Don’t Judge A Book By Its Terrible Jaws

With one of our favorite guests, Kristi Yamaguccimane.

Footnotes:

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Creature future 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 Don't Judge
a Book by its horrible Jaws, were talking about sharks,
spiders and other creepy crawleys that go bump in the night,
and we're finding blah, they have a sweet side. We'll

(00:30):
get to know these nasty nashers by a slightly different
side of themselves, and we'll answer the age old question,
can you hug the shark? Maybe not, I wouldn't do it,
but you know, could you? Joining me today to make
friends and finfluenced people as hosted the podcast Lour After
Hours in George Center, Christie, I'm a Gucci mane. Hello Katie,

(00:56):
thanks for having me again. I would absolutely hug a shark.
Did you To get that out of the way. Given
the opportunity legally speaking, legally speaking on this podcast to
legally and dimnify ourselves, I would say, don't hug a
shark because it could bite you. But you know, I
think there are I mean a whale shark. Honestly, I'd

(01:16):
hug a whale shark. Oh absolutely, And like what's another Like,
I feel like a nurse shark is probably okay, we
might nip at you. I feel like it's kind of
up to the shark. Yeah. I think like if the shark,
if the shark is not too dangerous, like a whale shark,
but if it doesn't want to hug, I don't want

(01:36):
to hug a shark that doesn't want to hush. Sure, absolutely, absolutely,
Consent is key there. Uh. And if the shark gives
you permission to hug it, then sure, right. But if
a great white shark is saying like, come on, bring
it on in here, then I would be a little
hesitant because I prob got like a bib with a
little human thing on it, like a human icon on it,

(01:58):
like a lobster bib. Exactly. It's it's it's it looks
just like you know, going to eat long John Silver's
or something like a knife. And he's licking his lips
in a cartoonish fashion. He's like, yeah, give me a
human exactly, or or a baby shark. I will say,
like I have not I don't think I've ever hugged
a shark before, but I've definitely you know, pet a

(02:19):
shark like a you would a cat or a dog
or something like the touch tank at an aquarium. Yeah,
that's a baby. Sharks are some of the cutest little
things in the world. They look like I don't know,
they look like angry little kiddies to me, but with Finns,
I think. Uh. Peter some years ago was trying to

(02:41):
start a campaign where they changed Basically they were trying
to get the public to refer to fish and sharks
as sea kittens. Yeah remember that. Yeah, and uh, you know, good,
good effort. I'm not not going to knock Peter. I
don't want them angrily exactly. I don't want them coming
after me or anything. Um. But yeah, not all fish

(03:04):
I think deserve to be compared to kittens, but definitely
some of them, and I think sharks are are included
in that. Have you ever seen a baby salmon shark?
They are, I don't think, really adorable. They got big
old eyes. They're super cute. Oh my god. Okay, I

(03:24):
have seen this picture before, but I did not. I
thought it was like a baby great white or something. No, no,
it's a baby salmon shark. Wow, Oh my god, that's adorable. Yeah,
it looks it looks like a like an anime version
of a shark or something. Have you heard of there's
a there's a forum on Reddit called I Think soon

(03:45):
dairy Sharks. Have you seen that where they turned the
sharks into like anime characters that blush and and they're
like biting the the the whole of a boat and saying,
notice me sentpie. Yeah exactly, I forgot about that. It's yeah,
so in our imaginations, sharks are very cute. Of course,

(04:08):
I don't necessarily advocate going up to a shark. I
think most sharks just kind of want to be left
alone by humans. And I'm joking about great white sharks,
you know, wanting to eat humans. Typically they just want
to avoid us. In fact, there's that drone footage that
shows a lot of sharks off the coast of California,

(04:28):
more than we thought further inland or or closer to land,
and it really demonstrates that these sharks, including great white sharks,
just don't really want to have anything to do with humans.
They don't want to eat us necessarily, they just don't
want to interact with us. We're not their typical diet,
and they just kind of want to leave us alone

(04:49):
and be left alone. But that doesn't mean that all
sharks are just kind of loaners. In fact, there are
a lot of sharks that do love to have ends. Unfortunately,
it's not us that they want to be friends with,
but they do want to be friends with each other.
They are not just soulless predators with black eyes like

(05:10):
a doll's eyes. Uh. They recognize the power of friendship.
It's so cute, it's adorable. So new observations of multiple
species of sharks seems to indicate that they form long
term friendships with each other. So yeah. Study tracking the
movements of gray reef sharks in the ocean near Hawaii

(05:34):
has found that they seem to prefer to spend time
with specific individuals, which indicates some kind of sharky friendship.
That's amazing. I had no idea that they like that
they have the the I guess. I don't want to
knock the intelligence of a shark. I know creatures are

(05:54):
intelligent and in all sorts of different ways, but I
didn't know that they had like the kind of brain
capacity need to really recognize other shark friends long term. Yeah. No,
I get it, because you know, I think about intelligent
see animals, I think of maybe whales and dolphins. I
don't think of a You know, typically don't think of

(06:16):
a shark as being an intelligent animally. You think of
it as sort of this like swimming kill machine. But
but yeah, they they they have the capacity. They have
the memory to recognize their friends for years, and they
have the emotional capacity to seek out that friendship. Now,
there are some species of sharks, like great white sharks,

(06:38):
who aren't that friendly with each other. They don't really
form friendships in this way. It does, at least not
our observations up to this point haven't really seemed to
indicate that. Um. But yeah, gray reef sharks, uh, which
are They are an intimidating looking shark. They're very sort
of sharky looking shark. They grow up to be about
six ft or two meters long. They're fairly aggressive when

(07:02):
it comes to other shark species. They'll defend their territory,
but they are very friendly with their own species. And
the observed friendships between two individual sharks has been shown
to last four years. The only reason we don't know
how long it lasts is that the batteries on the

(07:23):
shark tracking devices ran out, and yeah, so that's what
I want in a friendship When that lasts longer than
a shark tracking device battery, what do you think? Like,
so you think these sharks like, uh, do recreational activities
with each other as well? Like, are they they hunt

(07:44):
with each other? They hang out? Like? Okay are sharks?
Is a group of sharks called a school or is
it something else for for sharks? You know, that's a
good question. I think it is school. So these these
like long shark friends met in school perfectly good, yeah, okay, okay,

(08:04):
So I'm just trying to give a little backstory to
these shark friendships. Um. So they they met in school,
become lifelong friends, they have similar interests, um, and then
human observers get real weird and put tags on them. Uh,
and they outlast the human batteries the tags. That's incredible. Yeah,

(08:26):
I just love that's so it's so poetic. It's like
it's like, you know, you've got shark number one going like, man,
I'm going to be friends longer than this battery on
this tag last. I think it's conceivable that these could
be lifelong friendships. We just don't know. Because our dang
batteries don't last as long as sharks love for each other.
That's beautiful. I love this so much. I love this

(08:48):
so much. Now, great reef sharks are those Atlantic or
Pacific or just kind of like all over they I
think they're pretty cosmopolitan, meaning they're all over, but I think, yeah,
they're there in the Indo Pacific, they can be uh
they can go as far west as South Africa or

(09:09):
as far east as the Eastern Islands, so so yeah,
kind of in that that region. I I something that
I've I've learned recently is just how like like great
whites in particular are literally all over the world. Like
I don't think there's an ocean, or there might be,
but uh that great whites don't travel through They swim

(09:30):
such long distances. And I wasn't sure if if that
was unique to that species or if if a lot
of other sharks did the same thing. You know, a
lot of a lot of sharks do do cover wide
areas of territory. I mean, the great shark is one
of these, Like if you look at a map at
their their territories, they're like you can see them off

(09:51):
the coast of Australia, off the coast of India, off
the coast of Africa, off the coast of like Pacific Islands.
So so, yeah, they have quite a quite a wide
range and they can travel pretty good distances. In fact,
one of the things they love to do together is
they surf together. They ride waves in groups, especially with

(10:13):
their friends, so they can relax and even get some
sleep while traveling great distances together. So they're boogie boarding
with each Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. I love this so much.
There's just a bunch of bros. Certain it's so cool.
Like I so, I grew up and still live here
at the beach, and it's one of those things that

(10:36):
that like you always know when you're you know, swimming
out in the surf. You were talking about that Gerne
footage earlier, you like, there are sharks around you all
the time. And it's it's once you understand that and
you realize I've never never had an encounter with one,
you realize how much they do to stay out of
the way of of humans. They are not after you.

