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Speaker 1: support our show make the entire thing possible. Maximum fund
Speaker 1: dot org slash join. Thank you. Kidneys known for being
Speaker 1: animal famous for being hedgehog shaped animals. Nobody thinks much
Speaker 1: about them, So let's have some fun. Let's find out
Speaker 1: why echidnas are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey, they're folks. Welcome
Speaker 1: to a whole new podcast episode of Podcasts all about
Speaker 1: why being alive is more interesting than people think it is.
Speaker 1: My name is Alex Schmid, and I'm not alone because
Speaker 1: I'm joined by my ghost Katie Golden Katie. Yes, what
Speaker 1: is your relationship to or opinion of Echidna's.
Speaker 2: I love them, That's how it is. We're in a
Speaker 2: very loving relationship. I love everything about these frittle guys.
Speaker 2: They're so funky. They look like something out of a
Speaker 2: surrealist painting, and they are truly very weird in terms
Speaker 2: of their anatomy and how they work as animals. You know,
Speaker 2: thumbs up Australia. You got another you know, got another
Speaker 2: good one?
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. I mean you think about animals more than
Speaker 1: I do. You have a wonderful podcast creature feature everyone
Speaker 1: should listen to. But I feel like in my learning
Speaker 1: about animals, there was a stage where people said, Australia
Speaker 1: is different. Oh, you learned about the animals. Now we're
Speaker 1: opening the Australia closet in the back of the story
Speaker 1: so you can see those and and the kidneys are
Speaker 1: one of those. It's awesome.
Speaker 2: They have a lot of marsupials and monotremes, and both
Speaker 2: of those like to play by slightly different rules than
Speaker 2: the rest of the mammals.
Speaker 1: So it's great.
Speaker 2: So it's a you know, platypus included. It's it's but yeah,
Speaker 2: I actually find these guys kind of weirder than platypuses.
Speaker 2: Platypuses actually make more sense to me than these guys,
Speaker 2: so I'm excited to talk about them.
Speaker 1: And also two tiny programming notes. One is that when
Speaker 1: folks bread up this topic, thank you to Da Koop
Speaker 1: Beer for suggesting it, also ls Gregor and others for
Speaker 1: supporting it. In the polls. A lot of it. Folks
Speaker 1: brought up knuckles, the echidna from the Sonic Games. That's
Speaker 1: our bonus topic, all knuckles.
Speaker 2: All knuckles.
Speaker 1: And then I've also found this pronounced more like echidna
Speaker 1: and more like echidna, and I find I just go
Speaker 1: back and forth. Please just go with it, folks.
Speaker 2: It's fine. Yeah, tomato tomato really yeah, they you know,
Speaker 2: it's another thing this. I don't know if you're going
Speaker 2: to talk about this so much, but I think people
Speaker 2: like in terms of their size, they're different species of echidna,
Speaker 2: but the at least for one of the species, the
Speaker 2: long beak echidnas. Those are like the size that people
Speaker 2: think platypuses are. People imagine platypuses to be bigger than
Speaker 2: they actually are. Platypuses are quite small, like a month
Speaker 2: old kitten. They're they're pretty small the platypus. When you
Speaker 2: look at pictures of an adult platypusts, people are usually
Speaker 2: pretty shocked by how small they actually are, whereas a
Speaker 2: kidneys are the ones that are actually a big handful,
Speaker 2: And I think people have it flipped like people think
Speaker 2: kidneys are the little ones. Platypuses are sort of the
Speaker 2: bigger ones. But it's actually the opposite of kidneys are
Speaker 2: like they're they're a nice armful of weird, spiky, snooty
Speaker 2: little animal.
Speaker 1: That's exciting. I in my research really focused out of kidneys.
Speaker 1: That I missed that platypuses are so small. Apparently they're
Speaker 1: only little more than the foot long as an adult. Great,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe approaching foot and a half or two feet.
Speaker 1: That's that's not that big, yeah, because a lot of
Speaker 1: that length is duck faced or tail, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. You can hold them in both of your hands,
Speaker 2: like if you cut your both your hands you can
Speaker 2: fit a platypus in there very comfortably for some time.
Speaker 1: Do I do this? How do I do this right now?
Speaker 2: And then with with the a kidneys, that's not going
Speaker 2: to at least for the long beaked to kidneys which
Speaker 2: are bigger, that's not gonna work. It's too big.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk all about the echidnas and the long
Speaker 1: beak and the short beak and so on, because on
Speaker 1: every episode we lead with a quick set of fascinating
Speaker 1: numbers and statistics. This week that's in a segment called
Speaker 1: I might read some stats. That's the best idea. Gonna
Speaker 1: put them on the SIFT podcast.
Speaker 2: Golf clap, golf clap, golf claps all around.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Then it was a bit of my action
Speaker 1: populated on the discord. Thank you. We have a new
Speaker 1: name for this every week. Please make a Masillian wackem
Speaker 1: bad as possible. Submit yours through Discord or to sif
Speaker 1: pot at gmail dot com. The first number four echidnas
Speaker 1: is two or four. We know how to count how
Speaker 1: many achidney species there are in the world, but people
Speaker 1: tend to call it either two or four because in
Speaker 1: general there are short beaked echidnas and long beaked echidnas,
Speaker 1: and then also the long beaks break down into three
Speaker 1: entire species according to taxonomous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's taxonomy is always a little bit
Speaker 2: fiddly because you can sometimes have a species and have
Speaker 2: an argument about whether there's two different species or of
Speaker 2: ones subspecies. It's not necessarily that they discover an undiscover
Speaker 2: species of these animals. It's that there's like genetic research
Speaker 2: or arguments about whether or not they are they count
Speaker 2: as an entirely different species when they're close enough genetically,
Speaker 2: or if they're like a subspecies, things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the short beaked ekidna is someone I've probably
Speaker 1: seen the most like pictures of because that species lives
Speaker 1: all over Australia and nearby islands. There are relatively large
Speaker 1: numbers of them, and then long beaked echidnas all three
Speaker 1: species around the island of New Guinea. And so if
Speaker 1: you think of like quote unquote Australian animal, it's probably
Speaker 1: a short beak ekidna. Those are a little bit smaller.
Speaker 1: They tend to be active during the day, long beaked
Speaker 1: er active at night, and long beaked are in greater
Speaker 1: danger of extinction. While this number there is twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three because in the year twenty twenty three people documented
Speaker 1: a living member of one of the long beaked ekidney
Speaker 1: species with a camera for the first time. Wow, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three.
Speaker 2: They're pretty I think outside of like natural rescue areas
Speaker 2: and preserves are very very shy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and apparently all the achidneys are shy, but especially
Speaker 1: the long beaked. And then they're in the just parts
Speaker 1: of New Guinea and in smaller numbers, and so we
Speaker 1: have surprisingly little observation of some of these because that
Speaker 1: one that we hadn't documented. It's a species that's called
Speaker 1: Attenborough's long beaked Echidna in honor of Sir David Attenborough.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, he's a nice guy. He lies in the
Speaker 2: dirt and talks about a kidness even when the cameras
Speaker 2: aren't rolling. That's what people don't know is that he's
Speaker 2: just always doing that where he's like lying in the
Speaker 2: dirt talking about a kidness, but like when people notice
Speaker 2: he's doing it, the cameraman come over and try to
Speaker 2: catch him in the act.
Speaker 1: Now, I want him to do all sorts of animal
Speaker 1: behaviors that would be relatively impolite in human society. But
Speaker 1: because he's describing it in such a nice voice as
Speaker 1: he does it, we're all like, that's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like he's peeing on a chair leg explaining
Speaker 2: how this helps him mark his territory, and we all
Speaker 2: accept it.
Speaker 1: And we're like, oh, yeah, I wonder who he's going
Speaker 1: to mate with in his territory that he's wallowing. And
Speaker 1: we're like, look at that little guy wallow. That's how
Speaker 1: he keeps cool. It's the only way they can keep cool.
Speaker 2: But then who David Attenborough's David Attenborough documentary. It's sort
Speaker 2: of a who do we get to narrate the David
Speaker 2: Attenborough documentary?
