Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Feature production of I Heart Radio Creature
Speaker 1: feature It's Creature Creakle Times, a holiday special look about
Speaker 1: our foe friends. Today will meet the real life rude
Speaker 1: dogs who glow underneath you be Light, Imagination Station, Yetty
Speaker 1: Crabs and more join us as well. Learn It's More
Speaker 1: and love. Die Heart is a Christmas movie. Yes, I
Speaker 1: know me to work his Nature's John McClay Creature Feature
Speaker 1: the holiday special, but we will not missing the all time,
Speaker 1: I promise, damn miss and happy holidays everyone at me,
Speaker 1: Katie Golden, your host a many parasites. On this holiday special,
Speaker 1: we will explore three holiday classics Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer,
Speaker 1: Diehard in the Santa Claus and recast the leading roles
Speaker 1: as even more incredible real life animals Cream Good Creature.
Speaker 1: Joining me today is writer producer friend of the show,
Speaker 1: Friend of all the animals except maybe swarms of creepy bugs,
Speaker 1: Joel Money. Hi, Katie, how are you doing great? Welcome back.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. I've missed you so much, so much. The
Speaker 1: animal facts have still been coming though, keeping on top
Speaker 1: of everything, getting warming up on the birds. You know,
Speaker 1: I feel like they are beautiful. Obviously that's been proven,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe they don't all want to kill me.
Speaker 1: It's just the ravens. We have slowly, slowly been working
Speaker 1: on Joel on her distrust of birds to really have
Speaker 1: her accept birds, as you know, are inevitable overlords. You
Speaker 1: know they will they will take over the planet once
Speaker 1: humans have had our time in the sun. We don't
Speaker 1: want to have, like, in any kind of animosity with
Speaker 1: our overlord. So I'm trying to get into like a good, friendly,
Speaker 1: accepting space. You don't want to burn any bridges, even
Speaker 1: though I don't think birds really need bridges, but you don't.
Speaker 1: You still don't want to burn them. You know what
Speaker 1: if the birds burn the bridges to take control over
Speaker 1: right right there, bridges, the birds are like if only
Speaker 1: you had rings. I think that's probably how it's gonna
Speaker 1: go down when the the inevitable bird revelution incomes. But
Speaker 1: this episode is actually not about the bird revolution but
Speaker 1: about the holiday times. Happy creature, Happy creature Kringle times
Speaker 1: is what I like to say, our our nondenominational holidays
Speaker 1: celebrating all things winter, animals, and magical. And last year
Speaker 1: on the show, we used our creature Kringle Time Special
Speaker 1: to build a better Santa out of animal dna. We
Speaker 1: called him hydro casocrotal clause, who is not sound like
Speaker 1: a child friendly Santa, hear me out. It is a
Speaker 1: hybrid of immortal Hydras, which is a Niderian, which is
Speaker 1: this little sea creature that's related to jellyfish. Also a
Speaker 1: hybrid of the cats acotalist north ropi, which is the
Speaker 1: largest flying dinosaur ever to exist, which was the size
Speaker 1: of a small airplane. Oh lord, yes, Also it's got
Speaker 1: some crow dna because, as we know, crows have excellent
Speaker 1: memories and can remember everyone who's wronged them. Yes, they
Speaker 1: hold grudges. They hold grudges. Researchers have found that if
Speaker 1: you wrong a crow, uh, they will remember and pass
Speaker 1: it down for generations. So that way, don't do that.
Speaker 1: That way Santa knows who's naughty and nice and remembers forever.
Speaker 1: Uh So yeah, basically a giant, flying, immortal bird dinosaur
Speaker 1: who knows if you've been naughty or nice, which is
Speaker 1: basically Santa. Right, it sounds cute, thank you. Well, this
Speaker 1: year we are actually going to talk about some classic
Speaker 1: holiday films and recast the leading roles as animals who
Speaker 1: I think may actually be better than the original actors
Speaker 1: who were in these films. Oh my god, I love
Speaker 1: this idea. So we are gonna be talking Rudolph the
Speaker 1: Red Nose Reindeer. We're gonna be talking about die Hard,
Speaker 1: which is apparently Christmas movie. A lot of people say
Speaker 1: it's Christmas Movies movie, and I will fight anybody who
Speaker 1: says differently. I'm not going to fight you on this.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I'm not scared. I'm not scared. I
Speaker 1: just agree. I'm so glad. No. But and then we
Speaker 1: will talk about the Santa Claus, the classic Tim Allen
Speaker 1: movie where it is sort of a body horror where
Speaker 1: Tim Allan turns into Santa. Uh. Never thought of the
Speaker 1: Santa Claus as a body horror kind of. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: horrified me as like I could, and so I categorize it,
Speaker 1: you know, up with Cronenberg's The fly S horror movie.
Speaker 1: No way, I would read like a five page essay
Speaker 1: on how the Santa Claus is a body board. Well,
Speaker 1: if you look at my blog spot now. So yeah,
Speaker 1: So let's in part one. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: Rudolph the Red Nails Reindeer. So that classic, classic story,
Speaker 1: classic stop motion, slightly disturbing movie. It's always funny to
Speaker 1: me whenever there are these articles that are like, did
Speaker 1: you know that Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is actually
Speaker 1: a disturbing movie because it has some conflict in it
Speaker 1: and stuff, And it's like, yeah, all kids movies have
Speaker 1: weird things in it. The lion King, the dad dies,
Speaker 1: bamby mom dies like so many right off street baby
Speaker 1: who discovers the body in the middle of the forest.
Speaker 1: It's awful. We are back the classic Steven Spielberg movie,
Speaker 1: like crazy old dudes who stock children and force him
Speaker 1: to join the circus children. My god, I'd forgotten that movie.
Speaker 1: But you're totally right. It's so oh my gosh. First
Speaker 1: of all, listen and I think you're too far our track,
Speaker 1: but we're back to one of my favorite childhood movies.
Speaker 1: It's not a great movie, but it is a moment
Speaker 1: when Steven Spielberg is so obsessed with dinosaurs. He makes
Speaker 1: two movies in the same year, About and a Sour
Speaker 1: features Jurassic Park pretty heavily in the background of We're back,
Speaker 1: and it's just and it uses a lot of the
Speaker 1: same dinosaurs from Dressy Parks. Tops and a t Rex
Speaker 1: are like the main feature dinosaurs, and then even the
Speaker 1: last raptor too. It's just it's like neard to be
Speaker 1: in that mindset of like, how would we deliver drastic
Speaker 1: parks to kids? When Jasson Park essentially became a kids movie,
Speaker 1: At least in my household, we were like massively consuming it.
Speaker 1: But it but it was scary. There was some listen,
Speaker 1: We're back genuinely will horrify your child. This is all
Speaker 1: to say that Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer politics of
Speaker 1: the movie aside, Like yeah, it's not all kids movies
Speaker 1: are disturbing. Oh, speaking of Christmas dinosaurs, I got some
Speaker 1: wrapping paper that has Santa dinosaurs on it and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to make a minora that's like a Stegosaurus Manora,
Speaker 1: a Stegga minoras. So I don't know why. I don't
Speaker 1: know why, but I love Holidays are going to be
Speaker 1: dinosaur themed and we need crafts and enjoy right now?
Speaker 1: Can we needna yes to put it all together more
Speaker 1: than ever before. We need dinosaurs. But we're actually going
Speaker 1: to talk about some animals that are stranger than dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: So Rootolph the red nose reindeer, famous because his nose
Speaker 1: is glowing, and last Holidays, I think we talked about how,
Speaker 1: you know, Rudolph, in order for his nose actually glow,
Speaker 1: he would actually have to have some kind of bioluminescence,
Speaker 1: maybe some bacteria living in his nose that produced bioluminescence
Speaker 1: or some kind of chemical reaction in his nose. But
Speaker 1: it's unusual for mammals to actually glow like it. You
Speaker 1: see it in insects, in fish, and but like to
Speaker 1: actually have a mammal that glows quite unusual. And yet
Speaker 1: we're discovering more and more that mammals can biofluoresce. So yes,
Speaker 1: what's the difference between bioluminescent and bio fluoresce? Very good question. Bioluminescence,
Speaker 1: you actually create your own light through a chemical reaction,
Speaker 1: either using your own chemicals that you produce in like
Speaker 1: an organelle or your body, or by using bacteria that
Speaker 1: is living symbiotically inside of you, and then that bacteria
Speaker 1: has it produces a chemical reaction that will produce light.
