January 3, 2024 • 41 mins
Summary: Happy holidays! I'll see you soon in the new year, until then, enjoy some of my favorite classic holiday episodes! This one's about weird ungulates.
Guest: Alex Schmidt
Footnotes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ofN2BMRRxu3ITqZZZjcH7LSae9rq2umS0pJ39rHJlRU/edit?usp=sharing
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show, we're giving the creature Kringle
Time's reindeer a break and hiring some new mystical steeds
to carry kringle claus sleigh, and using a bit of
Kringle Time magic, we're bringing some megafauna back from extinction,
(00:31):
discover some unforgettable ungulates as we answer the age old
question or dragons herbivores. Joining me is friend of the pod,
friend of ungulates everywhere, and host of the show, secretly
incredibly fascinating Alex Schmidt.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Hey, Katie, it's amazing to be here at especially thank
you for teeing up megafauna. It's very very excited. I
love it. Yeah, mammals in both the bison and my
heart as dancing around very hippy. Yes, I have fun.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Well look at the size. So yeah, we're all about
ungulates today, Alex, do you like an ungulate?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I think I learned the word ungulate from a Far
Side cartoon. I don't know how many other people had
that experience, but there's it's like a guy in a
back alley. It's like the strip is like a guy
in a back alley. It's the trope of like a
guy with a coat full of illicit watches or whatever.
But it's a guy in a back alley saying, hey,
(01:34):
you want to buy an ungulate, and then there's a
bunch of like antelope and the shadows. It's great, Oh my.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
God, that's amazing. That's amazing black market ungulate. Yeah, they
are a clade of quadruped mammals. Typically they've got hooves.
This includes animals you'd probably expect like horses, deer, cows, camels,
and sheep, but also animals you might not expect, like rhinos, draftes,
(02:01):
tape ears, and even cetaceans, which is dolphins in whales.
And the reason dolphins and whales are in that clade
is they evolved from terrestrial ungulate ancestors, so they do
not have those they are. You know, thinking of a
dolphin as an ungulate is very strange, but they are
(02:23):
in that clade because they did evolve from weird little
deer things.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I didn't know. They got to remain in the club.
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, they're still in the club. I mean, I don't.
I think if you called a dolphin an ungulate, you
might get some weird looks. But they are technically in
the same clade as ungulates, so you know, you might
get some side eyes. You're like, yeah, dolphins is an.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Ungulate because I care about scientific accuracy and I also
care about, you know, fitting in with the cool marine
biologists exactly. So it's important to.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Kind of a west side story situation where you have
the marine biologists and then the terrestrial animal biologists snapping
their fingers and.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Right, the sharks and something besides the chats, the silicants
or whatever old ocean thing they care about.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Yeah, theikitas in the chevrotanes sounds really badass, but those
are two of the cutest examples of cetaceans and ungulates.
So first, let's talk about what a hoof is. So
not all ungulates have hoofs, but most hoofed animals are ungulates.
A hoof is the tip of a toe of an
(03:40):
animal where the nail or claw has evolved into a
very thick and hard, caratinous chunk that the animal can
walk on. So there are both even toed ungulates like
deer who have an even number of toes on each foot,
or the odd toed ungulates like horses who walk on
(04:00):
an odd number of toes. For instance, horses walk on
one big old toe which has grown to incredible proportions,
so uh, yeah, they're just walking on their tiptoes. Ungulate
legs are typically pretty interesting anatomically. So the part of
(04:21):
the horse that you would probably think of as the
knee is actually its wrist. So that big knobby thing
on the horse, you're like, that's where its knee is, right,
that's where it's walking. That's its ankle and or wrist.
So below that are the elongated, infused bones of the metacarpals.
(04:44):
In humans, the metacarpals are actually that first segment of
our fingers and toes. You guys can't see it because
I'm in your ears, but I'm showing Alex my fingers
because this is the metacarpals.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
So so yeah, it's just the rest of it is
Katie's hoof. Actually it continues into her head.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And they fuse into a single horrifying hoove that I
like to prance around on, which is, you know, really
an interesting image. But yeah, I mean, basically, horses are
walking on one long toe. So that's interesting and a
little bit upsetting.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I guess this is really changing my whole understanding of horses,
Like the whole essentially bottom half of what I think
of as their leg is basically a foot. Like that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah wow, yeah, so like freaky yeah, because if you
think of a horse leg, it bends in like three
places kind of. So you've got the shoulder part, but
then under that you have the actual knee and or elbow,
and then under that you have where you would kind
of think the knee would go is actually the wrist
(06:02):
or ankle joint, and then below that you have the
finger joints.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
So it's weird. Yeah, it's like I'm thinking of that
meme where it's like how would a dog wear pants?
And it's either across or at the back, Like now
I'm thinking of how would a horse wear shoes? And
the shoe is like half the leg, you know, because
it's it's the foot or whatever. Freaky.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
H I think there's some kind of drawing of like
what a human would look like with horse proportions.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Oh, it's called Bowjack Horsemen. It's a very good show.
A lot of people like it.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
There's a lot of fun diagrams of people walking like horses,
and it's showing sort of the the similar stuff. Well,
my Google search is certainly very strange and interesting, but
not very scientifically relevant. So moving on on you it's
weird toe walkers, but it gets weirder and we can
(06:56):
look back in time to some extinct species that were
absolutely just bonkers. So there used to be a gigantic
deer that would roam around in Ireland and Russia and
parts of Europe, called the Irish elk, and it was
(07:19):
not an elk, it was a deer. It was also
known as megeloceras gigantius because it was giganteus. So its
skeletal remains have been found in the bogs of Ireland,
which those bogs are really amazing at preserving dead things.
(07:40):
It probably went extinct over seven thousand years ago, so
humans definitely overlapped with this thing. So it had a
massive set of moose like antlers. So you have two
types of antlers. You have sort of the antlers you
see on like a deer, but then the antlers you
see on a goose or like a I think it's
(08:01):
called a fallow deer. Yeah, a fallow deer are palmated antlers.
So a palmated antlers basically means hand like antlers, just
like a moose. You know, they're they're they have sort
of this uh solid palm and then it branches off
into quote unquote fingers. So yeah, palmated antlers. And it
(08:25):
was absolutely pants weddingly huge, gigantic, gigantic ew Yeah, I'm.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Sorry, I'm imagining the first human to invent pants overlapping
with the end of this animal. So like they finally
finish pants and immediately pee up because.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yea, yeah, well I think they were invented to be
peed in like like you know, some very early human like,
oh my god, that deer makes me want to pee
my my pants, and then he invents pants and peas
them promptly.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
So the big old deer stood it around seven feet tall,
over two meters at the shoulders. It could weigh over
one five hundred pounds or seven hundred kilograms. It was
similar in size to a moose, plus you know, maybe
a little bigger than a moose, but it had much
(09:21):
bigger antlers. The antlers were the biggest known of any deer,
and they spanned twelve feet from side to side, so
that's three point six meters of antlers, and they weighed
almost ninety pounds or forty kilograms, over twice the size
of the antlers of a moose.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
So yeah, big antlers, right, that's the freakiest part that
it's the same size of the rest of the animal
pretty much. Yeah, just pile on so much.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Do you remember that old the Grinch who Stole Christmas
car tune version of the Jim Carrey version. Yeah, yeah,
the car like the check the Check Jones cartoon, And
he's trying to disguise his the little dog into a deer,
so he puts a big set of antlers on the dog,
so the dog tips forward, and he keeps having to
(10:18):
shave off the antlers until it's the right size for
the dog to wear. Yeah, that keeps tipping forward. That's
how I imagine these deer just like tipping forward all
the time. But yeah, that's why their bodies had to
be so huge and muscular. They even had like this
big hump on their back, similar to a bison. That
(10:40):
would help probably kind of balance them a little more
and also gave them the ability to both store fat
and have longer leg strides at the attachment of their shoulders.
