Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to Creature feature, the show where we
Speaker 1: examine the weirdest creatures and humans on the planet. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and I'm certainly not a hive mind intelligence of every
Speaker 1: bird on the planet who are waiting to make their
Speaker 1: move for the Grand Avian Revolution. Today we're talking about cryptids.
Speaker 1: What are they? Are they real? Are they right behind you?
Speaker 1: The truth behind Mothman, the Chepicabra and Bigfoot? And what
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know? Who's they I don't
Speaker 1: actually know? Discover this and more as we answer the
Speaker 1: agel question, what slimy, terrible creature maybe lurking right under
Speaker 1: your feet? So why do we love cryptids? Cryptids are
Speaker 1: animals that people believe exists based on anecdotal evidence, rumors, myths,
Speaker 1: folk tales, and conspiracy theories. There are cryptid sidings all
Speaker 1: over the world, in almost every culture. Why are they
Speaker 1: so compelling? I think the idea of secretive animals who
Speaker 1: elude our attend to document them is a massively appealing one.
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate freedom to live in isolation, nimbly evading
Speaker 1: the watchful eyes of human society only being caught in
Speaker 1: the blurry photos of conveniently terrible photographers. Maybe it's wish
Speaker 1: fulfillment fantasy. We live in a hyper surveilled world, either
Speaker 1: in tight knit communities who know everything about you, or
Speaker 1: vast metropolis is with the details of your existence on file.
Speaker 1: Cryptids are an escape from society monsters who are more
Speaker 1: revealing of our own psychological quirks. Well, at least that's
Speaker 1: the story the man would have you believe. What if
Speaker 1: I told you there are some real life cryptids. Today
Speaker 1: we'll be looking at the facts behind the cryptids, what
Speaker 1: it would mean if they actually existed, and the real
Speaker 1: animals that are just as crazy as the cryptids themselves.
Speaker 1: Joining me today to discuss this is Tess Lynch from
Speaker 1: Night Call podcast. Katie, How are you great? I'm so
Speaker 1: excited to have you because I know you guys love
Speaker 1: to talk about conspiracy theories, and it's just it's like
Speaker 1: all those late night conversations that you have with your
Speaker 1: friends when you know you're you're winding down from the
Speaker 1: day and then you're just your mind goes to incredibly
Speaker 1: creative places. It's really fun and I actually I was
Speaker 1: so excited that we're going to talk about cryptids because
Speaker 1: we've talked about cryptids on the podcast before. But also
Speaker 1: we're all Steely Dan fans, and of course the squawk
Speaker 1: is memorialized by Steely Dan. Uh the squawk, that cryptid,
Speaker 1: the squawk that cries oh my God. So my my
Speaker 1: dad's a big Steely Dan fans. Dan fans, Dan fan,
Speaker 1: Dad Dad Dan fan. But I actually am not familiar
Speaker 1: with this the squawk, the Squawk. There is a book,
Speaker 1: UM that I feel like I talked about a lot
Speaker 1: and everyone's always like, okay, test, But it's called um
Speaker 1: Fearsome Creatures of the North lumber Woods. I think it
Speaker 1: has like a kind of clunky title, pretty specific it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been out of print for a while, but UM,
Speaker 1: they have these like kind of crude doodles. It's very
Speaker 1: old book of UM all of these like different regional cryptids,
Speaker 1: and the Wendigo is probably like the most well known
Speaker 1: UM but than the squawk is it's like it's it's
Speaker 1: just a creature that's like a depressed cryptid and it
Speaker 1: wanders around weeping. Yeah, and so there's a stee leading
Speaker 1: song called any Major Dude, We'll tell you, and it's
Speaker 1: like have you seen a squawks? Tears? That makes me sad? Um. So,
Speaker 1: first we're going to talk about another cryptod that I
Speaker 1: think is kind of sympathetic, you know, like there's I
Speaker 1: think that's what's so cool about a lot of these cryptids.
Speaker 1: I mean, some of them are supposedly evil, but a
Speaker 1: lot of them are just like they're kind of sympathetic
Speaker 1: in a way, like you kind of want to get
Speaker 1: to know them, you know, like big Foot. Um. But
Speaker 1: first we're going to talk about Mothman. Oh, moth Man, yes, um. So,
Speaker 1: just for those of you who may not know, mothman
Speaker 1: is a cryptid originating from West Virginia. Uh. It started
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six when several grave diggers spotted a
Speaker 1: brown winged creature uh too big to be any kind
Speaker 1: of bird. Uh. And later a couple driving at night
Speaker 1: saw a huge creature with glowing red eyes, no neck,
Speaker 1: and wings folded against its back. Uh. The Point Pleasant Register,
Speaker 1: one of the local papers, reported, quote a couple sees
Speaker 1: man sized bird creature something uh. And then ever since
Speaker 1: then there have been sightings throughout the years. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: people believe that the mothman uh pops up right before
Speaker 1: and oncoming tragedy or catastrophe. Um. And so it's it's
Speaker 1: such an interest. It's I really love this one. It's
Speaker 1: so creative, it's very there's something kind of eerie. It's like,
Speaker 1: not because the Mothman doesn't necessarily hurt anyone, but it's
Speaker 1: just spooky. It's just warning you a bad omen. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I had never heard about the Mothman until obviously the
Speaker 1: Mothman prophecies, and I was like, I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: much of this, probably zero is based on the actual legend,
Speaker 1: but um, yeah, I had no idea that it was
Speaker 1: like a human sized necklace thing. Um. But I mean
Speaker 1: you kind of wonder if there's like you know, kind
Speaker 1: of like with near death experiences and things like that,
Speaker 1: there are tend to be like similar threads. So it
Speaker 1: makes I mean, if you just see like a kind
Speaker 1: of lumpy specter like before something terrible happens, it could
Speaker 1: be like an adrenaline response. But the red eyes are
Speaker 1: always a nice touch. Love acryptedd with the red glowing eyes.
Speaker 1: Red glowing eyes. Um. I actually get occasional sleep paralysis,
Speaker 1: and it's not really the hallucinating type. It's more of
Speaker 1: the menacing presence where something is sitting something evil is
Speaker 1: sitting on my chest. Um. So I feel like it's
Speaker 1: dictated by the kind of culture I consume. So if
Speaker 1: I am, I listen to a lot of like murder
Speaker 1: podcasts and stuff. So when I listen to those and
Speaker 1: I get sleep proalysis' is like, Oh, it's a murderer
Speaker 1: sitting on my chest. Like, but what's weird is I
Speaker 1: don't I think the part of my brain that's responsible
Speaker 1: for scaring me is also a sleep whatever specific disorder
Speaker 1: is going on. So like I'm like not afraid, but
Speaker 1: I'm completely convinced, like I'm going to get killed by
Speaker 1: a serial killer. But I'm like, I'm I'm disappointed, but
Speaker 1: I'm not scared. Well, man, Jesus suck. So I feel
Speaker 1: like if I got sleep paralysis and I really absorbed
Speaker 1: the mothman prophecies, I might see a moth man and
Speaker 1: and be like, geez, come on, man, why do you
Speaker 1: think that is? Do you think it's just because you're
Speaker 1: so relaxed that you can't have that normal kind of
Speaker 1: like yeah, I think so, like with a with sleep paralysis,
Speaker 1: your brain is normally when it comes out of r
Speaker 1: e M. Rabid eye movement. Sleep, there's sort of a
Speaker 1: process um of like the different parts of the brain
Speaker 1: kind of essentially turning back on um. But like if
Speaker 1: your sleep is disturbed and like say you're so the
Speaker 1: ponds in your brain will stop sending signals to your
Speaker 1: spinal cord um, so you that's why you're paralyzed. And
Speaker 1: but if other parts of your brain, like parts of
Speaker 1: the prefrontal cortex wake up or the occipital lobe, and
Speaker 1: that's for people who get the visual hallucinations that'll start
Speaker 1: to give you'll start to process the real world. But
Speaker 1: then it connects with like your amygdala isn't fully operating
Speaker 1: at a hunder percent and it's not um communicating well
Speaker 1: with the prefrontal cortex. So I think in my case,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, like the amygdala isn't is not communicating well.
