Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is
Speaker 1: Stuff you should Know. Another animal addition, which everybody loves those,
Speaker 1: and so do I. I would love to see a
Speaker 1: master list of all the animals that we've covered. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's probably longer than I think, twice as long maybe,
Speaker 1: But these are about mingoes. I'm super excited because, uh hey,
Speaker 1: I mean, who wasn't sort of fascinated by flamingos there
Speaker 1: attention getters with their funny one legged stance in their
Speaker 1: pink But when we finally went down to the Caribbean
Speaker 1: for the first time this year, to the Bahamas, they
Speaker 1: had some mingoes on their property and they would do
Speaker 1: a you know, you could walk by them and just
Speaker 1: say hi and stuff like that, and then in the
Speaker 1: morning they would do a little flamingo parade where they
Speaker 1: would walk them around the property like people would you
Speaker 1: and are you could follow along, which of course we did. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that just got my brain thinking, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: Ruby has had a painting. We got a ten dollar painting,
Speaker 1: like a real painting that someone did with their hands
Speaker 1: for ten bucks. That's quite a deal of a tight
Speaker 1: grouping of flamingos kind of from the neck up. That's
Speaker 1: been in her room her whole life almost, and I
Speaker 1: was just like, I gotta learn about these things. That's
Speaker 1: a great composition, the group of flamingos from the neck up.
Speaker 1: I've seen it before, not necessarily your painting, but I've
Speaker 1: seen that that composition before, and it is it's a trope.
Speaker 1: It's great. It's good because it could be like trees
Speaker 1: or sea grass, like any Spindley grouping of things. Um so,
Speaker 1: so this is a painting of sea grass? Well you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Tall ready Spindley Okay, um so
Speaker 1: this is a lot like the Possum episode for me,
Speaker 1: and that like I generally knew some stuff, but I
Speaker 1: learned a bunch of new cool stuff and now I'm
Speaker 1: a big flamingo fan. Yeah. Same. So you said something
Speaker 1: about them parading around. Apparently, so was there a human
Speaker 1: saying like, hey, this way, everybody, the parades going this way,
Speaker 1: and the Flamingos would kind of follow. Yeah, they had
Speaker 1: like an electric cattle pride, right. Apparently Flamingoes respond to
Speaker 1: that really well. No, they had humans that were just
Speaker 1: sort of walking along and sort of it seemed like
Speaker 1: a just a very gentle, wavy, corralling type of gesture. Right.
Speaker 1: So there's a video artist and Israeli video artist whom
Speaker 1: went to a zoo in Germany. Um, and she came
Speaker 1: up with a video five minute video called sixty nine bows.
Speaker 1: I think sixty seven bows. Get your head out of
Speaker 1: the gutter, sixty seven pounds, all right, um, And it
Speaker 1: was the flamingos responding to a hand gesture or she did,
Speaker 1: and all of all the flamingos would bow at once
Speaker 1: but really it's like they're ducking. And then the artist inserted, um,
Speaker 1: I think, very earnestly, but in retrospect also really hilariously
Speaker 1: a gunshot sound, and then the flamingos would duck every
Speaker 1: time the gunshot sound went off. It's that was a
Speaker 1: little weird. I didn't expect that. Um. This is, by
Speaker 1: the way, a video artist named Nira or Nero pereg
Speaker 1: give credit where credits due, But that's all the same thing,
Speaker 1: and it was it was interesting to see them move
Speaker 1: in unison and I watched a lot of flamingo videos.
Speaker 1: It's very fascinating the way they move about the earth.
Speaker 1: For sure, they do have a certain odd gangly grace
Speaker 1: to them, don't they. Yeah. So, um, flamingos actually are
Speaker 1: different from just about every other birds. Apparently their order
Speaker 1: um Phoenicia terra forms. Um, thank you, I have an
Speaker 1: extra letter in there. No, I didn't phansiyop terra forms,
Speaker 1: So what's should I quibble? No? I mean I don't
Speaker 1: have an eye after the sea. I just have phenice terraforms.
Speaker 1: My brain literally was like, nope, we're doing it. I
Speaker 1: don't care what you see. Um, we're doing We're adding
Speaker 1: the extra so pheniceop terra forms. Stupid brain. Your sounds better.
Speaker 1: If that makes you feel better. It does make me
Speaker 1: feel a little better. But that's that's the order that
Speaker 1: flamingos um belong to. And there's only five species, as
Speaker 1: we'll see. But um, they are just the like, it's
Speaker 1: just flamingos that belong to the order, and they diverge
Speaker 1: from other um birds a really long time ago. But
Speaker 1: you know, geneticists and biologists love to to taxonomize things,
Speaker 1: so they've tried to figure out the closest living relative
Speaker 1: to the flamingo and what we did for a very
Speaker 1: long time was like, oh, that animal looks like that animal,
Speaker 1: they must be very closely related. And as genetics of
Speaker 1: kind of come of age. Starting around two thousand was
Speaker 1: I think a really big turning point with the Human
Speaker 1: Genome project um that we found that genetically speaking, that's
Speaker 1: a terrible way to classify things, and the flamingos are
Speaker 1: a good example of that. Yeah, it's kind of lazy,
Speaker 1: it is. It's also like a it's old timey and dumb,
Speaker 1: yeah sentence, you know what I mean. It is like, oh,
Speaker 1: they look like storks, so let's just put them in
Speaker 1: that group. And that's what they did for a while,
Speaker 1: storks and herons, and then uh no, maybe they're more
Speaker 1: like geese and swans and ducks. But that wasn't right.
Speaker 1: And finally in the it took a while, I mean,
Speaker 1: the early adds in two thousand one is when they
Speaker 1: finally said, you know, genetically speaking, their closest to something
Speaker 1: called is that a GREEB. I'm gonna go with GREEB
Speaker 1: g r e B s and they are sort of duckish.
Speaker 1: Olivia helped us out. She said duck like I would
Speaker 1: agree with that. Uh, and what What it did though,
Speaker 1: was it kind of brought up what we're talking about. Apparently.
Speaker 1: I don't think it was like a firestorm, but I
Speaker 1: think it was a case where they said, hey, like,
Speaker 1: we should do this better. And this is a prime example.
