February 1, 2023 • 57 mins
We talk about some of the angriest, most frustrated, most peeved critters out there, and how they cope! Joined by the absolutely furious Alex Schmidt!
Guest: Alex Schmidt
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Creature feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we're talking
about angry animals. The grumpiest ornery is most cantankerous critters
in the animal kingdom, from the frustrations of puzzled crows
to the tantrums of tiny tots and the dastardly acts
(00:29):
of bingeful varmints. Joining me today to discuss these cranky
critters is the most ill tempered podcaster around, Alex Schmidt.
Welcome her. Yeah, Um, stomping around the room from wearing
I'm wearing the what is it n w O T
shirt that they did where they did a heel turn
(00:50):
in the wrestling events. Anyway, forget it. It's great to
be here. How angry he is, themes coming out of
his ears. Ah. I thought it would be appropriate to
have you on the show, not only because of your
ill tempered disposition, Um, but also because I am now
the co host on secretly incredibly fascinating. I'm trying to
(01:10):
modulate how loudly I'm like whoa with the microphone, but
I'm very excited about it. And I'm sure folks who
listened to secretly incredibly fascinating No Katie from being Amazing
on like a dozen episodes of it, And and I
of course know this audience is huge Katie fans, so
everyone knows why this is awesome. She's on on my
show is secretly incredibly fastening every week now because we're
(01:31):
doing a whole thing where we're on the Maximum Fun
network now and can do it. And I'm just very
very excited about it. I'm super excited too. And as
you can tell, it is it is tough work, though,
dealing with Alex's moods and rage. You know, who knows
what wrestling t shirt I'm going to clay up wearing, right,
it could come. It could be anything. It could be
(01:54):
that bull logo the Rock has. You know, I barely
even know what that is. But here it comes all
the stomping and chair throwing, like with the folding chairs.
It's not great for podcasting, I gotta say, yeah it is.
I love the idea of an angry podcaster because if
folks noticed, thirty seconds ago, I was concerned about saying
(02:16):
woo too loud because I don't want to blow out
the system. So yeah, I don't know how people do
shock jack stuff with microphones. It must be a skill
that you learn over over time and breaking stuff. Who's that?
There's that comedian who's famous for being angry all the time.
He voiced anger in The Inside outis Louis Black? Yeah?
(02:37):
Does he have a podcast? I hope he does. I
want I want to have that experience he can pioneer
at like a like an astronaut or experimental scientist for us. Right,
they'll have to develop better audio engineering to accommodate his
screaming in spittle. Some sort of large had round recorder
(02:57):
does the most advanced and pioneering. So the reason we're
talking about anger today's I'm talking about animals and their
anger problems. What animals do when they get frustrated or
angry or alarmed, and it's often really interesting and sometimes adorable.
(03:17):
Uh So, first we're going to talk about crows. Now, crows,
as you might note, are highly intelligent animals, along with
other Corvid species such as ravens, magpies, New Caledonian crows. Um.
We have actually talked about Corvid intelligence on the show before.
(03:38):
There's a Swedish study at Luden University that shows the
ability of Ravens to figure out puzzles and make plans.
They found that when Ravens were given a food reward,
either using tokens or using a tool to solve a puzzle,
the ravens were able to plan out what supplies they'd
need to accomplish the task. They would even forego an
(03:59):
immediate food reward in exchange for a tool that the
ravens knew they would use later to get an even
greater food rewards. So they refused the immediate gratification of
food in exchange for a tool or token that they
know they can get an even better reward later. So
it showed that these Ravens were patient, smart and can
(04:19):
plan for the future. I really relate to saving up
for a treat for yourself. That's great. We we we
were saving up for a special vacuum cleaner for like
a while, and then we got it. I won't say
what brand, don't want to conflict advertisers, but we got
it and we were like, this is worth it. I'm
glad we saved up. It's actually Katie's Lucky Suck vacuum
(04:40):
that is being used by Alex, I don't know why
you're not taking the people about it. They're a sponsor.
Oh wow, that's great. Our tagline for lucky suck vacuums.
This gets all the cheerios in places unit and even
though you put them, it's a long tagline. We're working
on it. Yeah. Yeah, the saving up for bigger rewards later,
(05:03):
that's really and I mean that feels so human. It's
amazing that ravens do this. Uh. In fact, there's all
sorts of amazingly intelligent crow behaviors, like being trained to
use vending machines, using crosswalks to crack open nuts. They
leave nuts out on the road and cars go over them,
(05:23):
and they found that like a lot of them would
use the crosswalk because that's the easiest place to get
the nuts. Uh. And then crows like New Caledonian crows
and other species will modify tools. They'll like modify wires
or branches in order to use them as hooks or
levers to get food out of sticky situations. That's they
(05:45):
sound better at using, in particular vending machines than I am. Yeah,
I'm proud of them. You don't you don't have the
coin tied to a piece of floss that you put
in the vending machine and then pull back out like
in the cartoons. I've only ever been the master of
one vending machine, and it was a British vending machine
(06:06):
at when I was studying abroad, which is very nice,
but it was one slot in the machine. It would
just give you the candy without charging you. Master of
getting lion bars. It's a British candy and I love
it because it was free. But other other times I've
been just at the mercy of how well those spools
work and everything. Yeah, no, I mean I've definitely tried
(06:26):
to memorize which of the aspects, like sometimes there are
some vending machines where it's got a bit of a
loose spool around, like the Swedish fish or whatever, and
then you can usually get too instead at one. So yeah,
we're just a dream. We're just essentially being grave And
when we're doing that, or crows, I would receive my
(06:48):
free British candy and then squawk and fly around the
room very happily. It was not subtle. So I want
to focus on when crows get angry. So we've talked
about this on the show before, but I want to
go over it again. For those who don't know, there's
the famous University of Washington study where they learned that
crows will recognize human faces and hold a grudge against
(07:10):
humans that they deem evil or a threat. So experimenters
in the study war extremely creepy masks with a neutral
human face expression, which to me already they already looked
like Michael Myers. They look like serial killers. I showed
you a picture of one of these people. What what's your?
(07:31):
What's your? What's your? What's you're feeling about that, Alex?
It's I'm pretty sure this picture is a conventionally attractive lady,
but she is wearing a neutral male to me mask,
and then her hair is kind of all pushed behind
it in a way where she looks like, uh, like
(07:51):
that balding dude who plays a lot of annoying waiters
and romantic comedies, but like if that guy was mad,
and it's a really weird vibe. It's like she's sort
of looks like evil Richard E. Grant, And uh, I
don't like that experience for crows, But I'm sure it's
experimentally useful, right, and can you tell what she's holding there? Uh?
(08:12):
Is it like a dummy of a crow? What is that? Yeah,
it's a taxidermy crow. So okay, so a death threat.
It's a dead crow. Uh. The living crows did not
like this at all. Surprisingly, Uh. They saw took one
look at this, and I'm like, no, no, no, do
not like that. They memorized that mask and they would
(08:32):
harass an issue alarm calls anytime they saw someone wearing
that mask. And the crows would remember these masks from
long periods of time. So I honestly team crow on
this one. Like, if I saw a person like this,
I would also squawk and swoop and harass them. Yeah,
(08:53):
I'm I'm sort of waiting for the difference between me
and crows. Are we different at all? Probably the same species? Yeah?
If you if you want to learn more about this study,
including like what it was like to do what, I
actually interviewed Corvid researcher Kaylee Swift back in October in
an episode called Corvid Horrors, So check that out if
(09:16):
you want to learn more about that study. Um, but
today I want to talk about crow frustration and more
crow news, So I do I want to show you
what happens Alex when a crow gets frustrated by a puzzle,
Because we we've talked about how good crows are at puzzles,
(09:37):
and this is a pet crow. Now I don't recommend
crows as pets typically, but um, occasionally they wind up
as pets. And this one is doing one of those
shape puzzles and where you put like the shape in
the hole that has the same shape as the shape,
so the shape goes through the hole. And uh, this
(09:58):
crow is doing this puzzle and it's actually pretty good
at it, but it does get frustrated. I also, they
deserve all the credit in the world for doing this
without fingers. A great job. Oh yeah, So they are
(10:18):
doing some fast cuts to speed up the process of this,
but there are several lid tosses and box throws and
just angrily moving it to a whole another area. I'm
glad I accidentally kind of looped and wrestling at the
top of this. I don't know much about wrestling, but
this reminds me of everything I know about wrestling. Right,
So the crow gets frustrated with this puzzle. It seems like,
I mean, we're obviously sort of just intuiting what this
(10:41):
crow is feeling at the time, but uh, it just
like it can't get the shape into the puzzle. So
then it picks up the whole box, the whole puzzle,
and just throws it onto the ground, rips the puzzle apart,
picks up like the top lid to the puzzle, and
then like slams it back down, which I love. I mean,
like you know, everyone's had that, everyone's had that experience,
(11:04):
like you're doing a thing, you're trying to fix the thing,
and you're just like the thing isn't working, it's not
being fixed, and so you want to throw it, you
want to smash it on the ground. Uh, And it's
just it's I feel so sympatical with this crow, especially
if you're being like required to do this kind of task.
You know, like there's so many games and puzzles that
(11:25):
we get to choose as adults and then just like
move on from go to the kitchen and forget it.
But these crows are I assume, being required to do
this until they're done. I mean required asn't like probably
given a treat. I don't know, like required asn't they
signed a contract to do this puzzle, but to make
the world go around man. Yeah, that's how it is.
(11:47):
But treats everything around me they are required, right, I mean,
like I feel like even with reward, right, like if
you have to do a complicated task for reward, you
still get really frustrated doing that task. Uh. And there's
but even with voluntary puzzles, like I get so frustrated.
(12:09):
I mean it's like computer games, right, it's really fun,
but then sometimes like they make you scream and frustration
because you get a lot of pleasure out of doing it.
This reward pathway that games are really good at kind
of giving you that dopamine release when you're playing them,
but then you get to a frustrating part. God especially
(12:31):
Elden ring Jesus. Uh. And then like just like so frustrating,
but you want to keep doing it, but you're so angry. Uh.
And to that, here's another crow who is This one
is getting frustrated trying to get into a backpack. Um,
but this could just as easily be playing Call of
(12:52):
Duty and screaming and throwing their microphone on the ground.
