Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, it's listener
Speaker 1: questions again. This time I'm going on a deep dive
Speaker 1: on a few questions that I think Marrital longer discussion
Speaker 1: from killer Kangaroos, two pesky parasites, do evolutionary copycats? Discover
Speaker 1: this and more as we answer the angel question why
Speaker 1: is Australia joining me today? To answer your questions? Is
Speaker 1: point guard of the podcast Lour After Hours, Christi Yamagucci Mane. Hello, Katie,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to
Speaker 1: be here, of course. Yeah, I have wanted to have
Speaker 1: you on the show. I think you are an awesome
Speaker 1: person and I figured this would be this would be
Speaker 1: good because we're just like a corny copeia of animal topics.
Speaker 1: I I'm thrilled. I I did not know if we
Speaker 1: were going to focus solely on the killer kangaroos when
Speaker 1: I when I got the email earlier, UM, I absolutely
Speaker 1: am excited for that topic. On Hour after Hours, we
Speaker 1: actually have a foreign correspondent, Morgan from Australia who keeps
Speaker 1: us informed on all of the the weird wildlife that
Speaker 1: happens around her. Although she has told me that she's
Speaker 1: never seen a kangaroo? What is she even really from Australia.
Speaker 1: It's either either she is from Australia and and has
Speaker 1: just never never seen a kangaroo, or it's the greatest
Speaker 1: single accent work I have ever ever come across, ever witnessed.
Speaker 1: Not even a wallaby. You know, I've never I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever asked her about a wallaby? A wallaby? Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I will absolutely and keep like going down in size
Speaker 1: in terms of like marsupial, like have you seen a wallaby?
Speaker 1: What about a koala? Uh? What about a nikidna? And
Speaker 1: if it's like no to any of those, I think
Speaker 1: he got catfished? She uh? I know she is a
Speaker 1: super fan of Australian What is I'm going to butcher this?
Speaker 1: It's like Australian rules football or something like that. I
Speaker 1: just whatever I just said. People are yelling at your
Speaker 1: podcast because I absolutely just butchered it. Because even though
Speaker 1: our our podcast kind of vaguely tangentially touches sports, I'm
Speaker 1: terrible at everything about them. So well, maybe it's a
Speaker 1: wallaball wallaby ball. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah maybe
Speaker 1: maybe uh similar to the way I think soccer developed
Speaker 1: originally from like and I could be making this up
Speaker 1: to using like a goat head the original soccer ball
Speaker 1: to kick. I think that's true. Either I just made
Speaker 1: that up and it's completely awful that I I came
Speaker 1: up with that based on absolutely nothing, or that's a
Speaker 1: completely true fact. I mean it's it is awful, but
Speaker 1: it's also pretty metal, so trade off. But we are
Speaker 1: talking about kangaroos at least for this first question from
Speaker 1: Leeds who showed me this tweet and Leads writes, this
Speaker 1: is a picture warning that kangaroos in water will try
Speaker 1: to drown you. Is this really true? And there is
Speaker 1: a tweet? Okay, so this is from Cormack Ferrell on
Speaker 1: Twitter who writes that fun kangaroo fact. This kangaroo is
Speaker 1: waiting for pursuers to come into the water with him,
Speaker 1: where he will try to drown them. They are extremely
Speaker 1: good at it. Never ever go into water with a kangaroo.
Speaker 1: Everything has lots of innovative ways to kill you here,
Speaker 1: So Australia. You're a beautiful country and I love you.
Speaker 1: But it's true that from everything from like your box
Speaker 1: jellyfish to your adorable but deadly blue ring octopus. Uh,
Speaker 1: just like everything is trying to kill you. Guys. What's
Speaker 1: up with that? The the great I know, the great
Speaker 1: white sharks are are very common on the reefs down there.
Speaker 1: And uh even yeah, yeah, even the platypus. Doesn't the
Speaker 1: platypus have some kind of poisonous element to it? It does.
Speaker 1: It has a venomous spine the on its behind legs
Speaker 1: that it can use to give you a dose of
Speaker 1: venom So so even something as doofy and looks like
Speaker 1: it was put together by a four year old after
Speaker 1: learning what a a beaver and a duck and a
Speaker 1: and a sea otter was, you know, and combined those,
Speaker 1: it looks like a pokemon, right, except it's still venomous,
Speaker 1: still venomous. So yeah, yeah, it's it's it's absolutely wild
Speaker 1: water in Australia. Well, speaking of something in the water,
Speaker 1: is this kangaroo? Yeah kangaroos? Is this thing going to
Speaker 1: kill me? Well? Here's the thing is this isn't interesting.
Speaker 1: I think I actually have heard about this. I read
Speaker 1: or saw something about a kangaroo almost drowning someone's dog. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I think from what I've read, and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: not actually a kangaroo expert, although I do know that
Speaker 1: they have a female. Kangaroos do have too vaginas. It's cool,
Speaker 1: but they do. It's not necessarily that they're not predators, right,
Speaker 1: They're not trying to drown you. They're not like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm doing this for I'm doing this for all life.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I I don't know. I can't do an
Speaker 1: Australian accent. It's probably a defensive behavior. So from what
Speaker 1: I can tell, they aren't trying to bait you into
Speaker 1: drowning you. But they are putting distance between you and themselves.
Speaker 1: And they're strong swimmers. They may very well understand that
Speaker 1: they have a bit of an upper hand if they're
Speaker 1: in a body of waters. So if they're in a
Speaker 1: body of water, some kind of predator may be less
Speaker 1: likely to be able to get at them, and then
Speaker 1: if they do try to get at them, uh, then
Speaker 1: they can drown them there. They have very very powerful
Speaker 1: hind legs. They can kick you, pull you down there.
Speaker 1: They're very strong and so they may have this advantage
Speaker 1: in the water where a predator may be less agile,
Speaker 1: less mobile. Uh. And then they can literally like just
Speaker 1: hold you under and drown you if you're trying to
Speaker 1: pursue them. It's not that they're murderous per se, but
Speaker 1: they are definitely going to defend themselves from you. So
Speaker 1: I think with the case with the dog, probably this
Speaker 1: kangaroo thought like, oh, the dog is trying to attack me,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna, you know, hold this little sucker under
Speaker 1: the water. Uh. And so I think that yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: they seek They might be seeking out the water because
Speaker 1: they uh see it. It's like basically like instinctively like, hey,
Speaker 1: I need to escape. This is a probably a good
Speaker 1: spot for me to to escape too. And then if
Speaker 1: you still go in and pursue them, then they're like,
Speaker 1: all right, no, it's on now. It's on now, buddy.
Speaker 1: So I I raised three boys, Um, I know that
Speaker 1: when I'm in a swimming pool, I can launch them
Speaker 1: over my head and feel like a pro wrestler. Right,
Speaker 1: I can't. I don't have the same leverage whenever we're
Speaker 1: you know, whenever they were younger and I was in
Speaker 1: the backyard and we'd wrestle on like the trampoline or something.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you you immediately become stronger in the water
Speaker 1: because a buoyancy and and and you don't you know,
Speaker 1: you don't have your own body weight to fight against um.
Speaker 1: But one of my favorite things that I see every
Speaker 1: usually happens like once a year or or you know whatever.
Speaker 1: The social media cycle is as soon as it's out
Speaker 1: of everybody's consciousness. But somebody will post a picture of
Speaker 1: a I'm assuming a male kangaroo up close, and people
Speaker 1: do not realize how jacked these things are. They look
Speaker 1: like they're on steroids. Like if you Google search jacked kangaroo,
Speaker 1: it looks like it's photoshopped. It looks like they took
Speaker 1: a nineties baseball player on steroids and put a kangaroo's
Speaker 1: head and and arms on it. It is absolutely wild.
Speaker 1: If if you're listening and you have not seen one
Speaker 1: of these photos, just Google search jacked kangaroo. Absolutely wild. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they are. It's there. They need these really powerful
Speaker 1: muscles to be able to jump and move. Uh, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's sort of like if you look
Speaker 1: at a rabbit, which they're not related to kangaroos. I'm
Speaker 1: not implying that, but they have those really powerful hind legs,
Speaker 1: and especially if you look at a wild hair which
Speaker 1: we actually talked about in our episode recently about bunnies,
Speaker 1: which is they they actually look quite muscular and and
Speaker 1: lena and there behind legs can actually do some damage.
Speaker 1: So you scale that up to the size of a
Speaker 1: big kangaroo. Absolutely, they are just covered in muscles. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's this quote by Graham Coulson of the University
Speaker 1: of Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne. Is it Melbourne or is it
Speaker 1: Melbourne Melbourne? Yeah, this, yes, this sounds right Melbourne, who's
Speaker 1: a kangaroo ecologist. Uh says that quote. There's a very
Speaker 1: strong instinct kangaroos will go to water if they're threatened
Speaker 1: by a predator. Uh So, I think it's it's questionable
Speaker 1: whether it's their intent to drown you once you go
Speaker 1: out there, but basically they're like, I can swim, well,
Speaker 1: I'll go in this water. This should be enough to
Speaker 1: deter the predator. And then if you still go in
Speaker 1: after it, even if you're going in to get a selfie,
Speaker 1: the kangaroo is like, oh my own, isn't it it's yeah,
Speaker 1: look at this picture. I hope folks can can see
Speaker 1: this this tweet. At some point, I'll have it in
Speaker 1: the show notes. It is. It is so spooky. It
Speaker 1: is like there's no ripples in the water, There's no
Speaker 1: there's nothing else around it. Just if if I came
Speaker 1: across this kangaroo ever, I would not in a million
Speaker 1: years damned Like I might take a selfie at a distance. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's probably gonna be far enough away that you
Speaker 1: can't even tell what's what's actually in the water behind you. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it is. It is one of the creepier
Speaker 1: what are the creepier photos I've seen? There is no
Speaker 1: way I'm getting in the water with this thing. It's
Speaker 1: giving me a death stare. I can just I can
Speaker 1: just hear it, you know, like you want to get molded?
Speaker 1: Is that what you want? Did I get to die?
Speaker 1: You want to die to die? Do you? It's uh yeah,
Speaker 1: No kangaroos I don't don't think of as a friendly animal.
Speaker 1: Maybe a wallaby, sure, uh Koala no, they a little
Speaker 1: scared of Koala's kangaroo. No way, they will kick my
Speaker 1: whole entire face off going to swim with a kangaroo.
Speaker 1: Oh no, Rather, I'd rather swim with a shark. I
Speaker 1: think I'd be safe for swimming with a shark. And
Speaker 1: I love, I don't, I love. I love going swimming.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not freaked out by by swimming in
Speaker 1: the ocean or anything like that. But there is no
Speaker 1: way in hell I would ever. Uh, you've got to
Speaker 1: be very hungry as a predator to to go into
Speaker 1: the water after one of these things. And I've seen
Speaker 1: those videos of I think there was one circulating not
Speaker 1: too long ago where this kangaroo came up to this
Speaker 1: this dude's sliding glass door and was just throwing himself
Speaker 1: against the glass, like very aggressively. It was like a
Speaker 1: zombie Kane Garu was was trying to invade his home.
Speaker 1: And if you've ever seen it, they use those tails.
Speaker 1: Those tails are absolutely incredible where they lean back on
Speaker 1: the tail and it launches them forward. It's like having
Speaker 1: a third leg. Uh that It's it's incredible, Well fourth leg.
