Speaker 1: Today on Creature feature, we'll discuss some weapons of ass distraction.
Speaker 1: Insect butts explode, spraying deadly chemicals, Hippos make poop rockets,
Speaker 1: Scorpions are willing to literally throw away their anus in
Speaker 1: deadly combat. We're talking about some of the nastiest acts
Speaker 1: of foul play in the animal and human Kingdom. And
Speaker 1: later I'll be talking to a real life researcher and
Speaker 1: curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Speaker 1: about one of the weirdest, most gruesome antal behaviors I've
Speaker 1: ever heard of. So as we'll discuss evolution is how
Speaker 1: should I put it inventive when it comes to weaponry?
Speaker 1: But how about some good old American ingenuity? How do
Speaker 1: we compare to the animal Kingdom? In World War Two,
Speaker 1: the O S S, America's espionage agency, tried to put
Speaker 1: a little stink on our military strategy Day. Along with
Speaker 1: their British counterparts, were developing a stink bomb. A top
Speaker 1: secret memo detailed the S liquid, an oily substance with
Speaker 1: a quote highly persistent smell suggestive of personal uncleanliness. It
Speaker 1: could be deployed via a gel capsule, a perfume atomizer
Speaker 1: or pesticide sprayer. The intent wasn't to down the German targets,
Speaker 1: but to make him the subject of quote derision or contempt,
Speaker 1: ruining their morale by rendering them too stinky. Further developed
Speaker 1: stink weapons were meant to have the quote revolting odor
Speaker 1: of a very loose bowel movement and was codenamed the
Speaker 1: who Me. Ultimately, this never really worked, in part due
Speaker 1: to the unfortunate fact that the deployer of the stink
Speaker 1: weapon usually got a taste of his own medicine, getting
Speaker 1: contaminated with the fetid poop smelling oil. But as we'll
Speaker 1: find out, animals are much more crafty and successful when
Speaker 1: it comes to butt bombs. Joining me today is actor
Speaker 1: writer bird Lover kimme a Pornia. Yeah you did it. Wow.
Speaker 1: Very honored to be here on this butt weapon every Yeah.
Speaker 1: I do love a butt. But this seems like the
Speaker 1: dark side of the dark side of the butt. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And now is that like a Pink Floyd album? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly the but that's exactly the title. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but stink Floyd. There you go. Boom um, why do
Speaker 1: you like birds? Um? You know what I I like
Speaker 1: birds because they're just really fun to look at. There
Speaker 1: there's a lot of birds that are just dumb looking um,
Speaker 1: and the way they move is so silly. They're very
Speaker 1: The thing is, I like how I like all of
Speaker 1: what you said. I like that birds looked dumb. They
Speaker 1: act dumb too. They certainly do, most of them. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously there's the African gray parrot and the corvids, and
Speaker 1: those are all very smart. But like your your average pigeon,
Speaker 1: just like the way they kind of like bob around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just they also have an expression of just like what happened?
Speaker 1: They don't know what's going on? Four or four brain off.
Speaker 1: That's right. Pigeons are actually my favorite type of birth.
Speaker 1: They are everywhere and they're uh full of rocks, right,
Speaker 1: they have to be addressed eat rocks. Um. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about exploding ant butts. Let's let's do it. Um. So,
Speaker 1: there's a species of carpenter ant found in Malaysia and
Speaker 1: brunet Uh. It's called Camponotus cylindricus um. So when they're attacked,
Speaker 1: they'll violently contract their abdomen, exploding a sticky yellow glue
Speaker 1: from their gaster. So the gaster is the posterior portion
Speaker 1: of the ant's body. It's um basically the closest we're
Speaker 1: going to get to an ant ass but there is
Speaker 1: So the act of their butt exploding does kill the
Speaker 1: ant um, but it's a suicidal sacrifice to ward off
Speaker 1: enemies or invaders, and so the adhesive goog kills the
Speaker 1: enemy by really really really sticky and gross. That's it.
Speaker 1: It's just very very stick sticky and sticky and gross.
Speaker 1: And just like you know, like that scene in The
Speaker 1: Incredibles where Mr. Incredible gets Have you seen that gets
Speaker 1: attacked by those googballs? Oh? Yes, and they like start
Speaker 1: growing and you can't move like that. Yeah, that's insane.
Speaker 1: There it was. There was a product at home depot
Speaker 1: well when I was in high school that my English
Speaker 1: teacher was telling us about that was exactly this. It
Speaker 1: was like, you can spray on a burglar and oh,
Speaker 1: because I've heard of sticky traps for like pest, but
Speaker 1: like this is a human person. I see, I see
Speaker 1: like a giant. That would be cool though, like a
Speaker 1: giant sticky trap for like a burglar. And they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you like spray on their face? And it turns
Speaker 1: into a big goo that grows like a foam on
Speaker 1: their face. So this is not the same. Wouldn't that
Speaker 1: kill the burglar? No, no, they just can't see your
Speaker 1: police get there, right, yeah right, yeah totally. So ants
Speaker 1: don't have the only exploding but termite don't know they don't.
Speaker 1: Termites also have one. So aging termites grow a sack
Speaker 1: of blue fluid that can suicidally explode onto enemies. Um So,
Speaker 1: a lot of termite species shoot poop at their enemies
Speaker 1: as a defense, but the toxic explosive blue goo takes
Speaker 1: it a step further. It's this costic chemical one that
Speaker 1: becomes increasingly toxic as the termite ages. It's like a
Speaker 1: fine wine just really kind of like why would you
Speaker 1: say that, I mean just really brewing in that that
Speaker 1: termite ass, you know. Um So, older termites whose manibals
Speaker 1: have become dull with age and so they can't forge
Speaker 1: as well, and there's like not a little teeny tiny
Speaker 1: termite dentures, so you can't. Uh, this is cute, I know,
Speaker 1: that's like just like it's a little grandpa termite is
Speaker 1: like got good dentur Wow, time to s blown by ass.
Speaker 1: Just about time and agesh wine for a long time. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so because they're basically useless, which the termites are
Speaker 1: basically none of the older termites horrible when if you
Speaker 1: think about it, like personify them. But you know, okay,
Speaker 1: it's like logans run. Yeah, so they can provide one
Speaker 1: last service for the colonies. They can blow themselves up.
Speaker 1: What that's it? They can, but the blowing up is
Speaker 1: just to get rid of themselves, doesn't do anything else
Speaker 1: to help anybody. Or yeah, well they blow themselves up
Speaker 1: on an enemies, like they're like they're like, hey, fella,
Speaker 1: you want some more others, originals, termites just old people.