So yeah, just beasts, big old beasts.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
And probably almost like hair owing to see. Because because
I have family and Colorado who've seen a moose in
the wild in real life, and they described it as
a little more scary than majestic, you know what I mean,
Like they're that big, and they're kind of aggressive, and
they only have you know, like one percent of these
antlers or whatever. I don't want to see an Irish
(11:19):
elkan life boy, oh boy, forget it.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Well, absolutely, yeah, I think moose are scary. I appreciate
them obviously. I think they're beautiful animals. I respect them.
I would not want to be face to face with
a moose. That is terrifying. They're big, dangerous wild animals.
I think that sometimes and certainly not people who live
(11:42):
with moose, I think they probably understand and have a
healthy respect for the moose. But deer and moose and
ungulates in general, I think maybe other than bulls, we
kind of don't think of as dangerous, but they certainly
can be.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yeah, Bulls, bulls, I think, because of media, are the
one exception where we're like, oh yeah, that plant eater
is dangerous, right, But otherwise we have this weird like
dinosaur I think based concepts where we're like, oh, if
it eats plants, you can hug it, and if it
eats heat, it's it's the bad guys in the movie.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, but really not the case. Even like if you've
seen these herbivores fighting back against the carnivores, especially in
the sub Saharan savannah, like the giraffes kicking lions, and
(12:36):
you know it just just they can really, I mean,
they can sometimes kill lions like a giraffe even something
like you know, some of the bigger, the bigger ungulates.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Like are hippos ungulates hippos.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Are gilts and they can certainly ruin your day and
stomp in your head. Yeah, oh will the beast can
really mess a line up. Absolutely just reck alion. So yeah,
I mean it's they are very capable. Moose are very capable.
Even regular sized deer can hurt people. They can kill people,
(13:13):
They can stomp you, they can gore you, you know,
if you anger a deer up close. I mean, we
have a great advantage with our weapons and stuff, and
generally they're afraid of us. But if they feel like
they've got to fight you to get out of a situation,
you're in a lot of trouble, because yeah, they are,
they're dangerous animals and so and so this thing with
(13:38):
antlers twelve feet wide antlers that's like two deer, Like
it could carry two Deus in each set of antlers.
You know, like that's insane, that's it's it's absolutely the
deer of your nightmares. And yeah, I mean we did
apparently hunt them, which I guess early humans were just like, yeah,
(14:02):
mammoth giant deer, No big deal, just gonna go up
to this thing. I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure there
was a good amount of collateral damage of early humans
of like, what's this thing? And the next thing they know,
like they've been cleanly hewn in half by a giant
set of antlers. But yeah, I mean, one of the
(14:25):
theories for why these went extinct is because of those
huge antlers, because they are very costly in terms of nutrition.
You need a lot of nutrition to build up those
muscles and to be able to actually grow such huge antlers.
And they're also kind of, you know, not the most
(14:48):
aerodynamic things in the world. So if you're trying to
run through a forest away from a group of human hunters.
I would imagine they'd get stuck in things, like in trees,
and you know, it's probably not the most advantageous feature.
The reason they got so huge was for probably sexual selection,
(15:10):
because they were huge in males, and it was probably
to impress females and to signal to other males that like,
they were awesome and great and don't even bother trying
to compete.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Yeah, they're essentially built like Johnny Bravo, but he doesn't
need all that hair up there. Come.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, definitely sort of the ornamental bodybuilders of the ungillate world,
where it's kind of it's kind of decorative. You know,
it looks intimidating, but a lot of it is decorative.
I mean, they could definitely crush you if they fell
on you, but you know. So now we're going to
(15:55):
talk about one of the most uncanny, weird just getting
we're getting real freaky with these with these deer alex.
We're going to talk about ro Poto Suradidae, which is
a family of even tote ungulates of North and Central
America that went extinct over four million years ago, whose
(16:16):
bodies look similar to deer, but their heads look like
a deer from Salvador Dali's nightmares.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
So not as good dreams where stuff's melting but it's happy.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Although maybe with Salvador Deli, maybe his nightmares were just
realistic things like cute teddy bears and normal looking things,
and he's like, ah, I just dreamed about o'clock that
wasn't melting.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, I could tell time. No.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
So my inspiration for this section is actually from a
Twitter thread by an ecology student Aditya Stranath and some
paleo artists discussing one of the weirdest extinct families of
ungulates out there, so protosur today. If you look at
one of these skulls, you will be convinced that dragons
(17:08):
were real. Alex I have shared with you some of
these schools. These will also be in the show notes.
They you know, they look like dragons or dinosaurs.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Right, Yeah, it's got dinosaur vibes and then also sort
of a horse mouth as I understand skeletons. Yeah, like
if you came upon it in the desert southwest, all
bleached and stuff, you would assume it's some sort of
dark tower situation where a gunslinger was fighting monsters.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah. So there are many different species with really wacky
looking skulls, but typically they would have four horns quote
unquote horns. They're actually most likely osso cones. So an
osso cone is something like you see on a giraffe.
They are a bone structure covered in skin and fur.
For the section, I'm gonna use terms like horn and
(18:04):
antler just to describe the shape of these things, but technically,
horns are a structure covered in keratin, and antlers are
a bony structure that are shed and regrown every year,
and they, like a deer's antlers, will actually start out
covered in a thin layer of skin and fur which
is shed, whereas osca cones, which is what we're talking
(18:27):
about here, are structurally similar to antlers and that they
have a bony base and they're covered in skin and fur,
but they're permanent and so they never shed that skin
and fur coating.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Oh just amazing.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, I mean, like the little knobs on a giraffe head.
I don't think about them too much, but when I do,
I realize they're kind of weird.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Right, I do, because I used to give tours of
a zoo at Brookfield Zoo, and we had a lot
of giraffes that were part of the tour vout and
I think people always thought of them as just silly.
But then those little I guess osacone on the top
of the head, they indicate some sort of more warlike
past to me of the giraffes. I don't know if
(19:06):
that's true. And then, as you said, giraffes will totally
fight and kick in the modern day, they still got.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
It, yeah, but with their next but yeah, I mean
it's interesting. I don't know exactly what the osccones are
used in giraffes. They may be for mate selection. I
don't think they're used for fighting, but they may have
had a relative that used them for fighting or for
mate signaling. So yeah, so in these extinct species, these
(19:36):
were probably used in sexual selection because it was the
males that had the most just bananas situation going on
with these auso accounts.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
So yeah, once again, Johnny Bravo, Johnny Bravo's most species,
it turns out, folks, I don't know if you're familiar
with the cartoon, I think the nineties maybe later last.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Anyway, nineties cartoon where it was this guy who's like
body mass was ninety percent the pectorals and and biceps
and then tiny little legs. And actually, you know what,
that Johnny Bravo analogy is going to hold out throughout
the show, especially with our last one we're going to
(20:14):
talk about. So hold on to that.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Thought scientific name Jonicas bravonicus and the you know, the
finer scientific text out there.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
So most species of Protocertidae had two horny protrusions behind
the eyes and two on the snout. But depending on
the species, these horns were in all sorts of different
weird shapes, and yeah it was the males ran particularly
wild with it. So one species called Synthetocerous had a
(20:48):
nose antler that started out as like one long unicorn
horn and branched into two, so kind of like kind
of like a slingshot. I could imagine, you know, you
wrapping a rubber band around it and using it as slingshot.