Speaker 1: For no, I wasn't. I wasn't going to go there, Katie.
Speaker 1: But okay, I'm sorry, No, no, no, don't apologize, but yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it is. They are They're powerful animals. They absolutely are intimidating.
Speaker 1: There's this video of someone on a parachute gliding down
Speaker 1: to the landing spot and as he lands, this kangaroo
Speaker 1: comes up to him. He's like, oh, I skip, and
Speaker 1: then the kangaroo swings at him and punches him. That's
Speaker 1: that's what's so unnerving about a kangaroo. It's like we
Speaker 1: we have from what I understand, even though our foreign correspondent,
Speaker 1: Morgan as An ever seeing a kangaroo before, allegedly, Uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're as common as like deer over there. They're
Speaker 1: they're super common there. They they seem to be. This
Speaker 1: is from my very myopic American perspective. It seems like
Speaker 1: they're everywhere except they're they're as tall as a human being.
Speaker 1: They have like they they have like deer like snouts,
Speaker 1: kind of this this absurd tale, these huge claws like there.
Speaker 1: Their talents are are significant, but it's the it's the
Speaker 1: physiology of almost being human like with their biceps and
Speaker 1: their their their triceps. I don't know the muscle groups
Speaker 1: or anything. I'm terrible at that as well, but but
Speaker 1: there's it's like a blend between like a deer and
Speaker 1: a human and like a velociraptor and a velocoraptor exactly.
Speaker 1: That's perfect, that's perfect. Yeah, No, they're they're they're jacked,
Speaker 1: they're small, and they kind to have that a little
Speaker 1: bit of that like velociraptor. Look, I don't want to
Speaker 1: mess with them at all. What's interesting is this whole
Speaker 1: thing of like an animal luring you into the water
Speaker 1: to drown you, is it has this precedent of mythology.
Speaker 1: So like, have you ever heard of the kelpie in
Speaker 1: Scottish folklore? I have not. I do not think I'm
Speaker 1: familiar with that. Yeah, it's one of the kind of
Speaker 1: lesser known mythological creatures. But a kelpie is a horse
Speaker 1: spirit from Scotland that lives in rivers and other bodies
Speaker 1: of water that lures people in and then pulls them
Speaker 1: into the river and drowns them. Oh okay, all right,
Speaker 1: that's terrifying. Yeah. So there are a lot of versions
Speaker 1: of the magical kelpie. Sometimes the kelpie will turn into
Speaker 1: a beautiful woman, either fully into a woman or a
Speaker 1: woman with horse hoofs uh. Sometimes it's a spectral horse
Speaker 1: with backwards hooves. Sometimes it had a mane of serpents.
Speaker 1: It's very variable, like what these kelpies take the form of,
Speaker 1: but typically horse like. Okay, well, men are completely idiots,
Speaker 1: so if you give it the vague shape of a woman,
Speaker 1: we will we will, you know, completely be lord to
Speaker 1: to anywhere you know. Allegedly that basically what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is that's a great excuse for men doing stupid shit anyway,
Speaker 1: just to say, oh, yeah, there was a beautiful woman
Speaker 1: that that lured him into the into the bog and
Speaker 1: he was never party with me in this river. I'm
Speaker 1: a human woman. He check out my bodacious boobies. Whoa
Speaker 1: I love how quickly you find the voices of these characters, instantly, instantly,
Speaker 1: You're so good at this. I've got I've got. Everyone's
Speaker 1: got a little horse inside them. But yeah, so, why
Speaker 1: does the kelpie want to drown you? Some say it's
Speaker 1: for companionship, which is strange to me. The more reasonable
Speaker 1: explanation is eating your entrails um. In some myths, the
Speaker 1: kelpie can extend its back to see many riders, so
Speaker 1: like become a long horse, like a stretched limo of horses,
Speaker 1: and then it gallops into the river and brings everyone
Speaker 1: to their watery grave. Wow. Okay, so so is there
Speaker 1: is this? You know how myths sometimes are formed, well
Speaker 1: not sometimes quite often are formed to explain away something
Speaker 1: that that you know, like the thunderbolts, you know, thor
Speaker 1: or Zeus or or whoever. Um. Uh. We create these
Speaker 1: these mythologies to explain natural phenomena. Is that what this
Speaker 1: developed out of? It's a really good question. I think
Speaker 1: there are a lot of myths and this is a trend.
Speaker 1: I've noticed a lot of myths about uh some kind
Speaker 1: of mythical creature in or near water, uh worring people
Speaker 1: to drown. And I think it is in general way
Speaker 1: to explain uh sudden drownings of people who you would think, oh,
Speaker 1: well they wouldn't they know not to mess around in
Speaker 1: the river, Like why would they drown? And I think
Speaker 1: it's kind of a this idea that like some kind
Speaker 1: of ramp like someone couldn't you know, my my dear
Speaker 1: cousin wouldn't have just like slipped on a rock, hit
Speaker 1: his head and drowned. Like that's too dumb of a
Speaker 1: death for him, Like no, it must have been like
Speaker 1: a horse demon luring him with its horse boobies. Uh,
Speaker 1: like it's I think it's an explanation for like we've
Speaker 1: seen that with um at sea, you know, sirens or mermaids,
Speaker 1: which some speculate may have been manatees, with the idea
Speaker 1: of like, well, they couldn't have just run aground, like
Speaker 1: they must have been lured to land by some uh
Speaker 1: bodacious mermaids and uh right fish boobies. And but I mean,
Speaker 1: like I think there's an another one, like the river
Speaker 1: dolphins in the Amazon. These boato river dolphins are said
Speaker 1: to like like transform into handsome men when they come
Speaker 1: out of the water to like lure women. Uh and
Speaker 1: they like cover their blowhole with like a fancy hat
Speaker 1: or something. And it's like again like well, how could
Speaker 1: she have just drowned like in the room, Like, no,
Speaker 1: she must have been lured there by a sexy dolphin man.
Speaker 1: Uh So so yeah, I think I think it's like
Speaker 1: rivers are strangely dangerous sometimes, like you don't know, like
Speaker 1: you'll see you part of the river that looks calm
Speaker 1: and you think, well, I can wait across that, and
Speaker 1: you step in and it's much faster. Uh. Sometimes there
Speaker 1: are like these these rivers that look narrow but are
Speaker 1: very deep and fast moving, so if you try to
Speaker 1: wait across, it's like instant drowning. Uh So it's yeah,
Speaker 1: rivers are very very dangerous. Uh They you have to
Speaker 1: be very careful navigating them. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people just accidentally die around rivers, especially you know
Speaker 1: back in the oldie Scotland, so like you had to
Speaker 1: have some way of like, you know, well, I I
Speaker 1: he was going across the river and he disappeared or drowned.
Speaker 1: It must have been a horse lady, a magical horse lady.
Speaker 1: It's it's incredible to me what we will come up
Speaker 1: with instead of just facing the occam's razor of a situation,
Speaker 1: which is probably these rocks are covered in moss. Uh
Speaker 1: it rained last night. He probably slipped and fell. Nope,
Speaker 1: it was a blow hole covered handsome dolphin person. I
Speaker 1: live actually probably a tenth of a mile from the
Speaker 1: Cape Fear River, which is a real place. It's not
Speaker 1: just a movie starring Robert de Niro and remake of
Speaker 1: with Robert DeNiro and Nicknolty. And yeah, the the river
Speaker 1: can absolutely be a a treacherous thing. There are drownings
Speaker 1: around here all the time, and it looks fairly calm,
Speaker 1: and it's not a fast moving river very you know,
Speaker 1: not a not a super moving river compared to some
Speaker 1: but it is where Blackbeard used to navigate his ship
Speaker 1: the Queensland revenge and escape, you know, the British Navy
Speaker 1: at the time, whenever, whenever he was up to up
Speaker 1: to his Shenanigans, so his old Shenanigans yet to put
Speaker 1: it mildly right, uh So, So basically it's it's a
Speaker 1: very tricky place to navigate, and you know, if if
Speaker 1: you're on a small boat or something, you can you
Speaker 1: can very easily you know, drown out there. But I I, uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's still that's way less cooler than coming up
Speaker 1: with some mythological creature than than just having an accident.
Speaker 1: It kind of makes me think of like, you know
Speaker 1: check Tingle, uh, the Tinglers, the like, you know, like
Speaker 1: seduced by a handsome t rex who is my boss books,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like we've been doing check Tingle things
Speaker 1: for for decades, for four centuries, Like these Scottish people
Speaker 1: are was like seduced to my death and a fast
Speaker 1: moving river by a handsome horse lady. It's I love
Speaker 1: it though they yeah, usually his ends up with some
Speaker 1: phrase of pounded in the at the end of his
Speaker 1: book titles. I did not think this, uh, this episode
Speaker 1: was going to veer into Chuck Tingle territory. Well, I do.
Speaker 1: I love Chuck Tingle. I think he's a he's a
Speaker 1: cool guy who has got some cool ideas. I I
Speaker 1: completely agree. I wholeheartedly endorsed Chuck Tingle. And we won't
Speaker 1: get into the discussion. Yeah, we won't get into too
Speaker 1: much detail about Chuck Tingle, I think, but you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's he writes some he writes some funny books,
Speaker 1: and but he seems like a cool person. So I
Speaker 1: was wondering, like, oh, like, I wonder if there's any
Speaker 1: like kelpie myths with kangaroos and like, so I looked
Speaker 1: for Australian kelpie and there is an Australian kelpie, but
Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with kangaroos. Well, the all Strillian. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Australian kelpie is a breed of dog that is
Speaker 1: a sheep dog. It's a very cute little peppo. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a chocolate brown, medium haired sheep dog and it's
Speaker 1: a working dog often still used to this day. Uh
Speaker 1: on sheep farms, and so I was like, well, what
Speaker 1: why is this dog? Why is this dog called a kelpie?
Speaker 1: I mean, is this this dog luring sheep into a
Speaker 1: river by the sheep? Are we about to talk about
Speaker 1: dog boobies? No? No, luckily not. So. This breed of
Speaker 1: dog was actually named after the Scottish kelpie that we
Speaker 1: just discussed, because the first dog of this breed was
Speaker 1: owned by a Scottish man living in Australia. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know why he named the dog Kelpie. Uh,
Speaker 1: he just did because he's Scottish and he's like, man,
Speaker 1: I keep thinking about those sexy horse demons. Anyways, your
Speaker 1: name is kelpie um and so yeah, and so it is.
Speaker 1: It's a highly competent sheep herding dog. So that that's Uh,
Speaker 1: if you look for Australian kelpie, that's what you're gonna find.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at this photo here. It's kind of got
Speaker 1: the the coloration of like a chocolate Doberman a little
Speaker 1: bit with the lighter color around the muzzle. It is
Speaker 1: beautiful looking dog. And he he or she is surfing
Speaker 1: on the back of some sheeping, yeah, sheep surfing, which
Speaker 1: honestly looks super fun. Yeah. Actually, a lot of sheep
Speaker 1: dogs do this where they kind of like moh orum
Speaker 1: crowd surf the sheep because if they are trying to
Speaker 1: get from the back to the front of the sheep
Speaker 1: or or organize the sheep from the middle of the sheep,
Speaker 1: crowd like, they need to be able to crouch surf
Speaker 1: the sheep. So yeah, I I love I absolutely love
Speaker 1: working dogs, watching dogs that have been trained and bred
Speaker 1: with specific personalities to to do very specific tasks. It
Speaker 1: is so much fun to watch a good farm dog
Speaker 1: or a sheep dog do its thing because there is
Speaker 1: no animal in the entire world that is more tickled
Speaker 1: and thrilled to be doing something than one of these dogs.
