Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature, feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show Creatures Versus Video Game Bosses,
Speaker 1: we're matching some of the most iconic video game bosses
Speaker 1: with real life creatures in a no holds barred match
Speaker 1: of wits, bron brain and slime, which members of the
Speaker 1: Animal Kingdom can travel to the Mushroom Kingdom and defeat
Speaker 1: Bowser is echoed, the dolphin really up to the task
Speaker 1: of defeating the final boss or could he use some
Speaker 1: fishy friends? And could a mycologist take down the batties
Speaker 1: from the most recent Resident Evil game. Discover this more
Speaker 1: as we answer the age old question parasitic Iapod Got
Speaker 1: your Tongue? Joining me today is the creator of the
Speaker 1: wildly popular YouTube channel that translates real life animal biology
Speaker 1: into video game terms. Patch from tears Zoo.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Hi, Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I am very excited to have you on for this episode.
Speaker 1: I think your videos are wildly entertaining. They're really cool.
Speaker 2: Love.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a secret at this point that
Speaker 1: I'm a nerd kind of in every aspect of my life.
Speaker 1: I love video games, I love animals. I really love
Speaker 1: sort of I don't want to say gamification because I
Speaker 1: don't like that word, but taking sort of animal biology
Speaker 1: and putting it into terms that people who love video
Speaker 1: games can really understand.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much. I'm really excited to rank
Speaker 2: some video game bosses versus animals with you, so uh.
Speaker 1: First, I mean, we've got to go with maybe the
Speaker 1: most iconic boss of all time. I don't want to
Speaker 1: put any video game bosses on blast here, but I
Speaker 1: think Bowser it right.
Speaker 2: King Koopa Basa is definitely a big bad that everyone knows.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah. The Mario games feature Bowser as
Speaker 1: the main antagonist. He's that big, spiky turtle like fellow.
Speaker 1: He's king of the Koopas, which I guess is what
Speaker 1: those little turtles are. I only discovered that into my
Speaker 1: adult life. I just thought they were turtles that you
Speaker 1: jump on.
Speaker 2: But yeah.
Speaker 1: He frequently captures Princess Peach, and his life goals are
Speaker 1: to defeat Mario, become the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom,
Speaker 1: and maybe go on a date with Princess Peach, which
Speaker 1: seems counterintuitive to the whole kidnappy thing.
Speaker 2: But you know, I agree, maybe not the best way
Speaker 2: to go about it, and I think some of the
Speaker 2: recent Mario games have kind of addressed that. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 2: Yasa definitely a legend, a.
Speaker 1: Right, a legend, just not in the dating sphere.
Speaker 2: So perhaps not.
Speaker 1: Some of Boers strengths are that he spits fire. It's
Speaker 1: pretty good. It's a pretty good.
Speaker 2: That's a strong ability for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's spiky. He got a lot of spikes, which
Speaker 1: you know, we know is a good defense mechanism for
Speaker 1: a variety of animals. He's got horns and claws and
Speaker 1: that that's good. That definitely helps him out. And he's
Speaker 1: big and strong.
Speaker 2: Yes, he's got a serious size advantage over most of
Speaker 2: his foes.
Speaker 1: Yes, Mario Mario. Yeah, Mario's kind of a he's a
Speaker 1: compact Italian plumber.
Speaker 2: He's a short king.
Speaker 1: He's a short king. Yeah, he's you know what he
Speaker 1: does lacks in size, he makes up in I guess
Speaker 1: stomping ability, right, that's his main power.
Speaker 2: Stomping, Yeah, I suppose so.
Speaker 1: Stomping and jumpin'.
Speaker 2: Yep, he's breaking next, jumping on people's heads.
Speaker 1: We love a short Italian plumber king who stepped on
Speaker 1: your neck. So Bowser's weaknesses is, well, there's his unrequited,
Speaker 1: unhealthy infatuation with princesses, which you know, that's more of
Speaker 1: a psychological thing. You know, maybe you could get under
Speaker 1: his skin with some comments about you know, he's he
Speaker 1: doesn't know how to talk to women. But other than that,
Speaker 1: his weakness is I think poor agility and flexibility. And
Speaker 1: he has this spot open on his tail that in
Speaker 1: Super Mario sixty four you must grab that tail and
Speaker 1: spin him around to defeat him. Based on these specifications,
Speaker 1: I think we're looking for a sturdy animal or a
Speaker 1: very agile animal that can outmaneuver him, and something that
Speaker 1: can attack its praise tails, maybe do spin attacks, maybe
Speaker 1: some brute strength. What do you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean my mind kind of goes to the
Speaker 2: sorts of animals that are the predators of turtles. Bowser's
Speaker 2: basically a dragon turtle, right, And I'm thinking, like, I
Speaker 2: don't know, birds, Like there's some birds that prey on
Speaker 2: turtles by like carrying them up into the air.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2: Really big bird to do that. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it when birds of prey, just like it's
Speaker 1: such a it's so devious to pick up your prey
Speaker 1: and you're not doing any thing to them yet, but
Speaker 1: you're just taking them higher and higher to drop down.
Speaker 2: Exactly, you're letting you're abusing the physics of yeah, real life.
Speaker 1: You know, you're letting gravity do the dirty work for you.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It's super intelligent. It's genius. Uh, you know, it
Speaker 2: works smarter, not harder, right, Smarter, not harder, precisely. But
Speaker 2: I don't think we're gonna find any birds that can
Speaker 2: quite do that to Bowser.
Speaker 1: Maybe not, maybe not, but you know there are animals.
Speaker 1: So one thing I was looking for is strong grip, right,
Speaker 1: because you need you're gonna need a strong grip because
Speaker 1: once you've got Bowser's tail, it's the game's over. Right,
Speaker 1: You've got his tail he can't get. That's one of
Speaker 1: the things is even though Mario is teeny tiny, like
Speaker 1: he can't turn around, because when Mario is attached to
Speaker 1: his tail, what's he gonna do like burn his own
Speaker 1: tail off? No?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so are you thinking like crocodiles.
Speaker 1: Crocodile's is a very good one.
Speaker 2: Like if a bit a Bowser's tail for sure that
Speaker 2: Bowser would be in a tough, tough spot, pretty hard
Speaker 2: to get the crocodile off of you at that point.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, so with the crocodile, I think you
Speaker 1: would not have to make any modifications. You could just
Speaker 1: take a classic saltwater crocodile pitted against Bowser, and in
Speaker 1: my opinion, the crocodile would win every time.
Speaker 2: What do you think, I think, especially because if Bowser
Speaker 2: decides to use his firebreath attack, the crocodile could just
Speaker 2: like submerge itself under the water. Absolutely, I guess in
Speaker 2: this hypothetical scenario, the croc has to also have water
Speaker 2: around it for whatever reason, wading through some swamp or
Speaker 2: river or something.
Speaker 1: There are water levels in Mario, right, There's lots of water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely water levels.
Speaker 1: There's definitely water levels. So yeah, let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about crocodiles because this is actually one of
Speaker 1: my picks for who I think could defeat Bowser. So,
Speaker 1: crocodiles are large reptiles found in aquatic environments all around
Speaker 1: the world. Most species of crocodile employ a devastating attack
Speaker 1: against their victims called a death roll, which I think
Speaker 1: would be a particularly effective attack against a bowser. So
Speaker 1: the death roll is the crocodile's way of attacking and
Speaker 1: devouring prey many times its size, such as a will
Speaker 1: to the beast, which is not an easy thing to eat.
Speaker 1: I think even you imagine, like crocodiles are pretty big,
Speaker 1: but imagine trying to get like a will to beast
Speaker 1: all in your mouth, all at once. It's impossible. Right,
Speaker 1: You've never you've never tried to chug a will the beast.
Speaker 2: I can't say that, I have no, have you no.
Speaker 1: I think the closest I've gotten is like trying to
Speaker 1: get a whole in and out burger, like half of
Speaker 1: it in my mouth and one bike really hot challenge.
Speaker 2: Awesome. I've done that with like donuts. I don't think
Speaker 2: I've done with a burger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't work very good with a burger, but
Speaker 1: I was really trying like a Guy Fieri bite with
Speaker 1: the burger.
Speaker 2: Okay, nice, one bye challenge and then so many regrets.
