Speaker 1: Oky do keep. Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied
Speaker 1: psychology and evolutionary biology. And wow, it is cold out there.
Speaker 1: It is chilly. We like to snuggle and sweaters. I
Speaker 1: have a cold right now, so I am in a
Speaker 1: big fluffy sweater. I've been huddling under the blankets drinking tea.
Speaker 1: But you know what, what do animals do to stay
Speaker 1: warm in the winter. We're talking from the tiny bee
Speaker 1: to bigger animals, ones that are no longer around. The
Speaker 1: most wonderful thing of the year, which is round birds.
Speaker 1: Why are they so round? So we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about all the ways in which animals stay warm in
Speaker 1: the winter. Discover this and more as we answer the
Speaker 1: angel question do you want to be in a bee
Speaker 1: mosh pit? Joining me today is co host of Daniel
Speaker 1: and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe, adjunct professor of biology at Rice University,
Speaker 1: and co author of A City on Mars, Kelly Wiedersmith.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited
Speaker 2: to be here.
Speaker 1: So where where are you Rice University?
Speaker 2: Where is that? So that's in Houston? Texas, but I
Speaker 2: actually live in Charlottesville, Virginia. Oh okay, yeah, and it's
Speaker 2: pretty warm here, but it was really cold the other day.
Speaker 2: Like as soon as it's below freezing, I'm like, no.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I have heard that, Like, I mean they've
Speaker 1: they've there have been some wild weather in Houston, because
Speaker 1: usually it's pretty mild and then you get these like
Speaker 1: incredible cold snaps. So so Charlottesville is getting pretty cold,
Speaker 1: I would imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's getting pretty cold. It's it's a time
Speaker 2: of year where you go out to take care of
Speaker 2: the animals and you gotta dump the ice out of
Speaker 2: the bucket first, which is in the rear end.
Speaker 1: Oh you got you got outdoor animals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got some chickens. We're looking into goats.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're you're sort of exploring the goats. You're setting
Speaker 1: up an exploratory committee to sort of see your options
Speaker 1: fees of goats. I get that.
Speaker 2: We've been visiting the local farms. We're trying to find
Speaker 2: out which ones are most likely to like ram into
Speaker 2: you and knock your kids over.
Speaker 1: And you get those and you get those ones.
Speaker 2: They're the funniest. Yeah, So I mean it seems like
Speaker 2: a good option.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. Yeah, I am. I'm lucky enough to only
Speaker 1: have indoor animals, and they all seek me out for warmth. No,
Speaker 1: it's not about love, it's not about affection. It's about wow,
Speaker 1: your lap is warm, let us join you. Particularly the cats.
Speaker 1: I think the dog is kind of like, she likes
Speaker 1: to cuddle, she likes to get cozy. For the cats,
Speaker 1: they see me as a warm object to heat them
Speaker 1: throughout the winter.
Speaker 2: And you know what, I'm fine with that, Like, it's
Speaker 2: totally cd with being a warm lap. As long as
Speaker 2: I get animal snuggles, I'm hotly on board.
Speaker 1: It warms my lap as well. So we're we're both
Speaker 1: we're working together, we're getting we're scratching each other's back,
Speaker 1: sometimes a little too literally. So yeah, today we are
Speaker 1: talking about how animals stay warm in the winter, and
Speaker 1: these are animals where when you think about it, it's
Speaker 1: I mean, with some of them it makes a little
Speaker 1: more sense, but with some of them it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of a question of like, wait, how do these guys
Speaker 1: survive winter? And one of the ones that always comes
Speaker 1: to mind is like insects, right, because they're so fragile
Speaker 1: and they're so it's like, man, these guys, it does
Speaker 1: not seem like they would do very well in the winter,
Speaker 1: particularly some of the cutest insects, my favorite ones, uh
Speaker 1: European honey bees. When I think of honey bees, they
Speaker 1: just they do not It's not even with bumble bees, right,
Speaker 1: I think, like, well, maybe bumble bees have a chance. Right,
Speaker 1: they're chunky, they've got that little striped sweater, but with
Speaker 1: like a with a sweet little honey bee and thing,
Speaker 1: what's going on with you? You're gonna be a little honeysickle.
Speaker 2: Well they can like so I was reading about how
Speaker 2: honey is made the other day and it was made
Speaker 2: in like a way grosser way than I had realized.
Speaker 2: And I still love honey Like it involves throwing things
Speaker 2: up and increasing the surface area. Yeah yeah, but I
Speaker 2: think part of how they do it is they like
Speaker 2: generate heat by like in their wings really fast, right
Speaker 2: to absolutely, and that's got to help them in the winter,
Speaker 2: maybe I'm.
Speaker 1: Guessing, yes, absolutely, so this is exactly right. This is
Speaker 1: something that you can also read more about if you
Speaker 1: want to, in the book Piping hot Bees and Boisterous
Speaker 1: buzz Runners, which is a great title by Thomas D. Seely. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: bees do have a remarkable ability to jiggle and wiggle
Speaker 1: their bodies, and they do so many things with those
Speaker 1: sorts of muscle vibrations, those undulations, they communicate, they can
Speaker 1: ward off threats. European honeybees may not be so adept
Speaker 1: at this, but there are species of Asian bees that
Speaker 1: are able to to vibrate in order to actually boil
Speaker 1: intruders alive. They reach such yeah, they reach such high temperatures.
Speaker 1: It's a strategy against the predator. The the do you
Speaker 1: remember that whole scare we had about the killer giant
Speaker 1: killer Asian hornets. Yeah, like in their in their natural habitats, right,
Speaker 1: there are bees that have co evolved with them, and
Speaker 1: they've learned this strategy of like vibrating, the creating this
Speaker 1: bee ball and then vibrating and basically boiling this intruder alive.
Speaker 1: And the reason that these hornets are so dangerous to
Speaker 1: bees in the US is just that these bees haven't
Speaker 1: co evolved with them, so they don't have that strategy.
Speaker 1: But European honey bees do have a great strategy to
Speaker 1: survive in the winter, and that is to huddle together
Speaker 1: and to vibrate for warmth, so a swarm will form
Speaker 1: around the queen and undulate their wing muscles to generate warmth.
Speaker 1: So the queen is she's a lucky gal. She gets
Speaker 1: to be right in the center, so she's in the
Speaker 1: warmest spot to keep being kept toasted, which serves a purpose.
Speaker 1: It's not just about paying leeves to their highness. Because
Speaker 1: she has to bear young, her body is the most
Speaker 1: vulnerable to winter stress, so keeping her really nice and
Speaker 1: warm and toast is helping to ensure the survival of
Speaker 1: the brood. But yeah, even the workers though. This is
Speaker 1: something that's interesting is that the workers on the outermost
Speaker 1: fringe they still generally survive this and they reach up
Speaker 1: to temperatures of around fifty degrees fahrenheit. So that's not bad.
Speaker 1: That's really not bad.
Speaker 2: Do they have a rotation system where like the outside
Speaker 2: ones get to go to the I mean, not as
Speaker 2: inside as the queen, but like a little bit inside
Speaker 2: every once in a while they do.
Speaker 1: It's not as much of an organized like let's make
Speaker 1: sure that everyone gets a chance in the center. A
Speaker 1: lot of it's going to be depend on the current
Speaker 1: roles of the worker bees. So worker bees are basically
Speaker 1: for a lot of like these sort of use social honeybees.