Speaker 1: So you might wonder how to suicidal termites and ants exist,
Speaker 1: Like it seems kind of counter productive. I was wondering
Speaker 1: why they have to die after they protect themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, so the reason is that ants and
Speaker 1: termites are you social. They live in a big colony
Speaker 1: where only the queen reproduces, and this makes it so
Speaker 1: they can sacrifice themselves and it it's not as important
Speaker 1: because like they're not really relying on their their personal
Speaker 1: genes getting passed down. They're relying on the fact that
Speaker 1: ants are um haploid diploid, and like basically they're they're
Speaker 1: sort of like clones of each other, so that that
Speaker 1: gene that's sort of genetic template is going to get
Speaker 1: passed down regardless of whether they actually, you know, give
Speaker 1: birth to a brood of horrifying little larva. So basically
Speaker 1: they're just disposable, yes, no matter how you look at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And a slightly different story is the Bombardier beetle, which
Speaker 1: they're found all over the world except Antarctica because who
Speaker 1: would want to live there? Nobody. That's true, it's a
Speaker 1: that's a bit of a misnomer. It's uh more like
Speaker 1: no ants Arctica. Yeah, we should rename it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's an irony that, like the one place ants don't
Speaker 1: live has an ant I mean, come on, you guys,
Speaker 1: come on, I really dropped the ball in I don't know.
Speaker 1: So at the Kobe University of Japan they studied these
Speaker 1: beetles and found that they can escape from toad stomach
Speaker 1: by spraying a hot chemical from their butts. Just toad stomachs,
Speaker 1: but I mean toads seem to be the thing they studied,
Speaker 1: so I would assume the toads are the beatles nemesis.
Speaker 1: So they just blow a hole through the toad. Well
Speaker 1: it's so what happens is there these tiny explosions of
Speaker 1: butt chemicals that occur inside the toad stomach, which causes
Speaker 1: them to vomit up the beetle. And actually it's kind
Speaker 1: of happy ending because the beetle survives. Uh, and the
Speaker 1: toads also seemed to survive. Well that's great. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just like you learn a hard lesson. It's like, man,
Speaker 1: that's like this feels like Chipotle, you know what I mean? Chipotle,
Speaker 1: that's a topical. You know how like sometimes when you
Speaker 1: eat Chipotle like upsets your stomach. That's I'm doing a
Speaker 1: thing about that, like as if Chipotle is like a beetle. Beetle, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what if there's some like toads out there
Speaker 1: with body dysmorphia that oh no, toads, toad you're beautiful,
Speaker 1: don't live mass marketing of unrealistic expectations hurt you that
Speaker 1: don't need to make yourself vo no, no, no, and
Speaker 1: don't just nobody try to eat beetles. Yeah, just don't
Speaker 1: do it. Just don't doesn't even sound good. No, they're
Speaker 1: they're I mean, like even in terms of insects, like
Speaker 1: like have a nice grub or something that's that'll go
Speaker 1: down smooth. But a beetle girls think so they have
Speaker 1: like pinchy faces they got Yeah, they got little dongles
Speaker 1: that are sharp. Yeah, yeah, I like what you said
Speaker 1: better sharp dongles. That's a scientific term. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about scorpion in this is you're already scary. They are, um,
Speaker 1: but they're good moms take care of their babies real good.
Speaker 1: Some of them let their babies eat them. We talked
Speaker 1: about that on another episode. Wow st we scorpions. So
Speaker 1: I got a question for you. If you could detach
Speaker 1: one body part, what would it be for defense or
Speaker 1: just because? Well defense defense? They're down because like I
Speaker 1: feel like if it's just because, I'd be like, obviously
Speaker 1: my head because that would be really funny. Yeah, dang,
Speaker 1: I was going to pick head anyway, I know. But well, well,
Speaker 1: what's your reason for being for defense? I would throw Well,
Speaker 1: I guess I just assumed that my severed head could
Speaker 1: still do stuff like I could toss my head at people.
Speaker 1: You could like spike your head down on someone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well I was thinking I could just verbally abuse people
Speaker 1: farther avera for me, just kick my head to a
Speaker 1: distance yeah, back, and tell him to not come any
Speaker 1: closer to me. You could make like a morning star
Speaker 1: your head on the end of a chain and like
Speaker 1: be throwing inside says, you're like whipping your head around,
Speaker 1: being like you suck that. Yes, that's my answer. That's
Speaker 1: what I want to do. Yeah. So the and A
Speaker 1: terrorist Scorpions of South America. I'm sure I pronounced that
Speaker 1: high percent. Sounds good to me. So when attacked, they
Speaker 1: detached their stingers, which wiggle around, probably to ward off predators,
Speaker 1: kind of like lizard tails, Like their tails will detach
Speaker 1: kind of wiggle around, and it's like, not only is
Speaker 1: it sort of like allowing them to escape because they
Speaker 1: can now run away, but then they've got this like
Speaker 1: tail to contend with, so it's it's like it's a
Speaker 1: nice decoy and also a way too to sort of
Speaker 1: like rip, rip and pull, you know, like report kind
Speaker 1: of thing with parachuting. I've tried to catch a lizard before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it from the lizard thing. You get those
Speaker 1: tails litters Like I used to try to catch lizards
Speaker 1: all the time when I was a little Kiden, like,
Speaker 1: just get a handful of lizard tails. Yeah, they just
Speaker 1: detached the tailing, right, Yeah, I can't. I can't. And
Speaker 1: I was like, I think I tried to keep one
Speaker 1: of the lizard tails once because I was like, well,
Speaker 1: if I can't have the lizard as a pet, I
Speaker 1: guess this tail will do. Because it was still moving,
Speaker 1: so I assumed it was like alive. I think a
Speaker 1: lizard was just going to grow out of the end
Speaker 1: of the tail there, sure, sure, why not happen? What
Speaker 1: works the other way? Why not? You're right? Who am
Speaker 1: I to tell you? Well, So for the scorpions, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: their stingers also include their anus, and so when they
Speaker 1: detached their stingers for purposes of evasion, they lose their
Speaker 1: ability to poop. Oh jeez, they die. Well. No amount
Speaker 1: of prune juice is gonna solve this situation. Um, So
Speaker 1: some of the scorpions turned into I guess you would
Speaker 1: call it poop balloons. Okay, so they just fill up
Speaker 1: with their own peah. They can live for about eight
Speaker 1: more months. Wow, that's a lot of time to just know. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's longer than a human can
Speaker 1: be constant, definitely. So one of the scorpions that was
Speaker 1: observed lost their tail stub due to the trapped pressure
Speaker 1: of the poops. So I guess it's like exploded. Oh
Speaker 1: the scorpion exploded. Yeah, it was so full of yea um.
Speaker 1: But they can still hunt and mate. So the whole
Speaker 1: thing with evolution is as long as you can pass
Speaker 1: your genetic load off when yeah yike. So there's some
Speaker 1: other scorpions that are just mating with a poop balloon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's fine. I mean maybe they're into it. I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe they are into it. People got different flavors,
Speaker 1: that's fair. People in scorpions. Yikes. What if they explode
Speaker 1: while mating, well that I mean then they could just
Speaker 1: be like surprise, they'd be dead. They would be dead.
Speaker 1: What an exciting thing that I'd want to see boot
Speaker 1: baloon scorpion explodes while meeting. I wish I had that
Speaker 1: video for you, uh but instead, you know how Marvel,
Speaker 1: I'm sure this episode is not going to come out
Speaker 1: right now, like, but there's the Marvel movie that should
Speaker 1: always be relevant. Yeah, I suppose. So the Avengers H
Speaker 1: Final Battle Game, Avengers the Last one End game Adventures.