Speaker 1: It's the eternal question of nature? Yeah, yeah, because there's
Speaker 1: the western lung beak to kidna, the Eastern lung beak
Speaker 1: to kidna, and then Attenborough's long beak to kidna, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one researchers decided they had discovered the
Speaker 1: Attenborough's long beak to kidna species. In nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: they found one deceased specimen, they identified it, put it
Speaker 1: in a museum, said surely we'll see more of this,
Speaker 1: and then nobody identified more of them until twenty twenty three. Wow,
Speaker 1: And in the intervening sixty plus years, scientists wondered did
Speaker 1: these go extinct, Like did we kind of find one
Speaker 1: when they were on the way out? And apparently not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just real reclusive. I mean, they spent a
Speaker 2: lot of their time just snuffling around in the leaf
Speaker 2: litter in these forests. So I don't think that it's
Speaker 2: like super easy to spot them.
Speaker 1: It does seem really hard. And at also like, if
Speaker 1: you do see one, how do you tell it apart
Speaker 1: from the other two.
Speaker 2: From a different because yeah, they are quite similar looking, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we really won't spend any time on the differences
Speaker 1: between these because it's not that visible or easy to
Speaker 1: figure out.
Speaker 2: It's only the long beaked and short beaked are pretty
Speaker 2: easy to tell apart. And that's about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Yeah, and yeah, And we only
Speaker 1: found Attenborough's long beaked to kidna for the second time
Speaker 1: ever because in twenty twenty three, a research team from
Speaker 1: Oxford University tried to study the entire ecosystem of what's
Speaker 1: called the Cyclops Mountains in the Indonesian half of the
Speaker 1: island of New Guinea. We'll link just the geography of
Speaker 1: New Guinea as an island that's about half in Indonesia
Speaker 1: and half its own country of Papula and New Guinea.
Speaker 1: And they were looking for all sorts of things in
Speaker 1: these mountains. They found a lot of insects, species, they
Speaker 1: found amphibians, they found a kind of tiny shrimp that
Speaker 1: live in wet soil and in trees instead of say
Speaker 1: an ocean. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, it's gonna it's gonna be my next sort
Speaker 2: of food sensation.
Speaker 1: Ugh, can we get some tree shrimp for the table?
Speaker 2: Yeah, some tree shrimp poppers? Thank you.
Speaker 1: They just pop over like they fly out of the kitchen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's pretty great. I love I love it
Speaker 2: when you find out those like weird crustacean type animals
Speaker 2: are just like not in the ocean.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so they're doing this observation with dozens of
Speaker 1: trail cameras, Like they wire up a bunch of video
Speaker 1: cameras and they say, wow, we're finding like dozens of species.
Speaker 1: This is already great. And then toward the end of
Speaker 1: the project, an echidna shuffles onto camera. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: look at the footage and they they say this is amazing.
Speaker 1: This is the second identified Attenborough's long peaks to kidna ever,
Speaker 1: and they're not extinct.
Speaker 2: Turns out, I think that given that it's not like
Speaker 2: a heavily surveiled area, it's safe to say that, like,
Speaker 2: just because you don't see doesn't mean they're extinct exactly.
Speaker 1: And I also just love that some of these Akidney
Speaker 1: species are basically secret, Like we still need to find
Speaker 1: out a lot more about these there's a lot to
Speaker 1: learn about the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just secretly incredibly secret. That's it. That's all
Speaker 2: we know about them.
Speaker 1: Sis, yes, yeah, and yeah and pps Nature says that
Speaker 1: the Eastern long beak to kidna is listed as vulnerable
Speaker 1: by the IUCN that does these designations of species in trouble,
Speaker 1: and the other two are critically endangered. Meanwhile, we think
Speaker 1: there are millions of short beaked to kidnas in Australia
Speaker 1: and that species is of least concerned. They're not like
Speaker 1: easy to find or super underfoot, but it's not a
Speaker 1: species where we're concerned that they're going to go away.
Speaker 2: Right, Unless you are concerned that they are going to
Speaker 2: take over, then maybe we should be a little more concerned.
Speaker 1: I welcome the takeover. Seems great.
Speaker 2: They're very cool. I don't know how much you're going
Speaker 2: to talk about like their snoots, but and the superpowers
Speaker 2: of their snoots, but I trust them to run the government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this I love that this episode will be very biological,
Speaker 1: Like there's almost too much ECHIDNA anatomy and biology to
Speaker 1: talk about, and so we're just going to be all
Speaker 1: over the place of and then this is amazing, and
Speaker 1: then this is amazing, and it's amazing that it's like
Speaker 1: even for an animal episode, this is pretty biological because
Speaker 1: the kidnap bodies are wild and yeah, and then also
Speaker 1: those short beaked of kidneas are a target of the
Speaker 1: pet trade.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not great.
Speaker 1: We don't think that will like end their numbers, but
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't keeping a kidney as a pet. And Australian
Speaker 1: law says that there are some ways to legally sell
Speaker 1: any kidnap pet if it's been raised in captivity. But
Speaker 1: the thing is, it's really hard to breed echidnas in captivity.
Speaker 1: And the number here is twenty nineteen. In twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: forensic scientists created a database of ECHIDNA DNA by looking
Speaker 1: at the DNA and their spines in order to fight
Speaker 1: the illegal trade of echidnas.
Speaker 2: Ooh, this is this is exciting. This is like CSI echidna.
Speaker 2: This is exciting.
Speaker 1: It's those exact same kind of scientists. Yeah, and echidnas
Speaker 1: are covered in spines and those are made of caraten.
Speaker 1: It's like the hair and fingernails of humans. It's like
Speaker 1: the scales of pangolins, if people remember the pangolin episode.
Speaker 1: Around twenty nineteen, a team of forensic scientists at the
Speaker 1: Australian Museum and also working with law enforcement, they found
Speaker 1: that there were at least seventy echidnas listed for sale
Speaker 1: as pats in Australia, but all of Australia's zoos had
Speaker 1: only successfully bred about thirty ekidneys in the previous ten
Speaker 1: years combined, and so they said, just based on the numbers,
Speaker 1: it's unlikely animal breeders bread all these. They're probably just
Speaker 1: catching them in the wild and forging papers to sell them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like like faking baby photos of the echidnas, like
Speaker 2: where they photoshop on little diapers, like no, we raise
Speaker 2: this one, see you look.
Speaker 1: Right, baptism yeah, faith.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The problem with one of the problems with the
Speaker 2: pet trade is not necessarily that this is like people
Speaker 2: might think like there's plenty of echidneys, they're not going
Speaker 2: to make the kidneas go extinct, Like what's the problem
Speaker 2: with the pet trade. One of the big problems is
Speaker 2: UH disease. So zoonotic diseases are a huge concern with
Speaker 2: the pet trades. So when you bring animals that don't
Speaker 2: normally have a lot of contact with human beings or
Speaker 2: different animals, right, Like echidnas are not a very social
Speaker 2: animal with like a huge giant colonies of other kidnas, right,
Speaker 2: and so you're bringing them and having them no noose
Speaker 2: snowp to snoop with a lot of different animals, and
Speaker 2: that's that's not good UH for or diseases jumping from
Speaker 2: human to a kidner or kidney to human. And the
Speaker 2: other thing is just like it is really like these
Speaker 2: are they're not great pets. I wouldn't imagine. I think
Speaker 2: that they seems like they're going to be happiest just
Speaker 2: snoofling around in leaf litter in forests, and that's really
Speaker 2: hard to recreate like a giant snowful zone in your backyard.
Speaker 2: I think it's probably not going to be adequate exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a few verses this week they all said that
Speaker 1: echidnas are both very plentiful in Australia and also not
Speaker 1: seen that often because they're very shy and don't like
Speaker 1: bigger at this. And so if you keep it as
Speaker 1: a pat it has to be aut us all the time.
Speaker 1: That's not what it wants.
Speaker 2: Come on, yeah, it's going to stress it out.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and so Now, as of twenty nineteen, Australian
Speaker 1: authorities can use a database of a kidney DNA to
Speaker 1: check out a pet trader's claim, Like they can take
Speaker 1: DNA from the caroten spine of that echidna and check
Speaker 1: whether it's parents are probably why old versus the known
Speaker 1: echidnas and captivity.
