Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show Happy Valentine's Day. Today we're
Speaker 1: talking gift giving for romance.
Speaker 2: All the boxes of chocolates and dead.
Speaker 1: Flies that animals give each other to woo their crush.
Speaker 1: Discover this and more as we answer the age old
Speaker 1: question is cyanide a. Girl's best friend joining me today
Speaker 1: is economist and professional at being my husband, Brett mccaullay.
Speaker 3: Welcome, Hey, honey.
Speaker 1: Hi, Hi honey, thanks for coming all the way upstairs
Speaker 1: to be on this podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having me all the way upstairs.
Speaker 1: I felt like a really good Valentine's Day gift to
Speaker 1: you is to make you perform free labor on my podcast.
Speaker 3: That's fair.
Speaker 1: Not only is this an episode about, you know, romantic
Speaker 1: gift giving, which is a huge hint to you, by
Speaker 1: the way, because anyways, just pay attention to the lessons
Speaker 1: and themes in this episode, but it is you know,
Speaker 1: you are an economist, and this is sort of about
Speaker 1: the dark side of gift giving, the idea that gift
Speaker 1: giving is not always done just out of the pureness
Speaker 1: and goodness of your heart, which you know. I guess like,
Speaker 1: if you're very cynical about Valentine's Day, you might feel
Speaker 1: the same way where people are giving gifts to each other,
Speaker 1: but you might think it is just sort of all
Speaker 1: superficial in order to kind of play into some sort
Speaker 1: of mass market on Valentine's Day. But I don't know
Speaker 1: what is your opinion of gift giving on Valentine's Day?
Speaker 1: And think extremely carefully before you answer this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's cool, I dig it. But I can also
Speaker 3: tell you what the economics community thinks of gift giving.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm very interested to hear.
Speaker 3: Well. So there's there's a couple of different views. And
Speaker 3: and really even you mentioned the dark side of gift giving,
Speaker 3: it's kind of that is maybe the mainstream view, at
Speaker 3: least for some. Here's a quote from Joel Waldfogel, who
Speaker 3: wrote about the dead weight loss of Christmas. He says
Speaker 3: that buying gifts typically destroys value and can only in
Speaker 3: the unlikely best special case, be as good as giving cash. Wow,
Speaker 3: So actually my community is telling me to give you
Speaker 3: cash for Valentine today. So I hope you're you're excited
Speaker 3: for some cash.
Speaker 1: No fat stacks of cash. I'll never say no to
Speaker 1: fat sacks of cash.
Speaker 2: You know this well enough. But I think even more
Speaker 2: than that.
Speaker 1: I would like fat stacks of dead flies and other
Speaker 1: to try to us. So we are talking about nuptial
Speaker 1: gifts today, which I feel like is very you know again,
Speaker 1: just pay attention to all the lessons that are to
Speaker 1: be learned from this.
Speaker 3: Like dead flies.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, dead flies?
Speaker 3: Is that why you allow all the spider webs to
Speaker 3: remain here?
Speaker 2: This is a this is unfair.
Speaker 1: This is a cheap shot because he gets to actually
Speaker 1: be in my recording studio. Normally, the guests get a
Speaker 1: very specific view of my recording studio through zoom, and
Speaker 1: he gets to see all the spider webs up ahead
Speaker 1: and dead flies being collected in them. It's actually really
Speaker 1: fun though, because sometimes I get to see them catch
Speaker 1: a fly and it's like free, free entertainment, free theater.
Speaker 1: So this is my advice to you do not clean
Speaker 1: up your spider webs. Keep them there, and then you've
Speaker 1: got twenty four to seven WWEE spider wrestling that you
Speaker 1: can watch. But yeah, anyway, so we are talking about
Speaker 1: nuptial gifts. So nuptial gifts are given by a variety
Speaker 1: of insects and arthropods to their mate, generally by a
Speaker 1: male to the female. Sorry that arthropods are indeed sexist,
Speaker 1: but the point is to help increase the success of copulation,
Speaker 1: either by encouraging the female to mate or giving her
Speaker 1: more patience to sit around while the male does this thing,
Speaker 1: or so she doesn't attack the male. Less number one.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you're saying you might attack me if I
Speaker 3: don't give you no, of course.
Speaker 1: Not anyways, there are different types of nuptial gifts that
Speaker 1: vary by species. So some give dead insects like I mentioned.
Speaker 1: Some even give dead insects wrapped in silk. Gift wrapping
Speaker 1: very important. Less number two. Some give globs of nutritional saliva.
Speaker 2: No comment.
Speaker 1: Some give a spermatophor, which is basically a sperm packet.
Speaker 1: So inside the sperm packet is sperm, but the envelope
Speaker 1: is actually edible and nutritional. I'm I don't I don't
Speaker 1: want any comments from you right now. So the male
Speaker 1: attaches the spermataphor to the female's genitals and the female
Speaker 1: eats the envelope while the sperm is essentially turkey base
Speaker 1: basted into her genital opening.