Speaker 1: Well we did it, guy, I just told you what
Speaker 1: it was Avengers. That was a great time we had um.
Speaker 1: But you know what if I just just humor me.
Speaker 1: What if Captain America never got a shield? What if
Speaker 1: the soldier Juice the game him not only made his
Speaker 1: little noodle body into big old muscle mcmusseles, but made
Speaker 1: his perfect butt into a shield. So like he never
Speaker 1: gets a shield, but he's got a big butt. And
Speaker 1: then like so he's got Nazis coming, he just like
Speaker 1: shields everyone with his butt, and you know it's like
Speaker 1: the bulls just bounced right off it, and he like
Speaker 1: can crush people between his cheeks. Like red skull just
Speaker 1: boomed like a like a nut down and advice. That's
Speaker 1: Buns of steel. Buns of steel just deflects tests rats
Speaker 1: and you know age of Ultron, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: based on what you thought the title of this Avenger,
Speaker 1: we'll see like he collects the gemstones of Dustiny on
Speaker 1: his butt though, and then so he can make butt snaps.
Speaker 1: That well, so let's talk about wan bats. Okay, I
Speaker 1: was really into this book snaps and that's my that's
Speaker 1: my alternate universe. O c um Captain America but with
Speaker 1: a really big butt that does heroic things. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of check out my dad aren't.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah I will. Um. So wombats are like
Speaker 1: Captain America except their shield is there. But except also
Speaker 1: they live in Australia, so they'd be like Captain Australia
Speaker 1: and their wombats. Damn, I mean, can't argue that logic.
Speaker 1: I can't argue much of the logic so far. So wombats,
Speaker 1: for those of you who may not know, they're adorable
Speaker 1: fluffy marsupials native to Australia. Um, they're pretty fierce and
Speaker 1: they can bite and scrape effectively, and they can well
Speaker 1: be a little chunk boys. They weigh up to eighty
Speaker 1: pounds of just pure cuteness. They look sort of they
Speaker 1: have like kind of big noses. They kind of dope.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen a wombat? I think I've seen
Speaker 1: a wombat. Let me show you one. Joe. You said
Speaker 1: chunk boys, and now I really want to see a pig.
Speaker 1: Chunk boys. Yeah, yeah, they're they're big old chunk boys. Um,
Speaker 1: here here's a whole hell. Yeah, yeah, I've seen one
Speaker 1: of those they are chunk boys. There are some thick
Speaker 1: little boys and they're very cute. Um. And they also
Speaker 1: have a butt that is reinforced with cartilage. So this
Speaker 1: is a quote from Alice Swinburne, or actually, since she's Australian,
Speaker 1: it's probably Alice Swinbon, PhD candidate at the University of Queensland. Um,
Speaker 1: should I try an Australian accent? I dare you. It's
Speaker 1: accents aren't my thing, but what we're going to try it?
Speaker 1: So there, then hang on, I gotta think down Unda,
Speaker 1: down and let's see Australian goody, good eye, good die Steve,
Speaker 1: Steve Irwin, Stave Irwin crokey. Here we go. The normal
Speaker 1: shield is essentially full fuse backbones or plates covered in
Speaker 1: cattledge fat, thick skin and fuh damn, that was good. Wow,
Speaker 1: you hustled me. I thought it was going to be. No,
Speaker 1: it's I have to work up to it. I can't
Speaker 1: go from I can't go cold into that accent. Um.
Speaker 1: So basically, they have a super butt. It's a super
Speaker 1: It's like it's reinforced with bone, cartilage, fat, They've got
Speaker 1: extra thick skin and extra thick fur. It is the boss,
Speaker 1: but the boss of butts. So the wombat, when threatened,
Speaker 1: will run into its burrow and just block the opening
Speaker 1: with its big, old armored tush. You oh my god,
Speaker 1: just enemies bouncing off it, just completely Uh, it's it's invincible.
Speaker 1: But that's amazing. I really want to touch that butt. No,
Speaker 1: it's I mean it would probably be kind of like
Speaker 1: firm um so. Uh. There's also evidence that it can
Speaker 1: use the butt to crush the skulls of persistent predators.
Speaker 1: It'll slam its booty against the sides of its burrow,
Speaker 1: crushing predator skulls who are unlucky to get stuck between
Speaker 1: a rock and a hard butt. Oh boy, look what
Speaker 1: you did. I mean, what a way to go to
Speaker 1: be crushed to death by the butt of one of
Speaker 1: the world's cutest animals. Yeah, I know. It's a real
Speaker 1: mixed bag for me. I love it. So I begged
Speaker 1: the question do humans have an analog? Yes, we do, actually,
Speaker 1: and but it's only through good old fashion German engineering,
Speaker 1: not just German. Actually think it's Swedish. I'm really not
Speaker 1: good at uh. Anyways, it's called it's called the Vulcan
Speaker 1: personal air bags and then there's also another company called
Speaker 1: hip Air. Um we're talking air bags. Well, their personal
Speaker 1: wearable air bags. Oh, we're talking airbags. You can wear
Speaker 1: on your chest, on your button, yes, on your wat
Speaker 1: like a wombat. Um. So these are for the elderly
Speaker 1: to prevent them from breaking their hips during a fault.
Speaker 1: Because actually that's one of the most, um, the highest
Speaker 1: risks of just being elderly with no other health complications,
Speaker 1: just of like physical trauma is breaking your hip. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because like as you get older, it's harder, too harder
Speaker 1: to balance, you have less like natural protection, and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's uh, this is actually really great. It's funny,
Speaker 1: but this is a great invention. So the bags you
Speaker 1: wear this like thick belt and then when it's the
Speaker 1: sensors since that you're you're falling, the bags inflate, uh
Speaker 1: and it just like creates an inflatable ass for you
Speaker 1: to like bounce on. And I think I have I
Speaker 1: think I have a video. Wow. It is just a
Speaker 1: big old side butt. Though it looks like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's on either side though. Oh it's so, I see,
Speaker 1: So it's a full it's it's either side of the
Speaker 1: butt can have this a big inflatable cheek that will
Speaker 1: protect you from falls. That's great. I need that maybe now,
Speaker 1: really just for fun, that would be pretty fun. Like
Speaker 1: like you you trip, you stumble, You're like, oh no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make full out of myself. But then you
Speaker 1: get this big inflatable but bounce right back up and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, what's the time. I'm all casual. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would just walk around waiting to fall down if
Speaker 1: I had one of those. Yeah, just bounce off cars
Speaker 1: like oh you just you didn't stop for me and
Speaker 1: I'm at a crosswalk, No problem, I just bounce. That's right,
Speaker 1: like a ping pong ball. That's right, pong ball. So
Speaker 1: what's up with humans and our big butts and round
Speaker 1: butt cheeks? Walking upright gave us an added bonus of
Speaker 1: gaining nice butts. Our bipedal gate requires us to have
Speaker 1: thick gluteal muscle masses and water pulvis is to allow
Speaker 1: for a water range of leg movements side to side.
