Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Future production of iHeartRadio Creature Feature.
Speaker 2: It's Creature cring Old Times, Oh Holiday Special about our
Speaker 2: furry friends. Today we'll go into the distant past and
Speaker 2: find out who Bold Cape Santasly.
Speaker 3: Imagination Station.
Speaker 2: Real life unicorns join us as we learn exploring.
Speaker 4: The early elephants were really really rare, and horses used
Speaker 4: to be like you were boys Creecha feature the Holiday Special.
Speaker 1: But we will not be singing the whole time.
Speaker 3: I promise stay here.
Speaker 2: Placed On gold.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host.
Speaker 1: So many parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show, we're talking about Caveman Santa
Speaker 1: and who would have guided.
Speaker 2: Its like Happy Creature cringle, Happy Creature, Congle, Happy Creature cry.
Speaker 1: So we are going to be sacking Santa's reindeer and
Speaker 1: replacing them with my favorite contenders from Christmas past, way past,
Speaker 1: millions of years in the past, from a real unicorn
Speaker 1: to a horse small enough to fit in Paris Hilton's purse.
Speaker 1: These ghosts of Christmas Paths are ready to spread joy
Speaker 1: to all the world's children. Or cave children or apes.
Speaker 1: When we go far enough back discover this and more
Speaker 1: as we answer the age old question, if you've got
Speaker 1: a shovel for a mouth, how do you kiss under
Speaker 1: the mistletoel? Joining me today is friend of the podcast,
Speaker 1: host of Secretly incredibly Fascinating and jolly Human, Alex Schmidt.
Speaker 5: Welcome. I have so deeply chilly after that song. Yes,
Speaker 5: I felt like we were both Clay madd and on
Speaker 5: a sledge. Yeah, going through a wonderful land. That was great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, our hair kind of flopping around as it's not
Speaker 1: quite animated correctly, and like you can see like fingerprints
Speaker 1: on the clay, that kind of like style, you know,
Speaker 1: real rough, real rough clamation going on here.
Speaker 5: Yeah. They made it in a hurry and they had to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can see a hand in one of the frames.
Speaker 1: There's like clear wires and threads sticking out. But that's
Speaker 1: what makes it special. So today we are we are
Speaker 1: actually talking about animals that do look like they are
Speaker 1: from a crappy clamation from the fifties, like for real,
Speaker 1: and I am so excited. These are prehistoric, extinct animals
Speaker 1: who I think would be quite impressive guiding Santa's sleigh.
Speaker 5: So I love it. That's very exciting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's start out, I think with a unicorn.
Speaker 3: Alex.
Speaker 1: Do you believe in unicorns?
Speaker 5: Oh? I don't believe in them. I just really like
Speaker 5: the concept, like that was some really clever. I wonder
Speaker 5: if people were ever like cryptid believing in it type
Speaker 5: people about unicorns. I think it's a very fun, fantastical idea.
Speaker 1: I think so. I think people did just probably because
Speaker 1: they found fossils they couldn't explain and they were like, well,
Speaker 1: that's a unicorn. Or they found an RWL tusk and
Speaker 1: they're like, that's a unicorn.
Speaker 5: That's yeah, that's true. I guess, especially when you're digging,
Speaker 5: if you just find a whole horse and one horn
Speaker 5: from any horned animal, it's an easy mistake to make.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But what if I told you there really
Speaker 1: was a unicorn and it's very fantastical looking, I'd be thrilled.
Speaker 5: I'd want to ride first. First I was in a
Speaker 5: claymated sled. Very thrilling. Now I'm going to ride a unicorn.
Speaker 5: I've gotta listen to that like happy Unicorn power song
Speaker 5: from that one game, like the platformer from the internet. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's not a good description of it, but you know
Speaker 5: what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, first, in order to discover this unicorn, I
Speaker 1: want you to imagine a rhino, just a regular rhino.
Speaker 1: You got it on it?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is it in there? Now make it bigger, like, way bigger.
Speaker 1: And now make it fluffy. Is it fluffy?
Speaker 5: Oh fantastic?
Speaker 1: Yes, Now reimagine the rhino's horn to the horn of
Speaker 1: a giant magical unicorn coming right out of the middle
Speaker 1: of its forehead.
Speaker 5: That's true, the forehead horn. That's got to be such
Speaker 5: a different experience from the nose horn right right right,
Speaker 5: like your whole head balance and everything. That seems like
Speaker 5: a maybe small change at first, but when I really
Speaker 5: think about it, boy, totally differently.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There aren't really many animals or any that I
Speaker 1: can think of, that really have that single forehead horn.
Speaker 1: Our current day rhinos do sometimes have a sort of
Speaker 1: nose horn and then maybe a forehead horn the two
Speaker 1: horned rhinos, and some of them just got through the
Speaker 1: nose horn bump, but one horn just right out in
Speaker 1: the middle of the forehead. Really struggling to think of
Speaker 1: any mammal that has that situation going on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, shoot, I wish they were still here. I think
Speaker 5: this is prehistoric, right we Yeah, it's it's departed in
Speaker 5: an age long ago.