Speaker 1: Species like the worker bees will as they grow they
Speaker 1: kind of take on different roles throughout their lives. So
Speaker 1: there may be some that are more likely to be
Speaker 1: tending to the queen right, and so they're going to
Speaker 1: be closer to the center. But there are these sort
Speaker 1: of fluctuations in terms of like how dense and how
Speaker 1: crowded together they are, so as the temperature changes, they
Speaker 1: change how closely knit they are or how spread out
Speaker 1: they are. And they also alternate like how intense their
Speaker 1: wing beats are, so they dynamically respond to temperature changes
Speaker 1: in order to keep pretty much everyone warm at a
Speaker 1: reasonable temperature, but especially keeping that queen safe and warm
Speaker 1: because she is the most vulnerable in terms of she
Speaker 1: has the highest sort of energy caloric requirements of all
Speaker 1: of the bees. Got it.
Speaker 2: I thought it was going to be like if you're
Speaker 2: on the end, that's sort of the colonies way of
Speaker 2: saying sorry, Joe, you're moving towards being expendable, or that
Speaker 2: they're all girls at that stage.
Speaker 1: They are all girls, yes, so there may be a
Speaker 1: few there may there may be a few male drones
Speaker 1: in the hive, and male drones do sometimes. Actually, you know,
Speaker 1: this is one case in which males are useful. Sorry guys,
Speaker 1: the one case they do actually help warm hives in
Speaker 1: the winter by vibrating their body. So there will be
Speaker 1: a few males, but it is the gender dynamic is
Speaker 1: very skewed, heavily female worker. So yeah, they it is
Speaker 1: together they can warm this whole hive. They all pretty
Speaker 1: much are able to survive this unless they are in
Speaker 1: some kind of incredibly extreme cold snap. They also, in
Speaker 1: preparation for the winter, will cluck pounds and pounds and pounds,
Speaker 1: tens of pounds of honey so that they can survive
Speaker 1: over the winter. Is classic chipmunk strategy, right, Like, they're
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to be getting a lot of nectar,
Speaker 1: not going to be able to produce a lot of honey.
Speaker 1: So right before winter they gear up, they store a
Speaker 1: bunch of honey, and then they're they're set for the winter,
Speaker 1: and so all they need to really focus on is
Speaker 1: staying warm and consuming calories, which is what I.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot more ice cream lately. I get it.
Speaker 2: I'm prepared too.
Speaker 1: Now exactly, I just I do. I do love that
Speaker 1: essentially the bee's strategy is uh, strategic cuddling, which I do,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's I it does feel like you know,
Speaker 1: we often will see say like the bee as this
Speaker 1: very robotic kind of it is part of the strict society.
Speaker 1: It's like a tiny robot. But they do strategic cuddling.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty pretty great.
Speaker 2: But it's not. It's like high movement cuddling like I
Speaker 2: feel like when I snuggle with my kids at night. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they just like will not stop rotating and moving around.
Speaker 2: And now, instead of being frustrated, I'm gonna be like, oh,
Speaker 2: they're trying to keep me warm.
Speaker 1: They're they're keeping the queen warm.
Speaker 2: That's right, exactly, Yes, I'll thank them instead of feeling
Speaker 2: a little frustrated.
Speaker 1: So, you know what, you did mention this idea that
Speaker 1: maybe the ones on the like outer perimeter, the ones
Speaker 1: that don't get as warm, maybe they're sort of on
Speaker 1: the fringes of society. It's a very interesting idea, and
Speaker 1: that does come into play when we talk about snow monkeys.
Speaker 1: So you have have you seen and or heard of
Speaker 1: snow monkeys? I'm fairly certain you must have seen at
Speaker 1: some point these adorable little guys.
Speaker 2: Are are they the ones that also go in the
Speaker 2: like hot springs?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, absolutely, they are Japanese macaques. Technically we call
Speaker 1: them snow monkeys because a lot of them. They live
Speaker 1: all over Japan and various habitats, but often they do
Speaker 1: live in areas where during the winter it gets cold
Speaker 1: and it snows, and they are very famous for this
Speaker 1: hot springs habit which is mostly in the Jigoku Dani
Speaker 1: Monkey Park in Japan, and they have these They have
Speaker 1: both naturally occurring as and also man made hot springs.
Speaker 1: They actually made an entire hot spring just for these monkeys.
Speaker 1: And yes, because the monkeys were had already figured out
Speaker 1: how to use hot springs. It's like, look, we got
Speaker 1: to make a monkey hot spring.
Speaker 2: So okay, people, I'm torn between thinking like, oh, I'd
Speaker 2: love to go visit and jump in the hot springs
Speaker 2: with the monkeys. But one probably about because the monkeys
Speaker 2: don't want you there too. They're probably pooping in that water,
Speaker 2: aren't they.
Speaker 1: They are, So number two is most definitely like probably
Speaker 1: correct number one. Actually, people do go and visit. Now,
Speaker 1: you're not going to want to be in the water
Speaker 1: with the monkeys, right, but people do go and visit
Speaker 1: them to simply watch them admire them, and they actually
Speaker 1: tolerate human visitors pretty well, which is rather surprising. But
Speaker 1: it seems that there's perhaps like a culture there of
Speaker 1: giving the monkeys some space, so they've learned to tolerate
Speaker 1: human visitors. So and interestingly, it's not like these monkeys
Speaker 1: are just completely chill, sort of like Cappy barras where
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, you get it, why kaby bars let
Speaker 1: you watch them? Because kabby bars just are completely chill.
Speaker 1: Some monkeys as cute as they are, as adorable as
Speaker 1: this Spa habit is, they do have a very strict
Speaker 1: social hierarchy, so they have a matrilineal dominance hierarchy. It
Speaker 1: is a system in which you will have a matriarch
Speaker 1: who is the dominant female who basically controls a territory
Speaker 1: a group of females and males are a little more fluid,
Speaker 1: so males will have their own dominance hierarchy, but it's
Speaker 1: much more fluid. It's much more changeable because the males,
Speaker 1: once they reach a certain age, they have to go
Speaker 1: out and disperse to another group. So what happens is
Speaker 1: you have this solid core of females with a hierarchy
Speaker 1: that stays relatively stable, and you have males who come
Speaker 1: and go and they kind of form a little bit
Speaker 1: of a looser knit hierarchy, but there's still usually like
Speaker 1: a dominant male. But yeah, that female power structure is
Speaker 1: much more I would say institutional. It's like a monkey institution.
Speaker 1: And you will have sometimes the daughter will take over
Speaker 1: the family business and become the matriarch, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: always happen. You might have a young upstart who comes
Speaker 1: up and then becomes the new monkey matriarch. There was
Speaker 1: a recent shakeup where there was a one of these
Speaker 1: young monkeys before her mom even retires, she took over.
Speaker 1: She took the company away from her mother. And yeah, family,
Speaker 1: it's just it's like that one show had cheered in
Speaker 1: cocaine in it. What was that? You know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about? Business?
Speaker 2: I don't think I don't family too close.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sad angry business people show is what I'm calling it. Succession,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's the one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't seen that.
Speaker 1: I'm not good at TV. I haven't seen it either.
Speaker 1: I just know I watched a couple episodes and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a sad, angry, rich family show. Not really interested,
Speaker 1: but I get it. It's it's television. But anyways, if
Speaker 1: that was done but with snow monkeys, I would absolutely
Speaker 1: watch it. Oh absolutely, So yeah, so these females form
Speaker 1: these stable matrilineal groups. Uh, and they have this rigorous
Speaker 1: dominant structure and this also comes into play for spa time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so the the dominant female and her immediate
Speaker 1: can get priority when it comes to the hot springs
Speaker 1: if you have curried favor with her, perhaps like you're
Speaker 1: a male that she's mating with. They don't form lifelong
Speaker 1: monogamous pair bonds, but they do form like seasonal monogamy,
Speaker 1: so they'll for a mating season at a time, maybe
Speaker 1: formal paaramond. But she will groom others. She teaches her
Speaker 1: daughters how to groom, so like mothers will teach their
Speaker 1: daughters these grooming techniques and they groom each other. But
Speaker 1: it's very clique. These are kind of this is like
Speaker 1: a high school click that lasts their entire lives.
