Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature, feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show Creatures Versus
Speaker 1: Video Game Bosses, were matching some of the most iconic
Speaker 1: video game bosses with real life creatures in a no
Speaker 1: holds barred match of wits, Broun, Brain and slime, which
Speaker 1: members of the Animal Kingdom can travel to the Mushroom
Speaker 1: Kingdom and defeat Bowser. Is Echo the dolphin really up
Speaker 1: to the task of defeating the final boss? Or could
Speaker 1: he use some fishy friends and could have mycologists take
Speaker 1: down the batties from the most recent Resident Evil game?
Speaker 1: Discover the more as we answered the angel question. Parasitic
Speaker 1: Pod Got your Tongue? Joining me today is the creator
Speaker 1: of the wildly popular YouTube channel that translates real life
Speaker 1: animal biology into video game term Patch from tears Zoo. Welcome, Hi,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for having me. I am very excited
Speaker 1: to have you on for this episode. I think your
Speaker 1: videos are wildly entertaining. They're really cool. I love I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a secret at this point that I'm
Speaker 1: a nerd kind of in every aspect of my life.
Speaker 1: I love video games, I love animals. I really love
Speaker 1: sort of I don't want to say gamification because I
Speaker 1: don't like that word, but taking sort of animal biology
Speaker 1: and putting it into terms that people who love video
Speaker 1: games can really understand. Oh, thank you so much. I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to rank some video game bosses versus animals
Speaker 1: VideA so uh first, I mean, we've got to go
Speaker 1: with maybe the most iconic boss of all time. I
Speaker 1: don't want to put any video game bosses on blast here,
Speaker 1: but I think Bowser to makes it right. King Koopa
Speaker 1: Bowser is definitely a big bad that everyone knows. I think, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The Mario games feature Bowser as the main antagonist. He's
Speaker 1: that big, spiky turtle like fellow. He's King of the Kopas,
Speaker 1: which I guess is what those little turtles are. I
Speaker 1: only discovered that into my adult life. I just thought
Speaker 1: they were turtles that you jump on. But yeah, he
Speaker 1: frequently captures Princess Peach, and his life goals are to
Speaker 1: defeat Mario, become the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom, and
Speaker 1: maybe go on a date with Princess Peach, which seems
Speaker 1: counterintuitive to the whole kidnappy thing. But you know, I agree,
Speaker 1: maybe not the best way to go about it, and
Speaker 1: I think some of the recent Mario games have kind
Speaker 1: of addressed that. Um but yeah, Pawser definitely a legend, right,
Speaker 1: a legend, just not in the dating sphere, so perhaps not.
Speaker 1: Some of Moser's strengths are that he spits fire pretty good.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty good that's a strong ability for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's spiky. He got a lot of spikes, which you know,
Speaker 1: we know is a good defense mechanism or a variety
Speaker 1: of animals. Uh, he's got horns and claws and that
Speaker 1: that's good. That definitely helps him out. And he's big
Speaker 1: and strong. Yes, he's got a serious size advantage over
Speaker 1: most of his foes. Yes, Mario, Yeah, Mario is kind
Speaker 1: of a he's a compact Italian plumber. He's a short
Speaker 1: he's a short king. Yeah. Uh, he's you know what
Speaker 1: he does lacks in size, he makes up in I
Speaker 1: guess stomping ability, right, that's his main power. Stomping, Yeah,
Speaker 1: stomping and jumping. Yep, he's breaking next, jumping on people's heads.
Speaker 1: We love a short Italian plumber king who step on
Speaker 1: your neck? So, uh, Bowser's weaknesses is uh, well, there's
Speaker 1: his unrequited, unhealthy infatuation with princesses, which you know, that's
Speaker 1: more of a psychological thing. You know, maybe he could
Speaker 1: get under his skin with some some comments about you know,
Speaker 1: he's uh, he doesn't know how to how to talk
Speaker 1: to women. But other than that, his weakness is I
Speaker 1: think poor agility and flexibility. And he has this spot
Speaker 1: open on his tail that in Super Mario sixty four
Speaker 1: you must grab that tail and spin him around to
Speaker 1: defeat him. Based on these specifications, I think we're looking
Speaker 1: for a sturdy animal or a very agile animal that
Speaker 1: can outmaneuver him um, and something that can attack its
Speaker 1: praise tails, maybe do spin attacks, maybe some brute strength.
Speaker 1: What do you think? Yeah, I mean my mind kind
Speaker 1: of goes to the sorts of animals that um are
Speaker 1: the predators of turtles, because Bosser is basically a dragon turtle.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, like, I don't know, birds, Like there's
Speaker 1: some birds that prey on turtles by like carrying them
Speaker 1: up into the air. Yeah. I love that really big
Speaker 1: bird to do that. I love it. I love it
Speaker 1: when birds of prey, just like it's such a it's
Speaker 1: so devious to pick up your prey and you're not
Speaker 1: doing anything to them yet, but you're just taking them
Speaker 1: higher and higher to drop down. Exactly, you're letting you're
Speaker 1: abusing the physics of real life. You know, you're letting
Speaker 1: gravity do the dirty work for you. Exactly. It's super intelligent.
Speaker 1: It's genius. Uh, you know, works smart, not harder, right, um,
Speaker 1: murder smarter, not harder, precisely. But I don't think we're
Speaker 1: going to find any birds that can quite do that
Speaker 1: to Bowser. Maybe not, maybe not, but you know there
Speaker 1: are animals. So one thing I was looking for is
Speaker 1: strong grip, right, because you need you're gonna need a
Speaker 1: strong grip because once you've got Bowser's tail, it's the
Speaker 1: game's over. Right, You've got his tail he can't get.
Speaker 1: That's one of the things is even though Mario is
Speaker 1: teeny tiny, like he can't turn around, because when Mario
Speaker 1: is attached to his tail, what's he gonna do like
Speaker 1: burn his own tail off? No? Yeah, so are you
Speaker 1: thinking like crocodiles. Crocodiles is a very good one. Like
Speaker 1: if a croc bid a Bowser's tail for sure that
Speaker 1: Bowser would be in a tough, tough spot, pretty hard
Speaker 1: to get the crocodile off of you. At that point,
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, So with crocodile, I think you would
Speaker 1: not have to make any modifications. You could just take
Speaker 1: a classic saltwater crocodile pitted against Bowser, and in my opinion,
Speaker 1: the crocodile would win every time. What do you think,
Speaker 1: I think, especially because if Bowser decides to use his
Speaker 1: firebreath attack, the crocodile could just like submerge itself under
Speaker 1: the water. Absolutely, I guess in this hypothetical scenario, the
Speaker 1: croc has to also have water around it, and for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, wading through some swamp or river or something,
Speaker 1: there are water levels and Mario, right, there's lots of water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely water levels. It's definitely water levels. So yeah, let's
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit more about crocodiles because this
Speaker 1: is actually one of my picks for who I think
Speaker 1: could defeat Bowser. So, crocodiles are large reptiles found in
Speaker 1: aquatic environments all around the world. Most species of crocodile
Speaker 1: employ a devastating attack against their victims called a death roll,
Speaker 1: which I think would be a particularly effective attack against
Speaker 1: a bowser. So the death roll is the crocodile's way
Speaker 1: of attacking and devouring prey many times its size, such
Speaker 1: as a will the Beast, which is not an easy
Speaker 1: thing to eat. I think even you imagine, like crocodiles
Speaker 1: are pretty big, but imagine trying to get like a
Speaker 1: will the Beast all in your mouth all at once.
Speaker 1: It's impossible. You've never you've never tried to chug a
Speaker 1: will the Beast. I can't say that I have you No.
Speaker 1: I think the closest I've gotten is like trying to
Speaker 1: get a whole in and out burger, like half of
Speaker 1: it in my mouth and one by kind of really
Speaker 1: one by challenging. Awesome. I've done that with like donuts.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've done with a burger. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work very good with a burger, But I was
Speaker 1: really trying, like a guy Fieri bye with the burger
Speaker 1: one bite challenge and then may I respect it? Yep.
