Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today we're gonna creature size and
Speaker 1: one and two and move those who and move those
Speaker 1: bodies segments. Come on, I want to see your tentacle sweating.
Speaker 1: We're gonna see some of the most impressive animal athletic feats.
Speaker 1: Woodcocks loved to book eat dung beetles, our gymnasts. Bats
Speaker 1: do crunches every time they pee. Discover this more as
Speaker 1: we answer the Agel question are Dalton's jerks. So I
Speaker 1: know everyone's feeling a little cramped and stir crazy, and
Speaker 1: it's hard to exercise. Gyms are closed because they're cesspools
Speaker 1: of sweat and body fluids. It's hard to jog with
Speaker 1: masks on, although please do wear masks joggers. If I
Speaker 1: have to do another barrel roll out of the way
Speaker 1: of a panting jogger, I swear I'm gonna start going
Speaker 1: outside a giant hamster ball. But to inspire you to
Speaker 1: invent your own exercise routine, today we'll be exploring some
Speaker 1: of the sickest stunts that mother nature brings calibunga, backwards
Speaker 1: baseball hat, skateboards, dabs behind every funky and unbelievable animal
Speaker 1: stunt is an even more unbelievable story. So joining me
Speaker 1: today's comedian, filmmaker and podcast host of You Can Tell
Speaker 1: Me Anything, and my friend Teresa Lee. Hello, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. Yeah, it's great to have you on. So
Speaker 1: I'm really excited. I think this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: fun one. It is about movement, dances, weird stunts, parkour,
Speaker 1: things that animals do, and I think it's Uh. I've
Speaker 1: been trying to remain somewhat active in quarantine, and so
Speaker 1: I've been like looking at aerobics videos and I feel
Speaker 1: like the biggest dork because I know, like the people
Speaker 1: on the aerobics video already look goofy, and I know
Speaker 1: I look even more goofy trying to do it. I
Speaker 1: think that's the point though, right, I mean I feel
Speaker 1: like that I've always I'm never understood when people try
Speaker 1: to pick people up at the gym. To me, I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's like going into an artist studio and trying to
Speaker 1: buy a painting half painted. I'm like, yeah, don't you
Speaker 1: get me. I'm a half painted masterpiece. Thank you. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I think this self humiliation does actually burn calories, Like
Speaker 1: the more humiliated you are, the more blood flow, like
Speaker 1: to your cheeks as you're blushing out of humiliation, Like
Speaker 1: the more your heart's pumping, it's good for you. I've
Speaker 1: tried to do I've tried to like teach myself dances
Speaker 1: from K pop videos. It's very fun and it's kind
Speaker 1: of just like a way since I'm not taking class
Speaker 1: or doing anything, and I'm very lazy when it comes
Speaker 1: to like yoga or anything like that that I'm active
Speaker 1: while like I'm putting my brain into a different mode
Speaker 1: where I'm like, oh, I'm just trying to learn, but
Speaker 1: actually it's active, so that's how I get my workout.
Speaker 1: But I almost learned the whole dance, and I was
Speaker 1: feeling confident because I hadn't I don't have a mirror,
Speaker 1: so I hadn't seen myself, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: feel like I got it. So then I recorded myself
Speaker 1: on my website just to see and then I was
Speaker 1: like in media humiliation, I was like, never did just
Speaker 1: like what you want, Like you know, they practiced for
Speaker 1: days weeks to get there and then you watch it
Speaker 1: like I got it when they say dance like nobody's watching.
Speaker 1: That includes yourself, like you don't want to see. Well,
Speaker 1: you should always dance like everybody's watching and you're very good.
Speaker 1: But that's yeah, but that's how you think. But then
Speaker 1: in reality it's like, don't show this to anybody. I
Speaker 1: danced like everyone's watching and frowning at me. But you know,
Speaker 1: we all have a style. So, speaking of dancing, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about some animals who have some truly
Speaker 1: wonderful dance moves. So have you seen there's this viral
Speaker 1: video of a woodcock doing a little kind of like
Speaker 1: swiggy dance, sort of like bobbing back and forth. It
Speaker 1: looks really funky and cute. That's not photoshop. Looks wow.
Speaker 1: I mean I think that the they may have added
Speaker 1: some funky music into it. I don't think that's from nature,
Speaker 1: but just the way they're all syncd up, it's like
Speaker 1: the babies are like learning how to groove exactly. So
Speaker 1: what Teresa's watching and I'll provide this in the show
Speaker 1: notes obviously, but it is a woodcock bird dancing with
Speaker 1: I think it's her chicks. So little baby woodcocks, and
Speaker 1: they're kind of it's almost like what kind of dance
Speaker 1: movies that they're like sort of like bouncing, like bouncing
Speaker 1: back and forth, sort of shimmying. I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: like a West Side Story a little bit like oh nice. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: like if they had little like if they had fingers,
Speaker 1: I would imagine them snapping, yeah, like bobbing. It's very
Speaker 1: very jazzy. So let me let me tell you a
Speaker 1: little bit about these woodcocks and why they're dancing in
Speaker 1: such a funky way. So, woodcocks are a group of
Speaker 1: medium sized bird species found all over the world. They
Speaker 1: have long, needle like beaks and brown modeled feathers that
Speaker 1: allow them to camouflage if you feel like it's kind
Speaker 1: of they're sort of like a chunkier version of a
Speaker 1: sand piper. You know, they're they're a little they're like
Speaker 1: a much rounder meteor version of a sandpiper, if you
Speaker 1: know what a sand piper looks like. So, the American woodcock,
Speaker 1: which is I believe this video is of an American woodcock,
Speaker 1: is also known as the timberdoodle, the bog sucker, the
Speaker 1: fiddle squeak, the buck, a bog sucker, hoke um poke,
Speaker 1: and a labrador twister. You know, I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: getting trolled. I don't believe. I don't believe that these
Speaker 1: are all nicknames. I think someone just edited like the
Speaker 1: Wicky or edited the dictionary and it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to call them a bog sucker, but
Speaker 1: nobody calls them that. I think I'm getting trolled here.
Speaker 1: Did you know Shakespeare also in vented a lot of
Speaker 1: bird names. Um, that's little little known fact about Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: These all sound like made up Shakespeare in exactly, fire
Speaker 1: you bug sucker, a fiddle squeak upon both your families.
Speaker 1: This is a but hookum poke shape. So these are
Speaker 1: found in the eastern half of the US. They're usually
Speaker 1: found along young growth forests, shorelines, mud flats, and other
Speaker 1: coastal habitats. They feed on insects hidden in soft soil
Speaker 1: or sand or worms. They do love worms, so they
Speaker 1: do this bobbing, rocking motion to coax the worms to
Speaker 1: wriggle so they can find them and eat them. So
Speaker 1: we've actually talked about worm fiddling before on the show,
Speaker 1: and worm fiddling is a technique that both humans and
Speaker 1: animals use to vibrate the ground to trigg worms into
Speaker 1: moving towards the surface. So when the ground vibrates, the
Speaker 1: worms think it's either rain or a mole. Both things
Speaker 1: can kill them, like a mole can sneak up and
Speaker 1: eat them, and rain can drown them if they stay underground,
Speaker 1: so they come up to the surface. But sometimes it's
Speaker 1: a human who's like vibrating the ground with like a
Speaker 1: like they stick a fork in the ground and hit
Speaker 1: it and then it vibrates the ground and worms come up.
Speaker 1: Or it's a woodcock who has done a little boogie
Speaker 1: on the ground and it's like so each time they
Speaker 1: do the little rocking, swaying boogee moves, that's causing the
Speaker 1: sand to shift and vibrate, and it's coaxing the worms
Speaker 1: to move around so that they can find them. I
Speaker 1: have a question. So if the mole, if they think
Speaker 1: there's a mole and they think they could die, so
Speaker 1: they get go up, oh because the moles are below right,
Speaker 1: Because okay, because otherwise I'm like, aren't they just exposing themselves?
Speaker 1: But now that yeah, and either they are. I mean
Speaker 1: it's a calculation because most I guess it's sort of
Speaker 1: that most of the times it is a mole or
Speaker 1: rain that's gonna get them, but sometimes it is out
Speaker 1: of the frying pan and into the bird. So males
Speaker 1: will also so the that little dance. Even though it
Speaker 1: looks very seductive and alluring, it is not a mating dance.
Speaker 1: It is it seems to be purely functional and it's
Speaker 1: really cute. In that video, you see the little babies
Speaker 1: trying to learn that dance as well. So they it does.
Speaker 1: It does appear that they're learning from their their parents
Speaker 1: how to do that hunting technique. And it's not a
Speaker 1: mating dance. It's like the kind of dancing do when
Speaker 1: you like, just wanna I just want to dance with
Speaker 1: my girls like that exactly to get food, like on
Speaker 1: your way to food. I don't know, have you ever been.
