February 9, 2022 • 29 mins
It's listener questions day! A sexy game of rock paper scissors lizards, eels mating in the Bermuda triangle, and Doggie Bowser, M.D., all your questions answered! (P.S: No goats were harmed in the making of this podcast).
Footnotes:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xSwpxwMqsXRIrWt9zvZlwpmOg_IERaov0A9q9Ie5MTM/edit?usp=sharing
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Creature Feature Production of My Heart Radio. I'm
your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, guess what,
it's just you me, some recording equipment and a document
I've got open where I wrote my notes because we
(00:26):
are doing listener questions today. That's right. You write me
your questions and I answer them. I sure do. And
if you think you have some questions or know you
have questions that you want to ask me, you can
always email me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com.
(00:47):
Can also send me in your pet pictures, your thoughts,
your hopes and dreams. I try to respond to as
many as I can in as good amount of time
as I can, and sometimes I will answer them on
the show like I'm doing right now. I've got some
(01:08):
really exciting questions that I am so pumped, so hyped
to talk about today. Let's start out with this one.
Why don't we? This is from A B M. Hi, Katie,
I really enjoy listening to your podcast, and I was
wondering if you had ever heard of the side Blotched
Lizard and their Rock paper scissors mating strategy. I heard
(01:28):
about this in another podcast about Rock Paper Scissors, but
I was curious to know more and to know your
thoughts on it. P s. As a side note, you
should invite Josh and Chuck from stuff you should know
on your podcast. So thank you Abby M for the
wonderful question. First of all, I love Josh and Chuck.
(01:49):
They were my entry into listening to podcasts. Uh what
feels like a really long time ago, which probably is
a long time ago, because that's that's how time works.
But yeah, no, I love them. Um, maybe maybe I'll
work up the courage to try and invite them on.
I don't know, but it would. It would be one
of those things where I'd just be like, Hey, you're
Josh and Chuck. What the heck, What the heck are
(02:11):
you doing talking to me? But maybe maybe I'll try
so on to blotch lizards, so side Blotched lizards are
very interesting. They do indeed have a rock paper scissors
mating strategies. So these little guys are found in the
western United States and in Mexico in desert regions. They're
(02:35):
only about six inches or fifteen centimeters long including the tail,
so they make for a nice tasty snack for larger
lizards roadrunners, and so they have a modeled brown coloration
to make them blend in with their sandy territory, and
they must breed at a high rate to make up
for the loss in their numbers due to predation. So
(02:59):
the one colorful spot on these lizards is their throats.
Males come in three delicious delectable flavors orange, blue, and yellow.
Females also have some coloration on their throats and they
come in two colors, orange and yellow. So orange throated
(03:21):
males are large and aggressive. Blue throated males are not
quite as large or aggressive, and they will actually cooperate
with other blue throated males. Meanwhile, yellow throated males are small,
non aggressive, and can easily be mistaken for a female lizard.
(03:43):
The male orange throated blotched lizards have the following mating strategy.
They use their aggression and their size to stake out
a large territory and this access to a good number
of females. They're easily able to fight off the smaller
blue throated males. However, with such a large territory, it's
(04:07):
easy for the yellow throated males who are small in
share coloration with the females to sneak in the edges
of the male's territory and mate with some of the females.
The orange throated males finds it difficult to keep track
of these sneaker males and they can't really prevent the
(04:27):
yellow throated males from having some reproductive success. The blue
throated males have a different mating strategy, so they have
smaller territories, but they cooperate with each other to defend
them so while they are easily overpowered by the hooking
orange throated males. Because the blue throated males have a
(04:51):
smaller area to keep track of and additionally have a
network of other blue throats that they're friends with that
will help them keep watch, those sneaky yellow throated males
find it harder to infiltrate their territory to seek a
sexual tryst with a female. So this is why it's
(05:12):
called the rock paper scissors mating strategy. Because each of
these types of males has a strategy that defeats one
other type of male while they are easily defeated by
the other type of male. So imagine the orange throated
mail as the rock. He's big, tough, and strong. The
(05:34):
blue throats are the scissors. They're more fragile than the rock,
and they can be smashed by the rock. The yellow
throats are the paper. They're lightweight and seemingly harmless, but
they can surround the rocks defenses and sneak in. Meanwhile,
the blue throats, which are the scissors, can work together
to cut through the sneaky paper. Yellow throated males subterfuge.
(06:00):
So I guess the problem with this metaphor is that
rock Paper scissors is a game. Doesn't make that much
since in the first place, I've never quite understood why
paper defeats rock. It just surrounds it. How does that
I don't really understand why that means it defeats rock.
But nevertheless, maybe we should change the game to orange lizard,
(06:23):
blue lizard, yellow lizard. Maybe that doesn't roll off the
tongue as well. Regardless, Abby m also asked if there's
anything else that there is to know about the story,
and indeed there is so whenever you have competitive interactions
between animals, you get some really interesting game theory dynamics
(06:45):
that make mathematicians salivate. In the case of these lizards.
The population composition changes every few years in a sort
of ballet of mating success. Think of what would happen
if you have a bunch of orange throated males successfully
(07:05):
bullying the blue throated males away. So you've got this
large population of orange throated males, so great, more orange throats,
fewer blue throats. But what does that mean. You have
that third player, the yellow throats. And remember orange throats
are basically the rock and yellow throats are the paper.
