Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature, feature of production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied
Speaker 1: psychology and evolutionary biology, and I like birds. It's true,
Speaker 1: I admit it. Today on the show, we'll be talking
Speaker 1: about a brief history of birds. Turns out the history
Speaker 1: of birds isn't really all that brief. Thanks a lot,
Speaker 1: Stephen Hawking. There are a lot of secrets that birds
Speaker 1: are hiding in their evolutionary history, and we have to
Speaker 1: go all the way back to dinosaur times to find them.
Speaker 1: Are there secretly still dinosaurs lurking among us? How did
Speaker 1: birds learn how to fly? Why did some birds decide
Speaker 1: to be so small? Discover this and more as we
Speaker 1: answer the asual questions is birds dinosaurs? Joining me today
Speaker 1: is podcast writer in our fabulous producer, Joel Monique. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: what's up. It's so good to have you back on Joel.
Speaker 1: Thank you, it's nice to be back. I am jealous
Speaker 1: listening to you talk to all of these people, and
Speaker 1: I always want to chain in and I'm like, this
Speaker 1: is not your show. Take a step back. You should
Speaker 1: we gotta, we should have you on a hot mike
Speaker 1: at all times. Oh my god, I love that. It's
Speaker 1: just gonna be me being like it could really do that?
Speaker 1: What honestly, honestly, now that you say that, let's do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're not like all the time, as long as you're
Speaker 1: not too stressed about it, I'm here for well, speaking
Speaker 1: of stress. So I am sorry to do this to
Speaker 1: you today. We're talking about birth. I should have known
Speaker 1: the betrayal. Okay, all right, put on my brave hat
Speaker 1: and we're just gonna get through this. Put on your
Speaker 1: brave hat. So you know, Joel, you do have a
Speaker 1: fear of birth. I do know this. I'm not here
Speaker 1: to torture you, Okay, I want to basically, well, I
Speaker 1: want to validate your fear while also maybe helping you
Speaker 1: be less afraid. Does that make sense. I don't know
Speaker 1: how you're going to do both, but I look forward
Speaker 1: to the validating part so that I can blast it
Speaker 1: for my brothers and be like, listen, here's a really
Speaker 1: good reason that you should be afraid of birds, right right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Because I think when most people here are like, you're
Speaker 1: afraid of birds, it's like, well, how can you be
Speaker 1: afraid of birds? But I think that it now I'm
Speaker 1: speaking as someone who absolutely loves birds. They're like my
Speaker 1: favorite kind of animal. But I do understand your fear.
Speaker 1: I do think it's valid. Would it surprise you and
Speaker 1: everyone listening out there to hear that dinosaurs did not
Speaker 1: die out and they are currently alive and well because
Speaker 1: they're birds and I know that, and that's why I'm
Speaker 1: afraid of birds. Listen, here's my theory on birds. I
Speaker 1: know they have small brains, but some birds have memory,
Speaker 1: some birds hold grudges, all those all birds have claws
Speaker 1: and the advantage of flight. Listen, if these guys ever
Speaker 1: got together and we're like, listen, we got it next
Speaker 1: to human race. Look at them. They're killing our trees
Speaker 1: and I like resources for living. They could absolutely take
Speaker 1: us out. They have all of the advantages, and most
Speaker 1: people aren't afraid of them. It's they're honestly the best predators.
Speaker 1: It's horrifying, and they're all around us. They are smarter,
Speaker 1: better dinosaurs, and I mean, that's why I personally liked them,
Speaker 1: and I welcome the bird revolution. I for one, will
Speaker 1: welcome our bird overlords with open arms or should I
Speaker 1: say open wings? But yes, I mean those are all
Speaker 1: valid reasons to respect, and I suppose fear the birds.
Speaker 1: So the general consensus amongst evolutionary biologists is that birds
Speaker 1: are literally dinosaurs, not like, oh, they're like they're living dinosaurs. No,
Speaker 1: they are actually dinosaurs, just like snakes are reptiles or
Speaker 1: humans are mammals, and they are the only living dinosaurs
Speaker 1: in the world, which is something I mean, like, you know,
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park is basically going to the zoo and going
Speaker 1: into the aviary, which is you know whatifying. So I
Speaker 1: love birds, I get anxious when I go to the aviary,
Speaker 1: not because I'm scared of the birds, but I feel
Speaker 1: like the chance I'm going to get pooped on is
Speaker 1: almost a percent. I am both afraid of birds and claustrophobic,
Speaker 1: which makes the aviary my nightmare. Scenaria swarms right, like
Speaker 1: swarms of things and they're all just around it all
Speaker 1: like the Leaguing Park Zoo in Chicago, which was the
Speaker 1: zoo I went to the most as like a child
Speaker 1: has an open aviary, so like it's an enclosed space
Speaker 1: and then there's like chicken wire that's sort of over
Speaker 1: a bridge that you can walk through. Other than that,
Speaker 1: it's just birds flapping overhead, very loud, and then when
Speaker 1: you exit, it's a giant, like I want to say,
Speaker 1: twenty foot tall cage just the birds of prey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like want of each bird of prey like a
Speaker 1: weird noise ar. It was the most traumatizing because it
Speaker 1: would be you could just close your eyes and you
Speaker 1: think that would be better, but when you close your eyes,
Speaker 1: you're just and you feel it was like moist and
Speaker 1: dark in there. It's not a pleasant experience. Now I
Speaker 1: actually do like it. I do like aviaries as long
Speaker 1: as I'm wearing a hat because I'm like, well, if
Speaker 1: I get put on, it's got to be on a hat.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get that out of my hair.
Speaker 1: But yes, I imagine if you are afraid of birds,
Speaker 1: an aviary is perhaps you know, the seventh Circle of
Speaker 1: Hell similar. So I think it is a fascinating story
Speaker 1: of how dinosaurs turned into birds. And I think it
Speaker 1: is when you really look at a bird, I think
Speaker 1: you can kind of see, oh yeah, yeah that I
Speaker 1: can see how that's kind of a dinosaur like, but
Speaker 1: it is. It's how it's kind of mind blowing to
Speaker 1: think about how these huge dinosaurs slowly turned into these
Speaker 1: little puff balls and why they would go from being
Speaker 1: these incredible, huge dino terrors roaming the earth to birds, like,
Speaker 1: why did that happen? So I want to talk about
Speaker 1: how dinosaurs turned into birds that and Joel, I think
Speaker 1: you will come from this feeling both validated and maybe hopefully.
Speaker 1: I don't know understanding birds and where they're coming from.
Speaker 1: I would like to. I would like to understand. So
Speaker 1: birds came from a clade of dinosaurs called theropods, and
Speaker 1: they share a common ancestor with t Rex and velocerats,
Speaker 1: the big ones, the and the deadly ones, the okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: the scary ones from Jurassic Park. M M. So again
Speaker 1: point one for Joel, valid valid fear. And so they
Speaker 1: didn't I have heard things like they came from t Rex,
Speaker 1: like as in, they directly descended from t Rex. That's
Speaker 1: not quite true. It's that they both share a common ancestors,
Speaker 1: so they're related. But they're like cousins. Okay, yes, that's
Speaker 1: very clear. They hang out during the summer, you know,
Speaker 1: but they're they're not living together. They don't have all
Speaker 1: the same jeans. They do holidays with each other, you know,
Speaker 1: catch up and uh yeah, I would it would be fun.
Speaker 1: I have wonderful cousins. I don't want to diss my cousins.
Speaker 1: They're great. I would love one of them to be
Speaker 1: a t Rex, though. I mean the advantages when you
Speaker 1: go to the mall, that you're clearing out spaces right right,
Speaker 1: exactly like picking out you know, during holidays, picking out
Speaker 1: a tree, going to malls shop and like you know,
Speaker 1: you just like one whip of that huge tail knocks
Speaker 1: everyone out clear, clears a path. You're going to get
Speaker 1: straight to the front of the line. Cheesecake factory. It's probable.
Speaker 1: I see you have a t Rex with you. Well,
Speaker 1: we have the special table. It's called the whole restaurant.
Speaker 1: Please do come in. I love it that Pus is
Speaker 1: not allowed to drink though he cannot. No, no, you
Speaker 1: can't drink while being a t Rex. It's just dangerous.
Speaker 1: Do you t do you t Rex? Yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: not allowed. It's just imagine joke. Rex. Let's backing through
Speaker 1: a ball. It's ridiculous. You know, he's got like a
Speaker 1: little beer bottle of his tittle close smashing it to
Speaker 1: the ground. But it looks really funny because those a
Speaker 1: little tiny Yeah, that's amazing. So they did descend from
Speaker 1: probably somewhat bigger like dinosaurs that were bigger than most
Speaker 1: birds are today, certainly so around a hundred to five
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, with lots of teeth and definitely could not
Speaker 1: fly yet. But those were their common ancestors, were these
Speaker 1: big kind of like uh probably sort of uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, raptor looking dinosaurs and you know, chunky, so
Speaker 1: you know not you know, that was their common ancestor
Speaker 1: with things like t rex and velociraptors. So another misconception, though,
Speaker 1: is that birds descended from archaeopterics. Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: of archaeopters? I have not. So archaeopterics is a classic
Speaker 1: fossil of this dinosaur that is considered or used to
Speaker 1: be considered one of the earliest birds, the mega early bird,
Speaker 1: where it's this little raptor looking dinosaur with feathers. Do
Speaker 1: you want to describe what you're seeing here this picture? Okay?
