Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature, feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show non Terrestrial Extraterrestrial. These non
Speaker 1: alien life forms look more alien than the aliens in Avatar.
Speaker 1: From gloopy ghosts to glowing alien eyes, these animals may
Speaker 1: give us a hint at what could be in store
Speaker 1: for us on alien planets. Discover this and more as
Speaker 1: we answer the age old question it's the Holy Grail
Speaker 1: just a pile of Snot joining me today is friend
Speaker 1: of the show, particle physicist and host of Daniel and
Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe, Daniel Whitson, Welcome, Thank you very much,
Speaker 1: happy to be here and happy to join in the blasphemy.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be a lot of things spitting God's eye
Speaker 1: on this episode, I believe. And we've actually talked about
Speaker 1: this a bit. I've been a guest co host on
Speaker 1: your show, Daniel and Jorgey Explain the Universe, and we've
Speaker 1: chatted from time to time about maybe the possibility of
Speaker 1: alien life. What do you think about that? Do you
Speaker 1: think that it's plausible that there are aliens out there.
Speaker 1: Are you a firm believer or are you a skeptic
Speaker 1: or are you a hoper? I am both a skeptic
Speaker 1: and a hoper. I think that it's quite plausible that
Speaker 1: there could be alien life out there, just because of
Speaker 1: the mathematics. We know that the universe is huge. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are trillions of galaxies out there. Each one has
Speaker 1: hundreds of billions of stars, and we now know that
Speaker 1: most of those stars have planets, many planets, and frequently
Speaker 1: they will have earthlike planets. So the sheer number of
Speaker 1: places that lifelike hours could evolve is overwhelming. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, we haven't found any of it, and we
Speaker 1: don't really know what the chances are for life to
Speaker 1: evolve on some earthlike planet. Is it one in two
Speaker 1: is it one in a gazillion. We just don't know.
Speaker 1: So I'd love for there to be life out there
Speaker 1: to talk to alien physicists about the secrets of the universe,
Speaker 1: but we just don't know. Well, here's a gotcha question.
Speaker 1: If there's life out there, why haven't they called us?
Speaker 1: I mean, they haven't called you. I've been chatting with
Speaker 1: them for years, Katie. I knew I wasn't in the
Speaker 1: intergalactic group chat. But it is a great question, it's
Speaker 1: a deep question, and it's a famous question. It's basically
Speaker 1: the Fermi paradox. Fermi, a physicist from decades ago, said, Look,
Speaker 1: if there's so many planets and stars out there, and
Speaker 1: the universe is quite old, billions of years old, plenty
Speaker 1: of time for civilizations to flourish and explore the galaxy,
Speaker 1: why has nobody contacted us yet? And of course here
Speaker 1: we have to put in a corner all the theories
Speaker 1: of maybe pilots seeing UFOs suggesting that they actually are here,
Speaker 1: assuming that none of them have contacted us, it's a
Speaker 1: great question, why haven't they? And there's a whole variety
Speaker 1: of theories suggesting that maybe aliens are maybe alien civilization
Speaker 1: is just sort of short lived, or maybe they're so
Speaker 1: alien that they're contacting us in a way we can't
Speaker 1: even imagine. Maybe their messages are washing over us right now,
Speaker 1: we just don't hear them. I choose to believe that
Speaker 1: whenever I'm missing a sock and I know I put
Speaker 1: it in the washer and it's just gone. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's I put two in the washer and one comes out,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure a lot of people have experienced this.
Speaker 1: I believe that there is some kind of alien interference
Speaker 1: there where they are trying to do some sort of
Speaker 1: you know, flattening of a wavelength to communicate with us,
Speaker 1: but then all they're getting is a pile of socks,
Speaker 1: and so they think that we are a very sock
Speaker 1: based society on Earth. And actually I have a physics
Speaker 1: based explanation for your missing socks. Yes. No, I think
Speaker 1: they've all been sucked up into the hose zone layer
Speaker 1: in the upper atmosphere. Good. Yes, very good. No. It's
Speaker 1: a really fun question whether they're aliens and what they're like,
Speaker 1: and it also sort of reflects what we think about aliens,
Speaker 1: like we are capable of thinking about aliens and searching
Speaker 1: for aliens essentially only in the way that we can
Speaker 1: think about aliens. But there's a possibility that aliens could
Speaker 1: be much weirder than we could possibly imagine, biologically, technically, culturally,
Speaker 1: in every sort of avenue. And I think that some
Speaker 1: evidence to back that up is that we keep finding
Speaker 1: stuff on our planet on Earth that is so alien
Speaker 1: to us that they are like in those sort of
Speaker 1: common depictions of aliens the most. You know, things that
Speaker 1: I see are things like basically a humanoid but green,
Speaker 1: with bigger eyes and maybe a huge head. You know,
Speaker 1: there are some more creative portrayals of aliens. One of
Speaker 1: my favorites actually is in the more recent movie Nope.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've seen that. Have you seen that, Daniel,
Speaker 1: I've not seen. Highly recommend Nope to you because the
Speaker 1: depiction of the alien is really fun, I think. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's scary but also really fun because it is I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say too much because I don't want to
Speaker 1: spoil it, but it's it's all They did somewhat base
Speaker 1: it in marine biology, but you wouldn't necessarily know that
Speaker 1: watching the movie, and it's it's it's just a very
Speaker 1: delightful take on alien life. But yeah, our imagination is
Speaker 1: often like, well, maybe it's like humans but blue and
Speaker 1: tall and they ride pterodactyls, and as you know, that's fun.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say that's a bad way to imagine things.
Speaker 1: But maybe that's not what it's like, and we only
Speaker 1: need to look at our own animals here on Earth,
Speaker 1: especially the animals we find in the oceans, because they
Speaker 1: have had a very different evolutionary path from us, and
Speaker 1: it results in things that to us terrestrial animals look
Speaker 1: very alien. And one I want to start with looks
Speaker 1: I mean, it looks alien in sort of a like
Speaker 1: I feel like in the sixties there were a lot
Speaker 1: of illustrations of alien planets that were just kind of surreal.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'd be like covers to some weird book that
Speaker 1: you'd find at like a used bookstore. And this one
Speaker 1: kind of gives me that vibe of these just super
Speaker 1: surreal imaginings of like it's an alien, but it's just
Speaker 1: a bunch of weird flanges. And it is called the
Speaker 1: malibe Veritas, and it well, I've shared an image of
Speaker 1: it with you, Daniel, how would you describe this thing?