Speaker 1: It's so much fun. I'm like I in general, I
Speaker 1: feel uneasy about dog breeding because often it's this superficial
Speaker 1: thing of like I want a dog that looks like
Speaker 1: a freaking bear with a pixie face and weird wrinkles everywhere,
Speaker 1: and it's like, I don't think that's good for the
Speaker 1: dogs to just breed them for a specific, uh superficial appearance,
Speaker 1: Like I want my dog to look to be pink
Speaker 1: and not have a butt hole or something like, obviously
Speaker 1: that's not good for the and then it doesn't fact
Speaker 1: when Okay, to be fair, if you could, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I would just be impressed, uh, purely for the difficulty
Speaker 1: of breeding a dog without a butthole. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know. Uh, I don't think that's possible. So I would,
Speaker 1: I would, I would. I would feel very bad for
Speaker 1: the animal and it should not know, the genes should
Speaker 1: not carry on. But if you did manage to breed
Speaker 1: a dog without a butth hole, like I would have
Speaker 1: to give you a very short applause for just a
Speaker 1: genius and either but nonetheless absolutely right, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but yeah, but with working dogs, if they're bred in
Speaker 1: a healthy way both for their physical health and for
Speaker 1: their mental health, where they are happy dogs, you know,
Speaker 1: with with you know, then you know, I think that's
Speaker 1: kind of like the ideal thing, because you're you're breeding
Speaker 1: them to be physically healthy and then mentally healthy. As
Speaker 1: long as like people will sometimes get sheep dogs like
Speaker 1: for their tiny apartment or something like, that's not good
Speaker 1: because they're not gonna be happy there. They gotta actually
Speaker 1: have be able to have the space to do to
Speaker 1: do these things because it's like it's fun for them
Speaker 1: to be active and feel, you know, like they're they're
Speaker 1: doing something. Um much like people, you know, people like
Speaker 1: to have a purpose or or to have to be
Speaker 1: able to have exercise and go out and do fun things.
Speaker 1: So it's all about that environmental stimuli. It creates more
Speaker 1: neurons as the dog develops. Um. That's why. Uh, enrichment
Speaker 1: and enclosures at zoos that are you know, and I
Speaker 1: not a huge fan of zoo. I love a good
Speaker 1: zoo that is all about conservation and education and stuff,
Speaker 1: but enrichment that creates more neurons and the brain is
Speaker 1: crucial to these animals that are that are you know,
Speaker 1: bred for for our companionship. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I agree to with with the zoos thing. It's you
Speaker 1: have to it's it really does affect a brain development
Speaker 1: for animals bred in captivity. If don't have enough and
Speaker 1: real quick on the zoo topic, North Carolina, to any
Speaker 1: listeners out there, is home to the largest walk through
Speaker 1: zoo in the world. It is in Asheboro, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: and there's two ends to it. There's an African end
Speaker 1: to it and a North American end to it. And
Speaker 1: it is incredible, Like they have these huge, huge environments
Speaker 1: for the animals to to uh roam around in and
Speaker 1: it's a super fun place. And it's only like seventeen
Speaker 1: bucks to get in the door, so it's not expensive
Speaker 1: in any way. And they're all about conservations. So if
Speaker 1: you ever, it's about two and a half hours away
Speaker 1: from me. So that's the zoo that I grew up
Speaker 1: going to primarily. Uh And if you ever are passing
Speaker 1: through North Carolina and want to spend a day uh
Speaker 1: getting to to see these animals up close and in
Speaker 1: in you know, approximations of environments, that's that's a very
Speaker 1: cool place to go to. Oh that's awesome. I love that.
Speaker 1: But uh yeah, I mean it's so interesting though, like
Speaker 1: how you can one topic like from kangaroos pulling people
Speaker 1: into the water to kelpies and it's like there's an
Speaker 1: Australian kelpie but it's a cool dog. That's quite the
Speaker 1: connection there that you you even thought to to look
Speaker 1: this up and it turns out that there was something
Speaker 1: even called in Australia. I know, I was amazed. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna take a quick break and then we'll
Speaker 1: be back with a whole new question from another listener email,
Speaker 1: where we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics, parasites. So, Christie,
Speaker 1: what is your feelings about parasites? What is my feelings
Speaker 1: about parasites human or the rest of the the animal kingdom? Um?
Speaker 1: All of them? Any of them? So human parasites, I've
Speaker 1: known a few, I've been friends with a few that
Speaker 1: haven't cut off throughout the years, um. But the the
Speaker 1: rest of the parasites, I know, I've kind of had
Speaker 1: to you know, the more I learned about the the
Speaker 1: animal kingdom, I think, the more I've had to come
Speaker 1: around on the concept of parasites. I realized that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of beneficial parasites primarily you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to say primarily beneficial parasites, but it kind
Speaker 1: of depends on what the parasite is doing to me,
Speaker 1: right It kind of it's kind of you know, it's
Speaker 1: like everything, it's it's what am I getting out of
Speaker 1: this deal type of response. I mean to be to
Speaker 1: be very pedantic about it. Anything that's a parasite on
Speaker 1: your body is going to be harmful to you. So like, uh,
Speaker 1: a parasites. UM specifically means like something that basically takes
Speaker 1: from you and it's harmful to you and it benefits itself.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of symbiotic relationships, different one types
Speaker 1: of symbiotic relationships, So you can have a symbiote in
Speaker 1: your body and it can be either good or bad. UM.
Speaker 1: So like there's mutualism, which is like you both benefit
Speaker 1: uh from the relationship. There's commence allism where it's benefiting
Speaker 1: and you're not but it doesn't really hurt you at all.
Speaker 1: And then there's a parasitism, which is that it's benefiting
Speaker 1: from your from your sweet body juices, and it's hurting
Speaker 1: you so real quick. Is a leech, depending on the
Speaker 1: use of the leech, a symbia and a parasite. Like
Speaker 1: if I was wading through a river and it latched
Speaker 1: onto me, it would be a parasite, but if a
Speaker 1: doctor uses it, it's a symbiate. That is so interesting.
Speaker 1: I've never thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: So like in its natural environment, a leech is a
Speaker 1: parasite because it's sucking your blood and that's not good
Speaker 1: for you. But then if you take it, it's like
Speaker 1: a man made symbiotic relationship. That's so interesting. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you actually have it in a medical setting, like let's
Speaker 1: say a current day medical setting, because like leeches used
Speaker 1: to be used in ways that they thought it was beneficial,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. But now like we actually do have
Speaker 1: say like um, maggots, their medical magic maggots, their medical
Speaker 1: leeches that are used in very specific circumstances with like uh,
Speaker 1: debriding tissue or like with leeches, Like I think it's
Speaker 1: something to do with like getting circulation back in a
Speaker 1: like getting blood flow into a part of the body
Speaker 1: that's not getting blood flow again. They it's very rarely used,
Speaker 1: but like they do use them occasionally and um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: in those circumstances they do, it transforms from a parasitic
Speaker 1: relationship to a mutualistic symbiotic relationship. That is such an
Speaker 1: interesting point. I've just never thought of it that way.
Speaker 1: And some people have pet leeches adorable, I believe one
Speaker 1: Jamie Loftus. I don't know if she's been a guest
Speaker 1: before she had she has, she has, and and I
Speaker 1: believe we talked a little bit about her pet leach.
Speaker 1: I listened to her story of her pet leach and
Speaker 1: I thought it was heartwarming. Uh. But yeah, so they're
Speaker 1: in bloss that like, parasites can be many different things,
Speaker 1: So can be anything from a leech to a tape
Speaker 1: worm can also be birds can be parasites. There can
Speaker 1: be brood parasites. So a cuckoo bird is a brood parasite.
Speaker 1: It benefits from other birds nests and it lays its
Speaker 1: egg in the nest. Uh. And it it's bad for
Speaker 1: the other bird species, but it's good for the cuckoo.
Speaker 1: So even a cute little baby bird can be a parasite.
Speaker 1: So the idea of a parasite is not just like
Speaker 1: a worm thing with like teeth. Uh. It's many different,
Speaker 1: many different things. But we are fortunately going to talk
Speaker 1: about some of the grosser parasites with this question, Lucky Day.
Speaker 1: So here is the question. Um, Hi, Katie, My now
Speaker 1: thirteen year old son introduced me to your show a
Speaker 1: few years ago while he was deep into a bird phase,
Speaker 1: and I've been a fan of the pot ever since.
Speaker 1: I'm not a creationist by any means, but I do
Speaker 1: have a few questions about the mechanics of evolution. Uh.
Speaker 1: There is one specifically that I'm hoping someone can help answer,
Speaker 1: how the heck do parasites do anything? Evolutionarily speaking, evolution
Speaker 1: is commonly explained as a series of adaptations over time
Speaker 1: that are passed on from generation to generation. I get
Speaker 1: Darwin's finches for example. That makes sense, But how did
Speaker 1: parasites pass on their parasitic behavior from one generation to
Speaker 1: the next. Take zombie snails for example. Evolutionarily speaking, how
Speaker 1: did that flat worm discover to get into a snail?
Speaker 1: Drive the snail to a prime location for a bird
Speaker 1: to see it, learned to pulsate in the snail's eyestalks
Speaker 1: in order to advertise itself to birds, survive being eaten
Speaker 1: by the bird, then release its eggs into the birds
Speaker 1: so that the bird's droppings lead to the continuation of
Speaker 1: that species. And almost all parasites have equally improbable life cycles.
Speaker 1: I don't understand how this came to be within the
Speaker 1: framework of evolution, and I'm wondering if you've heard of
Speaker 1: any evolutionary biologists discuss or write about this. How are
Speaker 1: parasitic behaviors created and passed on? Thank you for your
Speaker 1: great job on the pot and this is from limb
Speaker 1: Uh and thank you. This is an excellent question. You're
Speaker 1: not alone. A lot of people, a lot of scientists,
Speaker 1: a lot of evolutionary biologists, find this very fascinating, very interesting,
Speaker 1: because it is so surprising when you see such a
Speaker 1: specific evolutionary behavior, like you explained with the zombie snail
Speaker 1: or the it's a it's a flat worm that causes
Speaker 1: this like zombie snail to happen. It's actually called lucochloridium flatworm.
Speaker 1: And it will talk a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: details of that later, but yeah, no, you're you are
Speaker 1: you are that That description that you gave Limb is
Speaker 1: pretty accurate. Uh, and it is. It's mind blowing. But
Speaker 1: first I kind of want to talk about evolution in
Speaker 1: general because I think sometimes when you talk about evolution,
Speaker 1: there's a sense of like there's a long term intentionality,
Speaker 1: so like an animal wants to evolve in a certain
Speaker 1: way or something. I know. I know, like you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily literally believe that, but as humans are, our psychology
Speaker 1: is so attuned to intention because we're intentional creatures, Like
Speaker 1: we can plan for the future and say like when
Speaker 1: I grow up, I want to be on a podcast
Speaker 1: and talk about parasites, Like we we can think about
Speaker 1: the future. Um. But an animal who's evolving can't think
Speaker 1: about the future of evolutions like I'm It doesn't think
Speaker 1: like I'm going to evolve a certain way, and not
Speaker 1: even evolution, like evolution itself has no desires or intention
Speaker 1: Like evolution isn't like I'm going to make a weird
Speaker 1: uh snail parasite. It's all based on just a few
Speaker 1: very simple rules, and those simple rules creates this uh
Speaker 1: exponential complexity. There's only direction in hindsight, right, you can
Speaker 1: only see the direction that it came from in hindsight.