Speaker 2: I respect it, Yep. The regrets are for later. That's
Speaker 2: a problem for a future Katie, right.
Speaker 1: That's for future Katie. Right now, it's in and out
Speaker 1: Katie time. But for a crocodile. That's a real problem.
Speaker 1: Crocodiles don't really chew their food, do they. They don't.
Speaker 1: They don't have the chewing muscles that other carnivores. They
Speaker 1: can't rip and tear. They don't have the grinding action
Speaker 1: that like omnivores like humans have, like we can grind exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think if anything, the crocodile would probably rip
Speaker 2: off Bowser's tail by doing the whole death roll thing.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't really have much other options right to actually
Speaker 2: eat Bowser. Yeah, so much of him is inside that shell,
Speaker 2: which I don't think a croucle will be really able
Speaker 2: to do much too, even with its powerful bite. I mean,
Speaker 2: just because it's like a sphere, like imagine trying to
Speaker 2: bite something round like that.
Speaker 1: He'd have to hollow out Bowser from the inside, like
Speaker 1: get in there and pull the flesh chunks out from
Speaker 1: inside that shell.
Speaker 2: I suppose is that that could definitely work. Some pretty
Speaker 2: grisly looking life videos though, Yeah, yeah, like Hyena's getting
Speaker 2: all up in like a hip, yeah, or an elephant
Speaker 2: after killing it.
Speaker 1: David Attenborough narrating as you see, like like a hyena
Speaker 1: just come out of a crevice of Bowser's eyehole, I
Speaker 1: suck it, but yeah, so, because the crocodile doesn't chew
Speaker 1: its prey to break it down into smaller pieces, whatever
Speaker 1: it swallows it has to swallow hole. For smaller prey,
Speaker 1: that's easy enough. It just chomps down, crushes it, and
Speaker 1: gulps it back like an in and out burger. And
Speaker 1: often for bigger prey, the crocodile will actually drown its
Speaker 1: prey first, because you know, dead drowned prey is easier
Speaker 1: to deal with than a kicking, live prey that's going, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I didn't sign up for this. So
Speaker 1: its jaws are great for gripping, bad for chewing, and
Speaker 1: in fact, it's jaw strength has a bite force of
Speaker 1: over sixteen thousand newtons, which I you know, that's just
Speaker 1: a number, right, Like, it's hard to put into perspective
Speaker 1: of what that is. But for comparison, a human grip
Speaker 1: is about three hundred newtons, so you know it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: You'd have to shake them off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's why when you put your hand inside
Speaker 1: a crocodile mouth, it's usually not going to go good
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 2: It's just not do not recommend that.
Speaker 1: Do not recommend. I did find a video when I
Speaker 1: was researching this that I won't describe too much because
Speaker 1: I don't want people googling it. But it's bad. Don't
Speaker 1: put your crocodile mouth people.
Speaker 2: Don't do it, not getting if you want your hand back, Yeah,
Speaker 2: don't put it there.
Speaker 1: If you're not offering your hand literally to the crocodile
Speaker 1: to take for keepsies, don't do it. So it will
Speaker 1: bite down, clamp down on its prey and then do
Speaker 1: this death roll so where it just spin, spin, spin,
Speaker 1: like a video game attack. It's an incredible like because
Speaker 1: they're in the water, they have some buoyancy, some more
Speaker 1: I guess agility than you would think such a large
Speaker 1: reptile would have, and they just spin around like a
Speaker 1: tornado and with that limb in their mouth and literally
Speaker 1: will twist it right off of the body of their prey.
Speaker 1: And uh so they are able to then disassemble something
Speaker 1: like a wildebeeste or maybe like a bowser chunk by chunk,
Speaker 1: such that they can just eat something much larger than itself.
Speaker 2: It would certainly be a pretty gruesome sight to watch. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think they could eventually take a part at least
Speaker 2: things that are outside of the shell. They could probably
Speaker 2: rip Bowser's limbs off, which is a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his tail, his feet and arms, a head, those
Speaker 1: cute little like goth bracelets that he's got. He's got
Speaker 1: a lot of points of contact outside of the shell.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the death roll hasn't always been used
Speaker 1: by crocodiles to tear prey up into little edible bits.
Speaker 1: It's actually thought to be a defensive combat move that
Speaker 1: they can also use to tear down prey. So there
Speaker 1: have been observations of crocodiles using this move when they're
Speaker 1: fighting some kind of aggressive other animal or other crocodile.
Speaker 1: So it's totally totally feasible that a crocodile would use
Speaker 1: this move on Bowser in a one on one fight.
Speaker 2: Definitely, I think given its home turf of a river
Speaker 2: or swamp, I think a crocodile has a would pose
Speaker 2: a pretty big threat to Bowser for sure.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I agree, And but that is maybe not
Speaker 1: the only animal that I think could take down Bowser. Now,
Speaker 1: let's say, isn't there a there's a thingy that Mario
Speaker 1: can eat right in the game one of the mushrooms
Speaker 1: that makes him real big.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one that makes him big. There's a few
Speaker 2: other power ups that give him the ability to kind
Speaker 2: of fly or shoot fire himself. Ah nice, But the
Speaker 2: big one is the most iconic for sure.
Speaker 1: That's like this, that's like the Ghost Pepper, the Ghost
Speaker 1: Pepper mushroom story. He just shoots it out of his
Speaker 1: hands or his face. I see not as well. Anyways,
Speaker 1: if you gave a meerkat one of those mushrooms that
Speaker 1: makes it real big, I think that Bowser would be
Speaker 1: complete toast because if Bowser's point of weakness is grabbing
Speaker 1: and attacking the tail, mirror cats are just designed to
Speaker 1: fight dirty uh and grab you by the butt. So
Speaker 1: meerkats are a species of social mongoose found in Southern Africa.
Speaker 1: You know, they're Timoon from The Lion King. Completely accurate depiction.
Speaker 1: They all have a Nathan Lane's voice, so they love
Speaker 1: to eat scorpions when given the opportunity. Now, I've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of conjecture that like mongooses are or sorry,
Speaker 1: meerkats are, well, meer cats are mongooses. But nevertheless, meer
Speaker 1: cats that they're immune to venom or to poison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have some resistance to venom and poison, which are
Speaker 1: venom and toxins, which is good because they do like
Speaker 1: to eat snakes and scorpions, but they're not completely immune.
Speaker 1: They could not survive being stabbed a bunch of times
Speaker 1: by a highly venomous scorpion and they don't want to
Speaker 1: eat it. You know, It's just it's a bad time
Speaker 1: for the little meerkat that wants to eat a highly
Speaker 1: toxic arthropod. So instead, what they do is when they
Speaker 1: want to eat a scorpion, they attack it from the
Speaker 1: butt side. They grab it by the stinger, rip off
Speaker 1: its entire backside, including the stinger. They discard the stinger,
Speaker 1: and then just rub the poor little scorpion in the
Speaker 1: sand until it washes away all the toxins and then
Speaker 1: they can enjoy this tasty snack. So, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: the fact that meerkats learn to do this like since
Speaker 1: their babies, means that if you scaled up a merrcat,
Speaker 1: you gave it one of those dubious magic mushrooms and
Speaker 1: it was fighting size with bowser, it would just gruesomely
Speaker 1: destroy and our bowser.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, the agility that meer cats possesses pretty tough
Speaker 2: to beat now. I mean there's a little bit of
Speaker 2: uh asterisk next to the whole, like if you make
Speaker 2: it bigger, because you run into like the square cube
Speaker 2: law everything whether or not you can retain that agility
Speaker 2: while giant, Right, but it's.
Speaker 1: Vascular system just sort of immediately collapse under the weight
Speaker 1: of its new girth, would it you know?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And the whole moment of inertia of having limbs
Speaker 2: that are way.
Speaker 1: Longer camp because yeah, would it not get enough oxygen? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of questions when you scale things up.
Speaker 2: Yes, we can ignore all of that if you need
Speaker 2: just to talk about giant meer cats. So in your scenario,
Speaker 2: are the mere cats because you said that they're very
Speaker 2: social animals and that's oftentimes how they hunt snakes and everything.
Speaker 2: So in the scenario, is it just one meer cat
Speaker 2: versus bowser giant merkat or is it a whole posse
Speaker 2: of meerkats?