Speaker 1: And the old school taxonomists hung their head in shame
Speaker 1: and kind of slunk off and retired and died at
Speaker 1: various times. So the word flamingo bears a striking resemblance
Speaker 1: to a Spanish word flamenco, which you can't say that
Speaker 1: word without putting without snapping one finger at about your
Speaker 1: stomach and one above your head. I can, at least
Speaker 1: I know it's really the thing to do. And that
Speaker 1: that word flamenco um has uh. It means actually the bird,
Speaker 1: the flamingo. It also refers to that dance style and
Speaker 1: style of music flamenco. And it also refers to a
Speaker 1: person from Flanders, which is part of Belgium, right, So
Speaker 1: a Flemish person would be called a flamenco in Spanish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and I'm not sure why those are connected and
Speaker 1: used in the same word, but they are all right, Well,
Speaker 1: that is weird. Uh, we are gonna guess talk about
Speaker 1: the different kinds. The species you said five, is there
Speaker 1: not a six? There's okay, So I'm siding with the
Speaker 1: ones who say one a subspecies of another. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: you've already put yourself in a particular flamingo camp. I see.
Speaker 1: I I have as a matter of fact, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to stay there until genetics proves me wrong. All right,
Speaker 1: Well we'll start with the greater flamingo. This is the
Speaker 1: big fella. Um. They can be five feet tall. They
Speaker 1: can weigh up like close to nine pounds, which doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like a lot. But if you look at a flamingo,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of um money leg and there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of body. There a lot of negative space
Speaker 1: they don't take up. Yeah, exactly. Uh. These are pretty
Speaker 1: pale when it comes to their pink pinkness. And we
Speaker 1: should talk and I guess through this, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: their distribution because it may surprise you. Um. I kind
Speaker 1: of thought it was just like, yeah, they're in the
Speaker 1: Caribbean and Florida and that's it. That's not true at all. Um.
Speaker 1: These are in Africa, Southern Europe, and Asia, as in
Speaker 1: South Asia and Western Asia, and they like one of
Speaker 1: the cool things about flamingos is they sometimes will live
Speaker 1: where no other animals can or will live, and that
Speaker 1: is really saline or alkaline lakes and mud flats in
Speaker 1: places like that. Yeah, in that sense, they fill in
Speaker 1: a specific ecological niche that there's really not many other
Speaker 1: animals that that do. And that's just the first interesting, weird,
Speaker 1: unusual fact about flamingos. Right, just get ready, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: had no idea. So they eat like stuff in like
Speaker 1: the saltiest, briniest parts of Earth. That's where they that's
Speaker 1: where they like to be. So the Caribbean flamingo, which
Speaker 1: we know of as the American flamingo um, is considered
Speaker 1: by some, including myself, a subspecies of the greater flamingo,
Speaker 1: which would make their just five species of flamingo technically, right.
Speaker 1: And these are the ones that I saw. Uh, they
Speaker 1: are smaller, they are super super pink, very brightly colored. Um.
Speaker 1: These are the same, very same flamingos, the ones that
Speaker 1: I saw that actor Lea Schreiber played with the week before.
Speaker 1: Oh did he really? Man? You know how when you
Speaker 1: get in a in a car to go to the
Speaker 1: place wherever you're going, they liked always like to talk
Speaker 1: about stuff like that, and this car driver was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't do the accent, but he said
Speaker 1: that Ray Donovan was here last week and oh, it's
Speaker 1: like lovely of Schreiber, and Emily of course looked it
Speaker 1: up and he um, if you want to see like
Speaker 1: forty pictures of Lee Schreiber's family doing things in the Bahamas, Uh,
Speaker 1: you can do that online because that's must be what
Speaker 1: it's like to be a real celebrity. I couldn't imagine.
Speaker 1: It was this picture after picture flamingos and here he
Speaker 1: is at the water slide and it's like, did they
Speaker 1: just follow him around with the camera? And I guess
Speaker 1: the answers yes. I UM. I started to watch Ray
Speaker 1: Donovan Wants on a Flight um, because I've heard nothing
Speaker 1: but good things about it. But must have come in
Speaker 1: on like season five or something like that, because you
Speaker 1: know on Delta they have like Rando episodes. It's so weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so strange. So I and when I came in,
Speaker 1: it was like the the either I think the season
Speaker 1: premiere of some late season and like he's clearly having
Speaker 1: some sort of mental breakdown because he's having a crisis
Speaker 1: of conscience, conscience from killing people. And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh this again the killer had the killer can't just
Speaker 1: take killing any longer. I'm like, I'm not done on this.
Speaker 1: I'm done. Yeah. I enjoyed we and we both love
Speaker 1: that show, Emily and I for uh, probably the first
Speaker 1: three or four seasons, and then it was one of
Speaker 1: those that was like you should have known when to stop,
Speaker 1: and then we kind of just quit watching. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that happens a lot, it does in America. That
Speaker 1: was the good thing about our show. We we knew, well,
Speaker 1: actually Science Channel knew that. It's a while we were ahead.
Speaker 1: You know what about the Chilean Flamingo. What's up with
Speaker 1: that fella? These guys are particularly string an, unusual and
Speaker 1: fascinating because they like to live in the cold. Um
Speaker 1: they can handle cold weather at least um they live
Speaker 1: in Chili in a lot of South America. In fact,
Speaker 1: I don't know why Chile got the um the naming rights,
Speaker 1: but they typically have pink bands on their gray legs,
Speaker 1: which are something that kind of sets them off from
Speaker 1: the other ones. And there, I guess the third in
Speaker 1: line as far as size goes, there smaller than Caribbean
Speaker 1: flamingos bigger than the lesser flamingo though, which is another right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's such a sad name to call something the lesser flamingo. Uh.
Speaker 1: They are the smallest. They're about three to three to
Speaker 1: five pounds ish. And they are also in Africa on
Speaker 1: the eastern uh and southern uh well, I say coasts,
Speaker 1: but they can go inland as well if they've got
Speaker 1: some good, good alkaline lakes going on, but also in
Speaker 1: places like Yemen. Yeah, you'll find flamingos and yemen in Pakistan,
Speaker 1: in India. These have the dark bills and the really
Speaker 1: really red eyes that are just beautiful to look at.