Speaker 1: I want you to imagine the feet of a chicken
Speaker 1: and the tail of a peacock, the wings of like
Speaker 1: a two can you know, but like blue and green
Speaker 1: instead of that bright red color. And then like a
Speaker 1: tiny velociraptor head and that's vehnm right, And so that's archaeopterics.
Speaker 1: We actually don't know what color it was. This is
Speaker 1: probably the artist's interpretation. This artist was just like, I
Speaker 1: don't make it a peacock. Why not? It could have
Speaker 1: been it could have been like jet black, like a
Speaker 1: big raven. Actually they probably were raven sized. And there's
Speaker 1: some there's a lot of research about it, like trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what color it was. Some say like, oh,
Speaker 1: it was actually it shared properties of like uh, blackbirds
Speaker 1: and ravens, so like maybe it was jet black, but
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to say, like there's something like no, no,
Speaker 1: it had other colors. We don't really know. I like
Speaker 1: to think of it as being really fancy, just peacock colored. Personally,
Speaker 1: I like the idea of Edgar Allen Poe knowing this
Speaker 1: and his raven was really this guy just a big
Speaker 1: gas dinosaur. Never more quoth the raven. It makes a
Speaker 1: story much more fascinating. Read that right now. But that
Speaker 1: is but that is archaeopterics, and it and it was small,
Speaker 1: so about the size of a raven, which I mean
Speaker 1: I guess when I say small quote unquote ravens are
Speaker 1: pretty pretty hefty for birds, and they were around a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million years ago, so that's late Jurassic,
Speaker 1: about a foot long. The way I think of it
Speaker 1: is they kind of look like a road rudder, but
Speaker 1: with teeth and a very lizard looking face. That's a
Speaker 1: very good description. Yeah, And it's like it's often considered
Speaker 1: this missing link between birds and dinosaurs, but it's also
Speaker 1: very possible and probably true that archaeopterics and birds shared
Speaker 1: a common ancestor. But archaeopterics was kind of this like
Speaker 1: volutionary pit stop two birds. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: think that there's like a definite consensus yet, Like it's
Speaker 1: always tricky trying to trace back fossil records and figure
Speaker 1: out exactly how these evolutionary paths were. But yeah, certainly
Speaker 1: it was definitely at least a pit stop from dinosaurs
Speaker 1: to birds. I will say as somebody who has done
Speaker 1: some very minor studies on like the structure of animal
Speaker 1: bodies into fantasy creatures, like a specifically need like dragons,
Speaker 1: where some people really to test when dragons have four limbs,
Speaker 1: because they're like, that's not how science works. They're like
Speaker 1: you can have the wings instead of the arms, and
Speaker 1: that would make it. And I'm looking at this guy
Speaker 1: and he has like wing arms, like he has like
Speaker 1: the little chicken fee as at the end of his wings,
Speaker 1: which makes me think about talents. Yeah, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: imagine him in combat like this one foot winged claw creature.
Speaker 1: I feel like, listen, chicken, it's are bad. I don't
Speaker 1: want to promote that, but if pay to see this guy,
Speaker 1: I would If this, if we could see two archaeopterics
Speaker 1: consenting to doing a wrestling match, yes, that would be
Speaker 1: great for the first thing. First thing I'm going to
Speaker 1: do if I get a time machine and an ability
Speaker 1: to communicate with dinosaurs. Yeah, but I do love that,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, like, if you want to come up
Speaker 1: with an awesome dragon, just look at bird evolutionary history archaeopterics.
Speaker 1: You scale that thing up, maybe make it a little meteor,
Speaker 1: a little a little more buff like that, Like that
Speaker 1: would be a terrifying dragon. And it does. It does
Speaker 1: have claws on its wings, and you can kind of
Speaker 1: imagine the wings folding and it kind of walking along
Speaker 1: on its claws with like the folded back wings. But
Speaker 1: then like unfolding them and being capable of flight. So
Speaker 1: there actually has been a lot of debate over like
Speaker 1: whether these guys flew, how they flew, Like what what's
Speaker 1: the deal? We obviously can't watch one of them work
Speaker 1: until Jeff Goldbloom or whoever it is clones. It wasn't
Speaker 1: Jeff Goldbloom who did. It was the other guy. But
Speaker 1: you know, once they cloned dinosaurs, which they don't need
Speaker 1: to do again because we already have dinosaurs and they
Speaker 1: are birds, but they so there are theories that range
Speaker 1: from it being a glider to like so basically like
Speaker 1: a flying squirrel or something where it's like on a
Speaker 1: branch and then it glides down to another branch. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some their eyes that it could have run on the
Speaker 1: ground and taken off from the ground, and then others
Speaker 1: are like, no, it wasn't strong enough, like it's flight
Speaker 1: muscles weren't strong enough to do that. Uh. There are
Speaker 1: recent studies that are like, oh, it was probably a
Speaker 1: burst flyer like pheasants and modern birds, that it's bone
Speaker 1: structure seems to be very similar to where basically it
Speaker 1: didn't fly a lot, but then it could use its
Speaker 1: wings to evade predators. By these short bursts of flight
Speaker 1: up to tree branches, or by like gliding and like
Speaker 1: hopping from one branch to another and using its wings
Speaker 1: to basically be able to do these little bursts of
Speaker 1: like amplified jumping or or short flight to be able
Speaker 1: to escape predators. But yeah, so it's most of the
Speaker 1: theories suggest it was at least using those wings for
Speaker 1: something similar to flight, if not you know, full fledged flying.
Speaker 1: I'd like to imagine that it just like to glide
Speaker 1: a lot, like it was just like a sugar glider,
Speaker 1: and instead of like just hopping to the ground, it's
Speaker 1: like I'm just gonna lazily, like, listen, I got these wings,
Speaker 1: no one else does. I'm just gonna enjoy gliding a
Speaker 1: little bit. Okay, I changed my mind. We do have
Speaker 1: to clone these and I have to have one. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine being It'd be like being in falconry, but
Speaker 1: way way cooler and I love Look, I love falconry,
Speaker 1: But imagine this like your you have your your leathery
Speaker 1: gloved hand and then one of these things just lands
Speaker 1: on you and go listen. The Kalisi cosplay is about
Speaker 1: to get a huge transformation. Okay, that would be amazing.
Speaker 1: So how dinosaurs became birds again, it's like, well, how
Speaker 1: it's see it's such a huge change. Is this something
Speaker 1: where it's like it happened in these really dramatic steps,
Speaker 1: a drastic mutation in these dinosaurs that somehow was useful
Speaker 1: and then that was like this huge leap and evolution.
Speaker 1: So that's actually called hopeful monster in evolutionary biology, which
Speaker 1: I feel like you would you would very much agree
Speaker 1: with birds being hopeful monsters. But hopeful monster basically means
Speaker 1: you want, like, most significant mutations aren't going to be great,
Speaker 1: Like you have a mutation and like half of your
Speaker 1: body is gone or something, I'm not gonna work out
Speaker 1: so good for you in terms of evolution. But the
Speaker 1: hopeful monsters theory is that like if you once in
Speaker 1: a while you're gonna have a dramatic mutation ation that
Speaker 1: actually does help you. And so you're basically you're hopeful monster.
Speaker 1: So you're a monster that's hoping that you're ridiculously horrific
Speaker 1: mutation actually works out for you. That is such an
Speaker 1: interesting concept. I want to apply it to humans and
Speaker 1: put it in a side. But they were talking about
Speaker 1: a lot of sci fi stuff today because that's sort
Speaker 1: of my corner of the world. But I really love
Speaker 1: the idea of us being hopeful monsters and what would
Speaker 1: our like major genetic change be. It doesn't decimate us
Speaker 1: as a species, Yeah, that would be it. I like
Speaker 1: the idea that we're suddenly eight feet tall with claws. Okay,
Speaker 1: we are a true alphabetic. I don't know if keep
Speaker 1: seeing in person, but of course we have to paint
Speaker 1: our clause because that's who we are as humans right now.