Pretty nice backpack, but yep, flap flap flap, flap, flap
flap pick pick. I mean this video goes on for
like ten minutes. Uh, it's this crow getting increasingly frustrated
trying to open this backpack. At one point it poops
(13:12):
on the backpack. It's like viciously starts pecking at it,
pulling at it, tugging, trying to open it. Yeah. See,
speaking of saving up for items, I'm so particular about
a backpack this nice. I can't imagine going in on
it like this just out of not wanting to buy
a new backpack. But the crow is correct, this is
(13:33):
a hard to open thing. Shout out to the YouTube
user who simply titled this a frustrated crow. They're right,
they delivered. They came through. You don't want a video
it doesn't come through. That is wild, exactly so. And
I mean, obviously this is a small sample size of
a couple of videos that we have just observed, but
(13:54):
I'm fairly confident from what I know about crows and
their intelligence, that these are frustrated crows. Yeah, like they
they are emotionally frustrated there. They're like we would be. Yeah,
it makes sense. Yeah, I mean I I see it,
I feel it. Um And so that I do want
to talk about this incident that happened in where crows
(14:19):
menace to college campus university campus, and uh, there was
an email sent out to students. So in June of
students at Acadia University in Nova Scotia received an email
from the Department of Safety and Security warning students of
aggressive crows due to the nesting season and instructed students
(14:43):
not They instructed students not to carry anything shiny with them.
They also recommended waving your hands at crows that swooped
at you and to understand that crows have quote excellent memories,
which is kind of foreboding. Uh, and even more forebodingly,
they told students to try to make eye contact with
the crows as much as possible and that just it
(15:06):
feels like a horror movie, uh SCP Foundation kind of
thing where it's like, do not break eye contact with
the crows. You want to look at the crows as
long as you can. Just at university, Like okay, here
in the PR and Messaging department, it's very easy tell
(15:26):
people it's not a concern, and also leave your shiny
valuables at home. And we need to intimidate them into submission,
but like it's not a big deal. It's gonna be fine.
Do not turn your back on these crows anyways, have
a good day at class. Just send them an explanation
of what going to the mattresses means in the Godfather.
Otherwise it's fine. It's totally chill. Um so everything. But
(15:52):
the kind of last bit in that emails warning was
not exactly accurate. So um in terms of being good advice,
they didn't. They didn't give all the good advice. They
only gave some good advice. So Dr Kayleie Swift, who
I mentioned earlier, who I had on the show before
to talk about Corvid's and corvid horror. Uh, she was
(16:14):
actually interviewed in a Vice article by Julissa Castro Dale,
and uh. Dr Swift revealed that really the only reason
that these crows would attack you is if you get
too close to the nests with young nestlings, or get
too close to the nestlings, and they're really just trying
to warn you away. Um. But the idea that you
(16:36):
have to leave your shiny valuables at home is not
really true. So crows and other corvids aren't especially attracted
to shiny objects uh and will not attack you to
try to basically mug you for your shiny things. That's
not not necessarily true. Okay, that's good to know. Yeah,
(16:56):
And and I feel like that speaks to their intelligence
because that shines does not have financial value to them
a human society thing. I mean, it's they learn the
value of things like tokens and stuff, but if it's
just shiny, they don't necessarily They're not necessarily attracted to
it just because it's shiny. I think what's interesting is
people might notice more when a crow has something shiny,
(17:18):
and it's because we notice shiny things more, and so
because we notice them more, we notice it when a
crow or other bird has a shiny object. But it's
probably just because crows are naturally curious and we'll pick
up a lot of things that they find. Sometimes it's
going to be a shiny thing. But we humans when
we look at a crow, like, we're not going to
(17:39):
notice if they just have like a stick or a
berry in their mouth, but if they have like a
shiny thing, we're like, Wow, look that crow has got
a shiny thing. Grows must like shiny things because I
like shiny things. Wow. I like it feels like the
issue of understanding it is that they are smarter than
us and I have more perspective on life that you
don't need to chase those bubbles, you know, right, Like
(18:01):
if you want to, like, they must love bubbles like
I do. Right. I feel like if you want to
propose marriage to a crow, they'd be just as happy
with a peanut, which is why when I was proposed to,
I got a peanut because you're very Yeah, that makes sense.
(18:24):
So uh. Also, um, Dr Swift was saying that, yes,
it's true that crows have really good memories, but like
if you're just sort of walking by their nesting sites, um,
they're not going to like form a forever vengeance against
you and pursue you relentlessly for the rest of your life. Um.
(18:44):
But if you do pester them or threaten them, yes
they will. And unfortunately, one way to kind of pester
them would be like waving your hands at them, which
is like the university told students, like wave your arms
at them to like keep them way, But that's actually
bad advice because then the crows are going to remember
that you're the weird student who's like waving your arms
(19:05):
at them, making them feel threatened, and then they'll probably
remember you. That's that's such a big command from a university,
Like they're they're already trying to get you to do
a bunch of bursar paperwork and class registration kind of
kind of business like like also challenge an entire species
(19:26):
above our heads is a lot. That's a lot, man
like I have school spirit. But come on, follow up
follow up email from the administration, like, please disregard previous email,
new email. Please build a giant effigy of a crow
out of sticks and put peanuts on in offering bowls
(19:47):
to make up for our mistakes from last time. We're
very sorry. I'll hail our crow overlords. Yeah and all.
And honestly, if crows are so smart, maybe not the
worst overlords. Right, maybe they'll think through some stuff I
have to figured out. Sounds good. Yeah, and we'll have
like a peanut based economy. So yeah, I've I've been here,
(20:09):
delicately tried to put shape through a puzzle. They busted open,
they disrupted, Right, they are disruptors. Um doctor, So did
say that crows do pay attention to eye gaze, and
that direct eye contact will make them nervous and less
likely to swoop. So that part of the email was
actually correct. By making eye contact with them, you may
(20:33):
prevent a swooping attack because they can see that you're
looking at them, and they typically only will attack you
when you're turned away because they like the sneak attack man.
They're just can a species be too smart? How do
we mind that down? Sneak attacks are so clever? The
(20:57):
good news about this devastatingly smart species of flying animals
is that they not only have a good memory for
holding grudges, but they will also memorize you if you
feed them, for better or for worse. They may continue
to approach you for food and possibly get fussy if
you don't have anything for them. So choose wisely whether
(21:18):
you want to befriend crows um and you know, just
I would say in general, like somewhat limit your contact
with wild animals, but you know, like casual feeding is
probably okay with healthy items like a peanut here and there.
I'm now I'm curious if this could escalate where like
(21:40):
I become friends with the crows and then suddenly I'm
the neighborhood crow man if they start perching on my
arms when I'm walking around town and people are like
that crow guy again, and I'm like I have a name,
and they're like, you're right, your name is Chrowman. That's
all we can think of us. I'd kind of like
that reputation. Although in college I did kind of have
(22:01):
a reputation because whenever I was talking to someone, if
there was a squirrel nearby, I would get very distracted
and like go look at the squirrel and go like, oh,
look there's a squirrel. They're like, yes, we know, there's
lots of squirrels. I was like, yeah, but look at
that one. Look at them. So why are there beliefs
about the squirrels at Harvard being like distinctive Because the
(22:22):
college my brother went to they believe that about their squirrels.
And another friend of mine they went to a whole
different college where it was like we have special black
squirrels here. It's a thing. And I don't know if
it's actually distinctive or not. No, I don't remember them
being distinctive. They were distinctively fat um like they love.
They got lots of treats and goodies. Uh, probably too much,
(22:44):
but there was all There was one. There was an
albino squirrel that was pretty famous and there was a
squirrel that we called Nubbins because it was missing a
lot of its tail, so it only had a little
stumpy tail. Uh. So, you know, there were individual squirrels
that we knew and we loved, but um no, they
were pretty normal, normal squirrels. I think they were all
(23:06):
just Eastern gray squirrels. You were right to be looking
for the celebrity ones stuff. I've never seen an albino squirrel.
That's amazing, that's really cool. But the squirrels up in
Stanford are actually quite special because they are melanistic. They
have darker coats than typical and for some reason there's
a higher concentration of these squirrels near Stanford. Okay, there's
(23:28):
a similar belief about Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Interesting
do they have they have melanistic squirrels, sort of Darkerford squirrels.
I just know they're darker and they like it that.
That's probably the explanation they could there. They could have
like a higher population of melanistic squirrels there too. It's
really interesting. It's it's all these youths feeding them. Especially.
(23:49):
You need to control the crows and control the youths.
Those are my very positive and not at all regressive
thigots about society. Well, speaking of youths, we're actually going
to talk about that when we get back, and some
wonderful tantrums that young animals will do, so we're back.
(24:10):
I was actually when I was researching this episode, I
was curious about tantrums because you know, like the fussiest
of people are two year old. Um, although I would
say that there are I guess adults who have never
grown past that. Um. But man, the tantrums, the drama,
it's unrivaled. Uh. And so I was wondering if the
(24:34):
babies of other animals also liked to throw tantrums, And
indeed that seems to be the case, and it's very funny.
It would it would be kind of crushing if you were,
like humans are the only ones. Everybody else's babies tanned together.
They don't complain a bit quent wine and babies, babies,
(24:54):
babies in the animal kingdom know that they're they're potentially
gonna get eaten if they throw fuss, so uh, they
keep it, they keep it prim and proper. No uh,
no animal listening in what kingdom do indeed throw tantrum. So.
Animal behaviorist Jennifer L. Virtul In wrote about these fussy
(25:14):
babies and other family dynamics in nature in her book
Raised by Animals, The Surprising New Science of Animal Family Dynamics.
Uh so. A couple of examples that she highlighted um Apparently,
young prairie dogs when they are weaned will throw tantrums.
They will stomp on the ground, roll around, hop and
(25:38):
scream and cry to get their mother's attention, cling onto her,
and the mother's response is usually just to walk away.
That's trevenous and they that's an animal. Prairie dogs they're
like burrowing and stuff. Right, I'm imagining a lot of
angrily going into her out of burrows. Break yourself. Yeah yeah,
(26:02):
she'll just kind of walk away, go into a borough,
uh like when she's because she'll sort of determine that
she's done nursing them. And interestingly, they don't physically reprimand
their young, so they don't like attack their young for
throwing tantrums. They just kind of ignore the tantrum, just
let it, let it happen. Oh yeah, Because you can
(26:23):
pop into a tube blake Mario or something, you don't
have to deal with it. You're out of there. Forget it. Apparently,
tantrums when a young animals being weaned is relatively common.
Another species that this happens in is Barbary macaques, So
Barbary macaque babies will throw tantrum when they are being weaned.
(26:43):
Barbary macaques are Old World monkeys with long tails and
fluffy golden coats. They are very cute and they live
in the Atlas Mountains in North Africa as well as
a small population of a few hundred in Gibraltar. Um
So they have to endure cold winters so they grow
and especially fluffy winter coat that they shed in the summer.
(27:08):
So the baby macaques will throw a tantrum and cry
roll around on the ground when they are being weaned.
And also with these animals, with the Barbara maccaques, the
parents will just kind of calmly ignore, uh, these tantrums,
and so that is that's very interesting to me, Like
(27:28):
the animal parents tend to just like, oh, you're having
a tantrum, all right, just whatever, I'll i'm, I'll let
you leave into that. Then maybe maybe the parents just
remind them that they live near the lovely Mediterranean Sea,
right you know about this Katie, the lovely Mediterranean sea.
(27:49):
You can just go look at it and chill out
tantrums in this beautiful body of water. It is very calming. Um.