Speaker 1: And then it's like so that fear response is just
Speaker 1: not there. It's like it's like I have It's like
Speaker 1: when you see someone in your dream and you don't
Speaker 1: have the emotional connection to them and it's really bizarre.
Speaker 1: So it's like that it's like I'm I'm an emotionally
Speaker 1: distant from this feeling of doom and it's it's very weird.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. Maybe that's a good thing. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: good for you. I know some people with sleeper elsis
Speaker 1: it's extremely terrifying. I'm pretty lucky. Um. So I'm in
Speaker 1: terms of moth man, uh what I think if like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of a real like say this
Speaker 1: is real, right, like what to moth man moth human
Speaker 1: hybrid be like? Um. One thing I think that people
Speaker 1: that makes it really goofy is that it would be
Speaker 1: covered in these big flaky scales, just like because moms,
Speaker 1: you know how moths are dusty. Those are little microscopic
Speaker 1: scales that play a role in coloration. And it's also
Speaker 1: thought they might be um uh sort of thermal regulations,
Speaker 1: so like insulating them and keeping or absorbing sunlight so
Speaker 1: they don't overheat or get too cold. Um. And so
Speaker 1: if it's like a proportionally sized uh you know, moth wing,
Speaker 1: and then there's just like all this like flaky scales,
Speaker 1: like every time the moth like flies away, like this
Speaker 1: dust kind of the need to exfoliate, right, some some
Speaker 1: get some perp. Plus what's the anti damia? Um, do
Speaker 1: they have Do you know if moth man has antenna's antenna? Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: moths do have antenna and they actually, um, they're very
Speaker 1: sensitive in that they can detect pheromones. Um. So they
Speaker 1: are highly attuned to using their those little feathery antenna
Speaker 1: to pick up on the sense of females. And so
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, uh, that's another spooky thing. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's why if same mothman was real, that's why he
Speaker 1: could like detect an actually could like smell danger. You
Speaker 1: can pick up the fear. So fascinating. I'm super into moss.
Speaker 1: I've I've been a big moth fan for a long time,
Speaker 1: with the exception of the ones that go into your cabinet. Oh,
Speaker 1: I hate that. The food. Yeah, I'm there. I'm at
Speaker 1: the same thing. The big the bigger the moth, the better.
Speaker 1: It's those tiny ones that are like almost flat, where
Speaker 1: it's like they go into your cabinets and eat your
Speaker 1: food and get on your clothes. I don't like those
Speaker 1: because those are those are pests. But every other moth
Speaker 1: I grew up. I live for a while in Connecticut,
Speaker 1: and they had I think they're lunar moths. But the giant. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're beautiful. I was walking in a nature reserve in
Speaker 1: San Diego and am I think it's called a It's
Speaker 1: called a sphinx moth. And they're these huge moths that
Speaker 1: actually get confused with hummingbirds sometimes because they um they're
Speaker 1: so big, uh, and they drink nectar like hummingbirds, and
Speaker 1: their their wing their wing beat can be mistaken for
Speaker 1: like a hummingbirds hovering. Uh. And it like landed on
Speaker 1: me and refused to let go. Like I was having
Speaker 1: trouble prying it off, and I didn't want to hurt it,
Speaker 1: so I just like lit it sit on me, and
Speaker 1: then it like it just like stayed on me. And
Speaker 1: then eventually like I kind of got it off with
Speaker 1: like a leaf and put it in a little box. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then it just like it died the next day.
Speaker 1: So I think it was I think it was like
Speaker 1: on its deathbed and it was just it saw me.
Speaker 1: Is it like this child with brightly colored clothes, and
Speaker 1: like it was like, yeah, I'll sit on this human.
Speaker 1: You listen closely. It might have been willing you. It's
Speaker 1: a state. Missed it I leave to you leave an
Speaker 1: assorted poop. So there's a couple of compelling theories about
Speaker 1: like what the real animal is behind the mothman siding.
Speaker 1: So theory one is the sandhill crane. Um. So arguments
Speaker 1: for it is that these are big birds. So uh,
Speaker 1: they're grayish brown, so that brown color matches the description.
Speaker 1: They way up to fifteen pounds and they are a
Speaker 1: little over four ft in height, and they have a
Speaker 1: seven foot wingspan, so it's reasonably large for a bird.
Speaker 1: You're not like, if you're not used to these animals,
Speaker 1: that would seem too large to be a bird. They
Speaker 1: also have red foreheads and orange eyes. Um. Here's a
Speaker 1: picture of one looking particularly I'm convinced. Um. They also
Speaker 1: look kind of mad. Yeah, they do. They look angry. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's just because their foreheads are fluffy. Um. Their
Speaker 1: migration path takes them from Canada to Florida, and they
Speaker 1: pass through Kentucky. Um. But they don't they don't go
Speaker 1: through West Virginia, but they're close enough that um. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, a wildlife biologist was saying, oh, this
Speaker 1: is probably a sand hill crane that was like veering
Speaker 1: off course. So the residents weren't used to these birds,
Speaker 1: so they were attributing the mothman to this unfamiliar bird
Speaker 1: that was bigger than any bird that's like local to
Speaker 1: the area. Um, here's the problem, and this is the
Speaker 1: problem that a lot of conspiracy theorists point to as
Speaker 1: is that sant hill cranes they got big next and
Speaker 1: moth man you don't got no. Um And uh, that
Speaker 1: picture I showed you, The reason that looks like the
Speaker 1: moth man is because that his head is actually turned
Speaker 1: so like when they're sleeping or resting, they pulled their
Speaker 1: necks back and they like kind of rested against their body.
Speaker 1: So it could be that. But if the signing was
Speaker 1: like an agitated bird, I would imagine it wouldn't keep
Speaker 1: its neck like that. So so aren't cranes. I'm totally
Speaker 1: pulling this out of the here. I know nothing about cranes,
Speaker 1: but I would assume they wouldn't like a pro people.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I'm not sure, like it's I don't
Speaker 1: think generally speaking, they would be aggressive. Um, Like, if
Speaker 1: this one's off course on it's migration, it's already stressed out.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was like aggressively flapping at some people. But
Speaker 1: then if it's being aggressive, I would imagine it's neck
Speaker 1: wouldn't be at rest, but it's possible, like say, it's
Speaker 1: like kind of just chilling out and these guys see
Speaker 1: it and it's really spooky and they and then it
Speaker 1: kind of stretches its wings out and they perceive that
Speaker 1: as being like, you know, aggressive UM. Or like in
Speaker 1: the case of the couple who there was like a
Speaker 1: couple who said that it followed them in their car,
Speaker 1: maybe it was super lost and it was like going
Speaker 1: to Florida. Where are you guys hitting Florida? UM. So
Speaker 1: theory number two is that it is an owl, which
Speaker 1: sounds dumb because it's like, of course, you know an
Speaker 1: owl is now. But here's some um reasons it could be.
Speaker 1: One is that it's local to the area. UM. And
Speaker 1: there's a species of owl uh called the barred owl
Speaker 1: that is in the specific region that these sightings happened. UM.
Speaker 1: And their eyes actually, so different owls will have different eyeshine,
Speaker 1: so UM Barn owls, which were another candidate, they don't
Speaker 1: typically have red eyeshine. So eyeshine is when at night,
Speaker 1: like light reflects off the eye and you can actually
Speaker 1: see like the retina and the blood vessels and that's why,
Speaker 1: like in photos you have red eye. Um. It's like
Speaker 1: when cats and other nocturnal animals, like you see those
Speaker 1: kind of glowing eyes. UM. For the barn owl, their
Speaker 1: eyes don't shine red. So people are like, oh, it
Speaker 1: can't be an now, but the barred owl this isn't
Speaker 1: It sounds similar, but it's barred like the A R. R. E.
Speaker 1: D like an owl that not like Shakespeare owl right exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: And their eyes do glow red at night because of
Speaker 1: the red eyeshine because they have these deep eyes with
Speaker 1: um blood a lot of blood vessels that will refract
Speaker 1: that light back um. And the initial descriptions of the
Speaker 1: mothman were very owl like, with the wings that were
Speaker 1: folded on the back, the head that blended into the
Speaker 1: rest of the body as you know owls kind of
Speaker 1: they don't really have a neck. They do, but you
Speaker 1: can't see it. Don't feel bad, don't shame the owl.