(10:59):
You are not fish. They know you're not a fish. Um,
And it takes a very large like these these shure
you said, they get up to about six ft long. Yeah, okay,
like that's that's a perfect size for like a shark
that like looks intimidating but really poses no threat to you.
What they don't want to tangle with you. Their diet

(11:21):
is is fish and definitely not human sized fish. These
guys really, I mean, they really don't pose that much
of a threat to humans. They might they might bite you,
like if you are really get in their face and
you really threaten them. But I think most of these
species that I'm talking about in terms of like because
there are more, it's not just the gray reef sharks

(11:42):
that that form friendships. Uh, they tend to really not
pose that much of a threat to humans as long
as you're not like really aggravating them. In fact that
most of the time they just kind of want to
get away with you and go hang out with their
shark buddies. Can I tell you a very weird shark
story that I have. So when I was like probably

(12:04):
eight years old, Um, as I said, I grew up
you know, fishing around here. Uh, growing up at the beach.
We went a couple of miles out in the ocean,
and my dad ended up landing a hammerhead shark. And
it was the scariest thing that I had ever experienced

(12:24):
at that point because this thing was probably about seven
foot long, um, maybe longer uh And I don't know
the exact species of hammerhead, but he landed it. We
went to clean it that night because we ate everything
that we caught. We didn't do this for sport or anything.
And I would never endorse anybody catching sharks now, but

(12:47):
this was like, Yeah, the the fear, the fear of
sharks as well as them being like in a lot
of I guess dishes that are are highly sought after
makes them targets for for hunting. People don't often don't
have empathy for them because they think of them as
just these monsters and they're they're not. They're you know,
Jaws really painted a horrible picture of them, which is

(13:08):
not for sure. Well, we we took that shark home,
we cleaned it. But when we cleaned it, or when
my dad cleaned it rather, I was, like I said,
I was completely freaked out thrashing around on the deck
of this you know, small grady white boat. Um it
had babies inside its stomach and rich is very sad

(13:29):
and not to bring down your listenership, but uh, we
were fascinated by it. We went and got alcohol and
preserved these baby sharks and like gave them to our
family members for like presents and stuff. And I had
a uh, basically an embalmed baby hammerhead shark in my
room for the longest time. That is really cool and sad,

(13:53):
and I it is. You have to show it. It
deteriorated long ago. This was like twenty five years ago
at this point. Yes, so it's it's long bit. You know,
we weren't professional, you know, scientists embalming these these specimen
back then. But yeah, I had one frame a very
long time. So that's my weird shark story. Don't do that.

(14:17):
Don't catch shark. Uh, if you hook one by accident,
throw it back and pet it on the head first
if it if it allows you, and then throw it back.
They hid to your buddies for me and then and
then toss it back. In terms of threats to humans,
so so the gray reef shark is probably the most
aggressive of the sharks we're going to talk about. They

(14:39):
do they will attack humans. Like I said, they're they're
pretty aggressive towards other shark species, and they defend their
territory and they'll do the same with with humans, and
they can do like uh serious, you know, attacks on people.
I don't really think they tend to be deadly though.
It's just like you don't want to you don't want
it just doesn't take a chunk out of you. It's

(15:00):
like a dog licking you, you know what I mean.
They're just wanting pets, that's all it is. They just
want to hug. No, no, they they will they will
bite you. They're sort of like a imagine a giant chihuahua,
undersea chihuahua with much sharper powerful teeth, and you've got

(15:21):
a gray reef shark. It's like a Peter would call
them a sea chihuahuaa exactly with their friends exactly boogie
boarding for some attention. That's it. But so that's gray
reef sharks. But sand tiger sharks are another group of
cutie's who hold fins and make friends together. Well okay,

(15:44):
maybe they don't like hold fins, but they will huddle
together with their friends. So, sand tiger sharks are fairly
big sharks that can grow over ten feet or around
three meters long. They were observed during their migration along
the coach of the Eastern US and appear to have
complex social behavior and form friend groups. The groups tend

(16:08):
to be sex based, with females hanging out with each
other and males kind of hanging out with each other.
So like a middle school dance where you have all
the girls on one side and all the boys on
one side. I don't know if that's the case anymore.
Maybe the younger generations have fixed that sort of issue.
But I know when I was in middle school, you
would have like these two groups of scared kids where

(16:29):
you had all the boys huddled together and all the
girls huddled together, and sometimes you dare someone to go
out and try to ask a boy for a dance.
But as the as the stepdad of of three boys
that have uh, you know, come up through middle school
not too long ago, Uh, it's still very awkward. It's
it's still like that. I think the kids have not

(16:51):
solved that. Not we they have to solve that before
they solve like global warming and all the ill that.
I don't know, I think that might be. I think
that might be just a thing that lasts for time eternal,
like when we're in robot bodies, and we have the
female and male robots, or probably we'll have all sorts

(17:13):
of different fluid genders of robots, because we'll we'll have
will become much more advanced in our society. But then
we'll we'll still it will still be like be boop,
this is awkward. Yes, uh, we will. We will have
our utopia in the future, except for that, except for me,

(17:35):
we'll have completely advanced in our views on gender, except
for middle school dances, where where we'll still find it
very awkward. But yeah, so so sharks, you know, have
very awkward middle school dances. But they the reason that
they tend to make these sext based groups is because
the females are probably evading mating pressures when they don't

(17:58):
want to mate, so they just avoid of dudes. Um.
And when sand tigers do mate, they nibble at each other,
which I guess is cute. It's a little weird, it's
a it's a very good idea on the the lady
sand tiger sharks. Uh, you know, it's a good idea.

(18:18):
They've got the right idea there. Just just avoid the
guys all together. It makes makes life simpler and uh,
and and less pressure film and all that all that
good stuff. Yeah, just just have a girls stay out,
just you know, doing a feeding frenzy with the girls exactly.
I love feeding frenzy with the gals. They really are

(18:39):
cuddling though, Like this one's got it's it's lower it's
it's got its lower jaw resting on the dorsal fin
of another sand tiger shark. It's so cute. Yeah, yeah,
they huddle together. They they basically do everything except hook
their little fins together and and skip through a field
of see flowers of seaweeds. Right. Yeah, but these guys

(19:07):
also even though their teeth look really like you you
can see that picture of their teeth, they they look
quite intimidating. They really don't like to attack humans. They
tend to keep their distance. They're not they're not very
aggressive obviously with any shark. Like you don't want to
just like go up to a shark and if you're
not like an expert and poke it on the nose

(19:27):
because it might bite you. Because it's like, hey, get
out of my face, like you're not you're not my buddy.
But like, yeah, they they're they are much more gentle
than they look, which I think is really sweet. Uh.
And lemon sharks are another species of shark. They sound
like they would be really cute little lemon shaped sharks,
but they are actually really big and just sharky looking.

