Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to Creature feature, the show where we
Speaker 1: dive into the brains of humans and animals and discover
Speaker 1: that even though we may seem different on the inside,
Speaker 1: we're just a bunch of pink goo. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology. And did
Speaker 1: you know that if you say my last name really fast,
Speaker 1: it sounds like gullible? No, it doesn't, that's a trick. Yes,
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about getting bamboozled, pulling Shenanigan's, having the
Speaker 1: wool pulled over your eyes, getting can by caterpillars, and
Speaker 1: hoaxed by horses. So first we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: sexy scams. Pandas are notoriously bad at sex. Male pandas
Speaker 1: are terrible at knowing when a female is in the
Speaker 1: mood for sex, and even if they do happen to
Speaker 1: make it to third base, they have no idea what
Speaker 1: to do next. And the wild females have their pick
Speaker 1: of the litter. They can select a mate from a
Speaker 1: group of males, but in captivity there's limited options, so
Speaker 1: mating is often awkward and unsuccessful. Animal caretakes are taking
Speaker 1: a novel approach their bamboos. Holding these pandas into getting
Speaker 1: good at sex. The Shingdo Panda Breeding and Research Center
Speaker 1: in Sichuan, China tricks mail pandas into doing sexercize, getting
Speaker 1: up on their hind legs and working out their pelvic
Speaker 1: muscles by holding an apple just out of reach. Apple
Speaker 1: hungry pandas don't realize that as they wobble on their
Speaker 1: hind legs trying to get a bite of that sweet fruit,
Speaker 1: they're really working out their hips to be better at
Speaker 1: making them moves on an email. This is one of
Speaker 1: the very few of only examples of one species tricking
Speaker 1: another species into being better at mating. And it's probably
Speaker 1: because we humans are a bunch of weirdos. But when
Speaker 1: you explore the animal kingdom, you'll find a great deal
Speaker 1: of sexual bamboozles. Amongst these perverted connartist creatures. Joining me
Speaker 1: today is actress, comedian Daily Zeygeister and host of the
Speaker 1: show Scam Goddess Lacey Mosley. Hey, welcome, Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. Of course, uh, I'll of that these pandas
Speaker 1: all they wanted was an apple, and they got tricked
Speaker 1: into being really great at grinding. If only we could
Speaker 1: do this for real mint, I know, I know, just
Speaker 1: like dangle Talco just out of right, and they're like
Speaker 1: trying to get a taco like the football, Like you
Speaker 1: can watch football, but it has to be up this
Speaker 1: high and you have to stand here eat this popsicle
Speaker 1: wide not reason, Oh my goodness. But that's also so
Speaker 1: it's just making them better at thrusting. How do they
Speaker 1: get them to like engage with the females. Isn't that
Speaker 1: the problem that they don't even know when they're like horning?
Speaker 1: It's a good question. I feel like it's to make
Speaker 1: it so that when they do happen to under the
Speaker 1: female is literally saying like come get this vagina please,
Speaker 1: and the males are like okay, then they kind of
Speaker 1: know what to do because otherwise they're just not in
Speaker 1: the habit of using their pelvis. I guess, so they
Speaker 1: would just like land on top of them like is
Speaker 1: it happening? We're doing it right, you're fueling it? Is
Speaker 1: this good for you? Oh? Pandas so I want to
Speaker 1: take you on a trip to Deception Island, which is
Speaker 1: a real plaice okay island I would like to go to. Yes,
Speaker 1: So it's named Deception island because it looks like a
Speaker 1: normal island, but it's actually a caldera, which is a
Speaker 1: ring around an active volcano. So it's like looks like
Speaker 1: solid land, but then if you get in, it's just
Speaker 1: this ring of islands and then ocean. So is it
Speaker 1: like when those volcanoes like robbed and then they make
Speaker 1: those ocean islands. It's like one of those islands. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like nothing on those. Well, this one actually has
Speaker 1: things on it, and it's got kind of funny and
Speaker 1: in silly history, so various countries have tried to declare
Speaker 1: it belongs to them. So in UM two and argentinean
Speaker 1: exploratory party came to Deception Island and they just left
Speaker 1: signs and painted flags marking the territory as being Argentinia.
Speaker 1: I mean that's normally how it used to work that way.
Speaker 1: I mean that's what we did on the Moon, right right,
Speaker 1: we went to the Moon. I mean that's true. When
Speaker 1: we pretended to go to the Moon, we just put
Speaker 1: a flag there and we're like, I guess it's American USA. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we put the flag here. I mean that's a north
Speaker 1: Like that's really like back in the day, I truly
Speaker 1: don't know how anyone owns land. Land owning is a scam,
Speaker 1: and it still is a scam. It was like whoever
Speaker 1: got there first, or like whoever killed everyone? Like that's
Speaker 1: how you got it? Well? Like I did you just
Speaker 1: hear the thing where Trump was talking about how he
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to buy Greenland. No, he said so
Speaker 1: many crazy things a day. I can't keep up he does.
Speaker 1: But it was one of those things where I'm like, wait,
Speaker 1: how do you buy a country? And then I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: how do people get countries in the first place other
Speaker 1: than just like war? And like it was like enough
Speaker 1: people got together, like we're going to decide that this
Speaker 1: is I mean, that's what happened to America. America had
Speaker 1: people on it at Native Americans, and then Chris Columbus
Speaker 1: came and stuck a flag down. Look I discovered it, dude, No,
Speaker 1: I discovered over here? What about us? Hear? No, No,
Speaker 1: don't see anything. I don't hear anything. This is my land. Now,
Speaker 1: that's giving happened. Oh gosh, that the story we get.
Speaker 1: So a year later after the Argentinian ship like just
Speaker 1: put some flags in. They're like it's ours now, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: a British ship, being extremely petty in British returned and
Speaker 1: just like removed the signs and the flags and they're like, nope,
Speaker 1: it's British again. So they owned it in the first place.
Speaker 1: I mean no, I don't think anyone really owned it.
Speaker 1: I think it's under some kind of like shared Antarctic
Speaker 1: territory treaty um. And then in the nineteen sixties the
Speaker 1: volcano became active again and it destroyed British and Chilean
Speaker 1: scientific stations. So they gave up on like trying to
Speaker 1: decide who owned it because it's like, oh, it's full
Speaker 1: of lava. No, no, you can have it Argentina right
Speaker 1: now away. You can have a great Britain like the
Speaker 1: keep an taxes on it. That right, Argentina got a
Speaker 1: good deal out of that. Then. Well, the best part
Speaker 1: about Deception Island is it's home to chin strap penguins,
Speaker 1: which are cute little penguins who they themselves are little
Speaker 1: deceivers living on Deception Island? Is it? Okay? So it's
Speaker 1: well they're penguins. Wait, so it's cold there, So it's
Speaker 1: an act of Atarctica got it or near an Antarctic
Speaker 1: So the chin strap penguins and penguins in general have
Speaker 1: what's called counter shading. So you may wonder, like why
Speaker 1: would you be where those little tuxedos if you want
Speaker 1: to like blend in and be noticed. But by being
Speaker 1: darker on the top and lighter on the bottom, they
Speaker 1: actually appear flat in one dimensional from the top and
Speaker 1: from the bottom. So like if they're swimming and the
Speaker 1: leopard seals or whatever it's hunting them, you know they
Speaker 1: will appear just flat. So if I want to avoid
Speaker 1: like shark attacks, like I should swim in a tuxedo. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is uh, that is true. Everyone in Florida should
Speaker 1: be on the beach in a tuxed should wear you
Speaker 1: should wear it like a but like a texedo wetsuit.
Speaker 1: So like they have Bond, Yeah, doesn't James. Isn't that
Speaker 1: what James Bond does? He like has a tuxedo under
Speaker 1: his wetsuit right like he like swims ashore and his
Speaker 1: wet suiting takes it off. It's just a Texian. Am
Speaker 1: I imagining that? Or was that? Or was that in
Speaker 1: like Austin Powers and I just feel like it. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I truly don't know. That's a good question.
Speaker 1: It's it's a funny concept though, like I guess, so
Speaker 1: if you seem flat, then animals are like, I don't
Speaker 1: want that because it's flat. Like because so normal three
Speaker 1: dimensional object, like when you have a sphere, it's like
Speaker 1: it's you see the highlight on the top because the
Speaker 1: sun is hitting it, and then it's shaded towards the bottom.
Speaker 1: So then that's how you can tell, like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is a three dimensional object. This is a ball. And
Speaker 1: then like if you're an animal approaching from above or
Speaker 1: blow especially in water, it's like, okay, this is an
Speaker 1: object that is three dimensional, and therefore I can put
Speaker 1: it in my mouth. So like if it's flat and
Speaker 1: if you just see like an advertisement for the Hamburger,
Speaker 1: you don't try, well, most people don't. I sometimes give
Speaker 1: it a lick, just in case, just in case that
Speaker 1: they've like Willy Wonka asked, yeah, scratch and wait, did
Speaker 1: they have scratching licks? I didn't know that. I don't
Speaker 1: think they scratching. We were licking. We were like with
Speaker 1: those markers where it was sniff but it was a
Speaker 1: little bit like grapes. Never tasted like grapes, but it
Speaker 1: felt like grapes too after a while, like, yeah, I've
Speaker 1: just sniffing it long enough. Everything everything feels like grapes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So here's another fun instance of this time. The chin
Speaker 1: strap penguins were the were the Bamboozled Party. So in
Speaker 1: two thousand four, Roy and Silo, two male chin strap
Speaker 1: penguins at the Central Park Zoo. Um. They were famous
Speaker 1: for being a couple and they were both males, so
Speaker 1: they couldn't conceive naturally, so they adopted a rock thinking
Speaker 1: that it was an egg. So they kept trying to
Speaker 1: hatch it, like sat on the rock and they were
Speaker 1: totally fooled by this. So sweet and so sad. I
Speaker 1: know the penguin community won't let the gay penguin, why
Speaker 1: can't they adopt another person's egg. Well, the zoo keepers
Speaker 1: actually ended up replacing the rock with a fertile egg,
Speaker 1: and the couple hatched it and raised the chick. Ah.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. See see why can't people be really like?
Speaker 1: This was in two thousand and four too, So it's
Speaker 1: like I feel like the zookeepers were better at being
Speaker 1: nice to the penguin than like penguins got more rights
Speaker 1: than gay people. Oh that is unfortunate um. And then
Speaker 1: one more little bamboosle that these chin strap penguins like
Speaker 1: to do. And we've actually talked about this a bit
Speaker 1: on the show about the Adelaide penguins who also do this.
Speaker 1: So they create their nests out of pebbles because, like
Speaker 1: I don't know, in Antarctic or on this on Deception Island,
Speaker 1: there's not much to work with volcanic you're going to
Speaker 1: be sleeping on rocks. So they will steal pebbles from
Speaker 1: each other while they're not looking to make their nests better.
