Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show, it's another listener Questions episode.
Speaker 1: You can write to me your questions at Creature Featurepod
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com and I will do my best
Speaker 1: to answer them. So let's get right into this comfy
Speaker 1: and cozy listener Questions episode. First question, According to Matt
Speaker 1: Simon's Plight of the Living Dead, half of all animal
Speaker 1: species are parasites. How have parasites become so successful? And
Speaker 1: what role do they play in healthy ecosystems? Thanks Michael D.
Speaker 1: From Sacramento. Hey Michael, thank you for your question. So
Speaker 1: first I wanted to check on this whether it is
Speaker 1: true that half of all animals are parasites, and it
Speaker 1: seems roughly accurate. I've seen about forty percent being a
Speaker 1: number kind of bandied about, but I think it's a
Speaker 1: little bit tricky to get an exact proportion. One thing
Speaker 1: is that number of species is somewhat subjective, like do
Speaker 1: you count subspecies? How closely related are the different parasite
Speaker 1: species and so on, And of course biomass would be
Speaker 1: quite difficult to calculate as well, but I think the
Speaker 1: point still stands. There are a ton of parasites out there,
Speaker 1: perhaps more than we would be comfortable acknowledging. So to
Speaker 1: understand why there are so many different species of parasites,
Speaker 1: I think we should go over all the different kinds
Speaker 1: of parasites that are out there, because not all parasites
Speaker 1: follow the flea sucking blood type model for parasitism. So
Speaker 1: the flea type like the flea sucking your blood, is
Speaker 1: an example of an ectoparasite. Ectoparasites live on the external
Speaker 1: body of their host, and they feed on their host's blood, skin,
Speaker 1: or other important bodily components in a way that is
Speaker 1: detrimental to the host. And endoparasite is similar, but it
Speaker 1: lives inside the host. So an example would be a tapeworm.
Speaker 1: It feeds on the blood supply, flesh fluids, things that
Speaker 1: are inside the host's body which the host needs. Remember,
Speaker 1: parasites are necessarily by definition harmful to their hosts. It
Speaker 1: is a form of symbiosis in which the parasite harms
Speaker 1: the host in order to benefit itself. So another type
Speaker 1: of parasite are the parasitoids. So parasitoids live on or
Speaker 1: in their host. But the difference between a parasitoid and
Speaker 1: another parasite is that parasitoids end up necessarily killing their host.
Speaker 1: So an example is basically any number of species of
Speaker 1: parasitoid wasp who will lay her eggs on a host,
Speaker 1: and those eggs hatch either on or inside of the host,
Speaker 1: and the larva will eat the host until it is dead.
Speaker 1: Like the parasitoid wasp that attacks orb weaver spiders, these
Speaker 1: larva will live on the orb weaver, slowly drinking their
Speaker 1: fluids until the orb weaver is dead. So a parasite
Speaker 1: that accidentally kills their host does not count as a parasitoid.
Speaker 1: So say you have a really bad tapeworm, you get
Speaker 1: really sick, and you die. The tapeworm is not a parasitoid.
Speaker 1: It's just a parasite. It's not obligatory for the tapeworm
Speaker 1: to kill you, but parasitoids necessarily consume their host. Parasitoids
Speaker 1: can be ectoparasites, endo parasites, or in some cases, the
Speaker 1: host can be paralyzed, dragged back to a din, and
Speaker 1: slowly eaten over the course of hours, days, or even months.
Speaker 1: In fact, some parasitoids will specifically target non essential organs
Speaker 1: first so that the host species lives longer. This gives
Speaker 1: them more opportunity to eat flesh that is not rotting,
Speaker 1: that is fresh, So parasitoids blur the line between the
Speaker 1: categories of predation and parasitism. Also blurring lines are micropredators
Speaker 1: such as mosquitoes or vampire bats. They are parasites, but
Speaker 1: they don't don't live on their host or on a
Speaker 1: single host. Instead, they go from host to host and
Speaker 1: will take little SIPs of their blood or feed on
Speaker 1: whatever it is that they feed on. But they are
Speaker 1: not quite predators because they do not directly kill or
Speaker 1: consume their host. They can incidentally kill their host through
Speaker 1: spreading of pathogens, but this is not the same as
Speaker 1: you know as by definition killing their prey, So they
Speaker 1: are micro predators. They are parasites. They don't kill their host,
Speaker 1: but they can accidentally kill their hosts through pathogens. And actually,
Speaker 1: speaking of spreading pathogens, this is related to another way
Speaker 1: to categorize parasites in terms of the way that transmission works.