Speaker 1: And I believe this is the most abundant flamingo species, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like they'll gather in packs of like millions, one
Speaker 1: and a half two million, or at the very least
Speaker 1: that's how many of there are total. But they do,
Speaker 1: they do gather in huge flox as we'll see, Yeah,
Speaker 1: into the millions. That wasn't a hyperbole, by the way,
Speaker 1: chuck Um, Flamingos in Yemen is an excellent album title,
Speaker 1: oh man, not kidding. I mean talk about the album
Speaker 1: art too. It would be wonderful. Yeah, that could see like, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know who would do that, Franz Ferdinand or
Speaker 1: somebody Franz Ferdinand or um what was our What did
Speaker 1: Ian Bowers say our brit pop band was something Star?
Speaker 1: I don't remember. That would be a great something Star
Speaker 1: album Flamingos and yam and we're claiming that for our
Speaker 1: band that we create after we retire. Okay, I just saw,
Speaker 1: by the way, Franz Ferdinand is opening for the Pixies
Speaker 1: on their leg which goes to Atlanta sweet when uh
Speaker 1: in June. That's pretty cool, man. Yeah, I used to
Speaker 1: love those guys. I've been on a huge Pixies kick
Speaker 1: right now, um, which I had been way off the
Speaker 1: Pixies for a while, Like, man, am I ever going
Speaker 1: to like the pixie First new music? I haven't heard
Speaker 1: any of the new stuff. I've just been. I just
Speaker 1: got off of their old stuff and then I got
Speaker 1: back into um Trump Lamont, which I mean it's just
Speaker 1: so good from start to finish. So yeah, I love
Speaker 1: the Pixies again everybody. And I don't really like Ray Donovan.
Speaker 1: So there's the two things you need to know about
Speaker 1: me from this episode. They're new when that came out
Speaker 1: late last year. Is Okay, it sounds like a Pixies record,
Speaker 1: but it's just it's not as weird. Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of polished. I don't know. It just sounds like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make a Pixies record, so let's do that.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I mean, I think the new
Speaker 1: bass player is doing a great job. But do Miss
Speaker 1: Kim deal? So I mean, yeah, you gotta respect that though.
Speaker 1: The not just like we're going to cash in on
Speaker 1: the you know, three five albums that everybody's crazy about
Speaker 1: from the eighties and early nineties and just tour on that,
Speaker 1: although that's mostly what they played, thank goodness. So let's
Speaker 1: let's um, let's talk about I think the coolest Flamingo,
Speaker 1: or at least the most interesting of the flamingos. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the Caribbean Flamingos, the Money Flamingo far and away the best,
Speaker 1: just because it's so pink and pretty and perfect size
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. But the Andean Flamingo, for my money,
Speaker 1: is the most interesting of all. Yeah, they're very rare,
Speaker 1: and it's just h I had no idea that they
Speaker 1: could live high up in the Andes Mountains like that. Um.
Speaker 1: I was just blown away by that because I thought
Speaker 1: they were really exclusively um, you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: sort of coastal birds. But um, there aren't a lot
Speaker 1: of about eighty thousand of them. And you will be
Speaker 1: very saddened to know that those lithium batteries that we
Speaker 1: all love because they last so long, lithium mining in
Speaker 1: climate change are driving them away and destroying them. Batteries
Speaker 1: kill flamingos, that's right. So yeah, there's about eighty thousand
Speaker 1: of them alive, and they are I think under threatened status,
Speaker 1: which is one step down from endangered and very much
Speaker 1: threatening to move into endangered. So I don't know the
Speaker 1: andian is vulnerable vulnerable Okay, so that's which is one
Speaker 1: step down. Okay, I got you, Thanks, no problem. And
Speaker 1: then James's flamingo is the one that you don't consider
Speaker 1: like a full fledged flamingo. No, No, that's its own.
Speaker 1: That's a species. That's the Caribbean flamingo that I consider
Speaker 1: a subspecies of the greater flamingo. All right, James's flamingo
Speaker 1: is um. They thought it was actually extinct um in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, I believe. But then in the fifties.
Speaker 1: It's a whole Cela Camp comeback story because they discovered
Speaker 1: that there actually were James's flamingos that were mixed in
Speaker 1: with Chilean and Andy and flamingos in South America. Um,
Speaker 1: and not mixed in like they were interbreeding like the
Speaker 1: these huge flocks like we'll get across. The flocks of
Speaker 1: flamingos in the wild are so enormous and so populous
Speaker 1: it's crazy. But um, these flocks will there are these
Speaker 1: different species will kind of flock together, but they keep
Speaker 1: their distance from one another. And that's where they rediscovered
Speaker 1: the James flamingo that wasn't extinct after all. Yeah, named
Speaker 1: after the British naturalists who studied them, Harry Berkeley James,
Speaker 1: and I guess he just felt good enough about his
Speaker 1: work where he said, I'm gonna name you after me. Now,
Speaker 1: let's go have some mead, right, all right, I think
Speaker 1: we should take a break and have some mead and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about their pinkness right after this stuff. You
Speaker 1: should know, all right, we're back. One of the things
Speaker 1: I did know about flamingos, but only in a rudimentary way,
Speaker 1: was that they're pink because of what they eat. I
Speaker 1: did not know this at all. Really. I think that's
Speaker 1: a kind of a common like basic flamingo fact, which
Speaker 1: is why are they pink? Because this stuff they eat?
Speaker 1: Otherwise they oh no, not another one, not another seraph.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows that, you moron. Well, then could you do
Speaker 1: us the uh, the honors please and explain this? No, no,
Speaker 1: you go ahead, you're explaining it fine. I was just teasing. Well,
Speaker 1: it's because what they eat is rich in beta carotene,
Speaker 1: and what they largely eat is algae um. They stick
Speaker 1: their face down. If you see flamingos walking around in um,
Speaker 1: I guess like ankle too, whatever their knees would be
Speaker 1: knee deep water, you'll see them stick their face down
Speaker 1: there a lot and rummage around, and sometimes they'll just
Speaker 1: leave it down there, like fully dunked. And what they're
Speaker 1: doing is they're eating their filter feeders like a baleen whale,
Speaker 1: and they're just moving muddy water around and letting water
Speaker 1: swish around in their mouth, and they have these little
Speaker 1: uh what is it like a little filter yeah, described
Speaker 1: as like a comb like filter along. They're lower bill okay, no,
Speaker 1: their upper bill, yes, because they're upside down, so their
Speaker 1: upper bill is now their lower bill when they're feeding,
Speaker 1: and that's where the filter is, right, so they're they're
Speaker 1: kind of like that oil pulling. You know, some people
Speaker 1: swish essential oil in their mouth to like fight cavities
Speaker 1: or whatever. I didn't know that that's essentially what they're doing.
