Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to Creature feature, the show where we
Speaker 1: look at the world through the eyes of animals and
Speaker 1: discover what, if anything, it means to be human. Today
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about shape shifters, tales of terrific transformers
Speaker 1: who have some shocking before and after picks, what's got
Speaker 1: two thumbs? And started life out as a tiny donut?
Speaker 1: Can snails take laziness to a freaky new level. Humans
Speaker 1: and animals on the lamb. How would you escape the heat?
Speaker 1: Discover this and more as we answer the age old
Speaker 1: question how many legs does a frog have? Hint it's
Speaker 1: not always. For one of the most incredible transformations occurs
Speaker 1: in the womb. Two separate gam meets combined to form
Speaker 1: a new life. It's an incredible inspiring process, and we
Speaker 1: all begin as a tiny mouth butt doughnut. That's right,
Speaker 1: at one point in your life you were a simple
Speaker 1: little taurus a mouth and an us and a digestive tube.
Speaker 1: And while suddenly find the anus to be a distasteful topic,
Speaker 1: it's actually vitally important for all life on Earth. That's
Speaker 1: why it's one of the earliest structures to be formed.
Speaker 1: So there you are a little more than a macaroni noodle.
Speaker 1: What's next. There are three basic layers. The crust well
Speaker 1: the ectoderm, which eventually becomes the skin, hair, nails, and
Speaker 1: nervous system. The mantle, which is really called the mesoderm layer,
Speaker 1: which will become the longest circulatory system, skeleton, and muscular system. Finally,
Speaker 1: there's the core, which is actually called the endoderm layer,
Speaker 1: that will become the digestive system liver, pancreas, and lungs.
Speaker 1: What's so interesting to me is that when you look
Speaker 1: at the early embryos of animals, like those of fish, lizards, birds, mammals,
Speaker 1: and primates including humans, they all look kind of similar,
Speaker 1: like weird little alien worms. In fact, humans and other
Speaker 1: lung having animals start with gill slits, things that in
Speaker 1: fish would become gills, but in human and other terrestrial
Speaker 1: animals become the inner ear structure. In fact, gills are
Speaker 1: pretty versatile, and insects, it's believe gills evolved into wings.
Speaker 1: Fetal development is a kind of weird micro evolutionary journey.
Speaker 1: Many atavistic traits, meaning traits that are an evolutionary throwback,
Speaker 1: are president in embryos, like tails and gills, and humans
Speaker 1: or teeth and chickens. It's a stunning reminder that we
Speaker 1: all oozed out of that same primordial chili, and that
Speaker 1: we're not really a redesign of our fishy ancestors, but
Speaker 1: a fun, up cycled, reclaimed animal. Joining me on the
Speaker 1: show today is Anna and Sharene of the excellent podcast
Speaker 1: Ethnically Ambiguous. Welcome you guys, Hello, thanks for having uh
Speaker 1: of course super excited. Are you guys ready to hear
Speaker 1: about some weird animal? So I like to go on
Speaker 1: an imagination journeys on the show. Um, so if you
Speaker 1: guys could transform into something, what what would it be like?
Speaker 1: What would be you know, animal vehicle anything? Just like
Speaker 1: my cat? Cat? Yeah, that was quick time. Why a cat? Um,
Speaker 1: I'm just very cat like and I like to sleep
Speaker 1: and I like to just kind of like roll around
Speaker 1: and like rub up on people's legs. That's yeah, I've
Speaker 1: noticed that about you be a little jarring. I'm incredibly unprofessionally. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe like a puffin because they can swim and they
Speaker 1: can fly and they can walk nice and I would
Speaker 1: have the best of all worlds. Yeah, you can also
Speaker 1: fit a lot of fish in your beak. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: love that. Yeah, I love I love some good snack poucher.
Speaker 1: Have a backpack here. Um, well, I would probably be
Speaker 1: a C squirk because so we've actually talked about um
Speaker 1: this before on the show. It's this little uh marine animal.
Speaker 1: It's a tunique, which is a type of Yeah, well
Speaker 1: it's weak, it's a it's a wiggly jelly animal. Um so.
Speaker 1: And they go through this process called DRetro aggressive metamorphosis
Speaker 1: where they start out as a free moving tadpole and
Speaker 1: then it turns into it's essentially just a stationary tube
Speaker 1: that attaches to irock and passively filter feeds for the
Speaker 1: rest of its life. M Why did you want to
Speaker 1: be back? Because it's fun to be lazy, to just
Speaker 1: be like fed all day and chill out. Yeah, big,
Speaker 1: just stuck on this tube, stuck on this to um.
Speaker 1: They don't have an exoskeleton. That's what they are invertebrates.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, how could I Why did I forget
Speaker 1: that word for so long? Invertebrate. So there's a species
Speaker 1: of C snail that goes through a metamorphosis similar to
Speaker 1: the C. Squirt um and it never has to eat again.
Speaker 1: Um So, it's called called a giganto Pelta cessiya, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure I pronounced that. Fine. I think everybody's gonna
Speaker 1: tweet at me, like like it's actually pronounced frank um,
Speaker 1: like like new to branches sound like they should or
Speaker 1: look like they should be pronounced new to branch. But
Speaker 1: I learned their new to branks bran. Yeah, frank the
Speaker 1: new to BRNK you right exactly. Um. So it's a
Speaker 1: sea mollusc who lives near Antarctica, near the thermal vents
Speaker 1: on the ocean floor. Uh. They go through something called
Speaker 1: crypto metamorphosis, which is, uh, it's a change that we
Speaker 1: can't see on the outside, but inside the snail is
Speaker 1: going straight to nightmareland. It's well, it sounds like my life. Uh.
Speaker 1: So once the snail gets big enough, it's digestive system
Speaker 1: stops growing. Um, a huge esophageel gland forms uh. Forcing
Speaker 1: aside the snails teeth, stomach, and intestines. So humans we
Speaker 1: have esophageel glands. It's part of the digestive system. It
Speaker 1: produces mucus for the esophagus and for lubrication and to
Speaker 1: protect it from stuffun acid. So you've always got snot
Speaker 1: in yeah, um and the giganta Pelta chess oya. These
Speaker 1: glands take on a very different function. Bacteria will start
Speaker 1: to grow in the huge, bloated glands that now take
Speaker 1: up most of the snail's body. Um. The New York
Speaker 1: Times makes a really disgusting analogy quote to make a
Speaker 1: human comparison. Imagine growing from an average sized adult to
Speaker 1: one thirty to sixty ft tall with a giant sack
Speaker 1: of bacteria living inside you. I don't think I will
Speaker 1: New York Times like giant sack of bacteria inside me? Well, blee,
Speaker 1: that's that sounds like a it's a weird insult, like
Speaker 1: your giant sack of bacteria. It's like, uh so uh
Speaker 1: the snail will stop eating. At this point. The bacteria
Speaker 1: living in it's esophagel gland are in a symbiotic relationship
Speaker 1: with the snail. The bacteria produces energy that the snail
Speaker 1: cell can use. It's just like, oh, I see okay,
Speaker 1: it's off of the sac Basically, yeah, like ever needs
Speaker 1: to eat again, It doesn't need to eat it anymore
Speaker 1: because like the bacteria is doing all the work. And
Speaker 1: then in exchange, the bacteria has a cool sack to
Speaker 1: live in. Yeah, I feel like we should do that
Speaker 1: as humans and stop eating just like have bacteria like
Speaker 1: eating for us, just be giant sacks of bacteria. That
Speaker 1: that would be a that would be like if Wally
Speaker 1: really wanted to take it to the next level, like
Speaker 1: to show the truth of like humans just being bacteria
Speaker 1: sacks that don't need it, that are like attached to
Speaker 1: the walls of the ship and don't need to really
Speaker 1: eat anything. I could see that being like a new
Speaker 1: dietary thing in l A like, oh now I'm actually
Speaker 1: not eating because I have that bacteria sacing site. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, just healthcare, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Definitely a privatized company sort of thing, like you would
Speaker 1: like make little handbags for it or like little like satchels,
Speaker 1: like like people with like fashionable little like iPad cases
Speaker 1: right right right, like like some kind of Oh this
Speaker 1: is my bacteria. I learned it from Goop. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got a really cute patch for it on Etsy. That's
Speaker 1: that's disturbing. That's I'm sure it's going to happen though.
Speaker 1: Um So this is actually a similar feeding strategy to
Speaker 1: another animal that lives near thermal vents. Called get tube worms. Also,
Speaker 1: can I curse? Yes, okay, cool, but I have not
Speaker 1: been cursing. I can continue. No, you're fine, you're fine. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean like we're talking about giant sacks of bacteria.
Speaker 1: So I feel like, you know, if that doesn't make
Speaker 1: you go like, oh like that, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: confirm because I felt silly. No, you're fine. Um so
Speaker 1: uh the so the tube worms, which sound about as
Speaker 1: lovely as they are. They look like big, colorful PVC pipes,
Speaker 1: but they're they're live animals. Uh, they're cute, little existence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like just being a pool noodle. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't know that sounds like that sounds like how big?
Speaker 1: Heard these worms pool noodle size? Oh they are? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're pretty big. Holy crap. Yeah, cald worms not like
Speaker 1: anacondas or snakes like eels kind of right, eels are
Speaker 1: pretty big. Eels are big. But animals. I don't know
Speaker 1: how to break this to you guys, but animals aren't
Speaker 1: named based on the size category that they're um. But
Speaker 1: so they're immobile, which uh, scientists call sessile, which I
Speaker 1: don't know why they have to have to make complicated words. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially with one with so many says it's bad for
Speaker 1: podcasts styles. Um. So they also get all their energy
Speaker 1: from symbiotic bacteria living inside their tubular walls. Are these
Speaker 1: are both of these bacterias that grow inside these animals?