Speaker 1: I'm not neck shaming them. It's fine if they don't
Speaker 1: have neck. Um. But you it doesn't seem like you
Speaker 1: would mistake an awl for a monster though. But have
Speaker 1: you ever seen an owl without feathers? No owls when
Speaker 1: they don't have feathers are shocking looking. Oh no oh no,
Speaker 1: this is going to ruin owls forever. Um, oh no ah,
Speaker 1: what happened to those owls? So those are they're fine there, um,
Speaker 1: but these are probably young owls that are growing their feathers. Um.
Speaker 1: And they're probably a little scared, so that's why they're
Speaker 1: stay ending so tall. But they this this uh viral
Speaker 1: video went online because people thought they were aliens. They
Speaker 1: look like aliens, but also you could totally see they
Speaker 1: look kind of like moths. Yeah, they look humanoid right. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's like these these fledgling owls who don't have
Speaker 1: that many feathers. They look they're fluffy or than in
Speaker 1: one way there, like their their feathers are more downy,
Speaker 1: kind of like whispy. Um. But they're not fully filled
Speaker 1: out with the feathers. So you can see their legs
Speaker 1: are really long. Um. That's another surprising thing about owls.
Speaker 1: They have mega legs, legs for days. Here's a picture
Speaker 1: of uh it's an artistic rendering of an owl without feathers. Um. Wow,
Speaker 1: that is so wild. Yeah, they look like aliens, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: like very old men. Right. And here's a really funny
Speaker 1: one of someone showing how how tall their legs are.
Speaker 1: It's just a person lifting the owl up and so
Speaker 1: you can see how how tall their Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like do those legs go all the way up? And
Speaker 1: that I was like, why yas indeed they do? Why
Speaker 1: put me on the right show you? Um, if you
Speaker 1: think about it, that makes sense because raptors often have
Speaker 1: big beefy legs because they have those huge talents and
Speaker 1: they need that muscle power for grasping prey um. And
Speaker 1: so uh, it's just I think surprising to people because
Speaker 1: owls are so fluffy their feathers cover all that leg
Speaker 1: It gives them like a totally different body shape, right exactly,
Speaker 1: So how big is the bar at owl? It's not
Speaker 1: that big, but I feel like if you it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's big in terms of a bird. Um owls are.
Speaker 1: I think it's like about it's like a couple of
Speaker 1: feet uh tall. I think if that makes sense um
Speaker 1: uh and it's uh, but I think it's There is
Speaker 1: a study that showed when people are like driving along
Speaker 1: the road at night, they have really poor or perception
Speaker 1: of the size of things. So if you're scared also,
Speaker 1: you'll perceive something as being bigger than it really is. UM.
Speaker 1: And they have a pretty good wingspan. UM. So if
Speaker 1: you can imagine like say bart ol either a young
Speaker 1: bard owl who hadn't fully uh you know, fledged, or
Speaker 1: like a one with like some hair loss or not
Speaker 1: hair loss, has some owl pattern baldness, UM, just kind
Speaker 1: of like being agitated and and and they their hoots
Speaker 1: are also very like deep and somewhat foreboding. So I
Speaker 1: could definitely see that as being you know, you see
Speaker 1: this leggy creature with wings and no neck and glowing
Speaker 1: red eyes and it's hooting maliciously at you, and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a that's a demon. Yeah, something bad
Speaker 1: did just happen. It's not even telling me it's already happened.
Speaker 1: That when an owl happens to you, that's bad enough. Now.
Speaker 1: I love that they can take it. We can, we can.
Speaker 1: Rewls have a thick, a thick, feathery husk and under
Speaker 1: that a bunch of leg Is mothman just a mirror
Speaker 1: into the psychology of humanity? Maybe? David Gallo, of Psychology
Speaker 1: professor at the University of Chicago believes that mothman sidings
Speaker 1: may be part of a sort of group culturally dictated cognition.
Speaker 1: He explains that certain cultural ideas can influence how your
Speaker 1: brain interprets stimuli. So maybe after the first Mothman siding,
Speaker 1: every owl bird or blurry camera artifact became a mothman.
Speaker 1: I think there's something pretty spooky about how we can
Speaker 1: almost create mass hallucinations just through the force of storytelling
Speaker 1: in a way that makes mothman reel, an operation of
Speaker 1: collective imagination. When we return, we'll talk about more cryptids,
Speaker 1: starting with an infamous blood sucker. So why do we
Speaker 1: fear the blood s After all, vampires exist in almost
Speaker 1: every culture and over many centuries of folklore. One theory
Speaker 1: is that they're a manifestation of social upheaval. Vampire folklore
Speaker 1: seems to thrive in places where lower classes were persecuted.
Speaker 1: Nina Auerbach, University of Pennsylvania, English professor and author of
Speaker 1: quote Our Vampires Ourselves says vampire fears arise during times
Speaker 1: of strife, such as in Eastern Europe when peasants were persecuted,
Speaker 1: or perhaps in nine when farmers found that their precious
Speaker 1: livestock had been massacred. So l Chupacabra literally translates to uh,
Speaker 1: the goat sucker. I'm pretty sure, um So it's it's
Speaker 1: actually more recent than I had thought, Like I'm sure
Speaker 1: iterations of it existed before, but yeah, um, but it
Speaker 1: really hits sort of popular culture in um. So. It's
Speaker 1: a cryptod who is said to live on the American
Speaker 1: continent in Mexico of southwestern US uh and in Puerto
Speaker 1: Rico and in Central and South America. So the first
Speaker 1: reported attack occurred in Puerto Rico where eight sheep were
Speaker 1: discovered with their blood sucked dry and puncture wounds in
Speaker 1: their chest and so the distress farmers, which for a farmer,
Speaker 1: when your livestock is killed, it's like if like one
Speaker 1: sheep is killed by a wild animal, like that sucks.
Speaker 1: But if like eight sheep are all killed and they
Speaker 1: just drained of their blood and then just left there
Speaker 1: and left there, it's that's super upsetting. Um and so uh.
Speaker 1: The sightings of the chupa cabra typically describe a leathery
Speaker 1: gray beast with spines on its back and it kind
Speaker 1: of looks like a cross between like uh in descriptions
Speaker 1: like a kangaroo, a lizard, and a hairless dog. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of pictures of like chupa cabras online, uh tenda,
Speaker 1: there's actually ones that are of they're called Jolos. I
Speaker 1: think it's it's got a longer name. It's like Jolo's,
Speaker 1: Jolo's we'll call them jolo jolos. Yeah. They're Mexican hairless
Speaker 1: dogs and they're born without hair, perfectly healthy when they
Speaker 1: don't have hair. Um, but they I think they're pretty
Speaker 1: cool looking dogs. They kind of look like a nubiss.
Speaker 1: I think they may even be called the nubass dogs,
Speaker 1: but they're they're really neat. But like, uh, we're not
Speaker 1: used to seeing a hairless dog, so sometimes people show
Speaker 1: a dog like them be like that's a cheap of cobra.
Speaker 1: It's no, it's just a normal dog. But he baled um,
Speaker 1: he bald. But also the Mexican hairless dog. Like the
Speaker 1: first association I have is the scary stories to tell
Speaker 1: in the dark story where the couple goes to Mexico
Speaker 1: and they're like and everyone's like, look, you found a
Speaker 1: hairless dog. It's so cute. And then they come back
Speaker 1: to the u S and they're like, no, that's a rat. Babies.