Speaker 1: They use their tongues to kind of switch the water
Speaker 1: back and forth and then spit it out and get
Speaker 1: some more water. And apparently they can do this like
Speaker 1: four times in a second. They're that fast to just
Speaker 1: gather really really small stuff. But the stuff that they're
Speaker 1: eating is so full of beta carotene um carotenoids actually
Speaker 1: that the flamingos um livers break the break them down
Speaker 1: into a pigment. Which is a fun word to say,
Speaker 1: and I'm about to say it. You ready can't as anthon?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's way better than I what's I love it?
Speaker 1: It's one of my new favorite words. C A N
Speaker 1: t h A x A n t h I N
Speaker 1: can't as anthon? Yeah, good job. So it ends up
Speaker 1: in their feathers, in their skin, which turns them pink.
Speaker 1: And this is why Chuck, I think that lesser and
Speaker 1: Caribbean or Caribbean is a subspecies of Greater. Sorry, because
Speaker 1: the big distinction, I mean, yes, the Greater is a
Speaker 1: little bigger, not ridiculously bigger, but a big distinction is
Speaker 1: their coloring. And I think that it's because the Caribbean
Speaker 1: has more carotenoid rich diet than the Greater, and that
Speaker 1: they're really genetically essentially the same species, they just have
Speaker 1: different diets available to them. I think you're probably right, um.
Speaker 1: And you know, because they like to put flamingos in
Speaker 1: places like zoos for a long time, you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you feed these things red peppers and carrots and orange things,
Speaker 1: and they turn and they keep that color. So we're
Speaker 1: just going to feed them that and which is terrible
Speaker 1: and a very lazy kind of point of view. Um,
Speaker 1: But I think you know, now zoos are mostly on board.
Speaker 1: I think with I was saying, okay, maybe we should
Speaker 1: just feed them what they like to eat. That also
Speaker 1: keeps them pink. And also you can turn orange everybody
Speaker 1: knows for meeting like too many carrots or mangoes or
Speaker 1: something like that, sweet potatoes. Um. And that's a condition
Speaker 1: is called kademia, which will turn up in our Lives
Speaker 1: show eventually. Oh, that's right, look for it. That's a
Speaker 1: nice little tease. Watch for it this fall on stuff
Speaker 1: you should know. Speaking of to her, we should just
Speaker 1: go ahead and mention, um, because people are kind of asking.
Speaker 1: We are doing these first three shows in real time
Speaker 1: this week, that will be by the time it comes
Speaker 1: out in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. But we are
Speaker 1: aiming to do six more shows in tiny little groups
Speaker 1: of three, hopefully in the in the late spring, in
Speaker 1: the early fall. And um, we haven't nailed the cities down,
Speaker 1: but you know that's that's what we're trying to do.
Speaker 1: Not nine shows this year. You really put all those
Speaker 1: questions to rest. Well, I mean, should we mention some
Speaker 1: of those cities? I don't want people to be disappointed?
Speaker 1: Yeah kind of No, I mean they're going to be
Speaker 1: disappointed eventually. White might as well just disappoint them now
Speaker 1: so they can be disappointed all year. Well, I think
Speaker 1: we're gonna finally hit in Nashville. Yeah, I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna do Orlando again and finish up in Atlanta again,
Speaker 1: our hometown shows. It's right, what about in between? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: we're um, out of the four I think we're gonna
Speaker 1: pick three from probably Boston, New York, d C in Chicago,
Speaker 1: all cities that are great for stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: rich with suff you should know listeners. Yeah, and if
Speaker 1: we're gonna do this, like, you know, maybe nine shows
Speaker 1: a year, we're gonna have to mix it up because
Speaker 1: it's so easy to just go to like the same
Speaker 1: banger cities every time. But we've been to so many
Speaker 1: cities that turned out to be banger. Like surprisingly, Kansas
Speaker 1: City was a great show. Uh. St. Louis was a
Speaker 1: great show. Cleveland was a great show. Kansas. Yeah, Austin's
Speaker 1: always the jam. I mean, we've been to a bunch
Speaker 1: of places that were like this is this is actually
Speaker 1: really great time we want to come back. It's just, um,
Speaker 1: you know, if we're doing nine shows this year, we
Speaker 1: we guys, we just started out with our our usual
Speaker 1: how about that. Yeah, we're dipping our toe back in
Speaker 1: the live show pun but we we also like to
Speaker 1: add a brand new state. And that's why we're going
Speaker 1: to Nashville this year. So, uh, take Heed, take Heed,
Speaker 1: take heed. Boise. Yeah, that's good of Boise. We go
Speaker 1: see our old friend Dave Ruce, that's his stomping ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah all right, I think you can't tell is incredibly
Speaker 1: chipper and positive personality. That's true, very poisyan. And by
Speaker 1: the way, Chuck Um, we should give a shout out
Speaker 1: to Dave's podcast, A Bible Time Machine, Right, Yeah. Dave
Speaker 1: is a bit of a biblical scholar and takes a
Speaker 1: very sort of analytical view of the Bible in this podcast.
Speaker 1: It's not like a preachy thing, right right. So if
Speaker 1: you want to get to know Dave, Ru's one of
Speaker 1: our great writers that works for stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: You can get to know him a lot more wherever
Speaker 1: you get podcasts Bible Time Machine. Yeah, dare I say
Speaker 1: a sort of stuff you should know, like approach to
Speaker 1: biblical matters. I mean, how could it not be, you know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. Can we go back to flamingos for goodness sakes,
Speaker 1: because this is where it gets really interesting to me.
Speaker 1: Is a lot of this stuff in the next five minutes,
Speaker 1: namely namely their age. Did you know that lived this old? No, dude,
Speaker 1: twenty to sixty years and the oldest flamingo on record
Speaker 1: was eighty three years old. Yeah, his name was Greater.
Speaker 1: He was a greater flamingo and they named him Greater
Speaker 1: at the Adelaide Zoo. He showed up at the zoo
Speaker 1: in the thirties and he died in two thousand fourteen.
Speaker 1: And he was just this amazing resident. And apparently the
Speaker 1: Adelaide Zoo had like a flamingo encounter where their flamingos
Speaker 1: were able to mix with humans, and that turned out
Speaker 1: very badly. Four Greater in two thousand and eight because
Speaker 1: four scumbag teenagers beat him almost to death for no
Speaker 1: reason other than he was there. He was an animal.
