Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and I've got a real bad baby
Speaker 1: Yota problem in my attic. I hear them scrounging around
Speaker 1: all the time and nibbling on the insulation. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have to lay some traps. Well today on the show, uh,
Speaker 1: Star Wars Animal. You know those Star Wars They got
Speaker 1: some pretty goofy animals like ton Ton's and Banthers and Blurgs.
Speaker 1: But I bet good old Mother Nature has whipped up
Speaker 1: some animals are even weirder than what you can find
Speaker 1: in a Star Wars. We'll look at some of the
Speaker 1: habits of real life porks, find ourselves unable to hide
Speaker 1: from a monster scarier than the starl pit, and explore
Speaker 1: the world of an adorable alien looking antelope. Discover this
Speaker 1: and more as we answer the angel question, why does
Speaker 1: Fluke Skywater have hundreds of lightsabers? Is it to throw
Speaker 1: a Jedi rave? So why does everybody love Star Wars.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about any movie or trilogy in particular,
Speaker 1: but even when people are mad at Star Wars it's
Speaker 1: because they love some aspect of Star Wars and they
Speaker 1: get frustrated when it's not Star Wars ng the way
Speaker 1: they want it to. What causes this intense passion? Well,
Speaker 1: Harvard law professor cast Sunseten argues that Star Wars is
Speaker 1: about behavioral psychology. The popularity of a New Hope, he claims,
Speaker 1: was due, in part two, informational cascades, where people base
Speaker 1: their decisions on the decisions made by other people, like
Speaker 1: limings going off a cliff, or in this case, people
Speaker 1: lining up at the theater, causing rumors to spread about
Speaker 1: long lines, causing more people to line up at the theaters,
Speaker 1: and so on. However, limings don't actually follow each other
Speaker 1: off cliffs. That's a misinformation campaign against lemmings. Likewise, not
Speaker 1: all of Star wars popularity is due to people being
Speaker 1: sheep or do backs. I'm not actually sure what the
Speaker 1: Star Wars version of sheep are, but to me, the
Speaker 1: success of Star Wars is due to two basic ingredients.
Speaker 1: A solid hero story where we feel like we could
Speaker 1: be Luke Skywalker, poles eyeing womper outs from our t
Speaker 1: sixteens back at home, rising from irrelevance to save the galaxy.
Speaker 1: But the second part of its success is the rich
Speaker 1: creature filled universe were dropped into, getting to discover completely
Speaker 1: new animals, beings, and ecological biomas. A diverse painting of
Speaker 1: Star Wars monsters and critters isn't just I candy. In
Speaker 1: the original Star Wars, we got a sense of history
Speaker 1: with these alien creatures, that they had complex behaviors and
Speaker 1: evolutionary stories. Today, I want to celebrate this aspect of
Speaker 1: Star Wars by revealing that, hey, we kind of live
Speaker 1: in a Star Wars. The animals right here on Earth
Speaker 1: are just as insane, if not more so then the
Speaker 1: things concocted by a caffeinated George Lucas jo me today
Speaker 1: to have a Star War is actor, writer and film
Speaker 1: analyst Maggie may Fish. Hello, I'm so excited to have
Speaker 1: you for this one. I'm so excited to told me
Speaker 1: what it was about. So yeah, I knew you would
Speaker 1: love this one, and I feel like you will bring
Speaker 1: so much the conversation because I like I like a
Speaker 1: Star Wars, star like a Star Wars. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've delved into the mythos probably as much as you have.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, actually, as you were talking. I did
Speaker 1: remember that growing up I had it was like a
Speaker 1: fake biology book. But it's all about Star Wars. That
Speaker 1: is so cool. Yeah, I actually was. It was too
Speaker 1: in depth for me to understand as a kid. So
Speaker 1: I just looked at the phone. Love that. I love
Speaker 1: that so much. I I when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I would sort of draw pictures of fake animals and
Speaker 1: you know, all sorts of animal habits for them and
Speaker 1: mating rituals and all that ritual I was an innocent kid,
Speaker 1: so I didn't. I just when they sing songs to
Speaker 1: each other and they get married and then somehow babies.
Speaker 1: I don't know important though. But so first I want
Speaker 1: to talk about Porgs because they're one of my I
Speaker 1: know that the new Star Wars is pretty controversial. It's
Speaker 1: got its ups and down, twist turn sideways is us,
Speaker 1: some plot things that maybe aren't great, some plot things
Speaker 1: that seemed like exactly that it's a war. We're doing
Speaker 1: a fast knock on a star war. Uh. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: Porgs are I think perfect. I think that they did
Speaker 1: a perfect job on that. Yeah. As when the last
Speaker 1: one came out, I saw a lot of tweets going
Speaker 1: around that was like thank Ryan Johnson for porgs. Just
Speaker 1: thank him because they weren't needed, and they were there anyways.
Speaker 1: You know, actually they were necessary in terms of the cinematography.
Speaker 1: So they the part of Star Wars where Luke was
Speaker 1: a grump. So like Ray, the new Jedi, goes to
Speaker 1: Luke to get training, but Luke is old and crotchety,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I'm tired of Star Wars, get off,
Speaker 1: Get off of my rock. And this rock is actually
Speaker 1: uh skelling Michael, I hope that's I'm pronouncing. I was
Speaker 1: actually just there about like two months ago. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: went to where they filmed those scenes in Ireland. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's off the coast of Ireland. It's just a big
Speaker 1: craggy rock in the middle of the ocean. It's actually
Speaker 1: the roosting spot for a ton of puffins. And when
Speaker 1: they filmed it, they're like, this is the perfect rock
Speaker 1: for us to put Luke. But there's so many puffins here.
Speaker 1: We can't edit out all the puffins. So instead of
Speaker 1: editing them out, they just turned them into pork. Those
Speaker 1: are my favorite film stories where like there's this huge
Speaker 1: obstacle and then through creativity they kind a way to
Speaker 1: like make work. You know that? To me, I think
Speaker 1: that is sort of like the Mother of creation is
Speaker 1: like when you get a random animal that you just
Speaker 1: can't edit out of the films, Like, I guess we
Speaker 1: got to work with you. How would you describe a porg?
Speaker 1: It is a I would say a penguin, A puffin,
Speaker 1: and a pug. That's what it is. Lastly, the thing
Speaker 1: in the face is a pug. But I do I
Speaker 1: do have a couple of animals that people may not
Speaker 1: have heard of that I think are very poor glike. So,
Speaker 1: but first you want to talk about puffins, I do,
Speaker 1: I do want to talk about because puffins are pretty great.
Speaker 1: I think even without adding a like a pug face
Speaker 1: to a puff and they're already pretty awesome. So puffins
Speaker 1: are a group of species of ac or. They're these
Speaker 1: small seabirds and actually there used to be a larger
Speaker 1: version of this called the great ac but they are extinct.
Speaker 1: They they they're sleeping with the fishes now that so
Speaker 1: they're almost are I feel like a lot of large
Speaker 1: versions of animals that used to be are extinct. Yes,
Speaker 1: probably because we're the top predator and so yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's I mean part of it is resource Like,
Speaker 1: when you're bigger, you require more resources, and it can
Speaker 1: be harder for you to find that ecological niche without
Speaker 1: going extinct. And yeah, I mean you're also probably because
Speaker 1: you're bigger, maybe you don't have as many many chicks
Speaker 1: per per season and such. So it's like you're you're
Speaker 1: kind of putting all your eggs about it. One big
Speaker 1: old Bassay. Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of my
Speaker 1: audience is already already used to me being their dad. Um,
Speaker 1: it's fine, I'm everybody's dad. I'll be your dad. My
Speaker 1: dad is great, but you was good. Both. We can
Speaker 1: be co dad. It's fine. Everyone's welcome onboard the Dad train.