(07:26):
So now the yellow throats can easily sneak into the
big buff but not to observant. Orange throat males territories
mate with a lot of females, and then what happens.
You have an explosion of population of yellow throated males
and fewer orange throated males. So then what happens, Well,
(07:48):
the blue throated males now have an advantage because they
have fewer orange throated broots to contend with, and they
are uniquely able to defeat the yellow strategy. So imagine
this as a cycle over the years where you'll have
an increase in the orange population, and then an increase
in the yellow population, and then an increase in the
(08:10):
blue population, and so on and so forth for millions
of years. So this system can in some cases be
relatively stable, like I said, going on for millions of years,
but sometimes it actually changes, so some populations will end
up losing one of the color variations, destabilizing the game.
(08:34):
Interesting it seems like typically the pattern is that the
yellow throated males are the ones who go first. But
when this happens, you no longer have this stable game
going on. You can't continue the rock paper scissors game
because it's just rock scissors and that's not really a
viable game. So the lizards will actually start to rapidly
(08:58):
evolve in their theology changes in a very quick and
pretty pronounced way, so their body size changes rapidly, and
then this game is no longer stable, and that would
indicate that these lizards could become a new species once
this rock paper scissors game is destabilized and if they
(09:20):
undergo enough of an evolution in terms of their biology.
So that is the fascinating story of the rock paper
scissors lizards. Uh, the side blotched lizards and uh funny
side story relating to rock paper scissors and meeting strategies.
(09:43):
So I'm actually living in Italy. Now, as you may
have heard on the podcast before, and I'm learning Italian
because they speak a lot of Italian and Italy. Go figure.
So in one of my Italian classes, our teacher taught
us the Italian for rock paper scissors, and I tried
to remember it. And in another class session, we were
(10:04):
trying to decide who should read aloud the daily reading
an Italian and I helpfully suggested maybe a game of
rock paper scissors. But I said this in Italian, So
what I said was for se un joco di sesso
carta fbici. But the Italian word for rock is actually sasso,
(10:28):
not sesso. What sesso means is sex. So what I
announced to the class is that we should play a
game of sex, paper and scissors, which, fortunately we found
another way to decide who should do the reading. But
I thought you might enjoy that little anecdote about how
I accidentally tried to invent sex paper scissors in the
(10:51):
human population and not in the lizard population. So when
we get back, I will go over another list of
are questions, So stay tuned. Welcome back, Welcome, welcome back.
So the TikTok's the click clocks the clippity clops, the
dippity dot, the dipping dots. Is that what kids are
(11:14):
doing today at the TikTok's. I've got a question about TikTok.
So this is from Will and they say hello. I
recently discovered that my degree from TikTok University is worthless,
so that means I have to do some fact checking
at podcast University. I recently saw a TikTok that said
(11:35):
that we don't know how eels make. They said, we
can't find their genitals, and every so often eel swim
to the Bermuda triangle and then more eels come back. So,
Professor Katie, does this stand up to scrutiny? Aren't there
more than one kind of eel? Is it all eels
or just a specific eel? Can you help me understand
the more's of more eels? A more? A thanks. I'm
(11:57):
always happy when I see a new creature feature drop ps.
My wife and I use the app podcast Addict, and
often when you do your look Who's Squawking segment, we
can't hear the sound. It's clear that other people here
who is squawking, but neither of us can't. I don't
know why this could possibly be. So, first of all,
to address the audio thing. Actually got this comment from
a few people, and I think it may have something
(12:20):
to do with the audio being in stereo and certain
podcast platforms not being able to deal with that. So
I've been converting it into mono tracks and I'm hoping
that's solved the problem. Just to make sure, why don't
we do a little audio test right now, see if
you can hear this goat screaming, and if not, please
write to me at Creature Feature Product gmail dot com,
(12:42):
or you can write to me if you do hear
the goat screaming, just to share anyways, here it is,
So did you hear the goat scream? Hopefully it did?
Now onto the question. So TikTok University, as acclaimed and
accredited as it is, is not quite right about this one.
But I can actually see where this myth is coming
(13:04):
from because the truth is really weird, and there are
elements of truth in this TikTok meme. But as usual,
knowing the facts is actually way more fascinating than the
urban legend. So the mystery of eel gonads and mating
goes back very far so. In fact, German biologist Max
(13:30):
Schultze reportedly claimed that all the major biology questions had
been answered aside from the eel question, on his deathbed
in eighteen seventy four. Of course, he was wrong. All
the major questions in biology had not been answered and
still have not been answered. Actually, Sigmund Freud, famed father
(13:53):
of psychoanalysis and sexualizer of pipes, started out with an
interest in theology, which is study of fish, and as
part of his studies he would dissect eels, getting risk
deep in their guts trying to find their gonads. So
the eel at the center of this mating gonad mystery
(14:15):
is Anguilla Anguilla, the European eel. It's a species of
true eel, which is a type of ray fin fish
that have evolved into a snakelike elongated form, and they
often lack a pelvic and pectoral fin. The European eel
can grow up to a little under three feet or
(14:36):
one meter long. Even the Greek philosophers wondered how these
eels reproduced. Aristotle supposed that they were spawned from beneath
the surface of the Earth just spontaneously. Of course, this
is incorrect. They also do not come into spontaneous existence
due to the reality bending magic of the Bermuda triangle, although,
(15:00):
as we'll soon discuss, they do migrate towards that area
to mate. So the mystery of the missing eel sex
parts and how they mate was solved in nine by
Danish marine biologist Earnst Johannes Schmidt, no relation to Front
of the show Alan Schmidt. Schmidt led a long and
(15:20):
painstaking expedition to track the mating location of the European eel.
