Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Future 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.
Speaker 2: Show, it's a listener Questions episode.
Speaker 1: I answer your questions that you send to me at
Speaker 1: Creature Feature product gmail dot com. Do you have any
Speaker 1: questions about evolutionary biology, your pets, animal behavior. I will
Speaker 1: do my best to answer them. I love these questions.
Speaker 1: They often make me do a little bit of homework,
Speaker 1: do some research, phone up on my evolutionary biology and
Speaker 1: so I love them and I really appreciate you guys
Speaker 1: writing in. Let's get right into the first listener question. Hi, Katie,
Speaker 1: I absolutely love learning and I love animals, so when
Speaker 1: I found your podcast, I was a static. I'm constantly
Speaker 1: annoying my friends and family with the fascinating facts I've
Speaker 1: learned while to your podcast. I am still working my
Speaker 1: way through your podcast, so I'm not sure if you've
Speaker 1: covered this topic yet, but I am so fascinating with
Speaker 1: animals that have evolved to change their sex. I know
Speaker 1: there are fish, clownfish, and Asian sheep's head rass that
Speaker 1: can do it, and also a lizard in Madagascar. I
Speaker 1: think that lays fertilized eggs limiting the need to mate
Speaker 1: with a male. It's just so amazing how nature can
Speaker 1: just evolve like that in order to survive. Are there
Speaker 1: other animals besides those two fish and that lizard that
Speaker 1: have evolved in this way? No, I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: more from a biologists perspective on this topic. Also, if
Speaker 1: this is an episode already ready, which is it?
Speaker 2: Which one is it?
Speaker 1: I want to hear all the things. Thank you again
Speaker 1: for such a great podcast and can't wait to hear more.
Speaker 1: This is Chelsea from Coal Valley, Illinois. Hi, Chelsea, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for your question. I will definitely get
Speaker 1: into some details and facts and examples of animals who
Speaker 1: change their sex, But first I can tell you about
Speaker 1: the some of the episodeodes where I have covered some
Speaker 1: of this. There's plenty of stuff to go over those,
Speaker 1: so I have plenty more to talk about right now
Speaker 1: and then also on later episodes. But a couple examples
Speaker 1: of episodes where I cover sex swap shenanigans. There's one
Speaker 1: that was published January twentieth. In twenty twenty one, it
Speaker 1: was an episode called Paul Blart Jurassic Park cop where
Speaker 1: we talked about whiptail lizards and clownfish. And on June nineteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, I did an episode called Happy Pride
Speaker 1: that was on all sorts of animal sex diversity, both
Speaker 1: in terms of like biological sex and also sexuality. There's
Speaker 1: probably more episodes where I talk about these things, but
Speaker 1: those are the two that I can remember. Anyways, I
Speaker 1: am as fascinated as you are by animals and the
Speaker 1: ways in which sex is not really a binary, or
Speaker 1: at LEAs it's not a strict set in stone binary
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases in animals. First, let me
Speaker 1: explain before I go onto the new examples. Let me
Speaker 1: explain the ones that you brought up, Chelsea. The clownfish
Speaker 1: and Asian sheep's head rass. These are two species of
Speaker 1: fish which are sequential hermaphrodites, which means they change sex
Speaker 1: during their life cycle. So clownfish famously can change their
Speaker 1: sex depending on their environment as well as a hierarchical
Speaker 1: social system. So they start out as males, and a
Speaker 1: dominant male will listend to the rank of breeding female,
Speaker 1: and this is sort of like the queen of a
Speaker 1: group of all males. Her second in command. The second
Speaker 1: most dominant is a breeding male, and so these are
Speaker 1: the two. These are the only two that generally breed
Speaker 1: in these groups. It's these two and then a bunch
Speaker 1: of other males, and they live together, protect each other.
