Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature, the podcast where we shrink down
Speaker 1: and go on a journey through the brains of people
Speaker 1: and animals. I'm Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary
Speaker 1: biology at Harvard, and I'm a bird's rights activist on Twitter.
Speaker 1: This time we're looking at motherhood. It's now a shock
Speaker 1: that parenting children can be scary. You're trying to turn
Speaker 1: a wild, drooling, biting, poopy, little, freshly minted human into
Speaker 1: an upstanding citizen, even though all he wants to do
Speaker 1: is shove Marble's way up his nose. But there are
Speaker 1: dark sides to motherhood that go beyond the typical challenges.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a look at some of the
Speaker 1: freakiest filial phenomenons in the animal kingdom and the truth
Speaker 1: behind some of the horror movie tropes about motherhood. With
Speaker 1: me today to discuss some of these wild mothers. As
Speaker 1: co host of The Daily zeygeis Miles Gray. It's up,
Speaker 1: my Oh Hi, I was in suspended animation. I'm not
Speaker 1: used to a good podcast. Yes, hi, thank you for
Speaker 1: having me just hypnotized by my radio voice. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: it was amazing. So U do you know there's this
Speaker 1: creature in folklore called the change Link. Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard of the Angelina Jolie movie. Well, I mean that's
Speaker 1: from science. That's well, it's from folklore and mythology. See
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm my folklore and mythology game is not
Speaker 1: on point, as some would say. Well, you're in for
Speaker 1: a world wide because so the change link is this
Speaker 1: thing where a fairy steals a human baby and then
Speaker 1: it replaces it with a disguised fairy baby. So that's
Speaker 1: the changeling, and then the parent raises the fairy child. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: So the changeling looks like a human child, but its
Speaker 1: behavior is kind of weird, you know, it's just like
Speaker 1: off somehow, and it's not because it's not a human.
Speaker 1: It's a fairy. And then like one of the parts
Speaker 1: of the myth is one day it's going to leave
Speaker 1: the human world and return to its fairy family. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: so the human baby that was stolen is like put
Speaker 1: to work in the fairy court, is like a servant,
Speaker 1: or in some cases of the myth, like the fairies
Speaker 1: raise it because they're like, oh, it's it's cool to
Speaker 1: have a human child. But so the fairies rely on
Speaker 1: human slave labor. Yeah, that's a stolen human slaver. That
Speaker 1: is a very uh sober take on it. But um yes,
Speaker 1: we'll go with that. But what do the and then
Speaker 1: the parents, they think, what is a weird thing a
Speaker 1: changeling can do that a human parent might go, that's
Speaker 1: that's not like what a human baby would do. Well,
Speaker 1: this is where it gets a little bit more dark.
Speaker 1: Um So, anthropologists and people who study folklore think that
Speaker 1: this was an explanation for children who were born with
Speaker 1: developmental to stabilities, mental illness, or like physical deformities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's like, oh, this child is different, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: so you know it must be a fairy just because
Speaker 1: they're like maybe on the spectrum or have some kind
Speaker 1: of cognitive difference right, or just neurally a typical or
Speaker 1: something right, or even neurologically or even just like physically
Speaker 1: a little different. So that sounds like a scam artist
Speaker 1: pediatrician who doesn't know anything. It just goes, do not
Speaker 1: think a fairy doing guy? And then like a doctor,
Speaker 1: I need answers. Well, that's sort of that's funny because
Speaker 1: that that it does remind me of like, uh, you
Speaker 1: know how like there are a lot of anti vaxers
Speaker 1: who are like, you know, like my child just suddenly
Speaker 1: changed into a completely different personality overnight with autism or
Speaker 1: is that something that those parents say? Yeah, because one
Speaker 1: of the characteristics of autism is you have normal child
Speaker 1: development and then at a certain point, at a very
Speaker 1: young age, like around toddlerhood, like you regress, so that
Speaker 1: the child regresses, starts developing a lot slower. So they're
Speaker 1: the perception of the parent is that they had a
Speaker 1: normally developing child that's suddenly just became like started regressing
Speaker 1: and that's just a normal part of the development of
Speaker 1: autism or Asperger's. So it's like they're using that timing
Speaker 1: to rationalize. They're like, well, it must have been the vaccine, right,
Speaker 1: because you get a vax that's around the age where
Speaker 1: you get a lot of inoculations. So from their perspective,
Speaker 1: and I can actually really sympathize with that because from
Speaker 1: their perspective, they get the shot, then suddenly the child regresses,
Speaker 1: and so they're like, well, this must have been I mean,
Speaker 1: it's essentially like the changelingk thing, Like now we don't
Speaker 1: have a cultural belief in fairies, but you know, maybe
Speaker 1: skepticism about vaccinations has replaced that sort of or check
Speaker 1: check your ring camera on your front door and see
Speaker 1: of a fair payment and the night and took off
Speaker 1: with your child, and that's why all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: your kid knows every capital city in the United States,
Speaker 1: or I don't know. I mean that's maybe over the
Speaker 1: Redark description, but anyway, yes, I understand. Well, but what
Speaker 1: if there really was a supernatural explanation, Like what if
Speaker 1: your child really was taken? So I want to go
Speaker 1: on an imagination journey. First, you got to imagine that
Speaker 1: you have a baby. It's already very dark, a grim future.
Speaker 1: You've just come home from a long day of podcasting.
Speaker 1: You I'm sorry. I like the idea where I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's the equivalent of like real hard craft, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: and I got you know how many ads I had
Speaker 1: to re record today. I just got back from the podcast.
Speaker 1: Mind been sitting all day. Ah. You go to the
Speaker 1: nursery to check on your kid, and you look in
Speaker 1: the crib and you just feel like, I mean, your
Speaker 1: baby looks like your baby, but there's something just a
Speaker 1: little off, Like she seems like she's grow in a
Speaker 1: little bit and she starts crying and you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: she needs something, like she needs to be changed or held,
Speaker 1: and you try these things and she keeps crying and
Speaker 1: she cries louder and louder, and it's just like this
Speaker 1: ear splitting cries and you just feel like, oh, I
Speaker 1: have to feed her, right, and the ticket, right, that's
Speaker 1: the ticket, Like a warm bottle milk, apple juice I
Speaker 1: don't have. I don't know i have apple juice for
Speaker 1: a young baby. I'm not a parent either, I don't
Speaker 1: know how to do how to handle a baby. I'm like,
Speaker 1: maybe we cook up some hot pockets, we throw corn
Speaker 1: at it. I'm not really sure. So we try to
Speaker 1: feed it. Trying to feed it, the cries just keep
Speaker 1: getting louder, and it just feels like you have to
Speaker 1: keep feeding it. And you're feeding her and feeding her,
Speaker 1: You're going like you're working around the clock, like pumping
Speaker 1: breast milk, mixing formula, going to the store to get
Speaker 1: graham crackers, freezing the breast milk, you're frosting the breast milk,
Speaker 1: but nothing is ever enough. But you're just like, because
Speaker 1: if you've ever heard like a baby cry or like
Speaker 1: one of the reasons it's so irritating isn't just because
Speaker 1: it's noisy, but we have this instinctive desire to like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a problem. So it's like really distressing. So
Speaker 1: like when you're on a plane and a baby is crying,
Speaker 1: it's worse than like someone sneezing or coughing, because it's
Speaker 1: like you feel this like stress. Have you been on
Speaker 1: a plane where someone sneezes open mouth right next to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've actually been on a plane where someone I was
Speaker 1: like in the third seat and there were two seats,
Speaker 1: and she was there with her husband, and since she
Speaker 1: didn't want to sneeze on her husband, she turned to
Speaker 1: me and direct all her sneezes at me. I know, wait,
Speaker 1: hold on, that has to be illegal or something that
Speaker 1: let's put you at risk. It also doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: because like, if there's anyone you should be able to
Speaker 1: sneeze on, it's your husband, right right, Well, I've got
Speaker 1: bad news for bird smiles. It is a real thing.
Speaker 1: So there actual changelings in the bird world, and you
Speaker 1: may have heard of them. They're called cuckoos, and they're
Speaker 1: not just the clocks. They're also a real bird and
Speaker 1: one flew over at some point. Well, this is the thing.