Speaker 1: So that explains the muscles. But one of that nice
Speaker 1: cushy fat we got on our tissues. There's not really
Speaker 1: a definitive answer, though some anthropologists suggest it may simply
Speaker 1: be a convenient place to store fat on our bodies
Speaker 1: in preparation for times of scarcity. There's also the theory
Speaker 1: that women have more fat in our butts because of
Speaker 1: the added strain of breastfeeding and childbirth. Maybe we're like
Speaker 1: the fat tailed dwarf leamer, an adorable little critter found
Speaker 1: in Madagascar who likes to hibernate. They store huge amounts
Speaker 1: of fat in their tails to be used as fuel
Speaker 1: for their extended torport. So if anyone tells you that
Speaker 1: you have a big butt, thank them for the compliment
Speaker 1: and tell them you're well stocked for winter. Hold onto
Speaker 1: your butts. We'll be right back after a few quick messages.
Speaker 1: So do humans have weirdly gross biological defense mechanisms? After all?
Speaker 1: When we're scared, we can react by urinating, having bowel movements,
Speaker 1: or vomiting. Most of this is due to the fight
Speaker 1: or flight reflex. The reason we're not constantly peeing ourselves
Speaker 1: is due to the communication between the prefrontal cortex and
Speaker 1: the area of the brain that controls the bladder called
Speaker 1: the pontine micturition center. When the Olympics system takes over
Speaker 1: during times of fear of stress, the signals from the
Speaker 1: prefront to cortex to the pontine mixturtion center gets interrupted,
Speaker 1: so there's nothing telling your platter not to pe everywhere.
Speaker 1: The same principle goes for number two. Irritable Belle syndrome
Speaker 1: is a cluster of symptoms that include stomach pains, cramping,
Speaker 1: and or diarrhea. For many people, IBS is triggered by stress.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's associated with psychiatric disorders. Over half of
Speaker 1: people with IBS also have panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder,
Speaker 1: social phobia, post traumatic stress disorder, or major depression. It's
Speaker 1: a somewhat mysterious syndrome, but there are theories that it's
Speaker 1: not simply a disorder of the Belle's but the brain,
Speaker 1: a miscommunication between the brain and the gut. In fact,
Speaker 1: there could be an imbalance of serotonin in the gut.
Speaker 1: Some poopologists suggested depression of the second brain, meaning our
Speaker 1: butt brains. Our butt brains is known as the entire
Speaker 1: nervous system. It's a bundle of nerves in the walls
Speaker 1: of our guts. It controls the functioning of the gut
Speaker 1: independently of our brain, though there's still communication between the
Speaker 1: two brains and our gut brains can even have an inflo.
Speaker 1: It's over emotions. Think about like when you get nervous
Speaker 1: and your bowels kind of churn and you get butterflies
Speaker 1: and you get more nervous. So maybe people with ib
Speaker 1: should be seeking couples counseling between their head brains and
Speaker 1: their ass brains. So you like hippo's, I do. I
Speaker 1: also like the word poopologists. Thank you. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: scientific it's it's actually they study, um, they study trees. Said, um,
Speaker 1: we're actually gonna have a herpetologist on later and it's
Speaker 1: not it's guys, be mature about it. Yeah, man, it's
Speaker 1: not herpies. Yeah yeah, there I said it. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we said it. This is yeah, we did the joke first,
Speaker 1: So don't even think don't don't even think it. Grow
Speaker 1: first of all, grow up, put on your pants, put
Speaker 1: on your big adult pants. Move out of your parents house.
Speaker 1: Move out of your parents house, because we're about to
Speaker 1: talk about hippo poop rocket. Um. So I found this
Speaker 1: book and it's called the Social Life of Hippo's and
Speaker 1: it's just it's just wonderful. It has a whole section
Speaker 1: dedicated to defecation. It does. Quote from the book The
Speaker 1: Social Life of Hippo's, defecation plays a prominent role in
Speaker 1: the life of a hippo and often involves more than
Speaker 1: the mirror elimination of waste um David enbro thank you.
Speaker 1: So what happens is the hippo's tail is quote wagged
Speaker 1: vigorously while it's pooping, so that the quote loosely constituted,
Speaker 1: dung is sprayed around. Often this is done in a bush.
Speaker 1: I guess the book felt like I should know that.
Speaker 1: But but they it's not exclusive to bushes. They like
Speaker 1: to poop in general. So The Social Life of Hippo's
Speaker 1: book argues that though this was once considered to be
Speaker 1: territorial behavior, that hippos are not actually territorial on land.
Speaker 1: So we're going to get into a big controversy about
Speaker 1: hippo's can't wait. So this idea was supported by a
Speaker 1: study done in nineteen seventy four that showed no territoriality
Speaker 1: amongst Mirror River hippos. This study was contradicted by a
Speaker 1: more recent study done that looked at the territorial behavior
Speaker 1: of a male hippo that involved poop sprang onto the
Speaker 1: wall when a female hippo was introduced to his habitat.
Speaker 1: This was done in captivity, so like, some people argue
Speaker 1: that this is a different behavior than would be found
Speaker 1: in the wild. However, the University of Michigan Museum of
Speaker 1: Zoology notes that dung spraying is territorial and that the
Speaker 1: areas that are sprayed by the poop usually follow along
Speaker 1: the hippo's grazing path in territory or boundary into new territories. Um.
Speaker 1: And but here's the thing. I don't know whether it
Speaker 1: you look like, you're like, what's happening to me? It's
Speaker 1: like what dogs do when you take him on a
Speaker 1: walk and on everything everywhere you think like, and I
Speaker 1: mean like, some biologists think it is territorial and some don't.
Speaker 1: And here's but I have a theory. Okay, I think
Speaker 1: they just love it. I think they love pooping. So
Speaker 1: another hippo behavior, according to the Social Life of Hippos,
Speaker 1: is dung showering of other hippos, used as a display
Speaker 1: of dominance. Um. The San Diego Zoo notes that dominant
Speaker 1: males spray there poop onto subordinate males. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Supportinate males will also spray their poop in the faces
Speaker 1: of dominant males. I don't know, is that really a
Speaker 1: display of dominance or do they just like getting brown
Speaker 1: showers all the time? Gross to say, but I do.
Speaker 1: It does sound like hippos just love it. Seems like
Speaker 1: they love it. There's a lot and if you're eating
Speaker 1: something right now, I apologize, sorry, sorry, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of smelling, licking and eating of the dung. Yeah, yikes.
Speaker 1: Is it good for them? Is it like they're supposed
Speaker 1: to eat that stuff? Don't think so. I think it's okay.
Speaker 1: But it's not like there's certain things like like they're
Speaker 1: ruminants animals that um uh will eat stuff and like
Speaker 1: they have um they'll actually like pass things like rabbits
Speaker 1: and getting pigs will pass like poop and then like
Speaker 1: eat that. And it's actually like a special type of
Speaker 1: poop that has um. It's just like once digested, but
Speaker 1: stuff that can still have nutrients taken from it, and
Speaker 1: so that can be But I don't think this is
Speaker 1: the case of that. I think this is just purely
Speaker 1: for the joy of rolling around in their own films.
Speaker 1: So how many times a day what was just pop.