Speaker 1: Often they live among the sea and enemies because they
Speaker 1: are able to be resistant to the ceain enemy toxins
Speaker 1: while benefiting from the protection and the cea An enemies
Speaker 1: benefit from the little scraps of food that the clownfish
Speaker 1: lead behind. So they're living there. But then they also
Speaker 1: live in a social group where you have a queen
Speaker 1: dominant female, then the second in command, which is a male.
Speaker 1: Those two breed, and then the rest of the males
Speaker 1: just kind of orbit around them benefit from the territory,
Speaker 1: but they are not breeding. If the breeding female dies
Speaker 1: is lost moves on, the second in command male actually
Speaker 1: turns into a female, and then he becomes a she
Speaker 1: and becomes the breeding female, the new sort of like
Speaker 1: queen of this little colony, and then just the non
Speaker 1: breeding males then becomes her consort, the next second in command,
Speaker 1: who will eventually then take over her spot and become
Speaker 1: female when she dies or if she's killed. So this
Speaker 1: is how it works, right, It's a really interesting system.
Speaker 1: These fish will change sex throughout their lifetime based on
Speaker 1: the social hierarchy, which is there's really in one of
Speaker 1: these little colonies, there's only one female who's breeding and
Speaker 1: then her second in command. It's not really a harem
Speaker 1: situation where she's breeding with all the males. That's not
Speaker 1: really happening. She's breeding with her one second in command male,
Speaker 1: and then the rest of the males are just in
Speaker 1: a way waiting their turn. And they also benefit from
Speaker 1: the protective nature of having a colony. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting system. So the Asian, she said
Speaker 1: wrass are similarly really interesting. So they start out as
Speaker 1: normal looking tropical fish. The young ones are sort of
Speaker 1: orangish orangish with a white stripe. Older ones turn more
Speaker 1: of an olive tan color, they still have the little
Speaker 1: racing stripe. Now, unlike the clownfish, which all start out
Speaker 1: as males, the sheep head rass all start out as females.
Speaker 1: When they get old enough, which is about ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen years old and big enough, they actually turn in
Speaker 1: two males at that point and they undergo a really
Speaker 1: dramatic change in body size and shape, so they look
Speaker 1: very very different from their juvenile female forms. They lose
Speaker 1: any of the youthful coloration. They turn a sort of
Speaker 1: tan brown color or a reddish color.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And most notably, their heads kind of balloon out and
Speaker 1: get bulbous and puffy and big, so they have this
Speaker 1: huge growth on the forehead, an extruded, puffy lower jaw,
Speaker 1: and they grow from a little over a foot at
Speaker 1: their mature female size to up to two feet as
Speaker 1: a male. So the change from female into a male
Speaker 1: is permanent and they'll live the rest of their lives
Speaker 1: as a big headed dude. And this is a really
Speaker 1: interesting case where it doesn't really seem the environment might
Speaker 1: play a role, but in general it's just once they
Speaker 1: get big enough, they are able to turn from a
Speaker 1: female into a male, and.
Speaker 2: This is just their life cycle.
Speaker 1: So clownfish and cheap drasts are far from the only
Speaker 1: fish who can change their sex. There are many many
Speaker 1: species of both sequential hermaphrodites. These are the clownfish and
Speaker 1: the rass are the two examples of that, but there
Speaker 1: are also a lot of species of fish who can
Speaker 1: change back and forth where it's not a permanent change. So,
Speaker 1: coral gobies are a genius of small colorful fish that
Speaker 1: live in nooks and crannies of coral reefs. They're very pretty,
Speaker 1: very cute, but they don't want to waste encounters with
Speaker 1: other coral gobies. So if they happen to both be
Speaker 1: the same sex, usually one of them will rapidly change
Speaker 1: sex in order to mate with the other. And in
Speaker 1: a lot of species they form long term pair bonds.