Speaker 1: Are they foreign bacteria? Are they like found there like
Speaker 1: produced in the body? Yeah, so there they are, except
Speaker 1: their foreign bacteria that will uh grow inside the body.
Speaker 1: So everyone has a bacteria living inside of them. Um.
Speaker 1: But it is technically it's not something that like came
Speaker 1: from you're like when you're formed as a baby. It
Speaker 1: didn't come from so that it's not your bacteria. It's
Speaker 1: for in bacteria that just sits there forever. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean it's like it's in an indosymbiotic relationship with you,
Speaker 1: which means it's symbiosis symbiosis but happening inside your body.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, it's actually what so like like babies haven't
Speaker 1: developed a lot of gut bacteria yet, they can be
Speaker 1: really sensitive, uh and they can't like sort of ingest
Speaker 1: certain things, and um, like that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: you know, it's until you like not to eat fish
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah. Yeah, because like you got back to
Speaker 1: it's also why you shouldn't get Yes, you should not
Speaker 1: get you shouldn't get an enema or unless it's like
Speaker 1: medically necessary, because like if people do that, like you
Speaker 1: can actually flush out the good bacteria in your intestine,
Speaker 1: and people become addicted to those, so they like really
Speaker 1: like to have clean little whistle down there. Apparently, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they get addicted to it because it's the feeling is
Speaker 1: like weird, it's like a rush in a way. I
Speaker 1: don't I mean I've never had one, but get high
Speaker 1: on feeling there butts. But I also but I also
Speaker 1: think enemas are more common depending on what kind of
Speaker 1: sexs you like. M I I mean that makes sense.
Speaker 1: I think for that though you don't you wouldn't need
Speaker 1: to have like an X stream one. I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't want to, like you don't want a full colonoscopy
Speaker 1: before you but I feel like I don't know. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's but I think people sometimes do these like cleanses
Speaker 1: to another bad one is like like the cleanses that
Speaker 1: make you have a lot of diarrhea, Yeah, like those
Speaker 1: detox Tayah celebrities Like yeah, yeah, Like like I it's
Speaker 1: basically just a bunch of mineral oil that makes me
Speaker 1: crap for twenty four hours. That's it's not good for you.
Speaker 1: That's shooting yourself. That's that's like, that's eating ketoba too much. Actually,
Speaker 1: Ketoba's okay, I take that back. Um, taco bell, What's
Speaker 1: what's what's a What's a good one? That the one
Speaker 1: that always gets me? I feel like in and out
Speaker 1: always gets me. Actually, yeah, I don't know what it
Speaker 1: is about in and out, but it gets me. Gets
Speaker 1: me every time. It's always a It's like it's not
Speaker 1: even a gamble at this point. It's just like I
Speaker 1: will I will have to sit on a toilet, yeah,
Speaker 1: and sort of think about the decision I've made and
Speaker 1: usually regret it for a while, and then I forget
Speaker 1: about regretting it, and then I go back to in
Speaker 1: and out. That's how I am a taco Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I always forget. It's like, within fifteen minutes of finishing food,
Speaker 1: I'll be like, yeah, like, oh jeez, this is a
Speaker 1: it's a It becomes a situation and you're like, I
Speaker 1: don't why did I put myself in this intestinal situation?
Speaker 1: And then you're and then it's like a week later
Speaker 1: you're like, but you look so good. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like a toxic relationship where you're just like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like I've forgotten how what you do
Speaker 1: to my intestines. That's why we need our bacteria bags. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll solve everything. Yes. The freakish gigantic pelticis soil bacteria balloon,
Speaker 1: as well as the giant tube worms, maybe guides to
Speaker 1: how all complex life on Earth form. The symbiotical relationship
Speaker 1: between these animals and the bacteria that feels them may
Speaker 1: be analogous to how early eukaryotic cells acquired mitochondria, the
Speaker 1: powerhouse of the cell. A leading scientific theory proposes that
Speaker 1: early eukaryotes acquired a separate organism, a mitochondria, and somehow
Speaker 1: engulfed and entered into an endosymbiotic meaning symbiosis, but inside
Speaker 1: of you relationship with them, the mitochondria became the organelles
Speaker 1: that are so vital for complex life. I want to
Speaker 1: talk a bit about the incredible woman who discovered how
Speaker 1: giant two worms are able to survive with no plainly
Speaker 1: observable digestive system, living in the dark depths of the
Speaker 1: ocean where no energy producing sunlight can reach calling Kavanaugh,
Speaker 1: who is currently an eminent professor of biology at Harvard,
Speaker 1: was a first year graduate student at Harvard in nine
Speaker 1: studying biology. She was out of lecture at the Smithsonian
Speaker 1: Institution where the curator of worms was talking about the
Speaker 1: mystery of the two warm At this point, Kavanaugh jumped
Speaker 1: up and shouted out, well, it's perfectly clear they must
Speaker 1: have sulfur oxidizing bacteria inside their bodies. At first, she
Speaker 1: was dismissed and told to sit down. Fortunately for everyone
Speaker 1: in the warm biology world, she wasn't the sitting kind
Speaker 1: of gal. She discovered the symbiotic connection between energy producing
Speaker 1: bacteria and the two barns. More recently, she's challenged the
Speaker 1: current theory of the beginning of life that started with
Speaker 1: a soup of ingredients being struck by lightning. Instead, she
Speaker 1: thinks that perhaps the thermal events were the perfect place
Speaker 1: to provide fuel for nascent life. She says the idea
Speaker 1: makes sense because some of the oldest forms of free
Speaker 1: living bacteria shows signs of being heat loving organisms. She's
Speaker 1: made the scientific community rethink some basic assumptions. Thank goodness,
Speaker 1: she didn't sit down. Well, maybe she sat down at
Speaker 1: one point, you know, like when her legs got tired.
Speaker 1: You all stay sescile in your chairs. It's a you know,
Speaker 1: revolutionary biology group joke. Yeah. Anyways, we will be right
Speaker 1: back after this message. Do you ever wonder where the
Speaker 1: term slick Willie came from? Not former President Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: but Willie Stunton, the slickest bank robert, trickster and prison
Speaker 1: escape thee ever to walk the streets of New York.
Speaker 1: By some, he was considered to be a Robin Hood
Speaker 1: like figure, stealing from the rich to give to well himself.
Speaker 1: He never murdered anyone, and in fact was purported to
Speaker 1: carry an unloaded gun to his bank robberies worried that
Speaker 1: someone might get hurt. Other than his genteelness, he was
Speaker 1: remarkably well slippery guy. He was put in prison in
Speaker 1: one only to escape a year later, smuggling a gun
Speaker 1: and holding a prison guard hostage until he could get
Speaker 1: his hands on a ladder to escape. This was his
Speaker 1: most brute force type of escapade. As he became increasingly crafty,
Speaker 1: he and an accomplice tried to rob the corn Exchange
Speaker 1: Bank and Trust company. Willie was disguised as a postman.
Speaker 1: This attempt didn't work, though they later broke into the
Speaker 1: bank through a skylight, successfully FBI record state. Stutton also
Speaker 1: conducted a Broadway jewelry store robbery and broad daylight impersonating
Speaker 1: a postal telegraph messengers. Stutton's other and does guises included
Speaker 1: a police officer, messenger, and maintenance man. Usually arrived at
Speaker 1: banks or stores shortly before they opened for business. Stutton
Speaker 1: was caught again in nineteen thirty four and sentenced to
Speaker 1: twenty five to fifty years in prison. A year later,
Speaker 1: he escaped via tunnel, but was caught the next day.
Speaker 1: This time he was sentenced to life in prison, but
Speaker 1: two years later he escaped again, just as a prison
Speaker 1: guard when the searchlight landed on him. Yield. It's all right,
Speaker 1: so nobody has stopped him cool. He even made an
Speaker 1: attempt to escape from prison by using a dummy head.
Speaker 1: Over years, he carefully crafted a shockingly lifelike head in
Speaker 1: hand out a plaster. He used plaster he likely stole
Speaker 1: from the prison dentist, real human hair collected from the
Speaker 1: barber shop, real eyelashes, and paint from god knows where
Speaker 1: He put the head on his pill in the hand
Speaker 1: on the bed sheet to make guards think he was
Speaker 1: still tucked in bed while he was actually trying to escape. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: his escape was foiled by a group of bumbling himmates
Speaker 1: who are also trying to escape and who are much
Speaker 1: less artful at it. When animals are feeling pinned down
Speaker 1: by the fuzz, they often have incredible escape strategies, including
Speaker 1: transforming their bodies into amazing disguises. To see the absolute
Speaker 1: master of this, We're going to go underwater to me
Speaker 1: to really really slick Willie. Do you guys want to
Speaker 1: see the yet the curious I was literally just thinking,
Speaker 1: how does one like did the paper machee? It's plaster
Speaker 1: and it's actually really good, and I feel like maybe
Speaker 1: he uh uh, he might have used his own face
Speaker 1: as a model, so there it is. Whoa, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think he will probably like he had a buddy like
Speaker 1: put it over his face and like dipped his and
Speaker 1: made like a plaster casting. Um, it's pretty impressive, Yes
Speaker 1: it is. And it's like also the paint job is
Speaker 1: pretty good too, Like it's it's hard to do sort
Speaker 1: of human skin tones. I don't know how he did that,
Speaker 1: but like apparently he took years to do it. This
Speaker 1: was on the Antique Road Show and it's like yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like it's also made out of human hair
Speaker 1: and eyelashes. I wish I remembered. Probably they're probably something like, well,
Speaker 1: if it was in its original condition, that would have
Speaker 1: been two million dollars. But because there's a small scratch
Speaker 1: under the left nostril, it's actually costing you money. Yeez.
