Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show listener questions again.
Speaker 1: You guys send me in your questions and I love
Speaker 1: to answer them, So let's scare right into it. I
Speaker 1: guess I got some really good questions this time, so
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to answer them. All Right, So I
Speaker 1: got some emails, I got some tweets. I'm going to
Speaker 1: start off with an email from Rachel. My name is Rachel,
Speaker 1: and I love your show. I've been a fan since
Speaker 1: episode one and Creature Feature has been the highlight of
Speaker 1: my week ever since. Thank you so much, You're so sweet.
Speaker 1: As a result, I have become the person at work
Speaker 1: that will randomly spout animal facts and conversation excellent. One.
Speaker 1: Such a conversation resulted in a question, how do tis
Speaker 1: where I lived? Ticks are constant problem? But how do
Speaker 1: they get so prevalent? Like in order for a tick
Speaker 1: to reach maturity, it needs to find an animal to
Speaker 1: gorge itself on right, then it rides that animal to
Speaker 1: who knows where. I know that there are male and
Speaker 1: female ticks. How do they find each other? It would
Speaker 1: seem like they're nutritional and reproductive needs are at odds
Speaker 1: with each other. Second, I had a topic idea. Pride
Speaker 1: Month is coming up, and I am transgender. I would
Speaker 1: love to learn more about animals that have the ability
Speaker 1: to change sex or mimic the opposite sex. I know
Speaker 1: you have touched on it a little in the past, frogs, cuttlefish, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I think it would be cool to learn about the
Speaker 1: gender and sexual fluidity in nature. Anyways, thanks for making
Speaker 1: a great show. Don't ever stop being you take care Rachel. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, Rachel for your kind words, and
Speaker 1: you're great, You're great. Questions. First of all, I think
Speaker 1: that sexual fluidity is a great idea for a show,
Speaker 1: and I'd love to do an episode on that real soon,
Speaker 1: just to quickly touch upon it. There are actually many
Speaker 1: species of ray finn fish who are masters of sexual fluidity,
Speaker 1: like clown fish. So with clownfish social structures, there are
Speaker 1: a dominant females and breeding males in a hierarchy, but
Speaker 1: when the dominant female dies, the dominant male will actually
Speaker 1: become the new dominant female and undergo reproductive changes. To
Speaker 1: become female in the hierarchy. I think it's important to
Speaker 1: point out, and Rachel, I know that you're not saying this,
Speaker 1: but I think whenever we talk about like, we kind
Speaker 1: of make comparisons to human sexuality and sexuality and nature.
Speaker 1: It's an important note that like animals, for the most part,
Speaker 1: although well I'll talk about this little later, but for
Speaker 1: the most part, generally speaking, animals don't really have a gender,
Speaker 1: so to speak. So I bet if we do research
Speaker 1: into intelligent animals, we may actually find some interesting information
Speaker 1: on the animals concept of gender expression. But when we
Speaker 1: talk about animals in general, like animal going through say
Speaker 1: a change of sex, like a clown, which changing from
Speaker 1: male sex to female sex. This is a physical, physiological process,
Speaker 1: whereas in humans gender expression is it's different. I'm not
Speaker 1: necessarily an expert on gender expression in humans, but I
Speaker 1: think that for people it's both an internal and an
Speaker 1: external experience. It's both social and deeply personal. So, like you,
Speaker 1: you have your own personal concept of gender within yourself,
Speaker 1: and then there's also socially constructed gender, and so all
Speaker 1: of that interacts in a very complex way. And so
Speaker 1: anytime we talk about animal sex like it it's it's
Speaker 1: going to be very different from humans, but not completely.
Speaker 1: Like it's not as if we can't enjoy seeing sort
Speaker 1: of like the diversity of sexual changes in animals. And
Speaker 1: you know, I do think it's interesting when people try
Speaker 1: to just ify bigotry against trans people or sexual and
Speaker 1: gender minorities by citing like, oh, it's not natural. And
Speaker 1: people who say things like that tint to not know
Speaker 1: anything about nature. I mean, when you look at nature,
Speaker 1: it is so diverse when it comes to sex and reproduction.