Speaker 1: I was like that does not really that you don't
Speaker 1: resemble each other at all, but it's struggling like like all,
Speaker 1: so it's not it's like just anatomically a rat because
Speaker 1: I've seen I've seen naked rats. Yeah, bald rats. They
Speaker 1: just look like bald rats. Yeah, they do not look like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're really roasting scary stories to tell unextraptable because that
Speaker 1: story also, I was like, that's it's not like scary
Speaker 1: so much as it just sucks. But they're just very
Speaker 1: dumb and this yeah exactly, they're really dumb and then
Speaker 1: they're just like, right, I guess like we don't have
Speaker 1: a dog. We thought we had the story of like
Speaker 1: Yuppi disappointment, So I think that's that's also like a
Speaker 1: little bit of this stuff of like things in Mexico
Speaker 1: are scary exactly. You never know what's going on, like
Speaker 1: that weird yellow filter they put on film when it's
Speaker 1: like like yeah, when you go to Mexico, like it's
Speaker 1: it's all yellow filter and yeah that like weird like
Speaker 1: like like wiggly distortion, yeah, yeah, like like when the
Speaker 1: ground is hot and it makes the air kind of
Speaker 1: distroyed around like otherwise, how would you know, how would
Speaker 1: you know that you were in Mexico and they made
Speaker 1: it a complete different universe exactly. Um so. Um the
Speaker 1: I was wondering, how like there could be a real chuopicabra,
Speaker 1: so like a demonic goat sucking creature that manages to
Speaker 1: puck the blood out of sheep without them noticing. Um so, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe it could be like a leech or a vampire
Speaker 1: bat that's like a hybrid with a dog or something.
Speaker 1: So it's got the stealth and intelligence of a dog
Speaker 1: and then the blood sucking abilities of a leech or
Speaker 1: a vampire bout. Now, leeches and vampire bouts both have
Speaker 1: anticoagulant in their saliva that makes it easier for them
Speaker 1: to suck up blood. But one thing I found, and
Speaker 1: I had actually believed this myth before researching this, that
Speaker 1: that their saliva contains an anesthetic. That's actually not true.
Speaker 1: Um so we there is no evidence of there being
Speaker 1: an anesthetic in their saliva. Um there's a morphine like
Speaker 1: substance in their neural tissue. Um So, it's confusing because
Speaker 1: there's still a possibility that maybe there's somehow secreting this
Speaker 1: in their bike, but there's no evidence that it's actually
Speaker 1: in their saliva or in their um. They're sort of
Speaker 1: a mouth secretions that would make uh, would numb people too.
Speaker 1: And I read some uh, some biologists heart like saying
Speaker 1: like it's a total myth that it doesn't hurt, because
Speaker 1: it can hurt when I when I wonder, I was
Speaker 1: always wondering about what it felt like to get a leech,
Speaker 1: because growing up, like you know, I would go swimming
Speaker 1: in shady the shady lake where it's like who knows
Speaker 1: what's in there? Um, and some like some of my
Speaker 1: family members would be like, look out for leeches, and
Speaker 1: some of them had had leeches, but it was none
Speaker 1: of them could really remember because I just remembered being
Speaker 1: creeped out finding the leech, but they couldn't really remember
Speaker 1: like a sensation. And I always wondered if it was
Speaker 1: if there was something that made it not hurt, or
Speaker 1: like you know, able to be able to ignore the sensation,
Speaker 1: or if it was just the suction was so you know,
Speaker 1: pinpointed basically that that can um. I think that's yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's the latter. I think since their teeth
Speaker 1: are so tiny and needle like um and you probably
Speaker 1: get it while you're swimming, so you're in cool water
Speaker 1: perhaps and like you're you're maybe not noticing all of
Speaker 1: those body sensations as much. Um, so that would be
Speaker 1: that I suspect that would be the case. Like that.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like you wouldn't necessarily notice someone like
Speaker 1: poking you with a syringe underwater and cold water. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they but the the anticoagulant is very real
Speaker 1: and that that's a that makes it easier too. So
Speaker 1: it's not like they're actively like sucking like a vacuat.
Speaker 1: They're just kind of allowing the blood flow to come
Speaker 1: into your mouth, right. And vampire bats also have teeny
Speaker 1: tiny needle like tea, which you know, cow, it's probably
Speaker 1: like the cows like whoa, what was that? But it
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily disturb the cow because they're not like they're
Speaker 1: not like sucking on it there gently laughing at the
Speaker 1: at the web. Yeah there. And but here's the thing.
Speaker 1: This is why the chupacabra, even if we invent this
Speaker 1: like dog vampire bat leech hybrid, it's still wouldn't really
Speaker 1: work as an animal because most vampire animals, Uh, first
Speaker 1: of all, they don't necessarily kill their host. Otherwise, if
Speaker 1: they're capable of that, why wouldn't they just eat the
Speaker 1: rest of the host. Um. Also, they tend to be small,
Speaker 1: like a vampire bat a little little tiny cutie. Uh
Speaker 1: and leech is a little tiny not not as cute,
Speaker 1: but quite tiny. Mosquitoes super tiny. These are all the
Speaker 1: animals a lot. I mean there are more than that,
Speaker 1: but most of the animals that tend to suck blood
Speaker 1: are small. Uh. And that's because something the size of
Speaker 1: a dog couldn't subsist on blood alone. Um. Their body
Speaker 1: mouths would be too great. They would need things like
Speaker 1: ty tissues. Um. So the real animal behind the myth
Speaker 1: of the chupacabra is probably wait for it, mangie dogs
Speaker 1: and coyotes I know. Um So, Bio'll just think that
Speaker 1: the reports of chupacabras are likely stray dogs in Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: where they do have a lot of stray dogs. And um,
Speaker 1: when the dogs are malnourished, uh, they tend to get mange.
Speaker 1: So because they're um they're less capable of fighting off
Speaker 1: these uh so manges caused by parasitic mites. Um. So,
Speaker 1: when you have a healthy dog, there there's body their
Speaker 1: immune system, their body is able to kind of fight
Speaker 1: off these parasites, but if they're malne nourished, it's harder,
Speaker 1: and then they tend to get mange um. And that
Speaker 1: explains the appearance of the chupacabra pretty amplete, because that
Speaker 1: that gray leathery skin is probably mangie skin because there's
Speaker 1: probably a lot of scams. It's hairless um. And it
Speaker 1: would also explain the spikes along the back because if
Speaker 1: they're ma this is really sad, but if they're malnourished,
Speaker 1: their vertebrae are probably sticking out, so those look like
Speaker 1: spines um, and their faces probably look more angular and
Speaker 1: reptilian um. And it would also explain why they potentially
Speaker 1: attack livestock, because if they're too weak to hunt down
Speaker 1: regular prey, they probably go where they typically are too
Speaker 1: afraid to go. But they're so hungry they're like going
Speaker 1: after livestock um, and they may not even know what
Speaker 1: to do with it at that point. They probably get
Speaker 1: easily spooked if the rest of the livestock starts to
Speaker 1: um make a fuss, then they might run off without
Speaker 1: even eating it. So that coyotes and dogs are known
Speaker 1: to do that where they'll bite something, um attack it,
Speaker 1: maybe with the intention of eating it, but then if
Speaker 1: they get spooked, they'll run off before they make this calculation.
Speaker 1: And I would imagine that a malnourished dogg or coyote
Speaker 1: is worse at making that calculation. They don't know what
Speaker 1: necessarily to do it. Once they've uh, you know, killed
Speaker 1: a sheep, like they're like okay, and then like there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of sheep around that are maybe jostling and angry,
Speaker 1: and then they get scared. Um, and then that whole
Speaker 1: blood draining thing is actually potentially not true. So um,
Speaker 1: it's not that it's that a lie like they're making
Speaker 1: it up. It's that it's a misconception. So veterinarians reviewed
Speaker 1: these lives. They actually found that they did have blood
Speaker 1: in them. It wasn't that they had been drained dry blood.
Speaker 1: It's that what happens is that when a any living
Speaker 1: animal dies that has blood in it, it's a process
Speaker 1: called lividity where the blood pools at the bottom. So
Speaker 1: it's like if you cut it, like say you're doing
Speaker 1: like an autopsy on a dead sheep that's been dead
Speaker 1: for a while, it won't bleed. So a farmer who's
Speaker 1: used to slaughtering an animal that's you know, either alive
Speaker 1: or like maybe freshly dead or something. They would be
Speaker 1: used to blood flow when you like cut through the animals.