Speaker 1: The greets are for later. That's a problem for a
Speaker 1: future Katie, right That's for future Katie right now. It's
Speaker 1: in and out Katie time. But for a crocodile, that's
Speaker 1: a real problem. Crocodiles don't really chew their food, do they.
Speaker 1: They don't. They don't have the chewing muscles that other carnivores.
Speaker 1: They can't rip and tear. They don't have the grinding
Speaker 1: action that like omnivores like humans have, like we can
Speaker 1: grind exactly. Yeah. I think if anything, the crocodile would
Speaker 1: probably rip off Bowser's tail by doing the whole death
Speaker 1: roll thing. It would really have much other options to
Speaker 1: actually eat Bowser. So much of him is inside that shell,
Speaker 1: which I don't think the crocod would be really able
Speaker 1: to do much to even with its powerful bite. I mean,
Speaker 1: just because it's like a sphere, like imagine trying to
Speaker 1: bite something round like that, he'd have to hollow out
Speaker 1: Bowser from the inside, like get in there and pull
Speaker 1: the flesh chunks out from inside that shell. I suppose
Speaker 1: is that that could definitely work. Pretty grizzly looking life
Speaker 1: videos yeah, yeah, Like Hyena is getting all up in
Speaker 1: like a hip elephant after killing it. David Attenborrow narrating
Speaker 1: as you see, like like a hyena just come out
Speaker 1: of a crevice of Bowser's eyehole. I sack it, but yeah. So,
Speaker 1: because the crocodile doesn't chew it's prey to break it
Speaker 1: down into smaller pieces. Whatever it swallows, it has to
Speaker 1: swallow whole. For smaller prey, that's easy enough. It just
Speaker 1: chomps down, crushes it, and gulps it back like an
Speaker 1: in and out burger um. And often for bigger prey,
Speaker 1: the crocodile will actually drown its prey first, because you know, dead,
Speaker 1: drowned prey is easier to deal with than a kicking,
Speaker 1: live prey that's going, hey, wait a minute, I didn't
Speaker 1: sign up for this. So it's jaws are great for gripping,
Speaker 1: bad for chewing. In fact, it's jaw strength has a
Speaker 1: bite force of over sixteen thousand Newton's, which I you know,
Speaker 1: that's just a number, right, Like, it's hard to put
Speaker 1: into perspective of what that is. But for comparison, a
Speaker 1: human grip is about three hundred Newton's, so you know
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. Yeah. It's why when you put your
Speaker 1: hand inside a crocodile mouth, it's usually not going to
Speaker 1: go good for you. It's just not Do not recommend that,
Speaker 1: do not recommend. I did find a video when I
Speaker 1: was researching this that I won't describe too much because
Speaker 1: I don't want people googling it. But it's bad. Don't
Speaker 1: put your hand in a crocodile mouth. People, don't do it.
Speaker 1: If you want your hand back, yeah, don't don't put
Speaker 1: it there if you're not offering your hand literally to
Speaker 1: the crocodile to take for keeps. These don't do it.
Speaker 1: So it will bite down, clamp down on its prey
Speaker 1: and then do this death roll so where it just spin, spin, spin,
Speaker 1: like a video game attack. It's an incredible like because
Speaker 1: they're in the water, they have some buoyancy, some more
Speaker 1: I guess agility than you would think such a large
Speaker 1: reptile would have, and they just spit around like a
Speaker 1: tornado with that limb in their mouth and literally will
Speaker 1: twist it right off of the body of their prey.
Speaker 1: And uh so they are able to then disassemble something
Speaker 1: like a will the Beast or maybe like a bowser
Speaker 1: chunk by chunk, such that they can just eat something
Speaker 1: much larger than itself. It would certainly be a pretty
Speaker 1: gruesome sight to watch. Yeah, I think they could eventually
Speaker 1: take apart at least things that are outside of the
Speaker 1: shell they could probably rip Bowser's limbs off, which is
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah, his tail, his feet and arms ahead
Speaker 1: those cute little like goth bracelets that he's got, He's
Speaker 1: got a lot of points of contact outside of the shell.
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, that's true. And in fact, the death
Speaker 1: roll hasn't always been used by crocodiles to tear prey
Speaker 1: up into little edible bits. It's actually thought to be
Speaker 1: a defensive combat move that they can also use to
Speaker 1: tear down prey. So there have been observations of crocodiles
Speaker 1: using this move when they're fighting some kind of aggressive
Speaker 1: other animal or other crocodiles. So it's totally totally feasible
Speaker 1: that a crocodile would use this move on Bowser and
Speaker 1: a one on one fight. Definitely, I think given its
Speaker 1: home turf of a river swamp, I think a crocodile
Speaker 1: has a would pose a pretty big threat to Bowser
Speaker 1: for sure. Yes, yes, I agree, And but that is
Speaker 1: maybe not the only animal that I think could take
Speaker 1: down Bowser. Now, uh, let's say, isn't there a there's
Speaker 1: a thing that Mario can eat right in the game,
Speaker 1: one of the mushrooms that makes him real big? Yeah?
Speaker 1: There's one that makes him big. There's a few other
Speaker 1: power ups that give him uh the ability to kind
Speaker 1: of fly or um shoot fire himself. But the big
Speaker 1: one is the most iconic for sure. That's like this,
Speaker 1: that's like the Ghost Pepper, the Ghost Pepper mushroom story.
Speaker 1: He just he just shoots it out of his his
Speaker 1: hands are his face, I see not a well. Anyways,
Speaker 1: if you gave a mere cat one of those mushrooms,
Speaker 1: that makes it real big. I think that Bowser would
Speaker 1: be complete toast because if Bowser's point of weakness is
Speaker 1: grabbing an attack the tail, mirror cats are just designed
Speaker 1: to fight dirty uh and grab you by the butt.
Speaker 1: So mere cats are a species of social mongoose found
Speaker 1: in southern Africa. You know, they're to mown from the
Speaker 1: Lion King. Completely accurate depiction. They all have Nathan Lane's voice,
Speaker 1: so they love to eat scorpions when given the opportunity. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of conjecture that like, mongooses are sorry,
Speaker 1: mere cats are, well, your cats are mongooses. But nevertheless,
Speaker 1: mere cats that they're immune to venom or two poison.
Speaker 1: They have some resistance to venom and poison, which are
Speaker 1: venom and toxins, which is good because they do like
Speaker 1: to eat snakes and scorpions, but they're they're not completely immune.
Speaker 1: They could not survive being stabbed a bunch of times
Speaker 1: by a highly venomous scorpion, and they don't want to
Speaker 1: eat it. You know. It's just it's a bad time
Speaker 1: for for the little mercat that wants to eat a
Speaker 1: highly toxic arthur pods. So instead, what they do is,
Speaker 1: when they want to eat a scorpion, they attack it
Speaker 1: from the butt side. They grab it by the stinger,
Speaker 1: rip off its entire backside, including the stinger. They discard
Speaker 1: the stinger, and then just rub the poor little scorpion
Speaker 1: in the sand until it washes away all the toxins, uh,
Speaker 1: and then they can enjoy this tasty snack. So, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, the fact that meercats learned to do this
Speaker 1: like since their babies means that if you scaled up
Speaker 1: a meercat you gave it one of those dubious magic
Speaker 1: mushrooms and it was fighting size with bowser, it would
Speaker 1: just gruesomely destroy and devour our bowser. Yeah. Definitely, the
Speaker 1: agility that mere cats possesses pretty tough to beat now.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a little bit of uh asterisk next
Speaker 1: to the whole like if you make it bigger because
Speaker 1: you run into like the square cube law everything whether
Speaker 1: or not you can retain that agility, right, But it's
Speaker 1: vascular system just sort of uh immediately collapse under the
Speaker 1: weight of its new girth. Would it you know? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And the whole moment of a nerve show of having
Speaker 1: limbs that are way longer snap. Would it not get
Speaker 1: enough oxygen? Yeah, there's a lot of questions when you
Speaker 1: scale things up. We can ignore all of that if
Speaker 1: you need to be just to talk about giant mere cats.
