Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your hosts
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show, it's a listener questions episode.
Speaker 1: You write to me and I read what you write
Speaker 1: to me, and then I do my best to answer
Speaker 1: the questions that you write to me. If you're listening
Speaker 1: to this and you're like, hey, wait a minute, I
Speaker 1: have a question that relates to animal biology, maybe even
Speaker 1: animal psychology or human psychology and how that relates to animals,
Speaker 1: you can write to me at Creature Featurepod at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com and I will do my best to answer you.
Speaker 1: If not on the show, I'll send you a response
Speaker 1: via email, the electronic mailing system. But I try my
Speaker 1: best to answer everyone's questions. And here are some questions
Speaker 1: that I received that I am now about to answer. Hey, Katie,
Speaker 1: love the show, and since you answered a question about
Speaker 1: monsters ink characters, I thought I would ask about a
Speaker 1: fictional character as well. A friend of mine is really
Speaker 1: into cryptids, and he and I usually get into disagreements
Speaker 1: when he brings up Bigfoot. He likes to say that
Speaker 1: Bigfoot is the most plausible of all cryptids, and that
Speaker 1: it's more likely that a large primate lived in the
Speaker 1: Americas at one time than not, and that maybe they're
Speaker 1: still around in small numbers like the Tasmanian tiger. I'm
Speaker 1: not very well educated in science, but this seems wrong.
Speaker 1: Can you help me explain to him why this isn't
Speaker 1: a thing? Were there ever large primates in the Americas?
Speaker 1: Why are all the monkeys in South America small? And
Speaker 1: could they have a large cousin? Why are they only
Speaker 1: in South America? Was there ever non human primates in
Speaker 1: North America? Are there even any guerrilla sized primates anywhere
Speaker 1: but Africa and Asia? Sorry if these are very obvious questions,
Speaker 1: they're not. Thank you for your question, But my friend
Speaker 1: believes things that just seem so fundamentally wrong. He also
Speaker 1: likes to say that girlas we're cryptids once, and we're
Speaker 1: only recently verified to exist. Do you happen to know
Speaker 1: what the difference between an animal existing but not being
Speaker 1: really known and a cryptid? I know cryptids aren't your
Speaker 1: area of expertise, but you know so much about biology
Speaker 1: and evolution that I'm hoping you can help me get
Speaker 1: him to stop trying to convince me that bigfoot is
Speaker 1: a real thing. For what it's worth, I don't care
Speaker 1: that he likes to imagine a bigfoot wandering the forest,
Speaker 1: but when he tries to convince me of it and
Speaker 1: I get annoyed. So at info you can share with
Speaker 1: me will help me. Thank you. The struggle is real.
Speaker 1: I understand this. I have had some people try to
Speaker 1: convince me that Bigfoot is real. I love the concept
Speaker 1: of Bigfoot, YETI sasquatch. That's fun. I really love it
Speaker 1: as a mythos and folklore. But no, I am not.
Speaker 1: I am not big foot pilled. I do not believe
Speaker 1: that Bigfoot exists and is real. But yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for this question. Let's talk about it. Let's
Speaker 1: talk bigfoot. So the problem with most cryptid accounts is
Speaker 1: that they tend to be a large megafauna that would
Speaker 1: be unlikely to be missed by human observation, like the
Speaker 1: Lockness monster or big mant or big man, Bigfoot or
Speaker 1: moth man are harder for me to believe in than say,
Speaker 1: like an undiscovered frog side species of which there could
Speaker 1: be plenty we are constantly finding, like micro hyghlid frogs,
Speaker 1: tiny tiny frogs that can fit on like your pinky,
Speaker 1: and other tiny animals that are new species that we
Speaker 1: have not yet discovered, So little things existing in forest
Speaker 1: somewhere that we have not yet discovered, totally totally real.
Speaker 1: But something as big as a bigfoot, right, because when
Speaker 1: you think of bigfoot, I'm thinking man's eyes probably larger
Speaker 1: than manned because you know the name bigfoot. He's got
Speaker 1: big feet. So it's like this large ape creature. And
Speaker 1: so the idea is that somehow this really large megafauna,
Speaker 1: this large animal evades our detection and we have no
Speaker 1: actual tangible evidence of it. So it is true like
Speaker 1: that large animals can be elusive, such as the giant squid,
Speaker 1: but we can still find tangible evidence bodies that wash
Speaker 1: up on the shore. With modern technology, we can even
Speaker 1: get video of them. And this is in the ocean,
Speaker 1: which is massive. It is an enormous area that is
Speaker 1: very difficult to entirely explore. There's a lot about the
Speaker 1: ocean we simply don't know, and things like even the
Speaker 1: largest animals like whales, there's a lot of behavior that
Speaker 1: we have not been able to completely document because it's
Speaker 1: so hard to have a presence there where we're able
Speaker 1: to constantly have observational data, but we still have some
Speaker 1: tangible evidence for the large animals that exist in the ocean.