One of the reasons the eel's life cycle has so
long alluded early biologists is how different it looks at
each stage of its life. So the eel goes through
a metamorphosis, starting out as eggs than a small, flat,
(15:41):
transparent larva that looks more like a giant amba than
an eel. Then it grows into a glass eel, a
transparent little thing that looks like a glass noodle. Then
it starts to mature into an elv, which looks more
like its adult form and that it's pigmented and no
longer are transparent, but it's still pretty miniature. Then it
(16:03):
grows into a yellow eel, named such because it's belly
is a yellowish color and it's nearly adult sized. Finally
comes the fully matured, sexually mature adult version called the
silver eel, which grows larger eyes, a white belly, and
silver flanks. So the gonads wive biologists had so much
(16:23):
trouble finding those things. So the reason is that the
gonads only develop when the eel is at its final
stage of metamorphosis, the silver eel stage, and this final
eel form develops as the eel goes on a long
migration to the Sargasso Sea. So notably, the Sargasso Sea
(16:45):
does share a corner with the Bermuda Triangle. It's a
sea located in a sea, so it's found in the
Atlantic Ocean, and it's formed not by land mass but
a border of currents. So the Sargasso Sea is an
area of calmber waters within the Atlantic. So Ernst Johannes Schmidt,
(17:08):
that Dutch biologist had to follow the eel during its
different stages of life, following the elver's, the glass eels,
and the larva, and he determined that the eels were
spotting somewhere in the Sargasso Sea. So in tween there
was actually a study using radio transmitters affixed to eels,
(17:31):
but this time it was too American eels, and the
researchers found that the American eels actually were also mating
in the Sargasso Sea. So people didn't find these gonads
on eels because at earlier stages in the eel's life
they didn't have the gonads. They only developed when they
went on this migration to the Sargasso Sea. Also, weirdly enough,
(17:55):
the eel stomachs dissolves as they make this migration, and
they live only on their body fat for thousands of miles,
and after mating, the eel dies. So do we actually
know how they mate, like the actual mechanics and process
of the mating itself. So despite the lack of direct
(18:18):
observations in the Sargasso Sea, we actually do to an
extent understand how they make. Researchers are able to observe
European eels mating in captivity by inducing sexual maturity in
them with hormone treatments, and it appears, at least in
captivity that the females release eggs and the males release
(18:38):
sperm over the eggs. External fertilization, such as is found
in many other species of fish, but breeding European eels
in captivity and actually successfully raising the offspring is still
in the early stages of research, and the European eels
exact mating grounds in the Sargasso Sea have not yet
(19:00):
been found or observed, so there are still many mysteries
of eel sex to discover. There are other species of
eel who's mating locations and behaviors are easier to observe
and are better understood. So while there are still mysteries
around the mating habits of European eels as well as
some other eel species. Yes, we do know generally how
(19:23):
eels made. Yes, we know that they have gonads, and
we know that when they reach sexual maturity, that's when
they develop these gonads and they migrate to a mating
area somewhere in the Sargasso Sea, then returned to Europe
as they go through a number of different life stages.
So skip that degree from TikTok University and accept this
(19:46):
diploma in eel sexology from Creature Feature you home of
the Fighting Parasitoids, So enjoy that diploma. We're going to
take a quick break and when we get back, we're
gonna answer one more listener question and then play a
game of gifts. Who's squawking? So this question is from
Twitter from Mystic mo Hi Katie. I know that dogs
(20:11):
can sense when people are going to have seizures, but
I just recently learned that they can also detect diabetic levels.
I was just curious how humans learned that dogs could
smell these problems out in humans. Thanks for the podcast.
So this is a really interesting question, and I am
not necessarily an expert on doctor dogs, but I looked
(20:35):
into this. So we've probably known a long time about
dogs accurate sense of smell due to how they can
track down prey, pests, and even humans. We've taken advantage
of their sense of smell probably far back in our
coevolution with dogs in terms of using them as guard dogs,
(20:58):
as hunting dogs to be able to ferret out and
get rid of pests and agriculture, and so we've probably
for a long time understood that they have amazing noses,
and they really do. So in more modern times, we've
been able to use dogs to do more precise detection,
(21:20):
like detecting bombs or controversially detecting drugs. So, in my opinion,
the use of drug sniffing dogs is very troubling, especially
when it's used as a justification to do a search.
