Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied
Speaker 1: psychology and evolutionary biology, and I'd like to look at
Speaker 1: the brains of people and animals. I may be looking
Speaker 1: at some brains right now today on the show Gobble
Speaker 1: Gobble Now, we're not talking about turkeys this time, but
Speaker 1: the weird and wild eating behaviors of people and animals.
Speaker 1: We're talking gluttonous grubs who gobble on gastropods, animals who
Speaker 1: store their leftovers like their leather face on steroids. Animal
Speaker 1: chefs and foodies with very peculiar tastes discover these animals
Speaker 1: and more as we answer the angel question. Is eating
Speaker 1: civit poopa crappy thing to do? So what sets us
Speaker 1: apart from animals? It's our gourmet tastes, right, Unlike our
Speaker 1: lowly animal cousins. We prepare our foods, season it, add
Speaker 1: some garnished aloquately, use a utensil to put it in
Speaker 1: our mouths, and poop it out like civilized humans. But
Speaker 1: maybe animals aren't so animalistic with their eating habits. Sure,
Speaker 1: animals may not have mastered the art of cooking things,
Speaker 1: but they can get pretty close with their fancy food prep.
Speaker 1: Joining me today for this Culinary Creature feature are the
Speaker 1: hosts of Saber, a podcast about the culture of food eating, cooking,
Speaker 1: masticating that means chewing at perverts. So welcome now to
Speaker 1: Annie Reese and Lauren vogel Bomb. Hello, thank you, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for having us. Yeah, I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to have you guys. I think with evolutionary biology, there's
Speaker 1: it's basically food and sets, and right now we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the food part, all right. When we
Speaker 1: think about animal eating behaviors, sometimes it's restricted to, oh,
Speaker 1: predators chasing down prey and how awesome that is to
Speaker 1: see a lion just like totally take down a gazelle.
Speaker 1: But I think there are other eating habits that are
Speaker 1: really fascinating and things that people wouldn't really imagine animals
Speaker 1: are capable of. Oh absolutely, yeah. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I've seen my cats play with their food for sure.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and I often feel like I'm being more
Speaker 1: animalistic and how I am eating than perhaps, you know,
Speaker 1: I never feel I never feel less human than when
Speaker 1: I'm attempting to eat a salad. You know, I actually
Speaker 1: crack open chicken bones to eat the bone marrows because
Speaker 1: it seems kindable waste. Yeah, and you know, I don't live.
Speaker 1: I don't even let my dog do that because it's
Speaker 1: dangerous for the dog to eat the chicken bones. But
Speaker 1: here I am like eating sharp shards of bones. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that will never go wrong for me. Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be fine. You're fine so far. So that's
Speaker 1: that's a plus. So on your podcast, you guys like
Speaker 1: to talk about the culture of food and cooking, and
Speaker 1: I think it is a huge lynchpin of human culture.
Speaker 1: It's something that is so necessary and so integral to
Speaker 1: society that it just becomes part of everyday life. And
Speaker 1: I think this is true of animals, especially are close
Speaker 1: relatives in the primate families. So first I want to
Speaker 1: talk about capuchin monkeys, which are really cute. I sent
Speaker 1: you guys a slide show since I'm talking to you virtually,
Speaker 1: so you get to see these adorable little monkeys. Oh
Speaker 1: they are so cute. Oh no, okay, all right, that's fine,
Speaker 1: I'm fine, I'm back. Look at their little fingers, all right,
Speaker 1: let that sink. How cute they're what you're looking at
Speaker 1: our wild black striped or also known as bearded capchin
Speaker 1: monkeys who use stone bludgeons and anvils to crack open nuts,
Speaker 1: and their behaviors go way beyond just simple tool used.
Speaker 1: So these monkeys are found in the tropical wetlands and
Speaker 1: savannahs of Brazil. They're really cute. They have a penchant
Speaker 1: for cracking open nuts, as you can see their hand
Speaker 1: with black markings. They're very furry. They kind of got
Speaker 1: Eddie monster vibes with their little hair. Do that really high, widows, yep,
Speaker 1: I see it. So researchers have found evidence of old
Speaker 1: stone tools that shows they have been cracking nuts for
Speaker 1: over three thousand years. They even have special adaptations such
Speaker 1: as stronger leg and back muscles to allow them to
Speaker 1: carry heavy stones. So are you are you guys fans
Speaker 1: of do you guys like cracking open nuts, like getting
Speaker 1: the nuts and shells, especially over the holidays, or or
Speaker 1: are you sort of let someone else do that? That
Speaker 1: was a family tradition of mine growing up. We would
Speaker 1: always have a little handheld nutcracker, not like the fancy
Speaker 1: ones that come to life sometimes and chase you around
Speaker 1: in a ballet manner. But yeah, just just the little
Speaker 1: silver handheld ones and a bowl of nuts on the table.
Speaker 1: It's still a big tradition for me, although no one
Speaker 1: else in my household has ever dealt with that before.
Speaker 1: So they're like, so there's always it's just me, and
Speaker 1: then then looking really confused and hurting themselves. Me and
Speaker 1: my dad are sort of the nutcrackers of the family. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it is funny because yeah, we have one of
Speaker 1: those little metal nutcrackers, the actually the fancy nutcrackers. When
Speaker 1: I was a kid, I was like, okay, I'll use
Speaker 1: these two crack nuts. You know, broke the nutcracker. They
Speaker 1: aren't apparently, despite their name saying they're nut crackers for
Speaker 1: cracking nuts, they're actually nuts get broken by nut ters.
Speaker 1: They're not good at cracking nuts. It destroys them. It's
Speaker 1: the name is so misleading. It's kind of an oxymoron,
Speaker 1: destroyed by the very nut that you put in their
Speaker 1: jaws that they were meant to crack. There's some deep
Speaker 1: lesson to be learned there, I'm sure there is, such
Speaker 1: as maybe we should I mean, if we had a
Speaker 1: capuchin to do this, obviously they would be able to,
Speaker 1: so not only do Capucheans learn to crack open nuts,
Speaker 1: they also know which les are the best for the
Speaker 1: nut job, and it depends on the nuts ripeness. So
Speaker 1: cashows are one of their favorite nuts. Do you guys
Speaker 1: like cash E's buttery delicious? The monkeys they love the
Speaker 1: cash shows. The fresher cashows are softer and easier to
Speaker 1: crack open, but they're covered with a fleshy lining known
Speaker 1: as the mesocarp, which actually contains a caustic defensive substance.
Speaker 1: So even though the fresh nuts are easier to crack open,
Speaker 1: the monkeys will actually use larger stones to open them,
Speaker 1: so they're more likely to smash away the caustic lining.
Speaker 1: And so this indicates that they have an awareness that sure,
Speaker 1: these these less ripe nuts are easier to crack open,
Speaker 1: but I'm still going to smash it with a huge
Speaker 1: rock so that I just blast away that caustic lining. Conversely,
Speaker 1: the older nuts are less toxic. They're a little harder
Speaker 1: to crack open, but still they don't use those huge stones.
Speaker 1: They use slightly more appropriately sized stone tool just enough
Speaker 1: to crack open the shells because at that point they
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about that toxic mesocarp that the
Speaker 1: nut has grown to protect it from those very very
Speaker 1: predators that wants to eat it. Yeah, I wouldn't figure
Speaker 1: out how to do that. I'm like the first person
Speaker 1: to go down in the zombie apocalypse. I would not
Speaker 1: be able to feed myself in the wild. I mean
Speaker 1: it is interesting because plants do develop these defensive strategies
Speaker 1: against their potential predators, like monkeys or like humans, and
Speaker 1: we are in an arms race to figure out how
Speaker 1: to get past those defensive strategies so we can eat them.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely. One of our favorite topics over on
Speaker 1: Saver is how a lot of those defensive strategies wind
Speaker 1: up being delicious to humans, Like we're like suckers, Like
Speaker 1: we like that, Like onions like sorry about it, Like
Speaker 1: we we decided to want the onions just didn't know.
Speaker 1: We're masochists and we like it. Yeah yeah, or hot
Speaker 1: peppers or yeah yeah, I love these plants are like
Speaker 1: I'll hurt you, and we're like, oh yes, please, the hotter,
Speaker 1: the better. Baby. That says a lot about humanity. Another
Speaker 1: species of capuchin, the white faced capuchians, will wrap toxic
Speaker 1: caterpillars and fruits and leaves and rub them against soil
Speaker 1: to rub off the surface toxins so that they can
Speaker 1: kind of neutralize them and just eat them. Which I
Speaker 1: think is what's so fascinating to me about that is
Speaker 1: that indicates a level of trial and air that I
Speaker 1: would have long been dissuaded against. Like if I ate
Speaker 1: a caterpillar or a fruit that gave me a real
Speaker 1: sick stomach or throwing up or bad bathroom times, I
Speaker 1: just I just not have that fruit anymore. But I
Speaker 1: love that. They like, well, now if I wrap it
Speaker 1: in a leaf, does that I get better? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: like that too, very scientist. Yea, yeah, let me try
Speaker 1: this way. No, and I'm saying it I do. Maybe
Speaker 1: I do do that because like like when when when
Speaker 1: I eat food that just destroys me, like dairy products
Speaker 1: or Chipotle or anything that has flavor, basically my stomach
Speaker 1: goes like no, no, no, no no no. Um. Well
Speaker 1: but see I I love flavor, and so I just
Speaker 1: deal with it, and so I find outweighs like now
Speaker 1: if I eat this but with ginger ale, maybe that'll
Speaker 1: that'll work. That'll please the stomach. God? Oh absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have Um, I have a lot of friends who
Speaker 1: will only eat like pasta with red sauce with a
Speaker 1: glass of milk because the acidity of the tomato sauce,
Speaker 1: Like they it's delicious, but their stomach can't take it.
Speaker 1: And I think it's the grossest thing I've ever heard
Speaker 1: of in my entire life. Like this is what more
Speaker 1: parmesan cheese is for. Like I can neutralize this in
Speaker 1: a way that isn't a glass of milk, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't like, I don't like to just drink milk.
Speaker 1: But apparently if you're into spicy foods but then it
Speaker 1: destroys you, you should drink milk that that neutralizes the
Speaker 1: spicy food, right hypothetically, Yeah, yeah, this is also hypothetically
Speaker 1: why people serve a ranch your blue cheese dressing with
Speaker 1: I like hot wings because really down now, we were
Speaker 1: talking before we started recording that we have a mutual
Speaker 1: hatred for ranch in mayonnaise, which I'm really excited about
Speaker 1: because I think I consider myself someone interested in food
Speaker 1: and I get a lot of flak for my hatred
Speaker 1: of mayonnaise. But it's not a food it is it's
Speaker 1: it's like a food lotion. It's a food emollient that
Speaker 1: to me is disturbing. It's like, oh, I got a
Speaker 1: lotion up the sandwich, so it'll slide down my throat better. Yes,
Speaker 1: oh I'm neutral, but yeah, yeah, I can't have this
Speaker 1: no neutrality over here. But why do you not like mayonnaise?
