Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Creature 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 Annihilation eighteen.
Speaker 1: Do you do you remember that movie with the Natalie
Speaker 1: Portman and a bunch of other people and they go
Speaker 1: to some like science explosion that makes all the animals
Speaker 1: and plants turned into weird hybrid things. Anyways, the show
Speaker 1: is not really about that. The show is about weird
Speaker 1: genetic anomalies and what happens when you know, other nature
Speaker 1: just gets a little bit funky. We're talking about plants
Speaker 1: that look like a bad photoshop. We're talking about lobsters
Speaker 1: that also actually look like a bad photoshop, and butterflies.
Speaker 1: In fact, the common denominator throughout the whole episode is
Speaker 1: this all looks like bad photoshop, but it's not. Discover
Speaker 1: this and more as we answer the angel question, is
Speaker 1: the reason dogs evolved so good because they're they're cute
Speaker 1: widow eyeballs. Joining me today to talk about all things
Speaker 1: genetically funky is comedian and scientists and all around cool
Speaker 1: person Paula Vygnalin. Welcome, Hey, thanks for having me. Thank
Speaker 1: you for coming on. I'm just talking about some genetic
Speaker 1: mix ups on the show today. I love that. I'm excited.
Speaker 1: These things look weird, but in a beautiful way, a
Speaker 1: beautiful way. When I say weird, it's not a negative thing.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful thing. So have you ever heard of
Speaker 1: a fasciation? Fasciation or maybe I think it's fasciation maybe
Speaker 1: like fascia like the maybe, I don't know, I don't think,
Speaker 1: so it's hard for me to pronounce this. I believe
Speaker 1: its faciation. H So, like remember on old Windows computers
Speaker 1: when it would crash and you would like drag your
Speaker 1: cursor across the screen or like a window, and it
Speaker 1: would just keep making copies of that over and over again.
Speaker 1: So it would be yeah, yeah, just kind of like
Speaker 1: the snaking window. This happens to plants in nature. Are
Speaker 1: you saying they're a glitch in the matrix. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty confident were a simulation, just based on the
Speaker 1: probability that the universe is recursive. But it doesn't bother
Speaker 1: me none, so you know, yeah that's fair. But yeah, no,
Speaker 1: there is a glitch in the matrix if by matrix
Speaker 1: you mean genetics. Uh, Anyways, imagine, like I meant a
Speaker 1: Mendelian matrix. Yes, Mentellian matrix. That'd be great if the
Speaker 1: new matrix is just like cool science and like we
Speaker 1: had this pea plant bread with this pea plant and neils, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't keep track of all these pea plants anyways. Uh,
Speaker 1: imagine a daisy you got You got a daisy in
Speaker 1: your head. It's uh, you know, flower, It's got some
Speaker 1: petals and so on. And then imagine the daisy as
Speaker 1: if someone just like smeared it, like took a clone
Speaker 1: tool and smeared it across like I'm stretched daisy like
Speaker 1: a limo, and then a stretched limo like daisy, and
Speaker 1: a stretch daisy like the like the middle part looks
Speaker 1: like a caterpillar. Yeah, yeah it does. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: somewhat uncomfortable, but it's interesting. So it makes me feel
Speaker 1: emotions that I can't really identify exactly. I kind of
Speaker 1: want to eat it when I look at it, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I just want to fold up this cal zone. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like a daisy cannoli. Yeah. So typically a
Speaker 1: plant part like a flower or branch or berry will
Speaker 1: have a point of growth. So for a tree, a
Speaker 1: branch will come out from a point of growth in
Speaker 1: sort of a relatively uniform cylindrical pattern. Obviously it's not
Speaker 1: exact exactly you've seen trees. What if I was like, no, no, actually,
Speaker 1: I have not seen a tree, thank you, Yeah, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I live in Hollywood, baby, They're all fake out of here, exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with your quote unquote tree trees. As
Speaker 1: never seen a tree. Uh. Flower buds typically have a
Speaker 1: point of growth from which is symmetrical. Flower blooms, either
Speaker 1: radial symmetry like a daisy or bilateral symmetry like an orchid.
Speaker 1: But in plants with fasciation, this point of growth becomes elongated,
Speaker 1: so a normal looking daisy becomes a stretch daisy. And
Speaker 1: strawberries instead of being this nice little tear drop shape
Speaker 1: will like look like weird stretched strawberries. Like if you
Speaker 1: took a strawberry and you put it into Blender or
Speaker 1: some three D software and then just extruded it around
Speaker 1: its space until the strawberry looks like a half circle
Speaker 1: instead of a tear drop shape. Yeah, that's an eighty
Speaker 1: degree strawberry, right, A hundred eight degrees strawberry experience. That's
Speaker 1: so much strawberry. You could eat it like a watermelons,
Speaker 1: like could you could? You could like shove it in
Speaker 1: your mouth, uh, and choke. I guess that's not a
Speaker 1: good I don't know I could. That's the new creature
Speaker 1: feature motto, shove it in your mouth and choke. I
Speaker 1: guess you're a creature feature. We care about the listener
Speaker 1: and we want you all to shove it in your
Speaker 1: mouth and choke. Yeah. I guess you could do that
Speaker 1: with a lot of stuff. But yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: it's a. It's a I would say I'm uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: this strawberry, you know. Uh, it makes me like I
Speaker 1: feel like that. That's not a tolerant of view. This
Speaker 1: strawberry can't help how it looks. I need, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I need to learn to be more understanding
Speaker 1: of the strawberry before I stick it in a blender
Speaker 1: and pulverize it into a tasty smoothie. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: it's good. It's it's a it's a bigger ratio of
Speaker 1: of fleshy fruit to weird leafy talk. That is true.
Speaker 1: That's a very good point. You're definitely getting more fruit
Speaker 1: to leaf rach seo, Like, could you imagine dipping this
Speaker 1: in some fond do be so good? It could hold
Speaker 1: the chocolate like a platestead of having to be covered
Speaker 1: in I could just use it as a shovel at
Speaker 1: the chocolate fountain and just shovel that chocolate in your mouth,
Speaker 1: because we all know that there's kind of a conceit
Speaker 1: with chocolate strawberries. It's like, yeah, I really want the
Speaker 1: straw b No, you just you just want the chocolate.
Speaker 1: You're here for the chocolate. Yeah. So it also happens
Speaker 1: to stems in plants, so like a dandelion stem that
Speaker 1: is normally you know you've seen a dandelion, right me? Yes,
Speaker 1: I don't know because you live in l A and
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Oh yeah, Well, the wheaty things grow
Speaker 1: up between the sidewalks you mean sidewalk spangles. Yeah, I'm familiar.
Speaker 1: But they have a thin stem. But dandelion stem that
Speaker 1: undergoes fasciation becomes this like thick. It's a thick. It's
Speaker 1: a big boy. It's a big, big old thick one
Speaker 1: in it it looks like a broccoli like kind of
Speaker 1: a thing. Like that's how thick it is. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could, uh you know, you could really have some
Speaker 1: trouble picking this dand alone. I'll tell you what, did
Speaker 1: that sound too actual? I hope not trying to keep
Speaker 1: a clean I think this one is like weirder to
Speaker 1: me because with dandelions usually people have that image of
Speaker 1: like picking and like picking off the pedals, right, That's
Speaker 1: how it's used, isn't that stuff that That's how dandelions
Speaker 1: are used in media as people just like ripping them apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know we are here, but that's like
Speaker 1: our favorite thing to do. That's true. I also shouldn't
Speaker 1: complain given that that's most of my comedy style. Um,
Speaker 1: but but it's also that image of like a thin
Speaker 1: stem and people pulling the top part off. And this
Speaker 1: is very like now it just looks clunkier, you know,
Speaker 1: like this, you know, went to a gym. It's like
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's a CrossFit danielions, but it gives us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like that feeling you get when you like see
Speaker 1: someone you knew from a while ago, and you know
Speaker 1: they're like sort of standard size, but then they went
Speaker 1: to a gym and got incredibly buff and bulky. This
Speaker 1: is the camal nongiani flowers. Yes, this flower is prepping
Speaker 1: to be included in the Marvel Universe cinematic use. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1: And sometimes the fasciation is so severe that the flowers
Speaker 1: will actually start to curl around the point of growth
Speaker 1: just becomes so elongated that it like becomes a flower doughnut, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it sounds like it tastes good, but it's
Speaker 1: still just a plant. Unfortunately, it sounds like a powder donut,
Speaker 1: but flower don't. Yeah, it sounds like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it kind of sounds like a health food that it's
Speaker 1: like this is a flower doughnut, and you all right,
Speaker 1: like is this But then it's like not that good
Speaker 1: of a dessert, and it's also not that good of
Speaker 1: a health food. So really nobody wins it went that that.