Speaker 1: So for them, when their partner dies, if their partner
Speaker 1: dies before them, they'll go find another goby and if
Speaker 1: they are the same sex with this other gobi, they
Speaker 1: will change their sex to mate with them, to match
Speaker 1: with them, and they can switch back and forth if
Speaker 1: they need to. So really really interesting again, like this
Speaker 1: is something where they have you know, it is easier
Speaker 1: for them to be able to change their sex than
Speaker 1: to make sure that they're finding a male or a
Speaker 1: female if they happen to be the opposite sex. Incredible.
Speaker 1: So another one that you mentioned are the New Mexico
Speaker 1: whiptail lizards. So they are I think this is the
Speaker 1: lizard that you're mentioning, Chelsea. Now, these are a type
Speaker 1: of lizard, a species that are found in New Mexico
Speaker 1: and Arizona, and they don't change their sex, but they
Speaker 1: are all females, so they do not need males to reproduce,
Speaker 1: and they're a hybridization basically of these very closely related
Speaker 1: species of lizards. And so what happens is that these
Speaker 1: females actually have three chromosomes triploid rather than having two
Speaker 1: chromosomes like humans and a lot of animals have, and
Speaker 1: so they are able to reshuffle these three chromosomes and
Speaker 1: produce a reshuffled clone in an act of parthenogenesis. So
Speaker 1: that's reproduction without sex. So usually asexual reproduction can cause
Speaker 1: issues when you don't have a.
Speaker 2: Lot of genetic diversity.
Speaker 1: So you'll have a lot of species of animals, particularly
Speaker 1: insects and invertebrates, where they will have an asexual reproduction
Speaker 1: phase and then a sexual reproduction phase so that they're
Speaker 1: able to multiply a lot without needing to go through sex.
Speaker 1: But then they will every so often have some sex
Speaker 1: so that they can introduce some genetic Diversityids do this
Speaker 1: where some generations are asexual and then another there's every
Speaker 1: so often there will be a generation of them that
Speaker 1: are sexually reproducing, and then that helps them increase the
Speaker 1: genetic diversity of their population. A lot of like coral species.
Speaker 1: What they do is they will go through asexual reproduction
Speaker 1: phase budding, creating.
Speaker 2: Clones, and then those clones.
Speaker 1: Will then go through a sexual reproduction phase, so that
Speaker 1: you're basically going back and forth between asexually reproducing and
Speaker 1: then sexually reproducing. So the benefit of asexual reproduction is
Speaker 1: you can do it really quickly. You don't need to
Speaker 1: find a partner, which is great when you're coral and
Speaker 1: you can't.
Speaker 2: Move, and.
Speaker 1: You can do like a lot of it at once.
Speaker 1: But then the benefit of sexual reproduction is the introducing
Speaker 1: more diverse genome and that is useful because if you
Speaker 1: have a disease or change in the climate or a
Speaker 1: new predator, having a larger, richer genetic library increases the
Speaker 1: chance that some of your offspring is going to have
Speaker 1: some genetic quality or mutation or capability of a future
Speaker 1: mutation that will allow them to survive. So the whiptailed
Speaker 1: lizards kind of bypass that by having that set of
Speaker 1: three chromosomes that they can kind of shuffle and create
Speaker 1: new combinations that allow them to asexually reproduce. Interestingly, they
Speaker 1: don't need to have sex because they don't need to
Speaker 1: be fertilized, and they don't do that, but they do
Speaker 1: pseudocopulation where essentially one female lizard will hump another female lizard,
Speaker 1: and it's actually useful in addition to probably being a
Speaker 1: nice social activity for them, it induces ovulation and it's
Speaker 1: a really interesting thing where it's like there's no real
Speaker 1: practical purpose to it other than encouraging ovulation and probably
Speaker 1: being a way for them to socially connect. So yeah,
Speaker 1: really really interesting reptiles there. Another example of an interesting
Speaker 1: reptile is the bearded dragon, which this is another case
Speaker 1: of non set in stone sex. So this actually happens
Speaker 1: when they are still in the egg. So, like many reptiles,
Speaker 1: the temperature of incubation will determine the sex of the embryo,
Speaker 1: but unlike some other reptile species, they also have a
Speaker 1: chromosomal determinant of sex upon fertilization. So what this is
Speaker 1: that they will sometimes have like say, one sex upon fertilization,
Speaker 1: but then that can be overridden by the temperature of incubation.