Speaker 1: There aren't There aren't cuckoo nests, So your reality has
Speaker 1: been Okay, what does it cuckoo look like? Well there's
Speaker 1: not actually one look and we'll get into that. But
Speaker 1: so cuckoos are actually parasites. And I know normally when
Speaker 1: you think of parasites you think of like an insect
Speaker 1: that gets into your eyes and makes you go blind,
Speaker 1: or but it can be any animal as long as
Speaker 1: it's a non mutual relationship. So the parasite is living
Speaker 1: off of the host to the detriment of the host.
Speaker 1: And one of the differences between like parasites and predators
Speaker 1: is a predator eats the thing like kill. It eats it,
Speaker 1: and a parasite slowly feeds off of it over time.
Speaker 1: And this is the relationship of a cuckoo from child
Speaker 1: to parents. No, no, from the cuckoo and the host family,
Speaker 1: so birds that it infiltrates. So what it does is
Speaker 1: because it doesn't want to waste time making a nest
Speaker 1: like that, that's bullshit. It doesn't want to make a
Speaker 1: nest and fuss with that? Or what am I taking?
Speaker 1: Parents take care of a kid boring, so it finds
Speaker 1: a bird that's a good parent, is like, oh, you'll do,
Speaker 1: and lays their egg in their nest and just leaves
Speaker 1: it for this other bird to take care of and
Speaker 1: raises its own child like a like a changeling, right,
Speaker 1: or like my uncle who just drop my cousin off
Speaker 1: and then I was like, why is this full here snacks,
Speaker 1: So it's just foisting their young on another bird family
Speaker 1: essentially exactly if they've been foisted. It's not just the cuckoo.
Speaker 1: There are different types of parasitic birds. The cuckoo is
Speaker 1: the most famous. There's also the cuckoo, finch, the honey guide,
Speaker 1: and the cowbird. The cowbird just like just a bird
Speaker 1: with some utters, slashing around, not aerodynamics, can't fly. So
Speaker 1: there's a problem for the cuckoo, which is that birds
Speaker 1: don't want to raise your child, right, They don't want to,
Speaker 1: So they have to find a way to sneak the
Speaker 1: egg into the nest. So some species like the cowbird,
Speaker 1: just waits for the nest to be unoccupied then they
Speaker 1: lay their egg in there. But there are more complex
Speaker 1: strategies that are developed. So there's intimidation as a strategy
Speaker 1: so this is where we get into the different looks
Speaker 1: of these birds. So they all in the end game
Speaker 1: is all the same, which is you're about to raise
Speaker 1: my kids, yes exactly, okay, But then they have different
Speaker 1: avenues of getting to right okay, So we've gone over one,
Speaker 1: which is like sneaking in there while the parents are gone.
Speaker 1: The second one is they develop an apparent similar to
Speaker 1: a predator. So old world cuckoos have developed an underbelly
Speaker 1: that is meant to mimic that of raptors. So raptors
Speaker 1: are not just the gold bloom eating variety the dinosaur.
Speaker 1: Not the dinosaur right the Toronto basketball, It's a bird
Speaker 1: of prey. So they fly over and then they have
Speaker 1: this these stripe marks on their underbelly in a curved beak.
Speaker 1: And so when the when the host bird is looking
Speaker 1: up and seeing this, they're thinking, oh, this is going
Speaker 1: to eat me, So they fly off. And then when
Speaker 1: they've run off and terror like the cuckoo, who is
Speaker 1: not a predator, just goes in, lays their egg and leaves.
Speaker 1: You studied evolutionary biology, how does a bird right, I
Speaker 1: understand like through natural selection or whatever that certain traits
Speaker 1: make it and that's how evolution occurs. But like to
Speaker 1: develop a trait in which the bottom mimics the appearance
Speaker 1: of another animal, is that just by chance? And then
Speaker 1: because of that that trait moves up? Or can can
Speaker 1: a birds be like yo, I need monet to look
Speaker 1: like a predatory bird. No, it really is just by
Speaker 1: by random chance over millions of years. So you have,
Speaker 1: like you have all of these things that like tiny
Speaker 1: changes in your DNA can have a pretty dramatic effect
Speaker 1: on your phenotype. So you're I know what that means, Yeah,
Speaker 1: your physical your your physical characteristics. So you know, like
Speaker 1: how Darwin's finches their beaks. He observed evolutionary changes in
Speaker 1: their beaks over like short periods of time based on
Speaker 1: like which seeds were in season and like the availability
Speaker 1: of nuts versus seeds versus like what shell type. Um,
Speaker 1: So you can imagine like having a curved beak is
Speaker 1: a fairly like I don't want to say simple thing,
Speaker 1: but like you know, having stripes or having these kind
Speaker 1: of like changes, subtle changes in appearance parents could conceivably
Speaker 1: come from just a few mutations, and if that is effective,
Speaker 1: then it's going to get passed on because they're like
Speaker 1: they scared off the host family, their eggs get successfully
Speaker 1: raised by the host. Okay, thank you for and just
Speaker 1: over just imagine that, but over like such a long
Speaker 1: period of time. Right then everybody looks like, why don't
Speaker 1: we look like that? We should? Well pretty soon, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm curious in what that next stage of human
Speaker 1: evolution looks like. Birds. You think we'll be birds? Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh great, well then we've settled it. End of argument.
Speaker 1: So that's one. And then there's another strategy. So the
Speaker 1: cuckoo finch does the equivalent of wearing like a fake
Speaker 1: nose and mustache, and they're like, I'm a normal normal
Speaker 1: that's okay, don't worry. Um. So they've evolved to mimic
Speaker 1: um the southern red bishop birds, which are harmless species
Speaker 1: of non parasitic birds, just like friendly neighbor bird. That way,
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, I'm I'm just your friendly neighbor. I'm
Speaker 1: a bishop, I'm I'm a good person. And then they
Speaker 1: go in and the egg and the host species are like,
Speaker 1: what I thought you were my friend? In that sense,
Speaker 1: is that that the potential host bird because they identify
Speaker 1: they're seeing the red bishop, they're like oh, that's fine,
Speaker 1: if you lay your egg in my nest? Is that
Speaker 1: sort of They just don't expect that to happen. They
Speaker 1: don't they haven't been they haven't been trained, they don't
Speaker 1: necessarily catch. Now here's here's the thing. If they catch
Speaker 1: them laying their eggs in their nest a lot, the
Speaker 1: problem is they'll start to associate that behavior with the
Speaker 1: look of the Southern red bishop birds. Because you know,
Speaker 1: you can imagine the relationship between the cuckoos and the
Speaker 1: host they have like this arms race or wings right
Speaker 1: ye birds anyways, and so the hosts are really trying
Speaker 1: hard to sess that, like who's going to do this
Speaker 1: to me? And then the parasites are like trying to
Speaker 1: trick them. So actually, what's happened is that now the
Speaker 1: hosts are suspicious of Southern red bishop birds, and they,
Speaker 1: like the innocent people are getting caught up in this
Speaker 1: mess right exactly, and they're like, what I did? There's
Speaker 1: just so many, like such insidious strategies that the cuckoos
Speaker 1: have developed. So so how does it look like that's
Speaker 1: just a trait that the cuckoo just looks like a
Speaker 1: red bishops? That's the deal. Okay, so I was hoping.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I thought this was even feasible
Speaker 1: that there were some kind of disguise so that they wore.
Speaker 1: Some wore like a little like some leaves around, like
Speaker 1: where's my kid grub some berries on their rings? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Yeah that I'm showing how scientifically it literally
Speaker 1: I am, but interesting that you'd say that. So, like
Speaker 1: they do disguise their eggs sometimes to look like the
Speaker 1: host eggs, so in color and shape and roughly size,
Speaker 1: although they will be bigger because cuckoos are much bigger
Speaker 1: than our hosts generally. And then the there's one strategy
Speaker 1: where like some cuckoos just have showed the whole, like
Speaker 1: tricking the birds into accepting them, and they develop cuckoo
Speaker 1: mafia that like if the host species tries to push
Speaker 1: their eggs out of the neck, they attack them. So
Speaker 1: it's just like no, you will baby sit my baby'd
Speaker 1: be a shame if somebody up real good, Okay, I
Speaker 1: like bird mafia. Yeah, it's like always guy. And then
Speaker 1: the babies themselves are pretty bad too, because like when
Speaker 1: they hatch, cuckoo babies have developed like these strong backbone
Speaker 1: like shoulders to push out the eggs of the host
Speaker 1: species because it's not enough that they are just raised
Speaker 1: amongst other like have you know adopted siblings. They want
Speaker 1: all the food, they want all the parental attention that
Speaker 1: is best for them, especially because they're so big and
Speaker 1: they have terrible abandonment issues. Yeah, and and they that's
Speaker 1: where like remember how he's talking about, like your your
Speaker 1: imaginary baby that would cry so loud, you kept feeding
Speaker 1: it as much as you can. Yeah, that's what they do.