Speaker 1: If I think it's either or right to defeat Bowser,
Speaker 1: you could either have one giant meerkat or an army
Speaker 1: of regular sized meerkats, because together they're very good at teaming,
Speaker 1: like they can take on a king cobra together as
Speaker 1: a unit, yeah, which is very impressive. Now, they don't
Speaker 1: often fight cobras, which there's always something a little bit
Speaker 1: suspect to me when you see wildlife footage of like
Speaker 1: mirrkats fighting a cobra, because like, they don't usually get
Speaker 1: into conflict, like did someone just throw a cobra at them?
Speaker 2: And yeah, to find the most dangerous things they possibly.
Speaker 1: Can, yeah, yeah, and like sort of staging something for uh,
Speaker 1: for dramatic television effects.
Speaker 2: Maybe.
Speaker 1: Nevertheless, they do. They do team up and fight snakes
Speaker 1: by forming a united front as a because they are
Speaker 1: highly social. So I think a team of meerkats could
Speaker 1: do it, or one giant merrcap. And my last contender
Speaker 1: maybe is something you wouldn't necessarily think of, but it
Speaker 1: has pound for pound an incredibly strong grip, one of
Speaker 1: the strongest grips in the world. It is the coconut crab.
Speaker 1: So the coconut crab is a large, large terrestrial crustacean
Speaker 1: found on islands and coasts in the Indian Ocean and
Speaker 1: parts of the Pacific Ocean. They look like a weird
Speaker 1: big crab. They're actually more closely related to hermit crabs
Speaker 1: than actual crabs. Have you heard of carsonization?
Speaker 2: I certainly have. I'm considered making a video on the subject.
Speaker 1: Oh you must, I mean, it is inevitable. We all
Speaker 1: shall become crabs one day. Carsonization is the term for
Speaker 1: or they repeated, parallel or convergent evolution of arthropods into
Speaker 1: crab form, which apparently is the most desirable of forms
Speaker 1: in all of nature, is to be crab. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I've started scuttling, just in preparation for the future.
Speaker 2: Get with the times, there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, So the coconut crab not really a crab,
Speaker 1: more of a hermit crab. It is a crustacean. They're huge.
Speaker 1: The fact that they are so big and live on
Speaker 1: land is a little bit disconcerting. They can weigh up
Speaker 1: to nine pounds or four kilograms and grow up to
Speaker 1: three feet or one meter in length. So intimidating. I'm intimidated.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to mess with one.
Speaker 1: No, no, thank you. Yeah, so researchers, God bless our
Speaker 1: natural biology researchers. They collected about thirty coconut crabs and
Speaker 1: measured their pinches with They look like these metal tubes
Speaker 1: that the coconut crabs would pinch, and then it would
Speaker 1: measure the force of those big pinches, and they found
Speaker 1: that they were able to pinch with a force of
Speaker 1: over one thousand and seven hundred newtons. So again, human
Speaker 1: grip only three hundred newtons. A coconut crab the size
Speaker 1: that it is can grip at almost six times that
Speaker 1: of a human. And so if you scaled a coconut
Speaker 1: crab up to the size of say an average size
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit short human plumber, he could grip
Speaker 1: with six tons of force.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm thinking that might be enough to do a
Speaker 2: number on bowsershell.
Speaker 1: I think so. I think he could not only could
Speaker 1: he grab the tail and toss bowser like a limp rag,
Speaker 1: he could just crack open that shell like a little pistachio.
Speaker 2: So that's like the whole reason they're called coconut crabs, right,
Speaker 2: is because they could shatter coconuts with their just the
Speaker 2: sheer force of their grip.
Speaker 1: You know, I've never even questioned their name, but that
Speaker 1: sounds right to me.
Speaker 2: I totally made that up't totally wrong. I believe it
Speaker 2: sounds right. It sounds right to me as well.
Speaker 1: I believe you so. One of the researchers, marine biologists,
Speaker 1: Shinichiro Oka, was pinched by one of the tests subject
Speaker 1: coconut crabs, and said, quote, while it was only a
Speaker 1: few minutes, I filled eternal hell.
Speaker 2: I do thank you. I would not want to be.
Speaker 1: Him, no, no brave souls to invite a bunch of
Speaker 1: coconut crabs over to test their pinches.
Speaker 2: Yeah, seriously, I was just in Costa Rica and even
Speaker 2: picking up little little hermit crabs on the beach. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I would get a little nervous if I grabbed, like
Speaker 2: a particularly big one and they would try to.
Speaker 1: It can hurt, hurt, it can hurt bad.
Speaker 2: So imagine one that's two thousand times as bigger. Thank
Speaker 2: you you had one as well.
Speaker 1: I had a little tiny hermit crab as a kid,
Speaker 1: even though they don't really make good pets, but I
Speaker 1: was a kid. I don't know, and it's favorite thing
Speaker 1: to do. Probably it was looking for a different shell
Speaker 1: than the one that I had provided to it. Thought
Speaker 1: it was lame, not the right size, which is a
Speaker 1: tricky thing. If you have a hermit crab pet, you
Speaker 1: need to provide it with many different shells because it
Speaker 1: gets bigger, it needs to pick out a new shell.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be picky, so I think, oh, like this
Speaker 1: one is a good size for it, Not according to it.
Speaker 1: So it would crawl in my armpit and like pinch
Speaker 1: really hard in there. Ah, because I think it was
Speaker 1: like trying out my body as a new shell, like
Speaker 1: testing the structural integrity of my armpit. But that hurt.
Speaker 1: So I can't imagine one seven hundred newtons of force?
Speaker 1: Which yauser's that? Yeah? Quite a strong handshake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, leave a mark for sure.
Speaker 1: You know those competitive business handshakes.
Speaker 2: Uh, yes, Like basically the kind of handshake that your
Speaker 2: girlfriend's dad gives you the first time. Yes he meets you,
Speaker 2: think yeah, yes, calls you.
Speaker 1: A sport, grabs your hand, your vice like grip just
Speaker 1: so you know, just so you know the pecking order.
Speaker 1: Don't date a coconut crab because a coconut crab dad
Speaker 1: could just crush your hand into a pulverized smoosh.
Speaker 2: Absolutely all right.
Speaker 1: So our next video game boss is the Vortex Queen
Speaker 1: from Echo the Dolphin. Now this is maybe not as
Speaker 1: well known as a boss, but I have I had
Speaker 1: to include it because this is one of the times
Speaker 1: when a video game boss is actually defeated by an animal,
Speaker 1: and I want to question the choice of protagonists in
Speaker 1: this video game.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Echo the Dolphin was a nineteen ninety two Sega Genesis
Speaker 1: adventure game featuring Echo the Dolphin, who is a dolphin
Speaker 1: that jumps real good and is on an adventure to
Speaker 1: find it it's missing pod of dolphins. So I actually
Speaker 1: did not play this game as a kid because I
Speaker 1: didn't have the Sega Genesis.
Speaker 2: I've never played it at all, but I might have
Speaker 2: to see if I can find an emulator for it,
Speaker 2: because sounds very unique. I haven't heard about this.
Speaker 1: It is, I read. I went down a fandom wiki
Speaker 1: hole on this one, and it's an interesting plot. I
Speaker 1: mean like, when I saw artwork for this guy, I
Speaker 1: was like, yes, about a dolphin who jumps real good,
Speaker 1: but it's got aliens and time traveler it oh good?
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, every game mads that, so.
Speaker 1: They're are in this game. Your pod goes missing, your
Speaker 1: pod of dolphins. There are all these weird weather phenomenons
Speaker 1: like sudden storms and water spouts, which turn out to
Speaker 1: be the fault of an alien race of parasites known
Speaker 1: as the Vortex, So Echo the Dolphin must travel through
Speaker 1: time to collect powerful orbs to help defeat the Vortex
Speaker 1: Queen and rescue the planet and Echoes pod of dolphins.
Speaker 1: So the Vortex Queen is a giant alien head that
Speaker 1: lives in the deep sea with anglerfish like jaws and
Speaker 1: huge black eyes. She attacks her enemies by using strong
Speaker 1: suction to pull creatures into her mouth and devours them instantly.