Speaker 1: And this typically happens when you have a male chromosomally
Speaker 1: and then a high incubation temperature, which actually will turn
Speaker 1: it into a fully functional physiological female with male chromosomes.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is this is a case in which
Speaker 1: like the male embryo transitions physiologically into a female in
Speaker 1: the embryo as the embryo inside the egg before it hatches,
Speaker 1: so it's able to get pregnant, breed act like a female,
Speaker 1: but it has the genetics of a male. In human
Speaker 1: we have cases like this. It's not due to the
Speaker 1: temperature in utero, but there are definitely cases of people
Speaker 1: who are intersex or have androgen and sensitivity syndrome, where
Speaker 1: you have you may have genes that say one thing
Speaker 1: right like say x Y like your male, but then
Speaker 1: you have your physiologically appear female. So you know, this
Speaker 1: does happen in humans. It's just not like as it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen as a rule, whereas in bearded dragons it
Speaker 1: happens every time the eggs are incubated at a higher temperature.
Speaker 1: So you know, if anyone tells you that sex is
Speaker 1: really a very simple binary, they have not listened to
Speaker 1: this podcast or really gotten into the juicy bits of
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology where things get a lot more fun. So
Speaker 1: I hope that helps satisfy some of your curiosity. But
Speaker 1: I'm definitely we'll talk more on the show about these
Speaker 1: kinds of things because there are so many, many, many,
Speaker 1: many examples of interesting sex sort of like either sex
Speaker 1: changes or different kinds of systems than what we think,
Speaker 1: like what is the traditional view of what is normal
Speaker 1: and natural in terms of having a male and a
Speaker 1: female and they have sex and they have an offspring.
Speaker 1: A lot of different ways to do it in nature.
Speaker 1: So thank you for that question. Onto the next listener question.
Speaker 1: This one's short and sweet, but I like it. What
Speaker 1: are the smallest sharks and.
Speaker 2: What do they hunt? This is from Ada.
Speaker 1: So the smallest known sharks are the dwarf lantern sharks,
Speaker 1: which are tiny guys who can fit in the palm
Speaker 1: of your hand. They grow to be about only up
Speaker 1: to eight inches long, which is around twenty centimeters. They
Speaker 1: are found in the waters off of Colombia and Venezuela.
Speaker 1: They live at depths of over nine hundred feet which
Speaker 1: is over two hundred and eighty meters, so they're relatively
Speaker 1: rare to spot because they're in the twilight zone, which
Speaker 1: is this depth of the ocean. Where there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of light but not much. They are a brownish
Speaker 1: dark gray color and they have big old eyes. So
Speaker 1: they also have a series of black markings along their
Speaker 1: sides and on their bellies. Actually also on their bellies.
Speaker 1: They have photophores, which are light producing cells, so they
Speaker 1: can actually light up in the dark twilight zone depths
Speaker 1: where they live. So the light producing cells accomplish a
Speaker 1: couple of things. They can attract prey, which I don't
Speaker 1: know if we have a lot of specifics on what
Speaker 1: they eat exactly, but it is going to be things
Speaker 1: like invertebrates or smaller vertebrates like smaller fish. But really interestingly,
Speaker 1: this light also acts as camouflage, which sounds counterintuitive, right
Speaker 1: you're lighting yourself up. That seems like it'd making more noticeable,
Speaker 1: But like I said, the photophores are along their belly,
Speaker 1: and so if you're a predator, you're only going to
Speaker 1: see those lights looking up and upwards. When you're in
Speaker 1: the toilet zone, light is actually filtering down. So if
Speaker 1: you look down and you're in the twilet zone, it's
Speaker 1: all darkness, but if you look up, you're seeing light
Speaker 1: filtering in from the sun or the moon, and if
Speaker 1: you have something that has a dark underside and it's
Speaker 1: not illuminated, you're going to see like a shadow above
Speaker 1: you and see like, oh, that looks like a nice snack.
