Speaker 1: Broke then to Creature future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your
Speaker 1: host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology, and today on the show, it's a listener's
Speaker 1: Questions episode. You write to me your questions and I
Speaker 1: answer them. That's how it works. My email is Creature Feature. Nope,
Speaker 1: that's not my email. My email is Creature featurepod at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. If you have questions that you would
Speaker 1: like answered, you can write to me there. So let's
Speaker 1: get right into it with the first listener question. Hi, Katie,
Speaker 1: so I'm perplexed about various bird and animal diets. After
Speaker 1: the episode where you discuss the diverse diet of herons,
Speaker 1: this makes sense to me in terms of their physique
Speaker 1: and size. Now take Swan's How on Earth do they
Speaker 1: become so massive in size and need a diet of
Speaker 1: mostly pond plants, which I had to assume are not
Speaker 1: very calorically dense. How do they thrive on such a
Speaker 1: minimal diet? I guess this goes for many land herbivores
Speaker 1: that grow to enormous sizes as well, cows, giraffes, elephants.
Speaker 1: I understand metabolism varies from species to species, but it
Speaker 1: still boggles my mind. Help me understand how pond wheat
Speaker 1: sustains a swan. Thank you look forward to your podcast
Speaker 1: each week, JODCS. So this is a great question. How
Speaker 1: do plants sustain such huge creatures like elephants, pandas, gorilla, etc. So, yes,
Speaker 1: your correct, Swans primarily feed on pond plants. They do
Speaker 1: occasionally eat insects or crustaceans, but yeah, they most of
Speaker 1: their diet is vegetation, and this is also the case
Speaker 1: for even bigger animals like elephants. Elephants are primarily herbivores.
Speaker 1: They eat grasses, scrub, leaves, and sometimes even bark. They
Speaker 1: might sometimes supplement their diet with minerals found in dirt,
Speaker 1: watering holes or mineral lick sites, but yeah, they feed
Speaker 1: primarily on vegetation. And it seems like it would be
Speaker 1: difficult to gain so much mass, fat, muscle, all that
Speaker 1: tissue just from vegetation, but yeah, vegetation can be converted
Speaker 1: into muscle mass, and when eaten in large enough quantities,
Speaker 1: they can easily sustain a large animal. So it is
Speaker 1: true that carnivores are quote quote unquote more efficient in
Speaker 1: that more of the food that they eat, like the meat,
Speaker 1: that they can convert into energy and body mass rather
Speaker 1: than waste, whereas an herbivore will poop out a lot
Speaker 1: of the indigestible plant material. I actually once had a
Speaker 1: journal that was made out of fibers that were collected
Speaker 1: from elephant poop because they poop out so much of
Speaker 1: the insoluble fibers from their diet, this fiber that cannot
Speaker 1: be broken down by their digestive system, that people can
Speaker 1: collect it and then turn it into paper. So but
Speaker 1: in terms of like efficiency, it doesn't necessarily matter that
Speaker 1: if you eat, you know, a slab of meat, like
Speaker 1: you're gonna be able to digest that more easily than say,
Speaker 1: the equivalent amount of that amount of calories in veget
Speaker 1: in plants or vegetables, because it's about sort of the availability,
Speaker 1: the abundance of the food source. So the food that
Speaker 1: herbivores eat vegetation is typically in high supply and easy
Speaker 1: to get in mass volume, whereas prey, you know, predator's
Speaker 1: life is not easy just because they eat meat, which
Speaker 1: seems more efficient in terms of energy. Well, they have
Speaker 1: to chase after the dang thing, right, like they have
Speaker 1: to risk quite a bit in terms of time, energy,
Speaker 1: and even they're on safety in order to take down
Speaker 1: prey and eat that meat. So an herbivore eating a
Speaker 1: lot of vegetation and then yes, like pooping out a
Speaker 1: lot of the vegetation that cannot be digested just because
Speaker 1: they have to eat sort of larger quantities to get
Speaker 1: the same amount of caloric intake doesn't mean it's like
Speaker 1: not a good system for them, not an effective evolutionary
Speaker 1: strategy obviously, because we have plenty of herbivores. So to
Speaker 1: kind of put this in perspective, an African elephant can
Speaker 1: eat around one hundred to three hundred pounds of vegetation
Speaker 1: per day, that's forty five to one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: five kilograms. They spend most of the day grazing and eating,
Speaker 1: So the elephant's digestive system isn't the same as a human's.