Speaker 1: So this makes it pretty unlikely that a large Bigfoot
Speaker 1: like species could hang out in the forests of North
Speaker 1: America or Canada without ever leaving tangible evidence behind. So
Speaker 1: some people have submitted things like fur, but all the
Speaker 1: fur that's ever been submitted that has been attributed to
Speaker 1: Bigfoot turns out to be deer or some other animal.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's the famous footage. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: get into that because you know there's you can I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's tons of documentaries on picking that apart. I
Speaker 1: don't think that footage is a Bigfoot. I think it's
Speaker 1: a guy in a costume on sort of grainy, low
Speaker 1: quality footage. So first thing though, in terms of debunking Bigfoot,
Speaker 1: is there can't just be one immortal Bigfoot. Let's just no, uh,
Speaker 1: there is no primate that lives like hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of years that could sustain itself and just be the
Speaker 1: last one, the one guy who's just there for hundreds
Speaker 1: of years. I would say no, if there could be
Speaker 1: a Bigfoot, there would have to be like a species
Speaker 1: of bigfoots reproducing and living in these forests. They would
Speaker 1: need to consume enough to maintain their large size, and
Speaker 1: there would be notable activities. So if we had like
Speaker 1: essentially like North American gorillas, we would find evidence of
Speaker 1: them because they make their presence known even if they're elusive,
Speaker 1: even if they're trying to evade detection. Because they are large,
Speaker 1: they require a lot of food to consume, and they
Speaker 1: live in groups like we would find evidence eventually, even
Speaker 1: if our forests can be quite large. So what would
Speaker 1: say a bigfoot eat in these forests? Right? The forests
Speaker 1: of North America? These are like say the boreal forests
Speaker 1: or Appalachia. So large primate species such as ratans and
Speaker 1: gorillas are omnivores with vegetation making up a large part
Speaker 1: of their diet. Now, the problem with North America for
Speaker 1: large primates or any primates really is the fact that
Speaker 1: we have so many grasslands, and in our forests they
Speaker 1: are made up of mainly coniferous trees, and these are
Speaker 1: not great for getting a ton of non grass foliage
Speaker 1: and for an arboreal lifestyle that most primates live. So
Speaker 1: deer that live in these forests feed on weeds, grasses,
Speaker 1: and twiggins, so herbivores can live in these forests. But
Speaker 1: if there was a population of giant imates living in
Speaker 1: these forests, we would see a lot of evidence of
Speaker 1: them feeding on the flora, or if you want to
Speaker 1: argue that they would be carnivorous, say maybe eating the
Speaker 1: deer population, there would be evidence of that as well.
Speaker 1: Conservations observe things like deer carcasses and they can look
Speaker 1: for teethmark which actually they use that to track wolf
Speaker 1: populations and wolf activity. So it would be highly unlikely
Speaker 1: that a group of large predators would go unnoticed by
Speaker 1: all of these conservationists, national park employees, researchers, and then
Speaker 1: you know, random hikers other than the you know, like
Speaker 1: I saw bigfoot once, which I do not really consider
Speaker 1: evidence so much, like you know, anecdotal evidence maybe, but
Speaker 1: not real, tangible, scientifically durable evidence. So what if these
Speaker 1: bigfoots are really shy, really smart, and somehow have a
Speaker 1: secret society so they cover up all their activity and
Speaker 1: hide from people. I mean, this to me is extremely unlikely.
Speaker 1: But let's look at a real example of a huge
Speaker 1: primate that once lived that looks essentially like the popular
Speaker 1: depiction of a bigfoot. This was Gigantopithecus, who lived about
Speaker 1: two million to two hundred thousand years ago. It may
Speaker 1: have weighed up to six hundred and fifty pounds, which
Speaker 1: is about three hundred kilogram, so it was a big,
Speaker 1: big guy big guys and gals. It sometimes is depicted
Speaker 1: as walking upright, but really most likely it walked on
Speaker 1: all fours like a gorilla, but like a gorilla, could
Speaker 1: probably be occasionally bipedal, like to stand up make itself taller.