Speaker 2: You know, well, you know, I.
Speaker 1: Mean these are these are insects. They don't they don't
Speaker 1: have our sense of you know, romance, especially so some insects,
Speaker 1: such as tree crickets, directly consume nutritional secretions that the
Speaker 1: male provides on his back during copulation.
Speaker 2: What what didn't you like? Did you not like the.
Speaker 1: Word nutritional secretions or was it the word tree crickets?
Speaker 3: No, tree crickets is fine, but everything else that you
Speaker 3: just said was pretty distasteful. I mean, way to get
Speaker 3: us into the mood for Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1: I feel like I think on our first date, I
Speaker 1: started talking to you about parasites, so you knew what you.
Speaker 2: Were getting into.
Speaker 3: You can't that's fair.
Speaker 1: You can't say falsely advertised what this was going to
Speaker 1: be like for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3: By the way, to the audience, it really is Valentine's Day,
Speaker 3: Like this is a going to rest this episode out
Speaker 3: and then you know, so we are this is our celebration.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's uh. I literally dragged him up here Valentine's
Speaker 1: Day morning and was like, surprise, here's your gift helping
Speaker 1: me with my podcast. Now I got him an actual gift,
Speaker 1: but I can't tell you because he's right here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm getting some indications that the actual gift is
Speaker 3: not going to be to my life.
Speaker 1: So ground crickets actually get a little bit Twilight Vampire
Speaker 1: with their romance.
Speaker 2: Have you seen Twilight?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know that doesn't sound like you've actually seen it.
Speaker 1: I have, look, I have not seen or read.
Speaker 3: Oh come on, Twilight. I distinctly remember the scene where
Speaker 3: Bella was shown her her dad's house and she sulkily says,
Speaker 3: one bathroom.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, so you have.
Speaker 3: To she has to share it with her her step
Speaker 3: to dad whatever it is?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, No, that that the tracks with the theme
Speaker 1: of the movie, which is that if you date a vampire,
Speaker 1: you get more bathrooms. Yeah. So these ground crickets get
Speaker 1: a little bit of a little bit Twilight Vampire with
Speaker 1: their romance because the males will offer some of their
Speaker 1: blood to consume during mating. Isn't that a thing in
Speaker 1: Twilight where he like gets like Bella gets turned into
Speaker 1: a vampire by like drinking the bodily secretions of Edward.
Speaker 3: There you are with bodily secretions.
Speaker 1: I'm you know, it's a biology podcast, Honey, We've got
Speaker 1: to say nutritional secretions at least five times.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's great, Okay, but in any case, I don't
Speaker 3: I did not get that far in Twilight. But that
Speaker 3: makes sense. By like the third or the fourth book,
Speaker 3: you just have to, like the rest of the romance
Speaker 3: has run its course, and you just have to do
Speaker 3: something crazy like turn Bella into a vampire.
Speaker 1: Right, I think, like, like I've actually so despite not
Speaker 1: having watched the movies or read the books, I have
Speaker 1: read things about Twilight quite a bit because I find
Speaker 1: it really fascinating. And I think also like they have
Speaker 1: a baby, but I don't understand like if the baby
Speaker 1: is a vampire. Like I don't really understand vampire biology,
Speaker 1: like whether it's like genetic or like whether you have
Speaker 1: to like it's if it's like some kind of like
Speaker 1: thing where you have to consume the blood of other
Speaker 1: vampires or they have to like bite you, Like did
Speaker 1: they have to bite their own baby? Maybe I don't really.
Speaker 3: Know exactly, but yeah, the vampires cannot reproduce on their
Speaker 3: own they except by turning another living human into a vampire.
Speaker 3: They cannot reproduce in the regular human way you're.
Speaker 1: Thinking about nose feratus. These are sexy vampires and they
Speaker 1: live by different rules than the nose faratu rules. I see,
Speaker 1: because like nose feratus, I'm pretty sure nos feratus uh
Speaker 1: don't can't reproduce because like they're basically everything's all withered
Speaker 1: down there.
Speaker 3: They have no more secretions.
Speaker 1: They have no more secretions going on exactly. Anyways, back
Speaker 1: to actual biologies. So, nuptial gifts are not always like
Speaker 1: a sweet gesture, right, Sometimes they are like mutually beneficial
Speaker 1: to the male and the female and so like in
Speaker 1: terms of like arthropods, I guess that's as close to
Speaker 1: a romantic sweet gesture as you can get. But some
Speaker 1: nuptial gifts actually decreats the female's overall fitness in exchange
Speaker 1: for a more successful short term mating or reproductive success,
Speaker 1: which would primarily benefit the male who is passing on
Speaker 1: his DNA, but not the female in terms of her
Speaker 1: lifetime reproduction. These are called media gifts, after the Greek
Speaker 1: myth of media. So Medea was the wife to Jason
Speaker 1: who had so Jason decides to abandon Medea for a
Speaker 1: new wife who is like the daughter of a king,
Speaker 1: and so media sends poisoned gifts to the new wife,
Speaker 1: which is apparently a dress and a tiara covered in poison,
Speaker 1: which like why, I don't really understand how ancient poisons work,
Speaker 1: but like as soon as you pick up a dress,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you be like, wow, this is like soaking in poison.