Speaker 1: It seems like all the time constantly bikes. And you said,
Speaker 1: their tails just like spread around like the wagon pop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you have seen, if you've ever gone to the zoo,
Speaker 1: hang around the hippos for a while because it will happen.
Speaker 1: And it's quite interesting because they're a little tails just
Speaker 1: like like goes like like poop everywhere. Wow. Um. But
Speaker 1: so they're not not the only ones guilty of using
Speaker 1: poop as a sort of projectile. But this is not
Speaker 1: a weapon. This is just they just like they just
Speaker 1: love it. I just included it because I mean, there
Speaker 1: is the there is a theory that it is territorial
Speaker 1: or it is used to a certain dominance. But my
Speaker 1: thing is, I think they just like it. You um,
Speaker 1: as a as a hippoologist. Um, So let's go into
Speaker 1: the ocean and to one of the most majestic creatures
Speaker 1: that resides in the ocean, the pygmy sperm whale. So
Speaker 1: pygmy sperm whales can spew over three gallons of brownish
Speaker 1: red but syrup. It's an intestinal fluid distinct from poop,
Speaker 1: and its purpose is to distract enemies. While the pygmy
Speaker 1: sperm whale escapes did you say brownish red poop syrup. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's like a it's an intestinal fluid. It's not poop,
Speaker 1: but it's not not poop, it's it's a but syrup.
Speaker 1: And it just makes the water murky so that the
Speaker 1: thing can run away. Essentially. Yeah, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: a squid ink. Probably doesn't smell great either, I'd imagine.
Speaker 1: I also imagine that. Um. So, what we like to
Speaker 1: do on this show is we like to go on
Speaker 1: on the Imagination train, stop on off at the Imagination station,
Speaker 1: really kind of dive into the world. And we're in
Speaker 1: a topic that is a little tricky to do that,
Speaker 1: to get too deep into imagination world, because you know
Speaker 1: it's but so here's this is actually real story. Um,
Speaker 1: It's about how I've weaponized my own grossness. Okay please.
Speaker 1: Um When I was a kid, I had the flu
Speaker 1: and I would go to choir every morning, and so
Speaker 1: I was pretty stoic, so I still went to choir,
Speaker 1: but I could feel trouble brewing inside me, and we
Speaker 1: were singing do re me uh, And as we reached
Speaker 1: the sort of crescendo of do remi, a geyser of
Speaker 1: flu Vomit just spewed out of me a little tiny body. Um.
Speaker 1: Either through pure luck or some kind of evolutionary instinct,
Speaker 1: I managed to aim my arc of puke directly at
Speaker 1: this girl who was super mean to me, and just
Speaker 1: like a hundred percent like barely got it on anyone
Speaker 1: else but this one girl. And it was just like
Speaker 1: and it was also my birthday, Happy birthday. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was like, thank you, thank you, flu virus. This is
Speaker 1: a great birthday present. I mean, I've never bombed on anyone,
Speaker 1: but if I could, I would have aimed at someone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't think I was trying. I think it was
Speaker 1: just the universe allowing my vomit to reach a target.
Speaker 1: So it's like it's you know, it's like I feel
Speaker 1: like the universe balances out it always does you have
Speaker 1: to vomit during quire at least do it on someone
Speaker 1: who's mean to you. Yeah. Have you ever liked either
Speaker 1: inadvertently or advertently weaponized just something gross? Yeah? I don't know.
Speaker 1: The only thing I can think of is like a
Speaker 1: terrible fart making people go away. Have you like just
Speaker 1: on purpose? Um, I haven't done it on purpose. I
Speaker 1: sort of like to try avoid farting in public. It
Speaker 1: gives me a lot of anxiety, even though we're supposed
Speaker 1: to embrace the fart we I mean, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a whole yoga position about it. Oh there is, yeah,
Speaker 1: where it's like the wind release post. Definitely. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like um, I mean, I feel like I
Speaker 1: do feel like vomit. It is sort of it is
Speaker 1: a room clear. So like if you're ever in a
Speaker 1: situation where you need people to evacuate, but somehow you can't,
Speaker 1: like nobody's paying attention to you, you just vomit. You
Speaker 1: just keep a bunch of beetles in your pocket. Pop
Speaker 1: one and yeah, yeah, one of those one of those
Speaker 1: toad vomit beetles. Yeah there, Yeah, don't do that. But
Speaker 1: don't do that. You were just saying, I know, but
Speaker 1: sometimes I lie. So the US Navy contracted a company
Speaker 1: named Invocon to develop a vomit ray, or quote non
Speaker 1: lethal standoff weapon as it's otherwise known. And here's a
Speaker 1: quote from the the invocon website. It's a i VC.
Speaker 1: Invocan proposes to investigate the use of beamed r F
Speaker 1: radio frequency energy to excite and interrupt the normal process
Speaker 1: of human hearing and equilibrium. Uh. They say it can
Speaker 1: penetrate through walls and causes emotion, sick, dizziness, and vomiting.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, so they just point that thing at
Speaker 1: you and you feel off balance, start throwing up. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. Have they used this thing before? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think they tell as if they have.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. Why terrible like social humiliation weapons.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think this one is more practical, where
Speaker 1: it's like you can just disable someone if they're just
Speaker 1: like on the floor throwing up. Oh gosh. Um So,
Speaker 1: defensive vomiting in animals is a whole category of evolutionary
Speaker 1: defensive strategies. Um. So, later we're going to have an
Speaker 1: interview with Dr Greg Polly. He's a herpetologist and curator
Speaker 1: at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about some exorcism level vomiting, defensive maneuvers and animals. Um. But,
Speaker 1: just to give you a little taste, there's a bird
Speaker 1: called the European roller. It's a little bird found in Africa, Europe,
Speaker 1: and Asia who would make a real nice little snack
Speaker 1: predators lungeable sized. Um. But the babies will vomit nasty
Speaker 1: smelling orange liquid onto themselves to make themselves too revolting
Speaker 1: to eat. Gross. Yeah, look on to each other, onto themselves,
Speaker 1: you think, onto themselves, just like they are. They're there.
Speaker 1: They're nasty little things. They like to get nasty. But
Speaker 1: speaking of nasty, we're we gotta go back in the ocean.
Speaker 1: There's one. There's one more, the noble and majestic. See cucumber,
Speaker 1: I do. I how you say very positive beautiful attributes
Speaker 1: and we're about to talk about a gross thing that
Speaker 1: this thing does shaped like a pickle, But you know
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean we can't see its inter beauty. And
Speaker 1: in this case, we're gonna literally see its interview beauty.
Speaker 1: Because they're capable of self evisceration. They shoot their internal
Speaker 1: organs out of their butt to ward off predators, and
Speaker 1: then they were growing. You know what, Yeah, just like
Speaker 1: it's like, I guess I don't need these internal organs
Speaker 1: and shoot them at predators, so allowing them to escape,
Speaker 1: and then they can regrow their organs. So these things
Speaker 1: just never die, then, is what I'm as saying. Well,
Speaker 1: I think they can. They could still die, Okay, I
Speaker 1: mean just like, well, it's like, how you know Wolverine. Sure,
Speaker 1: he's like he can regrow himself, but you can still
Speaker 1: kill him. Can you kill Wolverine? I mean I think
Speaker 1: they did. They did? Did they rip in peace? The
Speaker 1: Hugh Jackman one? Oh, I thought they did. I don't know. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: scientists are sequencing the C. Cucumber genome to look at
Speaker 1: the genes behind their regeneration. So maybe someday medical science
Speaker 1: will advance to where humans can shoot their organs out
Speaker 1: of their butts and grow them back. Oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: super helpful. Well not the first part of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like Bezos is already probably doing this. Like
Speaker 1: he's rich enough that he's probably just like, like, give
Speaker 1: me c cucumber jelly and he's like injecting it into veins.