Speaker 1: And we actually I think we talked about this on
Speaker 1: the first or second episode, but this is a kind
Speaker 1: of new update where researchers have found that while both
Speaker 1: males and females will make nests and they'll both steal
Speaker 1: from each other, in these chin strap populations, the males
Speaker 1: are bigger assholes. I mean. But so males are more
Speaker 1: active in stealing stones, they're more aggressive when defending their nests,
Speaker 1: and they use larger stones because they're probably compensating, right,
Speaker 1: you see a large stone penguin, you're not working with anything,
Speaker 1: compensating for a bad career. Uh. And then females are
Speaker 1: more likely to have their rocks stolen. So I know,
Speaker 1: so y'all are stealing from the weaker. Second to how
Speaker 1: to bring feminism to penguin, I mean, they already got
Speaker 1: gay rights. I don't understand if the whole island is
Speaker 1: made up of pebbles, like why I think you're stealing
Speaker 1: specifically from people to be petty, because it's like you're
Speaker 1: just get some pebbles that aren't lay well. I think
Speaker 1: the researchers also found that if you if you have
Speaker 1: more rocks around your nest, and the more rocks, I
Speaker 1: think the better because it keeps the eggs um warmer
Speaker 1: because it like elevates a little bit off the cold ground.
Speaker 1: And there's just natural stone loss over time because of
Speaker 1: weather or penguins or like people running around well not people,
Speaker 1: but penguins running around flags places playing tugo war with
Speaker 1: a flag saying no, it's miling, No, it's mile. So
Speaker 1: if you have more rocks to begin with, I think
Speaker 1: you're just in a better place, like as as you
Speaker 1: start to lose rocks um later on. So there's a
Speaker 1: motivation to steal. But you know, it's probably also a
Speaker 1: little bit of pettiness where it's like because like, why
Speaker 1: go out and get your own rock when you can
Speaker 1: just like steal rocks from your neighbor. That's true if
Speaker 1: your neighbor is like right next door, we don't have
Speaker 1: to go to the shore line. Yeah. And also like
Speaker 1: equal pay, you know, women aren't making as much. That's
Speaker 1: true for every like like twelve rocks the male penguins
Speaker 1: make the females make like six and a half. I
Speaker 1: don't actually know you were going I was believing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not a good feminist, especially not a
Speaker 1: good penguin feminist. Uh So, next, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about gelatas, which sounds delicious, but it's uh it sounds
Speaker 1: like gelato and I want gelata now, but it's not. So.
Speaker 1: These are species of Old World monkey. They're found in
Speaker 1: the Ethiopian highlands. They kind of look like baboons, but
Speaker 1: they're just close relatives there because they have that. But
Speaker 1: they have that, but they have that nice but um.
Speaker 1: They're also called bleeding heart monkeys because they have a
Speaker 1: red patch on their chest. But this is not the
Speaker 1: reason they're called that. But it seems to also make
Speaker 1: sense because they will sometimes cheat on each other and
Speaker 1: then get mad about it um. So they have an
Speaker 1: actually super complex social structure that is hard for me
Speaker 1: to wrap my head around. They form multi level societies.
Speaker 1: The smallest unit of their societies are reproductive units. It's
Speaker 1: just like a sex club where it's like a dozen
Speaker 1: or so females and three or four males. Usually only
Speaker 1: one of the males is mating with the female's um
Speaker 1: at once. So it's like a orgy yeah yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's like an orgy organization or gy org um. And
Speaker 1: then the next step of gelata society is the bands,
Speaker 1: and they're made up of about thirty reproductive units. So
Speaker 1: it's like a bunch of these sex clubs come together
Speaker 1: for like a convention, and there are herds that are
Speaker 1: like temporary convoys made up of the report sex club.
Speaker 1: Right more like so the basic structure trip and then
Speaker 1: it's like how big? How big is the level? Right? Right? Right?
Speaker 1: So are you in like a small country town. We
Speaker 1: got three horses and that's all we're friend And then
Speaker 1: you know, it grows into like a metropolitan say like
Speaker 1: where's the where's the l a of? Like I mean,
Speaker 1: are we so different though? Everything? Like are you know,
Speaker 1: it's just more people who in a place having sex
Speaker 1: or less. You know, like the difference between a librarian
Speaker 1: and in and out is the number of people having said. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's focus back on that little, that smallest unit,
Speaker 1: which is the little sex club of like a dozen
Speaker 1: females and one to four males, and then one of
Speaker 1: the males is supposed to be the only one reproducing um,
Speaker 1: even though that's supposed to be the case. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, they like to cheat, so uh, sometimes they
Speaker 1: will cheat on him with another male, which I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, he's already got like twelve females acting double
Speaker 1: standards like big love when you're in the harem of women, right,
Speaker 1: So these cheating pairs have been studied in these observations,
Speaker 1: you know, like scientists just out there watching these gelata.
Speaker 1: Is just sciences for science, for science. So often gelattes
Speaker 1: will vocalize while mating, making happy noises like oh yeah exact, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is yeah yea goal. Um. So while they're cheating,
Speaker 1: they actually keep those sex moans to a minimum so
Speaker 1: they're more Yes, yes, I find this quite this, This
Speaker 1: is quite enjoyable. Yes, right there and also there and
Speaker 1: in addition, good day, wow, so they know they're doing something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if they're caught the male that got cheated on,
Speaker 1: we'll get really mad and throw a fit and like
Speaker 1: attack them. And yet domestic just like a real soap
Speaker 1: opera going on. Um, now when they get caught, like,
Speaker 1: I wonder, is there someone telling them that that's so interesting?
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't, like they just happened upon it,
Speaker 1: like they were going behind a tree, like they're like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, there's just like a trail of like
Speaker 1: clothes shoes. So the society may kind of seem unfair
Speaker 1: to females at first, but sort of like how lions,
Speaker 1: it's like seen as like, oh, these are um, you know, patriarchy.
Speaker 1: It's actually, in some ways more of a matriarchy, which
Speaker 1: is surprising. So females can basically elect their sex mayor,
Speaker 1: but um, so males will sometimes try to take over
Speaker 1: like a little sex group. And if the emails like
Speaker 1: their sex mayor who gets to mate with him, then
Speaker 1: they'll support him and they'll fight off the other male.
Speaker 1: But if he's doing a bad job at being mayor
Speaker 1: of sex, they'll be like, no, dude, you're out office.
Speaker 1: And then that comes along. But how do you know
Speaker 1: if the new guy is going to be good at
Speaker 1: sex or is it just like, well we don't like
Speaker 1: our old guy. I guess you just take a gamble on.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I know he could never find a clid
Speaker 1: and we just retired, right, And like some males will
Speaker 1: typically assert their dominance not by violence, but by occurring
Speaker 1: favor with the females by grooming them. So if he's
Speaker 1: like really bad at it, then I imagine they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to try this new guy because you suck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're never really had charming and we were like your jokes,
Speaker 1: but really what I made was I was faking. I
Speaker 1: was faking it those sex screams. So now we're gonna
Speaker 1: go onto some more dastardly sex capades. Um. So, fireflies
Speaker 1: are pretty spectacular and romantic, like I always like, you
Speaker 1: know in romance, you're like, you want to kiss in
Speaker 1: a field of fireflies, except you don't because then there's
Speaker 1: probably mosquitoes around. Getting up and catching flireflies kill them,
Speaker 1: like what you're doing a jar full of fireflies that
Speaker 1: are dead in the morning, literal childhood. So they'll flash
Speaker 1: their luminous butts at each other to attract mates and
Speaker 1: like in a sort of sex morse code to be
Speaker 1: like you know b B B B, which is like
Speaker 1: Netflix and Chill. Now what is is it like Amazon
Speaker 1: Prime and Chill? Have we moved on from Netflix and Chills? No,
Speaker 1: because Amazon Prime doesn't. The thing about Netflix is it
Speaker 1: has that like automatic like so it's like you don't
Speaker 1: have to be like you know, like in the middle
Speaker 1: of like you know, getting the cheeks clapped and then
Speaker 1: it's like, are you still watching so you can like
Speaker 1: binge watch the in place while having sex. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and it'll stay on for at least four hours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like just love that ted Dance right now that
Speaker 1: probably think it goes back to the home screen and
Speaker 1: next thing, you know, you're just looking at I don't know, landscapes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because like if you don't want to, you don't want
Speaker 1: to like have sex and then have it go to
Speaker 1: The Great British Bake Off because I mean that show
Speaker 1: is great, but it is the anti aphrodisiac. Yeah, right, exactly,
Speaker 1: you needed to keep playing whatever movie or whatever series
Speaker 1: that you're watching, especially if you have roommates, right right, Wait,
Speaker 1: what would the roommates would suspect something? Off, like if
Speaker 1: I think they probably start hearing sex noises if I
Speaker 1: live alone now, thank god, but I think they start
Speaker 1: hearing the sex noises. All right, so you kind of
Speaker 1: needed as kind of a scrambling affright right. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like when there's that dead air and then the
Speaker 1: screen goes black and then you just see yourself. Oh yeah, Also,
Speaker 1: do you want to see your own reflection of you?
Speaker 1: It's gonna be because it's not going to be like importants,
Speaker 1: gonna be extremely unflattering. It's gonna be your your butt
Speaker 1: in a way you've never seen it before. That is
Speaker 1: not becoming. Uh, it doesn't all look like That's how
Speaker 1: I imagine I look. You know, for years I didn't
Speaker 1: know that people were having sex with the lights off.
Speaker 1: I was having sex with the lights on all like,
Speaker 1: oh god, I'm having sex with this new guy. I
Speaker 1: gotta I can my poses together? Okay, well, speaking of
Speaker 1: sex with the lights on. Uh, these fireflies, so they
Speaker 1: do their little beet their butts do the flashing light. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then but there's a serial killer living amongst these
Speaker 1: innocent fireflies. All they want to do is have sex
Speaker 1: with each other. So photerus firefly females are called the
Speaker 1: fim fatales of the fireflies. A woman who murders snaps women.
Speaker 1: Have you seen the ads for that? Like show like
Speaker 1: like why do women kill? Yes? I feel like because
Speaker 1: they want to get it girl, all those people. Yes,
Speaker 1: I actually no curb. Literally it's literally slack. So they
Speaker 1: live in North America. They mimic the flashing pattern of
Speaker 1: firefly females of other species, so they're like deeping with
Speaker 1: their their shiny butts, like, hey, I would like to
Speaker 1: have sex. Come over here now, I would like to
Speaker 1: have sex as well, like a little NiFe the male
Speaker 1: fireflies like what's the knife emoji? Because of how sharp
Speaker 1: are sex will be. It's you know, that's a funny story.
Speaker 1: When the male comes over ready to bone, then the
Speaker 1: photorists will just eat them, just be like, hey, thanks
Speaker 1: for showing up, munch, give me far like the black
Speaker 1: woodows at least get hurt and then she's like, okay,
Speaker 1: now you die right right right, which is you know,
Speaker 1: like with spiders and mantis is at least they actually
Speaker 1: do have sex. But this the male gets literally nothing
Speaker 1: except death. I love it. So this is a form
Speaker 1: of aggressive mimicry. So mimicry comes in many different forms.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about it later, but aggressive mimicry is
Speaker 1: when it's a predator or a parasite using the mimicry
Speaker 1: to attack their target, but the them fatil fireflight in
Speaker 1: her defense, has a really good reason to do this. Um.
Speaker 1: First of all, have you ever like had the like
Speaker 1: tender dates where it's just they're super annoying and they're
Speaker 1: always like sending you weird pickup lines or like weird erotica.