Speaker 1: I don't exactly know how you poison address.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe you misinterpreted it as one of the secretions.
Speaker 1: You're like, ooh, addressed with secretions my favorite kind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I think that's what you're trying to tell
Speaker 3: me here. Yeah, secretions are sexy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm getting nutritional secretions for my gift. I can
Speaker 1: already tell so. Uh. Sometimes in it like there are
Speaker 1: of course the insects and arthropods that will give like
Speaker 1: these gifts usually like it's not like a poison that
Speaker 1: like kills the female, but it's like it's something that
Speaker 1: like it could be like a spermatophoor envelope or something
Speaker 1: that that will increase her short term fitness but actually
Speaker 1: decrease her long term fitness. So it's like cocaine exactly,
Speaker 1: like cocaine or meth or meth exactly that that's uh,
Speaker 1: it's the gift that keeps on giving or not. Actually,
Speaker 1: I just said it doesn't.
Speaker 3: So I'm getting some some good ideas for my gift.
Speaker 1: So sometimes males give worthless gifts to females as a
Speaker 1: deception to improve mating chances while not spending the cost
Speaker 1: or effort to give a real gift. So this happens
Speaker 1: in the spider Pisara mirabilis, which is a small brown
Speaker 1: spider found all over Europe. It doesn't look very interesting,
Speaker 1: but it has a very interesting behavior. So the males
Speaker 1: typically wrap up a dead insect for the female, offer
Speaker 1: it to her as a gift, and while she's busy
Speaker 1: like unwrapping, they you know, they get busy with their
Speaker 1: mating business and it gives the female more patience for
Speaker 1: the male to mate and that increases the success of
Speaker 1: their mating. But sometimes some of these males in this
Speaker 1: species will wrap up just nothing and offer this empty package,
Speaker 1: this empty wrapped silk package to the female and hopes
Speaker 1: for the best, and this actually does improve mating chances
Speaker 1: versus no gift giving. But the female will typically when
Speaker 1: she opens it up and she's like, hey, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: there's nothing in there, that's it mating over.
Speaker 3: But it's silk. What else does she want?
Speaker 1: She wants a dead juicy insect. Oh, I see, it's
Speaker 1: all about the It's all about the secretion cent Very well,
Speaker 1: we are going to take a quick break while I
Speaker 1: try to get Brett used to the word secretions so we.
Speaker 2: Can continue the podcast like adults.
Speaker 1: But when we return, we are going to talk about
Speaker 1: a very metal romance, Okatie.
Speaker 3: There's another point of view from economists, this one from
Speaker 3: Greg Manke, which suggests that gift giving is a way
Speaker 3: of signaling private information to one's partner. So the private
Speaker 3: information is your love or devotion to your partner, and
Speaker 3: because gift giving is costly, you have to go all
Speaker 3: the time to find an appropriate gift that's very well
Speaker 3: suited to your partner. And that then, uh, it's it's
Speaker 3: a signal to your partner that oh he really he
Speaker 3: or she or they really does love me, and you know,
Speaker 3: so it's kind of a signal of love or devotion.
Speaker 3: Does that type of signaling also exist in the animal kingdom?
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, So it's really interesting because this happens
Speaker 1: in birds species, especially where you have when you have
Speaker 1: parents who like there are a lot of birds that
Speaker 1: form these long term monogamous pairs. They sometimes form it
Speaker 1: just over one breeding season, but some form it over
Speaker 1: an entire lifetime. And the cost is high if you
Speaker 1: mate with someone who will just give up and abandon you,
Speaker 1: because in a lot of for a lot of birds,
Speaker 1: sometimes you need both parents to be not only like
Speaker 1: helping guard the nest, but also providing food. Like some birds,
Speaker 1: like you'll have one partner sitting on the egg and
Speaker 1: the other partner has to go out and find food.
Speaker 1: And you see this from any anything from penguins to
Speaker 1: two cans, like this is very common or you you
Speaker 1: really have to have this exchange of like this, This
Speaker 1: male or even both parents has.
Speaker 2: To be really devoted.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you're screwed because like you've you've paired off and
Speaker 1: then if you have you lay your egg and then
Speaker 1: your partner just goes like, well whatever, I don't care
Speaker 1: anymore and goes and hunts for himself and then doesn't
Speaker 1: like return to you. You could die or your your
Speaker 1: chicks could die.
Speaker 2: So it's very important to.
Speaker 1: Show the devotion the effort that this this partner is
Speaker 1: going to put effort into the relationship and really is
Speaker 1: invested in the relationship, otherwise you could be really screwed.