Speaker 1: Based on the molars that were found in the fossil evidence,
Speaker 1: it was likely an herbivore, and so this I've actually
Speaker 1: I think that Gigantopithecus is sometimes argued in favor of
Speaker 1: the existence of bigfoots, saying like, well, maybe it made
Speaker 1: its way to North America and now it's secretly living there.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, Like, so evidence of this primate
Speaker 1: was found in southern China in what would have been
Speaker 1: at the time probably tropical or subtropical forests. So these
Speaker 1: kinds of forests would better sustain a giant herbi of war,
Speaker 1: much like the bamboo forests can sustain pandas and So
Speaker 1: what is thought to have happened to Gigantopithecus is that
Speaker 1: climate change made their food source more scarce, and so
Speaker 1: they because they were so specialized in the in vegetation,
Speaker 1: they were not able to get enough food. They were
Speaker 1: not able to compete with other animals, and because they
Speaker 1: were so big and they had such a high caloric need,
Speaker 1: then they died out just because they could not get
Speaker 1: enough food. So the question of like, well, could Gigantopithecus
Speaker 1: have traveled from South China to North America and established
Speaker 1: a secret society there, I think it's very unlikely. So
Speaker 1: there's no archaeological evidence showing any movement of Gigantipithecus across Europe.
Speaker 1: Their bones were dated around two hundred thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: So in order to get to North America, they would
Speaker 1: have had to cross the bearing Land Bridge, and the
Speaker 1: bearing Land Bridge that is thought to have been the
Speaker 1: way in which human beings were able to come from
Speaker 1: from the Old World to the New World, which happened
Speaker 1: about thirty five thousand years ago. Actually no, so the
Speaker 1: bearing Land Bridge was revealed by way of the glaciers
Speaker 1: melting so that you could actually access the bridge, but
Speaker 1: it hadn't been flooded yet about thirty five thousand years
Speaker 1: and I think human beings crossed it a little more recently,
Speaker 1: around like ten twelve thousand years ago. So for Gigantipithecus
Speaker 1: to have crossed the land bridge, it would have likely
Speaker 1: been during an ice age period. And I don't even
Speaker 1: know if the glaciers would have melted by them to
Speaker 1: allow access to the bearing land bridge. I mean it
Speaker 1: was it fluctuated right over over the years, like there'd
Speaker 1: be like it'd get cold and then there may be
Speaker 1: be some warming. So there was were animals that would
Speaker 1: cross this land bridge. But for a for Gigantipithecus, which
Speaker 1: was not really built for this kind of cold, very
Speaker 1: scarce environment, is hard for me to imagine it could
Speaker 1: have made it all the way from southern China to
Speaker 1: North America. And again without any evidence, right like, because
Speaker 1: if it had made it all the way to North America,
Speaker 1: I would imagine it would be over many many years
Speaker 1: of adapting to its environment. And if that was the case, right,
Speaker 1: you know, you have this Gigantipitheca is that then slowly
Speaker 1: adapted maybe changed a bit to be able to make
Speaker 1: it to North America. Then we'd have fossil evidence like
Speaker 1: we have fossil evidence of mammoths. So I think that
Speaker 1: is really really unlikely. I don't think a bigfoot would
Speaker 1: be a gigantopithecus. Could it be some other primate that
Speaker 1: once lived in North America? As our question ask or observed,
Speaker 1: there are currently no known primates in North America other
Speaker 1: than Canadians and Americans. But there were primates in North
Speaker 1: America tens of millions of years ago, and these primates
Speaker 1: died off around thirty million years ago as climate change
Speaker 1: caused North America to become cold and dry rather than
Speaker 1: the warm, wet climate for lush forests that primates thrive in,
Speaker 1: and these primates tended to be small. I do not
Speaker 1: believe there were any primates in North or even in
Speaker 1: South America that were the size of, say, unterrang or
Speaker 1: a gorilla. So if small primates could not adapt to
Speaker 1: this change, I cannot imagine how a large primate without say,
Speaker 1: the social and technological advancement of humans, could have survived
Speaker 1: while their smaller relatives did not survive. And if bigfoots
Speaker 1: did somehow manage to survive through tool use or like
Speaker 1: a bigfoot civilization. The fact that we don't see any
Speaker 1: evidence of it is to me that is Beggar's belief,
Speaker 1: like there would be some evidence of a bigfoot civilization. Actually,
Speaker 1: the last primate that we have evidence of living in
Speaker 1: North America was called igamo wee cha Shala, which was
Speaker 1: only five pounds. It was a little over two kilograms,
Speaker 1: and it was similar to a lemur. It died out
Speaker 1: around twenty six million years ago. So again, the last
Speaker 1: survivor of the changing climate in North America was it
Speaker 1: heiny primate, and even it could not deal with the
Speaker 1: competition for food. So I just I really don't see it.
Speaker 1: I don't see how a bigfoot could survive or what really,
Speaker 1: what you would expect to see would be a group
Speaker 1: of you know, big big feet, big food foots, right,
Speaker 1: because primates are generally social and you would need to
Speaker 1: have you You couldn't have like the accounts of Bigfoot
Speaker 1: spanning over hundreds of years. You would not just have
Speaker 1: like one immortal bigfoot or a family of like two bigfoots.