Speaker 1: It has they have gone on a big spaceship and
Speaker 1: gone to that great planet of the Siberian unicorns in
Speaker 1: the sky. So, yes, this is the extinct Siberian unicorn
Speaker 1: aka alasmatheriums sibericum that once thudded along the grasslands of
Speaker 1: your asia long ago. So alex, uh, you have it
Speaker 1: in your imagination, and now look at those pictures that
Speaker 1: I've provided for you as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm pulling it up. And this is an extra
Speaker 5: good time to me because there's like an illustration first
Speaker 5: and then a physical mockup somebody made seconds. And I
Speaker 5: think the physical mock up the horn gets even bigger
Speaker 5: if I'm seeing this right like they just I feel
Speaker 5: like every person who imagines this is exaggerating like a
Speaker 5: fish story with the horn.
Speaker 1: At some point the horn is just so big. It's
Speaker 1: this little little rhinoceros dangling off of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the horn itself.
Speaker 1: We don't I'm gonna be real with you, We don't
Speaker 1: really know how big this thing was. The size of
Speaker 1: it is estimated based on the skull, because I don't
Speaker 1: think they have like that much in term of full
Speaker 1: intact horns of like adults. So the like it's like
Speaker 1: there's this indentation on the skull that seems to be
Speaker 1: where the horn would have grown out of, and then
Speaker 1: they estimate the size of the horn based on other
Speaker 1: aspects of this thing. So I am a little skeptical
Speaker 1: of the one where it just seems like it is
Speaker 1: this massive horn that is almost I mean, it's bigger
Speaker 1: than its head in circumference almost. Not sure if that's true,
Speaker 1: but it would be cool cool if true.
Speaker 5: I think I think you're right. I think this drawing
Speaker 5: the first version it's and it's still quite a horn,
Speaker 5: and it also seems a little more proportional. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 5: way into it. Yeah, And it's so far up on
Speaker 5: the head there, You're right, it's just kind of got
Speaker 5: a snout in the nose area.
Speaker 1: It's it's a chunky unicorn. It's a thick, thick unicorn.
Speaker 1: So the Siberian unicorn when extinct a little under forty
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, so technically humans may have crossed paths
Speaker 1: with these fellers at some point. It was huge, it
Speaker 1: was larger than any living species of rhino and larger
Speaker 1: than its contemporary, the wooly rhino. So it weighed around
Speaker 1: four tons or two toyota tacomas, my favorite unit of measurement.
Speaker 1: It was fifteen feet or four point five meters long.
Speaker 1: It was also over eight feet or two point five
Speaker 1: meters tall, So is a big boy.
Speaker 5: Wow. Okay, yeah, yeah, I love with the prehistoric stuff.
Speaker 5: They do that little scale diagram where it's just a
Speaker 5: silhouette of a little human next to whatever it is.
Speaker 5: I'm glad to know that human would be very dwarfed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, be little, just lit, little bitty human. I mean,
Speaker 1: riding one of these things, you'd look like a hobbit. Yeah.
Speaker 5: It's very like somebody on a giant eagle and learn
Speaker 5: of the rings, right that scale The eagle is much bigger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it is. It is shockingly huge.
Speaker 1: I think that it is. And it's funny because it
Speaker 1: is like it's like a very metal unicorn. So like
Speaker 1: you know, you have a unicorn, and people may tease
Speaker 1: you like, oh you like unicorns. That's like, you know,
Speaker 1: that's weak, that's something that manly, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: even know toxic masculinity, but like this, this is a
Speaker 1: unicorn who would thoroughly trounce you.
Speaker 5: I guess forgotten that a little bit. There is that
Speaker 5: gendering of how we assume people will like unicorns, Like
Speaker 5: we think all horse girls will also like unicorns, and
Speaker 5: then boys will be too busy with tanks and this
Speaker 5: animal is sort of a tank.
Speaker 1: So it's funny to me that unicorns is seen as
Speaker 1: this like feminine kind of like non tough thing because
Speaker 1: it is a horse that has a spear on its forehead.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, like put it together, folks.
Speaker 1: Right, a horse on a bad day can wreck you, right,
Speaker 1: like a horse can already wreck you. Oh, it can
Speaker 1: stop you, it can toss you, it can kick you.
Speaker 1: It's already serious. And then you add a weapon to
Speaker 1: its head and we're like, oh, that's you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's weak, Like that's that's silly, and that's for girls.
Speaker 1: And it's like, first of all, fine, like if girls
Speaker 1: have to claim unicorns, it's fine, good luck with your
Speaker 1: non weaponized horses, Fellas.
Speaker 5: That is funny. About a month ago I rode a
Speaker 5: horse for the first time.
Speaker 1: Really was it scary and scared of horses?
Speaker 5: It I think it was a very well trained horse,
Speaker 5: but it also had a lot of different ideas from
Speaker 5: me about how we should be proceeding on the ride,
Speaker 5: where we should go, how fast we should go. It's
Speaker 5: like every time I told it to do something different,
Speaker 5: it changed. It was like, okay, fine. But also I
Speaker 5: had learned how to talk to this horse like two
Speaker 5: seconds before getting at it. Yeah, so I did not
Speaker 5: feel in control at all. I was like, Okay, I
Speaker 5: just hope being perched on this works out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I feel like I would be
Speaker 1: very easily bossed around by a horse. I love horses.
Speaker 1: I have never ridden a real horse. I've written a
Speaker 1: pony before as a kid, but I thoroughly respect them.
Speaker 1: And they scare me a little bit, like they are
Speaker 1: so huge, and I'm like, you are just by your
Speaker 1: good nature not turning my face into a concave bowl
Speaker 1: like I eh, you know. And I think that they
Speaker 1: are quite impressive, and they the idea of like being like, well,
Speaker 1: now I'm gonna hop on you. It's like that seems rude.
