Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites.
Speaker 2: Katie Golden.
Speaker 1: I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and today on this show,
Speaker 1: it's a listener's Questions episode. You can write to me
Speaker 1: your questions and then guess what I try to answer them.
Speaker 2: That's what happens.
Speaker 1: So if you're listening to this Q and A and
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, wait a minute, I have a question.
Speaker 1: Why doesn't Katie answer my question about animals and stuff?
Speaker 2: Well, it's easy.
Speaker 1: You can write to me at Creature Featurepod at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com with your question and I will do my
Speaker 1: best to answer it accurately. Let's get right into it.
Speaker 1: First question, Hey, Katie, We here in my part of
Speaker 1: Newfoundland were fortunate enough to be right in the path
Speaker 1: of totality of the eclipse. So a friend and I
Speaker 1: decided to move a bit closer to the center of
Speaker 1: the path and observe it next to a ghost ship
Speaker 1: that recently appeared on a beach.
Speaker 2: That's spooky.
Speaker 1: Okay, it was awesome and Sareel got way colder than
Speaker 1: I anticipated. The horizon was orange, which was confusing, and
Speaker 1: thankfully we got a break in the clouds right before
Speaker 1: the sun turned black with the eerie white glow. As
Speaker 1: it became darker, I didn't hear or see any animals
Speaker 1: around us. I was a bit disappointed because I wanted
Speaker 1: to know how they'd react to this, but nothing. Our
Speaker 1: animals usually quiet as it darkens in anticipation of night.
Speaker 1: I don't know, or are they just thrown off by
Speaker 1: the timing. However, as soon as the sun started peeking out,
Speaker 1: the world became lighter, even before it really warmed up,
Speaker 1: birds started chirping. There were animals around us apparently, and
Speaker 1: one other strange animal behavior that I'm mostly curious about.
Speaker 1: As we walked back to where we parked the car,
Speaker 1: we met a young man and his saint Bernard. He
Speaker 1: the giant doggie seemed friendly enough. My friend got close
Speaker 1: because it seemed fine, leaned over, and the dog suddenly
Speaker 1: bit him in the arm, like pretty deep. The man
Speaker 1: had to use force on the leash to get him
Speaker 1: to back off. It was really on edge suddenly. My
Speaker 1: friend had never been bitten before, and the guy said
Speaker 1: his dog had never bitten anyone before. He was very
Speaker 1: apologetic and it seems sincere, although we don't know for
Speaker 1: sure if he was telling the truth, but if he was,
Speaker 1: it had me wondering if dogs have a very sensitive
Speaker 1: circadian clock and if this behavior was the result of
Speaker 1: him being thrown out of whack. I'm curious if you
Speaker 1: know of other stories like this or if other listeners
Speaker 1: might have recent animal eclipse stories as well. And this
Speaker 1: is from PK. Thank you so much for your story, PK.
Speaker 1: I am very jealous that you got to watch the
Speaker 1: eclipse next to a ghost ship. Also, apparently people were
Speaker 1: able to see the northern lights. But hey, guess what.
Speaker 1: Guess who's got two thumbs and didn't get to see
Speaker 1: the eclipse or the northern lights.
Speaker 2: Uh me, it's me. So I'm very jealous. That's very cool.
Speaker 1: So yeah, let's talk about animal behavior during the eclipse.
Speaker 1: So animals, like humans, typically follow a day night cycle,
Speaker 1: but in different ways maybe than humans. So they may
Speaker 1: be diurnal as we are, which means mostly sleeping at
Speaker 1: night and mostly being active during the day. There's also
Speaker 1: nocturnal animals that's being mostly asleep or inactive during the
Speaker 1: day and mostly active at night, and crepuscular animals and
Speaker 1: those are mostly active at dawn and dusk. Otherwise they
Speaker 1: are resting.
Speaker 2: So there are.
Speaker 1: Also animals who use the day night cycle to engage
Speaker 1: in mass migrations. So billions of zooplankton migrate from the.