Speaker 1: I'm not somebody who normally cares about texture, but it's
Speaker 1: like the combination of texture and a temperature, Like it's
Speaker 1: something about it being like cool and like slimy. I
Speaker 1: don't know, and it just feels like it coats and
Speaker 1: it's crazy and oily and slimy. I think that should be.
Speaker 1: That should be the new branding of mayonnaise is cool
Speaker 1: and sliming, a refreshing, gelatinous treat. They should lean into it.
Speaker 1: So chimps, as you may know, like to dip tools
Speaker 1: into ant intermite colonies to collect insects to eat, but
Speaker 1: sort of like spicy food, there are spicy ants that
Speaker 1: like to bite youa So when they get bitten up
Speaker 1: by aggressive army ants, they'll actually per themselves just above
Speaker 1: the ant colony by hanging from nearby tree limbs or trunks,
Speaker 1: so they can keep dipping into the ant colony without
Speaker 1: getting stung. Which I think is an interesting It's sort
Speaker 1: of like how humans, like we developed these strategies to
Speaker 1: deal with spicy foods that we still want to eat.
Speaker 1: These chimps figure out, Okay, so these ants get mad
Speaker 1: when I eat them and they bite me, We'll I'll
Speaker 1: just be off the ground then. Yeah, yeah, I got
Speaker 1: some respect for that. I wonder if the answer for
Speaker 1: bite their tongues though there are certain animals that certainly try.
Speaker 1: They keep on fighting all the way down. But I
Speaker 1: think if you're a little aunt and if you're getting
Speaker 1: chimps do have those really nice grinding teeth because they're omnivores,
Speaker 1: So I wonder if they just kind of get ground up.
Speaker 1: But yeah, maybe they may get a get a few
Speaker 1: tongue bites, but maybe that's just spiciness, right. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: have to admit that I'm asking this question because I've
Speaker 1: definitely been bitten on the tongue by ants before. Really,
Speaker 1: because yeah I did. I did the not smart thing
Speaker 1: and left like a picnic ate on the ground by
Speaker 1: my side, and then like just kind of reached down
Speaker 1: and like took like a slice of girled squash and
Speaker 1: popped it right into my mouth, and I was, and
Speaker 1: I was like, what's this, what's this kind of acidic
Speaker 1: flavor coming from? And I was like this peak ant flavor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this anti kind of oh dude, yeah, wiggly bity lagy flavor.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I ate insects because I
Speaker 1: had no concept that you didn't do that. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was actually ahead of my time, because there's no
Speaker 1: reason we shouldn't eat insects, but I would eat ants.
Speaker 1: And I gotta say, of the insects, they do have
Speaker 1: a nice flavor because they're kind of peppery and as
Speaker 1: long as they don't bite you, you know, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure is a little unpleasant, but that they do have
Speaker 1: that nice peppery aftertaste. I love that you're a connoisseur
Speaker 1: in this. Yeah. I think the only insects that I've
Speaker 1: ever eaten intentionally were crickets and really kind of taste
Speaker 1: you know, kind of I don't know, like like what
Speaker 1: like um, they sort of I'm like they sort of
Speaker 1: taste crookedy, like just a little bit like like like
Speaker 1: like savory kind of crickets? Did it? What was little
Speaker 1: texture where they was it? Could you feel the legs
Speaker 1: or were they just sort of crunchy. Um, you could
Speaker 1: kind of. I've only I've basically only ever eaten them
Speaker 1: in like like stunt food kind of ways, like when
Speaker 1: they're sort of like whole and fried or something like that.
Speaker 1: And so so yeah, there's they're a little bit kiteny um.
Speaker 1: But I mean, like if you've ever eaten a whole shrimp,
Speaker 1: like a little baby shrimp or something like, it's basically
Speaker 1: the same thing. Um, it's not too pokey like it's
Speaker 1: like really once you get over like looking the little
Speaker 1: dude in the eyes and going like i'malla eat this insect.
Speaker 1: Like once, once you get over that moment, it's fine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I've had them like flavored with ranch stuff
Speaker 1: like that ranch out of that. The cricket I'm fine with.
Speaker 1: You know, honestly, I would rather eat a cricket than
Speaker 1: eat ranch. No joke, not a bit. Yeah. So, speaking
Speaker 1: of ants, did you guys know that adult ants can't
Speaker 1: eat solid foods? Yeah, they're so their digestive system isn't
Speaker 1: built for solid foods and they i mean they've got
Speaker 1: that little tiny hour glass waste they literally cannot get
Speaker 1: food through it that's too big, So they have to
Speaker 1: obtain all their food in the form of liquids. Often
Speaker 1: it's honey dew or regurgitate from ant larva. And there's
Speaker 1: a species of ant called the Theodo spadonia that places
Speaker 1: food into a special chin shelf that's on the larva.
Speaker 1: So they imagine the larva, which are these little maggoty,
Speaker 1: wormy guys, and they've got their pretty pudgy they've got
Speaker 1: a little shelf right under their mouth that the adult
Speaker 1: ants just tuck a little he's a food in and
Speaker 1: then the larva will spit enzymes onto the food. And
Speaker 1: often the food is like a little a fly or
Speaker 1: another little insect that the ants have scavenged or killed,
Speaker 1: and then they will digest them externally, which is a
Speaker 1: frequent behavior in the animal kingdom of just spitting your
Speaker 1: enzymes onto an unfortunate prey item and turning it into
Speaker 1: a soup before you slurp it back up. So once
Speaker 1: the larva does this, the ants and larva share the
Speaker 1: fly soup together. It's really cute little family at Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's also like I've heard, you know, like I've seen
Speaker 1: like the fly right where, Jeff, you know, like like
Speaker 1: spitting on donuts right, Absolutely all of those good Cronenberg documentaries.
Speaker 1: But but I like that this ant like farm like
Speaker 1: it's it's like chef, this is what I'd like you
Speaker 1: to prepare today. I'll just put it right here for
Speaker 1: your consideration. Yeah, it's it is kind of neat because
Speaker 1: the kids are cooking for the adults. In a way.
Speaker 1: My plan for when I have children is to train
Speaker 1: them from birth to cook things for me, Like as
Speaker 1: soon as they're chubby little hands can hold a knife, Like,
Speaker 1: all right, you're cooking, You're in the kitchen. I like
Speaker 1: that plan. Yeah, yeah, I guess Annie's family has done
Speaker 1: that to her though she's the one who cooks their
Speaker 1: entire Thanksgiving meal. Really, really it falls upon youth. I
Speaker 1: was that is at larvae. Now you can go like,
Speaker 1: what am I a larva to you? Yes, that'll really
Speaker 1: show them. I'll make them listen to this and be
Speaker 1: like see see eary. Biology is like years of family therapy.
Speaker 1: That's true, saving me a lot of money. They cooking
Speaker 1: give us a leg up on evolution catching fire. How
Speaker 1: Cooking Made Us Human is a book by primatologists Richard
Speaker 1: Ringham which makes the case that cooking food gave us
Speaker 1: the nutritional benefits necessary to allow for our physical evolution
Speaker 1: from apes to modern humans. Cooking food not only makes
Speaker 1: it tastier, it helps increase its nutritional efficiency, making it
Speaker 1: easier to chew and digest. The smaller streamlined digestive system
Speaker 1: of Homo erectus our evolutionary ancestors may have developed as
Speaker 1: a result of cooking. This more efficient digestive system been
Speaker 1: allowed for larger brain growth. In particular, cooked tubers, which
Speaker 1: our root vegetables, may have given our ancestors a nutritional
Speaker 1: boost year round, But the archaeological evidence doesn't necessarily paint
Speaker 1: such a clear picture. In order for cooking to have
Speaker 1: influenced the evolutionary path of Homo erectus, it would have
Speaker 1: been invented over one point eight million years ago. The
Speaker 1: earliest archaeological evidence of humanoid made fires was only two
Speaker 1: fifty thousand years ago. Of course, this doesn't mean fires
Speaker 1: didn't credate these records. We just have no evidence of them.
Speaker 1: But I do wonder, given the number of animals who
Speaker 1: manipulate their food, could we have mastered some other form
Speaker 1: of food preparations, such as fermentation or grinding up food
Speaker 1: of which we have no evidence that's definitely a question
Speaker 1: for someone who knows more about our theology than me.
Speaker 1: When we return open up those fridges, we're gonna pick
Speaker 1: over some leftovers. Well, the holidays are upon us. You
Speaker 1: know what, It makes a great gift. Foot coverings, sorry,
Speaker 1: I mean socks. Bomba socks are some of the best
Speaker 1: foot coverings I mean socks available. Most people don't ask
Speaker 1: for socks, but that's just because they haven't had the
Speaker 1: experience of wearing a Bomba sock, which feels like a
Speaker 1: soft Koala hug. I have my own pairs of Bomba socks.
Speaker 1: They are truly some of the most comfortable socks around.
Speaker 1: They're form fitted to my foot, give arch support in
Speaker 1: a way that I didn't even know I needed in
Speaker 1: a sock. They come in really fun patterns. I have
Speaker 1: some Sesame Street socks that are adorable. There are Bomba
Speaker 1: sucks for a variety of activities. I got super soft
Speaker 1: Marina wool socks for hiking. I even got some dress socks.
Speaker 1: And have you ever noticed that annoying toe seam that
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Speaker 1: under your toe and it makes it awful and you
Speaker 1: want to throw off your socks and your shoes and
Speaker 1: just go naked. Well, Bombas got rid of it so
Speaker 1: they're smooth across the whole top of your foot. Bomba
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Speaker 1: a s dot com slash creature for off Bombas dot
Speaker 1: com slash creature. As you pay your way through Thanksgiving leftovers,
Speaker 1: or perhaps the leftover pizza that's been drying out in
Speaker 1: your fridge, why don't we go on a little trip
Speaker 1: to imagination Station. Imagine you're out on a nice starry night.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're a cool teenager out on the town in
Speaker 1: your green nineteen fifties Buick road Master, hanging out with
Speaker 1: your hot date. Driving up to the top of makeout point,
Speaker 1: you hear a weird noise outside, a sort of sniff
Speaker 1: sniff sniffing, and a scratchy You make some corny joke
Speaker 1: to your date about there being a monster. Your date
Speaker 1: says that's not funny, and just before you make out,
Speaker 1: suddenly a giant shrew breaks through the window of your
Speaker 1: buick road Master, a giant shrewe that's not so scary, right, Well,
Speaker 1: just as you're about to laugh off this oversized fuzzball,
Speaker 1: it delivers a swift bite to your leg and you
Speaker 1: feel an icy chill run through your body. Your limbs
Speaker 1: go limp, useless as your body forfeits to the tocks
Speaker 1: and rendering you completely paralyzed. As your date shrieks and tearror.