Speaker 1: They actually have really long nails right now because like
Speaker 1: I haven't really had to do anything, so they've just
Speaker 1: been getting longer and longer practice for the next evolutionary
Speaker 1: step exactly. The problem with the hopeful monster idea is
Speaker 1: that again, like most significant mutations will end up killing
Speaker 1: you basically, like they're not gonna be good. So it's
Speaker 1: very very rare that a really significant mutation that results
Speaker 1: in like a whole limb changing or falling off is
Speaker 1: gonna be good. So often the evolutionary change happens over
Speaker 1: these smaller changes over time. So it's like it's this
Speaker 1: balance of trying to find out, okay, well, was this
Speaker 1: a big leap? Was this animal's parents significantly different from it,
Speaker 1: or was there like this little small incremental change. And
Speaker 1: the answer is like, sometimes it's these small changes. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's like a bigger change that happened suddenly, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a mix of the two. So it's not it's
Speaker 1: definitely not always really clear, Like you don't have the
Speaker 1: smooth gradient of change for one animal to the next.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you do, and then it's interrupted by like a
Speaker 1: big sudden change. Usually you wouldn't have like a bunch
Speaker 1: of big changes in a row because that's very unlikely.
Speaker 1: But still it's it's very it's it's complicated. So it's
Speaker 1: more likely that bird like features developed over millions of years,
Speaker 1: so feathers started to evolve in dinosaurs long before birds
Speaker 1: started to evolve. And I think this is something a
Speaker 1: lot of people are becoming aware of in terms of like, hey,
Speaker 1: our image of what a dinosaur looks like may not
Speaker 1: be Jurassic Park. It maybe you know Old McDonald where
Speaker 1: you had a bunch of giant chickens running around. I
Speaker 1: remember for hearing about that and like late high school
Speaker 1: and being like, wait, what not lizards but birds? And
Speaker 1: then I was like, man, what does all that plumage
Speaker 1: look like and where they like when chickens you call
Speaker 1: it when birds shed their feathers MALTI yeah, are they
Speaker 1: like giant dinosaurs? Just malting? Probably sore feathers like blowing
Speaker 1: in the wind. You could stuff a whole matt like
Speaker 1: imagine so if like t rex has had enough feathers,
Speaker 1: could stuff a whole mattress. You hold down mattress, have
Speaker 1: a t rex down comforter am I like with like
Speaker 1: a baby t rex. Oh, I bet that'd be soft,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's a It's so reptiles share a common
Speaker 1: ancestor with dinosaurs, but they didn't evolve from dinosaurs and
Speaker 1: birds and reptiles have a common ancestor, but birds are dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: We have makes sense, yes, but I have some questions.
Speaker 1: So reptiles alive during like the Trassic period area of
Speaker 1: the Drastic period, were dinosaurs or not dinosaurs? Is there
Speaker 1: an overlap? Yeah, there's like an overlap in terms of
Speaker 1: like they are share an ancestor, like they there were
Speaker 1: these proto reptile proto dinosaurs around and then those branch
Speaker 1: off into dinosaurs and reptiles. There's like reptiles around during
Speaker 1: dinosaur times chilling out and then there's eventually dinosaurs turned
Speaker 1: into birds, so prehistoric gaiters just reptiles, not dinosaurs crocodiles.
Speaker 1: That changes my whole idea. I was just like all dinosaurs, dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: everything that lived back disa because there were also there
Speaker 1: were mammals around during dinosaur times. It's true. Actually, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure there were whales when dinosaurs were around, because like,
Speaker 1: whales actually were terrestrial mammals that went back into the water. What. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: whales started out as these kind of like weird, little
Speaker 1: horse like animals, and then these little horse like animals
Speaker 1: turned into these sort of semi aquatic predator like animals
Speaker 1: that were like almost like mammalian alligators. It was really weird.
Speaker 1: And then those those turned into whales. Okay, it's super weird.
Speaker 1: What a journey whales have been on. Now I'm trying
Speaker 1: to imagine horses turning into wales. It's like a horse,
Speaker 1: it's not a whale, it's a swimming creature. What but
Speaker 1: it has no legs, and so it's where does it's
Speaker 1: fin go? Oh my god, I please somebody draw me
Speaker 1: a horse turning into a whale like creature and not
Speaker 1: losing its color. I would like it to remain it's
Speaker 1: velvet brown, please, and it's a tail in a mane,
Speaker 1: but like its legs are flippers. Yes, I think I've
Speaker 1: seen drawings of that, like like like sort of mermaid horses.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of a pokemon, but I can't remember
Speaker 1: which one. It's blue and it's got like a shell,
Speaker 1: but it's like a dinosaur neck. Oh man, some of
Speaker 1: you are like, it's this thing. Um yeah, but so
Speaker 1: many angry nerves so sorry you guys. Feel free to
Speaker 1: tweet me about it. Uh yeah, it would be really cool,
Speaker 1: right to be angry. Yeah, I would. I would love
Speaker 1: to have one as a pet and then we would
Speaker 1: swim together and it would be amazing. You can have that,
Speaker 1: I can have the archaeopterics and we will be so happy. So,
Speaker 1: in terms of dinosaurs evolving into birds, like one of
Speaker 1: the big things is like, okay, how did they get
Speaker 1: so small and able? Basically going from being these big
Speaker 1: terrestrial animals to being able to fly and being small
Speaker 1: enough to fly some of them and birds skeletal structure
Speaker 1: actually looks a lot like embryonic dinosaurs, so it wasn't
Speaker 1: really that hard for birds to use dino d n
Speaker 1: A that already had these structures in their embryos to
Speaker 1: scale down and become more efficient for flying. So basically,
Speaker 1: these there's a theory that dinosaurs, these mutations were basically
Speaker 1: making the dinosaurs more and more immature. So birds are
Speaker 1: like little baby dinosaurs flap it around. That's so cute. Okay,
Speaker 1: listen as terrifying anything. Fruits are, it's really cute. They're
Speaker 1: just like and they it's like they did to themselves
Speaker 1: what we did to dogs. We were like, makes them
Speaker 1: very tiny, as we can keep them in our baths
Speaker 1: like we need to be, so we can evade danger
Speaker 1: wall with themselves. It's so freaking cute. And I think
Speaker 1: typically when we think of like smaller animals, we think
Speaker 1: of them as being more in danger, like less able
Speaker 1: to protect themselves. So that's very strange. Well, the reason
Speaker 1: they came smaller is it actually helps them to fit
Speaker 1: into a certain evolutionary niche. So if you're a big animal,
Speaker 1: like a big predator like t rex, you may think, well,
Speaker 1: that's the optimal thing. They're all dead now because they
Speaker 1: had to eat so much meat and they you know,
Speaker 1: basically it's not easy to be a predator. It's really
Speaker 1: hard to be a predator. You have to eat a
Speaker 1: bunch of meat if your hunt doesn't go well, if
Speaker 1: your prey is evolving to avoid you better. If something
Speaker 1: happens to the climate, for instance, or a big cataclysmic
Speaker 1: event where you can't find food, you're doomed. If you're
Speaker 1: small and you can get into this niche that's not
Speaker 1: being used like trees, and you're able to go after
Speaker 1: something very abundant like insects, you're actually much more likely
Speaker 1: to survive, even if some of you get eaten as
Speaker 1: a snack. But again, you're small and you're starting to
Speaker 1: get more agile. You can actually start to fly and
Speaker 1: glide it like the archaeopterics. You're able to evade predators.
Speaker 1: You're becoming way more successful than a t rex ever
Speaker 1: could be by getting smaller, by scaling down, And basically
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, I'm not a big barbarian, I'm a
Speaker 1: little rogue. I'm a little ninja like I basically can
Speaker 1: get through this evolutionary dungeon no problem. No matter what
Speaker 1: I roll on stealth, I'm gonna win. Okay, that is
Speaker 1: way cool and it makes a lot of sense to again,
Speaker 1: I have such an elementary understanding of like the dinosaurs
Speaker 1: and what happened. We studied that in third grade and
Speaker 1: then no one thought it was important for me to
Speaker 1: talk about it again, and so I understand it was
Speaker 1: like giant comic cons is dead. It makes much more
Speaker 1: sight that it's like, well, then their food supply was changed,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, the weather it was a little different.
Speaker 1: And it's the actual impact of the comment isn't really
Speaker 1: what killed them. It's it was the change in their
Speaker 1: environment and climate and just not like basic it's it's sad,
Speaker 1: but yeah, like slowly you know, dying off and and
Speaker 1: starving or you know, just not you know, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a I think that's one of the things like when
Speaker 1: we talk when we think about big cataclysmic events like
Speaker 1: a like a meteor strike or global warming or even
Speaker 1: like a nuclear disaster, we think, Okay, that's it. It's binary,
Speaker 1: We're done. It's like no, like we'd still be around.
Speaker 1: We'd have to find a way to survive and evolve
Speaker 1: or else we're gonna be like dinosaur. Essentially, if we
Speaker 1: end up curing my fear birds today, I will leave
Speaker 1: with a healthy new fear of comets our world, so
Speaker 1: sudden technically a meteor once you get your atmosphere meteor.
Speaker 1: So the other big change from dinosaurs to bird is
Speaker 1: pretty obvious. They don't have teeth anymore, right, so why
Speaker 1: did they lose their teeth in favor of a beak?
