Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Feature, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied
Speaker 1: psychology and evolutionary biology, and I think animals are pretty neat.
Speaker 1: On the show, I'd like to dive into the brains
Speaker 1: of people and animals, get all gooey and covered in neurons,
Speaker 1: and explore the most incredible behaviors on the planet. Today
Speaker 1: we're talking about virtual reality, but ditch those computer goggles
Speaker 1: and just listen with your brain meats, because we're talking
Speaker 1: about a more organic, squishy form of virtual reality. What
Speaker 1: happens when the human or animal brain takes some creative
Speaker 1: license or when your own hand rebels against you. To
Speaker 1: discover this and more as we answer the angel question,
Speaker 1: if you call a fish four eyes, is that science
Speaker 1: are just bullying. So the brain, human or otherwise, is
Speaker 1: one of the most intricately complex structures on the planet.
Speaker 1: The human brain has about eighty billion neurons. For perspective,
Speaker 1: that's almost as much as Jeff bezos is net worth.
Speaker 1: These neurons work together in complex patterns of activation that
Speaker 1: results in thought, movement, speech, and are conscious experience of
Speaker 1: the world. That means when something unusual happens to the brain,
Speaker 1: say a stroke, injury or a lesion, your perception of
Speaker 1: the world can become warped in unexpected ways. There's an
Speaker 1: incredibly rare neurological disorder called Anton Babinski syndrome that results
Speaker 1: from damage to the accipital lobe, a part of the
Speaker 1: brain near the back of your head that processes visual information.
Speaker 1: The damage to the occipital lobe branders the patient corticually blind,
Speaker 1: meaning that their blindness is a result of brain damage
Speaker 1: rather than eye problems. But rather than experiencing being blind,
Speaker 1: people with Anton Babinski syndrome do not experience nor accept
Speaker 1: that they are blind, despite being unable to identify visual
Speaker 1: cues or even navigate a room. When confronted about their blindness,
Speaker 1: people with this neurologic COO condition deny being blind, and
Speaker 1: when asked to describe what they see, they will confabulate
Speaker 1: a response. So confabulation is a term that means fabrication,
Speaker 1: but it's not a lie. The person confabulating really believes
Speaker 1: what they're saying. Their brain is filling in missing information
Speaker 1: to the best of their ability. While people with Anton
Speaker 1: Babinski syndrome do experience the delusion of being cited. It's
Speaker 1: not quite what you may think. It's likely not that
Speaker 1: they're just in denial or refuse to accept reality. Rather,
Speaker 1: the leading hypothesis is that the damage to their accipital
Speaker 1: lobe means that while they still receive visual signals from
Speaker 1: their eyes, their brain is unable to pass this information
Speaker 1: along to the speech language in motor processing areas of
Speaker 1: the brain. Basically, they can still see their eyes are
Speaker 1: sending messages to their accipital lobes, but they're unable to
Speaker 1: do anything with that information. So they may consciously understand
Speaker 1: that they're really seeing things, but their brain can't communicate
Speaker 1: the informa asian. So in order to fill in this gap,
Speaker 1: their brains do some improv Though Anton Bobinski syndrome is rare,
Speaker 1: this habit of the brain filling in information is something
Speaker 1: shared by every human and possibly most animals on the planet,
Speaker 1: as we'll soon discuss. Joining me today's comedian comic artist
Speaker 1: author of bad comics by Onna, which actually I think
Speaker 1: are pretty good and too can fan on A Selinus. I.
Speaker 1: It's so good to be here. Yeah, thank you for
Speaker 1: joining me today. I'm excited. I really like your comics,
Speaker 1: especially like how you sort of visualize thoughts and the
Speaker 1: brain and just by these sort of shape, little shapy
Speaker 1: blobs who have these yeah blobs, but they have discussions
Speaker 1: with you. And I love that way of visualizing how
Speaker 1: our brains work. Thank you. I mean it kind of
Speaker 1: started mostly when I moved in to my own apartment.
Speaker 1: I live with roommates. Now I went backwards, but I
Speaker 1: lived alone, and I was talking to myself and I
Speaker 1: started drawing, ing like I guess the voices in my head,
Speaker 1: and then you know, they just all have different personalities,
Speaker 1: like depression would be a sassy bunch, you know, anxiety
Speaker 1: would be like a really panicky, short little blob. So
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I feel like you've been doing
Speaker 1: inside out before inside out was a thing. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: thank you. They took it really from you got scooped now.
Speaker 1: I love that. I do sometimes imagine my obsessive compulsive
Speaker 1: disorder as almost like a cute little watch jaw dog,
Speaker 1: or like a chihuahua that's super not it's not quite
Speaker 1: a real chihuahua, but just this little blobby creature that
Speaker 1: is super anxious and always alert for things and it's
Speaker 1: just no. You can calm down. I'm sure the kitchen
Speaker 1: isn't on fire. We don't need to go check. I
Speaker 1: love that. I Oh my gosh, I want to. I
Speaker 1: don't have O C D. And I would feel disingenuous
Speaker 1: if I drew the old person. But I have to
Speaker 1: find do it? Do it? Please? You gotta find a
Speaker 1: way to do it. I want to because I could
Speaker 1: you do a custom one for me and I'll just
Speaker 1: describe it like what it is like to me, and
Speaker 1: then you could do a little thing. Oh my god. Up.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think this is a great episode to
Speaker 1: have you on because I'm talking about all the interesting
Speaker 1: things our brains do and how it really in some
Speaker 1: way we feel like we're one contiguous person with one personality,
Speaker 1: one conscious experience, but sometimes that it's not so clear
Speaker 1: that that's the way it is. So first to demonstrate this,
Speaker 1: I want people to realize, like, as we're talking on
Speaker 1: the show about these rare neurological phenomenons, that people that
Speaker 1: have these are not weird or crazy. This is something
Speaker 1: that basically, like we all have the capacity to fill
Speaker 1: in missing information with our brains, and in fact, we
Speaker 1: do it all the time constantly. Right now, you're doing
Speaker 1: it because everyone on Earth has a blind spot in
Speaker 1: their eyeballs, So I got to explain how our eyes
Speaker 1: work really quickly. So the eye has a bunch of
Speaker 1: light sensing proteins in the back, the rods and cones
Speaker 1: that make up the retina. That's that sort of red
Speaker 1: stuff at the back of your eye. But in order
Speaker 1: for that information to get to the brain, the occipital
Speaker 1: lobe at the back of your brain, you have to
Speaker 1: basically run a cable from your eyeballs to the back
Speaker 1: of your brain. And in order for the cable to
Speaker 1: connect to your eye, it actually is right in the
Speaker 1: middle of your retina. So there's an area, a little
Speaker 1: diameter of area in your eye that doesn't have retina,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't have the rods and cones. So you
Speaker 1: actually have a little blind spot right there, but you
Speaker 1: don't see it. You don't see a blank spot as
Speaker 1: you're looking around. And often it's because the other eye.
Speaker 1: You do have two eyes, generally, so you can make
Speaker 1: up for that missing information with your eye, but not always.
Speaker 1: Sometimes your blind spot is going to line up with
Speaker 1: the other eye and your brain is going to fill
Speaker 1: in the details, so it's like a content aware filler
Speaker 1: that interpretates what should be there. And it's really so
Speaker 1: there's this test you can do. I'm sure if you
Speaker 1: google it. I'll probably also include it in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Where you there's a dot and a cross or two
Speaker 1: shapes and a background that's either white or some color,
Speaker 1: and you close one eye and you look at the
Speaker 1: opposite the dot opposite to your eye, and then you
Speaker 1: kind of move back and forth and tell the the
Speaker 1: other dot across from your eye disappears. Actually have it
Speaker 1: up here so that you can do it. So if
Speaker 1: you're looking at it, what should happen is that the
Speaker 1: background color just kind of fills in where and it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting because it's not just a white spot. If
Speaker 1: you're looking at the background that's green, it's going to
Speaker 1: fill in green. And if you're looking at the background
Speaker 1: that's yellow, it's going to fill in yellow where that
Speaker 1: cross or that dot is supposed to be. So it
Speaker 1: just looks like a big yellow square, even though there's
Speaker 1: a black dot in the middle of it. And that's
Speaker 1: because you're brain is yea, yeah, you see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really it's really interesting and it's kind of fun
Speaker 1: to do. There's all sorts of these tests online that
Speaker 1: you can do and see. Uh, And it's not just
Speaker 1: filling in color. It can actually fill in complex patterns. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: If you see, if there's a line that's broken in
Speaker 1: the area where the break is, is it right in
Speaker 1: your blind spot? Your brain will actually fill in the
Speaker 1: line so it looks like a contiguous line even though
Speaker 1: there's in reality nothing there, because your brain is just guessing, like,
Speaker 1: oh well, it seems like a big line. So that's
Speaker 1: so interesting. I feel like that probably is true on
Speaker 1: a broader scale of how our mind's work of like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is probably what I was doing two weeks ago
Speaker 1: around noon. Yes, absolutely, building me kind of false memories
Speaker 1: a little bit. Absolutely. In fact, I talked about confabulation before,
Speaker 1: and that is also a term to describe gaps in
Speaker 1: memory where we built like it can rain from severe
Speaker 1: disorders like dementia, but also just too normal brain functioning
Speaker 1: where you miss a memory and you you're basically fabricating
Speaker 1: what should be in that memory, but you don't think
Speaker 1: it's a fabrication. I think it's real. So you can
Speaker 1: also with the blind spot, what your brain is doing
Speaker 1: is it's making a statistical determination based on the surrounding
Speaker 1: visual information. So say if you focus on like a
Speaker 1: yellow doughnut and you get your blind spot right in
Speaker 1: the center of that donut, your brain is going to
Speaker 1: fill in the rest. It's gonna look like a yellow circle.