I live in northern Italy, so we get no Mediterranean sea,
so I am constantly stressed. Uh. And I thought it
was interesting that this author, Jennifer virtil In, brought up
(28:13):
both these barbary macaques and these prairie dogs because both
um have these interesting social lives. I wouldn't say that
their societies are exactly the same, but they both are
highly social animals and live together in these large groups.
So prairie dogs live in communal boroughs known as colonies
(28:33):
or towns, which is adorable. Each prairie dog town consists
of several family groups, and each family group has one
the two breeding males typically one but sometimes two uh
and two to three breeding females um. And then they
also have a few of their offspring uh living with them.
(28:53):
So within related family, prairie dogs will kiss each other
as a creating like make mouth content, act and groom
each other, which is adorable. I'm really glad It's great.
Less adorable is that, uh, sometimes they will kill their offspring.
So if a male wants to take over a family group,
(29:16):
he will kill the offspring of the previous mail. Uh.
This this happens in a lot of situations, like in
lion prides, Like like if a new male comes in
and tries to take over, he will kill the other offspring,
which not great, but you know it's the it's nature. Uh.
And also females will kill the offspring of other females
(29:38):
to decrease competition resources are scarce. Uh, so you know,
sometimes not so cute. But what is cute is they
have a complex alarm system they use to protect all
members of a prairie dog colony. They have like different
alarms for different types of predators and where they're coming from.
So it's like, uh, this really complex kind of alarm
(29:59):
system and the issue that alarm, So all the prairie
dogs know to go down in the tunnels. Um right,
like they're the alarm is like crows, crows and their
spooky masks and put those on like we're ready. Perfect, Yes,
a very stern prairie dog. It is still cute. Too bad,
it's still cute. It doesn't work. Cute, man, Can you
(30:19):
imagine like a Little Prairie Dog horror movie. Michael Meyer's
prairie dog is so cute just standing out in the
yard holding a knife. But it's it's a little prairie dog,
little cuteness. I would like keep petting him as he stabbed,
and your little knife e stabbing me in the spleen.
(30:41):
So interestingly, with prairie dogs, females tend to be the
core of prairie dog colonies, So males will disperse, They
will leave the colony to join other colonies and try
to find a mate, whereas the females tend to stay
in one colony typically their whole lives, and just like
as the sort of older dominant female like age out,
(31:02):
they will sort of take the place and become a
dominant breeding female. It's all so interesting. I came into
this knowing very little about prairie dogs, even though I
have a big interest in animals like bison in that
same ecosystem. I just kind of knew they're cute and uh,
and that there's one minor league baseball team mascot called
Sad Poodles, and it's prairie dogs, but they're called the
(31:24):
Sad Poodles. That's all I knew about them. Sad poodles. Yeah,
it's just like a cute sie name. It's not scientific,
but it's I think Amarillo Texas, the minor league baseball team,
the mascot is the sad Poodles. I love that. I'm
going to start calling them sad poodles. That's amazing. It
sounds a little insulting, but it's also amazing. Exactly. Yeah,
(31:44):
it's great. And I think in the I think in
the mascot drawing they have little cowboy hats. I won't
promise that I got double check, but yet, I mean,
all prairie dogs have cowboy hats. That's just that's just fact, right,
And the way of them, the predators wave them away,
get out of um. So onto the social lives of
(32:08):
barbary macaques, so they too live in large groups of
multiple families. Um. They are matriarchal, with a hierarchy of
related females and the lead matriarch. So these macaques actually
have a much less brutal society than the prairie dogs.
So the males in society are very gentle with offspring,
(32:29):
and unlike many other primate species, they actually spend much
of their time helping to rear the offspring, so these
males will play with them and groom them. They will
even care for offspring that are not their own, possibly
due to vague unknown paternity, given that females will mate
with multiple males in the group, which is really interesting
(32:52):
because there's this unconfirmed theory just basically an idea that
in early humans or human ancestors, no or vague paternity
selected for more cooperation and less aggression, just as we
see in these macaques, so more sort of communal living.
And so yeah, I just I find that very interesting
that it's like, well, I don't know whose kid this is,
(33:13):
so I might as well not kill it. I might
as well take care of it. Wow. Yeah, that's such
an interesting way to motivate it versus like this is
definitely my kid, so I have to protect this one
and just this one. Yeah, exactly. It's really interesting, and
I mean there's still you do definitely still see some
like sexual selection, like competitive pressures, like males really do
(33:34):
try to mate with as many females as possible, and
the same thing for the female, so they are trying
to um like increase their reproductive success. It wouldn't really
be stable evolutionarily otherwise. But it's this really interesting stable
system of like it's not so much like group selection,
but because they don't know which one is their offspring,
(33:55):
the more they take care of them, and the more
others take care of you know, basically all this parenting,
all communal parenting, like, the more likely their offspring are
going to survive as well. Wow. Yeah, it's such a
different mindset about like scarcity, I guess, yeah, you know,
versus Oh, there's only so much prairie food I need
to eat everybody. It's totally different. Well yeah, I mean, yeah,
(34:19):
back to back to the anger part. Though we're too happy.
We're into like wonderful society here. Um, chro mentality, chro
mentality men great, Uh yeah, I mean there might be
some usefulness to like I talked about how the prairie
dog and the macaques don't really punish their offspring when
they're like throwing a fit about weeding, and they're generally
(34:41):
pretty permissive. Um, there may be some benefit for them
being pretty gentle at that period of time of transition,
not really spurning the offspring if they're upset about weaning,
because weaning too early has been shown to cause aggression
later in life in some animal species. So there's been
research on go dogs, cats, and other domesticated animals that
(35:03):
have found that too early weaning and separation from their
mothers increases the risk of aggressive behaviors in these animals.
So it's really really interesting to me that in this
like lower stress, lower aggression community of barbary macaques, they
are raised communally by both males and females. They're given
plenty of attention UH and when they throw tantrums, they
(35:27):
aren't physically reprimanded, they're just gently allowed to kind of
work through their tantrum, and then that seems to kind
of potentially have an impact on these macaques development. Now,
there haven't been any specific studies on maccaques that I
know of in terms of too early separation, but the
fact this is seen in multiple species seems to indicate
(35:47):
that like separating um young UH animals from their parents
or from their mother too early can cause these developmental
social problems, because you know, it makes sense, they're not
they're not learning these social cues from their mothers. They're
not getting these sort of secure attachment to be able
to explore their world from their mother's that's amazing and
(36:11):
that's so Yeah. I feel like when you think about animals,
I try not to put too many human things on them,
but that sounds very human. Yeah, yeah, I mean I
think that it's uh, it is important. Like sure, we
don't want to like just put our human emotions on animals,
but we also don't want to deprive them of that
emotional range that they probably feel. Yeah, and I hadn't
(36:35):
heard of this species before the Barbary mccas. I'm excited
to see them and stuff. They're very cute. Wait, just
oh I didn't give you a picture, google it? Do it?
Oh I as I said that I was doing it.
It's it's it's happening right now. Oh yeah, that's a
fun that's a fun face. Man, that's good. Yeah. They've
got like sort of pinkish little faces, golden fur. Um,
(36:56):
they're very cute. I'm looking at one that almost appears
to have cat years. I know they're not cattiers, but
it's like pointing and that's great. That's a good vibe. No,
they've got like the adults have very serious little faces. Uh.
And then the babies are just man, it's so cute.
So so cute. I can see why their parents slit
them just throw tantrums. I'd let this baby throw a tantrum. Yeah, oh,
(37:19):
who can stop open? You know, just go for a
little guy, cry it out. I already promised to let
a prairie dog stab me like, so of course I'm
gonna let um. Okay, it's like ten years down the
line of prairie dog shows up at your doors, like
I've come to collect on a promise. And then the
(37:44):
red up. I hear a really cool score, like a
John Carpenter score. That's a great way to go. That's good.
So we've talked about animals who will hold grudges and
get frustrated at puzzles. We've talked about baby animals that
throw tantrums. Uh, and I want to talk about before
(38:07):
we go, animals who get angry when they sense someone
is not being fair. Which, again I feel like it's
so fine, we can talk about me, fine, fine out,
But yeah, I feel like this idea of like fairness,
(38:27):
of being mad at someone for being unfair to you,
it feels so human. But we do actually see this
in animals, so of course, looking at our more closely
related relatives, the chimpanzees. We can see this in quite
a spectacular way. So researchers at the Max Planck Institute
(38:49):
for Evolutionary Anthropology set up a devious situation for chimps
to navigate. This is these studies are so devious. I mean,
they're not. I don't think that these ones are particularly cruel.
They're just devious. You'll see what I mean. So, Uh,
these chimps were situated in little cubicles with a sliding
(39:11):
table that had food on it, and so they could
like there was like sort of a divider, like a
plexi glass or something divider, and so they could pull
the table under the plexi glass towards them and pick
up food and eat it. Or the table would like
already be there in place when they entered the the
when they entered the cubicle, so they could like sit
(39:32):
down and eat stuff from the table. But then there
was another cubicle facing them that also could like pull
on this table and pull the food towards them. So
this other chimp could pull the food away from the
previous chimp to get the food themselves. Uh. And now
here's the other element. Is the chimps had ropes that
they could pull on that would collapse the table and
(39:54):
cause all the food to like scatter onto the ground,
and the ground was kind of recessed, so like the
food would basically be out of reach. Uh So, like
I'm Chimpanzee Johnny Knoxville, and this is the trick table,
and I just do the whole jackass segment. Yeah. So
they found that when the chimp like had the food
(40:17):
in its own cubicle, it didn't pull a rope. Obviously
it's not going to sabotage itself. Um, And if the
food was just kind of in the other cubicle, the
chimp did not pull the rope. But when so the
first chimp comes in, it sees the food. Great, it's
going to get that food. But then the second chimp
(40:37):
comes in and grabs the food away from the first
chimp by pulling the table away. The first chimp pulled
on the rope to cause all the food to fall
down to punish the second chimp for stealing the food
from the first chimp. This is such it feels like
(40:58):
such a king Saliban make decisions terrible of justice with
like a lot of moving parts that are surprising and memorable.
It's great I feel like in that situation where like
King Solomon and dealing with chimp since like, well you
should I cut this baby in half, and they're like,
I get the butt one, I get the butt part,
DIBs on the butt um. So yeah, I mean it's
(41:24):
really interesting because the chimps would not collapse the table
out of jealousy. So like if they were blocked from
getting to the food, whereas one chimp could get to
the food but the other one couldn't, Like, they wouldn't
collapse the table. They weren't like, oh you get food
and I don't. That's not fair, and then collapse the table.
It was only when they perceived the other chimp as
having stolen the food from them that they would collapse
(41:47):
the table. So like they were frustrated with that other
chimp and they were punishing that chimp um basically say
like well, if I can't have this food and you
steal it from me, like then you're not getting that food. Man.
