Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today we're having a little Halloween
Speaker 1: after party discussing some horror tropes you can find right
Speaker 1: in nature. Evil, deadly lakes, fungus that isn't fun, terrifying antics,
Speaker 1: and things that go bump in the night. Discover this
Speaker 1: more as we answer the angel question, what does the
Speaker 1: fox say? Is it? Joining me today are two horror
Speaker 1: movie specialists and hosts of the Gamefully Unemployed podcasts, Tom
Speaker 1: Ryman and David Bell. Oh spooky sounds Between us, we're
Speaker 1: also probably hosting tons of parasites. Oh yeah, my skin
Speaker 1: is rippling. Everyone has mites on their eyelashes, so you know,
Speaker 1: m There are symbiotes. They're not really positive or negative.
Speaker 1: They just sit there and eat your dead skin. It's
Speaker 1: I still feel like they're they're getting something over on
Speaker 1: me though. I las spiders. Yeah probably. I don't think
Speaker 1: they actually do anything good for you, so they're, you know,
Speaker 1: just kind of sitting on theres a get a job.
Speaker 1: I think it's fun though, because you're never truly alone.
Speaker 1: You're never alone when you got ice spiders, little tiny
Speaker 1: ice spiders. Are they wait, do they look like spiders?
Speaker 1: They look like spiders. They're actually mites, which are you know,
Speaker 1: related to spiders. They're not actually spiders. I like to
Speaker 1: picture my might swearing jaunty little hats. Yeah, they probably are.
Speaker 1: I like. I like the idea of them, like sort
Speaker 1: of matching my outfit every day. Like, hey, you're wearing
Speaker 1: a flamingo shirt. Me too. Yeah. Cute, very courteous little
Speaker 1: eye spiders. But guys, enough of the cute talk about spiders.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about haunted deadly lakes. That's right, spoo spoop
Speaker 1: spoo sky lakes. You did say lakes, right, Like, well,
Speaker 1: this is one leg. I'm sure there are other spooky lakes. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that this is the only spooky lake,
Speaker 1: can I. I I think all lakes are spooky. They're
Speaker 1: just they're giant like bodies of water of like stagnant water,
Speaker 1: which is things in them that's spooky. You don't want
Speaker 1: to go in those. I wouldn't say stagnant water necessarily,
Speaker 1: but still yeah, still water, which is uh, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I just assume if every lake is loaded with ghosts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got to be loaded with all the ghosts of
Speaker 1: the micro organisms, right like tiny just really haunted by
Speaker 1: jack fish. Yeah, fish with unfinished business, finished fish business,
Speaker 1: a turtle that never got to say goodbye to its mom.
Speaker 1: That's actually sad you brought the podcast down. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: thought I thought the fish business would be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I really wanted to pick up that pebble in my
Speaker 1: mouth and spit it back out really badly, and I
Speaker 1: never got to write. I feel like it would be
Speaker 1: be like I wanted to try like swimming in a
Speaker 1: loop de loop and then I hit my head on
Speaker 1: a rock and died. But now I'm going to try
Speaker 1: it again. But yeah, no, this is an actual spooky lake.
Speaker 1: So this is a lake that turns dead animals into
Speaker 1: terrifying stone sculptures. I mean that sounds pretty dope. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty tight. Yeah, it's pretty sounds like it
Speaker 1: turns them into fun collectibles, into precious moments. The moment
Speaker 1: of death isn't that precious though, you know. Yeah. Lake
Speaker 1: Natrone in northern Tanzania a salt lake that is highly alkaline.
Speaker 1: So if you're highly alkaline, you have a very high pH.
Speaker 1: So you're basic, You're you're basic, like a basic bit right, Yeah? Wait,
Speaker 1: this lake is a basic lake, is very basic. It's
Speaker 1: a basic lake. I got you know what. I followed
Speaker 1: this lake on Instagram and everybody got that. But it's
Speaker 1: not basic like basic, but it's basic like it is
Speaker 1: full of base, as in it has a high pH.
Speaker 1: Like there's assets low pH, and there's bases high pH
Speaker 1: and acids can be very caustic, and bases can be
Speaker 1: very caustic as well. So it is so basic due
Speaker 1: to high amounts of natron found in the lake. Natron
Speaker 1: is a naturally occurring basic high P mineral salt. This
Speaker 1: gives the lake a pH of over twelve, which is
Speaker 1: a about as high as ammonia. Sure. Yeah cool. You
Speaker 1: could say you could have said anything and I would. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what any of
Speaker 1: that means making this up. It's got a pH is
Speaker 1: high as glorge. Oh yeah, glory. Yeah, I remember hearing
Speaker 1: about glorge in high school. Yeah, it's really a powerful
Speaker 1: household solvent. Yeah. Well, so the lake is only about
Speaker 1: ten ft deep, which is about three meters, but thirty
Speaker 1: five miles long about fifty seven kilometers long, and the
Speaker 1: lake is pretty hot. It's about a hundred degrees fahrenheit,
Speaker 1: if not more. And it is the world's most caustic lake.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, No, you know it'll cackle if you go
Speaker 1: on it. Yeah, it's so caustic. It shouts at people
Speaker 1: as they walk by. Yeah, it's like this lake is
Speaker 1: like a real, real, real trash lake. Like Gilbert Gottfried's
Speaker 1: voice turned into water, the liquefied voice of Gilbert gotfreed,
Speaker 1: Gilfert Godfried's voice melted across ten miles or ever, why
Speaker 1: it was. The pictures that you have here is this
Speaker 1: is this the lake? This red, this terrifying red splotch
Speaker 1: of land. Yes, I'm gonna say I appreciate that it's
Speaker 1: blood red. That is very considerate of the lake, right,
Speaker 1: truth and advertising. Right, Yeah, So the satellite images of
Speaker 1: the lake show a creepy kind of portal to hell
Speaker 1: red gouge in the Earth's surface, and even up close
Speaker 1: to the lake can be red. So not in all
Speaker 1: parts of the lake are read. It kind of depends
Speaker 1: on what part of the lake you're in. Like their
Speaker 1: shallower bits, they're deeper bits, they're a bit sort of
Speaker 1: closer to the shoreline, that might be bluer, but like
Speaker 1: in the center of the lake, it may be redder.
Speaker 1: It also, so it's red because of ciano bacteria that
Speaker 1: has this deep red pigment. So cyanobacteria are these little um,
Speaker 1: very tiny organisms that also they can either live independently
Speaker 1: or they can live in red algae, and that's what
Speaker 1: gives red algae that bright red color. That's what happens
Speaker 1: like when you have a red tide, not not the
Speaker 1: euphemism for a lady's period, but an actual red tide
Speaker 1: sham in the ocean. And not not to be confused
Speaker 1: with the Tony Scott film Crimson Tide classic film. So
Speaker 1: other than microorganisms, little life finds this lake hospitable save
Speaker 1: for a few fish that live around the less salty
Speaker 1: and caustic margins of the lake. And also flamingos. Flamingos
Speaker 1: are hanging out in this lake. Flamingos are hanging out
Speaker 1: in this lake, so they actually feed on some of
Speaker 1: the algae and they because they can fly, they can
Speaker 1: actually fly into these mud flats that form seasonally due
Speaker 1: to evaporation and breathe there lay their eggs and allow
Speaker 1: their young to hatch, and that actually keeps them safe
Speaker 1: from predators because basically they're on these little islands and
Speaker 1: predators don't want to have to swim through a blood red, hellish,
Speaker 1: highly basic, caustic lake. It's like it's like how they
Speaker 1: always say, if you get attacked by a bear, light
Speaker 1: yourself on fire and then the bear won't touch you,
Speaker 1: be gonna have anything to do with that, right, But
Speaker 1: the flamingos can basically survive it because they're on those
Speaker 1: mud flats and they can fly and their their hatchlings
Speaker 1: when they hatch. Basically they have to time it very
Speaker 1: specifically so that they can walk across a land bridge
Speaker 1: that forms with evaporation, and they have to be pretty
Speaker 1: fast about it though, because young flamingos can actually die
Speaker 1: on the journey from these these salt uh salt lakes,
Speaker 1: like if their legs start to get too wet because
Speaker 1: salt crystals start to form and it weighs them down
Speaker 1: and it can actually kill them if they just get
Speaker 1: so weighed down by the salt crystals forming on their
Speaker 1: legs that they can't move. So this is after they're born.