So dog noses are indeed legendary, but what's also legendary
is their desire to please their human. A dog's nose
(21:44):
might be harder to trick than a dog's psychology, so
a dog who knows it's human trainer wants it to
signal on a drug will do so even if the
drug is not there. So I am very skeptical of
dogs being used to justify police searches, but that doesn't
mean that dogs noses aren't truly spectacular. So the earliest
(22:06):
use of dogs in a modern medical context I could
find was during World War One, when dogs were trained
to be able to sniff out and find wounded soldiers.
But in modern times, we're finding that dogs have a
uncanny ability to pick up on the sense of things
that lie below the surface. So dogs can be trained
(22:29):
to alert if they smell something like an increase in
isoprene in their owner's breath, which is a sign of
blood sugar dipping. So interestingly, we can sometimes make the
connection that a dog can smell or send something without
even knowing what they're smelling until later. So we've observed
(22:49):
that dogs can learn to alert to a hypoglycemic state,
which is a drop in blood sugar. But it wasn't
until twenty sixteen when researchers I and if I the
possible signal the dogs were getting, which was the smell
of the chemical isoprene on the breath of the person
experiencing the hypoglycemic state. So it seems that our history
(23:13):
of using dogs senses start with our observations that dogs
seem to have an uncanny ability to detect something happening,
and then we learned to how to cultivate that ability
before we fully understand exactly what it is these dogs
are sensing. So there are studies on dogs who spontaneously
(23:35):
show awareness of an oncoming seizure in their owner. So
they'll show things like hovering around their owner and staring
at them before the seizure happens. So the dog may
not know exactly what is happening, may not have any
idea that its owner is in danger, but there maybe
picking up on ascent and perhaps they've learned to associate
(23:58):
that scent with what will come a disturbance in their
owner's behavior. So imagine being a dog and you see
your owner going through a seizure. That may be really
distressing because you may sense that something's wrong, something's off,
This is not your owner's typical behavior, and maybe it
even picks up the distress on the distress that the
(24:20):
owner is showing. So researchers are still trying to figure
out exactly that what sent dogs pick up on when
they detect a seizure and how they're picking up on
it with respect to seizures. But we know they seem
to be able to do this and they can be
trained to really hone in on that skill. So a
(24:40):
question that comes to mind is if dogs can pick
up on the smells of cancers and seizures, why don't
we just replace doctors with dogs. Why do we have
to have biopsies when a dog could sniff out cancer.
Why not have dogs constantly patrolling to catch cancer early.
So the issue is, yet again not the accuracy of
(25:03):
their noses, but the psychology of the dog. Just because
the dog's nose is capable of sniffing something, the dog
needs to be able to accurately alert when it does
pick up the smell and not alert at a false
alarm for it to really be useful as a diagnostic tool.
But this may not always be in the dog's interest
(25:26):
because the dog is not actually a medical device. It's
a living creature with a mind of its own. So
the dog wants praise, rewards and positive feedback from its trainer.
And just like the problem with dogs alerting to drugs,
the dog may basically want to alert even if there's
nothing there because it craves that positive attention. So how
(25:49):
do you prevent the dog from making false alerts to
get praise. It's not really easy. You need basically to
have a bunch of intermittent positive signals, so basically, people
or things you know has the scent of this disease
you're trying to find so that the dog can get
(26:09):
this intermittent reward. But again, it's really difficult to basically
set up the situation where the dog will always alert
only when it is detecting the actual scent, especially in
a real life scenario. So that is why we do
not have doggie howser m D quite yet, but maybe
(26:32):
we'll get there. So before we go, we have got
to answer the mystery animal sound from last week. So
the hint that I gave was don't be alarmed by
this animal's name. It's called is purely platonic, warning you
(26:52):
about an approaching leopard. So did you hear those wheezy squeaks?
Can you guess who it is? Well? Congratulations to Jodie
and Auntie B who guessed the dick Dick. So the
(27:12):
dick Dick is a tiny antelope found in southern Africa.
They act only way about eight pounds or about four ms.
They are tiny, they are cute, and they're named the
dick Dick because it is automatopeia for that squeaking alarm
call you just heard. So they issue that sound through
(27:34):
a long tubular snout, and that snout also works as
an air conditioner, cooling blood as it circulates through the
blood vessels surrounding the nasal cavity. So cute fact. When
males try to defend their territory, they will dash at
each other, stop and shake their heads before colliding, which
(27:58):
is the world's cutest game of chick in. They will
do this until one male gives up the game and
goes home, just probably with an adorable look of dejection
on its face. So onto this week's mystery animal call
or so we just heard the alarm call of the
dick Dick, But what is she so alarmed about? Well,
(28:21):
it may be this critter, or at least once he's
all grown up. So what is that some kind of alien?
A robot? Well, if you think you know the answer,
you can write into Creature feature Pot at gmail dot com.
I am also on the internet at Creature feature Pot
(28:43):
on Instagram at Creature feet Pot on Twitter. That's f
e e T, not f e e T. That is
something very different. And thank you guys so much for
listening to the show. Again. You can reach out to
me if you have questions and I will try to
answer them either by email or when I do these
(29:04):
listener question episodes. And hey, you know, let me know
what you think of the show if you if you
write a rating and a review, I read them all,
give me some feedback. I hope it's positive, but even
if you have constructive feedback, I am very appreciative of that.