Speaker 1: The rest of it is just uh is. Honestly, it's
Speaker 1: like blind luck is to whatever allowed it to pass
Speaker 1: its genes on. So what you have to look at,
Speaker 1: I think with with something like the zombie snail, which
Speaker 1: I cannot stop staring at the gift that you sent
Speaker 1: me in this Google file, because it is it is
Speaker 1: like the hypnotade from from from Futurama. I believe the
Speaker 1: the snail. It's so fascinating looking. It does not look
Speaker 1: like real. It looks like a toy almost, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you have in its ice stocks, you know how,
Speaker 1: like snails normally have these little ice stocks. Ye, cutie
Speaker 1: little snails. The these paris citic flatworms. Um, those pulsating
Speaker 1: things are actually brood sacks, so they're full of a
Speaker 1: bunch of these parasites and they are they they grow
Speaker 1: into the snail like through the snails like becomes longer
Speaker 1: and longer and actually grow into their eyes talks, and
Speaker 1: these things are pulsating and it looks like and there
Speaker 1: are these different colors like green and sort of this
Speaker 1: reddish brown, and it makes the snail look like a
Speaker 1: weird techno party snail in the grossest way. And this
Speaker 1: is very attractive to birds who will then eat the snail.
Speaker 1: The flatworm completes its life cycle inside the bird mates
Speaker 1: and then lays more brood sacks that comes out in
Speaker 1: the bird's feces and it's poop. And then the snail
Speaker 1: will eat some leaves that has this bird poop on it,
Speaker 1: and then they unintentionally ingest this parasite and this horrible
Speaker 1: cycle starts again. Amazing are these now, these these eyes stalks?
Speaker 1: Are they mimicking a certain type of caterpillar that these
Speaker 1: birds might might appreciate. Yeah, I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: a specific caterpillar, but it's definitely got the look of
Speaker 1: a caterpillar or some some kind of undulating grub that
Speaker 1: the bird would be interested in eating. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. Um And normally I think these snails
Speaker 1: would avoid light, but the flatworms makes them less avoidance
Speaker 1: of light, so which is great for for the flatworms
Speaker 1: because then that makes it more likely that they're going
Speaker 1: to get eaten by a bird. But the idea that like, well,
Speaker 1: how okay, so so evolution basically has two basic rules
Speaker 1: that you have to follow in order to pass on
Speaker 1: your jeans, like don't die and uh mate, or pass
Speaker 1: on your genes like reproduce. You can reproduce asexually. You
Speaker 1: can clone yourself and pass on a full copy of yourself,
Speaker 1: or you can reproduce by sex and pass on a
Speaker 1: partial copy of yourself. And you know, if you pass
Speaker 1: on your genes and you don't die before you pass
Speaker 1: on your genes, you're the winner, uh like, And then
Speaker 1: your genes get passed on. And the reason that's those
Speaker 1: are the rules. It's just genes that get passed on
Speaker 1: get passed on. It's as simple as that, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's sort of a weird kind of
Speaker 1: circular logic. But that's how it works. So if if
Speaker 1: the genes make the animal live in a way that
Speaker 1: gets the genes passed on, the genes get passed on,
Speaker 1: it makes more of that animal. So I think in
Speaker 1: terms of like, well, how can something so simple, such
Speaker 1: a simple kind of binary rule, like you're either dead
Speaker 1: or you're alive, and you pass on your genes, Like,
Speaker 1: how can that create such complexity. There's a old computer
Speaker 1: game called John Conway's Game of Life. Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard of that? I have not, No, it's it's an
Speaker 1: old one. It's uh, it's I think kind of before
Speaker 1: our time. But it was a very simple computer game
Speaker 1: where you would have these cells, which are these like
Speaker 1: pixelated squares, interact with each other based on only three rules.
Speaker 1: And this was like one of a really early computer
Speaker 1: game because this is like right when computers were starting.
Speaker 1: He programmed in just these three rules, which was any
Speaker 1: live cell with two or three live neighbors will survive.
Speaker 1: Any dead cell with three live neighbors will become a
Speaker 1: live cell, and any other live cells, uh, like all
Speaker 1: other live cells will die in the next generation. Um,
Speaker 1: so all other dead cells will stay dead. So basically
Speaker 1: if you have a if you have one of these
Speaker 1: little pixels and it's surrounded by uh, two three living pixels,
Speaker 1: it'll become alive or stay alive, otherwise it dies. And
Speaker 1: that's simple, simple rule. Uh creates incredible complexity in this game,
Speaker 1: like these these beautiful patterns will emerge. You'll have things
Speaker 1: like gliders, which are like these little like they almost
Speaker 1: look like little tiny birds that like fly across the screen.
Speaker 1: And there's no intentionality behind it. The pixels don't know
Speaker 1: what they're doing. The programmer all he did was program
Speaker 1: these rules and he doesn't have any designs on like
Speaker 1: I want to create these things. It's just from those
Speaker 1: rules creates such incredible complexity that I think, like computer
Speaker 1: scientists and mathematicians are still like studying this stuff, like
Speaker 1: to this day. I certainly don't understand it that well.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's that's how complex it becomes. It's just
Speaker 1: it's mind blowing. One of my favorite, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite animals I know on I believe your last episode.
Speaker 1: I believe it was with Maura Wilson Rude. You talked
Speaker 1: about just the sheer volume like for like turtles Sea Turtles,
Speaker 1: right you you have to have a large number of
Speaker 1: of offspring because the mortality rate is something like. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite animals is the Mola mola, the sunfish,
Speaker 1: and it's the largest bony fish in the world. And
Speaker 1: one of my favorite facts about it is at one
Speaker 1: time they will lay three hundred million eggs. And that
Speaker 1: is yeah, and and and the this thing barely can swim.
Speaker 1: It loves the sunbathe that it allows. You know, seagulls
Speaker 1: out at sea will land on this thing and pick
Speaker 1: off parasites on the side of it. It eats jellyfish
Speaker 1: by all. It's it's and I hate to say this
Speaker 1: because this is me anthropomorphasizing it. I think I got
Speaker 1: that word right. It's a dumb anthropomorphizing thank you. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a dumb looking fish. Like it doesn't it
Speaker 1: looks like it's not all the way made yet, right,
Speaker 1: It's just like kind of cuts off at one point. Uh.
Speaker 1: It looks like you like took a fish and just
Speaker 1: like flattened it into a fish pancake and then exactly
Speaker 1: ocean It's like, I guess I'm a living pancake exactly.
Speaker 1: That's it's basically what it is. It's a giant, swimming,
Speaker 1: very peaceful, living pancake. I love the thing though, and
Speaker 1: and that's one of them. Again, that's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite facts about it is just the sheer. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons this thing has has uh is still around
Speaker 1: to this day is because of the sheer volume of
Speaker 1: eggs that it lays at any given time, and it's
Speaker 1: young that hatch from those are teeny tiny. They go
Speaker 1: from being like almost plankton sized to being this huge fish.
Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of the zooplankton in the ocean
Speaker 1: uh is larva or or the babies of a lot
Speaker 1: of bigger of like fish, of other of other sea creatures.
Speaker 1: And it's just like you wouldn't realize that this like
Speaker 1: almost like microscopic like thing is like a baby, and
Speaker 1: like there's massive amounts of zooplankton in the ocean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that fact. It's funny you bring that up
Speaker 1: because I was actually thinking about talking about the sunfish
Speaker 1: on on the brood thing just because they have so
Speaker 1: many babies at once. But yeah, and so what's interesting
Speaker 1: about that is that kind of is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that evolution can produce such incredible complexity is the
Speaker 1: sheer amount of time and scale of animals being born
Speaker 1: is hard to comprehend. So for something like a flat worm,
Speaker 1: it's not just evolving over millions of years, but there
Speaker 1: are billions and billions of generations of these flatworms because
Speaker 1: they breed it very fast rates. So you know, something
Speaker 1: like this, this luco Chloridium flatworm. It's like I said,
Speaker 1: like those things you see inside of the snail pulsating,
Speaker 1: that's not just one flatworm, that's a whole rude sack
Speaker 1: of a bunch of flow worms. And so in each
Speaker 1: generation you have like like each flatworm creates like hundreds
Speaker 1: of more flat worms, and they do that, you know,
Speaker 1: multiple times, uh and a year, and then like you
Speaker 1: just you're you have an incomprehensible number of these horrible
Speaker 1: little flatworms reducing over millions of years. And like you know,
Speaker 1: you run a simple program like the game of Life
Speaker 1: just for a few hours, you get these incredibly complex patterns.
Speaker 1: You run this computer program of just like you, if
Speaker 1: you can pass on your genes, you can pass on
Speaker 1: your genes and you make more of yourself you are.
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of inevitable that you're gonna get complexity.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the the universe, where it's like
Speaker 1: you have some simple rules for atoms interacting with each other,
Speaker 1: and from that you just inevitably get like galaxies and
Speaker 1: planets and these incredibly complex things in the universe, which
Speaker 1: is what gave rise to the idea UM And you know,
Speaker 1: not to get too in depth into this topic, but
Speaker 1: intelligent design, right, it's it's why we we look at
Speaker 1: something this specific and we say, Okay, there's no way
Speaker 1: somebody didn't design this. Uh, you know, there wasn't There
Speaker 1: wasn't a creator. But like you said, the sheer incomprehensible
Speaker 1: volume of genetic lines that are happening at any given
Speaker 1: time is something that we can't we can't fathom, we
Speaker 1: cannot understand, and the complex situations that allows. Okay, because
Speaker 1: of the slight variation and color of these genes, this
Speaker 1: gene mutation, this offers uh an advantage that past generation
Speaker 1: has never had. And now suddenly the population explodes because
Speaker 1: of that one tiny, tiny genetic mutation. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: it's like, I'm sympathetic to people who can like believe
Speaker 1: in intelligent design. Obviously, I I think that's right, copletely wrong. Uh.
Speaker 1: And but I do understand why you would think that way,
Speaker 1: because even I, like, even though I've been like thinking
Speaker 1: about parasites for many years, like and in appreciating parasites
Speaker 1: for many years and letting them use my body as
Speaker 1: a hotel now, but like I still when I read
Speaker 1: about like, well, you know, here's the orb weaver spider
Speaker 1: parasitoid wasp that lays its larva on the spider and
Speaker 1: it controls its brain. It makes it. We've a little
Speaker 1: little nursery for the baby larva, and and then it
Speaker 1: eats it. And it's like, how this is diabolical? Like
Speaker 1: this is how did they? Uh? Yeah, it's incredible, and
Speaker 1: especially these ones that have these complex life cycles of
Speaker 1: like well, the toxoplasmosis Gandhia, I like, goes inside the rat,
Speaker 1: makes the rat like I think a cat is cool
Speaker 1: and fun and sexually attracted to the cat, and goes
Speaker 1: up to the cat and cats like cool, free lunch.
