Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature future production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and I am full of New year resolutions?
Speaker 1: Or are those worms? I might be full of worms?
Speaker 1: Today on the show Happy New Fear, let's discover fears
Speaker 1: you didn't even know you had with some horrifying creatures,
Speaker 1: take a one way trip to decapitation station, check out
Speaker 1: some very creepy babies, and endure the existential crisis after
Speaker 1: finding out when a butt is not a butt. Discover
Speaker 1: this more as we answer the angel question. Is any worms?
Speaker 1: Too many worms to have inside of you? It's a
Speaker 1: new year, a fresh start, but New Year's Eve can
Speaker 1: be anxiety inducing for some, even depressing. A study conducted
Speaker 1: in Britain found that one in six people found New
Speaker 1: Year's Eve to be the sad this day of the year,
Speaker 1: according to the Telegraph. Some psychologists think this is due
Speaker 1: to the stress of the holidays, compounded by the stress
Speaker 1: of self reflection that the new year brings. Personally, I
Speaker 1: get overwhelmed by the idea that I have to make
Speaker 1: a fresh start for the new year, and I worry
Speaker 1: about things not improving in the world. I think maybe
Speaker 1: instead of avoiding fears of the new year, we should
Speaker 1: do a bit of radical acceptance. Instead of trying to
Speaker 1: dodge your fears, you accept them. Bad things might happen,
Speaker 1: worms might invade your body, but that's okay, and I
Speaker 1: accept it. I accept those worms. So today on the show,
Speaker 1: I want to trawl through the animal world for scary things,
Speaker 1: fears I never even knew I had until now, to
Speaker 1: confront them and find beauty in them. Maybe joining me
Speaker 1: today at the Wonderful Women of the Night Call podcast Molly,
Speaker 1: Tess and Emily. So, could you guys go around and
Speaker 1: introduce yourself so people will get a feel for your voices. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm Molly Lambert and sitting next to me, Emily Orshida
Speaker 1: and sitting next to me, Tess Witch, and I'm sitting
Speaker 1: next to Katie. That's and that's me. I'm Katie. People
Speaker 1: can't keep our voices clear you Sometimes I can't either. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets so so good luck to everybody out there
Speaker 1: hiring us for the first time. Well, you'll be able
Speaker 1: to recognize my voice by the terrible things that come
Speaker 1: out of it. So in this section I did want
Speaker 1: to say. I usually name my sections, but I don't
Speaker 1: always say what they are. But this time I'm really
Speaker 1: proud of it. I call this section what is this
Speaker 1: a horror movie for ants? Because we are going to
Speaker 1: talk about some of the most horrible things that can
Speaker 1: happen to you if you're an aunt. So, do you
Speaker 1: guys remember the Peter Jackson movie Brain Dead or Dead Alive?
Speaker 1: Peter jeekson before he made Lord of the Springs. I'm
Speaker 1: going to make some zombies. Uh he has. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a zombie movie. It's like someone gets bitten by
Speaker 1: like a sumach and rat monkey or something, and then
Speaker 1: they get they get the zombie virus and then they
Speaker 1: start biting other people and then they all turn into zombies.
Speaker 1: And there's this fame scene where this woman is pregnant
Speaker 1: and her baby has the zombie virus and it like
Speaker 1: crawls up through her out of her I guess, from
Speaker 1: her uterus to her head, which can't really happen, but
Speaker 1: you know, let's suspend virus. It's a zombievirus, and the
Speaker 1: baby just like explodes out of the woman's head. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that classic Peter Jackson. Yeah, that's how I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's what giving birth is. Right. Well, a tiny fly,
Speaker 1: in fact, the world's smallest known fly, does something even
Speaker 1: more horrifying to ants. So this is a new fly
Speaker 1: that was discovered in Thailand, and it's smaller than a
Speaker 1: grain of salt. It's called uri Plaidia nana keihaldy. It's
Speaker 1: a species from the group Forward, which is also known
Speaker 1: as scuttle flies, also known as coffin flies. And in
Speaker 1: the this gena supplies the pseudoacton, contains many flies that
Speaker 1: prey on ants in horrible ways. So this tiny fly,
Speaker 1: the eurie Platia, lays their eggs inside the body of
Speaker 1: the ant, and generally they target acrobat ants, which are
Speaker 1: also quite small, but they're bigger than the fly. So
Speaker 1: you're an ant. You're just walking along mind in your
Speaker 1: own ant business tests. This is going to be fun
Speaker 1: for you because you hate ant. I hate ants, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I really hate ants, and I know too much about
Speaker 1: ants now, but I don't know anything about what's about
Speaker 1: to happen to it. Well, you're gonna like this because
Speaker 1: this is a horrible, very sadistic thing that happens to
Speaker 1: this ant. So the little, this little, teeny tiny fly
Speaker 1: lays eggs inside of the ant's body. As the eggs
Speaker 1: develop into larva, they migrate up into the ant's head
Speaker 1: and feeds on its jaw muscles, which makes it unable
Speaker 1: to open and close its mouth. But they're not done yet.
Speaker 1: Then they and migrate up into the ant's brains and
Speaker 1: eat the brains, which causes the ant to shamble around
Speaker 1: like a zombie for up to two weeks of this torture.
Speaker 1: What how is that possible to ants even live for
Speaker 1: two weeks? Yes, and then the larva decapitates the ant
Speaker 1: by dissolving the membrane that keeps its head attached to
Speaker 1: its body, and the larva will live inside the decapitated
Speaker 1: ant head for another two weeks until they mold into adults.
Speaker 1: And then that adult fly will burst out of the
Speaker 1: ant's head and just go around its business. So it's
Speaker 1: like the ant or the fly that's laying the egg
Speaker 1: it's just like seize the ant walking by, and it's like, ah,
Speaker 1: my my dream home, my dream that's where I want
Speaker 1: to raise my children. How did they How do they
Speaker 1: get into the ant to lay the eggs in the
Speaker 1: first place? So usually the fly. A lot of these
Speaker 1: pairs as atid of flying animals will have an ovipositor
Speaker 1: that they stick inside of the animals, so basically they're
Speaker 1: just injecting their eggs. Whoa does the ant? I wonder
Speaker 1: if he fights it off? You know, there are certain
Speaker 1: bugs that will try to do that, So I don't
Speaker 1: know if we know whether these ants try to fight
Speaker 1: it off. We do know that cockroaches and spiders have
Speaker 1: developed strategies to try to avoid parasitic wasps from laying
Speaker 1: eggs on them and attacking them. So cockroaches actually employ
Speaker 1: a karate kick in midair, so they like jump up
Speaker 1: and like kick the wasp to try to avoid being
Speaker 1: turned into a mindless zombie when the wasp lays its
Speaker 1: eggs in its head, and spiders will actually roll up
Speaker 1: into a ball and tumble down a hill to try
Speaker 1: to avoid parasitic wasps. Wow, because I didn't know that ants.
Speaker 1: I knew ants were social within their own colonies, but
Speaker 1: then I was reading recently about how certain species of
Speaker 1: invasive of ants are will take over other ant colonies
Speaker 1: and not necessarily kill the ants, and that enslave them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll inslave them. And then there's the whole thing with
Speaker 1: the ants and the aphids that I just go on
Speaker 1: about for but it's basic. I mean, it just blows
Speaker 1: my mind. They will they protect the aphids, but they
Speaker 1: won't let the aphids leaves, so they tear they bite
Speaker 1: off their wings, and I would say they're not necessarily
Speaker 1: protecting the aphids. They are keeping the aphids as live,
Speaker 1: larger prey, so they don't they bring them into their
Speaker 1: into their ant hills. Yeah, yeah, so they they It's
Speaker 1: an interesting relationship and some they're different types of relationships
Speaker 1: that ants have with aphids. Some ants are mutualistic, so
Speaker 1: they kind of they protect the aphids and return for
Speaker 1: sucking some of the juices out of the aphids, and
Speaker 1: the aphids may try to cooperate more with the ants,
Speaker 1: evolutionarily speaking, in in exchange for that protection. A lot
Speaker 1: of the relationships is it's not so mutualistic where the
Speaker 1: ants are clearly just praying on the aphids, but they
Speaker 1: do protect them to some extent so that they can
Speaker 1: continue to prey on the aphids, but they'll overall have
Speaker 1: a negative impact on the aphid population. So it's a
Speaker 1: very it depends on the species, and it depends on
Speaker 1: the conditions whether it's going to be mutualistic or predatory.