Speaker 2: Down the line.
Speaker 1: And then also you see this it's often like where
Speaker 1: the female has to be choosy, like like the typical
Speaker 1: kind of thing is like the female has more to
Speaker 1: lose in these situations than the male. But there are
Speaker 1: a lot of species where both the male and female
Speaker 1: have to equally participate in the rearing of offspring, and
Speaker 1: so in those cases you actually often see like mating
Speaker 1: rituals where both the female male are trying to impress
Speaker 1: each other because they both are equally invested, they will
Speaker 1: often have a This is actually very common in seabirds
Speaker 1: because what will happen with them is you'll have one
Speaker 1: parent sitting on the nest and guarding the either the
Speaker 1: eggs or the chicks, and then the other parent off
Speaker 1: hunting for fish or whatever, and that one has to come.
Speaker 2: Back and they will switch off rolls, so.
Speaker 1: Like one will hunt one day and find fish and
Speaker 1: the other day the other one will go off. So
Speaker 1: then they really both need to be equally impressive, and
Speaker 1: so they'll have courtship rituals where they're both trying to
Speaker 1: impress each other also in those species the sexual dimorphism,
Speaker 1: meaning like one bird looks like usually female birds look
Speaker 1: kind of drab and the males are really fancy and pretty.
Speaker 1: In these species like puffins and other kinds of seabirds.
Speaker 2: Like ox like, they both as like the same.
Speaker 1: It's hard to tell the difference between males and females.
Speaker 3: But why do you why do you think this behavior
Speaker 3: is specific to seabirds, Like, is it is it something
Speaker 3: about the extremity of the environment that like, I mean especially, well,
Speaker 3: are puffins in the Arctic or is this just like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're in the Arctic circle puffins.
Speaker 3: Right, So so then you know if it's if it's
Speaker 3: it's a really extreme environment, and so then you really
Speaker 3: really need the investment of both parents to guarantee survival.
Speaker 3: Is that is that very reasonable?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I think so, I mean, so you do.
Speaker 2: It's not only.
Speaker 1: Seabirds that that this happens, Like, there are other birds
Speaker 1: where they're both uh uh, you know, pretty much equally invested.
Speaker 1: I mean in sometimes sometimes it's like sort of uh like,
Speaker 1: so for instance, with two cans, what's interesting about that
Speaker 1: is they live in an environment where there's a lot
Speaker 1: of snakes, a lot of egg eating predators, and so
Speaker 1: you have the female who seals herself up in a
Speaker 1: basically a hollow of a tree and uses like mud
Speaker 1: and feces to create like a door. I'm sorry, we
Speaker 1: always have to come back to feces on this podcast
Speaker 1: and secretions of some kind.
Speaker 2: But then so she's she's essentially.
Speaker 1: Locked herself in the tree hollow, and the male, if
Speaker 1: he at all wants this egg to survive, has to
Speaker 1: provide her constantly with food. And so even though the female,
Speaker 1: it seems like the female is risking more because she's
Speaker 1: like in the hollow of a tree, and to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, that's true. She can't. She could if she
Speaker 1: wanted to break out and like abandon the egg, and
Speaker 1: then the male's reproduction success would be screwed. Or the
Speaker 1: male if he just decides, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: feeding food to this tree anymore, like he would screw
Speaker 1: her chance of reproductive success. So they both have to
Speaker 1: like essentially be equally invested in the survival of this
Speaker 1: offspring for this to work. And so they they actually
Speaker 1: look very similar in terms of their there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of sexual dimorphism, and so, like with with seabirds,
Speaker 1: I would say, like puffins with with these arcs albatrosses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they have to leave the nesting area, which like
Speaker 1: is not usually usually the nesting area does not have
Speaker 1: a lot of food because it's like going to be
Speaker 1: like on an island or something where you have like
Speaker 1: these rocky outcroppings and then the birds leave to go
Speaker 1: to the ocean to fish, and so you have you
Speaker 1: really have to go kind of long distances to get
Speaker 1: your food.
Speaker 4: And but so it's kind of a function of the
Speaker 4: extremity of the environment because if it's like the jungle,
Speaker 4: then the food is like is all around you, let's say,
Speaker 4: whereas in the Arctic it is.
Speaker 3: Probably far away, right.
Speaker 1: And then the example that I gave of the two
Speaker 1: cans in the jungle, the reason that the environment is
Speaker 1: extreme is because of the amount of danger to your
Speaker 1: egg that like snakes and other predators present, and so
Speaker 1: like the it's not so much that it's super hard
Speaker 1: to find food, but that the female has to seal
Speaker 1: herself into this tree to protect her eggs from snakes.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think like the extremity of the environment
Speaker 1: definitely does play into that kind of like both parents
Speaker 1: have to basically invest versus say systems where the male
Speaker 1: is trying to mate with as many females as possible
Speaker 1: and the females are trying.