Speaker 1: That's not really a tenable situation. Yes, species can survive
Speaker 1: with not that many members, but you need some of them, right,
Speaker 1: And so in order for that to be the case,
Speaker 1: there would be some evidence. And I think the question
Speaker 1: asker also asked like if so, like why are they
Speaker 1: only in South America? So that is because of the environment, right, Like,
Speaker 1: so they used to be in North America because North
Speaker 1: America's climate used to be more like South America is today,
Speaker 1: where it was lush, there were these you know, wet,
Speaker 1: moist forests with a lot of foliage. And again, primates
Speaker 1: are generally arboreal. They live in the trees. So even
Speaker 1: like the ancestors of say the gorilla, lived in trees.
Speaker 1: Even though the gorilla is mostly now on the forest floor,
Speaker 1: they also thrive in forest because of the large amount
Speaker 1: of foliage insects food that an omnivore like a gorilla
Speaker 1: can eat. Also, like orangutans who are quite large, are
Speaker 1: still bor they live in the trees, They build nests
Speaker 1: in the trees. So once she started getting more grasslands
Speaker 1: and the forest started to dry out, it became not
Speaker 1: very hospitable for primates. So yeah, we lost the primates
Speaker 1: in North America. Another question that you asked in your
Speaker 1: email was what is the difference sort of between cryptids
Speaker 1: and an animal existing but not really being known. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. I like you, like you
Speaker 1: correctly pointed out, I'm not really much of a cryptid expert.
Speaker 1: I think that. I mean, there are some cases right
Speaker 1: where people think an animal is a hoax or a
Speaker 1: cryptid and it turns out it is real, like the platypus.
Speaker 1: Right Like, someone brought back a platypus that was, you know,
Speaker 1: a dead platypus taxidermy to one and people thought, oh,
Speaker 1: you just sewed some random animal parts together, like a
Speaker 1: bill and a tail, and it's laying eggs. You're saying, no,
Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. And of course it turned out to be real.
Speaker 1: But I think that that is becoming less and less
Speaker 1: common because we have so much just like the mass
Speaker 1: amount of human observation it is, it is hard, and
Speaker 1: we also have ways of analyzing things like analyzing DNA
Speaker 1: to be able to say, like verify if something is
Speaker 1: actually what someone claims it is. Like there was a
Speaker 1: case of I believe a coote and a domesticated dog
Speaker 1: or a fox and a dog. It might have been
Speaker 1: a fox and a dog that had it was like
Speaker 1: a hybrid, which is extremely rare because they're not very
Speaker 1: related and a DNA analysis actually showed that this is
Speaker 1: probably was a hybrid of a fox and a dog,
Speaker 1: which is really really interesting. And so like now it's
Speaker 1: like harder to It's both harder to have a hoax,
Speaker 1: right because you can do a DNA analysis of it,
Speaker 1: but it's also easier to show that something is real,
Speaker 1: So there's less time for something to get like a
Speaker 1: cryptid status. And so yeah, I would say that, like
Speaker 1: I would not really define like undiscovered or possibly existing,
Speaker 1: but we're not really sure species as necessarily cryptid. Cryptid really,
Speaker 1: I think is more attached to the folklore wives tales
Speaker 1: like word of mouth rather than the si scientific community. Right.
Speaker 1: That's not to say that like people's observations are bad, right,
Speaker 1: Like people's observations can absolutely help science and people observing
Speaker 1: the animals, like you know, researchers should pay attention to
Speaker 1: when people say like, hey, I saw this weird thing,
Speaker 1: or a group of people have some kind of legend.
Speaker 1: But the follow up is that you need to be
Speaker 1: able to actually find you know, go to the area,
Speaker 1: look for evidence, find things, and if you can't really
Speaker 1: find anything to me, that's when it's like that is
Speaker 1: like a cryptid, right, Like, we've never found at Chupacabra.
Speaker 1: What we have found are coyotes that have mange and
Speaker 1: so they don't have any hair, and then they die
Speaker 1: and as they start to decay, their gum lines received
Speaker 1: so they look very scary, but it's really just a
Speaker 1: poor madrid in coyote that is decaying. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think it. Cryptids are actually really interesting. I
Speaker 1: find them fascinating. I love folklore. I love fairy tales,
Speaker 1: but I do make a very strict distinct between what
Speaker 1: I consider to be actual, like animal research and conservationist
Speaker 1: efforts to like say, find as species that may or
Speaker 1: may not be extinct, or even like discovering new species,
Speaker 1: or listening to I think it is important to listen
Speaker 1: to communities about like, hey, we think we saw something,
Speaker 1: because even if it's not the thing that they think
Speaker 1: it is or they think they saw, it could be
Speaker 1: something kind of interesting, like how accounts of the mothman
Speaker 1: might actually be sand hill cranes like veering off of
Speaker 1: their regular migratory path. So I wouldn't I don't think
Speaker 1: it's like good to be so dismissive of folklore, but
Speaker 1: it's also I don't. I'm when like people sometimes try
Speaker 1: to prove folklore with like scientific things of like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: maybe there's this piece of bigfoot hair, but then it
Speaker 1: turns out to be you know, dear hair or something,
Speaker 1: or making these kind of like scientific arguments when there's
Speaker 1: not that much evidence. I personally do not find that compelling.