Speaker 1: They have to get out of this lake. Yes, that's awful.
Speaker 1: That's like real high risk reward here. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: building in the middle of like an acid moat. Well, right,
Speaker 1: but then if you're surrounded by predators that want to
Speaker 1: eat your babies and they don't want to go through
Speaker 1: the acid moat and sorry, guys, it's not an acid moat.
Speaker 1: It's a basic mode, basic basic. But like it's just
Speaker 1: they didn't ask for that. It's it's like it has
Speaker 1: to be born. Yeah, just like welcome to the world.
Speaker 1: Now you have to get through the Mario lava level.
Speaker 1: I love I love the emo Flamingo. It's just got
Speaker 1: like one little tuft of like black feathers and it
Speaker 1: has to be born an acoustic lake. Mom die in
Speaker 1: its feathers black. That's great, But for most birds, this
Speaker 1: lake is a deadly temptress because migrating birds will crash
Speaker 1: into the lake surface. It's waters are highly reflective due
Speaker 1: to the dense mineral content, and it forms a natural mirror.
Speaker 1: Do they think it's more sky. They think it's more skyle. Literally,
Speaker 1: they're like wow, sky direction. They're like, well, I've never
Speaker 1: seen that before. This is gonna be awesome. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's probably very disorienting because you look down and there's
Speaker 1: just more sky and you're like, huh, I got more
Speaker 1: sky to go in. Yeah, some bird scientists thinks they've
Speaker 1: discovered a window into another dimension. O. Man. Growing up,
Speaker 1: we had a lot of windows and we would you know,
Speaker 1: the birds would hit it. So I remember one year
Speaker 1: my parents had the bright idea of putting like butter
Speaker 1: fly stickers on the windows, and so they're just more
Speaker 1: birds slammed into it, but hungry birds. You should have
Speaker 1: put a pis somatic butterflies, butterflies with warning coloration on
Speaker 1: the windows, Dave's mom, or just like a big owl.
Speaker 1: Yeah that they sell hock dee cows you can put
Speaker 1: that would be super awesome. Though you just have a
Speaker 1: bunch of screaming hawks on your windows. I don't really
Speaker 1: have a problem with birds crashing into our our windows,
Speaker 1: but now I just want to cover them all in
Speaker 1: in hocte cows just blazing ferocious socks. That's protecting the birds.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so like they will crash into this and
Speaker 1: if you're you know, flying, and then you suddenly crash
Speaker 1: into a highly caustic lake at full speed, you can die.
Speaker 1: Either just from the impact or you know, from the
Speaker 1: caustic lake. Them being murdered by a lake is just
Speaker 1: the start of the horror story because then inside the
Speaker 1: water of the lake, the bodies of these dead animals
Speaker 1: will be turned into McCobb's sculptures. So the dead animals,
Speaker 1: semi decayed bodies are preserved through calcification, So calcium salts
Speaker 1: in the lake will be deposited into soft tissue, turning
Speaker 1: it into like this hard semi mummified dead bird or
Speaker 1: other animals. There's like bats sometimes get in there as well,
Speaker 1: but it's still all sleep birds. So I want you
Speaker 1: guys to take a look through. I'll also provide a
Speaker 1: link to these in the show notes. But this gallery
Speaker 1: of calcified animals that were turned into statues by lake neutron,
Speaker 1: which is not just to clarify something about these pictures.
Speaker 1: They were calcified, turned into statues, and then some jerk
Speaker 1: for photographer fished them out of the water and put
Speaker 1: them on these perches, right yep, okay, because they didn't
Speaker 1: calcify in these poses twigs. According to the photographer, they
Speaker 1: were in these poses, but they were not like sitting
Speaker 1: on a branch so they were collected by him and
Speaker 1: local I guess volunteers. I don't. I don't know what
Speaker 1: what Briberry system went on to get locals. So just like, hey,
Speaker 1: get some dead birds from me, will you. So this
Speaker 1: is photographer Nick Brandt who took these photos, and he
Speaker 1: would get acquire the dead birds and sometimes dead bats
Speaker 1: and pose them by just taking their hardened, calcified body
Speaker 1: and putting it on a branch and taking a photo.
Speaker 1: But he says that he didn't manipulate their bodies anyway,
Speaker 1: like trying to pose them. I don't even think you
Speaker 1: could break break Man. The goth flamingo would love these
Speaker 1: in its room. They have a whole whole thing of him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if all lined up on the wardrobe trying to shock
Speaker 1: its parents. Yeah, if you guys could get calcified. Um,
Speaker 1: if you if that's how you go getting calcified rapidly?
Speaker 1: What pose would you strike? Because these birds, they chose
Speaker 1: a good pose. I would probably go in an attack pose,
Speaker 1: attack pose. Yeah, with my fangs bared. I would hope
Speaker 1: to be holding a guitar so I could be wailing
Speaker 1: on a guitar in the pose. We can make this happen, Dave,
Speaker 1: we can, we can, you can. We can go to
Speaker 1: Tanzania and you can jump into the lake with a
Speaker 1: guitar and just jump in this freaking sarlac pit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I would have like one hand like a
Speaker 1: kimbo and kind of like sassily be sort of jetting
Speaker 1: my hip out and then like one hand sort of
Speaker 1: like blowing a kiss. And then I feel like that
Speaker 1: would be cool for people to Instagram post with, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: make a little money while you're dead, right, and then
Speaker 1: charge people. People could put fun like coins in my
Speaker 1: hand and then my bony, calcified fingers like clasp over
Speaker 1: the coin and I'll be like the is struck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's okay. It's so have they like stuck cameras in
Speaker 1: this lake? Have they looked in the part where the
Speaker 1: animals can't go? I don't. I mean, it's not that
Speaker 1: no animals can survive in this like, uh, fish can.
Speaker 1: Some fish, very hardy fish can actually live in certain
Speaker 1: parts of the lake. I mean they're stout fish, fisher,
Speaker 1: bulletproof fish going around. Dun't bar me. I don't know
Speaker 1: what they're complaining about. Dun't bar me. I just find
Speaker 1: it hard to like you're describing like one of those
Speaker 1: you know, those weird flowers that like spiders fall in
Speaker 1: and bugs fall in and they drown and eats them.
Speaker 1: Like it just seems like it's some elaborate trap, right,
Speaker 1: But it's just a lake. Yeah, but what's the lake?
Speaker 1: Want the lake? Yeah, I feel like like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: entirely possible. We'd go to the bottom of this lake
Speaker 1: and find like a mouth, yeah, hello, big big, like
Speaker 1: big juicy lips, like yeah, just a human mouth. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if there have been like
Speaker 1: underwater videos taken, I don't know if you would get
Speaker 1: much Also, if you if you got film exposed to
Speaker 1: the water, like if somehow water got into your film
Speaker 1: or on your camera, it would destroy the footage. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a racket, like we we don't know what's down there, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's at the very least, it's a portal
Speaker 1: to hell. What if it's this photographer. What if he
Speaker 1: like turns into like a like a like a snake
Speaker 1: or something and like slithers into the water at night
Speaker 1: like a silky Yeah, and it's it's the lake's elaborate
Speaker 1: scam to sell black and white photography of animals. I
Speaker 1: like that that this malevolent blood Red likes ultimate evil
Speaker 1: scam is photography. Oh yeah, hey, look sometimes monsters want,
Speaker 1: you know, to be artists too. But these are these
Speaker 1: are astounding photos. There's a wholeful a mingo, a bat
Speaker 1: uh swallow, some other bird I can't really tell what
Speaker 1: it is anymore, and an entire eagle, and I think
Speaker 1: a dove. Who I think the dove is my favorite
Speaker 1: because its wings are sort of folded in front of it.