Speaker 1: She can summon vortex jellyfish and Vortex drones to attack
Speaker 1: the player, all the while trying to suck you right
Speaker 1: into her mouth. So you defeat the Vortex Queen, Echo
Speaker 1: must first destroy her eyes with sonar and then break
Speaker 1: off her jaw and then break her skull.
Speaker 2: WHOA, that's so violent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean for a fun game about dolphins, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty violent and uh, pretty intense. Like this Vortex Queen.
Speaker 1: The pixel art of it it's bonkers. It's like it
Speaker 1: does look like a terrifying deep sea creature kind of
Speaker 1: fused with like an alien skull, which is definitely not
Speaker 1: probably what the mini thousands of grandma's who picked this
Speaker 1: game out for their kid like thought was going to
Speaker 1: be and just jumping and swimming and killing alien giant
Speaker 1: heads down deep in the sea, you know, standard marine
Speaker 1: fun times. So the issue I have with this, I
Speaker 1: mean they try to explain away some of the things
Speaker 1: with Echo the dolphin like time travels and picks up
Speaker 1: magic orbs so that he can breathe underwater without Because
Speaker 1: dolphins are mammals, they gotta breathe sometimes, so they can't
Speaker 1: unlike maybe some larger cetaceans like a sperm whale or
Speaker 1: a blue whale. They really can't go that deep and
Speaker 1: spin that much time deep down without surfacing to breathe.
Speaker 1: So Echo really shouldn't be down there. They try to
Speaker 1: explain it away with magic, but that's not good enough
Speaker 1: for me. Also, dolphins, sonar is not a weapon. It
Speaker 1: is a sensory tool.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It uses clicks to bounce sound off objects and form
Speaker 1: a map of their surroundings. These clicks don't do anything
Speaker 1: really to harm other animals unless it confuses some other
Speaker 1: cetacean that is also trying to find.
Speaker 2: As far as sonic weapons go, there are much more
Speaker 2: dam dress sonic blasts in the animal kingdom, like even
Speaker 2: just like the shriek of a parrot I think is
Speaker 2: potentially almost as loud as like a gunshot, and that
Speaker 2: can definitely mess with your ears if you're too close, or.
Speaker 1: The pinch of a mantis peacock mantis shrimp is gonna
Speaker 1: be sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not really a sonic.
Speaker 1: Weapon, but it's definitely shock wave, Yeah exactly, but no, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the sonar doesn't really do anything. This is very hyped up,
Speaker 1: sort of a Vana syndrome esque situation with act the
Speaker 1: dolphin really promising much more of a sonic weapon than
Speaker 1: and dolphin can really do. So, in my opinion, dolphin
Speaker 1: is not really the best animal for the job, even
Speaker 1: a magic time traveling dolphin. Of course, dolphins have a
Speaker 1: lot of strength that I should not downplay.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: They are intelligent, they're great at teamwork, very strong abs.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the abs of a dolphin.
Speaker 2: I can't say that I have no. I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess if you're doing all that, yeah, like you're basically
Speaker 2: just doing crunches in order to move.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's Jim goals.
Speaker 2: I guess it makes sense.
Speaker 1: It's up on my gym goals board. I want to
Speaker 1: have abs of a dolphin. They are agile and in
Speaker 1: groups of dolphins, they are capable of forming bubblenuts and
Speaker 1: sand nets, which would be very useful for trying to
Speaker 1: defeat an alien queen. Unfortunately, within the context of the story,
Speaker 1: Echo's dolphin buddies have been kidnapped by the aliens. So
Speaker 1: oh right, And so my thinking is that Echo's going
Speaker 1: to need to get a team together and think outside
Speaker 1: of his dolphin group and find like a marine team
Speaker 1: of creepy ocean critters where you have like a cool
Speaker 1: montage of Echo going around to all these different marine
Speaker 1: animals and they're like, God, damn it, I'm in and
Speaker 1: then they play some music and they get in like
Speaker 1: a submarine van thing, and yeah, right, So the team
Speaker 1: needs to be able to defeat the Vortex Queen. In
Speaker 1: the three stages that the player needs to defeat the
Speaker 1: Vortex Queen, it has to attack the eyes, the mouth,
Speaker 1: and then the skull.
Speaker 2: So and to be able to deal with all the
Speaker 2: little millions, right, all the little minions the Vortex Queen
Speaker 2: was summoning like jellyfish. So I was thinking, if it's
Speaker 2: got to deal with jellyfish, maybe a marine turtle, a
Speaker 2: sea turtle, Yeah, pretty good for that. They love to jellyfish.
Speaker 1: Maybe clear the way, Yeah, because they eat jellyfish, right.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And so I mean in order to even get
Speaker 2: to the to the final boss, right, you wouldn't want
Speaker 2: to be swimming through jellyfish and take a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of stings and die from poison before you even have
Speaker 2: the chance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So you got you got your turtle squad
Speaker 1: who clears out the minions. There you go, perfect, and
Speaker 1: then you need something to attack the eyes. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: for that the copapod Omada koita elongata. Have you heard
Speaker 1: of this?
Speaker 2: No? Is just like so a copa pod that's like
Speaker 2: a really really microscopic crustation, right.
Speaker 1: It's they can be microscopic, so they can be zooplankton,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they can be larger such that they're visible
Speaker 1: with the naked eye, usually under about an inch. Still
Speaker 1: very small, okay, so real tiny, real tiny. But copepods
Speaker 1: are a class of crustaceans, and like you said, they're
Speaker 1: often really tiny, like zooplankton size. But this one, the
Speaker 1: oh elongatta, is little like worm size, like under an
Speaker 1: inch long, little pink. They're kind of a weird y shape.
Speaker 1: They look like a worm that has two little noodle legs.
Speaker 1: It's actually kind of funny, and they are parasites that
Speaker 1: attach themselves to the eyes of their host, feeding on
Speaker 1: their eye tissue and impairing their vision.
Speaker 2: Oh that's horrible. I would not want to be that
Speaker 2: thing's victim.
Speaker 1: Its typical host is one of the largest and oldest
Speaker 1: living sharks, the greenland shark. So yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: These are ones that live like half a millenniu basically,
Speaker 2: like four or five hundred years exactly.
Speaker 1: Yes, ancient, ancient, So they'd give like the Vortex Queen
Speaker 1: a run for her money in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: old eldrick creatures that lurk in the water.
Speaker 2: I feel like you could also go for like a
Speaker 2: swordfish or a marlin or something.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, just to put the eyes out.
Speaker 2: Pokemon the eye if she needs to do.
Speaker 1: That's a much more straight Yeah, that's a much more
Speaker 1: straightforward method. I feel like.
Speaker 2: It might get the chopped on a little quicker if
Speaker 2: these parasites take a little while to start shop and
Speaker 2: destroy the eye tissue. On the other hand, a quick stab.
Speaker 1: Is it as fun though, like to slowly, you know,
Speaker 1: like plant those months in advance, Like you could have
Speaker 1: a spy montage of these little copa pods getting in there.
Speaker 2: You definitely could.
Speaker 1: You're a little bit. You're a little less devious than
Speaker 1: I am. I think you're just like we go in,
Speaker 1: we scoop its eyes out with a swordfish, we go out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there are some theories actually that the copa pod
Speaker 1: and the greenland shark actually have a mutualistic relationship rather
Speaker 1: than a parasitic one.
Speaker 2: Oh so you think it would betray the team.
Speaker 1: It's possible because the copa pod actually emits a or
Speaker 1: at least the theory. I'm not sure exactly how much
Speaker 1: of this has proven, but they may emit a slight
Speaker 1: level of bioluminescence, and so the idea is, well, the
Speaker 1: greenland shark doesn't really use its eyes much to hunt
Speaker 1: in the first place, so it could use this bioluminescence
Speaker 1: of these copa pods to draw fish closer to it
Speaker 1: and then ambush, using its a sense of smell to
Speaker 1: ambush these fish and eat them. That's a theory.
Speaker 2: It's quite a trade off. I could make that deal.
Speaker 1: Have your have your weird living eyeball tassels in exchange
Speaker 1: for slightly easier meals. I don't know, maybe maybe I
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: That's a tough call. I guess I wasn't using them
Speaker 2: like you said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like they use their sense of smell. It does
Speaker 1: feel like it'd be like kind of annoying, Like it
Speaker 1: always feels like you have something in your eye. Could
Speaker 1: you do.
