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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how stup

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe

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Speaker 1: McCormick and Robert. I was just thinking this morning about dogs.

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Speaker 1: I've got a dog. I'm a big dog fan. Y'all

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Speaker 1: don't have a dog. Now we're a cat household. Well,

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Speaker 1: I was thinking about how dogs, too many people feel

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Speaker 1: like such morally pure creatures. They're sweet, innocent, loving, Like

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Speaker 1: my dog seems so sweet and innocent to me. And

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Speaker 1: this is really incongruous with the evidence of my senses,

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Speaker 1: because consciously I know that he thirsts for blood. Literally,

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Speaker 1: the happiest day I can ever like, the happiest I've

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Speaker 1: ever seen my dog was the morning he successfully killed

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Speaker 1: a baby chip monk in our backyard. He like got

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Speaker 1: it in its jaws and he shook it to death,

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Speaker 1: and then he looked up with such joy in his

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Speaker 1: eyes as tail wagon so hard he seems like he

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Speaker 1: might break in half. And yet he still somehow seemed

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Speaker 1: to me like this pure, blameless, innocent creature. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: in a way he was right, because dogs, you know,

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Speaker 1: they're just following their instincts. It's not like they know

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Speaker 1: better than to do that. But I think one difference

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Speaker 1: in how we think about dogs that do destructive things

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Speaker 1: versus how we think about like people that do destructive things,

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Speaker 1: is that you usually think of a dog as something

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Speaker 1: that can't lie to you, right, this is this is true? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, cats, dogs, any animal you encounter, they are

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Speaker 1: an honest and pure version of what they are. What

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Speaker 1: else could they do being what they are? Yeah, But

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Speaker 1: it's like it's like lying is sort of the the

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Speaker 1: film that coats every other bad thing we think about

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Speaker 1: when we think about people, Like all the ways that

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Speaker 1: people can be bad somehow involve lying, you know what

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Speaker 1: I mean. And so it's this thing that that plants

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Speaker 1: the seed of distrust between people. I know, you've probably

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Speaker 1: you can think of times where you have this totally

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Speaker 1: otherwise good relationship with a person, but if you find

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Speaker 1: out they've lied do you one time, it really undercuts

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Speaker 1: the whole thing. It puts this poison pill in the relationship, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean with with cats, for instance, having more experience

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Speaker 1: with cats, you think about the times that your cat

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Speaker 1: has been quote unquote bad. Generally, this is a case

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Speaker 1: where the animal has there has not behaved in a

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Speaker 1: way that fits your altered version of their existence. Like

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Speaker 1: you've taken this animal that needs to live outside and

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Speaker 1: hunt small creatures, and you have made it live indoors

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Speaker 1: in an environment mostly devoid of small creatures, and of

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Speaker 1: course it's going to be crazy. Of course it's gonna

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Speaker 1: run around and scratch things inappropriately and hunt your feet

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Speaker 1: in the mornings in the evening, that sort of thing.

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Speaker 1: And we get mad at them and we say bad cat,

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Speaker 1: or and then we say bad dog. But really they

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Speaker 1: are just being what they are and there's not there

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Speaker 1: no deception going on. It's just a pure act by

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Speaker 1: a creature that cannot be anything else. I have this

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Speaker 1: thought a lot. I thought like I think, even when

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Speaker 1: Charlie has done something bad and I have to yell

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Speaker 1: at him, I feel so guilty having to yell at

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Speaker 1: him or or discipline him or whatever. And I always think,

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Speaker 1: at least he'll never lie to me. But despite how

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Speaker 1: strongly I feel this, I think maybe it isn't really true,

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Speaker 1: because dogs might not have complex enough cognition to really

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Speaker 1: understand the fact that they're lying or understand what they're doing.

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Speaker 1: But just as one example, so, if my dog Charlie

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Speaker 1: has been fed dinner by one member of the household,

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Speaker 1: he will sometimes seem to try to convince a different

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Speaker 1: member of the household that he hasn't had dinner yet.

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Speaker 1: My cat does a similar thing. And maybe I'm just

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Speaker 1: projecting imagined motivations or strategies on like a generalized begging behavior,

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Speaker 1: but it certainly seems real. It feels real, and if

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Speaker 1: it were real, if he were actively trying to deceive

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Speaker 1: us and cheat another meal out of us, he would

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Speaker 1: not be alone in the animal world. True. But on

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Speaker 1: the on the other hand, like a dog's just gonna

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Speaker 1: eat whenever it can eat, a cat's gonna eat when

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Speaker 1: whenever it can eat, even if it just ends up

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Speaker 1: puking because it's eating too much. Well, whether or not

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Speaker 1: that's actually a good example. The point is that animals

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Speaker 1: other than humans absolutely can lie and deceive. Some make

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Speaker 1: an entire way of life out of it. Many can't

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Speaker 1: live without it. Um And I guess we should be

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Speaker 1: clear that animal deception isn't exactly the same as human lying, right,

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Speaker 1: There's some kind of difference there that's important. Well, we're

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Speaker 1: certainly not talking about a conscious act We're talking about

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Speaker 1: something that's more primitive, something that really I think is

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Speaker 1: beneath the surface of human deception, like the the the

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Speaker 1: natural evolved action that are human lies or just a

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Speaker 1: human exaggeration off. Yeah, exactly. And we so we don't

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Speaker 1: want to draw one to one comparison between animal deception

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Speaker 1: and human lying, but it is interesting sometimes how instinctual

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Speaker 1: animal deception tactics often take place for like the same

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Speaker 1: reasons and the same types of motivations that you see

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Speaker 1: humans consciously engaging in deception with other members of their

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Speaker 1: own species. You know, creatures deceive, whether by instinct or

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Speaker 1: whether consciously, in order to gain advantage, right for food,

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Speaker 1: for mating privileges, for just pure survival though the kind

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Speaker 1: of thing that in human activity they just sort of

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Speaker 1: spring out of the moment. But in the natural world

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Speaker 1: we see them emerge via natural selection over vast periods

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Speaker 1: of time, right, And so there is this vast world

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Speaker 1: of animal deception to explore, and that's what we're gonna

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Speaker 1: do today. We've decided for today's episode just to take

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Speaker 1: a few of our favorite examples of interesting, amazing, sometimes

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Speaker 1: funny animal deception and talk about them. And if this

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Speaker 1: episode works out, maybe well, maybe we can make an

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Speaker 1: ongoing series of this, kind of like our Dangerous Foods episodes. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: is what we're gonna get into a lot of mimicry,

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Speaker 1: of course, and mimicry is probably one of my my

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Speaker 1: favorite topics in biology on one hand, because it almost

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Speaker 1: always lines up with some sort of a fictitious monster. Right,

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Speaker 1: there's so many monsters that pretend to be something that

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Speaker 1: they are not, usually that they're pretending to be a human, right,

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Speaker 1: But it matches up with so many examples, so many

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Speaker 1: just wonderfully um grotesque and intricate examples of creatures pretending

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Speaker 1: to be other creatures or somehow mimicking behavior. Well, you

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Speaker 1: can really see in all of these stories of human

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Speaker 1: or monsters that pretend to be humans, the shape shifting monsters,

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Speaker 1: you can see things that look like biological training algorithms.

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Speaker 1: Like when you have stories about the succubus having like

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Speaker 1: messed up looking feet that you should be able to

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Speaker 1: notice so that you can avoid the succubus. That is

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Speaker 1: a fictional story about an imagined monster. But it feels

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Speaker 1: very much like the way that there are going to

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Speaker 1: be deceptive, aggressive mimicry examples in the natural world, where

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Speaker 1: an animal has to become a tune to one particular

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Speaker 1: part of the body of another animal to understand the

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Speaker 1: difference between it and the harmless animal or the predator

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Speaker 1: or whatever that it's pretending to be. Indeed, now, now,

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Speaker 1: I like this approach for the podcast because there are

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Speaker 1: so many wonderful examples of deception and mimicry in the

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Speaker 1: animal kingdom, especially, so we could just do episode after

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Speaker 1: episode looking at some of these examples. In fact, with

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Speaker 1: this first example I want to talk about, we could

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Speaker 1: probably do a whole series of episodes just on this

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Speaker 1: one type of bird. But I want to start with

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Speaker 1: this example of the cuckoos. Now, Robert, I'm sure you've

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Speaker 1: touched on cuckoo's a bit in the podcast before, right, Yes,

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Speaker 1: we did cover cuckoos in an older episode. But it's

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Speaker 1: just such a fascinating biological example. Uh, let's definitely revisit

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Speaker 1: it here. We we are cuckoo for parasites. So cuckoos

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Speaker 1: are a family of birds. There are more than a

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Speaker 1: hundred and thirties species of cuckoos, more than fifty of

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Speaker 1: which are brewed parasites. So here's the low down on

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Speaker 1: brood parasitism. Evolution selects for you to have as many

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Speaker 1: future descendants as possible, but for some species it takes

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Speaker 1: a lot of work to raise them. So what if

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Speaker 1: you could trick another animal into raising your offspring as

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Speaker 1: its own so that you don't have to put the

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Speaker 1: investment in So, brood parasites developed biological strategies for exactly this,

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Speaker 1: to sneak their young into the care of some other

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Speaker 1: animal so they can avoid the resource investment of raising them. So,

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Speaker 1: in the case of cuckoos and some other avian brewed parasites,

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Speaker 1: this usually breaks down into a three stage strategy. The

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Speaker 1: first stages you want to get access to the unguarded

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Speaker 1: nest of a host bird. Second step is lay your

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Speaker 1: eggs among the eggs of the host, and then the

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Speaker 1: third step is often kill or remove the other eggs

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Speaker 1: or siblings from the nest. And this is to maximize

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Speaker 1: all of the parental attention that's going to go to

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Speaker 1: the parasitic invader. And on paper, just looking at the

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Speaker 1: pure economics of survival, this this makes sense. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: it it often leads to this evolutionary arms race between

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Speaker 1: parasites and hosts, with the host birds evolving defenses against

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Speaker 1: the cuckoos and the cuckoos evolving better and better tactics

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Speaker 1: for their brood parasitism game. Example, here's a question. If

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Speaker 1: you're a cuckoo and you want to gain access to

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Speaker 1: a local nest, how do you get to it without

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Speaker 1: the parent bird catching you in the act. Cuckoos are

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Speaker 1: actually not especially strong or agile birds, and they can

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Speaker 1: be injured or killed by attacks from host parents. So

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Speaker 1: if you were a cuckoo, you need some way of

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Speaker 1: getting the host parents safely away from the nest while

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Speaker 1: you lay your eggs in there. So how do you

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Speaker 1: do that? Well, some cuckoos appear to have evolved a

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Speaker 1: really ingenious solution to this. They evolved to look like predators,

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Speaker 1: specifically raptors like sparrow hawks. So the cuckoos look like

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Speaker 1: sparrow hawks in several ways. They're similar in size and shape,

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Speaker 1: like having a long body and then similar shaped wings

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Speaker 1: and a tail. And also in the plumage they've got

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Speaker 1: these similar colorations to the sparrow hawks, but then also

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Speaker 1: barred patterns on the plumage of the underside of their bodies.

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Speaker 1: Uh and then also I've read that there their swift

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Speaker 1: direct flight has a role to play in their mimicry

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Speaker 1: of hawks. So you've got this barred pattern on the plumage.

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Speaker 1: If you're a hawk, a barred pattern is probably useful

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Speaker 1: because it's camouflage, right. It helps you hide among the

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Speaker 1: branches and leaves, so you can get close to your prey.

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Speaker 1: But if you're a cuckoo and you look like a

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Speaker 1: predatory hawk, you can get birds to think you are

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Speaker 1: a predatory hawk, meaning they fly away and avoid you.