Speaker 1: But you know, hey, if you can write to me again,
Speaker 1: if there are any more pro bigfoot arguments that you
Speaker 1: want me to analyze or debunk, or if you're a
Speaker 1: pro bigfoot person and you want to email me, go
Speaker 1: for it. Like I'm here to hear your bigfoot arguments.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and when we
Speaker 1: get back, we're going to answer more listener questions. All right,
Speaker 1: on to the next listener question. Hi, Katie, I know
Speaker 1: you've discussed on the pod before that rabbits, pikas, and
Speaker 1: hares aren't rodents. They are lagomorphs. And according to the Internet,
Speaker 1: this has been understood phylogenetically since nineteen twelve. That being
Speaker 1: the case, why was I taught in elementary school in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties in the US that they were rodents?
Speaker 1: Was this a failure of my teachers or the curriculum,
Speaker 1: or am I experiencing the most niche case of the
Speaker 1: Mandola effect. Thanks. Here is a photo of my Siamese
Speaker 1: mix Karina. Thank you so much, and first of all,
Speaker 1: I love Karina. For the listeners, this cat looks like
Speaker 1: a princess who would not hesitate to start chopping heads
Speaker 1: and getting stuff done. I do love a very tyrant
Speaker 1: looking cat. She's beautiful, all right. So this is a
Speaker 1: great question. Rabbits did actually used to be classified as
Speaker 1: rodents in town until around the turn of the century.
Speaker 1: As you pointed out Question Asker and a lot of
Speaker 1: popular media, they were referred to as rodents, So I
Speaker 1: think that helps with the confusion. I think also people
Speaker 1: probably have this idea that rodent means any kind of
Speaker 1: small herbivore with large teeth. In fact, there are animals
Speaker 1: who are rodents that are surprising to people, and animals
Speaker 1: who seem like they should be rodents but who are not.
Speaker 1: Phylogeny gets really confusing because we switched how we classified
Speaker 1: these animals, like say, based on certain things physical characteristics
Speaker 1: and assumed relatedness, which kind of transformed to be more
Speaker 1: based on specific physiology like their digestive system. Rodents have
Speaker 1: single pairs of continuously growing upper and lower incisors. And
Speaker 1: then we also have more sophisticated methods now of understanding relatedness,
Speaker 1: like genetic testing, and then all of this stuff gets
Speaker 1: really hotly debated, like how we define certain like families
Speaker 1: of animals or clades of animals, Like this is not
Speaker 1: none of this is necessarily super super settled, like it
Speaker 1: can be kind of controversial, but yes, absolutely today, like
Speaker 1: the most popular common assessment is that rabbits are lagomorphs.
Speaker 1: They do not belong to the to Rodentia, although it
Speaker 1: is confusing because rabbits also have continuously growing incisors. It's
Speaker 1: just that they have two pairs on their upper jaw
Speaker 1: and one pair on the lower jaw. And then also
Speaker 1: the one of the reasons they're not considered rodents is
Speaker 1: the not being as related. But they do share a
Speaker 1: common ancestor with rodents, and so they do actually belong
Speaker 1: to the same clade. Still, like the subject of the
Speaker 1: phylogeny of rabbits and rodents, whether they should be in
Speaker 1: the same clade or not, it's been subject to a
Speaker 1: lot of debates, So prepare for a lot of drama
Speaker 1: if you bring this up at your local taxonomy meet up.
Speaker 1: So some animals that people can be surprised to find
Speaker 1: out are rodents. Let's talk about this because this is fun.
Speaker 1: So beavers are rodents. They're large semi aquatic rodents. Similar
Speaker 1: to the beaver. Are the nutria, another large semi aquatic
Speaker 1: rodent who some people will mistake for giant rats. If
Speaker 1: you see internet photos that claims that someone has found
Speaker 1: like a cat sized rat and they hold up this
Speaker 1: thing and it's enormous, that is probably a nutria, could
Speaker 1: be a muskrat, but most of those photos I've seen
Speaker 1: are nutria because I think people are more familiar with
Speaker 1: what a muskrat is. So nutria are found in South America,
Speaker 1: North America, and Europe. They weigh up to twenty pounds
Speaker 1: or nine kilograms, and yeah, they're pretty similar to beavers. Actually,
Speaker 1: they have large orange teeth that are reinforced with iron,
Speaker 1: but they do not have the flat tail of a beaver.