Speaker 1: And I looked so hard to find out what happened
Speaker 1: to those teenagers, and all I could find was that
Speaker 1: they were charged no follow up whatsoever, which really makes
Speaker 1: me think that they were released to their parents custody
Speaker 1: and they've probably been torturing animals ever since. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: this one was really tough to read about. I don't
Speaker 1: need to say anything else about it. And it's disgusting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is disgusting. And know that Australians are like the
Speaker 1: opposite of that as people. I know, it's really surprising.
Speaker 1: Hopefully they got hit in the butt with a giant
Speaker 1: boot like on the Simpsons, or maybe they gave the
Speaker 1: old outback treatment. You know what I mean, A dingo
Speaker 1: ate my scumbag. See if you can find your my
Speaker 1: own boys. Uh, that's not of course I don't. I'm
Speaker 1: not supporting, like you know, killing teenagers in retribution. But
Speaker 1: also we're not supporting teenagers beating up animals and getting
Speaker 1: away with especially an elderly animal too. It wasn't even
Speaker 1: like a young animal. It was three well let's see,
Speaker 1: so he was in his seventies, mid se flamingo that
Speaker 1: they beat up. I didn't mean to spend this much
Speaker 1: time on it, but I am a little worked up
Speaker 1: about us. Still, no, no, no, I'm with you, man,
Speaker 1: it's it's awful. Um. Flamingos may want to travel occasionally.
Speaker 1: They're considered non migratory, but they will get out of
Speaker 1: dodge if they need to. Um, if they you know,
Speaker 1: if the food isn't good or whatever there, or the
Speaker 1: waters um too higher, too low, they'll they'll go to
Speaker 1: greener pastures. And they'll do so with um a plum.
Speaker 1: Because they can travel. Man. They like to travel at night.
Speaker 1: They like those red eye flights and they can go
Speaker 1: like three hundred to four hundred miles a night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they traveled between about thirty to forty miles per hour typically,
Speaker 1: so that's forty six kilo. That's pretty fast. Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: over ten straight hours, that's pretty impressive. But yeah, they
Speaker 1: typically like to stay where they are. It's just if
Speaker 1: the environment changes, they're like, all right, we're out of here,
Speaker 1: we gotta go find us a new alkaline flat. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What about the way they stand, because that's what really
Speaker 1: every time I've seen flamingos, and this is one of
Speaker 1: the main reasons I dug into this was why in
Speaker 1: the world did they stand there on one leg? Well,
Speaker 1: they thought for a long time it was to conserve
Speaker 1: body heat, which is another It must have come from
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century taxonomous don't get that that bony little
Speaker 1: leg and gonna conserve any heat. Um. But I guess
Speaker 1: they were like, well, there's no feathers or anything on it,
Speaker 1: so I guess it's a huge thing to lose heat.
Speaker 1: But there was more investigation that was like, no, actually,
Speaker 1: they have a really good system for conserving heat in
Speaker 1: their their bony little legs. Um, So that's not it.
Speaker 1: And they think probably it's just that it's more stable
Speaker 1: and possibly more comfortable for them to stand on one
Speaker 1: leg because they're able to lock the um the tendons
Speaker 1: and ligaments and muscles and joints and everything in the
Speaker 1: leg that they're standing on, and it's just like you're
Speaker 1: not you're not gonna fall over. Um. And then there's
Speaker 1: one other thing about this, chuck um. They have a knee.
Speaker 1: It's not what you think. It's not in the middle
Speaker 1: of their leg. That's not their knee. Their knee, which
Speaker 1: allows them to move forward and backward is um where
Speaker 1: they're where our hips are. It's up in their body
Speaker 1: about where our hips are. That's what their knee where
Speaker 1: their hips. I don't know. I saw that they have
Speaker 1: hips though that they do have hips. They're similar to
Speaker 1: other birds, but I don't know if that was a
Speaker 1: reference to their actual knee. Interesting. Yeah, you can tell
Speaker 1: they're locked in like when they're standing there, they're not.
Speaker 1: They're not swaying around Like put me on one leg
Speaker 1: for a little while and you're gonna see a little movement. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you are. They tell you not to like lock your
Speaker 1: knees um for very long because you can faint for
Speaker 1: some reason. We'll have to do a short stuff on
Speaker 1: that sometime for humans. Yes, well, well you're not flamingo
Speaker 1: esk in that respect, No, not at all. Uh. You
Speaker 1: mentioned their communities and this is just amazing. They their
Speaker 1: their colonies or their flamboyance, which is we did a
Speaker 1: whole episode on on those names. Um, a flamboyance of flamingoes.
Speaker 1: I've seen other places say a regiment or a flurry
Speaker 1: or a stand, but why would you not say a
Speaker 1: flamboyance of flamingo Don't know, I just just just lock
Speaker 1: that in like a ligament, that's right. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 1: I think there was a study that was done in
Speaker 1: that kind of uh looked at these groups and started
Speaker 1: to like actually pay attention to individual members of them,
Speaker 1: and found that like that, the the the groups have
Speaker 1: incredibly complex social relationships and interactions, and there's clicks within
Speaker 1: these larger groups, and um, some members will have enemies
Speaker 1: and um, this is actually something I liked about flamingos.
Speaker 1: They tend to be very peaceful. Like it's not one
Speaker 1: of those things where you like, oh, that beautiful pink
Speaker 1: bird likes to eat tear the heads off of lizards
Speaker 1: and beat up one another or something like that. They're
Speaker 1: actually super peaceful animals. They like to avoid their enemies.