(19:50):
So they grew up to around eleven feet around three
point five meters long, and they are found in the
Western Atlantic and they have very complex social lives. They
like to form groups. Usually their groups are based on
similar age or size, although sometimes young sharks like to
hang out with the bigger sharks to learn from them.
It's sort of like someone in middle school trying to

(20:11):
hang out with the high schoolers, like, yeah, I'm one
of you. Do you want to see my pokemons? Oh,
we're not playing with pokemon's anymore. I'm sorry. I love
Is that so that that's how lemon sharks sound. That's
little lemon sharks like little baby lemon sharks trying to

(20:32):
hang out with bigger lemon sharks Like, hey, guys, you
wanna to see my pokemon's Now we're eating fish. Okay,
I guess I can eat a fish, But if you
want to see my pokemons later, I got a binder
full of pokemons. I'm trying to think of what what
one of these what a little lemon sharks like Pokemon
starter would be, uh, probably the on what was a

(20:53):
squirtl or like a garro dose or something? Yeah, or
like magic harp Yeah, magic harp definitely. But they're carr
Card's got a few bites taken out of it because
they're kind of hungry. I can't I don't know my
pokey man's h well enough to know if there's a
shark one. Um, but there's gotta be. There's gotta be.

(21:18):
Oh I spelled it wrong. It's Pokemon. Yeah, there's lots
of sharky Pokemon. Sharpedo. That's that's a torpedo shaped shark
Pokemon who is a dual water dark type Pokemon introduced
in generation three. That's perfect. That's perfect. And at Katie
on Twitter with your Pokemon recommendations for a little little

(21:42):
shark kids playing Pokemon. Yeah, I mean I got I
got my my my shark anime. Have you seen shark
anime soon? Darius Shirts, Hey guys, where are you going? Guys?
But trail huh, that's pretty cool. You. I will sit
here and let you do that as long as you want.

(22:03):
I love that voice, so so yeah, lemon sharks a
bunch of little cuties hanging out little sharks, sometimes hanging
out with the big sharks, trying to learn learn how
to play sharks games with them, and this group living
can be beneficial to the sharks in terms of safety
and hunting. But there's some evidence to suggest that they
form friendships and social groups out of a desire for companionship,

(22:29):
even when controlling for the practical benefits of being in
a group. So basically, this research is trying to demonstrate
that regardless of whether they would tangibly benefit from being
in this group, they still form these groups because they
just want that companionship. And it's similar when you think

(22:49):
about humans, like when we form companions trips for normal people,
non sociopathic people. When people form a friendship, you think
about like you're not thinking, Okay, what is this friend
gonna do for me? Like how am I going to
get stuff out of this friend? Hopefully in in good friendship,
ideally right, ideally, and you you form these connections because

(23:10):
you generally want to hang out and sometimes you do
benefit each other, right, Like you do it's like oh, hey,
you know, I know this great place to eat or something,
and you get benefits from each other, but it's not
You're not forming a friendship just to be like, Okay,
I'm going to form this friend I am going to
hang out with them in the hopes that they find
a good restaurant for me to eat at. And that's
your only if that is you need to think, actually, friendship.

(23:34):
I think I've probably gone into a friendship with that
motivation before. I'm not gonna lie is like this person
probably knows where the good foods at or or I
know that they have a background in cooking or something,
and like I'm I'm just trying to you know, snag
an invitation for dinner one night. Like, no shame in
that as long as you also give as well as

(23:57):
taking that friendship. But you when we hang out with
people and we form connections, it's an emotional thing. Like
we don't we don't necessarily think of all of this through,
but we do end up benefiting. And this is in
our evolutionary history. We are motivated by emotion to hang
out with each other and it does end up benefiting

(24:18):
us in the long run in our evolutionary history. But
we form these social groups not purely out of sort
of a cold calculation typically, and this is what these
researchers are starting to think is the case with these sharks,
is that they are forming these groups not out of
like some kind of shark calculation of like if I
hang out with this group, there's more fish. It's like

(24:40):
an emotional bond that they have that It's kind of
like when you your cat. You know your cat has
an emotional bond with you. Of course they just want
food out of you, but they actually do form an
emotional bond with you. Sure, they're little, they're little satanic demons,
I get that, but they do they do have the
capacity I to have an emotional bond with you, even

(25:02):
though they are technically speaking just trying to get food
out of you. It is I think they have this
genuine feeling they want a companionship. That so they'll come
up and want to get pets and stuff from you
even when they're not hungry, even when they don't need food.
And it's the same thing with these sharks. They want
companionship even when they don't. It's like not not directly

(25:22):
benefiting them in the long term. Evolutionarily speaking, it does
benefit them, but it comes from this place of emotional
desire potentially, which if that's the case, this is really
revolutionizing our understanding of sharks because we don't think of
them as being emotional, as as being able to have feelings.
You know. It's like they've got black eyes, like a

(25:43):
doll's eyes. So yeah, I mean, just the name shark
is synonymous with like a person that is cold and
calculating and and you know, doesn't show emotion and is
kinda i mean just kind of a bad person, you know,
unless unless you're thinking of like a pool shark. But
even then they're like coming in to take your money,

(26:05):
and that's you know, uh, so yeah, it's it's, uh,
there's no reason that we should have that preconceived notion
about these animals. But you know, because of human language
and us needing analogies for things all the time, we
we uh wrongfully give people names of animals when they

(26:29):
don't necessarily represent that animal whatsoever. Yeah, exactly, And I
think especially with sea animals, marine animals, we they've evolved
so separately from us. Not I'm not talking about marine
mammals because obviously we share an evolutionary history with them,
but marine other marine animals like sharks, fish, Uh, you know,

(26:53):
cephalopods like squid and octopuses, which again we've we've learned
that octopuses and have potentially very complex emotions and intelligence,
but they don't have We don't see their body signals
are so different from any mammal. Like we can kind
of read the mood of a dog. We've co evolved
with a dog. We can kind of intuitively understand what

(27:16):
mood a dog is in. We can even read the
mood of something that we haven't maybe co evolved with
as much. If you see like a lion or something,
you can kind of get a sense of the lion
what the lion is feeling. Maybe maybe not always accurately,
but but we can read their expressions somewhat. A shark
they're unreadable to us. They're so alien that looking at

(27:39):
a shark face, they don't have expressions. They don't really
have facial expressions that we can read. Their body expressions
are inscrutable, so we kind of just assume, I guess
that they don't have emotions, when of course that's probably
not true. They probably do have an emotional life. Especially
I think carnivores predators are off and more intelligent because

(28:02):
they have to be. They have to have some intelligence
to hunt. Hunting is difficult, So I think it would
be surprising if one of these main predators of the
ocean is not intelligent and doesn't have any emotional intelligence.
I think that would be much more strange than than
something that has to hunt in and and you know,
have this complex behavior just like being an empty kind

