Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of I Heart Radio. Today,
Speaker 1: on the show Playtime, it's time to have fun in
Speaker 1: the sun or the seat, or you know, in a
Speaker 1: rotting carcass or whatever. So this is probably not news
Speaker 1: to you. Animals love to play. Dogs fetch balls, Cats
Speaker 1: chase after strings and feathers. Rats giggle with glee when
Speaker 1: you tickle them, Birds like the snowboard, spiders like a
Speaker 1: fool around, and wait spiders. Today on the show, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about all the animals who love to play,
Speaker 1: and that list is way more extensive than you may think. Mammals, reptails,
Speaker 1: and insects to have been caughstious, screwing around and acting
Speaker 1: like idiots for the hell of it. Why do animals play?
Speaker 1: What the hell are they doing with that octopus? Discover
Speaker 1: this and more as we answered the angel question. Can
Speaker 1: turtles play basketball? So why do animals play? It's to
Speaker 1: prepare for adulthood, right, to hone predatory skills, to hone
Speaker 1: social skills, to learn and get smarter and better. While
Speaker 1: that may all to a certain extent be true, Honestly,
Speaker 1: there's so many different documented forms of play, and some
Speaker 1: of them have no clear explanation. In fact, play can
Speaker 1: be dangerous. Daredevil animals who fall a too hard can
Speaker 1: injure themselves just as humans can. So could play sometimes
Speaker 1: just be for fun, a side effect of having a
Speaker 1: conscious brain, rather than some kind of way to become
Speaker 1: a better animal. A few studies have tried to tackle
Speaker 1: whether play is always beneficial. A night study found that kittens,
Speaker 1: when equipped with vision distorting goggles and rendered incapable of playing,
Speaker 1: were compared with kittens that got to play with toys
Speaker 1: and romp around and pounds normally, But they grew up
Speaker 1: to be just as effective as hunting as the kittens
Speaker 1: who were able to play. So the kittens who were
Speaker 1: able to play had no observable advantage over the kittens
Speaker 1: who couldn't play. Furthermore, a mere cat researcher found that
Speaker 1: while mere cats are an extremely playful face de bunch,
Speaker 1: the frequency of their play fighting seemed to have no
Speaker 1: effect on their success at dominance, and who they chose
Speaker 1: as playmates didn't seem to have an effect on their
Speaker 1: camaraderie later in life. So could kittens and merecats play
Speaker 1: just for fun with no real benefits? Today we'll be
Speaker 1: looking at all sorts of different forms of play and
Speaker 1: see that sometimes a fun cigar is just a fun cigar.
Speaker 1: Joining me today to play in this space is after
Speaker 1: comedian bird enthusiast Kenya Apornia. Hello, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining me. I didn't even know what the
Speaker 1: theme was going to be, but I am plump. It's
Speaker 1: a fun one. We've been doing a lot of gross
Speaker 1: ones lately. It's a little breather from all the terrible
Speaker 1: darkness that has been my October spectacular. But did you
Speaker 1: say spider for play? Well? Yes, I mean but if
Speaker 1: you don't see that as a positive, I don't know
Speaker 1: what to tell you, because we're very spider sex positive
Speaker 1: on this show. My god, I'm so sorry. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I want to start out with something kind of fun.
Speaker 1: So have you seen that video of the beluga playing
Speaker 1: with the rugby ball? Oh? I that sounds familiar, but
Speaker 1: I probably a no. Just so I can see it.
Speaker 1: Let me let me show it to you just in case,
Speaker 1: and it's always worth given it another look because it's
Speaker 1: pretty great, so you can see. So it's this guy
Speaker 1: on a boat in the Arctic and he's got a
Speaker 1: rugby ball and he tosses it and this just chases
Speaker 1: after it really goes long, really goes long, and like
Speaker 1: a dog picks it up. There he's got it, and
Speaker 1: then he's well, okay, he fumbled a little bit, but
Speaker 1: he's you know, he's he's a good candidate. He's not
Speaker 1: he wasn't strong in his first season, but I think
Speaker 1: he's gonna he might shape up to be a real,
Speaker 1: real MVP next year. He's got the raw talent, but
Speaker 1: he has no idea how to play the game right exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, he hasn't. He's not developed as a team.
Speaker 1: He's he's developed as an individual, but he's got to
Speaker 1: learn to play with the boat rather than just playing
Speaker 1: it for hims self. Totally. I'm pretending like I know
Speaker 1: anything about rugby. But he brings it back to the humans.
Speaker 1: So he's playing fetch basically. It's basically fetch, and he
Speaker 1: waits and then he tosses it again and then he's
Speaker 1: going to go after it again. He's clearly, very clearly
Speaker 1: playing fetch. What a good boy? What a good boy?
Speaker 1: Or you know, I don't know. I just always think
Speaker 1: of you know, I always think of dogs when in
Speaker 1: this context. But I'm like, well, They're just all animals
Speaker 1: that have similar that's what we're talking about exactly. So
Speaker 1: little let me give a little background on below belugas
Speaker 1: because they are one of my favorite of these cetaceans. So,
Speaker 1: cetaceans are aquatic mammals, which includes toothed and baling whales.
Speaker 1: So that's basically all the sort of flippered mammals you
Speaker 1: can think of in the ocean, like whales, dolphins, from
Speaker 1: humpback whales to orcas to little porpoises to dolphins. These
Speaker 1: are all in the cetacean family. So blugas are toothed whales.
Speaker 1: So twos as you probably have guests, means teeth teeth
Speaker 1: with teeth, yeah, instead of those toothbrush teeth. Set the
Speaker 1: toothbrush teeth. Right. That's balians that like that big brushy
Speaker 1: like uh, you know, the like weird eyebrow like fish trap,
Speaker 1: the fish trap exactly. Broom broom mouth as we like
Speaker 1: to call them in high school. Okay, they're broommouth. Uh. So.
Speaker 1: Blue gas live in the Arctic oceans. They are white
Speaker 1: or light gray in color, and they have round, fleshy bodies.
Speaker 1: Pretty cute. They look like anything you could mold out
Speaker 1: a clay. Yes, they look they look pretty squidgy and soft.
Speaker 1: They're firmer than they look though. There you know it's
Speaker 1: it's blubberry. It's uh but yeah, I know right. They
Speaker 1: can grow up to ten to eighteen feet long. They
Speaker 1: weigh from one thousand, five hundred to three thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred pounds. Males tend to be larger than females. They
Speaker 1: used to be thought to live only about thirty years,
Speaker 1: but recent evidence suggests that they have similar lifespans to humans. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: hundred right, yeah, at least maybe for for you, but uh,
Speaker 1: for for me when I toss back like entire canisters
Speaker 1: of cookies and gummy worms. Maybe slightly. Yeah, But it's
Speaker 1: not about what you do. It's about how medicine can
Speaker 1: keep you alive. That's true. That is true. I what
Speaker 1: I do is I'll eat a cookie and then just
Speaker 1: take a pill, a random one, a random medication. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it'll do something good. You shouldn't keep it random.
Speaker 1: But they are unusual amongst whales in that their neck
Speaker 1: vertebrae are not fused, which means it can turn its
Speaker 1: head from side to side like a human and other
Speaker 1: mammals so think of a dolphin. You're not used to
Speaker 1: seeing a dolphin kind of swivel its head and then
Speaker 1: it can't do that, But beluga can. It can. If
Speaker 1: you call out a beluga, it can like side at you.
Speaker 1: It can turn around and look right in your eyes
Speaker 1: and be like, who are you calling? Call them blubberry?
Speaker 1: Like is kidding? I know, I've got lots of blob.
Speaker 1: It's great, I love it. So it is also known
Speaker 1: as the white whale and the melon head due to
Speaker 1: the bulbous shape of its head. Sounds like an insult.
Speaker 1: But one problem with calling it a melon head is
Speaker 1: this name has already been taken by another species of
Speaker 1: dolphin called the melon headed whale. Oh that's so confusing,
Speaker 1: I know, right, So what we'll keep calling it the beluga.
Speaker 1: But the reason so many their scientists are so eager
Speaker 1: to call these things melon heads is because their heads
Speaker 1: are kind of melon shaped. And also the melon is
Speaker 1: actually the real term for the anatomical feature of cetaceans
Speaker 1: that help with echolocations, So so their heads are literally
Speaker 1: called melons. Yes, well it's that head bump. It's not
Speaker 1: the little sensor the bumpy. It's actually not the sensor.
