Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature future production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we're firing
Speaker 1: the Easter Bunny and looking for a replacement. That's right,
Speaker 1: eb you're getting benched and we're sending in another animal
Speaker 1: out there to make merry with the eggs and the
Speaker 1: flowers and the chocolates and so on. We've got three
Speaker 1: candidates on the show today, each of whom may be
Speaker 1: able to beat the Easter bunny at his own game.
Speaker 1: From the mountains to the deserts to the Australian outback.
Speaker 1: Are contenders. Aren't bunnies, but that doesn't mean they can't
Speaker 1: hop the dig and maybe even deliver you a bouquet
Speaker 1: of fresh flowers. Discover this and more as we answered
Speaker 1: the age old question what did rabbits ever? Due to
Speaker 1: the Foundation for Rabbit Free Australia joining me today to
Speaker 1: give the Easter Bunny the boot is front of the show,
Speaker 1: co host of Quick Question with One and Daniel and
Speaker 1: comedy writer Sore and Booie. Welcome, Hey, thank you very
Speaker 1: much for having me giving these an opportunity to kick
Speaker 1: that Easter bunny and right in the are we allowed
Speaker 1: to swear on this? I put a little quack sound
Speaker 1: over it, like a little duck quack, so you can't.
Speaker 1: It's funny. Yeah, yeah, that's cute. All right, Well I'll
Speaker 1: stick with butt for now. People to hear my voices. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, the Easter Bunny has had a good run.
Speaker 1: But I think we can all agree that it gets
Speaker 1: too good. I would say it gets old. You know,
Speaker 1: the nose twitching, the ears, the floppy ears, the cotton tail.
Speaker 1: It's he's like he's a one trick bunny. He's a
Speaker 1: one trick bunny. Yeah, I would say so. So I
Speaker 1: actually thought of this idea because when I asked you
Speaker 1: if you wanted to guest on this show, you were
Speaker 1: really interested in talking about the pika. Yes, yeah, I so.
Speaker 1: I grew up. I grew up among the pika. They
Speaker 1: from a feral tree up in the scree of the mountains.
Speaker 1: We lived in the tiny holes of the screen, sort
Speaker 1: of like the Jungle Book, except the the Alpine book.
Speaker 1: And you learned the way of the pika, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess my sher con was sort of like an eagle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that was the natural enemy. Yeah, hawk, Yes, So
Speaker 1: I grew up in Colorado and from an early age,
Speaker 1: it's you're very encouraged from an early age to climb mountains,
Speaker 1: like your parents are like, I think you're about old
Speaker 1: enough that we can go climb something. And guaranteed as
Speaker 1: soon as you get above timberline, which just means like
Speaker 1: where the there's not enough air for the trees to survive,
Speaker 1: then you run into these. You run into these, you'll
Speaker 1: hear these little, tiny, adorable squeaks out there and it's
Speaker 1: up in and I don't know who's been up above
Speaker 1: like twelve feet, but there's like it's all rock up
Speaker 1: there's giant boulders and you just like they're deep. I
Speaker 1: mean you can kind of like if you dropped a
Speaker 1: water bottle, you could you could lose it inside the
Speaker 1: essentially crevasses of rock and that's where these pika would live.
Speaker 1: And they come out and they're so territorial. But it's
Speaker 1: adorable because they're there look like little cotton balls, essentially,
Speaker 1: the gray cotton balls. They're so cute. They're round and
Speaker 1: they come out and they yell at you, and they're
Speaker 1: yell is so it's just a little squeak and it's
Speaker 1: so nice. It's like they're they're adorable little animals. And uh,
Speaker 1: I feel like you you don't even need to do
Speaker 1: like the laying egg piece. You could just double up.
Speaker 1: You just have this round animal be the egg itself.
Speaker 1: So you get like little pikas and then you just
Speaker 1: open up the pika and your treats are in there
Speaker 1: right right wait, yes, okay, So to give the listener
Speaker 1: and sample of the pike a call, it is it
Speaker 1: is astounding. So this is a a pika sounds like
Speaker 1: just to sort of e that's and like in pika
Speaker 1: that means you get out of here, get out of here,
Speaker 1: you know a blog here, Yes exactly. Yeah. So, uh,
Speaker 1: Pikas have a variety of calls and songs they use
Speaker 1: for communication. The purpose of the calls can range from
Speaker 1: calling cards for individuals, attracting mates, territory defense, or warning
Speaker 1: of predators. So they they really are extremely verbal, which
Speaker 1: is I think it feels unusual for little animals like this.
Speaker 1: Often they tend to lay low, maybe not make a
Speaker 1: lot of noise, not make a lot of loud calls.
Speaker 1: But these guys really do an interesting things. So we
Speaker 1: are talking about replacing the Easter bunny, and of all
Speaker 1: the animals that we're going to talk about that look
Speaker 1: like bunnies on this show, this is the one that
Speaker 1: looks the least like a bunny, but it is the
Speaker 1: most related to rabbits. It is not a rodent. It
Speaker 1: is actually in the lagomorph order, which is also what
Speaker 1: rabbits belong to. Yeah, I heard that. I mean, they
Speaker 1: look kind of like hamsters that like like gerbils. But
Speaker 1: then I remember somebody telling me, no, no no, no, they're
Speaker 1: they're more like a rabbit. And I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you don't you don't know what you're talking about. Maybe
Speaker 1: you've just never seen a hamster. This is a hamster. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: they do. They look like large hamsters. They're not big,
Speaker 1: they're like sort of you could hold one in your hand.
Speaker 1: It's like a handful hamster. And they have these round ears.
Speaker 1: They're very fluffy, like you said, like little little egg
Speaker 1: shaped poofballs. H they don't have a visible tail. They
Speaker 1: actually do have a tail, but it's just buried under
Speaker 1: all of their fluff so you can't really see it.
Speaker 1: But even though they look like a rodent, they are
Speaker 1: in fact much more related to a rabbit. In fact,
Speaker 1: like laga morpha the order, it's rabbits and pikes, and
Speaker 1: that's it. I didn't know that. Um, I have a
Speaker 1: question for you. Do this is This is gonna sound
Speaker 1: like a dumb question, but but I need to know. Oh,
Speaker 1: yes they do. And the way I know this is
Speaker 1: I have been peed on by a rabbit. Uh my phone,
Speaker 1: very scientific. Yes, my my friend had a rabbit when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, and it not only kicked me
Speaker 1: very hard, it also flicked a bunch of p on me,
Speaker 1: which I've heard is like a I guess I don't
Speaker 1: know too much about domesticated rabbits, but I think that
Speaker 1: they sometimes flick their p as sort of like a
Speaker 1: territorial thing. So yeah, yeah, so it's I'm going to
Speaker 1: steal that. I'm letting it down what we can learn
Speaker 1: from rabbits. But what I mean, it's not a dumb question,
Speaker 1: but a weird one. So why do you ask? I asked,
Speaker 1: because I so I and I maybe this. I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is true because obviously all of my
Speaker 1: information about pike had come from seeing them and then
Speaker 1: somebody telling me things about them. Um, they said that
Speaker 1: because the water is also very hard to come buy
Speaker 1: up there, except in the winter when there's snow fields everywhere.