Speaker 1: And another relationship that ants have with another organism is
Speaker 1: the ant fungus mutualism. Have you heard of this? So
Speaker 1: so ants actually will cultivate fungus and essentially farm it,
Speaker 1: so especially leaf cutter ants. So there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: species of ants that cultivate all search of species of fungus,
Speaker 1: but the sort of highest order is how the leaf
Speaker 1: ants interact with the fungus, and the fungus has co
Speaker 1: evalved with the ant to the point where the fungus
Speaker 1: can't survive without the ant and the ant can't survive
Speaker 1: without the fungus. So leaf cutter ants will actually cut
Speaker 1: up leaves and then bring them to the fungus and
Speaker 1: feed them to the fungus because the fungus likes to
Speaker 1: eat on this fresh biomaterial. And then the ants will
Speaker 1: also they have a bacteria on them that actually acts
Speaker 1: as an antimicrobial for the fungus, and they will feed
Speaker 1: from the fungus. And these fungus that have co evolved
Speaker 1: with the ants actually have this little like bulb on
Speaker 1: the tip that contains nutrients that makes it really easy
Speaker 1: for the ant to just like suck a little bit
Speaker 1: of nutrients from the fungus. What does the fungus look like?
Speaker 1: It's kind of goo goopy, but it has like that's
Speaker 1: so interesting. I never thought that a fungus would have
Speaker 1: like a preferred diet. Really yeah. Yeah, And in fact,
Speaker 1: the ants will specifically choose types of leaves that are
Speaker 1: not toxic to the fungus, so they'll pay attention to
Speaker 1: how the fungus reacts to the leaves. Some researchers think
Speaker 1: they can smell like distress signals from the fungus and
Speaker 1: then they'll like get rid of the leaves that aren't
Speaker 1: doing it for them and get new ones doing science
Speaker 1: they're doing Yeah, they're like sending their cultivating this. We're
Speaker 1: doing trial and error. So that's amazing. It's a relationship
Speaker 1: that's taken around thirty million years to develop. It's pretty
Speaker 1: That's the stuff that always blows my moment about the
Speaker 1: stuff for the or the fly lane, the eggs that
Speaker 1: travel to the ant. It how many years did that
Speaker 1: process take to become refined? Because it takes a long time,
Speaker 1: it feels so much more complex than I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess if you've never seen a human before, and you
Speaker 1: were and you described, you know, how humans procreate or something,
Speaker 1: you would seem needlessly complex maybe, but that also seems
Speaker 1: like insanely complex. We have all sorts of really complex
Speaker 1: interactions happening inside of our body. Is like, you know,
Speaker 1: mitochondria is very very early on in the development of animals.
Speaker 1: It may have been a mutualistic relationship between the animals
Speaker 1: cell and the mitochondria. So yeah, it is pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: He's really weird and sometimes horrible relationships. Uh. Speaking of which,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the passing a beetle, which
Speaker 1: has a pretty creative way of taking advantage of ants.
Speaker 1: And they're kind of butt holes, which is a joke
Speaker 1: that will become funny once I explain what goes on
Speaker 1: with these So they are found in the rainforests of
Speaker 1: Costa Rica. F you dare to attack army ants because
Speaker 1: they are very aggro they are very pugnacious. They can
Speaker 1: take down scorpions and dismember them. They sting snakes and
Speaker 1: birds to death. Researchers have recently discovered a strange affliction
Speaker 1: that these ants have, and some ants have two butts
Speaker 1: and they were really confused. They found these ants specimens
Speaker 1: that had two butts, and it's like, you find a
Speaker 1: two butted animal, you gotta collect it and research it.
Speaker 1: So they collected some of these two asked ants and
Speaker 1: they studied them, only to discover that the extra butt
Speaker 1: was not a butt at all. It was a beatle
Speaker 1: disguised as an ant. But why how big is this ant? Ant?
Speaker 1: Size normally at normally sized? Yeah, it's a tiny, tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny beetle. The beetle has its whole m o is
Speaker 1: to disguise itself as the ant, but it clamps down
Speaker 1: on the ants abdomen and looks like an extra ant gaster.
Speaker 1: And the gaster is that little sort of bulb at
Speaker 1: the end of the ant, which, if you can describe
Speaker 1: it in any sort of humanoid way, it's the butt part.
Speaker 1: So it is. The beetle is called Nymphister cronarrae, but
Speaker 1: I like to call it the ac eating beetle because
Speaker 1: you know, it's easier to pronounce. And so why it
Speaker 1: mimics the ants but is somewhat of a mystery. The
Speaker 1: ants themselves depend on pheromones to navigate. They actually have
Speaker 1: they're nearly blind they're not quite totally blind, but they
Speaker 1: only can tell like light and dark, so they can't
Speaker 1: see a butt. It could be that they've mimiced the
Speaker 1: ant but to protect it from other predators, so other
Speaker 1: predators just see weird aunt with two butts. It is
Speaker 1: also this is the most compelling theory to me, is
Speaker 1: that it's very structurally similar to the ants, but so
Speaker 1: keeps the ants from suspecting anything if they feel up
Speaker 1: the fake butt, so like they're feeling the fake but
Speaker 1: if it just feels like another ants, but they're not
Speaker 1: gonna think it's a beetle just piggybacking on them. But
Speaker 1: doesn't the aunt who's the host, feel the beetle on
Speaker 1: it's but I don't know that it may feel the
Speaker 1: initial thing, and then if it can't like get it off,
Speaker 1: it's probably just gives up. Yeah, and I can't reach
Speaker 1: it to attack. Probably it may be able to. I'm
Speaker 1: it's this is actually pretty recent discovery, so I'm not
Speaker 1: exactly sure what mechanisms the beetle employees to prevent the
Speaker 1: ant from knowing what's going on. That's so crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it's just kind of like it feels like
Speaker 1: a but it looks like a butt, it walks like
Speaker 1: a butt. So the answer just assume it's a butt.
Speaker 1: And the question is that you guys have I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people would have, is why it does this,
Speaker 1: And scientists don't actually know, so all its life, it
Speaker 1: just wanted to be but it wants to be a butt.
Speaker 1: Most likely it's feeding on something either from the ant
Speaker 1: or around the ant. It could be for protection from
Speaker 1: other predators. It could be for dispersal to be able
Speaker 1: to travel safely with the ants. Um could be a
Speaker 1: weird fetish. I don't know, it's it's truly a mystery.
Speaker 1: I mean, if if we know that ants can farm
Speaker 1: and do a scientific method, then beetles surely can have
Speaker 1: sexual fetishes. I'm sure they. I'm sure it's just like
Speaker 1: you know, have you ever just wanted to be a butt?
Speaker 1: You know, all the time, all the time. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: wonder if it's eating something. If it's I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't want to get scatological. Is it eating something in
Speaker 1: the vicinity of the original But it could be eating
Speaker 1: anal secretions or eggs, could be eating eggs. It could
Speaker 1: be you know, feeding from aunt itself. It's hard to know.
Speaker 1: It's a very I think those are all good theories.
Speaker 1: I guess we won't know until we've dived deeper into
Speaker 1: this butt mystery. Do you have a fear of ants, spiders,
Speaker 1: or other insects? Many people do, and one way to
Speaker 1: face these fears is through the magic of the Marvel
Speaker 1: cinematic universe. No, really so. A study conducted in Israel
Speaker 1: by social scientists ben Ezra and Hoffman found that phobias
Speaker 1: of spiders and ants can be helped by viewing the
Speaker 1: Spider Man and ant Man movies. Being being shown just
Speaker 1: a few seconds of each movie lowered their spider and
Speaker 1: aunt phobia scores, implying that a positive cultural association with
Speaker 1: the superheroes may help to quell those fears. I guess
Speaker 1: seeing a friendly neighborhood Spider Man and Paul Rudd frolic
Speaker 1: among their Spider and Aunt motifs reduces the visceral phobia
Speaker 1: of these insects. Maybe Batman was right, not that he'd
Speaker 1: be able to help Gotham more by romping around in
Speaker 1: tights than just using his massive wealth to help the poor,
Speaker 1: but that by embracing his bat fears by making a
Speaker 1: festive outfit and accessories, he could overcome those fears. When
Speaker 1: we return, we'll discuss some fears that I never even
Speaker 1: knew I had until now, and simultaneously will overcome them.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll try imagine you're frolicking near the deep dark woods.