Speaker 1: That's bioluminescence. Biofluorescence requires the presence of UV light. So
Speaker 1: biofluorescence is when you can absorb UV light and re
Speaker 1: emit it to be visible light. So like you shine
Speaker 1: a black light on something and then it re emits
Speaker 1: as a glowing Usually it's something like glowing blue or green.
Speaker 1: It can be other colors as well. It's actually absorbing
Speaker 1: in that UV light and re emitting it into a
Speaker 1: glowing light that we can actually see with our human
Speaker 1: eyes although we can't see UV light. So these are
Speaker 1: the black light posters of Neat. Yes, I love that absolutely.
Speaker 1: And we've learned a couple of weeks ago that Platypus
Speaker 1: is floras under UV light. Yes, we just talked about
Speaker 1: that on the show. Oh my goodness, so cute. Yes,
Speaker 1: so they will bio florus. However, there's an update because
Speaker 1: they are finding more and more mammals in Australia that
Speaker 1: are glowing under UV light. It would be Australia. It
Speaker 1: would be like, of course Australia, have you why didn't
Speaker 1: occur to us before? Now to try throwing animals in
Speaker 1: Australia rave to see if they glow under black light,
Speaker 1: because of course they do. Animals were working their tricks
Speaker 1: to make sure we never did this. Really a disturbance
Speaker 1: in the underground party, just just this wombat going like
Speaker 1: I don't see you on the list. So Tasmanian devils
Speaker 1: are the newest mammal who have been discovered who also biofluoresce.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, this picture. It is so cool. Yes,
Speaker 1: it looks like the universe is in its ear. I
Speaker 1: want to go inside the ice cavern planet of its ear.
Speaker 1: It's so pretty. Yes, because most of its fur actually
Speaker 1: doesn't glow, so it's like this dark fur. It's sort
Speaker 1: of a brownish black button in the dark. You can't
Speaker 1: really see it, but there are spots that actually glow blue.
Speaker 1: So around its snout or the skin around its eyes,
Speaker 1: their inner ear skin, all of these parts absorb and
Speaker 1: re emit UV light as this eerie blue lights. So
Speaker 1: it looks like you turned off the lights and then
Speaker 1: the Tasmanian devil. Remember those like glow in the dark
Speaker 1: stars you put on your ceilings. The Tasmanian devil just
Speaker 1: has that, but it's on its face, on its snout
Speaker 1: and in its ears and around its eyes. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: The Tasmanian devil. Beautiful is not usually an adjective describe them.
Speaker 1: They are bushy, there hang out. They're kind of cute
Speaker 1: in an ugly way, right, they're cute, Yes, definitely, but
Speaker 1: when they glow my got etherious little alien bears space bears,
Speaker 1: space bear so cute. They are actually a marsupial. So
Speaker 1: what's interesting is platypuses are a monotream. They are not marsupials.
Speaker 1: But both monotreams and marsupials are kind of weird because
Speaker 1: they're they're both mammals, but they're sort of branches off
Speaker 1: of mammals that they're evolutionary path probably diverged from other
Speaker 1: mammals like a long time ago in evolutionary history. So
Speaker 1: that's why monotreams are so strange. In their reproduction, they
Speaker 1: lay eggs, they don't have nipples. They just kind of
Speaker 1: leak milk out of their chests, and marsupials have a right.
Speaker 1: It's such a funny. It was just leaking, you know,
Speaker 1: just leaking a little bit of milk out of there.
Speaker 1: But and then marsupials have a whole range reproductive system
Speaker 1: themselves where they have a pouch where these really tiny
Speaker 1: almost fetal babies when they when they're born, they have
Speaker 1: to crawl up and into the pouch. And they also
Speaker 1: have some very weird business going on with the reproductive organs.
Speaker 1: They all branch off into multiple kind of a maze
Speaker 1: like things. Anyways, this is all to say that there there,
Speaker 1: they are mammals, but they are strange mammals. So it's
Speaker 1: really interesting to see that both monotreams and marsupials seem
Speaker 1: to have this tendency to biofluoresce. Tasman and devils are
Speaker 1: not the only ones who biofluoresce. Basically, what researchers are
Speaker 1: doing right now, it's just shining black light on every
Speaker 1: animal specimen. They have to see if it was make
Speaker 1: your moment in history to shine everything like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: and they think, like I really would like it. It's
Speaker 1: butteretflies lit up under bioluminescence. I know there are some
Speaker 1: that like a little they do. Actually, there are butterflies
Speaker 1: like they would be gorgeous. Actually, scorpions also biofluorus, but
Speaker 1: there are there are butterflies that do biofluoress under UVY light.
Speaker 1: I think butterflies can actually see uv light. Butterflies are
Speaker 1: just fairies, yes, exactly exactly, but so are scorpions, so
Speaker 1: you know, like you can't judge, I don't they don't fly,
Speaker 1: that's true. I don't think there should be that deadly.
Speaker 1: Scorpions aren't deadly, just to be fair. And some butterflies
Speaker 1: are toxic if you eat them, so you know, do
Speaker 1: not eat butterflies, don't eat them, don't do it in general,
Speaker 1: don't need any anything you just find that's flying around.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So the other biofluorescent mammals that they have
Speaker 1: discovered ore wombats and bilbies, which are sort of a
Speaker 1: weird mouse like marsupial. These are both more supi in Australia.
Speaker 1: So the bilbie's ears and tails kind of glow, and
Speaker 1: the wombats sort of have glowing patches of fur around
Speaker 1: their eyes and around. It's a little less clear to
Speaker 1: me like what parts of the wombats glow, but it
Speaker 1: seems to be there. For it looks like a Coca
Speaker 1: Cola polar bear went to a rave and got some
Speaker 1: like lime green highlights and then got eyeliner that matched,
Speaker 1: and was like, let's do this, let's do this, let's
Speaker 1: whole crew. They are so cute. This little Bilbie was like,
Speaker 1: it's like a little rapidly a little bunny here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that glow, I just feel like everything is just
Speaker 1: glowing and cute and I want to love it. But
Speaker 1: it's a wild animal, so no, yeah, yeah, probably don't like,
Speaker 1: don't take these animals to a rave. Actually, it reminds
Speaker 1: me very much of cyberpunk TV vibes, you know, very much.
Speaker 1: I could see these pets with the luxurious folks hanging
Speaker 1: out in the corporate district exactly exactly like you know.