Speaker 1: I feel like I have seen that in l a yeah,
Speaker 1: health doughnut, Yeah, a healthy doughnut. Definitely seen that in
Speaker 1: l Yeah. Yeah, no trees, but you do got health doughnuts.
Speaker 1: It's a genetic defect that can happen in plants, and
Speaker 1: so most plants can be affected by like even an
Speaker 1: asparagus which turns into like an asparagus into an asparag No,
Speaker 1: thank you, because I'm already weirded out by asparagus. It
Speaker 1: would be in a it would be an a spare me, right,
Speaker 1: thank you for correcting my joke. It was really I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: no no, no, I mean because it was a bad joke.
Speaker 1: It was real sickly. And then you came in and
Speaker 1: you kind of got it, did some joke CPR on
Speaker 1: and actually you coming out of the podcast, right, you
Speaker 1: just used me to punch up, and then it's just
Speaker 1: your gonna edit. This is the writer's room, right right,
Speaker 1: I'm editing you out completely, and it's just gonna be
Speaker 1: me having a conversation with myself, and like half of
Speaker 1: the time I'm really funny and happens. I'm not that
Speaker 1: this asparagus really does look like, um oh, what is
Speaker 1: that movie with Robin Williams where he goes to hell
Speaker 1: to find his wife? I have no idea? What dreams?
Speaker 1: What dreams? And then the paint the paint sneers right, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like or like yeah, which is kind of like
Speaker 1: the what's that Google deep dream? What Ai? It's like
Speaker 1: an AI tried to do us an asparagus or like
Speaker 1: when you take a panorama and your dog runs through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that, and then it gets all stretched out.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a it is.
Speaker 1: It is definitely a like you mentioned earlier glitch in
Speaker 1: the matrix moment, though, it gives you that sort of
Speaker 1: unsettling feeling of like, ah, this is I feel like
Speaker 1: this asparagus would be really hard to cook because like
Speaker 1: I feel like asparagus like they're like it takes a
Speaker 1: while to like cook them all the way through, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I feel like this one would burn on the
Speaker 1: outside by the time you cooked. It looks like a
Speaker 1: like a piece of toast made out of asparagus. Asparagus.
Speaker 1: I bet it also makes your piece smell even weirder
Speaker 1: than normal. What if it makes a smell good action,
Speaker 1: that's great, Like we need to breed asparagus that whatever
Speaker 1: the gene that like make messes with your urine makes
Speaker 1: it smell great. Who this had to be some dude
Speaker 1: being like, what does my pie smell like after I
Speaker 1: eat only asparagus for three days? You know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 1: sometimes not all scientists wear lab coats. Some are just
Speaker 1: dudes and bachelor pads, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 1: I mean, I think like up until like the nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: most of science was some dude like drinking his own
Speaker 1: pea and seeing what life was like if he only
Speaker 1: drank fluids and and put milk up his butthole. You know,
Speaker 1: we gave a man an entire career because he only
Speaker 1: ate McDonald's for a while, and we were like, sure,
Speaker 1: let's just see what that looks like this he like
Speaker 1: everybody nobody was like, dude, you should eat McDonald's for
Speaker 1: a long time, and he's like he just he just
Speaker 1: did it himself and then built a full career both
Speaker 1: in nutrition and an entertainment off of that. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: What when when Grimes just eats pasta for two years,
Speaker 1: we call her a bad mother. And when I get
Speaker 1: an excessive amount of chocolate's like that's unhealthy. Okay, It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I have to be on my period to eat a
Speaker 1: bunch of chocolate. But Morgan what's his face can eat
Speaker 1: a half emal for a year and that's like not
Speaker 1: a midlife crisis. The Funyan's diet isn't getting a movie deal?
Speaker 1: All right? Okay, fine, just another example of the patriarchy.
Speaker 1: But uh so. Fasciation can be caused by a number
Speaker 1: of factors, including random genetic mutation, hormonal imbalance, viral infection,
Speaker 1: bacterial infection, chemical exposure, or parasites. But even in all
Speaker 1: of these cases, the method of action is the same.
Speaker 1: An abnormality occurs that affects the growing tip of the plant.
Speaker 1: So the growing tip is called the maris stem, which
Speaker 1: very much sounds like a little hobbit name or something
Speaker 1: like Marris stem. Oh, I'm I'm stem and I'm going
Speaker 1: with you, Mr Frodo to to protect the shy and
Speaker 1: then he immediately gets eaten by a dragon or a
Speaker 1: ring write or something thing I like, growing stem is
Speaker 1: coming to borders near you. So yeah, the the Marris stem,
Speaker 1: it's a cluster of undifferentiated cells. In a typical plant,
Speaker 1: the marrow stem is a tidy little bump, but in
Speaker 1: fasciation it goes bananas and there's this spread of the
Speaker 1: Marris stem and thus a spread of cells that can
Speaker 1: differentiate into new tissue. Uh So, uh sometimes we actually
Speaker 1: deliberately breed flowers that have the genetic mutation for fasciation,
Speaker 1: such as don't laugh Coxcomb I tried to keep really quiet.
Speaker 1: You did, you did, which I'm glad when I say, like,
Speaker 1: don't laugh now you take me seriously and don't actually laugh.
Speaker 1: I I tried really hard. It was like it's like
Speaker 1: a personal challenge, you know what I mean. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I I saw, I saw just laughter trying to escape you. Definitely,
Speaker 1: my mouth just like yeah, clamped down, yeah, yeah, unlike
Speaker 1: And I have a coxcomb. So it's called a coxcomb
Speaker 1: because it looks like a rooster's comb, you know, a rooster,
Speaker 1: a cock. It's it's innocent. Fair So is this basically
Speaker 1: this is kind of like flower cancer right because it's
Speaker 1: but it's it's where is it not? It's so it's
Speaker 1: sort of like that. I would say, it's more like
Speaker 1: flower tumor. Ish. It's like it's like you're still so
Speaker 1: the stem cells, the maristem of the plant having this
Speaker 1: uncontrolled duplication sort of like a tumor. Fortunately for the plant,
Speaker 1: it is a sustainable thing because it instead of being
Speaker 1: like a tumor where it's basically non functional tissue that
Speaker 1: you know, in malignant cases like steals your nutrients and
Speaker 1: does nothing good for you except you know, hurts you.
Speaker 1: In this case, it's just more of the plant, Like, hey,
Speaker 1: there's just more of you. Enjoy that, which could be
Speaker 1: could be problematic in some cases, I presume, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it just works, like in coxcombs, where they just look
Speaker 1: I guess, like you know, the rooster comb, and people
Speaker 1: love that. People go nuts for it. They do look
Speaker 1: really cool. These are fun. They look like a little purses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like fluffy little anemonies with Yeah, they do. They absolutely
Speaker 1: do look like an enemy's maybe with like a weird
Speaker 1: tongue attached to them. I'm into it. I'm into coxlick.
