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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. So, Robert,

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Speaker 1: I've got a question for you. Okay, shoot, I know

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Speaker 1: you've heard the old would you rather be able to

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Speaker 1: fly or be able to turn invisible question? What's your

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Speaker 1: answer to that? But it's always been invisible? Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: the creep's answer. Well, it's the creepy it's you know,

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Speaker 1: it's the observer's answer. It's this, it's the student of

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Speaker 1: human behavior's answer. Because if I'm flying around looking at stuff,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to be scaring wildlife. You know, people are

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Speaker 1: gonna be staring up at me, and tripped traffic accidents

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Speaker 1: are gonna occur. But if I've invisible, and if I'm

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Speaker 1: invisible and I play it safe and I you know,

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Speaker 1: and ethnically, then you know, I get to observe the

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Speaker 1: world as it goes about its business. You know. Another

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Speaker 1: advantage there is that flight can easily be achieved with technology,

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Speaker 1: but there's no way to become invisible technologically, So that's

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Speaker 1: the really more magical power. But what I was gonna

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Speaker 1: ask you is would you rather have wings or a

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Speaker 1: prehensile tail. This is interesting because I was I was

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Speaker 1: actually blogging about this a little bit yesterday. I was

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Speaker 1: looking into because there's a particular plastic surgeon, Joseph Rosen,

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Speaker 1: who's a real real trends that are real, real, just

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Speaker 1: amazing intellect in the world of plastic surgery, does a

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Speaker 1: lot of actual real life work with facial reconstruction and

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Speaker 1: wounded warriors. But he's also a trans humanist, so he's

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Speaker 1: he's written a lot about the not only can we

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Speaker 1: do all these things, we should do them. We will

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Speaker 1: get to the point where we add tails and wings. Well,

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Speaker 1: I was coming at this from a somewhat magical perspective

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Speaker 1: because I don't think humans would necessarily be able to

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Speaker 1: fly even if they had wings, because we're just too dense, right,

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Speaker 1: you would, They're like, our beings are much more dense

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Speaker 1: than birds. Yes, now, there are theoretical ways to transform

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Speaker 1: the human arm into a bird's wing, and it's would

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Speaker 1: be a lengthy surgical process, and then they still wouldn't

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Speaker 1: be able to support you and fly. You would have

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Speaker 1: to have additional uh tissue, perhaps clone tissue or vat

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Speaker 1: grown tissue that would be used to to graft on

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Speaker 1: and create the size of wings necessary to fly. And

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Speaker 1: then of course you still wouldn't have any arms. You

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Speaker 1: would just have like the large bat wings. So I mean,

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Speaker 1: along those lines, I would probably go with the tail

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Speaker 1: because it would it would change my life less dramatically.

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Speaker 1: Now would it be more horrifying to not have hands

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Speaker 1: at all and just have wings like a bird, or

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Speaker 1: to be like a bat and basically have gigantic hands

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Speaker 1: that you can't really use as hands but you can

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Speaker 1: still see some finger bones in there. Um, well, they're both.

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Speaker 1: They're both fine choices. But wait a minute. This episode

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Speaker 1: isn't about wings. It's about tails. That's right. We're talking

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Speaker 1: about tails specifically in this episode, about animal tails, and

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Speaker 1: then there's gonna be a second episode when we talk

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Speaker 1: about the absence of tails for the most part in

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Speaker 1: human beings. Okay, so did you come down one way

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Speaker 1: or another? Wings or tails? Definitely tails. You'd rather have

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Speaker 1: a prehensile tail than wings, yes, I mean especially it

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Speaker 1: was a nice functional tale that, you know, the prehensile

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Speaker 1: tale that I could utilize in my daily environment. It

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Speaker 1: wouldn't just be about you know, keeping flies away from me.

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Speaker 1: I've always thought a prehensile tail would be most useful

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Speaker 1: to a musician. Yeah, you know, playing a musical instrument,

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Speaker 1: that's when you really wish you had more hands. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if you're a one man band, you could you could

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Speaker 1: really use that extra appendage, right that that's for your

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Speaker 1: double bass drum pedal. Yeah, so before we got one

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Speaker 1: man death metal band? Not but what would it be?

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Speaker 1: Speed metal, thrash metal? Who uses the double bass pedal?

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Speaker 1: It's two technical question for me. But you know, when

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Speaker 1: when it comes to tales, and you know we're already

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Speaker 1: talking about semi fictional accounts. But but I say a

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Speaker 1: few examples that come to my mind that make me

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Speaker 1: also I want to want to go into the prints

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Speaker 1: off to the prehensile tail direction versus the wing direction. Um.

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Speaker 1: I think of Minos from Dante's Inferno, who has this

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Speaker 1: enormous serpentine tail, and when you have a new arrival

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Speaker 1: in Hell, he wraps this tail around you and he

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Speaker 1: is able to determine which level of the Inferno you're

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Speaker 1: bound for based on how many coils wrap around your body.

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Speaker 1: Now I can't remember. Does this also go into sorting

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Speaker 1: the virtuous Pagans or is this only once you're definitely

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Speaker 1: in the hell part. I think this is more about

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Speaker 1: like definite hell as opposed to the the the limobile

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Speaker 1: page Pagans and limbo on the outside. Yeah, this is

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Speaker 1: your inhale. Help now we need to get you where

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Speaker 1: you go. And Minos is in charge of sorting it. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's a smart tale. Another one that comes to mind

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Speaker 1: is u Calabos from Clash of the Titans, the old

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Speaker 1: Clash of the Titans Harry Hamlin duking it out version.

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Speaker 1: I assume you've seen this classic film, you know, I

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Speaker 1: have to admit I actually have not said this is

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Speaker 1: this is some ray he Housing claimation. Yeah, fabulous, fabulous claimation.

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Speaker 1: I love that stuff. And I've never seen this movie.

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Speaker 1: I think I've seen the scene where the where the

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Speaker 1: Titan comes to life is a huge statue of that

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Speaker 1: from Clash of the Titan. Well, there's the kracking. This

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Speaker 1: one has the Kraken, it has Medusa Pegasus, that little

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Speaker 1: mechanical owl. Of course, Calibus, who's this um, this character

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Speaker 1: who's twisted by the gods into this sort of caliban

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Speaker 1: esque creature with horns and a demonic face. And then

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Speaker 1: a long swinging tale. That's great. We'll have to watch it.

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Speaker 1: I love the Harry Housing sin Bad movies. Great creatures,

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Speaker 1: those are wonderful. Yeah, there's one that has um what's

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Speaker 1: his name? That went imp be doctor who or the

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Speaker 1: the doctor and Doctor who? Rather um the class. Oh

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Speaker 1: I don't know, yeah, Tom Baker, Tom Baker? Yeah, which

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Speaker 1: one is it? I don't know. I saw it a

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Speaker 1: like a drive in event once and it was It's

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Speaker 1: fabulous because you get to see him as a dark sorcerer.

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Speaker 1: Oh that's great. Um. One other fictional tale creature that

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Speaker 1: I want to mention because it's it's played a role

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Speaker 1: in my life a lot recently is the Chippendale mup

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Speaker 1: from Dr Seus's Sleep Book. I don't know what you're

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Speaker 1: talking about. Oh, well, this is This is a fabulous

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Speaker 1: Dr Seuss book in that it just takes the soon

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Speaker 1: hopefully to be a sleep child through this dreamland. Um

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Speaker 1: or so I guess this awaking dreamland and all these

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Speaker 1: creatures are going to sleep. And the the overall argument is, hey,

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Speaker 1: look at all these things that are going to sleep.