Speaker 1: So in your scenario, are the mere cats because you
Speaker 1: said that there very social animals and that's oftentimes how
Speaker 1: they hunt snakes and everything. So in the scenario, is
Speaker 1: it just one mere cat versus Bowser, a giant meer cat,
Speaker 1: or is it the whole posse of mere cats? If
Speaker 1: I think it's either or right to defeat Bowser, you
Speaker 1: could either have one giant mere cat or an army
Speaker 1: of regular size mere cats because together they're very good
Speaker 1: at teaming, Like they can take on a king cobra
Speaker 1: together as a unit, which is very impressive. Now, they
Speaker 1: don't often fight uh cobras, which there's always something a
Speaker 1: little bit suspect to me when you see wildlife footage
Speaker 1: of like mirr cats fighting a cobra, because like, they
Speaker 1: don't usually get into conflict, Like did someone just throw
Speaker 1: a cobra at them? And the way to find the
Speaker 1: most dangerous things they possibly can? Yeah, yeah, and like
Speaker 1: sort of staging something for uh for dramatic television effect. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: they do. They do team up and fight snakes by
Speaker 1: forming a united front as a team because they are
Speaker 1: highly social. So I think a team of merecats could
Speaker 1: do it, or one giant meercat uh. And my last
Speaker 1: contender maybe is something you wouldn't necessarily think of, but
Speaker 1: it has pound for pound an incredibly strong grip, one
Speaker 1: of the strongest grips in the world. It is the
Speaker 1: coconut crab. So the coconut crab is a large, large
Speaker 1: terrestrial crustacean found on islands and coasts in the Indian
Speaker 1: Ocean and parts of the Pacific Ocean. They look like
Speaker 1: a weird big crab. They're actually more closely related to
Speaker 1: hermit crabs than actual crabs. Have you heard of carsonization?
Speaker 1: I certainly have considered making a video on the subject.
Speaker 1: Oh you must, I mean it is inevitable. We all
Speaker 1: shall become crabs one day. Carsonization is the term for
Speaker 1: where they repeated parallel or convergent evolution of Arthur pods
Speaker 1: into crab form, which apparently is the most desirable of
Speaker 1: forms in all of nature, is to be crab. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I've started scuttling just in preparation for the future. Go yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, So the coconut crab not really a crab,
Speaker 1: more of a hermit crab. It is a crustacean. They're huge.
Speaker 1: The fact that they are so big and live on
Speaker 1: land is a little bit disconcerting. They can weigh up
Speaker 1: to nine pounds or four kims and grow up to
Speaker 1: three ft or one meter in length. So intimidating. I'm intimidated.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to mess with one. No, no, thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So researchers, God bless our natural biology researchers. They collected
Speaker 1: about thirty coconut crab us and measured their pinches with
Speaker 1: They look like these metal tubes that the coconut crabs
Speaker 1: would pinch, and then it would measure the force of
Speaker 1: those big pinches, and they found that they were able
Speaker 1: to pinch with the force of over one thousand, seven
Speaker 1: hundred newtons. So again, human grip only three hundred Newton's
Speaker 1: coconut crab the size that it is, can grip at
Speaker 1: almost six times that of a human. And so if
Speaker 1: you scaled a coconut crab up to the size of
Speaker 1: say an average size maybe a little bit short human plumber,
Speaker 1: he could grip with six tons of force. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that might be enough to do a number on
Speaker 1: bows of shell. I think so. I think he could
Speaker 1: not only could he grab the tail and toss bowser
Speaker 1: like a limp rag, he could just crack open that
Speaker 1: shell like a little pistachio. So that's like the whole
Speaker 1: reason they're called coconut crabs, right, is because they could
Speaker 1: shatter coconuts with their just the sheer force of their grip.
Speaker 1: You know, I've never even questioned their name, but that
Speaker 1: sounds right to me. I totally made that up, totally wrong,
Speaker 1: I believe sounds right. It sounds right to me as well.
Speaker 1: I believe you. So. One of the researchers marine biologists,
Speaker 1: shin Ichiro Coca, was pinched by one of the test
Speaker 1: subject coconut crabs and said quote, While it was only
Speaker 1: a few minutes, I felt eternal Hell, thank you. I
Speaker 1: would not want to be him, no, no brave souls
Speaker 1: to invite a bunch of coconut crabs over to test
Speaker 1: their pinches. Uh. Yeah, so actually I was just in
Speaker 1: Costa Rica and even picking up little little harmy crabs
Speaker 1: on the beach. Yeah. I would get a little nervous
Speaker 1: if I grabbed, like a particularly big one and they
Speaker 1: would try to it. It can hurt, It can hurt bad.
Speaker 1: So imagine one that's two thousand times as big. Thank
Speaker 1: you you had one as well. I had a little
Speaker 1: tiny hermit crab as a kid, even though they don't
Speaker 1: really make good pets, but I was a kid. I
Speaker 1: don't know, uh, and it it's favorite thing to do.
Speaker 1: Probably it was looking for a different shell than the
Speaker 1: one that I had provided to it. Thought it was lame,
Speaker 1: not the right size, which is a tricky thing. If
Speaker 1: you have a hermit crab pet, you need to provide
Speaker 1: it with many different shells because it gets bigger and
Speaker 1: needs to pick out a new shell. It's gonna be picky.
Speaker 1: So I think, oh, like this one is a good
Speaker 1: size for it, not according to it. So it would
Speaker 1: crawl in my armpit and like pinch really hard in
Speaker 1: there because I think it was like trying out my
Speaker 1: body as a new shell, like testing the structural integrity
Speaker 1: of my armpit. But that hurts, So I can't imagine
Speaker 1: one thousand, seven hundred Newton's of force, which yowser's that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: quite a strong handshake, Yeah, leave a mark for sure.
Speaker 1: You know those competitive business handshakes. Yes, like basically the
Speaker 1: kind of handshake that your girlfriend's dad gives you the
Speaker 1: first time. Give me that kind of thing. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: college your sport grabbed your hand device like grip just
Speaker 1: so you know, just so you know the pecking order.
Speaker 1: Don't date a coconut crab because a coconut crab dad
Speaker 1: could just crush your hand into a pulverized smoosh. Absolutely alright.
Speaker 1: So our next video game boss is the Vortex Queen
Speaker 1: from Echo the Dolphin. Now this is maybe not as
Speaker 1: well known of a boss, but I I had to
Speaker 1: include it because this is one of the times when
Speaker 1: a video game boss is actually defeated by an animal,
Speaker 1: and I want to question the choice of protagonists in
Speaker 1: this video game. So Echo the Dolphin was Sega Genesis
Speaker 1: adventure game featuring Echo the Dolphin, who is a dolphin
Speaker 1: that jumps real good and is on an adventure to
Speaker 1: find it's missing pod of dolphins. So I actually did
Speaker 1: not play this game as a kid because I didn't
Speaker 1: have the Sega Genesis. I've never played it at all,
Speaker 1: but I might have to see if I can find
Speaker 1: an emulator for it, because it sounds very unique. It is,
Speaker 1: I read I went down out of fandom wicky hole
Speaker 1: on this one, and it's an interesting plot. I mean
Speaker 1: like when I saw artwork for this game, was like, yes,
Speaker 1: about dolphin who jumps real good, but it's got aliens
Speaker 1: and time travel in it. Oh good, Okay, yeah every
Speaker 1: game needs that. So there are in this game your
Speaker 1: pod goes missing, your pot of dolphins. They're all these
Speaker 1: weird weather phenomenons like sudden storms and water spouts, which
Speaker 1: turn out to be the fault of an alien race
Speaker 1: of parasites known as the Vortex. So Echo the Dolphin
Speaker 1: must travel through time to collect powerful orbs to help
Speaker 1: defeat the Vortex Queen and rescue the planet and Echoes
Speaker 1: pod of dolphins. So the Vortex Queen is a giant
Speaker 1: alien head that lives in the deep sea with anglerfish
Speaker 1: like jaws and huge black eyes. She attacks her enemies
Speaker 1: by using strong suction to pull creatures into her mouth
Speaker 1: and devours them instantly. She can summon vortex jellyfish and
Speaker 1: Vortex drones to attack the player, all the while trying
Speaker 1: to suck you right into her mouth. So you defeat
Speaker 1: the Vortex Queen Echo almost first destroy her eyes with
Speaker 1: sonar and then break off her jaw and then break
Speaker 1: her skull. WHOA, that's so violent. Yeah, I mean for
Speaker 1: a fun game about dolphins, it's a pretty violent and
Speaker 1: pretty uh, pretty intense, Like this Vortex Queen. The pixel
Speaker 1: art of it it's bonkers. It's like it does look
Speaker 1: like a terrifying deep sea creature kind of fused with
Speaker 1: like an alien skull, which is definitely not probably what
Speaker 1: the mini thousands of grandmas who picked this game out
Speaker 1: for their kids like thought was going to be. And
Speaker 1: this is about just jump in and swim in and
Speaker 1: killing alien giant heads down deep in the sea, you know,
Speaker 1: standard marine fun times. So the issue I have with this,
Speaker 1: I mean they try to explain away some of the
Speaker 1: things with Echo the dolphins like time travels and picks
Speaker 1: up magic orbs so that he can breathe underwater without
Speaker 1: Because dolphins are mammals, they got to breathe sometimes, so
Speaker 1: they can't unlike maybe some larger cetaceans like a sperm
Speaker 1: whale or a blue whale. They really can't go that
Speaker 1: deep and spin that much time, uh, deep down without
Speaker 1: surfacing to breathe. Um, so Echo really shouldn't be down there. Uh.