Speaker 1: I like coxcomb. So in animals, when you have like
Speaker 1: an oopsy goofer with undifferentiated tissue, this can often lead
Speaker 1: to extra body parts, like supernumerary body parts, so like
Speaker 1: an extra body part can occur when you have an
Speaker 1: extra limb buds, So like in developing embryos, we have
Speaker 1: limb buds. It's kind of like the maristem of a plant,
Speaker 1: but instead of growing like a branch or flower, it
Speaker 1: grows a limb like a leg or an arm. Uh.
Speaker 1: And oh this is making this is making more sense
Speaker 1: because like there are those stereotypes of in like some
Speaker 1: underdeveloped areas where the children experience this right where they
Speaker 1: have extra limbs or you know, are born with like
Speaker 1: a tail or something you know, like uh so, but
Speaker 1: if it's influenced by some environmental factors, that would make
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. Absolutely it can be. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: something that can both be like a random genetic mutation
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily environmental, but often it is environmental. And
Speaker 1: you see that both unfortunately in humans, but you also
Speaker 1: see it in frogs. So in areas where there's a
Speaker 1: lot of pollution, you can get frogs with extra legs.
Speaker 1: So like the intro to The Simpsons where we got
Speaker 1: the fish with three eyes. Yeah, certainly. I don't think
Speaker 1: three eyes is very common. It's usually like extra limbs that,
Speaker 1: like multiple eye really unusual. I think like the sometimes
Speaker 1: the only times like you get a third eye in
Speaker 1: an animal or like a one eye or something is
Speaker 1: when you have like a twin that doesn't split correctly.
Speaker 1: So yeah, wow, but I don't interesting and I'm not
Speaker 1: exactly sure why, but I think it has something to
Speaker 1: do with the difference in how the eye develops versus
Speaker 1: a limb develops. And now we are the extent to
Speaker 1: which I know about um, but yeah, one question that
Speaker 1: I had that I looked into it was like, why
Speaker 1: don't animals have fasciation? So why can't I just grow
Speaker 1: a mega arm that's like thick like that mega dandelion stem. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I would I would guess it has something to
Speaker 1: do with like the difference in growth of new tissue
Speaker 1: in a plant's mare stem versus animal stem cells. So
Speaker 1: like plant tissue is sort of more uh, it's kind
Speaker 1: of more regularly structured. So yeah, it's simpler. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you have like so if you have you don't have
Speaker 1: quite as many interacting organs. So like if you have
Speaker 1: an arm, you have like a bunch of veins and bones,
Speaker 1: and it's not all symmetrical inside your arm, Like your
Speaker 1: arm does not have any radial symmetry, whereas like a
Speaker 1: branch in a tree or or a stem or even
Speaker 1: like a flower pedal, there's a lot of symmetry even
Speaker 1: within each individual part of it. So if you have
Speaker 1: this uh, genetic anomaly where it's just like it's like okay,
Speaker 1: this but more of it, that will kind of work
Speaker 1: out in the plant. That's why it's ironic that trees
Speaker 1: don't exist in Hollywood because it is so symmetrical, it
Speaker 1: should be able to make it in Hollywood, know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Symmetry is so important when you're casting a tree,
Speaker 1: like those trees and Wizard of Oz are really really
Speaker 1: unfair standards for trees, like no real trees look like that,
Speaker 1: No real trees look so um. There are really cool
Speaker 1: mutations though, in animals that have to do with the
Speaker 1: the like growing bud or limb bud and sometimes this
Speaker 1: can actually work out great for animals. So uh, snakes
Speaker 1: evolutionarily speaking, used to have legs. Uh and there so
Speaker 1: their ancestors used to have legs. They didn't start out legless.
Speaker 1: The so you know that that meme that's like the
Speaker 1: first creature crawling out of the sea that people use
Speaker 1: all the time. This would be like, yeah, the would
Speaker 1: be in in reverse. Right, I'm tired of walking. This sucks, right,
Speaker 1: let me just ride my body against the right. They
Speaker 1: don't use legs. They use their abdominal muscle contractions to
Speaker 1: smoothly glide along the ground. They have such a strong core.
Speaker 1: They really I'm I'm out here jealous of snakes cores.
Speaker 1: I'm jealous. I'm jealous of snakes and dolphins. Have you
Speaker 1: ever seen the abs on a dolphin? Oh wow, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, they do all that jumping out of water,
Speaker 1: that huge amount of core strength. So yeah, snakes and
Speaker 1: dolphins would laugh at your reps, just laugh. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh yeah, snakes dropped the legs. They got a
Speaker 1: more flexible skeleton that allows them to engorge themselves with
Speaker 1: huge prey relative to their slender lot Boddie and h.
Speaker 1: The gene that controls limb growth is actually called the
Speaker 1: sonic hedgehog gene. Yeah, I'm familiar with this gene. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a fun one. It's a fun it's fun fun naming,
Speaker 1: you know. Sometimes you just gotta have fun with genes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like too many of these like z A B two
Speaker 1: forty seven, blah blah blah, just call like sonic calle,
Speaker 1: like Mario do a? Do you a bowser gene? You know?
Speaker 1: Is that the gene for like where it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be Italian but it's not. Yes that the Mario Chris
Speaker 1: Pratt apparently has the Mario gene. Not really. I think
Speaker 1: here's the thing I think everybody. I think people want
Speaker 1: contradictory things from scientists. I think they want them to
Speaker 1: be less uptight, but then when they are, they're like,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be the serious person in our society,
Speaker 1: and they judge them for it. Yeah. Yeah, people really
Speaker 1: knew that scientists were just like human and chill. I
Speaker 1: think I feel like that they would they should be
Speaker 1: able to relate to them more. But then they it
Speaker 1: also concerns them. They're like, oh, these are people and
Speaker 1: we're putting all this responsibility on Yeah. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think understanding that scientists are not just aliens that
Speaker 1: don't aren't able to understand a social environment like outside
Speaker 1: of a lab is would be nice, a nice trope
Speaker 1: to get rid of, because yeah, I agree, like people
Speaker 1: like this thing that this is a little bit of
Speaker 1: a tangent. Sorry everyone, please don't give me a bad
Speaker 1: review for tangents. But um, they're like I remember when
Speaker 1: scientists were doing this like bird research on a bird calls,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people are like like uh, and
Speaker 1: it was there's some big controversy about like, oh, you're
Speaker 1: you're spinning all this time, like researching ward calls, and
Speaker 1: like that's that's so, you know, like you're supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing real science. It's like, yeah, they did this
Speaker 1: with like they did this with like beetle shells or something.
Speaker 1: They're like I remember every once in a while, something
Speaker 1: on Twitter or somebody you know will say something that's
Speaker 1: like like, I can't believe scientists are wasting their time
Speaker 1: and money on this thing instead of doing this thing.
Speaker 1: And it's like you aren't a scientist and have no
Speaker 1: idea the importance or the context of what they're studying.
Speaker 1: And also science is just studying the world, so it's
Speaker 1: still science even if you d prioritize it as necessary
Speaker 1: for you. And everything is connected. Oops, I said everything
Speaker 1: is connected, right, Like every like the Beatles shell will
Speaker 1: like help with the design of cars, and like you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, like everything is related. Um, but
Speaker 1: I don't think people understand that. Yeah, I mean most
Speaker 1: of our medical and technological advancements are based on scientific
Speaker 1: research that you know, many many years of scientific research
Speaker 1: that may not have that much apparently in common with
Speaker 1: the end result of the research. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: like if we didn't like look at, you know, mouse
Speaker 1: turds once in a while, we would probably not have
Speaker 1: most of medicine. Uh, but we do that just for fun.
Speaker 1: It's fun. Through mouse turds. Don't do it, don't get
Speaker 1: haunt of virus. That yeah, sonic hedgehog gene. It's actually
Speaker 1: Sonic hedgehog I think is the name, not Sonic the
Speaker 1: Hedgehog science stupid sciences, But it's called that because of
Speaker 1: its spiky appearance. And apparently one of the researchers who
Speaker 1: discovered it had a daughter with a Sonic the Hedgehog
Speaker 1: comic book, so that's cute like that. So a mutation
Speaker 1: occurred in snakes that basically deleted activators for the sonic
Speaker 1: hedgehog gene responsible for leg growth, but that gene for
Speaker 1: legs is still technically there. Uh, it's just that the
Speaker 1: activators that would switch that gene on are are not there.