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Speaker 1: You should join this crew in slumber. And the Chippendale

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Speaker 1: um up is this character who quote, his tail is

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Speaker 1: so long, he won't feel any pain till the nip

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Speaker 1: makes the trip and gets round to his brain. So

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Speaker 1: what happens is this, Um, this creature bites it's exceedingly

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Speaker 1: long tail right before it goes to sleep, so that

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Speaker 1: the pain will travel all the way through the tail

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Speaker 1: and travel eight hours all the way around and back

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Speaker 1: up the spinal column hit his brain, and then he'll

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Speaker 1: feel the pain and wake up. And I recently crunch

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Speaker 1: the numbers on this, and if I'm correct, for this

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Speaker 1: to work, based on the speed at which pain travels

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Speaker 1: through a nervous system, uh, the tail would need to

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Speaker 1: be about a thousand and eight kilometers or six six

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Speaker 1: miles long. So that's enough. That's so if the thing

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Speaker 1: we're laying out straight in the Western United States, it

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Speaker 1: could lay with its nose in Seattle, Washington into tail

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Speaker 1: in Sacramento, California. Wow. Yeah, I have absolutely nothing to

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Speaker 1: add to that horrifying children's story. Yeah. Um, beyond that,

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Speaker 1: I mean, the only other fictional tail that that instantly

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Speaker 1: comes to mind is, of course the xenomorph tail uh

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Speaker 1: from Alien and Aliens creature that every every part of

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Speaker 1: the creature is a is a weapon, and of course

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Speaker 1: its tail is a rather cinematic weapon as well. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a it's a barbed spear. If you look at

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Speaker 1: it, it it looks like it was designed to get stuck

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Speaker 1: in you. And one thing I have to notice about

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Speaker 1: that tail. It never seems like you see the tail coming.

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Speaker 1: It's always suddenly poking out of your torso and you're

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Speaker 1: looking down at it. And why did this happen? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it had whips it around and then right through you.

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Speaker 1: But those are fictional tales. We should, uh, we we

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Speaker 1: should start by just talking about the very basics here,

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Speaker 1: the basics of tales. Yeah, for example, what is a tail?

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Speaker 1: What is the essence of a tail? It's uh, it's

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Speaker 1: a harder question than then you then you, you know,

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Speaker 1: because when you first think of it, especially from a

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Speaker 1: vertebrate standpoint, you think, well, that's just the other end

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Speaker 1: of of the vertebrae, right, that's the the tail end

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Speaker 1: of the verb. It's almost indifficult to think about tails

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Speaker 1: outside of our language of tales. Yeah. And an interesting

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Speaker 1: fact is that even animals that don't have tails as

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Speaker 1: an adult often show a tale at some stage of

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Speaker 1: their development. So a frog might not have a tail,

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Speaker 1: but the tadpole that became that frog had a tail.

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Speaker 1: You might not have a tail, but when you were

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Speaker 1: in the womb as an embryo, you had a tail.

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Speaker 1: That's right. And then it it simply goes away, usually

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Speaker 1: before we're born. Usually we'll get to that, I guess

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Speaker 1: in the next episode. Yeah, it gets reabsorbed by the body, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So tales are a huge deal with vertebrates. We just

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Speaker 1: happen to belong to rather exclusive club of creatures that

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Speaker 1: do not have tales. Uh. And likewise, you look at

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Speaker 1: the invertebrate world and tons of fascinating tales there as well,

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Speaker 1: that exist without the necessity of underlying vertebrate. Now, if

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Speaker 1: you're an invertebrate and you have whatever we would call

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Speaker 1: a tale, is that technically a tale or not? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a It's a more difficult question than than you think,

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Speaker 1: you know when you start, especially when you look at

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Speaker 1: some of the specific examples that we're going to roll through.

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Speaker 1: Um uh, you know, particularly with a scorpion, like trying

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Speaker 1: to forget where this tail came from and how it

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Speaker 1: uh eventually evolved into this rather curious form. Now, when

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Speaker 1: in discussing tales, you basically have two types. There's kind

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Speaker 1: of and you can sort of think of this as

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Speaker 1: non functional or barely functional tales versus functional and highly

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Speaker 1: functional tales. So the first thing I've got to ask

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Speaker 1: about before we get into these vertebrate tales is what

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Speaker 1: is going on with the scorpion? Because I love I

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Speaker 1: love aragnids, and I love scorpions. When I was a

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Speaker 1: little kid, my dad one time took a trip to

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Speaker 1: Arizona and when he came back, he had one of

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Speaker 1: those one of those tourists you know, gifts that that

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Speaker 1: is a scorpion inside a piece of glass. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: And he he gave this to me, and I used

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Speaker 1: to just stare at it, thinking like, this is the

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Speaker 1: coolest thing on planet Earth. Where where does this tail

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Speaker 1: come from? Why is it so cool? Well, it's a

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Speaker 1: it's interesting because of course what you what you have

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Speaker 1: here when you're looking at a scorpion, you have a segmented,

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Speaker 1: curved tail that's tipped in a venomous stinger which he

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Speaker 1: uses for self defense, but also against prey that's large

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Speaker 1: or feisty, like if they're if they're coming up against

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Speaker 1: something small, they'll often just use their claws and not

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Speaker 1: even employ the stinger um. And about twenty five different

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Speaker 1: species of scorpion possessed of venoms capable of killing a human,

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Speaker 1: and the rest have venoms that are not that potent.

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Speaker 1: But of course, you know, allergies and whatnot can play

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Speaker 1: into reactions. Uh. Now, the interesting thing about scorpions is

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Speaker 1: that their body is a very old design. It's changed

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Speaker 1: little over the past four hundred million years, and they

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Speaker 1: probably evolved from the long extinct sea scorpions. Oh, the euryptorids. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the eureptroids. Those are the huge ones, right, Like you

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Speaker 1: see the fossils of those, and it's just astounding. The

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Speaker 1: biggest people and uh, the sea scorpions. They also featured

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Speaker 1: a segmented tale that ended in at least a spike. Now,

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Speaker 1: it's difficult, perhaps even impossible, to know if these were

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Speaker 1: venomous or non venomous. It's likely that they used to

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Speaker 1: use them for propulsion or balance steering swimming, and that

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Speaker 1: it just eventually evolved into a venomous weapon over time.

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Speaker 1: This is one of the interesting stories about evolution because

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Speaker 1: you see this primeval tale emerging in many older forms

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Speaker 1: of life. Where they've got some kind of appendage coming

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Speaker 1: out the back of their body. But there are so

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Speaker 1: many different evolutionary routes this tail could go down in

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Speaker 1: in later development. Uh, And I guess that's what we're

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Speaker 1: going to be exploring in in this episode of the podcast.

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Speaker 1: Today is like eighteen roads diverged in a yellow wood,

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Speaker 1: and depending on which one you picked, you might have

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Speaker 1: a tail that communicates your emotions, or a tail that

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Speaker 1: stabs your prey and injects venom, or a tail that

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Speaker 1: helps you climb trees, or who knows what I mean.

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Speaker 1: There are tons of things you can do with a

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Speaker 1: part of your body that you don't necessarily have to

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Speaker 1: use for walking or propulsion, though some animals do continue

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Speaker 1: to use it for that. Yeah, so I definitely challenge

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Speaker 1: everyone to keep our trans human question in mind as

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Speaker 1: we move forward. If you were to to have the

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Speaker 1: chance to gain a tail, might some of these examples

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Speaker 1: sweeten the deal for you. I think everybody is just

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Speaker 1: going to go with the xenomorph tail and yeah, but

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Speaker 1: you know, I don't see the xenomorpha doing a lot

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Speaker 1: of practical things outside of murder with that tale, right,

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Speaker 1: it must not be that fulfilling to be a xenomore. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, fulfillment is a very human classification, right, I'm

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Speaker 1: just projecting. I guess well, I think we should first

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Speaker 1: talk about prehensible tales in the animal kingdom. If you're

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Speaker 1: not familiar with what they are, I guess you might

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Speaker 1: have been a little bit lost so far. But a

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Speaker 1: prehensible tale is a tale that to some degree can

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Speaker 1: be used for manipulation and grasping. They're usually divided into

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Speaker 1: fully prehensible or semi prehensible tales, depending on what the

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Speaker 1: animal can do with and you you might think it

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Speaker 1: would be really great to have a prehensible tail as

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Speaker 1: a human because it'd be like having another hand. You know,

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Speaker 1: you could just do whatever we were talking about it earlier.