Speaker 1: There won't be any whole because your brain is going like, okay,
Speaker 1: everything around it is yellow, so this has to be
Speaker 1: yellow too. And you can even It even works on
Speaker 1: moving patterns like TV snow. So there's a test where
Speaker 1: you do the whole blind spot thing, but instead it's
Speaker 1: like you know, you know that, like fuzzy black and
Speaker 1: white TV snow, and people will fill in the static
Speaker 1: into their line spot and then if you quickly look
Speaker 1: away to a white wall, you'll see a little square
Speaker 1: of of TV static on the wall because your brain
Speaker 1: is so basically, your brain has so actively tried to
Speaker 1: plug in the snow and put it in. Once you
Speaker 1: suddenly remove it, it's still kind of going for a
Speaker 1: little while. I feel like that is kind of a
Speaker 1: familiar feeling too, that some something like that just sort
Speaker 1: of projects onto it. Yeah, it can happen. Say you're
Speaker 1: staring at a bold color for a while and then
Speaker 1: you suddenly look at the wall. You can see an
Speaker 1: afterimage because you're basically your eyes and your brain are
Speaker 1: confused by the sudden lack of I never thought of
Speaker 1: it that way, like like the wheels are just still running. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I was curious about how whether animals have
Speaker 1: blind spots, and in fact they must. Yeah, they do.
Speaker 1: And as I was researching this, I found some really
Speaker 1: interesting things about animal visions. So let's start with rats.
Speaker 1: They do have a blind spot. Their eyes are very
Speaker 1: similar to ours, except that they have double vision, and
Speaker 1: they can move their eyes independent of each other, like, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: like Pennywise from it, Yeah exactly, So like if there's
Speaker 1: a predator coming, they could feel like this is here exactly.
Speaker 1: And so actually, did you know that the actor who
Speaker 1: plays Pennywise, uh, the more recent one, Bill Scars Guard,
Speaker 1: he can do that. That's that's really yeah. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: an interview with him where he does the weird smile
Speaker 1: and he does the have has one of his eyes
Speaker 1: kind of go to the side, and it's it's really
Speaker 1: that is he doesn't he like almost doesn't need the makeup.
Speaker 1: You can do it all with a facial expression. The perfect,
Speaker 1: I know, I know. So researchers at the Max Planck
Speaker 1: Institute for Biological Cybernetics in m to Bingjin, it's a
Speaker 1: good job Germany on doing this research. So they attached
Speaker 1: teeny tiny high speed camera hats to ats and looked
Speaker 1: at their eye gays. They found that their eye gays
Speaker 1: indicates that they prioritize keeping a view of the sky
Speaker 1: over just looking ahead, so they have a good view
Speaker 1: of their immediate surroundings, but they're always at least keeping
Speaker 1: one eye or both eyes trained on the sky and
Speaker 1: have to have the sky in their field of vision,
Speaker 1: which is assumed to be to avoid predatory birds, which
Speaker 1: is one of their main predators. And they determined by
Speaker 1: tracing their eye movement that their field of vision in
Speaker 1: either eye differs too much from the other in order
Speaker 1: to be fused into one image, so they have to
Speaker 1: have binocular vision basically two distinct orbs, yeah, views that
Speaker 1: they somehow process in their ACCEPTITALB. That's so they're constantly
Speaker 1: living in VR exactly. That sounds nauseating, So it's terrible.
Speaker 1: I you know, I get terrible motion sickness when I
Speaker 1: have to do the VR rides where you know universal
Speaker 1: and I guess Disney is doing that now to get
Speaker 1: on the ride and it's sort of like it's a track, right,
Speaker 1: so you're actually moving, but then instead of having puppets
Speaker 1: or animatronics, it's VR or three D and I didn't
Speaker 1: want tom so sick. They yeah, because you're they If
Speaker 1: VR if truly of the future of media and video games,
Speaker 1: I don't know what we're gonna do about that. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna be too, just gonna be constantly high on drama. Me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you're just in a boat. You're like it a submarine,
Speaker 1: just rocking around. I did a VR what's it called
Speaker 1: Silent No No, No, No, Resident Evil, and it really
Speaker 1: scared me. It was really funny because I kept yelling
Speaker 1: at people, like get out of my area. Oh totally,
Speaker 1: because it's it feels so real. I went to the
Speaker 1: arcade here two Bit Circus, I think, and did their
Speaker 1: VR game, and like it's terrifying because you look behind
Speaker 1: you and all of a sudden, something attacking and you're
Speaker 1: you have to like move your hands to I caldn't defeat,
Speaker 1: couldn't write, and I couldn't convince myself it wasn't real.
Speaker 1: That's terrifying. I would be a very bad animal, I
Speaker 1: think because I hate video games that are like I
Speaker 1: like video games that are like you just exist in
Speaker 1: the world, like sim style. But I hate being chased.
Speaker 1: I hate having to like shoot at something or run
Speaker 1: from something. I just could not handle predators. Well, you
Speaker 1: would hate to be and I don't mean this as
Speaker 1: an insult, but you would hate to be the brown
Speaker 1: brown snout spook spits the brown snout spook fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would hate it. Why would I hate it? Well,
Speaker 1: so the brown snout spooks fish, well, that is a mouthful.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. They can see up and down at
Speaker 1: the same time. So they are not to be confused
Speaker 1: with the ghost shark, which we've talked about on the
Speaker 1: show before. But the brown snout spook fish is a
Speaker 1: species of barrel eye fish that lives all over the
Speaker 1: world in tropical and temperate regions. It's not too big,
Speaker 1: it's pretty slender. It's about um seven inches long, has
Speaker 1: a completely transparent body. There in the family Opus though Procididae,
Speaker 1: which in Greek means behind an us, whoa a whole family,
Speaker 1: But they're in the family of butt butts. But but so,
Speaker 1: one of its larger close relatives is the Pacific barrel
Speaker 1: eye fish. And there's a video that went viral a
Speaker 1: while ago of this fish that had a basically a
Speaker 1: transparent dome like head and these weird eyes. Let me
Speaker 1: show you that. Whoa, this feels like a fake fish.
Speaker 1: It's not. It's completely real. I know. It looks like
Speaker 1: a science fiction fish, right, Yeah, it looks like they
Speaker 1: put oh my gosh, it looks like they put a
Speaker 1: lightbulb inside of some jello, some clear jello. Honestly, this
Speaker 1: is like a Pixar movie because inside this fish are
Speaker 1: like the little snemones or like the little bacteria that
Speaker 1: are the star of this animated movie, riding in their
Speaker 1: inside out Yeah, like inside out style. They're a fish bus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It is. It also does remind me of
Speaker 1: those gelatin desserts from the fifties where you just put
Speaker 1: a whole fruit right in there. I think that, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: where you put in grapes or yes, or like olives
Speaker 1: and eggs. Yes. Just it's crazy that was ever a
Speaker 1: preferred food, right, Why do you want savory inside of jello?
Speaker 1: Don't know unless you've been watching videos of this fish
Speaker 1: a lot, all right, this fish does look pretty delicious.
Speaker 1: So this is the spook fish. So this is no.
Speaker 1: So this is the barrel the Pacific barrel eye fish,
Speaker 1: which is a relative of the brown snout spookfish. And
Speaker 1: I'll show you a picture of that one too. So
Speaker 1: the Pacific barrel eye fish. Uh, it has a transparent
Speaker 1: dome like head and tubular eyes, and the things at
Speaker 1: the front of its head that kind of look like
Speaker 1: eyes are actually basically it's nose, whereas the eyes are
Speaker 1: inside that dome and are these two round, rounded cylinders
Speaker 1: that look like they're just two telescopes pointing up or
Speaker 1: a pair of binoculars pointing up. And that's in fact
Speaker 1: exactly what they are, because their their eyes pointed straight
Speaker 1: up to look for silhouettes of food above them, and
Speaker 1: then once they've zoomed in on some food, then they
Speaker 1: can actually swivel those eyes in front of them. They
Speaker 1: are submarines, their submarines, exact, fish are floating, their little submarines.
Speaker 1: I love that. Now this doesn't happen, but because their
Speaker 1: heads are transparent, it does look like they should be
Speaker 1: sort of a transportation vest. So for some like tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny sea people. Yeah, and they're like inside they're steering
Speaker 1: the binoculars. There happened, I say something on the port side.
Speaker 1: It was just a fart. That's exactly what the little
Speaker 1: sea creatures inside of this fish. Right. Submariners saying, so
Speaker 1: it's cousin the brown snout spookfish takes this vision a
Speaker 1: step further. So, now here is a picture of this
Speaker 1: little guy. Okay, he's completely transparent, as you can see.
Speaker 1: This also looks incredibly big, it doesn't. It looks something
Speaker 1: about the clear bodies with this neon glow inside just
Speaker 1: feels like an art department got really creative. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks like one of the fake animals in life aquatic
Speaker 1: yea that they had especially fake exactly. Yeah, they're like
Speaker 1: stop motion that was put into the live film or
Speaker 1: something like that. Yes, it looks exactly like that. And
Speaker 1: it is the only vertebrate that is known to, in
Speaker 1: addition to an eye lens, employ a mirror in order
Speaker 1: to see. So this is something that is used by
Speaker 1: other animals, just not vertebrates. So scalops use the mirror
Speaker 1: technique in order and to see out of their horrible
Speaker 1: little eyes. We have a bunch of eyes too. They
Speaker 1: have so many eyes. They can have up to like
Speaker 1: a hundred eyes, these little blue eyes, I know. And
Speaker 1: so the mirror in the eye is thought to be
Speaker 1: made of guantine crystal. Seguanning is protein. It's found in
Speaker 1: DNA uh, and it can also be formed into this
Speaker 1: crystalline mass basically. And it's so in addition to the
Speaker 1: normal eye that looks upwards and just functions like a
Speaker 1: regular mammalian or other vertebrate eye words using the lens uh,
Speaker 1: the other eyes like kind of jammed onto the side
Speaker 1: of the eye of this little eyeball, and and it
Speaker 1: has a mirror that can look downwards and reflect it
Speaker 1: onto the retina. So let me show you this diagram.