Speaker 1: So some birds, especially aquatic birds, do have toothlike structures
Speaker 1: in their beak, which are called denticles, but these aren't
Speaker 1: real teeth in the sense that dinosaurs had them. So
Speaker 1: the teeth did go away, and in some forms like
Speaker 1: they re evolved these kind of like denticles or whatever.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so like, why it seems like teeth you
Speaker 1: would want It seems like it's pretty pretty good good
Speaker 1: thing to have no reason to really get rid of that.
Speaker 1: But recent research suggests that it has to do with
Speaker 1: egg incubation time. So the development of teeth in the
Speaker 1: egg is estimated to have taken up sixty of egg
Speaker 1: development time. And dinosaurs, so you get rid of the teeth,
Speaker 1: you have a much more limited amount of time in
Speaker 1: that very delicate, vulnerable egg where anyone can turn you
Speaker 1: into an omelet, and more time getting out in the world,
Speaker 1: spreading your jeans, doing bird stuff and hopefully, you know,
Speaker 1: maturing to adulthood and passing on your jeans. So it
Speaker 1: was a trade off of do I want to spend
Speaker 1: all this time as a little delicious egg growing these
Speaker 1: teeth or ditch the teeth, you know. I like the
Speaker 1: idea that spending six of their time just growing teeth.
Speaker 1: I actually that means they had many sets of teeth
Speaker 1: and they were falling out. That is horrifying. I six
Speaker 1: in imbryo on teeth. I don't think of babies is
Speaker 1: having teeth. Maybe the teeth is very scary. You're like,
Speaker 1: that's not right. You're supposed to just be all gun
Speaker 1: out there, little dinosaur embryos just working really hard, like
Speaker 1: doing like out. I'm imagining dinosaurs with giant dentri sized teeth,
Speaker 1: like he's way too large through their mouth and their
Speaker 1: babies and they're just chomp chomp, chop, chop chomp. It's
Speaker 1: very cute. So reptiles, well, it's the deal with reptiles.
Speaker 1: You may have heard that dinosaurs are reptiles, birds are reptiles,
Speaker 1: or that reptiles came from dinosaurs, and it gets pretty confusing. Honestly,
Speaker 1: that's because reptiles is a kind of outdated classification and
Speaker 1: one that's gone through some changes over the years. It
Speaker 1: used to just mean anything scaly and cold blooded, that is,
Speaker 1: having to regulate its blood temperature by using its environment.
Speaker 1: Then we started to pay more attention to phylogeny, that is,
Speaker 1: evolutionary his Street in categorizing animals, not just using their characteristics.
Speaker 1: Modern day reptiles such as crocodiles, lizards, snakes, and turtles
Speaker 1: did not evolve from dinosaurs. They evolved from an early
Speaker 1: reptilian ancestor. In fact, so did mammals. Mammals, lizards, snakes, crocodiles, turtles, dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: and birds are all classes of animals who share a
Speaker 1: common stem reptile ancestor. Imagine a tree branching off where
Speaker 1: you start with a small early reptile creature with a
Speaker 1: branch leading to mammals, a branch leading to turtles, a
Speaker 1: branch leading to and diverging into both snakes and lizards,
Speaker 1: and then there's the most awesome branch of all, the
Speaker 1: one that leads to arcosaurs, which split into crocodiles and dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: and those dinosaurs became birds. So when people talk about
Speaker 1: birds or dinosaurs being reptiles, really they mean they both
Speaker 1: descended from early reptile ancestors, but honestly, so did us mammals,
Speaker 1: so maybe it's a bit of a strange categorization. Birds
Speaker 1: today are most closely related to crocodiles, who were cousins
Speaker 1: both to ye oldie dinosaurs and to our modern day
Speaker 1: dinosaur birdies. Does any of this sound confusing, don't feel bad.
Speaker 1: It's really difficult to untangle the evolutionary tree, and researchers
Speaker 1: are often finding out new discoveries that helped prune some
Speaker 1: of these tangled branches. When we return, we're going to
Speaker 1: take a look at some real living birds who don't
Speaker 1: want us to forget that they're dinosaurs. So what was
Speaker 1: the earliest bird of all time that we know of?
Speaker 1: Almost sixty seven million years ago roamed the wonder chicken.
Speaker 1: Wonder chicken was about the size of a seagull, had
Speaker 1: a head like a chicken, a body like a duck,
Speaker 1: and long legs like a shore bird. It's the oldest
Speaker 1: fossil record that we have of birds. Unfortunately, wonder chicken
Speaker 1: is now extinct, but we still have birds alive and
Speaker 1: pecking today who have some really interesting characteristics that remind us, Hey,
Speaker 1: they're dinosaurs. So, Joel, now that we know a little
Speaker 1: bit more about the evolution of birds from sort of
Speaker 1: the standard dinosaurs to the dinosaurs that they are now,
Speaker 1: the bird bird dinosaurs, I want to talk about some
Speaker 1: birds that are alive right now that remind us that
Speaker 1: they're dinosaurs. Okay, Yes, let's hear about the terrifying birds
Speaker 1: of today. Yes, I'm sure you're going to love this. Second.
Speaker 1: AM going to be more prepared when I see a
Speaker 1: horrifying bird, and I can tell people why they need
Speaker 1: to be afraid when they're like, hal down, it's just bird. Yes.
Speaker 1: So first I want to talk about a bird who
Speaker 1: may not, by its appearance, remind you exactly of a dinosaur,
Speaker 1: but it has one of the oldest fossil records of
Speaker 1: extant which means living bird species. So this is the
Speaker 1: sand hill crane, which is found in North American wetlands.
Speaker 1: It's also found in northeastern Siberia, which sounds weird until
Speaker 1: you actually look at a world map and see how
Speaker 1: close they are, like on the globe, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're almost kissing those continents. They were probably crossing back
Speaker 1: and forth before or or migrating over over the water potentially. Yeah. OK.
Speaker 1: So their definite fossil record stretches back at least two
Speaker 1: point five million years ago, which is the oldest fossil
Speaker 1: record we have of living bird species. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: they are the oldest living species of birds. It just
Speaker 1: means that they have the oldest fossil record. So that
Speaker 1: could have something to do with, like say, their environment,
Speaker 1: like maybe wetlands preserved fossils better and that's why we
Speaker 1: have them. So we don't know like that they are
Speaker 1: the oldest living species of birth, just that we have
Speaker 1: the best records of them. There's also a ten million
Speaker 1: year old fossil that maybe a sandhill crane, although we're
Speaker 1: not exactly sure. There's some debate whether it's like an
Speaker 1: older ancestral species or whether it's the sandhill crane, but
Speaker 1: it could be. There could that which blows like we
Speaker 1: have these birds walks strutting around that could be ten
Speaker 1: million years old, which is a lot to think about
Speaker 1: and maybe wouldn't have changed that much. It looks like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is cool. I looked up the ten million year
Speaker 1: old fossil because they wanted to see it. That is
Speaker 1: so cool. It's like fossils are wild because obviously bones
Speaker 1: shift as they're being compressed, and so it's not always
Speaker 1: like a perfect outline. This guy's feet are kind of jinkie.
Speaker 1: They seem to be like placed one over the other,
Speaker 1: but you can see it. He was doing a cool
Speaker 1: dance move when he died. It's like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be immortal, mortal through depths. But you can definitely see
Speaker 1: like the crane like structure, and that's the crazy part. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's interesting. So I'm gonna put on my conspiracy hat
Speaker 1: a little bit here. Get get it on, Get on
Speaker 1: that tinfoil. The Sandhill crane is the prime candidate for
Speaker 1: who the Mothman sightings might be. So, uh, you know
Speaker 1: Mothman and that whole thing in North America where people
Speaker 1: see Mothman and he's well, he's a Mothman. He's a
Speaker 1: man who looks like he's like half moth or something,
Speaker 1: and he's the sightings that they report of having these
Speaker 1: red eyes and like this weird body and being really
Speaker 1: tall and lanky. It's thought that it's probably maybe We
Speaker 1: actually talked about this in an earlier episode that I
Speaker 1: did with the Nightcall Ladies. It could be that it's
Speaker 1: these sandhill cranes that in their heads they have this
Speaker 1: red coloration on top of their heads, so they look
Speaker 1: like you know how you imagine a crane or stork
Speaker 1: to look, but then they have these this like red coloration.
Speaker 1: So people who are like, oh, the mothman, he has
Speaker 1: these big red eyes. If you imagine like a hunched
Speaker 1: over crane where its neck isn't sticking out and it's
Speaker 1: like standing kind of upright, it could look very human like, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's got that those bulky wings which can easily
Speaker 1: be shoulders. If you're seeing it in like silhouette form,
Speaker 1: it's late night. I got a lot of the Mothman
Speaker 1: stuff on the bridge on a bridge in Jersey. Uh
Speaker 1: So if he was just chilling on like a guard rail,
Speaker 1: you can see that he's like, what is this thing
Speaker 1: with youant red eyes looking at me? Darkness right. The
Speaker 1: sort of scientific explanation is that the sandhill crane, it's
Speaker 1: bigger than you would necessarily expect a bird to be,
Speaker 1: and if one of them kind of strayed from its
Speaker 1: normal migratory path and you're not used to sing sandhill
Speaker 1: cranes and you see this bird, but its neck is
Speaker 1: kind of tucked in and its wings are out, and
Speaker 1: it looks like it has these big red eyes. You'd
Speaker 1: be like, oh, it's a mothman and we have to go.