Speaker 2: To select the best males.
Speaker 1: But so now we're actually going to talk about another bird,
Speaker 1: because sometimes romance involves just like a lot of horrifying impaling. So, like,
Speaker 1: the great gray shrike is a cute gray and black
Speaker 1: song bird, only about as like long as a piece
Speaker 1: of printer paper, weighs around two ounces. It's actually pretty cute.
Speaker 2: It's got like a little like.
Speaker 1: Black eye mask, but essentially it just looks like kind
Speaker 1: of a regular bird. It's not very impressive looking. It's cute.
Speaker 1: It's a nice looking bird, but you know, normal looking,
Speaker 1: and it lives throughout Eurasia and North Africa.
Speaker 2: It has a variety of nicknames.
Speaker 1: It has verkan Vogel, which means choking bird in a
Speaker 1: German dialect. There's nigandor, which means killer of nine prey.
Speaker 1: In English. They were called like murdering pies, which I
Speaker 1: think is because it looks like a magpie and it
Speaker 1: does like to murder. It's also known as the great
Speaker 1: butcher bird. So it is a bird that kills small
Speaker 1: prey like grasshoppers, or bigger prey like voles, mice, small birds,
Speaker 1: or even juvenile stoats, and once it's killed them, it
Speaker 1: impales them on sharp thorns of a tree. Let me
Speaker 1: show you actually what this it's like. So here it is.
Speaker 1: I think that's like a field mouse or something that
Speaker 1: it has impaled. You see what I mean though, Like
Speaker 1: this bird does not look so scary. It's cute, right,
Speaker 1: it's just a little guy. And yet here it is
Speaker 1: with like a mouse, fully impaled on a thorn on
Speaker 1: a tree. Here it is tearing off chunks of flesh
Speaker 1: from the thing that it has already impaled.
Speaker 2: And here you see the relative size.
Speaker 1: It's like it looks about the size of like a
Speaker 1: mocking bird or something, maybe even a little smaller. It's
Speaker 1: really but yeah, they are vicious, vicious predators. Oh, here's
Speaker 1: the one where it's just killed robins. Sometimes they grab
Speaker 1: birds mid flight, they like go under them, grab them
Speaker 1: by the feet, and then kill them. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So how do they kill them? Is it by the
Speaker 3: impaling process or some other way?
Speaker 2: And then yeah, oh.
Speaker 3: And then impaling storage Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the latter, So it's a they typically kill them
Speaker 1: by using their sturdy, hooked beak to like hit them
Speaker 1: on the skull, and impaling them usually isn't what kills them,
Speaker 1: although of course that probably happens sometimes. Yeah, it's going
Speaker 1: to finish the job for sure, But the the the
Speaker 1: impaling them is as you guessed, storage, and it's also
Speaker 1: like a way to it's essentially like a kebab because
Speaker 1: it sticks them somewhere and makes it easier for the
Speaker 1: strike to pull off pieces of flesh rather than having
Speaker 1: to consume the whole item, like because you see it
Speaker 1: like with a hawk, right, it's big. It kills a vole,
Speaker 1: it can just like eat that whole thing on the spot,
Speaker 1: or an owl like owls will like eat the thing whole,
Speaker 1: ingest it and then you know, vomit up like awl
Speaker 1: pellets that contain the fur and stuff. So for a
Speaker 1: smaller bird of prey like the shrike, what's it going
Speaker 1: to do. It can't eat the prey that it's capable
Speaker 1: of killing like this large prey, so it stores it
Speaker 1: on these spikes and then it can tear off small
Speaker 1: pieces of flesh throughout the day, throughout the week. They've
Speaker 1: even been known to stick certain insects that have toxins
Speaker 1: in them, and as the insect decomposes, the toxin actually
Speaker 1: degrades and they can then eat this insect later that
Speaker 1: they couldn't eat initially.
Speaker 3: But so if it's storing a piece of prey for
Speaker 3: up to a week, then it isn't that prey getting
Speaker 3: just tons of bacteria and other bad stuff. So does
Speaker 3: that mean that the shrike has a really powerful immune
Speaker 3: system or how does that work?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a really good question. I don't know exactly.