Speaker 1: They try to explain it away with magic, but that's
Speaker 1: not good enough for me. Also, uh, dolphins. Sonar is
Speaker 1: not a weapon. It is a sensory tool. It uses
Speaker 1: clicks to bounce sound off objects and form a map
Speaker 1: of their surroundings. These clicks don't do anything really to
Speaker 1: harm other animals unless it confuses some other cetacean that
Speaker 1: is also trying to find. As far as weapons go, uh,
Speaker 1: there are much more day sonic blasts in the animal kingdom,
Speaker 1: like even even just like the shriek of a parrot
Speaker 1: I think is potentially almost as loud as like a gunshot,
Speaker 1: and that can definitely mess with your ears if you're
Speaker 1: too close, or the pinch of a mantis peacock mantis
Speaker 1: shrimp is going to be Yeah, not really a sonic weapon,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely yeah exactly, but no, yeah, the sonar
Speaker 1: doesn't really do anything. This is very hyped up sort
Speaker 1: of Havanas syndrome masque a situation with that kind of
Speaker 1: dolphin really promising much more of a sonic weapon then,
Speaker 1: and dolphin can really do uh So, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: dolphin is not really the best animal for the job,
Speaker 1: even a magic time traveling dolphin. Of course, dolphins have
Speaker 1: a lot of strength that I should not downplay. Like,
Speaker 1: they're intelligent, they're great at teamwork, very strong abs. Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen the abs of a dolphin? I can't
Speaker 1: say that I have no. I mean, but I guess
Speaker 1: if you're doing all that, yeah, like you're basically just
Speaker 1: doing crunches in order to move. Yeah, it's Jim goals.
Speaker 1: It's up on my Gim goals board. I want to
Speaker 1: have the abs of a dolphin. They are agile and
Speaker 1: in groups of dolphins, they are capable of forming bubble
Speaker 1: nuts and sand nets, which would be very useful for
Speaker 1: trying to defeat an alien queen. Unfortunately, within the context
Speaker 1: of the story, uh echoes, dolphin buddies have been kidnapped
Speaker 1: by the aliens, so right, And so my thinking is
Speaker 1: that Echo is gonna need to get a team together
Speaker 1: and think outside of his dolphin group and find like
Speaker 1: a marine team of creepy ocean critters where you have
Speaker 1: like a cool montage of Echo going around to all
Speaker 1: these different marine animals and they're like, goddamn it, I'm in,
Speaker 1: and then they play some music and they get in
Speaker 1: like a submarine van thing, and yeah, right, So the
Speaker 1: team needs to be able to defeat the Vortex Queen
Speaker 1: in the three stages that the player needs to defeat
Speaker 1: the Vortex Queen has to attack the eyes, the mouth,
Speaker 1: and in the skull. So and to be able to
Speaker 1: deal with all the little means, right, all the little
Speaker 1: Vortex Queen was summoning like jellyfish. So I was thinking,
Speaker 1: if it's got to deal with jellyfish, maybe a marine turtle,
Speaker 1: a sea turtle, pretty good for that. The jellyfish maybe
Speaker 1: clear the way because they eat jellyfish, right exactly, And
Speaker 1: so I mean in order to even get to the
Speaker 1: to the final boss, right, you wouldn't want to be
Speaker 1: swimming through jellyfish and take a whole bunch of stings
Speaker 1: and die from poison before you even have the chance. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: So you got you got your turtle squad who clears
Speaker 1: out dominions the perfect and then you need something to
Speaker 1: attack the eyes. I'm thinking for that the Copa pod
Speaker 1: omata Koita elongata. Have you heard of this? No? Is
Speaker 1: this like that's like a really really microscopic station, right,
Speaker 1: it's they can be microscopic, so they can be zooplankton,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they can be larger such that they're visible
Speaker 1: with the naked eye, usually under about an inch still
Speaker 1: very small, Okay, several tiny, real tiny, but coupe pods
Speaker 1: are a class of crustaceans, and like you said, they're
Speaker 1: often really tiny, like zooplankton size. But this one, the
Speaker 1: o elongatta, is little like warm size, like under an
Speaker 1: inch long, little pink um. They're kind of a weird
Speaker 1: y shape. They look like a worm that has two
Speaker 1: little noodle legs. It's actually kind of funny. And they
Speaker 1: are parasites that attach themselves to the eyes of their host,
Speaker 1: feeding on their eye tissue and impairing their vision. That's horrible.
Speaker 1: That would not want to be that thing's victim. It's
Speaker 1: typical host is one of the largest and oldest living sharks,
Speaker 1: the greenland shark. So yeah, you know these like half
Speaker 1: a millennia basically four exactly, Yes, ancient ancients, So they'd
Speaker 1: give like the Vortex Queen a run for her money
Speaker 1: in terms of, you know, old creatures that lurk in
Speaker 1: the water. I feel like you could also go for
Speaker 1: like a swordfish or a marlin or something. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: just to poke the eyes out, pokemon the eye if
Speaker 1: she needs to do. That's a much more straight Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a much more straight forward method. I feel like
Speaker 1: it might get the dove chopped on a little quicker
Speaker 1: ifs parasites take a little while to start shop and
Speaker 1: destroy eye tissue. On the other hand, is it as
Speaker 1: fun though, like to slowly you know, like plant those
Speaker 1: months in advance, Like you could have a spy montage
Speaker 1: of these little copa pods getting in there. Uh, you
Speaker 1: definitely could. You're a little bit you're a little less
Speaker 1: devious than I am. I think you're just like, we
Speaker 1: go in, we scoop its eyes out with a swordfish,
Speaker 1: we go out. Yeah. So there are some theories actually
Speaker 1: that the copa pod in the greenland shark actually have
Speaker 1: a mutualistic relationship rather than a parasitic one. Oh, so
Speaker 1: you think it would betray the team. It's possible the
Speaker 1: copa pod actually emits a or at least the theory.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly how much of this has proven um,
Speaker 1: but they may emit a slight level of bioluminescence, and
Speaker 1: so the idea is, well, the greenland shark doesn't really
Speaker 1: use its eyes much to hunt in the first place,
Speaker 1: so it could use this bioluminescence of these copa pods
Speaker 1: to draw fish closer to it and then ambush, using
Speaker 1: its sense of smell to ambush these fish and eat them.
Speaker 1: That's a theory. It's quite a trade off. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I could make that deal, have your have
Speaker 1: your weird living eyeball tassels in exchange for slightly easier meals.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe maybe I do it. That's a
Speaker 1: tough call. I guess I wasn't using like you said, yeah,
Speaker 1: like they use their sense of smell. Uh, it does
Speaker 1: feel like it'd be like kind of annoying, Like it
Speaker 1: always feels like you have something in your eye because
Speaker 1: you do exactly. I always get eyelashes in my eye.