Speaker 1: It looks like those toys used to throw against the
Speaker 1: wall that would stick and then sort of roll down
Speaker 1: the wall bit by. I mean, it just looks like
Speaker 1: a sticky blob sticky hands, Yeah, sticky hands exactly. And
Speaker 1: you know, your comment about it looking like the sixties
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if our depiction of alien our imagination
Speaker 1: of aliens, basically just depends on what the artists would
Speaker 1: drug the artists recently, Yeah, I mean, I think it
Speaker 1: is interesting, and maybe the drug is somehow stimulating parts
Speaker 1: of the brain that haven't been active since we ourselves
Speaker 1: were in the ocean and we were surrounded by things
Speaker 1: like this. That's not very scientific, but I like to
Speaker 1: think that way. But yeah, well, how long ago was
Speaker 1: this discovered? How long have we been aware of the
Speaker 1: middlibivorids and it's bizarre alien sticky hands. Now, we have
Speaker 1: been aware of it since the late eighteen hundreds. I
Speaker 1: believe that doesn't mean it is something that's well known.
Speaker 1: So it is a new to brink, which is a
Speaker 1: type of sea slug. Now, what I'm seeing here is
Speaker 1: basically it is this pale green thing that has like
Speaker 1: a flat, translucent pancake for a head, and then off
Speaker 1: of that is a long tube, and then coming off
Speaker 1: the tube are these like little paddles that kind of
Speaker 1: go down its sides, and there's six seven seven of
Speaker 1: them on each side. I'm just describing what I'm seeing
Speaker 1: in this photo. And we're sure this thing is not
Speaker 1: actually an alien. I mean, if aliens actually came to
Speaker 1: Earth and land in the oceans, would marine biologists just
Speaker 1: be like, look at the weird things our oceans can produce. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we would probably have no way of knowing
Speaker 1: unless we could somehow trace any Like It's not like
Speaker 1: we could necessarily find alien DNA and no, it's alien
Speaker 1: DNA if they're using the same amino acids that we ease.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean we wouldn't necessarily know. I'm going
Speaker 1: to say the fact that they were able to track
Speaker 1: it to other species of Neoda branks and sea slugs
Speaker 1: means that it would have to be all or nothing,
Speaker 1: Like every sea slug would have to be an alien
Speaker 1: or none of them are, which you know, jury's out
Speaker 1: on that. But and do we understand the form of this,
Speaker 1: like why does it have a transparent pancake head? Can
Speaker 1: we understand everything that this thing is about in terms
Speaker 1: of like it's evolution, you know, it has to have
Speaker 1: this kind of head to survive this kind of experience
Speaker 1: or this kind of environment. Or is it really just
Speaker 1: like the random walk that evolution can do through time. Well,
Speaker 1: we don't know everything about it, but we do know
Speaker 1: some things, and we do know about it's weird pancake head,
Speaker 1: So it has this weird disc like protuberance on its
Speaker 1: head and it's called the oral veil. So it has
Speaker 1: actually lost its radula teeth, so ragula or like it's
Speaker 1: like a little circle teeth that you find on things
Speaker 1: like snails and slugs, and it does not have a ragula,
Speaker 1: doesn't have these teeth, and so instead it uses this
Speaker 1: disc of very thin flesh as a net, so it
Speaker 1: kind of casts this out searches through the substrate. It
Speaker 1: actually likes to be on the ocean floor, not the
Speaker 1: deep ocean, but just like you know, sort of a
Speaker 1: medium level ocean floor. It can swim freely, but it
Speaker 1: spends most of its time snooting around in the substrate,
Speaker 1: in the sand of the ocean floor, and it'll stick
Speaker 1: this weird disc out onto the sand, onto the substrate.
Speaker 1: And can it eat pancakes with its pancake head? That
Speaker 1: would be a door. I don't know of it eating pancakes.
Speaker 1: I think they'd have to be very small pancakes, maybe
Speaker 1: like miniature crepes. But Communion Wafers commons this is well,
Speaker 1: it's funny you mentioned this because there is a species
Speaker 1: of Malibe that gets a little bit religious or at
Speaker 1: least has a cult like following. So uh, but for
Speaker 1: for most malibe, this oral veil, they lay it out there,
Speaker 1: they're searching, and then it has all these papillae. So
Speaker 1: popila are just sort of sensory buds on something. We
Speaker 1: have papillae on our tongues. There's popila on a lot
Speaker 1: of different things. Um, but these ones are specifically to
Speaker 1: detect prey. And then once one of these are triggered by, say,
Speaker 1: like a tiny crustacean, it quickly retracts its oral veil
Speaker 1: like a big net that you're casting in, and it
Speaker 1: pulls in its prey like a teeny tiny crustacean, and
Speaker 1: it eats it. So it is a predator, which I
Speaker 1: always I find it just a little extra creepy whenever
Speaker 1: we find something that's weird looking that is a predator. Mm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very sneaky. It doesn't look ferocious. No, it looks
Speaker 1: like you could just sort of step on it and
Speaker 1: move on. I mean we could. But how big is
Speaker 1: this thing? Is it like the size of a bathtub
Speaker 1: or the size of your hand. Gosh, if it was,
Speaker 1: I would just I would leave Earth. But no, it's
Speaker 1: this one species very inside, this one, the voritus species
Speaker 1: is about I think it's a Yeah, it's fifteen centimeters
Speaker 1: long or around six inches long, so it's not that big,
Speaker 1: but it's also not like microscopic, so it's it is.
Speaker 1: It is a thing, right Like, I feel like six
Speaker 1: inches is definitely a threshold for me where if I
Speaker 1: find it crawling on me, I'm up set. Especially if
Speaker 1: it hunts in packs, right, like, five thousand of these
Speaker 1: things could probably take you down. Well, I don't know
Speaker 1: that they hunt in packs, but they do congregate, so
Speaker 1: especially for mating. Now, there are many species of Malibe
Speaker 1: that are found throughout the Indo Pacific tropical oceans. One
Speaker 1: of them is called Malibe leoneida. It is it can
Speaker 1: vary from sort of a greenish color to a pinkish color,
Speaker 1: and they can sometimes be found in these large clusters
Speaker 1: in kelp forests. And they are probably clustered like this
Speaker 1: because they are exchanging genetic information with each other and
Speaker 1: a big party. They are simultaneous hermaphrodites, meaning that they
Speaker 1: have both male and female gonads at the same time,
Speaker 1: and like other species of malibe, they do mate together
Speaker 1: and fertilize their eggs internally, which they will lay in
Speaker 1: long ribbon like strands, so you know they have a
Speaker 1: fun and free love life. And do biologists speculate that
Speaker 1: if there are oceans on other planets that life may
Speaker 1: have formed in that the same sort of structures may arise.