Speaker 1: I would say, like, yes, probably it is capable of
Speaker 1: digesting a lot of these these bacteria. I wonder. I
Speaker 1: think it's a good question because there's probably some mediation
Speaker 1: of like what it eats more quickly and what it
Speaker 1: waits to eat, right, because there's evidence that it does
Speaker 1: weight to eat, say like a toxic insect, that it
Speaker 1: not like it that when it degrades it actually makes
Speaker 1: it safer to eat. Maybe prioritizes eating things that get
Speaker 1: more dangerous that the longer you leave it, and then
Speaker 1: it will eat save for later the ones that are
Speaker 1: more toxic. And this is kind of speculation, right, Like
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly, but I would say, given that
Speaker 1: they do seem to take into account timing when eating
Speaker 1: like poisonous insects. It would also make sense for them
Speaker 1: to account for timing when it comes to prioritizing, like
Speaker 1: food that would essentially spoil. But like a lot of
Speaker 1: animals will eat carrion, right, Like, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: food that would make us sick. That would make the
Speaker 1: average like hyena vulture, you know, random animal not sick. Right,
Speaker 1: they might have strong, really strong stomach acid that will
Speaker 1: kill off this bacteria. So I would suspect the same
Speaker 1: thing with this strike that it is able to handle
Speaker 1: some bacteria. But it does like it doesn't leave the
Speaker 1: food just rotting for like weeks, It'll eat it within
Speaker 1: a few days typically. But they are also huge romantics,
Speaker 1: So males will create a very gruesome display for females
Speaker 1: just sticking a bunch of dead animals onto the thorns,
Speaker 1: and he will actually present her with a gift, so
Speaker 1: directly give her a dead animal. The bigger the better, right,
Speaker 1: Like she is impressed by a large she's impressed by
Speaker 1: a large award place to stop. She's impressed by a
Speaker 1: large prey item, and he will offer this to her
Speaker 1: as a gift. If he's successful, they will form a
Speaker 1: monogamous pair bond for the breeding season, not for life.
Speaker 1: So a lot of birds do this where they form
Speaker 1: a pair bond for the breeding season, but once that's over,
Speaker 1: you're back on the market. Maybe you'll be with the
Speaker 1: same partner if you really like we're impressed with them,
Speaker 1: or maybe you go back on the market again. So
Speaker 1: some birds will pair bond for life, but these ones
Speaker 1: they basically this this dead mouse on a stick strategy
Speaker 1: only lasts for one mating season.
Speaker 3: Interesting, so, how how big can this.
Speaker 2: Get the the prey?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, the the prey display like.
Speaker 1: How how many like like usually it's like just sort
Speaker 1: of they have this larder, Yeah they can. They can
Speaker 1: sometimes have a large larder where they have multiple prey
Speaker 1: items like stuck on just like spelling out.
Speaker 2: Go to prom with me and dead mice? Yeah no exactly.
Speaker 2: But usually the.
Speaker 1: Thing that will impress the female is that the male
Speaker 1: actually offers a single large prey item to her. So
Speaker 1: like he may have sort of a larder that like
Speaker 1: attracts her, but then like he will give her like hey,
Speaker 1: check out this huge dead vowl or like I found
Speaker 1: a baby stoat, and I'm presenting it to you, and
Speaker 1: that's what will compel her.
Speaker 2: To mate with him.
Speaker 3: And does the female eat the prey that was presented
Speaker 3: to her?
Speaker 1: I that's a good question. I think she probably probably
Speaker 1: sticks it on a thorn and starts eating it. She's
Speaker 1: not gonna eat the whole thing right like, she can't,
Speaker 1: so she probably will stick it, kebab it and maybe
Speaker 1: eat it a little bit, save some of it for later,
Speaker 1: you know, like how you get a box of chocolates,
Speaker 1: you don't generally you don't eat the whole thing right
Speaker 1: in front of your partner. Definitely, I'm impressed at your
Speaker 1: cookie eating abilities. Like, we'll get some cookies and then
Speaker 1: just like it's an incredible volume that somehow disappears somehow.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we're gonna take a quick cookie break,
Speaker 1: and when we get back, we are going to talk
Speaker 1: about a best friend to the ladies that's better than diamonds.
Speaker 1: So they say that diamonds are a girl's best friend,
Speaker 1: but the sixth spot Burnett moth would disagree. Do you
Speaker 1: think that's a good segue? So the six spot burnet
Speaker 1: moth is a small moth found throughout Europe, that is
Speaker 1: black with these striking bright red spots. See it's pretty, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's cool. Yeah, it's very It's like it's a little goth,
Speaker 1: right because it's like red and black or.
Speaker 2: Is that emo? I don't know, I'm I'm out of style.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's a pretty it's a pretty moth, and
Speaker 1: it's really brightly colored. It's really striking. But this coloration,
Speaker 1: this bright red coloration with black as contrast, is actually
Speaker 1: an example of aposimitism, meaning that it warns predators that
Speaker 1: they are toxic, and this toxic is cyanide. So cyanide
Speaker 1: is released when the moth is injured to ward off predators,
Speaker 1: and larva will get cyanide from their diet of a
Speaker 1: plant called bird's foot trefoil, which you know, cool name
Speaker 1: for a plant. But yeah, maturation into adulthood, so the
Speaker 1: transformation from a caterpillar into a moth depletes some of
Speaker 1: this supply. So in order to ensure the success of
Speaker 1: his partner and her offspring, males will actually offer females
Speaker 1: a gift of cyanide. So, uh, this gift, but I'll
Speaker 1: just I think to speculate that it probably is given
Speaker 1: through his sperm. Or sperm packet, which somehow replenishes her
Speaker 1: cyanide supplies, which allows her greater defense, and also she
Speaker 1: passes some of this on to her offspring to give
Speaker 1: them a good sort of start in life. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like a nest egg, but cyanide. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: know it's a you know, if you're if you're struggling
Speaker 1: to come up with a gift.