Speaker 1: So I can't imagine a crustacean hanging on. I hate
Speaker 1: eyeball stuff. I hate looking at things like I can't
Speaker 1: I have a glasses prescription, and people like, well, why
Speaker 1: don't you wear contacts? It's like no, never, let's touch
Speaker 1: your eye every time you want to take you out. Yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: those little petrie discs that you put on their waiting
Speaker 1: for some kind of voracious bacteria to grow, and there no,
Speaker 1: thank you. So either with a swordfish poking the eyeball
Speaker 1: out or the copa pods slowly but surely devouring the
Speaker 1: vortex Queen's vision. Let's say we've taken out her eyes,
Speaker 1: next stage is taking out her mouth. Now, Echo does
Speaker 1: this by I guess, dismantling her jaw with sonar, which
Speaker 1: we've established is not really how sonar works. You're really
Speaker 1: really strong, yeah, last of sonic energy to break a bone, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's job bone that. It would be such a strong
Speaker 1: blast of sonic energy, I think it would destroy Echo
Speaker 1: in the process. It would just explode, right if it's
Speaker 1: being emitted from echoes like face I assume, or like
Speaker 1: it's a little bits. Yeah, they used they used the
Speaker 1: mel in their head as like an echo chamber to
Speaker 1: help with the acoustics of these clicks. They would explode
Speaker 1: its head. Yes, I do think it would take some
Speaker 1: area of effect damage there, a little bit of friendly fire.
Speaker 1: So instead of echo exploding his head with this mystery sonar,
Speaker 1: I think we need a parasitic tongue is a pod
Speaker 1: One of my favorite parasites. Oh I don't like where
Speaker 1: you're going with this. Oh no, the simoo exegua. It's
Speaker 1: also called a parasitic tongue louse. We've actually talked about
Speaker 1: this little lady on the show before. Have you heard
Speaker 1: of this beautiful, beautiful tongue parasite I have, and is
Speaker 1: probably one of the most gut wrenching things to ever
Speaker 1: think about. This is the creature that essentially replaces the
Speaker 1: tongue of its uh it's victim. Yes, exactly exactly. So
Speaker 1: I feel like at this point I'm feeling really bad
Speaker 1: for this pot like it can keep, it can keep
Speaker 1: my friends. I'm not willing these extreme measures. The torture
Speaker 1: this thing it's subjecting her to like and then it's
Speaker 1: slowly devours her eyes and then it replaces their tongue.
Speaker 1: This is psychological intimidation. The aliens are just going to
Speaker 1: pack up and leave Earth. It's like, well, you've got
Speaker 1: tongue parasites down here, never mind keep stinking dolphins. Jesus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh see, eggs or exigua have so much trouble
Speaker 1: with that name. The tongue mouse, uh will enter the
Speaker 1: gills of a fish and swam up to its tongue
Speaker 1: and cut off the blood supply to the tongue while
Speaker 1: sucking on that sweet sweet fish blood tongue for its
Speaker 1: own self. And once it has consumed enough of the
Speaker 1: fish's blood, it will attach itself to the stub of
Speaker 1: the tongue because as it sucks the blood from the tongue,
Speaker 1: tongue atrophies and withers and falls off, which is fun,
Speaker 1: fun visual. And these little isopods, I mean imagine like
Speaker 1: a pale, white, giant version of one of those little
Speaker 1: roly polly's. That's what they look like. Kind of horrible.
Speaker 1: And when you open up one of these fishes mouth
Speaker 1: that has this is infected with this parasite, you just
Speaker 1: see like this little parasite face staring out like the
Speaker 1: little alien tongue in aliens like oh how yeah, sou
Speaker 1: She will live there, feeding off of the fish's blood,
Speaker 1: and sometimes the fish is mucus. She's not picky and
Speaker 1: acts as the fish is replacement tongue, because the fish
Speaker 1: literally has no choice. If it's gonna eat, it's got
Speaker 1: to use this isopod as its tongue. And once she
Speaker 1: is ready to release her brood pouch, she abandons fish
Speaker 1: and the fish actually dies without this parasite because it
Speaker 1: now has zero tongue. You know, so you're saying is
Speaker 1: actually better than nothing, it's better than that does kind
Speaker 1: of help. It's pour victim out at least a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's better not to get it in the first place.
Speaker 1: But you're screwed once it leaves the host, and it
Speaker 1: will inevitably leave you to lay its eggs, which you know,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of it's kind of cruel to like
Speaker 1: take someone's tongue and be like, I'm your tongue now,
Speaker 1: and then when you finally get used to it, it's like,
Speaker 1: well see it, it's like, but you're my tongue, not anymore.
Speaker 1: I'm not. By the reason I keep saying, she is,
Speaker 1: Actually it is the female pod that does this, and
Speaker 1: it's got a really interesting life cycle. So they all
Speaker 1: start out as males and enter into the fish gills
Speaker 1: where they'll feed off blood supply near the gills. But
Speaker 1: if a second uh see x segua enters into the gills,
Speaker 1: the first one transforms from being male into being female,
Speaker 1: and uh, they mate, and then the male you know,
Speaker 1: just I think, leaves and then the newly transformed female
Speaker 1: goes up and bites on the tongue and does that
Speaker 1: cool magic trick with the fish tongue that I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: So real, interesting little creature, absolutely horrifying to anything in
Speaker 1: the ocean that has a tongue. So yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be my plans for the Vortex Queen's tongue. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then all you need to do if she's not freaked
Speaker 1: out enough that she just leaves Earth, because it's so
Speaker 1: horribly messed up, much more messed up than anything she
Speaker 1: could come up with as this like alien Queen, you
Speaker 1: do need to attack her school And this is maybe
Speaker 1: my favorite one, which I can't I can't wait to
Speaker 1: hear how you're gonna Well, look, so the Vortex Queen
Speaker 1: is a deep sea creature. She's adapted to the crushing
Speaker 1: depths of the ocean floor. So she can't have a solid,
Speaker 1: hard skull filled with gooey brain like humans do, because
Speaker 1: it would collapse from the massive pressure of the bottom
Speaker 1: of the ocean to equalize. So if we went down, yeah,
Speaker 1: we went down to the bottom of the ocean, are
Speaker 1: heads would collapse a little bit. Yeah, they'd be squished.
Speaker 1: It might not look like it wouldn't look like your
Speaker 1: whole face got squished in, but your skull would definitely
Speaker 1: crack and start letting in water to equalize the pressure,
Speaker 1: which is bad for your brain. Yeah, this kills the person.
Speaker 1: Kills the person. Uh. So to survive the crushing depths
Speaker 1: of the ocean floor, animals who have evolved down there
Speaker 1: actually often have gaps in their skull uh to help
Speaker 1: equalize that pressure. So to illustrate this using like balls,
Speaker 1: like if you took a ping pong ball and somehow
Speaker 1: shoved it down in the bottom of the ocean, it
Speaker 1: would collapse because the huge p s I force of
Speaker 1: all of that stacks and stacks of water would be
Speaker 1: trying to equalize the pressure from inside the ball, which
Speaker 1: is filled with air which is less dense, and so
Speaker 1: it crushes the ping pong ball that's like your human skull.
Speaker 1: Maybe not quite because our Unless you're total air head,
Speaker 1: literally filled with air, it would have such a dramatic effect.
Speaker 1: But if you drop a whiffle ball, which has a
Speaker 1: bunch of holes in it, down to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ocean, it's not going to collapse because inside the
Speaker 1: whiffle ball is just more water, and so the density
Speaker 1: of water is equal to the density of other waters,
Speaker 1: so there's no pressure to have to equalize, so whiffleball doesn't.
Speaker 1: So if you have the actual material itself doesn't get
Speaker 1: impacted like the plastic of a whiffleball. Yeah, just to
Speaker 1: hens on the material. So if you have a porous
Speaker 1: material like styrofoam, that actually gets crushed because all of
Speaker 1: the air inside the styrofoam gets squeezed, and so you
Speaker 1: can actually take a styrofoam cup, put it down in
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean, it comes back a little
Speaker 1: tiny minicup. Okay, all right. So the material has to
Speaker 1: be like super solid, rigid, no pockets of air inside.