Speaker 2: This would be great as a reality TV show. I
Speaker 2: think they'd have a really easy time with it. And
Speaker 2: so is like if you're on top, does that mean
Speaker 2: that you get the like warmest spot or you stay
Speaker 2: in for longer, Like what do you get if you're
Speaker 2: the queen of this group?
Speaker 1: Yes, all of the above. So there is limited space
Speaker 1: in these hot springs. And so if you're the dominant
Speaker 1: female and that dominant female's family and the dominant females friends,
Speaker 1: you do get access to the hot springs more often,
Speaker 1: you get the premium spots, and you also may get
Speaker 1: the only spots. So sometimes if you are kind of
Speaker 1: on the periphery of society, you are the proletariat, the
Speaker 1: monkey proletariat, you don't actually get that spa time. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so it is it is not. This is not a
Speaker 1: utopian monkey society. Unfortunately, not everyone is treated equally. These
Speaker 1: other monkeys.
Speaker 2: Do they die sometimes if they don't get their spot
Speaker 2: in the water, do they freez.
Speaker 1: So they it is less good for them. So there's
Speaker 1: actual health benefits for these these hot springs. There have
Speaker 1: been studies on the monkey poop, because you always gotta
Speaker 1: do the monkey poop, but when they want to Whenever
Speaker 1: you see a study that's like about stress hormones and
Speaker 1: wild animals, nine out of ten times it's going to
Speaker 1: be that scientists are picking through poop looking for a
Speaker 1: stress hormones.
Speaker 2: So informative that poop. There's parasites in there too. There's
Speaker 2: so much you can learn.
Speaker 1: There's so much you can learn. In fact, in zoos,
Speaker 1: sometimes they will do color coding for poop, maybe put
Speaker 1: like glitter or some kind of color in the poop
Speaker 1: so that like something that's harmless to the animal, so
Speaker 1: that when they are trying to test various like you
Speaker 1: know this, here's this group and this group that we're
Speaker 1: doing various things like with research or medical studies in
Speaker 1: terms of like in terms of the animal's health, like
Speaker 1: like usually for zoos, it'll be like, we have to
Speaker 1: treat this giraffe for this stomach issue, so we're also
Speaker 1: going to test their poop, because why not, We're already
Speaker 1: we're already dealing with giraffe diarrhea. You might as well
Speaker 1: make giraffe diarrhea made out of giraffe diarrhea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, I mean I would definitely want the glitter
Speaker 2: poop if they were like, yes, you know what, except
Speaker 2: but I think if you're doing like a fecal float,
Speaker 2: you're trying to find the like parasite eggs. I would
Speaker 2: get really annoyed with all of the glitter, like in.
Speaker 1: The cunder your microscope blinding out. So yeah, So they
Speaker 1: looked at the feces of these monkeys and they found
Speaker 1: lower amounts of stress hormones stress proteins that indicate that
Speaker 1: these baths do have a material benefit for them in
Speaker 1: terms of lowering stress. I read this very interesting summary
Speaker 1: of it where it was saying that, well, the alpha female,
Speaker 1: who has the hardest job thus needs this more than
Speaker 1: the lower ranking females, And it's like, is that why?
Speaker 1: I feel like that was written by the alpha female?
Speaker 1: Like this this study summary was like written by the
Speaker 1: alpha female, Like yeah, I need it because I boss
Speaker 1: bay way too hard, so I'm always stressed, so I
Speaker 1: need it. I need it.
Speaker 2: The CEOs who are like, oh, sor I need five
Speaker 2: times the pay that you get, Yeah, just exactly how
Speaker 2: else am I going to make this job worth it? Exactly?
Speaker 2: How do you tease a part Like you know, if
Speaker 2: you are at the top of the hierarchy, or you
Speaker 2: are your hormones low because you get more time in
Speaker 2: the hot tub, or is it low because you know
Speaker 2: that you're in a good position and someone's cleaning off
Speaker 2: your parasites. You don't have to stress out about that.
Speaker 2: It seems like it would be hard to disentangle time
Speaker 2: in the tub from all the other benefits of being
Speaker 2: at the top of the hierarchy.
Speaker 1: That's a very good question. These are often issues with
Speaker 1: observational studies in animals because it's really hard, like especially
Speaker 1: so you have wild animals, you can't necessarily do a
Speaker 1: control group. So these are like observational studies. I believe
Speaker 1: what they did was they sort of tried to track
Speaker 1: it with the amount of observable time that a monkey
Speaker 1: is spent in the hot springs. Now that doesn't completely
Speaker 1: satisfy your study design question because a monkey who's in
Speaker 1: the spaw war you're right, maybe actually getting more access
Speaker 1: to grooming as well. So that's a tricky thing to
Speaker 1: tease apart. I think that they tried to, you know, essentially,
Speaker 1: they tried to separate observations of like grooming from like
Speaker 1: spa time and tried to make that separation. But it's
Speaker 1: true that those are confounding factors, and it's one of
Speaker 1: the difficulties with these studies that look into the natural
Speaker 1: behaviors of animals. But then if you try to do
Speaker 1: a controlled study in a laboratory environment, you have sort
Speaker 1: of another problem, which is that these are this is
Speaker 1: not capturing natural behavior. You're capturing the behavior of an
Speaker 1: animal in a lab. So it can be a little tricky.
Speaker 2: Sometimes ecology use a huge pain in the ass's but
Speaker 2: it's fascinating, but a real pain, very.
Speaker 1: Interesting, very much a pain. But yeah, they absolutely do
Speaker 1: seem to at the very least really enjoy these hot springs.
Speaker 1: It does warm them up. Your earlier question was like,
Speaker 1: could these other monkeys freeze to death? They could. They
Speaker 1: do also have really fluffy, furry coats, so those also
Speaker 1: keep them warm. Generally speaking, just because they're missing out
Speaker 1: on spa time doesn't necessarily doom them to die. But
Speaker 1: in a really harsh winter where resources are really scarce,
Speaker 1: if the temperatures drop way too low, they don't have
Speaker 1: enough food, yeah, that could absolutely make the difference, right,
Speaker 1: And that's sort of the that is the tricky part
Speaker 1: of this evolution where you have the this incentive for
Speaker 1: these this alpha structure of like we want to pass
Speaker 1: on our genes, we want to give our offspring the
Speaker 1: best opportunities, so it's sort of this dominance hierarchy. And
Speaker 1: it's so interesting when you see it in animals who
Speaker 1: are not you social right, so u sociality. You have
Speaker 1: this like basically physiological hierarchy that is enforced genetically and physically,
Speaker 1: and you see it in bees. You actually also see
Speaker 1: it in animals like meerkats. But this is kind of
Speaker 1: this is not quite you sociality you have it. It
Speaker 1: goes from the that one extreme of like bees, where
Speaker 1: you have like a queen and you have workers and
Speaker 1: you have this like genetically enforced social hierarchy with these
Speaker 1: well defined roles, to something a little more flexible, so
Speaker 1: like a young, upstart monkey can take over the troop
Speaker 1: and kick out the dominant. It's just a lot harder
Speaker 1: when you don't have the resources, when you essentially grow
Speaker 1: up poor as a monkey, and you don't get as
Speaker 1: much food and you don't get as much time in
Speaker 1: the spa. You know, monkey inequality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, not cool. Not cool. So there was a
Speaker 2: I seem to remember a long time ago, like Jane
Speaker 2: Goodall got a little bit of flack for putting out
Speaker 2: like food while she was watching the chimpanzees, and it
Speaker 2: like started a war yea. Did adding whoops? Did adding
Speaker 2: another hot spring change the like dynamics because now maybe
Speaker 2: there's enough hot springs to go around, so they don't
Speaker 2: have like the hierarchy doesn't matter anymore because everybody can
Speaker 2: get in the spa.