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Speaker 1: You drive the host parents away, and then you gain

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Speaker 1: access to the nest. Of course, then you've still got

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Speaker 1: this back and forth of the evolutionary arms race going on.

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Speaker 1: So some common hosts of parasitic cuckoos, like read warblers

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Speaker 1: or Acrocephalus sci passus, they've developed the ability to tell

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Speaker 1: the difference between cuckoos and genuine hawk predators. So you

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Speaker 1: put a stuffed sparrow hawk in front of them and

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Speaker 1: they will fly away, they'll avoid it. But if you

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Speaker 1: put a stuffed cuckoo in front of them, they'll often

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Speaker 1: mob it and go nuts attacking it. And then again

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Speaker 1: the trickery of avian brewed parasites can go in exactly

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Speaker 1: the opposite direction, driving the evolutionary arms race to the

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Speaker 1: other end of the spectrum. So to to cite a

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Speaker 1: paper here from Proceedings of the Royal Society b and

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Speaker 1: UH by Phoene at All, the authors tested the hypothesis

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Speaker 1: that female cuckoo finches or anomalous spizza embarbus uh, that

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Speaker 1: this is another parasitic bird, a brewed parasite bird, that

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Speaker 1: they aggressively mimic harmless bird species in order to gain

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Speaker 1: undetected access to the nests of their hosts, which are

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Speaker 1: tawny flanked prinia. So under this hypothesis us the parasites

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Speaker 1: disguised themselves as a harmless bird called Southern red Bishops,

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Speaker 1: and the results seemed to bear this out by showing

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Speaker 1: that the cuckoo finch plumage pattern was closer to that

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Speaker 1: of the Southern red Bishop than it was to the

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Speaker 1: parasitic finch's own closest relatives. Also, the authors noted that

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Speaker 1: the host birds the printia, were equally aggressive to the

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Speaker 1: parasites and to actual Southern Red bishops, actually harmless birds. Essentially,

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Speaker 1: this is kind of like if burglars uh one time

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Speaker 1: got into your house by disguising themselves as the milkman.

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Speaker 1: And then after that, every time you see the milkman

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Speaker 1: you scream and attack him. Yeah, And of course it's

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Speaker 1: important to note the obvious and all of this, and

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Speaker 1: that is that this is taking place at the speed

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Speaker 1: of natural selection. So we when we see the development

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Speaker 1: of of of coloration that matches a predatory bird, this

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Speaker 1: is something where the cuckoos that had UH coloration that

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Speaker 1: lined up with predatory birds, they were the more successful.

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Speaker 1: They were the ones that were producing offspring. Right. And

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Speaker 1: still in all these cases going to be a question

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Speaker 1: of percentages, you know, It's not like something is gonna

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Speaker 1: work or fail every time. It's going to be a

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Speaker 1: question of how often it works. Yeah, with kind of

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Speaker 1: a tug back and forth, as you've explained here, I

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Speaker 1: can't help but think of say, fashions and trends. Here

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Speaker 1: it's like, oh, predatory cuckoos are in this season, uh,

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Speaker 1: and then the next season out and now now it's

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Speaker 1: the the ones that look like harmless birds. That's what's

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Speaker 1: the what's actually getting success, and then it's having an

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Speaker 1: impact on the subsequent generations. Right. But in in real time,

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Speaker 1: of course, what it's going to be is mostly it's

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Speaker 1: going to be divergent, like you'll you'll pick a niche

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Speaker 1: one or the other and then split off into these

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Speaker 1: different paths over time. But yeah, you could see potentially

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Speaker 1: in the future the paths converging or going back in

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Speaker 1: the opposite direction, depending on what's beneficial. Now, we could

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Speaker 1: probably do a whole series of episodes just on the

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Speaker 1: arms race between a v and brood parasites on their

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Speaker 1: and their hosts, like disguising the eggs to look like

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Speaker 1: host eggs so the host parents don't roll them out

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Speaker 1: of the nest, and then once the egg does hatch,

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Speaker 1: a cuckoo chick will often immediately push the other eggs

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Speaker 1: out of the nest so that it alone can benefit

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Speaker 1: from its host parents feeding and protection. And sometimes people

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Speaker 1: note the like how ridiculous this can look to outside observers,

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Speaker 1: where like, a tiny parent will be feeding a gigantic

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Speaker 1: cuckoo baby as if it thinks it's its own young um,

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Speaker 1: and and so like, this is getting extremely large and fat,

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Speaker 1: but it looks weird to us because we don't see

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Speaker 1: bird chicks the same way birds see bird chicks like birds,

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Speaker 1: seabird chicks through these certain types of things they recognize,

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Speaker 1: like the shape of the open mouth and and that

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Speaker 1: being a trigger for their instinctual feeding behaviors. But I

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Speaker 1: also want to mention a very different and very amazing

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Speaker 1: kind of brood parasite that is also found in nature,

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Speaker 1: the ant queen with butterfly wings. So I've got a

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Speaker 1: strategy to improve my lot in life. Let me know

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Speaker 1: what you think about. Okay, I'm gonna walk up to

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Speaker 1: the eight outside the White House with a suit on.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, hey, I'm the President, and I'll like,

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Speaker 1: maybe i'll do a voice impression of the president, and

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Speaker 1: then hopefully they'll be like, Mr President, what are you

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Speaker 1: doing out here? Let's get you inside and get you

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Speaker 1: all kinds of luxury items. Okay, Well, I mean it

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Speaker 1: seems like people have gained access to the White House

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Speaker 1: with with with less of a complex plan in mind.

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Speaker 1: But I see some problems with this one. Yeah, you

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Speaker 1: don't think it's gonna work. Well, you're not gonna look

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Speaker 1: like the president. You're just saying you're the president, and

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Speaker 1: unless you just caught everybody unawares, they're probably not gonna

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Speaker 1: let you in. Yeah, it's absolutely true, based on how

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Speaker 1: humans identify other humans, that would probably not be a

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Speaker 1: good strategy. I would probably need some kind of surgery

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Speaker 1: or really really good mission impossible mask to totally look

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Speaker 1: like a convincing copy of the real president by sight. Right, Yeah, Like,

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Speaker 1: even if you look at a professional lookalikes a very

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Speaker 1: celebrities or politicians like you could maybe make a case

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Speaker 1: for some of these individuals having a good shot at

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Speaker 1: getting in there, you know, like their impression and their

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Speaker 1: appearance is spot on, and maybe if everyone was just

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Speaker 1: a little bit lax, they could wander in. But generally,

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Speaker 1: we just have so many caveats that we're looking at

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Speaker 1: to identify somebody. Well, right, But that's because we are humans,

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Speaker 1: and it's because we identify by sight and by sound primarily. Now,

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Speaker 1: what if I didn't actually smell like the president? Would

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Speaker 1: that matter? Probably not? Right? Well, I guess it depended

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Speaker 1: on what you smelled like, and it depends on how

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Speaker 1: how strong all the other sensory deceptions were, you know,

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Speaker 1: because it was one of those things where your hair

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Speaker 1: didn't look quite right. But then also you smelled say

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Speaker 1: like kale Like, I'm just a strong kale odor And

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Speaker 1: they might say the president has never smelled like kale before.

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Speaker 1: And then you know, now that I think about it,

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Speaker 1: the hair looks a little weird today. And then they said,

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Speaker 1: then it's like a an avalanche of of of revelation

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Speaker 1: and they to say, oh, it's actually an alien visitor.

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Speaker 1: Is that what I am? In this example? Now? Did

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Speaker 1: I become an alien? I don't know, it just got it.

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Speaker 1: It spiraled out of control to now I'm imagining a

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Speaker 1: Kale based alien organism that impersonates world leaders. Take me

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Speaker 1: to your leader has become make me your leader. Well, so, yeah,

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Speaker 1: so we've identified that sight and sound are the main

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Speaker 1: things humans would go by, but different animals go on

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Speaker 1: different types of senses. And so if you're an insect,

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Speaker 1: a good way to get access to the insect White

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Speaker 1: House might be something other than looking right. It might

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Speaker 1: be smelling right, and it might be sounding right. Okay, Well,

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Speaker 1: what would be an insect world equivalence of the White House?

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Speaker 1: A highly protected uh stronghold really uh, the kind of

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Speaker 1: place where generally to break into it, you would think

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Speaker 1: you'd have to pull some real mission impossible shenanigans. Oh,

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Speaker 1: it's got to be an ant colony, right, The ant

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Speaker 1: colon is the fortress or the castle of the insect world.

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Speaker 1: It's got powerful resource distribution channels, it's got powerful protective systems,

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Speaker 1: it's got you know, armies to protect you and do

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Speaker 1: your bidding, and selfless, selfless soldiers in its service. You have.

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Speaker 1: They talk about the secret servicemen will take a bullet

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Speaker 1: for the president, but at a worker ant will definitely

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Speaker 1: take a bullet for the queen for the colony. Totally

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Speaker 1: gaining access to the benefits of an ant colony without

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Speaker 1: having to give anything back to the ant colony. That

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Speaker 1: would be the insect equivalent of hitting the jackpot. Yeah, totally. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the call was coming from inside the colony the whole time.

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Speaker 1: And there is a species of butterfly that is an

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Speaker 1: example of there are many types of insects, actually, I

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Speaker 1: believe thousands of types of insects that have evolved to

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Speaker 1: parasitize ant colonies through the brood parasitism method. And so

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Speaker 1: there's a species of butterfly that's one of these insects

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Speaker 1: called the mountain alcon blue or acculine A rebelli. Maculanea parasitizes.

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Speaker 1: A type of Eurasian aunt called mermica skeen key or

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Speaker 1: skeen key C s h E N c k I,

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Speaker 1: and the caterpillar stage of this maculania butterfly uses chemical

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Speaker 1: signatures to convince the ants that it is an aunt larva.

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Speaker 1: So they're like, oh, one of our aunt lava is

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Speaker 1: out here, we need to take it inside, get it safe,

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Speaker 1: at which point so the ants carry the caterpillar back

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Speaker 1: to the nest and take care of it. But it

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Speaker 1: gets better. A two thousand nine study by Francesca Barbera

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Speaker 1: at all in Science found that mermica queen's partially demonstrate

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Speaker 1: who they are to the workers in their colony by

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Speaker 1: making distinctive acoustic sounds quote that elicit increased benevolent responses

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Speaker 1: from workers, reinforcing their supreme social status. So this parasite

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Speaker 1: is able to convince the ant colony through this deceptive

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Speaker 1: tactic and through making this type of noise by it's

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Speaker 1: it's like a friction based noise that it makes with

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Speaker 1: rubbing its body parts together, that it is not only

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Speaker 1: welcome in the colony, it's not only a larva that

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Speaker 1: should be taken care of, but it's a queen and

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Speaker 1: it's got to be given ultimate deference, status, resources and

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Speaker 1: all that, and this works so well. Did the parasitic

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Speaker 1: butterfly puts on the vast majority of its adult weight

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Speaker 1: while being fed by its aunt servants? That is that

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Speaker 1: is quite a cool This would be just like if

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Speaker 1: you showed up at the gates of the White House.