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Speaker 1: You could play more musical instruments or something like that.

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Speaker 1: But I also want to ask the question of do

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Speaker 1: you really need one? Because when you look at all

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Speaker 1: the animals that have prehensile or semi prehensile tails, I

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Speaker 1: see a common feature. And this might not be the case,

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Speaker 1: but at least in my observation, they all tend to

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Speaker 1: live in environments that are kind of like a jungle gym,

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Speaker 1: where there are branches or sea grass or coral reefs.

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Speaker 1: And if you look at pictures of animals using their

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Speaker 1: prehensile tails, sometimes they're used for free object manipulation, you know,

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Speaker 1: scooping up a bunch of something. But the majority of

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Speaker 1: what I see is animals using the prehensile tail is

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Speaker 1: an aid in climbing, or an anchor against some force,

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Speaker 1: such as hanging from a tree limb, so anchoring against gravity.

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Speaker 1: Or how a sea horse uses its tail as a

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Speaker 1: grasping oregan the latch onto things like coral and anchor

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Speaker 1: itself against the tide so it can just sit there

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Speaker 1: and wait and and do its thing with its head.

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Speaker 1: I guess the seahorse doesn't really have hands to work with. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the discussion of a jungle gym like environment, it reminds

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Speaker 1: me of Dan Simon's Hyperion Cantos, his sci fi series.

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Speaker 1: There's a kind of a subspecies of humans or a

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Speaker 1: branch of humanity known as the Alsters, and they live

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Speaker 1: in uh in in in low gravity or zero gravity environments,

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Speaker 1: and so they're their soldiers particularly will often be seen

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Speaker 1: with robotic tales added to their suits to to aid

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Speaker 1: in this very kind of environment. Because you're in a

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Speaker 1: wait list, like you know, shiphole environment. You are essentially

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Speaker 1: living in this kind of jungle gym. So we would

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Speaker 1: be advantageous in that environment to have a tale. Uh,

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Speaker 1: even if it's just a robotic one, a robotic tale,

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Speaker 1: you know. I think I've seen people have already created

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Speaker 1: robotic tales. Have you read about these? No, I was looking.

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Speaker 1: I've looked at a few different studies that have involved

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Speaker 1: the biomimicry of say, the sea horse tail. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I haven't. I didn't notice in any studies where

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Speaker 1: anyone's actually fixing this thing under the their posterior. Oh,

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Speaker 1: not so much studies. There's something I know we've talked

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Speaker 1: about in for we're thinking that was it wasn't so

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Speaker 1: much functional as it was decorative, but it was a

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Speaker 1: tail that would respond to your emotions. Okay, all right,

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Speaker 1: so the tail of the communicator. You could, Yeah, you

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Speaker 1: could wag your tail like a dog, which we will

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Speaker 1: get to in a bit. But of course, I I

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Speaker 1: said at the beginning, what you can do with the

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Speaker 1: tail if you don't have to use your tail for movement.

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Speaker 1: Of course, plenty of animals do still have to use

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Speaker 1: their tails for movement. They're they're a crucial part of

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Speaker 1: their locomotion method. We birds, for example, Yeah, I mean snakes,

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Speaker 1: fish birds in particular, you have a highly specialized tailed,

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Speaker 1: the feathered tail. The flighted bird contributes to lift as

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Speaker 1: well as stabilization drag reduction, so it's a very fine

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Speaker 1: tune part of their anatomy. Yeah, and of course there

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Speaker 1: are fish. Animals that live in the water often use

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Speaker 1: tails for propulsion, generating a paddling motion that pushes against

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Speaker 1: the water in a way that cancels outside to side

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Speaker 1: motion but generates net thrust in the forward direct And

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Speaker 1: in fact, if you've never seen it, you should look

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Speaker 1: up simulations of fish swimming motions and fluent in fluid

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Speaker 1: dynamics simulators. There. I found a couple of videos of

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Speaker 1: this on YouTube, and it's really interesting seeing the waves

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Speaker 1: that are generated by the side to side motion of

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Speaker 1: a fish's body and tail. As the waves sort of

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Speaker 1: starts at the head and then gets bigger and bigger

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Speaker 1: as it goes back towards the tail, and it generates

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Speaker 1: this upside down y shape of of directional motion. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's like a full body movement as opposed to just

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Speaker 1: you know, a mechanical fish with the tail that goes

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Speaker 1: back and forth from their your bathtub, right, that'd be

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Speaker 1: more like a I don't know, a side to side propeller.

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Speaker 1: I guess that's kind of like sculling in a in

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Speaker 1: a boat, right, if you just wag the rudder back

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Speaker 1: and forth. Another interesting fact, if you've never noticed, is

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Speaker 1: that fish tend to sweep side to side and there swimming,

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Speaker 1: and marine mammals like dolphins and whales sweep up and down. Uh.

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Speaker 1: There may be a septions to this, I'm not aware

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Speaker 1: of them if there are, but it's an interesting artifact

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Speaker 1: of the divergent and then subsequently re convergent evolutionary pathways

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Speaker 1: of fish and marine mammals, so that like the whale tail,

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Speaker 1: the horizontal whale tail versus the vertical shark tail. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Or I guess the more apt of comparison would be

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Speaker 1: dolphins and sharks, as that is the distinction one is

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Speaker 1: often trying to make at the beach in the water. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I don't know why it took me so long in

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Speaker 1: my life to notice this, but I just never noticed

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Speaker 1: that difference until I think I was at an aquarium

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Speaker 1: one time and I was looking at the belugas that

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Speaker 1: we're swimming through the aquarium, and I was like, what's

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Speaker 1: wrong with that thing's tail? Oh, it's just not like

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Speaker 1: fish tails, it goes the other way. Yeah. Of course

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Speaker 1: we already mentioned that communication is a big deal with

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Speaker 1: tales and a number of species, and of course what

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Speaker 1: what manner of communication is more important than than that

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Speaker 1: involved in courtship? Exactly right, And here we're going to

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Speaker 1: get to one of the most interesting things I've come

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Speaker 1: across in in our research about tales, which is the

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Speaker 1: courtship tail feathers of the p cock. Actually, another pop quiz.

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Speaker 1: Do you know the generic non gendered term for peacocks

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Speaker 1: and p hens? No? I don't. It is p foul

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Speaker 1: foul Okay, that's that's that seems brother neutral. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: just thought that was a great word. Fo Yeah, nobody

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Speaker 1: ever says, let's go look at the p foul though

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Speaker 1: the peacocks. It's true. Well, it's an unfortunate fact that

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Speaker 1: nobody cares about seeing the p hens because they do

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Speaker 1: not have these gigantic, interesting tails. Uh. I'm sure phns

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Speaker 1: are wonderful. No, no offense to them, but that they

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Speaker 1: don't put on a display like this, and that's what

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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about here. Another interesting fact, did you

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Speaker 1: know that what we call the peacocks tail is usually

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Speaker 1: not actually it's tail really yeah, most of the time

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Speaker 1: this thing you see when you think of a peacock,

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Speaker 1: what we're talking about is it's covert feathers, which your

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Speaker 1: feathers that cover the tail feathers. It's also referred to

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Speaker 1: as a peacock's train. And as you've surely seen before,

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Speaker 1: when a when a peacock props up and spreads out

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Speaker 1: its covert feathers, they formed this gigantic, shimmering, iridescent display

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Speaker 1: of plumage full of spots that look like eyes, and

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Speaker 1: if you want to use a cool word, those eye

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Speaker 1: spots are called ocelli. I had always read that the

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Speaker 1: peacocks train was known to be used for mate selection purposes,

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Speaker 1: though in reading up on this for today's episode, I

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Speaker 1: found out that there have been some really interesting questions

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Speaker 1: and doubts recently thrown into the mix here. But this

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Speaker 1: is a really interesting story about the complexities of evolutionary

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Speaker 1: biology and and questioning what we thought we knew. So

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Speaker 1: there's this mate selection theory of the peacocks train. The

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Speaker 1: ideas of the most prominent one, this is the one

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Speaker 1: we've all heard growing up. Yeah, and and Charles Darwin

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Speaker 1: thought about this. Charles Darwin. If you're Charles Darwin and

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Speaker 1: you look at a peacock's train, this huge, huge, shimmering,

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Speaker 1: eyespot covered extravagance, you think, what on earth is this for?

