked about
Speaker 1: on the show before. It's particularly heinous. It's the parasitic
Speaker 1: spider wasp, which will it's quite a menacing predator because
Speaker 1: they'll inject the spider with paralyzing venom. They'll drag the
Speaker 1: spider into their burrow. Then they lay their egg on
Speaker 1: the spider and bury it alive, and as the egg hatches,
Speaker 1: it'll eat this still living spider who's paralyzed slowly, oh
Speaker 1: my god, just over the course of even can be
Speaker 1: up to months. And it's called the parasitic spider wasps. Yes,
Speaker 1: imagine imagine being such a parasite. Parasitic as on the
Speaker 1: front of your name, right right, Mr crimes So. And actually,
Speaker 1: tranchulas and other spiders don't really have much of a
Speaker 1: defense against these wasps. They can't because the wasps are aerial.
Speaker 1: They can fly, so it's really hard for them to
Speaker 1: They just kind of try to defend themselves as best
Speaker 1: as they can, and they actually, because they're flying. The
Speaker 1: rangelas do the technique of like predatory birds where they
Speaker 1: kind of ball up, but that just leaves them even
Speaker 1: more exposed to the spider wasps um. But then that's true,
Speaker 1: they got ninety nine legs and problems, well they don't
Speaker 1: have they only have eight legs, but you know, would help.
Speaker 1: So the Golden Wheel Spider goes full Sonic the Hedgehog,
Speaker 1: where it will becomes too erotic and its movie version
Speaker 1: becomes too highly detailed and disquietingly too many muscles in
Speaker 1: its face. Yeah, they will transform into a wheel and
Speaker 1: cartwheeled down dunes. Uh, and it's they can go up
Speaker 1: to STPs which is my term for spidy turns per
Speaker 1: second um and they just it's really funny to watch
Speaker 1: because they just uh they see the wasps and the
Speaker 1: wasp is attacking it um and the wasp can actually
Speaker 1: dig it out, dig it out of its burrow. So
Speaker 1: and there it goes rolls down like Sonic and also
Speaker 1: the sand element makes me think of san true the Pokemon.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah, and it just tumbles down
Speaker 1: the dune side down a dune, um away from the danger.
Speaker 1: Whoever shot this got a lot of coverage. This is
Speaker 1: like ten different angles on that role. I love it.
Speaker 1: Drone footage of this spider um. So there's another victim
Speaker 1: of predatory wasps whom I think we don't think of
Speaker 1: as needing sympathy. But the humble cockroach. Oh finally, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I do agree that they're gross. I personally
Speaker 1: have a very strong aversion to cockroaches. But there's still
Speaker 1: an animal. They got their own life and their own hobbies.
Speaker 1: I'm sure whatever they do. Yeah, do you have a
Speaker 1: lot of bug phobia? Are not? Really? There's only really
Speaker 1: two insects that I'm phobic of, I would say, which
Speaker 1: would be cockroaches and silverfish. Um, those are the little
Speaker 1: gray ones that have a bunch of legs and they're
Speaker 1: just they're they're little, but they're just nasty. I don't know,
Speaker 1: And I'm not even phobic. I'm not afraid of them.
Speaker 1: I just they gross me out. But I don't mind spiders.
Speaker 1: They don't. There's not really many other insects that bother me.
Speaker 1: It sounds like silverfish had great pr on that name.
Speaker 1: Don't sound like silver. They don't fish or mus they
Speaker 1: really they don't. They're not silver. They're just dirty, little,
Speaker 1: great nasty things, the dirty bug. So cockroaches also face
Speaker 1: the predatory wasp. It's called the jewel wasp, which rides
Speaker 1: them like a cowboy, injects them with paralyzing venom and
Speaker 1: then a neurotoxin that actually allows the wasp to hijack
Speaker 1: their brain and steer them towards their spiders or their
Speaker 1: wasped in um and then like the like the spiders,
Speaker 1: the cockroach has become a meal for the wasps larva
Speaker 1: um where they bury them alive and then the larva
Speaker 1: slowly eats them over the course of like at its leisure.
Speaker 1: And it's called the jewel wasp. Yes, the jewel wasp. Um.
Speaker 1: That's another because that sounds like like some kind of
Speaker 1: fancy They are pretty. They are pretty. They are shiny
Speaker 1: green um, and they kind of do they've they've got curves.
Speaker 1: They do look like a fancy lady. Actually, hey, they're
Speaker 1: a'm jewel wasp. I think they would be female. The
Speaker 1: ones that are predatory so um, I mean certainly the
Speaker 1: ones that do this behavior because they're the ones laying
Speaker 1: the eggs. So they're like, hey, they're a good looking
Speaker 1: you wanna come to my burrow and have my young
Speaker 1: slowly you over several months, Well, you gotta be coordinated
Speaker 1: to inject whatever their poison is and hold one of
Speaker 1: those cigarettes on a longholder like my, my, sometimes I've
Speaker 1: got some neurotoxins. Um. But first uh so it choose
Speaker 1: the cockroaches antenna off and researchers aren't sure. Why could
Speaker 1: just be to be a jerk. Yeah, ruined their reception. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't no channels, um the cockroaches. Dad is on
Speaker 1: the roof just fighting with it. It's more of an
Speaker 1: old tech reference. Children. We used to get our TV
Speaker 1: through like wires that we put on our roofs, and
Speaker 1: then when it stopped working, Dad would get up on
Speaker 1: the war roof and swear a lot, and then you'd
Speaker 1: fall off the roof and swear some more. That's how
Speaker 1: it was being a Dad was terrified. So it uses
Speaker 1: the remaining antenna to uh lead it to its den
Speaker 1: like a dog on the leash, and the neurotoxins have
Speaker 1: just rendered it completely docile, like as zombie. Um. Then
Speaker 1: it buries the roach and lays its egg, and then
Speaker 1: it becomes like the zombie crib that also doubles as
Speaker 1: a larger for the baby wasp. Yeah. And animals are
Speaker 1: just so ready to use each other's bodies as like spaces.
Speaker 1: You know, like we're we're pretty brutal creatures ourselves, but
Speaker 1: we don't do a ton of that, right, Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: we just don't bother. I mean, you know, so like
Speaker 1: all right, we wear the skin of dead animals and
Speaker 1: eat them, and that all seems pretty bad, but animals
Speaker 1: do it. I'm not saying that we should keep doing that.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that animals also do that kind of
Speaker 1: horrifying stuff. Yeah, I've never been like that whale is
Speaker 1: going to be my house. Yeah that would be crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not into it. I mean in Pinocchio, it looked pretty rumy.
Speaker 1: They got all the fish they could ever eat too. Well,
Speaker 1: you're very open about it. Well, so the cockroaches, when
Speaker 1: faced with the seemingly insurmountable odds with the predator that
Speaker 1: just has like neurotoxins and can turn it into a zombie,
Speaker 1: they just rear up on their legs and swing their
Speaker 1: back leg like a baseball bat and deliver a roundhouse
Speaker 1: kick to the wasps head. Oh yeah, finally roundhouse kicks. Yes. Um,
Speaker 1: And it's uh, it's really it's oddly precise how they
Speaker 1: can just like nail these wasps in the face and
Speaker 1: they say it's kind of funny, like they just send
Speaker 1: the wasp flying. U. Where is it on the VANDAM scale?
