Can Your Nose Pick Your Friends?

You can pick your nose, you can pick your friends, and your nose can pick your friends! "Smell ya later" can be literal in the animal kingdom, and some secret handshakes make sure URINE the clique.

Guest: Jason Pargin

 

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Episode Transcript

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, you can
pick your nose, you can pick your friends, and your
nose can pick your friends, Smell you later, can be
literal in the animal Kingdom, and some secret handshakes. Make

(00:28):
sure you're in the click. Joining me today is author
of John Dyes at the End and the Zoe Ash series,
as well as the new book. If this book exists,
you're in the wrong universe. Jason Pargeon, Welcome once again.
I have to remind myself this is a family friendly
show that fans know. Uh. I go to strange and

(00:51):
unusual places being a infamously dark and devious brain. It's
there's the issue. I write different genres. This one's a
horror novel, so I for the interviews, I have to
be horror guy. Um, and then when the next book
comes at its sci fi, then I'll be I'll just

(01:11):
be a nerd again. But so right now I'm trying
to really play up how dark and devious my mind is.
I mean, this is the show where I talk about
parasites that like crawl out of your skin. So I
don't think that's so much of a problem. Although I
guess this topic is somewhat toilet toilet based horror. Uh,

(01:34):
that's perfect for anyone who's read any of my books.
There's a I have to confess a lot of toilet
stuff in there. I mean, you know, toilet. The toilet
is such a siminal part of our existence. I don't
know why it's so taboo to talk about it. You know. Yeah,
there's a lot of a lot of seminal stuff in
there too. Um. I apologize for that. Uh, but the

(01:59):
to be serious for a second. One thing about horror
is it relies very very heavily on our base kind
of instincts for disgust, you know, because we we are
instinctively afraid of certain things. And it's a lot of
that is driven by evolution. Of course, things we are
afraid of because we the ones who were not afraid
of it did not live on to reproduce. Um. So

(02:21):
a lot of it is just you know, we're for example, um,
a lot of aliens in order to make us disgusted
by them, the very slimy well why you know, we
have a visceral reaction to slime. We we viscerally want
to reject it. We are very scared of zombies, even
though in the entire history of the planet no one

(02:44):
has ever been injured or killed by a dead body.
But we are viscerally disgusted by rott and rotting and
rotting flesh. Because of course those sayings could make you
sick if you were too close to them, or you know,
you could be contaminated. So this fits right in because
when you see anything about in the animal kingdom, the
first thing you notice is they of course, even if

(03:06):
you just have a pet, they are not disgusted by
the same things we are. It is very hard to
keep my dog from eating the pup it finds in
the yard. Uh, and it seems to enjoy it very much. Yeah,
my dog tried to eat a turd that had like
a cigarette butt squished in the middle of it, like
a candle on a little birthday cake. And she was

(03:26):
very upset that I didn't let her just like, you know,
eat that thing. And yeah, actually, you know, when you're
bringing up the fear of like aliens and the fear
of zombies, I think there was some I heard at
least somewhere that like clown makeup can appear kind of

(03:48):
scary or menacing because it looks somewhat similar potentially like
a rotting corpse where the eyes are sunken and the
mouth kind of uh discolors or something, and in the
super pale white skin discoloration on a body or something,
and so that can that the weird proportions of a
clown and the weird facial coloration could like be reminiscent

(04:11):
of this strange coloration and strange proportions of like a
moldering corpse and equally weird. Um, when people have what
you know, I assume like sleep paralysis episodes where they
think they're being abducted by aliens and they imagine these
alien faces with very pale gray skin, very big dark eyes,

(04:32):
um that there's something in the side, because many different
people have described the same faces all over the world,
and UFO people say, well, see, that's evidence that the
aliens are real, when in reality is that that is
evidence of when your mind is in a certain state
and you're imagining being assaulted by something, there's a certain
type of face you put on it. When when you're

(04:54):
in a position where you're very afraid or whatever, and
for some reason we imprint like big emptied our guys.
Uh and like a skin tone that's not healthy, right,
like that's grayish or pale or something like. There's these
visceral reactions where like it kind of doesn't make logical sense.
It's like, well, why would you be afraid of a clown?

(05:15):
It's like why would you be afraid of any of
these things? It's like, well, there's some kind of primal thing.
It taps into in the same way that there's all
these series about why fingernails on a chalkboard, they care
our hair stand up on end. I guess they're like,
why would that tone, why would that specific you know,
vibration or noise be so upsetting to us? Um And

(05:35):
I don't know what they've ever landed on a theory,
but it has something to do with that. If you
go back a million years, you'll find a species that
is equally upset by that noise. Yeah, I mean it
does sound a little bit like a bird of praise
call or something. I'm just speculating. I don't know, of course,
but yeah, I mean it is interesting because the alteration

(05:57):
of some of a face, like a face that's out
of a portion, with eyes that are too big or
too small, or a mouth that's too big. It's like that,
I think when something deviates from our mental map of
a face, which we actually when we're very very young infants,
we already have kind of a schema of what a

(06:17):
face should look like, and infants will look at things
that represent like a human face and are much more
concerned when the when the face is kind of out
of proportion, and they don't really like that. And so yeah,
I think like if something is sort of out of
order or kind of off, we feel very unnerved and

(06:41):
interestingly like this idea of being able to identify a friend,
identify one of your species, but also identify someone you
know is something that we share with animals. Like animals
can identify individuals, they can get upset when something is
bizarre about a situation when it comes to identifying individuals,

(07:05):
and it can be pretty gross. Also, So I do
want to talk about dolphins now. I feel like dolphins
are interesting because they either get a really bad rap
of people saying, well, don't you know that dolphins are evil?
Or they're seen as this beautiful graceful, sort of philanthropic

(07:26):
wonder animal of the sea. Well, yeah, and also I
think the reason we have those attitudes towards them is
because it's weird having a creature that is supposedly intelligent
but doesn't express it in any of the same ways. Yeah,
Like like it's it's kind of similar to you know,
how our attitude towards you know, primates um there when

(07:47):
you see them doing something distinctly human, like their facial
expressions or their gestures, you can either think that's cute
or if, depending on how large and muscular the thing is,
you can be find it terrifying because it's like the
thing is too smart to not also know the rules
of human behavior. So it's kind of the same thing.
It's like dolphins, if you don't know anything about how

(08:08):
they behave it's like, oh, they're just the humans of
the sea. It's like, well, no, they they something can
be very intelligent. Same thing with aliens, you know something,
they can be very intelligent but have no knowledge of
any of the things that we think of as universal
laws of behavior. It's like, no, those are distinct to
our time and place and in culture. That's dolphins would

(08:30):
not would not understand any of that right, And like
some of the things they do that seems cruel to us,
like they will just smack the dickens out of octopuses.
So they'll take an octopus and smash it against the
water against rocks to like pulverize this poor octopus, and
it seems like it's just an act of cruelty, like

(08:51):
it already seems dead and they keep smacking it, and
it seems like it is these dolphins being sadistic, But
in reality, it's because they have to make sure that
this octopus, if they swallow an octopus that's still a
little bit alive, it's tentacles can like reach out and
try to prevent itself from getting swallowed and choked the