Speaker 2: Depths of the ocean.
Speaker 1: Up to the surface every night to feed, and then
Speaker 1: they go back down to the depths to hide from
Speaker 1: the sunlight because they are trying to evade predators that
Speaker 1: can see them. Zooplankton being very small, very snackable. So photoreceptors,
Speaker 1: which in humans and many other animals are mainly concentrated
Speaker 1: in our eyes, respond to light dark cues and stinctly,
Speaker 1: for instance, producing the hormone melatonin in response to dark
Speaker 1: light cycles, which signals to our body to sleep. So
Speaker 1: during an eclipse, it would make sense for animal behaviors
Speaker 1: to change. But to what extent is it changing and
Speaker 1: is it because the animals literally think it's night or
Speaker 1: is it due to fear or confusion. So the problem
Speaker 1: with trying to study animal behaviors during total eclipses is
Speaker 1: that they are so rare. Uh. Also, human observation during
Speaker 1: eclipses may differ. Right, Like, you are so hyper focused
Speaker 1: on the event, you may be paying particular attention to
Speaker 1: sounds and sights and noticing things maybe that you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have noticed before, So maybe you're more likely to notice
Speaker 1: subtle changes in behavior that may happen with some regularity.
Speaker 1: It's just everyone's paying attention right now because it's an
Speaker 1: eclipse and it is really exciting. So that being said,
Speaker 1: there really does seem to be some response from animals
Speaker 1: to eclipses. So zookeepers report animals acting erratically during an eclipse,
Speaker 1: probably confusion about the sudden darkness or maybe anticipation.
Speaker 2: Of a storm.
Speaker 1: Researchers found that some diurnal birds seem to continue their
Speaker 1: song during an eclipse, while observers have noticed that other
Speaker 1: birds will fall silent, So it's possible that some birds
Speaker 1: think it's night, or they might be confused and go
Speaker 1: into a cautious standby mode, whereas others are less sensitive
Speaker 1: to that change. Insects may respond more rapidly to eclipses,
Speaker 1: becoming more active as it gets dark. For honeybees, it's
Speaker 1: actually the opposite. Researchers found that honey bees return to
Speaker 1: their hive and hunker down during the darkness of an eclipse,
Speaker 1: and in fact, it seems like their return is pretty rapid,
Speaker 1: more rapid than they usually do. So it could be
Speaker 1: that they are in something of a panic because they
Speaker 1: are confused or it seems dangerous to them that this
Speaker 1: sudden darkness has approached. As for the question about the dog,
Speaker 1: so we don't know, right, like if this guy is
Speaker 1: telling the truth or not that his dog has never bitten.
Speaker 2: But let's take him at his word. Okay.
Speaker 1: So dogs really like routine, and they can get very
Speaker 1: stressed if their routine is disrupted by something unpleasant like
Speaker 1: the world suddenly going dark. So when I say routine,
Speaker 1: I don't mean just like boring stuff. Of course, dogs
Speaker 1: like stimulation, they like getting out about, they like novelty
Speaker 1: to some extent. But if their routine is altered in
Speaker 1: a really significant way, especially something spooky like the world
Speaker 1: suddenly going dark, I think it's very reasonable for the
Speaker 1: dog to get really stressed. Because dogs do have a
Speaker 1: pretty good sense of time. They have a good sense
Speaker 1: of routine, like that's why your dog expects dinner at
Speaker 1: a certain time. So I could definitely see a dog
Speaker 1: as reacting with fear and anxiety to the unexpected darkness. Also,
Speaker 1: I have found that dogs are very sensitive to vibes,
Speaker 1: which you know is obviously a scientific term. But if
Speaker 1: a dog's senses something is weird, right, like if people's
Speaker 1: behaviors have suddenly changed, if everyone if there's just a
Speaker 1: certain I guess emotional.
Speaker 2: Change.