It's it's a lot of politics. Yeah, that's the first
(42:08):
thing I'm thinking of, Like we're we're arranging the fiscal
year budget in Chimpanzee Congress for where this or like
Judge duty. But then it's like these chimps with like
the food and then like like just trying to work
out this problem, and it's like I see, you know,
don't don't piss on my leg and tell me that
you know it's raining, but then the chimps are actually
(42:29):
peeing on her leg and you know it's chaos. Right,
don't piss on my leg like you usually do in
certain situations because that's how we socialize. Yeah, there's nothing
weird about it, but right now, no, not now, it's
a different thing. So there's actually been lots of research
on punishing cheaters in animals. So cheaters as in an
(42:50):
animal that will take advantage of a situation and usually
hurt the other animals in the group by taking advantage
of the situation. So uh, this could also be you
know how earlier we were talking about aloe parenting with
these barbary mcaques and um these prairie dogs you know,
like like take rearing young together in these groups, and
(43:11):
the um the cats all sort of communally raising. I mean,
in some situations there will be this communal raising, but
sometimes it is enforced with rules. So in mere cats,
more hens and carrion crows. They all share this feature
where young females will engage in alo parenting, which means,
(43:32):
you know, helping to raise the offspring of the older,
more dominant females. And researchers have found that increased time
helping to raise the offspring is associated with better fitness
for the babysitter and a higher rate of weight gain
and the high The hypothesis is that this is due
to either more feeding opportunities granted to them by the
(43:55):
dominant females or that they the ones that are not
being a good babies, that are not spending as much
time taking care of the offspring, are being punished by
the dominant females with more bullying more like food deprivations.
So it's kind of interesting because you have something where
it's like, oh, it's communal parenting that seems really good
and peaceful, but maybe there's, uh, there might be a carrot,
(44:19):
but there might also be a stick involved with these
situations of punishing the subordinate females who are not being
good babysitters. Yeah, yeah, all this stuff. I'm always amazed
and just mystified trying to imagine, like how these systems
get put in place, to write like, of course human
(44:42):
society there's also like a long, long, thousands of years
process of developing it. But like how how animals work
out these arrangements based on just biology or more. It's amazing. Yeah, yeah,
I mean for some animals it's like, you know, they
are born with certain instincts, Especially with simple animals or
animals that don't spend as much like social time sort
(45:03):
of learning from parents, it's like, okay, they probably are
born with a certain instinct. But with animals that are
really social, especially these intelligent animals like uh, you know,
uh corvids or apes, even with prairie dogs, there's some
element of learning from the older generations. So separating out
(45:23):
like what is that animal's instinct, what are they born
with kind of having that instinct for war, or what
do they acquire through social learning? That can be tricky sometimes,
I mean, as it is tricky with humans as well. Yeah,
that's a that's amazing, yeah, and good for I am.
I'm the most amazed by the species that to us
appear to do It's probably not scientifically accurate to call
(45:46):
it like no parenting, but the ones where just an
egg hatches and the parents gone and never see the gun.
Well I mean, yeah, no exactly. I mean like with
sea turtles, they lay their eggs, they leave them, they're like,
all right, good kiddos by, and then they hatch and
they are instinctively attracted to light shining on the water,
(46:06):
and they go towards the water. It's like you're just
born little like robot computers, just going towards the ocean.
That's amazing. Yeah, it's like an operating system exactly. Yeah, welcome.
But speaking of cheaters, sometimes cheaters get very creative to
avoid wrath in nature. So this is found in young
(46:29):
white winged chuffs and Australian bird with a name that
is sort of a misnomer because they're not related to
alpine chuffs. Still, these are blackbirds with red eyes and
they are social where juveniles are expected to help feed
the offspring of their parents, so feed their younger siblings,
(46:50):
and if they returned to the nest with no food,
they are often chastised by their parents kind of swooped at,
pecked at, um punished. But if they return to the
nest with food, uh, they are not punished. So some
of these birds will return to the nest with food,
put the food in their younger siblings mouths and then
pluck it right back out of their mouths and need it,
(47:11):
and they do not get punished. Yeah, they just respect game.
I guess. Hey. I mean, the the thought for why
this is sort of stable in terms of evolution is
that these are related birds, so that these are the
older siblings and the younger siblings, and that when the
older siblings do this, like steal the food from the
(47:34):
younger siblings, they are um needing that nourishment. They need
that food, and so the cheating is actually okay in
this instance because uh, in terms of the passing on
the genetic material, because uh, by doing this occasional cheating,
they're not necessarily um going to prevent the younger offspring
(47:58):
from flourishing, um, but they are also ensuring that they
are getting enough nourishments. So it's like it's an off.
It's sort of you know, it's like a trade off
for the older sibling getting more nourishment versus the younger sibling.
We're just lucky that with I'm lucky. I guess that
humans aren't like that because I have an older brother
(48:19):
and like, it'd be so funny if like, in order
to survive, he had to like pull peanut butter and
jelly sandwiches out of my mouth. Yeah, there are a
few rules. But of course these birds are Australian and
the joke about Australia is that everything's wild and we'll
(48:41):
get outlaw there. So it's probably where it's coming from Australians.
Let us know what your version of peanut butter and
jelly sandwiches are and if older and younger siblings have
to fight for them. Yeah, yeah, let us know your
version of peanut butter and jelly and ben why is
it vega might just vegamu vegimlt sand wiches and I
(49:03):
had to fight my older brother for it. That's not Australian. No,
I didn't do good there. That wasn't a good accent.
And and this bird name, was it a chuff? You said,
a chuck chuff? Yeah? Interesting, Yeah, that's a fun name
even that even feels Australians. It's spelled yeah, I mean
there's Alpine Chuff's as well. Um, it's spelled the same.
(49:26):
They're not. They look like they're related, but they're not.
It's also it's spelled like c h O u g
H so to me, I try to I want to
pronounce it how yeah, or like chow, which is probably
not chows. Yeah, no, it's not chow's, but it's chuffs
(49:49):
because there's I know, if you British people too, and
they like to say they are chuffed like c h
e U F f e D they're happy. Yeah no,
I keep thinking of that. Well, it's a whole mom
and wealth of people speaking English and we don't understand
each other. I watch a lot of a lot of
British bigoff and they do say I'm quite chuffed a lot,
and I would love for that to happen where they're
(50:11):
just covered in cows. Yeah, but the birds are too smart.
They know four in twenty of them they'll get made
into a poet. Right, stay out of there. It's a
good move. So before we go, we have to play
it a little game. And that game is called Guess
who squawk and the Mry Animal Sound Game. Every week
(50:33):
I play a Mr Animal sound in you the listener
and you the guests trying to guess who is squawking.
So uh, lots of times people do people bring this up.
It's so good, Thank you, thank you so last week's
hint was whoever named this animal was being a bit judgmental,
(50:54):
and then actually, so that was I gave another hint,
which was this is often used in move beast to
create a spooky, haunted atmosphere, even when it's inaccurate to
do so. And this is the sounds. That's not the sound. Sorry,
that's my floating YouTube sounds it is. Yeah, it's spooky
(51:31):
and it sounds like a whining sort of maybe I'm
thinking of animal tantrums like babies that I'm pried for that. Uh,
but and a big echo. I'm very impressed with anybody
who can really you want you want to be like
that mountain person who like calls out to the whole
valley the sound of music or something. Yeah, it does
(51:51):
sound sort of like a bit of a weir w. Yeah,
I'm gonna say it's some kind of mountain animal maybe
lives in trees. But I almost want to go mammal.
I don't know. Interesting. Well, congratulations to Tiffany in enjoy
p who correctly guessed that this is the call of
(52:13):
a loon. So Loons are a group of aquatic bird
species found in North America and northern Eurasia. They are
sort of duck like birds with a more pointed bill,
often with a white belly and throat, black back and
black or gray head. Typically they have red eyes, and
often they have striking white lines and markings on their neck,
(52:37):
chest and back. Uh. The loon you just heard is
the red throated loon, which is found in Arctic regions
or coastal regions in the northern Hemisphere. When it's breeding season,
they develop a bright, rusty red patch of feathers on
their throat to attract mates. They form monogamous, long term
pair bonds, and that eerie cry they make is just
(52:58):
a way for pairs to communicate with each other or
for parents to call their offspring. So it's not spooky,
it's very sweet. But that does not stop people in
the movie industry from using this sound to try to
evince a spooky atmosphere sometimes like the Untamed wild And
it's really funny because they will use it in environments
(53:20):
where this loon would never be found, like in the
jungle or something that's not really where they are um
or like just like some it's just like this is wilderness.
This is spooky, haunted wilderness, and that's what the sound
is meant to evoke. I like that. That means that
jungle or whatever contains one lost Canadian. Right, that's great.
(53:43):
It's a bird, Canadian bird. Like he's just like with
those suitcases with all the stickers out of the various
places they've been wearing a two and very politely asking
for directions. Yes, shout out Canada. What a good bird
it is. And it's like it's spooky, but it's pretty.
It sort of reminds me of like whale song or
(54:05):
something like that that has an ominous feel sort of,
but it's also nice. Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful. I think.
All right, now onto this week's Mr Annals sound the hint.
This baby sure likes to make a point. M hmm.
I'm really really thinking about that. Bathing likes to make
(54:26):
a point hint because I immediately just imagine cute checks
like chicken babies, but they're not pointy, uh left field
gas scorpions, interesting gifts, very interesting. Well, you will find
out if you're right or wrong on next week's episode
(54:46):
the podcast. Actually guess the fact that I don't bliep
you out means you are wrong, So that's next. It's
not a scorpion spoil liter alert. Alex is wrong from
a week from now. I was going to be listening
to this like in my scorpion jacket from the movie
(55:08):
Drive with a little scorpion flag, like I'm so ready
to be right fingers. But it's a foam stinger. Yeah,
so yes. I will reveal the answer to this week's
mystery animal sound next time on Creature Feature. Alex, thank
(55:29):
you so much for joining me today and unleashing You're
just boundless rage. Thank you. People in my neighborhood are
going to be like the chroman is really calm. I
guess he worked it out this morning instead of your
angry stomping around. Uh, And thank you guys so much
(55:52):
for listening and check out. Secretly incredibly fascinating because Alex
is on it and also me too, I'm truly overjoyed
about it. I feel like I'm underselling it, but just
because people know how awesome you are. So but it's
it's the best thing in the world. It's it's if
you listen to the podcast before, it's continuing to be
(56:12):
the same podcast, but with this wonderful co host. It's
like two Louis Blacks. Screaming into a void about interesting things.
It just yeah, it just starts to create some sort
of physics reaction where it destroys and it like it's
a black hole or some type. Obviously I know a
lot about black holes. That's why that was such a
(56:33):
fluent joke. But we're screaming on a level that is
vibrating the corks of every atom or something. Yeah that's right, yeah,
any of that stuff. Yeah. Well, thank you guys so
much for listening. Uh and thanks to the Space Classics
for their super awesome song. Exo Lumina creates Your Features
(56:57):
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like
the one you just heard, visit the I Heart Radio
app Apple podcast or Hey gus, what what have you
listen to? Your favorite shows? See you next Wednesday.