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Speaker 1: He sounded like the president, you smelled like the president,

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Speaker 1: and then they took you in and they started feeding

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Speaker 1: you all of the President's favorite foods. Right, So this

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Speaker 1: is an amazing example and it's funny. So we've been

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Speaker 1: doing this anthropomorphizing thing because I think it often makes

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Speaker 1: these examples even more amazing and funnier to try to

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Speaker 1: think of what the human analogy would be. But anytime

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Speaker 1: there's stuff about, for example, you know, weird invertebrate courtship

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Speaker 1: behaviors which we're gonna get to in a bit, or

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Speaker 1: anything like that, people want to say, hey, maybe that's why,

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Speaker 1: and then inserts something about real human behaviors there. And

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Speaker 1: to be clear, it's not why. Like it's fun to

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Speaker 1: anthropomorphize these examples just because it can be funny. But

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Speaker 1: you know, we're talking about other types of organisms, birds, arachneids, insects,

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Speaker 1: which are not close relatives of ours, distantly removed in

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Speaker 1: evolutionary history, and it's pretty safe to assume that their

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Speaker 1: behaviors are independent of ours. So this extends to all

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Speaker 1: the things we'll be talking about today. Some of them

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Speaker 1: might be really interesting, were funny to consider when you

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Speaker 1: pour them up to some kind of human analogy, but

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Speaker 1: we should remember that these animals aren't humans. We humans

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Speaker 1: are not these animals, and their behavior doesn't necessarily or

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Speaker 1: even likely explain our behavior, and vice versa. I do

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Speaker 1: do not take any inspiration from these animals. Alright, we're

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Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break and we come back. We

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Speaker 1: will dive into the world of cuttlefish. Alright, we're back.

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Speaker 1: So you've promised me cuttlefish, Yes, and I will deliver cuttlefish.

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Speaker 1: I'm a big cuttlefish fan. If there is a video

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Speaker 1: or a giff involving cuttlefish, if I'm in an aquarium

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Speaker 1: and they're cuttlefish, then I Am definitely going to stare

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Speaker 1: long and deep into their their pulsating coloration, the way

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Speaker 1: they just kind of float there like an apparition. They're

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Speaker 1: just gorgeous, beautiful, holy, blameless creatures. Or we're back to

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Speaker 1: the blameless, right, Yeah, well, there's it's something angelic about

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Speaker 1: the cuttlefish. Cuttlefish are your dogs kind of Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: don't have to clean up after him though, but so yeah,

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Speaker 1: I do. I do see them with a certain amount

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Speaker 1: of purity. How do you feel about the nautilus compared

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Speaker 1: to cuttlefish? I mean, the nautils is is cool. Who

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Speaker 1: who doesn't love the vaulted nautilus? But and the cuttlefish

404
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Speaker 1: is is far more elegant. Okay, take me there, all right,

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Speaker 1: So cuttlefish are typically loners, but every year do have

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Speaker 1: to abandon their solitary lives and they have to gather

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Speaker 1: together to mate. And then you see, you see a

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Speaker 1: lot of behavior at this point that is less cute.

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Speaker 1: You know, that's at least to us are human eyes,

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Speaker 1: because you have a very similar scenario going on here.

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Speaker 1: You have males staking out smaller females, and they're expressing

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Speaker 1: both their desire to mate with the females and their

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Speaker 1: desire to fight off rivals. And they do a lot

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Speaker 1: of this through a complex flash of colors, changing of

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Speaker 1: their shapes. One of the mini tropes of science fiction

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Speaker 1: and fantasies. Of course, shape shifting organisms, things that can

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Speaker 1: change their shape to deceive. In this case, Uh, we

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Speaker 1: definitely see the change of shape and the change of

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Speaker 1: coloration as a way to communicate with each other. Um,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of a language of intent. And these changes

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Speaker 1: they happen to like a fraction of a second, and

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Speaker 1: it does at times just seem pulsating and hypnotic. And

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Speaker 1: there there have been studies that have looked at it

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Speaker 1: even a sort of hypnotic approach to capturing prey, just

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00:24:06,440 --> 00:24:11,000
Speaker 1: throwing the prey off with some sort of complex coloration pattern. Again,

426
00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:14,200
Speaker 1: there's almost something supernatural about seeing one of these organisms

427
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:19,680
Speaker 1: sort of paralysis by like baffling sensory overload. Right. Yeah,

428
00:24:19,760 --> 00:24:23,199
Speaker 1: But but when males encounter each other, basically they're just

429
00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:26,960
Speaker 1: they're flashing their colors, uh, saying, hey, don't mess with me,

430
00:24:27,040 --> 00:24:29,040
Speaker 1: don't try and get my mate, because I will fight you.

431
00:24:29,440 --> 00:24:32,600
Speaker 1: And then of course they end up actually fighting each other,

432
00:24:32,880 --> 00:24:36,480
Speaker 1: lashing out each other with with flashes of their yawning tentacles.

433
00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:39,200
Speaker 1: They lash onto each other, They tug, they grapple, they

434
00:24:39,359 --> 00:24:44,680
Speaker 1: roll around for dominance. It's dramatic. Uh. But but the

435
00:24:44,840 --> 00:24:50,240
Speaker 1: physical violence itself is the last resort. Now, this whole

436
00:24:50,400 --> 00:24:53,520
Speaker 1: stair down phase that occurs is really interesting, especially when

437
00:24:53,520 --> 00:24:56,359
Speaker 1: we're talking about deception because, according to a two thousand

438
00:24:56,400 --> 00:25:01,080
Speaker 1: seventeen study from the Marine Biological Laboratory, UH, it may

439
00:25:01,119 --> 00:25:05,200
Speaker 1: match up with the mutual assessment model of game theory. Okay,

440
00:25:05,200 --> 00:25:08,800
Speaker 1: what's that? So in this each individual considers their next

441
00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:13,080
Speaker 1: action based on their adversaries ability and their own ability

442
00:25:13,119 --> 00:25:16,240
Speaker 1: to prevail instead of just proceeding based on an evaluation

443
00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:20,120
Speaker 1: of your own strengths. So you're like constantly measuring yourself

444
00:25:20,240 --> 00:25:24,000
Speaker 1: against your opponent. Yeah, so one cuttlefish is saying, Hey,

445
00:25:24,040 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 1: this is me and this is what I'm gonna do.

446
00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:28,400
Speaker 1: The other cattle fish is saying the same thing, and

447
00:25:28,560 --> 00:25:32,280
Speaker 1: it's it's about who is going to back down? I mean,

448
00:25:32,320 --> 00:25:36,000
Speaker 1: that's why this behavior evolves, because it is it is

449
00:25:36,040 --> 00:25:39,800
Speaker 1: a way to give your opponent every opportunity to back

450
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:43,440
Speaker 1: down before physical violence has to ensue, which can result

451
00:25:43,480 --> 00:25:46,800
Speaker 1: in damage, et cetera. Yeah, you know, one thing that's

452
00:25:46,840 --> 00:25:49,720
Speaker 1: worth pointing out is that backing down happens a whole

453
00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:52,399
Speaker 1: lot in the natural world. Like a lot of times

454
00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:57,199
Speaker 1: you see rival dominance displays between aggressive or territorial males

455
00:25:57,320 --> 00:25:59,760
Speaker 1: or something like that, and all kinds of species, different

456
00:25:59,760 --> 00:26:02,840
Speaker 1: family lays. You'll very often see an attempt to avoid

457
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:06,679
Speaker 1: actual fighting. Right now, we have to bring in the

458
00:26:06,760 --> 00:26:10,359
Speaker 1: human element here because everyone's probably thinking of of some

459
00:26:10,520 --> 00:26:15,600
Speaker 1: very cliche tropes of of of men in like nineteen

460
00:26:15,600 --> 00:26:18,720
Speaker 1: fifties beach movies trying to pick up women. Uh So,

461
00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:21,680
Speaker 1: imagine a muscle dude on the beach. Muscle dude on

462
00:26:21,720 --> 00:26:23,679
Speaker 1: the beach, Yeah, trying to pick up the ladies. And

463
00:26:23,680 --> 00:26:25,960
Speaker 1: then there's another another muscle dude and maybe they start

464
00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:29,960
Speaker 1: like doing a muscle showdown. You know, they're kind of

465
00:26:30,240 --> 00:26:34,000
Speaker 1: doing mr universe poses, different flexes and all um or

466
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: just generally you know, busting out a bunch of of

467
00:26:37,119 --> 00:26:40,480
Speaker 1: macho bs. So in the human realm, we know, we

468
00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:43,679
Speaker 1: we we know just from nothing else from our stories,

469
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:48,359
Speaker 1: that sometimes an individual is bluffing. Sometimes they are putting

470
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:52,720
Speaker 1: on a show of potential physical violence or dominance, and

471
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:54,680
Speaker 1: they're not gonna be able to back that up with

472
00:26:54,880 --> 00:26:58,600
Speaker 1: say actual fighting skill or a or an actual willingness

473
00:26:58,640 --> 00:27:01,280
Speaker 1: to engage in physical islands. Right, Like, what do you

474
00:27:01,320 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 1: think when somebody's like, I'm a black belt in karate,

475
00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:09,080
Speaker 1: do you believe them. Do real Do real people who

476
00:27:09,080 --> 00:27:11,960
Speaker 1: have actual martial arts training say that very much? I

477
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:14,000
Speaker 1: don't know. Of course, that's a great example too, though,

478
00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:16,080
Speaker 1: because someone could very well be a black belt in karate.

479
00:27:16,160 --> 00:27:19,240
Speaker 1: But does that mean they really have the I mean,

480
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:21,560
Speaker 1: are they actually trained? Are they just saying it? And

481
00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 1: even if they are trained, are they going to back

482
00:27:23,280 --> 00:27:25,000
Speaker 1: it up? Are they going to be willing to actually

483
00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:28,239
Speaker 1: spring into action? So? I mean, we could go back

484
00:27:28,280 --> 00:27:31,640
Speaker 1: and forth on on the human ankle of that all day,

485
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:34,440
Speaker 1: But where it applies here is you have to ask

486
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:38,000
Speaker 1: the question, well, are there cases where a cuttle fish lies?

487
00:27:38,320 --> 00:27:41,240
Speaker 1: Does a cuttlefish say hey, I'm big and scary and

488
00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:43,440
Speaker 1: I can fight you. I mean, to a certain extent,

489
00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:45,639
Speaker 1: they are, because they're positioning their body and sort of

490
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:49,800
Speaker 1: making themselves look threatening. But a two thousand sixteen study

491
00:27:49,880 --> 00:27:54,520
Speaker 1: published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, they argue that cuttlefish

492
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 1: do not bluff when they signal agitation through this colorful display.

493
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:05,159
Speaker 1: They are really agitated. Displays reliably predict the chances of

494
00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:08,640
Speaker 1: any physical aggression. Now that being said, they again they

495
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:11,760
Speaker 1: did probably evolve to communicate varying levels of aggression to

496
00:28:11,760 --> 00:28:14,480
Speaker 1: give their rival multiple chances to back down. But it

497
00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 1: seems to be an honest display. So they really are

498
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:20,399
Speaker 1: a black belt in karate. Yes, yeah, they have not

499
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:24,480
Speaker 1: developed the technology to lie about their karate training. Now.

500
00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:27,119
Speaker 1: At the same time, with the cuttlefish, we do see

501
00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:32,639
Speaker 1: an amazing example of of mimicry in this mating, because

502
00:28:32,680 --> 00:28:34,200
Speaker 1: you know, what do you do if you can't match

503
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:39,000
Speaker 1: up to these aggressive displays. Well, Fortunately for the smaller males,

504
00:28:39,120 --> 00:28:42,560
Speaker 1: the cuttlefish made in game isn't completely dominated by brash

505
00:28:42,600 --> 00:28:47,400
Speaker 1: displays of power and these aquatic wrestling matches um. Because again,

506
00:28:47,440 --> 00:28:49,640
Speaker 1: they are intelligent creatures. They have to be to control

507
00:28:49,680 --> 00:28:54,280
Speaker 1: all of these uh, these various coloration patterns and the

508
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:57,520
Speaker 1: and the the the inner workings of their body. Uh.