Speaker 1: So all living species of ox can fly in the
Speaker 1: air and underwater, including puffins. And I want to show
Speaker 1: you this because it's incredible to see that little little
Speaker 1: flapping creature that is a puffin just flying underwater. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, it looks it's different from what you would
Speaker 1: expect that you kind of you don't think of when
Speaker 1: you think of. What I realized researching this is that
Speaker 1: when I try to picture penguins or puffins swimming, I
Speaker 1: just picture them diving. I didn't really picture them flapping underwater,
Speaker 1: but that is exactly what they do. Yeah, so, and
Speaker 1: they kind of like jet it's almost like they flapp
Speaker 1: and then write it for a while. Yeah, and they're
Speaker 1: extremely nimble. They're totally comfortable underwater, but they can't walk,
Speaker 1: so good good And oh you're not so you're not
Speaker 1: too jealous, right there, there's they nurfed that stat a
Speaker 1: little bit. So there are three species of puffins. The
Speaker 1: Atlantic puffin, which is the most iconic. I think it's
Speaker 1: like the puffin you think of. It's the puffin on
Speaker 1: that trigger Joe's cereal, remember puffins? Yeah, uh, it's then
Speaker 1: there's also the horned puffin and the tufted puffin. So
Speaker 1: first the Atlantic puffins. They are the smallest and they're
Speaker 1: about a foot long and way about twelve ounces one
Speaker 1: dollar foot. Don't eat puffins, Well, some people eat puffins,
Speaker 1: and that's okay, But well if you do already eating already,
Speaker 1: that's fine, but don't don't. Yeah, don't don't like accumulate
Speaker 1: the habit of eating puffins. Right, Yeah, But they live
Speaker 1: in the North Atlantic or Northern European skin naving, Canadian
Speaker 1: and Northern American coasts. Uh so kind of up in that,
Speaker 1: like you know, colder northern area. They will fly to
Speaker 1: Morocco and New York in the winter, fly south to
Speaker 1: escape some of the big coldness. So they're they're like
Speaker 1: rich people in the east. You know. They go to
Speaker 1: Oxford during and then we summon in Morocco, you know.
Speaker 1: So they have brightly colored orange, black and yellow beaks,
Speaker 1: white faces and bellies and black backs in a black
Speaker 1: hood like that kind of wearing a tuxedo. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are like rich. These are the These are very
Speaker 1: bougiebirds right there, like the sons of like the right.
Speaker 1: They're zuckerbirds. Oh my god, I'm gonna I'm gonna kill
Speaker 1: Maggie in this episode. She's just gonna like choke and
Speaker 1: then fall over too many bonds. Okay, I killed her
Speaker 1: with my dad powers. It's like it's like the force
Speaker 1: choke but it's Dad. But it's just cut your circulation.
Speaker 1: Let me show you a picture of these guys. They're very,
Speaker 1: very cute, just a little dude. They are so iconic.
Speaker 1: They must be on I think there was a national
Speaker 1: geographic that was pretty popular with their face on it,
Speaker 1: and it's like burned into my it's it's very iconic.
Speaker 1: And they've got those kind of like triangle eye situation.
Speaker 1: They have a little bit of a cat's eye, but
Speaker 1: it's going directly up, which is really you know, I
Speaker 1: don't innovative. You may not have heard of the other
Speaker 1: two species of puffins, so the horn puffin. Let me
Speaker 1: show you a picture of these guys, because they're they're
Speaker 1: pretty cool. They're I don't know if you've heard of
Speaker 1: these guys, but they're pretty cool. They're pretty cool. Look
Speaker 1: at that guy's eyeliner. They are very cool. Looks like
Speaker 1: Lady Gaga, like it's very Gaga asked, Yes, it's so
Speaker 1: that horn is actually really interesting. So they are about
Speaker 1: fifteen inches long and a little over pounds. A little
Speaker 1: bigger than the Atlantic puffin. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like like but pork size. I guess it's a handful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: A good a good puffin full you know, hand of
Speaker 1: puffin solid kind of yeah. And they live in the
Speaker 1: North Pacific and they winter south to California and Baja California,
Speaker 1: so more of these bougiebirds. They have a larger beak,
Speaker 1: like vertically it kind of is taller than the Atlantic puffin.
Speaker 1: Their beak is light yellow near the face and tipped
Speaker 1: and orange, and they have that really dramatic eyeliner going
Speaker 1: straight up and it's actually a it's not eyelashes. It's
Speaker 1: actually a fleshy extension like kind of horn that grows
Speaker 1: out of their eyelid. And they're they're just like these
Speaker 1: little little d dadsting. Yeah, what is the purpose of
Speaker 1: that on their face? As far as I know, I
Speaker 1: think it's just sexual selection. It's I think that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're fancy coloration. It's kind of like their beak
Speaker 1: is so brightly colored to all all puffins have that
Speaker 1: really brightly colored beak for sexual selection, and they actually
Speaker 1: shed that beak in off mating seasons because and then
Speaker 1: it's all right. So it's like it's like bright during
Speaker 1: the mating seasons and they shed it and regrow it,
Speaker 1: and when they're not mating, it's dullark because they you know,
Speaker 1: they're regrowing it and they don't need it to ben
Speaker 1: all the time. Like when I wear my pajamas around outside, right,
Speaker 1: I don't at me. I like fancy. I like fancy,
Speaker 1: like day to night pajamas. You know, like like sequin pajamas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's pajamas. But no one knows, no one
Speaker 1: has to know. So next are the tufted puffins. I
Speaker 1: feel like these are especially dramatic puffins. So they've got
Speaker 1: hello yes, uh and he looks like Bradley Cooper. What
Speaker 1: they have these big old tufts of feathers coming off
Speaker 1: of the sides of their faces. So uh, they're They're
Speaker 1: also a little bigger than the Atlantic puffin. They they're
Speaker 1: almost two pounds. My god, you could fit half funny,
Speaker 1: you could like weight lift these puffins for a mild exercise,
Speaker 1: for mild slash not at all exercise. Listen, everybody's got
Speaker 1: their own goals, all right, everybody sets their own goals.
Speaker 1: I'm comparing myself to me, not to anybody your year's goal,
Speaker 1: because your resolutions coming. So they also live in the
Speaker 1: North Pacific, and they have black bodies with a white
Speaker 1: face mask and these two tufts of feathers just shooting off.
Speaker 1: And you don't like the twilights in in Star Wars.
Speaker 1: Are the twilight Yes, yes, you know how they have
Speaker 1: those flushing the flushbarns, the head tails that come off.
Speaker 1: It looks exactly like that. Yeah, weird, right? Who was
Speaker 1: the real star war the whole time? Star Wars are puffins?
Speaker 1: What came first? The animal or George? Yeah? I don't know.
Speaker 1: So some quick puffin facts too, because like, puffins aren't
Speaker 1: just a pretty face with crazy dongles coming off their heads.