Speaker 1: But during the regular like the sunny season may through
Speaker 1: like August, there's not a ton of rain storms up there.
Speaker 1: And I heard that the way that one of the
Speaker 1: things that they do to save water, the pike a
Speaker 1: is that they get a lot of their water from
Speaker 1: the food that they eat. And then they like birds,
Speaker 1: they just it's all comes out of one place, like
Speaker 1: when they pope and pee. It's all just like one collective.
Speaker 1: It's just like this white block that comes out. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know they do not have a cloaca like a
Speaker 1: bird does. So birds actually have a cloaca. It's like
Speaker 1: the magical hole that does it all. It's what I
Speaker 1: like to call it on the show. Uh it's where pee, poop,
Speaker 1: eggs and sex all happens. But with Peka's no, they do.
Speaker 1: They do not have a wake up, but they do.
Speaker 1: I think similar to bunnies. They produce a kind of
Speaker 1: weird uh poop that they will eat that looks kind
Speaker 1: of more like a um it's kind of a more
Speaker 1: moist kind of thing, and so they may eat that
Speaker 1: to like retain their moisture. But yeah, they get they
Speaker 1: get most of their their fluid from themselves exactly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: hot out of the oven which is there, but so
Speaker 1: so yeah. So the the pika, as you mentioned, are
Speaker 1: found in mountainous regions, often where a lot of wild
Speaker 1: flowers grow. They're found in North America, like you said,
Speaker 1: in the mountains of Colorado. They're also found in Asia.
Speaker 1: The American pika is found in the mountains of western
Speaker 1: United States and southwestern Canada, and the colored pika is
Speaker 1: found in Alaska, the Yukon and British Columbia. So there
Speaker 1: are many more species though, than just the American pike
Speaker 1: and the collared pika. There are thirty four different species
Speaker 1: of pika, all extremely adorable. They're typically around six to
Speaker 1: eight inches big or fifteen to twenty centimeters long, sometimes smaller,
Speaker 1: sometimes a little bigger. They usually weigh less than a pound,
Speaker 1: uh like a hundred and twenty grams. The biggest pike
Speaker 1: I think is the illipika of the Tianshan Mountains in China,
Speaker 1: which is over twenty centimeters long and about two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty grams, which wow, so so large. Good job,
Speaker 1: little buddies. You did it. But they're very cute. They
Speaker 1: have very fluffy ears, uh, and they're adorable, are they?
Speaker 1: Is this one of those situations where an animal just
Speaker 1: walks over the bearing straight and we're all like, that's fine.
Speaker 1: Thousands of miles and that's why it's in both these
Speaker 1: plates and both these continents. Mean, is this like a
Speaker 1: pag angia animal. That's a really good question. I actually
Speaker 1: don't know the that far back in their evolutionary history.
Speaker 1: It can be surprising. Sometimes there are animals and I'm
Speaker 1: not saying this is true with the pike because I
Speaker 1: don't actually know, but there's some animals that actually originated
Speaker 1: in America that end up in crazy parts of the world,
Speaker 1: like I think marsupials. There's some evidence to suggest that
Speaker 1: marsupials actually originated in America. And now almost all marsupials
Speaker 1: are in Australia except for one, which is the possum,
Speaker 1: which is still in America, and it's like the only uh,
Speaker 1: North American marsupial, whereas like the rest of them are
Speaker 1: in Australia. So that could be the case with the pike.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um, I would be talking out of
Speaker 1: my butt, which unfortunately does not produce tasty treats like
Speaker 1: the Piket's butts do. Yeah, we're not talking abou our
Speaker 1: bus today. We're here for kicking butts easter bunnies. But
Speaker 1: that's right. I wonder if, like if there was like
Speaker 1: a prehistory. I went to the tar pits recently with
Speaker 1: my son and we looked at all the there's just yeah,
Speaker 1: seeing all the ice age creatures, it's just everything is
Speaker 1: similar except bigger, Like they were just animals were just bigger,
Speaker 1: like a sloth. The sloth is like the size of
Speaker 1: a cow and maybe a bigger And I'm just sort
Speaker 1: of hoping that at some point there was a bigger
Speaker 1: pike out there. There was just like contending with a
Speaker 1: saber to a tiger in the mountains, and then at
Speaker 1: a certain point it got small, but its attitude did not.
Speaker 1: It still stay, It's still continue to believe it was
Speaker 1: a kind of creature. Yeah, Sloans can have a kind
Speaker 1: of confidence of like I used to be bigger. I
Speaker 1: used to be big enough to like each you and
Speaker 1: just like slowly move away. I actually just just quickly
Speaker 1: googled it. It looks like the falsil evidence now points
Speaker 1: towards the pike. It is actually originating in Central Asia
Speaker 1: and then dispersing from there. So you know that that
Speaker 1: that that that that that that's my transition from phiologenies
Speaker 1: song I guess. So. Yeah, they are so so cute.
Speaker 1: Their physical appearance is very different from rabbits, even though
Speaker 1: they are cousins, and you know, they actually we we
Speaker 1: talked about those calls as amazing little calls that they make.
Speaker 1: They actually can have different dialects based on where they're located.
Speaker 1: So the same species can have a different dialect than
Speaker 1: they're their relatives that live somewhere else, which I think
Speaker 1: is really interesting. That's so if you listen hard enough,
Speaker 1: you could hear an accent among the pia. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say yes, I think that's how the science is conducted,
Speaker 1: just scientists listening very hard, like I hear different hearing
Speaker 1: on that squeak. So, yeah, pike has live in very
Speaker 1: high altitudes. They're highly adapted to cold weather, so much
Speaker 1: so that they can actually easily overheat and die in
Speaker 1: temperatures as low as seventy eight degrees fahrenheit or twenty
Speaker 1: six degrees celsius. So they need to find shade in
Speaker 1: that instance, and they can very very easily die from
Speaker 1: the heat. O. Man, is this Am I about to
Speaker 1: find out that global warming is killing my pike? A? Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. They're actually they're actually known as a climate indicator.
Speaker 1: Species is sort of canary in the coal mine for
Speaker 1: climate change because if their population declines, it's a sign
Speaker 1: of climate increase. And so there are climate scientists who
Speaker 1: will actually collect pike a poop and measure stress hormone
Speaker 1: levels in their poop to monitor temperature changes and changes
Speaker 1: in their population. That's an insult to injury because the
Speaker 1: pike is like not only dying off, Like I was gonna,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? I think they collect squee stop it.