Speaker 1: Why are you near the deep dark woods? Maybe you're
Speaker 1: picking some berries, or about to go to Grandma's house,
Speaker 1: or you have some sort of tree fetish. I'm not
Speaker 1: here to judge. As you stopped to admire a particularly
Speaker 1: cool piece of liking, you hear the faint but unmistakable
Speaker 1: cry of a baby coming from deep in the forest.
Speaker 1: You look around. There's no one around. You're way too
Speaker 1: horny for trees to remember your phone, so it's up
Speaker 1: to you to save this baby. You walk into the
Speaker 1: deep dark woods towards the sound of the crying baby,
Speaker 1: poor little thing out here all alone. Its cries become
Speaker 1: more frantic, so you hurry over now deep in these woods, disoriented.
Speaker 1: The sound is close now, but you can't see any baby.
Speaker 1: Where is it. The cries seem to come from up
Speaker 1: above you. You look into a tree. Two huge golden
Speaker 1: eyes stare back at you, and from its drooling jaws,
Speaker 1: you hear the sound of that crying baby. But only
Speaker 1: now do you notice how strangely alien it sounds. Before
Speaker 1: you can even begin to understand what's going on, the
Speaker 1: giant creature leaps down from the tree and snaps your neck.
Speaker 1: So you have been the victim of the marka junk cat,
Speaker 1: and it's a very cute cat, and it also likes
Speaker 1: to murder. Let me show you a picture of this
Speaker 1: vicious killer. Oh my god. Oh it's a little anime cat.
Speaker 1: It's funny that you should say it's a baby, because
Speaker 1: that is a bit of its m o. So the
Speaker 1: Margai is a very cute jungle cat. It lives in
Speaker 1: South American forests. It's nocturnal. It is pretty small. It
Speaker 1: looks a bit like an awful lot with really big eyes.
Speaker 1: It's like a kitten. It's like it does look like
Speaker 1: a kitten. It looks like Justin Bieber's pet cat. Does
Speaker 1: Justin Bieber have a pet cat? You got some kind
Speaker 1: of semi exotic cat, Bieber, You don't don't get exotic pets. Bert,
Speaker 1: stop it. It is probably really cute though. So they're
Speaker 1: pretty small. They only wagh about five to eight pounds.
Speaker 1: They're very skilled climbers, and they hunt small animals and birds.
Speaker 1: So in order to get themselves proper meals, sometimes they
Speaker 1: have to rely on very clever tricks, especially given one
Speaker 1: of their prey of choice, which is Pied Tamarin, a
Speaker 1: small monkey that looks half like a baby Yoda, half goblin.
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm going to show you a picture of that. Whoa,
Speaker 1: oh god, that looks like the boss you have to
Speaker 1: beat to win the game. That's so scary. It looks
Speaker 1: like but doesn't look like half orc half baby Yoda.
Speaker 1: It doesn't. It doesn't have baby Yoda's giant endearing eyes
Speaker 1: the way the market a threatening animals. Yeah, it looks wise,
Speaker 1: it looks austere, It looks really humorless. It looks bossy.
Speaker 1: It looks klaus Kinsky. I wish, I wish they could
Speaker 1: smile more. Welcome to our roast of the Pied Tamarin
Speaker 1: with Bob Saget. So in order to Laura Pie Tamarin,
Speaker 1: the Margart imitates the sound of a baby monkey, which
Speaker 1: is terrifying, deeply, deeply terrifying. So observation suggests that this
Speaker 1: behavior is passed from mother Margart's to her offspring who
Speaker 1: watch her hunt, and what they'll do is they mimic
Speaker 1: the kind of soft squeaking sound that baby tamarins make,
Speaker 1: which lures adult tamarin's out to investigate. Because tamarins are
Speaker 1: very social and like humans, they want to respond to
Speaker 1: the cries of a baby. So I don't think there
Speaker 1: have been observating multiple observations of this. They've never cut
Speaker 1: it on video, so sadly, I don't have a sound sample.
Speaker 1: So instead I'm going to do my best impression of
Speaker 1: what I think a Margart imitating a tamarind baby would
Speaker 1: sound like. Hang on, let me get a sip of
Speaker 1: water here. I'm very excited for this. It's like the
Speaker 1: world's biggest mosquito. Me me where I'm a b Baby's
Speaker 1: really convincing. I mean, that sounds like a baby. I'm
Speaker 1: going to care for that baby. So what is really
Speaker 1: interesting about this to me is that I looked into
Speaker 1: it and throughout basically all of human culture, there are
Speaker 1: mythological creatures that prey on people by imitating babies. And
Speaker 1: it's really eerie because this seems to indicate this deep
Speaker 1: instinctive human fear across like all cultures, and I want
Speaker 1: to talk about a few of these, and you you
Speaker 1: guys may know some of these already. The boo Back,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'm probably not pronouncing that right. It's from
Speaker 1: check folklore and it is basically a boogeyman that looks
Speaker 1: like a scarecrow and it wears the clothing made out
Speaker 1: of the souls that it is hard. I don't know
Speaker 1: how soul fabric is. Would that be like a terrifying
Speaker 1: it looks like slender Man? Oh yeah, it's like it
Speaker 1: looks like very returned to us. I think souls wear
Speaker 1: like an Eileen Fisher linen. That's what I would wear. Oh,
Speaker 1: that is really scared. That would that be hard to sew?
Speaker 1: I don't know much about sewing, Like when sewing a soul?
Speaker 1: Is that that got like a weird grain? That would
Speaker 1: be hard to sew? No, I think it's pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: You can do a seem, a hidden seem Okay. BBC
Speaker 1: has a big following on debian art. Really do they
Speaker 1: do they? Like? Do they pair back with like Slenderman
Speaker 1: or something that's kind of Elma and the one true pairing,
Speaker 1: the one true scaring. So the boo Back drives a
Speaker 1: cart that's pulled by cats, which seems um inefficient, okay,
Speaker 1: And it makes the sound of a crying baby to
Speaker 1: lure and victims. So that's a that's pretty clean. That's
Speaker 1: so scary. Yeah, that's the cart with the cats is
Speaker 1: so funny. You know. One time, I actually I thought
Speaker 1: I heard like a kitten muling in a bush and
Speaker 1: I was like trying to find it and couldn't and
Speaker 1: that was the scariest. But I thought I heard a
Speaker 1: kitty crying from a gutter and I looked in the
Speaker 1: gutter and I couldn't see a kiddie. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: about to get it. Yeah, I'm about It was like
Speaker 1: I was like digging through the bush trying to find
Speaker 1: the kitten because it was like sounded like it was
Speaker 1: in trouble. But then I was like, what if it's
Speaker 1: like a rat king or like a possum or something,
Speaker 1: then I'll have to you're already going down that roadwelling
Speaker 1: dropping hands. So the pontia neck is a vampire ghost
Speaker 1: woman in Malay and Indonesian folklore. So these are the
Speaker 1: spirits of women who have died during childbirth. And these
Speaker 1: are I guess angry ghosts because they kill their victims
Speaker 1: by digging into their body and eating their organs. Fun
Speaker 1: fact about this vampire ghost lady is that sometimes she
Speaker 1: lives in banana trees. I'm not precisely sure why, but
Speaker 1: it's just I think it's potassium that's right here, that
Speaker 1: specifically the right it's the ghost of a woman who
Speaker 1: died in childbirth. It's pretty macab, isn't it. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's it's a lot of the ways that
Speaker 1: we cope with scary things, and like, that's a really
Speaker 1: scary thing, is by It was also so common for
Speaker 1: so long. Her presence can sometimes be detected by a
Speaker 1: nice floral fragrance identifiable as plumeria, followed by an awful
Speaker 1: stench resembling a decaying body. The Indian version, the trurail,
Speaker 1: can be identified by her feet turning backwards just before
Speaker 1: her transformation into her vampire scary. For some reason, that's
Speaker 1: a bridge too far. What kind of dance stup is that? God?