Speaker 1: My god, Zuckerberg. Maybe that's a Zuckerberg thing to do.
Speaker 1: What about an Elon musk? That sounds like that they're
Speaker 1: all doing it. They're all just a little it's all
Speaker 1: a shadowy cabal of c cucumber like cultists eating just
Speaker 1: like conjecting they're more c cucumber than man. Now, you're
Speaker 1: totally right, is totally going on? Oh my goodness, it
Speaker 1: explains so much. It sure does. Those people will never die.
Speaker 1: I was right, They're never gonna die, and they're slowly
Speaker 1: just going to become like a big tube like a
Speaker 1: c cucumber. Oh my god. So you're saying, not only
Speaker 1: will they grow more insides, they're going to turn into
Speaker 1: cucumbers on the outside. I mean, look at Zuckerberg, it's
Speaker 1: already happening. Good roast, boom roasted. Do humans ever try
Speaker 1: to defeat their enemies through gory intimidation like a self
Speaker 1: eviscerating c cucumber? In ten nine seven, Turkish soldier regarding
Speaker 1: a fortress in a city within Asia minor when Christian
Speaker 1: Crusaders rolled up with their catapults. Though the catapult was
Speaker 1: already a terrifying siege weapon, the Crusaders decided to get
Speaker 1: a little funky with it. Turkish soldiers watched with horror
Speaker 1: as a torrent of bloody human heads rained down upon them.
Speaker 1: The Crusaders had lopped off the heads of dead Turkish
Speaker 1: defenders and loaded them up as projectiles. After a week
Speaker 1: long siege, the Turks surrendered. I'm not saying that c
Speaker 1: cucumbers are better than us, but shooting your own organs
Speaker 1: out of your butt is a bit classier than launching
Speaker 1: dead people's faces at your enemies. So yeah, maybe I
Speaker 1: am saying c cucumbers are better than us. Stay tuned.
Speaker 1: Just ahead, we have an awesome interview with reptile expert
Speaker 1: Dr Greg Polly, who has some crazy stories of gnarly
Speaker 1: animal defensive strategies. Will be right back you're with me.
Speaker 1: Today is friend of the show, Dr Greg Paul, herpetology
Speaker 1: researcher and curator at the Natural History Museum of Los
Speaker 1: Angeles County, to talk about one of the most metal
Speaker 1: animals I've ever heard of. Uh, so, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: excited about this. Uh, tell me a little bit about
Speaker 1: the horned lizard, where it lives, what its diet is
Speaker 1: in why it squirts blood out of its eyes like
Speaker 1: a haunted super soaker. So first, everyone should be excited
Speaker 1: about horn lizards because they're either adorable and be they're amazing.
Speaker 1: They're like little they look like a little pokemon like
Speaker 1: they have like little spikes everywhere and really cute faces.
Speaker 1: I think that's fair. Uh, they're adorable, They're really adorable. Um,
Speaker 1: and so this is a this is a this is
Speaker 1: actually a group of lizards, the horned lizards. That depends
Speaker 1: on who you want, who you ask, which what what
Speaker 1: research you believe, but let's call it roughly fifteen species.
Speaker 1: And these species are found from southern Canada down into
Speaker 1: Mexico and here in California we have a couple of
Speaker 1: these species of horn lizards and they are absolutely adorable.
Speaker 1: They are little lizards that mostly rely on camouflage and
Speaker 1: crypsis to go undetected. And so can you explain what
Speaker 1: crypsis is? Yeah, So basically, um there pretty much just
Speaker 1: trying to match the background. And they do this by
Speaker 1: a couple of ways. So they're they usually like if
Speaker 1: you imagine, like a lot of these are sort of
Speaker 1: desert adapted lizards, and so they're often on sandy backgrounds,
Speaker 1: and so they're kind of rotund. There's a reason that
Speaker 1: people call them horny toads, and it's because they kind
Speaker 1: of look a little toad like that. These are very
Speaker 1: rotund lizards, and they kind of look a little like
Speaker 1: a disc. And but they have you know, they usually
Speaker 1: sort of have like red and brown kind of patterns
Speaker 1: on their back which then really closely matched the background
Speaker 1: that they usually are living on and then instead of
Speaker 1: having like a very crisp sort of outlined, they've got
Speaker 1: all these spikes and horns and elongated scales and so
Speaker 1: forth that really break up their outline so that you know,
Speaker 1: if you're like say, an aerial predator like a hawk,
Speaker 1: you're unlikely to see them because it doesn't fit your
Speaker 1: sort of typical lizard search. Imagine there's this like rotund
Speaker 1: hawk key disc, you know, hanging out on the ground
Speaker 1: and you can't even pick it out as a lizard.
Speaker 1: But let's say that all that fails, like something still
Speaker 1: finds it even though it has this amazing camera like
Speaker 1: a hawk with heat vision or something, I mean something
Speaker 1: you know, coyote smells it out or you know, if
Speaker 1: they move, if they're running, you know, something might see them.
Speaker 1: And so if something grabs them, what they what not
Speaker 1: All the species of horn lizards can do, but most
Speaker 1: of horn lizards, most of the different species of horn
Speaker 1: liars do this is, Yeah, they shoot blood out of
Speaker 1: their eyes, and they can shoot this stream of blood
Speaker 1: actually with pretty good accuracy for several Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: seems like they can aim. And what they mostly are
Speaker 1: aiming for is they are aiming mostly for the mouth
Speaker 1: or the head reach of whatever is attacking them. And
Speaker 1: this doesn't work on snakes as far as we know,
Speaker 1: which is one porn lizards, but on dogs like like coyotes, foxes, um,
Speaker 1: it works on them, and it seems to also work
Speaker 1: on bobcats. This blood happens to be incredible distasteful, and
Speaker 1: we actually don't know why it's distasteful, which is really interesting.
Speaker 1: We can speculate, there's like lots of speculation as to
Speaker 1: why it's distasteful. It seems to be super distasteful, and
Speaker 1: so coyotes and foxes and bobcats you'll actually see you
Speaker 1: can actually find videos of this on YouTube. Liked gets
Speaker 1: in the mouth and they make the yucky face and
Speaker 1: they're like clearly trying to get this grossness off they're doing.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that horn lizards it varies by species,
Speaker 1: but for most of them, like of their diet, there's
Speaker 1: things like carpenter ants and harvest or ants sometimes also
Speaker 1: termines termines, but mostly these big ants. And so we
Speaker 1: think that whatever is in the blood for the horn lizards,
Speaker 1: it must be that they're taking sequestrian toxins from the ants.