Speaker 1: Like one to ten mm nine point five? Good? Yeah
Speaker 1: yeah um, missing points only because they don't like mug
Speaker 1: at the camera after doing it. So Eastern honey bees,
Speaker 1: which are one of my favorite insects. There, you know,
Speaker 1: cute they make honey, they're not they're not too mean.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'll sting you, you know if you if you
Speaker 1: provoke them, Yeah, he's gonna be um. And these are
Speaker 1: found in Asia and they will defend their hives by
Speaker 1: boiling invaders alive, kind of like a medieval siege anti
Speaker 1: seal weapons. Yeah yeah um. So when an invader like
Speaker 1: a hornet gets into their nest, the honey bees are
Speaker 1: outmatched in terms of size, but they can work together
Speaker 1: to defeat their attacker in one of the most gruesome
Speaker 1: ways I've heard of. So they boil the hornet alive
Speaker 1: by dog piling it and vibrating their muscles um which
Speaker 1: increases the temperature of this like little ball of bees
Speaker 1: that are surrounding the hornet, until the hornet will boil
Speaker 1: alive at temperatures of up to a hundred and fifteen
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit, and this this also increases the levels of
Speaker 1: c O two, so that in combination, if the heat
Speaker 1: doesn't kill it, the levels of CO two also will
Speaker 1: get it, and that most of the honey bees can
Speaker 1: survive this. They can survive the hot temperatures and CEO
Speaker 1: two levels um, but the hornet can't um um. So
Speaker 1: it's like they'll just kind of vibrate around this hornet
Speaker 1: and disperse and there's like a dead hornet. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: it would be kind of worse if the hornet could
Speaker 1: survive it, because then it's just endless vibrating. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: when you're on a real bumpy road and you you
Speaker 1: get out of the car and you're trying to get
Speaker 1: your land legs and your eyes are just jiggling in
Speaker 1: their sockets. Yea. Well, it's interesting is hornets and bees
Speaker 1: have something called an I see you predator prayer relationship,
Speaker 1: which is an actual term. I feel like biologists have
Speaker 1: the most adorable terms for things. So so I see
Speaker 1: you is the really like it's when I am something
Speaker 1: that is often a prey item will signal to the
Speaker 1: predator that it has seen it, and it's telling the predator, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: I see you. I'm not worth your time. So it
Speaker 1: doesn't run away necessarily because and I think, um, some
Speaker 1: species of squirrels will do this in response to snakes,
Speaker 1: where they like lift their tail up in a way
Speaker 1: that's saying, hey, I see you. You've lost the element
Speaker 1: of surprise, so why bother. So the bees will do this,
Speaker 1: so when they see a hornet, they'll start beating their
Speaker 1: wings violently and producing this menacing hume like. So it's
Speaker 1: not because the typical thing we all hear about is
Speaker 1: fight or flight, and this is some kind of uh,
Speaker 1: dissuade them from fighting. Yeah, it's a I would say
Speaker 1: it's like towards the fight end of the spectrum where
Speaker 1: they're they're saying, I we see you. You don't want
Speaker 1: our our jigglibe ball, do you? And then sometimes this
Speaker 1: will be enough to get the hornet to leave because
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't want to be in the middle
Speaker 1: of a big, old, vibrant and ball. But that sounds
Speaker 1: a little fun, but probably if you get reasted to death,
Speaker 1: it's like a theme park ride, like if it we're
Speaker 1: not safe, it would not be fun right right, like
Speaker 1: thunder Mountain Jewels. Yet around it was built by Pias
Speaker 1: to kill me. I would not write it, but just
Speaker 1: welcome to be a world. We jiggle youa a lot. So.
Speaker 1: The kangaroo rat is another adorable little guy, which you
Speaker 1: would think wouldn't it's just a totally helpless piece of prey.
Speaker 1: They look like kangaroo rat, they look more like mice. Um.
Speaker 1: They're they get their name not because they're in Australia.
Speaker 1: They're actually native to western North America in semi arid
Speaker 1: or arid areas like Arizona. They're adorable little mice like things,
Speaker 1: and their hind haunches are quite muscular, and that's why
Speaker 1: they get the term kangaroo rat because they kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a little bit of that kangaroo nous
Speaker 1: and they can hop like there would be a great
Speaker 1: minor league baseball mascot names that now the kangaroo rats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a softball team. You want any any regional animal
Speaker 1: with like one quarter, that's the best minor league baseball
Speaker 1: Arizona kangaroo rats across team a man to be taken seriously. Um. So,
Speaker 1: like the cockroach, the kangaroo rats will deliver a flying
Speaker 1: kick to escape the things of rattlesnakes UM. They their
Speaker 1: first approaches, they try to leap out of the way
Speaker 1: of the snake strike um with a reaction time of
Speaker 1: just a few fractions of a second, so they have
Speaker 1: very good reflexes and very muscular legs. They never skip
Speaker 1: leg day, arm day a little bit. They got little
Speaker 1: tiny arms, but leg day. But if the snake actually
Speaker 1: manages to grab it, you think, okay, fight over snake
Speaker 1: wins um. But no, they actually will sometimes be able
Speaker 1: to kick the snake in the face and produce act
Speaker 1: itself out of its mouth before the snake gets the
Speaker 1: chance to inject venom. And it's really really funny to watch.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna gonna show and that just kicks it away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so we're taking a look and it the snake
Speaker 1: actually grabs it, and it kicks its head and the
Speaker 1: snake goes flying and it's really funny because its mouth
Speaker 1: is a gape and this video is in slow motion,
Speaker 1: so the snake looks like um, and that's it's just
Speaker 1: a yeah, it's so interesting to me when you have
Speaker 1: an animal like what what is more innocent than a
Speaker 1: mouse um and it but it they animals really want
Speaker 1: to live and they will do their darndists to stay alive. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That it's like it even made sure. Okay, if they
Speaker 1: bite me in the middle, my feet are in a
Speaker 1: perfect position to keep it in the neck, right, great,
Speaker 1: good job. He landed one square in a snake's face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it one flying. It's very funny because snakes normally
Speaker 1: they look quite I don't regal, isn't the world, but
Speaker 1: but menacing. They look sleek and menacing, like killing machines.
Speaker 1: But a snake that's been kicked in the face looks
Speaker 1: very funny. I don't see a lot of There was
Speaker 1: one time I was at a zoo in Ohio and
Speaker 1: we were looking at the like monkey exhibit and one
Speaker 1: of the given type monkeys was swinging, swinging, swinging, missed misses,
Speaker 1: the branch falls, lands and then like immediately gets back
Speaker 1: up and tries to look cool. Normal as snakes have
Speaker 1: like no limbs to make mistakes, so it just always
Speaker 1: seem interesting, right right, But if it's here, Yeah, if
Speaker 1: it gets kicked in the face, it's very goofy looking.
Speaker 1: Imploying for lost. Yeah, it looked like Rocky. It's like
Speaker 1: a shot early in the fight when it's not going
Speaker 1: well right now, and he's like, oh good, you know
Speaker 1: later it'll be fine. But just slow mo and jaw
Speaker 1: waggling from some So. Another little cutie who actually has
Speaker 1: a great strategy to defend itself a bit against big
Speaker 1: predators are field fair birds. They are a small bird
Speaker 1: in the thrush family, native to northern Europe and Asia.
Speaker 1: Um their chicks make for very easy prey for ravens.
Speaker 1: Um they're you know, they're they're bird babies. They're basically
Speaker 1: just little sacks of feathers and meat. Um. So the
Speaker 1: field fair birds are smaller and they really can't ravens
Speaker 1: are quite large, so they don't have stand much of
Speaker 1: a chance against them using conventional warfare. But they use
Speaker 1: whatever weapons they do. They use whatever tools they have
Speaker 1: at their disposal, their poop. Yes, So first the birds
Speaker 1: down the alarm and that scrambles the birds they like,
Speaker 1: issue alarm call and all the all the birds in
Speaker 1: the area, the field for birds will start um swooping
Speaker 1: and swarming the raven and try to intimidate it into
Speaker 1: going away and if it if that doesn't work, this
Speaker 1: is how David Attenborough describes it, screaming with rage. They
Speaker 1: bomb the raven with their excrement. The duties. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I will that name like field Fair. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a place in the shire or something. I expected a
Speaker 1: very innocent bird, and they look innocent. They're like little songbirds.
Speaker 1: They look quite sweet and cute. Um. And the duties
Speaker 1: stick to the raven's feathers, making it difficult to fly.