So thank you guys again so much for listening. And
(29:24):
thanks to the Space Colassics for their super awesome song
Exo Alumina. Creature features 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 guess
what wh you listen to your favorite shows. See you
next Wednesday.
Welcome to Creature Feature Production of My Heart Radio. I'm
your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, guess what,
it's just you me, some recording equipment and a document
I've got open where I wrote my notes because we
(00:26):
are doing listener questions today. That's right. You write me
your questions and I answer them. I sure do. And
if you think you have some questions or know you
have questions that you want to ask me, you can
always email me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com.
(00:47):
Can also send me in your pet pictures, your thoughts,
your hopes and dreams. I try to respond to as
many as I can in as good amount of time
as I can, and sometimes I will answer them on
the show like I'm doing right now. I've got some
(01:08):
really exciting questions that I am so pumped, so hyped
to talk about today. Let's start out with this one.
Why don't we? This is from A B M. Hi, Katie,
I really enjoy listening to your podcast, and I was
wondering if you had ever heard of the side Blotched
Lizard and their Rock paper scissors mating strategy. I heard
(01:28):
about this in another podcast about Rock Paper Scissors, but
I was curious to know more and to know your
thoughts on it. P s. As a side note, you
should invite Josh and Chuck from stuff you should know
on your podcast. So thank you Abby M for the
wonderful question. First of all, I love Josh and Chuck.
(01:49):
They were my entry into listening to podcasts. Uh what
feels like a really long time ago, which probably is
a long time ago, because that's that's how time works.
But yeah, no, I love them. Um, maybe maybe I'll
work up the courage to try and invite them on.
I don't know, but it would. It would be one
of those things where I'd just be like, Hey, you're
Josh and Chuck. What the heck, What the heck are
(02:11):
you doing talking to me? But maybe maybe I'll try
so on to blotch lizards, so side Blotched lizards are
very interesting. They do indeed have a rock paper scissors
mating strategies. So these little guys are found in the
western United States and in Mexico in desert regions. They're
(02:35):
only about six inches or fifteen centimeters long including the tail,
so they make for a nice tasty snack for larger
lizards roadrunners, and so they have a modeled brown coloration
to make them blend in with their sandy territory, and
they must breed at a high rate to make up
for the loss in their numbers due to predation. So
(02:59):
the one colorful spot on these lizards is their throats.
Males come in three delicious delectable flavors orange, blue, and yellow.
Females also have some coloration on their throats and they
come in two colors, orange and yellow. So orange throated
(03:21):
males are large and aggressive. Blue throated males are not
quite as large or aggressive, and they will actually cooperate
with other blue throated males. Meanwhile, yellow throated males are small,
non aggressive, and can easily be mistaken for a female lizard.
(03:43):
The male orange throated blotched lizards have the following mating strategy.
They use their aggression and their size to stake out
a large territory and this access to a good number
of females. They're easily able to fight off the smaller
blue throated males. However, with such a large territory, it's
(04:07):
easy for the yellow throated males who are small in
share coloration with the females to sneak in the edges
of the male's territory and mate with some of the females.
The orange throated males finds it difficult to keep track
of these sneaker males and they can't really prevent the
(04:27):
yellow throated males from having some reproductive success. The blue
throated males have a different mating strategy, so they have
smaller territories, but they cooperate with each other to defend
them so while they are easily overpowered by the hooking
orange throated males. Because the blue throated males have a
(04:51):
smaller area to keep track of and additionally have a
network of other blue throats that they're friends with that
will help them keep watch, those sneaky yellow throated males
find it harder to infiltrate their territory to seek a
sexual tryst with a female. So this is why it's
(05:12):
called the rock paper scissors mating strategy. Because each of
these types of males has a strategy that defeats one
other type of male while they are easily defeated by
the other type of male. So imagine the orange throated
mail as the rock. He's big, tough, and strong. The
(05:34):
blue throats are the scissors. They're more fragile than the rock,
and they can be smashed by the rock. The yellow
throats are the paper. They're lightweight and seemingly harmless, but
they can surround the rocks defenses and sneak in. Meanwhile,
the blue throats, which are the scissors, can work together
to cut through the sneaky paper. Yellow throated males subterfuge.
(06:00):
So I guess the problem with this metaphor is that
rock Paper scissors is a game. Doesn't make that much
since in the first place, I've never quite understood why
paper defeats rock. It just surrounds it. How does that
I don't really understand why that means it defeats rock.
But nevertheless, maybe we should change the game to orange lizard,
(06:23):
blue lizard, yellow lizard. Maybe that doesn't roll off the
tongue as well. Regardless, Abby m also asked if there's
anything else that there is to know about the story,
and indeed there is so whenever you have competitive interactions
between animals, you get some really interesting game theory dynamics
(06:45):
that make mathematicians salivate. In the case of these lizards.
The population composition changes every few years in a sort
of ballet of mating success. Think of what would happen
if you have a bunch of orange throated males successfully
(07:05):
bullying the blue throated males away. So you've got this
large population of orange throated males, so great, more orange throats,
fewer blue throats. But what does that mean. You have
that third player, the yellow throats. And remember orange throats
are basically the rock and yellow throats are the paper.