Speaker 1: It's a really good question. That's a super good question.
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that, but I can
Speaker 1: tell you that there have been ships and monkey cultures
Speaker 1: where it's there's something that seems like, ah, this is
Speaker 1: just the general behavior of this monkey that that must
Speaker 1: be must have been since you know, they evolved and
Speaker 1: like continues and it's not necessarily a culture, it's just
Speaker 1: this instinctive trait and then it turns out that's wrong.
Speaker 1: So this this was the case for I believe babboons
Speaker 1: where there was an outbreak of a disease. They're eating
Speaker 1: tainted meat at a dumpster, and the this was a
Speaker 1: male dominated society, so you had these male baboons that
Speaker 1: were dominant over the females and over weaker males, and
Speaker 1: they were very violent, very aggressive, and they would do
Speaker 1: kind of like have enforced this strict hierarchy, and so
Speaker 1: they were able to go and feed at these food
Speaker 1: dumps and eat all of this meat. And so they
Speaker 1: ate this tainted meat that had a bacterial infection, and
Speaker 1: so they got infected and they died off. And so
Speaker 1: the females and the less dominant males survived because they
Speaker 1: weren't given a seat at the table at these dumps.
Speaker 1: And so what you saw is this reorganization of society
Speaker 1: where the females started to enforce a less aggressive society.
Speaker 1: They would punish males who would start to be too aggressive,
Speaker 1: and so you got a much less both them. Females
Speaker 1: and the less dominant males would force this sort of
Speaker 1: more I wouldn't necessarily call it egalitarian. There was still
Speaker 1: a hierarchy structure, but it was a lot more calm, gentle,
Speaker 1: less aggressive. A lot of conflicts were settled by grooming
Speaker 1: rather than fighting, and females seemed to enforce this and
Speaker 1: teach this to males. And what was really interesting was
Speaker 1: males that left their old troops and came to disperse
Speaker 1: right and came to this new one then learned right.
Speaker 1: So it was an effect that didn't go away. It persisted.
Speaker 1: So in terms of your question, I don't know specifically
Speaker 1: if adding more hot springs had a change in this
Speaker 1: monkey society, but I would say that that is definitely possible.
Speaker 1: You do see as resources and population shift, especially in
Speaker 1: intelligent animals like primates, you do actually see cultural shifts,
Speaker 1: which is really interesting.
Speaker 2: That is Yeah, that Baboon story is amazing. It almost
Speaker 2: gives me like hope for the future, although you like,
Speaker 2: I don't want a catastrophic mortality of all the people
Speaker 2: in charge, but.
Speaker 1: Like it's felas. We're not gonna go around poisoning me.
Speaker 1: It's okay, calm down.
Speaker 2: Sorry, Yeah, we're good. We're good. But but I like
Speaker 2: the idea that you know, things can change over time
Speaker 2: and that these cultural improvements can persist. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Also cool is that snow monkeys do roll snowballs,
Speaker 1: which I love.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Oh that does the hierarchy influence? Like what
Speaker 2: direction they throw the snowballs? Ah, hit the queen?
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, you know what. I I don't know that
Speaker 1: for a fact, but I bet that youngsters are probably
Speaker 1: gonna get pretty punished severely if they hit the queen,
Speaker 1: hit the matriarch with a snowball. I think it's mostly juveniles, uh,
Speaker 1: messing around with each other. I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: they get into too many monkey snowball fights. But they
Speaker 1: love rolling the snowball. They enjoy just like, this is fun,
Speaker 1: This is cool. I'm making a snowball and then maybe
Speaker 1: the juveniles kind of smack each other with it. That
Speaker 1: sounds like something they would do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, irresistible. Like I love the idea of little monkey snowmen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that would be so cute. You see a
Speaker 1: little just just and then there's like a piece of
Speaker 1: poop shoved in it because they're monkeys.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, they'd have to do that. Yeppold do that too,
Speaker 2: if we let them, if we let them, which you
Speaker 2: know it just don't don't eat the yellow snow folks.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we get back, we are gonna talk about really interesting story.
Speaker 1: This is an animal who it is a surprise that
Speaker 1: we now know more about. All right, So this story
Speaker 1: is it's a little less I mean, I have mixed
Speaker 1: feelings about it because it does involve a very very
Speaker 1: very old dead kitten. So I'm just gonna yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go there right at the top. But this is
Speaker 1: a saber toothed tiger kitten. Specifically, this is Homotherium and
Speaker 1: this was a This is an incredible find that I
Speaker 1: think was found in twenty twenty. It was a three
Speaker 1: week old mummified extinct Homothereum kitten which had its fur
Speaker 1: and its flesh and part of its skeleton in place. Shockingly,
Speaker 1: it actually this this sounds a little bit morbid, but
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of cute, Like it's it's it's sad.
Speaker 1: It's kind of morbid and sad, but it's not grotesque looking,
Speaker 1: like it's not super messed up looking. It looks a
Speaker 1: little bit cute, like it has kind of a cute face.
Speaker 1: It's like shockingly well preserved.
Speaker 2: I have a broad range of things I'm able to
Speaker 2: consider cute, Like there are cute parasites. I think blobfish
Speaker 2: are cute. I can imagine a cute preserved Yeah, fabertooth cat.
Speaker 1: Look, it's it's spooky. Uh, it's probably haunted, but it
Speaker 1: is also really cute. So there were many different species
Speaker 1: of home Ethereum. It's genus of these uh, sabertoothed tigers,
Speaker 1: and they're different genuses of sabertooth tigers. So this was
Speaker 1: this was one found in Siberia. There were also a
Speaker 1: home ethereum in North America, and in North America they
Speaker 1: were thought to have gone extinct around twelve thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: while those in Europe. The fossil record there is a
Speaker 1: little older, so around thirty thousand years ago. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean necessarily that that's when they went to extinct. North
Speaker 1: America has some different manners in which these these fossil
Speaker 1: records were preserved, such as like tarpits, incredible Librea tarpits
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. You get a lot of amazingly preserved
Speaker 1: bones and so you're able to build particially a more
Speaker 1: complete fossil record, whereas it may be a little more
Speaker 1: difficult in Europe. So it's it's just it's hard to say,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, this Honotheroeum kitten was found in.
Speaker 2: Siberia and it's ever been good to live in Siberia.
Speaker 1: It's tricky, but yeah, it's remarkably intact, kind of cute
Speaker 1: and a grim way has this soft, fluffy, sort of
Speaker 1: reddish brown fur. Now, the color, it's hard to make
Speaker 1: a definite determination about the color. Some of the research
Speaker 1: speculate there may have been some loss of the color
Speaker 1: over time. One of the reasons they suspect that is
Speaker 1: that the kitten doesn't have spots, and usually kittens will
Speaker 1: have spots some kind of like disruptive coloration in terms
Speaker 1: of camouflage. This doesn't have it could mean it didn't
Speaker 1: have it, or it could mean that this coat has
Speaker 1: degraded over the tens of thousands of years that it's
Speaker 1: been frozen.
Speaker 2: Would let it haunt me? Though it sounds super cute.
Speaker 1: It's super cute. There is so not to get too gruesome.
Speaker 1: There is only about half of it left, but it is.
Speaker 1: It's the cute half. It's the it's the front half,
Speaker 1: not the butt half.
Speaker 2: So that's preferable.
Speaker 1: Yes, look, we would both have failed that that one test.
Speaker 1: That guy who's like, ah, you want you want to
Speaker 1: chop this kitten in half, It's like, sure, give me
Speaker 1: the cute half.
Speaker 2: Uh. It was that keep us out of biblical stories?