Speaker 1: So if it doesn't that, they would very reasonably assumed
Speaker 1: that had been drained of blood. Um and So I
Speaker 1: think that's probably the most likely explanation. But if there
Speaker 1: were eight of the sheep killed, would that be like
Speaker 1: a pack of could have been Yeah, it could be
Speaker 1: although you know it's so it's something where you know,
Speaker 1: it could be a dog just like going crazy biting things,
Speaker 1: or a coyote. Um and Uh, it could be a
Speaker 1: pack of them, although I would assume if it was
Speaker 1: a pack, they would successfully take one down. But they
Speaker 1: could have gotten spooked, Like they could have gotten spooked
Speaker 1: and run off, and then subsequent sightings of it, because
Speaker 1: I think the initial encounter, like they didn't necessarily see
Speaker 1: what happened. They just saw these dead sheep. So that
Speaker 1: could have been like a pack that like came in,
Speaker 1: tried to kill them and then got spooked and ran off.
Speaker 1: Um And or they were this is more morbid, but
Speaker 1: maybe they were just having fun and killing funny coyote
Speaker 1: gays um, but yeah, I think it's UM. And then
Speaker 1: like maybe people like I was talking about these sort
Speaker 1: of cultural memes that happened where then you interpret things
Speaker 1: that you see as fitting in with um other people's
Speaker 1: um sort of rumors and stuff. So it's like you
Speaker 1: you hear about this like thing blood sucking creature, then
Speaker 1: you see like a mange coyote, and you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe that's right, especially one that's like in the area
Speaker 1: where another animal got killed. Because this chiopucabra, it's been
Speaker 1: in multiple areas, right Puerto Rico in Mexico, uh, the
Speaker 1: southwestern America and like Central and South America. So it's
Speaker 1: like these multiple sightings unlikely a new breed of animal
Speaker 1: that like, you know, that looks like a reptile with
Speaker 1: spines on its back. I think that's a really good hypothesis.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially because here in l A, like you know,
Speaker 1: in the past couple of years, I think, especially during
Speaker 1: the when the drought was really really bad, you would
Speaker 1: see coyotes that were clearly like hardier than the coyotes
Speaker 1: you'd normally see, like coyotes where you would assume they'd
Speaker 1: hunt far away from people, but that they're being driven
Speaker 1: kind of closer to people just based on lack of
Speaker 1: cutter like resources, and some of them looked really rough,
Speaker 1: you know. Well, so my parents house in San Diego
Speaker 1: kind of neighbors an area of chaparral. We would get
Speaker 1: a lot of coyotes. We even got a mountain lion
Speaker 1: in our backyard once. And are my parents backyard is
Speaker 1: pretty friendly to these animals because it's like there's like
Speaker 1: a little wood fence, but there's the whole yard has
Speaker 1: a lot of trees and bushes and stuff, so it's
Speaker 1: like all you know, very similar to kind of their
Speaker 1: their native stuff on the other side of the fence,
Speaker 1: and so it's, uh, they would love to come in.
Speaker 1: We had like kyoty puppies that came in. But like
Speaker 1: so a lot of times, like at night, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd hear coyotes and they sound like when they're in
Speaker 1: a pack, they have this weird they almost sound like
Speaker 1: demonic children laughing. Yeah, they have like it's almost sounds
Speaker 1: like a baby crying or something. It's like yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's super creepy. And I feel like there's something inherently
Speaker 1: creepy about coyotes. I mean they're they're really cute too,
Speaker 1: like the little puppies are are adorable, but they're yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're kind of menacing that their whole pack
Speaker 1: structure where they kind of try to like they'll they'll
Speaker 1: go in and sneakily kill your chickens or kill your
Speaker 1: livestock or even your pets, and that's creepy, and especially
Speaker 1: the pack. I think the pack. My parents were out
Speaker 1: here and they were walking their dog in Griffith Park
Speaker 1: at night and like my dad saw a coyote and
Speaker 1: then heard behind him like a wrestling and he was
Speaker 1: being surrounded by the Yeah, and that was super But
Speaker 1: even though, yeah, I mean I love them, and like
Speaker 1: you know, it's clearly you can be creeped out by
Speaker 1: something but still love it exactly. Do you have sing
Speaker 1: bevore a phobia that's a fear of vampires. And if
Speaker 1: you have a fear of these blood sucking demons, maybe
Speaker 1: you also have hemophobia, a fear of blood or blood
Speaker 1: injection injury phobia, which covers the fear of blood injections
Speaker 1: or seeing a physical injury. These are extremely common phobias,
Speaker 1: which kind of makes sense. Losing blood is generally not
Speaker 1: good for us, nor is getting injured or poked with something,
Speaker 1: so these very normal reactions can spiral into a full
Speaker 1: blown phobia. Often people with these phobias also experience vaso
Speaker 1: vagal syncope, meaning fainting. But fainting at the site of
Speaker 1: blood doesn't necessarily mean you're a frady cat. In fact,
Speaker 1: vaso vagal syncope may have deep evolutionary roots. Are animal
Speaker 1: ancestors also experience fear brady cardia, which means the slowing
Speaker 1: of the heart in response to stress. Brady Cardia can
Speaker 1: lead to fainting, both in animals and humans. This may
Speaker 1: be an evolutionary defensive mechanism when the heart is in peril,
Speaker 1: either due to injury or stress. A paper by Alboni
Speaker 1: at All called Origin and Evolution of vaso vagel syncope
Speaker 1: says quote the slowing of heart rate induced by the
Speaker 1: vase of vagle reflex may constitute a beneficial break of
Speaker 1: cardiac pump, thereby reducing myocardial oxygen consumption. Basically, it's giving
Speaker 1: your heart a chance to rest. Unfortunately, this means the
Speaker 1: rest of you might take a very sudden and unexpected
Speaker 1: rest as well, resulting in well fainting, so grab your
Speaker 1: fainting couch. When we return, we'll talk about some very real,
Speaker 1: very creepy cryptids. So cryptids all over the world have
Speaker 1: similar features, which maybe speaks to some deep instinctive human fears. Take,
Speaker 1: for instance, the fear of giant worms. There's the Minho cow,
Speaker 1: a Brazilian legendary giant worm, a man sized Mongolian death worm,
Speaker 1: the movie Tremor starring Kevin Bacon, and many other giant worms,
Speaker 1: and folklore around the world. Maybe we have an instinctive
Speaker 1: fear of these slithery creatures. They're snakelike, they can be parasites,
Speaker 1: and they're associated with death and decay in the deep,
Speaker 1: deep underground. Well, good thing. These giant Crawley's slimy worms
Speaker 1: are just legen and oh I'm sorry, did you forget
Speaker 1: which podcast you're listening to? Of course they're real. So
Speaker 1: the giant Gippsland earthworm, native to of course Australia, is
Speaker 1: a three foot long worm, and depending on how long
Speaker 1: it's stretched or how much it's contracted, it can be
Speaker 1: about the thickness of a medium to large sized rope.
Speaker 1: They live in deep burrows in Gippsland, Victoria. They actually
Speaker 1: have really long lifespans. They live for several years and
Speaker 1: they only reach sexual maturity at five years. Typically, they're
Speaker 1: never seen on land, as they spend their whole lives
Speaker 1: deep deep in their muddy burrows. While on land they
Speaker 1: can't move too fast. Inside their special wormholes, they can
Speaker 1: slip and slide around pretty rapidly. In fact, they make
Speaker 1: a deep guttural gurgling sound like water draining from a
Speaker 1: bathtub as they scoot through their holes, which can terrify
Speaker 1: people because you can hear it from the surface. O
Speaker 1: the worst thing I've ever heard, um, which it makes
Speaker 1: sense that people would be scared of that. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: like sort of deep in the earth kind of thing
Speaker 1: and like just sort of sliding around in this mudd um.
Speaker 1: There's this famous um Japanese comic by I think it's
Speaker 1: Gngi Edo Um that where it's like about people who
Speaker 1: find there's like these holes in a cliff face that
Speaker 1: are people shaped, and then people like crawling the holes
Speaker 1: and then they just like get sucked in and it's
Speaker 1: it's super creepy. And I just imagine that noise, like
Speaker 1: the these a giant start and the and watching it
Speaker 1: was also unpleasant. I actually really like worms, but not
Speaker 1: this worm. I don't like it. This worm is pretty big.
Speaker 1: It's a hefty, it's a it's a big boy thick worm.