Speaker 2: And then does the kidnat get like a reprieve the
Speaker 2: ceculic co If it's.
Speaker 1: That would if they could specifically five the parents, they
Speaker 1: could like send it back to its family. That would
Speaker 1: be a basic almost kind of a step back. The
Speaker 1: next number is two, because platypuses and echidneys are the
Speaker 1: two broad kinds of monotrems in the modern world. There's
Speaker 1: really just one platypus species today.
Speaker 2: It's so weird. It's such a strange troop because like
Speaker 2: all the other monotremes are extinct, these are the only
Speaker 2: extant monotremes. It's so funky. They're so unique compared to
Speaker 2: other mammals, even compared to like marsupials, which are quite weird. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they you know, they're the only well I don't want
Speaker 2: I don't want to steal your thunder if you've got
Speaker 2: if you've got stuff. But yeah, there, it's just just
Speaker 2: it's super weird. Like they are mammals, but they're just
Speaker 2: so different from the rest of placental mammals.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was always kind of loosely told that mammals
Speaker 1: don't lay eggs, and then monotreams are mammals that lay eggs.
Speaker 1: So there you go. Yeah, the.
Speaker 2: Things categories are not black and white in biology. But yeah,
Speaker 2: they are mammals. They do leggs. They also lactate, but
Speaker 2: they don't have nipples, and so that means that their
Speaker 2: milk just kind of like leaks out of their bellies
Speaker 2: through their pores and just a free for all. They
Speaker 2: also have a kloaca, which is not something that mammals
Speaker 2: typically have. Like the kloaca is found in birds, reptiles, amphibians.
Speaker 2: You know, it's this amazing hole that does a lot
Speaker 2: of different stuff. But males also have a penis, and
Speaker 2: it's a really weird one, so it's they're pretty all
Speaker 2: over the place, these guys.
Speaker 1: I also assumed monotreams would be named after the egg part,
Speaker 1: but apparently the word monotrem comes from etymology, meaning one opening.
Speaker 1: Like you're named after the kloaka, the kloika for urination, defecation, mating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one thing that's really weird. If I can
Speaker 2: just make one more note about the penis, which is
Speaker 2: that the males have this very strange penis, but they
Speaker 2: don't actually urinate out of the penis. They urinate out
Speaker 2: of the kloaca. They only use the penis for sperm transfer.
Speaker 1: That's it, because it is into takeaway number one. A
Speaker 1: melee kidna has a four front penis, which is sort
Speaker 1: of like having a double reptile penis, sort of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these look look. I normally don't say google these
Speaker 2: things because it's usually not safe, but if in the
Speaker 2: safest way that you can look up ekidna penises, because
Speaker 2: they're so yeah, to me, it's funnier than it is
Speaker 2: gross or lude it just because it looks like a
Speaker 2: little hand. It's like a little cartoon hand. They have
Speaker 2: four heads, essentially like four apertures. And again like this
Speaker 2: is not for your nation, this is only for sperm transfer.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, apparently they like tuck it away except when
Speaker 1: they're using it, and.
Speaker 2: It's very polite.
Speaker 1: It is honestly keysors or science writing for The New
Speaker 1: York Times by Natalie Angier, a twenty twenty one study
Speaker 1: in the Journal's Sexual Development. And then a mental fluss piece,
Speaker 1: which is one of many ways you can see pictures
Speaker 1: because it has four glands, it has four sort of
Speaker 1: tips on it. And then some observers compare this to
Speaker 1: the hemipenes of reptiles, because a hemipene is a pair
Speaker 1: of reproductive organs tucked into the reptile's body, usually until
Speaker 1: it's time to mate. That's sort of like a two
Speaker 1: headed penis. And then a kidness basically have a double
Speaker 1: two headed penis. It's four heads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you actually, if you do look at
Speaker 2: heavy pens of of reptiles, they look like medieval weapons
Speaker 2: often because they're like spiky and weird. It looks like
Speaker 2: some kind of weird, weird medieval weapon that probably didn't
Speaker 2: work very well, but yet I believe also for the
Speaker 2: for snakes and reptiles, they do not urinate out of those.
Speaker 2: Those are just for looking cool and passing on their DNA.
Speaker 1: The medieval element. Our recent episode about HS tapes, people
Speaker 1: were very excited about your Phantom of the Robin Hood
Speaker 1: Disney movie, and so now I'm thinking about Sir Hess
Speaker 1: having some kind of weapon and penis combo and the
Speaker 1: gritty reboot.
Speaker 2: They never that never made it. They really need to
Speaker 2: do a live action remake of Robin Hood.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I know that Disney doesn't have a great track record
Speaker 2: with live action remakes. They're usually superfluous at best and
Speaker 2: terrible monstrosities at worst. But hear me out, Okay, sir
Speaker 2: Hey gets a heavy penis, we get the freaking lion
Speaker 2: king treatment where these are realistic gas animals and like
Speaker 2: to the tea and they're just fighting. And you just
Speaker 2: got a fox and a sir his fighting and you
Speaker 2: see sir His is weird mating apparatus. There's uh, you know,
Speaker 2: do do do do do do?
Speaker 1: Do?
Speaker 2: Oh my god? Uh you know, I think it'd be cool.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be like only a quarter of the way
Speaker 1: through the pitch, and Disney has already walked us into
Speaker 1: the parking lot and not validated if they put black.
Speaker 2: Bags over our head and are taking us to the facility.
Speaker 1: And this penis apparently we've done further continuing study of it,
Speaker 1: because wow, there's so much going on, and we think
Speaker 1: that the male akid is able to ejaculate from just
Speaker 1: two of the four structures at a time. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so when a male mates with a female, it uses
Speaker 1: essentially half of the penis, so we can use its
Speaker 1: other half on the next female, and then they also
Speaker 1: have a faster fractory time period. So a study in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one suggested that a male at kid that
Speaker 1: could ejaculate ten times before it needed a significant break
Speaker 1: to rechart.
Speaker 2: Golf clap, golf clup, golf clup. Good job, guys. So
Speaker 2: it's less it's less a less a garden sprinkler, and
Speaker 2: more of like a machine gun.
Speaker 1: Right, it's like nineteen eighties action movie weapons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, right, right, which is really really important for
Speaker 2: males when they're trying to get as much spoying out
Speaker 2: there as possible. And being able to have like a
Speaker 2: like there are there are little mammals that will mate
Speaker 2: so frequently until they like collapse and have heart attacks
Speaker 2: and tie. Because the idea is like the more genetic
Speaker 2: material they get out, the more successful they're going to be. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: it's more likely that they're going to have something that
Speaker 2: carries on their genes and for it really depends on
Speaker 2: the species. There's a lot of types of animals where
Speaker 2: the males actually do invest more in parental care and
Speaker 2: it's less about it's more about quality over quantity. But
Speaker 2: there's plenty of animals where it's about quantity over quality.
Speaker 2: So this is one of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, especially with the males because because the other
Speaker 1: amazing thing to be about their reproduction is takeaway number two.
Speaker 1: Echidnas are named after a mythological serpent woman m partly
Speaker 1: because of how female ekidnas lay and carry eggs.
Speaker 2: Now I'm excited because I didn't know this, and I
Speaker 2: thought I knew everything about a kidneas, but enomology. Now,
Speaker 2: entomology I know a lot about, but etymology gets me.
Speaker 2: So I'm excited about this.
Speaker 1: Ooh, and the kidnas eat bugs, so they love entomology
Speaker 1: too delicious to them.
Speaker 2: They also do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah that the name at least in like European
Speaker 1: language is like English, This name Echidna comes from Greek mythology.
Speaker 1: A being named Echidna was the product of monstrous mating
Speaker 1: between sea and land beings generated a monster with the
Speaker 1: head and breasts of a human woman hot and the
Speaker 1: lower body and tail of a serpent a.