Welcome to Creature feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we're talking
about angry animals. The grumpiest ornery is most cantankerous critters
in the animal kingdom, from the frustrations of puzzled crows
to the tantrums of tiny tots and the dastardly acts
(00:29):
of bingeful varmints. Joining me today to discuss these cranky
critters is the most ill tempered podcaster around, Alex Schmidt.
Welcome her. Yeah, Um, stomping around the room from wearing
I'm wearing the what is it n w O T
shirt that they did where they did a heel turn
(00:50):
in the wrestling events. Anyway, forget it. It's great to
be here. How angry he is, themes coming out of
his ears. Ah. I thought it would be appropriate to
have you on the show, not only because of your
ill tempered disposition, Um, but also because I am now
the co host on secretly incredibly fascinating. I'm trying to
(01:10):
modulate how loudly I'm like whoa with the microphone, but
I'm very excited about it. And I'm sure folks who
listened to secretly incredibly fascinating No Katie from being Amazing
on like a dozen episodes of it, And and I
of course know this audience is huge Katie fans, so
everyone knows why this is awesome. She's on on my
show is secretly incredibly fastening every week now because we're
(01:31):
doing a whole thing where we're on the Maximum Fun
network now and can do it. And I'm just very
very excited about it. I'm super excited too. And as
you can tell, it is it is tough work, though,
dealing with Alex's moods and rage. You know, who knows
what wrestling t shirt I'm going to clay up wearing, right,
it could come. It could be anything. It could be
(01:54):
that bull logo the Rock has. You know, I barely
even know what that is. But here it comes all
the stomping and chair throwing, like with the folding chairs.
It's not great for podcasting, I gotta say, yeah it is.
I love the idea of an angry podcaster because if
folks noticed, thirty seconds ago, I was concerned about saying
(02:16):
woo too loud because I don't want to blow out
the system. So yeah, I don't know how people do
shock jack stuff with microphones. It must be a skill
that you learn over over time and breaking stuff. Who's that?
There's that comedian who's famous for being angry all the time.
He voiced anger in The Inside outis Louis Black? Yeah?
(02:37):
Does he have a podcast? I hope he does. I
want I want to have that experience he can pioneer
at like a like an astronaut or experimental scientist for us. Right,
they'll have to develop better audio engineering to accommodate his
screaming in spittle. Some sort of large had round recorder
(02:57):
does the most advanced and pioneering. So the reason we're
talking about anger today's I'm talking about animals and their
anger problems. What animals do when they get frustrated or
angry or alarmed, and it's often really interesting and sometimes adorable.
(03:17):
Uh So, first we're going to talk about crows. Now, crows,
as you might note, are highly intelligent animals, along with
other Corvid species such as ravens, magpies, New Caledonian crows. Um.
We have actually talked about Corvid intelligence on the show before.
(03:38):
There's a Swedish study at Luden University that shows the
ability of Ravens to figure out puzzles and make plans.
They found that when Ravens were given a food reward,
either using tokens or using a tool to solve a puzzle,
the ravens were able to plan out what supplies they'd
need to accomplish the task. They would even forego an
(03:59):
immediate food reward in exchange for a tool that the
ravens knew they would use later to get an even
greater food rewards. So they refused the immediate gratification of
food in exchange for a tool or token that they
know they can get an even better reward later. So
it showed that these Ravens were patient, smart and can
(04:19):
plan for the future. I really relate to saving up
for a treat for yourself. That's great. We we we
were saving up for a special vacuum cleaner for like
a while, and then we got it. I won't say
what brand, don't want to conflict advertisers, but we got
it and we were like, this is worth it. I'm
glad we saved up. It's actually Katie's Lucky Suck vacuum
(04:40):
that is being used by Alex, I don't know why
you're not taking the people about it. They're a sponsor.
Oh wow, that's great. Our tagline for lucky suck vacuums.
This gets all the cheerios in places unit and even
though you put them, it's a long tagline. We're working
on it. Yeah. Yeah, the saving up for bigger rewards later,
(05:03):
that's really and I mean that feels so human. It's
amazing that ravens do this. Uh. In fact, there's all
sorts of amazingly intelligent crow behaviors, like being trained to
use vending machines, using crosswalks to crack open nuts. They
leave nuts out on the road and cars go over them,
(05:23):
and they found that like a lot of them would
use the crosswalk because that's the easiest place to get
the nuts. Uh. And then crows like New Caledonian crows
and other species will modify tools. They'll like modify wires
or branches in order to use them as hooks or
levers to get food out of sticky situations. That's they
(05:45):
sound better at using, in particular vending machines than I am. Yeah,
I'm proud of them. You don't you don't have the
coin tied to a piece of floss that you put
in the vending machine and then pull back out like
in the cartoons. I've only ever been the master of
one vending machine, and it was a British vending machine
(06:06):
at when I was studying abroad, which is very nice,
but it was one slot in the machine. It would
just give you the candy without charging you. Master of
getting lion bars. It's a British candy and I love
it because it was free. But other other times I've
been just at the mercy of how well those spools
work and everything. Yeah, no, I mean I've definitely tried
(06:26):
to memorize which of the aspects, like sometimes there are
some vending machines where it's got a bit of a
loose spool around, like the Swedish fish or whatever, and
then you can usually get too instead at one. So yeah,
we're just a dream. We're just essentially being grave And
when we're doing that, or crows, I would receive my
(06:48):
free British candy and then squawk and fly around the
room very happily. It was not subtle. So I want
to focus on when crows get angry. So we've talked
about this on the show before, but I want to
go over it again. For those who don't know, there's
the famous University of Washington study where they learned that
crows will recognize human faces and hold a grudge against
(07:10):
humans that they deem evil or a threat. So experimenters
in the study war extremely creepy masks with a neutral
human face expression, which to me already they already looked
like Michael Myers. They look like serial killers. I showed
you a picture of one of these people. What what's your?
(07:31):
What's your? What's your? What's you're feeling about that, Alex?
It's I'm pretty sure this picture is a conventionally attractive lady,
but she is wearing a neutral male to me mask,
and then her hair is kind of all pushed behind
it in a way where she looks like, uh, like
(07:51):
that balding dude who plays a lot of annoying waiters
and romantic comedies, but like if that guy was mad,
and it's a really weird vibe. It's like she's sort
of looks like evil Richard E. Grant, And uh, I
don't like that experience for crows, But I'm sure it's
experimentally useful, right, and can you tell what she's holding there? Uh?
(08:12):
Is it like a dummy of a crow? What is that? Yeah,
it's a taxidermy crow. So okay, so a death threat.
It's a dead crow. Uh. The living crows did not
like this at all. Surprisingly, Uh. They saw took one
look at this, and I'm like, no, no, no, do
not like that. They memorized that mask and they would
(08:32):
harass an issue alarm calls anytime they saw someone wearing
that mask. And the crows would remember these masks from
long periods of time. So I honestly team crow on
this one. Like, if I saw a person like this,
I would also squawk and swoop and harass them. Yeah,
(08:53):
I'm I'm sort of waiting for the difference between me
and crows. Are we different at all? Probably the same species? Yeah?
If you if you want to learn more about this study,
including like what it was like to do what, I
actually interviewed Corvid researcher Kaylee Swift back in October in
an episode called Corvid Horrors, So check that out if
(09:16):
you want to learn more about that study. Um, but
today I want to talk about crow frustration and more
crow news, So I do I want to show you
what happens Alex when a crow gets frustrated by a puzzle,
Because we we've talked about how good crows are at puzzles,
(09:37):
and this is a pet crow. Now I don't recommend
crows as pets typically, but um, occasionally they wind up
as pets. And this one is doing one of those
shape puzzles and where you put like the shape in
the hole that has the same shape as the shape,
so the shape goes through the hole. And uh, this
(09:58):
crow is doing this puzzle and it's actually pretty good
at it, but it does get frustrated. I also, they
deserve all the credit in the world for doing this
without fingers. A great job. Oh yeah, So they are
(10:18):
doing some fast cuts to speed up the process of this,
but there are several lid tosses and box throws and
just angrily moving it to a whole another area. I'm
glad I accidentally kind of looped and wrestling at the
top of this. I don't know much about wrestling, but
this reminds me of everything I know about wrestling. Right,
So the crow gets frustrated with this puzzle. It seems like,
I mean, we're obviously sort of just intuiting what this
(10:41):
crow is feeling at the time, but uh, it just
like it can't get the shape into the puzzle. So
then it picks up the whole box, the whole puzzle,
and just throws it onto the ground, rips the puzzle apart,
picks up like the top lid to the puzzle, and
then like slams it back down, which I love. I mean,
like you know, everyone's had that, everyone's had that experience,
(11:04):
like you're doing a thing, you're trying to fix the thing,
and you're just like the thing isn't working, it's not
being fixed, and so you want to throw it, you
want to smash it on the ground. Uh, And it's
just it's I feel so sympatical with this crow, especially
if you're being like required to do this kind of task.
You know, like there's so many games and puzzles that
(11:25):
we get to choose as adults and then just like
move on from go to the kitchen and forget it.
But these crows are I assume, being required to do
this until they're done. I mean required asn't like probably
given a treat. I don't know, like required asn't they
signed a contract to do this puzzle, but to make
the world go around man. Yeah, that's how it is.
(11:47):
But treats everything around me they are required, right, I mean,
like I feel like even with reward, right, like if
you have to do a complicated task for reward, you
still get really frustrated doing that task. Uh. And there's
but even with voluntary puzzles, like I get so frustrated.
(12:09):
I mean it's like computer games, right, it's really fun,
but then sometimes like they make you scream and frustration
because you get a lot of pleasure out of doing it.
This reward pathway that games are really good at kind
of giving you that dopamine release when you're playing them,
but then you get to a frustrating part. God especially
(12:31):
Elden ring Jesus. Uh. And then like just like so frustrating,
but you want to keep doing it, but you're so angry. Uh.
And to that, here's another crow who is This one
is getting frustrated trying to get into a backpack. Um,
but this could just as easily be playing Call of
(12:52):
Duty and screaming and throwing their microphone on the ground.
Pretty nice backpack, but yep, flap flap flap, flap, flap
flap pick pick. I mean this video goes on for
like ten minutes. Uh, it's this crow getting increasingly frustrated
trying to open this backpack. At one point it poops
(13:12):
on the backpack. It's like viciously starts pecking at it,
pulling at it, tugging, trying to open it. Yeah. See,
speaking of saving up for items, I'm so particular about
a backpack this nice. I can't imagine going in on
it like this just out of not wanting to buy
a new backpack. But the crow is correct, this is
(13:33):
a hard to open thing. Shout out to the YouTube
user who simply titled this a frustrated crow. They're right,
they delivered. They came through. You don't want a video
it doesn't come through. That is wild, exactly so. And
I mean, obviously this is a small sample size of
a couple of videos that we have just observed, but
(13:54):
I'm fairly confident from what I know about crows and
their intelligence, that these are frustrated crows. Yeah, like they
they are emotionally frustrated there. They're like we would be. Yeah,
it makes sense. Yeah, I mean I I see it,
I feel it. Um And so that I do want
to talk about this incident that happened in where crows
(14:19):
menace to college campus university campus, and uh, there was
an email sent out to students. So in June of
students at Acadia University in Nova Scotia received an email
from the Department of Safety and Security warning students of
aggressive crows due to the nesting season and instructed students
(14:43):
not They instructed students not to carry anything shiny with them.