Speaker 1: They don't. They're just kind of like, hey, man, relax,
Speaker 1: don't do it, you know when you want to get Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have friends, um, they and they also are serial monogamous,
Speaker 1: as we'll see. Yeah, they get together, uh for a
Speaker 1: mating season, and they typically change it up after that
Speaker 1: mating season and get a new partner, but they stick
Speaker 1: together through that mating season in and they will um,
Speaker 1: they will, they will co uh. I guess well, I
Speaker 1: guess we should talk about their breeding. They breed when
Speaker 1: they want to breed, which is kind of cool. It's
Speaker 1: not like a certain time of year or you know,
Speaker 1: any particular season. It's just got to be like the
Speaker 1: right spot, the right um circumstance, and then they get
Speaker 1: it on. And if you want to see some fun stuff,
Speaker 1: just go on an internet video player and just um
Speaker 1: check out Flamingo Mating Dance Ritual or something like that,
Speaker 1: and just watch all the beautiful myriad videos that are
Speaker 1: online from the BBC and other places of these huge
Speaker 1: groups of like hundreds and like you said, they can
Speaker 1: group in the millions. At least there was the hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands. But yes, I'm all thought there was a
Speaker 1: flamingo flock once that hit million and they were like,
Speaker 1: we did it a flock a flamboyance. I'm sorry, thank
Speaker 1: you for saving me from I sell uh. And they
Speaker 1: just you know, they move around and dance and if
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of um mating rituals include dance
Speaker 1: in the wild, but it's usually like a male dancing
Speaker 1: to attract the attention of the female. But in this case,
Speaker 1: they're both trying to impress one another. And the most
Speaker 1: um I guess prolific maters are the ones. They're about
Speaker 1: twenty years old, by the way, which is right in
Speaker 1: the wheelhouse, but they are the ones that have the
Speaker 1: most dance moves and the the best ability to switch
Speaker 1: between those moves. And it's really kind of cute, you know.
Speaker 1: It's like literally dancing and how impressive is your dance? Right?
Speaker 1: And it's it's it bears a strong resemblance to how
Speaker 1: humans mate, where like you're at a club and you're
Speaker 1: dancing together to see how you connect, and if it's
Speaker 1: just right, then you go off together and stay together
Speaker 1: for a year, right, And that's just like flamingos are, right,
Speaker 1: and back to that when they do finally get together,
Speaker 1: the both the male and the female UM will help
Speaker 1: nurture that egg and sit with that egg because it's
Speaker 1: only one egg. Um, the incubation period is pretty short,
Speaker 1: it's about a month, and so they they're really both
Speaker 1: involved in that process, which is kind of cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's remarkable actually, Um, some of those dance moves to
Speaker 1: there like stuff you'd expect, you know, like them flapping
Speaker 1: and bending their heads and sticking their tails up and stuff.
Speaker 1: But they also do huh, a lot of headwork, that's right, Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: so then that's what you would think with a flamingo.
Speaker 1: But they also have at least one move where they
Speaker 1: put like a wing point in one direction and the
Speaker 1: leg points in another, which very much brings to mind
Speaker 1: John Travolta on the cover Saturday Night Fever. And there's
Speaker 1: actually a name for that move. It's called the disco finger.
Speaker 1: So Flamingos do the disco finger. So if a flamboyance
Speaker 1: of Flamingos doing the disco finger isn't enough to make
Speaker 1: you love Flamingos, then there's something really wrong with you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's another bumper sticker. We've got batteries killed Flamingos and
Speaker 1: flamingos with the disco sticker for the exactly. Here's another
Speaker 1: kind of fun thing when it comes to mating season
Speaker 1: is the ladies will almost adorned makeup. Um. There is
Speaker 1: a gland on their tail which produces you know how
Speaker 1: they have that that that coloration. It produces a really
Speaker 1: rich version of that carrotinoid oil, and they will they
Speaker 1: will wipe it on their bills and on their wings
Speaker 1: as like like pretty in themselves up a little bit.
Speaker 1: And it gets even better because after they have made
Speaker 1: it there, after mating season, they stopped doing that. They're
Speaker 1: just like, I'm not gonna bother anymore. Just like humans, man,
Speaker 1: Flamingos are a lot and I think it's actually both
Speaker 1: um sexes that do that that makeup. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's just females. But yeah, they're they're just like whatever,
Speaker 1: we we already landed a eat? Was that just flamingo
Speaker 1: sexist a little bit? But that's okay, you didn't mean.
Speaker 1: There's also another remarkable thing about flamingos that they're part
Speaker 1: of just a small handful of birds that produced milk
Speaker 1: for their young. And you're like, whoa, that would make
Speaker 1: them mammals? Wrong? There's actually like pigeons, flamingos, and I
Speaker 1: don't remember the other one. There's maybe one or two
Speaker 1: more that produced milk and what this is called crop milk,
Speaker 1: and they produce it through um glands that line all
Speaker 1: along their digestive tract and it's full of that carotenoid
Speaker 1: um rich fatty rich um food. There's also a lot
Speaker 1: of red blood cells, which I suspect probably imparts to
Speaker 1: their young um like immunity to like disease and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And it's like really red um. So people
Speaker 1: are like, wow, that that flamingo is killing the other
Speaker 1: flamingo is dripping blood all over it. That's actually it's
Speaker 1: it's crop milk. And that's pretty cool because as Chuck,
Speaker 1: both sexes produced the crop milk in both sexes take
Speaker 1: turns not only caring for the chick but feeding the
Speaker 1: chick too. And Chuck, by the way, they only lay
Speaker 1: one egg at a time typically, so a couple, this
Speaker 1: monogamous couple will both be feeding their one kid milk
Speaker 1: at the same time. Well not at the same time probably,
Speaker 1: but you know, in the same rearing. How about that
Speaker 1: and both letting their appearance go. That's right. It's the
Speaker 1: same time, not wearing any makeup. They both look very tired. Uh.
Speaker 1: This Um, the parents care for this little chickie for
Speaker 1: about a week in the nest and then they kind
Speaker 1: of go to daycare almost uh. And that they go
Speaker 1: off with all the other little babies, and they're called
Speaker 1: crutches and there are a few adults sort of watching
Speaker 1: out like daycare workers. Uh. And then nine to thirteen
Speaker 1: weeks later, and we should say they're born um basically
Speaker 1: sort of kind of grayish white or brownish white. And
Speaker 1: then once they start, you know, eating all the stuff,
Speaker 1: then they get that pink hue. But nine to thirteen
Speaker 1: weeks is when they're gonna kind of, you know, get
Speaker 1: ready to go and beat full fledged flamingos. They can
Speaker 1: also perhaps form same sex couples, right like there there
Speaker 1: was a pair at the Denver Zoo, very very sweet. Uh,
Speaker 1: Freddie Mercury and Lance Bass. Uh. Lance was the Chilean flamingo.