Speaker 1: Get away from that. Uh yeah, I mean there to
Speaker 1: be very pedantic. The poop that they collect is the
Speaker 1: actual poop. So pike is are selective over which poop
Speaker 1: they eat. Uh and rabbits actually, so they will only
Speaker 1: eat the special poop that they poop out, not the
Speaker 1: u not the regular poop. So uh okay. This is
Speaker 1: my favorite thing about pike is though, is that they
Speaker 1: collect flowers. They collect wild flowers, and so they in
Speaker 1: the summer they will spend all summer collecting wild flowers
Speaker 1: grasses for their din, and so they don't eat it
Speaker 1: right away. They get a big bunch of it and
Speaker 1: then run back to their din and add it to
Speaker 1: this big pile, which is called a haystack. And they
Speaker 1: because they don't hibernate, they stay awake during you know,
Speaker 1: well maybe not a wake. They may sleep, but they
Speaker 1: don't hibernate. So they need food during the winter. And
Speaker 1: it's exceedingly difficult to find any food in the high
Speaker 1: altitudes during the winter, so having this huge stockpile of
Speaker 1: food is necessary for their survival. But it is so
Speaker 1: cute because you'll see them like with a huge bouquet
Speaker 1: of flowers in their mouths and they're just running around.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'll like steal from each other, Like you see
Speaker 1: one sneak up to another pika's haystack and like take
Speaker 1: some flowers and run back to theirs and like pat
Speaker 1: it in as if it belongs there. It's so cute.
Speaker 1: That is perfect for Easter. It couldn't get more perfect.
Speaker 1: When is the easter bunny hand delivered you bouquet that
Speaker 1: it's stole from its neighbor and it's actually really interesting
Speaker 1: because they will pick out toxic flowers because they have
Speaker 1: to store it for such a long time that if
Speaker 1: the flowers get moldy, that can be terrible, that that
Speaker 1: can be a death sentence for them. So by picking
Speaker 1: out flowers that have toxins in it, those toxins actually
Speaker 1: prevent the flowers from spoiling. And by the time they
Speaker 1: eat them in the winter, that toxin has degraded enough
Speaker 1: to the point where it is now safe to eat.
Speaker 1: So they know not to eat them right away, but
Speaker 1: they will store them and age the flowers until they
Speaker 1: are perfect for eating. Fascinating. I didn't know they could
Speaker 1: do that. I also didn't know that all those flowers
Speaker 1: up there were toxic. Yeah. It explains a lot, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: It does. Poor poor flowers, though they they have very few.
Speaker 1: There's very few things that are actually gonna be eating
Speaker 1: flowers up there. I mean, you don't run into a
Speaker 1: lot of animals at that altitude. They're not very many.
Speaker 1: And that they create they're like, oh, we got this.
Speaker 1: We will create a toxin and then no one will
Speaker 1: ever eat us. Like said the like, no, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do. Thank you very much. But
Speaker 1: it's so cute you just gotta let them get away
Speaker 1: with flower maritor uh. But yeah, so they they will
Speaker 1: sometimes go around, make back and forth trips to their
Speaker 1: din two hundred times a day for the whole summer,
Speaker 1: collecting these flowers until they have this massive pile, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very important. They will need that to survive the winter.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it is they are as cute as they
Speaker 1: are the they take their survival incredibly seriously. This I
Speaker 1: think this is my favorite aspect about them. How seriously
Speaker 1: they take themselves. Like as they're running around with flowers
Speaker 1: in their mouths, these little poofballs, squeaking angrily at each other.
Speaker 1: It's they have such a such a pompous attitude, and
Speaker 1: I love it. Yeah, it is really fun to see
Speaker 1: them because they are They will come right out on
Speaker 1: the rocks to be like what's up, what's up, what's up?
Speaker 1: And yell at you. I mean like they're like they
Speaker 1: come out like you're going to be scared of them,
Speaker 1: and it's it's just adorable. Yeah, yeah, I yeah, I
Speaker 1: love it. I love the undeserved confidence these guys have.
Speaker 1: The rabbit, the Chihuahuas of the rabbit world I love that,
Speaker 1: So I think the pika is a pretty good candidate
Speaker 1: for replacement easter bunny or springtime rabbit. Nondenominational springtime rabbit.
Speaker 1: I guess it would be nondenominational springtime pika, which I
Speaker 1: think would be a great I would love. I would
Speaker 1: go to that festival for sure. There's actually a festival
Speaker 1: here in Italy. I think it's in the summer or
Speaker 1: late spring, and it it's a bunch of snakes, Like
Speaker 1: they collect a bunch of snakes and non poisonous snakes
Speaker 1: and just kind of put the monna pedestal of a saint.
Speaker 1: I forgot what the saint's name is, but it's so awesome,
Speaker 1: and then afterwards they release all the snakes back into
Speaker 1: the wild. So I love it and I wanna someday
Speaker 1: go to the snake festival. What what on earth? What
Speaker 1: a crazy? I mean, it's a cool festival, but like
Speaker 1: how did that start? Like we still got all the snakes, sat,
Speaker 1: look here they are and then just releasing back into
Speaker 1: the wild. I mean, okay, So so it's it's Saint Dominico.
Speaker 1: Uh and it's in kokolo Um but yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: held on the first of May, so I haven't missed
Speaker 1: it yet. And yeah, so it's it's like I think,
Speaker 1: originally I'm trying to remember why they why why snakes? Um?
Speaker 1: But it's it's I think that originally they used to
Speaker 1: like have a feast and eat the snakes afterwards, but
Speaker 1: now they have stopped doing that because people are like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to They don't want to hurt snakes anymore.
Speaker 1: They want to be nice to the snakes, which I
Speaker 1: think is nice. But I love that. I love that
Speaker 1: there's some Yes, bunnies are cute, cute, sort of harbinger
Speaker 1: of spring, but uh, you know, give snakes some love.
Speaker 1: They're cute too, I think. Yeah, would you see the
Speaker 1: first snake of the year. It's springtime, you know, right,
Speaker 1: if the snake sees its own what its own shadow?
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, it's it's tough animal for that. It's
Speaker 1: like the one animal that doesn't have a show, right,
Speaker 1: it's too close to the ground. So it's it's perpetually winter,
Speaker 1: I guess. So. So our next candidate actually to replace
Speaker 1: the easter bunny is the jerboa. Okay, I'm looking at
Speaker 1: it right now. Yes, this I don't know the difference
Speaker 1: between this and a kangaroo rat. That's a very good point.
Speaker 1: So it is not to be confused with the kangaroo mouse,
Speaker 1: which is found in sorry, I'm so sorry. The mouse
Speaker 1: it is found in the deserts of the us Um,
Speaker 1: but the jerboa is actually uh found in UH, North
Speaker 1: Africa and Asia. It is also a desert rodent though.