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Speaker 1: You're you're coming up with this theory of natural selection,

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Speaker 1: where organisms that are the most adapted to survive and

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Speaker 1: reproduce in their environment are the ones that survive. How

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Speaker 1: do you encourage a trait that's so wasteful and pointless.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't it takes energy or resources to

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Speaker 1: develop a train like this. It doesn't seem to provide

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Speaker 1: any sort of mechanical survival advantage, So it doesn't help

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Speaker 1: the peacock fly higher, or you know, kick with its

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Speaker 1: spurs harder or something. In fact, it would actually seem

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Speaker 1: that feathers like this make the peacocks more vulnerable to predators.

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Speaker 1: So what's the deal. Why would you have something like

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Speaker 1: this in an animal? So I've actually read several hypotheses

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Speaker 1: over the years to explain the the extravagance of the

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Speaker 1: peacock's train display and the I guess we should start

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Speaker 1: with the sexual selection effect. This is what's sometimes called

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Speaker 1: runaway sex sual selection. And the point is that at

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Speaker 1: some point, way way back in the p fowl's ancestral lineage,

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Speaker 1: the p hens, the female p foul preferred slightly longer,

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Speaker 1: more elaborate trains for some reason related to fitness. Maybe

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Speaker 1: it made the males stronger, more powerful in flight. And

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Speaker 1: this choosiness kept being magnified more and more over the generations,

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Speaker 1: until the peacocks were no longer displaying fitness, but they

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Speaker 1: were just being bred by the females to have longer

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Speaker 1: and more elaborate trains. In the same way we would

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Speaker 1: breed a dog to encourage a certain trait to to

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Speaker 1: intensify over generations, we just end up with a ridiculous

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Speaker 1: breed of dog that has no clear function anymore other

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Speaker 1: than to look funny. Yeah, And that's what the p

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Speaker 1: hens are doing to the pea cocks. Over the generations.

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Speaker 1: They develop a preference for a certain type of trait

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Speaker 1: in males, and the males that have that trade get

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Speaker 1: more mating opportunities, and this gets magnified over the generations,

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Speaker 1: and if there's not enough of a selection pressure to

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Speaker 1: counteract the sexual selection, like if there's not a strong

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Speaker 1: enough force saying okay, males with these big train displays

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Speaker 1: really are going to get killed all the time, then

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00:23:18,440 --> 00:23:23,199
Speaker 1: they'll just keep getting bigger and bigger. Another evolutionary explanation

425
00:23:23,320 --> 00:23:27,040
Speaker 1: that I've read about is that the large extravagant displays

426
00:23:27,119 --> 00:23:31,720
Speaker 1: function as a sort of calculated, conspicuous handicap to show

427
00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:34,320
Speaker 1: off the fitness of the mail. And it's kind of like,

428
00:23:34,359 --> 00:23:37,760
Speaker 1: in human terms, a guy showing off how much money

429
00:23:37,800 --> 00:23:41,960
Speaker 1: he has to waste by wearing lots of pointless expensive jewelry,

430
00:23:42,080 --> 00:23:46,280
Speaker 1: or like a swordsman demonstrating his superiority by dueling with

431
00:23:46,359 --> 00:23:49,280
Speaker 1: one hand tied behind his back. The point is like

432
00:23:49,400 --> 00:23:51,960
Speaker 1: I am so fit, I am such a good mate

433
00:23:52,000 --> 00:23:55,800
Speaker 1: that I can have this enormous handicap, this pointless waste

434
00:23:55,840 --> 00:23:59,679
Speaker 1: of resources, and still be the best that made that

435
00:23:59,600 --> 00:24:02,080
Speaker 1: that makes sense. It's like I have the time and

436
00:24:02,200 --> 00:24:07,520
Speaker 1: energy to put into this ridiculous, uh cumbersome uh addition

437
00:24:07,600 --> 00:24:11,440
Speaker 1: to my body. Another hypothesis that's been developed over the

438
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:15,040
Speaker 1: years is that the ability to produce large, elaborate trains

439
00:24:15,119 --> 00:24:18,520
Speaker 1: is an advertisement that the peacock is relatively free of

440
00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:22,960
Speaker 1: parasites which would impair his ability to produce and maintain

441
00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:26,159
Speaker 1: a large, beautiful train like this. But I want to

442
00:24:26,200 --> 00:24:29,080
Speaker 1: talk about some specific studies because, like I said, the

443
00:24:29,080 --> 00:24:32,480
Speaker 1: research now seems to have gone back and forth about

444
00:24:32,600 --> 00:24:37,000
Speaker 1: the role that the peacock's tail plays in the mating rituals.

445
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:40,800
Speaker 1: So in the early nineteen nineties, the behavioral ecologist Marian

446
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:45,720
Speaker 1: Petrie of Newcastle University carried out some really often cited

447
00:24:45,760 --> 00:24:48,919
Speaker 1: research and this is one of the big studies in

448
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:53,159
Speaker 1: this field. One paper and Animal Behavior in nine was

449
00:24:53,160 --> 00:24:57,480
Speaker 1: called p Hen's prefer Peacocks with elaborate trains. So what

450
00:24:57,560 --> 00:24:59,960
Speaker 1: do what do peacocks do when they want to mate? Well,

451
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:04,280
Speaker 1: they aggregate into something called a leck. I believe I'm

452
00:25:04,320 --> 00:25:08,159
Speaker 1: pronouncing that right. It's l e K and that so

453
00:25:08,200 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 1: the males gathered together and in this case, uh Petrie

454
00:25:12,119 --> 00:25:16,360
Speaker 1: and her her team observed one leck that was consisting

455
00:25:16,400 --> 00:25:19,520
Speaker 1: of ten males, and they found that there was a

456
00:25:19,560 --> 00:25:22,560
Speaker 1: big difference in how much the different males in the

457
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:26,400
Speaker 1: leck got opportunities for mating. So the top male, according

458
00:25:26,440 --> 00:25:30,639
Speaker 1: to them, copulated twelve times, while the least successful males

459
00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:34,960
Speaker 1: in the leck got no sex whatsoever, and Petrie's team

460
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:38,720
Speaker 1: concluded that quote over fifty percent of the variants in

461
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:43,399
Speaker 1: mating success could be attributed to train morphology. There was

462
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:47,480
Speaker 1: a significant positive correlation between the number of eye spots

463
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:50,280
Speaker 1: a male had in his train and the number of

464
00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:53,440
Speaker 1: females he made it with. So they found that the

465
00:25:53,560 --> 00:25:56,919
Speaker 1: females didn't mate with the first male they met, but

466
00:25:56,960 --> 00:25:59,640
Speaker 1: they would visit several different males and in ten out

467
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:02,679
Speaker 1: of a in cases in their study that ended with

468
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:06,359
Speaker 1: successful copulation. In their terms, I'm trying to imagine what

469
00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:11,679
Speaker 1: unsuccessful copulation is, the male that the female chose was

470
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:14,199
Speaker 1: the one with the greatest number of eye spots. So

471
00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:17,400
Speaker 1: this seems pretty straightforward. More eye spots on your train

472
00:26:17,600 --> 00:26:21,680
Speaker 1: means you get more mating opportunities. Okay, that's pretty straightforward.