Speaker 1: She also comes during a full moon and announces her
Speaker 1: presence with a baby cry. So you know that's because
Speaker 1: thought a full moon, you didn't run into hear any
Speaker 1: babies and smell any plumeria. Says, you got to put
Speaker 1: a nail in the nape of her neck to kill her. Oh,
Speaker 1: I thought it was a nail in the nape of
Speaker 1: the neck to transform her into a good wife. But
Speaker 1: then if you if you remive the nail, she goes
Speaker 1: back into put the nail. If you put the nail
Speaker 1: in the hole, it turns her into a beautiful woman.
Speaker 1: And if you pull that nail out, it's like, it's like,
Speaker 1: can you imagine just like having a bad day as
Speaker 1: a woman, and like someone just like who removed your
Speaker 1: ghost nail? Somebody tries to shove a no, I feel like,
Speaker 1: ten times out of ten, that's not gonna work. So Bigfoot.
Speaker 1: This is a fact I didn't know about Bigfoot is
Speaker 1: that in certain Bigfoot lore, people who believe Bigfoot is
Speaker 1: a predator, they say that Bigfoot can mimic the cries
Speaker 1: of a baby to lure people deep into the woods.
Speaker 1: So that's been interesting. I've always thought of Bigfoot is
Speaker 1: more of like a big old hippie. Yeah, totally off
Speaker 1: the grid, off the grid, live in their life. And
Speaker 1: then another spirit is the Windigo, and it is from
Speaker 1: the folklore of Algonkian people's in the Nova, Scotia, Eastern
Speaker 1: and Great Lakes areas of Canada, and it's associated with
Speaker 1: sort of like winter starvation, and it's either a monster
Speaker 1: or a spirit who can possess humans. And it's influenced
Speaker 1: as is evil acts such as cannibalism, murder, greed, and
Speaker 1: environmental destruction, or conversely, it is sort of summoned or
Speaker 1: created by these evil acts, and in some stories it
Speaker 1: can mimic the cry of a person or child in
Speaker 1: need of help, which is really creepy. Did you guys
Speaker 1: see that video game Until Dawn? It had the Window
Speaker 1: Goes in it and probably not accurately represented to be fair,
Speaker 1: but they do have a scene where the window Goes
Speaker 1: lures a character by pretending to be a girl crying
Speaker 1: for help, and then if you go, you get the capitata.
Speaker 1: The window goes pretty famous, right, because it's there's an
Speaker 1: often Nash problem about the wind to go. And then
Speaker 1: I think it's also in Um Creatures of the lumber Wood. Well,
Speaker 1: this does a lot of it has to do with
Speaker 1: people becoming cannibals. They would say they had when to
Speaker 1: go fever, when to go psychosis, Yeah, which I think
Speaker 1: is also that's a pretty controversial topic because a lot
Speaker 1: of that is basically like white people coming in and
Speaker 1: sentially misunderstanding the culture and the folklore and sort of
Speaker 1: just like giving this label to things like well, there's
Speaker 1: a wonder goo secret. And I think one thing that's
Speaker 1: interesting is in a lot of stories it is sort
Speaker 1: of like a metaphor, so it's like a conceptual representation
Speaker 1: of human greed and gluttony and evil acts. So it's
Speaker 1: not always meant to be taken literally as a as
Speaker 1: a physical creature. There are some stories in which it
Speaker 1: is a physical creature which is like a gaunt, gray skinned,
Speaker 1: skeletal like slender man creature, but in a lot of
Speaker 1: cases it's almost like a manifestation of our evil and
Speaker 1: sort of this um both spiritual or metaphorical sense, which
Speaker 1: I think is interesting. And I think it is interesting
Speaker 1: this idea that this it still has that myth of
Speaker 1: like a fake cry for help, and I think that
Speaker 1: it's like um in all of these stories, this idea
Speaker 1: that we could be taken advantage by one of our
Speaker 1: greatest features, which are is our empathy for the helpless,
Speaker 1: especially helpless baby, and that sort of chilling juxtaposition of
Speaker 1: like a crying baby and a predator is really scary,
Speaker 1: and I have to wonder if there's something Now, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't have any strictly like solid evidence
Speaker 1: for this, but I do wonder if, like deep in
Speaker 1: our evolutionary history, if we had these fears of some predator,
Speaker 1: like a big cat, because I know jaguars and some
Speaker 1: of these big cats also use similar methods to lure
Speaker 1: and pray. Like if we kind of have this this
Speaker 1: fear of something imitating our young and then luring us
Speaker 1: out and then preying on us, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: that's fast. Maybe it's also kind of a warning against
Speaker 1: making like having empathy become a vulnerability, or or the
Speaker 1: fear that like by taking care of someone else that
Speaker 1: you could put yourself, you can neglect your own needs
Speaker 1: to put yourself in danger kind of thing. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: that the evil, evil baby, the baby crying and you
Speaker 1: walk towards it, and it's a trap. It's just it's
Speaker 1: almost ubiquitous in every human culture, so so many stories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what if baby Yoda is really a parasite? Oh? I
Speaker 1: like that. I like that theory. You don't know anything
Speaker 1: we are. It is a cultural parasite because I cannot step.
Speaker 1: You can't spit and not hit a baby Yoda. You know,
Speaker 1: like you can't take two steps without tripping over baby
Speaker 1: Yoda on these social media is. The thing about baby
Speaker 1: Yoda too, is there's just one of them. But if
Speaker 1: there were like a million, there were a million baby
Speaker 1: Yodas washed up on a beach, I'll be frightened. We
Speaker 1: would be frightened. I mean, like they have telekinetic powers,
Speaker 1: they have the force, which you know is presented as good.
Speaker 1: But it's a baby. As soon as it gets mad,
Speaker 1: she's gonna smash you around like a like a big
Speaker 1: old rattle. The only reason we're not scared of baby
Speaker 1: Yodas that we're led to believe he's a wise baby
Speaker 1: because he's Yoda. Yeah, I mean he's got those little wrinkles.
Speaker 1: You've seen a lot of life. I mean, babies do
Speaker 1: come out really wrinkly. They look like old people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my brother came out as a little little wrinkly looked.
Speaker 1: He had that cute old man face when he came out.
Speaker 1: But he either premature or late, do you know? He
Speaker 1: was not I wouldn't say late, but he came out
Speaker 1: a little later than his due date. I came out
Speaker 1: a little earlier than my due date, but I was
Speaker 1: a big old chunker. Yeah, because sometimes I think it's
Speaker 1: mostly in babies who were born pastor I'm both of
Speaker 1: mine were, But so I don't know if if this is,
Speaker 1: you know, a general thing. But their skin peels off
Speaker 1: just like a fun surprise, nobody prepares you, and then
Speaker 1: like a couple of weeks after bringing your baby home,
Speaker 1: they molts like a snake. Who I didn't know about that?
Speaker 1: Neither did I molding from a larva to its exactly?
Speaker 1: Are you ever afraid they're going to molt again? Maybe
Speaker 1: it would be afraid. I also wonder if this fear
Speaker 1: of means so that this fear of cats imitating baby
Speaker 1: cries or sorry, it's not of cats, but maybe we
Speaker 1: should be afraid of cats mimicking baby cries because there
Speaker 1: have been some studies that suggest that cats manipulate their
Speaker 1: cries to sound more like babies. Have you guys heard
Speaker 1: this Siamese cats, right? I think it's all cats, but
Speaker 1: there they may be especially good at it, and their
Speaker 1: cries share a similar frequency as babies, human babies, human
Speaker 1: baby I choose to believe this because my one of
Speaker 1: my cast has been keeping me up all night every
Speaker 1: night making imaginary baby sounds. Yeah. And they also the
Speaker 1: researchers found that when they compare normal cats sounds to
Speaker 1: like the cat sounds that seem to be closer to
Speaker 1: a baby cry. Uh, people give more urgency to the
Speaker 1: ones that sound like a baby cry and show more anxieties.