Speaker 1: Or here's here's the conspiracy time. This is a ten
Speaker 1: million year old beast that's behind everything. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's the Illuminati. Okay, it's coming for you and your children, yourself.
Speaker 1: Other mothman mythology is like, oh, mothman always shows up
Speaker 1: before disaster. Oh well, this is ten million years old.
Speaker 1: It was behind like everything. This is what led to
Speaker 1: global warm Pompeii. Everything global warming is because of this
Speaker 1: global warming. Yep, yep. The one people who could stop him.
Speaker 1: Humans are gonna die. Oh my gosh. But if you
Speaker 1: want to see the dinosaur in birds, all you have
Speaker 1: to do is look at baby birds of a lot
Speaker 1: of different bird species and you can see. You're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're dinosaurs, right. Why didn't we see this earlier? So
Speaker 1: probably because baby birds and fledglings have less developed feathers,
Speaker 1: so like they're not puffy and you can see their
Speaker 1: skin and stuff. It's like with our illustrations of dinosaurs
Speaker 1: and our popular idea of what they look like. They're
Speaker 1: kind of shrink wrapped where we like all right, even
Speaker 1: if they had feathers that was maybe just a few
Speaker 1: of them. We don't think of them as being puffy
Speaker 1: and like filled out like a bird is, although they
Speaker 1: could have been. They could have had more feathers and
Speaker 1: been more fluffy, which I think is adorable. But when
Speaker 1: you look at a baby bird, they look like dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: especially species like blue herons. So if you dare take
Speaker 1: a look at that picture of that baby blue heron,
Speaker 1: I think, listen, it's cute. I can't deny it. It's
Speaker 1: super cute. It's got a very long neck, and it
Speaker 1: looks like it's making this sound. It's like a cry slash,
Speaker 1: like primal scream. It is like it's a little feathers.
Speaker 1: It's cute. It is cute, But it looks like a
Speaker 1: little dinosaur, right, totally, absolutely, it's a d little dinosaur,
Speaker 1: I mean that is what it is. But so these
Speaker 1: are found in North American wet lambs. They eat fish,
Speaker 1: and you know, if you live in North America, you
Speaker 1: may have seen an adult blue hair and they're those
Speaker 1: very elegant birds with the long necks and long beaks.
Speaker 1: They have that like one little frond of black feather
Speaker 1: coming off of their heads. But and so when you
Speaker 1: look at that, it's you know, kind of elegant, and
Speaker 1: so you think it doesn't you know, it doesn't look
Speaker 1: super like a dinosaur like again, it's all filled out
Speaker 1: with feathers. They look like a more refined pelican that Hellicanuh,
Speaker 1: is that the pink one? What's the pink one? Lam
Speaker 1: the kind of flamingo like. They're very long and tall
Speaker 1: and they see a leg. Yeah, totally, but not all
Speaker 1: dinosaur like. But their baby, they're so squat And is
Speaker 1: this this little black and white guy one of those
Speaker 1: two that is Actually this is so cute to me,
Speaker 1: But this is a baby Southern ground hornbill found in
Speaker 1: Southern Africa, so in Kenya and South Africa, And it
Speaker 1: looks like a little dinosaur alien to me. It looks,
Speaker 1: you know, for some reason, it's giving me Lelo and
Speaker 1: Stitch vibes. I know, it doesn't really it doesn't look
Speaker 1: like Stitch himself, but it looks like artwork that would
Speaker 1: have come from that movie. It has the attitude of Stitch.
Speaker 1: One leg popped out, head cocked to the side. This
Speaker 1: bird is giving you sass. It's not taking your bs
Speaker 1: armacambo arm on hip or little wing on him, and
Speaker 1: it is just like, yeah, I'm a dinosaur. What about it?
Speaker 1: You are going to listen to and respect this baby bird. Okay,
Speaker 1: she's got it going on. I love this, horrifies me.
Speaker 1: It's suff of nightmares, but also cute, you know, winning
Speaker 1: me over. I see what your game is now. This
Speaker 1: this is the thing. I think. Instead of telling you
Speaker 1: you should not be afraid of birds, they're not scary,
Speaker 1: I should be saying, yes, they're scary. That's what's so
Speaker 1: cool about them. They are terrifying little dinosaurs and adorable
Speaker 1: and yes, if they could kill us all, they probably would.
Speaker 1: But the fact that they don't adorable, I see the appeal.
Speaker 1: They're very charming. So the adult ground hornbill very different. No,
Speaker 1: that's when I filled out with feathers. It's jet black,
Speaker 1: it's got a long beak, and it's I imagine the
Speaker 1: part that you're not super into is that red kind
Speaker 1: of gold or pouch wattle. Swallowed a heart and half
Speaker 1: of it fell out, and it's still beating in its
Speaker 1: throat and maybe the heart like the ventricles from the
Speaker 1: heart to wrap up around his eye, and they're much
Speaker 1: something out of a Mary Shelley book. I can't actually
Speaker 1: argue with that. And they can live to be up
Speaker 1: to sixty years old and well up to two ft tall. Well,
Speaker 1: if it's only two be tall, I can kick it,
Speaker 1: so that's good. I wouldn't. I don't like to harm animals.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't kick it. But if I felt it was
Speaker 1: attacking me, you could. It's it's hypothetically possible your morals
Speaker 1: hold you back, but knowing that you could brings you
Speaker 1: some comfort. I understand that. I like to call these
Speaker 1: guys swoll Zazoo because they are hornbills. This does look
Speaker 1: like Zazi's older, much more like Tuck. Zassi thinks he's
Speaker 1: everything because he's got like access to the palace, and
Speaker 1: this guy is like, okay, well I run the streets,
Speaker 1: so what are we doing? Really? Yeah, he's just like
Speaker 1: he shows He's like Zazo's cousin who shows up and
Speaker 1: he's like, what's up. I've got like a bunch of beer,
Speaker 1: bunch of bruskies. We're gonna put the game on. It's
Speaker 1: a very come at me bro bird, I think, And
Speaker 1: it's it's great. It'd be like, it'd be a great
Speaker 1: foil for Zazo who's very like, Oh I'm an efficient
Speaker 1: little right. That's not really Zozie's voice, is it? No,
Speaker 1: that at all. He's got to you know, I'm here
Speaker 1: to shave from lay on High, isn't it. Im I'm
Speaker 1: going to save the Kingdom on I I like, uh,
Speaker 1: not John Stewart, but the other John British, John Oliver
Speaker 1: does the British. Yeah, he dosas his voice on the
Speaker 1: Lion King live action movie, and uh, it's it's pretty special.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite performances from the live action
Speaker 1: movie because he's he really channels his inner brit It's
Speaker 1: pretty special. Yes, But then this is like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what what what's like the swoll British Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know anything from a Guy Ritchie movie you need.
Speaker 1: This is a Guy Ritchie version of Zas. We did it.
Speaker 1: We solved it. Yeah, we did it. We did it.
Speaker 1: We got there. It took a while, but we got there.
Speaker 1: So these these hornbills can fly, but they mostly hunt
Speaker 1: on the ground and their carnivores, so you know, on
Speaker 1: the ground where you live and walk Okay, I'm just
Speaker 1: saying they could be up in the sky and finding
Speaker 1: other sky demons, but no on turf. Yes, rude. So
Speaker 1: now I want to talk about a bird who looks
Speaker 1: like it came out of a Jurassic Park movie slash
Speaker 1: science fiction slash fantasy movie. And it's called a Watson.
Speaker 1: Get us scrolled down a little bit, closing my center yourself,
Speaker 1: take a deep breath. Okay, you guys, you need to know.
Speaker 1: It has red eyes and orange mohawk and bright red wings,
Speaker 1: but like black and yellow tail feathers, which, to me
Speaker 1: um a casual purveyor of nature, says danger and warning. Okay,
Speaker 1: we get black and yellows and reds like this that's
Speaker 1: like I'm poisonous. Don't eat me. I will destroy you.
Speaker 1: Also has like weird highlight feathers on its neck that
Speaker 1: make it look very angry. I'm not messed with it.
Speaker 1: It's got it's got a bit of the speak to
Speaker 1: the manager hair, because I was gonna say it has
Speaker 1: a care and hair, got a car and hair. And
Speaker 1: this this image that you provided with its head cock
Speaker 1: to the side, absolutely says I need to speak with someone.
Speaker 1: I need to speak to your manager. Like right now,
Speaker 1: which did not come fast enough. And I am a
Speaker 1: living I had some of your leaves on this tree,
Speaker 1: and I gotta tell you, the service on this tree
Speaker 1: has been really, really bad. And she would get that
Speaker 1: every fund too, because look at her. I'm just giving
Speaker 1: your money back. Please don't be mad at me anymore.