Speaker 1: So it's not just a gross out tactic. It will
Speaker 1: actually render them immobile and in some cases that could
Speaker 1: be fatal for the raven if they dry off in time,
Speaker 1: makes them vulnerable to other predators. Um, like an oil spiller, yes, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: spilling a twelve. It's just so it's so interesting to
Speaker 1: me because you know, you have you have this little
Speaker 1: tiny bird. What what chance does it have? Well, it
Speaker 1: didn't bet on poop, did it. That's so I wonder.
Speaker 1: I wonder how purposefully they're like, oh I need to poop,
Speaker 1: but I should hold on to it as a weapon
Speaker 1: just in case I need. This is ammo, right, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that is very David and Goliath though it's
Speaker 1: whereas literally slinging you know, well, um, yeah, it's it's, um,
Speaker 1: the smaller the animal probably the more creative they have
Speaker 1: to be in terms of how they defend themselves. Um
Speaker 1: like be it with poop or flying kicks or you know.
Speaker 1: I actually, you know it's interesting because, um, when I'm
Speaker 1: walking my dog as a you know, smaller person of
Speaker 1: the female persuasion, like you just got to be alert.
Speaker 1: I mean, everyone has to be alert at night. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's just like be alert. You know. I'm
Speaker 1: try not to be paranoid of everyone. But I noticed,
Speaker 1: like after my dog poops and I have that bag
Speaker 1: of poop, I feel empowered, Like I feel like I
Speaker 1: have a weapon. I have like a morning start made
Speaker 1: out of poop. So I feel like if someone came
Speaker 1: up to me and meant bad, I would just throw
Speaker 1: the poop at them. And now I'm armed with poop.
Speaker 1: It's a good it's it makes me feel safe. I
Speaker 1: think I understand gun owners now, except my guns would
Speaker 1: just shoot poop. Yeah, and yours is all natural, all
Speaker 1: natural and organic poop gun top That second Amendment was
Speaker 1: second amendment more like number two amendment. I'm no biblical
Speaker 1: or historical scholar, but I wonder how much bigger Goliath
Speaker 1: really was than David. Was he actually a giant or
Speaker 1: was this a case of collective Alice in Wonderland syndrome.
Speaker 1: This syndrome, known as Todd's syndrome or dysmatropia, is a
Speaker 1: neurological syndrome that affects visual perception. Remember in Alice in Wonderland,
Speaker 1: where our girl gets shrunken down, or blown up, the
Speaker 1: world growing or shrinking around her. That's what sufferers of
Speaker 1: this syndrome experience, either micropsia things appearing smaller or macropsia
Speaker 1: things appearing larger, or even objects appearing closer or further
Speaker 1: away than they appear, a sort of mental side view mirror.
Speaker 1: The cause of Alice in Wonderland syndrome is varied. It
Speaker 1: could be a brain tumor a migraine, a symptom of
Speaker 1: the epstein bar virus, the cause of mono or psychoactive drugs.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all know Alice was probably tripping her
Speaker 1: yarn balls off. The general causes in an abnormal amount
Speaker 1: of activity in the visual processing parts of the brain,
Speaker 1: resulting in increased blood flow to the area. So maybe
Speaker 1: David was sky high on shrooms. Probably not, although anyone
Speaker 1: who shows up to a battle with nothing more than
Speaker 1: a few rocks might be a little high. Hey, we'll
Speaker 1: get your rocks off, but first we got to take
Speaker 1: a quick break. When we get back, I hope you
Speaker 1: have the stomach for it. It's gonna be about animals
Speaker 1: eating each other. We're about to discuss some animals who
Speaker 1: bite off more than they can chew. But first, do
Speaker 1: you or anyone you know have miss aphonia. It's the
Speaker 1: term for a strong aversion to the sound of chewing.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking being mildly annoyed by popcorn in the theater,
Speaker 1: but the sound of munching and slurping and gulping being
Speaker 1: enough for you to lose your appetite or even fly
Speaker 1: into a rage. For people with missophonia, chewing or other
Speaker 1: repetitive sounds can trigger the flight or fight reflex. Researchers
Speaker 1: looked at the brains of those with messophonia using fMRI
Speaker 1: I and found that while listening to trigger sounds, there
Speaker 1: was an increased brain activity in areas responsible for emotions,
Speaker 1: long term memory, and fear. The culprit the anterior insular cortex,
Speaker 1: which seemed to spur this increase in activity. The anterior
Speaker 1: insular cortex is responsible for a variety of functions, including
Speaker 1: sensory processing, cognitive emotional processing, and even things like interpreting
Speaker 1: the meaning of one's own heartbeat, imagining pain, and judging
Speaker 1: how painful something is. If you think you may have missophonia,
Speaker 1: there's some good news. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been shown
Speaker 1: to help, and even better news, we're about to discuss
Speaker 1: an animal who doesn't chew at all. In fact, it
Speaker 1: likes to swallow prey items wigh larger than its own body,
Speaker 1: all without chewing. So, Alex, what are your opinions on chewing?
Speaker 1: Yes or no? I do it when I've come across
Speaker 1: one or two people who I think have that misophonia
Speaker 1: becas I'll be eating with them and they're like, can
Speaker 1: you stop? Stop eating? Maybe can't be more closed than
Speaker 1: it is, like chew with your mouth clothes like I
Speaker 1: but my mouth has to open a little right right,
Speaker 1: Or I can just shove the food into my mouth
Speaker 1: like Whimpy from Popeye just Burgergergner. Well, if you did that,
Speaker 1: you would be like the black swallower, which is a fish.
Speaker 1: It sounds it sounds like, you know, like the black
Speaker 1: night from the stuff when it sounds like the worst
Speaker 1: swallower in the road, sounds like some kind of warlock
Speaker 1: who's like, did you die the relex swallower? What's your powers?
Speaker 1: I swallow the night all the King's food. No. Um,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna show you. Well. Wait, actually, first you're
Speaker 1: just gonna describe it. So it's a deep sea fish
Speaker 1: that can grow up to nine inches and it has
Speaker 1: a habit of eating things way bigger than its own body.
Speaker 1: It's found in deep North Atlantic waters at depths of
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine thousand feet. Um. So it's one
Speaker 1: of these spooky deep seafish that are all bony and teeth.
Speaker 1: I know Alex doesn't like these, so I had to
Speaker 1: include it. Yeah. They're all like it's like if a
Speaker 1: zip lock bag was angry. They're all like glowy and
Speaker 1: hard to look at. It looks like one of those
Speaker 1: stress balls full of the little like beads and stuff,
Speaker 1: but instead of beads, its bones. Yeah. And you can
Speaker 1: see all the organs ter pumping away everything. All their
Speaker 1: blood looks black. Yeah, so we should exterminate the species. Well,
Speaker 1: it gets the and better, Alex. It has a distintable
Speaker 1: stomach that can hold prey twice its length and up
Speaker 1: to ten times its mass. It's just can swing down
Speaker 1: and open large enough to eat things bigger than its
Speaker 1: own head, kind of like a snake. I'm going to
Speaker 1: show you a picture of ah man um. So what
Speaker 1: I've just shown Alex is a terrible looking fish um,
Speaker 1: and its stomach looks like a water balloon and it's
Speaker 1: full of I think a squid. Maybe it's hard to tell,
Speaker 1: but you can still see. So the stomach can stretch,
Speaker 1: but it's so stretchy that you can actually see through it.
Speaker 1: So it just looks like this big bag of squid
Speaker 1: attached to this fish that it's otherwise pretty shrimpy looking. Well,
Speaker 1: it looks it looks like if someone told you, hey,
Speaker 1: I need a photoshop of a minnow eating like a
Speaker 1: massive animal, and you didn't have a lot of time,
Speaker 1: you would just draw a big egg under the men
Speaker 1: with the animal in it. It's a child's idea of
Speaker 1: eating um. Sometimes its eyes are bigger than its stomach
Speaker 1: so much that it accidentally kills itself um just too much. Yes,
Speaker 1: so prey can burst its stomach or more gruesomely, if
Speaker 1: the prey is so large that decomposition sets in before
Speaker 1: it can be digested. The decomp gases will force the
Speaker 1: black swallower to float to the surface, killing it. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, this is how most specimens are collected. It's
Speaker 1: just like it's it's such a huge meal. They've just like,
Speaker 1: well it's it doesn't have time to actually digest it.