Speaker 1: Freddie Mercury was an American flamingo and or say was
Speaker 1: I guess is I think they're still around, but sadly
Speaker 1: not together. They got together before the pandemic in twin
Speaker 1: and we're surrogate parents, basically for breeding couples that abandoned
Speaker 1: their eggs, and then apparently about a year later, after
Speaker 1: the pandemic hit, they said too much. I've had enough, right,
Speaker 1: but we'll part close friends. The human lance Bass is
Speaker 1: surely honored to have had a flamingo named after him
Speaker 1: that was in the same sex couple with the flamingo
Speaker 1: named after Freddie Mark Greek. Don't you think sure? He
Speaker 1: already has a fish named after him, m man, dad,
Speaker 1: we should take a break, Yeah, we said, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Stuff. You should know, all right, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we're back, and um. People have really enjoyed flamingos for
Speaker 1: a long time, a lot longer than than even just
Speaker 1: since we started appreciating flamingos, you and me. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: a few days ago. Way longer than that, like thousands
Speaker 1: of years longer than that. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: there's a cave painting from southern Spain that dates from
Speaker 1: seven thousand years before present that has a flamingo on.
Speaker 1: It's pretty much unmistakable. Yeah, I'll just look at the
Speaker 1: cave and they're the answers. They're an Egyptian art there,
Speaker 1: you know, since there has been kids books. They've been
Speaker 1: all over kids books because kids obviously are going to
Speaker 1: be fascinated by flamingoes because they're so striking. That's why
Speaker 1: there's one hanging on my daughter's wall. Although I don't
Speaker 1: think we have any flamingo books. Oh, you need to
Speaker 1: remedy that situation. But if someone hasn't written one about
Speaker 1: Freddie Mercury and Lance Bass and there's an opportunity they're waiting.
Speaker 1: I have two flamingo dads exactly. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: it probably would also not surprise you to learn that
Speaker 1: not too long ago in the nineteenth century, flamingoes were
Speaker 1: hunted and killed because the ladies had to have those
Speaker 1: lovely pink feathers in their hats. Um, they would eat flamingos. Um.
Speaker 1: It was a you know, if you go back to
Speaker 1: like ancient Rome, it was a um, a delicacy, and
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world too. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's just so just old timey again kind of
Speaker 1: dim humans like look at that pretty feather. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go kill that thing that has those pretty feathers, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna kill them so often that they're gonna just
Speaker 1: go extinct. So, Chuck, did you know this that they
Speaker 1: think at least the Caribbean ones probable that all flamingos
Speaker 1: are I'm just making that up, but at the least
Speaker 1: the Caribbean um flamingos seemed to hail from Florida. People
Speaker 1: consider them um native to like maybe the Bahamas or
Speaker 1: Cuba or somewhere else. Nope, they seem to have originated
Speaker 1: or be native to South Florida, specifically the Keys. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think that they were so overhunted. It was
Speaker 1: thought that they, like any flamingos in the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: were either just travelers who got you know, lost on
Speaker 1: the way to the Caribbean, or they were escaped captives. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so they tagged one. I think in the twenty
Speaker 1: tins there was a flamingo name Conky or Conchi, depending
Speaker 1: on how you say the word conk, conch. What do
Speaker 1: you say conky? Okay? I said Conky two. Uh. And
Speaker 1: they saw this swimmingo. I think they tagged it. It
Speaker 1: was near an airfield on Boca Chica Key oh Bosa,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. Oh. And they gave you the old
Speaker 1: satellite transmitter treatment on the leg. And then I said
Speaker 1: I'm sure this thing is going to go back to
Speaker 1: the Caribbean, and they said, no, this thing is actually
Speaker 1: sticking around and is permanent. So, like, I think that's
Speaker 1: whether they when they decided, hey, I think these these
Speaker 1: are not wayward travelers or captives that have escaped. I
Speaker 1: think they're Florida flamingos. Yeah, And they they said, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, it's possible that they are escaped ones
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of nineteenth century eroad tycoons
Speaker 1: that built like enormous estates for themselves and imported flamingos
Speaker 1: for those estates, because the local flamingos are all dead,
Speaker 1: and uh, scientists have said, like, it doesn't matter. We're
Speaker 1: just going to say this is the native population rebounding,
Speaker 1: and let's just call it that and stop asking questions.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. Now the flamingos are coming back and
Speaker 1: they're from Florida originally. That's right. And I think which
Speaker 1: one is actually increasing in population? The Caribbean and I
Speaker 1: believe the Greater are both increasing in population, if I'm
Speaker 1: not mistaken. Yeah, I think so. Which is great? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is great, it's Greater. Um, they're about twenty thousand.
Speaker 1: I heard that. By the way, they're about twenty thousand
Speaker 1: flamingos living in um. I say captivity. It is captivity,
Speaker 1: but the in in zoos basically, and uh, we have
Speaker 1: them here in our Atlanta zoo. You can go buy
Speaker 1: and visit them. I guess that counts. At this place
Speaker 1: in the Bahamas, they're like fifteen or twenty that they
Speaker 1: had probably wouldn't that many, maybe about a dozen. Um.
Speaker 1: But they have found that, you know, flamingos like to
Speaker 1: be in big, large groups when it comes to these
Speaker 1: mating rituals. They like, they like a lot of um choice,
Speaker 1: I think in their selective mates. And so they said,
Speaker 1: these smaller groups, they're not mating like they should. So
Speaker 1: at least one zoo in England, the well it's spelled Colchester.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's not pronounced that way. Um, it's probably
Speaker 1: Colster or something like that. Kolki. Yeah, the Kulki Zoo
Speaker 1: in England put up big, full length mirrors to trick
Speaker 1: them into thinking they were bigger groups, right, and it worked.
Speaker 1: They like to look at themselves too, apparently. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: I mean it gave them the illusion that there was
Speaker 1: way more flamingos than they all started to dance and
Speaker 1: get it on and sex with a mirror. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the flamingo population and captivity in England was saved. Uh
Speaker 1: oh really yeah, I'm just wrapping it up. Okay. They
Speaker 1: clip their wings generally when they're in zoos because they
Speaker 1: will fly away of worse. Uh And if they don't
Speaker 1: get on those wings enough and they they managed to
Speaker 1: sneak out a little more wings size, then they will
Speaker 1: fly away and they'll they'll go away and this zoo
Speaker 1: flamingo will be found many meaning miles away for years
Speaker 1: and years in a row and become little celebrities. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Apparently there was a ranger at the Great Salt Lake
Speaker 1: who reported a flamingo and was I apparently told or
Speaker 1: asked if there was an elephant with it, because there's
Speaker 1: just no flamingos at the at the Great Salt Lake.