Speaker 1: So you may want to like feed your cat more
Speaker 1: when it's crying like a baby. Cat does that exactly
Speaker 1: as the funk out of me, which one drags all
Speaker 1: are weasy? Maybe need a baby? She can do it right.
Speaker 1: She goes up in frequency when she's trying to get
Speaker 1: me to feed her at night. When I'm like, she's
Speaker 1: trying to sound like a baby. Maybe it does sound
Speaker 1: like a baby. And then I'm always like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: imagine what a real baby is like. If a cat
Speaker 1: this manipulated? And well, I wonder if they if it
Speaker 1: is like an evolutionary thing where I mean, the logical
Speaker 1: conclusion is that then cats learned to talk like the dogs. Stella,
Speaker 1: who's pressing those buttons where I have a lot of doubt,
Speaker 1: but I choose to believe that that dog but if
Speaker 1: these so, if these margarie cats, which the observational studies
Speaker 1: have seemed to indicate that they're learning it from their
Speaker 1: maternal the maternal cats and the mother cat passes it
Speaker 1: on to her children and then they learn this skill.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if domesticated cats have learned this over time,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of um, it could be evolutionary. It
Speaker 1: could be that we selected for like the cats that
Speaker 1: were able to cry like babies, we kept more because
Speaker 1: we were more distressed and fed them more. I think
Speaker 1: that's very possible. But maybe the originally like some cats
Speaker 1: just kind of figured this out and then they passed
Speaker 1: those those genes or that knowledge onto the other cats.
Speaker 1: I always think it's interesting how like domesticated pets, it's
Speaker 1: like the opposite of evolution because you're like selecting for
Speaker 1: patheticism instead of like actually actually being able to survive.
Speaker 1: If I mean it works, they have survived, they're highly successful.
Speaker 1: Dogs are more successful than wolves as of now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I do wonder if, like, because we have this
Speaker 1: folklore about creepy, creepy baby crying being a trap, like
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it's it's our this like instinct telling
Speaker 1: us that the cats are trying to take advantage of us,
Speaker 1: like like warning bells. Like those cats, they're trying to
Speaker 1: get us all listen. We just don't. We don't know
Speaker 1: where the sources the cats were the what's it called
Speaker 1: the the boo back the whole time. As humans, we
Speaker 1: seem to have a particularly strong negative response to imitators.
Speaker 1: The uncanny valley. Something we talk about frequently on the
Speaker 1: show is that graph that depicts one's feelings towards a
Speaker 1: fake image of a person. When the image is cartoonish,
Speaker 1: like Charlie Brown, we're pretty comfortable. We get more and
Speaker 1: more comfortable with the image the more human it gets,
Speaker 1: until suddenly something changes. When the image becomes a little
Speaker 1: too human like but not quite realistic enough, like an
Speaker 1: animatronic face or c g I nightmare like that Dead
Speaker 1: Eyed the Polar Express movie. Our comfort suddenly plummets into
Speaker 1: the uncanny valley until the image becomes realistic enough to
Speaker 1: pass is human. Instinctively, we reject things that look similar
Speaker 1: but aren't quite right in terms of being human. Similarly,
Speaker 1: we're very afraid of body snatchers, and this is exemplified
Speaker 1: by Capgrass syndrome. Capgrass syndrome occurs when there's a disconnect
Speaker 1: between the amygdala and the part of our brain that
Speaker 1: processes faces. This can be a result of brain damage,
Speaker 1: such as that which occurs after a stroke. This causes
Speaker 1: you to think that a loved one or friend has
Speaker 1: been replaced by an impostor. You see their face, you
Speaker 1: recognize them, but there's a disconnect between their face and
Speaker 1: the emotional feeling of familiarity you normally feel. Therefore, that
Speaker 1: person feels wrong to you, and your reason that this
Speaker 1: must be because they've been replaced. There's even a disorder
Speaker 1: that can make you believe that an entire location has
Speaker 1: been duplicated. Reduplicative paramnesia is a delusion resulting from frontal
Speaker 1: lobe damage that causes you to think that a location
Speaker 1: has either been duplicated or has been removed and relocated
Speaker 1: to a new place. For example, if you're in your
Speaker 1: house right now, you might think that this is a
Speaker 1: duplicated house, exactly the same in every way, except it's
Speaker 1: in a different city. Re leading theory on how this
Speaker 1: has caused is that damage to the busy of spatial cortex,
Speaker 1: the part of the brain that processes visual and spatial information,
Speaker 1: causes a disconnect between this visual spatial information and memory.
Speaker 1: When we return, we'll talk about a whole lot of fears,
Speaker 1: about a whole lot of holes. Will be right back now.
Speaker 1: In this section, I'm going to tell you not to
Speaker 1: google something, so you will be spared a pretty gross image,
Speaker 1: but inevitably a lot of you will google it. I
Speaker 1: know I see you, but it's not your fault, and
Speaker 1: to be honest, i'd do it too. This is morbid curiosity,
Speaker 1: where we know we won't like to see an image,
Speaker 1: but some strange force compels us to look. Researchers have
Speaker 1: looked at morbid curiosity and have revealed some seemingly paradoxical findings. Often,
Speaker 1: the stronger reaction you have to morbid topics, the more
Speaker 1: likely you'll be curious about these morbid topics. Those that
Speaker 1: have a stronger physiological reaction to morbid news were also
Speaker 1: those who had reported to survey greater morbid curiosity, and
Speaker 1: in general, research has shown that people prefer to view
Speaker 1: morbid images more than neutral ones, especially morbid images that
Speaker 1: depict socially negative content, such as a war scene. Another
Speaker 1: study found that the stronger your fear of terrorism, the
Speaker 1: more likely you are to view violent images associated with terrorism.
Speaker 1: So sometimes our fear seems to drive us towards viewing
Speaker 1: images as if we think that viewing them will give
Speaker 1: us useful information to avoid our fears. Instead, these images
Speaker 1: likely form a feedback loop where we may perceive our
Speaker 1: fears as more likely, which is called confirmation bias. But
Speaker 1: sometimes the reaction to fear is avoidance, such as is
Speaker 1: often the case with phobias and the phobia were about
Speaker 1: to discuss maybe one of the most difficult ones to
Speaker 1: avoid completely. So do you guys know about triple phobia? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've talked about it all night. Call a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's the fear of holes. Yes, it's a fear or
Speaker 1: aversion to clusters of small holes or lumps. Even the
Speaker 1: word cluster just kind of gave me over. Was the
Speaker 1: clusters or clusters so close to holes? Do any of
Speaker 1: you guys fall anywhere on that spectrum of tripophobia? Yeah, definitely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm fine with them. I don't care. Yeah, I'm actually
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen to me, although I've got a warny
Speaker 1: as some of the content and this is it goes
Speaker 1: beyond just tripophobia into total gross out. What if I
Speaker 1: show you that picture of a lotus pod where they
Speaker 1: photoshopped it onto a breast. Yeah, I've seen that one.
Speaker 1: So they so a lotus pod is it's the dried
Speaker 1: seed pot of a of a lotus plant, and it
Speaker 1: has all these little holes that the seeds are in,
Speaker 1: and that's a common trigger for people with triple phobia.
Speaker 1: And some sadist photoshops that picture of the seed pot
Speaker 1: onto a breast and so it looks like the breast
Speaker 1: has a bunch of holes in it. What's crazy, though,
Speaker 1: is if you actually look at the anatomy of the breast,
Speaker 1: the milk ducts do look like a bunch of little
Speaker 1: clusters of little balls. So it's like inside the breast,
Speaker 1: it is horrible. But but yeah, that is cool or
Speaker 1: cool or really cool. That's that's right. This show is
Speaker 1: about embracing our fears and loving them and all of
Speaker 1: our holes and seed pods. So things like seed pods, sponges,
Speaker 1: seeds and fruit and even soap bubbles can trigger chip
Speaker 1: a phobia and it can cause panic attack like symptoms
Speaker 1: and people who have it. So it ranges from just
Speaker 1: a version well I don't want to say just a
Speaker 1: version of version can be a real serious thing, but
Speaker 1: it can range from mild aversion to strong aversion to
Speaker 1: full on panic attack. A panic attack is an autonomic
Speaker 1: nervous system response that can be really hard to control.