(09:13):
dolphin to death. So they've learned that they have to
absolutely tenderized and pulverized and octopus before they can safely
eat it. But to us it seems cruel like they're
just torturing an octopus before eating it, and torturing a
creature that is also shockingly intelligent for something that again

(09:34):
does not look anything like people. But for example, they've
recently started factory farming octopi as food and there's a
big protest movement saying this is not a creature that
should be herded into giant pins, you know, in closed
spaces and made to breed. And because they're like to
they're too smart for that. That is a whole other

(09:57):
episode we could do about at what point does a
creature become too intelligent to put it in a farm
and turn it into just something that breeds to be
to make food for us. Yeah, I mean I agree
with that, and also that I mean it's like, uh,
you know, with octopuses, it's just it seems very difficult
to create a setting that they could live happily before

(10:19):
being slaughtered. And you know, we could obviously the ethics
of slaughter as a whole other beast, but like, it
is feasible for some animals to like maybe not with
factory farming or cafoe farming, but it is feasible to
have an animal be able to live a relatively regular
life on land before slaughter. But for something like an octopus,

(10:41):
I'm not sure how you could do that. Like there
pasture is like the open ocean, so that's a little strange. Yeah,
they are very intelligent. There's some um, some researchers think
they might be able to dream. They're really good problem solvers.
And yeah, their lifespan is sad quite short, but the
and it is, but it is really fascinating because they're

(11:05):
very close to being aliens on Earth. They evolved completely
independently from us since the time we were both like
some kind of flatworms. So their brains, their eyes, all
this stuff evolved independently, and yet they still have these
recognizable intelligent behaviors. So that's it's very interesting. But you know,

(11:26):
the dolphins when they're smacking these octopuses, they're not thinking
about all these things, or so we think. Um. But yeah,
I mean, like they can be brutal, like a lot
is made out of like that they kill other species
of dolphins. Again, this is probably because they're like competing
for food. Um. They'll sometimes ram sharks. Um. But I

(11:47):
think it's a little bit reductive to see dolphins as evil.
After all, like humans do a lot of messed up stuff.
But I wouldn't write off on our entire species is
being evil. Um. And in fact, dolphins have a sweet side.
They can be very friendly with other species and they
can be really friendly with each other. Um. Sometimes bottle

(12:10):
nose dolphins will actually coexist and even form pods with
other dolphins species or other cetaceans like the short finned
pilot whales. So bottlenose dolphins aren't just all antisocial assholes
as sometimes people say they are. Yeah, it's that's the
thing is. It's kind of in the Internet era, I think,

(12:31):
is when the whole thing spread around it because the
whole thing was a lot of you know, young girls
grow up with like dolphins stickers on their on their
school supplies, or they you know, they get dolphins tattoos
on their ankles. It's like they're beautiful. So I think
people consider it very cool in the early Internet days
to point out but yeah, it's silly to have that
kind of binary for we were always projecting like human

(12:53):
morality onto other creatures. It was a very silly thing
to do. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's fun to
like point out, like, dolphins are not the Lease of
Frank version of the animal. But yeah, they're not. They're
not I think seeing them as like secretly evil animals,
they're they're they're just animals, you know, They're there. Some
aspect of them are cruel, Some aspects of them are

(13:15):
actually quite sweet. They can explain, you know, and it
varies from individual to individual or from pod to pod.
Uh And there are some examples of dolphins actually being
extremely empathetic. In two thousand and eight, there was a
bottle nose dolphin named Mocho who lived off the east
coast of New Zealand and who saved a pygmy sperm

(13:38):
whale in her calf who were stuck on a sandbar,
reportedly by calling out for them and leading them to
deeper water. Uh. And in twenty nineteen, it was observed
that a female bottle nose dolphin had adopted a young
melon headed whale and was caring for it as her
own offspring. And in Laguna, South Brazil, fisherman and dolphins

(14:00):
have actually been fishing together since the late eighteen hundreds,
with dolphins driving fish into the nets of fishermen, which
benefits both the dolphins and the fisherman. The dolphins even
make specific body gestures to tell the fishermen to deploy
their nets, and so, you know, all these cases, it's
it's interesting because it shows that dolphins are quite capable

(14:21):
of pro social behavior. Even with the fishing example. If
you can see that as like, well, they're doing it
because it also benefits themselves. I mean by it's basically
this happens actually quite a bit with cooperation between two
species and hunting. You're driving your prey into a bottle
neck where either they escape towards one predator or towards

(14:44):
the other. Actually, coyotes and badgers do this a little
bit with groundhogs another burrowing prey, where there's a coyote
at one entrance to the borrow and a badger digging
out the other entrance of the borrow. So the the
little burrowing animal has to either go towards the coyote
or towards the badger. And so this is what's happening
with the dolphins and the fisherman. The dolphins are driving

(15:07):
the fish towards the net, and so the fish are
kind of cornered between either the fisherman or the dolphins,
and so it gives these fish less avenues for escape.
It kind of balls them up into these clusters, and
both the fisherman and the dolphins can just kind of
scoop them out of the water. Interesting. Yeah, and so yeah,

(15:28):
so you know they're they're very intelligent animals, but within
their species, they are seemingly capable of sustaining friendships, and
they can identify their friends through their unique whistles almost
like these aren't names. But I did promise some gross
stuff rather than all this cute, touchy feely stuff, because

(15:50):
there is another way that they can identify their friends
and leave a calling card, and that is ppe which,
as we know, the ocean is one gigantic toilet. Yeah,
and in fact that's what the word ocean means really
in um in French means toilet, God's toilet, God's toilet

(16:13):
in old um Latin will say uh so uh. Dolphins
have been observed exploring the warm spots behind other dolphins,
which is the p p plume um, you know, because
they're they're they're down for pretty much anything, apparently, and

(16:35):
so of course, whenever something gross is happening in nature,
there's always a bunch of researchers clamoring to study it
and investigate it more closely, because when it comes down
to it, if you think the dolphins are freaky for
sniffing each other's p or even freakier for being really
voyeuristic and wanting to watch the dolphins sniffing each other's

(16:58):
p So what do they get of that though? Is it?
Is it that every dolphin has distinct urine and that's
how they like How does that determine whether or not
they want to be friends with that dolphin? Yeah, so
this is really interesting. Researchers put this to the test
by dumping p into these pools with these dolphins that

(17:19):
live at like these captive lagoon facilities in Hawaii and Bermuda. Basically,
the researchers would put a test subject dolphin in a
test pool and then dump either ice water, urine of
one of their friends, like a dolphin that they're familiar with,
or urine of a stranger into the pool, and the
dolphin would investigate this this new liquid introduced to the pool,

(17:43):
and they were super into tasting their friends urine, but
not so much the ice water or the urine of
the stranger dolphin, which means that they can recognize their
friends urine by taste and they are really interested in
invest to gating it. How did the researchers collect the
friend here and from the friend dolphin? I mean, you know,

(18:07):
that's a really good question. I don't know, but what
I assume is they like waited for a dolphin a
p Maybe they had like a thermal camera or something
and then just scooped it out with a cup. I
don't know, I am only guessing maybe there's like a
little dolphin diaper you can put on and then kind