Speaker 1: It's a little confusing otherwise. So there's just this one eye.
Speaker 1: Basically a normal eye like gets focused through the lens
Speaker 1: and hits the retina. And then this weird little annex
Speaker 1: just like built onto the side of the eye where
Speaker 1: the light enters and bounces off of the mirror and
Speaker 1: then hits the retina. So what is the purpose of
Speaker 1: this eye? It's like a last minute I like they
Speaker 1: someone was designing this fish in an art department because
Speaker 1: I'm still not convinced to. I was just like, I
Speaker 1: just throw this on and make it look creepier. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, when you're in the ocean,
Speaker 1: you not only have to worry about what's in front
Speaker 1: of you or what's behind you. You have to worry
Speaker 1: about what's above you and what's below you. So being
Speaker 1: able to see above, below, and around you is really important.
Speaker 1: So it's actually interesting to me that there aren't more
Speaker 1: fish than do this. That's true because yet at least
Speaker 1: if you're on land, the ground is safe unless trimmers happens.
Speaker 1: But it's true essentially, it is usually And also I
Speaker 1: guess things can like burrow up from the ground, but
Speaker 1: usually that's the one part we're not looking at, which
Speaker 1: is interesting because I feel like this is a problem
Speaker 1: I have and maybe a lot of people. I look
Speaker 1: down when I walk along. I'm afraid of stepping in poop,
Speaker 1: so I do too. Yeah yeah, or like if I'm
Speaker 1: running or something, I feel like I looked down and
Speaker 1: I remember this book, the last of the really great
Speaker 1: Whang Doodles to read that whang Doodles Win Doodles. It's
Speaker 1: this children's chapter book about whang doodles this dragon, but
Speaker 1: wang doodles the dragon. Yes, and they One of the
Speaker 1: lessons is that you should be looking up more because
Speaker 1: as people, we tend to look down. And so there's
Speaker 1: this guy who has like a rain book umbrella to
Speaker 1: encourage children to look up. I see. So there's something
Speaker 1: about looking up that is like maybe more free or something.
Speaker 1: But then you step and dog dog. That's the thing,
Speaker 1: like I've tried that where I'm just like gallivanting head
Speaker 1: eyes on the sky and then but right in the
Speaker 1: right in the poop or on the sidewalk here, because
Speaker 1: one time this guy was jogging past me and he
Speaker 1: stomped on a unintentional mistake, stepped on a catchup packet
Speaker 1: splattered all over me, and he looked at me and
Speaker 1: he was completely stunned, and then he just kept running.
Speaker 1: He kept running. Well, yeah, I think he just didn't
Speaker 1: know how to react. He was horrified, right, because it
Speaker 1: looked like I had just exploded in blood. But that's true.
Speaker 1: Still not still probably should have checked on me. But
Speaker 1: you should have checked exactly. But you know, if he
Speaker 1: was a brown snout spookfish, then he could of seeing
Speaker 1: that catch exactly. So that's why they did it so
Speaker 1: they can see poop and catch up. It's important for
Speaker 1: all five. Our brains do a huge amount of heavy
Speaker 1: lifting when it comes to our vision. There was a
Speaker 1: rather famous mirror flipping experiment, though you may have heard
Speaker 1: the incorrect version. So in this experiment, people wore glasses
Speaker 1: that used mirrors to flip the world upside down. Though
Speaker 1: the popular understanding of the study was that the participants
Speaker 1: brains flipped the world right side up, this never really happened. Instead,
Speaker 1: they rapidly adapted to the upside down world and regained
Speaker 1: the ability to walk around without falling over, and though
Speaker 1: they were spectacularly good at adapting, they never consciously flipped
Speaker 1: the world to the upright position. However, there have been
Speaker 1: studies where the participants wore goggles that distorted the world,
Speaker 1: such as weird magnifications or distorting how close things seemed
Speaker 1: like a rear view mirror, and the wearers were able
Speaker 1: to quickly adapt their new fun house mirror world. Their
Speaker 1: brains had to overcompensate so much to make things appear
Speaker 1: normal while wearing the glasses that when they were removed
Speaker 1: they experienced temporary distortions. With the naked eye. When we return,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about what happens when one side of your
Speaker 1: brain goes rogue. I like food, and I like home
Speaker 1: cooked meals, but what I don't like is going to
Speaker 1: the grocery store. I have to change out of my sweatpants,
Speaker 1: and that's just that's just not fair. With Hello Fresh,
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Speaker 1: That's Hello Fresh dot com slash creature nine to start
Speaker 1: enjoying credible home cooked meals. Imagine that one of your
Speaker 1: hands starts to have a mind of its own. It
Speaker 1: moves around, reaches for things, fiddles with your shirt, all
Speaker 1: without your conscious input or permission. You'd probably be forgiven
Speaker 1: for thinking that you've been possessed by an alien parasite
Speaker 1: or are in some sort of Doctor Strangelove situation. In fact,
Speaker 1: this is a real thing called Alien Hands syndrome or
Speaker 1: Doctor Strangelove syndrome after the movie. People with this rare
Speaker 1: neurological disorder few a loss of control over one of
Speaker 1: their hands. Those with alien hand syndrome may feel like
Speaker 1: their hand has a mind of its own, and they
Speaker 1: may actually be right. Most patients with this condition had
Speaker 1: a corpus colostomy, a medical procedure also called split brain procedure.
Speaker 1: It's a neurosurgical procedure wherein the corpus colosum, the neural
Speaker 1: tissue connecting the two hemispheres of the brain is severed.
Speaker 1: It's rarely used anymore and is mostly a last resort
Speaker 1: to treat dangerous and otherwise untreatable epilepsy. It interrupts the
Speaker 1: feedback loop between the two hemispheres of the brain, which
Speaker 1: helps stop seizures, but it can also result in uncomfortable
Speaker 1: side effects, including alien hand syndrome. By severing the corpus colosum,
Speaker 1: the communication between the two hemispheres of the brain is
Speaker 1: greatly inhibited, which may result in people having two separate
Speaker 1: conscious experiences at once alien hand. Therefore, maybe one side
Speaker 1: of the brain taking control of the hand while the
Speaker 1: other side of the brain expresses discomfort with the situation.
Speaker 1: It's hard to know exactly what it means to have
Speaker 1: two half brains in one person, whether consciousness resides in
Speaker 1: each hemisphere and has a separate experience, what it feels
Speaker 1: like to be in conflict with the side of your
Speaker 1: brain that can control speech or vice versa. Maybe it
Speaker 1: makes sense that one of your hands would lash out
Speaker 1: at the frustrating experience. So this is really it's one
Speaker 1: of the most existentially terrifying things to me in neurology.
Speaker 1: This idea that especially if you have split brain procedure,
Speaker 1: which is very rarely done, especially now, but it's Could
Speaker 1: you have two consciousness is in one body, and because
Speaker 1: each hemisphere of your brain controls different things, like controls
Speaker 1: the different side of your body, speech is located in
Speaker 1: one hemisphere of the brain. Would you have basically two
Speaker 1: people inside you and strug link to communicate together, and
Speaker 1: one of the people can talk, one of the people
Speaker 1: can maybe draw, and it's it's you know, I wonder,
Speaker 1: and I wonder if people with multiple personality disorders have
Speaker 1: ever experienced some version of this. Yeah, I think so
Speaker 1: there's actually multiple personality disorder is not really what it's
Speaker 1: called anymore. It's called dissociative identity disorder. And it is
Speaker 1: interesting because I do think that I think that people,
Speaker 1: even neurotypical people, people don't who don't have a neurological condition.
Speaker 1: Will we even though we have the illusion of having
Speaker 1: a unified consciousness, that may not actually be the case.
Speaker 1: That may just be an illusion of one contiguous consciousness,
Speaker 1: and that we may have sort of different conscious experiences
Speaker 1: and maybe some that can't maybe communicate with our speech
Speaker 1: center of the brain, but still are somehow consciously aware.
Speaker 1: Like so here's an example. One thing I you you know,
Speaker 1: I do the sort of thing of you step into
Speaker 1: a room, gosh darn it, I don't remember what I
Speaker 1: came in here for. And then you you know you
Speaker 1: you don't know, you forgot what you're there for. Basically,
Speaker 1: if I just relax and kind of go into a
Speaker 1: meditative state and let my body like walk over to
Speaker 1: where it wants to go, it's usually towards the thing
Speaker 1: I came in for. In it like I'll open a
Speaker 1: drawer and not really thinking him like, I have no
Speaker 1: idea what I'm doing here, and then it's like, oh, right,
Speaker 1: a napkin. So there is something in your body, be right,
Speaker 1: that is kind of similar. And also there are these
Speaker 1: studies that were done for people who had the corpus
Speaker 1: colossum severed and had the split brain condition. And so
Speaker 1: as I kind of talked about, you have the right side.
Speaker 1: So one thing to know about vision and your body
Speaker 1: is that you have the two hemispheres of the brain.
Speaker 1: But the right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for
Speaker 1: processing the left field of vision and the left side
Speaker 1: of the body, where's the left side of the brain
Speaker 1: processes the right field of vision and the right side
Speaker 1: of the body. So they're flipped, which can make it
Speaker 1: a little confusing. But basically, when you present someone uh
Speaker 1: pictures like you know how we did the thing with
Speaker 1: a blind spot earlier, and you had one thing in
Speaker 1: your right field of vision and one in your left,
Speaker 1: and you present them with two pictures. And these are
Speaker 1: people who had the split brain procedure done. Okay, So
Speaker 1: if they see something with their right field of vision,
Speaker 1: it's gonna go be processed in the left side of
Speaker 1: the brain, and the left side of the brain control speech,
Speaker 1: and so they'll be able to say what that thing is.