Speaker 1: So basically, when snakes start to develop as an embryo,
Speaker 1: they start to like develop these little legs and then
Speaker 1: they're like no, no, not just kidding, just kidding, No
Speaker 1: legs for me, thank you? Oh weird? What do you think?
Speaker 1: Like the first nake came out and was just like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck are you kidding me? My whole family
Speaker 1: has legs, and I have like I can't even go
Speaker 1: to the grocery store with them because they don't know
Speaker 1: how to handle me. Yeah, it's just like high five.
Speaker 1: That is so insensitive. Uh, I mean I think that uh,
Speaker 1: ruining your joke and taking it seriously. Uh, the first
Speaker 1: snakes probably came from these lizards that have basically just
Speaker 1: little nubs for legs, so the legs get kind of smaller,
Speaker 1: more useless. And uh, I want I want everyone on
Speaker 1: Twitter to take a moment and acknowledge what you just said,
Speaker 1: ruining your joke and taking it seriously. Can you put
Speaker 1: that at the front of every reply you send me
Speaker 1: on Twitter, just people of Twitter, where you name this podcast,
Speaker 1: ruining your joke by taking seriously? Yeah, this is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this is why I have comedians on the
Speaker 1: podcast about science, so I can just be like, well,
Speaker 1: actually you make a funny joke, but scientifically speaking, but yeah, no,
Speaker 1: this is me at a party. I have so many friends,
Speaker 1: so many friends. Um, but yeah, so so they did,
Speaker 1: Like there are a lot of these sort of transitional species.
Speaker 1: You could look at it and they're not necessarily direct
Speaker 1: ancestors of the snakes, but when you you can see
Speaker 1: like where you can see where they're coming from, Like
Speaker 1: they there are these lizards that have these very teeny tiny,
Speaker 1: nubby legs that uh, they don't really use that much.
Speaker 1: And then probably one of them just kind of had
Speaker 1: a gene deletion of these legs. And it's like, this
Speaker 1: is fine. I'm fine with this. You know what, I
Speaker 1: need your legs, all right. One day someone's gonna compare
Speaker 1: me to Taylor Swift. Okay, you know what, this is
Speaker 1: pretty great, Like you have your little legs and that's fine.
Speaker 1: I don't judge you, but I don't actually need them. So,
Speaker 1: you know, snakes are officially like that person who doesn't
Speaker 1: have a TV. And you know that they don't have
Speaker 1: a TV because they tell you about how much they
Speaker 1: don't watch TV all the time. Yeah, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean TVs, like we get it. You read yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, So snakes are out there like I don't
Speaker 1: need legs. And actually I read Lussies and I thought
Speaker 1: it was easy to read. They reads OLIVI do you
Speaker 1: want to talk about lobsters? Obviously that's why I came here.
Speaker 1: It's it's Lobster Wednesdays. Everybody gets your bib on and
Speaker 1: get ready to enjoy some sun about lobsters. So lobsters
Speaker 1: we love them, We love to eat them. Uh, they're
Speaker 1: the cute little sort of Arthur pods the sea and
Speaker 1: there they can have some really interesting and uh like
Speaker 1: very fake looking genetic mix ups. So lobsters can have
Speaker 1: a very rare mutation where they are bright blue instead
Speaker 1: of brown. Now, just a quick reminder, lobsters in the
Speaker 1: ocean aren't red. That's after you boil them as they
Speaker 1: scream for mercy. Uh, they turn red. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: but they're they're brown. I didn't even realize that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, you know, it's some some chemical change
Speaker 1: happens that I certainly know about chemistry. I'm so good
Speaker 1: at chemistry. But yeah, it's when you boil them they
Speaker 1: turn bright red. But in the ocean there's sort of
Speaker 1: a muddy brown, all of kind of color. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you know, but yes, sometimes they are bright bright blue,
Speaker 1: like you know, I don't know how to describe this blue. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: this is this is a great wait, bust blue. What
Speaker 1: did you say, I said, I I said best by,
Speaker 1: But yeah, it might also be what is it megabus blue?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know, you know the blue
Speaker 1: that it's the it's it's the blue of the nineties
Speaker 1: that all the companies use. No, it's it's more the
Speaker 1: blue of the early two thousand's where everyone decided blue
Speaker 1: is the good color for stores in general, Walmart blue,
Speaker 1: Best Buy blue. Uh, you know cool Ranch, Derito's blue.
Speaker 1: It's it's bright, artificial looking blue. And uh, this is
Speaker 1: said to be like a one in a million chance.
Speaker 1: I wonder how this affects like they're how like predators
Speaker 1: view them, and like how they're able to get away
Speaker 1: from things. You know. Yeah, that's a good question because
Speaker 1: with animals who have albin ism, we know, typically it's
Speaker 1: a bad thing because it makes them a lot easier
Speaker 1: to spot, so they don't typically survive as well. So
Speaker 1: like albino squirrels often get picked off. Unfortunately, the same
Speaker 1: thing with that. I've never seen an albino squirrel. I've
Speaker 1: seen so many squirrels in my lifetime get picked off
Speaker 1: by hawks pretty good. I mean, it's why melanistic squirrels
Speaker 1: black squirrels are much more common than albino squirrels because
Speaker 1: melanistic squirrels it's not so bad for them because you know,
Speaker 1: they're they don't just like stand out like someone highlighted
Speaker 1: them on, like, you know, this is like reverse white privilege.
Speaker 1: This is what this is the only context, and yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the squirrels of color are given an advantage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is yeah. And yes, I know albinism can happen
Speaker 1: to squirrels of colors. But yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think that the lobsters are so
Speaker 1: rare and they're typically only found during like commercial lobster fishing,
Speaker 1: so I don't know like what that does for their
Speaker 1: survival rates. I would imagine because it's blue and the
Speaker 1: oceans kind of blue, maybe it's okay. It's a very
Speaker 1: unscientific statement, but you know, it's like I think maybe
Speaker 1: it's okay in any context is also a very uncientific statement,
Speaker 1: given just a state of everything. I love reading a
Speaker 1: paper in like the New England Journal of Medicine and
Speaker 1: they're like, you know, smoking marijuana. I think maybe it's okay.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's okay, bro. I don't know, dude, But blue
Speaker 1: lobsters are not the only weird mutation that lobsters have.
Speaker 1: They can also be bright orange, which is interesting because
Speaker 1: when they're bright orange, they kind of look like the
Speaker 1: color of a cooked lobster, but they're not. So it's
Speaker 1: also a very rare mutation. You're not going to see
Speaker 1: it typically, but they will be. It's that's like them
Speaker 1: trying to hide before we cook them. They're like, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're already cooking. Yeah, you don't out of throw me
Speaker 1: in the pot. Yeah, but you know that's another protein
Speaker 1: mutation that happens that gives them this bright orange coloration,
Speaker 1: as is the blue coloration a protein mutation. But the
Speaker 1: this is not even as wild as lobsters get. Uh,
Speaker 1: they sometimes will look half and half, so they literally
Speaker 1: look like you plopped a lobster and photoshop and like
Speaker 1: selected exactly half of the lobster and changed the hue
Speaker 1: down the middle, Yes, straight down in the middle, one
Speaker 1: side being blue and one side being brown, or even
Speaker 1: one side being orange and one side being brown or blue.
Speaker 1: It's it doesn't look like it literally looks. It literally
Speaker 1: looks like somebody laid painter's tape. But that line is
Speaker 1: so clean all the way down. It's wild jealous of
Speaker 1: these clean lines, just like I've never been able to
Speaker 1: painting doing my nails. No, it's always always there's always
Speaker 1: a point of like a bubble in the tape where
Speaker 1: you peel it and then there's just like a little imperfection.