(18:28):
of squeegee out. Yeah. I'm gonna search YouTube later to
see how, because that sounds like by far the most
difficult part of that experiment. Yeah, that's a safe thing
to search how to collect dolphin p um you know,
on the internet. Definitely recommend searching for that. But I
feel like every listener right now is saying, well, now,

(18:50):
hold on, my my dog does this? Like if my
dog comes along and another dog is p there, my
dog runs over and smells it intensely and maybe p's
on top of it, or it runs over and smells
at other dogs. But is this the same thing? Like
is that are they getting the same thing out of
it that my dog gets when it's trying to read it,
Like when it meets a new dog, the first thing

(19:11):
that wants to do is smell it's But yeah, yeah,
I mean it's probably very similar. The only differences are
that the it's probably tasting the P the dolphin, not
just smelling it. And also they're able to recognize the
connection between the P and their dolphin friends whistle. So,

(19:33):
like I mentioned earlier, every dolphin kind of has a
unique whistle, which is kind of you could think of
it as like the dolphins name. And dolphins are really
interested when you present them both with the urine of
a friend and the whistle of their friend, like they
they taste even more P. I guess when they hear

(19:55):
the whistle because they think that this really means that
they're friend is nearby and they're they're really excited, um,
and so you know, I think it is. But it
is very similar to the whole dog butt sniffing dogs
sniffing pea kind of phenomenon. I guess. The I think
the issue is that we, because we're so humans, are

(20:16):
so based on site. We are thinking, well, couldn't you
just see that your friends, like if you're close enough
to drink as urine, like clearly you can see he's
right there. But I think and I think we may
be overestimating how well dolfice can see each other at
the depths they're at. Is that is that possible? I mean,
I think that it's just the there their vision. They

(20:39):
can use their vision, but I think like their sense
of hearing and their sense of taste and smell are
just much more um accurate and more um usable under
the water than their vision. Like vision underwater is a
little tricky with like how light reflects, Like see, creature

(21:00):
can see underwater, but you can't see very far. So
if your friend peas and then moves on kind of
you know, just like a several meters away, it might
be harder to see them because of how thick water
is compared to air in terms of how light can
pass through it. So making use of uh, taste and

(21:23):
smell and sonar and you're hearing underwater can be really
really useful compared to vision. And it's interesting because even
uh some terrestrial animals really capitalize on smell over vision.
Like dogs have decent vision, but they have incredible smell.

(21:45):
And so when you take your dog on a walk,
you might notice that they're much more interested in smelling
things getting their nose around than just looking around. And
that's because their perception is based on smell primarily and
also hearing. And then you know they do have okay, vision,
but they're less visual creatures than we are, and they're

(22:08):
much more interested in the smells of things. That I
think is secretly what this episode is going to be about,
because I think as humans were so heavily like everything
is by sight and then you know, second secondly by sound,
and you know, as you're going to get into later,
the concept of identifying your friends by smell is like

(22:29):
serial killer stuff, like that's what Hannibal Lictor did, the
idea that a dog's nose is so sensitive that can
smell a spot and instantly know everything that happened in
that spot over the last few days, like it's getting
a news report on that spot we can't really comprehend
because you know, we we can look and visually see,
oh there was a rainstorm here, or oh there was

(22:51):
you know, there's something there's this thing has been damaged
or whatever, and you can kind of reconstruct what has
occurred there. But whereas a dog can say, hey, you know,
a pair of squirrels had sex on this spot seven
two hours ago, where it's almost like a look into
the past because all of these traces remain of everything
that is urinated there. Stepped on that spot, you know,

(23:13):
somebody dropped a hot dog here two days ago, but
then they picked it up again. Um, and they can
get there getting so much information out of smelling. And
so when they do smell each other's butts or whatever,
I always felt like they're getting like a version of
that other dog's life story or that. You know, when
the a dolphin, you know it gets when it ingests

(23:33):
that urine. It's not just like m P like it
presumably is sensitive enough and to be able to detect
all sorts of things about hormone levels, you know, what
state of fear is it in? What state of health
is it in? It almost would I would assume that
through those chemicals it can deduce not it's not conscious
of all this. It's a form of communication. And since

(23:57):
that it can get like an update on its status, right,
because if it was unhealthy, if it was you know,
if it's kidneys were failing or whatever, that would be apparent.
And it's urine, it would be different. Yeah, that's super possible.
In fact, researchers their next goal is to see like
what compounds in the urine dolphins can detect and what
they're using to identify their friends, so they may very

(24:19):
well find that there's a lot of information these dolphins
can use from from this sampling this year. And even
though it sounds gross to us, it's like, we use
that kind of system in zoos, like zookeepers will test
the feces of animals to check on their health. And
so you know the fact that dolphins maybe using urine

(24:41):
to determine details about other dolphins. You know, it's it's
it's gross, but it gets right to the point. Earlier
we were talking about the kind of these uncanny valley
situations for humans, like weird faces with clowns. One of
the things for me is like when you think you
see a friend, uh, and then but it's not that friend,

(25:03):
where you think you see your own doppelganger, and it's
it's not really them. Like those kinds of situations really
like send a chill down my spine. And actually, with urine,
we have created an uncanny valley situation for elephants uh
in experiments. So there's this case of elephants where they

(25:26):
they can identify their friends from smelling their urine um
and they there was there are these researchers trying to
see if this was the case. They would collect the
urine from an elephant in like a group of elephants
that were traveling together and put it in like a
tupperware container and then later put it like in front

(25:49):
of the group of elephants. And so for these elephants,
sometimes they would smell these and it if it belonged
to an elephant that was like at the back of
the parade of elephants. They get really confused and stand
there and smell and like kind of make a commotion
because to them it seemed like that elephant just teleported.

(26:13):
They're smelling this year and in front of them, and
then they look behind them and they see, like George's
urine is here, but then George's way back there. How
did he get in front of them without them seeing
him move in front of them and like p there,
And so they get they freak out. They get really confused,
which I think is Uh, It's interesting how that kind
of sensation of like wait, this is not possible happens

(26:36):
to elephants. And it makes me wonder sometimes like we
mess with elephants like that. I wonder if aliens ever
do weird experiments on us. And that's you know, when
we were seeing a doppelganger or you know, weird unexplained occurrences,
and it's just some kind of like alien researcher doing
the equivalent of collecting elephant urine and tupperware and putting

(26:59):
it somewhere doesn't belong. And I know, I'm sure some
people get annoyed at the talk of like aliens because
of course there's no evidence we've been visited by aliens
or whatever. But I will say this, Uh, if they
were as intelligent to us as we are to elephants,
like if they were that far above us, they would
find it just as easy to deceive us, Like like

(27:19):
the elephant would never figure out, oh, they collected the
yurine and a type of ware container and just put
it here in the same thing like we are. We
we kind of cannot comprehend the idea that a creature
could be way more intelligent than we are, because how
can you imagine something smarter than you? It just doesn't work.
And we always assume, like, well, we figure it out,

(27:41):
like we would notice, Like no, not really, because our
thought patterns would be just as simplistic to them as
the elephants are to us, like we would be mysterious
to them in the same way that we don't completely
know how dolphins work, but at the same time, it's
not like a thing where we would for sure figure
out what they were doing. That's one of the creepier