Speaker 1: And it's so it's so creepy, like the de comp
Speaker 1: gases fill its body and it's like now I'm buoyant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's one of these animals that's just such a
Speaker 1: killing machine. It's dumb, you know, like it just knows
Speaker 1: how to eat stuff, so it's doesn't know how to
Speaker 1: not die. Here's a picture of one with its stomach
Speaker 1: just like torn open by a huge squid. Yeah, much
Speaker 1: bigger animals just leaving. It's like it just do it
Speaker 1: doesn't You're right, it doesn't look real. It doesn't look
Speaker 1: like this should actually happen. But its like it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like a real stomach. It looks like a plastic
Speaker 1: bag attached to a fish where it's like, well the
Speaker 1: food goes in here, I guess. It's so it's so creepy,
Speaker 1: like draw a trout eating two pounds of beef. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just on the bottom of it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Okay, And in space is kind of
Speaker 1: do you feel like this This one's dead. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of tragic, I suppose, but it's face likes kind
Speaker 1: of do be like, well because I bone this one up?
Speaker 1: Uh So, Alex, on this show, we like to go
Speaker 1: to a little place I like to call imagination station. Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: on board, on board, all board the brain train to
Speaker 1: chicken chicken. Um. So, imagine that you're just about to
Speaker 1: sit down and eat what's your favorite food. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: it's gotta be like a really good lemon pepper chicken. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you've got your lemon pepper chicken and it's it's
Speaker 1: in fact, it's like inviting you to eat it. It's
Speaker 1: going Come here, Alex, come hither and partake of my
Speaker 1: succulent meats. In my head, the little box of wings
Speaker 1: is talking yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah, just like,
Speaker 1: come here, Alex. We're delicious and covered in lemony zest.
Speaker 1: And you open up your box of lemon chicken and
Speaker 1: you're you're you're bringing it towards your mouth. And all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, just teeth pop out of the chicken
Speaker 1: and bite you in the face. I'm not going back
Speaker 1: to that wingstop well you know, I mean Chipotle, am right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be uh psychologically scarring, especially for me, an
Speaker 1: intelligent animal. Be like, well, never again when your food
Speaker 1: fights back. So I want to talk to you about
Speaker 1: such a case. Uh it's this little guy called the
Speaker 1: epimus beetle. Uh. They're only about a half an inch
Speaker 1: to an inch big as adults, and they look innocent enough.
Speaker 1: They're just like your average kind of semi shiny green beetle. Um.
Speaker 1: But they're called obligate role reversal predators. So the obligate
Speaker 1: part means that they must do that to survive. And um,
Speaker 1: the role reversal predator is someone who like pretends to
Speaker 1: be prey and then when their predator gets close enough,
Speaker 1: they strike. Oh yeah, like uh sort of film fatale,
Speaker 1: but their beetles and acting like food. Yeah. I just
Speaker 1: saw the first season of Killing Eve. It's like when
Speaker 1: she's in that club down there and she who's the
Speaker 1: guy in that's not a reference for people, but anyway, no,
Speaker 1: but that's that's cool. So like she she's kind of
Speaker 1: like luring someone. I mean that is that. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: one episode where one of the one of the detective
Speaker 1: people is pursuing her and she purposely leads him into
Speaker 1: like one of those crowded you know, like euro disco
Speaker 1: kind of clips and it's just tons of bodies, and
Speaker 1: then there's a part where she just turns around and
Speaker 1: smiles at him and you know that she knows he
Speaker 1: can't get away, she can't get him, and then she does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's creepy. That is like this that is so similar
Speaker 1: to this beetle because it's just like wants it. Well,
Speaker 1: once it's got, it's uh, it's victim like it takes
Speaker 1: its sweet time. Um so um. The it's actually not
Speaker 1: the adult beetle, but the baby beetles. The larva that
Speaker 1: will do this behavior. Um, the bet a larva will
Speaker 1: make sort of helpless, prey like movements like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just secular, little larva. Give me, I'm so delicious
Speaker 1: and tastes good. So it draws in predators like frogs,
Speaker 1: and as the frogs about to chow down on what
Speaker 1: looks like, you know, slimy but satisfying lava, uh, they
Speaker 1: do they dodge the frogs attacks. Then the beetle lava
Speaker 1: bites the frog in the neck or underside, disabling the frog.
Speaker 1: It's just so gruesome. Then they attached themselves to their
Speaker 1: frogs and slowly feed off them, like just sucking out
Speaker 1: their juices like blood and stuff, just taking just like yeah,
Speaker 1: like they they'll slowly eat at them, kind of like
Speaker 1: a parasite. But I think they work quicker, right, not
Speaker 1: like those lazy parasites. Yeah, she thought it was just
Speaker 1: tasty little grab who's eating who? Now that's my grub voice,
Speaker 1: because that's amazing. It's only the babies. Then the adults
Speaker 1: maybe see this brutal behavior happened, and they're like so child,
Speaker 1: Well the adults are also predatory. They but they instead
Speaker 1: of playing the like innocent little baby kind of thing,
Speaker 1: they'll sneak up behind their victim do a surgical strike,
Speaker 1: which some researchers think they're severing the leg muscles, which
Speaker 1: disables the frog and allows the beetle to eat at
Speaker 1: its leisure. Just like there's so there's such assholes, like
Speaker 1: just why can't they just kill it, get it over
Speaker 1: with and eat it. But instead it's like looks like
Speaker 1: you can't moving that shame kiss, I'm gonna I have
Speaker 1: to eat your legs. Man. And frogs are such a
Speaker 1: target for these guys or frogs. Well, it's frogs and
Speaker 1: other amphibians. Um like new and such. Uh well nuts
Speaker 1: Ham comment, Oh yeah, I love it. What a specific
Speaker 1: brutal thing. I know, it's it's pretty metal, but it's
Speaker 1: also it's just there's something so devious about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's creative but devious. Yeah, like a murderous baby. That's
Speaker 1: such a creepy troup. Why do you think it is?
Speaker 1: We're so creeped out by murder babies, you know, like like, ohmen,
Speaker 1: what's another like murder baby? Boss Baby? Was that the
Speaker 1: plot of boss Baby? Uh no, he murders a bunch
Speaker 1: of people. I know, an embarrassing amount about the entire
Speaker 1: movie I've seen. I watched boss Baby. Um actually for
Speaker 1: this podcast once. There was a pilot episode that didn't
Speaker 1: we didn't end up airing, But I watched Boss Baby before,
Speaker 1: which was great, good use of my time. Then the
Speaker 1: makers of Boss Baby killed the show. Yes, raw boss
Speaker 1: Baby creators called this up. And it's like, you don't
Speaker 1: understand it's not lawyers. We will kill you if you does,
Speaker 1: boss baby. Um so it was a great movie, Okay,
Speaker 1: Um yeah, those things like the omen or. There's one
Speaker 1: called the Orphan's Tiny adult. Yes, yeah, they do that
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah. Yeah, like pretending to be I mean
Speaker 1: that's the whole family guy thing. Is Stewie is uh
Speaker 1: is a tiny larva? Yeah? Sure, yes, if the frog's
Speaker 1: name is Lowest I write that classic naughty family guy humor,
Speaker 1: that raunchy naughty family guy humor. It's really good. So, Alex,
Speaker 1: I want you to imagine who you think will win
Speaker 1: in this fight. Although I feel like maybe the title
Speaker 1: of this episode is a a little bit of it. Maybe,
Speaker 1: but uh so we're in Maine and New England where
Speaker 1: it's all snowy and beautiful, and we have two kind
Speaker 1: of elusive predators, the fishers and the lynxes. They're kind
Speaker 1: of like the sharks and the jets. Fishers is that
Speaker 1: I think I've heard of a fisher cat, which actually
Speaker 1: might be a minor league based thinking about it, Where
Speaker 1: are the fisher cats? And we need to be taken seriously?