Speaker 1: But then if they're asked to draw it, they will
Speaker 1: draw the thing that's in their left field of vision
Speaker 1: that makes sense, that makes sense, and not realize really
Speaker 1: because exactly, and they won't say they see that that's
Speaker 1: really crazy, right exactly. I mean it's I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of it's a little spooky, but I think it's spooky.
Speaker 1: Or when you think about how I think we're maybe
Speaker 1: more similar to people who have the split brain syndrome,
Speaker 1: then we may think in that we're probably perceiving things
Speaker 1: and conscious of things that we don't communicate verbally nor
Speaker 1: maybe even think about consciously, especially because so much of
Speaker 1: our conscious thought is sort of framed in language. So
Speaker 1: if we're not processing it through language, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: there's part of our conscious experience that we're kind of
Speaker 1: not aware of because we have that internal monologue exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: always run in its mouth. Yeah, yeah, writing its internal mouth.
Speaker 1: That's why I love your comics because I mean I
Speaker 1: almost feel like when you kind of have warring parts
Speaker 1: of your brain. Yeah, I mean it's almost like you
Speaker 1: do have two people that you're talking to, negotiating with,
Speaker 1: you know. That's I mean, it makes sense. We have
Speaker 1: like eighty billion neurons. It would make sense were more
Speaker 1: complex than just like one little person, a little person.
Speaker 1: We're a billion little people exactly. Wow, So this is
Speaker 1: terrifying to you. It's one of the more I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say it's terrifying. I think it's and it's more of
Speaker 1: an existential crisis because when I think about who I
Speaker 1: am as a person, I feel like, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: it's me Katie. But then when you think about it,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I'm sharing my body with another consciousness
Speaker 1: in my brain that doesn't communicate directly to the world
Speaker 1: and doesn't communicate directly to what I perceive as my
Speaker 1: conscious experience. Because so much of me as I think
Speaker 1: about it is probably based in that kind of language
Speaker 1: processing center. Yeah. So have you ever had an out
Speaker 1: of body experience? Yeah? Actually so. I took a medication
Speaker 1: for my o CD once and one of the side
Speaker 1: effects was dissociation. So it felt like I was floating
Speaker 1: above my body. I really did not enjoy that. That
Speaker 1: was not It's terrifying. That is terrifying. Yes, it was
Speaker 1: not fun. And it's also weird that that can be
Speaker 1: boiled down to a side effect like that is because
Speaker 1: I would think it's so complex, that feeling, and it's
Speaker 1: somewhat existential, but that it literally I mean, it's something
Speaker 1: that people, I'm sure people who meditate to get that
Speaker 1: feeling go through a much more thoughtful process and it's
Speaker 1: probably a lot more. It's probably not as weird as
Speaker 1: it is when it's just a medication side effect, because
Speaker 1: for that it's just like your suddenly like whoa, yeah,
Speaker 1: not inside my body right now. That's kind of weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has that anxiety still, right exactly. Yeah, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very strange. I wonder those to me feel somewhat connected
Speaker 1: in that it's like and I have to look, maybe
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say this on a podcast, but it happened
Speaker 1: to be on drugs dar Boys God, where there are
Speaker 1: all these cops but you don't un mushrooms or something
Speaker 1: like that. I just happened more than once. But in
Speaker 1: that it is this feeling of like, oh, I'm I
Speaker 1: don't and maybe this is even a little different than
Speaker 1: what you experienced, but it feels like I don't know
Speaker 1: this person right now. Interesting. There's like a like an
Speaker 1: unconscious familiarity. And I think that has a lot to
Speaker 1: do with language that you feel in your body when
Speaker 1: you are not thinking about your existence or whatever. And
Speaker 1: I feel in those moments that I was like accessing
Speaker 1: something else interesting, some other experience. I mean, I've I've
Speaker 1: heard that a lot with people who have either um
Speaker 1: felt that through recreational drugs or from prescribed drugs, And
Speaker 1: for me it was a little different. I think it
Speaker 1: mostly just felt like I was watching myself act and
Speaker 1: it was It wasn't scary. It was just unpleasant because
Speaker 1: it's like I just felt like I is maybe two
Speaker 1: feet away watching myself. It's like that's scary. It's it's
Speaker 1: just it was uncomfortable. It wasn't scary. It was just
Speaker 1: just kind of uncomfortable. It was like, I'd rather be
Speaker 1: catch up. I kind of want to catch up to
Speaker 1: myself there. Yeah, So speaking of this kind of experience,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about a somatic nosia, which is
Speaker 1: a rare neurological disorder wherein you don't feel like you
Speaker 1: own one of your limbs. And so this could mean
Speaker 1: you either can't feel, sense, recognize, or be conscious of
Speaker 1: a body part. It's usually caused by damage to the brain,
Speaker 1: either by traumatic injury, illness, or a stroke. Typically the
Speaker 1: damage is in the right side of the brain, which
Speaker 1: causes patients to lose recognition of their left arm. Like specifically,
Speaker 1: that pattern is the most common, and sometimes the arm
Speaker 1: is also paralyzed, which would contribute to the illusion. But
Speaker 1: it's not typical. It's not like a typical thing that
Speaker 1: happens to people with paralysis, nor is paralysis necessary to
Speaker 1: be part of a somato noosea disorder. So somato paraphrenia
Speaker 1: is a form of a somatic noosea wherein the patient
Speaker 1: believes their appendage belongs to someone else. So here's an example.
Speaker 1: In one case study, a woman thought her left arm
Speaker 1: was her dead husband's arm. Here's a quote she said. Quote.
Speaker 1: He left them. He didn't want them. He just left
Speaker 1: them like he and she's talking about her arm in hand.
Speaker 1: He left them like he left his clothes. Up until
Speaker 1: the other day, they used to fall in my chest.
Speaker 1: I said, I got to get rid of them. Put
Speaker 1: them in the garbage, yes, two days ago. Still in
Speaker 1: the garbage, a black hand with a plastic cover. You'll
Speaker 1: find them. Be careful though. The nails are very long
Speaker 1: and very sharp, which sounds I mean, she m no, no, um.
Speaker 1: This is confabulation. This is uh. She is interpreting information
Speaker 1: that her brain is missing, and it's you know, she's not.
Speaker 1: I don't want people to come away from this thing like,
Speaker 1: oh man, she's she's crazy like she is. This is
Speaker 1: a very specific delusion to her smitta paraphrenia. So basically,
Speaker 1: she has an inexplicable sensation, which is that the arm
Speaker 1: attached to her isn't her own. So in order to
Speaker 1: understand it, her brain confabulates a response. It's fabricating a
Speaker 1: situation in which this makes sense, and then she's connecting
Speaker 1: it to a traumatic experience of the loss of her husband.
Speaker 1: So in a way, it's rational because you're dealing with
Speaker 1: an irrational situation where you are not getting and it's
Speaker 1: not just like that your arm is numb. You're literally
Speaker 1: because like even your arm being numb or paralyzed, you're
Speaker 1: getting information. You're getting like null information, uh that you
Speaker 1: can't feel it or that you can't move it. It's
Speaker 1: when you're not getting information at all, which does that
Speaker 1: it's almost hard to understand what that would feel like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is hard to understand what that feel like, what
Speaker 1: that feels like, because numbness is itself a feeling exactly exactly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is so interesting. I'm watching the show Legion on
Speaker 1: f FX and they literally talk about and I think
Speaker 1: the second episode, Yeah, of course in that case, as
Speaker 1: they're describing this condition, the guy does cut it's his leg,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I do know that can be there is
Speaker 1: there are cases of people who feel the need to
Speaker 1: remove Yeah, I don't know as much about that. I
Speaker 1: think it may be connected or a similar sometimes feels conceivable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like in the same way that if I have like
Speaker 1: dust on me or dirt, it's like I want to
Speaker 1: get this off right, Like if you suddenly just sprouted
Speaker 1: an extra arm, that like you didn't have control over
Speaker 1: it would feel like a parasite. Yeah, exactly, like God
Speaker 1: or I mean, this is such a lame example, but
Speaker 1: like when you get a pimple that's really bad and
Speaker 1: it's like I just want to get this, you want
Speaker 1: to get it rid rid of it. It's like it's
Speaker 1: invading your body. Yeah, no, I totally understand that. One
Speaker 1: of the theories for how this happens is that when
Speaker 1: you have so this is specifically for like you feel
Speaker 1: like your left arm doesn't belong to you right if
Speaker 1: you have a right brain lesion or damage resulting in airs,
Speaker 1: processing information from again, it's flips, so you're processing information
Speaker 1: from your left side of the body goes into your
Speaker 1: right brain. So basically, you have a lesion in the
Speaker 1: right side of your brain, which causes a loss of
Speaker 1: information coming from the left side of your body, and
Speaker 1: so the verbal hemisphere of your brain, which is on
Speaker 1: the left isn't receiving the right isn't receiving information from
Speaker 1: the right side of the brain about what's going on.
Speaker 1: So it's like your left side of the brain is undamaged,
Speaker 1: but the right side is damaged. In your right side
Speaker 1: is unable to send that that information about your left
Speaker 1: arm to your left brain. This is I know this
Speaker 1: is confusing. Let me, I think I can kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: let me put it. Let me like remove the the
Speaker 1: left right side from it, because I think that can
Speaker 1: be kind of confusing. Uh, you're in your right the brain.
Speaker 1: Information from your left hand is not going to your
Speaker 1: um your verbal processing motor processing area of the brain.