Speaker 1: It's adapted for an exclusive vegetarian diet. Digestion can take
Speaker 1: over twenty hours, so different elephant species actually have different
Speaker 1: digestive efficiency. So Asian elephants are more able to get
Speaker 1: use out of plant matter than say African elephants. So
Speaker 1: Asian elephants digest a greater percentage of the food that
Speaker 1: they eat, and it's speculated that this is due to
Speaker 1: basically the availability of the types of vegetation that's available
Speaker 1: to Asian elephants versus African elephants in their environment. So
Speaker 1: African elephants are larger than Asian elephants, but they're more
Speaker 1: inefficient in their diet, So the size of the animal
Speaker 1: is not like directly correlated to the efficiency of their digestion.
Speaker 1: The Asian elephants, they have more of their diet is
Speaker 1: grasses versus the more diverse food in the African elephants diet,
Speaker 1: so the Asian elephant has to be more precisely efficient
Speaker 1: at digesting those grasses. So yeah, size is really about
Speaker 1: a combination of the animal's metabolism and about how much
Speaker 1: food an animal can get. Like the biggest animal in
Speaker 1: the world, the blue whale, subsists entirely on these teeny
Speaker 1: tiny invertebrates like krill. They just eat a huge amount
Speaker 1: of them, a massive, massive amount of them, and that
Speaker 1: is able to sustain their large size. It's true that
Speaker 1: krill are very protein rich, but the common thread there
Speaker 1: with the krill and say like an elephant's diet is
Speaker 1: the abundance of the krilled krill are highly abundant. The
Speaker 1: blue whale can get a lot of them, and so
Speaker 1: and the krill themselves feed on the abundant algae and
Speaker 1: phytoplankton in the ocean. So basically, in terms of getting
Speaker 1: big and getting buff in the animal kingdom, you don't
Speaker 1: have to eat meat. You just have to have an
Speaker 1: abundant food source. If you get enough mass of a
Speaker 1: food item, even if it's not the most efficient food
Speaker 1: that you can eat, you will still get big. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, like did you know that panda ancestors they
Speaker 1: were not always just eating bamboo. They were once omnivores
Speaker 1: like other bears. They used to eat meat as well
Speaker 1: as fruit, plants and et cetera. But now they're exclusively
Speaker 1: bamboo eaters. So why would they do this? This is
Speaker 1: because of the abundance of bamboo in their territory. Being
Speaker 1: niche bamboo eaters mean they have a vast food supply
Speaker 1: and don't have to fight or compete for other food sources. Now,
Speaker 1: this only applies as long as the bamboo forest remain intact.
Speaker 1: The reason panda's struggle is when their bamboo forests are depleted,
Speaker 1: either through you know, human human intervene or climate change.
Speaker 1: So you might wonder, like, well, it doesn't seem wise
Speaker 1: right for an animal to put all their eggs in
Speaker 1: one basket, like if the bamboo becomes more scarce, the
Speaker 1: pandas would be in danger. And that's true, that is
Speaker 1: absolutely true. A lot of animals have probably gone extinct
Speaker 1: because they were specialists in a food source, very specific
Speaker 1: food source, and they weren't generalists. And then once that
Speaker 1: food source went away, maybe due to climate change, maybe
Speaker 1: due to humans, maybe due to another species of animal
Speaker 1: being more successful, then they can't compete anymore. So the
Speaker 1: thing to remember about evolution is evolution doesn't really have foresight.