Speaker 1: But with these lantern sharks, because their bellies are slightly luminous,
Speaker 1: it actually blends in with the light filtering down from above,
Speaker 1: so predator looks up and can't necessarily tell the difference
Speaker 1: between the lit up belly of this lantern shark and
Speaker 1: the rest of the diffuse light coming in from above.
Speaker 1: You actually see this not always with light producing coloration,
Speaker 1: but with say white bellies for animals, where they'll have
Speaker 1: a darker top and then white bellies a la an orca,
Speaker 1: and that helps camouflage them. For orcas, it's not as
Speaker 1: much for detection, maybe as being able to ambush prey.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so for the lantern sharks though, they are
Speaker 1: literally lighting up with bioluminescence these photophores. So interestingly, there
Speaker 1: is a similarly sized shark, maybe a little bigger, like
Speaker 1: by a fraction.
Speaker 2: Of an inch. It's maybe on average.
Speaker 1: Bigger, but it's a completely different species of shark in
Speaker 1: a completely different region in the waters near Japan. The
Speaker 1: philippines in Australia actually at a similar depth in the
Speaker 1: twilight zone as this other the lantern shark, but they're
Speaker 1: very morphologically that is, like physically similar to the lantern shark,
Speaker 1: despite being a completely different, unrelated species in a different
Speaker 1: area of the world. This is called the small eye
Speaker 1: pygmy shark and it's also tiny brown and they also
Speaker 1: have photophores, light producing cells on their bellies, and it's
Speaker 1: thought they use the same strategy as the lantern shark,
Speaker 1: so the lights help them camouflage but also tracked small prey.
Speaker 1: We do know a little more about what kind of
Speaker 1: prey these guys eat, which is small squid, shrimp, krill,
Speaker 1: and smaller fish like lantern fish. Now lanternfish, don't get
Speaker 1: that confused with lantern sharks. The lantern sharks that we
Speaker 1: just talked about too big for these guys live in
Speaker 1: a different area. But lantern fish, which are these tiny
Speaker 1: little guys, our prey for the small eye pygmy shark.
Speaker 1: So my guess would be that it's slightly smaller look
Speaker 1: alike the lantern fish or lantern shark that we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier probably eats very similar things, probably shrimp, krill,
Speaker 1: other invertebrates, and then smaller fish.
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 1: They do hunt, but they also gotta be sneaky because
Speaker 1: they are small and snack sized, and they use that
Speaker 1: really cool trick of lighting their tummies so that when
Speaker 1: you're looking up above, they blend in with the light filtering.
Speaker 2: Down in the twilight zone.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you're looking above and down below at them,
Speaker 1: you don't see the lights on their bellies. You just
Speaker 1: see that dark brown color that blends in with the
Speaker 1: murkiness of the depths.
Speaker 2: So really really cool. Thank you for your question.
Speaker 1: Onto the next listener question. I got sent a video
Speaker 1: of a marmot and the email goes, I saw this
Speaker 1: cute marmot video on Reddit today and don't think I've
Speaker 1: heard you talk about them that much. I'd love some
Speaker 1: more episodes about rodents. I love rats, but also Keppy barras.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear any episodes about Marmott's, Beaver's,
Speaker 1: Kepby Burrows, etc. While not a rodent, I love higher
Speaker 1: axes now because of you, hope you enjoy the video
Speaker 1: from Chloe. The video is of a marmot stealing a
Speaker 1: cracker from a man slowly approaching the camera, stopping every
Speaker 1: time the man looks at him, and then every time
Speaker 1: the man looks away, comes right up steals the cracker
Speaker 1: right out of his hands, which is a very very
Speaker 1: marmot behavior. So thank you for this video and for
Speaker 1: question Chloe. I'll talk a little bit about marmots right now.