Speaker 1: So researchers have looked at their vocal patterns and they
Speaker 1: are akin to like several of the host species birds.
Speaker 1: So like the babies will will make this little chirp,
Speaker 1: this little cry so that the parents feed them. It's
Speaker 1: a signal the parents instinctively, like they hear the cry
Speaker 1: and feed them. But the cuckoo, who is just so
Speaker 1: big and fat, if it doesn't get more nutrition than
Speaker 1: like one bird would get, then it would not get enough.
Speaker 1: So it's christ sounds like several other babies. So the
Speaker 1: host birds are like, oh, I gotta keep feeding these
Speaker 1: seven babies, which are it seemed to be like big babies, right,
Speaker 1: And they also have markings on the inside of their
Speaker 1: mouth that mimics the markings on the inside of the
Speaker 1: mouths of the host babies because that mark is sort
Speaker 1: of like a bull's eye for like the parents, like
Speaker 1: stick Warman. Yeah yeah, and they still do that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do, they do. They they have it. And then
Speaker 1: they have a special little pouch in their neck their
Speaker 1: throat that they regurgitate the food into. Fantastic yeah I know. Wait,
Speaker 1: so then on top of it, you need a bird
Speaker 1: who the belly looks like of raptor with a curve
Speaker 1: beef and you have hit the trifecta of having the
Speaker 1: mouth that looks like another big yeah. Uh. But there's
Speaker 1: a strategy to defeat the mimic babies, and so there's
Speaker 1: this is a great name, but the superb fairy wren,
Speaker 1: which just sounds so fancy. Of course, the super fairy wren,
Speaker 1: they will tweet out a password to their eggs, their
Speaker 1: embryonic chicks, and the chicks will hatch and when they
Speaker 1: come back with their nice regurgitation food to give their babies,
Speaker 1: if the babies don't tweet that password at them, they
Speaker 1: abandon the nest. Because embryonic fairy wrens can encode this
Speaker 1: tweeted password and then tweet it what sirp it once
Speaker 1: they're born. But the imposts any kind of parasitic baby
Speaker 1: will not be able to do this, doesn't have the
Speaker 1: code right right, So then the farrier and is like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll just abandon this nest and try to
Speaker 1: start again. You know what's really sad again, I completely
Speaker 1: forgot that tweet meant bird talk, and I thought you
Speaker 1: were working around like, yeah, they teat a password, and
Speaker 1: then yeah, they've they've checked their mentions to wow, okay,
Speaker 1: so that's encoded. And then if the wild cuckoos in
Speaker 1: there trying to get a free meal, it's like saying
Speaker 1: the complete wrong password to get in the nightclub. And
Speaker 1: then these are fakes. Um, so are you scared that
Speaker 1: someone is going to be a grew or change? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: That's why I always ask for a DNA test. When
Speaker 1: someone says these are your kids, say not so fast,
Speaker 1: thank you, Mari Povich, the super wren of our time.
Speaker 1: I just feel bad, you know, for the host, like
Speaker 1: any parent right who's like I've been raising someone else's
Speaker 1: whole damn time. Yeah, what do you you know? Is
Speaker 1: the and I don't know if we're getting to this,
Speaker 1: but is the way this plays out is that or
Speaker 1: is the true victims the other offspring of the host
Speaker 1: bird or does the parent parental bird also get basically
Speaker 1: worn down to the point that they expire. Well, the
Speaker 1: parents don't die, but it is very bad for them
Speaker 1: because they want their genes to pass on, so they
Speaker 1: want their uh, their chicks to survive. So it's um
Speaker 1: still draining them of resources that would otherwise go towards
Speaker 1: promoting their chicks and their genetic progeny. Right, and meanwhile
Speaker 1: this fake baby's shoulder shrugging their kids off the Yeah,
Speaker 1: so is there like a real life human changeling? This
Speaker 1: is a rhetorical question because I'm about to tell you,
Speaker 1: um so in a boy named Nicholas Barclay went missing.
Speaker 1: His family was devastated, so when French authorities said they
Speaker 1: found Nicholas, they were really excited to be reunited with him.
Speaker 1: But there are a few things that were kind of
Speaker 1: off about him. So his eyes were dark. When Nicholas's
Speaker 1: eyes were lighter. Um, he wore a hat and a
Speaker 1: scarf around his face. His accent was vaguely French, and
Speaker 1: he explained these differences by saying he had been in
Speaker 1: this like human slave trade, and like he he had
Speaker 1: been abused and like so his accent changed and they
Speaker 1: used some chemical on his eyes. And even if they
Speaker 1: were a little suspicious, he knew all these intimate details
Speaker 1: about the family, like names, stories about their childhood. He
Speaker 1: even had like the same tattoo on his finger that
Speaker 1: Nicholas had. Wait, so how old was he when he disappeared?
Speaker 1: I think it was he was like in his like preteens,
Speaker 1: and he had a hand tattoo, a little like cross
Speaker 1: tattoo on his hand. Okay, I don't know why I
Speaker 1: hung up. I'm like, why does that child of a tattoo?
Speaker 1: I don't know, aren't you cool man? Yeah, he's edgy
Speaker 1: and getting lost in Europe? So okay, it's what the
Speaker 1: kids do these days. Well, in the nineties, his face
Speaker 1: tattoos look so passing, so surprised. He wasn't Nicholas Barclay
Speaker 1: and he wasn't even a kid. He was a twenty
Speaker 1: three year old Frenchman named Frederic Bordon. Right. Wasn't there
Speaker 1: a documentary about Yes? Yes, yeah, now I remember when
Speaker 1: it was like it was a it was a man
Speaker 1: the whole time. Huh, an adult man. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: just this one time. He was a serial impostor who
Speaker 1: repeatedly pretended to be a young boy so he could
Speaker 1: attend school and live in youth shelters and doing anything
Speaker 1: else except just to get by just for shelter or
Speaker 1: was he It was complicated because he was saying that
Speaker 1: it wasn't just for like any kind of like security
Speaker 1: or financial gain. It was because he liked the attention.
Speaker 1: He wanted to love from his peers and families and
Speaker 1: like teachers sympathy. Right yeah. But in the case of
Speaker 1: like Nicholas Barklay, he was actually trying to get out
Speaker 1: of potentially going to jail because they're like, ah, you
Speaker 1: are not who you say you are, so like he
Speaker 1: wanted to go to America to escape these charges. Double down.
Speaker 1: I'm actually this American kid, right right. I know I
Speaker 1: sound French, but you know how it is, like you
Speaker 1: know how it is. You know you go to you
Speaker 1: go semester abroad way Yeah oh wow that you speak French?
Speaker 1: Uh yeah yeah, Okay, See we're a multi lingual podcast.
Speaker 1: I mean, like today though it's hard to imagine like
Speaker 1: teenagers falling for this, Like maybe it was different in
Speaker 1: the nineties. Like I feel like if a man was
Speaker 1: like like a fully grown man was like, Oh I
Speaker 1: like to play those Fork Nights. Yeah, Hey, fellow kids, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I like to watch The Poopy Dies. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: love Lebron Wayne the best and see what wit So
Speaker 1: how did that guy know all those stories? Well he did.
Speaker 1: He was actually really talented because he would like go
Speaker 1: like as soon as he was really nervous once he
Speaker 1: like went to their home, but he was like going
Speaker 1: through everything, like going through photo albums, like reading stuff
Speaker 1: and diaries and stuff. So that genuinely talented guy who
Speaker 1: just put all of his like I know, intelligence towards
Speaker 1: something so bad. He could have been an improviser. Everyone
Speaker 1: an impro off is just like a smidge away from impersonating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and you know we need that kind of talent.