Speaker 2: Exactly, Paris. I always get eyelashes in my eyes, so
Speaker 2: I can't imagine a crustacean hanging on.
Speaker 1: I hate eyeball stuff. I hate looking at think like
Speaker 1: I can't. I have a glasses prescription, and people like, well,
Speaker 1: why don't you wear contacts? It's like, no, never.
Speaker 2: Your eye every time you take it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, no, those little peatrie discs that you
Speaker 1: put on there waiting for some kind of voracious bacteria
Speaker 1: to grow in there, no thank you. So either with
Speaker 1: a swordfish poking the eyeball out or the copa pods
Speaker 1: slowly but surely devouring the vortex Queen's vision. Let's say
Speaker 1: we've taken out our eyes. Next stage is taking out
Speaker 1: her mouth. Now echo does this by I guess dismantling
Speaker 1: her jaw with sonar, which we've established is not really
Speaker 1: how sonar works.
Speaker 2: I really strong. Yeah, blast of sonic energy to break
Speaker 2: a bone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a jaw bone that it would be
Speaker 1: such a strong blast of sonic energy. I think it
Speaker 1: would destroy Echo in the process. It would just explode,
Speaker 1: right if.
Speaker 2: It's being emitted from Echo's like face, I assume, or
Speaker 2: like it's a little it's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they use they use the mill in their head
Speaker 1: as like an echo chamber to help with the acoustics
Speaker 1: of these clicks. They would explode its head.
Speaker 2: Yes, I do think it would take some area of
Speaker 2: effect damage there for sure.
Speaker 1: A little bit of friendly fire. So instead of Echo
Speaker 1: exploding its head with this mystery sonar, I think we
Speaker 1: need a parasitic tongue isopod. One of my favorite parasites.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't like where you're going with this.
Speaker 1: Oh no, the simultheo exigua. It's also called a parasitic
Speaker 1: tongue louse. We've actually talked about this little lady on
Speaker 1: the show before. Have you heard of this beautiful, beautiful
Speaker 1: tongue parasite.
Speaker 2: I have, and it's probably one of the most gut
Speaker 2: wrenching things to ever think about. This is the creature
Speaker 2: that essentially replaces the tongue of its victim.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: So I feel like at this point I'm feeling really
Speaker 2: bad for this pot like it can keep my friends.
Speaker 2: I'm not really go to these extreme measures to torture
Speaker 2: this thing's.
Speaker 1: Objecting her to like, and then it slowly devours her
Speaker 1: eyes and then it replaces their time. This is psychological intimidation.
Speaker 1: The aliens are just going to pack up and leave Earth.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, you got tongue parasites down here, never
Speaker 1: mind keep stinking dolphins. Jesus. Yeah, so uh see eggs
Speaker 1: we uh or exit exigua. I have so much trouble
Speaker 1: with that name. The tongue laus Uh will enter the
Speaker 1: gills of a fish and swim up to its tongue
Speaker 1: and cut off the blood supply to the tongue while
Speaker 1: sucking on that sweet, sweet fish blood tongue for its
Speaker 1: own self. And once it has consumed enough of the
Speaker 1: fish's blood, it will attach itself to the stub of
Speaker 1: the tongue because as it sucks the blood from the tongue,
Speaker 1: tongue atrophies and withers and falls off, which is fun
Speaker 1: fun visual. And these little isopods, I mean imagine like
Speaker 1: a pale, white, giant version of one of those little
Speaker 1: roly polleys. That's what they look like kind of horrible.
Speaker 1: And when you open up one of these fishes mouth
Speaker 1: that has this is infected with this parasite, you just
Speaker 1: see like this little parasite face staring out like the
Speaker 1: little alien tongue, and aliens like, oh hell yeah. So
Speaker 1: she will live there, feeding off of the fish's blood
Speaker 1: and sometimes the fish is mucus. She's not picky and
Speaker 1: acts as the fish's replacement tongue because the fish literally
Speaker 1: has no choice. If it's gonna eat, it's gotta use
Speaker 1: this isopod as its tongue. And once she is ready
Speaker 1: to release her brute pouch, she abandons fish and the
Speaker 1: fish actually dies without this parasite because it now has
Speaker 1: zero tongue it.
Speaker 2: You know, really, so the so you're saying, the isopod
Speaker 2: is actually better than nothing.
Speaker 1: It's better than not.
Speaker 2: She help, it helps. Yeah, it's poor victim out at
Speaker 2: least a little bit right at.
Speaker 1: It's better not to get it in the first place.
Speaker 1: But you're screwed once it leaves the host, and it
Speaker 1: will inevitably leave you to lay its eggs, which you know,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of it's kind of cruel to like
Speaker 1: take someone's tongue and be like, I'm your tongue now,
Speaker 1: and then when you finally get used to it, it's like,
Speaker 1: well see you, It's like, but you're my tongue, not anymore,
Speaker 1: I'm not bite. The reason I keep saying she is
Speaker 1: actually does the female isopod that does this, and it's
Speaker 1: got a really interesting life cycle. So they all start
Speaker 1: out as males and enter into the fish gills where
Speaker 1: they'll feed off blood supply near the gills. But if
Speaker 1: a second uh see exegua enters into the gills, the
Speaker 1: first one transforms from being male into being female, and
Speaker 1: uh they mate, and then the male you know, just
Speaker 1: I think, leaves and then the newly transformed female goes
Speaker 1: up and bites on the tongue and does that cool
Speaker 1: magic trick with the fish tongue that I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: So real, interesting little creature, absolutely horrifying to anything in
Speaker 1: the ocean that has a tongue. So yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be horrible My plans for the vortex Queen's tongue. And
Speaker 1: then all you need to do if she's not freaked
Speaker 1: out enough that she just leaves Earth because it's so
Speaker 1: horribly messed up, much more messed up than anything she
Speaker 1: could come up with as this, like alien queen, you
Speaker 1: do need to attack her skull and this is maybe
Speaker 1: my favorite one, which.
Speaker 2: I can't I can't wait to see how you're going
Speaker 2: to this.
Speaker 1: Well, look, so the vortex queen is a deep sea creature.
Speaker 1: She's adapted to the crushing depths of the ocean floor.
Speaker 1: So she can't have a solid, hard skull filled with
Speaker 1: gooey brain like humans do, because it would collapse from
Speaker 1: the massive pressure of the bottom of the ocean to equalize.
Speaker 1: So if we went down, yeah, we went down to
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean, our heads would collapse a
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, they'd be squished. It might not look
Speaker 1: like it wouldn't look like your whole face got squished in,
Speaker 1: but your skull would definitely crack and start letting in
Speaker 1: water to equalize the pressure, which is bad for your brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this kills the person.
Speaker 1: This kills the person. So to survive the crushing depths
Speaker 1: of the ocean floor, animals who have evolved down there
Speaker 1: actually often have gaps in their skull to help equalize
Speaker 1: that pressure. So to illustrate this using like balls, like
Speaker 1: if you took a ping pong ball, and somehow shoved
Speaker 1: it down into the bottom of the ocean, it would
Speaker 1: collapse because the huge PSI force of all of that
Speaker 1: stacks and stacks of water would be trying to equalize
Speaker 1: the pressure from inside the ball, which is filled with air,
Speaker 1: which is less dense, and so it crushes the ping
Speaker 1: pong ball. That's like your human skull. Maybe not quite
Speaker 1: because our unless your total airhead literally filled with air,
Speaker 1: would you have such a dramatic effect. But if you
Speaker 1: drop a whiffle ball which has a bunch of holes
Speaker 1: in it, down to the bottom of the ocean, it's
Speaker 1: not going to collapse because inside the whiffle ball is
Speaker 1: just more water, and so the density of water is
Speaker 1: equal to the density of other water, so there's no
Speaker 1: pressure to have to equalize, So whiffle ball.
Speaker 2: Doesn't flow out out. So if you have the actual
Speaker 2: material itself doesn't get impacted like the plastic of a
Speaker 2: whiffle ball.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pends on the material. So if you have a
Speaker 1: porous material like styrofoam, that actually gets crushed because all
Speaker 1: the air inside the styrofoam gets squeezed, And so you
Speaker 1: can actually take a styrofoam cup, put it down in
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean, it comes back a little
Speaker 1: tiny mini cup.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, right, So the material has to be like
Speaker 2: super solid, rigid, no pockets of air inside.