Speaker 1: It King Solomon, King Solomon, that's right, Yeah, yeah. So
Speaker 1: the kitten had some interesting features that researchers were able
Speaker 1: to kind of build a more complete picture of these
Speaker 1: the species. Now, obviously, because it's a kitten, a lot
Speaker 1: of its juvenile traits are not going to carry over
Speaker 1: as adults. In a lot of this is kind of
Speaker 1: giesswork and how this might have matured over time. But
Speaker 1: what they did have is they seem to have some
Speaker 1: evidence that they might eventually have had side burns. They
Speaker 1: have these cute little huffs on their chin, adorable, I know.
Speaker 1: And their upper lips were actually longer than the they
Speaker 1: like compared it to a three week old lion cub
Speaker 1: and looked at these morphological differences. The upper lips were
Speaker 1: longer and so their fangs hadn't grown in all the
Speaker 1: way yet because it was a kitten. But because of
Speaker 1: that longer lip, it speculated that there's like warring theories
Speaker 1: of like did they have the fangs out uncovered as
Speaker 1: we kind of imagine like when you see a lot
Speaker 1: of illustrations of saber toothed tigers, the various species, they've
Speaker 1: just got these giant things right out, and a lot
Speaker 1: of evolutionary biologists think that might be wrong, a lot
Speaker 1: of paleontologists because it's like, well, because you're not protect
Speaker 1: like if you have that tooth exposed and that gum
Speaker 1: line exposed, that's gonna be a little more dangerous in
Speaker 1: terms of infection. You're gonna get stuff in it. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit potentially tricky there. So there's another theory
Speaker 1: that maybe they covered it with skin. And so the
Speaker 1: fact that this kitten's upper lip is larger compared to
Speaker 1: say a line cub's upper lip, they think that that
Speaker 1: might kind of help in the case that they're making
Speaker 1: that maybe they covered at least part maybe not the
Speaker 1: whole thing, but at least part of it with some
Speaker 1: of their lipt to protect that sensitive area.
Speaker 2: So we think some adults might have had like super
Speaker 2: long droopy lips.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, possibly, way less epic. It feels a little doofier,
Speaker 1: like you know, it goes. It goes from that character
Speaker 1: from Ice Age really looking to like, hello everybody, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm here to join your join your your franchise.
Speaker 2: But as like an old person with cold teeth sensitivity,
Speaker 2: I like, I can imagine not wanting if you're inside
Speaker 2: your teeth exposed to the cold all the time.
Speaker 1: That would suck. Tooth cover, Yeah, that would a tooth cozy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just knit a little little tiny like teeth warmers them
Speaker 1: when you're ready to kill something. So the kitten also
Speaker 1: had rounded paws like a lynx So that's pretty interesting
Speaker 1: because again links uh certain species and links. The ones
Speaker 1: that live in the cold have these really thick, fluffy,
Speaker 1: rounded paws that help them stay warm against the snow,
Speaker 1: and so it looks like this kitten had that as well.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: They also had no carple pads on their wrist. So
Speaker 1: the carpl pad you know, the little toebeans on your
Speaker 1: dogs and your cats, and then they have a little
Speaker 1: pad on their sort of like the wrist part that
Speaker 1: is called a carple padu and it can help with say,
Speaker 1: like gripping, gripping things like balones, rasping things, but it
Speaker 1: is an exposed piece of flesh. And so what you
Speaker 1: see sometimes in animals that live in very, very cold
Speaker 1: environments is that they may lose parts of their bodies
Speaker 1: that are more prone to say, frost bites, because getting
Speaker 1: frostbite versus not getting it can make a significant difference,
Speaker 1: right in terms of you don't want you don't want
Speaker 1: a part of your body that's necrotic and potentially infected.
Speaker 1: So you actually see this also in have you ever
Speaker 1: seen a snubnosed monkeys? Are these they're these golden monkeys
Speaker 1: with blue They're different species, but there's the golden monkey,
Speaker 1: which is one with like this golden fur. It's got
Speaker 1: like a blue face. People who watched any of the
Speaker 1: what is it Golden Compass franchise, either the movie or
Speaker 1: TV show or books, there's a monkey in there that's
Speaker 1: a snubnose monkey. They're actually they're very interesting because they
Speaker 1: their noses are very flat, but they somewhat have humanoid faces.
Speaker 1: They're quite lovely looking a little strange, but they have
Speaker 1: essentially lost any of the fleshy part of their nose
Speaker 1: because they live in these high altitudes at these cold temperatures,
Speaker 1: which which it just makes it such that it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily that Like, we're not talking about la Marking evolution
Speaker 1: right where a monkey gets frost bite, its nose falls off,
Speaker 1: and then the next generation doesn't have a nose. This
Speaker 1: is not what we're talking about. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: monkeys whose noses were flatter and more inverted ended up
Speaker 1: not having a deal with things like frostbite and therefore
Speaker 1: had a better chance of survival.
Speaker 2: So I'm thinking of other sticky, outy parts you do.
Speaker 2: How about ears? Do ears and cold tend to like
Speaker 2: be smaller?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Ears, So that's very interesting yeat. Ears do play
Speaker 1: a role in terms of say, adapting to temperature environments.
Speaker 1: So like you'll see with say, uh with with fluffy animals,
Speaker 1: right that the ears will be covered in fur, Like
Speaker 1: you look at the links, big tufts of fluffy fur
Speaker 1: that really protects those ears. Ears are quite important. So
Speaker 1: having like a large ear that acts as a cone
Speaker 1: to like have all of that sound get sort of
Speaker 1: directed in and then being able to swivel them around
Speaker 1: so that you can locate do this calculation that where
Speaker 1: you can find figure out where your prey is coming from.
Speaker 1: All that's super important. So you'll often see and say,
Speaker 1: like a lot of predators species even when they're really
Speaker 1: in the cold, they still have these big ears, but
Speaker 1: they're covered in fur. And so for snubnose monkeys, their
Speaker 1: ears are actually pretty small. They're also close to the
Speaker 1: head and they're very fluffy, so it's just that bare
Speaker 1: face where that nose. It turned out that the benefits
Speaker 1: of having that nose were you know, not as not
Speaker 1: as good as having a flatter nose that they don't
Speaker 1: have to deal with frostbite and things like. Also, you
Speaker 1: may have say like digits that can be prone to frostbite.
Speaker 1: But you can also those are a little more dynamics,
Speaker 1: so you can like hold them close to you. You'll
Speaker 1: see them, you know, like holding it inwards, tucking their
Speaker 1: feet in. So, yeah, you absolutely do see that. You
Speaker 1: actually also see somewhat of the opposite effect and the heat.
Speaker 1: You'll see animals get these really big thin ears and
Speaker 1: they use those like like say, African hairs, and they
Speaker 1: use that as a method of thermal regulation and the heat.
Speaker 1: So they're using these giant ears that have all of
Speaker 1: these veins kind of over a wide surface area as
Speaker 1: an air conditioner.
Speaker 2: That is so much more functional than our ears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would like to have ears that are also
Speaker 1: an air conditioner.
Speaker 2: Or a nose covered in fur. Yeah yeah, maybe I'll
Speaker 2: think I'll pass on that one.
Speaker 1: Got a crochet and nose cozy. So we are gonna
Speaker 1: take another quick break and when we get back, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about birds getting round for the winter, and
Speaker 1: then we're gonna play a little game whoop. All right,
Speaker 1: So one of my my favorite, possibly the most favorite
Speaker 1: part of the winter is birds getting round. It's birds
Speaker 1: getting round season. They turn into fluffy little balls. It's
Speaker 1: so it's adorable. And it's incredibly functional. So birds have
Speaker 1: a variety of techniques to survive the winter. We have
Speaker 1: a lot of migratory species, right from aquatic birds like waterfowl, ducks, geese,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll form these big migrating flocks. You have smaller birds,
Speaker 1: songbirds that may migrate into various areas. But you still
Speaker 1: have birds who do have to deal with cold weather.