Speaker 1: So vector transmitted parasites use a taxi in order to
Speaker 1: infect their host. So think of a protozoan parasite that
Speaker 1: lives inside a mosquito. That mosquito goes to its target,
Speaker 1: maybe a human, maybe an animal, and plunges its proboscis
Speaker 1: into your skin, and then that protozoan can go on
Speaker 1: to infect you. So the protozoan is a vector transmitted parasite.
Speaker 1: It is using the mosquito as a taxi and it
Speaker 1: enters the host via this little living taxi, and it
Speaker 1: causes us all sorts of problems like malaria. So very
Speaker 1: important thing to know about these vector transmitted parasites if
Speaker 1: you are, say a doctor or epidemiologist. So directly transmitted
Speaker 1: parasites go by foot or wing flagella, wind, et cetera.
Speaker 1: They directly trans port themselves to their host. So an
Speaker 1: example would be a flea jumping onto your dog, or
Speaker 1: you picking up a tick while walking through grass. Another
Speaker 1: type is trophically transmitted parasites. These are parasites that want
Speaker 1: to be eaten. They are eaten by their host, or,
Speaker 1: as is often the case, they are eaten by one
Speaker 1: species and then a subsequent species, which is their true target,
Speaker 1: and then they reproduce and feed inside of their final target.
Speaker 1: An example of this includes roundworms. Another example is te gandhii,
Speaker 1: everyone's favorite rat Zombi Fie protozoan. It will infest rats.
Speaker 1: It will cause lesions in their brains, which makes the
Speaker 1: rats uncharacteristically bold an affectionate towards felines, who return the
Speaker 1: love by eating the rat and the protozoan. This Tea
Speaker 1: gandhii will happily reproduce inside the cat, who then poops
Speaker 1: out more Tea Gandhi. The poop gets around the rat
Speaker 1: accidentally in just some of that poop particle, and then
Speaker 1: it gets the Tea gandii and the cycle begins again.
Speaker 1: This is a trophically transmitted parasite. There are other types
Speaker 1: of parasites that are sometimes forgotten different categories, such as kleptoparasites.
Speaker 1: These are parasites that steal food from other animals. So
Speaker 1: seagulls who love to snatch food out of another bird's
Speaker 1: beak are kleptoparasites. Brood parasites are parasites that will use
Speaker 1: the paternal or maternal care of another species in order
Speaker 1: to benefit their own offspring, so cuckoo birds laying their
Speaker 1: eggs and tricking other birds into raising their chicks is
Speaker 1: an example of a brood parasite. Now, a very tiny
Speaker 1: but interesting category is sex actual parasitism. It describes only
Speaker 1: what anglerfish do. This only applies to anglerfish specifically. It
Speaker 1: is where the male attaches itself to the female physically
Speaker 1: graphs itself to the female. It actually uses an enzyme
Speaker 1: that kind of melts the skin of the female a
Speaker 1: little bit, so it can kind of melt itself onto
Speaker 1: the female's flesh. Then it feeds off of her blood supply,
Speaker 1: and the only thing it doesn't return is produce sperm.
Speaker 1: So the argument for this as a case of parasitism
Speaker 1: versus say, mutualism, is that the male takes more than
Speaker 1: he provides, so like if he's taking more of their
Speaker 1: female resources than he provides in terms of say, sperm donation.
Speaker 1: Social parasites are another category parasites. These are parasites that
Speaker 1: infiltrate usocial or other types of social groups of animals,
Speaker 1: mimicking them or sneaking by a notice, stealing resources from
Speaker 1: the group, tricking adults into feeding them, or feeding on
Speaker 1: their young. So there's a type of blue butterfly species
Speaker 1: where the caterpillar mimics the larva of ants, the ants
Speaker 1: will take it in, and sometimes it actually can imitate
Speaker 1: the queen signals of the ants, further tricking the ant colony,
Speaker 1: and it can go around feeding on larva or allowing
Speaker 1: itself to be fed by the ants. So it's a
Speaker 1: really sneaky form of parasitism. Another category is hyper parasitism.