Speaker 1: That's horny for me. And then it eats the rat
Speaker 1: and then this and then the taxoplasmosis Gonda breathes inside
Speaker 1: the cat and comes out and cap whop, and then
Speaker 1: and then in fix her outs again and it happens
Speaker 1: against like how like how did it know to do this? Well,
Speaker 1: it didn't. It's uh yeah, it just you know, these
Speaker 1: random mutations that happen will produce a slightly slight alteration
Speaker 1: in its behavior that uh. Sometimes you know, there's both
Speaker 1: like these very minor steps and evolution. Sometimes they are
Speaker 1: like larger steps. I think they're both you know, involved
Speaker 1: in evolutionary processes. Um. But for instance, so like let's
Speaker 1: talk about like what and there's obviously there there is
Speaker 1: a lot of research into specific parasites, like I know
Speaker 1: with the orb weaver parasite, the parasitoid wasp larva, which
Speaker 1: is like a little maggot that will turn into a
Speaker 1: wasp um but it it lashes onto the orb weaver spider,
Speaker 1: and they were trying to figure out, well, how does
Speaker 1: it make the spider uh stop weaving this beautiful web
Speaker 1: and start weaving a cocoon for the larva to live
Speaker 1: in while the spider dies. Like it's it's just awful,
Speaker 1: very diabolical. But uh, the and the it's like because like,
Speaker 1: how can it make such a complex behavior of the spider.
Speaker 1: How does it? Well, it turns out the spider does
Speaker 1: do this behavior when it is molting. So the spider
Speaker 1: goes through these molding phases where it's like very vulnerable
Speaker 1: while it's molting, and so it will weave itself a
Speaker 1: strong web to protect it. UH. That will and it's
Speaker 1: also more visible to like uh, birds and stuff because
Speaker 1: it doesn't want to like with its web it does.
Speaker 1: It doesn't want it to be too visible so that
Speaker 1: it like catches things before it's cocoon. It wants it
Speaker 1: to be more visible so that things don't run into
Speaker 1: it and knock it down while it's in this vulnerable state.
Speaker 1: So the larva, the parasitoid larva UH, some kind of
Speaker 1: chemical that it excretes triggers the hormones in the spider
Speaker 1: to to make it think that it's molting. And obviously
Speaker 1: this is something that the larva has no idea it's doing,
Speaker 1: but it just so happens that like probably it started
Speaker 1: out just being happy enough to eat the spiders slowly
Speaker 1: eat it. But maybe some kind of digestive enzyme or
Speaker 1: something also triggers that that spider's hormonal response. And that's
Speaker 1: like that specific chemical or is something that researchers are
Speaker 1: looking into. And so like when people are interested in
Speaker 1: the evolutionary history of parasites. Researchers look into like, Okay,
Speaker 1: how does this actually work? We don't even know necessarily,
Speaker 1: like what this chemical is, how it works exactly, but
Speaker 1: like their look, they're researching it like right now. And
Speaker 1: the thing that most folks and understandably kind of out
Speaker 1: of sight, out of mind situation, you don't see all
Speaker 1: the times this failed throughout the court. You know, the
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions, if not hundreds of billions of times
Speaker 1: where the wrong chemical got secreted which caused a behavior
Speaker 1: where the the parasite was not able to pass on.
Speaker 1: It's it's genetics. So that that's another thing too, is
Speaker 1: when we see again it's a matter of comprehension and
Speaker 1: our peon little minds not able to uh to to
Speaker 1: wrap wrap around the sheer volume of attempts, of of
Speaker 1: failed attempts here to where it got to the point
Speaker 1: whatever you're looking at, whatever form of incredible evolutionary biology
Speaker 1: you're looking at, is the result of so many failed
Speaker 1: attempts that you'll you'll it's a it's a number that's
Speaker 1: impossible to to probably even I don't know if I
Speaker 1: don't know if science can even count that high. It's
Speaker 1: it's amazing I can count that high. I can do it. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, no, absolutely, that's absolutely correct. It's our brand.
Speaker 1: It's not even that we're dumb. It's just that our
Speaker 1: brains don't work on that scale. Like we don't live.
Speaker 1: We don't live millions of years, so our brains only work,
Speaker 1: you know, on the scale of maybe like a hundred years.
Speaker 1: Is you know where we where we generally cap off at.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I mean it's kind of like one
Speaker 1: of those you know, like those like learn to draw
Speaker 1: things and it's like draw two ovals. Now you've got
Speaker 1: a bunny, and it's like this detailed bunny. You're like, what,
Speaker 1: I don't know how we got from the two ovals
Speaker 1: and a few scratch marks to the whole freaking bunny. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of like what evolution is, Like, we
Speaker 1: don't it's hard to see all the steps that you
Speaker 1: get to to get the to get the bunny or
Speaker 1: snail parasite. But yeah, in terms of specifically this, uh,
Speaker 1: the louco chloridium flat warm. I wonder with a lot
Speaker 1: of these parasites where they have their life cycle, like
Speaker 1: you start out in a bird and then you get
Speaker 1: pooped out and you get eaten by snail and that
Speaker 1: gets eaten by a bird. Blah blah blah. I wonder
Speaker 1: if it's like these like an accidental case of um
Speaker 1: my assis, which is where you actually it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a parasite, but you eat something and then it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: well I wasn't a parasite, but now I'm in this
Speaker 1: environment where the only way to keep living is like
Speaker 1: to feed off of where I am right now. And
Speaker 1: so like uh accent told my my a sis uh
Speaker 1: is like you you eat something like a larva or something,
Speaker 1: and it's typically not a parasite, but now it's inside
Speaker 1: your body and it's like, well, I'm gonna eat where
Speaker 1: I am uh, and then you can like poop it out.
Speaker 1: And so if this happens, like say you have this
Speaker 1: flat worm saying it's eaten by a bird on accident,
Speaker 1: it's not a parasite yet it's like hey, like I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to live my life and now I'm inside
Speaker 1: a bird. Well, hey, I see another one that got eaten,
Speaker 1: Like we're gonna mate. That's great. Then it gets pooped
Speaker 1: out and then it's like, well, our our eggs got
Speaker 1: pooped out, okay, and then that gets eaten by chance
Speaker 1: by a snail and then they're like in side the snail, like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess now we're here, like we're gonna you know,
Speaker 1: like be be in the snail and like continue to develop,
Speaker 1: and then that gets eaten by aber and it's like,
Speaker 1: well this worked out well. Like now we're back in
Speaker 1: the bird and we're in a single spar again, and
Speaker 1: we'll mate and make more of us. And then you
Speaker 1: start to get mutations and again, like you said, most
Speaker 1: mutations are bad, Like most mutations like are a game over,
Speaker 1: but once in a while they're go. It's like, why
Speaker 1: viruses don't just like uh, immediately turn into just world
Speaker 1: ending deadly killer viruses. Most mutations on a virus is
Speaker 1: going to be bad for the virus. So mutating virus, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily a good thing for the virus. It's
Speaker 1: just once in a while it's good. And that's why
Speaker 1: it's important everyone gets vaccinated because the more chances we
Speaker 1: give something to mutate them more likely it's going to
Speaker 1: turn into a mutation that benefits that organism. In this case,
Speaker 1: for viruses. That's bad for us. We don't want everybody
Speaker 1: get their their vaccine as soon as possible. Yeah that Uh,
Speaker 1: let's let's put a stop to opportunistic parasitism. Like you're
Speaker 1: like you're talking about where you know, these things just
Speaker 1: find themselves in a uh well damn, this environment is
Speaker 1: a lot cozier than my last one. And uh and
Speaker 1: I got no choice but to hang out and here,
Speaker 1: you know, longer than this host is gonna want me to.
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, that's that's a bad news. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta put a stop to this. If
Speaker 1: there's any position your podcast takes, uh, it is to
Speaker 1: stop opportunistic parasitism, you know, plant plant your flag in
Speaker 1: that take Katie, if I feel like some parasites are
Speaker 1: cool as as not in my body, yes, exactly exactly
Speaker 1: like like again, uh, situational symbiotic paris no not, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna is the general term for anything you're living with
Speaker 1: in some way. So so uh if if if you
Speaker 1: can take a parasite and make it a symbiot, a symbiote,
Speaker 1: a mutualistic symbiote, I own a mutualistic symbiote. I only
Speaker 1: know that word, by the way, from Spider Man, because venom, venom,
Speaker 1: and carnage. We're we're, we're. I love that. I love
Speaker 1: learning about science from comics. Yeah, it's it's the best.
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, that's primarily where I know that word from.
Speaker 1: And then of course the famous example of like the
Speaker 1: c an enemy and the clown fish, the mutual mutual relationship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh yeah, yeah, yeah, but no, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: and so, like you can imagine with a flatworm, it's
Speaker 1: like it's already getting eaten by snails and birds on accident,
Speaker 1: and then it starts to get these little mutations that
Speaker 1: maybe makes it a little better, like at getting in
Speaker 1: in the one and so you just start and now
Speaker 1: it's to the point where it's like, man, this devious
Speaker 1: flatworm has this whole plan about how to make the
Speaker 1: snail this like uh psychotropic looking thing that's really heapetizing
Speaker 1: to the bird. And it's like it had no idea.
Speaker 1: It was just like I'm inside this now. I if
Speaker 1: I can stay alive, I'm gonna stay alive. I mean,
Speaker 1: flatworms don't have brains. They don't think thoughts, I don't
Speaker 1: think exactly. Well they actually that's not true flatworms have
Speaker 1: I believe, well, it might not necessarily be a brain.
Speaker 1: It might be like a neural bundle ganglia. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: a ganglia. I'd have to look it up whether or
Speaker 1: not it's actually classified as a brain or not. It's
Speaker 1: very basic, you know, they only have a few neurons
Speaker 1: to rub together. Really grasping at some of the some
Speaker 1: of this vocabulary. I took marine technology. I have a
Speaker 1: degree on marine technology back when I was college age.
Speaker 1: So we studied flat worms and and you know, like
Speaker 1: sea creatures and stuff and and very simple organisms you
Speaker 1: know on up until the you know, uh, mammals, marine
Speaker 1: mammals and stuff. So um, some of this is scratching,
Speaker 1: scratching those it's yeah, I have that scratched in all
Speaker 1: very long time. So I'm loving all of these these topics.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, the like the color of the snail, Like again,
Speaker 1: if you can find this gift of this, yes, So
Speaker 1: the color that this thing is it looks like you said,
Speaker 1: a snail out of rave, right, it looks like it's
Speaker 1: skits and ties or something. Yeah, exactly. It's doing that
Speaker 1: pulsating thing to like like there's a like like a
Speaker 1: DJ Daniel is DJing the party that that this thing
Speaker 1: is at right, you should suggest this to him, give
Speaker 1: him a hey, you ever try one of these in
Speaker 1: your sets? He would probably put that on the screen
Speaker 1: behind him when he does a zoom set or something. Um. So,
Speaker 1: these colors, the number of times that this flatworm reproduced
Speaker 1: in this snail and it wasn't those colors is like
Speaker 1: billions of times. Except and then there was one accidental
Speaker 1: mutation of the genetic code to where it add did
Speaker 1: like a ring of orange or a ring of purple
Speaker 1: to these eye stalks, and the birds started being attracted
Speaker 1: exactly what wild for it. And then by accident. It's
Speaker 1: not like they got that response and thought, oh ship,
Speaker 1: we need to change another genetic No, no, no, no
Speaker 1: brain power here you're thinking about it. It's just just survived. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They just ended up exactly living longer. Exactly if you live,
Speaker 1: you live, is just kind of like the whole thing
Speaker 1: with if you live and and pop out some progeny,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's all you gotta do. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope that kind of like puts things into perspective,
Speaker 1: like how you can get such incredible, complex, devious little
Speaker 1: parasites from such a simple rule like if you ran
Speaker 1: if you ran a computer program for billions of years,
Speaker 1: who knows what kind of Wait a minute, what if
Speaker 1: for the computer program? No? No, what if for the simulation?