Speaker 1: So hey, fellow kids, we're going to take it totally tubular,
Speaker 1: quick break, skateboards, fidget spins. We'll be right back, my dudes.
Speaker 1: So you know Rosemary's baby, Yeah, I mean Rosemary grow
Speaker 1: I went to high school with her. She I think
Speaker 1: she had the baby after we graduated. Not quite the
Speaker 1: one I was talking about. Okay, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: The movie where she's having Satan's baby. Oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: I've never seen that movie, but I'm familiar with the concept.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because all the priests at my high
Speaker 1: school told role was married the same thing. She's having
Speaker 1: Satan's child. Oh weren't we all? But so other movies
Speaker 1: have kind of gone into this because I think we
Speaker 1: have like this, there's this fear of like something's growing
Speaker 1: inside of you that's like evil or going to hurt you. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm don't we all let's stop later. I'm
Speaker 1: curious with the darkness. You're the most cheery person, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure, yes, there's some kind of demon within you.
Speaker 1: The demon within but like you know, like an alien,
Speaker 1: the alien in the movie Alien. Like you know, it's
Speaker 1: like it's not like the chest burster is scarier to
Speaker 1: me than even just like the Big Mother alien. Because
Speaker 1: like there's like John Hurd, He's just like sitting around
Speaker 1: eating his space salad and like all of a sudden
Speaker 1: he feels sick and then this thing sorry spoilers, but
Speaker 1: it like bursts out of his chest. Is that what happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh my god, and it's just like what the movie
Speaker 1: was capturing was this like feeling. I'm sorry, it bursts
Speaker 1: from his chest. You might want to view the movie,
Speaker 1: I've I don't want to spoil. Yeah, I have a
Speaker 1: problem lying about seeing movies. I haven't seen it, but
Speaker 1: that sounds often. Well, he died, but like but like
Speaker 1: you have this thing. It's like the subversion of the
Speaker 1: joy of like parenthood. And I guess, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: very intense way to think of it, right, So I
Speaker 1: want to talk about some very real nightmare fuel though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think just to go off of that, right, I
Speaker 1: think any time I see a movie where something is
Speaker 1: crawling around on someone's inside unbeknownst to them or maybe
Speaker 1: they did know, Like even in the Matrix, when the
Speaker 1: agent puts that weird like digital shrimp on, there's something
Speaker 1: I think. I know what you mean. You feel like
Speaker 1: especially vulnerable because this isn't an an external threat. No,
Speaker 1: it's coming from inside the body. The call is coming
Speaker 1: from inside the house, so to speak. Okay, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm just I think most of us can sympathize with
Speaker 1: the fear of being pregnant and not knowing it. Um,
Speaker 1: just like like a million voices were just like, yes,
Speaker 1: but what if it took you sixty years to find
Speaker 1: out you've been carrying a fetus the whole time I
Speaker 1: think I was talking about. I guess you can guess.
Speaker 1: Is it that woman in Thailand? Maybe be more specific?
Speaker 1: Does she have a fossilized embryo? Yes? Yes, But all
Speaker 1: I know is I remember that like a woman gave
Speaker 1: birth to a rock or no, she had she had
Speaker 1: a pain, right and then okay, I'm sorry, I don't
Speaker 1: this is my show. No, but you're you're on the
Speaker 1: right track. Because it's called a lithe opedion, which translates
Speaker 1: to stone baby. It's it's an extremely rare form of miscarriages.
Speaker 1: So typically I don't want to laugh. I was left.
Speaker 1: For the record, I left at stone He was laughing
Speaker 1: at stone baby. Everybody just leaving get off his bat
Speaker 1: off mention. Um. So, typically when you have when something
Speaker 1: goes wrong, the fetus gets reabsorbed back into the womb.
Speaker 1: But in really rare cases, like if it's too big
Speaker 1: or it doesn't reabsorb um and it isn't ejected from
Speaker 1: the body, what happens is it starts to calcify and
Speaker 1: falsilize like you're saying, because what's actually happening is the
Speaker 1: mother's body is reacting to a foreign object and it's
Speaker 1: shielding itself from the dead tissue. You know. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of like so when oysters create um so like
Speaker 1: you know, like when oysters create pearls, like people say
Speaker 1: it's from a grain of sand, but it's usually from
Speaker 1: like a parasite. So what they do is they produce
Speaker 1: this substance called nacre and coated over a long period
Speaker 1: of time, and it results in this beautiful pearl. But
Speaker 1: I mean, in the case of lithopedions, it's a nightmare pearl.
Speaker 1: Horror pearl is a stone baby for an oyster basically,
Speaker 1: but it's that's so beautiful pretty much. So it's like
Speaker 1: it's not covering their own fetiss like a parasite or yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because is like that parasite or foreign body could cause
Speaker 1: problems for the oyster, like infection or maker is the like.
Speaker 1: So the strategy is just saran wrapped the ship out
Speaker 1: of this thing so it doesn't mess us up. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right. Yeah, Okay, I'm trying to put in Layman's
Speaker 1: wrapped the ship out of it with naker and then
Speaker 1: you get a pearl and you turn into a necklace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you turn into a thing that old ladies wear.
Speaker 1: Are pearls back in? Are they ever left? I'm the
Speaker 1: wrong person to ask, as I my pearl jewelry. So,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, in the case of the one lady,
Speaker 1: she carried the stone baby for sixty years. It weighed
Speaker 1: four and a half pounds, and actually you said like
Speaker 1: like she gave birth to it. No, it's just it
Speaker 1: remained inside her because the doctors determined she was too
Speaker 1: old for surgery, so it was safer just to leave
Speaker 1: it there, which just is awful. Oh no, I know. Wait,
Speaker 1: so it never is never removed? Wow? How common is this?
Speaker 1: It's pretty rare, very rare. Yeah, because I feel like
Speaker 1: it was just one of those headlines like years ago
Speaker 1: on the internet, woman has fossilized baby. It's extremely rare,
Speaker 1: and even more rare for it to be so long unnoticed.
Speaker 1: So this basically will don't worry, this will not happen
Speaker 1: to you. Do you think for science this is when
Speaker 1: we's still alive? Do you know? I'm not sure I want.
Speaker 1: I mean, just for science's sake, you would think you
Speaker 1: would want to extract that just to kind of Look,
Speaker 1: I know they do have samples of they do have
Speaker 1: like specimens of stone babies that would be a flex
Speaker 1: for jewelry, just a big necklace like chain or dangli.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Look, I'm just thinking outside the box. You've
Speaker 1: got me thinking about pearls. What's with the you know,
Speaker 1: my new light of line of jewelry an alien race
Speaker 1: who like has necklaces made out of humans. See that's again.
Speaker 1: Now we're writing a sci fi script I can get behind,
Speaker 1: like Marge Simpson seventy five from the Batel Juice Simpson
Speaker 1: with Emperor President Clinton. So they're actual, like horrific chest
Speaker 1: burster like alien babies in nature. First, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about Cecilians, not Sicilians from Princess Bride, whom you
Speaker 1: never want to engage in bets with, I believe. But
Speaker 1: so Cilians look like worms, but they're not. They can
Speaker 1: be as small as worms, they can be up to
Speaker 1: four feet and legs, but they're actually legless amphibians. You're
Speaker 1: making a face. Yeah, just the idea that just knowing
Speaker 1: that the route we're taking and we're starting off like
Speaker 1: it could be this small, it could be four ft long.
Speaker 1: You know, who knows how it could be as tall
Speaker 1: as a building. I don't know. Okay. Sicilians Sicilians, and
Speaker 1: they're they're amphibians. They don't have any legs and they
Speaker 1: squantch around. Does that mean squant is a scientific term?