Speaker 1: It's a thick so we we like to call them
Speaker 1: big old noodle boys. Yeah. Um. But so I want
Speaker 1: to talk about another very real cryptod um, but perhaps
Speaker 1: in a way you might not expect. So bigfoot or
Speaker 1: sasquatch is what maybe the most famous crypto in the world. Uh,
Speaker 1: It's found in North America. But North America is not
Speaker 1: the only place with a big foot. So there's the
Speaker 1: Baramano of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan that locals describe as
Speaker 1: a humanoid apelike creature who abducts women to mate with.
Speaker 1: There's the bucket Tima monkey man, who is said to
Speaker 1: inhabit Singapore, which is a three to six foot tall
Speaker 1: small difference, but uh, depending on reports. Uh, it's an
Speaker 1: immortal bipedal hominid um. And actually by all just think
Speaker 1: sightings of this are the crab eating macaque. But when
Speaker 1: I've seen like these maccaques, they're like clearly small monkeys. Yeah. Yeah, Um.
Speaker 1: There's the Mary coxy, which is a large ape like
Speaker 1: creature in South American jungles. Who Uh, these are more
Speaker 1: advanced versions of Bigfoot where they actually can use both
Speaker 1: and arrows, which I feel like it's not fair. No,
Speaker 1: I know, right, It's like Bigfoot to me has always
Speaker 1: been sort of a nice, like passive guy. But you
Speaker 1: can't get Bigfoot like an A K forty seven. No. No,
Speaker 1: you can't arm Bigfoot. Don't arm big keep arms away
Speaker 1: from Bigfoot. We need legislation. Yeah. Um there's the Mogo
Speaker 1: lawn monster, which is a bipedal humanoid over seven ft
Speaker 1: tall who lives in Arizona who smells like dead fish
Speaker 1: or the musk of a snapping turtle with wild red eyes. Um. So,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting to me that so many cultures have
Speaker 1: a big foot. Um and I'm kind of just speculating
Speaker 1: on why. Uh. Some of my theories are that it's
Speaker 1: like we have a kind of Uncanny Valley fear of
Speaker 1: apes because they're almost humans. They look so close to humans,
Speaker 1: but they're just not and so it's like we I
Speaker 1: think that, um So, the uncanny Valley is the description
Speaker 1: of that graph of your like comfort level when you
Speaker 1: look at like robots or humanoid c g I thing um,
Speaker 1: and as it gets more and more real, like your
Speaker 1: comfort level is like fine, maybe even goes up a little.
Speaker 1: But then like as it gets super close to being
Speaker 1: realistic but not quite the your comfort and anxiety like
Speaker 1: like your comfort goes way down and dips into the
Speaker 1: un kelly valley, and then it goes back up as
Speaker 1: we get to like basically real human face. It seems
Speaker 1: like it's almost a defense against getting tricked. You know.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. Yeah, it's super interesting. I love I mean,
Speaker 1: I remember like when I first heard about the Uncanny
Speaker 1: Valley and I was like, this is like a place
Speaker 1: I like to be. This is the crea I love
Speaker 1: looking at uh like weird animatronics. I really enjoy the
Speaker 1: Uncanny Valley too. It's fine, it's fun place to be
Speaker 1: because it also it's like it doesn't really makes sense
Speaker 1: why it feels so spooky. It's like going on a
Speaker 1: roller coaster, but it's happening inside your amygdala. Yeah. But also,
Speaker 1: like when you were talking about our complicated relationship to apes,
Speaker 1: I think it also has to do with how guilty
Speaker 1: we feel. I mean, I I took my kids to
Speaker 1: the zoo. Um like last year, I think it was
Speaker 1: part of a field trip and we spent a long
Speaker 1: time like with the apes, and they were taking care
Speaker 1: of their children, and we were watching them from behind glass,
Speaker 1: and like when we saw the chimps, they were like
Speaker 1: coming up to the glass and interacting, and you just
Speaker 1: get this sense of how wrong this is, like how
Speaker 1: closely like you feel like it could be swapped the patients. Um.
Speaker 1: And So sometimes I wonder about with Bigfoot, if it's
Speaker 1: like we're kind of projecting the of we want there
Speaker 1: to be like a secret society of big Feet, because
Speaker 1: it's almost like then maybe we haven't completely raised the
Speaker 1: entire planet, like maybe they're secret pockets of just untamed wilderness.
Speaker 1: And I think that's super appealing. I think, yeah, that
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense to me, because I
Speaker 1: think with a lot of other animals, especially like less
Speaker 1: human looking animals, we can kind of like go like, okay,
Speaker 1: but they're just animals. But with apes, it's almost like
Speaker 1: looking into a mirror exactly. It's it's super that that
Speaker 1: idea of like, oh yeah, maybe maybe animals can feel things,
Speaker 1: right yeah uh um. I also think that we tint
Speaker 1: to anthropomorphized thing like on the other other end of
Speaker 1: the scale where it's like so so um. When you
Speaker 1: see like faces in the clouds or like in tiles
Speaker 1: with like random patterns and stuff, it's called para idolia,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of a um your brain really wants
Speaker 1: to see that human face schema, and it's we develop
Speaker 1: it really early on, so like little babies start to
Speaker 1: develop the face scheme and they actually respond to like, say,
Speaker 1: you make like a face where you put the eyes
Speaker 1: in the mouth in the right place and you hold
Speaker 1: it up to a baby and they're like they can
Speaker 1: wreck a nize that and then if you like, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, make it, make it kind of like more bizarre,
Speaker 1: like the proportions off. They don't. They don't like that
Speaker 1: didn't Uh no, thank you. I will not like to
Speaker 1: see the new Sonic movie. Um. But I almost wonder
Speaker 1: if like we experienced this like paidolia when we're looking
Speaker 1: at say like a bear in the distance, and sometimes
Speaker 1: bears can walk on their hind legs, um like they're
Speaker 1: capable of it. They don't, that's not their normal mode
Speaker 1: of locomotion. But if you see a bear on its
Speaker 1: hind legs, like from a distance, I could see like
Speaker 1: you know, you kind of project like a human face
Speaker 1: onto it totally. It's like that's in human position. So
Speaker 1: like maybe that's uh because a lot of the I
Speaker 1: think a lot of these samples sent into labs and
Speaker 1: stuff of like this is bigfoot for and stuff tends
Speaker 1: to be like bears or dear too. Um here that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I think it's because like people will see like a
Speaker 1: chunk of fur somewhere. It's like maybe the spook foot,
Speaker 1: but it's just dear um. But good news, there is
Speaker 1: a real world bigfoot, a scientifically verifiable bigfoot. It's called
Speaker 1: gigant Epithecus blackie um, which is extinct. Sorry um, So,
Speaker 1: Gigantopithecus is a species of prehistoric ape that lived from
Speaker 1: nine million years ago to maybe about a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. We're not sure. There's very limited fossil evidence. Um.
Speaker 1: All of the fossils we've found have been in South
Speaker 1: China and Vietnam. But we have just enough fossils to
Speaker 1: know what about what they looked like. So they were
Speaker 1: nine ft tall and up to one thousand, three hundred pounds. What. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we have their mandibles and jaws and based on
Speaker 1: the size of their their mandibles, which means we know
Speaker 1: what their skull sizes. We know how big they had
Speaker 1: to be to support such a big skull, and like
Speaker 1: also their closest living relatives orangutans, And we just use
Speaker 1: that anatomy to kind of build this animal up. And
Speaker 1: it's enormous. That's like the weight of a horse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's for comparison, guerrilla's only way up to about four
Speaker 1: and thirty pounds. Um. So yeah, it's like the size
Speaker 1: of a bear. U. Yeah. Um. And uh, we know
Speaker 1: how big they were. We know that they were hominids, uh,
Speaker 1: and we know that some of their closest relatives are
Speaker 1: the oriantans, which they're actually uh they're like eight times
Speaker 1: the size of oraantans um. But we uh don't know
Speaker 1: how they walked so uh. Most paleontologists and biologists assumed
Speaker 1: that they must have walked on all fours because with
Speaker 1: such a massive body, that's hard to imagine being able
Speaker 1: to support that weight. But the argument for them being
Speaker 1: bipedal is that the shape of the jawbone, which is
Speaker 1: like this U shape, would allow for the wind pipe
Speaker 1: to go traverse through the jaw so like and if
Speaker 1: you look at the anatomy of like say a gorilla
Speaker 1: that is uh walks on all fours. Their skull is
Speaker 1: like forward, and then their spine kind of forms the slope,
Speaker 1: so there trachea and their wind pipe actually goes like
Speaker 1: not through the jaw, but like kind of behind it. Um.