Speaker 1: Some of them may stay in one location, or some
Speaker 1: of them may migrate from even colder areas, so they'll
Speaker 1: come in from say like Siberia and go somewhere that
Speaker 1: still has a winter, but it's a lot more survivable.
Speaker 1: So you do still have a lot of birds that
Speaker 1: have to figure out how to stay warm in the cold,
Speaker 1: particularly because they are you know, they have these very
Speaker 1: high metabolisms, which is one of the things they need
Speaker 1: in order to maintain flight.
Speaker 2: They burn.
Speaker 1: They do snuggle, so social speedy sas love to snuggle
Speaker 1: with each other. They will huddle all bunch up. They'll
Speaker 1: you often see also, like you know, how like in
Speaker 1: winter photography, you'll often see like two say you see
Speaker 1: a couple of tits and they're jammed together. They're huddling together,
Speaker 1: they're doing that for warmth and it is adorable. And yeah,
Speaker 1: they will form these big fluffy cuddle piles. They will
Speaker 1: also shiver, So birds can shiver. They're not necessarily scared,
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily uncomfortable, but shivering helps them warm up,
Speaker 1: just like it helps us warm up. Which is kind
Speaker 1: of wild because birds are died and we are mammals.
Speaker 2: But we're all still so similar.
Speaker 1: We're all we all shiver in the cold. So doesn't
Speaker 1: that I feel like that's poetic, right, something about from
Speaker 1: from dinosaurs to mammals. We all shiver in the cold.
Speaker 1: So let's just get along and only occasionally eat each other.
Speaker 2: When we're cut and we all shiver in the cold.
Speaker 1: I like, right. So another thing that they do is
Speaker 1: they get real fluffy, so they will fluff out their feathers.
Speaker 1: They which is both in terms of like they get fatter.
Speaker 1: They eat a lot of food preceding in the winter
Speaker 1: because having more body fat having more calories is really important. Also,
Speaker 1: species that are say insectivores, will expand their diet. They'll
Speaker 1: start eating berries, they'll start eating seeds. Because you can't
Speaker 1: be you can't be a beggar, or you can you
Speaker 1: can't be a chooser. You can be a beggar in
Speaker 1: the winter, but say like European robins, one of our
Speaker 1: favorite Christmas birds, right, it has to expand out its
Speaker 1: palette from invertebrates, worms to including berries, seeds, anything you
Speaker 1: can find, because it's going to be a lot harder
Speaker 1: to find insects in the winter.
Speaker 2: Does that make it harder for them to fly? Subsequently,
Speaker 2: the extra.
Speaker 1: Their chunkier, Yeah, it's you know, it is a trade off.
Speaker 1: Like you do potentially have a trade off between say
Speaker 1: like getting really fat and being able to fly, but
Speaker 1: in the winter it's absolutely worth it because you're really
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to be flying long distances once you're
Speaker 1: settled down for the winter. So whatever a slight amount
Speaker 1: of sluggishness that might be a trade off in terms
Speaker 1: of being a little thicker, is definitely worth the enhancement
Speaker 1: of having enough calories to burn and being able to
Speaker 1: have that chrishioning, especially when you'll there may be days
Speaker 1: where they just can't find any food.
Speaker 2: I wonder if chunky robins take off faster when they
Speaker 2: see a fox than less chunky robins, because like less
Speaker 2: chunky robins, maybe they can get off the ground faster.
Speaker 1: So interesting, Yeah, like maybe there's some added vigilance right
Speaker 1: in terms of like they understand, well not necessarily understand,
Speaker 1: but they have this instinctive response that you know, they
Speaker 1: may be a little more vulnerable and so that they
Speaker 1: are on a higher alert during the winter. That could
Speaker 1: be I think another trade off is that say you're
Speaker 1: a migratory bird, right and you go somewhere warmer where
Speaker 1: you're not really having to worry about these things, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot of predators that are out and
Speaker 1: about able to get you. When you are going somewhere
Speaker 1: really cold in the winter and you're surviving, there may
Speaker 1: be fewer predators out, and yet there may be a counterbalance,
Speaker 1: which is that the predators who are out and about
Speaker 1: very desperate, really want to eat you. So there's all
Speaker 1: these there are a lot of different sort of these
Speaker 1: kind of countervailing weights that results in this kind of
Speaker 1: spread out of like some species stay, some species migrate,
Speaker 1: some species migrate from a really cold place to slightly
Speaker 1: less cold place, all these kinds of things, and then
Speaker 1: you get this really interesting kind of push pull mechanisms
Speaker 1: that are you know, giving us winter birds in every
Speaker 1: quarner of the world.
Speaker 2: Yep, it's complicated exactly.
Speaker 1: So one thing they do is they puff out their
Speaker 1: feathers and so they turn it they not only are
Speaker 1: they like meteor fatter because they're trying to eat more
Speaker 1: or hopefully they physically fluff out their feathers, which gives
Speaker 1: them the impression of being much fatter, which they may
Speaker 1: not actually be that chunky, but that is there is
Speaker 1: a purpose to that puffing out because if they puff out,
Speaker 1: they're catching more air pockets in between the feathers. So
Speaker 1: like when you have a winter coat, you may even
Speaker 1: have something with synthetic reeled down. A lot of how
Speaker 1: that coat works is you're trapping air pockets in between
Speaker 1: these layers. That forms this insulation that keeps the heat
Speaker 1: from transferring from your body and then going out into
Speaker 1: the outside world. It keeps that heat in and so
Speaker 1: a bird who has fluffed itself up is essentially doing
Speaker 1: the same thing. There's pockets of air trapped between these feathers,
Speaker 1: and those pockets of air act as insulation and it
Speaker 1: basically it's like wearing a warm winter coat made out
Speaker 1: of feathers.
Speaker 2: Do they have more feathers during the winter or different
Speaker 2: kinds or is it just how they hold the feathers
Speaker 2: which is what captures the heat.
Speaker 1: It depends on the species, but it can be both,
Speaker 1: so it can some species might have more down more
Speaker 1: of this downy feathers, like during the winter, and some
Speaker 1: species some species actually even have a winter coat where
Speaker 1: it's like they go from a completely different coloration to
Speaker 1: say a white coloration to make them more linden with
Speaker 1: the snow. So some species, yeah, they actually might have
Speaker 1: a higher proportion density of down downy feathers and that
Speaker 1: that kind of those downy feathers are really good at
Speaker 1: trapping in warmth because they're like if you ever look
Speaker 1: at the difference between say a flight feather and a
Speaker 1: down feather, the down feather is a lot fluffier, It's
Speaker 1: like a lot softer. Flight feather is sleeker, uh, and
Speaker 1: that that is better for flight. Down is not good.
Speaker 1: You really can't fly using these like down in inner
Speaker 1: downy feathers. And you can even see, like when you
Speaker 1: look at the bird, all their flight feathers and stuff
Speaker 1: are kind of like more on the outside on their
Speaker 1: wings and then the downy feathers like you know, around
Speaker 1: their chests like under their wings, like on their bellies,
Speaker 1: and that because the of the structure of those feathers
Speaker 1: that are much more sort of they're they're finer, they're
Speaker 1: they're branched out more more finely. It traps little pockets,
Speaker 1: tiny pockets of air a lot better, and so those
Speaker 1: keep that bird warm. You also have pretty much every
Speaker 1: species of bird will have a oil gland near the
Speaker 1: base of their tails that they can use to preene,
Speaker 1: and that those oils cover the tops of their feathers,
Speaker 1: because when you get those feathers wet, they no longer
Speaker 1: functions as an insulation. Like if you've ever had a
Speaker 1: warm like a winter jacket that's like filled with a
Speaker 1: either synthetic or real down, and it gets wet, it's miserable.