Speaker 1: And of course ants are full of formic acid, so
Speaker 1: we think that that's probably what's going on, but no
Speaker 1: one's ever actually like done the or you know, done
Speaker 1: the chemistry to figure out that that's what it is mystery,
Speaker 1: and we do know, like incredibly, this happens very rarely,
Speaker 1: so it's very rare that the horn lizard will even
Speaker 1: shoot blood as a person. But we actually know from
Speaker 1: a couple of different accounts that if that blood actually
Speaker 1: gets in the eye of the person, that it is
Speaker 1: incredibly painful and can actually cause temporary blindness for a
Speaker 1: couple of hours. And there's only that's only happened to
Speaker 1: a few people where it's ever been reported, but it
Speaker 1: technically can't happen. So this is like acidic blood of
Speaker 1: some kind. Presumably it's it's there's something going on, and
Speaker 1: we presumably that's not blood that is circulating throughout the
Speaker 1: entire animal because there in their tear ducts right well,
Speaker 1: they're shooting the blood basically out of the tear ducts,
Speaker 1: but it's not clear whether that blood is being I mean,
Speaker 1: if you see a horned lizard when it gets when
Speaker 1: it's getting stressed out, you actually see that ocular sinus
Speaker 1: kind of filled with blood, Like you basically see their
Speaker 1: eyelids start to get like and like filling with so
Speaker 1: you know, like it's unhappy. And so that's obviously not
Speaker 1: always like that. So there's something but like, is it
Speaker 1: that the circulating blood is that distasteful? Will probably not
Speaker 1: because that coyotes try to eat it, and they're still
Speaker 1: trying to eat it, So it must be that at
Speaker 1: something like it must be that parts of it are good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we don't. They're still like a lot of research
Speaker 1: ingret Can you imagine if people like to like when
Speaker 1: people are upset, they just start crying blood, which is
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of the point. That's probably why
Speaker 1: this evolved. Like if if you're a predator and you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna eat this tasty thing and then suddenly it
Speaker 1: starts him blood, you're like, there's something wrong with that
Speaker 1: I eat that, It's probably how this in part evolve. Well,
Speaker 1: so it kind of reminds me of this historical story.
Speaker 1: Um around four nineties six to four six b c h.
Speaker 1: There was this king, King gug Uh. He was the
Speaker 1: ruler of the Kingdom of You, which is modern day
Speaker 1: Eastern China. I probably didn't pronounce any of that, right,
Speaker 1: but um So, he was allegedly known to scare his
Speaker 1: enemies before battle by sending in a front line of
Speaker 1: soldiers who would cut their own heads off or at
Speaker 1: least like maybe get one hacken and then time. I
Speaker 1: think it'd probably be pretty hard to just content like
Speaker 1: hang on a minute, I gotta I gotta more to go.
Speaker 1: Um So that was to intimidate the enemy. And what
Speaker 1: the enemy may not have known is that these were
Speaker 1: all condemned prisoners, so they were going to be executed anyways.
Speaker 1: So here was there sort of um chance to kind
Speaker 1: of you know, help out their families, earn some money,
Speaker 1: or like have some kind of final glory. Um. So
Speaker 1: it was it's like this that like, man, anything that's
Speaker 1: gonna like like squirt blood out at me is not
Speaker 1: something to tangle with. I think it's anything that anything
Speaker 1: that is just so crazy. Yeah right right right if
Speaker 1: someone started just like vomiting blood at you or sure,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah, it's it's I mean, you know, it
Speaker 1: is kind of an interesting thing because like when when
Speaker 1: you are nervous, sometimes you like will vomit or or
Speaker 1: urinate or poop and and I don't think there's any
Speaker 1: evidence to suggest it's necessarily a survival strategy and humans,
Speaker 1: um it more that you're your autonomic nervous system is
Speaker 1: just like, well, you're too scared to really control your bladder.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I think it may have
Speaker 1: some benefits for us where it's like you know, maybe uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like you're fighting with someone then suddenly they
Speaker 1: smell some really nasty things or you throw up on them,
Speaker 1: They're gonna be like, all right, too much trouble to
Speaker 1: forth it. Yeah, I was going to mug you, but
Speaker 1: then once you pooped over everything much less inclined. Um.
Speaker 1: Are there any other examples of animals using bloody or
Speaker 1: gross intimidation strategies to evade predators? Yes, there's, Tony asked,
Speaker 1: as if I didn't know, But yeah, there are so many.
Speaker 1: I mean, as a herpetologist, I obviously think about reptiles, nintins,
Speaker 1: and it's so common in snakes for example, that are
Speaker 1: really common defense strategy. Mean, because snakes are kind of limited, right,
Speaker 1: Like they don't have arms, they can't you, they can't
Speaker 1: punch you, they can't kick you, so like they're kind
Speaker 1: of limited with what they can do, and so you
Speaker 1: want to make yourself distasteful to a potential predator, how
Speaker 1: about smearing yourself in your own feces? Super common, defensive
Speaker 1: I get like in Jurassic Park or the New Jurassic
Speaker 1: Park where they like cover themselves in dinosaur poop. It
Speaker 1: was it was one of the news. Well it's in
Speaker 1: one of the newer ones, the lesser Jurassic parks. I've
Speaker 1: just saw those, and I told I don't I can't
Speaker 1: believest I feel like I'm obligated to remember all popular
Speaker 1: references to smearing one. It may have been a cut scene,
Speaker 1: it may have been a director's cut scene. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they cover themselves in That's actually I love when movies
Speaker 1: like that actually do incorporate things from sort of biological reality,
Speaker 1: like this is really common for snakes to do this. Um,
Speaker 1: because snakes eat such large meals, and vultures do this too.
Speaker 1: Like animals, they eat huge meals oftentimes puts them. It's
Speaker 1: sort of a locomotory disadvantage. So if something then goes
Speaker 1: after they peple have a way to get away. It's
Speaker 1: like imagine a line and then a big ball in
Speaker 1: the middle and that just so we can't we can't
Speaker 1: defend itself. Vultures sometimes eat so much that they actually
Speaker 1: can't fly very well. Yeah, and so for both, you know,
Speaker 1: for vultures and also for a lot of snakes, if
Speaker 1: they have a big meal, the first thing that they
Speaker 1: do if something is like threatening them is they vomit.
Speaker 1: And not only is I mean, especially with vulture, I
Speaker 1: mean vulture vomit has to be like one of the
Speaker 1: most disgusting things in the world. So it's like rotting
Speaker 1: carrion that's been sort of marinating and digestive juice. It
Speaker 1: was like, in case the rotting carrion wasn't disgusting enough,
Speaker 1: you then get to like put it into this stomach.
Speaker 1: Like I once had food poisoning after eating some chicken
Speaker 1: that may have gone bad, and that was pretty bad.