Speaker 1: So yes, so the jerboa has back feet like a kangaroo,
Speaker 1: with a tuft of fluff on their toes, a long tail,
Speaker 1: typically with another tuft of fur on the end. Very adorable.
Speaker 1: There there are thirty three species of jerboa, so there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different species. They all look a
Speaker 1: little bit different. Some of them have incredibly long ears
Speaker 1: and some of them are teeny tiny, like smaller than
Speaker 1: a ping pong ball. They are fascinating looking little guys.
Speaker 1: Uh And all of them, though, have the sort of
Speaker 1: kangaroo that even though some of them don't have really
Speaker 1: long ears and some of them have are smaller, they
Speaker 1: all have the kangaroo leg looking legs and like a long,
Speaker 1: supportive kangaroo looking tail. Yes, it looks like when these
Speaker 1: were being created that that mother nature ran out of
Speaker 1: legs for a rat and was just like, here, I'll
Speaker 1: put some sand piper legs on this thing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of and it's it kind of looks like
Speaker 1: a Character Creators sort of scenario to where it's like
Speaker 1: ears slider all the way up, size slider all the
Speaker 1: way down for this one. It's there. They are exceedingly cute.
Speaker 1: Some of them have this little snub nose too. So
Speaker 1: not only do they have these really long ears, they
Speaker 1: have this little almost pig like nose. Uh it is
Speaker 1: It is adorable. So they will eat seeds, insects and plants,
Speaker 1: and they often travel six miles almost ten kilometers every
Speaker 1: night for food. And yeah, so they those long legs
Speaker 1: served them in several ways, several important ways, one of
Speaker 1: which is being able to travel long distances to get
Speaker 1: food in the desert, which can be it is a
Speaker 1: tough area to live in for animals, so they have
Speaker 1: to have very very special adaptations to be able to
Speaker 1: be able to thrive there. I'm just thinking about that
Speaker 1: was lamenting the life of the jibo because it was
Speaker 1: to live out in the desert. I was like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I know it were a cool guys. It's a little
Speaker 1: tiny one like I don't know what are they? Are
Speaker 1: they eating vegetation? What are these things eat? Insects? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so seeds, insects, plants, you know, a lot. They have
Speaker 1: a kind of variety diet which I think helps them
Speaker 1: because you get you get what you can get in this.
Speaker 1: But are the are the ears for hunting or the
Speaker 1: ears for predators? So the ears are, well, it's for
Speaker 1: two things. Predators is an important one, being able to
Speaker 1: have sensitive hearing. Probably they also do use them for hunting.
Speaker 1: But one of the more surprising things is it's actually
Speaker 1: an air conditioning unit. So by having these really long gears,
Speaker 1: the blood flows through them and the heat from the
Speaker 1: blood dissipates over this larger surface area of their ears,
Speaker 1: so it helps keep them cool and really hot temperatures.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. I know that the kangaroo rat has basically
Speaker 1: a giant chamber in its skull right and its nose um,
Speaker 1: so that when it breathes in through its nose, it's
Speaker 1: like this moist chamber in there and essentially acts like
Speaker 1: an air conditioning unit where the air cools and like
Speaker 1: the moisture it does. The jerboa have that too. Oh,
Speaker 1: that is such a good question. I'm not sure. I
Speaker 1: gotta look it up. Jerboa nose, You're just gonna get
Speaker 1: a bunch of cute pictures. Oh, it's so cute. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just says that they have a hug like noses
Speaker 1: in this shape helps the gerboa forge and dig to
Speaker 1: find food and shelter. Let me see, bows can air
Speaker 1: weight heat. There we go. I'm not seeing anything about it.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, mostly they figured out the ears. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: still sound disappointed. I guess that's fine. They got air
Speaker 1: conditioner ears but not air conditioner knows. But yeah, that
Speaker 1: they should talk to the kangaroo rat. I mean, I
Speaker 1: wonder who like plagiarized too in that scenario, because they
Speaker 1: do look very similar. I think it's actually a case
Speaker 1: of convergent evolution. So I don't I think they're not
Speaker 1: super related. I think this is just like a convergent evolution. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if the nose is any judge, these things are most
Speaker 1: close related to piglets, not like piglets. Yes, yeah, so
Speaker 1: the huge feet though, we do have to talk about
Speaker 1: those massive kangaroo feet. They allow them to be highly
Speaker 1: mobile in the desert. They can run up to fifteen
Speaker 1: miles per hour, which is kilometers an hour, um, faster
Speaker 1: than I think I should run for sure, And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's incredible. They can also jump two to three
Speaker 1: ft vertically, which is almost a meter and ten times
Speaker 1: its own body lengthwise. And so given that they're about
Speaker 1: the size of your palm, like some are going to
Speaker 1: be smaller, like the pigmy Jerboa is teeny tiny, uh,
Speaker 1: and then oother the long yar Jibo is a little
Speaker 1: bigger than the pigmy Jrbo. But let's just say generally speaking,
Speaker 1: they're about the size of your palm maybe five inches
Speaker 1: or twelve centimeters, so scaled to human dimensions, the speeds
Speaker 1: and distances that they can the speedies that they can
Speaker 1: run in the distances they can jump. So it would
Speaker 1: be like, first of all, having feet the length of
Speaker 1: your torso and being able to run around two hundred
Speaker 1: miles per hour or three kilometers an hour and jump
Speaker 1: fourteen ft or twelve mem is up in the air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I want that. I like that would be
Speaker 1: nice and and there's no like, there's no drawbacks. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be like, oh but I'm not so cute anymore, right, No, Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: they're adorable. I mean the drawback I guess is you
Speaker 1: are small and everything wants to eat you. So you know,
Speaker 1: usually when you're running, it's not because you're just having
Speaker 1: a fun marathon with those like tiny little, tiny little
Speaker 1: placards that you're wearing, and little other gerboas are tossing
Speaker 1: tiny cups of water in your face. It's usually because
Speaker 1: you're running for your life. It would be fun, though,
Speaker 1: I know. Now they've got these they've got tails that
Speaker 1: are like three times as long as their body. Yes, tail, Katie.
Speaker 1: It helps them melts because they're actually typically by pedals,
Speaker 1: so they will do a hopping motion for running and
Speaker 1: for walking, and so having that tail helps them balance
Speaker 1: when they are hopping on two feet at these really
Speaker 1: high speeds, because if they stumble, if they trip over
Speaker 1: and lose their balance, that could be death for them,
Speaker 1: because they often are chased by things like the desert fox,
Speaker 1: which can be faster than them. But the thing that
Speaker 1: they have going for them is their mobility, so they
Speaker 1: can the jerbo can run in a zigzag pattern and
Speaker 1: be really really agile as they're running, so outmaneuvering their
Speaker 1: predator can be as important as being fast they know serpentine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's important. That's a good one. I saw my son,
Speaker 1: uh plays Freeze Tag. Now he's an Ajor like that's
Speaker 1: that's that's the game. That's fun. And uh, I see
Speaker 1: him sometimes out there playing with the older kids on
Speaker 1: the block and he just gets he just gets chewed
Speaker 1: up by the your kids, like they know, especially when
Speaker 1: like he's it and somebody's frozen and he's got to
Speaker 1: catch the last kid. Like you can't do it because
Speaker 1: the kids are they're so fast because they're you know,
Speaker 1: two years older, and that means that they're two ft taller.