Speaker 1: I started playing the game. It keeps crashing, so haven't
Speaker 1: really gone very far. Yeah, I'm an hour in. I
Speaker 1: tried to drive a car. It's not working. Just no,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of glitches. Yeah, it looks like
Speaker 1: it came out to three. I'm gonna wait for the patches. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed building my character. It was a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: yum on other things until this suck. It's fit. What
Speaker 1: a journey. I feel like very much the character creation
Speaker 1: and cyberpunk vibes with these glowing animals. Just yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a whole look, it's a whole vibe. It's
Speaker 1: like future futuristic Rudolph. So this is so funny. I
Speaker 1: have to share this. Dr Sarah Monks, who is a
Speaker 1: senior researcher at the School of Natural Sciences at the
Speaker 1: University of Tasmania, has this quote when she's talking about
Speaker 1: how they're now like shining all this UV light on
Speaker 1: various specimens to see if they glow. She says, quote,
Speaker 1: you mean, all these years we've been farting around with
Speaker 1: ordinary spotlights and we should have been using UV. I
Speaker 1: love it. I love I love that. Like I think
Speaker 1: it's very humanizing to realize that researchers are reacting the
Speaker 1: same way we are, where it's like, wait, these guys glow.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, we got it. We gotta start shut
Speaker 1: like you gotta test all of them, must have Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: they're testing as many more supials and Australian mammals as
Speaker 1: they can to see who glows under UV light. And
Speaker 1: it's not just because it's cool. They also want to
Speaker 1: find out if there is a pattern with nocturnal animals,
Speaker 1: like say, maybe some of them blow and some of
Speaker 1: them don't. They're finding that in general, carnivorous ones don't glow,
Speaker 1: which makes a lot of sense, because if you're trying
Speaker 1: to sneak up on your prey and you're glowing, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to see the scene. However, so it's
Speaker 1: interesting because as we know, like Tasmanian devils are carnivorous,
Speaker 1: but they do glow. And my theory on this is
Speaker 1: that it's because Tasmanian devils are more often than not
Speaker 1: actually scavengers, so they do hunt occasionally, but their preferences
Speaker 1: to scavenge, so it's not as much of an issue
Speaker 1: for them to have to sneak up on prey as
Speaker 1: it is for them to just find and intimidate others
Speaker 1: as they go and scavenge. For me, So that's that's
Speaker 1: my theory, and if it turns out to be right,
Speaker 1: I demand an award in the form of a and
Speaker 1: making the shape of a Tasmanian devil, a glowing, a
Speaker 1: glow in the dark Tasmanian devil, thank you. So that
Speaker 1: is option number one to recast as Rudolph, and I
Speaker 1: do have to go and mention another option because it
Speaker 1: is I can't even begin to explain, well, I can
Speaker 1: because I have to. It's happening now on the podcast.
Speaker 1: But this is it's a bioluminescent sea unicorn. Yes, very magical.
Speaker 1: So pyrosomes are called unicorns of the sea, not because
Speaker 1: their horses or anything like that, but because they are
Speaker 1: such a weird animal that biologists are like, it's as
Speaker 1: weird as a unicorn. They are the their tubes, I
Speaker 1: guess is the most essential way I can describe. Okay,
Speaker 1: do you remember those like jelly like liquid filled tubes.
Speaker 1: They have like glitter and like maybe a little star.
Speaker 1: Squeeze them and they will slippery. It looks like that,
Speaker 1: but it's an animal. Yeah, they were like these inverted
Speaker 1: like tubes and then you would like try to hold
Speaker 1: it and then they would like slide out of your hand.
Speaker 1: Because yeah, but yeah, that's they are. That's kind of
Speaker 1: what they look like. They look like they're made out
Speaker 1: of plastic or maybe like silk stockings. They can be tiny,
Speaker 1: like the size of a little routini or macaroni in
Speaker 1: your palm, or they can be pool noodle size, or
Speaker 1: they can be bigger than an elephant's trunk. They can
Speaker 1: be gigantic, and they are often translucent or transparent. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they're a little bit more opaque. They come in blues
Speaker 1: and greens and pinks, and they are actually sort of
Speaker 1: the borg of the sea because when you're looking at
Speaker 1: one of these things, one of these tubes, it is
Speaker 1: not one animal. It is hundreds or maybe thousands of animals.
Speaker 1: It's secretly swarms. This is a start. I'm yeah, Joel
Speaker 1: does not like it, doesn't like a swarm. I'm hoping
Speaker 1: this is one that it's sort of an introduction to
Speaker 1: swarms that maybe will ease you into the topic. It's
Speaker 1: less visually freaky. Yes, yes, so far. Even though it's
Speaker 1: visually very weird, I still feel like I'm looking at
Speaker 1: a computer rendering or something and not an actual thing.
Speaker 1: It's so weird. I'm hoping it's comforting that they actually
Speaker 1: don't separate. They don't like come apart. They're basically all
Speaker 1: permanently holding hands together. Oh my god, it's so cute.
Speaker 1: Except they're covered in a sort of gelatinous sleeve like
Speaker 1: a sausage. Okay, so le's cute. It's like a sausage.
Speaker 1: That's a community. I don't want my sausage. It takes
Speaker 1: a village to raise a sausage. As they say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is mentally confounding. Yes, so A pyrosome is not
Speaker 1: just one big worm or tube sock or whatever, but
Speaker 1: a bunch of individual zooid. So Zooids are animals that
Speaker 1: come together to form a single unit. Pyrosomes are called
Speaker 1: colonial tunic. It's which sounds like some kind of ancient
Speaker 1: war general old but it's not. It's a colony of tunicates.
Speaker 1: So a tunic, it is hard to describe to not
Speaker 1: very helpful, however, I will try. So. A tunicate is
Speaker 1: a very strange animal, sort of a subphylum. There's a
Speaker 1: bunch of different species of them. They are all just
Speaker 1: so weird. Some of them start out life as kind
Speaker 1: of being these little tadpole like animals that swim around,
Speaker 1: and then they will settle on a rock and then
Speaker 1: become immobile and grow into this sort of tube balloon
Speaker 1: thing and these are called c squirts. And yeah, so
Speaker 1: they'll actually lose a bunch of their brain matter and
Speaker 1: converted into other parts and go from being a swimming animal, uh,
Speaker 1: to just being something that looks like a plant but
Speaker 1: is actually alive but is immobile. It's very they're very weird.
Speaker 1: They're very weird. To just describe what happened to me
Speaker 1: doing quarantine matter. I transferred it to everything mostly just
Speaker 1: trying and stay alive. Must lets resemble human and more
Speaker 1: Paladays we have all become sessile. It is it is
Speaker 1: a fact of quarantine. I got. I have these peppermint
Speaker 1: chocolate covered pretzels that I've just been filter feeding, just
Speaker 1: letting them fall into my mouth like a sea squirt.
Speaker 1: So unlike sea squirts, parasomes are mobile. They are free floating,
Speaker 1: and they are actually made up of a bunch of
Speaker 1: tuniquet smaller individuals, pretty small like sort of plankton size,
Speaker 1: who joined together to create one giant creature. So they
Speaker 1: like to live in the open ocean, typically in warmer seas.
Speaker 1: They're not usually like deep deep sea, but they can
Speaker 1: be found, uh sort of in deeper deeper seas. The
Speaker 1: largest colonies can be up to sixty feet long, which
Speaker 1: is eighteen meters and made up of thousands of individuals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so pretty incredible. And like I said, they are attached
Speaker 1: to each other through a gelatinous casing, which is also
Speaker 1: called a gelatinous tunic, which is fun. Like, this color
Speaker 1: is nice. It looks like it'd be a comfortable material, right,
Speaker 1: It's sort of like an underwater renaissance. Fair like have
Speaker 1: you seen my gelatinous tunic? I was singu aus song.
Speaker 1: So they basically work as a unit and each zooid.
Speaker 1: So each of the individuals that make up this giant
Speaker 1: sea sausage will suck in water from the outside of
Speaker 1: the sausage and filter it through to the inside. And
Speaker 1: as it filters this water, it catches all of the
Speaker 1: little particles of edible material in the water, like basically
Speaker 1: sea ocean snow, a little bits of organic matter, and
Speaker 1: then that's how it feeds. Yeah, so just like I
Speaker 1: keep calling it a sausage, but it's very delicate looking,
Speaker 1: so it looks sort of like a ghost stalking. It's
Speaker 1: very thin and and flowy, like it's made out of silk.
Speaker 1: Do we know how tight their bonds are because it
Speaker 1: looks like if I just leave my hand in it
Speaker 1: all flute. Yes they are. Well, they wouldn't like separate,
Speaker 1: but you can tear it pretty easily. So like they
Speaker 1: don't they don't separate on their own, like a flock
Speaker 1: of birds where if you try to run out of
Speaker 1: flock of birds that like part for you, it won't
Speaker 1: do that, but it will tear apart so they're actually
Speaker 1: notoriously difficult to collect for research because of how delicate
Speaker 1: they are and how easy it is to tear them,
Speaker 1: and so some researchers have actually developed robots that have
Speaker 1: extremely soft hands, like these are really soft handed robots
Speaker 1: that they use to collect the parasomes. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is they are extremely delicate. So in terms of movement,
Speaker 1: smaller colonies can actually somewhat move on their own, Like
Speaker 1: each of the zoids have cilia, which are the tiny hairs,
Speaker 1: and they move so that they filter the water, but
Speaker 1: that also creates a water flow that propels them forward.