Speaker 1: Puffins are unusual in that they don't they have little
Speaker 1: sexual dimorphism, meaning that both males and females have the
Speaker 1: pretty bright coloration, which is that's fun, that is fun.
Speaker 1: It's usually usually the male birds are the ones putting
Speaker 1: on all the effort and all the makeup, and it's
Speaker 1: just nice to see some gender parody there. And they
Speaker 1: eat mostly small fish like herring, and they can dive
Speaker 1: into the ocean almost two hundred feet underwater. Just I
Speaker 1: have no visual concept for that, but it sounds like
Speaker 1: it's a lot of feet. About two hundred feet feet
Speaker 1: is about two dred I can't picture, but it seems
Speaker 1: like a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. I mean if
Speaker 1: if one puffin is about a foot, puffin lengths yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: They can also carry huge numbers of fish in their
Speaker 1: little beaks. They can carry tin fish per trip. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they can carry even more, but tins about their average
Speaker 1: and they have these rasping, hooked tongues, large bill and
Speaker 1: these denticles which means tooth like projections coming off of
Speaker 1: their beak. So if you look inside the puffin beak,
Speaker 1: you pop open the hood of a puffin and it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of gnarly. Yeah, it looks like an alien. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like it's got these cute, chubby cheeks
Speaker 1: and cute little eyeliner and then it's just got like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like a xeno morph coming out of
Speaker 1: its face. Puffin. Other here's some other stats about puffins.
Speaker 1: They can flap their wings up to four times per
Speaker 1: minute in the air. Pretty impressive. I think that's not No,
Speaker 1: that's not gonna do it. Yeah. During mating season, thousands
Speaker 1: of Puffins gathered together on Rocky coastlines to breed and
Speaker 1: to interrupt Star Wars shoots. Oh yeah, hey, well you
Speaker 1: know what a better what a more romantic date and
Speaker 1: being onset as new Star Wars Like, look, Maureen, there
Speaker 1: should his doar wartar war? Sh would just do war?
Speaker 1: That's great? Should we go some royal? Oh? Just do
Speaker 1: it here? Okay? You and they are they are sweet
Speaker 1: birds because they often remain monogamous, sometimes up to twenty years,
Speaker 1: which is about their lifespan. That's the lifespan of marriages.
Speaker 1: You want it, put a wing on it. That's a
Speaker 1: oh god, I've killed her. Uh. Mackie Mayfish was a
Speaker 1: much beloved YouTuber and film analyst who sadly passed away
Speaker 1: after being dadded to death. My parents would not mourn me. Well,
Speaker 1: i'm your dad now so here maybe this will bring
Speaker 1: you back to life. A baby puffin is called a puffling. Stop.
Speaker 1: I won't stop. I will not stop. Just to quickly
Speaker 1: get through the sad things. Is that seagulls like to
Speaker 1: eat them sometimes? Is there that's actually interesting? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: would think they'd be on the same team. But now birds, birds,
Speaker 1: they're all in it for number one, I think if
Speaker 1: we've learned anything about birds. But another thing that threatens
Speaker 1: the puffin is over fishing in pollution, and there's been
Speaker 1: an alarming decline in the Shetland puffin population off the
Speaker 1: coast of Scotland. So yeah, I mean we should care
Speaker 1: about the puffins. Yes, they're not gone yet, They're they're
Speaker 1: not going on away anytime soon. But there you know,
Speaker 1: we gotta care keep an eye out. Let's uh you know,
Speaker 1: I Katie will go say, just march on out there.
Speaker 1: Your dad's here to say, your kids. I oh, I'd
Speaker 1: love to be the daddy of all the Puffins. That
Speaker 1: would be just your kids, like, come to me, my pufflings. Look,
Speaker 1: my army of Pufflings have arrived. So to get a porg,
Speaker 1: we have sort of the The Puffin body is pretty
Speaker 1: pretty apparent in the porg. I mean they had to
Speaker 1: I guess, sort of match the Puffins pretty closely for
Speaker 1: the filming. But you also, I think there's a couple
Speaker 1: of animals who's got that face the face cuteness. So
Speaker 1: first is the Japanese dwarf flying squirrel. They are these
Speaker 1: adorable big eyed squirrels. Oh my god, I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever seen this. It doesn't look real right, No,
Speaker 1: it looks like it looks like Thumper the bunny bandy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got huge, like cartoonishly big eyes, and it's just
Speaker 1: it's adorable. It seems like it's almost as if it
Speaker 1: evolved to be torrible. There's no way you wouldn't need me.
Speaker 1: You wou much more satisfy. It's like they have the
Speaker 1: cute face, but they didn't really evolve the voice to match.
Speaker 1: So they live in the subalpine and boreal forests of Japan.
Speaker 1: They're about five inches eight inches, not not big, not big,
Speaker 1: and they weigh about half a pound, a little under
Speaker 1: half a pound, little guys. Yeah, okay about this, yeah
Speaker 1: about baseball. Sometimes they're used as baseballs now, which is
Speaker 1: why Japan. It's pretty good. So they are very fluffy,
Speaker 1: with light gray fur on their backs and white tummies
Speaker 1: and fluffy tails. And as their name should suggests, they
Speaker 1: can kind of fly. Well, it's more like controlled falling.
Speaker 1: So they have a peta geum, which is a membrane
Speaker 1: of skin between their little four limb ankles in their
Speaker 1: their hind feet ankles, and they can stind that out
Speaker 1: and glide down like like a person in a body flying.
Speaker 1: What's it called a flight suit? Flight suit? The light suit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: also buzz Lightyear falls of a style. I see, Yes,
Speaker 1: exactly they are. They really are the buzz light Years
Speaker 1: of the animal kingdom. The probably actually a lot more
Speaker 1: adept than buzz Lightyear. Probably very helpful. No, what did
Speaker 1: he even do? Nothing? Nothing? Garbagebage, garbage calls to sturb
Speaker 1: he did, cause he did make what he developed as
Speaker 1: a character, which I guess is good. Yes, here's a
Speaker 1: video of one of these these guys, and it is
Speaker 1: extremely cute. They just kind of, yeah they can. They love.
Speaker 1: They love jumping around, jumping from a tall man to
Speaker 1: a short man. That's what they're sort of cost playing
Speaker 1: his trees, I guess to help the help the flying
Speaker 1: squirrel feel more at home. Another little little animal that
Speaker 1: I think is pretty pretty poorglike is the Desert rain frog.
Speaker 1: And I've talked about this guy on the show before,
Speaker 1: but I think it is an animal that bears repeating.
Speaker 1: It's not a bear, it's a frog, but repeating so
Speaker 1: it makes a very very cute sound. So so you
Speaker 1: know the little pork. Uh. This I think is even cuter.
Speaker 1: And here's a picture of one of one of these guys.
Speaker 1: It is basically just a frowning bubble. Oh, I love it.
Speaker 1: It's just a grumpy frown, so that little perpetual frown
Speaker 1: that the porks have. This the desert rain frog and
Speaker 1: the black rain frog have that expression. You nailed it,
Speaker 1: those animals together exactly exactly pork. And so these guys
Speaker 1: live in South Africa, They live in the Cape Old
Speaker 1: Belt in forests and Faint Boss, which is a belt
Speaker 1: of shrubland vegetation. They live in a climate of dry
Speaker 1: summers and mild wet winters. They actually don't need to
Speaker 1: live right near a big body of water. They do
Speaker 1: find with like moisture inside the sand and the ground.