Speaker 1: So hyperparasitism is basically the old rhyme. Big fleas have
Speaker 1: little fleas upon their backs to bite them, and little
Speaker 1: fleas have lesser fleas, and so on at infinitum. So
Speaker 1: I actually had another listener question about how many levels
Speaker 1: of parasites you could have. This is from Jean Luke Picorgi,
Speaker 1: and the answer seems to be at least five. And
Speaker 1: you see these chin anes of parasites in gal wasps.
Speaker 1: So a gal wasp, the basic gal wasp, is a
Speaker 1: species of keeeny tiny wasp that forms a gall on
Speaker 1: a plant like an oak tree. What a gall is
Speaker 1: it's a bulb of flesh that the plant or tree
Speaker 1: is induced to create that does not benefit the tree,
Speaker 1: but it benefits this wasp. So the wasp will drill
Speaker 1: a hole into the bark or skin of the plant.
Speaker 1: Sometimes these galls are created on leaves and stuff, but
Speaker 1: we're focusing on an oak gal wasp. So it drills
Speaker 1: into the oak's flesh and then this bulb forms and
Speaker 1: the gal wasps will lay it's a inside of this
Speaker 1: bulb that is formed from basically this chemical that the
Speaker 1: larvae excretes. And then this bulb that grows around the
Speaker 1: larva has a fleshy interior that the larva feeds on,
Speaker 1: So it's feeding on the tree. It's harming the tree,
Speaker 1: and so that is why it is a parasite. Now
Speaker 1: there are other gal wasps that then take advantage of
Speaker 1: the previous gal wasp, the gal wasp that created this gall,
Speaker 1: this bulb, and then it lays its own offspring inside
Speaker 1: the other gal wasps gall. So it will sometimes harm
Speaker 1: the larva of the previous tenant of this gall. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it won't prevent it from developing, but it certainly steals
Speaker 1: resources from it. And then you have parasitoid wasps like
Speaker 1: the crypt keeper wasp. Remember a parasitoid necessarily kills its host.
Speaker 1: So the crypt keeper wasp will lay its eggs inside
Speaker 1: the gall on top of an existing larva, and those
Speaker 1: eggs will hatch into carnivorous larva which will feed on
Speaker 1: the other gal wasp slowly. Again, the sort of distinction
Speaker 1: between a predator and a parasitoid is a parasitoid feeds
Speaker 1: slowly on its host over a long period of time
Speaker 1: before killing it. So this parasitoid gal wasp will feed
Speaker 1: on the host larva and then it will continue to
Speaker 1: consume this victim larva slowly, and as the victim larva
Speaker 1: grows and develops into an adult wasp, the parasite larva
Speaker 1: will compel it to drill its way out of the gall,
Speaker 1: and then at this point the parasite will actually be
Speaker 1: head the host gal wasp, and that head blocks up
Speaker 1: the opening to the gall and basically creates a fleshy door.
Speaker 1: And then once that parasite larva continues to develop into
Speaker 1: an adult, it can then just basically eat its way
Speaker 1: through this head and emerge from the gall, so you
Speaker 1: can have chains of Basically, the first layer of parasitism
Speaker 1: is the initial gall creating wasp that is a parasite
Speaker 1: on the oak tree, and then you have maybe a
Speaker 1: gall wasp that is a parasite and infesting this gall
Speaker 1: by stealing essentially the resources from the gall from the
Speaker 1: bulb itself, and then another type of parasite that will
Speaker 1: steal resources directly from the larvae, eat them, consume them,
Speaker 1: a parasitoid, so you could actually get chains of this,
Speaker 1: and apparently it's been observed to be up to around
Speaker 1: five levels of parasitism, so things get wacky with these
Speaker 1: gall wasps, really interesting. So the point of giving you
Speaker 1: all these examples is to demonstrate the wide variety of
Speaker 1: parasites and parasitic strategies, which gives you a sense of
Speaker 1: why there are so many parasites in the world. There
Speaker 1: are near endless opportunities for parasites to take advantage of,
Speaker 1: and typically when there is a niche say there's some
Speaker 1: form of nutrition that can be exploited, there will be
Speaker 1: an organism that, over millions of years evolves to exploit it.