Speaker 1: They also do not really build dams in the same
Speaker 1: way that beavers do. There's also the capybara, the very
Speaker 1: sweet cute animal that people love. It looks like a
Speaker 1: mule and a guinea pig had an adorable large baby.
Speaker 1: Cappy Barras can weigh up to around one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty pounds, which is about sixty five kilograms, and they
Speaker 1: live in South America and they are the world's largest rodent. Also, interestingly,
Speaker 1: there is another thing that is somewhat similar to the
Speaker 1: cappy barra. The Patagonian mara is also a rodent. It
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a donkey rabbit. It's smaller than
Speaker 1: the capybara. It weighs around thirty five pounds or sixteen kilograms,
Speaker 1: and they are really really cute looking. There are some animals,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, that look like they should be rodents,
Speaker 1: but they are not so moles, shrews, hedgehogs, they are
Speaker 1: not rodents, nor are solidons, which are shrew like mammals
Speaker 1: that are actually venomous. They're very interesting, very kind of
Speaker 1: prehistoric looking. So there is this animal called the moon rat.
Speaker 1: Fantastic name. I love it. They are a fascinating species
Speaker 1: of mammal found in Southeast Asia who could easily be
Speaker 1: confused for an apossum, But they are not apossums, nor
Speaker 1: are they marsupials. They are actually more closely related to hedgehogs.
Speaker 1: So moon rats not a rat, not a rodent, more
Speaker 1: closely related to hedgehogs, even though they look like a possums.
Speaker 1: Confused stuff, but very very cool. So let's try to
Speaker 1: do just a little quick game. So try to guess
Speaker 1: whether this animal is a rodent or not a rodent.
Speaker 1: So porcupines are they rodents? Are they not rodents? What
Speaker 1: are they? I'll give you a few seconds. Okay, times up.
Speaker 1: Porcupines are actually rodents. They are found in both the
Speaker 1: New World and the Old World. There's different species of porcupines,
Speaker 1: and they are rodents, and they are not related. They
Speaker 1: are not very related at all. Two hedgehogs, because hedgehogs
Speaker 1: are not rodents, whereas porcupines are rodents. So yes, rodents
Speaker 1: are not just tiny little animals that have big teeth.
Speaker 1: It is a you know, fairly well defined, well defined
Speaker 1: group of animals. But again there's like a lot of controversy,
Speaker 1: a lot of argument about how exactly we define the
Speaker 1: phylogeny and the taxonomy of animals. So I'm not surprised
Speaker 1: that there's confusion confusion about rabbits being rodents, especially you know,
Speaker 1: maybe back in the nineteen eighties when we didn't have
Speaker 1: the Internet to correct us. Although now with the sort
Speaker 1: of like when you google something and the AI thing
Speaker 1: comes up, that worries me because I'm not sure AI
Speaker 1: is prepared to discuss the complex subject of phylogeny. But
Speaker 1: we'll see. All Right, another quick break and when we
Speaker 1: get back our last listener question. All right, here is
Speaker 1: our last listener question. Hi, Katie, I recently watched Life
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen the movie, and oh my was I frightened
Speaker 1: two bits. If you haven't watched it, then I won't
Speaker 1: recommend it to you. It's that scary for me at least,
Speaker 1: So it's okay if you can't answer my question, but
Speaker 1: if you have watched it, I was wondering just how
Speaker 1: realistic the science was in the movie to wake an
Speaker 1: organism in stasis after billions of years, and also just
Speaker 1: how probable was the organism's growth. Thanks for the awesome podcast.
Speaker 1: A Concerned citizen of Earth and listener Jesse. Hey, Jesse,
Speaker 1: So I did read the Wikipedia of this movie. A
Speaker 1: guilty pleasure of mine is actually spoiling movies for myself
Speaker 1: that I am too scared to watch. So I did
Speaker 1: enjoy doing that the idea I guess of this movie,
Speaker 1: which you described and I also read on the Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: is that there's this organism found I guess in the
Speaker 1: soil of Mars that has revived after billions of years,
Speaker 1: and then it rapidly evolves in order to commit various
Speaker 1: acts of bloody mischief aboard a space shuttle. And I
Speaker 1: think Ryan Reynolds is there too. So, first, is it
Speaker 1: realistic for something living to survive billions of years? So
Speaker 1: we do know that some species can survive quite a while,
Speaker 1: like that famous tiny animal, the tartar grade, who can
Speaker 1: survive for decades in a state of stasis. It desiccates itself,
Speaker 1: and it can survive extreme temperatures, extreme conditions for decades,
Speaker 1: and it can be revived. But what about four billions
Speaker 1: of years? So when we're on this timescale, we actually
Speaker 1: start to wade into the wacky waters of physics instead
Speaker 1: of biology, because now we're going to talk about like decay.