Speaker 1: I've definitely been so excited for food. Sometimes I do
Speaker 1: a little dance all the way to attention. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I actively tork while I cook. That's how I cook. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I like to do. I do like to do a
Speaker 1: little like butt shimmy while I'm cooking when I'm really excited.
Speaker 1: So males do do a dance, It's not quite as
Speaker 1: in my opinion, it's not as cute and groovy as
Speaker 1: the warm Hunting dance, but it is pretty death defying.
Speaker 1: So they will fly up about hundred yards into the
Speaker 1: air and then zig zagged down buzzing and chirping like
Speaker 1: a stunt flyer. So it's more of a it's more
Speaker 1: of a stunt kind of thing. It's not it's not
Speaker 1: a lot of style and pizzazz to it. It's just
Speaker 1: like a it's like, check out this cool stunt and
Speaker 1: then mate with me. So the next animal I want
Speaker 1: to talk about is an animal I was reminded of
Speaker 1: when I was watching this video of the woodcock bobbing around,
Speaker 1: and that's the chameleon. Theresa, have you ever seen a
Speaker 1: chameleon walking? I feel like in zoo like I I've
Speaker 1: seen them in like exhibits, but not not in the wild. Now, well,
Speaker 1: I've never seen one in the wild either. I've only
Speaker 1: ever seen them in captivity. But you know that like
Speaker 1: that kind of bobbing walk they do where they very slow,
Speaker 1: they'll like stick a leg out and pull it back in,
Speaker 1: and stick it out and pull it back in and
Speaker 1: do the hokey pokey that kind of thing. It's a
Speaker 1: very distinctive walk. And they have that wobbly bobbly walk,
Speaker 1: but for a different reason than the woodcock. Uh. So, uh,
Speaker 1: do you want me to blow your mind with some
Speaker 1: cameleon facts? Some chameleon facts. So they are a clay
Speaker 1: of lizards with over two hundred and two species. They
Speaker 1: are found in the Old World, so not in not
Speaker 1: on the American continent, although there are feral populations in Hawaii, Florida, Texas,
Speaker 1: and California from escaped pets, which I find I always
Speaker 1: find that funny. We have the here in l A.
Speaker 1: We have the green chevron parakeets or yellowships chevron parakeets
Speaker 1: who are escaped parakeets from pets, and they've just formed
Speaker 1: a feral flock and live here now. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: have the chameleons, and we can't find them. They keep disappearing.
Speaker 1: That bird do you think you have is actually a chameleon,
Speaker 1: right right, you pick up your cell phone. Whoops, it's
Speaker 1: a Chameleon's a chameleon. So they have curly, prehensile tails,
Speaker 1: eyes that can move independently of each other, which is
Speaker 1: actually a whole interesting topic in itself. The way that
Speaker 1: chameleon eyes reconstruct an image in their brain. It's all
Speaker 1: very complicated because they have these two independently moving eyes,
Speaker 1: like two kind of sets of information that gets rearranged
Speaker 1: in their brains, which is very interesting, but I'm not
Speaker 1: going to talk about that too much today. So they
Speaker 1: have very long tongues that can be shot out of
Speaker 1: their mouths like a harpoon, and many species can change
Speaker 1: their color. So a little bit about their color changing,
Speaker 1: because I think this is one of the biggest things
Speaker 1: that is misunderstood about chameleons is they can't change their
Speaker 1: color to anything they want at all. Like if you
Speaker 1: put a chameleon on like a checkerboard or on a
Speaker 1: red background, they don't just change their color to whatever
Speaker 1: background they're on to exactly match it. I think there
Speaker 1: was a viral video that was like a sunglasses ad
Speaker 1: that showed them like putting a chameleon next to their
Speaker 1: sunglasses and it kept changing color and it was very
Speaker 1: It was a cool video, but a lot of people
Speaker 1: thought it was real and unfortunately no. But they do
Speaker 1: change their color to engage in crypsis, so they can
Speaker 1: kind of it depends on their environment, but they can
Speaker 1: kind of shift from maybe browns or two greens to
Speaker 1: fit in better with what they're trying to hide amongst
Speaker 1: So there is a little bit of that they can't
Speaker 1: perfectly match any background, but there the normal backgrounds that
Speaker 1: they tend to be and they can engage in some
Speaker 1: amount of changing their skin color to hide. So it's
Speaker 1: like a Snapchat filter where you can kind of you
Speaker 1: can still tell as the person, but they've like readone
Speaker 1: there like now they have a hot dog for a
Speaker 1: hat or something exactly. I man, snapchat filters really messed
Speaker 1: me up. There's the baby one really scares me. That's
Speaker 1: really creepy. And there's like what I don't get though
Speaker 1: with snapchat filters is every single one kind of gives
Speaker 1: like not just the baby filter, but every single one
Speaker 1: sort of seems to want to make my face rounder,
Speaker 1: like they've decided I look better this way. So it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's a here's a Snapchat filter that is you wearing glasses,
Speaker 1: but also now your cheeks are rounder and your skin
Speaker 1: has no pores. It's like, well, I didn't want that.
Speaker 1: I think it's because it's for like young people more
Speaker 1: more like like teens use it, and I think maybe
Speaker 1: like rounder faces are like more youthful. Maybe they're trying
Speaker 1: to make you look baby. You know, they're trying to
Speaker 1: make everyone look like a baby, and stop turning us
Speaker 1: into baby snapchat, stop it. Do you think chameleons change um,
Speaker 1: not just to blend in, but to look hotter? Like,
Speaker 1: do you think they're they absolutely to look like this hot?
Speaker 1: Chameleons all just change my colors, actually, Teresa, that is
Speaker 1: the main reason they change color, truly. So mostly color
Speaker 1: change is social. It's a way to communicate in mating
Speaker 1: or being territorial. So different species have different ways of communication,
Speaker 1: so I can't give like a This is a very
Speaker 1: generalized thing, but typically brighter colors signal aggression and darker
Speaker 1: colors signal submission, and they also will turn to brighter
Speaker 1: colors when engaged in mating to try to impress their mate.
Speaker 1: They're able to change their skin color by compressing or
Speaker 1: expanding these lattices of guanine crystals in their skin, which
Speaker 1: changes the way that light is is reflected or absorbed.
Speaker 1: So they're not actually changing the pigments in their skin.
Speaker 1: They're changing like this crystalline structure in their skin that
Speaker 1: changes its shape to allow light to pass reflect differently
Speaker 1: and then that changes their skin color. So it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. But yeah, it is. It is funny that
Speaker 1: you would you would bring up Snapchat because it is
Speaker 1: it is mostly social signaling. It's cryptiist something they do.
Speaker 1: But that's like the most vibrant, fantastic colors seem to
Speaker 1: be social in nature. Interesting. Yeah. They also have ballistic tongues,
Speaker 1: which you know, I think is a compliment maybe, but
Speaker 1: they can be up to two times their body length,
Speaker 1: and their tongues are sticky, can cling to prey. Like
Speaker 1: when did you play with those like sticky hands? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you stick them on the wall and they
Speaker 1: get dusty. Yeah, I think once I'm trying to. I
Speaker 1: think like once a bunch of us in one of
Speaker 1: my classes got like sticky hands, and my teacher drove
Speaker 1: my teacher absolutely crazy and she just like went around
Speaker 1: like confiscating sticky hands because it was just like it
Speaker 1: was like a total sticky hands, mutually assured sticky hand
Speaker 1: destruction going on in that class. They are impossible, though,
Speaker 1: Like you you use them once and then they are
Speaker 1: immediately covered in every every particle of dust, every hair, everything.
Speaker 1: It's like it almost seems like it sucks the hairs
Speaker 1: like out of its environment. That's like a pre coronavirus.
Speaker 1: I feel like like post coronavirus. Everything through that lens
Speaker 1: is like, Oh no, this shouldn't be made. We shouldn't
Speaker 1: have this spreading turn around exactly exactly. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like that's it's that's disgusting. It's a disgusting disease ease vector,
Speaker 1: and it's in the shape of one of the most
Speaker 1: frightening things in the world. A human hand. No gloves,
Speaker 1: so their tongues are sticky, and it is actually really
Speaker 1: interesting how their tongues work to catch prey. So they
Speaker 1: can catch prey within point zero seven seconds and reach
Speaker 1: up to forty one G force of acceleration. So, for comparison,
Speaker 1: Apollo thirteen upon re entry reached a G force of seven,
Speaker 1: So that's forty one G force that this tongue gets
Speaker 1: up to. Damn that's like a that's that that should
Speaker 1: be in their tender bio just like right exactly, Hey baby,
Speaker 1: I've got fourty one G forces on this tongue. I'll
Speaker 1: give you a sample. Oh so a rocket sled is
Speaker 1: more akin to how fast that chameleon tongue accelerates. Again,
Speaker 1: I think, like describe having your tongue as a rocket
Speaker 1: sled is a great way to flirt. So the tongue
Speaker 1: is shot out with a lot of force because so
Speaker 1: first of all, the tongue is highly lubricated and it
Speaker 1: squeezes these sphincter like muscles near the base of the
Speaker 1: tongue around a hard high oid bone. So the highoid
Speaker 1: bone is this like bony structure at the base of
Speaker 1: the tongue. So it's kind of like if you squeeze
Speaker 1: a bar of soap and it pops out of your hand.