Speaker 1: We have limited resources on the planet, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of competition for resources, so finding shortcuts or cheets can
Speaker 1: greatly enhance an animal's success, and of course the host
Speaker 1: animals are also forced to develop strategies through evolution to
Speaker 1: try to counteract the parasite's attack. So in terms of
Speaker 1: what good they do for the ecosystem. By definition, parasites
Speaker 1: are bad for the individual host. There is no good
Speaker 1: parasite for an individual, but for say an ecosystem, they
Speaker 1: can actually be critical. So an ecosystem is a whole group,
Speaker 1: a delicate chain and web of animals interacting with each other,
Speaker 1: and so even though a parasite may harm an individual,
Speaker 1: they could provide a benefit to the ecosystem. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: nutritional biomass mosquitoes provide a huge biomass for other animals
Speaker 1: to feed on. There's potential for parasites to keep certain
Speaker 1: species from growing too numerous two dents which can maybe
Speaker 1: help with plant growth. Say you have you know, too
Speaker 1: many deer or too many rabbits or something, and they're
Speaker 1: too dense. Much like how predators will help keep these
Speaker 1: in check, parasites can also help keep them in check.
Speaker 1: And this can help prevent say, plants from being devastated
Speaker 1: by too many herbivores or you know, it could keep
Speaker 1: predatorspecies in check, and then that helps prevent too mini
Speaker 1: predators from going around killing herbivores. So it can keep
Speaker 1: some of these things in balance, and it can also
Speaker 1: increase the biodiversity of the host species through selective pressures.
Speaker 1: If you're a parasite and you're putting selective pressure on
Speaker 1: your host, you may force it to adapt in some way,
Speaker 1: and this can actually result in speciation, so a new
Speaker 1: species arising from this. So this can increase biodiversity, increase
Speaker 1: genetic diversity, which is really important in a changing world
Speaker 1: where you may have certain shocks to an ecosystem. So
Speaker 1: having more genetic diversity prevents a species from say, being
Speaker 1: wiped out by a change in the environment. Because you
Speaker 1: have such a rich genetic library, you might be able
Speaker 1: to adapt to this change. So removing parasites from the
Speaker 1: planet I think would be very very harmful, would be
Speaker 1: devastating because it would weaken this intricate web. I like
Speaker 1: to call it like a Jenga tower, these complex interspecific
Speaker 1: relationship between different species. And you remove one piece, maybe
Speaker 1: it doesn't do anything, but if you remove it, it could
Speaker 1: also make the whole tower collapse. So parasites very important
Speaker 1: for an ecosystem, very harmful for an individual. But I
Speaker 1: love them because they're so weird and their strategies are
Speaker 1: so intricate, and it's almost spooky sometimes how good they
Speaker 1: are exploiting. So we're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we get back, we are going to answer
Speaker 1: another listener question. All right, onto the next listener question.
Speaker 1: This one says less of a question and more a
Speaker 1: layman's observation. Maybe you've covered it before. Kind of unusual,
Speaker 1: how frogs don't have teeth yet eat flies, making them omnivorous. Right,
Speaker 1: and this is from Sherman. So Hi, Yeah, So some
Speaker 1: frogs are omnivorous, meaning they eat plants as well as
Speaker 1: meat or other things. So omnivores eat a variety of
Speaker 1: different different fruits, usually meat and plants, maybe fruit, maybe nuts, seeds, whatever.
Speaker 1: So some frogs do eat both plant matter and insects.