Speaker 1: Maybe the horse is fine with it, but I don't
Speaker 1: know what I'm doing. And I would just let that
Speaker 1: board that I would let the horse take charge. Really,
Speaker 1: it's just like, look, don't ignore me, do what you want.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm even here. You want to carrot?
Speaker 1: Don't don't kick me?
Speaker 5: Should have carrots? Yeah, I and you know, I made
Speaker 5: it back to shout out to Bud. Bud was the
Speaker 5: name of the horse, Bud. But there's Yeah, he's a
Speaker 5: nice guy. But it's it really is. It's like you're
Speaker 5: it's like you're on a motorcycle, but you're also on
Speaker 5: top of a cliff, right, and then a fireman animal
Speaker 5: can throw you off of the cliff at any time
Speaker 5: if it wants to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a motor tall motorcycle with feelings. Yeah, well.
Speaker 5: Anyway, I want to ride this animal.
Speaker 1: So anyways, this is like a mega rhino, also with
Speaker 1: a huge spear on its head, so good luck with that.
Speaker 1: The horn on its head is thought to have been
Speaker 1: massive and likely required the Siberian unicorn to grow a
Speaker 1: large muscular hump on its back, sort of like a bison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you love bison, so I thought you'd like this
Speaker 1: This guy too, fantastic. It is unknown, like I said,
Speaker 1: how big the horn really was, but based on a
Speaker 1: large indiant found on its skull reconstructions, imagine this unicorn
Speaker 1: is being longer than its head and very very thick.
Speaker 1: I would say some of the thickest models of it
Speaker 1: may be exaggerating a little bit, but it even with
Speaker 1: the more toned down the toned down illustrations of it,
Speaker 1: still look ridiculous. Like it is like a thick It's
Speaker 1: like a bison mixed with a rhino. Make it huge
Speaker 1: and then a like not just like one of those
Speaker 1: sort of thin you know unicorn horns, a big one.
Speaker 1: It's a chonker.
Speaker 5: Yeah. When you said the scientific name before, I think
Speaker 5: the phrase like them was part of it. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: I'm pretty sure I learned from this great show. I
Speaker 5: first learned about megatheriums, and ever since then I've been like, okay,
Speaker 5: theium is probably a big megathere oh mega too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, I don't know what the theeum room means
Speaker 1: theeum does that mean?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know Latin. I probably should have learned Latin
Speaker 1: at some point because of animals, but I didn't. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is yeah, this is a lasmo Theorium cibericum.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, despite looking like they could easily shish
Speaker 1: kabab you and roast you over and open fire. They
Speaker 1: were big, old herbivores, likely grazers who munched down massive
Speaker 1: amounts of grass, and their dependence on the grasslands may
Speaker 1: have been what led to their downfall. There's not really
Speaker 1: evidence that we like to them to extinction or anything
Speaker 1: like that. It seems to be more that because they
Speaker 1: were so huge and they needed so much grass that
Speaker 1: as grasslands shrank after the ice age, they simply were
Speaker 1: not able to get enough grass to sustain their populations.
Speaker 5: That makes sense. Yeah, this definitely seems like it needs
Speaker 5: to be chompident chewing all of the time to buildup
Speaker 5: more horn, but also to keep going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right exactly, so that that temperature change really kind
Speaker 1: of screwed them. So in terms of why I think
Speaker 1: the Siberian unicorn would be a good candidate for Santa
Speaker 1: Cave Santa to bring back from from the I guess
Speaker 1: from the extinction, although I guess if it's Cave Santa
Speaker 1: Cave Santa would have been contemporary with this guy. So
Speaker 1: one is that there is huge horn to break ice
Speaker 1: or to fight off grenches. The Siberian unicorn is also
Speaker 1: vegetarian friendly. It only grass. It is also fluffy, cold proof,
Speaker 1: and adorable. And it's a literal unicorn, so I feel
Speaker 1: like it is already probably infused with magic. What do
Speaker 1: you think, Alex?
Speaker 5: I agree with all that, and I'm thinking of that
Speaker 5: like traditional picture of what is an eight reindeer pulling
Speaker 5: the sledge? Yes, And I feel like it's like a
Speaker 5: two columns of four reindeer. Is the general arrangement right
Speaker 5: like to two These guys would need to work out
Speaker 5: being positioned directly behind each other with an enormous horn.
Speaker 5: And I could do it because like reindeer have those
Speaker 5: huge antlers, they're not sticking up each other's butts all
Speaker 5: the time, you know, so these guys could probably figure
Speaker 5: it out trust But.
Speaker 1: The antlers are little less forward facing than this horn,
Speaker 1: so I guess they'd need they'd need some personal space
Speaker 1: there to avoid a very unfortunate situation if like the
Speaker 1: one in front breaks very suddenly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I think maybe a bunch of pathing like yeah,
Speaker 5: window sock sort of structure it stick.
Speaker 1: A little like ball of styrofoam on the top of
Speaker 1: that point there.
Speaker 5: I think it could be festive going to work honey,
Speaker 5: and they put a huge one of those foam microphone
Speaker 5: covers over your horn.
Speaker 1: Like it could be festive, little festive pom poms.
Speaker 5: Oh, a lot of lights. You can put so many
Speaker 5: Christmas lights on.
Speaker 1: Wow, that you could paint it like a giant candy cane.
Speaker 3: Goshh So, Alex, I.
Speaker 1: Know what you're wondering. I know what you're thinking. What
Speaker 1: do you get when you cross a snowshovel with an elephant?