Speaker 1: Plastic that does not have air pockets, and I think
Speaker 1: it's sturdy enough to survive the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 1: Bones sometimes may not be because bone is more porous,
Speaker 1: so that might get more pressure. And in fact, with
Speaker 1: these deep sea animals, they often have cartilage instead of
Speaker 1: hard bone, so that they can move around and the
Speaker 1: pressure may kind of bend their bones a little bit
Speaker 1: and push inwards, but they're not as brittle as a
Speaker 1: sort of calcified bone, so that they're just much more
Speaker 1: durable to that underwater pressure. So what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: the vortex Queen's skull has to be made at least
Speaker 1: partially out of cartilage, and it's got to have gaps
Speaker 1: in it. And so that means that these like ramming
Speaker 1: attacks that you do in the echo the dolphin game
Speaker 1: to like crush her skull, I don't think would be
Speaker 1: very effective because it's like, dude, I'm already getting you know,
Speaker 1: all of these these this pressure from the deep sea water,
Speaker 1: Like you can't punch my skull in basically, uh, with
Speaker 1: your your puny dolphin powers. Instead, I think we need
Speaker 1: to use a hag fish is ability to bore a
Speaker 1: hole into the soft tissue of the vortex queen skull
Speaker 1: and eat it from the inside out. So hag fish
Speaker 1: that hag fish, well, they don't specifically look for brains
Speaker 1: and typically they're looking for uh, dead or dying animals.
Speaker 1: But by the time I'm this poor vortex queen has
Speaker 1: had her mouth and eyeballs taken care of. I think
Speaker 1: the hag fish would step in. That makes sense. It's
Speaker 1: in pretty rough shape at that at that point. Hag
Speaker 1: fish have a horrifying name that matches their horrifying little bodies.
Speaker 1: They're pink, slimy, squirmy, eel like primitive fish with no
Speaker 1: vertebral column and no jaw. They can grow around twenty
Speaker 1: or fifty cimeters long, which, ah, it's too much for me.
Speaker 1: When I'm thinking about just holding one of these, like
Speaker 1: pink slime wort, they look like worms. Uh, it's very uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: They're not worms. They are very primitive fish. So since
Speaker 1: they don't have jaws, they don't you know, no no,
Speaker 1: no eat, you know, like a regular fish. They have
Speaker 1: two plates covered in rows and rows of pointeek teeth,
Speaker 1: and they use these plates to grab and wrasp flesh
Speaker 1: off of carrion or they're sickly and dying victims. Uh.
Speaker 1: And when they've grabbed a nice piece of flesh and
Speaker 1: kind of gotten it sort of secured between these plates
Speaker 1: of teeth. They'll often wiggle around and not like not
Speaker 1: themselves around and rip big chunks off of their target.
Speaker 1: So a group of hagfish. Have you ever wondered, like
Speaker 1: what happens when a huge whale dies in the ocean?
Speaker 1: Like where does its body go? Sometimes it washes up
Speaker 1: on the beach, But we don't have just constant littering
Speaker 1: dead whale bodies everywhere, so it has to go somewhere
Speaker 1: right right, and it goes. You get a good mix
Speaker 1: of hagfish and crabs and stuff. I I kind of
Speaker 1: always assume there's a bunch of crabs. Crabs love a big,
Speaker 1: big cetacean body. They they'll they love a big whale body.
Speaker 1: That's that's like, that's like t g I Fridays for crabs. Um.
Speaker 1: So absolutely. The crabs are wonderful scavengers, great at breaking
Speaker 1: down decomposing bodies in the ocean. But hag fish are
Speaker 1: the unsung heroes of waste disposal. They love a dead body.
Speaker 1: They will get all in there. You can see sometimes
Speaker 1: these ghostly corpses of a large whale and then just
Speaker 1: these hag fish darting in and out of the body
Speaker 1: as they kind of like tear out these holes and
Speaker 1: then go inside to the softer bits of the whale.
Speaker 1: So uh and they're very slimy. Hagfish slime is this
Speaker 1: really thick? It's almost like egg white texture. It's so
Speaker 1: thick and gooey, and in fact, it's so full of proteins.
Speaker 1: Like some people, I mean have suggested we could use
Speaker 1: that as like an alternative to egg white protein, which
Speaker 1: you know, okay, yeah, just like for breakfast, just you know,
Speaker 1: like good morning, I gotta gotta milk tasty a hagfish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta milk the hagfish for its slime to make
Speaker 1: an omelet. You know, maybe it's more eco friendly. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Um that maybe our future where you just
Speaker 1: milk a hagfish for your breakfast. Uh So, I think
Speaker 1: I must look forward to what a bright future. Look.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's delicious, you just can't judge. Uh So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that if you just set a bunch of
Speaker 1: hagfish on this poor this poor vortex coin, she's she's
Speaker 1: doomed in a horrifying way. Wow wow. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: seems like it would do it. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: there's probably be plenty of crabs also following, and yes,
Speaker 1: all sorts of other bottom feeder parasites would be a
Speaker 1: party down there, pour into whatever hole. This hagfish kind
Speaker 1: of like scrobe blites, like an anglerfish, sort of using
Speaker 1: his Laura's for Laura as a strobe, like yeah, by
Speaker 1: luminescent rave, let's go. Do you remember when that new
Speaker 1: Resident Evil game like Resident Evil Villages came out our
Speaker 1: village and that giant vampire lady uh, lady dimitriuscu uh
Speaker 1: just kind of took the internet by storm. Yes, I
Speaker 1: remember Twitter blowing up about that. I'm for sure bite
Speaker 1: a day. People love a giant, tall vampire queen. I
Speaker 1: guess apparently there's a lot of simping going on on Twitter.
Speaker 1: For sure. A lot of people had crushes on her.
Speaker 1: I guess it was like because she could crush them
Speaker 1: and that, you know, that does it for people sometimes. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. That's the thing, A big, giant, deadly
Speaker 1: vampire queen like the size of a giraffe. That. I mean, Look,
Speaker 1: I'm not here to shame people for their preferences. That's
Speaker 1: beyond me. But if that's if, that's the thing. But
Speaker 1: you know, whether or not you want to take her
Speaker 1: out on a date, she definitely wants to kill and
Speaker 1: eat you. So she is a boss in the Resident
Speaker 1: Evil game. Ah wow, that's definitely gonna get picked up
Speaker 1: on the audio. But whatever, okay. So um uh So,
Speaker 1: if you haven't played the Resident Evil games, which maybe
Speaker 1: some of us haven't, including me, I wasn't very good
Speaker 1: at trying to hide the fact I haven't played this
Speaker 1: game as being like justin I played like the GameCube
Speaker 1: back there is some version. I didn't play it, but
Speaker 1: I watched my brother play it back when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, and there was like a scene where one
Speaker 1: of the zombies was like slowly going up the stairs
Speaker 1: and you saw it from the zombies perspective, so you
Speaker 1: knew it was coming. I was like scared to use
Speaker 1: the stairs for a week afterwards. So spooky. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I think I've got some rain and thunder going on,
Speaker 1: so perfect ambiance for this section, guys. Uh So, in
Speaker 1: this Resident Evil game, the giant Vampire Lady, I think
Speaker 1: it's demes Demetrius Dimitri Scouth looks like a very tall,
Speaker 1: well dressed woman and uh she was infected with a
Speaker 1: fictional parasite called the Cado parasite. So I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: trying to be really clear here because the video game
Speaker 1: the Resident Evil games deal with a lot of fictional
Speaker 1: like molds and parasites and kind of foe biology terms,
Speaker 1: and I'll try to clearly label that these are the
Speaker 1: fictional ones. But I'm going to talk about some real
Speaker 1: molds and fungus and parasites that I think could counteract
Speaker 1: these video game ones. So the the ca Do parasite
Speaker 1: somehow mutated her into a giant lady who needs to
Speaker 1: drink blood to survive. There's some sort of sciency schmi
Speaker 1: and c explanation in the game. Doesn't really make sense, um,
Speaker 1: but I love it. I'm not criticizing it. I love
Speaker 1: it when video games are like yeah, and then here's
Speaker 1: this fungus that makes everyone vampires, like right on, uh.