Speaker 1: But it is. It's a head bump. Okay, it's like
Speaker 1: that cartoon bump you get when the anvil falls on
Speaker 1: your right exactly. It's the badonca donc in the front,
Speaker 1: the front, the head, the head butt. Yes, uh so
Speaker 1: this is called the melon. It's made mostly out of adipose,
Speaker 1: which is fatty tissue. It is actually a sound lens,
Speaker 1: so it helps focus and project echolocation, calls, clicks, chirps,
Speaker 1: and other vocalizations. So it's sort of like a megaphone
Speaker 1: made out of squishy, fat tissue. Yeah, exciting, it is, right,
Speaker 1: it's like a flesh megaphone. I wouldn't well, I don't
Speaker 1: have to. Well, you can just project naturally out of
Speaker 1: my mouth, which is a flesh megaphone. I actually I
Speaker 1: have a very soft voice. I have to like basically
Speaker 1: eat the microphone for anyone to hear me. So I
Speaker 1: could use like a melon microphone, like fleshy microphone, a metaphone,
Speaker 1: you know, with where medicine is at, I'm sure we
Speaker 1: can PLoP one on your face. I'm sure we can
Speaker 1: do just plot. The medical term is plopping it into
Speaker 1: the face after you age one, right, exactly, I will
Speaker 1: have a body you with just a bunch of random medications,
Speaker 1: and doctors will will be like, oh, you know, we
Speaker 1: didn't think the technique of taking random pills every time
Speaker 1: you ate a cookie would work. But it turns out
Speaker 1: you're a medical marvel. You're gonna live forever. Jokes on
Speaker 1: everyone else. Let's put this melon head on you so
Speaker 1: you can talk louder totally. So blue is our special
Speaker 1: amongst the dolphin family, and that they can change the
Speaker 1: shape of their melons at will. They can even wiggle it.
Speaker 1: It's really funny. It looks like they're just kind of
Speaker 1: squishing winking their heads. I don't know about that, squishing
Speaker 1: that around. What's wrong with that? It's weird. It can
Speaker 1: change the shape of a the thing on its head. Well, right,
Speaker 1: it's imagine said this wasn't the spooky episode. No it's not.
Speaker 1: It's cute. It's adorable. Imagine you have a fleshy lump
Speaker 1: on your forehead, Uh, already out, already, don't like it,
Speaker 1: and then you wiggle it around by blowing air through
Speaker 1: your sinuses. Or let's say I love it you you
Speaker 1: would love it. They certainly seem to love it. They
Speaker 1: do it all the time, so it thought that this
Speaker 1: may help focus and modulate their clicks and calls. So
Speaker 1: they're sort of it's like the when if you have
Speaker 1: you ever played an instrument like a brass instrument or
Speaker 1: anything that you played the keyboard? I see, Ah, well, great,
Speaker 1: so I don't have any band geeks to back me
Speaker 1: up on this one right now, which is sad for
Speaker 1: me and kind of the story of my life. But
Speaker 1: uh so, yeah, if you change the shape of your lips,
Speaker 1: that's like the armor sure of your lips. You can
Speaker 1: change the way that you're sort of vibrating the mouthpiece
Speaker 1: and then that creates different sound. They're kind of doing
Speaker 1: that but with their their forehead lip forehead lips right right,
Speaker 1: which aren't their actual lips. It's just this protuberance of
Speaker 1: fatty tissue exactly. So. The beluga is also known as
Speaker 1: the sea canary due to it's birdlike calls. So mariners
Speaker 1: were able to hear their calls through the holes of
Speaker 1: their ship and it actually sounded similar to bird sounds,
Speaker 1: like a canary singing. So let me give you play
Speaker 1: you a little clip that may give you an idea
Speaker 1: of why they were called the canaries. Of the sea.
Speaker 1: Yes please, kind of like a techno canary. I know.
Speaker 1: I was like, there's that tweet tweet in the back,
Speaker 1: but then there's also all that static and a canary
Speaker 1: remix robot bird. They also can manage some pretty interesting
Speaker 1: sounds above the water, very different. That's not quite a
Speaker 1: canary sound, more of a more of a foghorn sound.
Speaker 1: Let's let's hear another another interesting oh ut, Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're pretty good at noises. Pretty cool. That's a bird.
Speaker 1: That's fully a bird. Yeah, that is not a bird.
Speaker 1: That is a blog. So they are able to make
Speaker 1: a lot of really interesting noises, and that's why they're
Speaker 1: the sea canaries, or to me, they're more like a
Speaker 1: sea huge sea bird that squawks and does techno, a
Speaker 1: techno turkey. So, like many cetaceans, they are highly social.
Speaker 1: They form cooperative groups or pods, which are typically about
Speaker 1: ten individuals big. They will hunt together and seek out
Speaker 1: interpersonal contact with each other. Some researchers suggest that their
Speaker 1: unique anatomy encourages even more social contact meanings. So there,
Speaker 1: since they can turn their heads, they can look at
Speaker 1: each other more easily. They that flexible malleable melon on
Speaker 1: their head maybe can direct vocalizations at another individual more easily,
Speaker 1: so that they may be really anatomically better at socializing
Speaker 1: with each other. That's amazing. Are they allowed to talk
Speaker 1: to other pods or just their own? No, they will
Speaker 1: actually coalesced into huge groups of sometimes up to thousands
Speaker 1: of other beluga where there are many different pods coming together.
Speaker 1: And then they will actually sometimes form these nursery groups,
Speaker 1: which is a bunch of mothers and their babies and adolescents.
Speaker 1: So mothers will form triads with like they'll have a
Speaker 1: baby and then an adolescent and the mom and they
Speaker 1: do this childcare together. But then sometimes they will form
Speaker 1: big nursery group like like mommy play dates with other
Speaker 1: other mothers and there's this positive pro social interaction between
Speaker 1: the mothers. Sometimes they'll they'll just like voluntarily be midwives
Speaker 1: for each other. So that means helping the new mother
Speaker 1: lift up the newborn calf to the surface to take
Speaker 1: its first breath, which is a really critical time because
Speaker 1: they they are mammals, they have to breathe the air,
Speaker 1: and so the calf is not strong enough to swim
Speaker 1: to the surface, so you have to physically lift it
Speaker 1: up and so all these moms will come together help
Speaker 1: each other lift their calf's up to take their first press.
Speaker 1: As beautiful it really is, and then the adolescents will
Speaker 1: babysit and learn how to raise raise the young. So
Speaker 1: it's it's really adorable. It's it's actually really cool, beautiful
Speaker 1: form of pro social behavior that's fantastic. And their whistles
Speaker 1: is this form of communication there. They also echolocate, so
Speaker 1: a lot of the clicks are just I'm trying to
Speaker 1: see my environment. So you know how basically echolocation works.
Speaker 1: You send out a click, it bounces off, comes back.
Speaker 1: They have these huge sort of visual cortex processing centers
Speaker 1: where it's like or not visual sorry, um, auditory processing
Speaker 1: centers where they can interpret see their environment through the
Speaker 1: second locations. Really cool. But then they'll they will also
Speaker 1: make weird squeaks and stuff, and that seems to be
Speaker 1: communicating with each other basically talking, making out alarms community,
Speaker 1: you know, a form of some some kind of bluega
Speaker 1: form of speech that goes like and then and then
Speaker 1: cute whistles, bluga jokes. It's like it's like, uh, what
Speaker 1: what do you call two melon heads together? What a
Speaker 1: picnic squad. That's a really terrible joke. But in my defense,
Speaker 1: I think it's true to what a beluga joke would be. Right,
Speaker 1: And belugas are highly playful, so they will rub up
Speaker 1: against each other, chase each other, or sometimes they spit
Speaker 1: water at each other just for fun, exciting, and they'll
Speaker 1: they will also spit water humans. By the way, So
Speaker 1: if you're if there is a bluga in captivity for
Speaker 1: some reason and it's like your walk and around, sometimes
Speaker 1: a little spit a jet of water at you because
Speaker 1: they want to play, because they want to play, maybe
Speaker 1: they want to annoy you. But hey, put water back
Speaker 1: in their face. Did I do that? Yeah? I think so,
Speaker 1: just spit at him. See what happens if you're out
Speaker 1: of zoo and you do. Yeah. They also like to
Speaker 1: play with c junk that they find, like plants would
Speaker 1: would like driftwood, Booye's trash. One even was observed carrying
Speaker 1: around a dead reindeer skeleton just out of curiosity. That's
Speaker 1: the weird one. No one touched. I found a new toy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go play over here. We're gonna make more
Speaker 1: bad melon jokes over here. Oh my god, But it
Speaker 1: got away from that guy. But you know, that's probably
Speaker 1: why this bluegol was caught on video playing rugby, because
Speaker 1: it's part of its natural behavior is playing around with objects.