Speaker 1: Larger colonies, I think it's just more like you can
Speaker 1: kind of tell because of how big they are, it
Speaker 1: becomes harder to sort of move it just through this
Speaker 1: propulsion of each of the individuals because it becomes so
Speaker 1: so long and sort of like uh, floppy. But they
Speaker 1: do move mostly with the help of ocean currents, so
Speaker 1: just kind of you know, going with the flow, picking
Speaker 1: up little bits of seed to try to where they can,
Speaker 1: and just you know, just really easy, easy going chill.
Speaker 1: They would really get along with Crush the turtle from Nemo,
Speaker 1: just living life, taking right here, seeing what happens. Do
Speaker 1: they also live a very long time? Like you know
Speaker 1: what there is? That's a good question. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it kind of depends on a few factors, like
Speaker 1: how big they end up growing. You know, they're because
Speaker 1: they're so fragile, I don't think they end up living
Speaker 1: that long. But it's like, in theory they could probably
Speaker 1: live for a while because they're made up of all
Speaker 1: these individuals, but I think in in reality, because they're
Speaker 1: so so fragile, they actually don't don't live that long.
Speaker 1: So maybe like a few years at most. But that's
Speaker 1: a good question. I'm not they seem like one of
Speaker 1: the more mysterious animals that I'm not sure how much
Speaker 1: is known about. I mean, that's fair if they shred
Speaker 1: when you touch them, hard to figure out how long
Speaker 1: they live because this one just died. Crap, okay to
Speaker 1: start again, start in top. But the reason that they
Speaker 1: are a candidate for Rudolph is that they are bioluminescent,
Speaker 1: and they can be some of the brightest bioluminescent animals
Speaker 1: in the sea. So each zooid that makes up the
Speaker 1: pyrosome colony can haynes light organs that are chock full
Speaker 1: of bioluminescent bacteria. So these organs are triggered to light
Speaker 1: up either by touch or by the presence of other light.
Speaker 1: So basically what this means is that you can have
Speaker 1: these waves of light that happened on a pyrosome because
Speaker 1: one of the little individuals is triggered to shine its
Speaker 1: light after its neighbor shines its lights. So you get
Speaker 1: these waves of light. It's an underwater light show, Disney,
Speaker 1: where are you at make the movie. It can also
Speaker 1: be triggered by the presence of another pyrosome nearby, so
Speaker 1: if a pyrosome is lighting up, another one will light up.
Speaker 1: It's just like a bunch of raving little c tubes
Speaker 1: made up of a bunch of little individuals. It's it's
Speaker 1: really really fascinating. This animal wave sounds amazing. Would very
Speaker 1: much like to participate. It's actually really difficult. I had
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble finding videos of it. I would
Speaker 1: assume it is sorry exact, just sent us a message
Speaker 1: saying beautiful at night, nasty during the day, which is,
Speaker 1: to be fair a lot true of a lot of partiers,
Speaker 1: Like you know, you're beautiful at night and then you
Speaker 1: wake up and your your hair is covered and covered
Speaker 1: in vomit and stuff. Anyways, not speaking from experience, um
Speaker 1: Zack Sar audio engineer, hilarious. So they will glow in white, green,
Speaker 1: or blue, but they can actually sometimes glow red and pink.
Speaker 1: So very good, very good on brand for Rudolph. So
Speaker 1: I feel like if there is an underwater Santa, He's
Speaker 1: definitely gonna want one of these parasomes to light up
Speaker 1: his sub submer sleigh, I just clause and c sounds
Speaker 1: good to me. It sounds yeah. But like I was saying,
Speaker 1: it is it is hard to find videos of these.
Speaker 1: I found a few, so I will definitely provide those
Speaker 1: in the show notes. But I guess it's just tricky.
Speaker 1: It's both tricky to find them and then happen to
Speaker 1: have a video camera that can capture their light show,
Speaker 1: and then it's also hard to collect them as samples,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to get get these on video. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are just a few of them, and I
Speaker 1: will share them. I've sent them to YouTube, Joel for
Speaker 1: you to enjoy. But it is they are just they
Speaker 1: look like I don't know, like glow sticks, but big
Speaker 1: big tubes, big pool noodle glow sticks. It's again, it's
Speaker 1: hard to think that. I really feel like this is
Speaker 1: a deep fake. I'm not I trust scientists, so I
Speaker 1: know it's not, but it just looks unreal. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: one more candidate for Rudolph, although it may not get
Speaker 1: along with the other reindeer. Mega mouth sharks, despite being
Speaker 1: twice as long as a bus and having giant, fierce
Speaker 1: looking mouths, are actually filter feeders that eat tiny plankton
Speaker 1: by sucking them in and catching them in bristles near
Speaker 1: their gill slets. Interestingly, they have a bright white band
Speaker 1: above their upper lip, like a glowing mustache. It was
Speaker 1: thought this might be bioluminescence, but more recent research suggests
Speaker 1: it acts like a reflective band. Denticles, tiny sharp protrusions
Speaker 1: on the band help reflect light given off by other
Speaker 1: bioluminescent animals. The function of this glowing mustache is still
Speaker 1: a mystery. It may either attract plankton or serve as
Speaker 1: an identifier for them to recognize other Meccha mouth sharks,
Speaker 1: or maybe they like to jog at night and want
Speaker 1: to be safe from cars. When we return, we're going
Speaker 1: to reboot another holiday movie classic using an adorable flatworm
Speaker 1: in a hairy crustacean. There are many animals who can
Speaker 1: survive extreme conditions. Tarte grades can survive total desiccation, radiation,
Speaker 1: and the vacuum of space. Wood frogs can survive being frozen.
Speaker 1: But there's one adorable little critter who could survive any
Speaker 1: action or slasher movie you throw at it. So now
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about die Hard. The classic Christmas
Speaker 1: tale of John McClain fighting Swedish terrorists was that. That's
Speaker 1: the plot, right, yeah, yeah, that's it. Okay, good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And he's like in an office building and he's is
Speaker 1: he he's like trying to save his fiance or it's
Speaker 1: his wife. Okay, but they're on the rocks. Yes, they've
Speaker 1: been fighting, and he's overworked cop, he's no time to
Speaker 1: do he he works with an outside cops try to
Speaker 1: figure things out. Once I think is it Russian? I
Speaker 1: think it's Russian terrorists Swedish? Check this, it's Snape right,
Speaker 1: Snapes in there, Yes with a wild accent because it's
Speaker 1: Alan Rickman. Yes, yes, Alan Rickman is there with crazy accent.
Speaker 1: How did it heckuars Jappy's own business by terrorist over
Speaker 1: hi rise? Oh, it doesn't say their ethnicity or nationality.
Speaker 1: I should say the Swedish government has censored that on Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: I know. Wait, German, German, German terrorists. Sure, Hans Gruber,
Speaker 1: of course he's German together. I'm sorry Sweden by the way,
Speaker 1: for he's coming. He's a terrorists. Not take some money.
Speaker 1: John McCain, life, it's been rough. John McClain. McCain, Oh
Speaker 1: my god. John McClain is on the ks with his wife.