509
00:28:57,520 --> 00:29:00,680
Speaker 1: And they have a talent, natural talent for disguise. So

510
00:29:00,800 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 1: what we see happening is, in order to get to

511
00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:06,480
Speaker 1: the closely guarded females, some of these smaller males will

512
00:29:06,520 --> 00:29:11,000
Speaker 1: engage in uh a kind of gender dancing. They'll they'll

513
00:29:11,040 --> 00:29:13,800
Speaker 1: scrunch up their tentacles, they'll change their colors and then

514
00:29:13,840 --> 00:29:16,560
Speaker 1: and suddenly they don't look like a rival at all.

515
00:29:17,120 --> 00:29:20,320
Speaker 1: They look like a female cuttlefish. Oh okay, so this

516
00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 1: would be going the route of trying to make yourself

517
00:29:22,800 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 1: appear harmless. Well not not even it goes beyond harmless.

518
00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:29,760
Speaker 1: They may even look desirable that the male will not

519
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:32,520
Speaker 1: only let them in and think, oh, here's another female

520
00:29:32,560 --> 00:29:35,280
Speaker 1: I can mate with. Sometimes they will try and mate

521
00:29:35,480 --> 00:29:40,720
Speaker 1: with the disguised cuttlefish. So the sneaky cuttlefish, the the

522
00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 1: gender dancing cuttlefish sneaks in mates with the female and

523
00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 1: then makes an escape. Uh. And then the female cuttlefish

524
00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:50,480
Speaker 1: doesn't play favorites either. She fertilizes her head with the

525
00:29:50,520 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 1: sperm of both males, and uh. And I should know

526
00:29:53,640 --> 00:29:56,040
Speaker 1: that it's not merely a proximity game here. It's not

527
00:29:56,080 --> 00:29:58,520
Speaker 1: just a matter of whichever male gets closest is going

528
00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:00,880
Speaker 1: to be the one to mate, because the female is

529
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:04,280
Speaker 1: going to reject something like seventy of her suitors according

530
00:30:04,360 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 1: to a two thousand six Marine Biological Laboratory study. And

531
00:30:07,680 --> 00:30:10,560
Speaker 1: then this carries on into just the evolutionary advantage, because

532
00:30:11,040 --> 00:30:14,680
Speaker 1: essentially there is there is a survival and an advantage

533
00:30:14,760 --> 00:30:17,480
Speaker 1: for cuttle fish in general to have not only the

534
00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:21,520
Speaker 1: genes of of big scary cuttlefish, succeeding, but also the

535
00:30:21,600 --> 00:30:26,280
Speaker 1: genes of stealthy, sneaky cuttlefish. I think it's interesting. It's

536
00:30:26,320 --> 00:30:28,920
Speaker 1: like imagining a Dungeons and Dragons party. You can't just

537
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:31,400
Speaker 1: have barbarians, you know, You've got a thief. Yeah, you

538
00:30:31,480 --> 00:30:33,280
Speaker 1: gotta have a rogue. You gotta have a thief. Somebody's

539
00:30:33,280 --> 00:30:36,520
Speaker 1: got to do the sneaking, uh, because otherwise how are

540
00:30:36,560 --> 00:30:38,560
Speaker 1: you going to best the dragon? So anyway, that's one

541
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:45,000
Speaker 1: of my favorite examples of mimicry deception uh within a species. Uh.

542
00:30:45,040 --> 00:30:47,680
Speaker 1: And anytime I get to talk about cuttlefish, I'm definitely

543
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:49,360
Speaker 1: gonna go for it. Well, I want to go to

544
00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:54,600
Speaker 1: another example of deception in mating practices and courtship. Uh.

545
00:30:54,800 --> 00:30:57,960
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about the deadbeat spider suitor.

546
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:01,640
Speaker 1: So there is a behavior that has evolved multiple times

547
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:05,880
Speaker 1: independently in different animal groups, especially in spiders and insects,

548
00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:10,320
Speaker 1: known as nuptial gift giving. And in these cases, an animal,

549
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:13,320
Speaker 1: generally a male that wants to mate with a female

550
00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:17,360
Speaker 1: of species needs to show up with a gift, often

551
00:31:17,360 --> 00:31:21,880
Speaker 1: a piece of nutritious food. This can get pretty weird because,

552
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:26,520
Speaker 1: for example, insects like some crickets, and moths will not

553
00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 1: go get you a piece of food, but they will

554
00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:34,960
Speaker 1: out of their bodies generate a nutritional spermatophor. So imagine

555
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 1: like an ampule of sperm cells for a human analogy,

556
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:41,959
Speaker 1: cushioned in the middle of a delicious lasagna. So they

557
00:31:42,040 --> 00:31:45,000
Speaker 1: bring you the lasagna, soy, like, here you go is

558
00:31:45,040 --> 00:31:48,520
Speaker 1: for you. There there is some genetic material in there,

559
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:52,040
Speaker 1: and I hope we can produce offspring together. This just

560
00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:55,640
Speaker 1: became a very dangerous episode too to listen to while eating.

561
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 1: But but, but no, if we strip away all of

562
00:31:57,920 --> 00:32:01,040
Speaker 1: our human complexities here, this is just a matter of

563
00:32:01,320 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 1: energy and economics. Uh, it's going to take a certain

564
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:08,040
Speaker 1: amount of energy to to produce the eggs to produce

565
00:32:08,080 --> 00:32:10,720
Speaker 1: the young. And the mail is saying, well, here, here

566
00:32:10,800 --> 00:32:13,160
Speaker 1: is some energy. I will give you this along with

567
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:16,480
Speaker 1: my genetic material. Yeah. So in reality, this lasagna is

568
00:32:16,520 --> 00:32:20,680
Speaker 1: the spermatophylax. It's a ball of gelatinous goo made by

569
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:23,880
Speaker 1: the male's body which surrounds the sperm ampule, and it's

570
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:27,080
Speaker 1: rich with proteins and other nutrients. And in some cases

571
00:32:27,160 --> 00:32:29,760
Speaker 1: the quality of the nutrition and the spermatophore can help

572
00:32:29,800 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 1: the female decide which males are worth mating with. Right, Like,

573
00:32:33,600 --> 00:32:37,160
Speaker 1: a healthier, better potential mate is going to produce a better,

574
00:32:37,360 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 1: more nutritious spermatophilax or or other structure on the spermatophor.

575
00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:45,640
Speaker 1: So in general, this gift giving can be good for

576
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:48,360
Speaker 1: the male because a big nutritious meal for his mate

577
00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 1: often means a better future for the offspring that they're

578
00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:53,880
Speaker 1: about to have together. Just like you were saying, sometimes

579
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 1: a male who wants to mate needs to bring the

580
00:32:56,400 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 1: female a dead animal. So I want to talk about

581
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:03,160
Speaker 1: a spy. He called Pisara mirablous, the nursery web spider.

582
00:33:03,480 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 1: This is a species of spider known for courtship feeding

583
00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:09,880
Speaker 1: and male nuptial gift giving. When a male approaches a

584
00:33:09,920 --> 00:33:12,760
Speaker 1: female with the intention to mate, he often brings with

585
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:17,800
Speaker 1: him a nuptial gift of an insect cocooned in silk. Then,

586
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:20,880
Speaker 1: while the female is inspecting or even trying to eat

587
00:33:20,920 --> 00:33:23,800
Speaker 1: the gift, the male mates with her, which he does

588
00:33:23,840 --> 00:33:26,840
Speaker 1: by using his petal palps to deposit sperm in her

589
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:30,320
Speaker 1: sperm storage organs on the underside of the abdomen. Now

590
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:34,000
Speaker 1: it's possible for a male spider to initiate mating without

591
00:33:34,080 --> 00:33:36,840
Speaker 1: the gift, it's just a lot less likely to be

592
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:40,760
Speaker 1: successful and he's more likely to get rejected or even worse.

593
00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:43,840
Speaker 1: And we can discuss the worst in a minute. So far,

594
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:46,680
Speaker 1: no deception, right, this is just like it's a gift

595
00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:50,640
Speaker 1: giving relationship. This is an evolved relationship to help facilitate

596
00:33:50,760 --> 00:33:53,920
Speaker 1: the mating process, to help the male get more nutrition

597
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 1: for his future offspring. So it seems to work out fine,

598
00:33:56,240 --> 00:33:58,960
Speaker 1: yea very businesslike, very professional. But what if you're a

599
00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:02,360
Speaker 1: male nursery webs spider and you can't find a juicy

600
00:34:02,440 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 1: fly to give to the female across the way? Or

601
00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:08,279
Speaker 1: maybe what if you're a male nursery web spider and

602
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:10,560
Speaker 1: you found a fly, but you got so excited that

603
00:34:10,640 --> 00:34:13,279
Speaker 1: you sucked all the fluids out of it yourself. What

604
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:15,680
Speaker 1: do you do then? Well, I mean it sounds like

605
00:34:15,719 --> 00:34:18,120
Speaker 1: you should die out right, I mean, because you don't

606
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:21,239
Speaker 1: have you don't have what it takes to win over

607
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:23,839
Speaker 1: the female. Well, maybe you just need a little bit

608
00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:26,960
Speaker 1: of deception. So in a two thousand eleven paper and

609
00:34:27,040 --> 00:34:31,200
Speaker 1: BMC Evolutionary Biology by Maria J. Albo at all Uh,

610
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:34,600
Speaker 1: the author studied the phenomenon of spider nuptial gift giving

611
00:34:34,680 --> 00:34:38,360
Speaker 1: under exactly this scenario. So there's an interesting observation. I

612
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:41,920
Speaker 1: mentioned that the male nursery web spider often wraps the

613
00:34:42,120 --> 00:34:46,120
Speaker 1: gift in silk. Why does he wrap the gift in silk?

614
00:34:46,440 --> 00:34:48,840
Speaker 1: Why not just bring it straight up that's in it?

615
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:51,920
Speaker 1: Because it's easy to initially just think, well, it's wrapped

616
00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:54,279
Speaker 1: in the silk anyway, because that's what spiders do with

617
00:34:54,360 --> 00:34:59,040
Speaker 1: things that they've trapped. But that's not necessarily the case here, right,

618
00:34:59,080 --> 00:35:01,759
Speaker 1: They're like they're wrapping for some other reason. Right, So

619
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:04,600
Speaker 1: wrapping a dead flying silk, this is one answer, helps

620
00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:07,440
Speaker 1: make it easier for the spider to carry, to carry it,

621
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: to handle it and control it, whether the spider is

622
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:13,480
Speaker 1: gripping it with the chilis array or the feet claws.

623
00:35:13,560 --> 00:35:15,719
Speaker 1: And this not only makes it easier to carry, it

624
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 1: also makes it harder for the female to grab the

625
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:21,040
Speaker 1: gift and run away with it without mating, So it's

626
00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:23,480
Speaker 1: easier for the male to maintain a grip on it.

627
00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:25,600
Speaker 1: Sometimes the female tries to do that, she'll try to

628
00:35:25,640 --> 00:35:28,160
Speaker 1: grab it and run off. You know, I wonder if

629
00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:31,520
Speaker 1: that's ever involved. Uh, I wonder if that's ever part

630
00:35:31,560 --> 00:35:33,160
Speaker 1: of our own gift giving. You know, we never think

631
00:35:33,200 --> 00:35:36,160
Speaker 1: about it consciously, but like, I'm really going to wrap

632
00:35:36,160 --> 00:35:38,160
Speaker 1: the heck out of this Christmas present because I want

633
00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:40,640
Speaker 1: I want the moment to last as long as possible,

634
00:35:41,040 --> 00:35:44,759
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want the recipient to just instantly

635
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:48,000
Speaker 1: have the gift and then they're off installing batteries in it.