Speaker 1: I want my money back. These are These are Karen birds.
Speaker 1: You know these? Uh So they're about the size of
Speaker 1: a chicken. They you did a very good job of
Speaker 1: describing it. But yeah. It has these like brownish black
Speaker 1: feathers on their back and tail feathers which they kind
Speaker 1: of have like an oil slick sheen when in the light. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're tipped in a yellowish gold. Uh. The front part
Speaker 1: of their wings have these dark burgundy feathers. Their bellies
Speaker 1: are gold. The flesh around their cheeks and eyes is
Speaker 1: bright blue. Uh. They have a mohawk crest of yellow
Speaker 1: and black feathers. The care and haircut a little bit
Speaker 1: and then a sort of like black hawk like beak,
Speaker 1: and their eyes are crimson red. So a little a
Speaker 1: little you know, interesting looking, a little scary. Maybe. I
Speaker 1: think I call it the nightmares. I think they're kind
Speaker 1: of pretty though they look like a cyberpunk turkey to
Speaker 1: me a little bit, it does. I was not this
Speaker 1: making cyberpunk turkey, but you look at this thing in
Speaker 1: the face, it does look like tattoos. Like sidekick bird. Okay,
Speaker 1: if the Terminator came back and needed an animal sidekick,
Speaker 1: it would be this guy and he would pick out
Speaker 1: your eyes. I need your clothes, and I need a
Speaker 1: couple of bone for my bird. I love it. So
Speaker 1: they are found in the Amazon rainforest. Now here's the thing.
Speaker 1: These are really interesting birds in that they kind of
Speaker 1: show us like this transition from dinosaurs to birds. Now,
Speaker 1: this doesn't mean that these are the transitional birds. We
Speaker 1: don't know that. They're probably have like pretty old species,
Speaker 1: but there could have been many species before them that
Speaker 1: were more transitional. But here here's where it gets weird.
Speaker 1: Is that their chicks. Remember how we were talking about
Speaker 1: the claws on the archaeopterics. It's chicks have claws on
Speaker 1: their wings, like little tiny claws, kind of like it
Speaker 1: could either be a vestige of dinosaur claws or a
Speaker 1: new adaptation that like came back like they didn't have
Speaker 1: claws and then they re evolved claws. We don't really
Speaker 1: know necessarily, but these claws allow them to climb trees
Speaker 1: before they're capable of flight, and the claws go away
Speaker 1: by adulthood, so it's basically to protect these little you're
Speaker 1: shaking your head, but listen. At first, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe it's the baby birds that I love, Like, maybe
Speaker 1: just their adult selves are scary and I need to
Speaker 1: focus my energy on loving baby birds. And doesn't love
Speaker 1: a baby But now here they have claws and they
Speaker 1: can try and trees with those claws before they can
Speaker 1: learn to fly. With just the Watson babies, that might
Speaker 1: be in a to turn me off all the bird babies.
Speaker 1: I know it's perpetudice, but I don't know how to
Speaker 1: trust in now hashtag not all bird babies. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so these are for defense. So if the chicks are
Speaker 1: attacked by predators, they can drop out of the tree
Speaker 1: into water, swim to shore, and then climb back up
Speaker 1: their trees. So they're not using these clauses weapons. They're
Speaker 1: using them for defense. It is super cool. It's weirdly
Speaker 1: very cool. I maybe went over again. Damn it, you're
Speaker 1: really getting me here today, Katie. It's tough because I
Speaker 1: like I like the idea of doing the pocahonas dive
Speaker 1: into waters with a giant waterfall behind them. Uh, it
Speaker 1: gives off a magic and majestical feel. That's they're from
Speaker 1: the sun. That's like little bit dumpy baby bird going
Speaker 1: like it's probably listen, they're having fun. That's their version
Speaker 1: of summer camp. We get it too. Now, these guys
Speaker 1: are from the land where they have like the really
Speaker 1: giant birds. Right, they're extinct now, but it was like
Speaker 1: a mesa that like rose above and like there was
Speaker 1: some more. Are you to understand all I'm talking about? Well,
Speaker 1: there there were um like the terror birds, like the
Speaker 1: land dwelling ones or the big what's it called. Um
Speaker 1: there's the one, there's the ones that could fly, and
Speaker 1: then there's the giant terror birds that lived on the ground. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: the ones that could fly. The terror birds were the
Speaker 1: one on the ground. Our gentivis magnificence. Magnificence. Lord, Now
Speaker 1: that is a big guy. This is the stuff that
Speaker 1: haunts my nightmares that I can't oh my oh lord.
Speaker 1: I'm like they okay, guys, imagine like you know how
Speaker 1: um vultures are sort of like especially when we think
Speaker 1: of them from our like animated cartoons things. They're like
Speaker 1: thin and like creepy and they've got like little hunchbacks
Speaker 1: and they you know, they don't have this voice, but
Speaker 1: that's the voice that I imagine in my head. These
Speaker 1: guys are like very thick, like huge, much larger but
Speaker 1: with that scene creepy lunch back thing, and I can't
Speaker 1: They're like a like a much more swoll California condor.
Speaker 1: It's enough for me. I don't like them, but I
Speaker 1: think they're they're cool, Like their history is cool because
Speaker 1: they like magically because of how the tectonic plates shifted,
Speaker 1: they were like higher above than what got knocked down.
Speaker 1: They were like, we're pretty good up here, and they
Speaker 1: lasted to like we're going up here. Yeah, And they
Speaker 1: had like they were a huge they like had a
Speaker 1: wingspan of like twenty feet or something. It much larger
Speaker 1: than a man. It's it's upsetting, Yeah, it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were serious birds. These ones, in comparison, are just
Speaker 1: the size of chickens, so they're not not quite as
Speaker 1: intimidating in terms like they have to make up for
Speaker 1: it in terms of their styling, not their size. But
Speaker 1: these are actually the last surviving member of the genus
Speaker 1: up as Thokamus, which and it's not exactly clear where
Speaker 1: they fit on the bird clade tree, but they may
Speaker 1: have been their own branch of early birds from around
Speaker 1: the time that dinosaurs went extinct and birds were starting
Speaker 1: to evolve. So like you know, you have birds evolving
Speaker 1: and then this is like a could be like a
Speaker 1: really early early bird. Okay, all right, so he definitely
Speaker 1: got the worm. He he was all set. They're actually herbivores.
Speaker 1: They eat vegetation exclusively and they actually so this is crazy,
Speaker 1: but they have a crop. So that's like part of
Speaker 1: the bird digestive system that works similar to the guts
Speaker 1: of ruminants. So ruminants are cows, goats, sheep, deer, et cetera.
Speaker 1: That where they will ferment vegetation in a special part
Speaker 1: of their digestive system called the ruman But these birds,
Speaker 1: they aren't mammals. They don't have a room, and but
Speaker 1: they have a rop where they keep this vegetation and
Speaker 1: it is also fermented for easier digestion. So they are
Speaker 1: also called uh, they're called flying cows. Sometimes they're also
Speaker 1: called skunk bird or stink bird because the fermenting leaves
Speaker 1: actually create a foul odor. But yeah, they're basically flying cows.
Speaker 1: I love that they're not flying cows, but I imagine
Speaker 1: they're slightly tipsy cows. All this fermentation going on within them.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're Okay, we have to climb this waterfall and
Speaker 1: get back to our diving spot. Damn it, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: these birds are very fancy and very disruptive. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: they're they're the drunk Karens, the drunk flying vegetarian Karens
Speaker 1: of the world. That's great. Different bird species have all
Speaker 1: sorts of different eating habits. There's the flying cow or
Speaker 1: before we just talked about. There are insectivores, carnivores, frugivores
Speaker 1: who eat fruit, granivores carnivores did I mention carnivores already?
Speaker 1: And omnivores. There are birds who are scavengers, birds who
Speaker 1: eat other birds, birds who eat bones. I'm looking at you,
Speaker 1: bearded vultures. If there's something edible on this earth, there's
Speaker 1: probably a bird who can eat it. They'll even eat
Speaker 1: small rocks and grit to help them with their digestion.
Speaker 1: So let's all be thankful. We can't fit inside a
Speaker 1: bird's beak. When we return, we'll talk about a couple
Speaker 1: of birds that make us question how they could possibly
Speaker 1: be dinosaurs. They're way too cute. Paleontologists, paleobiologists, and paleo
Speaker 1: artists try their best to reconstruct what extinct dinosaurs looked
Speaker 1: like based on fossil evidence, but we don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what dinosaur ors look like. They were probably much different
Speaker 1: from the depictions they received in Jurassic Park. First of all,
Speaker 1: it's hard to know exactly how their flesh was filled out,
Speaker 1: or they wire in scaly brown and green, or were
Speaker 1: they brightly colored with vibrant, fluffy feathers. As we make
Speaker 1: more discoveries and become more sophisticated with our ability to
Speaker 1: examine ancient DNA, will continue to get a closer picture
Speaker 1: of what different species of dinosaurs may have actually looked like.