Speaker 1: It can only the only guiding principle behind evolution is
Speaker 1: if you can pass your genes on to the next generation, great,
Speaker 1: you did it. So it's like this very small scale
Speaker 1: thing of like, well I'm successful, I had progeny and
Speaker 1: now they're alive. And it's from that very small unit
Speaker 1: that you have this much larger, these much larger patterns
Speaker 1: in evolution. But there's no way for evolution to like
Speaker 1: peer into the future or have some like greater understanding
Speaker 1: of what's going to happen to this animal, because that
Speaker 1: the evolution isn't like a meta cognition, it's it's not
Speaker 1: a force outside of just the principle of something that
Speaker 1: survives will survive, and then that thing gets passed on.
Speaker 1: That's it. So, uh, you know, if an animal can
Speaker 1: evolve for millions of years, that hundreds of thousands of years,
Speaker 1: specializing in a food source and being really good at
Speaker 1: getting that food source, and it's successful for hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of years or millions of years, then that's what's
Speaker 1: going to happen. Even if in the future. Sometime in
Speaker 1: the future the climate changes, that food source goes away
Speaker 1: or changes, and then the animal is impacted and then
Speaker 1: that animal might go extinct. So this is actually what
Speaker 1: is thought to have happened to Gigantopithecus, which is a
Speaker 1: giant extinct ape from around two million years ago, sought
Speaker 1: to have lived in southern China. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: the real life Bigfoot. Some researchers think it spent some
Speaker 1: of its time like walking on its hind legs. Some
Speaker 1: think it was too big to do that and walked
Speaker 1: more sort of gorilla style, but it at least looks
Speaker 1: a lot like our common perception of what a bigfoot
Speaker 1: would look like. But it's extinct, and it may have
Speaker 1: weighed over six hundred pounds, so that's three hundred kilograms.
Speaker 1: It was a big, big thing, and it was an
Speaker 1: herbivore and it is thought to have got extinct around
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand years ago when climate change made the
Speaker 1: tropical forests in the region more scarce. So you know,
Speaker 1: you have this happened to animals where you know, it
Speaker 1: has a successful evolutionary strategy for many, many years, and
Speaker 1: then something happens, the environment changes, and then it's no
Speaker 1: longer successful, and then they die out. And the reason
Speaker 1: things seems so stable to us now, right, like we
Speaker 1: have you know, animals that we can't imagine the world without,
Speaker 1: like elephants, Like we couldn't imagine the world without elephants. Well,
Speaker 1: because humans live on a very small scale. Humans kind
Speaker 1: of our memories go back, you know, maybe thousands of
Speaker 1: years in terms of our history, not millions of years.
Speaker 1: So you know, that's that's why it feels like evolution
Speaker 1: is a more stable thing than it actually is. Next
Speaker 1: listener question, Hi, Katie, I've been wondering for a while,
Speaker 1: why can't animals tell time? My dog knows when her
Speaker 1: automatic feeder is about to go, often when it's time
Speaker 1: to go outside at five point thirty in the morning,
Speaker 1: even on weekends. The cats know when it is time
Speaker 1: to be fed and start following us around. Crows know
Speaker 1: what time I get home from work and can expect
Speaker 1: some peanuts. It would seem like this would be an
Speaker 1: evolutionary disadvantage. If an animal has a routine and a
Speaker 1: predator can learn the routine, it would make it easier
Speaker 1: to stock and catch them. It seems like a chaotic
Speaker 1: schedule would be better with the exception of daylight considerations.
Speaker 1: Thanks will h. So, I mean, first of all, I
Speaker 1: think animals can indeed tell time, and you know I
Speaker 1: mean it's true and a certain way that having a
Speaker 1: regular schedule predators might learn your habits more. But the
Speaker 1: problem with having any irregular schedule in terms of say,
Speaker 1: I don't know, waking up at a random time or
Speaker 1: sometimes being nocturnal, sometimes being diurnal, is that your food
Speaker 1: source and your ability to get things would become more difficult.