(28:02):
concepts I know. Um. The second creepiest concept you mentioned,
like when they saw the urine of the elephant is
back there and they're like, hey, that's that's George's urine.
The concept of animals having names, like you mentioned earlier
that the that the dolphins had a distinct whistle that
almost served as a name for them. That is a

(28:23):
fascinating concept to me because when you're like training a dog,
the first thing they tell you is that the name
you gave the dog, the dog doesn't know that's their name.
To the dog, that is a command that means look,
attend to me, look at me, do what I'm asking
you to do. So if you shout rufus, the dog

(28:45):
does not think, oh, rufus, that's me. The dog thinks, oh,
that's the noise the human makes to to make me
return to them. So the idea of the dog having
a a like, are they conscious enough to have a
personal identity and no like I have I am a
distinct individual and these other dogs are other distinct individuals,

(29:07):
Like do they have a concept of the mind, like
these are other dogs? So that is a whole rabbit
hole you could go down and probably its own episode
because when they smell the urine, like they know the
concept of how many elephants are in the herd, they
know which one is which. But in their minds whatever
serves as an animal's mind, and they have something of
a mind. We humans have names we assigned to people,

(29:29):
but how would an animal who they don't have, you know,
a verbal language, So how do they conceptualize? Are they
just imagining a series? Is like? Is it literally in
their head? As just a pie smell? You see what
I'm saying. Like if you took the elephant we just
called George and painted him a different color, but as

(29:51):
Peace smelled the same, his roar from his trunk sounded
the same, everything else was the same. Would they have
no problem recognizing that as George because it's like the
fact that he's a different colors is irrelevant because in
their minds, elephant, in their minds, the name George is
instead of in an elephants mind, it's just a series

(30:12):
of sense or calls or noises or vibrations through the
ground or however however else you know elephants do what
they do. I mean, it's such an interesting question because
I think that, like what you're talking about in terms
of consciousness is like, I think something can be fully
conscious but not have a meta cognition of thinking about itself.

(30:36):
So I feel like a dog, it is very intelligent.
I think it's conscious, like very conscious, very aware, but
I don't think it has a meta cognition, or at
least there's no evidence that it has a meta cognition
about its own existence. So it like it just kind
of exists and feels things, but doesn't necessarily think about

(30:59):
itself as a unique individual. That doesn't mean it doesn't
have uh emotions connecting to itself, Like it can want
things and love things and dislike things. But that sense
of self might be kind of unclear to them. It

(31:19):
may it's like something they it doesn't even occur to
them to really think about. And I think they recognize
other individuals, like their owners or other dogs they like,
or even other species that they recognize, again without thinking
of this concept of self versus other However, we do

(31:39):
know they understand things like visual perceptive fields. So there
are these hilarious experiments with dogs where they have an
experiment or in the room, and there are a few
different types of situations. One in which they leave treats
out and they order the dog to sit and to

(32:00):
not take the treats. And so these are dogs that
are trained, who know that, who know what these commands mean. Uh,
And when the experiment er is looking at the dog
and looking at the treats, the dog will often sit
there and not try to steal the treat because it
knows that supposed to do that to behave if the
experiment or turns their back on the dog, and I'm
sure dog owners kind of recognize this behavior, Like if

(32:23):
you're not looking at your dog, and your dog can
tell you're not looking at it, then it will often
take the chance of being naughty, So then the dog
might go for the treat sometimes. And like most of
the cases of the dog that's experimented on, like if
they if the owner gives the command and then leaves
the room, almost all of them just immediately go and

(32:44):
take the treat um, but some of them will even
like try to be sneaky. So if the experimenters in
the room but with their gaze not directly at the
treat but sort of off to the side, the dog
will take sort of the circuitous path, how ding behind
things to try to get at the treat without the
observer watching them. So they can have complex concepts like

(33:09):
understanding that the observer can have it has a different
visual field than they do and is observing things without
necessarily conceptualizing the self and then the other person. So
or you know, they may have some kind of rudimentary
understanding of that. It's probably very different from our own,

(33:31):
but that is one of the it's one of the
key questions I think that animal behaviorists look at. It's like,
to what degree does an animal have that concept of self?
And there's some evidence that like dolphins may have that
developed more. They're very interested in mirrors, you know, they're
they're highly intelligent. There's also some research trying to find

(33:52):
out if elephants have that concept of self like they
sometimes like this. There's this famous thing known as the
mirror test, where you do something to animals face or
put a dot on them and you see if they like, uh,
investigate that dot that's on themselves in the mirror, which
would indicate that they understand that there's a connection between
themselves and the thing in the mirror. And I think,

(34:14):
if I remember correctly, elephants have on occasion done something
that indicates that they make that connection to the mirror
where they like ad just they have like a piece
of hay on their head or something, and then they
see that in the mirror and then they try to
pull it off of themselves. But yeah, it is I
don't think we have a definitive answer to that, and

(34:35):
once we do, we're going to know way more about
animal cognition and probably our own consciousness, which we barely
understand us. It is well right because when we try
to imagine being an animal, we imagine things like having
an internal monologue, which is something that didn't develop in
humans probably until we had language. Like you don't have

(34:56):
to go back that far in our own evolutionary treat
of find humans that don't have like this internal thought
processed the way we the thing that we think of
that that that like defines a human is a fairly
recent development. As far as we know, no other creature
has it. And you can function just fine without it.
You can function just fine as an intelligent being without that,

(35:19):
without having the internal you know, thoughts and all that.
Um that because our thinking the way, you know, when
we're trying to make a decision about what do we
do this or do we do this, we're running through
it in our head almost verbally or you know, and
we think that's the only way to process thoughts or
the process cognition, and of course it's it's not. Um

(35:41):
you know, we have machines that can make those decisions now,
and they're not They don't have an internal monologue or
an identity. They just they can judge, you know, a
self driving cars like do we turn here? Do we
turn here? Do we have to do this to avoid
this obstacle? But the car is not thinking to itself
like okay, okay, Tesla, now this thing the things about
to get into our way in the roads, we better

(36:03):
slow down, Like it doesn't need to do that. It
just does it. But it's still intelligent. It's still going
through the you know, all of the steps of processing
and information, but without anything like what we would call consciousness.
And these are all things are going to come up
as we make smarter and smarter machines, Like, again, at
what point do they do? We have to treat it
like a person, and that's going to be difficult because

(36:24):
we will probably never have one that has like an
internal monologue or thoughts the way we have. But the
question is going to be, well, okay, but why is
that the thing that defines whether or not we mistreat
a creature or or an entity. I mean, it's interesting
because even within humans, like that inner monomologue that you described,

(36:46):
it doesn't describe every humans experience, like there are exactly
there are you know, people who um function and like
socially you know, totally socially acceptable ways where it's you
wouldn't necessarily be able to tell this about them just
from talking to them, But they report not having that

(37:07):
inner monologue. They like don't talk to themselves in their head,
even though they can speak perfectly well. Um, but they
experience like images, emotions, sensations as sort of their inner thoughts.
But it's not organized as like a voice or words. Um,
which is it's I think it's a form of a