Speaker 1: They are so round that they can't hop they oh
Speaker 1: my god. That they also give birth to froglets, so
Speaker 1: just a little no eggs, just like tinier versions of themselves,
Speaker 1: which is such a weird way to give birth. Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: not just pops out or be like hey it's me
Speaker 1: and do that like hello. So they burrow into the sand,
Speaker 1: and they have these huge eyes that like big old
Speaker 1: perpetual frown and as if to kind of underscore their
Speaker 1: appearance as a little grumpy ball, they also squeak angrily
Speaker 1: when provoked. That's what you're hearing me, That is their
Speaker 1: angry squeak. Oh my god, so we've done it. We've
Speaker 1: made a pork. Now if we can just get this dangle,
Speaker 1: scientists to put all those genes together in a big old,
Speaker 1: the big old vial, right, you just chake it around.
Speaker 1: That's how science works. That's how you do it, and
Speaker 1: you pour it out. It's got pork. Yeah, if they
Speaker 1: do that, I don't know. I mean scientists. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to tell you how do you do your jobs?
Speaker 1: But maybe do your jobs? Do your job? Jeez. The
Speaker 1: force is important for jedies and sith, but is the
Speaker 1: force important for animals? Behavioral researchers have studied how the
Speaker 1: perception of control over your environment can affect your performance
Speaker 1: on tasks. Remember that scene where Obi Wan tells Luke
Speaker 1: to turn his Google Maps off and to take out
Speaker 1: the death Star using the force. That kind of confidence
Speaker 1: in being able to manipulate your world really does lead
Speaker 1: to a performance. In the nineteen seventies, researchers conducted studies
Speaker 1: on people and animals, testing to see how they responded
Speaker 1: to control or a lack of control over their environments,
Speaker 1: especially when faced with an unpleasant stimulus. And let's just
Speaker 1: say the researchers were kind of Darth vadery. In one study,
Speaker 1: they gave dogs small electric shocks, allowing one group of
Speaker 1: dogs to stop the shocks by pressing a metal bar,
Speaker 1: but the other group had no such option. Real ninth
Speaker 1: Darth vade nerds Anyways, the dogs who were given control
Speaker 1: over the shocks were able to figure out an escape
Speaker 1: path from the shocking room, whereas the other dogs had
Speaker 1: given up, probably while giving subtle middle paw fingers to
Speaker 1: the researchers. This kind of result has been replicated in
Speaker 1: other studies, where control over one's environment improves the health
Speaker 1: and ability to accomplish tasks in both humans and animals.
Speaker 1: So even though the Force may not let you lift
Speaker 1: up spaceships, believing that you have the force, maybe a
Speaker 1: powerful thing itself still doesn't let me. Will the remote
Speaker 1: control over towards me? Oh well, wait, maybe I believe
Speaker 1: really hard? No, no, not doing it. When we return,
Speaker 1: we'll explore the dark side of the Force with a
Speaker 1: very real and very horrible monster who haunts my dreams.
Speaker 1: Screen Crawl, episode four, Imagination Station. It is a period
Speaker 1: of oceanic civil war. Fluke Skywater, a young, handsome and
Speaker 1: slightly irritating fish, has been captured by Boba Fish and
Speaker 1: is being held by Blubber the Hut along with his
Speaker 1: friends Finn Solo Finces Rayfish and other cool fish friends.
Speaker 1: Blubber the Huts evil squid guards have led Fluke Skywalker
Speaker 1: and the gang over to an unassuming pile of sand
Speaker 1: on the ocean floor. Sand huh, says Fluke Skywalker. That's
Speaker 1: all you've got. I'm not afraid of some stupid sand.
Speaker 1: Suddenly the sand starts to churn like a volcano about
Speaker 1: to erupt, and as fast is underwater lightning, a pair
Speaker 1: of huge, blade like jaws burst from the ground, followed
Speaker 1: by a long, iridescent, purple worm like body. Fluke Skywalker
Speaker 1: barely has time to register the site of this tentacled,
Speaker 1: per lescent, blade faced, warm creature before he's cut clean
Speaker 1: in half by its massive jaws. So yeah, that's uh.
Speaker 1: I feel like a better version of the Starlac Pit.
Speaker 1: That was a better version than the movie that I
Speaker 1: saw a couple of weeks ago. I mean, like, okay,
Speaker 1: I get in the movie you can't kill off the
Speaker 1: hero howeverever. It would have been pretty rad. It would
Speaker 1: have been red and no spoilers. But they did, but
Speaker 1: then they didn't. They didn't, then they didn't. So with
Speaker 1: the killing off the hero thing back and forth, just
Speaker 1: one of them, just like measure twice with the Starlac
Speaker 1: Pit and cut once is my thing. Then you don't
Speaker 1: have to keep bringing the hero back and forth and
Speaker 1: back and forth from death and stuff. Just die, just
Speaker 1: die and star like. I think that would have been great.
Speaker 1: Star war Over. Star War Over would have been really
Speaker 1: small exactly. The massive beak in tentacles symbolizes uh Hebron says, yeah,
Speaker 1: the man's at Uh yeah, you need a Johnny Monster. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about a real life Is it
Speaker 1: called the Sarlac Sarlac worm or is it just the pit?
Speaker 1: It's called the Sarlac Pit. You know that was in
Speaker 1: this heavy, big heavy book that I had growing up
Speaker 1: that I could not read. I think I'm not so
Speaker 1: I didn't read it. I would assume that the pit
Speaker 1: is just the pit that the starlock. Right, but it is,
Speaker 1: but it is called the Sarlac, right, yes, right? Okay, So, um,
Speaker 1: a real life watches kidding murdered just like Twitter is like,
Speaker 1: um actually games um actually, if you refer to the
Speaker 1: compendium of Star Wars. So this is called the Bobbit worm,
Speaker 1: which is also known as the sand Striker. It's a
Speaker 1: scientific name. Is a little less menacing. It's Eunice afroditos
Speaker 1: afrod did toys Unice? Maybe nice so it is pretty
Speaker 1: if you look at it through a very different perspective
Speaker 1: than normal. So it's a species of bristle worm that
Speaker 1: lives on the ocean floor in the Atlantic Ocean. It's
Speaker 1: not a deep sea fish, despite how horrifying it looks.
Speaker 1: It often inhabits coral reefs because that's where it's unsuspecting
Speaker 1: prey likes to hang out. The reason it's called the
Speaker 1: bobbit worm is allegedly because of the John and Lorna
Speaker 1: Bobbit case. Do you know of that one that was
Speaker 1: the things in the nineties or eighties. It's actually kind
Speaker 1: of I feel like it's always kind of awkward when
Speaker 1: it's joked about, because so the short version of it
Speaker 1: is Lauren and Bobbitt is a woman who uh cut
Speaker 1: off her husband John's penis after alleged domestic abuse. Oh
Speaker 1: this is yes, okay, and it's actually so that's kind
Speaker 1: of horrifying. But then the media back in the day
Speaker 1: was like, look at this funny thing, and I do actually, yes,
Speaker 1: I know the controversy right right, and you know, look
Speaker 1: in the natural world, they're all sorts of fun penis
Speaker 1: hi jinks, but I think in this case it's kind
Speaker 1: of inappropriate how it has made fun of. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of other weird penises to laugh at, right exactly,
Speaker 1: maybe not in this case that involves domestic violence and things.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh it's uh yeah. But I think that
Speaker 1: the bobb it warm is allegedly named after that, not
Speaker 1: because it's like phallic, but because of its ability to
Speaker 1: cut things in half, which you couldn't. Because it feels
Speaker 1: like it's a double entendre. Maybe it is. I think
Speaker 1: I think whoever named this this, this scientist was a
Speaker 1: dirty bird. Dirty bird. So the bobbit worm is even
Speaker 1: more unbelievable looking than the sarlac to me, let me
Speaker 1: get you a picture. See how it's like rainbow and iridescent.