Speaker 1: So this phobia, as there are a lot of phobias,
Speaker 1: is associated with O c D. I have O c D.
Speaker 1: I don't actually have triple phobia at all, but I
Speaker 1: can't see how it's connected. I remember when I was
Speaker 1: a kid when something would gross me out, like I
Speaker 1: had a phobia of mummies, and I would seem patterns
Speaker 1: of mummies and everything like beef jerky, kind of like
Speaker 1: crusty bread. I would imagine that's like a mummified thing,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't eat um. They were dead beef jerky.
Speaker 1: What's not to hate? I thought it was cool. I
Speaker 1: was really into mummies. Yeah, so did some of my
Speaker 1: some some of my peers in sixth grade, and they
Speaker 1: like to torture me with pictures of mummies. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: Well you know, was it like the wrapped up mummy
Speaker 1: or just the body, the desiccated body, all of it,
Speaker 1: I mean all of it was bad. It was all bad.
Speaker 1: It's like a terrible present. Okay, you get out of here.
Speaker 1: Cause of tripophobia isn't fully understood, but there are theories.
Speaker 1: So one theory is that it's an evolution nary biological
Speaker 1: reflex similar to seeing images of spiders and snakes, which
Speaker 1: is sort of a are kind of an adaptation we
Speaker 1: have where we are automatically scared of certain things that
Speaker 1: are typically bad for us, and it is possibly an
Speaker 1: oversensitive alarm to try to avoid disease or parasites. If
Speaker 1: I have any audience members out there who have triple phobia,
Speaker 1: this is the part where you might wanna skip ahead
Speaker 1: of I'll probably either just skip the rest of it
Speaker 1: because we're near the end of the episode, or if
Speaker 1: you want to hear the last bit I'll give you
Speaker 1: in the show notes, I'll say where you can come
Speaker 1: back in. But yeah, this is gonna be a little gross.
Speaker 1: I'll give people a grace period to fiddle with their phones.
Speaker 1: How are you guys doing today? Well, nobody full of holes. Well,
Speaker 1: if you if you have to tap out, just just
Speaker 1: pass out and we'll drag you out of the room.
Speaker 1: So an example of a disease that both triggs triple
Speaker 1: phobia and maybe sort of like um where these kinds
Speaker 1: of fears may have come from sort of in our
Speaker 1: evolutionary it's the mango worm and it is also known
Speaker 1: as Corteleobia anthropophagia, which means in human eater um. It
Speaker 1: is found mostly in East and Central Africa, and usually
Speaker 1: you get infected by coming into contact with contaminated soil
Speaker 1: or dirty bedding UH sometimes contaminated with like fecal matter,
Speaker 1: and the mango worm fly larva can burrow into the
Speaker 1: skin of animals and including humans, and if you get
Speaker 1: an infection of more than one larva, it looks like
Speaker 1: a cluster of bumps or small holes that have the
Speaker 1: larva in them, and it can infect humans. It also
Speaker 1: infects dogs, which is there's Yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: pictures again and I told you into in the intro
Speaker 1: not to google it. I know a lot of not
Speaker 1: looking this one up. Yeah, I know a lot of
Speaker 1: you are going to google it. It's truly very gross.
Speaker 1: Just her phone. It's something where I'm not even gonna
Speaker 1: include a picture in the show notes, just so nobody
Speaker 1: does an accidental click. But yeah, you can easily google it.
Speaker 1: It's just really disturbing. And it's the ones where it's
Speaker 1: like the infected puppies is pretty bad too. It's just
Speaker 1: like puppies. But oh, I see, Yeah, it's the removal
Speaker 1: that you really want to move avoid. It's all of it,
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, but yeah, the removal is especially bad.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I have a high tolerance for parasite photos
Speaker 1: medical photos, but even this grosses me out. So I
Speaker 1: really like, if you have any kind of sensitivity, I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to show you. Guys a picture wasn't
Speaker 1: what I thought you were going to say either. I
Speaker 1: thought you're gonna talk about prions. Prions like in the brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those little holes in the brain. Yeah, that is true.
Speaker 1: That's another one. That's why you can't be accountable because
Speaker 1: it makes you get brain prions. Yeah. Well, so you
Speaker 1: can't eat like, if you eat other brains, not just
Speaker 1: of humans, but other animals, like, you can still get
Speaker 1: that's why we can't eat brains and my zombies brains. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but I think that's interesting too because it says to
Speaker 1: me that it's not like like sometimes when you're repulsed
Speaker 1: by something like that, where you're like, oh, I shouldn't
Speaker 1: eat a person's brain. It is because your body can
Speaker 1: be good for you. Otherwise everybody just would Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1: We would all just do it, wouldn't we um. But
Speaker 1: so the an infection by mango worms isn't typically fatal
Speaker 1: for people, but it can cause like a serious infection,
Speaker 1: and it can be fatal for small animals. One of
Speaker 1: the more creative ways of treating it is by plugging
Speaker 1: up the larva holes with petroleum jelly, which suffocates the
Speaker 1: larva and then they come out as and surface so
Speaker 1: they can breathe, which is yeah, terrible. Don't look it up.
Speaker 1: We just kind of they look like little barley things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they look like regular maggots. Basically, they look like maggots
Speaker 1: that live in your skin. I mean, if you want
Speaker 1: me to paint a picture, it's like a bunch of
Speaker 1: holes or but it's like a bunch of bumps. And
Speaker 1: then like when they come out of the skin, it's
Speaker 1: like a bunch of holes with maggots. And it's like
Speaker 1: the load seed pod. It's like the loadus seed pod,
Speaker 1: but with magats. You know what, it also looks like
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but I'm just going to say you know that, like,
Speaker 1: have you guys ever been targeted by the ad of
Speaker 1: that like sticker you put on pimples. The ad is
Speaker 1: really horrible because it's one of those squeezy balls with
Speaker 1: like gel and it's so it's just a bunch of
Speaker 1: like like the stress ball, Like yeah, it's got it's
Speaker 1: a stress ball. The net over it and you squeeze
Speaker 1: it and like all the things. Yeah, so I was
Speaker 1: so like put off that I was being targeted by
Speaker 1: these things. It was like, well, how much do you
Speaker 1: know about my complexion? But it looks it also kind
Speaker 1: of looks like that where it's like a like raised
Speaker 1: lump with like I see you guys on your phone.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to resist, try not to lose. We painted
Speaker 1: a picture. Yeah, it's very good. It's like you may
Speaker 1: be curious what you're going to find if you look
Speaker 1: up images of mango worms is exactly what I've described.
Speaker 1: It's very gross. It's just very great. I'm not like
Speaker 1: that put off by this one. I am because I
Speaker 1: just feel so bad for those puppies. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: How round are the holes? This is actually a big
Speaker 1: part of my interesting I think I'd say they're fairly
Speaker 1: round because they are like more afraid if they're round,
Speaker 1: they're perfectly round. The more kind of uncanny it feels
Speaker 1: because it's a perfect circle, because it's like it's it's
Speaker 1: as if some kind of higher consciousness has decided to
Speaker 1: afflict you with this disease. That's interesting. Yeah, maybe the
Speaker 1: regularity is part of it because that indicates not just
Speaker 1: sort of a randomized wound, but an infection of multiple organisms.