Speaker 1: Um well, actually no, fishers are small house cats sized
Speaker 1: animals in the weasel family. Um. Weighing in at only
Speaker 1: about eight pounds. They're weasels. Basically, they look a lot
Speaker 1: like weasels. Um, they're they're not. They're a little bigger
Speaker 1: than weasels, but they're about the size of a house cat. Okay,
Speaker 1: surely the much bigger Lynx destroys it in every fight. Yes, yes, uh,
Speaker 1: because I mean look at these they're they're cute little
Speaker 1: noodle boys. And then the Lea, the Canada Lynx, which
Speaker 1: is a relative of the bobcat. But they're bigger and fluffier.
Speaker 1: Weighs in at a shocking twenty five pounds. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of fluffy. Yeah, they are very fluffy. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're a little bigger than bobcat. They look intimidating,
Speaker 1: they can. They have a little more of the saber
Speaker 1: tooth tiger kind of look very fluffy, very sort of
Speaker 1: ice age looking. Um, so you think you Alex, you dummy, right, idiot. Well,
Speaker 1: researchers were pretty surprised to find that these little, tiny
Speaker 1: noodle e fishers were actually often the winners and fights
Speaker 1: between Lynxes and the fisher's noodle. But researcher Scott McLellan says, uh,
Speaker 1: a fisher really doesn't have any boundaries in the size
Speaker 1: of the animal it's willing to attack, which is great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now I need big Fisher energy in my life. No,
Speaker 1: nothing's too big. Yeah, I got Yeah. They are. They
Speaker 1: are saucy little noodle boys. And this researcher has I
Speaker 1: love this guy because he has such a way with words.
Speaker 1: He also says, um, we know that fishers are very opportunistic.
Speaker 1: They're just a ball of fury. So they tracked links
Speaker 1: Is with some radio collars and they when the radio
Speaker 1: callers stopped moving there like, I think that links might
Speaker 1: be dead. Oh god, these are researching what's the accent
Speaker 1: like in main Is that? Is that almost a Canadian accent?
Speaker 1: Or is that that's a good question. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: enough Stephen King adaptation. I imagine. I imagine it is Fargo,
Speaker 1: but I don't think that's right. But I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: with a Fargo accent because you know, so they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we think that might be dead. The radio colors stopped
Speaker 1: a going uh, And they arrive at the scene where
Speaker 1: the Lynxes were killed, and they have to do like
Speaker 1: a bit of biological forensics because they pieced together the
Speaker 1: scene of the crime. Uh. And it's actually kind of
Speaker 1: hard because the lynx is often ripped apart limb from limb.
Speaker 1: It's a nasty, nasty scene. Uh. And they found fisher
Speaker 1: bite marks and tufts of fisher fur in the lynx's mouth,
Speaker 1: indicating that there was quite a fight. Um. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't that, you know, It's like there's a chance that
Speaker 1: maybe the fisher was just like scavenging on the dead lynks.
Speaker 1: Like no, no, no, the links, the links had defensive
Speaker 1: fight wounds. Um. In fact, when they looked at the
Speaker 1: animal tracks, it pointed towards the fisher's stop king the lynxes,
Speaker 1: hunting them down, rather than just like defending themselves or
Speaker 1: getting in a little scrape, like they are actively murdering
Speaker 1: these lynxes. Oh, I don't know, boys, I think we
Speaker 1: got a murder on our hands. Um. And according to
Speaker 1: Scott McLellan, who God, I love him so much, quote,
Speaker 1: they just buckle on. They have a pretty powerful grip
Speaker 1: and they know where to attack. Um. And after the
Speaker 1: fishers have killed the lynxes, they get a little Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Dahmer creativity. Uh, McLellan says, quote it might drag a
Speaker 1: leg up into a tree. It might drag a leg
Speaker 1: into a bush pile or under some snow somewhere, just
Speaker 1: like dag a leg. Here's a leg, there's leg. Everywhere's
Speaker 1: a leg. Leg. Because when you're in a creative project
Speaker 1: and you're in the early stages, you have no wrong answers,
Speaker 1: no wrong ideas, no wrong in a tree, listen, we're
Speaker 1: just sticking things to the tree, and see what stays
Speaker 1: in that tree. We're gonna put some links body parts
Speaker 1: up the flag pole and see who salutes it. Also,
Speaker 1: um Fishers have these very spooky screams that sound well,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna play a brief clip of this for
Speaker 1: you and see what you think. It sounds like someone screaming,
Speaker 1: like a ghost person. It's just it's so creepy because
Speaker 1: I feel like if I lived in Maine and I
Speaker 1: heard that, I would just assume someone was being murdered. Oh,
Speaker 1: because it's such a haunted steak. Because yeah, like some
Speaker 1: ghosts are getting re murdered. Oh yeah, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: It's so steam Kings from main Oh yeah, he's he's
Speaker 1: all about it to wonder stories are there? Yes, the
Speaker 1: Fishers screaming at night murdering lynxes that scarred a young
Speaker 1: Stephen King. Well, they because, especially these animals, they feel
Speaker 1: like something that would be in There are a lot
Speaker 1: of Stephen King stories where it's like a horde of
Speaker 1: sort of small things being a problem, like lang leers
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, they would be He would probably call
Speaker 1: it the noodle boys and animals. And then then noodle
Speaker 1: boys reared their heads and entered my body with their teeth.
Speaker 1: So we know that scrappy little David's in the animal
Speaker 1: kingdom can take down Goliath. But I was wondering if
Speaker 1: there's any truth to this principle when it comes to
Speaker 1: human psychology, specifically in group dynamics. Human beings are social animals,
Speaker 1: so typically are Goliath like strengthler relies on us forming groups.
Speaker 1: But can there be a downside? There's something called the
Speaker 1: bystander effect. It's a sort of group thinks situation in
Speaker 1: which crowds of people failed to help someone in need,
Speaker 1: not because they're callously indifferent, but because each individual group
Speaker 1: member thinks, hey, someone else will handle it. Of course,
Speaker 1: who even deals with crowds of people anymore. We're all
Speaker 1: safe inside on our phones browsing Twitter and read it
Speaker 1: or the TikTok's and the Instagram morbles will not so
Speaker 1: fast there, my fellow millennials. A study by the Tavistock
Speaker 1: Institute of Human Relations found that the bystander effect was
Speaker 1: present even in online information sharing communities. When looking into
Speaker 1: how many people in online groups would respond helpfully to questions,
Speaker 1: the smallest groups fared the best, with the highest person
Speaker 1: of responders. Medium sized groups were the worst, and larger
Speaker 1: groups were better, but still not as good as the
Speaker 1: smallest group. The researchers speculate that while the smallest group
Speaker 1: avoids the bystander effect, the reason the larger groups tend
Speaker 1: to respond more than the medium sized groups was due
Speaker 1: to the increased anonymity, reducing social inhibition. After all, who's
Speaker 1: going to remember your particular handle. We'd go K sixty
Speaker 1: nine if you're in a form of five thousand members,
Speaker 1: so it's safe for you to offer your potentially bad ideas.