Speaker 1: I think dogs can be quite sensitive to that, and
Speaker 1: that can make them anxious. I'm really sorry that your
Speaker 1: friend was bitten. Of course, this is not his fault
Speaker 1: at all, and you know, but I can't imagine a
Speaker 1: dog getting really stressed over a unusual event like an eclipse.
Speaker 1: As a dog owner who has a very anxious little dog,
Speaker 1: She's tiny, so she can't really do much damage, but
Speaker 1: she does nip if she's stressed out. So what I
Speaker 1: do is if she is in an unusual situation. First
Speaker 1: of all, I tried to avoid putting her in stressful
Speaker 1: unusual situations, but if it's unavoidable, then I make sure
Speaker 1: that she stays away from people, because I don't want
Speaker 1: her to nip at people. Even if she's tiny, she
Speaker 1: she can she can get in a good little nip there,
Speaker 1: and it's it's not it's not fun. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: she she has a little bit of trauma as well,
Speaker 1: which we have worked through. But yeah, she does easily
Speaker 1: get very anxious and stressed and scared in situations, and
Speaker 1: an anxious and stressed and scared dog is one who
Speaker 1: could be unpredictable. They could they could bite, they could nip,
Speaker 1: So it's always important to keep that in mind as
Speaker 1: a as a dog owner. And yeah, so I'm really
Speaker 1: sorry that happened to your friend. But yeah, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it really was the Saint Bernard's first time because he
Speaker 1: thought it was the apocalypse, or maybe ghosts from that
Speaker 1: ghost ship possessed the dog. I don't know. Next question, Hey,
Speaker 1: how many times have we talked about a seals the
Speaker 1: plant animal marine flatworm? They're totally wicked and this is
Speaker 1: from Jercifuentis, So I don't think we have talked about
Speaker 1: them yet, and.
Speaker 2: We probably should.
Speaker 1: So. A seals are an order of marine invertebrates that
Speaker 1: are similar to flatworm. A seals kind of look like
Speaker 1: used band aids. Maybe more charitably, they look like sort
Speaker 1: of flat orangish discs, and they vary in size depending
Speaker 1: on the species. They are both carnivorous and in a
Speaker 1: symbiotic relationship with algae that can photosynthesize, so the algae
Speaker 1: is dispersed throughout the aceeal's tissue. But you know, even
Speaker 1: though we haven't talked about the acal, we have talked
Speaker 1: about another marine invertebrate that uses a similar technique. It
Speaker 1: is called the leaf sheep, also known as coast Ciella kroscheme,
Speaker 1: which is a sea slug that looks like a weird
Speaker 1: sheep whose wool is made of thick green leaves. I
Speaker 1: highly recommend you google leaf sheep.
Speaker 2: It's very cute.
Speaker 1: So this sheeplike aspect to its face is due to
Speaker 1: these projection that kind of look like ears, which are
Speaker 1: actually rhinophores. These are chemoreceptive sensors. It's also got a
Speaker 1: couple of eye spots that are really close together and
Speaker 1: look like really cartoony. They kind of look like a
Speaker 1: Gary Larsen cartoon of a cow's it's very funny. So
Speaker 1: the green leaves on its body are fleshy projections full
Speaker 1: of chloroplasts, which it actually steals from the algae it eats.
Speaker 1: So this is kleptoplasty. It's actually stealing chloroplasts from the
Speaker 1: algae that it eats and integrating it into its body,
Speaker 1: and these chloroplasts can photosynthesize and produce nutrients for the
Speaker 1: sea slug so a similar situation to the acal. But
Speaker 1: you know what, You're right. We should have talked about
Speaker 1: the acls. They're very cool and maybe I'll talk about
Speaker 1: them more on another episode. Next listener question, how do
Speaker 1: animals know what to eat? With humans? It seems to
Speaker 1: be a learned behavior, knowing what is safe to eat
Speaker 1: and what food we need for a healthy diet. Do
Speaker 1: animals use their senses? Is it learned behavior or something else?