Speaker 1: It reminds me. I am one of a very few
Speaker 1: people that I that I don't find cockroaches very gross.
Speaker 1: They look like the look of it doesn't creep me out,
Speaker 1: and that kind of looks like a cockroach where it's
Speaker 1: I think cockroaches are kind of like a pretty color.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like that red brown. You know what's
Speaker 1: funny is I am probably one of the most like
Speaker 1: accepting random people of like insects, but cockroaches is one
Speaker 1: thing I'm not accepting of. It's like, I have no
Speaker 1: like the bobbit worm to me looks kind of pretty.
Speaker 1: It's like your rainbow and you got giant jaws. That's cool.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't know cockroaches. I think it's that
Speaker 1: they're so they get right in there, you know. The
Speaker 1: about the thing for me that's like that is millipedes
Speaker 1: are centipedes. Yeah, well, I actually I like I like
Speaker 1: those guys. But and I like the giant hissing cockroaches
Speaker 1: because somehow it's the ones that I just associate with,
Speaker 1: Like you know, in the kitchen. In the kitchen, you're
Speaker 1: walking late at night, your foot touches something crunchy on
Speaker 1: the floor and you look down. So this guy, though,
Speaker 1: is a long, old, long, long, long, warm. It is iridescent,
Speaker 1: it's got like a rainbow sheen. It's got a hard
Speaker 1: segmented exoskeleton, and it's also got kind of a purplish
Speaker 1: hue to it. Unfortunately, you can't see it's horrifying beautiful
Speaker 1: majesty because most of the time it's buried under the
Speaker 1: sandy ocean floor. Um, it can grow up to ten
Speaker 1: ft long. Oh my god, that's that's ten puffins. That's
Speaker 1: tin puffins and ted puffins. Long, it's just the puffing
Speaker 1: walking around like dude, I have seventeen kids. Um, it's
Speaker 1: actually kind of a thin noodle guy, because it's only
Speaker 1: about an inch in diameter, so I don't know that
Speaker 1: it could fit a puffin inside of it, which I
Speaker 1: guess is good news for the puffins. Uh. It's got
Speaker 1: spiny leg like appendages all over its body, which is
Speaker 1: just great. It's got a horrific feeding apparatus called a pharynx,
Speaker 1: which includes these massive jaws that are like these just
Speaker 1: two sabers that just close on anything unlucky enough to
Speaker 1: have that happened to, which is mostly fish and sometimes octopuses.
Speaker 1: And it it also has five striped antenna that looked
Speaker 1: like little tentacles, which it uses two cents prey as
Speaker 1: it approaches, and those giants set that the set of
Speaker 1: giant bone hard serrated man mandibles will just like snap
Speaker 1: clothes as soon as those tentacles, uh detect movement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like a mouse trap, but that's really yeah,
Speaker 1: like mouse trout. Uh. And at night it his head
Speaker 1: out of its little little hidy hole and it goes like, oh,
Speaker 1: time to catching fish. I don't know why. It has
Speaker 1: a cute, cute little voice like that. It's funny. He's
Speaker 1: only skinny, a big old noodle boy, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to eat me some fish. Rebranding the Bobbit Worm isn't
Speaker 1: a lovable children's characters exactly, it's some marketing. The snore
Speaker 1: SNAs a pokemon. I think. I guess this one could
Speaker 1: be a pokemon too, to be honest. So once it's
Speaker 1: that antenna mouse trap gets set off and those jaws
Speaker 1: close in, they can actually cut a fish in half.
Speaker 1: That's how powerful they are. And if it will certainly
Speaker 1: stun the fish. And once that fish gets grabbed, it
Speaker 1: will pull it under the sand, never to be seen again.
Speaker 1: And as the fish tries to escape that sound, sand
Speaker 1: ground can just kind of pulsate with like the fish
Speaker 1: kind of trying to see surface and the and then yeah,
Speaker 1: and the bob it you just see it like yanking
Speaker 1: it and then like stillness. You want to see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bad. So there it is, laying in wait, and
Speaker 1: it's like it's kind of pretty. It's rainbow colored. It's
Speaker 1: it's gorgeous. Actually, I would love nail polish and with
Speaker 1: that kind of like sheen on it other than the
Speaker 1: big old mandibles, it's it's pretty neat. And then once
Speaker 1: it grabs it, you can see this like the struggle
Speaker 1: and it yanks it down. Isn't that horrifying? Whoa when
Speaker 1: it's gone and it's gone, and then you can see
Speaker 1: the ground kind of like pulsate and yanks it so forcefully.
Speaker 1: It's like such a horror movie thing, isn't it? But
Speaker 1: also weirdly beautiful. Yeah, when just when an animal so
Speaker 1: well adapted like that, it's just like fascinated to watch
Speaker 1: them do it. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, go get a girl,
Speaker 1: that's your Do you think you know who you are?
Speaker 1: You're horrifying hel bees to snatches fish and drags them
Speaker 1: underneath to the nether world, and you do it well?
Speaker 1: Do it well with a beautiful rainbow sheet. Find your niche,
Speaker 1: right exactly. Apparently the mandibles may even inject some talks
Speaker 1: in two into the fish, which I feel like it's
Speaker 1: kind of gilding the lily. I was gonna say, this
Speaker 1: is the wouldn't even need that, I don't know, and
Speaker 1: feel like it's just a little like Okay, calm down now,
Speaker 1: we're not eating puffins here. Okay, if you do, that's fine,
Speaker 1: but don't start again if you don't. So so, bobbit
Speaker 1: worms are actually a big problem for aquarists aquarium owners,
Speaker 1: from hobbyists to even like public aquariums. So baby bobb
Speaker 1: it's uh baby, baby bobbit. They can hit your ride
Speaker 1: on commercial aquatic plants for saltwater aquariums that can even
Speaker 1: hide in coral that you can buy at the store.
Speaker 1: And then once they get in your tank, they don't
Speaker 1: stay baby bobbit's for too long. They can grow and
Speaker 1: ground and and some some people will be like, huh,
Speaker 1: my fish are just disappearing. Oh no, and it's a
Speaker 1: big mystery. And then you dismantle your tank and you
Speaker 1: find a bobbit in the bottom. Or well New Quays
Speaker 1: Blue Reef Aquarium in the UK there was a news
Speaker 1: story about this where it's and it's this you know,
Speaker 1: aquarium open to the public, big old tanks, and they
Speaker 1: found that their fish just were going missing. It was
Speaker 1: like this like like what's happening to our fish? This
Speaker 1: this murder mystery and they finally realized it was a
Speaker 1: bobbit warm and they couldn't catch it, they couldn't lure
Speaker 1: it out of its hole, so they hadn't dismantle the
Speaker 1: entire aquarium. Oh my god to get this huge bobbit
Speaker 1: warm out. Yeah, that's what a stinker. An stinker, that's
Speaker 1: and also it's not like you chose that life, so
Speaker 1: the bobbit life. Yeah. So yeah, if you own an aquarium,
Speaker 1: a saltwater aquarium, and your fish are just disappearing, you
Speaker 1: may have a horrifying worm living in there. I would
Speaker 1: love a tank though, just filled with bobbit worms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you just buy fish to like feed it. Like
Speaker 1: this fish is like, wow, this is a nice new
Speaker 1: horror serie. Silence, wonder where are the other fish are?