Speaker 1: Plastic that does not have air pockets, and I think
Speaker 1: is sturdy enough to survive the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 1: Bones sometimes may not be because bone is more porous,
Speaker 1: so that might get more pressure. And in fact, with
Speaker 1: these deep sea animals, they often have cartilage instead of
Speaker 1: hard bone, so that they can move around and the
Speaker 1: pressure may kind of bend their bones a little bit
Speaker 1: and push inwards, but they're not as brittle as a
Speaker 1: sort of calcified bone, so that they're just much more
Speaker 1: durable to that underwater pressure. So what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: the vortex Queen's skull has to be made at least
Speaker 1: partially out of cartilage, and it's got to have gaps
Speaker 1: in it. And so that means that these like ramming
Speaker 1: attacks that you do in the Echo the Dolphin game
Speaker 1: to like crush her skull, I don't think would be
Speaker 1: very effective because it's like, dude, I'm already getting you know,
Speaker 1: all of these these this pressure from the deep sea water,
Speaker 1: Like you can't punch my skull in basically, uh, with
Speaker 1: your your puny dolphin powers. Instead, I think we need
Speaker 1: to use a hagfish's ability to bore a hole into
Speaker 1: the soft tissue of the vortex queens skull and eat
Speaker 1: it from the inside out.
Speaker 2: So hag fish.
Speaker 1: Hagfish, Well, they don't specifically look for brains, and typically
Speaker 1: they're looking for uh, dead or dying animals. But by
Speaker 1: the time this poor vortex queen has had her mouth
Speaker 1: and eyeballs taken care of, I think the hagfish would
Speaker 1: step in.
Speaker 2: That makes sense. It's in pretty rough shave at that point.
Speaker 1: Hagfish have a horrifying name that matches their horrifying little bodies.
Speaker 1: They're pink, slimy, squirmy, eel like primitive fish with no
Speaker 1: vertebral column and no jaw. They can grow around twenty
Speaker 1: inches or fifty centimeters long, which it's too much for me.
Speaker 1: When I'm thinking about just holding one of these, like
Speaker 1: pink slime worm, they look like worms. It's very uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: They're not worms. They are very primitive fish. So since
Speaker 1: they don't have jaws, they don't you know, no non
Speaker 1: eat you know, like a regular fish. They have two
Speaker 1: plates covered in rows, and rows of pointique teeth, and
Speaker 1: they use these plates to grab and rasp flesh off
Speaker 1: of carrion or they're sickly and dying victims. And when
Speaker 1: they've grabbed a nice piece of flesh and kind of
Speaker 1: gotten it sort of secured between these plates of teeth,
Speaker 1: they'll often wiggle around and not like not themselves around
Speaker 1: and rip big chunks off of their target. So a
Speaker 1: group of hagfish. Have you ever wondered, like what happens
Speaker 1: when a huge whale dies in the ocean, Like where
Speaker 1: does its body go? Sometimes it washes up on the beach,
Speaker 1: but we don't have just constant littering dead whale bodies everywhere,
Speaker 1: so it has to go somewhere right right, and it goes.
Speaker 2: You get a good mix of hagfish and crabs and stuff.
Speaker 2: I I kind of always assume there's a bunch of crabs.
Speaker 1: Crabs love a big, big cetacean body. They'll they love
Speaker 1: a big whale body. That's that's like, that's like TGI
Speaker 1: Fridays for crabs. So absolutely, the crabs are wonderful scavengers,
Speaker 1: great at breaking down decomposing bodies in the ocean. But
Speaker 1: hagfish are the unsung heroes of waste disposal. They love
Speaker 1: a dead body. They will get all in there. You
Speaker 1: can see sometimes these ghostly corpses of a large whale
Speaker 1: and then just these hagfish darting in and out of
Speaker 1: the body as they kind of like tear out these
Speaker 1: holes and then go inside to the softer bits of
Speaker 1: the whale. Sou and they're very slimy. Hagfish slime. Is
Speaker 1: this really thick? It's almost like egg white texture. It's
Speaker 1: so thick and gooey, and in fact, it's so full
Speaker 1: of proteins. Like some people, I mean have suggested we
Speaker 1: could use that as like an alternative to egg white protein,
Speaker 1: which you know, okay, yeah, just like for breakfast, just
Speaker 1: you know, like, good morning, I gotta got a.
Speaker 2: Milk tasty hagfish omelet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I gotta milk the hagfish for its slime to
Speaker 1: make an omelet. You know, maybe it's more eco friendly.
Speaker 1: I don't know. That may be our future where you
Speaker 1: just milk a hagfish for your breakfast.
Speaker 2: So I think I so much look forward to.
Speaker 1: What a bright future. Look. Maybe it's delicious, you just
Speaker 1: can't judge. Uh So, yeah, I think that if you
Speaker 1: just set a bunch of hagfish on this poor this
Speaker 1: poor vortex coin. She's she's doomed in a horrifying way.
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow, Yeah, that it seems like it would do it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess there's probably be plenty of crabs
Speaker 2: also following, and yes, all sorts of other bottom feeder parasites.
Speaker 1: A party down there.
Speaker 2: Pour into whatever hole this hagfish.
Speaker 1: Kind of like scrobe lights like an anglerfish, sort of
Speaker 1: using his Laura's for Laura's stroke like.
Speaker 2: Using y yeah by luminescent rave, let's go.
Speaker 1: Do you remember when that new Resident Evil game like
Speaker 1: Resident Evil Villages came out or Village and that giant
Speaker 1: vampire Lady h Lady Dimitriscue. Uh, it just kind of
Speaker 1: took the Internet by storm.
Speaker 2: Yes, I remember Twitter blowing up about that for sure,
Speaker 2: quite a day.
Speaker 1: People love a giant, tall vampire queen.
Speaker 2: I guess apparently there's a lot of simping going on
Speaker 2: on Twitter days. For sure.
Speaker 1: A lot of people had crushes on her. I guess
Speaker 1: it was like because she could crush them and that exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, that does it for people sometimes the thing
Speaker 1: that's their thing, a big giant deadly vampire queen like
Speaker 1: the size of a giraffe that. I mean, look, I'm
Speaker 1: not here to shame people for their preference.
Speaker 2: That's beyond me. But you know, that's if that's their thing.
Speaker 1: But you know, whether or not you want to take
Speaker 1: her out on a date, she definitely wants to kill
Speaker 1: and eat you. So she is a boss in the
Speaker 1: Resident Evil game. Uh wow, that's definitely going to get
Speaker 1: picked up on the audio.
Speaker 2: But whatever.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, uh so, if you haven't played the Resident
Speaker 1: Evil games, which maybe some of us haven't, including me,
Speaker 1: I wasn't very good at trying to hide the fact
Speaker 1: I haven't played this game as being like.
Speaker 2: Justin I played like the Oh yeah, I played on.
Speaker 1: There is some version. I didn't play it, but I
Speaker 1: watched my brother play it back when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: and there was like a scene where one of the
Speaker 1: zombies was like slowly going up the stairs and you
Speaker 1: saw it from the zombies perspective, so you knew it
Speaker 1: was coming. I was like scared to use the stairs
Speaker 1: for a week afterwards. So spooky, and I think I've
Speaker 1: got some rain and thunder going on, so perfect ambiance
Speaker 1: for this section, guys. So in this Resident Evil game,
Speaker 1: the giant vampire lady, I think it's Dmitroscu. D'mitra Scuv.
Speaker 1: Looks like a very tall, well dressed woman, and she
Speaker 1: was infected with a fictional parasite called the Cadou parasite.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to be trying to be really clear
Speaker 1: here because the video game the Resident Evil games deal
Speaker 1: with a lot of fictional like molds and parasites and
Speaker 1: kind of faux biology terms, and I'll try to clearly
Speaker 1: label that these are the fictional ones. But I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk about some real molds and fungus in parasites
Speaker 1: that I think could counteract these video game ones.
Speaker 2: So the.