Speaker 1: I haven't had any of that. No one has ever
Speaker 1: sent me a penis picture unsolicited. I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: I have a face that says I don't want to
Speaker 1: see your penis. Also, like, isn't this kind of cannibalism
Speaker 1: because she's a firefly like different species, but they don't
Speaker 1: eat like I don't know, well, well, so this one
Speaker 1: is carnivorous. It also has a really good reason for
Speaker 1: eating them, other than because they're annoying. So she sucks
Speaker 1: the uses out of them. And these juices have chemicals
Speaker 1: that are essential for her self defense. So when attacked
Speaker 1: by predators, fireflies release droplets of blood containing luci boufagins.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know you, but you try to.
Speaker 1: You try to pronounce it lucid luciboufigins. That sounds better
Speaker 1: than what I said, It's still wrong. So these lucibithfiggins
Speaker 1: deter spiders and birds. They're like unpalatable. And the killer
Speaker 1: female fireflies don't produce their own lucibithfigins, so she eats
Speaker 1: hapless sex time gry males of the actual species who
Speaker 1: do produce it, so that she can suck out those
Speaker 1: sweet lucibithigans. Makes sense. She needs them, she needs them,
Speaker 1: she needs them, maybe have everything. Of course, they just
Speaker 1: are fourn with the defense stuff and we have to
Speaker 1: like exactly, we have literally suck it out of men.
Speaker 1: So selfish. So fireflies aren't the only animals out there
Speaker 1: who get preyed upon by a sexy seductor. Humans are
Speaker 1: often the victims of romance scammers, people who go online
Speaker 1: and pretend to be some hot guy from Italy who
Speaker 1: just needs five hundred dollars for that plane ticket to
Speaker 1: visit you. Researchers looked into the issue of romance scams
Speaker 1: and catfishing and found there are some shared personality traits
Speaker 1: among those who get scammed it's not just being gullible,
Speaker 1: no matter how smart you are, you're always susceptible, but
Speaker 1: being conned, especially if it taps into one of your vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1: People who are targeted by romance scammers tended to score
Speaker 1: higher on a romantic belief scale and believed in things
Speaker 1: such as love finds a Way or love at first
Speaker 1: sight and there was one true soulmate out there. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, it's hard to blame the victims when
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of rom coms out there hawking these
Speaker 1: same ideas, teaching us that it's normal for some hot
Speaker 1: Italian stranger to declare their love to us and fly
Speaker 1: halfway across the world to meet us. One way to
Speaker 1: inoculate yourself against scammers, maybe to become the scammer, at
Speaker 1: least to pretend to become a scammer. When we get back,
Speaker 1: we'll discuss how learning to impersonate can help both humans
Speaker 1: and animals survive. I'm sure you've heard endless chatter about
Speaker 1: fake news. Some news story or Twitter talks about fake news,
Speaker 1: and then that story gets called out for being fake news,
Speaker 1: and then there's such an endless back and forth between
Speaker 1: people yelling fake news. How are you supposed to be
Speaker 1: able to sift through what's real and what's fake. There
Speaker 1: are fact checking websites out there, but they themselves may
Speaker 1: have their own biases, and there's no fact checkers checking
Speaker 1: the fact checkers. So instead of taking someone's else's word
Speaker 1: for it, there may be a way for you to
Speaker 1: become an expert propaganda and misinformation detector by becoming a
Speaker 1: misinformation and propagandist. A University of Cambridge study created a
Speaker 1: game where you become the propaganda ist. It introduces you
Speaker 1: and teaches you how to master six techniques of spreading misinformation, polarization,
Speaker 1: invoking emotions, spreading conspiracy theories, trolling people online, deflecting blame,
Speaker 1: and impersonating fake accounts. Of course, this is not a
Speaker 1: complete list of all the various ways that propaganda is spread,
Speaker 1: but it's start. The goal of the game is to
Speaker 1: gather followers and credibilities metrics which are programmed into the game.
Speaker 1: The researchers found that participants who played the game became
Speaker 1: better at identifying made up news headlines when tested. In fact,
Speaker 1: the greatest improvement in skepticism was found amongst those who
Speaker 1: were initially more glible. This is very encouraging because it
Speaker 1: means we can learn to become more savvy consumers of media.
Speaker 1: Or maybe I just made up the soul study huh huh,
Speaker 1: No I didn't, Or did I Now I didn't. You
Speaker 1: can look it up. It's by John rousen Beak and
Speaker 1: Sander van der Linden, published in Palgrave Communications five, article
Speaker 1: number six, five, two thousand nineteen. Or was it that
Speaker 1: last name sounded hell of fake? I know Sandra vander Lindon.
Speaker 1: Sandra vander Linden. Yeah, it's like a Lisa and Bart pranks,
Speaker 1: like like, I'm Sandra vander Linden. Can I speak to seymore?
Speaker 1: But a study published in the Journal of Buttology. No,
Speaker 1: that's legit though that as a scammer and I'm a
Speaker 1: professed scammer. I tell me why I'm running small scams
Speaker 1: and cons um The more you know about scams, the
Speaker 1: better you aren't identifying that. Yeah, because there's like tell
Speaker 1: tell signs that once you start to get your finger
Speaker 1: on it, you're like, wait a minute, Like because if
Speaker 1: you if you have long enough to think, so what
Speaker 1: it is about gullibility to it is about how desperate
Speaker 1: you are to want something like if you want it
Speaker 1: really badly. And three, it's also sometimes about time, like
Speaker 1: if someone catches you when you're like really sleepy, or
Speaker 1: you're in a rush, or you don't have time to
Speaker 1: really think about what they're saying to you, of an
Speaker 1: opportunity to scam right, Which is kind of crazy because
Speaker 1: that's when people read the news, like in the morning,
Speaker 1: right before work, like when you're sort of in a rush,
Speaker 1: or like if you're like checking Twitter, like when you're
Speaker 1: on break, and you don't have a lot of times
Speaker 1: right right, right exactly, so you're not always on your
Speaker 1: a game. So if there's like a news story that's
Speaker 1: like you know, like birds aren't real, Like you're like, yeah, sure, okay, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: actually on the news, girl, I said, the birds not real,
Speaker 1: hald drones, they're watching us, They're watching That's what they
Speaker 1: said last night at eleven, Like sure, fine, I'll believe that. Also,
Speaker 1: romance scams are like a hundred forty three million dollar industry,
Speaker 1: Are you kidding? Yeah, so much money is made off
Speaker 1: romance scams, and a lot of it is because people
Speaker 1: are just so lonely, and I think that's so sad.
Speaker 1: Really said and they tend to skew older too, right, yes,
Speaker 1: and also like but older and also younger, like young
Speaker 1: women and men with a lot of just posible come
Speaker 1: especially like they're very susceptible because they don't when you
Speaker 1: were younger, like I remember when I was nineteen, like right,
Speaker 1: people just say stuff to me. They made no sense.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until I became like an adult that
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, or like my one of my
Speaker 1: ex boyfriends in college had a whole sugar daddy, and
Speaker 1: I know something was off, but he had a sugar daddy.
Speaker 1: It was like like, like okay. So we went to
Speaker 1: school and our campus was like ten minutes away from
Speaker 1: his internship, which was downtown. So he if they worked late,
Speaker 1: the sugar daddy would get them a hotel and they
Speaker 1: would stay downtown. And he lived ten minutes away from home.
Speaker 1: I was like, you don't ever need to stay at
Speaker 1: home toil with this man? What is And I was
Speaker 1: young though, so I was like, I guess that's how
Speaker 1: they'd be working in the bank in the industry. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't work in the bank. Weirdly sweaty
Speaker 1: at the bank. Oh my god. They had robes that
Speaker 1: were like he would tell me all this stuff. I
Speaker 1: don't know why did not put two and two together.
Speaker 1: It was like robes that were monogramed, or like bank robes.
Speaker 1: You know what the bank bankers wear, you know what
Speaker 1: the bank? You know what the bank when they have
Speaker 1: the robes, the terry cloth robes. Don't know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. You'll need those robes to handle the money.
Speaker 1: Don't make it weird. I wonder if there's like a
Speaker 1: perfect age at which we are immune to scam. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's got to be like thirty five and
Speaker 1: that's it. Yeah. I feel like at thirty five, you're
Speaker 1: probably like a little bit more of a skeptic, but
Speaker 1: you're not like old enough that you're like worried about
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm trying to say is like when
Speaker 1: you get older, you as you also start to fall
Speaker 1: out of the way of technology. So the thirty five
Speaker 1: I feel like you're in tune with all the technology
Speaker 1: that's currently happening. You probably know how to text and
Speaker 1: cinemogs and skype, FaceTime and everything. But I feel like
Speaker 1: the older you get, because there's grandpa scams to grandparents
Speaker 1: scams and um, and those on average grandparents are sending
Speaker 1: like nine thousand dollars to scammers. That's so sad, ye
Speaker 1: who are pretending to be their grandchildren. And with Facebook,
Speaker 1: you can get on Facebook and learn everything you need
Speaker 1: to know about someone, click around to find their grandchildren. Um,
Speaker 1: and even people put up videos so you can learn
Speaker 1: how to mimic people's voices. It's so easy with deep fake.
Speaker 1: Now it's it's that's game over. Like once someone deep
Speaker 1: fakes a video of you going like, hey, grandma, it's me,
Speaker 1: I need nine thousand dollars for a bail and that's
Speaker 1: what they do. They call um. Actually just did a
Speaker 1: show about one where the phone call started as like,
Speaker 1: don't be afraid. It's me. I'm your grandson's defense attorney.
Speaker 1: He got into a d U I accident and he
Speaker 1: starts off with, don't be afraid. I trust it so much,
Speaker 1: don't be afraid. So but the thing is going to
Speaker 1: be afraid. But he told me not to so Muchill
Speaker 1: I'm good. Naturally when I pick up the phone, I'm afraid,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm just I'm on the needles. When I
Speaker 1: answered the column, waiting for someone to reassure me not
Speaker 1: to be afraid. But that's the thing that was like
Speaker 1: when you learn certain scams or get into like scamming,
Speaker 1: you start to hear things like that and you go
Speaker 1: with the like, this is great. But if you're not
Speaker 1: involved in that stuff, like your study was saying, I
Speaker 1: think that you're less likely to pinpoint it sometimes, like
Speaker 1: if they catch you at the right time because they
Speaker 1: call late at night or really really early in the
Speaker 1: morning to write. Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like
Speaker 1: as a former psychology study research assistant, I was basically
Speaker 1: running scams as well, because you just you have to
Speaker 1: lie to people in order to test them because they
Speaker 1: can't know what you're testing otherwise that influences the results.
Speaker 1: So there were some really weird studies. One of them
Speaker 1: was I had to convince these guys that we had
Speaker 1: a special camera that monitored their sexual arousal by looking
Speaker 1: at their pupil dilation, and then we showed them a
Speaker 1: sexy video and like I had to be really in college,
Speaker 1: I was not cool. It's I just wasn't cool, and
Speaker 1: I had I wasn't able to really I didn't know
Speaker 1: how to lie. I was just you know, kind of
Speaker 1: kind of doofy and stuff. I mean, you have like
Speaker 1: such an honest face. Though you have like these bright
Speaker 1: blue eyes. I feel like if you tell me things,
Speaker 1: I would believe them. It's my honest face a k
Speaker 1: looking always startled, or as if someone who's farted in
Speaker 1: the room. Hey, it works, it works. I have the
Speaker 1: face of a liar people people, people know what I'm talking.