Speaker 1: Thank you, Daniel, Thank you for your question, Daniel. So,
Speaker 1: for many animals, food is instinctive. They have sensory organs
Speaker 1: like a nose, antenna, or tentacles that alert them to
Speaker 1: the smells or.
Speaker 2: Tastes of food.
Speaker 1: They intuitively understand which foods are good or bad. All
Speaker 1: animals have some instinct when it comes to eating, including humans.
Speaker 1: We innately like the taste of sugars, carbohydrates, and proteins.
Speaker 1: Different flavors will appeal to different animals, of course, due
Speaker 1: to the differing nutritional and health needs. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: cat poop might seem like an abhorrent snack to most
Speaker 1: of us humans, but to a dog, cat poop is
Speaker 1: like candy. Given how high a protein content exists in
Speaker 1: catfood and is excreted in cat poop. So when your
Speaker 1: dog eats cat poop, he's not being a freak. It's
Speaker 1: just that cat poop seems like candy to dogs, believe
Speaker 1: it or not. So what happens when our instincts tells
Speaker 1: us that something will taste good and we try to
Speaker 1: eat it and then we get sick, Well, that is learning.
Speaker 1: So learning is a major way in which animals figure
Speaker 1: out how to eat. So, for instance, a butterfly might
Speaker 1: be a nice snack for a bird, but certain butterflies
Speaker 1: are actually toxic. Birds can learn that certain colors on
Speaker 1: a butterfly or frog means they are about to encounter
Speaker 1: a yucky thing that makes them throw up. This is
Speaker 1: actually called poison shyness. So butterflies actually some species of
Speaker 1: butterfly mimics will take advantage of this and pretend to
Speaker 1: be the toxic butterflies. But what happens actually is if
Speaker 1: these mimics become too great in numbers, the birds unlearn
Speaker 1: the toxicity signal, the apisomatic coloration, that's coloration that is
Speaker 1: a warning color that you know I am dangerous, I
Speaker 1: am yucky. And so if mimics become too big a number.
Speaker 1: The birds unlearn it, they statistically are more likely to
Speaker 1: encounter a mimic, and so they learn, hey, this is
Speaker 1: actually pretty tasty. And then you have sort of this
Speaker 1: realignment in populations, a drop in the population of mimics,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly once the actual toxic butterfly population becomes
Speaker 1: more prominent, after the birds have picked off a lot
Speaker 1: of the non time toxic mimics, then the apisomatic coloration
Speaker 1: works again and the birds are like, hey, actually, every
Speaker 1: time I try to eat one of these, you know,
Speaker 1: red or orange butterflies, I get a tummy ache and
Speaker 1: I throw up. So, yeah, that is poison shyness. So
Speaker 1: conservationists sometimes take advantage of poison shyness to try to
Speaker 1: teach endangered animal populations not to accidentally lethally poison themselves.
Speaker 1: So an example is with the quall. So qualls are
Speaker 1: an endangered Australian marsupial and on the other side you've
Speaker 1: got cane toads. Those are an invasive species. They were
Speaker 1: introduced to Australia because we had this thing that we
Speaker 1: would do as humans where we would have some kind
Speaker 1: of problem with a crop, right, like a cane sugar
Speaker 1: crop where it's like, ah, there's these cane beetles eating
Speaker 1: our cane sugar, So we'll just introduce an animal to
Speaker 1: eat the can cane beetles. And we did that with
Speaker 1: the cane toads. Didn't work to control the cane beetles
Speaker 1: because apparently the cane beetles were too high up on
Speaker 1: the cane stock for the cane toads to actually eat them,
Speaker 1: because it's a different species than they would prey upon
Speaker 1: in their native country. And so then the cane toad
Speaker 1: just started eating everything else, and you know, like marsupial mice,
Speaker 1: and the cane toads were highly toxic, so they would
Speaker 1: also poison predators. So it was a terrible situation. The
Speaker 1: cane toads are still highly invasive. It's not really a
Speaker 1: good idea to introduce a species as pets control, no
Speaker 1: matter how many times we've tried and failed. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: still it's never gonna be a good idea. Okay, So
Speaker 1: we've got these cane toads and we've got these qualls.