Speaker 1: It does not work. It's awful. It's awful because you've
Speaker 1: now the air bubbles no longer get trapped in there.
Speaker 1: It's wet, it's soaked through. You no longer have that insulation.
Speaker 1: It's almost worse than it was before. And so it's
Speaker 1: really important for birds to be able to maintain this
Speaker 1: weather proofing on their feathers, otherwise if they get wet,
Speaker 1: it's kind of game over. So like you'll see this
Speaker 1: in waterfowl. They really like you've heard the term, you know,
Speaker 1: like water off a ducts back. Well, that's because it's
Speaker 1: covered in this oil. And if they need to constantly preene,
Speaker 1: spread these oils around, maintain this in order to keep
Speaker 1: that weather proofing because that is vital for their survival.
Speaker 1: They would not survive if they didn't have that weatherproofing
Speaker 1: over their feathers.
Speaker 2: Does that oil do anything else? So it helps keep
Speaker 2: them warm? But like so there are another feather problem.
Speaker 2: There are like parasites that live in the feathers. Does
Speaker 2: it have any like anti parasite stuff so that the
Speaker 2: it gets eaten by like the lice and then the
Speaker 2: lifestye it.
Speaker 1: So if it has, it's not necessarily I don't believe.
Speaker 1: I'll check on that, but I don't believe it's actually
Speaker 1: like poisonous for the parasites. But it does provide a
Speaker 1: physical barrier, right, like sort of like a physical blocking
Speaker 1: because it's oily, right, it's a thick thing. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like how you know how like tree sap sort
Speaker 1: of works to deter boring beetles who are trying to
Speaker 1: get into that tree and oily coating on these feathers
Speaker 1: is going to potentially deter pairites because of the physical
Speaker 1: barrier method. Now, they do sometimes anoint themselves with a
Speaker 1: formic acid, which is called anting. Uh. They'll pick up
Speaker 1: an ant, a poor innocent little ant and just rub
Speaker 1: it on their bodies. This is done a lot by
Speaker 1: crows actually, but other birds do this as well. And
Speaker 1: so what that does is it uh that formic acid
Speaker 1: that actually does kill the parasites. Like, if a parasite
Speaker 1: is eating that that that acid, uh, it will uh
Speaker 1: it'll it'll die. And so yeah, they do actually use
Speaker 1: some other things in addition to that that oil barrier
Speaker 1: that helps them to find off parasites. And actually I
Speaker 1: think like there's also other species, like you also have
Speaker 1: uh not just birds, right, I mean we also produce
Speaker 1: something similar. We produce sebam in our in our hair.
Speaker 1: That's why when you don't wash your hair for a
Speaker 1: few days, it starts to get a little bit oily. Uh.
Speaker 1: You see it very dramatically in sheep. It's called lanilin.
Speaker 1: But essentially that's just sebam. It's it's oils produced by
Speaker 1: these sebam glands and those have a similar similar function
Speaker 1: in mammals as well. It's but yeah, we we do
Speaker 1: often have so like you know, a sheep might be
Speaker 1: able to survive out in the cold and the rain
Speaker 1: because not only that amazing fluffy wool, but the wool
Speaker 1: is a little bit waterproof. And if you've ever had
Speaker 1: like a wool sweater that wasn't super highly processed and
Speaker 1: still retain the those natural anilins, it does. Actually you'll
Speaker 1: see the water beat up on it because the water's
Speaker 1: not going to penetrate that, and the warmth from that
Speaker 1: is going to function on a similar sort of uh
Speaker 1: that that similar principle of it's trapping little pockets of
Speaker 1: air inside that soft wool and keeping you warm.
Speaker 2: Very cool. Yeah, I've heard lots of stories, no, very warm,
Speaker 2: very warm. I've heard lots of stories about people who
Speaker 2: have sheep and they like open up the barns to
Speaker 2: bring them in on the coldest days and the sheep
Speaker 2: are like, no, man, I'm cool, like my kindness. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I'm also really looking forward to, like, you know,
Speaker 2: if my elementary school kids ever come home with lice,
Speaker 2: to just like getting a bunch of ants and like
Speaker 2: rubbing the and taking care of that problem.
Speaker 1: Much much more fun than that nasty shampoo. Absolutely, yes, yes, yes, no,
Speaker 1: just rub some ants on there, like I'm gonna start.
Speaker 1: I'm I need to start a pseudo scientific health blog
Speaker 1: where it's just like we shouldn't have any real medicine,
Speaker 1: just stuff that animals do. So like rub ants on
Speaker 1: your bodies, you know, poop on your legs like a
Speaker 1: vulture to clean them. All of these natural remedies. Why
Speaker 1: they're natural, they have to be good for you, right
Speaker 1: right right.
Speaker 2: And penguins they shoot the poop to keep like other
Speaker 2: passities away, so like put poop around your house if
Speaker 2: you feel like being left alone. This is great. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: you're not gonna take my kids away from me probably.
Speaker 1: You know. I just I just talked about that on
Speaker 1: the show. These these penguins that the high velocity poop cannons,
Speaker 1: and there was an actual paper. Did you read that?
Speaker 1: Did you see that paper with incredible diagram? So great, yeap, fantastic, fantastic.
Speaker 1: I love that. Speaking of birds who have incredible like
Speaker 1: their feathers, completely different ballgame, very very sleek, designed mostly
Speaker 1: for swimming, but also to keep them warm, so they
Speaker 1: also have that effect of the super uh. They have
Speaker 1: the the oily coat on the outside for waterproofing, and
Speaker 1: then that's a very dense layer of down on the
Speaker 1: inside that keeps them warm. But then they also have
Speaker 1: other techniques of like huddling together, you know, sitting on
Speaker 1: their eggs, sitting on their chicks, and kind of creating
Speaker 1: that cocoon of warmness. So the penguins are kind of
Speaker 1: the ultimate animal because they combine almost everything we've talked
Speaker 1: about today, the big collective huddling. They they sit on
Speaker 1: their babies, which is always great. They have the down,
Speaker 1: they have the the that protective oily coating. I guess
Speaker 1: they don't enjoy hot springs, which is really I would
Speaker 1: love to put a penguin in a hot spring and
Speaker 1: just watch its little pupils dilate as it like discovers
Speaker 1: the most wondrous thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, I bet if they had access to hot springs,
Speaker 2: I bet they'd use those hot sks.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, I mean there they do.
Speaker 2: Some some of them, like do.
Speaker 1: Live in warmer areas, right, They're not, like not all
Speaker 1: penguins are Arctic penguins that or live near the Arctic circle.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of tropical penguins, and I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: someone in fairly warm waters. So we do have we
Speaker 1: do have penguins that are enjoying the Mediterranean lifestyle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, way to go. They are warm in the cutest
Speaker 2: of ways.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm definitely tracking Pesto. I can't wait to see
Speaker 1: his little what he looks like in his adult his
Speaker 1: final adult form. He's going to be massive. I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to it.
Speaker 2: Is Pesto an emperor penguin. I've managed to make.
Speaker 1: Pesto is a king penguin, I believe. Okay, so he's
Speaker 1: I don't think he's an emperor penguin. He's a king penguin.
Speaker 1: So that's like the second largest penguin. But for a
Speaker 1: king penguin, he's enormous.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, there we go. We do gotta play a
Speaker 1: little game. This is called Guess Who Squawk and the
Speaker 1: Mystery Animal Sound Game. Every week I play a mystery
Speaker 1: animal sound and you, the listener, and you the guest,
Speaker 1: try to guess who is making this sound. The hint
Speaker 1: for last week's is this. This is inspired by young
Speaker 1: listener Eleanor. The hint is this. If you wanted it,
Speaker 1: you should have put a ring on it? All right, Kelly,
Speaker 1: you got any guests?