473
00:26:21,720 --> 00:26:23,840
Speaker 1: It's kind of like more the more jewelry, the more

474
00:26:24,359 --> 00:26:27,359
Speaker 1: the fancier the clothes, the more the more money that

475
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:30,320
Speaker 1: the that the individual has to spend on drinks and

476
00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:34,440
Speaker 1: nights out translates to the the economics of the development

477
00:26:34,440 --> 00:26:37,280
Speaker 1: of these eye feathers. Yeah. Yeah, So this seemed to

478
00:26:37,400 --> 00:26:40,280
Speaker 1: be accepted for a while. Until now. That paper was

479
00:26:40,320 --> 00:26:43,560
Speaker 1: called p Hen's prefer peacocks with elaborate trains. In two

480
00:26:43,600 --> 00:26:46,359
Speaker 1: thousand eight, in the same journal Animal Behavior, there was

481
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:49,639
Speaker 1: a paper called p Hen's do not prefer peacocks with

482
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:52,560
Speaker 1: more elaborate trains. This was carried out by a team

483
00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:56,639
Speaker 1: led by Mariko Takahashi, and they were trying to replicate

484
00:26:56,680 --> 00:27:00,159
Speaker 1: the original results in a feral population of Indian pe

485
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:04,120
Speaker 1: foul in Japan. Over the course of seven years of observation,

486
00:27:04,720 --> 00:27:09,240
Speaker 1: and Takahashi and her co authors claimed to have found

487
00:27:09,440 --> 00:27:13,679
Speaker 1: no evidence at all that the phn's expressed any preference

488
00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:16,880
Speaker 1: for peacocks with more elaborate trains. That's what they said.

489
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:20,960
Speaker 1: This means the females did not show any noticeable preference

490
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:25,000
Speaker 1: for males with longer trains, more symmetrical trains, or more

491
00:27:25,119 --> 00:27:27,159
Speaker 1: eye spots. And those are the three things that are

492
00:27:27,240 --> 00:27:30,240
Speaker 1: often cited as as being the you know, the things

493
00:27:30,280 --> 00:27:33,960
Speaker 1: you want your train to have. So what does that?

494
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:35,920
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Where does that leave us? Well?

495
00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:39,480
Speaker 1: According to them, they concluded that the peacock train display

496
00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:43,120
Speaker 1: is it might be a necessary part of successful mating.

497
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:46,480
Speaker 1: So a male that can't show a train display is

498
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:49,600
Speaker 1: not going to get to mate. But they came up

499
00:27:49,640 --> 00:27:52,920
Speaker 1: with three concluding points. They said, the train is not

500
00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:57,160
Speaker 1: the universal target of female choice. Uh, the trains don't

501
00:27:57,359 --> 00:28:01,960
Speaker 1: vary a whole lot across male populations. And then they

502
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:05,400
Speaker 1: also said, quote, based on current physiological knowledge, it does

503
00:28:05,440 --> 00:28:09,040
Speaker 1: not appear to reliably reflect the male conditions. So they

504
00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:11,359
Speaker 1: don't think that the train is all that much of

505
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:16,240
Speaker 1: an indicator of fitness. And what they ended up concluding

506
00:28:16,359 --> 00:28:23,040
Speaker 1: is that it's just an obsolete signal that maybe it

507
00:28:23,320 --> 00:28:27,600
Speaker 1: used to correlate to female preference, but it just doesn't anymore.

508
00:28:28,080 --> 00:28:30,479
Speaker 1: It's it's tempting to take that and try to apply

509
00:28:30,560 --> 00:28:34,040
Speaker 1: it to the human world and and various mating practices

510
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:38,200
Speaker 1: and you know, romance practices that are really kind of

511
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:41,560
Speaker 1: becoming pointless than our modern age. But it's it's part

512
00:28:41,600 --> 00:28:43,680
Speaker 1: of traditions, so you kind of have to do it.

513
00:28:43,840 --> 00:28:46,120
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't really do it, but every you

514
00:28:46,160 --> 00:28:47,520
Speaker 1: don't I mean you don't really have to do it,

515
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:49,880
Speaker 1: but everyone feels a little weird if you don't write. Yeah,

516
00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:53,480
Speaker 1: how many common I don't know, dating or courtship practices

517
00:28:53,520 --> 00:28:57,520
Speaker 1: are still somehow based on the idea that in a relationship,

518
00:28:57,680 --> 00:29:00,360
Speaker 1: a man will be the person who's earning the money

519
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:03,720
Speaker 1: for the couple, when in you know, many or most

520
00:29:03,800 --> 00:29:07,280
Speaker 1: cases in the Western world, that's not the case anymore. Yeah,

521
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:09,920
Speaker 1: Or there's so many different little you know, superstitions and

522
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:12,880
Speaker 1: traditions and the wedding ceremony itself. My my wife shoots

523
00:29:12,880 --> 00:29:14,560
Speaker 1: a lot of weddings, so I get to hear I

524
00:29:14,560 --> 00:29:16,800
Speaker 1: always hear, you know, how did they do a first

525
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:19,000
Speaker 1: look or did they do the whole you know, the

526
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:21,040
Speaker 1: straight up deal where no, the bride in the room

527
00:29:21,080 --> 00:29:23,360
Speaker 1: do not see each other till the ceremony, Like that's

528
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:27,560
Speaker 1: something that really had there's no bearing on anything whatsoever.

529
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 1: But when it comes time to put the wedding together,

530
00:29:31,280 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 1: there's often you know, enough tradition, uh, you know, bouncing

531
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:36,840
Speaker 1: around in your head that you say, I know, we're

532
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:39,720
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna stick to the old I don't see

533
00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:42,480
Speaker 1: you and you don't see me until the moment of

534
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 1: of our of our our actual ceremony, our weddings. The

535
00:29:45,600 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 1: human version of investing tons of resources in an elaborate

536
00:29:48,920 --> 00:29:51,840
Speaker 1: train display. Yeah, I think there's a strong case for that.

537
00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:55,000
Speaker 1: So that was what they concluded. But there's still more

538
00:29:55,040 --> 00:29:58,960
Speaker 1: to the story because yet another animal behavior study was

539
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:02,080
Speaker 1: published in two thousand eleven that seemed to strike a

540
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:04,640
Speaker 1: note somewhere in between the two that came before, and

541
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 1: said p ns prefer peacocks displaying more eye spots, but rarely.

542
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:12,000
Speaker 1: I can see this study perhaps not getting as much

543
00:30:12,040 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 1: play and the media. Yeah there, I did read a

544
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 1: good Nature News article about it, but the main takeaway

545
00:30:18,520 --> 00:30:20,280
Speaker 1: was and I want to read a quote here to

546
00:30:20,480 --> 00:30:23,240
Speaker 1: get it exactly right. They said, p foul mate choice

547
00:30:23,280 --> 00:30:27,440
Speaker 1: is clearly more complex than previously thought. Females may reject

548
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:31,520
Speaker 1: a few mails with substantially reduced I spot number while

549
00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 1: using some other queue to choose among males with typical trains.