Speaker 1: You're like yeah, and you're like, you know, who's the
Speaker 1: best nail artist? Lobsters? Same thing, same thing, same thing
Speaker 1: is a lobster. Uh So yeah, and it not only
Speaker 1: looks mind blowing, but the explanation for it is also
Speaker 1: really interesting. So uh. Most animals have some form of symmetry.
Speaker 1: Some animals have radial symmetry, like a sea urchin or
Speaker 1: a starfish, and some animals like humans and most mammals
Speaker 1: and fish and lobsters have bilateral symmetry. So we each
Speaker 1: have you know, uh, you know, half of our body
Speaker 1: is relatively a mirror image of the other half. But
Speaker 1: if something goes wrong, as the cells are splitting when
Speaker 1: you're a blast assist developing into an embryo, uh, or
Speaker 1: even a mistake when the chromosomes are dividing, you can
Speaker 1: have an animal split down the middle with two different
Speaker 1: colors and even two different sexes. So most two toned
Speaker 1: lobsters are actually also gynandromorphs, So each side of the
Speaker 1: lobster is a different sex So one side has testes
Speaker 1: and the other has ovaries. So during early development and
Speaker 1: during cell division or mitosis and air occurs where the
Speaker 1: sex chromosomes don't split properly, so you have literally one
Speaker 1: half is female and one half is male, and then
Speaker 1: they're different colors. Uh, not necessarily, so male and female
Speaker 1: lobsters aren't really different colors typically, but you can have
Speaker 1: because one half has a different genome than the other half,
Speaker 1: you could have a color mutation one half and not
Speaker 1: in the other half. And so that's how you get
Speaker 1: these like incredibly rare. Not only do they have a
Speaker 1: color mutation, but they also have uh guyn andromorph mutation.
Speaker 1: Can Andrew morph? Was that children's book series we read
Speaker 1: as kids, that series. It's I did it for the
Speaker 1: flip book though of the lobsters. So actually, last episode
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about how sex determination works
Speaker 1: and how it can be different depending on the animals.
Speaker 1: So not all animals are x Y like humans. So
Speaker 1: you know, as humans you have like the x Y
Speaker 1: chromosomes and x x and x y, but there there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different variations in humans that can happen, uh,
Speaker 1: and then in other animals that can be even like
Speaker 1: like completely different systems like x oh where Uh, females
Speaker 1: will have x X and males will have You tell
Speaker 1: me there's a tic tac toe animals. There's tic tac
Speaker 1: toe animals, some shrews, low spiders playing tic tac toe
Speaker 1: much more much, which is the most fun kind of
Speaker 1: sex system, I think. Uh so, if anyways, he's different.
Speaker 1: There's also z W system and chickens, and well not
Speaker 1: just chickens, I guess other birds too, but you know,
Speaker 1: when you think bird, you think chicken. And actually the
Speaker 1: z W system is kind of the mirror of X
Speaker 1: Y system, because a female will have z W and
Speaker 1: a male will have z Z and they actually can
Speaker 1: have because males are boring. Wait, but that would mean
Speaker 1: females are boring in other species. No, because we're not
Speaker 1: z Z thing. I see, I get it. I am so.
Speaker 1: I I appreciate comedy. I'm a comedy appreciator. Uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: And actually chickens can have interest things happen with their
Speaker 1: sex determination system, where uh, males can like become females.
Speaker 1: Uh And so there's a lot there's a lot of
Speaker 1: cool shenanigans. If anyone tries to sell you the idea
Speaker 1: that sex determination and chromosomes is simple, they're wrong, they're
Speaker 1: uh yeah boom uh. So basically, what can happen during
Speaker 1: cell dicivision. Let's take for example, the XO system XO
Speaker 1: XO kiss kiss kiss um, where they say the cell
Speaker 1: split and one cell gets two X chromosomes and then
Speaker 1: the other cell only gets one X chromosome. Then, in
Speaker 1: like a spider or a shrew or one of these
Speaker 1: these creatures that have the XO system, one of them's
Speaker 1: uh there, there's gonna be one organism where half is
Speaker 1: male and half is female. And so this is actually
Speaker 1: what can happen in butterflies. And when it happens in butterflies,
Speaker 1: it's very striking. So now we're talking about color different
Speaker 1: differences in two sides. That's not just because of some
Speaker 1: interesting mutation like in lobsters where you have both gynandromorph
Speaker 1: gynandromorphy and you have this color mutation. But in butterflies,
Speaker 1: it's that male and female butterflies have different coloration even
Speaker 1: when the typical sexual reproduction happens. So in a gynandromorph,
Speaker 1: one half of the butterfly is male and has a
Speaker 1: very different wing shape and color, and the other half
Speaker 1: this female, and so not only are their wings different colors,
Speaker 1: but they can be different shapes and sizes. It looks
Speaker 1: like some psychopath cut butterflies in half and then glued
Speaker 1: them back together. Um, God, sad about this hypothetical situation.
Speaker 1: It like there's no way they can. They're flying in circles, right,
Speaker 1: Like the wings are totally different sizes. They're probably not
Speaker 1: flying great. It's probably not a probably not the best flyers, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: because one side is like way bigger than the other. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And some species like where there's not as much sexual dimorphism,
Speaker 1: that is, like there's not that as much difference between
Speaker 1: males and females. They probably function all right in terms
Speaker 1: of flying, but yeah, some of them, the difference is
Speaker 1: very dramatic where the female is a lot smaller than
Speaker 1: the male, or vice versa, and or the male like
Speaker 1: sometimes you know, butterflies have those big those tails on it,
Speaker 1: so like you have butterfly wing shape and then you
Speaker 1: have sort of this tear drop shape coming off of
Speaker 1: the bottom of the wing, and that's a that's like
Speaker 1: a swallow tail. Butterfly has those, but it is only
Speaker 1: in one sex. So when you have a gynandromorphe one
Speaker 1: of the sides has that little tail and the other doesn't,
Speaker 1: which is gonna make it real tricky for the butterfly.
Speaker 1: So you have a good time flying, I guess the
Speaker 1: butterflies like, um, okay, rest of the family, y'all go
Speaker 1: out further for flowers and whatnot, and I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: hang around in this circle like I'll just be at
Speaker 1: home base. Yeah. Yeah, it's uh, it's it's like one
Speaker 1: side of the butterfly is telling the other side of
Speaker 1: the butterfly. Did you ask for directions? No, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to ask get it, get it. It's it's at it.
Speaker 1: I gotta explain something to the zoomers. Back in the day,
Speaker 1: we used to have this joke where like men would
Speaker 1: never ask for directions. Um, and that was this is
Speaker 1: in dinosaur times actually when we have this joke, so
Speaker 1: all the dinosaurs at Jurassic Park would ask for directions.
Speaker 1: And then it's like like one dinosaur is like you
Speaker 1: gotta You've gotta ask for directions, and it's like I
Speaker 1: don't know, like I'll uh find a way MS park reference.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm wrap please every every word I say.
Speaker 1: Another zoomer just like clicks pause and puts down. Al Right,
Speaker 1: I think I think this episode is just as referential
Speaker 1: as ulysses. Wow, that was that was so referential. To
Speaker 1: being referential, I hurt in my brain. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break. So sometimes when we talk about mutations, uh,
Speaker 1: people get this idea that mutations are either good for
Speaker 1: organism or bad. So, like it's often the topic of
Speaker 1: conversation when we're talking about like COVID, like, oh, it
Speaker 1: has a mutation, this must mean it's now like a
Speaker 1: superpowered virus. But mutations are not intrinsically good or bad.