Speaker 2: Little less hot but still hot, I guess.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, like Europeans partly re use that name
Speaker 1: for this animal because it's like a mammal but does eggs,
Speaker 1: and they're like it's a reptile in a mammal all
Speaker 1: at once, like the serpent woman monster. Yeah, they just
Speaker 1: straight up re used the name. They didn't adapt it
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love it when, like when old Europeans were
Speaker 2: confused by mammals that didn't play by the rules, like
Speaker 2: when it was with fevers. It's like they're almost seafood,
Speaker 2: right because they're in the.
Speaker 1: Water a lot, all Europeans and also lots of people
Speaker 1: till today. They're like I only know a couple of things,
Speaker 1: So if there's a new thing, I'm naming it after
Speaker 1: the old thing, right, exactly, that's all I got. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah, And then because it's such a Greek mythology
Speaker 1: name first Nations peoples in Australia had totally different names
Speaker 1: for it, naming the Gamilla ray language is Biggiebilla and
Speaker 1: the name in the world Pierri language is yanar Lingi.
Speaker 1: It's all just completely different names because they didn't have
Speaker 1: Greek mythology of course.
Speaker 2: Right right, they weren't like they didn't see this like fuzzy,
Speaker 2: spiky animal with absolutely no tits and think what about
Speaker 2: the Greek half snake lady with boobies right right.
Speaker 1: And it's also it doesn't attack humans at all. It's
Speaker 1: been a useful food source for people. Like it's just
Speaker 1: like a positive animal in your life. So why would
Speaker 1: you name it after a monster.
Speaker 2: It's just a cute little snorfloer who goes after like
Speaker 2: bugs in the leaf litter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all that's all it wants to do. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, that's where they get their name. I had
Speaker 1: no idea, and a lot of it is because Europeans
Speaker 1: were like, this mammal lays eggs. I can't handle it, right,
Speaker 1: and the egg laying process is amazing semikidness, apparently, especially
Speaker 1: a subspecies on what's called Kangaroo Island south of the
Speaker 1: Australian mainland. They'll do something called a love train, which
Speaker 1: is where one female akida is followed by a long
Speaker 1: line of male ekidness ruffling around and hoping to.
Speaker 2: Mate the most perverted congo line that is out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the strange specifically sexual penis of the
Speaker 1: male plus the female's reproductive anatomy that the goal is
Speaker 1: to have as many sperm compete for just one egg.
Speaker 1: A female a kidney lays just one egg at a time.
Speaker 2: It's wild because she's got some sort of marsupial characteristics
Speaker 2: as well. She's got a pouch and she it's a
Speaker 2: weird kind of step between placental mammals where we give birth,
Speaker 2: we don't. We're not we're live bearing, we don't layla eggs.
Speaker 2: And then you you look at marsupials and they do
Speaker 2: have live births of like teeny tiny little beans that
Speaker 2: have to crawl their way up into this pouch where
Speaker 2: they continue to develop until they're actual identifiable babies. But
Speaker 2: then you've got like this in between step, which is
Speaker 2: the echidnas where they lay the eggs, but they store
Speaker 2: the eggs in a pouch, so the egg continues to
Speaker 2: develop and hatches inside the pouch. So it's kind of
Speaker 2: this weird in betweeny step between laying eggs and just
Speaker 2: like laying an egg, sticking it in a nest and
Speaker 2: being like good luck and having a live birth as
Speaker 2: a mammal.
Speaker 1: Yes, I didn't know any of that before research egg
Speaker 1: because it's so profoundly confused, especially if you have like
Speaker 1: a loose knowledge of kangaroos. Let's say, yeah that you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: so there's humans and kangaroos. Those are the two mammal ways,
Speaker 1: and then.
Speaker 2: Those are the two animals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like you said, this echidna baby. Also the
Speaker 1: human nickname for these babies, at least in English is
Speaker 1: a puggle.
Speaker 2: Puggle great, so cute.
Speaker 1: You can find pictures of that too, We'll link some.
Speaker 1: They really cute. But yeah, the echidna, it lays an
Speaker 1: egg and then doesn't leave it in a nest or whatever.
Speaker 1: The female forms a somewhat temporary pouch by contracting abdominal
Speaker 1: muscles and then incubates the egg against her body for
Speaker 1: about ten days.
Speaker 2: I mean, we all sometimes clinch to try to look
Speaker 2: good in bathing suits. But imagine doing that for a
Speaker 2: long time to wait for this egg to hatch. Just
Speaker 2: the control, the core control is impressive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it ends up being about two months of
Speaker 1: carrying something because the egg hatches after ten days. And
Speaker 1: then the puggle is inside mom's pouch for several weeks.
Speaker 1: Like Katie said, they don't have nipples. They have a
Speaker 1: gland type thing called a milk patch where milk just
Speaker 1: comes out of it like a part of their body.
Speaker 1: And it is mammal milk. It's just not exactly the
Speaker 1: anatomy for dispensing it we're used to. And yeah, and
Speaker 1: then the puggle is in the pouch for about seven
Speaker 1: weeks and only sort of gets kicked out because it
Speaker 1: starts developing spines. Yeah, and mom says, no spines in
Speaker 1: the pouch.
Speaker 2: She's like, oh, what the hell, get out?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then the kidnam Mom digs a burrow to
Speaker 1: like put this seven week old baby in. And also
Speaker 1: apparently they then leave their baby to fend for themselves
Speaker 1: at a relatively young age by mammal standards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, they did do a good
Speaker 2: amount of stuff for like a few months and then
Speaker 2: they're just like, you know what, Actually, you're good. Now
Speaker 2: you're all spiky. But the it's a good kind of
Speaker 2: timeline though, right, because once they develop spines, then they
Speaker 2: are somewhat protected from predation, so you are getting at
Speaker 2: the stage where they might be able to fin for
Speaker 2: themselves without having to give birth to a bald spikes,
Speaker 2: which would be really awful.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, they let them go around seven months apparently
Speaker 1: seven months old, so they're not totally an infant.
Speaker 2: At seven months. Babies are just that, you know, they're
Speaker 2: ready to start working. Send them to the mines.
Speaker 1: Let's see you have spines, a tie, a briefcase. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're in ad.
Speaker 2: Sales, Yeah, get out there, Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right yeah yeah. Another number to fit in is
Speaker 1: about forty years of age. That's the life span of
Speaker 1: any kidney in the wild. Approximately. They can get closer
Speaker 1: to fifty in captivity. So a mom stopping around seven
Speaker 1: months on that long of a life span is almost
Speaker 1: reptilia into our minds, like it's these because animals are
Speaker 1: such mammals and such other stuff too.
Speaker 2: It really is strange. But it's not like I don't
Speaker 2: want to get people to get the impression that these
Speaker 2: are the ancestors to all other mammals, right, Like, these
Speaker 2: are not. It's not like we all it's not like
Speaker 2: they are the in between step between reptiles and then
Speaker 2: the rest of mammals and then we all descended from
Speaker 2: echidnas and another monitors. That's not the case. They just
Speaker 2: represent like we don't necessarily know what the in between
Speaker 2: step was for the rest of mammals, like what the
Speaker 2: common ancestor was, but we we think that these ones
Speaker 2: might have been. They might have shared some qualities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great segue into the next takeaway too,
Speaker 1: because takeaway number three, based on new studies of ancient bones,
Speaker 1: we think echidnas and platypuses evolved from the same aquatic
Speaker 1: mammal near anti Arctica.
Speaker 2: Ooh, that's that's crazy. That's wild, because yeah, like we
Speaker 2: don't usually go back up like once we like come
Speaker 2: out of the water and then we're like actually no,
Speaker 2: the sucks, and we go back into the water. We
Speaker 2: don't usually go back out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a lot of like back and forth
Speaker 1: water and land with an animal that led to echidnas
Speaker 1: anti platypuses. Nice and platypuses are still semi aquatic. Echidnas
Speaker 1: are mostly a land animal that it also turns out
Speaker 1: as excellent its swimming, partly because of this heritage.
Speaker 2: Nice never it never forgets. Michael Phelps was once it's ancestor,
Speaker 2: and the.
Speaker 1: Big reason for monotrems seems to be plate tectonics, and
Speaker 1: that monotrems were sort of separated from the rest of
Speaker 1: animals in a crucial and specific way.