Speaker 1: But when measuring the quality of helpfulness, the small and
Speaker 1: medium sized groups fared better than the larger groups, so
Speaker 1: still the smallest group one out in terms of how
Speaker 1: helpful they were and how often they were helpful. However,
Speaker 1: what the researchers didn't take into account is that if
Speaker 1: you have an anonymous intergroup, small enough of the users
Speaker 1: could be sock puppets, with the remaining ten percent being
Speaker 1: you and two dogs trying to lick the chicken grease
Speaker 1: off a keyboard. So maybe dogs on keyboards are the
Speaker 1: real heroes. We'll be right back after a quick break,
Speaker 1: and I'll be joined by Dr Greg Polly, who's here
Speaker 1: to dispel some reptilian myths and to talk about a
Speaker 1: very slithery David and Goliath story. Here with me today
Speaker 1: is friend of the show, Dr Greg Paully. He's a
Speaker 1: herpetology researcher and curator at the Natural History Museum of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles County, and he is here to talk to
Speaker 1: us about snakes as the one thing I want people
Speaker 1: to get from this podcast is to love snakes. That
Speaker 1: sounds good to me. Yeah. So snakes are notorious gluttons,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about today David and Goliath situations. So
Speaker 1: nothing is more emblematic to me than like a snake
Speaker 1: eating something huge in its little tiny noodle body. Um,
Speaker 1: and it can unhinge its jaw and swallow prey many
Speaker 1: times its size. Um. How do they do this? Without
Speaker 1: exploding or do they actually explode. They can explode. So
Speaker 1: first I'll say, I will say they don't actually unhinder
Speaker 1: their jaw. What's really interesting about snakes is that their
Speaker 1: jaw actually consists of three bones. So we think about
Speaker 1: like we have a mandible and a maxilla. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: what snakes dove is I actually have another bone in
Speaker 1: between those. In us developmentally, that bone is part of
Speaker 1: our middle ear, but snakes, which don't have a middle ear,
Speaker 1: that bone is part of the jar articulation. And so
Speaker 1: what they can actually do is they put their jaws
Speaker 1: really wide because of the fact that they've got this
Speaker 1: you know, these basically two joints the bone system, right,
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like a door hinge where it's
Speaker 1: like you know those top the top hinges in hotel
Speaker 1: doors that lets the door open pretty wide. Does that
Speaker 1: make sense? No, No, I don't know anything about it.
Speaker 1: Spent more time with hotels. But it's too it's basically
Speaker 1: two hinges basically the whole point. It's like two hinges
Speaker 1: have two ing so it can open up in some cases,
Speaker 1: and some species of snakes they get almost two, which
Speaker 1: is you know, pretty amazing. So yeah, snakes. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that they have this reputation sometimes it's sort
Speaker 1: of being gluttonous, but you know the reality is that,
Speaker 1: you know, a snake might only eat one or two
Speaker 1: meals a year. So I don't know as somebody who's
Speaker 1: like going to have three meals and maybe two snacks.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's not my job to call to
Speaker 1: call a snake gluttonous when it's eating like once every sea.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's these unbelievable situations. So not a snakes
Speaker 1: ceo like intermittent fasting to exactly. So not all snakes
Speaker 1: do this, but particularly vipers and boas and python, some
Speaker 1: of our really like heavy bodied snakes, they take on
Speaker 1: huge prey items. So some of the biggest what we
Speaker 1: call relative prey mass, that's sort of what we refer
Speaker 1: to this in the snake literature is some of those
Speaker 1: biggest numbers will be like snakes eating prey items that
Speaker 1: are like a hundred over a hundred and fifty of
Speaker 1: their own So I think the record is like almost
Speaker 1: up to one point seven times their own mass. So
Speaker 1: that's like, you know, imagine something like uh, let's take
Speaker 1: you know, like a twenty pound boa constrictor. That's like
Speaker 1: one of those snakes eating like a thirty pound meal.
Speaker 1: So it goes from being a twenty pound snake to
Speaker 1: being a fifty pound because it just ate this massive meals,
Speaker 1: get some terrible meat sweats. Yeah, I would, and so
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean, so then what do they do
Speaker 1: for like the next couple of weeks is like nothing.
Speaker 1: You know, crawler in to some spot where they feel
Speaker 1: a little bit protected, idea that there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of sunshine, and they stick the they stick that chunk
Speaker 1: of their body that's got that big digesting prey mass
Speaker 1: out into the sun and then it's slowly digests and
Speaker 1: you know, weeks two months later they take a giant
Speaker 1: poop and got rid of it. All. That's that actually
Speaker 1: sounds like a wonderful life. But there are these situations
Speaker 1: where like the snake kind of misjudged what it was
Speaker 1: trying to eat and actually something that's so big that
Speaker 1: it actually does end up tearing the inside, so actually
Speaker 1: tearing the digestive truck and in some cases actually causing
Speaker 1: the entire animal to rupture. And there's actually this this
Speaker 1: photo that went vil of This is a non native
Speaker 1: Burmese python in the Florida Everglades that had taken out
Speaker 1: a rather large alligator and it actually ended up being
Speaker 1: too large and it ended up you know, how does
Speaker 1: the animal the snake from the ruptured and you can
Speaker 1: see the gator through the snake, So how does it
Speaker 1: take out a gator in the first place? It kind
Speaker 1: of wrapped construction? Actually, Yeah, so that's the thing. Like
Speaker 1: these these species that we see doing this, like bows
Speaker 1: and pythons, are like really big, strong, constricting snakes, and
Speaker 1: then the other ones we see doing it are things
Speaker 1: like vipers right where you know them. The snake strikes
Speaker 1: the animal, venimates, it waits for that animal to die,
Speaker 1: and then goes and consumes it. Yeah, how do they
Speaker 1: normally manage like without exploding? Because they must have some
Speaker 1: pretty flexible muscles to be able to allow them, because
Speaker 1: like if we tried to eat something twice our size,
Speaker 1: like that wouldn't that wouldn't work. We would instantly die
Speaker 1: or choke, Like how do they how do they not choke?
Speaker 1: How do they not always? I mean basically, a snake
Speaker 1: is just this giant tube, right, and so if you
Speaker 1: can sort of fit into that tube, you're kind of
Speaker 1: good to go, like they're there's a reason that a
Speaker 1: snake doesn't have a small neck in most cases, right,
Speaker 1: and it's because that neck would then be the sort
Speaker 1: of limiting factor of what you can fit down. And
Speaker 1: so what's really amazing is like snakes have all these
Speaker 1: ways of sort of like being able to expand, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't see things like we have we have like
Speaker 1: you know, we have this rib cage that's fused in
Speaker 1: a few places, and so our rib cage doesn't expand
Speaker 1: that well, well, snakes don't have that, you know, they
Speaker 1: don't have a rib cage that fuses all the way around,
Speaker 1: so that they can expand a lot. When we see
Speaker 1: a snake, what we mostly see or like we see
Speaker 1: all the scales, but actually if a snake is like
Speaker 1: eating a huge meal, then it's expanded so much that
Speaker 1: you actually see all the skin in between these scale roads,
Speaker 1: and it'll be almost as wide as the scale roads
Speaker 1: itself if it's really distended. And so they can just
Speaker 1: take on these you know, really big meals, and their
Speaker 1: body can expand to accept a lot of it those
Speaker 1: of course limits, but even the stomach itself can expand
Speaker 1: lengthwise and take up a huge chunk of sort of
Speaker 1: that tubular body if it has a big meal or
Speaker 1: maybe not just like a big meal, but maybe you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's an egg eating snake of something. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: maybe you just got lucky and you've got you know,
Speaker 1: you found the henhouse and you just got you know,
Speaker 1: six at once um. And some species of eggating snakes
Speaker 1: actually rupture the eggs and regurge datum, and some actually
Speaker 1: just swallow the eggs hole. So like for these ones
Speaker 1: that swallow hole, he's gonna pack like you know, do
Speaker 1: they poop the shell outer or it actually mostly gets digested.
Speaker 1: So snake stomachs are absolutely amazing. Like you know, you
Speaker 1: see these snakes that like you know, take like a
Speaker 1: you know, take a take that big bow con Church
Speaker 1: I was talking about. Let's say it does you know,
Speaker 1: let's say it eats a small monkey of some sort.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not pooping out a little monkey bones.
Speaker 1: There's not like a femur that's coming out, you know,
Speaker 1: a mammal femur coming out you know, two weeks later,
Speaker 1: now that all gets the snake stomach is so incredibly efficient.