Speaker 1: Classic Antiques Road Show, God, I love I mean I
Speaker 1: used to love that show and like just but there
Speaker 1: was something about like watching the light go out of
Speaker 1: an elderly person's eyes as they realized their antique furniture
Speaker 1: like that they refurnished, like it is now worthless. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's it's art. I think it's like I wan,
Speaker 1: they're always like yeah, I don't think this is real,
Speaker 1: and just I've never seen good. You could watch it
Speaker 1: for hours because the stuff is so random. It is.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like here's an eighteenth century dill though
Speaker 1: and now here's like actually they don't know. But then
Speaker 1: they'll be like people who come in and say I'm
Speaker 1: gonna watch now, they'll be like people come and go
Speaker 1: like this is a letter my great great grandfather wrote
Speaker 1: to my great great great whatever grandmother on Hitler Stationary
Speaker 1: right when they broke into his office and saw that
Speaker 1: he'd been killed, and you're like, what the fuck? How
Speaker 1: did you get that? But also like hippy Wheel, well,
Speaker 1: my grant is my grandpa was a Nazi. Also like
Speaker 1: who like goes in Tyler's office. It sounds like, I
Speaker 1: guess I'll just write a note to my wife, just
Speaker 1: like yeah, Hitler's finger, Hitler needs no underpants. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: comes to sail. That's probably worth more money. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like poopy underpants. Gross. So there's actually there's this
Speaker 1: reality show I've been watching called Hunted. Um there's a
Speaker 1: BBC version and I guess the US version, but I've
Speaker 1: been watching the BBC version and it's like you have
Speaker 1: to like go off the grid. Uh so uh, like
Speaker 1: they make people like, oh, you're being hunted by the government,
Speaker 1: and like we're going to use all of these like
Speaker 1: like and they have so many like like those CTV
Speaker 1: cameras in the UK, Like I feel like they're even
Speaker 1: more highly surveilled than here in the US, although well
Speaker 1: maybe just in terms of the cameras, um, all the
Speaker 1: cameras we can see that is if you but like,
Speaker 1: um uh so they have to. Like the goal is
Speaker 1: like they'll win like a half million dollars if they
Speaker 1: can make it through a week without being found after
Speaker 1: being dropped off. And it's really creepy show because like
Speaker 1: barely any of them can do it, because it's like
Speaker 1: it's just like, oh, look how much the government can
Speaker 1: like surveil you, like they can. Have you seen an
Speaker 1: episode where someone made it? I haven't, No, not. They
Speaker 1: always get caught pretty much. I haven't seen. I mean
Speaker 1: I am not through the season yet, so maybe someone
Speaker 1: makes it, but so far everyone's been caught. And it's
Speaker 1: stuff like like we got your like riding on the
Speaker 1: train and we got a picture of your face through
Speaker 1: like a camera, and like what if you just like
Speaker 1: stay put the whole time? Well, I mean I thought
Speaker 1: about that, like if I like, I feel like, I
Speaker 1: mean I don't know how much prep time they're given,
Speaker 1: but I feel like I would give I would find
Speaker 1: a body double and then have them do all the
Speaker 1: things like take like you get like a bank card
Speaker 1: that you're allowed to use, but then they can track
Speaker 1: the bank cards, so every time you make a withdrawal,
Speaker 1: they can see where you are so like you can't
Speaker 1: use cash. I mean you can withdraw cash from the
Speaker 1: A T M. But right exactly. And it's it's crazy
Speaker 1: like how much they can like they can read like
Speaker 1: license plates and like like they have drones that they
Speaker 1: can use and like he it's just I feel like
Speaker 1: the show is meant to be like see how cool
Speaker 1: like government crime fighters are, and to me, it's just
Speaker 1: like this horrifying dystopia of Like to me, it's like
Speaker 1: if you like never commit a crime or need to
Speaker 1: do this in real life, and you will get caught,
Speaker 1: right right, do you think the guy with the plaster
Speaker 1: head what's his name, slim, Willie Stutton, Willie Stunt, do
Speaker 1: you think he would have been caught? I don't know.
Speaker 1: He was pretty like he had the kind of charisma
Speaker 1: where he was able to tell prison guards like it's
Speaker 1: okay when he was escaping, oh my god, like because
Speaker 1: he was like dressed as a prison guard and like
Speaker 1: a spotlight was on him, He's like it's all right,
Speaker 1: nothing to see here. It almost sounds like, I mean,
Speaker 1: not not the same caliber of crime, but like Ted
Speaker 1: Bundy almost was like charismatic enough to multiple times and yeah,
Speaker 1: like he literally jumped out of a window, like out
Speaker 1: of a court one time. Yeah, and was fine and
Speaker 1: was it like it was gone for like a week. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the he was able to like be his own lawyer
Speaker 1: and without anything and then and the judge was like,
Speaker 1: I'd hire you. It's crazy messed up? How like it's
Speaker 1: missed up? How far a charismatic white guy, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: like a sort of mediocre white guy can get away
Speaker 1: with so much, like just by being like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's okay. And he's got like piles of humans heads
Speaker 1: behind exactly. You guys, wanna you wanna look at like
Speaker 1: a non serial killing master of deception. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to see the Willy of the ocean. Yeah, that slick
Speaker 1: Willy of the ocean. Um So, the mimic octopus is
Speaker 1: one of the most incredible um cases of animal mimicry
Speaker 1: I've ever seen. It's uh so octopuses um can change
Speaker 1: their skin color and even the texture of it. So
Speaker 1: they're kind of like chameleons boat way quicker um with
Speaker 1: way more precision. Um. Like you know how people think, like, oh,
Speaker 1: chameleons when they walk on like a different color, they
Speaker 1: can change their color like that's not true, but are not. No, No,
Speaker 1: I mean they can change They can change their skin
Speaker 1: color a little bit. It's usually more in terms of
Speaker 1: like when they're mating or their mood, Like they can
Speaker 1: change their skin color and they can change it a
Speaker 1: bit to match tree bark, But they don't have like
Speaker 1: a vast repertoire of like color will change pink, that's right, um,
Speaker 1: But octopuses and cuttlefish are more like that, Like I don't.
Speaker 1: It depends. So it's like I don't know if they
Speaker 1: can turn bright pink, but they can change their skin
Speaker 1: to patterns that they find, so you can see their
Speaker 1: skin link pulsate in real time like an LCD screen
Speaker 1: to match their surroundings. So even artificial surroundings like a checkerboard.
Speaker 1: Cuttlefish will attempt to make black and white squares on
Speaker 1: their body ease, like it doesn't quite match up. They're
Speaker 1: not like they try, like you can see blocks of
Speaker 1: black and white. Um. So, the mimic octopus takes this
Speaker 1: a step further. They not only transform their skin, but
Speaker 1: they move their entire body, tentacles and all to mimic
Speaker 1: the shape of other animals. Um. So, first about this
Speaker 1: little little cutie there. Uh. These octopuses live in the
Speaker 1: Indo Pacific Ocean. Their regular coloration is brown and white stripes,
Speaker 1: and they have eight long tentacles. Um. And when they're
Speaker 1: under threat, they can ball up and turn dark to
Speaker 1: look like a rock. They can shift their tentacles behind them,
Speaker 1: bundling them up to look like fins, while flattening their
Speaker 1: heads to look like a poisonous species of flatfish. Uh.
Speaker 1: They even mimic the flat fish is style of undulating swimming.
Speaker 1: Another trick is to hide most of its body in
Speaker 1: a hole and then it sticks out two of its
Speaker 1: tentacles that it's like the color has changed such that
Speaker 1: they're black and white stripes on them, and then that
Speaker 1: will look like a banded sea snake, because like the
Speaker 1: optical illusion of like you have one tinacoopo in the
Speaker 1: hole the other one if it's a snake. Um and this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and banded sea snakes are one of the most venomous
Speaker 1: snakes in the world. I just love the fact I
Speaker 1: just can't get over that he becomes a rock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wish I could do that if I could see
Speaker 1: someone there. They also can mimic poisonous lionfish by um
Speaker 1: holding its tentacles out like the deadly spines of the
Speaker 1: fish and kind of swimming like the lionfish does um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes by I'll just don't even know what they're mimicking.
Speaker 1: Like they've there's like they can turn like brown and
Speaker 1: spiky and start walking around on the seafloor on like
Speaker 1: bundled up tentacles, like they look like a little cartoon feet,
Speaker 1: Like quite know what they're trying to, like maybe just
Speaker 1: a walking rock, like I'm a rock. I'm a rock.
Speaker 1: Are mocking us? Humans? Look at you in your look
Speaker 1: at me. I'm a human phone. I breathe air like agad,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's just really mean. Uh. There's this
Speaker 1: nearly observed behavior in octopus is where they will actually
Speaker 1: collect to coconut shell house and carry them around so
Speaker 1: when they're threatened they can just close themselves up. O
Speaker 1: my god, I'm obsessed. They're so cute. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's why. That's also another dream. That's also another dream,
Speaker 1: just to either turn into a rock or have my
Speaker 1: little safe space everywhere I go. Yeah, like a bubble.