What was that old show with like the Caveman family
who would like ride around on weird dinosaur things and
(21:11):
like with the flinstones, No, I mean flintstones is one
of those things. Oh, definitely flintstones would use this as
like a mobile, like a slingshot creature. But now there
was another one, the.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Movie The Crudes. I have not seen the movie.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
The I googled cartoon dinosaur times eighties, and that didn't
help me really at all.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Slingshot in an old cartoon. I almost thought you were
going to say Bart Simpson, like what, he just goes
around sling shotting things. But other stuff is, especially in
the early seasons, they were like he's a real trouble maker.
And part of it was that he had a slingshot
in his back pocket, which no child has done since.
I don't know, FDR. It's very old fashioned to me.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah. Yeah, the Dennist, the one that slingshot in the
back pocket. Herculoids. It was herculoids. Do you remember herculoids?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
No, I don't know it. I don't know it. Yeah,
I've never heard of it.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
I mean it was a little before our time. I
think I only saw reruns and stuff. But they had
like weird like dinosaur monsters and like a rhino that
would shoot stuff out of its forehead, and like a
gorilla made out of stone, and then these just like
big goo things. Anyways, it was a really Weird Show,
(22:28):
and this makes me think of something from that Weird Show.
I think it was from the seventies, but yeah, so
so in addition to the slingshot on its nose, it
also had these two horns behind its eyes that were
curved and even weirder. So there's this dip in the
(22:48):
nasal bones that some people, including palaeo artists vill Sinkonin,
speculate may have been because of an inflatable skin pouch
at the base of the horn that males could have used,
similar to how animals like elephant, seals or frigatebirds inflate
(23:09):
a pouch for sexual displays, but like right on top
of its nose. So I'm definitely including a link to
a hilarious and really interesting animated three D recreation by
Villis Sincronin. It's this such a goof ofsaurus, Like, I mean,
it's an ungulate, mammalian ungulate, but it's so goofy looking.
(23:31):
And then on top of that, the potential for this
inflatable nose pouch just incredible, magnificent.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I'm looking at this little video and look, they did
a really professional job. It's really well put together, and
it makes it funnier to me. Y's just this. It
looks like it has like an Edgar Allen Poe Telltale
heart underneath the front of its face. I love it
really good, Like it won't stop beating in a way
(24:05):
that's unsettling.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, yeah, it's It looks like it would make a
little like bicycle horn honking sounds.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Or have like that wheezing nerd voice that's in cartoons,
like it's trying to talk, but there's just wheezing all
the time.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Great, yeah, yeah, no exactly, I mean there's and this
is just one species. There are several species of really
weird looking ones, and I'm including in the show notes
a diagram of a few of them. One of them
was Para paratocerous ward eye, which appeared to have two
(24:47):
big triangular horns right above the eyes, like almost like
eye eye lit lashes that fused into a horn, and
then two smaller bony triangular protrusions in front of the eyes,
and this weird little wishbone shaped bone right on top
(25:07):
of its skull between the ears, like it's wearing one
of those little propeller hats. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, it almost looks like old TV antennas and pictures
of old TVs in a way that no one has now,
Like yeah, like it's picking up channels two through seven
for free, and it's really proud of it, you know,
beating the Kalo Company.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
I mean it's it's ridiculous. And there's Protocera Celaire, which
was I don't I struggled to figure out how to
describe this. It has fangs, that's important, like vampire fangs.
It has like two bony shark fins or dolphin fins,
like at the sides of its nose, and then just
(25:54):
a complete chaos as you go up the face. There
are ridges around its eyes, like a square ridge right
above its eyes, and then two joysticks right behind its size.
So that's the thing.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
It basically has one of the landscape backgrounds from Wiley,
Coyote and roadrunner on top of its head like several
maces in a way that would be our greatest national
park but doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yeah, it's a skate park built on top of a
deer head. Yeah, it's just these things are they're so
I mean, so ambitious, just the ambition of these creatures
that thought they could get away with these horns.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
It also, I'm not a hunter. But I feel like
the hunting community would be losing its mind if it
could have this many different kinds of antlers to count
and rate themselves on, right, like they all love just
the amount of points deer antlers have, they would they
would be like like weird stat had baseball nerds about
see it was available to them today.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
These antlers would require some long division. It's it's a situation,
it's a whole situation. So now we're going to talk
about truly the most Johnny Bravo of all deer. It
(27:26):
is a species of giant gorilla bear deer that went
extinct over seventy eight thousand years ago, found in North America, Eurasia,
and Africa. So these are.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
You did you say gorilla bear deer?
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah they did, No, Actually I said giant gorilla bear deer.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Oh I'm sorry. The fourth animal there is giants like
in Jack of the Beadstock. Really cool.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
So these were odd tooed ungulates and though they were
autoed ungulates, they didn't really have the same hoof legs
structure as ungulates such as horses. Instead of hooves, they
had these three big claws kind of like a sloth.
And the way they walked were very strange. Do you
(28:16):
know those like strider costumes. I think they're in like
the dark crystal and a lot of people wear them
for like parades or Halloween or something where you're kind
of you have two stilts that you hold with your arms,
and then you're on a set of shorter stilts with
your back legs, and people kind of walk around like
(28:37):
some kind of weird animal. It's basically shaped like that.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
It's like it's like Cloverfield monster postures. Yeah, that where
you have like big, big, big front legs and then
little back ones. Yes, everyone does shake cam footage.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
That is what these are. Absolutely and they liked to
eat leaves and shrubs, so they had these little short
hind legs and really really big beefcakes arms obviously skipping
leg day but doing like quadruple duty on arm day.
(29:15):
And they walked on their knuckles of their forelimbs, kind
of similar to a gorilla, sort of like side knuckling.
It actually more like an ant eater walks. Because they
had such huge claws on their front limbs. They couldn't
really walk directly on these claws. They had to curl
them inwards and walk on the sides on their knuckles,
and then their heads were horse like and they had
(29:41):
like the you know, basically a big, big horse mouth
and they would so a review of what's happening here,
beefy body of a gorilla walks like a cross between
a gorilla and an ant eater, has claws like a sloth,
(30:01):
head and neck like a horse. They weighed over one
three hundred pounds or six hundred kilograms. They were about
six feet tall at the shoulders or one point eight
meters and over seven feet long or two meters, and
it could use its huge claws to pull down trees
(30:21):
and strip off limbs for them to get at leaves
or probably to fight off predators.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yeah, they could just put up those dukes and do
it and maybe fall over if it picks up its
front legs. But you know, still pretty good until that
pretty good.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Even funnier, they probably were able to rear up on
their hind legs to get at tall trees. So just
these little teeny tiny like I mean, their legs aren't
that tiny, they're like bare legs, but compared to the
front of them with these huge arms, they do look
disproportionately small. And yeah, I mean yeah, like, yeah, looking
(31:00):
at this thing, it's like it's like a mule or
a donkey cross with like a bear or a giant
sloth and with huge claws that could definitely decapitate you.