(37:30):
fantasia where it is you you're when you are sort
of in your mind, you're not thinking in sort of
images um, like clear, clearly constructed images. That's like the
typical sort of form of it. But I guess also
not thinking in terms of words or a voice is

(37:51):
a form of it. And it's interesting because people I've
I've read experiences of people where they're shocked to find
out that people you have like an inner voice, and
that sounds weird to them. Um. And so this concept
that you know, animals aren't aware because they don't have
a language, it's like, well, no, I think they can

(38:12):
definitely have coherent thought without a language. But it's just
it's so once you have that inner monologue and that's
how you think, it is really hard to conceptualize how
someone thinks without it, even though it happens. Yeah, And
so example, all these creatures, which is, you know, more
than the creatures that are like us, the ones that

(38:34):
base everything on smell, Like if they had a version
of an internal monologue, it would be a series of smells.
But that's that's almost incomprehensible like to a human because
we we've devalued what our nose does to the point
that you know, we still use it, but in terms
of like how we socialize, we we don't ever again,

(38:54):
think of it as being unless you're detecting how much
someone has bathed or something obvious wearing much cologne. Um,
the idea of interpreting the entire world through how it
smells and how its smell has changed. You can try
to imagine it, but you you know, you really can't.
And on that note, we're going to take a quick

(39:15):
break and then when we get back, we're gonna talk
about whether your noves can pick your friends? So we uh,
we're just talking about how for some animals, their sense
of smell is integral to the way they think, the
way they communicate, in the way that they identify their friends.

(39:35):
But is this the case for humans at times? I
mean consciously, um, you know no, unless by saying pick
your friends it's like, well, I don't want to hang
out with someone who's too stinky. But in terms of
the more subtle things of like can you recognize your
friend's smell? Um, and like can you tell anything really

(39:57):
about a person based on their smell when it's a
really subtle scent and it is not it's not something
that has to do with their perfume or the soap
that they're wearing. Because humans, we have a sense of smell,
but it is not nearly as sensitive as a lot
of other animals, and in social interactions were extremely visually

(40:18):
um focused as well as audio focus, so we rely
on hearing, sight, or touch, but we hardly use smell
at all and social interactions, if anything, we kind of
try to avoid smells human smells, or use like deodorant
or artificial smells to cover up our natural body odors

(40:41):
because we find them unappealing. So you know, our main
way of communicating is not through smells, but through like
facial expressions or language or sounds or touch. This is
I'm not trying to send us on down too much
of a rabbit hole here, but this is one of
my i unpopular beliefs, truly unpopular, to the point wherever

(41:06):
you expressed this in polite company or on the internet,
people just pile pile on you. Which is that the
our thing, our American Western thing, of showering every day
and shampooing your hair every day and putting on delorant
at least once a day, that is weird, Like through
all of civilization, through all of the civilizations that have existed,

(41:30):
the idea of bathing every single day and then like
socially shunning anyone who doesn't because the completely normal smell
of a human being that is functioning that we consider
that disgusting. That is a curious and weird thing that
I know dates back to living in cities and then

(41:54):
and then being you know more, having to be more
afraid of like disease outbreaks and germs, things like that,
having to be obsessive about controlling like sanitation. All these
are very recent inventions. And so as a result of this,
being afraid of any kind of a foul smell, any
kind of a hint of uncleanliness, it makes sense that

(42:15):
in this era, this very recent era of our evolution,
where we're living in close proximity two hundreds of thousands
of other people, when you're sharing the subway with all
these people, that it would make sense to develop a
kind of superstition around anyone who doesn't smell like they
just washed, which is but it is a superstition like that.

(42:35):
That's not that's not the natural, healthy way to live.
And in fact, we have shelves full of products that
have to put like the moisture back in your skin
because you're drying yourself out by constantly by bathing too much,
or or this shampoo that restores the oils that you
just washed out of your hair. Um. But and this

(42:56):
the reason it's a source spot with me is because
there are certainly some countries on Earth where people do
not bathe that often, and when we visit there as tourists,
we talk about what a filthy, terrible third world hellhole
this is because the people stink. It's like, no, they
smelled like people. It's a smell you're unfamiliar with because
you're in a you're in a you're in one of
the rare unique cultures that had the luxury of this

(43:20):
much fresh water to just waste with relentless bathing. It
would agree that it's almost like a religious thing with
us to the like that we considered a moral failing
if you don't bathe enough. Yeah, which you know, there's
a lot of sociological problems too with that, where you know,
it's like bathing is associated with being um more more

(43:45):
well off financially, because you have access to a shower,
you have the time to bathe. Um, you work in
an in a sort of a field where you're not
getting too stinky, and so we kind of associate it
with like, oh, you're you're a well to do person
and so this is a good thing. And yeah, but
but you're right, like overwashing like our body Like I'm

(44:09):
not saying you never should wash, but our bodies do
produce a lot of natural oils um called like sebam
that of course, it's like it gets a bad rap
because an excess it can cause acne and it can
get infected. But it uh is a protective, uh sort

(44:30):
of greasy substance that is generally good for your your
skin and your scalp. That's why we produce it, and
so over washing can actually cause problems skin problems, scalp problems. UM.
Sometimes it's sort of spirals into a vicious cycle. Like
for me, I have to um shower almost every day

(44:50):
or my scalp gets really itchy because I am like
allergic to A. I think it's like a it's this
common human sort of fungus that normally is fine, but
some people are sort of allergic to it and it's
got it's called support dermatitis UH, which is a fancy

(45:11):
name for like you get an itchy scalp and dandruff,
but probably you know part of that is you can
dry out your scalp and that can leave you more
vulnerable to things like that. And so, UM, now I'm
I'm trapped in a cycle of needing to shampoo all
the time. Uh, but you know, so, yeah, it is

(45:33):
it is interesting that we we uh really are sort
of an uh kind of an unusual animal because we
reject so much our natural smell, but we also don't
use it socially that much. Um. But there is research
that suggests we have not completely ditched the smellier side

(45:57):
of our evolutionary history and may subconsciously use odor as
a way to determine who our friends are and what
our compatibility is with people. And um, there there's been
a lot of studies on this. Uh. Sometimes they're like,
uh somewhat uh flimsy, like I think the uh there's

(46:21):
like a body odor and like compatibility with like romantic
partners study, but that it just had an extremely small
sample size. Um. And and these studies as well, they're
they're not concrete, but it isn't an interesting line of inquiries.
So researchers conducted as study looking at people who described
their friendships as instantly clicking, and they dragged them into

(46:46):
an old factory lab harvested their body odor and compared
them chemically, and they found that the body odor of
these friends were more chemically similar than that of two
random strangers. And in the second part of their study,
they brought together groups of strangers and had them do
bonding activities and then they observed these interactions and ranked

(47:10):
the friendlyness of them. Which sounds like everyone who has
social anxiety, that's like your worst nightmare that there's some
observer watching you ranking how friendly you are. UM. But
that's exactly what they did, and they found that in
the pairs that were ranked as having more positive interactions