They also recommended waving your hands at crows that swooped
at you and to understand that crows have quote excellent memories,
which is kind of foreboding. Uh, and even more forebodingly,
they told students to try to make eye contact with
the crows as much as possible and that just it
(15:06):
feels like a horror movie, uh SCP Foundation kind of
thing where it's like, do not break eye contact with
the crows. You want to look at the crows as
long as you can. Just at university, Like okay, here
in the PR and Messaging department, it's very easy tell
(15:26):
people it's not a concern, and also leave your shiny
valuables at home. And we need to intimidate them into submission,
but like it's not a big deal. It's gonna be fine.
Do not turn your back on these crows anyways, have
a good day at class. Just send them an explanation
of what going to the mattresses means in the Godfather.
Otherwise it's fine. It's totally chill. Um so everything. But
(15:52):
the kind of last bit in that emails warning was
not exactly accurate. So um in terms of being good advice,
they didn't. They didn't give all the good advice. They
only gave some good advice. So Dr Kayleie Swift, who
I mentioned earlier, who I had on the show before
to talk about Corvid's and corvid horror. Uh, she was
(16:14):
actually interviewed in a Vice article by Julissa Castro Dale,
and uh. Dr Swift revealed that really the only reason
that these crows would attack you is if you get
too close to the nests with young nestlings, or get
too close to the nestlings, and they're really just trying
to warn you away. Um. But the idea that you
(16:36):
have to leave your shiny valuables at home is not
really true. So crows and other corvids aren't especially attracted
to shiny objects uh and will not attack you to
try to basically mug you for your shiny things. That's
not not necessarily true. Okay, that's good to know. Yeah,
(16:56):
And and I feel like that speaks to their intelligence
because that shines does not have financial value to them
a human society thing. I mean, it's they learn the
value of things like tokens and stuff, but if it's
just shiny, they don't necessarily They're not necessarily attracted to
it just because it's shiny. I think what's interesting is
people might notice more when a crow has something shiny,
(17:18):
and it's because we notice shiny things more, and so
because we notice them more, we notice it when a
crow or other bird has a shiny object. But it's
probably just because crows are naturally curious and we'll pick
up a lot of things that they find. Sometimes it's
going to be a shiny thing. But we humans when
we look at a crow, like, we're not going to
(17:39):
notice if they just have like a stick or a
berry in their mouth, but if they have like a
shiny thing, we're like, Wow, look that crow has got
a shiny thing. Grows must like shiny things because I
like shiny things. Wow. I like it feels like the
issue of understanding it is that they are smarter than
us and I have more perspective on life that you
don't need to chase those bubbles, you know, right, Like
(18:01):
if you want to, like, they must love bubbles like
I do. Right. I feel like if you want to
propose marriage to a crow, they'd be just as happy
with a peanut, which is why when I was proposed to,
I got a peanut because you're very Yeah, that makes sense.
(18:24):
So uh. Also, um, Dr Swift was saying that, yes,
it's true that crows have really good memories, but like
if you're just sort of walking by their nesting sites, um,
they're not going to like form a forever vengeance against
you and pursue you relentlessly for the rest of your life. Um.
(18:44):
But if you do pester them or threaten them, yes
they will. And unfortunately, one way to kind of pester
them would be like waving your hands at them, which
is like the university told students, like wave your arms
at them to like keep them way, But that's actually
bad advice because then the crows are going to remember
that you're the weird student who's like waving your arms
(19:05):
at them, making them feel threatened, and then they'll probably
remember you. That's that's such a big command from a university,
Like they're they're already trying to get you to do
a bunch of bursar paperwork and class registration kind of
kind of business like like also challenge an entire species
(19:26):
above our heads is a lot. That's a lot, man
like I have school spirit. But come on, follow up
follow up email from the administration, like, please disregard previous email,
new email. Please build a giant effigy of a crow
out of sticks and put peanuts on in offering bowls
(19:47):
to make up for our mistakes from last time. We're
very sorry. I'll hail our crow overlords. Yeah and all.
And honestly, if crows are so smart, maybe not the
worst overlords. Right, maybe they'll think through some stuff I
have to figured out. Sounds good. Yeah, and we'll have
like a peanut based economy. So yeah, I've I've been here,
(20:09):
delicately tried to put shape through a puzzle. They busted open,
they disrupted, Right, they are disruptors. Um doctor, So did
say that crows do pay attention to eye gaze, and
that direct eye contact will make them nervous and less
likely to swoop. So that part of the email was
actually correct. By making eye contact with them, you may
(20:33):
prevent a swooping attack because they can see that you're
looking at them, and they typically only will attack you
when you're turned away because they like the sneak attack man.
They're just can a species be too smart? How do
we mind that down? Sneak attacks are so clever? The
(20:57):
good news about this devastatingly smart species of flying animals
is that they not only have a good memory for
holding grudges, but they will also memorize you if you
feed them, for better or for worse. They may continue
to approach you for food and possibly get fussy if
you don't have anything for them. So choose wisely whether
(21:18):
you want to befriend crows um and you know, just
I would say in general, like somewhat limit your contact
with wild animals, but you know, like casual feeding is
probably okay with healthy items like a peanut here and there.
I'm now I'm curious if this could escalate where like
(21:40):
I become friends with the crows and then suddenly I'm
the neighborhood crow man if they start perching on my
arms when I'm walking around town and people are like
that crow guy again, and I'm like I have a name,
and they're like, you're right, your name is Chrowman. That's
all we can think of us. I'd kind of like
that reputation. Although in college I did kind of have
(22:01):
a reputation because whenever I was talking to someone, if
there was a squirrel nearby, I would get very distracted
and like go look at the squirrel and go like, oh,
look there's a squirrel. They're like, yes, we know, there's
lots of squirrels. I was like, yeah, but look at
that one. Look at them. So why are there beliefs
about the squirrels at Harvard being like distinctive Because the
(22:22):
college my brother went to they believe that about their squirrels.
And another friend of mine they went to a whole
different college where it was like we have special black
squirrels here. It's a thing. And I don't know if
it's actually distinctive or not. No, I don't remember them
being distinctive. They were distinctively fat um like they love.
They got lots of treats and goodies. Uh, probably too much,
(22:44):
but there was all There was one. There was an
albino squirrel that was pretty famous and there was a
squirrel that we called Nubbins because it was missing a
lot of its tail, so it only had a little
stumpy tail. Uh. So, you know, there were individual squirrels
that we knew and we loved, but um no, they
were pretty normal, normal squirrels. I think they were all
(23:06):
just Eastern gray squirrels. You were right to be looking
for the celebrity ones stuff. I've never seen an albino squirrel.
That's amazing, that's really cool. But the squirrels up in
Stanford are actually quite special because they are melanistic. They
have darker coats than typical and for some reason there's
a higher concentration of these squirrels near Stanford. Okay, there's
(23:28):
a similar belief about Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Interesting
do they have they have melanistic squirrels, sort of Darkerford squirrels.
I just know they're darker and they like it that.
That's probably the explanation they could there. They could have
like a higher population of melanistic squirrels there too. It's
really interesting. It's it's all these youths feeding them. Especially.
(23:49):
You need to control the crows and control the youths.
Those are my very positive and not at all regressive
thigots about society. Well, speaking of youths, we're actually going
to talk about that when we get back, and some
wonderful tantrums that young animals will do, so we're back.
(24:10):
I was actually when I was researching this episode, I
was curious about tantrums because you know, like the fussiest
of people are two year old. Um, although I would
say that there are I guess adults who have never
grown past that. Um. But man, the tantrums, the drama,
it's unrivaled. Uh. And so I was wondering if the
(24:34):
babies of other animals also liked to throw tantrums, And
indeed that seems to be the case, and it's very funny.
It would it would be kind of crushing if you were,
like humans are the only ones. Everybody else's babies tanned together.
They don't complain a bit quent wine and babies, babies,
(24:54):
babies in the animal kingdom know that they're they're potentially
gonna get eaten if they throw fuss, so uh, they
keep it, they keep it prim and proper. No uh,
no animal listening in what kingdom do indeed throw tantrum. So.
Animal behaviorist Jennifer L. Virtul In wrote about these fussy
(25:14):
babies and other family dynamics in nature in her book
Raised by Animals, The Surprising New Science of Animal Family Dynamics.
Uh so. A couple of examples that she highlighted um Apparently,
young prairie dogs when they are weaned will throw tantrums.
They will stomp on the ground, roll around, hop and
(25:38):
scream and cry to get their mother's attention, cling onto her,
and the mother's response is usually just to walk away.
That's trevenous and they that's an animal. Prairie dogs they're
like burrowing and stuff. Right, I'm imagining a lot of
angrily going into her out of burrows. Break yourself. Yeah yeah,
(26:02):
she'll just kind of walk away, go into a borough,
uh like when she's because she'll sort of determine that
she's done nursing them. And interestingly, they don't physically reprimand
their young, so they don't like attack their young for
throwing tantrums. They just kind of ignore the tantrum, just
let it, let it happen. Oh yeah, Because you can
(26:23):
pop into a tube blake Mario or something, you don't
have to deal with it. You're out of there. Forget it. Apparently,
tantrums when a young animals being weaned is relatively common.
Another species that this happens in is Barbary macaques, So
Barbary macaque babies will throw tantrum when they are being weaned.
(26:43):
Barbary macaques are Old World monkeys with long tails and
fluffy golden coats. They are very cute and they live
in the Atlas Mountains in North Africa as well as
a small population of a few hundred in Gibraltar. Um
So they have to endure cold winters so they grow
and especially fluffy winter coat that they shed in the summer.
(27:08):
So the baby macaques will throw a tantrum and cry
roll around on the ground when they are being weaned.
And also with these animals, with the Barbara maccaques, the
parents will just kind of calmly ignore, uh, these tantrums,
and so that is that's very interesting to me, Like
(27:28):
the animal parents tend to just like, oh, you're having
a tantrum, all right, just whatever, I'll i'm, I'll let
you leave into that. Then maybe maybe the parents just
remind them that they live near the lovely Mediterranean Sea,
right you know about this Katie, the lovely Mediterranean sea.
(27:49):
You can just go look at it and chill out
tantrums in this beautiful body of water. It is very calming. Um.