Speaker 1: So it's similar to what we talked about with the
Speaker 1: cortical blindness, the disorder where you you're blind, you're functionally blind,
Speaker 1: but you're experiencing you think you can see because you're
Speaker 1: you actually may be receiving visual information. It is just
Speaker 1: not going anywhere useful in your brain. So it's it's
Speaker 1: a similar thing where you but in this case, you're
Speaker 1: just not receiving any information from your left hand and
Speaker 1: your your left side and so you're your brain is like, well,
Speaker 1: there's nothing there is you could be touching for and
Speaker 1: it wouldn't know. And it's different from paralysis or numbness
Speaker 1: because your brain it's just not getting it's getting zero information.
Speaker 1: It's not that it's oh it's numb or I'm not
Speaker 1: feeling it. It's like that there's an absence of that
Speaker 1: even recognizing that as being part of your body, because
Speaker 1: the part of your brain that even recognizes that you
Speaker 1: have this limb is has been damaged. That's staggering because
Speaker 1: now I'm thinking of the times I've been numbed for
Speaker 1: like surgery or something like that, and you still feel
Speaker 1: this like lump. You can, yeah, you can fathom what
Speaker 1: is going on. Yeah, but it's also interesting when you
Speaker 1: do get numbed up and you feel something, it feels
Speaker 1: like there's something stuck on your face, like it doesn't right,
Speaker 1: So there is a little bit of a thing where
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, that's weird. It just doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: it's part of me. But like that, but my brain knows.
Speaker 1: Your brain can, yeah, you can, but the if it
Speaker 1: can kind of get the idea across that. Okay, you
Speaker 1: still have the part of your brain that logs that
Speaker 1: in as part of your face, but if that part
Speaker 1: of your brain was like just gone or damaged, then
Speaker 1: you suddenly lose even the ability to conceive of that
Speaker 1: as being part of your body. We're hanging by a thread.
Speaker 1: As humans, we are hanging by a thread. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: I mean, it is crazy. But we're not. We're not
Speaker 1: the only one, so we're not alone in the world.
Speaker 1: So phantom limb and these limb processing disorders are also
Speaker 1: found in animals, So there's evidence that animals can get
Speaker 1: phantom limb syndrome, which is a similar disorder, although kind
Speaker 1: of inversed from what I was just talking about. So
Speaker 1: phantom limb is where you are you're missing you are
Speaker 1: actually in reality missing a limb, either you have had
Speaker 1: an amputation or even a congenital condition where you don't
Speaker 1: have that limb, but your brain still as the the
Speaker 1: area of the brain that is saying like, hey, I
Speaker 1: got a left arm is still there and it's still
Speaker 1: perfectly functional, so you sense that the limb is still there.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it gets stuck in weird positions, like it can
Speaker 1: feel like it's clenched or raised or you know, doing
Speaker 1: a phantom gesture um, and it can be really distressing
Speaker 1: for people because it can actually cause real pain. It's
Speaker 1: not and I think this is something that's important to
Speaker 1: get across. Pain is experienced inside of the brain. You
Speaker 1: may have nerves on your body where pain sensory input
Speaker 1: is received, but it travels into your brain and the
Speaker 1: experience of pain happens in your brain. So if someone
Speaker 1: is feeling pain from a phantom limb, that is exactly
Speaker 1: the same experience as if they're getting stabbed in a
Speaker 1: real limb. So famed neurologist the s Rama Chandron is
Speaker 1: the inventor of mirror therapy, and it specializes in I mean,
Speaker 1: he's are it's almost weird to say he specializes in anything,
Speaker 1: because he's like a genius who knows everything, but he's
Speaker 1: studied phantom limb. And basically, you place your existing limb
Speaker 1: in front of the mirror and your phantom limb on
Speaker 1: the other side. So you've got your your hand that
Speaker 1: still exists, and then you imagine placing your your other
Speaker 1: hand on the other side, but you're the the amputated
Speaker 1: area or the missing limb is not in view, and
Speaker 1: so then you just do cemetric symmetrical actions like clapping
Speaker 1: or raising both hands, and you imagine doing it, and
Speaker 1: you look and it looks because of the symmetry of
Speaker 1: the mirror, it looks like you your two hands are
Speaker 1: doing it. And that can help you because you're getting
Speaker 1: that visual feedback. Your brain is seeing like okay, I'm
Speaker 1: stretching out my arm. And so if it felt like
Speaker 1: your left hand was clenched in this uncomfortable position and
Speaker 1: you see it stretching out, it actually kind of um
Speaker 1: convinces your brain that your arm is stretching out, and
Speaker 1: it real accident and it can fascinate and it can
Speaker 1: help with treatment of pain. Rama. Schendre believes that this
Speaker 1: is caused by reorganization in the semanti sensory cortex, or
Speaker 1: the part of the brain that handles sensory and puts
Speaker 1: from your body. So it's this idea is actually leads
Speaker 1: into our next question, which is can animals get phantom limb?
Speaker 1: And in fact, the hypothesis that phantom limb syndrome is
Speaker 1: caused by reorganization of neurons in the semanti sensory cortex,
Speaker 1: the part of your brain that controls your arms and
Speaker 1: it controls the feelings of your arms and your arms
Speaker 1: and space has some neural plasticity, has to rearrange and
Speaker 1: compensate for the fact that you no longer have that limb.
Speaker 1: There has been a study done on macaux which so
Speaker 1: that's a type of monkey, where there semanti sensory cortex
Speaker 1: was found that to have undergone restructuring after losing sensory
Speaker 1: information from one of their limbs. So there was a
Speaker 1: neural just that made use of a pretty infamous and
Speaker 1: crappy situation. So this is sort of a set. It
Speaker 1: begins with a sad story. So the about a decade
Speaker 1: before they did this study, there was another study on
Speaker 1: the infamous Silver Spring monkeys who had their nerves to
Speaker 1: one of their arms cut in an experiment. And it
Speaker 1: was so this person who was like undercover Peeda like,
Speaker 1: was in the lab and reported it to the police
Speaker 1: because it was not it was like the experiments itself
Speaker 1: was like unnecessarily cruel. The living conditions were poor, So yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really I mean, you know, the idea of
Speaker 1: using animals and experiments is there's some complexity to it,
Speaker 1: but in this case, it was like very clearly unnecessarily cruel.
Speaker 1: Veterinarians looked at these monkeys and they tried to rehabilitate them,
Speaker 1: but they determined that they were just suffering, and so
Speaker 1: euthanizing them was the most um merciful thing to do,
Speaker 1: I know. But so an are alogist, I was like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: if we're we have to euthanize them, maybe we can
Speaker 1: learn something from their brains at least. So the researchers
Speaker 1: found that there's somatosensory cortex is so the cortex that
Speaker 1: control like processes information from your your limbs and your
Speaker 1: body changed significantly compared to control monkeys. So that indicated
Speaker 1: the neural plasticity the brain changing in response to their
Speaker 1: limb being essentially like the nerves had all been severed
Speaker 1: from the rest of their bodies. So so they have
Speaker 1: it too. So they had, yeah, phantom limb probably, and
Speaker 1: brain scans of people with amputations showed the same kind
Speaker 1: of brain reorganization as these macaques. So the yeah, basically,
Speaker 1: as far as we can tell, we can obviously never
Speaker 1: understand how the monkeys felt, but very likely that they
Speaker 1: had phantom limia. You can actually just observe phantom limb
Speaker 1: and animals. So there's a video of a cat with
Speaker 1: an amputated limb who tries to dig in his litter box,
Speaker 1: and this is equal parts cute and sad, so of
Speaker 1: course I got to show you. I mean, that is
Speaker 1: a cute cat though, So you can see real fluffy
Speaker 1: little guy and she's trying to you can see her
Speaker 1: moving her shoulder muscles as she's trying to scratch at
Speaker 1: the litter box. Now, I know it feels like a
Speaker 1: really sad video, but she's probably perfectly had. I mean,
Speaker 1: look at her, she's chubby, perfectly happy. She's just kind
Speaker 1: of doesn't necessarily recognize that her her forelum is miss
Speaker 1: she's adapting to it. She exactly getting in that litter
Speaker 1: box exactly. It's just a saddered visual. I think that's
Speaker 1: of animals with like a limb missing they are capable of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that. I think sometimes our pity
Speaker 1: is a little bit misplaced there. I mean, obviously, I
Speaker 1: think it's good to feel sympathy and empathy for an
Speaker 1: animal that is suffering, but I think it's there's almost
Speaker 1: a little bit of condest engine sometimes where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this animal can't be happy, and I'm sure that's kind
Speaker 1: of aggravating to people also with disability. That's what I
Speaker 1: think it pity that maybe over conversat people with disabilities
Speaker 1: because I feel it and I feel a little dirty
Speaker 1: about it when helping someone with the door when it's
Speaker 1: like I think you can always I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to speak to this because I
Speaker 1: don't have a physical disability. But I think it's fine
Speaker 1: to ask if someone needs help with something, as long
Speaker 1: as you're doing it in a respectful way and not
Speaker 1: assuming that they can't do it, but just like trying
Speaker 1: to be a nice person, like I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I hold doors for people all the time, like, and
Speaker 1: I think just recognizing that it doesn't you know, they're
Speaker 1: not They're not less capable as a person. They're just
Speaker 1: they you know, they have a different experience and with life,
Speaker 1: and they may have some extra physical challenges, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't make them like that doesn't mean they're unhappy or
Speaker 1: or infantilized or in any way. Yeah, so this all
Speaker 1: this talk of phantom limb makes me think about this
Speaker 1: is just kind of a thought experiment because as far
Speaker 1: as I know that, the research isn't there yet. But
Speaker 1: there's a behavior known as a taught to me. So
Speaker 1: it's like a lizard abandoning its tail. Sometimes crabs will
Speaker 1: pull off their own forelimbs to kind of as a
Speaker 1: way to when they feel they're losing a fight with
Speaker 1: a predator, they'll do that so the predator has a
Speaker 1: nice claw to chew on while the rest of the
Speaker 1: crab escapes, and eventually the crab can regrow it. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if they feel phantom limb, and if so,
Speaker 1: what that experience is like as the new limb grows
Speaker 1: back in, because that's something we can as humans, we
Speaker 1: can basically never know. We don't have that, right, but
Speaker 1: we do know that prosthetics can help with phantom limb,
Speaker 1: especially if you can move the prosthetics. So, yeah, I
Speaker 1: just it's so interesting thing to me, this idea that
Speaker 1: like in between growing back the limb, like, could a
Speaker 1: crab or a lizard feel phantom limb in the meantime
Speaker 1: when it just has a little baby and then exactly
Speaker 1: and then what what that experience is like as the
Speaker 1: new limb is growing back in. Yeah, I don't, I
Speaker 1: mean they must feel phantom limb. Yeah, right, Everything kind
Speaker 1: of adds up to if you are a lizard who
Speaker 1: loses its tail, you feel you have to yeah, and
Speaker 1: then what is Obviously lizards and crabs are a great
Speaker 1: deal less complicated than humans, so it's hard to know
Speaker 1: what that is like. You know, crabs are basically like
Speaker 1: glorified insects of the seas and lizards are a little
Speaker 1: more complex, but they're still pretty pretty simple. But what
Speaker 1: you know, I still think they are in a way conscious.