Uh yeah, I don't know, absolute cuties it is.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
It's like pretty nice looking for being the exact nightmare
collas you have described. Yeah, it's pretty fun to look
at for being parts of seven different mammals. It almost
feels like somebody was vaguely told about mammals in passing
and tried to draw what that is. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah, it feels like a b steerie drawing from a
monk who's never seen a horse or a gorilla and
tried to draw a combination of the two from memory. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I mean, and they're like, you're a monk, aren't you
supposed to be focused on the Bible, And they're like,
it's part of it. It's part of it. Don't worry
about it, don't worry about it. I'm creative.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah. Yeah, man, they love to draw their their weird
animals and those little inserts in the side. I mean,
I don't blame them. God, it must have been boring
to be a monk.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Oh, yeah. Yeah, and you know, enough time staring at
the wall and brewing beer that will be better later.
You know, you'd want to start drawing weird lions.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to try to draw a lion
despite never having seen one or even heard a description
of one. I think it's like a dog with spikes. Yeah,
but I would absolutely like feed one of these sugar cube,
call it sea biscuit, and ride around on it until
(32:42):
it like decided it was annoyed by me and just
sliced me cleanly in two.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
It could it could definitely be the tank in your
like fantasy role playing group of four or five characters.
It could definitely be the one that receives a lot
of damage. Well, somebody else is a mage and there's
an archer or whatever.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's it's a It's definitely the
tank and yeah, or like a Star Wars creature that
you know, oh that makes some ridiculous fully sound effect
as you ride around on it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Star Wars. I feel like throughout that franchise they're very
anti megafauna, right, Like there's some people ride and stuff,
but the Wampa and then the rain Corps and then
that big thing in the seventh movie and stuff. There's
a lot of like, if it's a big animal, it's
a monster. No thanks, big animals are cool, get out
of here. Star Wars not into.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
It, but yeah, I do. I do think like if
if if Creature Kringle times reindeer need a break, I
don't know. I would love I would love to see
a sleigh driven by like a couple of a couple
giant irish elka, a couple of weird uh Protocerididae with
(34:06):
just absolutely Boushian mc esher like faces, and then you know,
bringing up, bringing up the rear, maybe a couple of
these gorilla deer.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
I love it, just just following like a celebrities bodyguards.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Yeah, sunglasses and those like little little ear wires. It's like,
you know, baby reindeer to Papa Papa, Papa Santa. We
eyes on the package.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
And then later in the movie you find out they're
actually really sweet eyes. You judge them for their size,
but actually one of them does a lot of needle
point and.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
The other willed a movie into existence, like later in
the movie about this crew of non reindeer.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
I've been storyboarting this whole time. My hand is very tired.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Yeah, it'd be called Santa Claus, and then there'd be
like in the poster art these fake claw rips and
then blood dripping down right.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
I am astonished that it's not already a movie title.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Santa Clause movie. Oh, it certainly is. It's got two
stars on IMDb. There's different types of Santa Claus movies.
There's one that's starring kittens, as it looks like one
kitten's like a reindeer, one kittens like an elf. So
(35:39):
Santa Claus the Kittens Movie. Then there's Santa Claus starring
a skeleton dressed as Santa, carrying a axe.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Hold on. So they were like, we're gonna make a
horror movie called Santa Clause. What's the first monster we pick?
Definitely something that has no claws, a skeleton. Perfect.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
There is also a fourteen movie called Santa Stole Our Dog?
Not sure, and then there's another Santa Claus movie with
kittens that seems to be pretty popular one.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Santa Stole Our Dog. Santa He's just a huge jerk.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
I know this is not this is not necessarily the
theme of the podcast, but I do have to see
if I can read the UH description of this This movie,
The Santa Stole Our Dog. So Santa Stole Our Dog
is a twenty seventeen Christmas movie. It's called Santa Stollar Dog,
(36:47):
A Merry Dog on Christmas by Brian Michael Stoller.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Ryan Michael Steeler. Of course he wrote this, of course
he did so.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
The summary is pretty simple. On Christmas Eve, Santa Claus
accidentally steals the family dog, so begins an epic journey
through the twelve Days of Christmas as the family ventures
to the North Pole to get their beloved canine back. Now,
the cover of the Santa Stolar Dog has a Dodo
bird on it, which I'm not sure I understand that
(37:19):
this is definitely something I'm gonna have to watch and
get back to you guys on what's going on with
this UH with this movie.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Because it looks I am astonished that this movie connected
to megafauna. There's a Dodo on it. Incredible great megafauna, right, amazing.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
I feel like they're medium fauna. Medium that's santascle Art Dog.
I don't think I'm allowed. Maybe I could play just
a little clip from the trailer. Let me let me see,
this is a this is a this is a special
Creature feature first me playing a clip from a trailer
(37:55):
that only has a tenuous connection to uh animal biology.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
I have also pulled up this IMDb page and I'm
seeing a very cock eyed Santa, who is apparently played
by Ed Asner rip and I'm also seeing the subtitle
of Santa Stollar Dog is a merry dog one Christmas
exclamation point. A lot going on.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, okay, so I did I did manage to get
the trailer to Creature Kringle Times Miracle.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
There's okay, giving Santa a lot of credit up front.
Maybe he's a thief guys, Okay.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Yeah, it stars Ed Asner's Santa Claus bad cgi Reindeer,
and uh you know, yeah, no, this is a wow.
The trailer is basically just the kids going Santa Stoller Dog,
and then the adults going like, Santa stole our dog,
(39:03):
and then there's a newspaper that reads Santa steals family's dog,
and then Santa going like, Who's dog? Did I allegedly steal?
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Who do you belong to?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Wonderful? I feel so blessed to find this.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
It's just ninety straight minutes of people making surprised faces
back and forth. That's the entire time. Stole a dog.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
A dog was stolen by undel.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Well, so thank you so much for joining me. Alex.
Where can people find you anything?
Speaker 2 (39:44):
It's always great, always awks great. And Anya, I make
a podcast called Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. I really hope people
check it out. Each one's about one thing that people
think is ordinary, and then we get into history, science,
law about why it's amazing. And there are many wonderful
episodes with Katie gold what. Yes, you should check them out,
especially there'll be one start of January, a new one.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
It's exciting. I love the topic.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah, the topic might make you make a series of
high pitched noises as you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Mike, thank you here here, here here, yeah, and thank
you so much for listening. If you're enjoying the pod
and you leave me a rating and review, I read
all the reviews and I cherish them and I print
them out and I hang them up in my house.
I'm like, look at that one from we'd Goku sixty
(40:37):
nine who liked my show. So thank you so much.
And if you think you have an answer to the
animal sound, gissing game. You can write me at Creature
feature Pod at gmail dot com, Creature Future Pod on Instagram,
Creature Feet Pod on Twitter. That's FB eighteen not v
et sounding very different, and of course thanks to the
Space Colssics for their super awesome song ex Alumina. Creature
(40:59):
Features are direction of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the
one you just heard, visited the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or Hey guess what mayby listen to your favorite shows.