Speaker 1: So to say like, oh, well, this isn't natural, it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: but nature has so much stuff going on when it
Speaker 1: comes to sexual reproduction, Like, how can you say it's
Speaker 1: not natural? You can't. There's nature has every type of
Speaker 1: sexual reproduction you can think of, every type of sex,
Speaker 1: every type of kinds of behavior. So to say like
Speaker 1: this isn't natural, it's like, well, I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: who cares if it's not natural. We're humans. We have
Speaker 1: televisions and medicine, which you could argue aren't natural either.
Speaker 1: But secondly, it's just wrong. It's nature has no like
Speaker 1: one type of sexuality. That's ridiculous in terms of actual
Speaker 1: gender expression in animals. It's a much more complex question
Speaker 1: than say like sexual fluidity in animals because you can
Speaker 1: see you can look at a clown fish and see that, Okay,
Speaker 1: so it goes under this hormonal change where you know,
Speaker 1: a clown fish will like that situation I described, when
Speaker 1: the dominant females die, the dominant male will undergo this
Speaker 1: hormonal change and actually express uh female genitals. And so
Speaker 1: that's an external physical change we can observe, so researchers
Speaker 1: can actually observe that directly. But gender uh in humans
Speaker 1: is an often not just a social experience, but an
Speaker 1: internal experience. So we can't just ask an animal like like,
Speaker 1: what what are your feelings on gender? Uh? What does
Speaker 1: that mean to you? So it's very hard to study
Speaker 1: that and say more intelligent animals like primates or dolphins
Speaker 1: or elephants. But that's not to say that there have
Speaker 1: been no attempts made to parse this issue out. So
Speaker 1: there's this great article. I highly recommend you read the
Speaker 1: whole article because it does a great job of explaining
Speaker 1: all these things. Uh. It's in Sapiens Anthropology magazine by j.
Speaker 1: Schwartz and Assistant Professor of Psychological Science, at Western Oregon University.
Speaker 1: The article is called is Gender Unique to Humans? In
Speaker 1: this article there is a description of a study at
Speaker 1: Florida International University that looks at the behaviors of chimpanzees
Speaker 1: and bonobo's, a couple of our closest primate relatives. Uh,
Speaker 1: And they look at, well, could there be something like
Speaker 1: gender expression in these primates? Could there be a social
Speaker 1: concept of gender? And they found that in the wild, uh,
Speaker 1: social grooming behavior differs by sex. Now, with that alone,
Speaker 1: we still don't know whether this is like a gender
Speaker 1: expression or what it is, because that could could be instinctive,
Speaker 1: it could have all sorts of different explanations. But they
Speaker 1: did find that in captivity social grooming behavior doesn't really
Speaker 1: differ that much by sex, which seems to indicate that,
Speaker 1: you know, these primates in the wild may have a
Speaker 1: different culture than primates in captivity, where in the wild
Speaker 1: they have a different social expectations for different genders when
Speaker 1: it comes to grooming behaviors versus primates in captivity who
Speaker 1: are cut off from that culture in the wild. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not definitive because animals in captivity, as I
Speaker 1: believe we've talked about on the show before, they are
Speaker 1: in a very different circumstance. So because it's such a
Speaker 1: strange environment for them to be in, and their stress
Speaker 1: responses and all their social organization gets kind of like
Speaker 1: messed up by being in this captive setting. It's hard
Speaker 1: to say, well, is there's a difference because they're they're
Speaker 1: sort of gender culture is different within captivity or is
Speaker 1: it because they're stressed and other factors. I don't think
Speaker 1: we really know yet, But this is really interesting to
Speaker 1: me that we're starting to, you know, think about like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, humans have a social gender construct and an
Speaker 1: internal gender construct and uh, you know when we look
Speaker 1: at animals, if we look at our closest relatives, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's too far of a leap of logic
Speaker 1: to think, well, maybe they may have something uh, you know,
Speaker 1: while not similar to our concept of gender, maybe they
Speaker 1: have something uh, and we just don't know. And I
Speaker 1: think that's it's really interesting that we are starting to
Speaker 1: look into that. Um. But yeah, it's very difficult to
Speaker 1: research because, like I said, you know, gender is an
Speaker 1: internal experience like um that that you feel inside, and
Speaker 1: it's also an external experien that you learn from your culture.