Speaker 2: But like whatever God you believe in did their best
Speaker 2: to keep these weird separated from the rest of mammals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the scientology god, and so yeah, he
Speaker 1: used the nineteen sixties commercial airliner to separate the bottle trees. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the long set of movements of what became continents
Speaker 1: involves a very large super continent that we've named Gondwana,
Speaker 1: and about one hundred and eighty million years ago that
Speaker 1: split in half. Gondwana ends up forming pretty much all
Speaker 1: the Southern Hemisphere lands. So like one half becomes Africa
Speaker 1: and South America. After that's further subdivides, the other half
Speaker 1: continues breaking into pieces, creates Madagascar, India, and a lot
Speaker 1: of other things. And then about eighty five million years
Speaker 1: ago Antarctica and Australia began to split. Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: together toward the last stage of all this.
Speaker 2: God damn it, yoka Ona, what won't you ruin.
Speaker 1: Yo go dated Antarctica? She has big coats on and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And apparently also the climate was different, and so the
Speaker 1: combo Antarctica Australia had like a polar forested region. It's
Speaker 1: not all the way at the south pole, but it's
Speaker 1: below what's now the Antarctic Circle. It's very cold and
Speaker 1: also a thriving ecosystem. Researchers from the Australian Museum and
Speaker 1: a few universities in twenty twenty two announced that they
Speaker 1: thought they found the first mono dream Wow, which was
Speaker 1: a tiny prehistoric mammal scientific name Taina lofos truslaiai, and
Speaker 1: it lived on the combo Australia Antarctica with polar forests.
Speaker 2: Is do we have like pictures of these guys?
Speaker 1: No, just like bone fragments that they've sussed out what
Speaker 1: it could be. And it was also tiny. It'd only
Speaker 1: weighed about forty grams, which is about what one slice
Speaker 1: of bread weys. And it was tiny to be a
Speaker 1: tiny insective orient like dove into snow and moss to
Speaker 1: eat bugs, right.
Speaker 2: And snow and moss does have a lot of insects,
Speaker 2: but they're little, they're tiny insects.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And we also think this helps explain the electrosensitive
Speaker 1: parts of platypuses, indi kidness. Ah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is exciting because they, like sharks, have electro receptors.
Speaker 2: The way it works is every animal produces small electrical
Speaker 2: signals because of muscle movement, also brain activity, but mostly
Speaker 2: what they would be detecting would be muscle movement, and
Speaker 2: so you have these these very sensitive little glands. When
Speaker 2: it detects sort of this change in this electrical balance, right, Like,
Speaker 2: it triggers that nerve there, and then they can, like
Speaker 2: because they have so many of these glands, they can
Speaker 2: determine the direction from where it's coming and then they
Speaker 2: can go in that direction and find the thing. And
Speaker 2: both platypuses and kidnas have electroceptors. Platypuses to have them
Speaker 2: in their billain kidneys have them in their snoots. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a lot of animals we associate with the sea.
Speaker 1: The theory is either from living in the sea or
Speaker 1: from tracking down bugs in snow. These earliest monotremes develop
Speaker 1: that same electrosensitive ability to like feel where prey are
Speaker 1: from the electricity in their bodies and helps them eat
Speaker 1: and live. That is almost unique with land animals. It's
Speaker 1: another amazing anatomy thing.
Speaker 2: And it's really helpful for them because for platypuses, they're
Speaker 2: often looked around for worms and other little invertebrates in muddy,
Speaker 2: silty water where they can't see very well. And for
Speaker 2: kidnas they're rooting around in the dirt for worms and
Speaker 2: stuff where you know, they can't see very well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so cool that the ability has been useful
Speaker 1: for at least one hundred and thirty million years. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: good to keep that up. I love it.
Speaker 2: It's like you can feel food with your face, which
Speaker 2: we can too, but usually that's when you just sort
Speaker 2: of rub it into your face and by that point
Speaker 2: you kind of already have the food and it's fine.
Speaker 2: But yeah, being able to sense your food moving around
Speaker 2: is very useful.
Speaker 1: Thinking of David Edinburgh describing as a disgusting behaviors in
Speaker 1: the coolest voice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's rubbing a sandwich against his face. It's like,
Speaker 2: this is how the kidna finds its food.
Speaker 1: The Attenborough acquias the HOGI and like people are, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Nature's so cool, and he's just ruining the restaurant and yeah,
Speaker 1: and then there's tons of debates still with this whole
Speaker 1: evolutionary trajectory. There is a study published about it in
Speaker 1: April twenty twenty five. They examined one bone from an
Speaker 1: extinct animal scientific name Crierictus cad berry eye. It was
Speaker 1: found on a coast in southeastern Australia. It's the only
Speaker 1: bone we have from the entire species and based on
Speaker 1: its weight and its microscopic features, we think this was
Speaker 1: a semi aquatic burrowing monotrem Cryarechtes cadberry eye.
Speaker 2: I bet it was cute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we just figure it looks monotremy. We'd only have
Speaker 1: the one bone, so is.
Speaker 2: It a cute bone though, I bet it's a cute bone.
Speaker 1: It is. It's the bone called the humorus, so ah, funny.
Speaker 1: Our theory based on that is one of a couple
Speaker 1: things happened to make platypuses into kidnas separate. Either Cryirectus
Speaker 1: continued to live mostly in water and became platypuses, and
Speaker 1: then a branch of them moved onto lands and became
Speaker 1: echidnas or cryirectus evolved into platypuses, and then platypuses branched
Speaker 1: into echidness and apparently echidna fossils are much newer, right.
Speaker 2: So we so basically we don't know. So basically we
Speaker 2: have no idea. It could be either wine, it could
Speaker 2: be happened this way or the complete opposite. Those are
Speaker 2: our two theories.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. It's the few things we do feel
Speaker 1: like we know are that echidnas have a bunch of
Speaker 1: aquatic life features that are surprising. And also the way
Speaker 1: continents moved explains why monotreams are only down in the
Speaker 1: Australia area there and not across the rest of the world. Theoretically,
Speaker 1: this branch of evolution could be all over, but they
Speaker 1: were initially just living in polar forests of the combo
Speaker 1: Antarctica Australia, and by the time they adapted to warmer
Speaker 1: climates and other climates the other continents that moved away.
Speaker 2: They're like, ah, I get that thing away from us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why they're in the Australia category only yes, yes,
Speaker 1: like I don't have monotreams on my street, reoding through
Speaker 1: the trash.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I mean if only like it is,
Speaker 2: it is still to me it is wild that we
Speaker 2: even have any marsupials in the Americas, Like we have possums,
Speaker 2: which is crazy.
Speaker 1: A miracle. They're great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're great. They are rooting in your trash, so
Speaker 2: that's fun.
Speaker 1: I want them to have it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, good for them.
Speaker 1: Like when a mom puts a note at a kid's
Speaker 1: school lunch, I put a little note for the opossums.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, I love he's have good day, enjoy love
Speaker 2: you and and yeah.
Speaker 1: Echidnas, they they're amazing at burrowing. They have hind feet
Speaker 1: that face backwards. There's a theory that the backward facing
Speaker 1: feet might have originated as rudders for paddling through water.
Speaker 1: The electro reception, the focus on eating insects, it all
Speaker 1: could fit aquatic life or be a reason they moved
Speaker 1: on to land because there were more bugs. And then.
Speaker 1: Echidnas do not need to swim and love to swim.
Speaker 1: They have the diving reflex where they can tell their
Speaker 1: body to conserve energy when submerged in water to maximize oxygen.