Speaker 1: But imagine that your hand is the tongue and the
Speaker 1: bar of soap is like attached to the wall, and
Speaker 1: then you squeeze the bar of soap and then your
Speaker 1: hand flies out. Okay, maybe that's not I was following
Speaker 1: sort of, And then well, so the tongue, basically, the
Speaker 1: tongue is this slippery thing that wraps around the high
Speaker 1: oid bone. It's ease is really hard, and then it
Speaker 1: just like shoots out from from it like yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: So sort of like basically the mechanics of a bar
Speaker 1: of soap slipping out of your hand, except for but
Speaker 1: it comes back. Yeah, exactly, It's like it comes back.
Speaker 1: And it's also it's as if the bar of soap
Speaker 1: is squeezing your hand and then flying out with a sphincter.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Yeah, So now that I have
Speaker 1: blasted your mind with chameleon facts, uh, the whole that
Speaker 1: whole bobbing walk is actually to try to camouflage. So
Speaker 1: it is a form of crypsis where they're sort of
Speaker 1: trying to I guess cosplay as a leaf or a
Speaker 1: branch kind of It's it's supposed to make them feel
Speaker 1: like it seemed like part of the tree, part of
Speaker 1: the environment. It's also by moving slowly and jerkily kind
Speaker 1: of disrupts the visual cues of like when you when
Speaker 1: you're a predator and you're looking for something that's like moving,
Speaker 1: You're like, okay, this thing is moving like an animal.
Speaker 1: But if you've got just this kind of swaying thing
Speaker 1: that's like slowly inching forward by swaying, it's kind of
Speaker 1: not doesn't seem like a typical prey item, a typical
Speaker 1: a live animal. Wow. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, They're so
Speaker 1: they're like it's like when you're like when you put
Speaker 1: on sunglasses and you're like, now you can't see me coming.
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm moving so slow you can't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like that was a technique I had when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, is just like really slow slow movements,
Speaker 1: Like if I wasn't supposed to go somewhere or wasn't
Speaker 1: supposed to pick something up, if I just moved really slowly,
Speaker 1: then like it's like okay, like moving this amount is fine.
Speaker 1: Moving this amount is fine, and then that times a
Speaker 1: hundred is probably fine. Especially when it came that was
Speaker 1: mostly to annoy my brother. I think. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: if you eat if you eat a cookie over, like
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to eat it, but you just eat
Speaker 1: a little bit over like hours, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's My technique as an adult is to like
Speaker 1: if I if I want to have a cookie and
Speaker 1: I feel guilty about it, I will break the cookie
Speaker 1: in half and then break the half cookie that's left
Speaker 1: into a half again and just like keep basically breaking
Speaker 1: it into a half and having half of it. And
Speaker 1: then it's like what I'm only having half a cookie
Speaker 1: and then I've done that, you know, basically infinity times
Speaker 1: until I have like a tiny molecule of cookie left,
Speaker 1: and if I split that in half, it creates a
Speaker 1: nuclear explosion, which isn't good. But you know, so now,
Speaker 1: the last dancer I'm going to talk about in this
Speaker 1: section is the dung beetle. So do you know much
Speaker 1: about dung beetles? Teresa? Do you you? I don't know
Speaker 1: if you run in any dung beetles circle. I think
Speaker 1: I just have a very cursory knowledge, a layman's knowledge
Speaker 1: of the dung beetle. Yeah, it's a it's basically a
Speaker 1: beetle that eats dung. And I was kind of going
Speaker 1: it could be dung that eats beetle or a beetle
Speaker 1: that eats dung, so clearing that up. Yeah, typically dung
Speaker 1: doesn't eat anything. Okay, well, my bad. That's why you're
Speaker 1: so the dung beetle. Will you know how like some
Speaker 1: dung beetles have a ball of poop that they push around,
Speaker 1: like in sort of a a sisiphus kind of task
Speaker 1: where they're always pushing a big ball of dung. Dung
Speaker 1: beetles will sometimes get up on their ball of dung
Speaker 1: and do what looks like a little dance where they
Speaker 1: kind of spin around on this ball of poop, which
Speaker 1: is kind of it's sort of like like little circus
Speaker 1: poodle like dun dun da dun dun dung, just dancing
Speaker 1: on that, dancing on that poop. So this is actually
Speaker 1: really interesting thing, and researchers noticed them doing this and
Speaker 1: it was this big mystery. So but first to explain
Speaker 1: why they do this little poopball dance. First, let me
Speaker 1: explain what dung beetles are. So, dung beetles are a
Speaker 1: bunch of species of scared beetles who feed on dung
Speaker 1: and many species. Like I mentioned before, they will roll
Speaker 1: up the dung into a ball and then they roll
Speaker 1: massive amounts of crap back to their dens, and that
Speaker 1: is to nourish their larva. So they're basically building up
Speaker 1: a big nest full of poop for their babies. Cute, right,
Speaker 1: you find that cute right? Babies? Who doesn't like poop exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like so the opposite of parenting with humans, like
Speaker 1: we do our best to get as much poop away
Speaker 1: from the baby as possible as quickly as possible, and
Speaker 1: dung beetles are trying to get poop on the baby.
Speaker 1: You know, different strokes, different folks. So is it to
Speaker 1: cover because I've also heard like dogs will do that
Speaker 1: way they puppies like roll around and poop to cover
Speaker 1: their smell. Is it Is it a protective thing or
Speaker 1: they just like poop. No, it's actually they just love
Speaker 1: to eat it. It's got a lot of nutrition in
Speaker 1: it still for the beetles to eat. The pooh often
Speaker 1: has a lot of good stuff still in a lot
Speaker 1: of good nutrients still in there, so they in fact
Speaker 1: the reason they pull it away quickly from like the
Speaker 1: dung heap is dung is a fiercely competitive environment for
Speaker 1: insects who are wanting to eat that dunk. So a
Speaker 1: lot of flies, a lot of other beetles, a lot
Speaker 1: of other insects are all crowded around. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like going to grocery store. I don't know when people
Speaker 1: are freaking out or panicking. Just dung is a toilet paper,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, but trying to get Yeah again, beetles kind
Speaker 1: of the flip side of the coin to humans where
Speaker 1: we're all fiercely trying to get toilet paper, and beetles
Speaker 1: are just fiercely trying to get poop, you know, cutting
Speaker 1: out the middleman. Really, yeah, maybe we should be um,
Speaker 1: we should work out with some sort of treaty with them.
Speaker 1: Maybe instead of toilet paper, we just all have beetles
Speaker 1: in our bathrooms. I don't know. Oh that's a great idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like like, hey, look, weird, we desperately need toilet paper,
Speaker 1: you desperately need poop. It seems like the logical thing
Speaker 1: is you get in there and you know, look, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go into details. A day, we just
Speaker 1: it's a it's a bug day, yeah, exactly. Just dun
Speaker 1: get a dung beetle in there, get a pet dung beetle.
Speaker 1: Yeah wow, that's yeah, this podcast has taken an interesting turn. Innovative. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's get the patent pinning. Patent pinning. So typically
Speaker 1: the dung beetles that will roll balls of poop back
Speaker 1: to their din will stand up on their front legs.
Speaker 1: They will prop their hind legs on the dung ball
Speaker 1: and roll it with those back legs towards their din.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of incredible how dung beetles are able
Speaker 1: to easily navigate despite being backwards and having their vision
Speaker 1: mostly blocked by this big ball dung. But they like
Speaker 1: to roll it in a straight line to get back
Speaker 1: to their den as quickly as possible, because again, dung
Speaker 1: is a hot commodity and it's also really hot typically
Speaker 1: where they live. There are a lot of species in
Speaker 1: South Africa and it you know, it gets extremely hot
Speaker 1: and they're just scrabbling around on the hot ground. So
Speaker 1: they like to get it as to their din as
Speaker 1: if quickly and efficiently as possible. And interestingly, if the
Speaker 1: dung beetle is interrupted and meets some kind of obstacle,
Speaker 1: it is able to easily reorient and navigate back to
Speaker 1: its den. Like if you spin the dung beetle that around,
Speaker 1: it can immediately retriangulate its path. It will get up
Speaker 1: on its dung ball though, and do this little circus
Speaker 1: dog dance where it's just kind of like deep deep, deep,
Speaker 1: and then it goes along its marry way in the
Speaker 1: right direction. So researchers were interested in why they were
Speaker 1: doing this, So they found that when it gets up
Speaker 1: on the ball, it is actually trying to get a
Speaker 1: clear view of the sun, so it uses the sun
Speaker 1: to navigate in the direction it needs to go, and
Speaker 1: these researchers changed the appearance of where the sun was
Speaker 1: coming from with mirrors and successfully confused dung beetles into
Speaker 1: moving into the wrong direction. I know, it's kind of mean, right,
Speaker 1: And then when the sun sets, actually the dung beetles
Speaker 1: can see polarized light that humans can't really see in
Speaker 1: the sky to also help them navigate. So they're all,
Speaker 1: he's look into the sky for navigation, getting that little
Speaker 1: what's a little thing called you know, is it a
Speaker 1: sea campassing? Well, the the oh, a sextant, a sextant,
Speaker 1: you know, like sailors, like a weird triangle thing, but
Speaker 1: it's a ball of poop instead. Very smart, resourceful, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Here's a cute anecdote about that dung beetle study. So
Speaker 1: Professor Mark Burns dung beetle research team wanted to see
Speaker 1: why dung beetles will get up on their dung ball
Speaker 1: and wipe their little faces. And they used these thermal
Speaker 1: cameras to see that they seem to be trying to
Speaker 1: cool their little feetss because they get really hot in
Speaker 1: the sand. So they gave the beatles tiny booties to
Speaker 1: see how they'd react, and the beatles didn't need to
Speaker 1: like get up on the ball and cool their feet
Speaker 1: as much like they were able to keep going for longer.
