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 to day on the show, we're
Speaker 1: standing on the shoulders of giants Giant extinct animals. That is,
Speaker 1: some of today's most fascinating animals have surprising ancestors, from
Speaker 1: giant sloths to wooly rhinos, too enormous turtle rabbits. Discover
Speaker 1: this more as we answer the asual question which animals
Speaker 1: best at being a sphere? Joining me today is host
Speaker 1: of the awesome podcast Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. Friend of the show,
Speaker 1: Friend of All Animals, Alex Schmidt. Hey, it's adder to
Speaker 1: be here every time. Thank you for letting me like
Speaker 1: book on my holidays with humongous mammals. It's a real joy.
Speaker 1: I made the bison emoji. If people don't know, eight
Speaker 1: very nicely helped out with with a podcast about it,
Speaker 1: and and I can just something about humongous mammals is
Speaker 1: relatable to me. I don't know if everything is a
Speaker 1: mammal this week, but I just really like a big animal.
Speaker 1: Everything mammal. You get a mammal, you get a mammal.
Speaker 1: Everybody gets a mammal. Yeah, no, it's all mammals, all
Speaker 1: of its mammals. They're all big mammals. Um. Yeah, Alex
Speaker 1: likes to look under your chairs. It's like a megatherium verthing.
Speaker 1: It's definitely been there the whole time. Yeah, yeah, just
Speaker 1: you hadn't noticed yet. Um yeah. No, it's these are
Speaker 1: modern day mammals that have ancestors who are either really
Speaker 1: big or really surprising. And yeah, I figured we could
Speaker 1: start our new year with looking back at the past,
Speaker 1: I mean the very distant past sort of a you know,
Speaker 1: didn't like yeah, yeah, like the eighties and saber tooth
Speaker 1: tigers round Los Angeles. Yeah, Reagan, am I right? What
Speaker 1: a dinosaur? Yeah no, absolutely, although we are more so
Speaker 1: talking about tens of thousands of years ago, more like
Speaker 1: so tens of thousands okay, yeah, so pretty recent, you know,
Speaker 1: just just like twelve thousand years ago, you know, not
Speaker 1: that not that uh this skip pop and jumped back
Speaker 1: into yesteryear. In fact, we uh humans overlapped with these
Speaker 1: extinct mammals, which, when you think about it, as we
Speaker 1: go over these ridiculous animals, it's going to be surprising
Speaker 1: to think about early humans just being next door neighbors
Speaker 1: with them. Yeah, especially I feel like with dinosaur stuff,
Speaker 1: like there's a point where you're a kid where you're
Speaker 1: initially like, great, I'll bet people road t rexes, and
Speaker 1: then somebody tells you, no, humans didn't overlap with dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: Get it out of your head. Get it totally out
Speaker 1: of your head that humans can ever overlap with these
Speaker 1: huge animals. So it's it's almost like a mental flip
Speaker 1: back to start seeing some of this ancient stuff as
Speaker 1: stuff we were at the same time as really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean like humans could have written these animals,
Speaker 1: except probably they would have been shortly thereafter demolished, but
Speaker 1: technically possible. So first, let's look at some modern day
Speaker 1: animals that I'm sure you're all familiar with. The Slavs.
Speaker 1: So modern Slavs are an adorable group of arboreal mammals,
Speaker 1: typically not much bigger than a medium sized dog. They
Speaker 1: are own in Central and South America, and they come
Speaker 1: in two flavors, the two toed genus and the three
Speaker 1: toed genus. So the most famous species of the three
Speaker 1: toad sloths is the brown throated sloth. So that is
Speaker 1: the sloth from Zutopia and most popular culture sort of
Speaker 1: conception of a sloth with that little bandit mask, very slow,
Speaker 1: very cute. Uh, hangs and trees all the time. You know,
Speaker 1: your prototypical sloth. Yeah, you said, you set the picture.
Speaker 1: I'm just looking at it having a good time. So
Speaker 1: there are three other species of three toad sloth in
Speaker 1: order of increasing rarity. There's the pale throated sloth, the
Speaker 1: main three toad sloth, and the pigmy three toad sloth,
Speaker 1: which looks like an adorable, tiny Chihuahua sized version of
Speaker 1: the brown throated sloth and is critically endangered. Uh. They
Speaker 1: are actually found only on an island in the Caribbean
Speaker 1: called Vera Guras, found only in the red mangroves over
Speaker 1: an area of under two square miles or four point
Speaker 1: three square kilometers. There are only about eighty pygmy sloths
Speaker 1: left and they are primarily threatened by loss of habitats.
Speaker 1: So super adorable, very rare little dudes. Yeah, I hope,
Speaker 1: I hope conservation efforts you're happening. I know I would
Speaker 1: give a kidney for one of these slavs. Just I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, just a little it's a little it's such
Speaker 1: a little biscuit. Look at this thing. It's just a
Speaker 1: little ball of fluff, of lazy fluff, and all they
Speaker 1: want to do is hang around. So yeah, this one
Speaker 1: picture you sent, a sloth is sticking a little bit
Speaker 1: of its tongue out like that one cat on the
Speaker 1: internet that I forget the name of. Yeah, that's yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's doing pure golden joy face. Okay, yea. So
Speaker 1: the two toad sloths, while looking very similar to the
Speaker 1: three toad sloths and similar behavior and often living in
Speaker 1: the same forests, evolved from a common ground sloth ancestor
Speaker 1: independently to adapt to the arboreal lifestyles. So they independently
Speaker 1: evolved from terrestrial versions both into the trees, but two
Speaker 1: branches of parallel evolution. They are in general slightly larger
Speaker 1: than three toad slavs, and they include two species. There
Speaker 1: is Linnaeus's two toad sloth and Hoffman's two toad slav u.