(28:24):
of like soulless robot. That that doesn't make any sense. Yeah, absolutely,
I Uh, from now on, I'm going anytime I see
a shark wagon's tail wagon's tail fan, I'm just gonna
assume it's happy, just like a dog, Just like I
would a dog. I'm gonna extend that, uh, you know,
credit to the shark that it's in a good mood

(28:45):
and it wants a hug from me. Because this podcast
is not responsible for loss of limbs encounter during the
assumption that you should rub the belly of a shark
even if it looks super cute, I want to rub
the belly of a shark so bad, also like the
lemon shark. You're right, like the names for these creatures

(29:08):
do so much heavy lifting as far as our preconceived notion,
because these things are massive and the sand like a
sand tiger shark sounds bad ass, like it just sounds
like it is going to hunt you down. Same thing
with like a thrasher shark, and a thrasher shark might
I don't know what the temperament of a thrasher is.
But like these names again there they give these preconceived

(29:31):
notions of of these creatures and in reality we know
so little about them. Yeah, thrashers are actually they're thrashers,
which I don't know that. I don't know why it
does sound like thrasher though. And they they look intimidating
because they've got this really long spiky tail, and they
they leap out of the water really like they can

(29:53):
do these incredible leaps. But yeah, they're they're no threat
to humans at all. Really. See. But the name and
and you're absolutely right, it is a thresher shark. I
grew up thinking it was thrasher shark because that's understandable, right,
because what's threshing? I don't know is that is that
an actual is that like some scientists name or is
it like is it a verb of some sort? Let

(30:16):
me see if I can look that up, because I
have no idea where that came from. I don't I
have no idea. Why is Why is it called a
thresher shark? Oh? Okay, so it's the I see. So
it's the name for their Their tail looks like a
scythe which I guess is like threshing when you're like
cutting down wheat or something of like threshing or a thresher.

(30:38):
So since its tail looks like a thresher like a side,
that's why they're called thresher sharks. That's super badass. It's
very badass. They look really cool. They look like scary,
but they really are not. That's what death carries, right,
he carries a Yeah, yeah, we should just call him
scythe sharks. That's that's metal a f love it, love it, Christie.

(31:10):
What is your attitude towards spiders? I love them, absolutely
love them. I love all critters for the most part,
except for like the giant cockroaches that we have here
in southeastern North Carolina that are like this big um.
Those get a little annoying, especially when they fly right

(31:30):
at your face when you're like on the back porch.
But when it comes to spiders, I will not kill
a spider. I will let them live in my house.
I always trap them and then re home them outside. Um,
because they're they're little spider bros. They're just trying to
keep my house insect free, you know. Yeah, I have
like a size limit of spiders all lit stay in

(31:52):
in the in the house. It's sort of the opposite
of like a carnival ride. You must be this tall
to right, it must be this small to stay in
my house. But if they're under like if they're smaller
than like a quarter, then it's like, yeah, no, you
can hang out in here. And and if they're larger
than a quarter, I do try to catch them and

(32:13):
put them outside. I have once instinctively like stomped on
a spider that was larger, and I felt so bad.
I was like, oh no, I'm sorry, but it was
dead man. I'm gonna I feel like I just keep
bumming out your listeners. But like I stepped on a
wolf spider one time and by accident, and just like

(32:35):
hundreds of babies like that, we're riding on her back,
just like it was like you killed bambies mother too?
Did I did? Sorry to reveal that, um, but gives
the back to every Disney movie involving animals. I killed
Charlotte's I killed Charlotte and but and and her babies

(32:57):
parachuted away. Um what else did I kill? Um? No?
The but just like the the immediate kind of like again,
I love spiders, but the immediate visual horror of like
a hundred of them suddenly like you know, ralling in
all directions. It's it's uh, it'll it'll make you do

(33:17):
a double take. No, I love spiders, but like I have,
I still like have that instinct of if I see
a spider, I have I have a startle reflex, which
is why unfortunately, smoosh that poor little spider baby, rip
and piece, you were too good for this world. Pour
one out. But I understand, like being afraid of spiders

(33:39):
is nothing to be ashamed of. It's I think are
we are very instinctively afraid of of spiders and snakes
and things that could potentially bide us and cause some problems,
although most spiders are completely harmless. But are there any
spiders Because for the most part, spiders just want to
avoid us. They don't even the venomous spiders don't really

(34:02):
want to have to bite you. They do that out
of a defense. Mechanism. They don't, you know, chase after
you to bite you. They are basically they want to
be left alone. They want to leave you alone. They
don't really want to do much with humans. They just
want to snack on bugs and and spend time alone.
But there is an exception to this, and that there

(34:23):
is a spider that just wants to have a big
old party with other spiders and with humans. And it
is the cutest little thing. The winner of Miss Congeniality
Amongst Spiders. Chickunia build A who is a small heart
shaped spider from Bali, who is a sweet little cutie
who wants to give you big hug eight times with

(34:45):
each of its arms. I love it. That's a heck
of a name. Chickuna build A It so okay. I
see the little baby spiders around it, and that is
a weird. I don't think I've ever seen an abdom
in shape like that like it. It's it comes to
like almost a spike at the end, but it has
these two It's got Katie spiders have got some curves

(35:09):
on it, not to not to get weird about the spider,
but real spiders have curves. They absolutely do. Um Man,
that is a weird looking that's a bizarre looking critter
right there. Yeah, it's like it's abdomen is kind of
heart shaped, although it's not quite got like the divot
at the top. It's sort of like a like a
tear drop shape where the pointy end is at the

(35:33):
most posterior point and then it kind of bulges out
and then it has the the thorax uh that is
much smaller than it. Yeah, it is very strange looking,
and it looks a little intimidating perhaps sometimes like the
that it comes to such a sharp point. I think
it's kind of cute, but it is completely harmless to humans.

(35:56):
So these little guys are very tiny. They're only about
three to four millimeters big. They have a shiny black
or black and brown abdomen that is that like interesting
like teardrop pointy kind of heart shape, and they not
only like to hang out with their own species, but

(36:16):
similar species as well. So many spiders are not social.
They will actually cannibalize each other, or at least they'll
cannibalize other species of spiders, but Chickuna building likes to
socialize not only with their own species, but with their
close cousins. And they like to hang out in human
areas because they like to eat our pests. So they

(36:39):
will actively seek out human habitations, so gardens or agricultural areas,
and they will eat the pests that plague our plants
and our crops. So this is a true like definition
of spider bro exactly. This is the most browest of spiders.
That's that's incredible, love it. I didn't realize. So these

(37:02):
things really are tiny though, like they are are are
almost microscopic. Well you can see them, they're like yeah, yeah, ye,
not not very well probably with my eyesight, but I
mean three to four millimeters. It's like it's bigger than
an ant. So it's like the size of like a

(37:23):
baby button, like a little tiny button that you have
on like a baby onesie. Okay, okay, that's an interesting
unit of measurement. I don't know that I know how
big a baby baby button is, but I will. I
will look it up after all, button button, gotcha? Gotcha?
So what makes these spiders so interesting compared to other

(37:47):
social spiders, because there are social spiders that will form
these big like communal webs and hang out together, is
not is that they don't just coaxst peacefully with themselves
but related species, and they hang out together, they eat together,
but they don't breed with this close closely related species,