Speaker 1: But it's just they made little tiny booties rule young
Speaker 1: beetles and the dung beetles. That's so cute. I know,
Speaker 1: it's adorable. It makes me feel like, I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: you don't want to interfere with nature, you know it's
Speaker 1: not the way. But part of me just now wants
Speaker 1: to make little, tiny, many booties for as many insects
Speaker 1: as I want. Because look, insects they don't got shoes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't got but some of them got sticky feet
Speaker 1: like spiders. That's true, they do got hairy, sticky feet.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean little booties, can you like? It
Speaker 1: would make them cuter too, just a little little booties.
Speaker 1: It would be less scared of a spider of it. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it had shoes on, more scary
Speaker 1: or less scary. I'm not sure. It depends on the
Speaker 1: type of shoe, right, Like, if it was high heels,
Speaker 1: I'd be intimidated. That would be intimidating. Eight yeah, clacking around.
Speaker 1: But if it's like I don't know eight clown or something. Yeah, yeah, kids,
Speaker 1: kids are very non threatening shoe. Yeah yeah, like a
Speaker 1: rebok or like a croc, just like a real dad shoe.
Speaker 1: I just be like, yeah, a bunch of like sandals
Speaker 1: with socks on, and it's like, yeah, birken stocks. I
Speaker 1: don't need to be afraid of a spider with birken
Speaker 1: stocks on. So, now that you've heard of a couple
Speaker 1: of ruby dancing animals, are you ready to creature size?
Speaker 1: All you need is to dance around on some worm
Speaker 1: filled sand and to balance on a giant ball of dung.
Speaker 1: If you don't feel like doing that, you can at
Speaker 1: least put some of your favorite music on and do
Speaker 1: some dancing. Dancing is good cardio is good for balance
Speaker 1: and posture, and offer some additional benefits over other types
Speaker 1: of exercise. Dance gets you moving in different directions, working
Speaker 1: out different muscle groups, and engaging you cognitively. A study
Speaker 1: found that hip motion and spine flexibility was improved by
Speaker 1: a dancing exercise program. Another study found that dance helps
Speaker 1: increase bone density, keeping your bones strong and healthy. And heck,
Speaker 1: another dance study found that can help improve body image
Speaker 1: and quality of life. So get out on the dance
Speaker 1: floor or while you're living room floor, put on some
Speaker 1: dank beats and twerque your way to help. Humans can
Speaker 1: sometimes do a bit of parkour, jumping off cars and
Speaker 1: walls and so on. But animals do parkour every day,
Speaker 1: and not just for the Instagram. Sometimes they do it
Speaker 1: to evade predators. Sometimes it's to catch a meal. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: if you're a cat, is because you've seen a ghost
Speaker 1: that nobody else can see but you. And sometimes you've
Speaker 1: got to do a full body workout just to go
Speaker 1: to the bathroom. Do you do you do any six
Speaker 1: stunts Teresa? Well, you know, I do six stunts of
Speaker 1: the brain. Um, you know, I'm I'm always just like
Speaker 1: doing cool backflips with my words. You know. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: doing some book stunts, you know, you know, like like
Speaker 1: you're doing BMX stunts. I'm doing book stunts with reading
Speaker 1: and learning. Yeah, growing my brain. It's brettistic. Wow. Well
Speaker 1: that's yeah. I'm sure we're impressing a lot of people
Speaker 1: with our sick brain stunts. But speaking of which, why
Speaker 1: don't we learn about some animal animal stunts? And the
Speaker 1: first one is, I mean, I think it's a cool stunt.
Speaker 1: I think it's a fun party trick. It's about bat's
Speaker 1: urinating though, just wanted to warn you. Okay, okay, go on.
Speaker 1: So Teresa, how do you think bats go to the bathroom? Well,
Speaker 1: I have to say I've never thought about it until
Speaker 1: this very moment, but I would assume they have some
Speaker 1: sort of hole down towards their legs and and their
Speaker 1: waist comes out of it. That's very broad. I have
Speaker 1: no idea. Well that's that's that's true enough as it
Speaker 1: is with basically most creatures. Yeah, I mean that is true.
Speaker 1: Wuana from you know, that's true? Yah? Yeah. Doesn't he
Speaker 1: eat guano and he eats it and m hmm and
Speaker 1: then he learns it's a bat poop and he freaks out? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: a spin Sure. Really was a seminal moment for me, like,
Speaker 1: you know, learning about animals such as uh, that whole
Speaker 1: scene with him he comes out of the elephant and
Speaker 1: he's like like the elephant giving birth. I think that's
Speaker 1: the first time I ever watched anything give birth. Oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: doesn't he also like bop a woman a pregnant woman's
Speaker 1: belly and a baby pops out of it like a football.
Speaker 1: I feel like I remember that. I don't remember that,
Speaker 1: but maybe I maybe my poor little child brain was
Speaker 1: so scarred from him coming out of the elephant vagina
Speaker 1: that I blocked that out like I was numb the
Speaker 1: whole rest of the viewing. Well. So, yes, bats do
Speaker 1: excrete out of a hole, that's true. They do have,
Speaker 1: you know, the same sorts of genitals like that humans do.
Speaker 1: They like a penis or a vagina and erectum. I mean,
Speaker 1: think think about the physics of it though, Like, because
Speaker 1: they're hanging upside down, if they just like start peeing
Speaker 1: or pooping, where's it gonna go. It's gonna get all
Speaker 1: over them, right, I never thought about that, that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so bats, Bats basically just do a backflip every time
Speaker 1: they have to go to the bathroom. So flying foxes
Speaker 1: are a large species of bat found in Southeast Asia,
Speaker 1: and they flip around to pee. They hang onto the
Speaker 1: branch that they're on because there are boreal bats typically,
Speaker 1: and then they do their business and then they do
Speaker 1: this little shake just to make sure there's no peepee left.
Speaker 1: And baby flying foxes have to learn how to do this.
Speaker 1: I should sent you a link to a video baby.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's a huge bat. It is, yeah,
Speaker 1: with it. It's so cute. It looks like a dog
Speaker 1: with wings. Yeah, they are. They are very cute little bats.
Speaker 1: They are called flying foxes because they do kind of
Speaker 1: look like foxes. Shake. It's all over its feet. Well,
Speaker 1: it is a baby. It's learning how to do it,
Speaker 1: but adults kind of get perfected down, so they just
Speaker 1: flip over, do a little shake and you know, to
Speaker 1: get the rest of the peeps out, and then like
Speaker 1: flip back around so they don't get I love the
Speaker 1: shake though, because it's very I guess human. I just
Speaker 1: shakes his hands. I've never personally witnessed a man urinating,
Speaker 1: but you know, I have heard that they have to
Speaker 1: do a little shake to make you know, to make
Speaker 1: the last droplets. Yeah, exactly, exactly, get get the last
Speaker 1: drops out. It's a very relatable experience. You don't you
Speaker 1: don't want to get the you don't want to get
Speaker 1: p backsplash. Yeah. Yeah, you gotta make sure it's all
Speaker 1: gone before you go back up to down or it
Speaker 1: might get in your mouth. Exactly, you don't want that.
Speaker 1: I mean some some people, well let's not talk about
Speaker 1: So that's a different podcast. That's a different podcast, not
Speaker 1: this one, not this learning adventure. So another interesting thing
Speaker 1: about bats is a little bit of anti bird heresy,
Speaker 1: which is, there is some evidence to suggest that bats
Speaker 1: maybe more efficient flyers than birds. So bats may actually
Speaker 1: use less energy to fly than birds because of their flexible,
Speaker 1: men brain covered wings. The wings can be shaped in
Speaker 1: flight to reduce drag and be more efficient. So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if they've reached like a consensus yet on
Speaker 1: whether bats are actually like the best flyers, but there
Speaker 1: I think it used to be thought that they were
Speaker 1: clumsier and there they were less efficient than birds, but
Speaker 1: there is new evidence to suggest actually the opposite. And
Speaker 1: I apologize to my bird overlord about this. I'm probably gonna,
Speaker 1: you know this maybe the last you ever hear from
Speaker 1: me if the bird lobby catches onto the harrison, I'm speaking,
Speaker 1: but well, but best is subjective, right, I mean, like
Speaker 1: who has more style? Like exactly are they having fun?