(07:26):
So now the yellow throats can easily sneak into the
big buff but not to observant. Orange throat males territories
mate with a lot of females, and then what happens.
You have an explosion of population of yellow throated males
and fewer orange throated males. So then what happens, Well,
(07:48):
the blue throated males now have an advantage because they
have fewer orange throated broots to contend with, and they
are uniquely able to defeat the yellow strategy. So imagine
this as a cycle over the years where you'll have
an increase in the orange population, and then an increase
in the yellow population, and then an increase in the
(08:10):
blue population, and so on and so forth for millions
of years. So this system can in some cases be
relatively stable, like I said, going on for millions of years,
but sometimes it actually changes, so some populations will end
up losing one of the color variations, destabilizing the game.
(08:34):
Interesting it seems like typically the pattern is that the
yellow throated males are the ones who go first. But
when this happens, you no longer have this stable game
going on. You can't continue the rock paper scissors game
because it's just rock scissors and that's not really a
viable game. So the lizards will actually start to rapidly
(08:58):
evolve in their theology changes in a very quick and
pretty pronounced way, so their body size changes rapidly, and
then this game is no longer stable, and that would
indicate that these lizards could become a new species once
this rock paper scissors game is destabilized and if they
(09:20):
undergo enough of an evolution in terms of their biology.
So that is the fascinating story of the rock paper
scissors lizards. Uh, the side blotched lizards and uh funny
side story relating to rock paper scissors and meeting strategies.
(09:43):
So I'm actually living in Italy. Now, as you may
have heard on the podcast before, and I'm learning Italian
because they speak a lot of Italian and Italy. Go figure.
So in one of my Italian classes, our teacher taught
us the Italian for rock paper scissors, and I tried
to remember it. And in another class session, we were
(10:04):
trying to decide who should read aloud the daily reading
an Italian and I helpfully suggested maybe a game of
rock paper scissors. But I said this in Italian, So
what I said was for se un joco di sesso
carta fbici. But the Italian word for rock is actually sasso,
(10:28):
not sesso. What sesso means is sex. So what I
announced to the class is that we should play a
game of sex, paper and scissors, which, fortunately we found
another way to decide who should do the reading. But
I thought you might enjoy that little anecdote about how
I accidentally tried to invent sex paper scissors in the
(10:51):
human population and not in the lizard population. So when
we get back, I will go over another list of
are questions, So stay tuned. Welcome back, Welcome, welcome back.
So the TikTok's the click clocks the clippity clops, the
dippity dot, the dipping dots. Is that what kids are
(11:14):
doing today at the TikTok's. I've got a question about TikTok.
So this is from Will and they say hello. I
recently discovered that my degree from TikTok University is worthless,
so that means I have to do some fact checking
at podcast University. I recently saw a TikTok that said
(11:35):
that we don't know how eels make. They said, we
can't find their genitals, and every so often eel swim
to the Bermuda triangle and then more eels come back. So,
Professor Katie, does this stand up to scrutiny? Aren't there
more than one kind of eel? Is it all eels
or just a specific eel? Can you help me understand
the more's of more eels? A more? A thanks. I'm
(11:57):
always happy when I see a new creature feature drop ps.
My wife and I use the app podcast Addict, and
often when you do your look Who's Squawking segment, we
can't hear the sound. It's clear that other people here
who is squawking, but neither of us can't. I don't
know why this could possibly be. So, first of all,
to address the audio thing. Actually got this comment from
a few people, and I think it may have something
(12:20):
to do with the audio being in stereo and certain
podcast platforms not being able to deal with that. So
I've been converting it into mono tracks and I'm hoping
that's solved the problem. Just to make sure, why don't
we do a little audio test right now, see if
you can hear this goat screaming, and if not, please
write to me at Creature Feature Product gmail dot com,
(12:42):
or you can write to me if you do hear
the goat screaming, just to share anyways, here it is,
So did you hear the goat scream? Hopefully it did?
Now onto the question. So TikTok University, as acclaimed and
accredited as it is, is not quite right about this one.
But I can actually see where this myth is coming
(13:04):
from because the truth is really weird, and there are
elements of truth in this TikTok meme. But as usual,
knowing the facts is actually way more fascinating than the
urban legend. So the mystery of eel gonads and mating
goes back very far so. In fact, German biologist Max
(13:30):
Schultze reportedly claimed that all the major biology questions had
been answered aside from the eel question, on his deathbed
in eighteen seventy four. Of course, he was wrong. All
the major questions in biology had not been answered and
still have not been answered. Actually, Sigmund Freud, famed father
(13:53):
of psychoanalysis and sexualizer of pipes, started out with an
interest in theology, which is study of fish, and as
part of his studies he would dissect eels, getting risk
deep in their guts trying to find their gonads. So
the eel at the center of this mating gonad mystery
(14:15):
is Anguilla Anguilla, the European eel. It's a species of
true eel, which is a type of ray fin fish
that have evolved into a snakelike elongated form, and they
often lack a pelvic and pectoral fin. The European eel
can grow up to a little under three feet or
(14:36):
one meter long. Even the Greek philosophers wondered how these
eels reproduced. Aristotle supposed that they were spawned from beneath
the surface of the Earth just spontaneously. Of course, this
is incorrect. They also do not come into spontaneous existence
due to the reality bending magic of the Bermuda triangle, although,
(15:00):
as we'll soon discuss, they do migrate towards that area
to mate. So the mystery of the missing eel sex
parts and how they mate was solved in nine by
Danish marine biologist Earnst Johannes Schmidt, no relation to Front
of the show Alan Schmidt. Schmidt led a long and
(15:20):
painstaking expedition to track the mating location of the European eel.