Speaker 3: For for your I'm not going to get you cyanide, but.
Speaker 1: You know it has a lovely almondy flavor. No, it's
Speaker 1: a don't don't don't eat cyanide. It's bad for you,
Speaker 1: and it does it doesn't taste good like delicious almonds.
Speaker 1: It does actually smell like almonds though.
Speaker 2: That's what's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, boy has like a sort of bitter almondy smell.
Speaker 1: So if you if someone like gives you like, like
Speaker 1: would you like some tea, and then hands you tea
Speaker 1: and then they're like really sweaty and your tea.
Speaker 2: Kind of smells like almonds, maybe don't drink it.
Speaker 3: Are you saying specifically bitter almonds?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, hang on, I'm okay, So I know I sound
Speaker 1: like I'm a poison expert, but I'm not, uh, but
Speaker 1: and I have personally never smelled cyanide. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: people say it has like a bitter almond smell bitter almonds?
Speaker 3: So what is it? Bitter almond? Is that kind of
Speaker 3: like rancid almond?
Speaker 1: No, I don't think it's like rancid maybe, but I mean,
Speaker 1: like it's like I think it is as it is described,
Speaker 1: a bitter almond, but like maybe, yeah, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know how an odor is bitter. Like for me,
Speaker 1: bitter is kind of more of a taste than an odor.
Speaker 1: So okay, so like an aroma of bitter almonds or marzipan,
Speaker 1: you like marzapan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is.
Speaker 3: Dangerous for you, very dangerous for me.
Speaker 1: Because like I could just slip that right. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't even know because you like you like almond flavored
Speaker 1: like cookies and stuff. Well, better really think about your
Speaker 1: gift that you're gonna give me for Valentine's Day. Huh
Speaker 1: uh No, so yeah, I mean for these months. This
Speaker 1: is uh, the gift of a defensive weapon of cyanide
Speaker 1: is truly the most romantic thing I see.
Speaker 3: But it's like the the male is giving up some
Speaker 3: of his own defensive weapons.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. But what he's doing is he may be
Speaker 1: trading off some of his own defense, but this is
Speaker 1: more likely to ensure the success of his offspring. And
Speaker 1: so you do see, like, parental sacrifice can be made
Speaker 1: as long as it is increases, on net your chance
Speaker 1: of passing on your DNA. Like, if your sacrifice in
Speaker 1: terms of of fitness does not actually improve your lifetime
Speaker 1: reproductive success, then you won't do it. But if it does,
Speaker 1: then you'll do it. So like that's why in some
Speaker 1: animals you might wonder, like, well, these animals seem to
Speaker 1: like abandon.
Speaker 2: Their offspring like or.
Speaker 1: Do something that seems like selfish and self interested. And
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, they'll absolutely do that as long as that,
Speaker 1: on net improves their lifetime reproductive success. Like if they
Speaker 1: if they are reproducing a lot throughout their life, they're
Speaker 1: actually less likely to fully sacrifice for their offspring in
Speaker 1: any given sort of like mating, right, But if they
Speaker 1: don't do a lot of repeat reproduction like this moth,
Speaker 1: like it's like kind of a one shot sort of deal,
Speaker 1: then they will. They'll give it there all right, this moth,
Speaker 1: I think only reproduces once and so it's it's shooting
Speaker 1: a shot given everything it's got for its offspring. You
Speaker 1: know what's more? What's more romantic than that than a
Speaker 1: big self sacrificing gesture and then like essentially just disintegrating later.
Speaker 2: But all the what's all, That's what all the rom.
Speaker 1: Coms have taught me is like a guy can be
Speaker 1: a huge jerk, but as long as they do like
Speaker 1: one huge like they hold a boom box up over
Speaker 1: their head and like show you like you've married their
Speaker 1: best friend. But then they show up to your door
Speaker 1: with like a huge love letter written on poster board
Speaker 1: and stuff, and you got you gotta hand it to them, right,
Speaker 1: you gotta be like, oh, that's so sweet, not call
Speaker 1: the police. All right, Well, before we go, we've got
Speaker 1: to play a little game.
Speaker 3: Do you like games?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: This game is called Eat the Almond Cookie. Oh, don'tat
Speaker 1: the danger one. No, this is the Mystery Animal Sound Game. So, uh,
Speaker 1: this is the game guess who's squawking where you guess
Speaker 1: who is making this sound. It can be any animal
Speaker 1: in the world. You gotta guess who is making that sound.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna play a sound for you. Hang on,
Speaker 1: I don't want no cheating, even though you're.
Speaker 5: Hey.