Speaker 1: And I guess Linnaeus and Hoffman own all the slav
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't get it, Like who died and
Speaker 1: made them ceo of Slavs? Right? It's all it's like
Speaker 1: we always say we need more than two sloth parties. Right,
Speaker 1: how do we have a system where there's only two
Speaker 1: slot parties and only two choices. You're barely even voting
Speaker 1: at that point, Right, we need a sloth parliament. Yes.
Speaker 1: So the two toad sloths typically have more of a
Speaker 1: solid brown coat or reddish brown coat and light faces,
Speaker 1: but they don't have those little bandit masks. Hoffman's two
Speaker 1: toad sloths often drools and spits with its mouth open,
Speaker 1: which reportedly looks very silly. Scientifically speaking, it's called looking
Speaker 1: very doofy. They're nocturnal, which is actually in response to
Speaker 1: competition with the three toad brown throated sloths, so they're
Speaker 1: both trying to kind of like they have the same
Speaker 1: ecological niche. They're both these tree dwelling, leaf eating animals,
Speaker 1: and so by switching to being nocturnal, they don't have
Speaker 1: to compete as much with the three toad sloths. But
Speaker 1: in areas where actually there aren't as many three toad sloths,
Speaker 1: they can have different schedules, so they can be diurnal
Speaker 1: or crepuscular, so it's definitely seems to be in response
Speaker 1: to competition. They also have cute pink noses. That's very important.
Speaker 1: But despite having evolved separately, three toad and two toad
Speaker 1: sloth species have some common characteristics. So they're both very
Speaker 1: slow moving. Both eat leaves and digest have to digest
Speaker 1: them very slowly. They live in trees. They have special
Speaker 1: long claws that can grip onto tree branches, and they
Speaker 1: actually their muscles have adapted so they automatically at rest
Speaker 1: are gripping onto the tree. In fact, if they are asleep,
Speaker 1: they can keep gripping. They can even be dead and
Speaker 1: still be hanging in the tree, which is equal parts
Speaker 1: funny and sort of coub so um. Yeah. They also
Speaker 1: only poop every week or so and descend from the
Speaker 1: tree to do it in a great uh migration down
Speaker 1: to the ground to do a poop once every five
Speaker 1: to eight days or so. Wow, So they there must
Speaker 1: be some reason they've decided to not just drop it,
Speaker 1: and I hope it's nice manners. I'm sure there's some
Speaker 1: survival reason, but I hope it's just like they come on,
Speaker 1: we're put together. I mean the way that they sort
Speaker 1: of first of all, the way that their muscles work.
Speaker 1: They don't they're like hanging upside down so I think
Speaker 1: if they just like pooped, be much more likely to
Speaker 1: get stuck to their for um. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: also apparently there's some benefit to them going down and
Speaker 1: pooping in the dirt, because it's in addition to being
Speaker 1: more hygienic. I think they actually will collect some like
Speaker 1: microscopic organisms that go onto their coat and are involved
Speaker 1: in sort of a symbiotic relationship. So yeah, it's actually
Speaker 1: really interesting. That's amazing. Yeah, because with animals pooping that
Speaker 1: are also animals that spend time high up. You know,
Speaker 1: you always think of birds just letting it go, like
Speaker 1: there's man I always think about the fire side. I
Speaker 1: think of animals, there's that far side where it's a
Speaker 1: bird's view of the world and it's just target signs
Speaker 1: on everybody's heads and on the back of a dog
Speaker 1: and stuff. But slaws very different approach. I love it.
Speaker 1: They're like, we're going to migrate down, We'll drop it off,
Speaker 1: you know, we we don't. We aren't like them pointing
Speaker 1: at a bird. We aren't like them. We're better. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: what's really interesting is pooping on the ground, uh feeds
Speaker 1: into this whole symbiotic relationship that they have with these
Speaker 1: moths that actually, uh will use the slots and moths
Speaker 1: dynamic duo and yeah, so like it'll be an area
Speaker 1: where the moths can lay their larvae who are nourished
Speaker 1: by the poop, and then they hatch into moths and
Speaker 1: then they live in the sloths fur and then they
Speaker 1: the moths in turn nourish algae that grows in the
Speaker 1: slaws fur that the slaws will lick off and provides
Speaker 1: important vitamins to them. So there is a Yeah, this
Speaker 1: whole by pooping in the ground, they're basically creating this
Speaker 1: whole amazing symbiotic life cycle of moths, algae and sloths.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of that before and I love it.
Speaker 1: That's so cool. Yeah, just very excited. Wow, I guess
Speaker 1: there because I've I think I I never assumed their
Speaker 1: fur looked like clean, but it also didn't look like
Speaker 1: it had stuff in it. But it's full of algae
Speaker 1: and moths. Algae and moths. It's a whole forest on
Speaker 1: their backs and you can actually see sort of a
Speaker 1: green tinge to their for sometimes. Wow. Yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 1: They're like those mythical turtles that have worlds on their back. Yeah, exactly. Actually,
Speaker 1: some turtle species river turtles do grow algae on their
Speaker 1: backs and it can look very mystical. Oh that's awesome.
Speaker 1: But their ancestors were very different from these adorable little,
Speaker 1: slow moving living ecosystems who poop on the ground once
Speaker 1: a week. Their ancestors were the giant ground sloths, who
Speaker 1: not only pooped on the ground, but did everything else
Speaker 1: on the ground too, So they were found in South
Speaker 1: and North America. Many species of ground sloths existed and evolved.