Speaker 1: Just no, just not today, sat It's like yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm a coconut. Now yep, nothing to see here, nothing
Speaker 1: to see, just a coconut. So I was interested in,
Speaker 1: like how they actually do the skin changing, because that's
Speaker 1: crazy to me. Actually, let me show you guys of it. Yes, please,
Speaker 1: I need this, silly fucking Willie's. Have you seen that
Speaker 1: video of the girl trying to eat an octopus and
Speaker 1: then octopus like at tacks for face. Yeah. That actually
Speaker 1: that's a common thing too in the wild. So like
Speaker 1: dolphins will smack octopi or octopus is repeatedly, um, to
Speaker 1: make sure they're dead because their tentacles can keep moving
Speaker 1: for a while, uh after they're dead, both after they're
Speaker 1: dead and like even as like if they're being like
Speaker 1: consumed and like so it's like because they'll you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's these um the muscles can fire and so
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's really creepy. Um. But also like you
Speaker 1: can see like its skin color immediately change. Here's the
Speaker 1: banded sea snake memory memoricrans goes in the hall like, look,
Speaker 1: I am a snack. I'm a snack. That is so
Speaker 1: sea there it is doing this sort of like um
Speaker 1: the oh yeah, that's lionfish. Um. Pretty crazy. It would
Speaker 1: have to see these animals right before mixed them, or
Speaker 1: does it have the ability is inherently in them? It's
Speaker 1: I think that it's kind of it's pre programmed. So
Speaker 1: here it is again little it's us. It's a little
Speaker 1: ball that looks sort of like a seaweed thing and
Speaker 1: it's like walking on its tynacles like their feet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't see how that's like. It looks like it's
Speaker 1: just floating away seaweed basically, or like floating away like um, coral,
Speaker 1: they got an observable creature. Yeah, but they actually so
Speaker 1: to your question, they do actually come pre programmed with
Speaker 1: a repertoire of different shapes and colorations. So it's not
Speaker 1: just like it's genetic. Well yeah, so it's so their
Speaker 1: bodies are like an LCD screen. Um Uh. Their brains
Speaker 1: send signals to thousands and thousands of chromatophores their cells
Speaker 1: that can act as biological pixels that can be expanded
Speaker 1: and contracted to change skin tone. This is how they
Speaker 1: can transform their skin into a new pattern or color
Speaker 1: in a split second. Um. But like, so how do
Speaker 1: they match actual patterns? Like if you put a cuttle
Speaker 1: fish on on a checkerboard or you put um, you know,
Speaker 1: against a more natural background. How do they know to
Speaker 1: like do that pattern? So biology biologists think that when
Speaker 1: their eyes taken an image of their background, their brains
Speaker 1: make a statistical approximation of that image. Then they match
Speaker 1: it to a vast repertoire pre programmed patterns. UM. So
Speaker 1: human brains are kind of similar in terms of cognition,
Speaker 1: Like we have these set archetypes in our brains, so
Speaker 1: like that's how we can recognize something like a cat,
Speaker 1: like we've um, we've learned from observing many cats that
Speaker 1: like there's this sort of shape that is a cat,
Speaker 1: and then once we see it, it matches. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like matching to that pattern that's in our programmed
Speaker 1: in our brains. But the difference is that the cuttlefish
Speaker 1: and the octopus is come preprogrammed with these um patterns.
Speaker 1: Octopuses are very smart, though, so I wonder if they
Speaker 1: have more ability to learn. So cuttlefish are able to
Speaker 1: start matching patterns as soon as they hatch, leading to
Speaker 1: the theory that they're cute little supercomputers who come preprogrammed
Speaker 1: with a series of complex patterns. UM. But so cuttle
Speaker 1: fish also have this other really intelligent behavior. Um So,
Speaker 1: males can transform one half of their body to look
Speaker 1: female and the other half to look male, So like
Speaker 1: changing the coloration um so that males facing them on
Speaker 1: one side see a harmless female and then females on
Speaker 1: the other side see a sexy, available male. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then that way they can attract the females while catfishing
Speaker 1: the male into being non aggressive like it's cool, I'm
Speaker 1: just a female. Then like this is a ultimate player trick. Yes, there,
Speaker 1: there's like this behavior is pretty common amongst like many
Speaker 1: different animals where like there's like sturgeons where the male
Speaker 1: there's a certain type of like sneaky male fish where
Speaker 1: they their bodies actually look more female. Um, and they
Speaker 1: it's an evolutionary strategy because they're smaller and they can't
Speaker 1: compete as much with the big males, but they can
Speaker 1: like have sneaky mating because the big males assume they're
Speaker 1: a female. But in this case, it's like way crazier
Speaker 1: because they can actually change their body like you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're in real time morphing into like like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's cool, I'm I'm I'm a female. And then the
Speaker 1: other half is like not really like hit me up.
Speaker 1: I'm curious if they if they can all do that
Speaker 1: white they figure it out, Like they're not like wait
Speaker 1: is this one like yesterday? Yeah? Maybe they're just like
Speaker 1: very very like yeah, And I guess like it is
Speaker 1: interesting because with a lot of mimicry, there is sort
Speaker 1: of an arms race. So like with butterflies, Um, there
Speaker 1: are um, poisonous butterflies that aren't good to eat. Birds
Speaker 1: don't like them, they make them yack up um. But
Speaker 1: then there's the mimics that are totally delicious, good bugs
Speaker 1: teat and then um, but they mimic the ones that
Speaker 1: are yeah, the poisonous ones and then um. But then
Speaker 1: if you have sort of a critical mass of poisonous
Speaker 1: or not mimics, like where there's more mimics than there
Speaker 1: are poisonous ones, then they'll unlearn uh that and they'll
Speaker 1: start eating them again. So it's like you see these
Speaker 1: sort of populations kind of have these uh sort of
Speaker 1: like inverse relationships and like uh sort of balance out.
Speaker 1: It's it's really interesting. That's crazy, like, well they're only
Speaker 1: seems to be poison Yeah, so you have to have enough,
Speaker 1: like you have to have enough good It's like gambling,
Speaker 1: where it's like you have to have enough good feedback
Speaker 1: otherwise you're not going to do it. So I imagine
Speaker 1: with cuttle fish, it's that they're mating strategy is successful
Speaker 1: enough where it's like they encounter enough females and like
Speaker 1: get successful with them enough that even though they're fooled
Speaker 1: a few times, like, um, it's still it's still better
Speaker 1: to give it a give it a try. That's crazy,
Speaker 1: don't I feel like I read that in the game.
Speaker 1: You read the game goodness, how could you? I was kidding?
Speaker 1: But I also I feel like I think I did
Speaker 1: read it just as research in high school to know
Speaker 1: what these dumb boys were talking about. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: definitely learned online the terminology like nagging. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: good one. Uh yeah, I mean that's like a term
Speaker 1: that's using a lot of things. Yeah, which is which
Speaker 1: is kind of funny because I feel like, um, with
Speaker 1: peacock's uh there with birds, a lot of the theory
Speaker 1: with like male birds showing off this fancy coloration, it's
Speaker 1: like it's sort of more feminist because birds are the
Speaker 1: ones that are guiding evolution. Because there it's it's more
Speaker 1: like there's this theory and there's this great book I'm
Speaker 1: trying to remember the title. It's about like the um
Speaker 1: but it's about sort of the uh, the esthetic choices
Speaker 1: of birds and like this idea that it's not just
Speaker 1: about male fitness. It's also just like the female birds
Speaker 1: are like like, wow, you're you're sparkly. I like, uh,
Speaker 1: And so like female birds drive evolution in in bird
Speaker 1: species because they're like your tail like does a few somersaults.
Speaker 1: I do like that, like you're you're you know, your
Speaker 1: goal or pouch in your neck is are big and red.
Speaker 1: That's cool. I love it. Yeah, there are so many
Speaker 1: animals that could do like a song and to dance
Speaker 1: to even get the females attention. Yeah, there's a new
Speaker 1: like like Planet Earth sort of Netflix eas the one
Speaker 1: where the bird becomes like the top, yeah are you
Speaker 1: talking about, like dances around and he becomes this absurd
Speaker 1: shape and it's just like twirled. It's like literally the
Speaker 1: top yeah, yeah, like and like its neck rock and
Speaker 1: it looks like an umbrella that's spending around crazy. And
Speaker 1: then there's one where like the birds will sort of
Speaker 1: like there's like four males and like there's one male
Speaker 1: that's like the one trying to get the females attention,
Speaker 1: and then he has backup dancers. It's so birds are crazy.
Speaker 1: They're literally wingman. I feel like I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to do a whole episode about thirsty birds, thirsty birds
Speaker 1: and all the cool stuff they do, because it is,
Speaker 1: you know, just trying to get get that get ladies
Speaker 1: are just trying to get laid. They're just like us,
Speaker 1: is just trying to people magazine. They're just like us.
Speaker 1: Can humans transform into other animals? Well no, but some
Speaker 1: humans think they can. There's a rare disorder known as
Speaker 1: clinical like anthropy and humans where you hold the delusion
Speaker 1: that you can transform into an animal. We're not talking
Speaker 1: about being a furry or having a first SONA clinical
Speaker 1: like anthrapy is a form of psychosis that involves being
Speaker 1: in an altered state of mind, and despite being called
Speaker 1: like anthropy, it's not limited to the delusion of turning
Speaker 1: into a woolf Cases include people thinking they can transform
Speaker 1: into hyenas, cats, horses, tigers, or birds. Anyways. There is
Speaker 1: even a case in which someone thought they would go
Speaker 1: through a series of transformations into animals before finally being
Speaker 1: able to return to their human form after treatment. One
Speaker 1: unlucky psychiatric patient both had clinical echanthropy and Cotard delusion.