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's you know, it's like how the
Speaker 1: sound I imagine they make is that because they do
Speaker 1: the thing like a like a worm or they like
Speaker 1: bunch their butt up and yeah, squatching and then snakes
Speaker 1: do slithering. Yeah, okay, yeah, exactly. So the baby Sicilians
Speaker 1: have special teeth that resemble grappling hooks that they use
Speaker 1: to peel and eat their mother's skin for nourishment. What
Speaker 1: we're getting a picture of this here. They look like
Speaker 1: little worms and they got you know, it looks so disgusting,
Speaker 1: you know, like the Starlac pit and Star Wars. It's
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, that looks like a butt hole with teeth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: butth hole with teeth that you know what. This is
Speaker 1: actually the second time on this podcast we've talked about
Speaker 1: butts with teeth. It's a whole genre, it's a whole look,
Speaker 1: it's coming back. So the mother will lose about of
Speaker 1: her body weight, but she's totally cool with this. She
Speaker 1: allow was her offspring to eat or skin offspring is
Speaker 1: within the mother or so sometimes so some live bearing
Speaker 1: species of cicilians, they're actually eating inside of the mother,
Speaker 1: so they eat the fatty secretions from the reproductive organs.
Speaker 1: But other times they're already born and they're like or
Speaker 1: the eggs are laid and like they pop out and
Speaker 1: then they start eating like mom jerky, just like mom jerk,
Speaker 1: it's nutritious and delicious. Please make that a mom tested,
Speaker 1: Mom approved, Mom, it's in fact, mom My kids love
Speaker 1: my skin, love it and eat it and they just
Speaker 1: bite like so it would, I mean mimics sort of
Speaker 1: like mammalian feeding, where like a bunch of little kids
Speaker 1: are just like kind of nipping away, but there's no
Speaker 1: nipples or utters. Basically, it's kind of a weird evolutionary
Speaker 1: step towards like drinking milk. Because like so some of
Speaker 1: the very early versions of mammals, like monotream, so like
Speaker 1: a platypus kidnas, they don't have nipples. They just kind
Speaker 1: of uze milk. Um, I think out of their stomach pores. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not just like a messy sweating milk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like your baby or milk sweating and then the
Speaker 1: babies just kind of lick it up. So but it's
Speaker 1: not I don't want to make a claim that this
Speaker 1: is the direct link between that, but you can kind
Speaker 1: of see. This is a weird step because the mother
Speaker 1: is actually growing the skin, especially for the kids, so
Speaker 1: it's like nutritious, delicious skin, mom skin. And they actually
Speaker 1: survived this, so it's it doesn't kill them, but sometimes
Speaker 1: for not All moms who let their children eat them
Speaker 1: are so lucky. Um. So there's this creature called the pseudoscorpion.
Speaker 1: It's not a scorpion. It's a type of aracnut. I
Speaker 1: knew that. Yeah, yeah, so again we are already that's
Speaker 1: I think too. You get two stars. So it looks
Speaker 1: like a lot like a scorpion, as you would imagine.
Speaker 1: That's why they named it. Well what is it an? Actually?
Speaker 1: Oh want to be exactly. So the moms will offer
Speaker 1: herself up to her babies to eat, and the babies
Speaker 1: will suck out those sweet mom juices through her joints
Speaker 1: and then discard her carcass. Okay, you have to slow down. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this fake asked scorpion has kids, and then the
Speaker 1: kids just what they feed off her joints when they
Speaker 1: suck no, no no, no. Imagine like you have a straw,
Speaker 1: a bendy straw, and you stick it in soda and
Speaker 1: you drink out of it. They're drinking her juices out
Speaker 1: of her joints like they're straws that they've stuck into, like,
Speaker 1: but through her joints, like that's the entry point. And
Speaker 1: then from there they just suck. Mom. For lack of
Speaker 1: a or words, and the mom like, wow, when you
Speaker 1: look at it from a very specific perspective, this is
Speaker 1: heartwarming because researchers think this has given rise to these
Speaker 1: pro social behaviors in pseudo scorpions. So the young hunt
Speaker 1: together and parents like help protect the young. Um. So
Speaker 1: like since the mother is encouraging the young, like when
Speaker 1: they don't have enough to eat and they're like, oh
Speaker 1: well you can eat me, your mom. They don't need
Speaker 1: each other and they don't compete with each other. So
Speaker 1: they think that this allowed for more fraternally social pseudo
Speaker 1: scorpions to have survived and evolved. So yeah, So like,
Speaker 1: if you want your kids to get along, let them
Speaker 1: meet you. Pipe down in there, stop fighting. You can
Speaker 1: both have some mom. Soe get your straw and put
Speaker 1: in my kneecap, have a few SIPs of that each
Speaker 1: other alone. There's a similar case with black lace weaver
Speaker 1: spiders where they will eat their own mom and then
Speaker 1: they'll dance together. So black lace weaver spiders will have
Speaker 1: over a hundred young. So first step is they lay
Speaker 1: trophic eggs. Trophic eggs are unfertilized eggs that are just
Speaker 1: there for eating eating. And so once the babies eat
Speaker 1: all of these eggs, then the spider will actually guide
Speaker 1: them under her and kind of press down on them
Speaker 1: to kind of encourage them to eat her, which yeah,
Speaker 1: and so they do. And then once they've eaten some
Speaker 1: good mom, they go onto the web and start the internet.
Speaker 1: Um no, it's a physical web, I thought. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: you see how modern technology it's ruined nature. The mother
Speaker 1: ea their mother dead? Yeah, yeah, they kill her, they
Speaker 1: eat her, and she's all right with it. And how
Speaker 1: much are we talking of the body is gone just
Speaker 1: enough that it's mortally wounded basically, well, no, probably like
Speaker 1: they eat most of the fluids, like the which is
Speaker 1: sort of like it's probably not gonna eat the outer
Speaker 1: the exo skeleton because that's tough and not patricious. But
Speaker 1: the bits, they'll eat all of that arrow if you
Speaker 1: the mom marrow. And then so they eat the mom
Speaker 1: and then they go onto the spiders webs, yes, and
Speaker 1: then they dance. So they have the synchronized thing where
Speaker 1: they're all contracting their bodies like together and sync and
Speaker 1: it makes the web vibrate. And the thought is that
Speaker 1: this is now that they're suddenly orphaned by strange chance.
Speaker 1: They have to protect themselves. So if they if they
Speaker 1: moved together, um and like dance together, they're vibrating the
Speaker 1: web as if a much larger spider is on there,
Speaker 1: so like it wards off predators. So they think like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a someone's home. Yeah, someone's home, like at home
Speaker 1: alone where Kevin has a little Michael Jordan's on the train,
Speaker 1: or the latable clowns, Uncle's in the shower, or weaken
Speaker 1: to Bernie's or two men try and pretend a dead
Speaker 1: bodies life. See I'm thank you. I'm having to put
Speaker 1: it in scientific terms for me to understand, thank you,
Speaker 1: the science of home alone. And again, like the pseudoscorpion,
Speaker 1: they actually form social groups and they hunt together. So
Speaker 1: that's a heartwarming thought of like these little mother eating
Speaker 1: babies just all in one group, hunting together, dancing, right,
Speaker 1: there's something so yeah, is there a video of this dancing?
Speaker 1: Do they call dancing the science? Just? Yeah? I mean
Speaker 1: some of them do they it's not technically a dance,
Speaker 1: but like it. They're not going to start lasting or
Speaker 1: doing the Millie rock lets. You think they're so smart.
Speaker 1: It's like you guysn't even know why you're doing it.
Speaker 1: It's been millions of years and you're just figuring out now. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I know there's a question that's burning in everyone's mind.
Speaker 1: Do babies ever eat each other? You want to answer
Speaker 1: that because I know the answer. Yeah they do. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm joking. Uh wait, do babies eat each other like
Speaker 1: of their own like their own kin? Or do they
Speaker 1: just are babies wild and out and they go like, yeo,
Speaker 1: let's go eat some other babies like their own kin.
Speaker 1: I mean, nature so fucked up. The answer has to
Speaker 1: be yes. You're learning. This is a learning podcast. And
Speaker 1: I know, I know phenotypes. Have you heard of, Like
Speaker 1: there's this medical urban legend where like you have twins
Speaker 1: and then one twin eats the other twins. Yes, like
Speaker 1: Dwight shrewd and he said the exact same thing, yes,
Speaker 1: and that's why he doesn't not only has the strength
Speaker 1: of a man, but a man and a little twin. Yeah. Um. So,
Speaker 1: like the legend goes like, you get an ultrasound, there's
Speaker 1: like twins, yeah, and then you get another ultras dound
Speaker 1: and there's suspiciously only one twin remaining. So like the
Speaker 1: conclusion drawn is like, oh my twin eight the other
Speaker 1: twins so that they can grow into a strong shoot
Speaker 1: double by double by child the double boy. So this
Speaker 1: math is actually false. Mostly I like that idea, though
Speaker 1: this is an actual medical issue called vanishing twin syndrome.