(38:09):
this cousin species. So they are not hanging out thinking that, oh,
this is just my own species. It's not a mistake.
They don't breed with them because they recognize this is
not my own species. Uh, and they don't need them
for reproduction or anything. They stay within their own breeding
group of their species, but they still hang out with
this other species to hunt and to find food and

(38:31):
safety numbers. So it's really interesting. And even when their
population gets overly dense and food starts to get more scarce,
they still don't resort to cannibalism. So this is like, uh,
because I hang out with people that aren't necessarily you know,
that aren't really my speed. A lot of times I

(38:52):
enjoy the company of all sorts of different different folks,
different types of friends and stuff. So like that's basically
what the spider is doing is kind of uh, has
a variety of a social circle, if you will, Yeah, exactly.
And then it's like, oh, you're not you're not my species,
but you're like a close cousin to my species, Like,

(39:13):
let's team up, why not, you know, let's just cooling
out together. It'd be like if we saw some bonobos
and instead of destroying their habitat, were like, hey, what,
we're very similar, let's hang out exactly like or or
like Jane Goodall did with the chimpanzees, right, exactly like that. Man,
that's fascinating. It's like, you know, with I mean, we

(39:36):
kind of did that a little bit with Neanderthals, although
there's some debate as to whether we killed off Neanderthals
or just the right exactly, but we did sort of
breed with them a lot, and so so there is
still Neanderthal DNA in our DNA. But it'd be as
if we just hung out with Neanderthals and we're like, hey,

(39:56):
you guys are cool. We just hung out and like
there was no conflict because like, we didn't evolve from Neanderthals.
We were like cousin species, right, right, we co evolved
alongside each other, we had a common ancestor, right, we
had a common ancestor. We split off, and uh but
but they aren't like we didn't like evolve from the Neanderthals.

(40:17):
So uh yeah, so we kind of like killed our
either killed our own cousin species off or bread them
out of existence. You're either a cousin kisser or a
cousin killer. Again, it's a great way to look at humanity.
And these spiders don't just stop at being friends with

(40:37):
their cousin species. They also care for their own offspring.
They feed their offspring while they're young. This is rare
enough in spiders. But not only do they feed their
own offspring, they take care of their neighbor's offspring as well.
They baby sit and they feed these other babies. They
have communal caretaking of their young, which is just the

(41:01):
sweetest thing. That's so bizarre. Like I, like you said,
it's rare enough and like the larger animal kingdom for
animals to do this, like to care for their young
through like particularly non mammals, especially insects. Yes, yes, sexts
don't tend to They don't do as much parental care

(41:21):
as other species. Right, they lay in egg sack and
then they've a mouse, you know they're out of there, uh,
and then they have two hundred children that you know
immediately have to either become prey or hunt prey. So
that is absolutely fascinating that these things babysit and so like,

(41:42):
is it because you know, like with the shark things
or with the with the shark population, they they might
have complex emotions that we just can't comprehend. With spiders,
is there like a benefit to like there being a
part of a larger spider population as far as food

(42:02):
goes or or defense. Absolutely, yeah, No, they are definitely
benefiting from forming a communal area because there it's probably
easier to get prey because they can find an area
and team up against against this prey. And like if
they if they can't find food for their offspring, and
neighbor maybe could find food for their offspring, and they

(42:24):
can build a web together, so like they can have
a bigger web that can catch more things. Also, by
being together, they are safer, you know, safety in numbers,
and they can fend off other spiders more easily, some
something that may not be as friendly. So there's definitely
tangible benefits to them being in this group together. Whether

(42:46):
this is coming from a place of emotion like we
were talking about earlier, with like sharks and with humans,
we do have tangible benefits by forming community and in
form forming friendships but we do it out of emotion.
It's hard to say because spiders are very very simple
there there. They don't have the same kind of brain

(43:09):
that's say a human or shark has. So to say, like, well,
spider forms these these connections out of emotion, I think
is potentially a step too far. I just it's hard
to see. It's impossible to know exactly what goes on
in a spider's teeny tiny little brain. I don't know what.

(43:30):
They may have some kind of reward system, though, and
it's hard to know, Like what is the distinction between
like say a reward system that a spider has and
like emotion in a more complex creature. And that's a
that's a question I don't really have an answer to.
It's kind of like when you have a robot that
you program to kind of have a reward system or

(43:53):
something or want to seek out something, At what point
is that robot sentient? It's the same question with with
an Like we know we are sentient, and we have
a pretty good guess that things like apes and dolphins
and elephants are sentient. Like it's I think that's pretty clear.
But then as we start to get two more simple animals,

(44:15):
Like we get two sharks and it's like, I think
they're sentient. I don't know how much emotion they feel
or or what is the depth of their emotion, but
I think they do feel it. I think that's that's
a safe guest. But then you can start to get
to insects, it's like, well, I don't know, I just
don't know what the depth of their feeling is. I
would guess there maybe they they feel existence to some degree,

(44:36):
but it's very limited. It's like a very just kind
of very limited existence. So it's really hard for us
to even conceive of what's that's like because we it's
almost like we're too complicated to understand what that would
be like to experience. It's like, you know, uh Man's
um comparison of us too, being that would could be

(45:01):
considered a god, you know, an omnipotent, omnipresent. It's it's
the same equivalent as a cockroach to us, you know,
as far as like the complexity levels. You know, not
that one is more important than the other, but just
the level of complexity there is is something that the
cockroach cannot comprehend, just like we could not comprehend being

(45:21):
Uh that powerful. Well, I'm going to uh just assume
that these spiders are having barbecues and cookouts with each other,
and exactly it's the same thing as like inviting your
neighbors over for a cookout. Everybody brings a dish, you
know that way, like one person is not supplying all
the food. It makes things easier. Um, you know, you know,

(45:46):
basically like a pot luck kind of thing situation going on,
and they're having a good time. They probably listen to
music of some sort that we can't comprehend because we're
not spiders. Um, there's a little spider manning to grill
with a little apron that says like, um, regurgitate food
for the cook Exactly, he's got a spatula and all

(46:07):
eight legs. He's flipping flipping spider burgers. Many little they
eat mosquitoes and white fly, which are super annoying pests
for humans. But he's just got a bunch. He's making
much of white fly burgers and flipping everything. They're also
they're also apparently very docile and they don't bite people,

(46:28):
so like they they tend to be handled pretty well
if you're very gentle. They just a perfect spider cannot
buy these online and just release them in my house.
That leg I don't think so. Unfortunately. I think you'd
have to travel to Bali to be able to meet
one of these little guys. But suitcase horrible. Then you're
responsible for new invasive species exactly exactly. Who could blame you? Right?

(46:53):
But maybe a less charismatic insect that is a lot
less cute, a lot less fun to look at is
the earwig. Now, there are a number of insects that
even I am grossed out by, and earwigs are one
of them. Yeah, I I don't. I don't like to
look at them. I don't like to encounter them. They're
kind of one of my Uh they're they're kind of

(47:17):
blacklisted from from my home. You know. I have a
few like cockroaches, uh, silverfish and earwigs have You're just
not on the list. Sorry. I check a tiny little
clipboard and I'm like checond and I'm saying, I'm sorry, sorry,
I don't see you on the list. They are, they don't.
They don't look great. Let's let's be honest. I'm not

(47:38):
going to sugarcoat it. They've got pincers on their butt. Yeah,
they've got they've got butt, pincers, pincers. They are long,
shiny black, sometimes sort of brownish. They move in that slithery,
unsettling manner because they're segmented and they kind of have
a little bit of the centipede movement. But but they

(47:59):
also have but pincers and yeah, no, I I they're gross.
We've got so we have the European earwig here in
North Carolina that we get in the house sometimes and
they're they're also like the one that you've got here
in front of me has like some cool coloring to it,
like the it almost looks like a a fiddler crab claw.