Speaker 1: They're just a mutation, and whether or not it turns
Speaker 1: out to be beneficial or bad for the organism, it
Speaker 1: just depends on the selective pressures that the organism is
Speaker 1: operating in. So sometimes these color mutations can in like
Speaker 1: these interesting uh little genetic whoopsie doodles, can be maybe negative,
Speaker 1: like we talked about the butterfly being half male and
Speaker 1: half female and one side if the male and female
Speaker 1: of that species have significant difference in size, they'll be
Speaker 1: a little opsided and maybe flying circles a little bit.
Speaker 1: But sometimes color mutations can completely shape the course of history.
Speaker 1: For better or worse. So this one cool, weird eye
Speaker 1: trick may have changed the course of human history. Doctors
Speaker 1: hate it. So most primates have dark sclera, so that's
Speaker 1: the eye tissue surrounding the iris is but in humans
Speaker 1: this tissue is white or kind of off white. And
Speaker 1: some research seems to indicate that by having this bright
Speaker 1: white ish sclera, humans are better able to track eye
Speaker 1: movement and gaze in each other. And some anthropologists have
Speaker 1: a hypothesis that human cooperation and evolution was shaped by
Speaker 1: our ability to see each other's gaze. And so this
Speaker 1: is called the cooperative gaze hypothesis, which is like you know,
Speaker 1: like when you're with which is like just June, right,
Speaker 1: it's a bunch of cooperative gays. Uh see, I got
Speaker 1: that one. I'm getting faster with it. But you know,
Speaker 1: like when you're with someone and you can't like say
Speaker 1: something out loud to them, but you're using your family
Speaker 1: reunion weddings, right, You're like judging people. You're like, who's
Speaker 1: that at the at stand up shows? Right, You're like
Speaker 1: this is terrible, but with your eyes right, and like
Speaker 1: all the zoomers who are left still listening to the show,
Speaker 1: Like when you roll your eyes. If you didn't have
Speaker 1: a white sclera, like, your parents would never know that
Speaker 1: you hate them, which it's really important. They wouldn't get
Speaker 1: the full sense of your disdain, which would really be
Speaker 1: a tragedy. Part of phood, right, you have to let
Speaker 1: them know that they're being so uncool right now. But yeah, So,
Speaker 1: human babies follow eye gaze much more than primates, and
Speaker 1: the ability to follow each other's gaze may have helped
Speaker 1: human in collaboration or things like determining intent. So seeing
Speaker 1: where someone's eye gazes can really help you understand like
Speaker 1: what are they looking at? What are the focused on?
Speaker 1: Are they looking at me or something else? Like are
Speaker 1: they looking at the thing I have? So it can
Speaker 1: both be protective for you, like of understanding, Okay, what
Speaker 1: is this person interested in? And it can also help
Speaker 1: you cooperate because like, if they keep looking at something
Speaker 1: that's in your hands, it's like, oh, they may want
Speaker 1: to see this, or they may want this, and so
Speaker 1: I can figure out what someone wants before we even
Speaker 1: maybe had language, So you know, having that sort of
Speaker 1: non verbal accessory to communication may have been really really
Speaker 1: helpful in our early development as a highly social species.
Speaker 1: And uh it may have even helped our relationship with dogs,
Speaker 1: which we co evolved with uh since very early history. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know dogs used to be they had like a
Speaker 1: wolf like ancestor, and they started to catch on that. Hey,
Speaker 1: if I actually cue an Instagram wruble, I could have
Speaker 1: a real qushy lifestyle next to humans. Unfortunately, they didn't
Speaker 1: know like the extent to our obsession with making them
Speaker 1: look real weird and cute. Uh and like breeding them
Speaker 1: until they basically can't They can't breathe and they look
Speaker 1: like a loaf of bread with eyeballs. But anyways, Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so dogs are able to follow our eye gays almost
Speaker 1: as well as human infants. So having eyes that are
Speaker 1: so easy to follow, dogs may have co evolved with us,
Speaker 1: and we're better able to understand where our attention was
Speaker 1: and able to cooperate with us. So if you've ever wondered,
Speaker 1: like why your dog is so uncannily attuned to like
Speaker 1: what you're looking at or or what you're interested in,
Speaker 1: part of it could be that your dog is following
Speaker 1: your eye gays. Now, my dog, I think needs dog glasses.
Speaker 1: Her vision is not very good, so I can point
Speaker 1: at a slice of cheese, and she goes like wandering
Speaker 1: off like two feet away from the cheese. And so
Speaker 1: I don't think she's noticing my eye movements as much
Speaker 1: at all, although my dog, I think this might. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I feel like maybe we're at the point
Speaker 1: where we're wearing masks so much that our dogs are
Speaker 1: even more tuned into our eyes. Because now when I
Speaker 1: put in Now, when I put on a mask or
Speaker 1: go to like I use paper towels to like open
Speaker 1: the door knobs and stuff. She she um just because
Speaker 1: people a building or gross, no kidding, um she uh.
Speaker 1: She literally, she like starts freaking out immediately, like she's
Speaker 1: very tuned into when I start moving. It's all like
Speaker 1: embarrassing to Like when I put on pants, she freaks out,
Speaker 1: which is like how much I don't wear pants in
Speaker 1: my apartment. She's like, Oh, we're going outside. Now, were
Speaker 1: you putting on pants? Ye, code pants, You're wearing a
Speaker 1: broad pants. Something's happening, Something's happening. That's how my dog
Speaker 1: is when I put on shoes, because it's it's a
Speaker 1: fifty gamble for her. It could mean I'm going outside
Speaker 1: with her or leaving forever forever and neglecting her for
Speaker 1: an eternity, So I get it. Yeah, so she has
Speaker 1: this expression of like dread and excitement that is really
Speaker 1: pathetic and hard hard to watch honestly, But I like
Speaker 1: that you just called your dog pathetic. I mean, somebody
Speaker 1: kept me up all night whining about I don't know,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what freaked her out on. But
Speaker 1: imagine how anxious you would be if the person you
Speaker 1: loved most in the world would just randomly leave at
Speaker 1: times that you didn't understand end and you had no
Speaker 1: idea if they were coming back it would be And
Speaker 1: this is the person that you love most and are
Speaker 1: also dependent on for food and shelter. I mean, I
Speaker 1: get really sweaty palms if I'm left on red for
Speaker 1: like two minutes. So oh yeah, I'm probably not want
Speaker 1: to judge, but yeah, so so are the whites of
Speaker 1: our eyes are really important maybe for even communicating with dogs,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, we know how important dogs have
Speaker 1: been for our history and helping us with livestock and
Speaker 1: agriculture and hunting, and so just this one cool little
Speaker 1: genetic thing that happened with the sclera being white may
Speaker 1: have had this like huge effect on evolution. Ah, and
Speaker 1: in fact, you actually can get primates who have this mutation.
Speaker 1: So there's this picture of a chimpanzee with the white sclera,
Speaker 1: and it's a little uncanny because that first time you
Speaker 1: look at it, you're like, oh, yeah, that's a chimpanzee,
Speaker 1: and then you're like, it's this is it's a little
Speaker 1: it's like an uncanny valley thing of like, this is
Speaker 1: a little more human like than I'm used to seeing,
Speaker 1: Like in the next Oh my god, I didn't even
Speaker 1: realize that that was that's crazy. I had to look
Speaker 1: up what a chimpanzee normally looks like in order to
Speaker 1: remember that they didn't have the black in the eyes.
Speaker 1: Is this? Oh is this? What's the ape world movie?
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes? Did they do that in Planet
Speaker 1: of the Apes? A good question. Planet, Yeah, they have white,
Speaker 1: they have sclera. They have white white sclera. That that's
Speaker 1: what gave them more human expressions, right right, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a that's a good point because he looks the one
Speaker 1: the picture here looks like the main character from Rise
Speaker 1: of the Planet of the Apes. Yeah. I mean, for
Speaker 1: all we know, he could be um just retired now,
Speaker 1: but like you know, I think that, yeah, because that's
Speaker 1: the case in a lot of like maybe that's why
Speaker 1: the Lion King live action thing was really lifeless. Did
Speaker 1: they put whites in the eyes of the animals in
Speaker 1: that movie or live action? Three D King? Live action?