Speaker 1: Some were closely related, some were very similar anatomy, but
Speaker 1: due to parallel evolution, they caused them to actually repeatedly
Speaker 1: evolve these similar characteristics despite not being like super closely related,
Speaker 1: similar to the two toad sloth and three toad slavs.
Speaker 1: They're not unrelated, but they're not as closely related as
Speaker 1: you would think because they both evolved from a common
Speaker 1: ancestor who is a ground dwelling and they both independently
Speaker 1: evolved to be tree dwelling and evolved these very similar characteristics.
Speaker 1: And this is actually called homoplasy when you have these
Speaker 1: very similar characteristics being evolved due to very similar evolutionary
Speaker 1: pressures in a population that is related, but maybe aren't
Speaker 1: following the exact same evolutionary path so uh. In fact,
Speaker 1: the two toad sloths, so the little brown the ones
Speaker 1: that are sort of more of a solid brown, they
Speaker 1: do not have that bandit masks. Uh. They are most
Speaker 1: more closely related to their ex inked giant ground sloth relative,
Speaker 1: the polar bear sized sloth M. Jefferson I of the
Speaker 1: Megalonis genus, than they are to their three toad sloth cousins,
Speaker 1: which is amazing. Meanwhile, the three toad sloths belonged to
Speaker 1: an evolutionary lineage that includes the genus Megatherium, whose most
Speaker 1: famous species is the giant ground sloth, which is the
Speaker 1: size of an elephant. So the giant crown sloth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Alex getting excited. I can see it, I think because
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to step by it. But I think
Speaker 1: I mentioned the megatheris. Did I think it's because it's
Speaker 1: I think it's because one of the natural history museums
Speaker 1: we used to go to a lot had a skeleton
Speaker 1: that might be an invented memory, but I remember just
Speaker 1: the humongous nous of the skeleton being yeah, yeah, it's big.
Speaker 1: So the Megatherium, Uh, It was one of the largest
Speaker 1: terrestrial mammals that ever existed. It weighed around four tons
Speaker 1: and grew over six meters or twenty ft long. It
Speaker 1: was thought to walk on all fours, but it was
Speaker 1: able to stand up on its hind legs to eat
Speaker 1: leaves or survey its surroundings, and was even capable of
Speaker 1: walking short distances on its hind legs, which is cute
Speaker 1: and scary, right, Like, so could Godzilla? Woa, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like a fluffy Godzilla. Basically, it had these massive curved
Speaker 1: claws that let it pull down leaves like a tree trimmer.
Speaker 1: But if you think about it, a sloth has these
Speaker 1: big claws and they're not scary to us because we
Speaker 1: know they just use them as these hooks to hook
Speaker 1: onto trees. But imagine those except proportionately just as large,
Speaker 1: but on an animal the size of an elephant that
Speaker 1: they used to like just as scythes to cut down
Speaker 1: the tops of trees. It's incredible and scary. Yeah right
Speaker 1: if if none of this like just gently reaching for
Speaker 1: branches like get down here, Yeah, it's mortal Kombat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly the same way. Like I love it, great man,
Speaker 1: that that m night Chamalian movie with the with the plants,
Speaker 1: the evil plants, the happening, all the happening. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: you need is some giant ground sloths and that's it.
Speaker 1: The evil trees are going to go running. Just Mark
Speaker 1: Bahlberg talking about megatheriums, yeah, way into it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a freaking megathereum, megathereum. Oh my god. I would love
Speaker 1: to see Mark Wahlberg being like confused about megatheriums and
Speaker 1: then just get his face dumped in by a megatherium. Yea,
Speaker 1: and then basically every performer acting very flatly because it's
Speaker 1: a Shamalan movie too, So just look the megatherium. It's coming.
Speaker 1: But it just really weak, decapitated Mark Wahlberg, I mean
Speaker 1: whatever his character's name is, right, So, because of these
Speaker 1: massive claws, it actually had to walk on the sides
Speaker 1: of its feet, similar to how modern day aunt eaters walked.
Speaker 1: And I think the last time you were on the show,
Speaker 1: we actually talked about another animal that was more phologically
Speaker 1: kind of similar to a giant sloth, the Anisodon grande. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the gorilla bear deer I think, yeah, the men here
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, which also had big claws and had to
Speaker 1: walk on the sides of its feet kind of awkwardly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That this is a popular shape back back in the day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's what scientists like to describe as a big lug.
Speaker 1: These guys were big lugs folks, indeed, sort of Peluccas
Speaker 1: of the animal world, the big galoots. Yes, it may
Speaker 1: have also been nude. Some studies suggest a hairless giant
Speaker 1: ground sloth similar to the elephant, rather than a furry one.
Speaker 1: And I can't decide which reality I want to be
Speaker 1: true more, the big furry ground sloths or a big
Speaker 1: nude ground sloth. It's tough. It's close, too close to call.