Speaker 1: If I'm breathing, I'm lying. And I mean because I
Speaker 1: have to work real hard to convince people when I
Speaker 1: am lying, I wouldn't say that, but then I have
Speaker 1: the face of a gullible person. So and then the
Speaker 1: guys would sometimes question me like say like, wait, how
Speaker 1: can camera tell like I'm aroused? And it's like you know,
Speaker 1: by detecting your pupils And they're like, well, am I
Speaker 1: aroused right now? Like I don't know. If I'm not
Speaker 1: the camera, I can't tell that guy's a camera. It
Speaker 1: was like sounds. I didn't get good at scamming people,
Speaker 1: or I didn't get good at like lying, but I
Speaker 1: did learn like to do not trust anyone because if
Speaker 1: I couldn't trust me, who can I trust? Right? And
Speaker 1: that's the thing too, is it's like also your experience
Speaker 1: is that will also cater to like how easily you're
Speaker 1: scam if you're someone who's had more privileged life, you know,
Speaker 1: people in your life have genuinely not been shady. If
Speaker 1: you have access to a lot of money, those people
Speaker 1: easiest to scam. Yeah, because you've been insulated in a
Speaker 1: bubble and everyone's treated you well up until, Like, you
Speaker 1: don't know how other people live. So someone does tell you,
Speaker 1: like they work in diamond dealing, and it's dangerous that
Speaker 1: people are following them, like the arrested development, Like how
Speaker 1: much can banana's cost twelve dollars? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: mean I think because I do look kind of innocent.
Speaker 1: I think like a lot of people have tried to
Speaker 1: take advantage of me, so I've kind of learned a
Speaker 1: lot over the years. Like I remember in high school,
Speaker 1: I was super gloable. People were always teasing me and
Speaker 1: bullying me in a sort of funny way that like
Speaker 1: even now I can like that was pretty funny, but
Speaker 1: like the only person looking back fondly on the bullying, right,
Speaker 1: I think about that, well, I mean I was I
Speaker 1: was bullying. That was not so fun, But you know
Speaker 1: the fun bowling where it's like oh, look at the ceiling, Katie,
Speaker 1: and I would or like like, oh, did you know
Speaker 1: if you like shake a salt salt shaker on your tongue,
Speaker 1: you can like taste it them. I'm they're like looking
Speaker 1: like I'm, you know, going off. So another thing you
Speaker 1: can't trust is caterpillars. What a segue? Oh I'm great
Speaker 1: at segways. On this show, we're going to learn that
Speaker 1: just like humans can defend ourselves by learning to mimic
Speaker 1: our predators, so can animals. And we're going to start
Speaker 1: off with a very naughty little caterpillar. Um So, the
Speaker 1: hawk moth caterpillar of Central and South America mimics the
Speaker 1: look of vipers by inflating itself like a balloon. Need
Speaker 1: to make it look like a snake, right, So they
Speaker 1: have these big fake eye spots and fake reptile scales,
Speaker 1: and they puff up their front parts and wave them
Speaker 1: around to look like a snakehead. They'll even like undulate
Speaker 1: and do Monck strikes. So I've got a video of
Speaker 1: this alright, So here's the hawksmouth caterpillar. That's the cat.
Speaker 1: Oh my, it looks like a snake. This is crazy.
Speaker 1: Now it looks so it like twists itself around and
Speaker 1: then it inflates itself, just like part of it so
Speaker 1: part of it still skinny, and then it kind of
Speaker 1: creates a bulb at one end that looks like a snakehead.
Speaker 1: And it's extremely convincing like that, even even biologists and
Speaker 1: researchers who know about this caterpillar and are actively looking
Speaker 1: for it when they see it there. Yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: we're so programmed to be afraid of snakes that if
Speaker 1: you see this, you're gonna jump. Now the fake eys
Speaker 1: at all? This is this the butt part of the caterpillar.
Speaker 1: I think it's the front part actually, Like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: because I thought it was eaten. Now I think that is.
Speaker 1: I think that is the front part. Oh okay, because
Speaker 1: I was like, that would be fly if you could
Speaker 1: just make your booty look like a snake, but you
Speaker 1: could just eat Yeah, there are examples. So auto mimicry
Speaker 1: is a type of mimicry where you are mimicking your
Speaker 1: own body parts. So there are caterpillars and animals that
Speaker 1: have eyes on their butt um, and there's a there's
Speaker 1: this owl called the North American pygmy owl that has
Speaker 1: eyes on the back of its head. Um, here's a
Speaker 1: picture of that, so you can see from a distance
Speaker 1: that you would just think and it's looking at you
Speaker 1: right exactly. And alics can swivel their heads around. So
Speaker 1: this is like the next technology. They're like women need,
Speaker 1: like walking home at night, a whole face on the
Speaker 1: back of my head. I feel like if you had
Speaker 1: two faces, that would be enough of a deterrent, like
Speaker 1: like two faces, Like, she's a look crazier than what
Speaker 1: I bargained for. Well actually, so um. In Indian Bangladesh,
Speaker 1: in tiger territory, people used to try to wear masks
Speaker 1: on the back of their heads to prevent tiger attacks
Speaker 1: because they would attack you from behind. But they were
Speaker 1: only able to do it for a few months because
Speaker 1: reportedly the tigers like cut onto it and they learned
Speaker 1: to differentiate between the fake mask and like the real face.
Speaker 1: Right now, that's very smart. So I wonder who who
Speaker 1: was the first guy to get attacked. He was like, no, no, not,
Speaker 1: don't worry, I got my face mask. Do the first one.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's just a really bad face mask. And
Speaker 1: then they turned around in their face also looks like that.
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know what we're wrong. It
Speaker 1: was a perfect resemblance. That is a form of the
Speaker 1: The caterpillar pretending to be a form is a form
Speaker 1: of Baitsian mimicry. So that's a harmless animal mimicking a
Speaker 1: dangerous animal animal in order to scare off would be attackers.
Speaker 1: In addition to the caterpillar, other examples are taste butterflies
Speaker 1: mimicking the epis semitic coloration of unpalatable butterflies and moths.
Speaker 1: Like butterflies that will make like if a bird eats
Speaker 1: that butterfly, it'll vomit. Those tend to be like like
Speaker 1: green and red. Yeah, like these bright colors like monarchs
Speaker 1: are a good example. Um monarchs aren't delicious, No, okay,
Speaker 1: they do look delicious, though I do buttery. There's there's
Speaker 1: a complex math to this actually, because if you have
Speaker 1: too many mimics who taste great mimicking the unpalatable mimics,
Speaker 1: then it gets all skewed where predators don't learn, so
Speaker 1: they'll just like because the signal has too much noise.
Speaker 1: The predators lead all these tasty molds and only occasionally
Speaker 1: eat the moth or the butterfly. That is actually toxic.
Speaker 1: So they're kind of messing up the game for the
Speaker 1: person who is toxic because they like to take my
Speaker 1: chances right exactly. Like if like most ice cream you
Speaker 1: ate taste great, but like one once in a hundred
Speaker 1: like it tasted like like, then you'd still eat ice cream. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I probably would risk of that as Yeah. So so
Speaker 1: this really is kind of ruining it for the people
Speaker 1: who had the armor right exactly. So the populations actually
Speaker 1: you see like these populations rising in declining as they
Speaker 1: kind of balance out because there has to be this
Speaker 1: balance of mimic population to the actual true signal population. Um. So,
Speaker 1: Another example, and this is just kind of funny, is
Speaker 1: there be flies who are totally harmless that look like bees.
Speaker 1: But they're really funny because they're just these little they
Speaker 1: look like little poofballs with with eyes and they're they're
Speaker 1: just harmless flies. But I would never know these. I've
Speaker 1: never known if I've seen a bee fly before. I
Speaker 1: think the first time I saw one was um I
Speaker 1: think I saw one in the Sequoias and it was
Speaker 1: really funny because I thought it was a be, but
Speaker 1: it was also a lot less agile than it look
Speaker 1: like a great value brand, like one of those ice
Speaker 1: cream trucks serving like pocket Monster like ice creams where
Speaker 1: it's like Pikachu but it's all meltysed to be never
Speaker 1: were like it's it's sponge Guy, the poke Man, get
Speaker 1: a Pokemon ice scream. I mean, I feel like this
Speaker 1: would work on humans too, Like you know how um
Speaker 1: Like when the whole tide Pod thing was a mean
Speaker 1: people were making like tide Pod jello shots and tide
Speaker 1: Pod colored cupcakes and cookies like as a joke. But
Speaker 1: I feel like if someone handed me a jello shot
Speaker 1: that looked like a tide pod, I wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: eat it because it would discuss. I would feel like
Speaker 1: I was maybe going to eat a tide pot, right,
Speaker 1: It's kind of like how um I think they're there.
Speaker 1: There's been some research to show that when you have
Speaker 1: a certain flavor associated with cleaning products in a country,
Speaker 1: like there's a less gum that comes in that flavor,
Speaker 1: whereas like if in another country eat like the gum
Speaker 1: or that kind of flavoring isn't like a minty flavor
Speaker 1: being used in cleaning products. It's not, it's less likely
Speaker 1: to be to be because you don't want to consume
Speaker 1: it exactly. Oh that makes total sense. I would turn
Speaker 1: me off to I wonder what kind of gum they're
Speaker 1: eating in Mexico because fabuloso flavor um and it's all delicious.
Speaker 1: Why do they make it look so good? They make
Speaker 1: it look too good. It's like a bright color like
Speaker 1: candy apple, grereen and chin and blue, and then it
Speaker 1: smells like candy. And then I'm like, but I can't
Speaker 1: eat it? But or can I can? I? I mean
Speaker 1: we learned with tide pots. Have you have you seen those? Um?