Speaker 1: It digests all well, you'll see in the long one,
Speaker 1: you just see a little bit of hair and that's
Speaker 1: about it. Maybe some claws off the feet and stuff.
Speaker 1: But I kind of want to change my funeral plans
Speaker 1: to being eaten by a snake, because then I would
Speaker 1: be one percent snake at that point. Yeah, they actually
Speaker 1: have a pretty high rate of you know, sort of recovering,
Speaker 1: sort of the energy efficient. Yeah, um, I don't know it.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's not that far fetched. It's rare for
Speaker 1: a snake to consume a human. There are a few
Speaker 1: species that occasion that very very very very rarely do it. Um.
Speaker 1: And and the key is you need to be a
Speaker 1: sort of a smallish Yeah. So yeah, if I if
Speaker 1: I turned into a little lady, then that will be
Speaker 1: my funeral plan. There you go, get a big snake,
Speaker 1: big enough snake. So you wrote a blog post about
Speaker 1: these incredible flying wrestling matches between snakes and hawks, which,
Speaker 1: uh sounds a lot more entertaining than anything out of
Speaker 1: the w W E. Can you tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about it, paint us a picture of the scene
Speaker 1: to our audience, and and how how are snakes able
Speaker 1: to fend off these hawks? Yeah? So, I mean this
Speaker 1: is a sort of. I think it's sort of a
Speaker 1: great David and Goliah story. Like, you know, we have
Speaker 1: these aerial predators, hawks, eagles, other birds of prey, and
Speaker 1: they love to eat snakes like it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: their Italian fair. It's a tasty little and so. But
Speaker 1: sometimes what happens, this is particularly true for juvenile birds
Speaker 1: of prey, is they haven't really they haven't gotten their
Speaker 1: technique down and they haven't maybe figured out that you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you can buy it off more than you can chew,
Speaker 1: and so you might get something like a juvenile redtailed hawk,
Speaker 1: which is you know, really widespread species of hawk across
Speaker 1: across much of the United States, that might see something
Speaker 1: like a gopher snake, a bowl snake, a rat snake.
Speaker 1: It's sort of those are the species that we offer
Speaker 1: about how big, So you know, this is this this
Speaker 1: is I mean, you know, this is a couple of
Speaker 1: pound bird, you know, but it might a juvenile reddel
Speaker 1: hawks still might have you know, two two and a
Speaker 1: half a wingspan um and then these snakes might be
Speaker 1: two and a half three three and a half, you know,
Speaker 1: up to four or five ft long, but they're just
Speaker 1: but their noodles, whereas exactly town's crushing beaks. They can
Speaker 1: fly exactly, horrible mean predator. And there's this cute, adorable
Speaker 1: snake cruising around, going about this business for the day
Speaker 1: and join some sun, and this hawk comes out of
Speaker 1: nowhere and pounces on it. And so sometimes times with
Speaker 1: these juvenile hawks is they'll come down, they'll grab something
Speaker 1: like a gopher snake, and they'll start flying off with it.
Speaker 1: But you know, the snake is like two two and
Speaker 1: a half three ft long. It's oh and it's a
Speaker 1: constricting species. And so what the snake will then do
Speaker 1: is a defense mechanism, is it just wraps up the hawk.
Speaker 1: And so here's this hawk trying to fly and now
Speaker 1: it's got you know, it's got it. You can't move
Speaker 1: one very well because like the snake wrapped a coil
Speaker 1: around that it's like mashing kind of one talent into
Speaker 1: the other talent. It's got a coil around its neck,
Speaker 1: like getting tangled up in a hose. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: what happens is like you'll see these reports every now
Speaker 1: and then, and this is like one of the great things,
Speaker 1: like people post this stuff on social media because it
Speaker 1: seems absolutely absurd, and it is, but it actually gives
Speaker 1: us an opportunity to study these sort of rarely observed events.
Speaker 1: And so what happens You get these photographs every now
Speaker 1: and then that show up of like, you know, a
Speaker 1: hawk that has like landed in the middle of the street,
Speaker 1: or not even landed as much as it's like fallen
Speaker 1: out of the air into the middle of the street.
Speaker 1: There's a hawk like wrapped up around or there's a
Speaker 1: snake wrapped up around it, and you know, nobody knows
Speaker 1: what's going on. And what's going on is the snake
Speaker 1: is fighting for its life and it's the last ditch
Speaker 1: effort is like can I mess up this hawk enough
Speaker 1: that I can get away? And usually what sometimes happened
Speaker 1: in these cases is that actually the bird gets so
Speaker 1: exhausted that eventually the snake is able to crawl off
Speaker 1: and get away. You know, maybe it's got some talent
Speaker 1: injuries or something like. Yeah. And what's really neat is
Speaker 1: with social media is we see this now all over
Speaker 1: the place because people post these like absurd videos or
Speaker 1: absurd photos. But because they're posting these, you know, onto
Speaker 1: the internet, you know, we see observations of this like
Speaker 1: same sort of thing going down in like Africa and
Speaker 1: going down all across the United States and going down
Speaker 1: and you know, other parts around the world. Different species
Speaker 1: of you know, birds of prey and different species of snakes.
Speaker 1: But we see that there's a lot of different snakes
Speaker 1: that are capable of sort of doing this is like
Speaker 1: the last ditch effort of like trying to trying to
Speaker 1: save themselves and slay the evil hawk goalize. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: is is that is that kind of a common behavior
Speaker 1: that they do where they try to wrap around a
Speaker 1: predator um and but just in this case they happen
Speaker 1: to be flying. Yeah, I mean, I think in general,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean a snake's first line of defense
Speaker 1: is like, don't get seen at all, rely on camouflage,
Speaker 1: rely on stealth, try not to get seen. You know.
Speaker 1: The second line of defense is just flee, right, to
Speaker 1: try to crawl away. That's they teach you in self defense,
Speaker 1: Like the best thing to do is to run away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't get seen and then don't have any contact because
Speaker 1: you run away. And then you know, if that fails,
Speaker 1: then you've got to scare try to scare off whatever
Speaker 1: it is, you know, And so the snakes have all
Speaker 1: these bluff to s yeah, and other snakes will like
Speaker 1: try to rattle their tail to kind of mimic a
Speaker 1: rattle snake, or they'll hiss, or they'll they'll strike at you,
Speaker 1: but like totally in ways that are never going to connect.
Speaker 1: It's just these defensive strikes. And they do all this
Speaker 1: stuff to like, you know, they inhale a bunch of
Speaker 1: air to look big. You know, they do all the
Speaker 1: stuff to like scare away potential pitter. But if that
Speaker 1: fails as well, then you've got no other choice but
Speaker 1: to fight for your life, right, And so that's what's happening.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a snake fighting for its life.
Speaker 1: The hawk is fighting for a meal, the snakes fighting
Speaker 1: for its life. The snakes got way more to lose,
Speaker 1: gives it all it can and sometimes it works, you know,
Speaker 1: But then you have to imagine, like in these situations,
Speaker 1: like that snake is probably you know, snakes have home ranges,
Speaker 1: they have territories. So now it's dropped off in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere. So I think I forget the exact street.
Speaker 1: But like the blog that I was writing about was
Speaker 1: literally like a guy was driving down the street and
Speaker 1: took this photograph, and I want to say, like Echo
Speaker 1: Park here in Los Angeles, of this redtailed hawk that
Speaker 1: just plumbing it down in the middle of the roadway
Speaker 1: with this snake. Yeah, and so sometimes it can be
Speaker 1: as like conspicuous as a spot as that. But of
Speaker 1: course that snake is now, you know, totally in a
Speaker 1: new abitative has no idea. You gotta rebuild its snakes,
Speaker 1: like totally rebuild its whole life. But at least it's alive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least, Yeah, you gotta try. I wish that, um
Speaker 1: that I think it's the Mexican flag that has the
Speaker 1: hawk in the Yeah, that's exactly right. They should replace
Speaker 1: it with the snake just totally wrapped around the hawk
Speaker 1: and like just battling it out. Well, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us. Um. If there's one thing you
Speaker 1: could ask people to do to appreciate nature and more,
Speaker 1: what would it be. Oh, since we're since we're talking
Speaker 1: about you know, sort of rarely observed things, I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, if you see something out there that's really bizarre.