Speaker 1: But I went out with him once and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna teach you some strategies for for when you
Speaker 1: play Freeze Tag. That is they're gonna help you. Like
Speaker 1: you you're not gonna beat these guys with speed, so
Speaker 1: you're like, you need these you need some moves, is
Speaker 1: what you need. And so I went out and we
Speaker 1: worked on it, and that was the first time that
Speaker 1: we had like practiced the sport where he was like
Speaker 1: he said, I saw the tangible benefit right away, and
Speaker 1: was like, ah, you can see the light in his
Speaker 1: eye where he was like, I want to learn more. Oh,
Speaker 1: that is so cute. Did you learn that from your
Speaker 1: time being raised by pikes or by jerboa's It was
Speaker 1: the pike a yeah, it was so ill. You also
Speaker 1: need a really long tail when you're up in the mountains.
Speaker 1: The snow leopard will tell you all about it. When
Speaker 1: you're like hunting and on the sides of mountains, you
Speaker 1: need all that balance you can get. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so the jerboa, by by doing that serpentine pattern
Speaker 1: that you are teaching your son, can out maneuver things
Speaker 1: like desert foxes, owls, and snakes, which is it's also
Speaker 1: good for your son. And I'm I think like, aside
Speaker 1: from freeze tag, the fact that your son can now
Speaker 1: out maneuver a desert fox is going to be really important. Um,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be very helpful. They also, the Jerboas have
Speaker 1: tufts of hair on their feet which act like little
Speaker 1: little running shoes because they oh, my god, cute. It's
Speaker 1: so cute because they provide some traction against the sand.
Speaker 1: So it's like these little pom poms on their titsies
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's just it's so cute. It's
Speaker 1: every adaptation that they have that for them is very serious,
Speaker 1: Like I need these these running tufts otherwise I'm going
Speaker 1: to be eaten viciously by a snake. Really, would you
Speaker 1: usual cute? It's like, no, seriously, I will die if
Speaker 1: I do not have these toe puffs. I will die.
Speaker 1: I'm going to eat you up, Port Garbos. It must
Speaker 1: be so hard to be taken. Seriously, hard life to
Speaker 1: carve out when you're so darn cute, so darn cute.
Speaker 1: The long eared Jerboa actually has one of the I
Speaker 1: think actually the largest ear to body ratio in the
Speaker 1: animal kingdom. I think their ears are like two thirds
Speaker 1: the length of their body. It feels like if you
Speaker 1: like kind of tossed one like a paper airplane, that
Speaker 1: they would just like kind of take off. I'm not
Speaker 1: don't do that, like, do not do that, but it
Speaker 1: seems like that would be what would happen. Yeah, they've
Speaker 1: got I mean they've got huge eyes, big ears, tiny
Speaker 1: little nose. Like the baby schema is clicking on all
Speaker 1: cylinders with this animal. Yeah, I want to cuddle one
Speaker 1: of the is so so bad. They actually can carry
Speaker 1: some diseases, so you don't really want to cuddle them.
Speaker 1: That is probably not they're Actually I think they're banned
Speaker 1: in the US as pets, which is good because pet
Speaker 1: trade can be bad for animals. But I think the
Speaker 1: reason is that they can spread. I think it's a
Speaker 1: version of monkey pox. Actually, she's yeah, so it's just
Speaker 1: not in general, is not a great idea to have
Speaker 1: a pet. It's nocturnal anyway, Yeah, you shouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 1: They're the cutest ones, obviously because they've got the biggest egg. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, God, I remember having a hamster in my
Speaker 1: room going at the wheel all night long, just like
Speaker 1: it's time to exercise. We've talked about maybe having the
Speaker 1: Easter pikea the Easter Gerboa, both I think already like
Speaker 1: a vast improvement over the Easter bunny right hands, hands down,
Speaker 1: head and shoulders, even though they're so small. I mean
Speaker 1: not literally head and shoulders over the Easter money, but figuratively,
Speaker 1: because the pika is like both an egg and an
Speaker 1: adorable creature all in one. The Jerboa is, you know,
Speaker 1: just the the kangaroo style hopping allows it to hold
Speaker 1: a tiny basket, so you know, so you know, we've
Speaker 1: got our non nondenominational springtime pika festival. We've got our
Speaker 1: Jerboa Jerboa Bonanza I'd like to call this. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like we do this. It's like a spring like the
Speaker 1: fun run in the spring. Yeah yeah, and just like
Speaker 1: instead of eggs, like little seeds and insects that you
Speaker 1: feel the Jerboa's basket with. This sounds like such a
Speaker 1: good holiday. Uh. And so finally I want to talk
Speaker 1: about an animal that I truly believe in to replace
Speaker 1: the Easter bunny, and that is the Bilbie of Australia.
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with this animal. I'm looking at it
Speaker 1: right now and I'm like, yeah, I don't know what
Speaker 1: this is. This is um. It is an amazing and
Speaker 1: bizarre animal. And I think people, I mean, certainly I
Speaker 1: do underestimate how many ding marsupials there are because there
Speaker 1: are a lot of weird marsupials. So this thing looks
Speaker 1: like and it looks like some kind of weird rabbit
Speaker 1: with a long tail and a long snoot, or maybe
Speaker 1: even some kind of art arkh. This is in fact
Speaker 1: a marsupial. Um. This is Australia's Easter bunny, the Bilbie.
Speaker 1: It's actually a type of bandicoot, uh, which are you know,
Speaker 1: they are a group of marsupials, which is I guess
Speaker 1: that is the inspiration for Crash Bandicoot the video game.
Speaker 1: Although if you look at an actual bandicoote and you
Speaker 1: look at Crash Bandicoot, it's that there's not it doesn't
Speaker 1: really look like a bandicoot. Yeah, something lost in translation.
Speaker 1: I think same way Donkey Donkey Kong is a gorilla.
Speaker 1: They definitely don't wear Jinko jeans real bandicoote. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so Bandicootes are long snooted marsupials. They tend to have
Speaker 1: sort of a shrew like a parents, but the bilbie
Speaker 1: has these long rabbit ears that kind of I think
Speaker 1: elevates them to this special position of cuteness in my
Speaker 1: humble opinions. So they have these long, thin, furry tail.