Speaker 1: I mean that's important, that's really like the most fun?
Speaker 1: Exactly who doesn't have to flip around just to pee?
Speaker 1: You know, like talk about efficiency? Can't you know? Um?
Speaker 1: At least one species of bat may have also topped
Speaker 1: the swift bird's record for fastest fly. So swifts can
Speaker 1: fly at speeds of up to seventy miles per hour,
Speaker 1: but Brazilian free tailed bats have been documented flying at
Speaker 1: speeds of up to a hundred miles per hour. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's all the abdominal stuff they've had to do, just
Speaker 1: like just to pee, Like you can you imagine having
Speaker 1: to do like a full body flip and crunch just
Speaker 1: to your every time you pee. Well, but don't bets fly.
Speaker 1: They fly kind of like zig Zaggi, right, So maybe
Speaker 1: that's why we humans think they fly slower because that
Speaker 1: looks so messy, but to them that's like that's what
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be. So yeah, yeah, because they're always
Speaker 1: not hunting, they're hunting for insects midflight, and so they're
Speaker 1: you know, often kind of going around trying to trying
Speaker 1: to find bugs. But if they they once they set
Speaker 1: their mind to it, they can just you know, blow
Speaker 1: us all out of the water. So the next spectacular
Speaker 1: stunt I want to talk to you about only involves
Speaker 1: a little bit of bottle leaf fluids, and it is
Speaker 1: the frog hopper. Is it a frog or no, it's
Speaker 1: a it's an insect. Okay, misleading name from the I know,
Speaker 1: who are they trying to fool? So, frog hoppers are
Speaker 1: a super family of what are called true bugs or
Speaker 1: him ip Tera, which includes a fids, plant hoppers, leafhoppers,
Speaker 1: and shield bugs. And they all suck juices out of plants.
Speaker 1: It sort of like, you know, like plant vampires, and
Speaker 1: frog hoppers are often brightly colored, small, they're kind of
Speaker 1: what would you say they were, like shaped like a
Speaker 1: weird pistachio, Yeah, a little bit. Well, they have different colors.
Speaker 1: Some of them are more brown cock roach you're looking yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they come in all sorts of different colors, but that
Speaker 1: they are typically sort of like shaped and a sort
Speaker 1: I guess like a little bit like a nut, like
Speaker 1: a nut. Yeah, And they have these hard stout wings
Speaker 1: that lay flat along their bodies and frog hopper nymphs.
Speaker 1: So immature frog hoppers will excrete a bunch of foul
Speaker 1: tasting foam on a host plant, so they will basically
Speaker 1: create these disgusting foam spit bubbles that protects them from
Speaker 1: predators because it's this like nasty, gross foam that they've
Speaker 1: covered themselves in. Sounds like it's like quite a sacrifice, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like that's kind of it's a
Speaker 1: good defense strategy in general, if you want people to
Speaker 1: leave you alone, if you're just kind of like covered
Speaker 1: in spit, it's one way toward people away from you.
Speaker 1: I've found personally, I feel like you know, in every
Speaker 1: like like first grade class or whatever, there's like the
Speaker 1: one kid who just hates showering and their their parents
Speaker 1: just let them get away with it, and then they
Speaker 1: just smell bad. Like do you think that they are
Speaker 1: doing it because they're more evolved and it's a form
Speaker 1: of protection, Like is it like, please don't talk to me.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm anxious, So I'm just gonna smell bad and
Speaker 1: everyone will stay away. I mean, I think I think
Speaker 1: it is kind of a it's it's I think they're
Speaker 1: a little bit before their time, because like right now,
Speaker 1: as we have to social distance, I've been annoyed by
Speaker 1: people who don't like stay six feet away from me.
Speaker 1: But if I make myself smell real nasty and like
Speaker 1: cover myself in what looks like sort of a coating
Speaker 1: of drool or some nasty excretion, I think they will
Speaker 1: voluntarily stay six ft away from me. Ah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good you know, that's a that's a great point.
Speaker 1: I never thought about that. I think I've seen like
Speaker 1: different strategies, like people wearing hula hoops around them sort
Speaker 1: of like or like pool noodle hats to keep people
Speaker 1: six feet away. But have you guys considered just smelling
Speaker 1: real bad? And you know, I'm going to have to
Speaker 1: shower less and test this theory out exactly. Shower less,
Speaker 1: get get a stinkin, get a real you know, like
Speaker 1: a good vintage stink in, and people will stay away
Speaker 1: from you. And then it won't. It's not just to
Speaker 1: protect you, it protects them too. It's like a pro
Speaker 1: social thing. Now, to be stinky, it's good. Frog hoppers
Speaker 1: aren't only excellent at being stinky, they are excellent jumpers.
Speaker 1: So some species of frog hoppers can jump up to
Speaker 1: a hundred times its own body length, which is a lot.
Speaker 1: So they're only about a quarter of an inch big,
Speaker 1: so about point six centimeters, so this amounts to a
Speaker 1: little over a couple of feet or seventy centimeters. But
Speaker 1: they can actually reach about four hundred g's of acceleration,
Speaker 1: meaning it could probably dodge a chameleon tongue. And you
Speaker 1: know that that that rocket sled chameleon tongue. That it's
Speaker 1: incredible to me. How animal? You know, like you put
Speaker 1: a human do on a human dead just putty. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: immediate combustion. Okay, new tender bio girl. Let me see
Speaker 1: that frog hopper. How's that? My tongue is like a
Speaker 1: frog hopper got four covered in saliva and stinky, stinky,
Speaker 1: I think, I mean to me, that's very attractive. So
Speaker 1: I think it's a good strategy. So their hind legs
Speaker 1: are structored, structured like bow strings, so they can contract
Speaker 1: their muscles pulling back on a flexible rubbery protein connected
Speaker 1: to a hard cuticle. And then when they release it,
Speaker 1: this shoots their legs against the ground like an arrow,
Speaker 1: which then propel is the frog hopper forward, so they
Speaker 1: it's it's like a slingshot in their legs. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting because these animals that can often achieve
Speaker 1: these really high speeds will have an interesting mechanical advantage
Speaker 1: going on. Like with the chameleon tongue, it was sort
Speaker 1: of a squeeze and shoot forward technique using the slippery
Speaker 1: of friction energy built building up against that hard bone.
Speaker 1: And then here it's like basically like a bow and arrow,
Speaker 1: where it's shooting its legs backwards and then that propels
Speaker 1: the body forward. It's very interesting how these animals basically cheat.
Speaker 1: I feel like hearing all this isn't just making me
Speaker 1: very insecure about my human body. Um, just like how
Speaker 1: very little I can do with it. I can't push
Speaker 1: a ball of poop bigger than my body mass. That's
Speaker 1: it doesn't like you can't jump like a hundred times
Speaker 1: your own body length. You can't like orient yourself using
Speaker 1: the sun by standing on poop. You can't shoot your
Speaker 1: tongue out of your face like a rocket sled. A
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of shortcomings we have, you know.
Speaker 1: But none of these animals can make podcast, So I
Speaker 1: guess we do have that. That's true. That's true. That
Speaker 1: you know, that's how I go to sleep at night. Like, sure,
Speaker 1: sure you can you can get four hundreds of accelerations,
Speaker 1: but can you speak into a microphone for about an
Speaker 1: hour in a very very basic way? The evolutionary advantage
Speaker 1: of like, I mean, I that was a joke. But
Speaker 1: then when I think about it's like humans can spread
Speaker 1: information quickly, So podcasting that's just kind of like an
Speaker 1: evolution of spreading information. Yeah, we don't. We don't win
Speaker 1: in terms of our bodies when it comes to nature
Speaker 1: or floppy sort of flop flop around bodies. I mean,
Speaker 1: our bodies are not to not to be too down
Speaker 1: on our bodies. We are actually pretty good. One of
Speaker 1: the things we're good at is long distance jogging and stamina,
Speaker 1: and we've historically used that to great effect hunting. But yeah,
Speaker 1: our true strength is our brains. And then you know,
Speaker 1: like you said, like the brain stunts that we can do,
Speaker 1: Like okay, so you're your legs are a slingshot, I
Speaker 1: can just make a slingshot and kill you. But the
Speaker 1: thing is, like the animals when they have these instincts,
Speaker 1: they do it, and they tend to do it pretty straightforward,
Speaker 1: like the instinctive they do it for survival. Like, yes,
Speaker 1: we spread information, but oftentimes we spread bad information that's wrong.