Speaker 1: And I do really believe it was smart enough to
Speaker 1: figure out that if I bring this rugby ball back
Speaker 1: to the human, they're going to throw it and it'll
Speaker 1: be fun. They're highly social, highly intelligent. I think that
Speaker 1: often you'll see a video and it's like, oh am,
Speaker 1: I anthropomorphizing too much? Like is it? But in this case,
Speaker 1: I think sometimes we can the desire to not anthropomorphize
Speaker 1: too much actually flips the other direction and we don't
Speaker 1: do it enough. We think that everything an animal does
Speaker 1: have some kind of practical function rather than just maybe
Speaker 1: it's just having fun. And so this is it's as
Speaker 1: I said, it's very similar to how dogs play fetch.
Speaker 1: So I actually wanted to look into more why do
Speaker 1: dogs play fetch and how did that behavior come about?
Speaker 1: So wolves aren't great at fetch, which I think is interesting.
Speaker 1: So we have definitely bred dogs to be better at
Speaker 1: playing fetch. Obviously, sometimes we've selected for that behavior in particular,
Speaker 1: like with the Labrador retrievers um. It's in the name
Speaker 1: it is in the name. But one of the theories
Speaker 1: for why they're so playful in general, including fetch, is
Speaker 1: that they have retained juvenile traits, like puppy like traits,
Speaker 1: and we've selected for the more juvenile the dogs. We
Speaker 1: did this to the dogs. I mean, we made dogs,
Speaker 1: dogs from registered trademark dogs, copyright what dogs, patent pending dogs.
Speaker 1: We made dogs. Yeah, I understand. So what's interesting is
Speaker 1: that wolf puppies are show a great capacity for playing fetch.
Speaker 1: So if you taught you can train a wolf puppy
Speaker 1: how to play fetch, but a wolf adult, they don't.
Speaker 1: They're not as playful. As part of this exactly too mature,
Speaker 1: too cool fetch. Huh yeah, I used to play that.
Speaker 1: Now I'm into like like I'm into you know, sitting
Speaker 1: here in the space devo. That's better. But with dogs,
Speaker 1: we have potentially bred in these traits that are called neotony,
Speaker 1: which is basically dogs being kids forever. So neatanus traits
Speaker 1: means a juvenile trait that lingers on in an adult.
Speaker 1: Uh So. Some of the common notatinus traits in dogs
Speaker 1: is uh, floppy ears, shorter muzzles, smaller size, large eyes,
Speaker 1: and ears big ground foreheads kind of generally puppy like looks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did all this, we did. Yeah, I mean we
Speaker 1: bred dogs not just to have juvenile behaviors, more friendliness,
Speaker 1: more playfulness, but juveniles. Sometimes we selected for those juvenile
Speaker 1: physical traits because we find them cute. It fits into
Speaker 1: the baby schema of you know, the eye to forehead ratio,
Speaker 1: where you have this big forehead, big eyes, and to
Speaker 1: us that just strikes us as cuter. And sometimes juvenile
Speaker 1: physic could traits like floppy ears just happened to be
Speaker 1: attached to more friendly behavior. Like so your cartilage and
Speaker 1: a lot of domesticated animals gets weaker when you select
Speaker 1: for less aggression, which is really interesting. Okay, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: one of the juvenile behaviors of wolf puppies is more playfulness.
Speaker 1: So with dogs, they are it's almost like they are
Speaker 1: just eternal puppies like Peter Pan exactly. Yeah. So, and
Speaker 1: so in terms of like playing and fetching and retrieving,
Speaker 1: we we also did that by making them eternal children.
Speaker 1: We made we made fetch happens. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to feel about it, but I guess it's fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a dog I like dogs. Yeah, but to
Speaker 1: think that they didn't exist until we decided to make
Speaker 1: them this way. I mean, we wanted to make fetch happen,
Speaker 1: so we made fetch happen. Yeah. My dog isn't good
Speaker 1: at fetch though, so I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: She's only good at it if you have treats. She's
Speaker 1: oh to bring back the thing you see. Yeah, doesn't
Speaker 1: do that. No, no, no, she she wants something out
Speaker 1: of it, which is really sad. I thought that she
Speaker 1: was more pure of heart, but she's a cold blooded capitalist.
Speaker 1: She looks at me, she has the toy. She's like, well,
Speaker 1: and now I expect a transaction of treats to dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a smart dog. Yeah, it's a smart dog.
Speaker 1: But is it? Is it a fun dog? It's the
Speaker 1: dog of now it's it's dogs are no longer fun
Speaker 1: capitalist dogs, capitalist dogs, I know too much. Now she's
Speaker 1: running for president. Oh yeah, i'll vote. I don't know
Speaker 1: who I'm voting for my dog. So it plays sometimes
Speaker 1: just for fun and a characteristic of young animals. Does
Speaker 1: it really serve no purpose? One way to approach this
Speaker 1: question is to look into why humans play. It's easier
Speaker 1: to know why we want to play, since we understand
Speaker 1: our own feelings reasonably well. Playing is fun, But there
Speaker 1: is something about play that maybe been a ishal to humans.
Speaker 1: Many child behavioral researchers emphasize the importance of play for
Speaker 1: children in cognitive, social, and emotional development. It's not that
Speaker 1: play makes children better at hunting or better at dominating
Speaker 1: social hierarchies. It just gives them a more enriching emotional
Speaker 1: life and makes them happier, more well adjusted, and healthier.
Speaker 1: And for animals, when playtime isn't just honing a certain skill,
Speaker 1: maybe it's simply enriching their emotional lives. Animals, after all,
Speaker 1: can get bored, especially when they're taken out of their
Speaker 1: natural environment. When we return, we'll talk about some animals
Speaker 1: you wouldn't even think are capable of playing, and some
Speaker 1: curious little creatures who use playtime to cope with being
Speaker 1: abducted to a very strange alien environment. Will be right back.
Speaker 1: Remember being a young adult, Remember all those times you
Speaker 1: went out on a limb to try and meet someone new,
Speaker 1: maybe even find someone to go out with all that
Speaker 1: awkwardness as you fumbling Lee talked to a beautiful stranger
Speaker 1: with long, slender legs, curves in all the right places,
Speaker 1: beautiful shimmering eyes, glistening hair, elegant meaty chillis terrae, and
Speaker 1: soft beckoning pedipalps. She's a stunning single spider and she's
Speaker 1: wrapped her long forelimbs around you. She's been flirting with
Speaker 1: you all night, and she playfully put your head in
Speaker 1: her fans and whispers call me. Sometimes we can mate,
Speaker 1: and I'll rip your head off and eat it for real.
Speaker 1: That time, I didn't any of that. Well, sorry to
Speaker 1: say that. Researchers at the University of Tennessee have observed
Speaker 1: a tangle web spider playfully flirting with each other. So
Speaker 1: this is the I think it's pronounced nalosimus studio syst.
Speaker 1: That sounds right to me. Yea, yeah uh. And it
Speaker 1: is a type of These are tiny little spiders who
Speaker 1: build clumpy, tangled webs. That's why they're called tangle we
Speaker 1: are these the ones that I've seen on like to
Speaker 1: know where people are like check this out and it
Speaker 1: looks like a little fluffball and then they poke it.
Speaker 1: A million spiders, I don't think. So there are, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are social there are so let me just say
Speaker 1: they do live in North and South America, so you
Speaker 1: may encounter these at some point. They're so within the
Speaker 1: same species. They can be social or a social. So
Speaker 1: social individuals live in communal groups. So it's I don't
Speaker 1: think these are the ones that form the big clumps,
Speaker 1: but they are sometimes found in big groups. So yeah,
Speaker 1: but they're they're nice little guys, So don't don't be
Speaker 1: too po say bugs are a fear of mine. So
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna be this way through the spider section.
Speaker 1: Let's see if let's see if I can't seduce you
Speaker 1: to this, to to like spiders. So the social individuals
Speaker 1: live in these small groups. A social ones are kind
Speaker 1: of as you would predict, aggressive to newcomers, don't really
Speaker 1: like interacting with people, really like posting memes of the
Speaker 1: joker online. And it's thought that the social phenotype developed
Speaker 1: in response to harsher environments, so that made communal living
Speaker 1: a more viable survival strategy. Uh. And these social spiders
Speaker 1: of the species have also been observed flirting, so you
Speaker 1: may wonder how do spiders flirt? That is what I wonder. Yes,
Speaker 1: so juvenile females and males will engage in mock copulation
Speaker 1: or essentially dry up umping dry humping. The females are
Speaker 1: not yet sexually mature, so they can't reproduce. There's zero
Speaker 1: point to pretending to make because they can't, and but
Speaker 1: they still engage in the behavior, just sort of grinding
Speaker 1: against each other. It's the flirt part. I go straight
Speaker 1: for the dry hump, straight for the dry hump. They
Speaker 1: do not leave room for spider. Jesus. It's a disgrace
Speaker 1: and I don't know where their chaperones are. But what's
Speaker 1: interesting is it's not just they don't they're too stupid
Speaker 1: to understand that they're not ready or sex because the
Speaker 1: females seem to understand that this is not actual sex.