Speaker 1: So either question is quite difficult for researchers to answer
Speaker 1: when looking at a like, say, a primate culture. But
Speaker 1: we do know that primates do learn from each other,
Speaker 1: and they seem to have different cultures. So you have, um,
Speaker 1: you may have like a group of orangutans who use
Speaker 1: specific tools to get termites or ants, where you don't
Speaker 1: see that in other orienting groups. So it seems to
Speaker 1: indicate that primates do learn from each other they could
Speaker 1: form these cultures. So I think this is a really
Speaker 1: interesting line of research. And so oh, as to your
Speaker 1: other question, Rachel, how do ticks work? This is a
Speaker 1: great question because it does. It does blow my mind
Speaker 1: when we talk about parasites. I love parasites. I don't
Speaker 1: obviously don't want ticks on me. I don't want ticks
Speaker 1: on my dog. But parasites in general as a topic
Speaker 1: of research is fascinating because of how incredibly specialized they are.
Speaker 1: It's almost beyond belief. In terms of your your questionab well,
Speaker 1: how does their needs for a host and mating interact?
Speaker 1: It does seem counterintuitive, right, like why would you if
Speaker 1: you want to be able to mate, um, you know,
Speaker 1: having to be on another animal to get your food.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, that seems like that would potentially limit
Speaker 1: the dating pool because you're you know, just hopping from
Speaker 1: animal to animal. But they actually don't have too much
Speaker 1: of a problem. So, first of all, there are two
Speaker 1: main types of ticks. There are hard ticks and soft ticks,
Speaker 1: and this encompasses a number of species. Hard ticks will
Speaker 1: actually mate on top of their hosts, which you know,
Speaker 1: well yucky, but the female will gorge herself on blood
Speaker 1: after mating and then drop off to lay her eggs.
Speaker 1: Soft ticks, the other group of species of ticks, don't
Speaker 1: spend as much time on their hosts. They typically just
Speaker 1: kind of bite their hosts, they get a little meal, um,
Speaker 1: so they uh well, actually mate off of their hosts.
Speaker 1: So wherever they are usually like in grasses, and so
Speaker 1: they will feed after mating, so they may feed on
Speaker 1: a host, drop off and then lay her eggs. Uh So,
Speaker 1: in terms of the tick dating pool, unfortunately, there are
Speaker 1: just so many ticks out there, so many ticks in
Speaker 1: the sea, that they don't really have too much of
Speaker 1: a struggle to find a mate even if they are
Speaker 1: hopping on an animal. So if you have a tick
Speaker 1: hopping on a deer, the chances that they encounter another
Speaker 1: deer or another tick on that deer pretty high unfortunately
Speaker 1: for that deer. And if they do struggle to find
Speaker 1: a host to feed on and find a mate, they
Speaker 1: actually have some tricks up there, little ticks sleeves. Soft
Speaker 1: ticks can survive years between feedings if they can't find
Speaker 1: a suitable host, and they go into this kind of
Speaker 1: stay a sis until they detect a host nearby. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they are unfortunately for some of us who don't like
Speaker 1: getting bitten by ticks. They're very good at finding hosts
Speaker 1: and they're very patient, so they will be able to
Speaker 1: find a mate and a host, no problem, all right.
Speaker 1: And this is a short and sweet question from j
Speaker 1: who asks why are possums so perfect? They have little hands?
Speaker 1: Thank you, Ja, Yes, I agree a possums and possums
Speaker 1: are amazing. So oh possums are the ones native to
Speaker 1: the Americas, and we often call them possums if you're
Speaker 1: in really sort of deep in the technical uh possum world. Technically,
Speaker 1: um possum refers to marsupials found in Australia, another a
Speaker 1: very similar but a different species. Oh possums and the
Speaker 1: Americas and possums are both more supials. The possums found
Speaker 1: in Australia are arguably cuter than our opossums, but I
Speaker 1: think that's also kind of subjective, and I love opossums.