Speaker 1: So I think to fight the bobbit worm, we need
Speaker 1: a fluke skywater, and I have just the fish for
Speaker 1: the job, the secret lightsaber sharks. So these are species
Speaker 1: of sharks who can glow in the dark using biofluorescence,
Speaker 1: which is this it's a relatively recent discovery because we
Speaker 1: can't see it with the naked eye. I actually, I
Speaker 1: guess I have been being ching uh nature talcumentaries um
Speaker 1: and yeah, because the app by the way of that
Speaker 1: thank you. Yes, because there's something like that we can't see.
Speaker 1: We didn't realize that they were emitting it. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So biofluorescence is naked to those of us who are
Speaker 1: not strong in the shark force. So to see it,
Speaker 1: marine biologist used a blue light camera which mimicked the
Speaker 1: shark eyes that see in blue and green. And so
Speaker 1: for sharks, this glowing green biofluorescence just pops out like
Speaker 1: a Christmas tree and sorry, like a creature Kringle times tree.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. What I meant was, so the biofluorescence lights
Speaker 1: up in these beautiful green, glowing patterns. I know you've
Speaker 1: probably seen it before, but let me just show you
Speaker 1: because it's great. Look at that. That's gorgeous. It looks like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know when you see those maps where it's like
Speaker 1: here's Paris from spin That's right, that's right, like a
Speaker 1: like a satellite map of the Earth, as the cities
Speaker 1: are all all a light. Maybe we're just a big shark.
Speaker 1: Oh god, this is too this is too much for
Speaker 1: always fish. So this has been found in cat sharks
Speaker 1: and swell sharks, and it's thought to be in many
Speaker 1: other species as well. Cat shark and a swell shark.
Speaker 1: They're cute little guys. You can you can hold them
Speaker 1: like a baby. Yeah, I mean they might nibble on
Speaker 1: you and try to hold they're they're generally non threatening
Speaker 1: to humans at all. They they're really they're cuties. They're
Speaker 1: cute little sharks. I know, they're adorable. And this recent
Speaker 1: discovery reveals that they may use this biofluorescence to communicate
Speaker 1: with each other. The glowing patterns are unique to eat
Speaker 1: each species of shark and even to each sex of sharks.
Speaker 1: So there seems to be some community like almost like
Speaker 1: a business card of like or like a text yeah
Speaker 1: exactly what yeah? Or like or like a profile like
Speaker 1: like a Facebook profile or something like some kind of
Speaker 1: form of communication. Um I like adventures asl And this
Speaker 1: glow is generated by newly discovered glowing compounds that are
Speaker 1: amplified by these tiny rigid denticles, so denticals, like we
Speaker 1: talked about it with the puffins in their in their beaks.
Speaker 1: Denticles are tooth like projections, so they don't have to
Speaker 1: occur in the mouth. They can also be on the skin,
Speaker 1: so on these sharks, they have tiny teeth all over
Speaker 1: their bodies. You're making a face. You're just as you're
Speaker 1: describing to me. I don't like it. You don't want
Speaker 1: to be covered in teeth. Well, to each to each
Speaker 1: their own. So so that but these little, these little projections,
Speaker 1: these little spiny projections, actually help amplify the glowing compounds
Speaker 1: like lightsaber. So the scientistics describe them as being like
Speaker 1: these hundreds and hundreds of lightsabers all over the sharks skin.
Speaker 1: You specifically describe them as lights, Yes, they did nerds.
Speaker 1: So biofluorescence, you may be thinking of bioluminescence, but similar,
Speaker 1: similar vibe, but they are different things. So biofluorescence absorbs
Speaker 1: light from the sun and re emits it as a
Speaker 1: different color, whereas bioluminescence is light that's been created from
Speaker 1: a chemical reaction. So biofluorace. That's explains also why we
Speaker 1: can't see this biofluorescence with our naked eye. It's not
Speaker 1: we can see bioluminescence with the naked naked eye. It's
Speaker 1: light that's been created from this from these chemical reactions.
Speaker 1: It's very bright, very bright, whereas the biofluorescence it's almost
Speaker 1: like it's reflect it's like translating the sun into a
Speaker 1: different color and it's visible to a shark's eye. And
Speaker 1: it also another weird finding is that this biofluorescence may
Speaker 1: have antimicrobial properties. Oh yeah, that in there, you know,
Speaker 1: just rub it up against his teeth, light teeth. I
Speaker 1: wonder if they like I wonder if in Star Wars
Speaker 1: they use lightsabers and like surgery, like a surgeon has
Speaker 1: like a tiny lightsaber, you know, like a scalpel light exactly,
Speaker 1: like like a Jedi neurosurgeon with a tiny scalpel like
Speaker 1: made out of lightsaber. Right, there are so many more
Speaker 1: uses different lightsaber toast toast, toast, you cut, you slice
Speaker 1: the bread, and you toasted at the same time. This
Speaker 1: is That's what I wanted to see, the Mandalorian toasting bread.
Speaker 1: What's up with riding on Variety dot com. The Mandalorian
Speaker 1: fell short of expectations. I wanted to see a more
Speaker 1: versatile lightsaber, such a I don't know, tiny when we
Speaker 1: cut people lean open. Yeah, I would like to see
Speaker 1: some lightsaber saber surgery, you know, yeah, where's the doctor's
Speaker 1: I know, where are the doctors? One? Right, the robot
Speaker 1: orb with a big old syringe, Yes, robot arm and
Speaker 1: then also m whoever was taking care of pod May
Speaker 1: when she died from sadness, So like, can we even truss? Oh, no,
Speaker 1: you've got some guy doesn't like from the Simpsons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just doesn't know what he's doing. Yeah, and then I guess,
Speaker 1: but and then another doctor. I guess Luke was in
Speaker 1: a vat of some kind to grow. But that's like
Speaker 1: most of the doctors are just like a vat, like
Speaker 1: a big old that going like yod in wine, tell
Speaker 1: me and I'll heal you, you know, or like an
Speaker 1: orb that's like, you know, it's me me doctor. Vaccine,
Speaker 1: here's your flu shot. Why are you ready? Yeah, come
Speaker 1: back and flu sees it is bad this year. Get
Speaker 1: your flu shot. It's free. Why do you love monsters
Speaker 1: so much? Sometimes monsters are a response to cultural fears.