Speaker 1: But there are a couple of living dinosaurs that we
Speaker 1: know exactly what they look like and near a durable
Speaker 1: So now we've talked about the evolutionary history of birds
Speaker 1: and dinosaurs, and we've talked about some birds that remind
Speaker 1: us that they are in fact dinosaurs. Now I want
Speaker 1: to talk about birds that when you look at them,
Speaker 1: You're like, how is this ever a dinosaur? An sense
Speaker 1: I feel like I will be very soothed by these birds.
Speaker 1: I'm wanted. I I ratchet up your anxiety and then
Speaker 1: I bring it back down. I'm so thoughtful of you.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So the first one I want to look
Speaker 1: at is the Inca turn. It is a very proper
Speaker 1: looking bird with a debonair little mustache. He literally has
Speaker 1: the curly mustache that a villain has, but he has
Speaker 1: the eyes of a puppy. He looked like a little
Speaker 1: p emperor penguin kind of who is your little gentleman?
Speaker 1: Who is your little gentleman? Yeah, he's got this little
Speaker 1: he or she. This could also be a female mustache.
Speaker 1: Let's let's make mustaches unisex. Honestly, but I can save
Speaker 1: a lot of money on waxing. Let's do it, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I sometimes I think like if I had a
Speaker 1: handlebar mustache, I don't know, I think I could pull
Speaker 1: it off. You could absolutely pull it off. Are you?
Speaker 1: Thank you? Thank you? So these these little little gentlemen
Speaker 1: and gentlewomen who live on the coasts of Chile and Peru,
Speaker 1: they are these little puff and esque birds and like
Speaker 1: all turns. They are seabirds, so they're about a foot
Speaker 1: long and six ounces, so you could hold it like
Speaker 1: a sandwich. Their bodies are slate gray or blackish gray.
Speaker 1: Their feet are bright orange, their beaks are bright oranges red.
Speaker 1: It looks like they have two little dabs of like
Speaker 1: yellow makeup on their cheeks and bush were yellow, it
Speaker 1: would be right on the apples of It's kind of
Speaker 1: like clown makeup. Two little bright dots of yellow on
Speaker 1: the each side of their mouths. These are these fleshy
Speaker 1: parts of their cheeks. I think they're called gape pouches,
Speaker 1: so they look like and then they have, of course
Speaker 1: this like these two feathery plumes that look like candlebar
Speaker 1: mustache coming out from either side of its beak that
Speaker 1: are and they're white. It's just it looks like this,
Speaker 1: like weird gentleman clown. I'm surprised Disney has not made
Speaker 1: this a main character for one of their films yet.
Speaker 1: It's got cute, little loved feet, so I imagine it
Speaker 1: swims a little. Yes, yes, it does swim. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: want to see it as much to act like ripple them.
Speaker 1: My water probably does blows in the wind and there's
Speaker 1: seeing sea shanties. You know, I can see it now
Speaker 1: the movie. Now I imagine, Okay, this bird it has
Speaker 1: to protect the coastline and make sure the fish appli
Speaker 1: stays good for you know, all the little mama and
Speaker 1: baby birdies back on land trying to survive. And on
Speaker 1: his adventure, he meets a giant whale and they talk
Speaker 1: about ancestors that brought them here and how he used
Speaker 1: to be a dinosaurus to be a dinosaur, what were you?
Speaker 1: A tiny horse thing? That was a tiny horse too,
Speaker 1: that's what whales where. It's so funny, like these huge
Speaker 1: whales used to be these tiny, like little rabbit like horses.
Speaker 1: Yeah okay, yeah again that he travels back in time
Speaker 1: and that becomes friends with these tiny land horse rabbit whales.
Speaker 1: I just love the role reversal of like these huge
Speaker 1: dinosaurs becoming these little gentleman seabirds and then like these
Speaker 1: teeny tiny, little like weird horse animals becoming these huge whales.
Speaker 1: I have to look, I'm like trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what to google and like horse whale ancestors. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: whale land, let me let me find I forgot its
Speaker 1: name I think it's called into highest highest h y. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here it is. It's like a kangaroo clever thing. What
Speaker 1: in the hell that is so former? When you turned
Speaker 1: into a whale that imagined like a musk rat mixed
Speaker 1: through the cheetah mixed with a kangaroo the size of
Speaker 1: a rabbit, and that's what it is. Is so weird.
Speaker 1: But you can also kind of see where a whale
Speaker 1: with more like if if you guys know animals, I
Speaker 1: might be showing my age on that, but if you
Speaker 1: ever saw a human turn into an animal, that's animals.
Speaker 1: And I can see this thing turning into a whale,
Speaker 1: even though that's the craziest thing ever. I kept saying
Speaker 1: that it was horse like, but it's more deer like.
Speaker 1: I don't know why it's a horse um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: here's I'm gonna paste an image and to the dock
Speaker 1: here where you can see it looks like it looks
Speaker 1: like a freaking golden retriever mixed with a deer a kangaroo.
Speaker 1: AM stunned. It's so strange, It is so so strange,
Speaker 1: but it's it was this little hooved animal that was
Speaker 1: the size of I don't know a cappy bara. You
Speaker 1: know what a cappy barros? Yes, they do. They're super cute. Wow, guys,
Speaker 1: you have to look it up. Don't rely on our
Speaker 1: descriptions because you have to see it for yourself. It
Speaker 1: is the most in Like, I see where their ears went.
Speaker 1: I see how it's like lost its legs. It became
Speaker 1: like elongated fin form. It's all there, but it's infer
Speaker 1: and like a dog but not. Oh god, it's so cool.
Speaker 1: It's so weird. Yeaholution, it's yes, evolution, you crazy. But
Speaker 1: back to these incaterns, little little mustachio seabirds. So they
Speaker 1: are I don't know. To me, they kind of look
Speaker 1: like a cross between a pigeon and a penguin with
Speaker 1: duck legs and a mustache. That is so. They're similar
Speaker 1: to puffins in terms of their habits. They eat fish.
Speaker 1: They do dive into the water or dip to catch
Speaker 1: little fish. Unlike puffins, they don't do deep dives. They
Speaker 1: just kind of stick to the surface of the water.
Speaker 1: They also have these little denticles on the inside of
Speaker 1: their beaks that helps them secure these fish in place. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're also similar to puffins. They have these huge nesting
Speaker 1: colonies where they have thousands of families. They're very socially outgoing,
Speaker 1: and they are monogamous for at least a whole breeding season,
Speaker 1: so they can switch partners for different breedings Swiss seasons,
Speaker 1: sometimes they stick to the same partner, but yeah, they
Speaker 1: they raise their eggs together. And then that little mustache
Speaker 1: that both the females and males have is actually an
Speaker 1: indicator of the inca terns health, and both males and
Speaker 1: females use it to assess their partners health and suitability,
Speaker 1: so it is really cute to me. Basically they're dating
Speaker 1: is like how healthy is your mustato lists? And we
Speaker 1: could all use it in our dating cycles and should
Speaker 1: be like, how healthy are you? Really? Also like the
Speaker 1: idea of a polyamorous sitcom starting these guys, they're just like, listen,
Speaker 1: that was last raining season, this beeking season, Benna, try
Speaker 1: something jefferent, but it's all love boo. And then you know,
Speaker 1: we spent two hours grooming each other's mustaches, and that's
Speaker 1: how we know it's love. Hand in hand in handlebar
Speaker 1: is what it'd be called perfect. And it's also said
Speaker 1: that they have a mew like call. Now here's the
Speaker 1: thing I would love it if they sounded like a
Speaker 1: cat mewing. But I've listened to this. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a cat who's like a chain smoker. To me, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's not a cute little male. If you want to
Speaker 1: listen to it that YouTube link. Oh my god, yes,
Speaker 1: there clicking in now. Oh, it does sound like a
Speaker 1: New York cat who has waited for the bus for
Speaker 1: too long and as someone's trying to cut in for
Speaker 1: a night. Yeah, I will say it to not as
Speaker 1: horrifying as I thought it was going to be. It's
Speaker 1: kind of cute. No, it's chain smoker cat, which is cute.
Speaker 1: But I mean, if your cat don't chain smoke. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying smoke, don't do it. Cats be cool, be
Speaker 1: mule staying, SMaL steal. Uh. So, now I want to
Speaker 1: talk about a bird who when you think about the
Speaker 1: evolutionary path of dinosaurs and birds, it is mind blowing.