636
00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:51,880
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Uh, I do think we need to remember,

637
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:54,080
Speaker 1: as we were saying earlier, not to not to take

638
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:58,279
Speaker 1: literal anthropomorphizing, but but it was like a similar like

639
00:35:58,320 --> 00:36:02,520
Speaker 1: a stalling tactic, Like that's the necessity involved here is

640
00:36:03,080 --> 00:36:07,280
Speaker 1: I don't want the the recipient to have the actual

641
00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: gift too quickly, because then I am forgotten exactly. So

642
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:16,399
Speaker 1: here's another answer though. At least one study found that

643
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:20,560
Speaker 1: relatively brighter gifts were more attractive to females, And so

644
00:36:20,640 --> 00:36:24,520
Speaker 1: perhaps a silk wrapped gift looks like a higher value

645
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:27,319
Speaker 1: piece of food because it's got greater reflectivity of light,

646
00:36:27,600 --> 00:36:29,719
Speaker 1: and this means the gift bringer as a better shot

647
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:32,840
Speaker 1: at success just because it looks like a more nutritious gift.

648
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:37,839
Speaker 1: Just better packaging, better marketing. Third option. The authors note

649
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:41,560
Speaker 1: that a possible advantage of silk wrapping is as follows. Quote.

650
00:36:41,880 --> 00:36:46,080
Speaker 1: Male spiders have a unique opportunity for gift manipulation through

651
00:36:46,120 --> 00:36:50,400
Speaker 1: the gift wrapping trade, for example, by preventing female assessment

652
00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:54,759
Speaker 1: of the gift content nice and euphemistic. But what that

653
00:36:54,840 --> 00:36:58,520
Speaker 1: means is wrapping it in silk helps the spider trick

654
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:03,720
Speaker 1: you with a fake gift. So Psara mirabilous is notable

655
00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:06,839
Speaker 1: because reports have been indicated that sometimes males show up

656
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:10,359
Speaker 1: for mating with this silk wrapped package. But what's in

657
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:16,000
Speaker 1: the package is empty. It's a drained arthropod skeleton usually,

658
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:19,319
Speaker 1: or maybe just some pieces of plant parts. Uh to

659
00:37:19,400 --> 00:37:22,840
Speaker 1: quote from the study quote, dissection of sixteen gifts carried

660
00:37:23,120 --> 00:37:25,960
Speaker 1: by males in the field showed that sixty two percent

661
00:37:26,080 --> 00:37:29,960
Speaker 1: contained fresh prey, so good nutritious gifts, while the remaining

662
00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:34,720
Speaker 1: thirty eight percent contained empty arthropod skeletons i e. Prey

663
00:37:34,880 --> 00:37:40,160
Speaker 1: already sucked out, probably by the mail itself. So almost

664
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:42,440
Speaker 1: forty of the time, the male who shows up with

665
00:37:42,440 --> 00:37:45,800
Speaker 1: a gift has killed an insect, eating all the good parts,

666
00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:48,759
Speaker 1: taken the skeleton, wrapped it up in silk, and said

667
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:51,759
Speaker 1: she'll never figure this out. You know, we see a

668
00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:56,000
Speaker 1: lot of from the human perspective, jerky behavior on the

669
00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:59,759
Speaker 1: part of insects and the rachnids. But this is really jerky. Yes,

670
00:38:00,440 --> 00:38:03,719
Speaker 1: this is debat behavior if it were humans, but you

671
00:38:03,719 --> 00:38:07,239
Speaker 1: know it's it's spiders. So the experiment in question in

672
00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:09,920
Speaker 1: this paper I mentioned, they tested mating success in the

673
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:13,840
Speaker 1: following four groups. You had a protein enriched fly gift,

674
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:17,080
Speaker 1: so that's like a fly that's even better than a

675
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:21,600
Speaker 1: normal fly nutrition wise, a regular fly gift, a worthless gift,

676
00:38:21,880 --> 00:38:24,560
Speaker 1: or a male who shows up with no gift. And

677
00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 1: here are the results. The males that brought fake gifts

678
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:31,440
Speaker 1: got about the same amount of mating success as the

679
00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:35,160
Speaker 1: males who brought real nutritional gifts. Both of these groups

680
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:37,239
Speaker 1: had a lot more success than males who showed up

681
00:38:37,320 --> 00:38:40,640
Speaker 1: with no gift. This suggests there's a strong pressure on

682
00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:44,960
Speaker 1: gift bringing that sometimes selects for males to get fake

683
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:47,520
Speaker 1: gifts and bring them along. Now, on the other hand,

684
00:38:47,560 --> 00:38:50,560
Speaker 1: males who brought worthless fake gifts tended to get their

685
00:38:50,560 --> 00:38:54,719
Speaker 1: mating sessions cut short sooner than males who brought real gifts,

686
00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:57,600
Speaker 1: and this leads to less sperm deposition. So there is

687
00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:00,360
Speaker 1: a cost for males who show up with fakes. As Ventually,

688
00:39:00,360 --> 00:39:03,160
Speaker 1: it looks like if you bring a present, whether it's

689
00:39:03,200 --> 00:39:05,720
Speaker 1: real or fake, you're more likely to get to mate

690
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:08,880
Speaker 1: at all. But if the present is fake, you're probably

691
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:13,080
Speaker 1: gonna get cut off sooner. Here's another question, how did

692
00:39:13,080 --> 00:39:16,440
Speaker 1: this kind of nuptial gift giving relationship evolved in the

693
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:19,640
Speaker 1: first place, right, like, why in this species does the

694
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:22,319
Speaker 1: male show up with a gift and why would the

695
00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:27,960
Speaker 1: male fake it. To answer that question, researchers Maria j Albo,

696
00:39:28,040 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 1: who was the lead researcher on the last paper I mentioned,

697
00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:33,960
Speaker 1: and Sore and Taft performed an experiment which they published

698
00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 1: in the Royal Society Biology Letters in T and So.

699
00:39:38,640 --> 00:39:42,680
Speaker 1: The main existing hypothesis to explain the origin and maintenance

700
00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:46,000
Speaker 1: of food gifts during mating was that for females the

701
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:48,839
Speaker 1: benefit is obvious, it's the extra nutrition you get without

702
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:51,960
Speaker 1: any extra work and it helps increase fecundity. And for

703
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:54,480
Speaker 1: males it was thought that the possible benefits would be

704
00:39:54,520 --> 00:39:58,759
Speaker 1: twofold number one, that it's a parental investment which increases

705
00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:02,400
Speaker 1: the number the quality of offspring, and it also is

706
00:40:02,440 --> 00:40:05,600
Speaker 1: a mating effort. It allows the male to obtain access

707
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:09,000
Speaker 1: to mating opportunities. Both of these factors could actually play

708
00:40:09,040 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 1: a role. The author's right quote. A third hypothesis applying

709
00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:17,839
Speaker 1: to predatory and cannibalistic species proposes that nuptial gifts may

710
00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:23,680
Speaker 1: act as physical protection against sexual cannibalism from aggressive females.

711
00:40:24,239 --> 00:40:26,600
Speaker 1: Uh and they said this hypothesis at the time of

712
00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:29,960
Speaker 1: their paper hadn't yet received any support, but they were

713
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,160
Speaker 1: about to demonstrate some support for it. So first they

714
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:36,319
Speaker 1: collected a bunch of spiders before their maturity molt, and

715
00:40:36,360 --> 00:40:39,400
Speaker 1: then once the spiders reached adulthood, the females were sorted

716
00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:43,239
Speaker 1: into groups of well fed and poorly fed spiders. And

717
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:47,840
Speaker 1: then they staged mating encounters between females and males and

718
00:40:47,960 --> 00:40:50,640
Speaker 1: recorded whether the males were carrying a nuptial gift with

719
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:53,879
Speaker 1: them or not. And they recorded several possible outcomes. There

720
00:40:53,920 --> 00:40:57,480
Speaker 1: was successful mating, there was rejection of the male. There

721
00:40:57,560 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 1: was cannibalism where the female eats the male, and then

722
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:03,800
Speaker 1: there was gift stealing what we mentioned earlier, where the

723
00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:06,279
Speaker 1: female grabs the gift and then runs away with it

724
00:41:06,320 --> 00:41:10,600
Speaker 1: without mating. So females that did not cannibalize were tested

725
00:41:10,640 --> 00:41:13,200
Speaker 1: again on the following days up to eight times. And

726
00:41:13,239 --> 00:41:16,440
Speaker 1: the results were interesting because you'd guess that the poorly

727
00:41:16,600 --> 00:41:20,279
Speaker 1: fed females would cannibalize the males more often. Right, They're

728
00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:22,919
Speaker 1: really hungry, so there they'd be more likely to eat

729
00:41:22,960 --> 00:41:26,320
Speaker 1: the male spider who wants to mate. She needs the energy.

730
00:41:26,840 --> 00:41:29,160
Speaker 1: There is energy in the in the male's body, and

731
00:41:29,200 --> 00:41:33,560
Speaker 1: the male has out of his usefulness exactly, and that conversely,

732
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:37,600
Speaker 1: well fed females would not bother eating potential mates. But

733
00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:40,879
Speaker 1: they found this was not true. There was no statistically

734
00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:44,839
Speaker 1: significant relationship between how hungry the females were and how

735
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:48,480
Speaker 1: likely they were to eat the males. Instead, cannibalism was

736
00:41:48,560 --> 00:41:51,760
Speaker 1: more powerfully determined by whether the male brought a gift

737
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:55,920
Speaker 1: or not, they said. Quote, female staged with no gift

738
00:41:56,000 --> 00:41:59,840
Speaker 1: males were on average more than six times as cannibalistic

739
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:03,839
Speaker 1: his female stage with gift carrying males. Of seventy five

740
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:07,680
Speaker 1: female stage with no gift males, fifteen or nineteen percent

741
00:42:07,800 --> 00:42:11,759
Speaker 1: cannibalize their partner, whereas only one of twenty eight females

742
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:15,360
Speaker 1: or three point six percent, cannibalize gift carrying males. So

743
00:42:15,440 --> 00:42:17,880
Speaker 1: the males who show up with gifts tend not to

744
00:42:17,920 --> 00:42:22,120
Speaker 1: get cannibalized. Always bring a gift. What we can learn

745
00:42:22,160 --> 00:42:24,360
Speaker 1: from the spiders here, Well, but here's where the fake

746
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:27,440
Speaker 1: gifts come in the author's right quote. The use of

747
00:42:27,600 --> 00:42:30,400
Speaker 1: fake gifts by males may thus be a way to

748
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:33,759
Speaker 1: get access to receptive females, but considering the results of

749
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:36,560
Speaker 1: the present paper, it may also serve to reduce the

750
00:42:36,680 --> 00:42:40,600
Speaker 1: risk of cannibalistic attack. Well, you know, maybe so it

751
00:42:40,640 --> 00:42:42,319
Speaker 1: makes the male look a little bit less like a

752
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:44,920
Speaker 1: deadbeat if he's if he might get eaten if he

753
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:47,239
Speaker 1: doesn't show up with it. I mean, he has his

754
00:42:47,280 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 1: genetic programming is I must mate and if he made

755
00:42:52,040 --> 00:42:53,799
Speaker 1: he there's a good chance he's going to be killed

756
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:57,600
Speaker 1: and eaten. So it's a it's about survival really, it's

757
00:42:57,680 --> 00:43:01,279
Speaker 1: just about maybe if I just wrap up this, uh,

758
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:03,560
Speaker 1: this piece of dirt and and hand it to or

759
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:05,800
Speaker 1: then that'll that'll give me just enough time to escape

760
00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:07,960
Speaker 1: with my life. Yeah. Now I should add that among

761
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:12,759
Speaker 1: nursery web spiders, sexual cannibalism is not super common. So

762
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:15,080
Speaker 1: even the males who showed up without a gift didn't

763
00:43:15,120 --> 00:43:17,840
Speaker 1: get eaten, like all the time, it wasn't you know,

764
00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:20,439
Speaker 1: just if you don't have a gift, you will get eaten,

765
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:23,719
Speaker 1: but the chances, even though small, were much higher than

766
00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:25,960
Speaker 1: if you show up with a gift. I want to

767
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 1: add one more layer of deception in the nursery web

768
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:34,360
Speaker 1: spider mating. Sometimes in the nursery web spiders, males play

769
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:37,680
Speaker 1: dead during this process, so it's like a whole other

770
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:41,560
Speaker 1: thing going on. From a paper by Elbow in two

771
00:43:41,600 --> 00:43:45,560
Speaker 1: thousand eleven. Sometimes during mating, the female nursery web spider

772
00:43:45,600 --> 00:43:47,440
Speaker 1: is going to attempt, as we've said, to grab the

773
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:50,960
Speaker 1: nuptial gift and run away with it. And sometimes if

774
00:43:51,000 --> 00:43:54,120
Speaker 1: the female attempts to terminate copulation early to run away

775
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:57,160
Speaker 1: with the gift, the mail will resort to the trick

776
00:43:57,360 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 1: of thanatosis, or playing dead. So the death feigning behavior

777
00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:05,920
Speaker 1: involves going rigid and stretching out the legs and grabbing

778
00:44:05,960 --> 00:44:09,680
Speaker 1: tight hold of the gift he brought with his chilisarae.