Speaker 1: The shrew drags your limp helpless body along into the
Speaker 1: forest and into its din. At this point, you're hoping
Speaker 1: for a quick death, but oh no, this shrew has
Speaker 1: other plans for you. To your horror, the shrew starts
Speaker 1: to nibble on you just a bit, and then it
Speaker 1: takes another bite. You still can't move, You just watch
Speaker 1: as it munches your toes off. Then it leaves you
Speaker 1: to wonder what sort of God would allow this to happen.
Speaker 1: It returns hours later to nibble on you some more,
Speaker 1: maybe a finger here and ear there, And that's when
Speaker 1: you realize you're the leftover. Alright, So have you got
Speaker 1: did you guys know that there was a actually a
Speaker 1: creature feature called the Killer Shrews back in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: I had no idea, no, no me either, but it
Speaker 1: sounds like there should have been. Absolutely. It's a nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine indie film called The Killer Shrews. The movie
Speaker 1: post Stir is a shrewd tail running over a woman's
Speaker 1: high heel, which is great. It's one of those one
Speaker 1: of those be creature feature movies that actually I kind
Speaker 1: of based the theme of the podcast on, and I
Speaker 1: love this movie. It's there. I think people get stranded
Speaker 1: on an island. If I remember correctly, they get stranded
Speaker 1: on an island. It is full of scientists who are
Speaker 1: trying to solve world hunger by just shrinking down people.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like that Matt Damon movie that just
Speaker 1: that came out of a little while ago. We're okay,
Speaker 1: so we've got world hunger. We have the technology to
Speaker 1: shrink things, I guess. But instead of making food bigger,
Speaker 1: they make people smaller and they but of course the
Speaker 1: science goes wrong, as it always does, as we should
Speaker 1: know from movies to never try to do science because
Speaker 1: it'll go horribly wrong. And it makes the shrews really
Speaker 1: huge and monsters, and they start killing everyone and killing
Speaker 1: everything on the island, and they try to escape the shrews.
Speaker 1: And of course, if you dare try to go outside
Speaker 1: of the hero's narrative, you're gonna get eaten by one
Speaker 1: of these shrews. And what's interesting is obviously the the
Speaker 1: huge giant factor is not true about shrews, but the murderous,
Speaker 1: venomous thing is actually very accurate. So I want to
Speaker 1: talk about the Blorina revocatta, which is a venomous shrewe. Now,
Speaker 1: the shrew family includes some of the only mammals that
Speaker 1: are venomous, and the North American short tailed shrew, found
Speaker 1: in northeast North America, are a species of shrewe with
Speaker 1: an overall venomous personality and bite. And they're just they're
Speaker 1: awful little monsters. They're pretty cute. If you look at
Speaker 1: that picture, they're they're not. They don't look that's scary.
Speaker 1: They look like a little mole. They have cute, little
Speaker 1: fuzzy bodies. They are dark gray fur, a little fluffy tail,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, a little little fuzz tube, yeah yeah, fuzz noodle,
Speaker 1: fuzz tube. I like that. They do have those beady
Speaker 1: little eyes that is sort of a hint at their personality,
Speaker 1: and they have a pink little nose, and so they
Speaker 1: are cute, but not if you're one of their mini victims.
Speaker 1: So they are voracious little monsters who consume up to
Speaker 1: three times their body weight a day, which sounds really impressive.
Speaker 1: It is they do only way about one ounce, but still,
Speaker 1: I mean if you scale that up, that would be
Speaker 1: like eating what like five turkeys a day? How much
Speaker 1: does a turkey way? Oh? Uh, I mean there's a
Speaker 1: whole range. I think genuinely twelve, you know, it would
Speaker 1: it would be, it would be a lot. If I
Speaker 1: I definitely don't eat like one of me a day,
Speaker 1: let alone three of me, right exactly exactly, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it'd be it'd be like eating you know, tin turkeys.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna say the math is right on that one. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they eat insects, earthworms, snails, salamander's voles, mice, and
Speaker 1: actually other shrews if they're small enough, and it's salivary
Speaker 1: glands contain a paralytic toxin that can immobilize its prey,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately for its prey, that is not a quick death.
Speaker 1: They like to store their paralyzed victims in their din
Speaker 1: and snack on them for days until their prey eventually
Speaker 1: dies from its injuries. And so this strategy sounds really
Speaker 1: unnecessarily cruel, but this allows them fresh food for long
Speaker 1: periods of time, up to fifteen days, which is horrific.
Speaker 1: Kind of want to just give them little tiny fridges
Speaker 1: so they don't have to be so insane. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: their metabolism is so fast, having that late night snack
Speaker 1: is can make the difference for their survival, even if
Speaker 1: it is a horrific torture show going on. Yeah, gosh,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, I guess we do that with plants.
Speaker 1: Were like a ha ha Tomato, Like I will take
Speaker 1: one of you today and one of you tomorrow. But
Speaker 1: we don't think of plants as being conscious, so like
Speaker 1: it's not that big of a deal. This is reminding
Speaker 1: me of Jurassic Park of the of the copries. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they also I mean, you know again in this documentary
Speaker 1: right right right, the domumentary, the classic documentary Jurassic Park
Speaker 1: and the Fly. Yeah, I think Killer Shrew. Yes, that
Speaker 1: one is actually a lot closer to reality than one
Speaker 1: might think. It's one of the more realistic B movie
Speaker 1: I think other than the whole shrinking people to solve
Speaker 1: world hunger, which I think is silly. You obviously make
Speaker 1: giant or you know you you you make a giant, true, right,
Speaker 1: and then you eat the shrew their world hunger solved.
Speaker 1: Not really sure what shreue meat tastes like though, might
Speaker 1: that might be a bit of a gamble. But one
Speaker 1: thing scientists have done, speaking of mad scientists, is they
Speaker 1: have synthesized shrew venom into a substance called sore sit in,
Speaker 1: which is hoped to be used as a sort of
Speaker 1: botox alternative, which is used to treat migraines, myofacial pain,
Speaker 1: neuromuscular diseases, and of course also wrinkles. Now this is
Speaker 1: still in the works, they haven't actually put this on
Speaker 1: the market yet, but I actually get a pretty bad
Speaker 1: t m J pain, the transmendibular joint pain in my jaw,
Speaker 1: and I would love to inject some shroud venom just
Speaker 1: to see what it does, right, Yeah, I uh And
Speaker 1: and it's just a different type of gross than thinking
Speaker 1: about like like batuli um bacteria creating your treatment. Yes,
Speaker 1: I so I like this. You're changing it up. Yeahs out,
Speaker 1: I feel like I would trust I think I trust
Speaker 1: shrewd ven um a little more than botuli is um
Speaker 1: because shrew a shrewd bite might be kind of nasty
Speaker 1: for human, but it can't it doesn't generally cause much
Speaker 1: harm to people it's but bachuli is um it can.
Speaker 1: It can do a doozy on a human. So I
Speaker 1: don't know. I kind of want to go with the
Speaker 1: shrew ven him and the great The best part is
Speaker 1: you don't need to invest in needles because you can
Speaker 1: just get a shrew and then tease it and a
Speaker 1: little bite you Oh so much cuter batina them. I
Speaker 1: love this. I like that a shrewd attack is being
Speaker 1: described as cute. Can you imagine going to a doctor's
Speaker 1: office and they have their latex gloves on and they're
Speaker 1: unwrap one of those sort of medical looking things with
Speaker 1: the medical tissue, and then there's just this shrewd lives
Speaker 1: shrieking shrew and they're frantically flopping around and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: here's your treatment. It would just leave you in the room.
Speaker 1: I don't know, then good luck. See if you contame
Speaker 1: this shrew. No, well that would be an interesting doctor's
Speaker 1: party for sure. Now, I have to ask you, guys,
Speaker 1: do you keep secret food stashes at your homes? Oh?
Speaker 1: Everywhere everywhere my home, my desk, my purse, like essentially
Speaker 1: like the mother of a five year old, but the
Speaker 1: five year old is me, and I just have to
Speaker 1: eat like constantly, So like, yeah, I always have snacks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: secret snacks. I I am a big fan of secret snacks.
Speaker 1: I like to tuck. Usually. What happens, though, is I'll
Speaker 1: tuck things away in my purse and then it kind
Speaker 1: of gets pulverized over time, and then by the time
Speaker 1: I remember that I put a snack in there, it's
Speaker 1: just turned into like cookie dust, which I do eat.
Speaker 1: I still eat it. I'm not saying I don't eat it,
Speaker 1: but it has sort of worn away by the time,
Speaker 1: and the movement of the purse has turned it into
Speaker 1: a sort of crumble rather than a whole bar or
Speaker 1: a whole cookie. Yeah. I've destroyed many a granola bar
Speaker 1: the same way scientist can't explain what happens once you
Speaker 1: put something in your purse. Granola bars kind of explode
Speaker 1: on contact. I don't think you have to do much
Speaker 1: to make them turn into dust. Like you touch one
Speaker 1: and it's sort of just atomizes that seems to be
Speaker 1: there purpose faulty design. Perhaps it becomes vapor immediately in
Speaker 1: granola vapor. Yeah, which actually should not never breathe in
Speaker 1: granola vapor. Oh no, you'll get you'll get granola along.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants that, nobody. I want to talk about another
Speaker 1: animal who likes to store leftovers in a pretty cruel way.
Speaker 1: This is the Eleanora's falcon, and I also have a
Speaker 1: picture of that for you guys to check out. And
Speaker 1: it is a It likes to keep a larger of
Speaker 1: live prey, but it goes about it in a much
Speaker 1: less scientific way than the shrew. So. Eleanora's falcon is
Speaker 1: a medium sized falcon found in southern Southeast Europe and
Speaker 1: North Africa, and they like to winter in Madagascar, which
Speaker 1: is These are some hoity toity falcons, so typically they
Speaker 1: eat insects, but during autumn bird migration they enjoy a
Speaker 1: smorgas board of smaller birds, which include swifts and hoopoos.