Speaker 1: It looks very much like an angel of Death kind
Speaker 1: of thing going on. Yeah, it looks like a like
Speaker 1: a prop for the movie The Crow, right right, or
Speaker 1: like a Gearmo del Toro creation. Yeah, yeah, again, good
Speaker 1: on these birds of taking these majestic poses. At the
Speaker 1: moment of their death, They're like, I'm dying, but I
Speaker 1: must pull my finger. There's a cheese space in a
Speaker 1: in a peace sign. Yeah. I mean, I think that
Speaker 1: being turned into a statue is sort of a It's
Speaker 1: a it's a theme in horror movies, right, like in
Speaker 1: House of Wax, where they like turn horny teenagers into
Speaker 1: wax statues. Greek mythology like Medusa turning people into stone statues.
Speaker 1: I guess, horny Greeks, the classic story of gargoyles the cartoon, Right,
Speaker 1: that's sort of the that's sort of the opposite problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a good point, um, Tom, if we
Speaker 1: were we're talking about horror movies, Tom, we we literally
Speaker 1: just watched a movie like this, or should I say
Speaker 1: a segment in a movie, Tom, Yeah, creep show too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The raft it's about a lake where a bunch of
Speaker 1: college kids, you know, going on on one of those
Speaker 1: wooden rafts that's like anchored in the middle of the
Speaker 1: lake to bone uh and uh, there's in horror movies
Speaker 1: you can never have sex without like consequences, in this
Speaker 1: case being attacked by what appears to be like a
Speaker 1: gooey trash bag that floats around the lake and dissolves them,
Speaker 1: eats them. Yeah, that's pretty nearly. That's cool. That is
Speaker 1: kind of like this. Yeah. I was going to ask
Speaker 1: you guys if they are like killer lakes in horror movies,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like there are just the one, really
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah, I don't know, you know, there's some.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not really a horror movie. But in
Speaker 1: Dante's Peak, the lake turns into acid. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: eats Grandmama, eats Grandma. Yeah she kind of Yeah, she
Speaker 1: totally has it coming in the in the context of
Speaker 1: that film, Grandma, it's very satisfying. It's a villain death
Speaker 1: when you think about it, She's the chief villain of
Speaker 1: the piece. I like how this podcast has suddenly taken
Speaker 1: a very anti Grandma's dance Grandma. Yeah. Like if you
Speaker 1: watch Dante's Peak, you would be like, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know exactly what you're talking. We're saying Grandma's in general
Speaker 1: are cool, and we don't we don't want you to
Speaker 1: get devoured by legs of acid. Yeah, we should say
Speaker 1: the character who I believe is named Ruth. Ruth. Just
Speaker 1: before we move on to the next topic, I want
Speaker 1: to do sort of an honorable mention for spooky horror
Speaker 1: movie environment. So this would be the clathrus are carry
Speaker 1: fungus which is also known as the octopus, stinkhorn, the squid, word, mushroom,
Speaker 1: or Devon's fingers. So it is a fungus that looks
Speaker 1: like a tentacled alien bursting out of an egg, which
Speaker 1: I think is pretty neat. Yeah, why does this exist?
Speaker 1: How can I avoid it? Um? So to answer why
Speaker 1: it exists? Uh, I don't. I mean that's very deeply philosophical.
Speaker 1: In short, basically, these tentacle arms come out in order
Speaker 1: to distribute its spores, and they smell like rotting flesh
Speaker 1: when they're mature to attract flies and other pollinators. I
Speaker 1: guess that actually didn't answer why they exist, but just
Speaker 1: added on to sort of more of how they exist.
Speaker 1: So basically, the it looks like a white egg, and
Speaker 1: then out of the white egg are red tentacle arms
Speaker 1: with black goo inside of them, sort of bursting out
Speaker 1: of the eggs. And sometimes they come and hold clusters,
Speaker 1: so it looks like a nest of little eldric demons.
Speaker 1: It's the shrimp fingers and beetlejuice. Yeah, that's exactly what
Speaker 1: it looks like. Yeah, that was the first thing that
Speaker 1: came to mind. I don't remember shrimp fingers. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: during the famous scene where she dances and sings. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then at the end their meals grab them, grab
Speaker 1: their faces and throw them. That's fun. That's what these
Speaker 1: fungus do too. No, not really, they do smell like
Speaker 1: dead flesh and oh and then this is just a
Speaker 1: fun thing. From the Wikipedia sentence says, quote the young
Speaker 1: fungus erupts from a sub rumpant egg by forming into
Speaker 1: four to seven elongated slender arms, initially erect and attached
Speaker 1: at the top. So I never actually have heard the
Speaker 1: term suber rumpant, and I googled it, and every everything
Speaker 1: on Google just led back to this Wikipedia article. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is a real word or not.
Speaker 1: Rumpant is a real word. It means bursting forth through
Speaker 1: a surface. But I guess like sub or rumpant means
Speaker 1: like the egg is the thing from which the tentacle
Speaker 1: fungus erupts. I don't know, but I'm just sounds like
Speaker 1: somebody's making stuff up on Wikipedia. Kind of sounds like
Speaker 1: somebody's making stuff up on Wikipedia, but it's it was
Speaker 1: trying to slide suborumpant in there. It's like it's a
Speaker 1: perfect crime, right. But I'm like super into this word,
Speaker 1: so I kind of wanted to be a real word.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna start using subarumpant and act like
Speaker 1: you don't know what's subarumpant means that embarrassing for you.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm now automatically thinking of horror movies. This
Speaker 1: reminds me. Splinter comes to mind. Say, it's not quite
Speaker 1: the same, but that's I was trying to think of
Speaker 1: what our fungal horror movies. Uh, And of course there's
Speaker 1: The Last of Us with um like it's often a
Speaker 1: zombie genre. Splinters similar to US as a game where
Speaker 1: zombies are taken over by the court accepts Fungus, which
Speaker 1: is actually based on a real fungus that infects ants
Speaker 1: and other insects and bursts from them, like some times
Speaker 1: from their heads into a fruiting body that releases spores,
Speaker 1: which is pretty horrifying. I think we've talked about it
Speaker 1: on the show before, but yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also the movie Cargo, which was like a zombie movie
Speaker 1: with Martin Freeman that not Australian, the Australian Outback, and
Speaker 1: I think that him and a baby, him and a baby,
Speaker 1: and I think it wasn't that whole. There was like
Speaker 1: sort of I think they based some of their Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more zombie ish. It was a good, very good premise,
Speaker 1: which is that he's trying to get this this. I
Speaker 1: think it's a baby to safety having been bitten. So
Speaker 1: he knows that in a certain amount of time he's
Speaker 1: gonna eat that baby. Like he's just gonna he's not
Speaker 1: gonna he's gonna be a zombie. And then that baby
Speaker 1: is screwed. Bay, Yeah, the baby. I don't think that
Speaker 1: baby could handle this. Oh, but you know what it is.
Speaker 1: It's not that it's not that the virus itself is
Speaker 1: a fungus, but they based the human beho aaviors on
Speaker 1: the behaviors of ants that have been infected with Court accepts.