Speaker 1: Cotard delusion, which we've discussed before on the podcast, is
Speaker 1: the delusion that your body is dead. He believed that
Speaker 1: he transformed into a dog, while also believing he was
Speaker 1: at times a dead dog. The patient had also had
Speaker 1: sexual contact with the sheep, for which his guilt may
Speaker 1: have been contributing to his delusions. You could say he
Speaker 1: was feeling sheepish. I know, I know, this is a serious,
Speaker 1: disturbing matter that shouldn't be joked about. I'm wully rully sorry.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, get it. The guy who had
Speaker 1: sexual in with the sheep, right, so we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Everyone's taught about metamorphosis in elementary school. Frog start out
Speaker 1: as padpoles and grow leg Hungry caterpillars eat a bunch
Speaker 1: of leaves, bundle themselves into cocoons or crystalists, and turn
Speaker 1: into beautiful butterflies. But your elementary school teacher likely left
Speaker 1: out some of the more gory details. Have you ever
Speaker 1: wondered what happens inside those cocoons and crystalises? Do you
Speaker 1: picture caterpillars sprouting wings and legs. Sorry, but nope, they
Speaker 1: dissolved completely. That's right. The caterpillar will digest itself, turning
Speaker 1: entirely into go into an oozing soup. The only parts
Speaker 1: not dissolved are groups of blueprints cells called imaginal disks,
Speaker 1: which will eventually grow into body parts fueled by the
Speaker 1: soup of its former body. In fact, cocoons and crystalists
Speaker 1: are more like wounds than a sleeping bag, where the
Speaker 1: caterpillar goes through a sort of second embryonic development. So
Speaker 1: do those dissolved caterpillars die forming a new creature? Is
Speaker 1: it a kind of ship of THESEUS thought experiment where
Speaker 1: you're deconstructing the caterpillar cell by cell and rebuilding it
Speaker 1: into a new ship butterfly thing? So did it die?
Speaker 1: Is it reborn? Well, here's something trippy. Researchers have found
Speaker 1: that moths retain the memories of their former caterpillar cells.
Speaker 1: Caterpillars were conditioned to hate a certain odor by pairing
Speaker 1: it with a mild electric shock. Then the caterpillars went
Speaker 1: through the typical metamorphosis process, dissolving into a soup and
Speaker 1: reforming into a moll. But these moms actually kept the
Speaker 1: memories of the smell, avoiding it, as compared to control
Speaker 1: groups who weren't conditioned as caterpillars. So how do you
Speaker 1: get turned into a bug yogurt and keep your memories.
Speaker 1: It's possible that some of the neural structure resides in
Speaker 1: the imaginal disc cells that are kept intact during the metamorphosis,
Speaker 1: although it's hard to say how much of their brains
Speaker 1: remain the same. It's kind of spooky when you think
Speaker 1: about it. The moth is perhaps like the ghost of
Speaker 1: its former caterpillar self. Weird how they didn't cover this
Speaker 1: in The Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar. I'm going to be joined
Speaker 1: by a real life animal researcher to go over some
Speaker 1: of the other freaky metamorphoses you probably didn't learn about
Speaker 1: in school. Joining us today is our friendly neighborhood lizardman,
Speaker 1: Dr Greg Polly. He's a herpetology researcher and curator at
Speaker 1: the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show again, Greg, thanks for having me on. So
Speaker 1: as kids, we learn about tadpoles turning into frogs, but
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that I think it's a
Speaker 1: lot crazier when you really think about it. Um, And
Speaker 1: I think people don't know as much about metamorphosis as
Speaker 1: they think they do. Um, So what did school not
Speaker 1: teach us about tadpole to frog metamorphosis? A ton? They
Speaker 1: didn't teach They didn't teach anything so much. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: metamorphosis is such an amazing process. And you know the
Speaker 1: reality is that there's something like, you know, seven thousand,
Speaker 1: three hundred species of amphibians, of which the vast majority
Speaker 1: of a lot of frogs. Yeah, so something like I
Speaker 1: don't know sixty three of those. Um, just those numbers
Speaker 1: are off to my head. So that's roughly about what
Speaker 1: it is. Um. Are frogs, and they oftentimes have lots
Speaker 1: of variants on this theme of metamorphosis. So first of all,
Speaker 1: not all, not all frogs have a free living tadpole stage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not so. Um, some of them have, you know, the
Speaker 1: sort of standard like they have a free living tadpole
Speaker 1: and then the tadpole undergoes metamorphosis, right, and you get
Speaker 1: the tail gets resorbed and the limbs pop out, and
Speaker 1: you know, you have a bunch of other changes that happened,
Speaker 1: and then the thing, you know, crawls out of the water.
Speaker 1: It's our top round wind like, Yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: them do that, but a lot of them don't do that.
Speaker 1: So some of them have that tadpole stage basically inside
Speaker 1: the egg, and what hashes out of the egg is
Speaker 1: a little froglet. Like we see that a lot. And
Speaker 1: then we have situations like there's these spade foot toads
Speaker 1: in in the desert Southwest and the United States that
Speaker 1: they basically the adult breed in ponds that form in
Speaker 1: monsoon rainstorms and thunderstorms. And so but those ponds in
Speaker 1: the desert, we're gonna draw really fast. So they go
Speaker 1: from you know, egg to like tadpole in a matter
Speaker 1: of days, and then they go from adpole to frog
Speaker 1: let in a matter of days. So you might have
Speaker 1: ten days two weeks in which the entire process is completed.
Speaker 1: And then you might have frogs, for example, at high
Speaker 1: elevation in the Sierra Nevada or in northern or extreme
Speaker 1: southern latitudes, um that might actually take a long time
Speaker 1: to grow up to the point where they're going to metamorphosis,
Speaker 1: and so they actually might be tadpoles for two or
Speaker 1: three years before they get to the point that they transform.
Speaker 1: That's like when I think of a frog, I think
Speaker 1: their whole lifespan is two or three years, not like, no,
Speaker 1: not the case at all. Like there are some, there
Speaker 1: are definitely some. There are some species of frogs that
Speaker 1: live way longer than that. Like there's some species of
Speaker 1: frogs that you possibility like actually some of those poison
Speaker 1: dart frogs, like the incredibly colorful ones that we see
Speaker 1: hopping around in rainforest in northern South America in parts
Speaker 1: of cent America, some of those live up intil over
Speaker 1: twenty years, like, which is just amazing thing about that
Speaker 1: is and I imagine a lot of them successfully live
Speaker 1: pretty long because they don't get they have that point.
Speaker 1: It helps to be it helps to be really toxic
Speaker 1: and helps um and then and then, so we think
Speaker 1: a lot about with with metamorphosis. We think a lot
Speaker 1: about tadpoles and frogs, but of course there's also salamanders
Speaker 1: and in Salaman if we don't call them tadpoles, we
Speaker 1: just say the larva, which is not just insects. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: so we it's totally reasonable to use the term larva.
Speaker 1: And also I mean the term metamorphosis we use that
Speaker 1: for insect it's also true for amphibians, and so for
Speaker 1: salamanders and their larva. We see tons of sort of
Speaker 1: you know permutations on this theme of metamorphosis as well,
Speaker 1: and I think some of the coolest are actually there
Speaker 1: are some species of salamanders where the adult salamanders basically
Speaker 1: maintain the overall larval form. So you catch the adult
Speaker 1: salamander and it looks just like the larva, like it's aquatic,
Speaker 1: it's got gills, it's got a tail, but they're also
Speaker 1: sexually mature. So this is what we call pedomorphosis. So
Speaker 1: they've maintained some of these larval characters into adulthood and
Speaker 1: they kind of like ax Laudels X. Laudel is the
Speaker 1: perfect example, so that is a pedomorphic tiger salamander. So
Speaker 1: that is a species that doesn't undergo traditional amorphosis and
Speaker 1: actually becomes sexually mature. So males, you know, have test
Speaker 1: these females have ovaries, and yet they're in the overall
Speaker 1: larval form where they've got killed and they've got a
Speaker 1: tail and their cruising around. They're technically like babies but
Speaker 1: not Yeah, but they're also adults. So they're sort of
Speaker 1: combining the best of both worlds. Basically, what they're saying
Speaker 1: is like, Okay, the aquatic environment is so good, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna stay. And so there are some species where
Speaker 1: that sort of that transition to being this pedomorphic lineage happened,
Speaker 1: you know, way back in their history, and there's actually
Speaker 1: some species, including some tiger stylementers here in the United States,
Speaker 1: where if the aquatic conditions are really good, they'll stay
Speaker 1: as that pedomorphic kind as an impromptu decision. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: like the conditions are right, like the waters, you know,
Speaker 1: the water is nice and warm, it's easy living, there's
Speaker 1: tons of prey. I'm having a good time, there's lots
Speaker 1: of whether individuals around. Cool. I'm just gonna stay here.
Speaker 1: And but then let's say that didn't you know, that's
Speaker 1: been good for a while, and then there's a drought.
Speaker 1: Oh man, don't and then they and then boom, that's incredible.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like within one lifespan, like evolution, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can all these sort of potential things that can happen. So, like,
Speaker 1: I guess, so the key here is like when we
Speaker 1: think about metamorphosis, it's just incredibly diverse. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: you know, why shouldn't it be, right, there's like different
Speaker 1: habitats out there, there's lots of different species, and of
Speaker 1: course they're doing lots of different things. Yeah. So you
Speaker 1: talk to me a little bit about the paradoxical frog,
Speaker 1: which sounds sort of like a Benjamin Button situation, and
Speaker 1: it kind of is in a way. Um, so, can
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit about this mystery frog? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is I mean, what a great name for
Speaker 1: a frog, to the paradoxical frog. And it's entirely named
Speaker 1: for this whole sounds like a like an all rock
Speaker 1: band name, like paradoxical frogs, paradoxical frogs, but you like
Speaker 1: like electric ukuleles on there. I mean, the paradoxical frog
Speaker 1: is so cool that I just have to assume that
Speaker 1: this band is gonna be really really good. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um so yeah, the paradoxical frog. The reason it gets
Speaker 1: that name is because the tadpoles get huge, like two
Speaker 1: can be like a really big paradoxical So that's like
Speaker 1: ten inches people, Okay, ten inches. So we're jumping around,
Speaker 1: you know, depending on where you are in the listening audience,
Speaker 1: and so this is like a ten inch long tadpole
Speaker 1: that's huge. And then but of course it's mostly tail,
Speaker 1: but it has a really big tail. I mean both
Speaker 1: in terms of length and also just in terms of
Speaker 1: height and the tail, like it's a big tail. And
Speaker 1: then but of course what does that tail do well?