Speaker 1: This is so I love that whole thing with restory
Speaker 1: ancient species where we are somewhat guessing at the general
Speaker 1: look of it. And yeah, and of course it could
Speaker 1: look like an elephant. Sure now, now I'm imagining a
Speaker 1: very Chihuahua looking Megathereum sure, great, just ready for Olympic swimming,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, just saggy and baggy in all
Speaker 1: the right places. Um. So. The giant ground sloth and
Speaker 1: other species of ground slovs likely when extinct around ten
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, probably due to habitat loss due to
Speaker 1: the changing climate of the time. It's not we're not
Speaker 1: really sure whether human hunting really contributed to their extinction
Speaker 1: or not. But humans did exist at the same time,
Speaker 1: and they probably did try hunting them as we We
Speaker 1: basically tried to hunt anything, any even things that could
Speaker 1: definitely kill us. So I wouldn't be surprised if you know,
Speaker 1: humans hunt to these. I think there's some evidence that
Speaker 1: maybe they were hunted by humans, but um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's what's not clear is whether we actually drove them
Speaker 1: to extinction or not. We may have we tend to
Speaker 1: do that, but it could have also been climate change
Speaker 1: in habitat loss. But they're also and there are these
Speaker 1: giant burrows that you can find in areas where giant
Speaker 1: ground Slaws lived. And while I'm not sure whether it's
Speaker 1: known whether they were made by giant ground slaws, they're
Speaker 1: definitely a candidate for these big I think they're called
Speaker 1: paleo burrows or these huge tunnels. Yeah, and they have
Speaker 1: these huge claw marks on them, uh, indicating they were
Speaker 1: dug out by some animal. And so it's it's like, man,
Speaker 1: this could have I'm not sure what where the evidence
Speaker 1: is pointing to, but It's like there could have been
Speaker 1: these giant burrows that these giant sloths lived in, and
Speaker 1: just imagine sort of wandering down into and then you
Speaker 1: know the hulking figure of this giant sloth rearing up
Speaker 1: at you, chewing on leaves. I feel like the club
Speaker 1: marks either indicate any megatherium or one human prankster, one
Speaker 1: little scamp right trying to fool everybody. One one little
Speaker 1: cave boy with the brake. So, Alex, you're probably familiar
Speaker 1: with rhinos, right, familiar with them? I am? Yeah. We
Speaker 1: went to We went to the Brock Zoo at around
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving and they have a super prominent rhino exhibit. It
Speaker 1: was one of I think the first big animals they had.
Speaker 1: It's very nice to see them, some rhinoceros. I like
Speaker 1: a rhino. I've been to the San Diego Zoom many
Speaker 1: a time. I love the rhinos. You are separated from
Speaker 1: them by a nice sturdy fencing while thing, But I
Speaker 1: feel like they're pretty curious, Like they often approach visitors
Speaker 1: and they kind of look at you and they get
Speaker 1: close enough that you feel like if you wanted to
Speaker 1: risk getting your hand sort of impaled on their horn,
Speaker 1: you could like reach out and touch them. Of course
Speaker 1: you don't because you're not rude, but they are. They're beauty.
Speaker 1: There there's something I think surprisingly gentle about them. They're
Speaker 1: often seen as being these big, aggressive animals, and it's
Speaker 1: true they can be aggressive you don't want to play
Speaker 1: around with, like getting in the path of a rhino,
Speaker 1: but when they're relaxed, they're pretty chill. And of course yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course they're these big, horned, leathery skinned mammals,
Speaker 1: most famously from Africa, but also from India and Asia.
Speaker 1: And let's just do a quicker view about rhinos. So
Speaker 1: there are five species of rhino currently living. There is
Speaker 1: the white rhinoceros that you just mentioned, Alex, and there's
Speaker 1: the critically endangered black rhinos. Both of these rhinos are
Speaker 1: from Africa. Despite their names, they're actually both a grayish color.
Speaker 1: The main difference is actually the lip shape. So the
Speaker 1: black rhino has a point to your beak like upper
Speaker 1: lip and the white rhino has a more square, rounded lip.
Speaker 1: So it's likely that the misnomer is a bad interpretation
Speaker 1: of the Afrikaans word wide or wide, which I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just they're basically just called wide rhinos like wide
Speaker 1: lipped rhinos, but I guess it was misinterpreted as white rhinos.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. Yeah, yeah. And there is also the Sumatra
Speaker 1: in rhino that is the smallest rhino in the world,
Speaker 1: roughly half the size of a white rhino, maybe a
Speaker 1: little less. Uh. It's reddish brown and in rainforests and
Speaker 1: cloud forests of Asia. It's critically endangered as well, and
Speaker 1: there are only a round and estimated thirty individuals left
Speaker 1: in the world, so they're in a little bit of
Speaker 1: trouble there. Yeah, yeah, it is sad. There's also the
Speaker 1: Indian rhino with much more clearly segmented armor plating and
Speaker 1: this bumpier wardy hide which distinguishes them from the white
Speaker 1: rhino and black rhinos. And then there's the Java and rhino,
Speaker 1: which is another critically endangered species and is found only
Speaker 1: in Ujun Coulon National Fart. It's not a national fart,
Speaker 1: it's a national park usion Coulon National Park on the
Speaker 1: Java Island of Indonesia. So woh I did another outside
Speaker 1: of Africa too, that's amazing. Maybe that's well known. I
Speaker 1: had no idea. I don't know that it's well known.
Speaker 1: And that's why I'm bringing it because I think, like
Speaker 1: we think about the white rhinos and the black rhinos,
Speaker 1: but you know, there are other species of rhinos in
Speaker 1: the world, and so there is still a little bit
Speaker 1: of diversity among rhino species. They are all sort of precarious,
Speaker 1: I would say, like a lot of them are critically endangered,
Speaker 1: some of them are vulnerable or near threatened. So it's
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's it is like something to
Speaker 1: appreciate these species before they potentially disappear or hopefully we
Speaker 1: can reverse the disappearing, because we do not want our
Speaker 1: current rhinos to go the way of the wooly rhino,
Speaker 1: because the wooly rhino is this incredible extinct rhinoceros that
Speaker 1: once roamed uh all around the world, are once roamed
Speaker 1: all around Europe and Eurasia. So actually, this Tyson nicely
Speaker 1: with a listener question I got recently, and here is
Speaker 1: the question. There have been mammoths found preserved in the
Speaker 1: Siberian ice fields. Have there been any other prehistoric animals
Speaker 1: found frozen there as well? How about an Antarctica keep
Speaker 1: featuring creatures from Michael D of Texas. Thanks for your question.