Speaker 1: And then her minions are three lovely ladies who were
Speaker 1: also uh surgically implanted with the cad parasite. Again fake,
Speaker 1: this is all. This is all fictional parasites which somehow
Speaker 1: merged their DNA with a swarm of blowflies so they
Speaker 1: can like separate into swarms of blowflies and then coalesced
Speaker 1: back into ladies, which you know, it's pretty cool. It's
Speaker 1: a cool it's cool powers I like, definitely useful. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: especially if you got if you're there's like some doggy
Speaker 1: dudo in your house, it's like, don't worry, we'll get it. Boom,
Speaker 1: it's gone. Yeah, they can make short work of that
Speaker 1: for sure. So the Resident Evil series in general often
Speaker 1: combines folklore like vampires and werewolves with a sort of
Speaker 1: fake biology, like the cause of some freaky powers or
Speaker 1: mutations UH is caused by something known as the mold,
Speaker 1: which is a fictional fungus that can somehow store genetic
Speaker 1: information and cause specific hallucinations as well as mutations to
Speaker 1: create horrible monsters. So this isn't really biologically feasible. But
Speaker 1: let's fight the weird fantasy fungus with weird real life fungus.
Speaker 1: So I think this whole castle of weird fungal uh
Speaker 1: Lady vampires could have been taken out by a smart mycologists.
Speaker 1: So my cologist is someone who studies fungus, and there
Speaker 1: are let's fight. Let's fight fungus with fungus. What do
Speaker 1: you say? Okay, sure, I can't say I'm super well
Speaker 1: versed in mycology. I mean, I relied a lot on
Speaker 1: you know, my collogey monthly for this research. Excellent, I
Speaker 1: respect it. Most of what I know about fungus is
Speaker 1: like pretty much just the Court accepts fungus, which is yes,
Speaker 1: the kind that controls insect brains, Yes, and the and
Speaker 1: the basis for the video game The Last of Us Yes,
Speaker 1: because in that gamer or fungal as well, that is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite of the parasitic fungus. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: so Actually, those kinds of fungus that will eat insects
Speaker 1: and be parasites on an insect are called intomo pathogenic fungus.
Speaker 1: Is intomo Let me try that one more time. Intemo
Speaker 1: pathogenic fungus. There you go, like entomology meaning insect and
Speaker 1: pathogenic exactly. The Court accepts are one of many species
Speaker 1: of fungus that kills and eats insects by attaching to
Speaker 1: the insects body is spores uh, and then germinating and
Speaker 1: colonizing under the insects cuticle, which is that exoskeletal structure
Speaker 1: that functions as their skin. So often these intomo pathogenic
Speaker 1: fungi will use enzymes to bore holes into the insects
Speaker 1: body and then grow throughout the body. Cavity chemical warfare.
Speaker 1: Now exactly how we're going to beat the chemicals? Sweet
Speaker 1: all right, bring us home entomopathogenic, let's get there. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you will see like insects barely managing to crawl around
Speaker 1: where half of them have been eaten by some kind
Speaker 1: of fungus. Usually it'll be like a white or gray
Speaker 1: fuzzy mold. It's so creepy. So, like you mentioned, corticepts
Speaker 1: can infect ant brains and cause them to climb up
Speaker 1: tree branches, like dig into the branch with their mannibles
Speaker 1: to get a nice secure hold before they die in
Speaker 1: spectacular fashion as a fruiting body of the fungus just
Speaker 1: explodes from their head. So we've got a lot of
Speaker 1: really interesting species of intomopathogenic fungi, but we want one
Speaker 1: that will be really bad for blowflies, right, because we've
Speaker 1: got these two her minions, the lady demitriuscus minions turn
Speaker 1: into a swarm of blowflies, which is hard to stab
Speaker 1: with a knife. It's hard to find, so it presents
Speaker 1: a unique weakness you can exploit that interesting. I would
Speaker 1: have not thought about using kind of turning it's it's
Speaker 1: special ability against itself. Yes, we exactly so. Uh. The
Speaker 1: there's this species of antimo pathogenic fungi called Bavaria best siena,
Speaker 1: which is a beautiful name. I feel like it like
Speaker 1: sounds sounds like one of these names from resident evil
Speaker 1: to me, like lady dimitriscu. And it's like the Bavaria
Speaker 1: best siana fungus. Uh coming in to a right, I mean,
Speaker 1: who knows. Maybe that's how they got their names. Right.
Speaker 1: If you look up the demitrisu fungus, maybe that's a thing.
Speaker 1: Who knows. Uh. So this fungus, with its beautiful name,
Speaker 1: is very dangerous to blow flies. It is so efficient
Speaker 1: at killing blow flies and other species of flies and pests.
Speaker 1: It is often used as a biological pest decide so
Speaker 1: it grows throughout the insect, leaving behind a hollowed out
Speaker 1: carcass covered in white mold, which often collects and spills
Speaker 1: out at the joints if not completely overwhelming the carcass
Speaker 1: of the insects. So I have included a picture of
Speaker 1: a blowfly that looks like it's just covered in white fluff.
Speaker 1: I see it looks like it like it's covered in
Speaker 1: snow or something just went it like tumbled down a
Speaker 1: mountain right like in a cartoon, exactly exactly. But no,
Speaker 1: that is white mold that has completely subsumed and devoured
Speaker 1: this poor little blowfly. I think this fungus would make
Speaker 1: quick work of the minions, and so onto killing lady
Speaker 1: DIMITRISKI herself. Uh. So I looked up on another fan
Speaker 1: wicky thing because I have not played these games. I'm
Speaker 1: a fake nerd um, I just don't. I haven't played
Speaker 1: a game either. I simply do not have a PS
Speaker 1: five or whatever you would need for these games. PS
Speaker 1: five is pretty hard to come by, so I don't
Speaker 1: blame you. So uh. The fictional Cado parasite is a
Speaker 1: parasitic nematode spliced with this mysterious powerful mold that causes
Speaker 1: all these human mutations in the resident evil world. So,
Speaker 1: while the game version of the parasitic parasitic nematode isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily that accurate in terms of like, you can't really
Speaker 1: just splice its DNA with mold, I don't. It's two
Speaker 1: different kingdoms, guys, different Yeah, but there are real life
Speaker 1: parasitic nematodes and of worse, there are real life predators
Speaker 1: of Nema toads, and some of those predators are mushrooms.
Speaker 1: It all comes back to mushrooms. So in the Resident
Speaker 1: Evil Game, to defeat the big bad Lady Demese Demitrius,
Speaker 1: I cannot pronounce them. Uh is it Demitrius? Is it French?
Speaker 1: It seems like it would be French, but I have
Speaker 1: never studied French. Time not going to attempt it. I
Speaker 1: mean it takes place in Eastern Europe, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I did take Russian, but it doesn't look like a
Speaker 1: Russian name to me. It doesn't. There's not enough conflicting
Speaker 1: consonants in it. So uh you. But to defeat her
Speaker 1: you need a specific dagger imbued with monster killing toxins
Speaker 1: that are never specified. But hey, if you lose this
Speaker 1: dagger or butter fingers and drop it, then you're screwed. Um,
Speaker 1: Except maybe you could just go out and forage for
Speaker 1: some nice oyster mushrooms. So, oyster mushrooms make a nice
Speaker 1: meal for humans, but they like to feed on nematodes,
Speaker 1: so it seems a little weird for something like a
Speaker 1: fungus to be a carnivore. But they absolutely can be so. Uh.