Speaker 1: Cado parasite somehow mutated her into a giant lady who
Speaker 1: needs to drink blood to survive. There's some sort of
Speaker 1: sciencey schmyancy explanation in the game. Doesn't really make sense,
Speaker 1: but I love it. I'm not criticizing it. I love
Speaker 1: it when video games are like, yeah, and then here's
Speaker 1: this fungus that makes everyone vampires, like right on? And
Speaker 1: then her minions are three lovely ladies who were also
Speaker 1: surgically implanted with the Cado parasite. Again fake this is all.
Speaker 1: This is all fictional parasites which somehow merged their DNA
Speaker 1: with a swarm of blowflies so they can like separate
Speaker 1: into swarms of blowflies and then coalesce back into ladies,
Speaker 1: which you know, it's pretty cool. It's a cool it's
Speaker 1: cool powers.
Speaker 2: I like, yeah, definitely useful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially if you got if you're there's like some
Speaker 1: doggy doo doo in your house, it's like, don't worry,
Speaker 1: we'll get it. Boom, it's gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1: So the Resident Evil series in general often combines folklore
Speaker 1: like vampires and werewolves with a sort of fake biology.
Speaker 1: Like the cause of some freaky powers or mutations, uh
Speaker 1: is caused by something known as the mold, which is
Speaker 1: a fictional fungus that can somehow store genetic information and
Speaker 1: cause specific hallucinations as well as mutations to create horrible monsters.
Speaker 1: So this isn't really biologically feasible, but uh, let's fight
Speaker 1: the weird fantasy fungus with weird real life fungus. So
Speaker 1: I think this whole castle of weird fungal lady vampires
Speaker 1: could have been taken out by a smart micologist. So
Speaker 1: mycologist is someone who studies fungus and there are let's fight.
Speaker 1: Let's fight fungus with fungus. What do you say?
Speaker 2: Okay, sure, I can't say I'm super well versed in mycology.
Speaker 2: I mean either of I.
Speaker 1: Relied a lot on you know, mycology monthly for this research.
Speaker 2: Excellent, I respect it. Uh. Most of what I know
Speaker 2: about fungus is like pretty much just the cordyceps fungus,
Speaker 2: which is yes, the kind that controls insect brains, yes,
Speaker 2: and the basis for the video game The Last of
Speaker 2: Us Yes, because the zombies in that game, or fungal
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: That is one of my favorite of the parasitic fungus.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: So, Actually, those kinds of fungus that will eat insects
Speaker 1: and be parasites on an insect are called intomo pathogenic funguses.
Speaker 1: Into moo, let me try that one more time. Intimopathogenic fungus.
Speaker 2: There you go, entomology and pathogenic disease.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. The Cordyceps are one of many species of
Speaker 1: fungus that kills and eats insects by attaching to the
Speaker 1: insects body is spores uh, and then germinating and colonizing
Speaker 1: under the insects cuticle, which is that exoskeletal structure that
Speaker 1: functions as their skin. So often these into pathogenic fungi
Speaker 1: will use enzymes to bore holes into the insects body
Speaker 1: and then grow throughout the body. Cavity.
Speaker 2: Chemical warfare, Now exactly how we're going to beat the
Speaker 2: boss of chemicals. Sweet all right, bring us home atimopathogenic
Speaker 2: fung guy, let's get there.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you will see like insects barely managing to crawl
Speaker 1: around where half of them have been eaten by some
Speaker 1: kind of fungus. Usually it'll be like a white or
Speaker 1: gray fuzzy mold. It's so creepy. So, like you mentioned,
Speaker 1: cordyceps can infect ant brains and cause them to climb
Speaker 1: up tree branches, like dig into the branch with their
Speaker 1: manibles to get a nice secure hold before they die
Speaker 1: in spectacular fashion as a fruiting body of the fungus
Speaker 1: just explodes from their head. So we've got a lot
Speaker 1: of really interesting species of intomopathogenic fungi, but we want
Speaker 1: one that will be really bad for blowflies, right, because
Speaker 1: we've got these two her minions, the lady dimitrisk who's
Speaker 1: minions turn into a swarm of blowflies, which is hard
Speaker 1: to stab with a knife.
Speaker 2: It's hard to fight, okay, so, but it presents a
Speaker 2: unique weakness, right, you can exploit. That's interesting. I would
Speaker 2: have not thought about using kind of turning it's it's
Speaker 2: special ability against itself. Yes, we exactly so. Uh.
Speaker 1: The there's this species of anentomopathogenic fungi called Bovaria bassiana,
Speaker 1: which is a beautiful name. I feel like it like
Speaker 1: sounds sounds like one of these names from resident Evil
Speaker 1: to me, like lady Dimitrisciu. It's like the Bovaria bassiana fungus.
Speaker 1: Uh coming in to a right?
Speaker 2: I mean, who knows. Maybe that's how they got their names. Right.
Speaker 2: If you look up the demetrisou fungus, maybe that's a thing.
Speaker 2: Who knows. Uh.
Speaker 1: So, this fungus, with its beautiful name, is very dangerous
Speaker 1: to blowflies. It is so efficient at killing blowflies and
Speaker 1: other species of flies and pests. It is often used
Speaker 1: as a biological pest decide so it grows throughout the insect,
Speaker 1: leaving behind a hollowed out carcass covered in white mold,
Speaker 1: which often collects and spills out at the joints, if
Speaker 1: not completely overwhelming the carcass of the insects. So I
Speaker 1: have included a picture of a blowfly that looks like
Speaker 1: it's just covered in white fluff.
Speaker 2: I see, it looks like it like it's covered in
Speaker 2: snow or something. Yeah, just when it like tumbled down
Speaker 2: a mountain and.
Speaker 1: Right like in a cartoon, exactly exactly. But no, that
Speaker 1: is white mold that has completely subsumed and devoured this
Speaker 1: poor little blowfly. I think this fungus would make quick
Speaker 1: work of the minions and so onto killing Lady Dmitrisci herself.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: So, I looked up on another fan wiki thing because
Speaker 1: I have not played these games. I'm a fake nerd.
Speaker 1: I just don't know.
Speaker 2: I haven't played bad game either.
Speaker 1: I simply do not have a PS five or whatever
Speaker 1: you would need for these games.
Speaker 2: PS five is pretty hard to come vice. I don't
Speaker 2: blame you, so uh.
Speaker 1: The fictional Cadou parasite is a parasitic nematode spliced with
Speaker 1: this mysterious powerful mold that causes all these human mutations
Speaker 1: in the resident evil world. So, while the game version
Speaker 1: of the parasitic parasitic nematode isn't necessarily that accurate in
Speaker 1: terms of like, you can't really just splice its DNA
Speaker 1: with mold. I don't. It's two different kingdoms, guys.
Speaker 2: Different for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there are real life parasitic nematodes, and of
Speaker 1: course there are real life predators of nematods, and some
Speaker 1: of those predators are mushrooms. It all comes back to mushrooms.
Speaker 1: So in the Resident Evil game, to defeat the big
Speaker 1: bad lady Dmitriskiu, I cannot pronounce that is Dmitriskiu. Is
Speaker 1: it French?
Speaker 2: It seems like it would be French, but I have
Speaker 2: never studied French. I'm not going to attempt it.
Speaker 1: It takes place in Eastern Europe, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: Dimito I did take Russian, but it doesn't look like
Speaker 2: a Russian name to me.
Speaker 1: It doesn't. There's not enough conflicting consonants in it, so
Speaker 1: you but to defeat her you need a specific dagger
Speaker 1: imbued with monster killing toxins that are never specified. But hey,
Speaker 1: if you lose this dagger or butterfingers and drop it,
Speaker 1: then you're screwed. Except maybe you could just go out
Speaker 1: and forage for some nice oyster mushrooms. So, oyster mushrooms
Speaker 1: make a nice meal for humans, but they like to
Speaker 1: feed on nematodes. So it seems a little weird for
Speaker 1: something like a fungus to be a carnivore, but they
Speaker 1: absolutely can be. So they will use droplets of toxins
Speaker 1: that paralyze the nematod then slowly digest them using the hyphae,
Speaker 1: which are these branching filaments that take in nutrients for
Speaker 1: the fungus. So they're kind of like plant roots. They're
Speaker 1: not so fungus fungi are not plants. They don't have
Speaker 1: the same kinds of structures that plants do, but these
Speaker 1: hyphae do function a little bit like roots because they
Speaker 1: will suck in nutrients for the fungus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how does it find these nematods? I mean, neither.