Speaker 1: Qualls are adorable native species, and they would try to
Speaker 1: eat the cane toads, and the cane toads are so toxic.
Speaker 1: They have a buffo toxin that can actually kill the quall,
Speaker 1: and we don't want that. These are quality qualls and
Speaker 1: we don't want them killed. So what conservationists do is
Speaker 1: they take a dead cane toad that is not, you know,
Speaker 1: not no longer deadly toxic, and they actually lace it
Speaker 1: with a nausea inducing drugs. And these nausea inducing drugs
Speaker 1: won't actually kill the quall, they will just make them
Speaker 1: feel sick to their little tommies. And so they like
Speaker 1: lay out these dead altered cane toads that have these
Speaker 1: these drugs in them that will make them taste nasty.
Speaker 1: So then the quall learns like, hey, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I should avoid this cane toad because it makes me
Speaker 1: have a tummy ache. And that way it can learn
Speaker 1: without actually just dying from the lethal cane toad toxin.
Speaker 1: So that is a really great conservationist use of poison shyness.
Speaker 1: Poison shyness can sadly also happen in terms of when
Speaker 1: people use pest control and try to like say, poisoning rats,
Speaker 1: and rats can be very sensitive to that and learn
Speaker 1: to avoid certain foods or to test out certain foods,
Speaker 1: or even watch their friends eat something and see if
Speaker 1: it's safe.
Speaker 2: And so there's.
Speaker 1: Actually been more advanced rat poison that instead of being
Speaker 1: a fast acting poison, it's a basically like a extreme
Speaker 1: blood thinner that causes internal bleeding, but it takes a
Speaker 1: while to actually happen, and so that's meant to overcome
Speaker 1: the poison shyness. It's pretty grizzly. I like rats, so
Speaker 1: I don't love this kind of twisted method of killing them.
Speaker 1: Animals can also learn the inverse of poison shyness or
Speaker 1: that something is yucky. They can learn that something is
Speaker 1: yummy that is not intuitive. So the most famous example
Speaker 1: of this is probably the Japanese macare that learned that
Speaker 1: washing sweet potatoes in salt water makes them taste better.
Speaker 1: They basically they salt their food. It's not washing them
Speaker 1: for hygiene purposes, but for the flavor of the salt water.
Speaker 1: So this was taught to multiple generations of these Japanese
Speaker 1: macaques by a single female, and that idea spread and
Speaker 1: has been passed down and passed among these Japanese macaques
Speaker 1: long after her death. So sometimes learned feeding behavior and
Speaker 1: genetic food preference coincide and interact. So domesticated dogs have
Speaker 1: become much better at digesting starches over time, Like genetically,
Speaker 1: they are better at digesting starches due to their proximity
Speaker 1: with humans and starchy foods that we will give them.
Speaker 1: Compared to their ancestors, the wolves. Dogs are much better
Speaker 1: at digesting starches. That's what thousands of years of begging
Speaker 1: at the table gets you as a dog.
Speaker 2: So, you know, one can't imagine the.