Speaker 1: So are there cases of animals where they're like, I've
Speaker 1: evolved to tell you know, all my other honey bees
Speaker 1: where the honey is, but some of them do it wrong.
Speaker 1: They're like, no, it's here, and they're just wrong because
Speaker 1: I feel like that's what humans do, where we're like,
Speaker 1: this is how to save the world, and it's like
Speaker 1: that's bad. The world is not flat or whatever. You know, Oh,
Speaker 1: absolutely that happens, and it's a It can be a
Speaker 1: big problem that some animals have evolved solutions for. So
Speaker 1: like with seagulls, seagulls will squawk at each other if
Speaker 1: there is a threat, and they but some seagulls can
Speaker 1: be a little bit paranoid, so they'll start squawking when
Speaker 1: there's no threat, and seagulls actually learn which seagulls cry
Speaker 1: wolf and will ignore them. So they they will learn
Speaker 1: like the sound and look of the seagull that is
Speaker 1: not good at detecting danger, and it's like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: just frank, he doesn't know what he's talking about, and
Speaker 1: they'll ignore that seagull. I love that our last really
Speaker 1: awesome jumper of this section actually doesn't have any gross
Speaker 1: body excretions, which I think, well, maybe they do, but
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's a disappointment to me. I was
Speaker 1: hoping this one would have some some some oozing going on,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately, this is just an adorable animal that jumps
Speaker 1: really well. So clip Springers are cute small antelope found
Speaker 1: in southern and eastern Africa. It's about the size of
Speaker 1: a medium dog and about eighteen to forty pounds and
Speaker 1: a couple feet tall, So real huggable if they weren't
Speaker 1: wild animals that don't want you to hug them at all.
Speaker 1: Do you want to just like google an image of them?
Speaker 1: Because they are very cute. I love these names. Yeah,
Speaker 1: clip springer an acute name. It actually means in Afrikaans
Speaker 1: rock jumper. So because they are very good at jumping
Speaker 1: on rocks. That's their whole thing. Is it like a
Speaker 1: because you know how goats jump on rocks? Is it is? It?
Speaker 1: Is it goat like? It is in the way that
Speaker 1: it does it? Yeah, it is goat like. It's not
Speaker 1: directly it's like distantly related to goats, but they're you know,
Speaker 1: pretty distant, but yeah, it is. They have similar capabilities
Speaker 1: of a mountain goat. And they actually have these really
Speaker 1: dainty little hoofs that are kind of cone shaped, almost
Speaker 1: like you know ballet slippers, like the point shoes, and
Speaker 1: how they're sort of shaped like these these long cones
Speaker 1: with a really hard flat bottom, and it walks on
Speaker 1: the tips of its little cylindrical hoofs and can leap
Speaker 1: and land on very tiny little areas, so it can
Speaker 1: leap from rock to rock and scale these sheer areas
Speaker 1: and are they're very graceful. Another cute cute thing about
Speaker 1: them is they're actually monogamous and they practice the opposite
Speaker 1: of social distancing with their partners because they apparently have
Speaker 1: to be within sixteen feet or about five meters of
Speaker 1: each other at all times or they start to panic.
Speaker 1: So wow, that sounds like dependency. Yeah, it's a little clinging, right,
Speaker 1: like you gotta you gotta let each other breathe. They can't,
Speaker 1: you know, But yeah, they I mean, they are a
Speaker 1: very tempting knack for a variety of predators where they live.
Speaker 1: So it does make sense that they because if they
Speaker 1: do get out of their eyesight, there is a chance
Speaker 1: one of them just gets gobbled up. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it is. Oh and also, um, females tend to be
Speaker 1: larger and heavier than males. So second antelope patriarchy, do
Speaker 1: the females protect the males? I don't. I think that
Speaker 1: their whole form of self defense is spring away as
Speaker 1: fast as possible and scale the mountain as quickly as
Speaker 1: they can. So I think that that's there, that's their
Speaker 1: main thing. I think that the females and the males
Speaker 1: both want to protect each other and want to stay
Speaker 1: close and kind of like be able to alert each
Speaker 1: other of danger as it's happening. So you know, there
Speaker 1: there is a certain amount of um, you know, love
Speaker 1: and care there, but it's basically like oops, we gotta
Speaker 1: run now up This cliff was a video of a
Speaker 1: a zoo had a couple of crip sorry, a couple
Speaker 1: of clip springers, and they actually built them like this
Speaker 1: little rock climbing wall so to enrich them, and they
Speaker 1: put some some tasty leaves at the top for them
Speaker 1: to get as sort of a form of enrichment. But
Speaker 1: one of the clip springers, instead of like going up,
Speaker 1: they created this like really interesting route for them, a
Speaker 1: bunch of like rocks and like would steps and and
Speaker 1: things like a really fun little path for them to
Speaker 1: climb up. And one of them just basically leaned against
Speaker 1: the this little climbing wall and reached its neck out
Speaker 1: and grabbed the leaves and didn't do any things they
Speaker 1: set up for them. And I found that I really
Speaker 1: could relate to that. It's like it's like peeling all
Speaker 1: the stickers off a Rubik's cube and putting them on
Speaker 1: the right way. Like technically I got I got the goal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's like I don't. It's like it's in a zoo.
Speaker 1: It doesn't need a run. It's like, I don't need
Speaker 1: to do this. This is not like you you've taken
Speaker 1: away my freedom. I'm not you think I still have ambition,
Speaker 1: Like you think I'm gonna do your little games and
Speaker 1: your little puzzles. No, now it's it's time for leaf time.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna grab it. Uh huh. Animals are naturally
Speaker 1: capable of some pretty incredible stunts, death defying jumps, and flips,
Speaker 1: all during the course of their normal lives. Humans are well,
Speaker 1: we get a nice participation trophy for effort. Just because
Speaker 1: our floppy, fleshy bodies aren't the most impressive in the
Speaker 1: Annual Kingdom doesn't mean we can't use our innovations to
Speaker 1: achieve some pretty incredible and often stupidly dangerous stunts. In
Speaker 1: Australian Felix bomb Gardner jumped out of a small capsule
Speaker 1: attached to a huge weather balloon twenty four miles into
Speaker 1: the sky, almost to the edge of the stratosphere. He
Speaker 1: was the first human to reach supersonic speed without a vehicle.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool and all, But when we return, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about a tiny animal who reaches incredible speeds not
Speaker 1: by falling, but by jumping through water uphill in a snowstorm. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe I made up that last part, but it's still
Speaker 1: very impressive. We all know, please are great jumpers, especially
Speaker 1: those of us who can sort with small furry animals
Speaker 1: who are walking buffets for fleas. They can jump around
Speaker 1: fifty times their own body length, which is rather impressive.
Speaker 1: But please our well dirty little cheaters. They don't use
Speaker 1: their muscles. Instead, they use biotechnology. Inside their legs are
Speaker 1: little springs. Their legs work similarly to the frog hopper
Speaker 1: we discussed earlier. An elastic protein in its legs is
Speaker 1: used as a slingshot to push its shins against the ground,
Speaker 1: allowing it to catapult itself into the air and onto
Speaker 1: the unsuspecting fury butt of my dog Cookie. But enough
Speaker 1: about these little cheating wine parasites. Let's take a look
Speaker 1: at an animal who is the world best jumper in
Speaker 1: the good old fashioned way. Using muscles, grit, and determinations. So, Teresa,
Speaker 1: are you are you much of a swimmer? Much of
Speaker 1: a uh, you know, diver swimmer? Um? You know, I
Speaker 1: am a water sign um and I do have a
Speaker 1: lot of water in my astrology chart, but I do
Speaker 1: not consider myself an excellent swimmer, though I do love
Speaker 1: bean and water and I love water. Probably would drown
Speaker 1: if I was being chased by swimmer. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: I'm okay at swimming. When I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: had a really bad experience at a water park where
Speaker 1: I went down a slide and then I got stuck
Speaker 1: under a buoy and a lifeguard had to save me,
Speaker 1: and then she scolded me for not knowing how to swim.
Speaker 1: But I knew how swim. I just got stuck under
Speaker 1: a buoy and it really embarrassed me. And I've had
Speaker 1: sort of a bad, I don't know, I guess a
Speaker 1: bad relationship with swimming ever since then. But you know
Speaker 1: so well, and I know it sounds like it was
Speaker 1: a lifeguards mishandling. I feel like, you know, she she
Speaker 1: should have You're a child, I know, I feel like
Speaker 1: shouldn't I know? It was not great, Like I look,
Speaker 1: I appreciate her saving my life. Let me get that,
Speaker 1: Let me get that out there first. Not no complaints
Speaker 1: from me, you know, saving me, But it is your job.