Speaker 1: But that times like a billion So so yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: vultures do that. A lot of snakes will do that
Speaker 1: to get away, um, and it kind of just doesn't
Speaker 1: distract the predator or gross them out. I think probably,
Speaker 1: and it makes them more mobile because it makes more mobile,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's probably like it's I mean,
Speaker 1: if a snake does out of the vulture does that,
Speaker 1: it's still moves away from that vomitant, so then the
Speaker 1: animal is still there, whereas like the snakes smearing themselves
Speaker 1: in poop, like the animal is gross like the animals
Speaker 1: now yea and is still poop covered. And then there's
Speaker 1: also like there's these great snakes called hog no snakes
Speaker 1: and actually fainted death. They roll over on their bellies
Speaker 1: and thanatosis, yeah, and they open their mouths and they
Speaker 1: stick there. They sort of low. They emit this odor
Speaker 1: that sort of sounds like death and decay. But then
Speaker 1: they're not even the only animal that does that. Like
Speaker 1: when we think about like you know, you scare a
Speaker 1: possum and the like pretends to be asleep, what's it
Speaker 1: really doing is it's like pretending to be dead and
Speaker 1: it actually gives off this really disgusting So we see
Speaker 1: that a lot. And then there's all these other animals
Speaker 1: like um. I spent seven years in grad school at
Speaker 1: the University of Texas and Austin, and like we would
Speaker 1: go out, you know, driving around that night looking for
Speaker 1: snakes on the crossing the roads, and one of the
Speaker 1: things you would times come across are armadillos and one
Speaker 1: of the things you learned very quickly. If you ever
Speaker 1: try to catch and armadillo, is that there a defense
Speaker 1: mechanism is to just start pooping and pee. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you feel like that. That's like a baby's defense mechanisms,
Speaker 1: Like if you're if you're an and you try to
Speaker 1: pick up a new baby or something, just like starts
Speaker 1: pooping and teeing everywhere, and uh and this is what
Speaker 1: frogs do. You try to grab a frog, it's first
Speaker 1: defense mechanism usually is to just peel. I think I
Speaker 1: learned that as a kid because I would I would
Speaker 1: try to catch frogs and lizards all the time, and
Speaker 1: like the amount of times where I just get like
Speaker 1: the first time it happens, you're like, oh no, gross
Speaker 1: frog p And then then you just got to learn like,
Speaker 1: all right, buddy, I'm onto your trick exactly. Totally not
Speaker 1: intimidated by that, you know, if I think like stuff.
Speaker 1: One of becoming a herpetologist is like just accept the
Speaker 1: fact that you're gonna get pooped and pete making peace
Speaker 1: with frog and lizard poop and pea. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1: Lots of things smeared themselves in various bodily fluids to
Speaker 1: because oh, that's that's excellent that this is uh. I
Speaker 1: feel like, um, there was a I'm trying to remember
Speaker 1: if it's like a c I A thing, but like
Speaker 1: they're they've definitely been um government military operations where the
Speaker 1: research stuff like really bad smells, like really nasty smelly
Speaker 1: things as a weapon. So it's not quite chemical warfare
Speaker 1: because it doesn't I don't think they're meant to like
Speaker 1: actually damage people, but it's just just debilitate you with
Speaker 1: like these smell bombs. Yeah. Um, but maybe we should
Speaker 1: just uh, like if soldiers just covering themselves in and
Speaker 1: in poop and the job wasn't hard enough one more step. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me. Um, do you
Speaker 1: have anything to plug or anything that people should check out?
Speaker 1: I guess as always, I would just plug participating in
Speaker 1: uh in citizen science project. Yeah. We talked about this
Speaker 1: before on the show. Um there's an app that they
Speaker 1: can download, right, Yeah, So there's this amazing app called
Speaker 1: I Naturalists and people can download the app have it
Speaker 1: on their smartphone. If they're out one and around and
Speaker 1: they see wildlife, plants, fungi, whatever you get excited about. Um,
Speaker 1: some for the living animal or a sign of a
Speaker 1: living creature, take a photo uploaded to the app. And
Speaker 1: so it's just like me might end up using that
Speaker 1: photograph in their research. Yeah, stop taking photos of your
Speaker 1: food and take photos of animals and help science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can even take photos of animals eating some
Speaker 1: of your friends. Right right, you're you're you're amazing latte
Speaker 1: you got from Starbucks. A lizard starts to drink it. Boom,
Speaker 1: you've you've helped your science. Just don't stress out the
Speaker 1: animal so much that it poops and peas all over
Speaker 1: itself to take your photo. But if that does happen,
Speaker 1: take a photo of it. Take a photo. Yeah. All right, well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us. Absolutely thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. So we're back with Kim. We just heard
Speaker 1: some stuff about, you know, some pretty gross things that
Speaker 1: animals do. Yeah, more peine pooping, vomiting blood hears you
Speaker 1: know what. I think that it's just maybe humans that
Speaker 1: think that it makes like vomiting pe poops, so taboo.
Speaker 1: Why don't we I mean, we could use it as
Speaker 1: a web I mean like I mean, like certainly some
Speaker 1: of our primate relatives they do. It's a were just
Speaker 1: we're just we're two. We're prouds. That's the thing. That's it.
Speaker 1: I think I'm just going to use my poop as
Speaker 1: a weapon. Now, okay, you know you know what though,
Speaker 1: like when I'm taking my dog on a walk and
Speaker 1: I have that baggy of poop, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I've talked to another person that resonates with her words
Speaker 1: like it's at night, You've got your bag of dog poop,
Speaker 1: and you're like, I am armed. I have dog poop
Speaker 1: and like if there's someone comes up and tries to
Speaker 1: smug me, you know, dog poop into the face like
Speaker 1: it's a it is now like a maze, totally out.
Speaker 1: Hey that speaks to me too, that that's great, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Um so gross, do you have anything to plug? Yeah? Sure,
Speaker 1: Um if you guys watch TV, watch Abbie's on NBC
Speaker 1: or Hulu. It's a cool trope and I'm on it. Woo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably less gross than this. It's not gross at all.
Speaker 1: It's about a bar fairy, So no poop, h no,
Speaker 1: no pooping in the is going to be listen the
Speaker 1: bars outside so technically there's bushers and you can fool Okay,
Speaker 1: hippos would love them. Yeah, they totally would. Yeah, uh huh.
Speaker 1: And can we find you on social media? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you can follow me on Twitter at child Clown underscore.
Speaker 1: I had to put the underscore in there because some
Speaker 1: other free quantic greet clown and on Instagram at child
Speaker 1: clown just playing. I got that one first, that kind
Speaker 1: of weirdo would watch besides me, what other weirdo wants that?
Speaker 1: So you can find me on Twitter at Katie Golden um.
Speaker 1: And you can find podcast online peach podcast pod dot com.
Speaker 1: And then on Twitter Creature feet pod not feat as
Speaker 1: a stink gross feet, but feet as in f e
Speaker 1: a t so puture deep pod is Twitter. And then
Speaker 1: also I got Twitter called pro bird Rights and that's
Speaker 1: probably the best thing I've ever done in my life.
Speaker 1: It is the best thing I've seen. So yeah, check
Speaker 1: check me out there where I'm a bird, but I
Speaker 1: don't sleep on myself or vomit on myself like that
Speaker 1: bird tacticut. Yeah, just on my enemies. You had to
Speaker 1: toss that. And thanks to the Space Classics for their
Speaker 1: awesome song ex Alumina