(48:20):
The pincer on the button, you know, it's got it's
got like a like the bright red to it. And
then it's back is like silver. But this kind in
North Carolina is like, I don't know if you can
see that. No, it's blurring it it's like brown. It's
just like, yeah, yeah, it looks like a cockroach to
begin with. Then it's got like you said, the centipede

(48:42):
wiggly nous of it's like segmented. Uh was that thorax?
So yeah, they've got they've got is the upper body
that is the lower body. Okay, so that that weird, uh,
Like I don't even know what to compare that too,
but but it like has that wiggly notion to it.

(49:04):
And then those those pinchers do those pinchers I will
not bite because it's not their mandible. So is that
what you call They can use them. They can use
them to bite, they use them to defend themselves if
it feels threatened, and they use them to hunt. So
they definitely use them as pincers. Wow, it kind of inefficient,
like usually things attack the front, I feel like, but

(49:28):
if you're a predator, I guess you bite wherever you
want to. And if those it doesn't matter where those
pincers are directly. It can curl its backside sort of
like a scorpion, you know, have a scorpion has a
stinger on its backside, so it curls up and can
sort of strike at things or defend itself. So that's
that's how it uses it's horrible, horrible butt pincers. And yeah,

(49:52):
they they the that picture that you're looking at is
actually a Saint Helena or your wig of the Western gots.
It's a I think one of the coolest looking ones.
It also looks like it crawled right out of hell
because it's got those right right, uh, red pincers, a
black abdomen, and then a silver thorax. It super metal looking,

(50:19):
very very intimidating. But if you see those pincers, it's
actually kind of a good sign if you're worried about
them being parasites, because any earwig that has pincers is
not a parasite. They can bite you, and they will
if they feel threatened, but they aren't. They will only
do it in self defense. They do not crawl in

(50:40):
your ear and lay eggs in your brain. That's a myth.
They despite being called earwigs, they really don't want to
have anything to do with your ears. The only time
they would go in your ear would be by on accident,
just like not realizing, and so they they if they've
got pincers, they're not parasites. There are some species of

(51:01):
earwigs who are parasites, not on humans, but actually on bats,
but they do not have the butt. Pincers actually just
look like weird large ants. Uh. They kind of look
like a between like a Jerusalem cricket and an ant.
So that's a that's an earwig I'm looking at right
above it. Yeah, okay, I would have never guessed that. No,

(51:21):
you wouldn't have. They don't have the look. They don't
look like. They don't look creepy in the sense that
earwigs do. But those are actually creepier because they are parasites.
We don't have anything to fear from them. But they
do feed on bats, which I think is sad because
leave the bats alone. We love serious that so much.
Despite earwigs, the one the non parasitic earwigs with the

(51:43):
devil's tongues coming out of their butts. They have. Devil's tongues.
Is such a good name for that, the devil's tongues. Yeah,
that's great. It's true they might bite you if you
handle them, but they just think that you're trying to
kill them and they're probably not wrong, so you know,
self defense. And other than their bad reputation, they're actually

(52:08):
pretty sweet. They're amazing and loving mothers. So like we
talked about, you know, most insects are not that interested
in caring for their young, even like other arthur pods
like arachnids, tend not to care for their young, unlike
the species we talked about earlier, the sweet little friendly

(52:30):
heart shaped spider um. But yeah, a lot of a
lot of insects, a lot of arthur pods don't don't
take care of their young. Now, there are examples of
arthur pods who do take care of their young, the
the heart shaped spider being one of them that we
talked about earlier. Scorpions famously carry their young on their back,
and uh some insects do as well, including the earwig,

(52:53):
and they tend to be very very caring mothers. So
earwig mothers are very dedicated to their young mom of
the Year award. They will fast for months, not eating
just so they can look after their nest. They will
constantly clean their eggs, and if they detect pathogens in

(53:15):
their environment, they will clean their eggs more often and
be even more vigilant around their nests. So if they're
chased away by a predator and they detect that there's pathogens,
they will run back to their nest as soon as
possible to start cleaning their eggs again because they do
not want their eggs to become infected. And this is

(53:36):
really important because earwigs can be the victims of parasitic
fungus and uh so, yeah, they they are meticulous, just
constantly cleaning. They'll even move their entire nest of eggs
away if they are in danger, so pick everybody up
and move it away, which is an incredible feat. And
even even after the eggs hatch, the earwig others continue

(54:00):
to care for their young, so they'll help them hatch.
They regurgitate food for the young hatchlings, and they will
care for them for months until the babies are really
ready to strike out on their own. There's nothing like
a mother's love and that can't be expressed more clearly
than regurgitating food for you're young. Honestly, it's the most

(54:23):
beautiful thing that nature has to offer. It's it's it's this. Uh,
most animals do it. Humans are kind of weird ones
for not not you know, regurgitating food as a sign
of agree Any moms listening out there, if you truly
love your kids, you will chew their food up, swallow it,
then throw it back up for them to make it
easier for them to digest. This podcast is not responsible

(54:47):
for people who actually try to do that. I feel
like I do nothing but say irresponsible stuff on your show.
I apologize, Kadium, sorry, it's fine. We just need you
to sign here and multiple waivers documents responsible for any
vomit slash shark hugging lawsuit that we that we get.

(55:12):
But yeah, no, it is it's something where you look
at this thing, this earwig looks like some nightmare that
Satan came up with as he was tossing a salad
with his with his tongues and and and it's they
they are just sweet, loving mothers who care for their
their babies. Of course, like I said earlier, it's hard
to know. You know, this is probably mostly instinct, Like

(55:35):
these are little little mom bots that do these things
out of instinct, probably not a lot of forethought about it,
but you know, it's it's I think it's still adorable
and cute despite what they look like too. I love it.

(55:55):
So you mentioned earlier, Christie that you love bets. I
do absolutely love bats um. I uh grew up just
seeing them around my house all the time, you know,
like playing basketball in the street at night, and uh
you could you could basically throw rocks up at the
street light and they would swoop down after the rocks,

(56:17):
and it was just a cool thing to see. We
never harmed them or anything. I don't have any sad
stories arding bats, nothing like that. But they're absolutely adorable.
There's so much cuter than people give them credit for.
And again, and I think, obviously this is the theme
of your episode, like bats have such a bad reputation.
Uh you know, I don't know if it's because of

(56:39):
Dracula or the whole like spooky aspect of them around Halloween,
but they get a bum rap and they shouldn't. They
absolutely should not. Yeah, we talked about this on our
episode called the Origin on the Origin of Feces, where
we had we had a Rodrigo Medaine who is a

(57:00):
professor of bat ecology at the University of Mexico, and
he's known as the Batman of Mexico because he's done
so much for the conservation of long nose abouts. And
that's if you love bats, please listen to that episode.
It's a great interview. He's a wonderful, fascinating guy, and
and we talk about like he loves bats and he
wants to uh talk about like the benefits of bats

(57:23):
to humanity and how they truly get an undeserved reputation.
And I think one of the species of bats who
kind of get gets like the worst reputation of the
bats is the vampire bats. And you know, despite being
only there there's over a thousand species of bats, only

(57:45):
three species of bats are vampire bats that that actually
drink blood, and everyone, for whatever reason, this is the
most sensational kind of thing people have this idea that
most bats drink blood. The majority of bats do not
drink blood. Most of them are frugivores, meaning they'll eat fruit, insectivores,
they'll eat insects, and there are a few species that

(58:07):
are carnivores. Those are more rare, but none of them
are danger to humans other than you know, the rare
cases of rabies and so on. But the the vampire
bats themselves, I think, really get an undeserved bad reputation.