Speaker 1: So like the humans in a stage of infection, they
Speaker 1: are become very like photo sensitive and like hide their
Speaker 1: heads in the ground then burst forth becoming fully zombified. Um,
Speaker 1: And I think it's with ants, it's not quite the
Speaker 1: same thing. They just go crazy and walk up a
Speaker 1: stem and then like clamp down on the stem and
Speaker 1: start to clamp their head onto the stem and just
Speaker 1: like stay in that locked pose. So I think that's
Speaker 1: actually really I like that idea of like an infection
Speaker 1: sort of like having you do this weird behavior in
Speaker 1: service of the virus or fungus fungal infection. A non
Speaker 1: zombie option. It's not really a fungus. I'm cheating, but
Speaker 1: the movie Apostle has sort of a fungal quality to
Speaker 1: what's going on. It's it's more like nature. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is also this is also a little reminiscent of Annihilation. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: oh yeah. God. I couldn't watch that movie like all
Speaker 1: the way through, but I have just watched bits and
Speaker 1: pieces of it to get the overall vibe. E didn't
Speaker 1: like the tummy worms, I didn't like the that's going
Speaker 1: to say, did you make it to the Horror Bear?
Speaker 1: And yes you did. Yeah you your love of animals.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's certain horror movies that would fascinate
Speaker 1: you to some extent and horrify Yeah, Apostle being one
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah. It's funny because while I think I'm
Speaker 1: extremely empathetic towards humans, seeing animals suffer in movies somehow
Speaker 1: is worse. Not that I not that I think that
Speaker 1: I like value animals over humans. I think it's like
Speaker 1: when I see a human actor suffering in a movie,
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, part of my brain is like, oh no,
Speaker 1: I'm upset, But then part of my brain is like,
Speaker 1: that's a human actor. You know they're they're acting. Right
Speaker 1: When I see like a dog in a movie, even
Speaker 1: if it's even if I logically know this dog is
Speaker 1: trained to make this sound, it's not actually scared. The
Speaker 1: concept of a dog actor portraying fear but not actually
Speaker 1: being afraid doesn't really resonate with me. So I'm just like, oh, no, baby,
Speaker 1: Like in the Thing, the worst scene in that movie
Speaker 1: is the dog being attacked by the thing. They're like
Speaker 1: making these horrible scared dog noises. And I'm sure, at
Speaker 1: least I hope very much that these were just really
Speaker 1: well trained dogs. First of all, it's um white Thing
Speaker 1: is one of the dogs. The dog actor who played
Speaker 1: white Fing is the main dog in that I think, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it wor if you watch some of those
Speaker 1: shots where the dogs are getting like sprayed with thing goo, yeah,
Speaker 1: like you're definitely seeing irritated dogs. I don't think you're
Speaker 1: seeing dogs in like afraid, but I think you're seeing
Speaker 1: dogs being like what the hell is man? What is this? Right?
Speaker 1: But there's like a dog that tries to bite its
Speaker 1: way out of the cage because it's so scared. It's like, oh, puppy,
Speaker 1: probably peanut butter all these I know, I know, right,
Speaker 1: but like, screw all these people, like save the puppies.
Speaker 1: My favorite is when a dog or animals trying to
Speaker 1: be vicious and you can kind of tell they're just
Speaker 1: having TILSA. That's so interesting about the and this is
Speaker 1: a total tangent but I just watched it recently. So
Speaker 1: the dog is infected by the thing, which is this
Speaker 1: shape shifting alien evil entity, and the dog actor is
Speaker 1: so good at being kind of uncanny the way it's
Speaker 1: it's such a good dogs, such a good dog actor,
Speaker 1: and it kind of is creepy, but it's also like
Speaker 1: I'm just so proud of such a good good boy.
Speaker 1: What a good boy. It's white thing like that. That's
Speaker 1: that is like the Jack Nicholson of dogs. Uh, it's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the name is Jet Jet. The dog was in the
Speaker 1: thing and white thing and white thing to get him,
Speaker 1: get him an Oscar or an Oscar Mayer weener. I know,
Speaker 1: we're I know, far down the rabbit hole. I just
Speaker 1: have to say. The dog has one self credit where
Speaker 1: the dog plays itself and this is blowing my mind. Uh,
Speaker 1: it plays itself in the video documentary Dead Kennedy's the
Speaker 1: early Years, a documentary about the punk band The Dead Kennedy's.
Speaker 1: I don't know why White Fame is in that, but
Speaker 1: Jet the Dog was there in the formative years of
Speaker 1: the Dead Kennedys, so they couldn't they couldn't do a
Speaker 1: comprehensive documentary without talking to him. Right was Jed the
Speaker 1: first singer. The cast of this documentary is the four
Speaker 1: members of The Dead Kennedy's and Jed. That's all that's
Speaker 1: listed on IMDV. The dog in a pair of glasses
Speaker 1: like facing count. Yeah, well, you know, I do there
Speaker 1: early years, and to be frank with you, it was
Speaker 1: their sound was pretty rough. So now we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about ants. Ants can be scary, but ants could
Speaker 1: have their own horror movies like Attack of the Ant. Mimics.
Speaker 1: There are species of predatory insects and arachnids that mimic
Speaker 1: ants visually, behaviorally, and sometimes through pheromones. Reasons for the
Speaker 1: mimicry range from being able to sneakily live among the
Speaker 1: ants to stealing the ant's identity to avoid predators, Predators
Speaker 1: who are rightfully afraid of the wrath of an ant colony.
Speaker 1: Some mimics are ruthless murderers using their ant shape to
Speaker 1: sneak up on an ant, kill it, and eat it,
Speaker 1: like John Carpenter's The Thing. So before the break, we
Speaker 1: were just talking about the Thing, and I was kind
Speaker 1: of there aren't that many like shape shifting super animals
Speaker 1: that can assume the form of any organism. Unfortunately, But
Speaker 1: when you think of evolution as sort of like it,
Speaker 1: like on this grander scale of evolution, shaping animals into
Speaker 1: things in order to prey upon other animals, that behaves
Speaker 1: very much like the Thing. And so I want you
Speaker 1: to take a look at these photos because it shows
Speaker 1: a couple of ant mimics. So the first photo is
Speaker 1: of a jumping spider ant mimic. Can you tell which
Speaker 1: one is the ant, which one is the spider? Yes,
Speaker 1: But until I knew what these pictures were of, I
Speaker 1: just assumed I was looking at two ants. I'm very
Speaker 1: I'm surprised, like now looking at him, like, oh, that
Speaker 1: is a spider pretending doing its darndest to be an ant.
Speaker 1: This is a real It's kind of cute. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: this spider is really this is this is diabolical. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like if you saw this spider and
Speaker 1: like squinted at it, he'd be like, don't don't blow
Speaker 1: this for me. Shut up, dude, don't be an aren't
Speaker 1: Well this first one is a little less diabolical, I think,
Speaker 1: because this is actually a jumping spider mimicking an ant,
Speaker 1: not to prey on the ants, but actually to steal
Speaker 1: their identities so other spiders don't prey on it. Because
Speaker 1: if a spider eats an ant, a real ant, it
Speaker 1: runs the risk of the ants sending out distress pheromones
Speaker 1: and then the whole colony coming in and attacking killing
Speaker 1: the spider, which happens frequently. So spiders are like, okay,
Speaker 1: I don't want to, like, you know, attack an ant.
Speaker 1: So the jumping spider, which is often smaller spiders are
Speaker 1: often the prey of bigger spiders, and the jumping spider,
Speaker 1: a cute, little baby spider, is often the prey of
Speaker 1: bigger spiders, so by imitating an ant, it is actually
Speaker 1: standing a better chance of avoiding predation from larger spiders.