Speaker 1: That actually fuels that whole process of metamorphosis because it's
Speaker 1: such a radical change. So it's like the body is
Speaker 1: actually feeding on the tail. The body is digesting the
Speaker 1: table the tail to just feed this increasing energetically expensive
Speaker 1: act of transitioning into this sort of whole different kind
Speaker 1: of organism. And we've talked about c squirts on the
Speaker 1: show before, and that's another process where the c squirt
Speaker 1: like cannibalize it its own body to metamorphosis from one
Speaker 1: stage to the other. Like I think it, I will
Speaker 1: take your word from It eats its own It does
Speaker 1: and doesn't eat its own brain. It eats like certain
Speaker 1: parts of its brain, but then it forms kind of
Speaker 1: a new brain. Cool. Yeah, I mean it makes sense,
Speaker 1: like if you're gonna undergo one of these big transitions,
Speaker 1: you while your organs are undergoing this remarkable change, they're
Speaker 1: probably not going to be functioning at least as well
Speaker 1: as they would otherwise, and maybe not at all. So
Speaker 1: when frogs they actually stop eating, like these tadpoles stop eating,
Speaker 1: and their entire digestive drack is, you know, having lots
Speaker 1: of changes. Mouthparts are changing so under construction, so they
Speaker 1: can't so it's just gonna Yeah, you just basically cannibalize.
Speaker 1: You take all the energy from your tail, and that
Speaker 1: fuels this big change. And so that's what the paradoxical
Speaker 1: frog is doing. But what's incredible is it goes from
Speaker 1: this like ten inch long tadpole to this relatively sort
Speaker 1: of small froglet, and of course then that froglet you know,
Speaker 1: as all others about how big is the frog, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that the froglet is like, you know, right
Speaker 1: around inch and a half two inches, Okay, that's like yeah,
Speaker 1: so you basically you basically go from like ten inches
Speaker 1: down to this like one and a half to two
Speaker 1: inch long froglet. But then of course that froglet, you know,
Speaker 1: and then it starts eating and it's growing and you know,
Speaker 1: it's not yet reproductive maturer and so right, so it
Speaker 1: goes from like a big tadpole to a little frog
Speaker 1: and then the frog grows up into an adult exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then lays eggs and starts the cycle all over.
Speaker 1: That's such a kind of circuitest way to reach adulthood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's not. It's just that they get so big,
Speaker 1: is what's you know, is what sort of more dramatic here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: why do why do the tadpoles get so big as
Speaker 1: opposed to like because I know there's some species of
Speaker 1: frog where the tadpole is roughly the same size of
Speaker 1: the new froglet, maybe a little bigger with the tail.
Speaker 1: But yeah, kind of see, it's actually there's it's actually
Speaker 1: not yet. I don't think it's really totally clear why
Speaker 1: paradoxical frogs, like why are they doing this necessary? Um,
Speaker 1: it probably has to do not just with the energetic
Speaker 1: cost of metamorphosis, because lots of other species experience as well,
Speaker 1: but it probably has to do with aspects of their environment.
Speaker 1: You know, you're trying to get to a really big size,
Speaker 1: you know, grow as much as you can, and it's
Speaker 1: undoubtedly the case that the bigger you are as a
Speaker 1: tadpole is the bigger you are as a froglet, right right,
Speaker 1: And then there's lots of repercussions of that, like if
Speaker 1: you're small, maybe you're But why specifically paradoxical frogs do this.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen a good explanation. It's Benjamin Buttons some
Speaker 1: of just because they're like I wanted to be super cool, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just like I wanted to be the biggest tadpole on
Speaker 1: the block. And then and they like wear a little
Speaker 1: sunglasses and just cruise around and cruise around tropical ponds. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's this parasite called Liberia that I want to
Speaker 1: talk about. Um, it's a flatworm treumatoad is that if
Speaker 1: that's I'm pronouncing that right? Um? So it infects frogs. Um.
Speaker 1: But we're not here to talk necessarily about the frog's metamorphosis.
Speaker 1: But the the liberia itself goes through an amazing shape
Speaker 1: shifting life cycle. So the adult worms live inside predatory
Speaker 1: birds like cranes, herons and egrets. They reproduce inside the
Speaker 1: bird gut and then their eggs travel out of the
Speaker 1: crane via the poop train. Then they hatch. The The
Speaker 1: riberia flat worms hatch into these sort of like tadpole
Speaker 1: like larval stages with like sort of a body and
Speaker 1: a tail um and then those in fact ram's horns
Speaker 1: snails which um are also common in the same sort
Speaker 1: of like lagoon areas. Yeah. Um, I actually, like anyone
Speaker 1: who wants an aquarium knows how great they are taking
Speaker 1: over the snails. Um. So. So the riberia lives in
Speaker 1: the snails reproductive tissue, and then it transforms into more
Speaker 1: of a worm shape. Um. So this isn't another stage
Speaker 1: in its life cycle. Then it reproduces a sexually and
Speaker 1: castrates the snail by eating their reproductive organs as as
Speaker 1: you do, you know, if you believe in reincarnation, like
Speaker 1: just say, let's avoid being aid being rams torn snails.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like the treumatodes are having fun, but
Speaker 1: not the snals. I don't know they did, after all,
Speaker 1: start off like the first start of their life with
Speaker 1: like being pooped out. Yeah that's true, that's true. So
Speaker 1: then after they've castrated the snails, which must be like
Speaker 1: great singers and just all these castrati snails like oh um,
Speaker 1: then they transform into another free swimming form so that's
Speaker 1: the kind of tadpole like head and tail um. And
Speaker 1: then they infect frogs and also fish um. And they
Speaker 1: prefer uh infecting frogs when they're still developing. Um, and
Speaker 1: then they insist in the frog. Not I in S
Speaker 1: I T, but E in c y s T like
Speaker 1: assist because they like embed themselves in the tissue and
Speaker 1: form this cist capsule around themselves. Uh. And it's really
Speaker 1: as disgusting as you would imagine, like acne. But then
Speaker 1: you have a warm in there um and then um,
Speaker 1: so finally there there Uh life cycle ends when the
Speaker 1: frog gets eaten by a crane. The liberia emerges from
Speaker 1: the cyst, which sounds awful, and then it develops into
Speaker 1: an adult inside the birds intestinal tract, mates with other
Speaker 1: cool hip liberia in the area, and the whole boschi
Speaker 1: and horror starts again. Um. Just an amazingly complex I know.
Speaker 1: It's like it feels like a four year old's idea
Speaker 1: of like, uh, some kind of transformer robot thing. And
Speaker 1: then it turns and then it starts swimming around, and
Speaker 1: then it like like goes up its butt and then yeah,
Speaker 1: it basically is yeah, it's like, yeah, a little kid
Speaker 1: came up from this whole. Um. That's like not even
Speaker 1: the weirdest aspect of Liberia. It also when it infects frogs,
Speaker 1: especially young frogs completely jacks up the developing tadpoles and
Speaker 1: makes them grow these extra limbs, like and they're weird.
Speaker 1: It's not just like like having four arms would be
Speaker 1: kind of weird, but they're like also they can be
Speaker 1: super long or really like weirdly inflated, uh, strange numbers
Speaker 1: of digits. Yeah. Yeah, So I wanted to ask you,
Speaker 1: like if you've if you've ever seen one of these
Speaker 1: infected frogs, or if you can kind of explain like
Speaker 1: why they start growing long noodle legs at the back
Speaker 1: of their legs. So these traumatid parasites, when you know,
Speaker 1: they brow into these limb buds, and what will happen
Speaker 1: is if like so, if this is a tadpole, it's
Speaker 1: just got those limb buds. Just about playing real quick
Speaker 1: for the audience what a limb bud is. Yeah, so right,
Speaker 1: So these tadpoles are are going to undergo metamorphosis, and
Speaker 1: so as it does that, you know, as that goes
Speaker 1: to that process, then in the tadpole you get these
Speaker 1: spots where like the hind legs are gonna pop out,
Speaker 1: in the front legs are gonna and so that's that's
Speaker 1: the limbud right, so basically part of the tadpole, but
Speaker 1: that's the part that's gonna turn. It's going to develop
Speaker 1: into a limb. And so what happens is if these
Speaker 1: triumatodes burrow right into that limb bud, they can actually
Speaker 1: cause it to split in weird ways. And so sometimes
Speaker 1: what will then happened is like where you should have
Speaker 1: had one arm, you end up with two arms, or
Speaker 1: maybe an arm ends up being like it grows part
Speaker 1: way out and then it divides into two, and then
Speaker 1: they might have a tra branch. So you get all
Speaker 1: of these weird sort of things going on. And it
Speaker 1: turns out that I've actually only seen this once when
Speaker 1: what's really crazy about this is that some of the
Speaker 1: early work that was done on this was actually done
Speaker 1: by a guy by the name of Peter Johnson who
Speaker 1: was an undergrad. He actually started this work when he
Speaker 1: was an undergrad at Stanford University, and he did a
Speaker 1: lot of the work actually at uh ponds that are
Speaker 1: like ponds that like I used to go hiking by
Speaker 1: when I was high school, and he did this. I
Speaker 1: think he's like right around my age, so I think
Speaker 1: this is probably this is probably mid to list late nineties,
Speaker 1: I think they started doing this work and elsewhere around
Speaker 1: the country people were reporting in a high incidents of
Speaker 1: these like malform frogs, and we thought that maybe this
Speaker 1: was associated with this bigger pattern of amphibian declimb we're
Speaker 1: seeing like yeah, and so we're like, well, what's going on.