Speaker 1: These are the little little birds that just make great
Speaker 1: snacks for these falcons. And since the falcons don't have
Speaker 1: refrigerators and they like fresh meat, they just shove their
Speaker 1: bird victims into rock crevices and save them for later.
Speaker 1: So I have another picture in that slide up for
Speaker 1: you where it's a bird in bird prison, just awaiting
Speaker 1: the falcon to return to eat it. It's very sad,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you see, he's just kind of tucked in
Speaker 1: a little little hole in the rock and it's a
Speaker 1: tight squeeze, so we can't really get out. Sometimes they'll
Speaker 1: even pluck their praise wings and tail feathers and then
Speaker 1: just toss them in a big hole because then they
Speaker 1: can't fly out of the hole. And it's just at
Speaker 1: that point I think they're mocking them. Yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: This okay, see I was, I was down with the
Speaker 1: shrew thing. I was like, look, I understand you want
Speaker 1: to keep your food fresh, but like, and you know,
Speaker 1: and it's not your fault that you're venomous, like you
Speaker 1: just yeah, that's just what you do. But this is
Speaker 1: this is intentional, This is on purpose, This is premeditated.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well, this way they'll have fresh bird meat
Speaker 1: for themselves and for their chicks later. So there. It
Speaker 1: runs in the family. It's it's one of the things
Speaker 1: that brings family together, is just torturing and murdering birds.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good Is that a good summation
Speaker 1: of Thanksgiving? Actually? The bird actually bird murder and torture holiday? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Basically yeah. I mean, especially if you're dealing with like
Speaker 1: a tur ducan or something, boning three birds and stuff
Speaker 1: in one inside that, I mean that's a yeah. And
Speaker 1: really what is that all about except you feeling like
Speaker 1: you've got some power? Yeah? I really? How far can
Speaker 1: I push the limits? Yeah? Because those things, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine those taste very good. Their nightmare to prepare because
Speaker 1: the meat would cook at different rates. So I don't
Speaker 1: I don't quite understand how you do that? Do you? Guys? Know?
Speaker 1: Have you ever tried that? Like, does it actually taste
Speaker 1: good a turkey ducan? Or does it just I've never
Speaker 1: I've never made one. I've never had one. Um I
Speaker 1: I I don't. I don't really understand how you're supposed
Speaker 1: to cook it and right and have it come out
Speaker 1: like good at all, because like it's hard to cook
Speaker 1: a single bird and have it be like juicy and nice.
Speaker 1: And apparently there's like layers layers of stuffing involved that
Speaker 1: they're supposed to offset the moisture issue, like if you
Speaker 1: leave a turkey in the oven like one second too long,
Speaker 1: it turns into chalk. So now I'm supposed to stuff
Speaker 1: a duck inside and see how that works. It's just
Speaker 1: I think it's just I think you you guys hit
Speaker 1: the nail on the head. I think it's about showing
Speaker 1: how good at murdering we are. We're like, well, we've
Speaker 1: got this turkey, let's see how many more birds we
Speaker 1: can stuff inside. Like I killed tin animals to make
Speaker 1: this dish. It's a total power play. It is, it is.
Speaker 1: It is supposedly in like the seventeen hundreds. In France,
Speaker 1: this one guy invented I don't know if you ever
Speaker 1: cooked it, but he invented, like I think, it's like
Speaker 1: a seventeen bird. It went from like a buzzard on
Speaker 1: the outside to like this little wren all the way
Speaker 1: on the inside. France actually had Katherine Spears on of
Speaker 1: the smart Mouth podcast and we we talked about these
Speaker 1: like horrifying some of these really horrible dishes that we
Speaker 1: had in history, and yeah, that that's it's like it's
Speaker 1: stuffed a It was a large bird that then you
Speaker 1: stuffed it with like a turkey, and you stuffed that
Speaker 1: with like a guinea fowl, and then a pheasant, and
Speaker 1: then a quail and then a I think at the
Speaker 1: very end you're like shoving a little bee in there
Speaker 1: or something. I'm not sure, but yeah, it's it's a nightmare.
Speaker 1: I don't you know. I think that there is a
Speaker 1: certain at a certain level predators, and that includes humans.
Speaker 1: We do seem to relish in just being evil. So,
Speaker 1: speaking of which, I want to talk about a cute
Speaker 1: little caterpillar who is a pretty pretty nasty little customer. Now,
Speaker 1: you guys had a whole episode about scargo. I do
Speaker 1: not eat scargo, but when I was a child, I
Speaker 1: would eat raw snails because, like I said, I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't follow up your the man's rules about not
Speaker 1: eating this animal or don't put that in your mouth.
Speaker 1: I I put whatever I wanted in my mouth, and
Speaker 1: that included snails, which my mom found out because I
Speaker 1: would come out from the backyard inside and I was
Speaker 1: this little, like two year old, and I had like
Speaker 1: snail shells just stuck to my little cheeks. So she's like, well,
Speaker 1: she's been out there eating snails again. But she didn't think.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was nothing harmful about it, so she
Speaker 1: didn't stop me. That's pretty impressive as a two year old.
Speaker 1: Get a little get, get some get some olive oil
Speaker 1: and some some salt. But you guys have had a scargo, right,
Speaker 1: Can you describe that experience for those of us who
Speaker 1: have not partaken in the snail food? Oh? Yeah, sure. Um,
Speaker 1: they're they're really tasty. It's sort of like a slightly
Speaker 1: chewier oyster maybe. Um, it's sort of almost like a
Speaker 1: like squid, like if you've ever had fried calamari can
Speaker 1: be a lot like that because they're usually especially in
Speaker 1: the scargo preparation, they're kind of like kind of like
Speaker 1: sauteed in a lot of butter um and uh and
Speaker 1: they turn just kind of like chewy and uh and
Speaker 1: but a little bit tender and they don't have a
Speaker 1: very strong flavor, especially once you've got all that butter
Speaker 1: and like garlic and parsley and stuff in there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're real good. It's interesting you bring up like
Speaker 1: other shellfish because mollusks, they are related to molluscs, and
Speaker 1: they are related to squid in a sort of roundabout way.
Speaker 1: They are snails are gastropods. But they belong to the
Speaker 1: mollusc phylum, which does include things like cephalopods, squid to
Speaker 1: octopus and other shell shellfish. So it's not to say
Speaker 1: that that would necessarily make them taste similar to it.
Speaker 1: But I do think that is that is an interesting connection.
Speaker 1: Is there is there a reason why you don't eat
Speaker 1: a scargo? I think, you know, it is interesting because
Speaker 1: you'd think that as somehow, being a child who would
Speaker 1: just shove insect after insect in my mouth, that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be grossed out by it. But I think that
Speaker 1: was kind of my undoing. I remember when I was
Speaker 1: a little kid, I would collect snails as pets, and
Speaker 1: I didn't quite understand how to recreate their natural environment.
Speaker 1: So well would happen is they would die in large numbers,
Speaker 1: and the smell of these dead snails was very bad.
Speaker 1: So I think I don't associate dead snails with food.
Speaker 1: I associate it with existential horror as I realized that
Speaker 1: I am a bad little god and I have destroyed
Speaker 1: my citizens. So um, maybe that's why I don't. But
Speaker 1: I think that's fair. Yeah, You're like, I've already killed
Speaker 1: my lifetime share of snails, destroyer of snail worlds, I'm
Speaker 1: already in the red when it comes to snail karma,
Speaker 1: so I'm not I'm not fiddling with those numbers anymore.
Speaker 1: But so there is another caterpillar who may have more
Speaker 1: crimes to answer for than me, called the hyposmocoma mollusk givora.
Speaker 1: I sure, I'm sure I pronounced that correctly. But it's
Speaker 1: a tiny species of caterpillar from Hawaii. So this little
Speaker 1: caterpillar eventually metamorphosizes into a moth. But as caterpillars, they're
Speaker 1: little brats and they're pretty rude to snails. So these
Speaker 1: are case bearing caterpillars similar to bagworms, which means they
Speaker 1: spin themselves a shell out of their own silk. Now,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen these guys. They it looks like
Speaker 1: a little tube of a sort of junk, like a
Speaker 1: kind of it looks like a bunch of cobwebs kind
Speaker 1: of wrapped around in a tiny little tube, maybe some
Speaker 1: dirt and stuff on the outside, but then it kind
Speaker 1: of moves around and you look and then like a
Speaker 1: little worm where a little caterpillar pops out of it.
Speaker 1: And it's a really interesting way that these guys protect themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like a lint armor, essentially lint armor. That's the Yes,
Speaker 1: these are a little lint boys that like to wear
Speaker 1: lint armor. Sometimes they even decorate their little silk cases
Speaker 1: with snail shells, which will become even more grotesque as
Speaker 1: we go on here. So not only are they snail wannabes,
Speaker 1: they also destroy snails. So they'll roll up to a
Speaker 1: snail and they start to use their sticky silk to
Speaker 1: trap the snail against the leaf. So, you know, snails
Speaker 1: are not too fast, so the poor snail is too
Speaker 1: slow to be able to escape even though the net
Speaker 1: is just being woven around it's shell in real time.
Speaker 1: So if you can imagine you're just so slow that
Speaker 1: this this little caterpillar comes up with a set of
Speaker 1: knitting needles. Not not really, but you know biological netting
Speaker 1: meals starts to make a net and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: how's your day going, Yeah, I'm totally gonna eat you.