Speaker 1: I love that a spider eating an ant will erupt
Speaker 1: into a gang fight. Yeah, Like they'll just cut they'll
Speaker 1: just come out and stump at spiders as right, No,
Speaker 1: I mean like that's they have. That is their whole thing, right, safety, numbers,
Speaker 1: safety and the colony. And if you you you have
Speaker 1: to establish that basically you can't mess with us, or
Speaker 1: else you get the whole whole colony up your butt.
Speaker 1: Sometimes literally, Yeah, it's it's like the entire philosophy of
Speaker 1: the ant I feel like is they showed up on
Speaker 1: this earth and they were like, crap, we're ants were
Speaker 1: like the smallest things we better like stick together exactly,
Speaker 1: that's all we have. They probably start out as solitary insects,
Speaker 1: and it ended up the more social they were, the
Speaker 1: more successful they were. So the second photos are interesting
Speaker 1: because this is a little more devious. Now these are
Speaker 1: not ants. They look basically the first one especially looks
Speaker 1: exactly like an ant, but this is actually the ant
Speaker 1: mimicking predatory spider called the Karena ant like jumper, and
Speaker 1: they are found in Southeast Asia. They mimic weaver ants,
Speaker 1: and this is a form of aggressive mimicry because this
Speaker 1: spider will pretend to be an ant, you know, sneak
Speaker 1: up to an aunt, be like hello, fellow aunt, and
Speaker 1: then you know, eat it if it gets caught by
Speaker 1: another ant. It's like just doing normal ants stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: taking care of this dead body, and they're like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to have to report you and we're gonna have to.
Speaker 1: Don't be a total buzz killed dude. This ants pretty
Speaker 1: suss exact. Yeah. And then the and that's the female.
Speaker 1: The female looks very much like an ant, and it's
Speaker 1: like front legs kind of look like the feelers of
Speaker 1: the ant even though their legs and they'll actually hold
Speaker 1: them kind of like feelers and mimic the ant's behavior.
Speaker 1: And male karinga ant like jumper spiders, actually are away crazier.
Speaker 1: And I think I may have mentioned this on the
Speaker 1: show before, but there's another detail that I want to
Speaker 1: point out. So male karnga ant like jumper spiders, look
Speaker 1: like two ants where one ant is holding the other
Speaker 1: quote unquote ant, but it's just one spider, and like
Speaker 1: the second ant is, it's giant things. So unlike the female,
Speaker 1: it needs to compete with other males in mating, so
Speaker 1: it needs these big set of things. But ants don't
Speaker 1: have generally speaking, giant long fangs, so in order to
Speaker 1: continue to pass off as an ant, it makes itself
Speaker 1: look like two ants one carrying the other, except for
Speaker 1: the horrifying moment that one of the ants splits open
Speaker 1: into a giant set of fangs. It's the it's the
Speaker 1: spider equivalent of two kids in a trench coat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the spiders really having to juggle a lot of things, right,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it is. It's like it's like the thing
Speaker 1: if the thing had to look like it was holding
Speaker 1: a child, right, like then the child burst into tentacles
Speaker 1: just has like like you know, child has like one
Speaker 1: of the other ones like on the shoulders, and he's like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: this normal stuff. I love how these ants, like are
Speaker 1: these spiders The female one has like terrifying spider mandibles
Speaker 1: like the but like ants do too, just like slightly
Speaker 1: different ones. So like an observant aunt would just be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're slightly more terrifying looking than us, not much more,
Speaker 1: but your your creepy mouth is even creepier for some reason, right,
Speaker 1: And they probably do a lot of like since just
Speaker 1: sort of by feel, by tactile recognition, so probably their
Speaker 1: eyesight is not super great, so but by like just
Speaker 1: sweeping a leg over the spiders like oh you're you're, you're,
Speaker 1: you're basically ant shaped, right, yeah, the male one, though,
Speaker 1: it just feels like evolution just continuing to like right
Speaker 1: over itself over and over again, like not erasing anything,
Speaker 1: just adding and adding, like the like the female has
Speaker 1: mastered it. That thing looks like an ant. The male
Speaker 1: looks like a goblin. Yeah, females walking around like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm an aunt. The man was walking like him. I'm
Speaker 1: everybody's like it comes. Hey, guys, just two ants. I
Speaker 1: don't think that guy's two ants. I don't know what
Speaker 1: that is aunt favorite beer. We were talking about Annihilation earlier,
Speaker 1: but it is interesting because, like when you look at
Speaker 1: evolution on a larger scale, that idea of weird transformations,
Speaker 1: like in a weird melding of like different forms. Actually,
Speaker 1: while it doesn't really happen across species like it does
Speaker 1: in were distantly related species, in Annihilation, it does certainly happen.
Speaker 1: We're like, we just had an episode actually Aban Bridget
Speaker 1: We're on and we talked about carsonization, where everything just
Speaker 1: starts to turn into crabs, like every uh, everything is crap,
Speaker 1: Everything is crabs. Every crustacean starts to like evolve into
Speaker 1: crab form at some point, I preferred like everything. You're
Speaker 1: just like you turn on the faucet and it's like
Speaker 1: crabs spiders. Spiders are starting to be more. They're like
Speaker 1: crab spiders and look, maybe humans are next. I don't
Speaker 1: have any quote unquote research to back that up, but
Speaker 1: I like the idea that Mother Nature is like endgame
Speaker 1: is crab like that Crab game. Yeah, we're all just
Speaker 1: we're all just on our way to be crabs. Different
Speaker 1: different age of Ultron kind of thing where he does
Speaker 1: the he does this finger snap and everyone gets turned
Speaker 1: to crabs. That would have been a better one. That'd
Speaker 1: been a better wish, better magic gauntlet. Wish my wish.
Speaker 1: Everyone's crabs now crab world. So another horror movie trope
Speaker 1: that ants do is that scene in World war Z,
Speaker 1: you know, the one where all the it's like the
Speaker 1: only good scene in the World war Z the movie,
Speaker 1: but like where all the zombies are piling on top
Speaker 1: of each other to get over this wall. So ants
Speaker 1: do this where they form bridges out of their bodies.
Speaker 1: So at first it sounds, you know, pretty innocent and
Speaker 1: simple enough, like these ants kind of cooperating together maybe,
Speaker 1: but like when you actually look at the reality and
Speaker 1: science behind it. It is very scary and it's like
Speaker 1: even worse in some ways than that World Wars Z
Speaker 1: scene because like in the World War Z scene, they're
Speaker 1: just sort of creating like a pile, a zombie pile.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like, okay, yeah, I guess kind of threatening.
Speaker 1: So army ants have this behavior where they can actually
Speaker 1: make these long bridge chains of ants. So I want
Speaker 1: you guys to check out that video just for a second. Oh,
Speaker 1: I've seen this. Yeah, I want to hang off of it.
Speaker 1: Do you think you think they'd let me hang off
Speaker 1: of it? No? Maybe? Don't you think I just end
Speaker 1: up covered in ants? Maybe he dress as a big aunt, like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm here, I am also an aunt because they seem
Speaker 1: pretty too. Yeah, describe what you're seeing here. It looks
Speaker 1: like a jump rope like it. It's it's the awning
Speaker 1: of a house, and it looks like from afar someone
Speaker 1: has hung like maybe a cable of some sort off
Speaker 1: off the edge of the house. Cable you could like
Speaker 1: plant something on it, and then once you press play,
Speaker 1: it does indeed begin to move and it it appears
Speaker 1: to be honestly the most useless ant bridge I've seen
Speaker 1: because they're forming this big loop list like drooping loop
Speaker 1: so that they can get the equivalent of like one
Speaker 1: and a half feet that they could probably just crawl
Speaker 1: on the awning to get. It does seem like they're
Speaker 1: showing off. So it's like a it's it's a big
Speaker 1: chip purely made out of ants, this big chain of
Speaker 1: ants like thick as a thick as a big cable
Speaker 1: that goes from like sort of one end to the
Speaker 1: awning sort of loops down and then goes up towards
Speaker 1: what is actually a wasps nest. These are army ants.