See you next Wednesday.
Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show, we're giving the creature Kringle
Time's reindeer a break and hiring some new mystical steeds
to carry kringle claus sleigh, and using a bit of
Kringle Time magic, we're bringing some megafauna back from extinction,
(00:31):
discover some unforgettable ungulates as we answer the age old
question or dragons herbivores. Joining me is friend of the pod,
friend of ungulates everywhere, and host of the show, secretly
incredibly fascinating Alex Schmidt.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Hey, Katie, it's amazing to be here at especially thank
you for teeing up megafauna. It's very very excited. I
love it. Yeah, mammals in both the bison and my
heart as dancing around very hippy. Yes, I have fun.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Well look at the size. So yeah, we're all about
ungulates today, Alex, do you like an ungulate?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I think I learned the word ungulate from a Far
Side cartoon. I don't know how many other people had
that experience, but there's it's like a guy in a
back alley. It's like the strip is like a guy
in a back alley. It's the trope of like a
guy with a coat full of illicit watches or whatever.
But it's a guy in a back alley saying, hey,
(01:34):
you want to buy an ungulate, and then there's a
bunch of like antelope and the shadows. It's great, Oh my.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
God, that's amazing. That's amazing black market ungulate. Yeah, they
are a clade of quadruped mammals. Typically they've got hooves.
This includes animals you'd probably expect like horses, deer, cows, camels,
and sheep, but also animals you might not expect, like rhinos, draftes,
(02:01):
tape ears, and even cetaceans, which is dolphins in whales.
And the reason dolphins and whales are in that clade
is they evolved from terrestrial ungulate ancestors, so they do
not have those they are. You know, thinking of a
dolphin as an ungulate is very strange, but they are
(02:23):
in that clade because they did evolve from weird little
deer things.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I didn't know. They got to remain in the club.
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, they're still in the club. I mean, I don't.
I think if you called a dolphin an ungulate, you
might get some weird looks. But they are technically in
the same clade as ungulates, so you know, you might
get some side eyes. You're like, yeah, dolphins is an.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Ungulate because I care about scientific accuracy and I also
care about, you know, fitting in with the cool marine
biologists exactly. So it's important to.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Kind of a west side story situation where you have
the marine biologists and then the terrestrial animal biologists snapping
their fingers and.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Right, the sharks and something besides the chats, the silicants
or whatever old ocean thing they care about.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Yeah, theikitas in the chevrotanes sounds really badass, but those
are two of the cutest examples of cetaceans and ungulates.
So first, let's talk about what a hoof is. So
not all ungulates have hoofs, but most hoofed animals are ungulates.
A hoof is the tip of a toe of an
(03:40):
animal where the nail or claw has evolved into a
very thick and hard, caratinous chunk that the animal can
walk on. So there are both even toed ungulates like
deer who have an even number of toes on each foot,
or the odd toed ungulates like horses who walk on
(04:00):
an odd number of toes. For instance, horses walk on
one big old toe which has grown to incredible proportions,
so uh, yeah, they're just walking on their tiptoes. Ungulate
legs are typically pretty interesting anatomically. So the part of
(04:21):
the horse that you would probably think of as the
knee is actually its wrist. So that big knobby thing
on the horse, you're like, that's where its knee is, right,
that's where it's walking. That's its ankle and or wrist.
So below that are the elongated, infused bones of the metacarpals.
(04:44):
In humans, the metacarpals are actually that first segment of
our fingers and toes. You guys can't see it because
I'm in your ears, but I'm showing Alex my fingers
because this is the metacarpals.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
So so yeah, it's just the rest of it is
Katie's hoof. Actually it continues into her head.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And they fuse into a single horrifying hoove that I
like to prance around on, which is, you know, really
an interesting image. But yeah, I mean, basically, horses are
walking on one long toe. So that's interesting and a
little bit upsetting.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I guess this is really changing my whole understanding of horses,
Like the whole essentially bottom half of what I think
of as their leg is basically a foot. Like that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah wow, yeah, so like freaky yeah, because if you
think of a horse leg, it bends in like three
places kind of. So you've got the shoulder part, but
then under that you have the actual knee and or elbow,
and then under that you have where you would kind
of think the knee would go is actually the wrist
(06:02):
or ankle joint, and then below that you have the
finger joints.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
So it's weird. Yeah, it's like I'm thinking of that
meme where it's like how would a dog wear pants?
And it's either across or at the back, Like now
I'm thinking of how would a horse wear shoes? And
the shoe is like half the leg, you know, because
it's it's the foot or whatever. Freaky.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
H I think there's some kind of drawing of like
what a human would look like with horse proportions.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Oh, it's called Bowjack Horsemen. It's a very good show.
A lot of people like it.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
There's a lot of fun diagrams of people walking like horses,
and it's showing sort of the the similar stuff. Well,
my Google search is certainly very strange and interesting, but
not very scientifically relevant. So moving on on you it's
weird toe walkers, but it gets weirder and we can
(06:56):
look back in time to some extinct species that were
absolutely just bonkers. So there used to be a gigantic
deer that would roam around in Ireland and Russia and
parts of Europe, called the Irish elk, and it was
(07:19):
not an elk, it was a deer. It was also
known as megeloceras gigantius because it was giganteus. So its
skeletal remains have been found in the bogs of Ireland,
which those bogs are really amazing at preserving dead things.
(07:40):
It probably went extinct over seven thousand years ago, so
humans definitely overlapped with this thing. So it had a
massive set of moose like antlers. So you have two
types of antlers. You have sort of the antlers you
see on like a deer, but then the antlers you
see on a goose or like a I think it's
(08:01):
called a fallow deer. Yeah, a fallow deer are palmated antlers.
So a palmated antlers basically means hand like antlers, just
like a moose. You know, they're they're they have sort
of this uh solid palm and then it branches off
into quote unquote fingers. So yeah, palmated antlers. And it
(08:25):
was absolutely pants weddingly huge, gigantic, gigantic ew Yeah, I'm.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Sorry, I'm imagining the first human to invent pants overlapping
with the end of this animal. So like they finally
finish pants and immediately pee up because.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yea, yeah, well I think they were invented to be
peed in like like you know, some very early human like,
oh my god, that deer makes me want to pee
my my pants, and then he invents pants and peas
them promptly.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
So the big old deer stood it around seven feet tall,
over two meters at the shoulders. It could weigh over
one five hundred pounds or seven hundred kilograms. It was
similar in size to a moose, plus you know, maybe
a little bigger than a moose, but it had much
(09:21):
bigger antlers. The antlers were the biggest known of any deer,
and they spanned twelve feet from side to side, so
that's three point six meters of antlers, and they weighed
almost ninety pounds or forty kilograms, over twice the size
of the antlers of a moose.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
So yeah, big antlers, right, that's the freakiest part that
it's the same size of the rest of the animal
pretty much. Yeah, just pile on so much.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Do you remember that old the Grinch who Stole Christmas
car tune version of the Jim Carrey version. Yeah, yeah,
the car like the check the Check Jones cartoon, And
he's trying to disguise his the little dog into a deer,
so he puts a big set of antlers on the dog,
so the dog tips forward, and he keeps having to
(10:18):
shave off the antlers until it's the right size for
the dog to wear. Yeah, that keeps tipping forward. That's
how I imagine these deer just like tipping forward all
the time. But yeah, that's why their bodies had to
be so huge and muscular. They even had like this
big hump on their back, similar to a bison. That
(10:40):
would help probably kind of balance them a little more
and also gave them the ability to both store fat
and have longer leg strides at the attachment of their shoulders.