Speaker 1: Would you would you turn to the right a little bit? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right there you go. Oh no, It's like it's
Speaker 1: like it's like the quicksilver, but but you're just a snail.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like if Psycho just happened really slow,
Speaker 1: like Psycho but with slobs, just like really slow. You
Speaker 1: see it coming, but there's not, and you're both kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, all right, well how you know
Speaker 1: it's I'm about to murder you? But hey, did you
Speaker 1: see you see the Mets game or whatever? This is
Speaker 1: gonna take a minute, so let's just get to know
Speaker 1: each other a little bit. Yeah, I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like like slow murder small talk would be
Speaker 1: really awkward word like maybe a little more awkward than
Speaker 1: regular a small talk. Although if you with small time
Speaker 1: so well, sometimes you know, I want to be murdered
Speaker 1: in small talk is death is preferable. So the caterpillar
Speaker 1: then uses that weird little body case that it has
Speaker 1: sewn to wedge open the snail shell opening like one
Speaker 1: of those tiny scargo forks. So I actually have an
Speaker 1: image of that you guys can look at. You can
Speaker 1: see the snail shell is tied down to the leaf
Speaker 1: with the sticky strands of silk, and then the caterpillar
Speaker 1: has lodged its weird oblong uh silk casing into the
Speaker 1: snail shell and then that way it can just crawl
Speaker 1: right into that snail shell and like corring it in
Speaker 1: its own home, which is pretty scary, and then it
Speaker 1: just yeah, that gets right in there. And to eat
Speaker 1: the snail alive that is so gnarly. That is like
Speaker 1: the very worst version of like the call is coming
Speaker 1: from inside the house. Oh gosh. I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it is. We're pretty messed up, I think as
Speaker 1: humans in terms of our food presentation. But I don't
Speaker 1: know if we're at the level of eating animals alive
Speaker 1: in their own homes. Like we don't like get a
Speaker 1: bird nest and then just start eating the birds. You're
Speaker 1: not not today, That's not something I've done. I mean, actually,
Speaker 1: I don't know, is that going back to oysters? Isn't
Speaker 1: that sort of what we do crack open their houses
Speaker 1: and when we serve When we serve snails, we do
Speaker 1: like take them out of their shells to cook them,
Speaker 1: but then we put them back in their shells to
Speaker 1: serve them. So it's like, well, I mean that's just
Speaker 1: a presentation. Though. Gotta remember, gotta remember this was a snail,
Speaker 1: God forbid we forget this is this is a slimy
Speaker 1: snail that used to crawl all over the ground and
Speaker 1: and eat bird poop and stuff like I would not
Speaker 1: find that appetizing without that snail shell. Come on, and
Speaker 1: they're very pretty. It's true, that's true. We can't forget
Speaker 1: the presentation. Yeah, so it's interesting their shell is made
Speaker 1: That outside is made out of calcium carbonate, but the
Speaker 1: inside of the shell is it kind of has that
Speaker 1: a little bit of that pearlscent hue if you've ever
Speaker 1: looked at it. And that's because it's actually made out
Speaker 1: of naker, which is the same material in mother pearl
Speaker 1: shell and uh, that's secreted onto onto pearls in oysters,
Speaker 1: which I think is really interesting. I don't think we
Speaker 1: think of snails as beautiful mother pearl oysters, but they do.
Speaker 1: Their shells are very similar in terms of their composition.
Speaker 1: I love a snail shell. I think they're beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and bonus, I always feel like like ur slow the
Speaker 1: sea with if I haven't and the whole thing jewelry
Speaker 1: resembling that. But unfortunately it doesn't give you the powers
Speaker 1: to sing like her. No, I mean not unless you
Speaker 1: go to the trouble of trapping a mermaid and getting
Speaker 1: her to sign a like devil deal with you, right.
Speaker 1: The whole thing with Ariel here's something that bothers me.
Speaker 1: All of her friends are sea creatures. She's got a
Speaker 1: lobster or sorry, is it a lobster? Crap? I think
Speaker 1: it's a crab, right, she's got and in that musical number,
Speaker 1: oysters and clams are singing along. Now her bra is
Speaker 1: made out of clam shells. I feel it'd be really
Speaker 1: awkward if she visited some of her friends and there's like, oh,
Speaker 1: have you met here? Here's Clyde the clam. It's like,
Speaker 1: oh God, is that my grandmother's exoskeleton? And it's just
Speaker 1: these this shell like well whoops. See it's part of
Speaker 1: the storyline that wasn't really well explored. But the the
Speaker 1: reason that all of those animals like aerial and they
Speaker 1: all get along so wel together is that they are
Speaker 1: all metal ast and and so they really they really
Speaker 1: just love that, like that like death metal kind of culture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah it is. I do love the whole when she's
Speaker 1: talking about being on Earth with humans so that she
Speaker 1: may rend flesh from her her fellow fish and and
Speaker 1: enjoy the food that is cooked from her friends. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was good. I was like that was
Speaker 1: a good movie. Ultimate Revenge Tale really revenge, Like I
Speaker 1: gotta get all land and then I'm gonna eat all
Speaker 1: like like your dad's like, no, you can't go on lands.
Speaker 1: Like I'll go on land, dad, and then I'll eat you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll cook you in another fish make a dad ducking.
Speaker 1: We've gotten to the heart of the little mermaids. But
Speaker 1: it's really about Obviously, the invention of the fridge gave
Speaker 1: us a huge advantage when it came to storing leftovers,
Speaker 1: but humans have always found a way to make food last.
Speaker 1: From smokehouses to fermentation to salting, We've figured out ways
Speaker 1: to keep our food from going bad. Throughout human history.
Speaker 1: We've discovered how to store our food effectively, and it
Speaker 1: depended largely on your climate. In the frozen tundra, the
Speaker 1: world was your fridge for better or worse, and you
Speaker 1: could store meat on the ice. In warmer climates like
Speaker 1: the Middle Eastern Rome, you could dry out fruit and
Speaker 1: meat by baking them in the hot sun. One of
Speaker 1: the earliest recorded instances of stored food was found in
Speaker 1: Kessum Cave in Israel, dating back up to four D
Speaker 1: twenty thousand years ago. The Paleolithic people there stored animal
Speaker 1: bones for snacking on later, like when they were up
Speaker 1: real late reading cave wall comics. Researchers determined these bones
Speaker 1: were leftovers due to the markings. Fresher bones are easier
Speaker 1: to scrape out the marrow, whereas older booneses turn into
Speaker 1: marrow jerky, meaning there are more scratch and cutting marks
Speaker 1: on the bone. If you think eating bone marrow is weird,
Speaker 1: by the way, it's not. I've had it and it's delicious.
Speaker 1: Wait until we return. I think you'll be surprised. Some
Speaker 1: people and some creatures have pretty odd tastes when it
Speaker 1: comes to meals. So let's take a trip down to
Speaker 1: imagination station. You're a friendly little fish, swimming along, maybe
Speaker 1: saying hi to arial, and suddenly you feel a bit
Speaker 1: of eye irritation. There's no vision for fish, so you
Speaker 1: continue to swim along with your fishy business, but you
Speaker 1: start to feel kind of lazy and sluggish. You just
Speaker 1: want to slow down, not move too much. You take
Speaker 1: a bunch of lazy days. This all works out fine
Speaker 1: for you for a while. In fact, you seem to
Speaker 1: attract fewer predators. Great, but then something jane inges inside you,
Speaker 1: like a switch has been flipped. Now you've got a
Speaker 1: fierce case of the wiggles. You want nothing more than
Speaker 1: to splash around swimming, wantonly dancing and not caring who
Speaker 1: notices Well, loops, maybe you care a little bit because
Speaker 1: you see a huge bird flying down towards the surface
Speaker 1: of the water. You pause, freaked out, trying to stay
Speaker 1: still so the bird won't see you. But then that
Speaker 1: urge to wiggle around to dance. You just can't help it.
Speaker 1: You've gotta move around. Well, the bird eats you the end,
Speaker 1: So that guy's that is the end of your story.
Speaker 1: But it is just another part of the fish eye
Speaker 1: Fluke's life cycle. This is part of the episode that
Speaker 1: we're gonna get a little gross, I guess. So, how
Speaker 1: do you guys feel about parasites? You know, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be honest. They make me a little nervous. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: of of all the things that I'm not squeaked out by.
Speaker 1: I think that anything that crawls into your body and
Speaker 1: makes a home there that's larger and like a bacterium
Speaker 1: really freaks me out. Well, bad news for you, because
Speaker 1: we're about to talk about the eye Fluke, which is
Speaker 1: uh parasitic flatworm. There's a specific species called diplostom Um
Speaker 1: pseudo path which again I'm sure I pronounced that. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm a champion at Latin. Now that name sounds bad,
Speaker 1: and they are if you are a freshwater fish. So basically,
Speaker 1: these ie flukes will swim around until they find an
Speaker 1: unlucky fish, which is often a rainbow trout. Then they
Speaker 1: will infect their eyes, so the eye fluke pierces the
Speaker 1: fish's skin, then swims up through the body to find
Speaker 1: real estate in its eyeballs because it's location, location, location,
Speaker 1: am I right? Oh yeah, great, great views, right, a
Speaker 1: great waterfront property. Uh no, Oh, did I mention that
Speaker 1: my other squid is eye stuff? That's great. You guys
Speaker 1: haven't ever eaten eaten eyeballs? I have not to my
Speaker 1: personal Actually, I mean, I guess I've had like like
Speaker 1: whole like like shrimp or or those true, So so
Speaker 1: you've eaten it's kind of been a package deal for
Speaker 1: you with with eyeballs. Uh. Yeah, I've eaten a fish
Speaker 1: eye before, at the behest of my friend who told
Speaker 1: me it was very good and it was fine. It
Speaker 1: tasted pretty salty. Now I don't know if that's because
Speaker 1: they salted it a lot, But I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think it's a little bit there's something psychologically a problem
Speaker 1: for me with that, because it's like, I'm eyes are
Speaker 1: a window into the soul, and then I'm eating that
Speaker 1: window and it just kind of doesn't work for me
Speaker 1: mentally speaking. Yeah, no, I don't want it. It is
Speaker 1: a strange thing to eat an eye. I guess it's
Speaker 1: kind of like an ultimate power move, like what if
Speaker 1: the what if the chicken and the turduccan was just
Speaker 1: filled with eyes? Oh, why would you say that it's
Speaker 1: a monster. You're the one who brought up eyeballs. I
Speaker 1: brought up eating eyeballs. I didn't bring up filling a
Speaker 1: turkey like making a turkey pinata. But it's filled with eyeballs.
Speaker 1: Good lord, I thought I was that nightmare. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought I was the horror master. Here. You're welcome. So
Speaker 1: the fish eye fluke has a pretty good reason for
Speaker 1: being in the eyes. So the eyeball doesn't contain much blood,
Speaker 1: so there's no immune response to the parasites, so it
Speaker 1: can happily swim around in there, absorbing nutrients and just
Speaker 1: kind of hang out in the eyeball as long as
Speaker 1: it dang well pleases. Recent research suggests that not only
Speaker 1: is the eye fluke making a cozy little cottage out
Speaker 1: of the fish, I, but it's actually altering the fish's behavior.