Speaker 1: But if a hypothetical frog I'm among which there are
Speaker 1: many species that only eat flies or only eat insects,
Speaker 1: it would make it insectivorous. So insectivores are a type
Speaker 1: of carnivore, a carnivore that specializes in eating insects. So
Speaker 1: some frogs will be omnivores, some frogs will be insectivores,
Speaker 1: or some will be carnivores because they can eat both insects,
Speaker 1: small mammals, other frogs It kind of depends on the
Speaker 1: frog size. Frogs really love to basically eat anything can
Speaker 1: can fit in its mouth. Frogs typically aren't super picky
Speaker 1: when it comes to live prey as long as they
Speaker 1: can fit it inside of them. So onto the teeth. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: it's true that frogs do not have a prominent visible
Speaker 1: set of teeth, but not all frogs are toothless. Some are,
Speaker 1: and almost all frogs lack lower teeth, but there are
Speaker 1: many species of frogs that have tiny upper teeth or
Speaker 1: teeth on the roof of their mouths. Frog teeth are
Speaker 1: really teeny tiny. They are not easily seen with the
Speaker 1: naked eye. You usually have to use a CT scan
Speaker 1: of a skeleton or microscopic photography in order to see
Speaker 1: these teeth. But in terms of frogs that have both
Speaker 1: an upper and lower set of teeth, there's only one
Speaker 1: known species of frogs that have this. This is Gunther's
Speaker 1: mare supial frogs. They have a set of upper and
Speaker 1: lower teeth, all extremely tiny teeth about the size of
Speaker 1: a grain of sand. So this is really weird that
Speaker 1: this is the case for Gunther's marsupial frogs because these
Speaker 1: frogs lost their lower teeth two hundred million years ago
Speaker 1: along with these other frog species that don't have lower teeth.
Speaker 1: But it has re evolved these lower teeth, which it's
Speaker 1: unclear exactly why they have. It's really fascinating that that
Speaker 1: they can re evolve these teeth after so long. But
Speaker 1: it likely has something to do with grips. So you know,
Speaker 1: you think of sand paper, right, even though these teeth
Speaker 1: are the size of a grain of sand. With sandpaper,
Speaker 1: it's got a lot of traction, it's got a little grip.
Speaker 1: So it's thought that with frog teeth, whether they only
Speaker 1: have an upper set or they have that upper and
Speaker 1: lower set, has something to do with providing some friction
Speaker 1: to keep struggling prey from escaping, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to larger prey. So, in fact, there are some species
Speaker 1: of frog that have developed a set of lower things
Speaker 1: that kind of look like buck teeth, but really these
Speaker 1: are bony projections. They're not teeth. They lack dentin. True
Speaker 1: teeth has dentin, whereas these bony projections kind of look
Speaker 1: like little things, but they are not true teeth. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you do not need teeth to be a carnivore. So
Speaker 1: examples of other carnivores that do not have teeth. Giant
Speaker 1: ant eaters do not have teeth. Their jaws barely function. Instead,
Speaker 1: they rely on a long, sticky tongue to capture and
Speaker 1: slurp up ants and termites. Similarly, pangolins have no teeth.
Speaker 1: Pangolins are those little living pine cone like animals. Well
Speaker 1: they're not that little, actually, they're definitely an armful, but
Speaker 1: they have those scales that kind of look like a
Speaker 1: pine cone, and they feed on ants and termites, but
Speaker 1: they don't have any teeth. They just have, you know,
Speaker 1: a tongue and kind of viscous saliva. Pangolins will also
Speaker 1: eat stones to help pulverize food in their stomachs. Stones
Speaker 1: that are eaten in order to help with digestion are
Speaker 1: called gastroliths. Pangolin stomachs are also lined with spines, which
Speaker 1: help further macerate the insects they eat. So even though
Speaker 1: they don't have any teeth in their mouth, they do
Speaker 1: have ways to crush insects in their gizzard, which is
Speaker 1: interesting because this is a strategy also used by birds.
Speaker 1: Of course, birds do not have teeth. There are some birds,
Speaker 1: especially filter feeders, who will have kind of tooth like
Speaker 1: ridges in their beaks, but they're not true teeth. But
Speaker 1: most many, many species of birds don't even have these.
Speaker 1: They rely instead on their beaks. They can be really sharp,
Speaker 1: they can be shaped differently in order to achieve different
Speaker 1: kind of things, but they don't have teeth, and they,
Speaker 1: like the pangolin, will actually sometimes swallow stones or sand
Speaker 1: in order to help with digestion in their gizzard. Of course,
Speaker 1: beaks are also used by octopuses and squids, who are
Speaker 1: also carnivores, and they don't need teeth. They use these
Speaker 1: beaks along with their tentacles in order to entrap and
Speaker 1: rip up and eat prey. Another one of the world's
Speaker 1: biggest carnivores, in fact, one of the biggest animals. The
Speaker 1: biggest animal in the world has no teeth but is
Speaker 1: a carnivore. These are toothless whales, baylean whales, who use
Speaker 1: these broom like balen to sift out huge amounts of krill,
Speaker 1: which they gulp up. I know it's weird to think
Speaker 1: of a baling whale as a carnivore, but they are.