550
00:30:35,760 --> 00:30:38,960
Speaker 1: In other words, if you have way fewer eyespots the normal,

551
00:30:39,040 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 1: if you were obviously I spot deficient, you will not

552
00:30:42,440 --> 00:30:46,080
Speaker 1: get sex as a peacock. But there's no real difference

553
00:30:46,120 --> 00:30:48,960
Speaker 1: between an average number of eye spots and a much

554
00:30:49,040 --> 00:30:52,880
Speaker 1: greater than average number of eye spots. The main takeaway

555
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:55,040
Speaker 1: I got from this is that p foul mate choice

556
00:30:55,360 --> 00:30:59,440
Speaker 1: seems to be more complicated than we originally thought. And

557
00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:02,720
Speaker 1: actually the main author of the original study from nine,

558
00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:06,600
Speaker 1: Marjorie Petrie, said as as quoted in a two thousand

559
00:31:06,600 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 1: eleven article in Nature News quote, at the end of

560
00:31:09,560 --> 00:31:11,880
Speaker 1: the day, we will never know what p hens are

561
00:31:11,920 --> 00:31:15,120
Speaker 1: looking at and how they select their mates. You can't

562
00:31:15,200 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 1: ask them. Now at this point in our discussion of

563
00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 1: peacocks and p hen's um, you know, I have to say,

564
00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:24,040
Speaker 1: there's got to be a way to spice it up

565
00:31:24,040 --> 00:31:25,920
Speaker 1: a little bit. I feel like some some listeners out

566
00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:28,000
Speaker 1: there might be saying, all right, I'm I'm ready to

567
00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:32,600
Speaker 1: extract from the whole peacock discussion. But wait, right, what

568
00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:35,720
Speaker 1: if we throw cyborgs in there? Right? Because you can

569
00:31:35,760 --> 00:31:40,600
Speaker 1: answer Marjorie Petriots question in a way you can ask them.

570
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:43,080
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't ask them, but you can take

571
00:31:43,120 --> 00:31:45,800
Speaker 1: a look at what p hens are looking at by

572
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:49,360
Speaker 1: making a cyborg p hen with eye tracking devices. In

573
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:52,440
Speaker 1: the Journal of Experimental Biology in April, there was a

574
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:56,120
Speaker 1: paper called Through Their Eyes Selective Attention in p hen's

575
00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:59,520
Speaker 1: during Courtship, and the researchers behind the study wanted to

576
00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:02,160
Speaker 1: see if they could find out exactly what phn's were

577
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 1: looking at when they were presented with a male doing

578
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:07,680
Speaker 1: his courtship display. So they rigged up what looks like

579
00:32:07,720 --> 00:32:11,320
Speaker 1: a cyborg PHN. She's got eye tracking hardware on, and

580
00:32:11,360 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 1: she looks like something out of those you know, those

581
00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:15,880
Speaker 1: Terminator rip off movies that started coming out in the

582
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:20,120
Speaker 1: late eighties where everybody was a cyborg or had had

583
00:32:20,160 --> 00:32:23,320
Speaker 1: some kind of like cyborg upgrades for a while. Though

584
00:32:23,360 --> 00:32:25,400
Speaker 1: there were so many of them, they were all shot

585
00:32:25,440 --> 00:32:30,160
Speaker 1: on the same pseudo industrial setting back lot where everybody

586
00:32:30,240 --> 00:32:35,320
Speaker 1: just seemed to wander around factories and alleyways all the time. Anyway,

587
00:32:35,360 --> 00:32:38,280
Speaker 1: what did the PHN look at? Curiously? In the video

588
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:40,760
Speaker 1: I saw of this, she spent almost all her time

589
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:45,240
Speaker 1: looking across the bottom of the Peacock's train display, and

590
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:48,040
Speaker 1: the scientist in the video suggests that that means she's

591
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:53,040
Speaker 1: evaluating the width and symmetry of the train. So I

592
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:56,480
Speaker 1: don't know, we're kind of back to the beginning. Yeah, Anyway,

593
00:32:56,520 --> 00:32:59,360
Speaker 1: I thought this was very interesting that something that we

594
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 1: originally thought was a pretty settled matter of evolutionary adaptation

595
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:07,800
Speaker 1: turns out as very complicated and we don't fully understand it.

596
00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:11,160
Speaker 1: And just one more hypothesis I came across. I don't

597
00:33:11,160 --> 00:33:13,280
Speaker 1: know where to fit this into everything else, but this

598
00:33:13,400 --> 00:33:18,560
Speaker 1: was that the Peacock's train display makes infrasound as it vibrates,

599
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:23,000
Speaker 1: and this infrasound might play some sort of role in mating. Wow,

600
00:33:23,080 --> 00:33:26,640
Speaker 1: so it could be even more nuanced than originally suspected. Yeah.

601
00:33:27,240 --> 00:33:32,160
Speaker 1: Now I want to talk just briefly about the hippo tale. Um,

602
00:33:32,200 --> 00:33:34,520
Speaker 1: because this is a tale that is easy to miss,

603
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:37,600
Speaker 1: is easy to you to forget to draw. When you're

604
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:40,520
Speaker 1: drawing hippo's for a child, as I often do, I'm

605
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:44,960
Speaker 1: picturing a hippo tail. It's not very big. No, it

606
00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:48,800
Speaker 1: doesn't make a courtship display. No, it doesn't seem to

607
00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:52,120
Speaker 1: communicate a whole lot. Maybe it communicates a little. So

608
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:55,080
Speaker 1: what's the point. It's just a little dangly tiny thing. Yeah,

609
00:33:55,160 --> 00:34:00,280
Speaker 1: like barely covers the hippo anus really. Um, Well, here's

610
00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: the here's the thing. If you see, if you see

611
00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:03,360
Speaker 1: a hippo in a while, if you see a hippo

612
00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:06,160
Speaker 1: at the zoo, uh. The what the tail does is

613
00:34:06,240 --> 00:34:09,319
Speaker 1: that as the hippo releases its bowels, uh, the tail

614
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:12,400
Speaker 1: flips back and forth in order to fling poop like

615
00:34:12,480 --> 00:34:18,360
Speaker 1: some sort of fecal sprinkler system. And it's suspected that

616
00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:22,120
Speaker 1: this is how male hippos wou mates and territory, So

617
00:34:22,160 --> 00:34:27,360
Speaker 1: it could be a form of communication, a fecal communication system. Uh.

618
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:30,239
Speaker 1: Though there's another theory out there then. This theory is

619
00:34:30,280 --> 00:34:33,840
Speaker 1: that it's a means of flinging parasites away from the

620
00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:38,280
Speaker 1: hippo's body, such as the place of dell Odeo's Dieger

621
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:42,880
Speaker 1: Skio Delhi leech a special leech that feeds exclusively on

622
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:46,319
Speaker 1: the rectal tissue of a hippopotamus. So what's it like

623
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:50,839
Speaker 1: to be that leech. It's a very specific lifestyle. I mean,

624
00:34:50,840 --> 00:34:53,080
Speaker 1: there's so many different types of leech leeches out there

625
00:34:53,840 --> 00:34:56,799
Speaker 1: with the very specific hosts in some cases, uh, and

626
00:34:57,080 --> 00:35:00,680
Speaker 1: some actually eat worms as opposed to the on blood.