(47:31):
also had more chemically similar body odors. Now here are
the um issues with the study. Uh, it had a
very narrow definition of friendship, and it had a very
small sample size around like twenty people for each study. UM.
And Also, if you're thinking like, oh, this means that

(47:51):
people who are like physiologically similar must also you know,
be compatible be friends, I had don't think this study
finds that body odor is not completely determined by like genetics.
It's also determined by diet and lifestyle. So it's possible
that like a similarity in lifestyle could predict both body

(48:15):
odor similarity and also your personality being similar with other
people and being able to click with them, um and
actually have nothing to do with people subconsciously enjoying each
other's smell. So I think, like, I would really like
to see more research in this area. I don't think

(48:36):
it's I don't think these studies are convincing to me
that we like can smell out our friends, But I
do think it is interesting that there may be some
kind of link between body odor and compatibility and whether
it and you know, like, I would like to see
if there's like if you did a study and you

(48:57):
blocked participants ability to smell each other, but you still
found these results. I think that would be really interesting
because it'd be indicating that somehow your body odor is
linked to maybe lifestyle that signals compatibility rather than being
able to smell each other. But I think those are

(49:18):
I would guess, and I'm no expert in any subject.
To be frank, I think that those aren't necessarily saying
the things that if you said that in our early
in our evolution, we used to back before we bathed,
the way all of our natural oils and all the
things that we secreted our hormones. All that that if

(49:41):
you ran into another primitive human in the wild, that
your that their scent would tell you this person eats
a similar diet. They eat a lot of fish, means
they live by the river. You know, um, all of
the other things you can smell about a person that
they are from a similar background to you. Oh, this

(50:02):
is another of the river people, right, because they've got
the smell of of the moss on them, or the
smell of the there from the beach. They've got the
smell of the salt water on them. These are the
coast people. They've got Um that it doesn't necessarily have
to be you know, you're a genetic scent that it's
it's like genes identifying genes. That it could be like
I'm identifying a lifestyle here, whereas if I smelled someone

(50:23):
who smelled of a hunter, those are the hunting people.
We hate them. He smells like animals, He smells like
animal guts. He smells like you smell and you get
an animal and you get there the bio and all
the stuff in your hands, Like that's the scent of
the hunter tribe, and I'm it seems it seems implausible

(50:44):
that we wouldn't use all of our senses. Humans are
social animals. We survived by being able to identify, that's
why we're so tribal. We survived by being able to
quickly decide who we wanted to be friends with, who
we wanted to ally with. Things like that. It seems
like it would be weird, especially in a pre language
stage of our evolution, if we didn't use sent the

(51:07):
way all of these other creatures do. Because you know,
we have sent for many reasons. It's not just for
finding food. It's for all sorts of things, you know,
detecting when something is on fire. But I think my
personal theory, again not a scientist, I think today when
culturally we do everything we can to cover up our

(51:28):
scent so that we try to use like we try
to manipulate our sense to send signals Like I'm wearing
an expensive perfume, I'm signaling that is a social signal.
But I've chosen that rather than letting this the natural
musk from my armpits signal to potential boyfriends. What that

(51:49):
I'm that I'm ready to mate? Um that I would
think that now and again, please This is me speculating now.
A lot of times when we meet one and instantly
decide we don't like their vibe. If and if it's
not like, well he had a giant tattoo of a
spider on his neck, I don't mean that, but when

(52:12):
but go on right that, when you sense the you
know that the you you sense that there's something off.
I think a lot of people credit it to like
intuition or instinct that I think a lot of it
is things like their scent, that it's subtle enough that
it doesn't he you consciously like, oh, this person reads

(52:34):
of alcohol, not like that, but enough that it's this
is a person that drinks a lot, like they've not
drink today, it's not on their breath. That there may
be some subtle thing in there. And the thing about
whether or not, like men can detect if a woman
is ovulating stuff like that, I don't know at the experiments,

(52:55):
And I know that the people who used to read
Cracked probably are saying, well, didn't you guys post a
out of articles on Cracked with that factory down it? Look,
we didn't know that none of the stuff replicated. At
the time, we thought if there was in a scientific
American like, hey, they just didn't experiment women can detect,
you know, different men by their their body odor, that
by putting, and that we didn't know that. When you

(53:17):
try to repeat those experiments, they fall through. It is
extremely difficult to do those experiments because things like collecting
sweat and then adding it with a dropper to a shirt, well,
that's not exactly the same thing. And I don't think
it's smelling the scent on a piece of clothing in
a room. That doesn't. I think it's seeing the person

(53:39):
face to face and getting the whole picture, all the
little micro expressions on their face, all of their gestures,
the way what they do with their hands, and you're
seeing all these little signals about what type of person
they are, with their fingernails look like, all the stuff
that you're not consciously you're not like Sherrock Holmes, like
going through is like, ah, he has plucked eyebrows. That
means he's They that are the whole picture of the person,

(54:03):
including their scent. I think that's the thing we call vibe.
Before you've talked to them, before you've noticed what brands
they're wearing, before you asked them what they do for
a living. You see what kind of car they drive.
I think that that sometimes when you instantly feel at
ease around a person, I think some percentage of that
is there is their scent. It's what it's what scientists

(54:24):
refer to as the vibe check. Um. Yeah, no, I
mean I I tend to agree, So I don't know, right,
Like the research on our on humans ability to pick
up these things from odor is a little bit fraught
and definitely not complete, But just looking at the kind

(54:47):
of more obvious behaviors of people, I do think smell
plays quite a role in our society. I mean there's
a lot of things where it's like the smells of um,
of food that is unfamiliar to you, Like people will
sometimes complain about food that's from another country, like the

(55:07):
smell of it, and they will use that as sort
of a way to be maybe like xenophobic or or
complain about like this other group, whereas like it can
also be something more positively social, like you, um, you
kind of like identify certain smells and have a memory

(55:30):
linked with them, Like there are certain smells that I
whenever I smell them, I like remember something like my
kindergarten class, Like smelling a glue stick brings me right
back to kindergarten. And so I think that there's still
a lot of things that smell do in terms of
our socialization. Even though we have a much weaker sense

(55:52):
of smell than say a dog or an elephant, we
I think that it does make these highly emotional links
and we can like, like everyone knows what the smell of,
like say, fall is in their culture. Like for some
people it's like, you know, the smell of cinnamon or something.