Speaker 1: It would be mouse like this tail, except that it's
Speaker 1: covered in fur um. They have like a black stripe
Speaker 1: on their tails, pink noses, and their bodies are overall
Speaker 1: sort of a grayish tan color. Yeah, I would say
Speaker 1: that this animal seems to solve a lot of the
Speaker 1: problems of the possum, Like the possum has like some
Speaker 1: asthetic issues. In my opinion, it really needs to work past.
Speaker 1: One is that bald tail that it's got that like
Speaker 1: pink rat tail it's also got its ears are still
Speaker 1: like clipped to its head in a really gross, weird way,
Speaker 1: and its nose is really sharp and angular. And this
Speaker 1: one it still has the long kind of snarrow nose,
Speaker 1: but it pulls it off a lot better. And then
Speaker 1: obviously it's got way bigger ears. That's and then the tail.
Speaker 1: It has the decency to cover its tail in front.
Speaker 1: And I appreciate that it's rude, it's so gross, it's
Speaker 1: in decent. Honestly, I actually do love possums. H there
Speaker 1: to me to me cute, but I also think spiders
Speaker 1: are cute, so I may have as somewhat skewed u
Speaker 1: e skewed sense. There's actually the ustar alien possum, which
Speaker 1: is super super cute. It is, I mean, it doesn't
Speaker 1: look too much like the North American o possum, but
Speaker 1: they are. I would definitely definitely recommend a Google Images
Speaker 1: search of the Australian possum. Yeah, some genius has gone
Speaker 1: has gone to the like when you first just look
Speaker 1: up the Australian possum, they've they've put a side by
Speaker 1: side of the American possum versus the Australian ones. You
Speaker 1: can see both of them side by side and be like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, one is clearly better here. The even like
Speaker 1: the American possum has these like narrow evil eyes that
Speaker 1: kind of slipped down its face like it's kind it's
Speaker 1: angry all the time. Oh man, this, let's get this one.
Speaker 1: Let's trade now. American possums serve a very important ecological purpose.
Speaker 1: They do. They do they awful lot of diseases. They
Speaker 1: eat a lot of ticks, so they prevent a lot
Speaker 1: of lime disease. I keep them around. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: actually the I should say, the Australian possum is not
Speaker 1: really related to the North American opossum. They're both more supial,
Speaker 1: so they're both distantly related. But just because they're both
Speaker 1: got possum in the name, they're not actually that closely
Speaker 1: related aside from the whole our soupial thing. Uh So,
Speaker 1: like the probably the Australian possum is like I don't
Speaker 1: know her. Oh no, we don't know. No no relation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so back to you're thinking of the opossum. You're thinking
Speaker 1: of the possum. That's not me. That's very different. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So back to the bilbie. Uh. The it is the
Speaker 1: bilbie is an objectively adorable creature. The little the pointy
Speaker 1: little snoot, the long ears, the fluffy tail, the large
Speaker 1: ears that they have actually worked similarly to the giboah ears.
Speaker 1: They help keep the bill be cool by dissipating heat,
Speaker 1: and of course it also helps them to hear threats.
Speaker 1: They are actually the largest of the little critters that
Speaker 1: we're talking about today. They're around ten toes or thirty
Speaker 1: to fifty long. Uh. Like other marsupials, they have a pouch.
Speaker 1: They give birth to very premature young that look more
Speaker 1: like a gross little jelly bean or fetus than a newborn,
Speaker 1: and they actually give birth after only fourteen days of development.
Speaker 1: And when they give birth, that little tiny jelly bean
Speaker 1: with like tiny stubby legs will crawl up into the
Speaker 1: mother's pouch and latch onto a teat. Which is it is?
Speaker 1: It's hardcore that they expect so much like of course
Speaker 1: we expect a lot of our kids. Maybe we push
Speaker 1: kids too much with extracurriculars and everything, but this is like, okay, now,
Speaker 1: climb a hairy mountain that is your mom as soon
Speaker 1: as you're born. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 1: marsupials have got us. They've got us there. They're step
Speaker 1: ahead of us in this respect that they having that
Speaker 1: pouch is so valuable because you just station does not
Speaker 1: need to be nearly as long. It's like kangaroos. Kangaroos
Speaker 1: are born, they don't even like tadpoles. Basically, they don't
Speaker 1: even have back legs. Essentially, like they crawl up into
Speaker 1: the pocket and then they just hang out in the
Speaker 1: pocket until they're enough to come out and explore. And
Speaker 1: that's God, that's so great. I wish we had something
Speaker 1: like that, because I mean you're telling me, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: I am very jealous of a lot of the way
Speaker 1: that a lot of animals have decided to deal with
Speaker 1: bearing offspring. I think that marsupials have a great system.
Speaker 1: In fact, the bilbie has such a good system here,
Speaker 1: you know how, like kangaroo pouches open from the top.
Speaker 1: Billbies like to burrow a lot, both in terms of
Speaker 1: their their dens but also for searching for food because
Speaker 1: they'll eat anything from like spiders, insects, small animals, seed, fruit, fungi,
Speaker 1: so they'll diggle for a lot of their food because
Speaker 1: they they love digging so much. If they their pouch
Speaker 1: opened up at the top as they dig, their pouch
Speaker 1: would just fill with dirt. So if they had they
Speaker 1: would just like bury their young alive, which would be bad.
Speaker 1: So instead their pouch actually opens up at the other
Speaker 1: end at the bottom, and it's I mean, like the
Speaker 1: entrance to the pouch is very like elastic, so it's
Speaker 1: not just like this floppy kind of purse where the
Speaker 1: babies are just gonna fall out, So that way, when
Speaker 1: they're digging and burrowing, none of the dirt gets into
Speaker 1: the pouch. But it also means that if they're just
Speaker 1: like sitting there and you look at their butts, sometimes
Speaker 1: like for for the females, sometimes you'll just see like
Speaker 1: a little baby face come out from like where it
Speaker 1: looks like she's just has like a fully formed like
Speaker 1: little baby like coming out of her. But of course
Speaker 1: it's not coming out of the butt, it's coming out
Speaker 1: of the pouch. But it's very funny. I I'm in
Speaker 1: the mistake of just searching for the Bilbie pouch so
Speaker 1: that I could see it, and I feel like I
Speaker 1: should have done this with safe search on incognito window.
Speaker 1: It is there's like humans basically opening these pouches up
Speaker 1: like and showing a baby inside of it. Five I'm scandalized.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, just just leave the bilbie pouch alone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't touch them. So uh Bilbies on like bunnies are omnivores,
Speaker 1: so you know, already cooler than the easter bunny. I
Speaker 1: love that they eat spiders. I mean, I do love spiders,
Speaker 1: but I also really admire animals that eat spiders because
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, it's just it's just cool, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. The legs don't bother them, they
Speaker 1: have like, uh you know, there's it's like, instead of
Speaker 1: like smoking being cool, I feel like eating spiders should
Speaker 1: be the new cool thing. Yeah I'm very cool in
Speaker 1: my sleep. Then, from what I hear, not true, Actually
Speaker 1: that is, don't worry you don't eat spiders and your sleep.