Speaker 1: I just don't know what that any like, what that
Speaker 1: would be like. And but I'm sure they probably get
Speaker 1: phantom sensation. I bet that happens. They must, and they
Speaker 1: do feel pain lizards and crabs when they lose these limbs,
Speaker 1: even though they're regenerative. I believe so. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that there are nerves, right, so I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how their brain interprets that pain. It's hard to not
Speaker 1: enough that they don't do it right. Yeah, that is interesting.
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's some way to compensate for the
Speaker 1: pain of popping off. I guess we have that to
Speaker 1: a degree where it's like, in order to get out
Speaker 1: of this situation, I'm going to need to It's like
Speaker 1: getting waxed. Yeah, that is exactly what it's like. So
Speaker 1: lizards and crabs just have that pain relationship where they
Speaker 1: can get a bikini wax right by rapping, yanking off
Speaker 1: their whole tail. That's that is actually I'm like, and
Speaker 1: throwing it at their predator. I tweez eyebrows. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: tweets by eyebrows. That's I know the pain is coming, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you do it anyways. I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: going to be my new strategy for predators is like
Speaker 1: just wax a big, big chunk of air and then
Speaker 1: throw it at them and then run away, smooth, aerodynamic
Speaker 1: legs exactly. Man, yeah, my legs. There would be a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot to take. As we've previously discussed, phantom limb
Speaker 1: syndrome can be treated by mirror therapy. There's some new
Speaker 1: research on this form of treatment. Neuroimaging has shown that
Speaker 1: mirror therapy indeed helps reshape the brain sematosensory cortex. Patients
Speaker 1: with phantom limb syndrome had their brain scanned before treatment
Speaker 1: and showed hyperactivity in the somatosensory cortex when shown pictures
Speaker 1: of limbs corresponding to what they've had amputated as compared
Speaker 1: to controls. After treatment, this excess brain activity decreased, indicating that,
Speaker 1: in addition to the patient's self reported decrease in pain
Speaker 1: in their phantom limb, their somata sensory cortex was restructuring
Speaker 1: itself to have a calmer response to the amputated limb.
Speaker 1: Mirror therapy has pretty incredible results for humans, but could
Speaker 1: it work for animals. It depends on whether animals can
Speaker 1: understand mirrors. Unlike humans, animals don't necessarily have the same
Speaker 1: meta awareness or sense of self that we do, though
Speaker 1: there's some evidence to suggest that some primates, dolphins, and
Speaker 1: elephants may be closer to this self awareness than previously thought.
Speaker 1: Chimpanzees and orangutans, elephants, killer whales, and dolphins have all
Speaker 1: shown a capacity for recognizing their image in a mirror
Speaker 1: by moving their hands, trunks, or bodies around to inspect
Speaker 1: marks on their faces, showing and understanding that this image
Speaker 1: is of themselves. Maybe a new mirror test could be
Speaker 1: done for the benefit of animals in the future, seeing
Speaker 1: if animals with amputations respond to mirror therapy in the
Speaker 1: same way that humans do. Because I swear to God,
Speaker 1: if I have to see another sad video of a
Speaker 1: kid each trying to scoop litter with her phantom limb,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start crying. So scientists, you better get on this.
Speaker 1: When we return, we'll talk about facial recognition, like, could
Speaker 1: you guys still recognize me after I ugly cry over kitties?
Speaker 1: And litter boxes. Sometimes I want to research the show
Speaker 1: and go to the gym at the same time. That's
Speaker 1: why I love Audible. Right now I'm listening to David
Speaker 1: Attenborough's Life on Earth. I get to listen to his
Speaker 1: wonderful voice narrating his own book while learning about the
Speaker 1: animals of the world. You can give yourself the gift
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Speaker 1: or text creature to five zero zero, five zero zero.
Speaker 1: That's audible dot com slash creature or text creature to
Speaker 1: five zero zero, five zero zero. Typically humans are great
Speaker 1: at recognizing faces. We even have a whole area of
Speaker 1: the brain that specializes in faces, the fusiform gyrus. But
Speaker 1: if something unusual happens to the fusiform gyrus, the results
Speaker 1: are pretty trippy. A patient with epilepsy worked with a
Speaker 1: Stanford neurologist not just to treat his epilepsy, but to
Speaker 1: do a little experiment. The neural just decided that to
Speaker 1: treat his patient's epilepsy, he could locate the specific part
Speaker 1: of the brain responsible for the epilepsy and surgically removed
Speaker 1: just that little chunk. In order to locate it, he
Speaker 1: used electrodes to stimulate the brain to trigger the seizure
Speaker 1: in a safe clinical environment, and to locate the culprit area.
Speaker 1: But heck, while they were in there poking around, the
Speaker 1: neurologist and his completely conscious patient decided to see what
Speaker 1: happens if, say, you poke the fusiform gyrus with an electrode.
Speaker 1: When they did this, the patient told his neurologists, quote,
Speaker 1: you just turned into somebody else. Your whole face just
Speaker 1: sort of metamorphized. In fact, if the fusiform gyrus is damaged,
Speaker 1: this can result in a condition known as prosopagnosia, or
Speaker 1: face blindness. Those with prosopagnosia are unable to recognize familiar faces,
Speaker 1: sometimes even including their own. But are humans the only
Speaker 1: ones with such a fine tuned ability to recognize faces?
Speaker 1: Heck no, I mean on bron feature feature. You know,
Speaker 1: this is tripping me out really hard because the idea
Speaker 1: that you have a face in front of you that
Speaker 1: you don't recognize, Like even those disassociative moments or those
Speaker 1: sadd of body experiences, I at least had a sense
Speaker 1: of who that face was. But to not recognize the
Speaker 1: face in front of you is crazy. Have you ever
Speaker 1: stared at in a mirror for like a really long
Speaker 1: time and you start to feel weird that you don't
Speaker 1: see yourself anymore? Yeah, where you start like moving around
Speaker 1: your face in weird ways and just like stare in
Speaker 1: your life. Oh yeah, this is weird, this is this
Speaker 1: is just a skin mass. Yeah, here's a fun experiment. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you go into a bathroom, preferably in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night and with low lights, so you want
Speaker 1: it pretty dark, but you can just see a little
Speaker 1: bit and look in the mirror. You will start to
Speaker 1: more if your features will get weird. Uh, you may
Speaker 1: even feel like, oh man, my face is turning into
Speaker 1: a ghost or a demon. Because you're getting such little
Speaker 1: information from your face, you're interpretating the rest of the information,
Speaker 1: so you see all sorts of weird changes changes your face.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's like one of the my feeling of
Speaker 1: like what the bloody Mary thing is where you look
Speaker 1: in the mirror and say bloody marry three times. It's
Speaker 1: usually the middle of the night where you're not getting
Speaker 1: a lot of light, so that you're basically that's why
Speaker 1: you see the demon in the mirror. That makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. Yeah, that's why I like young girls
Speaker 1: do it because your face exactly, because it's it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a good time. You get scared and pee yourself.
Speaker 1: Maryone laughs at you. Fun fun slumber party things. We
Speaker 1: we used to do it. I was so tempting to
Speaker 1: believe in magic too. Yeah, like I still do enough,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I I when I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: would really try to summon bloody Mary and then I
Speaker 1: would also really try to like go through the mirror
Speaker 1: to you, Alice in Wonderland that, yeah, it's I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time like staring in the mirror, like
Speaker 1: going like if I stare hard enough, and then that's
Speaker 1: how I discovered that if you stare too long, then
Speaker 1: you start to lose your sense of identity and get
Speaker 1: a little freaked out. Exactly, well, too bad, I'm not
Speaker 1: a horse. That's a segue into this. So horses will
Speaker 1: judge you based on your facial expression, which is pretty
Speaker 1: astounding because I don't know if you've noticed, but horses
Speaker 1: and humans don't share a lot in terms of facial
Speaker 1: not at all. Yeah, so horses will judge you, good news, huh.
Speaker 1: So they will judge you as in if you're if
Speaker 1: you're like an angry face, they will judge you for it.