Speaker 2: I mean all right? So the sound made me happy,
Speaker 2: totally unrelated. It sounds like a happy sound. It's gotta
Speaker 2: be some kind of ring necked bird with the ring,
Speaker 2: but I don't think I know it is.
Speaker 1: You are on the right track with the rings being
Speaker 1: involved in the coloration. This is surprisingly the call of
Speaker 1: the ring tailed lamour. Oh yeah, it's it's this is
Speaker 1: such a tricky one. Congratulations to Jared him for guessing correctly.
Speaker 1: I did a mystery animal sound where I did a
Speaker 1: baby zebra and Eleanor had guessed a ringtailed lamur, and
Speaker 1: I had thought, you know what, I don't actually know
Speaker 1: what a ringtail fleamer sound like. So thank you Eleanor
Speaker 1: for having me look this up because this was surprising
Speaker 1: to me. So ringtail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all those years of watching z boom fo, I
Speaker 2: thought for.
Speaker 1: Sure different lemurs. The booma foo I believe is a
Speaker 1: He is a what if he's a faka? Wait? Who
Speaker 1: is zaboomafoo boom buff can't spell? That's hard. I think
Speaker 1: he's such a fakka. Let me check. This is so important?
Speaker 1: So he is he is? No? No, yes, he is
Speaker 1: a Cockerell's sofaka lemur? So okay, yeah, yeah, uh it's
Speaker 1: a it's really it gets tough. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: lemurs and they're very similar looking. So yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the call of the ringtail lemur. They're endemic to Madagascar.
Speaker 1: Like other lemurs. Uh, they are sort of I think
Speaker 1: they're the most iconic ones. They're the they're the striped lemurs.
Speaker 1: They they like to do that side sache hopping. Other
Speaker 1: lemurs do it as well, but these are quite famous
Speaker 1: for it. Uh you know, the what's it the Madagascar
Speaker 1: movie franchise King Julian. Uh, if you're, if you're, yes,
Speaker 1: that's someone. And so they have extremely complex vocalizations they
Speaker 1: use in social groups. They have calls for reaching out
Speaker 1: to fellow members of their troop. They also have specific
Speaker 1: predator alarm calls like actually similar to the Japanese macacus
Speaker 1: we discussed earlier. Ringtailed lemurs form matrilineal social groups with
Speaker 1: dominant females uh subordinate females. Males have a looser structure
Speaker 1: they where they also have their own little hierarchy, but
Speaker 1: basically the the dominant females calling the shots in the
Speaker 1: troop like in the radio. Yeah, you know, I'm just saying.
Speaker 2: Look.
Speaker 1: Uh. First, first, a ringtailed leamer president so cutely lemurs
Speaker 1: will sit on their behinds with their arms out, kind
Speaker 1: of like in a lotus position, like a meditation pose.
Speaker 1: It's called sun worshiping. All they're doing is warming up
Speaker 1: in the morning sun. They're they're haven't they're warming up
Speaker 1: all their fur they're getting they're soaking in the rays
Speaker 1: and they look adorable and peaceful. Uh.
Speaker 2: Yes, reminds me of the vultures that I see sunning
Speaker 2: u fences in the mornings.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, it's it's so interesting. It's a behavior you
Speaker 1: see in vultures. You see it. And also, uh, cormorants,
Speaker 1: they're very they they love to strike that pose. It's
Speaker 1: a it's very regal, very majestic. But they're just like,
Speaker 1: ah my tummy's so warm. Yay, all right, onto this
Speaker 1: week's mister annimill sound. The hint is this, just let
Speaker 1: them grab winter coat and he's ready to start caroling. Beautiful,
Speaker 1: it's stunning. Let's let's just hear it again just because
Speaker 1: I love it so much. Fantastic, it's amazing, beatis beautiful song,
Speaker 1: so regal. Yes, you got it. I guess this. This
Speaker 1: is a tough one.
Speaker 2: You know that it sounds like a call that a
Speaker 2: frog would make. But the put on his winter coat
Speaker 2: just doesn't doesn't match.
Speaker 1: Uh frogs and their little winter coats, so.
Speaker 2: That'd be super cute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, all right, Well, I will reveal
Speaker 1: the answer next time on Creature Feature. Uh well, if
Speaker 1: it's not next time, it might be in a future episode.
Speaker 1: This is happening in the holiday, so I might have
Speaker 1: a rerun. But the next time we do a fresh
Speaker 1: hot pipe and new mystery animal sound game, you will
Speaker 1: find out who is making this wacky noise. Kelly, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining me today. This this is
Speaker 1: a blast. Where can people find.
Speaker 2: You, well, thank you so much for having me. I
Speaker 2: had a blast. You can find me at Daniel and
Speaker 2: Kelly's Extraordinary Universe the podcast or at Wienersmith dot com.
Speaker 1: That is I highly recommend, very excited for this show
Speaker 1: if you want to learn all about the universe, all
Speaker 1: about physics, uh, particle physics, and you know, possibly aliens.
Speaker 1: Not gonna say no to aliens.
Speaker 2: We've been doing parasites and stuff too. I've been screaming
Speaker 2: more biology in there. We're working on a parasite series
Speaker 2: right now. It's it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: I'm excited. I want to I want to be invited
Speaker 1: to the parasite party. And yes, fantastic alien parasites. Let's
Speaker 1: let's let's find out more about that. People are saying
Speaker 1: the show. I'm I'm hearing this. I'm not saying it,
Speaker 1: but I'm people are saying that there are alien parasites
Speaker 1: out there right now.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I think if there's alien free
Speaker 2: living creatures, a Delian parasites are probably never far Probably. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm auditioning for Joe Rogan right now. I'm just like like, look,
Speaker 1: I've heard this, you know, like I've heard that maybe
Speaker 1: there's alien parasites. I don't have any data to back
Speaker 1: it up, but I've heard this.
Speaker 2: I think you'd be a great guest.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you very much. Well, stay warm out there,
Speaker 1: you guys. I hope you are all enjoying the winter season. Friendship,
Speaker 1: stay and warm, family, food and cuddles, doing a bee
Speaker 1: mosh pit, hot springs that show institutional problems of inequality,
Speaker 1: all of these festive things. Take care out there, and
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show,
Speaker 1: when you leave a rating, oar of you, it really
Speaker 1: does help me. It's a tangible help to the podcast.
Speaker 1: It tells the algorithm that it's worthy of being shown
Speaker 1: on the internet. So yes, those do you really help?
Speaker 1: And thank you guys so much for listening. Just by listening,
Speaker 1: you are helping me out. And I really love teaching
Speaker 1: you guys about animals. And I love it when you
Speaker 1: guys write to me. If you guys think you know
Speaker 1: the answer to this week's mister animal sound, you can
Speaker 1: write to me at Creature Featurepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also write to me your questions and you
Speaker 1: know it is. It is fantastic. I've also been getting
Speaker 1: a lot of things where people are sending me studies
Speaker 1: and interesting things and I am learning new stuff, So
Speaker 1: thank you so much for that. I love that. I
Speaker 1: love opening up my email to find something about weird
Speaker 1: gross parasites. I'm not even joking. I love that. So
Speaker 1: thank you guys so much. And thanks to the space
Speaker 1: Cossics for their super awesome song Exo Lumina. Creature features
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one
Speaker 1: you just heard, Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or
Speaker 1: hey guess what where have you listened to your favorite shows?
Speaker 1: I do not judge you. I'm not your mother, but
Speaker 1: I do recommend this. If it's cold outside, don't only
Speaker 1: eat worms, also eat berries and seeds. Don't be picky.
Speaker 1: It's not the time to be picky. See you next Wednesday.
Speaker 2: Sound Advice
Speaker 1: All right, excellent