Speaker 1: Spiders do not want to be Like it's the idea
Speaker 1: that we eat a bunch of spiders and our sleep
Speaker 1: sort of supposes that spiders are like, oh a big
Speaker 1: wet moist cave. Let me go right in there. Let's
Speaker 1: see what we got in here rubbing their little pans together.
Speaker 1: Let's oh no, oh, this is worse, this little caving equipment,
Speaker 1: one of those little helmets with the light on it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so so they can actually that that long
Speaker 1: snoot of theirs. They can smell food underground, and they
Speaker 1: actually have a long, sticky tongue that they can use
Speaker 1: to lap up either insects or seeds from dug up
Speaker 1: holes in the ground. And in fact, this method of
Speaker 1: eating means they ingest a lot of sand, and so
Speaker 1: the sand they don't digest, it passes right through them.
Speaker 1: So you can tell what Bilbie poop is because it's
Speaker 1: mostly sand. Oh gross, that's a terrible existence. I don't
Speaker 1: even like going to the beach. Yeah, I don't like
Speaker 1: go to the beach because I don't like getting like
Speaker 1: the idea of getting sand in your mouth is horrifying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the stuff of nightmare. And it's just its whole
Speaker 1: life is that it's just everything tastes like that gray
Speaker 1: that sandwich that you accidentally dropped in the sand. You're
Speaker 1: like like boogie boarding and stuff is like when you
Speaker 1: like going to shore and then it's just sort of
Speaker 1: like sand getting into like it's everywhere and it's bad
Speaker 1: and I sort of don't understand people who enjoy the beach.
Speaker 1: Yeah you'll be two days later you'll be like sand
Speaker 1: will just fall out of your pants and where was that.
Speaker 1: You'll sneeze and like your hands are just full of sand.
Speaker 1: But I guess they're into it, so you know, and
Speaker 1: it's it's good for the environment because they're such proficient diggers.
Speaker 1: They actually helped till the soil and make the ground
Speaker 1: more fertile for plants to grow. So hey, you know,
Speaker 1: good for you. A good Easter bunny animal, a good
Speaker 1: bunny replacement. It's all about fertility, right, And probably people
Speaker 1: who are listening to this from Australia, um, are you
Speaker 1: know saying like uh, yeah, no, we use the bilbie
Speaker 1: sometimes as our Easter bunny and yes, so in Australia
Speaker 1: there is a campaign to make the bill Bei the
Speaker 1: official Easter bunny. And it's really interesting why so chocolate
Speaker 1: Easter bilbies have been sold for almost thirty years in Australia,
Speaker 1: with the funds going to the Foundation for Rabbit Free Australia.
Speaker 1: So suck it buddies. Whoa that is a uh? Is
Speaker 1: that a genocide. What are we talking about here but
Speaker 1: bunnigeddon rabbigeddon. Uh. Yeah, So why does Australia hate rabbits?
Speaker 1: What have rabbits ever done to Australia. Well, rabbits invaded Australia.
Speaker 1: They are an invasive species. Australia is an island that
Speaker 1: is extremely prone to invasive species. I mean, kane tone
Speaker 1: cough cough, wink wink. Uh, I mean I think I'm
Speaker 1: among friends. And so these invasive species can steal habitats resources,
Speaker 1: they can hunt native species. Of course, rabbits are not predators. However,
Speaker 1: they you know, breed extremely prolifically and they can eat
Speaker 1: a lot, and so they steal resources from native animals
Speaker 1: like bilbies, and so ecologists have declared war on invasive
Speaker 1: bunnies with the Easter bilbie as their mascot. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I just love I love that this. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's such a vindictive use of Easter. Yeah it does. See,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, we like this other animal to be
Speaker 1: our Easter bunny. And I was like, okay, that's fine,
Speaker 1: that's good. That's really cute. Yeah, and we would also
Speaker 1: like to kill all the other ones that you're using.
Speaker 1: That would be nice if we just didn't have to
Speaker 1: look at them anymore. Yeah, yeah, no, seriously, buddies, get out,
Speaker 1: we will murder you. Yeah no, it's I mean, I
Speaker 1: understand it though, because when you have an island like
Speaker 1: Australia and you have a lot of endemic species, that is,
Speaker 1: species that are only found in Australia and nowhere else
Speaker 1: in the world, and you have an invasive species that
Speaker 1: is threatening these animals, you know, it's like, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It is a serious problem. But yeah, just the the aggressive,
Speaker 1: the aggressive and angry energy of the easter Bilbie is
Speaker 1: is incredible and I do love it. It does feel
Speaker 1: like nationalism to me. But that's fine, fine, what's fine animals.
Speaker 1: We haven't we no one's no one's decided to stick
Speaker 1: a claim in the ground over that an issue yet,
Speaker 1: So have at it, Australia. Yeah alright, Well I don't
Speaker 1: gonna agree with you. I think the Bilby could be
Speaker 1: a really good choice, and already it seems like there's
Speaker 1: already momentum built behind it. So the rabbit and let's
Speaker 1: kill all of them. Let's kill him here too, Let's
Speaker 1: just kill him. Let's kill the rabbits. I think this
Speaker 1: is a great idea that Looney Tunes had it right.
Speaker 1: Kill the webbit, Elmer Fudd had it right. Uncancelled Elmer Fudd.
Speaker 1: He was right along. So before we go, would you
Speaker 1: like to play a little game. This is like the
Speaker 1: main reason I came, Katie, and I was, in fact,
Speaker 1: as you're asking me what animal I want to do
Speaker 1: this time, I was like the castuary and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: damn it, that was the animal last time. That This
Speaker 1: is just to make sure. This is the game where
Speaker 1: I get to you play an animal noise for me
Speaker 1: and I say I know what that is, and I
Speaker 1: tell you what it is and then the fun is over.
Speaker 1: But I look smart, right exactly, that is what this game.
Speaker 1: The game is make scorn seems smart game games like that.
Speaker 1: So I hear dog that is the Great North Italian
Speaker 1: nesting dog. She gets mad at the elevator, so I
Speaker 1: know it's it's a it's witchcraft that I think. I
Speaker 1: think science has gone too far with the elevator. A
Speaker 1: people mover. Excuse me, people can move themselves, So ignore
Speaker 1: the dog. The dog barking, But please do listen to this,
Speaker 1: which is last week's mr animals sound and the hint
Speaker 1: was could this be the call of a unicorn? M
Speaker 1: h wow, it was like echoe. So do you know
Speaker 1: who is squawking or talking or roaring? Could be any animal. Ah,
Speaker 1: it's so deep and resonant, and it sounds like it's
Speaker 1: echoing wherever it is. Um, I'm gonna say, hippo, is
Speaker 1: that your final answer? Remember remember that show? Remember Who
Speaker 1: Wants to Be a Millionaire? It's topical. Oh, does sound
Speaker 1: like here's the problem I'm having. It sounds like so
Speaker 1: many savannah animals, but also like the echoes really throwing me.