Speaker 1: Do they think these things are inevitable? Like do we
Speaker 1: see multiple convergent forms of evolution getting to this sort
Speaker 1: of structure on Earth? Or is there just like one
Speaker 1: example here and it may be weird? You know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting because there are I don't think all biologists are
Speaker 1: agree on this, but I have seen and I personally
Speaker 1: kind of subscribe to this idea that there are things
Speaker 1: that happen so frequently that if you have similar circumstances, Right,
Speaker 1: if you have a planet that has conditions similar to
Speaker 1: Earth and you're lucky enough to get that primordial soup
Speaker 1: or like I've probably talked about on the show before,
Speaker 1: it's probably more of a primordial baklava, just these layers
Speaker 1: of mineral or rock in between which these little protein
Speaker 1: chains kind of hide out and form these chains and
Speaker 1: then are able to start to create sort of the
Speaker 1: building blocks of life, the DNA strands. And so once
Speaker 1: you have that, I think a lot of these structures,
Speaker 1: given the same pressures, are pretty inevitable. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: one of the I don't know if you can describe
Speaker 1: it as alien because it's so familiar to us, but
Speaker 1: it is very strange is the octopus. And when we
Speaker 1: see the octopus, we're like, oh, it's like a little
Speaker 1: noodly puppy that we found in the seat. Because it's
Speaker 1: got these big eyes. It's very kind of curious. You
Speaker 1: can sort of almost feel the octopus's emotions in a
Speaker 1: way by watching its body language. There's this idea that
Speaker 1: maybe they dream because they change their color patterns in
Speaker 1: their sleep, and it seems to be like maybe they're
Speaker 1: having a dream about hunting because the color patterns on
Speaker 1: their skin they're chromatophores that change color, are do sort
Speaker 1: of a hunting pattern while they're asleep, and then they play.
Speaker 1: They like will toss objects in water over and over again,
Speaker 1: which seems pretty indicative that they're doing it for fun.
Speaker 1: And they have evolved completely independently from almost all life
Speaker 1: on sort of the terrestrial part of Earth, Like we
Speaker 1: diverged from octopuses back from like basically a flat worm stage,
Speaker 1: like from this little tiny worm. So they evolved all
Speaker 1: these things independently, like these complex eyeballs. They're complex brains.
Speaker 1: They evolved that independently from all mammals, all reptiles, birds,
Speaker 1: other fish. So this idea that isn't that like a
Speaker 1: really hopeful sign for those of us who are looking
Speaker 1: forward to talking to aliens and intelligence sort of evolves
Speaker 1: in two different environments and ends up sort of similar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it is, and I think that I think
Speaker 1: what we have to think about in terms of intelligence
Speaker 1: is like when we communicate with other animals, it can
Speaker 1: be really difficult, especially when we try to communicate using
Speaker 1: human like communication methods. So there's these famous examples of
Speaker 1: trying to teach primate sign language and so far really
Speaker 1: hasn't worked that well. There's the stories of like Coco
Speaker 1: the gorilla and nim Chimski the chimpanzee, And even though
Speaker 1: there was a lot of sort of pr about Coco
Speaker 1: of having the sign language work, it wasn't really clear
Speaker 1: that it did. The project with nim Chimsky really didn't
Speaker 1: work out that well. And I think the deploy on
Speaker 1: Gnome Chomsky it is because it was actually they named
Speaker 1: it as sort of a a tse, a little bit
Speaker 1: of a jape making fun of Noam chompsy because they
Speaker 1: were trying to, I think, prove Noam Chomsky wrong to
Speaker 1: say that no chimpanzees could learn a human syntax, whereas g.
Speaker 1: Noam Chomsky was skeptical of the idea that primate language
Speaker 1: has some of the necessary characteristics that human language has.
Speaker 1: And ultimately, I think in their their project wasn't very good.
Speaker 1: It wasn't well designed. I mean, neither of these sign
Speaker 1: language projects with either of these apes were particularly well designed,
Speaker 1: so it's hard you know they were not. It was
Speaker 1: not a good study. It was not like a double
Speaker 1: blind study because like the caretakers really loved the like
Speaker 1: Coco the gorilla, and so when they would interpret the signs,
Speaker 1: they would maybe a lot of it would be sort
Speaker 1: of what they are sort of interpreting in that situation.
Speaker 1: So there was not really any evidence that the primates
Speaker 1: could use sign language in the way that humans could.
Speaker 1: But I think that it is a little bit of
Speaker 1: hubris for us to think that we could communicate with
Speaker 1: something by making them come to us and use like
Speaker 1: our form of language. And like, Also, it was pretty
Speaker 1: weird because the all the sign language studies were done
Speaker 1: sort of without the input of people who actually use
Speaker 1: sign language. So the death community was not super involved
Speaker 1: with these experiments. And sign language is not just like
Speaker 1: verbal language that's been put on your hands. It's got
Speaker 1: its whole own unique syntax and like it's a very
Speaker 1: unique language itself. And so we have this idea that
Speaker 1: you can just kind of take another either form of
Speaker 1: language or different type of intelligence and then plaster it
Speaker 1: over our own or use some kind of translation technique
Speaker 1: and then kind of just be able to understand it
Speaker 1: or communicate by doing that. But I think we have
Speaker 1: to be more flexible in that, and we would have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to meet them at least halfway, right,
Speaker 1: How do you communicate with a primate without forcing it
Speaker 1: into learning a human language. How do we kind of
Speaker 1: figure out what their communication style is? Can we actually
Speaker 1: meet them somewhere in the middle there kind of like
Speaker 1: I feel like anyone who owns a pet has experienced
Speaker 1: this where it's like if you try to talk to
Speaker 1: your dog using English, like, hey, don't do that. You know,
Speaker 1: they don't know what you're talking about. You know, they
Speaker 1: might respond your tone of voice a little bit, but
Speaker 1: ultimately they don't understand. But if you learn kind of
Speaker 1: their method of communication, right, Like I've learned sometimes when
Speaker 1: my dog is upset, if I just sort of comfortingly
Speaker 1: say like, oh, it's okay, like that doesn't do anything.