Speaker 1: It's a miscarriage in which one of the fetuses. See
Speaker 1: every time, I'm like, oh, I like that, and then
Speaker 1: it ends up being some form of a miscarriage. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm sorry that it's a syndrome in which, okay,
Speaker 1: there's you start off with two, right, So, like miscarriages
Speaker 1: happened pretty often and naturally so like one of the
Speaker 1: fetuses will die and then, like we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: what happens is it gets reabsorbed back into the wombs. Right,
Speaker 1: the other twin is innocent. It didn't eat the twin.
Speaker 1: It just is like just hanging out. Tell that to
Speaker 1: the same doctor. It was like a fairy took your kid.
Speaker 1: Also that kid the twin, so you may want to
Speaker 1: ask him some questions. Those fairies levey babies. Anyways, here's
Speaker 1: twenty more leeches and we're gonna bleed you. So, but
Speaker 1: there is this really rare condition in which again we're
Speaker 1: going back to sort of the stone baby horror, but
Speaker 1: like the dead fetus becomes mummified, and it's called fetis
Speaker 1: pepraceus fetis pepracius, which translates to paper fetus um. Because
Speaker 1: what happens is like the live twin kind of smooshes
Speaker 1: the dead fetus and then it gets wedged between the
Speaker 1: uterine wall and the live fetus and it becomes like,
Speaker 1: you know, like flower pressing but horrible, you know, like
Speaker 1: flower pressing but fetus, but a fetus and it's terrible.
Speaker 1: So and that's paper fetus mummified. Yes, So basically fetal
Speaker 1: cannibalism in humans is a myth, but like you guessed,
Speaker 1: it's not a myth for non humans. So let's go
Speaker 1: inside a shark womb. Miles. Of course I don't trust sharks.
Speaker 1: Well you shouldn't, because shark wombs are like an embryonic
Speaker 1: thunder dome. Yes, go on, which is a great band name.
Speaker 1: Don't take it, actually take it, take it, take it.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a really dark like metal We will
Speaker 1: eat you in the world. Nice. The pregnant san shark
Speaker 1: can be carrying several baby sharks at once, but typically
Speaker 1: only one will emerge victorious. The biggest and strongest fetus
Speaker 1: will eat its unborn wound mates. So why would it
Speaker 1: do this? Does it just like hated siblings? Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it really hungry? Insecure? Insecure? So marine biologists are
Speaker 1: really interested in this, and they've done research and have
Speaker 1: found that female San tiger sharks can carry babies from
Speaker 1: multiple fathers at once. So when and an embryonic shark
Speaker 1: eats its fellow embryos, it's both cutting down on sibling competition,
Speaker 1: but also because they have different fathers, it's making sure
Speaker 1: it's paternal. DNA is triumphant over its half siblings. So
Speaker 1: it's toxic masculinity played out in the womb and you're
Speaker 1: murking your half. The shark rearchy, shark rearchy thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: toxic shark city. You know, it's just a problem in
Speaker 1: our sark city. Yes, okay, Like can you imagine, like
Speaker 1: like you're in a car trip and the kids in
Speaker 1: back are like filing eye. He's on my side like loud,
Speaker 1: and like suddenly gets like really quiet, and you look
Speaker 1: back and there's just like one really fat Yeah, just
Speaker 1: like now we're good back here, We're fine. Everything worked out. Wow.
Speaker 1: The idea of the paternal DNA having to be dominant
Speaker 1: or at the very least have that genetic line go on.
Speaker 1: That is so wild to me that it can play
Speaker 1: out in the womb. Yes, yes, that, like their reproductive
Speaker 1: system is wild. Yeah. Have you ever seen like a
Speaker 1: So some sharks are live bearing, and then some sharks
Speaker 1: have like these like egg pods and like you hold
Speaker 1: it up to a light and you can see a
Speaker 1: little shark embryo like inside moving around. It's like it's external, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's carried on the mother. No, No, this is
Speaker 1: a difference. So there's some live bearing sharks, and some
Speaker 1: of them like lay these like these pods that got
Speaker 1: you like an alien? Yeah, exactly, like an alien or
Speaker 1: those shark pods called I forgot hide pods. Nice. God,
Speaker 1: that's great. So we're going to leave some wound for
Speaker 1: a quick method, get it because because of sharks eating
Speaker 1: each other in the room right, and room yes and
Speaker 1: room yes. So there's another horror trope that I think
Speaker 1: reflects a deep primal fear, which is the evil mother,
Speaker 1: like the Bible thumping mother and carry the spider mom
Speaker 1: and coraline mother goffl and tangled h my mom um.
Speaker 1: But seriously, oh no, does she suck the life horse
Speaker 1: out of your hair? Basically? I mean I'm bald in
Speaker 1: a way, yes, And I blame her, So go on,
Speaker 1: I like this section. Now, Now everyone who has baldness
Speaker 1: knows who to like blame my mother. Yeah, your mother
Speaker 1: says specifically, she's been sucking all of the hair force.
Speaker 1: She one time said, she goes, it looks like your
Speaker 1: hair is dying. Mother, You know what I mean. I
Speaker 1: looked at her, I said, I'm your kids, just so
Speaker 1: you technically, technically hair is already dead. It's the hair
Speaker 1: follicle thank you, Katie, that's welcome. You know what, can
Speaker 1: I take a second to call my mother and well,
Speaker 1: guess what jokes on you? My hair was been dead.
Speaker 1: Stick that in your mom's pipe and have her smoke it.
Speaker 1: So one of my favorite evil mothers is spoilers for
Speaker 1: the show Sharp Objects. So if you haven't seen spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, yank out your headphones, throw your phone and
Speaker 1: the toilet, run away and watch the show. Binge it
Speaker 1: and I'll see you back. And then you realize it's
Speaker 1: the little sister the whole time. And those teeth were
Speaker 1: actually people's teeth on the floor anyway in the door
Speaker 1: at this point. If they didn't turn away, that's on them.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm saying you gave ample spoiler alert
Speaker 1: warning right aggressively to the end of the all complaints
Speaker 1: to God. I blame the bird man. I'm sorry, going
Speaker 1: on right. So, the protagonist mother is very disturbing her
Speaker 1: favoritism coldness towards Um, the main character, and again spoilers, spoilers, spoilers,
Speaker 1: spoilers go away. The mother feeds her own children rat
Speaker 1: poison so she can like take care of them. She
Speaker 1: has like this bottle of quote unquote medicine that's full
Speaker 1: of poison that she like lovingly makes and she feeds
Speaker 1: it to them. She's like, oh, sweetie, you know, just
Speaker 1: stay in bed, and she takes care of them and
Speaker 1: pulls the sheets over and like all this stuff and um.
Speaker 1: As the show points out, this is a condition called
Speaker 1: Munchhausen by proxy, and this is a real disorder. So
Speaker 1: Munchhausen is when you pretend to be sick yourself and
Speaker 1: it's not for any financial gain or getting out of work.
Speaker 1: That's just called lingering and you're just an asshole. Uh,
Speaker 1: munch Housen is you want the attention. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like that guy who was pretending to be a kid.
Speaker 1: He wanted to love an attention. So like with Munchausen,
Speaker 1: you're pretending to be sick so you can get attention
Speaker 1: onto yourself. But if it's lingering, what's the way. What's
Speaker 1: the lingering? Is you want financial gain or right? Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not for attention, it's just for pure utter. It's
Speaker 1: just I don't want to go to school. I don't
Speaker 1: want to go to what we also call that, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you're on a murder trial and you're trying
Speaker 1: to act like you're insane and you're faking it. They
Speaker 1: call them lingering to yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's true crime.
Speaker 1: Lingle it's to try, it's to get an actual tangible reward. Munchausen.