Speaker 1: Like their coffee mug shaped like toilets? Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: understand it because any any time, like there's some cute
Speaker 1: see things like oh, here's a cookie but it shaped
Speaker 1: like a poop emoji or like here's like the want
Speaker 1: that eat poop. Yeah. Somebody had a baby shower cake
Speaker 1: once and they had a very realistic of vagina. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with the baby hand was coming out. It was like
Speaker 1: would you like to eat this? Yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: people would like to eat it, um, but but it
Speaker 1: was like a baby birth reaching the Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: was like they did as a joke and I'm like, also,
Speaker 1: I don't want to eat I don't ever want to
Speaker 1: eat a baby shaped cake. Um. But also I saw
Speaker 1: I saw a baby cake where it was like the
Speaker 1: stomach was transparent. It was like this baby fetus in
Speaker 1: this transparent jellow cab. I don't under we've just because
Speaker 1: we can doesn't mean we should. Yeah, our society, man,
Speaker 1: I would eat a cake shape like a baby, though,
Speaker 1: I don't know. If I give me a little baby
Speaker 1: foot baby, I already want to eat baby cheeks. I
Speaker 1: don't literally want to eat a baby, but I just
Speaker 1: wanted like nibble. That's true, just like yeah, yeah, just
Speaker 1: like it. So there's another kind of mimicry called Mularian mimicry,
Speaker 1: when it's two or more dangerous animals that develop a
Speaker 1: similar look so that that signal. Like we talked about,
Speaker 1: it's important that predators actually learned that that signal so
Speaker 1: they don't eat you otherwise it's useless. So when you
Speaker 1: have too dangerous um or toxic animals teaming up looking alike,
Speaker 1: than their signal is going to be even stronger. So
Speaker 1: an example of this is the viceroy and monarch butterflies
Speaker 1: that are both mildly toxic to toxic, and they look
Speaker 1: very similar they basically look the same. It's really hard
Speaker 1: to differentiate them, and there's actually some human examples. So
Speaker 1: evolutionary zoologist Thomas in Shat claims that marketers engage in
Speaker 1: this mulary in mimicry where products are colored similarly to
Speaker 1: signal brand identification better. So that would kind of be
Speaker 1: like Baitsian mimicry, So like a some Coke off brand,
Speaker 1: like trying to look like a Coke bottle, or having
Speaker 1: the same like Dr Pepper and Mr Pitts exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: or like the I can't believe it's not butter. Have
Speaker 1: you seen like all the variations of that where it's
Speaker 1: like butter, No, I can't believe it. It's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's not Maybe it's like the same kind
Speaker 1: of swooping texts like like the blue on yellow or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, it's like butter. Nah, maybe no, this
Speaker 1: isn't butter. Or is it the taste of butter? Perhaps
Speaker 1: the cousin of butter butter. You be the judge, and
Speaker 1: I would go for that. I mean, that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what Walmart is. Every great value product is literally
Speaker 1: so close to cheerios, cheery boys, and then the kind
Speaker 1: of Mularian mimicry where it's like their signal boosting each
Speaker 1: other is like chip flavors often have similar colors, so
Speaker 1: like cool, ranch is like blue, salt and vinegar is
Speaker 1: like green exactly, red and yellow is just like you know,
Speaker 1: basic basic chip. Yeah. Um, so that's kind of interesting
Speaker 1: to me. It's like butterflies do it and chips do it.
Speaker 1: So there's other forms, interesting forms of defensive mimicry. Um.
Speaker 1: So there are these three snakes who live in North
Speaker 1: Central and South America who look almost identical, the milk snake,
Speaker 1: the false coral snakes, and the deadly coral snakes. So
Speaker 1: the milk snakes are harmless, the false coral snakes are
Speaker 1: moderately toxic and venomous um, and the deadly coral snakes
Speaker 1: are um. So there's a mnemonic device to try to
Speaker 1: tell the difference between these snakes. It goes red on
Speaker 1: yellow kills a fellow, Red on black venom black. Or
Speaker 1: there's another one that's like red touches black, it's a
Speaker 1: friend of jack, Red touches yellow. It's a bad for
Speaker 1: a fellow, or I didn't mean to do that, as
Speaker 1: like Italian it's a bad for a red touches yellow,
Speaker 1: you're a dead fellow, Red touches black, you're okay, jack. Um,
Speaker 1: I've never been able to learn these because I'm just
Speaker 1: like red on yellow good for a fellow, red on black,
Speaker 1: you're okay, jack. You know it's completely confusing to close,
Speaker 1: but like you should, regardless of whether they confuse you,
Speaker 1: you should completely ignore these poems. They are useless. Researchers
Speaker 1: have found that there's no reliable color pattern that can
Speaker 1: help you determine the harmless snakes from the deadly coral snakes.
Speaker 1: So if you see like red touches yellow, just like,
Speaker 1: stay away from these snakes, right, don't be like, okay,
Speaker 1: red touches yellow or red touches black, rob it all
Speaker 1: over your back. Um. So you might think that in
Speaker 1: this case, the milk snake and the false coral snakes
Speaker 1: are mimicking the deadly coral snake as a kind of
Speaker 1: Baitsia mimicry, but it's Some biologists actually argue that this
Speaker 1: is called Martensian mimicry um, where a deadly animal mimics
Speaker 1: a less deadly but still harm full animal. Because if
Speaker 1: you're deadly, it's hard to teach a predator a lesson
Speaker 1: because if they eat you, then they die, but you
Speaker 1: also die. So so if you mimic a slightly less
Speaker 1: deadly animal but that's still toxic, then the predators live,
Speaker 1: but they learned that that is a yucky snake, and
Speaker 1: then they won't eat you, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: convoluted thing, and it's not it's somewhat. I can't tell
Speaker 1: my friends about the snake that I ate if I'm
Speaker 1: did right exactly, you can't do that anyways. I've found
Speaker 1: people don't like it. I hate a snake last week,
Speaker 1: and then then they're like, okay, well do snakes tastes good? Alligator,
Speaker 1: don't think they taste super good. I think it's hard
Speaker 1: to cook them without them getting really chalky. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like dried out. It's just useless. They're just useless little
Speaker 1: news like biting noodles, noodles. There's also Gilbertian emacry, so
Speaker 1: this is an interesting one. Uh here's an example. So
Speaker 1: passion flowers have developed growths that look like butterfly eggs
Speaker 1: to deter butterflies from laying their eggs on them, exposing
Speaker 1: them to caterpillars. So Basically Gilbertian mimicry is you're the
Speaker 1: victim of parasites that then mimics the parasite in order
Speaker 1: to trick the parasite into not bothering you. Right, So
Speaker 1: this is like if um, oh, this is so dark,
Speaker 1: but it's like if someone shooting and you just lay
Speaker 1: down and pretend you've already been shot, pretty much. And
Speaker 1: so it's like, these these passion flowers actually have developed
Speaker 1: growth that look like butterfly eggs. So the butterfly who
Speaker 1: normally likes to lay their eggs on these flowers will
Speaker 1: look at that and be like, oh, there's already competition here,
Speaker 1: I can't do it. Or it also attracts predators of
Speaker 1: the butterflies, and then that's good because that then kills
Speaker 1: any butterflies that will come and lay their eggs. Um,
Speaker 1: because it kind of just keeps them around, like it's
Speaker 1: probably gonna be some butterflies by soon, munch on. I
Speaker 1: feel like this would be like if you got a
Speaker 1: scammer calling you and then you tried to scam the camera,
Speaker 1: Like like if they're like, can you give me your
Speaker 1: social Security number? And you're like, oh, I don't know
Speaker 1: what a social security number is could you give me
Speaker 1: yours as an example? Yeah, wait, repeat it? Thank you?
Speaker 1: Or like what's your driver's license? It's all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you're giving up on the information. Um. And then
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about automimicry. UM. That's the
Speaker 1: that's where you're mimicking your own body parts where it's
Speaker 1: like the eyes on the back of your head. Um.
Speaker 1: Actually you know the that Gilbert Tian Memicry reminds me of. UM.
Speaker 1: I think his name is James Veach. Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen his stuff? He's like he um, scammers email him
Speaker 1: and then he like scams the scammers for comedy where
Speaker 1: he like, uh, like they'll they'll like try to get
Speaker 1: him to do a scam and then he tries to
Speaker 1: keep them engaged as long as possible, where he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm in. But then he like starts like tormenting them
Speaker 1: by being like, you know, can you send me a
Speaker 1: photo of the briefcase? And like scammers, I haven't seen that,
Speaker 1: but scammers have to be really good at photoshop. It's
Speaker 1: like a requirement. UM, And I can't imagine like him
Speaker 1: like putting them through like can you send me the
Speaker 1: bank statement like and they have to go to work
Speaker 1: making it all or they're like they'll say, like you've
Speaker 1: won this thing and he's like, oh yeah, I heard
Speaker 1: about that in the newspaper. So I also get a
Speaker 1: free toaster, right, And they're like, no, there's no free toasters,
Speaker 1: Like well what about this? And he shows like an
Speaker 1: advertisement for their scam, but it says like and a
Speaker 1: free toaster. It's it's so good. There's one example of
Speaker 1: mimicry and evolutionary biology that isn't just unique, it's freaky,
Speaker 1: and like many freaky things in nature, it's all because
Speaker 1: of this weird fungus. Imagine a fungus that infects your body,
Speaker 1: hijacks your biology to make you look and smell like
Speaker 1: a delicious dessert. This is exactly what the disco mycet
Speaker 1: fungus monil in the Vaccini core bosy fungus do, or
Speaker 1: as I like to call them because that's impossible to pronounce,
Speaker 1: the blueberry. The blueberry fungus infects the leaves of the
Speaker 1: blueberry plant and causes them to secrete sweet nectar like substance.
Speaker 1: Pollinators like bees come to sip at this sugary hoax
Speaker 1: and the fungus hitches right on the bee. Then when
Speaker 1: the bee moves on to a blueberry flower, the fungus
Speaker 1: infects the flowers reproductive system. Then the fungus hijacks the
Speaker 1: flowers ovaries, using them to produce mummified, inedible blueberries containing
Speaker 1: the fungus, which hibernate over the winter and goes on
Speaker 1: to infect the plant again in the spring. This is
Speaker 1: one of the only cases in nature where a parasitic
Speaker 1: organism forces another organism, in this case the blueberry plant
Speaker 1: to engage in mimicry and then uses a patsy in
Speaker 1: this case, the bee, to infect the plant. Not only
Speaker 1: does it force the blueberry to smell delicious, it also
Speaker 1: alters its ultra violet coloration, making the leaves give off
Speaker 1: a flower signal to the bees. The blueberry fungus runs
Speaker 1: one of the most complicated, dastardly scams in nature. When
Speaker 1: we return, we'll discuss how sometimes all you need to
Speaker 1: do to bamboozle someone is to just act casual and
Speaker 1: blend into the crowd. Sometimes the best way to trick
Speaker 1: someone is to act like what you're doing is totally normal.
Speaker 1: The greatest strength of humans can also be our greatest weakness.
Speaker 1: We are highly socially intelligent, and we depend on social
Speaker 1: groups to survive, and other words, were a bunch of conformists.
Speaker 1: There's a famous study in psychology that puts us to
Speaker 1: the test it in an almost unnecessarily humiliating way. The
Speaker 1: elevator experiment was part of the Ash Conformity experiments that
Speaker 1: looked at how people coped with group pressures. Now imagine
Speaker 1: that you normally enter an elevator. You get in, face
Speaker 1: the wall with the doors and all the buttons, and
Speaker 1: wait while desperately holding in that fart. And the elevator
Speaker 1: experiment experimenters placed research assistance in the elevator who were
Speaker 1: instructed to face the back, while when they got in
Speaker 1: with their backs turned away from the doors like a
Speaker 1: couple of idiots. Except when an unexpecting bystandard got in
Speaker 1: the elevator, they copied the two research assistants, also turning
Speaker 1: away to face the back. So are we all just
Speaker 1: a bunch of stupid sheep? Well, the Ash Conformity experiments
Speaker 1: revealed that while people are heavily pressured by crowds and conforming,
Speaker 1: were also extremely willing to listen to reason. His research
Speaker 1: show that it only took one person going like, hey,
Speaker 1: why the hell are you guys standing backwards yet holes
Speaker 1: to prevent people from falling for the group think um,
Speaker 1: which I feel like I would be easily tricked by
Speaker 1: this elevator experiment because I've been an elevator where they
Speaker 1: open on one side and then like I'm standing there,
Speaker 1: you know, like like a door, like facing the doors,
Speaker 1: and then like ding, and then I hear like from
Speaker 1: like what there's like a big target on the brand
Speaker 1: that has those elevators where like they opened on the
Speaker 1: other side when you go out. I I would definitely
Speaker 1: fall for this because like I'm also the type of
Speaker 1: person and like black people joke about this. Alive is
Speaker 1: like if we see other people running, we will start
Speaker 1: running too, and we don't need to know why we're
Speaker 1: running or what we're running from or where we're running to.