Speaker 1: I think they're adorable, so whatever. Um, But opossums, the
Speaker 1: North American impossums are actually the only more supial found
Speaker 1: in North America. They also have opposable thumbs and prehensile
Speaker 1: tails that allow them to grip onto tree branches, so
Speaker 1: very curiously primate like, but they are not primates. They
Speaker 1: are marsupials. Despite looking maybe kind of intimidating or scary,
Speaker 1: they are not at all aggressive. And when they puff
Speaker 1: up it's kind of like a frightened house cat. They're
Speaker 1: just they're just trying to seem like they're big and
Speaker 1: scary and tough, and but really they don't want to
Speaker 1: fight you. That's the last thing that they want to do.
Speaker 1: In fact, they'd rather play dead when they are seriously threatened,
Speaker 1: so they can actually lower their body and picture and
Speaker 1: release a foul smell to make the act very convincing.
Speaker 1: They're the Daniel day Lewis of method acting in terms
Speaker 1: of playing dead. They really don't want to mess with you,
Speaker 1: and they may kind of like surprise you sometimes because
Speaker 1: you're like, go, you're taking your trash out and book,
Speaker 1: there's a possum. But uh, they really don't don't mean
Speaker 1: any harm. And they all that hissing and puffing, that's
Speaker 1: all because they're scared of you. And they're actually great
Speaker 1: to have around in your community because speaking of ticks,
Speaker 1: which we talked about earlier, they love to eat ticks.
Speaker 1: They eat a bunch of ticks. They eat the same
Speaker 1: kinds of ticks that cause lime disease. So hooray for
Speaker 1: possums or a possums, whatever you want to call them.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna judge you if you
Speaker 1: call them possums. I think that's totally fine. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I love apossums too. They're adorable, they're sweet, they're they're
Speaker 1: a little trash buddies. And then I got some wonderful questions.
Speaker 1: Actually two questions are very similar. Soul answer them both
Speaker 1: at the same time. How do animals that reproduce parthenogenically
Speaker 1: maintain genetic diversity? Also, since platypus and some ant eaters
Speaker 1: lay eggs, would you try them and this is from
Speaker 1: twenty magic on Twitter. And another question those lizards in
Speaker 1: Arizona where the species and is only female. Does each
Speaker 1: lizard just reproduce a clone of itself or are there
Speaker 1: eggs mixing somehow? If so, can we figure out how
Speaker 1: to do this with human couples? And this is from
Speaker 1: Hannah Michael's I've actually had Halla on my show and
Speaker 1: she's a good friend of mine, So thanks Hannah for
Speaker 1: sitting in your question. I love these questions because I
Speaker 1: get to talk about the whiptail lizard, and I get
Speaker 1: to talk about platypuses and lana treams, and I love
Speaker 1: all these animals. So here we go. First, I'll answer
Speaker 1: the question would I eat a platypus egg? And when
Speaker 1: you say ant eater, I think you are referring to
Speaker 1: the spiny ant eater a k A kidna. Actually, so kidnas,
Speaker 1: just like platypuses, are monotorying, and they actually aren't related
Speaker 1: to other ant eaters like the giant ant eater, but
Speaker 1: they're just called a spiny ant eater because they have
Speaker 1: that long snoot and they do eat ants. So monotreams
Speaker 1: are a fascinating ancient off branch of mammals, and they
Speaker 1: do lay eggs, so they do actually produce milk though,
Speaker 1: but instead of it kind of coming out of nipples
Speaker 1: all nice and tidy like most mammals, are just kind
Speaker 1: of gooches out of their their pores on on their bellies,
Speaker 1: which is a little weird, but you know, hey, you
Speaker 1: do you monotreams. I'm not here to judge, but they
Speaker 1: do lay eggs. However, they do not lay unfertilized eggs
Speaker 1: like chickens, so every egg they lay is actually going
Speaker 1: to be a fertilized egg. So if I was to
Speaker 1: eat a platypus or a kidna egg, I'd be eating
Speaker 1: some platypus or a kidnea embryo or fetus. So no,
Speaker 1: I would probably not not eat one of their eggs.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure i'd like the mouth feel. So now
Speaker 1: onto the question. Both Magic and my friend Hannah asked
Speaker 1: about parthenogenesis. So parthenogenesis is a type of a sexual
Speaker 1: reproduction in which an embryo from an unfertilized egg develops
Speaker 1: to maturity. So it is true that reproducing a sexually
Speaker 1: comes with the problem of limiting genetic diversity. Some species
Speaker 1: avoid this by going through cycles of sexual and then
Speaker 1: a sexual reproductions. So a fids do this. There are
Speaker 1: actually many generations of clonal females with aphids, but then
Speaker 1: when the conditions are right, there is a phase of
Speaker 1: sexual reproduction. So during the parthenogenic phases, the a sexual phases,
Speaker 1: the females only give birth to live female nymphs. Nymphs
Speaker 1: are immature aphids, and in fact those nymphs can be
Speaker 1: borne pregnant already with their own clone. So it's an
Speaker 1: a FIT giving birth to an a fit, which is
Speaker 1: a clone of itself. But that little baby, if it
Speaker 1: is already pregnant with its own clone, which is you know, weird.