Speaker 1: By proxy is when you use a child you're typically
Speaker 1: it's a mother using her own child and poisoning them
Speaker 1: or pretending they're sick in order for you as the parent,
Speaker 1: to get attention, because like, like we often are kind
Speaker 1: to the parents of sick children because they're going through
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble, and that's a good thing. But
Speaker 1: in this case, it's this perversion of other people's kindness
Speaker 1: where it's like you are making your child sick so
Speaker 1: that you get this attention in this like feeling like
Speaker 1: this good hair takes by proxy. First when you use biproxy,
Speaker 1: yes you're the child, and they're like, that is exactly.
Speaker 1: I feel like Sharper objects used that as inspiration because
Speaker 1: that yet that is really dark. So that so what
Speaker 1: Miles is talking about is there was this woman, Dee
Speaker 1: de Blanchard, who she forced her child to live as
Speaker 1: if she was disabled and um like in a wheelchair,
Speaker 1: shaving her head, um, wearing these big glasses and like
Speaker 1: she didn't allow her to sort of speak as if
Speaker 1: she were like normally. She made her act like she
Speaker 1: was kind of mentally disabled as well. She also like
Speaker 1: tricked doctors into having her undergo all these unnecessary medical procedures,
Speaker 1: so like they even removed her salivary glands because she
Speaker 1: would put like this numbing like origel or some other
Speaker 1: like gum numbing things, so she would drool during her
Speaker 1: doctor's visits, so they removed the glance to what I know,
Speaker 1: it's so upsetting because it's like it's just like making
Speaker 1: her go through all of this. It's it's abuse. It's
Speaker 1: child abuse. Yeah, it's like physical and emotional abuse. And
Speaker 1: in this case and in that documentary, um, the daughter
Speaker 1: actually plots and successfully plots to have the mother killed,
Speaker 1: which I mean, it's just the whole thing is awful.
Speaker 1: But when you look at it from the perspective of
Speaker 1: she's been abused all this time, it's completely like of
Speaker 1: course she's gonna snap. And she was like meant to
Speaker 1: forego years of her child pretend to be someone she wasn't.
Speaker 1: Wasn't she like even pretending to be like a few
Speaker 1: years younger than because she was actually she was still
Speaker 1: being forced to play this role into her early twenties,
Speaker 1: and like her mother was both forcing her to pretend
Speaker 1: like she's younger and then also like act as if
Speaker 1: she's mentally behind really young. So I feel like this
Speaker 1: is like it's so similar to like the story and
Speaker 1: Sharp Objects. What I thought was interesting in Sharp Objects
Speaker 1: was like they had all this stuff where there's a
Speaker 1: lot of this like imagery of the mother like eating
Speaker 1: her daughter, because like remember when she was talking about
Speaker 1: Camie and me like, oh, she's like a ripe cherry,
Speaker 1: and his sister was talking about like oh, I could
Speaker 1: just eat you up, um. And there's like drinking the
Speaker 1: milk which is like poisoned, and just like this is
Speaker 1: kind of a theme in mythology and storytelling, this idea
Speaker 1: of like parents, especially mothers eating children, like the Witch
Speaker 1: and Hansel and Gretel. And there's that great painting by
Speaker 1: Goya where it's Saturn eating his son great as in horrifying,
Speaker 1: where it's like the guy with a beard and he's
Speaker 1: like hunched over this like this adult man and like
Speaker 1: it is eating the arms off of it. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll put that up on the website, so you guys
Speaker 1: can have more nightmare fuel, just share the nightmares. So,
Speaker 1: in nature, this is called phil real cannibalism, meaning like
Speaker 1: you're eating your own children, and it's a lot more
Speaker 1: common than you might think. Cats, rodents, insects, other animals
Speaker 1: will occasionally nibble on their children. Cats sometimes, I mean,
Speaker 1: are you really that surprised at those assholes? No, because
Speaker 1: I know like people like sometimes elderly people die with
Speaker 1: a bunch of cats will eat their face off. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's true, right, yeah, okay, good, sometimes eat you too.
Speaker 1: This has come up on our podcast before. This is
Speaker 1: a and then they're like, yeah, with the dogs, I
Speaker 1: feel like it's more in this than the dogs trying
Speaker 1: to like wake you up. And then they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're actually kind of tasty. And so fish are a
Speaker 1: big offender in terms of eating children. So parents will
Speaker 1: often eat their own babies and they're called fries, which
Speaker 1: maybe explains why really, yeah, they're called baby fish are
Speaker 1: called fries? Really, huh okay, so something so that maybe
Speaker 1: you know, like the parents are confusing, like I guess
Speaker 1: I eat fries. I don't know. To try and just
Speaker 1: have one, just one, try to have one baby you
Speaker 1: can't have, you can't start, you get going pretty soon
Speaker 1: the whole carton's handfuls of babies. UM. So that seems
Speaker 1: kind of counterintuitive because like you would think like the
Speaker 1: genes for parents that eat their own babies would die
Speaker 1: out because there's no more babies. But it's it's more
Speaker 1: complicated than that. So eating your own fish babies can
Speaker 1: actually increase your reproductive success in some cases. So, like
Speaker 1: what researchers have found is that they eat the ones
Speaker 1: that are slower to develop. And what that does is
Speaker 1: in fish where they have parental care, like they're trying
Speaker 1: to make sure they're their fries don't get eaten by
Speaker 1: other fish. If they if they don't eat my fries, okay,
Speaker 1: if they eat the small, weak, soggy fries, I like
Speaker 1: soggy fries to be honest, Well they do eat them,
Speaker 1: I would fit in the fish. I mean they're all
Speaker 1: soggy fries because their fish. UM. So when they eat
Speaker 1: the slow to develop ones, what they're doing is they
Speaker 1: make it so that the ones that are most likely
Speaker 1: to survive. They're putting all of their parental care into
Speaker 1: the most fit, the fastest developing, most likely to reach
Speaker 1: adulthood babies and then they they're sort of like getting
Speaker 1: rid of some of the babies that would maybe take
Speaker 1: away their attention from the the winner babies. And then
Speaker 1: they also get a free snack, so some nutritional advantage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just you know, they only want the cream of
Speaker 1: the crop, right, Yeah, separating the curds in the way.
Speaker 1: So it's like then they have more time to get
Speaker 1: back to spawning. Right, So it's just merely it's like
Speaker 1: a time saving things like, look, I got too many
Speaker 1: kids slow ones because they might not become NBA and
Speaker 1: it would take care of me. So I need to
Speaker 1: keep going so I could have more kids that might
Speaker 1: be the next broun fish, right right, like B plus,
Speaker 1: I guess you you survived this time. But if it's
Speaker 1: a B minus, yeah, that sounds like a great way
Speaker 1: to raise your children. Just threatened to eat them. I
Speaker 1: was nearly raised like that. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: gotta achieve, gotta achieve, you know what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was never under the fear of being consumed, right right,
Speaker 1: it would just be like I wouldn't get electricity or
Speaker 1: yeah no, but it's cool. You can do a lot
Speaker 1: with candle light. Yeah yeah, yeah, plotting your revenge, yeah,
Speaker 1: just on your on your scroll with your So what
Speaker 1: about eating like your whole family, the whole family meal
Speaker 1: of fries. Get it. So we're moving on to land
Speaker 1: the long tailed skink, which is it's just a type
Speaker 1: of lizard, right, Yeah, I think I've don't people have
Speaker 1: skinks like in the terrariums. I think I had a
Speaker 1: roommate who had one. Yeah, I had a crust did
Speaker 1: geck once. Yeah. So when the long tailed skink encounters
Speaker 1: intruding eggs eating snakes, they reach this point of exasperation
Speaker 1: where they're just like, fine, I'll eat my eggs like
Speaker 1: you want to eat my eggs, I'll eat them like that.
Speaker 1: So they are risking losing their eggs to this predator,
Speaker 1: and if it's really persistent, like it keeps coming back,
Speaker 1: like they're like they're like screw it, Like I'll eat them,
Speaker 1: get that nutrition and then try again with a new
Speaker 1: clutch of eggs. Um And like pregnant skinks do this
Speaker 1: the most because they're like I can just give birth
Speaker 1: in like a week. I got more in the chamber, right,
Speaker 1: I got more cooking, So like I'll eat these and
Speaker 1: they're just doing it because they don't want there. Like,
Speaker 1: if anybody's eating my eggs, it's gonna be gonna it's mate.