Speaker 1: Definitely will have occasion to talk about more rodents in
Speaker 1: the future on the podcast. So marmots are very very cool.
Speaker 1: I've personally run into them hiking in the Sierra Nevadas.
Speaker 1: There's the yellow bellied marmot in Canada and western US.
Speaker 2: They're quite big.
Speaker 1: They're like, I would say, like a very fat cat size,
Speaker 1: like they're larger than your average cat, and they're very cute.
Speaker 1: They are indeed large rodents. In fact, they're technically a
Speaker 1: type of ground squirrel. They don't look very squirrely, they
Speaker 1: don't generally have the fluffy long tails like squirrels. There
Speaker 1: are many different species of these though, so there are
Speaker 1: fifteen species found in Europe, Asia and North America, so
Speaker 1: they get around. If you're not sure what a marmot is,
Speaker 1: think of a groundhog. The ground hog is actually a
Speaker 1: species of marmot. So if you've seen a groundhog, you'll
Speaker 1: have a general idea of what a marmot looks like.
Speaker 1: Of course, different species have slightly different colorations, slightly different shapes.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are a bit bigger than a groundhog.
Speaker 1: You might hear about marmots in the news every so often,
Speaker 1: well pretty rarely, when someone contracts the bubonic plague from
Speaker 1: them by hunting and consuming their meat, particularly if it's
Speaker 1: raw or undercooked. So this doesn't really happen in North America.
Speaker 1: This is usually something that happens in Northeast Asia. So
Speaker 1: technically you could get the plague from an infected marmot
Speaker 1: if fleas travel from the marmot to humans, but that's
Speaker 1: really rare these days. I was unable to find an
Speaker 1: example of that happening in recent history. I think probably
Speaker 1: it's just very uncommon to be living in close quarters
Speaker 1: with marmots to the point where a flea is gonna
Speaker 1: bite an infected marmot, get off the marmot and get
Speaker 1: on you and bite you. The last time there was
Speaker 1: a plague caused by marmots was the Manchurian Plague of
Speaker 1: nineteen ten in Northeast Asia, during which people caught the
Speaker 1: pneumonic plague from marmot fleas killed a lot of people,
Speaker 1: killed like at least sixty thousand people, so.
Speaker 2: It was very serious.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's really not very common, not something to
Speaker 1: worry about. I have not seen any cases of plague
Speaker 1: being transmitted from marmot's to humans in America.
Speaker 2: In North America.
Speaker 1: It could happen, but it's I haven't seen any documentation
Speaker 1: of it, because they are technically a carrier of the
Speaker 1: the bacteria that can cause the plague. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: really rare that someone would be in close proximity with
Speaker 1: a marmot and a flea would jump from that marmot,
Speaker 1: which would happen to be infected, which is also very rare,
Speaker 1: and then happen to by the person. It just it
Speaker 1: doesn't really happen personally. I wouldn't cuddle with a marmot,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they're probably not going to want.
Speaker 2: To cuddle with with you either.
Speaker 1: A wild marment is not going to have interest stealing
Speaker 1: your food. Yes, and you're you're not going to get
Speaker 1: sick by a marmot just running up and stealing your food,
Speaker 1: but you should still do your best to secure your
Speaker 1: food when you're hiking. But yeah, the more recent cases
Speaker 1: of plague have been from people hunting and consuming their meat,
Speaker 1: particularly raw and undercooked meat, but even that is extremely
Speaker 1: extremely rare. So Prairie dogs, which are another very rare
Speaker 1: source of the plague, are highly related to marmots. Marmots
Speaker 1: differ from perry prairie dogs because they're a lot larger.