Speaker 1: So or like a group dynamics, like something like a
Speaker 1: dog is a very social animal, so having a schedule
Speaker 1: where it follows you know, the pack, it's family, or
Speaker 1: it's you know, human family, is going to be very
Speaker 1: important for its survival. I mean actually the same thing
Speaker 1: with crows. Crows are highly social, so having schedules, having
Speaker 1: sort of patterns are really useful for social animals to function,
Speaker 1: and even the less social animals having a pattern. A
Speaker 1: cat is a predator, so having a schedule, knowing like
Speaker 1: when small animals are the most active, is going to
Speaker 1: be good for it. And you know it's also part
Speaker 1: of the reason animals are active at certain times is
Speaker 1: temperature of the environment. Like say you you are, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhere where it's hot. You might be more crepuscular active
Speaker 1: in dawn and dusk, so that you can be active
Speaker 1: when it's a little cooler but not so cold like
Speaker 1: it at night. Or you might want to be more
Speaker 1: active during the day because it's warmer and night is
Speaker 1: too cold. So those are just some reasons that that
Speaker 1: that there are schedules for animals. Also, sunlight, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a visually predisposed animals, you're you're gonna want
Speaker 1: that sunlight so that you can see what you're doing.
Speaker 1: I mean with human beings, we're very visual creatures, much
Speaker 1: more than a lot of animals. We don't use our
Speaker 1: sense of smell or even our hearing, although our hearing
Speaker 1: is fairly good, but our smell is, you know, it's decent,
Speaker 1: but it's not nearly as good as say, like a
Speaker 1: dog or a cat. But our vision is really good.
Speaker 1: And so we're a very like sun based animal. We
Speaker 1: need the sunlight so we can see, so we can hunt,
Speaker 1: so we can gather things like that, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of animals are like that. They need the sunlight
Speaker 1: so that they can see things. And so having a
Speaker 1: schedule that basically maximizes the time you're out and about
Speaker 1: where you can actually see stuff is important. You see
Speaker 1: this also in the ocean, like you see the schedule
Speaker 1: that these very tiny animals follow, these phido, these zooplankton,
Speaker 1: which is both animals that remain microscopic and tiny their
Speaker 1: whole lives. In animals that are larval, the offspring of
Speaker 1: larger animals, fish, ninerians, which includes jellyfish, a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of you know, crustaceans, everything will have a larva, you know,
Speaker 1: on offspring that can be really really tiny, and so
Speaker 1: all of these things, all these little tiny zooplankton go
Speaker 1: on a mass migration and every night where they go
Speaker 1: from the sort of depths of the ocean and come
Speaker 1: up to the surface to feed because during the daytime
Speaker 1: they actually hide at the depth of the ocean, and
Speaker 1: that schedule actually protects them because they are they go
Speaker 1: down below where the sunlight can reach them, so predators
Speaker 1: have a harder time finding them, seeing them and eating them.
Speaker 1: And then at night they come up to the surface
Speaker 1: so that they can feed on phidoplankton, you know, algae
Speaker 1: that has been feeding off of the sun rays. And
Speaker 1: it's this huge mass migration that happens every day and
Speaker 1: it's really amazing. So there are a lot of good
Speaker 1: reasons for animals to have schedules, even if that means
Speaker 1: predators can perhaps exploit that schedule to know when their
Speaker 1: prey is out and about. And in terms of whether
Speaker 1: or not animals can tell time, there has been some
Speaker 1: research on this. Now. Of course, animals have a sense
Speaker 1: of time, of timing, they don't maybe have a definition
Speaker 1: of time or precise sort of orological measurement of time
Speaker 1: with numbers and fractions you know, they don't have their
Speaker 1: little wrist watches. But aside from clocks and understanding like
Speaker 1: what an hour is or how to set an appointment,
Speaker 1: animals have been found to have a sense of time.
Speaker 1: So there's research on mouse brains that show that they
Speaker 1: have an internal clock. And they do this research by
Speaker 1: putting mice into virtual reality, which is always funny to
Speaker 1: me when an animal is put into a VR scenario.