Speaker 1: You see a snake in a hawk crashing to the ground,
Speaker 1: you see some lizards mating, you see um, you know
Speaker 1: there's probably other cool stuff going on in like non
Speaker 1: reptile examples. But you know, you see something interesting, take
Speaker 1: a photograph of it, and um send it to somebody
Speaker 1: at your local natural historyism because maybe it's actually scientifically interesting.
Speaker 1: Or better still, download this amazing app called Naturalists and
Speaker 1: participate in this online citizen science project where you can
Speaker 1: upload observations of things that you see and share those
Speaker 1: with people around the world and create an amazing digital
Speaker 1: legacy of biodiversity records that scientists for literally hundreds of
Speaker 1: years we'll be able to use for their research. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you can maybe also use it for your
Speaker 1: new metal band album cover. Absolutely, but share it with
Speaker 1: scientists first, please, Yeah, and then we can even give
Speaker 1: you advice. I'm like, yeah, you know what this is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what what? What's a good name? What's going on with
Speaker 1: the correct scientific name of your metal band? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you can have a Latin influenced metal awesome. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us, Thanks for having
Speaker 1: me on, and we're back with Alex Schmidt. Um, so
Speaker 1: that was a pretty pretty snaky advance. Sure. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: I don't know why so many people are afraid of snakes.
Speaker 1: They've mostly been like comedically hit the weird fights with birds,
Speaker 1: and I'm way into it. I know, I I do
Speaker 1: like snakes. I think they're actually kind of well, I
Speaker 1: guess Rattlesnakes aren't cute to me just because I associate
Speaker 1: them with venom, deadly, deadly venom. But the other ones
Speaker 1: are cute to me, Like pythons. They have they kind
Speaker 1: of like have a little puppy faces. They're cute. They're
Speaker 1: little noodle dogs. Yeah. That Disney's Robin Hood movie where
Speaker 1: the snake is like a dupey advisor. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: one that got I had a lot of sympathy for
Speaker 1: that snake. Yeah, you know, he was just he was
Speaker 1: like like a lot of that stuff really good. He
Speaker 1: was sort of like the white shret of the Assistant
Speaker 1: to the False King. That was the Disney hit Robin Hood,
Speaker 1: an animated tale. Yeah for yeah, where he was a fox. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that's in history, Yeah, in history, Robin I
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys knew this, but Robin Hood
Speaker 1: was a fox. Yeah. Uh, that's a great movie that
Speaker 1: I love all just like they have Little John as
Speaker 1: Blue the Bears. Somehow it's like a Big Bear in it.
Speaker 1: It's the same voice actor as he did Blue and
Speaker 1: Jungle Book. Yeah, they're that brief period of reusing a
Speaker 1: lot of the cells. That was a good time. I
Speaker 1: think we need more positive representation of snakes in in media.
Speaker 1: I can't think of like any good snake, Like, can
Speaker 1: you think of one like a good cartoon snake? Oh
Speaker 1: wait wait, Kung Fu Panda one of the snakes, uh
Speaker 1: is is one of the good guys, one of the
Speaker 1: good good fighters. And and she's a she's a female,
Speaker 1: which is um. I don't know why I called her.
Speaker 1: I'm used to calling animals females, but she's a woman
Speaker 1: in the movie because she's anthropomorphic. Um. But yeah, And
Speaker 1: maybe that's why they're not in a ton of stuff
Speaker 1: is that it's a little hard to make them anthropomorphic
Speaker 1: in a super fun way. Although I did find I mean,
Speaker 1: like what they did in Robin Hood again hit Disney
Speaker 1: film Robin Hood made a tale of Robin Hood and
Speaker 1: his merriage historical documentary. Yes, is like the snake would
Speaker 1: like fold his late his not his legs, but fold
Speaker 1: his body and kind of like funny ways. And I
Speaker 1: think that I think you can definitely do it just
Speaker 1: gotta gotta have empathized with the snakes. Creativity, give us
Speaker 1: more good representation of snakes. Please. They're great, They're good,
Speaker 1: they're good. Little noodle boys, we got, we got, We
Speaker 1: need fishes and snakes. Who do you think would win
Speaker 1: fisher versus snake? Big snake? You know that that's almost
Speaker 1: in the existing story of Ricky Ticky Tabby. That is true.
Speaker 1: Ricky Ticky Tabby is a mongoose. And there was an
Speaker 1: animated movie of it that our library had on VHS.
Speaker 1: Remember that, I remember that. Yeah, it was like a
Speaker 1: Chuck Jones movie. Um. Yeah, And and that's story is
Speaker 1: accurate because monkeys do eat snakes, Yeah, often poisonous ones,
Speaker 1: and they all eat they're not poison as sorry, venomous.
Speaker 1: And they'll also eat um scorpions, and they have a
Speaker 1: certain resistance to yeah, to scorpion venom Tough little noodle boys,
Speaker 1: tough little noodle boys. Yeah. Or would it just like
Speaker 1: if you matched up a fissure with a snake, would
Speaker 1: it just be like like flopping two noodles together, like
Speaker 1: a fight, like fighting with two poodle pool noodles, you know,
Speaker 1: pool noodle fights that you have you got anything to plug.
Speaker 1: My upcoming pool fights going to be uh no, the
Speaker 1: correct podcast. I hope people check it out and uh
Speaker 1: and then I'm doing a show in l A Friday
Speaker 1: July if that fits with Yeah. Yeah, it's a Stories
Speaker 1: Cafe and Echo Park. It's called Difficult to Name and
Speaker 1: it's a great reading series. Now what's the show's name?
Speaker 1: Difficult to just come on, you can do it, difficult
Speaker 1: to name. I like you should come more prepared to
Speaker 1: these podcasts. You were so ready for that. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was actually just on the Crack podcast, so that should
Speaker 1: be coming out soon, probably around the time. Well when
Speaker 1: is that coming out? It'll be middle agely okay? Cool? Yeah, sweet.
Speaker 1: So it's all coming together. It's coming it's all it's
Speaker 1: all the way to the top. It's all coming together.
Speaker 1: And you brought great stuff, including animal stup so yeah, yeah, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: we talk about extinct kangaroos or are they what tough
Speaker 1: little kangaroo boy? So where can people find you? Alex?
Speaker 1: I'm at Alex Metty on Twitter, and then my website
Speaker 1: is Alex Smitty dot com and it has an email
Speaker 1: newsletter I do where it's ten tips on fun things
Speaker 1: that are free on the internet. Am I not subscribe
Speaker 1: to that? Maybe I think I don't talk about it enough.
Speaker 1: I've been trying to. Yeah, that's amazing. I'm going to
Speaker 1: subscribe to that. I want Schmitty to Yeah, they come
Speaker 1: like once a month, obtrusively, the Gritty Schmitty. I feel
Speaker 1: like the room will fill with nicknames. There we are here.
Speaker 1: I invite everyone on Twitter to round Alex with your
Speaker 1: own nicknames. You of course can find us at Creature
Speaker 1: feet Pod on Twitter, a t U Creature feature pod
Speaker 1: dot com, Creature feature Pod on Instagram. We're up here
Speaker 1: every Wednesday, and I'm at Katie Golden and of course
Speaker 1: I'm also at pro bird rites or is the bird meat?
Speaker 1: Or am I the bird? I'm just thinking about that
Speaker 1: bird that poops on its enemies. I know, I know,
Speaker 1: it's it's It is truly an excellent strategy of bombardment.
Speaker 1: Birds is nasty, nasty listen birds. Yeah, and thanks to
Speaker 1: the Space Classics for their awesome song Exo Lumina