Speaker 1: They move very well through it. And my favorite quote
Speaker 1: about this is Australian geographic. They interviewed Peggy riss Miller,
Speaker 1: who's any kidne expert and works for a wildlife center,
Speaker 1: and she says that people often think they are rescuing
Speaker 1: a swimming echidna. They're like, oh, that a kid is
Speaker 1: in the water. It needs help. Yeah, and as soon
Speaker 1: as they pull it out of the water, it runs
Speaker 1: straight back into the water to be in the water.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like someone's chilling out in a like a
Speaker 2: kiddie pool and then a rogue lifeguard comes and it's like,
Speaker 2: I'll save you and smashes into the kiddie pool and
Speaker 2: you're like what.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, especially Americans and like video game fans too,
Speaker 1: we think these are sort of a hedgehog looking guy
Speaker 1: that just wants to be on land all the time
Speaker 1: and they are quietly an Antarctic swimmer sort of. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They also the males on those back legs. The
Speaker 2: males do have these spurs, which you probably heard of
Speaker 2: in Platypuses are venomous, like they're one of the rare
Speaker 2: venomous mammals. Echidneas don't have venom don't mention it to them, like,
Speaker 2: don't tell the male a kindas like, I know you
Speaker 2: don't have venom It's considered really impolite, but like, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're they're they're not venomous, they're not harmful, but still
Speaker 2: don't pick it, like, don't pick them up. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, just leave them alone, let them swim around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and apparently they can like they still have the
Speaker 1: spurs sort of and they can release a hormone or
Speaker 1: a communicative thing through it. But yeah, it's not venomous anymore.
Speaker 1: They let it go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not it's not dangerous. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, like Katie said, be polite to your local,
Speaker 1: didn't it right?
Speaker 2: Let them swim? Yeah, remember that nine pm to two
Speaker 2: am is a kidnea free swim.
Speaker 1: But that's what I want to be at the pool
Speaker 1: to watch. Uh And folks, that's so many numbers and
Speaker 1: takeaways already, We're going to take a quick break and
Speaker 1: then do a couple more takeaways about these amazing echidna monodreams.
Speaker 2: I'm excited.
Speaker 1: We are back, and we're back with takeaway number four.
Speaker 1: Short beaked echidnas air ate until the soil across all
Speaker 1: of Australia.
Speaker 2: You know, I've never thought about that, but that makes
Speaker 2: complete sense because all the snuffalon We've been talking about,
Speaker 2: all the snufflin, and I've just never thought about the
Speaker 2: consequences of the snuffalin.
Speaker 1: A like nickname for ekidnas is the spiny ant eater,
Speaker 1: and for reasons we just explored, they're not particularly related
Speaker 1: to ant eaters or hedgehogs. They're from this other whole branch.
Speaker 1: But they're constantly eating ants and termites and other bugs.
Speaker 1: They love to dig, and in the process they support
Speaker 1: the entire ecosystem of all of Australia, from snowy mountains
Speaker 1: to the hottest outback.
Speaker 2: That's uh, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's amazing.
Speaker 2: They're also super cute. I mean, like, if you if
Speaker 2: you can do yourself a favor and look for try
Speaker 2: to find photos of short beaked a kinya's with their
Speaker 2: faces directly at the camera. It's the funniest thing I've
Speaker 2: ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1: We were what me, Kittie were you may like, I
Speaker 1: said her, the what pic trifiut where it just kind
Speaker 1: of looks like the echidna is grinning. It's not really grinning.
Speaker 1: But I love it. It's I'm gonna post it. It's
Speaker 1: my favorite.
Speaker 2: They're real cute. They're real, real cute.
Speaker 1: You replied with, what it was even snootier, like in
Speaker 1: a good way. The snoop was like, hello, not not
Speaker 1: snooty like a rich person.
Speaker 2: It's all the cuteness of a hedgehog with an even
Speaker 2: bigger snoot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great. They also have a snoot with a long,
Speaker 1: sticky tongue, and they don't have teeth. They grind the
Speaker 1: bugs against a hard mouth bone. But they're amazing at
Speaker 1: eating bugs with that whole snowden system. And then the
Speaker 1: electro receptors to see them.
Speaker 2: Ant eaters are similar. They have a long, sticky tongue.
Speaker 2: They grind ants through like sort of a hard throat area.
Speaker 2: So it's like a very similar mechanics. But they're not.
Speaker 2: They didn't descend from one another or anything like that.
Speaker 2: It's an example of convergent evolution exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, then anteaters would be like what are you?
Speaker 1: You're laying an egg? What? They're so different?
Speaker 2: Ah, dang, I should try that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, maybe that's good. Yeah. A key source about
Speaker 1: this digging and climate support is a twenty sixteen study
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Also more writing about
Speaker 1: that from Cosmos magazine by Amy Middleton. Because this twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen study, you know, it's just one study, but they
Speaker 1: tagged and tracked the activities of short beaked echidneas, the
Speaker 1: mainly Australian kidna, and even as recently as twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: researcher we're I think they spend their day eating bugs,
Speaker 1: but like, what are the details. We don't really know
Speaker 1: because we're not observing it that much and we need
Speaker 1: to tag it. And they discovered two amazing things. One
Speaker 1: is that he kidness spend about twelve percent of their
Speaker 1: day digging, like actively just digging, which is a lot,
Speaker 1: Like twelve is a lot. If you think about if
Speaker 1: you did that in the day, you know, like you
Speaker 1: would be a digging animal if you.
Speaker 2: Did that, it sounds not bad, you know, like just digging,
Speaker 2: you know, when you're not if you're not digging for
Speaker 2: the man. If I had to dig for the man,
Speaker 2: then I think it would suck. But if I'm digging
Speaker 2: for me m E and just digging all day, that
Speaker 2: seems kind of fun. Yeah, hanging out with the worms,
Speaker 2: slurping them up when I find them, like spaghetti's.
Speaker 1: We should seize the means of digging. We should dig
Speaker 1: for ourselves.
Speaker 2: For not for the man. But yeah, their claws are
Speaker 2: really weird and shovel like they like, they're very cute,
Speaker 2: and then you zoom in on their claws and they're
Speaker 2: nasty as Yeah.
Speaker 1: The two observations one is how much digging they do,
Speaker 1: like in a concentrated way. The other thing they found
Speaker 1: is that echidnas walk in a funny way. If you've
Speaker 1: seen videos of a kidnas walking, it's a funny little shuffle,
Speaker 1: it's really cute. But the way their feet move when
Speaker 1: they do that disturbs the soil more than an average shuffle,
Speaker 1: and so it sort of creates a light digging element
Speaker 1: to the way they walk ow.
Speaker 2: So it's sort of like when we talked about buffalo
Speaker 2: that they they will make little little trenches with their hooves.
Speaker 2: These guys make little tiny trenches with their little claws exactly.
Speaker 1: That's exactly the thrilling feeling I had. I was like,
Speaker 1: echidnas are sort of a tiny Australian bison. Great great, great, exciting, exciting,
Speaker 1: very heavy and yeah, and one term for what ekidneys
Speaker 1: are doing with that is bioturbation.
Speaker 2: Eh oh, that sounds cool.
Speaker 1: An animal stirring up and tilling and narrating soil, you know,
Speaker 1: like when the kidna digs to eat that ant. It's
Speaker 1: not by attribation necessarily, but when I'm just like doing
Speaker 1: stuff that adjusts soil, that's that right. Cool.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna like when I'm just walking around in the
Speaker 2: dirt and someone asks me what I'm doing, saying bioturbating,
Speaker 2: You're welcome, yeah.
Speaker 1: And using these two discoveries, these researchers did a possibly
Speaker 1: wrong estimate, but they did like a bunch of calculating,
Speaker 1: and they came up with a number of one adultakid
Speaker 1: ina moves two hundred and four cubic meters of dirt
Speaker 1: per year, h one adulty kid inna two hundred and
Speaker 1: four cubic meters.
Speaker 2: It seems like a lot of dirt. I don't really
Speaker 2: know how much dirt that is. I'm gonna be honest
Speaker 2: with you. I'm bad at units. I'm trying trying to
Speaker 2: picture the amount of dirt. Is it a lot of dirt?
Speaker 1: They tried to help They did a comparison where they said, Okay,
Speaker 1: if twelve ekidnas do that amount, that's enough dirt to
Speaker 1: fill an empty Olympic swimming pool.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of dirt. Okay, I get it.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of Olympic swimming pool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right by twelve by twelve ekidness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're little like compared to an Olympic swimming pool, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty good stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they're they're bioturbating the dirt, and so that's does
Speaker 2: that have like a pretty profound effect on the on
Speaker 2: the ecosystem.
Speaker 1: It does. It helps capture and retain leaf litter and soil.