One of the reasons the eel's life cycle has so
long alluded early biologists is how different it looks at
each stage of its life. So the eel goes through
a metamorphosis, starting out as eggs than a small, flat,
(15:41):
transparent larva that looks more like a giant amba than
an eel. Then it grows into a glass eel, a
transparent little thing that looks like a glass noodle. Then
it starts to mature into an elv, which looks more
like its adult form and that it's pigmented and no
longer are transparent, but it's still pretty miniature. Then it
(16:03):
grows into a yellow eel, named such because it's belly
is a yellowish color and it's nearly adult sized. Finally
comes the fully matured, sexually mature adult version called the
silver eel, which grows larger eyes, a white belly, and
silver flanks. So the gonads wive biologists had so much
(16:23):
trouble finding those things. So the reason is that the
gonads only develop when the eel is at its final
stage of metamorphosis, the silver eel stage, and this final
eel form develops as the eel goes on a long
migration to the Sargasso Sea. So notably, the Sargasso Sea
(16:45):
does share a corner with the Bermuda Triangle. It's a
sea located in a sea, so it's found in the
Atlantic Ocean, and it's formed not by land mass but
a border of currents. So the Sargasso Sea is an
area of calmber waters within the Atlantic. So Ernst Johannes Schmidt,
(17:08):
that Dutch biologist had to follow the eel during its
different stages of life, following the elver's, the glass eels,
and the larva, and he determined that the eels were
spotting somewhere in the Sargasso Sea. So in tween there
was actually a study using radio transmitters affixed to eels,
(17:31):
but this time it was too American eels, and the
researchers found that the American eels actually were also mating
in the Sargasso Sea. So people didn't find these gonads
on eels because at earlier stages in the eel's life
they didn't have the gonads. They only developed when they
went on this migration to the Sargasso Sea. Also, weirdly enough,
(17:55):
the eel stomachs dissolves as they make this migration, and
they live only on their body fat for thousands of miles,
and after mating, the eel dies. So do we actually
know how they mate, like the actual mechanics and process
of the mating itself. So despite the lack of direct
(18:18):
observations in the Sargasso Sea, we actually do to an
extent understand how they make. Researchers are able to observe
European eels mating in captivity by inducing sexual maturity in
them with hormone treatments, and it appears, at least in
captivity that the females release eggs and the males release
(18:38):
sperm over the eggs. External fertilization, such as is found
in many other species of fish, but breeding European eels
in captivity and actually successfully raising the offspring is still
in the early stages of research, and the European eels
exact mating grounds in the Sargasso Sea have not yet
(19:00):
been found or observed, so there are still many mysteries
of eel sex to discover. There are other species of
eel who's mating locations and behaviors are easier to observe
and are better understood. So while there are still mysteries
around the mating habits of European eels as well as
some other eel species. Yes, we do know generally how
(19:23):
eels made. Yes, we know that they have gonads, and
we know that when they reach sexual maturity, that's when
they develop these gonads and they migrate to a mating
area somewhere in the Sargasso Sea, then returned to Europe
as they go through a number of different life stages.
So skip that degree from TikTok University and accept this
(19:46):
diploma in eel sexology from Creature Feature you home of
the Fighting Parasitoids, So enjoy that diploma. We're going to
take a quick break and when we get back, we're
gonna answer one more listener question and then play a
game of gifts. Who's squawking? So this question is from
Twitter from Mystic mo Hi Katie. I know that dogs
(20:11):
can sense when people are going to have seizures, but
I just recently learned that they can also detect diabetic levels.
I was just curious how humans learned that dogs could
smell these problems out in humans. Thanks for the podcast.
So this is a really interesting question, and I am
not necessarily an expert on doctor dogs, but I looked
(20:35):
into this. So we've probably known a long time about
dogs accurate sense of smell due to how they can
track down prey, pests, and even humans. We've taken advantage
of their sense of smell probably far back in our
coevolution with dogs in terms of using them as guard dogs,
(20:58):
as hunting dogs to be able to ferret out and
get rid of pests and agriculture, and so we've probably
for a long time understood that they have amazing noses,
and they really do. So in more modern times, we've
been able to use dogs to do more precise detection,
(21:20):
like detecting bombs or controversially detecting drugs. So, in my opinion,
the use of drug sniffing dogs is very troubling, especially
when it's used as a justification to do a search.
So dog noses are indeed legendary, but what's also legendary
is their desire to please their human. A dog's nose
(21:44):
might be harder to trick than a dog's psychology, so
a dog who knows it's human trainer wants it to
signal on a drug will do so even if the
drug is not there. So I am very skeptical of
dogs being used to justify police searches, but that doesn't
mean that dogs noses aren't truly spectacular. So the earliest
(22:06):
use of dogs in a modern medical context I could
find was during World War One, when dogs were trained
to be able to sniff out and find wounded soldiers.