Speaker 1: The hint is this, these Canadians think you're a hoser.
Speaker 3: H the seal No, keep going? Is a creature? No,
Speaker 3: fat water creature.
Speaker 2: We're not.
Speaker 1: I guess we're paying playing fifty questions now. No, it's
Speaker 1: not a water creature. Well most of the time. It's
Speaker 1: not a water creature.
Speaker 3: Not a phinnic fox. No, I have no idea.
Speaker 1: It's a moose.
Speaker 2: It's a moose. Moose, mouss moose.
Speaker 3: So, I mean sometimes that's a good swimmers.
Speaker 1: They're actually good swimmers. So it is making moose sounds.
Speaker 1: These grunts are from a female moose, possibly communicating with
Speaker 1: her mate, which I think.
Speaker 2: Is very sexy of this female.
Speaker 3: Truck horn.
Speaker 1: Yes, so moose seems goofy, but they are actually relatively dangerous.
Speaker 1: Have you have you seen a moose before in person?
Speaker 3: Or was it an elk? I saw saw a giant Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was in Maine, crossing the road. I think it
Speaker 3: was a moose, but it was enormous. I'm very tall,
Speaker 3: but it is significantly taller than me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Crazy, how giant those things are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they're like six feet tall at the shoulders.
Speaker 1: But then when you include their antlers and their head,
Speaker 1: they are significantly taller than six feet and you're you're
Speaker 1: quite tall. But yeah, if a moose with a bowl moose,
Speaker 1: like a male moose with all its antlers, I think
Speaker 1: would beat you. They also can weigh.
Speaker 3: Unless I slowly ate bits of cyanide until I built
Speaker 3: up my cyanide, And then I guess that would mean
Speaker 3: the moose would have to eat me. So this is
Speaker 3: a poorly thought out defense mechanism.
Speaker 1: Right, well, you know, I mean a moose would maybe
Speaker 1: not want to eat you after a few bites of
Speaker 1: like bitter almond flavor. But yeah, you.
Speaker 3: See, this is why I've been eating the almonds almond
Speaker 3: cookies all the time.
Speaker 1: Oh maybe if you eat enough almonds, you just smell
Speaker 1: like you have cyanide, and you like, you don't actually
Speaker 1: have cyanide, but you smell enough almondy flavor that you
Speaker 1: might seem like you're cyanide. I moose, don't you. Moose
Speaker 1: don't eat people. Moose don't eat people. So a male
Speaker 1: moose can weigh over sixteen hundred pounds, which is seven
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five kilograms. And but yeah, despite being
Speaker 1: so huge and bulky. They can actually swim on very
Speaker 1: rare occasion, this is not typical. They can actually be
Speaker 1: preyed upon by orcas, So there's kind of a myth
Speaker 1: that orcas like routinely prey upon moose. They can't, like
Speaker 1: it has been seen to happen where an orca eats
Speaker 1: a moose, but it's not typical. Otherwise, the only threat
Speaker 1: that moose face are from humans, bears, and wolves. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they are pretty pretty big and they don't have too
Speaker 1: much to worry about, and so you know they uh
Speaker 1: will they'll you know, make those really attractive noises when
Speaker 1: communicating with me.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess they have to be loud, right,
Speaker 3: because they're pretty spread apart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's true, like to communicate over long distances.
Speaker 1: But also just you know, he doesn't love a moosey grunt.
Speaker 3: I mean, don't they communicate like through the Wi Fi
Speaker 3: enabled antlers.
Speaker 1: Onto this week's mister animal sound.
Speaker 2: The hint is.
Speaker 1: This this monk is ignoring his vows of celibacies and
Speaker 1: is on the market for hanky panky.
Speaker 5: Oh right, it's the animal noise that was used to
Speaker 5: signal that you're connecting to the internet when we had
Speaker 5: dial up.
Speaker 1: It's dial up which was only used by virgins, which
Speaker 1: is why I was saying vows solabusy. Uh yeah, so
Speaker 1: your guess is that it's dial.
Speaker 2: Up internet all right.
Speaker 1: Well, if you think you know the answer out there,
Speaker 1: you can write to me at Creature feature Pod at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. You can also write to me your questions,
Speaker 1: your pet pictures, you know, general comments, whatever. Brittney, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for.
Speaker 2: Joining me today.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: You can now go back downstairs.
Speaker 1: No get out, get out.
Speaker 2: And thank you guys so much for listening.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying the show, If you leave a ratio review,
Speaker 1: I deeply, deeply appreciate it. I read all the reviews,
Speaker 1: all of them, every single one. And thank you to
Speaker 1: the Space Classics for their's super awesome song XO.
Speaker 2: Lumina.
Speaker 1: Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like
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Speaker 1: podcast or he guess what are you listening your favorite shows?
Speaker 1: I don't care, I don't judge. You got your mother,
Speaker 1: You do what you want, You live your own life.
Speaker 1: I'll see you next Wednesday.