Speaker 1: And we know this because they don't eat the male's
Speaker 1: head after they do the dry humping for real one right,
Speaker 1: when it's a real connection, when you've made a true
Speaker 1: sexual connection and you have been intimate as a spider,
Speaker 1: you you eat the dude's head. I'm supposed to You're
Speaker 1: supposed to have sway me to like spiders spooky. But
Speaker 1: it's a commitment, it's an ultimate commitment. Well, okay, to
Speaker 1: be fair to spiders, there's only about a thirty percent
Speaker 1: chance that they're going to eat the male's head. But
Speaker 1: so when researchers looked at the play, the playful flirtationous humping,
Speaker 1: they found that the females never ate the male spider's head,
Speaker 1: which I think is really polite of them. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is just a dry run. This is
Speaker 1: a you know, this is a test run. I'm not gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, kill you during the practice game. But in
Speaker 1: the finals, yeah, I'll probably you'll probably get your head eaten.
Speaker 1: But that's fine because that's that's the for real one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the real show, the real performance, is it,
Speaker 1: Because then the eggs are laid inside the body that's
Speaker 1: left over. Oh my god, now you've got me going crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are obviously there are many insects that
Speaker 1: do lay their eggs inside the bodies of prey items.
Speaker 1: But this is just a case in which the idea
Speaker 1: is that when females do eat the heads of the males,
Speaker 1: it may help increase the viability of their eggs, So
Speaker 1: that extra snack that they get is good for good
Speaker 1: for them, good for the survival rate of their eggs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they don't. I mean, come on, don't be gross.
Speaker 1: They don't lay their eggs and the bodies of their victims.
Speaker 1: You're sorry, I'm being grossed. They're not like the tarantula
Speaker 1: loss that paralyzes tarantulas and then lays their larva on
Speaker 1: the tarantula, and the larva eats its way outside of
Speaker 1: the tarantulas it develops. Come on, Kim, come on, don't
Speaker 1: be weird. Okay, well, okay, so you look really uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: So I think we will move on from spiders. Hey,
Speaker 1: that learning was cute. It was adorable. Wink wink wink, wink,
Speaker 1: wink wink. All the eyes keep winking. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's real spider blurting. So let's talk about geckos in space. Space, Space, space,
Speaker 1: geckos in space. So, uh, did you know there are
Speaker 1: space geckos hovering above us? Maybe even at this moment?
Speaker 1: Well there are. So Geckos are much studied animals in
Speaker 1: unmanned spacecraft because researchers are really interested in seeing how
Speaker 1: they manage that spider Man trick of climbing up walls.
Speaker 1: So geckos, as you may know, are really good at
Speaker 1: climbing up stuff, and like really sheer surfaces, so they
Speaker 1: can even climb up glass. If you've ever owned a gecko,
Speaker 1: you know they sometimes can climb up the glass tank.
Speaker 1: Kimmy it, come on, I'll go out and get a
Speaker 1: gecko and a bunch of spiders. Yeah, you're supposed to go, Yes,
Speaker 1: and I'll get a bunch of geckos and spiders. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I will. So a specific species of gecko was studied,
Speaker 1: So I'm going to talk about the Turner's thick toed gecko. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean it's got the thick toes though sees thick
Speaker 1: to double ts. So these are a species of gecko
Speaker 1: who are found in southern Africa and also in space space.
Speaker 1: So scientists have long been curious about how gecko has
Speaker 1: managed to climb up walls. Uh, and researchers have sort
Speaker 1: of I think they may have pinned it down to
Speaker 1: Vandervald's forces. So I gotta preemptively say I'm not a physicist,
Speaker 1: so this is slightly out of my wheelhouse, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to explain Vandervald's force. It is an
Speaker 1: attraction or repulsion between molecules over very short distances. So
Speaker 1: the way that maybe geckos are able to use Vandervald's
Speaker 1: forces is they have these microscopic hairs on their toepath
Speaker 1: adds that interact with the molecules on the surface that
Speaker 1: they're climbing. So these little, tiny, tiny, tiny hairs have
Speaker 1: these little molecules that get really close to the molecules
Speaker 1: on the surface that they're climbing up in these weak
Speaker 1: Vanderwald forces make it stick together, and then you just
Speaker 1: multiply that by there's so many hairs on their foot
Speaker 1: that they're able to stick. So this is just like
Speaker 1: so small, something that's so tency. Yeah, you'd never real
Speaker 1: to see it. Yeah, I mean, well you can probably
Speaker 1: see it under like an electron microscope, yes, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: but like you know, like in the Spider Man movies
Speaker 1: where you see Spider Man and he's got his fingers,
Speaker 1: he looks at his fingers and these tiny hairs like
Speaker 1: poke out of his fingers kind of like that. That's great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Researchers are of course interested in seeing whether they can
Speaker 1: still do this in space, so they put geckos in space. Essentially,
Speaker 1: story short, we shot them into space. We couldn't just
Speaker 1: keep them down here in those fake space you know,
Speaker 1: atmosphere thingies. We don't we spent all the money to time,
Speaker 1: I don't think we have we don't have those anti
Speaker 1: gravity space chambers yet. What we don't have those officially
Speaker 1: on the record. Oh yeah, we gotta we gotta cut
Speaker 1: this all out of the podcast. Get Get. The FBI
Speaker 1: is just busting down our door. The area forty one. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you don't even know, well, no, the thing is
Speaker 1: they want you to focus on area fifty one. What's
Speaker 1: going on? And two that's where it's actually happening. Gecko aliens. So,
Speaker 1: in fact, they found that geckos can climb walls in space,
Speaker 1: so great cool, But they also found something else. They
Speaker 1: found that geckos like to play games in space. So
Speaker 1: in space, so on board the buy on M one
Speaker 1: unmanned spacecraft turners thick toed geckos were caught playing around
Speaker 1: in zero grab, which is a great headline. I'm very
Speaker 1: good at headline writing. Is good. What happened is one
Speaker 1: of these space geckos wriggled out of its collar and
Speaker 1: went rogue and was just floating around like a little sneaker,
Speaker 1: and it was holding its collar and just kind of
Speaker 1: like the collar floated away because they're in low gravity.
Speaker 1: And the gecko started playing with this floating collar. They
Speaker 1: would boop it with their no kind of push it around.
Speaker 1: One gecko tried putting it on, trying it on, tried
Speaker 1: to put his head through it. One of them tried
Speaker 1: pinning it to the floor and then like releasing it
Speaker 1: and seeing what happened there, just experimenting, just playing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who's the real scientists, the scientists or the geckos. But yeah,
Speaker 1: still the scientists, well okay, but they're doing experiment experiments
Speaker 1: on their collar for fun. I'm also imagining that they
Speaker 1: are all having little tiny bubble helmets over just their heads.
Speaker 1: There's just like some kind of like science noise beeping
Speaker 1: in the background, and one of them has a little helmet.
Speaker 1: They're just like floating around exactly essentially, that's what's happening.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's zero gravity, but it's not zero oxygen,
Speaker 1: so they're they're probably fine, that's fair, that's cute. But yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: they do have a little time space suits, good little
Speaker 1: tiny NASA patches on, and when they're getting on the
Speaker 1: spacecraft is just the slow walk of geckos with a
Speaker 1: little helmet under their arms like don't dunk, don't d
Speaker 1: don't and like a little gecko is like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: so worried about my gecko husband. Oh I hope they
Speaker 1: don't forget about me. Read three to one stof the
Speaker 1: geka is like just like their faces going yeah, yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: all the all the space things. It's like, here'ston, we
Speaker 1: have a problem. There's just a gecko turd floating around.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. That was real though, when people went
Speaker 1: up into space. Yeah, where do they poop the poop
Speaker 1: in bags? I know, well sometimes I float around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I read about that. I've been here. I know they
Speaker 1: had to poop somewhere and it must have been in
Speaker 1: you know, the pooping baggies and dehydrate them some time
Speaker 1: at times. And that right, there was an incident where
Speaker 1: like the poop baggies accidentally got released, yes, and that
Speaker 1: you can there's like a recording I think it was
Speaker 1: an Apollo flight where they're joking about poops flying around. Anyway,
Speaker 1: someone fact check that. It's like, oh, is this is
Speaker 1: this dehydrate of No? Not I screaming guy, So how
Speaker 1: do we know that these geckos are playing like? I
Speaker 1: mean we to be fair, we don't like we can't
Speaker 1: get inside the brain. We can't avatar inside a gecko
Speaker 1: brain yet. Um. But there's a good chance it is
Speaker 1: play based on some of the criteria that we've made
Speaker 1: for like what is play versus another behavior? Years So
Speaker 1: Mark Bekov is a behavioral ecologist at the University of
Speaker 1: Colorado Boulder who talked to Discover magazine and said that
Speaker 1: even though play is difficult to define, it can fit
Speaker 1: a few criteria. So he said, quote, play is a kaleidoscope,
Speaker 1: a mix of different behaviors from lots of different contexts,
Speaker 1: like predatory behavior, aggressive behavior, sexual behavior. And it's this
Speaker 1: mix that allows animals to know that it's play and
Speaker 1: not something serious. So play is loosely defined as being
Speaker 1: fitting this mix of criteria, so being voluntary. There's no
Speaker 1: obvious practical function. Uh, it's different from practical functions. Uh.