779
00:44:09,880 --> 00:44:12,120
Speaker 1: So while she's trying to run off with the gift,

780
00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:16,040
Speaker 1: he's dead and clutching the gift, So she has to

781
00:44:16,160 --> 00:44:20,040
Speaker 1: drag this apparently dead male spider along with her, and

782
00:44:20,080 --> 00:44:22,959
Speaker 1: then once she gets tired and stops moving, the mail

783
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:27,480
Speaker 1: revives and then tries to mate again. I mean it's

784
00:44:27,480 --> 00:44:31,200
Speaker 1: really almost kind of comic. Yeah. Now, the nursery web spiders,

785
00:44:31,200 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: i should point out, are not the only animals who

786
00:44:33,640 --> 00:44:37,080
Speaker 1: have been noted bringing fake nuptial gifts. The mail dance

787
00:44:37,080 --> 00:44:41,279
Speaker 1: fly will sometimes bring empty, worthless gifts to a potential mate. Uh.

788
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:46,000
Speaker 1: And there is another spider species called Paratrichalea or nada,

789
00:44:46,080 --> 00:44:49,400
Speaker 1: and some researchers found that seventy percent of males in

790
00:44:49,400 --> 00:44:52,960
Speaker 1: the species tried to initiate mating with worthless gifts like

791
00:44:53,080 --> 00:44:57,719
Speaker 1: the same drained leftover prey skeletons, the worst gift of

792
00:44:57,760 --> 00:45:01,000
Speaker 1: the arachnid world. That this is all fascinating because when

793
00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 1: you start breaking it down really and when you try

794
00:45:04,200 --> 00:45:08,200
Speaker 1: as much as as possible to cut out the human

795
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:13,480
Speaker 1: layer of interpretation here, you see just how these things emerge.

796
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:17,600
Speaker 1: It's just like a like like an economic byproduct of

797
00:45:17,640 --> 00:45:20,840
Speaker 1: these these complex mating relationships. Yeah. Well, it's one of

798
00:45:20,840 --> 00:45:23,880
Speaker 1: these things where there's like a deep economy of animal

799
00:45:23,920 --> 00:45:27,040
Speaker 1: behavior that we would never even understand unless there were

800
00:45:27,040 --> 00:45:30,040
Speaker 1: people doing these detailed studies. I mean, there's so much

801
00:45:30,080 --> 00:45:33,319
Speaker 1: to consider in the costs and benefits of how you

802
00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:35,760
Speaker 1: bring a dead thing wrapped up in silk, or whether

803
00:45:35,840 --> 00:45:38,360
Speaker 1: you choose to do so or not. Alright, well, on

804
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:40,080
Speaker 1: that note, we're gonna take one more break, and when

805
00:45:40,080 --> 00:45:46,000
Speaker 1: we come back we will discuss some thim fatals than Alright,

806
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:50,120
Speaker 1: we're back. So one of my favorite acts of animal deception.

807
00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 1: And if anyone has seen any of the old monster

808
00:45:53,680 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 1: science videos that that I did, then you're you're already

809
00:45:56,440 --> 00:45:59,200
Speaker 1: familiar with this one. But I'm gonna addle a little

810
00:45:59,239 --> 00:46:02,080
Speaker 1: extra to it as well. Uh but but I find it.

811
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:05,280
Speaker 1: I find it very much like the idea of a

812
00:46:05,320 --> 00:46:10,680
Speaker 1: beautiful vampire luring human victims in with the promise of sex,

813
00:46:11,280 --> 00:46:13,760
Speaker 1: only to kill them and drain them of their precious blood.

814
00:46:14,480 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 1: Only this example is even cooler, and it comes from

815
00:46:17,440 --> 00:46:22,080
Speaker 1: the world of lightning bugs. Yeah. So you have a

816
00:46:22,080 --> 00:46:24,759
Speaker 1: few different varieties of lightning bugs out there, but the

817
00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:28,440
Speaker 1: one we're talking about here, if I can interrupt, lightning

818
00:46:28,440 --> 00:46:30,839
Speaker 1: bugs seem like the most innocent of bugs. Oh yeah,

819
00:46:30,880 --> 00:46:33,759
Speaker 1: yeah about animal innocence. My dog is innocent, cuttle fish

820
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:37,120
Speaker 1: are innocent. Lightning bugs are so sweet. Yeah, It's something

821
00:46:37,120 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 1: that children go around trapping in a jar and then

822
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:42,440
Speaker 1: hopefully releasing, you know, they're they're this this kind of

823
00:46:42,480 --> 00:46:46,960
Speaker 1: magical creature afloat in the wilderness. They're they're the magic

824
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:50,160
Speaker 1: of summertime when you're a child in the twilight. Yes, now,

825
00:46:50,200 --> 00:46:53,799
Speaker 1: of course all that that that that lighting that they're

826
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:56,600
Speaker 1: doing out there there, the little patterns they're forming, this

827
00:46:56,640 --> 00:46:59,320
Speaker 1: has to do with mating. And then this is where

828
00:46:59,560 --> 00:47:04,879
Speaker 1: the email photourists lightning bug enters the picture, also known

829
00:47:04,920 --> 00:47:08,200
Speaker 1: as the fim fatale lightning bug. So what she does

830
00:47:08,360 --> 00:47:11,240
Speaker 1: is she goes out there and she mimics the flash

831
00:47:11,320 --> 00:47:16,480
Speaker 1: signals of a mating female Photinus. Lightning bug is a

832
00:47:16,480 --> 00:47:22,400
Speaker 1: different species but related for poturists and Photinus, so the

833
00:47:22,440 --> 00:47:26,400
Speaker 1: fim fatal is fo tourists. And then she is mimicking, uh,

834
00:47:26,719 --> 00:47:31,719
Speaker 1: the the the lighting displays of a Photinus. Right, So

835
00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:34,839
Speaker 1: the thing here is she doesn't want to mate with

836
00:47:34,920 --> 00:47:39,400
Speaker 1: Photinus males. She wants to kill them and consume their nutrients,

837
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 1: especially this defensive steroid that they have in their bodies

838
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:50,000
Speaker 1: called luci Bithagin's which provides protection against predatory jumping spiders.

839
00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:52,960
Speaker 1: So the fim fatal bugs she can't produce the steroid

840
00:47:53,040 --> 00:47:56,520
Speaker 1: on her own. She has to seduce and kill these

841
00:47:56,600 --> 00:47:59,759
Speaker 1: these other lightning bugs in order to acquire it, and

842
00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:02,920
Speaker 1: in fact she attracts males of four different species of

843
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:08,080
Speaker 1: lightning bugs with with distinctively different flashed responses. Now, this

844
00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:11,759
Speaker 1: behavior was first observed in nineteen sixty five. It was

845
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:13,640
Speaker 1: suspected prior to that, but for the most part it

846
00:48:13,719 --> 00:48:16,200
Speaker 1: is only fairly recently that we've been able to understand it.

847
00:48:17,200 --> 00:48:19,799
Speaker 1: Now at this point you might wonder, though, hey, what

848
00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:23,160
Speaker 1: do you do if you're a male for tourists lightning bug?

849
00:48:23,920 --> 00:48:25,920
Speaker 1: What did they do to attract their mate when their

850
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:30,319
Speaker 1: females are out there praying on the males of another species. Well,

851
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:33,920
Speaker 1: according to a nineteen eighties study published in Science, the

852
00:48:34,040 --> 00:48:37,319
Speaker 1: males have their own mating displays, you know, that are

853
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:40,520
Speaker 1: their key to their species. But they'll also mimic the

854
00:48:40,640 --> 00:48:44,400
Speaker 1: male mating displays of other species in order to attract

855
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:48,400
Speaker 1: their own females. So, so think about this. Anyone who's

856
00:48:48,440 --> 00:48:53,800
Speaker 1: seen from dustal down. You know Selma Hias vampire queen character. Okay,

857
00:48:53,960 --> 00:48:57,799
Speaker 1: so imagine her, She's out there luring bikers into her

858
00:48:57,840 --> 00:49:01,919
Speaker 1: deadly embrace. Meanwhile, you have cheech Marin's character Chet, who's

859
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:04,960
Speaker 1: another vampire. Uh say he wants to mate. What's he

860
00:49:04,960 --> 00:49:07,200
Speaker 1: gonna do to get her attention? She's going around, uh

861
00:49:07,520 --> 00:49:11,279
Speaker 1: tearing bikers apart, maybe he has to disguise himself as

862
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:15,480
Speaker 1: a hapless biker in order to attract her attention. Wow,

863
00:49:15,520 --> 00:49:19,680
Speaker 1: that's like that's some matrix stuff. That's several several levels down. Yeah,

864
00:49:19,760 --> 00:49:24,040
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's just it can sound dysfunctional, I guess,

865
00:49:24,080 --> 00:49:26,439
Speaker 1: but you know it's you know, every every couple has

866
00:49:26,480 --> 00:49:29,520
Speaker 1: their thing. But the crazy thing here is that, as

867
00:49:29,600 --> 00:49:31,880
Speaker 1: best I can tell, and based on a couple of

868
00:49:31,920 --> 00:49:35,480
Speaker 1: the papers I looked at, there's no known parallel in

869
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:40,800
Speaker 1: other animal communicative systems. It's just this, this this weird

870
00:49:40,880 --> 00:49:47,160
Speaker 1: scenario of of the parasitic lover and her parasitic mate

871
00:49:47,920 --> 00:49:51,440
Speaker 1: uh in the in the mail, having to actually pretend

872
00:49:51,480 --> 00:49:54,279
Speaker 1: to be her prey in order to mate with her.

873
00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:57,879
Speaker 1: It's phenomenal. I love it. That is amazing. Alright, So

874
00:49:57,960 --> 00:50:01,360
Speaker 1: for the next animal to fever here, I want to

875
00:50:01,400 --> 00:50:04,840
Speaker 1: talk about a creature that has really become kind of

876
00:50:04,840 --> 00:50:09,239
Speaker 1: an icon of of horror and doom, and that is

877
00:50:09,480 --> 00:50:12,279
Speaker 1: the Death's Head hawk moth. Oh, this is one from

878
00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:14,960
Speaker 1: Silence of the Lambs, Right, Yeah, most famous for a

879
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:16,920
Speaker 1: showing up in Thomas Harris is The Silence of the

880
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:21,840
Speaker 1: Lambs and the film adaptation, so to refresh Serial Killer,

881
00:50:21,960 --> 00:50:25,200
Speaker 1: Jamie Gum places the insect and the throats of his victims.