But in modern times, we're finding that dogs have a
uncanny ability to pick up on the sense of things
that lie below the surface. So dogs can be trained
(22:29):
to alert if they smell something like an increase in
isoprene in their owner's breath, which is a sign of
blood sugar dipping. So interestingly, we can sometimes make the
connection that a dog can smell or send something without
even knowing what they're smelling until later. So we've observed
(22:49):
that dogs can learn to alert to a hypoglycemic state,
which is a drop in blood sugar. But it wasn't
until twenty sixteen when researchers I and if I the
possible signal the dogs were getting, which was the smell
of the chemical isoprene on the breath of the person
experiencing the hypoglycemic state. So it seems that our history
(23:13):
of using dogs senses start with our observations that dogs
seem to have an uncanny ability to detect something happening,
and then we learned to how to cultivate that ability
before we fully understand exactly what it is these dogs
are sensing. So there are studies on dogs who spontaneously
(23:35):
show awareness of an oncoming seizure in their owner. So
they'll show things like hovering around their owner and staring
at them before the seizure happens. So the dog may
not know exactly what is happening, may not have any
idea that its owner is in danger, but there maybe
picking up on ascent and perhaps they've learned to associate
(23:58):
that scent with what will come a disturbance in their
owner's behavior. So imagine being a dog and you see
your owner going through a seizure. That may be really
distressing because you may sense that something's wrong, something's off,
This is not your owner's typical behavior, and maybe it
even picks up the distress on the distress that the
(24:20):
owner is showing. So researchers are still trying to figure
out exactly that what sent dogs pick up on when
they detect a seizure and how they're picking up on
it with respect to seizures. But we know they seem
to be able to do this and they can be
trained to really hone in on that skill. So a
(24:40):
question that comes to mind is if dogs can pick
up on the smells of cancers and seizures, why don't
we just replace doctors with dogs. Why do we have
to have biopsies when a dog could sniff out cancer.
Why not have dogs constantly patrolling to catch cancer early.
So the issue is, yet again not the accuracy of
(25:03):
their noses, but the psychology of the dog. Just because
the dog's nose is capable of sniffing something, the dog
needs to be able to accurately alert when it does
pick up the smell and not alert at a false
alarm for it to really be useful as a diagnostic tool.
But this may not always be in the dog's interest
(25:26):
because the dog is not actually a medical device. It's
a living creature with a mind of its own. So
the dog wants praise, rewards and positive feedback from its trainer.
And just like the problem with dogs alerting to drugs,
the dog may basically want to alert even if there's
nothing there because it craves that positive attention. So how
(25:49):
do you prevent the dog from making false alerts to
get praise. It's not really easy. You need basically to
have a bunch of intermittent positive signals, so basically, people
or things you know has the scent of this disease
you're trying to find so that the dog can get
(26:09):
this intermittent reward. But again, it's really difficult to basically
set up the situation where the dog will always alert
only when it is detecting the actual scent, especially in
a real life scenario. So that is why we do
not have doggie howser m D quite yet, but maybe
(26:32):
we'll get there. So before we go, we have got
to answer the mystery animal sound from last week. So
the hint that I gave was don't be alarmed by
this animal's name. It's called is purely platonic, warning you
(26:52):
about an approaching leopard. So did you hear those wheezy squeaks?
Can you guess who it is? Well? Congratulations to Jodie
and Auntie B who guessed the dick Dick. So the
(27:12):
dick Dick is a tiny antelope found in southern Africa.
They act only way about eight pounds or about four ms.
They are tiny, they are cute, and they're named the
dick Dick because it is automatopeia for that squeaking alarm
call you just heard. So they issue that sound through
(27:34):
a long tubular snout, and that snout also works as
an air conditioner, cooling blood as it circulates through the
blood vessels surrounding the nasal cavity. So cute fact. When
males try to defend their territory, they will dash at
each other, stop and shake their heads before colliding, which
(27:58):
is the world's cutest game of chick in. They will
do this until one male gives up the game and
goes home, just probably with an adorable look of dejection
on its face. So onto this week's mystery animal call
or so we just heard the alarm call of the
dick Dick, But what is she so alarmed about? Well,
(28:21):
it may be this critter, or at least once he's
all grown up. So what is that some kind of alien?
A robot? Well, if you think you know the answer,
you can write into Creature feature Pot at gmail dot com.
I am also on the internet at Creature feature Pot
(28:43):
on Instagram at Creature feet Pot on Twitter. That's f
e e T, not f e e T. That is
something very different. And thank you guys so much for
listening to the show. Again. You can reach out to
me if you have questions and I will try to
answer them either by email or when I do these
(29:04):
listener question episodes. And hey, you know, let me know
what you think of the show if you if you
write a rating and a review, I read them all,
give me some feedback. I hope it's positive, but even
if you have constructive feedback, I am very appreciative of that.
So thank you guys again so much for listening. And
(29:24):
thanks to the Space Colassics for their super awesome song
Exo Alumina. Creature features 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 guess
what wh you listen to your favorite shows. See you
next Wednesday.
Creature Feature News
Host
Katie Goldin
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