Speaker 1: It can be repetitive. Uh, it can be predatory, sexual, aggressive,
Speaker 1: or a mix of these behaviors, and the animal playing
Speaker 1: is not distressed, and it's for the most part healthy. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then if you kind of hit most of those
Speaker 1: criteria or see a combination of those things, there's a
Speaker 1: good chance that that qualifies as basically playing, because what
Speaker 1: else is it going to be. We've talked about this
Speaker 1: on the show before, but octopuses will play. They like to,
Speaker 1: So there's a super smart they're very smart. Yes, you
Speaker 1: should check out the aliens under the CEA episode. It's
Speaker 1: we have a guy who lived with an octopus in
Speaker 1: his living room and made friends with it. He's like
Speaker 1: an octopus researcher, and they're incredibly smart. They have been
Speaker 1: seen playing with So these researchers put an empty pill
Speaker 1: bottle in their aquarium and so it's buoyant and it
Speaker 1: floated around, and the octopuses were playing fetch with themselves.
Speaker 1: So they were letting the bottle like float out and
Speaker 1: then it like would like push it with a stream
Speaker 1: of water, and then he would float back and then
Speaker 1: push it again. So it's playing ball and also turtles. Surprisingly.
Speaker 1: Now what's interesting is some of these animals that we're
Speaker 1: talking about are not super intelligent. So obviously spiders basically
Speaker 1: almost don't have a brain, have like a cluster of
Speaker 1: neurons that can is almost like hard to describe as
Speaker 1: being like a fully functional brain, and yet they still
Speaker 1: do this interesting mimicking behavior and so turtles are obviously
Speaker 1: more complex than spiders, but they are not maybe as
Speaker 1: intelligent as like a bluego or an octopus, but they
Speaker 1: still engage in place. So uh. In the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: there was this African soft shelled turtle living in the
Speaker 1: National Zoo in d C. And his name was pig Face.
Speaker 1: I'll show you a picture so you understand why. They
Speaker 1: have really weird snouts like snouts that. Yeah, they're they
Speaker 1: just they're not unlike hard shelled turtles where they have
Speaker 1: this distinct hard shell. They are squishy boys, squishy boys
Speaker 1: animal squishy. Yes, this is definitely squishy. Yeah. It's like
Speaker 1: a lump lumpy turtle. Okay, yeah, with the pointy nose,
Speaker 1: and they are pretty funny looking and they have pretty
Speaker 1: long necks. And unfortunately, pig Face was having some behavioral problems.
Speaker 1: It kept clawing at itself client scratching its own face,
Speaker 1: and zookeepers were very concerned, and the common knowledge at
Speaker 1: the time was like, well, turtles can't be bored, so
Speaker 1: we don't know what why it's doing this. Well, it's
Speaker 1: literally ripping his face right and then well but yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the zookeeper was saying, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: think he could be bored, actually, because he seems pretty bored.
Speaker 1: And so they gave him a couple of basketballs to
Speaker 1: play with, and at first it didn't seem like he
Speaker 1: was doing much with the basketball. Official size, well, you
Speaker 1: know what, I don't know for turtles. Maybe for the
Speaker 1: Turtle Basketball Association, the t B a t t B A. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So but they recorded, They set up a camera to
Speaker 1: record and see what it would do with these basketball
Speaker 1: and when they were reviewing the footage, at first it
Speaker 1: didn't really seem like much, but then they sped it
Speaker 1: up to watch the whole thing. And then once they
Speaker 1: saw it at this higher speed, it was very clearly
Speaker 1: playing with a ball like a little puppy. They don't
Speaker 1: do sloma replay right exactly fast fast, because the turtle
Speaker 1: isn't a fast animal. It's not like a puppy that
Speaker 1: sprints around. But then when you speed it up to
Speaker 1: basically what the animals activity level is, it was playing
Speaker 1: with it. He was frolicking around, booping it with his nose,
Speaker 1: having a good time. And I think it was a
Speaker 1: real testament to this this idea that first of all,
Speaker 1: even animals we don't give that much credit for for
Speaker 1: being intelligent, can still be bored, can still need stimulation
Speaker 1: and enrichment, especially if they're not and if they're in
Speaker 1: a tiny enclosed environment. I always think about that. But
Speaker 1: these animals that are like being rehabilitated in zoos or
Speaker 1: just have grown up in zoos where I'm like, what
Speaker 1: do you guys doing a small space? You just swim
Speaker 1: this way and then you go that way, and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it. Yeah. I mean I have a friend who
Speaker 1: she would go around the world and try to teach
Speaker 1: people about animal enrichment, especially in captivity and rehabilitation programs,
Speaker 1: because it's really important that people understand even if you
Speaker 1: provide for all of their needs like food, shelter, a
Speaker 1: good amount of space, if you don't give them entertainment,
Speaker 1: social stimulation, and in these other kind of just like
Speaker 1: fun games to play, they'll get bored and they'll start
Speaker 1: to exhibit neurotic behavior that's really a sign of bad
Speaker 1: things happening, Like polar bears will pace a lot, they'll
Speaker 1: like overgroom themselves, and then when they introduce more toys
Speaker 1: and more social interactions than those kinds of uh, those
Speaker 1: little behaviors of of kind of almost like O C
Speaker 1: D like behaviors stop happening. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's I think it's really important to understand how playful
Speaker 1: animals are, not just because it's key and fun, but
Speaker 1: because it impacts like how we actually treat them. They
Speaker 1: need it, Yeah, they need it. Just one one fact,
Speaker 1: rats who get tickled giggle what they don't It doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like human giggles. But researchers found that when rats
Speaker 1: would get tickled, which they love, by the way, they
Speaker 1: love getting tickled. They do they Yeah, they would run around,
Speaker 1: they they would they have these squeals that were specifically
Speaker 1: associated with getting tickled. Okay, well, but I thought tickling
Speaker 1: was bad, Like when humans get tickled, isn't it your
Speaker 1: body freaking out? That's why you laugh? This is what
Speaker 1: I heard. I mean, I don't know, like body tenses
Speaker 1: up and it's like natural reaction is to like laugh,
Speaker 1: but you're just like panicking so much you don't know
Speaker 1: what to do. Well, I think everyone responds to tickles differently, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean it is it is. That is true. Like
Speaker 1: there are some theories about laughing being about like being
Speaker 1: so overstimulated that you just don't know how to respond.
Speaker 1: And certainly tickling can be really unpleasant, but you know
Speaker 1: it kind of I think in the rats case, at least,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like they weren't finding the worst spot and
Speaker 1: then tickling it relentlessly and then holding its head down
Speaker 1: and being like, well, you're tickling yourself while you're tickling. Uh.
Speaker 1: You heard about this the rats driving cars, about how
Speaker 1: rats like to drive. They like to drive, and that's
Speaker 1: I think what's interesting about that is that's another instance
Speaker 1: of play because they don't need to drive, they just
Speaker 1: enjoy it. So they made these little vehicles for rats
Speaker 1: and they could learn how to drive them to get
Speaker 1: through a maze. But they found that even when the
Speaker 1: vehicles offered no actual advantage for the rats, like didn't
Speaker 1: help them with anything, they still seemed to really enjoy
Speaker 1: learning how to drive and going around honking at each other,
Speaker 1: going like oh and if you cut me off. It
Speaker 1: brought down there like stress levels and anxiety, which is
Speaker 1: the opposite of how I feel when I'm well. It's
Speaker 1: kind of I mean, I think that originally probably the
Speaker 1: first people who drove, like when cars first came right
Speaker 1: like cars one point, oh, the start of cars, it
Speaker 1: was probably really fun because nobody was around. So for
Speaker 1: these rats, like for now, it's great, but wait until
Speaker 1: it's an actual traffic jam, a real rat race. So
Speaker 1: I mean to see if it's fun then when you
Speaker 1: you gotta get to work and there's some guy head
Speaker 1: who's got his blinker on for a mile and yeah,
Speaker 1: totally yeah, so they have it. They think they've got
Speaker 1: it so good now at least instead of hear me out,
Speaker 1: instead of automated driving like driverless cars, I hear where
Speaker 1: rats driving the cars, so they have fun. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: get to not drive the cars. Many will die, However,
Speaker 1: isn't it worth a shot? It is called Google. Serious
Speaker 1: dial Google, I know what burning question you have? Could
Speaker 1: dine the stores have enjoyed playing? Could a t rex
Speaker 1: have romped around playing with some poor triceratops's skull? Some
Speaker 1: evidence suggests that yes. So let's look at crocodiles. Now,
Speaker 1: crocodiles didn't descend from dinosaurs, but they're about as old.