Speaker 1: But if I do a dog body language thing like
Speaker 1: do you sort of a play bow or do a
Speaker 1: little sort of a play bark or something that actually
Speaker 1: perks her up gets her to calm down more, because
Speaker 1: I think we have to hear you speak, dog, what's
Speaker 1: a playbark? Sound like? It sounds like and she loves that,
Speaker 1: And so you're kind of like, so you're using your
Speaker 1: and you know she's coming halfway to me, right because
Speaker 1: she knows when I say sit, stay, you know, so
Speaker 1: she's trying to understand me. So I owe it to
Speaker 1: her to try to understand her. And I think that
Speaker 1: is a lesson we can learn from our own animals.
Speaker 1: If we're ever fortunate enough to actually come into contact
Speaker 1: with aliens, I think we need to really understand that
Speaker 1: we may have to work very hard to reach a
Speaker 1: midway point where we can both be understood, and we
Speaker 1: might still have to pick up their poop, even but
Speaker 1: alien poop might be nice like smell like flowers or
Speaker 1: pancakes or communion wafers or something. What if pancakes has
Speaker 1: just been alien poops the whole time, But if pancakes
Speaker 1: are aliens and we've been eating them and they're mad, No,
Speaker 1: I think the takeaway is that you're saying intelligence may
Speaker 1: not be that unusual, but even intelligence here on Earth,
Speaker 1: it's hard to cross that barrier from our sort of
Speaker 1: mental frame to theirs, which makes me less less enthusiastic
Speaker 1: or less optimistic that we could learn to communicate with aliens, unless,
Speaker 1: of course, we fall in love with them first. I'm
Speaker 1: still optimistic that we could. I think it would just
Speaker 1: take a It would take a kind of flexibility, like
Speaker 1: we can't necessarily just expect to be able to decrypt
Speaker 1: some kind of alien language. We may have to figure
Speaker 1: out an entirely new method of communication. But I think
Speaker 1: it can be done. Now back to this wonderful new
Speaker 1: to brank. I did promise I was going to talk
Speaker 1: about piles of snot and here we go. So Malibe Kolmani,
Speaker 1: which is one of these weird new to branks, the
Speaker 1: ones that look like a pancake mixed with one of
Speaker 1: those like sticky hands that you throw at the wall.
Speaker 1: They are found near Malaysia, and it is dubbed the
Speaker 1: Holy Grail of newda Branks because a lot of nature
Speaker 1: photographers think it is the weirdest looking thing also the
Speaker 1: hardest to actually spot. It is described as looking like
Speaker 1: a pile of strings or snot so. Its body is
Speaker 1: actually mostly transparent, like really weirdly transparent, almost completely see through,
Speaker 1: except for this network of tubes visible throughout its ghostly body.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like do you know the Bodies exhibition
Speaker 1: where they show like the human circulatory system just kind
Speaker 1: of like on its own. It kind of looks like that.
Speaker 1: I've never been to the Body's exhibit because it scares
Speaker 1: the pants off at me. I couldn't. But this is
Speaker 1: like that, Like you see this network of tubes and
Speaker 1: it just it doesn't look like it has a body
Speaker 1: because it's so translucent. The tubes that you're seeing are
Speaker 1: actually digestive glands, and this see through appearance, and then
Speaker 1: these digestive glands may act as camouflage, making the nutabrinc
Speaker 1: look like just a pile of debris, nothing interesting. It
Speaker 1: looks to me like some sort of delicate fungus, like
Speaker 1: it might be good pizza. It would be a very
Speaker 1: interesting mouth feel to eat one of these. I bet
Speaker 1: what's interesting about this and makes me think of aliens
Speaker 1: is that when you look at this, what all we're
Speaker 1: really seeing are its digestive glands, because that's all we
Speaker 1: can see, and so our understanding of what this creature
Speaker 1: is is only based on the thing that we can see.
Speaker 1: And I know that in astrophysics and particle physics sometimes
Speaker 1: it's hard to to see something, or our perception of
Speaker 1: the thing that we're seeing in the universe is made
Speaker 1: more complex by the fact that we're only seeing a
Speaker 1: part of the truth. And then the real meat of
Speaker 1: the thing, whether it's like a black hole or a
Speaker 1: planetary body, is only really defined by the stuff that
Speaker 1: we see around it, the stuff that we see that
Speaker 1: is visible. Like we can see the outline of this
Speaker 1: sea slug by its digestive system, but we can't actually
Speaker 1: see the flesh of the sea slug. It's sort of weird.
Speaker 1: I always wonder why things become transparent, like evolutionarily, why
Speaker 1: would you want people to get to see your inner bits.
Speaker 1: It sort of makes you more vulnerable or like they
Speaker 1: know like where to bite you to get you. It
Speaker 1: seems to be like a. It's a nice defense layer
Speaker 1: to not be transparent. It's an interesting idea because a
Speaker 1: lot of times transparency helps as sort of pattern and disruption. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you are, say neuter brank shaped, something that
Speaker 1: sees you is going to have an instinct to go
Speaker 1: after that pattern, like, this is a pattern. I recognize.
Speaker 1: This slug shape is good. It's like when you see
Speaker 1: something that is vaguely bagel shaped or spaghetti shaped, you're like,
Speaker 1: that's food. I eat that. But then if it's sort
Speaker 1: of transparent, but you only see the inner workings of it,
Speaker 1: especially when it's kind of like huddled up somewhere, like
Speaker 1: with these photos, the photographers are intentionally trying to get
Speaker 1: it against a more neutral background so that you can
Speaker 1: actually see what it is. But in the first photo
Speaker 1: you can see it's kind of just intermingled with a
Speaker 1: bunch of coral. And so because there's no clear pattern
Speaker 1: to this thing, it's not necessarily going to register. So
Speaker 1: even if you could technically see its inner workings, it
Speaker 1: has disrupted the typical pattern that predators look for. And
Speaker 1: so you actually see this also in frogs like glass
Speaker 1: frogs that are transparent, like to us, it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you can see all of its little organs going like
Speaker 1: you would know where to if you were a froggy murderer,
Speaker 1: you'd know exactly where to stab. But if you're a predator,
Speaker 1: you're not really looking for a frog heart. You are
Speaker 1: looking for frog shape. And if that's not pattern matching
Speaker 1: to what you imagine a frog to look like, you
Speaker 1: are less likely to have your predator instinct triggered, and
Speaker 1: then you are not going to go after it. So
Speaker 1: tell me about this weird thing? What about this makes
Speaker 1: you feel like aliens? One gives you an alien vibe?