Speaker 1: And it turns out its probably does have a link
Speaker 1: to pollution, because you know, one of the sort of
Speaker 1: key aspects of this crazy parasite life cycle is that
Speaker 1: they have to go through these rams, horn snails, algae
Speaker 1: and extra nitrogen in the water, and that can be
Speaker 1: from agricultural runoff, that can be from fertilizers, that can
Speaker 1: be from pollution, extra nitrogen in the water, algae, blooms, rams,
Speaker 1: horn snails really want to understand large ecological patterns. Get
Speaker 1: an aquarium and try to keep it from either being
Speaker 1: taken over about by algae or by snails, and like
Speaker 1: trying to balance that because it's very difficult. So these
Speaker 1: uh yeah, so these you get, you know, large numbers
Speaker 1: of rams from sales, large numbers of trimands, and then
Speaker 1: you get large numbers of these crazy and so yeah,
Speaker 1: these these parasites they brew in the limbuds. You get
Speaker 1: this weird. These weird, you know, deformed frogs, just like
Speaker 1: cronenberg esque frogs, limping with big hind legs and long,
Speaker 1: skinny ones and noodly arms. And I've seen I've never
Speaker 1: seen one personally, but I've I've seen photos online and
Speaker 1: some of them are totally messed up. They have several
Speaker 1: areas where like, I guess, is it because they can
Speaker 1: get multiple infections exactly? Yeah, so like that what's weird? Like,
Speaker 1: so I was going to say, it's like, this is
Speaker 1: a lot of this work was done right near where
Speaker 1: I grew up. This is actually in the foothills, just
Speaker 1: just around south said Jose. And um here in California.
Speaker 1: And I've actually never seen one there. I've only ever
Speaker 1: seen this once and it was in it was in
Speaker 1: central Texas. Yeah, and it was a frog that had
Speaker 1: had five limbs, although the fifth limb was not It
Speaker 1: was short and stubby, but it was it was is
Speaker 1: flopping around. No, it was like, you know, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not so bad. It was a decent looking limb.
Speaker 1: It was a little short, little stubby, but it's still
Speaker 1: had all five. Digital was like, yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it definitely impact locomotion. Yeah, yeah, you probably would go
Speaker 1: in a lot of circles. It was this one was
Speaker 1: kind of up and out of the way a little bit,
Speaker 1: and so actually in this case the frog had pretty
Speaker 1: good locomotion. Certainly for a lot of these frogs, it's
Speaker 1: absolutely going to impact emotion, and of course that probably
Speaker 1: increases their likelihood of being picked up by some heron
Speaker 1: and then the crane. Yeah, and then the life cycle
Speaker 1: of the riberias. It's sort of like we've talked about
Speaker 1: toxoplasmosis the t gan gandha or gandai um that infects
Speaker 1: rats where it makes them like be chill with cats
Speaker 1: and then the cats eat them, which is great for
Speaker 1: the the T. Ganda because it completes life cycle and
Speaker 1: the cat gut. It is clearly in the parasite favorite
Speaker 1: to alter the behavior of the host, increase the likelihood
Speaker 1: that did to move on to the next stage. And
Speaker 1: so it's actually for these triumatoid parasites it's definitely to
Speaker 1: their advantage to cause some sort of locomotory problem on
Speaker 1: the phone because it increases the chance that that frog
Speaker 1: is gonna get picked off by a bird, which again,
Speaker 1: and I've made this argument before, I think is the
Speaker 1: best kind of zombie apocalypse science is like some kind
Speaker 1: of parasite that wants us to eat each other basically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, and it's just what we see
Speaker 1: is that if there's a mass resource out there, something
Speaker 1: is eventually going to evolve to explore the mass resource,
Speaker 1: and so you know, the human population is it continues
Speaker 1: to skyrocket, It's like that's that's a lot of protein
Speaker 1: out there for something to take advantage of. Zombie apocalypse
Speaker 1: confirmed by Dr Greg Paulli. Uh, he's willing to bet
Speaker 1: his credentials on it happening. Yeah, that's that's not quite
Speaker 1: what I think. Um So, you mentioned to me that
Speaker 1: there's this folk legend regarding snakes shedding their skin and rejuvenation,
Speaker 1: which fits into that thing like when we think of
Speaker 1: shape shifters. You know, there's something mystical about snakes and
Speaker 1: how they they'll literally like remove their skin and emerge
Speaker 1: a new and there's something very creepy about it. Um So,
Speaker 1: so what's the legend and what's the scientific reality behind
Speaker 1: snakes and other reptiles and shedding their skin. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we see snakes associated both with the ideas of rejuvenation
Speaker 1: and ideas with shape shifting, and they probably stem from
Speaker 1: the same basic thing, which is that if a snake
Speaker 1: is about to shed, that snake usually becomes very lethargic
Speaker 1: as the you know, a snake skin. When it sheds
Speaker 1: that skin off, there's actually a scale that does go
Speaker 1: over the eye, and so as that all starts to
Speaker 1: get ready to shed, they actually really kind of lose
Speaker 1: their eyesight for a couple of days, and their eyes
Speaker 1: kind of gray over. They kind of become this like
Speaker 1: milky white. The whole animal kind of gets this gray appearance.
Speaker 1: So you've got a snake that's now like lethargic gray.
Speaker 1: It's like this thing is gonna die. And then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden it sheds its skin and it's absolutely beautiful,
Speaker 1: you know. And they haven't eaten for like a week
Speaker 1: or two is they were going through this process, and
Speaker 1: so now they're like hungary and they're cruising around and
Speaker 1: so all of a sudden it's like full of life
Speaker 1: and vigor. So you can see how this gets into
Speaker 1: this idea of rejuvenation. Yeah, yeah, like a phoenix bursting
Speaker 1: from its old skin exactly. Yeah, I know, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a great way to look at it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: of course the reality is that what's happening is that,
Speaker 1: you know, the snake has this this sort of dead
Speaker 1: layer of skin. Yeah, and you know, but that's and
Speaker 1: this is true of course for reptiles as well, but
Speaker 1: that's basically this continuous layer, and there's lots of benefits
Speaker 1: to that, Like, you know, presumably that's that reduces things
Speaker 1: like water loss, which is great if you're like an
Speaker 1: air adapted animal um. And it's also like if you're
Speaker 1: picking up parasites, you know, like ectoparasites like ticks and mites,
Speaker 1: and they can't get through that thick they're on that layer.
Speaker 1: But if you shed off that layer, you might be
Speaker 1: able to lose a whole bunch of these. I see,
Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting. So there's all these sort of benefits
Speaker 1: of it. But it's dead skin, so it's not going
Speaker 1: to grow with the animal. And so once that animal
Speaker 1: grows a little bit, it needs to shut off that
Speaker 1: skin and it's going to get rid of some of
Speaker 1: those ectoparasites, right because i'mlike, because like for most people,
Speaker 1: our skin is very elastic, so as you grow, it
Speaker 1: actually stretches some people get stretch marks as they grow,
Speaker 1: they grow too quickly because your your skin is literally
Speaker 1: stretching for you. Um. And but snakes they don't have
Speaker 1: that kind of elasticity, right, and which again, but it
Speaker 1: has lots of advantages, Like we lose lots of moisture
Speaker 1: through our skin. Snake can't. A snake doesn't want to
Speaker 1: do that, right because water is probably a hard thing
Speaker 1: to come and they're cold blooded and they have to, uh,
Speaker 1: they kind of have to be in the in the
Speaker 1: heat in order to keep it. So their behaviorally thermoregulating, right,
Speaker 1: which is I mean, I think at some level is
Speaker 1: a big advantage because behavioral thermal regulation means that you know,
Speaker 1: you can get your energy from the environment as a
Speaker 1: haus at least what a snake's perspective was, right, You
Speaker 1: sound like you're on the snake side here. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit partial to our little biased Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So as a lot of people might know, like that
Speaker 1: that whole symbol for medicine, those two snakes kind of
Speaker 1: wrapped around a pole, or the two snakes eating each
Speaker 1: other's tail. Um, Actually that one's I think that's a
Speaker 1: different one. That's that's dis Yeah, um. But the caducius
Speaker 1: is the too snail or the two snakes wrapped around
Speaker 1: a pole kind of facing each other, um. And you
Speaker 1: see it on ambulances at hospitals. It's this a pretty
Speaker 1: old symbol of medicine. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about how how snakes got associated with medicine like that?
Speaker 1: So this whole idea of snakes, you know, snakes being
Speaker 1: associated with rejuvenation, I think we see this popping up
Speaker 1: in in many cultures. And one of the cultures where
Speaker 1: it pops up in this sort of Greek and Roman mythology.
Speaker 1: And so there's this symbol called the rod of Asclepius
Speaker 1: that is a single snake that's wrapped around this like
Speaker 1: staff and a Sleepius was the Greek god of healing
Speaker 1: and medicine, and so totally makes sense that we would
Speaker 1: have this, you know, this this his rod, that emblem
Speaker 1: of a single snake wrapped around this rod as now
Speaker 1: like a symbol of medicine. But I think just this
Speaker 1: idea of like a snake intertwined around a stick, people
Speaker 1: sort of didn't always realize that like that's specific to
Speaker 1: this rod of Asclepius. So you also have the Caducius,
Speaker 1: which is the two snakes intertwined around the stick. But
Speaker 1: the Caducius is actually has nothing to do with Asclepius.