Speaker 1: We'll figure out when we get there. We're like, there's dangerous,
Speaker 1: so we're going to just run with this group of people.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a marathon. Uh. There have been prank shows
Speaker 1: where they just like have a horde of people who
Speaker 1: start running like towards some innocent person and then the
Speaker 1: persons like oh, it's like running, it's finally happening, and
Speaker 1: then they start running away too. I mean that's I
Speaker 1: feel like that's not being gullible. I think that's just
Speaker 1: self preservation because usually when a bunch of people are running,
Speaker 1: you should run, right, And I think it's also self preservation. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: I feel like when we're conforming, because it's like sometimes
Speaker 1: standing out can be dangerous exactly. But me too, me too,
Speaker 1: me as well, I know why we're doing this. I'm
Speaker 1: not even gonna like I would definitely do the same.
Speaker 1: I'd rather be sometimes. I mean it's like, I know
Speaker 1: we're all like, oh, you know, you want you don't
Speaker 1: want to conform, you don't want to be a sheep,
Speaker 1: But sometimes I kind of would rather be a sheep
Speaker 1: than like be the idiot who's like, wait, why is
Speaker 1: nobody else what? Right? Exactly just getting pulled away is
Speaker 1: nobody else walking over because it's like an open man
Speaker 1: hole or right, literally, you don't want to be that
Speaker 1: one guy whose mask on the back of his head
Speaker 1: didn't work, my ex boyfriend who was wearing robes to
Speaker 1: the bank. You know, it's like, I guess that's whatever,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't the bank what if you want to
Speaker 1: bank like wearing a monograund robe and you're like, but
Speaker 1: my boyfriend said, this is what this is. No, where's
Speaker 1: my hotel room? To all your business out of hotel
Speaker 1: rooms right now. So in the animal kingdom, there's something
Speaker 1: called los manny and mimicry, where the mimic resembles the
Speaker 1: animal that it's trying to live amongst. So kind of
Speaker 1: like it makes me think of that meme with um,
Speaker 1: what's his name? Who's going like, hello, what's that actor's name?
Speaker 1: Oh it's Steve, Yeah, yeah, hello, fellow kids, children, Yes,
Speaker 1: this is exactly that. So typically it's found in insects
Speaker 1: who are mimicking social insects like ants and bees. So
Speaker 1: here's an example. There are several species of jumping spiders
Speaker 1: who do this to avoid predation and get lost in
Speaker 1: the ant crowd. So spider predators like spider wasps, which
Speaker 1: like to prey on spiders, don't like to prey on
Speaker 1: ants because ants have zero chill. They will oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and they will destroy you. I stepped in an ampile
Speaker 1: not too long and they descended on my foot. It
Speaker 1: was like seconds before, like my whole foot was bit.
Speaker 1: I was like, damn, it was an accident. Is everybody
Speaker 1: Tina get kid out here? The out beat me up.
Speaker 1: I was like, damn. It's like when you accidentally bump
Speaker 1: someone in the grocery store and then they just they
Speaker 1: don't accept your apology. You're like, oh, I'm sorry, and
Speaker 1: they're like what You're going, Oh, wow, dare you. It's
Speaker 1: like there are people in traffic, like you cut somebody
Speaker 1: off by acts and you're like sorry that they hawk
Speaker 1: at you for three blocks down. I want there to
Speaker 1: be a horn I can press where it's like, yes,
Speaker 1: I realize I've made a mistake and I'm very sorry
Speaker 1: about it. Please stop hawking at me. I understand my mistake,
Speaker 1: and I will endeavor to not do it again. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to be that law. Yes, that one you
Speaker 1: have to pause and let it finish. And I'm really
Speaker 1: sorry that I did this action. I have apologized. I
Speaker 1: know I didn't. We all do it. I don't know
Speaker 1: why people get so angry, don't know, but yeah, Aunt's
Speaker 1: turned up real quickly. So they are they are, they
Speaker 1: are on board, uh for I feel like they're also
Speaker 1: just juiced up. I feel like they're like the roided
Speaker 1: up animal of the animal kingdom or of the insect
Speaker 1: kingdom because they can like lift like ten times their
Speaker 1: own body. Way. They're angry at fifty flannel bros all
Speaker 1: showing up to a party and they all like sign
Speaker 1: like one of them gets their drink knocked over and
Speaker 1: they're all like, you want to go? They're all on
Speaker 1: pre workout there drinking pre workout in vodka. These are
Speaker 1: the antswering for loco, love for logo, like all the
Speaker 1: ants is simultaneously unison, like flannels off off. So these
Speaker 1: jumping spiders who mimic the ants will do a lot
Speaker 1: to try to really sell the allusions. And that's big.
Speaker 1: Um they can like the jumping spiders are actually quite small.
Speaker 1: They're pretty cute. I think they're adorable. I know, I
Speaker 1: know that's a controversial opinion about spiders being cute, But
Speaker 1: if there is a cute spider, it's the jumping spiders. Um.
Speaker 1: So I'll show you a couple of pictures. Here's the
Speaker 1: actual ants, and then here's the mimic. This is a
Speaker 1: spider what and and this is another spider that looks
Speaker 1: just like the ant, except for you can tell that
Speaker 1: the mouth is different and the mandibles are a little different.
Speaker 1: So ants have those antenna which the spiders don't have.
Speaker 1: So the spiders will wave their front legs around as
Speaker 1: if they're antenna. Um. It makes me think of those
Speaker 1: videos where you put human arms around a dog and
Speaker 1: it's like, look, I'm a human doing science. I love that.
Speaker 1: That reminds me of one time my girlfriends and I
Speaker 1: were trying to get into the v I P. Of
Speaker 1: this nightclub and it was like they had like really
Speaker 1: walled up and there were like some really famous people
Speaker 1: in there. And we walked by a table and there
Speaker 1: was like a bunch of cups and like supplies on it,
Speaker 1: and so we just picked that stuff up and held
Speaker 1: it over our heads like we worked there, Like, excuse us,
Speaker 1: that's so good to put these cups, Jimmy, you know me.
Speaker 1: We gotta put these clubs back here. I think people
Speaker 1: are so we're so willing, we want to go with
Speaker 1: the flow, we want things to be normal. That if
Speaker 1: if you are confident and you're just like I'm here
Speaker 1: to do a job, like people's default is like oh yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got cups, you're especial. I also learned in my
Speaker 1: Psychology of marketing class that if you give people an excuse,
Speaker 1: any excuse, they're more likely to let you do what
Speaker 1: you want. So an example, if you want to cut
Speaker 1: in a line, they can just be like I do
Speaker 1: all the time at the airport, my flight sporting like
Speaker 1: do you mind get in front of you? Works every
Speaker 1: single time, or or just any excuse. It doesn't even
Speaker 1: have to do with the situation. Could be at the
Speaker 1: aird diabetes and then your yeah line, it's like wait
Speaker 1: what it works? Just like well, I don't know if
Speaker 1: she got babeties, so she said she said she got
Speaker 1: to get through t s a fast because diabetes gonna
Speaker 1: flare up. I don't get it, I have it. My
Speaker 1: dog has a bladder stone. So you need your start. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: get your Starbucks faster. No, I was just gonna get
Speaker 1: a lot time. But if you're dog like you know
Speaker 1: how it is you dog? Yeah? Okay sure. So some
Speaker 1: of these um jumping spiders that mimic ants will prey
Speaker 1: on the ants. Um They'll like I know, I know,
Speaker 1: They're like, I'm just a normal ants And it's like,
Speaker 1: well wait, why do you have another ant in your mouth?
Speaker 1: Billy an Billy come back, come back behind this dirt pile.
Speaker 1: I need you to see something. So some of the
Speaker 1: some of the other I find that picture. So some
Speaker 1: of the other spiders, the bigger ones that can't get
Speaker 1: away with being ant sized, and so they just look
Speaker 1: like two ants like carrying another ant um. Here it
Speaker 1: is here, it is here, it is It's so cool. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this is an image of one spider who looks
Speaker 1: like two ants. What the like? Here's the like it
Speaker 1: looks like one ant and then it carrying another ant
Speaker 1: because like and it's got little eyes where the ant
Speaker 1: right exactly, It's got little uh little spots in two places,
Speaker 1: so it looks like it has two sets of eyes.
Speaker 1: So it looks like a worker ant carrying like a
Speaker 1: dead or injured ant um. And so it gets away
Speaker 1: with It's like it's like it's sort of the reverse
Speaker 1: of like two kids in a trench coat. It's like
Speaker 1: it's like one person looking like two adults that is insane.
Speaker 1: And then it's eating ants. Yeah, it's like just a
Speaker 1: paramedic ant here carrying injured Do you want to actually
Speaker 1: I got more ant on the It's like, is that
Speaker 1: are those two ants eating another ant? Just doing medicine,
Speaker 1: which is working on his lick scalpel. Al Right, So now, um,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about zebra coloring because it's a
Speaker 1: really interesting phenomenon where like you look at a zebra,
Speaker 1: it's like that is a stupid animal because if it
Speaker 1: wants to not stand out, not be spotted by lions,
Speaker 1: like it's dumb because it's it's it almost like something
Speaker 1: is white and black right, Like it looks like it's
Speaker 1: an alarm sign going like here's a zebra eat it?
Speaker 1: Um uh. Like it even looks like a diner, you
Speaker 1: know how like diners like have this sort of like
Speaker 1: black and white pattern, like like come and dine at
Speaker 1: the zebra diner. So actually there's a few theories as
Speaker 1: to why these stripes are advantageous and they're really wild.
Speaker 1: So zebras are actually have some defense against predators and
Speaker 1: biting flies because of this coloring. So one way is
Speaker 1: they confuse predators with what's called motion dazzle, which is
Speaker 1: like the old razzle day. These zebras are like bootleggers
Speaker 1: from the twenties or something like picking their feed up. Wait,
Speaker 1: what like what do you mean by that? Is it
Speaker 1: like you look at them you think you're high for
Speaker 1: a second. That's also true, but it's like so bold
Speaker 1: patterns actually can make it difficult to assess speed and
Speaker 1: direction because of a couple of um illusions. So they
Speaker 1: are two illusions at play. There's the wagon wheel effects,
Speaker 1: so like if you've ever seen I mean, we don't
Speaker 1: see wagon wheels, but it's kind of an antiquated term,
Speaker 1: like you know how well wheel. But when you see
Speaker 1: like a fan, like a ceiling fan, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: looks like it's going backwards in a weird way. Um,
Speaker 1: it's like the motion seems inverted when it's moving fast
Speaker 1: enough because like the the light and dark going like
Speaker 1: light dart like dark. It's like it confuses your visual
Speaker 1: neurons and it's like because that is the same pattern
Speaker 1: as it would go in the other direction, so your
Speaker 1: brain keeps switching it back and forth. So this is
Speaker 1: similar to the barber pole illusion, which is also in
Speaker 1: effect with the zebras, where stripes on a barber pole,
Speaker 1: so it's just a rotating thing inside that. It's like
Speaker 1: got like a blue and a red band, but it
Speaker 1: looks like when you look at the pole, looks like
Speaker 1: the stripes are moving down like vertically along the stripe
Speaker 1: rather than just turning around. So that's big because neurons
Speaker 1: in the visual cortex have what's called an aperture problem,
Speaker 1: which is that you only have a limited slice of
Speaker 1: visual information. You can't take in like everything about the
Speaker 1: geometry of like that barber pole. So when there are
Speaker 1: two interpretations which like you have, it's like with the
Speaker 1: wagon wheel illusion, like you have the visual stimulation of
Speaker 1: like the stripes going around the pole is actually very
Speaker 1: similar to how it would look like if they were
Speaker 1: traveling down. Um, that's my brain is making it seem
Speaker 1: like it's traveling. It's like it's doing that right. And
Speaker 1: and in fact your brain actually will opt for the
Speaker 1: slower moving interpretation. I'm not really sure why it does that.