Speaker 1: It's similar size and shape. They look like they're pretty round,
Speaker 1: but that there's in most of the pictures there it's
Speaker 1: like they're inflame. So the inflammation is yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I I had one. I was terrified once when I
Speaker 1: was like eight years old or something because for some
Speaker 1: reason I was sitting waiting in the car for my
Speaker 1: mom and the front window had started to fog, and
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, there was something on the window where
Speaker 1: the fog like it would fog up but except for
Speaker 1: these little perfect circles, And when my mom came back
Speaker 1: to the car, it was like freaking out and crying
Speaker 1: because I couldn't deal with the little circles on the
Speaker 1: window very I mean, that's the common thing that's like
Speaker 1: part of it is like seeing soap bubbles because of
Speaker 1: the regular shape of the soap bubbles. It's like your brain.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's an um, not as an insult,
Speaker 1: but just that your your brain has an over sensitivity
Speaker 1: where it's like picking up the signal of a bunch
Speaker 1: of holes, and it's seeing that pattern outside of the
Speaker 1: context in which it would be useful, like where a
Speaker 1: useful context was would be like you look at your arm,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of holes there. That's good. But you
Speaker 1: know so bubbles are okay. But it's it's an over
Speaker 1: generalization of a dangerous pattern that we know, we somehow know, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not good to have, like what looks like an
Speaker 1: infection by these flies. But then you're you're just like
Speaker 1: your your brain is trying to warn you when it
Speaker 1: doesn't need to. But for polka dots, those don't do
Speaker 1: anything for me. Word, I don't like them. What about
Speaker 1: like a bee hive? With that is it? The behives
Speaker 1: are okay? Although when I think about bee hives a
Speaker 1: little too hard or start to get freaked out. I
Speaker 1: think it's like if there's holes in something that's supposed
Speaker 1: to have holes in it, that's not scary, Like the
Speaker 1: top of a salt shaker isn't scary or well, So
Speaker 1: I now want to talk about how this affects this
Speaker 1: poor caterpillar that gets infected with Glipto Pantelis wasp larva.
Speaker 1: And this is a case in which the caterpillar probably
Speaker 1: should have shiptophobia because it's a horrible thing that happens
Speaker 1: to these little guys. And the glipped to pantales wasp
Speaker 1: lives in North America, Central America, and New Zealand, and
Speaker 1: female glipped to Pantalies wasps inject their eggs up to
Speaker 1: eighty eggs into the bodies of caterpillars. The eggs develop
Speaker 1: and grow and they feed on the insides of the caterpillar,
Speaker 1: but they don't kill the caterpillar, at least not yet,
Speaker 1: because they're taking care not to eat its vital organs,
Speaker 1: which is actually it's unusual, but it's not unheard of
Speaker 1: amongst parasites to do that where they will You're you're okay,
Speaker 1: did you just look up a photo? I told you,
Speaker 1: I told you, it's not gross. It's just like it
Speaker 1: triggers something. Yeah, I just don't like it at all.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't. So the the eggs continue to grow, not
Speaker 1: eating vital organs. So the caterpillars still alive, and the
Speaker 1: caterpillar starts to bloat up like a horrible water balloon
Speaker 1: filled with nightmares. And eventually what Emily is currently freaking
Speaker 1: out about is that dozens and dozens and dozens of
Speaker 1: these little things will burst from the caterpillar's body in
Speaker 1: a horrible spectacle. So I'll show you gut. Do you
Speaker 1: guys want to see it? I mean, Emily already did that,
Speaker 1: so Emily, you don't have to see it here. It
Speaker 1: is alright, alright, alright, okay, okay, okay, al right, everyone,
Speaker 1: all right, and we need to take I mean, speaking
Speaker 1: of scary stories in the dark like that, that was
Speaker 1: the worst one for me about the woman with the spiders. Weirdly,
Speaker 1: that image just not freaking out as much as the
Speaker 1: spider babies when the mom spider has the babies all
Speaker 1: over its back. That one is the scariest. But I
Speaker 1: also thought that one is a sweet story of motherhood
Speaker 1: and this one is a horrible story of parasites. It
Speaker 1: is sweet, and I want to overcome whatever internal you know,
Speaker 1: bias against having spiders I have. So Molly's talking about
Speaker 1: is often spiders scorpions will do this to certain since
Speaker 1: the scorpions one also, I think it's something about a
Speaker 1: million tiny things on one. Well, the babies, the newly
Speaker 1: hatched babies will just hang out on their mother's back
Speaker 1: for protection for a while. So it's this big cluster
Speaker 1: of little spider babies and little scorpion babies just kind
Speaker 1: of hanging out on their backs, just like an adult
Speaker 1: sized Yoda covered in baby. Yeah. Oddly enough, these parasitic
Speaker 1: wasp larva bursting out the caterpillar do not kill it.
Speaker 1: The caterpillar is still alive, and the the larva actually
Speaker 1: they help keep the caterpillar alive, doing this really gruesome
Speaker 1: surgical hap dash job where they leave behind they molt
Speaker 1: as they come out of the caterpillar, and they leave
Speaker 1: behind their exoskeleton which plugs up all the whole which
Speaker 1: prevents the caterpillar from bleeding to the whoa, So they
Speaker 1: like form a scat. They leave scabs basically. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: as it's it's functionally it's just the function of like
Speaker 1: as they're popping out of the caterpillar as they're molting,
Speaker 1: so they leave behind that the multidexo skeleton that basically
Speaker 1: plugs up the caterpillar's wounds and so, but they're still
Speaker 1: not done with this. Poor freaking caterpillars. So, the the
Speaker 1: wasp larva want to grow into wasps, and to do
Speaker 1: that they have to weave a protective cocoon. And while
Speaker 1: they're in this cocoon, they're very vulnerable to predation. The
Speaker 1: caterpillar will help the wasp lava out by weaving its
Speaker 1: own silk cocoon around them, and it will stand watch
Speaker 1: over the larva and protect them until it's very last breath.
Speaker 1: And you might be thinking, why would the caterpillar do this, Like,
Speaker 1: what's in it for the caterpillar? The answer is nothing's
Speaker 1: in it for the caterpillar. The caterpillar is being controlled
Speaker 1: from the end side by a couple of these larva
Speaker 1: who are taking one for the team for the rest
Speaker 1: of the larva by staying inside the caterpillar head and um. Basically,
Speaker 1: they are mind controlling the caterpillar, as a lot of
Speaker 1: parasites do. And I don't know what the exact I'm
Speaker 1: not even sure we know yet what the precise mechanism
Speaker 1: is of how they control the caterpillar's brain, but often
Speaker 1: which what is the cases, they have some kind of
Speaker 1: chemical excretion that changes the balance of neurotransmitters in the
Speaker 1: caterpillar's brain, and then that causes some behavior to to
Speaker 1: go off or to become exaggerated. So, like cocoon weaving
Speaker 1: is a regular behavior for the caterpillar, so it'll weave
Speaker 1: this cocoon in a context that doesn't make sense. As
Speaker 1: for attacking predators, that like staying watch over the larva
Speaker 1: and attacking predators that come near. That is such a
Speaker 1: bizarre caterpillar behavior. I don't know how they do that.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. But yeah, so the caterpillar becomes a zombie
Speaker 1: bodyguard who attacks any predators who want to snack on
Speaker 1: or attack the larva, and it greatly increases the chance
Speaker 1: that the larva will develop into fully grown wasps, and
Speaker 1: the caterpillar will eventually starve to death full of plugged
Speaker 1: up larva holes. Totally thankless job. It's really sad it is,
Speaker 1: isn't it. It's your zombie bodyguard and nanny that just
Speaker 1: eventually dies. Yeah, it feels like some kind of I
Speaker 1: can't I can't fill in all the blanks, but it
Speaker 1: feels like some kind of metaphor about like Um, like
Speaker 1: all weeklies or something. Um, that's brutal, poor caterpillar. Well
Speaker 1: do you guys want to do some palate cleansers. So
Speaker 1: welcome back to everyone who has skipped ahead. Um, we
Speaker 1: talked about horrible things. I hate this, um, so uh,
Speaker 1: first first pout, Actually it's just a news item, and
Speaker 1: then I got a couple of cool messages on Instagram
Speaker 1: I want to talk about. So the news item is. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Audibon Society came out with an article asking the
Speaker 1: tough question of what is a burb? And they try
Speaker 1: to define what a burb is. And I'm very very
Speaker 1: grateful to this article because they attribute the coining of
Speaker 1: the term burb to my proverb rights account, which I
Speaker 1: had thought I had coined it, and I remember, I
Speaker 1: remember being the first one to do it, and I
Speaker 1: am just thrilled to finally get media recognition to my
Speaker 1: contribution to society. So this is a self promotion tour
Speaker 1: where I go around bragging about how I invented the
Speaker 1: word bourb and I think I mowed like I've million
Speaker 1: dollars and right yeah, I'm crunching the numbers right now.