Speaker 1: Michael D. Indeed, there are other animals that have been
Speaker 1: found preserved in ice fields, especially the Siberian ice fields,
Speaker 1: lots of animals they're including wooly rhinos. So last year
Speaker 1: in eastern Siberia, the body of a young wooly rhino
Speaker 1: was found frozen with skin and internal organs intact, which is, yeah,
Speaker 1: like that, it's an amazing find. Uh. There's so much
Speaker 1: you can learn about an animal once you start to
Speaker 1: get soft tissues, including internal organs, that you cannot learned
Speaker 1: from fossils. Yeah, I mean we're gonna clone it, right,
Speaker 1: let's do it. I mean machine, I think, if I'm
Speaker 1: remembering correctly, there is a de extinction project where it's
Speaker 1: sort of the speculative thing of like once we get
Speaker 1: to the point where maybe we could clone species, and
Speaker 1: I think wooly rhino is one of the ones that
Speaker 1: they are interested in. I'm not sure how feasible that is.
Speaker 1: It's a similar problem of cloning the wooly mammoth, which
Speaker 1: is like, okay, say you can clone it or replicate
Speaker 1: it genetically, then where does it go? Where do you
Speaker 1: put it? Because it's a environment no longer exists, not
Speaker 1: my house, nimby, not back. Uh back era, nimbe it's
Speaker 1: fridge yet so oh no, no, no, like chumping up
Speaker 1: a data that stere rhinos. So yeah, this young wooly
Speaker 1: rhino is one of the best preserved frozen animals ever found.
Speaker 1: It also came with a small horn that they found
Speaker 1: also in the ice that was just a few feet
Speaker 1: away from its body. So what what is this wooly
Speaker 1: rhino all about? What's the situation with with this fun
Speaker 1: and fuzzy friend. So, like the name suggests, it was
Speaker 1: a rhino with long, thick fur to survive the cold
Speaker 1: of ice age Europe and Asia. They were pretty darn big.
Speaker 1: They were over twelve ft almost four meters long from
Speaker 1: tail to head, and possibly up to six thousand pounds
Speaker 1: or two thousand seven ms. They were as tall as
Speaker 1: a human six point five feet or two meters tall
Speaker 1: at the shoulders. Uh. This is actually around the same
Speaker 1: size of a white rhino except oi flaw fear with
Speaker 1: a much bigger horn. So they had two horns, similar
Speaker 1: to a lot of species of current rhinos, but their
Speaker 1: front horn was much more massive than modern rhino horns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this artist's depiction you send, it's it's like it's just huge.
Speaker 1: That's what I have to say about it. But I
Speaker 1: feel like when you see modern rhinos, and I've only
Speaker 1: seen the white kind of the black kind of thing,
Speaker 1: but when you see those, it's like almost surprising how
Speaker 1: much we focus on the horns because they're just not
Speaker 1: that big. It's a prominent horn, but it's nothing like this.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty judgment to me, humongous, like simbatar. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also I I I have like Simon Cowell's style opinions
Speaker 1: about rhinos, like not good enough. Next that was I
Speaker 1: didn't load up a British accent time, but you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Yeah, it's a it's I feel like
Speaker 1: he who has the biggest horn should cast the first horn.
Speaker 1: Is that I don't know? But look, yeah, when you
Speaker 1: compare the wooly rhinos horn to modern day rhinos, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I mean, like modern day rhinos have like kind of elegant,
Speaker 1: slender horns, like like a unicorn or something. But these
Speaker 1: wooly rhinos just had like big old honkers. I mean horns,
Speaker 1: big old horns, not honkers, but you know, horn, big
Speaker 1: old horn. So these horns were so impressive. Early people
Speaker 1: who recovered the fossilized horns, thought they were the claws
Speaker 1: of giant birds or griffins. I like somebody saying, like,
Speaker 1: it's either a bird or a griffin. Like, it's either
Speaker 1: this real kind of animal. Maybe it's a giant bird
Speaker 1: or some kind of lying lion bird. The same monk
Speaker 1: who brought you the drawing of what they thought a
Speaker 1: lion looked like, which was just like an angrier, spikier dog.
Speaker 1: Is the griffin some kind of bird with maybe cat
Speaker 1: feet or something. Right, Yeah, Like these remains are either
Speaker 1: a dog or a tonton from Star Wars. It's one
Speaker 1: of those two. I'm equally confident, folks, And we have
Speaker 1: a terrible memory as a species because we actually did
Speaker 1: live with the wooly rhino as contemporaries, So early humans
Speaker 1: were around at this time, and they're actually cave paintings
Speaker 1: depicting them. Some of the paintings seemed to indicate that
Speaker 1: wooly rhinos used their large horns to fight off other animals,
Speaker 1: so early artists drew these like battle sea between a
Speaker 1: wooly rhino warding off other animals with their big old horn.
Speaker 1: That's so cool. Yeah, and I've looked at some of
Speaker 1: these cave paintings, and I think they're actually pretty good.
Speaker 1: Like when I think about cave paintings sometimes it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, early artists, we hadn't learned perspective yet. The
Speaker 1: paintings can't be that good. And I'm looking at this
Speaker 1: and like, hey, it might be marginally better than what
Speaker 1: I could do. And then meanwhile, I'm Simon Cowell, old
Speaker 1: school enough terrible. There we go, there's your perfect accent,
Speaker 1: perfect accown. But that is that's that's really cool that
Speaker 1: they did such evocative art of this thing that, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to assume happens. It really looks like a
Speaker 1: weapon horn. It looks like a big saber or something. Well,
Speaker 1: if they used them like anything, that anything, like how
Speaker 1: modern day rhinos use them. They do use them as
Speaker 1: defensive weapons as well as tools to like dig up
Speaker 1: grasses and stuff or to like help guide their calves gently.