Speaker 1: But this one named Pink Floyd escaped from the Tracy
Speaker 1: Aviary in Salt Lake City and was like, holy cow,
Speaker 1: a huge salt lake. This is exactly where I want
Speaker 1: to be. But sadly, um, I mean he basically lived
Speaker 1: there for the rest of his life, but he was alone. Um.
Speaker 1: So there was actually a group in Salt Lake City
Speaker 1: called the Friends of Floyd who wanted to import twenty
Speaker 1: five more flamingos, and the people running Great Salt Lake,
Speaker 1: I guess park where like this is a really bad idea.
Speaker 1: These are not a native species. We should not be
Speaker 1: importing them in the twenty century. We know better than
Speaker 1: doing that. Despite how a lone Floyd is. Yeah, good
Speaker 1: for them. Yeah, and I did mention eating them. They
Speaker 1: used to eat them in ancient Rome. Uh. There was
Speaker 1: a writer for Slate, Molly Olmstead, that was um shocked
Speaker 1: to find out about the number of Google searches for
Speaker 1: can you eat a Flamingo a few years ago, And
Speaker 1: she kind of chalked it up to people not necessarily
Speaker 1: thinking like, hey, I want to go eat a flamingo,
Speaker 1: but just reading about them and people thinking, well, they're birds.
Speaker 1: I'm curious to people eat them. Uh and not a
Speaker 1: genuine like um effort to eat a flamingo. No, but
Speaker 1: they definitely did eat them, apparently. Pliny the Elder wrote
Speaker 1: that they have the most exquisite flavor and um because
Speaker 1: they set the tongues specifically too. Oh yeah, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: that's right. The flamingo tongues and flamingo meat tongue is
Speaker 1: actually really good. Man, If you're gonna eat an animal,
Speaker 1: the tongue is not to be wasted. Typically, I don't
Speaker 1: like tongue. That's fine. I'm just telling you. If you've
Speaker 1: never tried it before, okay, and you don't like it,
Speaker 1: I don't like the consistency. Wait, hold on, let me
Speaker 1: do it. You what you don't like tongue? No, I
Speaker 1: don't think you should like wasted. I'm glad people eat
Speaker 1: it if they're gonna be eating an animal, but it's
Speaker 1: not for me. I understand. And yeah, I would never
Speaker 1: impress that on you. I appreciate that. But the meat
Speaker 1: of a flamingo probably has a really distinct taste, and
Speaker 1: that they have, you know, layers of fat because they're
Speaker 1: a water bird. Water birds have layers of fat like duck.
Speaker 1: Duck is delicious obviously in part because of its huge
Speaker 1: fat content, but then also they eat so much algae
Speaker 1: that they would have huge levels of Omega three, which
Speaker 1: could give them a fishy taste. Right, I think that's
Speaker 1: the deal. Two fishy a ducky fishy taste. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't eat duck either, so I don't know what a
Speaker 1: duck taste like, Oh, duck's really good too, is it? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's an eat anything I've spent time with. I understand
Speaker 1: that's hypocritical for people that out there that are vegan,
Speaker 1: So I get it. It's to me the email. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is, if you spend enough time with them,
Speaker 1: they'll let their guard down, and that's when you pounce.
Speaker 1: There's a Chinese restaurant actually called Pee King Gourmet in
Speaker 1: Falls Church, Virginia that makes it a whole roast duck
Speaker 1: and it is one of the best things you'll ever
Speaker 1: eat in your entire life. Okay, I think it's called
Speaker 1: Peking Gourmet. It might just be called Peeking Duck one
Speaker 1: of the two. But it's Rember of the Christmas story.
Speaker 1: I guess that's it. I mean we uh, I think
Speaker 1: we should direct people to our I get Was it
Speaker 1: a short stuff on the lawn ornaments? Yeah, yeah it was.
Speaker 1: We did a whole short stuff on pink flamingo lawn
Speaker 1: ornaments and it's a pretty cool story. So go seek
Speaker 1: that out, is what I say. Uh, And there really
Speaker 1: isn't anything else. And since Chuck said go seek that out,
Speaker 1: of course everybody do. That means it's time for a listener, Mayo. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this sort of Laurn mystery solved. You
Speaker 1: know the story of when I adopted my um my
Speaker 1: buddy Lauren, who was no longer with this. He had
Speaker 1: a silver back and that's when Tim Curry referred to
Speaker 1: him as looking like a baboon. Right, So this is
Speaker 1: solved by Sarah Patton. I think, uh nice things that
Speaker 1: Sarah has to say about the show and Tim Curry.
Speaker 1: And then that's Chuck mentioned that his silver back eventually
Speaker 1: disappeared and it maybe think it could have been a
Speaker 1: fever coat prior to birth. The kitten's coat is very
Speaker 1: sensitive to heat, but MoMA cat has a fever during
Speaker 1: pregnancy from an illness or prolonged stress could potentially affect
Speaker 1: the pigments in her. Kittens spur. So a fever coat
Speaker 1: is typically great or silver, and then it resolves when
Speaker 1: it kittens around four months old, although it can take
Speaker 1: up to a year. Even though the kittens pigment um
Speaker 1: didn't fully develop while they were in the womb, there
Speaker 1: coat is still written in their d n A. There's
Speaker 1: no negative implications for our the kitten's future overall health
Speaker 1: just a fun quirk when you're young. Wow, like when
Speaker 1: you're born with a vestigial tail and it falls off
Speaker 1: at age two. I guess so so that I think
Speaker 1: that solves the mystery. Um. This is from Sarah Patton
Speaker 1: and Sarah's Greyton knows a lot about cat and cat
Speaker 1: rescue and is doing a lot of good work in
Speaker 1: that realm awesome. Thanks a lot, Sarah. That is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: You put that mystery to rest and we thank you
Speaker 1: for it. How do you feel good now that it's
Speaker 1: it's salved I love it. I need to tell Emily
Speaker 1: about the Fever Coach school. Well, if you want to
Speaker 1: be like Sarah and put some mystery to rest, we
Speaker 1: love that kind of stuff. You can do it in
Speaker 1: an email. Send it to stuff podcast at iHeart radio
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
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