Speaker 1: So along with his police buddy, they tried to infiltrate
Speaker 1: the building using back alleyates and stuff. The fun thing
Speaker 1: about this is this was a new building. I want
Speaker 1: to say it was owned by Sony at the time,
Speaker 1: so this production had to get special permission from Sony
Speaker 1: to use the building. It was still under construction. That's
Speaker 1: why they could film and all of the floors and
Speaker 1: all of the sets and in the um shafts where
Speaker 1: the elevators were going to go, and so a lot
Speaker 1: of the scenes were written like on set because they
Speaker 1: were like what's around, Oh, we have this dumpster and
Speaker 1: like where they dump all they done go next? Um,
Speaker 1: it was halter skelter, but it worked. Chovin Bruce Willis
Speaker 1: into every nook and cranny and like being like now crawl,
Speaker 1: damn it, crawl and it deals with all like the
Speaker 1: perfect like there is definitely a lot of debate about
Speaker 1: whether this is a Christmas movie, right. The reason I
Speaker 1: think it is because it deals with all of the
Speaker 1: holiday like themes of a family movie. So if you
Speaker 1: have holiday family movies are like are we going to
Speaker 1: make it? We're really stressed out. What's the reason for
Speaker 1: the season? Um, a lot of interpersonal drama, growth the
Speaker 1: human beings, Like it's always about like family and how
Speaker 1: this season inspires the best of us and damn it,
Speaker 1: that night it is inspired the best in John McLean.
Speaker 1: You know he took out and it was writing and
Speaker 1: like he dressed on the dead dead German terrorists as
Speaker 1: a Santa. Right, so Christmas movie obviously being But the
Speaker 1: title of the movie is die Hard, and that is
Speaker 1: because it's very hard to kill John McClane. He's very
Speaker 1: widely very hardy. So we're gonna talk about animals that
Speaker 1: are extremely difficult to kill, maybe even better at not
Speaker 1: dying than John mcclin. So our first potential cast member
Speaker 1: is planarians. Oh my god, planarians are a flat worm
Speaker 1: that are surprisingly and they can definitely walk over a
Speaker 1: floor covered in sharp glass, get all cut off, even
Speaker 1: get decapitated, and be totally fine. So I will explain. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, they are a species of flatworm, they
Speaker 1: are actually sorry, they are a group of flatworms. There
Speaker 1: are all sorts of different species that live all over
Speaker 1: the world. They can live in salt water, freshwater, or
Speaker 1: in moist terrestrial environments, so they are a cosmopolitan species. Yes,
Speaker 1: very much like John McClain like. They can survive many
Speaker 1: different situations, even like office building Alan Rickman, holding you
Speaker 1: up for money and trying to save your estranged wife.
Speaker 1: So they are in appearance typically pretty flat. I guess
Speaker 1: that's obvious because they're type of flat worm kind of
Speaker 1: a brownish color, and they have this like weird little
Speaker 1: shovel shaped head. And the most interesting part is that
Speaker 1: they have eye spots facing upwards on the top of
Speaker 1: their heads, and they look cross side and really silly
Speaker 1: like little cartoon characters. Are not there's are spots that
Speaker 1: look like eyes, yes, so they're eye spots are made
Speaker 1: out of photoreceptive cells. And even though it looks like
Speaker 1: basically cartoon eyes where they have the whites of their
Speaker 1: eyes and the pupils like drawn in like a Looney
Speaker 1: Tunes character. It's actually because the dark part of their
Speaker 1: eye is made out of pigment cells that absorb light,
Speaker 1: and then the white part is uh um photoreceptive neurons
Speaker 1: that will take the information about the light to the brain.
Speaker 1: So it's not it's not a pupil and the white
Speaker 1: of the eye. It's just it's happens to look like
Speaker 1: a cross side cartoon just because that's how that's how
Speaker 1: the neurons versus the the pigmented spots look like. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like they're cross eyed and goofy and it's
Speaker 1: really funny. And it's basically they can tell the difference
Speaker 1: between light and dark and that's about it. So like me,
Speaker 1: as I get this kind of day, maybe planarians are
Speaker 1: incredible not just because they look like amazing little cartoon goofballs.
Speaker 1: They are super bad ass, really hard to kill. They
Speaker 1: can survive being decapitated and can just casually grow a
Speaker 1: new body or a new head and become multiple individuals.
Speaker 1: Imagine a die hard where every time John McClean gets injured,
Speaker 1: he just grows another John McClean, like and then Alan Rickman.
Speaker 1: It's like I just thought, I we killed John mccleans. Like,
Speaker 1: now you've got to John mcclean's to deal with an
Speaker 1: army of John mcclean's by the surrounding conquer. The amount
Speaker 1: of abuse that Planarians can take and survive, even grow
Speaker 1: into new individuals is truly incredible. You can split a
Speaker 1: Planari in down the middle, you can julian a Planari,
Speaker 1: and you can dice it. You can chop it pretty finely,
Speaker 1: and in most cases, as long as you have a
Speaker 1: big enough chunk of Planarian, it will grow into a
Speaker 1: new Planarian, or just it'll grow the parts that it's missing.
Speaker 1: So if you cut the body from the head, it'll
Speaker 1: grow a new body. If you cut the body, the
Speaker 1: body will grow a new head. You can even bisect
Speaker 1: it partially, which sounds horrifor like this is like now planarians,
Speaker 1: saw you cut it partially in half. Those split heads
Speaker 1: will regrow and now it'll have two heads. That is
Speaker 1: some real body words stuff. Right, have to use this
Speaker 1: animal as the inspiration for the next great body horror movie,
Speaker 1: because at one point, don't they just beg for death?
Speaker 1: They're like, this is untenable. You know, like how planes
Speaker 1: have the black box and you're like, why don't you
Speaker 1: make the whole plane out of the black box. It's like,
Speaker 1: why don't we make all animals out of planarians? Yes,
Speaker 1: keep all of the puppies. See just I don't even
Speaker 1: want to go there with puppies. No matter what you do,
Speaker 1: the puppy just keeps growing back into more puppies. It's like,
Speaker 1: eventually there are too many horrifying like a three headed puppy.
Speaker 1: It's fine. I like that. I guess the reason that
Speaker 1: they can do this is that the wound site on
Speaker 1: the planarian, when you slice and dice, it can actually
Speaker 1: act like the cells there will act as stem cells
Speaker 1: and differentiate to form the missing chunk of body, whether
Speaker 1: it's a head or tail or middle. So with embryos,
Speaker 1: as they're developing, they have stem cells. They have cells
Speaker 1: that can differentiate into different parts. It's how you can
Speaker 1: basically start with like, you know, two cells, and then
Speaker 1: like start to break into more and more cells, and
Speaker 1: those cells go on to form the brain, the eyes,
Speaker 1: the head, the feet, the toe is the I don't know, teeth, whatever,
Speaker 1: all the parts. I think I named all the parts
Speaker 1: of a human the bones connected to the hip bones
Speaker 1: connected to the butt bone anyways. So yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: also some really weird science fiction things that happen with
Speaker 1: these guys, like researchers can induce doubleheadedness in planarians by
Speaker 1: exposing the wounded planarian to electrical fields or two chemicals
Speaker 1: that affect gene expressions. So yeah, weird stuff. Weird stuff.
Speaker 1: To start cross breeding clanarians, start with Jagons. I know
Speaker 1: they don't really exist, but I would like a canon
Speaker 1: Jagon and defeat it. It's our new overlord now. But
Speaker 1: you know, if we take Bruce Willis right and cross
Speaker 1: them with some Planarian DNA, we can do like die
Speaker 1: Hard three, Die Hardest. Yes, you know, like that scene
Speaker 1: with him walking through glass. He would just be skipping
Speaker 1: through it, like and each time, like a toe gets
Speaker 1: cut off, like just a whole new Bruce Willis bros.
Speaker 1: It's just starts off really tiny though, because it grew
Speaker 1: out of a pinky tes Bruce Willis and John mcclin.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna teach a terrace lasson. Oh my gosh, I'm
Speaker 1: seeing the vision of John McLean's at the end, because
Speaker 1: each like, who are all of these John mccleans like,
Speaker 1: we all love you. And then you know somebody who's
Speaker 1: always cleaning the house and she lives the perfect leg right,
Speaker 1: his cop buddies like, my god, there's too many John mccleans.