627
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:04,200
Speaker 1: But this leech knows what it wants it and it's

628
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:07,920
Speaker 1: hippo rectum. So it's possible that the hippo tail is

629
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:11,600
Speaker 1: as much about just flinging those away from its body

630
00:35:11,640 --> 00:35:14,920
Speaker 1: as possible, and certainly in other large herbivores, we see

631
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:17,560
Speaker 1: the use of the tail as a means of keeping

632
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:19,959
Speaker 1: flies away from the rectum as well, and ultimately about

633
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:23,680
Speaker 1: you know, keeping parasites away from that delicate area of

634
00:35:23,719 --> 00:35:27,680
Speaker 1: the anatomy that is otherwise difficult to reach. Now. I

635
00:35:27,719 --> 00:35:30,400
Speaker 1: want to get back to monkeys for a second, because

636
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:34,080
Speaker 1: when I talked about monkeys and their prehensile tails, obviously

637
00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:36,960
Speaker 1: not all monkeys have preensile tails, but the New World

638
00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:40,960
Speaker 1: monkeys that have them, I talked about them using them

639
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 1: in climbing. And there are multiple ways actually that a

640
00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:49,520
Speaker 1: tail could come into climbing behaviors. It wouldn't necessarily just

641
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:53,120
Speaker 1: have to be for gripping branches or for bracing against

642
00:35:53,880 --> 00:35:56,680
Speaker 1: trunks and limbs, right, yeah. It can be used as

643
00:35:56,760 --> 00:36:00,640
Speaker 1: a as a balance, as a counterweight. Ah there you yeah,

644
00:36:00,800 --> 00:36:03,880
Speaker 1: and and certainly you can imagine this, but I just

645
00:36:03,920 --> 00:36:07,040
Speaker 1: imagine yourself balancing on a beam and the various things

646
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:09,719
Speaker 1: you use your arm for, you know, spreading your arms

647
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:10,880
Speaker 1: out and all that. If you had a tail, that

648
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:12,360
Speaker 1: would just be another part of your body that you

649
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:15,680
Speaker 1: could utilize in such a fashion. Even something like your

650
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:20,760
Speaker 1: modern house cat will utilize it's its tail for balance. Yeah.

651
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:23,759
Speaker 1: But another animal that uses it not only uses its

652
00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:27,319
Speaker 1: tail for balance, but also for propulsion and uses it

653
00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:31,759
Speaker 1: for pulp for propulsion on land is of course the kangaroo.

654
00:36:32,600 --> 00:36:35,759
Speaker 1: You know, they have that large tail, uh, sticking out

655
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:39,040
Speaker 1: behind a huge muscular tail, and according to a two

656
00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:43,000
Speaker 1: fourteen study published in the journal Biology Letters, the kangaroo

657
00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:47,759
Speaker 1: utilizes its tail as a true fifth leg. The researchers

658
00:36:47,760 --> 00:36:50,799
Speaker 1: found that the tail of a walking kangaroo works as

659
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:55,160
Speaker 1: hard as the leg of a comparably sized human moving

660
00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:58,320
Speaker 1: at the same speed. Wait, so the tail makes contact

661
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:01,160
Speaker 1: with the ground. Yes, it does, and I'll get to it.

662
00:37:01,239 --> 00:37:04,000
Speaker 1: To to that part in a second. For the most part, though,

663
00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:07,120
Speaker 1: as it hops, the tail lashes up and down, helping

664
00:37:07,120 --> 00:37:10,640
Speaker 1: the creature stabilize while also serving as a motor to

665
00:37:10,800 --> 00:37:14,120
Speaker 1: lift and help accelerate the kangaroo's body. So it's almost

666
00:37:14,840 --> 00:37:18,560
Speaker 1: it's almost like a ficio's tail, except it's uh, it's

667
00:37:18,600 --> 00:37:21,600
Speaker 1: just it's moving in the air, and it's about, you know,

668
00:37:21,880 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 1: thrusting the body as opposed to actually making contact with anything. However, However,

669
00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:31,319
Speaker 1: to your point, though, the that that fifth lag, that

670
00:37:31,360 --> 00:37:35,680
Speaker 1: giant tail can support the kangaroo's full body, and you'll

671
00:37:36,080 --> 00:37:39,560
Speaker 1: you'll often see this occur when when male kangaroos are

672
00:37:39,640 --> 00:37:41,520
Speaker 1: kicking at each other, they'll kick up, you know, they

673
00:37:41,600 --> 00:37:44,640
Speaker 1: do that kangaroo kick and uh, and in doing so,

674
00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:47,600
Speaker 1: they actually come up on the tail. Now, of course,

675
00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:49,880
Speaker 1: a lot of the rest of the time, the creatures

676
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 1: are not doing high speed hops and they're not kicking

677
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:55,719
Speaker 1: each other. They're just you know, gently browsing um for

678
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 1: stuff to eat. And in those those situations, the tail

679
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:01,240
Speaker 1: just kind of, uh, you know, faces into the background

680
00:38:01,239 --> 00:38:04,880
Speaker 1: for a little bit. But it's a really really remarkable

681
00:38:05,080 --> 00:38:08,080
Speaker 1: tale when you when you look at at at its

682
00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 1: high speed hopping behavior and its ability to just rear

683
00:38:12,239 --> 00:38:14,439
Speaker 1: up on that tail and kick with its feet. When

684
00:38:14,440 --> 00:38:17,239
Speaker 1: I was a kid, I remember I thought kangaroos were

685
00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:19,840
Speaker 1: one of the coolest animals, and I think that simply

686
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:23,240
Speaker 1: had to do with the obvious athleticism you see in

687
00:38:23,239 --> 00:38:26,360
Speaker 1: in a kangaroo bounding, and I never really thought about

688
00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:29,759
Speaker 1: the role it's tail played. Yeah, it's easy because they have,

689
00:38:29,800 --> 00:38:33,640
Speaker 1: you know, pretty remarkable physiologies. Otherwise that nothing really looks

690
00:38:33,680 --> 00:38:37,760
Speaker 1: like a kangaroo um. But yeah, when they're that challenge

691
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:40,120
Speaker 1: anyone to next time you're watching a kangaroo run, either

692
00:38:40,160 --> 00:38:42,520
Speaker 1: at at a zoo or or just looking up you

693
00:38:42,520 --> 00:38:46,000
Speaker 1: know videos on YouTube, observe the tail. I mean, what

694
00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:49,360
Speaker 1: the kangaroo is doing. It's a full body movement obviously,

695
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:52,640
Speaker 1: and the tail plays an enormous role in that movement,

696
00:38:52,640 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 1: even if it's not making contact with the ground. Um.

697
00:38:56,200 --> 00:38:58,640
Speaker 1: I have to admit the kangaroo is a creature I

698
00:38:58,719 --> 00:39:01,040
Speaker 1: kind of took for granted because because you would see

699
00:39:01,440 --> 00:39:04,280
Speaker 1: cartoons where they get in boxing matches, you'd see footage

700
00:39:04,280 --> 00:39:06,160
Speaker 1: of them running. But then you go to the zoo

701
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:10,520
Speaker 1: and you see captive kangaroos and they're just all, you know,

702
00:39:10,600 --> 00:39:13,799
Speaker 1: lying on the ground and kind of splayed, and they

703
00:39:13,880 --> 00:39:16,840
Speaker 1: kind of look like old men, like naked, furry old

704
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:19,440
Speaker 1: men laying around. I can think of it as a

705
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:23,040
Speaker 1: kanger danger. You know, you just want to look around,

706
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:26,239
Speaker 1: look away, and tell the children not to make eye

707
00:39:26,239 --> 00:39:29,560
Speaker 1: contact with the creepy kangaroo. Yeah, there is something kind

708
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:32,600
Speaker 1: of sad about seeing bounding animals in captivity, and yeah,

709
00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:35,960
Speaker 1: well it's it's almost the equivalent, though not quite the same,

710
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:39,560
Speaker 1: of hunting animals in captivity. I'm sure you've seen those

711
00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:42,719
Speaker 1: YouTube videos where a tiger will see a child at

712
00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:45,279
Speaker 1: the zoo and come up and through the glass and

713
00:39:45,280 --> 00:39:48,400
Speaker 1: try to eat the baby. Yeah. Yeah, it's far more,

714
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:51,799
Speaker 1: far more depressing with the with a large carnivores for sure,

715
00:39:51,920 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 1: and and certainly any animal that depends on you know

716
00:39:55,320 --> 00:39:59,480
Speaker 1: a large territory in which to range about. Now I'm

717
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 1: gonna also and throw the fox in here. There's not

718
00:40:02,719 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 1: a lot to this one, but with the fox, you

719
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:07,719
Speaker 1: do see them using their big bushy tails as a