Speaker 1: So army ants describe a number of species of ants
Speaker 1: that form aggressive groups of foraging ants, and this can
Speaker 1: result in rivers of ants, towers of ants, and just
Speaker 1: huge bridges of undulating ants. And when you you look
Speaker 1: at this, it's like, okay, so why how are they
Speaker 1: doing this? Like are they do they have some kind
Speaker 1: of like pheromone signal where they're like, okay, make a bridge,
Speaker 1: or is it some kind of altruism sort of thing
Speaker 1: or like cooperation or emergent multimind or like the queen
Speaker 1: going like okay, guys, go form a bridge. And the
Speaker 1: reality is actually kind of frustratingly simple. So there is
Speaker 1: just this very and we actually talked about this, I
Speaker 1: think last week, just about how a very intelligent seeming
Speaker 1: behavior can actually be really dumb simple behavior. But once
Speaker 1: you multiply it by a bunch of individuals, the swarm
Speaker 1: actually seems to be acting very intelligently. So here's the
Speaker 1: basic algorithm that researchers have worked out that each dumb
Speaker 1: little aunt brain does. So aunt comes across a gap
Speaker 1: and it pauses because you know, it's like, oh, a gap,
Speaker 1: and it stops. And then another aunt comes from behind
Speaker 1: the first aunt, and that ant walks over the first
Speaker 1: ant and then gets to the end of the first
Speaker 1: ant and stops, and it's like, oh, I can't walk anymore.
Speaker 1: And the first ant, when another ant is walking on
Speaker 1: top of its back, it just instinctively freezes. And then
Speaker 1: so when there are so this keeps happening over and
Speaker 1: over again. Right, So it's like now there's like two
Speaker 1: ants that are like stopped because like the first ant
Speaker 1: is like, oh, someone's on top of me. I freeze now,
Speaker 1: and then the second ant is like, oh, I can't
Speaker 1: walk anymore. I stopped walking now. And the third ant
Speaker 1: comes walks over both of them. They're like, okay, we're
Speaker 1: stopped now. But this keeps happening over and over again
Speaker 1: until you have an actual bridge of ants between the gap,
Speaker 1: and then ants can start to cross it. So basically,
Speaker 1: when there are enough ants trampling on the frozen ants backs,
Speaker 1: they will stay in place because there's so much foot
Speaker 1: traffic on top of them. But when traffic starts to
Speaker 1: lighten up, they'll actually start to break apart and keep moving,
Speaker 1: like as soon as they don't have so many ants
Speaker 1: trampling over them. And this is like this very stupidly
Speaker 1: simple algorithm, but then you multiply that times thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of ants, and that actually results in this very
Speaker 1: complex group behavior that allows them to build bridges which
Speaker 1: can increase movement efficiency and reach places of interest. Now,
Speaker 1: in this case, it is interesting because like this looks
Speaker 1: to be fairly unintelligent, right, like why would you form
Speaker 1: this big loop of ants when you could just like
Speaker 1: walk from the hive back to the like, So they're
Speaker 1: they're going to the wasps nest in order to rate it,
Speaker 1: like get all the larva and stuff and eat eat
Speaker 1: all these things, and then what they'll do is they
Speaker 1: like break apart their prey and then like bring it
Speaker 1: back to their ant colony. But the fact that they've
Speaker 1: formed the seemingly like superfluous loop instead of just walking
Speaker 1: across the awning. It could either just be sort of
Speaker 1: the algorithm just being kind of dumb. I mean, like
Speaker 1: any computer programmer probably knows when this happens when you
Speaker 1: write a program, and sometimes it's not completely efficient because
Speaker 1: it just happens to start this behavior that will keep going.
Speaker 1: Or it could be that like there are ants that
Speaker 1: are trying to walk across the roof, but it's harder
Speaker 1: for them to carry things on this flat surface upside
Speaker 1: down or something. I'm not sure. It's very interesting. They're
Speaker 1: just trying to get their their their wiggles out. I
Speaker 1: was gonna I was gonna make a joke about like
Speaker 1: the the uselessness of being one of those bridge ants
Speaker 1: just sitting there like in one place, not not serving
Speaker 1: a very simple purpose to make this flimsy bridge for
Speaker 1: the better ants to like walk across. And then I
Speaker 1: remembered like society and jobs, and was like, oh, all right,
Speaker 1: you remember we live in a society. Yeah, we live
Speaker 1: in a society. Do the ants get to like talk
Speaker 1: to each other, at least when they're in the bridge,
Speaker 1: you know, how's your how's your aunt wife? And then
Speaker 1: the other times like we're all sisters, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? And then the third ants like I'm not
Speaker 1: a spider, guys, a spider, the spider would know how
Speaker 1: to do it right. The spider would mess it up,
Speaker 1: really give it give itself away in this situation, who
Speaker 1: do you guys? What do you mean? Hang eight? I mean,
Speaker 1: is there is there a Pixar movie in this where
Speaker 1: a spider like is gonna eat the ants? And then
Speaker 1: like or it's just it's just trying to get away
Speaker 1: from its spider family and does this and then like
Speaker 1: it's you know, the ants find out and they accept
Speaker 1: them anyway. So let's talk about ancient aunt vampires. Let
Speaker 1: me tell the story of this ancient ant vampire, and
Speaker 1: someone please write a fan fiction. Make it really, make
Speaker 1: it really horny and inappropriate. Yes, would be vampire right? Nice,
Speaker 1: very good. So a million year old chunk of amber
Speaker 1: was found with the demonic vampire hell ant inside. So
Speaker 1: this ant is extinct for now, we do have it
Speaker 1: trapped in amber, so you know, you know where that
Speaker 1: it's blood and make dinosaurs. Yeah, I mean make just
Speaker 1: make more of these ants and call it aunt Park
Speaker 1: and people still die and go out of business part
Speaker 1: by each gigantic island. Uh set up big fences and
Speaker 1: just release the It's like that seeing this the big
Speaker 1: reveal where the two paleontologists are like, they're like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, there's actually dinosaurs, except like one. They're like
Speaker 1: the music swells and you look out and there's like
Speaker 1: nothing there, and then they're like, you know down there,
Speaker 1: and then it's like donna na closer. Done on. I
Speaker 1: still can't know. Okay there. I think that's one right
Speaker 1: of it done on on on. There's one Jeff Goldblum
Speaker 1: type who's like, you can't do this and they're like,
Speaker 1: what you think it's irresponsible? Like no, it's just a
Speaker 1: bad business, terrible idea. Nobody's gonna pay money to see
Speaker 1: these ants. I don't care about the morality. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just there ants. Well, I think these ants are cool,
Speaker 1: you guys anything. I think if you hear about these ants,
Speaker 1: you'll think they're cool too. So this is called a
Speaker 1: lingua mar Max vladdy Sure, lingua mar Max Vladdie and
Speaker 1: I'm imagining that Vladdie is referencing Vlad like a vampire,
Speaker 1: a species in a group of ants called hell ants,
Speaker 1: because their mandibles were just giant sides, like big curved blades.