Speaker 1: It is the tiniest bird in the world and it
Speaker 1: is the b hummingbird. So the b hummingbird is only
Speaker 1: found in Cuba. It is only two inches long, it's
Speaker 1: under three grams, it weighs less than a single grape,
Speaker 1: and it's about the size of a grape. H it
Speaker 1: is tiny. It is so my god, guys, if you've
Speaker 1: seen flit from Pocacon, it's it's a tiny hummingbird. It's
Speaker 1: like that. Like it. Oh, it could fit between your fingers. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's literally like a little flying, colorful grape and
Speaker 1: always less than a grape. It's I don't know, it's nuts.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at one perched on somebody's thumbnail. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's okay. This is the only bird I stand. This
Speaker 1: bird and I are friends. It is the cutest and
Speaker 1: it doesn't even have like it's beacut kind of long
Speaker 1: like typically is of a hummingbird, but doesn't have that
Speaker 1: weird like long tongue thing that I don't like. That
Speaker 1: thing leads me out. It feels very it does, but
Speaker 1: you can't see it. It's so it's proportionate to its
Speaker 1: body and it's cut. And also it's plumage is very beautiful,
Speaker 1: like it's almost iridescent. Yeah. So males are a bright
Speaker 1: iridescent blue on their back and females are a bright
Speaker 1: iridescent green, and their bellies are kind of a grayish white,
Speaker 1: and they eat like most hind birds. They eat nectar.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'll eat a spider or tiny insect, whatever they
Speaker 1: can fit in their little beaks. Their beaks do open.
Speaker 1: I know, it seems like they're just like a drinking
Speaker 1: straw that doesn't open and close, but yeah they can.
Speaker 1: They can open and close it and use it like
Speaker 1: little pincers. But yeah. Mostly it's mostly nectar that they
Speaker 1: feed on, and they build teeny teeny teeny tiny nests.
Speaker 1: It's the size of a corner o. Their nests can
Speaker 1: fit on a clothes pin and they lay two itty
Speaker 1: bitty eggs in it, and each egg is the size
Speaker 1: of a single pe. You guys can't describe to you
Speaker 1: pass out it is and it's always two little eggs.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. You can see there's a lot of
Speaker 1: pictures of people like handling or putting, you know, things
Speaker 1: near it, so you can get a relative idea of
Speaker 1: the size. But very very tiny, so cute. I'm obsessed
Speaker 1: with dollhouses. I love tiny things, and this is kind
Speaker 1: of perfect. I know, I love I love miniatures. This.
Speaker 1: I got to the point of quarantine where it's like
Speaker 1: I'm going to build some miniatures, but I didn't do it.
Speaker 1: But I work and also if you up it's you
Speaker 1: got a primate and start from the top. It's so much.
Speaker 1: But when I obsessively watch I think videos on Instagram
Speaker 1: with people like here's tiny dollhouse, me too, tiny cafe.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen tiny cooking? Like it's a YouTube
Speaker 1: thing where they build a tech they build a tiny,
Speaker 1: fully functional kitchen and cook tiny food. I like it
Speaker 1: when they get a hamster and they feed the hamster. Yes.
Speaker 1: Oh I saw one where they made a hamster spa
Speaker 1: and they put the hamster in the tiny spat little jets,
Speaker 1: but a little thing that was so cute. I can't
Speaker 1: take it. Like, imagine like a bee hummingbird in a
Speaker 1: tiny kitchen, one of these, like I just I'm dead.
Speaker 1: I diad this is what killed me. A little cherry
Speaker 1: cloth bathrobe. You can stay cuddly. Oh my mom sent
Speaker 1: me photos of there was this little hummingbird nest, not
Speaker 1: a bee hummingbird, just a normal hummingbird. And it was
Speaker 1: so cute. The tiny eggs they just look like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, they look like little little gumballs. I want,
Speaker 1: for some reason just want to like put it all
Speaker 1: in my mouth. I don't know why it would not
Speaker 1: taste good, but I don't know. I don't and I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. Maybe I'm like part snake just now. Of
Speaker 1: course I don't want to do this because I want
Speaker 1: them to develop into tiny hummingbirds. But can you imagine
Speaker 1: the world's tiniest Friday egg from a bee hummingbird egg
Speaker 1: on a tiny pan. I love it with little tiny sandgates.
Speaker 1: Those are the cutest. I like how whenever there's a
Speaker 1: cute animal, it's like, Oh, it's so cute, how can
Speaker 1: I eat it? Yes, I don't advocate eating the b hummingbird,
Speaker 1: but they are so cute. They are so cute. But
Speaker 1: it's also it's just crazy to think about how the
Speaker 1: evolutionary path of the therapods that also created the t
Speaker 1: rex ended up with like the little tiny p bird. Like,
Speaker 1: it's just so like to put it in perspective, the
Speaker 1: earliest common ancestors of therapods, so all therapods, including like
Speaker 1: velociraptors t rex is birds, was probably something either similar
Speaker 1: to or was he Arasaurus, which is one of the
Speaker 1: earliest dinosaurs. It's a bipedal carnivore that looked like a
Speaker 1: sort of meaty your philosophy like a cross between a
Speaker 1: t rex and a velociraptor. It weighed seven hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy pounds and grew to be up to twenty ft
Speaker 1: in length. And these guys evolved around two hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty million years ago. And it, I mean, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I can see how it like shrank down
Speaker 1: into bird ancestors and like beefed up into like t rex.
Speaker 1: But it's just it's crazy that it started with this
Speaker 1: template and then just behind door number one, you become
Speaker 1: a t rex behind door number two. Verbs I like,
Speaker 1: I really would like one of these dinosaurs and the
Speaker 1: size of a bee hummingbird. Like I really enjoyed the
Speaker 1: idea of this little Again, dude, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you call that a snout on a dinosaur the mouth
Speaker 1: yeah sure, yeah if you little guys so cute, it's
Speaker 1: trying to bite your finger but it can't get it.
Speaker 1: But like, so these guys were from around two hundred
Speaker 1: thirty million years ago. Be hummingbirds evolved around ten million
Speaker 1: years ago, so it only took two hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: million years for Herosaurus or maybe a dinosaur similar to
Speaker 1: it that is thought to be the ancestor of therapods,
Speaker 1: to become a little less than a grape size buzzing puffball.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, you guys. That's so impressive. Dinosaurs are amazing.
Speaker 1: Evolution is amazing. I feel like I am less afraid
Speaker 1: of birds, but more conscious of the adult ones. I
Speaker 1: am now warming up to baby birds. I think baby
Speaker 1: birds are okay. Most people dislike they like adult birds,
Speaker 1: but they don't like the babies because they think that
Speaker 1: they about Simon cats are like the shaved cats. And
Speaker 1: I'm just like, listen, guys, every no matter what how
Speaker 1: much hair you have or how little hair you have,
Speaker 1: you're worthy of love and you still be adorable and
Speaker 1: super cute. Hypocritical coming from us naked humans. We're hella naked,
Speaker 1: Like we have to put on some clothes. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine a baby bird in a clothes? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I have imagine. Okay, Well, would I want to put
Speaker 1: on it like a little Jackie Kennedy outfit with the okay? Well,
Speaker 1: so I feel like we've been on a learning journey
Speaker 1: and maybe, like I know, it's it's we're not going
Speaker 1: to solve the relationship you have with birds. In one podcast,
Speaker 1: but like I feel like instead of like saying, don't
Speaker 1: try to think about like, oh I shouldn't be afraid
Speaker 1: of birds, think about like maybe there's like a reason
Speaker 1: for this fear, and let's find the science behind it,
Speaker 1: and then that way we can move forward and put
Speaker 1: baby birds and sailor costumes. That makes sense. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: send me all of your baby birds in sailor costumes. Please.
Speaker 1: I love him or her or them already. Um, we
Speaker 1: haven't solved the problem, but we have come much closer.
Speaker 1: After that, I thank you. That's all I need to hear. So,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me today Joel. Of course,
Speaker 1: Joel is our wonderful producer. But do you have anything
Speaker 1: else to plug Sure, if you are a mature listener,
Speaker 1: you can check out Fake Doctor's Real Friends, which is
Speaker 1: a Scrubs rewatch show. It's a fun show to be
Speaker 1: on and can we watch along with us on Hulu
Speaker 1: dot com. Other than that, you can come find me
Speaker 1: on my twitters, wrote out a lot of social stuff
Speaker 1: and a lot of sci fi stuff. I am Joel
Speaker 1: Monik and that's j O E L L E M
Speaker 1: O N I tu eat all one week and you
Speaker 1: can find us on Instagram at Creature Feature Pod. I'll
Speaker 1: be posting pictures of all these fantastic birds. Find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Creature Feet pod. That's f e A
Speaker 1: T not f e ET. That songing very different. You
Speaker 1: can find me if you just want to hear my
Speaker 1: Katie thoughts. Again, not not necessarily related to the show,
Speaker 1: but you know, just my thoughts and opinions. That's at
Speaker 1: Katie Golden And as always I am also pro bird
Speaker 1: rights where I This is a very relevant episode about
Speaker 1: basically the bird takeover is emminent and we must prepare
Speaker 1: for our new beloved bird overlords. Thanks to the Space
Speaker 1: Coassics for their super awesome song x Alumina. Creature Feature
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: like the one you just heard, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app website, Apple podcast, or Hey Gus, what wherever
Speaker 1: you get your favorite shoes? To see you next Wednesday.