Speaker 1: So researchers showed horses pictures of angry or happy faces
Speaker 1: of humans. Then they introduced the real humans to the horses,
Speaker 1: and the humans were the people were told to have
Speaker 1: a neutral expression in front of the horse, which seems
Speaker 1: really hard for me because if I'm like faced with
Speaker 1: a horse that I don't know what their impression of
Speaker 1: me was because like the participants, part of the way
Speaker 1: the experiment works, so they wouldn't be biased towards the horses.
Speaker 1: They didn't know whether the horses had seen their happy picture.
Speaker 1: They're angry picture, so they have to go face the
Speaker 1: horse but the neutral expression, Oh my god, and like
Speaker 1: I don't know how they did it. I would just
Speaker 1: be so nervous, like, I hope you saw the nice
Speaker 1: picture of me, Mr, Horse, And then I would think
Speaker 1: a horse can pick up on that. I know, probably,
Speaker 1: But so the horses ended up responding more positively to
Speaker 1: the people where they had seen a happy face, and
Speaker 1: more negatively to the angry faced humans that they had
Speaker 1: been primed before seeing the neutral person. So you know,
Speaker 1: they see the person, they look totally neutral, but they
Speaker 1: remember that picture and they had the stink eyes, and
Speaker 1: so they're like, you had you looked angry that because
Speaker 1: I would have thought, because I know that horses can
Speaker 1: pick up on your emotions, because they say that you know,
Speaker 1: when you're like learning to horseback, right or whatever, that
Speaker 1: you have to be like calm with the horse and
Speaker 1: they pick up on whatever you're feeling. But I always
Speaker 1: assumed that that was just like your heart rate and
Speaker 1: like just your general demeanor, but that is literally your face. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: how well, I don't know if they've gone into how
Speaker 1: they're able to do it, but I would assume it's
Speaker 1: got to be learned because it has to be angry.
Speaker 1: Human doesn't really look anything like an angry horse, you know,
Speaker 1: so I think they have to make an association with
Speaker 1: an angry face. Yes, and that would be right. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, it could be something that after
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of thousands of the years of domestication,
Speaker 1: that has become ingrained in the kind of like dogs exactly.
Speaker 1: Dogs can see faces, they can see a moms and
Speaker 1: they focus on the side of our faces that are
Speaker 1: more expressive. So it could be that they've learned, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of through you know, selection for the more compatible
Speaker 1: dogs and the compatible horses. Yeah, or it could be
Speaker 1: completely learned, It's hard to know, or combination of the two,
Speaker 1: which is often often the case. So the way the
Speaker 1: researchers could tell the horses weren't jazzed about meeting the
Speaker 1: humans that they had seen angry pictures are they have
Speaker 1: certain behaviors that indicate anxieties. So like scratching and chewing behaviors,
Speaker 1: which indicates their stressed out. But also they wanted a
Speaker 1: more non subjective measures so they can see how the
Speaker 1: horses feel about something by gaze bias. So basically, here's
Speaker 1: another this is going to be another confusing thing where
Speaker 1: it's like left right side of the brain. But basically,
Speaker 1: so horses process threatening stimuli and the right hemisphere of
Speaker 1: the brains, So guests where they would look which region
Speaker 1: their gaze they would look to process that left yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: so if I leave your learning anything, it's that side
Speaker 1: of yours apple sauce. So if they are trying to
Speaker 1: process something threatening, they'll look with their left gaze and
Speaker 1: if it's something um or pro social, something positive, they
Speaker 1: have a right gaze bias. And then they measured the
Speaker 1: eye gaze and they indeed found that they had a
Speaker 1: left gaze bias. That means they're looking for stink face
Speaker 1: towards the people where they had been primed with the
Speaker 1: angry face versus right gays. So basically they knew they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: this person, I remember they had a stink face, they
Speaker 1: had an angry face, So I'm I'm checking, I'm alert
Speaker 1: I'm worried they're going to try something. Wow, I'm even
Speaker 1: amazed that they can remember a human face. Yeah that easily. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of animals can We know that
Speaker 1: birds can do that. Corvid's crows can remember human faces.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's pretty interesting. And also animals can make
Speaker 1: faces specifically for humans. So dogs have facial expressions. I
Speaker 1: know what they have made for humans. I feel crazy,
Speaker 1: but you're not crazy. When my mom's dog, who's so cute,
Speaker 1: is trying to get like your sympathy because she's just
Speaker 1: pete inside, she got a face that she does well,
Speaker 1: science is confirming that you are correct. So dogs will
Speaker 1: make expressions specifically when you're watching them. They're more likely
Speaker 1: to raise their eyebrows and stick out their tongues when
Speaker 1: someone is watching them, and they're also more likely to
Speaker 1: show just a larger range of facial expressions in general
Speaker 1: when human eye gazs. I know, and I this is
Speaker 1: confirmed what I've long believed about my dog, which is
Speaker 1: she when she sees me looking at her, she pulls
Speaker 1: a really cute face so that I come over and
Speaker 1: pet her. I think she's learned, she's learned what faces work.
Speaker 1: The best to get me to go scratch her tommy,
Speaker 1: And she knows what noises are cute, so she she's
Speaker 1: just playing me like a fiddle. She's playing you like
Speaker 1: a fiddle. And dogs are so socially smart. They're a
Speaker 1: little manipulators. They Yeah, I mean, I guess it comes
Speaker 1: from the territory. If you are raised to just be
Speaker 1: cuddled and pad and like coud at. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: feel good. I would court it too. But even really
Speaker 1: simple creatures like wasps can recognize each other's faces, so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, I don't think there's any evidence they
Speaker 1: can recognize human faces, but they can recognize each other's
Speaker 1: faces and change their responses to each other based on
Speaker 1: whether they recognize someone or don't recognize someone. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. It's not even like like I would
Speaker 1: think with wasps it would be a smell or something right,
Speaker 1: like a pheromone signal, But they can. They have some
Speaker 1: pretty complex visual processing for such a tiny rain. Whenever
Speaker 1: I learn how smart and social animals are, I'm just
Speaker 1: like hit with a wave of sadness about how much
Speaker 1: we're're hurting, Yes, just as a society, and the sort
Speaker 1: of guilt of like, oh, yeah, they they're pretty yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty smart. Yeah, no, I feel that too, And no
Speaker 1: offense to anyone who eats meat. But I always come
Speaker 1: back to like, oh, pigs are like dogs, those poor pigs. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm full disclosure. I'm not a vegetarian, but
Speaker 1: pork is the one thing that I really can't. It's
Speaker 1: like I I really struggle with because of how smart
Speaker 1: pigs are social. Yeah, and I sort of I've tried,
Speaker 1: even though I'm not vegetarian. I've massively cut down on
Speaker 1: my meat for you know, environmental and ethical purposes. Right.
Speaker 1: Obviously I'm biased because it's what I'm doing, but I
Speaker 1: think it's like fine to do whatever you can do.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I I ate a lot of fish because
Speaker 1: I'm not just don't. I love fish and I am
Speaker 1: actually keeping a query and I love fish. But I'm
Speaker 1: also like, they know, they don't know what well, they
Speaker 1: don't feel pain. I don't know, but they if you
Speaker 1: at least kill them humanely, they don't won't know what
Speaker 1: hit them. Not that fishing that something does hit them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Gone fishing with my grandma and she took the stone
Speaker 1: when she smacked. That's That's how I moralize it with
Speaker 1: myself because I don't eat meat, but I eat fish
Speaker 1: because I used to go fishing with my grandma and Sweden,
Speaker 1: and you know, we'd have to kill the fish. She
Speaker 1: it just felt so barbaric. She would take the stone
Speaker 1: that she used specific fish killing stuff, killing fish, and
Speaker 1: it would be bloody, dried with blood, and she'd smash
Speaker 1: it and it would be there wiggling, and I was like,
Speaker 1: if I can face this, I can eat it. I
Speaker 1: learned that the best way to do it, the least
Speaker 1: cruel way, is to hit it on the head, stun it,
Speaker 1: and then you immediately cut its main arm. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that it you're you don't want to just throw it
Speaker 1: on a pile of ice and let it slowly die.
Speaker 1: That's like the worst thing to do. You want to
Speaker 1: make it quick. Um. But yeah, that's what she did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy that you did it that way. No, No,
Speaker 1: that is. It feels barbaric. But if you're gonna eat
Speaker 1: a fish, you've gotta have you gotta have the you know,
Speaker 1: courage to actually kill it quickly, otherwise you're just letting
Speaker 1: it exactly. So, para idolia is a sort of brain
Speaker 1: thing that happens. It's the habit of misinterpreting information, like
Speaker 1: seeing shapes and clouds or hearing hidden messages and music,
Speaker 1: or like when you see faces and random patterns like
Speaker 1: pattern textures or tree leaves or like on the carpet
Speaker 1: or clouds. Yeah, and you see like a face and
Speaker 1: it's like, whoa, that looks exactly like a face. That's
Speaker 1: para idolia. So that's just because we're so highly attuned
Speaker 1: to recognizing facial patterns. Sometimes our brains are too sensitive
Speaker 1: and we just pick up on a face when it's
Speaker 1: not really a face, but it's hitting all the proportions
Speaker 1: of like of like, okay, this is where the noses.
Speaker 1: That's where the eyes learned, so it registers as a face.
Speaker 1: But poi anion. Mimicry is when nature does this on purpose.
Speaker 1: So flowers will sometimes mimic the female of an insect
Speaker 1: species so that the insect tries mating with it, pollinating
Speaker 1: it unwittingly. And this is a really sneaky trick. It's
Speaker 1: often done by orchids, and this is a way for
Speaker 1: the flower to not have to invest in nectar. So
Speaker 1: one way that a lot of flowers get pollinators interested.