720
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:13,200
Speaker 1: warming wrap. So there's another use right there. Of course,

721
00:40:13,239 --> 00:40:15,000
Speaker 1: the tail can play a role in some kind of

722
00:40:15,120 --> 00:40:17,560
Speaker 1: energy conservation. Another way it could play a role in

723
00:40:17,680 --> 00:40:20,919
Speaker 1: energy conservation is storage of fat, like you might see

724
00:40:20,960 --> 00:40:23,439
Speaker 1: this in an alligator that stores fat at the base

725
00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:25,719
Speaker 1: of its tail. I was trying to find information about this,

726
00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:28,960
Speaker 1: and when I googled alligator tail, almost all of the

727
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:32,200
Speaker 1: results were about meat. I thought that was interesting. For example,

728
00:40:32,200 --> 00:40:35,799
Speaker 1: a grocery item on Amazon called alligator tail meat five

729
00:40:35,840 --> 00:40:41,480
Speaker 1: pounds and have very good reviews. Uh. But apparently alligators

730
00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:43,200
Speaker 1: aren't the only ones who will put some fat in

731
00:40:43,239 --> 00:40:46,279
Speaker 1: their tail store it for later. Yeah. For instance, sheep

732
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:48,680
Speaker 1: also keep a fat reserve in their tail. And really,

733
00:40:48,719 --> 00:40:51,879
Speaker 1: if there's if there's room for fat in an animal's tail,

734
00:40:52,280 --> 00:40:54,799
Speaker 1: it's essentially serving that purpose. And that's one of the

735
00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:57,720
Speaker 1: things when you start looking at tails um with various creatures,

736
00:40:57,719 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 1: there's often like a very predominant talking point purpose for

737
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 1: the tail. But then there are various other uses as well,

738
00:41:05,680 --> 00:41:07,959
Speaker 1: like you could be a prehensile tail, but if there

739
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:10,600
Speaker 1: is room for any fat storage in there, well, then

740
00:41:10,640 --> 00:41:14,280
Speaker 1: it's it's also achieving that go as well. Another way

741
00:41:14,360 --> 00:41:17,880
Speaker 1: that a tail can be fat without necessarily being fatty

742
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:22,440
Speaker 1: or having fat cells in it is tail volume. Yeah.

743
00:41:22,560 --> 00:41:25,600
Speaker 1: I was interested in the question of what creature in

744
00:41:25,640 --> 00:41:27,640
Speaker 1: the world has the biggest tail, But then I realized

745
00:41:27,680 --> 00:41:30,479
Speaker 1: that's actually not very interesting because and I can't find

746
00:41:30,480 --> 00:41:33,520
Speaker 1: any documentation to confirm this. I have to assume that

747
00:41:33,560 --> 00:41:35,960
Speaker 1: it's probably just the blue whale, since the blue whale

748
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:38,560
Speaker 1: has the biggest of everything it has. That would I

749
00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:40,759
Speaker 1: think that would be a very sick that But if

750
00:41:40,800 --> 00:41:43,120
Speaker 1: you know otherwise, please email us that blow the mind

751
00:41:43,120 --> 00:41:44,880
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com and let us know.

752
00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 1: But I did think of the question of what land

753
00:41:48,080 --> 00:41:51,480
Speaker 1: mammal has the largest tail in relation to its body,

754
00:41:51,600 --> 00:41:54,960
Speaker 1: So the largest tail to body ratio, and if you

755
00:41:55,000 --> 00:41:59,800
Speaker 1: count the volume of fluff rather than mass, the trophy

756
00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:03,040
Speaker 1: seems to go to the tufted ground squirrel of Borneo

757
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:09,040
Speaker 1: or Rathroscurus macrotis. I found a great feature in Science

758
00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:12,239
Speaker 1: from June about this bizarre animal and what they said,

759
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:14,920
Speaker 1: is that it First of all, it's about twice the

760
00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:18,719
Speaker 1: size of most tree squirrels, and they say it reputedly

761
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:21,400
Speaker 1: has a taste for blood. But like for real or

762
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:24,279
Speaker 1: just in like folklore. I think it's folklore. But we'll

763
00:42:24,280 --> 00:42:26,200
Speaker 1: get to that in a second. So the size of it,

764
00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:28,960
Speaker 1: it's about like thirty five cis long. It has the

765
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:32,239
Speaker 1: bushiest tail to body size ratio of any mammal, with

766
00:42:32,320 --> 00:42:35,440
Speaker 1: the tail being thirty percent greater by volume than the

767
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:39,080
Speaker 1: rest of the squirrel's body. Wow, that's a big tail.

768
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:42,239
Speaker 1: Is a big tail, So why is the tail so bushy?

769
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:44,800
Speaker 1: One of the scientists referenced in that in that science

770
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:48,600
Speaker 1: article hypothesized that this giant puff ball of a tail

771
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:52,719
Speaker 1: could confuse or distract predators like leopards, or it could

772
00:42:52,719 --> 00:42:55,440
Speaker 1: simply prevent the predator from getting a good grip on

773
00:42:55,520 --> 00:42:59,120
Speaker 1: the squirrel if I'm just trying to catch it. Also, apparently,

774
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:02,239
Speaker 1: like I said, squirrel has this messed up reputation. In

775
00:43:02,360 --> 00:43:07,400
Speaker 1: local legend, hunters claim that it attacks much larger animal

776
00:43:07,560 --> 00:43:11,080
Speaker 1: like deer, it slashes them to death and then tears

777
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:15,360
Speaker 1: their guts out. Well, I certainly want to believe that story.

778
00:43:15,520 --> 00:43:17,840
Speaker 1: Like the blood crazed killer squirrels. He reminds me of

779
00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:21,759
Speaker 1: a certain rabbit from Monty Pyth. Right, Yeah, it's the

780
00:43:21,760 --> 00:43:24,440
Speaker 1: only squirrel you know of that might harvest your organs.

781
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:27,239
Speaker 1: But it looks like the scientists are skeptical that this

782
00:43:27,320 --> 00:43:30,799
Speaker 1: is true. All Right, we're gonna go and cut the

783
00:43:30,800 --> 00:43:34,200
Speaker 1: tail off here, Okay, But next time, in in part

784
00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:36,400
Speaker 1: two of our two parter about tales, we're going to

785
00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:39,799
Speaker 1: talk about using tales in communication. We're going to talk

786
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:45,600
Speaker 1: about the strange world of autotomy. Am I pronouncing that right? Autotomy? Tommy?

787
00:43:46,200 --> 00:43:48,520
Speaker 1: But yeah, and the scorpion will come back up again

788
00:43:48,640 --> 00:43:51,520
Speaker 1: as promised. Um. And then of course humans human, why

789
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:54,280
Speaker 1: don't we have tales? Where's our tail? We will discuss

790
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:56,520
Speaker 1: in the meantime. If you want to check out more

791
00:43:56,600 --> 00:43:58,759
Speaker 1: content from Stuff to Blow your Mind, hadn't over to

792
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:00,840
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership.

793
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:03,239
Speaker 1: That's where we'll find all the podcast episodes, all the

794
00:44:03,239 --> 00:44:06,640
Speaker 1: blog posts, various videos. This one links out to our

795
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:09,279
Speaker 1: social media accounts that we we keep all our eyes on.

796
00:44:09,600 --> 00:44:11,279
Speaker 1: And if you want to follow up on any of

797
00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:14,600
Speaker 1: the rabbit trails we went down about tales today, or

798
00:44:14,640 --> 00:44:16,759
Speaker 1: if you just have an interesting tale fact you'd like

799
00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:18,520
Speaker 1: to share with us. You can email us at blow

800
00:44:18,520 --> 00:44:23,879
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more

801
00:44:23,920 --> 00:44:26,200
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how

802
00:44:26,239 --> 00:44:33,200
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com