Speaker 1: A piece of DNA, say preserved in a fossil or something,
Speaker 1: can only survive for a few thousand years because of
Speaker 1: the half life of DNA molecules. So the half life
Speaker 1: of DNA is about five hundred years, So it only
Speaker 1: takes a few million years for DNA to completely decay.
Speaker 1: So for an organism with the DNA to survive millions
Speaker 1: of years or billions of years, it would need to
Speaker 1: be continually renewing its DNA, so it couldn't be in
Speaker 1: a state of stasis. It would actually have to be say, reproduce,
Speaker 1: renewing itself, right, reproducing itself in DNA for a single organism,
Speaker 1: it can't, like cells can't endlessly reproduce, Like we have
Speaker 1: telomere length which kind of like shortens as you are
Speaker 1: continually doing cell replication, and then at a certain point,
Speaker 1: as that telomere gets whittled down and down and down,
Speaker 1: sort of like the body of a candle, then you
Speaker 1: can no longer keep replicating cells, having cell replication without
Speaker 1: having enormous genetic errors which can be represented in things
Speaker 1: like cancer and aging. And so yeah, that's why we
Speaker 1: can't really have, you know, an immortal organism or organism
Speaker 1: that lasts such a long time. So in order for
Speaker 1: it to really survive that long, have to have some
Speaker 1: kind of DNA or an RNA or genetic system that
Speaker 1: does not use the same genetic system that we do,
Speaker 1: like DNA or RNA, some kind of protein strand that
Speaker 1: doesn't need these things. It's hard for me to conceive
Speaker 1: of like how that would actually work, right, So, but
Speaker 1: you know, you could have maybe an organism that is
Speaker 1: made up of smaller organisms that are you know, dying
Speaker 1: and then evolving over many millions of years, right like there,
Speaker 1: I mean there are things like forest systems or like
Speaker 1: coral systems where you know, one could look at these
Speaker 1: things as kind of like one mega organism that has
Speaker 1: all these smaller units to it that are sort of
Speaker 1: reproducing and you know, somewhat maintaining this this system that
Speaker 1: I suppose you could look at it as like an organism, right,
Speaker 1: like a coral reef that is made up of all
Speaker 1: these kind of interconnected corals that are self replicating or
Speaker 1: sexually reproducing and then lasting you know, many many thousands
Speaker 1: of years, or or for systems that are lasting millions
Speaker 1: of years. You could see that as like an organism.
Speaker 1: So maybe an alien organism could be made up of
Speaker 1: a bunch of individual little organisms. But I don't know
Speaker 1: that it would survive stasis, right because again you run
Speaker 1: into that half life issue of like if these are
Speaker 1: if this is just inert DNA sitting there. The molecules
Speaker 1: have to follow the rules of physics in terms of
Speaker 1: like these these you know, bonds like breaking down and decaying,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, I really don't see how something like
Speaker 1: DNA or RNA or even an alien version of DNA
Speaker 1: or RNA could survive billions of years, let alone, right,
Speaker 1: millions or thousands of years, because it would start to
Speaker 1: break down, and even before it's broken down completely, once
Speaker 1: you start to break down, that's interesting reducing so many errors,
Speaker 1: And it's not like DNA is super robust against like
Speaker 1: a lot of errors or a lot of breakdown, because
Speaker 1: then you would get, you know, genetic problems that would
Speaker 1: be really bad for an organism. So but let's kind
Speaker 1: of move past that the idea of it surviving in
Speaker 1: stasis for so long and into the idea of it
Speaker 1: rapidly going under evolution. So basically in the movie, I
Speaker 1: think it changes shape and size and the shape of
Speaker 1: its body and its teeth over time, right, like it
Speaker 1: seems to be able to evolve really rapidly. Evolution doesn't
Speaker 1: generally work in this way where you have a single
Speaker 1: organism changing its body and its genes over its own
Speaker 1: lifetime because of the way that genetics work in terms
Speaker 1: like your genes cannot really change that much over a
Speaker 1: single lifetime or mutate in rapid response to your environment.