Speaker 1: But for us, like if you feel you're you're tricky,
Speaker 1: it's like right, it's it's right through that um, that
Speaker 1: little U shape of your jaw bone, and that allows
Speaker 1: our heads to sit erect on our spines. UM. So
Speaker 1: there's that argument that like, well, maybe because their jaws
Speaker 1: are kind of U shaped. Um. Of course we have
Speaker 1: very little falsil evidence. So um. I my personal feeling,
Speaker 1: as much as I want them to be bipedal, I
Speaker 1: feel like they probably at most would kind of walk
Speaker 1: slumped over with like kind of maybe one uh foot
Speaker 1: on the ground, maybe like three legs, maybe four legs
Speaker 1: sometimes maybe sometimes bipedal, Like maybe that that jaw design
Speaker 1: in their skull design allowed them to stand up for
Speaker 1: longer periods of time. It's just such a massive animal.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine it being able to just stroll around
Speaker 1: like do what, well, what did it eat? Do we
Speaker 1: know what we actually have? A pretty good idea of
Speaker 1: what it ate based on fossil records of um, sort
Speaker 1: of the like um plant leavings in the teeth and
Speaker 1: like the scraping marks. So UM. It's thought that they
Speaker 1: ate bamboo seeds and fruit. So you know, hippies, um,
Speaker 1: which I think is great because they're so huge that
Speaker 1: they probably had no natural predators. But they were just
Speaker 1: like these these hippies hanging out, vegans hanging out eating
Speaker 1: bamboo seeds and fruit. Now, they could have eaten more
Speaker 1: of an omnivorous diet and we wouldn't know because we
Speaker 1: don't have the fossil records of right, um, but we
Speaker 1: do know they at least date bamboo. UM. I love
Speaker 1: these guys. How I never heard of this. I think
Speaker 1: it's I think it's just um because there's not there's
Speaker 1: not a full skeleton of them, so it's like it
Speaker 1: maybe it's like, oh, a fragment of a job bone,
Speaker 1: Why is that interesting? Um? But when you really build
Speaker 1: it up from that, it's like, this is an amazing animal.
Speaker 1: The reason it probably went extinct is wait for it,
Speaker 1: climate change whoops. Um. So the climate change was turning
Speaker 1: its forests into savannah and since it was so large,
Speaker 1: it couldn't really adapt to the more meager food offerings,
Speaker 1: so smaller primates were able to go Okay, like our
Speaker 1: normal fruits and stuff are gone, but hey we can
Speaker 1: still do this other stuff. Um. But like with such
Speaker 1: a big animal, it's sort of like how um pandas
Speaker 1: um if you take away their bamboo, they can't survive
Speaker 1: as a species. Um. And which is interesting because like
Speaker 1: the Gigantipithecus also ate bamboo. Um. And uh it's to
Speaker 1: me kind of um it's very prescient. I mean, like
Speaker 1: last week we talked about the Amazon rainforest and climate
Speaker 1: change and like, you know, sure we're not the size
Speaker 1: of the gig Antipithecus, but our society really is. We
Speaker 1: are a huge, huge society with so many people, and
Speaker 1: we have such a high need for food and land
Speaker 1: and we're the vampires now that I don't know if
Speaker 1: we could adapt to a planet that gets downgraded to
Speaker 1: uh not not necessarily being as human friendly. Um. So
Speaker 1: you know, but uh, you know, maybe in like a
Speaker 1: few million years, like the next smaller iteration of humans
Speaker 1: will look at our uh skulls and be like, I
Speaker 1: wonder if they walked on like two feet or feet,
Speaker 1: you know, like they were all vegans clearly like they
Speaker 1: should have been. They were very against something called straws. Straws. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's that's an incredible story to me. It's like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: big Foot was real. I mean, they're dead, but it
Speaker 1: was real. But once upon a time. I wonder like
Speaker 1: how that kind of came into play and like influencing
Speaker 1: Bigfoot the legend, I think it helps propagated. I don't
Speaker 1: think it starts it, but I think when people hear
Speaker 1: about this, they're like, Okay, an animal like this is
Speaker 1: so it's not impossible. It's not impossible, which I mean
Speaker 1: there's a certain logic to that. I just personally think that, well,
Speaker 1: when we do find species that we think have been
Speaker 1: extinct but actually aren't, it's usually in places that are
Speaker 1: really hard to explore. So there was a tree kangaroo
Speaker 1: found I think in Indonesia in an area that was
Speaker 1: extremely remote, very difficult to explore, and that that was
Speaker 1: a case of a pretty large animal that we thought
Speaker 1: had gone. It's not like huge tree kangaroos, about the
Speaker 1: size of a medium to large sized dog. Um, but
Speaker 1: like it's uh, you know, it's a fairly meaty animals.
Speaker 1: Unlike like when a really small animal we think goes
Speaker 1: extinct and then it's like, oh, but we found this
Speaker 1: insect over here, like that kind of makes more sense.
Speaker 1: But with a tree kinger, it's like, oh, that's really exciting.
Speaker 1: Um it's a specific species of tree care at all,
Speaker 1: we knew like other tree cares are still around, but um,
Speaker 1: but it's still really exciting. But in that case, it's
Speaker 1: like they're either really deep in the sea like Sela camps.
Speaker 1: Where are these deep sea fish that are kind of
Speaker 1: this like evolutionary throwback, um, that are like millions of
Speaker 1: years old in like they look it they there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to say, but they don't look great. They
Speaker 1: need a little lift, right, But you know they're deep,
Speaker 1: deep in the sea. So that's why we didn't realize
Speaker 1: they're still around. So like the idea that like some
Speaker 1: extinct gigantic Epithecus is just chilling out in the Appalachia,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I want to I want to believe,
Speaker 1: I really, I'd be so pumped if it right, I
Speaker 1: would be so psyched. But the sheer size is like exciting.
Speaker 1: Maybe we could scrape off some of that DNA from
Speaker 1: the jaw clone. It gratically. Um. So before we go,
Speaker 1: you said there was a news item and oh, yes, okay.