(56:14):
For other people it may be the smell of sort
of wet dirt or something. But we have these kind
of categories of smells, and so I do think it
is it's very plausible that we do the same thing
with people. And even if you know, I mean, I
think it even counts when we're using like artificial smell,
Like you may have a family member that always uses

(56:35):
the same perfume or something, and then you associate that
perfume with that family member, and then you have a
positive or negative reaction to that perfume. So yeah, I think, um,
I think it is. I think that smell is something
that is it's so such an interesting sense right, because

(56:57):
it's so it's very hard to describe a smell other
than just like making the connection to that thing, like
what is the smell of cinnamon? Well, it smells like cinnamon,
but actually describing that smell kind of in detail is
really difficult. Like, um, it's easier to describe taste, maybe
even than smell because it's such a complex sensation, and

(57:20):
so it's really hard to kind of incorporate that in
our language. But there are all these subtle emotions that
can come up with the smell that is really hard
to describe in in our linguistic monologue. But I think
it's still a very core part of the human experience.
I mean, that's kind of everything. The fact that we
don't have a lot of words that can convey to

(57:43):
someone else a smell, or the fact that I can
close my eyes in picture what my first car looked like,
pretty almost exactly that nine blue Mustang. I cannot bring
to mind its smell. I cannot make myself smell what
it smelled like. I can't, you know, like if and

(58:04):
if you try to tell me to imagine the smell
of cinnamon, I can't bring that scent into my nose.
But I can bring a picture of a cinnamon stick
into my mind and can close my eyes and I
can see it. I can generate a site, and I
can hear a song if you ask me, you know,
uh so, if you ask me to imagine the song

(58:26):
Babies Got Back by Sir Mix a Lot, I can
hear the whole song in my head, word for word
right now, But I cannot remember the smell of that song. Um.
And so there's some there's something weird about how our
cognition and our our mental thought processes is more disconnected
from our our sense of smell dan from almost anything else.

(58:49):
Because like visually, we can describe things we see. We
have a million different words for for color and contours
and shapes. You know, all of our poetry is based
about seeing things and feeling things. But trying to write
a poem about how something smells, you're just like the smoke.
It smells smoky. It smells like smoke, like it's You

(59:11):
can throw words in there, like acrid or something, or
stings in your nose or whatever, But in terms of
trying to verbally recreate a smell for a person, the
best you can do is say, well, it smells like
frying onions. It's something you've smelled before. It smells like that.
But like, well, yeah, but what what does frying onions
smell like? It's like, well, it's kind of smoky. Yeah.

(59:35):
And so this, this is the reason I bring this
up is because I think that's why so much of
if I'm looking at somebody and I'm judging them by
the shirt they're wearing, by their grooming, by their haircut,
all that stuff is visual. If they're saying a bunch
of annoying pickup lines at me, that's that's all audible.
I can you know, I can describe those words as
being stupid or corny or creepy. But the sense stuff,

(59:59):
because we don't connect it to our thoughts and our
language and our internal monologue, that stuff almost just always
plays as instinct. I think, for example, you said, what,
why smell a glue stick that reminds me of kindergarten? Um.
I think for every one time you smell a glue
stick and you consciously think, oh, this reminds me of kindergarten,

(01:00:21):
I think there are a hundred times when you have
suddenly had your mood change because you smelled something that
brought back a memory, but not consciously. It was just
a smell that brought a sense of dread. And you
don't remember necessarily that this is the same disinfectant they
used in the hospital when my dad was in the

(01:00:42):
hospital or whatever. But it's it's a subconscious thing. I
think there are all these associations where you find yourself
your mood shifting, or you find a certain house that
you just like being in. It's just and again you
would say it's just a vibe, and you can talk
about what is the function is that the arrangement of
the fur nature is this or that It's like, no,
it's it's the smell. You just you're not conscious of

(01:01:04):
it unless it's like an overwhelming like vanilla candle smell.
But sometimes a house just smells welcoming, whereas no hospital
smells that way. I think that's what they sometimes, like
realtors will like bake cookies in a house, um, but
like a few days before, so it's not super obvious,
but it's just kind of like they're hanging in the air.

(01:01:25):
You know that. It's interesting because you mentioned that you
can't imagine smells like you can't conjure that smell sort
of like to your you know, in a similar way
that you can visualize like a car. For me, that's
actually very different. I have an extremely sensitive sense of smell,
which sounds cool, except like I can smell tuna from

(01:01:48):
like five rooms away and it makes me want to
like pass out, So I and I hate, Like, there
are certain smells that I just like hate, Like I
hate the smell of a banana, and I can smell
it if someone's eating it across the room, and I
absolutely hate it. But I think like I can sometimes
in dreams, I can like taste or smell things, and

(01:02:10):
that can be either great or terrible, depending on the
context of the dream. But I can also like imagine smells,
which I think that's It's just interesting because I kind
of had assumed other people can also imagine taste or smells.
Um am I the only one who can't. I don't know.

(01:02:30):
I have to google it, I doubt well, let me, Yeah, like,
who can people? Can you imagine smells? Like I've never
had a taste or a smell in a dream in
my life. I didn't. I didn't think that was possible. Yeah,
I mean, I've talked to other people who say they
can't do that um as well as people who said
they can. So I would assume it's something that is

(01:02:55):
um that it is something that kind of just varies
from her into person. Do you do you have like
a very sensitive sense of smell or not? Not at all? No,
not at all. I mean maybe that's the that is
like the difference. Well, it's just like there's a specific
region of the brain, right, like that's it's it's more developed.

(01:03:15):
It seems like it's as simple as that, Like it's
it has the horsepower to process that memory more vividly
than like I don't completely forget what pizza tastes like
like I'm not. I know exactly why I see a pizza.
I know exactly what to expect. But I can't bring
the taste of pepperoni into my mouth the way I
can bring the song Babies Got back into my mind

(01:03:37):
anytime I want. That's interesting because yeah, for me, it's
like sometimes even not um intentional. I remember in high
school we had to do dissections of like fetle pigs
and frogs, and uh, the worst part for me was
the smell of the formalde hyde, and I was imagining

(01:03:58):
it was such a strong and unpleasant smell that for
like a week after we had done it, I kept
imagining that. It's like, my clothes smelled like it. Everything
smelled like it. And you know, my poor mom like
washed my clothes like twice and she's like, there's no
smell of formalde hyde on these clothes. You're you're it's
not there. But I could like still smell it, and
it was psychological because it was such a strong smell.

(01:04:21):
I think it just kind of like embedded itself in
my old factory memory and I kept um sort of
conjuring it up because it was probably like mildly traumatic
to have to like smell such a strong, unpleasant thing
while looking into the face of a dead baby pig. Yeah,
I mean that that is I feel like we've just,

(01:04:42):
like remember at the beginning, we were talking about some
people don't think in an inner monologue and how shocking
it is to like find out that other people think
in a different way. I feel like we're experiencing that
right now. But in terms of imagining smells or not
imagining smells, and of course the mechanism what we know
is there because there's the thing that people are about

(01:05:04):
to have a stroke. They will smell like a burning smell,
like burnt toast or something, and they'll ask if something
is burning. Then they'll have a stroke a moment later
because of some misfire in the part of the in
that part of the brain. So it's certainly something that
can happen. And also, I think every single person listening
this has had some the exact thing that you just described,
where their wife or their roommate is swears like something

(01:05:28):
stinks in here, like there's something rotten in the refrigerator,
the amouse's diet. I can smell. I can't smell anything,
And no matter what you do, you open the windows,
you lie at a candle, it's like I can't smell,
And the other person will just insist, and it's like, well,
is it something inside your nose? Is it? And it? Maybe?
Are they just more sensitive? Are they picking up little
scores of oils or whatever that's embedded in the fabric

(01:05:50):
of the curtains that it's just too subtle for the
other person. That's the weird thing about being a human
being is you just don't know what it's like to
live inside someone else's audi and brighten and senses I
think it would be shocking to the point of if
you could Freaky Friday somebody else and feel like impulses
the way they feel them, and perceptions the way they

(01:06:12):
perceive them. I think it would you. You would faint
from from the shock of it. I think how different
other people, how much more tired some people are, how
much more energy some people have. I'm always fantasizing about,
like whether everyone else has more energy than I do,
because I feel sleepy all the time. Um. But I

(01:06:36):
think we can sum up this episode by saying I
smell good and you smell bad apparently so um. Before
we go, I want to play a quick game called
guests Who's Squawk and the Mystery Animal Sound Game. Every
week I play a mry animal sound and you the listener,
and you the guests, try to guess who is making

(01:06:57):
that sound. It can be any animal in the world.
Last week's Mystery Animals sound hint was this. In the
winter they wear white, in the summer they wear brown,
but all year round they sound like dinghis is oh?