Speaker 1: They eat krill. Krill is a living animal, it's meat.
Speaker 1: They will eat so many of them. They are actually
Speaker 1: really really good carnivore, very very high number of prey
Speaker 1: that they can get all at once. But yes, despite
Speaker 1: their prey being so small, baling whales are carnivores and
Speaker 1: they don't have to use teeth to do it, and
Speaker 1: they are the world's largest animal. So teeth are important
Speaker 1: for us though, so brush them. You know. It's not
Speaker 1: like we can put brooms in our mouth and use
Speaker 1: that to filter soup. I mean, maybe we could. I
Speaker 1: don't recommend it, though, Keep those teeth brushed and flossed,
Speaker 1: and you know, like drink a lot of water. Anyways,
Speaker 1: We're gonna take another quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: I'm going to answer the last listener question. Next listener question. Recently,
Speaker 1: orchidmantis species have been shown that was once thought to
Speaker 1: only be camouflage for mimicry are actually gliding surfaces too.
Speaker 1: What are your favorite surprise animal abilities only found years
Speaker 1: after the species was known and studied. This is from
Speaker 1: URF the MIRF. This is amazing. So orchidmantises, which are beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful insects. They are a species of mantises that look
Speaker 1: like orchids, I mean the name is truly accurate. They
Speaker 1: have pinks and whites and green colors, and they have
Speaker 1: all of these like petal like protrusions, and they have
Speaker 1: these petal shaped lobes on you know, basically their their legs,
Speaker 1: and it looks beautiful. It makes them look like an orchid.
Speaker 1: It helps with their camouflage so that they can be
Speaker 1: both protected and an ambush predator, which is really cool.
Speaker 1: But the new news is that they can also use
Speaker 1: them as gliding surfaces, essentially, like because the surface area
Speaker 1: has increased, they can glide for short distances using these petals,
Speaker 1: which can also be used for camouflage, which is just
Speaker 1: beautiful and fantastic. Other discoveries of animals that we've known
Speaker 1: about for a really long time. I love it when
Speaker 1: there's like a I don't want to say mundane animal,
Speaker 1: because I think they're all really interesting, but an animal
Speaker 1: we know, it's well known, and then suddenly something new
Speaker 1: pops upwards we had no idea. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I think is really funny is we keep discovering
Speaker 1: that so many mammals biofluoresse, have biofluorescence, and we don't
Speaker 1: know why. So it started out with a few discoveries
Speaker 1: of mammals being biofluorescent. So biofluorescence means that they absorb
Speaker 1: and re emit light. You can't see this with the
Speaker 1: naked human eye, but you can see it under black light.
Speaker 1: So this was discovered in apossums, flying squirrels, and platypuses
Speaker 1: and they were found to be biofluorescent. And then researchers
Speaker 1: started testing more mammals under black light. They did this
Speaker 1: with specimens in museum or research catalogs, so they kept
Speaker 1: finding more and more species who were biofluorescent, and the
Speaker 1: list kept getting longer and longer. So wombbats, bilbies, armadillas,
Speaker 1: red foxes, dolphins, cats, house cats, bats, zebras, big cats,
Speaker 1: they all were found to have biofluorescent fur or other
Speaker 1: body parts. In fact, one hundred and twenty five species
Speaker 1: of mammals were found to biofluoresse when Western Australia Museum
Speaker 1: puts specimens under UV light. So it's still not really
Speaker 1: well understood exactly what is causing this. The emerging pattern
Speaker 1: seems to be that nocturnal animals have stronger biofluorescence, but
Speaker 1: this is still something found in diurnal animals animals that
Speaker 1: are active during the day. So another pattern I guess
Speaker 1: is that white fur seems to be more likely to
Speaker 1: be biofluorescent. So like in the case of housecats, only
Speaker 1: white fur has been found to be biofluorescent, it's the
Speaker 1: only type of fur that does so, but in other
Speaker 1: species of animals, like there can be other colorations of
Speaker 1: fur that is biofluorescent. So yeah, it's really interesting. We
Speaker 1: kind of had no idea that this was a feature
Speaker 1: for so many mammals, and so it's I'll be keeping
Speaker 1: my eye on this for sure to find out if
Speaker 1: they come up with any more hypotheses or do any
Speaker 1: more testing to figure out why exactly this is the case.