Speaker 1: They will use droplets of toxins that paralyze the nematode,
Speaker 1: then slowly digest them using the hyphe which are these
Speaker 1: branching filaments that take in nutrients for the fungus. So
Speaker 1: they're kind of like plant roots. They're not so fungus
Speaker 1: fungi are not plants. They don't have the same kinds
Speaker 1: of structure as that plants do, but these hyphe do
Speaker 1: function a little bit like roots because they will suck
Speaker 1: in nutrients for the fungus. Yeah, how does it find
Speaker 1: these nematodes? You can live in the They live in
Speaker 1: the soil where these mushrooms are so okay, So they're
Speaker 1: just so ubiquitous that exactly. But if that doesn't sound
Speaker 1: powerful enough, like if you throw some oyster mushrooms at
Speaker 1: or make or eat some, like you don't think that's
Speaker 1: gonna work. Uh. There's a lot of different mushrooms that
Speaker 1: are in line to kill nemat toads, and they have
Speaker 1: some really dastardly methods of doing so. Sometimes they will
Speaker 1: have booby trapped fungal spores that will develop spikes and
Speaker 1: lodge themselves in the throats of nematodes, killing them and
Speaker 1: devouring them as they germinate. So the nematotal eat this
Speaker 1: a little spore if they think it's delicious, and then
Speaker 1: it just like starts to like grow out these hypha
Speaker 1: into the nematod's throat and just devours it completely. There's
Speaker 1: also you could gift a lady Dimitrius schou with a
Speaker 1: necklace of giant our throw bought Tyrus. So our throw
Speaker 1: Botyrus is uh perfect for killing a vampiric nematode mutant
Speaker 1: with a sense of fashion because our throw but Tyrus
Speaker 1: uses fungal spores shaped like necklaces that ensnare nematodes and
Speaker 1: shoots spikes into the nematodes body as it grows into
Speaker 1: it and devours them. So you've got options, is what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Wow. Yeah, so we have chemical warfare, we
Speaker 1: have these booby traps, we have so many these These
Speaker 1: fungus are definitely equipped to do some damage for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the game, you have this mysterious mold that gives
Speaker 1: them all these powers. It's like, well, guys, there's like
Speaker 1: more than one species of mold out there. There are
Speaker 1: many fungi um they're ready to party, so, you know,
Speaker 1: mutually assured fungus destruction that could definitely take out some
Speaker 1: of these vampire queens. I don't know, what do you think?
Speaker 1: Do you think these animals could indeed defeat these video
Speaker 1: game bosses or which of these bosses do you think
Speaker 1: would actually come out on top. Bowser is definitely, like
Speaker 1: I would say, fairly evenly mashed with the crocodile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got a chance. He's so spicy. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of ways Bossle can deal damage. But I think
Speaker 1: if the crocodile is playing his cards right, um, it
Speaker 1: could certainly get a good strike on Bowser's weak point
Speaker 1: or one of its limbs. Yeah, but it's a fair Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is Bowler's bigger. Yeah, but nobody's situation potentially not
Speaker 1: um for the deep Sea Vortex boss Vortex Queen, is
Speaker 1: that what we're called? Um? That thing is just in
Speaker 1: for a world of hurt. If what you're doing is
Speaker 1: is going to come to pass, If these parasites actually
Speaker 1: can do what you said to the alien creature, I
Speaker 1: would not want to be that. I think it has
Speaker 1: no chance. I feel like it would just be psyched
Speaker 1: out after the first attack. Yeah, if I was, if
Speaker 1: I was the vortex queen, I'd be like, I'll find
Speaker 1: another planet. It's fine, you can keep her. Keep parasites
Speaker 1: to yourself, dolphins and your weird eyeball parasites exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: As for vampire lady, I think if you can get
Speaker 1: the fungus to be the vampire, and you certainly got
Speaker 1: got a shot, right yeah. Um, but considering they're not motile, ah,
Speaker 1: I think you need a good mess of delivering me
Speaker 1: fungal based toxins, and and you got to put them
Speaker 1: in a salad, you know, a nice salad and be
Speaker 1: like here sad. I know you drink blood primarily, but
Speaker 1: you know it's good to get some fiber. Very true,
Speaker 1: very true. I would not curious to see how that
Speaker 1: affects their digestive tract. These verifires, do failfires need fiber?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I wouldn't want to have no fiber
Speaker 1: in my diet. So yeah, and blood sounds like it
Speaker 1: doesn't have much, so I don't think so. No, it
Speaker 1: would be tough. Well, I think that's gonna do it.
Speaker 1: For video game bosses, I think, honestly, they're going to
Speaker 1: have a tough, tough time against these animals. But before
Speaker 1: we go, I do want to reveal the answer to
Speaker 1: last week's guess Who's talking Mystery animals sound game. So
Speaker 1: every week I play a mystery animal sound at the
Speaker 1: end of the episode and you all try to guess
Speaker 1: what is making that sound. Um, And so the hint
Speaker 1: for last week was that this may sound like a
Speaker 1: machine gun, but unless you're an insect, the only thing
Speaker 1: you'll really have to worry about is getting smacked in
Speaker 1: the face by its enormous beautiful tail. To me, that
Speaker 1: sounds like a like a blaster from like a video game. Like,
Speaker 1: what do you think is making that sound? I think
Speaker 1: it's got to be some sort of like mocking bird
Speaker 1: or maybe a parrot, some sort of really really good
Speaker 1: mimic of sounds my experience tend to be birds. Well,
Speaker 1: that is a great guess because the answer is that
Speaker 1: this is the mating call of a brown sickle bill,
Speaker 1: which is a beautiful bird of paradise found in New Guinea.
Speaker 1: Females have a rusty red head and a black body,
Speaker 1: whereas males have bright blue spots on their backs and
Speaker 1: white underbellies and super long ornamental tails. That are gorgeous
Speaker 1: and they are just such a fancy looking bird to
Speaker 1: be making like machine gun noises. I find the difference
Speaker 1: in their overall appearance OF's like, oh, it's a beautiful
Speaker 1: bird of paradise, and then just like interesting, it's just
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, like how did they think of that
Speaker 1: sound to rig Congratulations to the first three listeners to
Speaker 1: give correctly, Abby, m Ana l A, and Jesse a Ska.
Speaker 1: Great job you guys. I feel like you guys are
Speaker 1: better at this game than I would be if I
Speaker 1: was playing on the other end. So really, great job
Speaker 1: you guys. I have such smart listeners. Now onto our
Speaker 1: next mystery animal sound for next week. The hint is
Speaker 1: that it sounds like a collaboration between a biologist, a
Speaker 1: heavy metal band, and a hairdresser. So do you have
Speaker 1: any guesses for what this mystery animal is? I mean,
Speaker 1: I want to say it's a bird again. It sounds like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, a parrot. It's like a really angry parrot.
Speaker 1: My grandma had a parrot and it was always making
Speaker 1: super weird loud noises. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: with some sort of parrot or some kind of angry parrot. Well,
Speaker 1: the answer will be revealed next week if you tune
Speaker 1: in today Creature Feature. That's how I get you, all right,
Speaker 1: I'll be there, I gotta know. Well, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining me today, Patch so welcome, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. The tears Zoo YouTube channel is absolutely amazing,
Speaker 1: really wonderful, um way to learn about some evolutionary biology
Speaker 1: and feel like you're playing a video game. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you like it. Other than the YouTube channel, where
Speaker 1: can people find you? Yeah, so YouTube dot com, slash
Speaker 1: teer zoo. But you can also find me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at at at tears zoo. Um. I'm also I also
Speaker 1: have a few things on TikTok Instagram if you just
Speaker 1: search cheers and you should be able to find them.
Speaker 1: But that's about it. That's uh the extent of my
Speaker 1: online presence. I think, I mean, I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: good to do it. Yeah, um, And you can find
Speaker 1: if you want to write in what you think the
Speaker 1: answer is to the Mr Nial sound or any of
Speaker 1: your questions or comments or concerns, you can write at
Speaker 1: Creature feature Pod at gmail dot com, Creature Feature Pod
Speaker 1: on Instagram, or Creature feet Pod on Twitter, that's f
Speaker 1: E t E eteen Town is something very different and uh,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening. If you want to
Speaker 1: rate or review the podcast, I read all the reviews
Speaker 1: and they bring so much joy to my heart. Ah
Speaker 1: and thanks to the Space Classics for their super awesome
Speaker 1: song Exo. Aluminate Creature features a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or Hey guess what?
Speaker 1: Where have you listen to your favorite shows? See you
Speaker 1: next Wednesday.