Speaker 1: So these sides like job swooped down on the underside
Speaker 1: of the jaw and snap upwards and like this very
Speaker 1: very violent underbite. Most modern ants, like their mandibles move horizontally,
Speaker 1: like side to side, you know, just a little kind
Speaker 1: of thinging on there. But these ones it was like
Speaker 1: up and down, like this sort of upside down guillotine
Speaker 1: made out of sickles. And their jaws are surrounded by
Speaker 1: sensitive hairs that allowed the jaw to snap shut. So
Speaker 1: like these trigger hairs that if something brushes against them,
Speaker 1: the jaw is kind of flap shut, which probably easily
Speaker 1: decapitated unsuspecting prey. And on the upper part of their
Speaker 1: jaw is a hard, flat anvil that actually had metal
Speaker 1: particles in it to reinforce it. So basically they have
Speaker 1: like a chopping block on the top of their jaw
Speaker 1: and like a big axe on the bottom of their
Speaker 1: jaw that comes up and chops against this like anvil,
Speaker 1: and if it doesn't decapitate their prey. It like crushes
Speaker 1: it or punctures it. And uh also, um, there are
Speaker 1: vampires because when you have a guillotine on your face,
Speaker 1: you can't really chew, so they had to suck the
Speaker 1: blood and other essential goo out of their victims. Just
Speaker 1: dudes like trap chaw the heman villain. Yeah, this ant's
Speaker 1: ready for the spider, the spider. Like this is like
Speaker 1: a reverse trap like the spider. It would come up like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm just an ant. If the spider comes in there,
Speaker 1: like the Steve BUSSETI meme, Hello fellow, it's only seeing
Speaker 1: the ant from from the behind, and then the ant
Speaker 1: turns around, so it's like, yeah, yeah, this thing, this
Speaker 1: is a cool ant. Why don't we have these ants anymore?
Speaker 1: I mean potentially trading off your ability to chew things
Speaker 1: with a giant guillotine face. I guess probably like the
Speaker 1: more streamlined ants one out in that. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: they're less cool. Yeah. I feel like evolution would have
Speaker 1: favored them if they existed when we existed, and like
Speaker 1: ant farms would be a more lucrative business. We'd love
Speaker 1: these ants. I would I would have an ant farm.
Speaker 1: I mean artificial selection. Definitely in terms of our human preferences.
Speaker 1: We do love a monster, look at love a good monster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is basically the pug of ants. Let's let's let's
Speaker 1: do like weird cross breeding until all of their legs
Speaker 1: are sickles too. Yeah about pugs right, yes, yeah, talking
Speaker 1: about turning pugs into just these little knife beasts. Ye cute,
Speaker 1: dug the pugs, but it's not nice. Yeah. Ants can
Speaker 1: be pests at picnics, but are they actually dangerous to humans?
Speaker 1: While most ants may not be able to kill you,
Speaker 1: some species can. The Maricopa harvester ant found in the
Speaker 1: southwest United States and in Mexico have been a more
Speaker 1: potent than honey bees that produces extreme pain and humans.
Speaker 1: It can also be potentially deadly because they send out
Speaker 1: an alarm pheromone that triggers other ants to sting as well.
Speaker 1: A few hundred stings and you may be dead meat
Speaker 1: if you don't get medical attention. When we return, we're
Speaker 1: going to play a little auditory game, So turn your
Speaker 1: headphones up and your lights out. Imagine you're camping, the
Speaker 1: sun has set, the stars are out, and you're sitting
Speaker 1: by a dim dying camp fire. There's the din of crickets,
Speaker 1: the wind blowing through the trees, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you here. So, guys, we're going to play a game.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play a sound, and you're gonna guess what
Speaker 1: it is. Okay, do you guess what that one was? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Go for it. Um, I don't know. I feel like,
Speaker 1: is it is it? Is it? Bobcat gold Swate, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is it? Bobcat gold sway on acid in the woods.
Speaker 1: UM's no, all right. The first instinct some kind of bird,
Speaker 1: because birds are allowed all the time, and so that
Speaker 1: sounds like some sort of crow. But I could actually
Speaker 1: see it being some kind of actual like Bobcat, not gold,
Speaker 1: not gold slate, but also gold Swate sounds gold regular, regular,
Speaker 1: Bob Bobcat classic. This is actually the call of a
Speaker 1: red fox, which is like when I think of a fox,
Speaker 1: I don't think I think of them sort of maybe
Speaker 1: going like rank or a meal. They don't really mew,
Speaker 1: but you know, I just think like a fox noise
Speaker 1: to me is definitely not like ra Yeah, like an
Speaker 1: existential screen. Yeah, they make like weird chirping noises. They
Speaker 1: do that too. Yeah, fox noises are really unique. That's
Speaker 1: the that's the that's that. I guess what was a
Speaker 1: Swedish music video with the Fox saying like wrap up
Speaker 1: and that isn't it? They were wrong? Yeah, no, that
Speaker 1: is not what the fox there. The Fox does sometimes
Speaker 1: say that as well, But they also say this and
Speaker 1: this is either a territory warning call or I don't know,
Speaker 1: potentially a noise they make while they're mating. I think
Speaker 1: this one is the territory morning call. But they do
Speaker 1: make weird screams while they're making as well. I like that.
Speaker 1: We apparently can't tell the difference between those two things.
Speaker 1: I'm sure a foxologists could, but I care one of
Speaker 1: them big city scientists. I'm no big city Fox lawyer.
Speaker 1: I'm going to play another sound for you to guess
Speaker 1: and one and a two and here we go, all right.
Speaker 1: That had an evolution, Like at first I thought was
Speaker 1: someone distantly having a party. I thought somebody was like
Speaker 1: playing some steel drums for a second, and then I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, is a coffee maker running out of water?
Speaker 1: And then I was like, oh am I hearing hell? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is this hell? Um? Is Satan choking? Satan's choking on
Speaker 1: a pretzel? Satan's chicken bones stuck in his throat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to guess some sort of monkey or ape. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess some sort of reptile or amphibious creature
Speaker 1: like a frog or something. Yeah, like some sort of
Speaker 1: stupid toad. This is actually a koala. I don't like
Speaker 1: that at all. Get that right out of here. This
Speaker 1: is a male koala showing dominance behavior, announcing his position
Speaker 1: with a low, growling rumble. And this is so the
Speaker 1: koalas don't have to fight as much. So like if
Speaker 1: they have a territorial call, much like in other animals
Speaker 1: that have territorial calls, they are announcing their presence basically saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this is my area, and that just kind of helps
Speaker 1: reduce the amount of scuffles they have to get into.
Speaker 1: And koalas will scuffle. They seem cute and cuddly, but
Speaker 1: don't they are. Yeah. Is this the koala equivalent? Like
Speaker 1: if you have property and you don't want people to
Speaker 1: wander on, you can hang like a bunch of doll
Speaker 1: heads and nobody's coming. You know, no one's going to
Speaker 1: cross that property line. Is this the koala equivalent where
Speaker 1: they're like and other qualies like I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know what that playing kid rock really loud? Ye
Speaker 1: your speakers, Yeah, I don't do it both that in
Speaker 1: dull heads that Yeah, you're guaranteed not to get any guests,
Speaker 1: all right. So now onto the next sound and just
Speaker 1: a little, a little additional one here. So what do
Speaker 1: you think that is a poltergeist? I think it's I
Speaker 1: think it's a Nicolas Cage performance. You know, what it
Speaker 1: does sound like is one of those rubber chickens that
Speaker 1: you squeeze and then when you release it like screams.
Speaker 1: I got a little bit of wolf howl at the end,
Speaker 1: and so I'm guessing it's some sort of dog beast.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of bird a right, Dave, You're actually very
Speaker 1: close on this one. This is a new Guinea singing dog,
Speaker 1: which actually is probably makes the same sound as the
Speaker 1: new Guinea Highland wild dogs because they're very very closely related.
Speaker 1: So a little background. The new Guinea singing dogs are
Speaker 1: dogs that were probably domesticated from Highland wild dogs or
Speaker 1: even just tamed. I don't know how genetically different they
Speaker 1: are from the wild version of these dogs. They do
Speaker 1: not bark. Instead, they sing or how which often has
Speaker 1: that spooky thing at the end where it sounds haunted.