Speaker 1: It is in the title of the job, you know,
Speaker 1: when it hurt to maybe And I was only like
Speaker 1: six years old, so lifeguard, I mean, she should be
Speaker 1: grateful she got to save your life. I know I'm
Speaker 1: employing her. I'm giving her work to do by not
Speaker 1: being good at doing water park things. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, I'm always kind of jealous. I think of
Speaker 1: sea creatures with the eaves that they glide through the water.
Speaker 1: So I want to channel that jealousy into a learning journey.
Speaker 1: We if you can't do teach, so I want to
Speaker 1: talk about some of the best jumpers in the water,
Speaker 1: and maybe the best jumpers in the entire world. So
Speaker 1: these are called copa pods. Copa pods are small crustaceans
Speaker 1: that are about the size of a flea, and they
Speaker 1: look like freaky little spaceships with antenna and hair. I
Speaker 1: shared an image with you here. They're they're interesting looking, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the almost like kind of like weird looking
Speaker 1: butterflies spaceships maybe cat cat toys. Yeah, they kind of
Speaker 1: look like cat toy is weird fishing lures, um some
Speaker 1: kind of like weird weird art, bad weird bad art.
Speaker 1: So not only are they as small as a flea,
Speaker 1: many of them are actually parasites feeding on host fish. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they are actually better jumpers than fleas, and fleas
Speaker 1: are very good jumpers. So copa pods within milliseconds, can
Speaker 1: accelerate to a thousand times their own body length. That
Speaker 1: would be like the speed of a six foot tall
Speaker 1: person jumping six thousand feet like six Eiffel towers stacked
Speaker 1: on top of each other. So they need, yeah, they
Speaker 1: need that amount of force to be able to move
Speaker 1: quickly through the water. So when they jump like this,
Speaker 1: they don't actually move a distance of six thousand times
Speaker 1: their body size. It's just that's the speed at which
Speaker 1: they are moving. So because the water slows them down,
Speaker 1: or why aren't they Yeah, because the water slows them
Speaker 1: down significantly, So they only move a few millimeters maybe
Speaker 1: several times their own size, but at a ridiculous amount
Speaker 1: of speed. And they can do this over and over
Speaker 1: to either catch prey or dodge predators. Whoa, it's like
Speaker 1: a little spermy or fish. It looks like a fish
Speaker 1: with a huge poop coming out of it, but a
Speaker 1: huge poopy tail. Yeah, with a bunch of legs and
Speaker 1: a poop tail. Yeah, it doesn't look like it's swimming
Speaker 1: very efficiently. That's that's the interesting Like the I think
Speaker 1: it's I think it's slowed down, but it's like it
Speaker 1: looks like it's quite a bit of effort the way
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, yeah, you know, it's not like just
Speaker 1: like this is a video of a copa pod like
Speaker 1: jumping out of the path of a fish. Okay, I
Speaker 1: see it. Yeah, super fess. Oh it does go very far. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it goes really really far for its body size, but
Speaker 1: and it goes super fast. Like I think that video
Speaker 1: is slowed down. So and when you're looking at them,
Speaker 1: you were noticing how they're how weird it is that
Speaker 1: they swim where like their legs seem to all be moving. Um,
Speaker 1: so they actually throw back their five pairs of tiny
Speaker 1: legs in sequence like a rowing team, and that actually
Speaker 1: really helps. It's like it is similar to how rowing
Speaker 1: teams work, like because you have all of those oars
Speaker 1: all pushing back in sequence, you're propelling the boat forward.
Speaker 1: As quickly as you can. And they actually have the
Speaker 1: strongest leg muscles proportionate to their size in the animal kingdom,
Speaker 1: being able to produce ten times the force of any
Speaker 1: other animal studied, So they never skip leg day. Every
Speaker 1: day is leg day. Yeah. And what's interesting is, like
Speaker 1: the other a couple of other examples we've talked about
Speaker 1: with like the with the frog hopper and with the
Speaker 1: chameleon tongue, they use mechanical advantage to get that speed up,
Speaker 1: like either a bowing and arrow kind of mechanism or
Speaker 1: that like soap in your in your hand mechanism, but
Speaker 1: they actually use their legs similar to a human jump
Speaker 1: or kangaroo jump um where they just use the strength
Speaker 1: of their leg muscles, which is really impressive. Like if
Speaker 1: you compare them to a grasshopper where they actually have
Speaker 1: a spring mechanism in their leg and that allows them
Speaker 1: to jump so quickly. It's these little copa pods are
Speaker 1: just using the sheer force of their swoll legs to
Speaker 1: be able to jump through the water um. And they
Speaker 1: have that torpedo like shape which also helps them cut
Speaker 1: through the water, which is really important because they're so tiny.
Speaker 1: The water or the viscousness of the water, like the
Speaker 1: thickness of the water is provides a lot of resistance
Speaker 1: to them because they're so small, water is really thick,
Speaker 1: kind of like traveling through a ball pit or something.
Speaker 1: So if they go slowly, the water surrounding them can
Speaker 1: actually push away their prey, and by leaping so forcefully,
Speaker 1: they can sneak up attack their prey and cut through
Speaker 1: the water tension. It's always funny to me when it's like,
Speaker 1: what is this. What animal has the strongest legs in
Speaker 1: the animal kingdom? And you're thinking of like some crazy
Speaker 1: rhinoceros with like huge muscly legs, and it's just this tiny,
Speaker 1: weird like flea creature. It's almost like teleporting. It moves
Speaker 1: so fast to not just displace the water around it.
Speaker 1: I wonder it's like you know cats when they move slowly.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen like when cats, like you turn
Speaker 1: around and it's frozen, and then you turn it back
Speaker 1: around but it's still frozen, and yeah, and they get
Speaker 1: closer and closer. You're like you hide behind a wall
Speaker 1: and then you like look over the cats like there,
Speaker 1: and then you like look away and they think that
Speaker 1: they're moving, but maybe they're teleporting like the I think cat, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I think cats actually do slip into a
Speaker 1: fourth dimension. But that's kind of its own whole own topic.
Speaker 1: So next I want to talk about spinner dolphins. So
Speaker 1: spinner dolphins are these amazing dolphins that can perform these
Speaker 1: impressive aerial stunts. So it looks basically like a dolphin.
Speaker 1: It's a little small. It's kind of a small dolphin
Speaker 1: with a long snout, and they are found in offshore
Speaker 1: tropical waters, and as is common in most dolphins, they
Speaker 1: like to jump out of the water, but they put
Speaker 1: a spin on it. Literally, Yeah, they actually spin and
Speaker 1: rotate as they jump out of the water. So I
Speaker 1: are you checking out that video? It's very cool. I
Speaker 1: feel like I've seen Are they around like Kawaii? I
Speaker 1: feel like I saw these dolphins? Would I think they're
Speaker 1: all over the world, And yeah, they They're found all
Speaker 1: over the world and offshore tropical waters, so you think
Speaker 1: you may have seen these? Yeah, that's awesome. I love
Speaker 1: I love watching dolphins jump out of the water. I
Speaker 1: was on a whale watching boat trip out to the
Speaker 1: Channel Islands and just kind of circled them and there
Speaker 1: were these huge pods of I think bottle knows dolphins,
Speaker 1: and they were just it was incredible because they were
Speaker 1: these massive, like feeding frenzies, and it's always really fun
Speaker 1: to watch them. But I didn't get to see any
Speaker 1: spinner dolphins, which is too bad. But they will travel
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles a day, and they will often leap
Speaker 1: and spin outside of the water as if they're showboating.
Speaker 1: It really looks like they are just showing off how
Speaker 1: incredibly cool and good at stunts they are. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: just Dolphins are very interesting because they're so cute but
Speaker 1: so vicious. Well they're they're vicious to prey items and
Speaker 1: sometimes each other. They've got some weird I feel like
Speaker 1: I hear a lot of weird predatorial stuff about dolphins.
Speaker 1: They do like to play with their food, but so
Speaker 1: do cats, so you know, I think it's a double standard.
Speaker 1: We're like, look at the cat. It's so cute. It's
Speaker 1: like shredding a yarn ball, like and the cat is
Speaker 1: imagining the yarn ball is just the guts, the guts
Speaker 1: strewn around of a mouse. And but then a dolphin
Speaker 1: plays with its food and like tortures a seal and
Speaker 1: we're like, oh, that terrible dolphin. But you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I thineah, we we are pretty fucked up
Speaker 1: to as humans because like chicken nuggets. If you think
Speaker 1: about it, we're taking chicken and making it into the
Speaker 1: shape of um, extinct dinosaurs. And that's just a fun
Speaker 1: thing we do four kids. Yeah, that's kind of messed up.
Speaker 1: Who's the real monster? A dolphin innocently torturing a seal
Speaker 1: or us turning chicken into paste that we form into
Speaker 1: the shapes of fun things. You know, probably both actually,
Speaker 1: But anyways, so they can often spin multiple rotations, like
Speaker 1: over three hundred and sixty degrees. It is really spectacular.
Speaker 1: You guys have to watch a video of these guys.