882
00:50:25,840 --> 00:50:28,040
Speaker 1: And it seems like a fitting calling card, right because

883
00:50:28,239 --> 00:50:30,760
Speaker 1: on one love we have this this theme of metamorphosis.

884
00:50:30,840 --> 00:50:35,200
Speaker 1: He's trying to transform himself, and here is a creature

885
00:50:35,239 --> 00:50:40,120
Speaker 1: that is defined by its transformation. But it's also nice

886
00:50:40,120 --> 00:50:43,720
Speaker 1: and thematic because the moths feature coloration on their backs.

887
00:50:44,040 --> 00:50:47,200
Speaker 1: Did hauntingly look like a human skull. Yeah, it looks

888
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:51,080
Speaker 1: like on the day that that animal was created the

889
00:50:51,080 --> 00:50:54,080
Speaker 1: gods who were really into Megadeath. Yeah. Yeah. They they're

890
00:50:54,160 --> 00:50:57,000
Speaker 1: very gothic looking and and it's people have been noticing

891
00:50:57,000 --> 00:50:59,960
Speaker 1: this for ages. They're African myths that involved the death

892
00:51:00,080 --> 00:51:03,880
Speaker 1: head hawk moth is being you know, a a token

893
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:06,359
Speaker 1: of doom there that you also have it showing up

894
00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:08,840
Speaker 1: in the works of John Keats. It shows up in

895
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:14,280
Speaker 1: bron Stoker's Dracula. Dracula sends them to Renfield. Yeah, uh,

896
00:51:14,320 --> 00:51:17,160
Speaker 1: and uh, they're just really cool looking moss that they're

897
00:51:17,160 --> 00:51:21,640
Speaker 1: pretty big too. There's one variety known as the Arcarantia sticks,

898
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:25,960
Speaker 1: which can grow to between three and five point eleven

899
00:51:26,000 --> 00:51:29,640
Speaker 1: inches in wingspan. And they're also the world's fastest moth

900
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 1: at thirty miles per hour or forty eight kilometers per hour,

901
00:51:33,600 --> 00:51:36,959
Speaker 1: so they're they're pretty impressive species, even if you don't,

902
00:51:37,080 --> 00:51:40,799
Speaker 1: you know, count the little miniature skull or at least

903
00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 1: abstract skull on their backs. Now you might notice that

904
00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:48,839
Speaker 1: name was kind of interesting. Arcarantia sticks uh, named after

905
00:51:49,040 --> 00:51:52,600
Speaker 1: not one but two rivers in Hell. And then there's

906
00:51:52,600 --> 00:51:57,160
Speaker 1: another one, Arkarantia tropus, named for one of the rivers

907
00:51:57,160 --> 00:51:59,160
Speaker 1: in Help, but then also a tropics, one of the

908
00:51:59,160 --> 00:52:02,279
Speaker 1: three fates and Greek mythology. So they're just they're just

909
00:52:02,400 --> 00:52:06,839
Speaker 1: really death metally from just throughout their appearance. Their their

910
00:52:06,840 --> 00:52:10,640
Speaker 1: official scientific names, but it goes, it goes well beyond that,

911
00:52:10,960 --> 00:52:13,360
Speaker 1: because you if you if you get past their just

912
00:52:13,400 --> 00:52:16,160
Speaker 1: basic appearance and h and a lot of the superstitions

913
00:52:16,200 --> 00:52:18,040
Speaker 1: about them, you might ask, well, what does a what

914
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:20,680
Speaker 1: does a hawk moth eat? What is a death's head

915
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:24,880
Speaker 1: hot moth hunger? For I would guess, I don't know,

916
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:28,040
Speaker 1: does it like desiccated skeletons that are being taken as

917
00:52:28,040 --> 00:52:30,560
Speaker 1: gifts by all these nursery web spiders. You think, yeah,

918
00:52:30,600 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 1: I think it would be more fitting if they if

919
00:52:32,080 --> 00:52:35,040
Speaker 1: they fed on carry I eat the bones of insects.

920
00:52:35,040 --> 00:52:37,960
Speaker 1: But they don't. They're like Pooh. They're like Pooh Bear.

921
00:52:38,360 --> 00:52:40,719
Speaker 1: They love honey. Oh. For a second, I thought you

922
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:43,880
Speaker 1: meant they like Pooh. No, no, they are like Pooh

923
00:52:43,880 --> 00:52:46,959
Speaker 1: the bear. It just Pooh Bear likes honey. They love honey.

924
00:52:46,960 --> 00:52:49,719
Speaker 1: In fact, it's pretty much all they eat, the delicious

925
00:52:49,719 --> 00:52:53,040
Speaker 1: food stuff. So the bees, that's all they want. Okay,

926
00:52:53,080 --> 00:52:55,600
Speaker 1: well how do they get it? Well, this is where

927
00:52:55,640 --> 00:52:57,440
Speaker 1: it gets interesting because we come back to the similar

928
00:52:57,440 --> 00:53:00,560
Speaker 1: scenario with the ants. Sure that high is full of

929
00:53:00,600 --> 00:53:03,160
Speaker 1: delicious honey, but the bees don't make it for moths.

930
00:53:03,280 --> 00:53:06,759
Speaker 1: They make it for people. No, wat, they make it

931
00:53:06,760 --> 00:53:09,200
Speaker 1: for other bees. They make it. Yeah, and they protect

932
00:53:09,239 --> 00:53:12,160
Speaker 1: it fiercely. They have stingers. It is a dangerous place

933
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:17,000
Speaker 1: to go. Uh. I'm reminded of an old Donald Duck cartoon.

934
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:18,719
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever saw this one growing up,

935
00:53:18,719 --> 00:53:22,319
Speaker 1: but Donald dresses up like a giant bee to go

936
00:53:22,400 --> 00:53:24,880
Speaker 1: into the bee hive to collect the honey. Does it work?

937
00:53:25,200 --> 00:53:27,880
Speaker 1: It does until Chip and Dale like screw with his

938
00:53:28,000 --> 00:53:32,839
Speaker 1: plan and lots of stinging and quacking and sue. Uh,

939
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:36,760
Speaker 1: But it's basically what's going on here, there's there's there's

940
00:53:36,800 --> 00:53:39,600
Speaker 1: some form of mimicry going on with the Death's Head

941
00:53:39,680 --> 00:53:44,640
Speaker 1: moth when it enters a hive. Basically it it waltz,

942
00:53:44,680 --> 00:53:47,160
Speaker 1: is in, it hangs out, it eats honey, and then

943
00:53:47,200 --> 00:53:49,960
Speaker 1: it leaves at its own leisure. And it's only rarely

944
00:53:50,080 --> 00:53:53,120
Speaker 1: stung by the bees and seems to be only weakly

945
00:53:53,160 --> 00:53:56,720
Speaker 1: affected by the venom. Uh. Actually entering the hive seems

946
00:53:56,719 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 1: to be the only real choke point in the plan.

947
00:53:58,719 --> 00:54:02,040
Speaker 1: This is when they received the most attention. But once

948
00:54:02,080 --> 00:54:04,400
Speaker 1: they they're in, they tend to stay still on a

949
00:54:04,440 --> 00:54:08,120
Speaker 1: comb while they feed and nothing really bothers them. Well

950
00:54:08,120 --> 00:54:10,840
Speaker 1: how do they achieve that? Well, for a while it

951
00:54:10,920 --> 00:54:13,200
Speaker 1: was a mystery, so some theorized that it was the

952
00:54:13,239 --> 00:54:16,399
Speaker 1: creature's ability to squeak. This is kind of a call

953
00:54:16,440 --> 00:54:19,279
Speaker 1: back to where we're talking earlier with the with the

954
00:54:19,360 --> 00:54:22,680
Speaker 1: use of sound in the ant callin the butterfly that

955
00:54:22,680 --> 00:54:26,480
Speaker 1: that sings a song that says I'm the ant queen, right. So, uh,

956
00:54:26,520 --> 00:54:29,200
Speaker 1: these death said moss have been observed to squeak upon

957
00:54:29,239 --> 00:54:31,480
Speaker 1: a rival at a hive, and the theory is that

958
00:54:31,480 --> 00:54:35,200
Speaker 1: they might mimic the queen's call for worker bees to freeze.

959
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:39,120
Speaker 1: Plus the squeaks may be adapted to particular types of bees.

960
00:54:39,480 --> 00:54:42,279
Speaker 1: But some researchers aren't as fond of this theory, and

961
00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:44,399
Speaker 1: at the very least they tend to believe that there

962
00:54:44,480 --> 00:54:49,719
Speaker 1: is there's more going on than mirror sound. Now, as

963
00:54:49,760 --> 00:54:51,759
Speaker 1: an as an aside, it is interesting when you start

964
00:54:51,800 --> 00:54:54,520
Speaker 1: looking at how they make that sound. So they apparently

965
00:54:54,560 --> 00:54:59,359
Speaker 1: modified they're they're sucking over time to better slurp all

966
00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:03,319
Speaker 1: of that vic his honey. Okay. Uh So once these uh,

967
00:55:03,400 --> 00:55:08,440
Speaker 1: these modifications were in place, according to German researcher Gunnar Brem,

968
00:55:08,880 --> 00:55:11,360
Speaker 1: they were able to develop an ability to produce squeaking

969
00:55:11,400 --> 00:55:15,640
Speaker 1: noises by inflating or deflating the pharynx or the epipharynx

970
00:55:15,800 --> 00:55:19,320
Speaker 1: at the base of the robostis. They emit this sound

971
00:55:19,680 --> 00:55:21,920
Speaker 1: also to ward off predators, and it seems to work

972
00:55:22,239 --> 00:55:25,759
Speaker 1: so well that they have very few additional defensive capabilities

973
00:55:25,800 --> 00:55:29,080
Speaker 1: except for some thorns on their legs. Uh. And I've

974
00:55:29,080 --> 00:55:32,279
Speaker 1: seen the process of creating the sound compared to the

975
00:55:32,280 --> 00:55:35,839
Speaker 1: playing of an accordion and then there's a there's another theory,

976
00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:39,360
Speaker 1: and this one is that the death's head marking resembles

977
00:55:39,400 --> 00:55:44,399
Speaker 1: a worker bee's face. Yeah, but that one doesn't seem

978
00:55:44,440 --> 00:55:46,919
Speaker 1: like a very popular theory at all. I'm no entomologist,

979
00:55:47,080 --> 00:55:50,880
Speaker 1: but it's a little too donald duck. I feel McDonald

980
00:55:50,960 --> 00:55:54,360
Speaker 1: duck puts on a fake stinger and paints himself yellow

981
00:55:54,400 --> 00:55:56,960
Speaker 1: and black fools the bees. It's it seems like it's

982
00:55:56,960 --> 00:55:59,759
Speaker 1: on that level. But now more recent researcher reveals that

983
00:55:59,800 --> 00:56:03,400
Speaker 1: they screet an odor that contains the same compounds present

984
00:56:03,480 --> 00:56:06,520
Speaker 1: in honeybee odor. And this is again something we see

985
00:56:06,560 --> 00:56:09,440
Speaker 1: in various ant mimics and ant colonies as well. Produced

986
00:56:09,640 --> 00:56:13,600
Speaker 1: the appropriate smell, and you have a real leg up

987
00:56:13,600 --> 00:56:17,600
Speaker 1: on surviving your infiltration of the enemy compound. Just like

988
00:56:17,680 --> 00:56:20,040
Speaker 1: we could probably do a whole episode or series of

989
00:56:20,080 --> 00:56:23,600
Speaker 1: episodes on brood parasitism and birds, so you could probably

990
00:56:23,640 --> 00:56:27,239
Speaker 1: do a whole episode or series of episodes on ant mimics. Yes, yeah,

991
00:56:27,560 --> 00:56:29,880
Speaker 1: because they're not. Actually, when we were putting this episode

992
00:56:29,920 --> 00:56:34,080
Speaker 1: together and we were selecting organisms, I had originally selected

993
00:56:34,160 --> 00:56:37,040
Speaker 1: another ant mimic. And then when when you told me

994
00:56:37,040 --> 00:56:38,520
Speaker 1: you were doing an anti mimic, I was like, oh, well,

995
00:56:38,560 --> 00:56:40,760
Speaker 1: I should do the death said moth, because I wanted

996
00:56:40,800 --> 00:56:44,279
Speaker 1: to research this, uh this creature for years. But yeah,

997
00:56:44,320 --> 00:56:46,960
Speaker 1: ant mimics are so cool. But this is another example of,

998
00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:50,960
Speaker 1: like the ant mimics, something that exploits the teamwork of

999
00:56:51,000 --> 00:56:54,400
Speaker 1: a social species. Indeed, now, of course it's probably raises

1000
00:56:54,440 --> 00:56:57,160
Speaker 1: the question from any listeners, what's the deal with that skull?