Speaker 1: I'll play it for you again to see you remember.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is that wolves and other wild canines
Speaker 1: do not typically bark, at least not in the same
Speaker 1: way that dogs bark, because barking was an adaptation that
Speaker 1: domesticated dogs developed after humans selected for watchdogs. So it's
Speaker 1: very significant that these dogs do not bark much because
Speaker 1: it indicates that they are more wild and earlier on
Speaker 1: the evolutionary tree than your typical dog. So it's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of like debate about like where they are
Speaker 1: in terms of dogs evolution from their wolf like ancestors,
Speaker 1: But it seems like it may be sort of a
Speaker 1: separate branch that like remained wild for a while longer
Speaker 1: before humans sort of re like took that sort of
Speaker 1: like wonky branch and then domesticated them a little more. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there was domestication involved, because I'm looking at a
Speaker 1: picture and it looks like a domesticated dog. I have
Speaker 1: a theory, sure is that we domesticated them then they
Speaker 1: started doing that and we stopped domesticating them. We were like, oh,
Speaker 1: never mind, I can't have you in our house every
Speaker 1: if every time the mailman comes, I think I've crossed
Speaker 1: over into that. No, thank you, no, thank you, dog.
Speaker 1: You win, you win this round of domestication. Here's a
Speaker 1: fun fact. They can rotate their pause to help them
Speaker 1: catch prey or open door knobs. You know. Oh no, oh,
Speaker 1: that's not good. I don't need this thing coming into
Speaker 1: my house again. You get one. It walks into your
Speaker 1: room and like opens the door and goes it's knock,
Speaker 1: door knob, just slowly turns in a little dog face
Speaker 1: sticks and it's like, not interested. Dog. I don't need
Speaker 1: any of this. So now here's my last sound for
Speaker 1: you guys to guess about. And what do you think
Speaker 1: is making that sound? I'm gonna go with wishful thinking
Speaker 1: and say it's a worm I wanted to be. I
Speaker 1: want a screaming worm to exist yet like an angry bat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see something like that. This is actually a
Speaker 1: barn owl. So most owls make a lovely little like sound,
Speaker 1: but barn owls scream like they're being murdered. And the
Speaker 1: call is used by males to attract mates and to
Speaker 1: invite females to check out potential nest sites, whereas females
Speaker 1: use the screeching call to ask males to give them food.
Speaker 1: So it's actually a pretty like sweet thing. Basically, these
Speaker 1: owls are screaming at each other, but then in the subtitles,
Speaker 1: it's like, honey, would you like to come over and
Speaker 1: check out this nesting side. I think it has an
Speaker 1: excellent view. Honey, could you get me that dead mouse?
Speaker 1: I'm feeling kind of peckish? Right? Yeah, that owls are
Speaker 1: the weirdest things we have. Yeah, there's sky cats. They
Speaker 1: don't they don't. They don't seem to have like bones.
Speaker 1: They do have bones. I don't know they're they're they're real.
Speaker 1: They don't have bones, but they have ears that are asymmetrical,
Speaker 1: so one earhole is lower than the other earhole to
Speaker 1: give them more depth perception with their hearing. Okay, um, yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: cool the sound of a of a defeated man. You
Speaker 1: you you implied they established owl relationship with these screams.
Speaker 1: You can both be a come on like to sort
Speaker 1: of I was thinking, like, hey, baby, check out my path, right,
Speaker 1: like to seduce some mate, But it can also be
Speaker 1: to communicate with a mate, like check out this nesting site,
Speaker 1: or I'm hungry, please feed me, which is what the
Speaker 1: sound that I make when I'm hungry. Also there's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just I will. This is exactly the kind of
Speaker 1: the kind of malarchy i'd expect an owl to do
Speaker 1: because they gotta make They're just having a casual conversation
Speaker 1: and they got to freak everybody out around them because
Speaker 1: that's just what they do. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: I do like an owl. I also like how you
Speaker 1: look at you like sort of lift up there sort
Speaker 1: of skirts skirt feathers and you lift them up in
Speaker 1: their legs are just big and swollen. It's very good.
Speaker 1: I'm not against I'm not against owls. It's just there's
Speaker 1: always what now with owls. Like if I saw an
Speaker 1: owl and then it suddenly like like turned into two owls,
Speaker 1: like separated the two, I'd be like, I guess that's
Speaker 1: the thing they can do, because like, nothing would be
Speaker 1: surprised me about owls. They're they're weird little creatures that
Speaker 1: just flutter around and go about your like what are
Speaker 1: what is their world? There's nothing better than a group
Speaker 1: of baby barn owls sort of as a group because
Speaker 1: their feathers haven't really grown in yet, and they're very defensive.
Speaker 1: So you take a video of them and they're kind
Speaker 1: of waving their head around like what are you going
Speaker 1: to do about it? Huh broke, what are you gonna
Speaker 1: do about it? And they're like basically naked. They look
Speaker 1: like aliens and probably one of them's gotta like a mouse,
Speaker 1: how down its throat? Like? There are a lot of
Speaker 1: videos that you can see where you know, barn owls
Speaker 1: just top notch, top notch animals in terms of just
Speaker 1: making a dramatic scene, the real Edged Lords. Yeah, have
Speaker 1: you seen the owl documentary um Legends of the Guardians
Speaker 1: the Owls of Goole? No? I have not, so clearly
Speaker 1: I don't know everything about owls. Have you seen a Dave? Yes,
Speaker 1: this is a good movie. M hmm. It's definitely got
Speaker 1: a lot of owls in it. Yeah, it's definitely of
Speaker 1: one owl? How many els? Too many owls? Like a
Speaker 1: whole lot of owls? Are telling me is that this
Speaker 1: movie was not a hoot, not a hoot. It has
Speaker 1: owl fascists in it. Well, alright, so I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: with not a just gonna do one more. We're going
Speaker 1: to do one more sound. We're going to end the
Speaker 1: episode on that note. What do you think that is? Shoot?
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's definitely like, yeah, that's some some kind
Speaker 1: of really angry extinct creature. Possibly that is the rare
Speaker 1: brown tufted, red chested to malan. Yeah. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: is the call that it makes during mating. Uh huh
Speaker 1: oh god, you just really disturbed me with the implication
Speaker 1: that every time he makes that sound he's horned, because
Speaker 1: he makes that sound a lot he does. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you guys so much for joining me today and
Speaker 1: playing my animal sound guessing game and checking out some
Speaker 1: real life animal horror movies. Where can the people find you? Uh?
Speaker 1: We were? We have a Patreon for our podcast network
Speaker 1: called Gamefully Unemployed. You can check us out at patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash gamefully Unemployed. And also thank you for
Speaker 1: having having us on. Yeah. Always a delight. Indeed, this
Speaker 1: was fun. I've been meaning to have Tom on for
Speaker 1: a while, but he can only come on at midnight
Speaker 1: on the present Moon. Yeah. No, it's it's a whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every time I do a podcast with him, I have
Speaker 1: to I have to crack open like a skull has
Speaker 1: to have. He has to have a blood meal to
Speaker 1: have the energy to get through an episode. You gotta
Speaker 1: you have to play a haunting European folk song backwards.
Speaker 1: You can find the parent cast on the internet at
Speaker 1: Creature on Instagram, at Creature feet Pod. On Twitter, that's
Speaker 1: E E T. You can find me Katie Golden K
Speaker 1: T I E G O L D I N on
Speaker 1: Twitter just my Katie thoughts. You can email me with
Speaker 1: cute pictures of your pets at the email actions Creature
Speaker 1: feature pot at gmail dot com. Send me your pets
Speaker 1: to your questions, or if you find a cool b
Speaker 1: a cool twig I don't know, send suck it to
Speaker 1: send send Katie bees. Yeah, do you have a mailing
Speaker 1: address for the bees po box? B B And thank
Speaker 1: you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying the show, please leave a rating or review.
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