Speaker 1: It's like when you're like as a kid and like
Speaker 1: your siblings trying to eat your candy, and you're just like,
Speaker 1: I'll eat it all. I'll get really sick, like probably
Speaker 1: throw up chocolate everywhere, but by god, it's my candy
Speaker 1: and I'll eat it. I'm glad evolution has awarded that baseline. Yes,
Speaker 1: but you know you can't always judge a mom cannibal
Speaker 1: by its cover. So there's a tropical fish called the
Speaker 1: big mouth hap which is really rude of science to
Speaker 1: call it that, Like it's just trying to speak its mine,
Speaker 1: and you're calling it a big mouth? Is it? What
Speaker 1: is the mouth in fact big? Yes? It is the
Speaker 1: mouth is in fact big. What would you what's a
Speaker 1: more sensitive way to name the fish since you're so
Speaker 1: insensed by this anatomically large mouth? Tap? Okay. So it
Speaker 1: has a parenting style where it's a caretaker. So it
Speaker 1: has a whole mess of fish babies, um, and it's
Speaker 1: constantly like wrangling them trying to prevent them from getting eaten,
Speaker 1: or like finding me mode and like like when you
Speaker 1: watch a video of it, sometimes she seems to just
Speaker 1: like lose her cool and she opens up her mouth
Speaker 1: and sucks all her babies in. But don't panic, she's
Speaker 1: just keeping them safe inside her mouth. When she sends
Speaker 1: as a predator is nearby, whoa, that is wild. It
Speaker 1: looks like it's eating the children. I'm watching a video
Speaker 1: of this. Thank you to the BBC. Yeah, we'll put
Speaker 1: all this stuff up on our website, Creature feature pod
Speaker 1: dot com. You can see all the cool cool stuff
Speaker 1: on there. Yeah, don't just take my groans in it
Speaker 1: just it vacuums them up. It's really cool. And that's
Speaker 1: to be like that's like the panic room. So yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah children, Yeah, there's like the uvula just like lights
Speaker 1: up like a like one of those red lights and
Speaker 1: go like it haven't we proved I'm no nothing about sets.
Speaker 1: Somebody you're thinking, they're actually tweeting their kids and they're
Speaker 1: doing internet dances. Okay, so don't do that. So they
Speaker 1: like hang out in mom's cool fun mouth for a
Speaker 1: little while and then she spits them back out when
Speaker 1: it's safe. We've come up with that Mom's cool fun
Speaker 1: mouth sounds like a bar opening an echo parks cool
Speaker 1: fun mouth. Have you been a mom's school fun mouth?
Speaker 1: Get your get your mom poppers? They have like an
Speaker 1: O G Mortal Kombat mixture in there. It's cool anyway,
Speaker 1: I think embryonic thunderdomes playing. So there's an even crazier
Speaker 1: example of this childcare strategy, and it's called the gastric
Speaker 1: brooding frog, which it sounds like a frog that's like
Speaker 1: got irritable balance, like nobody understands me everything. Uh So,
Speaker 1: Actually it is called this because it keeps its eggs
Speaker 1: and its stomach. They develop and she gives birth out
Speaker 1: of her mouth like regurgitates, yes, yes, throws up a
Speaker 1: live baby. That's the scientific term. Yes, correct, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: making sure I'm saying everything according to the standards of
Speaker 1: the world. Cold stars all around. So it's a way
Speaker 1: to keep her eggs safe and like this kind of
Speaker 1: like olutionary scenic root towards live bearing because it's like
Speaker 1: it has eggs, it swallows the eggs, eggs hatch in
Speaker 1: her stomach and then she throws up babies. And those
Speaker 1: are like the little tadpoles basically just they're fully developed
Speaker 1: little frogs, So they've passed tadpole phase. That isn't a
Speaker 1: frog starts a tadpool? Yes, okay, I'm just again. Now
Speaker 1: you're correct. So all those periods of gestation happened inside
Speaker 1: the stomach, and so you might ask why don't they
Speaker 1: get digested? Um, the eggs are covered in this substance
Speaker 1: called prostaglandin. So it's a chemical that signals to the
Speaker 1: mom's stomach to stop producing gastric acid. And I should
Speaker 1: probably put all of this in past tense because unfortunately
Speaker 1: the gastric brooding frogs are extinct, which I know it
Speaker 1: really that's a low bloke, right, bringing up opening up
Speaker 1: what it really sucks, because like for people like me
Speaker 1: with like sensitive stomachs, it would be cool if they
Speaker 1: could research like this prostagland and and like how it
Speaker 1: stomach somehow making this tragic extinction about your about me,
Speaker 1: how quickly the world over everything. I want to swallow
Speaker 1: some frogs and have it here in my stomach. It
Speaker 1: sounds like they're just covered in like toms, like it's
Speaker 1: just neutralizing, or it's not that it's neutralizing, it's sending
Speaker 1: a signal to the body that's saying no more acid
Speaker 1: produced less acid. Also, I mean they are just like
Speaker 1: really cool. Like there's this great picture of the one
Speaker 1: of the gastric brooding frogs. It's a little tiny baby
Speaker 1: frog right in its mouth. See little little baby frog
Speaker 1: looks like a Russian nesting at all where it's like,
Speaker 1: oh inside, it's another little frog. How far do the
Speaker 1: frog It's frogs all the way down right, So I
Speaker 1: don't want to end the podcast on such a sad note. Wait,
Speaker 1: so how long ago did they go extinct? Just like
Speaker 1: a few decades ago? Okay, well, then our grandparents are
Speaker 1: the only ones who are like, hey, hey, show some respect,
Speaker 1: show respect for brooding frog frog elders. But here's some hope.
Speaker 1: So scientists are hoping that they can clone the frogs
Speaker 1: to bring them back from extinction. Thank fucking god. I know,
Speaker 1: park up in here, Jurassic Park us up some baby
Speaker 1: vomiting frogs at the very least, just for your sensitive something.
Speaker 1: I want to eat baby frogs and be cured. I know.
Speaker 1: But I'm pretty sure your doctor told you that was
Speaker 1: sort of the cause of your stomach, and she's ready
Speaker 1: to say you're just eating fro frog babies and it's
Speaker 1: also the cause of the extinction of the frogs. I
Speaker 1: was eating all their babies. Yeah, I believe I've seen
Speaker 1: your photo up at the l A Zoo. It's like,
Speaker 1: don't let this fucking maniac game, especially near the frog
Speaker 1: She'll break in and eat all of your frogs, like
Speaker 1: like they have that little corkboard of like frequent offenders.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's like a frog leg sticking out
Speaker 1: of my mouth. And you're like, have because I'm freend Wow.
Speaker 1: Way to kick the French other down, true American patriot. Well,
Speaker 1: if they're going to pretend to be children, they deserve it. Yeah, hey,
Speaker 1: why not so much? Have you got anything to plug? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: what don't I you know, I'm doing a benefit for
Speaker 1: gastric brooding frogs this week at the Embryonic thunder Dome
Speaker 1: right next to Mom's fun mouth. No you don't. Come
Speaker 1: listen in on the Daily Zeitgeist that I hope you've
Speaker 1: heard of it. Yeah, with Jacques O'Brien, who you may
Speaker 1: or may not know. I think Jacques uh and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: come see us over there. We talk every day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you've been on the show. We had a
Speaker 1: great time and you we talk news and politics and
Speaker 1: culture and it's just an easy way to like stay
Speaker 1: to digest. Yeah, keep up with the times without getting
Speaker 1: fully you know, have your hair on fire and feel
Speaker 1: down about the world because we're trying to us about Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you know, you can follow me on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Miles of Gray. So that's it. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a humble man, simple man. I don't have much
Speaker 1: else to quote. And you can follow me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Katie Golden gu l B I am uh and
Speaker 1: also at proverb Rides, which is that that's the that's
Speaker 1: where you get the good stuff. You can check us
Speaker 1: out on our website feature feature pod dot com and
Speaker 1: our Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and come back next week.
Speaker 1: Yeah please come back, No come back. You get you
Speaker 1: get your preaking butts, set your butts down from