(58:27):
And uh, you know, we've we've talked about them a
little bit on the show before the fact that vampire
bats really don't tend to drink human blood. There's only
one species that has been found to drink human blood.
This is the hairy legged vampire bat of South and
Central America and southern Mexico. And they're absolutely adorable. It's

(58:50):
to me they look like just like like Stitch from
Lelo and Stitch. Uh, that's exactly what it looks like.
They're they're so cute. They got these big eyes, they
got this cute little little smile. They they're furry, they've
got little ears. These I would absolutely let this bat
drink my blood if I knew there was if this

(59:12):
bat has like he got his rabies test and when
he's fine, like, you can absolutely have some of my
but blood, you a little sweetie. I would I feel
the exact same way. And these things, these these vampire
bats are tiny too. Write there. They're little guys. Yeah,
little tiny guys. They just fit in your hand, like

(59:32):
in the palm of your hand. They're not And they
when they drink blood even when it's like these guys,
the hairy legged vampire bats tend to drink blood from
birds like chickens. Most vampire bats will tend to uh
drink blood from cattle like cows or pigs. Uh. And
they just drink a little bit of blood. They do.

(59:54):
They never suck their prey dry. That's a total myth.
They don't kill their prey. The time their prey dies
is during the inadvertent transmission of something like rabies, which
is pretty it's still pretty rare. It's like people think
that most bats have rabies. That's not true. The majority
of bats do not have rabies. It's just that the
ones who do you might there's sort of a confirmation

(01:00:18):
bias because if there's a sick bat that you find
on the ground kind of struggling and who lets you
pick it up, like, that's more likely to have rabies
than your average bat because it's sick. Um. So I
still do not advocate, you know, you still be very
careful around bats. Don't just pick up a random bat
you find on the ground. Not a good idea. But

(01:00:38):
most bats do not have rabies. That they're not just
a bunch of you know, disease things flying around. But
in the same goes for vampire bats. So they don't
kill animals by drinking their blood. And they really they're
all about stealth. It's like a little stealth mission. They
they you know, wait until they see, you know, since

(01:00:58):
a a nice blood filled animal nearby, and they drop
down and quickly scamper over to their usually an ankle
or something, and just do a little incision with their
tiny needle like teeth and they actually have really fascinating
noses that have these little divots that can detect blood flow.
So they find the they'd be great doctor's assistance to

(01:01:20):
help them find a vein to to do an infusion,
because they have these amazing little little detection organs. But
they find where they can get a good blood flow,
do a little incision, just sip a little bit of blood,
and it really it's not especially when it's like something
like a pig ora or a cow, like they're they're
not going to hurt them by drinking their blood. They're

(01:01:42):
not taking enough blood. The animals don't even notice. Probably yeah,
yeah most of the time, Like it might be kind
of irritating sometimes, but that's probably probably the worst, Like, yeah, exactly.
So they're really not scary at all. In fact, they
are very sweet and they will in terms of bat society,

(01:02:05):
they are very caring about each other and they will
share their food with their friends. So bats make friends too,
just like sharks. Just like people, they will form companionships
with specific other bats, and so bats in general have
very rapid metabolisms, especially vampire bats, and going without a

(01:02:25):
meal for too long can kill them. So it only
takes three nights of missing meals for a vampire bat
to die of starvation. Yeah, so that's the saddest thing
I've ever heard. Well, don't be sad for too long,
because bats will help out and neighbor in need. Bats
will share food with other bats. If there's a bat

(01:02:47):
who's hungry, one of their friends will regurgitate a bit
of their blood meal for the needy bat. And then
in the future this bat will reciprocate feeding other friends
that need food and will help them out in hard times.
They'll pay it forward. They'll pay it forward. They have
a bat social safety nut. They're more advanced than the US.

(01:03:09):
That's more than can be said for most of the
fifty states and our federal government for the most they
don't even make the bats like sign up for food
stamps and there's no means testing. It's just like that thinks.
There's no shaming, there's no you're hungry, Yeah, yeah, just
just come and get a little bit of blood vomb.
You know, that's amazing, that's amazing. Do do these bats?

(01:03:32):
I'm meant to ask you when when they do the
little incision, is there anything in their saliva that's like
kind of a coagulation agent, like an anti coagulant. That's well,
I didn't know, like like, yeah, an anti coagult I
guess that would be the term that I'm I'm thinking of. Yeah,
they have an anticoagulant. I don't think they have anything

(01:03:55):
that like numbs the area, but they do have an
anticoagulant that makes the blood low a little easier. These
things are so highly evolved, they're so so incredible. Yeah,
they're there. It's it is pretty amazing too that that
they have their little noses have these tiny pores that
they can detect heat coming from veins, so they can

(01:04:16):
get blood flow pretty easily, so that they can you know,
so they're not they are surgical. They're like little little
tiny blood sucking doctors and and so uh. It's in
a lot of species of animals, like parents who often
regurgitate food for their offspring, and in use social insects

(01:04:40):
like bees and ants, they will regurgitate food for adults,
but it's within this colony of like sisters of relatives.
But it's extremely unusual in the animal kingdom for unrelated
adults who are not interested in mating with each other
to regurgitate food for each other purely out of a
sort of like friendship bonding thing that is that's rare,

(01:05:02):
that is quite rare, and they will form these these
close friendships with each other. And researchers have studied these
vampire bats and they they've found that they form these
bonds by they take it slow. They like to take
it slow and build up trust over time. So it's
not not just like this unthinking like I will feed

(01:05:26):
you and then you feed me and then we're good
capeche like. They will slowly build up trust over times.
So they'll start off with smaller gestures. Maybe they'll do
a little bit of grooming. They're like, you know, check
for parasitesaw on each other, and they'll groom each other.
And then and then after they've done some grooming gotten
to know each other, then maybe they'll share a little

(01:05:47):
bit of a blood meal with their new friend. And
then the first the first date, at the first date.
But it's it can what's so incredible is this can
be completely platonic. They can have no interest in mating,
and it can be purely just a friendship where you know,
where you just regurgitate blood for your friends and yeah,

(01:06:07):
exactly everybody. You know, that's that's a normal thing to
do when your friend needs some regurgitated blood and you've
got some despair exactly. And uh yeah, so they so
basically if they are getting they make these small investments
early on in the friendship basically to make sure that
you know, this is a mutual friendship, that that they'll

(01:06:29):
they'll it's a give and take. And then they start
to invest more in their friends. And then it gets
to the point where basically like they will you know,
give them a good amount of food just like when
they are in need, and then they'll get reciprocated. And
so it forms this this this safety network, this this
it's mute bat mutual aid. It's it's very cool. That's

(01:06:50):
that's that's amazing. That's uh yeah, like the obviously these
these uh, these bats live in these huge colonies, and
I never I never realized just the uh complexity and
the intricacies of the I mean, they're really societies almost,
you know, like like you could you could call them.