(01:07:26):
I mean it clearly. I'm trying to think of the
because it sounds to me like some sort of a
frog or something. But they the whole clue with them
wearing white in the winter and brown in the summer
um and I'm not sure. Gosh, dude, I can't. Yeah,

(01:07:51):
I'm not picturing there's some sort of a bird or
a gull or something. But no, I that that didn't
sound like anything. I'm familiar it there or would want
to be familiar with. Well, you are correct that it
is some kind of bird. It is a rock ptarmigan,
and it is a ground dwelling bird found all over

(01:08:12):
the world in arctic and subarctic regions. And even though
it sounds like some kind of like weird alien that
has a tentacle that like goes up your eye and
reads your brain, it's actually just a little fluffy bird.
They go from brown to white from summer to winter,
so they they molt and their brown feathers are replaced

(01:08:36):
by white feathers for the purpose of camouflage. They're actually
pretty cute. Their feet are fluffy and covered in feathers
then look like little bunny paws, and that works as
snowshoes in the winter, and they like to live inside
snow caves that form around trees and rocks. And what
you heard is their mating call. And remember that birds

(01:08:58):
are just modern day dinosaurs, So I love to imagine
that back in dinosaur times there are a bunch of
you know, big scary looking dinosaurs making just a weird
giggling sounds like this bird. Congratulations to Joey Pete, Bob,
whichever bob that was. I mean, if you're that bob,

(01:09:20):
you probably know which bob you are. And Emily am Yeah.
And again, anybody who successfully guesses these you win a
gift card to Hooters for ten thousand dollars. And you
might think that it is to the restaurant with problematic themes,
but no, it is actually an owl um sanctuary that

(01:09:46):
he is talking about. This Hooters, the restaurant still exists.
Is that still a thing? Oh? I think it does. Yeah, yeah,
that's inspirational. They're still hanging in there. I yeah. I
feel like they could definitely rebrand though, and make it
completely owl themed. Oh so um, are you ready for

(01:10:09):
this week's mystery animalsound? Yeah? And again if I if
I do successfully guess that, you just bleep it so
it doesn't ruin the whole thing. That's exactly right. All right,
here we go. So here is the hint, you've been
lied to. These guys don't have wings al right, so

(01:10:43):
can you guess who is squawking? Like? You are absolutely
correct and therefore you you you will be bleeped out, um,
although the listener will know that you're victorious, so you know,
oh yes, uh. And if you think you know who
is squalking right to me a creature feature pod at

(01:11:05):
gmail dot com. Also, hey, you know what right to me?
About whether you can imagine smells and taste or if
you don't imagine smells or taste, or if you have
a fantasia or if you don't think in a monologue.
I am curious to know. Um. And hey, Jason, thank
you so much for coming on. Where can people find you?

(01:11:27):
And when? When? And where can people get your book?
The book For those of you who know me from
before this show, it's UM in the John Dies at
the End series of adult horror sci fi novels. The
title of this one is if this book exists, you're
in the wrong universe. You can get it anywhere. It's

(01:11:50):
got a big, lime green cover. It's available on audiobook
anything like that. UM in any format out October eighteenth.
I don't know exactly when this episode airs. But either
way it's close enough that it's either out or it
will be within days. Otherwise, I'm on all of the
social media's that just that name, Jason Pargeon p A

(01:12:12):
r G. I n searched that name on Twitter or TikTok,
sadly or Instagram, any of them. I'm on their Facebook.
I'm on all of them. I'm not on Snapchat. That's
one that I'm not on. You on TikTok, That's well,
that's not something we like to adi. That's not something
we like to admit in public. But yes, we have

(01:12:35):
become I have gone viral on on TikTok. I have
a lot of I've now more followers there than I
have on Facebook, even though I've had that Facebook account
for like twenty years. TikTok, I've been on there for
two months. I've got like twenty thou followers and like
one of their own. Yeah, um and anybody have there.
Was worried about because a lot of people in my age,

(01:12:56):
you know, because I'm seven, ask how do you get
into TikTok. Because the thing is if you go to
best Buy and you get like they have like the
TikTok vlogger kits. Now for the kids. It's like in
a little pink box but like a little ring light
in a little camera and stuff. It's like to get
you set up on TikTok And it's like, well, how
can I purchase that with? Like won't they call the

(01:13:18):
cops or something if I try to buy something like that?
But again, you can tell them it's for somebody else.
I can say it's my niece's birthday. You know, I'm
getting it. She's twelve and you know she wants to
be an influencer. I'm getting it for her. You don't
have to admit that you're using this equipment for yourself. Yeah.
I mean it's like Lego Land and Chuck E Cheese
rules like you cannot purchase a TikTok kit as an adult,

(01:13:41):
but if you have a child with you, then you
can buy it. And you just have to say it
is for that child, yeah. Or like the guy who
goes to the dog park but without her dog. Yeah,
you know, I just like to sit here in commune
with the dogs. That happened to me once and it
was a magician also, and that was interested, to say
the least. Did you say he was a magician? Yeah?

(01:14:04):
He literally, this is not a joke. He had cards
in his pocket and like a little piece of string
for his tricks, and it it was scary. Did I
wish the whole episode had been about this? Did this
happen in America? Or did this happen where happen in America?
Good old American magician? All right, yeah, no dog either.

(01:14:32):
I guess he made the dog disappear and probably me
too if I hadn't gotten away from that park. If
any of you out there are amateur magicians, we are
not trying to cast us persions on the type of
there's just certain there's certain pastimes, like the like minds,
like they've gotten a certain reputation. Yeah no, I I um,

(01:14:55):
you know fully support the magician profession, just not at
dog parks when you don't have a dog. That's when,
uh it drives terror into my heart. Well, thank you
so much for joining me, and thanks to you the listener. Uh,
if you're enjoying the show, and you know you do

(01:15:17):
those things that people are always demanding you do, like
leave reviews, and you're probably sick of it, like stop
at asking me for my opinion. Well, I'm going to
do it one more time. If you have an opinion
on the podcast and you want to say it, especially
if it's a nice one, I'm not gonna lie. Like
those the best. I appreciate them and I read all

(01:15:38):
of them. And hey, thank you to the Space Classics
for their super awesome song. Ex Alumina Creature Feature is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like
the one you just heard, visit the I heart Radio
app Apple Podcasts, or Hey, guess what where avery he
listen your favorite shows? I genuinely don't care. See you

(01:16:00):
next Wednesday.