1001
00:56:57,640 --> 00:57:01,360
Speaker 1: Like right, and I should drive home that if you

1002
00:57:01,400 --> 00:57:05,360
Speaker 1: look at different images of the skull, sometimes you have

1003
00:57:05,400 --> 00:57:08,319
Speaker 1: to squint a little bit or and it's sometimes that

1004
00:57:08,360 --> 00:57:11,320
Speaker 1: you have to realize that it is an abstract skull

1005
00:57:11,360 --> 00:57:16,120
Speaker 1: at best. And aside from the worker be face theory

1006
00:57:16,400 --> 00:57:19,000
Speaker 1: and the and the general trend in mimicry to have

1007
00:57:19,120 --> 00:57:22,400
Speaker 1: something resembling eyes or a face somewhere else on your anatomy,

1008
00:57:22,800 --> 00:57:25,840
Speaker 1: there's not actually a lot out there on the purpose

1009
00:57:26,000 --> 00:57:28,320
Speaker 1: of the skull, and I think part of it is

1010
00:57:28,360 --> 00:57:30,520
Speaker 1: on us. I mean, we as humans were obsessed with

1011
00:57:30,560 --> 00:57:35,120
Speaker 1: our own countenance, were obsessed with death. We we we

1012
00:57:35,200 --> 00:57:39,640
Speaker 1: see our faces everywhere and when we obsess about our mortality,

1013
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:42,439
Speaker 1: and then we see see skulls in my breakfast cereal. Yeah,

1014
00:57:42,560 --> 00:57:45,360
Speaker 1: I mean we kind of love skulls. It's it's it's

1015
00:57:45,400 --> 00:57:48,200
Speaker 1: it's what we're into. And then this thing on this uh,

1016
00:57:48,320 --> 00:57:51,000
Speaker 1: this moth's back kind of looks like a skull, and

1017
00:57:51,040 --> 00:57:53,920
Speaker 1: we just go way overboard with it, you know. We

1018
00:57:54,240 --> 00:57:56,480
Speaker 1: to quote T. S. Eliott, we see the skull beneath

1019
00:57:56,520 --> 00:58:00,120
Speaker 1: the skin, and uh, that seems to be the best

1020
00:58:00,160 --> 00:58:03,960
Speaker 1: explanation I can find, uh thus far for the death,

1021
00:58:04,040 --> 00:58:06,440
Speaker 1: said mock. If anyone out there has found any additional

1022
00:58:06,480 --> 00:58:09,240
Speaker 1: scholarship on this question, do share it with us. I

1023
00:58:09,280 --> 00:58:11,400
Speaker 1: would love to read it. Well, let's just say that

1024
00:58:11,440 --> 00:58:15,880
Speaker 1: it's a design to accommodate the needs of future thriller writers, Yeah,

1025
00:58:16,000 --> 00:58:18,720
Speaker 1: or or to distract us from the the the other

1026
00:58:19,080 --> 00:58:21,760
Speaker 1: aspects of the species, because that's the thing we we

1027
00:58:21,840 --> 00:58:23,600
Speaker 1: think of the death, said moth. And we just think

1028
00:58:23,640 --> 00:58:26,640
Speaker 1: of that the poster for the silence of the lambs,

1029
00:58:26,800 --> 00:58:29,800
Speaker 1: or you know, or some other usage of the creature

1030
00:58:29,840 --> 00:58:33,720
Speaker 1: to to portray a sense of of weird doom. But

1031
00:58:33,800 --> 00:58:36,960
Speaker 1: they're they're a fascinating organism in their own right. Their

1032
00:58:37,000 --> 00:58:41,280
Speaker 1: their ability to to to conquer the colony and uh

1033
00:58:41,320 --> 00:58:45,080
Speaker 1: and and fatten themselves with honey and and get out

1034
00:58:45,120 --> 00:58:48,840
Speaker 1: without anybody even really noticing that they were there, and

1035
00:58:48,880 --> 00:58:51,920
Speaker 1: then they and they can squeak. Very few moths can squeak.

1036
00:58:52,440 --> 00:58:54,960
Speaker 1: I've never heard of moll squeak in my life, neither

1037
00:58:55,000 --> 00:58:57,800
Speaker 1: have I. But apparently there are a few other varieties. Uh.

1038
00:58:58,560 --> 00:59:02,560
Speaker 1: The materials I looked were primarily concerned with the death

1039
00:59:03,160 --> 00:59:05,840
Speaker 1: head hawk moth. But but there are some other squeaky

1040
00:59:05,880 --> 00:59:08,000
Speaker 1: mots out there. Man. It is always a little bit

1041
00:59:08,040 --> 00:59:12,160
Speaker 1: disturbing when an invertebrate makes audible sound. Oh, yeah, like

1042
00:59:12,160 --> 00:59:15,680
Speaker 1: with hissing cockroaches. Yeah, or like if you've seen those

1043
00:59:15,760 --> 00:59:20,160
Speaker 1: killer spider movies where the killer spider squeals or screams

1044
00:59:20,280 --> 00:59:22,480
Speaker 1: or something like that. I don't think I've ever heard

1045
00:59:22,480 --> 00:59:25,560
Speaker 1: of spider make actual noise in real life. Or really,

1046
00:59:25,600 --> 00:59:29,280
Speaker 1: any summer day in in the South, especially, you walk

1047
00:59:29,280 --> 00:59:32,120
Speaker 1: out and you hear this, this thunderous sound, and at

1048
00:59:32,200 --> 00:59:34,480
Speaker 1: times it's easy to forget, Oh that is the That

1049
00:59:34,640 --> 00:59:38,560
Speaker 1: is the roar of untold insect legions in our midst

1050
00:59:39,360 --> 00:59:43,640
Speaker 1: rubbing their hard little parts. All right. So there you

1051
00:59:43,680 --> 00:59:45,680
Speaker 1: have it, just to taste of some of the deceptions

1052
00:59:45,680 --> 00:59:49,240
Speaker 1: some of the mimicry out there in the animal kingdom.

1053
00:59:49,320 --> 00:59:52,440
Speaker 1: If you liked this selection. Let us know, because we

1054
00:59:52,480 --> 00:59:56,320
Speaker 1: can totally come back and cover some more fascinating organisms

1055
00:59:56,320 --> 00:59:59,120
Speaker 1: in a future episode. And I want to stress yet again,

1056
00:59:59,680 --> 01:00:02,760
Speaker 1: as fun as it is to anthropomorphize these examples and

1057
01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:04,959
Speaker 1: imagine what it would be like if a human tried

1058
01:00:05,000 --> 01:00:07,480
Speaker 1: to do this, I stress yet again, do not try

1059
01:00:07,560 --> 01:00:10,360
Speaker 1: to use any of these examples to explain what you

1060
01:00:10,400 --> 01:00:13,760
Speaker 1: think humans do in life. Yes, do not paint the

1061
01:00:13,800 --> 01:00:16,800
Speaker 1: face of a of a of a bank employe on

1062
01:00:16,880 --> 01:00:19,640
Speaker 1: your back and walk try to walk into the vault.

1063
01:00:20,240 --> 01:00:22,240
Speaker 1: It's not gonna work. That's probably not gonna work. No.

1064
01:00:22,360 --> 01:00:24,840
Speaker 1: More specifically, I'm trying to think about, like you see

1065
01:00:24,840 --> 01:00:27,320
Speaker 1: people do this, Like you'll see a study comes out

1066
01:00:27,360 --> 01:00:30,480
Speaker 1: that talks about some mating behavior in some animal, and

1067
01:00:30,520 --> 01:00:33,360
Speaker 1: then people will be like, oh, that's why men are like,

1068
01:00:33,520 --> 01:00:36,280
Speaker 1: or oh that's why women are like when when you're

1069
01:00:36,360 --> 01:00:39,360
Speaker 1: dating and it's it's just not well, we can't help

1070
01:00:39,360 --> 01:00:42,240
Speaker 1: but compare ourselves to animals, and and there there's a

1071
01:00:42,240 --> 01:00:44,760
Speaker 1: certain amount of fun that we had there. Any I mean,

1072
01:00:44,760 --> 01:00:48,720
Speaker 1: it can be enlightening. We've been doing it as long

1073
01:00:48,760 --> 01:00:52,160
Speaker 1: as we've had human culture. But on the other hand, yeah,

1074
01:00:52,400 --> 01:00:54,480
Speaker 1: at times, it's it's like you missed the whole point

1075
01:00:54,480 --> 01:00:56,360
Speaker 1: of the study. You just took the fun part of

1076
01:00:56,400 --> 01:00:58,880
Speaker 1: the study and went wild with it, and you're you're

1077
01:00:58,960 --> 01:01:03,920
Speaker 1: missing the the insight into actually what's actually happening with

1078
01:01:04,000 --> 01:01:07,040
Speaker 1: the mating behaviors of this organism. Yeah, what's interesting about

1079
01:01:07,080 --> 01:01:09,800
Speaker 1: it is what it says about that particular animals niche

1080
01:01:09,840 --> 01:01:12,280
Speaker 1: in way of life. Yeah. In the meantime, head on

1081
01:01:12,320 --> 01:01:14,320
Speaker 1: over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's

1082
01:01:14,320 --> 01:01:16,720
Speaker 1: where you will find all the podcast episodes. You'll find

1083
01:01:16,720 --> 01:01:19,480
Speaker 1: blog posts, you'll find links out to our various social

1084
01:01:19,520 --> 01:01:23,520
Speaker 1: media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And if

1085
01:01:23,520 --> 01:01:25,560
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us directly, as always,

1086
01:01:25,560 --> 01:01:28,160
Speaker 1: you can do that through email. Big shout out as

1087
01:01:28,160 --> 01:01:32,120
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Torry Harrison.

1088
01:01:32,320 --> 01:01:35,000
Speaker 1: And if you want to email us, our address is

1089
01:01:35,160 --> 01:01:47,440
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For

1090
01:01:47,520 --> 01:01:49,840
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, does it

1091
01:01:49,920 --> 01:02:06,600
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Bl b bad twinty four

1092
01:02:06,800 --> 01:02:10,600
Speaker 1: ft part proper fo