Speaker 1: It traps organic matter below the surface of the soil,
Speaker 1: so then plants rooted in at animals living in it
Speaker 1: can all eat. I like the idea that a kidneys
Speaker 1: are basically making more stuff for the bugs they eat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it's a nice situation all around. And then also
Speaker 1: ekidnas make foraging pits actively to find bugs they found.
Speaker 1: When any kidney does that, the soil in and around
Speaker 1: the pit absorbs double the amount of water afterwards, but
Speaker 1: it would have if it hadn't been disturbed.
Speaker 2: So they're kind of raising the water table maybe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also like helping plants get water from that soil,
Speaker 1: so like they're sort of greening their whole world by
Speaker 1: doing this.
Speaker 2: They're like little gardeners. Did you ever watch or did
Speaker 2: you ever read bea Trix Potter books when you.
Speaker 1: Were a kid, and not really I'm familiar with that.
Speaker 2: Hey, I read them. They were very cute. They had
Speaker 2: she had like a little hedgehog lady who is very industrious.
Speaker 2: And I think that there's a lot of love for
Speaker 2: hedgehogs in the UK because of all the good they
Speaker 2: do for gardens. But this is like the same thing
Speaker 2: we need, because I think it was Miss tiggy Winkle
Speaker 2: was the hedgehog one, which is you know, definitely what
Speaker 2: female hedgehogs are generally named. And I just I want
Speaker 2: an Australian version of Beatrix Potter with all the beautiful illustrations,
Speaker 2: but with these really weird versions of these animals. That
Speaker 2: would be really cool.
Speaker 1: Miss echidnasiggy Winkle look out for the love trade, oh boy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's just such an astounding animal for every
Speaker 1: animal around it. And the other thing with modern Australia
Speaker 1: is that as primarily white colladizers proceeded to build like
Speaker 1: European style cities in Australia. That expansion of human habitat
Speaker 1: has impacted a lot of Australian mammals, and apparently echidnas
Speaker 1: are the most common remaining mammal that does bioturbation, because
Speaker 1: other animals like bandicoots and also bilbies are known for
Speaker 1: doing bioturbation type stuff too. Is they look for bugs
Speaker 1: and move around, but their habitats and numbers were impacted
Speaker 1: a lot more than a kid numbers. Yeah, so ekidnas
Speaker 1: are like picking up the job in some ways.
Speaker 2: Also by those dang cane toads and also rabbits. I
Speaker 2: don't compete with bilbi's and bandicoots, so but yeah, the
Speaker 2: kidnas remain snow competition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like going into this, I really would have
Speaker 1: presumed all the kidneys are endangered because just many cool
Speaker 1: animals are. But the short beaked ones in Australia and
Speaker 1: it's adjacent little islands are are doing pretty well. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of them, and so it's a surprisingly plentiful
Speaker 1: animal and it makes the whole ecosystem go.
Speaker 2: I mean, they are covered in spikes, they are covered
Speaker 2: in spikes.
Speaker 1: Also mentioned they do this in every Australian climate. That
Speaker 1: helps get into our last takeaway number five. Echidnas do
Speaker 1: amazing and silly things to survive in various climates.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm excited to hear this. They wear do They
Speaker 2: wear a little hat, roll around in scarves.
Speaker 1: They're very good at cold or hot temperatures. And one
Speaker 1: of the cold temperature things is that some subspecies just
Speaker 1: grow thicker coverings of fur and air. Yeah, so they're
Speaker 1: like fuzzier.
Speaker 2: Reasonable, it's really good.
Speaker 1: Subspecies in Tasmania known for that in the mountains. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The main source here is an excerpt from the book
Speaker 1: Platypus Matters, The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals by Cambridge
Speaker 1: Zoology Museum director Jack Ashby, also writing by a veterinary scientist,
Speaker 1: Kate Dutton Register who lectures at the University of Queensland.
Speaker 1: Echidnas with those sharp spines on their body that also
Speaker 1: does a lot of temperature control. They mostly release heat
Speaker 1: through their belly, their limbs and other not spiny small areas.
Speaker 1: They're also amazing at forming a ball. Yeah, they will
Speaker 1: at the slightest provocation, apparently as little as a twig
Speaker 1: crunching near them in a way they don't expect. They
Speaker 1: will tuck their limbs and belly under the spines and
Speaker 1: then also fully ball up. They have a layer of
Speaker 1: muscle that, when contracted, works like a draw string to
Speaker 1: pull their spines down over their limbs heads.
Speaker 2: Zep, like yeah, whoop, goodbye. Yeah, no there, it's only
Speaker 2: it's like only spines. When you look at when they're
Speaker 2: all curled up, it's a very impressive ball of spoikes.
Speaker 1: It is the apparently other move they can do besides
Speaker 1: the ball is Jack Ashby says they can do what
Speaker 1: he compares to jazz hands with all four limbs in
Speaker 1: order to like make their whole body dig down and
Speaker 1: just be a dome of spikes in dirt.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic. Yeah, I think I see why these guys
Speaker 2: have survived for so long. Because they can be ball
Speaker 2: of spike or jazz hands. You into submission.
Speaker 1: Almost even more than the spines. They're super tough against
Speaker 1: temperatures and partly because their bodies can go into tor
Speaker 1: poor and fully hibernation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and tour poor is basically when your body systems
Speaker 2: slow down. It's not quite hibernation, but your metabolism slows down,
Speaker 2: Your body kind of slows down. But it's a lot
Speaker 2: it's easier to wake up from than hibernation, Like you
Speaker 2: can do it shorter periods of time.
Speaker 1: That's so cool. Yeah, again, like loose understanding of mammals
Speaker 1: that stuff I associate with like bears, and then hey,
Speaker 1: kidneys are doing it very exciting.
Speaker 2: Actually bears are. It's an interesting thing because bears are
Speaker 2: kind of considered like the most famous hibernators, but they don't.
Speaker 2: They're not actually major hibernators when you compare them to
Speaker 2: a lot of other animals, Like bats are really good
Speaker 2: at it. A lot of smaller mammals are actually quite good
Speaker 2: at hibernation. The record takers for hibernations are things that
Speaker 2: like bats, I can just hybridate many many, many months
Speaker 2: at a time and just almost completely stop their bodily processes.
Speaker 1: That's bats should be famous for that. That's so cool.
Speaker 1: They should be Yeah, why do we think bears are
Speaker 1: amazing at it? And then bats are some sort of
Speaker 1: dracula like, like, well, bats should be famous for hibernating.
Speaker 2: It's really not fair. I think it's a barrel obbyists
Speaker 2: have gotten gotten the message out big bear.
Speaker 1: Oh no. And in political cartoons, bears are the Soviets,
Speaker 1: so that's bad. They're in the government. Oh no. But
Speaker 1: they're also the markets, so oh yeah, right, do they
Speaker 1: love capital? Do they hate capital? Come on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have I've never figured out what a bolish
Speaker 2: market and a bearish market is because it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: a bearish market is bad, but bulls are good, and
Speaker 2: it's like why huh.
Speaker 1: Just both dangerous animals? Yeah? What? And yeah, and kidneys
Speaker 1: among all mammals have a surprisingly low body temperature. Their
Speaker 1: body temp sits at around eighty nine point six fahrenheit
Speaker 1: or thirty two celsius, and then when they go into
Speaker 1: torpor they can plummet it all the way to fifty
Speaker 1: fahrenheit or ten celsius.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's goin to help slow down their metabolism quite
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so apparently in all climates of Australia they
Speaker 1: will use that to get through tough winter, tough summer, anything.
Speaker 1: And then between that and being able to grow more
Speaker 1: hair and fur, they're very good at cold temperatures if
Speaker 1: they need to be.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. What can't they do?
Speaker 1: And then the other thing this might tie into snoot
Speaker 1: stuff you're thinking about. Apparently in the hottest parts of
Speaker 1: the outback, they will blow snot bubbles on their snowt
Speaker 1: for cooling.
Speaker 2: Yes, there we go. That's that's the gross thing that
Speaker 2: I was looking for. Yeah, snot bubbles. It's you know,
Speaker 2: when you're trying to stay cool, well, anything goes. Vultures
Speaker 2: will poop on themselves and that running poop will help
Speaker 2: cool them down by pooping on their legs snot bubbles.