Speaker 1: In Star Wars, the monsters are often gargantuan or of
Speaker 1: unseen proportions, like the star lac pit, the spaceship eating worms,
Speaker 1: the mysterious tentacled creature that lurks in the garbage masher
Speaker 1: in the detention level. Even the man made monstrosities like
Speaker 1: the Death Star can destroy entire planets. This kind of
Speaker 1: catastrophic level of mom sters seems to me to reflect
Speaker 1: the fears of the Cold War nuclear weapons that are
Speaker 1: a constant threat, but one that seems to be lurking
Speaker 1: in the shadows, one that could emerge suddenly and destroy
Speaker 1: our world. Throughout our history, there have been many monsters.
Speaker 1: Monsters like vampires may have been a response to the
Speaker 1: fears around sudden illness and death and mysterious wasting diseases
Speaker 1: like consumption otherwise known as tuberculosis. The zombies are the
Speaker 1: two thousands, may have reflected our fears of the masses.
Speaker 1: As our world became more connected through vast cities and
Speaker 1: our ability to travel, We also shared our problems, such
Speaker 1: as epidemics. My prediction is that new monsters will emerge
Speaker 1: in the twenties, ones that reflect the fears of today,
Speaker 1: such as climate change and extinction. Maybe huge gluttonous monsters
Speaker 1: that devour resources in level entire forests. Maybe just maybe
Speaker 1: we were the monsters the whole sign and I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: The bobbit worms are definitely the monsters. When we return,
Speaker 1: we'll rip off our Darth vay or helmet and return
Speaker 1: to the light side of the force with an incredibly
Speaker 1: goofy creature. My favorite part of Star Wars is trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how all their goofball creatures could have evolved.
Speaker 1: Why is the tonton bipedal on huge kangaroo legs? Is
Speaker 1: it to hop over icy crags and chasms? Why do
Speaker 1: banthers have such huge horns? Are they used in mating
Speaker 1: contests or sexual selection? Does the wampo like to capture
Speaker 1: live prey and store it and it's larger like a shrew?
Speaker 1: Does the rain corps have a good relationship with its keeper?
Speaker 1: Can it be trained to do fun tricks? There's no
Speaker 1: amount of goofy no, as Star Wars can throw at
Speaker 1: us that doesn't exist in real animals in the real
Speaker 1: world with real, incredible explanations. So let's look at one
Speaker 1: of the wackiest looking mammals in the world and figure
Speaker 1: out why it looks so dang lovable and cookie So.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of the saiga antelope? No? I
Speaker 1: don't think so. The saiga antelope, hope, is like a
Speaker 1: cross between a tan tan and an antelope, and like
Speaker 1: an elephant and a tape beer. It is a real goofball.
Speaker 1: So these are critically endangered species of antelope. They are
Speaker 1: found in grasslands and semi deserts in Central Asia, which
Speaker 1: includes a little part of Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.
Speaker 1: They used to have a much wider range and a
Speaker 1: much bigger population, but of course, of course, after overhunting,
Speaker 1: their population declined. We did it again, We did it again.
Speaker 1: We extincted. Yeah, remember Britney spears. It's twenty twenty um.
Speaker 1: But no, they're not extinct yet, but they are critically endangered.
Speaker 1: And these guys are goofy as hell. They're real, they're
Speaker 1: real goofballs. Let me let me show you. I got
Speaker 1: a whole slight changer of these guys. Yes, so here's
Speaker 1: an adult and they have a big, big nose that's
Speaker 1: just this it's like a it's like a big old macaroni, right,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of looks like it's just sitting
Speaker 1: on it, right, right, like something kind of like as
Speaker 1: an afterthought gluted on. And then that the baby one,
Speaker 1: this is a fawn, looks adorable. It still has that
Speaker 1: big floppy nose. Very cute, I think. I think the
Speaker 1: adults are cute too. They're they're goofy goofy. They're silly, right.
Speaker 1: They look like a muppet or like a Sesame Street muppet,
Speaker 1: like the snuffle lophiguss, but with a shorter nose so
Speaker 1: that the snout, which is called a proboscis, it kind
Speaker 1: of looks like a truncated elephant trunk, truncated trunk. And
Speaker 1: I don't I'm just bad at talking. That's not actually,
Speaker 1: So they're not that big. They're about two to three
Speaker 1: feet tall at the shoulders and about six fifty pounds.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they kind of seem like they would be bigger,
Speaker 1: like a big almost horse like or they're like, but
Speaker 1: they're yeah, no, they're They're like, yeah, they're they're not
Speaker 1: that big, more taller than them to take that, take
Speaker 1: that trouble. So they're light brown tan in the summer
Speaker 1: and they their coat changes in the winter to a
Speaker 1: fluffier grayish white coat. It's pretty pretty nice. And they
Speaker 1: have they are most famous for that huge tubular nose.
Speaker 1: These big you could you could do some sick flips
Speaker 1: off that, and they're not they have like biologically speaking,
Speaker 1: their nostrils are just inflated, I guess, just huge nostrils
Speaker 1: that forms this this well that's a good question, and
Speaker 1: I actually have an answer. So that huge nose has
Speaker 1: a few purposes. One of them looks looks good, functions, great,
Speaker 1: whisper quiet. So it helps filter dust as huge herds
Speaker 1: kick up things as there because they do these mass migrations.
Speaker 1: And if you're that is but when you're in the
Speaker 1: midst of one of these mass migrations, everyone's kicking up dust.
Speaker 1: You're gonna get a bunch of dust in your lungs
Speaker 1: and that's no that's no fun. So these huge noses
Speaker 1: prevents that dust from entering the lungs by making it It
Speaker 1: It basically has to like go through this labyrinth of
Speaker 1: like chambers and vestibules, and it just like captures the
Speaker 1: dust and it can't enter the lungs. It also, this
Speaker 1: big nose confunction as an a C unit just like
Speaker 1: this free this air conditional shoved onto its face because
Speaker 1: as it sucks in is the blood runs through it
Speaker 1: and the air passes over the blood. It cools the
Speaker 1: blood that is circulating what I know that is tubular man.
Speaker 1: In the winter, it converts to a space heater. I
Speaker 1: mean it doesn't actually go through that much many changes.
Speaker 1: It's just as air is entering. It's it's cavernous and
Speaker 1: it's surrounded in blood vessels and stuff, so it warms
Speaker 1: the air coming in. Uh so yeah, it's a multi functional.
Speaker 1: Uh it's sexy multi functional. I mean, what can't this nose? Do?
Speaker 1: You know? That's a great question. Probably maybe they could
Speaker 1: play it like an insta boat like Max Rebo from
Speaker 1: Star Wars. Doesn't he isn't there like a like there's
Speaker 1: a little Star Wars animal who he doesn't have an instrument.
Speaker 1: He's like playing his nose like it's like a pipe, right, ye,
Speaker 1: Like he's holding it and playing it. Yeah. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned earlier, Siga's journey on these massive migrations. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it when you look at them from the sky,
Speaker 1: and this is sadly, like you pointed out, this may
Speaker 1: not become a thing if if these guys continue their decline.
Speaker 1: But when you look at it from the sky, it
Speaker 1: looks like this huge river of like fluff of these
Speaker 1: antle just like migrating together, and they're so fluffy and
Speaker 1: they're so cool. It's just like this, this flowing river
Speaker 1: of cute fluff. In two hundred thousand, Siga mysteriously died
Speaker 1: off which was a huge blow to them because I
Speaker 1: was like over half of their population. And researchers recently
Speaker 1: discovered the cause of this mysterious plague as being hemorrhagic septicemia. Ye,
Speaker 1: hemorrhagic septichemia, which was caused by a bacteria called Pasturella moltosita,
Speaker 1: which usually this bacteria is found in these antelope, but
Speaker 1: actually grows in their nose. The nose is nice cavernet,
Speaker 1: it's like a little cave, so cores, pockets, got pockets
Speaker 1: of things. This is a big pocket but yeah, and
Speaker 1: so it's a nice, nice place for bacteria to grow.