Speaker 1: So the mice ran on treadmills and we're attached to
Speaker 1: a little mousey VR headset. They ran down a VR hallway,
Speaker 1: so they're running in place, just on a treadmill, but
Speaker 1: to the mouse, they think they're running down a hallway
Speaker 1: because they're in virtual reality. And then they come to
Speaker 1: a little VR door, you know, this digital door. After
Speaker 1: six seconds, the door would open and then they can
Speaker 1: keep going through the door and receive a little treat.
Speaker 1: So the treat is real, but the door is fake,
Speaker 1: the hallway is fake. They're just on a treadmill. So
Speaker 1: after training like this, the mice learned that this virtual
Speaker 1: door is shut for six seconds and then opens and
Speaker 1: then they can keep going through and get their little treat.
Speaker 1: The researchers then made the door invisible, and they had
Speaker 1: like a marker on the ground, sort of the change
Speaker 1: in the floor, so that the mice would know that
Speaker 1: the door is supposed to be there, But then they
Speaker 1: can't actually see the door. So the mice still waited
Speaker 1: at the invisible door for six seconds before proceeding to
Speaker 1: receive their reward, even though they don't see the virtual
Speaker 1: door opening, so they don't know when they're supposed to
Speaker 1: proceed through. There's the evidence that they are actually somehow
Speaker 1: able to wait six seconds, the amount of time they
Speaker 1: know they were supposed to wait to receive their treat.
Speaker 1: By looking at the rat's neural activity, the researchers found
Speaker 1: that specific neurons fired when the mouse was waiting for
Speaker 1: the invisible door to open for that waiting period they
Speaker 1: know they have to wait before receiving their treat, which
Speaker 1: indicates that there may be specific neural networks responsible for timing.
Speaker 1: So it's I think reasonable to assume that if mice
Speaker 1: are capable of having this little internal stopwatch, other animals
Speaker 1: probably also have this ability. But of course there's like
Speaker 1: a big difference between a mouse being able to remember
Speaker 1: how to wait six seconds and a mouse being able
Speaker 1: to have sort of the concept of counting, like, you know,
Speaker 1: thinking like one, two, three, four, five, six. You know,
Speaker 1: one mousissippi, two mousissippi. That's probably not happening, but yeah,
Speaker 1: really interesting to see that even a mouse is capable
Speaker 1: of very precise timing abilities. So quite quite amazing. Next
Speaker 1: listen our question. Hello Katie, just in case you do
Speaker 1: a Listener Questions episode before Halloween, I have a spook
Speaker 1: key question for you. If you were a witch, assuming
Speaker 1: you're not assume away, what kind of animal would be
Speaker 1: you're familiar? I think I would go beta garbasca all
Speaker 1: the way. They definitely know how to get to the
Speaker 1: underworld and back. Another good option would be a black
Speaker 1: rat snake that coils around the neck like a necklace
Speaker 1: and is allowed to practice kleptothermy in exchange for its
Speaker 1: services as a familiar. What about you? Would you have
Speaker 1: a velvet worm who can squirt black magic out of
Speaker 1: its little squirty holes. The poo tuo bird is also
Speaker 1: a good candidate for a familiar because they are clearly
Speaker 1: already involved in the dark arts. What do you think?
Speaker 1: Happy Halloween, Chelsea? Now of course this is after Halloween.
Speaker 1: Sorry about that, but I'm still you know what, For me,
Speaker 1: spooky season doesn't end on Halloween. Spooky season is all
Speaker 1: of autumn and winter, because I don't know. Whenever I
Speaker 1: want to get cozy, I also want to think about
Speaker 1: spooky things like ghosts and velvet worms. Of course, I
Speaker 1: do love the idea of a velvet worm familiar who
Speaker 1: squirts black magic out of its little squirty holes. Real
Speaker 1: life velvet worms are a type of it's a worm
Speaker 1: like animal. It's not actual worm, but they look like
Speaker 1: a sort of cross between a caterpillar and a worm.
Speaker 1: They're adorable, and they they have these little nodules on
Speaker 1: their heads where they can squirt the sticky substance at
Speaker 1: their prey because they prey on insects, and then the
Speaker 1: prey gets stuck and the velvet worm can go and
Speaker 1: nibble on them, eat them, and it's great. It's very spooky.