Speaker 1: So my friend Dan Hernandez, who has guessed it on
Speaker 1: night call before with all of his crypto knowledge, his
Speaker 1: dad was like a cryptologist. I was like, damn. I
Speaker 1: thought my dad was cool, but this this is a
Speaker 1: very cool dad. Um. But he just sent us this
Speaker 1: link to I think I'm gonna actually find out what
Speaker 1: the website is called. It's like it's a crypto zoology,
Speaker 1: crypto mondo, very in festive crypto mondo. But it was
Speaker 1: this article about a cryptod called the Awful Uh and
Speaker 1: it was described as looking like a griffin kind of
Speaker 1: with a long serpent's tail, wings that were I think
Speaker 1: ten ft each um and it would grab prey and
Speaker 1: its talents. So people reported that someone had seen it
Speaker 1: and they thought it was holding like a baby's crying
Speaker 1: baby in a talent. But then later they were like,
Speaker 1: maybe it was just a ship a doll. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: one of the baby alive love. But I think it
Speaker 1: was first discovered in n and H. P. Lovecraft was
Speaker 1: in Vermont, I think, visiting friends and he heard people
Speaker 1: talking about this thing, and he said that from the
Speaker 1: way that they talked about it and their responses to it,
Speaker 1: he kind of believed it was real. And I think
Speaker 1: it was. One guy saw this thing, had a heart
Speaker 1: attack on the spot, had to be carried home and
Speaker 1: I in fashion and they're like and then he was
Speaker 1: carried home and like, where was the setting woods Woods
Speaker 1: of Vermont? I see interesting? Um. But then this this
Speaker 1: article that was on Crypto Mondo cited a newspaper article
Speaker 1: from two thousand six where a reader had written in
Speaker 1: I guess and said, I I saw this. Everyone will
Speaker 1: think I'm crazy, so I want to be anonymous. But
Speaker 1: I've seen one and I think they're real. Like I'm
Speaker 1: usually a pretty skeptical person, but I believe this thing
Speaker 1: is real. And it's called the awful. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were real animals that existed that were like this,
Speaker 1: the parosaurs. Um. The that's so that's like pterodactyl Um,
Speaker 1: that's like the cat cats actalists. That's the giant one
Speaker 1: that's like the size of a giraft that was thought
Speaker 1: to be able to fly. Um so um. But I
Speaker 1: wonder if like these sightings, I don't know, this is
Speaker 1: just throwing it out there. And of course I'm not
Speaker 1: sure exactly where these sightings are if this makes sense,
Speaker 1: but if it's like some kind of hawk that has
Speaker 1: caught a snake, because like and that would prey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so predatory birds do prey on snakes and sometimes they
Speaker 1: actually wrestle and the sky um. And so it's like,
Speaker 1: I wonder if someone could see that and be like,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a big flying animal, and that would
Speaker 1: mess with you for a long time because it's it
Speaker 1: is like a strange thing to see, like the actual
Speaker 1: act flock wrestling with a snake. And if you're not
Speaker 1: expecting that, if you don't know about like hawks preying
Speaker 1: on snakes, and you see that, it's got like and
Speaker 1: then you have this kind of cultural on understanding of
Speaker 1: like a griffin or like a monster. It's like that
Speaker 1: image will be interpreted by your brain as being like
Speaker 1: a griffin. Mom, Yeah, that's actually a really good call
Speaker 1: because I I initially thought a turkey vulture because I
Speaker 1: know that they kind of kick around up there and
Speaker 1: they're huge, like especially I think maybe just the way
Speaker 1: that they fly it looks it's very like dramatic working
Speaker 1: and they look big, but yeah, that they doesn't explain
Speaker 1: the tail well, but they could be it could be
Speaker 1: a turkey vulture holding like a dead lizard that yeah,
Speaker 1: and especially if it were like a lot but I
Speaker 1: guess like a lizard in Vermont, Like what kind of
Speaker 1: lizards happen. I mean, they do have snakes, right, snakes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and honestly, I think maybe like the giant Eastern salamander.
Speaker 1: Those are huge and like strange looking. Do you think
Speaker 1: a turkey vulture could pick one of those up? I think.
Speaker 1: I mean I've seen some really big turkey vultures I
Speaker 1: looked on because I that was like my first thought
Speaker 1: was that it must be a turkey vulture. And then
Speaker 1: but I mean, just like you said, when you see
Speaker 1: an animal that it kind of like startles you in
Speaker 1: your mind, it's just automatically make it bigger than it is.
Speaker 1: So in my mind, I was like turkey vultures. And
Speaker 1: I mean, this has happened to me. So like when
Speaker 1: I was I was out walking my dog once and
Speaker 1: I saw this thing with glowing, bright yellow eyes and
Speaker 1: it was standing like a humanoid and it was like
Speaker 1: this furry thing that looked it was like I was
Speaker 1: just like my brain was like monster. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: didn't help that my dog was like growling at it
Speaker 1: because I was like, oh my god, it is a
Speaker 1: mom this is not It's like, oh my god, monsters
Speaker 1: are real. There was that moment where it was like,
Speaker 1: holy crap, like demons and monsters are real, because here's
Speaker 1: one like standing in front of me on its hind
Speaker 1: legs and then it like uh and it was like
Speaker 1: kind of making a weird noise like and it was
Speaker 1: like really freaking me out. And then it like it
Speaker 1: was it was it looked huge to me and it
Speaker 1: got on its all fours. This is skunk. No, you're kidding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just a skunk that was like on its
Speaker 1: hind legs for some reason, probably doably, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to scope me out because it's like who is this?
Speaker 1: Who is this person in her very angry, little tiny dart.
Speaker 1: And the reason it looks so big, First of all,
Speaker 1: skunks can appear quite big because they're very fluffy and
Speaker 1: they can kind of puff up. Yeah, they puff up.
Speaker 1: And it was on an incline, so in my brain
Speaker 1: I shortened the distance between us because it was so scary.
Speaker 1: So it looked like I thought it was human sized,
Speaker 1: and then I realized, no, it's a skunk, and it's
Speaker 1: normal skunk size. But it really like if I hadn't
Speaker 1: gotten that verification that it was a skunk when it
Speaker 1: like flopped down on its fours and I saw that
Speaker 1: little white stripe. I mean, it's like been like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw I saw a big foot. Yeah, total sasquata.
Speaker 1: And then like especially at night, and everything's creepy and
Speaker 1: every like when your clothes piled in the corner of
Speaker 1: your room at night look like some kind of evil
Speaker 1: demon like with giant teeth and it's like a shirt
Speaker 1: that's folded weird. Ye. Yeah, not that that's ever happened
Speaker 1: to me, of course, I'm not messy have um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I think I think you kind of like hit
Speaker 1: the nail on the head when you talk about how
Speaker 1: we're so surveiled and like we're there's nowhere to hide,
Speaker 1: you know, and and also like so much knowledge is
Speaker 1: available to us and we have some little privacy that
Speaker 1: I think there is something of wanting to believe in
Speaker 1: animals that are so elusive and you know, kind of
Speaker 1: leading the existence that we used to have more access
Speaker 1: to I mean, one thing I think that should reassure
Speaker 1: people is there are so many species of animals that
Speaker 1: we have not discovered that exists deep under the water
Speaker 1: and and I mean even in in forests and in rainforests,
Speaker 1: especially because of the huge amount of biodiversity um. And
Speaker 1: I think it's that mega fauna, which are like something
Speaker 1: like a big foot, it's like a or like a
Speaker 1: big cat that's like a cougar or something, or the mammoths.
Speaker 1: Those are harder to really. Like you, we we've sort
Speaker 1: of run out of megafauna to discover. And I think
Speaker 1: that those big, magnificent animals that oft too often go extinct,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's sad. And I think we want
Speaker 1: we want there to be secret, like these big secret
Speaker 1: animals like locknut monster in the big Foot, and I
Speaker 1: want that too. I just skeptical. Now we just have
Speaker 1: to clone them. We do have to clone them. Let's
Speaker 1: clone a gigant Epithecus and then we got a big
Speaker 1: foot and he's going to be super chill. Yeah what
Speaker 1: if he's like what if he's like super annoying. He's
Speaker 1: always like bogarding all the he does sound like a
Speaker 1: frat guy, like maybe people are just seeing like really
Speaker 1: confused stone fract. Guys, that's a big foot. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's very insino man. Right, yeah, exactly. Well, so
Speaker 1: you've got anything to plug you want to tell people
Speaker 1: a little bit about the podcast and where. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we're our podcast Nightcall. It's me and my friends Molly
Speaker 1: Lambert and Emily Oshida. We do the podcast once a week.
Speaker 1: We took a little bit of a hiatus because we
Speaker 1: were moving networks over to I Heeart Media and we're
Speaker 1: so excited to be doing it here. So, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: look out for a night Call. We talk about all
Speaker 1: things related to late night thoughts, so conspiracies, weird animals,
Speaker 1: outer space, psychic stuff, advice. Um. Also, if you want
Speaker 1: to call with a question or late night thought, you
Speaker 1: can give us a call at to four oh four
Speaker 1: six night because we take calls. Uh leave a voicemail
Speaker 1: and me answer them on the air. I might just
Speaker 1: call you guys please do I love it. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be at three o'clock in the morning. I'm like, do
Speaker 1: you think do you think bees are planning something? Oh?
Speaker 1: That's exactly our champ. Yeah. Uh. Can people find you
Speaker 1: on social media. Yes, so we are a Nightcall Podcast
Speaker 1: on Facebook and Instagram and Nightcall Pod on Twitter. Awesome.
Speaker 1: And you can find us on the internet Creature Feature
Speaker 1: Pod dot Com, Creature Feature Pod on Instagram, Creature Feet
Speaker 1: Pod on Twitter. F e A T not f e
Speaker 1: T that's very different. You can find me. I'm at
Speaker 1: Katie Golden on Twitter, and I'm also at pro bird
Speaker 1: Writes where I am definitely the human and it's not
Speaker 1: the bird controlling me. That's don't tell. And thanks to
Speaker 1: the Space Classics for their awesome song Exo Lumina