Speaker 1: They evolved two hundred million years ago during the Mesozoic era,
Speaker 1: and crocodiles love to play biologists at the University of
Speaker 1: Tennessee at Knoxville have studied the play behaviors of crocodilians,
Speaker 1: using over three thousand hours of observation. Their play behavior
Speaker 1: includes tossing around a ball, blowing bubbles in the water,
Speaker 1: snapping playfully at streams of water, carrying around bright flowers,
Speaker 1: and giving each other piggyback rides. But what about the
Speaker 1: direct descendants of dinosaurs. That's right, I'm talking about birds.
Speaker 1: Birds love to play, as many bird owners may already know,
Speaker 1: Even the more serious seeming birds love a good time.
Speaker 1: Birds of play like screech owls will pounce on leaves
Speaker 1: or in captivity, cat toys, corvids which is os and
Speaker 1: ravens love to play with all sorts of shiny objects,
Speaker 1: and a crow was caught on camera in Russia taking
Speaker 1: a metal lid to the top of a snowy rooftop,
Speaker 1: sitting on it, and sledding down, only to repeat the
Speaker 1: process again and again. Black swans have been videoed surfing
Speaker 1: the waves, flying out onto the beach, finding a wave
Speaker 1: that's just crusting, surfing it to the shore, and repeating
Speaker 1: the process. I'm definitely including links to these videos of
Speaker 1: the show. Notes seriously check them out and tell me
Speaker 1: with a straight face that these birds aren't having a
Speaker 1: heck and good time. So here's the here's the crow snowboarding.
Speaker 1: He's gone to the top of the roof, snowboards down,
Speaker 1: picks up the lid, bottom, gets back up there again.
Speaker 1: And the great thing about being a snowboarding crow is
Speaker 1: you don't need to scala, no weight, tiring back, no
Speaker 1: wait times. You can just fly back up and he's
Speaker 1: gonna do it again. Ah yeah, right, that powder dude,
Speaker 1: that's some good. He's got something. He's got some good
Speaker 1: air there. It takes a lot because he's like, he's
Speaker 1: also using his wings, so it's like a skill arding crowboarding. Nice,
Speaker 1: that's what it's said on the video. Come up with that. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a good one anyway. Here's some swan surfing. So
Speaker 1: here's a group of black swans going out into the ocean.
Speaker 1: They find a good way to surfing, and then what's
Speaker 1: incredible is it doesn't seem like it's just a mistake
Speaker 1: because then they fly back out find another way. You've
Speaker 1: got to try that again. Yeah, bro, catch the live
Speaker 1: Oh nice tubular dude, that's swell. In fact, it seems
Speaker 1: more likely that most animals engage in some form of play,
Speaker 1: whether it's locomotion playing like enjoying, sledding or surfing or crowboarding,
Speaker 1: play behaviors and pretend flirtations. But there can be a
Speaker 1: dark side to playing. When we return, we'll learn that
Speaker 1: mother nature lets you playing with your food, and sometimes
Speaker 1: your food plays back. Imagine you're strolling along on a
Speaker 1: nice day. The sun is shining. The birds well, that's weird.
Speaker 1: The birds have stopped singing. Something is off. You feel
Speaker 1: a deep trembling, something rising from the ground. Suddenly, a
Speaker 1: huge appendage rises from beneath you, tearing apart the ground.
Speaker 1: It scoops you up and tosses you high into the air.
Speaker 1: You fall down, expecting to meet a quick end. But
Speaker 1: that's when you land on something soft and fleshy. You
Speaker 1: come to the horrible realization that this giant monster has
Speaker 1: caught you on its appendage. Well, this is it. Hopefully
Speaker 1: getting eaten won't suck as bad as you thought it would.
Speaker 1: But then you feel the air whoosh around you as
Speaker 1: you're tossed again high into the air, so high the
Speaker 1: air thins and you can barely breathe. You land again
Speaker 1: with a thud into the monster's grasp. You're pretty sure
Speaker 1: most of your bones are broken at this point, and
Speaker 1: again it tosses you. Why doesn't it kill you? What
Speaker 1: is It's some kind of sick game? And that's when
Speaker 1: you realize it is a game and you're the ball.
Speaker 1: It's not spooky. That one's spooky too. These are all spooky.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, this is one if you can believe it.
Speaker 1: This is a less spooky episode. The other ones have
Speaker 1: a lot of parasites and you know, disembo say no more. Although,
Speaker 1: speaking of disembolpment, Jimmy, I want to welcome you to
Speaker 1: the life of a fish who was unlucky to encounter
Speaker 1: nature's most adorable anshole, the dolphin. So dolphins love to
Speaker 1: eat fish right out of the water. Dolphins have this
Speaker 1: hunting strategy where they will forcefully kick a fish out
Speaker 1: of water with their flipper and when the fish is
Speaker 1: stunned obviously after flying through the air and exactly it's
Speaker 1: like someone just threw you into the airness can't breathe right.
Speaker 1: So the dolphins will take advantage of these shocked fish
Speaker 1: and then eat them because they're horrible monsters. Little everyone
Speaker 1: loves a dolphin. But what's interesting is they don't just
Speaker 1: do this to hunt, so they will also play with
Speaker 1: their food after they've already caught it. Dolphins have been
Speaker 1: observed tossing fish over and over again before eating them,
Speaker 1: and it's speculated that sometimes this is practical, so they
Speaker 1: may be making sure that the fish or octopus that
Speaker 1: they caught or whatever prey item is truly dead so
Speaker 1: that they can swallow it without choking, which is a
Speaker 1: pretty reasonable thing to do. But sometimes they just do
Speaker 1: it because they can, and it doesn't seem to have
Speaker 1: any real practical purpose, and so, as we talked about before,
Speaker 1: that would qualify it as play. Uh. Dolphins have been
Speaker 1: observed playing ball with things they have no intention of eating. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes dolphins have been observed dragging seagulls under the water,
Speaker 1: dunking them, playing around with them a few times before
Speaker 1: releasing them unharmed but super frazzled. I think we can't
Speaker 1: say play, and we need to call this bully dolphin bowling.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I guess uh, I guess it is.
Speaker 1: They are essentially like giving the birds swirlies exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: They're they're the big big man on campus, a bunch
Speaker 1: of footballers playing around dead fish, dunking on seagulls, a
Speaker 1: nerd bird like yank um underwater dang. So. They also
Speaker 1: like to pull and tug on turtle tails and legs,
Speaker 1: which is super mean unless I got a crush on
Speaker 1: those turtles. Give them old tug. I don't like you.
Speaker 1: I'm just shut up. I'm gonna chase you, though, not
Speaker 1: because I like you. They will even stock sharks and
Speaker 1: mimic their movements. Wow. The more we talk about these
Speaker 1: are they're about jerk teenagers, right, like, look nice, leave
Speaker 1: me a little look at me over shark. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know bones, I got cartilage do Let's see you're
Speaker 1: good at this. Maybe it was a dolphin in the
Speaker 1: in the past life and Orca's who are actually members
Speaker 1: of the dolphin family like to go shark tipping. They
Speaker 1: will flip over sharks, which makes them really easy to
Speaker 1: torment and eat because when sharks are tipped over, they
Speaker 1: go into this state of catatonia where they don't move.
Speaker 1: They just kind of like sheep like sheep. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's just it's kind of like cow tipping, but
Speaker 1: with sharks, and sometimes they do eat them. Also, yeah,
Speaker 1: the orcans will eat the sharkscause we're on kay. Orcas
Speaker 1: are are dolphins, But that's what I'm thinking of, you know,
Speaker 1: the black and white whale. Yes, yes, but it's and
Speaker 1: dolphins are whales. Understood, it's confusing, but they're all called
Speaker 1: was that first category? No, those are so so to
Speaker 1: the to the whales are dolphins and other other toothy
Speaker 1: whales and orcas are in the dolphin family. Will remember this, Yeah, us,
Speaker 1: so dolphins are whales or because our whales or because
Speaker 1: they're also dolphins, and yes, cool. So this actually reminds
Speaker 1: me a lot of cats, Like how cats will play
Speaker 1: with their Oh yeah, they're flicking their food around, looking around.