Speaker 1: The whole time blowing my mind, Katie. It's honestly, I
Speaker 1: don't like if we're a simulation. I don't care. It's fine.
Speaker 1: It's like the same thing, right, yea me either. I
Speaker 1: still got I still got bills to pay. I still
Speaker 1: like to exactly. Wow, if there was ever a response
Speaker 1: to the we're living in a simulation theory, that that's
Speaker 1: it right there, and I don't care. Peza still tastes
Speaker 1: good that that's all that matters. Christie, have you heard of, uh,
Speaker 1: the way that everything is becoming crabs, that all things
Speaker 1: become crabs, eventually all things crabs, Eventually we all become crabs.
Speaker 1: I don't think i've heard now. I am familiar with
Speaker 1: a certain gift that gets circulated whenever, maybe like somebody
Speaker 1: who's of of you know, not maybe not very liked
Speaker 1: online or something, people start dropping a certain advancing crabs
Speaker 1: celebrating Yeah, someone you know, maybe maybe like an awful
Speaker 1: politician or just terrible person, right, yeah, when when someone
Speaker 1: when someone loses at something, uh, and they're a bad person,
Speaker 1: the dancing crab gift definitely comes into play. Um, Well,
Speaker 1: it's that's very relevant because so carsonization is this the
Speaker 1: thing that happens amongst crustaceans and other arthropods, which is,
Speaker 1: like you know, Arthur prods includes things like spiders and um,
Speaker 1: but like it's mostly with crustaceans, is that they keep
Speaker 1: independently evolving into crab shape. Like you have the true crabs,
Speaker 1: but then you have something like more related to a
Speaker 1: lobster that just independently starts to evolve into a crab shape.
Speaker 1: And you even have spiders that will evolve into a
Speaker 1: crab shape. And so it's so common that there's actually
Speaker 1: a term for it called carsonization, which is when something
Speaker 1: just starts to go into crab shape because apparently crab
Speaker 1: shape is really good. And we actually had an episode
Speaker 1: on this if you want to hear more about carsonization.
Speaker 1: But I bring it up because I've got this great
Speaker 1: listener question. Um who writes Hi, Katie, I love listening
Speaker 1: to the podcast because I love animals and all the
Speaker 1: gifts you have on the show. Uh, And I have
Speaker 1: a question for you. Are there different forms of evolution
Speaker 1: that are similar to carsonization where there are multiple versions
Speaker 1: of the same body type, Like if a reptile moves
Speaker 1: to a body of water, it'll evolve into a croc
Speaker 1: or a bird will become flightless if X and Y happens.
Speaker 1: Or could it be that crabs are the ultimate life
Speaker 1: form and humans will inevitably evolve into them? L O L.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Enrique, Thank you so much, Enrique. This is
Speaker 1: a great question. I love it, it is and you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right. Yes, this happens a lot actually, where there
Speaker 1: is just some kind of animal form that multiple animals
Speaker 1: related or unrelated, decide this is this is it. I
Speaker 1: love this. I love this shape. Of course, when I
Speaker 1: say decide, obviously I'm speaking facetiously. They don't decide anything.
Speaker 1: But you know, nature loves certain forms of animal uh.
Speaker 1: And this is called both. This is called either convergent evolution,
Speaker 1: so these are like animals who are unrelated developing similar
Speaker 1: forms or parallel evolution, so animals share a relatively recent
Speaker 1: common ancestor, but then they independently evolve the same characteristics. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's so fascinating whenever this happens the first one.
Speaker 1: I feel like our mammalian version of crabs carsonization is moles. Molarization, Uh,
Speaker 1: nothing to do with teeth. Also, I completely thought when
Speaker 1: you were saying carsonization, I was thinking, like Johnny Carson's
Speaker 1: last name. So I have no idea how any of
Speaker 1: this stuff is spelled. But molar ization. I love that
Speaker 1: name already. It's probably like linguists don't like me saying
Speaker 1: that because I don't think a Mueller and well, maybe
Speaker 1: they share a root. I don't know. They certainly don't
Speaker 1: share a root in my mouth. Dent we're bringing dental
Speaker 1: humor back. God, I can't wait to go to the dentist, Like,
Speaker 1: once I'm fully vaccinated, get those suckers clean. I I
Speaker 1: kind of this is so weird and I feel like
Speaker 1: it makes me, I don't know, unnerving for people to
Speaker 1: hear this. I like going to the dentist me too. Okay,
Speaker 1: you do enjoy that, I do. I mean I don't
Speaker 1: obviously don't want to get a cavity filled or a
Speaker 1: procedure done, but just the teeth cleaning. I like that smooth,
Speaker 1: smooth feeling on my teeth. You want to hear something
Speaker 1: even weirder. I actually have a home dental kit with
Speaker 1: like the little picks and stuff. Okay, I have that too,
Speaker 1: do you really? Yes? I bought it for the pandemic
Speaker 1: because it's like, well, I need to I need to
Speaker 1: clean my teeth, like I'm going a hold over a
Speaker 1: year without getting my teeth professionally clean. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: yeah I got. I got like with a little rubber
Speaker 1: thingy and the little scrapy doodog, and like a mirror
Speaker 1: that I never used because I can't with my two hands.
Speaker 1: Yeah I can't. I the visual like this spatial ability
Speaker 1: to know which direction to go while looking into two
Speaker 1: mirrors is something I can't wrap my brain around. Because
Speaker 1: I love I love getting the plaque. The with the
Speaker 1: build up is called calculus. When it turns hard um
Speaker 1: on you, it's because of a Is it because it's
Speaker 1: like calcium build up or no? I think it's because
Speaker 1: it's as hard as the math that it's named after.
Speaker 1: Hum baby, we're bringing it back, bringing it back. And
Speaker 1: and speaking of of of teeth, some of these moles
Speaker 1: are incredible looking. Oh we're going to talk about these
Speaker 1: moles teeth. You better believe it. So moles keep evolving
Speaker 1: and they're not even necessarily moles. So uh, there are
Speaker 1: a family of animals that are moles, like true moles,
Speaker 1: um like things like the Eastern mole found in eastern
Speaker 1: North America. Uh. And this is the only one we're
Speaker 1: talking about that is actually a member of the mole family.
Speaker 1: And this is like, this is, you know, like the
Speaker 1: mole from what's it called Wind and the Willows. I'm
Speaker 1: struggling to think of other popular media where you have
Speaker 1: a mole in it. You have a mole, I'm not familiar.
Speaker 1: I know the name that you just said, but I
Speaker 1: don't know anything about that as it's the one where,
Speaker 1: like it's where Mr. Toad's Wild Ride comes from. I think, oh, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so the mole is wearing like a little outfit, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little waistcout waistcoat, vest things. I can picture it
Speaker 1: in my mind. But they're those little they're those little
Speaker 1: fuzzy grayish black, blind mostly blind mammal. And it's found
Speaker 1: all over the world, but like in in North America.
Speaker 1: I think there are some European moles as well, Old
Speaker 1: World moles as they're called, uh, and New World moles.
Speaker 1: They have like a gray coat. They burrow into soft
Speaker 1: earth and they eat insects for the either the old
Speaker 1: ones the Old World ones are Italian. Correct? Is that
Speaker 1: is that the difference between the two. They live Old
Speaker 1: world is like they live anywhere in uh Eurasia basically
Speaker 1: okay okay uh. And then uh they their eyes are
Speaker 1: mostly nonfunctional. They're kind of like grown over skin. Maybe
Speaker 1: they can detect a little bit of light some species
Speaker 1: of moles uh. And they have small sharp teeth with
Speaker 1: slightly enlarged incisors, so those front teeth, but not not
Speaker 1: really they're all these like little pointy teeth. But they
Speaker 1: do have huge digging claws for digging through the earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're their hands for claws, I guess. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but they look kind of like hands though there there's
Speaker 1: no hair on them or anything. They're they're very pink,
Speaker 1: which I imagine. Uh. And that the claws are are
Speaker 1: huge on these things. There, man, there their borderline. They're
Speaker 1: they're in this uncanny valley of being super cute and
Speaker 1: really freaky looking, straddling that that bridge. Perfectly. Star nosed
Speaker 1: moles are freaky because they have that they have a
Speaker 1: nose that has like tendrils on it, and it actually
Speaker 1: helps them since vibrations in the earth because they don't
Speaker 1: rely too much on their eyesight. The only thing any
Speaker 1: mold species really uses their eyesight forested, hecked light and
Speaker 1: dark uh. And then they will rely on vibrations in
Speaker 1: the earth to sense their prey or to sense threats.
Speaker 1: And having like the that star knows uh both like
Speaker 1: you know, it's both for the sense of smell but
Speaker 1: also to sense more vibrations uh. And so it's really sensitive.
Speaker 1: But it looks like like their face exploded. It's very
Speaker 1: weird looking. But there are a number of other animals
Speaker 1: that look like their moles. They're not technically related. They
Speaker 1: are not in the mole family. Um. There is the
Speaker 1: golden mole, which is found in the deserts of South Africa,
Speaker 1: and despite its name, it is not a mole at all.
Speaker 1: It evolved independently. Uh. It is very cute. It's got
Speaker 1: a light golden coat. Uh. It burrows in sand instead
Speaker 1: of earth, and it eats insects much like the eastern
Speaker 1: mole uh. And it doesn't form permanent burrows, but it
Speaker 1: swims through the sand like a little sand shark. It
Speaker 1: is really fun. They look it's like a bugs Bunny
Speaker 1: cartoon where bugs Bunny is like exactly like that but
Speaker 1: in sand. Uh and it is eyelis. Its skin has
Speaker 1: grown over its non functional eyes, and it uses vibrations
Speaker 1: entirely to see under under the earth, and it's sense
Speaker 1: of smells, so just very similar to the mole. It
Speaker 1: also has big digging claws that it uses, and and
Speaker 1: and hind legs as well that that it can use
Speaker 1: to like uh, to travel through the sand. So again,
Speaker 1: very similar to to the eastern mole. And its teeth
Speaker 1: are very similar as well. So it's got small sharp
Speaker 1: teeth with slightly enlarged incisors but just a little like
Speaker 1: needle like teeth that it can snatch an insect with.
Speaker 1: And it's got no external ears like like the eastern moles.