Speaker 5: Man? Finally, here I am on a horseback in the
Speaker 5: woods wondering that question, and the horse is like, I
Speaker 5: don't know, man, And I keep asking the horse, what
Speaker 5: do you do with a snowshovel in an elephant?
Speaker 1: It's one of the great unanswered questions of our times. Well,
Speaker 1: I have an answer. It's the platy belodon, the world's
Speaker 1: doofiest extinct elephant. He looks so dumb.
Speaker 5: Hooray Oh I pulled up the picture. Wow, great, very good.
Speaker 1: This is one of my favorite extinct animals. It is
Speaker 1: one of the animals that got me interested in evolutionary
Speaker 1: biology when I was a kid, because I got like
Speaker 1: a what was it. I don't remember the brand of magazine.
Speaker 1: It might have been a zoo books, but it was
Speaker 1: like a free magazine we got in the mail.
Speaker 5: That was about Suprehistoric Freaks Weekly. That was one of
Speaker 5: my favorite.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was like it was like the evolution of the elephant,
Speaker 1: and it showed a just a bunch of weird, weird elephants,
Speaker 1: and I was fascinated by that, and it really, I
Speaker 1: mean I was already I already loved it. I think
Speaker 1: I was already probably addicted to animals at that point,
Speaker 1: but this was, this was amazing. And so the Platybelodon
Speaker 1: was one of the world's doofiest extinct elephants, possibly the
Speaker 1: world's doofiest looking animal. It looks like a Star Wars animal,
Speaker 1: but something that is so silly looking. Even George Lucas
Speaker 1: would have had to edit it out of his films,
Speaker 1: and he is notorious for having doofy things and not
Speaker 1: knowing how to edit.
Speaker 5: I am if people don't know really made the bison.
Speaker 5: Emoji also vary into stuff like elephants, and I think
Speaker 5: just like large mammals or like big I define things
Speaker 5: I'm into. Yeah, and like when those when those Delexe
Speaker 5: editions of the original Star Wars movies came out. I
Speaker 5: was pretty excited about the do Bachs. I think that
Speaker 5: whole school of animals, I'm like, pretty good. But do
Speaker 5: Bacs are also, as you say, much more conventional. These
Speaker 5: guys would be just wacky. It would be like, why
Speaker 5: are the stormtroopers on a comedy animal? Silly?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they do have a bit of a charger
Speaker 1: being situation going on the yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the Plotybelodon is a genus of extinct relatives of
Speaker 1: elephants that lived during the Miocene epoch ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: million years ago in Asia and Africa. So imagine an elephant,
Speaker 1: but it's actually a bit smaller. Sometimes when we go prehistoric,
Speaker 1: the animals are bigger, like giant slots and this giant
Speaker 1: unicorn rhino, but sometimes it's smaller, you know. So this
Speaker 1: one's a little bit smaller. Now, turn its trunk into
Speaker 1: a giant shovel like almost kind of like duck bill
Speaker 1: thing with a couple of buck teeth sticking out of
Speaker 1: the lower jaw right on the tip of its mouth.
Speaker 1: In addition, it still has tusts on the side of
Speaker 1: its mouth like modern elephants. So there has been a
Speaker 1: lot of debate about exactly what this thing looks like.
Speaker 1: So there are some depictions of it that are a
Speaker 1: little more far fetched than others. All of the depictions
Speaker 1: of it are bananas bonkers, so don't worry, like there's
Speaker 1: there's no depiction of it that makes it look normal,
Speaker 1: like a reasonable animal. Some are just a little more
Speaker 1: wild than others. The depiction that is my favorite, uh,
Speaker 1: but possibly the least accurate, is the one where it
Speaker 1: has like stretched out daffy duck like bill with like
Speaker 1: buck teeth on the bottom. So it's hard to know
Speaker 1: exactly what they look like because we only have the
Speaker 1: like fossil records, we don't have the soft tissue records,
Speaker 1: so like we don't know what like any of the
Speaker 1: sort of soft tissue would have looked like. We can
Speaker 1: only guess based on the skull, the lower jaw, what
Speaker 1: the upper fleshy part of their essentially like it's this
Speaker 1: elongated proboscus would have looked like. So with a modern elephant,
Speaker 1: you have a elongated nose that acts as this big
Speaker 1: proboscis and has all these muscles very fine tune control,
Speaker 1: and its mouth is way back, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: like it pulls it doesn't eat with the tip of
Speaker 1: its trunk. It can breathe with the tip of its trunk,
Speaker 1: but it you know, can pull up grasses or vegetation
Speaker 1: and bring it up to its mouth. And you've probably
Speaker 1: seen an elephant eat, you've probably seen it drink. It
Speaker 1: also doesn't drink like through its nose. It sucks that
Speaker 1: water in and then dumps it into its mouth.
Speaker 5: So yea, yea.
Speaker 1: So it's not that the Platybelodon had a similar situation
Speaker 1: going that it didn't like have a weird mouth at
Speaker 1: the tip of its preboscus, but unlike the unlike the elephant,
Speaker 1: it had a low, elongated lower jaw. Now this is
Speaker 1: pretty pretty definitive based on the fossil records. We have
Speaker 1: the fossil records of this really long, like weird Scooper
Speaker 1: shovel shovel like lower jaw that probably had these like
Speaker 1: two sort of like buck teeth or like weird just
Speaker 1: like two tusks together that's stuck out at the bottom.