Speaker 1: Well they called it the live action ones, but it's
Speaker 1: none of it. I don't think they did. I see.
Speaker 1: I think that was a mistake. Yeah, definitely. It definitely
Speaker 1: feels more human when they have the whites of the eyes, right,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. Yeah, I really just thought that's what chimps
Speaker 1: look like. I was like, why is this? Is this
Speaker 1: just a funny picture? Katie included thing that's so wild?
Speaker 1: How frequent is this is this mutation? It's very rare,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't seem to actually like catch on. It's
Speaker 1: not none of the chimps are really having it that
Speaker 1: it's not a which I think is what's interesting about
Speaker 1: it is that you think, like, oh, this is really
Speaker 1: helpful and humans potentially, but it hasn't really taken hold.
Speaker 1: It hasn't taken the chimp world by storm. And so
Speaker 1: it's because I mean, when we think about chimpanzees, they're
Speaker 1: not our ancestors. They are a cousin of ours like
Speaker 1: on the evolutionary tree. And so the idea that like, oh,
Speaker 1: chimpanzees are just like a hop, skip and a jump
Speaker 1: away from evolving into humans is not really true because
Speaker 1: primates like chimpanzees do not have the same use for
Speaker 1: tracking eye gaze as early humans may have had. Uh So,
Speaker 1: in fact, like there may be a detriment to having that.
Speaker 1: I like, you may not be able to be as sneaky,
Speaker 1: like if you if it's hard to see where your
Speaker 1: gaze is, it's hard to see like where you're looking at,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's makes it a little easier to be sneaky,
Speaker 1: like if you see some food and you want to
Speaker 1: grab it or something. Wait, so I'm reading up of
Speaker 1: lowland gorillas possessed some degree of depigmentation, with eleven point
Speaker 1: five percent of averted gazing eyes showing a completely white
Speaker 1: scal sclera a lot of human Well, but this is
Speaker 1: like this probably is from a sample of something. Um
Speaker 1: that's just like a quick there's no way there, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's well, this isn't guerrillas, but it's probably a specific
Speaker 1: type of gorilla like lowland versus mountains. And also I
Speaker 1: just like I literally was just googling it, so I
Speaker 1: don't have the context at all, but it seems like
Speaker 1: western Lowland and mountain gorilla faces were acquired. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: I wonder if, like they have in their populations, they
Speaker 1: have a specific kind of selective pressure that makes it
Speaker 1: more beneficial for them to have be able to better
Speaker 1: track their I gaze. Yeah, and it also is related
Speaker 1: to direct says averted gazes or something. It looks like
Speaker 1: that's this is so interesting. I'm fascinated by that, just
Speaker 1: like gorillas with whites in their eyes, and it's uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's intense. It's an intense it really is.
Speaker 1: Once you it's like the yel ship bricks. When you
Speaker 1: see it, like when you realize that that's not normal,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh my gosh. It actually brings me to
Speaker 1: an article that says the scientific reason the Internet wants
Speaker 1: to bang this handsome gorilla, Oh my god, and it's
Speaker 1: they break it down into the fact that the uh
Speaker 1: sclera are white or something. Yeah, okay, I mean I
Speaker 1: guess so it looks more human. I guess it makes
Speaker 1: gorillas sexier. All right, that's that's far. Japanese women go
Speaker 1: ape over surprisingly handsome gorilla. This is from this is how,
Speaker 1: this is how how desperate women are kidding. I'll check
Speaker 1: this zoo. It's a. It's a. It's a bad sign
Speaker 1: for bumble and tinder if people are just like pulling
Speaker 1: up the zop Jesus. They made a pillow in the
Speaker 1: shape of shabani for women to sleep with, so I
Speaker 1: know to avoid it. What's the address? Well, this was
Speaker 1: Japan Times. It was like an article about it. But
Speaker 1: send me the links so I know never to go there.
Speaker 1: You're like, yeah, send me the link. I don't want
Speaker 1: to go there. I'm not going to get a body pillow.
Speaker 1: How much does it cost? Um? Yeah, but in a
Speaker 1: catered species in the canines like wild wolves coyote as
Speaker 1: you can actually see as their eyes become have a
Speaker 1: higher um contrast between their pupils and the rest of
Speaker 1: their eyes. Is it tracts with the more social species.
Speaker 1: So wild wolves and coyotes are both highly social. They
Speaker 1: form packs, a lot of their survival depends on how
Speaker 1: well they work as a team, and they actually have
Speaker 1: much higher contrast eyes between their pupils and their irises,
Speaker 1: which it's a similar function as the sclera. So instead
Speaker 1: of having a white sclera like humans, they'll have like
Speaker 1: a light yellow iris in a in a black pupil,
Speaker 1: so their eye movement can be tracked. And among the
Speaker 1: canid species, wolves and coyotes are the most social and
Speaker 1: cooperative and so more solitary canids like you know, wild
Speaker 1: dogs will have lower contrast eyes. That's so, that's so
Speaker 1: wild that dogs are the less social, like not not
Speaker 1: not like domesticated dogs. Yeah yeah, but like what but
Speaker 1: what are what are our domesticated dogs descendants from wolves
Speaker 1: or from the wild dogs ancestor, But wild dogs aren't
Speaker 1: as closely related to domesticated dogs as it depends on
Speaker 1: the type of wild dogs. So there are some highly
Speaker 1: social wild dogs, and some wild dogs may actually come
Speaker 1: from very early domesticated dogs. It's unclear, like dingoes maybe
Speaker 1: came from early early domesticated dogs. Wild dogs look crazy,
Speaker 1: like they look so weird. They look like they have
Speaker 1: like these big circular ears, like huge circular ears compared
Speaker 1: to their face and there there. Yeah, and their face
Speaker 1: looks like almost like hyena, like you know, like the
Speaker 1: hyenas often but they're another example of like canad because
Speaker 1: wild dogs do actually like the African wild dog uh
Speaker 1: does is pretty social because like they do have somewhat
Speaker 1: high contrasting eyes, maybe not as much as wolves and coyotes,
Speaker 1: but some other examples of like of canids that are
Speaker 1: not that social. Foxes aren't as social. Main wolves aren't
Speaker 1: as social. They will not necessarily have as high contrast
Speaker 1: of an eye as wolves. A really wild looking canaid
Speaker 1: species is the short eared dog. It does not look
Speaker 1: like you would expect a canine to. Look what did
Speaker 1: you say? Maned wolves? Main wolves are one of the
Speaker 1: one of the canaid species. Uh, they're they're wild looking,
Speaker 1: they have really long legs, stunt and then oh yeah,
Speaker 1: those are the weird the weird legged ones. And what
Speaker 1: was the one you just said to have that short
Speaker 1: short eared dogs? Just just google Google and image of
Speaker 1: short ear done. I'm like looking up all of these.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, what what is that? It is not related?
Speaker 1: Not this is an example of a wild Canada who
Speaker 1: is not at all related to domesticated dogs. So this
Speaker 1: is a u. I think this is the South American
Speaker 1: uh candid species, and I think actually pretty, it's like
Speaker 1: a pretty primitive species of Canada. But yeah they are,
Speaker 1: they're pretty. They're mixed with like a with a pig
Speaker 1: or something, yeah, or like a or like an ant eater. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're funny looking. But you if you look
Speaker 1: at their eyes, you can see it's like you cannot
Speaker 1: really see the pupil out well. They also there aren't
Speaker 1: that many pictures of them either. Yeah, they're they're very rare.
Speaker 1: They're hard to spot, very elusive, very interesting to see
Speaker 1: how that tracks. And I wonder, like and dogs, like
Speaker 1: even in sort of domesticated dogs, whether that affects because
Speaker 1: like domesticated dogs have all sorts of different eye colors.