Speaker 1: Um just kind of it's got ear holes, but it's
Speaker 1: just like there's fur over it. There's no little mouse
Speaker 1: ears or anything on it. So are these mole and
Speaker 1: mole like creatures are they using basically their entire body
Speaker 1: to pick up on vibrations like uh is kind of
Speaker 1: are they? For lack of a better way of explaining,
Speaker 1: are they one giant ear drum. I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they use every part of their
Speaker 1: body to pick up on vibrations, but certainly more than
Speaker 1: just like their feet or their nose. Like I think
Speaker 1: that they've got like whiskers and hairs that they can
Speaker 1: use to pick up on vibrations. I think they get
Speaker 1: it through their nose and through their feet as well,
Speaker 1: So I think multiple part of their bodies they can
Speaker 1: use to sense vibration. Uh so, yeah, yeah, they are.
Speaker 1: They are kind of like even though it seems like
Speaker 1: they lack sensory organs in terms of their eyes, like
Speaker 1: they are making up for it for converting other body
Speaker 1: parts into sensory organs. They're the daredevil of the animal exactly.
Speaker 1: He should be called Moleman. He really should. I feel
Speaker 1: like there is a Moman comic book character, maybe not
Speaker 1: in the Marvel or DC units, the Simpsons guy his Moleman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that's what I'm thinking. Maybe that that actually probably
Speaker 1: is exactly exactly what I'm thinking of. There's another mole
Speaker 1: which is not really a mole, called the marsupial mole,
Speaker 1: who is not a mole. Uh it is uh found
Speaker 1: in Australia. It looks uncannily similar to the golden mole,
Speaker 1: who again looks pretty similar to uh the Eastern mole.
Speaker 1: It also has golden fur like the golden mole. It
Speaker 1: also has pink little nose, little claws. UH. It also
Speaker 1: burrows in sand. It also swims through the sand just
Speaker 1: like the golden mole. UH. It's eyes are also nonfunctional
Speaker 1: and covered in skin. It also has large digging claws.
Speaker 1: It also has small, pointy teeth, although their their teeth
Speaker 1: are a little blunter than the golden mole and the
Speaker 1: Eastern mole UH, and their claws are a little more
Speaker 1: side like, so they're a little longer, a little sharper looking.
Speaker 1: They also has no external ears. They are very similar
Speaker 1: to the golden mole. They're not even on the same continent.
Speaker 1: Golden moles are found in the deserts of South Africa
Speaker 1: and marsupial moles are found in Australia. And they did
Speaker 1: not like. They didn't like get split like when you
Speaker 1: know Pangaea split or something. They they evolved independently of
Speaker 1: each other, complet completely independently. I am looking up additional
Speaker 1: photos because the photo in the Google doc it's it's eating. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's got like half of a lizard in its mouth,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to really get a grasp on where
Speaker 1: even the quote unquote face is this thing. It's it's
Speaker 1: literally it. There's like a pink hub on the front,
Speaker 1: which is as the approximation of like the nose where
Speaker 1: the noses, but that's basically it. It's the rest of
Speaker 1: it is covered in almost like polar bear like light
Speaker 1: colored fur. Um. How big? And I just lost the
Speaker 1: Google doc for a second, but how big are we
Speaker 1: talking about? Your not very big? Like that's a small lizard,
Speaker 1: so probably like about the size of your, well, maybe
Speaker 1: my hand, like uh, you know, just like it it
Speaker 1: fit in your hand. It's it's okay, a big thing.
Speaker 1: So so this one then and similar to the golden mole,
Speaker 1: than uh, I'm gonna go on the cute spectrum for
Speaker 1: for these guys because of their tininess. Um, if these
Speaker 1: things were had any significant size to them, terrifying silently
Speaker 1: moved through the sand and like and tremors emerged from
Speaker 1: the sand like the sandworms. Yeah yeah, I know they
Speaker 1: would be terrifying if they were any bigger. Wow. Okay,
Speaker 1: and then the last one we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: is the mole rat. Again not an actual mole uh.
Speaker 1: There are lots of different species of mole rats. You
Speaker 1: may be familiar with the naked mole rat, which is
Speaker 1: that lovely little mole rat that is totally nude, lives
Speaker 1: the nude lifestyle and is proud of it. It's very progressive.
Speaker 1: But most mole rat species actually have fur uh and
Speaker 1: so they can be. As we've talked about before, naked
Speaker 1: mole rats live in a colony much like a beehive
Speaker 1: and our youth social um. But there are some furry
Speaker 1: mole rat species that also have some form of youth
Speaker 1: sociality UM. But some of them don't so, so they're
Speaker 1: different species of mole rat. But they look like moles
Speaker 1: uh and they uh. Their eyesight again is like limited
Speaker 1: ranges from being very very poor to being completely blind um.
Speaker 1: And they burrow in the earth uh so like all
Speaker 1: of these these are are called phosporal animals because they
Speaker 1: spend most of their time underground uh and they have
Speaker 1: large claws for burrowing no external ears. The big difference
Speaker 1: between mole rats and the rest of these mole like
Speaker 1: animals and moles is that they actually have these really
Speaker 1: large front teeth, so more like a beaver or a rabbit.
Speaker 1: They have these huge front teeth that they use to
Speaker 1: like tunnel through roots and and make these these big burrows.
Speaker 1: And it probably serves them well in making these big
Speaker 1: colonies of like permanent burrows for them to live in,
Speaker 1: uh and to chew through like hard roots and things.
Speaker 1: So so it's it's if you see like something you
Speaker 1: think is a mole, but it has big like beaver teeth,
Speaker 1: It's not a mole, it's a it's a mole rat.
Speaker 1: These teeth just look comical like and I know with
Speaker 1: with these types of of rodents, when with these types
Speaker 1: of animals that they basically if if they don't find
Speaker 1: things to chew on, then their teeth will actually like
Speaker 1: grow through their upper and lower lips sometimes. Um, so
Speaker 1: these these teeth are InCred This photo is so funny.
Speaker 1: I cannot stop looking at it because it does not
Speaker 1: look real at all. The the between the teeth and
Speaker 1: the it's almost like it has a shocked expression on space.
Speaker 1: It's so yeah, look they look like Jim Henson creations.
Speaker 1: Yes they do. Yes, like like a dark crystal or
Speaker 1: one of those movies with the the Henson Henson, Mommy,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what it looks like. And yeah, so so
Speaker 1: moles are not or mole like animals are not the
Speaker 1: only ones that have these uncanny parallel or convergent evolution.
Speaker 1: So so these would whether this is convergent or parallel, um,
Speaker 1: I think it it's it kind of differs based on
Speaker 1: your opinion as a biologist. Like some would say this
Speaker 1: is convergent evolution because they are, you know, not related
Speaker 1: enough to each other for it to be parallel evolutions.
Speaker 1: Some might say, like, well they there, they share a
Speaker 1: close enough common ancestor that this would count, or some
Speaker 1: cases of this would count as parallel evolution. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of borderline because they are pretty
Speaker 1: distantly related. Um. But a definite example of parallel evolution
Speaker 1: or sorry, a definite example of convergent evolution is ichthyosaurs
Speaker 1: and dolphins. So ich theo uh sores are extinct aquatic
Speaker 1: reptiles back in dinosaur times early Triassic too late Cretaceous
Speaker 1: that these mini species of saurs lived and the species
Speaker 1: ranged from being only one m to sixteen meters long,
Speaker 1: So that's three to fifty feet long. So good. Some
Speaker 1: species were gigantic and some are cute and widow wow.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they look kind of like weird dolphins. So
Speaker 1: they're dolphins shape. They have the long snout. Uh, they're
Speaker 1: often obviously, their anatomy is not completely the same as dolphins.
Speaker 1: They have that um vertical tail rather than the horizontal table.
Speaker 1: And that has to do with the evolution of dolphins,
Speaker 1: where they uh evolved from terrestrial animals. Um. Whereas atheosaurs
Speaker 1: you know, well they I guess they also may have
Speaker 1: evolved from terrestrial animals. Huh. But I guess it depends
Speaker 1: on the pelvic shape of the reptiles that they evolved
Speaker 1: from must have been different from the pelvic shape of
Speaker 1: the terrestrial animals that dolphins evolved from. And so it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I always wondered if if the the finn shape had
Speaker 1: anything to do with the body eas of water. I guess,
Speaker 1: like the currents, Like what was more efficient as far
Speaker 1: as swimming against or with the currents? Uh, the kind
Speaker 1: of kind of the you know, that's the primary one
Speaker 1: of the primary things as far as the what the
Speaker 1: tail does is is locomotion. So how how efficient it
Speaker 1: was for them to to have either a vertical or
Speaker 1: horizontal one depending on their environment and body of water.
Speaker 1: It really actually has more to do with the way
Speaker 1: that their pelvis and spine evolved. So with with terrestrial
Speaker 1: four legged animals, they're walking was like an up and
Speaker 1: down undulation. So like you see you see like a
Speaker 1: horse walking or a dog walking, there's a sort of
Speaker 1: like they don't like do too much of the sachet
Speaker 1: from side to side. If you see like a lizard
Speaker 1: walking and it's doing that side to side thingy, it's
Speaker 1: got more of a side to side motion with its
Speaker 1: spine and pelvis and its locomotion, whereas a dog you
Speaker 1: see a dog or hyote eloping, it kind of has
Speaker 1: this up and down. You sit on a horse, you're
Speaker 1: gonna bounce up and down and up and down because
Speaker 1: it's fine and it's pelvis has more of this undulating.
Speaker 1: The way that his legs work is more of an
Speaker 1: up and down motion. Where's the way reptiles pelvic girl
Speaker 1: kind of works as more of a side to side
Speaker 1: just a snake, yeah, which originally snakes had legs and
Speaker 1: then they eventually dropped their legs, but they kept that
Speaker 1: side to side locomotion. Um so the same thing with
Speaker 1: the ichthyosaur and the dolphin. The ichthyosaur has that side
Speaker 1: to side motion with the vertical tail like fish do,
Speaker 1: and dolphins instead of have that flat, horizontal tail because
Speaker 1: they evolved from like little deer like terrestrial animals that
Speaker 1: had that up and down pelvic girdle motion, and so
Speaker 1: they still have that up and down motion of the
Speaker 1: spine and the pelvis. So what what what kind of tail? Eventually,
Speaker 1: billions of years from now, kangaroos have stayed in the water,
Speaker 1: mean mugging the rest of the animal kingdom, you know, saying,
Speaker 1: come on, they're gonna look like terrifying dolphins. Okay, okay, man, okay,
Speaker 1: now kangaroo dolphins. Oh man, that's a that's a visual
Speaker 1: uh that that is scary as hell. Well, if you
Speaker 1: want to think, if you want to see approximately what
Speaker 1: a kangaroo dolphin looks like, just scrolled down in this document.
Speaker 1: Because the Ambula stas, which is an extinct semi aquatic mammal,
Speaker 1: is actually the ancestor of all cetaceans like dolphins, whales,
Speaker 1: and it looks like a cross between a kangaroo and
Speaker 1: a crocodile. Wow. Yes, it does. Holy cow, I've never
Speaker 1: seen one of these things before, not just I just
Speaker 1: meant like, obviously, I've never actually seen any of these
Speaker 1: things before. Nobody has got a pet ambula cetis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh man, that is wild looking. Yeah, it looks, you know,
Speaker 1: like the the hands and feet have kind of like
Speaker 1: an otter um, like a river otter type of vibe
Speaker 1: to them. But that tail is absolutely it's all kangaroo tail.