Speaker 1: That's actually from Hermes. That's Hermes as staff or was
Speaker 1: a part of her well. So I think it's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: we need like a Greek like there's this snake stick
Speaker 1: image from you know, Greek Roman mythology, and it's really
Speaker 1: supposed to be the rod of a sleep It's associated
Speaker 1: with medicine because the sleepy is the god of medicine.
Speaker 1: Hermes was actually all about commerce and merchants, right, he
Speaker 1: was like the communication. So it's this crazy situation where
Speaker 1: like we have like that snake motif, but if you
Speaker 1: actually see both of those snakes, it's just it's really
Speaker 1: common and it's mostly in like in sort of Western culture.
Speaker 1: So like you see this in a lot of Europe,
Speaker 1: and you especially see it in the United States, Like
Speaker 1: the us UM Public Health Agency, they have their emblem
Speaker 1: is the incorrect emblem, so like their actual emblem, And
Speaker 1: you know, you could argue that maybe this is somewhat
Speaker 1: ironic given the amount of money that goes towards like
Speaker 1: medical insurance companies couldn't look up, couldn't look up their
Speaker 1: Greek mythology, and ended up actually having an emblem that's
Speaker 1: more about commerce and merchants than that's actually about healing
Speaker 1: and medicine. So true though, when you think about it,
Speaker 1: so true. We don't we we can't do politics on
Speaker 1: this show. I'm not allowed not No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Um, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's really interesting. So um, doctors are all doing
Speaker 1: it wrong. Hospitals, you have been incorrectly using the snakes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I mean I'm all for like emblems with more snakes,
Speaker 1: but in this case, it's actually we should be going
Speaker 1: with a single snake model. We should just have I
Speaker 1: would like one that's just a wreath of snakes, just
Speaker 1: as many snakes. I mean, I think we're getting into
Speaker 1: like Medusa maybe yeah, yeah, like a Medusa head. That
Speaker 1: would be cool that. I think if hospitals had like
Speaker 1: a really metal Medusa head with a bunch of snakes,
Speaker 1: I feel a lot more comfortence gonna go over well
Speaker 1: in the children's room. Yeah, yeah, Well, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us today. Is there any anything you
Speaker 1: wanna tell listeners to do? Yeah, I would say wherever
Speaker 1: you are. I mean, you know, as a curator at
Speaker 1: a natural history museum. I love museums. Wherever you are,
Speaker 1: go check out your local natural history museum. Yeah, stay
Speaker 1: in school, be cool. Check out some reptiles at your
Speaker 1: natural history museum. Sounds good to me. So I'm back
Speaker 1: with Anna and Scheren, and I'm going to show them
Speaker 1: at picture of a frog with a bunch of legs.
Speaker 1: Whoa you just he's just chilling. Man. Ah, there's there's
Speaker 1: so many and there's like, here's another one. Huh. Frogs
Speaker 1: were wild? So does this help their lives in any way?
Speaker 1: Or doesn't make No, doesn't hinder them then? Or does
Speaker 1: it just what? It depends? Sometimes they can just they
Speaker 1: they're just cool with it. They're like, all right, more
Speaker 1: more legs to dance with or whatever. They never like
Speaker 1: chew off a leg to get rid of it. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think so, although sometimes like it it depends
Speaker 1: like on how lucky or unlucky the frog is, because
Speaker 1: like if they have an extra limb, sometimes it just
Speaker 1: doesn't affect them at all, whereas like it can sort
Speaker 1: of interfere, like like at this one he's just got
Speaker 1: like this one buff leg in this one little point
Speaker 1: weird leg. He doesn't work out that like someone skipped,
Speaker 1: Like you got to pay attention to all five of
Speaker 1: your legs. Wow, leg day, leg day, leg day, leg day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what happens when you focus on one leg legs days,
Speaker 1: legs for days literally like and each leg can be
Speaker 1: on one day each. Does that happen to any other
Speaker 1: animal where they grow multiple limbs because of that what
Speaker 1: you were talking about the because of the the the
Speaker 1: parasitic flatworm, I don't. I don't think so. I think
Speaker 1: it's specific to frogs because it infects the frog at
Speaker 1: that um larval stage where it's like their tadpoles, So
Speaker 1: it inmbeds in the limbuds. So that's what kind of
Speaker 1: causes that weird like you know, like sprouts into two limbs.
Speaker 1: Although like um researchers have played around with um oh
Speaker 1: sort of limb buds and insects and stuff and gotten
Speaker 1: them to sprout legs. Yeah. Yeah, we don't need more centipedes.
Speaker 1: We don't need spiders with more legs. I haven't seen that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to halt. It's just like a scientist
Speaker 1: like more legs, we need more legs. Too many legs,
Speaker 1: too too many. I hear what you're saying. I understand.
Speaker 1: What about not enough legs? Yeah, what if we did
Speaker 1: put more legs? Like how centipede but more legs? That's
Speaker 1: too many? How much is too many legs? Centipedes that
Speaker 1: even have twelve legs have way more than twelve, Like
Speaker 1: it's called centipede, like twelve, but it's way more. I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's like it's like dozens. Yeah, it doesen't a
Speaker 1: billion billion legs. You feel like our reptiles only ones
Speaker 1: that have that capability though, I feel I feel like
Speaker 1: like lizards can regenerate their tails sometimes, yeah they can,
Speaker 1: so like they could regenerate their tail, but um, frogs
Speaker 1: can't actually regenerate their limbs. It's just that when there's well,
Speaker 1: it's right, it's just that when they're in that tadpole stage,
Speaker 1: like their limbs are growing um and so like if
Speaker 1: something like like hangs out in that little limb butt area,
Speaker 1: it's just like it's gonna maybe sprout into two legs. Wait,
Speaker 1: so something like a salamander like you're talking about, can
Speaker 1: that as well grow multiple legs because it has a
Speaker 1: lot of a stage. I probably think I would imagine
Speaker 1: it could. I don't know if this uh flatworm actually infects.
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like it. It looks like, um, what
Speaker 1: if they got against frogs? Man? I mean maybe they
Speaker 1: love frogs. Maybe they do. Maybe they're like I want
Speaker 1: to get in that sweet frog butt and just live
Speaker 1: there and grow multiple legs out of you. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love your butts so much. I just want to
Speaker 1: live in your butt. Um. But uh yeah, here's here's
Speaker 1: another picture if you want it. Just like that's a
Speaker 1: really inconveniently located if you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 1: he has a giant penis leg with the hand on it.
Speaker 1: Good for good for mating, hope. Yeah, like female frogs.
Speaker 1: That being like what bound sign me up? Is that
Speaker 1: your third leg? Yes? Actually yes it is actually yeah,
Speaker 1: that is exactly what it is. But I imagine the pulse.
Speaker 1: So you guys got anything to plug? Not and don't
Speaker 1: say frog limbs. Um, I just want to go back
Speaker 1: and read animorphs again to my third leg. We're plugging animorphs.
Speaker 1: I just the covers were so great that I bought
Speaker 1: I would beg my parents for animals and just flipped
Speaker 1: through them. That's all. Covers were so good, the cover
Speaker 1: and then the little flip book in the corners where
Speaker 1: you're like, and it's a person. But now to beat
Speaker 1: That's all I was thinking about when you were talking
Speaker 1: about people. I think they're animals. I was like, maybe
Speaker 1: that's the author of animals. Yeah, maybe animals turned us
Speaker 1: into turn everybody into furries. Yeah. Well, on that note, Um,
Speaker 1: we host a podcast together called Ethnically Ambiguous. Yeah, Anna
Speaker 1: is on it. I am on it. There you could
Speaker 1: say they're both on it. Really say we host it together.
Speaker 1: On it. It's on my Heart Radio comedy podcast nowhek's
Speaker 1: onhar Radio Economy podcast Network. And you can find this
Speaker 1: anywhere you find your podcast. We're on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify.
Speaker 1: Our website I Thinically Ambigie was pod dot com. You
Speaker 1: can follow us on Twitter ethnically am A m B.
Speaker 1: Follow us on Instagram Ethnically am big A m B
Speaker 1: I G And we post episodes every Monday and Wednesday. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know it's a show all about being from
Speaker 1: the Middle East and being children of immigrants or immigrants,
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, it's talk a lot about that those
Speaker 1: experiences and a lot of like Middle Easter news that
Speaker 1: doesn't really get covered in the mainstream media, and we
Speaker 1: keep it fun. We have cool Yeah, we have like
Speaker 1: guests that are usually people of color, immigrants, just highlighting
Speaker 1: their cool work. We just had some really cool guests
Speaker 1: on last months of check it out. Yeah, and I'm
Speaker 1: at Anna hosting on Twitter A N N A h
Speaker 1: O S S N e h. And I'm Shiro Hero
Speaker 1: on Instagram s h E E r O h E
Speaker 1: r oh and on Twitter, I'm sure Hero six six
Speaker 1: six nice. That's super metal, hardcore. And you can follow
Speaker 1: Creature Feature on the Twitter at Creature feet pod not
Speaker 1: like feet but like a t this episode. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's pork uh and on Instagram and on our website
Speaker 1: Creature Feature uh pod. And we will be back next
Speaker 1: Wednesday with more gross stuff. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having us, Thank you guys for joining me. And thanks
Speaker 1: to the Space Classics for their awesome song Exo Lumina