Speaker 1: I also love the badagarabasca that Chelsea mentioned. It is
Speaker 1: a river turtle found in Southeast Asia, also called the
Speaker 1: Northern River terrapin. So males will change from an olive
Speaker 1: green to spooky halloween colors red and black coloration during
Speaker 1: the breeding season. Their heads turn black and their next
Speaker 1: turned blood red to attract females, So these are some
Speaker 1: goth loving females. So in terms of a familiar, I
Speaker 1: think I gotta go with a classic, because a familiar
Speaker 1: has to be good at carrying out my witchy asks.
Speaker 1: It's got to be vaguely spooky, vaguely threatening, good at
Speaker 1: picking locks for my witch crimes, and capable of relaying
Speaker 1: messages to my coven of fellow witches, and also looks cool.
Speaker 1: So for me, I think I would pick the New
Speaker 1: Caledonian crow. They've got the classic kind of Corvid witchy. Look,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of witches are gonna have ravens
Speaker 1: and crows and stuff, and so it'd fit right in.
Speaker 1: But the New Caledonian crow can make tools out of twigs,
Speaker 1: paper and wire, so they are really special species of Corvid.
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty sure I could train one to pick
Speaker 1: a lock or stir a witch's brew, as long as
Speaker 1: I made sure that they would get compensation. I think
Speaker 1: I would have to pay the New Caledonian crow a
Speaker 1: fair wage because these crows are very intelligent and I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure it would know if it's being exploited. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think their cleverness in figuring out puzzles and
Speaker 1: problem solving and getting grown rubs out of bark in
Speaker 1: the wild and food out of man made puzzles in
Speaker 1: the laboratory would make them a very valuable ally in
Speaker 1: the dark arts and in my little witch plans. You know. Also,
Speaker 1: they if I'm flying on some kind of broom or
Speaker 1: vacuum or whatever it is, they would be able to
Speaker 1: keep up and not be afraid of heights. Next, listen
Speaker 1: our question. Hi, Katie, just wondering if you've seen the
Speaker 1: Apple TV series Invasion. The aliens in there not a
Speaker 1: spoiler because it's shown in the teasers. Teasers show everything.
Speaker 1: By the way, I've seen trailers that show the entire
Speaker 1: TV show Slash Movie, and there's nothing left to spoil. Anyways,
Speaker 1: back to the question, the aliens in there definitely got
Speaker 1: that could be highly evolved crab look to them. I
Speaker 1: wonder if the creators had the thought that all evolutions
Speaker 1: lead to crab on the universal scale. Cheers Jesse. Hi, Jesse, So,
Speaker 1: I have not seen this TV series, but yeah, looked
Speaker 1: at some of the images from the show, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree with you. They're pretty crab like, maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit of sea archin tossed in there. I do
Speaker 1: love them. And I'm answering this question because I think
Speaker 1: it's really interesting how so many movies and TV shows
Speaker 1: about scary aliens have aliens that are ripped from the
Speaker 1: pages of marine biology. So I wanted to go through
Speaker 1: some other examples that I can think of. So the
Speaker 1: alien from the Aliens franchise, you know, Signori Weaver and
Speaker 1: the aliens chasing around in her underpants. Those aliens look
Speaker 1: like you took a deep sea anglerfish and bred it
Speaker 1: with a human and a mora eel, And I love
Speaker 1: you know, like the when they open their mouth, the
Speaker 1: aliens in the movie have that little little guy that
Speaker 1: comes out like the extra little like bidy tongue. It's
Speaker 1: that there's an actual thing in marine biology. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: a fair and geal second set of jaws that more
Speaker 1: eels have that can come out and grab food. So
Speaker 1: they open their mouths and then like a second little
Speaker 1: set of jaws shoot out of their mouths and can
Speaker 1: grab food and like pull them in, just like you
Speaker 1: see in the Aliens. I also find face huggers to
Speaker 1: be very crustacean, like very crab or like horseshoe crab.