Speaker 1: There's some amount of that, right, Like you can argue that, hey,
Speaker 1: we have an immune system, right, and our immune cells
Speaker 1: undergo evolutionary pressures and stuff when we're introduced to pathogens,
Speaker 1: and so there is some amount of like evolution happening
Speaker 1: within a complicated organism over its lifetime. But generally speaking,
Speaker 1: like to have really dramatic changes over a lifetime of
Speaker 1: a complex organism, I'm pretty skeptical now if this is
Speaker 1: made up of like say it's a super organism made
Speaker 1: out of individual organisms and they're all under they're like
Speaker 1: tiny microorganisms that are all undergoing evolution, right and reproducing,
Speaker 1: having genetic mutations and responding dynamically to evolutionary pressures, and
Speaker 1: then are forming this maga organism. Again, like to be
Speaker 1: able to like we do see animals like this, right,
Speaker 1: but usually like say you have a slime mold that
Speaker 1: is made up of individual organisms, but then it's basically
Speaker 1: like a blob. To create a more complicated organism that
Speaker 1: has structure or teeth or a form that is responding
Speaker 1: to its environment. I don't see how you would need
Speaker 1: something very different from our system of DNA or even
Speaker 1: RNA in order to have something that can evolve that rapidly,
Speaker 1: because again it's like you need it's not it's it
Speaker 1: would need to have an incredibly rapid life span of
Speaker 1: this DNA and in credibly rapid sex and mutations. And
Speaker 1: one of the issue with really really rapid mutations, or
Speaker 1: really dramatic rapid mutations, is that will mess you up.
Speaker 1: A mutation can have a really good chance of just
Speaker 1: killing you, right, So if you have these massive rapid
Speaker 1: mutations happening, most likely outcome is you just die. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I do not think we have to worry about
Speaker 1: this kind of alien unless there's some completely different type
Speaker 1: of you know, protein strand in, like an alien genetics
Speaker 1: that works completely differently. I have a hard time conceptualizing that.
Speaker 1: But who knows. I could be wrong and there could
Speaker 1: be aliens among us right now disguising themselves as things
Speaker 1: like your box of tissues or a podcast. But yeah, no,
Speaker 1: not very likely, I think. So. I'm sorry to be
Speaker 1: a wet blanket on this episode to be like aliens.
Speaker 1: Encryptids don't exist. Actually, I do think that aliens exist.
Speaker 1: I don't know what they would look like or seem like,
Speaker 1: but I think it is very likely given on our Earth,
Speaker 1: how we see so much parallel evolution. Like basically humans
Speaker 1: and octopuses evolved completely independently. We our last common ancestor
Speaker 1: was like kind of a warm thing with a simple
Speaker 1: eye spot, and yet we both evolved brain, we both
Speaker 1: evolved eyes, we both seem to actually dream. So I
Speaker 1: think that, like, it is very likely that if you
Speaker 1: have the conditions on some planet somewhere for life, complex
Speaker 1: organisms that are not like completely different from organisms on
Speaker 1: Earth could evolve. Like I think that is a reasonable
Speaker 1: thing to believe. And I do think that believing in
Speaker 1: aliens is not weird or wacky, just that the aliens
Speaker 1: in this movie, in this life movie. I don't buy
Speaker 1: it so much, all right, So before we go last week,
Speaker 1: I played a rerun episode because I was having some
Speaker 1: technical difficulties with my studio. But there was a mystery
Speaker 1: animal sound on that episode, and the hint was this.
Speaker 1: It was if you've got happy feet, this is not
Speaker 1: a sound you want to hear, all right, So I've
Speaker 1: got a few correct guesters here, Jacob Bim, damiumg I
Speaker 1: said Damium, didn't I, Damien, g Anna El, and Nicole
Speaker 1: l all guess correctly. Congratulations. So next week there will
Speaker 1: be a new mystery animal sound as well as the
Speaker 1: answer to the mystery animal sound that was played on
Speaker 1: the episode is Earth Alive which aired a couple weeks ago,
Speaker 1: so stay tuned for that. Thank you guys so much
Speaker 1: for writing to me with your questions. I love answering these,
Speaker 1: like I still love the main episodes with the guests
Speaker 1: and everything, but I actually have a lot of fun
Speaker 1: answering these questions, so I hope you're enjoying that as well.
Speaker 1: And if you would like to write to me, you
Speaker 1: can write to me at Creature feature Pod at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. Your questions, your comments, your pictures of your
Speaker 1: beautiful pets, always love those, or if you think you know,
Speaker 1: actually I guess. If you want to listen to is
Speaker 1: Earth Alive and then that last part has that mystery
Speaker 1: animal sound and want to answer that, you can also
Speaker 1: send your mystery animal sound answers to that email address
Speaker 1: as well. Thank you guys so much for listening, and
Speaker 1: thanks to the Space Classics for their super awesome song
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Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. I'm not your mother, and
Speaker 1: I can't tell you what to do, but I do
Speaker 1: care about you and I hope you have like chocolate
Speaker 1: chip cookies and milk, so you know, have a good
Speaker 1: day and I'll see you next Wednesday.