Speaker 1: So definitely had a long lower jaw. Now, the upper one,
Speaker 1: like it could have been more like a modern day
Speaker 1: elephant tusk, right, because the idea that it was more
Speaker 1: like an elephant tusk. Is that its mouth again, like,
Speaker 1: how is it gonna get stuff in its mouth like
Speaker 1: like sort of scoop things up and then like toss
Speaker 1: its head all the way back and hope that it
Speaker 1: all falls in. Probably not with that. If it has
Speaker 1: an easily manipulatable upper preboscis, then it could like you know,
Speaker 1: pick things up and then place it back into its mouth,
Speaker 1: which is like you know, sort of like the bits
Speaker 1: where it would be able to chew and eat stuff
Speaker 1: is not at the tip of that proboscis or even
Speaker 1: at the tip of that jaw. It'd be in like deeper.
Speaker 1: I mean, like it's weird to think about because our
Speaker 1: mouths are so like self contained. But for this, for
Speaker 1: this thing, it can't like chew with the front bits
Speaker 1: of its lower jaw or its longus. It's got to
Speaker 1: get it back there somehow. So like the depictions of
Speaker 1: its mouth is more like a weird I don't even know,
Speaker 1: just like a weird kind of like beak thing that
Speaker 1: like closes all the way. It's like, well, then this
Speaker 1: that upper thing would have to somehow get stuff in
Speaker 1: that deeper into its mouth. And it's a little unclear
Speaker 1: how it would do that with such a long, unwieldy
Speaker 1: uh duck like preboscis. But you know, it could have
Speaker 1: been flatter than a modern day elephant's trunk, but still
Speaker 1: could manipulate things like still grab things and manipulate and
Speaker 1: push it back, so I get I. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: probably the most accurate model would be elephant with this
Speaker 1: ridiculously long lower jaw with the two buck teeth sticking out.
Speaker 1: So that's still good, that's still there.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, we're not losing that.
Speaker 1: The top part of it. Probably a flatter but still
Speaker 1: relatively recognizable elephant trunk on top of it, so not
Speaker 1: quite like a weird duck bill, but still a flatter,
Speaker 1: a little bit thicker and flatter elephant trunk. That's my
Speaker 1: unprofessional opinion.
Speaker 5: That's making me think of obviously all the cartoon ducks
Speaker 5: you mentioned total fit, and then I'm thinking of the
Speaker 5: Disney character goofy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think if you put those two teeth of his
Speaker 5: on the bottom and set the top, that's kind of
Speaker 5: the mouth we're looking at, which yet I don't want
Speaker 5: to see him eat at all, so that really takes
Speaker 5: out of the cartoon.
Speaker 1: It's it's very even the most reserved reconstructions of this
Speaker 1: are wild and very very strange. Looks like a fever
Speaker 1: dream of an elephant. Yeah, now there, So like, there
Speaker 1: used to be this theory about this elephant that kind
Speaker 1: of informed the illustrations of it, which is that it
Speaker 1: used its mouth as a shovel and kind of like
Speaker 1: would live in sort of swampy areas and then shovel
Speaker 1: up sort of swamp grasses and then like you know,
Speaker 1: kind of let it sort of drop in the backs
Speaker 1: of their mouths. But modern researchers think that it's more
Speaker 1: likely given the shape and characteristics of those low or
Speaker 1: buck teeth that just jut out. God it, it's just
Speaker 1: it's so weird. It's like a big spoon with like
Speaker 1: these two like a fork at the end. I don't
Speaker 1: even know, man, it's look this thing up. Please look
Speaker 1: it up, and don't look at just the first result.
Speaker 1: Look at many different reconstructions. So the thought is that
Speaker 1: that they used this lower jaw not to like as
Speaker 1: a shovel, but actually as like a tree trimmer. So uh,
Speaker 1: it's like, uh, basically, the wear patterns on this seem
Speaker 1: to indicate that it was used to strip off bark
Speaker 1: and leaves off of trees. So basically it would use
Speaker 1: this lower jutting jaw to like tree trim the tree,
Speaker 1: and then it's upper trunk to take that stuff it
Speaker 1: just trimmed and then push it back into its mouth.
Speaker 5: I yeah, like a bucket for catching like an out.
Speaker 5: It is amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so it's I mean, it's just like you
Speaker 1: can imagine this thing shred and stuff with its weird
Speaker 1: lower jaw and then picking it up with its upper
Speaker 1: trunk thing and then putting it in its mouth. Just
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no no matter how one reconstructs this,
Speaker 1: this elephant, it was preposterous.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for some reason of imaginally some comedy sketch where
Speaker 5: like a tree has a mind like a human and
Speaker 5: is like, look at that dumb animal. Definitely eats marsh stuff.
Speaker 5: Doesn't fuck me, it's getting closer to me, don't need
Speaker 5: to worry about it. Getting even closer to me, doesn't matter.
Speaker 5: Stupid marshmouth. Definitely that Oh no, uh uh, it's definitely
Speaker 5: a tree driver's aw. Oh no.
Speaker 1: So this is why I think the Platybelodon would be
Speaker 1: a good candidate for Santa's sleigh team. So even though
Speaker 1: it may not have used its mouth as a shovel,
Speaker 1: I think it still could, so emergency the snowshovel mouth
Speaker 1: for efficient rooftop landings, as long as the roof is
Speaker 1: structurally stable enough to handle the weight of a small elephant.