Speaker 1: This is called telescopic development. But as you guys pointed out,
Speaker 1: this is a problem because how do you maintain genetic
Speaker 1: diversity in your population. Because when you don't have genetic diversity,
Speaker 1: if you're all clones, as soon as there's a new
Speaker 1: disease or a new predator or parasite or even changing conditions,
Speaker 1: you don't have enough genes to kind of shuffle through
Speaker 1: to get characteristics that may help your species survive during
Speaker 1: these changes, So you'll just kind of go extinct. So
Speaker 1: their solution is to go through these periods of sexual
Speaker 1: reproduction in between the clonal reproduction. So this gives them
Speaker 1: the advantage of clonal reproduction, which is super fast, super smooth,
Speaker 1: like just pumping out many many clones. You know, think
Speaker 1: of Star Wars, an army of clones. But then you
Speaker 1: just like every so often, inject some genetic diversity into
Speaker 1: the population so you don't get this genetic fall neck.
Speaker 1: So during the sexual phase, when weather conditions are right
Speaker 1: and the a fit females will start giving birth to
Speaker 1: parthenogenic females but also males. So typically when they go
Speaker 1: through their a sexual cycles, it's just female clones, a
Speaker 1: real wind for feminism. So but during the sexual phase,
Speaker 1: they give birth to both females and males, and then
Speaker 1: that generation goes on to do sexual reproduction and they
Speaker 1: actually lay eggs instead of giving life birth. So that's
Speaker 1: how they actually kind of have a little loophole that
Speaker 1: allows them to do generations of clonal females. But then
Speaker 1: they mix it up with a little bit of sex
Speaker 1: here and there, so they have some genetic diversity. As
Speaker 1: for the truly all female parthenogenic species, there's one called
Speaker 1: the desert grassland whiptail lizards of New Mexico. So these
Speaker 1: are a lizard that is an all female species. They
Speaker 1: do parthenogenic reproduction. They do not have sex at all.
Speaker 1: They're like you know, Amazonian uh, mythical ladies who just
Speaker 1: are chilling out, all female um. And they actually have
Speaker 1: a really interesting genetic story. So they actually have three
Speaker 1: sets of chromosomes that they got from the initial mutation
Speaker 1: that kind of spawned this all female, parthenogenic species of lizard.
Speaker 1: So instead of the regular two sets of chromosome that humans,
Speaker 1: other mammals, and other diploid sex having animals have, they
Speaker 1: have three sets. And this means that the whiptail lizards
Speaker 1: can effectively shuffle through their deck of genes. They actually
Speaker 1: recombine their own three sets of chromosomes during the process
Speaker 1: of reproduction, allowing them to create non clone parthenogenic offspring.