Speaker 1: And then his wife was like, no, don't you see,
Speaker 1: there's just enough John mccleans to fill the hole in
Speaker 1: my heart. It's a true love story. It's just like
Speaker 1: various sized John mcclin's working around the house like a
Speaker 1: little short one and like a little apron make near
Speaker 1: breakfast like food, and they work multiple jobs. Now he
Speaker 1: has all the time in the world for me. Excellent, excellent, worthy,
Speaker 1: thank you. I think a better ending to die Hard, right,
Speaker 1: because like it's definitely improved upon the original material. Right.
Speaker 1: Because if you think that you will resolve all your
Speaker 1: marital problems just through a mutually shared traumatic experience, no,
Speaker 1: you will not healthy. That's a temporary right. You will
Speaker 1: solve your marital problems if you regenerate into a bunch
Speaker 1: of us that are able to be on mass. A
Speaker 1: better you because you can spend more time at home
Speaker 1: with your wife, financially, more time to give to the
Speaker 1: reasons you know she you were having trouble the first
Speaker 1: place right. It's like I gotta go to work, but
Speaker 1: my foot, which is now a whole new John McClain
Speaker 1: can stay home with you. You cant the to work
Speaker 1: boo ter Luck me, it's got a mouth on it.
Speaker 1: So our next John McClain can. It is the Yetti crab,
Speaker 1: also known as the Hoff crabs, which will be very clear.
Speaker 1: So I think we actually discussed these briefly during our
Speaker 1: crab episode, our crab episode where we talked about how
Speaker 1: the nature of things is to evolve into crabs, which
Speaker 1: is called carsonization. It is such a fat in nature.
Speaker 1: They've actually come up with a word for it, and
Speaker 1: it's that crustaceans and sometimes Arthur POD's just like to
Speaker 1: turn into crab shapes because crab is best according to evolution,
Speaker 1: all right, And YETI crabs are another example of this
Speaker 1: because they're actually not crabs. They're squat lobsters who have
Speaker 1: evolved to start having that squat crab shape. So but
Speaker 1: more remarkably, they are super hairy, so they are they
Speaker 1: are covered in silky blonde bristles that look like for
Speaker 1: That's also why they are nicknamed the Hoff crabs because
Speaker 1: of David Hasselhoff's hairy ches in Baywatch, naughty scientists. I
Speaker 1: thought it was hot like the planet in Star Wars,
Speaker 1: that that would be nice too. I guess that would
Speaker 1: fit a little bit. In fact, fit even more than
Speaker 1: you may think, because they can survive in extreme conditions.
Speaker 1: So they live in the depths of frigidly cold southern
Speaker 1: oceans and congregate around boiling hot thermal vents that reach
Speaker 1: temperatures up to seven and fifty degrees fahrenheit, which is
Speaker 1: four hundred degrees celsius. So they are between freezing water
Speaker 1: and boiling water, and you know they are somehow able
Speaker 1: to find the water that won't kill them. So you know,
Speaker 1: their hair senses it. That's where all these fighter sensors are.
Speaker 1: Their hair actually does help them filter these weeks, these
Speaker 1: toxic minerals that can come up from these events. So
Speaker 1: these events have these very they're very rich with minerals,
Speaker 1: which is good for some life, right, like a lot
Speaker 1: of bacteria that feeds on these vents. It's very good
Speaker 1: for But for a lot of animals, those heavy minerals
Speaker 1: are actually quite bad for them. The yet eat crabs
Speaker 1: fur or those bristles are actually covered in this helpful
Speaker 1: bacteria that will filter out the toxic minerals, allowing the
Speaker 1: crab to feed and breathe without getting in those those
Speaker 1: minerals from the vents, and the crabs themselves actually do
Speaker 1: like to eat bacteria around the vents, and it's theorized
Speaker 1: that they probably also eat other small animals that live
Speaker 1: around the vents. They look carnivorous, they look like they
Speaker 1: could hunt. Yeah, I think they're very intimidating, but also beautiful.
Speaker 1: Like I would like a YETI crab for co comfortable.
Speaker 1: That would be it would be a look, It would
Speaker 1: look great, it would look great, thank you. So they
Speaker 1: live at crushing depths, so like two thousand, three hundred
Speaker 1: feet under the sea, which is seven dred just absolute
Speaker 1: crushing depths, so they can withstand all of that pressure
Speaker 1: and managed to stay out of the freezing cold and
Speaker 1: out of the boiling hot by crawling in between these
Speaker 1: thermal events. So it's just like John McClean in die
Speaker 1: Hard has to crawl in the vent to get through
Speaker 1: the building. These crabs are just very carefully crawling between
Speaker 1: freezing to death and being boiled alive and becoming boiled
Speaker 1: lobster or becoming cold lobster rolls. It's it's very, very
Speaker 1: tricky situation. I feel like these guys understand the struggle
Speaker 1: with John McClean, like they get it. They absolutely had
Speaker 1: struggled to survive exactly. They're also crabby. The yetti has
Speaker 1: been encrypted with multiple sightings throughout human history in the Himalayas.
Speaker 1: Is there any truth to the legend. Recent research has
Speaker 1: analyzed all the evidence of a yetti, from hair samples
Speaker 1: to footprints, and has come to an interesting conclusion. Bears,
Speaker 1: it's bears. It was bears the whole time. You guys,
Speaker 1: brown bears live in the region, and their hair sample
Speaker 1: and footprints match those of the yetis so, how could
Speaker 1: people mistake a brown bear for a yetti? Well, I
Speaker 1: have a theory. Brown bears can stand on their hind legs,
Speaker 1: and sure, I don't think people would mistake it for
Speaker 1: a yetti just yet. But if it's a brown bear
Speaker 1: with a rare white or light coat color variation, which
Speaker 1: can happen in brown bears, black bears, and grizzly bears,
Speaker 1: it may look just spectacular enough on its hind legs
Speaker 1: to seem like a mystical yetti and it would be
Speaker 1: rare enough to be a cryptic siting. But hey, maybe
Speaker 1: yetis do exist and that big bellied white hair an't
Speaker 1: a mystical being. Has been a yetty this whole time?
Speaker 1: Or a bear? I don't know either way, you better
Speaker 1: be nice and not naughty for Santa Yetti Bear. When
Speaker 1: we return, we're going to discuss the body horror movie
Speaker 1: The Santa Claus starring Tim Allen and animals who would
Speaker 1: be way better as the leading role. Many animals go
Speaker 1: through incredible transformations. Insects go through metamorphosis from a larva
Speaker 1: to a butterfly, beetle or wasps. Some animals transformed during
Speaker 1: the winter to better suit their environment, and some animals transform,
Speaker 1: like Tim Allen, to take on the mantle of a
Speaker 1: deceased leader. So now we are going to talk about
Speaker 1: the classic holiday horror movie, The Santa Clause, in which
Speaker 1: a man accidentally man slaughters Santa, who lands on his roof.
Speaker 1: He startles Santa, Santa falls, dies, and incredible. Can I
Speaker 1: just say this movie is brave? I don't think I've
Speaker 1: heard of any other movie that starts in the first
Speaker 1: ten minutes with murdering Santa Claus and it's doesn't he
Speaker 1: It's been a minute since I've seen the Santa Claus.
Speaker 1: But doesn't he slip off the roof? Yes? Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: so not a man slaughter, you know, that's an act
Speaker 1: of God. He just slipped right off the roof. I
Speaker 1: saw a murderous glint and Tim Allen's I'll say that,
Speaker 1: don't we all to me as a child is closed
Speaker 1: a gap, which he was like, no one lives forever.
Speaker 1: I don't believe the Santa Claus a fifteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: It's also bringing me presents. I saw this movie and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, he just morphs into a new person,
Speaker 1: right right, got it. It's like a Highlander situation sort
Speaker 1: of right, only be one Yeah, so yeah in the movie.