Speaker 1: My dog has like brown eyes that almost like perfectly
Speaker 1: blend with her pupils. It's really hard to see her
Speaker 1: pupils unless you're like really staring deep into her eyes
Speaker 1: like I do every day. Um, but I wonder because
Speaker 1: she does not have a good relationship with other dogs.
Speaker 1: I mean, part of that is she was attacked by
Speaker 1: a couple of dogs and so she's just like she's done.
Speaker 1: Um but I wonder if part of her, like because
Speaker 1: she seems to have trouble with other dogs, even friendly ones.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if like dogs with eyes that where
Speaker 1: their eye gaze is harder to track. I wonder if
Speaker 1: they ever have more problems socializing with other dogs because
Speaker 1: the other dog can't read their body languages, which I
Speaker 1: don't want my dog compassed right here. Who, I just
Speaker 1: woke up from a nap. I'm sorry. Her eyes are
Speaker 1: very dark and she also doesn't interact with other dogs
Speaker 1: very much. But it's because she's more scared, I think,
Speaker 1: you know. No, Yeah, Cookie is also scared. So we
Speaker 1: have a sample size of two, which, as we know,
Speaker 1: it to draw conclusions poppies science. Yeah, but I don't know,
Speaker 1: because I I I should probably have looked into this
Speaker 1: before I started recording him, just like maybe it's like this,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's like this and I love science. Uh
Speaker 1: but yeah, because we do. We do sound like Twitter, right,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, just wild conjecture with no evidence,
Speaker 1: just like I wonder if it's like this, but it
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, because dogs use each other's body
Speaker 1: language a lot, I think, much more than like facial expression,
Speaker 1: other than like say, they're when they snarl and they
Speaker 1: flash those white teeth, that's easy to see and that's
Speaker 1: an easy expression in their ear position, but they also
Speaker 1: look at each other's like body posture tail position like there,
Speaker 1: whether their hair is up or down, just their overall
Speaker 1: body language. It really helps dogs to communicate. But I
Speaker 1: really do wonder about the eye gaze thing. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: look into that wild how attentive um dogs are to
Speaker 1: body language and how lacking men at clubs are language.
Speaker 1: So like if you say, say, like men are dogs,
Speaker 1: that would actually be a compliment because and they would
Speaker 1: be like really paying attention to you and really toil
Speaker 1: and yeah, like like you're you're a dog. But that's
Speaker 1: good because like you're paying attention to the cues I'm
Speaker 1: throwing out there. So, uh, before we go, I have
Speaker 1: to reveal the answer to last week's mystery animal sound game,
Speaker 1: which is a new thing I'm doing. And I've been
Speaker 1: on the show before season three. Um wait season yeah,
Speaker 1: season three. Don't worry, guys, I got this podcast in control.
Speaker 1: And so every week I am playing a mystery animal
Speaker 1: sound and people can guess from home, ask their coworkers,
Speaker 1: their family, uh, call up your local library and try
Speaker 1: to find out who is making that animal sound. So
Speaker 1: first I want to reveal the answer to last week's sound.
Speaker 1: So who do you think is talking there? Well, now,
Speaker 1: that I've seen a shortier dog that sounds like something weird.
Speaker 1: That dog, it just sounds like so when screaming with
Speaker 1: their jaw like all the way open. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: how I wake up every morning. Actually, I just like
Speaker 1: from deep slumber into the existential dread. Yes, So the
Speaker 1: answer is actually the New Guineas Singing Dog. Congratulations to
Speaker 1: everyone who gets the right answer. There is actually a
Speaker 1: bit of a tie this week's We have four winners.
Speaker 1: That is Shana, Jared Miller, Michael Daniels, and Instagram user
Speaker 1: open Road before me. Great job you guys, great guesses.
Speaker 1: So the New Guinea Singing Dog is a dog that
Speaker 1: looks similar to a dingo, but is considered to be
Speaker 1: a breed of domesticated dog and not its own species.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, New Guinea singing Dog. It looks like
Speaker 1: a dingo, but it's not a dingo, and it's so cute,
Speaker 1: very cute. Uh. It has this really haunting call. It's
Speaker 1: one of the rarest breeds of dogs in the world,
Speaker 1: with an ancient lineage. It was in fact once thought
Speaker 1: to be a separate species of canad but they are
Speaker 1: in fact a breed of dog that has a segment
Speaker 1: of its population, living fairly and often there. They like
Speaker 1: live cohabitate with humans, and instead of having a single owner,
Speaker 1: they live like in a village amongst humans um and
Speaker 1: so their howl, unlike other like wolf or doghowls, utilizes
Speaker 1: a pulsed, high frequency trill, which gives it that like
Speaker 1: rattling sound, like it's about to eat your face in
Speaker 1: a monster movie. That's wild. So onto our new mystery
Speaker 1: animal sound of the weak. Uh. Here is a hint.
Speaker 1: This may sound like a machine gun, but unless you're
Speaker 1: an insect, the only thing you'll really have to worry
Speaker 1: about is getting smacked in the face by its enormous tail,
Speaker 1: which is I guess a kind of specific hint. I
Speaker 1: hope it's helpful. Anyways, here's the sound. Well, that's my
Speaker 1: dog gets you. That sound, that's that's my dog Cookie.
Speaker 1: It's okay, I wasn't talking about you behind your back.
Speaker 1: I wasn't. I was okay, here we go. Nice. That
Speaker 1: definitely sounded like a machine gun. So if it's a
Speaker 1: machine gun, it's definitely American. And it's some kind of animal.
Speaker 1: That's that's another hint. Incredible, Yeah, it's it's not a gun.
Speaker 1: And it kind of sounds a little bit like not
Speaker 1: just like a gun, but like a computer game gun,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, we're like cartoony. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: do you have any guests this Polo? Oh? And he
Speaker 1: said it's so it has a tail. I'm sort of
Speaker 1: so is it some sort of lizard? That doesn't make sense?
Speaker 1: I don't know why I said that that makes a
Speaker 1: machine gun sound, that has a tail. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. Well, you can find out next
Speaker 1: week or maybe I'll tell you after the show, but
Speaker 1: you have to get a secret. Okay, okay, okay, next Wednesday,
Speaker 1: I'll reveal the answer. And if you think you the listener,
Speaker 1: think you may have an idea, a gift, or even
Speaker 1: if you have a question or a picture of your pet,
Speaker 1: you can write to me at Creature feature Pot at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com, Creature feature Pot on Instagram, I'm creat
Speaker 1: your feet pot on Twitter. That's eighteenth that is something
Speaker 1: very different plan. Where can the people find you? I'm
Speaker 1: at Polo Vignal and everywhere. P A l l A
Speaker 1: v I g U n A l A N. That's
Speaker 1: on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, I'm on clubhouse now I do
Speaker 1: shows on Clubhouse. But yeah, just check me out. I
Speaker 1: put my my shows up on my website pologanland dot com.
Speaker 1: Check it out. It's very funny. And you'll never know
Speaker 1: it though, because I'm gonna edit her out and pretend
Speaker 1: like all of her jokes. Uh. And yeah, you can
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at Katie Golden um. And let's
Speaker 1: see what else do I do at the end of
Speaker 1: these shows? Oh yeah, Uh, if you enjoyed the show
Speaker 1: and you want to give me a rating review, I
Speaker 1: really appreciate that. That really does help with the robots
Speaker 1: that go through the algorithm and they're like, hey, this
Speaker 1: show is good. Uh. And I read all of them
Speaker 1: and I really appreciate them. I mean, it warms my
Speaker 1: heart to see your feedback, even when you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: stop stop talking about how much you like to eat pizza.
Speaker 1: We get it. Uh. And thank you to the Space
Speaker 1: Classics for their super awesome song Exo Alumina. 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 Hey guess what anywhere anywhere you listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts, I don't judge you. I'm not the podcast police.
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not. I'm not watching you from the darkness.
Speaker 1: See you next Wednesday by