I live in northern Italy, so we get no Mediterranean sea,
so I am constantly stressed. Uh. And I thought it
was interesting that this author, Jennifer virtil In, brought up
(28:13):
both these barbary macaques and these prairie dogs because both
um have these interesting social lives. I wouldn't say that
their societies are exactly the same, but they both are
highly social animals and live together in these large groups.
So prairie dogs live in communal boroughs known as colonies
(28:33):
or towns, which is adorable. Each prairie dog town consists
of several family groups, and each family group has one
the two breeding males typically one but sometimes two uh
and two to three breeding females um. And then they
also have a few of their offspring uh living with them.
(28:53):
So within related family, prairie dogs will kiss each other
as a creating like make mouth content, act and groom
each other, which is adorable. I'm really glad It's great.
Less adorable is that, uh, sometimes they will kill their offspring.
So if a male wants to take over a family group,
(29:16):
he will kill the offspring of the previous mail. Uh.
This this happens in a lot of situations, like in
lion prides, Like like if a new male comes in
and tries to take over, he will kill the other offspring,
which not great, but you know it's the it's nature. Uh.
And also females will kill the offspring of other females
(29:38):
to decrease competition resources are scarce. Uh, so you know,
sometimes not so cute. But what is cute is they
have a complex alarm system they use to protect all
members of a prairie dog colony. They have like different
alarms for different types of predators and where they're coming from.
So it's like, uh, this really complex kind of alarm
(29:59):
system and the issue that alarm, So all the prairie
dogs know to go down in the tunnels. Um right,
like they're the alarm is like crows, crows and their
spooky masks and put those on like we're ready. Perfect, Yes,
a very stern prairie dog. It is still cute. Too bad,
it's still cute. It doesn't work. Cute, man, Can you
(30:19):
imagine like a Little Prairie Dog horror movie. Michael Meyer's
prairie dog is so cute just standing out in the
yard holding a knife. But it's it's a little prairie dog,
little cuteness. I would like keep petting him as he stabbed,
and your little knife e stabbing me in the spleen.
(30:41):
So interestingly, with prairie dogs, females tend to be the
core of prairie dog colonies, So males will disperse, They
will leave the colony to join other colonies and try
to find a mate, whereas the females tend to stay
in one colony typically their whole lives, and just like
as the sort of older dominant female like age out,
(31:02):
they will sort of take the place and become a
dominant breeding female. It's all so interesting. I came into
this knowing very little about prairie dogs, even though I
have a big interest in animals like bison in that
same ecosystem. I just kind of knew they're cute and uh,
and that there's one minor league baseball team mascot called
Sad Poodles, and it's prairie dogs, but they're called the
(31:24):
Sad Poodles. That's all I knew about them. Sad poodles. Yeah,
it's just like a cute sie name. It's not scientific,
but it's I think Amarillo Texas, the minor league baseball team,
the mascot is the sad Poodles. I love that. I'm
going to start calling them sad poodles. That's amazing. It
sounds a little insulting, but it's also amazing. Exactly. Yeah,
(31:44):
it's great. And I think in the I think in
the mascot drawing they have little cowboy hats. I won't
promise that I got double check, but yet, I mean,
all prairie dogs have cowboy hats. That's just that's just fact, right,
And the way of them, the predators wave them away,
get out of um. So onto the social lives of
(32:08):
barbary macaques, so they too live in large groups of
multiple families. Um. They are matriarchal, with a hierarchy of
related females and the lead matriarch. So these macaques actually
have a much less brutal society than the prairie dogs.
So the males in society are very gentle with offspring,
(32:29):
and unlike many other primate species, they actually spend much
of their time helping to rear the offspring, so these
males will play with them and groom them. They will
even care for offspring that are not their own, possibly
due to vague unknown paternity, given that females will mate
with multiple males in the group, which is really interesting
(32:52):
because there's this unconfirmed theory just basically an idea that
in early humans or human ancestors, no or vague paternity
selected for more cooperation and less aggression, just as we
see in these macaques, so more sort of communal living.
And so yeah, I just I find that very interesting
that it's like, well, I don't know whose kid this is,
(33:13):
so I might as well not kill it. I might
as well take care of it. Wow. Yeah, that's such
an interesting way to motivate it versus like this is
definitely my kid, so I have to protect this one
and just this one. Yeah, exactly. It's really interesting, and
I mean there's still you do definitely still see some
like sexual selection, like competitive pressures, like males really do
(33:34):
try to mate with as many females as possible, and
the same thing for the female, so they are trying
to um like increase their reproductive success. It wouldn't really
be stable evolutionarily otherwise. But it's this really interesting stable
system of like it's not so much like group selection,
but because they don't know which one is their offspring,
(33:55):
the more they take care of them, and the more
others take care of you know, basically all this parenting,
all communal parenting, like, the more likely their offspring are
going to survive as well. Wow. Yeah, it's such a
different mindset about like scarcity, I guess, yeah, you know,
versus Oh, there's only so much prairie food I need
to eat everybody. It's totally different. Well yeah, I mean, yeah,
(34:19):
back to back to the anger part. Though we're too happy.
We're into like wonderful society here. Um, chro mentality, chro
mentality men great, Uh yeah, I mean there might be
some usefulness to like I talked about how the prairie
dog and the macaques don't really punish their offspring when
they're like throwing a fit about weeding, and they're generally
(34:41):
pretty permissive. Um, there may be some benefit for them
being pretty gentle at that period of time of transition,
not really spurning the offspring if they're upset about weaning,
because weaning too early has been shown to cause aggression
later in life in some animal species. So there's been
research on go dogs, cats, and other domesticated animals that
(35:03):
have found that too early weaning and separation from their
mothers increases the risk of aggressive behaviors in these animals.
So it's really really interesting to me that in this
like lower stress, lower aggression community of barbary macaques, they
are raised communally by both males and females. They're given
plenty of attention UH and when they throw tantrums, they
(35:27):
aren't physically reprimanded, they're just gently allowed to kind of
work through their tantrum, and then that seems to kind
of potentially have an impact on these macaques development. Now,
there haven't been any specific studies on maccaques that I
know of in terms of too early separation, but the
fact this is seen in multiple species seems to indicate
(35:47):
that like separating um young UH animals from their parents
or from their mother too early can cause these developmental
social problems, because you know, it makes sense, they're not
they're not learning these social cues from their mothers. They're
not getting these sort of secure attachment to be able
to explore their world from their mother's that's amazing and
(36:11):
that's so Yeah. I feel like when you think about animals,
I try not to put too many human things on them,
but that sounds very human. Yeah, yeah, I mean I
think that it's uh, it is important. Like sure, we
don't want to like just put our human emotions on animals,
but we also don't want to deprive them of that
emotional range that they probably feel. Yeah, and I hadn't
(36:35):
heard of this species before the Barbary mccas. I'm excited
to see them and stuff. They're very cute. Wait, just
oh I didn't give you a picture, google it? Do it?
Oh I as I said that I was doing it.
It's it's it's happening right now. Oh yeah, that's a
fun that's a fun face. Man, that's good. Yeah. They've
got like sort of pinkish little faces, golden fur. Um,
(36:56):
they're very cute. I'm looking at one that almost appears
to have cat years. I know they're not cattiers, but
it's like pointing and that's great. That's a good vibe. No,
they've got like the adults have very serious little faces. Uh.
And then the babies are just man, it's so cute.
So so cute. I can see why their parents slit
them just throw tantrums. I'd let this baby throw a tantrum. Yeah, oh,
(37:19):
who can stop open? You know, just go for a
little guy, cry it out. I already promised to let
a prairie dog stab me like, so of course I'm
gonna let um. Okay, it's like ten years down the
line of prairie dog shows up at your doors, like
I've come to collect on a promise. And then the
(37:44):
red up. I hear a really cool score, like a
John Carpenter score. That's a great way to go. That's good.
So we've talked about animals who will hold grudges and
get frustrated at puzzles. We've talked about baby animals that
throw tantrums. Uh, and I want to talk about before
(38:07):
we go, animals who get angry when they sense someone
is not being fair. Which, again I feel like it's
so fine, we can talk about me, fine, fine out,
But yeah, I feel like this idea of like fairness,
(38:27):
of being mad at someone for being unfair to you,
it feels so human. But we do actually see this
in animals, so of course, looking at our more closely
related relatives, the chimpanzees. We can see this in quite
a spectacular way. So researchers at the Max Planck Institute
(38:49):
for Evolutionary Anthropology set up a devious situation for chimps
to navigate. This is these studies are so devious. I mean,
they're not. I don't think that these ones are particularly cruel.
They're just devious. You'll see what I mean. So, Uh,
these chimps were situated in little cubicles with a sliding
(39:11):
table that had food on it, and so they could
like there was like sort of a divider, like a
plexi glass or something divider, and so they could pull
the table under the plexi glass towards them and pick
up food and eat it. Or the table would like
already be there in place when they entered the the
when they entered the cubicle, so they could like sit
(39:32):
down and eat stuff from the table. But then there
was another cubicle facing them that also could like pull
on this table and pull the food towards them. So
this other chimp could pull the food away from the
previous chimp to get the food themselves. Uh. And now
here's the other element. Is the chimps had ropes that
they could pull on that would collapse the table and
(39:54):
cause all the food to like scatter onto the ground,
and the ground was kind of recessed, so like the
food would basically be out of reach. Uh So, like
I'm Chimpanzee Johnny Knoxville, and this is the trick table,
and I just do the whole jackass segment. Yeah. So
they found that when the chimp like had the food
(40:17):
in its own cubicle, it didn't pull a rope. Obviously
it's not going to sabotage itself. Um, And if the
food was just kind of in the other cubicle, the
chimp did not pull the rope. But when so the
first chimp comes in, it sees the food. Great, it's
going to get that food. But then the second chimp
(40:37):
comes in and grabs the food away from the first
chimp by pulling the table away. The first chimp pulled
on the rope to cause all the food to fall
down to punish the second chimp for stealing the food
from the first chimp. This is such it feels like
(40:58):
such a king Saliban make decisions terrible of justice with
like a lot of moving parts that are surprising and memorable.
It's great I feel like in that situation where like
King Solomon and dealing with chimp since like, well you
should I cut this baby in half, and they're like,
I get the butt one, I get the butt part,
DIBs on the butt um. So yeah, I mean it's
(41:24):
really interesting because the chimps would not collapse the table
out of jealousy. So like if they were blocked from
getting to the food, whereas one chimp could get to
the food but the other one couldn't, Like, they wouldn't
collapse the table. They weren't like, oh you get food
and I don't. That's not fair, and then collapse the table.
It was only when they perceived the other chimp as
having stolen the food from them that they would collapse
(41:47):
the table. So like they were frustrated with that other
chimp and they were punishing that chimp um basically say
like well, if I can't have this food and you
steal it from me, like then you're not getting that food. Man.