Speaker 1: Like horseshoe crabs, despite being marine animals, are actually not
Speaker 1: true crabs. They're not crustaceans at all. They are chalceraates
Speaker 1: related to Iraq. And it's like spiders and scorpions. So
Speaker 1: you know, if you see like this alien design and
Speaker 1: it's like, man, it's kind of like it's kind of
Speaker 1: like marine life, but it also kind of looks insect life.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of evolutionary crossover between marine animals like
Speaker 1: isopods or horseshoe horseshoe crabs and land arthropods scorpions, spiders, isopods.
Speaker 1: On land marine isopods you can get quite big, and
Speaker 1: then terrestrial isopods are also known as roly Polly's. So
Speaker 1: it's you know, keep your eye out for alien beings
Speaker 1: in TV shows and movies that look like a cross
Speaker 1: between marine life or some kind of weird land arthropod.
Speaker 1: So there are more movies that have aliens that come
Speaker 1: right out of marine biology. War of the Worlds have
Speaker 1: alien powered ships that look like big squids. Arrival have
Speaker 1: less menacing aliens, but they look like big kind of
Speaker 1: inkty squids or octopuses. The alien thing I'm gonna say,
Speaker 1: in the movie Nope was intentionally cribbed from marine life
Speaker 1: and was based on like a sand dollar design, and
Speaker 1: at other times weird sort of invertebrate sea life, like
Speaker 1: sea pens or sea squirts. So the alien in I mean,
Speaker 1: this is PH's a less famous movie, but the faculty
Speaker 1: had proto Baggins in it. This is an old movie
Speaker 1: was explicitly a tentacled secretter that could infect humans. The
Speaker 1: abyss spoilers this movie features an alien civilization underwater suicide squad.
Speaker 1: Didn't watch the movie, but apparently it's aliens look like
Speaker 1: giant adorable starfish. Uh. And then in clover Field the
Speaker 1: little guys look like little isopods or crustaceans to me.
Speaker 1: So to me, the list goes on and on. I
Speaker 1: think the point is that we love a marine inspired
Speaker 1: alien for some reason. I think that perhaps this is
Speaker 1: because marine life is the closest we get to alien
Speaker 1: life on our planet. Because, aside from say, aquatic mammals
Speaker 1: that hop back into the water like whales who started
Speaker 1: out terrestrial and went back into the ocean, our evolutionary
Speaker 1: history diverged quite early on from a lot of marine
Speaker 1: life so octopuses and humans evolved our brains and eyes
Speaker 1: mostly independently. Our last common ancestor was some kind of
Speaker 1: nematode like creature, and so they have all of these abilities,
Speaker 1: all of these characteristics that are kind of similar to
Speaker 1: our own, like their eyes, they're very expressive and kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting way. They seem to perhaps even dream.
Speaker 1: And yet all of these things they had to evolve independently,
Speaker 1: because yeah, our last common ancestor was essentially like some
Speaker 1: kind of flatworm with like an eye spot, not an
Speaker 1: actual eyeball. So I really don't blame the entertainment industry
Speaker 1: at all for using marine life as a stand in
Speaker 1: for aliens, although it makes me like the aliens more
Speaker 1: like it's hard for me to find them creepy or
Speaker 1: scary when it's like, oh, cute little octopus. Anyways, I
Speaker 1: love a mind flare adorable. Well, that'll just about do
Speaker 1: it for today's Listener Questions episode. If you have a
Speaker 1: question that you would like to have me answer, you
Speaker 1: can write to me at Creature featurepot at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: I either answer here on the show, or I'll write
Speaker 1: to you back in your email if I can, And
Speaker 1: I really appreciate all your questions. Thank you guys so
Speaker 1: much for listening to the show. If you're enjoying it
Speaker 1: and you leave rating or you, I truly do appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I read every single one of the reviews. And thanks
Speaker 1: to the Space Classics for their super awesome song XO.
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Speaker 1: tell you what to do. See you next Wednesday eight