Speaker 1: They don't have as large and strictly struct structured communes
Speaker 1: as prairie dogs do. Prairie dogs basically live in like
Speaker 1: quite large prairie dog cities, whereas marmots kind of live
Speaker 1: in smaller population marmot towns. Marmots, depending on the species,
Speaker 1: are still quite highly social with each other. They will
Speaker 1: groom each other, allow their young to play together. There's
Speaker 1: usually like a breeding pair that lives with a bunch
Speaker 1: of different other breeding pairs, and they all have their
Speaker 1: babies and stuff. Different species may be more or less social,
Speaker 1: but they're usually pretty friendly with each other. They're not
Speaker 1: going to be necessarily friendly with you. They can be
Speaker 1: quite aggressive and territorial if you're not in the cool
Speaker 1: marmot club. The marmots that I encountered while backpacking were
Speaker 1: really bold. They were very unafraid of hikers. They actually
Speaker 1: stole my brother's hiking pole. My brother got it back
Speaker 1: after a extremely funny chase. Probably what they were after
Speaker 1: is the salty sweat on the handle of the hiking pole.
Speaker 1: So we have salt in our sweat, and if you're backpacking,
Speaker 1: if you're hiking, you're going to sweat a lot, and
Speaker 1: so that's salty sweat gets on your hiking equipment, from
Speaker 1: your palms, transferred onto the handles of your hiking poles,
Speaker 1: or on your backpack, or on your clothes. And marmots
Speaker 1: love salt. It's an important mineral in their diet. They're
Speaker 1: attracted to the smell of it and they want to
Speaker 1: eat it, and so it's actually if you look up
Speaker 1: marmots stealing hiking poles or chewing on hiking poles, it's
Speaker 1: very common. And they especially love the ones the poles
Speaker 1: that like have the cork because that absorbs a nice
Speaker 1: amount of sweat. And so if you're hiking in a
Speaker 1: marmot area, it is as important to secure anything that
Speaker 1: has your sweat on it as it is to secure
Speaker 1: your food, because the marmots will steal it and sometimes
Speaker 1: chew the handle of your hiking pole right off, chew
Speaker 1: up your clothes or your backpack because they love salt.
Speaker 2: They'll also go.
Speaker 1: After your fo which again you should The video of
Speaker 1: the Mormon eating the crackers very cute, but you shouldn't
Speaker 1: be encouraging them to eat human food. Not great for them.
Speaker 1: Also turns them into bold little thieves. They were a
Speaker 1: menace for us when we were backpacking. They were very
Speaker 1: very unafraid of us, really trying to steal our things
Speaker 1: right in front of us. They've learned that we're not
Speaker 1: about to do anything to them. So yeah, they've become
Speaker 1: pretty incorrigible, very cute, very cute guys though, So thank
Speaker 1: you guys so much for your questions. I will reveal
Speaker 1: the answer to last week's mystery animal sound next week
Speaker 1: on the full length episode. I do want to say, like,
Speaker 1: I got a lot of people who guessed correctly, so
Speaker 1: I'm really proud of you guys for that. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to hear that sound, if you listen
Speaker 1: to the last two weeks episode at the end we
Speaker 1: do the animal sound gissing game. And yeah, if you
Speaker 1: have your own question and you would like.
Speaker 2: Me to answer it.
Speaker 1: You can write to me at Creature featurepod at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com any question about evolutionary biology, animal behavior, even
Speaker 1: pet questions. I'll be happy to read them and answer them.
Speaker 1: And yeah, thanks to the Space Cossacks for their super
Speaker 1: awesome song Exolumina. Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or Hey guess what wherever.
Speaker 2: You listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: I'm not your mother. I can't tell you what to do.
Speaker 1: I do suggest you not let a marmot eat your
Speaker 1: hiking pole. It's not good for them, and then you
Speaker 1: don't have a hiking pole, which man, I love hiking poles.
Speaker 1: They're great for your knees. That's my advice. See you
Speaker 1: next Wednesday.