It's it's a lot of politics. Yeah, that's the first
(42:08):
thing I'm thinking of, Like we're we're arranging the fiscal
year budget in Chimpanzee Congress for where this or like
Judge duty. But then it's like these chimps with like
the food and then like like just trying to work
out this problem, and it's like I see, you know,
don't don't piss on my leg and tell me that
you know it's raining, but then the chimps are actually
(42:29):
peeing on her leg and you know it's chaos. Right,
don't piss on my leg like you usually do in
certain situations because that's how we socialize. Yeah, there's nothing
weird about it, but right now, no, not now, it's
a different thing. So there's actually been lots of research
on punishing cheaters in animals. So cheaters as in an
(42:50):
animal that will take advantage of a situation and usually
hurt the other animals in the group by taking advantage
of the situation. So uh, this could also be you
know how earlier we were talking about aloe parenting with
these barbary mcaques and um these prairie dogs you know,
like like take rearing young together in these groups, and
(43:11):
the um the cats all sort of communally raising. I mean,
in some situations there will be this communal raising, but
sometimes it is enforced with rules. So in mere cats,
more hens and carrion crows. They all share this feature
where young females will engage in alo parenting, which means,
(43:32):
you know, helping to raise the offspring of the older,
more dominant females. And researchers have found that increased time
helping to raise the offspring is associated with better fitness
for the babysitter and a higher rate of weight gain
and the high The hypothesis is that this is due
to either more feeding opportunities granted to them by the
(43:55):
dominant females or that they the ones that are not
being a good babies, that are not spending as much
time taking care of the offspring, are being punished by
the dominant females with more bullying more like food deprivations.
So it's kind of interesting because you have something where
it's like, oh, it's communal parenting that seems really good
and peaceful, but maybe there's, uh, there might be a carrot,
(44:19):
but there might also be a stick involved with these
situations of punishing the subordinate females who are not being
good babysitters. Yeah, yeah, all this stuff. I'm always amazed
and just mystified trying to imagine, like how these systems
get put in place, to write like, of course human
(44:42):
society there's also like a long, long, thousands of years
process of developing it. But like how how animals work
out these arrangements based on just biology or more. It's amazing. Yeah, yeah,
I mean for some animals it's like, you know, they
are born with certain instincts, Especially with simple animals or
animals that don't spend as much like social time sort
(45:03):
of learning from parents, it's like, okay, they probably are
born with a certain instinct. But with animals that are
really social, especially these intelligent animals like uh, you know,
uh corvids or apes, even with prairie dogs, there's some
element of learning from the older generations. So separating out
(45:23):
like what is that animal's instinct, what are they born
with kind of having that instinct for war, or what
do they acquire through social learning? That can be tricky sometimes,
I mean, as it is tricky with humans as well. Yeah,
that's a that's amazing, yeah, and good for I am.
I'm the most amazed by the species that to us
appear to do It's probably not scientifically accurate to call
(45:46):
it like no parenting, but the ones where just an
egg hatches and the parents gone and never see the gun.
Well I mean, yeah, no exactly. I mean like with
sea turtles, they lay their eggs, they leave them, they're like,
all right, good kiddos by, and then they hatch and
they are instinctively attracted to light shining on the water,
(46:06):
and they go towards the water. It's like you're just
born little like robot computers, just going towards the ocean.
That's amazing. Yeah, it's like an operating system exactly. Yeah, welcome.
But speaking of cheaters, sometimes cheaters get very creative to
avoid wrath in nature. So this is found in young
(46:29):
white winged chuffs and Australian bird with a name that
is sort of a misnomer because they're not related to
alpine chuffs. Still, these are blackbirds with red eyes and
they are social where juveniles are expected to help feed
the offspring of their parents, so feed their younger siblings,
(46:50):
and if they returned to the nest with no food,
they are often chastised by their parents kind of swooped at,
pecked at, um punished. But if they return to the
nest with food, uh, they are not punished. So some
of these birds will return to the nest with food,
put the food in their younger siblings mouths and then
pluck it right back out of their mouths and need it,
(47:11):
and they do not get punished. Yeah, they just respect game.
I guess. Hey. I mean, the the thought for why
this is sort of stable in terms of evolution is
that these are related birds, so that these are the
older siblings and the younger siblings, and that when the
older siblings do this, like steal the food from the
(47:34):
younger siblings, they are um needing that nourishment. They need
that food, and so the cheating is actually okay in
this instance because uh, in terms of the passing on
the genetic material, because uh, by doing this occasional cheating,
they're not necessarily um going to prevent the younger offspring
(47:58):
from flourishing, um, but they are also ensuring that they
are getting enough nourishments. So it's like it's an off.
It's sort of you know, it's like a trade off
for the older sibling getting more nourishment versus the younger sibling.
We're just lucky that with I'm lucky. I guess that
humans aren't like that because I have an older brother
(48:19):
and like, it'd be so funny if like, in order
to survive, he had to like pull peanut butter and
jelly sandwiches out of my mouth. Yeah, there are a
few rules. But of course these birds are Australian and
the joke about Australia is that everything's wild and we'll
(48:41):
get outlaw there. So it's probably where it's coming from Australians.
Let us know what your version of peanut butter and
jelly sandwiches are and if older and younger siblings have
to fight for them. Yeah, yeah, let us know your
version of peanut butter and jelly and ben why is
it vega might just vegamu vegimlt sand wiches and I
(49:03):
had to fight my older brother for it. That's not Australian. No,
I didn't do good there. That wasn't a good accent.
And and this bird name, was it a chuff? You said,
a chuck chuff? Yeah? Interesting, Yeah, that's a fun name
even that even feels Australians. It's spelled yeah, I mean
there's Alpine Chuff's as well. Um, it's spelled the same.
(49:26):
They're not. They look like they're related, but they're not.
It's also it's spelled like c h O u g
H so to me, I try to I want to
pronounce it how yeah, or like chow, which is probably
not chows. Yeah, no, it's not chow's, but it's chuffs
(49:49):
because there's I know, if you British people too, and
they like to say they are chuffed like c h
e U F f e D they're happy. Yeah no,
I keep thinking of that. Well, it's a whole mom
and wealth of people speaking English and we don't understand
each other. I watch a lot of a lot of
British bigoff and they do say I'm quite chuffed a lot,
and I would love for that to happen where they're
(50:11):
just covered in cows. Yeah, but the birds are too smart.
They know four in twenty of them they'll get made
into a poet. Right, stay out of there. It's a
good move. So before we go, we have to play
it a little game. And that game is called Guess
who squawk and the Mry Animal Sound Game. Every week
(50:33):
I play a Mr Animal sound in you the listener
and you the guests trying to guess who is squawking.
So uh, lots of times people do people bring this up.
It's so good, Thank you, thank you so last week's
hint was whoever named this animal was being a bit judgmental,
(50:54):
and then actually, so that was I gave another hint,
which was this is often used in move beast to
create a spooky, haunted atmosphere, even when it's inaccurate to
do so. And this is the sounds. That's not the sound. Sorry,
that's my floating YouTube sounds it is. Yeah, it's spooky
(51:31):
and it sounds like a whining sort of maybe I'm
thinking of animal tantrums like babies that I'm pried for that. Uh,
but and a big echo. I'm very impressed with anybody
who can really you want you want to be like
that mountain person who like calls out to the whole
valley the sound of music or something. Yeah, it does
(51:51):
sound sort of like a bit of a weir w. Yeah,
I'm gonna say it's some kind of mountain animal maybe
lives in trees. But I almost want to go mammal.
I don't know. Interesting. Well, congratulations to Tiffany in enjoy
p who correctly guessed that this is the call of
(52:13):
a loon. So Loons are a group of aquatic bird
species found in North America and northern Eurasia. They are
sort of duck like birds with a more pointed bill,
often with a white belly and throat, black back and
black or gray head. Typically they have red eyes, and
often they have striking white lines and markings on their neck,
(52:37):
chest and back. Uh. The loon you just heard is
the red throated loon, which is found in Arctic regions
or coastal regions in the northern Hemisphere. When it's breeding season,
they develop a bright, rusty red patch of feathers on
their throat to attract mates. They form monogamous, long term
pair bonds, and that eerie cry they make is just
(52:58):
a way for pairs to communicate with each other or
for parents to call their offspring. So it's not spooky,
it's very sweet. But that does not stop people in
the movie industry from using this sound to try to
evince a spooky atmosphere sometimes like the Untamed wild And
it's really funny because they will use it in environments
(53:20):
where this loon would never be found, like in the
jungle or something that's not really where they are um
or like just like some it's just like this is wilderness.
This is spooky, haunted wilderness, and that's what the sound
is meant to evoke. I like that. That means that
jungle or whatever contains one lost Canadian. Right, that's great.
(53:43):
It's a bird, Canadian bird. Like he's just like with
those suitcases with all the stickers out of the various
places they've been wearing a two and very politely asking
for directions. Yes, shout out Canada. What a good bird
it is. And it's like it's spooky, but it's pretty.
It sort of reminds me of like whale song or
(54:05):
something like that that has an ominous feel sort of,
but it's also nice. Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful. I think.
All right, now onto this week's Mr Annals sound the hint.
This baby sure likes to make a point. M hmm.
I'm really really thinking about that. Bathing likes to make
(54:26):
a point hint because I immediately just imagine cute checks
like chicken babies, but they're not pointy, uh left field
gas scorpions, interesting gifts, very interesting. Well, you will find
out if you're right or wrong on next week's episode
(54:46):
the podcast. Actually guess the fact that I don't bliep
you out means you are wrong, So that's next. It's
not a scorpion spoil liter alert. Alex is wrong from
a week from now. I was going to be listening
to this like in my scorpion jacket from the movie
(55:08):
Drive with a little scorpion flag, like I'm so ready
to be right fingers. But it's a foam stinger. Yeah,
so yes. I will reveal the answer to this week's
mystery animal sound next time on Creature Feature. Alex, thank
(55:29):
you so much for joining me today and unleashing You're
just boundless rage. Thank you. People in my neighborhood are
going to be like the chroman is really calm. I
guess he worked it out this morning instead of your
angry stomping around. Uh, And thank you guys so much
(55:52):
for listening and check out. Secretly incredibly fascinating because Alex
is on it and also me too, I'm truly overjoyed
about it. I feel like I'm underselling it, but just
because people know how awesome you are. So but it's
it's the best thing in the world. It's it's if
you listen to the podcast before, it's continuing to be
(56:12):
the same podcast, but with this wonderful co host. It's
like two Louis Blacks. Screaming into a void about interesting things.
It just yeah, it just starts to create some sort
of physics reaction where it destroys and it like it's
a black hole or some type. Obviously I know a
lot about black holes. That's why that was such a
(56:33):
fluent joke. But we're screaming on a level that is
vibrating the corks of every atom or something. Yeah that's right, yeah,
any of that stuff. Yeah. Well, thank you guys so
much for listening. Uh and thanks to the Space Classics
for their super awesome song. Exo Lumina creates Your Features
(56:57):
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like
the one you just heard, visit the I Heart Radio
app Apple podcast or Hey gus, what what have you
listen to? Your favorite shows? See you next Wednesday.
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Katie Goldin
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