Speaker 1: So use gently. They can be sort of a communication tool,
Speaker 1: but used less gently, they can definitely be a defensive weapon.
Speaker 1: And so I would not be shocked if these were
Speaker 1: used as defensive weapons. They may also have had something
Speaker 1: to do with like sexual signaling, like hey, look, at
Speaker 1: look at my horn. Wink wink, nudge nudge. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean really interesting. They also had a large hump near
Speaker 1: its shoulders, both to help support the huge horn and
Speaker 1: where it stored fat reserves to help sustain it during
Speaker 1: the winter. So like your favorite kind of like a bison, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: bison stuff. Yeah, if people don't know, a bunch of
Speaker 1: an American bison's weight as its head and so they
Speaker 1: have a huge hump to just hold it up exactly,
Speaker 1: not fall forward all the time. And due to preserved
Speaker 1: specimens that we've found, we know something about its diet.
Speaker 1: It ate grass, flowers, moss, and even branches, so you
Speaker 1: know herbivores with a giant uh just skull penetrating horn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm amazed. I feel like wooly mammoth's get so much ink,
Speaker 1: They get so much press up so much. And then
Speaker 1: and I think it's partly because we love elephants, but
Speaker 1: then this other packeter and we love the rhino, has
Speaker 1: a wooly version that I'm learning about right now for
Speaker 1: the first time. I think it's it's unfair that the
Speaker 1: media has been so much time on elephants. Mammoth Oh
Speaker 1: my god, But yeah, you got you got wooly rhinos,
Speaker 1: which I think are you know, they're basically like a
Speaker 1: big bison unicorn lovely creatures. Wouldn't want to get chased
Speaker 1: by one, but I do love them, so you know,
Speaker 1: time to shine a light, you know. And what's what's
Speaker 1: the Washington Post thing like sh finding a light on
Speaker 1: wooly rhino's at last or something. You know that their
Speaker 1: journalism tagline for God's tagline is mammoths are the only
Speaker 1: wooly animal. Typical mainstream media, typical armadillos. You like Armadilla's,
Speaker 1: I like Armadilla's. What about you? You like Armadilla's I'm
Speaker 1: pro armadillo. Yeah, if they make me think of the Southwest.
Speaker 1: We used to have a lamp from Target where the
Speaker 1: whole base was on armadillo shape from Southwestern thing we got.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I didn't you know, grow up near him
Speaker 1: or anything. But yeah, but I like an armadillo good stuff. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some of the weirdest mammals in the world, though,
Speaker 1: no doubt. Armadillo. The name comes from the diminutive of
Speaker 1: the Spanish word armatto or armed man or armored man,
Speaker 1: but the as text called the armadillo's turtle rabbits, which
Speaker 1: is a wonderful name. A turtle rabbit. Yeah, that's just better.
Speaker 1: It's so good. It's so good. It sounds like something
Speaker 1: from Avatar The Last Airbender, the cartoon series they had
Speaker 1: like turtle ducks and stuff, but like a turtle rabbit.
Speaker 1: It's so good. I love it. It's perfect too, it's
Speaker 1: the perfect description. So that show man armed man, armed
Speaker 1: man is not the vibe you get from this, like
Speaker 1: what like one ft long little guy. N I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's really like small armored man, like a
Speaker 1: small armored man. But yeah, turtle rabbit better turtle rabbit
Speaker 1: petition to change the name rabbit. Yeah. So they're found
Speaker 1: in the same super order as slogs and ant eaters,
Speaker 1: and uh, they are actually any species of armadilla. So
Speaker 1: there are twenty one species of armadillo, all found in
Speaker 1: the America's and they all share a similar trait amazing
Speaker 1: plate armor made up of caratin that protects their bodies.
Speaker 1: So some species can roll up into an impressively well
Speaker 1: armored ball, whereas other species cannot roll into a ball.
Speaker 1: So the ones that can roll into a ball are
Speaker 1: able to tuck in their more vulnerable body parts into
Speaker 1: a relatively impenetrable sphere. So perhaps the most impressive species
Speaker 1: in terms of ball rolling ability is the Southern three
Speaker 1: banded armadillo and Brazilian three banded armadillas. So they have
Speaker 1: armored heads and tails and can in the blink of
Speaker 1: an eye, jump and roll into a ball, tucking everything in.
Speaker 1: They interlock their head and tail into place like a
Speaker 1: ying yang, sealing them into the most perfect pennetrable armadilla ball.
Speaker 1: They truly have achieved pure sphericality. I'm going to share
Speaker 1: this gift with you. Amazing how easily they can snap
Speaker 1: into a ball. And the claws of these three banded
Speaker 1: armadilla are so long and sturdy they can walk on
Speaker 1: the tips of them, almost like their hooves, And most
Speaker 1: armadillas need really strong digging claws for digging up the
Speaker 1: ants and termites. Katie, Katie, I'm I'm looking at this
Speaker 1: chif of an armadilla becoming a ball, and if if
Speaker 1: any listeners do not look up this chif, I will
Speaker 1: be very upset with them. The greatest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: There's no excuse, it's in the show notes. I'm confident
Speaker 1: it's there. You need to go see this. It's like
Speaker 1: it's like it's standing there and then it does a
Speaker 1: little turn and then boopball mode just immediately like yeah,
Speaker 1: ball of the guy who impressively pops out of folding
Speaker 1: chair as he's walking so he can go see stuff.