Speaker 1: But in addition, those buck teeth would be useful for
Speaker 1: tree trimming, so cutting down Christmas trees trimming them all
Speaker 1: great proboscis could the elephant trunk part of it could
Speaker 1: be used to help tie Christmas presents And sorry, creature
Speaker 1: Kringle presence. I want to be clear here. This is
Speaker 1: for Creature Kringle Times, a non denominational holiday for all.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so creature creche Keva a creature Kringle Times presence.
Speaker 1: Also Santa at least our creature Kringle Time Santa. Cave
Speaker 1: Santa is a kind, magical man who knows not to
Speaker 1: ride on top of the Platybelodon because Platybelodon, like modern elephants,
Speaker 1: probably had a skeletal structure that means they can't bear
Speaker 1: the weight of a human rider and that can hurt
Speaker 1: hit them. So Cave Santa would know this because he's
Speaker 1: you know, magical and would use magical sleigh powder to
Speaker 1: help the Plattybellaton fly and there would be no pressure
Speaker 1: on its back. And they're probably friends. So that's cannon.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's true. That's right. Yeah. I like that
Speaker 5: we're thinking so much about how this animal eats. Yes,
Speaker 5: it's making me think about Santa. Like there's so much
Speaker 5: Santa Laura about how Santa eats and drinks as this
Speaker 5: night goes on, Like he has a couple of billion
Speaker 5: helpings of milk and cookies. So I want the Christmas
Speaker 5: stuff to be like, yeah, kids like Santa will come
Speaker 5: have milk and cookies. Meanwhile, his platty belladons are eating
Speaker 5: the trees outside our house. That's a fun break to me.
Speaker 5: That's a good a good stopper snacks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, make sure to plant a lot of friendly, deciduous
Speaker 1: edible trees for the Plattybelloton, the creature Kringle times platty Beloton.
Speaker 5: You're like, oh, a wonderful set of presents. Anyway, time
Speaker 5: to go outside and all the trees are just gone,
Speaker 5: like you can just see for miles, you know.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean you got to pay the piper. In
Speaker 1: this instance, an extinct elephant relative Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of rooftop damage too from the magical Platybelodon thumping down
Speaker 1: onto the roof. I feel like reindeer reindeer would cause
Speaker 1: a good amount of damage anyways, So.
Speaker 5: That's yeah. I think a lot of especially kids are like, oh,
Speaker 5: all hoofed animals are on like pony logic where it's
Speaker 5: tiny in a way I want it to be. But
Speaker 5: those things are huge, like they would definitely break through
Speaker 5: a lot of roofs and singles and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, speaking of tiny pony logic, when we return,
Speaker 1: we are going to stop with the big and start
Speaker 1: thinking small. So tiny pony time, tiny pony time, tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny any time. It's like tiny tim but tiny pony at.
Speaker 5: Least, sir, may I have some ponies. It's like, I'll
Speaker 5: give you ponies. I'm actually very nice, surprise.
Speaker 1: So so far we've gone with huge animals who could
Speaker 1: probably take over, like the whole reindeer team, to be honest,
Speaker 1: like the platty belt On the Siberian Unicorn, both quite
Speaker 1: huge megafauna. But what about microfauna neotini, tiny adorable animals.
Speaker 1: So let's look at the world's first horse number one
Speaker 1: horse number one like once we started making these horses
Speaker 1: very different from from the horses today. So when we
Speaker 1: think about like the world's first x y Z, it's
Speaker 1: it's like kind of tricky, right, like, well, what truly
Speaker 1: was the world's first horse? Well, it's more like this
Speaker 1: is the first sort of common ancestor of all horses.
Speaker 1: And that's essentially what we would say, say, like, you
Speaker 1: know the first horse, and the first horse was so
Speaker 1: teeny and tiny inch bowl. Uh, it's it's so wonderful.
Speaker 1: The first horse was the Prippis Sandre, which was a
Speaker 1: genus of teeny tiny, itty bitty baby horses who lived
Speaker 1: in Wyoming over fifty million years ago. So it was
Speaker 1: the size of a chihuahua around eight pounds or four
Speaker 1: and a half kilograms. It was smaller than a modern
Speaker 1: horse's head. So wow, this kind of horse, I feel
Speaker 1: like I could confidently boss around.
Speaker 5: It's true, isn't it? Is this the horse from the
Speaker 5: question about the duck sized horses or the horse sized duck?
Speaker 5: This is it?
Speaker 1: Right? Like, I guess fight, but I wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: fight these guys because they're so cute.
Speaker 5: No. No, And also, anytime people ask that question, I'm like,
Speaker 5: why are you battling animals? They're so nice? Like, I
Speaker 5: don't know that.
Speaker 1: I feel like, if the duck sized horses want to
Speaker 1: fight you, you've done something to deserve it.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, all one hundred of them can't be wrong.
Speaker 1: So the main difference between it and modern horses, other
Speaker 1: than obviously the fact it's the size of a lap dog,
Speaker 1: is its feet. So while horses have one fused toe,
Speaker 1: the cyphrippis had multiple toes. So it's like a teeny
Speaker 1: tiny horse with little tutsis cool.
Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, I'll bet that's I'll bet that's helpful for walking.