Speaker 1: Then Tim Allen, after quote unquote accidentally killing Santa, puts
Speaker 1: on his coat delivers presence. But that's not the end
Speaker 1: of the movie. It turns out by putting on the clothes,
Speaker 1: he has activated some kind of like Santa transformation sequence,
Speaker 1: sort of like that Ray Bradbury story where this pliontologist
Speaker 1: as symbols. Do you remember that, where like this paleontologist
Speaker 1: assembols some bones of some alien creature and then she
Speaker 1: starts transforming into an alien creature. Did not read this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah that. I mean, like they're all sorts of
Speaker 1: weird transformation things, and this one is, you know, he's
Speaker 1: turning into Santa so he gets the Santa belly and
Speaker 1: he gets like a white Santa beard. He starts going
Speaker 1: ho ho ho, and like, you know, because you know,
Speaker 1: giving giving stuff away. So it's been a it's been
Speaker 1: a minute since I've seen that. Uh, And so we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about some incredible animal transformations that I
Speaker 1: think rivals that of the anti clause. So I would
Speaker 1: be remiss if I did not at least mention one
Speaker 1: fun wintertime animal that goes through the yearly process of
Speaker 1: turning into a little snow version of that animal. I mean,
Speaker 1: everyone knows about the Arctic fox and Arctic bunnies that
Speaker 1: go through their incredible transformation and from like being brown
Speaker 1: and gray to being little puffballs of snow where they
Speaker 1: have these beautiful snow white coats. But there are also
Speaker 1: birds that do the same thing. So what rock Ptarmigans
Speaker 1: are ground dwelling birds who go from a sleek, modeled
Speaker 1: brown coloration, which is I think really stunningly beautiful too,
Speaker 1: fluffy white balls of feathery snowy feathers, not feathery snow
Speaker 1: in the winter. They look like little snowballs with beaks
Speaker 1: and a face. O. God, I'm the last person to
Speaker 1: judge birds on beauty, but this wintry coloring it's giving
Speaker 1: me like fall fashion EASTA. Yes, yes, it goes from
Speaker 1: sort of this like summer fashion to a winter fashion.
Speaker 1: And yes, also they have like these fluffy little ug
Speaker 1: boots situation going on. It's wild how differently they look like.
Speaker 1: One sort of like almost like a turkey, and the
Speaker 1: other one's like a dove. It's much like bigger. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: they actually they look a bit turkey like because they
Speaker 1: are a ground dwelling bird for the most parts, so
Speaker 1: they have that sort of more rotund squat body. They're
Speaker 1: actually a type of grouse and their feet are so
Speaker 1: fluffy covered in feathers. In fact, it's Latin name the
Speaker 1: pussy's or lapu sees. I don't know, maybe I think
Speaker 1: it's lap you see is not laps but it's Latin names.
Speaker 1: La puces means hair foot because it's are fluffy and
Speaker 1: covered in feathers and look like bunny feet, so these
Speaker 1: extra foot feathers keep their little feets he's warm and
Speaker 1: also allow them to walk over the snow like they're
Speaker 1: wearing snowshoes by increasing the surface area. So like snow
Speaker 1: shoes will increase the surface area of your foot and
Speaker 1: displace that weight so that your foot doesn't go right
Speaker 1: through the snow. It's the same thing with these feathery
Speaker 1: little snow shoes, so that they can step step step
Speaker 1: over snow and not fall fall under the snow. And
Speaker 1: that of course, the reason their feathers turn white is
Speaker 1: to camouflage with the snow, and females are all white
Speaker 1: except for some black feathers around their tails. And males
Speaker 1: actually still have this bright red eyeliner around their eyes
Speaker 1: which is present all year long. It's beautiful eyeliner because
Speaker 1: they always have to look they always have to look good,
Speaker 1: like a lot of birds. Well as we know with
Speaker 1: birds like males are always trying to look their best,
Speaker 1: and it is to look it is a really nice
Speaker 1: I would say it's it looks like it's both in
Speaker 1: eyeliner eyeshadow and like eyelash combination of just bright red,
Speaker 1: which is very good. The red false's on a red
Speaker 1: eyeshadow is bold, but I really respect the choice. It
Speaker 1: looks great. He's ready for any like Paris fashion walk. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm inspired. And with that that stark white white coat,
Speaker 1: it's very it's it's a bold move. But when I
Speaker 1: I to respect. They like to live in little snow
Speaker 1: caves as well. And snow caves are these hollow bunkers
Speaker 1: of snow that often form around rocks and trees, and
Speaker 1: actually when you're walking out in the snow, it's something
Speaker 1: you sometimes have to be careful for, Like if you
Speaker 1: walk around a tree, you can actually fall down because
Speaker 1: like the snow will form this kind of like this
Speaker 1: little hollow cave when there's like roots or something that
Speaker 1: prevents the snow from piling up under it or or
Speaker 1: in between rocks. So they will get in these little
Speaker 1: snow caves and it will help them keep warm. And
Speaker 1: it's really cute when they poke their little heads above
Speaker 1: the snow. It's just just like little It looks like
Speaker 1: it's a groundhog, but it's a bird. No, my good news.
Speaker 1: This is the first bird. I'm ready to go on
Speaker 1: record and say that I love we did it so
Speaker 1: so sweet. It's a creature Kringle Times miracle, Yes, beautiful birds, wonderful,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a much I think it's a
Speaker 1: less horrifying transformation than in the Santa Claus. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is a fashion transformation, whereas Santa Claus, as we've already mentioned,
Speaker 1: is pure body horror. It's also I don't know if
Speaker 1: this has ever explained in the Santa Clause, but like,
Speaker 1: does he go back to his normal body when it's
Speaker 1: not Christmas time or does it? Yeah? And then next
Speaker 1: year he gets big again. Okay, don't even Santa Claus too,
Speaker 1: there is a sequel. It is amazing. H he cannot
Speaker 1: shake being Santa Claus. So just like all of us then, really, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: once winter comes, we all bulked back up to our
Speaker 1: our hair um hair, hair turns white from stress. Start
Speaker 1: giving me all of our money. It's true, we all,
Speaker 1: we all really do become Santa Clauses around around the holidays.
Speaker 1: So in terms of I think what's interesting to me
Speaker 1: is that, in terms of actually following the plot of
Speaker 1: the movie, the animal that is most like the Santa
Speaker 1: Claus are bees. So we are actually going to talk
Speaker 1: about bees in depth in a very special New Year's
Speaker 1: episode about bees. I'm really excited. I think you guys
Speaker 1: are gonna love it. It's got Jamie and Caitlin of
Speaker 1: the Bechdel Cast on it. It's all about bees and
Speaker 1: we review a very special movie which you may have
Speaker 1: guessed what it is. Maybe like a movie that actually
Speaker 1: requires analysis, Yes, because it's so Banana's wilds so important.
Speaker 1: I was also on another podcast, I think it's out now,
Speaker 1: the frame Rate podcast with Abe Epperson and Michael Swain,
Speaker 1: and I also talked about B movie there, but I
Speaker 1: needed to do it on this podcast to to really
Speaker 1: get deep into the B biologies. So it's a it's
Speaker 1: a good it's a good check it out. It's coming
Speaker 1: out uh soon, so yeah, but we will talk in
Speaker 1: depth about bees. However, this is I think an important
Speaker 1: point to bring up when we are talking about the
Speaker 1: Santa clause because bees basically follow the Santa Claus movie rules.
Speaker 1: So most B Larva will grow up to be worker bees.
Speaker 1: Worker bees are female bees. They're all sisters, and they
Speaker 1: do all of the normal tasks around the hive, from
Speaker 1: collecting pollen to you know, defending the hive everything. This
Speaker 1: sounds like heaven and just the workforce of women's sisters
Speaker 1: united the hive, but a few select larva will actually
Speaker 1: grow up to be queen bees. And this when when
Speaker 1: a new queen must rise. And this is usually following
Speaker 1: the death of the old queen or the old queen
Speaker 1: becoming too old to become a good egg layer, which
Speaker 1: is kind of you know, kind of sucks just retiring
Speaker 1: for gold. She's going to fly down to Miami. But
Speaker 1: it all depends on how it shakes out, how the politics.