So yeah, just beasts, big old beasts.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
And probably almost like hair owing to see. Because because
I have family and Colorado who've seen a moose in
the wild in real life, and they described it as
a little more scary than majestic, you know what I mean,
Like they're that big, and they're kind of aggressive, and
they only have you know, like one percent of these
antlers or whatever. I don't want to see an Irish
(11:19):
elkan life boy, oh boy, forget it.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Well, absolutely, yeah, I think moose are scary. I appreciate
them obviously. I think they're beautiful animals. I respect them.
I would not want to be face to face with
a moose. That is terrifying. They're big, dangerous wild animals.
I think that sometimes and certainly not people who live
(11:42):
with moose, I think they probably understand and have a
healthy respect for the moose. But deer and moose and
ungulates in general, I think maybe other than bulls, we
kind of don't think of as dangerous, but they certainly
can be.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yeah, Bulls, bulls, I think, because of media, are the
one exception where we're like, oh yeah, that plant eater
is dangerous, right, But otherwise we have this weird like
dinosaur I think based concepts where we're like, oh, if
it eats plants, you can hug it, and if it
eats heat, it's it's the bad guys in the movie.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, but really not the case. Even like if you've
seen these herbivores fighting back against the carnivores, especially in
the sub Saharan savannah, like the giraffes kicking lions, and
(12:36):
you know it just just they can really, I mean,
they can sometimes kill lions like a giraffe even something
like you know, some of the bigger, the bigger ungulates.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Like are hippos ungulates hippos.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Are gilts and they can certainly ruin your day and
stomp in your head. Yeah, oh will the beast can
really mess a line up. Absolutely just reck alion. So yeah,
I mean it's they are very capable. Moose are very capable.
Even regular sized deer can hurt people. They can kill people,
(13:13):
They can stomp you, they can gore you, you know,
if you anger a deer up close. I mean, we
have a great advantage with our weapons and stuff, and
generally they're afraid of us. But if they feel like
they've got to fight you to get out of a situation,
you're in a lot of trouble, because yeah, they are,
they're dangerous animals and so and so this thing with
(13:38):
antlers twelve feet wide antlers that's like two deer, Like
it could carry two Deus in each set of antlers.
You know, like that's insane, that's it's it's absolutely the
deer of your nightmares. And yeah, I mean we did
apparently hunt them, which I guess early humans were just like, yeah,
(14:02):
mammoth giant deer, No big deal, just gonna go up
to this thing. I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure there
was a good amount of collateral damage of early humans
of like, what's this thing? And the next thing they know,
like they've been cleanly hewn in half by a giant
set of antlers. But yeah, I mean, one of the
(14:25):
theories for why these went extinct is because of those
huge antlers, because they are very costly in terms of nutrition.
You need a lot of nutrition to build up those
muscles and to be able to actually grow such huge antlers.
And they're also kind of, you know, not the most
(14:48):
aerodynamic things in the world. So if you're trying to
run through a forest away from a group of human hunters.
I would imagine they'd get stuck in things, like in trees,
and you know, it's probably not the most advantageous feature.
The reason they got so huge was for probably sexual selection,
(15:10):
because they were huge in males, and it was probably
to impress females and to signal to other males that like,
they were awesome and great and don't even bother trying
to compete.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Yeah, they're essentially built like Johnny Bravo, but he doesn't
need all that hair up there. Come.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, definitely sort of the ornamental bodybuilders of the ungillate world,
where it's kind of it's kind of decorative. You know,
it looks intimidating, but a lot of it is decorative.
I mean, they could definitely crush you if they fell
on you, but you know. So now we're going to
(15:55):
talk about one of the most uncanny, weird just getting
we're getting real freaky with these with these deer alex.
We're going to talk about ro Poto Suradidae, which is
a family of even tote ungulates of North and Central
America that went extinct over four million years ago, whose
(16:16):
bodies look similar to deer, but their heads look like
a deer from Salvador Dali's nightmares.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
So not as good dreams where stuff's melting but it's happy.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Although maybe with Salvador Deli, maybe his nightmares were just
realistic things like cute teddy bears and normal looking things,
and he's like, ah, I just dreamed about o'clock that
wasn't melting.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, I could tell time. No.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
So my inspiration for this section is actually from a
Twitter thread by an ecology student Aditya Stranath and some
paleo artists discussing one of the weirdest extinct families of
ungulates out there, so protosur today. If you look at
one of these skulls, you will be convinced that dragons
(17:08):
were real. Alex I have shared with you some of
these schools. These will also be in the show notes.
They you know, they look like dragons or dinosaurs.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Right, Yeah, it's got dinosaur vibes and then also sort
of a horse mouth as I understand skeletons. Yeah, like
if you came upon it in the desert southwest, all
bleached and stuff, you would assume it's some sort of
dark tower situation where a gunslinger was fighting monsters.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah. So there are many different species with really wacky
looking skulls, but typically they would have four horns quote
unquote horns. They're actually most likely osso cones. So an
osso cone is something like you see on a giraffe.
They are a bone structure covered in skin and fur.
For the section, I'm gonna use terms like horn and
(18:04):
antler just to describe the shape of these things, but technically,
horns are a structure covered in keratin, and antlers are
a bony structure that are shed and regrown every year,
and they, like a deer's antlers, will actually start out
covered in a thin layer of skin and fur which
is shed, whereas osca cones, which is what we're talking
(18:27):
about here, are structurally similar to antlers and that they
have a bony base and they're covered in skin and fur,
but they're permanent and so they never shed that skin
and fur coating.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Oh just amazing.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, I mean, like the little knobs on a giraffe head.
I don't think about them too much, but when I do,
I realize they're kind of weird.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Right, I do, because I used to give tours of
a zoo at Brookfield Zoo, and we had a lot
of giraffes that were part of the tour vout and
I think people always thought of them as just silly.
But then those little I guess osacone on the top
of the head, they indicate some sort of more warlike
past to me of the giraffes. I don't know if
(19:06):
that's true. And then, as you said, giraffes will totally
fight and kick in the modern day, they still got.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
It, yeah, but with their next but yeah, I mean
it's interesting. I don't know exactly what the osccones are
used in giraffes. They may be for mate selection. I
don't think they're used for fighting, but they may have
had a relative that used them for fighting or for
mate signaling. So yeah, so in these extinct species, these
(19:36):
were probably used in sexual selection because it was the
males that had the most just bananas situation going on
with these auso accounts.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
So yeah, once again, Johnny Bravo, Johnny Bravo's most species,
it turns out, folks, I don't know if you're familiar
with the cartoon, I think the nineties maybe later last.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Anyway, nineties cartoon where it was this guy who's like
body mass was ninety percent the pectorals and and biceps
and then tiny little legs. And actually, you know what,
that Johnny Bravo analogy is going to hold out throughout
the show, especially with our last one we're going to
(20:14):
talk about. So hold on to that.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Thought scientific name Jonicas bravonicus and the you know, the
finer scientific text out there.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
So most species of Protocertidae had two horny protrusions behind
the eyes and two on the snout. But depending on
the species, these horns were in all sorts of different
weird shapes, and yeah it was the males ran particularly
wild with it. So one species called Synthetocerous had a
(20:48):
nose antler that started out as like one long unicorn
horn and branched into two, so kind of like kind
of like a slingshot. I could imagine, you know, you
wrapping a rubber band around it and using it as slingshot.