Speaker 1: So I had a cat when I was growing up.
Speaker 1: She's a real, real sweet cat, but just a vicious killer.
Speaker 1: Would kill probably, you know, killed off a few rare
Speaker 1: bird species in her lifetime. She would was very good
Speaker 1: at catching mice and birds. She loved to come up
Speaker 1: to our back door, which was a clear glass door,
Speaker 1: and you could look out and she saw us and
Speaker 1: she'd have a dead mouse and she'd like this was
Speaker 1: her little stage, and she put the alta show and
Speaker 1: she would toss this mouse up disembol it just a
Speaker 1: confetti of blood and guts, and she was watching. She
Speaker 1: would look at me to make sure I was watching
Speaker 1: as she tore this mouse to shreds. And she had
Speaker 1: so much fun, and I think she was probably this
Speaker 1: is sort of a maternal or social behavior where she's
Speaker 1: thinking like I'm gonna show you how it's done, and
Speaker 1: had a really good time. But I think it was
Speaker 1: also just fun for her. It sounds like Benny Hannah
Speaker 1: makes me think of like a It's just like around
Speaker 1: does that little onion volcano, but it's made out of
Speaker 1: dead mine exactly. So like dolphins, cats may play with
Speaker 1: their prey partially to kill it and disable it so
Speaker 1: that it doesn't hurt them. Uh so it makes him
Speaker 1: easier to eat, it prevents them from scratching them. But
Speaker 1: it's probably, I think, also really fun. I mean, cats
Speaker 1: also play with toy mice for no purpose. They seem
Speaker 1: to really enjoy it. Did you see that video of
Speaker 1: that cat that ran out onto the football field? That
Speaker 1: was Okay, you gotta link that. So here's here's the
Speaker 1: cat running out onto the field. Just it's so fight.
Speaker 1: So it's this huge black cat it's real chalker and
Speaker 1: uh he or she, I don't I don't know who
Speaker 1: this cat is, but runs out onto the field and
Speaker 1: looks momentarily stunned as thousands of people look on, Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, this is a cat's nightmare. I mean, but
Speaker 1: do you think the cat is do you think this
Speaker 1: is like a cat form of streaking, or do you
Speaker 1: think that one of those cats, one of that cats.
Speaker 1: Buddies was like, I'll bet you can't do this, but
Speaker 1: you wouldn't run, no niggi across the field, I would go.
Speaker 1: Would watch me? Just watch me? I I wonder. Or
Speaker 1: do you think the cat was like looking for the bathroom,
Speaker 1: made a wrong turn and suddenly it's in the middle
Speaker 1: of the stadium. It's like tables and bits. Just keep running,
Speaker 1: you just keep running, and everyone saw you when they're
Speaker 1: all looking. So one thing that I think is really
Speaker 1: interesting is that big cats, like lions, leopards, tigers, all
Speaker 1: those all those big old, big old furry death machines
Speaker 1: are basically just big cat. They're a lot like domesticated
Speaker 1: cats and vice versa. So big cats love to play
Speaker 1: with their food as well, and it is truly psychotic.
Speaker 1: So there was a video of a leopard cot who
Speaker 1: was dismembering a wart hog corpse. I mean, which is
Speaker 1: that's normal? So far, so far, so good. It's butchering
Speaker 1: this wart hog corpse to eat it, normal normal leopard stuff.
Speaker 1: But then it picks up the wart hog's jawbone and
Speaker 1: uses the jawbone to stir around its own carcass. So
Speaker 1: it's like it's mutile, basically mutilating this wart hog just
Speaker 1: for fun, right, It's like, han, it's got this this
Speaker 1: jaw bone. It's like, why are you hitting yourself? Why
Speaker 1: are you hitting yourself? Really psychopathic behavior, right, And it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to serve any like some people were wondering,
Speaker 1: how is this tool use or Something's like, no, it
Speaker 1: doesn't serve any purpose. It didn't accomplish anything. It was
Speaker 1: just like one or what happens if I shove this
Speaker 1: in here? Yep art that art I've made? Art uh.
Speaker 1: And big cats will also play with their prey while
Speaker 1: they are still alive. Often a big cat like a lion,
Speaker 1: will catch something small like a little antelope or other ungulate,
Speaker 1: and once the prey is tired and stops running that
Speaker 1: sometimes the prey will just like go into the state
Speaker 1: of catatonia where it will lie down and stop trying
Speaker 1: because it's so exhausted. And this is actually not a
Speaker 1: bad technique always, because if you don't have any more
Speaker 1: energy to run, your best bet is to lie down
Speaker 1: hope that there is a break in the cat's attention
Speaker 1: so that you can make a dash for it once
Speaker 1: you've recollected yourself. But once the prey has calmed down. Uh, Sometimes,
Speaker 1: like when it's just stopped running and it's just laying
Speaker 1: there kind of like dumb struck, the cat will play
Speaker 1: around with it, like kind of smack it around and
Speaker 1: put a big paw on it. They'll even groom it. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: This is sick, I know, right, And they can appear
Speaker 1: really gentle, like, oh, I'm now adopting this this little antelope.
Speaker 1: This is scary, you said, this is so spooky. That's
Speaker 1: to be like, hello, my pretty, I'm just taking care
Speaker 1: of you. I'm just gonna give you a little brush.
Speaker 1: It's like so good. It's like that it's split that
Speaker 1: that I didn't see it. The trauma personalities. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: what's that actor's name, James McAvoy, Yeah, I know, I
Speaker 1: just play stupid about movies. But no, it's he's got
Speaker 1: these multiple personalities, and one of his personality, or I
Speaker 1: guess a few of his personalities are crazy, actually, but
Speaker 1: one of them wants to kidnap and eat these kids,
Speaker 1: these girls. And I'm going to see this movie. And
Speaker 1: I didn't watch it either. But what I like to
Speaker 1: do is there are movies I'm too too scared to see,
Speaker 1: too spooked to see. But I read it up. I
Speaker 1: read it on Wikipedia because I'm curious, but I don't
Speaker 1: actually want to see it. I am a weenie. And
Speaker 1: so he catches these these girls, and then one of
Speaker 1: his personalities is like the sweet grandma or sweet mother,
Speaker 1: and he starts like braiding their hair and says, I
Speaker 1: made you a sandwich. I made you a sandwich. Oh,
Speaker 1: you have such pretty hair. It's basically what these lines
Speaker 1: are doing. So most of the time, once they get
Speaker 1: bored or hungry, then they just kill the prey. I
Speaker 1: don't just so it's such a such a jerk thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, I'm bored now, so as long as
Speaker 1: you're very entertaining, right right, It's like it's like wait, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I see I can juggle cartoon lion King was accurate
Speaker 1: when Scarhead does you Trapped and every damn that movie
Speaker 1: has a lot of inaccuracies, but that's that's the one
Speaker 1: that is correct exactly. Lest you think that it's just
Speaker 1: male big cats that are jerk, lionesses are just as terrible.
Speaker 1: So lionesses were observed killing doves even though they had
Speaker 1: no need for the dove meat because they were like
Speaker 1: neck deep in an elephant carcass. So uh, they were
Speaker 1: clearly not hungry because they had just finished gorging themselves
Speaker 1: on this elephant carcass and a flock of doves landed nearby,
Speaker 1: and they paused to admire the beauty and elegance of
Speaker 1: these doves. It's like one of them was just like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to kill them. So they start jumping around
Speaker 1: playing with these doves, trying to snatch them out of
Speaker 1: the air, and there was no need to do this,
Speaker 1: absolutely no need. One of them caught a dove and
Speaker 1: killed in. It was just like that was fun. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing as when your cat who is
Speaker 1: fully fed, goes out and kills a bird and disembowels
Speaker 1: it and doesn't eat it because it's just fun. It's
Speaker 1: just fun to Yeah, now I'm now I don't like cats. Well,
Speaker 1: here's a fun of in stories. So sometimes your food
Speaker 1: will play back, Okay, it will be really annoying. So
Speaker 1: there is this video of a hippo playing with a crocodile. Now,
Speaker 1: typically adult hippos are not on a crocodile's menu because
Speaker 1: they are big and they are scary, and you should
Speaker 1: be scared of hippos. They will mess you up, That's
Speaker 1: what I've heard. They are not kidding around. Yeah, they'll
Speaker 1: chase you, and they kill a lot of people more.
Speaker 1: I think they kill more people than any other animal. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I've got a deliver lit No. I mean the number
Speaker 1: one killer is probably mosquitoes actually because of diseases. But no, no,
Speaker 1: they kill a handful of people every year. But they're
Speaker 1: they're not like, they're not super dangerous. They're just more
Speaker 1: dangerous than like, if you're afraid of I think lions.