Speaker 5: You have a little more control, grip, et cetera. You're
Speaker 5: not just on a stub that has to be one thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a it's a trade off, right, like
Speaker 1: you are sort of The hoof has some great properties
Speaker 1: in terms of like sort of suspension, weight distribution, things
Speaker 1: like that toughness of the feet and the fact that
Speaker 1: this thing like continually the horse hoof like sort of
Speaker 1: continually grows and makes it very tough, and so a
Speaker 1: horse can in a wild horse can sort of trample
Speaker 1: over rough terrain and like shoes, you know, natural shoes
Speaker 1: growing shoes. The reason we actually have to shoe horses
Speaker 1: that are domesticated is because they are on harder surfaces,
Speaker 1: so like streets, cobblestone, things like that, any kind of
Speaker 1: like paved thing is going to be too hard on
Speaker 1: the hoofs and will wear them down too quickly. But
Speaker 1: wild horses are on softer terrain, but still having those
Speaker 1: like hooves does protect their feet and legs from the
Speaker 1: stress of like galloping and running, and they don't really
Speaker 1: need the other toes for things like they don't use
Speaker 1: them for other things. So that is why generally speaking,
Speaker 1: like you'd have something like a hoof form, but for
Speaker 1: this little, tiny, light animal, it doesn't necessarily need the
Speaker 1: hoof structure so much to like you know, offer that
Speaker 1: cushioning that protection as it's like running, and the toes
Speaker 1: might be useful for something like digging things up. In fact,
Speaker 1: like some ungulates, not all ungulates have like horse hoofs.
Speaker 1: Some are like have multiple toes, and some have things
Speaker 1: like cup shaved hooves, like caribou or reindeer have these
Speaker 1: like cup shaped hooves oh that can actually like dig
Speaker 1: up vegetation. So yeah, they're all sorts of interesting hoof structures.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the first the first horse ancestor genus, like
Speaker 1: they had multiple toes, they didn't had not yet had
Speaker 1: those all fused into that one hoof.
Speaker 5: Wow, that's also interesting. I didn't know much of any
Speaker 5: of that, especially like cup shaped hoofs. That's great. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that seems very.
Speaker 1: Handy, very very handy hoofy uh.
Speaker 5: Oh right, I'm so human centric, like those are probably
Speaker 5: bad and hands are the best, is my pet.
Speaker 1: Interestingly, scientists are looking at how the cypripis responded to
Speaker 1: climate change to predict how species might be impacted during
Speaker 1: our current anthropogenic climate change. So in the past there's
Speaker 1: been climate change, right, like natural climate change. Currently, the
Speaker 1: climate change we're experiencing is increasing at a rate unprecedented,
Speaker 1: and it's anthropogenic caused, human cause. Like there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of research on this. So like when people were like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know there's been climate change in the past, like
Speaker 1: it's different. But even in the past, climate change did
Speaker 1: have a huge impact on the world. So there was
Speaker 1: a period of rapid heating during the Paleocene Eocene thermal maximum,
Speaker 1: which was around fifty five million years ago, where global
Speaker 1: temperatures rose by almost twenty degrees fahrenheit or eight degrees
Speaker 1: celsius and lasted around two hundred thousand years. And the
Speaker 1: paleontologists have found that this caused the Cyphripus species to
Speaker 1: get small, going from around twelve pounds to eight pounds,
Speaker 1: so they started off all and when even more teacup size.
Speaker 1: It's possible then that researchers speculate that maybe modern animals
Speaker 1: will adapt to global warming by getting smaller, if they
Speaker 1: don't just go extinct. So, yeah, like global warming today
Speaker 1: is happening at an alarmingly fast rate. So the worry
Speaker 1: is that it's happening too fast for animals to adapt.
Speaker 1: That is just going to like cause sort of extinctions
Speaker 1: rather than you know, a more gradual natural selection. But
Speaker 1: it's possible that animals will become smaller in response to
Speaker 1: global warming. That's not necessarily a good thing.
Speaker 5: But you know, yeah, that's such a man I never
Speaker 5: thought of that being a way things can go though.
Speaker 5: Even that's amazing. Yeah, I guess we have these ancient
Speaker 5: examples of some non human cause stuff that can be
Speaker 5: a guidance. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean again, it's very different because this is
Speaker 1: a different kind of global warming that is happening in
Speaker 1: a much shorter time scale than historic periods of global warming.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's still possible that we would see
Speaker 1: there be some selection for smaller animals. It's it's hard
Speaker 1: to know exactly. But anyways, let's talk about how we
Speaker 1: could get the Zepps to whole Santas Sleigh.
Speaker 5: Also, can we can we celebrate the name zeph Come on, folks, well,
Speaker 5: actually fantastic.
Speaker 1: It's got the acronym of your podcast in there. S
Speaker 1: I f R H I P p U s so sif.
Speaker 1: Secretly and credibly fascinating. This is the horse of your podcast.
Speaker 5: That's right, I'm sitting on one every time I tape.
Speaker 5: It's doing fine. It can it can handle it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: a tiny horse.
Speaker 1: It kind of like made me think of like some
Speaker 1: old timey way of like writing sir, and I'm reading
Speaker 1: it as like some medieval like cirrippis, like you know,
Speaker 1: some kind of honorific So, uh, let's say that gets
Speaker 1: the same magical properties, same physics of the nine reindeer
Speaker 1: that Santa has. And remember, reindeer are real animals also
Speaker 1: known as caribou. They are quite hefty Santa's reindeer are
Speaker 1: likely female because male reindeer shed their antlers in the winter,
Speaker 1: while females keep their antlers during the winter and shed
Speaker 1: them in spring. So all all those prance are to answer,
Speaker 1: they're all ladies, Okay.
Speaker 5: I Also when I was thinking about, like how this
Speaker 5: sleigh is arranged, and I was thinking of eight reindeer,
Speaker 5: I think I fully forgot about Rudolph.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is.