Speaker 1: It feels like it has to be somewhere in a canyon.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stay with hippo, all right, Well you're close
Speaker 1: and that it is an ungulate Mike a hippo. But
Speaker 1: it is not a hippo. It is actually the Arabian rics.
Speaker 1: So yes, So I was very shocked to hear this
Speaker 1: is what an oorc sounds like. It it's it's just
Speaker 1: much more imposing. But the Arabian oorcs is a really
Speaker 1: interesting animal and it is uh. It is something of
Speaker 1: a unicorn, both in terms of its rarity and the
Speaker 1: mythology behind it. So the Arabian Orics lives in the
Speaker 1: desert and step area of the Arabian Peninsula. And it
Speaker 1: is a an antelope that it's not. It's got sort
Speaker 1: of a I would say, you know, formidable body like.
Speaker 1: It's not one of these very very lean and sleek antelope.
Speaker 1: It's medium sized. The it's mostly sort of this whitish
Speaker 1: color with some black markings on its nose and legs.
Speaker 1: But the most remarkable part about it is that it
Speaker 1: has these incredibly incredibly long horns, which are just they're
Speaker 1: very long and pointy and frankly menacing looking. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: would be hard for it to stab you with those though,
Speaker 1: I think because they're so long they're unwheeling. It's actually both.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you'll have ungulates, you know, these hooved animals, where
Speaker 1: like only the males will have horns or antlers, but
Speaker 1: in this case, both sexes actually have these horns, so
Speaker 1: congratulations to them for a gender equitable society. And they
Speaker 1: can be up to around thirty inches or long, which
Speaker 1: is just incredible. Yeah, it's they're really big, is it?
Speaker 1: Just do they do they use them like goats and
Speaker 1: sheep or they just are button heads with each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think it is used in uh sort of
Speaker 1: posturing displays. They like to avoid the conflict more and
Speaker 1: they will use them to defend their territory. But they
Speaker 1: when they're doing sort of like conflict amongst themselves, they
Speaker 1: often will do a display kind of thing of like hey,
Speaker 1: check out how big my horns are. Seriously, you don't
Speaker 1: want to deal with these. So they like to avoid
Speaker 1: injuring each other because and they would rather sort of
Speaker 1: just intimidate each other with like the their horns. That
Speaker 1: checks out because it goes with the old adage you
Speaker 1: mess with the orcs, you get the horns. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: the classic adage. Uh so yeah, and the uh these
Speaker 1: orcs actually may have helped contribute to the unicorn myth
Speaker 1: along with other animals because the if people saw one
Speaker 1: of these animals with just a single horn, or maybe
Speaker 1: found one of these horns, it's thought that this may
Speaker 1: have lead people to believe that there is the mythical unicorn.
Speaker 1: And because these are actually these are horns, these are
Speaker 1: hollow bones that don't regrow. If an orcs loses one
Speaker 1: of them, it will never grow it back, so it
Speaker 1: will appear like a unicorn. For the rest of its life.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I know it's kind of sad, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't know that that even happened. I
Speaker 1: thought all animals were like elk and deer where it's
Speaker 1: just like you lose them every year and then you
Speaker 1: grow them back. Yeah. I mean it's really interesting because
Speaker 1: like elk and deer, antlers are there there is a
Speaker 1: lot of living tissue in there, so like they and
Speaker 1: they will um like near the base of the horn,
Speaker 1: and you know, they will break off and regrown. When
Speaker 1: they regrow, they actually have this sort of velvety skin
Speaker 1: coating on it that supplies to the hornet or the
Speaker 1: antlers as it grows. But yeah, with these horns, they
Speaker 1: actually don't go through that cycle of regrowth. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and well you stumped me, Katie. Yeah. And also, like unicorns,
Speaker 1: these are very well, they used to be exceedingly rare.
Speaker 1: They actually went extinct in the wild in the seventies,
Speaker 1: but there was a reintroduction program and now they do
Speaker 1: exist in the wild. Uh. And there's about um over
Speaker 1: a thousand now in the wild. So it's an incredible Yes,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Such good news. Okay, feel good story. At
Speaker 1: the end yep. Uh, we gotta we gotta have those
Speaker 1: feel good stories on this show. Yeah, considering the Pikes
Speaker 1: won't be around in six years, this is good. It's
Speaker 1: good at least the Orcs will unless they him up.
Speaker 1: And you've got an angry little writing on ORCX with
Speaker 1: its mouthful of flowers. I think you just made the
Speaker 1: next Pixar movie. Yeah that sounds great. Yeah, So onto
Speaker 1: this week's mystery animals sound. The hint does this ring
Speaker 1: a bell? So? Who do you think is making that sound? God?
Speaker 1: I at first I want to say a bird, but
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that that's a frog. If it's a bird,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be really in the weeds because there
Speaker 1: I just don't know him well enough. But I'm going
Speaker 1: to say that that is a that is a type
Speaker 1: of frog. What an interesting guess? Well, sore And in
Speaker 1: fact you'll find out next week when we will reveal
Speaker 1: the answer to this week's mystery sound next Wednesday for
Speaker 1: the next podcast. Thank you so much for joining me
Speaker 1: today to talk about my pleasure talk about all the
Speaker 1: better candidates for I like bunnies. I gotta say, I
Speaker 1: gotta admit I do like buddies. I do not hate bunnies.
Speaker 1: I think they're great. Yeah, they're fine, They've been nine
Speaker 1: They're good. I guess So where can people find you?
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at sore and Underscore
Speaker 1: lt D. You can find my podcast called Quick Question
Speaker 1: with Soren and Daniel that I do with Daniel O'Brien,
Speaker 1: and uh, you can find my writings now on American Dad.
Speaker 1: Go watch the show, and if you think you know
Speaker 1: the answer to this week's Mr Animal sound, you can
Speaker 1: write to me at Creature Future Pod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: I'm also on Twitter at Creature Feet Pod. That is
Speaker 1: f E T not fet something very different. Uh, and hey,
Speaker 1: guess what, thank you for watching the show. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate that. And when you guys leave ratings and reviews,
Speaker 1: I scream in delight. I like burst open my window
Speaker 1: and yell out onto the streets of Italy. Hey, um,
Speaker 1: fish Master seventy six loves my podcast, so suck it
Speaker 1: so and I am a bit of a social pariah
Speaker 1: because of that, but I'm proud um. But yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I seriously do love like every time someone writes in
Speaker 1: to the show or leaves a review, it really does
Speaker 1: make my day. So I really appreciate that, and thanks
Speaker 1: to the Space Colssics for their super awesome song excel Alumina.
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Speaker 1: come on, come on, see your next Wednesday.