Speaker 1: And that that head, the teeth very much like the
Speaker 1: crocodile that you've got a photo next to it of. Man,
Speaker 1: that's wild looking. Yeah, it looks like you gave a
Speaker 1: crocodile fur and yes, and it's oddly horrifying, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's uh again, here's I mean, that is another
Speaker 1: example of um convergent evolution. You have completely unrelated crocodile,
Speaker 1: completely unrelated mammal just having this similar body shape, and
Speaker 1: then the ambulo seati goes on to evolve into the dolphin,
Speaker 1: which has a very similar body shape to the ichtheo
Speaker 1: store So it happens all the day time, a bunch
Speaker 1: of hacks. Really, yeah, it's it's uh, it's it's back
Speaker 1: to that molarization thing. There's certain environmental pressures that if
Speaker 1: you let the computer program go on long enough, it's
Speaker 1: going to revert back to the most efficient one. It's like,
Speaker 1: I mean, humans do it in car design all the time, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's there's there's a reason most cars have a
Speaker 1: similar body shape to them because we've you know, had
Speaker 1: enough people attempt this and and and experiment with it.
Speaker 1: When it's like a three wheeled car that's sort of
Speaker 1: a wedge shaped, it just keeps falling over exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: There's certain certain environmental factors that just make it all
Speaker 1: all come back to a similar, similar type vibe. Man.
Speaker 1: That is, if I that's a new horror. If you
Speaker 1: are swimming in like a river or a lake and
Speaker 1: you imagine and and say the word for me again
Speaker 1: and bets and bulla SETAs, that is a new that's
Speaker 1: nightmare fuel right there, Absolute nightmare fuel. Yeah, it's Uh.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to be in the water with one
Speaker 1: of these guys or a kangaroo. No, no, not at all.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't want to, UH don't want to
Speaker 1: get drowned by kangaroo or torn to shreds by the
Speaker 1: teeth of this thing. God, Okay, that's scary. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's like one of those things where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: what if a crocodile was fluffy, would it be cuter? No,
Speaker 1: I'd rather spend time with the crocodile than this thing.
Speaker 1: God no, I uh not a crocodile, but I did.
Speaker 1: Um uh. This is probably very illegal for me to say,
Speaker 1: but a friend of mine was re homing a baby
Speaker 1: alligator that I got to I got to sit babysit
Speaker 1: for the weekend until he had to go out of town.
Speaker 1: But it was like in the pond next to his house,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to rehome it to another uh like
Speaker 1: body of water because you know, he didn't want it
Speaker 1: to There's lots of dogs in the neighborhoods, you know
Speaker 1: we were talking about, and we have lots of alligators
Speaker 1: around here, so there's so this is like a this
Speaker 1: is like a natural alligator. This is not a pet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. This was just he was Yeah, I said
Speaker 1: re homing. I meant like, actually gonna be like like
Speaker 1: an alligator with a little collar on, and I'd have
Speaker 1: to have a conversation about alligators as pets do not
Speaker 1: keep alligators as pets. But I we he was kept
Speaker 1: in an aquarium for like two days, um, and then
Speaker 1: we re homed him to a larger body of water
Speaker 1: that he could he could flourish in and thrive. But
Speaker 1: they're adorable when they're cute, so so adorable and uh
Speaker 1: but but yeah, add for to it and that would
Speaker 1: be that would cross that uncanny valley into just terrifying.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like a baby, a baby, I mean
Speaker 1: baby alligators are so cute, and the little sounds they make,
Speaker 1: they make this little like air a sound because they
Speaker 1: call out to their mommy's too. It's so pathetic sounding.
Speaker 1: It's just like it's like listening to a tiger cub
Speaker 1: trying to roar for the first time. It's so cute.
Speaker 1: They are so adorable. Um, but yeah, they grow up
Speaker 1: into big alligators and those are not good pets. Uh
Speaker 1: and uh yeah. The but if you covered a baby
Speaker 1: alligator and for a little cute, but then when it
Speaker 1: grows up, no, no longer cute, very scary exactly. I
Speaker 1: feel like it would be like kind of have like
Speaker 1: a ferret vibe yeah, with a big mat like a
Speaker 1: longer mouth, longer mouth way way bigger eyes. Yeah, Gary,
Speaker 1: we really came full circle, right. We got the we
Speaker 1: got the aquatic crocodile kangaroo that would definitely probably try
Speaker 1: to drown you, because crocodiles do actually use uh they
Speaker 1: will drown, try to drown prey in the water. Still
Speaker 1: grab something, yeah, death, roll it, bring it, bring it
Speaker 1: down into the water. So at least we'll know that
Speaker 1: there used to be the ambulacidas, which was looked like
Speaker 1: the cross between a crocodile and kangaroo and probably wanted
Speaker 1: to drown me. I. Uh So the the only other
Speaker 1: experiences that I've had with alligators growing up, we did
Speaker 1: a lot of crabbing around here where we just tie
Speaker 1: a piece of chicken on the end of a string
Speaker 1: and you know, hanging off the end of a pier
Speaker 1: or stuff and uh and and catch blue crab with it. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was. It was a quick way to
Speaker 1: uh to to bring home some blue crab um. And
Speaker 1: we a couple of times when we did it in
Speaker 1: the Cape Fear River because it's it's very brackish water.
Speaker 1: Because we're also I've got the inter coastal on one
Speaker 1: side of the Cape Fear on the other, and uh,
Speaker 1: there's lots of alligators in in that river, and the
Speaker 1: alligator every once in a while would come up and
Speaker 1: grab the chicken and we would play tug of war
Speaker 1: with the alligator. And on my drive home from work,
Speaker 1: I drive a road called River Road that runs parallel
Speaker 1: to the Cape Fear and there was just like a
Speaker 1: six and a half foot or just chilling in the
Speaker 1: middle of the road and brought traffic to a screeching halt.
Speaker 1: So I very stupidly, and I do not recommend anybody
Speaker 1: do this. Don't do this, don't, but I was afraid
Speaker 1: somebody was gonna was gonna hit this thing. And there's
Speaker 1: a golf course on the other side of the road
Speaker 1: with ponds on it. So these alligators will come up
Speaker 1: out of the river and go chill in the golf course.
Speaker 1: Uh for for you know, however long. And so I grabbed.
Speaker 1: I had a pair of like bolt cutters or something
Speaker 1: in the back of my my pickup truck, and so
Speaker 1: I I stretched them out, I extend them, and I
Speaker 1: put on a pair of gloves, these leather gloves that
Speaker 1: I had, and I dangle one end of the bolt
Speaker 1: cutters in front of like the mouth the head of
Speaker 1: him to get his attention, and then I just grabbed
Speaker 1: his tail and slung him like as hard, you know,
Speaker 1: not not violently or anything, but just it is still
Speaker 1: to this day, I still get the tingly sensation when
Speaker 1: I think about doing that, because it was the stupidest
Speaker 1: thing I could have done, but it was just a
Speaker 1: spur of the moment. I'm gonna try this and I
Speaker 1: hope it works out. And then he just waddled off
Speaker 1: and seemed completely fine headed, headed down towards the river.
Speaker 1: That's so yeah, don't don't do that. You're not never
Speaker 1: do that. It's so funny though, because it's like yesterday
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, there was a there was a
Speaker 1: fledgling bird in the middle of a sidewalk, and it
Speaker 1: was like relocated it to a hedge, and I felt like, wow,
Speaker 1: I'm interacting with nature, and you're like, yeah, one time
Speaker 1: I grabbed an alligator and just like yeted it right
Speaker 1: into a golf course. Honestly, I like the unpredicted, like
Speaker 1: the alligator is long enough that like grabbing its pale
Speaker 1: is still a good you know, six ft away from it,
Speaker 1: and I know alligators are extremely fast when they whipped
Speaker 1: that head around, but I I as soon as I
Speaker 1: grabbed the tail, I also started moving, so like the
Speaker 1: momentum the inertia kept him from like really doing anything.
Speaker 1: But handling a bird is more stressful to me than
Speaker 1: than probably what I did with the alligator, because they
Speaker 1: are able to uh, their their talents and their beaks
Speaker 1: are so quit and so close to your hands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was in so much danger. You were, You were
Speaker 1: baby sparrow. Yeah, baby sparrows have right and I'm glad
Speaker 1: that you were that you have right. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being on the show. You're a wonderful gift.
Speaker 1: Although I know he's a very charismatic gift. Don't handle alligators, don't, please,
Speaker 1: do not. Don't don't. It was very stupid of me.
Speaker 1: I I still think about it to this every once
Speaker 1: in a while, I'll think about doing that and just like,
Speaker 1: what the hell? And that's why we call him all
Speaker 1: one arm Christie. Ye, Well, hey, where can people find you?
Speaker 1: So you can find me at on Twitter at wopple
Speaker 1: House w A P P L E h O U
Speaker 1: s e UM and I host, as you said at
Speaker 1: the top of the show, lour after Hours, which if
Speaker 1: you're a fan of the Dan Lebottard Show, this might
Speaker 1: be in your wheelhouse or something you might want to
Speaker 1: check out. If you're not a fan of the Dan
Speaker 1: Lebottard Show, honestly you're it's it's gonna be a tough listen.
Speaker 1: So if if that's not your thing, I completely understand.
Speaker 1: You can find me at George Center Pod on Twitter
Speaker 1: as well. That's another podcast I do with some friends
Speaker 1: of mine because the world doesn't have enough dude sitting
Speaker 1: around talking about stupid stuff. So that's that's George Center,
Speaker 1: like Gene Shorts and yes, George Center Pod, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's not about sports, so it's also like George's not
Speaker 1: sports exactly, it's a bunch of dudes sitting around in
Speaker 1: George's uh laughing. So uh that that's where you can
Speaker 1: find me. And you can find the podcast on the
Speaker 1: internet at Creature creature Pot on Instagram, at Creature feak
Speaker 1: pot on Twitter. That's f E A T, not f
Speaker 1: E T. That's it's very different. Uh. And if you
Speaker 1: want to send me in your email questions, you can
Speaker 1: send it to Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com
Speaker 1: and I'll try to answer questions. Sometimes I'm a little slow,
Speaker 1: like I get I get kind of behind on stuff,
Speaker 1: but I am working through the emails. So if you
Speaker 1: sent in a question, I haven't answered it yet, Like,
Speaker 1: don't worry, I am. I am working on it. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, keep sending those into me because I
Speaker 1: love to hear him and if yeah, sometimes I will
Speaker 1: answer them on the show. Uh and uh, you can
Speaker 1: find me at Katie Golden. That's just where I put
Speaker 1: my Katie thoughts. And as always, I am pro bird right.
Speaker 1: I'm a human, not a skin suit full of a
Speaker 1: flock of birds trying to trick humanity and into giving
Speaker 1: us more power for bread. Certainly not. Uh, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. If you enjoy the show, please
Speaker 1: leave a rating and review that actually does tangibly help
Speaker 1: the podcast. It tells tells the iTunes and web webpoons
Speaker 1: and pod pod place at Internet that we're a good show,
Speaker 1: and it tricks the robots into you giving us attention.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. Thanks to the Space Classics for their
Speaker 1: super awesome song Exo Lumina. Creature features a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you
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Speaker 1: or Hey guess what. Why have you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows? I don't care, I don't judge. See you
Speaker 1: next Wednesday.