Speaker 1: Live in the They live in the soil where these mushrooms.
Speaker 2: Are so okay, so they're just so ubiquitous that yeah.
Speaker 1: Where exactly. But if that doesn't sound powerful enough, like
Speaker 1: if you throw some oyster mushrooms at or make or
Speaker 1: eat some, like you don't think that's gonna work. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different mushrooms that are in line
Speaker 1: to kill nematoads, and they have some really dastardly methods
Speaker 1: of doing so. Sometimes they will have booby trapped fungal
Speaker 1: spores that will develop spikes and lodge themselves in the
Speaker 1: throats of nematodes, killing them and devouring them as they germinate.
Speaker 1: So the nematot will eat this a little spoor, they
Speaker 1: think it's delicious, and then it just like starts to
Speaker 1: like grow out these hyphae into the nema toad's throat
Speaker 1: and just devours it completely. There's also you could gift
Speaker 1: a lady Dimitrisku with a necklace of giant arthrow bottyrs.
Speaker 1: So so arthrow botyrus is perfect for killing a vampiric
Speaker 1: nematod mutant with a sense of fashion. Uh, because arthrow
Speaker 1: bootyrus uses fungal spores shaped like necklaces that ensnare nematodes
Speaker 1: and shoots spikes into the nematod's body as it grows
Speaker 1: into it and devours them. So you've got options, is
Speaker 1: what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, so we have chemical warfare, we have these
Speaker 2: booby traps, we have so many These fungus are definitely
Speaker 2: equipped to do some damage for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the game, you have this mysterious mold that
Speaker 1: gives them all these powers. It's like, well, guys, there's
Speaker 1: like more than one species of mold out there. There
Speaker 1: are many fungi out there ready to party, so you know,
Speaker 1: mutually assured fungus destruction that could definitely take out some
Speaker 1: of these vampire queens. I don't know, what do you think, Uh,
Speaker 1: do you think these animals could indeed defeat these video
Speaker 1: game bosses or which of these bosses do you think
Speaker 1: would actually come out on top.
Speaker 2: Bowser is definitely, like I would say, fairly evenly mashed.
Speaker 1: For the crocodile, Yeah, he's got a chance. He's so spicy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of ways Bowser can deal damage.
Speaker 2: But I think if the crocodile's playing his cards right,
Speaker 2: it could certainly get a good strike on Bowser's weak
Speaker 2: point or one of his limbs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's a fair Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: Bowser's bigger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but nobody's for the situation.
Speaker 2: Potentially not for the Deep Sea Vortex boss. Vortex Queen,
Speaker 2: is that what that thing's just in for a world
Speaker 2: to hurt? If what you're doing is going to come
Speaker 2: to pass. If these parasites actually can do what you said,
Speaker 2: uh to the alien creature, I would not want to
Speaker 2: be that. I think it has no chance.
Speaker 1: I feel like it would just be psyched out after
Speaker 1: the first attack.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if I was, if I was the vortex queen,
Speaker 2: I'd be like, I'll find another planet. It's fine. You
Speaker 2: can keep your keep your parasites to yourself, dolphins.
Speaker 1: And your weird eyeball parasites.
Speaker 2: Exactly. As for vampire lady, I think if you can
Speaker 2: get the fungus to be the vampire, then you certainly
Speaker 2: got got a shot, right. Yeah, but considering they're not motile,
Speaker 2: you need a good of delivering me, right, fungal based toxins,
Speaker 2: and and.
Speaker 1: You got to put them in a salad, you know,
Speaker 1: a nice salad and be like here, sure, nice salad.
Speaker 1: I know you drink blood primarily, but you know it's
Speaker 1: good to get some fiber.
Speaker 2: Very true, very true. I would not. I'm curious to
Speaker 2: see how that affects their digestive tract these vamifires.
Speaker 1: Do vampires need fiber?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I wouldn't want to have no fiber
Speaker 2: in my diet. So yeah, and blood sounds like it
Speaker 2: doesn't have much, so I don't think so, No, it'd
Speaker 2: be tough.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's gonna do it for video game bosses.
Speaker 1: I think honestly they're going to have a tough time
Speaker 1: against these animals. But before we go, I do want
Speaker 1: to reveal the answer to last week's guess Who's talking
Speaker 1: mystery animal sound game. So every week I play a
Speaker 1: mystery animal sound at the end of the episode, and
Speaker 1: you all try to guess what is making that sound.
Speaker 1: And so the hint for last week was that this
Speaker 1: may sound like a machine gun, but unless you're an insect,
Speaker 1: the only thing you'll really have to worry about is
Speaker 1: getting smacked in the face by its enormous beautiful tail.
Speaker 1: To me, that sounds like a like a blaster from
Speaker 1: like a video game.
Speaker 2: Like a yeah it does a laser gun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What do you think is making that sound?
Speaker 2: I think it's gotta be some sort of like mocking
Speaker 2: bird h or maybe a parrot, some sort of really
Speaker 2: really good mimic of sounds my experience tend to be birds.
Speaker 1: Well, that is a great guess because the answer is
Speaker 1: that this is the mating cull of a brown sickle bill,
Speaker 1: which is a beautiful bird of paradise found in New Guinea.
Speaker 1: Females have a rusty red head and a black body,
Speaker 1: whereas males have bright blue spots on their backs and
Speaker 1: white underbellies and super long ornamental tails that are gorgeous,
Speaker 1: and they are just such a fancy looking bird to
Speaker 1: be making like machine gun noises. I find the difference
Speaker 1: in their overall appearance is like, oh, it's a beautiful
Speaker 1: bird of paradise, and.
Speaker 2: Then just like right, that's super interesting. It's just out
Speaker 2: of nowhere, like how did they think of that? Sound?
Speaker 1: To Rake, Congratulations to the first three listeners to guess correctly, Abby,
Speaker 1: m Anda, La and Jesse Asika. Great job you guys.
Speaker 1: I feel like you guys are better at this game
Speaker 1: than I would be if I was playing on the
Speaker 1: other end. So really, great job you guys. I have
Speaker 1: such smart listeners. Now onto our next mystery animal sound
Speaker 1: for next week. The hint is that it sounds like
Speaker 1: a collaboration between a biologist, a heavy metal band, and
Speaker 1: a hairdresser. So do you have any guesses for what
Speaker 1: this mystery animal is?
Speaker 2: I mean, I want to say it's a verd again,
Speaker 2: it sounds like, I don't know a parrot. It's like
Speaker 2: a really angry parrot. My grandma had a parrot and
Speaker 2: it was always making super weird loud noises. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I'm going to go with some sort of parrot
Speaker 2: or some kind.
Speaker 1: Of angry parrot. Well, the answer will be revealed next
Speaker 1: week if you tune in the day Work Creature feature.
Speaker 1: That's how I get you.
Speaker 2: All right, I'll be there, I gotta know.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for joining me today, patch.
Speaker 2: So welcome, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: The tiers Zoo YouTube channel is absolutely amazing, really wonderful
Speaker 1: way to learn about some evolutionary biology and feel like
Speaker 1: you're playing a video game.
Speaker 2: So glad you like it.
Speaker 1: Other than the YouTube channel, where can people find you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so YouTube dot com, slash tearszoo. You can also
Speaker 2: find me on Twitter at at at tearszoo. I'm also
Speaker 2: I also have a few things on TikTok Instagram. If
Speaker 2: you just search teers that you should be able to
Speaker 2: find them. But that's about it. That's uh, the extent
Speaker 2: of my online presence.
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, I think it's pretty good to
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, and you can find if you want
Speaker 1: to write in what you think the answer is to
Speaker 1: the mystery animal sound or any of your questions or
Speaker 1: comments or concerns. You can write at Creature Featurepod at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com, Creature feature Pod on Instagram, or Creature
Speaker 1: feet Pod on Twitter. That's FE eighteen, not feeteen. That
Speaker 1: is something very different and uh, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening. If you want to rate or review the podcast,
Speaker 1: I read all the reviews and they bring so much
Speaker 1: joy to my heart. And thanks to the Space Cossics
Speaker 1: for their super awesome song XO Lumina. Creature features a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you
Speaker 1: just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast.
Speaker 2: Or Hey guess what where?
Speaker 1: Have you listened to your favorite shows? See you next Wednesday.