Speaker 1: Is nectar fragrances, things like that. But if you can
Speaker 1: seduce it, then you don't actually have to invest in
Speaker 1: nectar because that's a lot of sugars involved the nectar,
Speaker 1: and that's a high cost um. So here's the hammer
Speaker 1: orchid that it's maybe not as clear as a human
Speaker 1: sometimes to see these, but that little black spot is
Speaker 1: supposed to be a specific species of wasp that is
Speaker 1: black and fuzzy. Yeah, and so the males will be
Speaker 1: fooled and we'll try to mate with it. And actually
Speaker 1: what's interesting is you don't see flowers are sleece bags.
Speaker 1: It's called consent. Flowers try to get it. It's like
Speaker 1: lying on their tinder profile. Yeah, like yeah, I'm a wasp,
Speaker 1: Yeah sure, I'm not. There an orchid on their tin
Speaker 1: drill profile. Plant plant job. Here's a here's a bee
Speaker 1: orchid where you can see that really clearly because you
Speaker 1: can see the antenna looks like a bee. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is not an example of the I wonder how bugs,
Speaker 1: i should say, insects feel when they do this, like
Speaker 1: they've just yeah, they've just made it with a flower.
Speaker 1: Is it like a little disappointing or do they get
Speaker 1: their yahyas out. I have no idea. I hope it's
Speaker 1: for them too, I hope. So yeah, maybe it's like
Speaker 1: a sex doll or something. Yeah, they're like, whoa, we're
Speaker 1: bo getting something out of this. So this is actually
Speaker 1: not an example of of the sexual mimicry. But this
Speaker 1: is just super cool. This is called a monkey orchid.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why. It looks exactly like a
Speaker 1: monkey face, but it looks exactly like a monkey face
Speaker 1: that is a monkey. It looks exactly like a monkey,
Speaker 1: and it's I don't know why it looks like and
Speaker 1: probably there's no reason for it to look this way.
Speaker 1: It's just coincidence. That feels crazy. That feels so nail
Speaker 1: on the head. Yeah, though, doesn't it look I'm looking
Speaker 1: at the lion king. Yeah, that is that exact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably just coincidence in a little mix of the
Speaker 1: pair idylia where we're looking for the face. But it's uncanny.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know that. Sometimes when I see
Speaker 1: things like that, I'm like, we're living in a simulation
Speaker 1: and some of that lazy and copied some CODEA this
Speaker 1: the same code that made certain monkey faces made back
Speaker 1: flower they copy tasted. Yeah. So the habit of these
Speaker 1: orchids to lure in the insects and that that fake
Speaker 1: sex is called pseudocopulation. And there is an Australian orchid
Speaker 1: called crypto Stylus which uh, and there's a study to
Speaker 1: found that there is actually a pretty bad cost for
Speaker 1: the insects that get tricked because they waste large amounts
Speaker 1: of sperm by um, you know, ejaculating onto the flower
Speaker 1: not to get nasty. But I have like a certain
Speaker 1: amount in them. I wonder, I wonder if it's I
Speaker 1: don't care a little one then you die. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: do think that there is a certain limit to how
Speaker 1: much they have or can produce, and it's certainly does
Speaker 1: come at a cost for them because that is a
Speaker 1: lot of proteins. They're perfect, that is their purpose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't want to waste it. And so here's a
Speaker 1: picture to it feels good for you. So here's a
Speaker 1: picture of it, and you can. They definitely look like
Speaker 1: wasps to me. Are is there a wasp in there? No,
Speaker 1: there's no wasp. Yeah, this is just the little thing. Yes, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like bugs. It looks like bugs. I'm probably
Speaker 1: bastardizing looks like bugs. Um. And then so there's also
Speaker 1: the inverse of this, which is when insects imitate plants,
Speaker 1: which happens often in crypsis like you have leaf imitating insects.
Speaker 1: You've seen stick bugs or the stick insects. Uh see,
Speaker 1: now you've got me saying bugs. Bugs is just such
Speaker 1: a cute word. It is a cute word. And one
Speaker 1: of the coolest things that I've seen are the predators
Speaker 1: that imitate flowers. So here's a crab spider imitating a flower,
Speaker 1: and it's beautiful. It's the shiny white with little some
Speaker 1: little detail and it looks like a pretty flower. It
Speaker 1: is beautiful. So that's the color they are. They're that
Speaker 1: glowy white all the time and beautier. They are beautiful.
Speaker 1: And then here, this is one of the most spectacular examples,
Speaker 1: is the orchid mantis and it is absolutely gorgeous. Whoa,
Speaker 1: it's pink and white with it looks exactly like an
Speaker 1: orchid because it has pink just like dust. It like
Speaker 1: an orchid would just kind of like it's watercolors. It's
Speaker 1: really it's real. It's beautiful and it has it looks
Speaker 1: like petals. It has sort of the the yellow and
Speaker 1: green towards the base of its abdomen that looks like
Speaker 1: you know when you look inside an orchid and it
Speaker 1: has that kind of ombre from pink to yellow and green.
Speaker 1: The attention to detail, it's are incredible. Crazy. That's what
Speaker 1: I should call this show. Yes, yes, it is really
Speaker 1: the bottom line of each lesson I have learned on
Speaker 1: this show with you. That's crazy nature. Whoa slow down? Slow?
Speaker 1: Could you just calm down for one's nature? Just just
Speaker 1: calm down, just chill, just chill. First, so I gotta
Speaker 1: ask these orchids, spiders and mantis, yes, and mantis they
Speaker 1: look like or kids, is like, how do you trick
Speaker 1: an orchid? No, they're not tricking an orchid. They're tricking
Speaker 1: potential trick predators because these are predators, right, So the
Speaker 1: prey maybe approaches them because they think they're flower, or
Speaker 1: they just at least don't suspect them. And so it's
Speaker 1: just imagine you're you're kind of walking through the forest
Speaker 1: and you see a beautiful flower and you go down
Speaker 1: to smell it, and then it just starts to eat you.
Speaker 1: You know, Oh, there are uglier things to be eaten by.
Speaker 1: That is true. Yeah, I can't really argue with that.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful spider. I am slightly terrified of spiders.
Speaker 1: I mean, of of all the creatures, probably roaches the most.
Speaker 1: You know what, I actually agree with you on roaches.
Speaker 1: I disagree on spiders. I'm not really that grossed out
Speaker 1: or scared of spiders. But roaches I have I think
Speaker 1: a negative association with because they are it's that they're
Speaker 1: so greasy. They're literally fatty in terms of like and
Speaker 1: I'm not saying like in terms of way. It's like
Speaker 1: they have these fatty excretions all over their body, which
Speaker 1: is like, is gross, and they feel like, I'm sorry, buttery.
Speaker 1: But at least a spider, I'm like, I know, we eat.
Speaker 1: Spiders are the good guys. It's like Charlotte's web spider
Speaker 1: was sweet little lady. But roaches, I'm like, or what
Speaker 1: all they're going to do is outlive of So when
Speaker 1: nuclear apocalypse comes an importantly ecological niation, they are you know,
Speaker 1: they eat organic material, but they I do a great spare.
Speaker 1: My problem is that I've here's I can trace back
Speaker 1: my dislike approaches to a specific experience, which was stepping
Speaker 1: on one in bare feet and getting the geu on
Speaker 1: my foot. No wonder you call them buttery there. It
Speaker 1: was such a crunchy buttery experience. I didn't like it.
Speaker 1: I have not scared away your listeners by really leaning
Speaker 1: into this issue of approaches. I like to. So there
Speaker 1: are some really I might do an episode or explore
Speaker 1: roaches or something, because there are some really cool one
Speaker 1: like the Madagow's characters and cock roach that is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: But yeah, just I'm I'm very tolerant towards of animals
Speaker 1: and insects and bacteria and everything except for roaches. I
Speaker 1: think silverfish are kind of nasty. And the mosquitoes just
Speaker 1: because of all the people they can Yeah, that is
Speaker 1: the one, right and please and please say torture my
Speaker 1: dog and I hate it. Well, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining me today. Thank you. Um is there? Can you
Speaker 1: just tell people about things that they can look online?
Speaker 1: Absolutely that will bring them into your world? Which is
Speaker 1: my complicated way of saying, do you have anything to plug?
Speaker 1: I do? Um? Yeah, check out my web comic. It
Speaker 1: is at bad Comics with an X by Anna. But
Speaker 1: if you just type in bad comics, it'll pop up. Um.
Speaker 1: I do comics pretty much every week about depression, anxiety, dairy. Um,
Speaker 1: they're all interlinked. To be honest, they truly in my
Speaker 1: world they are. You can also catch me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at bad Comics by Anna and uh, you know, let
Speaker 1: us know your thoughts on these animals, Like I really
Speaker 1: I love when people comment on Twitter about episodes. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's so fun. Could you guys do me a favor
Speaker 1: and send on some dick Dick pick picks somewhat dictic
Speaker 1: pick picks. So dictics are a little tiny, dear like
Speaker 1: animals and they're very cute. It'll be fine, I promise.
Speaker 1: Okay it dude, sound like you're saying send on a
Speaker 1: dick pics And I was like, no, no, no, I
Speaker 1: don't know why you think that it's picks engagement. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm expecting just cute, little cuddly animals. Cute animals, yes,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, And you can find us on the internet
Speaker 1: Creature feature Pod dot com, Creature feature Pot on Instagram.
Speaker 1: It's mostly pictures of my dog. Creature feet Pot on Twitter.
Speaker 1: That's f e a T, not f e e T.
Speaker 1: That one is something of front. Definitely a wicked feet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's just dog pots. We knows, and thank
Speaker 1: you how much for listening. If you're like in the show,
Speaker 1: you know, there's buttons, there's stars, there's subscription buttons you
Speaker 1: can press and all that actually really does help me
Speaker 1: out like tremendously, so please please do that. Thanks to
Speaker 1: the Space Classics for their super spectacular song Exo Alumina.
Speaker 1: Creature features a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit that I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.