Speaker 1: So when they give birth without ever having sex, unlike
Speaker 1: the aphids who are giving birth to clones, they're actually
Speaker 1: giving birth to a unique individual who is not a
Speaker 1: clone of themselves, and that is how they bypass that
Speaker 1: problem of genetic bottleneck. Also, fun fact, even though they
Speaker 1: do not have real sex quote unquote, real sex where
Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, where they are exchanging genetic information
Speaker 1: with another of their species. They do pseudocopulations, so they
Speaker 1: will hump each other, essentially, do courtship and mating behaviors
Speaker 1: with each other. This all female species, and that actually
Speaker 1: helps them get in the mood to give birth. So
Speaker 1: even though they're not actually exchanging any genes with their
Speaker 1: fellow members of their species, just the act of this pseudocopulation,
Speaker 1: you know, it helps kind of bring on the hormones
Speaker 1: that will help them give birth to their little Jesus babies,
Speaker 1: all female Jesus lizards. So really interesting stuff. Uh and
Speaker 1: I think it ties back in earlier when we're talking
Speaker 1: about just the incredible diversity of how sex works in nature.
Speaker 1: Uh So if anyone says like, oh, you know, that's unnatural,
Speaker 1: like whatever sex thing, it's like you don't know anything
Speaker 1: about nature. Nature is buck wild. I guess that's the
Speaker 1: definition of nature. Here is a question from Mark f.
Speaker 1: This may be a dumb one, but how do animals
Speaker 1: know to breed with their species? How do the blue
Speaker 1: jays in my neighborhood no to breed with blue jays
Speaker 1: instead of the robin's nearby. This is from Mark f
Speaker 1: It's not at all dumb question. Every time guys that
Speaker 1: you say like, oh, this may be a dumb question,
Speaker 1: it never is, so don't worry about it. This is
Speaker 1: a great question in terms of like being able to
Speaker 1: breed with your own species. For some animals, it's just
Speaker 1: pure instinct that you know, come pre programmed with these
Speaker 1: mating instincts, um. But for some other animals, including many
Speaker 1: species of birds, they actually learn as juveniles based on
Speaker 1: their parents. So this is called imprinting. So they see
Speaker 1: their parents after they hatch and they imprint upon them
Speaker 1: that this is my species, this is who I am.
Speaker 1: And this is actually very important for many species of
Speaker 1: songbirds because this is how they learn their own species
Speaker 1: specific calls, so they're mating calls, their alarm calls. They
Speaker 1: learn from their parents because they imprint. They as soon
Speaker 1: as they start to see the blurry world as little hatchlings,
Speaker 1: they see their parents like this is me, that's who
Speaker 1: I am, um. But sometimes this goes a little bit
Speaker 1: cock eyed, because if birds are raised by another species
Speaker 1: of bird and they imprint upon the wrong species, that's
Speaker 1: they'll just guilelessly think that they are this other species,
Speaker 1: and they will attempt to mate with their adoptive parental species.
Speaker 1: In fact, this is such a problem that when conservationists
Speaker 1: raise baby birds like and trying to repopulate birds and
Speaker 1: these conservation efforts such as sandhill cranes, they have to
Speaker 1: be very careful that the sandhill cranes don't see that
Speaker 1: it's humans taking care of them, otherwise the cranes will
Speaker 1: imprint upon the humans. So in order to feed them,
Speaker 1: what they do is they actually have a hand puppet
Speaker 1: that looks like a sandhill crane to feed the birds,
Speaker 1: so that the baby birds will see the hand puppet
Speaker 1: of the sandhill crane and think, okay, this is what
Speaker 1: I look like, this is my species instead of being
Speaker 1: fed by a humans. So you'll see these researchers like
Speaker 1: ducking under tables just like a Jim Hanson operation, feeding
Speaker 1: these baby sandhill cranes, tricking them into thinking they're being
Speaker 1: fed by sandhill crane so that they understand that's their species,
Speaker 1: so that they can be released into the wild and
Speaker 1: understand their sandhill cranes and mate and uh be able
Speaker 1: to repopulate. So but when you don't do this, a
Speaker 1: bird can imprint on a human and think, oh, this
Speaker 1: is what I look like, I must be a human.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they fall in love with human beings and they
Speaker 1: just think they're they think they're people. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: can happen naturally as well. Uh. There was a Canada
Speaker 1: goose spotted uh. Speaking of sandhill cranes. The Canada goose
Speaker 1: also imprints upon their parents. But this Canada goose was
Speaker 1: adopted by sandhill crane probably some kind of egg mishap,
Speaker 1: and it just thought it was a sandhill crane. So
Speaker 1: I hang out hung out with the sandhill cranes. Uh.