What was that old show with like the Caveman family
who would like ride around on weird dinosaur things and
(21:11):
like with the flinstones, No, I mean flintstones is one
of those things. Oh, definitely flintstones would use this as
like a mobile, like a slingshot creature. But now there
was another one, the.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Movie The Crudes. I have not seen the movie.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
The I googled cartoon dinosaur times eighties, and that didn't
help me really at all.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Slingshot in an old cartoon. I almost thought you were
going to say Bart Simpson, like what, he just goes
around sling shotting things. But other stuff is, especially in
the early seasons, they were like he's a real trouble maker.
And part of it was that he had a slingshot
in his back pocket, which no child has done since.
I don't know, FDR. It's very old fashioned to me.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah. Yeah, the Dennist, the one that slingshot in the
back pocket. Herculoids. It was herculoids. Do you remember herculoids?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
No, I don't know it. I don't know it. Yeah,
I've never heard of it.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
I mean it was a little before our time. I
think I only saw reruns and stuff. But they had
like weird like dinosaur monsters and like a rhino that
would shoot stuff out of its forehead, and like a
gorilla made out of stone, and then these just like
big goo things. Anyways, it was a really Weird Show,
(22:28):
and this makes me think of something from that Weird Show.
I think it was from the seventies, but yeah, so
so in addition to the slingshot on its nose, it
also had these two horns behind its eyes that were
curved and even weirder. So there's this dip in the
(22:48):
nasal bones that some people, including palaeo artists vill Sinkonin,
speculate may have been because of an inflatable skin pouch
at the base of the horn that males could have used,
similar to how animals like elephant, seals or frigatebirds inflate
(23:09):
a pouch for sexual displays, but like right on top
of its nose. So I'm definitely including a link to
a hilarious and really interesting animated three D recreation by
Villis Sincronin. It's this such a goof ofsaurus, Like, I mean,
it's an ungulate, mammalian ungulate, but it's so goofy looking.
(23:31):
And then on top of that, the potential for this
inflatable nose pouch just incredible, magnificent.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I'm looking at this little video and look, they did
a really professional job. It's really well put together, and
it makes it funnier to me. Y's just this. It
looks like it has like an Edgar Allen Poe Telltale
heart underneath the front of its face. I love it
really good, Like it won't stop beating in a way
(24:05):
that's unsettling.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, yeah, it's It looks like it would make a
little like bicycle horn honking sounds.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Or have like that wheezing nerd voice that's in cartoons,
like it's trying to talk, but there's just wheezing all
the time.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Great, yeah, yeah, no exactly, I mean there's and this
is just one species. There are several species of really
weird looking ones, and I'm including in the show notes
a diagram of a few of them. One of them
was Para paratocerous ward eye, which appeared to have two
(24:47):
big triangular horns right above the eyes, like almost like
eye eye lit lashes that fused into a horn, and
then two smaller bony triangular protrusions in front of the eyes,
and this weird little wishbone shaped bone right on top
(25:07):
of its skull between the ears, like it's wearing one
of those little propeller hats. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, it almost looks like old TV antennas and pictures
of old TVs in a way that no one has now,
Like yeah, like it's picking up channels two through seven
for free, and it's really proud of it, you know,
beating the Kalo Company.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
I mean it's it's ridiculous. And there's Protocera Celaire, which
was I don't I struggled to figure out how to
describe this. It has fangs, that's important, like vampire fangs.
It has like two bony shark fins or dolphin fins,
like at the sides of its nose, and then just
(25:54):
a complete chaos as you go up the face. There
are ridges around its eyes, like a square ridge right
above its eyes, and then two joysticks right behind its size.
So that's the thing.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
It basically has one of the landscape backgrounds from Wiley,
Coyote and roadrunner on top of its head like several
maces in a way that would be our greatest national
park but doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yeah, it's a skate park built on top of a
deer head. Yeah, it's just these things are they're so
I mean, so ambitious, just the ambition of these creatures
that thought they could get away with these horns.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
It also, I'm not a hunter. But I feel like
the hunting community would be losing its mind if it
could have this many different kinds of antlers to count
and rate themselves on, right, like they all love just
the amount of points deer antlers have, they would they
would be like like weird stat had baseball nerds about
see it was available to them today.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
These antlers would require some long division. It's it's a situation,
it's a whole situation. So now we're going to talk
about truly the most Johnny Bravo of all deer. It
(27:26):
is a species of giant gorilla bear deer that went
extinct over seventy eight thousand years ago, found in North America, Eurasia,
and Africa. So these are.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
You did you say gorilla bear deer?
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah they did, No, Actually I said giant gorilla bear deer.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Oh I'm sorry. The fourth animal there is giants like
in Jack of the Beadstock. Really cool.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
So these were odd tooed ungulates and though they were
autoed ungulates, they didn't really have the same hoof legs
structure as ungulates such as horses. Instead of hooves, they
had these three big claws kind of like a sloth.
And the way they walked were very strange. Do you
(28:16):
know those like strider costumes. I think they're in like
the dark crystal and a lot of people wear them
for like parades or Halloween or something where you're kind
of you have two stilts that you hold with your arms,
and then you're on a set of shorter stilts with
your back legs, and people kind of walk around like
(28:37):
some kind of weird animal. It's basically shaped like that.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
It's like it's like Cloverfield monster postures. Yeah, that where
you have like big, big, big front legs and then
little back ones. Yes, everyone does shake cam footage.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
That is what these are. Absolutely and they liked to
eat leaves and shrubs, so they had these little short
hind legs and really really big beefcakes arms obviously skipping
leg day but doing like quadruple duty on arm day.
(29:15):
And they walked on their knuckles of their forelimbs, kind
of similar to a gorilla, sort of like side knuckling.
It actually more like an ant eater walks. Because they
had such huge claws on their front limbs. They couldn't
really walk directly on these claws. They had to curl
them inwards and walk on the sides on their knuckles,
and then their heads were horse like and they had
(29:41):
like the you know, basically a big, big horse mouth
and they would so a review of what's happening here,
beefy body of a gorilla walks like a cross between
a gorilla and an ant eater, has claws like a sloth,
(30:01):
head and neck like a horse. They weighed over one
three hundred pounds or six hundred kilograms. They were about
six feet tall at the shoulders or one point eight
meters and over seven feet long or two meters, and
it could use its huge claws to pull down trees
(30:21):
and strip off limbs for them to get at leaves
or probably to fight off predators.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yeah, they could just put up those dukes and do
it and maybe fall over if it picks up its
front legs. But you know, still pretty good until that
pretty good.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Even funnier, they probably were able to rear up on
their hind legs to get at tall trees. So just
these little teeny tiny like I mean, their legs aren't
that tiny, they're like bare legs, but compared to the
front of them with these huge arms, they do look
disproportionately small. And yeah, I mean yeah, like, yeah, looking
(31:00):
at this thing, it's like it's like a mule or
a donkey cross with like a bear or a giant
sloth and with huge claws that could definitely decapitate you.