Speaker 5: Definitely the most famous one. Uh Like, I'm the one
Speaker 5: who has been through the most fully.
Speaker 1: Alex the one that was denying Rudolph those reindeer games,
Speaker 1: So direct your hate towards Alex.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's four on four, man, what do you want?
Speaker 5: What are we gonna do? You can't have an odd number. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And also it's eight ladies. You're a guy, that's fine,
Speaker 5: but you know, we kind of have a thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting because Rudolph is sometimes depicted as
Speaker 1: not having antlers, like having little nubs, so he could
Speaker 1: actually be the only male.
Speaker 5: Wow, right, that's yeah. Santa Santa is so he just
Speaker 5: has a lot of personal decisions going on. We don't understand.
Speaker 5: We're not privy to it, right, you know, how do
Speaker 5: I get in that meeting.
Speaker 1: So, uh, female's weigh around two hundred pounds or ninety
Speaker 1: kilograms female reindeers, so times nine range, that's like one
Speaker 1: eight hundred pounds of pure reindeer. So obviously there's probably
Speaker 1: more biophysics that goes into this in terms of like
Speaker 1: muscle capacity, pulling capacity, skeletal strength. I'm not gonna do
Speaker 1: any of that. It's creature kringleness. We don't have time.
Speaker 1: So how many sifrippis do we need to equal this
Speaker 1: amount of reindeer heft sifrippists are only around eight to
Speaker 1: twelve pounds, so you'd need one hundred and fifty to
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty five cifrif sifrippis tiny ponies to
Speaker 1: equal nine reindeer. So you would get to hear the
Speaker 1: little toe toe steps of two hundred and twenty five
Speaker 1: tiny horses pulling uh, Cave Santa's sleigh or at least
Speaker 1: like these were not These were like around fifty million
Speaker 1: years ago. Humans were not around at this time, so
Speaker 1: Cave Santa would have to do some kringle to bring
Speaker 1: this guy back.
Speaker 5: That's incredible, and I guess the naming situation is fine.
Speaker 5: You get to pick a lot of names. Maybe it's
Speaker 5: too many to pick, right, there's.
Speaker 1: You know, Clarence one, Clarence two, Clarence three, Clarence.
Speaker 5: Four, the first name we pull.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're all Clarences. I can't, I can't.
Speaker 5: Event I guess it would eventually be like NASA where
Speaker 5: they just start numbering the asteroids, you know, like there's
Speaker 5: too many asteroids. Man, what are we gonna do?
Speaker 1: Tiny horse?
Speaker 5: Just one serial numbers?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just serial numbers on their butts, poor, poor
Speaker 1: little horses. Maybe they don't want to Maybe they don't
Speaker 1: want to fly creature Kringle time slay. Maybe they just
Speaker 1: want to hang out, chill out in grasslands and skip around.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I also, I'm just realized sing how pretty that
Speaker 5: herd probably is. It's it probably looks like a flack
Speaker 5: of birds or something. Just that.
Speaker 1: Guys, just little guys, just a little like just great,
Speaker 1: just so cute. I would love to have a lap
Speaker 1: horse like this, just had it, keep it in my lap,
Speaker 1: feel a little baby carrots, because that's all could have
Speaker 1: because it's so small. I do.
Speaker 5: I want to see one try to pick up a
Speaker 5: whole carrot and just thud.
Speaker 1: Little baby, little baby, it's so cute. I love tiny horses.
Speaker 1: I love tiny horses. Bring back like I know that
Speaker 1: we have a bunch of like extinction projects and stuff
Speaker 1: and maybe it's unethical, but I don't care. Bring back
Speaker 1: this horse.
Speaker 5: Yeah, do it? Okay, worried about it.
Speaker 1: My proposal for like government funding is come on, teddy horse,
Speaker 1: come on.
Speaker 5: Just at the the h or some huge government organization.
Speaker 5: You're just poking somebody like standing behind me.
Speaker 1: So, Alex, thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 1: Where can the people find you?
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me. It's always great, And yeah,
Speaker 5: I hope people enjoy my podcast Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, which
Speaker 5: also should have a recent episode about Snoopy. Yeah, featuring
Speaker 5: guest Katie Golden. That's a minute and that's me, that's you. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but yeah, it's history and science and stories about why
Speaker 5: something seemingly ordinary is amazing. And I'm also glad Matron's
Speaker 5: pick Snoopy because you know, folks love Snoopy. And also
Speaker 5: it turns out there was a lot.
Speaker 1: More there, a lot of snoop pegs out there.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think this show is fantastic. I highly recommend it
Speaker 1: if you like this podcast and yeah, I've been on
Speaker 1: a guest on it a few times now. And yeah
Speaker 1: I am on the Snoopy Snoopy Verse episode, so do
Speaker 1: check that out. Uh, and thank you guys so much
Speaker 1: for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you want
Speaker 1: to leave a rating or review, ay, they Hey, I
Speaker 1: would love that. I read all of them and they
Speaker 1: make me happy.
Speaker 5: And Uh.
Speaker 1: If you have an answer to this week's mystery animal,
Speaker 1: sound game or question or picture of your pet, you
Speaker 1: can write to me at Creature feature Pod at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. And thank you so much. Through to the
Speaker 1: Space Cossics for their super awesome song ex Alumina. Creature
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Speaker 3: Wherever you listen to your favorite.
Speaker 1: Shows and people happy, Creature Criminal Times, enjoy it. See
Speaker 1: you next Wednesday.
Speaker 5: Okay,