Speaker 1: I think the neurons are just lazy. They're like slow,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. That's when our brain just starts
Speaker 1: to like make stuff up. It's like, yeah, we think
Speaker 1: it's moving down. We don't really know, but that's what
Speaker 1: that's what we decided to. Yeah, Tom said it's moving
Speaker 1: down and around there's just loud chewing and like like
Speaker 1: McDonald's papers like crinkly, like what moving down? Down. So
Speaker 1: with the Zebras with their stripes, they kind of they
Speaker 1: reap the advantage of both the barber pool and the
Speaker 1: wagon wheel allusions, so like uh, and they also when
Speaker 1: they're moving as a herd um, it just turns into
Speaker 1: this giant, flickering mass that to like a line, it's
Speaker 1: hard for it to you know what way it's moving,
Speaker 1: what it's doing, And it's also hard to pick out
Speaker 1: an individual to like eat. You know, if you're a line,
Speaker 1: you can't just eat all of the Zebras you want
Speaker 1: to write once. You probably just can't stop Sarah Getti
Speaker 1: spread Sprinkle. But I mean that's another thing with scammers.
Speaker 1: You have to isolate a victim, right, Like if you
Speaker 1: try to scam a group of people, it's harder, yeah,
Speaker 1: because then people can figure it out. And you also
Speaker 1: have to pick victims who are isolated, because if a
Speaker 1: victim has too many friends and then they go, you know,
Speaker 1: they're at brunch and they're like, yeah, so Federico told me,
Speaker 1: I gotta send him seven thousand dollars and then he's
Speaker 1: gonna get his visa and then he's gonna be able
Speaker 1: to come over here. But right now he only has
Speaker 1: a flip phone and he cannot contact me or show
Speaker 1: me any pictures of him. And you're like, wait, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't do that. Well, but no, it's okay. His dog
Speaker 1: is bladders. Yeah, yeah, I know his dog is very
Speaker 1: much gonna die. I've never seen the dog either, No,
Speaker 1: but he once did have it bark on the phone,
Speaker 1: so I know it's real. Burk burk. Right. Oh, here's
Speaker 1: here's an image of the barber. Like it looks like
Speaker 1: it's like just moving moving up And even though I'm
Speaker 1: trying to tell my brain it's not, my brain, Tom
Speaker 1: is like, no, no, no, no, no, we told you
Speaker 1: it's going right, it's going up. I mean. That's what's
Speaker 1: so interesting about illusions is that even once you know
Speaker 1: the illusion, you can't unsee it, and you you are
Speaker 1: actually flip back and forth, and sometimes you can force
Speaker 1: yourself to try to see. So another use of these
Speaker 1: stripes is they are unattractive to horseflies, which typically like
Speaker 1: to bite animals like zebras. But horseflies can't, like they're
Speaker 1: so stupid that like, and they expect light to act
Speaker 1: in a certain way. That putting a dark color and
Speaker 1: a light color next to each other like that is
Speaker 1: like too confusing for them, and they they're like what
Speaker 1: you know what, never mind, never mind, we'll eat later.
Speaker 1: Come on, tim, Like this horse is uh confusing just
Speaker 1: because it's got different colors, Like it smells like a
Speaker 1: horse and broken. We don't want any of this nasty
Speaker 1: horse o. Horseflies like taking our blood out when they Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're second or juices are delicious juices, horse juice. That's
Speaker 1: the best situation though, because horselies I have to kill anybody.
Speaker 1: They're just come bite. That's true, although um, like I'm
Speaker 1: not I think horse flies might sometimes carry disease. That's
Speaker 1: the thing that really gets you with like mosquitoes or
Speaker 1: the flies, Like they carry disease and then that's how
Speaker 1: they so it's not really their fault, it's the diseases
Speaker 1: that they carry. Now are they from biting people? Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a good chicken and the egg thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So like like they get the virus um or the
Speaker 1: virus directly infects them and then like they'll get it
Speaker 1: from another infected animal and then they pass it on.
Speaker 1: But they're like living good with zeka like zukism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. I think so they're the carrier. They're so lacy.
Speaker 1: I was thinking we could in the show with you
Speaker 1: talking a little bit about the scams that you know,
Speaker 1: about the scams that you do. I'm really not insulting you, no, No,
Speaker 1: I don't talk about current scams right right, it's like
Speaker 1: you know, knowing, but when it's retired, and then I'll
Speaker 1: talk to retire scams exactly. So the scam Goddess that's
Speaker 1: coming out with new episodes, this is part of my
Speaker 1: inspiration for I love this. I love to see all
Speaker 1: the scammer animals, scam samins. That's the kind of fat
Speaker 1: I want to have as a scaminal. Yeah. So what's
Speaker 1: some of your advice to to scam which obviously we
Speaker 1: don't we don't endorse them scam people, but yeah, it
Speaker 1: depends on what kind of scams you're doing. If you're
Speaker 1: like scamming and hurting people that I don't approve of that,
Speaker 1: If you're scamming big faceless corporation, absolutely don't scam old people,
Speaker 1: scam old companies right exactly, Like they're they're they're scams themselves,
Speaker 1: like they've been running scams and work scams, so they
Speaker 1: need to be like like scam your internet provider into
Speaker 1: giving you new like trial packages and stuff like. That's
Speaker 1: that's that's the good scam because they're you know, like
Speaker 1: they're the scammer exactly. They've they've all ripped us off
Speaker 1: so much, so we we deserve we're road. Oh this
Speaker 1: is a fun one um that I actually learned about.
Speaker 1: A listener mailed this one in. They said they retired
Speaker 1: the scam so I could share it, but I think
Speaker 1: other people should pick it up because I think it
Speaker 1: could still work. So if you have a friend and
Speaker 1: you asked and like you asked them to like send
Speaker 1: you some text messages, so basically you change their name
Speaker 1: in your phone to like insert whatever food business promotion here,
Speaker 1: So like insert Taco Bell food promotion, right, So you
Speaker 1: change their name to that in your phone. Then you
Speaker 1: have them text you a text saying like, oh, you
Speaker 1: have received a deal deal in the day, and it's
Speaker 1: like ten corntraps for five dollars um, offered only for
Speaker 1: a limited time at participating locations. And then like you
Speaker 1: have to make sure that the date is about to
Speaker 1: expire or is already expired, but maybe just like a
Speaker 1: date or and then you go into like these fast
Speaker 1: food restaurants and you're like, hey, I got this deal
Speaker 1: promotion for tin for five dollars. I know it says
Speaker 1: it's about to expire, like can I use it? And
Speaker 1: a lot of times like these, like these fast food
Speaker 1: chain restaurants don't really communicate they'll honor it. And that
Speaker 1: was a wild because at first I thought you were
Speaker 1: going to like prank the friend and it's like, it's me.
Speaker 1: Don't your friends like prank talking? That's fine, And I'm
Speaker 1: talking about those food scammers. As you look up like
Speaker 1: popular concerts in the area or whatever concerts are happening
Speaker 1: that day, and then you call ahead to Chipotle and
Speaker 1: you tell them that you're on tour with whatever concept
Speaker 1: that's playing whatever venue, and that they love to have
Speaker 1: some like free burritos because this artist loves these burritos.
Speaker 1: And most of the time they will give you like
Speaker 1: thirteen free burritos, and Sharon, he loves he said, I'm
Speaker 1: in love with the ship of Time. I accidentally scammed
Speaker 1: a restaurant once because I was doing a report for
Speaker 1: school on Italian chain restaurants. It's like a an anthropology class.
Speaker 1: I was like comparing like American Italian chains like to
Speaker 1: to authentic Italian and like what kinds of things they're
Speaker 1: like mimicking and stuff, And so I like showed up
Speaker 1: with like a clipboard. I was like writing things down
Speaker 1: because like I was trying to take notes and I
Speaker 1: didn't want to bring my whole laptop. So I was
Speaker 1: like there with a clip note, like writing about the food,
Speaker 1: and they were so nice to me, and they like
Speaker 1: gave me extra bread. You came in with a clipboard. Yeah, yeah, listen,
Speaker 1: a clipboard is in a scammers artillery. Okay, you gotta
Speaker 1: have a clip right right, It's like uh And I
Speaker 1: was like, well, gosh, they sure were nice. They don't
Speaker 1: know what you're reporting. A lot of times, like food critics,
Speaker 1: like you'd be shocked how much stuff you can get
Speaker 1: for free. They might not give you free things, but
Speaker 1: they will be really nice to you. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: definitely people who will like impersonate famous food critics that
Speaker 1: people may not necessarily know what their faces, and then
Speaker 1: those people will come in and you can get complimentary
Speaker 1: meals that way. Are saying that you're writing for like
Speaker 1: a big right. I think that's kind of mean because
Speaker 1: if you know, like when waiters like, but like the
Speaker 1: also the cooks, like you have some like line cooks
Speaker 1: who are like, oh, I'm really trying harder than the like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta get this right, like Gordon Ramsey like just
Speaker 1: screaming them out. It's like y'all serving this crap on
Speaker 1: a plata. That would have never happened to me at
Speaker 1: the restaurant that I worked at ages ago, because we
Speaker 1: had photos of l a food critics that were really
Speaker 1: so you knew what their face like, putting like photos
Speaker 1: of counterfeit dollars up or putting real money. You knew
Speaker 1: how to be on diler if you did get a
Speaker 1: food critic and you're like, oh, I know who you are,
Speaker 1: like you have to, I'll give you the goods right
Speaker 1: like like Gordon Ramsey isn't a twelve year old boy,
Speaker 1: but like im person Nation. Scams like those are really big.
Speaker 1: The biggest thing that I tell people though, because on
Speaker 1: Scam God Is we spent a lot of time warning
Speaker 1: you about scams because we only want you to get
Speaker 1: involved in my scams. Now I'm running this camp. Please
Speaker 1: do give me your social Security number, spinning a cup
Speaker 1: and mail it to me. Yeah, I need it like
Speaker 1: you wan't like meet a swamman. Okay, I already took
Speaker 1: your other water bottles. I helpfully labeled it with my
Speaker 1: credit card information. Yes, that was very helpful of you.
Speaker 1: Too easy, right right? No, um, but one of the
Speaker 1: biggest things is is like if someone calls you and
Speaker 1: they're offering you information, like you should always be watching
Speaker 1: out so like, so think about it, like when you
Speaker 1: call your bank, like your bank basically acts like an
Speaker 1: angry ex girlfriend and interrogates you, like it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're wearing a you have a Bank of America account. Okay, sure,
Speaker 1: what's your social Okay, what's your day to birth? Okay,
Speaker 1: what's your last name, what's your first name, what's your
Speaker 1: middle name? Who is your mama? Who is your mom?