Speaker 2: Kangaroos lick their hands, so they use saliva all over
Speaker 2: their arms to cool themselves down. So, yeah, we got
Speaker 2: a lot of fluids that we can use. Like when
Speaker 2: you don't have a water bottle or one of those
Speaker 2: little handheld fan, you got saliva and poop and snot
Speaker 2: bubbles and all of those things can help you with
Speaker 2: evaporative cooling.
Speaker 1: It turns out, yeah, yeah, the beaked nose of the
Speaker 1: echidna is covered in blood vessels a lot of potential
Speaker 1: for releasing heat, and so they've figured out that they
Speaker 1: can blow snot bubbles onto their own nose. The bubble bursts,
Speaker 1: then the wet moisture evaporates and that evaporation cools their nose,
Speaker 1: which then cools their whole body. Nice ekinnas have apparently
Speaker 1: been seen sheltering and hollow logs of the outback while
Speaker 1: the temperature is forty celsius, which is one hundred and
Speaker 1: four fahrenheit. I love that spines protecting kidness so well.
Speaker 1: But I also love that they're almost even more of
Speaker 1: a temperature super animal.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well link pictures from the Conversation dot Com of them
Speaker 1: walking through snowy mountains like the north in Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones character. And then also they hang out in the
Speaker 1: hottest desert in the content.
Speaker 2: It's really cool and there, and they're great at fondue
Speaker 2: parties marshmallow roasts.
Speaker 1: Yeah they could.
Speaker 2: They can't carry it all, yeah, Bob's yeah, canapees because.
Speaker 1: If you bring a porcupine, they're going to eject those quills.
Speaker 1: You can. The spines do not each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, so it's better and porcupine. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: interesting those real.
Speaker 1: Animal effect to joke about fondu.
Speaker 2: Parties, porcupines, they don't shoot them from a distance, but
Speaker 2: porcupines do. They'll come off. So like if you're curious
Speaker 2: coyote and you stick your snoop at a porcupine. Their
Speaker 2: quills can come off and they get stuck with these
Speaker 2: little tiny barbs in your snout and it's really uncomfortable
Speaker 2: and unpleasant. Hedgehogs, that does not happen. The kidnas, that
Speaker 2: doesn't happen. The kidnas are actually much more similar to
Speaker 2: hedgehogs and the sort of spine stuff like. And also
Speaker 2: hedgehogs will ball up and porcupines don't ball up. They
Speaker 2: go on like an offensive like, oh you want some
Speaker 2: of this, and then they start backing their butt. There's
Speaker 2: spiny butt into your face.
Speaker 1: I just love how many elements are so close to
Speaker 1: another animal. And then I want echidnas to like speed
Speaker 1: date these animals. They're like and the other animals like,
Speaker 1: you're so like me. And the kidna is like hold
Speaker 1: down one sec, like lays a whole egg right there,
Speaker 1: like oh, okay.
Speaker 2: Right, I'm sure we're going to talk about this more
Speaker 2: on the bonus. But just like with Sonic, we've got
Speaker 2: Sonic the hedgehog, we have Knuckles the echidna, and then
Speaker 2: tails the fox.
Speaker 1: Why no porcupine and they details in between Sonic and Knuckles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what the hell then we don't even we
Speaker 2: don't get tendricks. There's so many spiky animals to get through,
Speaker 2: and I can't believe they whiffed it like that.
Speaker 1: Our next pitch after Disney is Sega, Sega, Hey listen.
Speaker 2: Hey listen. Why didn't you include weird penises in your
Speaker 2: game franchise? Why was there no mention of kloacas even once.
Speaker 1: Perfect bonus transitions? Thanks Bolts. That is the main episode
Speaker 1: for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features
Speaker 1: for you, such as help remembering this episode with a
Speaker 1: runback through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one. A male
Speaker 1: echidna has a four front penis, which is sort of
Speaker 1: like having a double reptile penis. Takeaway number two. Echidnas
Speaker 1: are named after a mythological reptilian monster, partly because of
Speaker 1: how female echidnas lay and carry eggs. Takeaway number three.
Speaker 1: Based on new studies of ancient bones, we think echidnas
Speaker 1: and platypuses evolved from an aquatic mammal near Antarctica. Take
Speaker 1: Away number four. Short beaked echidnas air rate until the
Speaker 1: soil across all of Australia. Takeaway number five Echidnas do
Speaker 1: amazing and silly things to live in any climate, and
Speaker 1: then so many stats and numbers about the entire evolutionary
Speaker 1: history of echidnas, the amazing forensic science protecting Australian echidnas,
Speaker 1: and more. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's
Speaker 1: the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating
Speaker 1: stuff available to you right now if you support this
Speaker 1: show at maximumfund dot org. Members are the reason this
Speaker 1: podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week
Speaker 1: where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to
Speaker 1: the main episode. This week's bonus topic, as promised, is
Speaker 1: the entire series of business and technological decisions that led
Speaker 1: to Knuckles the echidna in the Sonic the Hedgehog video games.
Speaker 1: Visit sifpod dot fund for that bonus show, for a
Speaker 1: library of almost twenty one dozen other secretly incredibly fastening
Speaker 1: bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of max
Speaker 1: funbonus shows. It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank
Speaker 1: you to everybody who backs this podcast. Operation additional fun things,
Speaker 1: check out our research sources on this episode's page at
Speaker 1: maximum fund dot org. Key sources this week include so
Speaker 1: much amazing digital science writing. Those outlets include PBS Nature,
Speaker 1: Australian Geographic, The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The New
Speaker 1: York Times. Also a lot of scientific resources online, including
Speaker 1: the journal PNASS, the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, digital resources
Speaker 1: from the Australian Antarctic Program, in particular for the plate
Speaker 1: tectonics that separated Antarctica from Australia. And then one book excerpt.
Speaker 1: I did not read the entire book because it's mainly
Speaker 1: about platypuses, but there's an amazing excerpt about echidnas from
Speaker 1: Platypus Matters, The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals that's by
Speaker 1: Cambridge Zoology Museum director Jack Ashby. That page also features
Speaker 1: resources such as Native Dashland dot CA. I'm using those
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenape Hooking, the
Speaker 1: traditional land of the Muncy Lenape people and the Wappinger people,
Speaker 1: as well as the Mohican people, Scatagoque people and others. Also,
Speaker 1: Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I
Speaker 1: once we now in my location, in many other locations
Speaker 1: in the Americas and elsewhere, In particular, the entire range
Speaker 1: of Echidneys, Australia, New Guinea, other island territories in the
Speaker 1: Southern Pacific Ocean. Native people are very much still here
Speaker 1: and there at elsewhere that feels worth doing on each episode,
Speaker 1: and join the Free Sift discord, where we're sharing stories
Speaker 1: and resources about Native people and life. There is a
Speaker 1: link in this episode's description to join the discord. We're
Speaker 1: also talking about this episode on the discord. And hey,
Speaker 1: would you like a tip on another episode? Because each
Speaker 1: week I'm finding is something randomly incredibly fascinating by running
Speaker 1: all the past episode numbers through a random number generator.
Speaker 1: This week's pick is episode two hundred that's about the
Speaker 1: topic of helium. Fun fact there, the people who discovered
Speaker 1: helium as a specific element on the periodic table were
Speaker 1: widely mocked as being wrong about how the sun works,
Speaker 1: so I recommend that episode. I also, of course recommend
Speaker 1: my co host Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature feature about
Speaker 1: animals and science and more. Katie is of course a
Speaker 1: massive source on this episode about an amazing animal and
Speaker 1: if you enjoyed this at all, you will love Creature Feature.
Speaker 1: Check it out. Our theme music is Unbroken, Unshaven by
Speaker 1: the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artists Burton
Speaker 1: Durand Special thanks to Chris SUSA for audio mastering on
Speaker 1: this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for
Speaker 1: taping support. Extra extra special thanks go to our members
Speaker 1: and thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to
Speaker 1: say we will be back next week with more secretly
Speaker 1: incredibly fascinating. So how about that talk to you then.
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