Speaker 1: All include a link to a video. Actually saw. One
Speaker 1: of the videos I saw is that like show Spy
Speaker 1: on the Wild where they they had like a robot
Speaker 1: fish swim around to capture the dolphins movements. But I
Speaker 1: think the dolphins are happy enough to like show off
Speaker 1: their cool moves to like a human. I don't think
Speaker 1: you need the subterfuge of a robot fish. So they
Speaker 1: have these incredibly strong abdominal muscles so they can rapidly
Speaker 1: beat their tails, launch themselves out of the water, and
Speaker 1: spin around, and scientists aren't really sure why they do this.
Speaker 1: Like most dolphin jumping, the exact reason behind these spins
Speaker 1: isn't really well known to researchers, but it's suspected that
Speaker 1: it has something to do with maybe removing parasites, maybe communication,
Speaker 1: or maybe just like for fun. I'm kind of I
Speaker 1: kind of think they they're showing off, what a broad
Speaker 1: range of different Yeah, yeah, I think they're showoffs personally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see that. Our last water stunt, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about our some Jesus spiders hallelujah. So but
Speaker 1: would you hate a spider who's actually Jesus though? Could you? Uh?
Speaker 1: Probably because then it could come back to life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I am This Jesus spider is just gonna turn
Speaker 1: the other chilis array, which is you know, spider sang
Speaker 1: thingies on its face. Anyways, So Jesus spiders, Um, well,
Speaker 1: actually nobody calls them that but me. These are actually
Speaker 1: called fishing spiders and they can walk on water. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think I for one welcome the coming
Speaker 1: of spider Christ. But you know, you can be blasphemous
Speaker 1: if you choose, Teresa. So it's so big. I'm watching
Speaker 1: the video and it's so big. So fishing spiders are
Speaker 1: a genus of large semi aquatic spiders. Teresa's freaking out.
Speaker 1: How's it going, I'm washing the spider video. It's so nasty. Okay, cool.
Speaker 1: So some species grow up to three inches in diameter,
Speaker 1: including the legs, and typically these large ones are the ladies.
Speaker 1: Because the ladies are larger than the males, they are
Speaker 1: lightweight and covered in hydrophobic hairs, so it makes skittering
Speaker 1: across the surface of water easy peasy. So they will
Speaker 1: wait near the edge of a body of fresh water
Speaker 1: and then display their legs on the surface of the water,
Speaker 1: kind of feeling for vibrations like they would with a web.
Speaker 1: They're just like basically, their legs are sonar and they're
Speaker 1: waiting to sense movement, and once they sense movement, they
Speaker 1: will dash out onto the surface of the water towards
Speaker 1: their prey, which could be like an insect, like an
Speaker 1: aquatic insect, larva could be a small fish. They're actually
Speaker 1: known to be able to catch small fish, and they
Speaker 1: uh probably trick their prey into thinking that they're Jesus
Speaker 1: because they can walk on water, but then they just
Speaker 1: eat them, so they can even dive under the water.
Speaker 1: And because their hairs are so hydrophobic, meaning they repel water,
Speaker 1: they are actually buoyant, so they have to claw their
Speaker 1: way under the water by holding onto a plant, and
Speaker 1: air will cling to their hydrophobic fuzz, which gives them
Speaker 1: like this silvery like silver surfer silver sheen, and they
Speaker 1: will breathe through that trapped air, and then when they
Speaker 1: want to surface, they just pop out of the water
Speaker 1: like a cork, emerging dry because of their hydrophobic hairs.
Speaker 1: This sounds we should get rid of them. I feel
Speaker 1: like they sound like they have too much power. It
Speaker 1: sounds sounds like you don't accept our Lord and Savior Jesus. Spider,
Speaker 1: this is you know. Do you remember that? Do you
Speaker 1: remember that sand like the the I think it's like
Speaker 1: called zand like with a z zand where you could
Speaker 1: put it underwater, but it had like a waxy coating,
Speaker 1: so you would make these designs underwater and then pull
Speaker 1: the sand out and it was dry. No, I don't
Speaker 1: think I had that. Were you even alive in the nineties, Teresa,
Speaker 1: I remember the sticky hands I don't remember the sand.
Speaker 1: I didn't get a lot of fat, the fat because
Speaker 1: I feel like these were not allowed. You're you weren't
Speaker 1: allowed to have sand stuffed animals and monopoly, but you
Speaker 1: were deprived sand as a toy. That's a lot of
Speaker 1: I just had the natural sand from the beach, I see,
Speaker 1: I see. No, I had the fancy sand you could
Speaker 1: put underwater and pull out and it was like dry
Speaker 1: and it was really cool. But then if you like
Speaker 1: played with it too much, it lost that like coating
Speaker 1: that made it dry, and then it would just get
Speaker 1: wet and then it was like expensive normal sand. But
Speaker 1: basically this sand is like the spider gotchat of that.
Speaker 1: And they're actually pretty interesting because they can test the
Speaker 1: surface of the water with their legs, like I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: and they're so sensitive they can actually tell the difference
Speaker 1: between what is causing the vibrations, so they'll ignore things
Speaker 1: like falling leaves. And they also know to flee the
Speaker 1: movement of large fish like a trout that's going to
Speaker 1: eat them, and if it's but if it's got that
Speaker 1: nice perfect vibration like a little insect or a little fish,
Speaker 1: they know to get on over there and eat them
Speaker 1: up and some of them have even created drag lines
Speaker 1: made out of silk so they don't overshoot their prey,
Speaker 1: which I find kind of cute actually, because they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, just kind of kind of like bungee jumping,
Speaker 1: but across the water sounds demonic. It sounds like they
Speaker 1: are too smart for you know, you know, if if
Speaker 1: Jesus came back, and I'm not a religious person, but
Speaker 1: if Jesus came ac and was a giant spider, you know,
Speaker 1: nobody would nobody would, uh know, we we would just
Speaker 1: ignore the second Coming of Jesus because it's a giant
Speaker 1: spider and were so superficial that were like your giant
Speaker 1: Harry spider. You you could your you must be bad.
Speaker 1: And he's like healing people, walking on water, making bread
Speaker 1: and wine and fish like look this, this this spider
Speaker 1: literally fishes and teaches teaches you how to fish by
Speaker 1: walking on water. Very christ like, I think, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I could see that connection. Yeah, yeah, see
Speaker 1: what I mean. And then yeah, okay, but the part
Speaker 1: where it eats that frog, that that that freaks me
Speaker 1: out a little bit. Well, you know, even even even
Speaker 1: the Messiah isn't perfect the spider Messiah, you know, and
Speaker 1: maybe that frog is evil. You don't know that it's true.
Speaker 1: That's very possible. See that little tiny, little like snidy
Speaker 1: whiplash mustache on that frog. I think that's an evil frog. Well, Teresa,
Speaker 1: that is it for the scary spiders and all the
Speaker 1: other things. Um, did what did you learn anything fun today?
Speaker 1: I did? I learned a lot. I learned to sleep
Speaker 1: with one I opened when I'm around a body of
Speaker 1: water rice the spiders are around. But no, I learned
Speaker 1: a lot. I learned a lot about tongues and and
Speaker 1: uh that's and all the other things. See learned a
Speaker 1: lot about tongues. That's this is this is the true
Speaker 1: value of this podcast. Well you got anything to plug Teresa?
Speaker 1: Oh sure, I have a podcast, Todd, you can tell
Speaker 1: me anything. Um, it's not apparently not spiders can't tell
Speaker 1: you about Christ's spiders. Well, you know the second part
Speaker 1: of it is I will still judge you is sky,
Speaker 1: But I was m No. It's comedians confessing something they
Speaker 1: want to get off their chest. Um, usually a secret something.
Speaker 1: It's always heavy, sometime to light and dumb. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then we get into it that's that's really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I love your podcast. Thanks. Oh yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: you could follow me too, just personally, Larissa Tea. It's
Speaker 1: like Theresa Lee, but the first letters are switched. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can you pull a little switch through on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Hand well, you can find us on the internet at
Speaker 1: Creature feature Pot on Instagram, at Creature feet Pot on Twitter.
Speaker 1: That's f F E T. That's something very different. And
Speaker 1: if you're interested in my Katie thoughts, I'm at Katie
Speaker 1: Golden on Twitter and I'm also at pro bird Writes,
Speaker 1: where I am definitely a human being and not a
Speaker 1: flow the birds in a lady suit. Oh. Also, guys,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening. If you feel like
Speaker 1: doing it, if you rate, review, download, subscribe. Those really
Speaker 1: helped me out, like, first of all, my self esteem.
Speaker 1: Also like algorithms, it tells the robots and charge of
Speaker 1: podcasting that we're doing a good job and you like it,
Speaker 1: and that really helps me out and it also just
Speaker 1: makes me feel good. It pumps up my ego. It's like, man,
Speaker 1: maybe I do have a rocket sled tongue when it
Speaker 1: comes to podcasting. So thank you guys so much for
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