Speaker 1: Dogs that were better able to digest these starches flourished
Speaker 1: more among human settlements, and so they were more likely
Speaker 1: to pass along their genes and perhaps maybe it made
Speaker 1: them even friendlier towards humans. Right, Like they can digest
Speaker 1: starch well and they're more friendly towards humans, and so
Speaker 1: humans would reward that right by trying to make more
Speaker 1: puppies like that. So you have this really interesting interplay
Speaker 1: of artificial selection of humans selecting the dogs, evolutionary pressures
Speaker 1: right of dogs being able to eat more food that
Speaker 1: is around human settlements, and genetics. Now, dogs are very
Speaker 1: distinct genetically from wolves such that they are much better
Speaker 1: at eating starches. So like dog chow and wolf chow
Speaker 1: would have to be very different now. So, like many behaviors,
Speaker 1: knowing what to eat can both be instinctive, like a
Speaker 1: newborn who knows how to immediately suckle at the teat,
Speaker 1: to learned like putting salt on food to make it
Speaker 1: taste better, or just a combination right of genetics learn
Speaker 1: behavior over long periods of time, creating you know, new situations.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a very deep and interesting question, so
Speaker 1: thank you. Next listener question, Hi, Katie, I enjoyed your
Speaker 1: recent secretly incredibly fascinating episode about the middle finger, and
Speaker 1: suddenly I found myself wondering about the evolution of the penis. Hey,
Speaker 1: you know what that tracks. I've heard that some birds
Speaker 1: have penises, while many non mammals manage fine with just chloak.
Speaker 1: Did dinosaurs have penises? Do any fish have them? How
Speaker 1: often have they evolved independently? What makes an insects of
Speaker 1: a positor not a penis? Thanks for the fascinating show.
Speaker 1: Wanted to thank you so much for this question. It
Speaker 1: is a fascinating topic. Don't you dare giggle even once
Speaker 1: during my explanation. So penises, they are actually extremely interesting.
Speaker 1: There are birds who don't have them in mate by
Speaker 1: bumping cloacas together. There are also birds who do have penises.
Speaker 1: Reptiles also vary in terms of who have penises. Some
Speaker 1: reptiles like the tuatura, only use cloacas, whereas reptails like
Speaker 1: lizards and snakes actually have hemipenies, which are two headed
Speaker 1: penises that they met with. In fact, they are often spiky.
Speaker 1: They basically look like a two headed morning star mace,
Speaker 1: but you know they use it for love, not war.
Speaker 2: So fish are.
Speaker 1: Extremely diverse, so some species of fish are less closely
Speaker 1: related to other fish as they are too terrestrial animals.
Speaker 1: That said, there aren't any true fish stix, I mean
Speaker 1: true fish penises. They do have a variety of either
Speaker 1: chloika or penis like organs, So I would say, I
Speaker 1: mean this is similar to the insects ovipositor. The insects
Speaker 1: overpositor is not a penis, just because that's just sort
Speaker 1: of a definition thing, right, but its function is very
Speaker 1: similar and ovipositor usually is used to deposit eggs, not sperm,
Speaker 1: and so just based on our definition of a penis,
Speaker 1: that that wouldn't count as a penis. But even with
Speaker 1: these fish, right like, they will have structures that resemble penises.
Speaker 1: But just because of the way that we define things,
Speaker 1: we don't define them as penis. We call them penis
Speaker 1: like structures. But it's it's all, that's just semantics, that's
Speaker 1: just how we define things. So so, for instance, sharks
Speaker 1: have claspers. They are a set of umbrella like organs
Speaker 1: that funnel semen into the female's kloaca. Some fish like guppies,
Speaker 1: have gona podium, which are modified anal fins that act
Speaker 1: as a trow basically to loge sperm into the female's kloaka.
Speaker 1: Now let's move on to dinosaurs. So dinosaurs, it's a
Speaker 1: really fascinating question and one that scientists don't really have
Speaker 1: all the answers to because it is so tricky to
Speaker 1: get answers to questions for species that we only have
Speaker 1: fossil records for. Of course, we do have modern day dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: which are birds, and that factors plays a huge role
Speaker 1: in how we understand what dinosaurs that are extinct were like.
Speaker 1: So penises don't have to have a bone. Human penises
Speaker 1: do not have a bone. A lot of mammalian penises,
Speaker 1: most mammalian penises do actually have a penis bone, but
Speaker 1: human penises do not, so given that penis bone may
Speaker 1: not have existed in dinosaurs, right, it would just be
Speaker 1: soft tissue, So how would we know if they had
Speaker 1: penises based on fossil records. Also, discovering something about one
Speaker 1: dinosaur doesn't mean we know everything about every other dinosaur.