Speaker 1: About this just because it's weird? Or is there something
Speaker 1: specifically about it that if you saw it, you think like,
Speaker 1: is this extraterrestrial? I think what makes me think about
Speaker 1: aliens is if we ever find an alien, there may
Speaker 1: be parts of the alien that are not visible to
Speaker 1: us or detectable to us, and only other only certain
Speaker 1: other parts of the aliens. Like what if we are
Speaker 1: only able to see certain aspects of the alien when
Speaker 1: we think that we either don't recognize it as alien
Speaker 1: life or don't recognize that, hey, this is just its
Speaker 1: digestive system, whereas the rest of it is either not visible,
Speaker 1: or some other kind of weird thing going on. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of weird stuff in the
Speaker 1: universe like that I barely understand in terms of matter. Now,
Speaker 1: in terms of biology, I find it difficult to believe
Speaker 1: that an animal could exist on some other dimension than
Speaker 1: just one. But you know, there's so much I don't
Speaker 1: know about the universe, and especially like how life could
Speaker 1: be presented in the universe, that I could believe that
Speaker 1: we might if we ever see an alien. We might
Speaker 1: only see sort of traces of it or evidence that
Speaker 1: it's there, But then we can't actually see the alien
Speaker 1: itself because it is not It exists in a way
Speaker 1: that is not perceivable by our eyes or by our instruments.
Speaker 1: And maybe even these weird little guys have aspects to
Speaker 1: them that we can't see. Who knows. I mean, we
Speaker 1: are always discovering new things about animals that we even
Speaker 1: know about that are not visible to us. There are
Speaker 1: animals that biofluoress that we are just discovering, not because
Speaker 1: we lacked the technology to see it before, but because
Speaker 1: we lacked the creativity to collect a bunch of roadkill
Speaker 1: and then flash UV lights on it to see if
Speaker 1: they glowed. And now that we're doing that, we're finding
Speaker 1: a lot of animals biofluoress that we didn't realize that
Speaker 1: they did, and we had no way of knowing until
Speaker 1: we actually looked for it. What kind of roadkill? What
Speaker 1: kind of road kill glues in the dark? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean platypuses glow in the dark. I think wombats glow
Speaker 1: in the dark. I think Tasmanian devils, sharks, some issues
Speaker 1: of shark, some species of frog. So yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 1: It's a great lesson that even critters here on Earth
Speaker 1: can do things that we can't imagine, and so of
Speaker 1: course aliens might be doing even stranger things out there.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, Well, we are going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but when we get back, we're gonna look at a
Speaker 1: pretty fishy alien. So we are talking now about anomalops
Speaker 1: ketop tron. In the light of the day or in
Speaker 1: a flashlight, this looks like a pretty normal fish. It's
Speaker 1: not that exciting. So why am I bringing it up.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I want to bore you. So it
Speaker 1: grows to be about fourteen inches long or thirty five centimeters.
Speaker 1: It has brownish scales, black fins, and other than having
Speaker 1: pretty large eyes, it's really not that interesting looking. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't really live in the sunlight. It is actually
Speaker 1: found in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean at depths
Speaker 1: up to one thousand, three hundred feet or around four
Speaker 1: hundred meters, and it lives mostly in sort of dark caves,
Speaker 1: and in the dark they look really spooky. They look
Speaker 1: like fishy aliens with evil glowing eyes. It is also
Speaker 1: known as the split fin flashlight fish, which shows you
Speaker 1: that scientists aren't exactly always wordsmiths. We know scientists are
Speaker 1: terrible at coming up with names for things, but this
Speaker 1: one does look like a really creepy fish. It looks
Speaker 1: like a fish somebody stepped on and it got mad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean. The thing that strikes me about the eyes is,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of like our perception of what an
Speaker 1: alien looks like the cartoon alien, it's like maybe a
Speaker 1: gray head and then two sort of mean green glowing eyes.
Speaker 1: They kind of have the spider Man mask look on them,
Speaker 1: where it's like, you know, just these angry green eyes
Speaker 1: and they're glowing and they're big, and this looks exactly
Speaker 1: like that. This just looks like the angry alien eyes
Speaker 1: that I see sort of in cartoonish depictions of aliens,
Speaker 1: and that tells you something about like our whole vision
Speaker 1: of aliens. You know, when people reach for the concept
Speaker 1: of an alien, maybe they're really just thinking about the
Speaker 1: weirdest kind of critter they've ever seen, which means we
Speaker 1: haven't even really done the job imaginationally of coming up
Speaker 1: with an idea that is truly beyond our planet. I
Speaker 1: have a completely unverified theory about glowing alien, big glowing
Speaker 1: alien eyes, and that I think it taps into maybe
Speaker 1: a fear we had going way back of eyes that
Speaker 1: we could see at dust or at night that would glow.