Speaker 1: As with most royal successions so asassinations, creating the new
Speaker 1: queen is triggered by the workers detecting a lack of
Speaker 1: the queen's pheromone, which she normally distributes around the hive,
Speaker 1: so she if she dies or becomes less active, that
Speaker 1: queen pheromone will start to degrade and then the worker
Speaker 1: bees will be triggered to start feeding some larva mass
Speaker 1: quantities of royal jelly. Royal jelly is a specialized honey
Speaker 1: that is nutrient nutrient rich and triggers the larva to
Speaker 1: start the process of developing into a queen bee instead
Speaker 1: of a worker bee. And actually I think all worker
Speaker 1: bees are fed a little bit of royal jelly as lava,
Speaker 1: but just for the first couple of days. But queen
Speaker 1: bees are just fed a diet exclusively of royal jelly,
Speaker 1: premium babies, premium babies, and they will actually have a
Speaker 1: different body than a normal worker so their body is elongated,
Speaker 1: much larger than a worker bee. They will have like
Speaker 1: I said, they have that queen pheromone which causes the
Speaker 1: bees to act differently, and they will breed and mate
Speaker 1: on like the worker bees, so that that queen pheromone
Speaker 1: actually suppresses mating in all of the worker bees, and
Speaker 1: so she will be the only one to breed and produce.
Speaker 1: She can produce thousands of eggs a day. When you
Speaker 1: have like a situation where you have an old queen
Speaker 1: and a new queen, sometimes it's fine, like the new
Speaker 1: queen will just work alongside the old queen. But sometimes
Speaker 1: either the workers or the new queen will kill the
Speaker 1: old queen. You know, we can't have two queens. That's
Speaker 1: confusing messages to people. We gotta make sure we're all
Speaker 1: aligned behind end. Yeah. In fact, like a newly hatched queen,
Speaker 1: if there are any other queens that are developing, she
Speaker 1: will go around and stab them all with her stinger
Speaker 1: before they can hatch and become rivals with her. So
Speaker 1: I had no idea. There's so much bloody regicide happening
Speaker 1: inside the hives. So imagine if in the Santa clause,
Speaker 1: if no the elves, the elves have to smell some
Speaker 1: kind of rich Santa cologne every day, and if they don't,
Speaker 1: they start raising a new Santa by feeding it exclusively
Speaker 1: like Santa cookies, and then one that Santa grows up,
Speaker 1: it will kill the old Santa and in any other
Speaker 1: developing Santa's and then become the new Santa. And start
Speaker 1: sinks to me that the Santa Claus is a horror movie,
Speaker 1: and now you have improved upon the original horror concept
Speaker 1: of that movie. Horrifying thing, because then essentially they're getting
Speaker 1: a baby and just mediot Christmas cookies only for its
Speaker 1: whole life, so that when it grows up it's like
Speaker 1: huge and thinks it's Santa. Well that's basically what happens
Speaker 1: with bees as I'm sure any any entomologist would agree
Speaker 1: with me. Oh my goodness. Yeah, but those Santa Claus
Speaker 1: movies are messed up because like in the Mrs Claus,
Speaker 1: one doesn't he like kidnap a woman and essentially just
Speaker 1: I don't remember the Mrs Laws one. In all these movies,
Speaker 1: it's like there's new rules to being Santa that the
Speaker 1: Tim Allen character finds out, and oh, in order for
Speaker 1: you to remain being Santa, you have to find a
Speaker 1: Mrs Claus And it's like Mrs Clause because it's a
Speaker 1: clause of some magical legal documents. She has to go
Speaker 1: find a wife and use his Santa magic to make
Speaker 1: her fall in love with him. You creepy. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, I think it's more like he's
Speaker 1: using his magic to woo her, not to like mind
Speaker 1: control her, but you know, like I don't know what
Speaker 1: to watch. Yeah, like an omniscient Santa that knows everything
Speaker 1: about you and is using that to like date you.
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, We're like he's made to listen,
Speaker 1: he knows who's not nice, and he goes on like
Speaker 1: one date with her and then basically lays it out
Speaker 1: on all on the table. Where's he? And all the
Speaker 1: elves are like, I gotta marry you to keep being
Speaker 1: Santa for Christmas to happen, And of course she's gonna
Speaker 1: say yes, you know, It's like the worst kind of
Speaker 1: public proposal, never proposed to someone that you have not
Speaker 1: talked about it with, Like, make sure they're okay with
Speaker 1: a public proposal, otherwise you just hi jacking, right, right,
Speaker 1: emotional hijack exactly like you you propose to someone in
Speaker 1: front of a big crowd, the pressures on to say
Speaker 1: yes because then otherwise they don't want to embarrass you.
Speaker 1: But then privately later they're probably gonna be like, dude,
Speaker 1: what what No? Actually no, and now your heartbroken and
Speaker 1: looking like a fool. But imagine that, except it's not
Speaker 1: just a crowd of elves staring at you, but it's
Speaker 1: like Christmas on the line. That is so unfair. So again,
Speaker 1: unhappy children will be your fault, lady. Or maybe this
Speaker 1: is uh an analogy for what women go through every year.
Speaker 1: Make our Christmas special. Dammit, they're just tired and they
Speaker 1: want to rest. Yeah. I feel like the Santa Claus
Speaker 1: too needs to be remade into a horror movie, sort
Speaker 1: of like The Invisible Man, where it's married to Santa
Speaker 1: and he's just super creepy and I would watch that anyways.
Speaker 1: That's why bees is Santa Kiwi d listen you have
Speaker 1: made our favorite holiday movies even better, enhanced them, enhanced
Speaker 1: them with natural biology. Yeah, I will make Christmas scientifically accurate,
Speaker 1: even if it pains you, even if it breaks the
Speaker 1: childlike wonder in your heart. But I don't think it will.
Speaker 1: I think that nature is so wonderful and magical it
Speaker 1: actually enhances the magic of it. Listen, you want your
Speaker 1: fuzzy birds with surf feet to sleep across the snow.
Speaker 1: That's magic. That's magical, so cute, so wonderful. Are are
Speaker 1: glowing tubes? Are John McClain worms with googly eyes? It's
Speaker 1: all incredible. This has been a wonderful creature Kringle Times. Joel,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me. I have missed
Speaker 1: you so much, so this is a wonderful, wonderful Kringle
Speaker 1: Time reunion and we will have you back of course
Speaker 1: in the new year. Have you all on the show again, pleasure.
Speaker 1: I to miss you a ton. I love everything holidays spiritued.
Speaker 1: I do not skype to one holiday. I will celebrate
Speaker 1: them all. We need a much choice, and you know
Speaker 1: when we do animals and movies, that's my favorite things.
Speaker 1: So thanks for having me back in Yeah, I'll definitely
Speaker 1: be back in here. Yes, yes, excellent. And where can
Speaker 1: people find you? Oh, well, you guys already you know
Speaker 1: I'm all over the internet at twelve one. That's j
Speaker 1: O E l l E M l N I q
Speaker 1: u E. And you do you write amazing articles. I
Speaker 1: love your TV show reviews. And you can find us
Speaker 1: on the internet at Creature feature Pot on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Creature feet Pot on Twitter. That's f e A T,
Speaker 1: not f e E T. That is some are in
Speaker 1: different And yeah, thank you guys so much for listening.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate each and every one of you. I
Speaker 1: am so we're just so lucky to have people to
Speaker 1: listen to my podcast, listen to geek out about animals,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, I hope you're all staying safe and
Speaker 1: having as much fun as you can this holiday season.
Speaker 1: I know it's you know, it's hard and different for
Speaker 1: all of us, but yeah, it's uh I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, human beings are capable of finding light even
Speaker 1: in the darkest of times, and finding giant pyrosomes that
Speaker 1: light up your hearts even in the darkest oceans. So yes,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening, and thank you to
Speaker 1: the Space Classics for their super awesome song ex Alumina.
Speaker 1: Creat Your Feature is a production of I heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday, and
Speaker 1: Happy Creature Kringel Times Everybody.