Speaker 1: Dinosaurs were very diverse. Some were warm blooded, being able
Speaker 1: to thermoregulate on their own, and others were cold blooded,
Speaker 1: meaning they relied on their environment to thermoregulate. That's just
Speaker 1: an example of how diverse dinosaurs were as a whole.
Speaker 1: And so one species might have a penis, whereas others
Speaker 1: maybe didn't develop that, but we don't necessarily know. So
Speaker 1: there is fossil evidence of kloacas in dinosaurs, but no
Speaker 1: hard proof of the existence of penises. Biologists speculate that
Speaker 1: at least some dinosaurs may have had penises because old
Speaker 1: lineages of birds birds being you know, the dinosaurs that
Speaker 1: remain do have penises. So based on embryonic evidence, that is,
Speaker 1: like you look at the stages of the development of
Speaker 1: the embryo and you see you see like early on,
Speaker 1: maybe it starts to develop a penis and then it
Speaker 1: stops developing. And so based on that evidence many birds
Speaker 1: who did not have penises likely did have them in
Speaker 1: their evolutionary history, but then lost them over time due
Speaker 1: to it not being necessary or different mating techniques, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So what about mammals. All male mammals have some sort
Speaker 1: of are All male mammals are born with some sort
Speaker 1: of penis. Even some females have pseudo penises, Like the
Speaker 1: female hyena has something a structure that looks very much
Speaker 1: like a penis. It is something that she has to
Speaker 1: give birth through, which is incredibly difficult. One of the
Speaker 1: theories for why hyenas have a pseudo penis is that
Speaker 1: it improves the survival of cubs of hyena cubs because
Speaker 1: perhaps in earlier iterations of their evolution, males would kill
Speaker 1: young male cubs, and so by making it more difficult
Speaker 1: to differentiate, it would make it less beneficial for male
Speaker 1: hyenas to kill the cubs.
Speaker 2: That's just one theory.
Speaker 1: I don't know, though, it is very interesting why the
Speaker 1: females have a pseudopenis. It seems like there must also
Speaker 1: be some evolutionary pressure in terms of the social structure
Speaker 1: of hyena groups. Anyways, researchers believe that all mammals have
Speaker 1: a common ancestor that had a penis, and so the
Speaker 1: mammalian penis evolved once. In fact, it's thought that all
Speaker 1: amniotes share a common ancestor who had a penis. So
Speaker 1: amniotes include birds, reptiles, and mammals. The idea is that
Speaker 1: even reptiles or birds who do not have penises once
Speaker 1: had a common ancestor with like us mammals, with everyone else,
Speaker 1: all other amniotes one common ancestor who did have a penis,
Speaker 1: But some species ended up finding the penis unnecessary and
Speaker 1: it just shrank into oblivion. Well, on that note, we've
Speaker 1: done it. I have answered your questions, and if you're
Speaker 1: out there saying like, hey, I have a question, I'm
Speaker 1: worried it's dumb or it's about butts, so I feel
Speaker 1: like it's inappropriate. I just spent like I don't know,
Speaker 1: eight minutes talking about penises. So any question is welcome,
Speaker 1: and you can write to me at Creature Featurepod at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. Any question about animal biology, evolution, your pets,
Speaker 1: some kind of random bug you found, send it to me.
Speaker 1: I love doing these and I hope you like them too.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much, for listening. If you're enjoying
Speaker 1: the show and you leave a rating and review that
Speaker 1: actually tangibly helps me, it makes the podcast go better
Speaker 1: somehow in the algorithm. I don't know how it works,
Speaker 1: but it that's how it do. And thank you so
Speaker 1: much to the Space Classics for your super awesome song.
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