Speaker 1: Thinks this is perfectly normal. The sandhill cranes didn't seem
Speaker 1: to mind it, So yeah, that's what happens, all right.
Speaker 1: And I got a question from another front of the show,
Speaker 1: Alex Schmidt, host of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, and I've had
Speaker 1: him on the show and he's a great guy. Highly
Speaker 1: recommend his podcast. And he writes, what's an exciting thing
Speaker 1: worth knowing about woodchucks? And also someone responded to this
Speaker 1: question saying are they related to nun chucks? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for the question, Alex, uh, and thank you
Speaker 1: for the nunchuck comment. Alberton Um, no, they're not related
Speaker 1: to nunchucks. Be serious. Come on, this is a serious
Speaker 1: science show and jokes will not be tolerated anyways. Wood chucks.
Speaker 1: So what is a woodchuck? Does it chuck wood? No?
Speaker 1: Why is it called the woodchuck? Well, I think we
Speaker 1: talked about this a while back on the show, but uh,
Speaker 1: the likely story is that Colonizer's came here they misunderstood
Speaker 1: the language of the Algonquian Native American Indian nation of
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, and so then they thought like, oh, it
Speaker 1: sounds like woodchuck, which was probably misunderstanding because their actual
Speaker 1: word for ground hogs is okuk chewan. Or it could
Speaker 1: have been that the colonists thought that they were talking
Speaker 1: about a woodchuck, whereas they have a word that sounds
Speaker 1: kind of like woodchuck, but that's actually word for a
Speaker 1: weasel like animal called a fisher. So you know, the
Speaker 1: name woodchuck is just based on stupidity. But here we
Speaker 1: are we call them woodchucks, then we have tongue twisters.
Speaker 1: But really, hey, woodchucks are just groundhogs, so you know,
Speaker 1: just groundhogs by another name. In fact, they have other
Speaker 1: names such as whistle pig due to the noises they make,
Speaker 1: or mouse bear because I guess they look like tiny bears.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I buy it, but hey, you know
Speaker 1: I guess I'm I wasn't there when they named these things,
Speaker 1: Otherwise I probably would have named them little little fluff buddies.
Speaker 1: And this is why they don't put me in charge
Speaker 1: of name and animals. So groundhogs a K wood chucks
Speaker 1: a K whistle pigs a K. Mouse bears are a
Speaker 1: type of large rodent. They are healthy little dudes a
Speaker 1: weigh about thirteen pounds or six kis. Are actually about
Speaker 1: the same size and weight of my dog Cookie, So
Speaker 1: you know, she probably wishes she could take on one
Speaker 1: of these woodchucks, but I don't think so. I don't
Speaker 1: think so, Cookie. Uh. So, they're found all over North
Speaker 1: America and they are burrowing animals who, actually, like bears,
Speaker 1: do hibernate during the winter months. In fact, they are
Speaker 1: really true hibernators, more so than bears. Bears don't really
Speaker 1: hibernate in the true sense of the word. They go
Speaker 1: into a lighter state of torpor, like a really, really
Speaker 1: deep sleep. They do slow down their metallobolism, but they
Speaker 1: can wake up, so during torpor, they will wake up
Speaker 1: relatively quickly in response to danger. But hibernation is a
Speaker 1: much more serious version of this. It's more like suspended animation,
Speaker 1: and the groundhog is almost completely dead to the world.
Speaker 1: During hibernation, groundhogs body temperature or drops from nine degrees fahrenheit,
Speaker 1: which is about the normal human temperature, maybe a little higher,
Speaker 1: but it drops to thirty seven degrees fahrenheit, which we
Speaker 1: would be so extremely dead at this point, like anything
Speaker 1: around seventy degrees were already probably going to be dead. Uh,
Speaker 1: thirty seven degrees, we've probably been dead for a while.