Speaker 1: And normally that's okay. However, as the weather that was
Speaker 1: much warmer and more human than it usually was, uh,
Speaker 1: these bacteria grew out of control and causes hemorrhagic septic kemia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: septickemia um. And so now only about a hundred thousands
Speaker 1: IgA remain in the wild. That's like the things that
Speaker 1: we don't think about with like temperatures rise, like like
Speaker 1: when people brush it off its lights like there. You
Speaker 1: did not know that that was going to happen, and
Speaker 1: things could predicted that you have an animal that has
Speaker 1: a huge old nose and then the bacteria can grow
Speaker 1: better than the nose when it's hotter and more human crazy, right,
Speaker 1: it's like, and that's just the right exactly, it's yes,
Speaker 1: And that's just one example of millions of things. Like
Speaker 1: it's like you take out a Jenga piece and then
Speaker 1: suddenly all these noses fall from the sky, but is
Speaker 1: cavernous noses? Yeah, but I mean too. I don't want
Speaker 1: to end on such a bummer. Note, there is some
Speaker 1: good news, which is that there are these ecological protections
Speaker 1: aimed at saving the saiga that are starting to gain tractions.
Speaker 1: So China has banned saiga antelope horns from being covered
Speaker 1: by health insurance, which is a pretty big thing because
Speaker 1: I know that I think that the antelope horn has
Speaker 1: been used in some traditional medicine, which unfortunately, you know,
Speaker 1: then poachers will take the antelope horn and that's bad
Speaker 1: for their population. The US and Mongolia have backed a
Speaker 1: plan to ban the trade of siga antelope horns, and
Speaker 1: their population is slowly starting to increase in Kazakhstan. So
Speaker 1: I really hope we can pull it together because I
Speaker 1: would be devastated if these guys were no longer around,
Speaker 1: because they're they're just such God, they are such lovable goofballs,
Speaker 1: and they're also kind of like inspiring in a way.
Speaker 1: It's like use your imagination. You know, anything is possible.
Speaker 1: Look at these guys. This exists. Like if they can
Speaker 1: pull it off, we can pull anything. We can do, right,
Speaker 1: we can save the planet. Yes, exactly, one puffing one,
Speaker 1: one big old, big old proboscis at a time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there. I don't know, there's something I think I
Speaker 1: love that they basically look like a normal antelope and
Speaker 1: then just with a big elephant seal nose stuck on
Speaker 1: the front of it like an afterthought. It's wonderful. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'll definitely include links in the show
Speaker 1: notes to pictures of these guys because they're they're incredible. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe I should should you know what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: that'd be great, right, or just like a nose attachment,
Speaker 1: you know, a ball of clava that's just like with
Speaker 1: the with the nose, you know, like like like a
Speaker 1: sort of crochet one and then it has that big nose.
Speaker 1: Maybe it'll maybe it'll work for me too, Yeah, se
Speaker 1: pull that off. I think I could do it. I
Speaker 1: think you could do it. Well, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today. Got any before I would go?
Speaker 1: I guess, like any kind of like thoughts about Star
Speaker 1: Wars man, I mean, well, yeah, from your opening, I
Speaker 1: think that is the reason why people like it, you know,
Speaker 1: the different biomes, the joke about like each planet being
Speaker 1: a different type of planet of popt uh here's hilarious,
Speaker 1: but also the human planet of your orb the water
Speaker 1: planet with water, do you get it? This planet is grass.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, that was not that important. This one's
Speaker 1: a city, this one the desert. This one's a casino.
Speaker 1: It goes on and on and not. This one is
Speaker 1: a smart and saved so that I didn't see that
Speaker 1: in the Mandalorian didn't see spartans planet. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: If the Mandalorian and the Yoda went to like a
Speaker 1: smart and final planet and they're like, I gotta feed around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like baby Yoda's like pulling things off the shelves. Now
Speaker 1: you can't eat that. Now it crying. He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: just one, but then too, that would be I would.
Speaker 1: I would. And he's got like a baby Bjorn, He's
Speaker 1: like carrying it around. Yeah, he's really all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: he's like one of those he's like doing his assassinations
Speaker 1: with the baby Bjorn and nothing. That's that's a Mandalorian
Speaker 1: I would approve. Well, you got anything to plug? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys can find my film video essays on my
Speaker 1: YouTube channel at just my Name Maggie made fish may
Speaker 1: Spell on m A E. Not like the Buns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so check yourself, check your check your small preconceptions at
Speaker 1: the Okay, Uh yeah, we have some really fun ones
Speaker 1: coming out. We have an hour long video about Cats,
Speaker 1: the movie the play Anti May that cat's content, it's banana.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be great. I would be in fold cats
Speaker 1: costume for Oh my God. Okay, I'm sold. So it'll
Speaker 1: be exciting. But we're still working on and so. But
Speaker 1: you can check out my past ones. Um, you can
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter again. Just got my name. You've
Speaker 1: got like you've got a Star Wars or episode or two, right,
Speaker 1: I do. Yeah, we talked about we talked Star Wars.
Speaker 1: We talked dads. I have sears on dad's dad's dads.
Speaker 1: It was meant to be. I was meant to be
Speaker 1: your dad. Unexpected heart warming conclusion. Well, uh, did you
Speaker 1: mention your Twitter handle. Oh yeah, it's just it's just
Speaker 1: my name, just your name, my name Magan Meatesish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: before follow me, I'll talk some fun stuff. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Instagram at Creature Creature Pod. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter at Creature Feet Pod. That's
Speaker 1: f F E T. There is a Creature Feet Pod.
Speaker 1: But it's different. It's it's actually fun. It's just a
Speaker 1: bunch of animal feats. And I know that I think
Speaker 1: that there's a change happening with the website. I think
Speaker 1: we're now on my heart. But yeah, if you just
Speaker 1: check out the the the you just check out the
Speaker 1: Twitter and the Facebook and Instagram and funnel links are
Speaker 1: on there. Um and you can find me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I'm at Katie Golden UM not like the month Golden.
Speaker 1: Also GEO l D I ND and I'm also pro
Speaker 1: bird Rites where I fight the eternal struggle to get
Speaker 1: birds the presidency. I really admire your work, um, and
Speaker 1: I meant to bring it up. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I mean the fish myself. Um, you know we are
Speaker 1: aligned with the birds. Yeah, I mean, uh something we well,
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes we eat each other, but that's what's
Speaker 1: what's a little bit of predation amongst friends. That's how Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening. If you want to
Speaker 1: help out the podcast, lead that five star review or
Speaker 1: you know whatever, I'm not going to tell you how
Speaker 1: many stars to do from five, but or a review,
Speaker 1: or just subscribing to the podcast, downloading our episodes. It's
Speaker 1: just it really helps out more than you probably even know.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the Space Cossis for their extremely groovy song,
Speaker 1: ex Alumina. Creature features a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heeart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit that I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or where
Speaker 1: if you listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.