Speaker 1: It's that energy, like time for me to do this.
Speaker 1: It's great. It just sees some business. It doesn't want
Speaker 1: it doesn't like going on. It's like nope, ball, I'm ball,
Speaker 1: look at me ball now. So we've actually covered some
Speaker 1: of the weirder armadillos on the show before, like the
Speaker 1: pink fairy armadillo that kind of looks like a piece
Speaker 1: of sushi, and the screaming hairy armadillo, which is harry
Speaker 1: and it does scream. But let's look at the most
Speaker 1: prototypical armadillo, the nine banded armadillo. These are gray armadillo's
Speaker 1: found in north, South, and Central America. They're the most
Speaker 1: widespread armadillo, so probably the most famous in North America.
Speaker 1: They are found in southeastern United States and they can
Speaker 1: grow to be about the size of a chihuahua. They
Speaker 1: cannot roll into a ball like the three banded armadillos,
Speaker 1: but they are still protected by that hard caratinous armor.
Speaker 1: Because they can't roll into a ball, they rely on
Speaker 1: burrows for further protection, so a predator trying to dig
Speaker 1: them out of a burrow is just going to be
Speaker 1: met with a hard armored uh top side of the armadillo,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be very hard to get at them.
Speaker 1: But the largest species, the largest living species of armadillo
Speaker 1: is the giant armadillo of South America. They can grow
Speaker 1: to weigh up to seventy pounds or thirty two and
Speaker 1: a half kilograms, but captive set specimens can reach up
Speaker 1: to a hundred and twenty pounds or fifty four ms
Speaker 1: minus the tail. They grow a little over three ft long,
Speaker 1: which is about a meter. So they're they're big. They're
Speaker 1: they're big little dudes. They're they're hunky and chunky. But
Speaker 1: this is actually nothing compared to the extinct genus of
Speaker 1: close armadillo relatives, the glyptodons. They were bigger than a
Speaker 1: Fiat about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, and weighed
Speaker 1: up to over one thousand, eight hundred pounds or eight
Speaker 1: hundred forty ms. So imagine our armadillo, but the size
Speaker 1: of a Volkswagen beetle. So I'm imagining that turned into
Speaker 1: a bul jeft, but it just creates a crater and
Speaker 1: like a building collapses behind it, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: probably could easily be used as a wrecking ball. Yes, yeah, wow, incredible.
Speaker 1: So they um when extinct a few like around the
Speaker 1: same time, I would say, as like the giant slaws
Speaker 1: probably around ten thousand years ago. Unlike the more flexible
Speaker 1: shells of current armadillos, they had a big turtle like
Speaker 1: shell that provided their body with coverage and an armored tail.
Speaker 1: And while they couldn't withdraw their head into their shell
Speaker 1: like a turtle, the top of their head had this
Speaker 1: hard armor as well, and they had Speaking of their heads,
Speaker 1: they were very thick jowled, with massive jawbones, which indicated
Speaker 1: big old chewing muscles. Um. They also had these ridged
Speaker 1: teeth that kind of looked like corrugated metal, and they
Speaker 1: just used these as like grinding mills for hard plant matter.
Speaker 1: Their tails were so hard and cratinus that they were
Speaker 1: able to use them as weapons, and there have been
Speaker 1: wounds found in some of the fossils of these glyptodons
Speaker 1: that indicate they were used in battle within the species,
Speaker 1: so between males, maybe fighting over territory or mates. So yeah,
Speaker 1: just like big old armored tail fights m And the
Speaker 1: cutest and most surprising thing about these is they had
Speaker 1: nasal passage structures that seemed to indicate there were areas
Speaker 1: for large muscle attachments, which may have indicated they actually
Speaker 1: had a long snout, maybe even a proboscis or trunk
Speaker 1: similar to a tape here, or even a small elephant
Speaker 1: like trunk, uh, which I love so much, Just a
Speaker 1: big old giant Harry mammalian turtle with maybe a little
Speaker 1: trunk on it. Uh. The shells were so big that
Speaker 1: humans actually may have used them as shelters from weather.
Speaker 1: It just incredible. Wait what and where? I mean? It
Speaker 1: is shaped almost exactly like an egglue or something. I
Speaker 1: can see why, but I had never made that jump
Speaker 1: that humans would just be like perfect a house here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean probably more like a tent, because I don't
Speaker 1: think it would fit more than maybe a couple of
Speaker 1: people in it. I mean, you know, it's like a
Speaker 1: Volkswagen Beetle. You can't you can't fit too many people
Speaker 1: outside of it, right, only a couple of prehistoric humans
Speaker 1: or a hundred clowns. Yeah, that's it. That's it. That's
Speaker 1: all you can do. Well then, because also with the
Speaker 1: Bronx Zoo visit, I'm fresh off of seeing tape beers
Speaker 1: and they are really soft fellas, you know, they're really
Speaker 1: they're really squishy, and so they're like a living snuffle
Speaker 1: off against version. Yeah. But yeah, the the hard armored
Speaker 1: it's just like like time to get serious. And then
Speaker 1: with this big doofy shell. Yeah, like it's a like
Speaker 1: it's a soldier in a Red Wall book or something
Speaker 1: instead of the little goofy goofs that I saw in
Speaker 1: the zoo. Really fun. I think I keep up bringing
Speaker 1: up the like seventies cartoon Herculoids, but this definitely looks
Speaker 1: like one of the weird characters from Herculoids, which I mean,
Speaker 1: I would say I'm dating myself, but I'm not even
Speaker 1: dating myself because it was way before my time and
Speaker 1: for whatever reason I saw it on TV. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: think they would do like Boomerang classic cartoons or something,
Speaker 1: and I would that's fascinating. So anyways, maybe there's too
Speaker 1: much of a tangent, but that will be a thing.