Speaker 1: I think they kill more people than lions. Essentially, even
Speaker 1: if you're crocodile, you don't want to mess around with
Speaker 1: adult hippos. But hippo calves are soft and squishy and delicious. Apparently,
Speaker 1: if you're crocodile. But there is a video of a
Speaker 1: hippo calf who is maybe a little too much of
Speaker 1: a mouthful for this crocodile, and she just tortures this crocodile,
Speaker 1: plays with it, and she's not being aggressive. She doesn't
Speaker 1: show any like signs of aggression or bear or territorial nous.
Speaker 1: She's just having fun. So she chases the crocodile around,
Speaker 1: tugs on its tail, romps around, wrestles with it, and
Speaker 1: the crocodile keeps trying to escape bold little hippo. I know.
Speaker 1: It's really funny because and so the crocodile is surrounded
Speaker 1: by other hippos too, so it's probably thinking like I
Speaker 1: can't do anything without getting completely destroyed, so it doesn't
Speaker 1: try attacking the hippo. It just keeps trying to get
Speaker 1: away from this playful little little hippo. And uh so
Speaker 1: here here's the hippo, and it's it's really just really
Speaker 1: interested in the crocodile. The crocodile seems less than thrilled
Speaker 1: and keeps trying to get away, and I was just
Speaker 1: yelping like please tell um, yeah, And it's pretty funny.
Speaker 1: It just like keeps torturing it runs around like like
Speaker 1: plays with it underwater, pulls it underwater and rolls around.
Speaker 1: It's just hangs. It's like you're my new best friend.
Speaker 1: And this crocodiles like please know, so over it, Like wow,
Speaker 1: even on land, I thought I could escape band sniffing
Speaker 1: his but get out of here. So it's like literally
Speaker 1: just like pulling on its tail. It's kind of funny
Speaker 1: to see because it's you think of crocodiles as being
Speaker 1: these ruthless killers, and really they're kind of WIMPs when
Speaker 1: they know that the tables could easily be turned against them,
Speaker 1: and I like to see that bothered. And the croc
Speaker 1: only got to escape when a herd of elephants showed
Speaker 1: up and chased off the hippo, probably because the hippo
Speaker 1: was being really annoying. Uh. There's this another really cute
Speaker 1: thing where I mean hippos. Hippos are bold. So there's
Speaker 1: a photo of a hippo just kind of like sniffing
Speaker 1: around a hyena in its nose, and it's usually what's
Speaker 1: interesting to me too, is that these are young hippos,
Speaker 1: so they're more curious. And this this young hyena and
Speaker 1: this young hippo. We're just kind of sniffing each other.
Speaker 1: They're not they're naturally not really friends because Hyena's I
Speaker 1: mean Hyena's I don't think typically go after fully grown
Speaker 1: hippos because that would be a very bad idea of
Speaker 1: bad matchup there that yeah, it's not gonna work out
Speaker 1: in their favor. But definitely a little baby hippo would
Speaker 1: be more more their style. Uh, and they work as
Speaker 1: a pack so they can take down things that are
Speaker 1: pretty big. But yeah, it is. It is funny that
Speaker 1: it's you've got these two guys that are kind of
Speaker 1: natural enemies in the sense, but they're so young they
Speaker 1: don't know, they don't know. It's like it's a fox
Speaker 1: and the hound exactly. Oh yeah, that was a sad movie,
Speaker 1: really was. I don't understand why she didn't just like
Speaker 1: murder her neighbor, that the old lady who had to
Speaker 1: get that's what she done, all right, because like he
Speaker 1: keeps trying to shoot her fox like he does. He's
Speaker 1: like why have a fox as a pet. Well, then
Speaker 1: she just shoots him and was like, oops, I thought
Speaker 1: you were a fox waink wink and dying much better. Ending.
Speaker 1: That was a screwed up movie. It was, because doesn't
Speaker 1: it end with the So the fox makes friends with
Speaker 1: the hound when they're both puppies and a kid and
Speaker 1: a puppy, and they have to kill each other, right,
Speaker 1: and then like he goes hunting, the old man that
Speaker 1: owns the hound goes hunting, and the hound that used
Speaker 1: to be his friend is like, oh, but I have
Speaker 1: to kill you because I'm It's like, no, you don't,
Speaker 1: you don't have to, you don't have to, and then
Speaker 1: it just ends with them I guess, sort of deciding
Speaker 1: not to kill each other. But then the older Yeah,
Speaker 1: the older dog dies or gets in No one dies, right,
Speaker 1: because then they show him at the end of like
Speaker 1: there's a Disney movie, the dogs are just in casts.
Speaker 1: Dog has like a leg cast and yeah, the fox
Speaker 1: signs it like I know you're trying to kill me
Speaker 1: for sport, but I hope you feel better soon exactly.
Speaker 1: Don't break a leg. Oh you already did a won't won't.
Speaker 1: Do you have any any fun play stories? Do you
Speaker 1: have any pets or any kind of like fun playtime stories.
Speaker 1: Let's see, Well, my I guess this is normal dog stuff,
Speaker 1: but my dog rips up all of his stuffed animals.
Speaker 1: But here's the fun fact. I have a one eyed
Speaker 1: dog and I was putting his toys away. This is
Speaker 1: just like a couple of months ago and I found
Speaker 1: three of his toys where he'd bitten one eye off
Speaker 1: of each toy. Like, this is great. Does it your
Speaker 1: one eyed dog? You can go Yeah, I have pictures
Speaker 1: of it that I can show you. I think I
Speaker 1: think I saw you posted this. I was on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I was like, my one eye but one eye? It's crazy?
Speaker 1: Is it always the same? One? Know? Your dog so stupid,
Speaker 1: can't be consistent? Is right from his left one? An idiot?
Speaker 1: That is interesting? Yeah, you think he has? Do you
Speaker 1: think it's like some kind of like body relation thing
Speaker 1: where it's like, no, I only have one eye, so
Speaker 1: everyone else must. Has he ever made to go at
Speaker 1: you like, I see you have two eyeballs human, Let's
Speaker 1: see if we can't fix that. He has played with
Speaker 1: my parents dog and there was a moment where like
Speaker 1: they got too tired of chasing each other and they're
Speaker 1: just both laying down and my dog was like wicking
Speaker 1: my parents dog's eyeball and he's like, huh. I thought
Speaker 1: that was like an Elvis. You let it take him.
Speaker 1: This is like an inn is like an im night
Speaker 1: show and movie where it's it's the dog has one eye,
Speaker 1: but then it goes insane and decides everyone must have
Speaker 1: one eye. I think that's what's going on. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: boy it was like I must steal the eyeballs, think,
Speaker 1: oh you go, boyd, the eyeballs will be my mask's
Speaker 1: got a big fixation on eyeball. Sometimes I cat looking
Speaker 1: at himself in the mirror like he didn't remember that
Speaker 1: he just got the one and he still one eye.
Speaker 1: I must correct the situation with my toys exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is that's fascinating, pretty wild, that's pretty crazy. Dogs
Speaker 1: are smart? Dogs are they are uncannily smart? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: my my dog. Her claim to fame is she likes
Speaker 1: to fart as soon as she sits in your lamp
Speaker 1: and I claiming you Wow, I don't like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't like the idea of a dog trying to
Speaker 1: like d eyeball everything that comes across him. But you know,
Speaker 1: oh sure, judge my dog dog. Well, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining me today. You got anything a plug?
Speaker 1: Can people fall you on things? Can they look at
Speaker 1: you yes, yeah, if you got well, if you want
Speaker 1: to see this dog photo, I think I pinned it
Speaker 1: on Twitter, so go at child Clown underscore because someone
Speaker 1: else had to be child Clown and they won't let
Speaker 1: me have it. Or on Instagram at child Clown also great.
Speaker 1: Got any got any shows? Or um I got shows?
Speaker 1: If you want to come by to UCB in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: I perform on the Herald team Lee Roy, so check
Speaker 1: the schedule and come check us out Noise. You can
Speaker 1: find us online as always on the Internet, Creature Feature
Speaker 1: Pod dot Com, Creature Feature Pod on Instagram, Creature Feet
Speaker 1: Pod on Twitter. That's f e A T, not f
Speaker 1: e e T the other one of the verb different. Uh.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to this here dang
Speaker 1: old podcast. If you're enjoying it, please subscribe download Press
Speaker 1: the Stars Old those buttons down buttons and whistles and
Speaker 1: gizmos and that that actually really helps us out when
Speaker 1: you're leave rating in a comment and subscribe, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a free way to boost us. Boost us in
Speaker 1: the alga You guys, thanks to the Space Classics for
Speaker 1: their super spectacular song ex Alumina. Creature features a production
Speaker 1: of I heart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: See your next Wednesday Crowboarding