(01:07:11):
They might not uh look like what we think of
as a society, but when you have complex interactions like that,
when you have basically bats getting to know each other
and making sure the other one's cool and and uh
and helping, like you said, bat mutual aid. That's a
that's that's pretty that. I can't it can't be stressed

(01:07:35):
enough how highly evolved these things are. And then and
it's not just vampire abouts. There are lots of different species.
But that's of course, it depends on the species. There's
some species that are more solitary. But but a lot
of species of bats will form these big groups and
they all they all huddle together in in caves or
in trees, and they and they form these like big
communes and they are of of a lot of these

(01:07:58):
species of like imunal animals are very like pacifist with
each other. There aren't really that there's not that much conflict.
They're very chill, low drama animals. Well, when you're that cute, like,
you can't you can't get mad at that face. Look
at the little baby. I one of my favorite pictures
of a vampire bat. It's a I think this is

(01:08:19):
a white, white winged vampire bat. It's it's absolutely it's
just got a little smile, well turned up nose, yeah,
well turned up nose. The big ears, yeah, they're adorable.
If I could have if I could have one mulligan
on like an unethical pet, like a pet that I

(01:08:41):
really shouldn't have, it would be a bat. Yeah. Absolutely,
I've seen video of those golden flying fox bats. Yeah,
those giant ones, and like I've seen I don't know
if people are illegally keeping them as pets or if
it's in a sanctuary or what. Those things are the cutest,

(01:09:02):
Like they're cuter than like a lot of dogs that
I see, you know what I mean, Like they're they're
just seeing them eating a group. Yes, yes, it's it's
the most adorable thing in the world. It's like it's
it's the cutest video you can imagine. But they're huge too.
I don't understand the physics and the aerodynamics. Yeah, they're

(01:09:22):
they're they're as big as small dogs. Basically they have
there well they're little. They're actual bodies minus their wings
is going to be smaller than smaller, smaller than the
small dog. It's it's gonna be. Uh. Their wingspan though,
is gigantic because in order to hoist up like even

(01:09:43):
even something that's like bigger, they're like a little They're
they're actual body sizes maybe a little bigger than a
rat um, like a large rat so they need a
massive wingspan to keep them aloft. So like when you
look at them wings and all, they're truly giant. I
also like that they're called megabouts. The biggest megabouts is

(01:10:03):
the great flying fox. Megabat is such a yeah, and
they can. They They only weigh about a little over
three pounds or one point six ks, so pretty small
in total. But their wingspan is almost six ft or

(01:10:24):
almost two meters long, so yeah, it's huge. Yeah, yeah,
so they But it's what you're asking, like, how do
they even get in the air. That's the answer. They're
pretty lightweight, but they have a huge wingspan because the
bigger you are, the bigger wings you need to be
able to get up in the air. This has been
the most educational experience I've ever had with bats since

(01:10:46):
ace Ventura too. Don't where he eats? Yes, exactly, this
is This has been so much fun. Well, I'm I'm
glad to be in the company of a fellow bat appreciator.
I love them, so obviously we shouldn't keep bats as pets.
I'm just saying, if I could have one Mulligan on
an unethical pet. It would be bad because they're so cute.

(01:11:08):
But don't don't have bats as pets. I might. It's
illegal in North Carolina to own a raven, but I
think that might be my mulligan because of how intelligent
those things are, and I love them so much. You
would be it would be like living with a two
year old who can claw and bite at you. Though

(01:11:28):
intelligent birds. As much as I love intelligent birds, I
would never want one as a pet because they would
It's like a little dinosaur that has the brain of
a two year old and and know and knows how
to inflict pain. I have a friend who knows exactly
what it's like taking care of like a cockatoo, and

(01:11:49):
and ravens are quite intelligent as well. I'm gonna show you.
I'll send you a YouTube video of someone who takes
care of a bunch of big birds in a is
like a bird sanctuary, and she has a raven and
she's like, she's basically, this is not my pet. This
is a raven who has decided to be my tenant

(01:12:12):
in this this aviary. You know, we have to come
to basic agreements. But if she doesn't want to do something,
she's not going to do something. So they are very
independent and so I feel like if if I was
if I was to have an unethical familiar, I'd want
a bat because I think they'd just be real chill.
I probably need more than one bat, though, because I

(01:12:33):
wouldn't want to isolate them from from their companions. Yeah,
like you have to have bat friends, and that's live
in a cave with a bunch of bats. Yeah, that
that's under the same mulligan though, Like exactly, you don't
need a bunch of individual Mulligan's for that, Like a
flock of bath exactly exactly. And I let them all
drink by blood and I could probably pass out. Hopefully

(01:12:57):
you're not iron deficient or anything like that. Up get
anemia and I'd go to the doctor. It's like, oh,
you have severe anemia. It's like, Katie, has anything recently
changed in your life? Any any major? Uh? You know?
I adopted a flock of vampire bats, which to no dairy.

(01:13:20):
It's probably the no dairy. It's probably the no dairy thing. Yes, exactly, exactly. Well, Christie,
I am a Gucci mane. Thank you so much for
being on the show today and for highlighting the sweet
cute sides of some animals who are unfairly in theligne. Uh.
Where can people find you? You can find me on

(01:13:42):
Twitter at Wapple House w A P P L E
h O U s E UM. That's the easiest way
to keep up with me and other shows that I host,
like Hour after Hours in George Center. UM, and that's
basically it. Let's listen to those shows if you're a
fan of Dan Lebottard show, UM kinda sports radio UM

(01:14:07):
type of type of thing. If you're a fan of
his show. We do a podcast that kind of revolves
around that universe called Hour after Hours. And then George
Center Pod is me and uh four of the funniest
people I have ever met or heard. They're just lifelong
friends of mine and blood into their mouths. Yeah, absolutely,

(01:14:28):
I have many times, um, usually after a long night
of drinking, uh, you know, doing doing drugs and stuff.
You know it it Uh, it's it's a good hangover
remedy basically, is what I'm saying. But you know the
saying like, uh, friendships are great if they outlast the
battery and a shark tracking device or and or if

(01:14:51):
they vomit a little bit of blood in your mouth,
you know. I think I have that on a cross
stitch hanging up in the hallway. I think my grandma
made made one of those for me when I was
very little. So I've got one of those wood burnings
that's like live, laugh, let your friendships less longer than
a shark tracking device, and vomit letting your friends male.
It's a little corny, but yeah, I mean it's is

(01:15:13):
it long winded? Sure? But is it? Is it? You know?
Is it a life? Is this saying that we're very
familiar with for a reason, Yes, because it's true. It's
very true, one of those eternal truths. Well, you can
find the show on the internet at Creature Feature Pod
on Instagram, at Creature feet pot on Twitter. That's Eppy
eating something very different. And of course, uh you can

(01:15:36):
send in emails at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot
com where you can send in all your questions, your
pictures of your cute little doggies and kiddies and pets.
And uh, I'm also Katie Golden on the internet at
Katie Golden on Twitter. Uh. So, yeah, thank you so
much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you

(01:15:59):
have like just a minute to spare, you could press
that the star buttons give it a rating. If you
have even a little more time and you give it
a review, I will read it. I read all the reviews.
They absolutely make my day. They make me smile. Thank
you for doing that, and thanks for the space concerts
for the super awesome song. Ex Alumina Creature features a

(01:16:19):
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the
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