Speaker 1: Have that it eyes that glow at night that belong
Speaker 1: to like mammals, usually big cats. They glow because they
Speaker 1: have something called the tepetum lucidum, and it's light kind
Speaker 1: of enters the eye and it does this double refraction
Speaker 1: so that you get more light in the eye so
Speaker 1: they can see better, but also that light is reflected
Speaker 1: back out and that's why the light glows. But a
Speaker 1: lot of predators have this so they can see at night,
Speaker 1: and so us as either early humans or human ancestors
Speaker 1: like when you see big glowing eyes at night, that's
Speaker 1: a predator probably looking at you. Especially if they're front
Speaker 1: facing glowing eyes, that's probably from some kind of predator that's,
Speaker 1: you know, stalking you. And so I think that big
Speaker 1: glowing eyes probably inspire a bit of fear in us
Speaker 1: that might go back way way before we ever even
Speaker 1: had a concept of aliens. And so are you saying
Speaker 1: if we meet the aliens and their eyes glow, they're
Speaker 1: more likely to be predators. If their eyes face forward,
Speaker 1: they're also more likely to be predators. So anything that
Speaker 1: looks like us we should be afraid of. If humans
Speaker 1: get off that ship, then run run. So these glowing
Speaker 1: eyes are actually not eyes at all. These are glowing
Speaker 1: sacks of bioluminescent bacteria. Yuck. Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: like a kombucha that kind of got out of hand,
Speaker 1: am I. Let's say, yuck the kombucha also not on
Speaker 1: the kombucha train. Look, I'm very sensitive to like strong flavors,
Speaker 1: especially strong sour flavors. I can't deal with yogurt. I
Speaker 1: think that I think it has I have some instinctive
Speaker 1: response to something that taste spoiled, and I get a
Speaker 1: kind of gag reflex, So now I get it. But
Speaker 1: the weird thing about this, right, I just told you
Speaker 1: that these aren't eyes, But if you look at that
Speaker 1: gift that I sent you, I'll also make all of
Speaker 1: these available in the show notes. It is blinking. It's
Speaker 1: blinking that big glowing not an eyeball. So it actually
Speaker 1: has a flap of skin and muscle that can contract
Speaker 1: and blink. So you look at this and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe this is just a bioluminescent patch, but then it
Speaker 1: blinks at you and it really looks like an eyeball.
Speaker 1: Now it is. It has puzzled researchers for a long
Speaker 1: time as to why they can blink these eyes. There
Speaker 1: are currently a few theories. But Daniel, do you have
Speaker 1: any ideas for why they might want to blink this
Speaker 1: bioluminescent patch. Yeah, I think they're charging up their laser
Speaker 1: beams to fry you. I mean they do. I think
Speaker 1: it's a fully I think it's a fully operational death fish.
Speaker 1: I mean it looks that way. And also the eyes
Speaker 1: look angry. They look not just angry, they look malevolent.
Speaker 1: They look like little demon fish that are plotting our downfall. Well,
Speaker 1: so this blinking is not done like how we blink
Speaker 1: our eyes. So we blink our eyes mainly to sort
Speaker 1: of remoisturize them to clean them so that we don't
Speaker 1: go around and just get sticky dust and junk in
Speaker 1: our very delicate, sensitive eyes all the time. This blinking
Speaker 1: seems to be a mysterious morse code that changes depending
Speaker 1: on what they are looking at, So it seems to
Speaker 1: be both a form of communication, camouflage, and also to
Speaker 1: be able to hunt their prey. Fortunately for us, they
Speaker 1: hunt zooplankton at this time and not people. What if
Speaker 1: some of your listeners are zooplankton, Now they're freaked out. Oh,
Speaker 1: I apologize to all my zooplankton listeners, but they're so
Speaker 1: small they can't rate my podcasts, so I'm not too
Speaker 1: worried about that. They look downloads are downloads, all right.
Speaker 1: So researchers have found that these fish blink at different
Speaker 1: rates when presented with prey, with predators, and in the
Speaker 1: company of their school, their group of fish. So these
Speaker 1: blinking rates seem to have an impact on the behavior
Speaker 1: of their school. So like they seem to blink at
Speaker 1: different rates and that changes which direction the school goes
Speaker 1: whether they stay or whether they kind of dart off
Speaker 1: in another direction. And we haven't really decoded what the
Speaker 1: flashlight fish is Morse code is, but we suspect it
Speaker 1: has some kind of communication with its school. And it's
Speaker 1: also blinked when a predators around to sort of put
Speaker 1: it off its track, like blinking at a rate that
Speaker 1: confuses the predator. And then it also blinks when it
Speaker 1: is around it's prey, so that it can see the
Speaker 1: prey but also doesn't scare off the prey. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: glad there's some explanation for this creeping is. I love
Speaker 1: the angle on these eyes, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, classic,
Speaker 1: like classic bad guy, you know, glowing evil eyes. I
Speaker 1: just I do love that we know they have a
Speaker 1: Morse code, and we suspect that they are communicating with it,
Speaker 1: but we don't know what it is yet. And I
Speaker 1: really wonder what we will find out if we ever
Speaker 1: decode this blinking language that these fish have and what
Speaker 1: they've been saying about us behind our backs. Maybe we
Speaker 1: should show it to gnom Chimski. Maybe the chimp can decoded, right,
Speaker 1: Maybe all these other creatures on Earth has language that
Speaker 1: we don't understand we're all talking about us. I do
Speaker 1: love the idea of Nim Chimsky becoming a linguist but
Speaker 1: also a chimpanzee at the same time. I want to
Speaker 1: I want to see Chomsky versus Chimsky. I mean, if
Speaker 1: Nim Chimsky wasn't I believe dead at this point, that
Speaker 1: would be no contest that chimp would definitely win. I mean, Chomsky,
Speaker 1: are you talking about? Chomsky is still sharp. We've had
Speaker 1: him on our podcast in a debate maybe Noam Chomsky,
Speaker 1: and when if it was a wrestling match, Chomsky would
Speaker 1: be torn to shreds. That's terrible. I don't even want
Speaker 1: to imagine wrestling a chimp. Oh my god. I know
Speaker 1: if you've seen Noam Chomsky recently, he looks like a
Speaker 1: very ancient Santa Clause, and I feel very protective. I
Speaker 1: will protect him from chimps. I'm gonna go have a
Speaker 1: communion way for to cleanse my mental power after that image.
Speaker 1: Didn't you you got didn't you get a statement from
Speaker 1: Nom Chomsky at one point for one of your books. Yeah? Absolutely.
Speaker 1: He was on our podcast and we were talking to
Speaker 1: him about how to communicate with aliens and whether they
Speaker 1: are likely to speak our language or use mathematics. He's
Speaker 1: a surprisingly responsive guy. You could just email him and
Speaker 1: he writes back, Oh, that's so nice. He's such a
Speaker 1: sweet guy. I feel bad that I even imagined chimpanzee
Speaker 1: harming Nom Chomsky. You've offended me and all the Zooplankton listeners,
Speaker 1: and really, who else is left? Please don't tell Noam
Speaker 1: Chomsky that I had talked about no Chimsky tearing him
Speaker 1: limb from limb. I don't think he would appreciate that.