Speaker 1: Like I was in a meeting once where I brought
Speaker 1: up Scooby Doo and apparently one of the other people
Speaker 1: decided I'm really old. Yeah no, it just re aired.
Speaker 1: I'm not from one that was a show. No, I
Speaker 1: wasn't alive when this first aired. I just somehow caught
Speaker 1: it on TV later on in the nineties. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: things get rebroadcast, like you know what Scooby Doo is?
Speaker 1: You must be like a hundred and ten. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize Civil War veterans were still alive. Yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: the last widow from that war. Like that article. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think that just about does it for old, decrepit
Speaker 1: things in this podcast. But before we go, I do
Speaker 1: want to answer the question that we proposed last week
Speaker 1: of Guess Who's Squawking? Every week we play a Mr
Speaker 1: Animal sound and we ask you the listener who is talking.
Speaker 1: So last week's hint was people will pay out the
Speaker 1: nose for their poop. Who do you think is talking?
Speaker 1: Alex mm hmm out the nose for their poop. This
Speaker 1: is a two can thing. It was birdish to me.
Speaker 1: I don't really know that's a good guess because two
Speaker 1: cans do use poop to seal up their nests that
Speaker 1: they have in tree hollows, But no, this is actually
Speaker 1: a palm civet. Congratulations to this week's winners who gets
Speaker 1: the animal correctly Anti be Trish H. And Elizabeth P. Yeah. So, uh,
Speaker 1: this is an Asian palm civet. Uh. They are small
Speaker 1: field forms found in South and Southeast Asia and forests,
Speaker 1: and they eat a type of coffee bean fruit and
Speaker 1: poop out the bean which are harvested and made into
Speaker 1: a very expensive and highly sought after coffee. I guess
Speaker 1: due to the fermentation that happens in their gut, which
Speaker 1: makes it good poop coffee, very fancy. Unfortunately, this has
Speaker 1: led to civit farms that cage in force feed palm civets.
Speaker 1: So personally I would avoid drinking the poop coffee for
Speaker 1: ethical reasons, but also it's expensive poop coffee. Guys, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? Yeah? Man, because I googled the picture
Speaker 1: of this animal while you're talking about it. It's very cute,
Speaker 1: and I immediately became concerned people were like doing something
Speaker 1: shady to keep it and look at it all the time. No,
Speaker 1: it's extremely cute. It looks like a raccoon cat with
Speaker 1: a prehensile tail. It's adorable. Leave the poop alone, folks,
Speaker 1: Let him poop in peace. Yeah, you can get dunkin
Speaker 1: Donuts coffee, and you can get a cat. If you
Speaker 1: want crappy coffee, you can go get dunk and Donuts coffee.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Duncan is great. I don't know anything about coffee.
Speaker 1: It's probably good. I apologize everyone. If you like Duncan,
Speaker 1: if you run on Duncan, it's fine. I don't even
Speaker 1: drink coffee, so what do I know? Please don't sue me.
Speaker 1: So onto, this was going to rise up there? That
Speaker 1: back uh so onto. This week's mystery animal sound a hint.
Speaker 1: As adults, they look like a beautiful sunset, but as
Speaker 1: babies they just don't want to be someone else's grub. Wow,
Speaker 1: and he guesses, Alex, that's not two animals. That was.
Speaker 1: That was like the highest squeakiest noise event. Probably I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give you this. The background noise probably some kind
Speaker 1: of owl. Um. That's not what we're focusing on. What
Speaker 1: we're focusing on is the little squeaky noises, the mystery squeaks. Yeah. Wow,
Speaker 1: um let's see and I'm thinking of the hint. There
Speaker 1: was something about grubs. There's something about being very colorful
Speaker 1: like a sunset. Is this? Is this some sort of
Speaker 1: that also does Michael Winslow style sound effects? Maybe well?
Speaker 1: The answer will be revealed in next week's Creature Feature.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining me today, Alex. Where
Speaker 1: can the people find you? I hate? Thank you so
Speaker 1: much every time? And and people can find my show
Speaker 1: Secretly incredibly fascinating if you just search. The name Secretly
Speaker 1: usually comes up in your podcast player. But it's about
Speaker 1: one people, but it's about one thing people think is ordinary,
Speaker 1: and it turns out it's amazing if you discover the
Speaker 1: history and the science and the lore. And it's me
Speaker 1: and funny guests such as Katie Golden and on January
Speaker 1: third episode, she is the guest we talk about maze,
Speaker 1: which is also known as corn. Thank you guys so
Speaker 1: much for listening. You can if you think you have
Speaker 1: an answer to the mystery animal sound game, you can
Speaker 1: write to me at email, Creature Feature Pod at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com, or on Instagram Creature Feature Pod or on
Speaker 1: Twitter Creature feet Pod. That's at the eight, not at
Speaker 1: the et Sen something very different. And if you're enjoying
Speaker 1: the show and you leave or rating and review, I
Speaker 1: will be eternally grateful. I read every review. I get
Speaker 1: a cup of hot coco, bundle up by the fire,
Speaker 1: and read every review out to a bunch of random children.
Speaker 1: Um like story time where I'm like, you know, Apple
Speaker 1: iTunes user, you know we use our fan nine hundred
Speaker 1: rites like you know, Hey, cool pod anyways, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening, and thanks to the Space Classics
Speaker 1: for their super awesome song. Ex Alumina. Creature Feature is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio for our podcasts like
Speaker 1: the one you just heard. Visit the I Heart Radio
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Speaker 1: next Wednesday.