Speaker 1: That sounds very cool. So I'm rich now apparently. Um, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's thank you Audubon Society. That's pretty great. I think
Speaker 1: the so I can help out a little bit with
Speaker 1: the science of what a bourb is versus a bird.
Speaker 1: They try to kind of define like, okay, what's a
Speaker 1: burb what's just a regular bird? Correctly, they're saying like
Speaker 1: if the bird is too big like an an Ostrich
Speaker 1: and Ostrich isn't a bourb um. But there's another thing,
Speaker 1: which is that the roundness quotation of the bird is
Speaker 1: directly correlated with how much of a bourb it is,
Speaker 1: so that that's a helpful tool as well. I also
Speaker 1: got a couple of cool messages on Instagram. First of all,
Speaker 1: Instagram user Ali water Windows is a food scientist, and
Speaker 1: she wanted to talk about the recent episode Leftovers where
Speaker 1: we talked about the movie The Killer Shrews, where so
Speaker 1: in this this b horror movie, scientists try to make
Speaker 1: giant food to in a world hunger, but they accidentally
Speaker 1: make giant shrews whoops us. So, so we were we
Speaker 1: had briefly talked about, you know, why why you would
Speaker 1: make giant food, you know, and we we talked about
Speaker 1: that that there's that other movie that had Matt Damon
Speaker 1: in it where they shrink people down to try to
Speaker 1: what was it called the Shrinkable Matt Damon? What was
Speaker 1: that movie called? Remember it's this is going to drive
Speaker 1: Me crazy? Yeah, I mean I saw it wasn't as
Speaker 1: bad as people said Alexander Payne movie downsizing. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: this is from Instagram user all I want our windows,
Speaker 1: She says, Hey, I listened to the Leftovers episode and
Speaker 1: got so psycked because I love Creature feature and I
Speaker 1: love Savers. I had Savers hosts on the show. So
Speaker 1: she says, I had to weigh in on the shrinking
Speaker 1: issue because it's a fun thought experiment. With our understanding
Speaker 1: of electron fields and how we believe at this point
Speaker 1: that much solid matter is actually full of empty space,
Speaker 1: it stands to reason that if we developed shrink technology,
Speaker 1: it would simply condense our electron orbits and not reduce
Speaker 1: our mass. So by shrinking ourselves, we could do agriculture
Speaker 1: on a much smaller scale and feed more people by
Speaker 1: producing the same more food in a tiny space. But conversely,
Speaker 1: the challenge of enlarging things seems like much more advanced
Speaker 1: and complicated technology. Since matter can neither be created nor destroyed.
Speaker 1: And an enlarging machine would theoretically expand the electron orbits
Speaker 1: of the subject, and that seems problematic to their structure
Speaker 1: and integrity. And an enlarged hypothetical strawberry wouldn't have any
Speaker 1: more calories than it had when it was normal sized,
Speaker 1: So all that effort of inventing that technology gives you
Speaker 1: no increase in harvest and yield. And then she says,
Speaker 1: thanks for humoring me, thanks for sending my mind down
Speaker 1: a physics wormhole. Hope you see this. I did. I
Speaker 1: don't have Twitter, and I don't wasn't sure how to
Speaker 1: contact you. Well you sure did contact me. It worked. Um,
Speaker 1: And then yeah, so she that is I think a
Speaker 1: really good point that she brings up. Question then, is
Speaker 1: like a genetically modified apple or strawberries, you know, like
Speaker 1: when like there's obviously like GMO strawberries that are gigantic,
Speaker 1: is that the same amount of calories as like an
Speaker 1: organic No, because I think that in that case, it
Speaker 1: is the cellular growth of the apple has been modified,
Speaker 1: so there is more calories. It's just a hypothetical growth rate,
Speaker 1: like you do a growth right right, right? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean like in any domesticated food and animals, we can
Speaker 1: futs with their genes such that they grow beyond their
Speaker 1: normal size, so like chickens, broiler chickens have Basically we've
Speaker 1: shut off some of the jeans that say, hey, stop growing,
Speaker 1: that's enough, So they grow these like huge muscles that
Speaker 1: we then eat and it's horrifying. But yeah, so that's likes.
Speaker 1: I got this message from Samantha regarding our recent episode
Speaker 1: it's called out Remember to Breathe through your Butt, where
Speaker 1: we talked about fluffy horses and how horses are measured
Speaker 1: using hands. And I'm not a horse person, so I
Speaker 1: was I didn't know much about how you measure horses.
Speaker 1: Apparently you measure in hands from the withers of the horse,
Speaker 1: which is like the ridge along the neck. And I
Speaker 1: asked on the show, why don't you use a measuring stick?
Speaker 1: Our horses afraid of measuring sticks. So this is Samantha,
Speaker 1: she says, horse girl here, been listening for a while,
Speaker 1: finally had information to add the hand measurements is only
Speaker 1: in North America. Actually, the rest of the world still
Speaker 1: likes to use cinemeters. We do the top of the
Speaker 1: shoulders as it is the highest point stays consistent as
Speaker 1: the head and neck goes up and down. And lots
Speaker 1: of horses are not a fan of our measuring sticks,
Speaker 1: even the ones with the hand measurements. I love the
Speaker 1: foesy pony facts. I had no idea about their special blood.
Speaker 1: It is a fact I plan on sharing. Thank you
Speaker 1: for all your hard work. And then I asked her
Speaker 1: why aren't horses a fan of measuring sticks, and she said,
Speaker 1: horses are prey animals, so most of them are spooky
Speaker 1: by nature. That is what kept them alive. Plus they
Speaker 1: actually have nerve endings up in their weather area that
Speaker 1: keeps them from moving forward, so it is a kill spot.
Speaker 1: And mail horces stallions will grab there when they mount
Speaker 1: us for breeding, so that is super interesting. Samantha really
Speaker 1: appreciate that. I had no idea that the withers was
Speaker 1: such a sort of sensitive subject for horses. And I
Speaker 1: guess like, if if I think about it, if some
Speaker 1: like creature that wanted to ride me came at me
Speaker 1: with a yard stick, I'd be kind of piste off
Speaker 1: to let me put it on and put it in
Speaker 1: my withers area. That's a that's a personal area. The Withers.
Speaker 1: So do you guys have anything to plug. We've got
Speaker 1: our podcast just Nightcall, Nightcall. I was just on that podcast.
Speaker 1: UM check it out. We did a little pod exchange
Speaker 1: she did when where's right here? On the How Stuff Network.
Speaker 1: I haven't moved from this chair and over two hours
Speaker 1: I think we've been here on No, don't give anybody
Speaker 1: a peek behind the curtain face. We are in the
Speaker 1: information void. And we're all on social media too, which
Speaker 1: is the same thing. But I met Emily Yoshida on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I'm Mr tes Lynch, I'm Molly Lambert. They you guys
Speaker 1: so much for joining me. This has been excellent. So
Speaker 1: if you want to send me message, it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be horses and giant strawberries. Whatever you want. On
Speaker 1: Instagram or Twitter. It's Creature feature pod on Instagram and
Speaker 1: Creature Feet pod on Twitter. That's f e A T,
Speaker 1: not f e E T. That's something very different. In fact,
Speaker 1: exciting news. There is now a creature feet pod. I
Speaker 1: did not create this. This is someone else and apparently
Speaker 1: it is full of creature feet. So check that one
Speaker 1: out too. Uh, thank you guys so much for listening.
Speaker 1: My New Year's resolutionists to keep making episodes for you
Speaker 1: and to collect more worms to please the Queen worm
Speaker 1: who's controlling my brain. One way you guys could really
Speaker 1: help is by subscribing, downloading episodes, leaving me a nice
Speaker 1: rating and review, or leaving me some worms. I Love Worms.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the Space Classics for their super slimy scormy song.
Speaker 1: X Alumina Creature features a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. See your next Wormsday
Speaker 1: I mean Wednesday. Thank you so good, Thank you guys
Speaker 1: so much.