Speaker 1: So this is something we've talked about before on the show,
Speaker 1: where a parasite will manipulate its host by interfering with
Speaker 1: its brain chemistry. So have you guys ever heard of
Speaker 1: t gandhi? I is that? Is that the toxoplasma or
Speaker 1: the or the fungus with the ants? You're You're on
Speaker 1: the right track. It's the it's the it's the parasite
Speaker 1: that infects rats and makes them lose their fear of cats. Okay, yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the way that they influence the host behavior is mysterious. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that we know how the eye fluke
Speaker 1: does this. This is pretty recent research. But let's say
Speaker 1: that it does some kind of maybe it releases some
Speaker 1: kind of chemical that interacts with the fish's brain and
Speaker 1: causes some malfunction. Is now, I don't know this. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of I'm kind of winging because I don't think
Speaker 1: we've I don't think science has determined exactly how the
Speaker 1: eye fluke controls these fish. But that is one of
Speaker 1: the mechanisms that these parasites can use. So the eye
Speaker 1: fluke influences the fish too at first swim more sluggishly. Now,
Speaker 1: as listeners of the show might know, often the parasites
Speaker 1: mo is to make the host look as noticeable as
Speaker 1: possible because often these parasites have the goal of winding
Speaker 1: up in the stomach of a predator, like in the
Speaker 1: stomach of a cat or in a bird. And while
Speaker 1: that's true, these eye flukes kind of have finessed it
Speaker 1: a bit because when they're juveniles, they're still developing in
Speaker 1: the fish I they don't want to get eaten yet
Speaker 1: because they're just not ready. They're not ready for that commitment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they will make the fish swim slower, more sluggishly so
Speaker 1: it isn't targeted by predators. And then later in the
Speaker 1: eye flukes lifestyle, when it's a an adult, it's single,
Speaker 1: it's ready to mingle. Then that's when it kicks into
Speaker 1: high gear and makes the fish just wiggle around like crazy.
Speaker 1: It makes the fish want to swim closer to the
Speaker 1: surface to swim more actively, and normally when a bird
Speaker 1: attacks a fish, the fish is responses to freeze to
Speaker 1: try to reduce its visibility, and but the infected fish
Speaker 1: will very quickly start to dance around again, swim around again,
Speaker 1: So it makes it really easy for the birds to
Speaker 1: just scoop that right up. And at that point the
Speaker 1: the iye fluke and the fish will escape into the
Speaker 1: bird's gut and that's where it has its singles bar
Speaker 1: speed dating night and mates, and the reproductive cycle begins
Speaker 1: a new Well. That is quite the method. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess when you don't have tinder um, you know, you
Speaker 1: have to figure out your own way to do stuff.
Speaker 1: You have fender. Oh wow, that is when you when
Speaker 1: when you get an oh well from Annie about a pun,
Speaker 1: I feel like you just won. You wont like the
Speaker 1: whole month you Yeah, I have so much respect right now.
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do with it. I can
Speaker 1: only aspire to make as good fun with that. There's
Speaker 1: even another step in their weird life cycle. So once
Speaker 1: they've reproduced, their young escapes out of the bird into
Speaker 1: the bird poop, and that bird poop then gets eaten
Speaker 1: by snails, and then the snails. When these are aquatic
Speaker 1: freshwater snails, they will be in the water and then
Speaker 1: they will escape out of the snails and then swim
Speaker 1: over to a fish. So it's a complicated life process,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of steps. I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of a way for these eye flukes to sort
Speaker 1: of feel, you know, they're like constantly at a midlife
Speaker 1: isis no matter at what point of their lifestycle cycle
Speaker 1: they are out like I gotta do something. I gotta
Speaker 1: get myself a new ride. I'm gonna get a snail.
Speaker 1: And it's like, no, I'm gonna get myself a new ride.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get myself a fish. I Yeah, No, that's great.
Speaker 1: I mean you're traveling your right, having new experiences. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're really pushing yourself. Yeah, doing it for the insta.
Speaker 1: So that's that's great. That's that's so gnarly. I love
Speaker 1: it trying new food, new home. I do feel I
Speaker 1: do sympathize with these these eye flutes a little bit.
Speaker 1: I think one of the ways I feel like I
Speaker 1: can reinvent myself is to try just a slightly different food,
Speaker 1: nothing way outside my comfort zone. Not like a big
Speaker 1: bowl of mayonnaise, but you know, a slight like maybe
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit of a spicier food. And then
Speaker 1: I feel more worldly, even if it's just down the
Speaker 1: street from my apartment. I'm like, I've done a thing.
Speaker 1: I've I've discovered a new food, and then I somehow
Speaker 1: feel accomplished even though I didn't do anything, feel more alive. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: you did something. You went out and found something and
Speaker 1: I put it in my Yeah, it was a bit
Speaker 1: different than normal. That is Why do you guys think
Speaker 1: that is so satisfying to you? Discover new food and
Speaker 1: you it's like there's a certain conquest in putting something
Speaker 1: new in your mouth, and it's like I have made
Speaker 1: this mine. What do you think that is? I think
Speaker 1: for me, there's a UM, I have a weird thing
Speaker 1: I call it collecting experiences where I'm very much I
Speaker 1: want to try as much as I can. So I
Speaker 1: think if I discover something that to me, I've never
Speaker 1: had anything like it before, it's very exciting. Um, and
Speaker 1: my my mouth is like, WHOA, what's this? I've never
Speaker 1: had this combination of flavors and textures. This is great,
Speaker 1: And I feel like my brain gets really excited about it, like, oh,
Speaker 1: You've got to find other things like this, And there's
Speaker 1: just something about that for me. Excitement of it of
Speaker 1: finding something I really like that's got set off a
Speaker 1: new hearing. It's for me, absolutely, And I think that
Speaker 1: there's I think there's some brain chemicals that get set
Speaker 1: off when when you do try a new combination of
Speaker 1: textures or or flavors that your brain is like, well,
Speaker 1: is it danger? Is it cool? And which is really
Speaker 1: basically the same emotion according to our brains. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, there's also chemicals involved in the nostalgia of
Speaker 1: eating something the same but or or similar to something
Speaker 1: that you've had a long time ago. We did an
Speaker 1: upsote on that, but uh yeah, yeah, no, no, the
Speaker 1: definitely it's it's it's a it's a thrill. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I love adrenaline. It's like I'm trying to find it
Speaker 1: wherever I can get it. It's the safe risk taking,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not gonna go go cliff jumping, but i
Speaker 1: may put something in my mouth that I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it's gonna create a good situation with my stomach, but
Speaker 1: gosh darn it, I'll try. I like that. I'm going
Speaker 1: to start thinking of trying new things with it. With food.
Speaker 1: Is cliff jumping? Right here we go? Right here we go?
Speaker 1: You know, saddle saddle up in testines. We're going on
Speaker 1: a ride. I think your's open. It's a good one,
Speaker 1: much much safer than like than yeah, than like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, buying a motorcycle or something. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: an adventure in your mouth and your stomach and possibly
Speaker 1: other bathroom times that will not discuss. So there's another
Speaker 1: parasite that likes to eat eyeballs. If you you guys,
Speaker 1: thought we had escaped the eyeball eating conversation, oh I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but now we're back. Now this is a This is
Speaker 1: a slightly different parasite and it specifically likes to eat
Speaker 1: the eyeballs of sharks, and a specific type of shark
Speaker 1: called the sleeper shark. And these are a group of
Speaker 1: sharks that are slow moving deep sea. They look like ancient,
Speaker 1: prehistoric creatures and they are actually in fact, so we've
Speaker 1: talked about the Greenland shark on the show before. They're
Speaker 1: these really huge sharks and they're very slow. They are carnivorous,
Speaker 1: but they have a really slow metabolism so they don't
Speaker 1: have to move very fast and they basically just sneak
Speaker 1: up on their prey and then by the time the
Speaker 1: prey realizes it's surrounded by teeth. It's too late, and
Speaker 1: but that is not the horrifying thing we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: The horrifying thing we're talking about is called omatta quita elongata,
Speaker 1: which is a copa pod, a type of crustacean, and
Speaker 1: it's this pink worm like creature that grows about an
Speaker 1: inch long, and it likes to attach itself to the
Speaker 1: corneas of these sleeper sharks and it slowly eats away
Speaker 1: at that juicy shark. Guy. Okay, that's uncool. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and say that's not chill. No one
Speaker 1: should do that. Yeah, and you've and you've sent us
Speaker 1: pictures and it's and it's. Yeah, this like little worm
Speaker 1: like thing just like just like dangling out of the
Speaker 1: eyeball of this poor, kind of dirty looking shark. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel a lot of sympathy for these sleeper sharks
Speaker 1: and the greenland shark. I think I like them. I
Speaker 1: think they're cool. Little guy, they're not little. They're actually huge,
Speaker 1: huge sharks, but they're they have an overall pretty chill personality.
Speaker 1: They aren't super aggressive. They do eat other fish and things,
Speaker 1: but basically they just the rest of the time when
Speaker 1: they're not killing, they're they're pretty chill, they're slow moving,
Speaker 1: and they Yeah that these little stinkers, these little eyeball
Speaker 1: eating crustaceans, get on their eyes. And because the shark
Speaker 1: doesn't I mean, the shark doesn't have hands, can't do
Speaker 1: anything about it, it just seems kind of mean. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess the coupe of pod is just
Speaker 1: you know, it's just trying to eat. It's just trying
Speaker 1: to make a living. It doesn't know any better. Like
Speaker 1: it's like in the flintst Owns, those animals, like the
Speaker 1: the copa pod like looks at the camera and it's
Speaker 1: like it's a loving time to eat the eyeballs, like
Speaker 1: another day in the eyeball. The shark eyeball mines. Oh No.
Speaker 1: Also reminds me of the times throughout history humanity has
Speaker 1: really latched onto some weird fashion. So I wonder if
Speaker 1: in the shark world this was ever like fashionable to
Speaker 1: have the worm. It's sort of like a monocle. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The psyches of sharks will never know over sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean it damages their visions, so maybe like
Speaker 1: if they have any mirrors down there the sharks looking
Speaker 1: at It's like, I look pretty good. Look at me
Speaker 1: looking good. I'm kind of a blurry blob, but I
Speaker 1: assume I'm quite attractive with these eye dangles, little eye tassels.
Speaker 1: Oh so then when when they rule their eyes, like
Speaker 1: say something sarcastic and roll their eyes, they get a
Speaker 1: nice sort of like pendulum movement with with the eye tassels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's actually kind of best of Yeah yeah, shark burlesque.
Speaker 1: This is great shark burlesque. Right, Yeah, Well we know
Speaker 1: what goes on because the little mermaid the sharks wearing
Speaker 1: sexy sunglasses and it comes in. It's like done done,
Speaker 1: done done, and then it just like takes off the
Speaker 1: glasses and it's the shark the eye tassels. Yeah, sexy
Speaker 1: hot cool. Oh yeah. So, actually, the the sharks don't
Speaker 1: necessarily mind it that much. I mean, we don't know
Speaker 1: how they feel. They may mind it a hell of
Speaker 1: a lot, but it doesn't affect their survival too badly,
Speaker 1: so they they don't rely on their eyesight too heavily
Speaker 1: to hunt. So they are a functioned pretty well even
Speaker 1: with these eye dangles going on. And there's actually an
Speaker 1: un proven theory that oh a lagatta, these copa pods
Speaker 1: have a mutualistic relationship with the sharks they attached to
Speaker 1: because they have a bioluminescence, and the theory is that
Speaker 1: the bioluminescence actually helps attract prey towards the sharks. So
Speaker 1: the shark, as we know, who is kind of a
Speaker 1: lazy Garfield like character who doesn't really want to work
Speaker 1: too hard for his food, just opens his mouth and
Speaker 1: chomps on anything foolish enough to approach its glowing eye tassels.