Speaker 1: We wish him nothing but the best, exactly. So now
Speaker 1: on to our last alien looking animal. I'm actually not sure.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm between this looking like an alien
Speaker 1: or looking more like a galaxy or a quasar. This
Speaker 1: is the Lion's main jellyfish, and it is one of
Speaker 1: the largest jellyfish in the world and one of the
Speaker 1: longest animals in the world. How big is it? I
Speaker 1: can see from the picture that it's like long and beautiful,
Speaker 1: but I can't tell if it's like three inches long
Speaker 1: or like thirty feet long. Yeah. So there's a whole
Speaker 1: range of these jellyfish, and a lot of the jellyfish
Speaker 1: that will be found will be smaller, but there are
Speaker 1: ones that can grow to gargantuan sizes. So the bell,
Speaker 1: which is that cuplike shape on the top of the jellyfish,
Speaker 1: grows up to two point one meters or seven feet
Speaker 1: in diameter, and it's tentacles can grow to be around
Speaker 1: thirty seven meters or one hundred and twenty feet long.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, wow. And they have over a thousand tentacles.
Speaker 1: So it just looks like this forest of things. It
Speaker 1: looks like I mean when you look when we look
Speaker 1: at the colorized photos of other galaxies or you know,
Speaker 1: just these like clouds of material in the universe. To me,
Speaker 1: it kind of looks a little bit like this thing.
Speaker 1: But if this thing is like meters and meters long
Speaker 1: and there's thousands of them, then you're telling me it's
Speaker 1: like tens of thousands of total tentacle for a single
Speaker 1: for a single critter. So if each tentacle is like
Speaker 1: thirty seven meters and there's thousands of them, then you
Speaker 1: have like thirty seven thousand total meters. Yeah. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could probably wrap one of these guys around like the moon.
Speaker 1: Not that I'm saying you should. That would be animal cruelty.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and they do contain stinging cells, which sounds
Speaker 1: like a super bad time. Fortunately, the lion Maine jelly's
Speaker 1: sting is not that potent, so it's not that dangerous
Speaker 1: to humans. In fact, in small amounts, it may just
Speaker 1: feel kind of like a tingling, warm sensation maybe followed
Speaker 1: by a bit of discomfort with a lot of contact.
Speaker 1: Like if you just dive put your whole body into
Speaker 1: the forest of its tentacles, then you're probably going to
Speaker 1: have a bad time. You're probably going to experience a
Speaker 1: good amount of pain, and you'll probably want to go
Speaker 1: to a hospital, if not just to check in on
Speaker 1: why you are diving into a forest of tentacles. But
Speaker 1: these actually don't really kill people. It's really rare that
Speaker 1: it hurts people that badly because they just really aren't
Speaker 1: that potent. But they are so huge they can have
Speaker 1: a number of victims that they annoy. A single Lion's
Speaker 1: main jellyfish is so large. One specimen that kind of disintegrated,
Speaker 1: it broke up, ended up stinging over one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty people at a beach in Rye, New Hampshire. So
Speaker 1: this thing just kind of like broke up and all
Speaker 1: of its stinging tentacles and everything started floating around, and
Speaker 1: just one hundred and fifty people ended up in this
Speaker 1: dead jellyfish soup and got stunned. Yeah. See, I'm telling
Speaker 1: you it's kilometers of pain. Kilometers of pain. That sounds
Speaker 1: like a really moody book by like by a jellyfish
Speaker 1: alien exactly. Yeah. And when it's out of the water.
Speaker 1: In the water, it just looks like this weird spectral
Speaker 1: floaty ectoplasmic thing. And out of the water it kind
Speaker 1: of loses its form. It's so gelatinous and so sticky,
Speaker 1: it just kind of turns into what looks like a
Speaker 1: pile of liquid jelly and it is. It's just very
Speaker 1: it's a very strange looking thing. Now, if you google
Speaker 1: Lion's main jellyfish, you might see a photo of it
Speaker 1: that it's actually photoshopped, where like it's this tiny scuba
Speaker 1: diver next to this giant jellyfish. I think that jellyfish
Speaker 1: itself is a real photo. They've just like made the
Speaker 1: scale make it look more impressive. But that photo is fake. However,
Speaker 1: like I said before, they can get to be huge.
Speaker 1: So I don't know why people put out fake stuff
Speaker 1: about animals that are really actually extremely cool. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: the reality is weird enough people, exactly exactly, But like,
Speaker 1: do you think, because like this thing makes me think
Speaker 1: of just a an entire galaxy or quaisar if there
Speaker 1: is an animal or an intelligence that arises out of
Speaker 1: like a massive amount of material out there in the galaxy,
Speaker 1: if they have some kind of communication or relationship in
Speaker 1: terms of like physics, what like I think there's this
Speaker 1: idea of like, well, what if you could have some
Speaker 1: kind of consciousness that's like this big thing that arises
Speaker 1: from these maybe planetary bodies or stars in space that
Speaker 1: are responding to each other and communicating via these sort
Speaker 1: of like the just the laws of astrophysics. Well, if
Speaker 1: that's the case, it would be thinking extremely slowly because
Speaker 1: remember there's a speed limit to how fast information can
Speaker 1: move through the universe, the speed of light, And so
Speaker 1: if something is really really big, it'd have to think
Speaker 1: basically really really slow because like a thought would take
Speaker 1: you know, a thousand years to cross from one side
Speaker 1: of its brain to another if it's a thousand light
Speaker 1: years wide. So it would be pretty hard to have
Speaker 1: a conversation with like a galaxy sized jellyfish be like
Speaker 1: talking to a tree in or something. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: really interesting to be because you know, if that is
Speaker 1: the case, you know, that would explain why we don't
Speaker 1: have a galaxy talking to us like hey humans, yeah
Speaker 1: we're over here. But it's also reminds me of in animals,
Speaker 1: there is this concept of sort of a different way
Speaker 1: that different animals experience time. So it's something called flicker
Speaker 1: fusion rate, which is like the amount of information you
Speaker 1: can receive before it all starts to kind of blend together,
Speaker 1: so the amount of frames per second you can experience.