Speaker 1: And what's your mama's favorite car? Like like they're gonna
Speaker 1: interrogate you. I heard your mother's dog has bladderstone. What's
Speaker 1: that dog's name? I don't know. You're not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to get anybody out of your account if you
Speaker 1: can't tell me. Um. So, if a scammer calls and
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, I'm calling from your bank, and here's
Speaker 1: a reference number, a reference number, is like the biggest
Speaker 1: O G scam things like they'll give you some made
Speaker 1: up numbers too, one zero O nine is your reference number,
Speaker 1: like and we know it's a scamp. Oh, here's one
Speaker 1: for all the dog walkers. And we're talking about the
Speaker 1: animals obviously and animal lovers. I'm sure listen to this
Speaker 1: podcast Wags. So we've heard of WAGS, right, is that
Speaker 1: the walking dog walking service? Dog walking service with the app.
Speaker 1: So there's some scammers. This is a recent one that
Speaker 1: um they'll get on the Wags app and they'll schedule
Speaker 1: a dog walking session with you and then they'll cancel
Speaker 1: it and then they'll call you because on the app
Speaker 1: it's like Uber how like when you can call people
Speaker 1: because you're about to have service with them, and like
Speaker 1: you know how Uber like scramble your number when you
Speaker 1: call the Uber driver and it does the same for
Speaker 1: them for privacy. So when they've scheduled a dog walk
Speaker 1: with you, they get access to your contact and for
Speaker 1: nation through the app. So by canceling the dog walking
Speaker 1: service that they previously booked with you, then they'll call
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, we're calling from WAGS and we
Speaker 1: just canceled your dog walking service, but don't worry, you're
Speaker 1: going to get a ten dollar cancelation fee. So then
Speaker 1: that person will go through the app and send ten
Speaker 1: dollars to the person that they just canceled the walk on.
Speaker 1: Then they'll be like, hey, we actually need to reverify
Speaker 1: your banking information. Um, we're like right after they've sent
Speaker 1: them the money, then they take their banking information and
Speaker 1: they robbed the dog walker and it's wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: so so it's a dog walk Wait, so who's getting scammed?
Speaker 1: Is it the person with the dog or the person
Speaker 1: who was the person who walks the dog, which is
Speaker 1: so sad because the person probably doesn't even have a dog.
Speaker 1: The scammer is just getting on the app so that
Speaker 1: they can get in contact with the dog walker, and
Speaker 1: then it's like and through the app they can pay
Speaker 1: the dog walker and make it seem like they work
Speaker 1: for the Apple. I see. It's one of those things
Speaker 1: where they dangle a little bit of money out for
Speaker 1: you and then they take all of your money. So
Speaker 1: it's like it's like, oh, I sorry, I had to
Speaker 1: cancel here. Um, let me give you ten dollars, but actually,
Speaker 1: could you give me a social Security number? Right? It's
Speaker 1: like it's like if I called an Uber driver that
Speaker 1: I had the number four because I was using the app,
Speaker 1: and I was like, hey Tom, that Uber drivers that
Speaker 1: we actually call him from Uber it's me um mr
Speaker 1: Uber from San Francisco. Um. Yeah, yeah, we just had
Speaker 1: to cancel that client. But we sent you the cancelation
Speaker 1: for you. We don't. You're banking information is at a
Speaker 1: date or whatever, and then you give me the information,
Speaker 1: then I steal it. Yeah yeah. I think for me,
Speaker 1: like the general thing is like when I get a
Speaker 1: call from someone like pretending to be the I R
Speaker 1: S or something, and they're like they're like, you owe taxes,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like make me because I've actually because
Speaker 1: I've gotten like actual letters from the I R S.
Speaker 1: Because like whenever you owe taxes or something, um, the
Speaker 1: I R S will send you physical mail and they'll
Speaker 1: be like, hey, you owe some stuff like like send us,
Speaker 1: which is so petty. Like if I don't get the letter,
Speaker 1: they're like, hey I open this pail or go to jail. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean they actually don't really threaten you with jail typically,
Speaker 1: like there they there may be something in the letter
Speaker 1: which is like you know, like not paying these things,
Speaker 1: we can't result in penalties or something. But they won't
Speaker 1: call you and be like, hey, you need to pay
Speaker 1: this now or you'll go to jail. They just don't
Speaker 1: have the resources to send you to jail. They're so underfunded,
Speaker 1: like they you know, they'll try to get you to
Speaker 1: pay it, but but if someone's calling you, it's like
Speaker 1: I'm the I R S. And if you don't pay this,
Speaker 1: you're in danger of going to jail. It's like no,
Speaker 1: they don't. They do not have the manpower to do.
Speaker 1: That's how they they call like Hi, it's like maybe
Speaker 1: to leave. Listen, we trying to build a roses okay,
Speaker 1: and we just really meet right. And it happens all
Speaker 1: the time too, especially like if you have kind of
Speaker 1: complicated taxes um you know, like you may make a
Speaker 1: miscalculation and they're just like hey, this is what you
Speaker 1: owe or like hey there's something could you tell us
Speaker 1: what you want, like what you want me to both
Speaker 1: pay you and figure out what I owe. And that's
Speaker 1: literally the government's biggest scam is they oh yeah, because
Speaker 1: like Tibo tax uh and other like H and R
Speaker 1: backs and these other like tax prep like companies lobbied
Speaker 1: against legislation that would have them calculate what we all
Speaker 1: and just like be like, hey, here's your bill for taxes,
Speaker 1: which I would be fine with because then it's like
Speaker 1: then I don't have to do work and oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I need to be able to run my scam. Honestly,
Speaker 1: my accountant is to law abiding and I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to switch him out for more of a like a
Speaker 1: better call sault type because he'd be trying to follow
Speaker 1: all the laws. And I was like, that's not why
Speaker 1: I hired you, Like what is this? I literally like
Speaker 1: was shooting in Savannah, and Savannah took six percent of
Speaker 1: my earning for shooting um and it was a series
Speaker 1: regular roll, so they took a lot of money from me.
Speaker 1: And so when I found out that this was going
Speaker 1: to happen, my lork my accountant called me and he
Speaker 1: was like, hey, Lacy, so when you get to Georgia
Speaker 1: like that, it's going to be a six percent tax
Speaker 1: for an outside contractor. I said, okay, so how can
Speaker 1: we get around that? He said, we can't. It's the law.
Speaker 1: It's like, what, oh side are you on? Are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Or the law? Shady what I want. You
Speaker 1: gotta get you gotta get a sweatier accountant because like
Speaker 1: you know that like in movies, ayre always sweaty if
Speaker 1: they're like, you know, you're right. Mine is like completely dry.
Speaker 1: He's got photos of his family. It looks like he sleeps. Well.
Speaker 1: That was not you want. What's your favorite scammer like
Speaker 1: in history? Oh gosh, that's hard because I've fallen in
Speaker 1: love with a lot of scammers. One that I particularly
Speaker 1: love a lot. He's actually you heard if you heard
Speaker 1: the first episode my show that you heard about him.
Speaker 1: But it's Jerome Jacobson. I love that story. I love
Speaker 1: him so much. There's another scammer that I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get the whole story on. But there was a woman
Speaker 1: and she worked for Walmart and she made over four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars by just charging customers and extra nickel
Speaker 1: for a fake item and then taking that nickel out
Speaker 1: of the register. Oh my god, And I just thought
Speaker 1: the patients, that's like the office space kind of thing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that takes a lot of She did it
Speaker 1: for many, many and she said if people looked gullible,
Speaker 1: she'd take a quarter. I mean, who checks the receipt
Speaker 1: for like no bad especially bag fees. Now, if I
Speaker 1: saw a quarter, I'd just be like, it's probably like
Speaker 1: a fee for printing out the receipt or something, right.
Speaker 1: And also I feel like there's no that's probably the
Speaker 1: hot new scam is charging for bags but not actually
Speaker 1: charging for the bag, because I don't think that stores
Speaker 1: are counting how many bags that they're giving away. Um,
Speaker 1: I know they're not at rouse because that's my biggest scam.
Speaker 1: And when I got to like the grocery stores, I'll
Speaker 1: get all my stuff and I'll say no bags. Then
Speaker 1: I'll pay, and then they'll close the card and then
Speaker 1: I'm like I can't carry all this what was that again?
Speaker 1: And then I'll never ring me back up for the
Speaker 1: bags and just give me a bag. It's terrible. Let's
Speaker 1: self check out. They don't check Oh no, but I
Speaker 1: feel weird in the self check out, So I'll be
Speaker 1: like I got three bags when really I got Telly.
Speaker 1: That's funny. Yeah, I'll give him a little bit, a
Speaker 1: little because then I'll go to the regular counter and
Speaker 1: be like like I can't carry this grocery car to
Speaker 1: be some bad I think it's because with that, you're
Speaker 1: like actually giving them a chance to do it. Charged? Yeah,
Speaker 1: where did charge on his? Like the honor system? And
Speaker 1: I think it's it's so easy to get away with, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it a challenge. She loved the chill.
Speaker 1: That might be it for me. I think I might
Speaker 1: just enjoy duping people. It makes me feel smart, Like, Okay,
Speaker 1: what it that's so true? Why do I do that? Bags?
Speaker 1: As long as you don't do me? And that it
Speaker 1: was that it was okay that I gave you my
Speaker 1: social Security number? Is I'm just verifying it. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: going to turn that into like big investments right. Oh
Speaker 1: of course we're credited seating social security number. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: So tell people where they can find you in more
Speaker 1: about the podcast. Oh great. So you can find me
Speaker 1: um Lacey Mosley at d I V A l A
Speaker 1: c I DVA Lacey on all platforms Instagram, Twitter, then
Speaker 1: mo the like. Um, you can follow Scam Gottess at
Speaker 1: Scam got his Pot on Twitter and on Instagram. And
Speaker 1: if you have any scams that you want to share
Speaker 1: with me that you're retiring or any time you've been scammed.
Speaker 1: U scam got his pot at gmail dot com And
Speaker 1: don't don't scam the elderly only scam big face. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: please do not scam the elderly. That is so hurtful.
Speaker 1: And also, guys, watch Florida Girls on pop tv um.
Speaker 1: The whole season is out now, so you can stream
Speaker 1: the whole thing on or you can get on iTunes
Speaker 1: or Amazon and download it. It's really fun, guys. And
Speaker 1: you can follow us on the internets. Uh, Creature feature
Speaker 1: Pod dot com, Creature Feature Pod on Instagram, Creature feet Pod.
Speaker 1: We couldn't get Creature feature pot on Twitter, creature like
Speaker 1: it's it's not it's f e a T. Don't type
Speaker 1: in creature fet because you will get you will get
Speaker 1: something that's uh not endorsed by this podcast. And you
Speaker 1: can find me online at Katie Golden Um. And I'm
Speaker 1: also a bird on Twitter at pro bird Writes where
Speaker 1: I am a real, actual, factual bird. The greatest scam
Speaker 1: ever pulled was birds because they're not they are they
Speaker 1: are real. I don't know. I don't after listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast, I don't know. It's birds scams. Bird is scams.
Speaker 1: Birds is scams and thanks to the Space Classics for
Speaker 1: their awesome song Solumina.