Speaker 1: But that theory is not proven. I do. I am
Speaker 1: fond of that theory. I really do want it to
Speaker 1: be true. So I hope they discover that, yes, these
Speaker 1: burlesque sharks have neon glowing eye tassels that prey just
Speaker 1: finds irresistible. I want that to be true as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that if you're going to have to have
Speaker 1: an eye tassel, it better be working for you. You
Speaker 1: better be getting something out of that relationship. You need
Speaker 1: eye tassels to make eye tassels, and then you use
Speaker 1: those eye tasks and make money. And I like the
Speaker 1: idea of some poor, unsuspecting prey just like pretty shiny thing.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. I mean that happens a lot in
Speaker 1: the in deep sea areas because you have so little
Speaker 1: light and bioluminescence is this chemical reaction that happens with
Speaker 1: bacteria that a lot of animals have adopted. And so
Speaker 1: if you're in a deep sea angler fish, if you're
Speaker 1: a deep sea octopus, you can use that bioluminescence both
Speaker 1: to attract prey as a defensive mechanism to make yourself
Speaker 1: seem bigger. It's a really handy tool when you're down
Speaker 1: there and you're in the dark and there's very little
Speaker 1: visual information other than this bioluminescence. So yeah, it tassels
Speaker 1: for everybody. We've really come full circle. So I know
Speaker 1: you guys are probably wondering, Hey, can my eyeballs get
Speaker 1: eaten by tiny horrible creatures? You know that had occurred
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, so bad news. The answer is yes, uh,
Speaker 1: and it is, but it is not quite as horrifying
Speaker 1: as a huge worm dangling from your cornea. It is
Speaker 1: pretty horrifying, though. So there are, in fact, I am
Speaker 1: bas that infect human eye So these are tiny microscopic
Speaker 1: organisms that love to eat human eyeballs. The Acanthamiba is
Speaker 1: the little stinker who likes to infect and feed on
Speaker 1: human cornias, and this condition is known as Acanthamiba carotesis.
Speaker 1: It can even cause blindness if not treated. It's very rare,
Speaker 1: so for the most part, you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about it. But if you wear contact lenses, do either
Speaker 1: of you wear contact lenses? Nope? Nope, yeah, neither do I.
Speaker 1: I stick to glasses, and I'm glad I do because
Speaker 1: contact lens users have to be careful with how they
Speaker 1: store and wash their lenses because they're at a higher
Speaker 1: risk of getting infected by the acanthemiba. So if you
Speaker 1: do wear contact lenses, don't I'm not saying rip them
Speaker 1: out of your eyeballs right now, especially don't rip them out.
Speaker 1: But you're you're okay, don't don't panic. You just have
Speaker 1: to remember that you should not ever use tap water
Speaker 1: to clean the lenses. You shouldn't wear your contacts while showering, swimming,
Speaker 1: or using a hot tub because that can increase your
Speaker 1: risk of infection. Because what happens is that contact lenses
Speaker 1: provide a nice surface for the amiba to latch onto,
Speaker 1: and so normally they would kind of maybe just get
Speaker 1: flushed out of the eye. But with the contact lenses,
Speaker 1: they just they have a little like it's a little
Speaker 1: restaurant for them to sit at and then they can
Speaker 1: hang out and multiply and eat your cornia. It's a
Speaker 1: cornia copia, get it. I feel like this is some
Speaker 1: personal full of eyeball jokes, kind of personal punishment for us,
Speaker 1: Like you're gonna tell you about this thing. They can
Speaker 1: eat your I used to wear contexts, and I'm nervous
Speaker 1: for my past self. Oh well, you seem to have
Speaker 1: gotten through it. I was very not good about taking
Speaker 1: care of my context I like found another I was
Speaker 1: putting in one and then another one popped out and
Speaker 1: it was like completely hard and I have no idea
Speaker 1: how long I don't know. Oh my gosh. I mean
Speaker 1: that does happen. Like people, you'll forget that you're wearing
Speaker 1: one and then you put another one on, and it
Speaker 1: can even be bad. You've got to be careful, and
Speaker 1: I would suggest for all you you cost players out there,
Speaker 1: be very careful with the sort of cost playing lenses,
Speaker 1: the decorative lenses. You should. You're at a much greater
Speaker 1: risk of getting an eye infection from those as well.
Speaker 1: So I would advise generally, ED would advise against it, honestly,
Speaker 1: But if you're going to go with it, I would
Speaker 1: go get them from a reputable like ophthalmologist, like from
Speaker 1: a professional, and not just the internet. Yeah. I read
Speaker 1: a story of someone who got this amiba infection by
Speaker 1: getting cool cat I contact lenses from a swap meat.
Speaker 1: So don't do that. Oh no, don't, don't get her
Speaker 1: swap contact lenses. No, don't get don't get contact lenses
Speaker 1: from a flea market. Is my honest to you, that's
Speaker 1: not a second hand item. Gosh, like I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: weirded up. I said, no, it's not a second hand item.
Speaker 1: It's a second eye item. Oh you set yourself up
Speaker 1: for that one. That one should have seen it coming.
Speaker 1: And there goes my audience. They're gone, now bye bye. Well,
Speaker 1: if they stuck with you that, I think they're good.
Speaker 1: They're good with parasites. I don't know about puns. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Well you'll find out. Yeah, this is the time.
Speaker 1: Maybe I can win them back with some civet poop.
Speaker 1: So now I want to Yeah, so I want to
Speaker 1: talk about Asian civits and this is I want to
Speaker 1: it's the capstone to our food related podcast because it's
Speaker 1: both about their eating habits and are Weird eating habits
Speaker 1: when it comes to their poops. So, Asian civits are
Speaker 1: a small cat like animal that is actually more closely
Speaker 1: related to bent a Wrong than a cat. Now, for
Speaker 1: those of you wondering what a bent to wrong is,
Speaker 1: I actually have talked about it on the show before
Speaker 1: Are Weird Anatomy episode. I think it's actually called nature
Speaker 1: You're Drunk, But it's so, this is a bent a
Speaker 1: wrong looks like a Doctor SEUs fluffy cat, and it
Speaker 1: actually smells like popcorn because of some anal glands. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting animal. But yeah, it's related to this
Speaker 1: civit and the Asian civit is much. It's a little guy.
Speaker 1: You guys, see that picture of it. It's like it
Speaker 1: looks it is similar to a kitty, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of like if you crossed a cat with like a
Speaker 1: red panda or something. It's like an even cute raccoon. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and they live in South and Southeast Asian forests. They're omnivorous,
Speaker 1: but they love to drink palm flower sap and they
Speaker 1: eat fresh coffee beans. So they're also known as the
Speaker 1: toddy cat, despite not they're not a feline. They're not
Speaker 1: a cat. But you know, back when we were naming
Speaker 1: these animals, we didn't know so palm sap tappers would
Speaker 1: collect palm sap to ferment into palm wine, which is
Speaker 1: a type of alcoholic beverage. And there are stories of
Speaker 1: these palm civets getting drunk on the pots of fermenting
Speaker 1: palm sap. So then they got the name Toddy cat
Speaker 1: because Toddy is the also the name of the palm wine.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had like a hot toddy it's like
Speaker 1: that sort of Swedish or not Sweedish, but that's sort
Speaker 1: of sweet alcoholic drink. Yeah, oh yeah yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: simil delicious similar to that. So yeah, these civts would
Speaker 1: would get get drunk, and it's, uh, I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of another terrible influence that humans have had on
Speaker 1: animals is now we're now we're a bad influence and
Speaker 1: getting them, getting them drunk and have them go out
Speaker 1: on parties. It's it's terrible, you know. Um, it's not hey,
Speaker 1: like we want to have a good time. They want
Speaker 1: to have a good time, like we're just providing. We're
Speaker 1: providers at the good time. Yeah, that's if that sounds
Speaker 1: like you're trying to evade responsibility for leading these that's
Speaker 1: down a dark path. Hey, I'm sure we always say
Speaker 1: drink responsibly. I've never personally gone up to a civot
Speaker 1: and been like shot shot shot, So I feel like,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's oddly specific. So I feel like maybe
Speaker 1: you have so the lady duff to protest too much. So,
Speaker 1: as you guys may know, we actually do eat civitt
Speaker 1: poop in the form of coffee and it is called
Speaker 1: kopelo wak. I hope I'm pronouncing that right, And it
Speaker 1: is made out of coffee beans collected from civitt poop. Now,
Speaker 1: apparently the civits digestive system for mince the beans so
Speaker 1: that they come out tasty in their poops. And there
Speaker 1: are also claims that the civit will choose the best
Speaker 1: beans to eat, so they poop out the most premium
Speaker 1: of coffee beans, like like premium selection in this civit
Speaker 1: turd a. I see. So, so okay, I've been wondering
Speaker 1: about this actually, like is it is this chill for
Speaker 1: the civits like, are they happy doing this? Well, so
Speaker 1: this is the sad part of the story. It is
Speaker 1: if we just picked up their poop after they left
Speaker 1: it in the forest, that would probably be fine. I mean,
Speaker 1: as long as we there was some. Obviously, if we
Speaker 1: collected all the poop, I think that would be bad
Speaker 1: for the coffee plants because then that would reduce their
Speaker 1: ability to spread their seed. In fact, civets are really
Speaker 1: great at spreading the seeds of various plants and trees
Speaker 1: because they eat a lot of eat a lot of
Speaker 1: berries and things with seeds in it, and then they
Speaker 1: go and poop somewhere else and that that is great
Speaker 1: for the forest. But yeah, I mean, if we if
Speaker 1: we just collected some poop occasionally, I think that would
Speaker 1: be okay. Unfortunately, we're humans, so of course we don't
Speaker 1: stop at that. Because of the popularity of Coopilua, it
Speaker 1: is becoming a big problem for the civits. Civits are
Speaker 1: being trapped and kept in cages and they're being fed
Speaker 1: coffee beans just so they'll poop it out. So it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they're being farmed in a way that I
Speaker 1: think is really not It's very bad for the civits.