Speaker 1: That's yeah. No. Also, the groundhogs breathing slows to two
Speaker 1: breaths a minute and their heart beats slows to five
Speaker 1: beats per minutes, so like about as dead as they
Speaker 1: can be without actually being dead. For the entire period
Speaker 1: of hibernation, which can last around a hundred and fifty days,
Speaker 1: they will not eat and they lose about a fourth
Speaker 1: of their body weight. So it's able to survive this
Speaker 1: extreme food deprivation because their metabolism have has been slowed
Speaker 1: to an absolute crawl. So it's essentially into this beended
Speaker 1: animation other quick which check facts. They are able to
Speaker 1: grind up tough vegetation like wild grasses because their teeth
Speaker 1: grow constantly to withstand the grinding. In fact, they grow
Speaker 1: around a sixteenth of an inch or one point five
Speaker 1: millimeters every week. If their teeth are not aligned properly
Speaker 1: and they are not chewed down by the act of
Speaker 1: munching on grasses, the teeth continually grow until they are tusks,
Speaker 1: and they can actually be lethal if they grow up
Speaker 1: into the groundhogs jaw or grow so wonky and curly
Speaker 1: that they can't chew on grass. So ground hogs are
Speaker 1: actually quite social and friendly with each other. They dig
Speaker 1: burrows together, they whistle to report threats to each other.
Speaker 1: And if you think that groundhogs look a little bit
Speaker 1: like marmots, you are correct. They are actually a type
Speaker 1: of marmot. And by the way, marmots are actually technically
Speaker 1: a type of ground squirrel, So yeah, other species of
Speaker 1: marmots and ground squirrels are also pretty social. They have
Speaker 1: these like little colonies where they dig burrows and they
Speaker 1: will alert each other two threats. So, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: this is what we got from wood chucks to basically
Speaker 1: ground squirrels. This is a quite a reveal fun fact
Speaker 1: about marmots if you go hiking in the Sequoias. In
Speaker 1: addition to making sure none of your food is left out,
Speaker 1: you also need to be careful about anything you have
Speaker 1: that has your human sweat on it, because marmots love
Speaker 1: the salty taste of human sweat, and we'll try to
Speaker 1: steal your socks, even your hiking poles, which I learned
Speaker 1: when I was hiking with my brother. Uh, a marmot
Speaker 1: grabbed his pole and ran as fast as it could,
Speaker 1: so if the pole hadn't gotten caught on a rock,
Speaker 1: probably the marmot would have my brother's hiking pole to
Speaker 1: this day. So yeah, they love the taste of human sweat,
Speaker 1: which I think is a little alarming because if they
Speaker 1: figure out they can make us it by making us
Speaker 1: really scared, we would probably be in some kind of
Speaker 1: marmot fear factory saw type situation. But luckily they probably
Speaker 1: don't listen to this podcast, so hey, maybe we'll be
Speaker 1: safe from the marmot threat another year. So to end
Speaker 1: the episode, I think I'll play you some lovely groundhog
Speaker 1: slash wood chuck slash whistle pig sounds, so you will
Speaker 1: see why they are also called whistle pigs. There you go,
Speaker 1: the North American whistle pig. Thank you guys so much
Speaker 1: for listening. I really appreciate you sending in your questions.
Speaker 1: If you have a question, it's not too late. I
Speaker 1: periodically do these listener question episodes. So you can send
Speaker 1: that in uh to my email Creature Feature Pod at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. You can send it into the Twitter
Speaker 1: Creature Feet Pod, which it's f e A T f
Speaker 1: e et that's something right different. Also Instagram Creature Feature
Speaker 1: Pod on Instagram, and you can send those questions right in.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'll try to answer them on the spot. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I'll save them for an episode. And I really appreciate
Speaker 1: it because these are great questions and I like talking
Speaker 1: about them. And thank you so much to these space
Speaker 1: Cossics for their super awesome song Exo Lumina. Creature features
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like
Speaker 1: the one you just heard, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcast or Hate Guess What Pridulous to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: I don't judge, h less you really watched this propost.
Speaker 1: See your next Wednesday