Uh yeah, I don't know, absolute cuties it is.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
It's like pretty nice looking for being the exact nightmare
collas you have described. Yeah, it's pretty fun to look
at for being parts of seven different mammals. It almost
feels like somebody was vaguely told about mammals in passing
and tried to draw what that is. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah, it feels like a b steerie drawing from a
monk who's never seen a horse or a gorilla and
tried to draw a combination of the two from memory. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I mean, and they're like, you're a monk, aren't you
supposed to be focused on the Bible, And they're like,
it's part of it. It's part of it. Don't worry
about it, don't worry about it. I'm creative.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah. Yeah, man, they love to draw their their weird
animals and those little inserts in the side. I mean,
I don't blame them. God, it must have been boring
to be a monk.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Oh, yeah. Yeah, and you know, enough time staring at
the wall and brewing beer that will be better later.
You know, you'd want to start drawing weird lions.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to try to draw a lion
despite never having seen one or even heard a description
of one. I think it's like a dog with spikes. Yeah,
but I would absolutely like feed one of these sugar cube,
call it sea biscuit, and ride around on it until
(32:42):
it like decided it was annoyed by me and just
sliced me cleanly in two.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
It could it could definitely be the tank in your
like fantasy role playing group of four or five characters.
It could definitely be the one that receives a lot
of damage. Well, somebody else is a mage and there's
an archer or whatever.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's it's a It's definitely the
tank and yeah, or like a Star Wars creature that
you know, oh that makes some ridiculous fully sound effect
as you ride around on it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Star Wars. I feel like throughout that franchise they're very
anti megafauna, right, Like there's some people ride and stuff,
but the Wampa and then the rain Corps and then
that big thing in the seventh movie and stuff. There's
a lot of like, if it's a big animal, it's
a monster. No thanks, big animals are cool, get out
of here. Star Wars not into.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
It, but yeah, I do. I do think like if
if if Creature Kringle times reindeer need a break, I
don't know. I would love I would love to see
a sleigh driven by like a couple of a couple
giant irish elka, a couple of weird uh Protocerididae with
(34:06):
just absolutely Boushian mc esher like faces, and then you know,
bringing up, bringing up the rear, maybe a couple of
these gorilla deer.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
I love it, just just following like a celebrities bodyguards.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Yeah, sunglasses and those like little little ear wires. It's like,
you know, baby reindeer to Papa Papa, Papa Santa. We
eyes on the package.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
And then later in the movie you find out they're
actually really sweet eyes. You judge them for their size,
but actually one of them does a lot of needle
point and.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
The other willed a movie into existence, like later in
the movie about this crew of non reindeer.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
I've been storyboarting this whole time. My hand is very tired.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Yeah, it'd be called Santa Claus, and then there'd be
like in the poster art these fake claw rips and
then blood dripping down right.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
I am astonished that it's not already a movie title.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Santa Clause movie. Oh, it certainly is. It's got two
stars on IMDb. There's different types of Santa Claus movies.
There's one that's starring kittens, as it looks like one
kitten's like a reindeer, one kittens like an elf. So
(35:39):
Santa Claus the Kittens Movie. Then there's Santa Claus starring
a skeleton dressed as Santa, carrying a axe.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Hold on. So they were like, we're gonna make a
horror movie called Santa Clause. What's the first monster we pick?
Definitely something that has no claws, a skeleton. Perfect.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
There is also a fourteen movie called Santa Stole Our Dog?
Not sure, and then there's another Santa Claus movie with
kittens that seems to be pretty popular one.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Santa Stole Our Dog. Santa He's just a huge jerk.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
I know this is not this is not necessarily the
theme of the podcast, but I do have to see
if I can read the UH description of this This movie,
The Santa Stole Our Dog. So Santa Stole Our Dog
is a twenty seventeen Christmas movie. It's called Santa Stollar Dog,
(36:47):
A Merry Dog on Christmas by Brian Michael Stoller.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Ryan Michael Steeler. Of course he wrote this, of course
he did so.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
The summary is pretty simple. On Christmas Eve, Santa Claus
accidentally steals the family dog, so begins an epic journey
through the twelve Days of Christmas as the family ventures
to the North Pole to get their beloved canine back. Now,
the cover of the Santa Stolar Dog has a Dodo
bird on it, which I'm not sure I understand that
(37:19):
this is definitely something I'm gonna have to watch and
get back to you guys on what's going on with
this UH with this movie.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Because it looks I am astonished that this movie connected
to megafauna. There's a Dodo on it. Incredible great megafauna, right, amazing.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
I feel like they're medium fauna. Medium that's santascle Art Dog.
I don't think I'm allowed. Maybe I could play just
a little clip from the trailer. Let me let me see,
this is a this is a this is a special
Creature feature first me playing a clip from a trailer
(37:55):
that only has a tenuous connection to uh animal biology.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
I have also pulled up this IMDb page and I'm
seeing a very cock eyed Santa, who is apparently played
by Ed Asner rip and I'm also seeing the subtitle
of Santa Stollar Dog is a merry dog one Christmas
exclamation point. A lot going on.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, okay, so I did I did manage to get
the trailer to Creature Kringle Times Miracle.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
There's okay, giving Santa a lot of credit up front.
Maybe he's a thief guys, Okay.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Yeah, it stars Ed Asner's Santa Claus bad cgi Reindeer,
and uh you know, yeah, no, this is a wow.
The trailer is basically just the kids going Santa Stoller Dog,
and then the adults going like, Santa stole our dog,
(39:03):
and then there's a newspaper that reads Santa steals family's dog,
and then Santa going like, Who's dog? Did I allegedly steal?
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Who do you belong to?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Wonderful? I feel so blessed to find this.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
It's just ninety straight minutes of people making surprised faces
back and forth. That's the entire time. Stole a dog.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
A dog was stolen by undel.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Well, so thank you so much for joining me. Alex.
Where can people find you anything?
Speaker 2 (39:44):
It's always great, always awks great. And Anya, I make
a podcast called Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. I really hope people
check it out. Each one's about one thing that people
think is ordinary, and then we get into history, science,
law about why it's amazing. And there are many wonderful
episodes with Katie gold what. Yes, you should check them out,
especially there'll be one start of January, a new one.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
It's exciting. I love the topic.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah, the topic might make you make a series of
high pitched noises as you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Mike, thank you here here, here here, yeah, and thank
you so much for listening. If you're enjoying the pod
and you leave me a rating and review, I read
all the reviews and I cherish them and I print
them out and I hang them up in my house.
I'm like, look at that one from we'd Goku sixty
(40:37):
nine who liked my show. So thank you so much.
And if you think you have an answer to the
animal sound, gissing game. You can write me at Creature
feature Pod at gmail dot com, Creature Future Pod on Instagram,
Creature Feet Pod on Twitter. That's FB eighteen not v
et sounding very different, and of course thanks to the
Space Colssics for their super awesome song ex Alumina. Creature
(40:59):
Features are direction of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the
one you just heard, visited the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or Hey guess what mayby listen to your favorite shows.
See you next Wednesday.
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