Speaker 1: It's bad for their populations. We don't really know what
Speaker 1: effect this has on their natural populations, but it's not
Speaker 1: going to be good. And their living conditions are not
Speaker 1: good either. So I would say, as tempting as it
Speaker 1: is to eat civit poop coffee, I wouldn't do it
Speaker 1: because of the problem of the sourcing and these these
Speaker 1: not not very good practices. I have so many mixed
Speaker 1: feelings about this. I you know, it's it's I do
Speaker 1: like trying new things. It's a shame that I shouldn't
Speaker 1: try that. But I don't know exactly how upset I
Speaker 1: can be about being like, well, not that poop. I'm
Speaker 1: just not gonna eat just not gonna eat that poop.
Speaker 1: It is. It is a big conflict because, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, the opportunity to drink poop and pay he
Speaker 1: it's very expensive, so you're paying a huge amount for
Speaker 1: poop coffee. I would love that. That's living my best
Speaker 1: life if I were, if I was a rich person,
Speaker 1: you bet I'd be paying thousands of dollars to drink
Speaker 1: poop coffee. But of course the moral aspect, I can't.
Speaker 1: I couldn't bring myself to do it. Like, I think
Speaker 1: the idea of just just kind of picking up maybe
Speaker 1: with the doggy poop bag some of the Civett poop
Speaker 1: and harvesting the beans, that's pretty charming, but obviously the
Speaker 1: reality is very different. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I would agree,
Speaker 1: I would agree. I mean, and everybody poops, uh, that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, we talk about bacteria poop and used
Speaker 1: poop all the time on the show, but usually usually
Speaker 1: that's like the micro poop is the only poop we
Speaker 1: get to talk about. So this is this is fun
Speaker 1: what you talk about. You talk about like the sort
Speaker 1: of fecal material that gets everywhere. Oh no, just about
Speaker 1: like a just about fermentation of any kind. It's really
Speaker 1: you know what you're talking about, bacteria and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: bacteria poop. Yeah. Yeah, you're drinking, Yeah, I mean we're drinking.
Speaker 1: We're drinking bacteria poop when we drink wine, exactly, sure,
Speaker 1: And it's delicious. I mean, bacteria poop makes everything better.
Speaker 1: I mean, aren't the civits kind of hypocrites because they're
Speaker 1: drinking fermented palm juice, so they're drinking bacteria poop. But
Speaker 1: we can't drink the civet's poop, I mean, ridiculous need
Speaker 1: to fight for their better treatment so that we can drink.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. I feel like, yeah, free range,
Speaker 1: free range poop, cage free, free range civet poop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's Unfortunately, it's probably pretty difficult to source
Speaker 1: the poop. I don't know how you would determine whether
Speaker 1: this was humanely collected poop or not. So I would
Speaker 1: if you're worried about the the the humaneness of it,
Speaker 1: I would probably just avoid it. I mean, it is
Speaker 1: incredibly expensive anyways. So it's kind of sad because it's
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that at first it's kind
Speaker 1: of charming, like, oh, you know, drinking drinking weird civet
Speaker 1: poop as a fancy drink. That's fun. But then it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: of course we have to be crappy about it. Not
Speaker 1: that was. I didn't mean that as a pun. That
Speaker 1: was I wasn't trying to make a pun out of
Speaker 1: a terrible situation. Okay, maybe it was a little bit
Speaker 1: to sue me. Yeah, sue you get get that important
Speaker 1: civet poop money. No, no, no no, I'm big civets. Oh god, well, so,
Speaker 1: I just before we go, there's like a couple of
Speaker 1: news items I wanted to really briefly talked about. Apparently,
Speaker 1: baby t rexes were fuzzy, little turkey sized monsters, which
Speaker 1: I love. There's new fossil evidence that indicates that they
Speaker 1: had this little fluffy layer of feathers sort of down
Speaker 1: like feathers, and then that they are we're about the
Speaker 1: size of a turkey. That is. That sounds so cute
Speaker 1: and no, less terrifying than a normal regular t rex.
Speaker 1: I thought you're gonna say, no, less terrifying than a
Speaker 1: normal regular turkey, which would also be accurate. Oh no,
Speaker 1: absolutely no. I don't like birds. Okay, I realized that
Speaker 1: I heard a bird hater on this show. Just you
Speaker 1: get out of here. I'm not a bird hater. I'm
Speaker 1: just a bird. Respect a bird. Feel there, I see
Speaker 1: you fear the power of birds. That's appropriate. They will,
Speaker 1: I do, they will? I mean, the bird revolution is nigh,
Speaker 1: it's imminent. You are wise to respect the authority of birds. Okay, no, no, work,
Speaker 1: We're cool now, that's fine. Oh yeah, no, no, like
Speaker 1: they want to eat your eyeballs and they can fly,
Speaker 1: and they're dinosaurs. And I don't like that combination of things. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder though, if if we lived it, Okay, if
Speaker 1: if we had dinosaurs, right, if we had a Jurassic Park,
Speaker 1: there's zero percent chance that we wouldn't do a t
Speaker 1: rex duck in right, like we would do do a
Speaker 1: tyrannosaur stuck and just start shoving ever smaller dinosaurs inside
Speaker 1: of the t X. Yeah, No, we would. It's true,
Speaker 1: we would, and I just don't think it tastes good.
Speaker 1: But it wouldn't be about the taste. It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: about the taste. It would be about teaching the dinosaurs
Speaker 1: a lesson, like, look, you try to any more of
Speaker 1: our amusement park visitors, Look, what's going to happen to you?
Speaker 1: You're going to become an abomination of solid dino meat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're like showing them the menu, like pointing at it
Speaker 1: very emphatically, like that could be you there, big margarita's
Speaker 1: at hand. Yeah, I mean maybe that's kind of about right.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's I guess that's sort of what we've done.
Speaker 1: We talked about that last week on the episode. I
Speaker 1: talked about the domestication of of turkeys and chickens, and
Speaker 1: in a way it is it is kind of I
Speaker 1: think we are trying to humiliate dinosaurs to kind of
Speaker 1: let them know, like, never try again to own this planet,
Speaker 1: because we will humiliate you by turning you into really
Speaker 1: fluffy chickens. Wow, echoes across time. Yeah, if any of
Speaker 1: them ever have a time machine, they're they're gonna flash
Speaker 1: forward now and go like, oh no, we better keep
Speaker 1: in mind. I feel like that's the turtles in time.
Speaker 1: It's coming for sure. Um. I was also thinking, I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is true, but when I was
Speaker 1: in Australia, there's a saying piste as a parrot, which
Speaker 1: meant drunk as a parrot, because parrots would get drunk
Speaker 1: fermented berries and you would see them just kind of
Speaker 1: flying around, crashing into things and shouting weird, weird stuff.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of like, yeah, the the drunk bird,
Speaker 1: they're trying to deal with the ramifications you're duck in
Speaker 1: they actually have. So this is it's a common thing
Speaker 1: where they have bird drunk tanks because a lot of
Speaker 1: birds get drunk off of fermented berries, and there's like,
Speaker 1: especially in Canada, they have a lot of these winter
Speaker 1: birds that in the winter the berries free and but
Speaker 1: the birds still eat them, but they've fermented, and so
Speaker 1: they try to rescue these drunk birds and hold them
Speaker 1: in the bird drunk tanks until they feel better so
Speaker 1: they can be released sober up birds. See. See, I'm
Speaker 1: not that was There's no peer pressure there. I'm not
Speaker 1: responsible for that. You cannot blame me for the natural
Speaker 1: process of fermentation. The civit thing maybe, but you're like you,
Speaker 1: But I'm not out sneaking up behind a wax swing
Speaker 1: and just going shots shots, shots, shot, shot shots. I'm
Speaker 1: onto you. That's just gonna miss scaled. The problem is
Speaker 1: that's just gonna make the bird revolution come more swiftly
Speaker 1: and more angrily. So you know, really we're writing our own,
Speaker 1: our own history here. It's true. Well, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining me, ladies. I love I love your podcast.
Speaker 1: I think especially around the holidays, it's a great list
Speaker 1: because it talks about the culture of food and do
Speaker 1: you want to talk a little bit about how you
Speaker 1: get why you guys are interested in talking about food
Speaker 1: in our culinary habits. Uh? Sure. I think one of
Speaker 1: the things we really enjoy is that we all have
Speaker 1: to eat and there's this very powerful sense of connection
Speaker 1: and shared culture and history and when you stop and
Speaker 1: think about I don't know, if you're eating something that
Speaker 1: you just never pause to wonder how did this get here?
Speaker 1: And why do we eat it this way? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like just the traditions around it and the the stories
Speaker 1: behind it, we find some fascity. Yeah. And also the
Speaker 1: science is really cool. Um, just the way that plants work,
Speaker 1: in the way that animals work and how they grow
Speaker 1: and how you know, what they eat and how they
Speaker 1: can feed us. Um. And so that this has been
Speaker 1: a real treat because like usually we're like, okay, like
Speaker 1: look at this cute monkey. Here's what it tastes like,
Speaker 1: and it's it can get real weird, real fast. Like
Speaker 1: talking about animals and not talking about eating all of
Speaker 1: them has been really cool. Yeah, a lot of times
Speaker 1: we have to be like, look, we're a food podcast.
Speaker 1: We want to talk about snail six all the time,
Speaker 1: but we've got to move on. So, Yeah, this has
Speaker 1: been really wonderful. Well, it's been lovely having you guys,
Speaker 1: so again, you guys can check out Annie and Lauren
Speaker 1: on Savor Podcast. It's also here on the the How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I Heart Media Network. So it's been great
Speaker 1: to talk to you, and is there anything else you
Speaker 1: guys want to plug? Like any social media people can
Speaker 1: follow you on Oh sure. Our website is uh is
Speaker 1: saber pod dot com and we are on Twitter, Instagram
Speaker 1: and Facebook at saber Pod. We do hope to hearten you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can find us on the internet Creature Feature
Speaker 1: Pod dot com, Creature Feature Pod on Instagram. It's mostly
Speaker 1: pictures of my dog creature feet it on Twitter, that's
Speaker 1: f e a t f e et is something very
Speaker 1: different and you can find me as always at Katie
Speaker 1: Golden on Twitter. I'm also at Pro Bird Rights, where
Speaker 1: I fight for the rights of birds to take over
Speaker 1: humanity and get the world back on track. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you you really done gooped when you revealed your anti
Speaker 1: bird propaganda there, Yeah yourself, I'll just quietly leave you.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the Space Classics for their super spooctacular song
Speaker 1: Exo Lumina. Creature features a production of I Heart Radio's
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.