Speaker 1: Is this just a basically like a evolutionary spandrel something
Speaker 1: that serves no function but it's just it just happens
Speaker 1: to be there and it's cool, or does it serve
Speaker 1: some kind of function, So yeah, it's very very interesting.
Speaker 1: Another thing is I love it when we make new
Speaker 1: discoveries about ants because ants are so common and they're everywhere,
Speaker 1: and it feels like we already know everything about ants,
Speaker 1: but then ants always surprise us. So of course there
Speaker 1: are many different ant species, so Just because we know
Speaker 1: a bunch of things about one ant species doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we know everything about all the ant species. But still
Speaker 1: it's really cool when we discover new things. So there
Speaker 1: is a species of ant called the Indian jumping ants,
Speaker 1: which are found in India. They are really interesting looking
Speaker 1: ants with elongated mandibles, and their colony structure is a
Speaker 1: little different from most ants. They have pretty small colonies,
Speaker 1: about one hundred individuals. They do have queens, but the
Speaker 1: queen's position is a lot less secure and high up
Speaker 1: on a hierarchy than in typical ant colonies. You see
Speaker 1: workers that can rise to become queens and workers that
Speaker 1: can control who is their queen. So if there is
Speaker 1: a queen who has not been approved of by the colony,
Speaker 1: she can be dethroned and placed in queen custody, where
Speaker 1: a very weird body transformation can take place. So when
Speaker 1: an old queen dies in one of these Indian jumping
Speaker 1: ant colonies, the queen is selected in a jousting competition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is very medieval or Middle Ages. I'm not a historian.
Speaker 1: So they have those elongated manibles that I talk about,
Speaker 1: and they will essentially joust with each other until there
Speaker 1: is a clear dominant winner. That winner will become the
Speaker 1: new queen. And what happens when you attain power, Well,
Speaker 1: your brain shrinks and your ovaries expand. So yes, the
Speaker 1: queen's brain will shrink and her ovaries will expand, and
Speaker 1: she assumes the position of being the breeding dominant queen.
Speaker 1: But if there is multiple ants that are starting to
Speaker 1: develop into queens and one is unauthorized, or if there's
Speaker 1: a queen that is not performing her royal duties correctly,
Speaker 1: the worker ants will seize her into a restrictive hold.
Speaker 1: They don't kill her, though. Ants are more civilized than
Speaker 1: humans are. When they are deposing a queen, this ant
Speaker 1: is just held until its brain expands and ovary shrinks
Speaker 1: and it biologically turns back into a worker. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a representative monarchy, democratic monarchy. It's a
Speaker 1: very violent one, but maybe not as violent as people.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying the ants may have some things figured out,
Speaker 1: you know, except for the part where their leader's brain shrinks.
Speaker 1: It's not like that happens with humans anyways. I really
Speaker 1: hope that you enjoyed this Listener Questions episode. If you
Speaker 1: want your question to be answered. You can write to
Speaker 1: me at Creature feature Pod at gmail dot com. You
Speaker 1: can write to me on Twitter if you dare delve
Speaker 1: in that murkiness. I'm still Katie Golden. There a T
Speaker 1: I E G O L D I N. And I
Speaker 1: will definitely keep doing these listener questions episode because I
Speaker 1: love answering your questions. It forces me to do research
Speaker 1: on topics sometimes or study up on things I've forgotten,
Speaker 1: so it's a learning experience for me as well. Help
Speaker 1: me help you, help me help you to learn. Yes. Anyways,
Speaker 1: hope you're all doing well. Thanks to the Space Classics
Speaker 1: for their super awesome song Xolumina. Creature features a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you just
Speaker 1: heard this, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or Hey guess
Speaker 1: what wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'll see
Speaker 1: you guys next Wednesday.