Speaker 1: So something like a fly, one of the reasons you
Speaker 1: can't catch it like smack it is that it can
Speaker 1: experience a lot of frames per second, which actually slows
Speaker 1: things down for it, and then having fewer frames of
Speaker 1: a second actually speeds things up. So something like a
Speaker 1: fly is experiencing things really slowly, so when you try
Speaker 1: to slap it down, it sees your hand moving towards it,
Speaker 1: you know, really slowly. This this is the theory behind
Speaker 1: like flicker fusion rate, whereas something like an elephant actually
Speaker 1: uh is seeing you know, potentially has a sees things
Speaker 1: happening much faster. Around it, So, uh, it is maybe
Speaker 1: seeing like smaller animals just kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: going high speed around it, whereas it's moving very slowly
Speaker 1: and it's got a lower frame rate and uh, and
Speaker 1: it maybe is experiencing all the world around it going
Speaker 1: really fast, um, whereas it's going at its own pace.
Speaker 1: So it's that's an interesting idea for me to be
Speaker 1: applied to. Like what if there are aliens out there
Speaker 1: or some kind of alien intelligence that spans over some
Speaker 1: large area in a in a non conventional way that
Speaker 1: we we don't think of. Intelligence is something that could
Speaker 1: happen outside of just like an animal or organic creature,
Speaker 1: but there could be some huge intelligence. It's just thinking
Speaker 1: so slowly and on such a slower rate we can't
Speaker 1: really communicate with it. Yeah, exactly. I feel that way
Speaker 1: as I get older, Like younger kids just like flipped
Speaker 1: by me and I'm just like, what was that? Oh
Speaker 1: that was my toddler. Yeah, Now that's that's how I
Speaker 1: feel like with language, Like I used to be able
Speaker 1: to catch on to slang a lot faster, but now
Speaker 1: it's like, wait, we're not saying fleek anymore. Really, by
Speaker 1: the time you and I are saying it. It's definitely
Speaker 1: it's gone not cool anymore. In fact, it might be
Speaker 1: because we're saying it that it's no longer cool. That's
Speaker 1: how you know it's jumped the shark. Well, before we go,
Speaker 1: we do have to play a little game called the
Speaker 1: Mystery Animal Sound Game or Guess Who squawk in So
Speaker 1: every week I play a mystery animal sound and you,
Speaker 1: the guest and the listener try to guess who is
Speaker 1: making that sound. It could be any animal on Earth
Speaker 1: or outside of Earth. I'm not I'm just saying if
Speaker 1: we ever hear aliens, they're fair game for this game.
Speaker 1: So last week's mystery animal sound hint was this. This
Speaker 1: is one peeved, pissed, particularly provoked pond paddler. Did you
Speaker 1: hear that? I did? It sounds like some kind of
Speaker 1: bird in distress. I'm gonna say it's a heron. You're
Speaker 1: weirdly close but also weirdly far away because this is
Speaker 1: the platypus. So congratulations to Antib and Joey P who
Speaker 1: I think are the rating champions of the animal gissing game.
Speaker 1: So the platypus is a monotrem found in Australia, like
Speaker 1: a heron. It lays eggs, and it actually has a bill,
Speaker 1: but unlike the heron, it is a mammal. These are
Speaker 1: warm blooded mammals that lay eggs. This is the same
Speaker 1: thing that other monotreams do. So montreams include platypuses and
Speaker 1: a kidnas and in a lot of ways they are
Speaker 1: like the rust of mammals, but in some ways they
Speaker 1: are very strange, such as laying their eggs, and also
Speaker 1: they do not have nipples, but they do provide their
Speaker 1: young with milk, and they do that by releasing the
Speaker 1: milk through pores in their skin. Another weird platypus thing
Speaker 1: is that males have venomous spurs on their hind legs
Speaker 1: that are incredibly painful, probably worse than the lion maine jellies.
Speaker 1: So you have more to worry about in terms of
Speaker 1: getting stung from a cute little platypus than you do
Speaker 1: from a gargantuan jellyfish. So the best thing about platypuses,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, is that they have electoral reception. They
Speaker 1: can actually sense small electrical impulses through the water with
Speaker 1: an organ in its bill, and it can locate prey
Speaker 1: such as worms or other invertebrates, even in muddy water,
Speaker 1: by detecting the electrical pulses of their muscle movements. So
Speaker 1: that is an incredible thing with these platypuses, and it
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if like there are aliens out there
Speaker 1: that have senses that humans don't have that makes it
Speaker 1: easier for them to see us, but we can't see them. Wow, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there might be parts of the universe that they can
Speaker 1: see that we can't, and so we might like weirdly
Speaker 1: glow in their senses. I just I wonder if there's
Speaker 1: like a corner of the universe where all other life
Speaker 1: is and they're having a big old party they have,
Speaker 1: like you know, an interplanetary convention, and we're just not
Speaker 1: invited because we're too far away, I know, or maybe
Speaker 1: we're just not cool. We're not saying you aren't kind
Speaker 1: of sling. That's that is planetary levels of fomo. I
Speaker 1: cannot handle that well. I do know from a physics
Speaker 1: perspective that every time we look deep into the universe,
Speaker 1: we find something weird and new and totally surprising that
Speaker 1: nobody on Earth anticipated. So I expect that if we
Speaker 1: ever do get to see the surface of alien planets.
Speaker 1: The same thing will happen so onto this week's since
Speaker 1: thory animals sound the hint is this a tiny wolf
Speaker 1: or something else? So, Daniel, do you have any guesses
Speaker 1: as to what that sounds like? A koala bear taking
Speaker 1: communion as it gets on a ufore, maybe no idea.
Speaker 1: You may be right, but you'll only find out on
Speaker 1: next week's Creature Feature. Danielle, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining me today, listeners. If you think you know what
Speaker 1: this week's mystery animals sound is, you can write to
Speaker 1: me at Creature Feature pot at gmail dot com. Daniel.
Speaker 1: Where can people find out more about you and about
Speaker 1: the universe? You can come check out our podcast at
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe of production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcast. And thank you guys so
Speaker 1: much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you
Speaker 1: leave a rating or review, I read all of them,
Speaker 1: I print them out, I plaster my walls with them,
Speaker 1: and it is making my husband very nervous as to
Speaker 1: how it's gone with me. And thanks, so be nice, y'all.
Speaker 1: Be nice when you leave a rating. There's real people
Speaker 1: out there reading the and thanks to the Space Classics
Speaker 1: for their super awesome song Exo Lumina. Creature features a
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Speaker 1: you next Wednesday.